CHALLENGING THE STANDARDS

author=Feldschlacht IV link=topic=2605.msg48279#msg48279 date=1228162593
Shinan, it sounds like you need some Fallout in your life.

STALKER is my Fallout FPS surrogate. I will refuse to play Fallout 3 for as long as possible.

author=Feldschlacht IV link=topic=2605.msg48283#msg48283 date=1228162810
Hahaha, slightly off topic (or maybe not), but why is that, Shinan?

I'm one of those old Fallout fanatics that are all over the internet complaining about the buttraping Bethesda has done to Fallout. I was following the development and one after the other every "worst fear" was confirmed, each one more stupid than the next.

So yeah. I'm one of "those".

If you want to explain the monster dropping gold thing, just have a merchant 'join' the party (not available in combat), because he thinks it will be profitable to do so.

Hero slew Slime!
Slime dropped intestines!
Hero sold intestines to Merchant!
Hero got 10G!

In all videogames, specially RPG's, ALL is simbolic. The logic and reality may have some importance in some moments, but i thinks its "stupid" to think in gameplay elements with the idea of drastical coherence in mind: The gameplay don't exist for coherence (except in 100% simulators) it exist to have fun, play and be challenged. Also, i have to say that i agree in the idea of making coherence with the gameplay and history (like in clasic rpg's where all history was about gameplay elements, legendary weapons, magics, clases, or a central gameplay theme that its important to the history, like espers or materia from final fantasy)

I'm making a game that have a customitzed menu and a limited capacity of 15 to 30 items. I never do it for coherence, i thinked in a strategical idea for gameplay (limited inventory) and this is all. Also, i have in the same game a system based on objects that you can recolect, even hundreds of them. Yes, you have heard it well, 25 general items and hundreds of recolection items... total incoherence, but fun, interesting and strategic. I dont need any more, i have been playing total incoherence all my life.

pd: sorry for my english,

Chests could be found wherever inteligent beings would have stored then. In my game they are in most cities/military facilities/factories and ancient ruins. But you won´t find then in a forest or natural cave unless someone stashed then there.

I also think that every incoherence issue can be easily solved without killing gameplay, or even by enhancing it. Unlike most games, part of the fun in an RPG lies in being immersed in the game´s settings, therefore all efforts to kill things that might unplug the player by reminding then it is just a game are well worthy.

I addressed this before: Menus, turn based systems etc are kinda like the soundtrack orother non present elements which in the heroes don´t deal with, just us expectators, however, anything the characters actually deal in game should be mended.

Personally the gold and chests were not so blatant to me as robots being healed by regular healing spells/itens, misproportion in graphics, story cutscenes that contradict other gameplay aspects with no explanation or at least surprise reaction from characters, bad developed geopolitics (if you can´t make it good, make it simple), iron sword doing 500+ damage than copper sword.

As I said on the other page: There are fictional aspects (magic, floating islands, dragons etc) which have their own background and in-game reasons to be there; There are the narrative/gameplay aspects (menus, turn based system, parallel scenes, message boxes...) which are not seen by the characters nor touched by then; And then there are the coherency holes (finding gold inside an animal for no reason) which can be EASILY solved with some effort to make things look more solid (as I suggested on a previous post here some changes in text could very well clarify things).

Actually, it is funny how ppl complained so much about clicking away to sell loot and no one complained about something which is usually incoherent AND a very boring chore as it is standard jRPGs: Upgrading equipment.

For coherence, as I said, it is funny how a more durable material, which should just make the sword far less "breakable" and with that slightly sharp (since it could be sharpened better) turns the next sword into something way more deadly than the previous one, and also how conviniently that progression goes toward villages and even the loot from monsters or chests follow up for that progression.

For the gameplay aspect: When I get to a new town, I need to visit at least 2 different stores (armor and weapon, let alone games which have more) just to upgrade equipment which won´t offer me more strategic options, but will just adjust my stats to the monsters I will bump into next... unless for the occasional elemental armor, but the progression will destroy it´s strategic value since the next armors will be generally better than that and will make it useless even in its strong defense point.

I would far more prefer if villages just sold diferent equipment which offered more options in equipment configuration without overall progression in the total benefits of said equipments.

This would also give villages a better personality regarding stores, like you could have stores selling equipment related to what the townsfolk would really need to hunt around that region.

Oh and another fun coherence point: When shops sell tottally absurd itens for their conditions, tend to happen more with guns being sold in nom-developed villages, an example was in the medieval-like planet Expell in Star Ocean 2, you could buy disk/cartridge for Opera´s Kaleidoscope ray gun, something the ppl there would never know how to use, let alone develope new components for.

A good counter example is Phantasy Star IV, where the techy weapons from Androids can only be found in crates found in ruins from the once techy civilization that lived in Algol centures before. Shops will just sell weapons from what current civilization could produced, medieval stuff.

Party defeated Angry Wolf!
Found Scavenged 10 GP of goods!

