How are game designers supposed to deal with the fact most gamers are whiny emotional babies
For example
>want to tell players a certain area won't be accessible for a certain period of the game
>if you wall it off completely, players complain you took away their freedumbs
>if you surround it with instadeath enemies or traps, players complain you killed them for no reason how were they supposed to know
>if you surround it with unbeatable enemies that do heavy damage just to deter player without killing them, they will spent time trying to find a way around them
That's just one example, there are many situations where players will complain no matter what you do, how do you get players to engage with the game in good faith
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> Put in door
> Door can only be unlocked with key you get from finishing the previous area
Bro they figured this out in like the 60s how have you not caught up yet
Or you could have a party happening in the building that doesn’t end until you’ve completed the hurdle. Either is fine. You say this shit but none of it has any bearing on reality, you barely even feel it yourself. It’s an immaterial residual annoyance caused by reading someone else say they were annoyed, literally eight years ago
You're talking about linear games and walled off areas with door-sized chokepoints, I'm talking about open games with wide areas that would be off limits, think the Deathclaw infested quarry in New Vegas. Or areas that logically wouldn't have keys, or stuff like making water poisonous or shark infested so players can't reach islands until later etc even though it wasn't poisonous or shark infested before that.
> Lake is toxic
> Obtain the McGuffin Divemask of Detoxification to make it to the secret island
> This is different design from door/key mechanism
Are you really like this or just pretending to be moronic
You're missing the point, if the lake is toxic then you're either going to have to kill the player once to inform them of that (forced deaths are bad game design by default), or you're going to have to damage them heavily so they realize they're not supposed to go through there just yet, when most will take the fact they didn't die as encouragement to keep trying to get there even without the McGuffin Divemask of Detoxification.
None of it’s a problem. The poison lakes in Elden ring are distinct from the keys and that’s fine. You can literally have a guy stand in a doorway until a trigger, a key needed for a lock, or a poison floor you can traverse if you’re careful, all of it’s fricking fine. You can barely explain why it’s not
> Approach lake
> Lake is bubbling green, fumes coming out
> There's a dead human npc floating in the water
> Sign next to lake says TOXIC LAKE STAY OUT
> Go in
> Start losing health
> Die
> Ragequit and Steam Refund, leave a 0 star review about forced deaths and bad game design
This is why we can't have nice things
WHY. IS THE GAME. PUNISHING ME?!?!
I’M
NOT
STUPID!
This all sounds great on paper but we all know that's not how it really works, players aren't invested in the well-being of their character the way they are in their personal well-being, unless they're in an ironman run and any misstep could cost them hours of progress.
Why wouldn't you just put an NPC telling you not to go in?
Telling players not to do something is a great way to get them to do it. So maybe the solution would be to have an NPC urging them to go in.
If players are getting stuck on heading down a certain path even if you have put up something to stop them, it's a communication problem. You need to do something to tell them that there is another viable path. You can be overt and just straight up tell them (likely via an NPC or external actor prompting them), or you can be more subtle and give them visual cues: something eyecatching in the distance, or perhaps watching other NPCs also go around the obstruction. If you really want to make players have to think and pay attention, have it come up as a topic you overhear other NPCs talk about. Just make sure you set that expectation up with something simple before trusting people to do that on their own.
Probably one of the most common things I've seen is NPCs setup outside the obstruction telling the player they need something or are waiting for something to happen. It's not bad but a bit overplayed.
This sounds like a fun thing to do lol.
Post your top 5 games.
So you get to play in adventurous poison and live in a dangerous exotic fantasy world, rather than just have some scoutmaster guide you along, moron
>Player approaches hazard
>An NPC, or even just a sign or text box tells the player they cannot go into area yet
>After that the player can try and they will die, or they can listen to the game and not go there
Easy as shit.
Yeah what the frick and why do I have to use Chekhov’s Obligatory Key of Mocking the Audience to turn on my car anyways? Why did they name it that?
if you're having trouble with this, you are never going to finish an open world game. Maybe try something simpler, like a pong clone.
you need to make it clear that the goal is to unlock the area, moron
>open world
>world's central point is the final area
>place some endgame level knights around the area
>first time going near the area
>companion: "this is the final boss's dark castle. his minions are empowered by the four temples around the world. we should clear those first, then we'll be able to get in!"
So a poison lake is probably a really good indicator to get poison resistance, no?
yes, anyone that complains after the game very clearly lays out what you need to do to get past the barrier is a moron and should not be listened to.
Open games are a meme.
Embreace linearity.
Why would you need a key to access a public juncture that should realistically experience a lot of traffic
How come you can't break locks in Pokemon? Realistically a Machoke would be enough to brute force through the door already, but if you want to be cheekier you can just order Magnemite to disassemble to the lock and reassemble it again and no one would know a thing.
No HM for that.
>WOW MORE FRICKING KEYHUNT GARBAGE
So HMs?
>How are game designers supposed to deal with the fact most gamers are whiny emotional babies
They ignore those gamers and make their profits anyways, because unlike individual seething gamers, the creators actually live in a world of reality where they actually know and can see if a mechanic affects sales/enjoyment or not. They don’t have to spend decades on a message board insisting their pet peeve must actually be someone’s ciritical fricking error and they don’t have to keep disappointing themselves that the people behind it are chugging along just fine and no one else really cares except who you can get on a bandwagon by spamming. They don’t live in a world where every video game is shit and they’re depressed because no one will make their dream game finally, or even one game they can accept. Instead, they go in, do their work, leave having gotten their work done, and when the project sells, they’re done with it and it was all a successful paying job. They don’t go 10 years telling themselves The Witcher 3 is a bad game because it has quest markers, they don’t consider Skyrim an abysmal failure when it’s one of the most popular games out there. They’re not deluding themselves into thinking Minecraft was a mistake because the hunger patch. They just see these things as the successful good work they are. They have none of the problems you do, and you posting them never made them true.
This is all wrong, games that offend gamers the least often enjoy high scores like BotW with its "unlimited freedom", and the one place where the devs tried to force their vision of weapon experimentation through degradation is often held up as a flaw to be addressed. There is genuine value in figuring out how to work around gamers and execute your vision without offending their habits.
Weapon degradation didn’t affect BotW’s massive sales and it didn’t affect TotK’s massive sales years later, nor did the half decade of spam about the map and everything else. How are you so myopic that you’re using a massive successful pair of games as an argument for why your ‘flaw’ in them matters?
In reality weapon degradation caused you to adventure and economize more, make more decisions and play the game more, than you even realize. And you think you can even speak properly on behalf of your own brain
>only sales matter
Dumbass
>In reality weapon degradation caused you to adventure and economize more, make more decisions and play the game more, than you even realize
And people still didn't like it, which means the devs should've figured out another way of achieving the same intended behavior in players
They were superficially annoyed because it was the main bottleneck that drove gameplay but the mechanic works great and your loud mouths are a drop in the bucket
If players complain then it's bad game design regardless of reviews and sales, I agree that the gameplay should be driven towards the experimentation angle they went with and I personally didn't mind the durability but there has to be a way to achieve the same thing while not making most people annoyed they have to engage with it.
