I never realized Mario is a metaphor for real life.
For the love of God Gen Z is gonna kill us with sighs
I am slowly recognizing what I don’t like about modern gaming.
Is it the lack of people recognizing how great you are and how much money you have to spend?
How about every dollar you spend a twitch streamer will be forced to say your name?
You good now?
Okay? I was before, but I am now, too, thanks.
Nintendo is way ahead of these guys. The last few mario games let you pick a character that can’t be hurt or killed. And if that’s too hard for you, they’ll even show you exactly how to play the level.
I can at least support baby mode for, like, extremely small kids and maybe co-op with that one person who’s never touched a video game in their life but wants to play along with the other three. You know, the kids are over at grandpa’s, and he wants to feel like he’s playing and having fun with them instead of just setting and forgetting them on the magic dopamine box, but he’s no good at it, so he takes the invincible character. I think that’s reasonable, inclusive game design.
What I take issue with is when baby mode drags down the difficulty of the rest of the game modes. For example, you as a game designer benchmark “normal mode” against “being literally invulnerable”, and so you now have to play hard mode to even vaguely feel any sort of tension.
I agree completely. Idk why they do it. They got filthy rich off kids 5-10 playing the shit out of NES games.
The way it works is this: The people catch hold of something, and make magic. It makes a ton of money, because people can recognize magic. Then other people with investment money get involved. Gradually, the magic oriented people are outnumbered, the fun of their average working day declines, and they leave or simply get shouldered into some niche somewhere by the unimaginable torrent of motivated people who have something else on their mind.
No one involved in Mario, Zelda, Metroid, or Contra has been anywhere near the design team at Nintendo for decades. These guys own the rights to call it “Mario,” but if they weren’t making games where you can turn Mario into an elephant, they could be just as happy making sweat pants with writing on the ass. And the magic is off somewhere else, doing its thing.
These guys own the rights to call it “Mario,” but if they weren’t making games where you can turn Mario into an elephant, they could be just as [miserable] making sweat pants with writing on the ass.
FTFY. But also nice one, I loled. And you’re absolutely spot on with what you’re saying too.
I’m not sure if I’m missing sarcasm here, but Super Mario Bros. Wonder is freaking amazing. There’s so much creativity packed into that game, that almost every level they introduce a new mechanic that could easily be it’s whole entire game.
Oh, I dunno about any of the newer Mario games, I was just taking people’s word for it.
I was agreeing with the way that successful brands/IP tend to get milked to death by business types long after the creative types have moved on. But tbf I think Nintendo is one of the few corporations where they have been able to maintain the creative vitality of their franchises for 30+ years, they may be an exception to that rule. Especially with Mario and Zelda, they continued to make great games long after the original creative teams were gone.
But still, all it takes is a few dumbass MBAs to ruin great things by driving away the people who make the magic happen.
Yeah, I agree in general, IP milking is pretty bad right now (always been bad, but gotten even worse), but Nintendo is an exception. If they release a game at all, it at least has some merit to justify its existence. Except of course, Pokemon…
That is just bad game design, and nothing inherently to do with having easier modes. There is a long, long, history of games having easy modes, and still being some of the most challenging games made, when you select the harder ones.
Mario Wonder both had a “baby mode” mechanic and yet also had some genuinely interesting and challenging levels.
Celeste is extremely difficult yet also has a baby mode feature.
Many games have a “tell me a story” difficulty level which is more or less the same idea.
Games having an easy difficulty without detracting from the game’s main challenge and balance is not a problem IMO.
The real problem with the “improved” SMB from the post is not that it has ways of making the game easier, it’s that the “fixes” amount to a microtransaction hellhole, complete with intrusive prompts.
I’m all for games with configurable difficulty. Nobody thinks less of Doom for having difficulty settings. But everybody does think less of games that pair frustrating mechanics (like difficulty spikes or countdown timers) with bypass MTX.
To use the default controversial genre, I think that a soulslike with difficulty settings would work just fine. But a soulslike where your healing flask only restores one charge every ten minutes unless you buy more charges from the store (but store-bought ones can exceed the normal maximum) or where game-breakingly OP equipment is available as MTX would not go over well.
Don’t tell Soulslike players that. They think that even the slightest concession to accessibility makes the game unplayable garbage, even if you choose not to use it.
