Kids Can't Handle Old-School RPGs Anymore Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NEXT | |
Nah, you just do what I did with the original Carmen Sandiego (on the C-128) when I lost the encyclopedia that came with it: guess and hope you're right and don't blame yourself if you're not. That also helps you memorize the answers, which is good for an educational game.
Agreed. The original Gold Box game manuals even inspired me to start table-top roleplaying back when I was in middle school. Even the original Legend of Zelda came with a poster map where you had to complete the upper two corners. | |
I would say that with games like Quest of the Avatar, it had a rudimentary sense of realism. So you've just come fresh out of knight school and want to save the world through philosophy and enlightenment. So modern gamers stand there waiting for the 30ft long blue arrow to appear above their heads to show them where to go. Retro gamers had to explore, write everything random NPCs say down just in case it might come in useful later on and work out WTF the particular game designer wanted them to do with little to no help. Try playing GTA4, or Fallout New Vegas without map markers or quest markers or anything else we take for granted. I'd bet half the people playing would give up within 2 hours and mark the games down as terrible. BUT thats not to say Modern games should go back to the limited resources era of games back in the Goldern age, a game like Ultima 4 did well when it was released because it was a simpler time and something entirely new. Release an RPG these days without a main antagonist or shady govenerment control and it wouldn't be taken seriously. | |
Might and Magic was/is a great series. If you want to see what older RPGs were like, as well as their evolution over time I suggest buying the Might & Magic 6 pack from GOG here: http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/might_and_magic_6_limited_edition Unfortunately I don't know where the Ultima games can be legally acquired or I would recommend them. Just a warning, you will need to read the manuals, and you will need to draw maps for at least the first game, and highly recommended for the second. And as an aside, between Swords of Xeen and VI's release Heroes of Might and Magic 1 and 2 were made, so storyline-wise those two games are in between some of the games in the Might and Magic pack. Anyhow, more on topic, I'm only 18 and I always read the manuals for games, assuming of course there is a manual, even if it's just a pdf Steam links me to when I click the manual button. It's a shame that people can't enjoy the RPGs of years past when they are very entertaining. Although, when they were released completing a game was meant to be an accomplishment, not a given, as you will see if you complete Might & Magic Book One, when you are presented with a score and a number to call and get a certificate, although with New World Computing out of business I doubt you will get it.... | |
Manuels? On every single game I've ever played, I always hit every single button and button combination I can think of before it starts XD | |
Wow I'm a kid,i just played one of those and I read instructions first when I buy any game so this is just a stereotype | |
there is so much gamer-classic HATRED of the "outsiders" in this thread. It makes so happy! for economic reasons | |
Yeah, but you know what? When you encounter a problem you can't figure out, you're supposed to look at the documentation before you call tech support. | |
Christ and Hunter, I sure feel old..... Games back there were very different from the games of today, that's for sure. I grew up during the "Golden Age" of video gaming (the 90s), before everything was mainstream'd to hell and back, creativity was a GOOD thing, there was such a thing as a truly independent but big game production company (like Origin), and while consoles were there, they certainty were nothing compared to computer gaming. As mentioned by others, one of the things that this generation of "gamers" gets is everything handed to them....and I can use two games of the same world to illustrate this: Morrowind and Oblivion. In Morrowind, you were told "go east, past the hills, look for the large tree"...and that was it. You didn't have a quest marker, you got the quest was told "go find it". In Oblivion....it was so damn easy. Who to find, where the treasure was, etc etc. The thing is, all games were like Morrowind in "that way", you were given vague instructions and sent on your way....and that was part of the FUN. It forced you to explore, you managed to find things that you weren't intending on finding, but that was the point. Now, has U4 aged well? Of course not...the game was grid based (up and down, left and right only, no diagonal movement), the graphics look like the graphics from that time, and a lot of doing stuff on that game required KEYBOARD inputs, not from the mouse. But, at the time, that game was pretty damn innovative...and if you bothered playing it, you'd see why. I miss the olden days of Masters of Orion 2, Sam and Max, and Stonekeep. But games and gaming have changed way too much, and trying to get people to play and understand a game from the 80s is difficult, if not impossible. | |
