IseeThings wrote:I'm saying that's the way the games are designed because of pressure from publishers, the industry in general, and because it's what they THINK people want.
I'm not from Japan and yet disagree with the majority of things you find in games today, the whole lack of real achievement because they're made so easy anybody can actually complete them (and be given virtual achievements instead?)
A good game should be either about skill, or personal memorable experiences that differ to other people. Today's games are about acting out a role in a movie, everybody gets the same experience in the end, as a result most of them are far more fun to WATCH than actually PLAY. The majority of current games require neither skill (just button mashing / repeating sequences until you pass them with checkpoints every minute) nor do they give you a personal experience (too heavily scripted, too restrained) Do anything outside that box and your game will be ripped apart by the reviewers and players who can no longer complete it. It's cheaper and easier to develop games that way too, balance no longer has to be considered as tightly (because players can just brute force their way past the harder bits by retrying), and the more on-rails the game is, the less testing it requires (simple logic, less player input / choice = less test cases, yet they still mange to screw so many up)
Of course there are good players from outside of Japan, but even many of the 90s classics were butchered for non-Japan audiences simply due to publisher / industry / operator pressure.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I invited some people over to play Mortal Kombat and someone asked, "How do I play?" I told them the basic button setup and they looked dumbfounded. Someone else said, "It's a fighting game, just mash buttons." And they wonder why I tore them in half. DOOM, of all games, can handle this balance issue really well; the player sets the checkpoints via save files. I give myself a specific set of rules when I play:
You may only save at the beginning of a level.
If you die, either reload your beginning of level save or take the 100% / No Armor / 50 Pistol Ammo.
If you need to leave mid-level, then the exception can be made to the first rule, but you may only load this save one time and if you die you still must restart the level. This is like a suspend save in SRPG's or long race series in games like Gran Turismo 5.
There you go, there's a balanced checkpoint system. If the player wants they can be little girls and save every two seconds or be a maniac and play a whole episode with no saves, then set their computer on fire and kill their dog if they die. Whatever, player, set your own pace!
Then there's every modern game ever, where checkpoints are forced down a player's throat every encounter or so. You're right in calling it a brute force attempt. I could grind out every trophy in every PS3 game I own. I've been trying to, because it's a maddening Skinner box environment that rewards the player on a semi-random interval with varying-value prizes. Warhawk is a grind. Gran Turismo 5 has endurance races which can be 60 laps or more; the last two races appear to be twenty-four hour races. What the hell? I have the Formula Gran Turismo car unlocked so it is quite literally nothing but a grind. The only challenge-based races are the ones that give you a specific vehicle.
But not resetting a player's score? This could be fine if you just use the Capcom method. You use a continue, you get a number at the end of your score. There you go, people will now know if you're a credit feeding monkey or not. Hell, it even increases your score, so shove some more quarters in, buddy! Keep mashing that bomb button every time you die. Do it.
I'll admit I can't 1cc a lot of games. DeathSmiles and MUSHA come to mind. But you know what? I've been playing DOOM II recently and using my save file rules, some levels take half an hour to forty-five minutes to complete, and I die often enough until I learn the route that will get me to the end, leaving two Arch-Viles and thirty Cacodemons chasing me to the exit. I think I can afford to restart a shmup to try for a higher score, rather than just keeping my score for simply hitting continue. People just want instant gratification.
Modern gaming is really pushing me to start working on that shmup I've been planning. Well, since I don't do much at my coding job as is, I guess I should get cracking.
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