Kids Can't Handle Old-School RPGs Anymore

[Tyrannowalefish_Rex]

'tis true. I count myself among them. Never played much of Fallout although I like all Infinity-Engine games. Learning to play it feels to me more like learning a handwork than immersing oneself in a fictional world.
Whatever stats you choose, you'll probably make some mistake the first dozen attempts, and finding them out requires first-hand experience in extremely cumbersome gameplay. That's ten hours of nothing, and then you are merely at the beginning, and can feel all good about how "hardcore" you are, and how many possibilties are open to you, and how "tactical" it is to kill a rat in half a minute instead of two seconds.

 

[shadow741]

They have a class where the main thing about it is playing video games and learning about them!! I WANT IN NOW!!!!!!

 

[zombays]

Well reading the manuals is pretty much the only way you can actually play an Ultima game, and even then it's also harder to play 2 or 3, which pretty much tell you nothing about what you're actually supposed to do. At least Ultima 4 is clear on that. Also, I find it's actually easier to play old-school RPGs now, thanks to the glories of internet walkthroughs.

Am I the only person who ever reads the manual? I love reading the fluff that comes with videogames, and when it comes to CRPG's, you often NEED to read the manual.

Stupid children.


EDIT: Then again, it might be because I'm so damned old. 29 isn't exactly a spring chicken anymore.

I'm always disappointed with manual sizes nowadays, back when I bought Age of Empires 2 you got a manual the size of a freaking book, detailing everything, unit stats, upgrades, actual historical value, etc. Now I'm lucky to actually get a manual, or to get one over twenty pages (the first five describing how you install the game).

I think this is true with a lot of old games. I downloaded Final Fantasy 7 over PSN and I could not get into it. It's not even very obscure like Ultima IV. I'm 16 I feel a little shafted not getting being able to play some of these awesome old games (I just can't get a grasp on Mega Man).

Is it a combat issue or a plot issue that turns you off from Final Fantasy 7? 'Cause you're not alone, 7's plot is very 'love-it-or-hate-it' and I'm part of the latter category.

Civilization IV's manual made my brain explode, and I am also dissapointed with some "game manuals" like the call of duty series, where it tells NOTHING of the events or anything like that, I enjoyed Red Dead Manual and World of warcraft's and halo's manuals.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

Education dumbed down younger generations...

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

To be fair to the kids, the logic that Richard Garriot employs in the Ultima series is batshit insane. I can forgive them for having trouble grasping it without, say, an FAQ.

 

[Blind Sight]

Civilization IV's manual made my brain explode, and I am also dissapointed with some "game manuals" like the call of duty series, where it tells NOTHING of the events or anything like that, I enjoyed Red Dead Manual and World of warcraft's and halo's manuals.

The Mechwarrior series had epic manuals too, they were written like you were an actual recruit, so it plays itself like a military handbook, very cool.

 

[hurfdurp]

More importantly, there is a course on the History of Videogames? I wonder what that's like.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Sounds like they just didn't realise that old computers didn't have enough space in memory for a lot of text so a lot of content had to be put on paper. The kids are all right, apart from the ones who aren't.

 

[Neofishie]

In my opinion, it's not about just "modern gamers need tutorials" and "we were so much smarter back in the day." I do think that there's a touch of that, but I think it's that video games are turning into something more akin to a sport, where they used to be an interactive story.

Think about all of the buzzwords that were dropped in the late 90's and early 2000's. I personally remember "cinematic" being one of them. Developers gained the hardware to create cinematics and cutscenes. Players grew up thinking that the first 15 minutes would explain to them what was going on and what they had to do, and then had to follow the dotted line to get from one scripted sequence to another. If done well, say in a well crafted FPS, this is very enjoyable, but in my opinion, doesn't fully utilize the fact that video games are an interactive story.

Think Halo to Deus Ex. I love both games (Disclaimer: I'm currently working my way through Deus Ex for the first time. Praise be to Steam), but Halo's story is the same every time. Chief enters room, kills everything. Dues Ex has options.

Jump back 10 more years and all games have to offer is choices. Can't program a story, it takes too much space. So let's write it all down and ship it with the game.

That's my two bits.

