Crossing from fun to frustrating by design.

[Badmojo]

fudge, A lot of idiots on this board. First, I never said I want PE to be easy, EVER! So shut that noise. Secondly, what the hell is wrong with all of you? I was merely mentioning my opinions and you attack me? You act like I killed your favorite pet, pissed on it, made a stew, and then sent it too your families as a Christmas meal. You know what? News Flash. Not EVERYTHING about the old games were great. You know why? Because it was all new! It was all trial and error and limitations of programming at the time. There are something that should definitely not be in the new games, not because of making it easy, but because it was not fun to the MAJORITY of players, EVEN THE OLD SCHOOL PLAYERS. Oh, but I guess they do not count because only REAL gamers play grimhard.

 

Also, this trend of making games so freaking hard like demon souls is exactly that, a trend, the old games were not that hard. Many of you are just on the trend badwagon, if PE makes a game like the older games, guess what? It would not be any harder than those games which IS FINE. If they make it super hard like you want IT WILL NOT BE LIKE THE OLD RPG GAMES. Your the ones asking for change. However, it seems a lot of you want one hit kills, degrading armour, forced hunger/eating, and half a dozen other things that most of us just do not find fun and were not even in the old games.

 

But, I digress. I never opened this thread to start a flamewar, I was just expressing my concern that some mechanics might not be fun when actually playing. As for XCOM, I either have a bugged game or the posters who say they loaded a save right before a character died is lying. *shrug*. Too far in to start a new game and see if the same thing happens, after I finish I will try it again.

[Badmojo]

Dude, you can manually save.

 

If your so worried about losing one soldier then your gonna have to manually save before each soldiers command.

 

What kind of auto-save would you have implemented? Seems like you want it to auto-save every turn except when a soldier dies.

 

Name a game that does anything close to that.

 

The game overwrites ALL the saves on the level, even my manual saves. Might be a bug.

[Malcador]

That does sound buggy, you can "save scum" on non-Ironman, I did it when I raged at losing my support Captain, heh. Hard to design to prevent frustration though, some people don't handle set backs well in games it seems (see Walker). But give Obsidian a little credit.

[Badmojo]

For complaining about "how people should read" most of you have done a fantastically good job of not properly reading the OP's post.

 

CONGRATS.

Basically what it says is he doesn't want OE to implent a system like the "prevent scum saving" thread guy wanted, and we all agreed with that, didn't we? It's just stating if they make changes it should be tested if it works properly, and not is just added irritation (think armor/weapon degredation) with no gain.

 

*sigh*

 

This is pretty much all I was saying, but hey, some people like stiring up rage and hate on a board.

[evdk]

the old games were not that hard.

HAHAHAHAHA, you crack me up, little buddy. (An ironic quote, I should have used something from the Sierra repertoire to be more topical)

Edited October 26, 2012 by evdk

[UncleBourbon]

I prefer the portion of harder difficulty from old games that was found in the lack of waypoints, significant hints and simplified journal entries. That, and all the [diplomacy: 40] or [speach: 50%]. In most campaigns, it was never revealed until maybe after the campaign ended whether I failed to try and persuade an NPC or not, and by how much. Also, it shouldn't be the dev's job to implement a system to prevent saving/loading before each pickpocket attempt - players who want to play through without it, or think it is cheap, can not do it. I think the only reason those sort of "choose your penalty before you start" sort of rules are simply so you can get some obscure achievements - more a mentality of "it doesn't matter how well I play, it is all about others seeing it."

I would prefer the greatest challenges being cerebral rather than dice-roll repitition or building your character to a fixed skill level then switching, because it is obvious that most things that skill is used for would be satisfied. I trust obsidian to make a great game, but I also know there is a big pressure to make games more "accessable" these days.

[Badmojo]

For complaining about "how people should read" most of you have done a fantastically good job of not properly reading the OP's post.

 

CONGRATS.

Basically what it says is he doesn't want OE to implent a system like the "prevent scum saving" thread guy wanted, and we all agreed with that, didn't we? It's just stating if they make changes it should be tested if it works properly, and not is just added irritation (think armor/weapon degredation) with no gain.

 

*sigh*

It's his own fault for starting his post with a weird, erroneous tangent about the X-COM. After that his credibility was shot and nobody truly cared about his concerns for PE, given that they were built on a faulty premise.

 

No, that is what everyone is latching on too without actually coming up with a coherent argument against what I said about worrying about unfun game mechanics. Maybe I made a mistake with xcom, got a buggy game, or who knows. But that is how it is acting for ME. Still, that is just a distraction from the argument itself.

[jivex5k]

Dude, you can manually save.

