What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?

[Balmas]

You know, there's a lot of good things in classic video games, but just as much bad. What's one thing you don't miss from classic games?

For me, it's RNG in RPG skill checks. Lots of older games drew their roots from pen-and-paper roleplaying games; as such, it was basically standard practice for skill checks to be a matter of the game rolling dice behind the scenes.

The problem is that there are certain assumptions in play around a table that don't hold true in a computer game, namely that skill checks are usually something that only happen once per instance. You either disarm the trap, or it goes off in your face. You either know a relevant fact, or you don't. In a CRPG, that assumption goes out the window. If you like, you can sit there, lockpicking the same door for as long as you want. What's more, in a game that has unlimited saves, you can save immediately before a difficult skill check, and simply reload the save until the dice roll in your favor.

Note that I'm not necessarily against RNG in video games. It's only in skill checks that I get a bit tetchy; I'd much rather know either that I will or will not make a check.

[Rynjin]

Designated save points, hands down.

Been making my way through each of the Yakuza games in chronological order, and having to go back to finding a phone booth to save whenever I want to stop playing since starting the Yakuza 3 remaster the other day has been annoying. Yakuza 0 had it (with a way to "cheat" in a save anywhere functionality), but Yakuza Kiwami and Kiwami 2 (the full on remakes in an entirely new engine of the first 2 games) let you save from the menus any time, and I don't feel like the games lost anything for it.

It's even worse when you're playing a game where save points aren't on almost literally every street corner.

[Winthur]

Designated save points, hands down.
On the flipside, I like those in jRPGs because they tend to increase tension when you're pushing the envelope on some of the tougher environments (like delving into a dungeon) and tend to make you calculate whether it's worth it to toss out consumable resources. It can pump adrenaline a bit to be just a few paces from the save point while bleeding out and then getting another encounter.

Uhhh, I wanted to say games with cryptic or excessive micromanagement that didn't really add to complexity, but now that I think of it this is only a thing in Civ titles older than 4 because, for example, original Master of Orion is still a great 4X and it has remarkably little on the micromanagement front, so it's not really a jab against classic games in general.

[Rakaydos]

Designated save points, hands down.
Back in the days of the Gameboy brick, where you didn't get warning when your battery was dying, I wished MORE games ON HANDHELD had designated save points. Plenty of times in the Pokémon Red days, I'd run out of power and realize my last save was hours back.

[factotum]

Totally agree on the "designated save points" thing--I like to be able to save whenever and wherever I like. The way to fix the problem of not having saved is to have an auto-save system, not to have fixed and limited save locations. I don't have a problem with the RNG in RPG skill checks, though, because to my mind the entire point of the genre is to have what I can do be determined by my in-game character, not my own gaming skills. (e.g. in Skyrim you pretty much never need to put a point into lockpicking so long as you're reasonably adept at the lockpicking mini-game).

[PraetorDragoon]

Life systems. Let that stay in the arcades were it belongs.

EDIT: I mean 1-ups and their ilk.

[Balmas]

Limited saves have their place, I'd argue, but it's only certain genres that really benefit from them. They add tension in games like Souls-likes and Rogue-likes, when you're down to half-health with no more estus flasks, but the knowledge that there's probably a bonfire just around the corner, if you can manage to make it there. Paired with how using a bonfire also respawns all the enemies, that's an example of limited saves done right.

For an example of limited saves done wrong, look at Supernova mode in Outer Worlds. You can only save when you sleep, you can only sleep inside your spaceship, and you can't fast travel to or from your spaceship. That means that even if you're inside a hotel, renting a room, you can't save unless you schlep back to your ship to use the bed there.

[Psyren]

This is more a mechanic that didn't exist back in the day, but I'm really happy that modern RPGs have embraced the "respec." I hate getting a fair ways into a game only to figure out that whatever stats, skills, or abilities I allocated points to while leveling are suboptimal - or worse, make it so that the game is almost impossible to complete, and leave me with no way to do anything about it except cheat or start over from scratch. Even if it's expensive, limited or time-consuming to pull off, I find respeccing to be mandatory to RPGs with any depth, and lack of a respec system in a game where you have to allocate limited points is a dealbreaker for me even if I can find all your optimal builds online somewhere.

[Aeson]

I'm also going to go with checkpoints/designated save points. If I haven't played the game before, I won't really know how long any particular stretch between save points takes and if I misjudge how much time it takes to get to the next save point I might have to drop the game and go do something else before I get there. Beyond that, re-clearing an area I've already mostly gone through just because there's one last encounter that I didn't beat the first time through is not something that I consider to be particularly enjoyable - sure, if the game's combat system is enjoyable then it might be fun to decide not to progress and instead just fight a bunch of stuff repeatedly for a while, but I'd much rather that be up to me than down to the game designer's decision that if you don't reach Y after hitting X then you have to do everything between X and Y again.


I don't have a problem with the RNG in RPG skill checks, though, because to my mind the entire point of the genre is to have what I can do be determined by my in-game character, not my own gaming skills. (e.g. in Skyrim you pretty much never need to put a point into lockpicking so long as you're reasonably adept at the lockpicking mini-game).
if(skill > x) pass, else fail is an RNG-free skill check mechanic that's completely independent of player (as opposed to character) skill.

Passingly related to the example you brought up, minigames in general are something that I wish I could say were an "old game" mechanic that I don't miss. Some of them can be fun, but, really, if I wanted to play a racing game I'd go play a racing game and not, say, KotOR.

[Hunter Noventa]

I won't miss when games didn't signpost a point of no return. An infamous example being Riovanes Castle in Final Fantasy Tactics, three battles in a row, all of them relatively difficult, the last of them being an escort mission...if your only save is one of the ones you make between battles when prompted, and you can't win, have fun starting your game over.

[Rynjin]

Back in the days of the Gameboy brick, where you didn't get warning when your battery was dying, I wished MORE games ON HANDHELD had designated save points. Plenty of times in the Pokémon Red days, I'd run out of power and realize my last save was hours back.

I'm not sure how a stationary save point would have helped. In games where you can save anywhere, the solution to running out of power is to just save more often. "Save early, save often" is a creed for a reason.

When you can only save in certain places, you can just get ****ed. Only have 5 minutes of battery left but the nearest save point is a 10 minute walk? Too bad for you.

[Kitten Champion]

For JRPGs specifically - and mostly FF - the 9999 number limit. It makes the mechanics nearing the end of the game increasingly less interesting.

The second is related to FF as well as it's particularly found in old JRPGs, but poorly translated or just plain uncommunicative games where the next objective to moving the game along is opaque to say the least. Like where you have to talk with some specific NPCs in the world, in a specific order, with a specific item. It's one thing to have objectives be something the player has to puzzle out, and another to maybe give a vague sentence suggesting what you ought to do that got muddled even more through the localization.

One recent-ish example I went through was in Pokemon Red. To get through a checkpoint and continue the game you need to pass a guard blocking it, who, if prompted, will say he's thirsty. Which might be a pretty clear clue if, for example, there was a specific place to buy beverages in the game world or you could win something beverage-related at an arranged battle somewhere... something like that. However, you get bottled water, lemonade, and soda as regular items throughout the game to give to Pokemon that you can buy from a dozen vending machines. The game could've done something to specify which drink the guard wanted so you got the clue, but the only indication that the beverages in your inventory don't work is that you cannot pass. Of course, what it comes down to is you need a specific key item, tea, to pass through.

Usually these are more along the lines of "you need to visit every village/town/city on the map and talk to every available NPC and hope maybe something will happen" kinds of flags though.

[LibraryOgre]

For JRPGs specifically - and mostly FF - the 9999 number limit. It makes the mechanics nearing the end of the game increasingly less interesting.

The second is related to FF as well as it's particularly found in old JRPGs, but poorly translated or just plain uncommunicative games where the next objective to moving the game along is opaque to say the least. Like where you have to talk with some specific NPCs in the world, in a specific order, with a specific item. It's one thing to have objectives be something the player has to puzzle out, and another to maybe give a vague sentence suggesting what you ought to do that got muddled even more through the localization.

One recent-ish example I went through was in Pokemon Red. To get through a checkpoint and continue the game you need to pass a guard blocking it, who, if prompted, will say he's thirsty. Which might be a pretty clear clue if, for example, there was a specific place to buy beverages in the game world or you could win something beverage-related at an arranged battle somewhere... something like that. However, you get bottled water, lemonade, and soda as regular items throughout the game to give to Pokemon that you can buy from a dozen vending machines. The game could've done something to specify which drink the guard wanted so you got the clue, but the only indication that the beverages in your inventory don't work is that you cannot pass. Of course, what it comes down to is you need a specific key item, tea, to pass through.

Usually these are more along the lines of "you need to visit every village/town/city on the map and talk to every available NPC and hope maybe something will happen" kinds of flags though.

Or even just someone AT the local store who would comment "Franz, the guard at the gate, really likes tea."

[Balmas]

I don't have a problem with the RNG in RPG skill checks, though, because to my mind the entire point of the genre is to have what I can do be determined by my in-game character, not my own gaming skills. (e.g. in Skyrim you pretty much never need to put a point into lockpicking so long as you're reasonably adept at the lockpicking mini-game).

Oh, I totally agree with having character skills be more important than player skills. My issue is with the RNG side of things. I'm thinking specifically of playing Fallout, Fallout 2, and Morrowind, where you had things like lockpicking that amounted to nothing more than hitting the lockpick skill key or poking a chest with a lockpick until the game decided your character had succeeded.

I'd much prefer an RNG- and minigame-less system, like that used in Outer Worlds: if your character has 60 skill in lockpicking, they can open any lock that has a requirement of 60 or less, automatically, with no minigame. That way, I don't have to bother with a minigame, savescumming doesn't change the outcome of skill checks, and I can reliably predict and prepare for what my character can do.

[Kitten Champion]

Or even just someone AT the local store who would comment "Franz, the guard at the gate, really likes tea."

I think an easiest solution would've been just to make him say he's hungry rather than thirsty, then make the key item a rice ball jelly filled doughnut or something. It's literally the same amount of effort involved.

While they have three beverage items in the game there's nothing in terms of food, so you'd know you'd need to look for something.

Still, in general it's not exactly rare for me to feel like I need to look up a GameFAQ to get through an older JRPG at some point. Not that JRPGs have a premium on poorly explained game flags, I've just played them more.

[Vinyadan]

In fps, having a limited number of saves per level. It's just an artificial way to increase difficulty and make the game feel longer by playing the same sections over and over again.
It gets worse in games where bad programming gave the AI unfair advantages, like seeing through items that are transparent to bullets. It means that they have concealment, and you don't.

I agree with save locations, because it doesn't account for black-outs or crashes, or simply someone else needing the computer. Alien: Isolation used them as a way to let you free-range without making your save unusable if you e.g. saved while about to be killed, but it ended up substituting in-character fear with the player's worry of wasting 20 minutes if he was killed before he could save, which I think is bad.

[Tvtyrant]

Oh, I totally agree with having character skills be more important than player skills. My issue is with the RNG side of things. I'm thinking specifically of playing Fallout, Fallout 2, and Morrowind, where you had things like lockpicking that amounted to nothing more than hitting the lockpick skill key or poking a chest with a lockpick until the game decided your character had succeeded.

I'd much prefer an RNG- and minigame-less system, like that used in Outer Worlds: if your character has 60 skill in lockpicking, they can open any lock that has a requirement of 60 or less, automatically, with no minigame. That way, I don't have to bother with a minigame, savescumming doesn't change the outcome of skill checks, and I can reliably predict and prepare for what my character can do.

I kind of feel the opposite. I loved Bioshock's hacking system, I find the "did you spec for this if no go away" approach irritating.

That said, hilariously empty town/farm syndrome. Lots of old games had "towns" of 5-10 people that lived on no visible agriculture and had monsters just outside the town limits (which was usually like a small gate.) That isn't a town, or even a thorpe. It is a bus stop.

[Vinyadan]

I don't know if it still exists, but pc games that don't account for a mouse, if it would allow a noticeable improvement. Like gta2 when compared to Crimsonland.

[Aeson]

That said, hilariously empty town/farm syndrome. Lots of old games had "towns" of 5-10 people that lived on no visible agriculture and had monsters just outside the town limits (which was usually like a small gate.) That isn't a town, or even a thorpe. It is a bus stop.
I'm a bit on the fence about that one, because unless it has some mechanical purpose within the game it's just set dressing, and I'm of the opinion that set dressing is something that it's often better to have too little of than too much. It looks pretty, but it has no real substance, uses up resources, and can get in the way if there's too much of it.


I don't know if it still exists, but pc games that don't account for a mouse, if it would allow a noticeable improvement. Like gta2 when compared to Crimsonland.
Do console ports count?

[Bohandas]

*Limited number of lives
*Save game limitations (only at certain places, etc)
*Limited number of save game slots
*Pixelhunting
*Intrusive DRM that made you copy a passage from the instruction manual in order to start the game
*Intrusive DRM that required you to have the cd or disk inserted in order to start the game
*When the up key isn't the jump key in a side-scroller


Limited saves have their place, I'd argue, but it's only certain genres that really benefit from them. They add tension in games like Souls-likes and Rogue-likes,
Strongly disagree. It's as intolerably annoying in rogue-likes as it is anywhere else and its only in the genre because games in the era of the original Rogue couldn't handle proper saving


In fps, having a limited number of saves per level. It's just an artificial way to increase difficulty and make the game feel longer by playing the same sections over and over again.

Are you implying that there are situations outside in other genres where having a limited number of saves per level IS NOY just an artificial way to increase difficulty and make the game feel longer by playing the same sections over and over again?!? Because my impression is that is its purpose regardless of genre.

[factotum]

Oh, I totally agree with having character skills be more important than player skills. My issue is with the RNG side of things. I'm thinking specifically of playing Fallout, Fallout 2, and Morrowind, where you had things like lockpicking that amounted to nothing more than hitting the lockpick skill key or poking a chest with a lockpick until the game decided your character had succeeded.

Sorry, misunderstood what you meant! Although the d20 system for D&D (which was introduced in 2000, so before Morrowind at least) knew this was an issue, which is why it introduced the concept of "Taking 10" and "Taking 20" for skill checks where you weren't under any time pressure to avoid you just rerolling the dice until you succeeded. (Note: you can't Take 20 in a case where failing the check has a negative consequence, for obvious reasons).

[Erloas]

I think many of these aren't issues that are gone yet, at least not consistently.
Limited save slots were very much a limitation of the hardware, rather than a design choice, I'm not sad to see it go.

But I really don't like binary pass/fail skill checks in RPGs, that is more and more common in newer games and I 100% prefer the old design of a chance of failure or success no matter what your skill level is at. Although that doesn't mean they always got it right, finding the right increase/drop off of chance vs skill and relative availability of skill points can be hard to get right.

I actually think overall I miss more "old school" designs than I can remember that was bad. But I'm sure if I went back and played some more they would jump out. What does come to mind is poor tracking and quest information. Like not having a copy of quest chat text or log of the important bits, so when you go back to some game you haven't played in a while and the quest name tells you nothing of what you actually need to know. I know the quest trackers are contentious too, but game developers are just too close to the game to write good directions of where you need to go, and a description that probably makes perfect sense to them doesn't mean anything to the player until after they've already found it. Wandering around a map for half an hour to try to figure out some vague hint of what needs to be done is not an engaging experience.

[Neptunas123]

Health packs. I'm quite glad most modern games have health regeneration. Of course, health packs can add to the strategy of the game. Halo: Combat Evolved is considered the first game to introduce "health regeneration" mechanic (which was actually energy shields recharging) but it also had health packs and you could strategically backtrack while playing on Legendary difficulty. It balanced out. But over all it can get quite annoying in an old game, where you reach some sort of a boss fight and you have only few HP points left after you fought your way there and no health packs around. Then your final battle comes down to mere luck.

[Cheesegear]

Intrusive DRM that made you copy a passage from the instruction manual in order to start the game

This was easy-mode. Fire up the game and you're done.
The worst version of this was during gameplay. You would reach a point in the game where the answer to an in-game puzzle is found in the manual, and you can't progress unless you input it.

[Spore]

I think an easiest solution would've been just to make him say he's hungry rather than thirsty, then make the key item a rice ball jelly filled doughnut or something. It's literally the same amount of effort involved.

While they have three beverage items in the game there's nothing in terms of food, so you'd know you'd need to look for something.

The tea item is only in FireRed and LeafGreen, the remakes. In Red/Blue/Green/Yellow, it was indeed a standard drink from the top of Celadon City Dept. Store. The programmers did not want you to be softlocked so they introduced a granny giving out tea for free (since the drinks cost money, and you can very well be out of cash when you spend irresponsibly and wipe out once or twice, loosing half your money in the process).

And honestly, this is fine that it is a bit hidden away to me. Of course I can see how it is frustrating because there is no big indicator that you CAN go in the backside of the living quarters in Celadon to find Granny. But in the spirit of the predecessor games it should be a beverage. Maybe just the generic hint of: "I heard grandma Milly made a great tea. She lives back in Celadon next to the department store. I hope she does not fall when she has to enter on the alley on the backside though."

That being said, "bring standard item x to NPC y" can go die in a fire. I am not your drinking dispenser nor does it make ANY sense for a police man to lift a city lockdown for a damn cup of tea. If you were like: "I got the ghost of cubone's mother captured and RIGHT here, I am qualified to take on Team Rocket" then it would make sense. Fetch and collect 8 bear asses quests will be the end of me.

[Hunter Noventa]

*Intrusive DRM that made you copy a passage from the instruction manual in order to start the game
*Intrusive DRM that required you to have the cd or disk inserted in order to start the game


These days I'd almost prefer this to the always-on internet requirements, or the DRM Software that can damage your system.

[factotum]

What does come to mind is poor tracking and quest information. Like not having a copy of quest chat text or log of the important bits, so when you go back to some game you haven't played in a while and the quest name tells you nothing of what you actually need to know. I know the quest trackers are contentious too, but game developers are just too close to the game to write good directions of where you need to go, and a description that probably makes perfect sense to them doesn't mean anything to the player until after they've already found it. Wandering around a map for half an hour to try to figure out some vague hint of what needs to be done is not an engaging experience.

There's a happy medium to be had there. Having an exact location for every quest (a la Skyrim) is a bit silly and immersion breaking, IMHO. Witcher 3 had a better option whereby quests would usually guide you to a general area and you'd then have to search round that to find the specific doodad. Outer Worlds also does it pretty well--you still get the exact pinpoint quest marker, but it only appears if you've found some specific information directing you at it.

[Vinyadan]

Do console ports count?

It depends, fps meant primarily for consoles nowadays do have mouse support on PC, and they would be unusable otherwise. An Earthsiege game I tried, however, didn't use it, and I think that the experience would have been far better if it did (and I think it was primarily a PC game).

There also are cases where this isn't true, like with Rogue Squadron, which was playable with the mouse, but better with the keyboard.



Are you implying that there are situations outside in other genres where having a limited number of saves per level IS NOY just an artificial way to increase difficulty and make the game feel longer by playing the same sections over and over again?!? Because my impression is that is its purpose regardless of genre.

I simply have never seen it outside fps. Call me lucky if you will!

Also, kudos for noy, since it's an old word for annoyance.

[Rynjin]

Health packs. I'm quite glad most modern games have health regeneration. Of course, health packs can add to the strategy of the game. Halo: Combat Evolved is considered the first game to introduce "health regeneration" mechanic (which was actually energy shields recharging) but it also had health packs and you could strategically backtrack while playing on Legendary difficulty. It balanced out. But over all it can get quite annoying in an old game, where you reach some sort of a boss fight and you have only few HP points left after you fought your way there and no health packs around. Then your final battle comes down to mere luck.

It doesn't come down to luck, it comes down to skill. I like games with health regen too, but they tend to make you a lot more reckless.

Games where you have a limited amount of health and need a resource to replenish it make you think very carefully about how to engage with any given situation. It puts more pressure on you to dodge attacks, engage carefully, use cover, and efficiently take down enemies.

I've been playing through Bloodborne for the first time recently and ended up fighting an unintended "boss rush" (I fought the Shadows of Yharnam, Darkbeast Paarl, and Rom, the Vacuous Spider in rapid succession) and am now having to make my way through the next area with no Blood Vials on me (or go back and grind which...no thanks). It makes you really cognizant of what you can do to avoid getting hit at all in this game, and given no damage runs are possible, it's very doable to get through one area with a bit of trial and error without needing to heal.

[LibraryOgre]

Probably something few people have dealt with: Games with two timers.

This was the late 80s, early 90s. In the local arcade (Yong-san Base Youth Services) there was a Nintendo coin-op machine. Put in your money, and you could play Nintendo games. But, a lot of those games had a timer, and the cabinet itself had a timer, so if you weren't paying attention to one of them, you could run out of time two different places.

[Vinyadan]

Limited save slots were very much a limitation of the hardware, rather than a design choice, I'm not sad to see it go.


I read an interesting story about hardware limitations and how it changed games.

It said that Space Invaders was actually written without speed increase. But, the more aliens you shot, the more system power you freed up, and it was put to running the game faster. So the last aliens moved far faster, and the difficulty increased the closer you were to win.

This changed videogames forever, as, especially in arcades, there now was an expectation that the game would get more hectic the further you went.

I didn't check if there were earlier games with increasing difficulty, however.

[Bohandas]

Health packs. I'm quite glad most modern games have health regeneration. Of course, health packs can add to the strategy of the game. Halo: Combat Evolved is considered the first game to introduce "health regeneration" mechanic (which was actually energy shields recharging) but it also had health packs and you could strategically backtrack while playing on Legendary difficulty. It balanced out. But over all it can get quite annoying in an old game, where you reach some sort of a boss fight and you have only few HP points left after you fought your way there and no health packs around. Then your final battle comes down to mere luck.

And then half the time you have to go all the way back to the [redacted] beginning of the [redacted] level because the game also has limited saves. This problem is especially common in roguelikes.

[warty goblin]

The thing I genuinely don't miss is the various miseries of old interfaces. Not that new interfaces are necessarily good, but some of the older ones are just downright hostile. Take for instance original Age of Wonders, a game near and dear to my heart. If you want to make your elf archer shoot the bad man, you have to select the archery ability from the menu, then select the dude you want to kill. If you just click on the bad guy, your archer will walk up to him and stand there gormlessly.

