Any RPG fan should know about grind, but what is grind? Well, to put into simple terms, it's where the player repeats an action over and over in order to gain an overall advantage. An example of this would be killing wolves outside the first town of the game, to level up enough times, so that the boss that follows becomes easier. A game is never advertised as "x many hours of grind!" because in general, people don't like it. Is grinding a bad thing though? Can it be good? What ways could it be implemented in order to engage the player rather than repel them?
I think it's important to note that even though many players claim to dislike grinding, it's interesting how RPGs (by their very nature) still leave it there as an option. Just what exactly are the positives to grinding?:
1. A crutch
Truth be told, some players grind not because the game inherently requires it, but because certain people require it. Just because the first boss can in theory be defeated at level 3, some players may need to be level 5, or maybe even level 7. This is (in a way) great because the skilled players can rest assured that their skill has paid off (in not needing to grind at all). On the other hand, the unskilled player is just adapting to their own requirements, and succeeding in doing so.
2. Useful time waster
Sounds like an oxymoron, but what I mean by this is that players want to feel that their time is spent usefully when playing games. It may be that the player is in that certain mood, where they want to just relax. Grinding against easier enemies can really serve this purpose, because all the "lazy time" is chosen on that specific game, because it will eventually contribute to help with the "active time". There is always that feeling of moving forward.
3. Moulding the game to the player's mood
This is a branch off the previous point, but it basically means that the player will constantly (or at least often) have the choice to be playing the game actively or passively. If a player is forced to be active at a certain time, they may not play that game if they're not in an active mood. Being given the choice, they can switch their play style (to grind or not to grind) depending on their current mood.
4. Breaking the linearity
A need to level up does not particularly result in linearity. Grinding can be very engaging if there are alternatives. If for example the first mission in a game is to cross over a bridge, but the bridge is full of hard enemies that there needs to be some grinding done. Well, if the content is varied enough, the grinding can be very open and lead the player to many options. It could be (for example) that the player needs to be about level 7 to stand a chance against the enemies on the bridge. Well, if the area before the bridge has items scattered around for the player to find, encouraging the player to explore (whilst they are grinding the levels). If the player is earning money as they grind, maybe they could go to a shop and decide what items, weapons etc. are worth buying. Maybe they see a strong sword for 1000 gold, so they set out to get 1000 gold. But maybe in order to help them get the 1000 gold, they need to buy 5 potions for 50 gold each that will help them reach treasure chests that hold even more money. These are just some examples of how being required to grind can really open up the game and make it more interesting. If the bridge could be completed at level 1, the player may not have any motivation to do any of these "things on the side"
5. Effective grinding is a skill
Sometimes, being able to grind effectively is itself a skill. Mixing the right abilities with the correct enemies using the correct characters etc., to maximise the level up speed can be very satisfying. The moment that you realise that by tweaking some strategies, you can rack up the EXP at a faster rate. That can be just as satisfying (or even more satisfying) as beating a hard boss or solving a taxing puzzle. In essence, maximising your EXP growth rate is a puzzle to be solved. It can be even more satisfying with the knowledge that you didn't "need" to do it, but it was through your own discovery that you found something to help you through the game.
6. Not too linear, not too strict
If the level requirements are so strict, and there is no openness at all in the grind process, this is where grind becomes boring. Imagine a part of the game where the player "must" be level 10, there is a boss that causes instant death to anything less than level 10, so reaching level 10 is an absolute "must". Couple that with a completely linear grinding system, and that is where the boredom comes in. This 6th point is actually "don't ignore points 1-5". In this scenario, you are just doing something over and over again because the game says "you must do it" with no regards to how the player feels or what the player is capable of.
7. To keep playing once everything else is done
This is not so common, but even if the player has completed everything in the game, every secret boss, every hidden treasure etc., maybe they just want to keep levelling for the sake of levelling. Even though its uses have "expired", there are players who enjoy watching their character(s) become as powerful as can be. Disgaea games are prime examples of this.
Friday, 30 March 2012
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Nobody Likes Water Levels
For some reason, people simply do not like water levels in games. Why is this? I have a few ideas:
1. "Flying"
I say "flying" in quotation marks because it's not strictly flying... but the idea of having vertical movement in ways other than jumping. It changes how the game is played and it distorts people's perception of how things "should work".
2. Scenery
The scenery in under-water segments are usually rather fixed and without much variation. This isn't always the case, but how often are under-water segments filled with just rocks? I guess it boils down to what actually exists underwater in reality, and putting that into the games
3. Mazes
Due to the "flying" and also due to how under-water scenery is so consistent, the segments can end up being quite maze-like. Especially true in 3D games, it can be very hard to know where you are, where you've been and where you're going.
4. Slowness
Underwater everything goes slower, Sonic games for example suffer from this, even though they do not suffer from the previous points, they are definitely slower. If you're able to play a game at a certain speed without any issues, slowing it down doesn't increase the fun levels, it just takes longer.
