how do you deal with this as a dev
>>724048758Make the game actually more fun to play blind than with a guide. 99% of games fail at this.
>>724048758Ignore that kind of player, that kind of player will always exist. Hell there is a reason guidebooks existed for purchase back in the game.Unless that player is your target audience, then cater the game around the player having a guide.
>>724048829>Make the game actually more fun to play blind than with a guide.you will complain no matter what. this is about as useful as telling someone "just make the game good".
nobody actually wants a toddler's choose your own adventure book. this is why jrpgs will always be better
>mulitple pathsbold of you to think I'll want to play your dogshit game more than once.
Dont give a fuck about "players" make the game you want to play. Simple as that. Feedback from average joe is "fix the game" anyway so its worthless.
>>724048982as if you play games at all
>oops, you didn't meet scrimblo and exhaust his dialogue 3 times in this exact spot in this exact area at this exact point of the game, no cool macguffin for youeat my whole ass
>>724049067you were not the target audience
>>724048758Make it so all paths are fun and rewarding, and make the narrative be worth locking content behind certain routes. Or you can just make the game encourage replayability, perhaps with a new game plus gamemode.
>>724048919>you will complain no matter whatthen how do you want the question >how do you deal with this as a devto be answered? because the answer is "pull your head out of your ass" but i doubt it's the one you wanted to hear
>>724048758By not making some rewards absolutely gamebreaking or incomparably superior. It literally always boils down to "Get a good item" or "Get a piece of shit that deals damage to you every second and is unusable"
>>724048758put a warning up when you first play that the game is more fun if you do not look stuff up, this will unironically work on a large group of people
The only difference between then and now was that people used to pay real money for guides like idiots.
>>724048758not possible
>>724048758Make it an actually interesting or meaningful choice. Most of the time the latter happens because the former is in reality "Choice that fucks you over", "Choice that fucks you over, but only a little", or "objectively the correct choice(requires esoteric bullshit)."
I'd never make such a game, because I loathe games with multiple endings.Is like "haha just play the game 10 times to get all endings and then you'll also get the REAL ending HAHA"Yea no, I just don't play it even once. I can get the appeal for some people. But fuck if I'd ever make such a game
>>724048982You can also just stick with the choices you made. Even without replaying, choice adds a lot to a game.
>>724048758You gotta created games this image your getting consumers buy buying your self games to get idiots to send you few games
>>724049293>>724049156bad things should happen in games babies
>>724049293It's moreso "Choice that is objectively good" and "Choice that will make the city, your entire party and God himself hate your guts with literally no upsides"
>>724049304I like multiple endings, but I hate the concept of a "real ending". The whole point of having multiple endings is to give the player's choices narrative weight. Those choices don't have any weight if you say that only one ending is real, meaning all the others are fake.
>>724049376"Bad" choices are literally always short term gains that will tip the tide at a cost while "Good" choices are long term solutions that will barely make a dent at this moment yet somehow picking the latter gives you more power than former.
>>724048758Make everything obtainable if player finish every route(New Game+). It's literally this easy.This thing happened because the game is limiting players in some ways.
>>724049376If you want fail states or bad endings from choices then you need to also make those fail states or bad endings as interesting and enjoyable as the correct ones otherwise you will always have the second part of the image happen.
>>724048926>be betterAt being shitty F-rated movie "games"? Yeah I agree.
>>724048758just be proud of something you create, Anon.
>>724048919>>724048758Don't show completion percent, don't make a list of collectibles, don't make the player feel like they obviously are missing something, because believe me, it's sometimes real easy to tell if you're not doing something right in a game.
>>724048758who's this midwit faggot(possibly tranny) cartoonist and why is he spammed everywhere?
>>724049835companies hate adding hidden content that will be missed by 90% of players
>>724048758https://youtu.be/xSXofLK5hFQ?si=rj4xaE9gq8tk1ocF
>>724050929Looks like he was right.
>>724048758Why should I care?
>>724051191Not even 50% of people who buy a game will finish it, so why even waste resources on making even further optional stuff?Even in hollow knight, steam achievements say less than 50% of players even beat the Mantis Lords
>>724048758You dont. The mistake is to give a fuck what some faggot nobody wants and just to make the game you want to make. This is what the jap devs do, pretty sure one of them held a focus group and told the group to just fuck off lol >caring what other people think>current year
>>724049835Honestly this, I've put a lot of hours into Legacy of the Dragonborn but I've had a lot more fun and hours without it
>>724048758I hate everything that has missable some games don't even tell you the point of no return
>>724048758by ignoring people like that
>>724052070enjoy your nosales game then lmao
>>724048758>Path 1The most unambiguously optimum choice that's clearly favored by the devs because it lavishes you with unique loot and additional rewards.>Path 2The bad choice that prematurely terminates multiple quest lines and instantly turns all of your best party members against you.
