Developers, kiss my ass. [RANT TIME!]

[winneganfake]

Right. That does it, you lot.

I am fucking sick and tired of your "it's like a sandbox" videogames. Sick of game designers too busy to come up with things like interesting characters, dramatic tension, or even, god forbid, enough plot to last through even just twenty hours of playtime.

Open-ended sandboxes do nothing but bore the fuck out of me, and when the only intensity level in your game is "Oh fuck, I'm gonna die!" the the actual feeling of intensity kinda drop out after the first straight hour of it. And learning endless button-push combos to activate more powerful moves is not my idea of "game rewards player for success."

But giving me a virtual sandbox does no good- nope, nothing. I play to be entertained, goddamnit. Instead of making me hunt around endlessly for the fun, why don't you actually provide some in your game from the get go?


Here's some ideas, most of which I find lacking lately:

Plot (both having one and having one with some depth beyond kill everyone before they kill you.)

Intensity (chibi's nice and all, but can we do with less of the kyoot? Or maybe a balance between cute and "I'm so hardcore my teeth have tattoos"?)

Characters. With motivations. Maybe even backgrounds, or at least decent dialogue. And no, giving the character 10-15 different unlockable outfits does not count as "depth."



Sigh... how much longer do I have to wait for another Final Fantasy? Or a Shin Megami Tensei? Or to just even find an older game that's actually decent on the shelves?

Brought to you by:

Bujingai: The Forsaken City

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

Unlimited SaGa

Anything with the combination of "Elder" and "Scrolls" in its title

The entire GTA franchise

The entire franchise of GTA clones that are just covered over with superhero (or anime, or horror, or anything) licenses.

Every last one of the damn platformers that attempts to masquerade as an RPG.

Comments

[livingdeadpan.livejournal.com]

And which recent game(s) prompted this rant, may I ask?

[synabetic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, which game? I'm curious, too...

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

Um, see the below reply. Ah, hell, may as well just edit the whoel post with it.

[synabetic.livejournal.com]

Ah! Okay...

Well, I highly enjoyed Morrowind, but I can see (and agree with) your points.

Only problem with some of the larger, open-endedesque crpgs is that they are easy to sink lots of time into and then they may get a bit tedious, boring or just plain confusing.

I'm waiting for another KOTOR, Fallout 1/2 or Planescape Torment to come out, personally. A deep, involving rpg that captures my full attention and forces me to complete it. The FF games bug me though... hate them with a passion... but that's just a personal quirk.

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

Hell, I'd sell my soul for pretty much any of the sequels you mentioned. I gotta ask though, whythe hate for the Final Fantasy series?

That, and have you every tried any of the Persona games, or Shin Megami Tensei?

[synabetic.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not a big PS/PS2 fan, which pretty much counts me out of the FF series for the last decade... hehe. Also, I just never really liked the content and delivery... Maybe I never really gave them a chance... but I've also never liked anime-styled rpgs very much at all (even tabletop rpg art with manga turns me off... dunno why, just don't like it).
Although, I may try an FF game if it comes oot for the PC (aside form 11, which is an MMO).

Haven't tried Persona... Though from what I've seen, SMT is really, really good and deserves the praise that it has been given.

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

Actually, FF 7 and 8 both had PC releases, though there's some compatibility issues with XP, both can still usually be found on Ebay and the like.

Persona's pretty much impossible to get ahold of. the was only a small number produced for the US release (old stuff for the PS1), but it was damned good. Darker and more twisted than SMT. Though from what I hear, it looks like the new Persona game (#3) is going to be getting a US release. Which'll be interesting, since in the Japanese version, the PCs have to shoot themselves in the head in order to activate their special abilities. Can't wait to see what the anti-videogame faction, or the censors, do with that bit.

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

ah yes... brought to you by:

Bujingai: The Forsaken City

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

Unlimited SaGa

Anything with the combination of "Elder" and "Scrolls" in its title

The entire GTA franchise

The entire franchise of GTA clones that are just covered over with superhero (or anime, or horror, or anything) licenses.

Every last one of the damn platformers that attempts to masquerade as an RPG.

[luchog.livejournal.com]

Amen. Sick of the whole bloody lot.

