In Defense of Hepler Mode

[Iron Criterion]

Pretty much all Bioware games would be improved if you could skip the combat. Since combat in most Bioware games is pretty bad.

Hell, it seems when given the option, plenty of people will gladly jump on the chance to skip shitty parts of a game. [http://dragonage.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=816].

However, for, say, Bioware games (or RPG's in general), they could just give us a way to skip combat through dialog. Like, say, you get ambushed, leader starts gloating, you use your super-awesome speech skills to persuade him/her to back off.

Bam, combat section skipped.

Really wish Bioware, and more developers for that matter, let you do that. Let you really exercise that speechcraft and charisma score. Of course some people you may have to fight no matter what, but you could still talk to them first, and whittle down their confidence and moral to make them easier to fight. Maybe have a button that let you throw combat taunts of your own. Or something.

KOTOR 2 played with this idea. Only with Sion, but still. HK-47 tells you the best way to kill a jedi (or sith) is to mess with his/her mind. Erode their confidence. You could do this with Sion, and his skills would decrease, and you'd eventually talk him into dying (or "letting go").

This is probably the best way to implement a Hepler Mode. It'd give a Deus Ex feel to the game if you could either charge straight into the combat, be more tactical about it or talk your way out of it entirely.

 

[Damien Granz]

In Defense of Hepler Mode

Shamus offers support for a "Hepler Mode" in games.

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What the crap?

She's talking about an option, not a mandate.

"Grr, I'm the internet, and I hate people having options I don't myself want to use!". It's like people that are against cheat codes and the like in single player games.

"You beat your version of Mass Effect 3 hours before me! I must kill myself!".

This anti-option in single player sentiment honestly is why I hate Trophies/Achievements in games. It forces single player games to play by the mindset that governs multiplayer games, two things that have different goals entirely. It suddenly makes your single player actions 'matter' to mine by virtue of an online score board when realistically they don't and shouldn't.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Never played 3 but ME2 combat was so agonizingly dull and repetitive that I started looking for a mod that let me skip it. Then I started playing soldier and it amounted to pretty much the same thing. If they had that mode for 3 I might buy it but if its more of the same then no thanks.

The answer to treyus academy is jedi consular. Put your level ups in wisdom and nobody can resist your force powers. Aoe paralyze (or choke), pew pew, move to next room.

 

[FredTheUndead]

Pretty much all Bioware games would be improved if you could skip the combat. Since combat in most Bioware games is pretty bad.

Hell, it seems when given the option, plenty of people will gladly jump on the chance to skip shitty parts of a game. [http://dragonage.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=816].

However, for, say, Bioware games (or RPG's in general), they could just give us a way to skip combat through dialog. Like, say, you get ambushed, leader starts gloating, you use your super-awesome speech skills to persuade him/her to back off.

Bam, combat section skipped.

Really wish Bioware, and more developers for that matter, let you do that. Let you really exercise that speechcraft and charisma score. Of course some people you may have to fight no matter what, but you could still talk to them first, and whittle down their confidence and moral to make them easier to fight. Maybe have a button that let you throw combat taunts of your own. Or something.

KOTOR 2 played with this idea. Only with Sion, but still. HK-47 tells you the best way to kill a jedi (or sith) is to mess with his/her mind. Erode their confidence. You could do this with Sion, and his skills would decrease, and you'd eventually talk him into dying (or "letting go").

This is probably the best way to implement a Hepler Mode. It'd give a Deus Ex feel to the game if you could either charge straight into the combat, be more tactical about it or talk your way out of it entirely.

But that would actually be intelligent and creative! It's quite beyond a company as utterly worthless as modern Bioware.

 

[The Wooster]

I disagree entirely, Shamus.

Giving lazy developers an excuse not to develop content in order to appeal to a small few is obviously a slippery slope.

I mean, look what happened when we introduced subtitles into games. Developers just stopped adding sound to games. Now every game is silent, and that sucks.

How about when developers introduced difficulty options like "hard mode" to games? Now every game is impossible. Where does it end, Shamus? Where? Tell me Shamus. Where? Where?

 

[ms_sunlight]

Can anyone release the most awesome story based game in the world though? Planescape Torment after 12+ years still holds the #1 place in these para-olympics of storytelling.
Maybe if storytelling in games much improved I can see a couple hours of just cutscenes and dialogues being worth my time.

Well, the Bioware writers seem to think they can, so let them try. Maybe the response of the gaming community will be amusing to watch atleast.

