ID:194416
 
Over the past few days, I haven't showed up at any of the GoB's because I've been extremely distracted by which I can honestly call The Game.

If you don't own Black & White yet, you are weird, eccentric, and a pagan. Get it now!

At this rate, if I keep playing this game, I'll starve. Maybe I should get off the computer for lunch or something. =)



(And I'm serious. Not only is it filled with nearly boundless ideas for designing games, it's hellishly fun, too. =)
On 4/13/01 1:38 pm Spuzzum wrote:
Over the past few days, I haven't showed up at any of the GoB's because I've been extremely distracted by which I can honestly call The Game.

If you don't own Black & White yet, you are weird,

B&W is the only non-EverQuest game I'm playing at the moment, and I would describe it as "an interesting mess"... Absolutely some interesting gameplay ideas for any game designer, but also a lot of problems, including a core misunderstanding of what the "game" should be...

But, well, if people try it out we can argue about it!
In response to Deadron
On 4/13/01 1:42 pm Deadron wrote:
On 4/13/01 1:38 pm Spuzzum wrote:
Over the past few days, I haven't showed up at any of the GoB's because I've been extremely distracted by which I can honestly call The Game.

If you don't own Black & White yet, you are weird,

B&W is the only non-EverQuest game I'm playing at the moment, and I would describe it as "an interesting mess"... Absolutely some interesting gameplay ideas for any game designer, but also a lot of problems, including a core misunderstanding of what the "game" should be...


I agree that it has a lot of problems. Especially the fact that if you punish your creature AFTER doing something, you're punishing your creature for the results, not for the action, so the creature will feel free to do the same thing again. That's probably the worst inconsistency, since in Land 1 you don't get the pop-up creature help (unless you use a little "secret"; save, start a skirmish game, then reload your normal game again). And if you don't get creature help, that means you have to actually predict what your creature is doing. Which is next to impossible.


What exactly do you mean about 'core misunderstanding of what the "game" should be'? Are you implying that raising my kind and caring sheep (with a taste for Soylent Green) is work, and not play? =)


For anyone who plays it for the "game", then strictly game-wise, if you don't lay the smackdown on your creature at least once, or burn at least one village to the ground, then you aren't experiencing B&W. Otherwise be Good, though. =)
In response to Spuzzum
On 4/13/01 1:53 pm Spuzzum wrote:
What exactly do you mean about 'core misunderstanding of what the "game" should be'?

The fun parts of B&W are, in order of funness:

- training your creature and seeing it help you out
- deciding whether to solve quests in a good or evil manner
- growing your villages

The unfun part is just about anything to do with the single-player game. The "Command & Conquer" model for the game isn't what most people want to do. And when the single-player game takes away your creature for a while, it completely collapses into unfun.

At the moment (and the furthest I've gotten before restarting twice is the end of the 2nd level so my opinion might change later), I think the "game" should be SimVillage, not Command & Conquer.

I'd have much more fun if I was overcome natural disasters and the like, growing a large village, and always training my creature to be more and more helpful, than in battling another god for space.

Combat should just be things like having your creature fight Godzilla if he shows up on the shores.
In response to Deadron
On 4/13/01 2:10 pm Deadron wrote:
The fun parts of B&W are, in order of funness:

- training your creature and seeing it help you out
- deciding whether to solve quests in a good or evil manner
- growing your villages

The unfun part is just about anything to do with the single-player game. The "Command & Conquer" model for the game isn't what most people want to do. And when the single-player game takes away your creature for a while, it completely collapses into unfun.

I thought having two enemy creatures battle it out was kinda fun, too. But that's just me.


At the moment (and the furthest I've gotten before restarting twice is the end of the 2nd level so my opinion might change later), I think the "game" should be SimVillage, not Command & Conquer.

Ah. The second level is really tough, because your villagers are, well, moronic.

