Gameplayer Posted June 17, 2015 Author Posted June 17, 2015 Dumbed down... I'm waiting for school to start back up so I don't have a lot to do right now other then study up for classes I'll be taking soon. I binged on a whole bunch of Let's Plays and I gotta be honest about what I saw. People out there are horrible at games, they don't understand jack about game mechanics, and I don't think its going to get better any time soon. I watched like 20 authors play Fallout Shelter, I don't have the game and understood the mechanics inside and out in the first few minutes of footage. 18 of 20 authors couldn't even figure out essential mechanics they read aloud to their viewers until their 3rd show. It cant be all for ratings right? I used to play an MMO set a goal for top tier and got it....Most of the player base never got that stuff. Face it if your a mod user or an author this trend is like a reflection of the mental capacities of the whole public at large. Most people out there are just not quick on the uptake with games.
Jexsam Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 X: I'm busy Y: Enough space? A: Sounds great B: Go away Yes, I was wrong, it's not dumbed down at all! Although, I'm not sure how I'd think if it was like this: X: IB Y: ES? A: SG B: GA Oh no, they're using shortened versions of full responses to represent the dialog choice! Clearly this trivial change means the game has been dumbed down!
bjornk Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 If reducing the reply options to four buttons and using two word sentences to represent what you want to say isn't "dumbing down" a dialogue system, I wonder what is. Let's see... Mr Handy offers you some food. Your options are: X: Don't know Y: You okay? A: Get food B: No food You choose "A: Get food" dialogue option, hoping to get some food obviously, why else would you choose that otherwise? What does your character say instead? "Sure, I need a minute to think", and doesn't get any food. What I'm trying to say is that it's almost impossible to predict where these options of two or three word sentences will take you. That's the reason why I said... How anyone can construct a meaningful dialogue with sentences that contain only a few words is beyond me.
The DarkSlayer Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Every thread that this bjornk guy has visited becomes toxic. lol
bjornk Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Every thread that this bjornk guy has visited becomes toxic. lol Probably because I'm disturbing the circlejerk between fanboys.
DocClox Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 I think dumbing down is a legitimate concern. I've been playing a lot of Morrowind and the depth of that game is incredible. Everything beth has released since then has been simplified, discarding some of that complexity. We've lost spells, spellmaking, complex enchantments, amour slots, weapon types, faction ranks and that's just off the top of my head. The end result was Skyrim. Given the game's success it's hard to argue that the strategy is hurting Beth. But while I found Skyrim to be an enjoyable romp, I don't find it anywhere near as satisfying to play as Morrowind. Nor (sex mods aside) does it have any of Morrowind's replay value. Now FO3 is different enough from the TES line that it's hard to argue that anything was dumbed down in that case. In fact the primary aim seems to be to have been to get as close as possible to FO1/2. But the trend seems clear in Beth's other games, and I do worry that we'll see the same thing here, with depth of play sacrificed in favour of the holy Lowest Common Denominator. The four button dialogue is probably a separate concern. I can't see it working as well on the PC as on a console, but so be it. The worry there is how do we, as modders add a fifth option to a four option menu. I'm reasonably confident there will be a way to do it, probably turning the last option into "[More]" or some such. The business of using voice to carry the information is going to be a pain though. So yeah: it's not going to be the end of the world, and I'm sure as modders we can work around it. But a little apprehension is probably justified.
Jexsam Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Probably because I'm disturbing the circlejerk between fanboys. Typical reaction. Positivity = fanboyism. Optimism for what was overall a pretty good-looking presentation doesn't equate to kissing Bethesda's ass or defending their work as irreproachable masterpieces. But no, we dared to not shit on everything, so obviously we're just fanboys who'll eat up anything Bethesda hands us no matter how much shit is on the plate.
xTrogdorx Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 If reducing the reply options to four buttons and using two word sentences to represent what you want to say isn't "dumbing down" a dialogue system, I wonder what is. Let's see... Mr Handy offers you some food. Your options are: X: Don't know Y: You okay? A: Get food B: No food You choose "A: Get food" dialogue option, hoping to get some food obviously, why else would you choose that otherwise? What does your character say instead? "Sure, I need a minute to think", and doesn't get any food. What I'm trying to say is that it's almost impossible to predict where these options of two or three word sentences will take you. That's the reason why I said... Actually I think the actual response was something more along the lines of "Food, eh, sure, I need a minute to think." And then the robot goes into the house to get you some food.
