What he said.
All of it.
Actually, I think Sacred 2’s UI is pretty great.
Aside from the goofy way you select spells, I agree. I just don’t get how I have a few dozen skills but only a very small number of actual buttons to put them in. Yeah, I know, combos. But sometimes I’d just rather throw a fireball instead of a fireball and several other things that happen after the target’s dead.
Agreed 100%. The pipboy interface is terrible. There is no excuse for it taking up the whole screen but the functional part of it accounting for only 25 - 30% of the area.
There are two xpacks for NWN2. One of them, Mask of the Betrayer, has an absolutely massive story. It’s been called the best story since the last great story RPG back in the whenevers. Everybody and their gramma liked it.
The one you’re thinking of, Storm of Zehir, is the one I like. It’s story light, combat heavy, and lots of fun. It’s also very different from the bog standard modern western RPG, so it generated a lot of controversy.
If you enjoy loads of overwrought writing about you being the Chosen One, you’ll love MotB.
And, uh, isn’t TOEE infamous for being retarded bad at everything other than combat?
As has been mentioned, the excuse is that it fits in its context. Whether that’s enough to look past its obvious shortcomings is up to the player, but part of the charm of the Fallout universe is that sort of shoddy, makeshift electronic vibe. But yeah, a poor interface is a poor interface. I hear one or two people found the game brilliant despite this, however.
You don’t have to get rid of it – and I’m not necessarily against that type of interface (Far Cry 2’s comes to mind). However, a few things to improve it:
- Add the option to skip the zoom in animation to the interface.
- Zoom it in further, so that the useable area of the interface takes up much more of the screen real estate.
- Add an option to provide a more “modern” look – I’m all over the MVS feel with the green type and scan lines and all, but over 100s of hours functionality has to win out over style.
A game can be brilliant despite the interface, but that shouldn’t be a reason to give a shoddy interface a free pass. Fable 2 was a fun game but I have no idea how it shipped with that interface – just atrocious.
Speaking of interfaces and Fallout 3, however, I found the stat selection with the baby book to be very enjoyable and well-executed, so I know Bethesda has the chops to do it. =)
…Now, about that horrible floaty third-person animation…
The counterpoint to any legitimate gripe about Fallout’s interface will undoubtedly be the modding community. Reliance on the fans to fix a game’s glaring issues is totally okay, right?
I love Fallout. It’s definitely in my top 3 games of last year. The interface, however, is probably the worst thing about it.
EDIT: BigWeather: I totally agree about the book. It was great.
[quote=Aeon221;1584615]…And, uh, isn’t TOEE infamous for being retarded bad at everything other than combat?[/quote]
Yeah, turn-based combat; just what I’m looking for.
And I’ve mixed up my NWN2 expansions. MOTB has been called one the top 5 RPGs of late, while the other has been labeled combat heavy, story lite. Neither will get me to install NWN2 ever again.
CRPGs are indeed awful for UX. Some folks in this thread almost remind me of beaten spouses. There really is no excuse for most of the shit Jason highlights.
Just because you’re used to tedious bullshit in games doesn’t mean everyone should be happy about dealing with it. That’s pretty much the gist of Jason’s post. When you’re putting as much (or more) effort into screwing around with the interface as you are actually playing the game, I don’t think it’s too outrageous to complain about it and hope someone gets it right one day.
The difference is a lot of the stuff mentioned never gets escalated to “tedious bullshit.” For instance needing a notepad to keep track of shop inventories would never dawn on me since I don’t give a shit about keeping track of that stuff. I’m not looking for the best item/price between all the vendors ala some kind of Space Trader. That would be tedious.
The wizard spell mechanic of only being able to use spells you chose at level up or bought at a shop is also shit. You have to track it all in notepad or something so you don’t accidentally take a spell at level up you could have just bought in notepad.
This is completely foreign to me. Those spells at level up are free. On noes! You picked one you could have paid gold for at a vendor. Sorry for your lost? Using a notepad here is a damn tragedy.
The camera in NWN2 and inventory management in general is a constant chore through and through. Those need to be reformed.
