Ever think you take things a bit too far also? I've finished Diablo II (and the expansion) alone and with others a few dozen times. Perfection doesn't exist beyond your minds eye really, cause what is perfect to you is horrid to me (and vice versa of course). How do you live life knowning you've not see and experienced every person and every inch of this, the real, world?

I guess I'm a little of both. I like customization but dislike non-linearity (at least as I've seen it in games). Without customization, there's no real reason to play a game over again. When I think about whether I want to play a game or not, I think about my previous experience with the game; if there's no customization, I just remember my previous experience with it, so there's no reason to play it again. Sometimes there's fake customization, in which you can choose a bunch of different options, but 99% of them suck. That's not cool at all. Ideally, anything you could construct would work to some extent (this usually happens with inventories, where there are tradeoffs to equipping each item in a slot, but all of them improve your character in one way or another. It happens less often in character construction). It's also uncool for customization not to have any effect at all.

Non-linearity, though, seems to be an excuse for shallow and uninteresting stories. Even being an assassin in Morrowind is boring; you just read some text about some guy they want dead, and kill them. Then it takes you half an hour or more to get to your target (if you haven't discovered or memorized the land, sea, and teleportation routes), and then another half-hour to get back. I've read more interesting mathematical proofs than some of the Morrowind dialogue. Who cares if you have a million options if none of them are compelling? I usually just joined every guild I could, so I could find a mission that didn't require me to spend all day travelling to the middle of nowhere to complete it.

I largely agree with the O.P. to that end my favored genre are "old school" shoot-em-ups. Particularly newer style ones like Ikaruga and Mars Matrix.

It only takes some 20 minutes or so to blast through these games...and in my two examples the cliched power-ups are completely absent. To that end playing these games is like learning to play a specific musical instrament in an effort to master a particular song...Yeah, you can use continues and whatnot when you arn't good to rush through the game, but it takes a LOT of practice to get good at it...good enough that you can do it in one sitting without dieing or useing continues (effectively missing a note or two while playing a song).

But to each thier own. My life is complex enough as it is. I lack the time to dedicate myself to a "complex" game where I need to memorize locations, story lines, goals, keyboard control layouts and the status of things inorder to pick up from where I may have left off a week or two ago...Give me a highly focused linear pick up and play game anytime over one with uber customisation and the like.

Quote:

Original post by Trapper Zoid - For non-linear games, would you enjoy the game more if the content was procedurally generated? For example, if the terrain was randomly created as in Nethack or Diablo, with random quests created in a similar fashion (as done in some MMORPGs)?

Depends on what I want the game to provide. It was good in Civ II (which I still play). It would be bad in Final Fantasy VI (which I still play). "Randomly created" severely restricts the designer's ability to create a specific experience.

Quote:

- For customisable games, would the problem be alleviated if you started at a base state (such as a default base in strategy games, or a common character in RPGs), and the customisabilty was made gradually through player choices throughout the game?

The problem would be alleviated if there were no sub-optimal customisations. Gradual customisation helps because the player has a better feel for how the changes will affect the game, but doesn't "solve" the problem.

Quote:

[Original post by T1Oracle Play pong, or tetris.

No and yes. I don't like pong, but I love Tetris. Probably the greatest video game ever made. Extremely high replayability because every game is different and there's always room to improve.

Quote:

Its riddiculous to hate a game for having features. If that's not your thing then don't play those games.

I don't play them.

Who said anything about playing games they don't like?

Quote:

Find games made by unimaginative and uncreative game designers who only have the time to make one story line and zero custom options.

The flip side of this argument is:
I'd rather have a finely tuned gaming experience created by imaginiative and creative game designers than a watered down "create your own" experience created by unimaginative and uncreative game designers who can't be bothered to do the work themselves.

Cheap insults aside, nobody's asking you to play linear games. If that's not your thing then don't play those games.

Quote:

It's like the difference between chess and tic tac toe. If you don't like complexity then stick to the tic tac toe and let the Gary Kasparov's of the world have their chess.

Funny, because chess has all the linearity of Tetris and all the customization of pong.

Quote:

Original post by Ezbez So basically, you like a game in wich any bad mistake that you make can only loose you, say, under five minutes of game time? Makes sense.

AMEN!

Quote:

Original post by Mike2343 How do you live life knowning you've not see and experienced every person and every inch of this, the real, world?

