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Seeing people throw fits over Hollow Knight having the tiniest little complication on a standard map system has pushed me a lot further in the other way, to the point where I've really started to appreciate what Hideo Kojima was doing for MGS2, or how the Zelda series was allowed to keep going with its whole map and compass thing for a long while. I'm not really sure how lost people can get on the first area of Hollow Knight, it doesn't seem that complicated and Cornifer is in one of the easiest to access rooms, but after you get the first map, there's no real problem. If you're anxious over possibly getting lost in a new area, you can just trek back to the bench. The map is even good enough that it gives you a decent amount of landmarks to get your bearings on without using the "you are here" charm. You know, like how you use an actual real map to get directions like a human being. FPS games regularly don't give players a map, and they have the disadvantage of giving the player far less spatial awareness of the overall game world from the smaller field of view and the fact that you can get actually turned around with the moving camera so you lose your frame of reference. I don't see the issue people have with a game that already generally demands that you push the limits of your ability in other areas to ask you to understand the basic sort of spatial awareness you'd need to leave your home every day.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:08
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I feel the same way about time limits. There's a segment of the population who just get anxious over even the lightest time pressure and are unable to enjoy any video game where you can't go at as leisurely a pace you want. So if your goal as a game dev is to have a broad appeal, you'll never put them in. But I like time limits! I think they're fun! And I'm sad when they get removed, even if I fully understand the reasonable thought process that led to the removal.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:41
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cheetah7071 posted:I feel the same way about time limits. There's a segment of the population who just get anxious over even the lightest time pressure and are unable to enjoy any video game where you can't go at as leisurely a pace you want. So if your goal as a game dev is to have a broad appeal, you'll never put them in. But I like time limits! I think they're fun! And I'm sad when they get removed, even if I fully understand the reasonable thought process that led to the removal. Yeah, I don't think the original Dead Rising would have been nearly as interesting or compelling without its time limits. I also wouldn't want every single game to have that same system, and I remember it being incredibly polarizing and off-putting to most people on release.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:44
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cheetah7071 posted:This kind of attitude is exactly what I was talking about. If you go into an old game assuming it must be kinda poo poo and that people only care because of nostalgia, you're mentally preparing yourself to miss what makes it good SlothfulCobra posted:Seeing people throw fits over Hollow Knight having the tiniest little complication on a standard map system has pushed me a lot further in the other way, to the point where I've really started to appreciate what Hideo Kojima was doing for MGS2, or how the Zelda series was allowed to keep going with its whole map and compass thing for a long while. Strong agree on this stuff too, I think it's a big mistake to view modern conventions as what video games are "supposed to be", and assume anything different is inferior. Basically the only time I think it's possible for a game to "age badly" is when it was just a tech demo for the former cutting edge with actual gameplay as an afterthought (there's a lot of FMV games that don't have anything going for them now that "blurry video clips of bad actors" is not a selling point, for example). Beyond that though - if it was possible to lose yourself in a game for dozens of hours several decades ago, it's still possible today.
