I've come to terms with the fact that there's some huge flaws plaguing the lack of orthodox functionality inherently built in as part of almost every RPG-based games. Not limited to the "few" mistakes or missed opportunities, most of which has a painfully absent presence (oxymoron alert). Before I point to the elephants crowding the otherwise well-maintained room, I have yet to find or conjure up any reason, plot-based or otherwise, for the purpose to these (dare I say) rookie mistakes in an otherwise highly technologically and culturally modern game.
Somehow and somewhere there's a committee which decided there's a need for a camel. I can only deduce it isn't accidental, the deliberate purpose (in lack of a better term) required for this, lacks probability to be the result of anything but at minimum a small group of people. Either directly or working side by side with other developers experienced and/or old-school enough - again, bare minimum well informed - in the traditions and milestones of game development as far as to include John Carmack references.
The dynamic inherently present of such a vast and advanced mixture of knowledge and cultural historical knowledge combined with modern traditions, or wisdom if you will, on the art and basics of creating good games simply lack enough probability to have been accidentally creating/outsourcing or just miss such a deeply broken design that is the HUD/Game menu interface.
What's wrong?
I could go on, but I won't
Mostly because I don't want to send the wrong message, I love the game and it is a triple A game. But it suffers from it's hideous and poorly thought through GUI/UI to this very day and I can't make excuses for it by simply insisting it serves some kind of "psychological" or "pedagogical" purpose, e.g pretentiousness seldom serves much of a purpose in a game that get's hundreds or thousands of hours of attention from individual players that will pick everything a part because they explore a world you have given them. Making it harder for the purpose of dragging replay ability out of the game would be worse than simply having made mistakes and as such I reject that as any genuine excuse.
What would I want see changed?
Ask me. I will share not just what but even how, depending on what aspect of the process you query me on. The graphical aspect, sure, I can demonstrate superior concepts but mostly I argue that the "less is more" principle is abused to the point of being torture and no longer serves more than less is as little as possible, which doesn't belong in a triple A game.
Trolls or people trying to argue as advocate for the purpose of issues mentioned above will not get any serious response. It would need to be developers or representatives thereof. If you share my concerns, please, list yours and I'll try to add them to the list and perhaps make it a bit more formal.
Thanks
Somehow and somewhere there's a committee which decided there's a need for a camel. I can only deduce it isn't accidental, the deliberate purpose (in lack of a better term) required for this, lacks probability to be the result of anything but at minimum a small group of people. Either directly or working side by side with other developers experienced and/or old-school enough - again, bare minimum well informed - in the traditions and milestones of game development as far as to include John Carmack references.
The dynamic inherently present of such a vast and advanced mixture of knowledge and cultural historical knowledge combined with modern traditions, or wisdom if you will, on the art and basics of creating good games simply lack enough probability to have been accidentally creating/outsourcing or just miss such a deeply broken design that is the HUD/Game menu interface.
What's wrong?
- Lack of dating.
One category for "philosophy", one for "World", one for "Other" (?) in the Journal makes you wonder if someone read Aristotle but further observations of how they categorize missions and shards (for example) quickly informs you that there's no clear vision or idea behind it and as a programmer I find it looking like a speedrun attempt. Yet coding the GUI in a game belongs to one of the less demanding and open to alterations, part of a game, comes.
(Even for the purpose of upholding the illusion of playing a game in an alternative timeline and in the future as well, a relativistic date for purpose of having actions being relative to time serves an important purpose, especially in a game based on "point of no return" actions and decisions (developers name for it, not mine). - Lack of consistency.
Sometimes items with mod slots have two descriptions. Nay, one but stated twice. Sometimes items have an important descriptions followed by mod-slot and/or mod description. The difference is of absolute importance yet nobody bothered to fix this, as of 2.0.
- Internal time made important in every aspect except of time passing.
"Hurry, it's important." Two weeks later you meet up and happily greet Hakimura, or - insert character here - that simply doesn't care what time it is, how long time has passed and if it does matter what time it is (from what I can tell it's almost exclusively for aesthetic purposes) you are politely introduced to the "skip-time" function, just without using the GUI.
- Shards, needle in a haystack or a haystack somewhere in space?
You accidentally press "Read" rather than "Take", or you press "Take" and whilst reading it closes (either a delayed action or slip of a finger). If you didn't memorize the entire title as well as deduce what category (based on the unintelligible, subjective categorization system) it must've belonged to, and while scrolling through categories which doesn't use preference or any memory function other than tagging unread/read, avoid scrolling fast enough to tag it as read unless you already did whilst it was open 365 milliseconds.
- A city-based game based on RPG and lore with a map that doesn't list street names, numbers or even individual markets/squares but only divides the map into city districts and gang territory gets beyond tedious fast. Even online map renditions which are interactive uses text-based descriptions even though simply numbering and naming streets or buildings would've made it easier, or more importantly, realistic.
At one part of the game you get to read the description of an A.I-based cab service vehicle That you may or may not get to own based on your actions that has the description heavily hinting at the A.I possessing deep knowledge relating to the city traffic. To the point that it knows every street well enough to take advantage of what is usually called so-called green wave. Despite this there isn't as much as an instance in any interaction with Delamane taxi services that requires you to - or informs you of - knowledge about anything relating to navigating urban environments regurarly. You learn more about the NUSA constitution than you do about what street name and number Arasaka Tower is situated at.
- The telephone is worse than using a Nokia 3210 when it was still a black/green 5 row interface.
The release of 2.0 fixed the worst aspects of the "SMS" (?) exchange issues (which used to send you between in-game and suspended in-menu depending on actions, such as "reply".
You either have to be an expert on names and memory or you will call random people you don't know for reasons unknown until you forcefully learn key characters full name, even though some of them are extremely forgettable.
Case and point;
At a late portion of the main story-line in the game as I'm doing my third run at the OP55N1, still I possess the contact which I can still call for "Flaming crotch man". Even if he's some kind of super complicated easter egg that you have to call when the full moon shines and you hear a cat mjau three times followed by a car horn and seeing a homeless man with a taped X on his back I stand by my point. Some people you actually get to know better, yet the "Flaming crotch man" has his own avatar when most of your contacts have stock-photo-esque looks for avatars.
I could go on, but I won't
Mostly because I don't want to send the wrong message, I love the game and it is a triple A game. But it suffers from it's hideous and poorly thought through GUI/UI to this very day and I can't make excuses for it by simply insisting it serves some kind of "psychological" or "pedagogical" purpose, e.g pretentiousness seldom serves much of a purpose in a game that get's hundreds or thousands of hours of attention from individual players that will pick everything a part because they explore a world you have given them. Making it harder for the purpose of dragging replay ability out of the game would be worse than simply having made mistakes and as such I reject that as any genuine excuse.
What would I want see changed?
Ask me. I will share not just what but even how, depending on what aspect of the process you query me on. The graphical aspect, sure, I can demonstrate superior concepts but mostly I argue that the "less is more" principle is abused to the point of being torture and no longer serves more than less is as little as possible, which doesn't belong in a triple A game.
Trolls or people trying to argue as advocate for the purpose of issues mentioned above will not get any serious response. It would need to be developers or representatives thereof. If you share my concerns, please, list yours and I'll try to add them to the list and perhaps make it a bit more formal.
Thanks
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