> If players complain then it's bad game design regardless of reviews and sales
There is meaning to what you’re saying, but you obviously know there are dumb pointless complaints based in nothing. Not every complaint you read here or anywhere else is the majority complaint. Not even every valid complaint you have, is significant enough to make the game as bad as you say. Yes you absolutely can write an essay about BotW’s weapon damage system, find people who hate it so much they hate the game, and even have most of the players agree it’s annoying, it doesn’t stop millions of people from picking up the game and enjoying it any time because the mechanic is a critical driving force that comes at the cost of some irritation in some people.
Now BOTW is a big example, you were right to choose it, the mechanic there is worth discussing. But this Pokémon thing where it’s supposed to be an insult and a crime to have a little parade block your path before beating the boss? There is no material problem there. At the very least, that’s an example of a brain dead complaint, a superficial one that’s just not based in reality. It’s just a silly way to lock a door.
So between that and really really bad mechanics, there’s a spectrum of valid complaints to clueless ones, at least
>the creators actually live in a world of reality
lol, devs are devs because they don't want to work in real jobs and avoid reality
>they actually know and can see if a mechanic affects sales/enjoyment or not
yeah they know so much that their games keep dropping on the bargain bin just one month after release, both physically and digitally (some are even given away for free!)
>They don’t have to spend decades on a message board
They do, they're obsessed with what forums say about them, but they will only pay attention and validate opinions that are convenient for their interests
>They don’t live in a world where every video game is shit and they’re depressed
They keep making games about depression because that's their only real life experience lol
>he thinks I’m talking about his pet indie developer
I’m talking to people who think The Witcher 3, Elden Ring, Minecraft, Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, and all these beloved best sellers are bad games. And Pokémon may be shoddy but the people who say the parade blocking the door is unforgivable are insane too
Those are bad games, Minecraft is okay if modded, popularity is inversely proportional to a game's quality.
See this is what makes you clueless. It’s not about sales it’s about how those are all massively effective as games.
Yeah, I don't care about your metrics for effectiveness, israelite. You have nothing else but ad populum.
My problem with Elden Ring is it's unnecessarily large. I would like to feel more constrained, because that's literally half of what's good about Dark Souls.
You're stuck in a series of narrow corridors, making progress is difficult, but rewarding, occasionally you unlock a door or some shit, and get access to a short cut, and it feels amazing.
>good faith
Lead with this so I know I can completely disregard your post and not waste my time.
>another spaz who can’t interface with the question itself because b***hing like this is just a lifestyle for him and has nothing to do with the content
Any other little rules you want to tell us to explain why you won’t see shit clearly
for someone so hung up on muh whiny gamers, you're pretty insufferable yourself. consider sucking less wieners next time you type a post
>nooooo what do you mean people don't like being told what to do or being patronized? grrrrr those ungrateful gamers and their human emotions
not my fricking problem. try making it somewhat clever or humourous like that pokemon screenshot if you really can't think of a clever roadblock so you don't rustle any jimmies, if people disliking your level design really bruises your ego that badly
It’s because you’re ridiculous. I was literally talking about the Pokémon roadblock by the way, the second two posts you replied to were me literally talking about exactly why the Pokémon roadblock is okay. Spaz
>It’s because you’re ridiculous
no i'm not
>I was literally talking about the Pokémon roadblock by the way, the second two posts you replied to were me literally talking about exactly why the Pokémon roadblock is okay
no, it's just you b***hing about people you think are b***hing because god forbid someone has a problem with being condescended to. we don't sign our posts here by the way
The question is if dying in a video game is the game condescending to you, or betraying you. They can do it goofily or severely, sure, but to say death in any game is the searing judgement of the creators and an indictment of personal failure? Absolutely not the case.
i think you replied to the wrong post
An artist is not supposed to give the audience what they say they want. Audiences do not know what they want. If they did, they would be artists.
You don’t understand there was a sprite standing in the doorway and he said I couldn’t progress until I beat the boss. I was never so condescended to in my life, it was like the developer was gripping my skull with his two hands, foreheads touching, whispering to me through gritted teeth ‘you have to finish this level to get to the next one’. I was mortified, shook in the utter dehumanization that had just occurred. Was I even a man in this person’s eyes? Or the controller of some character?
>>want to tell players a certain area won't be accessible for a certain period of the game
you don't do that
>a locked door?! Y…you can’t do that! I’m… *ack*… I’m suffocating! I can’t breathe! You took away my air!!! This is slavery… *ack* *cough* help… I’m… stuck… *falls down* I… i just wanted to get… *collapses* …through the door *silence*
>noooooo my rich semite narrative has a very specific order which you will follow
>no I literally decided resident evil, doom, metal gear solid, deus ex, halo, stalker, and every game ever is bad because they have levels and doors and keys
You aren’t even listening to yourself. You say this shit and you don’t even know what you’re saying
>>want to tell players a certain area won't be accessible for a certain period of the game
>>if you wall it off completely, players complain you took away their freedumbs
>>if you surround it with instadeath enemies or traps, players complain you killed them for no reason how were they supposed to know
>>if you surround it with unbeatable enemies that do heavy damage just to deter player without killing them, they will spent time trying to find a way around them
The only wrong answer to that problem is
>quirky non-sequitur obstacle blocks you for no reason until you do something else
Like your pic
some gameplay mechanics are bad, other times you’ve just picked up a pointless dogmatic pet peeve off an old Ganker post from some pissy guy who can’t even stand in line at a store without wishing the people near him were dead
>engage with the game in good faith
every time I see someone say this it's just code for "please ignore the design flaws in my shit game and pretend it's good"
That's projection on your part, consider the following
>Rockstar wants you to stay on the designated path while playing missions in their games
>players obviously don't want to do that and want to wander around anyway
>Rockstars punishes that behavior by failing the missions
>if players engaged in good faith then they wouldn't have to be punished
>however it was on Rockstar as the designer to provide motivation to players to do that in the first place
>Rockstars failed to provide any reason to players to play as intended and instead put an electric fence around the missions
>point of the thread is figuring out how to motivate players to do what you intended so they want to do it themselves without you punishing them
>"y-you're just projecting!"
>proceeds to give another example of it simply being shit design
epic
It's really ironic that you're refusing to engage with the topic of the thread in good faith, really shows why this sort of discussion is necessary in the first place
>complaining about not being able to go here or there.
yeah, (you) and the complainers are just moronic.
If the player is too dumb to realise they're supposed to go somewhere else, and come back later, that's their problem. Why does everything have to cater toward the dumbest and most belligerent player?
>players will complain no matter what you do
That's because I don't actually know what I want. I only know what I don't want, which is whatever I get.
But people should still try to meet my deliberately impossible and unreasonable expectations, even though I have no intention of ever letting them succeed in satisfying me, because I enjoy watching people jump through hoops.
And I am entitled to that, for the same reason I'm entitled to everything that I want: because I'm me, and me is better than not me because me is me.
Me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me me.
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
I know you're barely paid but still put on a better effort to shill
Listening to players is a surefire way to make your game bland forgettable slop.
Consider how many memorable iconic moments in vidya history are bullshit hard difficulty spikes, and then consider how players hate dying and trying over and over again, and how they would rather quit the game and go play something else. Getting players to play through the uncomfortable stuff and learn to like it is good game design, it's like getting kids to eat healthy food by pretending the spoon/fork is an airplane.
They should listen to me and only me because me is more important than not me and me me me me meee me meeee meee meeeeee meee mee meeeeee meeeee.