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Feb 12, 2024 19:48
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Snake Maze posted:Strong agree on this stuff too, I think it's a big mistake to view modern conventions as what video games are "supposed to be", and assume anything different is inferior. Basically the only time I think it's possible for a game to "age badly" is when it was just a tech demo for the former cutting edge with actual gameplay as an afterthought (there's a lot of FMV games that don't have anything going for them now that "blurry video clips of bad actors" is not a selling point, for example). Beyond that though - if it was possible to lose yourself in a game for dozens of hours several decades ago, it's still possible today. I wouldn't agree with this at all, no, because this assumes the lack of alternatives had no impact on people's viewpoints. There are plenty of games which were fantastic for the time because they did something cool or unique and there was nothing else like them, but once other things came out like them but with the benefits of improved design it becomes clear how much of a game's frustration was held up by a lack of an alternative. Arcade games are a great example here, where they frequently had intentionally bad design because they made a profit off making you die and spend more money. That doesn't mean you couldn't have fun playing them, but often times having the benefit of 'free' gameplay makes it clear how absolutely rough the gameplay is because the design being unfair or awkward wasn't done in the interest of creative vision, it was done in the interest of earning more money. One of the best ports of Phantasy Star 1 for example is the Sega Ages version which adds a map, and it isn't really something anyone disagrees with, because the limitations of Phantasy Star 1 mean that every dungeon was a series of nearly identical corridors of the exact same color and while you could map it out by hand/buy a guide, neither worked well for the game's design because it was an ambitious game that suffered from the inability to do things that could be done later on. This isn't because people are too WEAK and LAZY for a map but because the graphical limitations of the time meant that there was no other real choice. PS1 comes a game that goes from being tedious to being incredibly playable with this small change. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Feb 12, 2024 |
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Feb 12, 2024 20:05
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The compass charm discussion is a fascinating example of how psychologically loaded the impression of a game mechanic can be. It is very easy to say - someone itt did, but dismissed it as not a good argument immediately! - that the compass being a charm to remove frees up a slot for if you don't need it (backtracking, boss fight, replay). That's simple positive framing, and it doesn't even presume that you don't absolutely need it when going into an area blind. And yet, it's almost always phrased as it "taking away" a charm slot. The game devs obviously know that the charm is highly attractive to players, so they want to make it a real choice to put it on or not. Now think about this possible scenario: when testing late in development, they realize that having your position on the map is basically mandatory for most players. So they do what is demanded by some itt and bake its effect into the map. But they balanced the game around the tradeoff between a slot taken for orientation or for combat, and don't want to have the player be too powerful. So they just cut off a starting charm slot. In effect, for players that do consider the compass charm mandatory, nothing changes. For everybody else, they lose a slot. Nobody would ever know however unless they reveal the design process. So this entire discussion wouldn't exist, everybody would be happy, but with a factually worse solution. This is all because some feel that it's unfair that they need this slot and others don't and so the others have an advantage. But that doesn't actually make the game worse for you! It's a single player game! It's all in your head!
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Feb 12, 2024 20:24
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ImpAtom posted:I wouldn't agree with this at all, no, because this assumes the lack of alternatives had no impact on people's viewpoints. There are plenty of games which were fantastic for the time because they did something cool or unique and there was nothing else like them, but once other things came out like them but with the benefits of improved design it becomes clear how much of a game's frustration was held up by a lack of an alternative. Personally I'd struggle to think of an example for this where the original game isn't still worth playing in some way. I'm not sure if I'd hold the business model for coin-fed arcade games against them, considering anyone playing them now is almost certainly playing a modern port (which you buy and then own with no further costs) or on an emulator which doesn't cost you anything. In most of them dying just lets you respawn where you are if you still have coins, so they're really pretty forgiving for a modern player who doesn't need to put in actual quarters. If the argument is that a game being 2 hours long with high difficulty throughout is just fundamentally inferior to a game that's 20 hours long with a gradual difficulty curve, then I'll have to disagree. There are benefits to both, and there are a lot of times where being able to sit down and do a full run and see how your high score compares to your last one is preferable to sitting down and playing the intro hour where you don't have all the mechanics unlocked and the enemies are really weak.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:27