bjornk Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Typical reaction. Positivity = fanboyism. Actually, this is one of the typical responses I get from fanboys, they never accept being one, naturally. Some other typical responses I get from fanboys are "Shut up!", "If you don't like the game, don't play it!", "We don't want to hear your criticism, go create your own hate thread!". Criticize anything they like and they take it personally. Criticism equals negativity for them. I never have any problem with people opposing my ideas with rational arguments and I never try to silence them or attack them. Only the fanboys "derail" these threads.
Sacremas Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 3 - No, I believe we've only seen a grand total of two conversations in the demos. As I said before, there were plenty of conversations with only a few topics in the previous games so this is hardly enough information to make a sound assumption. If you look clouse at the gameplay vids, you can see that each dialog option is bound to the four face-buttons on the Xbox controller. There's no scrolling list of options like in previous games, just the four face-buttons in every instance. From that, yes, it seems we only get four due to them tying this to the face-buttons of a controller (and it's only got the four). I believe this restriction is closely related to voice acted protagonist and the prerecorded dialogue lines for them. They had to dumb it down like this in order to project the workload and minimize the time and cost of voice acting. They must have left out all the dialogue options that they deemed non-essential. Have to admit even Bioware, with their wheel dialogue system, did a better job than this. More than four dialogue options can easily be solved by makign one of the options say "More..." and clicking that gives you three more lines and a "Back" option. I agree that the simplified two-word sentences can make it a bit difficult, it was in Mass Effect where sometimes your character would end up saying something completely else than what you intended. And Bioware's writers are vastly better than Bethesda's. On the combat system, Todd Howard mentioned that you'd also be able to "slow down time to pick your shots" so sounds like Bullet Time will be a part of the game. They can't call it that because believe it or not Bullet Time is actually a trademark of the Max Payne franchise.
Guest endgameaddiction Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 The short 1-4 responses handled in dialogue are just to set off what the protagonist will be saying voiced out. I'm not concerned about that. I am happy to see voice acting in the game instead of the dull silence. Not worried about my character being a widower/widow. Every protagonist in Fallout has a set story. That didn't stop us from doing what we want before, so it shouldn't now. Sure, I didn't like it, but it's not that big of a deal to me. Alternative starts will be created. Not that it will change what happens in the main quest line. We're taling about 200 years after the war and rising out of a vault. His/Her family is dead or probably androids later on in the story. Maybe everyone in the vault was in a cryogenic chamber and it turns out that that is why you are the soul survivor. Maybe you see your family dead before you leave the vault. We don't know nada but what's been revealed. I think they went with this approach so it wouldn't be another Fallout 3 introduction with the whole baby born, raised in a vault and a tragic happens and you are off into the wasteland scenario.
testsubject013 Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 I kinda hope the family is alive somewhere out in the wasteland and you can find them and horribly and brutally kill them
Redflyingmonkey Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 I kinda hope the family is alive somewhere out in the wasteland and you can find them and horribly and brutally kill them It's Fallout of course you can and will do that. They would't let an occasion to murder your wife and child pass by. Bjornk you're a fan of Black Desert, maybe you should just shut the fuck up already about dumbed down games. I'm sure korean mmos require a lot of philosophical considerations before farming goblins for 12 hours or buying a 15$ top hat at the shop.