You know, The Brothers Karamazov is a really, really good book. It was first published in the 1880s. It's okay if something which is an older piece of storytelling holds the crown as one of the greatest - in fact it's one of the marks of a mature medium.

The best RPGs - like Planescape: Torment, which I've played through a couple of times myself - have so much more than combat and cut scenes. Dialogue, branching choices, puzzles, non-combat actions dependent on character stats (e.g. opening the bronze sphere, understanding the unbroken circle of Zerthimon). Cut all the combat from Planescape: Torment and you'd still have a hell of a lot of gameplay.

If anything, Planescape: Torment is a bad example to bring up in making this point; it's one of the RPGs with the least combat I've ever played, and the combat there is is not very good. (At least, not compared to other isometric D&D games like Icewind Dale or Temple of Elemental Evil.)

 

[secretsantaone]

Because snarling invectives at someone and rationalizing abusing them for merely saying something you disagreed with without the slightest hint of humor or irony just makes you an asshole? I don't know, maybe I was just raised better.

Lets take the original quote shall we?

As for Hepler herself, while the community at the time certainly didn't handle things correctly, she IS nothing less than a living tumor, one of many Bioware developed and rotted down to nothing because of.

The metaphor here is that Hepler's actions at Bioware resemble that of a tumour. She was grown on the inside by the host, and her actions and poor writing are slowly killing the company. Notice how he also says 'one of many'. This isn't just directed to Hepler, but the dropped standard of many writers at Bioware. I believe he mentioned David Gaider as well in a later post.

But thanks for the arrogance, I've been nothing but civil so far.

What do you even mean by 'movies are more accessible'? That they're catering to the lowest common denominator? Why is that a good thing?

That's seriously the first assumption you went for?

Well yeah, that's kind of what 'more accessible' means. If you cater to the lowest common denominator you are, by definition, marketing your product to the largest amount of people.

And why is it invalid when people compare movies to books all the time even though those are "fundamentally different?"

Firstly, why have you even brought books into the situation? I never even mentioned them. Secondly, I never said comparing movies and games always made your point invalid, I merely said that you cannot treat them as the same just because they are both entertainment. They both have individual qualities that must be taken into account.

Think about the market for movies for a moment. Even if the major studios are too busy pandering most of the time to take their heads out of their asses, there are movies literally for everybody. No matter what race, social class, cultural background, or general overall taste is, there are movies being made for you. They are ingrained into our pop culture. They're one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world. How is that bad?

They're catering to lots of different markets, I never said that was a bad thing. In fact it's great. Attempting to cater to multiple markets at once by making games 'more accessible' however, is a bad thing for gaming.

With videogames, 'more accessible' means you have to simplify gameplay.

Interestingly, that is a gross oversimplification. Everyone acts like simplicity is a bad thing, yet they also are pretty quick to tell us how much they loved Shadow of the Colossus. There's also a difference between being complex and being convoluted.

In most cases it's a bad thing, but I will admit that it can work in some games. SoTC however, I would argue isn't one of these. I would define accessibility as someone who has never or very sparingly used a controller before, picking up a game and being able to play without much difficulty. If I was going to introduce someone to gaming, SoTC would not be where I would start.

If you want to expand your audience you have to make it so people who are unfamiliar to gaming can play it and not get frustrated.

Here's another major stumbling block to your argument. Take Minecraft for example. The mechanics are very simplistic, but everybody loves it. But not all games need to be exactly like Minecraft.

Minecraft is unique in that's it's pretty much it's own genre. There's nothing to really simplify from existing mechanics. Though I'll admit the left click/right click controls do work pretty well and are simple enough for new players to learn.

You are either mistakenly or intentionally conflating simplicity with poor quality and a lower barrier to entry with lowering quality all across the board. If it's the former, you're just getting yourself worked up over nothing. If it's the latter, you're doing more damage to games than good.

It's frustrating to see that when you've been playing games for years, that instead of pushing boundaries and adding to existing mechanics, people are scaling them back just to appeal to other potential customers.

Gameplay is what makes the game, movies can afford to deal with more general ideas and less controversial concepts because they can make up for it with clever cinematic techniques and good acting. If you're dumbing-down gameplay, you're always going to get a poorer quality game.

So you rush to protect games from those smelly, stupid casual gamers and then insult the entire medium in the same breath. Jesus...

It's not really an insult to say dumbing down gameplay will make for a worse game. It's like saying using poorer quality ingredients will lead to a worse meal.

