The "yet another thread ruined by ABF" Thread

[A Black Falcon]

Gamepads just assign keyboard keys to buttons. There are very few PC games that support analog control. There's a reason why fighting games, third-person action/adventure games, beat-em-ups (like DMC), platformers, and various other types of games are scarce on the PC. There's simply no control standard for any of them. You can't release a great, original 3D platformer for the PC without including kb&m support, which basically ruins the controls and forces you to greatly limit the way you design the controls. If you're not making a strategy game, FPS-style game (that includes the likes of Max Payne), or sim, you're going to have great creative difficulties.

You simply include both analog and digital controls and live with the fact that the analog controls will make the game easier. That's what almost all console ports of games that have analog controls on consoles do, you know (Rayman 2, Rayman 3, and Rogue Squadron, for examples)... a few don't (BG&E, Oni (though that's really more a PC-first title than a port from consoles)), but those adapt some other way. You are wrong, unquestionably. There is only a problem if the developers are lazy or if they don't bother to adapt to the PC. So you have to include keyboard support... so? Why is this a big deal? I don't get it. Get a gamepad! Or live with it. It's not exactly hard. For anyone. Except you, that is.

See, you seem to see the keyboard as this horrible hurdle that makes playing games impossibly hard. For some genres, it's the exact opposite. Moving to consoles is a massive hurdle that requires huge sacrifices that greatly hurt the fun of the game. See: Wargames, Strategy games, PC-Type RPGs, Sims (simcity-type, not vehicular). So you have a vague nugget of truth there but it's so horribly distorted out of context and twisted that it's definitely wrong. PC and consoles are merely different. Consoles are most certainly not intrinsically better than PCs. They are just different and each system has it's own strengths. On your question about fighting games or 3d platformers on PC, I could as well ask about wargames, pc-style rpgs, vehicular simulations (MechWarrior, flight sims, racing sims, X-Wing, tank sims, sub sims, etc...) or strategy games on consoles... they don't occur in a much higher frequency.

Wow, what a sad, sad response. While the console industry has developers like Nintendo innovating every which way whenever they can because they know that staying stagnant will kill the industry, you have people like you on the PC side fighting for things to stay the same, which will most definitely be the death of the industry.

You yourself have said you dislike a lot of Nintendo's "innovations" as of late, and anyway PCs were ahead in many fields for a long time so consoles have more ground to make up... they don't have lots of buttons (the number of buttons on the keyboard is a huge advantage for some genres), a precision control (mouse), as much adaptability, etc...

I read every single one of your posts and as per usual your arguments are devoid of all sense of logic and good reason. In your very narrow, tiny mind, you can only conceive true 3D angles as being either first-person or right behind the character, when in fact they can accommodate any type of RPG. If you have a hundred troops then you're going to want to zoom back very far, but just six or eight teammates?? Only a foolishly stubborn PC fanboy such as yourself would cry for shitty isometric cameras. You're the reason why PC fanboys are hated so much.

