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>"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 th

>"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.
- Trasmatta 4y ago
  I think From needs to evolve their approach to quest design (it hasn't really changed since Demon's Souls), but it's also an intentional design choice that much of the content of their games is easily missable.
  - fauxpause_ 4y ago
    It was, however, MUCH worse in Elden ring because the environments were so big and often so empty. while they were fun to explore once, they tended not have to have anything in them aside from a cool aesthetic. I think the only quest I managed to naturally find all the plot beats for was Jar Alexander. Sekiro was their best work. I’ll say this to the end.
    - Trasmatta 4y ago
      > Sekiro was their best work. I’ll say this to the end. Agreed, 100%. Sekiro is a masterpiece. I think they did it a disservice by adding the online messaging system to it post release though. I like the system in Souls, but it just really doesn't belong in Sekiro and ruins the mood.
- mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
  > 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. ....What? I mean you might miss the quest lines but this isn't Skyrim. The questlines are a teeny tiny portion of the content in a From Soft game. The quest lines are fun little bits of interactivity and current plot but the overwhelming majority of the game is just in exploring the areas, fighting the enemies, and finishing the game. You could miss all the sidequests in Elden Ring but still see almost all of the game if you were willing to just wander around looking at stuff
  - fauxpause_ 4y ago
    That’s true. I just meant the quests and borrowed language from the parent.
the__alchemist 4y ago
Alpha Protocol was another good example of doing this well.
Trasmatta 4y ago
> 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. My favorite example of this was Ash Lake in Dark Souls 1. In one of the most difficult and miserable places in the game there's a random tree with a chest in it. If you happen to hit the wall behind it, you'll find it's actually illusory, and be rewarded with another chest. At that point you probably think you've already found the secret, but if you move being the second chest, you'll find this wall is illusory as well. You'll walk down a path and find that this tree is actually hollow, and proceeds into the ground for hundreds of feet. You can try to make it down, but it's quite the gauntlet: you have to deal with irritating platforming, and enemies that will curse you and remove half your health. If you have the patience to make it all the way down, you emerge from the tree and are greeted with one of the most spectacular vistas in the game: a seemingly endless lake stretching to the horizon, filled with gigantic trees, each hundreds (if not thousands) of feet tall. If you then make the journey all the way down the beach, you'll encounter an amazingly bizarre (but peaceful) dragon. All of this hidden at the bottom of a miserable swamp behind two unassuming illusory walls. It's so magic the first time you find this, and it reminded me of playing games as a kid, where the possibilities of what might be around the next corner felt endless.
2bitencryption 4y ago
I don't see the connection between the quote you cited, and your response? The quote is about making consequences obvious. Elden Ring does this in spades. Hell, at one point in the game, a huge section of the map becomes a giant hole, and at another part, the massive tree that is visible throughout the game begins to burn, dropping ash across the whole world.

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.
Trasmatta 4y ago
I think From needs to evolve their approach to quest design (it hasn't really changed since Demon's Souls), but it's also an intentional design choice that much of the content of their games is easily missable.
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  It was, however, MUCH worse in Elden ring because the environments were so big and often so empty. while they were fun to explore once, they tended not have to have anything in them aside from a cool aesthetic. I think the only quest I managed to naturally find all the plot beats for was Jar Alexander. Sekiro was their best work. I’ll say this to the end.
  - Trasmatta 4y ago
    > Sekiro was their best work. I’ll say this to the end. Agreed, 100%. Sekiro is a masterpiece. I think they did it a disservice by adding the online messaging system to it post release though. I like the system in Souls, but it just really doesn't belong in Sekiro and ruins the mood.
mecha_ghidorah 4y ago
> 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. ....What? I mean you might miss the quest lines but this isn't Skyrim. The questlines are a teeny tiny portion of the content in a From Soft game. The quest lines are fun little bits of interactivity and current plot but the overwhelming majority of the game is just in exploring the areas, fighting the enemies, and finishing the game. You could miss all the sidequests in Elden Ring but still see almost all of the game if you were willing to just wander around looking at stuff
- fauxpause_ 4y ago
  That’s true. I just meant the quests and borrowed language from the parent.

the__alchemist 4y ago

Alpha Protocol was another good example of doing this well.

Trasmatta 4y ago

> 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. My favorite example of this was Ash Lake in Dark Souls 1. In one of the most difficult and miserable places in the game there's a random tree with a chest in it. If you happen to hit the wall behind it, you'll find it's actually illusory, and be rewarded with another chest. At that point you probably think you've already found the secret, but if you move being the second chest, you'll find this wall is illusory as well. You'll walk down a path and find that this tree is actually hollow, and proceeds into the ground for hundreds of feet. You can try to make it down, but it's quite the gauntlet: you have to deal with irritating platforming, and enemies that will curse you and remove half your health. If you have the patience to make it all the way down, you emerge from the tree and are greeted with one of the most spectacular vistas in the game: a seemingly endless lake stretching to the horizon, filled with gigantic trees, each hundreds (if not thousands) of feet tall. If you then make the journey all the way down the beach, you'll encounter an amazingly bizarre (but peaceful) dragon. All of this hidden at the bottom of a miserable swamp behind two unassuming illusory walls. It's so magic the first time you find this, and it reminded me of playing games as a kid, where the possibilities of what might be around the next corner felt endless.

2bitencryption 4y ago

I don't see the connection between the quote you cited, and your response? The quote is about making consequences obvious. Elden Ring does this in spades. Hell, at one point in the game, a huge section of the map becomes a giant hole, and at another part, the massive tree that is visible throughout the game begins to burn, dropping ash across the whole world.