[SPOILER ALERT]
What I find best in Land 2 is to throw nearly every tree from Land 1 into the village store, and then take it out and stack it up where the Vortex would appear. It takes a long time to collect it all, but fortunately you'll have big enough stockpiles of stuff that you should survive really well. I tend to ignore the villagers if they keep complaining too much about more buildings and that.
[END SPOILER ALERT]

The major problem with Land 2 is that they don't give you the necessary facilities, but your villagers expect you to have those facilities. You have to activate the Scrolls as quickly as possible, even though Whitey suggested in Land 1 that you explore for a bit before grabbing scrolls.


I'd have much more fun if I was overcome natural disasters and the like, growing a large village, and always training my creature to be more and more helpful, than in battling another god for space.

Yeah, that would be rather fun... =)


So you're basically saying (basically) that the game should just be a sim, not a strategy game? Basically?


I do agree with you on that one there. Maybe Lionhead would make an add-on or something that will let you have a single-player game like that! It would be a rather fun addition to the game. Well, very fun.
In response to Spuzzum
I'd have much more fun if I was overcome natural disasters and the like, growing a large village, and always training my creature to be more and more helpful, than in battling another god for space.

So you're basically saying (basically) that the game should just be a sim, not a strategy game? Basically?

I do agree with you on that one there. Maybe Lionhead would make an add-on or something that will let you have a single-player game like that! It would be a rather fun addition to the game. Well, very fun.

I picked this up Thursday night and spent most of yesterday trying it out. I'm still unsure what to make of it. I think I'm leaning toward the "interesting mess" description. There are some things I really enjoy so far:

* Throwing rocks and stuff!
* General user interface (left to look, right to act, no need for a control panel)
* Colorful mini-quests (which seemed to dry up dramatically after level 1). My personal preference would probably be that the game be neither a Populous god-battle game, nor a SimCity development game, but rather just a continuing series of little quests to undertake in the order you prefer.

Things I don't enjoy so much:

* Glacial pace
* Looong auto-save without warning--there should be an in-between option, where auto-save is enabled but you have 10 seconds to postpone it.
* My damn creature doesn't learn what I want it to.
* Why is it evil if I kill people who mouth off to me? Isn't that pretty traditional behavior for gods?

In response to Gughunter
* Throwing rocks and stuff!
* General user interface (left to look, right to act, no need for a control panel)

Yeah, that is pretty intuitive. That's what I liked most about it. After playing it for a while my opinions on the game are beginning to change, however...

* Colorful mini-quests (which seemed to dry up dramatically after level 1). My personal preference would probably be that the game be neither a Populous god-battle game, nor a SimCity development game, but rather just a continuing series of little quests to undertake in the order you prefer.

That would be good too. I got really PO'd about the fact that the mini-quests in Land 2 looked like an afterthought, while the mini-quests in Land 1 add a great deal to the map.

What's worse, in the Skirmish game, if you aren't evil, you can't really win. The other gods are somewhat evil, and they'll do anything in their power to zap your creature to hell and back. If you try to capture their villages peaceably, they just raise a shield around them so you can't cast spells, and then they send their creatures to ravage your territory. But if you send your creature into theirs, they destroy it.

What's worse is that your personality from Skirmish is saved in the full game. So if you do everything in your power to take over the enemy villages, you are evil, and you become evil in the game.


Things I don't enjoy so much:

* Glacial pace

Yeah. And the longer it takes you, the more your villagers complain and the more you become evil for not satisfying their demands.

* Looong auto-save without warning--there should be an in-between option, where auto-save is enabled but you have 10 seconds to postpone it.

I hate that too! The worst thing is, the one feature of that I enjoy, the fact that it saves on exit, is not enjoyed if you disable it. So either you save-on-exit and you save annoyingly without warning every five minutes, or you have neither and tear your hair out when the game crashes and you forgot to save (which happened twice this afternoon).

* My damn creature doesn't learn what I want it to.

