It doesn’t have to be a sudden switch. For the main quest, regular reminders by things getting markedly worse would work. You’d just have to make sure that the player was aware that things were getting worse.
I like Oblivion, but I’m more inclined to get into a game where the inhabitants don’t all go on break when I’m out of the area, and events take place whether I’m there or not.
Of course it’s more realistic. My point is why the hell should I care? All it does is slightly increase realism for a one-time “well I guess that’s slightly immersive” factor. They apparently blew their realism budget on “scheduling of mundane tasks”, rather than, say, the game world actually reacting to what you do. One adds nothing to the fun, the other does. Sleep scheduling at least has the impact of affecting pickpocketing and mass thievery.
Oblivion’s melee combat is kind of fun, sure; but why is it still so damn minimal? I want really great gaming, not kind of fun. “This is sort of good so I can’t criticize it” is odd.
So, if the game world was just fully reactive? That’s all it’d take?
That’s about where I am, too. I don’t want the entire gameworld to stop and start around me, and I don’t want a world that adjusts to my level. I want things to happen that can only stopped if I step up and get involved, and if I don’t, there will be repercussions.
The thing to remember here is that the number of people who want a game like that are so far in the minority that it’s not financially viable to make it. Most people would consider an RPG that you can lose via inaction to be horrendously unfun. A lot of people (myself included) play RPGs for the story, to experience the world, and to make forward progress.
You’re either going to have to start your own game company and create that game or just live with it.
You’re pretty aware in Oblivion, as gates keep appearing all over the countryside. But I’m guessing that years of, “The game won’t put me in an unwinnable situation” training would cause armies of gamers to be seriously pissed if it said, “Oops, sorry dude. They overran the world. You did nothing. Have a nice day.”
I mean, does anyone remember how in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you didn’t feed the dog in the beginning of the game? At the end, he’d eat you and there was no way around that. You’d put X hours into an unwinnable game. I’m thinking that if I’m a designer, I want people to finish my game.
I like Oblivion, but I’m more inclined to get into a game where the inhabitants don’t all go on break when I’m out of the area, and events take place whether I’m there or not.
Have you every been “into” a game? Because I’m not aware of any that have a truly dynamic world running all of the time. While I’d love to see someone try such a thing, consider the memory and CPU requirements of tracking every single NPC all of the time. Almost every game maintains a circle of activity around the player because it’s not particularly important to track someone the player can’t possibly see in some other part of the world. Some fake it better than others, however. I think Oblivion did as good a job as any.
Yeah, I was pretty much in the same boat. I found that lowering the difficulty increased my enjoyment of the game considerably, to the point where I didn’t care about the leveling system.
Can’t speak for Christoph, but I think I’d hate that game. I hate any game where I feel like I’ve been painted into a corner and I’ll lose no matter what I do and I realize the only chance I have is to go back several hours to an old save and replay the game, avoiding past mistakes and praying I don’t make enough new ones to paint myself into a different corner. [Which, presumably, is what the complaints about Kvatch are about.] And your ideal RPG sounds like it would have a very real chance of doing exactly that.
And it’s funny you criticize the lack of choice in Oblivion, because your ideal RPG sounds like it would hound players to finish the main quest and punish them severely for taking too much time to, I dunno, practice their gardening or whatever. It sounds like you’re just trading one lack of choice (the generic-ness of Oblivion) for a different lack of choice (being penalized for not dealing with the central threat).
Oblivion gives you a large open-ended environment and multiple skills to pursue or ignore as you see fit (though you’re an idiot if you think you can finish the game without learning how to fight). Your interactions within that world are basically limited to four main actions: explore, fight, loot / harvest, and converse. But within those four basic actions you’re offered a lot of micro-options. E.g., what weapon(s) and spell(s) do you use; do you use stealth, do you get good at picking locks, do you pursue alchemy; are you a thief, are you a murderer, etc. Some aspects are weaker than others - e.g., the conversation wheel is a pretty silly and pointless mini-game - but the whole is stronger than the sum of its parts, IMHO.
