Chade on 4/8/2010 at 04:12
Quote Posted by Papy
I have a question though : what is the "right" challenge for a game? Can
concretely you define it?
Easy. The level of challenge which the player enjoys most. (Well, easy in the sense that it's practically a tautology.)
So is it possible to observe the player's session and choose a better level of challenge then the one they are currently on? That depends on two things: how strongly we believe that the player was already playing on an appropriate difficulty level, and how strongly we believe that we can choose an appropriate level by observing the player.
As for the first issue, I don't believe that the player can choose an appropriate difficulty level before he has even played the game. But in many games the player has tools he can use to adjust the difficulty throughout the game.
This is one reason why Oblivion's system was so jarring. It wasn't just that the automatic difficulty algorithm was poor. The trouble was that, by automatically adjusting the difficulty of the enemies, the game was taking away a powerful tool that player's could use to set their own level of challenge, complete with in-game rewards and all. On the other hand, KoTOR did automatic difficulty adjustment, and people didn't mind at all (both because your choice of which location to visit next was limited, and because there was no history of players having that tool within the series).
As for the second issue ...
Quote Posted by Papy
If you are refering to the paper you already linked here, it didn't made any correlation between "enjoyment" and the way people were playing the game. "Enjoyment" was not even part of the data.
If there are experimental results about this, then I'd like to know : what is the accuracy of the correlation? 50%? 75%? 95%
One paper I linked ((
http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/cig/2007/papers/2024.pdf) here) to did indeed measure enjoyment. The conclusion starts with: "This paper introduced feature selection methods for obtaining minimal feature subsets that successfully model children’s notion of entertainment ... ... ... This model manages to map between ... and the children’s notion of gameplay entertainment with a cross-validation accuracy of 77.77%". Here, "entertainment value" was recorded by having the children play two games, and asking which one they preferred.
Quote Posted by Papy
According to this definition, Tetris (as a lot of other games) could be viewed as having an adaptive difficulty system.
OK, I propose a first tweak to your definition : the difficulty at which the player is currently playing the game and the overall effect of the adaptive difficulty system on the game must be hidden from him. Do you agree with this tweak to your definition?
I don't agree with either of your tweaks. The reason most games can be viewed as having adaptive difficulty is that ... well, most games have some form of adaptive difficulty! We shouldn't be talking about whether adaptive difficulty is good or bad, we should talk about what forms of adaptive difficulty can work.
Looking at the two "negative" examples in this thread, I don't even think the common thread linking them is that they try to "hide" their effects from the player. The player certainly knew what the difficulty was in Oblivion, as the monsters changed. The problem with Oblivion is that the system took away player choice. And the problem with your racing game is that it allowed you to cheat.
On the other hand, Max Payne (and KoTOR to a lesser extent) seem to have done a fine job of, if not hiding the difficulty adjustment, then at least not drawing attention to it.
Quote Posted by Papy
There may be several kind of reward, from having a high score, so you can compare yourself with other people, to unlocking some new gameplay, but "the game going easy on you == reward" is correct. When I get that +5 sword of death, I want to be able to crush enemies who were giving me a hard time before. In fact, I percieve that sword as a reward BECAUSE I am now able to easily crush enemies who were giving me ahard time before.
No, the reward is that you get a +5 sword of death, and are able to face more powerful enemies. You may well have a brief moment where you can crush your old enemies, but the game itself will not change difficulty for long. The reward is that you have "advanced", not that the game has become easier.
DDL on 4/8/2010 at 13:08
Plus re: papy's "the game giving you a +5 sword of death": Papy: this is not the same things as "the game going easy on you". It's very easy to appear to disprove a point if you miss the point entirely in the first place.
I am not talking systems that go "well done, you're a cretin! Have a cookie", because..well, that would be fucking idiotic. I'm talking systems that assess that you're playing at a difficulty clearly above your actual ability, and then making it less punishing. Rather than swarming you with 15 badguys at once, it uses 14. Rather than people having 400 health, they have 350. Rather than them doing 100 damage per hit, they do 90.