5. Time limits
Usually there's some sort of "breathing" that needs to be done, so the time spend under water is time that you're rushing for air. it's not so much that people dislike time limits in general, it's that time limits are less fun when they are mixed with forced slowness (as mentioned in the previous point).
6. Water is scary
Water is scary in general. We live above sea levels, the world as we know it is on land, we are aware of the creatures that roam the lands. But the ocean is where all the mystery lies, it's big, it's dark, and there's a lot of crazy stuff down there we don't know about. We can't breathe there either.
I would say a lot of the general disliking of water levels comes from the disliking of common features of the water levels, not the actual water itself. If we look at games that do not incorporate any of these features, we are not bothered by them (Pokemon for example).
1. "Flying"
I say "flying" in quotation marks because it's not strictly flying... but the idea of having vertical movement in ways other than jumping. It changes how the game is played and it distorts people's perception of how things "should work".
2. Scenery
The scenery in under-water segments are usually rather fixed and without much variation. This isn't always the case, but how often are under-water segments filled with just rocks? I guess it boils down to what actually exists underwater in reality, and putting that into the games
3. Mazes
Due to the "flying" and also due to how under-water scenery is so consistent, the segments can end up being quite maze-like. Especially true in 3D games, it can be very hard to know where you are, where you've been and where you're going.
4. Slowness
Underwater everything goes slower, Sonic games for example suffer from this, even though they do not suffer from the previous points, they are definitely slower. If you're able to play a game at a certain speed without any issues, slowing it down doesn't increase the fun levels, it just takes longer.
5. Time limits
Usually there's some sort of "breathing" that needs to be done, so the time spend under water is time that you're rushing for air. it's not so much that people dislike time limits in general, it's that time limits are less fun when they are mixed with forced slowness (as mentioned in the previous point).
6. Water is scary
Water is scary in general. We live above sea levels, the world as we know it is on land, we are aware of the creatures that roam the lands. But the ocean is where all the mystery lies, it's big, it's dark, and there's a lot of crazy stuff down there we don't know about. We can't breathe there either.
I would say a lot of the general disliking of water levels comes from the disliking of common features of the water levels, not the actual water itself. If we look at games that do not incorporate any of these features, we are not bothered by them (Pokemon for example).
Friday, 23 March 2012
What I Would've Changed In Rayman Origins
Rayman Origins is a great game, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I think a few minor tweaks would go a long way. Well here is a list of nine minor tweaks that I would've made:
1. Display total medallions and speed trophies
Why are the total medallions and speed trophies not displayed on the level select screen next to the electoon and teeth count? It would be nice to be able to see how much you've got without having to manually count. This is especially helpful when trying to check how close you are to reaching certain achievements/trophies.
2. Display medallions and speed trophies on world select screen
The world select screen does good in showing which electoons have been acquired and which are still left to get. This also works with the teeth too. But in terms of medallions and speed trophies, you have to enter the world and check all the levels individually. This would not be needed if they were shown on the world select screen.
3. Display lum requirements for electoons and medallion
In order to get the medallion (and 2 electoons), you must complete a level with a set amount of lums. The problem is that you don't know what the requirement is until after you complete the level. So you could end up either completing the level thinking you have enough only to have to restart the whole level, or, trying really hard to get every lum possible when a good portion of them end up doing nothing.
4. A self-destruct button
A button to instantly self-destruct would be ideal. For some unknown reason, restarting a level means the level has to reload, but not when you die and end up restarting anyway. When doing a level in attempt to get lums, sometimes you end up missing a chunk and want to reset to the previous checkpoint, so the only solution is to actively find something that you can use to kill yourself with. This is also the case of losing a heart, and then wanting to make sure you reset back to the last checkpoint so that the next checkpoint can register your heart and reset it there. A button to self-destruct would make that much easier, an obscure button such as select/back so it doesn't get pressed accidentally.
5. More consistent and visible checkpoints
Checkpoints are usually set between the different "rooms" (the doors with the eye), which is fine. But this also includes rooms with electoons in them. This can sometimes really make the mechanics abusive when attempting to collect lums. For example, you could go back to an electoon room after a while to activate a checkpoint that would fix certain lums to be collected, even passed the checkpoint-point. This is fine, but it's so obscurely hidden that it seems like a mistake and I'm not sure if I'm intended to be able to do it.
6. One-hit cage breaking
This is something I didn't understand in the original Rayman and I still don't understand it here. When you find a cage with electoons trapped inside, it takes multiple small hits or a charged attack to smash open the cage. Why? I can imagine if there were enemies around and there was difficulty in charging an attack or manoeuvring then it could pose somewhat of a challenge. But such is not the case. In order to have access to the cage, all the enemies guarding must be killed off first anyway. When there are no external threats, why can't a simple attack be enough?
7. A bit more manoeuvrability during suction
During the moskito levels, it can be so hard to suck in the enemies. What I mean by this is that doing so stops you from being able to move, but that doesn't take into account the automatic scrolling of the levels. It would be more effective if either you could move (but slowly, for example) or you came to an actual halt.
