6 ms·

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

46 points by adrian_mrd 4y ago

uejfiweun 4y ago
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 elaborate simulation that can be poked and prodded as you please. In fact I've never even completed a main quest in a Bethesda game, I just spend all my time exploring and dicking around and it's WAY more fun than the on-rails theme park rides that are CDPR games.
- TillE 4y ago
  Totally agree. It's the design philosophy of pick from a menu of scripted choices vs interact with a simulated world. I don't think Bethesda has ever quite lived up to that ambition even in the days of Daggerfall and Morrowind, but they have at least tried.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    Morrowind was pretty close. Clunky by modern standards, and I remember playing it on Xbox years ago and having no f-ing clue where to go or what to do -- a lot of GameFAQs helped -- but it really made it feel like a real world.
- Isinlor 4y ago
  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.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    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 in the way of some other great content in that game. Cyberpunk has great main quest and memorable side stories.
    - Isinlor 4y ago
      I played the Witcher 3 twice trough leaving a small bit of the second expansion unfinished just because I don't want this game to end. I lost interest in Cyberpunk quite early. To me Cyberpunk is too American with overdone themes. Although the Cyberpunk anime is great. Simple story, but has really well put together characters and delivers emotional punch. I will have to try to get back to the game. Maybe on second try it will be better.
      - bsder 4y ago
        The Cyberpunk anime got the fact that the environment was a character while the video game didn't. A tremendously important point in the Cyberpunk anime was the fact that their world was really horrific to live in. You could live semi-miserably and go out in an untimely fashion--possibly even in a blaze of glory--or you live completely miserably and could go out in an untimely fashion with a whimper. Living well and pleasantly was really never on the table. Whereas, Cyberpunk the video game is the standard, kinda-generic power fantasy. You never really feel "oppressed" by the overall system as you're kind of outside it.
    - smoldesu 4y ago
      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.
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- Dalewyn 4y ago
  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 fucking hated it. Quests everywhere. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Walk around a bit? Here's a side quest! Pan the camera? Here please take this quest! No? How about this quest?! It is still the worst use of $60 bucks that I've ever spent.
  - TriangleCoconut 4y ago
    OOT: You've just described my exact most memorable gaming experiences over the last two or so decades. I've been struggling to find something I liked enough of late. Would you mind sharing what you're into these days?
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      Japanese mobile games, namely Fate/Grand Order and Princess Connect! Re:Dive. Playing on the Japanese home servers, mind, since I speak Japanese. (RIP English Priconne, Crunchyroll is bad civilization.) I don't have the kind of time or energy to devote to grinding anymore like I used to in RO and the like, but I'm always a sucker for good writing which FGO and Priconne give me in spades. And before anyone mentions it: Yeah yeah, they're gacha games. Gambling. I don't care. Japanese gachas are generally good, and I'm getting my money's worth when I whale. :V
  - tmtvl 4y ago
    Some people prefer paying $60 for a blank canvas with some brushes and paint, others prefer a good book.
  - bigger_cheese 4y ago
    As someone who likes Guild Wars 2 the game makes the distinction between quests (i.e. the Story) and Events which are constantly occurring in the world. As you wander through zones in the world dynamic events will spawn for example you might run into a merchant in need of an escort between villages or you'll run across a farmer who needs you to defend his flock or whatever. Many events are simply on a timer and some are triggered by specific actions you (or another player) have done elsewhere in the world. The events can be simply once off events or they can be more complex with multiple states. I.e. an event can spawn where a bunch of npc soldiers want to take back a mine from monsters - players can escort them to the mine help them clear it out. If successful then later on other NPC's will move into the mine new vendors will become accessible etc. Later still the monsters will congregate and launch a new offensive to retake the mine an event will spawn to help defend the new settlement. I like the feeling this gives the world. For me at least it makes the game world feel like it's fresh and things are constantly happening even when your character is not around the world is alive and things are changing all of the time. This is different from my experience playing an mmo like World of Warcraft, which had static NPC quest givers in zones and once you'd done the content, which tended to be stuff like kill 15 of this enemy and then report back to me - there was little reason to revisit the zone again. The questline in guild wars 2 which reveals the larger narrative and your characters personal story is instanced content, separate from the event system. None of the events in Guild Wars are mandatory you can ignore all of them to your heart's content - don't feel like escorting the merchant you can walk past him on the road. Don't want to help the farmer defend his flock from the wolves - you can go right on ahead and ignore it. So it's strange you would get hung up on that aspect of the game. If you wanted to run around and explore the open world going from zone to zone as you please you can go right ahead and do just that.