It doesn't need to be "here, have the instagib cannon because you're clearly fuck-all use without it, you tard", it can (and should) be subtle lessening of punishment, not 'rewarding of failure'.
If I were teaching a class of children some basic mathematics, and some were clearly stuggling, the method would not be to throw the answer sheet at them as a reward for not being good enough (your +5 sword of death), it would be to give them easier questions. Then when they've got the hang of those they might be more able to tackle the harder ones. I guess hypothetically some kids could deliberately appear to be shit at maths just to get easier questions, but these kids would be utterly missing the point.
A good adaptive difficulty system would lower the difficulty to a point where you are being punished for failure, but LESS SEVERELY. I don't know why this is so hard to grasp.
Fail DIE -WTF?
Fail DIE -WTF?
Fail DIE -WTF?
Fail DIE -WTF?
this is bad difficulty.
Fail DIE -WTF?
Fail DIE -WTF?
Fail, but manage to survive (just), learning in the process how it's done, and how you could've done it better (because the game lowered the difficulty enough for you to manage that)
this is better.
I'm just not sure we're ever arguing about the same things anymore, though. Rereading your responses almost seems like one of us is arguing that "X is a better model of car" and the other is responding that "you're wrong, vitamin C is far more important for health". Or similar.
Papy on 5/8/2010 at 06:05
Quote Posted by Thirith
I don't think this is necessary. Take the example I gave earlier of enemies 'learning' from player behaviour in the sense that if the player always uses the same strategy, the enemies adapt.
At first, I was going to say that I do not view enemies adapting to a player who is using always the same tactics as "adaptive difficulty", but if the adaptation occurs only if the player succeed "too easily" (according to what the developers expect), then I will agree this could be a form of adaptive difficulty.
Is this acceptable as a form of making a game more challenging? Of course! It's certainly better than just removing resources from the player or giving more hit points to enemies. But to me the most important problem with the idea of adaptive difficulty was never with
how you can make a game more or less challenging, but with
when you should make the game more or less challenging. To me, this "when" is really what adaptive difficulty is about.
My position is quite simple : until someone defines a way to know accurately when the player has just the right challenge, I consider the whole idea as wishful thinking. It might be tempting to try it anyway, but considering the possible bad results of adaptive difficulty (the player feeling cheated by the game or feeling that his own efforts are pointless, the player trying to abuse the system, the system indirectly putting to much emphasis on challenge and eclipsing other aspects of the game...), I don't think adaptive difficulty is worth it.
Quote Posted by Chade
I don't believe that the player can choose an appropriate difficulty level before he has even played the game.
For short games (like sport games, puzzle games, games like guitar hero or DDR, etc... ), this is not an issue.
For story based games that are played only once, I think a short "introduction" (which would also serves as a basic tutorial) to give a feeling of the game difficulty would be a good idea. The player could be evaluated during this introduction and then presented with a somewhat correct default difficulty level to start the "real" game.
Quote Posted by Chade
This is one reason why Oblivion's system was so jarring.
How would you have done it otherwise? Bethesda wanted to give the player total freedom from the start, and yet they wanted to make sure the player would never be bored or never stumble upon impossible challenges. I guess one solution would have been to give enough possibility of information gathering to let the player learn characteristics of the world before actually exploring it, but it would have made Oblivion a very niche game.
I'm sorry. I missed it.
The paper is interesting, unfortunately the research was extremely limited : young children of the same age, a very simple game and the game was also physical (intuitively I'd say it's a lot easier to evaluate an emotion if we use some physical responses). And despite the extremely simplified experiment, the accuracy was only 77%. So it is better than the 50% due to chance, but do you really think they could keep that 77% for an RPG? And even if they did, adaptive difficulty is not only about one evaluation, it is about constant evaluations. 0,77 * 0,77 * 0,77... With an accuracy as low as 77%, the system will screw up pretty fast.
