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Thomas Mink
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Even Baldur's Gate and similar games had variants of fast travel. Course, you had to walk over to the edge of the area.. but even still, you didn't have to walk all the way back to wherever it was you were going. Just click on that place's icon on the map, and POOF!.. even an appropriate amount of time was passed. Sometimes you got waylaid and had to fight a group of enemies, but eh.
Never really saw a problem with it myself, but I can understand the nitpicks.
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Phoenix
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The only game I've encountered that kind of gameplay is in space sims The Wing Commander series had autopilot, so that between nav points you'd just hit autopilot and you'd see a third person camera of your ships flying by. If you encountered enemies, asteroids, or mine fields at any point it would drop you out of autopilot, otherwise you'd autopilot to the next nav point. Since the focus was on actual combat and not flying around endlessly it was a nice shortcut to keep the action going. There was no "warp drive" so instead there were what were called jump points, which had some kind of explanation made up around stars and gravity fields, etc, but they equated to strategic "beachheads" in any sector that allowed large capital ships to travel instantly from one sector to another. Of course, it took real time and space to fly from one end of a sector to another, and jump points were often times at opposite ends of a star system. That made for a good mechanic that covered both FTL travel and limited fighters from being able to just run willy-nilly without their capital ships, and made the real-time spaceflight part of the game make sense. The fighting was all done at sub-light speeds within normal space. Autopilot just helped shorten the wait time between the staged encounters. |
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  I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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J3E125
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Oh man, Wing Commander... When was the last time I played that?  |
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death_stalker
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I know this is kind of an old topic but I have ask... Why have fast travel in the first place? I remember games like Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, and even Fantasy Star that you had to go from point to point without any means like that. I always saw RPGS to be an RPG. Granted I used that feature from time to time in Skyrim but if you did that means you missed out on a good portion of the map just to get a spot you've already discovered  . They really need to come out with a 1st person RPG that doesn't have a feature like that just to see how many old schoolers are really out there lol... That would make a happy DooMer  PS... they probably already have and I didn't know it lol |
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J3E125
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In Skyrim most of the time you'll find dull and barren areas, so I just spam the fast travel.
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death_stalker
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Fast travel is optional, so pure action fans would use it much more. Especially Skyrim, no one wants to run in to a dragon every 5 minutes. Although if your looking for something more action oriented, just get something like Borderlands or Torchlight 2.
(I just can't keep myself from derailing the topic!)
Wait. What? No dragon killings? That's the best part! I make time almost all the time to go dragon hunting after work. Taking those beasts down is the best part. Skyrim is supposed to be action oriented. Plus being a vampire lord now  oh hehehe  pure bliss  |
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J3E125
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Wait. What? No dragon killings? That's the best part!
In all honesty, it got dull after the 14th... thousand dragon. |
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death_stalker
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I miss the go anywhere part of a level. To get a notice you can't go there yet is kind of annoying. Let us find that out on our own again. Linear path ways? Ugh. Bring back the old run and gun of the classic games, like DooM and Quake of the originals. They "tried" with Duke (awesome game IMO besides the awful reviews). But they need to do more. Being told where to go and what to do and where is stupid. If they follow the old school format they could make some awesome games now. But certain games (CoD) cough, cough, had to change that  |
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Phoenix
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Duke was pretty linear, but here's something I've noticed about games. Old arcade machines were open-ended. You played with a finite number of times you could fail, often called "lives", and the goal was to survive long enough to get enough points to top the high score. Games were designed to be difficult and short, so as to separate players from their quarters. They were also fairly simple, with minimal controls - a joystick and a button, a knob, or some combination of these. This was an evolution from the old pinball machines, which were also designed to be difficult. Home game machines mimicked this pattern initially. Eventually arcade machines became more advanced and complex, and as the game machines could support more advanced graphics, more realistic characters were made, and game play became more linear as well as a very basic story was woven into the game. A contrast would be the original Asteroids or Pac-Man compared to, say, Altered Beast. For home machines a contrast would be most of the Atari 2600's open-ended games compared with the NES. Super Mario Brothers was linear. It was very difficult, but exactingly linear.
