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[KvP]

Again, I don't think the scripted encounters (the poisoned Harper, etc.) are the problematic ones, but rather the different slaver encounters, like the swarm of orogs or the 3-fighters-and-a-mage encounters. But I think the monotony of those encounters has more to do with the power of the party than anything else. In BG1 many of the random encounters were difficult. There are actually a number of mods that implement more sensible REs. Yuan-ti around De'Arnise Keep, wild animals around Trademeet, shade wolves around Imnesvale, etc.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I'm just at the end of Gears of War and up until now it's been great. But it shits me to tears that instead of an interesting end-boss that is difficult to fight but has some kind of eventually identifiable weakness you just have to shoot the dude until he dies. I'm not saying it needs to be easy but it needs to be fucking possible!

[est]

I don't really like random encounters.  I touched on this in an earlier post when I talked about bad guys spawning/respawning out of nowhere.  Ambushes are ok, but seriously, if you're an adventurer I expect you have some sense of what is going on in the world around you.  If you are blindly crashing through the undergrowth then quite frankly you deserve whatever you run into.

I'd like to imagine that any character or party I would be bothered to control would have eyes and ears and therefore the ability to see monsters from afar, giving me the option to either engage them or skirt around them as I see fit.  I find it hard to see why random encounters make the game more realistic or "roleplaying"-like.  To me it's completely unrealistic unless, as I said earlier, it comes in the form of an ambush.

So long as the ambush idea was not over-implemented it would keep a game interesting.  Most of the time if you are in an area populated by monsters at an appropriate level for your character you would be able to pick and choose your targets unless it was an aggressive monster with good senses.  Even still, not every bad guy/monster would want to engage you immediately.  However, I would think that if you went into an area you were not ready for then you would get jumped more often due to the superior skills/senses of the creatures in that area.

This could also be a non-bullshit way of slowing an eager player up.  You want to get to the next town?  Ok sure, you can try.  No tree fallen across a path, no broken bridge or any other such hard-coded bullshit impediment.  You simply have a very high likelihood of getting your ass handed to you.  Up to you, Mr Adventurerman.  It's your ass.

Similarly, if you were to go into an area where the monsters are massively underpowered compared to you I would expect that even the most aggressive of monsters would take pause if it were smart enough to be able to gauge your strength.  Excessively stupid animals would probably still try to engage you unless you were visibly glowing with might, but everyone else would probably get a glimpse of your Dragonscale Armour and Flaming Sword of Fucking-them-up and wisely remember they've left the oven on.

[Spluff]

That's another problem with games. Monsters that can't see as far as you can - wtf is that? If you're not hiding, and you see a monster, I expect at least 75% of the time the monster will see you as well. No more of this bullshit metagaming finding the path around them that means they won't attack you, even if you're in plain site.

[Narr]

I could have swore I wrote another response.

re:BG2 ->  The encounters aren't random.  They are highly scripted, and are coded to occur at certain times.  All of them.  The slavers where there's the caster that has a short sword of free action always happens relatively early (usually as soon as you leave the Slums), and the orogs don't pop up until sometime after that, depending on how you did the Slave Ring questline.  Just because there's no dialogue doesn't mean it's a random encounter.

I've always considered "Random Encounters" to be monsters that just seem to pop up from nowhere, like in Final Fantasy games.  Where you walk and it's all SURPRISE: BUTTSEX now kill these 5 rabbites.

The proper way to do it, as est was talking about, is how Earthbound or the Namco Tales games handle it.  You can see a battle as represented by a monster on the overhead map.  Avoid or attack at your leisure.

[est]

I can agree with that, Spluff.  I am all for having more intelligent beasties.  As fun as it is to be able to take on a whole camp of monsters one by one if you know their respective aggro ranges, etc I would much prefer a scenario in which I were forced to take on an entire camp of lesser monster at once because y'know, the guards aren't fucking stupid and they call for help instead of deciding to take me on solo.  In such an instance I'd expect that I'd get experience from the camp as a whole and not have the game tell me that I can't get exp from the fight due to arbitrary level-based cut-offs or someshit.

The key there would be to construct the camp in such a fashion that there is a strategic way to go about the fight.  Maybe a warrior could take them all on at once by finding a choke-point so they couldn't get behind him.  Perhaps a mage could erect a flame wall at a key point, cutting off half the camp from the other (and the AI was intelligent enough to fear jumping through the flames) or freeze some of the camp.  Perhaps a rogue could take out a few patrollers before the alarm roused the rest of the camp, and a Ranger could take some of them out from afar with arrows (if they chose the right ones) before the camp realised what was going on.