Quote Posted by Chade
The reason most games can be viewed as having adaptive difficulty is that ... well, most games have some form of adaptive difficulty!
We simply don't talk about the same things. When I say that adaptive difficulty must be hidden from the player, it is not something you can agree or disagree, it is a part of what I associate with my definition of "adaptive difficulty". If I had to give a name to what you are talking about, I'd probably use "adapted difficulty" instead of "adaptive difficulty".
Quote Posted by Chade
I don't even think the common thread linking them is that they try to "hide" their effects from the player. The player certainly knew what the difficulty was in Oblivion, as the monsters changed. The problem with Oblivion is that the system took away player choice. And the problem with your racing game is that it allowed you to cheat.
I disagree. Both games tried to hide it. The best proof is that, in the case of Oblivion, it took one or two weeks on Bethesda's forum before a majority of people agreed with the fact monsters and loot were tied to the character's level. And even then, there was still a lot of debate. People just thought the change was part of the game world.
In the case of Final Lap, there was absolutely no indication the player behind had a boost. It was only after a bit of experience that players realized that something was "wrong" and learned how to abuse the system in order to win.
One more thing about Oblivion, the problem was not that the game removed player choices, after all with most games there is no choice at all, it was that players realized everything was an illusion. Why train and level up when it's useless anyway? And that problem will be common to all forms of "adaptive difficulty" (my definition, not yours) : why do any effort since the game will adapt to the player anyway?
Quote Posted by Chade
No, the reward is that you get a +5 sword of death, and are able to face more powerful enemies. You may well have a brief moment where you can crush your old enemies, but the game itself will not change difficulty for long. The reward is that you have "advanced", not that the game has become easier.
Have you played Gothic? Crushing old enemies gives the player a sense of satisfaction. That's pretty much the definition of a reward. As for facing more powerful enemies being a reward, it really depends if the gameplay change because of those new enemies. If the only thing that you unlock is a new name and some new graphics, let's be honest, the reward is not that exciting. It might work a few times, but it won't be long before the player is bored with the same gameplay and so stop viewing facing those more "powerful" enemies as a rewards.
OK. Time for Oblivion example again. I level up, I get better equipment, I face more powerful enemies. Did the better equipment and the more powerful enemies fell like a reward? Until I wasn't aware of the leveling up, yes, once I noticed it, not anymore.
Quote Posted by DDL
I'm talking systems that assess that you're playing at a difficulty clearly above your actual ability, and then making it
less punishing. Rather than swarming you with 15 badguys at once, it uses 14. Rather than people having 400 health, they have 350. Rather than them doing 100 damage per hit, they do 90.
We really are not talking about the same thing. If that's the only thing you have in mind, then I have nothing against it. But do you think this limited adjustment would be enough to make the game fun for everyone?
Having said that, from a more egoistical point of view, I will admit my biggest fear with adaptive difficulty is not with the game lowering the difficulty, but with the game increasing the difficulty if the system thinks I don't die enough or if it thinks I have to much ammo.
Chade on 8/8/2010 at 23:05
Quote Posted by Papy
For short games (like sport games, puzzle games, games like guitar hero or DDR, etc... ), this is not an issue.
For story based games that are played only once, I think a short "introduction" (which would also serves as a basic tutorial) to give a feeling of the game difficulty would be a good idea. The player could be evaluated during this introduction and then presented with a somewhat correct default difficulty level to start the "real" game.
Yes, re-playable games are fine. Most of the time the player will select a difficulty having already had some experience with the game. You ideas are fine as well. Although I don't think a short tutorial is really enough to properly evaluate difficulty, but it would certainly be an improvement. As I've said before, I'm totally happy with games which give the player power to choose the difficulty, as long as he has a reasonable basis for making that decision.
Quote Posted by Papy
How would you have done it otherwise? Bethesda wanted to give the player total freedom from the start, and yet they wanted to make sure the player would never be bored or never stumble upon impossible challenges. I guess one solution would have been to give enough possibility of information gathering to let the player learn characteristics of the world before actually exploring it, but it would have made Oblivion a very niche game.
