This makes me wonder how the Switch version will tackle this. Other games that traditionally didn't have a pause button added a pause feature for the 3DS version (like the Monster Hunter series).Seth Carter said:
OT: Forced grinding.
Outdated game design
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
- Start date
OT: Forced grinding.
Physical controls. I expect no less than telepathic synchronisation with my modern gaming experience. These goddamn scrub developers need to up their literal games if they wanna gitt gudd in the imminent sphere of tactile frontal lobe ascendency.
[small] (Or is it telekinetic, if I'm moving a character still? Telepathetic? Eh, don't care)[/small]
[small] (Or is it telekinetic, if I'm moving a character still? Telepathetic? Eh, don't care)[/small]
i like your ideaSilentpony said:
it would be good if it can be applied to games like "Return of Warrior" in where the combat system is non-targeting means you can control where you can attack hahaha go for the headshots hahaha lol if it could be made possible
Absolutely. Goddamn. Freaking. Nothing.
You want to know why games will never be regarded as art? Why the whole medium is stuck in an infantile holding pattern?
It's because of this mentality right here.
Did the movie industry decide that black and white was outdated once colour arrived? Of course it bloody didn't. Movies like A Night To Remember, The Longest Day, Schindler's List and The Artist all arrived long afterward, but used black and white as a creative choice. Do people read Shakespeare's plays and simply think 'oh how out of date?' No- they see past the mere period it was created in and can appreciate it for its timeless human qualities. Does everyone throw out cars that can't drive as fast as the latest supercars? Of course not. Some may have a style or charm that isn't seen in the current generation, and so they choose to preserve them.
As for games, if something worked for a game, then it serves its purpose. Done. End of story. Lifebars, for example, give you the second clearest indication possible of exactly how far something is from destruction at any given moment (the best will probably always be a percentage display). I've seen games replace lifebars for the amount of smoke pouring out of something, obscuring the view ahead and making the whole experience much worse that it used to be with a life bar. Driver Parallel Lines, for instance. Thankfully they brought back the life bar in D:SF, a much, much better game overall.
So no, I wouldn't call anything out of date- just different. less intuitive in some cases perhaps, but just about everything can be made to work well in a game when used by someone with clear enough sight to know where to put them.
I agree with this. Was thinking something similar and you've articulated it for me. Maybe some games can age in terms of 3D graphics, but everything else is very subjective as to what makes something unplayable. It's usually to do with preference. People have argued with me on this site numerous times about things like 'the controls in resident evil' or 'the lack of navigation in the original Thief games', but at the end of the day, I, like many people, enjoy these games more with those features than most modern games.Squilookle said:
People find games enjoyable or they don't - that's all there is to it. It's not about being outdated - it's about what's popular at the time. Some people thought 70s music was outdated in the 90s until it went full circle when many bands took on the style again in the 2000s. Then it became popular again. Go figure.
The classic outdated is the good old days were you used arrow keys only in an FPS. No one needed all those extra buttons in reach.
Other outdated game design features though is excessive menus. The philosophy should always be that the least number buttons you have to press to get to a thing in menus, the better. But some games love to bury menus in menus, and ask you "are you sure?" for everything. Valkyria Chronicles is the worst I've seen for this sort of thing, but most RPGs could do with streamlining these systems: Skyrim/Fallout shouldn't be a spreadsheet simulator with a fighting minigame on the side.
Other outdated game design features though is excessive menus. The philosophy should always be that the least number buttons you have to press to get to a thing in menus, the better. But some games love to bury menus in menus, and ask you "are you sure?" for everything. Valkyria Chronicles is the worst I've seen for this sort of thing, but most RPGs could do with streamlining these systems: Skyrim/Fallout shouldn't be a spreadsheet simulator with a fighting minigame on the side.
Agreed. Reminds me of my experience with Dragon Age: Origins; the menus were so kludgy and convoluted, it actually made me as angry as I was confused. Don?t mistake me; I like a game with reasonable depth in customization and leveling systems, but when your menus have sliders that have sliders with sliders, you?ve attained Inception levels of obfuscating complexity, and lacking the Hans Zimmer score to drown out the ?thinky? parts of the brain long enough for me to enjoy myself even on accident, you?ve done little more than overlaid an Excel spreadsheet with a graphical interface.maninahat said:
No, in movies 'overused' means overused. Really not sure how you could fail to understand this.CaitSeith said:
I have similar feelings about Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magik Obscura. I love the ideas behind it, especially being able to create a very specialized character. Unfortunately, this comes at the cost of a character creation/upgrade screen which is not close to intuitive and has WAY too many things to try to figure out at the beginning of the game. It also doesn't help that the opening village/area doesn't really give you much in the way of experience or equipment, so if you happened to build your character wrong(again, pretty likely considering how opaque the process is), well, looks like you aren't getting past the bandits who guard the only bridge out of town(who are surprisingly tough for early game enemies).Xprimentyl said:
Complicating this is a tech system that takes a lot of investment to be made particularly worthwhile and if you don't know how the system works, but think it would be fun to play a gunslinger who can invent stuff? Hope you know exactly what you're doing because if you don't, you've likely wasted your limited Experience and resources with little ability to gain more(because grinding enemies isn't really feasible that early in the game and you can't leave the opening area without killing or talking your way past the bandits who are really good at murdering you).
