Back in the day games were hard (often in unfair ways) to stretch out the game, because there was only like 4 levels and if it was easy you’d be finished in a single afternoon.
Now games are thousands of hours long and they hold your hand every step of the way to make sure you actually see all that content; and then the majority of players quit after completing only about 1/4th of the total game.
This is probably why I love Soulslikes so fucking much. I grew up with the first kind, and have suffered long enough with the latter kind. Soulslikes are the perfect blend of new and old school design philosophy (when done right). Tough, but also not short. They don’t hold your hand, but they don’t exactly keep you entirely in the dark on how to play. They reward community action not just in the game with the message systems, but also because it doesn’t spoon-feed you everything, certain deeper ideas are discovered more from talking to other players who found things you missed; which is something we did back in the day before the internet.
Kids have it too easy. Back in my day we did it the hard way! (using Game Genie)
I know OP is joking (at least I hope he is), but it reminded me of this thread about Soulslikes:
https://old.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/oc1w7g/separating_difficulty_from_drudgery_or_why/
Time-wasting respawns/progress loss seems like a very blunt tool with which to motivate the player to keep playing. It’s some 1988 arcade coin-op shit that we really ought to leave in the past.
Time-wasting respawns/progress loss seems like a very blunt tool with which to motivate the player to keep playing.
Tried playing a game of tennis with my friends. 0, 15, 30, 40, Point. Then if you’re two scores ahead the game resets. Wtf! Why did the game reset? I was 30-40 and now I’m back to 0? I should be allowed to keep my 30 into the next game.
Now I’m being induced into playing more tennis! I hate this.
And tennis has so few maps! Almost everywhere I go is concrete. Very luck to find a clay court anywhere. You need to buy the DLC to find grass, and only if you’re really lucky.
Its repetitive. Its exhausting. The rules barely make sense. And the match-making is completely fucked. I’m either playing people I trounce or getting my ass handed to me almost every time I go to a court.
I think I’m going to try and pick up chess instead. Does anyone know how I can upgrade my pawns to queens, though?
So your claim is souls likes are more like tennis than say, Fortnite is.
Fortnite is just baseball with extra steps
It’s not quite the same though, souls still keeps the items you dropped, its just up to you to retrieve them.
You can’t claim you climbed a mountain, if each time you fell you just resumed from where you lost grip. Falling and reclimbing with renewed tenacity means that when you finally conquer the mountain, the view is all the more sweeter for the huge experience you’ve gained along the way.
You can’t claim you climbed a mountain, if each time you fell you just resumed from where you lost grip.
Well, good thing games are better than real life. Or they would be worthless.
I can think of at least two things wrong with those statements there
You can’t claim you climbed a mountain, if each time you fell you just resumed from where you lost grip.
Sure you can; it’s called redpointing.
I’m not inviting you to any parties, but you can join my DnD group
Thanks. My preference is intersectional second ed. I don’t mind conflict as long as it’s not derived from lazy racist tropes.
I think soulslikes are appealing to a certain type of player. Personally I love Dark Souls it’s my favorite game.
But I like playing with stakes. I remember stumbling around in the forest, down to my last scrap of health, with no more heals, desperately trying to reach the next bonfire. That for me is fun. Is it frustrating to lose your progress? Sure. But the only “penalty” is you have to try again or change your approach and try something else. And really, is being forced to replay a section inherently punishing? If the game itself is fun, you should still be having fun fighting and exploring even if you aren’t progressing.
It can be the only way to punish people in certain games.
If there’s no punishment for failure, there’s no reason to respect any dangers the game presents.
In Minecraft, what should happen if you walk north for an hour and die? If you respawn with your inventory, why not just do that again and die as a quick way to get back? Why even bother with equipment or food at that point? Suddenly, half the game mechanics have lost their meaning, and there’s a lot less to do for the player.If the punishment for failure is wasting time, then I’m just going to play something else.
Games are supposed to be enjoyable.
That would certainly give me a sense of pride and accomplishment.
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It’s a joke, because EA added crap to their games and defended it with those exact words.
That’s why you’re being downvoted by everyone.
Do we at least get a participation medal, or can we buy one?
What other costly mistakes can we buy ourselves out of?