Well, it's a free roaming world ... the player doesn't get locked into encounters, he is free to run away at any time. Morrowind worked fine.
That being said, I'm only identifying the root problem that most people had with Oblivion's difficulty system. I'm not saying that there weren't other advantages. I actually appreciated the ability to tell whatever story you wanted with your character at any time, and not worry about doing things at the correct level (this does
not mean I thought it was better then the alternative). But when I see people talking about Oblivion, I see a lot of people complaining about the lack of hard/easy areas, and not many people praising the ability to do any quest at any level.
Quote Posted by Papy
The paper is interesting, unfortunately the research was extremely limited
It is limited. But then, the scope of most adaptive difficulty algorithms is limited. The study iirc actually varied the game along two dimensions, whereas most adaptive difficulty algorithms only vary one (the "difficulty level", which might then be represented in the game via several mechanics).
Quote Posted by Papy
I disagree. Both games tried to hide it. The best proof is that, in the case of Oblivion, it took one or two weeks on Bethesda's forum before a majority of people agreed with the fact monsters and loot were tied to the character's level. And even then, there was still a lot of debate. People just thought the change was part of the game world.
In the case of Final Lap, there was absolutely no indication the player behind had a boost. It was only after a bit of experience that players realized that something was "wrong" and learned how to abuse the system in order to win.
Uh, Oblivion does not try to hide it's difficulty adjustment. If it's not obvious after four or five hours play, well ... that's pretty sad.
In any case, I am simply saying that hiding the adjustment is not the
core problem in both games. In Oblivion, the root cause is that players actually wanted to have hard/easy areas they could explore if desired. Final Lap obviously did try to hide it, but it probably wasn't the core problem. Let's consider two games: a final lap where they did not hide the mechanic (umm ... perhaps the AI sends cocky/agressive messages to the player? With the sound of the engine idling or revving in the background?) but still allowed you to cheat it, and a final lap where the adjustment was hidden but could not be cheated. Which game would you prefer to play?
Quote Posted by Papy
Have you played Gothic? Crushing old enemies gives the player a sense of satisfaction. That's pretty much the definition of a reward.
It is a reward, but it's not a game. If the game is to continue, there must be new, harder, challenges to match the new, tougher, player.
(EDIT: oh, and another very important thing: it's not rewarding because your old enemies are easier. You don't level up by suddenly downgrading the armour of all your old enemies. The important thing is that the player becomes more powerful, not relative to his enemies, but according to the game's fiction.)
Quote Posted by Papy
As for facing more powerful enemies being a reward, it really depends if the gameplay change because of those new enemies. If the only thing that you unlock is a new name and some new graphics, let's be honest, the reward is not that exciting. It might work a few times, but it won't be long before the player is bored with the same gameplay and so stop viewing facing those more "powerful" enemies as a rewards.
Diablo.
Papy on 9/8/2010 at 04:34
Quote Posted by Chade
Although I don't think a short tutorial is really enough to properly evaluate difficulty
Actually, I was suggesting that the game could evaluate the player during this "tutorial", based on his shooting accuracy, tactical skill, movement speed and ease, ability to solve puzzles, etc..., and then present the player with a "good" default difficulty level. For example, highlight the hard setting, with a "recommended setting" next to it, if the results were good. That way, the player could control his own difficulty level, while at the same time being offered an adequate challenge.
Quote Posted by Chade
Morrowind worked fine.
I didn't like Morrowind either and, like Oblivion, I quit playing quite fast, meaning I can't really discuss that game. But reading some comments on Bethesda forum, I wouldn't be so sure that it worked fine. One very common comment that I saw about Oblivion is that the "dumbing down" was due to all the "tards" who had difficulty with Morrowind. As I don't really believe in "tards" as an explanation, I'd say the problem was more with the game.
Quote Posted by Chade
But when I see people talking about Oblivion, I see a lot of people complaining about the lack of hard/easy areas, and not many people praising the ability to do any quest at any level.