>>724049161>Start game>Opening cinematic>Immersion breaking window thanking the player for engaging in commerce with the publisher>Close window>Immersion breaking window from the publisher thanking the player for purchasing the DLC>Close Window>Immersion breaking window reminding the player that they should return to the menu and play the tutorial or visit the online shop>>724051601>Not even 50% of people who buy a game will finish itImagine the board game where "Our games are too shit to finish" gets interpreted as "lets only put effort into the first two hours of the experience."
>>724052283baldurs gate 3 has bad options and sold 15million copies, one of dialogue trees instantly kills you if you pick it
>>724052283bg3 sold like 20 million copies
>>724052283Braindead retard, fuck off
>>724048758Ignore these players and embrace players who play these kinds of game with character RP as a core priority. Then scope your game and budget accordingly. However that means letting evil or solo runs have real content.
>>724048758Every choice is bad but doesn't really matter. Companion dies? No problem, there are 25 in total to find and recruit. And you won't care because we didn't spend thousands of hours writing shit dialogue and making worthless companion quests that only exist to give you reward items.
>>724048758there will always be a subset of players who insist upon optimising the fun out of the game
>>724048919>you will complain no matter what.Then maybe have your own fucking vision and stick to it like a proper fucking artist, instead of desperately trying to pander to loud online voices hoping for publicity. Have some fucking integrity, holy shit.
>>724048758If people want to look up a guide there is nothing you can do about it. It's a game not real life, you're allowed to let retards spoil their own fun. But really you should have an easy to understand build that is powerful early on that encouraged people into. Then you have alternative builds for contrarians or people who want to play your game with a new mindset.I think that giving players too much choice at the beginning is a real issue since they don't even know how the game works yet.
>>724052449Portal is only 3 hours long and still only has a 52% completion rate.A short hike is about 4 hours, and only 55% finished that. Thats a game with over 200,000 sales.It's just a fact people are shit at finishing their games. You may not like the statistics, but when even the ending of your game is basically optional content, why make further missable stuff?
>>724048758Just have hints guiding toward anything that's permanently missable. There's no value to it being a secret>branching paths and different rewardsAre typically a meme and a giant waste of time. Almost nobody will play your game beyond the introduction let alone play the entire game multiple times. Unless it's a very specific type of game where replaying is central to the design, you're literally just wasting time on shit nobody will see.>but player choice!is a feeling, not something real. The illusion of choice is just as good as an actual choice for 99.9% of players, the extremely autistic few who reload 50 times to check every option and log it on a spreadsheet are not worth pandering to.Or to put it another way: since you're asking how to design your own work to please players, you're looking to pander to someone. Therefore you should pander to the 90% of players who play the game (less than) once and want to have a fun time, not the tiny niche of autists who complain no matter what because their brains are programmed to fixate on details and they're unable to resist the impulse.
>>724052723And if you really, really like the dogshit companion who died, you can just do the dogshit companion resurrection quest because nothing you do is consequential.
>>724048758The problem is that most of the time it comes to:>good option: reward>rest of options: fuck you for not choosing the good option
>>724048758Is this a real question? How?If the game is heavily reliant on gear then don't lock gear behind story decisions.If the game is heavily reliant on companions, don't lock them behind gameplay decisions.If the game is mostly story-driven, do whatever you want with the gear and companions.Basically, make your shit BALANCED AROUND ITS CORE FEATURES. It's not rocket science.
>>724053236you are retarded
>>724048758because the choice in the pic is a terrible example. The choice only appears at the end of this one quest and the consequence of the choice is what reward you get, and there's no way to know what reward you get without looking it up. And one choice kills a party member which is a nonstarter. So it's just bad game design.A good choice is like picking a house in Fire Emblem 3H, it's one choice and it changes the entire rest of the story. You can make the choice based on who you like and the story organically changes around you. whether you like the game or not overall it's a good example of player choice.Even picking a starter in Pokemon is a pretty good example of choice. For most people that play the game you're permanently choosing how your party will look because that first Pokemon forms a core of the team that you build around. (some people box their starter but they're autists)Character creation is another great example of player choice because it defines a whole playthrough all at once, massively consequential and gives background to your roleplaying. Options to say "yes" or "grr i dont like you but yes" otoh are worthless
>>724048758I fucking HATE when game is either>you picked the good option, you get all the good shit, there is no downside for picking the good optionor >lol there's no actual choice here, you can save all the people and get all the things, lmaoI think the only actual choice in mass effect you can't talk your way out of is the bring down the sky bomb thing at the end of the DLC in 1
>>724053243No fuck that he's dead dead. Look at Baldur's Gate 1 and do that. I came to play an RPG not a visual novel.