Now skip ahead to the era of computer games, specifically shooters. Wolfenstein and Doom were linear in nature. You started, and you finished. Having the game divided up into episodes, and those episodes further divided into individual levels broke up the linearity. Each level had to be unique from the others, and had to fit within a finite set of constraints. The primary constraints were maximum space allowed for a map, physical design limitations (no altitude in Wolf, no overlapping height in Doom, etc), no more than a specific number of locked door types, no more than a specific number of entities (monsters, items, etc) in a map. You would work within those constraints to make interesting areas visually and geometrically, and then add the maze puzzle element - where does the player have to go to exit the level, and what obstacles such as locked doors and enemies are in the way? Further limitations would be in the form of health items, weapons, etc. The maps themselves did not have to have any specific real-world parallels. The designers had a lot of freedom within those constraints, as strict as they were logically speaking.
Now push ahead to more advanced modern hardware of the last few years. As games have become visually more realistic, more expectations of realism on the part of the player are inferred by the designers. This presents a constraint that was not present before, and a very ugly one when it comes to design freedom. Games are now expected to have a realistic appearance, which means environments must appear realistic. In addition, characters are expected to behave in realistic and thus predictable manners. Story and plot are expected elements. For the single player designer, these are limitations, not freedoms. The same for the artists. Certain things are expected to appear a certain way - humanoid or known animal types, real-world structures, plant life, and terrain, water, real-world vehicles and weapons if based upon a historical period or modern environment. Science-fiction and fantasy games lend some degree of artistic freedom, but the story-driven part of the game can hamper the exploration factor.
Introduce the "path". The path is what the player is herded along, triggering scripted environmental and character sequences as well as plot-specific dialogue. This game element accounts for almost all of the linearity in most games. It was present all the way back in the original Half-Life. It's more visible in a lot of modern games due to game authors having either budget constraints, a very strict design director, or lazy or untalented level designers. It does not have to be this way. Some linearity isn't always bad, but some degree of freedom in the level keeps it interesting. It's unlikely things will go back to the Doom and Wolf days due to the expectation of believability and storytelling. I think if game designers understood how to better manage the constraints of storytelling and presented multiple story arcs or decision-dependent outcomes it might increase replay value and make for a more interesting game. That does require a degree of effort and expenditure though.
Those are my thoughts anyway.
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I fly into the night, on wings of fire burning bright...
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death_stalker
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I have to agree with you on just about all those points. It just seems they are trying to make most games to play out like movies. Cut scenes, on rails paths, and so on. There are a lot of games out there that only have one way to do something, with the same outcome. The only difference being if you completed objective A or B. But then there's others (more modern ones) that actually have multiple paths that allow for different endings.
Without typing a book I'm going to say that me personally I'd rather either play a game or watch a movie. But don't get me wrong, there are lots of games like that I find very enjoyable but on several replays it's only fun when you have someone watching that hasn't seen it before.
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FistMarine
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I agree with you death_stalker but let me say my thoughts about games in general... The good old days of 90s when the games were simplistic and you had to kill a certain number of monsters or finding the exit to finish the level and the old health system in 100 percent where you had to find health packs, armors and powerups to help you stay alive, ah good times.  Graphics may not be that great but gameplay matters most! Today games are boring, they have linear design but have good graphics. gameplay: Long load times, 2 weapon limit, health regeneration, no story, cutscenes, checkpoint system etc. Let me know if I missed something. Oh and about the game Duke Nukem Forever, I kinda liked it but what I didn't like was 2 (4 on PC) weapon limit, health regeneration and it's shown on a bar instead of a percentage value (like good old games), linear level design, checkpoint system and so on. I agree about some reviews, I have seen few good reviews (example Angry Joe's DNF Review) but what I didn't liked was he gave a 4 out of 10 and then pissed on the game box.  I was expecting to get better reviews (with lowest being 5, not 3). Maybe if the game came out earlier (in 2007 at least) And if you want to see comparison videos of old games and games of today, watch these 2 videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eUhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw&feature=relatedI am pretty sure you all have watched these videos but just re-posting here for reminders. Also a screenshot as bonus comparing Doom 2 and a modern game: |
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J3E125
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I have to agree with you on just about all those points. It just seems they are trying to make most games to play out like movies. Cut scenes, on rails paths, and so on.
I played that game, Metal Gear Solid. |
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FistMarine
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Regarding my post above, the screenshot was deleted because the uploader decided to close his account.  Forum Suggestion: It is possible to edit the post even after a reply or a long time has passed? Currently, it can be done ONLY when there are no replies or not enough time has passed. Please?  |
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J3E125
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Needs some more linear-ness!
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J3E125
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Something that's bothered me with all these games with physics-based engines is the lack of, erm, physics.
I thought the Red-Faction series did an excellent job letting you destroy the environments, may it be the mines of RF1 or the open world in RF3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ6XM7NfGr8 |
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