How young are these kids? I'm 24 and I have no problem with these kinds of games. Hell I play MINECRAFT and it just dumps you into the world with absolutely no fucking clue what to do. Reading the wiki is about the only way to figure out how to progress. | |
im 16 and this game sounds awesome! i want it. | |
wow | |
I think it's an attitude thing, not an age thing. I ave co-workers 20 years older than me that keep asking for help with spreadsheets for things that are easially looked up in the help manual or through google. Heck, 5 minutes of playing around could have done some of the things they asked me. Admmitedly, Ultima IV while a good choice for historical video games was probably not a good game to bridge the old and new. I sympathize as I rented III and IV on my NES back in the day and since they didn't have manuals, left me with no idea what to do. I had the same issue with a used copy of Might and Magic 3 I got on the SNES (it took years of playing and digging on the net to figure out what to do, but I did beat it in the end.) It's like how the older games were often harder, the lack of direction what what lengthened the game. Heck, even Dragon Warrior started you with no clear direction, and there are parts of the first Final Fantasy I wonder if I'd have thought of without a guide. | |
Ah yes. I miss the days when I had to take notes (and draw maps) in order to progress. While I did that only in the PS1 generation (and mostly on JRPG's), I really liked how it made me think on how to figure out my progress, seeing as the whole dungeon I'm currently in utilizes teleporters. | |
Maybe they can be forgiven for not reading the manuals nowadays. Last manual I read for an x360 game made a point of pointing out that the green button is the "A" button. With this sort of dumb-down approach to manual writing its no wonder no one, or hardly no one, bothers to read them. | |
Back when I was a kid (and when Ultima IV came out) in order to be a gamer of the non ATARI 2600 type, you actually had to have some modicum of intellectual capability. That was just the way things were since P.C.'s were relatively uncommon and still difficult to work. Now a days, games, computers, operating systems, etc are all very accessible, so the variety of people who play games on the P.C. has evolved from a very narrow band of relatively smart nerd type people, to the guy that could best be described as "average". I think the professor here is discounting (or not accounting for at all) the gap in the TYPES of gamers. Certainly a game like Ultima IV is not accessible to people for what passes as average intellectual capabilities these days. Now I realize that this could come off as very denigrating towards the "average gamers" these days, but it's just the way things were - back in the infancy of gaming many games were just made for and by nerdy type people. It's kind of ironic that Garriot was one of the more artistic people in the industry at the time and his game was received like this, but I would chalk it down to the people who were doing the implementation (as the professor stated, it was expected that the user would read the manual). | |
Yeah, sometimes manuals are actually an insult to a normal person's intelligence by pointing out the blatantly obvious. It makes me think of how [apparently] inane the wii manual was with its silly illustrations. I wish more games would have better manuals, especially with backstory/fluff, facts, and in-depth descriptions. Age of Kings had a really cool manual, for example, that had italicized, historical applications for all of the buildings, units, and technologies. Even just a well-made map would be appreciated. The GOTY Morrowind map that came with my xbox version was so fun to use with the game's massive world, while the Oblivion one was bloody awful. Now that I think of it, there was an error in the Oblivion manual about one of the skills/attributes... | |
insult me if you must, but i think i'd prefer my non-cerebral, streamlined, "new" games to these older difficult ones. that said, they should have read the manual. i do that just 'cause i like to. oldest game i've ever beat: Metriod | |
Now I know. Also, is that Linkara in your avatar? 'Cause the resembleance is eerie. Well, most kids these days can't really handle old school. If you can't make 'em like subs, what chance do you have with Ultima 4? | |
Wasn't that the starting point of EA becoming the bloody mawed, indie-eating behemoth it is today? | |
its me. and I really don't look like linkara, its just I picked the only picture where I don't look like a madman. Also, Im kind of confused, "If you can't make 'em like subs" subs? WTF? | |