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Kneel
>How are game designers supposed to deal with the fact most gamers are whiny emotional babies
There is absolutely no industry as unprofessional as video games development.
>most gamers are whiny emotional babies
are they though? *most*? a couple homies complaining on Ganker or elsewhere is hardly representative of the overall population, pretty sure most people encounter all of the bullet points you mention and are like oh ok, guess I'll do this later, and frankly; the ability to 'sequence break' by sweating is a really fricking cool option in games in general and should always be on the table for those with the skill and/or willing to put in the time and attempts
There's acceptable and unacceptable ways to do this. Let's look at RDR2.
>Acceptable
Really strong, difficult pinkertons spawn if you go to the RDR1 map too early. You can survive but it's hard.
>Unacceptable
If you go too far, invisible snipers instakill you. FRICK YOOOOOUUUUU
Why frick you? It’s an in-setting way to simulate a barrier between zones, with a final line that makes sure it works. Really so what.
Dishonest game design. If they're gonna let you go part way in and have a challenge for you if you do, why would you not have it be like that the entire area? If you're gonna put in invisible snipers, why not have them be there from the beginning? So you have a chance to leave? If that's a case, put in the invisible snipers and put in a warning. The pinkertons aren't a warning.
Yes so you can have a chance to leave. The Pinkertons allow you to have a large game area where you’re fighting a lot and it’s hard to stay alive, but you can stay alive. The snipers show the end of that zone. You experience them once and then you get the picture. So what
Sorry dude, but frick the snipers. Thankfully I have the PC version and just modded them out
Fine by me, you took out a wall because you didn’t want it there. Makes sense, but it doesn’t make it a wrong game mechanic
>in-setting
invisible noclip god snipers are not in-setting. There's no indication they would be there, and there's no reason for it. "but the police are on high alert because blackwater" the police around one particular area are the most lethal force in the world, but only until Arthur dies? I'm not saying the player should have free reign, but an invisible enemy that instakills you is just lame. If you really want to blockade, put an actual blockade along the entrance to the area and spawn in an endless stream of buffed lawmen. Guarantee it'll feel better dying while trying to fight through 50 Spartans than one invisible fricker. Most people will realize their folly and some will make an extra game of how long they can last, but no one will feel like the game broke the rules. Thats really what this is about- feeling like the game is playing by its own rules.
For me it makes sense there’s some incredible crack shot and some place I can’t survive due to danger, even if a player model isn’t physically there
>some will make an extra game of how long they can last
Did exactly this, went to Blackwater and killed them until they stopped spawning en-masse. It was fun.
What wasn't fun was going too far south and the game deciding that I'm dead now.
What are some true game design dogmas
>players should never have to die to learn a lesson
>taking control away from players is always a bad thing
>showing or hinting what to do next should always be prioritized over directly telling the player through a prompt or an NPC
>a well designed game can be beaten without dying on the first run by a skilled and attentive player
>long button presses and QTEs are always bad
>players should never have to die to learn a lesson
Only if the player takes death so personally he feels like the game is calling him a failure. You don’t even lose anything in dark souls so long as you can get back to where you were, and the death screen isn’t a game over screen, why get upset?
>taking control away from players is always a bad thing
You simply can have cool effects and scenes in a game. It’s not a problem until it becomes one. You have so many frames you can’t act on in a game, it’s not just a hard rule you can’t do that.
>showing or hinting what to do next should always be prioritized over directly telling the player through a prompt or an NPC
You can have more immersion or more guidance. Either is fine
>a well designed game can be beaten without dying on the first run by a skilled and attentive player
Says who? Something you don’t expect to happen can happen once and then you know. So what
>long button presses and QTEs are always bad
Can create a feeling of distress or strength ie Snake in the microwave tunnel
>players should never have to die to learn a lesson
Don't see why.
Because you consider a death to be a personal insult from the game, and not just part of the learning process?
If death is considered a fail state in a game, the player should never have to die because of the devs' shortcomings, players should always have the chance to never fail if they are skilled and attentive enough. If death is somehow incorporated into the gameplay like in a roguelike, then it can be fine.
Why is expecting the player to fail, learn, and adapt a failure of the game design?
Sounds like you're just a pussy. I don't know.
Players can fail and realize they did something wrong without dying. Forcing players to die to learn things would be like teaching a 5 year old kid how to play basketball for the first time, failing to tell them they can't kick the ball with their feet, then fouling them when they inevitably kick it for something you failed to explain. If you did tell them and they kicked it anyway, then it's okay to foul them.
Pretty much.
>Players can fail and realize they did something wrong without dying
What difference does it make at that point? Either your failure is represented as a death, or it's represented as something else, like Wario getting knocked back to the previous check point. That's mechanically the same thing.
Not really, consider the following situation
>an enemy can only be damaged by a certain type of attack
>the player tries to damage them with another type of attack
>the game can a) have the attack not do any damage and visibly demonstrate it's pointless forcing the player to try something else (failure without death)
>b) auto-kill the player for trying the wrong attack so they learn it's the wrong type and try something else next time
If death is a fail state then it should be only reserved for critical failures by the player to follow the rules or react and play with skill, it's on the dev to provide the opportunities for players to never die if they play with excellence. A difficult game that can nevertheless be beaten with minimal deaths by lots of people is a game design achievement, it's like explaining difficult abstract concepts with simple words so that anyone can understand them.
Because the devs designated it as a fail state.
>Sometimes you don’t know the giant hammer kills you in one hit until it does, now you know
Or you can e.g. put a usually tough enemy below it that gets instakilled anyway so the player now knows to avoid them and if they die to them it's their fault for not paying attention or not playing well, and not on the dev for failing to explain a situation well before it happens.
I think you're generally right that a game should avoid forced deaths, but I also think it's going too far to say that games can never use deaths as anything except as a way to tell the player they failed a skill check. It can be fine to say to a player "you fricked up, and this death will teach you why"
>It can be fine to say to a player "you fricked up, and this death will teach you why"
I agree, but the "why" should also be clear before the player fricks up.
Generally, yes, but having a point of no return can really sell the impact of a particular failure. As long as it's not a game where death is excessively punishing at least.
>the devs designate it as a fail state
A temporary, theoretical one in a game you’re able to try again and again and no one ever EVER said you were meant to beat in one life. See this is what I was worried about, you DO actually think someone is scolding or insulting you when you die in a video game. They’re not. Video games are little puzzles you play for fun and you have to figure out parts of. It’s no problem. Yet the very act of having a task and a condition, makes you feel reprimanded by someone when you don’t meet that condition. How about you just get over it and say ‘ah ok, now I know’? You need to pull your head out of your ass feeling insulted by what is basically a toy obstacle course.
I don't see why you have such a hard time understanding that at least one player should be able to beat the game without dying without having to rely on luck as a sign of a well designed game. If you as a designer are relying on players to die over and over again to even understand the rules of the game, then you failed in conveying those rules to them in the first place. The challenge of a game should come from being able to adhere to the rules using your skills, not being unable to understand them until you fail over and over.
A difficult debate against a smart and well spoken debater is much different than a debate that's difficult because both of you speak different languages and don't understand what the other is even saying.
Don't agree. That's just your preference.
There's no concrete reason that I should have a reasonable shot at beating every game without dying.
There is, it's called good game design. If the player has to learn something about the game, and can only learn it by dying, that means it could've also been taught it to them through a designed way without dying, but the dev skimped out on it to save effort.
