tealizard wrote:I think I gave good reasons to prefer melee-style targeting to arbitrary ranged targeting in my opening comments on the thread.
yes, your argument is that ranged UI is bad. your proposed solution is "ranged targeting should be automated so it can be done in a single keypress", which is undeniably a user interface improvement, but it's not clear that this is necessarily a gameplay improvement. removing manual exploration and melee combat would also be a UI improvement since you have to memorize less keys, but it's not clearly an improvement to the gameplay; your posts don't suggest that you think it's an improvement either
tealizard wrote:As for this counterfactual version of super mario bros., I would want to see this version of mario become an all-time classic before taking it very seriously.
i'm not sure how this is helping your argument. it sounds like you're agreeing with me that if super mario bros was "simplified" in the ways I described, it would be worse
tealizard wrote:Some have suggested that there is something overly dumbed-down about moving to spell effects that do not have explicit targeting via the targeter, yet I have still not heard anyone speak to the point that many spells already have such mechanics and everyone seems cool with that. I don't hear a lot of talk about how these spells are just too dumb.
I don't dislike ice cream, but if I were forced to eat ice cream every day I would start finding things to complain about it; there is a big difference between having something in volume versus being limited to a small subset. I believe there are a few removed items that no one complained about (either before they were removed or after) other than minmay but that doesn't necessarily mean they were good designs
tealizard wrote:I don't think you have to make formal argument in coding theory to see that arbitrary selection of targets at range necessarily involves a significantly more cumbersome interface than melee combat or the sort of implicit targeting I advocate.
again, I'll bring up ocarina of time as a system that has targeting (z-targeting) and as far as I'm aware, no one has argued that the game would be better without it. the fact that nintendo, a game developer that highly values good UI, left it in suggests that it is possible to have targeting without being cumbersome
tealizard wrote:To circle back to a point I mentioned earlier in the thread, beyond the interface and gameplay issue, there's also the issue that many of these explicitly targeted ranged spells are extremely similar to ranged weapon and evocable effects. There's potential for more diverse play here. (On the other hand, I think there's some agreement on this forum that the set of explicitly targeted ranged spells in this game is fairly repetitive and unimaginative.)
you claim that having non-targeted spells would create more diverse play, but then you handwave the work required to show that. like any other poster who makes a proposal in GDD, you have some onus to actually design these spells so that other posters can pick at it to see if it will really create more diverse gameplay as you claim. in addition, developers have tried adding new "beams" like dazzling spray and glaciate, but they have their own issues, so it's not clear why non-targeted spells won't have similar issues
another way of looking at it: if having more non-targeted spells *will* improve gameplay, you should design and propose them, and then you can advocate for the removal of other spells, like how ignition was created to replace delayed fireball; there is nothing stopping these hypothetical spells from existing in the current game