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Design Philosophy: Where do you stand?


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I'm wondering what your overall design philosophy is here.  I know that much of the game is 'as shipped' but there are some things here that are bothering me in the ways in which you guys have changed what was there originally.

 

For example: the mission text is vague, poorly written, and often misleading.  This doesn't make for an interesting play experience, it just makes it frustrating.  I have dyslexia.  Anymore, with all the work I've put into it, I don't have problems with reading.  It's taken work, but I've gotten past the issues that I have.

 

That being said, when you put up a wall of text up, with few punctuation marks, or improperly used punctuation, or run-on sentences without rhyme or reason, that continue well beyond the realm of understanding and ramble without rambling, have self contradictory meanings, and rely upon me reading the text three times...

 

I hope you get the idea.

 

Some of the text really looks like it was written by a non-native speaker who was trying to translate to English without a complete understanding of what was being written.

 

Those are just a couple of issues I have with the text.  Before you ask, yes I do think I could do better.  Provide me what you have, and give me the format you want it in, and I'll edit the hell out of it and provide something that will make everyone involved proud to put before a public audience.

 

That brings me to the second half of where I have an issue.  In live, the Terran Trader mission 'Reactor Leak' mission wasn't anything like what you have here.  The ship was HUGE.  In fact, it was so big that the first time I played a Trader, I was sure that they meant something BEHIND the ship that was sitting there, so I flew every which way around the ship, looking for something that looked like it had a reactor leak.

 

Your ship is invisible from the Garbage Scow.  I mean, it literally is not visible on the screen, and the mission text tells you to go to the Garbage Scow.  There is a difference between difficult and mean, and right now, that mission is just plain mean.  I have no issues with a difficult game.  I welcome the challenges that were designed into this game or I wouldn't be here.

 

That being said, when you make a mission just painful like this...it makes me want to change it.  Enough that I'm here writing this to you with no real hope that you're going to respond.

 

Look, if the mission text specified that you had to head off into the dark, and gave a direction, even THEN it would be a difficult mission to complete.  The real problem is, the mission text for this mission is especially nonsensical.  Most of the Trader text is ridiculous, but it is worse for this mission.

 

Anyway, this is my statement.  I know.  You're probably not going to change anything, but I'm not just complaining. That isn't an idle offer.  I will go through and edit all of the in-game text you have and make it cleaner.  I want this to be a game that we can all truly enjoy.

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Typos drive me crazy. They're incredibly easy and quick to fix, but there are simply too many missions and talk trees to go through in order to eliminate all typos. I am glad to see your concern and would be happy to fix any typos you or anyone else finds. I created a thread in the bug reporting section where anyone can post where they found a typo. https://forum.enb-emulator.com/index.php?/tracker/issue-1287-missiontalk-tree-typos/?gopid=4839#entry4839

 

As far as misleading talk trees go, some of these talk trees are intentionally misleading (agrippa) and I don't want to mess with what the original writers intended. I have witnessed players struggle with that particular mission and would also recommend giving players more of a clue but I will leave that up to Kyp.

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Some of the text really looks like it was written by a non-native speaker who was trying to translate to English without a complete understanding of what was being written.

 

  This could be intentional and designed to give some colour to the NPCs.  They may not all be native English speakers you know:)

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... "As far as misleading talk trees go, some of these talk trees are intentionally misleading (agrippa) and I don't want to mess with what the original writers intended. I have witnessed players struggle with that particular mission and would also recommend giving players more of a clue but I will leave that up to Kyp."

As a donator, I hereby grant Kenu free and unfettered access to clean up any and ALL agrippa misleading and intentional wrong turns.

 

 

Fine print below:

This decree in no way is to be construed as supported by the powers that be.  

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I'm wondering what your overall design philosophy is here.  I know that much of the game is 'as shipped' but there are some things here that are bothering me in the ways in which you guys have changed what was there originally.

 

For example: the mission text is vague, poorly written, and often misleading.  This doesn't make for an interesting play experience, it just makes it frustrating.  I have dyslexia.  Anymore, with all the work I've put into it, I don't have problems with reading.  It's taken work, but I've gotten past the issues that I have.

 

That being said, when you put up a wall of text up, with few punctuation marks, or improperly used punctuation, or run-on sentences without rhyme or reason, that continue well beyond the realm of understanding and ramble without rambling, have self contradictory meanings, and rely upon me reading the text three times...

