i don't like how in e.g. the Zelda games you have to keep stopping the game to choose items from the menu screen
in the PC version of American McGee's Alice, each inventory item corresponds to a different number key on the keyboard. i liked that, it was much quicker, and involved minimal onscreen UI.
mostly i prefer controllers over keyboards but that's an instance where i think keyboards are advantageous
Well, when I played it, even marginally good drops were rare, the entire game was exploitable, roaming death-champions ruled the wasteland. and co-op was buggy. Diablo 3 that is.
See, strategy games work really well on PC because keyboard and mouse controls make sense for controlling the movements of large groups. RTS games necessitate a large amount of information at once, but ARPGs should be a bit more elegant or at least introduce themselves a bit slower.
Given that "ARPG" encompasses everything from two-button wonders like Zelda to hilariously customizable things like WoW, I find it difficult to ascribe many sweeping rules to it.
Given that "ARPG" encompasses everything from two-button wonders like Zelda to hilariously customizable things like WoW, I find it difficult to ascribe many sweeping rules to it.
Hence the problem with video game genre classifications I was using it to refer to games like Fable, Dark Souls, Diablo, and Torchlight.
Third person, skills that are upgraded individually, loot and upgrades important to basic gameplay loop, world is made up of focused nodes, exploration possible but not really a focus
To an extent. They should be minimally obtrusive insofar as the goal you're trying to accomplish permits. Interfaces don't exist in a vacuum; they're there to do stuff.
The difference between console and PC gaming is that UIs in PC games are universally shitgarbage while console game UIs have to account for controllers having less buttons and as such have to be well designed.
> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (GB) > two action buttons > mapped jump to B and attack to A
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
I honestly don't see anything wrong with the Morrowind interface.
Also, the primary element that distinguishes PC interfaces from console interfaces is flexibility. As in "you can control how much you want to and don't want to see."
Fable is a sandbox, Dark Souls is a metroidvania, Diablo is a hack-and-slash, and Torchlight is basically Diablo 3 without Blizzard.
Dark Souls isn't really a metroidvania.
I can see how you'd argue that and not be wrong in the technical sense but it doesn't play much like one.
Dark Souls immediately reminded me of Symphony of the Night, actually. Mainly for its variety of weapon types, backtracking, level structure, and its gorhic atmosphere, though Dark Souls takes itself more seriously.
Fable is a sandbox, Dark Souls is a metroidvania, Diablo is a hack-and-slash, and Torchlight is basically Diablo 3 without Blizzard.
Dark Souls isn't really a metroidvania.
I can see how you'd argue that and not be wrong in the technical sense but it doesn't play much like one.
Dark Souls actually immediately reminded me of Symphony of the Night, actually. Mainly for its variety of weapon types, backtracking, level structure, and its gorhic atmosphere, though Dark Souls takes itself more seriously.
I honestly don't see anything wrong with the Morrowind interface.
Also, the primary element that distinguishes PC interfaces from console interfaces is flexibility. As in "you can control how much you want to and don't want to see."
That's better for some games than others.
In the case of something like a strategy game it makes sense, but for a game like Morrowind less so.
I honestly don't see anything wrong with the Morrowind interface.
Also, the primary element that distinguishes PC interfaces from console interfaces is flexibility. As in "you can control how much you want to and don't want to see."
That's better for some games than others.
In the case of something like a strategy game it makes sense, but for a game like Morrowind less so.
Fable is a sandbox, Dark Souls is a metroidvania, Diablo is a hack-and-slash, and Torchlight is basically Diablo 3 without Blizzard.
Dark Souls isn't really a metroidvania.
I can see how you'd argue that and not be wrong in the technical sense but it doesn't play much like one.
Dark Souls actually immediately reminded me of Symphony of the Night, actually. Mainly for its variety of weapon types, backtracking, level structure, and its gorhic atmosphere, though Dark Souls takes itself more seriously.
I don't really see it, aesthetics aside.
Also "gorhic" is a great word.
I really wish people would stop nitpicking typos. I usually notice them after posting and when people point them out I can't really change them anymore.
Fable is a sandbox, Dark Souls is a metroidvania, Diablo is a hack-and-slash, and Torchlight is basically Diablo 3 without Blizzard.
Dark Souls isn't really a metroidvania.
I can see how you'd argue that and not be wrong in the technical sense but it doesn't play much like one.
