Streamlining that you agree with

[Zhukov]

You cant really mean that when Thief 4 and Deus Ex Invisible War exist.

I have not played Thief 4.

I don't think it was the streamlining that made Invisible War bad.

 

[wings012]

You cant really mean that when Thief 4 and Deus Ex Invisible War exist.

I don't think it was the streamlining that made Invisible War bad.

Indeed, but never the less universal ammo was a pretty stupid idea.

 

[Zhukov]

You cant really mean that when Thief 4 and Deus Ex Invisible War exist.

I don't think it was the streamlining that made Invisible War bad.

Indeed, but never the less universal ammo was a pretty stupid idea.

I had absolutely no problem with universal ammo.

I wouldn't say it made the game noticeably better, but at no point was I thinking, "Gosh, if only I was picking up separate ammo for my pistol and my crossbow, this game would be awesome."

 

[wings012]

You cant really mean that when Thief 4 and Deus Ex Invisible War exist.

I don't think it was the streamlining that made Invisible War bad.

Indeed, but never the less universal ammo was a pretty stupid idea.

I had absolutely no problem with universal ammo.

I wouldn't say it made the game noticeably better, but at no point was I thinking, "Gosh, if only I was picking up separate ammo for my pistol and my crossbow, this game would be awesome."

I thought it completely janked weapon balance. While more powerful weapons did use more ammunition, there was seriously little point using anything but the mag rifle or rocket launcher if you wanted to gun stuff down.

 

[The Lunatic]

Honestly, I'm more of a complicated is better sort of person.

I prefer ME1 over all the others, and I've never forgiven them for removing armour from the game. Though, they did readd it in Andromeda, shame about the rest of the game though.

Skyrim, sure, the game feels better to play that Morrowind, but, I find the depth of Morrowind just makes it a better RPG.

Dragon Age 2 and 3 aren't even the same genre as DA:O as far as I'm concerned.

I prefer Xenonauts to the New XCOM games.

Path of Exile offers so many more options than Diablo 3, it's kinda depressing.

It's not really some snobby "OH, GAMES ARE SOOO SIMPLE THESE DAYS" sorta thing. I guess it's just a desire for more from the games I enjoy.

Skyrim for example, perfectly fun game. But, there's a reason I mod it to fuck to add a bunch more things to do.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

A pretty typical answer but the hacking in Bioshock 2 was way better than the original.

I prefer the original head and shoulders over the sequel but I won't deny the hacking, as well as most of the game mechanically, is a tick or two more sound than the original.

 

[Valiance]

QoL changes, HUD/GUI improvements...

A few that come to mind:

More visible pickups games (UT 2K4 shield/armor pickup icons as opposed to UT99 for example); data being more easily parsable even if by only half a second is actually really helpful in a fast-paced game.

Better management tools - compare, say, Master of Orion 2's colony build queues vs Master of Magic where the player must constantly set the next building for construction as soon as the previous is finished, instead of queueing up four or five (Yes, I know this was improved in both games significantly with mods).

Since the games are turn-based, it's not removing mechanical skill - doing the same thing in Starcraft Broodwar or Age of Empires would completely change the action-economy of the game, as it is indeed "part of the game" at a high level, as opposed to Total Annihilation / Supreme Commander / Sins of a Solar Empire where your APM can be like 30 because it is more heavily balanced towards the strategy and tactics rather than the fast clicking (which is still skill! just a different kind of skill!)

Auto-loot / group-loot in MMOs, instead of having to rightclick 30 bodies you just AoE'd down.

Making information more visible to the player is usually a good thing.
Making it easier for the player to perform actions in a turn-based or single player game is almost always a better choice.
Simplifying needlessly complex systems can be a great thing, but simplifying complex systems that are complex for a reason can really destroy the gameplay and alienate the core audience.




