In game character Perspective!

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kofeiiniturpa;n10834541 said:
What about when there are supposed to be RPG mechanics that - as they should - aim to distort the contorl accuracy so as to present character building his ability?

First Deus Ex did it pretty well in first person mode. While the weapon related skills don't increase the weapon damage that much, they do visibly improve your accuracy, while providing some additional benefits when it comes to using those weapons, like faster reloading, At the basic level you must hold the crosshair on the enemy for a while, for it to focus on him, thus letting you shoot him with a proper accuracy, but when you upgrade your skills, you can notice it actually starts focusing on faster and faster, at the highest level letting you finish your aiming in an instant. You can still shoot without waiting to aim properly, but then you have a very low chance of actually hitting your target. There are also some other combat elements, not Deus Ex related, that could potentially be affected by your character skills, like recoil or even the size of crosshair showing your lack of accuracy, that also can be replicated perfectly in first person perspective to show your progression. Outside of combat, other skills modified via stats can also be shown through the eyes of the character just fine. In other words I don't see the advantage that third person perspective could provide in regard to that.
 
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Shavod;n10836991 said:
In other words I don't see the advantage that third person perspective could provide in regard to that.

Yeah I know how Deus Ex does it, and like I said, I'm not opposed to CP2077 working somewhat like that. I've made a good number of suggestions on what kind of mehcanics might work here to that end (from my perspective) and argued about it (how the skills might work, how the controls might work, how the general combat flow should work, how even the difficulty and game settings might affect how the game plays out, etc).

But here, in this discussion, I'm trying to think more broadly (for a change, I suppose).... because - firstly - I'm probably not the target audience of this game with my preferences so I kinda have aim for some form of "bestestest compromise" that doesn't completely dilute everything with what I put out, and - secondly - as has been the trend for years (so called RPG's trimming down the RPG parts from the game in favor of providing more fluid and precise ackshun) you know that if it looks like a first person shooter in todays market, it has to work like one or there'll be a shitstorm coming from a lot people who thought they bought one and then noticed that it feels like shit when played as one.

The demand will be for better FPS combat, and the developer knows this so they might aim for it or somewhere close to the middle ground (like Bethesda with their Fallout-masquerade), and it always leads to watered down RPG mechanics, and in worst cases waterd down both aspects. Always, because there is not malleable middleground to be achieved here between stat-driven and accurate control-responsive combat other than making magic bullets that grow stronger as you progress (which itself is an awful concept).

That's the benefit of third person (and preferably camera pulled higher back than over the shoulder so as to underline that the player is not personally aiming, but just pointing at the direction of the preferred enemy). It allows better character ability abstraction that doesn't break peoples "personal immersion" as much as diminishing their control while they pretend to be the character (even if they really shouldn't, or at least should accept that it is the games specific version of them where they have to abide to the rules of it) whilst viewing the world from a camera attached to the PC's head (well, it's often really the chest if you look at how the arms protrude from the bottom of the screen).

Of course CDPR might just say fuck it and make it work somewhat like Deus Ex and take the incoming heat. I'll be glad if they do, but... I'm not sure how likely it is give the afore mentioned trendings and the preferences of the general gaming populace. It takes someone to break the mold to do it and show that it can be fun and rewarding, but.... I digress.

We'll see.
 
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kofeiiniturpa;n10837241 said:
Of course CDPR might just say fuck it and make it work somewhat like Deus Ex and take the incoming heat. I'll be glad if they do, but... I'm not sure how likely it is give the afore mentioned trendings and the preferences of the general gaming populace. It takes someone to break the mold to do it and show that it can be fun and rewarding, but.... I digress.
We'll see.

Now after you explained it in a greater details, I see your point (even though I still prefer first person perspective). While I don't have some high standards regarding Cyberpunk gameplay, since I can enjoy both complex and less complex gameplay mechanics, as long as it's done well enough, I too would prefer if the character skills actually mattered in the combat scenario, not only by increasing the damage output, but by actually making you feel like you go from the scrub with the gun to professional sniper throughout the game. And I also feel that going with the less risky solutions (read: standard sticky cover based shooter) in combat department, just to play it safe, is very likely, especially since the game on it's own, taking all the planned features under consideration, is possibly one of the most ambitious projects ever made as far as video games go, so it needs to bring a really solid revenue to make up for it and let's be honest, none of the RPG with strong focus on the mechanics broke any sales records in the last decade. In the ideal world we would had difficulty determining how much player skills on it's own matter in the game and how much is determined by character skills to appeal to both sides, but it's doubtful that they will implement something like that on top of everything they are already working on, so for now we can only hope that in the end they won't go with the most obvious solutions.
 
Shavod;n10836501 said:
You know, when it comes to choosing between possibility to see your character all the time and more interactivity in gameplay, I always choose the latter.
So I'm curious.
What is it about first person gameplay that you find more interactive then third person?
Merely the ability (in most first person games) to have a cosshair vs the back of your characters head in the middle of your screen?
How is one more immersive then the other?
 
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kofeiiniturpa;n10837241 said:
But here, in this discussion, I'm trying to think more broadly (for a change, I suppose).... because - firstly - I'm probably not the target audience of this game with my preferences so I kinda have aim for some form of "bestestest compromise" that doesn't completely dilute everything with what I put out, and - secondly - as has been the trend for years (so called RPG's trimming down the RPG parts from the game in favor of providing more fluid and precise ackshun) you know that if it looks like a first person shooter in todays market, it has to work like one or there'll be a shitstorm coming from a lot people who thought they bought one and then noticed that it feels like shit when played as one.

The demand will be for better FPS combat, and the developer knows this so they might aim for it or somewhere close to the middle ground (like Bethesda with their Fallout-masquerade), and it always leads to watered down RPG mechanics, and in worst cases waterd down both aspects. Always, because there is not malleable middleground to be achieved here between stat-driven and accurate control-responsive combat other than making magic bullets that grow stronger as you progress (which itself is an awful concept).
My thinking exactly.

For a "pure" RPG where you're controlling a team of characters nothing beats isometric.
You need to be able to see character, opponents, and the terrain all in relationship to each other to make tactical decisions.

For a single-character game where any team NPCs are controlled entirely by an AI then first-person works best.
But that said, third-person gives far better situational awareness then first. And for that reason alone I prefer third.
 
Suhiira;n10839121 said:
My thinking exactly.

For a "pure" RPG where you're controlling a team of characters nothing beats isometric.
You need to be able to see character, opponents, and the terrain all in relationship to each other to make tactical decisions.

For a single-character game where any team NPCs are controlled entirely by an AI then first-person works best.
But that said, third-person gives far better situational awareness then first. And for that reason alone I prefer third.

Good to have you back.
 
Suhiira;n10839061 said:
So I'm curious.
What is it about first person gameplay that you find more interactive then third person?
Merely the ability (in most first person games) to a cosshair vs the back of your characters head in the middle of your screen?
How is one more immersive then the other?

For starters, here's the example that we should all be familiar with: The Witcher vs Kingdom Come. It's should not come as a surprise that Kingdom Come definitely took some heavy inspirations from the Witcher 3, especially in case of certain quests designs, one of them being based on tracking, which is featured quite prominently in both TW3, as well as KC. But one major difference that people praised about KC in comparison to TW3 was related to always controversial Witcher Senses mechanic, which is obviously the fact that there was nothing highlighting those tracks for you. Now I tried playing TW3 while using Witcher Senses as little as possible and one thing I really liked about it is that the tracks actually exist in the game world, they are not just red paint in WS mode, so technically it should be possible to do those quests without relying on that mode, so why did they felt the need to implement something like that, other then making game more appealing for casual gamers, I'm thinking to myself. But then I actually try doing that without WS and, my God, was it troublesome as all hell. Spotting all the tracks in third person like that turned out to be quite a painful experience for my neck. Sure, maybe if I had a really large monitor and played the game in highest resolution possible it would be easier, but how many people, especially the one playing on consoles, where they are used to sitting a certain distance from the screen, will really have something like that. So I reached the conclusion that the inclusion of WS mode was the most of all born out of neccesity, rather then the desire to make the game more casual friendly. Kingdom Come obviously didn't had this problem, since it's in first person, so player can easily pick up the environmental clues without the need to cause himself a physical harm. This is one major advantage that FPP has over TPP when it comes to interacting with the environment, it makes it easier to interact with it without the need for supportive features, such as heavy use of UI, scanning modes and such,

Second matter I have to talk about is, let's call it, a flexibility when it comes to interactions in first person that third person does not possess. Let me reiterate my love for original Deus Ex (and I must add it annoys that I always have to specify that I mean the original DX, otherwise people by default assume I'm talking about it's successors, which as you could probably notice in the past, I'm not as much fond of) by using it once more as an example. In Deus Ex with the benefit of first person perspective you can look at pretty much any direction you want, up and down, allowing you to take a peek in many obscure areas, like under tables or on the shelf localised above your head, which allows the designers to have more fun with putting stuff around for you to find, including story related clues. In game like Mass Effect you only get to interact with objects horizontally, which usually means walking around, looking for the right spot for prompt to appear on screen and all the clues needs to be left in a clearly visible spot for the player, so he could progress. Additionally, FPP makes it much easier to implement the interactions with NPC bystanders and random objects, since as opposed to TPP it doesn't need to make full animations just for that, which is also why in TPP games this level of interaction with environment, that few games like Deus Ex have, as far as I know, never occurs.

There are a few more points I could make on the subject, but I believe I already made my position perfectly clear.
 
Shavod;n10840441 said:
This is one major advantage that FPP has over TPP when it comes to interacting with the environment, it makes it easier to interact with it without the need for supportive features, such as heavy use of UI, scanning modes and such,
I'm sorry, but your example does an excellent job of illustrating why a certain game mechanic, Witcher Senses, was included in one game but does little to indicate an inherent advantage of first vs third-person perspective. You seen to believe such a game mechanic was necessary because the game was third-person, that is simply untrue. I've played plenty of third-person games where you had to track something via blood smears or footprints and it worked just fine.

Shavod;n10840441 said:
Second matter I have to talk about is, let's call it, a flexibility when it comes to interactions in first person that third person does not possess. Let me reiterate my love for original Deus Ex (and I must add it annoys that I always have to specify that I mean the original DX, otherwise people by default assume I'm talking about it's successors, which as you could probably notice in the past, I'm not as much fond of) by using it once more as an example. In Deus Ex with the benefit of first person perspective you can look at pretty much any direction you want, up and down, allowing you to take a peek in many obscure areas, like under tables or on the shelf localised above your head, which allows the designers to have more fun with putting stuff around for you to find, including story related clues. In game like Mass Effect you only get to interact with objects horizontally, which usually means walking around, looking for the right spot for prompt to appear on screen and all the clues needs to be left in a clearly visible spot for the player, so he could progress. Additionally, FPP makes it much easier to implement the interactions with NPC bystanders and random objects, since as opposed to TPP it doesn't need to make full animations just for that, which is also why in TPP games this level of interaction with environment, that few games like Deus Ex have, as far as I know, never occurs.
Now here you make a somewhat valid argument.
If you want your game to rely on the players ability to note and interact with minutiae in the game environment then yes, first-person is easier to implement. I myself have noted elsewhere the extreme frustration I had with looting certain times in Witcher 3, candle-off, candle on, candle off, candle ... But this doesn't inherently make one perspective superior to another, it merely illustrates an example of poor implementation of a game feature. The "interactivity zone/box" of one item overlapped those of another and were given priority when the player attempted to select which item they were attempting to interact with.

I'd still like to hear why one system is superior to another that doesn't involve game design decisions but rather illustrates an inherent advantage of first-person perspective.
 
Suhiira;n10841071 said:
I've played plenty of third-person games where you had to track something via blood smears or footprints and it worked just fine.

Could you give some examples, because personally I can't recall any third person title, when it would be a significant mechanic and done well on top of that. With the Witcher Senses it was just an example, but overall the point I was trying to make was that when it comes to spotting environmental clues and interacting with them, I think FPP simply works better then TPP. However you should also take under consideration that I actually like third person perspective, I only argue about focus being on FPP in regarding to Cyberpunk and the way I envisioned it could be played. Which is also why, after experiencing the way third person was implemented in The Witcher games, I say that FPP would work simply better based on little bits we know about Cyberpunk.

Suhiira;n10841071 said:
I'd still like to hear why one system is superior to another that doesn't involve game design decisions but rather illustrates an inherent advantage of first-person perspective.

That would be pretty difficult, since the point I made regarding the advantages of that mode was all about the extent of interactivity with environment, which is pretty strongly tied to the game design (some would say it actually tied to loading screens, but whatever). As I said, I have nothing to TPP in general, I only think it would work better in Cyberpunk from design standpoint when it comes to game that I grew to expect.
 
Shavod;n10842021 said:
Could you give some examples,<clip>
I assume (perhaps incorrectly) you're not an MMO fan?
Most MMOs (at least older ones) are third-person and sometimes some do have things besides fetch and kill quests, and tracking animals or following bloodstains happens on occasion. As to strictly third-person games, I can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head; but a good many isometric games have had tracking mechanics ("Baldurs Gate" comes to mind) you used on occasion.

Shavod;n10842021 said:
<clip> I only argue about focus being on FPP in regarding to Cyberpunk and the way I envisioned it could be played. Which is also why, after experiencing the way third person was implemented in The Witcher games, I say that FPP would work simply better based on little bits we know about Cyberpunk.
I'm not going to assume CP2077 is going to be Witcher with guns, so while there will undoubtedly be some similarities (simply because all games where you play a character have certain similarities) there's zero reason to think the "Witcher Senses" mechanic, or anything similar will be used.

Shavod;n10842021 said:
That would be pretty difficult, since the point I made regarding the advantages of that mode was all about the extent of interactivity with environment, which is pretty strongly tied to the game design (some would say it actually tied to loading screens, but whatever). As I said, I have nothing to TPP in general, I only think it would work better in Cyberpunk from design standpoint when it comes to game that I grew to expect.
As I'm sure you've noticed I've been concentrating on game mechanics other then the viewing perspective used. This is because most of the time when people prefer one perspective over another it's because of poorly designed or implemented game mechanics. And that's the point I hope to make.
 
Suhiira;n10842451 said:
I assume (perhaps incorrectly) you're not an MMO fan? Most MMOs (at least older ones) are third-person and sometimes some do have things besides fetch and kill quests, and tracking animals or following bloodstains happens on occasion. As to strictly third-person games, I can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head; but a good many isometric games have had tracking mechanics ("Baldurs Gate" comes to mind) you used on occasion.

No, I'm not, therefore I don't really have any idea about how it worked there, but I assume the MMO you're talking about (based on how little I played the games of such type) that even when they are presented in third person, camera is still localised somewhat above your avatar and you have full control over your mouse cursor, which I assume makes things somewhat easier to operate, then with games that have more restrictive TPP mode (so pretty much any single player focused game on the market). Isometric games are different pair of boots, so let's not bring them into discussion about advatages or disadvatages of FPP/TPP mode.

Suhiira;n10842451 said:
I'm not going to assume CP2077 is going to be Witcher with guns, so while there will undoubtedly be some similarities (simply because all games where you play a character have certain similarities) there's zero reason to think the "Witcher Senses" mechanic, or anything similar will be used

I also don't assume that, but it's very possible that third person perspective (if it's going to be implemented) is going to work in similar way as in The Witcher for better or worse, since the game uses the same engine after all, albeit undoubtedly greatly improved one. Of course, there is an option it will be completely different then in The Witcher, but since most of what we are doing right now is speculating, so I guess it's appropriate to share some of my worries about certain design decisions they can make.
 
Suhiira;n10842451 said:
As I'm sure you've noticed I've been concentrating on game mechanics other then the viewing perspective used. This is because most of the time when people prefer one perspective over another it's because of poorly designed or implemented game mechanics. And that's the point I hope to make.

You both make good points, and it's nice to understand Shavod's perspective a bit better. I'm inclined to agree with you, as I agree that it's largely poorly implemented game mechanics that have resulted in awkward third person experiences in games like TW3.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance placed a heavy focus on realism, thus the design reflects that.

I have absolutely no clue what Shavod is referring to as far as tracking in that game goes, because it was a nightmare for me. One quest has you tracking down a horse that ran away. You have to follow his poop trail through a dense forest with no quest markers or other indicators.

I'm not arguing against that sort of quest design (I love the "doesn't hold your hand" aspect of the game), but to say it was easier than TW3's non-WS view is inaccurate, at least in my experience. I spent 30 minutes trying to find the next poop pile... again, that was great and I had fun doing it, but you get the point.

In the case of a third person game, the obvious answer for a tracking mechanic is to simply make stuff a bit more visible. Not unrealistically so, but make bloodstains a wee bit bigger, make footprints a bit "deeper" or increase color contrast, etc. Lots of solutions that don't involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

As far as interacting with the environment goes, Shavod sure, you have a point there - but just barely. Skyrim, for all its faults, was super easy to play in third person as far as environmental interactivity goes. Projectile aiming was off (Fixable with a simple mod, so it's not an inherent flaw of third person, just poor implementation) but otherwise every single item I could reach in first person was easily reachable in third - just aim my cursor (TW3 didn't have a cursor) at it and press E. Easy peasy.

In fact, in TW3's case, modders fixed that as well, so again, poor implementation on CDPR's part, not an inherent flaw of third person perspectives.

I didn't play the original Deus Ex, so I'll take your word for it that FPP was implemented well. But it's not superior just because it's been done well in the past. I've seen terrible first person cameras and fantastic third person cameras and vice versa.
 
Suhiira;n10839121 said:
For a single-character game where any team NPCs are controlled entirely by an AI then first-person works best.

In a sense. Though I don't really think FPP offers much more to an RPG but a certain sense of presence, which at this day and age where games like Morrowind or Albion aren't made anymore come with a cost in the mechanical trappings.

I liked games where FPP was a coolness gimmick that departs from the norm, just like how cutscenes used to be. Nowadays everything's homogenized, over-refined and taken for granted and a certain special feeling is missing from games (also beyond simply the choice of perspectives).

I'd like a game that looked pretty much like satellite reign and allowed that kind of gameplay (though with different combat and far, far richer interactivity to the world),



but which also allowed and occasional, "for vanity" or gameplay contextual glimpse down on the street level (like if you enter a bar, or are observing a situation at a vantage point, or just want to look around for a while) -- also allowing opportunities on the gameplay side not present with the high up camera.



This, so as to prevent, or mitigate, the numbness that comes from the presentation always coming off the same way.
 
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kofeiiniturpa;n10843661 said:
In a sense. Though I don't really think FPP offers much more to an RPG but a certain sense of presence, which at this day and age where games like Morrowind or Albion aren't made anymore come with a cost in the mechanical trappings.

This, so as to prevent, or mitigate, the numbness that comes from the presentation always coming off the same way.

Man, I wish I could have gotten into Satellite Reign. It looked very interesting, but it just felt too clunky for my liking. Very interesting visuals and theme, and I loved the perspective.

I wouldn't want it here, though, because 2077 is supposed to have more "Verticality," whatever that means (probably flying vehicles, or different city levels). It's not impossible to do that with an isometric game, of course, but you won't really get that sense of presence you get with a TPP RPG.
 
Snowflakez;n10843961 said:
Man, I wish I could have gotten into Satellite Reign. It looked very interesting, but it just felt too clunky for my liking. Very interesting visuals and theme, and I loved the perspective.

Yeah, it wasn’t really a very good game, but it had an excellent layout to start implementing RPG stuff (that the game screamed for in the first place).


On the other note.
I don’t really care about the simulation of verticality or 3D movement, the abstraction of it is enough for me if it means the game otherwise and in general delivers.
 
For a game like this, third person. Only like First person if it's a shooter type game, but for RPG style, third person works best IMO just like Witcher, Assassin's Creed, Batman Arkham, etc.

Edit - just to add, one thing that might be kinda cool is for really personal scenes like sex scenes, etc. it might be kinda neat to have an option to switch to first person to see it through your character's eyes rather than being like a voyeur, lol. :)
 
How could I know that making fun of guys who don't wan't anyone to have TPP in the game make them write elaborated essays why being a walking TV with 90 degree vision impairment is better than seeing your badass character... :D
 
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