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Mierenneuker posted:I too listened to the commentary and thought "boy, were some of these Valve testers dumb as heck". I then played old games which had unintuitive stuff and longed for those kind of testers. I remember all too well being one of the people mocking "consolisation" of games when they brought in loot glow and highlighted objectives. Pfft, having loot shine from all the way across the room, so lazy. Not having it rewards careful thorough players with bonus loot. Too easy. Highlighted/glowing objectives are insulting our intelligence. I can find poo poo on my own, thanks.  Now I go back to those old games and realise how poorly designed they were. How many times I would be lost because I didn't see some incredibly tiny detail. Like a switch, or button. How many times did I end up just mashing the use key while rubbing up against everything in the room because the button I was supposed to use was indistinguihsalbe from every other glowing control panel which was just decoration? Far too many.
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Oct 23, 2018 06:37
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RE: That example with L4D having auto-crouch because people are dumb. People actually consciously or subconsciously think about what the game designers intend for the player to do. The question you ask in videogames when stuck is "What am I supposed to do here?" not "How do I solve this". We know there's a solution, there always is. But it's a solution someone else thought up and wants you to figure out. In L4D you crouch to aim better (nice videogame logic in itself) not to squeeze through spaces. The game is about going fast and shooting zombies, not about solving environmental puzzles. The auto-crouch is actually pretty sensible. Videogames are super dumbed down versions of the real world. If you need an item in videogame, the solution is never "go and buy it" or "ask the nearest person for help". No you need a wrench and it's the only wrench in the world and it's in that locked building. All the practical solutions you could think up are just not possible because they wouldn't lead to [the gameplay] so you default to what the videogame is telling you to do. And the best thing is that the more I play videogames the more I'm used to the videodumb. When you watch someone new to videogames they actually display logical thought when trying to open doors that are obviously part of the scenery or trying to jump over what is obviously an impassable obstacle of a car blocking the street or a bunch of chairs in front of a doorway. They are still new to the videogame logic. There are so many examples in every genre. I could talk about them for hours. Vic has a new favorite as of 08:19 on Oct 23, 2018 |
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Oct 23, 2018 08:17
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The language of video games is a tremendously interesting thing especially because there are significant generational gaps and that is probably only going to widen as games get older. A lot of people who play games don't realize how much language they've internalized and it's also very easy to miss what may be obvious to some people isn't obvious to others.
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Oct 23, 2018 08:40
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Regarding tutorials, why not just have it unskippable by default but it becomes skippable if the game detects a save that's past it?Megillah Gorilla posted:I remember all too well being one of the people mocking "consolisation" of games when they brought in loot glow and highlighted objectives. I think the bigger thing about this that those kinds of people don't think about is that, yeah, in the old days it was real easy to figure out what items were important, when there were only like 3 models maximum in a given room. Like, you got a room with a big gray cube for a table, a big key model on it, and basically nothing else, of course you're gonna think "I should grab that key." The problem is that nowadays it's mandatory that every game have about 4,000 fully detailed pieces of clutter in every room and it's impossible to tell what's important if it's not highlighted, especially if it's tiny.
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Oct 23, 2018 10:33
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I got the original Unreal recently and tried it out a bit, it's pretty fun, but "rub your face against every object" is absolutely in full swing. I never know if I'm just super dense with a puzzle or if there's a button somewhere and it's always the latter; just a brick sticking out or like a plate on the ground. I'm just not used to looking for things like that, I'll try to like shoot through the bars of the gate blocking me to hit something that's maybe a switch behind it, I'll even look up, but it's just not the kind of game I can "solve" today. I get lost in the levels because they're super huge and nonlinear, I don't know if the jumping puzzle is mandatory or not, I don't know if I just glitched through the fan pushing me back or if it's intentional (I looked it up, it's the latter, and it's just janky - spent half an hour looking for a way to turn off the fan but you're just supposed to...push through it...sideways?). That's not much of a complaint, it's just how games were back there, trying to find themselves in 3D space, but I don't think I can go back there. A bit of a pity - the shooting itself is fine, and I like the way it does "scans" Metroid Prime-style, that's actually really brilliant!