xTrogdorx Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Voiced PC plus already establishing not only being married but having a kid irritates me immensely. It depends on how deeply the previous life is integrated into dialog and interactions, but it's not beyond my ability to simply ignore this problem. Further, it's not established what kind of people the couple is - other than having a kid and being married, they're blank slates. Maybe they're both ex-cons who may or may not have killed a whole lot of people and simply managed to get away with it? Iunno. It bugs me having to justify any of this to start with but it's not too different from roleplaying any character, it's just making shit up where it suits me. Everything else looks better than I dared hope. Cautiously optimistic. New Vegas plot-hammered a whole lot more than that. You start the game having been a courier, with all the baggage of the events leading up to the Lonesome Road DLC. Personally I would have preferred being born in the vault and going through the whole you-make-choices-as-you-grow-up thing, but I can see where they wouldn't want to pretty much re-make the intro of Fallout 3, so I can't exactly be too critical about this. I much prefer this to what we got with NV. Am a little put off by the Old World thing - it looks like you barely have time to do anything in it before you have to run off and start the plot, which seems wasteful... not only of the art assets, but the characters you're supposed to get attached to. Plot is, make character, make your spouse's character, look at adorable generated baby, run off to vault and have a nap. Then at some point spouse and baby die and you get vomited back up into the actual game again. I get the impression that the loss of spouse and baby are supposed to feel like significant events for the protagonist, but we the player are going to end up not caring much because we haven't had sufficient time to become attached. They die pretty much right away. Imagine if, in Fallout 3, your dad died trying to escape the Vault, instead of what actually happened. His death wouldn't have the same emotional impact, would it?
afa Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 The wife and husband thing is actually an interesting take on gaming trend. If we look at gaming main characters archetype. Married person isn't that high on the list, nor is parental figure, sure a few here and there; Last of us, Bioshock, Red dead. Also the opposite is true in FO3 the main character is the child looking for the father. Familial ties isn't foreign concept for Bethesda's Fallout game. NV was developed by Obsidian. Fallout has always been a little tighter with the characterization unlike TES.
nonusnomeni Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 I kinda hope the family is alive somewhere out in the wasteland and you can find them and horribly and brutally kill them It's Fallout of course you can and will do that. They would't let an occasion to murder your wife and child pass by. Bjornk you're a fan of Black Desert, maybe you should just shut the fuck up already about dumbed down games. I'm sure korean mmos require a lot of philosophical considerations before farming goblins for 12 hours or buying a 15$ top hat at the shop. nope it is bethesda no childkiller perk for you
Nixea Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 The wife and husband thing is actually an interesting take on gaming trend. If we look at gaming main characters archetype. Married person isn't that high on the list, nor is parental figure, sure a few here and there; Last of us, Bioshock, Red dead. Also the opposite is true in FO3 the main character is the child looking for the father. Familial ties isn't foreign concept for Bethesda's Fallout game. NV was developed by Obsidian. Fallout has always been a little tighter with the characterization unlike TES. I'm quite interested in playing as a mother. I can't say I've ever seen that myself, seems like developers don't shy away from creating paternal player characters, but for one reason or another won't make maternal player characters.
Gameplayer Posted June 17, 2015 Author Posted June 17, 2015 Well there's at least a potential of 2 different kind of play through's then. Should be fun. I'm not bothered by the whole set up so far and honestly a lot of the time I spent playing fallout was spent exploring and adding a lot of content with mods that put new places into the World Space to go see. As far as playing mom or dad goes it remains to be seen if that's really such a big hurdle to enjoying the game. The thing with Bethsada games is just that you know once your out of the starter zone on rails...Its best to just make a save and figure that's where your characters life begins anyway. The one thing that bothers me is that I'd like to have Sexlab in this game. Nothing else I've seen about the game bothers me in the slightest. I'd just like to have a more adult experience with the game like what modders have managed with Skyrim. That's something I don't think a lot of gamers out there can even really understand. I'm not looking for a discussion on the player characters sexuality...The PC's identity is whatever I imagine it too be and Im not open to discussion on this until I can see more on the game or play it. Although I wouldn't mind having to play with a Family/Settlement mini game either, I seem to remember an April Fools Day joke mod that had a very lengthy interesting description on playing a Leading Family member haha. I think what makes Bethsada Games really interesting is what we manage to pull off with the mods after the play through. I've found that sometimes its the unexpected results of using mods from different authors that tends to get real interesting with these games.