I should point out at this juncture that archers have no melee attacks, and are completely useless when adjacent to an enemy.

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.


I'm also going to go with checkpoints/designated save points. If I haven't played the game before, I won't really know how long any particular stretch between save points takes and if I misjudge how much time it takes to get to the next save point I might have to drop the game and go do something else before I get there. Beyond that, re-clearing an area I've already mostly gone through just because there's one last encounter that I didn't beat the first time through is not something that I consider to be particularly enjoyable - sure, if the game's combat system is enjoyable then it might be fun to decide not to progress and instead just fight a bunch of stuff repeatedly for a while, but I'd much rather that be up to me than down to the game designer's decision that if you don't reach Y after hitting X then you have to do everything between X and Y again.


Tragically the limited save location thing is very far from dead, because Dark Souls brought it back. And somehow convinced an entire generation that a crappy save system plus the system not needing to save a complex worldstate somehow was good game design. Personally I can't stand it. And now because every third game has decided it needs to be Dark Souls, I have to screen everything for just how obnoxious their save system is.

[Erloas]

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.

What was wrong with the original Fallout interface? It was faster to know the keyboard shortcuts, but it worked well for me. There are also quite a few similarly designed more contemporary games that use essentially the same interface, and I've been enjoying those too. I can't even think of the games at this point, but I've found myself a few times wishing they would have went with, what I think of as, the classic tactical combat interface of Fallout and other games of that era.

[Cespenar]

Fallout can come out to seem outright minimalist when you play stuff like the original X-coms, Jagged Alliance, etc.

[LuckGuy]

The thing that keeps me from still playing the original XComs 1 and 2 and Jagged Alliance 2 (which are otherwise near perfect games) is the "where's the last bad guy" issue. Nothing like having an epic shootout for control of the sector only to spend 20 more minutes to find the last guy hiding in the closet... especially when he gets a free shot when you open the door and the game mechanics don't let you shoot through the closet door.

[Glimbur]

I am not a fan of grinding for ultimate gear, especially as a rare drop. I have a level 99 save of Earthbound where I was looking for the Sword of Kings. Blech.

[Lord Torath]

*Intrusive DRM that made you copy a passage from the instruction manual in order to start the game
*Intrusive DRM that required you to have the cd or disk inserted in order to start the game
These days I'd almost prefer this to the always-on internet requirements, or the DRM Software that can damage your system.I agree with Hunter Noventa. I'd much rather have a code to enter once at the beginning of each session than have to be continuously logged into the internet.


Tragically the limited save location thing is very far from dead, because Dark Souls brought it back. And somehow convinced an entire generation that a crappy save system plus the system not needing to save a complex worldstate somehow was good game design. Personally I can't stand it. And now because every third game has decided it needs to be Dark Souls, I have to screen everything for just how obnoxious their save system is.Horizon: Zero Dawn has this, in that you need to find a Campfire to save. But you can Fast-Travel to campfires, so it's not that onerous.

[Bohandas]

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.

I agree. The interface for the first two Fallouts is absolutely terrible. Plus, somehow they move slow as molasses even on modern machines.

[Squark]

The thing I genuinely don't miss is the various miseries of old interfaces. Not that new interfaces are necessarily good, but some of the older ones are just downright hostile. Take for instance original Age of Wonders, a game near and dear to my heart. If you want to make your elf archer shoot the bad man, you have to select the archery ability from the menu, then select the dude you want to kill. If you just click on the bad guy, your archer will walk up to him and stand there gormlessly.

I should point out at this juncture that archers have no melee attacks, and are completely useless when adjacent to an enemy.

Or the original Fallout games. They could be the greatest achievement of humanity to date, and I'll never know. Because I'd rather clean out my toilet with my face than deal with that interface.



Tragically the limited save location thing is very far from dead, because Dark Souls brought it back. And somehow convinced an entire generation that a crappy save system plus the system not needing to save a complex worldstate somehow was good game design. Personally I can't stand it. And now because every third game has decided it needs to be Dark Souls, I have to screen everything for just how obnoxious their save system is.

Soulsborne's combination of checkpoints+one save file that autosaves constantly doesn't bother me... in the Souls games themselves. I suspect a lot of imitators are a lot less artful about pacing, though.

[Amechra]

Soulsborne's combination of checkpoints+one save file that autosaves constantly doesn't bother me... in the Souls games themselves. I suspect a lot of imitators are a lot less artful about pacing, though.

Yeah.

One of the advantages that the Soulsborne games have is that the level design is filled with persistent shortcuts. Imitators that don't shove ladders that you can kick down or doors that you can unlock everywhere are messing up the formula.

---

Personally, I'm glad to see the back of RPGs where they didn't have space to give you a breakdown of new equipment. So you'd have to buy it and hope that it was better than your old stuff...

[veti]

I'd like to put in a word in favour of minigames. Some of my favourite games ever have been basically a loosely-strung-together series of minigames.

Most Zelda games, for instance, and particularly Twilight Princess which is just the best. The ultimate example for me would be Chocobo Tales, which doesn't even have any real gameplay between minigames. Still heaps of fun.

[danzibr]

I am not a fan of grinding for ultimate gear, especially as a rare drop. I have a level 99 save of Earthbound where I was looking for the Sword of Kings. Blech.
Ooohhh I heartily agree. I remember grinding for Poo’s sword for a few hours before I gave up just never got it.

Pretty much everything else mentioned in the thread doesn’t *really* bother me, but those hella rare drops, ugh.

In FFIV there’s a rare drop from a rare mob that lets you get the best armor in the game. Way less than 1% chance to get it. I grinded (ground?) for that for a long time, never got it. Disturbs the completionist in me.

[Rynjin]

Ooohhh I heartily agree. I remember grinding for Poo’s sword for a few hours before I gave up just never got it.

Pretty much everything else mentioned in the thread doesn’t *really* bother me, but those hella rare drops, ugh.

In FFIV there’s a rare drop from a rare mob that lets you get the best armor in the game. Way less than 1% chance to get it. I grinded (ground?) for that for a long time, never got it. Disturbs the completionist in me.

If we're talking "old mechanics that should stay dead" and Final Fantasy, completely missable items.

FInal Fantasy XII's Zodiac Spear is one of the most egregious examples of this I've ever seen. The only way to get it is to NOT open a series of nondescript containers mixed in with other containers randomly scattered around the world; opening a single one of these arbitrarily flagged containers despawns the Zodiac Spear when you could get it later. Literally the only way you would know to not do this is by using a guide.

[Kitten Champion]

If we're talking "old mechanics that should stay dead" and Final Fantasy, completely missable items.

FInal Fantasy XII's Zodiac Spear is one of the most egregious examples of this I've ever seen. The only way to get it is to NOT open a series of nondescript containers mixed in with other containers randomly scattered around the world; opening a single one of these arbitrarily flagged containers despawns the Zodiac Spear when you could get it later. Literally the only way you would know to not do this is by using a guide.

I personally like that, mostly because it makes the game more interesting to have this level of mystery around it.

That, and you can certainly beat the game and side content without jumping through insane hoops to get a specific unique item with difficult conditions attached to it, but those who do can get that additional sense of accomplishment of completing these more extreme challenges well before the days of trophies.

Tying it to a pure RNG mechanic is annoying though, as the only point to it is how long you can repeatedly press buttons before you legitimately can't take it anymore and give up.

Edit: Though, that's not really a defunct game mechanic. People still need to hunt for Shiny variants of Pokemon in every successive generation after all.

[Jasdoif]

Literally the only way you would know to not do this is by using a guide.Ah, now there's a "mechanic" I don't miss: "buy the official strategy guide to get the best gear". At least with its better-gear-through-DLC descendant you know up-front that you're buying into it....

[Cikomyr]

Gear degradation and need to repair.

Unless the idea of gear rotation is built in the game's theme and story, forcing you to stop your adventuring to go back and repair your **** is annoying as hell. And useless. And pointless.

It was annoying Diablo, it was annoying in WoW.

Dying Light, at least, made good us of the mechanic and the thematic.

It was ****ing pointless in Fallout 3.

The designers of that sort of mechanic should have taken cues of Penalty vs Bonus. Instead of "repairing" your gear when it breaks down, your skill should allow you to "fine tune" your gear that slowly reverts to normal. Akin how "XP penalty for overplaying" in WoW became, after protests, "XP Bonus at the start of your session". The numbers didn't change, but people are more receptive to a bonus that you lose instead of a penalty you accrue.

[LaZodiac]

I'm not sure how a stationary save point would have helped. In games where you can save anywhere, the solution to running out of power is to just save more often. "Save early, save often" is a creed for a reason.

When you can only save in certain places, you can just get ****ed. Only have 5 minutes of battery left but the nearest save point is a 10 minute walk? Too bad for you.

Answering this question since it's actually a reason for why I think having save spots AND the ability to save on the fly is good!

Seeing a save point will remind you "right I should save my game". That's it. That's all a save point should be used for, and with proper use it would ensure that 90% of the time, you don't lose your progress due to battery because you're reminded to save frequently in an unobtrusive way.


For JRPGs specifically - and mostly FF - the 9999 number limit. It makes the mechanics nearing the end of the game increasingly less interesting.

The second is related to FF as well as it's particularly found in old JRPGs, but poorly translated or just plain uncommunicative games where the next objective to moving the game along is opaque to say the least. Like where you have to talk with some specific NPCs in the world, in a specific order, with a specific item. It's one thing to have objectives be something the player has to puzzle out, and another to maybe give a vague sentence suggesting what you ought to do that got muddled even more through the localization.

One recent-ish example I went through was in Pokemon Red. To get through a checkpoint and continue the game you need to pass a guard blocking it, who, if prompted, will say he's thirsty. Which might be a pretty clear clue if, for example, there was a specific place to buy beverages in the game world or you could win something beverage-related at an arranged battle somewhere... something like that. However, you get bottled water, lemonade, and soda as regular items throughout the game to give to Pokemon that you can buy from a dozen vending machines. The game could've done something to specify which drink the guard wanted so you got the clue, but the only indication that the beverages in your inventory don't work is that you cannot pass. Of course, what it comes down to is you need a specific key item, tea, to pass through.

Usually these are more along the lines of "you need to visit every village/town/city on the map and talk to every available NPC and hope maybe something will happen" kinds of flags though.

I literally never remember where the tea ever and that makes the few times I've replayed Firered Leafgreen stupid hard out of nowhere.

As for game mechanics I don't like... possibly controversial, but I had "over the shoulder third person camera's". They're always so up in your face, and makes you feel like you can't see half the screen... because you can't. I've been playing Control (which rules by the way) and it just, the OTS camera is just kinda frustrating.

[tonberrian]

I'm not a fan of being jumped by random encounters from nowhere. Luckily, it looks like all the JRPGs that relied on that are now putting an enemies on the overworld to bump into (or not) to start battles, and that's much better.

[warty goblin]

I agree. The interface for the first two Fallouts is absolutely terrible. Plus, somehow they move slow as molasses even on modern machines.
We can all be grateful that Bethesda at least kept something of the old games, although to be fair modern Fallout interfaces suck in entirely new and exciting ways. Progress!

Honestly when it comes to inventories, I remain inexplicably fond of inventory tetris systems. Easy to parse visually, easy to get a sense of how much space you have left, and generally at least somewhat intuitive. Plus they tend to be small enough that they keep the designers from shoehorning in much in the way of a crafting system. Crafting, where interesting game design and engaging play mechanics go to die.


Soulsborne's combination of checkpoints+one save file that autosaves constantly doesn't bother me... in the Souls games themselves. I suspect a lot of imitators are a lot less artful about pacing, though.

All I can say is that having to redo large sections of a game because of infrequent checkpointing was considered bad design for something like fifteen years. Now apparently it's a feature, which still annoys the snot out of me. Surge 2 has legitimately great combat, but not legitimately great enough I want to redo the same fights six times on my way to work out how to beat that one actually hard part.

(And let's not mention the weirdness of tying enemy respawns to whether or not I decide to take a nap. Who would have thought my sleep habits were apparently of existential importance?)

[Rynjin]

All I can say is that having to redo large sections of a game because of infrequent checkpointing was considered bad design for something like fifteen years. Now apparently it's a feature, which still annoys the snot out of me. Surge 2 has legitimately great combat, but not legitimately great enough I want to redo the same fights six times on my way to work out how to beat that one actually hard part.

It's good because A.) Player buy-in (it's an up front convention of the genre you are CHOOSING to engage in rather than being forced to due to every game having it) and B.) The entire game is built around the concept and breaks down without it.


(And let's not mention the weirdness of tying enemy respawns to whether or not I decide to take a nap. Who would have thought my sleep habits were apparently of existential importance?)

It's because all the enemies function on the same metaphysical mechanics you do. When you die, you respawn at the bonfire. When they die, they respawn when you rest at a bonfire. Because lore, kinda.

[Bohandas]

It's good because A.) Player buy-in (it's an up front convention of the genre you are CHOOSING to engage in rather than being forced to due to every game having it) and B.) The entire game is built around the concept and breaks down without it.

I know any game with limited saves that I own I have bought despite the limitations, rather than because of them. It annoys me to know end that its so hard to, for example, find a game with procedurally generated levels where you can actually save and reload the save if you die. And there's really no reason not to be able to; if you don't want to finish the game nobody's forcing you to.

[Rynjin]

I know any game with limited saves that I own I have bought despite the limitations, rather than because of them. It annoys me to know end that its so hard to, for example, find a game with procedurally generated levels where you can actually save and reload the save if you die. And there's really no reason not to be able to; if you don't want to finish the game nobody's forcing you to.

The post you're responding to was about Dark Souls' checkpointing system, not limited saves. All content is saved instantly in a Souls game, so any progress you make is logged (you always keep items and whatnot if you die).

Although procedurally generated levels typically are found in Roguelikes (or Roguelites), where permadeath is what the game is built around, so again I don't find it to be a flaw in that context. Roguelike games are typically very short in the grand scheme, with the assumption that what will keep you coming back is repeated deaths resetting progress, and the procedural generation providing replayability. Removing the permadeath removes the reason to play the game after the first hour or so.

[Kitten Champion]

One old mechanic that I hadn't thought of until I watched The Wizard on Netflix recently, but the concept of high scores. As in, the old school concept of high scores on arcade machines that you'd get to input your initials on the leader-board for bragging rights. The idea kept going into home consoles but it was sort of vestigial at the point where you could save your game and no quarters were involved. For instance, old Mario games would attach point totals to defeating enemies and collecting stuff, but personally I can't recall ever actually thinking about the total once in my life.

While the concept of high scores in itself isn't bad exactly, in terms of game design evolution replacing it with more tangible in-game benefits for the player upon a successful performance is far more motivating and satisfying. I like unlocking stuff, it does keep me playing and wanting to improve myself just that bit more to get that whateveritis.

Sure, there are still leader-boards for some games with a bigger online element, but usually it's in a less abstract sort of way than some general point count like the seasonal boards in Diablo III.

[factotum]

Honestly when it comes to inventories, I remain inexplicably fond of inventory tetris systems. Easy to parse visually, easy to get a sense of how much space you have left, and generally at least somewhat intuitive.

I think the best inventory I ever saw was the one used in Might and Magic 6, 7 and 8, simply because it had absolutely huge, well-drawn representations of everything and looked really nice because of it.

[Cespenar]

I think the best inventory I ever saw was the one used in Might and Magic 6, 7 and 8, simply because it had absolutely huge, well-drawn representations of everything and looked really nice because of it.

Those were actually pretty enjoyable to look at and organize (http://mmgames.ru/files/mm/mods/XMAS16mod_001.jpg), due to the lost skill of nice-looking 2D (non-pixel) art.

[Hunter Noventa]

One old mechanic that I hadn't thought of until I watched The Wizard on Netflix recently, but the concept of high scores. As in, the old school concept of high scores on an arcade machines that you'd get to input your initials on the leader-board for bragging rights. The idea kept going into home consoles but it was sort of vestigial at the point where you could save your game and no quarters were involved. For instance, old Mario games would attach point totals to defeating enemies and collecting stuff, but personally I can't recall ever actually thinking about the total once in my life.

While the concept of high scores in itself isn't bad exactly, in terms of game design evolution replacing it with more tangible in-game benefits for the player upon a successful performance is far more motivating and satisfying. I like unlocking stuff, it does keep me playing and wanting to improve myself just that bit more to get that whateveritis.

Sure, there are still leader-boards for some games with a bigger online element, but usually it's in a less abstract sort of way than some general point count like the seasonal boards in Diablo III.

A handful of those older games on the NES and Genesis and the like would attach 'continues' to your score, while keeping lives separate. But yeah, there's not that much reason for it now.

[Bohandas]

The post you're responding to was about Dark Souls' checkpointing system, not limited saves. All content is saved instantly in a Souls game, so any progress you make is logged (you always keep items and whatnot if you die).

I've got issues with checkpoint saving too, and its basically the same issue on a smaller scale. I don't want to replay the same stretch of this level over and over again any more than I want to play the first level over and over again

[Triaxx]

One of the better things Bethesda did, was keeping both autosaves and free saving.

Original Fallout game interfaces were... functional. Which is a suitable term. The primary issue is nothing being labeled, which wasn't an issue in the days of paper manuals in the box. What does this button do? I can look it up. Now? If it's not labeled, you have to click it to find out. And the ones that were labeled were labeled confusingly. I mean, I guessed what a Skilldex was right away. But how many people even know what a Rolodex is now?

One thing I don't miss, is games assuming I started off knowing precisely what I'm doing. The fact that I can probably work out how to fly a plane myself, doesn't mean I want to try and go straight into a dogfight.

[druid91]

Or even just someone AT the local store who would comment "Franz, the guard at the gate, really likes tea."

TBF. In the original red the healing drinks WERE the key to get past. Lemonade I think it was.

[Ortho]

Lack of an in-game tutorial and/or an explanation of what the game mechanics actually are.

I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?

Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to chuck a bomb at him and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?

[LaZodiac]

Lack of an in-game tutorial and/or an explanation of what the game mechanics actually are.

I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?

Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to [i]chuck a bomb at him[\i] and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?

Because he's not stoppable unless you bomb him, in that one, and he says he won't stop for anything, and there are bomb flowers around. It's fair to miss, and also is optional!

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Grind for the sake of grind to extend gameplay.

Case in point: Dragon Warrior on the NES. You can beat the whole game in under a half hour if you didn't have to constantly grind levels to be able to survive. A substantial majority of the gameplay is nothing more than grinding cash/xp.

[Amechra]

Grind for the sake of grind to extend gameplay.

Case in point: Dragon Warrior on the NES. You can beat the whole game in under a half hour if you didn't have to constantly grind levels to be able to survive. A substantial majority of the gameplay is nothing more than grinding cash/xp.

Sadly, this is still a thing in a lot of modern JRPGs as well. Heck, a lot of "sixty hour" games are only that long because they artificially pad the runtime with useless grindy quests.

I don't think we'll see the tail end of that one any time soon...

[Vinyadan]

I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?



A fast explanation.

Morrowind has:

Basic stats:

Health: when you run out of it, you die.
Magicka: you consume it to cast spells.
Fatigue: you consume it when running, jumping, or striking with a weapon. As it drains, you become less successful at everything you do.

Attributes:

Strength: allows you to carry more (5 each point), makes you inflict more damage with weapons. Influences fatigue and starting health.
Agility: lets you hit and dodge more often. You can fall when hit during combat. Agility makes it less likely. Influences max fatigue.
Endurance: increases max HP and fatigue. Your fatigue drains slower.
Intelligence: increases your max magicka.
Willpower: Makes you cast spells more reliably, increases max fatigue and resistance to certain spells like paralyse.
Personality: People like you more. You are better at persuading and trading.
Luck: gives you a bonus at everything.
Speed: decides how fast you move.

Skills:

Skills make you better at a very selected kind of activities. In Morrowind, you often need to roll a virtual die that decides whether you succeed or not at what you are doing: will your strike connect? Will your spell fizzle? Skills make it more likely that you succeed.

Weapon skills make you better at using a certain kind of weapon, and increase how much damage you inflict and how often you hit.

Armour skills make you faster at moving in a certain kind of armour, using less fatigue while running, and increase your armour rating.

Spell-school skills let you cast spells in that school more reliably. These are destruction (mostly direct damage and debuff), mysticism (absorb from enemy, teleportation, detection spells, soul trap), alteration (lock, unlock, levitate, various shield spells, a number of travel spells), conjuration (summon creatures, weapons, and armour, or dominate creatures), illusion (invisibility, silence, night sight, combat-oriented mind-control), and restoration (healing).

Then there are some crafting skills: alchemy lets you create potions. You very often find ingredients. Each has four effects. With higher alchemy scores, more effects become visible. When you have an apparatus (which you carry in your inventory) you can use it to mix ingredients and create potions.
Enchant lets you create and recharge magic items more reliably, and use them more effectively. You need a spell (of any school), a soulgem filled with a soul, and an item to enchant. There are two kinds of enchanted items: some have their own magicka pool (which recharges over time) and let you cast their enchantment like a spell; others are always casting and represent a constant buff for yourself.
Armorer lets you use your hammers to repair your weapons and armour more reliably.

Athletics lets you run longer and faster.
Acrobatics lets you jump higher.
Mercantile lets you get better deals when trading.
Security lets you use lockpicks and probe for traps more reliably.
Sneak lets you sneak more reliably.
Speechcraft makes you better at persuading, bribing, or taunting.
Block lets you block with your shield more reliably. Blocking is automatic.

Every skill is governed by an attribute, which means that that attribute will give you better results when using that skill.

Every character has a class. Every class has major, minor, and miscellaneous skills. Major skills receive a large bonus at character creation, minor ones get a small one, misc. get no bonus. To gain levels, you need to raise your major and minor skills by a total of 10 points. When you level up, you get a bonus to health, magicka, and fatigue, and you can choose which attribute to raise. The attributes that govern the skills which you increased get a better increase, should you decide to raise them.

Governing attributes:

Strength: Acrobatics, Armorer, Axe, Blunt Weapon, and Long Blade.
Agility: Block, Light Armor, Marksman, and Sneak.
Endurance: Heavy Armor, Medium Armor, and Spear.
Intelligence: Alchemy, Conjuration, Enchant, and Security.
Personality: Illusion, Mercantile, and Speechcraft
Speed: Athletics, Hand-to-hand, Short Blade and Unarmored.
Willpower: Alteration, Destruction, Mysticism, and Restoration.