 

If your so worried about losing one soldier then your gonna have to manually save before each soldiers command.

 

What kind of auto-save would you have implemented? Seems like you want it to auto-save every turn except when a soldier dies.

 

Name a game that does anything close to that.

 

The game overwrites ALL the saves on the level, even my manual saves. Might be a bug.

Wow that does sound like a bug. I'd check the x-com forums, if there are any.

There will probably be a patch fairly soon too.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Different people have different thresholds for frustration, but satisfaction typically only comes about if the challenge required to reach a goal is sufficiently difficult.

 

The bottom line for any feature we include is how people actually use (or don't use) it. When you sit down and watch people actually play the game, a lot of theoretical discussions go out of the window.

[Gfted1]

Hopefully those different thresholds can be defined by difficuly settings and not basic game mechanics like resting and saving.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Gamers have wildly divergent behavior patterns when it comes to saving and resting, BTW. I mean, I know that's what you might get just from reading threads like this, but if you load up various Let's Play videos on YouTube and watch how people use (or don't use) save and rest features, it becomes very clear.

[HereticSaint]

fudge, A lot of idiots on this board. First, I never said I want PE to be easy, EVER! So shut that noise. Secondly, what the hell is wrong with all of you? I was merely mentioning my opinions and you attack me? You act like I killed your favorite pet, pissed on it, made a stew, and then sent it too your families as a Christmas meal. You know what? News Flash. Not EVERYTHING about the old games were great. You know why? Because it was all new! It was all trial and error and limitations of programming at the time. There are something that should definitely not be in the new games, not because of making it easy, but because it was not fun to the MAJORITY of players, EVEN THE OLD SCHOOL PLAYERS. Oh, but I guess they do not count because only REAL gamers play grimhard.

 

Also, this trend of making games so freaking hard like demon souls is exactly that, a trend, the old games were not that hard. Many of you are just on the trend badwagon, if PE makes a game like the older games, guess what? It would not be any harder than those games which IS FINE. If they make it super hard like you want IT WILL NOT BE LIKE THE OLD RPG GAMES. Your the ones asking for change. However, it seems a lot of you want one hit kills, degrading armour, forced hunger/eating, and half a dozen other things that most of us just do not find fun and were not even in the old games.

 

But, I digress. I never opened this thread to start a flamewar, I was just expressing my concern that some mechanics might not be fun when actually playing. As for XCOM, I either have a bugged game or the posters who say they loaded a save right before a character died is lying. *shrug*. Too far in to start a new game and see if the same thing happens, after I finish I will try it again.

 

Here is essentially what the posts from you in this thread have boiled down too.

 

- "X-Com on easy is too hard."

- "X-Com prevents save scumming (When it doesn't) and you think save scumming should be encouraged, or at the very least allowed."

 

I don't necessarily flat out disagree with save scumming, but the point is even on easy you want this.

 

What do these two things lead me to understand? That you have a severe lack of understanding of basic tactics and strategy and even if this game is similar to old style games in a non abrasive way you will complain while playing on the easiest difficulty. Yes, this bothers me.

 

You also went,

 

- "I highly disagree with some of the design decisions they are going about to make your characters feel more important"

 

I'm not going to be one of those people who say, "The game is going to be developed my way, GTFO", but I will say I absolutely love the decisions they've made regarding characters having healing spells and medicine in general. It makes it feel less mandatory to have a specific party composition and indeed it does make the characters feel more important. If you've never played a Roguelike you won't understand this, and it almost sounds like you haven't with what you've been saying in this thread.

 

Fact of the matter is if this game is balanced around someone who wants to save scum X-Com on easy I will have issue with that. (Fortunately, I think it won't). I do like having options when playing a game, but there comes a point where the games difficulty should push back and I shouldn't have to self impose challenges on myself just to make a game have any difficulty whatsoever.

Edited October 26, 2012 by HereticSaint

[Keyrock]

I'm all for variable difficulty levels and selectable optional mechanics, in that regard, from everything I've heard and read about Project Eternity should deliver in troves. While I have yet to play the new XCOM, going back to the original game, I thought that attrition was an extremely important, if not downright vital part of that game. I'm all for developers giving players maximum choice in what mechanics they want to use or not use, but in this particular case if they simply force you to deal with character death (or replay lengthy missions), I can sort of understand it, since, if the new XCOM is anything like the old, attrition is such a key part of the game.

[jivex5k]

The OP is saying his manual saves are getting overwritten by auto-saves which sounds like a bug since he's not on ironman mode.

 

I think we can all agree: "Nobody wants PE to overwrite manual saves with auto-save."