>Over and over? I thought we were talking about traps and one-hit punishments you have to know exist
I assume there would be more than one in such a game. There is nothing to be gained from design like that, it's not an engaging way to play a game.
https://catmario.eu/
It means you taught it to them badly.
What about Dark Souls.
>teaching by letting the player die to the mechanic means you taught them badly
No it means you’re teaching them now. Only you think it’s bad because you think dying in a video game is like being fired or dropping out of college
you would have a point if death wasnt punished in dark souls, but it is.
Death is only punished if you can’t get as far as you did last time. You aren’t punished for dying, you’re punished for not being as good as you were when you died, punished for getting worse than you were before. Not even punished really, just, ‘well start over and do it right’
A fail state is a signal to the player: "don't do that", if you bring up fail states to them for just playing the game, it means you're signaling "don't play the game".
>a game familiarizing you to a new mechanic by demonstrating its fail state is the game telling you you’re a failure
No it’s just demonstrating the fail state.
Incorrect. Or would you like your bank to charge you random fees you never incurred simply to demonstrate them, so you know they exist?
What an absolutely moronic analogy
>blown the frick out
My finances aren’t the same as a 7 second load screen and the chance to play more video games. You might as well have said dying in the video game is like dying in real life
>My finances aren’t the same as a 7 second load screen and the chance to play more video games
Why not, a game wasting your time for no reason is a punishment, you were hoping to progress and the game is telling you to go back and redo something you already did for something you weren't at fault at. Do you not value your limited time on Earth?
Because one is legal tender and exchangeable for tangible goods and one is a toy communicating its rules to you. Long level replays are frustrating but normal death runs either are easier than you think or don’t even exist at all in most games. If something comes out of the blue, a checkpoint is almost always effortless to start back at. Most games you just restart the fight itself, basically just trying the one thing again, for many others the level is part of the challenge. No I don’t consider minutes repeated during recreation to be a time robbery of my life. I’m chilling out as it is, even if I’m trying to win
>Because one is legal tender and exchangeable for tangible goods and one is a toy communicating its rules to you
It's also communicating "your free time is worthless to me". If I made a popular program that had a 30 second startup time for everyone that used it, and refused to optimize it to get it lower even if it was possible, would I not be a bad program designer?
>If something comes out of the blue, a checkpoint is almost always effortless to start back at.
Or you can just give players enough time to react to it. Even if most don't and do actually die, it's fine if they had the time to do it but *failed*. Prompting a fail state for the game designer's failings is bad game design.
shut the frick up you absolute moron. this is such a fricking moronic thread. you're sitting there arguing about game design fundamentals when it's clear you've never made a game in your life and you're certainly not going to finish whatever "game" you're talking about now. This thread doesn't value any of its participants time and you're a pretentious waste of space.
Is a run where you die truly worthless time or isn’t it just time you’re playing a video game? If the game is bad enough it’s not fun to play that little time, the. It’s not a good game anyways, but for me I don’t consider running around hitting things with my sword in a good game such suffering that I consider doing it again a robbery
>Is a run where you die truly worthless time
Yes if there was never an option for you to not die
So you’re just trying to get in and get out huh, no extra 90 seconds of gameplay to figure anything out, he just starts the game to see how little of his time he can spend beating it. Do you even like video games or is this some proxy trophy for you?
For the nth time, it's fine even if a lot of players die a lot playing the game, as long as they all had the option to not die if their skill and attentiveness were appropriately high. Bullshit deaths every player will have to go through no matter what, are bullshit.
Why? It’s just a little sequence.
I bet you enjoy loadings and cutscenes, they are just little sequences
>you're not allowed to enjoy cutscenes
Oh, it's ACgay.
>my favorite part of the video game is the part where there's zero interaction and it's basically just a movie
I see.
I didn't say it was my favourite part. It can accentuate the experience, by adding storytelling, dramatic flourishes, and context for your actions though.
>by adding storytelling, dramatic flourishes, and context for your actions though.
You can do all of that without needing overly restrictive story and cinematics. Mario has enough motivation to jump on goombas and rescue the princess, without constant cinematic accompaniment. And he seems to be doing well enough for himself.
kid, i poop on you
Cutscenes can be cool. I don’t rage slamming buttons or anything during them. Death can be content
>Death can be content
It can be, it usually isn't
Oh so it’s not a hard and fast rule then, isn’t it? It’s not something that should be forbidden because it’s just horrible on its own? It’s actually a feature you can use well or poorly, huh? That’s pretty much what I’ve been saying
If a player is rewarded for dying, it could be a good thing.
see
Nah they can just show you a fail state and you can learn it that way. So what, it’s barely even a real death.
see
The same can be demonstrated without incurring the fail state in a player, otherwise it sends mixed messages about its purpose. If death is a fail state, then it's bad game design to fail them for something they didn't do.
Just don’t be insulted by dying in a video game.
no, that's a completely arbitrary preference of yours.
Say there was a game with levels, that required you to beat every level twice in order to progress, to the next one, if I said I thought that was a waste of time would that just be a preference or would beating the same areas twice be an objective waste of time?
I mean, there are games like that, and some people like them.
RPGs are basically built around the concept of having you do a repetitive task over and over again until a number goes up.
If the levels were fun it’s fine. Your metaphor of playing the entire game twice to win once is bunk when we’d really talking about retrying an encounter
Then why don't devs do it more often? It's a free way of doubling your game's length.
There are plenty of games with great gameplay and levels that have the player replay them, or the player replays themselves. Monster Hunter, MMOs, Resident Evil games, fighting games, RTS, all these
This is an argument for why repeating zones are bad, not why dying is
Yes it's called an analogy
It’s an entirely different case
That is usually what an analogy is
There are bad analogies
What you’re saying just isn’t compelling. No one said it had to be constant death, but yes you can literally teach players mechanics by killing them with them. It doesn’t mean you didn’t teach the player.
Punishment isn’t just a "don’t do that" backhand either. It also exists to present decisions that the player has to make.
For a simple example, say a game places a bonus out on a series of precarious platforms out away from the normal route. A player then has to weigh the risk of them fricking up and having to redo the level up to that point. A skilled player with confidence in their abilities may consider it worth the risk, while a novice may simply decide to skip it and just go for the goal.
Decision making is part of what makes games games.
>how about the devs show you every dangerous move in the game on some other dummy opponent first so that you can make sure never to feel surprised or at risk or danger, because adventure means being coached tit-for-tat on every lash thing that can happen to you to the precise point where you know what to do ahead of time enough to never be hurt
Lmao no
>adventure is dying randomly to asspulls
??
I mean I guess but real adventurers don't get to try again after being crushed by falling boulders, if you're into the thrill of adventure then you should uninstall after your first death in a game
Yes adventure literally is the risk of surprise and danger. A perfectly charted path with all its risks explained is not an adventure, it’s a guided tour
An adventure where you die over and over again only to be revived to try again is not an adventure, it's hocus pocus magic bullshit. Real celebrated adventurers came inches away from dying and survived anyway, that's the thrill and knife's edge that games should aim to simulate, not the nameless dudes who died because they didn't see what's coming.
Again you seem to miss the point of OFFERING the players the ability do avoid death if they pay attention and have skill, not that no one should die ever, on the other hand you seem to want everyone to die to learn the game's ins and outs, only to achieve the same thing you could've achieved in a well designed game where skilled players don't have to die to asspulls to learn they're there.
