Downloading it now. I'll be sure to give it an honest and critical review so DJB can see some more varied feedback.
Though I don't think that so many people having the same reaction is coincidence or ignorance, and I think it would be naive to take that attitude. There must be something in the design that can be addressed to improve the experience or better communicate the goals of the game while still staying true to the original gameplay/art style. Certainly huge maps for a tactical shooter doesn't sound like a correct fit, but I'll wait until I've tried it.
What I will say is huge congratulations for getting it out. It looks beautiful and I look forward to seeing what you've done. :)
Bijiy and i have been playing together on some servers, add me on steam some time and we'll get more people together. organized play in this game is amazingly fun :D
It looks great but It's Just Another Shooter. Which puts it in direct competition with powerhouse retail games.
The artists should be getting payed for the quality of their work.
The game designer should be whipped for letting such talent go on a bland shooter.
Best mod for HL2 but that's not much saying much. 5-10 years ago when everyone was modding HL1, NT wouldn't have got a look in. I so desperately want to like this but it need a reboot with new features.
Just played it. Visually amazing, very very polished. Some niggles in the UI like not being able to see the teams before you join and no auto teambalance but otherwise fine. I can see how the deliberate pace of the game might put off some people but I quite liked it.
It's as fast or as slow as you make it. All in all when playing on publics with randoms, both teams go straight it at straight away to see who is generally the better in a rush, then one sits back when they lose horribly.
Neotokyo is a game where beautiful and technically accomplished art style and an original core gameplay mechanic are dragged down by what some might strongly term incompetant game design. Nevertheless this is a mod with huge potential if the dev team is willing to work on making it less obtuse, less fiddly and easier to pick up.
As the name might suggest, the setting is of a Japan forty years hence and mixes clean geometrical modernist and gritty structural expressionist styles, taking its cues from anime such as <i>Ghost in the Shell</i> and <i>Akira</i>. Two factions, one seperatist-nationalist (JINRAI), one loyalist (the National Security Forces) from within the Japanese military are in-fighting to control the country's destiny. Gameplay is tactical in nature, with up to 24 players duking it out in an array of visually stunning environments complete with authentic ambient sound effects. Levels range from the snowy surrounds of a Japanese dojo to high-tech robotic assembly plants to the skyways and giant air-conditioner units of Neotokyo's rooftops. I cannot impress upon you just how well the team's art team has done; it's just like stepping into a manga.
The mod's first release comes with only one game mode: a capture the flag variant where both teams must attempt to take the 'Ghost' (a futuro female robot mannequin torso complete with erect nipples) and push through the enemy to deliver it to their spawn point. To pick up the Ghost a player must discard their primary weapon and rely either on either a very meagre pistol or (more likely) their teammates for protection. But there is a further twist to the CTF format in which lies the mod's true potential. The Ghost can be activated to display all enemy locations and their proximity, with a compass at the bottom of the HUD displaying the cardinal direction the player is facing. So the player with the Ghost knows where the enemy is, but the location of the Ghost is also shown to all players at all times. In theory it's brilliant, but in practise it relies on the kind of team synergy and communication that works best when the mod is played with friends or players in the know. It is unfortunate that without a headset for most players the quickest method of relaying the enemy's positions is typing "2 West, 1 East" into teamchat.
Communication is similarly sorely lacking throughout the mod's interface. In view of the round-respawn system and short 1-on-1 firefights, some have likened the mod to a futuristic Counter-Strike. Now, if you've ever played Counter-Strike, you'll know that when you connect to a server and the map boots the team selection menu also has a description of the map, telling you that (for example) the Counter-Terrorists must rescue the hostages and the Terrorists must keep hold of them. In Neotokyo there is no such explanation of the game's rules; to begin with you will have no idea what it is you're supposed to be doing. The 'Recon', 'Assault' and 'Support' classes have no descriptions and the weapon selection menu contains no statistical data. You are left with a pot-luck decision that may or may not result in a setup that suits your skillset, or that complements the rest of your team. In fact there is no way of knowing the rest of your team's class distribution unless everybody joins the same squad. The introduction to the game lacks guidance and leaves you feeling utterly confused. The rules of the game do slowly become clear through the <a href="http://www.neotokyohq.com/neotokyo_noob_hints.html" target="_blank">hints system</a> that pops up for all too brief a moment between rounds.
What's certain is that this mod is not intuitive. In my first round of playing the game I was killed without taking a shot, but I didn't know who killed me. This is partly because there's no deathcam (or even the ability to spectate your slayer) but mostly because two out of the three classes can shoot while cloaked. There are two infra-red-style vision modes that will detect cloakers, but one can be hard-countered if the target does something imaginative like standing still. Some more experienced players of the game insisted this was a 'deep' mechanic, but in my eyes there is no reason not to use cloak and you have up to 13 seconds to reap the benefits. Dystopia did this rock-paper-scissors vision mechanic much better.
If you do manage to flank an enemy you won't realise it until you sweep the crosshair over them and it doesn't turn friendly-fire red. The reason for this is that each class has 3 different player models to choose from, so that's 9 models per team and a total of <a href="http://" target="_blank">18 player models</a> to familiarise yourself with. The other reason you might not think it's an enemy is because there's no minimap to help you even conceive of flanking manouvres without prior and intimate knowledge of the map. The maps, gorgeous as they are, often suffer from overly complex pathways further burdened by an overabundance of visual clutter and lack of clear signposting.
But by far the worst part of the game's design is the Ranking system. In the same way that <i>Call of Duty 4</i> infuriatingly rewards kill-streaks with longer, virtually unavoidable kill-streaks and forces beginner players to play with toy replica guns for the first 20 hours of online play, Neotokyo rewards better players with the more accurate, longer firing and stealthier weapons of the game. This way the good get better and beginners will stay under the thumb for a good while before making any real progress. After about 5 hours of online play I still haven't used about a quarter of the mod's arsenal. I know what they look like and how they sound, though, because those are mostly the guns that I've been dying to. Even better, an AFK player who survives to see their team win the round is deemed more valuable than the teammate who died valiantly fighting for his cause, the former being rewarded with three times more experience points towards getting their hands on the elusive super weapons of lore.
On the immensity of its design frustrations, it's tempting to recommend just <a href="http://cdbaby.com/cd/edharrison" target="_blank">buying the superb OST CD</a>, but the truth is it would be a crime not to venture into the beautifully crafted land- and soundscapes of Neotokyo to witness this craftwork first-hand. That, and the game has the potential to really come alive if you and the rest of the players know what you're doing. It needs a lot of polish (revision even) on the design front, but this mod has legs so here's to hoping the devs run with it.
Awesome mod, been playing it quite a lot recently. It's like a slower, more tactical Counterstrike with player classes, a fun objective, a bigger reliance on teamwork, and cool vision modes. The graphics are professional quality, more or less, and I'm digging the whole "swap spawn points and ghost location" thing that the maps do, which helps relieve a lot of what would be tedium. I don't like how you can't see any gun stats or how you have to pick your class and gun every single round, but after a few hours I know how all the guns work so that's not a huge issue. Some people can't find much variety in the guns but they all seem different enough to me. I really like the larger maps; it gives everyone a chance to sneak around, even the Support class, which has no sprint and no cloak. The spectator mode is really buggy though; stuff keeps going in and out of existence like you're in the skybox or something.
I would like it if the game had a little more stuff (although it doesn't need to reach Dystopia levels of crazy; I don't need to see people with katanas bouncing through a field of exploding rockets and spider robots and then blowing up) but overall it's a very well done mod and it's great for a few hours with buddies. I play on the Penny Arcade server with friends who basically all have microphones and work together as a team which makes it a ton more fun, like all tactical games. It strikes me as a bit too slow and contemplative to play with a bunch of random pubbies but that might be just me.
