As many, I play games for stress relief and enjoyment. It's nice to know that you can put your money down and get an agreeable time from it. But there's a few concepts that bother me to the point that change my feelings for a game almost instantly. And they normally all have to do with Scaling.
1.) NPC Auto Leveling: To me, this is one of the single most dumbest design that has ever come out the gaming industry. There is nothing that tells me my time grinding was useless more than NPC Auto-leveling. Why did I spend hours grinding to get enough points to get the Super Nova ability when a Thief in rags that I had difficulty dispatching with my rusty sword doesn't die outright to it?
It's also world immersion breaking. I got the fabled sword of legends that was supposed to slice mountains in half, but I still need to do a solid minute of combos to destroy a creature I was introduced to at level 3?
For a particular egregious example of this, see what we found out about in Anthem and the level one rifle [https://kotaku.com/anthems-level-one-weapons-are-stronger-than-endgame-one-1833103893]. The game was designed to look at your character, figure out what your medium damage output would be... and then hinder it to make you want to grind for bigger and better weapons. Actual math [https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-03-16-anthem-fan-uses-the-power-of-maths-to-prove-loot-doesnt-matter] was used to find out how much the game kneecaps you to create a need for grind that can never sate you.
Imagine paying money for a power fantasy specifically designed to make sure you'll never get it.
And that's one side of the Scaling Coin.
2.) Adaptive Difficulty:The other side reared its ugly head this year as well in Resident Evil 2 Remake using Adaptive Difficulty [http://gametyrant.com/news/the-resident-evil-2-remake-will-have-adaptive-difficulty-similar-to-resident-evil-4]. In the beginning, I loved this game. So much.
Then I started noticing the luck situation. How more and more instant headshots became rare. And sometimes, the fabled Shotgun blast to the face would just blow a zombie's face away but it will still shamble forward like nothing happened. I thought even my luck couldn't be that bad. But then I learned about Adaptive Difficulty.
Some people who know me know that I love Left4Dead and think that it's weird that I can still love Left4Dead's AI director but hate REmake 2's Adaptive Difficulty. And I say that it's simply not as severe. An Infected in Left4Dead won't mutate to suddenly be able to tank 7 rounds of your m16 because you're doing very well. But as recently as today, I can hit a zombie in the head 4 out of 6 shots in REmake 2 without even a stagger.
If every time I pull a trigger, I get penalties for being good at the game, I suddenly don't find that game that appealing.
So, those are some of my gripes. As always, please feel free to share yours.
1.) NPC Auto Leveling: To me, this is one of the single most dumbest design that has ever come out the gaming industry. There is nothing that tells me my time grinding was useless more than NPC Auto-leveling. Why did I spend hours grinding to get enough points to get the Super Nova ability when a Thief in rags that I had difficulty dispatching with my rusty sword doesn't die outright to it?
It's also world immersion breaking. I got the fabled sword of legends that was supposed to slice mountains in half, but I still need to do a solid minute of combos to destroy a creature I was introduced to at level 3?
For a particular egregious example of this, see what we found out about in Anthem and the level one rifle [https://kotaku.com/anthems-level-one-weapons-are-stronger-than-endgame-one-1833103893]. The game was designed to look at your character, figure out what your medium damage output would be... and then hinder it to make you want to grind for bigger and better weapons. Actual math [https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-03-16-anthem-fan-uses-the-power-of-maths-to-prove-loot-doesnt-matter] was used to find out how much the game kneecaps you to create a need for grind that can never sate you.
Imagine paying money for a power fantasy specifically designed to make sure you'll never get it.
And that's one side of the Scaling Coin.
2.) Adaptive Difficulty:The other side reared its ugly head this year as well in Resident Evil 2 Remake using Adaptive Difficulty [http://gametyrant.com/news/the-resident-evil-2-remake-will-have-adaptive-difficulty-similar-to-resident-evil-4]. In the beginning, I loved this game. So much.
Then I started noticing the luck situation. How more and more instant headshots became rare. And sometimes, the fabled Shotgun blast to the face would just blow a zombie's face away but it will still shamble forward like nothing happened. I thought even my luck couldn't be that bad. But then I learned about Adaptive Difficulty.
So, the choice here is artificially make the situation harder because you happen to have skill or turn on hand-hold mode... so skill also doesn't matter. This is a no-win situation for a gamer like me.Talking about the difficulty in REmake 2, producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi said that:
"In terms of the standard difficulty, it does adjust based on player performance. I'd like to believe that you were doing really well and so the difficulty ramped up even more. But we have it tuned so that no matter how well you?re doing, there's always going to be that sense of dread and tension there. Also, we are definitely implementing things that assist the player if they choose to utilize that stuff such as auto game. If a player thinks, 'Here, I'd rather have an easier time going through this,' we will have those sorts of options as well."
Some people who know me know that I love Left4Dead and think that it's weird that I can still love Left4Dead's AI director but hate REmake 2's Adaptive Difficulty. And I say that it's simply not as severe. An Infected in Left4Dead won't mutate to suddenly be able to tank 7 rounds of your m16 because you're doing very well. But as recently as today, I can hit a zombie in the head 4 out of 6 shots in REmake 2 without even a stagger.
If every time I pull a trigger, I get penalties for being good at the game, I suddenly don't find that game that appealing.
So, those are some of my gripes. As always, please feel free to share yours.