8. No co-op bonuses
This may just be me, but I hate the idea of using co-op for a net-gain. Why should people be able to leech off other people's skill? I'm not against co-op overall, I just hate the idea of needing to rely on other people's skill.
9. No touch screen bonuses (PSVita version)
On the PSVita version, you can touch the screen to burst bubbles and such... who thought it would be a good idea to have the player switching between 2D platforming to screen tapping spontaneously?
1. Display total medallions and speed trophies
Why are the total medallions and speed trophies not displayed on the level select screen next to the electoon and teeth count? It would be nice to be able to see how much you've got without having to manually count. This is especially helpful when trying to check how close you are to reaching certain achievements/trophies.
2. Display medallions and speed trophies on world select screen
The world select screen does good in showing which electoons have been acquired and which are still left to get. This also works with the teeth too. But in terms of medallions and speed trophies, you have to enter the world and check all the levels individually. This would not be needed if they were shown on the world select screen.
3. Display lum requirements for electoons and medallion
In order to get the medallion (and 2 electoons), you must complete a level with a set amount of lums. The problem is that you don't know what the requirement is until after you complete the level. So you could end up either completing the level thinking you have enough only to have to restart the whole level, or, trying really hard to get every lum possible when a good portion of them end up doing nothing.
4. A self-destruct button
A button to instantly self-destruct would be ideal. For some unknown reason, restarting a level means the level has to reload, but not when you die and end up restarting anyway. When doing a level in attempt to get lums, sometimes you end up missing a chunk and want to reset to the previous checkpoint, so the only solution is to actively find something that you can use to kill yourself with. This is also the case of losing a heart, and then wanting to make sure you reset back to the last checkpoint so that the next checkpoint can register your heart and reset it there. A button to self-destruct would make that much easier, an obscure button such as select/back so it doesn't get pressed accidentally.
5. More consistent and visible checkpoints
Checkpoints are usually set between the different "rooms" (the doors with the eye), which is fine. But this also includes rooms with electoons in them. This can sometimes really make the mechanics abusive when attempting to collect lums. For example, you could go back to an electoon room after a while to activate a checkpoint that would fix certain lums to be collected, even passed the checkpoint-point. This is fine, but it's so obscurely hidden that it seems like a mistake and I'm not sure if I'm intended to be able to do it.
6. One-hit cage breaking
This is something I didn't understand in the original Rayman and I still don't understand it here. When you find a cage with electoons trapped inside, it takes multiple small hits or a charged attack to smash open the cage. Why? I can imagine if there were enemies around and there was difficulty in charging an attack or manoeuvring then it could pose somewhat of a challenge. But such is not the case. In order to have access to the cage, all the enemies guarding must be killed off first anyway. When there are no external threats, why can't a simple attack be enough?
7. A bit more manoeuvrability during suction
During the moskito levels, it can be so hard to suck in the enemies. What I mean by this is that doing so stops you from being able to move, but that doesn't take into account the automatic scrolling of the levels. It would be more effective if either you could move (but slowly, for example) or you came to an actual halt.
8. No co-op bonuses
This may just be me, but I hate the idea of using co-op for a net-gain. Why should people be able to leech off other people's skill? I'm not against co-op overall, I just hate the idea of needing to rely on other people's skill.
9. No touch screen bonuses (PSVita version)
On the PSVita version, you can touch the screen to burst bubbles and such... who thought it would be a good idea to have the player switching between 2D platforming to screen tapping spontaneously?
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Review: Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (By Earth)
Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (AKA Earth 2) by Earth falls within the "Doom Drone" genre of music and is known as a pioneer of the genre, but what can we expect to hear from this album? The cover does a good job of portraying the feeling that is given by this album, vast emptiness and intense heat. "Vast emptiness" is actually a very good way of describing this album because even though there is clearly a large bombardment of heavy sound, not much actually happens... but that's the appeal (I guess). The album is divided into three tracks than spans over the course of 73 minutes. Each track is very heavy, very slow and very deep. This constant wave of sound that is produced in each of the tracks would make newcomers believe that the tracks may all sound exactly the same. Whilst it is true that each track does share a very similar sound, each track does have it's own features.
01. Seven Angels (15:35)
The shortest track (even though it is over 15 minutes) and the most musical. This track actually has a tune that you theoretically could get into your head and the tune isn't bad. The question is "Are you willing to listen through the wall of noise to hear it?" This is my favourite track, as it manages to supply at least some tune whilst also managing to leave enough space to incorporate the album's theme of "emptiness".
02. Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine (27:05)
This is my least favourite track of the three. The main feature of this track is that even though there are sounds playing throughout, they don't seem to be memorable or prevalent in any way. Rather they seem to be there just to add to the atmosphere. This would usually be good, but I just don't feel they're doing as such a good job as the other tracks. They do start to have more of an effect later on in the track where they vibrate a bit more but that's not much
03. Like Gold And Faceted (30:21)
The final and least eventful of the three tracks, probably the most ambient of the three tracks as well. The sound of a single note being held for 30 minutes, with occasional drum sounds. The cymbals do add to that "heat" feeling. This is also the only track that fades out at the end but that's understandable as the other tracks blend into the one that follows.