Because Crispy and I seem doomed to disagree about 80% of life here's some stuff:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you do manage to flank an enemy you won't realise it until you sweep the crosshair over them and it doesn't turn friendly-fire red<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Teammates have a green d-pad sort of thing over them on the HUD. It's hard to see if you're using your vision mode, but that's kind of the point I think.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The maps, gorgeous as they are, often suffer from overly complex pathways further burdened by an overabundance of visual clutter and lack of clear signposting.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I agree that they don't funnel you to where you need to go like in TF2, but there are two reasons for this, I'd say. The first is that they have a bunch of spawn locations and ghost locations; you can't just shunt players down a few paths unless you predetermine the paths. The other reason is the general "hardcore" or unforgiving nature of the game. It really doesn't seem to be a handholder like TF2 or CS; it strikes me as a more tactical game like Insurgency or something, a game that's mroe focused on figuring out your own way throught he maps instead of letting the level designer make your decisions for you. Even the aesthetic (aside from the funny easter eggs), pinched from GitS/Akira, reinforces this, with the mixture of visual complexity and sparse desolation that is characteristic of cyberpunk and which I think lends itself to a game that really feels like you're part of the universe (incidentally, my biggest problem with Dystopia is that it doesn't do this at all. It feels more like team deathmatch in sci-fi land than a cyberpunk near-future.) And don't even get me started on the awesome gibs.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->But by far the worst part of the game's design is the Ranking system. In the same way that Call of Duty 4 infuriatingly rewards kill-streaks with longer, virtually unavoidable kill-streaks and forces beginner players to play with toy replica guns for the first 20 hours of online play, Neotokyo rewards better players with the more accurate, longer firing and stealthier weapons of the game. This way the good get better and beginners will stay under the thumb for a good while before making any real progress.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> It's possible you just suck or something because I unlock all the guns every round. More importantly, higher doesn't always mean better: one of the guns open to you at the beginning (the semi-auto rifle with a small magazine) is one of my favorites, and for close range damage the beginning submachineguns are easily the best (although I think rifles are almost always a better option unless you're sneaking behind people a great deal). The big difference between this and CoD 4 is that you unlock in each round, which means you don't have to grind or anything. Everyone starts on a level playing field. Still, I wouldn't mind if they got rid of the unlock system altogether. I don't see what the point is, unless it's to make the game easier for newcomers: you have a limited selection until you've played for about 20 minutes and unlocked another gun or two, and by the time you unlock the next couple you're probably pretty familiar with it. The game is so unforgiving in other aspects, though, that I think they could do away with this handholding, especially considering someone like you, Crispy, who it is designed for, seems to dislike it.
If it sounds like I'm being too harsh on it, it's because it has some criminal design blunders (not telling players the rules of the game, not having any class or weapon descriptions, no HUD icon for when you are carrying the 'flag'). If these are addressed the game will be a lot easier to understand for the initiate player. If people at least understand the gameplay they will be able to make an informed decision as to whether they like it or not, but the mod as it stands makes virtually no direct attempt to explain itself.
IMHO, the next major version update should focus on: - Pre-round message describing the game objectives (i.e. "Deliver the Ghost to the capture point") - Class menu descriptions - Weapon menu stats/descriptions (damage, rate of fire, etc.) - First-person spec mode, so newbies can understand the vision modes and learn the finer points of the game through example - The ability to spec players on the other team - Autospectate the player who killed you (server toggleable) - Allow the round to be played out when map limit hits - Possible inclusion of a HUD minimap, or at least a map toggle - Crosshairs that correctly display each weapon's cone of fire - Scrollbar for the scorebord (the game is designed for 24 player, afterall) - Class info on the Scoreboard or on the Class Selection menu - Some sort of comms info menu (e.g. 'Enemy ahead', 'Cover me', 'Advance', etc.) - Proper friendly-fire protection (e.g. anti-griefer system; currently it only seems to protect against melee and not ranged FF) - Increase 'Random Hint' duration - Label vision modes on the HUD when in use (e.g. "Night Vision Mode") - Consider revising the XP distribution system to reward activity over inactivity and minimise snowball effect - Consider revising the weapon balance (especially top-tier weapons, which tend to dominate)
Only a few of those are balance changes, the rest are focused on making the game easier to learn. I can understand why you'd want that in a retail game where your objective is to make the most money by selling to as many people as possible, but I imagine the Neotokyo designers really don't care if dense people have trouble picking up their game or if people with Alzheimer's forget if they're carrying the ghost or can't figure out whether they've turned on their vision mode. Making a mod is hard and time consuming and you can't possible do everything. When there's a conflict between making it easy to pick up or polishing some other feature, I suspect they went with the second, because aside from all the objects glitching out in obsever mode, NT is the most professional looking, polished mod I've played in a while. Sure, it's harder to learn than most games, but that's not a problem once you learn it. Some of my favorite games (Starsiege: Tribes, Natural Selection, Men of War, STALKER) get knocked all the time for being too hard to learn. I don't mind.
You might counter by saying "but all those games have more stuff to help you than Neotokyo does" but honestly Neotokyo is not an incredibly complex game compared to those. There's only one objective, and it's a giant flashing icon that's visible 100% of the time. There are only a few places to take the objective, and those are giant glowing arrows on your HUD 100% of the time. Teammates have icons over them all the time, even through walls if they're in your squad. The guns might be very hard to tell apart at first, but there are fewer than there are in Counterstrike and Counterstrike doesn't even have useful weapon descriptions either. You just have to <i>learn them</i>, or alternatively go play another game. There's only one vision mode for each class, there's only one kind of sprint, and only one kind of cloak. There aren't a thousand buttons to bind or a thousand maps to learn. It's really not overly complex.
<!--quoteo(post=1715948:date=Jul 6 2009, 04:23 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 6 2009, 04:23 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1715948"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->It's really not overly complex.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->And yet it manages to seem confusing when you start, That is how badly it's been designed. Ever played a board game, or a learnt a new sport? Board games come with a list of rules in the box, no matter if they're super-easy or super-hard. Does Risk come with a set of rules? Yes. And Magic? Yes. And Cluedo? Yes. Dungeons and Dragons has a rulebook. And when you learn a new sport you begin by learning the rules.
Basically every game has a list of rules to tell you how to play the game. Neotokyo only has 1 tooltip that appears roughly 0.001% of the time to teach you the basic rules of the Ghost game mode. The classes are similarly only described in 'Random Tooltips'. This is simply bad design. I don't think you speak for what the devs plan to do next, but if they really would prefer to actively stifle their own playerbase, then they don't know how to design a multiplayer mod.
Most of the changes I listed are easily achieved and don't encrouch on the current gameplay. It would be madness not to fix them. Also, notice that I said next major update release, not next patch.
I don't understand why you think these changes are handholding. Most of them are simply stating the obvious to avoid confusion, not making the game less skilful. E.g. labelling the vision modes so you don't have to learn wtf they do from a tooltip. There's nothing outside of tooltips that states that the Recon's vision mode is 'Night Vision', the Assault's is 'motion detection' and the Support's is 'heat vision'. Knowing this information and not knowing this information doesn't make the game easier to play, only easier to learn, which leads me to the next point.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Only a few of those are balance changes, the rest are focused on making the game easier to learn. I can understand why you'd want that in a retail game where your objective is to make the most money by selling to as many people as possible, but I imagine the Neotokyo designers really don't care if dense people have trouble picking up their game or if people with Alzheimer's forget if they're carrying the ghost or can't figure out whether they've turned on their vision mode.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think it's quite obvious I'm not an idiot. You should know that when you pick up the Ghost you don't automatically switch to it, so only a generic audio alert tells you this. This would be fine but Neotokyo has lots of random ambient sounds that play suddenly throughout the level. So I, a not-stupid-person, think I've picked up the Ghost, but I'm not sure. I dropped my primary weapon to pick it up because I saw other players holding it in their hands and I didn't automatically pick it up when I stepped over it. I don't switch weapons because I have never played any CTF mode where the flag is a usable item. I thought I picked it up, but to me there's no obvious way to tell. I might have taken too long causing it to respawn, but I don't know because there's nothing telling me I have the GAME OBJECTIVE. I didn't mention this in the review because it's slightly less obvious to pick up on for a dev than the bleedingly obvious <i>Class Descriptions Act</i> of 1992, but I still think it should be addressed, because it's crucial game info. In TF2 it when you pick up the intel the announcer says "We have taken the intelligence" AND the intel appears in your hands AND a briefcase outline flashes up on the HUD AND it has a HUD icon above the HP/Ammo counters AND an alert pops up next to the kill/death messages. It would be nice if Neotokyo did <i>just one</i> of those things with a bit of clarity. A text alert in the top corner of the screen is fine and a piece of piss to add into the game.