So it doesn’t simulate macro-responses of the scope and nature you would like to see. What do you expect? It’s still “just” a game, not the friggin’ Matrix.
I just want RPGs to not feel so much like I am the trigger which makes all the gears turn. It’s just too transparent for me. Maybe it’s the curse of being a game developer with a penchant for design. :/
Well, clearly, you’re talking about a very different sort of RPG than what Oblivion offers. Maybe you could do a mod which makes it behave that way.
Personally, though, it just seems odd to me to criticize a game for being “arbitrary” or “unrealistic” when we’re still using health bars… :-)
That’s a pretty extreme example, and I’m not talking about a you fail button. Just actual pressure rather than fake pressure.
Oblivion is pretty blatant about the whole world-on-hold aspect. I think there are degrees between what Oblivion does and a truly dynamic world. Take something like Space Rangers 2, where battles for systems happen whether you are there or not, or even Star Control 2’s racial spheres of influence.
That is why I enjoyed Space Rangers 2 so much.
I think part of the main quest gripe is due to the way the story is told rather then just the mechanics. The main story is always in a dire urgent state. You need to rescue Martin RIGHT NOW. You need to go get the spies before they get away, RIGHT NOW. OMG!!! Bravil is going to be burned down unless you do something RIGHT NOW!!!
And then you don’t do anything RIGHT NOW. And then… nothing happens.
They could have made urgent spots that were timed and then giving you a lot of, you can wait forever, plot spots. Once Martin was back at the keep, and the amulet stolen, he could have said that the new dawn guys got it, and he had no idea where it was. He would just hang out there until you found it. After you found out the guy took it to his pocket dimension, that could have been another indefinite pause point. No hurry. You need to get a daedric artifact right? Go adventure till you get one.
But no, everything had to be done ASAP and there were no consequences for not doing it ASAP.
I’ve not played Space Rangers 2, but how do you know battles are happening? Do you just get results and reports? I think a game could fake a more dynamic world nicely, just by delivering reports of what’s happening in other areas.
Does Space Rangers 2 have a main plot thread that involves, “The world is about to end?” Because I suspect that staple of RPGs forces them down a path similar to that of Oblivion. You can’t have too much stuff happening on the periphery when such a critical, world-changing event is happening in the foreground.
In games I want to be able to become a diety. And, no I don’t mean god games nor having them catering to drooling 4 year olds. When games take on the design principle that they should be hard, hardcore. I think to myself that I can play real life instead and make some money instead of spending it.
You don’t have to lose via inaction necessarily. All ideas aren’t just black and white. I play for the same reasons you do; I just prefer my illusion to be a little more illusive. Having the entire world cater itself directly to me is too much; having a world built so that there are areas I shouldn’t go so soon just makes it a little more believable.
Whether or not you are painted in to an unwinnable situation is entirely dependent on the design. It doesn’t have to be that way. It could just be a game where the bad guy becomes king and kills all the king’s family and implements martial law, and you continue to cook and weave and in general ignore the gameworld. After all, if you are arguing that you shouldn’t have to do the main quest, or should be able to do it at your leisure, then why would you complain if after a period if time the main quest became unavailable or changed?
And it’s funny you criticize the lack of choice in Oblivion, because your ideal RPG sounds like it would hound players to finish the main quest and punish them severely for taking too much time to, I dunno, practice their gardening or whatever. It sounds like you’re just trading one lack of choice (the generic-ness of Oblivion) for a different lack of choice (being penalized for not dealing with the central threat).
Whether or not it’s penalizing, again, would be in the design. It doesn’t have to be.
Personally, though, it just seems odd to me to criticize a game for being “arbitrary” or “unrealistic” when we’re still using health bars… :-)
I didn’t complain about unrealistic. Just some of the choices they made. I don’t believe realism is a goal that should be expected in games. After all, I have plenty of reality available to me without games at all.