So what can I say about this album overall? Well if I am totally honest the album is really boring, but it doesn't have to be if you enter it with the correct mindset. If you're going into the album with the intent of "enjoying music" then you'll find that you'll be killed by the album's overwhelming presence or just die of boredom. If you enter the album with the mindset of "hearing sound" then you're in for a long tough ride.
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
First Impressions: The Dissent Of Man (By Bad Religion)
So, the album I have been anticipating for a good while now has finally come out... though to be fair it wasnt too long ago that I discovered it, and Bad Religion already have so many albums at this point that any new releases are just icing on the cake.
So before I go into discussing the tracks of this album on an individual basis, I will talk about the other details first. As my brother suggested, you should be given some 3D glasses with this so you can see the album art in "Threeeeeeeeeeeeee-Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" though it really wouldn't matter either way. It's interesting that they differenciated from the red, black and white colour-scheme they used for their past couple albums. I always thought that colour-scheme was a reference to their old albums as a "just in case this is our last album we need to reference to their early works" kinda thing. This seems pretty obvious, when Los Angeles Is Burning has the title of their album How Could Hell Be Any Worse? and this especially true on their previous album New Maps Of Hell as not only is "Hell" in the title but the artwork has a very similar dark/sinister theme as How Could Hell Be Any Worse? did. Also consider that the disc itself had nothing but the band's logo on it. Maybe they changed it up for The Dissent Of Man because they no longer believe it could be their last album, or more likely they just think the fans wouldn't appreciate another red, balck and white album. Anyway, The Dissent Of Man's artwork looks a lot like an old science text-book, or more specifially a old biology text-book.
Bad Religion have had a particular structure with their recent albums: fast songs first, slow songs later. The Dissent Of Man only very partially follows this structure, this time there is only one track under the two-minute mark, which is the first track. So that leads me onto the tracks
01. The Day The Earth Stalled
This surely is a fast song to start out with, as they usually use fast songs to start out with. However this song for somereason sounds a bit strange to me. It starts and parts of the song just seem a bit "off", for example when you hear the word "stalled" being sung, it goes all over the place.
02. Only Rain
Decent second song, I would expect a song like this to go somewhere in the middle or towards the end. This song gets a lot of praise though it doesn't work so much for me. Don't get me wrong I do like the song but it doesn't reach that level of "awesomeness" for me.
03. The Resist Stance
Favourite song on the album, really full of energy (which I feel is generally missing from this album). The only song I recall using any distortion on the guitars. Great song!
04. Won't Somebody
Average, seriously, not bad, not great, quite catchy, but not catchy enough.
05. The Devil In Stiches
Now this is a song that proves how time can make songs sound better. This was the first song from the album I heard before the album came out, and I hated it. I even went as far to compare it to Prodigal Son (Gah, I hate Prodigal Son). But after a while I started humming it to myself and I started to like it (I still don't like Prodigal Son by the way, even since 2007 I still think that song's one of their worst).
06. Pride And The Pallor
This song irritates me, not because it's "bad" but because the tune sounds like it's going somewhere other than where it does (after 14 seconds). It sounds like another song before that point but I can't put my finger on it, hold on, I know what it sounds like! it sounds like Victory for the first 14 seconds (I literally just figured it out as I was typing this) and then it just goes away and the rest of the song is "ok" but not catchy at all.
07. Wrong Way Kids
This song has a catchy chorus, with all the "whoa"s they have going . Reminds me of The Bravest Kids by Rancid (maybe the title is the reason there). But yeah, the chorus is catchy and so are some of the verses.
08. Meeting Of Minds
What can I say? It sounds a lot like Germs Of Perfection, and Germs Of Perfection is agreat song, and so is this one, fast, catchy, powerful. It has that Bad Religion feeling to it.
09. Someone To Believe
This song is also catchy, It's one of those songs where the title is a strong element to the lyrics and the melody. I get the feeling that this song will fall under the category of songs that are fun to listen to but will get too critisised just because it's not "deep" and "meaningful". Raise Your Voice! and The Hippy Killers also fell victim to this.
10. Avalon
A strange one, it's not too memorable for me, but I still enjoy it. It's reasonably paced and the melody is decent.
11. Cyanide
Not fond of this one, I can hear the tune to it, but it just doesn't work for me. This song is the longest on the album aswell, why do short songs always seem to sound better than the longer ones?
12. Turn Your Back On Me
Worst song on the album, I just think the chorus sounds rather bland and stale, especially when you consider how strong their music usually is
13. Ad Hominem
Now this is good example of a good slow Bad Religion song. Reminds me of Submission Complete, it has a very powerful beat, the pre-chorus is both catchy and powerful, the chorus itself is still just as powerful. "Powerful" is a good word to describe this song
14. Where The Fun Is
Does anybody else think 21st Century Digital Boy when they hear this song? This song keeps making me want to sing along to 21st Century Digital Boy whenever I hear it. I think this song is pretty decent overall. 21st Century Digital Boy I always found to be a song for people who are new to Bad Religion, so maybe this song will od the same
15. I Won't Say Anything
Oh dear, I can hear the fanboys screaming right now. This song is very poppy for Bad Religion, my personal opinion of this song is that it's "ok", not great but not bad. I do get thrown off by how poppy it is. That being said people critisised Lose As Directed of doing the same thing but I thought that song was pretty good.