Dark Souls actually immediately reminded me of Symphony of the Night, actually. Mainly for its variety of weapon types, backtracking, level structure, and its gorhic atmosphere, though Dark Souls takes itself more seriously.
I don't really see it, aesthetics aside.
Also "gorhic" is a great word.
I really wish people would stop nitpicking typos. I usually notice them after posting and when people point them out I can't really change them anymore.
I'm not nitpicking I just thought it was funny.
I think most typos are funny unless it's just like you forgot a letter in a word that has two of the same letter in it
Dark Souls immediately reminded me of Symphony of the Night, actually. Mainly for its variety of weapon types, backtracking, level structure, and its gorhic atmosphere, though Dark Souls takes itself more seriously.
I once had an interesting conversation with various people about whether Dark Souls is like Castlevania.
I haven't played it, but I've seen a bit of it, and it seemed like a 3D action game with slow, deliberate combat, a relatively dark aesthetic all over the place, and little music. So it looked nothing to me like what I knew of the Castlevania games -- immense castles with numerous and often contrasting areas to explore with lots of very interesting sights to see, accompanied by a huge variety of vivid and evocative music tracks.
So I was confused when people said it's like Castlevania. It's got perhaps the castle size, but certainly not the music, nor the relative ease of movement that characterizes the seven "IGAvanias".
It's like a metroidvania in that there is a good deal of exploration and you use that to find shortcuts (more in the first game than the second) and what could be loosely termed powerups if you used the term very generally.
The combat is a huge focus though and it's very granular, it's not very platformer-like at all (indeed, jumping is very difficult in the Souls series).
I honestly don't see anything wrong with the Morrowind interface.
Also, the primary element that distinguishes PC interfaces from console interfaces is flexibility. As in "you can control how much you want to and don't want to see."
That's better for some games than others.
In the case of something like a strategy game it makes sense, but for a game like Morrowind less so.
Morrowind has way too many components and stat screens to not use some kind of popup window interface. It had issues that got ironed out as the series went on, but at its core the UI was what it needed to be, and was about as unintrusive and minimalist as it gets while in action.
I mean really, what part of this looks cluttered to you?
the first Dark Souls had an interesting thing with symbols
tell me
do you have enough Leg to use this weapon
how about enough Owl
Reminds me of the 2015 April Fools prank used at the website Hummingbird.me, which replaced their choice of 3-point and 10-point anime rating scales with a 73-point rating scale where every rating was a small picture of an animal.
Well, not a problem of clutter but the use of nearly unintelligible symbols for status effects was a problem.
I think Morrowind's use of its skill and attribute system was flawed in and of itself, too.
Okay, yes. Those were all big problems. Just not UI layout problems.
Morrowind was one of the first games to display a mouseover buff/debuff list like that though.
To be honest Morrowind's interface was pretty okay by my standards, but the resizable window thing is a pet peeve because it means UI designers feel like they have a free pass to not put effort into making their interfaces intuitive under the guise of "customizability"
Comments
in the PC version of American McGee's Alice, each inventory item corresponds to a different number key on the keyboard. i liked that, it was much quicker, and involved minimal onscreen UI.
mostly i prefer controllers over keyboards but that's an instance where i think keyboards are advantageous
that's all i have to contribute to this debate
I was using it to refer to games like Fable, Dark Souls, Diablo, and Torchlight.
'focused nodes'?
Torchlight and Diablo less so, but they're connected in other ways. Like you said though, genre isn't absolute.
also
> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (GB)
> two action buttons
> mapped jump to B and attack to A
nahhhhh.
Also nothing like Fable, Dark Souls, Diablo, or Torchlight, as far as I know.
In the case of something like a strategy game it makes sense, but for a game like Morrowind less so.
I once had an interesting conversation with various people about whether Dark Souls is like Castlevania.
I haven't played it, but I've seen a bit of it, and it seemed like a 3D action game with slow, deliberate combat, a relatively dark aesthetic all over the place, and little music. So it looked nothing to me like what I knew of the Castlevania games -- immense castles with numerous and often contrasting areas to explore with lots of very interesting sights to see, accompanied by a huge variety of vivid and evocative music tracks.
So I was confused when people said it's like Castlevania. It's got perhaps the castle size, but certainly not the music, nor the relative ease of movement that characterizes the seven "IGAvanias".
I think Morrowind's use of its skill and attribute system was flawed in and of itself, too.