If this were a multi-player RPG we're talking about then obviously you could take the camp out more safely in a party and partying up would also allow you to take on higher-levelled camps.  This is still similar to the concepts in current MMORPGs of course, but at least with decent AI the mobs would not stand around like dipshits while you murdered their mates.

[Spluff]

I definitely agree with you there. It's an aspect where games are very often, falling short. It's why I love the combat in such games as the Total War series or Fallout: Tactics - games where it's not just number crunching, where even if you are the weaker person you can still win due to playing smart.

There's nothing better than, say, beating off a few thousand men with an excellent flanking manoeuvre in Rome: Total War, or laying a successful trap in Fallout: Tactics and shooting a very powerful enemy in the back as he rushes through the door towards your bait.

[Surgoshan]

There's nothing better than, say, beating off a few thousand men

It had to be done.

[Spluff]

You don't wanna know what 'flanking manoeuvre' is a euphemism for, either.

[Storm Rider]

I don't particularly mind random encounters, to be honest. Unless the encounter rate is so ridiculously high it takes forever to get anywhere. Or if the game has a lot of backtracking so you chew up time in random battles against monsters you're far stronger than. Earthbound had a good solution for this: if your party is clearly stronger than the enemies, it just defaults to victory, gives you the EXP, and cuts out the time-consuming transition to the battle screen for a meaningless battle.

[Siert]

Expanding on the idea of random encounters, I was playing Blue Dragon for the 360, and like the above said that earthbound missed battles, it missed battles by, you simply knocked enemies over with a shield. Althouhg you needed the right skills for it. But the same jist applies although you only get the "Specialist points" to level up your skills, you still needed to grind for hours to level up.


This moves onto my next point, is it just me or are the vast majority of JRPGs and asian-orientated-MMORPGs
 grindfests? I mean theres lineage, RF online, Ragnarok, final fantasy (Already been mentioned earlier), blue dragon... alright those are a few, but well each I've played involved farming for hours to get anywhere.

[Cartilage Head]

 Est had a great point. Forgive me for being a fanboy but Persona 3 is probably exactly the game you're looking for. When you are adventuring around, you kind of have to sneak and watch the monsters. You can avoid them if you like, but only sometimes. Usually you'll want to sneak around, wait until they turn they're back to you, and you can run up and smack them with your weapon. In this case, you get the advantage in the following turn-based battle. The enemies have pretty good senses, and if they can see you they'll come after you.

[Dimmukane]

Where you walk and it's all SURPRISE: BUTTSEX now kill these 5 rabbites.

This is more along the lines of what I was talking about.  Not actual random encounters, but the enemies just appear either via teleportation or digging up from the ground or flying down from the sky.  Like Ankhegs in BG1, and Cliff Chasers in Morrowind.  When you're trying to get somewhere in a hurry and then you've got to stop and possibly die because you didn't see these guys.  This kind of thing is perfectly alright in a horror shooter, but in an RPG it tends to piss me off.  I'll be running low on health due to a dungeon I just left, forgot to save, and a wimpy little turd with wings will manage to kill me.

And the sole reason I stopped playing turn-based (and also random battle) RPGs is because of the backtracking part.  Especially when there's a sudden ramp up in difficulty...case in point: Legaia 2: Duel Saga (which wasn't very fun to begin with, I thought it was gonna be more like the first one).  There's a part where you're in this volcano fighting monsters that can kill you in 3 rounds if you're not careful.  And then you fight the boss(es) who have 89,900 and 92,000 hp at the same time.  The previous boss had only 55,000 hp.  So after you realize that there is no way you're going to survive this fight, and that you need healing items, you have to walk all the way back out of this dungeon which can take up to 45 minutes without the some-battle-avoiding item).  And then grind.

A lot of those RPGs tend to do this.  I'll have fought every battle I've come across in the game, and maybe an extra 50 or so on the side for good measure.  And then I'll come up to an enormous dungeon in which the designers put a boss expecting the player to have done nothing but grind for around 10 hours after the last plot point, find out the hard way, and have to go back out again to get healing items and just grind around for a bit.

While I'm at it, sudden ramps in difficulty.  Star Ocean 3, you get to Styx, and the average enemy HP jumps about 20,000 or so.  Which is just fucking stupid.  I've sat through half-hour cutscenes and fought every monster in every dungeon at least twice to try and get better equipment, and they throw something like that at you.  Had to grind for at least 5 hours in the moonbase just to survive my frantic dash to the exit while hopefully avoiding the enemies.

