The Grudge List

[MechDeus]

I have a grudge against Oblivion because it was gorgeous, the voice acting was incredible, the amount of content was awesome, but the story and world was a huge letdown from Morrowind, and WHEN YOU LEVEL THE MONSTERS LEVEL WITH YOU And fuck shit fuck that pissed me off so goddamn much. The challenge remains constant unless you fuck with that little bar and it's still pretty much constant.

God damn I was so angry. I'm still angry. That is straight up not how a game world should be made. So my grudge is that I love playing it but can't bring myself to play it because it makes me so goddamn angry, and I wish they'd remake Morrowind with the Oblivion engine/spells.

Or maybe my grudge is against all games everywhere becoming easier and more mainstream. Hooray Contra 4.

There was another game I played recently that had a decent, old-school feel challenge to it as well, but I forget wtf it was.

I'm so lost. You start off complaining about a game which had consistent difficulty, a component that - when left alone - made it much tougher than its prequel, and this somehow represents your distaste for easier games in recent years?

[Cowutopia]

It makes it way easier, imo.
Also, way more boring.

[MechDeus]

It makes it way easier, imo.

How? In Morrowind it was insanely easy to pretty much become a god, and nothing in the game could hurt you if you bothered investing any time into alchemy and enchanting.

[Cowutopia]

it's a lot harder to become a god in Morrowind than it is in Oblivion, and in Morrowind you feel a sense of accomplishment when/if you get to that level, whereas in Oblivion it ruins the sense of progression completely. Suddenly you get 100% Chameleon and the whole game is just over.

It's just bad game design.

I also SUPPOSE that it IS harder than Morrowind since you can't just go grind up and then take on whatever beat you before, BUT the difficulty slider pisses me off. If you didn't have enemies that levelled with you in the first place (stupid) you wouldn't need a difficulty slider (stupid), but even with the levelling enemies the slider is more, unwelcome pandering to people who can't play shit. Great for them, angry for me.

So, tying into my grudge against games getting easier is my grudge against the millions of bad game players that are driving sales of games I don't want to play. It's hard to reconcile that grudge against my love of all these people throwing money into the games industry though, because they are the reason for many astronomically-budgeted fantastic games.

And I'm not going to say they are ALSO the reason for indie/smaller games dying, because they are doing pretty well. Hooray.

[dog$]

So, in summary, 2600>2800>NES.

The Intellivision was the first console to offer a controller with a directional pad and shoulder buttons, the first console to offer an online service of any sort, and the first home console to provide games with speech. Why are you ignoring it?

I suppose your reply is "how many million sellers did it have".

The ultimate point is that the home console markets in the US for Atari, Coleco, and Mattel is what crashed in 1983. That's it. To say the videogame market crashed in 1983 is to say that these three companies in a single territory represented the totality of the market at the time - and that isn't true. You know it isn't true. Japan, arcades, and PC gaming had no crash at all.

Meanwhile; I wasn't able to dig up too much in the scant research I tried into coin-op income through the years, but just in thinking about major companies individually, I think the arcade industry did at least as well in the 90's as it did in the 80's.

Capcom did no better than SF2's height.
SNK did no better than with the MVS.
Konami did much better with Bemani than anything it did in the 80's.
Midway might not have had 80's like volume but their success with MK, NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and others leads me to believe they didn't fall off that dramatically.
Namco probably has the widest disparity between the 80's and 90's.
Well, that is, except Nintendo, who basically gave arcades up post-NES.

So, ultimately, to say the arcade market peaked at 1984 or so is to say that a handful of games (Defender, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, SMB) grossed more than entire genres during the 90's. I find that very difficult to believe.

[Othello Harrington]

The Intellivision was the first console to offer a controller with a directional pad and shoulder buttons, the first console to offer an online service of any sort, and the first home console to provide games with speech. Why are you ignoring it?

I suppose your reply is "how many million sellers did it have".