My nephew picks that up in 3D world and it drives me crazy! What’s the point of playing if you’re immune to everything and can’t be damaged!? I should point out, we were playing cooperatively, so it wasn’t like he was just messing around by himself. And he’s 11 and can definitely play it normally…
Co-op might be a little different. I could see having fun not needing to worry about enemies in that. You should pick the same guy, if it lets you.
Difficulty is hardly the point of the post.
OMG I added to the conversation, how horrible of me!
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.
That would certainly give me a sense of pride and accomplishment.
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
All games are just stick and hoop with extra steps
It’s a very funny comment but also tennis is only the gameplay of tennis. People don’t play tennis because they Iike the story so much lmao
Go for ping pong if you want to get roped in because of the plot.
Maybe tennis 2: pickleball
People don’t play dark souls for the story either. We are there for the gameplay.
Speak for yourself. I think many soulslikes have fascinating stories, and they’re wasted on players who don’t pay attention to them.
My favorite part of playing tennis is the commute back to the court after every time my opponent scores. I really get to savor and look forward to the next time I’ll get to swing my racket. It also makes victory that much more meaningful knowing that not only am I an expert at swinging the racket, reading my opponents moves, and responding, I’ve also memorized every crack, crevice, and nuance of conversation along the route to the court. That meaningless repetition of unrelated action is what makes games fun!
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.
For millions of people, having to try again when you die IS enjoyable. Many people don’t like being treated like a baby and have everything handed to them, they want to earn it.
Being sent back to try again is not wasting time, its giving the player the opportunity to learn and grow.
Video games are the only medium where someone can be denied progress based on their skill. That is their major draw. If you don’t like this, you probably don’t like video games and I recommend you try movies and books instead of trying to turn video games into them.
Being sent back to try again is not wasting time, its giving the player the opportunity to learn and grow.
I think a large part of why so many people think that some games punish the player by wasting their time is because for lower skilled players (like myself), getting hit is a death sentence, and so we focus our efforts on not getting hit. But then, because we’re focusing more on not getting hit than we are hitting the enemy, the fight takes an eternity. And because the fight takes an eternity, the enemy has that many more opportunities to get a couple hits in, and now that 20 minutes that I’ve just spent dodging Lady Maria’s attacks have been wasted. I didn’t learn anything in that attempt, because I was busy trying not to get hit. It’s basically impossible to break out of that mindset on your own, because by default the game trains you to avoid getting hurt at all costs.
This is also why I love Sekiro so much. That instinct to not get hit can be expressed through deflecting. Deflections move the fight along just as much as attacks, and also I’m sitting right next to the boss so I’m able to get attacks in more easily without putting myself at risk. Altogether, this means boss fights don’t take an eternity.
Video games are the only medium where someone can be denied progress based on their skill. That is their major draw. If you don’t like this, you probably don’t like video games and I recommend you try movies and books instead of trying to turn video games into them.
This is an incredibly Fromsoft Fan attitude. There’s a reason you never hear people make these complaints about games like Dying Light or Mass Effect. Are most games just too movie-like for you?
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.
Green Mario and Metroid
I’m triggered!!
I’m just imagining a metroid coming down to suck the life out of Bowser
But no Zelda with Epona.
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.
I’d agree with you mostly except that nobody out there making a “soulslike” actually seems to understand what makes Dark Souls so good. There are so, so many garbage soulslikes out there, and exceptionally few good ones.
To be fair, there are also a ton of games using the term “souls like” just because they have a respawn system and checkpoints. I don’t include these, personally.
Some of the good ones not made by From soft, IMO, include Lies of P which is probably the closest to form, and The Surge, but 1 over 2 for level design, and 2 over 1 for boss design.
Mortal Shell could be good if it wasn’t so buggy that enemies only actually appear once they’re in your face. It’s got atmosphere and the weighty combat part pretty good.
Another Crab’s Treasure nails everything while having a totally different, satirical take on the concept.
I haven’t tried Entoria, but the reviews don’t look good. I was hoping it would be at least to the level of Lies.
I’ve played all these and agree that Lies of P is one of the few good ones. The Surge is actually one I had in mind when I wrote my response. I think it’s absolute trash. The limb targeting gimmick and the forced quicktime finishers constantly stopping the action are just awful. I agree with your assessment of the others.