[AngelofShadows]

Persona 3 was mentioned earlier but I felt in needs more mention, simply due to the fact that if you go to earlier portions of the dungeon to get Persona's, the weaker enemies will shit themselves and run. And that is fucking cool. More Turn based RPG's need to do this.

Oh, and also.

Excessively stupid animals would probably still try to engage you unless you were visibly glowing with might, but everyone else would probably get a glimpse of your Dragonscale Armour and Flaming Sword of Fucking-them-up and wisely remember they've left the oven on.

Quoted for sig-worthyness

[Ikrik]

MOAR Sins:

Sidekicks:  When you have RPG or Fantasy games where the character is transported into a completely new and different world.  They like to pair you up with an annoying sidekick who knows everything and just happens to be a: child/animal/gargoyle, who spends all their time making fun of you and gasping at how little you know.  I remember playing Primal and EUUUUGH this bugged me so much.

Playing Fetch: Who wants to make 100000 deliviries?  I know I don't.  I don't mind collecting stuff or chasing things around for a while.  But some games are structered on doing the same things over and over and over.  However this isn't always a general sin.  Animal Crossing is a game where you basically do the same thing for most of the game, but it's still incredibly fun.  But there are a few games that make playing "fetch" or "tag" really boring. 

Games That Need Multiplayer:  I own Trauma Center: New Blood and it's one of my favourite games.  I love it so much, and I'm pretty good at it when I try.  However there reaches a certain point in the game where the mission just gets WAY too hard, seriously.  The game is centered around multiplayer play and as much as I love playing with other people I believe that I should not be forced to have to have someone helping me to beat the game.  Guitar Hero has a Co-Op Career where you can unlock new songs to play, I think that's incredibly cool, I think that's awesome.  It's not necessary to beat the game, but it's an option.

[Siert]

Noticed in Lost Odyssey Xbox 360 RPG.

Save points, you will come across one every building for the first hour of playing, then you will fail to come across another for 4 hours.

This length in-between savepoints is quite disturbing for me, especially when I have a life . Also, does anyone know any cooperative games for the PC (Lately, online works and isn't MMORPG). Just lately i've nto really found any that are satisfying.

[Dimmukane]

Nothing new, I think.  I'm pretty sure the mentality is that the PC community thinks Co-op = MMO, and the console community thinks co-op = co-op.  I can't even remember the last PC co-op game I played.  Odds are you're not gonna find any, unfortunately.

That's another sin.  What's the deal, PC devs?  Why the lack of 2-4 person co-op?

[Jimmy the Squid]

While we're on multiplayer type things, I've noticed that a lot of Xbox 360 games being released don't have multiplayer options OR are only multiplayer online over the Xbox Live thing. I don't use that so much because then I have huge wires hanging from my ceiling and people will trip up on them. I just want to play games with my brother, not some halfwit on the other side of the planet!

[Dimmukane]

I remember you talking about this earlier, and I have to agree.  There needs to be more splitscreen co-op console games that aren't necessarily shooters.

Edit: I do understand there are technical limitations, but they could always do what Halo 3 did for their multiplayer (lower graphical quality just a little bit, like turning off the HDR and the anti-aliasing).  Just a thought.

[Narr]

I feel like game devs aren't making use of good opportunities for co-op games.

For example, how BADASS would Oblivion have been with a 2-player mode?  A game like that would be so fantastic with 2 people.

It's like they make it so it's MMO, or that there's one other person who can sort of tag along with you that's slightly retarded.

[CardinalFang]

Nothing new, I think.  I'm pretty sure the mentality is that the PC community thinks Co-op = MMO, and the console community thinks co-op = co-op.  I can't even remember the last PC co-op game I played.  Odds are you're not gonna find any, unfortunately.

That's another sin.  What's the deal, PC devs?  Why the lack of 2-4 person co-op?

Would Diablo qualify as a co-op?

[KvP]

IIRC, there was something in the 360 hardware that made it difficult to implement splitscreen play. Don't know if that's actually the case. Halo did just fine.

Oblivion didn't have co-op because it was ostensibly a "role playing game", and RPGs are pretty retarded co-op candidates, given their usual focus on a single character. You either have a silent, non-interactive second PC who fights with you throughout the game while you do all the talking or you at least double the development workload trying to make the narrative coherent with two PCs. Oblivion makes some sense for co-op, though, because it has more in common with Diablo 2 or Icewind Dale than any character-driven game. But there would be some complications. How would guild advancement work? Can both PCs be grandmasters at the same time?

