Cities in Vidya - non brand-wars edition

The last thread was inane bickering over which brand of shit is better. I'll tell you why we can't have nice things.
I agree that Bethesda does it quite horribly, but so do other developers, and technology is not a valid excuse. Greed and laziness is the only reason we can't have cities the size of Novigrad with the interactivity of TES. As of now, both of these are opposite extremes of the same issue and which poorly realized compromise you "like" is really just a matter of preference. They're on about the same level.
Meanwhile, post what your ideal vidya city/town/settlement looks like.

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=5G6EXTBrwUY
youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3EllL6Yks
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

That is my favorite city.
The cliff off to the left, Ive spent probably a 50 hours sitting and looking at the sky and water. Ive tripped acid looking at that shit. Beautiful.

In terms of an actual city, its shit and small.

youtube.com/watch?v=5G6EXTBrwUY
BDO has the best settlements of any open world game prove me wrong.

What horrible pop-in.

is there anything as big as the imperial city in skyrim?

I feel like my computer couldn't handle this

>10 buildings

Any city from Morrowind mane, so gud

Pity the game itself is irredeemable shit.

novigrad in your face

did you see him?

>waaah skyrim cities are small
Just mod the game

Even consolefags can do it now

Best medieval city in gaming history

Morrowind is like 15 yo

Also Mournhold was huge.

My favourite city in any game ever is the player created cities in star wars galaxies. Back in the day, it was amazing to walk through a town and know it was all player owned, constructed and maintained.


As for recent rpg like games? Nothing comes to mind. There's always a tradeoff between how good it looks and how well it functions. Even though it's pretty bad, the imperial city in oblivion probably comes closest to landing a good middle ground.

Can we talk about the mods in this video for a second?

Like holy shit how do I make my skyrim as fun as this?

>tfw games couldn't even make a lifesized small village if they tried

>Greed and laziness is the only reason we can't have cities the size of Novigrad with the interactivity of TES
Or maybe it's because it's relatively pointless? I'd rather they spent time on more important things than being able to enter every fucking house in a city. Why is that important anyway? You can't even do that IRL.

forgot video

youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3EllL6Yks

That's not Vizima, user

If I had to narrow it down, my two contenders for favourite city in vidya would be Khorinis from Gothic 2, and Clock Town from Majora's Mask.

I've never read Discworld, but pic related gets my imagination going. Just set a game entirely in a city like this.
Picture it as a fully realized, immersive game world, where every building can be entered and looted, (though not easily - introduce thief-related skills and items); a realistically sized population, each NPC with their own unique characterization, dialogue, daily schedule, etc; interesting lore; vast amounts of unique, handplaced loot scattered throughout the world; challenging and rewarding combat system(think Mount&Blade combined with dice-rolls a la Morrowind); subtle(meaning the opposite of TES) but powerful magic system; deeply complex guilds, with detailed hierarchies and immersive storylines, most of which you can never experience on a single playthrough - the game doesn't avoid placing limitations on the player, you can't have everything and your choices really do matter; oh, fuck it. I realize I'm describing my perfect game, not the perfect city. In any case, just look at the fucking image. It's beautiful and it will probably never happen.

Zaiwei from Blade & Soul
Stormwind from World of Warcraft (and Suramar was okay too)

I can't remember any other cities that actually impressed me with their scale. Suramar not so much anymore because the game is dated as fuck, and it's not really impressive anymore in this day and age, but it was the only thing I found enjoyable in the new expansion for the few weeks I played it.

Zaiwei is an actually huge city that doesn't seem to suffer from issues related to scaling it down. No pictures because they're on short supply from Google. The ones there just show the palace and its surroundings.

Get back to work, Dreamboy

found the ideas guy

>You can't even do that IRL
Of course you can, what the fuck are you smoking? You can make entering some buildings very difficult; nonetheless, the possibility to do that is the point. Every house in real life has an interior.
Why is it important? I'm not talking *just* about being able to enter the buildings. Interactivity encompasses a lot more than that.

>Beautiful, carefully manufactured world
>Shit gameplay and alien game design priorities

Korea, not even once.

assassins creed has the best cities since the entire over-world is just a city

but I wish the guys that made BDO would make a warhammer fantasy game since that franchise has amazing cities

Yeah, just give it a dev time of 10 years, while for some reason also avoiding the problems of constantly shifting hardwares, give it a budget of a few hundred million dollars, some of the best artistic visionairs of the industry (and pray that they get allong and have a similar vision in mind), and on top of that a publisher who is willing to put up with that, while not being able to sell it to the mainstram audience who does not like complex games like that.