- tormeh 4y ago
  Calling Bethesda games "simulation" is a bizarre exaggeration. You mean the games where NPCs will let you rob them if only you place a bucket on their heads? That's a no from me. I don't think any games I've ever played did world-scale simulation well. I've heard good things about Dwarf Fortress, though. I'd rather have tightly constrained but well executed experience than an unconstrained experience where everything is dumb.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    DF simulation goes to crazy degrees of detail, that's the fun part in it. Even for combat where two ASCII characters are fighting they have actual physiology in play calculating hit locations and the effects of different weapons on different parts of the body and even internal organs. All for a line of text in a combat log most people won't read.
  - uejfiweun 4y ago
    Wow, I clearly have a different view on games than you (nothing wrong with that of course). To be honest, I thought the bucket head on NPC thing was a fantastic example of how you can interact with the systems of that world in creative ways.
prohobo 4y ago
The hell is he talking about? Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 are way past the golden age of gaming. They have nothing worthwhile to contribute here. It's reminiscent of mobile game designers from the 2010's, and how they were making "engaging" games. Lots of presentations about making engaging experiences that immerse players into the lore of the game world. Actually, just mediocre manipulation tactics pushing people into skinner boxes. It's all bullshit, and indie game devs would do well to stay naive and simply try to make fun games. If anything, a much better example of this stuff is in Disco Elysium.
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you're responding to? The phrase "golden age" does not occur anywhere in the submission. This is a summary of a presentation by CD Projekt employee talking about the two games he's worked on, so naturally it's focused on those two games.
  - prohobo 4y ago
    The golden age was when most modern game design principles and techniques were established, between 1993-2005 (roughly). My criticism is that this presentation by CD Projekt is not helpful but harmful to indie developers. It's clear in the presentation that their mindset is similar to the mobile game era of manipulation and control of the player. Ostensibly in this case to "make them want to continue". Engagement is skinner box jargon used by companies like Zynga and has nothing to do with making a good game. Because the presentation promotes this mindset and because it's about two games that mostly were made possible by golden age game design, and not their own innovations, I don't believe they have anything meaningful to contribute on this topic. The quest design in Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk is neither innovative, nor very fun. It may be effective in the manipulative sense, but that doesn't contribute to the artistry of making games fun.
noobermin 4y ago
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."
- 1123581321 4y ago
  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.
- hayst4ck 4y ago
  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_types 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.
zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago
My favorite game lately has been chrome://dino/
XorNot 4y ago
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).
- blargey 4y ago
  Interesting, I felt the opposite - consistent mismatches between the expectation and reality of Cyberpunk’s dialogue choices. A lot of optional dialogue was just cues to make the NPC roll their eyes and explain obvious “subtext” to the biggest dork in Night City, instead of a cue to play out two inhabitants of this world just naturally discussing and elaborating on a point of shared understanding. V’s lines in mandatory dialogue weren’t much better, though, so perhaps it’s a problem with CDPR’s rigid vision of what “V” is supposed to be like - simultaneously a cyberpunk native and a fish out of water. Either way, I had to politely ignore and headcanon most of it to get any actual role-playing satisfaction.
  - jltsiren 4y ago
    I think it's more about Mike Pondsmith's vision than CDPR's vision. It's not the kind of setting where you tell stories about competent and successful characters. The main characters are supposed to be losers and misfits who often turn to crime because they don't have other options. They are good at some things and bad at others, and they have far more ambition than common sense. The expected outcome is a failure, and there are no happy endings.
    - blargey 4y ago