16. Finite
Well when I bought the album, I listened to this song and thought.... oh... that's right... I didn't get this song. Yeah, this is a "bonus track" that just doesn't happen to be on the version of the album that I got. I have heard this track from somebody else who hosted it on YouTube but I don't think I should review a track that wasn't on the actual album that I bought. Since I'm reviewing an album that I bought, why should I review content that I didn't get? A message to all the bands out there, stop doing this, it's annoying. Bonus tracks that only certain countries get, they are just pointless and annoying. If a song belongs on an album it belongs on every copy of that album, if it doesn't belong there then don't put it on any of them.
Overall, it's a pretty good album, I would say about "average" for the band (which overall still very good since this is my favourite band), even though there are a selection of very strong tracks. One complaint I do have is that the gaps between the tracks are too long, sometimes they're ten seconds long! That's ok if you're using it for artistic effect or is the song itself is pretty long but these aren't. I would say a couple seconds is long enough. Even better; no gap at all. The first two tracks do this and it works.
Saturday, 21 August 2010
Do Modern Gamers Have Short Attention Spans?
It always seems to me that in modern times there has been a higher ratio games released that cater towards those with shorter attention spans. I mean this in many respects, the marketing of games and the game mechanics themselves.
Now before I continue, I just want to make a few things clear... I am not referring to casual gamers specifically nor those people who are unable to play games for large periods of time. I am referring to gamers as a whole. I am also not criticising individual games for using the "short-term mechanics" that I mention (as some of those mechanics I do enjoy myself) but rather the widely held belief that those mechanics are inherently superior.
It's clear that more and more games are using short-term mechanics. When I refer to "short-term mechanics" I am simply referring to mechanics that condense the risk/reward structures of a game into a shorter period of time. Basically, a short-term mechanic is where the punishment for failing and the reward for succeeding is low (this is not in reference to the difficulty). More and more do we see these in games. More and more do we hear people praising games when they do this, and criticising them when they don't.
There are many different ways that games use short-term mechanics.
First of all, there are save-features. Everyone seems to want to be able to save their game at any time. Place save points too far apart and there'll be a ton of complaints. Understandable if people are unable to play the game for large periods of time, or if such people are forced to leave their game too far from a save point, but I hardly think allowing people to save anywhere is going to make for a really enjoyable experience... Those two problems can be easily solved with a "quicksave" feature. Quicksaving is where the game allows the current state to be saved (as with normal saving) to a different file, but that file instantly deletes once it is reloaded. This is used to avoid "save scumming" that could be used with a "save anywhere" feature. "Save scumming" is where the player keeps reloading a save file in order to accomplish a specific goal (often not required for progression with the game) and keeps reloading until they succeed.
The problem with being able to save anywhere is that it greatly reduces risks that the player has to take, and simply replaces them with trial and error. Imagine this, you're in the middle of a dungeon haven't saved for 20 minutes, you need to get out in order to save. There are two treasure chests in front of you, one of them contains gold and the other contains a monster that could easily kill you, but you don't know which one is in which. Do you choose a chest at random or do you ignore them? In cases like this, you have to make a conscious effort to choose to pick one randomly or to ignore them. You would have to take into consideration many things. Is the gold worth taking the risk? what would you lose if you failed? is there a small chance that you'd be able to defeat the monster if you got it wrong? would it take 20 minutes to back here or would it be faster next time because you know the dungeon a bit better?
Now imagine that same scenario, but this time you're able to save anywhere. Not as much of a big issue is it? You'd choose one, if it was the wrong one you reload and pick the other. This would make the decision simply a small cost to your time more than anything else. Generally, such a decision that is placed directly after a save-point is rather pointless, it falls into the "decision that can easily be undone" category (which has an effect on linearity of the game, but I won't go into that just yet).
Save-anywhere games aren't necessarily a bad thing. Tomb Raider II for example uses a save-anywhere feature, but it takes about 10-20 seconds to save. This is good as it discourages constant saving, if the saving took the simple press of a button, without a doubt people would be pressing it every few seconds (I don't consider pressing "save" every few seconds fun). On the otherside you have Tomb Raider III that allows the player to save anywhere but the number of saves is restricted, if you ask me, that goes a bit too far in the other extreme and the lack of saving makes it far too hard (I'd probably give it more of a chance if save crystals were more common).
Going back to the example of being in a dungeon and having to choose to pick a chest or ignore them. It is an example how saving abilities can alter the time in which the risk/reward is an issue.
