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wildweasel

Informed Rage

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Those of you that have a subscription to Game Informer or intend on buying an issue from your local GameStop, the August 2009 issue has a cover story on id Software's upcoming Rage. The story includes many high-resolution pictures, commentary from John Carmack and Tim Willits, and a more in-depth description of Rage's gameplay than previously published. Evidently this coverage is not on the Game Informer website yet.

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There's some uncomfortable information in there. Like regenerating health, ability to revive yourself after you die and the suggestion that all the focus is put on making it favorable for the console tards.

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kristus said:

There's some uncomfortable information in there. Like regenerating health, ability to revive yourself after you die and the suggestion that all the focus is put on making it favorable for the console tards.


Surprise, surprise. Welcome to todays generation of gaming.

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kristus said:

There's some uncomfortable information in there. Like regenerating health, ability to revive yourself after you die and the suggestion that all the focus is put on making it favorable for the console tards.

Too much emphasis is being put on the controller thing.. If you bought an FPS for your console that doesn't handle well due to lack of interest in the controller you'd moan. If you bought a racing game for your console where the controls suck, the game is nigh unplayable. These guys have made the mouse+keyboard combo work for years.. there really isn't anything to add or change in that regard.

People can't rag on id for attempting to make the game playable on two of its target consoles...

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Remember guys, they're still making the PC version. There's no way in hell they'd require you to play with a gamepad just because there's support for it.

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kristus said:

There's some uncomfortable information in there. Like regenerating health, ability to revive yourself after you die

Sounds like a game for babies (not unlike how Prince of Persia sounds like too). No one dies, it's all for the fun!

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Printz: Well. You still had to complete the acrobatics puzzles in POP. I never played it so I dunno how it was with combat. but in all respects regarding the climbing and jumping. You still actually had to do it.

WildWeasel said:

Remember guys, they're still making the PC version. There's no way in hell they'd require you to play with a gamepad just because there's support for it.


No, they'll support Mouse and Keyboard too.

Zaldron said:

Too much emphasis is being put on the controller thing.. If you bought an FPS for your console that doesn't handle well due to lack of interest in the controller you'd moan. If you bought a racing game for your console where the controls suck, the game is nigh unplayable. These guys have made the mouse+keyboard combo work for years.. there really isn't anything to add or change in that regard.

People can't rag on id for attempting to make the game playable on two of its target consoles...


If you only test it with the controller, it's easy to overlook the glaring issues you can get with the keyboard+mouse. Remember Dead space and Alone in the Dark 5? They had all this shit going on to make them work on their stupid target console controls and you had to do a lot of pointless shit which made the game play pretty annoying.

Halo is probably the best case of an FPS that went from console to PC and actually had a decent game play. But most of them are playing pretty flat.

But my biggest issue is with the pampering nonsense of health and death.

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You seriously think an id game that also happens to be an FPS won't have a functional mouse/keyboard setup? Is this really an issue in your mind?

Personally I don't miss the stupid health packs. If you're going for persistent health, then fuck it go all the way. Locational damage with real side effects, the ability to carry medical equipment, extremely overall fragility to damage, etc. etc. Regenerating health is just a simplification of before and after fight medkits.

And the death thing sounds different from other games, so I can't really comment...but you know, YOU CAN ALWAYS QUICKLOAD.

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Zaldron said:

Personally I don't miss the stupid health packs. ... Regenerating health is just a simplification of before and after fight medkits.

Health packs really depend on level design (and a number of other gameplay mechanics). If all your levels are "fight, give max health, fight, give max health, fight..." then sure, there's no difference between regenerating and using medkits. But that kind of level design is crap. Good level design would limit the provided resources and distribute them, and the fights, in a less Serious Sam-kind of a way, so that managing when you pick your goodies (and trying to stay alive without running out of them) becomes a part of the gameplay. Using regenerating health just removes the whole resource managing aspect.

Also, regenerating health makes bigger fights impossible to have because you'd have to find a perfectly safe spot to sit in to regenerate health...unless the game has such system that you can regen health only when all enemies are dead, of course, which makes big fights completely impossible. Yay, fun!