[veti]

I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?

There's a character generation - minigame, you could call it - where you get interviewed, and the interviewer will suggest a class based on your answers. It's not a bad way to get started. If you decide to change later, once you've understood what's going on, there's nothing to stop you.

[Triaxx]

On weapon degradation, I will say I think it fit more into Fallout 3 than say Oblivion. Rusty junk that may or may not have been shot out of a Raiders hands, or sat out in a definitely non-watertight container for 200 years, should probably break more often than something relatively freshly forged. That said as with so many other things, Fallout New Vegas did it better with it's maintenance system. It works fine for the first 10-15 percent of it's condition, then begins to have a negative performance.

[Floogal]

Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.


One issue that seems to be getting worse over time: unnecessary number inflation. Health & damage & stat numbers being much larger than they need to be. Don't be doing 5400 damage to something with 37665 HP, please instead be doing 2 damage to something with 13 HP. Either way you're defeating the target in 7 hits, but latter is much easier to plan & strategize around. It's part of why Paper Mario 1&2 are one of my favourite turn-based games, the HP almost never leaves double-digits.

[Rynjin]

Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.


One issue that seems to be getting worse over time: unnecessary number inflation. Health & damage & stat numbers being much larger than they need to be. Don't be doing 5400 damage to something with 37665 HP, please instead be doing 2 damage to something with 13 HP. Either way you're defeating the target in 7 hits, but latter is much easier to plan & strategize around. It's part of why Paper Mario 1&2 are one of my favourite turn-based games, the HP almost never leaves double-digits.

In large part I agree, though I think there's room in there for some gradients.

Something having 30k+ HP is clearly absurd, 300 HP is a little less so. It leads to a bit more granularity where there can be a significant difference between doing 10 and 15 damage, but without arbitrary numbers inflation.

[danzibr]

Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.
The PS4 FFX/X-2 remaster has this.

WHY!? It's a remaster!!!

[Spore]

There's a character generation - minigame, you could call it - where you get interviewed, and the interviewer will suggest a class based on your answers. It's not a bad way to get started. If you decide to change later, once you've understood what's going on, there's nothing to stop you.

One thing I miss is intertwined with a thing I don't miss now that you mention Morrowind and magic: Utility magic. I simultaneously miss utility magic (and to an extent, crafting/engineering) in games. But a thing I do not miss is QoL improvements being hidden behind certain skills and builds.

My character runs faster when I take a perk for movement in Outer Worlds? Why WOULDN'T I? I am no speed runners but my time is valuable. I need mysticism for teleport spells which cut my travel times down in Morrowind? Dude, that is just a fancy way of fast travelling. My character can be an artisan locksmith with a whole dedicated tree to picking locks? Why not give wizards a 2nd level spell that works like a whole class feature in Baldur's Gate? Your blade will have almost game breaking power, but only if you invest in smithing? Sure, but you gotta smith 200 iron daggers first in Skyrim.

It is difficult to increase a character's toolbox with a certain side skill that does NOT spawn the occasional need to always go into the side skill. And games that are usually scared to take that risk have very very bland crafting or utility skills as a result. But it is a two-edged blade there.

[Bohandas]

Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.

Oh, I DESPISE those!

The worst offenders there are Skyrim and the Half-Life series. At least most other games' unskippable cutscenes have something going on other than the protagonist just sitting dumbly on a vehicle for half an hour.

(EDIT: granted, the scenes I'm referring to here aren't technically cutscenes because you can look in different directions, but these scenes lack gameplay and function similar to cutscenes so I'm counting them)

[Cespenar]

In large part I agree, though I think there's room in there for some gradients.

Something having 30k+ HP is clearly absurd, 300 HP is a little less so. It leads to a bit more granularity where there can be a significant difference between doing 10 and 15 damage, but without arbitrary numbers inflation.

Eh. If a crazily simulationist system like D&D or Warhammer can make it work with a handful of hit points, there isn't really much excuse of not doing it. (Yes, D&D can reach 300s, but not for the most of the time).

[GloatingSwine]

Unskippable cutscenes. We've still got them, but they're becoming less & less prevalent.

I'll see your unskippable cutscenes and raise you checkpoints before the unskippable cutscene.

Hell, checkpoints before even skippable cutscenes are bad enough, I've recently gone back to the original Saint's Row, and it's chronic for no checkpoints in missions and putting the checkpoint before the cutscenes.


One issue that seems to be getting worse over time: unnecessary number inflation. Health & damage & stat numbers being much larger than they need to be. Don't be doing 5400 damage to something with 37665 HP, please instead be doing 2 damage to something with 13 HP. Either way you're defeating the target in 7 hits, but latter is much easier to plan & strategize around. It's part of why Paper Mario 1&2 are one of my favourite turn-based games, the HP almost never leaves double-digits.

Conversely expanding the number scale gives you more scope for effects that change the amount of hits it takes without requiring the player to deal with fractions.

Like if you do 2 damage at a time you can't have an effect that gives you +25% damage unless you're willing to let the player do 2.5 damage, and even then .5 damage doesn't sound like a lot.

Whereas if you do 200 damage at a time you can because people will grasp the value of going from 200 to 250 damage and won't rebel about having to deal with half points of damage.

[Cikomyr]

I'll see your unskippable cutscenes and raise you checkpoints before the unskippable cutscene.

Hell, checkpoints before even skippable cutscenes are bad enough, I've recently gone back to the original Saint's Row, and it's chronic for no checkpoints in missions and putting the checkpoint before the cutscenes.



Conversely expanding the number scale gives you more scope for effects that change the amount of hits it takes without requiring the player to deal with fractions.

Like if you do 2 damage at a time you can't have an effect that gives you +25% damage unless you're willing to let the player do 2.5 damage, and even then .5 damage doesn't sound like a lot.

Whereas if you do 200 damage at a time you can because people will grasp the value of going from 200 to 250 damage and won't rebel about having to deal with half points of damage.

I remember a game where the checkpoint was before the cutscene. The first time you went through it, it was unskippable. The second time, it was skippable.

Now that's convenience.

[Keltest]

Conversely expanding the number scale gives you more scope for effects that change the amount of hits it takes without requiring the player to deal with fractions.

Like if you do 2 damage at a time you can't have an effect that gives you +25% damage unless you're willing to let the player do 2.5 damage, and even then .5 damage doesn't sound like a lot.

Whereas if you do 200 damage at a time you can because people will grasp the value of going from 200 to 250 damage and won't rebel about having to deal with half points of damage.

For games like Diablo as well, where there is significant character progression from start to max level, having the wide range of numbers is nice both from a design and a player standpoint. From a design standpoint, if youre only ever doing the same amount of damage the whole game, your gear treadmill goes all out of whack, because suddenly that weapon that did 10 damage 3 levels ago is now only doing 2 damage, so youre actively being punished for progressing. Its also nice from a player standpoint to see just how much more powerful you are then when you started.

I do think its possible to have absurd number bloat (Diablo 3's endgame is especially guilty of this, to stick within the same series) but that's not really the same issue.

[Cespenar]

While the topic is on unskippable cutscenes, does anyone else remember the arcane art of being able to pause a cutscene? I remember one occurrence in a AAA game somewhere in the past, but there could be more.

[Amechra]

While the topic is on unskippable cutscenes, does anyone else remember the arcane art of being able to pause a cutscene? I remember one occurrence in a AAA game somewhere in the past, but there could be more.

Parasite Eve has the ability to pause cutscenes, unskippable cutscenes, and a sequence where you have a lengthy cutscene, then a boss, then another cutscene, then a forced battle arena. Then you're allowed to save.

[Crow]

Lack of an in-game tutorial and/or an explanation of what the game mechanics actually are.

I really want to get into Morrowind but I can't because I don't know what any of my stat increases do. Or even how useful they are. E.g. what the heck does Mysticism do and why should I take it?

Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to chuck a bomb at him and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?

The trick with Morrowind is to never sleep. If you can do that, where you put your skills and stats doesn't matter. I managed sll the game's content only sleeping twice.

[Tvtyrant]

Starcraft II had the best version IMO, not only are cutscenes slippage, but you can rewatch them on a little between missions.

[deuterio12]

Tangentially related to the above: frustratingly obtuse puzzles that are necessary for progression. In Ocarina of Time, there's a Goron rolling around that you have to talk to in order to enter the Fire Temple, but the solution isn't to talk to him but rather to chuck a bomb at him and then talk to him. How exactly were we supposed to figure that one out?

It is Zelda to be fair, one of the main rules is that in case of doubt chuck bombs at anything that looks funny/set it everything on fire.

[veti]

The trick with Morrowind is to never sleep. If you can do that, where you put your skills and stats doesn't matter. I managed sll the game's content only sleeping twice.

Sounds unnecessarily painful. I sleep a lot in Morrowind, since it's the only natural way to recover health. Not sleeping just means you never level up, which is not nearly as useful in Morrowind as in Oblivion, and it deprives you of the chance of any stat or health gains.

What makes character generation - not very important in Morrowind is the simple mechanic that allows anyone to do anything. Bored of hitting things with a sword? - just buy some training, and start hitting things with fists or spears or spells instead.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

"Oh, but thou must!"

I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.

It is very nearly always used in a ham-handed manner, and extremely annoying if you don't want to or the 'correct' answer is the obviously dangerous or boss battle engaging option.

Dragon Warrior was the Trope Namer for this, but it's got examples all over the place. Fortunately, they seem to either be dialed way back, completely removed, or have a lampshade hung on them.

Basically, instead of offering you a non-option, most these days will simply do it in a cutscene with no player agency. Also annoying at times, but at least not as bad as literally saying 'you have two options, and one of them will not be accepted'.

It still happens, I mean almost all of Fallout 4 falls into this category, but it's not as common as it used to be.

[Vinyadan]

The trick with Morrowind is to never sleep. If you can do that, where you put your skills and stats doesn't matter. I managed sll the game's content only sleeping twice.

But why? Sleeping and resting allow you to refill both health and magicka at no price, so they let you spare money instead of consuming potions.
And they are needed for levelling. Did you install Tribunal immediately after Morrowind? Being ambushed by the Dark Brotherhood at lvl 1 is the only reason why I can imagine you'd avoid sleep (in spite of the fact that they are leveled npcs, they are more dangerous for newer characters). Otherwise, there are creatures that are substituted with stronger versions as you level up, but I don't think they are too challenging, while npcs are mostly static, and you are actively gimping yourself by avoiding sleep and leveling (since your health increases by 10% at each level, at level 10 you have twice the health you had at lvl 1).

[deuterio12]

"Oh, but thou must!"

I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.

It is very nearly always used in a ham-handed manner, and extremely annoying if you don't want to or the 'correct' answer is the obviously dangerous or boss battle engaging option.

Dragon Warrior was the Trope Namer for this, but it's got examples all over the place. Fortunately, they seem to either be dialed way back, completely removed, or have a lampshade hung on them.

Basically, instead of offering you a non-option, most these days will simply do it in a cutscene with no player agency. Also annoying at times, but at least not as bad as literally saying 'you have two options, and one of them will not be accepted'.

The first Golden Sun had an option after the first dungeon is finished and the plot really starts going of just refusing to go save the world.

The result is the game going "And so you spent some more time at the starting village before the whole world fell to ruin since there was nobody else to save things" for a non-standard game over.

[Crow]

@Veti @Vinyadan

Just try it and see, do a no sleep run. The attributes not increasing doesn't really hurt you at all, and you get the opportunity to raise your strength and con sky high once you contract the blight. The HP doesn't hurt you, because everything else is leveled. Even the Ash Disciples (or whatever they're called) have fewer HP.

I can't remember atm how I regained HP though. I figured something out though, and it clearly wasn't so burdensome as to leave much of an impression.

[factotum]

Morrowind actually had a range for its level scaling in dungeons--e.g. you might specify 10-25, and the critters will always map to those ranges. This makes it actually harder to do those dungeons at level 1 because everything's level 10, whereas if you do it at level 30 it'd be easier because you're 5 levels higher than them.

Regarding the "Oh, thou must!" thing mentioned by Shneekey the Lost a minute ago, the version of that which annoys me most is the "meant to lose" fight--e.g. a fight which is deliberately designed to be so hard that you can't possibly win it. The game never actually tells you that you're just going through a glorified cutscene, though. Bonus points if the game designers never considered what would happen in the one in a million chance you actually do win the "meant to lose" fight and you leave the game in a broken state because of it!

[huttj509]

"Oh, but thou must!"

I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.

It is very nearly always used in a ham-handed manner, and extremely annoying if you don't want to or the 'correct' answer is the obviously dangerous or boss battle engaging option.

Dragon Warrior was the Trope Namer for this, but it's got examples all over the place. Fortunately, they seem to either be dialed way back, completely removed, or have a lampshade hung on them.

Basically, instead of offering you a non-option, most these days will simply do it in a cutscene with no player agency. Also annoying at times, but at least not as bad as literally saying 'you have two options, and one of them will not be accepted'.

It still happens, I mean almost all of Fallout 4 falls into this category, but it's not as common as it used to be.

Dragon Quest 11 I think took it as a deliberate joke. So many "but thou must" times in game, often with special scenes you wouldn't otherwise see. Such as when a prince is asking for your help, and if you refuse he grunts as he falls to the floor begging, before asking again.

...and then I noticed the grunts were different. Each time I repeated it, the grunts were randomized. I don't know how many voice acted grunts they recorded for that scene.

Or when asked to help a mermaid, if you refuse one of your party members swings a high kick at the Hero's head, stopping just before. "Oh, I'm sorry, I felt the sudden need to stretch my legs, what was that you were saying?"

[Spore]

"Oh, but thou must!"

I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.



I am curious what you think about linear RPGs like Pokemon then.

"Do you want to join Team Rocket?"

Of course nowdays in a time of meta jokes they joke about that stuff themselves.

https://pics.me.me/of-course-know-what-hau-hey-sun-did-you-know-52636952.png

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Designated save points, hands down.

The original GTA had no save points. (As far as I was ever aware at least.)

It was technically divided into separate levels, after you finished one level it updated your high scores and if you won unlocked the next level. But those levels were pretty huge, given that this is one of the games that popularized the open game world idea, and could take hours to beat. Six of these levels made up the whole game. Clear your schedule for this afternoon, or you'll never make it to San Andreas part 2.

[Vinyadan]

Regarding the "Oh, thou must!" thing mentioned by Shneekey the Lost a minute ago, the version of that which annoys me most is the "meant to lose" fight--e.g. a fight which is deliberately designed to be so hard that you can't possibly win it. The game never actually tells you that you're just going through a glorified cutscene, though. Bonus points if the game designers never considered what would happen in the one in a million chance you actually do win the "meant to lose" fight and you leave the game in a broken state because of it!

The expansion of Aliens vs Predator 2 (Primal Hunt) had such a fight, but it was an fps. You were a mercenary human and had two human allies. You walked into an infested area, and you were swarmed by aliens coming from a tunnel. One of the features on Primal Hunt was that you could place sentry guns (auto-turrets). So I placed two of them. The aliens didn't stop coming. The humans and the sentry guns didn't stop shooting. I also shot, until I run out of bullets. I later understood that the level was designed so that the swarm would only stop once your two allies were dead.

[Balmas]

So, I'm probably about to get crucified by the grognard crowd for saying this, but there are a lot of old RPG systems whose complexity detracts from the game. For instance, Morrowind's "pick your class, abilities, skills, and star sign at the census office" approach, while it lets you generate a character that fits your vision, means that it's much less intuitive than Skyrim's "use what you like as you're using it" approach.

I'd especially like to call out Wasteland 2, as a modern sequel to an 80s DOS game, as having learned entirely the wrong lessons from twenty-five years of building RPGs. It's the embodiment of complexity for complexity's sake.

I'm talking twenty-nine different skill categories which require different investment of skill points to rank up, and listed in categories which are overly specialized and subdivided. For instance, Mechanical Repair, Weaponsmithing, and Toaster Repair could conceivably all fit under the same heading of Maintenance or Repair. The ability to notice small hidden details is not a function of the attribute Awareness, but is its own skill called Perception. There are four skills devoted to talking to people--Harda**, Smarta**, Kissa**, and Animal Whisperer--none of which are affected by the attribute Charisma. If you need to open a door safely, you need to first use Alarm Disarming to get rid of the alarm, then Trap Disarming to get rid of any traps, and then Lockpicking to actually open the door. (Note, also, that Lockpicking is distinct from Safecracking, Trap Disarming is separate from Demolitions, and Computer Science is different from Alarm Disarming.)

That isn't even touching on the perk system, which unlocks perks based on the rank you have in skills you've taken, or the attribute system, which has natural break points in each of its seven stats.

This is a game that released in 2014. I'm just saying, if the character creation screen sends players running for a guidebook, you've done a poor job designing your character system.

[Cikomyr]

So, I'm probably about to get crucified by the grognard crowd for saying this, but there are a lot of old RPG systems whose complexity detracts from the game. For instance, Morrowind's "pick your class, abilities, skills, and star sign at the census office" approach, while it lets you generate a character that fits your vision, means that it's much less intuitive than Skyrim's "use what you like as you're using it" approach.

I'd especially like to call out Wasteland 2, as a modern sequel to an 80s DOS game, as having learned entirely the wrong lessons from twenty-five years of building RPGs. It's the embodiment of complexity for complexity's sake.

I'm talking twenty-nine different skill categories which require different investment of skill points to rank up, and listed in categories which are overly specialized and subdivided. For instance, Mechanical Repair, Weaponsmithing, and Toaster Repair could conceivably all fit under the same heading of Maintenance or Repair. The ability to notice small hidden details is not a function of the attribute Awareness, but is its own skill called Perception. There are four skills devoted to talking to people--Harda**, Smarta**, Kissa**, and Animal Whisperer--none of which are affected by the attribute Charisma. If you need to open a door safely, you need to first use Alarm Disarming to get rid of the alarm, then Trap Disarming to get rid of any traps, and then Lockpicking to actually open the door. (Note, also, that Lockpicking is distinct from Safecracking, Trap Disarming is separate from Demolitions, and Computer Science is different from Alarm Disarming.)

That isn't even touching on the perk system, which unlocks perks based on the rank you have in skills you've taken, or the attribute system, which has natural break points in each of its seven stats.

This is a game that released in 2014. I'm just saying, if the character creation screen sends players running for a guidebook, you've done a poor job designing your character system.

Im with you there. Simplicity has its own beauty

[Triaxx]

I kind of have the opposite view. I like that diverse granularity of skills, giving the ability to have one person specialize in one set of skills while someone else takes another. David talks to people, while Fingers repairs things. All sorts of things. And while I have mastered the art of sniping, I can also tease open any lock ever made.

[warty goblin]

I kind of have the opposite view. I like that diverse granularity of skills, giving the ability to have one person specialize in one set of skills while someone else takes another. David talks to people, while Fingers repairs things. All sorts of things. And while I have mastered the art of sniping, I can also tease open any lock ever made.

The big stumbling block with Wasteland 2 is that you have to make some pretty consequential character design choices before ever actually playing the game. Worse, you have to do this for like four characters at once. This is annoying enough in a game that uses a pre-existing system like D&D, but it's a pretty heavy lift in a game where you really can't know the system beforehand. It pretty much guarantees that a new player will realize they've totally hosed up at least one party member, or left some important skill uncovered, or doubled up on gun types too much and there simply isn't enough rifle caliber ammo to go around or something. You're gonna need to restart to get a decent party. Probably several times. It's really too damn bad, because the turn based fighty bits in Wasteland 2 are great, but the game doesn't really have a learning curve. It has a learning cliff, polished to a glassy smooth finish.

Which is one of the great irritations I have with RPGs that make me decide a huge amount about how a character plays before I actually play the game. I'm gonna restart this sucker a bunch of times, by which point I'll be hideously bored of the opening section, and probably burned out of the whole thing. Oblivion got a lot wrong, but letting you completely remake your character after the tutorial dungeon - and allowing you to save right there - was a piece of good design. By that point I knew at least a bit of how all the game systems actually played, which gave me some idea of what sort of character would actually be fun to play.

Of course being Oblivion, the actual RPG system was such a hot mess that designing a character to be good at the things you enjoyed was a secret trap option. But the concept of tutorial, then decide your character, is entirely respectable.

[Morty]

It helps a lot if the game has a respecialization option, the lack thereof being a thing that I definitely don't miss. Though of course there's still games that don't have one - Kingmaker apparently doesn't, which baffles me. So it's less an old game mechanic that I don't miss and more an option that has become more widespread in the past ten years that I greatly appreciate.

[warty goblin]

It helps a lot if the game has a respecialization option, the lack thereof being a thing that I definitely don't miss. Though of course there's still games that don't have one - Kingmaker apparently doesn't, which baffles me. So it's less an old game mechanic that I don't miss and more an option that has become more widespread in the past ten years that I greatly appreciate.

The character creation for Kingmaker is, I suspect, excellent if you've got a stack of Pathfinder books at your elbow. Otherwise be prepared to restart a lot. The tooltips are generally pretty good, but some of the more complex classes are seriously hard to decipher, with leveling flowcharts that look like somebody ran a tarantula through a pasta machine.

(Really makes me appreciate Drakensang all the more, where you basically just picked a pregen archtype, and then evolved it as you wanted. The only really immutable choices you made were species, gender and whether you could use magic or not. But DSA is a lot more straightforwards about flexibility in character advancement than d20 systems have ever been.)

[Crow]

Personally, I don't like systems where the skills are broken down to too many options. Having separate skills for rifles, smgs, assault rifles, sniper rifles, etc.

I much prefer when it is something like long guns and pistols, with the option to specialize.


Morrowind actually had a range for its level scaling in dungeons--e.g. you might specify 10-25, and the critters will always map to those ranges. This makes it actually harder to do those dungeons at level 1 because everything's level 10, whereas if you do it at level 30 it'd be easier because you're 5 levels higher than them.

Except the effectiveness of your weapons, armor, and spells are governed by your skills; which don't require sleeping to increase.

Try the insomniac run.