>>724052070>>724052283>>724052496>>724052516What the fuck are you retards talking about? like 99% of the time bg3 is >do good thing>get reward>do bad thing>lol no rewardand then like the one time you had to make a decision with minthara and being good and halsin they patched it out so you could save minthara as a good person and keep halsin. there are no other choices the entire rest of the game. Like the only times>do bad>get good thinghappens is with the fish people, which is minor and killing Karlach which is also a minor act 1 item no one cares about. I blame hasbro. they clearly had evil set ups for all the characters that would have made them stronger and caused friction, but they got rid of that by the final release.
bait or retard, hard to call
>>724048758You can't really stop it but you can make the experience better for everyone else. My rule of thumb if I was a dev would be:>Make choices as clear as possible for players to understand the consequences fully during the dialogue>No "bad/loser" paths, just different. If a choice kills somebody, both choices should kill somebody. If a choice gives a reward, both choices should give a reward. Even if the outcome is different, rewards should be consistent.>Design evil and good choices in a way that neither skip contentAnd this isn't exactly related to guides but I'd also stop using skills as autowin dialogue choices, I'd make choices affect worldstates and I'd create dynamic conditions that rotate per playthrough, like >"oh, on this one run the evil lich dude has awoken and is using his agents to kidnap victims, so there are more undead enemies">"in this one playthrough, reptilians are taking the shapes of people, so npcs you may have known before are now fake and conspiring to usurp the kingdom">"in this one playthrough, a false chosen one is risen and gathering followers, including potential companions"
>>724053262>Okay, player. Do you want to solve this multi-faction conflict diplomatically and observe the best possible result, or do you want everyone on one side to fucking die and stop selling you shit?
Can someone tell why the goddamn fuck people put dialogue choices in a fucking 40 hour rpg? Who the fuck is going to replay that game all over again? Why not put it in a game built for replayability like a 2d platformer? Imagine if games like kirby or pizza tower had dialogue choices. It just makes fucking sense. A game that's fun to replay
>>724054252>And this isn't exactly related to guides but I'd also stop using skills as autowin dialogue choicesFallout 1/2 did it best by you not knowing exactly which options were related to Speech skill.
>>724054252>I'd make choices affect worldstates and I'd create dynamic conditions that rotate per playthrough, like >>"oh, on this one run the evil lich dude has awoken and is using his agents to kidnap victims, so there are more undead enemies">>"in this one playthrough, reptilians are taking the shapes of people, so npcs you may have known before are now fake and conspiring to usurp the kingdom">>"in this one playthrough, a false chosen one is risen and gathering followers, including potential companions"you're better off just making different games in that case. The premises are so different it's just, why. You're telling a different story, make another game or a sequel or something. Pathfinder WOTR has something like this with the lich route, yeah that's neat and all but I'm not replaying the first 300 hours which are almost exactly the same, to get to the point where you actually become a lich.
>>724052425why would anyone go down path 2>inb4 path 1 requires you to talk to every NPC and go down a series of tedious quests that seem to do nothing but end up leading to the key to a secret door that lets you avoid the bad endingthen in that case no one will experience path 1
>>724055630The problem with wotr is that it's too large and the first part for every single mythic path and class is virtually the same, which is tedious as fuck, my idea is specifically made to make replays more interesting. See kingmaker, I personally felt that every new bullshit happening to the kingdom was interesting because you had to adapt to different situations, so I think some randomized crises happening in different playthroughs that could also have an effect on the story and gameplay could be interesting, though this idea only really works for a sandbox type of game and one with fast progression too, fast and sweet.
>>724053236>but player choice!>is a feeling, not something real. The illusion of choice is just as good as an actual choiceThen Mass Effect 3 shot the [colored] laser and the player went “wow”
>>724056142But why make them random? Just write one story where one crazy crisis happens, then another story where another one happens. There's no value in randomizing it and recycling bits of the story inbetween. Unless it's more of a roguelike and not so much about the story
>>724054252>Design evil and good choices in a way that neither skip contentOr that both do.The most compelling faction/morality system I ever experienced was in Sundered. You collected Macguffins and gave them to one of two factions. If you gave one to the darkness faction, you got a mobility upgrade (air dash, wall jump, etc). If you gave one to the light faction, you got a combat upgrade (plasma cannon, extended air combo, etc.)I have never been Sophie’s Choice’d so hard by a game in my goddamn life.
