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[Squill]

big hp bars.

In Maplestory, monsters have like, 10s of thousands of HP, and your hits do like 4000 each

why is there so many hp, when your damage is scaled anyway

I feel like an excess of health ruined the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite for me. The story was great, but the actual combat felt stupid on hard.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 The siren was the worst, as the only one where I could easily kill her was the one with the vending machine. On my first fight against her, I ran out of ammo and had to run around like an idiot until Elizabeth gave me more, shoot it all, and repeat.

(Actual spoilers here)

[alexandertnt]

Character/story is the only/most important thing in gaming

I have very poor social skills, and human behaviour continues to confuse and baffle me. So I tend to not care all that much about the story if its "in-depth" as I cant really follow it. But I dont understand why many people have decided that the measure of a games quality is objectively solely based or mostly based on the quality of its story/characters.

Its worse (for me) when the game story is particularly dependant on character relations (seems more common in modern games). Put bluntly, I couldnt give a shit about the characters relations to each other, so I tend to have no interest. Its also quite insulting when people accuse you of being an idiot for not careing-about/understanding the characters (in forms such as "You diddnt get that? your stuped" or "You liked that game despite its terrable characters? Your stuped.") , as if thats a valid measurement of intelligence.

This has nothing at all to do with people who personally prefer the story in a video game, just those which act like it is an objective fact that the story/characters are more important than anything else.

why is there so many hp, when your damage is scaled anyway

I think its because bigger numbers are supposed to make you feel stronger (even if the health is scaled so it makes no functional difference). When I play them, I always see my damage as a percentage of the enemies HP (so doing 500 damage to something with 2000 hp is 25, and then visualise all the enemies as having 100 hp). It helps to realise the redundancy of scaling both damage and HP.

[Werdna]

Again, commendably, DX:HR did that at one point. If you've been breaking into offices at Sarif Enterprises and looting them, when you return there next time you get e-mails from your coworkers requesting that you, Head of Security, investigate the recent thieving incidents you, player, caused. It's actually useful, since you get the door codes.

Ah, I remember.  It's a funny moment, but the fact that it is useful is sad.  They're rewarding the 'stealing' behavior, in a game that doesn't even feature a thief archetype.  It'd be more hilarious if you got an email from HR to come by their office, and then some lady made you sit through a long concerned lecture about your habit of entering people's offices and money disappearing. 

In Witcher 2, if you walk around town with an unsheathed sword, the civilians have special negative reactions, guards threaten you, etc.  This is immersive.  Villagers not noticing or caring about stealing breaks immersion.  Furthermore, having virtually all of the games' crafting supplies in chests and barrels that you need to steal from (buying the supplies is pretty steep) is actively encouraging the stealing trope.  In the Witcher novels, Geralt is not a thief!

What I'd like to see is if a game allows you to steal, show some consequences.  Rewarding conversation options that disappear as villagers begin to suspect the newcomer of the thefts.  Quests lines that close off (choice: money or xp).  New quest options ("Widow Angus didn't make rent again, says she was robbed.  Would you go shake her down?")  Children making comments ("Why do you go into people's houses?")  Less reward money.  Limited selling options.  What I'd also love to see is RPG loot systems that are not based around randomly running around looking for openable objects.  I'm tired of this dated game mechanic that encourages mindless exploration purely by lootable nodes.  Enter room, look for shinies, exit.  Give me earnable money instead and let me buy my shit, like a normal person!  Let me walk into places and enjoy them without a handful of glitternig containers.  We've got hyper-realistic computer graphics that depict every last little detail of a world, but how many games make you knock on a door to enter a house?

Bethesda games at least have some thought to the issue.  Stealing is not terribly worth it in their games, if you're not a thief.  Its fairly entertaining to steal, if you are, but most of that comes from quests related to it.  Its a hassle to find a fence for stolen items weighing down your pack all the time.  You must steal when backs our turned.  Containers usually have crap in them - its fairly easy to walk by most of the containers in the game and not worry that you missed something important.  Its not inspired, but very little of it breaks immersion.

Its just a lazy game mechanic, and it'd be so trivial to improve it or turn it on its head and play it for laughs.

[Neonivek]

big hp bars.

In Maplestory, monsters have like, 10s of thousands of HP, and your hits do like 4000 each

why is there so many hp, when your damage is scaled anyway

Let me just add

Difficulty that only affects the length of the bar and how much the enemy hurts you

also

Character/story is the only/most important thing in gaming

It is sort of a rather large factor for games that focus on the story.

Indeed not everygame needs to have a huge indepth story and some games are hampered by their story... Yet what it does is often give it context.

A movie that basically places a protagonist in a building where he beats a bunch of ninjas up, is probably not going to seem like a very good movie even if the action was amazing.

[alexandertnt]

Indeed not everygame needs to have a huge indepth story

Some people beg to differ, that is what my peeve is.

A movie that basically places a protagonist in a building where he beats a bunch of ninjas up, is probably not going to seem like a very good movie even if the action was amazing.

As someone who grew up playing games like Quake (basically what you described but wth guns instead of ninjas), I think that a video game like this is fully capable of being a great game without any story, relying solely on the action.

[Neonivek]

Quake had a story.

[alexandertnt]

Quake had a story.

I was thinking of Quake 3 primarily, which was both bloody great fun and barely had anything that could be considered a story.

[Neonivek]

Quake had a story.

I was thinking of Quake 3 primarily, which was both bloody great fun and barely had anything that could be considered a story.

In Quake 3 you were an entire squad of soldiers trying to take down an alien force.

[alexandertnt]

In Quake 3 you were an entire squad of soldiers trying to take down an alien force.

Did you play it for the story?

[flame99]

Having no support for single-player.
I get it. Your game is based around multiplayer. But please, for the love of god, just give us a campaign, or a firefight, or a challenge mode! Bots, at the very least! We don't all want to have to be called homofags by 10-year-olds.

[Neonivek]

In Quake 3 you were an entire squad of soldiers trying to take down an alien force.

Did you play it for the story?

I was actually thinking of other games with the BAREST semblance of a story. Like Sports games.

So you are right, games do not need a story.

Just ignore the hoity toity story snobs who are like "Well la di da, this game clearly doesn't have enough story for my tastes. Champaign anyone?"

[alexandertnt]

Just ignore the hoity toity story snobs who are like "Well la di da, this game clearly doesn't have enough story for my tastes. Champaign anyone?"

Whoa, I never said that people shouldn't dislike a game based on the story (or any particular reason). Just that I dislike the idea that video games as a concept require a complex story in order for anyone to be able to consider it a good game.

Think of a person saying (or implying) "I believe all games with poor/no stories are bad, and you shouldnt like them because games require good stories".

If you like stories thats totally fine, I like stories too. But some people I have talked to have been suprised I have liked game X, due to the story being bad without even considering the gameplay.

[Neonivek]

I was trying to make up a person who dislikes any game that isn't story heavy and considers them bad.

But I guess I couldn't project insincere politeness enough.

[alexandertnt]

Ah. The "for my tastes" part made me think that I sounded as if I diddn't like people personally liking stories.

I just wanted to make sure that it was clear that people can like/dislike games for whatever reason they want. I only have issue with those that push their preferences as fact.

[Neonivek]

Sometimes it is just because of backlash from stupidity.

For example for a while I had almost a vendetta against stupid action movies because I forgot that stupid action movies were meant to be stupid action movies.