Since X-Com is mentioned a lot in this thread, I think it's worth looking at something like "The Bureau: X-Com declassified" as streamlining I wouldn't like (streamlined to the point of a different game) and nu-XCOM as an example of decent streamlining. I still prefer the originals, but I can see how they had to make it easier to get into to reach a wider audience, and I'm not mad. Also, I must be in the minority because I enjoyed reading game manuals and I actually *liked* the air game in X-Com UFO defense (it is even better in X-Com Apocalypse!)

Good Streamlining: Quake 3 to Quake Live. Bad streamlining: Quake 3 to Quake Champions.

Etc.

 

[laggyteabag]

I think a lot of the changes that HotS made to the MOBA genre has made it accessible, more fast paced, and generally more fun.

It seems that Blizzard looked at LoL and DOTA2 and just cut away at the unnecessary fat.
Items? Boring. They take you away from the battle, and most only give unfun stat boosts. Let Heroes upgrade their abilities on the field, and throw in some really interesting boosts and buffs, too.
Runes and masteries? Tried it - community didn't like it. One player shouldn't have an advantage over another before the game even starts.
Last hitting? Unfun. Only causes arguments between teams. A kill is a kill, and the whole team benefits from that.
Only one map? Thats kinda stale. Different maps give you more variety than the hero you pick. No point staying with one forever.
Unlocking abilities as you level up? Thats slow. Give every hero their Q,W, and E when the game starts. It encourages early team fights, and it makes them much more interesting.

I just think HotS has done so much for the genre. I don't think that I would ever want to play LoL or DOTA again.

 

[Kyrian007]

My example would be FF 8's junction system over FF 7's materia system. Each piece of materia needed 100 or more (some of them way more) combats to level up. Grind, Grind, Grind, Grind, GRIIIINNNNNDDDDD. FF 8, one combat could net me 3 complete stacks of some spell. Then I never had to grind that specific monster ever again. You really only have to fight each type of monster once. Soooooooo much better.

 

[iwinatlife]

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Heroes 6 - a lot of it.
- buy your population from anywhere - I love, love, love the series but when I look back, I realise just how much time I've spent collecting my troops. In Heroes 3 the god strat was to have both the Wisdom skill, so you can learn Town Portal and the Earth Magic skill, so you can actually choose your destination. Thus you finally solved your population collection issue. But it was still boring. Go around, purchase all the troops, repeat - on large maps it became tedious. Just being able to buy all troops from everywhere makes more sense.

- removing some resources - if you're not familiar, the series has ran on the following resources: wood, ore, mercury, crystals, gems, sulphur and gold. For pretty much all intents and purposes wood and ore are the same thing - they have the EXACT same exchange rate with everything else and for the most part a building will need equal measures of both. Occasionally you get something that needs lots of one but not the other but whatever. As for the rest, mercury, crystals, gems and sulphur are in the same boat, although they do have a higher exchange rate than wood and ore. Well, also buildings do want exclusively one most of the time. At any rate, you essentially have three tiers of resources - gold, a common resource (wood and ore), and precious resources (the rest). Heroes 6 did stripped down precious resources to a single one: blood crystals. As interesting is to be strapped for those 3 mercury you need to build something, it's also incredibly frustrating. In most cases, each race has a high demand for one of the precious resources, so if you cannot secure income for it (entirely possible on random maps), you are in a bad place.

- removing random skill selection for a skill based system - if you've ever played the series enough, you'd have had a level up when the choices you have simply suck. It's super annoying when that happens. In general, you don't have a good ability to plan out your heroes, either - some skills are more likely for some classes, but other than that, you cannot really guarantee you'll get any. That's why that Wisdom/Earth Magic combo is strong - you could easily just not be able to get it. Heroes 6 instead gives you skill points on level up and you can just buy whatever skills you want in the skill trees.

