I would like all game designers out there to read this, please! Be sure to go and read the blog where all the mistakes is presented. (part1 and part2)
I especially agree with the first paragraph. I don’t have a lot of patience with games. They are supposed to amuse me and entertain me. Not challenge me beyond my wildest dreams. I do NOT enjoy spending all night just trying to get past that stupid part of the game. And I don’t mind if the game is short (less gameplay hours before I played through the story).
While I don’t disagree, I don’t really agree with the last paragraph. I do like storytelling through the game. I just don’t like when I can’t keep playing once the story is finnished. You could in Zelda Windwaker, but not in Twilight Princess. Stupid, because it was in the latter that I really wanted to.
Anyways, my point is, that if it is a story being told, I don’t want to be stopped from experiencing that story just because I couldn’t get past that place… If there is a story being told, you need some sort of flow through the game.
If there is not, I’m fine with not managing to get into that specific part of the game that is too hard for me, but they better make sure I have something else to do!
“Repetitive interface tasks”… Let me say this: I don’t like repetitive tasks at all! Once I’ve managed to kill that mushroom, I don’t see the point in doing it over and over again until… Well I never got past that part in Lineage II (and I spent a LOT of time doing it. It was never enough).
“Too much complexity”… I actually can’t handle all the different units if there is going to be as many as 12. Isn’t it possible to only have 3 per race and then the tricky part could be to build the right amount of each? Cap the population and try it! Is there a strategic game like that?
Thing with strategic games are that you kind of need to spend like a week getting to know all the units, buildings and stuff (like what am I supposed to build to upgrade that, and Oh, was there a building to upgrade that?) before it is even possible to play it properly. It is allways (except in civ) a battle against time. You don’t have the time to read all those description boxes while trying to press exactly EVERYWHERE on the screen just so you opponent don’t have more units than you and win… And ofcourse if your opponent knows something you don’t, he will win. Was that what the developers had in mind? I don’t like it.
And the piracy thing… I don’t mind entering some code or number or whatever when installing the game. But the copy protection shouldn’t go further than that. There is no point. It will just get cracked. And in some cases a bough copy doesn’t work as well as a downloaded one. That’s just silly. Just have everyone download the frickin game for free and charge them for an online account, kadamit! Surely you can always think of a way to get people to want one!
There is a lot of really stupid things that game designers insist on doing. Unlockable content has to be one of the most annoying in my opinion – why should I have to work extra hard to unlock shit that I already paid for?
Another is the stupid insistence from game designers to make their games so amazingly difficult – the example I tend to use the most is Return to Castle Wolfensten, a game that even on the easiest setting is so ridiculously difficult that early on the first level I had to redo a segment more than forty (!) times. Sure, I’m not Death Incarnated when it comes to FPS games, but I’m not exactly a babe in the woods either.
I remember back in the days when I was hooked on the Sierra adventure games. The Kings Quest-series comes to mind here, but this really applies to anyone of their games from that era. These games would kill you if you stepped on the wrong plate or did anything strange at all. For no reason at all (i.e. you clicked on a plant) you die, since that plant was poisionous and the default action was to eat the plant when you clicked on it. How the hell is the player supposed to know that?!?!
tsktsktsk…. cheer up; 4 days left!!;DDD
Unlockable content can make sence if there is just too much to handle if it is there from the start. But… I have a game called supermonkeyball, and I want it for the party games. But I have to unlock the party games in the single player game! Should it not be the other way around… or something?
What? Don’t you eat everything in the forrest that you are curious of? I do… =)
movttet: …and now it’s three! =)