7 ms·

> if 93.6% of users who played the game on the first day after release got a shitty experience, It isn't a shitty experience though. They were playing the game

> if 93.6% of users who played the game on the first day after release got a shitty experience, It isn't a shitty experience though. They were playing the game, getting immersed into it, trying to win, and they got stuck. Stuck enough, and interested enough in succeeding, that they asked on forums how to deal with the in-game piracy issue. That isn't a sign of someone having a shitty experience. What is interesting now is what players of the pirated version of the game will do with the knowledge that their success is being hampered because they pirated the game originally instead of buying it. I hope a nice chunk will opt to buy the game, it's obviously immersed them enough to have provided entertainment value, and hopefully there's sufficiently extra gameplay and opportunities in the non-pirated version to justify the "add-on" purchase. Or, they'll crack the game to remove the pirated limitation. Or they'll walk away from the game. Or they'll find a genuinely pirated version of the real game. I hope they see the funny side, and appreciate it, and give kudos to the game development company. It's not a £40 boxed game.

Gonzih 13y ago
> They were playing the game, getting immersed into it, trying to win, and they got stuck. Stuck without any reason. Looks like shitty experience to me.
- micheljansen 13y ago
  Exactly. Why would I buy this game if all I read is reports of people getting stuck after 1 day?
  - sukuriant 13y ago
    Man, that Mega Man 2 sure sucks, huh?
- Isofarro 13y ago
  By that definition, any game you play that you can't master on day one is a shitty experience. That's an exceedingly hard customer expectation to meet: a customer who doesn't like difficult challenges or learning curves.
  - micheljansen 13y ago
    There is a difference between offering a challenge and letting players get completely stuck. There is an optimum (the mythical "flow").
    - Isofarro 13y ago
      The difference is the $8 purchase price. That's the optimum. And the players are not completely stuck, they are at the local optimal of their current gaming model - a plateau. That doesn't stop them from taking a different path towards a different optimisation strategy and find one where the localised high point is better than this one.
      - micheljansen 13y ago
        Did you read the original post? The players that get stuck are not playing the same game as the players who paid $8. They are playing a version that is deliberately frustrating and almost impossible to play due to rampant piracy in the game. The normal version does not have this frustration built in and is probably a lot more optimised towards an optimal challenge / reward balance.
  - b0rsuk 13y ago
    And that's correct. When my brother played Hexen years ago - a DooM engine game with extreme switch hunting - he got stuck halfway through. He got a shitty experience. Maybe he wasn't good enough according to your judgement, but in the end he had a shitty experience nonetheless. It was not necessarily Raven's (developer) fault, but it happened. An ideal game would be hard enough for everyone, yet everyone would be able to beat it. The difference here is the developer makes the game a shitty experience by design. That's the definition of shooting himself in the foot.
    - Isofarro 13y ago
      > An ideal game would be hard enough for everyone, yet everyone would be able to beat it. That seems to hold very little replayability value. A better prospect is to make the game just a little more difficult that the current player's skill level, and adapt to that, so the game gets progressively more difficult as the player's skill improves, and the rewards/achievements are in line with that path. (It's quite a oft-given piece of advice for players wanting to get better at chess, that they play people a little stronger than themselves, and they gradually adapt and start winning more than losing) I guess that's what's changed in gaming since the eighties. Back then the challenge and difficulty of games was a feature. Only a small crop of people completed them, the rest of us enjoyed the challenge of trying to get there. Where the journey to improvement is of more value than reaching the credits at the end.

Gonzih 13y ago

> They were playing the game, getting immersed into it, trying to win, and they got stuck. Stuck without any reason. Looks like shitty experience to me.

micheljansen 13y ago
Exactly. Why would I buy this game if all I read is reports of people getting stuck after 1 day?
- sukuriant 13y ago
  Man, that Mega Man 2 sure sucks, huh?
Isofarro 13y ago
By that definition, any game you play that you can't master on day one is a shitty experience. That's an exceedingly hard customer expectation to meet: a customer who doesn't like difficult challenges or learning curves.
- micheljansen 13y ago
  There is a difference between offering a challenge and letting players get completely stuck. There is an optimum (the mythical "flow").
  - Isofarro 13y ago
    The difference is the $8 purchase price. That's the optimum. And the players are not completely stuck, they are at the local optimal of their current gaming model - a plateau. That doesn't stop them from taking a different path towards a different optimisation strategy and find one where the localised high point is better than this one.
    - micheljansen 13y ago
      Did you read the original post? The players that get stuck are not playing the same game as the players who paid $8. They are playing a version that is deliberately frustrating and almost impossible to play due to rampant piracy in the game. The normal version does not have this frustration built in and is probably a lot more optimised towards an optimal challenge / reward balance.
- b0rsuk 13y ago
  And that's correct. When my brother played Hexen years ago - a DooM engine game with extreme switch hunting - he got stuck halfway through. He got a shitty experience. Maybe he wasn't good enough according to your judgement, but in the end he had a shitty experience nonetheless. It was not necessarily Raven's (developer) fault, but it happened. An ideal game would be hard enough for everyone, yet everyone would be able to beat it. The difference here is the developer makes the game a shitty experience by design. That's the definition of shooting himself in the foot.
  - Isofarro 13y ago
    > An ideal game would be hard enough for everyone, yet everyone would be able to beat it. That seems to hold very little replayability value. A better prospect is to make the game just a little more difficult that the current player's skill level, and adapt to that, so the game gets progressively more difficult as the player's skill improves, and the rewards/achievements are in line with that path. (It's quite a oft-given piece of advice for players wanting to get better at chess, that they play people a little stronger than themselves, and they gradually adapt and start winning more than losing) I guess that's what's changed in gaming since the eighties. Back then the challenge and difficulty of games was a feature. Only a small crop of people completed them, the rest of us enjoyed the challenge of trying to get there. Where the journey to improvement is of more value than reaching the credits at the end.