van HellSing on 25/6/2010 at 19:35
Quote Posted by Nihilism
Either way, in Bioshock, you were an all powerful, unstoppable badass.
And that's with just the wrench!
Sulphur on 25/6/2010 at 19:35
Quote Posted by Papy
Why trying to find a compromise when you can give everyone what they want?
Because base gameplay mechanics and narrative ideally aren't a set of switches to be turned on and off at will? Because each new option added requires retesting and rebalancing and added QA/bug checking?
I understand that these are all boring reasons, but if there's little return on doing such things - which is unfortunately, so to say, 'just' pleasing a small subset of the PC community - then there's not much business sense in doing it.
Papy on 25/6/2010 at 20:10
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Because base gameplay mechanics and narrative ideally aren't a set of switches to be turned on and off at will? Because each new option added requires retesting and rebalancing and added QA/bug checking?
How much retesting, rebalancing and bug checking, disabling the ability to switch plasmid would take? How much would it cost to have this option so people of loved SS2 could have a bit more of what they want? And how about developers let ME the burden of choosing my own balance?
When I started playing oblivion, I just couldn't stand my character leveling system. Because of who I am, I was always trying to maximize my leveling bonus, which took away my "role playing fun" (and reading Bethesda's forum, it seemed to be the case for a good number of people). So I took a bit of time changing it. After learning the scripting language, it took me 3 or 4 hours to decide what to do, make the script and test it. Why couldn't Bethesda do it themselves?
I never played Fallout 3. The reason is I thought Oblivion was so bad that I didn't care for their next game. If Bethesda took a few hundred hours to include some simple gameplay options, I might have found Oblivion good enough after all and I might have bought Fallout 3. Instead, I now consider Bethesda as a company which is making boring games. How many people are like me?
thiefinthedark on 25/6/2010 at 20:15
When you pander to the lowest common denominator, inevitably you set the benchmark there. If developers attempted to raise the bar in terms of challenge and immersion, then gamers would naturally adapt with it.
This isn't the 80's. Games do not have to be hard due to techinical constraints, nor do they have to be artificially hard to replicate that difficulty.
What we are going through is like some sort of bizzaro hangover where publishers are screaming "MY GOD, GAMES WERE SO HARD 30 YEARS AGO, WE NEED TO MAKE THEM EASIER TO ATONE" and thus making every game a themepark FPS.
Notice the lack of most genre's these days? The oldschool RTS is gone in favor of some sort of childish capture the flag/ king of the hill design. Simulations are almost non-existant. The TBS is dead except in the case of Civ and the Stardock games. FPS's have taken fully to using regenerative health, excessive cover, and all manner of player aids.
It's a strange, strange situation. All I'm saying is if we raised the bar instead of lowering it, we'd be doing everyone a favor.
DDL on 25/6/2010 at 22:12
Kinda agree.
Nowadays, it seems like if someone discovers in playtesting that it's possible to get screwed if you do something gapingly retarded, they jump to make sure that can't happen: "let's make sure the players don't end up doing that by mistake".
I kinda liked it back when it was more a case of "Hah! Srsly? Well fuck em if they're that stupid."
Games (hah! Vastly sweeping generalisation...uh..'some games'?) should be trying to weed out stupidity by discouraging it, rather than making it irrelevant. It's sort of an extension of the case where people complain that they've done something utterly idiotic and their last save was twenty five hours ago. If you know you're a fuckwit, SAVE MORE OFTEN. If you're not keen on that, then BE LESS OF A FUCKWIT.
Er...that turned into more of a rant than I was expecting. Sorry.
*runs off to install aqualung, run silent and EMP shield*
SubJeff on 26/6/2010 at 00:45
Games will never be taken as a serious artform if they never become meaningful and it's a step in the wrong direction to take away meaningful choices.
Someone remind me, is the reason we're discussing this because you can respec in DX3?
Nihilism on 26/6/2010 at 00:46
Quote Posted by thiefinthedark
This isn't the 80's. Games do not have to be hard due to techinical constraints, nor do they have to be artificially hard to replicate that difficulty.
Demon's Souls was deliberately difficult, and it was probably the best game I've played in the last couple years.
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
Games will never be taken as a serious artform if they never become meaningful and it's a step in the wrong direction to take away meaningful choices.
Someone remind me, is the reason we're discussing this because you can respec in DX3?
Why must games be considered art by non-gamers? Art is eternally subjective, so what another thinks of what you consider art, should be irrelevant.
The intrigue in choice is rooted in the diversity of causality. With cookie cutter results, I am uninterested in the typical choice system present in Bioware or Bethesda games. When games become advanced enough where choices produce incomprehensible amounts of permutations, like in real life, then we'll have something noteworthy.
Sulphur on 26/6/2010 at 04:20
Quote Posted by Papy
How much retesting, rebalancing and bug checking, disabling the ability to switch plasmid would take? How much would it cost to have this option so people of loved SS2 could have a bit more of what they want? And how about developers let ME the burden of choosing my own balance?
Quite a bit. Some of the level design hinged on having certain plasmids in your possession; being stuck to one or two means that alternative solutions would be needed for every obstacle throughout the game. Enemy types vulnerable to only one type of attack would need weapons and ammo types rebalanced and available for the areas they're in. And so on.
