"We're Making It Accessible to a Wider Audience."

[RuralGamer]

Also known as the "we didn't make enough so the publishers are going to kill us this time should we fail to make a spectacular return on investment" statement in the case of a lot of smaller devs. Or the "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY!!!" statement if we're talking larger devs who have, in attitude, morphed into publishers. With the exception of one game (which may not be an example), this approach has never worked as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

After eight years of watching the World of Warcraft message boards overflow with incomprehensible frothing berserker nerd rage every time any change is made to the game, I've more or less taken the stance that any such announcement is warning that it's time to take the wife and kids and head to the cellar because there's a Shit Storm a'comin!

All kidding aside I guess I can kinda understand the ire that this gets from folks who were already fans of the property and didn't see that it needed changing. I know that the tonal shift between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 took me by surprise.

 

[Dandark]

It can depend but it usaully means they are going to take out some of the things that make a game unique or just add in stuff it doesn't need to appeal to a wider audience. Sadly most of the time this will upset the fans and can easily make a game worse.

A great example is Supreme commander 2. The original was an awesome game, you got to command huge armies of robots from small barely noticable scout units to giant robots towering over the battlefield, with whole squadrans of jets flying overhead in a set pattern and artillary from both land and naval units. Pretty much, a ton of stuff, it was awesome.


Supreme commander 2 was streamlined, a lot. It's still a good RTS but many fans of the original were very dissapointed with it, me included. At the moment this term is seen in the negative but it isn't supposed to be negative.

 

[Pumpkin_Eater]

They're making something that everyone will buy and hate.

Spoiler

Like Mass Effect 3

 

[Thoric485]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/107335-wasteland-2-interview.html [http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/107335-wasteland-2-interview.html]

Brian: ...We will nail down all of this soon but it is critical we make the hardcore happy with this title. I'd rather make a smaller dedicated fan base ecstatic than worry too much about the larger audience.

GB: Unfortunately, role-playing games have lost much of their original identity in recent years, thanks in part to the popularity of first-person action RPGs. How do you convince a newer or younger RPG fan who has grown accustomed to the action-focused titles to give Wasteland 2 a shot?

Brian: Well here is the beauty of fan funding... we don't have to convince some younger RPG player of anything. I am making this game for the wonderful fans who put their money behind us and not some nebulous group of new people. Let's make the game they all expect and let the chips fall where they may. There is just no way I'm going to consider anything that could let down the core.

Feels good man.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

How do you feel when you hear this statement in regards to an upcoming game?

Heh. Captcha: heated debate

"Nooo" ... puke.
These words kill franchises.
On the flip side... i like pleasant suprises.

 

[Mr. Eff_v1legacy]

The only thing worse than this is just coming out and saying "We want Call of Duty's audience."

Ugh. That's pretty bad too. Didn't Bioware say that in regards to Dragon Age II?

 

[Zayle79]

We all know that it's bad when a developer utterly destroys everything that was once good about a franchise to give it a completely different appeal to a completely different audience, but what about when they simplify elements of their previous games while maintaining the original appeal?

Skyrim, for instance, simplified Oblivion's absurdly convoluted leveling system with one that was intuitive and very[/] simple and easy to use, but it accomplishes the same goals better than Oblivion did. In Oblivion, you went through a complicated character creation process that you couldn't possibly understand unless you had played it or Morrowind already--not exactly inviting to new players. In Skyrim, you just pick a race and adjust your character's appearance if you want and you're ready to go.

In Oblivion, you had to sleep to level for some reason and you could only affect the level-up itself by choosing 3 of the game's several attributes, and after several levels you could actually start to see your increased attributes making a difference. In Skyrim, you pick one of the three clearly-labeled attributes and you pick a perk. The development of attributes is still as gradual as it was in Oblivion, but you can typically see the effect of your chosen perk right away. Which of these do you think appeals more to Call of Duty's audience? Skyrim, obviously, because the devs made a conscious effort to simplify the game's mechanics to make it accessible to a wider audience. That doesn't necessarily make it worse than Oblivion's pointlessly convoluted syste, does it?

 

[Netrigan]

Depends on what they mean when they're making something more accessible. Accessibility is a desirable thing, as many fan-favorite shows have discovered over the years when their Continuity heavy storylines start keeping new fans out of the show, because watching an episode from the five season is so much gibberish to anyone who isn't already a fan.

If you're making a strong effort to keep things clear and to the point, then it's usually a good thing. It's like the old saying "sorry for the long letter, but I didn't have the time to write a short one". Successfully communicating ideas in the most concise manner is really hard and a lot of the "complexity" of video games is simply people adding new features on top of old ones without stopping to think if there's a better way of presenting this information.

I'll use an example from a game I hate: Halo. First person shooters have been on consoles for about as long as there have been first person shooters, but few were genuine hits. The reason was the complexity of the control scheme was based upon the keyboard/mouse lay-out, where you could always add another key for any additional function. Bungie figured out how to replicate as much of that functionality as they could with a controller far less complex. Granted, it's not a perfect port of the PC experience (I hate the two gun load-out as much as the next person), but it's still the foundation upon which all console control schemes are built.

More recently, we have Mass Effect 3 versus Mass Effect 1. A lot of the complexity in ME1 is meaningless. Unless you really, really love micro-managing gear, the system in ME3 is far superior. Instead of making the player buy a +1 improvement to existing gear, you simply buy the upgrade and it's automatically applied to all affected gear. While ME3's inventory isn't quite as deep, you could easily apply the same technique to armor and biotic upgrades and have a superior system with the same level of depth.