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Oct 23, 2018 10:59
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PubicMice posted:Regarding tutorials, why not just have it unskippable by default but it becomes skippable if the game detects a save that's past it? The sheer number of polygons on screen is the reason why many third-person have some kind Eagle Vision/ Detective Vision/ Witcher Senses. Since Geralt is not in Skyrim he's not interested in putting buckets on peoples heads. so his interactions are limited to Examine-Clue, Loot-Treasure, and Light-Candle. It's certainly gives Witcher 3 a faster pace than Fallout 4, which expects us to be amazed that we can pick a spoon off the table like it's still 2006. Batman's Detective-Vision had to be toned down after the first game because it was too useful, and you could play the whole game as Batman and the Argonauts.
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Oct 23, 2018 11:26
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Simply Simon posted:One of my buddies has the superpower of "look up". We were playing Twilight Princess together back when it was new and I kept getting stumped by the stupidest things and he just kept saying the dumbass catchphrase "gazing skyward will reveal many problems" and he was right every. single. time. Is this your buddy? 
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Oct 23, 2018 11:28
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Vic posted:RE: That example with L4D having auto-crouch because people are dumb. People actually consciously or subconsciously think about what the game designers intend for the player to do. The question you ask in videogames when stuck is "What am I supposed to do here?" not "How do I solve this". We know there's a solution, there always is. But it's a solution someone else thought up and wants you to figure out. In L4D you crouch to aim better (nice videogame logic in itself) not to squeeze through spaces. The game is about going fast and shooting zombies, not about solving environmental puzzles. The auto-crouch is actually pretty sensible. But did they pick people who had never played a videogame before in their lives to playtest it? Crouching = smaller places in what 90% of videogames?
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Oct 23, 2018 11:37
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Len posted:But did they pick people who had never played a videogame before in their lives to playtest it? Crouching = smaller places in what 90% of videogames? The kind of people you want to playtest videogames are generally smart enough not to take a job playtesting videogames.
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Oct 23, 2018 11:38
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Megillah Gorilla posted:I remember all too well being one of the people mocking "consolisation" of games when they brought in loot glow and highlighted objectives. Hell, the original Doom and Doom 2 highlighted a fair number of secrets in the minimap, by showing you where a good number of the fake walls were (they were shown on the minimap as the same color as doors). Now figuring out how to open said fake walls, that was the catch. And the ones you just opened like a door were usually a slightly different texture, so you could spot them if you were paying attention. Then again, these are also, y'know, secrets, and not the stage proper. Though the keys DID shine brightly and in the dark.
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Oct 23, 2018 11:46
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I like the Demon's Souls tutorial method of giving you a handful of mooks to kill followed by an enormous monster who will one-shot you. Basically get used to dying. Dark Souls' Undead Asylum is also excellent - you learn everything you need to beat the game in about 20 minutes.
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Oct 23, 2018 12:32
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I watched a pair of people who fought Asylum Demon for about 45 minutes with the broken sword hilt because they didn't realize they'd picked up a weapon and figured that beating the thing with scratch damage was just part of the Dark Souls experience. These were people who had already beaten Demon's Souls, too.
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Oct 23, 2018 12:38
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As far as video game logic and interactions go, Prey nailed it. You can interact with basically any door, computer, body, etc. You have tools that behave in specific ways and will always behave that way. If there’s an obstacle, you can take a look at what tools you have and basically any reasonable solution will work.
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Oct 23, 2018 12:56
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Ugly In The Morning posted:As far as video game logic and interactions go, Prey nailed it. You can interact with basically any door, computer, body, etc. You have tools that behave in specific ways and will always behave that way. If there’s an obstacle, you can take a look at what tools you have and basically any reasonable solution will work. WHAT DOES REPLOYER DO
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Oct 23, 2018 12:58
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Vic posted:RE: That example with L4D having auto-crouch because people are dumb. People actually consciously or subconsciously think about what the game designers intend for the player to do. The question you ask in videogames when stuck is "What am I supposed to do here?" not "How do I solve this". We know there's a solution, there always is. But it's a solution someone else thought up and wants you to figure out. In L4D you crouch to aim better (nice videogame logic in itself) not to squeeze through spaces. The game is about going fast and shooting zombies, not about solving environmental puzzles. The auto-crouch is actually pretty sensible. My favorite example was watching my dad play Wind Waker and coming across 3 unlit torches, one lit torch, and an obvious shut door. So he took the lit torch and started looking for a key or lever in the dark spaces of the room, because why the gently caress would lighting torches open doors? Which as just so obviously intuitively the answer for me, because I'd been raised on videogame logic.
