"Embark on a PvE survival adventure in the Age of Piracy. Fight on land and sea, solo or with friends. Build, craft and explore vast open world filled with dark secrets. Master soulslite combat and take on challenging bosses, command your ship and plunder unspoken treasures!"
It looked fun, so I watched some streams. Everything about this game's mechanics screams MMO design, but the game is not an MMO. I hate this lazy design.
all these games are 100% the same. collect shit, fight enemies, build a base.
its the most lazy game design possible. no story required, no quests are required, no NPC's are required. it requires only a few game systems and a world with some enemies + collectable stuff. it can absolutely not get lazier.
That being said, some have more complexity than others, i like NMS because it does have more complexity than most, it does have some actual quests, missions and quest givers. Soulmask is, so far, pretty decent, but yes, its the same fight some enemies, chop trees, then maybe more stuff with the tribe later on.
People complain about "fetch quests" lol... fetch quests are fucking BRAINIAC-level game design in comparison to hit trees and bushes for 5 minutes and with just the reward function of gathering, no actual downside or danger to it like a fetch quest usually have (fight enemies usually).
no story required, no quests are required, no NPC's are required.
Yes please! (not this game) but these 3 things are what turn me away from games if they are heavy in them. If I want a story, I can watch a movie. Otherwise a game is just a movie I have to work to make continue.
If I want quests and to be told what to do in what order, I will listen to my wife's to do list for me
NPC's are OK, but extra and not needed to me.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Other way around to me. Differences of outlooks I suppose.
Game stories are worse to me. At least a movie I am not the main character. A game I am, and stuck picking the script they wrote for me. What's the point of being the main character yet having no agency of your own story really?
At least a movie I know I am not in control of it. A game I am frustrated I am not.
Maybe my 30 years of tabletop spoiled me. If I am given a task, or heroes journey to travel. I want to pick how I do it no matter what I decided as that way to.
Maybe I don't want to save X NPC because they are annoying (But have to for....static story reasons).
Or I am tasked with clearing a village of raiding goblins? (or whatever pedantic fetch/kill/investigate quest game gives me). Maybe I don't want to 'go X location, and fight them" maybe I want to bribe them with fake gems and false coins to move.
Or round them up, cage them and have "Beat-A-Goblin" night with a makeshift boxing ring and charge town folks 3 silver each to beat one to death. But I can't, I have to kill them to clear the quest, to get the mayor to grant me some item, that i need for next quest [or whatever]. Then listen to a bunch of dialog of the results I didn't want to do to start with.
Maybe I decide "flare and style over efficiency" and go capture the goblin tribe leader, and beat him to death with a pillowcase filled with doorknobs in front of his tribe.." Nope cant do that. Gotta do it how the game tells me to.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
no story required, no quests are required, no NPC's are required.
Yes please! (not this game) but these 3 things are what turn me away from games if they are heavy in them. If I want a story, I can watch a movie. Otherwise a game is just a movie I have to work to make continue.
If I want quests and to be told what to do in what order, I will listen to my wife's to do list for me
Is it what it is.
Will try it. Sandbox no story games are my jam.
You pay for game styles you like, I will pay for the styles I like, deal?
I won't make you buy them for me if that helps you not care what someone else enjoys their money on. And based on past posts, not many here have room to talk if we are using simply "I disagree with how you enjoy spending money" criteria...lol.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
I love pirates, plunder, and the overall naval theme. However, I absolutely LOATHE "crafting" (gather 100 stone with left click, press a button, look ma, I "crafted"!), and "survival" (drink rainwater every 10 minutes, why, so I have to piss again?).
Other way around to me. Differences of outlooks I suppose.
Game stories are worse to me. At least a movie I am not the main character. A game I am, and stuck picking the script they wrote for me. What's the point of being the main character yet having no agency of your own story really?
At least a movie I know I am not in control of it. A game I am frustrated I am not.
