Rage Gameplay with Willits at E3 '10

Craigs said:

Yes and God forbid all they remove some of the other awesome features in Daggerfall, such as...

So you don't like dungeon crawling. Gee, I wonder why you didn't like Daggerfall.

extremely unbalanced tutorial dungeon full of monsters that will kill you in a single hit if you don't make your character just right

Nonsense.

massive dungeons with unintuitive designs that are far too easy to get lost in

I wish the RNG had more prefabs to work with to make them even more complex.

tedious quests that require you to search every square inch of one of said massive dungeons for a single enemy that you have to kill

See above.

falling through the floor to your death every 5 minutes

Never happened to me.

Daggerfall is still the best TES game.

Craigs said:

Yes and God forbid all they remove some of the other awesome features in Daggerfall, [list of bugs and oddities]

Nobody ever said that Bethesda games are flawless, they had their share of bugs from the beginning. But at least for me bugs are not equal to bad design decisions to appeal the masses.

Want another one of said bad design decisions?
Fallout 3, beds that arent owned by the player or one of the groups he belongs to. You cant sleep in them because you dont own them.
WTF again! I can try to sleep where the fuck i want. If it is a good idea to sleep in a Raider infested region is another thing, but please, let me decide where my character rest and let the electric game master laugh his ass off afterwards.

Back to TES4.
Nobody ever takes my stuff. I can pile up stuff in front of a shop and nobody ever takes something from said pile or even notices the junk. I would expect that either the guards tell me to not litter the town or that some NPC-Thief thinks he should own said stuff. The first one seems most likely so if i leave my stuff there i would expect a guard to tell me "Hey citizen, don't litter our street. Remove your junk or pay the fine." (and loose the items...)

Then the guards scum-radar. I was in the sewers with Baurus (that Redguard Blade) and accidentally tried to steal from him. A guard came into the sewers and tried to arrest me...

And don't let me begin with my characters reputation and how everybody seems to know that i am the listener. WTF again and again and again...

And yes, i am a pen and paper player (mostly Storyteller ones), so i expect a "bit" more realism and complexity in my fantasy simulator.
Make an option that dumbs the game down for those causal gamers but please, let me decide if i want full realism or not.

Craigs said:

The banks were another thing I was happy to see go, as they made it even easier to make money than Oblivion. Just go to some region you'll never go to again, take out a massive loan, and never visit the region again.

Yeah, just because you couldn't resist design-abusing, in other words bad role-playing, doesn't mean that a feature sucks.
You can do that in real life too, get a loan in $country and never visit it again, good luck with making that stunt, though.
In-game they should have tested your reputation first and if you "stole" a bigger sum send some bounty hunter after you, but otherwise its OK that you can do that.

So you don't like dungeon crawling. Gee, I wonder why you didn't like Daggerfall.

I guess we have different ideas as to what kind of dungeon qualifies as fun. See, as much as I enjoy exploring ancient ruins fighting a large assortment of monsters, I can't say I enjoy stumbling through a huge mess of identical corridors for an hour, most of which lead to completely pointless dead ends, just so I can dump some stuff in my wagon.

Nonsense.

First time I tried was with a Nordic warrior. As soon as I went up a flight of stairs an imp came through a door and cast a spell that killed me in a single hit. Second character, pretty much the same thing but I managed to kill it with about 1/3 of my health left. I went to sleep to restore my health but was interrupted by an archer who once again, killed me with a single blow. Third character, killed by a skeleton. One hit. I could understand if maybe this was some optional dungeon I could have entered once I had leveled up a bit or at least grabbed some decent gear, but this was the very first area in the game.

Back to TES4.
Nobody ever takes my stuff. I can pile up stuff in front of a shop and nobody ever takes something from said pile or even notices the junk. I would expect that either the guards tell me to not litter the town or that some NPC-Thief thinks he should own said stuff. The first one seems most likely so if i leave my stuff there i would expect a guard to tell me "Hey citizen, don't litter our street. Remove your junk or pay the fine." (and loose the items...)

You could do that in Morrowind too. Hell, you could even walk into someone's home and kill them, and store all your stuff in their home and the guards wouldn't give a shit unless one happened to be in there.

Bastet Furry said:

And yes, i am a pen and paper player (mostly Storyteller ones), so i expect a "bit" more realism and complexity in my fantasy simulator.
Make an option that dumbs the game down for those causal gamers but please, let me decide if i want full realism or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darklands_%28video_game%29

Can't go wrong with this one then, and you'll probably find many of it's gameplay elements similar to Daggerfall.