It's called a metaphor.

And you suck at using them. Don't use rhetoric as an excuse to justify being a tool.

Did you honestly just say 'I suck at using metaphors'? Seriously, give me a real argument, rather than 'you're a tool'.

It's called an insult, metaphor or not, and it's unnecessary.

I'm not going to repeat myself, but suffice it to say that anyone who thinks Hepler (ONE writer) is the problem with Bioware, or even a major problem, is deluded. Plus a huge amount of the criticism was based on completely fabricated "quotes." And the vagina comment was a) a response to the gender-based slurs being levelled at her ("*****" and "****" may not seem so bad to you, but believe me they feel like cheap moves if you're a woman) and b) nowhere near as bad as half the stuff so-called "fans" were coming up with. Are people supposed to just roll over and take these outrageous comments? Sure, it may have been a bit unprofessional but I can't say I blame her given what she had to put up with.

Believe it or not, I am a big fan of a lot of Bioware's games. I'm pissed off with some of the things they've done recently. I'm not a massive fan of everything Hepler has written (though I did like her stuff in DA:O, which people tend to conventiently forget when writing her off). I'm just saying people don't need to be throwing these disgusting insults about. It's difficult to make a reasonable point when people insist on acting like this.

Firstly, take a look at the top of this comment for my response to the insult/metaphor thing.

Secondly, yes, if you're a professional representing a company when talking with your fanbase, you roll over and take it. You do not engage in petty tit-for-tat comments which not only further enrages the people without serious arguments, but pretty much undermines everyone who does.

Any sympathy I might have had for Hepler disappeared when I saw those comments.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

So basically gamers are getting angry that someone suggested taking out the game bit of games. What did anyone expect? It was a pretty stupid suggestion.

No, christ how many times does it need to be said? Giving people the **** gargling option to skip. If you don't want to skip don't. Then just ignore how everyone else is playing the game because it doesn't affect you.

I'm not saying I would oppose it but why would anyone waste $80 on a game when they could watch the bit they want on Youtube for free?

 

[DestinyCall]

I would totally use Hepler mode, especially in action adventure style games which have an interesting story/character development aspect along with a lot of fighting. As much as I enjoy certain parts of these games, I often find the fight scenes too intense. I hate being shot at or dying repeatedly. I especially hate dying and repeating a specific fight over and over until I finally get through. While some people find this kind of challenge very satisfying to overcome, I just find it emotionally draining.

I don't have any problem dialing the difficulty back to the lowest setting to get through, but sometimes even that isn't enough or just plain isn't an option. There are a few games I've had to watch other people play because watching let me distance myself from the action a little more. Less stressful, more fun. But not the same as actually playing it myself.

Since I play games for an enjoyable escape, it doesn't make much sense to play frustratingly difficult or stressful games. The trade-off is that I have to give up experiencing some potentially good games.

 

[FredTheUndead]

"They treat us like animals so we'll shit on the floor," is not an acceptable rationale from people who are supposed to be adults.

So why defend Hepler, who did exactly that?

I believe he mentioned David Gaider as well in a later post.

Yes, yes I did, and I hate Gaider too. Now, I hate him LESS than Hepler, because the man actually knows how to avoid fire rather than dive into it, indicating he has some sense of self preservation. He basically keeps his fucking mouth shut unless he's directly talking about what he's going to do in Dragon Age, and when responding to easy targets, like "family values" groups whining about gay marriage. He manages to cultivate his awful little dating sim fanbase carefully and only sticks his neck out to fight with easily knocked down opponents for some internet cred. He doesn't draw the kind of hatred to Bioware that Hepler does, so he's not a complete press disaster. He IS however just as bad of a writer, but he found his audience and knows how to handle them. Professionally speaking, that puts him above Hepler (however barely), thus I mention him less.

 

[Timmibal]

@Timmibal - Changing the argument so it's easier to argue against? Classy.

I'm not changing the argument. I'm taking what she SAID in context, to determine what she MEANT. And the only thing I can infer is that Ms. Hepler would prefer an interactive movie with a dialogue wheel that doesn't involve any kind of effort, challenge or time commitment. Due to her self-admission of being adverse to games, this is not surprising.

People, there's more to gameplay than just combat. There's more to challenging gameplay than combat. There's more to games than combat. Just because it's the only thing you care about doesn't mean it's the only thing that exists, and no-one is suggesting that you should be forced to skip the parts you like. And I don't see how being able to skip individual gameplay segments means the whole game turns into a movie. What if I just want to skip a particularly badly made segment but nothing else?