Yeah, though the concept is great, they really messed up on the way it learns. Especially if you're not quick when you stroke it; you have to catch it in the PROCESS of doing something, rather than watching what it did afterward. So if you smack a creature for picking up someone and eating them, the creature won't know why and will think you're evil.

* Why is it evil if I kill people who mouth off to me? Isn't that pretty traditional behavior for gods?

Lots of stuff is evil that shouldn't be. For example, if any of your village store's flags are up, you are evil. Uh huh.

Or if you don't pay perfect attention to your worshippers and one dies, you're evil. Uh huh.

Or if you take some supplies from the village store to supply the workshop. Uh huh.

Or if you go fishing, or feed your monster an animal. Uh huh.

And that too. When I do any of the quests, I always resolve it in the Best way possible. I save people, I spare their lives, I even avoid killing them. But because I punished people a few times (and played Skirmish mode), my hand is an ugly reddish.

My creature is a nice, good creature, who is very helpful, too. I did teach him (accidentally) to have a fetish for eating the corpses of people who died, but that's not really TOO bad. =)
Ok i had recently bought black and white and im having trouble. has anyone else had the game freeze within 5-15 minutes of playing it? my system has all the requirements i beleive and i have directX 7.0. I tried allot of things that a 12 year old person would do. any ideas I really want to play it.
In response to Geo
On 4/15/01 9:07 am Geo wrote:
Ok i had recently bought black and white and im having trouble. has anyone else had the game freeze within 5-15 minutes of playing it? my system has all the requirements i beleive and i have directX 7.0. I tried allot of things that a 12 year old person would do. any ideas I really want to play it.

Go to http://www.bwgame.com and look at their Workarounds link for any ideas.
In response to Deadron
Go to http://www.bwgame.com and look at their Workarounds link for any ideas.

Didn't have anything that would help. I've also tried the /NOINETCONN thing and now it won't practicly start using the shortcut(i made a shortcut using it so the game is alright).
In response to Geo
On 4/15/01 9:52 am Geo wrote:
Go to http://www.bwgame.com and look at their Workarounds link for any ideas.

Didn't have anything that would help. I've also tried the /NOINETCONN thing and now it won't practicly start using the shortcut(i made a shortcut using it so the game is alright).

Then you might want to wait for the patch...

I'm not playing it anymore until the patch, myself. I want sandbox mode.
In response to Deadron
On 4/15/01 11:18 am Deadron wrote:
On 4/15/01 9:52 am Geo wrote:
Go to http://www.bwgame.com and look at their Workarounds link for any ideas.

Didn't have anything that would help. I've also tried the /NOINETCONN thing and now it won't practicly start using the shortcut(i made a shortcut using it so the game is alright).

Then you might want to wait for the patch...

I'm not playing it anymore until the patch, myself. I want sandbox mode.

I want 'no consequences' mode.
In response to Spuzzum
Well i would return the game today and get a new game but since its easter the store is closed. If it doesn't get fixed today (I will probably not do anything else to fix it) I'm getting a different game tomarow. I tried everything i saw at planet black and white's forum and I can't wait for a patch which may not fix it.
In response to Geo
On 4/15/01 4:26 pm Geo wrote:
Well i would return the game today and get a new game but since its easter the store is closed. If it doesn't get fixed today (I will probably not do anything else to fix it) I'm getting a different game tomarow. I tried everything i saw at planet black and white's forum and I can't wait for a patch which may not fix it.

Not really a problem. The initial fun factor drops off rather quickly; the game is excellent... in the beginning. After that, it gets annoying, because half of the things don't work like they would logically work.

Not a bad game at all, but not necessarily a good one. It's still a lot of fun to play, and the storyline (however epic) isn't all too bad, but the bugs and inconsistencies really don't make much sense.

To summarize, it's a great game to try for a while, but I'm basically over its initial appeal. Now I'm seeing a lot of things, and I'm not liking the things I see.