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Snake Maze posted:Personally I'd struggle to think of an example for this where the original game isn't still worth playing in some way. I mean that is exactly the issue. Those arcade games are designed in such a way that dying and restarting for money is a central element of the game and while they can still be fun outside of that, that element overrides the entire game. The fact that you can put infinite money into a virtual arcade machine only underlines that because it means design elements that don't have the starting point of "make money" are deemphasized Simply Simon posted:This is all because some feel that it's unfair that they need this slot and others don't and so the others have an advantage. But that doesn't actually make the game worse for you! It's a single player game! It's all in your head! This is absolutely not true and an attempt to rationalize a bad design choice. Hollow Knight's charms are a big part of how the game plays and can significantly impact your play style. The majority of them are gameplay changers in big or small ways and while some are obviously superior to others they are where the bulk of choice and customization lies. Players may not need it, but having one fewer charm slots (especially early on) significantly detracts from the options you have for building your character in a fun way. It, in fact, absolutely makes the game worse for you because you're more limited in your choices for something that is justifiably considered a base feature in the genre. And there's even a much better example in the same game of how you can do that better. Being Overcharmed in Hollow Knight allows you a bonus charm slot at the cost of taking significantly more damage from all sources. Rather than being a situation where you feel like you're losing a slot, it instead lets you gain a slot at a risk. Instead of feeling like a basic gameplay feature is locked behind a charm, it instead feels like you're given an extra charm slot for good play.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:43
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ImpAtom posted:I mean that is exactly the issue. Those arcade games are designed in such a way that dying and restarting for money is a central element of the game and while they can still be fun outside of that, that element overrides the entire game. The fact that you can put infinite money into a virtual arcade machine only underlines that because it means design elements that don't have the starting point of "make money" are deemphasized I think that in practice the good arcade games (and there were lots of good ones!) were hard but fair, I don't really get what you're saying here. Like, idk, here's Rayforce https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zP4fpnDRKzY It's an arcade game from 1993. I played it for the first time in 2023, 30 years after it was released. I thought it was really good! The two-layer system was pretty simple but the game made good use of it - there's lots of interesting enemy compositions and bits of interactivity in the background. The scoring system is simple (the more targets you lock onto before you shoot, the more points you get for each kill) but there's a lot of depth that comes out of it. I had a great time playing it, and I certainly can't think of any modern game that makes it obsolete.
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Feb 12, 2024 20:55
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Snake Maze posted:I think that in practice the good arcade games (and there were lots of good ones!) were hard but fair, I don't really get what you're saying here. There are absolutely good arcade games but there are a lot of good ones marred by bad ideas designed to draw more money from players. A lot of the times the advantage arcade titles had was a much stronger visual presentation and capabilities than console games which is why they were considered worth the money. (That and the good ol' human brain wanting to throw good money after bad.) I spent entirely too many hours on old school arcade games but the majority of them weren't very well designed even if they were fun. (Honestly bullet hells are probably one of the ones that did do best because they had the whole 1cc culture from the early days.)
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Feb 12, 2024 21:00
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ImpAtom posted:I spent entirely too many hours on old school arcade games but the majority of them weren't very well designed even if they were fun. Sure, but there were always tons of bad games, just like there were always tons of bad books and movies. James Bond Jr. (SNES, 1992) is not bad because it "aged badly", it just wasn't a very good game in the first place*. If you pick a 90s arcade game at random you'll probably get something bad, in much the same way that if you shuffle all the games released this year and pick one completely at random you'll probably end up with some shovelware trash. What I disagree with is that the games that used to be good can "age badly" and become bad over time, because they're missing X feature that only became popular later. I think that if you actually go back and play the games that used to be good you'll find that they still are good, and they work great even without whatever modern feature they're missing. *I assume, anyway. Maybe gamefaqs reviews lied to me and it's a beloved classic with a devoted fanbase and I just undermined my own point
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Feb 12, 2024 21:15
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and again, if you go in assuming it'll be bad, you'll usually be able to convince yourself that's right
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Feb 12, 2024 21:17
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Snake Maze posted:Sure, but there were always tons of bad games, just like there were always tons of bad books and movies. James Bond Jr. (SNES, 1992) is not bad because it "aged badly", it just wasn't a very good game in the first place*. If you pick a 90s arcade game at random you'll probably get something bad, in much the same way that if you shuffle all the games released this year and pick one completely at random you'll probably end up with some shovelware trash. I mean I gave an example above for Phantasy Star 1. It is one of my favorite RPGs ever but after Sega Ages I can't go back and play the original because the addition of a map was game changing. And I'll arguing 'til the day I die PS1 is a fantastic early JRPG but not because it lacked a map.
