recently i've been noticing how disrespectful of player's time video games are compared to tabletop.

Haha yeah I've always liked how flight sims and space games can do time compression. A big issue I think is what I think of as 'actualization' vs. abstraction. Actualization is making players move step by step through a virtual world, abstraction is letting them fast travel. AAA has focused heavily on blow-by-blow actualization I think because of the huge draw of immersion, but it comes with hidden costs, most significantly navigation fatigue.

what i propose is a game that's not designed that way. a living world with purpose.

A very tall order but it would be fascinating if done with enough detail and room for player creativity. I suspect it would not have those 'just so' carefully designed moments we get with scripted content, but may well make up for it with emergent gameplay.

continual - so you don't run out of content - IE stuff to do.

Since procedural will eventually expose recognizable patterns I'm guessing something like this would take a continual developer commitment. This isn't unheard of (Stardock, for instance, keeps updating games they've released ages ago).

appropriate to their level - i already have houses. i want to design my own castle. and raise an army. and attack my neighbors, and have them attack me, and encounter my neighbors in the wilderness and do champion's battle for prisoner and ransom. sometimes they win, i become their "guest prisoner" and pay ransom, sometimes i win, and they are my "guests" for a few days. or perhaps we bag and tag each other's followers, that kind of stuff. and all along there's adventuring to be done: allies need help in epic quests, constant dungeon adventuring to afford the army, the odd dragon menacing the kingdom from time to time, etc.

I've always wondered how you stop this sort of game from leaking into a bunch of other genres. Does an RPG become an RTS becomes a grand strategy game? Or is there a clever way to contain the idea within its borders so that the development requirements don't explode exponentially.

you design it as "they continually become more powerful, and the world renews itself, instead of getting used up by the player.". but this has no closure.

I've always been a fan of the idea that you let players advance but never allow them to become Superman, otherwise we get Man of Steel style battles (now we need destructible cities, *sigh*). But even with that you're still saddled with Alexander the Great / Napoleon possibilities-- but at least they can be poisoned or backstabbed.

character retirement is about the only "solution" i've seen, and it isn't much of one if you ask me.

Death and permadeath are the only solutions I've ever been able to imagine as compelling, spiced with restart options based on how the player has changed the world. It gives continuity and meaning, but would only appeal to a limited subset of gamers.

when thy do this, it must be a new experience like the first pay through with the first character. they should not know where points of interest are in the world from previous play throughs, nor where the badguys spawn, nor when, nor where the good treasure is, none of that.

I actually don't think this would be a problem if the world was large enough. Granted I've thought about this stuff forever in context of space games, so maybe a planet isn't a big enough arena (lol)

the arms race aspect of player level/playing time and new content is the only part for which there seems no solution.

It's not often a feature of fantasy (or even terrestrial) games but time / decay could be a natural factor. If you're the Red Baron but the Jet Age is coming, you're going to have to upgrade!

the brilliance of this is that you can't use up design software, as it not content you consume, its a tool you use to modify content.

This is another great way of looking at it.

they seem to be too conditioned to getting that level up reward - when it seems that its really about the journey (the grind) and not the destination (retirement). i'm not really sure, as i've never been tempted to even try something that one might typically associate with grinding and fetch quests (IE MMOs). i have no need for PvP or co-op, which is about all an MMO offers over a single player FPSRPG. and who wants to hassle with connecting just to play single player?

I think any kind of progression can be hypnotic. Even a stupid little gambling game where you watch your money go up can be compelling, but in a game with a larger context this simplicity only goes so far and creates problems.

MEANINGFUL art

Just to elaborate, good turns of plot in movies or books are good because they are constructed just so, in a way that dovetails perfectly with all that came before. To use Star Wars for example, take the famous reveal in Empire Strikes Back when Vader tells Luke that he is the young man's father. Given everything that's come before this is an emotionally resonant, 'just right' construction that amplifies the work. By comparison, had the reveal been that Vader was Han Solo's father, it would within the same framework have been largely meaningless.