[Cikomyr]

The big stumbling block with Wasteland 2 is that you have to make some pretty consequential character design choices before ever actually playing the game. Worse, you have to do this for like four characters at once. This is annoying enough in a game that uses a pre-existing system like D&D, but it's a pretty heavy lift in a game where you really can't know the system beforehand. It pretty much guarantees that a new player will realize they've totally hosed up at least one party member, or left some important skill uncovered, or doubled up on gun types too much and there simply isn't enough rifle caliber ammo to go around or something. You're gonna need to restart to get a decent party. Probably several times. It's really too damn bad, because the turn based fighty bits in Wasteland 2 are great, but the game doesn't really have a learning curve. It has a learning cliff, polished to a glassy smooth finish.

Which is one of the great irritations I have with RPGs that make me decide a huge amount about how a character plays before I actually play the game. I'm gonna restart this sucker a bunch of times, by which point I'll be hideously bored of the opening section, and probably burned out of the whole thing. Oblivion got a lot wrong, but letting you completely remake your character after the tutorial dungeon - and allowing you to save right there - was a piece of good design. By that point I knew at least a bit of how all the game systems actually played, which gave me some idea of what sort of character would actually be fun to play.

Of course being Oblivion, the actual RPG system was such a hot mess that designing a character to be good at the things you enjoyed was a secret trap option. But the concept of tutorial, then decide your character, is entirely respectable.

A good system can have very sweet specialization options that gives personality to your character, forcing you to pick ways in which you will focus your character.

It can also do this without having literally 40 skills available. Some of the best rpgs have 10-15 skills available, and it's damn fine. There's nothing gained out of adding more skills for the sake of having more skills, and some video game that added skills for the heck of it may lead to some bad or useless implementations.

Arcanum is a good example of certain cool skills having only a limited number of applications. There's a balance problem when a skill is considered "essential" or another is considered "useless". That means proper skill balance wasn't properly thought out.

[Triaxx]

There's definitely a balance between hardcore you can totally screw this up character creation, and Do whatever it doesn't matter in the slightest. Some games definitely fall too far one way or the other. Wasteland 2 seems to assume you played the first, so all the inside jokes, like toaster repair make sense.

[Balmas]

I kind of have the opposite view. I like that diverse granularity of skills, giving the ability to have one person specialize in one set of skills while someone else takes another. David talks to people, while Fingers repairs things. All sorts of things. And while I have mastered the art of sniping, I can also tease open any lock ever made.

Unless, of course, that lock is on a safe, in which case the highly granular skill system means that you need to use your 0-level Safecracking skill instead of the Lockpicking skill which took 3/4 of the skill points from your max-level character to max out.

Look, I'm sure there's a way to make a highly granular RPG and do it well, but the further you subdivide your skills, the more chance there is for you to make skills that are basically pointless, and the more skill points you need to hand out to your characters to keep them competent. In Fallout 1 and 2, f'r'instance, you had both First Aid and Doctor; Doctor gave more XP per check, fixed broken limbs, and was often used as a skill check in quests, while First Aid restored HP. As such, everything First Aid did was neatly packaged into the humble Stimpak, and putting actual points in First Aid was a booby trap for new players.

Going back to Wasteland 2: not only does the Wasteland character system subdivide skills up unnecessarily, but it gives you barely any skill points to play with per level, and then makes it so that increasing skills to the point that you're competent with them takes a linearly-increasing amount of points. Even maxing out Intelligence means you end up with a maximum of 260ish skill points. Sounds like a lot until you realize that maxing out a skill--even if you use skill books efficiently--requires an investment of 36 points, and so even your max intelligence all-the-skills character at max level is only going to be able to really specialize in seven skills out of those 29 skills. Basic competency comes at skill level 3, which is two levels' worth of investment for the average 4 INT character.


The big stumbling block with Wasteland 2 is that you have to make some pretty consequential character design choices before ever actually playing the game. Worse, you have to do this for like four characters at once. This is annoying enough in a game that uses a pre-existing system like D&D, but it's a pretty heavy lift in a game where you really can't know the system beforehand. It pretty much guarantees that a new player will realize they've totally hosed up at least one party member, or left some important skill uncovered, or doubled up on gun types too much and there simply isn't enough rifle caliber ammo to go around or something. You're gonna need to restart to get a decent party. Probably several times. It's really too damn bad, because the turn based fighty bits in Wasteland 2 are great, but the game doesn't really have a learning curve. It has a learning cliff, polished to a glassy smooth finish.

Aye, that's the rub. This game basically throws you at this horrid skill creator, says have at it, and then doesn't tell you which skills are actually useful, which are traps, and which will actually become irrelevant because as soon as you hit the first town you pick up a surgeon who makes the points you put in that skill irrelevant. And until you get to that point and find that out, you're stuck basically guessing and redoing the first mission over and over until you can climb that cliff with the corpses of parties gone before.


A good system can have very sweet specialization options that gives personality to your character, forcing you to pick ways in which you will focus your character.

It can also do this without having literally 40 skills available. Some of the best rpgs have 10-15 skills available, and it's damn fine. There's nothing gained out of adding more skills for the sake of having more skills, and some video game that added skills for the heck of it may lead to some bad or useless implementations.

Exactly this. If a skill isn't useful, it really shouldn't be in the game.

[factotum]

Of course being Oblivion, the actual RPG system was such a hot mess that designing a character to be good at the things you enjoyed was a secret trap option. But the concept of tutorial, then decide your character, is entirely respectable.

This I agree with. While I like having a number of different ways to specialise a character, allowing you to respec once you've realised you've specced into the wrong things is a nice feature. Grim Dawn allows you to respec at any time but it costs in-game money to do so, which I think is a fair exchange given there's not a huge amount else to use money on (most of the time, the items you find adventuring will be better than what you can buy at a shop).



Even maxing out Intelligence means you end up with a maximum of 260ish skill points. Sounds like a lot until you realize that maxing out a skill--even if you use skill books efficiently--requires an investment of 36 points, and so even your max intelligence all-the-skills character at max level is only going to be able to really specialize in seven skills out of those 29 skills. Basic competency comes at skill level 3, which is two levels' worth of investment for the average 4 INT character.


The thing is, though, you have *four* characters in Wasteland 2, all of which you can create yourself--so you don't have to make any one of them be able to do everything, the game encourages you to specialise characters to do certain things. Although I will agree that having Safecracking and Lockpicking be two separate skills was annoying, it kind of makes sense because in real life safes often don't have the same type of locks as doors do--knowing how to pick a lock on someone's front door isn't going to help you figure out how to open a safe door that's protected by a combination lock.

On a wider point, I would argue that reducing the number of skills in an RPG is just part and parcel of the modern trend to ensure that any single character can see all of the content in the game, which I totally disagree with. In an RPG with a single character, if I choose to run my character with no lock picking skill, I don't expect to be able to get through every locked door--there will be some things I miss because of that. To my mind that's fine and expected. I shouldn't be able to be the Arch-Mage of the Winterhold College, the Speaker of the Night Mother, and the leader of the Companions simultaneously because they should all require totally different skill sets, and it annoys me to no end that Skyrim pretty much expects me to do that!

[veti]

Try the insomniac run.

I'm sure it's possible. I'm just not seeing how it would add to the fun. You miss out on levelling, which is a major benefit in Morrowind (unlike Oblivion), and you also miss out on the bigger, more impressive random enemies at higher level (with their bigger, more powerful souls). And instead you get - what, exactly?

[Morty]

(Really makes me appreciate Drakensang all the more, where you basically just picked a pregen archtype, and then evolved it as you wanted. The only really immutable choices you made were species, gender and whether you could use magic or not. But DSA is a lot more straightforwards about flexibility in character advancement than d20 systems have ever been.)

There's many ways to approach this, but what it boils down to is that a game should minimize the chances of messing up your whole playthrough through decisions during chargen or early game. Whether it's through flexibility, respecialization or something else.

It's also quite true that old RPGs frequently suffer from an overabundance of skills, many of which are traps. The old Fallout games have been discussed above, but Morrowind is a fine example too. Particularly if you decide to pick a pre-made class. There's really not much of a point in having more than one melee weapon skill, and some of the pre-made classes have like three.

[Hunter Noventa]

"Oh, but thou must!"

I mean, used to be so common in JRPG's that it's become a Gaming Trope definition. Basically the 'not a choice' option, where picking the 'wrong' option just presented you the question again until you picked the 'right' one.

It is very nearly always used in a ham-handed manner, and extremely annoying if you don't want to or the 'correct' answer is the obviously dangerous or boss battle engaging option.

Dragon Warrior was the Trope Namer for this, but it's got examples all over the place. Fortunately, they seem to either be dialed way back, completely removed, or have a lampshade hung on them.

Basically, instead of offering you a non-option, most these days will simply do it in a cutscene with no player agency. Also annoying at times, but at least not as bad as literally saying 'you have two options, and one of them will not be accepted'.

It still happens, I mean almost all of Fallout 4 falls into this category, but it's not as common as it used to be.

I think Yoko Taro is a fan of lampshades, if this dialog from the event he wrote in FF14 is any indication. (https://i.imgur.com/a3HJsCu.png)

[Cespenar]

I shouldn't be able to be the Arch-Mage of the Winterhold College, the Speaker of the Night Mother, and the leader of the Companions simultaneously because they should all require totally different skill sets, and it annoys me to no end that Skyrim pretty much expects me to do that!

That's pretty much the intentional and primary design point behind Skyrim as you said, aka "accessibility". Which irritates me to no end as well, despite the fact that I find the game pretty enjoyable.

Also, for everyone talking about bloated and redundant skill lists, check out Academagia's skill list (https://academagia.fandom.com/wiki/Alphabetical_List_of_Skills) if you haven't already. It's almost like a "don't do this" university course in game design. For a demo: Calligraphy is a "main" skill, and it has the following subskills: Bookbinding, Forgery, Forms, Illustration, Ink Compounds, and Orthography.

[factotum]

Also, for everyone talking about bloated and redundant skill lists, check out Academagia's skill list (https://academagia.fandom.com/wiki/Alphabetical_List_of_Skills) if you haven't already. It's almost like a "don't do this" university course in game design. For a demo: Calligraphy is a "main" skill, and it has the following subskills: Bookbinding, Forgery, Forms, Illustration, Ink Compounds, and Orthography.

Yeah, that's taking things to ridiculous levels. I just cut and paste that list into a spreadsheet--there are 55 "parent" skills and 310 skills in total!

Speaking of skill systems I think are actually pretty good, I think the Outer Worlds has a really nice idea there--basically, you can increase skills up to 50 (e.g. halfway) in groups of three, then you have to increase them individually beyond that. It means that you still have some level of competence with, say, rifles even if you're concentrating mainly on handguns.

[Triaxx]

One character can see everything, can be counter-acted by simply having multiple solutions. Doors going to be locked? Leave a key around. Or allow for the crafting/looting of lockpicking kits that allow characters of sufficient intelligence and insufficient skill to open locks. Or simply write lockbashing into the game code.

I play a fair bit of Dungeons and Dragons online, and they sell Bells of Opening, which anyone can use, Wizards and Sorcerors have Knock, and Half-Orcs can headbutt locks open based on their intimidation.

[Cikomyr]

. Although I will agree that having Safecracking and Lockpicking be two separate skills was annoying, it kind of makes sense because in real life safes often don't have the same type of locks as doors do--knowing how to pick a lock on someone's front door isn't going to help you figure out how to open a safe door that's protected by a combination lock.

But that's the problem. You are making a "realist" argument that doesn't has its place in a video game rpg. Unless the game's thematic is heavily focused on burglary, safe breaking and lockpicking, there is no effective gameplay reason to dissociate the two, and you are just inviting frustration for players who were suckers for the *wrong* skill.

You know what else is irrealist? Reloading after dying. Not pooping. Killing zombies makes you better at Science! (tm) because that's how "the system works".

We tolerate a lot of irrealist things in video games for the sake of convenience, I don't see why having Safe Breaking vs Lockpicking as two skills adds to a game about survival in a post apocalyptic landscape.


On a wider point, I would argue that reducing the number of skills in an RPG is just part and parcel of the modern trend to ensure that any single character can see all of the content in the game, which I totally disagree with.

That's a strawman. There are a lot of classic, solid rpg that have branching path based on skills and choices. Just because a few RPGs decided to go the Skyrim/Fallout 4 approach to "'you can do everything" doesn't mean the alternative is *50 skills* to manage.

Fallout New Vegas kind of made your build impact how you progress, without going with 50 skills.

Tyranny is the same. Pillars OF eternity. All of these didn't had 50 skills to develop.

[Crow]

I'm sure it's possible. I'm just not seeing how it would add to the fun. You miss out on levelling, which is a major benefit in Morrowind (unlike Oblivion), and you also miss out on the bigger, more impressive random enemies at higher level (with their bigger, more powerful souls). And instead you get - what, exactly?

Leveling is not a major benefit in Morrowind though. The game is actually easier without it. As the poster earlier mentioned, you can still run into higher level monsters, and their souls. Not that you need them. I ran through most of the high level content in Morrowind using a crossbow with silver bolts and a silver sword.

The game can be a huge grind, and a lot of people have never finished it. I would just suggest to those people to try it without sleeping; and anyone who disagrees, I would encourage them to see for themselves as well.

[Cygnia]

I don't miss looting individuals one at a time. WoW's "Loot All" has me now spoiled.

[LibraryOgre]

The trick with Morrowind is to never sleep. If you can do that, where you put your skills and stats doesn't matter. I managed sll the game's content only sleeping twice.

That's also the trick in Oblivion, unless you get a friendly-leveling mod.

[Erloas]

I'm replaying Wastelands 2 right now, and while I do think the skill system could use some tweaking, I don't think it is that bad. There are a lot of skills, but you've got 4 characters and 3 companions so it is really easy to cover all the skills and *because* the skills go up in points, picking "the wrong skill" at the start means you haven't actually sunk much into any given skill by the time you've learned the system fairly well. As it is, there isn't much in the game that you can't do in any given play-through.

To me, if they gave out a lot more skill points or the same number of skill points and much fewer total skills then they may as well just remove all the skills because you could always do everything successfully without even having to think about it, so why put in a skill at all? The only thing I don't like is that even if you can/do detect traps/alarms the characters will just automatically run into it without giving you a pause, but that isn't an issue with the skills but how characters interact with the world/how perception information is portrayed to the player.

[Traab]

Im not sorry to see less of the "We offer tons of alternate choices on how to play. Oops! Only playing this way lets you get past the bottleneck!" As an example, one of the first (might actually be the first) final fantasy games. You basically need to have a black mage in your party and cast toad on a boss otherwise he will obliterate your party, pretty much no matter how much you grind. For a game that old it had a surprising amount of flexibility with party setups and such but yeah, you kinda got your wheels spiked if you didnt do this one strategy. I was also never really a fan of the class system games like the other final fantasies where by the time you were done you had like a dozen+ options on classes for your characters because, again, some were going to make things much easier, some made things all but impossible, and there was no real way to know for sure without trying them then grinding a lot to earn the skills. I had this issue in tactics iirc. Suddenly the next battle destroys my crew because it turns out its really hard to reach the enemy before they crush us with the classes I have been playing as up till now.

As an alternate to "but thou must!" And not an old mechanic, choices that mean nothing to the game. Lets go with starcraft 2. When playing as terran you get the choice to either fight off a protoss fleet to protect a human colony (and a potential romantic interest woo hoo) or to help wipe out the infested colony. No matter what option you pick, the attractive scientist is gone by the end, and it never, ever gets brought up again, having absolutely no connection to the storyline. But yeah, aside from some research points, which long term dont mean anything as you will easily max out all research your decision only effects what the next mission is despite being portrayed as one with huge ramifications. On the one hand, you are fighting the protoss, a group of powerful aliens that are actually friends and allies of yours to at least some extent. On the other, you are wiping out a human colony because its infested with zerg. That SHOULD make a difference long term, it SOUNDS like it will, and you have every reason to think its an important choice. But it isnt. Its not like mass effect where it could alter relationships with the crew, its not going to change how the protoss view jim later, and the girl was never, EVER going to be a part of the crew no matter what you picked. That always bugged me.

[Misery Esquire]

Leveling is not a major benefit in Morrowind though. The game is actually easier without it. As the poster earlier mentioned, you can still run into higher level monsters, and their souls. Not that you need them. I ran through most of the high level content in Morrowind using a crossbow with silver bolts and a silver sword.

The game can be a huge grind, and a lot of people have never finished it. I would just suggest to those people to try it without sleeping; and anyone who disagrees, I would encourage them to see for themselves as well.

You gain health, more mana, more stamina, damage, walking/running speed, dodge chance, more health per level, more stamina per level, better magic resistance... And crit chance/Speechcraft bonus, I guess. Your enemies don't advance with you, except cliffracers and slaughterfish who go up to level... 50?

Levelling up is purely beneficial, even if you don't get the "right" stat boost spread. Why would you not?

[deuterio12]

I play a fair bit of Dungeons and Dragons online, and they sell Bells of Opening, which anyone can use, Wizards and Sorcerors have Knock, and Half-Orcs can headbutt locks open based on their intimidation.

Wait, you can be so intimidating that doors open themselves for you? That sounds pretty awesome.:smallbiggrin:

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Im not sorry to see less of the "We offer tons of alternate choices on how to play. Oops! Only playing this way lets you get past the bottleneck!" As an example, one of the first (might actually be the first) final fantasy games. You basically need to have a black mage in your party and cast toad on a boss otherwise he will obliterate your party, pretty much no matter how much you grind. For a game that old it had a surprising amount of flexibility with party setups and such but yeah, you kinda got your wheels spiked if you didnt do this one strategy. I was also never really a fan of the class system games like the other final fantasies where by the time you were done you had like a dozen+ options on classes for your characters because, again, some were going to make things much easier, some made things all but impossible, and there was no real way to know for sure without trying them then grinding a lot to earn the skills. I had this issue in tactics iirc. Suddenly the next battle destroys my crew because it turns out its really hard to reach the enemy before they crush us with the classes I have been playing as up till now. Uhh... the only FF game which has 'Toad' you can cast, to my knowledge, is FF IV which doesn't actually have any alternative choices because characters enter and leave your party based purely on plot events, thus which party members, and skills, are available to you are predefined. Maybe 5? I never got a chance to play that one much, since it didn't show up in America until the Playstation, where it was combo'd with 6.


As an alternate to "but thou must!" And not an old mechanic, choices that mean nothing to the game. Lets go with starcraft 2. When playing as terran you get the choice to either fight off a protoss fleet to protect a human colony (and a potential romantic interest woo hoo) or to help wipe out the infested colony. No matter what option you pick, the attractive scientist is gone by the end, and it never, ever gets brought up again, having absolutely no connection to the storyline. But yeah, aside from some research points, which long term dont mean anything as you will easily max out all research your decision only effects what the next mission is despite being portrayed as one with huge ramifications. On the one hand, you are fighting the protoss, a group of powerful aliens that are actually friends and allies of yours to at least some extent. On the other, you are wiping out a human colony because its infested with zerg. That SHOULD make a difference long term, it SOUNDS like it will, and you have every reason to think its an important choice. But it isnt. Its not like mass effect where it could alter relationships with the crew, its not going to change how the protoss view jim later, and the girl was never, EVER going to be a part of the crew no matter what you picked. That always bugged me.The writing team for Legacy of the Void in general dropped a whole lot of balls, in my opinion, and it feels basically like Joss Wheaton directed the first two SC II games, while they got Michael Bay to do the third. Lots of pretty shiny explosions, and not just ignoring the previous two games and their buildup but directly spitting in their face and taking a leak on them.

There is a marginal advantage in siding with the Protoss, in that at that stage of the game, you likely don't have much Protoss research and the next couple of Protoss tiers are hecka good while the Zerg tree has you slogging through a couple of mostly-useless decisions until you get to bio-reactors. It also gets you to Tech Reactors much sooner, which are pretty insanely OP. Specifically, if you side with the Protoss, and do things in a certain way, you can have Tech Reactors by the time the Banshee mission comes along, which permits you to build banshees twice as fast. Needless to say... this is kind of ridiculously good in a timed game with the firewall slowly marching onward (not that anyone should have any real issues with the firewall).

[Enixon]

For JRPGs specifically - and mostly FF - the 9999 number limit. It makes the mechanics nearing the end of the game increasingly less interesting.

The second is related to FF as well as it's particularly found in old JRPGs, but poorly translated or just plain uncommunicative games where the next objective to moving the game along is opaque to say the least. Like where you have to talk with some specific NPCs in the world, in a specific order, with a specific item. It's one thing to have objectives be something the player has to puzzle out, and another to maybe give a vague sentence suggesting what you ought to do that got muddled even more through the localization.

One recent-ish example I went through was in Pokemon Red. To get through a checkpoint and continue the game you need to pass a guard blocking it, who, if prompted, will say he's thirsty. Which might be a pretty clear clue if, for example, there was a specific place to buy beverages in the game world or you could win something beverage-related at an arranged battle somewhere... something like that. However, you get bottled water, lemonade, and soda as regular items throughout the game to give to Pokemon that you can buy from a dozen vending machines. The game could've done something to specify which drink the guard wanted so you got the clue, but the only indication that the beverages in your inventory don't work is that you cannot pass. Of course, what it comes down to is you need a specific key item, tea, to pass through.

Usually these are more along the lines of "you need to visit every village/town/city on the map and talk to every available NPC and hope maybe something will happen" kinds of flags though.


Ironically, in the original game boy versions of Red, Blue, and Yellow, you actually DID just give the guard either a Fresh Water, Soda Pop, or Lemonade, they changed it to be that Tea key item in the remakes.

[Kitten Champion]

Ironically, in the original game boy versions of Red, Blue, and Yellow, you actually DID just give the guard either a Fresh Water, Soda Pop, or Lemonade, they changed it to be that Tea key item in the remakes.

Yeah, someone mentioned that before. I just assumed it was a direct copy of the original, as it's the same NES-era Dragon Quest kind of game design.

I've never played original Red/Blue. I was given a copy of Pokemon Blue to play - this was back when I was designing a campaign for a Pokemon TTRPG and wanted to play the games in order to know what I was doing - but the cartridge malfunctioned. Same thing happened with the Gold I was given, but that seemed to be an issue of the internal battery.

