So, I've been thinking about this lately. Have any of you ever heard a game mechanic get criticized widely or even just by a few people for a problem that didn't exist for you personally? I don't know how subjective game mechanic problems are. Is it perceived or do I just compensate so much better than the people taking issue with the (in this latter case it's factual and an objective thing as a result of course) problem that it is less serious for me? Maybe we can shed light on this. This might go on a little too long as I have 3 long stories/examples of this so for those that might find this TL;DR just respond with your own story of this happening to you.
1. For me, the first time I disagreed on game mechanic implementation was with the FPS platforming in Mirror's Edge. Mostly Yahtzee criticizes this. He brought it up in his Mirror's Edge critique and in his newest game critique Rise of the Triad he thinks it became a problem again. " pointed out that platforming from a first person perspective has worked about as often as Western European peace treaties", is what he said in regards to excitement about the gameplay trailers for Mirror's Edge. His reasoning is always that you can't see your legs so it's hard to judge your jumps without looking down and b/c it's in first person perspective sometimes your legs just exist in a nether space for design reasons messing with perceived collision. It gets worse with small platforms and ledges as a result too. I get the 2nd point though this has never been a problem for me whenever I platform in FPS games, guess I got lucky with that aspect in the types of FPS games I've played that involve any sort of platforming.
So, based on his issues it seemed to me like he i just really bad at it. Mirror's Edge had problems but the parkour mechanics rarely contributed to them. I rarely had collision detection issues and even without looking down I have enough experience and enough gameplay understanding to know how and when to jump. I think it's kind of like when you learn to ride a bike or play a sport, you get a sense of where things are, how to react, when you're good to perform an action in your perspective. The trick is translating that skill, instinct/talent, and hand-eye coordination to that sort of gaming, mostly FPS platforming/parkour in this example. I never, or maybe just rarely since I haven't played in a while and don't remember too well, had to break gameflow like he did. He also had gameflow issues when you're dangling on a pipe or ledge which was also never an issue for me b/c I took in a majority of the environment quickly before jumping to that hypothetical pipe or ledge most of the time. Even when I didn't take it in before jumping to get a "face full of wall" looking around for the next jump was never so slow for me that it broke the fast pace of the game (maybe he was playing on a console vs me playing on a PC and that had something to do with it? Maybe he is more impatient than me or perceived an even faster pace environment push from the game than I did?).
2. Moving on: I also took issue with Yahtzee's opinion on perceived camera difficulties in Epic Mickey. I never had camera problems. I only recently got the game though so it's not like I've played through the whole campaign; maybe the camera refusing to work will come up as I progress into more camera sensitive areas.
3. Lastly, I also took issue back in the day with perceived fighting problems with the Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith video game. The biggest problem I had with that game was that multiplayer fighters weren't diversified enough in their combat; they were diversified enough to still be enjoyable but they should have been a little more so b/c it still got redundant after a while. Apparently though there were other issues people had. A popular perception was that the gameplay was overly choreographed with serious flaws such as the fact that you can't immediately cancel a drawn-out combo to do a block or parry. I found this silly for a few reasons: 1) If you go for an attack or defense inappropriate for a situation you get punished. A fighting game should only easily let you save yourself or switch if it complements gameplay, challenge, and the type of sub-genre fighting it is. And for this game I think being able to do that would only hurt it. 2) It was simply never a problem for me. For one thing, I thought the fighting looked nicer and performed better than much of the lightsaber twirling in the movie. Now, that was glorified dancing. Each attack had a purpose and could be countered in some form and there was a finesse to certain moves. It wasn't perfect and it had problems sometimes but I always felt like the claim was heavily exaggerated by people who couldn't master the fighting. The fighting was never so eccentric that gameplay suffered. Again, perhaps this is more a subjective thing.