TTLG is a very strange place with lots of angry people. I can assure you that I saw a lot of people loving Oblivion for its freedom.
Quote Posted by Chade
The study iirc actually varied the game along two dimensions, whereas most adaptive difficulty algorithms only vary one (the "difficulty level", which might then be represented in the game via several mechanics).
The variation was about the effect of a change over the feeling of a player. It was about what to change. But again, I consider the adaptive difficulty biggest problem is not with what you change in the game, but when to change it. It is about what metrics do you use to measure how the player feels. In the study, the game was extremely simple, the player was doing only one single action. Analyzing how the player was doing that single action was somewhat easy. But an RPG has a lot of parts and a complex gameplay. So what will you use to guess how the player feels? Suppose the player thinks the action is to hard, but puzzles are too simple... how will you measure that contradictory feeling?
Even a simpler shooter like Doom is a lot more complex than a whack-a-mole game. The effect of stress due to low health or low ammo, spatial memorization abilities, the ability to move, reaction time, the ability to choose the correct weapon depending on the monster you face, the reaction to surprise... All of these, and a lot more, will have an effect on how a single player will feel about the game and, even though data mining will allow you to classify people into a few basic categories categories, nothing is clear cut and there is no guaranty this will lead to something useful on how to know what is the best overall difficulty for the player.
Quote Posted by Chade
Uh, Oblivion does not try to hide it's difficulty adjustment. If it's not obvious after four or five hours play, well ... that's pretty sad.
I didn't mean adaptive difficulty tries to hide there is a difficulty adjustment, I mean it tries to hide the cause of the difficulty adjustment. Oblivion did not try to hide the fact monster changed, it tried to hide that it was directly linked to the character level.
The same was true for Final Lap. It was pretty obvious the car was going faster compared to others, but at first players thought it was either because other players were making driving errors or because they were themselves playing better. It's only after a while that players realize the reason was simply because the car was behind.
Quote Posted by Chade
Let's consider two games: a final lap where they did not hide the mechanic (umm ... perhaps the AI sends cocky/agressive messages to the player? With the sound of the engine idling or revving in the background?) but still allowed you to cheat it, and a final lap where the adjustment was hidden but could not be cheated. Which game would you prefer to play?
Not sure what you mean with "could not be cheated". Anyway, Final Lap was a competitive game. The goal was to beat the opponent. So my first choice is a clear and constant handicap for the whole game. My second choice is a clear (read visible during the game) handicap which might be adjusted during the game. My third choice is a known but not clearly visible adjustment (except at the end of the game where it could be expressed in a form of a score or something else). And, no, I just don't like the idea of a hidden adjustment that I'm not aware of for a competitive game.
Quote Posted by Chade
It is a reward, but it's not a game. If the game is to continue, there must be new, harder, challenges to match the new, tougher, player.
Oh but I completely agree with that!
Quote Posted by Chade
(EDIT: oh, and another very important thing: it's not rewarding because your old enemies are easier. You don't level up by suddenly downgrading the armour of all your old enemies. The important thing is that the player becomes more powerful, not relative to his enemies, but according to the game's fiction.)
No, old enemies do not become weaker, but... I really don't understand what is your point. Yes, you get new, tougher, enemies like most games, and yes, seeing a new part of the game is also a reward, but what Gothic developers understood is that allowing the player to crush your old enemies is an even better reward.
Quote Posted by Chade
Diablo.
That game polarized people a lot. Some thought it was a fantastic game, while some others thought it was utterly boring. So yes, some people are quite satisfied with a simple name change and new graphics, but that's not everyone. I was in the army at the time and our choice of video games was quite limited, but I'd say only a third or a fourth of us did find that game interesting. (Although I'll be honest and say that since I was among the people who had absolutely no interest for that game, maybe my vision is a bit skewed.)
Chade on 13/8/2010 at 02:25
Quote Posted by Papy
Suppose the player thinks the action is to hard, but puzzles are too simple... how will you measure that contradictory feeling?