At the end of the day I’d almost always rather just play Dark Souls (yes, even Dark Souls 2) again rather than any of the crappy copycats out there.
This is why I want a remaster of Space Channel 5, the timing is impossibly difficult (ESPECIALLY when emulated as video and audio isn’t synced), but it’s on purpose because if you aren’t stonewalled the game will only take one hour.
Nowadays buying a game that only lasts an hour is fine because the game’s usually not sold at full price anyway.
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.
A game is something that has a goal within certain bounds/rules. You accept that when you play and tedium isn’t relivent except as maybe a thing you don’t like, just like you might not like how a piece feels or character looks or a particular rule.
A toy is something you play with for “fun”.
I think people that want a toy accidentally start playing a game then get upset that it isnt a toy.
Why can’t/shouldn’t a game be both? Plenty of games have easy modes and cheat consoles.
They CAN be, but they are not obligated to be.
Fair enough.
Kids have it too easy. Back in my day we did it the hard way! (using Game Genie)
Gr8 b8 m8
I r8 8/8
Now that takes me back.
Please. Please please please please PLEASE be satire.
Thanks I hate it
dark souls would still benefit from difficulty settings
Aye. Unpopular but…that’s a reason I haven’t touched any of those yet. Fucking respawn. Stop wasting my time. We had that enough back in the days when there only was 1 game a month (if at all). But they must exclude us with not having a difficulty setting. Cheating also doesn’t help in this case.
The difficulty settings are your stats. Literally.
Depending on your build and your personal skill level the game becomes easy or hard. The souls games are notoriously difficult because people don’t have the attention span to learn boss patterns and want to kill every other enemy they see. The game punishes arrogance and forces you to figure out the mechanics yourself.
Once you get a hang of it the games become really easy. Not even joking. I have a harder time playing Space Marine 2 than I do Dark Souls.
sure but you won’t know that as a new player unless you go outside the actual game for info.
The game provides everything you need to know that though.
If one hit takes most of your health away, then clearly you need more health. So buff your health stat.
Still learning and need to survive better? Wear armour.
Casting magic? Maybe you need more Mana.
Maybe as a person who’s been playing games my whole life I have a cognitive dissonance or something when it comes to people not understanding game mechanics.
Here’s a good video that helps me understand a bit better.
But like… You can literally see what each stat buffs and by how much each time you sit at a bonfire to level up.
The game doesn’t hold your hand but it’s not difficult to understand enough to play the game.
Oh, so Dark Souls is trail and error?
That doesn’t sound fun at all.
Are there any video games that don’t involve some level of trial and error? I suppose respawn mechanics should be removed from all games then?
I guess what I’m saying is that the souls games reward experience. The more you learn, the easier it becomes. More akin to a roguelike in learning curve than a puzzle game.
The barrier for entry may seem high but I genuinely think after an hour of playing you’ll quickly get the hang of it and be just fine.
some of the highest-rated games of all time have no trial and error. Disco Elysium springs to mind because i’m currently playing through it.
Some games not having trial and error doesn’t invalidate my point though. At a fundamental level videogames reward knowledge of mechanics the further you progress. One mechanic may work well in one game and horribly in another.
I’m certain the more you play Disco Elysium the better you get at the game. Same applies for any game. Not being able to grasp a repeated mechanic in a game doesn’t make it a bad game either. It just means it isn’t a game for you.
ah, so it’s king’s quest style progression. i played enough of that in the 90s.
I mean, that’s RPGs for you. Level up, buy equipment, wear armour and cast spells.
Any part of the equation is the solution. Just depends on how you want to play. The story is what you make of it along the way.
with king’s quest progression i meant that the game is designed around players getting stuck, possibly without them knowing.
RPGs center around the story and the role you play, and the mechanics are built to aid that. you play for the story. in most RPGs, failure still progresses the story because failure is interesting. getting stuck is not interesting. having the mechanics without a story to reinforce would just be going through the motions.
someone else said that the fromsoft games are made to feel like videogames, and that resonated with me. that explained the disconnect i see in the mechanics and the world.
I think you have a bad impression of how souls games work and I’m not sure how to address that.