Look, I don't need every game to be a JRPG where leveling up just increases stats with no player input at all, but having to read player guides to have any hope of building an early game viable character feels like there was a failure in the design process somewhere along the way. I could reasonably build a character in the early fallout games, which is ironic considering members of the Interplay Fallout team made this game too.
Fuck, I'd kill for a remake of that game where they just cleaned up the character creation/upgrade screen to be reasonably initiative, as well as revising the opening area to be better at teaching you gameplay mechanics and making the tech path a lot more viable earlier in the game(as opposed to the magic path which is easier to use).
There's no such thing. As "outdated" as far as game design goes. There are situations where any style or feature can enhance a gaming experience. Look at the 16-bit style comeback in indie games. A game like Stardew Valley doesn't get better with current realistic 3d graphics. And ANY style or feature can be useful... given the right situation.
Oh the magic path in that game was OP as hell. It's actually really easy to get past that those bandits at the gate if you grind enough to get the first fireball spell, which you can do by going out to the world map and circling around the opening village and purposely running into random encounters. Just save a lot because it's very easy to die to a random pack of wolves. Once you have that you can veritably lay waste to them, the gate they were guarding, the chest nearby, and just about everything in the immediate vicinity.Dalisclock said:
I can example that. The camera controls for ps2's Tecmo's Deception 2 and 3, non-inverted freaking X axis... no options to change. But can I see a situation for that... sure can. Randomly switching camera axis control when your character is drunk springs to mind. Again, test me... I can find a situation where ANY feature or style is appropriate. Squilookle and dscross are absolutely correct, there is no such thing as "outdated" design.dscross said:
While I get the idea behind what you're saying, I'll have to disagree and add on top that comparing video games to movies or cars is misguided. People don't throw out cars that can't drive as fast as the latest supercar, but they do replace old cars for ones with better gas mileage or handy features like air conditioning. I'm pretty sure no one is still defending the Lada as the best car ever made and that there's nothing wrong with it. The same way all movies aren't in black and white with cameras strictly in place anymore. The previous two were technological necessities dictated by the technology of their time that became obsolete. Today they're a conscious stylistic choice.Squilookle said:
Are you seriously saying that for example there's nothing wrong with the controls of the original System Shock? That there's nothing to improve about them and they're fine as is? Or that the top-down view in GTA 1 was totally fine? All of history is absolutely packed with technological creations that were good enough for the time, but ditched the instant something could do the same thing better.
I think what I'd say in defence of the 'there's no outdated game design' idea, is that for every person who says there's something 'outdated' in how a game operates, there'll be another person who still enjoys that feature.bartholen said:
Your reference to the top down approach in GTA is an good example of this. I like it. Same with the RE1 controls, as another example, I prefer it to the new ones. I'm sure it's possible for these design elements to come back into vogue in the future in a different series. (Although I suppose if a game was never fun for anyone in the first place, that's a different story).
To elaborate further, i feel that the idea of a specific game being outdated is usually either a product of the zeitgeist or of what people perceive to be 'better' owing to technology progression. Sometimes features can come back into vogue - things that were once retro can find their way back into the mainstream.
Just because something is not popular now doesn't mean everyone finds it 'unplayable'. But, more to the point, it doesn't mean a new generation won't enjoy it more than the 'improved' versions if the old style becomes popular again. If we are to take video games as art, as has been suggested, 'improvement' is a subjective term, unless it was actually quite poor in the first place (as with most art forms).
Skilled workmanship, execution, or agency, as distinguished from nature.Squilookle said:
That definition is as close to art as games can get. Outside of having artistical elements, they have always been more of a product and more recently a service.
Skill also changes over time due to increased experience and new technologies. If everything back then was ?good enough? for today, things would be quite different.
As an addendum I?d say it?s practically inevitable to be mincing definitions here for a concept as superfluous as art. A person could also call a car a work of art, but there?s no denying its main purpose is to be used, and in some cases even manipulated. True art is meant to be simply observed, reflected upon and either appreciated or criticized, or both. That may describe video games half way at best.