Yes, but you see, this is why the study is actually more complex in one sense then most "real situations". They actually try to vary the game across two dimensions, and determine what is the best game out of all possible games along that plane.
The average adaptive difficulty algorithm is not trying to determine whether to make a game puzzle orientated or action orientated ... that's a much more complex problem. It is just adjusting the difficulty along a single dimension, and determining what is the best possible game along that line.
And yeah, that difficulty will affect the puzzles, and affect the action, and affect all sorts of mechanics. The possibility space you could potentially explore
if you wanted to is much larger, because there are so many more variables ... but just because you can explore a larger space, doesn't mean you have to.
Quote Posted by Papy
I didn't mean adaptive difficulty tries to hide there is a difficulty adjustment, I mean it tries to hide the cause of the difficulty adjustment. Oblivion did not try to hide the fact monster changed, it tried to hide that it was directly linked to the character level.
Now it's true that there wasn't a glowing neon sign whenever you levelled up that told you the monsters had also levelled up. But they didn't take any steps to hide the relationship either, and when the effects are so obvious, and there are no confounding variables to confuse the relationship, I don't think this should qualify as hidden.
Quote Posted by Papy
Not sure what you mean with "could not be cheated".
Well, there are two things about Final Laps difficulty adjustment that you seem to have a problem with. One is that the the adjustment was hidden, and one is that you could cheat the system.
Now, the original point I was attempting to make is that hiding the difficulty adjustment is not the root problem behind both Final Lap and Oblivion's systems. Firstly, because I don't believe Oblivion's system deserves to be called "hidden" at all, and secondly, because it sounds to me like the biggest problem you had with Final Lap is that you can cheat it. So, my question is: if you had to pick a difficulty system with one of those two problems, which one you you dislike the least?
Quote Posted by Papy
No, old enemies do not become weaker, but... I really don't understand what is your point. Yes, you get new, tougher, enemies like most games, and yes, seeing a new part of the game is also a reward, but what Gothic developers understood is that allowing the player to crush your old enemies is an even better reward.
But crush them
for what reason? That's the point. Why can the player now crush them?
Let's say you advanced a level, and turned into a frog, hopping slowly through the villages you used to ride past. Would that be a rewarding if your opponents all turned into bugs?
The point of this random anecdote is that fiction matters. Crushing your old enemies is not rewarding because the game has become easier. It's an aesthetic touch, similar to finding a fancier looking sword, that tells the user "you are more powerful now". But making the game easier is not a reward, and the game must supply new (harder) enemies to keep the player satisfied.
In fact, while RPG's have limited player skill, most RPG's actually do manage to get harder as the player progress. They require him to juggle more equipment, abilities, special conditions, etc. Not always, but often.
mothra on 13/8/2010 at 12:41
I'm playing AC2 now without any HUD since it looks better and the game is so easy, I don't even have to think about any "healthbar". The game never ever has any situation where I think I am outnumbered or ready to die. IF I die (mostly to stupid misjumps across rooftops) I get "desynchronied", it does not have any impact on my avatar and then in turn on me. I rather have the unrealistc reload knowing that my ingame character actually died. Every other excuse I came across in games (Elika, Vitachambers) felt like a tagged-on and even more gamey.
Having said that I HATED those boring puzzles in AC2 and actually wanted a "solve it and fuck off" button. What they did give me is a hint-button that always spelled out the obvious, making the ingame characters (the decrypt guy) seem even more idiotic and useless since they can't even give proper hints about the puzzles. It all works against each other imo instead of together.
polytourist97 on 14/8/2010 at 18:56
Quote Posted by Chade
But crush them
for what reason? That's the point. Why can the player now crush them?.
Because that's how a game can indicate a character/player's growth in ability. If, later in the game, one can more easily overcome enemies and situations that were challenging in the beginning, then one will have the sense of having progressed in some way.
