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Re: There's pie in that thar sky | |
Posted By: Socrates (Alt PC) <thoagland@gmail.com> | Date: 1/28/07 7:39 p.m. |
In Response To: There's pie in that thar sky (Ducain) I have a few of comments on your list: First off, it's an awesome list. Sometimes, I wonder why some game developer hasn't taken you on as a gameplay advisor, Ducain. :-) Second, I would go a bit further with a single item on your list: do take out the instant kill-zones, and replace them with barriers: but at least make most of the barriers realistic and in-sync with the environment. Invisible walls suck -- they kick me right out of a state of suspended disbelief. If I'm the MC, or the Arbiter, maybe I want to jump across rooftops to flank an enemy rather than repeat "The Charge of the Light Brigade." If so, I'm not expecting to run into an invisible wall. There has to be a limit, I agree, and eventually you have to have either an invisible wall or a kill-zone of some sort -- even if it's just an impossible-to-traverse cliff. But offering these invisible walls well out of the way allows for player exploration and an added dynamic to the combat.
This, in turn, makes the jobs of the AI programmers and those who build the encounters within the single-player much more difficult, I recognize. This makes it such that they cannot rely on a linear approach by the player. I cannot really answer to this, except to say that I realize this may be impossible for Halo 3, but is something I'd still like to see, eventually -- at least for the outdoor levels in games.
Finally, and this is less an address to your list than a question of game development in general, but something about your list struck me, as it is directly related to something I've thought about, recently: Namely, two items have to deal with weapons balance. I'm curious: it used to be that weapons balance was largely left alone once a game was released. Now, it seems like every game is patched within two months for weapons-balance aspects, if a shooter or tactical RPG, or unit balance aspects if it's an RTS or strategy game. I'd be curious to hear your response, Ducain, as well as anyone else's, as to whether this might be a result of the ability to patch games easily, and thus to address complaints; if it's something that is a result of insufficient gameplay testing in regards to weapons; if it's a combination of the two; or if it's something entirely different. Ducain, anyone else: any insight into this? Sincerely, Socrates
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