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Zaldron said:

Stuff

Way to oversimplify, batman.

I don't expect id to make obnoxious complicated control schemes to manage the limits of the controls. They'll probably make the controls simple to suit them, but also that as I said is very likely to lead to the game play being flat as a pancake. Doom3 had pretty damn flat game play too. But here's a setting that should offer a lot more possibilities for vertical layouts.

Jodwin covered the health packs pretty well. It sounds like you never even played all that many games to think that regenerating health is automatically better than having something more involved for noncooperation.

The regenerating health in GoW worked, because the game play was all about hiding. But I'd be damned if that was what is going on here. Where it's just more catering to the casual crowd.

And your persistent crying about Quicksaves. A feature I don't even care for or use. Get over yourself.

Sure I could play the game with self imposed rules and not get up just because the game tells me that I can. But then I would be playing with the balance heavily tipped against me since the game counts on me using that feature.
Prey for instance (I get the feeling I've already said this but whatever) don't have health packs at all in the "harder" skill level and just expect you to die to get more health. So why the hell is there a health meter to begin with?

I don't mind quicksaves being in games though. Because they're a non intrusive feature for people who just want to make progress and don't care about enjoying the game play. IMO anyway. But reviving the player after he dies. That's very intrusive, since it affects the whole game balance. But even here there's no hard rules that I apply. Descent had extra lives. I could live with that, since you had a finite quantity. They're a bit like the mystic urn in Heretic, only they don't require any skill to use to their full extent. But if you suck so much you need to use them repeatedly. Then they won't save you for long anyway.

Sum of it all. It sounds like it'll be simple simple simple. I still hope that won't be the case though.

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Get over myself? You're the one that cannot live with the idea of "stuff" happening after your character dies, something you can COMPLETELY IGNORE and LOAD to whatever "fair" instance of progress you can conjure up. Your position is ridiculous.

And health management is simply "ooh, I have 97% health, I better remember where this is the next time I'm running low". Please. You really think there's any tactic involved in going back a few rooms and fetching some spare health boosts? Like it really makes any god damn difference to standing still for a couple of seconds? I will concede most games regenerate too fast for my liking, but health distribution in level design is just a fancy way of achieving exactly the same kind of fight->recover->fight game flow. Even Valve noted the deficiency of this system and implemented a dynamic health boost method in the grubs of Episode II.

I've finished Prey without a single death but the mandatory ones so I don't really see your point.

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Jodwin said:

Also, regenerating health makes bigger fights impossible to have because you'd have to find a perfectly safe spot to sit in to regenerate health...unless the game has such system that you can regen health only when all enemies are dead, of course, which makes big fights completely impossible. Yay, fun!

A problem that doesn't actually exist. Have you ever really have gone through a big fight you couldn't win on account of there not being enough health? What happened to avoiding damage anyway?

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Zaldron said:
And health management is simply "ooh, I have 97% health, I better remember where this is the next time I'm running low". Please. You really think there's any tactic involved in going back a few rooms and fetching some spare health boosts?

Assuming the health is nearby, you're going to navigate to it in the middle of the fight, under fire. That's where the tactic resides. Sure, you can also run back to health found in another area, and you might do it when you're still pretty unfamiliar with the game, but that's going to be a rather dull and conservative way to play which you'll be trying to avoid once you're playing for the challenge.

Regenerating health doesn't seem to me like an inevitably bad concept, but discourages that tactical element from the game design. You could still implement it in some way by providing situation where the player could hide to heal himself, perhaps still in potential danger. It's all less concrete and more abusable than limited resources, though, and won't push the level designers to pay much attention to the aspect.

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Zaldron said:

Get over myself?

Granted, this was the wrong expression I was looking for. "Get real" would probably have better suited my needs.

Zaldron said:

Your position is ridiculous.

Funny. I think the same about yours.