[Crow]

You gain health, more mana, more stamina, damage, walking/running speed, dodge chance, more health per level, more stamina per level, better magic resistance... And crit chance/Speechcraft bonus, I guess. Your enemies don't advance with you, except cliffracers and slaughterfish who go up to level... 50?

Levelling up is purely beneficial, even if you don't get the "right" stat boost spread. Why would you not?

All those are governed by attributes and skills, and there are plenty of other ways to pump attributes, just through playing, without resorting to exploits or grinding. You miss out on an attribute dependent boost (small) boost to hp, mana, and stamina per level; but you won't miss them at all. You get stronger and the levelled spawns you face don't. It's the easiest way to get through the game. Just try it and see.

[Cikomyr]

To me, if they gave out a lot more skill points or the same number of skill points and much fewer total skills then they may as well just remove all the skills because you could always do everything successfully without even having to think about it, so why put in a skill at all?

.....

Yes. Exactly

Why would they do that? I mean, why not have less skill choices and less skill points. Streamline the gameplay.

[factotum]

As an alternate to "but thou must!" And not an old mechanic, choices that mean nothing to the game.

One of the Heroes of Might and Magic games did that, can't remember if it was the first one or the second--anyway, about halfway through the campaign (whichever side you originally picked) you get the option of turning coat and going over to the other faction. The only effect this has is on the next mission, where, instead of it being you alone against three enemies, it's you and two friends against a single enemy. After that point you just switch over to the other campaign and do the remaining missions in it with no negative or positive consequences to being a turncoat.

[Toric]

I never did like needing to record and enter a password to continue my playthrough, for example in the original Metroid. But most of the frustration from that system came down to the font having one set of characters that looked almost identical to each other. Is that an I or an l? A 6 or a G? You'll find out when you try to pick up where you left off.

[Hunter Noventa]

Uhh... the only FF game which has 'Toad' you can cast, to my knowledge, is FF IV which doesn't actually have any alternative choices because characters enter and leave your party based purely on plot events, thus which party members, and skills, are available to you are predefined. Maybe 5? I never got a chance to play that one much, since it didn't show up in America until the Playstation, where it was combo'd with 6.

FF3 on the NES had at least one dungeon where you had to Mini your whole party to get in, but I can't think of anything that required Toad. Not to mention that didn't come out int he US officially until the relatively awful DS remake.

[Cikomyr]

I never did like needing to record and enter a password to continue my playthrough, for example in the original Metroid. But most of the frustration from that system came down to the font having one set of characters that looked almost identical to each other. Is that an I or an l? A 6 or a G? You'll find out when you try to pick up where you left off.

It was annoying, but. You know.. Blame the technology of the time.

[factotum]

It was annoying, but. You know.. Blame the technology of the time.

In a way, the password thing was actually a blessing. I gamed in my youth on a ZX Spectrum, and every game had to be loaded from tape (taking a good 5-10 minutes) before it could be played. Just being able to enter a simple password to jump back to where you were, rather than having to spend more minutes faffing around loading in a saved game from a different tape, was a godsend.

[danzibr]

FF3 on the NES had at least one dungeon where you had to Mini your whole party to get in, but I can't think of anything that required Toad. Not to mention that didn't come out int he US officially until the relatively awful DS remake.
Hmmmmm pretty sure it had both. There’s one where there’s a buncha frogs hopping around and you need to be a frog to get in.

Then again I never played the NES version.

[Traab]

Yeah on looking through the game guides its clear it wasnt final fantasy, now its going to bug me forever. I KNOW it was one of the older classic rpg console games, but now I have no clue which one it was! I must have just assumed it was final fantasy as that series was my jam. I played most of the other series and stand alone titles too as I was pretty much pure rpg gamer growing up, but those were the ones I tended to stick with. I just remember it was some rpg where the first dungeon or so (at least fairly early on) there was a boss where you basically had to turn him into a toad to weaken him, as I found out after dying repeatedly then giving in and reading a guide online. And as I tend to not focus on spell casting much (you never run out of sword swings, mana can be an issue) when I play, I had skipped those spells. Also, spells like that so rarely really mattered in the games, and being the genre savvy player I was, I "knew" that bosses tended to resist that stuff anyways. Yeah there are exceptions but in the main spells like toad sleep mini death etc, are pretty much pointless trash when you can just clobber the monster with a giant mace instead :smalltongue:

[Rynjin]

It may have been one of the Legend of Mana games they rebranded as Final Fantasy Adventure?

[tyckspoon]

Yeah on looking through the game guides its clear it wasnt final fantasy, now its going to bug me forever. I KNOW it was one of the older classic rpg console games, but now I have no clue which one it was! I must have just assumed it was final fantasy as that series was my jam. I played most of the other series and stand alone titles too as I was pretty much pure rpg gamer growing up, but those were the ones I tended to stick with. I just remember it was some rpg where the first dungeon or so (at least fairly early on) there was a boss where you basically had to turn him into a toad to weaken him, as I found out after dying repeatedly then giving in and reading a guide online. And as I tend to not focus on spell casting much (you never run out of sword swings, mana can be an issue) when I play, I had skipped those spells. Also, spells like that so rarely really mattered in the games, and being the genre savvy player I was, I "knew" that bosses tended to resist that stuff anyways. Yeah there are exceptions but in the main spells like toad sleep mini death etc, are pretty much pointless trash when you can just clobber the monster with a giant mace instead :smalltongue:

Huh. That's gonna be on my mind for a while now. I thought I'd played or at least heard of pretty much every notable NES and SNES RPG (emulation did wonders for that, I've played some real obscurities) and I can't think of anything where this happened. I would have bet on it being a Final Fantasy, too - Toad/Pig/Mini are pretty distinct status effects to those games. There are definitely bosses I can remember where you are recommended to Silence or Berserk them because the trick is to disable their spellcasting/break their AI scripts, but nothing for Toad.

[Traab]

It may have been one of the Legend of Mana games they rebranded as Final Fantasy Adventure?

Could be, heck, it might have been a random game boy/advance/gamegear title for all I know now!

[LibraryOgre]

I never did like needing to record and enter a password to continue my playthrough, for example in the original Metroid. But most of the frustration from that system came down to the font having one set of characters that looked almost identical to each other. Is that an I or an l? A 6 or a G? You'll find out when you try to pick up where you left off.

We actually sat down and hacked passcodes a bit for Faxanadu. It's been long enough I cannot remember details, but change a few characters and things got interesting.

[Traab]

We actually sat down and hacked passcodes a bit for Faxanadu. It's been long enough I cannot remember details, but change a few characters and things got interesting.

I loved how they worked like cheat codes. i remember a game, I think kid icarus, where we had a password that would bring you right to the final boss with full upgrades. We were such l33t h@x0rz back in the days of nintendo. Considering the sheer difficulty of so many titles back then, being able to see the end of a rental game was awesome!

[LibraryOgre]

I loved how they worked like cheat codes. i remember a game, I think kid icarus, where we had a password that would bring you right to the final boss with full upgrades. We were such l33t h@x0rz back in the days of nintendo. Considering the sheer difficulty of so many titles back then, being able to see the end of a rental game was awesome!

Man, anyone else hack Game Genie codes? Like, look at enough of them to get a sense of the vocabulary and grammar for a given game, and then just... play?

I think we messed with the Shield spell in Adventure of Link so it would constantly heal you.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I never did like needing to record and enter a password to continue my playthrough, for example in the original Metroid. But most of the frustration from that system came down to the font having one set of characters that looked almost identical to each other. Is that an I or an l? A 6 or a G? You'll find out when you try to pick up where you left off.

Faxanadu and Gauntlet for the NES. That is all.

[Velaryon]

Only read the first page, so apologies if someone mentioned this already.

What I don't miss is having to write down passwords as a replacement for a game save. Oh, I finally beat that tough fight in Punch Out/cleared that boss in Mega Man 3/etc., time to write down this string of letters/numbers/dots on a grid so I can pick up where I left off later... unless I lose this paper (or don't have one handy in the first place). No thanks.

[Rynjin]

Only read the first page, so apologies if someone mentioned this already.

What I don't miss is having to write down passwords as a replacement for a game save. Oh, I finally beat that tough fight in Punch Out/cleared that boss in Mega Man 3/etc., time to write down this string of letters/numbers/dots on a grid so I can pick up where I left off later... unless I lose this paper (or don't have one handy in the first place). No thanks.

It's, eh, usually good form even if you only read the first page to at least read the post directly above yours on the last page.

[Tvtyrant]

I actually liked the old password system. We used to trade completed passwords in elementary school, and there were all sorts of lies about what passwords could do. Learning about the Hadouken in Megaman X was one of the highlights of my childhood.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Anyone remember the 'all H's' password in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Basically gave you everything you needed to go beat the game.

[Velaryon]

It's, eh, usually good form even if you only read the first page to at least read the post directly above yours on the last page.

I get 15 minutes on my break at work and I don't type quickly on my phone. Niceties sometimes get put aside in favor of having time to post.

Another thing I don't miss from old games is arbitrary time limits, i.e. clear this stage before the time runs out or you fail. It was a holdover from arcades (where it made sense to make people spend more and give more players a chance to play) that console games held onto for way too long. It still crops up sometimes, but usually in the form of "escape the building before the bomb goes off" and so on where it at least makes some sense.

[Toric]

Man, anyone else hack Game Genie codes? Like, look at enough of them to get a sense of the vocabulary and grammar for a given game, and then just... play?

I think we messed with the Shield spell in Adventure of Link so it would constantly heal you.

Mostly I stuck to published codes but we did some fiddling around, especially with the SNES version. I remember my brother and I beat Final Fantasy 6 via a code that essentially reduced all damage to zero, enemy or ally. My brother would actually play the game and my job would be to flip the Game Genie's "hack" switch on and off as damage was doled out.

....It probably would have been less effort just to grind and learn to play tactically but boy did it shave down that playtime clock.

[Tvtyrant]

Mostly I stuck to published codes but we did some fiddling around, especially with the SNES version. I remember my brother and I beat Final Fantasy 6 via a code that essentially reduced all damage to zero, enemy or ally. My brother would actually play the game and my job would be to flip the Game Genie's "hack" switch on and off as damage was doled out.

....It probably would have been less effort just to grind and learn to play tactically but boy did it shave down that playtime clock.

Late game you could just cast X-Zone over and over as well (except bosses.)

[tonberrian]

I had a gameshark for gameboy, fondly remember my team of shiny legendaries with lock-on fissure. Didn't do much more than fiddle with it though, once I realized the power I had I went back to playing games normally.

[JellyPooga]

So, I'm probably about to get crucified by the grognard crowd for saying this, but there are a lot of old RPG systems whose complexity detracts from the game. For instance, Morrowind's "pick your class, abilities, skills, and star sign at the census office" approach, while it lets you generate a character that fits your vision, means that it's much less intuitive than Skyrim's "use what you like as you're using it" approach.

I'd especially like to call out Wasteland 2, as a modern sequel to an 80s DOS game, as having learned entirely the wrong lessons from twenty-five years of building RPGs. It's the embodiment of complexity for complexity's sake.

I'm talking twenty-nine different skill categories which require different investment of skill points to rank up, and listed in categories which are overly specialized and subdivided. For instance, Mechanical Repair, Weaponsmithing, and Toaster Repair could conceivably all fit under the same heading of Maintenance or Repair. The ability to notice small hidden details is not a function of the attribute Awareness, but is its own skill called Perception. There are four skills devoted to talking to people--Harda**, Smarta**, Kissa**, and Animal Whisperer--none of which are affected by the attribute Charisma. If you need to open a door safely, you need to first use Alarm Disarming to get rid of the alarm, then Trap Disarming to get rid of any traps, and then Lockpicking to actually open the door. (Note, also, that Lockpicking is distinct from Safecracking, Trap Disarming is separate from Demolitions, and Computer Science is different from Alarm Disarming.)

That isn't even touching on the perk system, which unlocks perks based on the rank you have in skills you've taken, or the attribute system, which has natural break points in each of its seven stats.

This is a game that released in 2014. I'm just saying, if the character creation screen sends players running for a guidebook, you've done a poor job designing your character system.

So, I'm going to preface this by letting you know that I have read through the entire thread and the back'n'forth that's been played out on this subject. I'm just quoting this post because if you're going to start anywhere, it's probably best if it's at the beginning...

I would suggest that you're missing the point of systems with a large number of skills/options/whathaveyou. The point *is* that there are so-called "trap" options. The point *is* that you'll have to restart and replay if you want to experience all that the game has to offer. The point *is*, in these kinds of games, that the expectation is that you'll be roleplaying, as opposed to merely gaming.

As much as I love Skyrim (and I really do; it's a great game), I prefer Morrowind. Is the gameplay of the earlier game better? No. Is the interface better? No. Are the graphics better? No. Is the story better? Debatable. Do I prefer the skill system? Absolutely. Do I prefer the quests and guild system? More than I can express.

Skyrim lets me play a single character that can do everything. I can get every skill to 100, join every guild, complete every quest. Huzzah for my one character of ultimate doom. That single playthrough where I can count the choices that actually made a difference on one hand. Morrowind, on the other hand, I'll have to play that game three times just to experience all the quest-lines of the three Great Houses, let alone any other in-game choices. Not to mention how significantly harder is is to get every skill/stat to 100...or beyond...making each play through different in not only content, but style of play and what is or isn't achievable.

I'm not at all familiar with Wasteland 2 (yet), beyond what's been discussed in this thread and some vague memories of the orignial game, but for me, it sounds like an intriguing experience of having to choose, without knowing the consequences, what skills to focus on, what decisions to make. If those decisions make certain things harder or even impossible, some time down the line, so be it. So long as I can still complete the game, I'll be a happy gamer and maybe the next time I play I'll know better, or make a different choice that opens up still more aspects of the game. I want that choice. I want that replayability. I'm still discovering lines of dialogue, quests and items in games like Morrowind that I've never come across before because I'm still playing those games and I'm still exploring all the myriad ways of playing those games, decades and hundreds, if not thousands of hours of game time after their release. Without having to rely on DLC.

Streamlining and intuition is great for pick-up-and-play. It's great for giving you a singular gameplay experience that you can one-and-done, then never play again (after all, what would be the point?). It's great marketing. It doesn't necessarily make great games because it doesn't invest you in the game as much as complexity and granularity do.

In my opinion.

[PraetorDragoon]

I lost respect for trap choices when I ran in a game that skill options that didn't came up or only came up once or twice the entire game. Either make it that they do something, or don't include them at all.

[Cikomyr]

So, I'm going to preface this by letting you know that I have read through the entire thread and the back'n'forth that's been played out on this subject. I'm just quoting this post because if you're going to start anywhere, it's probably best if it's at the beginning...

I would suggest that you're missing the point of systems with a large number of skills/options/whathaveyou. The point *is* that there are so-called "trap" options. The point *is* that you'll have to restart and replay if you want to experience all that the game has to offer. The point *is*, in these kinds of games, that the expectation is that you'll be roleplaying, as opposed to merely gaming.

As much as I love Skyrim (and I really do; it's a great game), I prefer Morrowind. Is the gameplay of the earlier game better? No. Is the interface better? No. Are the graphics better? No. Is the story better? Debatable. Do I prefer the skill system? Absolutely. Do I prefer the quests and guild system? More than I can express.

Skyrim lets me play a single character that can do everything. I can get every skill to 100, join every guild, complete every quest. Huzzah for my one character of ultimate doom. That single playthrough where I can count the choices that actually made a difference on one hand. Morrowind, on the other hand, I'll have to play that game three times just to experience all the quest-lines of the three Great Houses, let alone any other in-game choices. Not to mention how significantly harder is is to get every skill/stat to 100...or beyond...making each play through different in not only content, but style of play and what is or isn't achievable.

I'm not at all familiar with Wasteland 2 (yet), beyond what's been discussed in this thread and some vague memories of the orignial game, but for me, it sounds like an intriguing experience of having to choose, without knowing the consequences, what skills to focus on, what decisions to make. If those decisions make certain things harder or even impossible, some time down the line, so be it. So long as I can still complete the game, I'll be a happy gamer and maybe the next time I play I'll know better, or make a different choice that opens up still more aspects of the game. I want that choice. I want that replayability. I'm still discovering lines of dialogue, quests and items in games like Morrowind that I've never come across before because I'm still playing those games and I'm still exploring all the myriad ways of playing those games, decades and hundreds, if not thousands of hours of game time after their release. Without having to rely on DLC.

Streamlining and intuition is great for pick-up-and-play. It's great for giving you a singular gameplay experience that you can one-and-done, then never play again (after all, what would be the point?). It's great marketing. It doesn't necessarily make great games because it doesn't invest you in the game as much as complexity and granularity do.

In my opinion.

Again, there is a big space between "you can do everything" and "there are 40 skills, 15 them will only be marginally useful, I hope you guess right!!"

How about a skill system of, say, 10 skills, you get to pick 3-4, and they are all actually useful? That way, you need to rerun a new playthrough next time with a different format.

[Cespenar]

Again, there is a big space between "you can do everything" and "there are 40 skills, 15 them will only be marginally useful, I hope you guess right!!"

How about a skill system of, say, 10 skills, you get to pick 3-4, and they are all actually useful? That way, you need to rerun a new playthrough next time with a different format.

Big thumbs up here. As gamers, we all might have developed a knack for spotting trap choices and on occasion, the act of spotting them might very well be a part of the gameplay, but overall, these things are supposed to be a tool for your actual mechanics. And tools should be efficient.

[factotum]

I would suggest that you're missing the point of systems with a large number of skills/options/whathaveyou. The point *is* that there are so-called "trap" options. The point *is* that you'll have to restart and replay if you want to experience all that the game has to offer. The point *is*, in these kinds of games, that the expectation is that you'll be roleplaying, as opposed to merely gaming.


I entirely agree that not being able to see all the content with one character is a good thing, see my posts earlier in the thread. However, that doesn't mean you have to include skills that are actively useless, or set things up so that somebody might have to restart the game just because they picked a bad selection of skills and can't actually make it through. When I was younger I had the patience to play through the first few hours of a game two or three times trying to find a decent set of skills that would get me through, but nowadays that sort of thing is just going to make me ragequit and uninstall.

[JellyPooga]

Again, there is a big space between "you can do everything" and "there are 40 skills, 15 them will only be marginally useful, I hope you guess right!!"

How about a skill system of, say, 10 skills, you get to pick 3-4, and they are all actually useful? That way, you need to rerun a new playthrough next time with a different format.

Perhaps it's just my personal preference, but those 15 skills that are only marginally useful are the ones I'd be exploring years down the line to find out just how useful I can make them. To use Fallout 1/2 by way of example, I've done playthroughs that never invested points in any weapon skills except Throwing; a marginal skill at best by most accounts, but one that can be done. Perhaps a "trap" option for newbs who don't yet know how rare grenades and throwing knives are in the early game, but a solid "iron man" option there for more experienced gamers. Similar for a Martial Arts or Knifing Expert in Jagged Alliance 2. Those "trap" options are only traps for as long as it takes to learn it's a trap. After that, it's a tool for another style of play or area of the game you wouldn't otherwise experience.

[danzibr]

Character creation.

Not that it’s necessarily an old game mechanic. Also, it can be done well. My major complaint when you build your character up from a blank canvas, your decisions usually aren’t (in my experience) important to the plot.

Like in Xenoblade Chronicles X. It feels your companion is actually the main character.

Or Fallout 3. Your character’s most defining trait is their father.

Or KOTOR. You actually have an awesome backstory, but that’s wiped clean by the time you actually make your character.

The more I think about it, it feels the more freedom a player is given, the worse the plot is.

[Jasdoif]

However, that doesn't mean you have to include skills that are actively useless, or set things up so that somebody might have to restart the game just because they picked a bad selection of skills and can't actually make it through. When I was younger I had the patience to play through the first few hours of a game two or three times trying to find a decent set of skills that would get me through, but nowadays that sort of thing is just going to make me ragequit and uninstall.Yeah....I'm fully in favor of niche skills, downright esoteric skills, and skill choices that you know in advance may make your life more difficult than it needs to be (Borderlands the Presequel triple-prompts you to confirm when you try to start as Claptrap, as all three apply); but when skills are presented as equal and you only find out the hard way that they're not? That's just frustrating...like when I restarted Fallout 4 because despite their initial presentation, attributes are not even remotely created equal.

[Toric]

Character creation.

Not that it’s necessarily an old game mechanic. Also, it can be done well. My major complaint when you build your character up from a blank canvas, your decisions usually aren’t (in my experience) important to the plot.

Like in Xenoblade Chronicles X. It feels your companion is actually the main character.

Or Fallout 3. Your character’s most defining trait is their father.

Or KOTOR. You actually have an awesome backstory, but that’s wiped clean by the time you actually make your character.

The more I think about it, it feels the more freedom a player is given, the worse the plot is.

That's something I hope will evolve over the next decade. Obsidian in particular seems to be toying with the approach of "Choose a background and/or starting weapon set, your starting skills are tied to that." Not as liberating as letting you pick your skills from scratch, but it grants unique dialogue choices and gives NPC's in the game proper something relevant to reference in making your character a part of the world.

[danzibr]

That's something I hope will evolve over the next decade. Obsidian in particular seems to be toying with the approach of "Choose a background and/or starting weapon set, your starting skills are tied to that." Not as liberating as letting you pick your skills from scratch, but it grants unique dialogue choices and gives NPC's in the game proper something relevant to reference in making your character a part of the world.
Same, same.

However, I thought about it some more. I can think of an example of a game with superb plot yet has a totally blank protagonist: Baldur's Gate.

Still, overall, I find games where you're playing as somebody (without dialogue options?) to have better plots than games where you build someone from scratch (and you choose what they say?).

[Triaxx]

I rather prefer the active character creation method. To put it in Fallout terms, instead of being asked for a bunch of stats, you start in front of a table of weapons before a target. You can play with them and shoot the target, then get to choose which you prefer. And the non-violent solution being to walk straight to the 'excursion' and say you don't need them.

[Balmas]

So, I'm going to preface this by letting you know that I have read through the entire thread and the back'n'forth that's been played out on this subject. I'm just quoting this post because if you're going to start anywhere, it's probably best if it's at the beginning...

I would suggest that you're missing the point of systems with a large number of skills/options/whathaveyou. The point *is* that there are so-called "trap" options. The point *is* that you'll have to restart and replay if you want to experience all that the game has to offer. The point *is*, in these kinds of games, that the expectation is that you'll be roleplaying, as opposed to merely gaming.