It would be like 1us for 500 coins, and a pack of 5 life-up mushrooms for 450 coins.
It’s okay not to like Super Mario. You don’t need to try and “fix” it.
I think it was a joke
I am slowly recognizing what I don’t like about modern gaming.
other characters… Metroid
What if Metroid and Zelda were girls
streamlining
you mean instead of playing the game, i could pay you to not play the game i’m playing instead?
sign me up
I have this same mindset and it’s great because it results in 0 temptation to spend money on game progression or items. If I’m playing a game where it feels like spending money like that is the only way to have fun with it, I just drop the game.
Actually, I don’t even really bother with any games that I understand to have p2w aspects or any mtx that aren’t just cosmetic.
If I’m playing a game where it feels like spending money like that is the only way to have fun with it, I just drop the game.
A big part of the “hook” in GACHA and other whale-hunting games is the initial hook of a fun and engaging setup. Genshin Impact and Sword of Convallaria both stick out to me as initially very fun and captivating games. They draw you in with the cut scenes and ramp up the curve like a normal open world JRPG.
But the longer you play, the more you start tripping over resource requirements and timers on abilities and the need to do “daily” activities that involve logging on every day. All of this is fun in the early cycles but feels more and more like work by the later stages of the game. Dungeons start looking more and more basic - big empty rooms with a bunch of respawns in the center. Fights feel more contingent on having a bigger number than any kind of strategy or skill.
If you’ve played older traditional JRPGs before, it’ll start feeling weird because you know you should be expecting the game to pick up towards a dramatic conclusion after 100 hours of play. But these games just… go on forever. There’s no payoff. You get tired and bored and you leave.
But if you haven’t played older traditional JRPGs, you’re just falling into this skinner box of induced anxiety. The game becomes habit-forming. The induced reflex to trigger a feature or use a power that’s increasingly paywalled encourages you to open your (parent’s) wallet.
Actually, I don’t even really bother with any games that I understand to have p2w aspects or any mtx that aren’t just cosmetic.
There’s a networking effect to a lot of these games. Up front, you’re strongly encouraged to get your friends to join in. And friends playing a game together can have enormous staying power. I know people who have been running the same D&D game for 20 years (literally the same characters and world, going on into the level 200+ range as they just crank those numbers higher). I know a couple that’s been doing WoW for their entire relationship - they started playing when they started dating and now they’ve got their ten-year-old son along for the ride.
I think part of what gives these games staying power is that they don’t require you to empty your savings account to participate. But I think its naive to discount the addictive power of a community space you’re comfortable socializing in.
These places are predatory. I can’t discount them just because I’m not one of the ones that got eaten.
Agreed, I’m hoping to impart my mindset on my daughter so she recognizes the trap before spending money on it. The games use an exponential growth curve, which means you can spend some money to be dominant for a little while, but the enemies will always catch up because that’s what it’s designed to do. So any power purchase is temporary and will set you up to feel like you need to spend even more to “keep” the “investment” you’ve already made.
Which also makes quitting harder because quitting entirely is admitting whatever money was spent on in game shit was wasted. It’s just sunk cost fallacy and there really should be regulation on shit like that.
And, to add insult to injury, the people running the game can decide at any point that it’s not worth running anymore and just shut it all down, leaving players that wasted tons of money with nothing.
I prefer subscriptions over that and still to this day don’t mind that I spent a lot of money on my wow subscription because I knew what I was paying for.
No it should have 10-year-olds with huge tits /jk
I see you there Trump
Thanks I hate it
For the love of God Gen Z is gonna kill us with sighs
Noita has a resurrection mod for this.
Recently I re-played Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 on an emulator and did not feel ashamed by making save points everywhere to avoid re-playing the levels, I had time for that as a kid.
I get the urge, but I wouldn’t reccomend doing that on any of the later Wario Land games. They’re puzzle platformers, so (especially in 2 and 3) the punishment for messing up is the short window of time it takes to get back to the start of the puzzle.
I used save states on them also, I can’t remember if there were any problems with the puzzles.
I use save function though but differently instead of saving everytime I breath I just save once at start of Level then everytime even if I take a single hit or Fall somewhere. I load my last start save no matter progress. That’s why it take me around 1 week just beat one game.