Josh Sawyer, game designer, re: co-op / multiplayer, when confronted by forumgoers who demanded co-op in a game.

Multiplayer, whether co-op or head-to-head, requires a lot of time and effort from both programming and design.  Even when implementing a split-screen solution, it can have a very large impact on the schedule of the team. I just wanted to make clear that adding multiplayer can be quite an undertaking. Not that anyone here was assuming otherwise, but it's something that really has to be a big focus of the development team. Otherwise, it winds up being an enormous complication. When I was working on Gauntlet at Midway, we had four-player same-system and four-player peer-to-peer online co-op. It was done pretty well, all things considered, but it took a great deal of time.

[Dimmukane]

Diablo was like, 7 years ago, wasn't it?  Just saying, the pickings are pretty slim.

I understand games not having co-op from their perspective, but there are a ton of games that make use of co-op across XBL or System Link, but not splitscreen.  I don't think there's a hardware conflict keeping splitscreen from working, because there are at least two games that do have splitscreen co-op, and several more that have splitscreen multiplayer.  I don't know much about DirectX code, but it can't be that hard to port over that code and turn down graphics settings to make it work.

[Siert]

So in retro-fact the only decent cooperative games are the ones you subscribe to? Thats quite limiting in the fact we want our own little game to play when we wish and that limits it to.

Dungeon siege 1 + 2
and
Diablo 2.

Shame the list seems so short. How about MMORPGs then? I do know though, a lot of games are leaping on the cooperative band wagon lately, I read an article somewhere about it (Pre Halo 3) I think it was when halo released 4 player coop.

Anyway, I recentley re-subscribed to city of heroes for a month on union Server to play with a couple friends.

[Dimmukane]

MMORPGs don't count, because what we're looking for is Co-op play in a world full of NPC's, not co-op play in a world of PCs who interrupt your immersion to hawk their wares on the chat channels.  I think there's a sizeable amount of people who still stick to the "I just wanna play with my friends" part of social gaming as opposed to "I wanna play with people I don't know" side of it.  Even on Xbox Live, I will RARELY jump on if one of my friends isn't playing something I feel like playing.  I also limit my friends list to the friends I know in real life and my clan, which includes some of the same people.  So although I'm getting Too Human and Left4Dead in the future, whether or not I play the online co-op depends on whether or not any of my friends got it.

[Siert]

Hmm I see your point, to playwith your friends is quite pleasent.

Unlike some encounters, Rainbow six vegas 2 online matchmaking.


(My username is gryphongod08)
player 1: Haw you gryph ya faggot!
Playes 2-7: *misc laughing/gryph faggot*
Player 1: I'll fucking own you yeh faggot!

Game begins.
Gryphongod [G36C] Player 1
Gryphongod has been kicked from the match.
Player 1 has sent you a message.
Message: OMG U R HACKING LAMER U FAGGOT!
Bad rep on me = unsporting.

Thats what I get for joining a random match today...
 

[Scandanavian War Machine]

in the vein of co-op games, i'd like to mention Army of Two. i had little to no expectations for this game and didn't really care one way or the other about it, but a friend of mine rented it and it was actually pretty fun! (surprise!)

it's something you can do by yourself, or splitscreen with a friend/sibling/roomate, or online with friends/strangers.

okay, the aiming is kind of shitty but the pros easily make up for this con. you actually have to think tactically and plan attacks with your partner! it's surprisingly fun.

anyway, i don't know if i'd recommend buying it (i say go right ahead if you find a cheap, used copy though) but i'd definitely recommend renting it at least once if you're looking for a good co-op experience.

[Dimmukane]

Unfortunately, that's not a PC game, and Jimmy is looking for non-shooters.  Except for maybe Timesplitters 4, whenever that comes out.

[Storm Rider]

Considering that Free Radical is finally finishing Haze within the next few months, and I'm pretty sure they're big enough to have parallel development going on, I'd guess Timesplitters 4 is probably a 2009 game. Looking forward to that, Timesplitters 2 is still one of my favorite multiplayer FPSes ever.

[Narr]

(stuff about co-op play)

I do agree, and I see why they did it, but come on!  It would be so freakin' badassedness to the umpteenthmillionth degree.

I had to make up 2 words just to get across how awesome I would find such a thing.

