Quote:Original post by Captain P
You prefer more open games, I quickly feel lost in them. That doesn't mean any one of those games are poorly designed, they're just designed with different publics in mind.

That sounds a little ridiculous. Do you really feel lost by gaining the flexibility to implement your own strategy? Allowing this flexibility does not change anything other than the possibilities. If you like having the answer thrown in your lap, you can still have that, as it would work right along with the flexibility. But if you want to ride-the-rail, aka Virtual Cop or Myst, then yes, this type of design would ruin it.

Half-Life 2 had plenty of extremely fun situations. But they also had plenty of cheap tricks to keep the player on the rails. And many of those tricks actually subtracted from the gameplay. It has a superior physics engine, right? I mean you can bounce baby dolls on see-saws and use weight scales to get ammo. But did you ever try something useful like barricading a door from the bad guys? Valve doesn't allow that type of thing. That would require a ruleset AI instead of scripted AI.

Quote:I understand your issue, and in some games I have the same feeling, the idea you're being pushed through a certain predefined tunnel, so to say. That's probably poor design. However, I've played various games that are essentially equally linear, yet still give the player the feeling they're doing it themselves.

I'm guessing my point is still unclear. Deus Ex was very linear, yet still did not suffer from the problem I'm bringing to attention. As I said before, their A,B, or C choices don't really trick anyone into thinking the choice came from the player. But that was just the plot development. Their gameplay was very flexible. Ruleset AI. The player could do whatever they wanted to win a mission. They weren't forced onto a rail. If they wanted to kill everyone, cool. If they wanted to sneak around, that's okay too. Bombs? Yep. They never handed any sort of recommendation for achieving victory to the player. They simply presented a situation and let the player do his thing. There were hackable computer consoles that could be ignored, tweakable mechs that could be ignored, ammo that wasn't needed, and all sorts of other unnecessary possibilities. It's not that the designers are trying to pretend they are not handing the player choices, it's that they really are not handing them choices. They are associating choices with game world elements, and those elements are put in places where they make sense. The choices are not an illusion.

Quote:On the other hand, masking a single choice as if it was an open choice can be effective just as well.

I don't agree. Maybe with the plot. Not with gameplay.

Quote:

Quote:I see no reason to prevent item hoarding. It's a lack of strategic skill on the player's part to miss opportunities to use items in good places. If you never believe the use of nice items warrants their loss, I have a simple solution. Turn up the difficulty, or stop saving the game every 30 seconds.

Aren't you the one now who's forcing people to play the way you like? ;) Some players don't play for the strategy, others see it as a skill to beat situations with as little resource waste as possible. I remember playing Tomb Raider, only using the pistols. I saved a lot, too. Still, I enjoyed the game a lot. That was my way to play it back then, it was my 'solution' and I had fun with it, and isn't that what you're trying to emphasize?

What does any of this have to do with preventing or not preventing item hoarding? If players don't want to use my game world items in the places where those items are the most effective, then I leave that choice with them. I'm certainly not going to restrict the choices for other players because of it. You're suggesting that I'm forcing people to play the way 'I like' by not implimenting item hoarding restrictions?

Quote:On the other hand however, I think preventing ammo hoarding can be quite effective. The original gameplay can be fun, but by preventing hoarding, the designers can enforce players to rethink their strategies because the ammo they trust on may not always be sufficient. Some players play (too) carefull and while they may enjoy a game that way, forcing them to finally make those decisions can unlock a new level of gameplay, one which they never would've gotten to by themselves.

By preventing ammo hoarding, are you not forcing players to play the way you like? I could certainly strap a lot of ammo onto myself in most situations. I would have to question the game for preventing me from doing this. That's like puting a bandaid over a poorly balanced ammo supply. If you want to limit the ammo, then just limit the amount of it available. There's no need to limit the player to a carrying capacity of 30 shots.

Here's a small list of games I've thrown together quickly.

Games that have mostly strict linear gameplay:
- Medal of Honor
- Splinter Cell
- Tomb Raider: Legends

Games that have mostly free-form gameplay:
- Doom
- Half-Life
- Hitman
- Resident Evil

Games that have nearly completely free-form gameplay:
- Deus Ex
- Operation Flashpoint
- Grand Theft Auto
- Fallout
- Oblivion / Morrowind
- Ninja Gaiden (old-school versions)
- Super Mario (all versions)

Note that while games like Super Mario had limited complexity, the games are still completely free-form. The designers gave you abilities, then they gave you goals, then they set you lose. The enemies, the mushrooms, the turtles, they were all built to handle all of Mario's abilities. Not just the abilities he was allowed to use for a given stage.

The reason there were infinite rockets in those crates in Half-Life 2 was not because you might need them, but because Valve was too lazy to add a second method of taking it out if you failed to shoot it down. Not only did they force the method that must be used to win, they twisted the game's rules in order to do so. The same is true in all of those stealth missions where the bad guys seem more dumb than usual just so you can sneak by them.

Quote:Original post by Captain P
That's not what I'm saying. What I mean is: you want to 'enforce' free-form gameplay as you like it, while players like me may not want that degree of freedom. Item hoarding was just the example used: some people hate it, others are stimulated to play more strategic that way.