I would love for such a game to exist, but people who think it would be that easy need to get a grasp of game development.

I'm not necessarily attacking you personally, user, I just wanted to make a post about how naive some Sup Forumsirgins seem to be when it comes to what is going into a game being made.

I also recommend to get into Dwarf Foretress.

but 90% of it and its inhabitants are just props the player can't interact with

To some degree, all of those things are present in Gothic 2. Except the scope, but the game is almost old enough to post here, so there is that.

The possibility of doing something that is a complete waste of time is worthless. Were you running a game company, it'd die off before releasing its first game - because you cannot prioritize resources. No one would want a city with 1000+ houses where you would miss most of the content because you don't know which buildings to enter and don't want to bother.

>with dice-rolls a la Morrowind

praise to Allah for not making you a game dev

Best vidya city.

It really just boils down to hiring a million artists and writers and actually having the writers work together while at the same time working on their own substories. After all, I suppose for a game like that to be interesting, it'd have to be riddled with small details that make it apparent your past decisions changed something. That is to say, there would have to be fucktons of situational dialogue content that only surfaces when certain conditions are fulfilled - and with everything affecting everything, it'd be a potentially impossible effort.

I don't think you really even need a gazillion artists. It's one city. It's bound to have a pretty consistent architectural style going on in the sense that mos of the buildings will be built of the same materials and have a similar colour scheme given that it's a medieval city. Of course, again, if you copypaste too much it will not be convincing.

The only real issue is making the world seem dynamic based on your actions, and the amount of detail you can put in (the interiors of houses, the lines of each NPC etc) without it becoming impossible to carry out while at the same time being interesting. I wouldn't say it's as impossible as you make it out to be, though.

>ideas guy
Why is this something of a derogatory term? Sure, I'm not a programmer, but if I had money, I'd hire good developers and fund those ideas, and great games would be made. The point is that the people who are in the position to do that, either have no ideas or don't care about anything else than monetary gain. Besides, programmers famously don't have very good ideas or design sensibilities. "Programmer art" is a widely used term for a reason.

The thing is, most of your points are wrong, and here we come to one of the main things that keep good games from being made - graphics. If developers stopped constantly trying to advance in that department while sacrificing everything else, we could have games with early-2000s visuals that would be better than anything made today.
I understand entirely how you'd call this naivety - but I also think you're underestimating the creative potential of dedicated people with a vision, whose motivation is not money, but just that - creating something great.
I also never said it would be "easy". Not at all.
>constantly shifting hardwares
again, that's not a real issue.
Now BUDGET, that's, of course, a real issue. Which is why these "ideal games" could only be made by people both rich and creative - which is a practically non-existent combination.

Good game design combined with a good story alleviates those issues entirely.

Really? So you think a good combat system in an RPG could be entirely based on a player's skill, with no regard for anything else? Think again.

It isn't really greed.Skyrim was supposed to be a ps360 game and it along with the west of betheda games you an ancient outdated engine.

Another major problem with betheda games is the empathise on dungeon crawling over story telling and other alternate forms of questing.

Most towns in RPGs are designed with the players in mind for the most part with flavor setpieces added to make the town feel more real to the player.

If you take a step back how many open world rpgs can you think of that have papermills, coin mints, banks, schools or post offices.

The reason games don't have those things often is because those wouldn't concern the player.Keep in mind games are designed to be economic.To the people who run gaming companies parts of a city that serve no purpose to the player is useless filler whereas generic copy paste dungeon crawl #78 is usefull filler.

If the designer focused on making more city centric quest then that would lead to larger cities.

To spice up this thread try to name a location you often don't see in a fantasy setting and try to think up of a quest revolving around it.

Procedural generation of cities is the way forward and you know it.

fractalaiwhen.jpg

So?

thumb nail makes it look like an angry duck

nobodies can, everything only exists within 20 meters of you

>isn't greed
>one of the best selling games of all time
>on an ancient outdated engine (not to mention all the other issues that make the game unplayable even in comparison to earlier entries in the same series)
>isn't greed

I didn't like dawnstar much, I always thought it was boring as fuck.

I really liked Anvil in Oblivion for some reason, that wasnt too bad.

My favorite was Markarth though. I liked the idea of a city being carved from a mountain with the houses being embedded in the rock, something about that stuck with me. Plus I liked the architecture and the criss crossing stone bridges, and how tall shit was. Markarth is max comfy.

