Papy on 26/6/2010 at 10:37
Quote Posted by piercehead
What? You actually want hard figures or something?
What I want is an idea of what "quite a bit" means. For example, you said hundreds of tester-hours. Fine. I'll use your figure without questioning it. So, considering tester is a low paid job, that's what? $10,000? If one sell brings $20, then it means this feature needs to bring 500 people to buy the game to be worth it. Considering how many people criticize the lack of significant character development with BioShock, don't you think this small amount of money would have been a good investment? Yes, I agree that compared to total number of people who bought the game, the SS2 fans are a minority. But don't you think all the bitching we saw here and there pushed more than 500 people to pirate the game instead of buying it?
You know what? Although I loved BioShock, I played it only once (I tried to replay it but it was too boring) and I still haven't bought its sequel. It was a very good game, I certainly don't regret buying it, but in the end it was also very shallow and I feel I've seen all that need to be seen. I'll wait for the day it will be $5 on steam as I have no real desire to replay that kind of game for now. That's one lost sale for 2K. How many people are like me?
chris the cynic on 26/6/2010 at 12:38
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.
Isn't that a good thing?
I thought that what is described (
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=16) here, (starting from the first "You find yourself standing on a rooftop...") was generally considered a good thing. A very good thing in fact.
Koki on 26/6/2010 at 14:41
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Quite a bit.
It depends on how you approached the project. If you started with the mindset of allowing for different playstyles and approaches, then you will take the engine in that direction and creating open levels will be easy because, well, that's how you made the game.
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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.
Or you could just remove the obstacles - which would be hardly noticeable, actually, as their role in Bioshock was almost always to force you to use a newly acquired plasmid, a poorly disguised form of tutorial. When you got the electric one, it was to zap the lock and move forward. When you got the fire one, it was to melt your way forward; when you got the gravity gun one, it was to catch a grenade and blast your way forward. Nothing but pointless hand-holding.
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Enemy types vulnerable to only one type of attack would need weapons and ammo types rebalanced and available for the areas they're in.
There were no enemy types vulnerable to only one type of attack in Bioshock. Hell, in Bioshock you could use any weapon at any time with 100% proficiency which was a huge backup. In SS2 you actually COULD end up with no weapon to fight the current threat(say, you play as OSA, needed inventory space so you threw away your only pistol, forgot to pick it back up and now stand face-to-face with a security bot) and amazingly, no one gave a damn. If you did something so stupid you deserved to die; you probably won't repeat that mistake again; you're now better at the game. The modern mindset is to make it so the player never possibly makes any mistakes at all.
piercehead on 26/6/2010 at 15:39
Quote Posted by Papy
Considering how many people criticize the lack of significant character development with BioShock, don't you think this small amount of money would have been a good investment? Yes, I agree that compared to total number of people who bought the game, the SS2 fans are a minority. But don't you think all the bitching we saw here and there pushed more than 500 people to pirate the game instead of buying it??
Firstly, I don't see how taking away the ability to switch plasmids increases character development.
Don't get me wrong though, I think the more choice you have the better, and yes I would've loved Bioshock to be a lot closer to SS2. At the end of the day though, only those involved in making/publishing the game can make the call about how much to cram in before release...
Do I think bitching here drove 500 people to pirate the game? I would bloody hope not.
Sulphur on 26/6/2010 at 17:35
Quote Posted by Papy
What I want is an idea of what "quite a bit" means. For example, you said hundreds of tester-hours. Fine. I'll use your figure without questioning it. So, considering tester is a low paid job, that's what? $10,000? If one sell brings $20, then it means this feature needs to bring 500 people to buy the game to be worth it. Considering how many people criticize the lack of significant character development with BioShock, don't you think this small amount of money would have been a good investment? Yes, I agree that compared to total number of people who bought the game, the SS2 fans are a minority. But don't you think all the bitching we saw here and there pushed more than 500 people to pirate the game instead of buying it?
I obviously don't have any hard figures as I've never worked for Irrational. But QA isn't a one-man job. Bioshock had, as far as I can count from the credits, 22 people on QA. Sure they all wouldn't have been testing the same thing, but changing just one gameplay mechanic could involve testing every single level and combination of that mechanic thereof with everything else.
Coming down to the sales, there's an annoying lack of hard data and figures to refer to platform-wise. I can quote the Wiki, but most of the information is outdated except for 2K reporting that total sales was 4 million as of March 2010.
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You know what? Although I loved BioShock, I played it only once (I tried to replay it but it was too boring) and I still haven't bought its sequel. It was a very good game, I certainly don't regret buying it, but in the end it was also very shallow and I feel I've seen all that need to be seen. I'll wait for the day it will be $5 on steam as I have no real desire to replay that kind of game for now. That's one lost sale for 2K. How many people are like me?
Since we're engaging in speculation of this fashion - as a thought, even if it's everybody on this forum and Strange Bedfellows, how many people would that be compared to the 4 million who bought Bioshock?
Quote Posted by chris the cynic
Isn't that a good thing?
I thought that what is described (
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=16) here, (starting from the first "You find yourself standing on a rooftop...") was generally considered a good thing. A very good thing in fact.
I didn't say it wasn't. I'd have loved more Deus Ex/SS2-ish options. I'm just saying that the amount of effort expended towards it doesn't necessarily guarantee profitable returns on the investment made.
Quote Posted by Koki
It depends on how you approached the project. If you started with the mindset of allowing for different playstyles and approaches, then you will take the engine in that direction and creating open levels will be easy because, well, that's how you made the game.
I agree. And it's obvious that Bioshock's design document either wasn't made with this in mind, or was changed to not have those options somewhere down the line during development.
