clippen05 said:
Simple Question really. I feel that gamers no longer feel scared in games, whether they be RPGS like Skyrim to FPS's like COD. In cod, no one cares when they die. If they see an opportunity to get 5 kills but know they'll die they'll take it. Similarly, in Skyrim you have a savepoint always backing you up so bosses are no big deal. I know that some people don't want to die with the stress of this, and that's fine. But perhaps there could be a separate mode in some games that caters to those who feel death is too painless. One example in shooters is long respawn times or long walks to get into battle (Both ala Red Orchestra: OST, not so much Red Orchestra: HOS. But this causes camping and that doesn't solve much. I can't really think of an example in RPGs or any better ones in shooters so that's why I ask you: what can be done? Now I know some people can say, "You can rolepay or limit yourself" Sure, ok, but I want things that are in line with the gameplay not things that I have to force on myself. Also, b4 someone says, "Play 1 life gamemodes" for FPS's realize that those gamemodes have a very narrow range of gameplay options. I want Conquest for BF3 just with an added incentive not to die? Not neccesarily ARMA level realism (which is nice) but just something that will make the player fear death. Tell me Escapists, can this be done? Again, I restate, I don't want this to be included in every game because that wouldn't be fun, I just want there to be an option where applicable.
You are writing about both multiplayer and singleplayer modes,but I think it would be better if we split these 2 to different categories,because I can see why someone would want death to be more feared in a single player mode/game,but things like time penalty for respawn in online FPSs is annoying bro!
The one most important reason players have to fear of their death in multiplayer FPSs is that they will get a bad kill/death ratio on their statistics page,and that's it. And now that we are talking about it doesn't need anything more than that,because it's just competition.
Now for single player games I can agree that I generally miss the thrill of being afraid of dying in games,even if I'm currently playing Dark Souls,where you really do fear of dying.
Another game I felt fear for dying recently was S.T.A.L.K.E.R.,but this game was a Horror game anyway,so death was as fearsome as just walking outside at night where you can't see 10 meters away from you without your flashlight,and you hear howls and scream without knowing what's hiding in the darkness...
Well the truth is that there is a trend in the industry,and that trend is to make games easier regarding challenge,and simplified regarding level structure,and mechanics/gameplay complexity. The thing is the publishers are trying to make the non-gamers crowd to buy their games,because they want to enlarge their customer base. There are lots of people who won't enjoy a good game,but say that are gamers to be "in" as it is a fashion they have to follow,so they buy a console and a few games so they can say to their gamer friends "hey I play games too",but the problem is that the non-gamer who will buy some games to kill his time,seeing games as "oh another thing to kill hours which is in fashion" won't have the will or time to spend in a good game to learn how it works,and invest appropriate time on it to become good at it,and usually these guys get annoyed when they get their hands on a game like that,and then they bash said game for loosing lives in it,which is because they didn't cared enough to play it the way it was meant to be played,because this bunch of jerks are too 'busy' to have to spend more than 20 minutes to learn how a game works in a tutorial,and they are also too busy to spend 10 minutes to read a manual,and because they still want to be able to finish games, games are primarily designed nowdays for lazy people who will ***** if the game doesn't tell you everything you need to know in the first 20 minutes on a tutorial.
As a by-product of games being designed for this targeted audience,games are becoming more and more easy to play,and penalties in them have almost vanished. If you compare games of a certain series from the past,and their latest installments you will probably find out that the modern installments are much more easier and simplified than the older ones.
Compare the difficulty of Return to Castle Wolfenstein,where in the later half of the game you could just die in seconds by a simple enemy type,with the 2009's Wolfenstein game where your health regenerates,and you also have magic abilities like raising a protection field that blocks all enemy's attacks which can last for considerable time.
Compare Zelda: Majora's Mask where you had to finish every quest in certain time,or else you would have to either travel back in time and have to start the quest from the beggining,or the moon would crash and you would loose your gamesave and then you would have to start THE COMPLETE GAME ALL OVER AGAIN,with Zelda: The Twilight Princess,in which I completed my first playthrough without loosing a single life until the game's final boss.
The companies want more money,and for that they will try to capture a larger audience to buy their games. Because of this they are trying to appeal to non-gamers by making games much easier,so people who aren't interested in investing time in their games can still play them and think they don't suck. The rest of us can go fuck ourselves,because it seems the amount of people who are non-gamers but would play a game if they only had to press the A button the whole time and have the game tell them that they are awesome,is much bigger than the amount of people that would like to find some depth in a game so they have something to master and get good at it.
Seems unfair for 'hardcore' gamers,but that's what the majority of developers and publishers want,and there's nothing we can do about it.