I can't understand why anyone would hate not being restricted to carrying a limited supply of items. Does choice bother you that much? To the point where you can't dump some stuff off because the game doesn't force it upon you?

Quote:But what this all comes down to, between you and me, is our different taste in games. To me, you come over as 'thinking outside the box', at least my box. ;) I would like to encourage that, even though I probably wouldn't like to play the things you come up with. My point is just, keep in mind that your own taste isn't representative for everyones taste. Free-form gameplay works for some gamers, not for others.

I always have this in mind. For every design decision, there is always an alternative that someone somewhere will enjoy more. I like to use my own preferences. My goal in creating this thread was not to rule out the existence of players like you, but to make sure there were others like me.

It seems it is more common for Gamedev users who disagree with an idea to reply more often. Perhaps I should have pretended I was rooting for the linear side [smile]

I agree, the whole 'get the rocket launcher moments before the boss fight' is a little predictable. Same goes for grenades moments before entrenched enemies, sniper rifle moments before needing to snipe, satchel charges moments before needing to blow up something, etc.

Though I'm not really certain how else you're supposed to do it. It might break the game to have rocket launcher ammo strewn everywhere, and you do have to make sure that the player can get the appropriate ammo if that's the only thing that's going to work.

Difficult situation here.

One thing I like alot in many RPGs [including Nethack and ToME] are shops.

Shops can potentially give you anything you anything you want <br><br>Anyway, I think adding shops, or some other system for exchanging game items could help allow for different stratagy. <br><br>For example, in a game like Halo, have a moment where the player could meet up with &#111;ne of the marines and exchange inventory. Pick up some more ammo and weapons or unload excess grenades. Though in this situation it wouldn't be 'trading' it could give a chance to prepare with whatever weapons you think you may need or unload stuff you don't. Plus, the marines might need some weapons back at the base.

Those are some really good ideas, TSN. In case anyone doesn't know, Halo 2 actually did let you strip weapons from fellow marines. And it added a lot to the flexiblity of the gameplay.

It's really refreshing to see that I'm not the only one disappointed with the linearity of Half-Life 2. There was always exactly one path you could take from the beginning to the end -- literally. If you took a wrong turn, you wound up at a dead end. Between that, the long and frequent load times, and the jumping puzzles(!), I gave up about halfway through.

Deus Ex is as close to perfection as I've seen in a FPS. I've played through it about three times. What separates good games from great games is the illusion that you're part of a believable world, making the world seem huge even though you can never explore most of it. I tend to hate story-based games, because the writing tends to be painfully banal or dripped out in long cutscenes. Deus Ex kept my attention because it was almost always interactive. There were sidequests that never felt like sidequests, because you were just interacting with the world and the characters.

I'm also a confessed hoarder/quicksave-abuser. It's hard to break those habits, which is why I really like games like Goldeneye, Hitman, Project IGI, and Operation Flashpoint, where you can't quicksave all the time in the middle of a mission.

Quote:Original post by drakostar
It's really refreshing to see that I'm not the only one disappointed with the linearity of Half-Life 2. There was always exactly one path you could take from the beginning to the end -- literally. If you took a wrong turn, you wound up at a dead end.

This sounds like you're referring to the plot. I was referring to the gameplay. So where the plot gives you only one door that you can go through, the gameplay only gives you one way to reach it. Most of HL2's gameplay was non-linear, except for situations like the helicopter fights, where only rockets could be used to damage them. You couldn't run away, trick it into wrecking, or snipe the pilot. You absolutely had to fire rockets at it to proceed with the game.

So while I don't think the gameplay was normally very linear, the plot, as you say, was pretty much completely linear. And the linearity of it was pretty extreme if you consider the fact that the plots of games like Flashpoint are also linear. I guess you could say that HL2 had many small connecting hallways, and only one door to exit in each. Flashpoint would be more like one huge room, also having only one exit. So even though both are linear in the fact that only one conclusion can win the mission, HL2 guides you to the end.

Quote:Original post by Kest
So even though both are linear in the fact that only one conclusion can win the mission, HL2 guides you to the end.

Yes, exactly. I wouldn't call it 'plot' so much as 'level design'. It very often felt like I was playing a rail shooter (remember Rebel Assault?).

Could you elaborate on what part of the gameplay you considered nonlinear? And no, I don't consider "well, you can kill this group of enemies before that other one" to be nonlinear. HL2 didn't hold your hand, but there was always exactly one solution to any given problem. That's linearity.

Quote:Original post by drakostar
Could you elaborate on what part of the gameplay you considered nonlinear?

Actually, I'm having trouble remembering any. Trying to think of situations reminded me of snipers and vehicles. The snipers really irked me in that game, because I could never seem to snipe them back. From what I could tell, lobbing grenades into the windows was the only way to kill them. The fact that you have no choice but to drive each vehicle is also pretty lame. You can't leave them behind, even though it should be totally feasible to do so.

Oh well, I give up. It's too much work trying to remember.