 

[Nieroshai]

Ah yes, Ultima 4. Where you had to talk to everyone in the world and sometimes in a particular order in order to know what to do, and grass and the floor are the most insidious enemies you will ever facee! This game isn't just hard now, it was hard back then. But back then there was no expectation of knowing where to go in most games, so people dealt with it better and consigned to turning the game into a PnP game wiith an interactive screen. It's not that we can't handle it. It's that it's stupid to have to handle it when games have gotten so much better at letting you know what the hell is going on beyond you simply needing to become the avatar.

That and no one has the patience to draw a detailed map of the entire world and have to write down every phrase spoken in case it might be a clue.

 

[Mcupobob]

1985? Oh good, so I wasn't even alive yet. Now I don't feel bad about having never heard of it before.

Also, those students seem a bit silly. Sure, I'd probably try to play first without the manual too, but once I was confused as all hell, I'd go back to the manual and read it instead of just giving up.

What this guy said. If I get stuck I go back and read the manual or replay the tutorial. Hell sometimes I just go back and do that to see if I'm missing out on something, can't tell you how many times i've played a game only to find half-way through there was a move or button that made things a 100X easier.

Can't belive how lazy these kids are, giving up on a game without leaning how to play it first? Pssh they're not gamers, just lazy assholes looking for a easy A.

 

[Space Jawa]

In other words, in-game tutorials and constant references to "Press X to do Y" have made people complacent.

 

[Xaryn Mar]

It just shows that too few people of today knows the very good acronym: RtfM.

Everything has (or at least should have) a manual and in order to use it correctly you have to read said manual. I would never turn a new electronic item on without reading the manual (whether it be before or during) and neither would I play a game (any kind of game) without reading the manual/rules.

 

[open trap]

I love reading the manuelo, im disappointed when there isnt onbe or just a bisic controll scheme one.

 

[Fensfield]

Bah, kids these days...

Me, I still go back and read manuals for fun. It's just.. nice. I mean some of the manuals are absolutely awesome. Outpost 2 had all those little short stories for every last unit and building in the game, and Homeworld had all that lore about the Kadeshi setting..

Admittedly, modern game manuals are brief, boring, and spoiler-ridden at times.. is the manual a dying art?

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I guess this is why they need to Dumb down Dragon Age 2. The old school first one was just too much for them.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

Honestly, I don't think that kids not reading the manual is an excuse for the game being hard to get into. If you can't explain yourself in-game, then how well can you possible explain the rules in the manual? And if you simply feel like not explaining how to play inside of the game, you are being lazy.

Having a manual is fine, requiring a manual is bullshit. What if you lost it? The game would have been nigh unplayable at the time, right?

Really? no games required a manual unless it was the copy protection.
Even Ultima 4 can be fairly easily played by taking your time and seeing what happens, a manual let you get there quicker and allowed you learn a very complex game far faster and better than a tutorial.
However even something a seemingly simple as Baldurs gate had a massive manual detailing how the ad&d system had been butchered to fit the game, what actions would definitely get you in trouble and a fair chunk of background information. These days you want to minmax your RPG character you get on a forum or look for a FAQ back then you took half an hour out of your life to actually read the manual and figure it out yourself.

And as for losing the manual, ever heard the phrase read, listen, repeat? By reading about something in detail, seeing it in game and then applying it freely you actually learn the game, once played never forgotten. With a modern game you probably don't bother to remember how to play as it has a tutorial, you can always just replay it later; right? Either that or it just uses exactly the same controls and in game actions as every other game in it's genre. anyway.

Still have my old Elite 2: Frontier Manual laying about, now that is a manual.

Now there's a thought; I might read the fiction half of that manual tomorrow.

 

[Bobzer77]

I was born in 1992, have played all the old classics including Ultima IV and love my manuals... does that make me special?

 

[Nieroshai]

We're too used to good graphics and intuitive interfaces, I guess?

There's nothing intuitive about the unskippable tutorials most games have now. Intuitive was MegaMan and even that seems too hard to grasp.

The only "hard to" part about Megaman I remember was having to guess who was weak against what, and what order to take the bosses on in. That and it's a genuinely difficult platformer. Not Ninja Gaiden hard, but hard enough to have to use several continues on a first playthrough. A thing about modern games is the principle that dying a lot=/=fun so the default difficulty is made so that a beginner will die some but a seasoned player can breeze through it. That's what hard modes are for.

Andtutorials truly are there because we're too lazy to read the manual. OR that we got the game at Gamestop without the manual. OR that reading isn't enough and you want to practice first. OR because learning how to play flows into the narrative and the character as well is just learning how to do these things.