Did you ever play Rogue or Thief back in the day? Maybe the Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Cuphead or Balatro? Loss is part of the game but it still progresses the story. You’re never “stuck” as you say. Dying, making mistakes and retrying is part of the game.
Old RPGs that just gave you nothing sucked because they were directionless. Which is not a word I would ever use to describe a souls game. Sure, they’re difficult but there’s certainly a flow to them. I think a lot of people get hung up on the mechanics of the games and drop them immediately.
As you said, RPGs are centred around the story and role you play, mechanics are built to aid that. Once you get into a souls game, that is made abundantly clear. They just don’t hand it to you in the first 30 seconds and they expect you to be able to figure some things out as you play because the game does a good job at that.
And yes, fromsoft/soulsborne games most definitely feel like a videogame and they should. This Harkins to the story elements where you play as a literal nobody, worthless undying but you somehow ascend to godhood despite the odds and it breaks the world over and over again. We, the player, are the god. But the characters don’t know this. It’s unfathomable to them that something greater than they, exists. To us it’s a videogame but to the characters it’s the end of the world. Over and over and over again. No matter how insurmountable the odds, we get infinite chances to topple pantheons and change everything.
You should! The game desperately wants you to! That’s why stuff like the messaging system was created, to incentivize the player to player share of information. Yeah, all the messages left these days are going to be trolling, unfortunately, but there’s still plenty of videos and info from the era it was released on the internet.
There’s absolutely no shame in looking something up when you get stuck and can’t progress further, or asking a friend where to go next. That’s FromSoftware’s intent.
but that’s not interesting to me. i want immersion. that’s also why their multiplayer aspect seems like such a weird idea.
Then they might not be the games for you. Immersion is probably the last thing I’d really think of for Souls. They’re very much a series of videogames that feel like videogames, especially when you realize how many of the assets and animations get re-used from game to game.
that’s… the most concise way to explain it i’ve ever seen, and something that has never clicked for me until now. it’s always looked to me like this lore-heavy dark RPG and i’ve never been able to square the gameplay with the feeling. hearing that it was never supposed to gel at all and it’s all just background noise makes a lot of sense, and made all the remaining curiosity i had for the series disappear.
now if only other games could stop getting infected by the fromsoft bug…
So what, I have to dive in deep just to get the correct stats to have the difficulty that I want?
How about my old retired dad, is he not allowed to play dark souls because he doesn’t have the same reflexes he did 40 years ago? Because it would otherwise invalidate your sense of pride for being able to beat it?
Dark Souls should have a story mode difficulty. Every game should.
Claiming it shouldn’t is selfish.
A sense of entitlement to features in a creative work not made by you is the real selfishness.
It is only a creative work if it can be enjoyed. Otherwise it are just bits on a harddrive.
People beat the games blindfolded. People beat them one handed and without dodging or leveling up.
There’s no need to dive deep either. The souls games have to be some of the best thought out games I’ve played in a long time. Progression makes sense as you play. If an enemy is too tough just walk away and come back later.
Stats scale pretty simply with the game and you can play as you want. Dark souls doesn’t need a story mode and not every game does either.
If you want to make the argument for accessibility, fine. But asking for the bar to be lowered because you can’t or won’t learn the mechanics of a game is wild to me. It’s like asking the devs of Overcooked to make the dishes cook themselves because it gets hard to play.
I tried to pay DS1 about 6 times now, hated it every single time. Played ER, fucking loved it. DS1 is just horrible game design.
Setting aside the graphics, the map/open world, and magic becoming mana based rather than vancian, they really feel like the same gameplay to me. I think the bosses were actually easier in DS1. Honestly. Fighting the final boss, or say that capybara demon, really felt more like I was being a badass, learning the mechanics and being better than the boss, than the utterly annoying final few bosses in ER, where it was all about getting my stats high enough.
That’s because Elden Ring is Dark Souls for noobs. You just weren’t able to git gud. It’s okay. Not everyone can. Saying a game that literally spawned an entire genre has “horrible design” is pretty ridiculous though, don’t you think?
It has a lot going for it that is really good, but the way the game is laid out and the controls and the menus and several other things that fall under design are pretty horrible. Definitely not unique, Metal Gear for the MSX spawned a lot of different content and arguably a genre, but it’s annoying to play, same with the first Assassin’s Creed, and I’m sure if we looked plenty more.