But for most developers, when they say "accessible", they just mean they're copying something that is popular, without putting the necessary thought into it to make it a superior system.

 

[SajuukKhar]

when "making it available to a wider audience" ends up removing outdated and antiquated game mechanics like dice-roll mechanics and stats you can only raise during level up and not by actually DOING said actions I am happy with it.

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

Because developers should spend millions of dollars developing a game that will only appeal to a small subset of people.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Which of these do you think appeals more to Call of Duty's audience? Skyrim, obviously, because the devs made a conscious effort to simplify the game's mechanics to make it accessible to a wider audience. That doesn't necessarily make it worse than Oblivion's pointlessly convoluted syste, does it?

Well, the Elder Scrolls leveling system is pretty terrible in any game, TBH. Rewards all sorts of bizarre meta-gaming, which ironically is made worse by "innovations" like level-scaling.

Although, it is a pretty clear indication that RPG mechanics are not mechanics that

only appeal to a small subset of people.

Elder Scrolls leveling is about as clunky as leveling mechanics get, and it doesn't seem to drive people away from Elder Scrolls games.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I find ES leveling to be better then say Fallouts or Dragon Ages, and most people I know who have played Skyrim said they find it tons better then both those games, in terms of leveling.

I don't know where you are getting "clunky" from but many people dont share that opinion.

 

[lord.jeff]

I don't mind the statement, I like easily accessible games, I'm all for challenge but I'd rather have it come from though enemies instead of a crappy design, the term a minute to learn a lifetime to master works. I think Arkham Asylum vs. Arkham city makes a good example; Asylum had far fewer things to worry about then city, but the simpler game was the better game.

 

[Kahunaburger]

I find ES leveling to be better then say Fallouts or Dragon Ages, and most people I know who have played Skyrim said they find it tons better then both those games, in terms of leveling.

I don't know where you are getting "clunky" from but many people dont share that opinion.

If you want to have a powerful character (for his or her level) in an Elder Scrolls game, you have to metagame re: what skills you use. In a nutshell:

http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/75/75543.jpg

At least in Skyrim you don't have to count skill increases in order to maximize stat boosts like in Oblivion or Morrowind. Now *that* was an awkward leveling system. The commercial success of all three of these games shows that fiddly mechanics are apparently not actually a turn-off for most gamers.

 

[SajuukKhar]

If you want to have a powerful character (for his or her level) in an Elder Scrolls game, you have to metagame re: what skills you use. In a nutshell:

http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/75/75543.jpg

At least in Skyrim you don't have to count skill increases in order to maximize stat boosts like in Oblivion or Morrowind. Now *that* was an awkward leveling system. The commercial success of all three of these games shows that fiddly mechanics are apparently not actually a turn-off for most gamers.

Funny because I never encountered that problem at all during my warrior or Thief type character play-throughs.

Like you have to try pretty hard to not level up any sort of weapon/armor skills for the enemies to be even somewhat "dangerous".

Hell the easiness of the enemies is one of the most common complaints I see on the skyrim Nexus forums.

Get out.

Yes because missing an attack with a sword when you looking at an enemy dead on because an arbitrary and completly out of your hands dice-roll is such a fun game mechanic.

note the sarcasm.

 

[kayo of the Well]

.

 

[Kahunaburger]

If you want to have a powerful character (for his or her level) in an Elder Scrolls game, you have to metagame re: what skills you use. In a nutshell:

http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/75/75543.jpg

At least in Skyrim you don't have to count skill increases in order to maximize stat boosts like in Oblivion or Morrowind. Now *that* was an awkward leveling system. The commercial success of all three of these games shows that fiddly mechanics are apparently not actually a turn-off for most gamers.

Funny because I never encountered that problem at all during my warrior or Thief type character play-throughs.

Like you have to try pretty hard to not level up any sort of weapon/armor skills for the enemies to be even somewhat "dangerous".

From most accounts, it depends on the difficulty level and how much time the player spends on non-combat skills. It's more forgiving than previous Elder Scrolls games. In Oblivion, bad leveling decisions could very easily get the player completely screwed over, but it didn't really impact the game's popularity that much. Neither does skill-grinding, which is an ever-present companion in any Elder Scrolls game.

 

[SajuukKhar]

From most accounts, it depends on the difficulty level and how much time the player spends on non-combat skills. It's more forgiving than previous Elder Scrolls games. In Oblivion, bad leveling decisions could very easily get the player completely screwed over, but it didn't really impact the game's popularity that much. Neither does skill-grinding, which is an ever-present companion in any Elder Scrolls game.

I will agree, it IS possible to fu** up in Skyrim, I could see it happening for like a magic based player because magic in Skyrim is total bullshit, but as you said it is more forgiving then Oblivion, A LOT so IMO.

Oblivion raped you over hard.

I had all my skills maxed, all my attributes maxed, and the best weapons/armor in the base game and walked into shivering isles and found it took ages to kill mostly anything because the level scaling of enemies sucked so hard, and they had ginormous HP bars.

Skyrim's level scaling system is so much more fun.

There was really only a handful of times at the very end of a dungeons I encountered some enemies I couldn't beat ay me level.

 

[TehCookie]

I just feel pure rage. Don't make a game targeted towards core games casual, make a new casual game. I'd rather see my favorite franchise die then be subjected to that shit.

Spoiler: And I really wish this never existed.