- you no longer gain spells from the magic guilds - it's now actually a skill you buy with skill points. Again, the reasoning for why I like it is similar to the skills themselves - the spells you get are random and you can definitely just not have Town Portal at all. Even if you take over another town, you are not guaranteed to get useful spells, since you can get duplicates. And I can't express just how disappointed I've been when I get Summon Boat or Scuttle Boat on a map that doesn't have any water in H3. There is a good selection of spells that aren't really useful to begin with. At least with skills you have SOME control of what you get, with spells you really only need a handful but you could keep getting the rest without much you can do about it aside from keep rolling dice building magic guilds.

I agree with some of those but I liked the old resources and my favorite skill system was heroes 5 where you had 2 skills and 2 abilites to choose from on level up. I liked the H5 cravan system too so you could gather your troops but it was a bit more strategic.
However 100% on fuck random spells.

 

[DoPo]

I agree with some of those but I liked the old resources and my favorite skill system was heroes 5 where you had 2 skills and 2 abilites to choose from on level up. I liked the H5 cravan system too so you could gather your troops but it was a bit more strategic.
However 100% on fuck random spells.

See, I was quite a fan of the H5 skill system too with the synergies and stuff. The problem is that it's just not feasible to play the game without the skillwheel if you want to plan anything and if you do plan a build, then you have to work hard not to let random chance break that plan.

Overall being given more choice on levelup was better but randomness could still make things hard for you.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

My favorite example of good streamlining is the Fallout 4 looting, where you just hover over a container and you can pick things up without having to go into a special menu for it.

Now all they need to do is take it one step farther and have all those useless NPCs standing around in your towns do the looting for you. The ability to drop a pin in a location that says, "I've had all the fun here, come by and do the boring searching and hauling back," would be ideal.

 

[iwinatlife]

See, I was quite a fan of the H5 skill system too with the synergies and stuff. The problem is that it's just not feasible to play the game without the skillwheel if you want to plan anything and if you do plan a build, then you have to work hard not to let random chance break that plan.

Overall being given more choice on levelup was better but randomness could still make things hard for you.

See i like the element of randomness because it made it less boring on new games. If I have a skill tree I am going to build the same way every time because it is optimal for my playstyle

 

[DoPo]

See, I was quite a fan of the H5 skill system too with the synergies and stuff. The problem is that it's just not feasible to play the game without the skillwheel if you want to plan anything and if you do plan a build, then you have to work hard not to let random chance break that plan.

Overall being given more choice on levelup was better but randomness could still make things hard for you.

See i like the element of randomness because it made it less boring on new games. If I have a skill tree I am going to build the same way every time because it is optimal for my playstyle

The issue here is that I would also build the same way every time even with the random choices. Well, depends on what I'll be going for but if I plan on taking certain skills, I'll push towards those no matter what happens. Which leads to really annoying experience overall. I'm not going to take suboptimal choices on level up because that's stupid. Just makes levelling more of a chore than really needed.

 

[kilenem]

Pokemon is probably the best series to show you how to stream line a game and how not to
Pokemon Gold and Silver is the greatest video game Sequel because everything is stream lined so much better. A pokeball appears to let you know that you've caught that pokemon when encountering a wild pokemon. The Back pack is set up so that items have a specific place with in the back pack. The Select button could be used for the Rod or the bike. Using a HM now becomes context sensitive when a approaching a object that can be interacted with, so you don't have to go through the menu system to interact with it. To Surf you walk to water, you hit the a button a prompt appears to ask if you want to surf if you have the badges and HM. Pokemon Gold and Silver Feels like Red and Blue but Polished to a insane degree.

My most disliked pokemon sequel, Sun and Moon does way to way to much stream lining. Removing HM's takes away from some of the adventuring and makes the game more liner then what it already is. To go to other Islands back tracking is a ***** until you get Fly because you have to remember where to access a fairy. When in the past you just looked at a map. You can only fish in certain areas. Rather then have Blocks or Plants that give you a visual que that you can't progress. In Sun and Moon someone randomly blocks your path which I thought was stupid in other games because in Gold and Silver you watch Kurt the Ball maker physically move a team rocket member. When battling it tells you what attacks are super effective against a pokemon. I feel like a move helper should be something you turn on because its nice figuring out what type a pokemon is and what attacks to use against it. Finding out Ice Punch Knocked out Dragon Lance's hacked level 53 dragonnites was awesome.

