I've never played an RPG game although I do know roughly the mechanics and typical animations done when healing or providing a buff to someone's health, shield etc.
My point is that Massive has gone through great lengths to give us a believable scenario, great visuals, artwork, storyline and gameplay. Even to the point of shooting windows in cars.
That being said, doesn't the realism or lack of it clash with otherwise stellar animation when you see a drone simply hover overhead and provide a healing buff to someone?
Why not have the drone drop some medical supplies and show the animation where the injured team mate self applies the bandages rather than just having his health stats get buffed up?
Likewise with a shield buff? Why not have the drone drop a ceramic armored vest? Let's see the animations rather than have a suspension of belief and assume that is what is happening?
We're in 2013, we'll be getting this on next gen consoles. Shouldn't animations in RPG's be consistently next gen too?
What do you think guys, sound out please.
Whys are you always so feisty in your replies? I actually agree with your point (dropping a ceramic vest would destroy it upon impact) but you always seem so snappy! HahaOriginally Posted by luciusnetheril Go to original post
I understand your point Switchblade732, however sometimes it's just very difficult to get round things like that! I'm assuming "player healing" will have a nice animation to it, but what they're going for is that the companion drone will give your team a 'boost' / advantage. They can't simply have it as extra firepower, as everyone would simply fly around blasting everything with a drone, and that's also not by realistic. I'm worried how they going to approach the amount of ammounition that the drone carries; I hope they remember it's a quad-copter, and not a reaper drone!
Because TC games were never about realism, well, with exception of remote realism in Rainbow Six. Everything beyond that was grid person cover shooter with a mix of sci-fi and conspiracy theories.Originally Posted by c-swain Go to original post
And if he wants realism-than lets be clear about it-there should be no healing all, for realism to be achieved.
If the op wants realism so much, he should try ARMA2
Red Storm was strongly focused on realism with the old school R6 and GR games. I recall dev interviews where they would talk about nothing but for 30 minutes on whatever G4 use to be called. I also took part in many conversations with one of the original GR devs who went on to create Blackfoot Studios and watched a recent interview with another who's making Takedown: Red Sabre which would strongly contradict that "they were never about realism". It was THE focus of those games.
You could make a pretty good argument that even the original Splinter Cell was more reality based in many ways.
... And when I talked about realism I'm talking strictly gameplay. I couldn't care less about the story in most shooters.
I'm not sure that crawlig all over the pipes can be considered realistic. I have to agree with you in regards GR games, though. However, only few first few GR games were realistic, but that realism went down the drain too darn fast.
Either way, expecting realism from current TC games, especially from this one, is a lost cause.
They said this is first and foremost a game. If realism was what they were striving for then get rid of respawns, make food and water required in order to survive, cause serious injuries to take time to heal or severely hinder gameplay until fixed. Completely change the mechanics of the game so that it is a simulation not a game. This is however (As the developers have stated and myself earlier) a game first and foremost so trying to change something so little as drone mechanics seems.... trivial.
Originally Posted by luciusnetheril Go to original post
Agreed all around.
I only mentioned SC relative to the more recent versions... Mostly in that it started out more demanding, less "over the top"/action oriented and far less linear.
No, because with RPG elements come Min/Maxers and when building a character the utility of an ability is the first last and middle consideration when deciding if you should get it. Animations are a liability in a real time game the more time you are in an animation the less time you're helping.Originally Posted by Switchblade732 Go to original post
If the drone dropped med supplies it would be an unfavorable ability because you'd have to leave cover and expose yourself. If you had to apply bandages i'd be an unfavorable ability because you'd be out of the fight applying bandages. And god help us if you have a team heal, you'd be taking two players out of the fight for seconds at a time. Getting a ceramic vest would be unfavorable, why leave cover, go to the item, and go through a pick up and equip animation when you can just stay in cover and not get shot?
Time, processing power, and what gen this is have nothing to do with that. They could do that, but why? It makes everything more difficult for every one in the end. They have to do more work, combat is harder for the wrong reasons, the game becomes frustrating, and people will just skip the abilities with long animations leading to very homogenized Min/Max builds and less teamwork.