I feel that procedural content often suffers from thematic meaninglessness. Some of this has to do with the very problem it is meant to solve, namely the difficulty of creating quality content. That you generate a bunch of buildings and roads does not make a city Paris. There is something unique about Paris that makes it Paris, and that's often lost no matter how well developed our technology becomes.

that's just lazy / bad procedural content generation. good procedural content generation should be nigh on indistinguishable from hand rolled.

It's a nice ideal to reach for but I don't think we're there yet. We're making breathtaking strides though (No Man's Sky for example).

>> But it's clear that filling those worlds is becoming a bigger and increasingly expensive problem.

recently i've been noticing how disrespectful of player's time video games are compared to tabletop. in D&D, if my players said "we leave the dungeon", i'd say "ok", make the appropriate random encounter checks, and that would be it. they would not have to physically traverse each foot of the path back out in real time. and if they wanted to explore to the west, i'd do an encounter check, and move them 1 days's travel, telling them anything of interest along the way in case they wanted to stop and check it out.and just like that they would have crossed skyrim 4 times. but i would not make then sit there in real time while empty wilderness unfolds before them.

fpsrpgs have no accelerated time like flight sims to skip ahead to the action. i often use SGTM console commands in elder scrolls and fallout to accelerate time when forced to manually walk somewhere. needless to say, accelerated time is one of the first things i put in Caveman.

>> Agree, especially because the world itself has no purpose for the player once all the fetching and monster killing is done. Then homicidal depression kicks in as the world reveals how meaningless it is without a hard, final closure to cap everything and justify all the time you've spent (you've rescued the prince and saved the lands or whatever).

games that are designed that way might be able to use closure.

what i propose is a game that's not designed that way. a living world with purpose. no fetching, unless its the epic kind. and a never ending supply of action.

from my notes on the subject: "a continual supply of new and compelling content which is of interest to the player, and appropriate for their level."

continual - so you don't run out of content - IE stuff to do.

new and compelling - can't be the "more of the same". can't be "horse armor" - IE new yet worthless content.

of interest to the player - i don't want to buy the parts for a pre-designed house in skyrim - i already have houses and can only sleep in one at a time, and any single container in any of them can hold all my worldly possessions. i want to design my own castle.

appropriate to their level - i already have houses. i want to design my own castle. and raise an army. and attack my neighbors, and have them attack me, and encounter my neighbors in the wilderness and do champion's battle for prisoner and ransom. sometimes they win, i become their "guest prisoner" and pay ransom, sometimes i win, and they are my "guests" for a few days. or perhaps we bag and tag each other's followers, that kind of stuff. and all along there's adventuring to be done: allies need help in epic quests, constant dungeon adventuring to afford the army, the odd dragon menacing the kingdom from time to time, etc.

you start with a shooter (level maps, combat, monsters, npcs). add the rpg elements (stats, skills, classes, experience, inventory items and world objects [like houses], magic, techno, etc).

then instead of designing it with hard coded spawn points that don't respwan, or only some respawn, or respawn infrequently, or only respawn only a couple of badguys, and hard coded quests, you design it with random encounters. random spawn points, and quest generators.

and you don't design it as "ok, they do the quests, clear the spawn points, and that's the game - sounds like a plan, lets do it".

you design it as "they continually become more powerful, and the world renews itself, instead of getting used up by the player.". but this has no closure.

at some point, there's a limit to how powerful is practical. once you're a god, what's left?

character retirement is about the only "solution" i've seen, and it isn't much of one if you ask me.

but the important thing is the player should be willing to and want to retire , at least for a while, and try a different character in the same world - a different play style, or a different role to take on. and here's the important part:

when thy do this, it must be a new experience like the first pay through with the first character. they should not know where points of interest are in the world from previous play throughs, nor where the badguys spawn, nor when, nor where the good treasure is, none of that.

IE the game should be designed for replay-ability, not for one shot disposable consumption, like a novel or a movie.

and attention needs to be paid to long term play. bayguys can't kill off all the merchants over time (skyrim). in general the world simulation must exhibit long term stability. this is the critical design criteria which is not even considered in most fpsrpg titles.

the arms race aspect of player level/playing time and new content is the only part for which there seems no solution.