Zaldron said:

And health management is simply "ooh, I have 97% health, I better remember where this is the next time I'm running low". Please. You really think there's any tactic involved in going back a few rooms and fetching some spare health boosts? Like it really makes any god damn difference to standing still for a couple of seconds? I will concede most games regenerate too fast for my liking, but health distribution in level design is just a fancy way of achieving exactly the same kind of fight->recover->fight game flow. Even Valve noted the deficiency of this system and implemented a dynamic health boost method in the grubs of Episode II.


I dunno about Episode2 since I only played HL2, and I had my fill there. But if you don't understand how a regenerating health bar is seriously impacting the strategic elements of game play. Then I don't think there's any reason we continue this discussion. There's also no actual penalty to doing stupid shit. I can run out and as long as I keep a cover close enough I can just take pot shots at the enemies until they die. Doesn't matter if they hit me, as long as I don't die, I won't be affected. It's not fun, it's not clever and it's not very skillful. It's simply boring and a matter of having enough patience to do it.

Zaldron said:

I've finished Prey without a single death but the mandatory ones so I don't really see your point.

I played Prey through once. When I noticed that I couldn't die, I lost all interest in the actual game and I just didn't care about anything. I'd die, then just run down that hole back into the map and shoot at the monsters and sometimes die again cause I didn't give a shit since it wasn't a game I was playing anyway. It was just an interactive movie with a bad script.
I then tried out "cherokee" the "hard" skill level that is unlocked as you finish the first. But instead of making a game out of it and removing "death walk" they removed the health potions. So you are forced to use "Death Walk" if you want health. Which you do, since monsters are shooting at you.

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As bland and uninspired as Halo is, I did prefer it's method of health regeneration, where you have an overshield with an actual lifebar underneath. If your health got too low, risking the loss of your shield became more of a threat. Kinda the best of both worlds.

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I prefer the way they did it in Max Payne though. In Halo extra health or armor or whatever it was was more a convenience than a requisite. Kind of like the Soulsphere in Doom.

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Use3D said:

As bland and uninspired as Halo is, I did prefer it's method of health regeneration, where you have an overshield with an actual lifebar underneath. If your health got too low, risking the loss of your shield became more of a threat. Kinda the best of both worlds.


Yea, but if i remember correctly the dumped that aspect of the game in Halo 3 and only give you regenerating health and no actual health bar. I could be wrong though.

As for the people crapping all over Id for making the game good for consoles rather the making the game PC focused:

Did Id ever actually say or claim that this would be a PC focused tittle? The moment i learned that the game would have open landscapes and cars in it i started to assume the game would be console focused. And since Rage is a brand new franchise we can't reach out for the "they stabbed the PC crowd in the back" card because Rage has never been a PC focused franchise in the first place.

Now if they were to declare Doom 4 a console focused shooter then i would be pissed, but they have already announced some very cool features that appear to be PC only, like better visuals and user made content.

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kristus said:

I prefer the way they did it in Max Payne though. In Halo extra health or armor or whatever it was was more a convenience than a requisite.


Er huh? In Max Payne you could just carry painkillers around, but also had the quicksave feature, so if you did poorly in a fight you could just reload and not bother using your painkillers, thus stocking them up, which is a broken method of healing in my opinion.
Halo didn't allow you to carry health around, and a player at low health in Halo was much more vulnerable regardless of the regenerating shield...I don't see how healthpacks are just a convenience, if anything they're a convenience in Max Payne.

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In Max Payne if you get near death some of your health regenerates. It also claimes to have an auto-adjusting difficulty system.

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kristus said:
I don't mind quicksaves being in games though. Because they're a non intrusive feature for people who just want to make progress and don't care about enjoying the game play.


Wait.....what?

This logic makes no sense on so many different levels. I use quake save all the time, but not because i don't want to enjoy the game but simply because i don't like the idea of spending 15 min playing though a hard chapter of a level and then being forced to repeat the whole thing over and over in case i die when i can make sure that i won't have to with the press of a button.

Playing the though the same area over and over because you keep getting killed is just not fun.