There are plenty of games that do what Charles describes – just not so many in the RPG realm. Pirates! and Space Rangers 2 are two excellent examples of games with dynamic, living worlds, where you control one character and can compete directly with AI NPCs who are doing the same things as you – trading cargo, attacking pirates, etc. The world evolves and grows whether you do anything or not, and you can even directly compare your current standing against that of your AI competitors. Civilization and its 4x ilk are similar examples, wherein you compete against the AI players on a relatively even playing field, but you may or may not win (at least if you play Iron Man style). There is no reason that this sort of design can’t be cross-pollinated with the traditional western RPG approach, with great results. I’ve been wanting something like that for a long time.
I’m in total agreement with Charles on this point, but it’s also clear that there are at least two different camps when it comes to this sort of thing. For me, being the heroic, world-saving protagonist around whom the game world revolves is tired and dull, dull, dull. I’m much more interested in playing a character that’s part of a larger world and seeing how my particular story turns out, whether I end up ending my days as a hermit on a hilltop or at the bottom of the ocean after a career-ending boarding action. The unique trajectory and details of my character’s story are far more interesting to me than whether or not I’m able to put in enough hours and reload enough saved games to jump throught he successive hoops necessary to reach a pre-defined end point.
I didn’t intend for this to become a giant discussion about RPG game design; I don’t require a game where I’m completely irrelevant – I just like games that don’t entirely center on the character in such an obvious fashion as Oblivion does. Sure, they all do. But some of what oblivion does centers it too much on the character, is what I’m saying. Levelled enemies being the main issue, really.
As for wanting the game to go on without me, as has been said many times in this thread, it’s an artifact of their storytelling. It was a bad idea to treat the whole thing as an invasion when it absolutely is not.
If they wanted to impart that kind of thing, they’d have made it so that after a certain point in the story, every time you approached a city an oblivion gate would pop open in front of your eyes while you watch, and start pouring out enemies who proceed to begin ravaging the town and killing people until you stop them.
If you are going to pretend something is important, then make it important.
The game’s actual tone doesn’t match the implied tone. The actual tone is more of a “So yeah, there might be an issue with these gates. When you get a chance, maybe you could close them? They really aren’t that big of a deal, but it would be worth your while” whereas the implied tone is “OH SHIT WE’RE FUCKED GOGOGO.”
There are battle icons that pop up on the starmap as systems are attacked. If you can get there in time, you can participate and even turn the tide. Depending on how long the battle has been going on, both sides may have taken losses. Sometimes the defenders do fine on their own, and sometimes they get clobbered, but you can’t be everywhere.
You’ll also have NPC attacks on Dominator-controlled systems to try and liberate them. You’re notified of these, and can participate either by going to the staging area or the battle after it starts. They may or may not succeed, but they happen whether or not you get involved.
Yes it does. The Dominators (three seperate robotic forces) are attacking the galaxy. How much you fight them is up to you, but they will keep attacking and trying to take control of systems until you eliminate their leadership. There are plenty of other things to do in the meantime, but if the Dominators are doing well, you had best get involved or start running out of friendly systems.
Is there some sort of wait or sleep command? It would be neat to see if you just never leave your home system, if eventually the bad guys take over the entire galaxy.
I’d actually argue that Pirates, like The Sims, is really an RPG. But ignoring that discussion, the main “plot” of the remake of Pirates isn’t exactly pressing. The world isn’t about to end; you’re just out for revenge. So the entire game is less about its main storyline and more about creating your own.
Which is an awesome way to design a game, and I think we’re both in agreement on that. But I’m not sure fantasy games can escape the Lord of the Rings-style “one hero saves the world” archetype. It’s like people want to play a fantasy novel.
I wonder if they’re actually taking place, or if results are just being generated. And if you do show up, does it suddenly “sim” the battles up to the point of your entry?
There are plenty of other things to do in the meantime, but if the Dominators are doing well, you had best get involved or start running out of friendly systems.
What happens if you just sit around and do nothing? Do they eventually take over the world and you get “Game Over?”
I’m enjoying Oblivion, faults and all. I guess I’m not as disturbed by them as some of the others are.
I do have to agree with Charles that the way the story and dialogue is written, it is rather a jarring affront to immersion and could probably have been done better. There is definitely a sense of urgency and immediacy that is communicated in the dialog that just isn’t supported by the gameplay mechanics.