Either you don't pay attention to me or you have serious comprehension problems. I'm pretty sure that it's both. What do you think I mean by 3d isometric? Do you have any idea? In general, if you have a full 3d engine, that means full camera control (something KotOR doesn't have, by the way). As in you can move it around. And hopefully you'd make it so that the game is fun from multiple camera angles. Though for party-based RPGs a higher overhead one is better... I know that if I could play KOTOR from a more overhead perspective I'd switch to it in a second. It'd make so many things so much easier (this is the aspect you keep ignoring, OB1 -- the fact that I have said it's more than just 'I like it that way'. You haven't responded as if I have said anything else, but I most certainly have!)... must I REALLY go thorough it all again? I guess I have to. Hopefully this time it'll get through the brick wall you hide your brain behind. First, switching characters. When you have a bunch of characters in a third-person viewpoint, switching is harder. Even if it's just a key or something, it is still harder -- you have a constant perspective shift, as each time you switch you would switch to being behind that character. This is a definite problem, because while you may get used to it it is never a good thing and most games that have had such a system have either minimized its use or been the worse for it. Notice how for instance most sports games use a more overhead perspective, not a close-in third person one. This is because that way you can see your whole team, or at least a good chunk of the field. If you were just in one character's head you'd just have to hope that the AI controlling everyone else was good because you'd never be able to follow it all... and if it switched you automatically constantly to be closest to the ball (say, in a baseball game) it'd be incredibly confusing and awful. No, for sports games a higher viewpoint is obviously hugely better. It works exactly the same way in PC-style party-based RPGs (as in less so in single-character ones, because you have just one person...). You cannot manage the whole party easily. Yes, you still can have issues in isometric. But it's dramatically less, especially in combat. Dramatically less. If you have an imagination, as you claim to, imagine trying to fight a battle in Baldur's Gate II (upper-level, so you need to use more skills and not just 'attack monster') with a camera like KotOR. Worse yet, a INTERFACE like KotOR. It'd be horrendous! I couldn't imagine having to scroll through a spellbook of dozens of spells if I could only have one icon displayed on the screen at a time! It would absolutely never work. And that's not to mention everything else... you'd need many more buttons. That's solvable, but finding a clean way for a console RPG to have that kind of variety of abilities and have a combat system that flows quickly would be a major challenge. Which is why for KotOR Bioware wisely simplified things. Anyway, I'm sidetracked. Camera. I'm controlling person A. They get in range of the enemy! Okay. So where are my other people... you can hit the button to switch. Then you have to figure out where exactly they are. Go through menus. Switch to next. Etc. It'd take a lot longer than it would with a mouse and keyboard interface and an isometric viewpoint (and you still don't seem to quite get that a game with a movable 3d camera could be isometric if the primary viewpoint is from some overhead angle -- think Dungeon Siege perhaps?), and it'd be a whole lot more confusing. If I'm confused about character positioning (as in, I don't know where my other party member is or if they are in the combat) with just two people, if I had six... and factor in the hassles of pathfinding... it'd be a nightmare. You'd also need great AI for this stuff... you want to make sure that the characters roughly stay in their formation (a vital function for parties) and need to have an easy way or rearranging them so that they can quickly be resituated (in a PC title, it's as simple as selecting all of your characters and clicking on the ground somewhere, and it's something you will do a lot) to face a new threat... these are basic things which would be much clumsier and harder to arrange if you had a third-person (or first-person) viewpoint.

There is a reason that most party-based PC RPGs that are first person do not have your party being actual seperate characters, they just have your whole party being represented by the one viewpoint (see Might & Magic or Wizardry). The other way would be a massive pain and would probably be more work than fun. And your people would probably be killed by things you didn't see a whole lot more frequently, unless you were really on your guard (not just switching to each person, but moving them around if they're in danger, finding all the enemies, etc... something easy on a isometric view where you can see everything, but a tedious job I am sure from third or first person...).

Okay, let's continue, if you don't get the point yet. Let's pretend that we have a third person title like KotOR but it was designed for the PC so that it doesn't have all of those interface and system design problems that KotOR has. It even has a free camera (though a good one that also follows your character well). You'd still have issues with switching characters, issues with understanding what is going on in combat (and remember, you want to be controlling your WHOLE party, not just one person in it!), issues with figuring out where everyone is while not in combat (say you want to take one person into a room to check for traps... it'd take longer than in an isometric view to even start (figuring out where all your people are, selecting one and going in, looking around, etc...). And it seems like it'd be easier to miss someone in the area, and then if you switched to them to get them out you'd probably lose the trap display... that doesn't gaurantee mistakes (nor does isometric mean they won't happen, for sure), but it makes them a whole lot easier to make...). It'd also make it a lot easier to not notice enemies you are going to fight, especially if your party is more spread out (remember, there are many formations available here, like BG). Of course in BG with Party AI On (that is they do their own thing when not controlled) you can have some issues as well, like with someone chasing an enemy and getting hurt or killed for it, in isometric you can solve that by turning off party AI. In third person that would not work as well because you almost have to have AI on... if you turned it off you'd greatly increase your micromanagement, much more than in a isometric title. Maybe multiple levels, like 'just follow main character but don't attack or chase anyone or anything' would be good? But that would mean a lot more work for the programmers... anyway, it'd be a tough issue that it would be very hard to get right, as I think I have made clear. This isn't to say that it could never work in third person/first person, but to say that it intrinsically works better from a higher view. And that's really my point.

As far as the look of the graphics go, as I said beforethat's almost purely personal opinion. I happen to love, for the most part, the look of Infinity-engine titles. Yeah, as I said there are some unimpressive parts I wish were better. But that is true with any game, really. Making it 3d wouldn't totally solve that -- I am sure that some things would be made to look blander in 3d than they look in drawn 2d art! Anyway, this is an opinion issue and should be mostly seperated from the substantive gameplay issues I discussed before. It's also definitely an issue, but it's a different one.