> die over and over again only to be revived to try again is not an adventure
Over and over? I thought we were talking about traps and one-hit punishments you have to know exist, and not content too difficult to progress. Yeah some games are frustrating and bad with too much of this stuff, I get it, does it mean you have to feel insulted when you die to discover live a game has rolling boulder traps? Not at all.
What unfair one hit kills are we even talking about anyways? What are our examples. And whatever happened to ‘holy shit did you see that that was crazy I didn’t know he could do that this guy is fricking strong’, when did that become an awful feeling to people?
But why is dying so bad?
>like asking a 5 year old to play basketball for the first time, failing to tell them they can't kick the ball with their feet, then fouling them when they inevitably kick it for something you failed to explain
That’d be fine, fouls and penalties are just mechanics and if you don’t play by then you’ll learn to. What’s the problem? Sometimes you don’t know the giant hammer kills you in one hit until it does, now you know. Is it really important to make sure everything in every game is so safe and forgiving you aren’t in any real danger when you don’t even know what’s going on? Otherwise you just get hit by anything and it doesn’t matter because it was designed not to be overcome
>But why is dying so bad?
Negative feedback mindbreaks the participation trophy generation, it's the same reason they had a massive shitfit about 1Ups in Mario games so now we don't have green mushrooms anymore.
Those are stupid in the 3D games, specifically because there's no actual fail state. It's basically an illusion of a life system.
You fetishize failure and punishment, you must've been beaten by your parents for inane shit a lot.
Your assumption that failure in a video game is a punishment, is the telling part.
It's not a punishment. It's just a state of not having succeeded yet.
No, just existing in a level or a quest before beating it is not having succeeded yet, the fact you think punishment is equivalent to the default state is telling of your trauma.
Bro, it's a game. You don't get to win by doing nothing. Winning doesn't even feel good, if it's just handed to you.
>You don't get to win by doing nothing
Yes, you have to beat the challenges to win, like I said, but the challenges and their rules need to be clear first. Cat Mario is not a well designed game, trial and error with death is not good game design.
Trial and error *can* be good game design in productive games and mechanics, for example if there's a game about mixing ingredients to get potions, creating the wrong mix and producing nothing is not a fail state nor a punishment, but if you tied that ingredient system to the game's fail states, then it would be bad game design.
I don't see why you have such an aversion to death as a skillcheck. If it's "go back to the start of the game and lose hours of progress", or "you drop all of your items and don't get them back" that's one thing. A death just on it's own isn't anything, especially if it's only setting you back thirty seconds.
You could just as easily visualise that as a gust of wind blowing your character back a few feet. It's mechanically the same thing. Nothing was taken from you.
>but the challenges need to be clear first
First can be learning the challenge by trial and then you know from there on out. You can do either. Just consider your first run your first run, dumbass, and not your master ‘I’m going to prove I’m so smart I’ll never get hurt even in a video game’ run
How do you expect a player, who let's assume has never played a platformer before, to know that the spots without ground will kill you?
Hell, SMB starts you with a goomba right in front of your face at 1-1 explicitly to teach you that enemies will kill you and you should jump over them.
Death is barely a fail state in any game, plenty of games it’s not a fail state at all. Ironman games should be careful but at the same time I can’t respect people insisting on doing Ironman for games like WoW and others that aren’t about it even if the option is implemented
I think I get what you're trying to say
A death should never feel cheap or like it came out of nowhere. If you die, you should feel like it's your own shortcoming and not because the game blindsided you with something unavoidable
Why? That's just your preference. And I would say it's rooted in some weird insecurity about the game "disrespecting" you, which reflects on you more than anything.
Oh, and Another World basically violates all of these "rules", and is an incredibly good and well designed game.
Some of the things you think you hate are because a seething autistic shut in convinced you to be as mad as he was with something you hadn’t even touched ten years ago
>How are game designers supposed to deal with the fact most gamers are whiny emotional babies
You don't
In linear games just wall it off, you don't need justification other than it is a linear game so go this way stupid.
In open world games? Active level scaling so it doesn't matter where the player chooses to go the difficulty won't randomly spike.
Pokemon Scarlet failed to do either, which is why it is a bad game.
All of you fricking children go and play Another World now, before you talk to me about game design. It takes like two hours.
Another World is an awful game with an amazing presentation.
I say this as some one who still spins it up every now and then (Amiga and SNES versions).
It's a masterclass of clever and intuitive design. The game never has to stop and tell you anything. It all just makes sense.
>It all just makes sense.
Eh, that might be going a bit too far. A fair bit of the game's solutions are wonky in the same bane of Dragon's Lair, where you may just need to keep guessing and dying till you figure out what it wants from you.
But for visual and audio presentation, the game is 11/10.
Some games are a pleasure to play beyond their gameplay IMO.
>where you may just need to keep guessing and dying till you figure out what it wants from you.
That's good design. It's satisfying, and to the point.
Do something wrong - die
Do something right - live
That's called feedback.
>same bane of Dragon's Lair
Dragon's Lair is literally a guessing game at times. Another World has a couple of times where you get stuck trying to figure out wtf to do but it's never really "I pressed right instead of left". Plus Dragon's Lair has a game over system where you restart from the beginning, Another World will put you back a few screens at most. And it's even more generous in the newer versions.
You have bad takes, amigo.
OP is projecting hard
All pokemon games were designed like shit from the beginning.
Without some areas being hard locked you could run the risk of a player pushing through an area of higher level monsters, using a repelent or having luck, pushin all the way to a pokemon center, marking it as the respawn point and now being basically trapped in an area they can't escape because every time they try to go out they are ambushed by high level monsters that curbstomp them.
That of course is an even deeper problem of design of the combat and leveling system that creates a world that doesn't make any sense.
>where players will complain no matter what you do, how do you get players to engage with the game in good faith
>implying players trying to solve problems is bad
why the frick is anyone responding to this homosexual israelite OP. all fields
OP’s image isn’t a problem. It’s a simple funny barrier.
>>if you surround it with unbeatable enemies that do heavy damage just to deter player without killing them, they will spent time trying to find a way around them
the best way because players WILL find a way and in the end makes for a more interesting game for having that weirdo second option
I hate the stupid sequence break mindset, SOME games can benefit from it, but insisting that every single game and scenario cater to the stubborn players is so fricking stupid it boggles the mind. Skipping content should NEVER be the reward, players should never want to skip the content.
>sequence break mindset
Speedrunning and its consequences have been devastating for gaming as a whole.
i want to frick with speedrunners
>set of five sequences breaks
>all of them involve a very long set of frame perfect inputs and the player only has one chance at them, effectively being TAS only unless the speedBlack person practices for months/years
>successfully performing all five sequence breaks flips a true/false variable
>there are several checks along the player's route to see if its a TAS speedrun or not
>if it IS a TAS speedrun, the game continues as normal.
>if it is NOT a TAS speedrun, the final boss will not spawn, locking the cuck who spent years of his time practicing a single game out of the highest moment of his life
>be me
>crate tred:
>How are game designers supposed to deal with the fact most gamers are whiny emotional babies
>people don't give a shit about my fantasies
>be emotional whiny baby
If I ever make a game my progress walls will be a gang of npcs populating the place who politely tell you to frick off and if you persist, you can fight them and they will be the same level as the area past them. You win, you earn your sequence break.