So, there you have it. What about all of you? Can you cite any examples? What do you think the reasons are that you didn't struggle with commonly cited gameplay issues? Was the problem perceived by the critics b/c they have mastery and understanding problems or did you just compensate so well in comparison to them that the problem wasn't as big of an issue for you? Or perhaps you just can't figure out why you didn't go through the same problems. I'm not sure myself when this comes up from time to time.
1. For me, the first time I disagreed on game mechanic implementation was with the FPS platforming in Mirror's Edge. Mostly Yahtzee criticizes this. He brought it up in his Mirror's Edge critique and in his newest game critique Rise of the Triad he thinks it became a problem again. " pointed out that platforming from a first person perspective has worked about as often as Western European peace treaties", is what he said in regards to excitement about the gameplay trailers for Mirror's Edge. His reasoning is always that you can't see your legs so it's hard to judge your jumps without looking down and b/c it's in first person perspective sometimes your legs just exist in a nether space for design reasons messing with perceived collision. It gets worse with small platforms and ledges as a result too. I get the 2nd point though this has never been a problem for me whenever I platform in FPS games, guess I got lucky with that aspect in the types of FPS games I've played that involve any sort of platforming.
So, based on his issues it seemed to me like he i just really bad at it. Mirror's Edge had problems but the parkour mechanics rarely contributed to them. I rarely had collision detection issues and even without looking down I have enough experience and enough gameplay understanding to know how and when to jump. I think it's kind of like when you learn to ride a bike or play a sport, you get a sense of where things are, how to react, when you're good to perform an action in your perspective. The trick is translating that skill, instinct/talent, and hand-eye coordination to that sort of gaming, mostly FPS platforming/parkour in this example. I never, or maybe just rarely since I haven't played in a while and don't remember too well, had to break gameflow like he did. He also had gameflow issues when you're dangling on a pipe or ledge which was also never an issue for me b/c I took in a majority of the environment quickly before jumping to that hypothetical pipe or ledge most of the time. Even when I didn't take it in before jumping to get a "face full of wall" looking around for the next jump was never so slow for me that it broke the fast pace of the game (maybe he was playing on a console vs me playing on a PC and that had something to do with it? Maybe he is more impatient than me or perceived an even faster pace environment push from the game than I did?).
2. Moving on: I also took issue with Yahtzee's opinion on perceived camera difficulties in Epic Mickey. I never had camera problems. I only recently got the game though so it's not like I've played through the whole campaign; maybe the camera refusing to work will come up as I progress into more camera sensitive areas.
3. Lastly, I also took issue back in the day with perceived fighting problems with the Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith video game. The biggest problem I had with that game was that multiplayer fighters weren't diversified enough in their combat; they were diversified enough to still be enjoyable but they should have been a little more so b/c it still got redundant after a while. Apparently though there were other issues people had. A popular perception was that the gameplay was overly choreographed with serious flaws such as the fact that you can't immediately cancel a drawn-out combo to do a block or parry. I found this silly for a few reasons: 1) If you go for an attack or defense inappropriate for a situation you get punished. A fighting game should only easily let you save yourself or switch if it complements gameplay, challenge, and the type of sub-genre fighting it is. And for this game I think being able to do that would only hurt it. 2) It was simply never a problem for me. For one thing, I thought the fighting looked nicer and performed better than much of the lightsaber twirling in the movie. Now, that was glorified dancing. Each attack had a purpose and could be countered in some form and there was a finesse to certain moves. It wasn't perfect and it had problems sometimes but I always felt like the claim was heavily exaggerated by people who couldn't master the fighting. The fighting was never so eccentric that gameplay suffered. Again, perhaps this is more a subjective thing.
So, there you have it. What about all of you? Can you cite any examples? What do you think the reasons are that you didn't struggle with commonly cited gameplay issues? Was the problem perceived by the critics b/c they have mastery and understanding problems or did you just compensate so well in comparison to them that the problem wasn't as big of an issue for you? Or perhaps you just can't figure out why you didn't go through the same problems. I'm not sure myself when this comes up from time to time.