And I'd suggest that there's a world of difference between systems that don't give you enough skill advancements to do everything, and systems with trap options.

Outer Worlds, for instance, is a system that doesn't give you enough points to do everything. You have enough skill points, over the 30 levels you get in the game, to max out maybe four skills out of the . If you want to be an excellent negotiator, you're going to be losing out on combat viability, or technical skills, or sneaking, or hacking or lockpicking or what have you. But when you put points into a skill, you can be relatively confident that it's going to be useful, and that skill will open up paths to which you otherwise wouldn't have access. Even the most useless skill, block, is situationally useful if you're doing a melee build.

Compare that to Wasteland 2 or Daggerfall, where entire skills are basically useless, and never come up. Points put into those skills lead to no increased enjoyment and no alternative ways to play the game. They are, in every way, a trap for the player, and the only replayability they add is the ability for the player to say, "okay, next time I'll invest in my ability to shoot guns instead of toaster repair." In short, skills that do nothing are bad game design.

[Cikomyr]

It you want to make esoteric skills, either make it obvious that they are marginal ("toaster repair" is actually pretty funny, I can imagine being used only, and solely to repair toasters over the entire game), or maybe have a selection of skills that are all marginal, clearly identified as such, and have all players at least pick one for the fun wacky factor of it.

Like I said earlier, esoteric mechanic can work if you thought your game around it. No repeat of Arcanum Gamble skill please. Where its used *once*

[Jasdoif]

("toaster repair" is actually pretty funny, I can imagine being used only, and solely to repair toasters over the entire game)
....
Like I said earlier, esoteric mechanic can work if you thought your game around it.Clearly the game's setting is some sort of modern-day conspiracy story, and the super-advanced power cells are recharged by long exposure to heat and shaped like toast for precisely this reason; so field agents can recharge their tools with ubiquitous appliances.

[Morty]

To use Fallout 1/2 by way of example, I've done playthroughs that never invested points in any weapon skills except Throwing; a marginal skill at best by most accounts, but one that can be done. Perhaps a "trap" option for newbs who don't yet know how rare grenades and throwing knives are in the early game, but a solid "iron man" option there for more experienced gamers.

I would really rather be able to focus on throwing as a new player without finding out it's terrible once I start encountering tougher enemies.

[LibraryOgre]

To an extent, Fallout 3, Oblivion, and New Vegas did a bit to address the "I have to build my character blind" problem... build your character as you like, but when you reach a certain point, the game says "Ok, if you go past here, your choices are fixed. Do you want to change any choices now?"

[Traab]

The problem with allowing for esoteric silly skills is you then have to balance the game for people who take those extra points meant for silly and use it to further boost their primary skills. Ive seen games that do it right, games that have primary and secondary skill sets where you unlock the ability to choose a silly skill without losing the good ones but you cant stack two good ones. Along these lines was something that used to be in world of warcraft. I cant remember what they were called, but they had large and small runes or something. The large added boosts to skills, the small were flavor stuff mainly "Polymorph turns target into a penguin now" that sort of thing. Letting you pick both a game balance effecting boost, and a fun flavor skill.

[tommyrory]

The lord of the rings this game its very old 1955 and make by Mr, J. R. R. Tolkien he is Genus

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The lord of the rings this game its very old 1955 and make by Mr, J. R. R. Tolkien he is Genus

Not sure if bot or just having linguistic translation issues...

[JellyPooga]

Compare that to Wasteland 2 or Daggerfall, where entire skills are basically useless, and never come up. Points put into those skills lead to no increased enjoyment and no alternative ways to play the game. They are, in every way, a trap for the player, and the only replayability they add is the ability for the player to say, "okay, next time I'll invest in my ability to shoot guns instead of toaster repair." In short, skills that do nothing are bad game design.

Which is it to be? Skills that are "Basically useless" or "do [literally] nothing"? Those are not the same thing. If Toaster Repair even has a single use in game, then it's not the latter and such things can be entertaining to find for yourself where and when that weird, esoteric, seemingly useless skill actually comes into play. I agree that including a skill or ability that has literally zero utility or function is bad design, but I cannot recall a single game (other than ones still in dev) that has such a feature.

Such things aren't always well implemented, granted, but that's more a factor or how well designed the game is than the game style. There are FPSs that are good and bad; the bad ones don't make FPSs a bad concept. Similarly, esoteric/expansive skill systems aren't inherently bad and have much that can be said in their favour.

[Gnoman]

Which is it to be? Skills that are "Basically useless" or "do [literally] nothing"? Those are not the same thing. If Toaster Repair even has a single use in game, then it's not the latter and such things can be entertaining to find for yourself where and when that weird, esoteric, seemingly useless skill actually comes into play. I agree that including a skill or ability that has literally zero utility or function is bad design, but I cannot recall a single game (other than ones still in dev) that has such a feature.

The old Megatraveller games had several skills that were completely useless (I think Megatraveller 2 helpfully pointed them out in the manual, but 1 did not), and there were some spells in the old SSI Gold Box games that were useful in only one or two places in the entire franchise. In both cases, they were there because they were part of the tabletop game, and there was still an idea that you'd be moving a character from tabletop to computer and back in the design room.

[Tvtyrant]

Not sure if bot or just having linguistic translation issues...

He makes a good point though. Why haven't we named a genus after Tolkein yet?

[KatsOfLoathing]

For me, it's RPGs with playable casts larger than the default party size, that require you to swap out members regularly to ensure that everyone is getting XP. I normally don't mind having to grind a little to get past a particular challenge (I like seeing my characters getting incrementally more powerful, sue me), but having to do it in gradual stages, especially in games where you can only change your party members at specific locations, it's just a painful experience that tends to hit me with option paralysis when I'm not just annoyed by it.

The XP Share feature introduced in Pokémon's X/Y generation that shares half the XP of your active mon with all those on the bench was a godsend for me, especially after the grinding hellscape that was Black/White. But now I've been using my Switch to go back and play games a little before my time, and Final Fantasy IX hits all the problems I've described above. The game is fun, don't get me wrong, and I actually like switching up my party now and again to try out all the different combinations available, but I'm at the point where I have a full party of eight with only four slots (and one of them has to be Zidane), and it's making the late game a slog to ensure they're all up to par.

[danzibr]

@Kats: so much yes.

Currently replaying FFX. Very irritating.

Or in like Suikoden you have a party of 6 but a million playable characters.

[factotum]

They are, in every way, a trap for the player, and the only replayability they add is the ability for the player to say, "okay, next time I'll invest in my ability to shoot guns instead of toaster repair." In short, skills that do nothing are bad game design.

I will point out here that Toaster Repair may sound like a joke skill, but it actually isn't. Toasters in Wasteland 2 are effectively chests with high-quality items hidden inside, and the only way to get those items is the repair skill. So, there are effectively *three* lockpicking skills in Wasteland 2--lockpicking, safecracking and toaster repair, all used for different types of container and all equally useful (or useless, if you prefer).

[Morty]

Which is it to be? Skills that are "Basically useless" or "do [literally] nothing"? Those are not the same thing. If Toaster Repair even has a single use in game, then it's not the latter and such things can be entertaining to find for yourself where and when that weird, esoteric, seemingly useless skill actually comes into play. I agree that including a skill or ability that has literally zero utility or function is bad design, but I cannot recall a single game (other than ones still in dev) that has such a feature.

Such things aren't always well implemented, granted, but that's more a factor or how well designed the game is than the game style. There are FPSs that are good and bad; the bad ones don't make FPSs a bad concept. Similarly, esoteric/expansive skill systems aren't inherently bad and have much that can be said in their favour.

If a skill isn't going to be useful for a new player who picks it because it suits their character, forcing them to go through their game with a dead weight on their character sheet, it has no business being in the game. That it has some esoteric use cases somewhere isn't substantially different from not being useful ever. The new player may or may not even run into those opportunities to use it.

[JellyPooga]

If a skill isn't going to be useful for a new player who picks it because it suits their character, forcing them to go through their game with a dead weight on their character sheet, it has no business being in the game. That it has some esoteric use cases somewhere isn't substantially different from not being useful ever. The new player may or may not even run into those opportunities to use it.

The flipside is, of course, that if this new player does have opportunity to use it, then it wasn't dead weight. If they don't, then assuming there is a use, it becomes an incentive to play again and find out what the use is, so again, not pointless.

[Morty]

The flipside is, of course, that if this new player does have opportunity to use it, then it wasn't dead weight. If they don't, then assuming there is a use, it becomes an incentive to play again and find out what the use is, so again, not pointless.

That's if the player's takeaway is "I'm going to try using this skill again somehow" and not "this skill is useless and I'll avoid it next time". In the second case, the skill absolutely is dead weight. Again, it doesn't matter if there's a use for it somewhere. It still has to compete with skills that are consistently useful. "Not completely 100% useless" isn't a high or meaningful bar to clear.

[GloatingSwine]

I will point out here that Toaster Repair may sound like a joke skill, but it actually isn't. Toasters in Wasteland 2 are effectively chests with high-quality items hidden inside, and the only way to get those items is the repair skill. So, there are effectively *three* lockpicking skills in Wasteland 2--lockpicking, safecracking and toaster repair, all used for different types of container and all equally useful (or useless, if you prefer).

The other thing to point out is that in Wasteland 2 you make a party of four custom characters instead of one, so you're spreading those skills out considerably more than you would in other equivalent games.

[Zalabim]

The flipside is, of course, that if this new player does have opportunity to use it, then it wasn't dead weight. If they don't, then assuming there is a use, it becomes an incentive to play again and find out what the use is, so again, not pointless.
What actually happens is the new player beats the game without ever using the skill then feels safe to go check for spoilers, finds out there actually was a use for the skill and says "F that noise" to the idea of replaying a 40 hour RPG just for one Easter egg. For example, I'm more annoyed than enthused about missing the best suit of armor in the game (The Witcher) because I didn't walk back into the literally burning city literally in the middle of a war, or losing the idol group that boosts your entire fleet by 20% no matter what post you give them (Infinite Space) because of the newbie RPG mistake of talking to everybody. I obviously didn't need them the first time. Congratulations on beating the game. Now you can go back and play it again, only easier. Not interested.

[Amechra]

Not really a mechanic, exactly, but that reminds me of something that I really don't miss: a lot of older games used to be really rude. I'm thinking of stuff like the first Space Quest game, where it's possible to put the game into an unwinnable state within the first few screens... and you didn't find out until near the end of the game.

I'm also glad that you don't really see the old-fashioned "You played on Easy! No later levels for you." thing anymore.

[JellyPooga]

What actually happens is the new player beats the game without ever using the skill then feels safe to go check for spoilers, finds out there actually was a use for the skill and says "F that noise" to the idea of replaying a 40 hour RPG just for one Easter egg. For example, I'm more annoyed than enthused about missing the best suit of armor in the game (The Witcher) because I didn't walk back into the literally burning city literally in the middle of a war, or losing the idol group that boosts your entire fleet by 20% no matter what post you give them (Infinite Space) because of the newbie RPG mistake of talking to everybody. I obviously didn't need them the first time. Congratulations on beating the game. Now you can go back and play it again, only easier. Not interested.

If you have no interest in replaying the game, I'd suggest that the game wasn't that good in the first place. That's not to say there aren't story focused games that you might only play once and then leave for a few years before playing again, if you ever get around to it, but if the gameplay is engaging and the story variable enough (even if it is only in the details), then you'll want to find out what those easter eggs are. The kind of "hey, why don't you play again but easier" features are poor design in my book; it's a cheap shot at trying to make the game replayable. Replayability shouldn't be about being easier, it should be about being different.

[GloatingSwine]

If you have no interest in replaying the game, I'd suggest that the game wasn't that good in the first place.

Yeah, and too many disappointing skills with few and uninteresting uses throughout the game is one of the things that can make games not good.

[JellyPooga]

Yeah, and too many disappointing skills with few and uninteresting uses throughout the game is one of the things that can make games not good.

The same can be said of literally anything. An excess of anything, whether that thing is considered "good" or "bad" is always "bad". That's not just gaming, that's life.

[Morty]

Or you can have a game that offers different ways of playing that are actually somewhat balanced with each other, instead of trap options some players might treat as a puzzle to be cracked.

[Velaryon]

For me, it's RPGs with playable casts larger than the default party size, that require you to swap out members regularly to ensure that everyone is getting XP. I normally don't mind having to grind a little to get past a particular challenge (I like seeing my characters getting incrementally more powerful, sue me), but having to do it in gradual stages, especially in games where you can only change your party members at specific locations, it's just a painful experience that tends to hit me with option paralysis when I'm not just annoyed by it.

Agreed. To make it worse, many games that do this also have one main character that you cannot remove from your party, causing them to become over-leveled relative to everyone else if you take the time to grind a lot. And often those games also have sections where you have to use a certain character in your party temporarily, meaning if you haven't been either using that character regularly or grinding to keep them leveled up, then they're an active liability when you become stuck with them.



The XP Share feature introduced in Pokémon's X/Y generation that shares half the XP of your active mon with all those on the bench was a godsend for me, especially after the grinding hellscape that was Black/White. But now I've been using my Switch to go back and play games a little before my time, and Final Fantasy IX hits all the problems I've described above. The game is fun, don't get me wrong, and I actually like switching up my party now and again to try out all the different combinations available, but I'm at the point where I have a full party of eight with only four slots (and one of them has to be Zidane), and it's making the late game a slog to ensure they're all up to par.

I sure don't miss the days of trying to level up a Magikarp by putting it first in my party and then switching to my real Pokemon during the battle, like I had to do before getting the XP sharing items.

[Toric]

I'm also glad that you don't really see the old-fashioned "You played on Easy! No later levels for you." thing anymore.

I know. I love the relatively recent design philosophy that games don't have to be hard to be worthwhile, and that players don't have to display a sufficient amount of skill to appreciate a game's full contact unless the difficulty is a specific design choice. I was delighted when I heard Mass Effect 3 would have a "Story" difficulty, and I love that Celeste has collectibles that are purely optional so you can just follow the story if you like.

I recall hearing that in the NES era Japanese developers would specifically make American versions of games harder because they disagreed with the practice of video game rental, and it ensured nobody could fully appreciate the game without either multiple rentals or just buying the game. Don't quote me on that, I may need to verify it.

[Amechra]

I know. I love the relatively recent design philosophy that games don't have to be hard to be worthwhile, and that players don't have to display a sufficient amount of skill to appreciate a game's full contact unless the difficulty is a specific design choice. I was delighted when I heard Mass Effect 3 would have a "Story" difficulty, and I love that Celeste has collectibles that are purely optional so you can just follow the story if you like.

I recall hearing that in the NES era Japanese developers would specifically make American versions of games harder because they disagreed with the practice of video game rental, and it ensured nobody could fully appreciate the game without either multiple rentals or just buying the game. Don't quote me on that, I may need to verify it.

I kinda want to see an indie game where you have to unlock easier difficulties, just to be contrary.

Like how Lost Vikings 2 gave all of your characters superpowers if you managed to get a character killed in the first level (which has no enemies or stage hazards).

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I recall hearing that in the NES era Japanese developers would specifically make American versions of games harder because they disagreed with the practice of video game rental, and it ensured nobody could fully appreciate the game without either multiple rentals or just buying the game. Don't quote me on that, I may need to verify it.

You've got it exactly backwards, actually.

The original game designers for the NES came from designing coin-op arcade machines, which were punishingly difficult in order to suck as many quarters from you as they could. And they carried that philosophy over to NES game design because these games were *expensive*, relatively speaking (for the 80's), and so a kid would need to be able to spend a lot of time on one because they might not get very many.

Then they got flack for making punishing style games, the Japanese creators went the other way, made games for America that were distinctly, occasionally insultingly, easier. What would be the 'hard' difficulty setting in the US would be the only setting in Japan, that sort of thing.

Plus titles like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, called 'Final Fantasy America' in Japan. Which wasn't even going to BE a Final Fantasy title, but they felt FF 3 (the one with the Onion Knights) was going to be too difficult for Americans, and so took another game that was from a different IP that wasn't already established and slapped the Final Fantasy logo on it and kicked it out the door.

[warty goblin]

If you have no interest in replaying the game, I'd suggest that the game wasn't that good in the first place. That's not to say there aren't story focused games that you might only play once and then leave for a few years before playing again, if you ever get around to it, but if the gameplay is engaging and the story variable enough (even if it is only in the details), then you'll want to find out what those easter eggs are. The kind of "hey, why don't you play again but easier" features are poor design in my book; it's a cheap shot at trying to make the game replayable. Replayability shouldn't be about being easier, it should be about being different.

If I'm interested in replaying a game (that isn't something like a strategy game with a skirmish mode) it's because the experience it offered the first time was really good, not because I want to do something different the second time through. Making a game more replayable is, in my view, generally a misallocation of effort, because the thing needs to playable in the first place.

[JellyPooga]

If I'm interested in replaying a game (that isn't something like a strategy game with a skirmish mode) it's because the experience it offered the first time was really good, not because I want to do something different the second time through. Making a game more replayable is, in my view, generally a misallocation of effort, because the thing needs to playable in the first place.

That's sort of my point. A good game will be good regardless of the actual features included or not; I'm not about to criticise a FPS for not having RPG elements, or an RPG for not having RTS ones. An in-depth RPG with a myriad of esoteric and niche-use skills is not an inherently bad design choice if the game is well designed and enjoyable to play. A given player might not like the design elements used in a given game and that's fine; opinons are allowed :smallbiggrin:

[Toric]

You've got it exactly backwards, actually.

The original game designers for the NES came from designing coin-op arcade machines, which were punishingly difficult in order to suck as many quarters from you as they could. And they carried that philosophy over to NES game design because these games were *expensive*, relatively speaking (for the 80's), and so a kid would need to be able to spend a lot of time on one because they might not get very many.

Then they got flack for making punishing style games, the Japanese creators went the other way, made games for America that were distinctly, occasionally insultingly, easier. What would be the 'hard' difficulty setting in the US would be the only setting in Japan, that sort of thing.

Plus titles like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, called 'Final Fantasy America' in Japan. Which wasn't even going to BE a Final Fantasy title, but they felt FF 3 (the one with the Onion Knights) was going to be too difficult for Americans, and so took another game that was from a different IP that wasn't already established and slapped the Final Fantasy logo on it and kicked it out the door.

Cool, thanks for clearing that up!

I've always questioned the choice of increasing difficulty in order to stretch playability. I've never had a problem replaying a game again and again and again if I like it. James Bond 007 for the Game Boy? You can finish that game in maybe five hours. I've beaten it dozens of times.

[Hunter Noventa]

@Kats: so much yes.

Currently replaying FFX. Very irritating.

Or in like Suikoden you have a party of 6 but a million playable characters.

At least Suikoden scales XP gained by character level, bring a level 5 character to your party thats in the 40s, and they'll be caught up in like, 5 battles.

[Gnoman]

You've got it exactly backwards, actually.

The original game designers for the NES came from designing coin-op arcade machines, which were punishingly difficult in order to suck as many quarters from you as they could. And they carried that philosophy over to NES game design because these games were *expensive*, relatively speaking (for the 80's), and so a kid would need to be able to spend a lot of time on one because they might not get very many.

Then they got flack for making punishing style games, the Japanese creators went the other way, made games for America that were distinctly, occasionally insultingly, easier. What would be the 'hard' difficulty setting in the US would be the only setting in Japan, that sort of thing.

Plus titles like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, called 'Final Fantasy America' in Japan. Which wasn't even going to BE a Final Fantasy title, but they felt FF 3 (the one with the Onion Knights) was going to be too difficult for Americans, and so took another game that was from a different IP that wasn't already established and slapped the Final Fantasy logo on it and kicked it out the door.

You're actually the one that has it backwards, mostly. There were a few games made easier for US release (Mega Man II added an easier difficulty, Super Mario Bros. 3 had the "level 2" power ups only drop you down to Mushroom level instead of the small Mario (giving you an extra hit), and a few other examples), but it was far more common to make the US version significantly harder. Enemies in Castlevania III do much more damage, The Adventures of Bayou Billy (US release) is borderline unplayable because it is massively harder than Mad City (the Japanese original), River City Ransom has less health and no option to disable friendly fire in 2P mode, lots of other examples. This is explicitly (as in, Japanese developers have straight up stated "This is why we did this") because game rentals are legal in the US and illegal in Japan. Games like FFIV were the rare exception, not the rule.

US releases of Final Fantasy II and III were not scrapped due to difficulty, but to timing. By the time II (let alone III!) would have been ready, the SNES would be out in the US. This meant that spending an enormous amount of money and dev time on an English translation of a Famicom/NES game was not a wise idea. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest wasn't some game they slapped the Final Fantasy name on (You're probably thinking of the Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy Legend games, which were rebranded Mana and SaGa titles) - Square noticed that the RPG genre wasn't big in the US, so they created FF:MQ for the US market as a relatively light "This is an RPG - now that you know what it is, we make more!" introduction to the genre. This is also why FFIV was made easier - they did not expect US gamers to be familiar with the genre, and didn't want to overwhelm them. The fact that the US had a "Video games are for KIDS!!!!!!" attitude (partially because of Nintendo Of America's content policies) which Japan did not also influenced the decision.

[KatsOfLoathing]

Agreed. To make it worse, many games that do this also have one main character that you cannot remove from your party, causing them to become over-leveled relative to everyone else if you take the time to grind a lot. And often those games also have sections where you have to use a certain character in your party temporarily, meaning if you haven't been either using that character regularly or grinding to keep them leveled up, then they're an active liability when you become stuck with them.

Final Fantasy IX does both of those things, yep. I'd have probably given up on the game a while back if the general difficulty wasn't actually all that bad barring some certain stretches (looking at you, Burmecia/Cleyra arc that puts you through like four dungeons and two long overland sections without a healer). There is, however, a midgame event that requires you to use all eight party members in two simultaneous teams, you have to make said teams at the beginning of the quest and can't change thereafter, and one half of the event doesn't allow magic, leaving you with a team of probably-underleveled, definitely squishy mages to carry the other half. If I hadn't been warned by the Internet beforehand, I'm sure I would've been grinding my teeth throughout.

