#26809 - keldon - Sun Sep 26, 2004 3:40 pm
When I was in college I was just jotting down some boudaries and level concepts for a game; when my friend started to make some suggestions. Her ideas were a little punishing for the slightest mistake; and as much as I liked it I had this gut feeling it was a little harsh - a little like shouting at late bus drivers.
Well recently I was playing "Out Of This World" on the SNES. I've never seen the manual, but ever since I first layed eyes on this game I've never got any further than the second stage where you swing from the cell.
After 10 years, I had discovered that holding the button fires a powerful bolt, and also creates a shield (maybe I should have got the one with the book). Well I liked this game, and I continued to play it all night.
It later occured to me that this game was a little punishing, and gave little margin for error; and it's clues were slightly absent. Sure the game was more rewarding when you'd figured it out, but I felt more cheated at some times. Some of the clues were almost absent; and it was more of a case of luck in triggering a specific game event that drew attention to how to solve the puzzle. It is as if all of your puzzle solving skills were in vein.
But since this post is already a little long, what are your views; if any?
#26811 - zazery - Sun Sep 26, 2004 6:10 pm
I've noticed this with a few games myself; especially games, which tell you everything, and those, which guide you through some sort of training sequence.
Halo, I must say had a good way to explain the controls. There was a reason for the training and it wasn't boring.
I also noticed that many games tell you which buttons to press, which isn't fun, but the player can progress faster.
I play tested Fight Night 2004 at EA and found their controls rather confusing. Half way through, the guy showed me at least 10 things I didn't know with the controls.
One thing I notice is games like to change actions for each button a lot. A good example of what to do instead is Mario 64. You know exactly what will happen when you press the combos of buttons. With this type of setup, it limits your moves, but allows the player to attach themselves to the character so they know how to move him at all times. Prince of Persia: Sands of time is another great example where this is possible.
One last thing; It's useful to have little hints sometimes when the players are stuck as to which button to press.
#26813 - sgeos - Sun Sep 26, 2004 6:21 pm
The more a player struggles, the greater the sense of accomplishment after the struggle is over.
Let's play Evil Overlord. There is an evil overlord who sends minions of darkness out into the world to generally make life suck for everyone. Luckly, you work for him and just found the Holy Sword of Light. What are you going to do?
A) Commit suicide because there is no hope
B) Kill the evil overlord and free the land of opression
If you picked B, you win. (If you picked A, you lose.) There was no struggle and therefore no sense of accomplishment.
What you need to do is figure out your target audiance and calibrate your difficultly level to that audiance. I'm looking for much harsher and unforgiving games than say my 14 year old sister or my 10 year old cousin.
I think that the game penalties should give an incentive for the player to try. Let's take death in a game:
A) Permadeath- once you die you need to start a new game. This is a really harsh penalty. It makes players think before they try stupid things.
B) Death and reload- when you die you lose all progress since the last save. Nowhere near as harsh as permadeath, but it still forces players to think before they try something stupid. (Or find a save point first.)
C) Penalty on death- May be loss of XP, gold or items. Gives an incentive to not die without punishing potentially hours of gameplay.
D) Restart from save- Move the player back to the last save point on death. Loss of progress only. Not harsh unless save points are few and/or stages are really hard.
E) Restart screen- Start to screen over at death. Tend to make for easy games and immediate challenges.
F) Timed Revive- Come back to life after a little bit of delay. A fantastic penalty for little kids who are still trying to master the controller.
In general, I think that penalties should encourage players to think about the ramifications of their actions. They should not slap a player because the designer is on an ego trip "Nobody can get past the volcano of doom! AHAHAHA!" (permadeath in an otherwise non permadeath game).
-Brendan
#39965 - etali - Wed Apr 13, 2005 11:42 pm
I like games that explain the controls clearly at the beginning, and give you gentle but not jarring reminders from time to time. That's easier to do in some games than others - if you're constantly being reminded of the controls in an unrealistic way it breaks the immersion.
If the game has a lot of controls, and they blend them into the game realistically then its fine though.
I don't mind being punished for mistakes made because *I* did something wrong, but I do mind if you don't get hints at what you're supposed to do in the first place.
I was playing one of the old R-Type games recently on the playstation, and found that some of the levels seemed to give you no chance to react - it felt like you had to play through the level and die once just to find out what was coming, then avoid it the next time round because you were expecting that.
I still played it but it isn't as fun that way.
That's just my thoughts.
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#39969 - sajiimori - Thu Apr 14, 2005 12:23 am
Games can be fun with very severe punishment (NetHack) or almost none (World of Warcraft). The important thing is to establish some sort of contract with your audience, and hold up your end of the bargain.