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Feb 12, 2024 21:21
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Consider the original Metroid, too. It was a top 20 seller for its console and outsold Metroid 2 despite having a smaller console base to work with. Lots of people did lose themselves for dozens of hours in it, but even most of the Metroid 2 defenders ITT agree that Metroid is not a good game, which seems to support ImpAtom's post. Once you acknowledge that point, it all comes down to matters of degree. Metroid 2 unquestionably made mapless navigation a lot more entertaining than Metroid 1, and I would go so far as to agree that most of the time it's actually a blast: the broadly linear nature makes most of the navigation pretty frictionless, and a lot of navigational obstacles are designed as fun puzzles so the frustration of being stymied by the occasional dead end are usually outweighed by the satisfaction of figuring out the way forward. But there are some sections that are just tedious, and while they're not a huge part of the play time they stand out in large part because the rest of the game does such a good job of making exploration either straightforward or interesting. The good parts of Metroid 2 demonstrate that it can work perfectly fine without a map, so you can argue that the flaw is a failing of level design rather than lacking an in-game map. But from a player's perspective the easiest way to compensate for that issue is to pull up a map when you need one.
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Feb 12, 2024 21:26
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Snake Maze posted:Is every charm punitive to the people who benefit from it, by forcing them to use a charm slot on it? What is the game that charges you in-game currency every time you save? That's another bullshit one too
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Feb 12, 2024 21:27
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ExcessBLarg! posted:No, because most charms confer a positive benefit on the game play. The compass charm is just a lovely thing to do when the baseline is to have a compass in any game that does have a map. no it doesn't, what are you on about lol
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Feb 12, 2024 21:32
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No Dignity posted:no it doesn't, what are you on about lol They're asking what game did that, not saying Hollow Knight does. And the answer is "a whole lot of them" so I'm not sure which specific one they mean
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Feb 12, 2024 21:33
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I love extremely tiny things in video games that make obsessive freaks insanely mad
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Feb 12, 2024 22:03
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just because you *can* do something with current game tech doesn’t necessarily mean you *should* do something. you *can* rerelease silent hill without any fog whatsoever. the tech has advanced enough that you don’t need the fog to mask the draw distance anymore. doesn’t mean you *should* do that. silent hill without the fog would suck.
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Feb 12, 2024 22:11
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Do we know if silksong will have the same map function?
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Feb 12, 2024 22:18
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ImpAtom posted:This is absolutely not true and an attempt to rationalize a bad design choice.
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Feb 12, 2024 22:28
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if it makes some people go "oh that's cool" and some people go "oh that sucks", that doesn't mean it's bad design. The end result of that type of thinking is a perfectly frictionless and utterly boring experience.
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Feb 12, 2024 22:32
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cheetah7071 posted:if it makes some people go "oh that's cool" and some people go "oh that sucks", that doesn't mean it's bad design. The end result of that type of thinking is a perfectly frictionless and utterly boring experience. I mean by that logic there's no such thing as bad design, because someone will defend pretty much anything if you look hard enough. There are people who defend Lunar: Dragon Song. Like to use an example of a place where friction on maps is reasonable, Etrian Odyssey is a dungeon crawler franchise where the central gimmick was that you had your own map you drew as you progressed through the game, and the dungeons were maze like and confusing enough that making your map and making it properly was essential to complete it. This was a case where they could have automated the entire thing but in doing so they would lose out on part of the core idea of the game which was the slow progress and risk of mapping, and the entire game is designed around that simple fact. Hollow Knight, in this case, isn't really about that. There is a degree of intentional design to the mapping but the key there is that the challenge is in 'saving' your mapping progress or finding your little bug friend to buy his map. The risk of moving forward or the reward for exploring out of the way to get a map is a great part of the core design. Even the ability to buy and put markers down works for that. I don't think anyone has a criticism of that. The criticism lies almost entirely in the lack of a marker because a map marker is generally considered basic functionality rather than additional features. And honestly at the end of the day if it didn't take a charm slot it would change absolutely nothing about the game for 99.9% of the people who play it.