[Morty]

That's sort of my point. A good game will be good regardless of the actual features included or not; I'm not about to criticise a FPS for not having RPG elements, or an RPG for not having RTS ones. An in-depth RPG with a myriad of esoteric and niche-use skills is not an inherently bad design choice if the game is well designed and enjoyable to play. A given player might not like the design elements used in a given game and that's fine; opinons are allowed :smallbiggrin:

You've got it backwards, actually. The fact that some people manage to enjoy long lists of imbalanced and superfluous games doesn't make it a good design choice.

[Traab]

Final Fantasy IX does both of those things, yep. I'd have probably given up on the game a while back if the general difficulty wasn't actually all that bad barring some certain stretches (looking at you, Burmecia/Cleyra arc that puts you through like four dungeons and two long overland sections without a healer). There is, however, a midgame event that requires you to use all eight party members in two simultaneous teams, you have to make said teams at the beginning of the quest and can't change thereafter, and one half of the event doesn't allow magic, leaving you with a team of probably-underleveled, definitely squishy mages to carry the other half. If I hadn't been warned by the Internet beforehand, I'm sure I would've been grinding my teeth throughout.

Speaking of FF9, Blargh, that strategy guide though! For years it was tradition that these games would come out with an official strategy guide that was generally a major help for figuring out everything in the game. Sure there would often be secrets not covered in the guide, but probably 90% or so of the rpg content was included. But FF9, I couldnt believe what a ripoff it was. It covered like 50% of the content, then told you to go to their online site and type in a keyword to find out more. I mean, i kinda get what theyw ere aiming for, an online guide would probably be much cheaper than a gossy paper one for them to provide so it was probably meant to ease us into it, but good lord did it stink! I remember having all sorts of issues just using the freaking site, and in the end just gave up and went to the unlicensed gamefaqs and such. FF9 was probably my favorite title in the series. I felt like it blended gorgeous graphics with the classic gameplay style that I loved so much with an entertaining story. But that GUIDE!!!!!!

[Triaxx]

Fun trick about that two party section of FF9? You've got two characters who shine in the 'wrong' dungeon. Dagger's still mostly non-functional anyway, so she's deadweight either place. But send her to the anti-magic zone as a back line healer. Potion early, potion often and then you don't waste combatant turns. And then Steiner stays with the mages, so he can do his combining with Vivi. Easy mode, and I've never seen a guide mention it.

Though by the same Token, the FF7 section without Cloud is extremely annoying. At least FF8 had the other members gain some off-screen XP so that section wasn't too painful. (And it also auto-unjunctioned the off-screen party.)

[Traab]

Fun trick about that two party section of FF9? You've got two characters who shine in the 'wrong' dungeon. Dagger's still mostly non-functional anyway, so she's deadweight either place. But send her to the anti-magic zone as a back line healer. Potion early, potion often and then you don't waste combatant turns. And then Steiner stays with the mages, so he can do his combining with Vivi. Easy mode, and I've never seen a guide mention it.

Though by the same Token, the FF7 section without Cloud is extremely annoying. At least FF8 had the other members gain some off-screen XP so that section wasn't too painful. (And it also auto-unjunctioned the off-screen party.)

I honestly never had trouble with ff7. It was probably the easiest game to straight up beat in the series imo. Materia meant pretty much everyone could hit for max damage with max hp and mana so barring some specific skills it really didnt matter much what characters you used. Now ff6 could get obnoxious because of the multiple times you needed to use all your characters in various parties so you couldnt just use edgar sabin cyan and gogo and call it a day (or whoever your personal preference may be) Plus, iirc, when you had the multi party dungeons it wasnt always clear which group was going to fight the boss or bosses without a guide so you had to water down your groups somewhat by placing a powerhouse in every group just to be safe and so on.

[JellyPooga]

You've got it backwards, actually. The fact that some people manage to enjoy long lists of imbalanced and superfluous games doesn't make it a good design choice.

What defines a good design choice? Is it the choice that makes a game the most popular to the widest audience? The one that you, personally, enjoy the most? The one voted on as the best compromise by the design team? The one that gets the game released on schedule as opposed to stuck in development hell? The one that appeals most to the target demographic? All of the above and more?

Careful with making judgement calls like that; some might take offence...

[Amechra]

Here's one that feels like an old-school mechanic, but I'm not sure actually is: highly random games with elaborate quests.

I'm thinking stuff like Reigns, where there are 4-5 events you need to complete if you're going to get the good ending. Whether or not you'll even see those events during each run is completely random, and the correct response to each event isn't intuitive.

[Traab]

Here's one that feels like an old-school mechanic, but I'm not sure actually is: highly random games with elaborate quests.

I'm thinking stuff like Reigns, where there are 4-5 events you need to complete if you're going to get the good ending. Whether or not you'll even see those events during each run is completely random, and the correct response to each event isn't intuitive.

Sounds like an awful mix of rogue-like with standard rpg elements. Like, diablo 3 has some elements of that, where each zone has a long list of special events that you wont see every playthrough as the new map is generated, but none of them are vital to quests without automatically being included. For example on bounty runs you will always find the event you need for the bounty on that run.

[Rynjin]

What defines a good design choice? Is it the choice that makes a game the most popular to the widest audience? The one that you, personally, enjoy the most? The one voted on as the best compromise by the design team? The one that gets the game released on schedule as opposed to stuck in development hell? The one that appeals most to the target demographic? All of the above and more?

Careful with making judgement calls like that; some might take offence...

The answer is complicated and most textbooks on the subject give you a copout answer, but one thing most professions that involve designing something do have the same conclusion re: complexity of design: If it adds complexity, it needs to add equal value to that complexity (and preferably more). More complex = more work and more chances for things to go wrong.

If you're adding 27 skills to the game, that's man hours (in coding, bug reporting/fixing, playstesting, etc. etc. across multiple sprints) that can potentially be spent elsewhere. So whatever that adds to the game needs to be worth those hours.

If you can get away with using 13 broader skills instead, that's typically better design. You have a sharper focus, and can spend more time adding more reasons to use those skills, more content to the game that the majority of players can interact with, rather than catering to one niche group each with the 14 less usable skills.

Having 3 different versions of Repair (ex Repair Vehicles, Repair Weapons, and Repair Electronics) will almost never add more value than simply having the singular Repair skill. Any quests or other challenges you could build around Repair Vehicles can just as easily be built around Repair; nothing need be cut from the hypothetical game's content.

Additionally, added complexity decreases usability. Decreasing usability without adding increased functionality is ALWAYS bad design, as at that point you are gating off segments of your potential customers for literally no reason other than your own inability to trim the fat. And no, having 3 different versions of Repair does not increase functionality, as we already covered.

[Morty]

What defines a good design choice? Is it the choice that makes a game the most popular to the widest audience? The one that you, personally, enjoy the most? The one voted on as the best compromise by the design team? The one that gets the game released on schedule as opposed to stuck in development hell? The one that appeals most to the target demographic? All of the above and more?

Careful with making judgement calls like that; some might take offence...


The answer is complicated and most textbooks on the subject give you a copout answer, but one thing most professions that involve designing something do have the same conclusion re: complexity of design: If it adds complexity, it needs to add equal value to that complexity (and preferably more). More complex = more work and more chances for things to go wrong.

If you're adding 27 skills to the game, that's man hours (in coding, bug reporting/fixing, playstesting, etc. etc. across multiple sprints) that can potentially be spent elsewhere. So whatever that adds to the game needs to be worth those hours.

If you can get away with using 13 broader skills instead, that's typically better design. You have a sharper focus, and can spend more time adding more reasons to use those skills, more content to the game that the majority of players can interact with, rather than catering to one niche group each with the 14 less usable skills.

Having 3 different versions of Repair (ex Repair Vehicles, Repair Weapons, and Repair Electronics) will almost never add more value than simply having the singular Repair skill. Any quests or other challenges you could build around Repair Vehicles can just as easily be built around Repair; nothing need be cut from the hypothetical game's content.

Additionally, added complexity decreases usability. Decreasing usability without adding increased functionality is ALWAYS bad design, as at that point you are gating off segments of your potential customers for literally no reason other than your own inability to trim the fat. And no, having 3 different versions of Repair does not increase functionality, as we already covered.

I will add that, in this specific context, good design is one that doesn't deceive the user. If a game gives me a skill or some other option, I expect that investing in the it will reward me. If I find out later that it doesn't, outside some very specific circumstances, that's bad.

[JellyPooga]

The answer is complicated and most textbooks on the subject give you a copout answer, but one thing most professions that involve designing something do have the same conclusion re: complexity of design: If it adds complexity, it needs to add equal value to that complexity (and preferably more). More complex = more work and more chances for things to go wrong.

If you're adding 27 skills to the game, that's man hours (in coding, bug reporting/fixing, playstesting, etc. etc. across multiple sprints) that can potentially be spent elsewhere. So whatever that adds to the game needs to be worth those hours.

If you can get away with using 13 broader skills instead, that's typically better design. You have a sharper focus, and can spend more time adding more reasons to use those skills, more content to the game that the majority of players can interact with, rather than catering to one niche group each with the 14 less usable skills.

Having 3 different versions of Repair (ex Repair Vehicles, Repair Weapons, and Repair Electronics) will almost never add more value than simply having the singular Repair skill. Any quests or other challenges you could build around Repair Vehicles can just as easily be built around Repair; nothing need be cut from the hypothetical game's content.

Additionally, added complexity decreases usability. Decreasing usability without adding increased functionality is ALWAYS bad design, as at that point you are gating off segments of your potential customers for literally no reason other than your own inability to trim the fat. And no, having 3 different versions of Repair does not increase functionality, as we already covered.

This is as may be, but the point stands that "adding 27 skills to a game" is not, in and of itself, bad design. Less is not always more in this regard. If you have the funding/man-hours/expertise to make those 27 skills work in the intended way (which can include niche or esoteric use), it can be good design if the target audience likes or expects the added complexity. Yes, you may cut off certain demographics, but that is a design choice whatever game you're making.

Designing an FPS? You automatically cut off anyone that doesn't like FPSs. Is that bad design? No. Streamline your skill system from 20 skills down to 10 easy to use, simple skills that you can't get wrong? Oops, you just spent man hours cutting content and in doing so, cut off a demographic that would have enjoyed that extra complexity. Bad design? No. It's just a design choice.

Just because you or even many people don't like a certain element, doesn't make it bad design. Bad implementation, poor information sharing, unclear interfaces..these are bad design. Granted, it's easier to get some elements wrong than others, but that doesn't make them bad choices unless you actually get them wrong.

[Balmas]

What defines a good design choice? Is it the choice that makes a game the most popular to the widest audience? The one that you, personally, enjoy the most? The one voted on as the best compromise by the design team? The one that gets the game released on schedule as opposed to stuck in development hell? The one that appeals most to the target demographic? All of the above and more?

Now, I'll freely admit that I might be misreading your post here, but it feels like you're trying to equate personal preference in game mechanics with good/bad game design; since there's no objectively best "preference" in game mechanics, there is therefore no objectively good or bad game design.

Before I spend energy on typing up a rebuttal, am I understanding that argument correctly?

[Rynjin]

This is as may be, but the point stands that "adding 27 skills to a game" is not, in and of itself, bad design. Less is not always more in this regard. If you have the funding/man-hours/expertise to make those 27 skills work in the intended way (which can include niche or esoteric use), it can be good design if the target audience likes or expects the added complexity. Yes, you may cut off certain demographics, but that is a design choice whatever game you're making.

Sure.

Not relevant to the discussion, as it was about a specific game (Wasteland 2), and not a hypothetical.


Designing an FPS? You automatically cut off anyone that doesn't like FPSs.

That's called "choosing your demographic", yes.


Streamline your skill system from 20 skills down to 10 easy to use, simple skills that you can't get wrong? Oops, you just spent man hours cutting content and in doing so, cut off a demographic that would have enjoyed that extra complexity. Bad design? No. It's just a design choice.

...You do realize NOT doing something doesn't take any time, right? Unless you're really incompetent you're not going to implement 20 skills and then spend time removing them. How many skills are going to be in the game is determined before they're added, so it requires no more or less work to DECIDE whether you're going to use 10 or 1000 skills. Except in the sensethat floating 20 skills at all is going to take more time in discussion than 10, but not by a ton, really.


Just because you or even many people don't like a certain element, doesn't make it bad design. Bad implementation, poor information sharing, unclear interfaces..these are bad design. Granted, it's easier to get some elements wrong than others, but that doesn't make them bad choices unless you actually get them wrong.

UI design is completely separate from game design for the most part. Designing a game is about setting goals and executing those goals. If the implementation of your goals conflicts with one or more of your other goals, typically you have a design issue.

Shipping a game with 27 skills where 13 would work is generally going to conflict with goals like "appeal to the average player", "ship the game out on time", and "reduce complexity to increase depth".

It certainly CAN work, but usually does not. look, I love E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, for example, but there's a reason it wasn't a popular game, and a big part of it is the overwhelming complexity it frontloads the game with, and a lot of that complexity didn't actually add much in the grand scheme (why do you need a Pokemon battle minigame to hack an ATM?).

And yes, popularity is a valuable metric in this discussion. It's not the ONLY one, by a long shot, but if your game doesn't sell enough copies to put food on your team's table, it's failed pretty spectacularly, and reducing bloat in your design is a simple way to help keep that from happening.

[Crow]

Here's one that feels like an old-school mechanic, but I'm not sure actually is: highly random games with elaborate quests.

I'm thinking stuff like Reigns, where there are 4-5 events you need to complete if you're going to get the good ending. Whether or not you'll even see those events during each run is completely random, and the correct response to each event isn't intuitive.

Reigns is just garbage. That game screws you for the sake of screwing you.

[JellyPooga]

Now, I'll freely admit that I might be misreading your post here, but it feels like you're trying to equate personal preference in game mechanics with good/bad game design; since there's no objectively best "preference" in game mechanics, there is therefore no objectively good or bad game design.

Before I spend energy on typing up a rebuttal, am I understanding that argument correctly?

Hmm...no (tentatively). I'm saying that the game mechanics are not a valid metric to measure the value of the game design by. Whether your game has 10 or 100 skills, that choice is not inherently good or bad design. The implementation of those skills, whether they be many or few, is what determines the quality of the design. A game can still be bad with few skills, just as much as it can be bad with many.


Not relevant to the discussion, as it was about a specific game (Wasteland 2), and not a hypothetical.

That's where the discussion started, agreed. It's not where it went.


You do realize NOT doing something doesn't take any time, right?

Gosh, really? I didn't realise. Maybe I'm all turned around on the subject because you tried demeaning me. Or perhaps not. Let's have a civil discussion, yes?


Unless you're really incompetent you're not going to implement 20 skills and then spend time removing them. How many skills are going to be in the game is determined before they're added, so it requires no more or less work to DECIDE whether you're going to use 10 or 1000 skills. Except in the sensethat floating 20 skills at all is going to take more time in discussion than 10, but not by a ton, really.

I'm not even sure where to start addressing this. There are a plethora of reasons why a game might end up cutting content. Including game mechanics.


UI design is completely separate from game design for the most part. Designing a game is about setting goals and executing those goals. If the implementation of your goals conflicts with one or more of your other goals, typically you have a design issue.

Shipping a game with 27 skills where 13 would work is generally going to conflict with goals like "appeal to the average player", "ship the game out on time", and "reduce complexity to increase depth".

It certainly CAN work, but usually does not. look, I love E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy, for example, but there's a reason it wasn't a popular game, and a big part of it is the overwhelming complexity it frontloads the game with, and a lot of that complexity didn't actually add much in the grand scheme (why do you need a Pokemon battle minigame to hack an ATM?).

And yes, popularity is a valuable metric in this discussion. It's not the ONLY one, by a long shot, but if your game doesn't sell enough copies to put food on your team's table, it's failed pretty spectacularly, and reducing bloat in your design is a simple way to help keep that from happening.

Popularity is indeed a valuable metric in your design goals, but it's not always the most important one and goals are not always met. That doesn't change my point.

[Rynjin]

I'm not even sure where to start addressing this. There are a plethora of reasons why a game might end up cutting content. Including game mechanics.

And so we're back to implementing things you don't need is a mistake. Cut content is usually due to lack of time and/or resources to finish them, or some kind of publisher mandate.

[JellyPooga]

And so we're back to implementing things you don't need is a mistake. Cut content is usually due to lack of time and/or resources to finish them, or some kind of publisher mandate.

Making a mistake is not indicative of bad design. Correcting mistakes can be an indication of good design. Too many mistakes is probably indicative of bad, granted and trying to correct them can lead to the aforementioned development hell.

[Rynjin]

Making a mistake is not indicative of bad design. Correcting mistakes can be an indication of good design.

I'm going to have to ask you at this point to define your own terms since you seem to be so fond of making everyone else do so for your own convenience, while your own seem to change with every post.

[JellyPooga]

I'm going to have to ask you at this point to define your own terms since you seem to be so fond of making everyone else do so for your own convenience, while your own seem to change with every post.

I'm fairly sure I've been consistent. I have one point; game features are not indicators of whether a game was badly designed or not.

[Rynjin]

I'm fairly sure I've been consistent. I have one point; game features are not indicators of whether a game was badly designed or not.

Yes, you seem to have a whole lot of "this is not" responses lined up but where that surety comes from I'm not sure, since as I mentioned, you've never put forward what it IS.

I'm just curious as to why exactly you are so sure in your own definition of the term that you can so easily dismiss everybody else in the discussion.

[Erloas]

Popularity and game design can't really be directly applied. There are too many variables. There are poorly designed games that sell well just because they have a famous name. There are also really well designed games that sell poorly because they're not in a popular genre. Good games that just don't have the marketing to get found, etc. We've also seen plenty of cases of "good designs" being stapled into genres where they don't really fit, which then doesn't really make it good design.

Like for instance I really don't want to play a match based PvP FPS where there are dozens of "classes" and many of those classes and equipment is locked behind "experience" which, for me, doesn't add anything I want to the genre but it's being done more and more. But it is a perfectly fine design for an RPG and not a problem for a story driven FPS either. Although some people do like that design.

[Amechra]

Reigns is just garbage. That game screws you for the sake of screwing you.

I mean, I figured as much. It's just that I've seen it in other games as well (Hand of Fate, a little bit in FTL and Slay The Spire, etc). I was wondering if anyone knew where that urge to put in sidequests with that many points of failure comes from.

[JellyPooga]

Yes, you seem to have a whole lot of "this is not" responses lined up but where that surety comes from I'm not sure, since as I mentioned, you've never put forward what it IS.

I'm just curious as to why exactly you are so sure in your own definition of the term that you can so easily dismiss everybody else in the discussion.

Because opinion doesn't count.

I should probably addend my previous statement with "their implementation is". A game feature is not a good or bad design choice. Adding a feature to a game and making it useful to the themes and goals of the game is good design. Adding a feature to the game counter to those themes is bad design. The implementation is what makes good or bad design, in light of the design goals of the game in question. Adding a "jump" function to Command&Conquer clone would be both nonsensical and difficult in my opinion. That doesn't make jump functions bad design.

[Rynjin]

Because opinion doesn't count.

I should probably addend my previous statement with "their implementation is". A game feature is not a good or bad design choice. Adding a feature to a game and making it useful to the themes and goals of the game is good design. Adding a feature to the game counter to those themes is bad design. The implementation is what makes good or bad design, in light of the design goals of the game in question. Adding a "jump" function to Command&Conquer clone would be both nonsensical and difficult in my opinion. That doesn't make jump functions bad design.

Sure, but ALL design is evaluated in the context it is given, for the specific game you're talking about.

That's why discussing whether Wasteland 2 has too many skills is a potentially interesting discussion, but arguing for multiple pages about whether there is a hypothetical game where it is good design is a waste of time.

[JellyPooga]

Sure, but ALL design is evaluated in the context it is given, for the specific game you're talking about.

That's why discussing whether Wasteland 2 has too many skills is a potentially interesting discussion, but arguing for multiple pages about whether there is a hypothetical game where it is good design is a waste of time.

I just disagreed with the statement that (to paraphrase) "more skills in a game is always bad". That's been the entire point. I've never even played Wasteland 2 (which I stated in my first post in this thread, I believe); whether or not it has too many skills or not is entirely irrelevant to me. *shrug*

[Amechra]

Because opinion doesn't count.

I should probably addend my previous statement with "their implementation is". A game feature is not a good or bad design choice. Adding a feature to a game and making it useful to the themes and goals of the game is good design. Adding a feature to the game counter to those themes is bad design. The implementation is what makes good or bad design, in light of the design goals of the game in question. Adding a "jump" function to Command&Conquer clone would be both nonsensical and difficult; that would be bad design. That doesn't make jump functions bad design.

I'd say that there are game features that are legitimately bad design choices. If I made a VR game where part of the game mechanics involved smacking your face against a wall, it'd be very difficult for anyone to argue that that would be an appropriate mechanic anywhere.



My own take on this little argument - while having a huge number of skills is not necessarily a bad choice, it's going to usually be an ill-advised one. Good designs are usually relatively small because a given team only has a finite amount of time and effort that they can apply towards a project, and everything pulls from that pool. The time it takes to design and test 90 extra skills could've been spent polishing something else.

Like, seriously, what does adding a large number of extra skills do for your game, in concrete terms? It extends design and testing time, which means that it will cost more than an equivalent game with a fraction of that skill count. And your payoff is that an indeterminate number of people will buy your game who wouldn't otherwise. If you're lucky, that number of people is larger than the number of people who decided not to buy your game because of your design choice. Those don't seem like good odds to me, not in this case.

[Balmas]

Hmm...no (tentatively). I'm saying that the game mechanics are not a valid metric to measure the value of the game design by.
"...Game mechanics are not a valid metric to measure the value of the game design?" That's... I'm struggling to find the right words to express myself. The game mechanics are some of the most important parts of the game's design; if the mechanics don't work, it's badly designed. It's like saying that whether or not a car is a functional vehicle should not be used as an indicator of that car's design.


Whether your game has 10 or 100 skills, that choice is not inherently good or bad design. The implementation of those skills, whether they be many or few, is what determines the quality of the design. A game can still be bad with few skills, just as much as it can be bad with many.