This is called a boss
Most games have a boss at the end of the level. My example would be in the transition zone where there's normally no combat due to said area being ill-suited for it.
>how do you get players to engage with the game in good faith
here is a serious answer. You fricking don't. It doesn't matter how you will look at it. Players will never do whatever you want them to do, they'll have fun their own way. If they can't or won't have fun, they'll play something else. Well, most of the well-adjusted human beings would.
If you look at videogames as a piece of art, a way to tell a story too, you should deal with the fact, that people will just do whatever they want with your product. Whenever a person owns something, they're free to do anything they want with it. You can take a painting IRL and wipe your ass with it, if you so desire. You can shoot cum on or inside of a book, if you want.
That is to say, that once an item, even piece of art is released into the world, you have no control of it anymore. Yes you might have been the author, yes, you might have been the creator. But it has it's own life now and there is nothing you can or will do about it.
>Whenever a person owns something, they're free to do anything they want with it. You can take a painting IRL and wipe your ass with it, if you so desire. You can shoot cum on or inside of a book, if you want.
They are free, but a good enough painting or book will have people not want to do that, entirely on their own. Games, and player characters, and NPCs are seen as far more disposable, and a lot of people find fun in shitting on them than in engaging seriously with them.
Nah people deface and criticize fine art constantly and they do the same with games, in fact the most popular games usually get the most affection for their exploits
>but a good enough painting or book will have people not want to do that
You're judging people using yourself as an example. People are animals. If somebody doesn't like a painting or a cover of a book, for whatever reason, there is no telling what they might do.
Then there are overwhelming emotions (negative), like uncontrollable rage in some people, who'll just destroy anything when pissed off for no reason at all. Usually their own stuff.
If you forcefully divorce a woman who loves you, or break up with such a girl, there is no telling, what she will do to your stuff. Tale old as the universe itself.
Bottom line
TL;DR: People will do whatever they want and nothing will stop them.
P.S. but if there is a force that can't be dealt with or prevented, people will rather quit than waste time.
You are talking about extraneous situations whereas I'm talking about personal art product > customer relationships. Few people buy high art to destroy it, few people buy books to destroy them or read the spoilers at the end, few people fast forward through movies they paid for, but a lot of gamers play games with the intention of breaking them and then complain the game didn't cater to their playstyle. It's unironically a toy > child relationship.
children break toys apart, because they want to know how it works. same with videogames btw. if you want to learn about the real core of the game even devs are unaware of -> break it.
Most games don't cater to the playstyle of most players. That is perfectly fine. What kind of a "hardcore" gamer plays FIFA? No such thing.
Besides, depending on the design ofc, but breaking a game is not a bad thing. I don't value the game from the 90's and my experience in them less just because I know how to break them and am aware of some speedrun "glitches" that allow you to skip levels now.
But in all of my probably close to 30 years experience of playing videogames nothing has ever pissed me off more than an artificial barrier than doesn't allow me to progress. But that's just imo. Although it does diminish the experience of playing the game itself, it's like seeing the wizard behind the curtain, you know.
yeah, sure. but we're not talking about peaceful breakups there. we're talking about such a flow of emotions and pain that clouds all of the judgement and foresight in the world.
The is no telling what she'll do with your stuff, but more than likely she'll just go her own way.
Yeah people can have better relationships with their emotion and it’s not just the end of the conversation to say ‘I get furious at this because I’m an animal’. Nobody would blame you at being furious over a murder, a few video game deaths just aren’t anything to get furious about
Ah, it depends on the game, design, and the cause of death. If I were to die on hardcore mode in an online game because of the moronic bug the devs can't/won't fix, that is enraging. Which is one of the reasons why I don't play hardcore modes online, like ever.
The point i'm making tho is still valid, which is, people will just do whatever they want with a videogame they own. And their emotions and/or mood might/will influence it too.
What I also don't like, but is very widespread is the "gaming" community, is getting absolutely high/stoned/drunk and play videogames in that state. baka. it's like i'm making an argument against online games again.
But you get the point anyway... People will not follow the lead of the devs.
Right, it’s conditional, not just a hard and fast rule all death is a bad punishment
Yes, if the death benefits the player, then dying in a videogame is fun and a good thing. Does it in the game you have in your mind tho?
Dark souls? Yeah, you get to play the level again and get double xp when you get back to your body because you played the level. I would also classify learning mechanics as a good reward for dying. ‘Oh shit now that I’ve been hit by that I know how to dodge it’ type of thing, I would also consider death to give credit to success, if you’re scared to fail the player then success means less
Ok, this will be a very unpopular opinion in this particular world, and I have ever only played the first one, but Dark Souls actually sucks. It sucks very bad as a videogame.
Because the controls are moronic as in not very intuitive, plus the animations suck. As in you can't break a moronic animation and you will suffer the consequences of taking an action. Which is why it only makes sense to do as little as possible and get as much shit as possible by exploiting the game. In legit and not-so-legit ways. Which basicly almost everybody does.
Also, Dark Souls doesn't reward you for dying one bit. You get nothing, but lose a lot. A LOT.
So you don’t really believe in learning a game or planning ahead, then. Like if you swing a giant sword and the guy can hit you faster, you think it’s bad and wrong that you can’t in every game cancel your move, as if knowing how fast your weapon is just isn’t an option? I’m not saying cancels aren’t great, they make a lot of games great, but you are talking about not accepting committing to an attack or not pressing a button because you know it makes you vulnerable. Like you believe every mistake should be able to be undone. Makes sense in a way but I doubt you believe this is the only way to design games
Ofc not. But that also isn't the point. Point being that you just get free souls by endless farming, you could even bot it, right in the beginning of the game. It will be somewhat slow, but doable with 0 danger to your life. I found it out after like an hour of playing, by accident.
Even that isn't the point btw. You just get a bow, or way better a mage and blow your way through the entire game without suffering once.
>Like if you swing a giant sword
in your gaming view means
>learn melee combat
to me it means: melee sucks. make a mage or an archer and blast through the game on easy mode. even unintended stuff by devs, but you can do it. also, bomb throwing is a great bonus to a ranged character.
You just want the game to be easier. That’s fine, but you could have also learned the melee attacks. Whatever though, you don’t have to like dark souls or anything, but no dark souls melee isn’t poorly designed, most players can handle it
>You just want the game to be easier.
No, no, no. I don't want it to be easier. I want game to be designed in a good way. Make a mage = easy win is not a good game design.
>That’s fine, but you could have also learned the melee attacks.
Why would I waste my time?
> Whatever though, you don’t have to like dark souls or anything, but no dark souls melee isn’t poorly designed, most players can handle it
I don't like Dark Souls because it's awful game balance, hence bad design. And yes melee is poorly balanced against other types of combat.
Path of least resistance guy huh. Melee just isn’t that hard and dark souls isn’t a poorly designed game
And I want to clarify, the reason why I think your standards shouldn’t be a hard and fast rule, is because it would directly prevent games like dark souls from existing the way I like them. It matters if the sword attack makes me vulnerable
>And I want to clarify, the reason why I think your standards shouldn’t be a hard and fast rule
Fair, but we're talking game design. It's poor. That's a fact. Game still exists and one can launch it.