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Oct 23, 2018 13:40
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Is it really so common for players to find themselves stumped because they just don't look up? Any time I can't immediately figure out the solution to some puzzle I'll scour every corner of the room I'm in for hints and that means looking up as well. We joke about enemies in games having incredibly poor sight but maybe that's closer to reality than we'd like to believe
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Oct 23, 2018 13:44
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Kit Walker posted:Is it really so common for players to find themselves stumped because they just don't look up? Any time I can't immediately figure out the solution to some puzzle I'll scour every corner of the room I'm in for hints and that means looking up as well. We joke about enemies in games having incredibly poor sight but maybe that's closer to reality than we'd like to believe  .In a game like Batman: Arkham Asylum, it's far more natural for me to look up because Batman as a vertical fighter is so baked into the game itself. You constantly are expected to get the drop on enemies from above, to look for poo poo to hang from, to grapple up places, it's actually the FIRST solution I check. But I think "looking up" still hasn't quite entered my typical problem solving instinct yet. I just don't play that many games where it's necessary; camera is for keeping track of enemies on the same plane as I am, not look for poo poo above or below.
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Oct 23, 2018 13:51
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Simply Simon posted:BUT What do you mean, what does it do? It's pretty obvious when you find it.
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Oct 23, 2018 13:52
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Kit Walker posted:Is it really so common for players to find themselves stumped because they just don't look up? Any time I can't immediately figure out the solution to some puzzle I'll scour every corner of the room I'm in for hints and that means looking up as well. We joke about enemies in games having incredibly poor sight but maybe that's closer to reality than we'd like to believe Redneck Rampage is a FPS running on the Build engine (like Duke 3D). In the first episode there is a sewer level (already off to a bad start) where at one point you need to raise the water so you can swim to a platform in the middle of the water. There is nothing on this small, closed platform. Unless you look 45 degrees up and happen to notice a button you can shoot. AT NO POINT IN THAT GAME BEFORE DID YOU HAVE TO LOOK UP OR DOWN. This is a 2.5D shooter from before mouselook was a common thing. Whenever an enemy is above or below there is some vertical aim assist to shoot at them. The button itself doesn't really stand out in the drab environment either (much like the game's keys, how I hate those tiny bastards). It's not like Duke Nukem 3D where you have these comically sized red buttons, that almost look they came from a Street Fighter 1 arcade cabinet. Mierenneuker has a new favorite as of 14:05 on Oct 23, 2018 |
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Oct 23, 2018 14:01
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Morpheus posted:What do you mean, what does it do? It's pretty obvious when you find it. It's like these people never actually played the game.
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Oct 23, 2018 14:06
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ImpAtom posted:The language of video games is a tremendously interesting thing especially because there are significant generational gaps and that is probably only going to widen as games get older. A lot of people who play games don't realize how much language they've internalized and it's also very easy to miss what may be obvious to some people isn't obvious to others. I sound like a crazy person whenever I have to explain to my sister how a game she is interested in works Things like Metroidvania or Roguelike/lite are already hard to parse for people who play these things every day, imagine to the normal folk out there.
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Oct 23, 2018 14:50
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Normies can go back to partaking in normie hobbies like paying taxes and voting and not video games.
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Oct 23, 2018 14:54
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Simply Simon posted:BUT It reploys things, obviously.
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Oct 23, 2018 14:55
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TheMostFrench posted:I feel like this is why some games have those introductory levels which are disguised tutorials. It's unfortunate when they're unskippable by default. i liked how Gears of War 2 did it. it asks you if you want to take the rookie character around the block for some pointers from the main characters, or if, gently caress it, you just wanna jump straight into the deep end and let the rookie sink or swim.