Read my post again, Ms. Hepler has only been involved in RPG derivatives, so that's what I limited my response to. A good RPG has multiple methods to achieve the same goal, and as I said previously, many of those alternate paths are more challenging than a straight up fight.

Sorry if I offended you, I want to preface this by saying that I'm no misogynist, but that doesn't mean I don't believe bitchy women, or men for that matter exist. I just wanted to take the word back here in america. Apparently the word **** is more offensive than the word "******" in America these days and that bullshit needs to stop. Also she kind of is a ****

You didn't offend me man, but look at the responses. All of them are attacking your method of delivery rather than dealing with your argument.

Unrelated to the topic at hand, can people explain to me why Hepler is such an allegedly unequivocally terrible writer?

Look up the reviews of her novel on amazon. They go into FAR more detail than I'm willing to waste on it without being paid for the effort.

Edit - Huh... Looks like someone did a 'DELETE FUCKING EVERYTHING' on the reviews and ratings. There were at least 10 there last time I checked. Oh well, maybe I'll elaborate in a later post.

Her work on The Anvil of the Void questline in Origins was an incredibly atmospheric and well-paced piece of storytelling, with each scrap of information pertaining the fate of Branka's house uncovered slowly but surely to finally reveal the true extent of the horror it involved.

Really? I felt it was a bit 'paint by numbers' considering the darkspawn exposition we had already received, and that was before I knew Hepler was involved. Admittedly at that stage I was already sick of the damn deep roads.

She was also responsible for Bethany and Leandra in DAII, both of whom were very sympathetic and grounded characters.

Both of whom you spend the LEAST amount of time interacting with. Kind of hard to fuck up a bit role. And it would explain why I felt more connection to the damn dwarf than my own mother in that game.

I get the distinct and unpleasant feeling that a majority of complaints regarding Hepler are really just tied to her having an opinion on games which doesn't necessarily ring true to the base.

Personally, I just think she's a sub-par author. It is compounded by her admitted desire to see game writing 'achieve' the level of a childrens author (Rowling) and the producer of one of the most universally panned literary abominations of this generation (Meyer).

Specific to her view on games, however. Do you trust a Jeweller with an allergy to gold? A vegetarian Butcher? A Chocolatier who hates chocolate? An abstinent Brewer or Vitner?

If you are working in a creative medium and you do not have a passion for the thing you create, you should find another job for the sake of your customers.

- That, and her being a woman in a subculture inhabited by a very peculiar and nasty breed of misogynists.

Rim shot.

Go read this Awesome Post I just snipped.

I... I think I love you...

 

[secretsantaone]

No, it doesn't work as a metaphor. It's a lot of overblown melodrama. And you're still speaking in defense of people who aren't civil, so I consider you accessory to their bullshit.

So still no argument other than 'no it isn't'. Great.

So there's you and the lowest common denominator and there's nothing in between

A lower common denominator if you want to be pedantic.

Firstly, why have you even brought books into the situation? I never even mentioned them. Secondly, I never said comparing movies and games always made your point invalid, I merely said that you cannot treat them as the same just because they are both entertainment. They both have individual qualities that must be taken into account.

But there are parallels, that's my point.

But you cannot compare them without taking the differences into account too. That's my point.

So branching out to different markets is not accessibility? News to me.

Not if you're specifically aiming at one target audience. If you're making a kinect game aimed at families, and the gameplay, marketing and franchise as a whole is aimed at this target market, I have no problem with that. That's just good design.

If you take existing franchises and attempt to cater to many multiple audiences through 'accessibility', that's what I have a problem with.

In most cases it's a bad thing, but I will admit that it can work in some games. SoTC however, I would argue isn't one of these. I would define accessibility as someone who has never or very sparingly used a controller before, picking up a game and being able to play without much difficulty. If I was going to introduce someone to gaming, SoTC would not be where I would start.

So you equate simplicity with a lack of challenge?

Not simplicity, but accessibility. There's no point in attracting people who don't play games if you're just going to drive them away by making your game difficult for them.

Minecraft is unique in that's it's pretty much it's own genre. There's nothing to really simplify from existing mechanics. Though I'll admit the left click/right click controls do work pretty well and are simple enough for new players to learn.

So it still counts.