If a game doesn't provide some sort of feedback such as that (i.e. actively strives to maintain a difficulty level "sweet spot"), then there is nothing to distinguish between a player's initial state of having less experience and skill, and their (one would hope) eventual state of more experience and skill.
Chade on 15/8/2010 at 21:37
Yes.
But, err ... isn't that exactly what I went on to say? :confused:
Papy on 20/8/2010 at 04:20
Quote Posted by Chade
Yes, but you see, this is why the study is actually more complex in one sense then most "real situations". They actually try to vary the game across two dimensions, and determine what is the best game out of all possible games along that plane.
You are using the paper for something it was not. OK. I'll play your game for now and answer to your claim that the study was "more complex than most real situations".
Unless you're thinking about video games from 1975, nearly all "real situations" have a lot more than two dimensions. A plain whac-a-mole game is pretty much the most simplistic game you can think of. That's why the whac-a-mole game for the Nintendo DS is happily qualified as a game too simple to hold the interest for long, even though it has "traps, combos and power-ups" (which makes it significantly more complex than the example used in the paper).
That same paper with a (still simple) game like Pac Man could have played with a lot more than two dimensions. Among others, speed of ghosts, number of ghosts, different combination of ghosts "pathfinding", speed of Pac Man, number of lives, number of points for an extra life, number of mazes, size of mazes, complexity of mazes, number of warp tunnels, number of power pellets, duration of those power pellets, time for the flashing ghost warning, size and resistance of the joystick...
Now can you imagine what it would be like with an RPG? Can you guess how many "dimensions" I would find with a game like Deus Ex? So I'm sorry if I insist, but the study is most probably completely useless for any "real situations". Particularly when you take into consideration that the study was made with only children of the same age, it was with a pure physical game (meaning it was kind of easy to have a strong feedback during gameplay) and, most importantly, the accuracy was far too low.
Having said that, I will now be a little more serious. The paper was not about determining what was the best combination of those two variables in order to find the "best game", it was only about trying to validate a correlation between a few player's physical responses (mainly the average response time) and the children's expressed preferences. If I was cynical, I would say the paper was about using data mining techniques to find out that if the kid is dozing off while playing the game, then there is a chance he might not be interested in the game after all. Who would have thought? Now... Can you understand why I think this study has absolutely no value?
Quote Posted by Chade
Now it's true that there wasn't a glowing neon sign whenever you levelled up that told you the monsters had also levelled up. But they didn't take any steps to hide the relationship either, and when the effects are so obvious, and there are no confounding variables to confuse the relationship, I don't think this should qualify as hidden.
It was not obvious at all. As I said, there was a lot of talk on Bethesda's forums arguing one way or the other and it took a while before the majority agreed.
As for whether it was hidden or not, I'm sorry, but "forgetting" to tell me one of the major rule of the game is pretty much the same as "hiding" that rule to me. Using confounding variables over that would have just added a layer of "lying" of the "hiding". Of course, we can have a long debate on semantics with this, which I think would be pointless, so just tell me the correct word to express what Oblivion did if you think this is not the definition of "to hide" and I'll use it. But you have to realize that changing the word we use to name it won't change what I think of it.
Quote Posted by Chade
Well, there are two things about Final Laps difficulty adjustment that you seem to have a problem with. One is that the the adjustment was hidden, and one is that you could cheat the system. [...]So, my question is: if you had to pick a difficulty system with one of those two problems, which one you you dislike the least?
If I dislike a game, why would I play it? I'm not sure I understand why you asked that question.
Quote Posted by Chade
Crushing your old enemies is not rewarding because the game has become easier. It's an aesthetic touch, similar to finding a fancier looking sword, that tells the user "you are more powerful now". But making the game easier is not a reward, and the game must supply new (harder) enemies to keep the player satisfied.
Either I don't get what you mean, or you don't get what I mean.
Aesthetic alone is not enough. Except maybe for the rare player who has an enormous imagination, the fancier looking sword of a message saying : you are now level 34 is not really rewarding. The player has to feel it through the gameplay.