Craigs said:

First time I tried was with a Nordic warrior. As soon as I went up a flight of stairs an imp came through a door and cast a spell that killed me in a single hit. Second character, pretty much the same thing but I managed to kill it with about 1/3 of my health left. I went to sleep to restore my health but was interrupted by an archer who once again, killed me with a single blow. Third character, killed by a skeleton. One hit. I could understand if maybe this was some optional dungeon I could have entered once I had leveled up a bit or at least grabbed some decent gear, but this was the very first area in the game.

The imp can be nasty, I'll give you that. Everything else, I've never had trouble in the starting dungeon, even when playing a Dark Elf mage.

I had more problems with stuff like monsters that I couldn't damage with any of my weapons, or getting a quest to kill a monster in a dungeon that spawned an ancient lich on me when I was level <10. The imp could be considered an example of such encounters that you can unexpectedly run into.

It's all fair if you ask me.

NeoWorm said:

Making game dumb CANT be justified by ANYTHING, not even by bringing completely new franchise.

I don't think you understand what "dumbing down" means. Dumbing down means taking something that already exists in one form or the other and making it less deep and complex on purpose for the sake of appealing to more people at the expense of the original fans. It isn't possible to dumb down a franchise that doesn't exist (A single game is not a franchise).

If the developers just want to sit down and make a simple and yet a fun game for everyone to enjoy, then who are you to blame them?

NeoWorm said:

There is no reason why I cant complain about console (and multiplatform) games being dumb even if they are console only (or primary).

But then what you consider to be dumb? Does a game have to be extremely simple to play in order to be considered dumb? Or are the majority of console games in general "dumb" because they lack the complexity of many PC tittles because of the natural technical and control limitations that come with the consoles?

NeoWorm said:

"but PC games can be more complex!" maybe wont work when talking about new ID furious FPS, but it works well in many other cases. For example compare MW that claims to be realistic depiction of modern war with old Operation:Flashpoint or newer ARMA2 which actually ARE realistic depictions of modern war.

Hmmmmmmm...I guess your right.


Oh wait!......Whats this:
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2047/opfdrfront.jpg

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

EDIT: In case you were talking about the older game, it was on the Xbox as well.

There is also one thing I haven't mentioned it, a really big problem I have with your logic. And that is that you keep talking about complexity like it is always a good thing. Its not.

Don't get me wrong, if anything I appreciate depth in games more then the typical gamer with some of my favorite games being grand strategy games like EU 3 and I am personally really looking forward to Victoria 2 and Civ 5, but that doesn't mean I want every single game I play to be some sort of a realistic depiction of the real world.

Being thrown into a realistic war scenario is fun and all, but I don't want to be forced to have to worry about my squad, my ammo status and not getting insta-killed with as single bullet every time I play a first person shooter, sometimes I just want to sit down and have some fun. Not to mentione that that a extra layer of complexity is worthless if it doesn't actually improve the game or make it more fun somehow.

Plus some of the things you have mentioned are just nitpicks. So what if you can only see 4 items on the screen at once instead of 12 in whatever role playing game you are playing? Is it really something that is so terrible that it literally ruins the whole experience?

hardcore_gamer said:

Plus some of the things you have mentioned are just nitpicks. So what if you can only see 4 items on the screen at once instead of 12 in whatever role playing game you are playing? Is it really something that is so terrible that it literally ruins the whole experience?

Yes, it does as its not the only thing.
If you understand a bit of German, try the German translation of TES4.
Schw.Tr.d.Le.En.W. anyone? :3

Bastet Furry said:

Yes, it does as its not the only thing.
If you understand a bit of German, try the German translation of TES4.
Schw.Tr.d.Le.En.W. anyone? :3

Care to be more precise? I don't speak German.

NeoWorm said:

"but PC games can be more complex!" maybe wont work when talking about new ID furious FPS,

Of course you can. You just have to look at other avenues of complexity. For instance the Quake games are extremely complex when played in multi. (Even Doom is quite complex when done as this.) Much more so than CS and any other so called "realistic shooter".

kristus said:

Of course you can. You just have to look at other avenues of complexity. For instance the Quake games are extremely complex when played in multi.

Complex how? And how does said complexity improve the game?

hardcore_gamer said:

Care to be more precise? I don't speak German.

The translation was a bit orthodox so to say.
A faithful retranslation would be something along the line of:
Li.Pot.O.Li.Reg. - Light Potion Of Life Regeneration

Nowadays it nets to a great game, but only after the community completed it.

hardcore_gamer said:

Complex how? And how does said complexity improve the game?

if you shoot rockets at your feet you go really really high.

Yes, it does as its not the only thing.