>is because it would directly prevent games like dark souls from existing the way I like them. It matters if the sword attack makes me vulnerable
Great. I'm not invalidating your experience. I'm saying that
>dark souls is hard hardcore game
>dark souls teaches you to play by dying
is bs. Because mages exist. Because archers exist. Because bombs exist. Because poor design allows you to get virtually infinite amount of souls for the price of your time (or botting) in the first level of the game without ever dying or even engaging in combat!
The "easy" mode is built in the first Dark Souls right away. It isn't a hard game.
>it’s poor, that’s a fact
No it’s not. Melee is fun as frick, the feel and sense of danger is different than mage, the mechanics are different. They’re not just awful and not worth doing, they’re decently quick to figure out and fun to learn and succeed with. If you call this poor, then you’re asking the game not to have the melee I like.
> Because poor design allows you to get virtually infinite amount of souls for the price of your time
Yeah you can grind or go without grinding, like any RPG. I understand the draw to taking the easy options, but to say harder ones that are really fun shouldn’t exist because of it, or that they should be made as easy so there wouldn’t be a difference, that’s asking this type of melee combat not to exist.
Not that anon, I dislike "committing to attacks" because it makes for boring non-fluid gameplay, not because I don't like calculating the best move ahead. To give you an example
>racing game
>there's an upcoming corner
>you have to pick a line, speed, apex etc and commit to it
>even if you picked wrong, you still have control of your car
>you can never save the corner fully as you would if you took it correctly from the start, but you aren't locked out of your controls either and can do damage control on the fly
I dislike the From system because it makes for stilted broken up gameplay where you're constantly locked out of making inputs until an animation is finished playing. I'd much prefer it if I was able to still move but e.g. a lot slower, or if I was allowed to drop a weapon if I realize I fricked up and back off the animation, for the tradeoff of temporarily losing the weapon but getting to not die.
It doesn't have to allow you to completely undo your frickup, but it'd flow a lot nicer if you were allowed to do shit to attempt to minimize the damage while the animation was playing.
Perfectly smooth gameplay is nice but obviously there are so many games and mechanics including outside of gaming that have turns, beats, and pulses. I get what you’re saying but recovery is just another kind of timing, it’s not a wrong type of competitive form in a world where people actually have to pivot and recover and wait to do things like fence, play volleyball, gamble, etc
>>if you surround it with instadeath enemies or traps, players complain you killed them for no reason how were they supposed to know
>>if you surround it with unbeatable enemies that do heavy damage just to deter player without killing them, they will spent time trying to find a way around them
These are objectively the worst ways to go about it. The player would assume the area is just hard and continue to throw themselves at it, this is the same reason why the soft progression gates in Elden Ring outright don't work and end up being more frustrating than guiding.
>how to deal with most gamers being whiny emotional babies
>how do you get players to engage with the game in good faith
You make your game linear and you also make it clear that there aren't going to be important items they'll miss if they don't explore every nook and cranny of the game like autistic chimps.
That way they can be at ease and have fun or they can take their time looking around at everything for an extra little reward that won't amount to much but will still be nice to have.
Same when it comes to endings, make it clear cut so people don't have to fricking google shit up, no fricking
>oh, you want the good ending? You just need to talk to all the hidden NPCs through the game that are in secret hidden areas and if you go past them you can't get them again then you need to finish the game
Undertale did it right.
Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest solved this 100 years ago
Better than that one moron guard that wont let you pass for no reason until you get him some water from the only vending machine in the world that sells it.
You just have to grit you teeth and keep going. Focus on the ones who like your game and provide useful feedbacks. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that some of your players are fricking idiots who can't tie their own shoelaces.
If you're gonna flaunt your game as open ended and free, don't punish people for going off of the beaten path. If you want to break away from the story because it's boring, why should the game punish you for it? It's one thing to nudge people in a general direction, but don't insult the player with something they couldn't see coming, or with a blatant asspull, like magic invisible snipers that insta-gib you. It's no different from a JRPG where the player wins the battle, but then the boss magically pulls out an asspull that lets them wipe the party. At the least the game should reward you for your effort. Like Lufia 2 attempted to do.
>you beat Gades early? That was quite an accomplishment, but we need him alive for later in the game, so have an extremely powerful weapon for your troubles
Personally would've preferred him to stay dead, and have the game acknowledge the immense effort put in, but it's better than nothing. Is that too much to ask, that the effort be given some recognition? Is the story so important that the gameplay has to be neutered for it? The game itself should come first before everything else. The story should not, and does not, deserve any say in the matter. If anything, it should exist as background noise, the barest possible excuse to justify going around and jumping on goombas and collecting coins. This shouldn't be like God of War or Final Fantasy, where we're forced down a hallway to listen to exposition constantly. Games should be more about discovery and player agency. That should be paramount above all else.
>Posts Lufia 2 Gades battle.
You now remember that banger of a battle theme
you need to decide if your games are going to cater to sub 90 IQ or not. then you need to decide if they are going to cater to sub 110 IQ or not, and so on. Thats it really.
for instance if you dont cater to sub 90iq then you get people who complain that the map was too confusing if there are any branching paths. If you dont cater to sub 110 IQ then you get people complaining about "too many enemies to keep track of i need to 1v1"
it doesnt even matter if you put tutorials or training missions on the game. stupid people will barely pay attention, just do the bear minimum to get by, then complain when those lessons are actually needed in the later game because "how was i suppose to know"
Am I the only one who remembers teleporting to a new random bullshit location after every level?
>Level 1 grassy noob village
>Level 2 factory but the water is purple
>Level 3 Icy place
>Level 4 castle but it's filled with skeletons
>Level 5 lava place
Why can't nu-devs into schizo game logic?
you've just described Vampire Survivors btw. Which is an indie like a 2022 (or was it 2021?) release.
There's a difference between a shitty asset flip and a decent non-sequitur videogame, anon.
>>if you surround it with unbeatable enemies that do heavy damage just to deter player without killing them, they will spent time trying to find a way around them
How is that a flaw instead of an objective positive trait? This is how any game with different accessible areas should behave, players who are willing to bust their balls and go through numerous meaningless deaths deserve to be rewarded with strong gear/creatures/abilities earlier than intended if they do manage to reach them.
I think the reason why unintended meddling with games is thought of so highly is because of all the Americans that grew up with Nintendo games had to make their own fun because the intended ways of engaging with the games were boring, so they started worshipping speedrunning, and sequences breaks etc.
Other less popular games offered so many different ways to engage with them on their own that the idea of breaking the game to make it fun never even crossed people's minds. For example I grew up with Fallout 2 and never once did I think I have to mess with the game's design to make it fun, the game just lets you walk into any place at any level and you don't have to bullshit your way through stuff the devs never intended in order to do so. I think a good immersive game should have either dev-intended "sequence breaks" where you can stumble into things, or the player should never want to sequence break themselves and would want to follow the game's logic.
If the player is thinking "I can slide over this mountain if I jump autistically enough times and skip some content" that means they don't find the main gameplay engaging in the first place.
>people don't do gimmick runs, or speed runs of old CRPGs
based Ganker, and it's uninformed opinions on everything
yo, you can't just target minors like that dude
There's a big difference between trying to mess with a decades old game everyone's beaten and insisting that sort of game design has to be standard for first playthroughs in brand new games. People absolutely do cry they aren't allowed to sequence break new games they are playing for the first time.
What the frick are you even saying?