The ultimate point is that the home console markets in the US for Atari, Coleco, and Mattel is what crashed in 1983. That's it. To say the videogame market crashed in 1983 is to say that these three companies in a single territory represented the totality of the market at the time - and that isn't true. You know it isn't true. Japan, arcades, and PC gaming had no crash at all.

Meanwhile; I wasn't able to dig up too much in the scant research I tried into coin-op income through the years, but just in thinking about major companies individually, I think the arcade industry did at least as well in the 90's as it did in the 80's.

Capcom did no better than SF2's height.
SNK did no better than with the MVS.
Konami did much better with Bemani than anything it did in the 80's.
Midway might not have had 80's like volume but their success with MK, NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and others leads me to believe they didn't fall off that dramatically.
Namco probably has the widest disparity between the 80's and 90's.
Well, that is, except Nintendo, who basically gave arcades up post-NES.

So, ultimately, to say the arcade market peaked at 1984 or so is to say that a handful of games (Defender, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, SMB) grossed more than entire genres during the 90's. I find that very difficult to believe.

I would to be willing to bet that Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Joust, Defender, Beserk, and Fucking Lady Bug did more themselves than any game in released in the 90's if you adjust for inflation.

[MechDeus]

it's a lot harder to become a god in Morrowind than it is in Oblivion

Fortify Intelligence, then make whatever. Or just fly onto a roof.

[...] Morrowind you feel a sense of accomplishment when/if you get to that level, whereas in Oblivion it ruins the sense of progression completely.

Don't care, that's not what I was questioning.

Suddenly you get 100% Chameleon and the whole game is just over.

So your views on Oblivion being easier is because there's an ability that can be obtained which makes you unstoppable instead of having to make simple items which turn you into an juggernaut?

If you didn't have enemies that levelled with you in the first place (stupid)

Mass Effect was a great game.

[...] you wouldn't need a difficulty slider (stupid), but even with the levelling enemies the slider is more, unwelcome pandering to people who can't play shit.

Yeah, Doom sucked because you could pick an easy difficulty.

I love both Oblivion and Morrowind, but if you don't make up your own rules for playing them they're both horrifically broken in so many ways. If you preferred the more varied environments, the world layout, the missions, the interface, or any stuff like that in Morrowind is one thing, but trying to say it had any kind of a challenge at any point in the game (unless you tried to fight guards when starting out) is just silly.

[dog$]

I would to be willing to bet that Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Joust, Defender, Beserk, and Fucking Lady Bug did more themselves than any game in released in the 90's if you adjust for inflation.

Any one game, sure, but all of them?

I really wish there was an easy way to find out. I'd like to know.

[Cowutopia]

I don't much like Mass Effect either. Go figure.

Being able to change difficulty midstream is what annoys me. Having an "easy level" is whatever. Every game since...oh shit. That's a good question. What was the first (home) game to include different difficulty levels? And for that matter, what was the first Arcade game to feature difficulty settings that could be tweaked in the cab?

Your statement at the end that "if you don't make up your own rules for playing them they are horrifically broken" is entirely true. I guess the same could be said about Bioshock and the death thing. It's poor game design, imo. And I have issues with poor game design.

Morrowind, I suppose, isn't more challenging, but it's much more joyful to explore that world because of all those reasons up there. There's something about going into an area and getting your ass whooped only to go train and return to that is compelling for me. "This area is off limits until you have become strong enough," is just more realistic, to me.

If there's some foreboding ass cave it should house some foreboding ass shit. If I go into hell, or whatever parallel monster dimension, it should be worse.

I think Oblivion would have been more fun for me if I hadn't been trained by years of other games to think this way. When there is a major plot point/hyped up enemy/battle my instinct is to train up until I'm comfortable with my skills so I can feel confident to go into that battle, but with Oblivion's flat difficulty...it just broke something in my head.

[Othello Harrington]

Make a list of your grudges against video games
+
Bicker about the grudges
+
Single out the noob
+
Get Dog$ all pissy
+
Josh/Biff posting off topic
+
Yoshi just being Yoshi
+
Compass crying about it
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TNL

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