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Feb 12, 2024 22:52
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cheetah7071 posted:if it makes some people go "oh that's cool" and some people go "oh that sucks", that doesn't mean it's bad design. The end result of that type of thinking is a perfectly frictionless and utterly boring experience. There's actually plenty of such interesting questions in games. I've played and talked a bunch about Mega Man, and that's also a very interesting series because a strong core of its game design is boss weapons. And a lot of the levels are designed around you using them, with basic enemies having specific weaknesses, setups being more or less obviously meant for you to exploit one of them - it might even be the boss' weakness, emphasizing that you want to come into the level with that weapon - but a lot of players say again and again "yeah I never use them, because what if I run out before the boss and can't beat it with its weakness/switching is kinda tedious/I don't feel like experimenting with basic enemy weaknesses, because that costs ammo that might be a waste/etc." So obviously, there's a lot of bad feelings associated with using special weapons in the playerbase. I think the special weapon system in the original Mega Mans is actually quite good - the efficiency you gain by switching to a proper weapon more than makes up for the time spent switching, and often the ammo cost isn't that bad - but it's hard to argue against it still feeling bad for lots of people. And they eventually put quickswitch in, and some of the best received weapon arsenals are the ones where the weapons cost almost nothing, there's definitely lessons there.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:03
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I guess I don't know what to say other than: it was cool to me, and the game would be less cool without it. It evoked a feeling of "oh, I have to give up this charm slot now--but some day, I'll be confident enough in the world that I can forego this and get the slot back". And by the end of the game, I did! And it was a good feeling to have the confidence to reclaim that slot. It's very similar to the way that basic HUD elements are equippable and unequippable in nier automata, which got universally praised as far as I can tell. It's always a downer when people try to say that something you liked is objectively bad from pure principles. If that stance means there's no such thing as objective bad design, so be it.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:05
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ExcessBLarg! posted:What is the game that charges you in-game currency every time you save? That's another bullshit one too Resident Evil? The horror game that wanted to purposefully create anxiety?
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Feb 12, 2024 23:08
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Simply Simon posted:There's actually plenty of such interesting questions in games. I've played and talked a bunch about Mega Man, and that's also a very interesting series because a strong core of its game design is boss weapons. And a lot of the levels are designed around you using them, with basic enemies having specific weaknesses, setups being more or less obviously meant for you to exploit one of them - it might even be the boss' weakness, emphasizing that you want to come into the level with that weapon - but a lot of players say again and again "yeah I never use them, because what if I run out before the boss and can't beat it with its weakness/switching is kinda tedious/I don't feel like experimenting with basic enemy weaknesses, because that costs ammo that might be a waste/etc." It's also worth noting the impact something like achievements can have on these things. Mega Man 10 had a "use buster only" achivement and despite having some of the best weapons in the entire franchise you had people tearing their hair out over how hard it was because they didn't want to ruin their achievement. (Or a similar thing in Mirror's Edge where there was a 'don't use gun' achievement so you had people refusing to use guns.) cheetah7071 posted:I guess I don't know what to say other than: it was cool to me, and the game would be less cool without it. It evoked a feeling of "oh, I have to give up this charm slot now--but some day, I'll be confident enough in the world that I can forego this and get the slot back". And by the end of the game, I did! And it was a good feeling to have the confidence to reclaim that slot. I think you highlighted the issue there. It's the difference between turning it on and turning it off. I don't think anyone would say having the ability to turn off map icons or whatever is wrong or bad.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:10