There's my solution to the whole "Why does an animal drop GP?". Add some flavour text and treat it as getting anything worth anything from the corpse and automatically converting it to its monetary worth. If enemies are dropping stuff whose only purpose in the entire game is to be sold for cash then its just a tedious step that the player has to go through every time they kill anything. Plus loot can be restricted by inventory limits; If I ever get 99 of an item I either have to go back to town to drop it off or effectively start losing earned cash since I can't carry the loot anymore.

An alchemy system using loot would be a good way of making loot more tolerable but it would have to be done right. Having to craft basic healing items which turns into having to farm specific enemies sounds like a great excuse to play something better, and it better not be something that requires magical player knowledge to use. (I could barely stand FF12's loot system)


Trying to mix gameplay with sensability is IMO tricky. I'm trying to make my game's world one that can stand up to a bit of scrutiny and possibly even exist in the real world given certain liberties but I don't want to screw up the gameplay for it. If that includes magical monster guts->$$$ converters then I don't think I'll be losing much sleep over it. Then there's trying to limit where the player can go (Ya~ay linearity!) and I'd at least like to make sensable barriers to why the player can't go to places yet.

author=gerkrt link=topic=2605.msg48447#msg48447 date=1228198705
I agree in some things...but. Look at what you say about the Iron Sword. Yeah, i didnt like games like FFIV where de equipment was stupid, but this dont mean that its incoherence hurted immersion.

It simply: We dont need(and normally dont want) to read, or know, all the information, all the relations, real rules of your world. A lot of things are assumed by the player to make the things direct and easy. Yes, the "Iron Sword" is a short formula to describe why this sword is better, in a mode well known. Nothing more, and nothing less. And nothing bad.

All the games and genres uses things like this. In RPG's like Morrowind you get "normal X, better X, etc X" well, its an other formula, but the system its the same, just that in games like DQ or FF they created a scale of power of the materials for their arms.

Also the same with the Geopolotics. A videogame its different than a novel or some movies. Many times we dont want to know all, and many others we will know it with the protagonist perspective. My original project have a lot of this, geopolitics, legends, mites, i have registered more than 20 wars and what happened in them, but im not going to put most of that things in the game, because i think a game assumes a lot of things for the gameplay and its never like book or movie (maybe i will put the original texts as extras). Gameplay rithm.

Cutscenes that contradict, i suppose that you talk about things like FFVII Aerith dead. Well, in this case its the same thing, when you are playing a reality abstraction like is a crpg this things simply are normal, people that play this games assumes that its all symbolic. I thing a lot of people have done the joke with aeris and a Phoneix Down, but its only a joke, its assumed that the logical of any game its like this.

I liked that from PSIV, the robots that need special items and their equipment, but was a general idea of the history, you cant do this with all. And the stores that sell incoherent things, its the same idea, i never look this at coherence terms, only gameplay terms. I think its you that have some fixation with realism...

Sure you like games like Ultima, TES or fallout, no?

Maybe you don´t want to read it all, but I and most of the library devourer players, play mainly to know the world, something that books or movies can´t offer since you only know what the story covers and some extras, but in games you can actually see and explore bits of the world even if they aren´t relevant to the story.

In fact that´s why I like to sopend more time in towns than dungeons, fighting is just part of the coherence for me, save when fighting is presented as really funny and strategic (and in most rpgs, it apply only for bosses).

Also note that the Iron sword was just one of my complaints with progression system, it still has the convenient progression that follows the hero. Also the fact that upgrading equipment is a really one of the most boring parts in RPGs, only slightly better when you have several options of equipment at each shop and characters can equip almost anything. But I´d rather not be forced to upgrade in every town. In towns I like to get information, look at the architecture, city structure, check libraries, museums, NPCs, pubs etc Maybe do some shopping, but interesting shopping, like souvenirs.

Now as much I advocate that more games should be aimed at the librarian/exploration coherence (NOT REALISM, realism applies to world world as setting only) insane players, I think that politics should be introduced slowly and most of it kept optional trough books and NPCs. However any bit that fixes something absurd should be in your face, even if just as a short sentence which could be explained better if you want.

Regarding cutscenes: if it is not coherent to the point that it doesn´t even try to fool me, I can´t feel for it, case with Aeris that when I laughed and I never got how ppl can feel anything in there (and I did like the character) and the scene could be completely fixed with some small edits. Compare this to Alys that, where there is at least effort to try and restore her, even using an in-game spell in a cutscene (I actually drew a fanart of Rika trying to use Gires on her). Those are the things I like to see and make me feel the world they live in is more of a world.

Why can´t you do this with all? I don´t see the inpending factor here. And again, not realism, coherence.

Funny enough I hardly play PC/nom JRPGs since most of the ones I played lack a central linear path and pre created characters, most of the time in those, it feels my character is an outsider to that world because of that. I get some fun exploring here and there, but I don´t feel attached to anything. I actually should try Fallout sometime though, the setting seems interesting.

GRS: I said almost the same thing on the page before :)

Suzu: I remember I was shocked to see a little girl selling weapons in the devasted 2300 A.D in Chrono Trigger, but it was exactly because it felt possible, yet sad, like the world is so bad that children have to deal with weapons to live. And in some cases, little girls just attend to shops while their parents went to restock.