Most of which you've pointed out and more can be found in the console version as well. Again, there's the fact that you have to periodically reset the console and hold down A to clear the cache so the game won't crash every 5 minutes. Then there's the fact that you really can't customize the controls. Your only options are to pick from some preset configurations. There were also some areas that could cause the game to chug on the 360. For the PC that wasn't a problem for me. I could just turn down the video settings a bit. Not an option with the 360. I'm pretty sure most of these issues are proof that it wasn't made with just the 360 in mind.

Craigs said:

if you shoot rockets at your feet you go really really high.

Yea I remember seeing something like that in the original Team Fortress as well. It made next to no difference to me whatsoever.

How the hell is being able to jump higher then everyone else suppose to make the game much better then it would otherwise be? Sure, players who get good at it can make some nice jumps to hard to reach places, but for the most part its just a novelty that majority of players are never going to use except as a mean of a quick escape, and even then the effect can still be easily emulated on a console by giving the player a jump button/jetpack.

The only thing PC games have over consoles games are games like Civilization, Europa Universalis 3, mouse control in shooters, modding communities, and the occasional tactical shooter, and the ability to select your own video settings. Almost everything else is either just a novelty or something so insignificant that most people aren't likely to care.

By the way, I don't believe I have mentioned it yet that I spend more of my time on the PC then on my consoles (I own both a Xbox 360 and a PS3, plus a 42 inch full HD LCD TV). I love PC gaming as well as console gaming. And I like them both for what they are.

Craigs said:

if you shoot rockets at your feet you go really really high.

That is one ingredient of the game play.
There's the timing of items.
Positioning to do damage without taking it.
Using the right weapon at the right time. (Should I switch or not, if I mess up I die)
Using the weapons in the best ways.
Movement, dodging, strafejumping, circlejumping, rocketjumping.
Controlling/forcing the spawns.
Putting out good prediction shots.
Spamming to control where the opponent goes (cutting them off).
Sounds, hearing pickups, footsteps or not making any sounds to give you away.
Controlling the map.

Example.
Say you've just killed your opponent in DM6. He's looking for a weapons. Railgun is an important weapon in that map, and you hear him go up the jump pad to it. You who are keeping high ground got position on him and cut him off from bridge and rocket/rail him when he tries to go for the rail. Optionally, you plus forward and rocket jump over to rail. Or make a bridge to rail jump and .. well kill him.

Ok that's a very simple example but I hope you understand what I am saying.

hardcore_gamer said:

Dumbing down means taking something that already exists in one form or the other and making it less deep and complex on purpose for the sake of appealing to more people at the expense of the original fans.

Eh, you mean like taking away Health and replace it with screen covered in blood and MASSIVE text "You are hurt, take cover to heal!". I think I know what I am talking about.
Simple =/= stupid - enough said.

hardcore_gamer said:

But then what you consider to be dumb? Does a game have to be extremely simple to play in order to be considered dumb? Or are the majority of console games in general "dumb" because they lack the complexity of many PC tittles because of the natural technical and control limitations that come with the consoles?

Yes? Technical limitation are one of the problems why the games have to be simplier.

hardcore_gamer said:

Oh wait!......Whats this:
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2047/opfdrfront.jpg

Nice argument to post a primary PC game that got miraculously ported to XBox.

Rest of post is just proof of simple minded consolism. "I want to play realistic war game but without stuff that makes war games realistic." Nice. No thanks.
Simple games are fine, as long as you have the possibility to play something more interesting. Probles comes here - You dont have the possibility to play something more interesting because they DONT make such games. Because consoles are casual entertaiment. No stress, just fun. They try so hard to make the games as friendly as possible that they took all the challenge away alongway. And only way to pretend that games are hard and challenging is adding hitpoints and damage to monsters! Thats cheap and wrong.

hardcore_gamer said:

The only thing PC games have over consoles games are games like Civilization, Europa Universalis 3, mouse control in shooters, modding communities, and the occasional tactical shooter, and the ability to select your own video settings. Almost everything else is either just a novelty or something so insignificant that most people aren't likely to care.

You pretty much wrote all reasons why I will never bother about consoles. EVERY SINGLE ITEM FROM THAT LIST ALONE IS ENOUGH.

NeoWorm said:

You pretty much wrote all reasons why I will never bother about consoles.

But it doesn't stop you from posting about them like you know your ass from a hole in the ground.

They try so hard to make the games as friendly as possible that they took all the challenge away alongway.

Now you're just talking out your ass. Not all console games are like that and quick glance is enough to show it. RE4 is a good example of what I'm talking about. The game really demands quick reflexes, flexible strategies, and sometimes a keen eye. Same could be said about Demon's souls as well. Besides, implying that console games are the only ones that do this is pretty ignorant and near sighted. Spore anyone?