Allowing players to save more frequently is becoming more and more popular within games. Old platform games didn't allow saving at all, and dying too many times caused the player to have to restart from scratch. This is clearly because the games would otherwise be too easy (in general) and would be very short. In those days (as a child) games were more about retrying a game over and over again until it eventually got completed rather than continuing a savefile and progressing a bit more each day. Of course, the ability to save (even if rarely) is a feature that is favourable in many current games due to the overall length of the game.
autosave after each gamble, the player could just save scum until they get it right, which in reality just costs time.
If save scumming usually creates "un-fun" gameplay, so why would people do it? Well the simple answer is "because it works"
So why do people like to save anywhere? Well (ignoring those two reasons I've already given an answer to), the general answer is that it is not fun to replay a part of the game if you lose. I don't know why that is exactly, I'd understand if the game arbitrarily made you replay one segment over and over again without any changes, but that's not the case. If you lose, it's your own fault. You're supposed to be punished if you lose. If you're not punished for losing (or if that punishment is small) then that in-turn lowers to quality of the reward for winning. In the end people like to be given great rewards. The "greatness" of a reward for success depends on the difficulty of the task and the punishment for losing, it's about striking the balance. Besides, if the punishment for failure is low, then the difficulty must come from the difficulty of the individual tasks (or else the game would be too easy) (short-term mechanics). If the difficulty of the individual tasks is difficult then there are still going to be segments of gameplay that are to be replayed. These segments would be shorter but more frequent (due to the difficulty of said tasks)
It is true that a reward's size is based off the size of the punishment for failing. For example, Prince Of Persia (the 2008 version) is a very easy game. For one, if you fall down you're only punishment is that you have to re-attempt the obstacle that you failed at. The obstacles are not that hard to begin with. But even though some are more challenging than others, the feeling of accomplishment for succeeding them is not that great because there is that "I would've done it eventually anyway" feeling.
"short-term mechanics" also appear in other ways, a very common example in modern games is "regenerating health". Where the player's health recovers over-time. Even Final Fantasy does this. In the early FF games, you needed to go to a town to save, or use a tent, if one of your characters died, you had to go all the way back to the church. Later games in the series made it a lot easier to recover KO'd party members. FF10 and 12 fully cured all party members at every save-point, FF13 did it after every battle (of course due to FF13's battle system, that worked). Lots of more modern games allow players to regenerate their health over short periods of time, Gears Of War, inFamous, Uncharted all do this. There is less concern about preservation of health... in the early Tomb Raider games you could accumulate medi-packs and ammo over a series of levels, and you would be rewarded for skilled gameplay earlier on. With regenerating health, you're not rewarded for you're skilled "health preservation skills" from earlier in the game. In Uncharted this also is effected by the limitations on ammo, reaching the max ammo for the guns is so easy that preserving it only has a short-term effect.
"short-term mechanics" can be found all over, games don't use "lives" as much as they used to, or at least to not as much of an effect.
Remember, I am not saying that these mechanics are bad, but I think it is wrong to say that all games "should" use them... and it's this mentality that makes me think that modern gamers (in general) have a shorter attention span
It's clear that more and more games are using short-term mechanics. When I refer to "short-term mechanics" I am simply referring to mechanics that condense the risk/reward structures of a game into a shorter period of time. Basically, a short-term mechanic is where the punishment for failing and the reward for succeeding is low (this is not in reference to the difficulty). More and more do we see these in games. More and more do we hear people praising games when they do this, and criticising them when they don't.
There are many different ways that games use short-term mechanics.
First of all, there are save-features. Everyone seems to want to be able to save their game at any time. Place save points too far apart and there'll be a ton of complaints. Understandable if people are unable to play the game for large periods of time, or if such people are forced to leave their game too far from a save point, but I hardly think allowing people to save anywhere is going to make for a really enjoyable experience... Those two problems can be easily solved with a "quicksave" feature. Quicksaving is where the game allows the current state to be saved (as with normal saving) to a different file, but that file instantly deletes once it is reloaded. This is used to avoid "save scumming" that could be used with a "save anywhere" feature. "Save scumming" is where the player keeps reloading a save file in order to accomplish a specific goal (often not required for progression with the game) and keeps reloading until they succeed.
The problem with being able to save anywhere is that it greatly reduces risks that the player has to take, and simply replaces them with trial and error. Imagine this, you're in the middle of a dungeon haven't saved for 20 minutes, you need to get out in order to save. There are two treasure chests in front of you, one of them contains gold and the other contains a monster that could easily kill you, but you don't know which one is in which. Do you choose a chest at random or do you ignore them? In cases like this, you have to make a conscious effort to choose to pick one randomly or to ignore them. You would have to take into consideration many things. Is the gold worth taking the risk? what would you lose if you failed? is there a small chance that you'd be able to defeat the monster if you got it wrong? would it take 20 minutes to back here or would it be faster next time because you know the dungeon a bit better?