      Perhaps. The setting and themes are certainly bleak. But the dialogue I’m thinking of feels more like complete lapses in common sense / social skills / street smarts one would expect even from a loser/misfit, given any of V’s background story options. I’d chalk some of it up to awkward exposition, but stuff like “background check” equivalents tend to feel stilted too. The many gameplay and plot concessions made towards run-and-gun action and power fantasy cause 2077 to stray far from the “you’re not special” theme of “proper” cyberpunk stories, in general. Especially with the defeat of a certain character at the hands of V.
rossmohax 4y ago
I thought Witcher 3 had a good story until I played Disco Elysium.
- nxpub 4y ago
  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)
  - freeone3000 4y ago
    It was already written and voiced by humans? I’m not sure what you want out of it. A curated experience is more valuable than a generated one.
    - Rebelgecko 4y ago
      Idk about Disco Elysium since I haven't played it, but I think there's some cool opportunities for generative text with carefully crafted prompts. Imagine a game like LA Noire where you can interrogate suspects about anything, instead of having to choose between 3 options.
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Barrin92 4y ago
>"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.
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  Yeah count me as someone who thought Elden Ring’s quests sucked hard. It’s only up to you to miss 80% of the game in the sense that you absolutely will miss 80% of the game unless you look it up on a wiki. And then when you do them it has basically no impact on anything. Like… you could have been able to do something really light touch like ask the merchants if they’ve heard any rumors on where characters are.
  - vlunkr 4y ago
    As a huge fan of From Software games, I don’t bother with the character quests. They are incredibly obtuse. You can ignore them entirely and still enjoy the main experience. Exploration and combat is what really counts for me.
  - 4y ago
snozolli 4y ago
I thought the Cyberpunk story was pretty good, but the game mechanics pushed you toward the next quest in the main storyline all the time. This resulted in me burning through the main story quickly, then being presented with "touching" messages from all the characters during the credits. Except I barely knew who any of these characters were, since I'd hardly done any of the side missions where you get to know them. So yeah, pretty great story scripting, voice acting, and character animation, but it was heavily undercut by some core mechanics in my opinion.
- tekla 4y ago
  The game warns you before the final quest though no?
  - snozolli 4y ago
    It just says something like "you can't go back after this point", not "this is the final mission and the end of the game". Maybe that's got an obvious meaning to a more seasoned gamer. Not that it matters, since I could just load the save game just prior and do the side missions, but it still kind of ruined the impact of the end of the game. Keep in mind that the main story isn't all that long, so from my perspective the game was just getting going.
  - stubish 4y ago
    This sort of pacing is one of the problems with many open world games. The narrative pushes you towards saving the world and the final epic battle, while filling the world with tasks and sub plots that are trivial and non-urgent. And then the general will wait under heavy enemy fire for years as her troops are massacred and city after city burned while the character back tracks to kill rats and plow fields as part of their romantic interest's subplot. But if the narrative provides a lull in the action, you can encourage players to pursue subplots and even make that easier and more in character than to pursue the main plot. And you would have less of a problem dealing with under leveled characters who have rushed through the game in keeping with the main narrative, and over leveled characters who have dawdled through countless sub quests and DLCs oblivious to the urgency you were trying to convey in the story.
r9550684 4y ago
imho since gamasutra became "gamedeveloper", the quality of its content went way down, to the point of becoming a soulless mouthpiece for the industry on one hand and the now standard for a for-profit online publication an engagement and metrics driven words sweatshop on the other. the article is a chatgpt summary of Paweł Sasko's cd projekt red lead quest designer's presentation on lead quest design. "lessons learned" are in the form of "we did a thing, and by virtue of doing the thing the way we did it, we have an experience doing this thing our way." there's not a single element of self-reflection. it says quest director, but Pavel wasn't one until, the actual Cyberpunk 2077 quest director, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, quit in 2021, a year after the game was released. In my experience these days talks like that are heavily filtered by the PR (or some informal equivalent of), and having sat through my fare share of them they seem to make up the dull corporate background noise of GDC and co. Pavel is a cool dude though, he was responsible for the Red Barron in Witcher 3 that people keep bringing up in the comments. I think real cyberpunk 2077 design retrospective would've been interesting to read. If somebody knows an in-depth one I'd appreciate a link. The game is very very uneven. There's a first rate B-grade Hollywood blockbuster hiding there, staring Keanu Reeves, Goro's subplot, etc. which suffers from very basic design issues ("show don't tell" "show don't tell" "jeez that tell is the opposite of the show" "show.. oh fuck it"). Tell us how to awkwardly wrap up your story lines under crunch, Pavel.

