The most retarded thing in games. you can think of

Yes, in Kult you had two pools--one of hit points, and one called blood points. You could use the herb pouch for field healing to top off your hit points, but it subtracted from your blood points, which you then replenished through rest. It was a much more believable system in practice.

Not that I actually remembered all that--but I still have the manual ;) Mike how many hundred games have you played since then and that factoid is still present in your memory?--youthful brain cells or just innate ability, I'm still amazed :)
 
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There are plenty of daft implementations in RPGs, there almost have to be for many to function on the computer game level. Which is a shame, really.. Some of the best RPG computer gaming I've done is on RP-centric "hardcore" NWN PW servers, where things are built more to emulate tabletop gaming than a video game.

For me, what are "retarded" things in games are clumsy control and other interface/interaction decisions. Things like save points. Removing the ability to save whenever you want is probably my top pet peeve for gaming. I understand the desire to make things challenging, to remove the save and try again element, but really, I find it massively inconsiderate. I don't have time to game for great stretches, I need to be able to save at a moment's notice if need be. I find it really short-sighted and essentially inconsiderate of developers to implement save points rather than save-whenever systems.
 
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xSamhainx said:
non-configurable hotkeys are my number one gripe
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Yep, I want my number block. Other things I find retarded: addons or sequels so tough they are unenjoyable and disgrace the whole game/series/whatever. Translation errors rendering puzzles unsolvable.
 
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Corwin said:
Aside from having to pay ridiculous amounts for weapons and armor to save the lives of the self same merchants, finding those things on rats or other animals is just plain silly!!
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Yes!!!! I hate when you kill some mean looking person and they have nothing and then a rat has something on them... hello... other than food for Myrthos rats are no use.

I will basically play most things and accept them for what they are, but I hate really small inventories. I am a horder and will go back to town and sell everything, go back and continue, fill up, go back to town and sell everything again. I spend half my time transporting goods for sale, but I have a compulsion to do this as otherwise you come across something amazingly good and you are short and then you lose where the merchant is and spend hours trying to find the merchant with the awesome thingy again.... I need to horde, I need to sell, I need the cash so I can make sure I will not be short of cash if or when that beautiful item worth drooling over comes along. I know some people would argue small inventories are more realistic, but like the difficulty setting there should be an inventory size control (eg. small as a mouse poo to large enough to stock every Cash Converters store for a year).
 
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Lucky Day said:
Gothic's control scheme make it unplayable. Sorry that upsets you.
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Coming from the Jump 'n' Run area, I never had problems with it. In fact, in my Jump 'n' Ruin games I became used to play with the keyboard quite efficiently (Commander Keen, especially).

To me, it was quite intuittive and straightforward - as long as I didn't have to fight.

Lucky Day said:
Most joysticks these days come with software where you can emulate keystrokes to your joystick. Sometimes they aren't very good though for specific games as I found out with NWN.
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Sorry, but that wasn't the problem for me.

I'm quite sure that I will *never* become familiar with a mouse instead of a joystick in sich a game.

I guess I'm too much used to X-Wing, perhaps.


And I had great problems playing Forsaken - never touched it since. Same goes for Descent.

Even wordse, I had to use this kind o control for one of my absolutely favourite games, Zanzarah.
I couldn't believe it and had to train trally hard to get the things going, not a slightest movement with the mouse.
 
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magerette said:
what is it with the health potions thing in newer games?
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In one of the in-game books of Beyond Divinity (the game with the totally unsorted inventory until a patch), there was a very fitting title given:

"Health potion addiction" ...

Olnigg described an MMORPG (don't rememer the name), as a "Wettsaufen" (a drinking contest) of who can drink the highest number of health potions while fighting in the shortest time and therefore doesn't receive the greatest amount of wounds, if you get it.
In principle, EVERY fight just consists of such a drinking contest, not of actual fighting, as he put it.
 
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Arhu said:
My gripe about a particular control scheme standard - how the smeg did WASD become the default for movement keys? ESDF is much better suited to the task, because it gives you 3 additional hotkey options on the left side (W, A, Z) and still everything on the right side of the keyboard. (A)SDF is also the default left hand position for 10 finger typing, so you get the small, nifty bumper on the F key for quick positioning of your fingers.

