gamespot - comments on modern game difficulty
extollo
Ping Blip Join Date: 2010-07-16 Member: 72457Members
Ping Blip Join Date: 2010-07-16 Member: 72457Members
<div class="IPBDescription">dumbing down of games</div>A recent 7 min video on the pressures and trends in AAA game development.. Thought it was interesting since much of the same discussion has happened here about NS2.
<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/super-meat-boy/videos/are-modern-games-being-dumbed-down-6398401/?tag=Topslot;AreModernGamesBeingDumbedDown;AreModernGamesBeingDu" target="_blank">Gamespot: Are Modern Games Being Dumbed Down</a>
The AAA guys seem resigned to it (ie work within that constraint).
The Indie sized Team Meat guys seem much more sympathetic to the core gamer. It obviously worked out well for them.
It's worth a watch.
<a href="http://www.gamespot.com/super-meat-boy/videos/are-modern-games-being-dumbed-down-6398401/?tag=Topslot;AreModernGamesBeingDumbedDown;AreModernGamesBeingDu" target="_blank">Gamespot: Are Modern Games Being Dumbed Down</a>
The AAA guys seem resigned to it (ie work within that constraint).
The Indie sized Team Meat guys seem much more sympathetic to the core gamer. It obviously worked out well for them.
It's worth a watch.
Comments
Japan still makes hard games. So I learned Japanese =). Sadly they don't make online fps... :(
It does a lot of really awkward stuff in terms of how one player can ruin a game and how frustrating and stressful the game is on certain moments. But it makes use of all that freedom in design to create interesting interactions, satisfying gameplay moments and all that. It makes you feel stuff way more than most games, which is absolutely wonderful even if that means that you'll also be frustrated, angry or disappointed here and there.
It's interesting to see how DotA 2 is going to work in the long run, but right now it looks people are approving the way it does things.
Game developers are more concerned about being like rockstars and padding egos. Then making good games.
But im sure it will go away in a few years, When the ###### crumbles.
As for dumbing down in terms of content, I guess it could be arguably true, but I just see it as different sub genres of games. I mean hell, are you going to tell me that COD 7: Bad Ops is dumbed down compared to Quake 3 or HL:DM? Let me guess, their movement mechanics made them revolutionary brain puzzles solvable only by gaming savants. In my opinion, you get games that are "simplistic" in their goals, like COD, and you get games that are more "complex", like NS2. However saying that all games are being dumbed down is like pointing to Justin Bieber as proof that this generation's music is bad.
To even ask that question means you have no understanding of what made Q3the first serious e-sport, which incidentally still has big cash prize tournaments. I don't see any COD game having the competitive longevity of Q3.
You have a lack of understanding about what made the games skillful. It is nothing to do with brain puzzles. It is to do with movement skill. Anyone can aim and shoot, but to avoid being killed yourself, you had to master the movement. I stopped playing COD at COD2, becase it was crap movement. We've now had about 7 COD games since then, guess what, the movement is still ######e.
Penny Arcade's take on this in an entertaining video: <a href="http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/easy-games" target="_blank">http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/easy-games</a>. Unlike the others following in my post, these guys are actually professionals. These cartoons even appeared on UWEs list of viable sources for game development somewhere...
Egoraptor's Sequelitis about Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X. However, it is more about how to teach a player during the game instead of having seperate tutorials etc., quite funny and entertaining to watch as well: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM</a>
The Angry Video Game Nerd reviewing Silver Surfer for NES. This one is more just-for-fun but also a good example why "trial and error" is a bad way to artificially increase a game's difficulty: <a href="http://cinemassacre.com/2007/06/05/silver-surfer/" target="_blank">http://cinemassacre.com/2007/06/05/silver-surfer/</a>
Sure you can divide "games" into categories like "family games, action games". That has been done forever...... But new stuff is only being focused on some games and not the games which most people who have this kind of opinion, plays. Every game company can change the market, but a lot of people rely on the big companies with a lot of money to change the market with new ideas(all aspects as mentioned), which very rarely happens.
are you sure about that?
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdkDjsBiO58</a>
in the case of quake, the vast majority of the skill and <i>long-term interesting stuff</i> is the mental game (decision making, playing the opponent etc)
there's also nothing wrong with that, and you don't have to be "a savant" to appreciate it...it's just more interesting than NS2 where you hobble around holding mouse1 for 5 minutes and then quit because it's not fun
imbalanx'd
When I was a kid, I played games a lot.
I could have fun with hard games, even though it meant failing a billion times before succeeding.
Nowadays, I don't have the time or inclination for that type of design.