Like I say, it's unique. You have given just one example. A simple control scheme does not instantly make an accessible game either. VVVVVV has a simple control scheme, but it sure has hell isn't very accessible to someone who's never played a game before.

It's frustrating to see that when you've been playing games for years, that instead of pushing boundaries and adding to existing mechanics, people are scaling them back just to appeal to other potential customers.

So basically you're telling me that my assumption is correct. Okay then.

Point remains. I want there to be a lower barrier to entry. That does not mean all games have to have mechanics as minimalist as Minecraft. You can have Minecraft and still have Dark Souls at the same time. You can have Little Big Planet and Skyrim. You can have Farmville and World of Warcraft. These concepts are not mutually exclusive.

The concepts of being hard and easy in the same game ARE mutually exclusive. I'm not talking about having different games for different markets. I'm talking about consciously expanding a games target market by dumbing down.

I'm glad you mentioned Skyrim. Many agree it's a good game, but to those that played Morrowind, you can't help but see it's been made 'more accessible', and it's suffered for it.

No, I was referring to you effectively saying that games are inferior to film because film has far more tools at its disposal to artistically tackle controversial subject matter.

No, it has more tools to tackle stupid subject matter. You'll find a lot of people say 'You can make a good film out of anything'. The same cannot be said of videogames if the gameplay is lacking. If you do not have good gameplay, you do not have a good game.

That does not make it inferior, and nowhere did I even imply that, it's just that the one element is much more important.

Calling someone a cancer for saying something you didn't like, especially given all the abuse leveled at the person, while simultaneously claiming not to condone abuse strikes me as duplicitous and crass. Whatever happened to saying, "I disagree with you, but I don't hate you."? When did we as a community decide that saying something disagreeable made everything fair game?

Again, you're taking it purely as an insult rather than the allegory the context implies. I even gave you the context in my last post.

No. No, I do not morally accept that. No matter what position a person is in, they are entitled to speak in their own defense. You do not have a right to harass someone just because you don't like them.

And don't give me any excuses about her response to the goon squad's attacks on her. "They treat us like animals so we'll shit on the floor," is not an acceptable rationale from people who are supposed to be adults.

Does she have the right to defend herself?
Yes

Should she have defended herself in the manner that she did?
God no

I'm not defending the people who used ad-hominem attacks on her. What I'm saying is the way she reacted did nothing to help her or the company she was representing and only served to belittle the genuine criticism and dismiss it as sexist. Surely her reaction was exactly "They treat us like animals so we'll shit on the floor". It was just as presumptuous and stupid as the people attacking her.

 

[axlryder]

I didn't really see a whole ton of actual outrage, more so just people wryly jeering Hepler. Admittedly, what I saw was hilarious and I honestly don't normally care who offends who so I was indifferent at the time. Still don't care.

As for her idea, if devs want to put something in their game, then do it, test the waters, see how people respond. If they like it, good, if they don't, trash it or tweak it. There will invariably be an inordinate amount of bitching from the detractors who feel this new feature is "sullying the purity of their games" or some crap.

My personal opinion? It may too early for something like this to exist in standard AAA project and, given the risky nature of implementing in new ideas, probably not very practical right now either. The appeal of such a feature, while existent, is probably catering to the minority. Ultimately, I imagine if something like this was included then unlocking specific story elements or bonus features would ONLY be possible if you actually played the game. Perhaps some other way of "earning" the "100%" story could be determined. To me, the biggest issue with this is that all of the "work" and thus accomplishment is eliminated from the experience. Immersion, identification and emotional bonding take a hit too. For me, those factors tend to replace what video game writing often lacks in substance. I think writing in vidjya games is really gonna need to kick it up a notch for me to even care about something like this. Although, I'm really just thinking of DA2 right now, so perhaps I'm looking at this whole situation through shit tinted lenses.

As for Hepler, it seems to me she just managed to inadvertently reinforce her own negative feminine stereotypes (or at least, people chose to perceive her statement that way) and also be part of the atrocious dragon age 2 writing. That was enough to paint a target on her back.

 

[axlryder]

I disagree entirely, Shamus.

Giving lazy developers an excuse not to develop content in order to appeal to a small few is obviously a slippery slope.

I mean, look what happened when we introduced subtitles into games. Developers just stopped adding sound to games. Now every game is silent, and that sucks.

How about when developers introduced difficulty options like "hard mode" to games? Now every game is impossible. Where does it end, Shamus? Where? Tell me Shamus. Where? Where?

This gave me a good laugh. Thank you.