ISRIERI'S PROFILE

I'll join and then modkill myself to see what the hilarious entertaining flavor text is.

author=Ratty524
Yeah. I don't know whether to cut it here.

To fill you in, I've already got ratings from all judges except for one person. Said person is very busy with a new job and the post activity shows.

Considering our current trend in scores, however, I'm debating on whether it's worth it to wait for the last set of ratings. I've been pretty patient so far, but I don't know whether the final set would even be that big of an influence on every other judge's thoughts on each level.

Send him a PM.

"The Eroticism of Challenge." Now there's a thread title for you!

I played a little of Doom 4's new campaign and I really really enjoyed not just the challenge the game presented, but the way it was challenging. In your average shooter these days, I think most of the difficulty is learning how to play defensively and getting good at long-range target practice. Its all about aiming and precision with the enemies offering up some cursory offense you can recover from.

Doom is not like that. It is fast-paced hectic adrenaline action where there is no safe space to hide in or plan a defense around. The enemies don't stay behind cover or offer themselves up as targets to knock down: They come AFTER YOU. And the AI is good enough that different units can coordinate well enough that the bruisers pin you while the harassing units say in back. Your straggling has to be done in the moment and constantly on the move while trying to get a hang of the whole aiming thing. Plus you don't have regenerating health. Its health packs. You can die very easily, but you regain health for killing bad guys instead of waiting. Thus there is real tension and incentive to play your best; fast and aggressively.

I like games like that. The game presents it's challenges front and center and leave you to figure out the most optimal way of dealing with a problem. The level design never assaults you with too much at once, and gives you the right tools at the right time to deal with new threats. The main draw of this style of combat is that as a player, its more visceral and fun. I think the trick of Doom's campaign is that although it has no qualms about throwing you in the thick of things, it also never dogpiles you with unfair situations. The game assumes that you will find the right weapons, get the upgrades, and sufficient practice on the earlier enemies before they move you up to the hordes of bigger baddies.

On another level. Part of how well the game is designed has not only to do with the actual enemy and level design, but the aesthetic aspects too. Shooting people in a fake war isn't fun for me at all. Shooting aliens in a space war is pretty fun when you've got cool guns to use. Shooting demons on Mars? That's right up my ally. And you can carry more than two weapons at a time!! Let me repeat: YOU CAN CARRY MORE THAN TWO WEAPONS AT A TIME. Why did that convention vanish?!

That's not just player convenience. That opens up options for you. It opens up strategy and deeper possibilities for enemy combinations in a similar vein to how Zelda games can make more complicated dungeons as the tools you acquire upgrade your puzzle-solving arsenal. Doom does not restrict itself by needing to supply you with the right weapon for the right situation, for each situation as it occurs. It gives you all your tools in sequence, and then toward the end they can go balls to the walls and test how effective you are when fully armed. Mega Man X was like this too.

author=Ratty524
The way to get players to care about towns is to actually add things that give them incentive to stay there and interact with their environment.

The towns in Earthbound were good examples of this idea. For one thing, they weren't like your traditional 'rest-stop' towns in RPGs. But were a part of the world at large. What made them special was that there was stuff to do in them and had little features that made them lively and memorable. To an extent I think that's what Craze is talking about when he mentions FF12 since a lot of the story's narrative has Rabanastre in the limelight front and center. There was also the underground slum part of the city that gave it another aesthetic layer (and a really groovy music track). But even then it didn't feel like a living place for me personally. That's cuz it didn't capture my imagination and I could tell that all the people walking were just NPCs. The fact that there were so many of them I didn't have the time or inclination to talk to them all were another big part of it.

And I think that's the secret. If you want players to hang around your towns, you have to make every NPC worth talking to or checking out. If you don't, then you shouldn't have that NPC there. The actual look of the town be damned. Its the people who are in it, the stuff you can do, and the level of exploration that makes them fun to be around and to stick in your memory. If I visit a town, I don't want to look at it, I want to feel like I'm there.

The thing with Final Fantasy (especially the fourth one) is that the towns don't often have any features were you can go "Oh, that was the town with this thing or where that thing happened." that wasn't attributed to a character or some part of the overall story at large. Good towns will have some kind of feature, interesting dialogue, events that happen, dungeons located nearby, or anything that allows players to interact with the town in a way that is specific to the town itself. If you just have gear shops or people who spout out tips for other regions of the world, then that puts focus on the dungeons or the outside world or anyplace other than the town you're currently in.

I also agree with Solitayre. I know we still have turnout for levels but I'm concerned about quality turnout. I mean, look at the results of Ratty's contest. You're gonna want to revise that old plan and make a smaller game. That said:

The quality of another RMN World is going to fall entirely on the backs of the judges. I still remember the last time and get headaches. At this point it seems like killing ourselves for no reason. Why bother with a submission period if its just going to mean we have to spend 2 or 3 months doing cleanup?

I strongly posit that you'll be better off making your own game working together than doing another site-wide collab. So unless that's what happens, count me out on this one.


IE: We already have our Indiana Jones trilogy. It ended on a happy, positive note. Lets not make a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.