SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[Velhart]

^ This person gets it. BlaiseArath you should check this out...

http://youtu.be/8FpigqfcvlM?t=1m25s

Has about a 3 minute blurb about the dumbing down of the gaming industry. Also amusing as hell.

That has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. He is pointing out that mechanics are simple enough to learn on your own without the need of a tutorial guiding you.

[Zarzak]

That has nothing to do with the conversation at hand. He is pointing out that mechanics are simple enough to learn on your own without the need of a tutorial guiding you.

No.. he is pointing out that the gaming industry assumes everyone is mentally handicapped and needs their hand held through every single thing. Making fights DDR levels because how would people ever learn if it isn't perfectly predictable. Hand holding you through every stage of leveling by having you follow yellow ! points. etc etc.

If that went over your head then maybe they are right.. And that is a sad sad thing.

[Delily]

No.. he is pointing out that the gaming industry assumes everyone is mentally handicapped and needs their hand held through every single thing. Making fights DDR levels because how would people ever learn if it isn't perfectly predictable. Hand holding you through every stage of leveling by having you follow yellow ! points. etc etc.

Are you familiar with Scott Jennings, a.k.a Lun the Mad? If not, I'd recommend looking him. Sadly, I can't give you a direct reference to his article, but he wrote something that is pertinent to this. Basically, players will cry about how much they want difficulty, and how truly boring the current encounters are. The reality is the more challenging something is, the fewer people will actually attempt. Obviously, this will appeal to a certain type of player, but that type is definitely not the majority, despite appearances. I mean, what do you want? Bosses that have learning algorithms? Do you know that result in bosses simply using the strongest attack available on the healers to wipe the raid? That will pretty much mean no one will ever fight that boss.

The truth is that if only 5% of your player-base can reasonably expect to run the current content, that's a whole lot of wasted resources.

On that note, I find it amusing that the "hardcore raiders" are complaining that this game is not challenging enough. The designers were, and are, very clear the game is currently aimed at newer players and "filthy casuals". What exactly were you expecting?

The reality is that this "garage band syndrome". WoW essentially proved that MMOs don't have to be niche products that measure subscriptions in terms of tens of thousands, or ever hundreds of thousands. The "veteran MMO gamer" that is referred to in your signature may not like that, but seriously, this is a business, the point is to make money.

[Kiara]

The truth is that if only 5% of your player-base can reasonably expect to run the current content, that's a whole lot of wasted resources.

On that note, I find it amusing that the "hardcore raiders" are complaining that this game is not challenging enough. The designers were, and are, very clear the game is currently aimed at newer players and "filthy casuals". What exactly were you expecting?

BTW, Delily, not once have I mentioned making the game more punitive. I actually think Coil encounters are pretty obscure and awful game design. The overuse of Insta-Kill / One Shot mechanics is a handicap that the design team has been using to basically make you do things exactly the way they want or else.

I'm hoping for more organic encounters. There's a place for Instant Death, but not to the level of over usage that was in 2nd Coil pre-nerf. Reducing the over reliance on them makes the fights less tedious and grants room for all types of players to potentially recover and just go in and learn the fight (instead of a totally scripted experience where most players resort to watching Youtube videos to learn the Dance Dance Revolution pattern for that fight).

[Delily]

BTW, Delily, not once have I mentioned making the game more punitive. I actually think Coil encounters are pretty obscure and awful game design. The overuse of Insta-Kill / One Shot mechanics is a handicap that the design team has been using to basically make you do things exactly the way they want or else.

Well, the whole ilvl concept is design failure in my opinion, but that's for another day...

I'm hoping for more organic encounters. There's a place for Instant Death, but not to the level of over usage that was in 2nd Coil pre-nerf. Reducing the over reliance on them makes the fights less tedious and grants room for all types of players to potentially recover and just go in and learn the fight (instead of a totally scripted experience where most players resort to watching Youtube videos to learn the Dance Dance Revolution pattern for that fight).

More organic encounters would be great, the only caveat is that you do have to train your players via more scripted fights, and then provide them with some clues. Think "wax on, wax off" from the original "Karate Kid" movie. Theoretically, you'd use leveling to teach people those mechanics, but that would require some significant design to not only slow people down, but also to encourage them NOT to rush to the end game.

[Velhart]

snip

I don't think you got the point of the video. Its all about hand holding a player through a game with tutorials. Making systems easy to understand is -not- holding a person's hand. The point he is illustrating that people can figure out how to play Mega Man without a tutorial, because it's concepts are simple enough you don't need something to guide you. Whereas a modern game, text or an NPC will talk to you and straight out tell you how to do something, when the gameplay itself should be the tutorial. You are in fact talking about two completely different things.