Do not get me wrong, I like complex games. I don't like hard games. Hard games usualy entail "hard to execute" games (precise jump, precise aim, precise precision).
I would much rather have a game require precise puzzle solving, and I don't mean puzzle has in tetris or myst games. I mean in the sense that I understood the game rules, and chose a correct path of action to succeed, this can mean choosing the shotgun with exploding chicken shells instead of the assault rifle with blueberry pancakes.
Complex = good.
Hard (trial and error, incoherent design, unintuitive design) = bad.
So, while hard games can be good and fun, it all depends on what makes them hard. If it's bad design, then it's bad.
I also believe most people have their views slightly tinted by nostalgia.
I cannot replay 95% of the games that I used to love, simply because the design is so horrendous. I still have fond memories, but I would not spend a minute replaying them.
Btw, for every "dumb down" design decision that "progress" has brought, we now have multiple great design improvements. A lot of people seem to forget this. No game is perfect, but I believe games are always steadily becoming better.
Don't believe me?
Imagine if you were 10 and I showed you games like Assassins Creed, Bioshock, World of Warcraft, Rock band, Super Mario Bros and Galaxy, Grand theft auto, Gears of Wars, ... but with comparable graphics and sound of the games of your youth. You would go completely nuts!
Good games are good.
And thank god for design progress.
Pointless clicking and looting, guns that just lie on the floor, health packs that magically heal you, forgetting to save and having to restart an entire segment, having to call a gaming hotline (remember those, they were in EVERY game handbook) because the design is not obvious.
I for one, am happy with where games are going. While we are losing some stuff that made old games good, we are gaining a lot in exchange.
It's not all good, but it certainly is not as bad as you seem to think it is.
Anyways, to each their own I suppose!
Oh, one last thing:
I do not put much worth in gamespot's (or most gaming review/info sites) opinion on what makes quality games, or good design.
These are the people who will do everything in their power to make a buck on the diablo 3 real money auction house (and fail), and then whine when the gold auction house has ###### items.
These are the people who give Tony Hawk games flawless marks (while those are great skateboarding games, the prerequisite for finding it good, is to like skateboarding games... does that make any sense?).
In short, what I'm trying to say, is that game critics are often like wine critics. Full of sh**.
However modern games have reduced emphasis on player movement and aiming. I would say this goes hand-in-hand with the rise of consoles, which find it very hard to aim and move compared to PC.
Basically we are playing console ports. 10 years ago consoles were playing PC ports.
Just going to link this again because this video is awesome.
just sayin
I disagree, I have never had any problems with Diablo 2's interface not when I played it back in the day nor when I played it last month. And D3 is laughably easy, until you get to inferno when it becomes laughably hard and a silly 100% gear limited grind.
The only other games like duke3d, doom, blood, etc. available around when quake came out had 2d sprites as models, and simplified "walls" with often parallax backgrounds, and e.g. you couldn't look directly up and down due to the way the engine worked. Most people before quake also played with the keyboard only due to mostly the left/right aiming (the vertical aiming was automatic, like a one-dimensional aimbot lol).
So yes, Quake single-handedly pushed FPS gaming to the "next level" so to speak.
Even years later when Unreal came out, and Valve took the Quake engine towards goldsrc and made HL, you didn't have nearly the choice people do today the FPS game market.
It was basically Unreal/UT, Quake, and CS when it came out (which was in itself a modded quake engine anyway). There were other games too, most notably I remember Rainbow Six, Blood 2, Shogo (lithtech), some military Voxel terrain / textured model mix game that I forgot the name of, and other odd games like Requiem: Avenging Angel (which I actually really liked)... but really, the most balanced and well-designed games were the Unreal, Quake series and CS.
I think there has been a huge saturation of shooters in the 2000's, so it's not exactly "fair" to compare a game franchise which came out in 2005, or that is coming out today, to something like Quake. It's like comparing modern art to the Mona Lisa. There is just no comparison...
But yes, some gaming trends which are annoying to "hardcore" gamers are visible today, mostly due to bad console porting, bad design due to the way console controllers operate, and an attempt to appeal to as many people as possible.
Even hallowed game sequels such as Portal 2 were maimed by the consoles... has anyone noticed that there aren't as many "twitch" puzzles in Portal 2 which require quick and precise aiming/turning like there were in Portal 1? It's unfortunate but it's a fact of the business that game development is. It's much easier and cheaper to design a game which could potentially appeal to casual/non-casual 12 year-olds as well as 30 year-olds, while designing for a controller with its limitations and then port to PC.
