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Mariel




Joined: 15 Oct 2008
Posts: 78
Location: In your dreams

PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm a little bit OCD weird with games, but I always go into every house, attempt to open/loot/look at every object, and talk to every person, and if I come back from a quest and someone says something different, I think maybe everyone will say something different, so I do it all over again.

I'm really bad at this in RPGs like Morrowind, where the sheer number of items and places to explore leads to some neurotic behavior, like stealing every single lantern and fork in Balmora and then constructing a pyramid out of them on top of my house. Or trying to soultrap every creature in the game and arrange the soulgems alphabetically by creature type in pretty patterns.... Oh, and downloading mods that give full unique dialogue trees to every NPC didn't help at all...


Anyway, yeah, I talk to everyone in every game. >.>
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The Wobbler




Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Posts: 2221

PostPosted: Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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Baconlabs
PURPLE IS MANLY




Joined: 15 Mar 2009
Posts: 335
Location: Tennessee

PostPosted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 2:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I tend to think in different mindsets based on previous experiences.

Games like Earthbound and Mother 3 - Definitely search the towns. I usually find a mix of useful and terrible items, but the real reason is because it's entertaining. The Beatles quiz guy from Earthbound and the presents with fireworks/music/farts from Mother 3 take the cake for the useless fun in exploration.

Games like Vikings of Midgard and most commercial RPGs - I usually don't bother exploring at first, but they tend to have benefits I overlook. For example, a friend of mine found an item in the clock of Valhalla on his first playthrough that I never noticed.

Games like the early Final Fantasies, 1st generation Pokemon, and most OHR games - I seldom explore unless I'm bored, and that curiosity is almost never rewarded because there's nothing useful to find and the NPCs are bland.
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Pumpkinbot
Rock beats scissors! >:D




Joined: 22 Apr 2009
Posts: 106
Location: Megaman, Cutman's level.

PostPosted: Sat Apr 25, 2009 11:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I go through and talk to every NPC. Why not? Remember the hide-and-seek kid from Wandering Hamster? X) I always think NPCs add a lot to the town, so you should really think about what they say when you're adding in their messages. You could have one guy that looks like he's busy, rushing from house to house, or you could have the obnoxious travelling salesman, etc. See, if you're imaginative, you can add a lot of depth to the town.
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Ronin Catholic
Deadliest of Fairies




Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 530
Location: My Girlfriend

PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2020 4:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I always talk to every NPC I can find in every town of every RPG I play for as long as the game can hold my interest. If they say anything topical, I check back with then after a major event (like killing that boss monster who was eating their livestock). If their dialog changes, even if it repeats every time for a given plot point, I tend to like it more even if it's not written very compellingly on its own.

I also check barrels, trees, or other interesting-looking tiles in case there's a hidden item, flavor text, or the real jackpot: both.



The more the game rewards me for exploring and talking to people, the more I enjoy it and the more likely I am to put up with mediocre-but-not-bad gameplay.

This is what I always intend to do when I put a town or castle or other such friendly space in a game - I just usually rush things and don't get around to finishing the implementation of the flavor text.
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TMC
On the Verge of Insanity




Joined: 05 Apr 2003
Posts: 3240
Location: Matakana

PostPosted: Tue Aug 11, 2020 6:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yeah, me too. A lot of people do.

But it's kind of like a disease, really. Am I actually enjoying myself, walking long distances to return to NPCs I saw long ago, or going back and forth to check every barrel? Sure, those little bits of lore are both genuinely fun and extra rewarding because of the effort, but searching for them is sometimes done to an extreme, to the point that searching becomes unfun and we do it only because of operant conditioning.

But I think it's possible to escape this old formula, and structure a game in such a way that the player is prevented from finding every secret and doesn't resent it. This is what I now strive for in game design.
Preventing the player from doing it is easy, e.g. a time limit. Making them not resent it is a bit harder. For example, if the maps are procedurally generated then you won't care if you don't see it all, because only a fraction of the total possibilities were present anyway.
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Ronin Catholic
Deadliest of Fairies




Joined: 23 Jul 2007
Posts: 530
Location: My Girlfriend

PostPosted: Tue Aug 11, 2020 10:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think another thing that leads to a problem is people not taking enough of a cue from the original NES JRPGs, Dragon Warrior 1-3 and FF1 when it comes to keeping the space of an in-game town suitably compact and instead trying to accurately model the size and scope of the settlement. In the old games, it took roughly one minute to walk from one end of a town to the other at most, NPCs were limited to necessary shops, perhaps one flavor NPC per shop to explain something mechanical or flavorful about the shop's contents (like bonus damage against certain monster types if they sold a specialty weapon), and one or two houses with pure flavor NPCs or a sidequest NPC. Add more shops proportionally to more flavor houses for a "big" city like Mercado, like 2-3 weapon shops or separate shops for weapons, armor, and shields, but never a big enough in-game city players can legitimately get lost in it (as should be possible with dungeons).

In the abstract, there are usually farm houses and the like out several miles in each direction from a given RPG city, but these aren't triggered as locations on the world map because there's nothing for the player to interact with. Likewise there are probably more buildings/businesses in a given town than those that interact with player characters, but aside from one here or there per town for humor or worldbuilding flavor there's not much reason to depict them.

Basically, an RPG town should ideally be a compact and relatively safe space with a few interesting things to interact with. I always personally get a bigger kick out of having a player character refuse to rob NPCs' in-house treasure chests and dresser drawers than I get out of getting a free potion or herb, but this doesn't work for all heroes. A flavorful description of the objects in question is probably worth more to me than either.
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