This is how my rpg is supposed to behave. There isn't a randomised plot, the story is always the same but the bad guys, top level npcs, spawns and loot are randomized to encourage replays.

Now if only I had infinite time to finish it off...

a better approach might be to give the player the ultimate goal quest, and have the intermediate quests just out there in the game world as side quests that just happen to aid in your overall goal. any required steps the plauer would be made ware of, or would discover over time. much of this sort of thing means the player needs the ability to ask people in the game world about things, like where can i find person x, location y, or item z. as one of my players used to say "i don't know where the dungeon is? Ok... Person in the street - which way to the dungeon?"

I've been wondering of late whether or not the best approach would be a bunch of monitored values rather than the key/lock approach that's become so dominant. Quest-giver dead? Sold the magic sword you were supposed to give the princess? Dragon cave inaccessible because you triggered an avalanche? No problem! Do you have enough "HERO POINTS?" You win!

Of course, how you get those points should drive an ecology of other point systems (Reputation, Empathy, Valor, etc) so that the main values aren't just a cakewalk. Theoretically, anyway.

>> I've been wondering of late whether or not the best approach would be a bunch of monitored values rather than the key/lock approach that's become so dominant. Quest-giver dead? Sold the magic sword you were supposed to give the princess? Dragon cave inaccessible because you triggered an avalanche? No problem! Do you have enough "HERO POINTS?" You win!

i've taken a very simple approach in caveman so far: no quest is required, and any quest can be abandoned at any time for any reason. all quests are single stage stand alone. and they are "somewhat epic" in terms of a realistic stone age setting - IE there's no dark lord or anything like that to do true epic stuff with, but there are no mundane fetch quests. most involve combat and or journeying. once the basic 30-50 "somewhat epic" quest gens are done (20 down, i start on the rest today), "truly epic" (within reason) questgens are planned for higher level players. but all the quests are written to be bulletproof and handle all possible cases such as questor dead etc, despite the fact that you can abandon them. its not really that hard, at every step you just think of all the possible things that could go wrong, and trap them out, or design it so they can't occur in the first place, such as "can't drop quest items".

i don't typically care for point systems that let you buy stuff. i find it a bit too much of an abstraction. i prefer things to unfold in a more realistic and natural way.

I always watch a "Let's Play" before buying any game.

Seems like games are marketed now-a-days around a lot of hype, false promises and exaggerated 'game trailers' / 'promos' . Most 'game review' sites I have visited seem to publish 'doctored' reviews that give bad games almost perfect scores.

Same here.

I saw the Undertale trailer, immediately thought of it as a Tombi spiritual successor but watched Lets Plays and asked fans if Undertale was truly the spiritual successor I was looking for.

Turned out, the answer was no, the trailer just made it seem that way.

Sometimes I watch a let's play, and I end up watching it right to the end.

Then I think "well that game looked good but now I know what happens and don't want to buy it"

That happened to me with BioShock infinite...

Sometimes I watch a let's play, and I end up watching it right to the end.

Then I think "well that game looked good but now I know what happens and don't want to buy it"

That happened to me with BioShock infinite...

I only watched snippets of the Lets Play to make an informed decision on purchasing the game - I don't know the story of Undertale all that well, just wanted to see if the gameplay appealed to me.

i keep buying games and they're not what i expected.

I keep going to movies and they're not what I expected.I keep tuning into new TV shows and they're not what I expected.I keep buying books and they're not what I expected.

I keep reading comments and they aren't what I expected :-P

Personally I enjoy playing the Star Wars games (Dark Forces, Jedi Knight collection, and KOTOR 1 & 2) and playing Final Fantasy XI (though you have to be ready to pay $12.95 a month to play it). You can also go retro and get SEGA Mega Drive & Genesis Classics on Steam for a decent collection of old games to play (my favorite on there is the Shining Force trilogy).

Side note: I just discovered that if you don't start Steam games through Steam it doesn't log your time played. FFXI states I've played 90 days, 9 hours, and 30 minutes...Steam claims I've only played 15 minutes. Within the 90 days I've only scratched the surface of the quests you can do (and yes I own all the expansions).