Dreamweaver Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Am a little put off by the Old World thing - it looks like you barely have time to do anything in it before you have to run off and start the plot, which seems wasteful... not only of the art assets, but the characters you're supposed to get attached to. Plot is, make character, make your spouse's character, look at adorable generated baby, run off to vault and have a nap. Then at some point spouse and baby die and you get vomited back up into the actual game again. I get the impression that the loss of spouse and baby are supposed to feel like significant events for the protagonist, but we the player are going to end up not caring much because we haven't had sufficient time to become attached. They die pretty much right away. Imagine if, in Fallout 3, your dad died trying to escape the Vault, instead of what actually happened. His death wouldn't have the same emotional impact, would it? I get what you're saying here, but a couple of things: (1) We don't know yet what happens in the vault. "Events transpire" is all we've been told about that. Who's to say we won't get to spend a lot of time with spouse and baby in there? (2) Even a short time spent with a character can get you attached and make you feel their loss, if done well. Last of Us spoilers: Joel's daughter. Only half an hour in, tops, and that hit like a truck and provided an enormous character-defining motivation for him throughout the entire game. All in all, I'm optimistic about what we know so far, but we really don't know very much yet and a lot of the details will come out in time. I didn't want a voiced protagonist and I'm uneasy about having what seems to be a clearly defined background/origin - because those things to some degree will take away the freedom to make a character my own, rather than playing Bethesda's, and the freedom to make a character my own is an enormous part of the appeal of Bethesda RPGs. But having those things certainly opens up the potential for a harder-hitting, more focused and meaningful story, and there will likely still be plenty of freedom for role-playing. I'm interested to see how it works out. It may disappoint in some ways, or it may be amazing.
Coopervane Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 I'm definately not keen on the whole family angle. Though i did notice something in the char-creation menu, it wasen't on screen for long, but one of buttons in one of it's menu's was called "Sex". So it might be possible to change the gender of one or both of the parents and create a same sex couple? Well, maybe.. Or maybe it's just the button you press to swap to and edit the other character. Well i hope it's the first one, i really do.
Sacremas Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Absolutely no chance at all of a same-sex couple because that would need a third voice actor with 13000+ lines of dialogue. You get to play as mother or father (confirmed by the robot recognizing you/you recognizing the robot, even if you were your dad's twin the baby wouldn't remember the robot), and something happens inside the vault that Howard didn't want to spoil, odds are they either die in the vault as a part of whatever killed absolutely everyone else in the vault, or something else. Spending a long time with the family in the vault is out of the question because then the parent would have aged during the 200 years rather than spent them in cryo sleep, though waking up occasionally would likely be a thing. Unless of course the whole Android thing is a thing, I'm actually betting more on that, makes some things make more sense. If so it's probably a mid-game reveal, like "Would you Kindly?"
DocClox Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Maybe you can sculpt the appearance of both partners before choosing one to play. Actually, that would make sense and could be kind of fun.
windpl Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Maybe you can sculpt the appearance of both partners before choosing one to play. Actually, that would make sense and could be kind of fun. Not maybe, you can...
Coopervane Posted June 17, 2015 Posted June 17, 2015 Absolutely no chance at all of a same-sex couple because that would need a third voice actor with 13000+ lines of dialogue. You get to play as mother or father (confirmed by the robot recognizing you/you recognizing the robot, even if you were your dad's twin the baby wouldn't remember the robot), and something happens inside the vault that Howard didn't want to spoil, odds are they either die in the vault as a part of whatever killed absolutely everyone else in the vault, or something else. Spending a long time with the family in the vault is out of the question because then the parent would have aged during the 200 years rather than spent them in cryo sleep, though waking up occasionally would likely be a thing. Unless of course the whole Android thing is a thing, I'm actually betting more on that, makes some things make more sense. If so it's probably a mid-game reveal, like "Would you Kindly?" We don't really know how many lines of dialog the spouse will have, how big a role they play, but if this was possible, it woulden't be the full 13000+ lines of the two playable characters, it might be as few as the handful we hear the spouse say before the bomb drops. Not to mention that it would be possible to reuse the already recorded lines and just modulate them. But unfortunately you are probably right, the chances of them having done any of this are slim to nill. All i can do then is hope that the spouse plays no major part in anything that happens after the Vault, and prefably doesen't even get mentioned past that point, or this is going to present a serious problem for me
Gameplayer Posted June 17, 2015 Author Posted June 17, 2015 Watch the intro video again. It's nothing fancy mind you and looks more like what we have seen in Skyrim fan hair. Long Hair has physics. You'll notice the wifes hair isn't stiff as a board when she tilts her head. You realize that if you cant get re-married in game that it'll be a "Hearth Fire DLC" probably.
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