>>724049304I just play it once and accept whatever ending I got. If the game is really good I might go for a second replay and do different things but I mostly don't bother
what is even the point of choices if they end up all the same? at best you get an extra character
>>724049304That kind of thing was designed for adventure games and visual novels, where the multiple routes are meant to tell one overall story. So it's less like "replaying" and more like turning to a different chapter. But regular video games started copying this as a cheap form of padding and now you have games where you gotta replay 90% the same shit just to see 10% difference, yeah no. at least VNs let you hold ctrl and skip that.
>>724055716>why would anyone go down path 2To see what happens and then reload after realising that it's one of the half-baked choices that the devs reluctantly included for the sake of variety.
>>724055716>why would anyone go down path 2Because they were tricked into doing so by the developers
>>724056249I think there's more value in a roleplaying game when you can see the world differently every time you make a character as opposed to playing through it once with one character and fishing for all the content. In an ideal world, I'd couple what I explained earlier with different starting points based on race like DA:O, coupled with gimmick traits that also have an impact on your character's story as well as a fail state system similar to nemesis coupled with kenshi where you can lose limbs and also make enemies for life out of a random fucking goblin in a cave.In the end I believe that players get more of a kick out of what their character journeys were like instead of the central storyline of a videogame, the conversations tend to be more passionate as well because realistically they are more invested in their own characters and characters they like. So yeah, to me: player fantasy > gameplay based choices and progression > character npcs > quests > storyline.But let me throw the ball back to you now, how would you design your ideal RPG?
>>724048758Make it so players don't feel the need to autistically check everything by not adding some vital super weapon/armor tucked away in random corners.Undertale did it perfectly, it's mostly a straight line and the important stuff is found on that straight line, but if you make pit stops at random locations you might find funny things or items that COULD help but nothing vital, and you can't miss anything because you can backtrack whenever you want with ease.
>>724048926>nobody actually wants an rpg. this is why coomer jap games will always be better
>>724048758You don't. If people decide to do that, yiu can't stop them. Just make your game and pretend they don't exist.No matter what you try to obscure details they WILL datamine and they WILL make nerd essays, but that quite simply doesn't have to be your problem.
>>724048758games are toys.treat them like toys and the player will figure how to have fun by themselves.treat them like a movie (forcing unpredictable negative outcomes on random decision) and the player won't like your moviescript, justifiably so.
this entire thing is just a service problemits the exact same logic as people duping/cheating in items or whateverif your game doesnt have a problem with it and actually does it well, most people wont cheat or guide with external sourcesFar more people played DS1-DS2. In DS3 and specially Elden Ring it got increasingly more obtuse and you can fail some of these quests in the most retarded ways possible so naturally everyone and their mom wants to google so they dont miss out on a fun item, interaction or mechanic for the 50 remaining hours of the game
>>724049376No they shouldn't, faggot, i'm the hero man and while i'm here nothing bad will happen.
>>724057307>Far more people played DS1-DS2. meant to writePlayed DS1-DS2 blindly**
>>724057018I think this may be a difference in what we want out of an RPG. FWIW I've replayed a bunch of games including some more freeform RPGs. Morrowind might be one of the more freeform ones because you can essentially ignore the main story and piss off to do whatever. But that's why it works, the storytelling mainly comes from your imagination and not the game. Daggerfall is an even more extreme example of that.On the other hand, you have games that are telling a specific story. Sure you can have player choices influence it, but at the end of the day WOTR for instance will always have the same setting, premise, main characters, and themes.I just don't see much value in "what if you can become a swarm" and telling a half-assed "Swarm version" of the story, beyond novelty value. As in "woah I can eat everybody I knew from the other playthrough", yeah it's neat but what storytelling value does this have? Now imagine if there was another RPG where you start out as a shambling swarm of worms and the whole story is built around that. It could be much more interesting I think.But if your objective isn't to tell a specific story then that's another thing. I guess what you're looking for is more of a story the player makes by playing the game, which is not how most RPGs are at all. They want to pretend they are but they aren't. Games like that are, again stuff like Daggerfall, most people bounce off it because it's essentially playing pretend. Stories people write from Dwarf Fortress games are another example. Whereas the OP pic is more like "how can we add Player Choice(tm) to this predetermined story I already wrote".>how would you design your ideal RPG?Yeah that's what I mean, there isn't one. Maybe you're thinking of a "perfect game" that does everything all the time but I'd rather have several different games that tell different stories. Even though there is an appeal to the "you can do anything" type game, most RPGs aren't that
>>724056172Mass effect is a perfect example of why branching paths is a garbage idea that doesn't work anything but small indie gamesIt's basically impossible to come up dozens of variations for every single questline in order to account for all possible choices the players could've made so they make two or three half-baked variations and cram all possible paths into them.
