Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Dzian]

TL;DR: Homogenisation may seem the answer to balance problems, but instead it’s the indicator of a much bigger problem: the lack of variety and nuances in encounter and activity design.

Homogenization and over emphasis on simplicity and accessibility is the reason so many games franchises have died over the years, and also why so many newer games essentially flop or under perform. Players just don't want simplicity, they want depth and engagement.

Back in February or there abouts Yoshi even said the future of the Final Fantasy franchise needs to move away from trying to cater to mainstream audiences and go back to being made for the fans. Because virtually every game that tries to go mainstream ends up losing everything that made it popular in the first place. those engaging and interesting game play elements are lost in exchange for simplicity or accessibility.

Games like Tomb Raider where you have skill trees that are useless. Skills to conserve or recycle arrows from your bow that are ultimately useless because ease and simplicity means there quivers of arrows or boxes of bullets everywhere you look.

Or Dead Space where they simplified it by making every weapon use the exact same ammo and totally destroyed the sense of tension and fear for survival that made the first games so popular. Resident Evil again where the later games have moved away from survival horror can't waste a single bullet into run and gun kill everything that moves because ammo is practically infinite and that resulted in a massive decline in it's popularity. It's one of the reasons they went and did the remake of Resident Evil 2 to take the series back in that direction.

It's even more prevalent on the mobile side of things. Where Google and Apple wanted there platforms to be serious games contenders but most people just aren't putting the money into mobile games because they're virtually all so dull simple and shallow. Sure you can say 200 million people played angry birds or whatever. But for how long? It was a fun game for an hour or so but got boring incredibly quickly.

It's also why many of the so called underdogs take the industry by storm because they don't cater for mainstream audiences or over simplify. They stay true to what makes them great games and gamers love them for it. A recent example would be how God of War was so much more popular and amazing than anyone ever expected. Generally shunned as a fairly niche game by many media outlets and yet it blew everyone away with how successful it was.

But yeah so many games flop these days because people just don't want to spend there money on shallow and simple games that have no depth or are just not rewarding to play. There are more people playing games than there ever has been but on the flip side people are generally buying much less of them because it's all the same stuff and thus all those once deep and engaging franchises end up meeting a terrible demise because everything players loved about them gets taken out in favour of simplicity and accessibiltiy that no one actually wants.

Even 14 suffers from this. It can look nice and pull in players without too many problems. However it has always struggled to keep players engaged for any length of time as it really does get old and stale very quickly. This is because of over emphasis on simplicity and ease which comes at the cost of fun, depth and engagement.. There's no sense of fun, accomplishment or engagement in beating a fight that is borderline impossible to lose. That means players end up getting bored quickly or disengaged from the game.

It's also not gripping or engaging when the story tries to paint a picture of an incredibly dire situation where things seem all but hopeless only for you to faceroll through it and completely destroy the atmosphere and tension the story tried to create. has been a problem ever since ARR. the Garlean empire almighty and powerful yet an entire army cant even scratch a single player running around there castrum owning the place.. does not lend any merit to the story and instead often leaves players feeling disconnected from it and the game as a result.

But I think that's partly what Yoshi was referring to back in February when he said the franchise needs to go back to the fans.