 

I hope you get the idea.

 

Some of the text really looks like it was written by a non-native speaker who was trying to translate to English without a complete understanding of what was being written.

 

Those are just a couple of issues I have with the text.  Before you ask, yes I do think I could do better.  Provide me what you have, and give me the format you want it in, and I'll edit the hell out of it and provide something that will make everyone involved proud to put before a public audience.

 

That brings me to the second half of where I have an issue.  In live, the Terran Trader mission 'Reactor Leak' mission wasn't anything like what you have here.  The ship was HUGE.  In fact, it was so big that the first time I played a Trader, I was sure that they meant something BEHIND the ship that was sitting there, so I flew every which way around the ship, looking for something that looked like it had a reactor leak.

 

Your ship is invisible from the Garbage Scow.  I mean, it literally is not visible on the screen, and the mission text tells you to go to the Garbage Scow.  There is a difference between difficult and mean, and right now, that mission is just plain mean.  I have no issues with a difficult game.  I welcome the challenges that were designed into this game or I wouldn't be here.

 

That being said, when you make a mission just painful like this...it makes me want to change it.  Enough that I'm here writing this to you with no real hope that you're going to respond.

 

Look, if the mission text specified that you had to head off into the dark, and gave a direction, even THEN it would be a difficult mission to complete.  The real problem is, the mission text for this mission is especially nonsensical.  Most of the Trader text is ridiculous, but it is worse for this mission.

 

Anyway, this is my statement.  I know.  You're probably not going to change anything, but I'm not just complaining. That isn't an idle offer.  I will go through and edit all of the in-game text you have and make it cleaner.  I want this to be a game that we can all truly enjoy.

 

Throughout our history a lot of different people have been involved in mission writing including a few for whom English was not a first (or even second or third) language, and even for those much like the Reactor Leak mission, they originally targeted other objects but those were later changed. That text isn't smart enough to change on its own so if someone made such a change and didn't notice the text you'd see results like that. (Incidentally I added that one to my list to have a look at since I wrote it long long ago).

 

In some cases it is designed to appear that way though, for example the Bogeril have a decidedly southern dialect from the US and they are intended to have some odd abbreviations and the like. Or Exec Mackellan and her Scottish accent, the text is written the way it is to give it that sound if you read it to yourself aloud.

 

Something else to be remembered is that many of the volunteers who've helped with the project are not professional game developers, in fact they are from decidedly different industries. I am the only one among the team with credentials even close to that of a developer, having earned a degree for multimedia game design and being part of the IGDA.

 

As for the 'rest of the trader text' what for examples do you have that you think could use improvement and perhaps why? I do rather prefer they be fixed where possible but it all comes down to availability and manpower in the long run.

 

Typos drive me crazy. They're incredibly easy and quick to fix, but there are simply too many missions and talk trees to go through in order to eliminate all typos. I am glad to see your concern and would be happy to fix any typos you or anyone else finds. I created a thread in the bug reporting section where anyone can post where they found a typo. https://forum.enb-emulator.com/index.php?/tracker/issue-1287-missiontalk-tree-typos/?gopid=4839#entry4839

 

As far as misleading talk trees go, some of these talk trees are intentionally misleading (agrippa) and I don't want to mess with what the original writers intended. I have witnessed players struggle with that particular mission and would also recommend giving players more of a clue but I will leave that up to Kyp.

 

I too think the mission talktrees should lead you in the right direction, but I do not necessarily always think they should point you directly to something. Half the wonder in the game for some types of players is exploration. For example, a lot of people took to World of Warcraft's quest system. I absolutely hated it because you could have replaced a lot of it with "Take X to Y for Z" and not only that, it led you directly to the point of turn-in. Obviously the game was successful so in that respect i'm probably in a relative minority, but you've definitely got to remember that all players aren't made equally. That's what the Bartle scale is about, after all. (if you're not familiar with the Bartle scale, the thing with the percentages in my signature is how I rated taking the Bartle test a few years ago, these values tend to change over time but tell you what your player prefers to do with their time. Killers like PVP and combat, Achievers like to be the people to earn all the Achievements, Explorers don't want to be hand held, they want to explore every nook and cranny and create the maps everyone else uses, and Socializers are the people that play for their friends or to talk to them.

 

  This could be intentional and designed to give some colour to the NPCs.  They may not all be native English speakers you know:)

 

What he said. :)

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