Your opposition to helping people learn the game is totally inane and illogical. A multiplayer game is most fun when everyone knows what they're doing, so it makes total unequivocable sense to teach people the game in the shortest possible timeframe so that the main decider in games is teamwork and skill, not beginners not knowing what to do. Single-player games can be far more obtuse, but it doesn't make sense to make a multiplayer game impenetrable.
And if you really, really think you're still right, let's take a look at the changelog for the second release of a mod that never made it: <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->BETA 2.0 [8.13.99] NEW Features : » Three new guns added : {Sig SG-552 Commando , AK-47 , Desert Eagle} » Added silencers to the USP .45 Tactical and the Colt M4A1 <b>» Added a round timer which shows how much time is left in the round</b> » Added team scores which shows how many rounds a team has won » Added Night Vision Goggles » Added new entity for mappers to use (info_hostage_rescue) » Optimized all the models for lower r_speeds! » Ability to assign keys to all of the commands from the controls menu (courtesy of cannelbrae of Gunman project)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Woah! What's this, a round timer? But that's dumbing down the game, isn't it? That's explaining the actual rules of the game. What a poor decision! If people are too 'dense' to be able to remember the timer is 5 minutes long, I don't know why the devs wanted them playing their mod. Better to make the game deliberately hard to pick up for no logical reason other than a misguided sense of elitism. That's the best way to design a game that people will want to play for years to come. It should have been obvious from this decision alone these guys had no future.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
edited July 2009
Honestly, I think Crispy is right (no matter how abrasive he is being about it). The mod isn't that complex, but ALL of the detailed info is unavailable to casual players. Even what is available isn't much.
Fixing all of this stuff is also really not all that hard.
Giving class descriptions with a mouse over or in the class selection. Giving weapon Descriptions in mouse over (seriously needed). A Small sprite telling you that you have picked up the flag. Explaining (some how) the features of the ghost (preferable either pregame, or via in game tips like NS did).
Really, most of this could be fixed via something like NS's tip system (that you can turn off like NS's)
I think the worst bits are knowledge of the vision modes, knowledge of how the ghost works, and knowledge of what the weapons are like.
After playing a 2nd time I've done a complete 180 and think this game is very, very good.
When your team uses voice-comms an extra dimension is added to the game via the Ghost and compass. I complained in my earlier post about NT not having a unique selling point but this is it. I won't deny it's a niche- it's luck of the draw whether the server your own has players with a mic, but it's an massively enjoyable experience when they do.
Also, the guns are fun and easy to use (though the pump action shotgun seems a bit weak).
All I want is a manual that explains things (can thermoptics see through cloak and smoke?), re-skinned player models (as there's so many they really should be 80-90% blue or green to make it obvious) and a slight across-the-board speed increase to help the Recon class.
Crispy, you note how all board games come with a manual. NeoTokyo's manual is the set of noob tips on their website, which you refused to read before playing. I read that before playing (in fact, before the mod even came out) and I knew exactly what I was doing, exactly what the vision modes were, exactly what CTG was, that I had to hold the ghost in my hands like a weapon, etc. If you're not going to read the manual I don't think it's fair to call something out for being confusing.
In fact they just released a pdf manual too, although I dunno if that's any good. I'm reading it now. Saying that none of this info is clear isn't the right way to put it. More accurately, none of the info is in the game. I'm not saying this is a great idea or that every game should do this. In fact, I agree that the game would be MUCH clearer if the design was better. I agree with almost all of your points. What I disagree with is the idea that the team should have focused on this over anything ELSE in the mod. Could you think of something you'd like to remove from the mod, in order to replace it with ingame hints and stuff? Because the team has limited resources and can't do everything perfectly.
Had quite a few games of this earilier but its not my really cup of tea.
After the first game ended my initial impression was "counter-strike in the future".
Most rounds seemed to decend into team deathmatch with alot of people ignoring the objective and simply just running and gunning for the other team.
Also the lack of any minimap makes moving to the objective rather confusing especially if your trying to intercept the ghost carrier only to end up in a dead end with ghost marker being on the other side of the wall infront of you.
It does look real nice though i'll give them that and it seems to have taken alot of inpiration from GITS/Shirow but it isnt really enough to keep me playing.
Played it last night for about an hour. I'm an experienced FPS gamer and the chatter I heard in-game was "so what's the actual difference between classes? I can't really see it"
Took me about 45minutes to really get the hang of how the classes work more (I prefer the Support Class - use the vision = WIN at long range!) Seriously... you can see that TINY bit of heat signature poking around the corner the TINIEST little bit. Aim at wall and SPRAY! Enemy be dead... (I love wooden walls on maps).
:)
But overall gameplay is a little weird to pick-up, I like the "tips" when you first start up they certainly make you go "ohhhhhhhhh" from time to time :)
Some maps need balancing, and more fall damage in my opinion. Falling 5 or 6 floors to then be able to shoot through glass, jump on down another 1 1/2 floors and still take out 1/2 a team... yet they die from 1 or 2 shotguns to the chest seems a little bizarre.
<!--quoteo(post=1716014:date=Jul 6 2009, 08:35 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 6 2009, 08:35 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716014"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Crispy, you note how all board games come with a manual. NeoTokyo's manual is the set of noob tips on their website, which you refused to read before playing. I read that before playing (in fact, before the mod even came out) and I knew exactly what I was doing, exactly what the vision modes were, exactly what CTG was, that I had to hold the ghost in my hands like a weapon, etc. If you're not going to read the manual I don't think it's fair to call something out for being confusing.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->1. Most of the website was down on release day (congrats to the team on getting a temp page up with mirrors so quickly, btw). All the more reason to give the players information in the game or at least include it in the download. 2. There is no ReadMe or any tutorial with the game files that shipped. 3. You are a self-admitting fan of the mod who familiarised himself with the gameplay long before release. You were also at one stage part of the mod team. Your behaviour is not indicative of the average person downloading and playing this mod for the first time. When you buy a game off Steam, do you go to the website to make sure you know the rules before playing? No. It's an unreasonable assumption on the part of any designer.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In fact they just released a pdf manual too, although I dunno if that's any good. I'm reading it now. Saying that none of this info is clear isn't the right way to put it. More accurately, none of the info is in the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->My review was of the mod, not the website. If the mod installer linked to the manual or if it prompted you to read it before playing, that would be a whole different story. Have you ever read a game review that vindicates unclear game design by advocating the official website as an acceptable method of teaching you the game? The rules in board games come in the box, the rules in video games come with the installer or are taught in the game. The rules in Neotokyo simply aren't clear enough and it makes the game far less enjoyable than it should be to begin with.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I agree with almost all of your points. What I disagree with is the idea that the team should have focused on this over anything ELSE in the mod. Could you think of something you'd like to remove from the mod, in order to replace it with ingame hints and stuff? Because the team has limited resources and can't do everything perfectly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I would have focused on just 1 player model/skin per class for release instead of doing 3 times that work and spent more time on making the game easier to pick up. In fact more time spent on making the classes really look distinct across both teams would have reduced the kind of confusion people are currently experiencing. But my original point is that this is stuff that needs to be addressed for the 'next major update', and that's the 2nd time I've repeated that. Implementing text in a Class/Weapon menu is not really that time-consuming. It's very achievable for a first release with just a modicum of thought invested.