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Simply Simon posted:I might type up something longer in a bit, but to preface: it's a bad design choice because it feels bad, I agree with that. They should have foreseen that. However, I understand why they made it, because I might have made the same mistake. I simply don't think about it taking away anything, and probably so did the designers. It's a pitfall of asking the player to allocate resources between different layers of the game which are unequal in importance and interest value. Nominally, it's a fair trade that makes one part of the game easier in exchange for making another part harder, which is the whole point of giving players flexible build options. But in this case you're making a sacrifice in the fun challenging parts of the game to save you some tedium in the uninteresting part. Compare to Sprint Shoes in the original FF3/6. Walking around is not interesting and most players would like to get it over with faster, but the cost to do so is giving up 1/8 of your relic slots, which makes it feel like a tax. You can argue that it's an apples to oranges comparison because you can overcome the need for the compass charm with sufficient map familiarity whereas walk speed is fixed, but a lot of players enjoy the movement and combat of Hollow Knight more than the navigation and resent having to give up movement and combat ability for navigation functions. Again, it's all matters of degree. I don't regard it as a massive flaw in Hollow Knight, because most room geometry is reasonably distinct and you can probably figure out where you are on the map and even if you misjudge which section of a room you're in you will probably figure it out pretty quickly. I think it stands out because it combines with other design decisions (long paths, infrequent checkpoints, inconvenient fast travel stations) that make navigation feel more time-consuming than a lot of players would prefer. Unlike Sprint Shoes you can't point at any one of these design choices and say "this is objectively wrong" but for a lot of players it does add up to make the experience less than it could be. cheetah7071 posted:It's always a downer when people try to say that something you liked is objectively bad from pure principles. Yeah and some players like having a map of Metroid 2 to refer to 
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Feb 12, 2024 23:22
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To bring this somewhat back to Metroid. I can't help but wonder how I would feel about Hollow Knight and its need for a compass charm alongside all the player unfriendly things it does, like rez running with permanent cash loss, if I was as bad at it as I am at Metroid. Huge amounts of my frustration with Dread, Fusion, essentially every Metroid I've ever played come from the Space Jump being essentially the worst thing in the world for me to do. Getting that upgrade feels like a downgrade for me every time because suddenly my hands just stop working and I become unable to do the things the game asks of me. Much of my opinion of the 2D Metroid series derives from being unable to divorce my frustration at how bad I am from my experience of the game. And yet, it's friendly to the player, with convenient save points and a helpful map. So ultimately I come away from most of the games in a decent enough space. I ultimately struggle to understand the issue of the compass charm because I simply didn't need the charm slot until I was doing Godhome. I think I had it on when I beat the true ending of the game. I'm honestly not sure where I'm going with this. But it's just interesting to me that skill can elide what would otherwise be huge issues otherwise. My utter hatred of Bloodborne kinda shows a world where I'm not that good at HK.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:27
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ImpAtom posted:I mean by that logic there's no such thing as bad design, “bad design” depends on the context of what a game is trying to accomplish and at the end of the day it’s highly subjective some people will find the stamina gauge in dark souls intolerably annoying and wish they could just dodge and attack whenever, but the mechanic effectively accomplishes what it sets out to do in setting the pace of combat and encouraging careful decision-making.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:28
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LividLiquid posted:Yes? What's your point? I dunno, you just seemed to really not get the point that people like different things.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:33
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Augus posted:“bad design” depends on the context of what a game is trying to accomplish and at the end of the day it’s highly subjective Oh yes, absolutely, but I think there's a difference between design that works well despite being antagonistic vs design that goes against the intention. One of my favorite examples is Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. (by the Metroid Dread developer!) It has a mechanic where you gain magic by playing well and in turn can use that magic either for Light attacks (which heal you) or Shadow attacks (which do more damage.) The core problem there is that if you're playing well, you're not going to need the Light mechanics because you won't be taking damage. In addition you'll be doing more damage with Shadow attacks which means enemies are dying significantly faster too. This basically puts the game in the position where the mechanic to give you an assist if you're doing poorly is inaccessible to people playing poorly while the people playing well effectively get a Win More button. You get what they were going for ("You can spend your resources on heal or damage") but also how they screwed it up ("You get resources mostly by fighting without taking damage") I think it's comfortable to call that bad design considering they reworked it in the (otherwise awful) LoS2.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:39
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Did you know that game design is really hard?