46 points by adrian_mrd 4y ago

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 elaborate simulation that can be poked and prodded as you please. In fact I've never even completed a main quest in a Bethesda game, I just spend all my time exploring and dicking around and it's WAY more fun than the on-rails theme park rides that are CDPR games.

TillE 4y ago
Totally agree. It's the design philosophy of pick from a menu of scripted choices vs interact with a simulated world. I don't think Bethesda has ever quite lived up to that ambition even in the days of Daggerfall and Morrowind, but they have at least tried.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  Morrowind was pretty close. Clunky by modern standards, and I remember playing it on Xbox years ago and having no f-ing clue where to go or what to do -- a lot of GameFAQs helped -- but it really made it feel like a real world.
Isinlor 4y ago
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.
- gambiting 4y ago
  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 in the way of some other great content in that game. Cyberpunk has great main quest and memorable side stories.
  - Isinlor 4y ago
    I played the Witcher 3 twice trough leaving a small bit of the second expansion unfinished just because I don't want this game to end. I lost interest in Cyberpunk quite early. To me Cyberpunk is too American with overdone themes. Although the Cyberpunk anime is great. Simple story, but has really well put together characters and delivers emotional punch. I will have to try to get back to the game. Maybe on second try it will be better.
    - bsder 4y ago
      The Cyberpunk anime got the fact that the environment was a character while the video game didn't. A tremendously important point in the Cyberpunk anime was the fact that their world was really horrific to live in. You could live semi-miserably and go out in an untimely fashion--possibly even in a blaze of glory--or you live completely miserably and could go out in an untimely fashion with a whimper. Living well and pleasantly was really never on the table. Whereas, Cyberpunk the video game is the standard, kinda-generic power fantasy. You never really feel "oppressed" by the overall system as you're kind of outside it.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    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.
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Dalewyn 4y ago
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 fucking hated it. Quests everywhere. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Walk around a bit? Here's a side quest! Pan the camera? Here please take this quest! No? How about this quest?! It is still the worst use of $60 bucks that I've ever spent.
- TriangleCoconut 4y ago
  OOT: You've just described my exact most memorable gaming experiences over the last two or so decades. I've been struggling to find something I liked enough of late. Would you mind sharing what you're into these days?
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    Japanese mobile games, namely Fate/Grand Order and Princess Connect! Re:Dive. Playing on the Japanese home servers, mind, since I speak Japanese. (RIP English Priconne, Crunchyroll is bad civilization.) I don't have the kind of time or energy to devote to grinding anymore like I used to in RO and the like, but I'm always a sucker for good writing which FGO and Priconne give me in spades. And before anyone mentions it: Yeah yeah, they're gacha games. Gambling. I don't care. Japanese gachas are generally good, and I'm getting my money's worth when I whale. :V
- tmtvl 4y ago
  Some people prefer paying $60 for a blank canvas with some brushes and paint, others prefer a good book.
- bigger_cheese 4y ago
  As someone who likes Guild Wars 2 the game makes the distinction between quests (i.e. the Story) and Events which are constantly occurring in the world. As you wander through zones in the world dynamic events will spawn for example you might run into a merchant in need of an escort between villages or you'll run across a farmer who needs you to defend his flock or whatever. Many events are simply on a timer and some are triggered by specific actions you (or another player) have done elsewhere in the world. The events can be simply once off events or they can be more complex with multiple states. I.e. an event can spawn where a bunch of npc soldiers want to take back a mine from monsters - players can escort them to the mine help them clear it out. If successful then later on other NPC's will move into the mine new vendors will become accessible etc. Later still the monsters will congregate and launch a new offensive to retake the mine an event will spawn to help defend the new settlement. I like the feeling this gives the world. For me at least it makes the game world feel like it's fresh and things are constantly happening even when your character is not around the world is alive and things are changing all of the time. This is different from my experience playing an mmo like World of Warcraft, which had static NPC quest givers in zones and once you'd done the content, which tended to be stuff like kill 15 of this enemy and then report back to me - there was little reason to revisit the zone again. The questline in guild wars 2 which reveals the larger narrative and your characters personal story is instanced content, separate from the event system. None of the events in Guild Wars are mandatory you can ignore all of them to your heart's content - don't feel like escorting the merchant you can walk past him on the road. Don't want to help the farmer defend his flock from the wolves - you can go right on ahead and ignore it. So it's strange you would get hung up on that aspect of the game. If you wanted to run around and explore the open world going from zone to zone as you please you can go right ahead and do just that.
tormeh 4y ago
Calling Bethesda games "simulation" is a bizarre exaggeration. You mean the games where NPCs will let you rob them if only you place a bucket on their heads? That's a no from me. I don't think any games I've ever played did world-scale simulation well. I've heard good things about Dwarf Fortress, though. I'd rather have tightly constrained but well executed experience than an unconstrained experience where everything is dumb.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  DF simulation goes to crazy degrees of detail, that's the fun part in it. Even for combat where two ASCII characters are fighting they have actual physiology in play calculating hit locations and the effects of different weapons on different parts of the body and even internal organs. All for a line of text in a combat log most people won't read.
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  Wow, I clearly have a different view on games than you (nothing wrong with that of course). To be honest, I thought the bucket head on NPC thing was a fantastic example of how you can interact with the systems of that world in creative ways.