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Oct 23, 2018 15:27
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Ravenfood posted:My favorite example was watching my dad play Wind Waker and coming across 3 unlit torches, one lit torch, and an obvious shut door. So he took the lit torch and started looking for a key or lever in the dark spaces of the room, because why the gently caress would lighting torches open doors? Which as just so obviously intuitively the answer for me, because I'd been raised on videogame logic. Specifically, Zelda logic. Someone's first Zelda game is always really tricky because you haven't been taught its particular set of puzzle solutions yet.
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Oct 23, 2018 16:39
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PubicMice posted:Regarding tutorials, why not just have it unskippable by default but it becomes skippable if the game detects a save that's past it? Doesn't really work in a lot of cases, like what if you double dip and buy the PC version later it would still force the tutorial on you, or you played it on your Exs console or whatever. What we really need to do is change the culture around games so that people feel like going through the tutorial or playing on easy is totally OK to do an doesn't make you lesser in any way. Shadow Warrior 2 did a nice thing and basically said that Easy is for people that want to feel like superheroes and didn't need to prove anything. If people are ok with learning and playing on easier levels if it fits their skill level then we can have skippable tutorials without people not knowing how to play the game.
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Oct 23, 2018 18:55
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I almost agree but more that there shouldnt be shame and tedium in tutorials. In some cases its unavoidable, but making it feel naturally would be nice.
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Oct 23, 2018 19:05
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Mandatory tutorials are fine, if somewhat bothersome on replays, as long as they're snappy. There's a world of difference between "look up, look down, head to the glowing point. This is a gun, shoot it with Shift-Alt-Y. Shoot enemies to hurt them." kinds of tutorials, and the kind that drop you in a level, show button prompts for how to do things and let you play while it shows you how to do things.
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Oct 23, 2018 19:55
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Since the Deus Ex chat I had to reinstall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7NzifR9BQs
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Oct 23, 2018 20:18
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Vic posted:And the best thing is that the more I play videogames the more I'm used to the videodumb. When you watch someone new to videogames they actually display logical thought when trying to open doors that are obviously part of the scenery or trying to jump over what is obviously an impassable obstacle of a car blocking the street or a bunch of chairs in front of a doorway. They are still new to the videogame logic. I was watching some stupid horror game LP, and the protagonist is being chased by a monster. At the end of the hall were two doors, a huge heavy steel door, and a interior wood door roped off with a 'pardon our mess' sign. I was (initially) quite ANGERY that the player tried the roped off door first, since it was obviously locked off.
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Oct 23, 2018 20:26
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ItBreathes posted:Mandatory tutorials are fine, if somewhat bothersome on replays, as long as they're snappy. There's a world of difference between "look up, look down, head to the glowing point. This is a gun, shoot it with Shift-Alt-Y. Shoot enemies to hurt them." kinds of tutorials, and the kind that drop you in a level, show button prompts for how to do things and let you play while it shows you how to do things. The new spiderman game did this really well. The initial cutscene is of Spidey swinging around and it just naturally pans into you having control and it says "Press R2 to swing" and then bam, your swinging. It slowly adds other things on top of it. I feel like videogames have gotten pretty good at adding tools you your toolbox one at a time.
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Oct 23, 2018 20:46
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I don't know why, but this line of conversation reminded me of Shogo. It's an old-ish (late '90s) FPS in which you play a giant mech pilot in an anime inspired universe. In one level, you're on foot and have to progress through a city to get your mech back. You come across a locked gate with a guardhouse next to it with a woman in it, and you ask nicely could you please open the gate? The woman answers that her cat has run off into a nearby building, and she wants you to rescue it before she'll agree to open the gate. What follows is a long, grueling level, full of enemies shooting at you, until you finally, finally find the cat, bring it outside, and the woman opens the gate for you. Or you can just shoot her in the face and open the gate yourself. That works too.