Here is an example of a contract violation from Uru, the full-3D Myst game. It is presented as an intellectual point-and-click puzzle game, but players are randomly expected to do some sort of clumsy maneuver to knock over a plank or nudge wobbly rocks around to get them to stay on pressure plates.
In NetHack it's okay that you die for things that you couldn't possibly have prevented. The point is to learn the rules of the universe over multiple lifetimes. It's critical, though, that there are rules to discover, and that they can be exploited.
#51474 - ghost Leinad - Sat Aug 20, 2005 2:06 am
look...im making now a few games for my resident project for some goberment company...this company is specialized in childrens...SO, i need to make games they can undertands..so my "boss" always tell me..put the bottons to press in a visible place, let the intructions for that game in the main screen, where the game is...this is because the games are for childrens in kinder-garten or first level of elementary schools...you must guide by your hand this childres...
games like mario 64, are a little more complex but still some childrens may be able to play it...
games like age of empires takes "ages" to master...and it could be a real challenge for young people, let's not say children...
but enough of words...i invite you to try my new game (still in process, but already playable)
http://www.angelfire.com/ab8/leinadcharm/pixmanip.gba
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#51600 - gauauu - Mon Aug 22, 2005 6:48 am
Right on, sajiimori.
As long as the rules are consistant, it can be fun either way. I for one, LOVED Out of this World, and played it over and over, dying repeatedly trying to figure out what to do next.
But I'm also a sucker for punishment - I thoroughly enjoyed the nasty way on ninja gaiden for nes that if you died fighting a boss, it would immediately send you back to the very beginning of the level (if you died on level 6-2, you got to play from 6-2, but if you died on the level 6 boss, you'd go back to 6-1)
#54525 - LunarCrisis - Tue Sep 20, 2005 5:05 am
IMO, the player should be able to configure the game to be as easy or hard as they want it to be. If a game is too hard for a particular class of gamer, it means you have completely locked out part of your audience. Remember, the game is first and formost for _their_ enjoyment.
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#54531 - gauauu - Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:25 am
true, although the problem with that is that a player will tend to pick an easier difficulty than he needs, and then write the game off as not quite as fun.
Yes, that's a player problem and not a game problem, but it's true. I've done it many times...get frustrated and use a cheat, or an easier difficulty. Then regret the decision when that sense of accomplishment from beating the game wasn't really there.
That's my problem with overly adaptive difficulty also. There's no sense of accomplishing something if merely losing at it 20 times in a row causes the game to make it really easy.
The best solution I have seen was on an old NES game called Dragon Spirit or something like that. It basically had an "easy game" and a "hard game" but they were different enough, and the easy game easy enough, that you really didn't ever want to bother playing the "easy" game. And you didn't just choose which one you wanted to play....instead, it judged how well you did at the first level of the game, and then selected easy or hard based on that. Very cool, I thought. People who wanted an easy game could play it if they wanted, but there was no sense of "spoiling the challenge" by just making it a little easier on yourself.
#54534 - tepples - Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:29 am
But then you get games like Frequency for PS2, which are so darn hard on the later levels that despite trying a song fifty-nine times I can't pass it, and it appears that on expert you need to full-combo levels 1-1 through 1-4 in order to unlock level 1-5.
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#55090 - biubid_boy - Sun Sep 25, 2005 1:38 pm
I tend to get sick of a game very quickly if I can't beat it. I've only completed a few games at the original time I bought them. The others I stop playing for like half-a-year, then I go back and finish it once I've forgotten how hard/annoying it was.
#109990 - Optihut - Fri Nov 24, 2006 1:17 am
| sgeos wrote: |
| The more a player struggles, the greater the sense of accomplishment after the struggle is over. |
I've got a different opinion on this. From my limited selection of games I've bought for the DS, I like Mario Kart the best and Tomb Raider the least. This is partly because of the difficulty level:
In Mario Kart I usually win against the AI, but it's a close call, so I feel like I've accomplished something.
Tomb Raider on the other hand is a tedious exercise of meticulously timed jumps and going through the same sections a dozen times to memorize where all the death traps are... It's too hard right to the point where it's more frustrating than rewarding.
In my opinion the game needs to give you the feeling that you are winning, because you're just awesome - it needs to be a challenge, yet not so hard to discourage the player.
#109994 - sajiimori - Fri Nov 24, 2006 1:57 am
Difficult games are good if players feel like they are learning something useful every time they fail at a task.
Edit: Wow, zombie thread.
#109995 - MrD - Fri Nov 24, 2006 3:19 am
Which is the exact opposite of 'Tear Up Eric's Best Line' from Tony Hawk's Underground, or Skip-Bo.
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