 

That's what ironman mode is for.

Edited October 26, 2012 by jivex5k

[Frenetic Pony]

Considering how many people love Xcom for just the feature OP mentioned, I think OP has a problem with the game rather than the game being bad.

 

I despise most of Skyrim and wished I'd never bought it or played it even if it was for free. It's unchallenging, has no systems, is horribly written, looks awful from a technical perspective, I could go on. But most of those are MY problems with the game, not problems with the game in and of itself, as evidenced by the millions of people that liked it.

 

So while YOU, and everyone, can certainly be on here to talk about what you like, don't conflate your own dislike of something with that thing being a problem in and of itself. Maybe, hopefully, if it's in you can just avoid it in the game or turn it off in an option.

[HansKrSG]

I really wanted to press like on the OP's post, just for the first part about XCOM:Enemy Unknown. I don't think there will be the same hassle in PE. In all IE games (except Torment, duh ) , I always load when someone dies, ressurection spell at your fingertips or no, and I never got so frustrated as I got with the flawed system in XCOM.

[Adhin]

XCOM is a damn cake walk on easy if you know the systems. The only real complaints I have about the game is the %chances seem wildly skewed. That and a lot of 'angles' make little sense. For instance, Alien is on the corner of a building, full cover... great. My shotgun guy runs up to the other part of that corners cover to get a point blank shot but, for some silly reason, only has a 40% chance to hit. Entirely because its not considered flanking even though he steps out to shoot, the barrels literally in the aliens face. A lot of the 'angles' and such cause some bizar percent chances, overwatch shots being taken THROUGH entire buildings because 1 character can see the alien and its technically with in there normal shoot radius but its all misses cause... theres a ****ing building between them.

 

XCOM has a lot of quirky issues I hope get fixed but the saving issue isn't one of them. If your not playing on ironman you can just save whenever you damn-well please. The Auto save feature outside of iron man does a relatively good job but if a lot of chars die in a round will override all of em so.. manually save if your not on ironman? Seriously though easy mode is the same as 'normal' in relation to funding and how much stuff costs (think you may start with a little more off the bat) but enemies all have a little less HP. Classic starts you off with less funding, satellites and troops (amongst other things) cost more, some buildings cost more and more to have subsequent ones built but all the enemies are the same (but you get more of them). Impossible... now that's ****ed up. All the same funding and cost issues of classic but 'all' enemies have more health and there's even more still. Literally first mission your going up against 8-9 brain dudes and they each got 4hp. The sheer amount of absurd luck requires to not have your whole squad wiped on that's silly.

 

Anyway XCOM is fun, though I can't see impossible being fun due to the general shift in math, no amount of tactics changes that. As for PE, I love the idea of the HP and Stamina, but then Health is just a general representation of how much abuse your character is taking over the long term. I was toying with the idea of a system like that but my 'stamina' bar was gonna also fuel all spells and skills and there would be a winded... bar it was all silly and convoluted but its what I have to work with in the mod im doing. Either way I like it, and should prove rather interesting as long as we don't lose health points to extremely fast. Hopefully if they don't do any real 'instant death' spells and if they do they mostly just knock you out and take away a % of your current HP.

 

-edit-

Oh and the save after death happens outside of Ironman incase folks failed to mention that. Makes sense in ironman, can cause some irritating domino effect with the 3-4 autosaves it keeps (periodically, not each turn) outside of ironman if you have the autosave feature enabled. Only way around that is manual saving and I forget to do that sooo often its not even funny. Though by halfway point game got real easy on normal diff I just kinda blew through the rest of it. Battleship wasn't even that big of an issue by the end, and the actual end battle is weeeaak compared to a battleship.

Edited October 26, 2012 by Adhin

[sfam]

For complaining about "how people should read" most of you have done a fantastically good job of not properly reading the OP's post.

 

CONGRATS.

Basically what it says is he doesn't want OE to implent a system like the "prevent scum saving" thread guy wanted, and we all agreed with that, didn't we? It's just stating if they make changes it should be tested if it works properly, and not is just added irritation (think armor/weapon degredation) with no gain.

 

*sigh*

It's his own fault for starting his post with a weird, erroneous tangent about the X-COM. After that his credibility was shot and nobody truly cared about his concerns for PE, given that they were built on a faulty premise.

 

No, that is what everyone is latching on too without actually coming up with a coherent argument against what I said about worrying about unfun game mechanics. Maybe I made a mistake with xcom, got a buggy game, or who knows. But that is how it is acting for ME. Still, that is just a distraction from the argument itself.