What I would like to see, is an RPG, Adventure, RTS -- hell, I'd even settle for sandbox game, anything as long as it isn't a fucking shooter -- that is created for intelligent, mature individuals. Not mature as in "let's throw in as much skanky sleaze as the ratings board will let us get away with", but as in dealing with life in a reasonably adult way. Sexuality that isn't either adolescent sniggering or vile street-trash sleaze. Objectives that involve something other than just bashing or shooting the hell out of whatever the hell shows up on the screen. Something with an intelligently written and complex plot and storyline, and some decent fucking character/world development. And drop the damn levelup shit!

Just once I'd like to see a sexually-oriented game where the theme wasn't some variant of either GTA or LSL. A quest game that didn't go through endless "kill lots of monsters in order to improve stats enough to kill the really big monster". A strategy game that wasn't just "build things so you can shoot stuff, oh and we'll stick some lame story on it so you won't notice that the actual gameplay hasn't changed one goddamn bit since fucking Dune." An RPG that wasn't "spend 75% of your game-playing time searching every single tile of every single floor in every single dungeon to fine that one rusty ring that is the only thing that will activate the magic thingie-that-saves-the-world at the end" because RPG writers can't seem to find reasonable, logical puzzles but just chuck shit out at random where you'd have to be unbelievably lucky to stumble across it and recognize it at something valueable. An Adventure/RPG game that isn't Yet Another Glorified Platformer.

And please God, NOT ANOTHER MARIO WORLD GAME!!! And while you're listening, we don't really need any more SIMs expansions either.

Unfortunately, that isn't likely to happen anytime soon.

Have you seen any of the Spiderweb Software games? Better than the usual run of the mill for gameplay; even if the graphics suck ass.

[synabetic.livejournal.com]

I've played the Geneforge and Avernum games... Great stuff, especially from an indie!
Here's a link for those that need more info on Spiderweb Software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiderweb_Software

And luchog, mad props to you for bringing up an excellent developer :)

[luchog.livejournal.com]

If i had the money, I would love to invest enough to give Jeff Vogel a production studio that could turn out "latest and greatest" quality graphics for his games. Would love to see something like Geneforge with the kind of graphics quality and play the best PC games get (don't think it would work as well on a console).

[winneganfake.livejournal.com]

Spiderweb's definitely up there on my list of companies I'd love to support, were I a wealthy philanthropist.

But a big "hell yes" in agreement to everything you just added. Not that I mind killing the little guys to get enough XP to the boss, etc, but it'd be just as nice to do away with at least some of that element.

[luchog.livejournal.com]

but it'd be just as nice to do away with at least some of that element

It just gets so tedious, having to spend hours just stomping stuff over and over and over, to finally get to a few minutes of actual storyline. One of the reasons I liked Chrono Cross so much is that there wasn't nearly as much of that sort of thing as there usually is, and there was plenty of storyline and side quests to make up for it. It did still suffer from the randomness that most RPGs suffer from.

That's my other problem with most RPGs, unless you're amazingly obsessive and can look at every frigging tile in the game, and show up at every monolith at every phase of the moon in case something happens, you'll need to shell out big bucks for a "strategy guide", or wait a few months before the obsessive types post a walkthrough online somewhere. There really needs to be less of the finding stuff randomly, and more of the finding stuff by talking to people or reading old maps/inscriptions/etc. And plenty of interesting side quests, too.

The thing I like most about Spiderweb is that you're not on rails for the entire game, like you are for most RPGs. There are at least three different paths, and multiple variations of each path, to the end of the game. Vogel is truly amazing in the complexity his story development.

[josienutter.livejournal.com]

<< Just once I'd like to see a sexually-oriented game where the theme wasn't some variant of either GTA or LSL. >>

http://www.igda.org/sex/
http://gamasutra.com/features/20060613/reynolds_01.shtml

[wakko.livejournal.com]

Just remember... NWN 2 comes out in September.

Gamasutra also had a similar article:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060710/adams_01.shtml

[josienutter.livejournal.com]

(As far as my current project goes:) We're not making an RPG-- we're making an action game with RPG elements. How marketing chooses to play semantics is something we have no control over...

Just sayin'.


I'm just pissed that Titan Quest crashes every 10 minutes and corrupts my character/questlog.