I should make it clear that I found the actual gameplay good, once I understood it. But in all truth if I wasn't giving it a review I probably would have stopped playing it after about half an hour of trying to understand it and come out with a negative impression of the mod. This is why I find the design so frustrating, because it drags down what is otherwise a unique and fun game concept in a beautifully crafted setting. And this is why I think the changes I mentioned should be made for the next major update at the latest, or the mod risks falling into a chasm of obscurity entirely of its own making.
<!--quoteo(post=1716014:date=Jul 6 2009, 08:35 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 6 2009, 08:35 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716014"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Crispy, you note how all board games come with a manual. NeoTokyo's manual is the set of noob tips on their website, which you refused to read before playing. I read that before playing (in fact, before the mod even came out) and I knew exactly what I was doing, exactly what the vision modes were, exactly what CTG was, that I had to hold the ghost in my hands like a weapon, etc. If you're not going to read the manual I don't think it's fair to call something out for being confusing.
In fact they just released a pdf manual too, although I dunno if that's any good. I'm reading it now. Saying that none of this info is clear isn't the right way to put it. More accurately, none of the info is in the game. I'm not saying this is a great idea or that every game should do this. In fact, I agree that the game would be MUCH clearer if the design was better. I agree with almost all of your points. What I disagree with is the idea that the team should have focused on this over anything ELSE in the mod. Could you think of something you'd like to remove from the mod, in order to replace it with ingame hints and stuff? Because the team has limited resources and can't do everything perfectly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's an old PDF designed for PT's I believe. I think they're working on a real one.
<!--quoteo(post=1716368:date=Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM:name=Crispy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crispy @ Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->1. Most of the website was down on release day (congrats to the team on getting a temp page up with mirrors so quickly, btw). All the more reason to give the players information in the game or at least include it in the download. 2. There is no ReadMe or any tutorial with the game files that shipped. 3. You are a self-admitting fan of the mod who familiarised himself with the gameplay long before release. You were also at one stage part of the mod team. Your behaviour is not indicative of the average person downloading and playing this mod for the first time. When you buy a game off Steam, do you go to the website to make sure you know the rules before playing? No. It's an unreasonable assumption on the part of any designer.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> They can hardly be blamed for having their website go down under traffic, and they got the full thing back up ASAP. It does make sense to include the noob hints in the install, but I guess they figured people would read the stuff online before the mod came out if they cared at all. I'm a fan of the mod, sure, but I wasn't a fan before it came out and I've quite definitely never been on the dev team. I just registered for their forums a couple weeks ago and my first post there got flamed pretty badly because I offered to proofread their stuff, having noticed the typos in the noob hints that they put up a few weeks ago so that people like you who can't figure things out themselves without getting annoyed could familiarize themselves with the game. And when I buy a game off Steam I read the manual, which Steam links to.
<!--quoteo(post=1716368:date=Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM:name=Crispy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crispy @ Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->My review was of the mod, not the website. If the mod installer linked to the manual or if it prompted you to read it before playing, that would be a whole different story. Have you ever read a game review that vindicates unclear game design by advocating the official website as an acceptable method of teaching you the game? The rules in board games come in the box, the rules in video games come with the installer or are taught in the game. The rules in Neotokyo simply aren't clear enough and it makes the game far less enjoyable than it should be to begin with.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I agree it would have made sense to stick it in the installer but Neotokyo's a mod made by like 8 people, not a full retail game; you can't expect them to include a paper manual in a box the way a retail game would. For a mod, I think it's fair to have to read it on the computer, which is what I did with the noob hints.
<!--quoteo(post=1716368:date=Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM:name=Crispy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crispy @ Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I would have focused on just 1 player model/skin per class for release instead of doing 3 times that work and spent more time on making the game easier to pick up. In fact more time spent on making the classes really look distinct across both teams would have reduced the kind of confusion people are currently experiencing. But my original point is that this is stuff that needs to be addressed for the 'next major update', and that's the 2nd time I've repeated that. Implementing text in a Class/Weapon menu is not really that time-consuming. It's very achievable for a first release with just a modicum of thought invested.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I'm pretty sure the people doing the 3d models of the players aren't the same ones who design the mod, Crispy. People aren't interchangeable.
<!--quoteo(post=1716368:date=Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM:name=Crispy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crispy @ Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I should make it clear that I found the actual gameplay good, once I understood it. But in all truth if I wasn't giving it a review I probably would have stopped playing it after about half an hour of trying to understand it and come out with a negative impression of the mod. This is why I find the design so frustrating, because it drags down what is otherwise a unique and fun game concept in a beautifully crafted setting. And this is why I think the changes I mentioned should be made for the next major update at the latest, or the mod risks falling into a chasm of obscurity entirely of its own making.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> That's more of a criticism of the metagame rather than the game itself; you're saying it's fun but very hard to get in to and it will scare people off. If Neotokyo doesn't care about scaring people off, then I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, I guess it's better to be popular than unpopular, but there's something to be said for focusing more on making the game fun for people who put the effort in than on making it accessible to a lot of people who are probably going to stop playing anyways. I'm not saying one way is better or worse than the other, but it seems odd to criticise the mod for something like that when the game itself doesn't suffer at all. It's like saying chess is a worse game for not having all the piece's moves on the bottom of the board. That would make it easier to pick up, definitely, but that doesn't make the actual game of chess any more fun or less fun.
locallyunsceneFeeder of TrollsJoin Date: 2002-12-25Member: 11528Members, Constellation
edited July 2009
<!--quoteo(post=1716396:date=Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716396"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I agree it would have made sense to stick it in the installer but Neotokyo's a mod made by like 8 people, not a full retail game; you can't expect them to include a paper manual in a box the way a retail game would. For a mod, I think it's fair to have to read it on the computer, which is what I did with the noob hints.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Huh? He asked for a README.txt to be unzipped with the installer, not a paper box with a manual to be shipped to him. <!--quoteo(post=1716396:date=Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716396"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm pretty sure the people doing the 3d models of the players aren't the same ones who design the mod, Crispy. People aren't interchangeable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> No, but if you have different priorities you will hire different people to begin with. He thinks gameplay should have been prioritized over graphics. You don't have to agree with that, but I'd personally rather play a fun game than a pretty one. <!--quoteo(post=1716396:date=Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716396"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They can hardly be blamed for having their website go down under traffic, and they got the full thing back up ASAP. It does make sense to include the noob hints in the install, but I guess they figured people would read the stuff online before the mod came out if they cared at all. I'm a fan of the mod, sure, but I wasn't a fan before it came out and I've quite definitely never been on the dev team. I just registered for their forums a couple weeks ago and my first post there got flamed pretty badly because I offered to proofread their stuff, having noticed the typos in the noob hints that they put up a few weeks ago so that people like you who can't figure things out themselves without getting annoyed could familiarize themselves with the game. And when I buy a game off Steam I read the manual, which Steam links to. ... That's more of a criticism of the metagame rather than the game itself; you're saying it's fun but very hard to get in to and it will scare people off. If Neotokyo doesn't care about scaring people off, then I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, I guess it's better to be popular than unpopular, but there's something to be said for focusing more on making the game fun for people who put the effort in than on making it accessible to a lot of people who are probably going to stop playing anyways. I'm not saying one way is better or worse than the other, but it seems odd to criticise the mod for something like that when the game itself doesn't suffer at all. It's like saying chess is a worse game for not having all the piece's moves on the bottom of the board. That would make it easier to pick up, definitely, but that doesn't make the actual game of chess any more fun or less fun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> How the heck could you play chess for the first time without having the rules explained to you in some form or another? At the time of release they weren't and he's suggesting easy ways for them to have been accessible. I don't think "maybe they want the game to be obscure/fail" is a very good reason not to make the changes.