prohobo 4y ago

The hell is he talking about? Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 are way past the golden age of gaming. They have nothing worthwhile to contribute here. It's reminiscent of mobile game designers from the 2010's, and how they were making "engaging" games. Lots of presentations about making engaging experiences that immerse players into the lore of the game world. Actually, just mediocre manipulation tactics pushing people into skinner boxes. It's all bullshit, and indie game devs would do well to stay naive and simply try to make fun games. If anything, a much better example of this stuff is in Disco Elysium.

sbierwagen 4y ago
I'm not sure what you're responding to? The phrase "golden age" does not occur anywhere in the submission. This is a summary of a presentation by CD Projekt employee talking about the two games he's worked on, so naturally it's focused on those two games.
- prohobo 4y ago
  The golden age was when most modern game design principles and techniques were established, between 1993-2005 (roughly). My criticism is that this presentation by CD Projekt is not helpful but harmful to indie developers. It's clear in the presentation that their mindset is similar to the mobile game era of manipulation and control of the player. Ostensibly in this case to "make them want to continue". Engagement is skinner box jargon used by companies like Zynga and has nothing to do with making a good game. Because the presentation promotes this mindset and because it's about two games that mostly were made possible by golden age game design, and not their own innovations, I don't believe they have anything meaningful to contribute on this topic. The quest design in Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk is neither innovative, nor very fun. It may be effective in the manipulative sense, but that doesn't contribute to the artistry of making games fun.

noobermin 4y ago

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."

1123581321 4y ago
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.
hayst4ck 4y ago
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_types 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.

zoklet-enjoyer 4y ago

My favorite game lately has been chrome://dino/

XorNot 4y ago

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).

blargey 4y ago
Interesting, I felt the opposite - consistent mismatches between the expectation and reality of Cyberpunk’s dialogue choices. A lot of optional dialogue was just cues to make the NPC roll their eyes and explain obvious “subtext” to the biggest dork in Night City, instead of a cue to play out two inhabitants of this world just naturally discussing and elaborating on a point of shared understanding. V’s lines in mandatory dialogue weren’t much better, though, so perhaps it’s a problem with CDPR’s rigid vision of what “V” is supposed to be like - simultaneously a cyberpunk native and a fish out of water. Either way, I had to politely ignore and headcanon most of it to get any actual role-playing satisfaction.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  I think it's more about Mike Pondsmith's vision than CDPR's vision. It's not the kind of setting where you tell stories about competent and successful characters. The main characters are supposed to be losers and misfits who often turn to crime because they don't have other options. They are good at some things and bad at others, and they have far more ambition than common sense. The expected outcome is a failure, and there are no happy endings.
  - blargey 4y ago
    Perhaps. The setting and themes are certainly bleak. But the dialogue I’m thinking of feels more like complete lapses in common sense / social skills / street smarts one would expect even from a loser/misfit, given any of V’s background story options. I’d chalk some of it up to awkward exposition, but stuff like “background check” equivalents tend to feel stilted too. The many gameplay and plot concessions made towards run-and-gun action and power fantasy cause 2077 to stray far from the “you’re not special” theme of “proper” cyberpunk stories, in general. Especially with the defeat of a certain character at the hands of V.

