5 ms·
The essence of any wildly popular single-player game = hard to win quickly + very hard to lose.
by ethbr0 4y ago
The essence of any wildly popular single-player game = hard to win quickly + very hard to lose.
- Waterluvian 4y agoYeah! That reminds me of something a game dev once taught me about single player games. (paraphrasing) "Almost all AAA titles are impossible _not_ to finish in a reasonable time. The entire challenge of balancing a single player game is to hide all the ways the game holds your hand, while making the player feel responsible for all the times you win."
- LZ_Khan 4y agoUm.. elden ring?
- mwaitjmp 4y agoAny soulsborne game for that matter. They are all a long enjoyable slog. Recommended for sure.
- azemetre 4y agoLiterally spent 50 hours mucking around exploring everything I could before realizing that you have to fight Margit to progress the story. I honestly thought it was a game like Shadow of the Colossus where you freely explore and just fight bosses. Fun game but some very terrible UX decisions that seem spiteful at times.
- ar_lan 4y agoI did the same exact thing. In fact, the whole rest of lakes of Niurnia I had found far earlier than I found Margit because I accidentally found the shortcut and thought - well, he was blocking this path, so I guess he's not necessary.
- rubyist5eva 4y agoI didn’t find the shortcut around Stormveil until my second character. After a while I realized that Margit-Stormveil-Godrick are all completely optional.
- rubyist5eva 4y agoYou don’t have to fight Margit, he is completely optional and so is the entirety of Stormveil and the boss there.
- crtasm 4y agoWell, you can explore the world in Shadow of the Colossus but the boss fights have to be done in a fixed order.
- wfleming 4y agoFrom Soft games are, I think, popular with a particular niche precisely because they swim against the tide here. Even their games, though, although they are famously and genuinely difficult, do try and guide the player to success. They just do it in somewhat subtle ways by trying to kill you a lot. I’ve been watching a let’s play series on YouTube of Dark Souls I & III for a while (“Souls Academy”), and one of things I enjoy about it is how they often talk about what skills particular bosses or game areas are trying to teach you, so that you can be successful with later, harder challenges. But you’re completely right that these games aren’t “hard not to finish”. They’re extremely hard to finish!
- ethbr0 4y agoAnd I'd argue they wouldn't be as successful as they are if they weren't a rejection of something players sense in most other games, even if they don't consciously notice the systems helping them. Kind of like the Matrix.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoI thought Elden Ring was a bit weird in this regard. Margit is likely the first boss people fight. And he does introduce a lot of concepts that seem pertinent. He's classic souls boss with a few touches of the game's unique concepts. He hits very fast, sometimes without telegraphing. If you're competent at Margit then Godrey is likely to be mechanically simpler. But then for some reason every single other major boss is very gimmicky and does not draw upon this. Radahn is a (fun) clusterfuck with yer boys. Rennala just has projectiles and no defenses. Rykard is... just poorly designed and can't hit you if you're in melee range. Fire Giant is a gimmicky horse battle. Astel is sort of similar to Rennala. Hoarah does his own thing with grabs and jumpable stomps. Malekith and Malenia are so awkwardly fast that you need to be proactively positioning rather than reacting to their telegraphed moves for the most part. Then you've got at the endgame Morgot and Radagon who, for some reason, seem to be not only simpler, but significantly slower opponents than Margit. Not a complaint really. I thought boss design was great and entertaining. But definitely a bit unusual. Sekiro's boss progression was amazing and the best I've ever seen. It's a really great inflection point when Genichiro swings by to make sure you understand the game's not gonna fuck around anymore.
- Waterluvian 4y agoIn my opinion Elden Ring demonstrates how making a Soulsborne game more mainstream actually makes it less like a Soulsborne game. It’s so player friendly and lacks most of the hard lessons previous titles teach.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoThis is something I didn't like about the game. They always had multiplayer so difficulty has always been... optional in a way. But the summons in this game are extremely powerful, and they change the dynamics of the fight from slowly mastering an encounter to high variance gambles on being able to capitalize on the boss just not looking at you. Which is fine. You can just not use summons. But then you see something like the godskin duo with a premade npc ally outside to be summoned and you start to get conflicting feelings about what's appropriate "intended" difficulty.
- Retric 4y agoCan you actually lose elden ring? As far as I can tell it’s just time consuming not hard.
- beeboop 4y agoI had the same thought - there's too much practice needed considering how little free time I have. I downloaded a trainer (I play on PC) and modified my stats a bit so I don't die so easily and don't feel like I needed to grind to level up
- Waterluvian 4y agoI wrote an entire section about Soulsborne in my original comment but felt I was biting off too much. Soulsborne games succeed because of exactly this. And you might notice that they’re drifting towards mainstream and that’s actually causing them to shed all the little details of what makes a Soulsborne game. Elden Ring was ridiculously forgiving and I found it boringly easy. But it made me go back to Demon’s Souls.
- stevage 4y agoGreat comment. I've been playing UFO enemy unknown (the remake) recently and noticing how it fails at this. The original felt like a real simulation of aliens attacking the earth and were always on the brink of taking over. This one feels like a carefully paced story where unless I try really really hard everything is going to be just fine. Which takes away all the drama and hence a lot of the interest.
- MetaWhirledPeas 4y ago> very hard to lose Sort of. You could argue that Super Mario Bros. is 99.9% losing for most people. But within those losses are little personal victories, like getting past the first Goomba. I hate games that try to remove all loss, assuming people can't handle it.
- ghaff 4y agoYeah, I was never really a serious gamer and, for the most part, I didn't really win--as in get all the way through--most games I played over time. I don't think it's that I couldn't but just wasn't interested enough to put in the time.
- pvillano 4y agoAn addictive formula is "hard to win entirely + easy to win a little bit" examples include arcade machines/roguelike, gotcha/lootboxes/gambling, crosswords psychologists have found that the most effective reinforcement strategy is a combination of continuous and random rewards. For example, in World of Warcraft, enemies have a small amount of gold, but only a chance of carrying a good item.