How much does poor writing/UI influence your enjoyment of games?

Poor writing hurts, that's for sure. It isn't a death sentence, though. Dragon's Dogma's story was pretty weak but I loved the game. In The Last Remnant, the overall story was OK but the main character was downright annoying yet I've put several hundred hours into that game. Tomb Raider's reboot was cliché and predictable but was still fun. If you've got great gameplay, it can make up for a bad writing. (The reverse can also be true: I can look past weak gameplay if you give me a great story to follow.)

UI doesn't hurt me much. So I need to click five times instead of two? Big deal. My mouse can take it.

Good thing, too, because I'm afraid great keyboard/mouse UI's are going to be hurting. More and more PC gamers want to play their games from their couch just like the console folks. That means console-style UIs. That means no pointer to hover over a button to indicate that it's time to pop up a tool tip explaining what the button does.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

It is a riddle to my why gaming companies just can't or don't want to use aesthetics in developing an UI. A pleasure for the eye ! That's how it should be, imho.

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That's probably a game design thing. Remember they don't just start out with a big document that says exactly how the game will work. The game changes as it's developed. When crunch time comes, features have to get dropped. Ideally you wouldn't even design the UI until the last weeks but I don't think that's practical. Kinda hard to play-test with no UI.

(In my work it's even worse. I start out releasing a program that has a fairly nice UI. Then the business asks for more features. Then some existing features change. Then there's even more new features. After a couple of years the UI gets pretty insane.)

Great topic, how did it live so long without meeeeeeee?

Story
Who doesn't like a good story? That said, I am a fan of world simulation in cRPGs so if a story lacks but the world simulation is robust, I like that sort of thing and won't care much about a bland story. I'd even go as far to say that if I have to pick between which two will be emphasized, I'd pick world simulation over story.

Further, coming from the beginnings of cRPG history with games like Ultima, Wizardry, and Bard's Tale, my hard-wired expectations for good story in games isn't really there. When there is a good story, then that's great. But if the story is sort of bland, written poorly, or even voiced awfully, it'll usually get a pass with me if world simulation or even other mechanics are interesting and fun.

UI
UI matters to me a lot and it's unfortunate that many cRPGs do not offer robust UIs commensurate with the sophistication and complexity of their mechanics. It's not lost on me that many cRPGs these days have 'consolized' UIs since they are available on consoles. But looking at things strictly from a PC Gamer viewpoint, I want a UI that takes advantage of mouse and keyboard as a starting point.

SIDEBAR: BIG HUGE KUDOS to Larian for making a proper PC UI for D:OS - this cannot be overstated enough and I worry that those of us who truly appreciate a good PC UI did not vocalize that to Larian as much as we should have.

Let's take Skyrim's Vanilla UI for example (again, looking at this from a PC gamer viewpoint). You have an open world. Factions. A gazillion and one items of various categories and types. Quests. Perks. And so on. But then you had this very 'consolized' drill-down menu system. I held off playing Skyrim for an entire year for two reasons. First and foremost, I was waiting for what eventually became SkyUI. Secondly, I was waiting out the patches. But I'd never had played Skyrim (or Oblivion for that matter) had modders never improved on the UIs in those two games.

I remember some pre-release buzz from Westwood Studios touting the robust nature of their UI for Lands of Lore 3. I played and liked the first two and would have bought 3 anyway, but that they actually were sort of advertising the 'robust UI' really intrigued me. Too bad that game just wasn't all that great though I did appreciate the UI effort.

Since Two Worlds is in the news again, I thought TW2's UI was a good effort, but they over complicated it. Despite a proper PC UI, it was still cumbersome to manage items and I never really engaged with their alchemy crafting system because of it (and the fact that the game wasn't that difficult and I just never needed much in the way of potions beyond what I could buy off vendors). The one real oddity with TW2's UI was that the UI would warn you if you were about to 'break down into raw materials' any item you were wearing, but would fail to give you this warning with the other 2 pre-defined sets you could prepare. Still - they bothered to make a proper PC UI and for that I'm appreciative.

I think they're both important, though I am generally more forgiving of a bad story than a bad UI. If the UI is poor enough I will just get frustrated with a game and not play it. Story, I think, is much more subjective.

On the other hand, story can be almost my entire reason to play a game if done right. "Age of Decadence" I'm looking at you square on - almost no (if not zero) combat in that game during my play as a merchant, but an excellent story that kept me interested and entertained; a world I wanted to learn more about. I also enjoyed the "story" in Pillars of Eternity as well though many would disagree with me on that.

I will be the first one to echo the poster above me with Skyrim's UI - it had a horrid, horrid UI for PC users. I doubt I would have played that (very good, if bland) game without the SkyUI mod, which improved the experience tenfold for me. But the "story" in Skyrim? Eh? Something about a civil war with elves and then arctic barbarian humans and... vampires running around and you're the son of dragons and...

Yeah. I didn't play Skyrim for the writing.

(On the other hand, I've been kind of disappointed in Fallout 4's story so far.)

Zloth said:

(In my work it's even worse. I start out releasing a program that has a fairly nice UI. Then the business asks for more features. Then some existing features change. Then there's even more new features. After a couple of years the UI gets pretty insane.)

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LOL :lol:

I understand what you mean. :lol: