Comments on: State of Temptation

By: Drug Crazed Dropkick

Drug Crazed Dropkick — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:46:53 +0000

I also haven’t played it. There are tons of things with achievements though. Even an online game makes me keep playing and playing until I get it. Damn them.

Another Tom Francis quote is that Diablo was addictive, but whoever it was that made it addictive must have left before WoW, because WoW didn’t do that to him.

I really need to stop using him for quotes.

By: US_ManaTree

US_ManaTree — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:38:39 +0000

Last Stand isn’t exactly the same. I haven’t played it, but from what I know, it’s essentially horde mode. This is Diablo styled. It’s more about persistent collecting and power building. RPG stuff. Also, Last Stand has a focus on difficulty, where as Diablo types tend to not.

By: Drug Crazed Dropkick

Drug Crazed Dropkick — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 13:20:15 +0000

I remember Tom Francis saying that he got real bad RSI from Diablo in a PCG podcast.

In general, the human mind does just think that bigger equals better. I note that you haven’t spoken about Last Stand from DoW2. From what I know, you are just doing exactly the same thing over and over again.

By: ManaTree

ManaTree — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 11:21:15 +0000

So true. And such is the allure and danger of procedural generation. So much potential, so much more to understand. I think that’s part of the problem with all of those games (and all of them are some of my favorites, simply because they are so compelling), is that procedural generation is very difficult to get right, simply because most developers have not had enough time to dick around with it. It really is a difficult thing to balance and master. That and AI are usually neglected (well, AI more so than procedural generation because AI is in basically every game). I really want to make cool stuff involving procedural generation. There’s so much huge potential. And in terms of games, more than just items. Procedural events, personalities, battles, environment, audio, visual, etc. I think it’ll be key in true open world games. I really hope AAA studios get to sit down and work on procedural generation. We’ve literally only scratched the top (a very capitalistic top).