I didn´t like Witcher 3 at all going to Novigrad for the first time was awesome

Dwemer architecture is best architecture

best cities in a jrpg

Star Ocean 2

not too big, not too small, just perfect.

Heksville from Gravity Rush is a great Vidya city. It has nice aesthetics and distinct districts. Only downfall is that I don't know how they get food considering they're attached to a big piller

Too bad the game is fucking trash. The UI is shit, the font is unreadable, the translation laughable, the grind unreal. Combat is fun for a few hours but then it collapses entirely.

Asian MMOs are just goddamn terrible.

We could have cities with tens of thousands of inhabitants if developers freed themselves from the 3D meme.

I agree that with limited graphics a game like that would be possible. But it would obviously not happen because that stuff would not sell outside of a dedicated core audience.

But again, that is why I recommend you to get into Dwarf Foretress.

Thats actually bull

Agreed, friend.

I wish the Dwemer were still a thing. I know that their disappearance is part of the allure, but fuck man, it would be so cool to see a thriving Dwemer society.

>Nobody has said Varrock

>Good game design combined with a good story alleviates those issues entirely

You are delusional and I can tell you'll never make a great game.

places this comfy should be illegal

it looks way more like a duck than a bull

>Sure, I'm not a programmer, but if I had money, I'd hire good developers and fund those ideas, and great games would be made.
that's kinda the point, it doesn't work that way. Coming up with an idea of how something should work is easy, getting that shit to work usually means compromising. Do you really think that there are so little people who can come up with "good" ideas for games?

>Also Mournhold was huge.
I was actually smaller than the Imperial City.

So fucking comfy.

i beg to differ

I genuinely liked Age of Wushu. That game was all about PvP and being a total cunt to each other. Hell, it even had skills training in the background like EVE so you could just fuck off and do whatever while the game grinded for you in the meanwhile.
Of course then they fucked it up with adding more almost mandatory godawful PvE raids. I hope the sequel doesn't repeat that mistake.

>But it would obviously not happen because that stuff would not sell outside of a dedicated core audience.
I think it certainly would. Skillful marketing does wonders. Besides, if it somewhat resembles the type of game that Skyrim is, on the surface, why would it not sell in the first place?

>Dwarf Fortress
I'll give it a try at some point.

>Do you really think that there are so little people who can come up with "good" ideas for games?
No. There are few(if any) people with good ideas with budgets to make their "dream games" even remotely worth considering.

Where's this from

>I'll give it a try at some point.
No you won't.

I'll probably never make any kind of game.
You, on the other hand, apparently don't even understand the meaning of "game design" if you think it would not fix the non-issue of
>a city with 1000+ houses where you would miss most of the content
I mean, really, that's just a retarded claim to make.
Prioritize resources? We arrive at budget again.

Pathologic

>Varrok
>Not massively more comfy Falador

Oh, okay. My mistake.

More like Ding Dong Bannu

Popins that cause the character to rubber band while loading shit. How wretched.

I am serious. You can't just slap a game like Dorf Fort onto your backlog. You need dedication and the right mindset to get into it. It is not something that you "might try", because if you just try it you won't get past the first menu and just turn it off again.

>interactivity of TES

It's been on my backlog for a long time, precisely because I know I'll need to dedicate some time to it. I'm perfectly aware it's not easy to get into. Looking at it intimidates me. I do seriously intend to try it, though, meaning I'll put in actual effort to understand it. Dropping games like that isn't really my style.

Why does comfy and scary sometimes intertwine? The feeling of comf is very similar to the feeling I get when I play scary games like silent hill.

Alright. Good for you then.

like 100% of games?

Compared to Witcher, yes, and regarding cities specifically. Of course, TES, as stated in the OP, is also a poorly realized compromise. Where's the issue?
I had actually rewritten the OP to put my point across more clearly, but you can thank Hiroshimoot for all the server errors which made me think this version wasn't posted in the first place.

Because it's actually the word 'atmosphere' you're looking for. It's what draws you into a game's world, and is a crucial element.

You definitely won't make any kind of game.

I'm sorry to tell you the truth but only a very limited and selected group of people would find your game fun - rest would find it a waste of time and make fun in your expense.

And no, your "it will have great story and game design" does not convince me the slightest - you can have both without committing to waste of resources.

good choice. but novigrad is far superior. come on user take the nostalgia goggles off

You're dumb user. Atmosphere can feel widely different from game to game.