In a way, I like my games linear because I get enough non-linearity in real life. I'm in something of an engineering program. I tinker with things enough in real life, I customize things in real life. When I play a game, I'm looking for something already tinkered with, something already customized by someone else. Think of it, in a way, as "talking shop" with the game designer.

Whatever you choose to do, it always has something to do with your own personal tastes.

I just love Marios, Raymans, Sonics, Spyros and such, because they don't ask me to botehr with the story, just get a grip on the handle, and wander through the levels collecting things, and killing others... But I can understand the challenge of coordination it demands can unnerve some people.

I kind of like the Final Fantasy series, because they often told great stories. But, to be fair, my favourites were VI and VII, because after that, they concentrated too much on apearances and fancy graphics . And still my friends can't get enough of VIII, because it's SOOOOO gorgeous... I just hate the way it pretends it is non-linear by having a huge world in which you wander, but only have ONE choice for your route really...

I both loved and hated Morrowind. It was just a great experience starting a game knowing nothing of it or of the world, and exploring,and making the best of what you had chosen as an avatar. But it pissed me off when I left the game for two weeks in a row to be absolutely unable to remember where I was or what I was doing in the previous session. The quest system sucked great time, because it was meant to appear so natural. And there was nothing to do for it. I could never find a way to remember which altars I had already been to, or who I was going to talk to, or What particular item I was supposed to steal... Having to read your entire journals and trying to make sense of them was a pain. really. But this is still the BEST game I've ever played...

Okay, pal, that's it! You just won an all expenses paid trip to the Wavinator Sandbox Bootcamp!! Yes, that's right, for 6 miserable weeks yours truly will bang trashcans at 5 AM in the morning, yell at you as you're trying to click the mouse ("OVER THERE, MAGGOT!"), and make you a sand-box stompin', cus-ta-my-zation choosin' badass! Ready to sign up?

[grin]

Seriously, it might be easy for hardcore sandbox players like myself to dismiss your complaint, but that would be a serious mistake. This isn't just a choice of those who like chocolate or vanilla.

Your post reminds me of my friend who stuck to Seyda Neen for weeks and weeks because he was afraid of leaving and somehow making a mistake. It was only when I started to regale him with the tales of my travels (like how I made it off of Red Mountain with no armor, cliff racers and Kagouti in tow, and a sword with only 1 HP) that he gained the confidence to venture out.

When a world is quite large, it makes me think that a kind of Grand Tour is needed. Before they commit to living with irrevocable choices, some players need at least an overview of what experiences they're going to have. I think if there was some way of experiencing a path through the world that was low risk and bracketed by friendly helpers, it might help to give such players more faith that their time is going to be well spent.

Those who love sandbox mode (like myself) will continue to ignore such options, and are much happier if it's not assumed that we're not capable of striking out on our own (as Freelancer does-- can't count the number of times I told Juni to take a flying leap while I flew all over creation).


That said, I also think that if you hate experimentation and creative problem solving, you'll really never enjoy a non-linear game. In that case, it is a case of chocolate and vanilla, and as the game industry practically only makes linear games, you'll have an eternity of products to enjoy (lucky #*$!)

Quote:

Original post by Silvermyst Quote: Original post by lightblade If you like linear games, you're really not getting your money worth of the game! Considering spending $50 on buying Prince of Persia: T2T, all you'll get is 10 hours of gameplay even in hard mode. Non-linear games can really extend that border, to give a game more than a month of gameplay. I'd rather spend $50 on a 10-hour game I'll enjoy than $50 on a 100-hour game I will not enjoy.

Of course, we'd all rather spend $50.00 on a game that we can enjoy for the length of time appropriate to however much we want to play. That's much more tricky.

I play both linear and non-linear games, but one frustration I frequently have with linear games is not being able to extend an aspect I enjoy enough. In Tron 2.0, for instance, I LOVED lightcycle racing and disk competition, but these were very limited parts of the game. Driving in Halo was the same. Similarly, a deal-breaker for me with RTS games (whose story mode I completely ignore) is if the game doesn't have a skirmish mode with lots of setup options and maps.

Unless it's an MMO, I'm sure this mentality isn't very economical from a production point of view, but I'll chalk that up to the art part of this business.