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Feb 12, 2024 23:47
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You could go a step farther and make the health bar a UI element that requires point investment. After all, you already have all of that information from the action on screen, so you don't NEED the health bar UI to know how much health you have, it's a convenience feature. It certainly wouldn't make it an unplayable game, but it would annoy a lot of players. HK even has distinct health dots instead of an indistinct health bar, so it's even easier numbers to track. Obviously it's not exactly the same thing. You can do a lot more with distinctive designs to give people a sense of location vs counting hits and health pickups to keep a running tally. But there are plenty of people who can do that kind of thing, just like there are plenty of people that can navigate these environments without maps. At some point, it's a trade off decision. Also, this becomes much less of an issue when the resource involved isn't as limited. Kingdom Hearts has "Scan" which shows enemy HP. Could easily be built into the system, but costs a few AP to equip it. But there's more than enough AP that the tax is a small one. Broad vs deep is an interesting build choice, but making what's generally a core UI element require buying into with a noticeable chunk of your build, it tends to feel bad to a lot of players. The positive outcome is that players who can overcome the need for it feel a sense of accomplishment and get more power for it. Is that a worthwhile trade off?
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Feb 12, 2024 23:48
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Fedule posted:Did you know that game design is really hard? You could try putting some yellow paint on it, that ought to make it easier.
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Feb 12, 2024 23:51
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Man, can you imagine if Metroid had implausibly colored objects in it that specifically showed you where to go or what weapon to use to open a door.
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Feb 13, 2024 00:00
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ImpAtom posted:Man, can you imagine if Metroid had implausibly colored objects in it that specifically showed you where to go or what weapon to use to open a door.
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Feb 13, 2024 00:44
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Zero Mission was kinda overbearing yeah. Would have preferred if the map markers were more opt-in.
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Feb 13, 2024 00:45
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Simply Simon posted:Well, does the Compass charm really make some people go "that's cool"? Yes. I kept it off 'cause I like having to actually read the map.
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Feb 13, 2024 01:51
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 10:26 |
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This whole thing is orbiting the inevitability of an invocation of Dark Souls so let's get it the gently caress out of the way. Okay so you know the Souls Difficulty Discourse. On and on it rages, and ever it will, because there is an incredibly specific reason why FromSoft's Souls lineage of video games will never have a selectable Easy Mode; because these games are absolutely dedicated to situating every possible player in One World, which is Always The Same World For Everyone, and only differs on account of the consequences of things they do while in that world. There are limits to how much of that you can unabstract but FromSoft will always push them, and if Hidetaka Miyazaki ever figures out a narrative justification for there to be an NPC who controls your Vsync he'll loving do it. The way you make and reason about choices remains very Video Gamey, and you are still thinking about numbers a good amount of the time, but it is important to them that that situation takes place, that everything you do is just the consequences of your decisions by way of the game systems. This is why you always have to go to A Specific Guy to level up, they keep that idea as consistent as they can even as they strain to find ways to have you continue to be able to level up even when that character isn't present, and whenever they think of a way to weave the situated game mechanics into the world design they take it, even if it's just a little thing (see: there are no Boss Retry Stakes in the Academy in Elden Ring for lore reasons, which of course has a gameplay implication, but to keep the actual game pacing consistent they design around that). So difficulty in Souls is always, even when very predictable and controllable, still the result of an organic collision of multiple ongoing systems that you can poke and prod in increasingly heavy ways as you progress. The magnitude of available approaches is of course at its peak in Elden Ring, but even in Literal Dark Souls, I think in all those games except Sekiro, while there is never an Easy Mode there are a bunch of things you can do that make individual or multiple parts of the game easier. Or harder. If you're into it, you can make these games far more difficult than they have to be. It is only and always up to you how many of those buttons you press. Now. This approach has limits to how accessible it can