[KvP]

To further illustrate the dev quote I posted up there, it was recently announced that the upcoming sandbox monster game Prototype was shedding its co-op aspect because they wanted to get the game finished and shipped by the end of the year. Which is a shame, because their last game (Hulk: Ultimate Destruction) was a fucking blast and would've been doubly so multiplayer.

GTAIV should turn out pretty awesome with the multiplayer.

[Dimmukane]

Considering that Free Radical is finally finishing Haze within the next few months, and I'm pretty sure they're big enough to have parallel development going on, I'd guess Timesplitters 4 is probably a 2009 game. Looking forward to that, Timesplitters 2 is still one of my favorite multiplayer FPSes ever.

Did you ever play 3? Because 3 was at least twice as good. 

[Narr]

I'm okay with companies delaying games for even years if need be in order to up the awesomeness.

See: Smash Bros Brawl.

[KvP]

You aren't a publisher. Blizzard / Valve / Nintendo gets away with that stuff because they've had enough success to dictate the terms of development.

[Narr]

Hey, I can dream.

That's what this whole multiplayer debate really is, one way or the other.

[Spluff]

Serious Sam had some pretty fucking fun co-op.

[CursedMortivore]

Fable 2 (Whenever it decides to release) is said to have co-op play. Both split-screen and online. I'm really looking forward to that.

[est]

I read a couple of articles about the co-op play in Fable 2 and they were talking about how the other guy can kill your family and it's a permanent thing as if that's some kind of cool feature.

Hey guy.  Leave my fucking family alone, you cunt.

[KvP]

Yeah, but you know how Molyneux is. It's not even funny anymore.

[Storm Rider]

I read a couple of articles about the co-op play in Fable 2 and they were talking about how the other guy can kill your family and it's a permanent thing as if that's some kind of cool feature.

Hey guy.  Leave my fucking family alone, you cunt.

Well, the safeguard against this is to not play with dicks.

And I think Molyneux is a great and creative game designer, he just lets his imagination get ahead of him sometimes and then flaps his mouth before he actually finds out that what he's talking about wouldn't work within the technology/context of the game. Co-op is definitely a feature in Fable 2, though, and I think the permanent consequences thing is also an actual feature. What I think is especially neat about the co-op in Fable 2 is that if you play through as another dude's henchman you can take all the money and experience you earn back to your own save file.

[Dimmukane]

Have you guys heard what he's said about Dmitri? About how it's gonna change everything about AI and will be featured in nature and science journals?

[frullic]

biggest sin of all: PLAYING RUNESCAPE
If you are a n00bscape player, thou shalt be sacrificed to Gunpei Yokoi...
The only good reason to play is to troll tards with shock sites (Goatse still works there!)

[öde]

I used to play runescape a few years ago, it was kinda fun back then, you could actually find decent people to play with. Then it just kept getting more popular and it was full of morons and I realised how tedious it was. The end!

The best MMOs I've played have been Guildwars (MMORPG) and Planetside (MMOFPS). Thinking about it, Planetside is probably the best game I've played (and it takes a lot for me to rank something above Enemy Territory) since most of the people I met on there were really cool.

[AngelofShadows]

Is anyone else slightly pissed that Sega is working on a new Golden Ax game, and it's limited only to single player?

Why remake a game in which the biggest draw was that it was fun to get a friend and kick some ass and then not put that draw in?

If they remake Streets of Rage (I can still hope) and do that, I'm shooting people.....in the face.

[Siert]

I used to play runescape I got pretty high, this was before the 3d alteration, I quite enjoyed it I mean I was able to get full rune, some of the best skills, then gave up becasue I had got all the free things sorted except max magic (Only thing I never really did well in)

[est]

Is every post you make in the computer forum going to include bragging of some kind, Siert?  Because so far it's looking pretty close to it.

[clockworkjames]

I only ever brag about CoD4 because I am mediocre at everything else, but HC CoD4 I have the skills to back it up.

Don't talk smack unless you can back it up, if you can then feel free to do so.

It's the same for all other LAN gamers I know.

I might be shit at WoW, any game that requires heavy tactics over aim&reflexes and all RTS but DAMN I will sit you down at HC CoD4.

[AngelofShadows]

it`s not bragging if you can back it up, but that still doesn`t mean we want to hear about it

[Surgoshan]

If you can back it up, it's bragging.  If you can't back it up, you're either bragging or lying.

Any which way it's pretty obnoxious.

[öde]

He's bragging about runescape. That's like anti-bragging.