P.S. Actually, speaking of "depth," I think Quake was actually not the most difficult game to at least pick up. It was pretty easy to sit down and just start playing. The guns' functions were self-explanatory, etc. Rainbow six - that, from what I remember, was just insanity. I think it combined a planning stage like frozen synapse, to actually being in that situation in a FPS perspective and playing it out... I watched others play it but never picked it up myself. I'm not sure how "deep" the actual game mechanics were but it seemed a lot more complex than Quake...
AVGN is a good reminder that back in the 'golden days' of gaming, many games introduced difficulty by having terrible control mechanics and resorting to tedious repetition rather than actually having an in-depth experience. I remember quite a few games in the Atari/Nintendo/Sega which ended up not being fun to play because of this. Personally, I'd quite rather stick with the current state of gaming in which its vast enough that I can find my personally enjoyable niche (see NS2) rather than being shoehorned into a narrow range of games.
In most bullet hell games, it's also fairly well-accepted that you don't get a health bar. You die from 1 hit :-) .
And yes, they are very much about memorizing "what comes next" as well as series of patterns and just developing that "brain mode" where you dodge many slow-moving projectiles.
It's a little strange because it doesn't sound very fun, but I absolutely love those games actually. And yes, there's a LOT of dying, but repetition is how you learn the game, and is very satisfying in the end... they are also definitely not for everyone, and most definitely not for anyone "casual" who would probably give up after a few attempts and the little progress they give.
However modern games have reduced emphasis on player movement and aiming. I would say this goes hand-in-hand with the rise of consoles, which find it very hard to aim and move compared to PC.
Basically we are playing console ports. 10 years ago consoles were playing PC ports.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Quake 3 has extremely simple mechanics, but those mechanics allow deep gameplay. The same goes for Chess for example.
Most modern games are pretty complex with their basic rules, but the mechanics have very little interaction and limited and specific utility. If you take a look at SC2 Colossus, it's packed with all kinds of mechanics and yet it plays out as one of the dullest and most limiting units in the whole game because of what those mechanics do and how they work with the rest of the game. It looked cool on the trailer, it was fun for the first few hours of gameplay and after that it's mostly downhill.
I don't think the movement is necessarily required for deeper gameplay, but it sure helps in creating interaction, variation and possibilities in gameplay.
I disagree. A pvp game can be easy or hard depending on the "skill ceiling" as people call it.
The more there is to learn and the longer these things takes to master defines how hard or easy a pvp game is. I.e. in CoD:BlackOps there isn't much at all, you point, you pull the trigger, the guy in front of you dies. Everything else in the game is common sense and broad across all fps games (predicting enemy movement, using audio cues, etc). I'd consider that to be an easy pvp game.
To say that in "CoD:BlackOps there isn't much at all, you point, you pull the trigger, the guy in front of you dies" is a little generalizing IMO. In CS "you pull the trigger, the guy in front of you dies." In Quake and UT you also "pull the trigger, the guy in front of you dies..." I wouldn't call CS or Quake/UT "easy" games though XD. But there's different skill involved in the different games because of what they feature in regards to the things I mentioned above (weapon accuracy, etc. etc.).
The more there is to learn and the longer these things takes to master defines how hard or easy a pvp game is. I.e. in CoD:BlackOps there isn't much at all, you point, you pull the trigger, the guy in front of you dies. Everything else in the game is common sense and broad across all fps games (predicting enemy movement, using audio cues, etc). I'd consider that to be an easy pvp game.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'm of the opinion that the "easyness" or simplicity of the game actually creates the complexity. Take the example you outlined. Sure, pointing and shooting is pretty basic and easy, which means killing is easy. But if killing is easy, then saying alive must be hard.
Take a game like NS2. Staying alive as skulk is easy. Run up a wall and down a wall and all over the ceiling in random directions, 99% of marines will miss the majority of shots. However, that simplicity translates into complexity for the marine. In assymetric games it often becomes about transferring difficulty to your opponents using the differing game mechanics to your advantage. In run of the mill symmetric shooters it actually creates an obvious but rarely scrutinised dynamic of every player having exactly what they need to kill their enemy, which makes every player highly vulnerable.
but deeper multiplayer mechanics have much more influence on the skillceiling than people might realise. knowing the game inside out is often crucial to judge a situation, which is very important to make your split-second decisions (should i fight or run, which target is to be attacked first, should i position myself differently, should i take risks or are we about to win). i guess mobas are a very good example for this. if you don't know what your enemy is capeable of, you probably don't stand a chance. going one step further and predicting his moves and strategies can help a lot too. with simple mechanics, you still have these things to some degree, but they might not be as complex and difficult to put into practise.
i think the age of a game also influences it's difficulty not only because of the way it is made, but also because of the community: the longer a game exists, the less casual players you will find.
example: i started playing unreal tournament 2004 many years after it's initial release. the people who still played it were hardcore experts for the most part and most managed to kill me without even seeing me, i didn't stand a chance. like... at all! one guy even called me "###### noob" for the sole reason of listening to music while playing (note: this was on an ordinary pub server). what kept me playing was the movement mechanics (double tap to dodge, double jump, walljumps, liftjumps, weapon-jumps (works with basically all of them), tons of possible combinations) and after a few years i was even able to score 2nd place in some minor competition which earned me a package of choclate-stuff (which was awesome).