Choosing the burden of your own balance was there, the devs just chose to not tie your hands behind your back - if you didn't want to switch plasmids, you didn't have to. (Facetious answer, I know, but logically that's what people do anyway - make their own rules. Like a wrench-only playthrough.)
Quote:
I never played Fallout 3. The reason is I thought Oblivion was so bad that I didn't care for their next game. If Bethesda took a few hundred hours to include some simple gameplay options, I might have found Oblivion good enough after all and I might have bought Fallout 3. Instead, I now consider Bethesda as a company which is making boring games. How many people are like me?
Given the sales of both Oblivion and Fallout 3 across the consoles (I don't have PC numbers, but I'm sure they're relatively high for PC titles as well), not many, unfortunately. To Bethesda's credit, while I thought Oblivion was a rather soulless and uninspired (but good-looking) game, Fallout 3 managed to reverse that opinion quite a bit.
Quote Posted by thiefinthedark
Notice the lack of most genre's these days? The oldschool RTS is gone in favor of some sort of childish capture the flag/ king of the hill design. Simulations are almost non-existant
I agree with you about the bar needing to be raised. But the lack of genres is something I find favourable: post-genre games make for some rather interesting combinations. The standard example is Darwinia, which is rather hard to categorise, but brilliant. Overlord was ridiculously fun as well. As for RTS games, apart from DoW II we still have Starcraft 2 coming, you know. I haven't played C&C 3, but did they take the base management out of it? Simulators... have been dying since the late 90s, unfortunately.
Quote:
The TBS is dead except in the case of Civ and the Stardock games. FPS's have taken fully to using regenerative health, excessive cover, and all manner of player aids.
TBS was never the most popular kind of strategy game - I understand missing this stuff, because I'd dearly love to have a Heroes of Might & Magic VI in glorious 2D by the old New World Computing team, but... it's not completely dead. We did have a HoMM V, however average it might have been. And King's Bounty, while not a completely turn-based strategy game, was a glorious blend of RPG and TBS. Options might not be as prolific (I doubt they ever were, though!) but they're there.
Papy on 26/6/2010 at 06:49
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Quite a bit. Some of the level design hinged on having certain plasmids in your possession; being stuck to one or two means that alternative solutions would be needed for every obstacle throughout the game. Enemy types vulnerable to only one type of attack would need weapons and ammo types rebalanced and available for the areas they're in. And so on.
I must admit I have some difficulties accepting this argument as true. In theory I agree, but in practice, I think this is not true at all. Except for the fire plasmid at the beginning of the game, I don't remember anything as absolutely necessary. And even if there was some things which were necessary, it would have been easy to think about it while designing the level. If a much lower budget game like SS2 could do it, I don't see why BioShock couldn't.
Anyway, "quite a bit" is very vague. So I'd like to know how much it would have cost to make the testing necessary to make sure the game could be done without a particular plasmid?
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Choosing the burden of your own balance was there, the devs just chose to not tie your hands behind your back - if you didn't want to switch plasmids, you didn't have to. (Facetious answer, I know, but logically that's what people do anyway - make their own rules. Like a wrench-only playthrough.)
Actually, I never switched plasmids... and this self-imposed limitation certainly contributed to my feeling that I now consider BioShock as one of the best game I played (despite the fact it's gameplay was enormously dumbed down compared to SS2).
The funny thing is, I almost give up on BioShock right from the start because of Vita-Chambers. It's only when there was an option to turn them off in the menu that I begun to be interested and that I discovered it was a great game after all. Without this option, I simply wouldn't have played it. I know I could have just reloaded after being resurrected, like a few others did, but I felt it was not the way to play the game so I couldn't do it. Maybe it's illogical, but that's the way it is. Because of that, I have no problem understanding why some people here complain a lot about the ability to switch plasmids and why having an option in the menu could help them appreciate the game instead of hating it. Could those options break the game under some special circumstances? In the case of BioShock I doubt it, but even then, developers must let me take the responsibility of my choices. They should stop holding my hand.
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Given the sales of both Oblivion and Fallout 3 across the consoles (I don't have PC numbers, but I'm sure they're relatively high for PC titles as well), not many, unfortunately.
Again, "not many" doesn't mean much. Do you think it's 1000? 10,000? 100,000?
Personally, I don't think the problem is economic. If an amateur like myself can make a mod to change the character leveling bonus system in 3 or 4 hours, I have a hard time believing that option couldn't have been made by one professional in 8 hours.
piercehead on 26/6/2010 at 08:54
Quote Posted by Papy
Anyway, "quite a bit" is very vague. So I'd like to know how much it would have cost to make the testing necessary to make sure the game could be done without a particular plasmid?
What? You actually want hard figures or something? The fact is, for something you can do yourself as the player, there's little need to add in another variable that almost nobody will use (compared to the total playerbase) and will cost any amount of extra tester-hours at all.
You can't really quantify it easily though; adding it as a new feature though on an existing game would be hundreds of tester-hours. That's money essentially wasted if the feature doesn't need to be in.