Now imagine that same scenario, but this time you're able to save anywhere. Not as much of a big issue is it? You'd choose one, if it was the wrong one you reload and pick the other. This would make the decision simply a small cost to your time more than anything else. Generally, such a decision that is placed directly after a save-point is rather pointless, it falls into the "decision that can easily be undone" category (which has an effect on linearity of the game, but I won't go into that just yet).
Save-anywhere games aren't necessarily a bad thing. Tomb Raider II for example uses a save-anywhere feature, but it takes about 10-20 seconds to save. This is good as it discourages constant saving, if the saving took the simple press of a button, without a doubt people would be pressing it every few seconds (I don't consider pressing "save" every few seconds fun). On the otherside you have Tomb Raider III that allows the player to save anywhere but the number of saves is restricted, if you ask me, that goes a bit too far in the other extreme and the lack of saving makes it far too hard (I'd probably give it more of a chance if save crystals were more common).
Going back to the example of being in a dungeon and having to choose to pick a chest or ignore them. It is an example how saving abilities can alter the time in which the risk/reward is an issue.
Allowing players to save more frequently is becoming more and more popular within games. Old platform games didn't allow saving at all, and dying too many times caused the player to have to restart from scratch. This is clearly because the games would otherwise be too easy (in general) and would be very short. In those days (as a child) games were more about retrying a game over and over again until it eventually got completed rather than continuing a savefile and progressing a bit more each day. Of course, the ability to save (even if rarely) is a feature that is favourable in many current games due to the overall length of the game.
autosave after each gamble, the player could just save scum until they get it right, which in reality just costs time.
If save scumming usually creates "un-fun" gameplay, so why would people do it? Well the simple answer is "because it works"
So why do people like to save anywhere? Well (ignoring those two reasons I've already given an answer to), the general answer is that it is not fun to replay a part of the game if you lose. I don't know why that is exactly, I'd understand if the game arbitrarily made you replay one segment over and over again without any changes, but that's not the case. If you lose, it's your own fault. You're supposed to be punished if you lose. If you're not punished for losing (or if that punishment is small) then that in-turn lowers to quality of the reward for winning. In the end people like to be given great rewards. The "greatness" of a reward for success depends on the difficulty of the task and the punishment for losing, it's about striking the balance. Besides, if the punishment for failure is low, then the difficulty must come from the difficulty of the individual tasks (or else the game would be too easy) (short-term mechanics). If the difficulty of the individual tasks is difficult then there are still going to be segments of gameplay that are to be replayed. These segments would be shorter but more frequent (due to the difficulty of said tasks)
It is true that a reward's size is based off the size of the punishment for failing. For example, Prince Of Persia (the 2008 version) is a very easy game. For one, if you fall down you're only punishment is that you have to re-attempt the obstacle that you failed at. The obstacles are not that hard to begin with. But even though some are more challenging than others, the feeling of accomplishment for succeeding them is not that great because there is that "I would've done it eventually anyway" feeling.
"short-term mechanics" also appear in other ways, a very common example in modern games is "regenerating health". Where the player's health recovers over-time. Even Final Fantasy does this. In the early FF games, you needed to go to a town to save, or use a tent, if one of your characters died, you had to go all the way back to the church. Later games in the series made it a lot easier to recover KO'd party members. FF10 and 12 fully cured all party members at every save-point, FF13 did it after every battle (of course due to FF13's battle system, that worked). Lots of more modern games allow players to regenerate their health over short periods of time, Gears Of War, inFamous, Uncharted all do this. There is less concern about preservation of health... in the early Tomb Raider games you could accumulate medi-packs and ammo over a series of levels, and you would be rewarded for skilled gameplay earlier on. With regenerating health, you're not rewarded for you're skilled "health preservation skills" from earlier in the game. In Uncharted this also is effected by the limitations on ammo, reaching the max ammo for the guns is so easy that preserving it only has a short-term effect.
"short-term mechanics" can be found all over, games don't use "lives" as much as they used to, or at least to not as much of an effect.
Remember, I am not saying that these mechanics are bad, but I think it is wrong to say that all games "should" use them... and it's this mentality that makes me think that modern gamers (in general) have a shorter attention span
Saturday, 14 August 2010
My Experience With Buying Games From Second Hand Shops
I generally find that you get two groups of people when it comes to buying games. One group is the group that are "hardcore gamers" so to speak who'll buy something the day of release, or maybe the week of release for £45 or £40. Then you get the people who aren't gamers "to the heart" they just play games for a bit of fun... I'm not necessarily refering to casual gamers here. Typically these people are either kids who don't have much money, or parents who dont have much money.
The second group are the type that you find in second hand shops. These shops aren't very nice to go into; let's be honest, they are small, cramped, not all that clean and the they are full of kids "running around" (of what they can) and their parents shouting at them whilst they rummage through the 7-year-old PS2 games for £2. These shops target the unemployed, and it's generally those type of people that go to these shops. These shops don't offer much for stuff, and there are many games that you'd expect to see there... Fifa '07, Fifa '08 and all sorts of cheap games that nobody's really heard or cared about.
