Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's 'follow NPC' toggle should be mandatory in all videogames, with a jail sentence for developers not using it - Related to arpgs, come:, unused, has, creator

Civilization 7 Dataminers Unearth Unused Leaders, Civs, Atomic Age

The game looks, feels and plays great. I thought the same thing about Civ6 and that launched in a fairly bare bones state too, since then we've had years of DLC for the game and I've still yet to get through them all. I don't like the publisher's approach to monetization but I trust enough in the Dev's vision to keep dipping back in as they add more content over time. I've seen a lot of the previous negativity surrounding the game start to dry up as folks get hands on with the game themselves and see how much more the new changes add to the experience. The city management alone is a real game changer.

Edit: The really weird thing about the game is that the more you get into those new mechanics the more Civ6 feels like the unfinished one. That's even with all of the DLCs that are available for Civ6, it's easy to focus on the number of leaders and Civs but honestly once you get deep into a playthrough you quickly forget about all of that. It's definitely quality over quantity.

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Diablo creator says speedy player progression in current ARPGs has "cheapened the entire experience"

Diablo creator David Brevik has shared his distaste for some aspects in current ARPGs, and expressed that when the journey to levelling up is shortened "you've cheapened the entire experience".

Brevik, now head of indie publisher Skystone Games, spoke to VideoGamer about his career and his thoughts on the ARPG genre. Brevik was co-founder and president of Blizzard North and served as lead programmer and senior designer on Diablo, and project and design lead on Diablo 2.

In the interview, Brevik criticised the speed at which games today offer player progression, which he believes spoils the pacing.

"I think that RPGs in general have started to lean into this: kill swathes of enemies all over the place extremely quickly," expressed Brevik. "Your build is killing all sorts of stuff so you could get more drops, you can level up, and the screen is littered with stuff you don't care about."

Enemy counts in the original Diablo games were notably high for the time, but Brevik believes modern games have learned the wrong lesson.

"I don't find that as kind of personal and realistic as like Diablo 2. The pacing on Diablo 2, I think is great," he showcased. "That's one of the reasons it's endured. I just don't find killing screen-fulls of things instantly and mowing stuff down and walking around the level and killing everything, very enticing. I just don't feel like that is a cool experience. I find it kind of silly.

"When you're shortening that journey and making it kind of ridiculous. You've cheapened the entire experience, in my opinion."

While Brevik's comments apply to the recent Diablo games, it also arguably applies to the likes of Path of Exile 2 and Lost Ark. And MMOs also suffer from similar faults.

"I think that MMOs have definitely pushed in that direction," mentioned Brevik. "How fast can you level? How fast can you kill everything? It's all about speed and things like that, but, in reality, I just think that makes a kind of a worse experience. And I tend to shy away from that direction."

Blizzard has followed the release of Diablo 4 with a number of seasons and major expansion Vessel of Hatred to extend its longevity, while also battling with endgame imbalances. The expansion's launch in October last year was rocky but still led to a boost in Steam players.

Path of Exile 2, meanwhile, received a major patch last month after its early access release in December, which made big changes to its endgame.

Just in case you somehow missed it, the PlayStation Network — commonly known as the PSN — went down over the past weekend.

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's 'follow NPC' toggle should be mandatory in all videogames, with a jail sentence for developers not using it

Videogames—RPGs in particular—just love to make us go for a wander with an NPC. Whether it's the tiresome MMO mainstay of an escort quest, following an NPC to a bandit camp where their mate's being held, or simply sauntering down a road having a chat, we are expected to give up a significant chunk of our lives to this most mundane task. Which wouldn't be that bad if NPCs walked at a normal pace. But they almost never do—because game devs delight in tormenting us. Presumably.

The consistency with which NPC and player walking speeds fail to match up implies some sort of global conspiracy. Nothing else makes sense. It's such a simple thing, you'd think, given that designers know that there's always going to be a specific speed range that players are moving within.

Sure, you might have a sprint, or a sneak, and you might be able to control your speed more precisely when playing with a controller, but there's still always a minimum and maximum speed. Yet so many games are filled to the brim with NPCs that willfully ignore this, walking or running at a pace that's too fast for the slowest player speed and too slow for a faster one, making it impossible to match the NPC's pace without constantly stopping and starting.

This is just annoying enough for it to be distracting—you become more focused on keeping pace with the NPC than hearing what they have to say, turning even the most leisurely stroll into a big ol' chore. And we've been very vocal about hating it, yet it crops up all the frigging time. It is an ancient issue that has multiple demonstrable solutions, but rarely do games bother trying to rectify it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 does not fall into this camp. It's one of the rarities—the type of game we should treasure—that finds a nice, clean solution. Instead of NPCs having to take into account all the possible speeds the player might move at, and instead of players needing to find a sweet spot where they can match the pace of the NPC, the process is automated. You hit a button and you simply follow the NPC without any further input.

Now you can just enjoy the conversation and soak in the sights of Bohemia without a care in the world. Well, except for the civil war, the mountain of injustices and the very real possibility that you might get stabbed in the face. Walking with a pal, though, is no longer a concern. This extends to trips on horseback, too, and if you're riding with multiple people you can choose who to follow.

This is just one of several ways that KCD2 makes travel less frustrating. The fast travel system is one of the best around, for instance, and finds a sweet spot between convenience and maintaining interesting journeys. And even when you're riding alone, you can command your horse to follow the road, so you don't need to worry about your speed or direction until you hit a junction or hop off the beaten track.

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You'll cover a lot of ground in Henry's shoes, and meaty journeys are part of KCD2's appeal, so it's such a relief that it cuts out a lot of the bullshit, instead just allowing you to enjoy exploring its gargantuan pair of maps without fiddly systems interrupting the good times. In huge games like this, it's often these small details that make all the difference.

We've seen other solutions, too, though. Some games simply—and I know, this is madness—have NPCs move at either your slowest or fastest speeds, so you just follow along behind them. Others, like older Assassin Creeds, allow you to match the speed of the NPC when you get close enough, letting you sync up due to your proximity. These are not out-there solutions. They're just common sense. And they're not new ideas, either.

So yeah, I don't think it's too radical to suggest that devs who continue to force us to stop and start and stop and start and stop and start until we just break down and start screaming at NPCs should do jail time. By willfully tormenting us for years they have broken an critical social contract and must be punished. They won't learn, otherwise.

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