Then any multiplayer game. Some people prefer to figure games out themselves, others prefer to read the manual, and others want the game to teach them. No matter what option you choose, or no matter what options are available, the actual GAME is just as fun, because once you learn it, it doesn't matter HOW you learned it. Whether or not it's obtuse and hard to get into doesn't change how much fun it is four weeks later when everyone knows everything there is to know. It's a valid criticism of a mod to say that it's hard to get into, but it's not a valid criticism to say that this makes it less fun. The mod isn't any less fun; it's just the learning process that you like or dislike.
It's a good game (futuristic Rainbow-Six-esque ftw), but some aspects of the game could be polished. Very fun with a team that actually uses teamwork and actually uses the Ghost. As said before, Support thermal vision = win.
I think I got your work with Hullbreach mixed up with Neotokyo.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not saying one way is better or worse than the other, but it seems odd to criticise the mod for something like that when the game itself doesn't suffer at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->It suffers from people not knowing wth they're doing. It's not about dumbing the game down (don't make me embolden-italicise-underline-capitalise this), it's about telling people the fundamentals of how it's played. Counter-Strike does it in 2 lines of text. It's not difficult to do. A 1-person mod team could do it, let alone an 8-person mod team. And it certainly doesn't dumb the game down or take away ANY of the experience for the 'cleverer' games players of the NTS community. Quit with the strawman: dumbing down gameplay != explaining fundamental rules of gameplay.
I sit here, years after getting hl2 and thinking...why? To this day no mod release has managed to grab my attention..sure they hype alot, but damn, ns2 aint coming on source either so, an even bigger why.
As posted above , excellent game universe but poor game flow. I'm biased since I hate tactical shooters , but I hope the dev team didn't intend the mod to be that unfun. It's quite an achievement to make it less intuitive than Dystopia (which is much more complex)
It may sound shallow , but I found 2 conditions to have an enjoyable round : have friends or good teamplayers in your team , and higher skill than most of the enemy team. This paves the way for multiple victories which give you better guns , also adding variety to the game. Otherwise , being target practice for the other team is terrible , and I know for fact that communication and teamwork will not help overcome the widening gap.
QuaunautThe longest seven days in history...Join Date: 2003-03-21Member: 14759Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Shadow
<!--quoteo(post=1716498:date=Jul 9 2009, 05:53 AM:name=CoolCookieCooks)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (CoolCookieCooks @ Jul 9 2009, 05:53 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716498"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Maybe expectations for HL2 mods are TOO high with all the great retail games out? who knows. Just remember source mod developers arent getting paid.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, probably. Making art assets is just too difficult these days, and while programmers would love to make changes, your mod doesn't get noticed without separate art assets.
Just kinda sad such great art got wasted on something like this.
Comments
Though I don't think that so many people having the same reaction is coincidence or ignorance, and I think it would be naive to take that attitude. There must be something in the design that can be addressed to improve the experience or better communicate the goals of the game while still staying true to the original gameplay/art style. Certainly huge maps for a tactical shooter doesn't sound like a correct fit, but I'll wait until I've tried it.
What I will say is huge congratulations for getting it out. It looks beautiful and I look forward to seeing what you've done. :)
The artists should be getting payed for the quality of their work.
The game designer should be whipped for letting such talent go on a bland shooter.
Best mod for HL2 but that's not much saying much. 5-10 years ago when everyone was modding HL1, NT wouldn't have got a look in. I so desperately want to like this but it need a reboot with new features.
How am I supposed to shoot you guys in game if I don't know what your steam ID's are >:(
Neotokyo is a game where beautiful and technically accomplished art style and an original core gameplay mechanic are dragged down by what some might strongly term incompetant game design. Nevertheless this is a mod with huge potential if the dev team is willing to work on making it less obtuse, less fiddly and easier to pick up.
As the name might suggest, the setting is of a Japan forty years hence and mixes clean geometrical modernist and gritty structural expressionist styles, taking its cues from anime such as <i>Ghost in the Shell</i> and <i>Akira</i>. Two factions, one seperatist-nationalist (JINRAI), one loyalist (the National Security Forces) from within the Japanese military are in-fighting to control the country's destiny. Gameplay is tactical in nature, with up to 24 players duking it out in an array of visually stunning environments complete with authentic ambient sound effects. Levels range from the snowy surrounds of a Japanese dojo to high-tech robotic assembly plants to the skyways and giant air-conditioner units of Neotokyo's rooftops. I cannot impress upon you just how well the team's art team has done; it's just like stepping into a manga.
The mod's first release comes with only one game mode: a capture the flag variant where both teams must attempt to take the 'Ghost' (a futuro female robot mannequin torso complete with erect nipples) and push through the enemy to deliver it to their spawn point. To pick up the Ghost a player must discard their primary weapon and rely either on either a very meagre pistol or (more likely) their teammates for protection. But there is a further twist to the CTF format in which lies the mod's true potential. The Ghost can be activated to display all enemy locations and their proximity, with a compass at the bottom of the HUD displaying the cardinal direction the player is facing. So the player with the Ghost knows where the enemy is, but the location of the Ghost is also shown to all players at all times. In theory it's brilliant, but in practise it relies on the kind of team synergy and communication that works best when the mod is played with friends or players in the know. It is unfortunate that without a headset for most players the quickest method of relaying the enemy's positions is typing "2 West, 1 East" into teamchat.
Communication is similarly sorely lacking throughout the mod's interface. In view of the round-respawn system and short 1-on-1 firefights, some have likened the mod to a futuristic Counter-Strike. Now, if you've ever played Counter-Strike, you'll know that when you connect to a server and the map boots the team selection menu also has a description of the map, telling you that (for example) the Counter-Terrorists must rescue the hostages and the Terrorists must keep hold of them. In Neotokyo there is no such explanation of the game's rules; to begin with you will have no idea what it is you're supposed to be doing. The 'Recon', 'Assault' and 'Support' classes have no descriptions and the weapon selection menu contains no statistical data. You are left with a pot-luck decision that may or may not result in a setup that suits your skillset, or that complements the rest of your team. In fact there is no way of knowing the rest of your team's class distribution unless everybody joins the same squad. The introduction to the game lacks guidance and leaves you feeling utterly confused. The rules of the game do slowly become clear through the <a href="http://www.neotokyohq.com/neotokyo_noob_hints.html" target="_blank">hints system</a> that pops up for all too brief a moment between rounds.
What's certain is that this mod is not intuitive. In my first round of playing the game I was killed without taking a shot, but I didn't know who killed me. This is partly because there's no deathcam (or even the ability to spectate your slayer) but mostly because two out of the three classes can shoot while cloaked. There are two infra-red-style vision modes that will detect cloakers, but one can be hard-countered if the target does something imaginative like standing still. Some more experienced players of the game insisted this was a 'deep' mechanic, but in my eyes there is no reason not to use cloak and you have up to 13 seconds to reap the benefits. Dystopia did this rock-paper-scissors vision mechanic much better.
If you do manage to flank an enemy you won't realise it until you sweep the crosshair over them and it doesn't turn friendly-fire red. The reason for this is that each class has 3 different player models to choose from, so that's 9 models per team and a total of <a href="http://" target="_blank">18 player models</a> to familiarise yourself with. The other reason you might not think it's an enemy is because there's no minimap to help you even conceive of flanking manouvres without prior and intimate knowledge of the map. The maps, gorgeous as they are, often suffer from overly complex pathways further burdened by an overabundance of visual clutter and lack of clear signposting.