these people seem fucking dumb as shit. | |
I said you resembled him because you both have the hat, glasses, and friendly looks on your faces. And by subs, I meant subtitles. As in kids hate reading subtitles. | |
OK "And by subs, I meant subtitles. As in kids hate reading subtitles." ah yes most kids do don't they... I personally prefer not to listen to PAINFUL voice acting (looking at you FFX2) | |
Me too. *Looks towards James Arnold Taylor.* | |
Wait....they are teaching "the history of video games" in a college? And people actually enroll in this course, and PAY for it? *head explodes* | |
Ahh, the good old days, where the best directions you'd get was a compass heading, and dungeon maps were the scrawls you made on grid paper. Good times. | |
I was responding to why people don't read the "READ THIS" things. Otherwise I agree with you. | |
I miss the days when game designers assumed people read the manuals so they wouldn't have to include boring game tutorials. Now, if you read the manual, you already know what to do and yet you're bogged down by NPCs who reiterate everything you just read in a painfully slow manner. Or even worse, the manual doesn't explain half the controls of the game so you HAVE to pay attention to the tutorial and then have no future reference to crawl back, or have to bog yourself down with in-game menus. It's no wonder people who got into gaming recently have no fondness for additional reading when modern games are such hand-holders. But I admit, these days it is bad game design to NOT tell you where to go. Even in an open-ended game, you should be able to figure out what your character is capable of doing without having to read a textbook. | |
I think there's a reason why people don't tolerate having to mark everything down on grid paper - that's bad design. Making a player do non-engaging labor that could be accomplished by an automated map system, just so they can play the game, is bad user interface. Software, as a general rule, should have good user interface. There should be contextual cues that explain minutiae that can't be fit into a tutorial (attribute description, command description [In a rogue-like I'm fond of: (z)ap which monster?]). A game should rarely, if ever, make you fight with its interface. | |
The Pokemon generation... | |
What surprised me most in this article was the fact that videogame history courses exist. I wonder how long I'll have to wait for interactive media historians to start popping up. Incidentally, I would have to recommend not reading online walkthroughs. I read most of one for Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and it sadly ruined the game for me. The guide in question did not give away spoilers, but it did change the way I operated by telling me locations of rare and powerful items. The guide also mentioned that a certain potential party member (I won't speak its name, that would just ruin things) was far too powerful and made the game too easy. However, I rather like said potential party member, so this created quite a struggle for me that ultimately messed up the game.
Sir, you are mistaken, Steam has manuals. If you wish to access them simply right-click on a game's icon and select "view player manual" from the context menu. | |
I loved Ultima IV and Ultima V on the old Apple IIe. Truth be told, I don't think I ever read the manual, yet managed to finish those games as a 13-14 year old back in the late 80s. They are 2 games that I had an exercise book simply for note taking, self drawn dungeon maps, passwords, obscure locations, and other secrets. I then passed on that book to other friends who wanted to play them after I was done. I have really fond memories of playing those games, but I don't think I'd go back in a hurry to replay them. | |
So the point of the article is telling people that if you're used to modern stuff, it's hard to go back to the old stuff? Euhm... duh? Especially if you were born after the old stuff. I mean... Sure, games are a lot easier then they were before but half of those old games are nothing more then glorified memories. There's nothing grand about them anymore. It's like saying "You should have definately driven the first car ever build if you're into driving/racing." | |
The younger crowd ruining and not understanding RPG's isn't anything new I mean why do you think Turn Based combat is a thing of the past and battles are now little more than any button mashing action game you can mention. And then there's the arrow thing that was sort of brought up, you can't even go to a town and ask a guy where to go next and find it yourself that's too complicated for the twats so you have a literal Arrow hold their hand and walk them there. | |
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Wow. Just...wow.
Anybody who spent money to take a class on the the "Art and History of Video Games" who ISN'T planning on a career in the game industry just failed an intelligence test. EPICALLY.