bhlaab said:
denizsi said:
I think it's a huge mistake to break down every action into a minutia-driven numbers game. The idea is choices and consequences, not minmaxing and consequences.
Minutia-driven numbers game? The fuck? You are already minmaxing consequences in Fallout series at any given time at every single turn, and often times, just because you can. There's rarely any choice that deals with conflicts of interest in the series than you leisurely deciding what's best for the world.
I'd much rather have a simple "You can do X or Y, but you don't have enough time to do both! Pick one!" thrown in my face than have to write out a day planner for my video game character. "Hmmm, rescued Tandi, I have 15 minutes free to break for lunch!"
The original game is already throwing that in your face, but only not backing it up by walking the walk. Read again:
denizsi said:
a certain fixed amount of hidden (from the player) time slots
Kind of like how you put a point in an attribute during character creation and suddenly, out of thin air, the text magically changes from, say, Average to Good, Good to Great etc, which are actually textual representations for numbers. But, you're gonna object, numbers? What's that shit now, eh? If it's Good, then it's Good, what the fuck are numbers for; do we really need this shit, one more stuff to worry about? If I wanted to play math 101, I'd use my calculator!
Wait, there comes another example: New Reno! You know the place where there are four families and depending on how you play, fate of New Reno changes? Now the part it gets interesting: The families have these "numerical values", ie. more numbers. Yeah, I know, it's crazy! Just when the game was bad enough as it is, what with playing math 101 right at character creation, it suddenly jumps to, I don't know, complex mathematics? So, actions you do, add or substract numbers from these "values" each family have, and their fate is decided depending who has the "highest number" when the game's over, is that it? Completely crazy, isn't it. The whole game is about numbers! Gee, I guess we must be glad that we don't see numbers for game graphics.
So the point is, no, you don't need to sit and worry about some magical numbers somewhere and do calculations. The narrative of the game provides the necessary context for you to understand this and be able to make choices with reasonable consequences, while also (in my model) actually supporting that narrative with relevant game mechanics. Fallout was full of hits and misses in this regard, because, well I can't know why for certain but the impression I get is the lack of a unified, standardized system to track these kinds of things and letting some stuff slip.
I gave Shady Sands as an example on purpose. It's one of these settlements in the series where the narrative would have you believe that there is a conflict of interests between the stuff the townsfolk needs to deal with in there. There are Radscorpions attacking the town which can't possibly sit around forever, waiting you to come and kill them, while there are also Raiders in the area who attack the town frequently and also happen to have kidnapped the daughter of the village elder in their last visit. Common sense would have you believe that you'd need prioritize, decide what's more urgent and what's for the best and possibly take risks by going with your choice. When you can safely take your teaching the locals about agriculture without not giving a damn about the other more pressing matters and still have nothing bad come out of it, that is somewhat silly, in my opinion.
Now, Fallout already did lots of good and rarely done things, so this is not a stab at Fallout. Ending slides based on in games actions already achieved the effect I'm going for here somewhat but while it's nice to see that something you have or haven't done has had an effect, it's superficial because you likely don't get to be directly affected from it either way, not to mention it breaks the narrative despite having a very clear track of time and dates in the game. I'm exploring where and how to improve it, and that by using some form of time limits since that's the subject of the thread.
Arguing against this by claiming that it's one more thing to worry about is silly, especially when the original games are full of such examples that work.