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Oct 23, 2018 20:53
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That's like how the most useful tool in Deus Ex 1 is the rocket launcher (sorry, GEP gun) because in addition to being a heinously powerful weapon it's also a lockpick, safecracker, doorbuster, and general "I want to go this way but there's a flimsy barrier in the way" fixer. It makes you realize in retrospect how many games block your path with barriers that in any reasonable world you'd be able to trivially bypass with the vast array of tools the game provides to you.
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Oct 23, 2018 21:18
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Also good at making silent takedowns and resembling brothers.
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Oct 23, 2018 21:32
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I have opinions on tutorials, damnit!  ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the very weird quirks about humanity is that we just kind of don't look up unless there's a reason to. Like...we just don't. Similarly, there's a section in the collapsing Citadel in HL:Ep1 where one of the transport ships rises up from the depths and it's this big spectacle. But how do you make sure players pay attention to the cool thing happening? Easy: Stick a single Combine soldier, just armed with a pistol or something, on a far catwalk in the same direction to plink at the player. Attention grabbed. Len posted:It's really a no win situation. If they give an unskippable tutorial it gets people bitching about being forced to do a tutorial. If the tutorial is optional people bitch about not knowing what to do. Honestly part of the problem is that there are a bunch of weirdo gamers out there that seethe at the idea of a game telling them what to do, before turning around and then complaining that a game is bad because they don't know what to do. The actual answer though is to hire on some loving teaching specialists already and put actual effort into crafting your tutorial instead of just rubber-stamping the same tired designs over and over. And also have the guts to make your game not instantly approachable by literally every human being and also one-celled organism on earth. It still annoys me that Dead Space's whole goddamn gimmick is literally spelled out in bloody graffiti directly above where you pick up the plasma cutter, before you can even fire a single shot at a Necromorph. Megillah Gorilla posted:Now I go back to those old games and realise how poorly designed they were. How many times I would be lost because I didn't see some incredibly tiny detail. Like a switch, or button. Reminds me of how Thief's loot system has always been arbitrary and lovely, but clearly the problem is making it more obvious which wine bottle can actually be picked up for money and not the sloppy implementation of the whole dang thing. Grognards will always insist <random piece of system mastery> is actually a totally fundamental element and removing or reducing it would cause the entire game to implode. Kit Walker posted:Is it really so common for players to find themselves stumped because they just don't look up? Any time I can't immediately figure out the solution to some puzzle I'll scour every corner of the room I'm in for hints and that means looking up as well. We joke about enemies in games having incredibly poor sight but maybe that's closer to reality than we'd like to believe I think you can blame gravity. Any game where you're inclined to loot dead bodies or pickup stuff off the ground is going to lead to the player focusing on looking more downward than upward. Not to mention enemy creepy crawlies that inevitably skitter across the ground at speed. There's also probably some muckery with console-optimized FoVs and third person cameras that make it less intuitive to look up.
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Oct 23, 2018 22:22
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:That's like how the most useful tool in Deus Ex 1 is the rocket launcher (sorry, GEP gun) because in addition to being a heinously powerful weapon it's also a lockpick, safecracker, doorbuster, and general "I want to go this way but there's a flimsy barrier in the way" fixer. Pffft. Why use the GEP gun to blow open one safe, when you can use a LAW to blow up every safe?
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Oct 23, 2018 23:12
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I wonder if our avoidance of looking vertically has to do with our eyes being horizontally placed on our heads? If our eyes were at the top and bottom of our faces would we be more prone to missing things to the left and right? I should probably go smoke some weed.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:13
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No. The world is horizontal. Turn all around, there's something new at every angle. Up? Lotta sky like 90% of the time. Or, technically, gravity is the reason we don't look up, in a roundabout way.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:30
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Game design 
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Oct 24, 2018 02:36
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Queen Combat posted:No. The world is horizontal. Turn all around, there's something new at every angle. Up? Lotta sky like 90% of the time. And as far as learned responses in video games go, 90% of the time there is nothing on the ceiling, or at most a pre-generated skybox. I have seen games where the player is trained to regularly look up, mainly in games with full 3D movement. But most games don't, and so the trick becomes having to draw the player's attention upwards when normally there's no reason for them to look up.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:39
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