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Or you could just remove the obstacles - which would be hardly noticeable, actually, as their role in Bioshock was almost always to force you to use a newly acquired plasmid, a poorly disguised form of tutorial. When you got the electric one, it was to zap the lock and move forward. When you got the fire one, it was to melt your way forward; when you got the gravity gun one, it was to catch a grenade and blast your way forward. Nothing but pointless hand-holding.
Yep, but IIRC there were also places apart from the initial segments that required plasmid use, not just the tutorial areas. Removing the obstacles wouldn't be the greatest solution for a game, honestly. Replacing them with barriers that didn't need to be overcome by plasmids would have been a better goal.
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The modern mindset is to make it so the player never possibly makes any mistakes at all.
That's simplifying it a tad. The modern mindset is to make it so the player doesn't make a decision that screws his entire playthrough over at some point, either immediately or later on, and he has to reload from some way earlier point in time to reverse that decision and replay entire segments of the game. Makes for less frustration, and I tend to agree with it.
I don't see anyone complaining about Valve's games doing exactly the same thing, because that's sort of design philosophy they follow - and Half-Life 1 and 2 have been hailed as the greatest PC FPSes ever made.
Koki on 26/6/2010 at 17:49
Quote Posted by Sulphur
That's simplifying it a tad. The modern mindset is to make it so the player doesn't make a decision that screws his entire playthrough over at some point, either immediately or later on, and he has to reload from some way earlier point in time to reverse that decision and replay entire segments of the game. Makes for less frustration, and I tend to agree with it.
Do you have a single example where you screwed up your entire plathrough in a video game? One that's not from Space Quest series.
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I don't see anyone complaining about Valve's games doing exactly the same thing, because that's sort of design philosophy they follow - and Half-Life 1 and 2 have been hailed as the greatest PC FPSes ever made.
*cough* *cough* *pant* *wheeze*
Well, I'll leave it at that since I don't even know how you managed to bring Half Life series into discussion of games with character development.
Sulphur on 26/6/2010 at 17:57
Quote Posted by Koki
Do you have a single example where you screwed up your entire plathrough in a video game? One that's not from Space Quest series.
Sure. Every D&D RPG where you haven't fully understood the rules but try to learn as you go and end up facing unwinnable later encounters because your character builds weren't balanced out or skilled enough.
Quote:
*cough* *cough* *pant* *wheeze*
Well, I'll leave it at that since I don't even know how you managed to bring Half Life series into discussion of games with character development.
Oh? I thought you were talking about the modern mindset here, which surely applies to the industry in general and not just one game in isolation.
Anyway, as you know, Bioshock doesn't feature character development in the classical SS2/Deus Ex segregated character build sense, where you choose one path and stick to it at your own peril, where not having enough points in a certain weapon type in SS2 meant you were unable to use something as simple as a pistol. I don't think that was the idea.
Papy on 26/6/2010 at 19:33
Quote Posted by piercehead
Do I think bitching here drove 500 people to pirate the game? I would bloody hope not.
Most people I know will buy the few games they think are worthwhile and pirate all the others (and contrarily to the usual excuse, they never buy a game after they pirated it). Because of that, I tend to believe a lot more than 500 people pirated the game because of all the bitching (which was not only here).
Quote Posted by Sulphur
I didn't say it wasn't. I'd have loved more Deus Ex/SS2-ish options. I'm just saying that the amount of effort expended towards it doesn't necessarily guarantee profitable returns on the investment made.
SS2 total budget was 1.7 million. Do you think I can assume most of that amount went into graphics, animation and sound? Could I then infer that creating, testing and balancing a "deep" gameplay doesn't cost that much? I agree that fully creating another SS2 is not commercially reasonable. But that's not what I'm advocating, What I'm saying is it would be great to use the same assets as BioShock and then create a deeper gameplay with it. Same engine, same graphics, same animations, same sounds even same story. Just add an inventory screen, make a few modification here and there to levels and balance and test another gameplay. With SS2 numbers in mind, do you think this can be done professionally for less than a million? So the question is : do you think 50,000 people would be interested with that? Because that's all it would take to make the project profitable.
Personally, I have nothing against company making games with the lowest common denominator in mind. But if they want to sell games to people like me, they have to change their way of making games. Marketing crap won't be enough. I used to buy a lot of video games. Now, it's only a few. I didn't buy BioShock 2 and there's very little chance I will buy Human Revolution. The truth is I'm losing interest because everything is now mostly crap to me. Do you think there is at least 50,000 people on this planet who think like me?
Koki on 26/6/2010 at 21:26
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Sure. Every D&D RPG where you haven't fully understood the rules but try to learn as you go and end up facing unwinnable later encounters because your character builds weren't balanced out or skilled enough.
Hahaha, oh wow. Okay, keep talking, just not to me.
Muzman on 27/6/2010 at 03:59
In this discussion of modern "difficulty" trends there's a fine line between being pathetically forgiving and giving the player a sense that they
could succeed if they tried again. Valve manage more the latter for my money (although their greatest crime in most games is boredom, I reckon). It seems pretty easy to do superficially similar things and just make your game a hopeless nerf ball of a thing though, which no one seems to mind making these days (since games are disposable and no one finishes them anyway).
People here probably can't stand it but the reaction to Demon's Souls was kinda interesting; reviewers and so forth seemed surprised to find a game so unforgiving. But it turned out pretty popular (the reaction was such that I wouldn't mind trying it, just to find out how hard is "Hard" these days. Severance was
tough, to beat that first ghoul boss guy you had to be skilled and patient as fuck or you died and it was amazingly rewarding. Plus I like (
http://manydeaths.blogspot.com/) my Zone nice and harsh.) And things like bullet hell shooters are still a solid niche.
So I'm wondering if maybe the no difficulty trend will abate at some point. Like, now would be nice.