If anything, games like Fallout were the ones popularising the idea that the player shouldn't just be locked on a particular path. If a Fallout game didn't let you just wander the map, more or less immediately, there would be complaints about that.
just like the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls:_Arena
did
But Fallout devs intended for you to be able to go anywhere anytime and built the game around it, whereas people are usually obsessed with intentionally circumventing the designed areas and challenges of a game to do something the dev never intended. I think that these sort of "challenges" only break immersion and toe the line with outright manipulating the game with outside software like bots or Cheat Engine.
It's fine if a dev makes a purposefully impossible encounter, then still accounts for the fact players might try to circumvent it and creates some acknowledgement or reward for it, but I think they should be allowed to make the encounter genuinely impossible without having players complain the game is forcing them to do something or railroading them.
I think it should be acceptable to force players to suck some things up with immersion as the goal, it's much more visceral for e.g. a tough saloon full of pirates to not allow the player inside by beating them up and throwing them out every time they enter with no possible recourse from the player until later in the game, instead of just throwing up a "can't enter here" prompt when the player tries to enter. It feels more immersive to feel like you can do something but realize there's no hope, than it is to just be artificially stopped from even trying, but players should also accept that they can only enter much later when they find an intended item/quest/etc, than trying to bruteforce their way in.
> It feels more immersive to feel like you can do something but realize there's no hope, than it is to just be artificially stopped from even trying, but players should also accept that they can only enter much later when they find an intended item/quest/etc, than trying to bruteforce their way in.
it causes the problem with writing. or to be more precise, it reveals the non-existence of writing skills of the author.
Ofc it depends entirely on the universe, but whatever world is being created, it shouldn't violate logic (and its principles) and common sense. Esp it isn't allowed to violate the logic and the laws of that particular created world.
For example, if your character is stronk enough to break a wall at one point in the game, there is no reason, whatsoever, why the this character won't be able to break any other wall (or all of them) at any other point of the story.
The most common trope (mistake), however, and RPG's and MMO's suffer a lot because of it, is that you're a powerful character, but you can't take on some "butthole" (your rival) for plot armor or some other bullshit reason, even tho, you've just killed a pack of strongest apocalyptic dragons with your fart, like two minutes ago.
Yes, but the reverse is also true, in that players expect themselves to be the strongest baddest most capable motherfricker around at all times and don't like being humbled ever, in gameplay or story.
Realistically no single human character in the game should be able to take on 10+ other human characters in a fight, but some skilled players might through the virtue of being humans vs dumb AI, or abusing levels and items, or by savescumming etc and expect the same "power" to carry through in the story as well. Sometimes what makes for fun flowing gameplay isn't what makes for a fun story, making every main character an immortal because "you can just reload you can just use Phoenix Down etc" would be dumb.
I agree that examples like pic related are true and should be avoided or the players should be given logical means of engaging with these types of situations, but I also think, if handled logically, the devs should be able to create these organic walls that don't telegraph that they're walls.
>be the strongest baddest most capable motherfricker around at all times and don't like being humbled ever, in gameplay or story.
Depends entirely on the context: world, characters, gameplay, etc.
Half-Life 1, Doom II, Quake I-III, Unreal, UT, and so on, and so forth, have never game me the feeling of being the strongest, baddest, "all powerful" being. Strategy Games were also amazing at this, but suffered from some other writing bullshit.
TL;DR: Plenty of great games in different genres have no problems of this kind.
>unintentional sequence breaking is less of a thing in a game designed around intentional sequence breaking
You'd expect so, yes.
"Breaking" these old RPGs lies more in figuring out the most optimal character builds. People love doing that shit.
That's what I'm saying, when you're used to playing games where there are no sequences to break because the dev accounted for all of it, you're more inclined to play the "intended" way in other less open games. But when you're used to very limited linear games where fun has to be extracted by abusing the game, then you get into an unhealthy mindset of expecting every game to be breakable and complain when they aren't. Not every game can offer CRPG levels of freedom nor should they need to.
For example I've seen people praise SM64 as the definitive 3D platformer better than any other for its "freedom" that they are lacking, but I personally never cared for the freedom of abusing lack of dev oversight and the reward of skipping content and prefer more tightly designed games where you can experience the whole thing by playing normally, not necessarily even from other IPs, Mario 3D World was a much more enjoyable experience than SM64 to me.
thats just the result of shit map design
why would you put a endgame area near something you can access halfway through the game?
I mean there can be various reasons for design like this, for example if you designed an area to have an obvious path and a hidden path, and you want the players to look for the hidden path by blocking off the obvious one. Having the player see the same location from different angles and in different ways can deepen the appreciation they have for it, instead of just getting used to the path of least resistance.
then don't make it visible until you beat the game
there's ways to hide secret endgame areas
>mysterious rock or tree hiding a path that gets removed after you beat the game
shit like OP is just lazy gamedevs
gen 2 is a good example of good map design
you unlock kanto after beating the pokemon league
Or you can just let the player know there’s a place they’ll get to later they can’t get to now. It doesn’t piss anyone off unless the message doesn’t come across or theyre just offended by sequence
most times these types of locations are completely worthless and makes you wonder why hide them in the first place
most egregious locked locations in pokemon were in gen 7
the hotel was completely inaccessible for almost the entire game and once you get access to it there's literally nothing there
Yeah that’s the real bummer with these Pokémon games, not so much that there are barriers in them
Why? It'd be pretty neat to always go through the same path, then get forced to find an alternate one and get a new perspective on the area, and then pick and choose depending on which one is more convenient for the rest of the game. Then you start the game again and realize the alternate path was always there, available from the start and not locked away.
You can do either or both. I imagine alt paths take more dev time, though smart design obviously makes it all work with decent effort. It’s true some devs are just uncreative and lazy and run you through a dull sequence for no reason
roadblocks are bad because they make the game appear smaller
metroidvania switches
the path never looked like it existed until something broke a path open
but then david jaffe would get stuck and cry about it on youtube
good
You aren't supposed to listen to them. That's it.
The solution is to make the game you want to make and not listen to whiny little shitters that can't even face adversity in a virtual setting where said adversity even matter.
>be game designer
>expected to design game
>designing game is hard
>it's the player's fault for expecting it
Bro this is what you are paid to do, you are paid to come up with these contrivances. All video games are just-so stories designed to frame a series of utterly pointless and arbitrary challenges as a coherent narrative. Saying it's "too hard" to do that is like developing a multiplayer FPS and whining it's too hard to balance guns. If you don't want to come up with clever narrative justification for your gameplay contrivances then don't make a fricking RPG. The average D&D dungeon master thinks shit through better than this.
Right, but there’s a spectrum from the game developers honest responsibility and job all the way down to neurotic unhappy people having trouble with their own emotions. Not to say every complain is fake and mentally ill, just that you know people can get crazy
They put it there and if the player doesn't get the point, tough shit I guess
You would have a valid point if you didn't post one of the best examples of how NOT to do it.
t. dropped that game because of how the devs chose to be so self-aware and obnoxious on top of railroading the player.
haven't you heard the phrase fools shout the loudest? the fact that indie devs care about bad feedback from the .001% of their audience baffles me. if you know how to make a good game then make a good game. if you can't take some punches then you are the baby. there are even tools to hide posts from people that trigger you and you don't even need to officially censor them. yet you still complain?