In almost every 3D game I have to change my movement keys to what they should have been in the first place (ESDF), having to change at least three other keys in the process because of that. Gah!
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Funny, I never thought of that... but you're entirely right. I guess I've internalized the WASD layout so well I never even though of alternatives.

Still, compared to the fact that we're typing on a keyboard that was intentionally designed to slow down your typing, that's pretty minor...
 
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Lucky Day said:
Most joysticks these days come with software where you can emulate keystrokes to your joystick. Sometimes they aren't very good though for specific games as I found out with NWN.
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Which is completely useless for a flight-type game, where the whole point of a joystick is having full continuous control around a center point. That's just not doable with a mouse or the keyboard -- it would be like trying to get a snake to tap-dance.
 
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Kayla said:
I will basically play most things and accept them for what they are, but I hate really small inventories.
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That would depend entirely on the game. Some cRPG's are built around being a packrat (NWN series the prime example). In others, inventory size is used as an element in game balance. I don't think I would've enjoyed Deus Ex or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. as much had I been able to lug around everything I came across; thinking about what to carry and what to ditch was a big part of the experience.
 
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PJ, as was explained to me so eloquently by Corwin et al. there's such a thing and edit and Quote+ button. ;)

txa1265 said:
Cool - I could get MoH:AA and both expansions and Call of Duty and its expansion and Call of Duty 2 and Medal of Honor Airborne and Bioshock ... all together for less than $50! :D

As for leveling, I don't like the complete lack of leveling control in jRPG's, but that is how they are built. But I definitely agree with no in-dungeon leveling in western RPG's. I was surprised that I could do it in D&D Tactics - I obviously chose not to.
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:D

Its in tactics I assume because that's the way all PnP games are played now as well. I didn't like it in BG but I was shocked to discover that's the way kids play nowadays in NWN. It took the Hardcore Ruleset script system to put trainers back in and I was surprised at how much it confused the younger players.

---

On the lack of a mouse control in Rez Evil I think that stems from a common complaint around here: porting games from console to PC.

I'm not asking a little time saving but to focus your design on console then slap PC version together just because you wrote it in a WoRe language is inexcusable.

Case in point, NHL 2007. All my options were gone from previous versions and I couldn't use my mouse on the menus to save my life.

For crying out loud devs, take advantage of the system you port it over to.
 
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Yes, please try to avoid multiple posting; use the buttons provided to enhance your posting pleasure!! :)
 
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i'm not sure i see the problem with it. its not like it takes up more room. in addition, it helps to seperate different responses to different people so if some just wants to read there reply...

but yes having the option is good!
 
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It's considered poor forum etiquette to make multiple posts. In the past, people used to do it simply to increase their post count!!
 
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Prime Junta said:
Funny, I never thought of that... but you're entirely right. I guess I've internalized the WASD layout so well I never even though of alternatives.

Still, compared to the fact that we're typing on a keyboard that was intentionally designed to slow down your typing, that's pretty minor...
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Minor point: even using a DVORAK layout - your default hand position would still be the same. ;)

And yes, the Quote+ button is very useful. ^^ (Click quote+ on posts you want to quote, last click the normal "quote")
 
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Again, I reiterate that this was precisely why Apple put an up and down arrow on their keyboards. Up and Down arrows weren't used anywhere except in gaming for a very long time and the joysticks that they put out for the machine weren't very durable.

Initially they pushed for I,J,K,M to be the walkaround (I believe that was based on the ASCII system) but it just didn't fly.

I noticed at Best Buy that the special gaming keyboards are designed around around a WASD system as well.

Let me reiterate again I hate bad console ports. For crying out loud customize them for PCs - fix the screen width, the font size, and design them around a mouse/keyboard system!
 
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Lucky Day: Yes, the arrow keys were very useful in times of Doom and Dark Forces, when games were designed for pure keyboard controls (and the arrow keys appropriately utilized). However, I do believe that the combination of 4 movement keys for the left hand and mouselook for the right is vastly superior in modern 3D games.

I remember that I was the first among my friends who used to glue a key down with duct tape to enable constant mouselook in Quake (wasn't possible otherwise yet), which gave me a pretty good advantage over them, especially in levels where looking up or down was important. ;)

Sure, it's something you have to get used to, just like learning blind 10 finger typing when you are still much faster with 2 and a half, but I think the gain of freedom was / is worth it.
 
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