rossmohax 4y ago

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

nxpub 4y ago
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)
- freeone3000 4y ago
  It was already written and voiced by humans? I’m not sure what you want out of it. A curated experience is more valuable than a generated one.
  - Rebelgecko 4y ago
    Idk about Disco Elysium since I haven't played it, but I think there's some cool opportunities for generative text with carefully crafted prompts. Imagine a game like LA Noire where you can interrogate suspects about anything, instead of having to choose between 3 options.
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Barrin92 4y ago

>"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.

fauxpause_ 4y ago
Yeah count me as someone who thought Elden Ring’s quests sucked hard. It’s only up to you to miss 80% of the game in the sense that you absolutely will miss 80% of the game unless you look it up on a wiki. And then when you do them it has basically no impact on anything. Like… you could have been able to do something really light touch like ask the merchants if they’ve heard any rumors on where characters are.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  As a huge fan of From Software games, I don’t bother with the character quests. They are incredibly obtuse. You can ignore them entirely and still enjoy the main experience. Exploration and combat is what really counts for me.
- 4y ago

snozolli 4y ago

I thought the Cyberpunk story was pretty good, but the game mechanics pushed you toward the next quest in the main storyline all the time. This resulted in me burning through the main story quickly, then being presented with "touching" messages from all the characters during the credits. Except I barely knew who any of these characters were, since I'd hardly done any of the side missions where you get to know them. So yeah, pretty great story scripting, voice acting, and character animation, but it was heavily undercut by some core mechanics in my opinion.

tekla 4y ago
The game warns you before the final quest though no?
- snozolli 4y ago
  It just says something like "you can't go back after this point", not "this is the final mission and the end of the game". Maybe that's got an obvious meaning to a more seasoned gamer. Not that it matters, since I could just load the save game just prior and do the side missions, but it still kind of ruined the impact of the end of the game. Keep in mind that the main story isn't all that long, so from my perspective the game was just getting going.
- stubish 4y ago
  This sort of pacing is one of the problems with many open world games. The narrative pushes you towards saving the world and the final epic battle, while filling the world with tasks and sub plots that are trivial and non-urgent. And then the general will wait under heavy enemy fire for years as her troops are massacred and city after city burned while the character back tracks to kill rats and plow fields as part of their romantic interest's subplot. But if the narrative provides a lull in the action, you can encourage players to pursue subplots and even make that easier and more in character than to pursue the main plot. And you would have less of a problem dealing with under leveled characters who have rushed through the game in keeping with the main narrative, and over leveled characters who have dawdled through countless sub quests and DLCs oblivious to the urgency you were trying to convey in the story.

r9550684 4y ago

imho since gamasutra became "gamedeveloper", the quality of its content went way down, to the point of becoming a soulless mouthpiece for the industry on one hand and the now standard for a for-profit online publication an engagement and metrics driven words sweatshop on the other. the article is a chatgpt summary of Paweł Sasko's cd projekt red lead quest designer's presentation on lead quest design. "lessons learned" are in the form of "we did a thing, and by virtue of doing the thing the way we did it, we have an experience doing this thing our way." there's not a single element of self-reflection. it says quest director, but Pavel wasn't one until, the actual Cyberpunk 2077 quest director, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, quit in 2021, a year after the game was released. In my experience these days talks like that are heavily filtered by the PR (or some informal equivalent of), and having sat through my fare share of them they seem to make up the dull corporate background noise of GDC and co. Pavel is a cool dude though, he was responsible for the Red Barron in Witcher 3 that people keep bringing up in the comments. I think real cyberpunk 2077 design retrospective would've been interesting to read. If somebody knows an in-depth one I'd appreciate a link. The game is very very uneven. There's a first rate B-grade Hollywood blockbuster hiding there, staring Keanu Reeves, Goro's subplot, etc. which suffers from very basic design issues ("show don't tell" "show don't tell" "jeez that tell is the opposite of the show" "show.. oh fuck it"). Tell us how to awkwardly wrap up your story lines under crunch, Pavel.