I think stream lining can be a great thing when it doesn't take away from gameplay. For example Resource management isn't gameplay and a huge part of Zelda Breath of Wild is inventory Management because they removed the Touch features on the Wii U so its that same game on the Switch.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I'll agree with most of what you said about Bloodborne, but shields? Maybe not in 2, but in the first two games(Demons and Dark), a shield was very useful. I totally don't miss the convoluted weapon upgrade system from the earlier games(which I used a little in dark and totally ignored in 2).

The only thing about Bloodborne that kind of annoys me is that since bloodvials don't auto-replenish like Estus did, you occasionally have to go farm it, which usually means having to go beat up that intial mob of villagers in the early game a few times. Not terrible but annoying when you want to keep going in the game.

I'm not saying shields aren't useful, I just don't feel the shield controls are very good against more than one opponent due to the over-reliance on the lock-on system. I shouldn't need to lock-on to backstep and strafe properly, which I've talked about in length in the current Bayonetta thread of all things. Shields are so good 1v1 (no risk and huge rewards basically), that they are sorta a "cheese" playstyle IMO. Bloodborne sorta removed all the cheese options like said shields, bow and arrows, and magic. To me, Bloodborne is a lean and mean Souls game with complete focus on its core gameplay. I definitely agree with the blood vials, especially the fact that some areas just having really shitty blood vial drop rates.

No cheese? The Hunter Axe says hello. That weapon can stagger most enemies and even bosses, and has a decent range and wide attacks. For a starting weapon, it's pretty OP.

I can't really disagree, I don't find Souls games hard in any way. The normal enemies in every one of the games are some of gaming weakest enemies IMO. Most of Bloodborne's weapons I recall basically stun-locking most enemies and only your stamina stopped you from R1 spamming everything to death in one attack string. I guess the cheesiest stuff was taken out then... I'm not at all the biggest fan of the Souls games as, rather blasphemously, to most Souls fans, I'd rather have these games go full survival horror with like 90% of enemies taken out and have all enemies be actual threats as the games' best parts are the atmosphere and level design and then adding in puzzles are more environmental traps.

 

[DoPo]

Skyrim - changing the levelling system. Yeah, I get it, it's not as deep as the levelling systems used in past games. I have seen people express that opinion and it's somewhat correct. The problem is that the Morrowind/Oblivion system was obtuse and obsolete to begin with. The "depth" provided was false and it just meant micromanagement of stuff you really shouldn't care about. Pretty much the whole crux of the old system was flawed. I truly don't understand how people are not OK with the idea of changing the levelling system considering that by far the most popular mods for both previous games dealt with the levelling system. And of them, by far the most popular were the ones that did changes similar to what Skyrim does - you just use skills and that increases your level and attributes automatically. Skyrim axed attributes altogether in favour of "do you want more health, magicka or stamina" and that's actually a step above. The levelling system mods had to work with attributes in place but those were redundant as well.

And not just that, Morrowind was sooo easy to spam through if you knew how. Just roll up a strong warrior character in class creation and go to town at fucking level 1. And let's not even get into the massive amounts of items with the seriously OP'd paralysis enchantment. Oh lawdy. Morrowind could sometimes easily be even more of a snoozefest, combat-wise, than Skyrim or Oblivion.

Magic users were a pain the ass to play at the start too, although to be fair, they did open up massively in the late game. Spellmaker is deliciously broken with enough skill and gold.