If i spend 10 min fighting a horde of enemy's, then i don't want to risk being shot while i an not looking forcing me to do it all over again. And that's why i have quake save, to remove those kind of problems from the games.

This is extremely true when it comes to Doom and Doom 2 also, i mean just look at it like this:

You spend 20 min fighting through a long and a hard map, and everything appears well and good. Then you press a switch and suddenly the room becomes full of chaingunners who blast you to bits giving you next to no time to react, forcing you to restart the whole level. Of course, you would know of them the next time you were to enter that room or press that switch or whatever but progressing though the level would still largely be a trial and error process since monsters could jump at you at any second, and i just don't get the appeal of restarting the level over and over instead of simply using quake save.

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Hardcore_gamer, you just described what "people who just want to make progress and don't care about enjoying the game play" think. Other people do indeed enjoy replaying those parts of the game as a challenge and to improve their skills at the game. You can also use save games in a complementary fashion to play from a certain section, or course, especially if it helps get ideas on how to tackle a particularly frustrating part, but anyone who enjoys the challenge and really likes how the game plays will come back to it and tackle it without that help, to really test himself against the raw game, which is the main point of playing.

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Constant quicksaving really destroys the flow of games. Especially shooters. Seriously, just try playing through a hard level without quicksaving your way through it once. Only then can you truly appreciate the subtleties and awesome challenges the game presents you.

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The whole debate about saves and how those who use them are not proper gamers is not new on these forums. It really, really depends on the game in my opinion, and on what it offers. A series of discrete maps that can be played in under 20 minutes each is not the same thing at all as a large seamless world in which you can play for hundreds and hundreds of hours.

Either way, I don't like games that do not offer the option to save anywhere. Everyone has played through one of these games with predetermined save points, and should be familiar with this horrible scenario: save point -> unskippable cutscene -> very tough boss fight.

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Gez said:

The whole debate about saves

It's not a debate about saves. It's a debate about Quicksaves.

Many games require saves to make it through them, unless you got a lot of stamina and nothing better to do for a few days or weeks. But Quicksaves are only there for the user to be able to save everytime they make any kind of progress.

And that's fine. If the user want to do that. Do it, as I said before. It's non intrusive. But when this is built into the game play by having players unable to really lose. Then it affects everyone. If that is the case with Rage, I will probably do what Zal sugested though, and take a death as a death. Reload my save in town or whatever. Because I really do want to be able to enjoy Rage.

But for me, that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. I enjoy a good story in a game and all that, but it's not why I play games. If It were, then I would watch movies instead. Something I rarely do. I love games, and when I say games. I mean games, not interactive storytelling.

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myk said:

Hardcore_gamer, you just described what "people who just want to make progress and don't care about enjoying the game play" think. Other people do indeed enjoy replaying those parts of the game as a challenge and to improve their skills at the game. You can also use save games in a complementary fashion to play from a certain section, or course, especially if it helps get ideas on how to tackle a particularly frustrating part, but anyone who enjoys the challenge and really likes how the game plays will come back to it and tackle it without that help, to really test himself against the raw game, which is the main point of playing.


Hearing someone accuse me of not playing games for the gameplay leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, using quick save does not make me a progression whore who doesn't care about the gameplay. Allot of the games i play don't even have a quick save feature.

I don't quick save every 3 min but i do quick save once i reach the conclusion that replaying the area i was just in would send me to far back in time.

Oh! And some people's claims here that you don't need any skills to play the game if you use quick save is rubbish, regardless of if or not one decides to use quick save the player will still have to be at least relatively good at the game if he is suppose to beat it. Not to mention that once you quick load your quick save your lost health and sparse ammo will be back as well, so it's not like you just respawn with full health and ammo. In fact, i would go as far as saying that games like Bioshock are allot less hard to play then most games that use quick save because in that game you ALWAYS respawn with full health after you die and the enemy's you killed before your death remain dead, at least when you quick load you will respawn in the same condition you were in before you died.

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kristus said:

It's not a debate about saves. It's a debate about Quicksaves.


