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Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

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Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#11

Post by noobermin »

I initially closed the tab in disgust but reopened it to hate read it further to even more completely confirm my own disgust. This is why modern "gaming" which is closer today to flashy fantasy oriented story telling (where you press (x) to advance the story) just doesn't appeal to me. I have nothing wrong with movies or RPGs of the old sort where it's just one drawn out story, but I usually expected most of a "game" to be playing a game, where there is skill involved, where you can lose, where there is difficulty, where there is fun. I literally ctfl-f'ed "fun" and it doesn't appear in the article at all, what is the point of a game that isn't fun?

It's good to see game "designers" from the big studios really are to blame here. While I've long since grown out of my teenage elitist disgust concerning "top 20" music the truth is games continue to a good place where "popular" usually defaults to "bad."

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#12

Post by tmtvl »

Dalewyn wrote: post #10
uejfiweun wrote: post #2

To tell you the truth, playing these games taught me that I really don't care for quest-dependent games. I feel like CDPR games have no way to interact with their pretty worlds outside of the heavily scripted quests. You can generally just go anywhere you want, take anything, even loot the entire office of the captain of the army, and nobody even reacts. Contrast this to Bethesda games, where the entire game is an el…

I realized this rather spectacularly with MMORPGs. I've long been a fan of open world MMOs with basically next to no mandatory quests. Think Runescape, Ragnarok Online, MapleStory, etc. Loved them, and Ragnarok Online is to this day still among my top favorite games of all time. One day, Guild Wars 2 dropped to great hype and fanfare and I bought it to try it out. Good fucking god damn hell in a shit basket, I fuckin…

Some people prefer paying $60 for a blank canvas with some brushes and paint, others prefer a good book.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#14

Post by XorNot »

This is right on the money for games which are impactful for me, and I noticed the writing being on-point in CP2077's decisions entirely: there were plenty of moment in my playthrough where I didn't have to stop and think about what a dialogue option was, it felt entirely natural to hit one of the prompts the moment I saw it because the way I was playing my character, that's what they would've done.

That felt great, compared to say, Mass Effect which did tend to suffer from a mismatch between the prompt and what would actually happen - it's a credit to CDPR that I never felt betrayed by a dialogue choice (except one, at the ending).

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#15

Post by smoldesu »

gambiting wrote: post #6
Isinlor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like simulation-like open world games, but Witcher 3 was one of the very few games with a good story. To be honest I think the only one that I cared about. Especially the bloody baron questline was amazing storytelling. Heart of Stone was also great story based on Polish ballad Mr. Twardowski. Cyberpunk is unfortunately nowhere near as good in terms of the story as the Witcher.

Hard disagree, cyberpunk had a fantastic story, compared to the witcher 3 that I've tried to finish about 4 separate times and failed every time - the side quests are fantastic, the main quest is just unbelievably dragged out and boring. Everyone mentions the blood baron quest - and yes, it was great, outstanding even. I've never seen anyone mention anything after that point - it's just a mess of narrative that gets…

Frankly, I think they're both bad. CDPR gets a lot of stuff right, but their self-insistence on their world and storytelling is only rivaled by Final Fantasy. Cyberpunk's main quest feels like Fallout 4 with a fake veneer of moral ambiguity, and the sidequests are either penis-based or another car who wants to lecture me on their philosophy of the week. Almost every single mission in that game had me cringing, to the point that I'd mute the dialogue and still wince as I read the subtitles. It's... pure suck. As for my review of the gameplay... it's just Borderlands again. I can't be fooled like this, sorry.