@Craigs:
Yay, woho, one example versus thousands of shitty ones.
I still go with latest VG Cats comic (#281: Subtlety). I hope some people in the industry read it and get thinking. This one speaks my hearth too.

You know the last good game i bought that was worth every Euro i paid? It was an indie game called Aquaria. Good old Castletroid action with a great story and superb pixel art. Nothing for the causal gamer, though, because this game wont present itself on a silver tablet and wont make it easy for you.

NeoWorm said:

I know what I am talking about.

No.

NeoWorm said:

Simple =/= stupid - enough said.

So Super Mario Bros, Star Fox 64, the original Ace Combat games, Doom 64, and Goldeneye 64 are all stupid because they don't have the same level of complexity as Microsoft Flight Simulator?

NeoWorm said:

Nice argument to post a primary PC game that got miraculously ported to XBox.

Well perhaps I would not have been able to do so if you had simply bothered to use a couple of extra minutes of your time to fact check your claims and to see if or not the games you mentioned were actually PC exclusives like you implied/said they were.

NeoWorm said:

Rest of post is just proof of simple minded consolism. "I want to play realistic war game but without stuff that makes war games realistic." Nice. No thanks.

What? I never said that. I said that while I can enjoy complexity in games I sometimes just feel like sitting down and blowing shit up without having to worry about anything complex. Sometimes I feel like spending hours forging a Empire in EU 3, and sometimes I just want to sit down and spend 20 min online in some simple and yet fun online shooter. It just depends on what I want to play.

NeoWorm said:

Simple games are fine, as long as you have the possibility to play something more interesting. Probles comes here - You dont have the possibility to play something more interesting because they DONT make such games.

Or perhaps you just haven't bothered to actually look for them.

NeoWorm said:

Because consoles are casual entertaiment

So all of the Xbox live tournaments and the countless pre-planned events hosted by Microsoft and others over Xbox live are just casual entertainment?

NeoWorm said:

No stress, just fun. They try so hard to make the games as friendly as possible that they took all the challenge away alongway. And only way to pretend that games are hard and challenging is adding hitpoints and damage to monsters! Thats cheap and wrong.

Then please enlighten me and tell me how your ideal game would be like, and then tell me why it isn't possible to implement it on a console.

Bastet Furry said:

@Craigs:
Yay, woho, one example versus thousands of shitty ones.
I still go with latest VG Cats comic (#281: Subtlety). I hope some people in the industry read it and get thinking. This one speaks my hearth too.

Oh there's a few more. Both bioshock games (considering how god awful the controls are on the console are and the time it takes for textures to unblur I think it's safe to say they're PC oriented) are good examples of this. Speaking of those flaws, it's also pretty damn stupid to assume that PC users are the only ones getting ripped off with ports. PC users got screwed over with RE4, call of cthulhu, and MW2. At the same time though, the same's happened to console games such as Quake 4 (horrible performance), fallout 3 (broken and jerky aiming system), and again bioshock. It goes both ways.

http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6266586/

16:40 into this video. Tim says that there'll be an option to the player. To play with either regen or with classic health packs health system. That's some excellent news.

kristus said:

To play with either regen or with classic health packs health system.

You just made my day, kristus.

hardcore_gamer said:

So Super Mario Bros, Star Fox 64, the original Ace Combat games, Doom 64, and Goldeneye 64 are all stupid because they don't have the same level of complexity as Microsoft Flight Simulator?

Notice the slash through his equals sign? That means IS NOT EQUAL TO.

kristus said:

http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6266586/

16:40 into this video. Tim says that there'll be an option to the player. To play with either regen or with classic health packs health system. That's some excellent news.

Are you sure? I watched the video and I don't think I ever heard him say that you could choose between the two. It sounded more like he was saying that the player has health that can be restored by health packs AND by regenerating it.

*Sigh*
Obviously I can't be sure before I played the game and experienced it for myself. That's why I posted the link and a timestamp so people could check it out for themselves.

Craigs said:

Now you're just talking out your ass. Not all console games are like that and quick glance is enough to show it. RE4 is a good example of what I'm talking about. The game really demands quick reflexes, flexible strategies, and sometimes a keen eye. Same could be said about Demon's souls as well. Besides, implying that console games are the only ones that do this is pretty ignorant and near sighted. Spore anyone?