But by far the worst part of the game's design is the Ranking system. In the same way that <i>Call of Duty 4</i> infuriatingly rewards kill-streaks with longer, virtually unavoidable kill-streaks and forces beginner players to play with toy replica guns for the first 20 hours of online play, Neotokyo rewards better players with the more accurate, longer firing and stealthier weapons of the game. This way the good get better and beginners will stay under the thumb for a good while before making any real progress. After about 5 hours of online play I still haven't used about a quarter of the mod's arsenal. I know what they look like and how they sound, though, because those are mostly the guns that I've been dying to. Even better, an AFK player who survives to see their team win the round is deemed more valuable than the teammate who died valiantly fighting for his cause, the former being rewarded with three times more experience points towards getting their hands on the elusive super weapons of lore.
On the immensity of its design frustrations, it's tempting to recommend just <a href="http://cdbaby.com/cd/edharrison" target="_blank">buying the superb OST CD</a>, but the truth is it would be a crime not to venture into the beautifully crafted land- and soundscapes of Neotokyo to witness this craftwork first-hand. That, and the game has the potential to really come alive if you and the rest of the players know what you're doing. It needs a lot of polish (revision even) on the design front, but this mod has legs so here's to hoping the devs run with it.
<b>Art</b>
2D Art: 4/5
3D Art: 4/5
Animations: 3/5
Sound effects: 3/5
Music: 5/5
<b>Game Design</b>
UI: 1/5
Intuitiveness: 1/5
Balance: 1/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Originality: 4/5
<b>Overall:</b> 4/5 - The game design doesn't match the art's high level of accomplishment, but worth the download.
I would like it if the game had a little more stuff (although it doesn't need to reach Dystopia levels of crazy; I don't need to see people with katanas bouncing through a field of exploding rockets and spider robots and then blowing up) but overall it's a very well done mod and it's great for a few hours with buddies. I play on the Penny Arcade server with friends who basically all have microphones and work together as a team which makes it a ton more fun, like all tactical games. It strikes me as a bit too slow and contemplative to play with a bunch of random pubbies but that might be just me.
Because Crispy and I seem doomed to disagree about 80% of life here's some stuff:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->If you do manage to flank an enemy you won't realise it until you sweep the crosshair over them and it doesn't turn friendly-fire red<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Teammates have a green d-pad sort of thing over them on the HUD. It's hard to see if you're using your vision mode, but that's kind of the point I think.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The maps, gorgeous as they are, often suffer from overly complex pathways further burdened by an overabundance of visual clutter and lack of clear signposting.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree that they don't funnel you to where you need to go like in TF2, but there are two reasons for this, I'd say. The first is that they have a bunch of spawn locations and ghost locations; you can't just shunt players down a few paths unless you predetermine the paths. The other reason is the general "hardcore" or unforgiving nature of the game. It really doesn't seem to be a handholder like TF2 or CS; it strikes me as a more tactical game like Insurgency or something, a game that's mroe focused on figuring out your own way throught he maps instead of letting the level designer make your decisions for you. Even the aesthetic (aside from the funny easter eggs), pinched from GitS/Akira, reinforces this, with the mixture of visual complexity and sparse desolation that is characteristic of cyberpunk and which I think lends itself to a game that really feels like you're part of the universe (incidentally, my biggest problem with Dystopia is that it doesn't do this at all. It feels more like team deathmatch in sci-fi land than a cyberpunk near-future.) And don't even get me started on the awesome gibs.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->But by far the worst part of the game's design is the Ranking system. In the same way that Call of Duty 4 infuriatingly rewards kill-streaks with longer, virtually unavoidable kill-streaks and forces beginner players to play with toy replica guns for the first 20 hours of online play, Neotokyo rewards better players with the more accurate, longer firing and stealthier weapons of the game. This way the good get better and beginners will stay under the thumb for a good while before making any real progress.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's possible you just suck or something because I unlock all the guns every round. More importantly, higher doesn't always mean better: one of the guns open to you at the beginning (the semi-auto rifle with a small magazine) is one of my favorites, and for close range damage the beginning submachineguns are easily the best (although I think rifles are almost always a better option unless you're sneaking behind people a great deal). The big difference between this and CoD 4 is that you unlock in each round, which means you don't have to grind or anything. Everyone starts on a level playing field. Still, I wouldn't mind if they got rid of the unlock system altogether. I don't see what the point is, unless it's to make the game easier for newcomers: you have a limited selection until you've played for about 20 minutes and unlocked another gun or two, and by the time you unlock the next couple you're probably pretty familiar with it. The game is so unforgiving in other aspects, though, that I think they could do away with this handholding, especially considering someone like you, Crispy, who it is designed for, seems to dislike it.
IMHO, the next major version update should focus on:
- Pre-round message describing the game objectives (i.e. "Deliver the Ghost to the capture point")
- Class menu descriptions
- Weapon menu stats/descriptions (damage, rate of fire, etc.)
- First-person spec mode, so newbies can understand the vision modes and learn the finer points of the game through example
- The ability to spec players on the other team
- Autospectate the player who killed you (server toggleable)
- Allow the round to be played out when map limit hits
- Possible inclusion of a HUD minimap, or at least a map toggle
- Crosshairs that correctly display each weapon's cone of fire
- Scrollbar for the scorebord (the game is designed for 24 player, afterall)
- Class info on the Scoreboard or on the Class Selection menu
- Some sort of comms info menu (e.g. 'Enemy ahead', 'Cover me', 'Advance', etc.)
- Proper friendly-fire protection (e.g. anti-griefer system; currently it only seems to protect against melee and not ranged FF)
- Increase 'Random Hint' duration
- Label vision modes on the HUD when in use (e.g. "Night Vision Mode")
- Consider revising the XP distribution system to reward activity over inactivity and minimise snowball effect
- Consider revising the weapon balance (especially top-tier weapons, which tend to dominate)
You might counter by saying "but all those games have more stuff to help you than Neotokyo does" but honestly Neotokyo is not an incredibly complex game compared to those. There's only one objective, and it's a giant flashing icon that's visible 100% of the time. There are only a few places to take the objective, and those are giant glowing arrows on your HUD 100% of the time. Teammates have icons over them all the time, even through walls if they're in your squad. The guns might be very hard to tell apart at first, but there are fewer than there are in Counterstrike and Counterstrike doesn't even have useful weapon descriptions either. You just have to <i>learn them</i>, or alternatively go play another game. There's only one vision mode for each class, there's only one kind of sprint, and only one kind of cloak. There aren't a thousand buttons to bind or a thousand maps to learn. It's really not overly complex.
Basically every game has a list of rules to tell you how to play the game. Neotokyo only has 1 tooltip that appears roughly 0.001% of the time to teach you the basic rules of the Ghost game mode. The classes are similarly only described in 'Random Tooltips'. This is simply bad design. I don't think you speak for what the devs plan to do next, but if they really would prefer to actively stifle their own playerbase, then they don't know how to design a multiplayer mod.
Most of the changes I listed are easily achieved and don't encrouch on the current gameplay. It would be madness not to fix them. Also, notice that I said next major update release, not next patch.