Wow, the bizarre chest thumping in this thread is way over the top. The OP's main point was that game mechanics that come off as frustrating instead of fun are a bad idea. How people can disagree with that statement, I still don't know. That so many people took the OP's point as saying, "I suck at easy RPGs, so you must dumb down the game so I can enjoy it" is just bizarre.

 

I PE takes anything from this thought, it should be that beta testers should be testing the game not just for bugs, but also to see if the mechanics detract from the game being fun. This, I think, is radically different from saying the level of difficulty has to be easy.

[Jymm]

This totally doesn't belong on the poor PE forums, and there are XCOM forums here:

http://forums.2kgames.com/forumdisplay.php?76-XCOM-Enemy-Unknown-General-Discussion

 

Please do bring up your concern there because I have shamefully save scummed some of the really tough missions in XCOM. I won't admit that on their forums, but its safe to admit that here, right? :D If you really truly can't get multiple saves then you have a nasty bug or have inadvertently turned on ironman mode.

 

Back to the topic at hand though, I understand your actual point. There are times when a mechanic is introduced to try to mold player behavior. This is an interesting dance between developer and player because they want to guide you to ways of playing the game that _will_ be fun, but they can't predict every player's reaction to features. There are interesting documented cases where a feature is consistently used by some set of players to ruin their own experience. And post release all the devs can do is shout impotently at their screens saying "just stop doing that and you could have FUN with this!!" So in an effort to try to avoid those kinds of issues they often try to put subtle or not-so-subtle guideposts in on how the game is intended to be played. It can be very hard to get that mix right. As Josh just said, watching people try to play it will often reveal things that seemed very different in design than they do when interfaced with a human player.

[Badmojo]

Sawyer, thanks for replaying to the thread! This isn't a swipe at you or the people of obsidian, just a minor concern that I wanted to express, I did not realize the thread would blow up in my face. I blame music and violent video games for the bad behavior on here.

 

 

Oh and the save after death happens outside of Ironman incase folks failed to mention that. Makes sense in ironman, can cause some irritating domino effect with the 3-4 autosaves it keeps (periodically, not each turn) outside of ironman if you have the autosave feature enabled. Only way around that is manual saving and I forget to do that sooo often its not even funny. Though by halfway point game got real easy on normal diff I just kinda blew through the rest of it. Battleship wasn't even that big of an issue by the end, and the actual end battle is weeeaak compared to a battleship.

 

That is probably it then, I have autosave turned on because I am BAD at forgetting to manually save the game and really do not want to lose hours of gameplay because I forgot to save. However, it makes no sense that it would pull an ironman overwrite if you did not select ironman. Probably an oversite/bug the devs made (among many bugs) that will hopefully be patched in later. Ok, a Mea culpa on my part. I thought it was a mandatory thing since I did not select ironman, however it is still a mechanical fault on their part because it does not say it would pull an ironman.

 

 

Wow, the bizarre chest thumping in this thread is way over the top. The OP's main point was that game mechanics that come off as frustrating instead of fun are a bad idea. How people can disagree with that statement, I still don't know. That so many people took the OP's point as saying, "I suck at easy RPGs, so you must dumb down the game so I can enjoy it" is just bizarre.

 

I PE takes anything from this thought, it should be that beta testers should be testing the game not just for bugs, but also to see if the mechanics detract from the game being fun. This, I think, is radically different from saying the level of difficulty has to be easy.

 

This is exactly what I was saying, I never said I wanted the game to be dumbed down and turned easy. I just said to make sure the mechanics do not cross from fun to frustrating/irritating. How does anybody interpret that as wanting to make it easy? I know we have all played games where there has been SOMETHING that has made us all want to smash our screens in because of bad design. Something that just SUCKS the fun from games. I am just saying after implementing something, step back and ask yourself the simple question. Is this fun? That is all. I am sure the game will be fun, but I have played a lot of games where the devs implementing something that I am sure they thought it was a good idea, where most of us find frustrating. I do agree that asking beta testers this would probably be a good idea.

[HereticSaint]

I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be the sole person deciding what is good design and what isn't. I'm not saying I am either, however, I'm not the one completely decrying how a specificy genre of games handles their mechanics. AKA: Roguelikes, their whole system of mechanics and gameplay are based on death being permanent and dying does end up pissing you off, but the thing that makes it fun is learning and finally triumphing, if not over the entire game then over a new area.

 

X-Com is very intentionally built around losing characters and moving on, that's part of the difficulty of the game. It's intentional, the people who enjoyed the original X-Com more often enjoyed this mechanic than they didn't enjoy it.