Wasn RE4 the game where you cant walk and shoot at the same time? Other things I remember about this game was annoying cammera and interuptions with cutscenes every two seconds.
On the other hand I would really like to try Demon's souls, the game looks fine from videos I saw. Only I fear there would be some another awfully annoying thing that would completely ruin the game for me... but maybe not.

hardcore_gamer said:

Well perhaps I would not have been able to do so if you had simply bothered to use a couple of extra minutes of your time to fact check your claims and to see if or not the games you mentioned were actually PC exclusives like you implied/said they were.

Exclusivity isnt the thing we are arguing about, even that each discussion about consoles vs PC sooner or later ends with arguing who have more exclusives. The problem is whatever the console games are more dumbled down than PC games. Since both games I posted ARE PC exclusives and Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is some kind of spinoff inspired by the two PC games I talked about (never heard about it before, I tought is a datadisc for old Flashpoint) I think my point was absolutely right. Even multiplatform Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is complex because its offshot from PC game (or I hope it is, never played it).

hardcore_gamer said:

So all of the Xbox live tournaments and the countless pre-planned events hosted by Microsoft and others over Xbox live are just casual entertainment?

Yes, and all the challenges and achievements too. Actually all achievements on XBox are designed for casual gamers to be able to achieve them, because if they arent, gamers would be annoyed that they cant get ALL the new achievements and would complain. Thats fact.

hardcore_gamer said:

Then please enlighten me and tell me how your ideal game would be like, and then tell me why it isn't possible to implement it on a console.

Because it doesnt have customizable controls, keyboard and mouse. That largely restricts games to these that can be controlled by the 12(?) buttons on controller. And thats problem because players want to have all the stuff that is common on PC (HUDs, inventories in RPG for example). So this stuff is ported in simplier way because it cant be done otherwise on console. And here comes the problem - now you are making multiplatform game, you have to choose what kind of system you implement, because making two absolutely different systems would be too much work. So you naturaly choose the one that can be ported to console because it will earn more money. PC game is than dumb even that it doesnt had to be.

kristus said:

*Sigh*
Obviously I can't be sure before I played the game and experienced it for myself. That's why I posted the link and a timestamp so people could check it out for themselves.

There is quite high possibility that it will have health packs instead of instaregeneration like modern games. After all its id, they made DooM and they had this classical scheme even in DooM3 and Quake4. I still think they are classical PC gamers.

Yeah. But they didn't in Wolfenstein.

Anyway. That Tim even made a point out of how they want the player to have the choice between regen and classic health pack mechanic leads me to believe that there is in fact a choice in the matter. And not simply regen with the option to also use health packs.

I think the way the view bobs when walking could get really annoying after a while.

Looks like the AI had some massive brain farts in the long hallway section where he placed the turret. The two guys at the end that so obviously spawned out of thin air aren't a good sign either.

Are all the hosts in these vids older balding guys who get over-excited about anything, even if it's the most generic feature ever?

I guess I'm spoiled by the fact that the only Polish TV channel that covers gaming extensively has two guys doing the reviews that are veteran gamers (their review of the Speedball 2 remake focused on comparing it to the Amiga games), often playing off the fact that one of them isn't too bothered by the influx of casual console gamers and the other blames it for the dumbing-down of games, Bioshock being his favorite example.

@Regeneration:
Its nice, when you earn it with a hard side-quest.
But when you have it from the beginning the game can get way too easy.

@PC-Exclusives:
I could go into my basement and dig out tons of PC exclusives and then there is the DOS-Collection and the Abandon Archive. Lets say that 90% in there is PC only, that would make roughly 1900 games, only from ~1982 to ~1995 and only those inside said archive. And dont let me start with all the Amiga and C64 games, Amiga and C64 being a real all-purpose computer. Beat that, consoleros! :P
(In before PSX Tosec ;) )

As someone said before, it just boils down to the laziness of the programmers who just cant implement a bunch of #IFDEFs against __WIN__ and __LINUX__ versus __PS3__, __WII__ and __XBOX360__.

Belial said:

the other blames it for the dumbing-down of games, Bioshock being his favorite example.

Sounds like my kind of guy. :p

Bastet Furry said:

@Regeneration:
Its nice, when you earn it with a hard side-quest.
But when you have it from the beginning the game can get way too easy.

There are ways that regen can be good. Like as a temporary powerup, or like in Max payne for two examples.

Bastet Furry said:

And dont let me start with all the Amiga and C64 games, Amiga and C64 being a real all-purpose computer.

There were many multi-platform games back then. Titles that came out on the C64 and Amiga usually had their Amstrad, Spectrum, Atari versions as well. Later Amiga titles had their PC versions with horrible sound :P

One thing I forgot to mention about the vid: Mutant Bash TV? Heh. Does anyone else think that it was pathetic of the host not to mention Smash TV at that point, or is it just me?