I don't understand why you think these changes are handholding. Most of them are simply stating the obvious to avoid confusion, not making the game less skilful. E.g. labelling the vision modes so you don't have to learn wtf they do from a tooltip. There's nothing outside of tooltips that states that the Recon's vision mode is 'Night Vision', the Assault's is 'motion detection' and the Support's is 'heat vision'. Knowing this information and not knowing this information doesn't make the game easier to play, only easier to learn, which leads me to the next point.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Only a few of those are balance changes, the rest are focused on making the game easier to learn. I can understand why you'd want that in a retail game where your objective is to make the most money by selling to as many people as possible, but I imagine the Neotokyo designers really don't care if dense people have trouble picking up their game or if people with Alzheimer's forget if they're carrying the ghost or can't figure out whether they've turned on their vision mode.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I think it's quite obvious I'm not an idiot. You should know that when you pick up the Ghost you don't automatically switch to it, so only a generic audio alert tells you this. This would be fine but Neotokyo has lots of random ambient sounds that play suddenly throughout the level. So I, a not-stupid-person, think I've picked up the Ghost, but I'm not sure. I dropped my primary weapon to pick it up because I saw other players holding it in their hands and I didn't automatically pick it up when I stepped over it. I don't switch weapons because I have never played any CTF mode where the flag is a usable item. I thought I picked it up, but to me there's no obvious way to tell. I might have taken too long causing it to respawn, but I don't know because there's nothing telling me I have the GAME OBJECTIVE. I didn't mention this in the review because it's slightly less obvious to pick up on for a dev than the bleedingly obvious <i>Class Descriptions Act</i> of 1992, but I still think it should be addressed, because it's crucial game info. In TF2 it when you pick up the intel the announcer says "We have taken the intelligence" AND the intel appears in your hands AND a briefcase outline flashes up on the HUD AND it has a HUD icon above the HP/Ammo counters AND an alert pops up next to the kill/death messages. It would be nice if Neotokyo did <i>just one</i> of those things with a bit of clarity. A text alert in the top corner of the screen is fine and a piece of piss to add into the game.
Your opposition to helping people learn the game is totally inane and illogical. A multiplayer game is most fun when everyone knows what they're doing, so it makes total unequivocable sense to teach people the game in the shortest possible timeframe so that the main decider in games is teamwork and skill, not beginners not knowing what to do. Single-player games can be far more obtuse, but it doesn't make sense to make a multiplayer game impenetrable.
And if you really, really think you're still right, let's take a look at the changelog for the second release of a mod that never made it:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->BETA 2.0
[8.13.99]
NEW Features :
» Three new guns added : {Sig SG-552 Commando , AK-47 , Desert Eagle}
» Added silencers to the USP .45 Tactical and the Colt M4A1
<b>» Added a round timer which shows how much time is left in the round</b>
» Added team scores which shows how many rounds a team has won
» Added Night Vision Goggles
» Added new entity for mappers to use (info_hostage_rescue)
» Optimized all the models for lower r_speeds!
» Ability to assign keys to all of the commands from the controls menu
(courtesy of cannelbrae of Gunman project)<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->Woah! What's this, a round timer? But that's dumbing down the game, isn't it? That's explaining the actual rules of the game. What a poor decision! If people are too 'dense' to be able to remember the timer is 5 minutes long, I don't know why the devs wanted them playing their mod. Better to make the game deliberately hard to pick up for no logical reason other than a misguided sense of elitism. That's the best way to design a game that people will want to play for years to come. It should have been obvious from this decision alone these guys had no future.
Fixing all of this stuff is also really not all that hard.
Giving class descriptions with a mouse over or in the class selection.
Giving weapon Descriptions in mouse over (seriously needed).
A Small sprite telling you that you have picked up the flag.
Explaining (some how) the features of the ghost (preferable either pregame, or via in game tips like NS did).
Really, most of this could be fixed via something like NS's tip system (that you can turn off like NS's)
I think the worst bits are knowledge of the vision modes, knowledge of how the ghost works, and knowledge of what the weapons are like.
When your team uses voice-comms an extra dimension is added to the game via the Ghost and compass. I complained in my earlier post about NT not having a unique selling point but this is it. I won't deny it's a niche- it's luck of the draw whether the server your own has players with a mic, but it's an massively enjoyable experience when they do.
Also, the guns are fun and easy to use (though the pump action shotgun seems a bit weak).
All I want is a manual that explains things (can thermoptics see through cloak and smoke?), re-skinned player models (as there's so many they really should be 80-90% blue or green to make it obvious) and a slight across-the-board speed increase to help the Recon class.
In fact they just released a pdf manual too, although I dunno if that's any good. I'm reading it now. Saying that none of this info is clear isn't the right way to put it. More accurately, none of the info is in the game. I'm not saying this is a great idea or that every game should do this. In fact, I agree that the game would be MUCH clearer if the design was better. I agree with almost all of your points. What I disagree with is the idea that the team should have focused on this over anything ELSE in the mod. Could you think of something you'd like to remove from the mod, in order to replace it with ingame hints and stuff? Because the team has limited resources and can't do everything perfectly.
After the first game ended my initial impression was "counter-strike in the future".
Most rounds seemed to decend into team deathmatch with alot of people ignoring the objective and simply just running and gunning for the other team.
Also the lack of any minimap makes moving to the objective rather confusing especially if your trying to intercept the ghost carrier only to end up in a dead end with ghost marker being on the other side of the wall infront of you.
It does look real nice though i'll give them that and it seems to have taken alot of inpiration from GITS/Shirow but it isnt really enough to keep me playing.
Took me about 45minutes to really get the hang of how the classes work more (I prefer the Support Class - use the vision = WIN at long range!) Seriously... you can see that TINY bit of heat signature poking around the corner the TINIEST little bit. Aim at wall and SPRAY! Enemy be dead... (I love wooden walls on maps).
:)
But overall gameplay is a little weird to pick-up, I like the "tips" when you first start up they certainly make you go "ohhhhhhhhh" from time to time :)
Some maps need balancing, and more fall damage in my opinion.
Falling 5 or 6 floors to then be able to shoot through glass, jump on down another 1 1/2 floors and still take out 1/2 a team... yet they die from 1 or 2 shotguns to the chest seems a little bizarre.
2. There is no ReadMe or any tutorial with the game files that shipped.
3. You are a self-admitting fan of the mod who familiarised himself with the gameplay long before release. You were also at one stage part of the mod team. Your behaviour is not indicative of the average person downloading and playing this mod for the first time. When you buy a game off Steam, do you go to the website to make sure you know the rules before playing? No. It's an unreasonable assumption on the part of any designer.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In fact they just released a pdf manual too, although I dunno if that's any good. I'm reading it now. Saying that none of this info is clear isn't the right way to put it. More accurately, none of the info is in the game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->My review was of the mod, not the website. If the mod installer linked to the manual or if it prompted you to read it before playing, that would be a whole different story. Have you ever read a game review that vindicates unclear game design by advocating the official website as an acceptable method of teaching you the game? The rules in board games come in the box, the rules in video games come with the installer or are taught in the game. The rules in Neotokyo simply aren't clear enough and it makes the game far less enjoyable than it should be to begin with.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I agree with almost all of your points. What I disagree with is the idea that the team should have focused on this over anything ELSE in the mod. Could you think of something you'd like to remove from the mod, in order to replace it with ingame hints and stuff? Because the team has limited resources and can't do everything perfectly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->I would have focused on just 1 player model/skin per class for release instead of doing 3 times that work and spent more time on making the game easier to pick up. In fact more time spent on making the classes really look distinct across both teams would have reduced the kind of confusion people are currently experiencing. But my original point is that this is stuff that needs to be addressed for the 'next major update', and that's the 2nd time I've repeated that. Implementing text in a Class/Weapon menu is not really that time-consuming. It's very achievable for a first release with just a modicum of thought invested.
I should make it clear that I found the actual gameplay good, once I understood it. But in all truth if I wasn't giving it a review I probably would have stopped playing it after about half an hour of trying to understand it and come out with a negative impression of the mod. This is why I find the design so frustrating, because it drags down what is otherwise a unique and fun game concept in a beautifully crafted setting. And this is why I think the changes I mentioned should be made for the next major update at the latest, or the mod risks falling into a chasm of obscurity entirely of its own making.