Buffing and De-buffing in D&D is a livable micro-chore, but NWN2 does have automated Single/Party Buff options from the right-click menu.
Yeah, turn-based combat; just what I’m looking for.
And I’ve mixed up my NWN2 expansions. MOTB has been called one the top 5 RPGs of late, while the other has been labeled combat heavy, story lite. Neither will get me to install NWN2 ever again.[/QUOTE]
You’re either wildly optimistic about what you’ll be getting in TOEE, or you’re actually two people, one who likes stories and one who likes fighting, and both of whom are going to loathe TOEE. Or you’re just flat out insane. I can’t decide!
The Stupidest Thing Ever section is just totally random. Does anyone besides Jason actually expect a “inventory at shops I’ve seen” tracker?
At one point walking around and checking the inventory at shops for cool stuff I could afford would take me literally somewhere north of 20 minutes. What’s the point of that? I eventually figured out it’d actually save me time to write down the stuff I was interested in, which it did. It’s depressing.
That’s not what I mean; I was strictly just trying to figure out what I could buy next with my money. There is no “shop with the best equipment for your progress in the game” like in some games, where every shop has basically the same inventory. Every shop in NWN2 has very different inventories, because the “special” items fire enchant, daze enchant, etc. are scattered across every single store.
Ah, but unless you do this there’s spells you’ll never see, near as I can tell. Like upgrading your equipment, every shop has a slightly different overlapping set of spells, so good fucking luck upgrading Sand’s spellbook without writing it all down.
Making it really hard to get a wide variety of spells for your mage seems to be a Black Isle fetish in game design. I don’t get it at all.
Yeah, but again, you missed the gist of his post. Some things that could be (and should be) simple end up getting in the way of the actual enjoyable parts of the game. Nobody should have to think about the interface, really. An excellently designed interface should be more or less invisible in terms of not taking the player out of the game and certainly shouldn’t be the focal point due to little irritating quirks and flaws.
Another way to think of it is “why is this in the game?”
If you want to have a bunch of shops that you have to visit because they all have different inventories, is making the player watch their characters slowly walk all over creation to visit them really the best solution?
If you want to use the D&D mechanic of choosing only a few spells at level up and buying or finding the rest, are you ok with the players not seeing half the spells you put into the game? Because that’s what happens with the current system unless they’re OCD freaks.
It’s called the game as player’s imagine it. One of the mistakes developers make is they create systems which are more efficient and on paper functionally the same, but it destroys the atmosphere. Harvey Smith talked about this in his talk for Specter’s class. For example, functionally, in Deus Ex 2 you could do most everything you could do in Deus Ex 1, but players didn’t like them removing the skills because it ruined how the players imagined their specific character.
If you want to have a bunch of shops that you have to visit because they all have different inventories, is making the player watch their characters slowly walk all over creation to visit them really the best solution?
If I’m developing a solution for a business? Of course not, but I’m playing game about fantasy heroes whose primary job is walking from place to place getting into fights and misadventures. Going back to old shops is part of that. :)
If you want to use the D&D mechanic of choosing only a few spells at level up and buying or finding the rest, are you ok with the players not seeing half the spells you put into the game? Because that’s what happens with the current system unless they’re OCD freaks.
Yeah, I’m fine with it. I like finding spells when I play a wizard in D&D games. It’s like a built in achievement system. :) Even so, limited access to spells helps encourage players to use alternate strategies. And anyway, since you get to pick spells every level, it’s easy to grab the goto spells and use what you come across as filler.
For the record:
I like stories: Planescape Torment is great.
I don’t like pausable real-time combat: Planescape Torment sucks.
I do like turn-based combat: Ultima 4 & 5 are great.
I don’t like 3d RPG’s: NWN1, NWN2, etc… suck.
I do like a good story with TB combat: Fallout 1 is great.
I don’t like 1st person RPG’s with TB combat: FO3 sucks.
I can tolerate BG2 because that’s about all there is left.
And yeah, I’m looking forward to TOEE for it’s combat, little else.
The biggest sin it commits is not having a button’s hotkey in its tooltip.
Good thread. I’ve bookmarked it.