Same thing. Whether you go into a menu or not does not change the feature qualitatively. "F9-Y" is not that much different from "Esc-Down-Down-Enter-Enter".

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Gez: You seem to be missing the point where it's not even a debate about the saves.

The only debate there were was whether quicksaves were equal to the "game" holding your hand giving you a hug and revive you when you die-
Then suddenly "Hardcore gamer" here decided that he had been insulted by my opinion of using quicksaves and shift the focus on how quicksaves are important for enjoying a game or something..

If you want to save every time you get a few lucky kills just so you can inch your way forward. Be my guest. I really don't care. But saying that a reviving function in a SP game is "just like quicksaves" is retarded, because 1. Many people don't use Quicksaves, so why should something that is like it be forced upon them? and 2. Having them there doesn't affect me in the slightest. While balancing a game around that you are not gonna have to worry about losing anyway, it will affect me.

Hardcore_gamer here finally reached the conclusion which I've stated time and time again, though I bet if he actually read what was previously posted in the thread he would have got it a lot sooner.

EDIT. Having revives aren't just like quicksaves. It's a lot more like forcing IDDQD. Why doesn't game developers make skill levels for this shit?
Skill 1. Training (You can have any hold my hand shit you want here without anyone ever making a fuss, I can guarantee that). I never played Halo in the lowest skill levels, but the middle was fairly easy. While Legendary was pretty murderous. (aka I failed it, though thanks to the regenerating health I could make it forward... very slowly) I thought that was the best part of Halo. A level for every player.

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hardcore_gamer said:
Hearing someone accuse me of not playing games for the gameplay leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, using quick save does not make me a progression whore who doesn't care about the gameplay.

Not a total whore, just a bit of a slut :p

I understand some people do "play for the challenge" and still use saves. It often comes naturally from the game design combined with the readily available save game feature. It's there, they use it, and don't think back on not using it for any reason. What I'm saying is that save gaming benefits or befits progression more than playing for the challenge.

As far as I'm concerned, saving outside of an interruption takes a piece out of the "for the challenge" aspect. Playing an action game is like playing a guitar. Do you skip parts of a good song because you've "already played it"? On the contrary, you play it again, and play it better. Now, if the game actually sucks in various sections, maybe it's time to "warp" to the good sections or to play something else.

Oh! And some people's claims here that you don't need any skills to play the game if you use quick save is rubbish, regardless of if or not one decides to use quick save the player will still have to be at least relatively good at the game if he is suppose to beat it.

No one said "any skill". They've said less, and that you miss out on an aspect of game play continuity.

In other words, surviving a series of hard trials in uninterrupted sequence is harder than tackling those challenges while having the possibility to go over the harder parts over and over. With saves, it requires some skill, sure, but it does not lend to improving skills as much and isn't as hard to progress with.

And I'm not even telling you to stop using saves, hardcore_gamer. That's up to you. What do I care? Just keep in mind that that "repetition" and insistence on not relying on saves (except perhaps for some modes of practice or to go out to dinner) brings on a bunch of skill acquisition and action that is otherwise avoided. It's not about being of a better or superior race of warriors or the like. It's about some facts related to certain practices regarding action games.

kristus said:
Gez: You seem to be missing the point where it's not even a debate about the saves.

It may have been brought up by someone who may be called a moron, but it did start somewhere :p

Keep in mind the two topics are somewhat related, though, in the sense that people who think playing with saves is the same as playing without them won't mind having quick saves or a similar feature stuffed in their face automatically each time they die or the like.

Gez said:
It really, really depends on the game in my opinion, and on what it offers. A series of discrete maps that can be played in under 20 minutes each is not the same thing at all as a large seamless world in which you can play for hundreds and hundreds of hours.

Although how the save or life related features will be implemented kind of defines what the game will be good for, or how it will be played. Thus at this point people look at the potential features and wonder whether it'll be interesting to them. The whole concept might not lend itself that well to action, for example, and might use it only to further a plot or provide some sort of interaction, giving other aspects more importance. It does, by the descriptions they've given, sound like a rather eclectic, or heh, even ambiguous, game.

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