Games have trended towards being easier for like 20 years.
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Games have trended towards being easier for like 20 years.
Some games have the sense to include options to adjust difficulty. Ass Creed 2 and RDR don't unfortunately (I don't count setting auto-aim on or off). I think it's worth telling developers we want more options. It's the reason we got 1999 mode in Bioshock Infinite. It's not perfect by any means but I'm glad that more hardcore setting is there.
Also, I think there's a limit to how dumbed down the masses want their games. I haven't played Dead Space 3 yet (despite owning it from that humble bundle) but isn't the main reason people avoided it because they turned it into a pure action game?
If there is a limit, I think we are still far from it.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater
Ass Creed 2, RDR, the Zelda series for example are all trying to be mass market games. Aiming to sell to as large of a demographic as is humanly possible. Expecting those games to be brutally difficult is like expecting 1000 dollar a bottle fine wine to be sold at TGIFridays. It's just not going to happen. Yeah there's a market for tough games, but it's way smaller than the mass market those titles are trying to hit. Besides most people don't want that. Most folks are looking for a distraction, and something that helps pass the time. They're not looking for something that's going to take them 40 hours to master just to get past level 3. I will give NeoZeed though that there should be difficult settings in more games for sure. It would be nice too if they were more than just giving the main character less health, or having there be more enemies.
Both of these things are tough lines to walk. Would NES Ninja Gaiden 2 or Dark Souls have been improved by a selectable difficulty? I don't think so, and there's definitely something to be said about games being balanced around an intended design. 1999 mode was so lazy that it's pointless; it's an option but does it actually offer anything to the game besides showing how exploitable the mechanics are?Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater
The dumbing down of games also works both ways. The best and most oft-repeated example this generation is the transition from Mass Effect 1 to 2, where many things were removed but ultimately resulted in a game that was much more enjoyable to play. If this was the late 80s/early 90s we probably would've had all three games running on the same engine with no improvements, and would've been shuffling through idiotic inventory management to turn everything into gel for three games instead of one.
Obviously the opposite also applies (the difficulty levels in Platinum games where they're designed from the outset to be played at the highest level, Dead Space dumbing down as you mentioned, etc.) but really the big issue that I see is simply a well designed game vs. a poorly designed one. While RDR might be improved in some ways by a harder difficulty I would bet money that the only real change would be upping enemy damage/health and lowering player damage/health, which I don't think would add too much. A "real" improved difficulty (let's say something like where it's often one-hit kills for both enemies and the player to make it more realistic and the ability to treat wounds to survive, like the Fallout 3 survival mode) would be fantastic but that rarely happens.
There are a lot of video games.
Well, the problem is that even if those people who did avoid it bought it, it still wouldn't have made enough money to justify developing the franchise. They needed to sell to all Dead Space 2 people and a lot on top of that. So the truth is that Dead Space is just a game that is not popular enough to justify dropping the amount of money it costs to make a Dead Space game.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater
I've been playing XCOM and StarCraft 2 so I like hard games too. But sometimes a game is good just to chill out and see the sights. I'm glad both exist.
The success of games like Dark Souls and The Last of Us makes me worry very little about whether games in the future will be easier. There is a market for hard games, and major publishers seem to have finally realized that. Are there going to be lots of easy "cinematic" games? Definitely. But at the same time I don't think those of us looking for hard games are going to be left out.
What does concern me is the continuing trend towards focusing on short-term decisions rather than long-term consequences. Regenerating health, freedom to re-spec at any time, or the simple lack of any major decision-making at all are all symptoms of an emphasis on immediacy that almost totally excludes player choice on how the game evolves. Of course, the two games I cited above manage to avert this quite nicely for the most part, but at the same time I think it's a far greater and more prevalent problem than difficulty.
I'm trying to think of a game that was improved by limiting this and coming up blank. Granted, some companies feel that it improves a game because they can charge the player real money to allow for a respec, but in terms of gameplay and experimentation not so much.Quote:
Originally Posted by bVork
I can't say I see that sort of thing is any less present now than it was before.Quote:
or the simple lack of any major decision-making at all
This is a societal issue that goes well beyond games.Quote:
Originally Posted by bVork