 

Limiting healing magic means you aren't forced into having a Priest in your party on X difficulty because the game is balanced around you having a healer. Meaning you have more possiblity in what classes you take and your tactics and overall options playing the game. You eluded this to if not being a flat out bad mechanic, as worrying. What worries me is you use a terrible example of X-Com having bad game design, when it doesn't, (at least in that respect), then you complain about them getting rid of an awful, restrictive mechanic of having to have a healer or essentially playing the game on hard mode.

[Badmojo]

I'm sorry, but you shouldn't be the sole person deciding what is good design and what isn't. I'm not saying I am either, however, I'm not the one completely decrying how a specificy genre of games handles their mechanics. AKA: Roguelikes, their whole system of mechanics and gameplay are based on death being permanent and dying does end up pissing you off, but the thing that makes it fun is learning and finally triumphing, if not over the entire game then over a new area.

 

X-Com is very intentionally built around losing characters and moving on, that's part of the difficulty of the game. It's intentional, the people who enjoyed the original X-Com more often enjoyed this mechanic than they didn't enjoy it.

 

Limiting healing magic means you aren't forced into having a Priest in your party on X difficulty because the game is balanced around you having a healer. Meaning you have more possiblity in what classes you take and your tactics and overall options playing the game. You eluded this to if not being a flat out bad mechanic, as worrying. What worries me is you use a terrible example of X-Com having bad game design, when it doesn't, (at least in that respect), then you complain about them getting rid of an awful, restrictive mechanic of having to have a healer or essentially playing the game on hard mode.

 

What? I don't even... Where the hell did I say *I* was the only person. I specifically said they should ask beta testers and THEMSELVES if a design they put in is fun or not (getting different perspectives is usually a good idea to a point). Lets be clear, this is still the theoretical stage and NOTHING has been created yet. I was simple responding to what I read earlier. Ok, lets review what was said and/or hinted at.

 

- the characters have no magic/healer (ok, not my something *I* would do, but hey, lets see what they do)

- we have regenerative stamina (lets just call it for what it is, a health shield that recharges with time, this protects the character until they actually get damaged in health when the shield runs out)

- we have what? 6? 8? party that has plays in real time that we have to hit the space bar to pause and set up attacks. Sounds like it might be easy to miss something and get someones shield damaged and the person hurt depending on the size and power of the attack group. Depending on how bad, you will have to go to a rest area to sleep/heal

- only way to heal is by resting, there are resting spots from what I understand, there is *safe* resting spots (probably inns) that will be far away, then there will be unsafe resting spots which will probably have random encounters if you try to rest. So the only way you can be sure to get healed completly without fighting a monster is to drag your party all the way back to an inn and then drag your party all the way back to where you left off. I can't remember if there is responding monsters or not, so you might have to fight the same monsters again.

 

 

Again, this is theoretical work and nothing has been created at all as far as I know. Now, just looking at the limited information, it *LOOKS* like this could be a bit frustrating if we have to go back and forth every time someone gets *real* damage and the only way to be sure we are not killed by a random attack is to drag ourselves all the way back to the *safe* area far away. Of course, the word is limited information, there probably a lot of stuff we are not seeing that might make this the most awesome thing ever....or not. I do not know and neither does anybody but the devs.

 

 

*its got to be the video games that make everybody this way, damn video games, ah crazy religious groups, you were right! video games are tearing our peaceful world apart!*

[Kuroneko]

its not ironman, it set on EASY. This feature should NOT be in easy mode.

That might be just the auto-save option. Turn it off to see what happens. I've tried XCOM on Classic difficulty, and it proved a bit too difficult for me (also, bad decision to skip the tutorial), so for a while I started save-scumming whenever I lost too many people before just toning down the difficulty. I've never had any saves over-written, but I haven't played with any auto-saves, only manual saves.

[Althernai]

- we have regenerative stamina (lets just call it for what it is, a health shield that recharges with time, this protects the character until they actually get damaged in health when the shield runs out)

Stamina is not a shield. Health and stamina both take damage when a character is hit, but health typically depletes much slower than stamina.

[J.E. Sawyer]

Yes. In most cases, stamina lost to health lost will likely be a variable ratio, but a ratio, nonetheless. Stamina is not a "shield" for health. The simplest analogue for how such a system works is the 1992 game Darklands.

 

 

In this example, watch Hans' (first) blue and red (?) bars. The thicker bars are the PCs' stamina (blue) and health (red?) and the thin ones are the stamina and health of the enemies they currently are targeting. Hans goes down with 7 health and the others take lesser amounts of stamina damage throughout the battle. At the end of the fight, Hans pops back up with 20 stamina and other party members regain portions of their stamina as well. Their health values are not recovered, so Hans and Ebhard are in precarious states.