actually make these games, and it is not incorrect to note that Souls remains quite inaccessible to large populations for reasons that are not, shall we say, skill issues. No amount of nifty narrative justification can in the real world render it any less of a Bad Thing that a lot of people who really want to play Souls games can't. This is why we are seeing a small but noticeable number of Souls-likes start to introduce these Features Fromsoft Won't, because those games are doing what good creatives do and taking things they like and are inspired by from Souls and leaving behind things they don't like. It's also why we have the weird phenomenon of games that absolutely are not Souls-likes but make a huge mechanical show of pretending to be in order to then add "also it's more forgiving and has difficulty modes" (like Jedi: Fallen Order), to try and capture some of that Can't Souls market. All of this to underscore: there is an external artistic pressure specifically on FromSoft's flagship lineage that they would have to compromise on in order to implement this commonly requested feature into their games. Judge however you like, but this is why they will not do it. Okay, so that's all fascinating, but we're arguing about the Compass in Hollow Knight. To be honest, I don't like it overall. I see the theory, the thing where you can take it off for boss fights for an extra slot to play with. The same theory animates other systems in other games; one direct and distant pull I can invoke is Ghost of Tsushima which gives you outfits, most of which are for fighting, of which there's a lot, but one is specifically for exploration. It's a completely different system to Hollow Knight's Compass but also it's identical; they've situated some game functionality into a practical choice in their world - giant clanky armour or light travelling cloak? - and refused to let you be in both modes at the same time, making adaptability come at the cost of a little tedium. Anecdotally I've only ever known people (myself included) to attempt to roll with the cape at all times, only donning armour when a base turns out to be Actually Difficult and you die a lot, or something. Actually, this is also what I did in Hollow Knight most of the time; that Compass was permanently attached, I just refused to spare the engagement it would take to remove it in preparation for fights, unless I got really stuck or I was doing a superboss or the boss rushes. There are two problems with this theory. One is that tedium is pretty much always bad. It does not quite encroach on The Golden Rule Of Game Design ("don't waste the player's time") but tedium tends to make you feel like your time is being wasted even when it isn't, it's the same reason having loading screens is unpreferable even when they're short, because it just makes people feel bad. Of course, it doesn't make everyone feel bad, but that's the bargain when you make tedium part of your game; you are risking people getting sick of it. A lot of people will come to the conclusion that it doesn't actually matter that you can still see your position on the map during a boss fight. The second is that barely anything else in Hollow Knight presumes to be made a choice in this way. There are no other navigation aids that come at the cost of combat utility, every other upgrade, including ones that you'd think would be way more of a burden on a bug than a compass - like the lantern - just slot additively into your inventory and remain there. I almost think people would actually complain less about the compass if more things needed to be equipped at the cost of other things. It's incongruous, it's less about "why is it like this" and more about "why is this one thing a charm"? Hollow Knight actually does this a lot, although usually more successfully. As noted by others, it brings back the Corpse Run concept from Souls and situates that process in the narrative as a Thing that's happening for a Reason. It has more of a need for this thing to be a narrative element than it does for it to be a thing the player actually has to be doing. So there's this tension; this mechanic is in the game, but the developers are very aware that it's unpopular and they don't really want players to be losing their money. So they go out of their way to file edges off it, even while they also add one that wasn't there before (you have slightly less Soul meter until you get it back, and also you have to kill it, which is easy, but tense). It gets moved outside of boss rooms, and some other locations too, can move on its own to come to where you are (so it doesn't get stuck over a pit) and you can summon it to a designated safe spot and fight it on your terms using a fairly abundant currency which has no other purpose. But, despite all this, the system is still in the game, it's there, and it's real, and it can gently caress you over. They need it to be real even though they don't want it to be real because that makes the narrative more real. And still they design around it, just like Elden Ring's Academy. Basically what I'm saying is that this poo poo's basically Oops! All Art. Sorry. These people are Trying Things, and the things they are trying hinge on difficulty in a way that's affective more than it is abstractly ideal. Sorry. I'm sorry. Game Design is really loving hard. Sorry.
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Feb 13, 2024 03:32
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