Quote:

Original post by Flarelocke Non-linearity, though, seems to be an excuse for shallow and uninteresting stories. Even being an assassin in Morrowind is boring; you just read some text about some guy they want dead, and kill them.

Did you read any of the scrolls and books in the game world? For me, they really made the game world come alive. They were particularly more compelling if you've played through Red Guard and the other, earlier Elder Scrolls games.

Quote:

Then it takes you half an hour or more to get to your target (if you haven't discovered or memorized the land, sea, and teleportation routes), and then another half-hour to get back.

I think if you don't like virtual terrain and the sight of a made up world, there's no helping this one. I didn't mind the travelling because I was roleplaying a scout, and so I worked to stay off the roads as much as possible. Even though the game world didn't reward or acknowledge me, the thought of what it would be like to pick the right terrain and use the right stealth equipment added something.

Not sure, but I think for you the game needed horses. Would it have been any more interesting if the terrain were more treacherous, or the wildlife much more numerous and deadly?

Quote:

I've read more interesting mathematical proofs than some of the Morrowind dialogue.

Ouch, can't defend them there, except to say that open-ended dialog is a massive project.

Quote:

I usually just joined every guild I could, so I could find a mission that didn't require me to spend all day travelling to the middle of nowhere to complete it.

Okay, I'm forever curious about this: Part of the compelling aspect of Morrowind is versimilitude, not so much "reality" but the concrete likeness of a place made alive because it captures the right feel. Now, if you travel in the wilderness, there's a certain something to wilderness that makes it wilderness. Not just the graphics, but the types of encounters, the risks to them, and the intervals between them. So if it's filled with tons of people and interaction points, it's not really a wilderness, it's a city made of hills and trees.

So without badlands and no-man's lands, without significant physical spacing between interaction nodes, how do you capture the right flavor of a medieval world that shouldn't be anywhere near as populated as the modern world? Throw in swarms of dense NPCs and quests and you might as well throw in a Starbucks.

(btw, this is similar to setting up interactions in space and capturing the feeling of that medium-- compare Freelancer, which has ridiculously small star systems that completely destroy the feeling of space to I-War2, which creates an awesome sense of versimilitude because star systems are vast and solitary)

I enjoyed Morrowind, though its a great example of something I think is important in a game, being missing.
I find Character devolopment games to be my favorite, non linear ones at that.
My preference is where your character evolves gradualy in a logical manner, features being introduced after you have mastered the basic features and so on.
I must add, my pet hate is having everything spoon fed to you as if your a 6 year old, step by step by step. I somehow feel insulted, the balance is to have a system that caters for many different skill levels, alowing you to delve deeper if you need it or alow you to gloss over if not, or you are replaying.
Morrowind gives you choices in character development that can make or break your char in the first few minutes and other features are up to you to find.
The lack of a logical development, throwing people into the deep end is what many find frustrating in non linear games, going overboard with the non linear idea. The balance is usualy found in a linear story threaded through a non linear world, the best are stories that branch into a complexe tree of choices and alowing you to do what you want around the story, the more choices, the less linear it feels and more replayable the game becomes. This allows the basis of gradual imersion into the "world" of the game, a heavily linear aspect can be used to teach the player about the game at the start so when they can venture forth it is with anticipation of what they can become, not worying about what they have done wrong or missed. I love teasers too, glimses of what you can become, they can be a great tool for giving the player "educated" choices in thier development, anticipation always hightens the feeling of accomplishemnt.
In such a game a linear minded person can play start to finish along the story, then try again with different choices - different story, a non linear minded person can follow the story and explore at will, picking up all the stand alone segments from other story choices, making the game seem less linear and a larger world. Unfortunately its rarely accomplished in games.

I'll add though that most of my friends outgrow linear RPG games eventualy!
I started gaming/programming on a VIC 20, so I've had a long time to outgrow them, hehe.

Wavinator, I find it interesting after reading your post that somehow, despite all our differences in taste, we both enjoyed Freelancer very much.

The worst parts of the game for me were when, at the end of a story arc, Juni would tell me to "go explore, find some work, I'll get back to you later." And then I would have to grind just to get on with the game. Heh, you're just the opposite-- it sounds like the story arcs were annoying to you and you just wanted to play the game without being interrupted by pesky Juni.

What I find interesting is that the game was able to accomodate both of us well enough that we would both walk away from the experience claiming it was a good game. Gives me a little hope. [smile]