Mages were fun up until the point where every creature had some sort of reflect spell

Fighting deadra was a fucking nightmare

Spell absorb can catch reflected spells. Also, if you cast a DOT, then you won't kill yourself - you can just heal to negate it. Most creatures don't have a heal, so DOTs are quite effective.

 

[BrawlMan]

Far Cry Instincts - Compared to FC1, while slightly simpler was more fair in difficulty. Then again, Instincts was made for consoles in mind. I wish Ubisuck would re-release the game on modern (it is backwards compatible on the XONE) consoles and PC for those that missed out. Luckily for me, I kept my 360.

Mad World and Anarchy Reigns - Both are spiritual successors to God Hand. As much as I love GH, it was Resident Evil 4 as a brawler. The combat in MW and AR is more fluid and a lot less stiff in comparison. Though you don't have as many moves in Mad World, but there are creative ways to dispatch enemies. AR plays even better by adding in multiple playable characters, multiplayer (that is dead unfortunately, no thanks to Sega), and a dedicated button for blocking, dodging, and grabbing. In GH, you could only grab certain bad guys that were stunned, and can dodge only. To be fair, once you get used to all of the dodge mechanics, you realize that God Hand never need a block button.

Devil May Cry 4 - The upgrade system. You no longer have to decide between health, devil trigger, or buying new moves with red orbs. The proud soul system was made were you could buy, and get a refund on new moves, while red orbs were mainly used buying health or devil trigger upgrades. This is where the 4th installment trumps all of the other DMC titles,

Burnout Revenge - Traffic checking. I hated that they removed this in Paradise, meaning you crash in to smaller vehicles more often and lose more time.

No More Heroes 2 - Getting rid of the open world. I don't care what anyone says, I hated it. Oh, and allowing Travis to carry multiple beam katanas acquired throughout the campaign. The first game is still better in boss battles.

Killer Is Dead - The spiritual successor to NMH had the best upgrade system out of all of Grasshopper's games to date. Also, the most convenient. You could just upgrade your moves or gain new attack by pausing the menu. If enough upgrades points were acquired of course.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

As long as the streamlining makes the game more convenient to play, and cuts down on meaningless time wasting to allow you you to get to the actual fun parts, AND as long as it doesn't reduce the fun parts or take away from the experience, it's a good thing.

Deus Ex Human Revolution streamlined a shitton of stuff from the original game, but kept all the important or engaging things in. As a result, the game felt butter-smooth compared to the clunky jankiness that was DX1, and why I preferred it.

I hear you guys on the skyrim perk system and action-levelling too. It allowed me to much more easily get into my character and just "do stuff", whereas in Oblivion I had to keep messing with attributes and sudden massive power spikes instead of a gradual increase in power where I put my points, to say nothing of how frustrating it was to be using mostly long-swords and then finding an incredible axe or something as loot that I couldn't use because I only had points in longsword (I forget the situation exactly, but it was frustrating).

I did have my beefs with Skyrim (allowing us to pick a class at the start of the game to get advantages to some skills and lower others was one of the first mods I downloaded for my second run), but for all the anger over streamlining...Most of the changes just made it more fun.

Basically, if a thing is not fun, or is getting in the way of the fun, I see no problem with trimming it down to improve the fun. A lot of Game design is about "what to cut out", not just "what to put in".

All of it.

I cannot remember ever encountering an instance of streamlining that decreased my enjoyment of the game.

I can actually think of one very recently.

In my quest to keep finding the perfect space game, I tried Gemini starpoint 2. A apace game where missions are picked up at any time via the starmap, as opposed to the genre standard of picking them up at space stations (which themselves you just dock at by flying near them and then hitting the Anchor button). Which makes space stations basically superfluous unless you need to restock on heavy weapon ammo or sell goods.

And honestly...That just takes away from the experience. Docking at space stations is a core part of the whole space sim experience. It doesn't have to be in-depth like Elite, with fuel needs and requiring manual docking and stuff, but something feels lost if you can more or less ignore docking at stations.