The Hot Topic Returns

[Sly Reflex]

Rocket League is an excellent shout. I wish I was better at it, but the better I get at it the more useless I realise I am.

[shinymcshine]

I find sports games in general, where most have ditched the 'arcade' pick up and play - where I might want a quick blast of Soccer, NFL, WWE or NBA action now and again, but not a huge array of controls to learn and master.

[Sly Reflex]

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 What game mechanic would you happily steal from one game and put into another? 

 

[Maf]

I was thinking the other day how so many games focus on power, which makes your character dangerous and cool. But to me what’s cooler than power is speed and transcendence. Big weapons are dangerous, but what’s more dangerous is total control to the point the danger cannot touch you. 

 

With that I would take Danmaku’s Graze mechanic where the closer you get to the bullets the more score you get, and the Bravely Default mechanic where you build power by accruing turns, but I’d apply both to a character action game like Bayonetta. So the more you dodge, and the closer the dodges are (both proximity and timing) the more power you’re building for when you attack.

 

Games like Metal Gear Revengance and Star Wars Jedi survivor have mechanics where you deflect/dodge small attacks just by moving. So the screen is swarmed with enemies/projectiles/danger and the basic dodge is semi-automatic by moving the stick, but when you see certain attacks come out like Sekiro, you apply the appropriate dodge button to build special meter/resource faster. Almost like you’re dancing on the enemies until the “my turn” moment and delete the room

 

The thing about bullet hell games is 90% of the screen is a distraction and noise you just need to focus on you. Bringing a similar idea to an action game, the basic movement solves a lot of the noise. It looks cool, it makes the player have to constantly move instead of idle, but it’s low mental tax, most of the mental stack is true engagement with the big attacks, obstacles, terrain, etc 

 

If you played an encounter perfectly maybe the cash-out move is the character stops, with time frozen around him, taps one finger lightly on the air, and it explodes and ripples outwards like when you bomb the screen in a shmup

 

So grazing mechanic, banking turns mechanic, and shmup style movement mechanics in a 3D action game. Zen-like control over a room on fire 

 

Basically I want to combine a character action game with a bullet hell game 

 

…

 

Kinda went all in on this answer. If this is no good Plan B is put a skateboard in Elden Ring. Elden Ring is a masterpiece but even masterpieces need skateboards 

[one-armed dwarf]

I didn't put much time into him, cause I went too hard on the game on general, but I think Dmc5 Vergil works like that.

 

https://devilmaycry.fandom.com/wiki/Concentration

 

Not a bullet hell game though, obviously, so someone needs to mod him into Ninja Gaiden 2 Master Ninja mode, with all the exploding shurikens

 

A game mechanic I'd take from other games, it's hard to think of examples cause I think lots of games kinda borrow things from each other. The one I'd generally pick would be Disco Elysium's RPG dialogue system where your character traits/neuroses/addictions/etc have an internal argument with each other and recommend (sometimes poor) choices for you in dialogue. I like this whole rational/irrational discourse happening in your character's mind, it's so interesting. 

 

So yeah, I dunno, put that in Cyberpunk's sequel or something. Have a whole mechanic where you can spec your character to have less humanity/more cyber which makes you stronger in battle/better at intimidation, but your stats governing more diplomatic dialogue options will become more prone to extreme outcomes or (possibly interesting) failures. Because you've traded your humanity and reason for pure power, so you more easily lose control

 

Just another thing that was missing from 2077 I think, interesting decision making with real tradeoffs

[Maf]

Actually the Concentration mechanic sounds extremely close to what I was thinking. I’ve never played Vergil in any game so wasn’t aware of it. Still, I’m also more leaning to something more kinetic and flow state like a Bayonetta and a tonne of bullets. It’s a close match, though 

[Sly Reflex]

I really wish that more games would crib from Morrowind and how it dealt with equipment. Stuff like having a set of clothes for walking around town and talking to people and generally doing day to day living in towns and cities.

 

For going on adventures combat clothes could be tailored down if you only needed part of them, or have a mix and match if you had stuff that had perks on it that mixed well with your build. So you would wear mixed gloves and pauldrons for example. You could mix weights or just only wear one if you needed it. If you only wore half of the pair you would only get 50% of the enchantment.

 

I feel in general y we've only gone backwards when it comes to RPG's like this, we only really trade up when something better comes along instead of having multiple sets for different jobs.

[one-armed dwarf]

Tbf, I think the new Fable might be doing that

 

Though I spent most of my Morrowind playthrough wearing random BS, and there wasn't that many speech checks I can remember

 

Thinking of RPG reminded me though of my Ultima Underworld time a while back, with its map that you had to write your own notes on, and the Lizardman language you had to learn to pass a quest. What a cool game. Old RPGs were doing such cool things before they became more like action games

 

Bring back note taking, the masses yearn for it. If they liked it in Blue Prince they will like it in other games as well

[Sly Reflex]

Did you ever play TESII? You could climb surfaces and be a cat burglar. Like all the surfaces, climbing was a stat. You had stats like etiquette and streetwise. It also had loads of languages so you could speak to different races, even monster iirc.