I do this in every souls game and have zero fuilt because FUCK souls NPC questlines they're the most retarded vague shit ever. >NPC quest stage 3 has them move to a totally random hidden location locked behind doors and invisible walls with no indication from any dialog or quest items that this is where they're going, not even the vaguest mention that they were going in this direction at all>oops you progressed the game normally and defeated a boss now you're permanently locked out of this quest and this NPC you said hello to is dead because (???)Trash. Garbage.
>>724054252>I'd make choices affect worldstates and I'd create dynamic conditions that rotate per playthroughI recall the Blade Runner adventure game doing something like you suggested in a less dramatic fashion, with random characters and even the player potentially being the replicants.
This reminds me a fable 3 for some reason. Is was so cool finding out your evil brother was actually trying to prepare the kingdom for the oncoming darkness.
>>724058175acquire proficiency
>>724048919>just make the game goodIt's literally that easy.
>>724048758Launch your game with a digital walkthrough as dlc to milk them more
Ai constructed narratives and endless branching unique paths counters all of this. Ai will perfect gaming
>>724048758>game present multiple paths depending on players choices>path 1 - the right choice>path 2 - unfinished and half baked alternative>path 3 - didn't even go past the concept stage but is still in the game to create the illusion of possibility the western RPG special
>>724048926thispbp
>Stardew Valley Joja route>Seeds aren't even cheaper at Joja
>>724058942Nah, I'mma read the wiki and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
>>724049112>Holy fuck it's Scrimblo! I'm going to exhaust his dialogue 3 times in this exact spot in this exact area at this exact point of the game regardless of whether or not I get a cool macguffin out of it!t. the target audience
>>724048758Let’s look at a hypothetical>build a sword character>side with faction A>reward is a gun that is useless to you or far worse than all other options available due to your build>too late to pivot, stat reset would fuck up your other equipment and skills>if you had sided with faction B you would have gotten a cool sword>took you 30+ hours to get to this point in the game, don’t feel like a whole new playthrough just for that This only needs to happen once to ruin these games of chance for a player to turn to guides from then on.
>>724048758The vast majority of people will play your game only once. If you can’t structure your game such that the vast majority of the fun content isn’t available in any one route, you’re making the experience worse for the majority of your players.
>>724048758/tg/ here, the phenomenon is not exclusive to videogames. There's a type of person who wants to Google how to win and rush to the next game to do it again, it's just how it is. I have played in games where this kind of person read the whole module ahead of time and googled a build to counter the campaign, fuckin miserable experience. You could have $20 dlc that unlocks everything and earns all achievements/trophies and they'd buy it because that's optimal gaming. You don't have to listen to them at all because they'll be complaining about someone else's game next week.
>>724048758Balance the rewards to be equal while also suiting different playstyles that fit the route's narrative. Pretty shrimple stuff. Evil path gives you the uber grimdark demon sword, good path gives you the uber ethereal angel spear, challenge super-duper hard path (secret variant good ending) gives you the special nephilim armor set that's necessary to beat the fuck-you secret boss that gives you critical lore. Gather all 3 for the true ending so playing your game thrice actually matters.More importantly, make your routes actually differ from one another. Don't make it so your players are doing the exact same shit 90% of the time and choosing their ending based on one or two things, otherwise they're going to want to skip the hassle and just play the "best" route. Spread it throughout the whole game and have heavy story/world/character changes based on each choice so that different playthroughs are completely different experiences with a few points you can change your mind in (e.g., trying to repent for an evil route midway through for a good ending with a few alternate lines acknowledging your character's journey). This also helps you prevent the pseudo-mixed route problem where your players feel like they didn't do their endings "properly" because they did 49% evil and 51% good and wound up with the good ending without ever seeing much of its preceding content.
>>724048758I remember if you 100% God of War you get a special thanks voice over from the devs and they say "oh but if you looked up a guide you're lame"I still think about that rent free