But here's the thing, I have bought quite a few games there. Why? well because if you manage to get passed all the rubbish that's there you'll find a pretty good deal. i got Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box for £2, same with Need For Speed: Pro Street. I got Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call there for 99p... that's right 99p! I can't find that game for any less than £30 anywhere else. It's because they don't understand the value of certain games, so they can't effectively price them, it seems to me they go off assumptions... "oh, this is a PS2 game, every other PS2 game we have is £1 or £2, let's make this £1"
Of course the football games are priced slightly higher than anywhere else (well, think of the customers who enter these shops)... oh and did I mention the stacks of 2-year-old football games there? that's another rant for another time.
One thing that really annoys me is this; the conditions of these games. I don't even understand how anybody could have so little respect for games as to put them in the state that they become. I have PS1 games that I have played many times, Final Fantasy VIII I got on September 30th 2000 (My 12th birthday) and the discs are still working fine, not all that many scratches. But I sometimes see these 360 games and PS3 games with tons of scratches all over them. The cover art on the box isn't in all that good condition either. Now consider this, I got Lucifer's Call for 99p, a bargain, I am very pleased... but the disc was full of scratches. Think about this, the person who sold it to this second hand shop kept the recipt of their original purchase of this game, they bought it 2nd hand for £18 in 2006 (guess that means I got it at least 3rd hand then). They clearly didn't take care of it very well, they probably turned it on and thought "bah! this game is slow and boring" (knowing the mindset of the youngens today, gee, I'm not that old). Now considering that I bought it for 99p, that means the previous owner must have gotten even less than that! 50p maybe? what does 50p get you? barely even a drink! so they must have thought "50p is better than this game"... not only that, but the shop thought "how much can we sell this for? 99p? alright then!" So what would've happened if I didn't but that game? well probably some random kid would get it and treat it just as badly. It just annoys me that there are people willing to pay lots of money for these games but can't get them cause some ingoramous is using it as a coaster.
I guess all in all what I'm saying is that if a game comes out, just wait! don't pay £45 for a 1-day-old game, unless of course you've been anticipating it for a couple years then I can understand. Before you know it'll be in some second hand shop somewhere for a bargain. I suppose this is also a message about not getting games brand new on the release day but I might talk about that another day (that is people who in general pay way too much money for the value they get)
The second group are the type that you find in second hand shops. These shops aren't very nice to go into; let's be honest, they are small, cramped, not all that clean and the they are full of kids "running around" (of what they can) and their parents shouting at them whilst they rummage through the 7-year-old PS2 games for £2. These shops target the unemployed, and it's generally those type of people that go to these shops. These shops don't offer much for stuff, and there are many games that you'd expect to see there... Fifa '07, Fifa '08 and all sorts of cheap games that nobody's really heard or cared about.
But here's the thing, I have bought quite a few games there. Why? well because if you manage to get passed all the rubbish that's there you'll find a pretty good deal. i got Burnout Paradise: The Ultimate Box for £2, same with Need For Speed: Pro Street. I got Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call there for 99p... that's right 99p! I can't find that game for any less than £30 anywhere else. It's because they don't understand the value of certain games, so they can't effectively price them, it seems to me they go off assumptions... "oh, this is a PS2 game, every other PS2 game we have is £1 or £2, let's make this £1"
Of course the football games are priced slightly higher than anywhere else (well, think of the customers who enter these shops)... oh and did I mention the stacks of 2-year-old football games there? that's another rant for another time.
One thing that really annoys me is this; the conditions of these games. I don't even understand how anybody could have so little respect for games as to put them in the state that they become. I have PS1 games that I have played many times, Final Fantasy VIII I got on September 30th 2000 (My 12th birthday) and the discs are still working fine, not all that many scratches. But I sometimes see these 360 games and PS3 games with tons of scratches all over them. The cover art on the box isn't in all that good condition either. Now consider this, I got Lucifer's Call for 99p, a bargain, I am very pleased... but the disc was full of scratches. Think about this, the person who sold it to this second hand shop kept the recipt of their original purchase of this game, they bought it 2nd hand for £18 in 2006 (guess that means I got it at least 3rd hand then). They clearly didn't take care of it very well, they probably turned it on and thought "bah! this game is slow and boring" (knowing the mindset of the youngens today, gee, I'm not that old). Now considering that I bought it for 99p, that means the previous owner must have gotten even less than that! 50p maybe? what does 50p get you? barely even a drink! so they must have thought "50p is better than this game"... not only that, but the shop thought "how much can we sell this for? 99p? alright then!" So what would've happened if I didn't but that game? well probably some random kid would get it and treat it just as badly. It just annoys me that there are people willing to pay lots of money for these games but can't get them cause some ingoramous is using it as a coaster.
I guess all in all what I'm saying is that if a game comes out, just wait! don't pay £45 for a 1-day-old game, unless of course you've been anticipating it for a couple years then I can understand. Before you know it'll be in some second hand shop somewhere for a bargain. I suppose this is also a message about not getting games brand new on the release day but I might talk about that another day (that is people who in general pay way too much money for the value they get)
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