In Skyrim and many other games all buildings are accessible and you can talk to all npcs. In that sense, it has way more content than witcher.

i laughed

You don't get it.
>only a very limited and selected group of people would find your game fun
I'm not talking about making some kind of a detailed autism simulator. I'm merely describing the idealistic version of any RPG you might've enjoyed playing. It can be TES on the surface, to appeal to all the same audiences, with infinitely more depth to it.
>you can have both without committing to waste of resources
Undoubtedly, yes. Maybe I gave off the impression I care about the size of the game world more than its contents, which couldn't be further from the truth.
However, I believe they're no longer mutually exclusive in this day and age, and there's no excuse for there not being a large game world filled with quality content. That's also the entire point of the thread you're in.
I also don't think it's a waste of resources, they would be resources very well spent.

Oh, I'm dumb? You can't even grasp points that are as simple as they come.
>Atmosphere can feel widely different from game to game
Whoever contradicted this ever in the history of video-game discussion, let alone this thread or my post, you nonce?

>Whoever contradicted this ever in the history of video-game discussion
You just did.
>The feeling of comf is very similar to the feeling I get when I play scary games like silent hill.
>Because the feeling is called atmosphere lol

You're putting me on, aren't you? I don't want to believe you could really be this thick.
Is English your third or fourth language? In that case, I forgive you for the terrible reading comprehension you're displaying.

Enderal completely shit on Skyrim in every way. Especially, when it came to the atmosphere of a city.

your idea wasn't anything special though.
What you described as you said yourself is your perfect game. You didn't specify HOW you'd do most of the shit you mentioned.
>interesting lore
Easier said than done, unless you hire some really good writers, you're pretty much fucked. And even then, it might not play out very well.

>a realistically sized population, each NPC with their own unique characterization, dialogue, daily schedule, etc;
So right, you want a huge population where everyone is unique at least to some extent. Unless you're going to do some weird procedural generation thing to do that shit (which rarely gives good results) you're going to have to either spend insane amounts of time on that, or have a huge team of people doing it (which would also mean that not everyone would be as great at it as you'd want).

>subtle(meaning the opposite of TES) but powerful magic system
Implying no one has ever come up with that idea. Shit is easy to say, hard to implement. (stuff like that can be pretty easy in a book, but doing it in a game is hard)

>deeply complex guilds, with detailed hierarchies and immersive storylines
Again, need great writers, and either a lot of them, or a lot of time.

That's why you're the "ideas" guy. You just imagined what your perfect game might sound like if you described it, but you didn't go deeper than that. And the more you think about how to actually implement all that shit, the more you see that you need to make compromises (because the time and money you'd have wouldn't infinite)

>good game design
>dice rolls

Please stop being ironic.

Entering a house with nothing of interest in it with a braindead NPC staring at you while sitting at his dinner table asking you how the weather is after you lock picked your way inside really isn't really better than not being able to go inside at all.

How much time doe the average player spend in these buildings, almost all of them have nothing useful in them and are all the same, and how much time does it take for a developer to create these interiors and handplace items and shit, its just a lot of work that goes to waste if you make it as generic as skyrim with no real purpose

>In Skyrim and many other games all buildings are accessible and you can talk to all npcs. In that sense, it has way more content than witcher.
Poor bait.

Pic related, also the whole entirety of the old valley of mines especially the old and the swamp camps, Murky Waters, Novigrad, Beauclair.

comfy

would live

At the very least it doesn't ruin the game's atmosphere by having some unaccessible object from another dimension with invisible barriers that poses as a regular house.

I'm being completely sincere. You don't understand the post you were responding to.

No. I do understand perfectly.
Either you're dumb or you're pretending to be dumb.
It's OK though, user. I'm here for you.

They should just hire a guy to make sure everything is comfy, everyone loves a comfy game.

They do. They are called level designers.

This user is correct.
NFPBP

Another tidbit tied to this that needs to be kept in mind is that towns in RPG video games are generally supposed to be a cluster of buildings tightly knit together to provide easy access to the player.

Designers could experiment with spreading out towns over mountains ranges or hillsides.

For example have a castle on a steep hill then have the living area of the town on the west side and the business center on the east.

Or place large scale structures like temples and towers throughout cities and place smallet buildings and houses between them. See pic related.

I absolutely love the City in the first Mirror's Edge game.

I would, without a joke, want to live there.