Maybe my 30 years of tabletop spoiled me. If I am given a task, or heroes journey to travel. I want to pick how I do it no matter what I decided as that way to.
Maybe I don't want to save X NPC because they are annoying (But have to for....static story reasons).
Or I am tasked with clearing a village of raiding goblins? (or whatever pedantic fetch/kill/investigate quest game gives me). Maybe I don't want to 'go X location, and fight them" maybe I want to bribe them with fake gems and false coins to move.
Or round them up, cage them and have "Beat-A-Goblin" night with a makeshift boxing ring and charge town folks 3 silver each to beat one to death. But I can't, I have to kill them to clear the quest, to get the mayor to grant me some item, that i need for next quest [or whatever]. Then listen to a bunch of dialog of the results I didn't want to do to start with.
Maybe I decide "flare and style over efficiency" and go capture the goblin tribe leader, and beat him to death with a pillowcase filled with doorknobs in front of his tribe.." Nope cant do that. Gotta do it how the game tells me to.
I like story and quests more and more actually, i think the survival genre has partially made me hate this kind of slop. I was also thinking exactly like you for a good while. I like a mix of both, run into quest givers then adventure out in the world to do them, and while doing so in the open world you have your own adventures too.
That is ultimately very RPG and tabletop-like, no quests at all, nah, not how we have ever played them at least. While you can have your own ideas of quests they get old quickly, i need a mix of both.
Nodrim wrote:
This game has NPCs and quests. They are all MMO-like.
I see, that is at least an upgrade from most games in the genre.
Sorry, think i said it to give the wrong impression of outr games. in tabletop its VERY story driven when we play, but they make the story I have no canned one. Quests? not really. They make the story. Only real quests are what they decide to task themselves with fixing as they travel.
I meant that story based video games feel railroad linear to me.
Like playing with a GM that refuses to let you make your own solutions to problems, forces you to go where they want and do things they already had a plan how how to run and how to 'fix problems'.
Maybe its how we run it. Or how I do anyway.
My worlds are always sandbox-ish. The world around you is happening, time progresses, shit happens. Regardless if you engage it or not.
So pick what shit you care about..And how you engage it is up to the group.
My favorite example: There is a lich gaining power in a nearby cave fortress. Wanna stop him before he gets it? Team up with him? Go party with him for a month and then and move the fuck out of dodge? Whatever they choose.
Do it HOWEVER you want. What was done?
A player went to the local farming village, rented 200 cattle. Then when they lured the lich into the front hall/room. Stampede them into it so they was all panicked and bumping into everything, including the lich. So he couldn't pass any concentration check to cast a damn thing. And when he did he was too busy trying to kill 200 cattle to hit the players.
[My world is sort of like videogame distance LOD, I put broad 'this is happening here' and add more detail in place as they move towards things and/or time progresses based on what happened in other areas and ripples of what they did before. This started as "Lich in cave fortress' that was it. that was all my notes for it until they got close enough to flesh out timelines. They get closer, fill in WHAT cave where, closer, what people rumor about it, closer still, detail him and make LICH NPC sheet and what he has 'done' in the time it took them to wander over there and if anything they have done could affect it or be used to tie it into the narrative, etc.]
I always go with the idea Matt Colville put into words I better than I ever did:
How do you expect the players/us to get out of or solve this?
No idea. I just make a fair scenario. I have zero idea how they will or should do it. I run the rest of the world.The players run themselves, not my place to influence their choices.
Another example of "I did not see it going that way"
Spoiler:
A year of gameplay accidently was based around a single barfight with a guard. Random NPC #4521 or whatever. He even had a "Shit I need a throw away name" for him.
They wanted to confront the city about it, and ended up making the entire campaign about tracking down the Earl, then the Marquis, then the Duke of the lands here. TO find out he was corrupt and kinda evil and they got deadset on crumbling the whole noble structure of the region and replace it, to fix the region. I did not see that coming at all from one guard punching the rogue. They wanted to run that way, I let them run with it.
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
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