Take a game like NS2. Staying alive as skulk is easy. Run up a wall and down a wall and all over the ceiling in random directions, 99% of marines will miss the majority of shots. However, that simplicity translates into complexity for the marine. In assymetric games it often becomes about transferring difficulty to your opponents using the differing game mechanics to your advantage. In run of the mill symmetric shooters it actually creates an obvious but rarely scrutinised dynamic of every player having exactly what they need to kill their enemy, which makes every player highly vulnerable.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Simplicity creating complexity is a bit of an oxymoron isn't it? But I think I understand what you're saying and I think I didn't explain myself very clearly before. Quake3 was a very simple game at its core but there was a lot to be learned 'skill' wise after all.
I'll go into a bit more detail with the example I gave. Take a game between me and my friend. My friend is a lot better than me at games in general, and when we played UT he hammered me 50-0 (and a $30k comp winner hammered him almost as badly). We had about the same level of hours clocked up at the time. Now compare that to a time when we were both playing CoD-blackops in an empty server, we tried to 1v1. We had approximately the same amount of hours put into the game but the difference in score was very bland, something like 7-10. This isn't because I was better or he was worse at this game, but because the skill-ceiling had been hit. The outcome of who would die was determined more like the toss of a coin, it would come down to luck. Who sees who first, who takes the best guess shots when there is no LOS, etc.
NS2 is point and shoot with the LMG, but the aliens have abilities that prevent it from being easy as you said.
But does that mean its not possible to go 50-0 in a game like COD? Because trust me, it is possible. Does it then mean that your friend isn't good enough to go 50 for zero? In that case, if its harder for him to be good, doesn't that make the game more difficult?
Well we could pull an average pub player and either of us could get a high k:d against them. I've done something like that in bc2, a server emptied and I did just that using only a pistol (I had many game hours over him). But (at the risk of contradicting myself) this isn't a good way to gauge the game's difficulty.
I guess this matter is more complex than "easy" and "hard". But never the less, when I played BC2 (850hrs) and BlackOps (180hrs), I had to apply a lot less effort to do well than I did in games such as UT and Quake (which I put a lot more hours into). I felt there was nothing I could do to improve my game in the former two, whilst with the latter I was improving right up until I stopped playing.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe these games aren't easier. Maybe they just attract a larger amount of players who aren't very good? I don't know.
As for NS2, it's so far proving to have a good skill-ceiling. Some times it's easy, some times it's mind bogglingly hard depending on the enemy. I bumped into a competitive player last week and his aim with the shotgun was simply amazing (so many 1shot deaths), and he was just as good as a skulk.
<!--quoteo(post=1994467:date=Oct 21 2012, 03:34 PM:name=HeatSurge)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (HeatSurge @ Oct 21 2012, 03:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1994467"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And I don't know about COD, but 50-0 is definitely possible in BF :-) .<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<a href="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=23400892" target="_blank">Of course it is</a>. But I was comparing the score spread of two players in a 1v1, with an equal amount of experience, and the spread they got in other games.
edit: curse you typos.
With regards to NS2, this law is one of the main reasons why I dislike the powergrid system and infestation. They reverse the law to make the rules complicated but the outcome very simplistic. Both territory mechanics serve to provide awkward criteria that yield pretty meaningless results. Power is redundant throughout the map except for the win-button and infestation is just a steady creep outwards that means you have to drop node A and B and can never drop nodes X and Y.
Yes.
<!--quoteo(post=1994421:date=Oct 21 2012, 02:28 PM:name=HeatSurge)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (HeatSurge @ Oct 21 2012, 02:28 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1994421"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->In Quake and UT you also "pull the trigger, the guy in front of you dies..."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
No.
Having health, armor and no headshots is just one of the myriad of things that separate Quake from the strafe & spray & pray games. Please don't mix it in your comparisons so lightly.
I used to play CS 24/7. Then I found Quake, was like, f*ck, you actually have to aim in here. Where are all the boxes?! How can I strafe from behind a corner if THERE ARE NONE?