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[Virtz]

I don't think when people say "hit points" they mean "there's a number of numeric measures of the health of something somewhere under the hood that ain't even visible to the player". I think they mean "a single overt bar or number representing a character's well-being like a game from the 80s". Seems like semantics to claim something like DF is still hit points. Though that might just be me.

[Sergarr]

It creates a fairly good illusion that there's some super-complex system underneath

I wouldn't say it's an illusion, at least taken in the context of the rest of the video game market. Can you name another game where damage is modeled by having a bunch of different HP trackers on individual layers of tissue?

There are definitely a few games which have different HP trackers on individual body parts. The point was, that it is much simpler than most people think it is, and that most of the perceived complexity is due to game hiding information from the player, which is not really a good way of doing things, since it allowed a lot of fairly devastating bugs to seep through, like the "dwarfs and animals born in the fortress do not grow up in size" one, that was there for several years, and it was only finally caught by using a third-party program to see internal variables.

Too many features have turned out to be bugs for me to continue considering DF as any kind of realistic, I'm afraid.

[itisnotlogical]

Well, DF's not realistic, but it's detailed. In a game where we don't really get to see what happens, that's as good as realistic unless it reaches FATAL levels of strange and terribad.

[Sergarr]

Well, DF's not realistic, but it's detailed. In a game where we don't really get to see what happens, that's as good as realistic unless it reaches FATAL levels of strange and terribad.

But it only works until you find a way to see what really happens, you see, and then you just feel like looking at the Emerald City without green glasses on every time something weird happens.

I mean, the only reason why I even went to the degree of learning how that stuff worked is because I wanted to create a certain mod for DF, but after learning the internal workings of DF combat system, it kind of lost interest to me, because it was simply impossible to fully make what I wanted. There are just too many degenerative states in there, they made the entire combat way too swingy than it should be.

[Tawa]

There are definitely a few games which have different HP trackers on individual body parts.

Can you name

What I was getting at is that I can name another game with HP trackers on individual body parts (e.g., Cataclysm DDA,) but I can't name another game that tracks HP on individual layers of fat and muscle.

it is much simpler than most people think it is

I'll admit that there's a lot of mystique and hype around DF's inner workings, yeah. Those "this game sucks because it's not what I heard it was" threads exist for a reason (well, a couple reasons, anyway.)

But it only works until you find a way to see what really happens, you see, and then you I just feel like looking at the Emerald City without green glasses on every time something weird happens.

But at this point I think that it's just a matter of how you look at the game. I like DF because even if I know why something dumb happened, I can think of in-world explanations and write my own story about the game.

I imagine that Urist fell in the ravine because he tripped and fell, not because of bad pathfinding. I imagine that Listat tried to take on the forgotten beast with a sock because he was drunk off his ass and wanted to be a hero, not because the AI forgot to put down the sock. I imagine that the goblin fighting Commander Zod fell into the moat because Zod threw the goblin into the moat in the midst of battle, not because the gobin's AI told him to dodge off a cliff. I like that the game says that the captain of the guard died because of blood loss from his "mangled arm", instead of dying from his blood counter running to 0 because his arm ran out of HP and started bleeding.

Not for everybody, I guess, but I love it.

(edited for typo)

[miauw62]

I think Tawarochir has the right idea. DF was originally a way to procedurally generate stories, and to a large degree it still is. Hidden information helps greatly with this, since it encourages players to find their own explanations for in-game events, and thus write their own stories.

[94dima94]

Not to mention (I know it's not a good justification, but still it's relevant and nobody is considering this), the game is nowhere near being even HALF done. I don't think the damage system will change soon, but the UI (and pathfinding) most certainly will; many things are now hidden, but will probably be readable in later versions.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

One thing I just realized I hate:

When a game, say a 3d platformer/shooter, whose levels allow (and reward, with extra coins or collectibles or whatever) exploration, but you have no way to know which way is the end of the level and which ones are the optional branching paths. And then you get near the exit and it shoves you into the next area, with no way of going back, and autosaves.

Oh man, I didn't even realize just how much I hated that thing before I've read this. Unmarked exploratory areas are such complete bullshit.

This is very easily solved by adding a prompt that the player is about to leave the area, which I guarantee is 100% doable in every single dang game out there. Another solution would be just not shoving the player inexorably forward, which in some cases might mean some redesign of the game. I assume when the designer does it, he either wants the player to sometimes screw up and not explore everything (and can't think of a better way to make that happen than what appears to be bad design) or he's created a bad design. In either case the game would have been better if he were better at his job. You can't tell me the business pressures or weird coding situations prevented him from putting a blinking red light or whatever in front of the one-way boss room door.

[pikachu17]

I hate it when a long "challenge" area has no save in the middle of it. the pit of 100 trials in rogueport should test my ability as a gamer, not my ability to not turn my gamecube off long enough to get to the end.

[Neonivek]

Managers and Tycoons that are nothing of the sort

Ok seriously Indie developers stop with these misleading names that try to evoke a level of control and a type of gameplay that you aren't even attempting to provide.

I know most Tycoons now adays are rather lacking, but at least they attempt to be tycoons. Stop trying to hoist your piss poor RPG under the "manager" title.

[Aseaheru]

There is no artillery radar in Arma 3.

 This is a bit nitpicky, but really? One of the main design elements of modern artillery is their ability to get in a spot, fire a shot(or a few if it has some sorta burst fire system), then get the hell away before counter battery fire (directed by artillery radar backtracking their shells path) goes and makes that spot a hole in the ground, and none of that is represented in Arma 3. Makes me sad.

 Theres also no direct fire ability for SPGs in Arma 3, which also makes me a sad nitpicker.

[itisnotlogical]

Moments where the only option is stupidity.

In Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, you have to sneak into a museum for a mission. LaCroix, your main quest NPC for this part, is about to hand you the keys to the front door and implies he has a way to get you to your objective with no hassle at all. There's four dialogue options at this point... all of them are variations on "KEEP YOUR KEYS, I WANT A STEALTH MISSION".

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is especially egregious because the sarcophagus has been stolen by the time you get there. If you had just taken LaCroix's help, there would have been no problem at all. Hell, you might have prevented the theft (although I have no idea who actually stole the sarcophagus, haven't played that far yet).

Yet another example of a stupid anarch (my character is Brujah) dismissing the Camarilla's advice and things going wrong as a result

[Shadowlord]

Things went right, actually. But that's SPOILERS.

[Rolan7]

Speaking of VtM:B, I have very low humanity this run...  And the dialog options are just great (and kinda concerning).  Like most of the time there's no option to even be nice anymore.  When this one hobo gave me information with his dying breath, the *only* option was "Just die already."

In another game this might be presumptuous but for the Vampire setting it's actually chillingly accurate...

[94dima94]

Games with a forced, unavoidable moral message

I can't explain it decently in the title, but I'm talking about something like this:
you are talking with the evil enemy, and he says something like "Well, look at all the people you killed. We are not so different, you chose to be evil too".

The only problem: the game never gives you any other option; if the only way I have to win a level is by killing people, I won't feel so bad when you call me out on that. It wasn't much of a choice if it was the only way possible.

(Can't remember the example right now, but I found this in some game I played a while ago)