The Witcher 3 is weird, relative to Cyberpunk. I haven't finished it, but it's writing is a lot more grounded and less... bad. The gameplay feels clunky, though, and the pacing is completely fucked (cutscene -> fetch quest -> cutscene -> fight -> GOTO 0;). Neither of these games really deserve commendations for the way they handled questing, and even the most heralded RPG interactions like Dark Souls and New Vegas leave plenty of room for improvement.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#17

Post by hayst4ck »

noobermin wrote: post #11

I initially closed the tab in disgust but reopened it to hate read it further to even more completely confirm my own disgust. This is why modern "gaming" which is closer today to flashy fantasy oriented story telling (where you press (x) to advance the story) just doesn't appeal to me. I have nothing wrong with movies or RPGs of the old sort where it's just one drawn out story, but I usually expected most of a "game"…

Are slot machines fun? I think it's pretty clear the answer is yes. Diablo 2 is a glorified slot machine, most RPG mechanics are slot machine-y. Play the slot machine while you upgrade the slot machine (via gear) which reduces your chance of losing is a clearly popular gaming category that is able to gather entire conventions of fans. Is there strategy? Kinda, I guess, but not at a core mechanic level.

There is a spectrum between slot machine (try until you get a lucky roll) and chess (pure strategy) for what losing means.

The idea of fun is just dopamine manipulation: Creating a state of wanting and then playing with a person's ability to get there.

Here is a classic of game design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_type...

Some people enjoy the chat room. Some people enjoy the feeling of dominance. Some people enjoy uncovering the story. Some people enjoy checking every box or getting the best gear.

The fact that you don't find exploration fun doesn't mean other people can't find exploration style play fun.

The problem of modern gaming is much less about the strategy vs slot machine continuum, but about the motivation of game companies to monetize micro transactions or reduce production costs (namely by minimizing novelty or quality). Games are less of an artistic endeavor and more of a money endeavor.

Are games born out of an idea to make a game and ultimately make money to support the life style of game creation or are games born first out of an idea to make money and the desire to promote fun secondary? Are games art or are they cigarettes?

What you feel in modern game is the corrosive and corrupting force of "next quarters profits" culture. What you feel is games being built for shareholders first and gamers second.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#18

Post by 1123581321 »

noobermin wrote: post #11

I initially closed the tab in disgust but reopened it to hate read it further to even more completely confirm my own disgust. This is why modern "gaming" which is closer today to flashy fantasy oriented story telling (where you press (x) to advance the story) just doesn't appeal to me. I have nothing wrong with movies or RPGs of the old sort where it's just one drawn out story, but I usually expected most of a "game"…

This article is about the story parts of the quests. To make progress you also have to win action-RPG fights, build and counter correctly, find hidden items, etc.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#19

Post by nxpub »

rossmohax wrote: post #16

I thought Witcher 3 had a good story until I played Disco Elysium.

I can imagine Disco Elysium with ChatGPT instances per skill/object (for those who didn’t play DE - every thing, including skills according to their points, speaks with you and this gameplay mechanic is amazing)

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#20

Post by Barrin92 »

>"Be sure to make your consequences clear and visible. When consequences are too subtle, players won’t see them. Bring back stuff from earlier in the game at the least expected time. Design for the visibility of consequences; investing in something not telegraphed well is mostly not worth it. Figure out how to the player visibly see what the consequences will be."

Disagree with this and I think interestingly enough even large amounts of mainstream players have started to disagree with it. This gamification, ironically enough not a good thing in a game, does not take the player seriously. If you have to put exclamation points or guardrails around your game you are taking responsibility away from the player. It's like riding a tricycle.

Contrast this with Elden Ring which deliberately ditches almost all of this. You can miss 80% of the game on your first playthrough but that's entirely up to you. And the experience of finding some gigantic world below the surface that just exists, with entire stories in it but completely unadvertised makes it seem incredibly mysterious, like nobody even designed it, you just stumbled over it. It gives an incredibly level of depth to a game world. There's this underground area full of gigantic trees that looks like a Hieronymus Bosch painting with a gigantic corpse in it and my first thought finding it was basically "am I the first person here?, do the developers know this exists?". A world having that much of a life of its own is a hug feat for a work of fiction.

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