In fact they just released a pdf manual too, although I dunno if that's any good. I'm reading it now. Saying that none of this info is clear isn't the right way to put it. More accurately, none of the info is in the game. I'm not saying this is a great idea or that every game should do this. In fact, I agree that the game would be MUCH clearer if the design was better. I agree with almost all of your points. What I disagree with is the idea that the team should have focused on this over anything ELSE in the mod. Could you think of something you'd like to remove from the mod, in order to replace it with ingame hints and stuff? Because the team has limited resources and can't do everything perfectly.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It's an old PDF designed for PT's I believe. I think they're working on a real one.
2. There is no ReadMe or any tutorial with the game files that shipped.
3. You are a self-admitting fan of the mod who familiarised himself with the gameplay long before release. You were also at one stage part of the mod team. Your behaviour is not indicative of the average person downloading and playing this mod for the first time. When you buy a game off Steam, do you go to the website to make sure you know the rules before playing? No. It's an unreasonable assumption on the part of any designer.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They can hardly be blamed for having their website go down under traffic, and they got the full thing back up ASAP. It does make sense to include the noob hints in the install, but I guess they figured people would read the stuff online before the mod came out if they cared at all. I'm a fan of the mod, sure, but I wasn't a fan before it came out and I've quite definitely never been on the dev team. I just registered for their forums a couple weeks ago and my first post there got flamed pretty badly because I offered to proofread their stuff, having noticed the typos in the noob hints that they put up a few weeks ago so that people like you who can't figure things out themselves without getting annoyed could familiarize themselves with the game. And when I buy a game off Steam I read the manual, which Steam links to.
<!--quoteo(post=1716368:date=Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM:name=Crispy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crispy @ Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->My review was of the mod, not the website. If the mod installer linked to the manual or if it prompted you to read it before playing, that would be a whole different story. Have you ever read a game review that vindicates unclear game design by advocating the official website as an acceptable method of teaching you the game? The rules in board games come in the box, the rules in video games come with the installer or are taught in the game. The rules in Neotokyo simply aren't clear enough and it makes the game far less enjoyable than it should be to begin with.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree it would have made sense to stick it in the installer but Neotokyo's a mod made by like 8 people, not a full retail game; you can't expect them to include a paper manual in a box the way a retail game would. For a mod, I think it's fair to have to read it on the computer, which is what I did with the noob hints.
<!--quoteo(post=1716368:date=Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM:name=Crispy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crispy @ Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I would have focused on just 1 player model/skin per class for release instead of doing 3 times that work and spent more time on making the game easier to pick up. In fact more time spent on making the classes really look distinct across both teams would have reduced the kind of confusion people are currently experiencing. But my original point is that this is stuff that needs to be addressed for the 'next major update', and that's the 2nd time I've repeated that. Implementing text in a Class/Weapon menu is not really that time-consuming. It's very achievable for a first release with just a modicum of thought invested.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm pretty sure the people doing the 3d models of the players aren't the same ones who design the mod, Crispy. People aren't interchangeable.
<!--quoteo(post=1716368:date=Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM:name=Crispy)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Crispy @ Jul 8 2009, 10:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716368"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I should make it clear that I found the actual gameplay good, once I understood it. But in all truth if I wasn't giving it a review I probably would have stopped playing it after about half an hour of trying to understand it and come out with a negative impression of the mod. This is why I find the design so frustrating, because it drags down what is otherwise a unique and fun game concept in a beautifully crafted setting. And this is why I think the changes I mentioned should be made for the next major update at the latest, or the mod risks falling into a chasm of obscurity entirely of its own making.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That's more of a criticism of the metagame rather than the game itself; you're saying it's fun but very hard to get in to and it will scare people off. If Neotokyo doesn't care about scaring people off, then I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, I guess it's better to be popular than unpopular, but there's something to be said for focusing more on making the game fun for people who put the effort in than on making it accessible to a lot of people who are probably going to stop playing anyways. I'm not saying one way is better or worse than the other, but it seems odd to criticise the mod for something like that when the game itself doesn't suffer at all. It's like saying chess is a worse game for not having all the piece's moves on the bottom of the board. That would make it easier to pick up, definitely, but that doesn't make the actual game of chess any more fun or less fun.
Huh? He asked for a README.txt to be unzipped with the installer, not a paper box with a manual to be shipped to him.
<!--quoteo(post=1716396:date=Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716396"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm pretty sure the people doing the 3d models of the players aren't the same ones who design the mod, Crispy. People aren't interchangeable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No, but if you have different priorities you will hire different people to begin with. He thinks gameplay should have been prioritized over graphics. You don't have to agree with that, but I'd personally rather play a fun game than a pretty one.
<!--quoteo(post=1716396:date=Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM:name=TychoCelchuuu)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (TychoCelchuuu @ Jul 8 2009, 03:03 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1716396"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They can hardly be blamed for having their website go down under traffic, and they got the full thing back up ASAP. It does make sense to include the noob hints in the install, but I guess they figured people would read the stuff online before the mod came out if they cared at all. I'm a fan of the mod, sure, but I wasn't a fan before it came out and I've quite definitely never been on the dev team. I just registered for their forums a couple weeks ago and my first post there got flamed pretty badly because I offered to proofread their stuff, having noticed the typos in the noob hints that they put up a few weeks ago so that people like you who can't figure things out themselves without getting annoyed could familiarize themselves with the game. And when I buy a game off Steam I read the manual, which Steam links to.
...
That's more of a criticism of the metagame rather than the game itself; you're saying it's fun but very hard to get in to and it will scare people off. If Neotokyo doesn't care about scaring people off, then I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, I guess it's better to be popular than unpopular, but there's something to be said for focusing more on making the game fun for people who put the effort in than on making it accessible to a lot of people who are probably going to stop playing anyways. I'm not saying one way is better or worse than the other, but it seems odd to criticise the mod for something like that when the game itself doesn't suffer at all. It's like saying chess is a worse game for not having all the piece's moves on the bottom of the board. That would make it easier to pick up, definitely, but that doesn't make the actual game of chess any more fun or less fun.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
How the heck could you play chess for the first time without having the rules explained to you in some form or another? At the time of release they weren't and he's suggesting easy ways for them to have been accessible. I don't think "maybe they want the game to be obscure/fail" is a very good reason not to make the changes.
I swear the recoil/cof is bull###### too.
EDIT: After seeing the people who vouched for it here I decided to give it another go, and my second experience was vastly better than my first.
If they sped all the classes up, made the guns more accurate (less recoil) but lowered the damage of the guns. It would be FAR more enjoyable.
I do like the cloacking aspects adding quick fast thinking into it though...
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I'm not saying one way is better or worse than the other, but it seems odd to criticise the mod for something like that when the game itself doesn't suffer at all.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->It suffers from people not knowing wth they're doing. It's not about dumbing the game down (don't make me embolden-italicise-underline-capitalise this), it's about telling people the fundamentals of how it's played. Counter-Strike does it in 2 lines of text. It's not difficult to do. A 1-person mod team could do it, let alone an 8-person mod team. And it certainly doesn't dumb the game down or take away ANY of the experience for the 'cleverer' games players of the NTS community. Quit with the strawman: dumbing down gameplay != explaining fundamental rules of gameplay.
To this day no mod release has managed to grab my attention..sure they hype alot, but damn, ns2 aint coming on source either so, an even bigger why.
It's quite an achievement to make it less intuitive than Dystopia (which is much more complex)
It may sound shallow , but I found 2 conditions to have an enjoyable round : have friends or good teamplayers in your team , and higher skill than most of the enemy team. This paves the way for multiple victories which give you better guns , also adding variety to the game. Otherwise , being target practice for the other team is terrible , and I know for fact that communication and teamwork will not help overcome the widening gap.
Yeah, probably. Making art assets is just too difficult these days, and while programmers would love to make changes, your mod doesn't get noticed without separate art assets.
Just kinda sad such great art got wasted on something like this.