I'm not saying that complex, esoteric skill systems cannot be implemented well, or that some people don't like them. However, as the complexity of the system increases, it becomes harder to implement and balance. A simpler system is easier and quicker to develop, more intuitively understood by new players, and is simpler to implement in a balanced and rewarding fashion in the game world. While a game with simple skills can be just as bad as one with a complicated system, I think you're far more likely to find a complex bad system than a simple bad one.

EDIT:

I just disagreed with the statement that (to paraphrase) "more skills in a game is always bad". That's been the entire point. I've never even played Wasteland 2 (which I stated in my first post in this thread, I believe); whether or not it has too many skills or not is entirely irrelevant to me. *shrug*

And by paraphrasing, you mean misunderstanding. I'm not saying and did not say "more skills is always bad." I'm saying that lots of old games include complexity for complexity's sake, without thought given for implementation.

[factotum]

And by paraphrasing, you mean misunderstanding. I'm not saying and did not say "more skills is always bad." I'm saying that lots of old games include complexity for complexity's sake, without thought given for implementation.

One instance of that where I definitely agree: some older roguelikes would have a different keypress for drinking something as opposed to eating it, and if you tried to drink food or eat water you'd get a snarky message. Why they did this I have no idea--having just one button that does both works fine to my mind. Mind you, it often seemed to me that roguelikes had obscure and difficult to understand control schemes just for the hell of it!

[JellyPooga]

"...Game mechanics are not a valid metric to measure the value of the game design?" That's... I'm struggling to find the right words to express myself. The game mechanics are some of the most important parts of the game's design; if the mechanics don't work, it's badly designed. It's like saying that whether or not a car is a functional vehicle should not be used as an indicator of that car's design.

No, it's more like saying that a cars design isn't predicated on car stereos. Someone might think one stereo is enough, another might think they need five and someone else again might consider a stereo entirely superfluous. Then there's qualitative factors of the stereo; does it have a cd player? iPod docking station? Does it have the latest sub-woofer double magatronic bass? The fact is that the stereo itself is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether you have the right stereo for the car you're designing. The feature doesn't make or break the design. If the stereo is broken and doesn't work, that isn't a fault in the design of the game, per se, but a fault of the stereo itself and that can be fixed whilst still maintaining the integrity of the games design. Yes, if the design calls for an overcomplex feature that is prone to breaking, then the designers should probably reconsider their design, but that is another design choice to make and it still isn't the fault of the feature.


I'm not saying that complex, esoteric skill systems cannot be implemented well, or that some people don't like them. However, as the complexity of the system increases, it becomes harder to implement and balance. A simpler system is easier and quicker to develop, more intuitively understood by new players, and is simpler to implement in a balanced and rewarding fashion in the game world. While a game with simple skills can be just as bad as one with a complicated system, I think you're far more likely to find a complex bad system than a simple bad one.

I don't disagree at all.


And by paraphrasing, you mean misunderstanding. I'm not saying and did not say "more skills is always bad." I'm saying that lots of old games include complexity for complexity's sake, without thought given for implementation.

Who said I was paraphrasing you? My apologies. I used your quote to preface my introduction into this thread and that wasn't, as you say, your stance necessarily. As I mentioned in my original preamble, I used you as a starting point, but it was not my intention to be pointing fingers at you, but rather the conversation you began.

[noob]

I kinda want to see an indie game where you have to unlock easier difficulties, just to be contrary.

Like how Lost Vikings 2 gave all of your characters superpowers if you managed to get a character killed in the first level (which has no enemies or stage hazards).

There is also a devil may cry where you unlock lower difficulties by losing a lot.

[Cespenar]

One instance of that where I definitely agree: some older roguelikes would have a different keypress for drinking something as opposed to eating it, and if you tried to drink food or eat water you'd get a snarky message. Why they did this I have no idea--having just one button that does both works fine to my mind. Mind you, it often seemed to me that roguelikes had obscure and difficult to understand control schemes just for the hell of it!

Kinda true, but in something like ADOM, for example, it becomes way easier and faster to choose with a different keystroke to a) eat something from your 54 foods, b) drink one of your 81 potions, or c) drink from the fountain next to you.

Also, don't quote me on this, but the whole "lots of different keystrokes for different actions" thing in oldschool roguelikes might have evolved from the text adventures and MUDs, so that we don't spend time trying every verb in the dictionary with every item we can see. Not to say that it's not still a bit clunky and outdated, but still.

[Rodin]

Kinda true, but in something like ADOM, for example, it becomes way easier and faster to choose with a different keystroke to a) eat something from your 54 foods, b) drink one of your 81 potions, or c) drink from the fountain next to you.

Also, don't quote me on this, but the whole "lots of different keystrokes for different actions" thing in oldschool roguelikes might have evolved from the text adventures and MUDs, so that we don't spend time trying every verb in the dictionary with every item we can see. Not to say that it's not still a bit clunky and outdated, but still.

Roguelikes developed the different keystrokes for eating and drinking from...*drumroll*....Rogue. The original.

Eating and drinking were entirely different gameplay mechanics. You could only drink potions (which were unidentified and randomized in their effects), and none of those effects related to your thirst or your hunger. Drinking was purely to apply buffs or debuffs to yourself. Eating had one purpose - staving off hunger. There weren't multiple types of food, there was just food. The keystrokes being separate made sense, because when you were hungry you needed to eat and there was no reason to go into your potion menu.

Future versions (Nethack et al) built on both the code and the design philosophies of the original. As such, they wind up with weird stuff like a separate eat and drink button when the game has become complicated enough that the distinction no longer really matters.

[Cikomyr]

Talking about "useless stuff from a previous time that still exist for some absurd reason"

A: and b: drives on Windows install. Come on.

[Amechra]

Talking about "useless stuff from a previous time that still exist for some absurd reason"

A: and b: drives on Windows install. Come on.

What do you map your floppy drives to? Next you'll tell me that my 8-track player is obsolete...

[factotum]

I've only ever seen a: and b: drives if the system actually has a floppy drive installed, and I haven't owned such a system for years. In fact, if you don't have a floppy installed there's nothing stopping you formatting a hard drive as A: or B:--Windows will allow you to do that just fine.

[Cikomyr]

I've only ever seen a: and b: drives if the system actually has a floppy drive installed, and I haven't owned such a system for years. In fact, if you don't have a floppy installed there's nothing stopping you formatting a hard drive as A: or B:--Windows will allow you to do that just fine.

But why not have the default drive install as A:

If you have, for some fetishtic reason, a floppy drive, map it to B or C. Why force the entire business world have a C Drive because Windows

[heronbpv]

But why not have the default drive install as A:

If you have, for some fetishtic reason, a floppy drive, map it to B or C. Why force the entire business world have a C Drive because Windows
Retro compatibility, which is one of the major points for businesses.

Also, reading this thread for a while, it's interesting to see some old mechanics that you love (random encounters, for once, and extensive skill trees for another) being mentioned, and the reasons for the dislikes. I think I can agree that some mechanics may be seem as dated, and inappropriate, but I can enjoy the game so long as the mesh of mechanics, pacing, and music is good.

As for my contribution to the list: bad controls, because that sucks and has always sucked since ever. And micro-transaction focused gameplay, which is my pet peeve with almost all mobile games and most modern AAA games (except card games, for historical reasons).

[huttj509]

As for my contribution to the list: bad controls, because that sucks and has always sucked since ever.

"You don't get it, the tank controls were on purpose to make Resident Evil scarier, it was brilliant!"

Resident Evil literally came out before analog sticks were a thing on home consoles, and was working on figuring out the genre in general, so I give it a lot of slack, but that doesn't make the tank controls *good.*

What it did do pretty well was design around its controls. Most of the enemies were slow and deliberate, so you have time to adjust and react. Everyone remembers the famous/infamous dogs for a reason. :-)

[heronbpv]

What it did do pretty well was design around its controls. Most of the enemies were slow and deliberate, so you have time to adjust and react. Everyone remembers the famous/infamous dogs for a reason. :-)

Indeed. I remember liking RE3 a lot, for the few hours I played it. Just proves my point about "the mesh is the end goal that matters", even though in this case it is with something I don't miss, the tank controls.
On the other hand, RE2 remake shows clearly that the design can definitely be improved with modern takes, but then a lot of things had to be changed in order for it to make sense for the remake, see the new enemy behavior (and Mr. "I hear you" X).

[veti]

But why not have the default drive install as A:

If you have, for some fetishtic reason, a floppy drive, map it to B or C. Why force the entire business world have a C Drive because Windows
If you produce a Windows computer that doesn't have its primary working hard drive mapped to C:, you will immediately break tens of thousands of installers, .ini and config files, readmes and troubleshooting guides. Some of these will break immediately and obviously, but others will just subtly misbehave in ways that no one will be able to diagnose until they decide to spend a couple of days really focusing on why their template upgrade isn't working as expected.

Most people will never get that far, they'll just return the computer to you complaining that it doesn't work. There's no way to a happy ending from that position.

So why should anyone attempt it? What's the point?

[Cikomyr]

If you produce a Windows computer that doesn't have its primary working hard drive mapped to C:, you will immediately break tens of thousands of installers, .ini and config files, readmes and troubleshooting guides. Some of these will break immediately and obviously, but others will just subtly misbehave in ways that no one will be able to diagnose until they decide to spend a couple of days really focusing on why their template upgrade isn't working as expected.

Most people will never get that far, they'll just return the computer to you complaining that it doesn't work. There's no way to a happy ending from that position.

So why should anyone attempt it? What's the point?

Microsoft could just change the default installation path to A: drive?

I mean, will people in the year 2541 install their OS on their C: drive still?!

[Erloas]

I believe that A and B being set to floppy drives is built into the motherboard standardization from decades ago. I'm sure it pre-dates Windows, it probably pre-dates microsoft.

[Rynjin]

Microsoft could just change the default installation path to A: drive?

I mean, will people in the year 2541 install their OS on their C: drive still?!

...What does it matter if they do?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Microsoft could just change the default installation path to A: drive?

I mean, will people in the year 2541 install their OS on their C: drive still?!

Are you really hurting for drive letters so badly that you begrudge backwards compatibility?

[veti]

Microsoft could just change the default installation path to A: drive?

I mean, will people in the year 2541 install their OS on their C: drive still?!
Microsoft can change whatever, but that does nothing to update the software produced by thousands upon thousands of other companies that runs on Windows.

If you pay attention to such stories, you may remember the sad tale of Munich city government's attempt to migrate to Linux. In 2012, a wealthy and sophisticated city of 1.5 million people decided to ditch Microsoft from its city govt and go full open source. They spent almost five years trying to make this work, before admitting defeat and going back - because, apparently, no one had realised how complicated it was. The city government, it discovered, relies on some 800 separate applications, about half of which don't run on Linux at all and those that do, don't do it smoothly.

So think about those 800 applications for a minute. We're not talking about email and mail merge and spreadsheets - those things are perfectly well covered in Linux. We're talking about the applications that manage the city-run art galleries and cemeteries and rubbish collection and sports programmes and land registration, signposting, animal welfare, libraries, parks, elections, storm drains, fire safety, and dozens more things we could spend all day trying to list. Those programs are not maintained by Microsoft, they're maintained by countless small software businesses - such as the one I used to work for - called, with various qualifying adjectives, "partners" of Microsoft.

And that is the ecosystem that keeps Microsoft in business. MS has an incredibly strong interest in not upsetting those thousands of businesses.

As for what we'll be doing in 50 or 500 years time, MS's bet is that long before then we'll have completely lost interest in where anything is stored, the operating system will manage that in the background. Of course that will also require work from all those "partners" of theirs, but it will be suitably dressed up in the language of upgrades and new tools and features and, above all, it will be interesting and/or fun, if you're into that sort of thing, to develop. Not like "changing a letter".

[huttj509]

Are you really hurting for drive letters so badly that you begrudge backwards compatibility?

Not even just backwards compatibility. There are times when "THIS IS THE NEW STANDARD, EVERYBODY CHANGE" is warranted with the fuss it creates. This...is probably not one of those times.

[tyckspoon]

Microsoft could just change the default installation path to A: drive?

I mean, will people in the year 2541 install their OS on their C: drive still?!

If we're even still using the same paradigm of file management by then, it'll probably all be dynamically-managed symbolic links. Your 'install location' will be your User folder or equivalent but the actual data will just be somewhere in the storage volume with no defined or preferred home; the OS will manage the actual location of stuff and update the target of your link as needed. But yes, primary storage will probably still be conventionally referred to as 'C' because humans don't tend to change anything like that without an actual reason (and no, 'there's no reason to keep this and nobody remembers why it's this way' doesn't count as a reason. If it did the floppy disk wouldn't still be the icon for 'save file'.)

[factotum]

Microsoft could just change the default installation path to A: drive?

I mean, will people in the year 2541 install their OS on their C: drive still?!

As Veti points out, it's not Microsoft you need to worry about, it's sloppy third party developers who will assume the Windows installation drive is C: and their programs will break if it's not. Don't imagine this sort of thing doesn't happen--I was an early adopter of Windows 2000 back in the day, and I had a problem with the game "X-Wing: Alliance". Basically, rather than using the DirectX API to determine what the 3D capabilities of the system were, it just checked the Windows version and assumed that any NT kernel based OS would not have hardware 3D acceleration, because Windows NT 4.0 didn't support that. Windows 2000 did, but the game would insist that it didn't and wouldn't allow you to run it in hardware mode.

For a similar reason, despite the massive differences between the operating systems, Microsoft made the version number for Windows 98 4.10.1998 (while Win95 was 4.0.950), because there were actually third party applications that would check the first digit of the version and refuse to run if it was anything other than 4, or would complain if the minor version was less than 950. They bought several years of additional backwards compatibility with that trick.

[Velaryon]

There is also a devil may cry where you unlock lower difficulties by losing a lot.

I really hated how Devil May Cry handled easier difficulties. It really came across to me as "LOL you suck, play on easy mode instead loser!" I'm sure it can be done in a way that doesn't come across as insulting, but as a general rule I think lower difficulties should be available from the start.

[Aeson]

I really hated how Devil May Cry handled easier difficulties. It really came across to me as "LOL you suck, play on easy mode instead loser!" I'm sure it can be done in a way that doesn't come across as insulting, but as a general rule I think lower difficulties should be available from the start.
I personally don't see any good reason to deny players access to difficulty settings at game start regardless of whether the locked difficulty levels are lower or higher.

[Velaryon]

I personally don't see any good reason to deny players access to difficulty settings at game start regardless of whether the locked difficulty levels are lower or higher.

Yeah, I'd agree with that.

[Rynjin]

I personally don't see any good reason to deny players access to difficulty settings at game start regardless of whether the locked difficulty levels are lower or higher.

TBF to DMC (but not DmC) some of the difficulties fundamentally change the way the game is played (Heaven or Hell and Hell or Hell), and those are usually the ones you need to unlock. I think in most you can play Normal, Hard, and Master from the start, though sometimes Master needs to be unlocked by beating a level on Hard first, I think it varies by game. Typically you can also unlock a difficulty for a specific level and then immediately play on that difficulty; you don't need to play the whole game on Hard to unlock Master.

[Toric]

I personally don't see any good reason to deny players access to difficulty settings at game start regardless of whether the locked difficulty levels are lower or higher.

For me it's a matter of how important the default difficulty is from a design standpoint. With DMC I can see the argument that by the end of the game you should develop the skills to look AMAZING in combat, and lower difficulties deny the player that reward. But yes, the execution was terrible. Lock the difficulty until after the first chapter, prompt the player to slide up or down based on how they fared. Done, nobody's insulted (unless they're a huge OG DMC fan playing the reboot game's first chapter).

[factotum]

I wonder what the first game was that locked the higher difficulties? The oldest one I can definitely remember that did it was Diablo 2, where you had to complete Normal, Nightmare and Hell difficulty in that order--however, in that game the harder difficulties were balanced on the assumption you'd have a higher level character, and the only way to *get* a high level character was to go through the lower difficulties, so it all kind of made sense.

[Rodin]

I wonder what the first game was that locked the higher difficulties? The oldest one I can definitely remember that did it was Diablo 2, where you had to complete Normal, Nightmare and Hell difficulty in that order--however, in that game the harder difficulties were balanced on the assumption you'd have a higher level character, and the only way to *get* a high level character was to go through the lower difficulties, so it all kind of made sense.

Considerably earlier than that. Legend of Zelda had it with Second Quest, unlocked after beating the game. Kirby's Dream Land had Extra Mode. Mario Kart unlocked additional cups and 150cc mode as you completed them. Super Mario Land had a hard mode with extra enemies that was unlocked after beating the game. Ditto Super Castlevania IV.

I'm sure there are plenty of non-Nintendo examples as well that I am forgetting - those are just the ones that come to mind from playing them as a kid.

I don't mind locked harder difficulties under those circumstances - it's essentially giving you more game to play in a way that would break the game for a first-time player. I wish more games did it, in fact. Giving nastier versions of the same content is a lot more fun than just "all enemies have 20% more HP and damage".

[Lord Torath]

I wonder what the first game was that locked the higher difficulties? The oldest one I can definitely remember that did it was Diablo 2, where you had to complete Normal, Nightmare and Hell difficulty in that order--however, in that game the harder difficulties were balanced on the assumption you'd have a higher level character, and the only way to *get* a high level character was to go through the lower difficulties, so it all kind of made sense.The first Diablo did this as well. Until you killed Diablo on Normal, you couldn't play on Nightmare, and the same for Nightmare and Hell difficulties. If you had a Hell-level character, you could open a Multiplayer game, leave the game and switch to a new character, and then if you didn't access the difficulty screen, your next game would be Hell difficulty - good for leveling new characters quickly.

[Spore]

I wonder what the first game was that locked the higher difficulties?

I'd look at any sort of gaming that uses this as "padding". A damage/health multiplicator is literally just a line of code and thus easy to tack unto a small game. But arcade game also immensely profit from a second quest ala Ghouls and Goblins tacked onto the original run.

In that vein, padding your game to the brim with pointless stuff. I even liked it when Skyrim did it with its radiant system (even tho the radiant stuff is boring af) but stuff like "rob three households before you can continue your thieves guild quest" is literally busywork.

And when stuff in a game gets more boring than WORK for me I think I'm doing the wrong things then. I prefer a concise gaming experience to one that needlessly throws stuff at me.

[Keltest]

I'd look at any sort of gaming that uses this as "padding". A damage/health multiplicator is literally just a line of code and thus easy to tack unto a small game. But arcade game also immensely profit from a second quest ala Ghouls and Goblins tacked onto the original run.

In that vein, padding your game to the brim with pointless stuff. I even liked it when Skyrim did it with its radiant system (even tho the radiant stuff is boring af) but stuff like "rob three households before you can continue your thieves guild quest" is literally busywork.

And when stuff in a game gets more boring than WORK for me I think I'm doing the wrong things then. I prefer a concise gaming experience to one that needlessly throws stuff at me.

I think that system would have worked better with a Morrowind style system that required certain levels of skills to advance the main quest lines. So all you actually need to advance in the Thieves' Guild quest is good thief skills, but if you need something to train up on, here are some radiant quests so you can at least get paid for it.

[Vinyadan]

One instance of that where I definitely agree: some older roguelikes would have a different keypress for drinking something as opposed to eating it, and if you tried to drink food or eat water you'd get a snarky message. Why they did this I have no idea--having just one button that does both works fine to my mind. Mind you, it often seemed to me that roguelikes had obscure and difficult to understand control schemes just for the hell of it!

I think that Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has been great in making the user interface actually enjoyable. To make an example of an old pitfall that is now luckily gone, Crawl has vampiric weapons. They absorb health from your enemies and they transfer it to you. However, because they are so powerful, they used to be limited in that you could only swap them by increasing your hunger.

However, in very old versions of Crawl you needed a tool to chop up corpses for food. If your weapon had a blade, you would use your weapon. If your weapon was e.g. a mace, then your character would instead use a pocket knife. To do this, he would unwield the weapon, chop up the corpse with the knife, and then wield the weapon again. Unfortunately, this meant that you could suffer an instadeath by starvation when you butchered a corpse while wielding a vampiric mace.

[Amechra]

I'd look at any sort of gaming that uses this as "padding". A damage/health multiplicator is literally just a line of code and thus easy to tack unto a small game. But arcade game also immensely profit from a second quest ala Ghouls and Goblins tacked onto the original run.

In that vein, padding your game to the brim with pointless stuff. I even liked it when Skyrim did it with its radiant system (even tho the radiant stuff is boring af) but stuff like "rob three households before you can continue your thieves guild quest" is literally busywork.

And when stuff in a game gets more boring than WORK for me I think I'm doing the wrong things then. I prefer a concise gaming experience to one that needlessly throws stuff at me.

I can think of one example where the difficulty settings actually matter. In Hero Core, Hard mode changes all of the enemy and boss patterns, and starts you off in a different part of the world map. Then Annihilator Mode is a completely new map.

But that's really the only game I can think of where there's that big of a difference. And in any case, you can play both Normal and Hard right off the bat.

[Lord Torath]

I can think of one example where the difficulty settings actually matter. In Hero Core, Hard mode changes all of the enemy and boss patterns, and starts you off in a different part of the world map. Then Annihilator Mode is a completely new map.

But that's really the only game I can think of where there's that big of a difference. And in any case, you can play both Normal and Hard right off the bat.Thief: The Dark Project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief:_The_Dark_Project) made a similar difference, but you could select the difficulty for each mission before starting. On the first mission, for Easy mode, the mission ended once you reached the object of the heist. On medium difficulty, you had to grab the object and then escape the manner, without killing any non-combatants. On hard difficulty, you had to do all that without killing anyone.

On the second mission, on easy mode you just needed to reach the cell block without triggering an alarm, which would end the mission. On medium, you had to rescue your friend and reach the exit, and on hard you had to do that without triggering an alarm and without killing anyone, and there were additional enemies in the beginning of the mission.

[factotum]

On hard difficulty, you had to do all that without killing anyone.


And I found out the hard way that the game knew that dropping an unconscious person into a six-inch puddle of water was very likely to drown them, because I did that on one mission and then got a mission fail about a minute later when I was just walking up a corridor.

[Cikomyr]

And I found out the hard way that the game knew that dropping an unconscious person into a six-inch puddle of water was very likely to drown them, because I did that on one mission and then got a mission fail about a minute later when I was just walking up a corridor.

****. It would consider Batman killings as *killings*?

It's so unfair