 

They really cut that shit off at the knees. When TESVI eventually shows up I'm expecting them to have kneecapped it even more and made it so streamlined that it'll be down to the modders to put all the cool shit back in. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah, though I never finished it. Looking at the last post I mentioned using enchanted clothes so people would give me helpful directions: https://www.mfgamers.net/index.php?/topic/44556-the-elder-scrolls-ii-daggerfall-unity-version/#comment-336726

 

 

The languages thing I recall was more of a speech-check against enemies attacking you, I saw it happen once where an Orc didn't immediately attack me cause I had a few points in Orcish.

 

I think what's interesting in Daggerfall is it's character creator is a sort of role playing framework for an open world which is largely a set of procedurally generated functions that you kinda roll the dice to navigate, like how the cities are massive and impossible to find your way around until you get NPCs to tell you where to go (streetwise, ettiquette checks etc) and then the map fills in with the important info. The real meat of the game is in its dungeons

 

I think though for a game like Daggerfall to make sense, you need immense scale, cause that's what makes all these individual variables allow you to navigate its hugeness and make the randomness of its system collide in unexpected ways. As soon as you scale down to Morrowind, you are in a different era of TES's game design, way more authored. You don't require imagination to fill in the blanks anymore, the attention to detail is mindblowing (even now, I would argue, if you aren't just looking at the graphics that is). But the tradeoff in scale changes the game in other ways where the streamlining makes some sense.

 

My prediction with TESVI is the opposite though in that I think they're going to use LLMs to sort of bring the game design closer to Daggerfall again in terms of scale, and have AI-driven NPCs that point you where to go, tell you lore, tell you to fuck off in a non-scripted fashion. There will be a lot more 'blank space' on the canvas like how it is in Daggerfall, compared with the more authored take of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim.

[one-armed dwarf]

I've never played more than a few hours of Skyrim, though have tried to get into it about 4 different times. But I like what this person says about TES3, and how it deals with the "chosen one" trope

 

 

 

 

TES3 is about a religious cult who wins a war and decides how history is written, and it's never really that clear how right or wrong they are. It's just unclear shades of moral ambiguity, and you as a player have to plunge into things and decide for yourself what you think about it. At least, when it comes to interpreting the story and your character's role in it, Imperial pawn or Morrowind's Messiah, or a fake prophet 

 

Vvardenfall is such an interesting world, so it's weird how boring Cyrodil ended up being. Literally just temu LOTR, though it does at least assign the "chosen one" role to an NPC instead

[Sly Reflex]

I mean technically this is what V is about too. Loosely remembering because it's been a while. The Aldmiri Dominion did an internal coup on the Empire and started the groundwork for rewriting history because they don't like the L the men dealt the mer. Those actions of which saw Tiber ascend to being Talos. It's earlier on in the loop than III, but it's the same concept. Essentially they are trying to remove a God and disenfranchise a section of the continent they are having trouble conquering, on the homelands of where the routing took place.

 

I think generally the writing in TES is great, but the games that they feature in, not so much.

[Sly Reflex]

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You wake up tomorrow and discover you're an NPC in the last game you played. How worried are you? What would your daily routine be? Would you actually survive for a week? Would the player accidentally ruin your life?

 

[OCH]

Unfortunately, the last game I played that had NPC's was a brief session of Dark Souls 3. So, yea...

 

In short: Very worried, survival, effectively immortal due to bonfires, the player would revel in it.

[DANGERMAN]

I was playing a game last night called The Suicide of Rachel Foster. Your father (seemingly, I'm still early) groomed Rachel which lead to her suicide. Your father is now dead and you have to go and inspect your old family hotel so you can sell it. Unfortunately it's during a blizzard and you end up stuck in the closed hotel for about a week.

 

I'm up to Day 3 and so far not a lot has happened. I've found some food in the freezer, not a ton, but enough for a few days, and seemingly the tins of soup are those special tins that you can just put in the microwave and that's absolutely fine

 

Anyway, I'm halfway through the week and so far I have food, power, heat, and no ghosts of dead victims, so I should be ok.

[Metroid66]

Last game I finished was Ghost of Yotei, so I'll make my way to that hippy commune in the north and live out my days making pots and fishing without hooks.

[mfnick]

Blasphemous 2. 
 

So I’m going to be suffering in some form of sin for eternity. 
 

Joy! 

[radiofloyd]

I think I’ll be safe within the confines of the city walls in Mina the Hollower.

 

Before that I player Hogwarts Legacy. As long as I don’t go trying to safe the world…

[Sly Reflex]

I would probably be immortal, be a donkey and be swinging dick. 

[Sly Reflex]

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This weeks question was inspired by this weeks blunders by Sony.

You can undo one bad choice or event from gaming history. What event are you choosing, and why?