PercyBoleyn:
People actually complained about that? I mean yeah, the spells and combat system were a bit confusing at first but it's not like there weren't mobs around for you to experiment with. Didn't it feel satisfying taking down your first mob with techniques and tricks you learned by yourself instead of having someone hold your hand through the entire process?

A lot of reviews whined about difficulty and how it wasn't in your face obvious how to do things. Some people are just impatient really, and it's not like the first Witcher game was easy either. for all I know, people who complained were the ones who never played the first game.

leet_x1337:

imahobbit4062:
You ever played Call Of Duty on Veteran?

Why, yes I have.

"GRENADE!!!!" *boom* "You were killed by a grenade." "GRENADE!!!!" *boom* "You were killed by a grenade.""GRENADE!!!!" *boom* "You were killed by a grenade." "GRENADE!!!!" *boom* "You were killed by a grenade." "GRENADE!!!!" *boom* "You were killed by a grenade." "GRENADE!!!!" *boom* "You were killed by a grenade."

You want to know what actual difficulty is? Nothing like that.

My friend and I just played the new MW3 DLC on Monday night (right when it came out) and we were playing one of the new Spec Ops missions called Negotiation. In this mission, you have to save hostages (which die if you don't move forward fast enough) and a few rooms which you have to breach. Thats fine, breaching is fun.
However, near the end of the level--actually at about halfway, but whatever, I still look at level progress as a "how much of the map is left?"--you have to move through this really open area (its just a big street that looks open, but it is just a hallway) and kill a bunch of enemies. Not only are there a fuckload of enemies that spawn automatically, there are a bunch that drop from a chopper right away. Now, if you're playing on Veteran, they ALL aim at your head and down you in three shots. So as you can imagine, this part is really fucking hard. But thats the thing, this part isn't hard it is just really bad level design. It is not hard to slowly look around cover and kill enemies one by one until there are none left, it is not hard to throw every grenade you have until a bunch of guys are dead, it is just patience and luck. Granted, if you can kill all these guys without being downed once, without abusing cover, then yeah, you are a fucking badass. But their health is so high, and your weapon damage is so low, that you just can't do that. CoD isn't fucking Halo or Doom.

If this was set up to be the same kind of difficulty in Halo, then you would enter a room with like... 50 elites with plasma rifles, you have a fuckload of sniper ammo, and they never advance on you, they just shoot the fuck out of you when you stand up. Not hard, just boring and tedious. Halo is actually difficult, it spawns enemies that rush your position and are tough, but if you are a badass, you can kill these guys before they kill you, or avoid them and then kill them.

That is why CoD fucking sucks, and Halo is better than CoD in every way. I don't even need a flame shield, because I know I am right in this.

It goes back to command and conquer, well, possibly back to the DUNE 2000 before it. This is the first time I noticed it. You beat a mission, get a new vehicle, learn a new skill. Each mission, new vehical/feature, beat it, next mission. This makes the entire game at some level a giant tutorial.

I wholeheartedly agree. Morrowind, move, look, race, chargen, grab stuff, get money, ALL SYSTEMS GO! Hell, like Yahtzee said for Skyrim, you could walk 89 miles in the other direction if you wanted.

Waaghpowa:

PercyBoleyn:
People actually complained about that? I mean yeah, the spells and combat system were a bit confusing at first but it's not like there weren't mobs around for you to experiment with. Didn't it feel satisfying taking down your first mob with techniques and tricks you learned by yourself instead of having someone hold your hand through the entire process?

A lot of reviews whined about difficulty and how it wasn't in your face obvious how to do things. Some people are just impatient really, and it's not like the first Witcher game was easy either. for all I know, people who complained were the ones who never played the first game.

The problem I had with it was that the interface was horrible for looking stuff up and that the opening section is quite difficult when you don't quite understand what's going on. I just about got to the first village before I got fed up, speaking here as someone who enjoyed the first game and is generally a fan of large, complex games.

I'm probably going to give it another go eventually (they have a massive update coming soon I think?) However the Witcher 2 is an extremely difficult game to get into.

As far as handholding goes, I'm perfectly fine so long as it doesn't get int he way of playing normally. When the game starts covering the screen in constant pop-ups and nags you to follow the nice little path the developers wants you to take through their game, I get fed-up and either turn them off or find something better to play.

No kidding. Not that I want to return to the days of Nintendo Hard by any stretch of the imagination, but all this hand holding tends to kill any sense of accomplishment the game might've offered.

Well I wouldn't agree on that text thing but figuring things out is an issue, and the issue is in bad design, it is the split between a great meal and a decent one, you can have the same ingredients but how you put them together is of great importance.

The little things add up to a huge difference in overall feel:
- let's take path discovery, in HL2 which is completely linear you are left to discover your way and it is designed for you to notice the hints, and in modern games your way is marked by a big flashing neon outline... discovery 0, challenge 0, reward 0, you are just along for the pretty pictures
- opening doors, yes so simple yet we can have a challenge in it, in HL2 you get a door with a lock on it and you have a weapon... figure it out buddy, in modern games again a big flashing neon outline on the door, a big flashing neon button to press on the door, and half the time they still have someone else open the door in a most time consuming way
- items, in Deus Ex every item has a distinguishing design that you will start to remember and notice ever more quickly when coming across it, in Human Revolution there is no such design only a big flashing neon outline

And there is much more discovery lost in these new "everyone wins" design directions

roushutsu:
Probably a variety of reasons.

Hello and Welcome to the Escapist.
Hope you enjoy yourself here :)

On Topic.

I don't mind having a tutorial in the start telling me how to do the basics.
But games that doesn't have it are interesting to learn and play and after the game I usually go look the internet what there are and realize I have only used the basic attacks through the wole game.

For example in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands you learn the basic mechanics (running on walls, jumping, leaping, rolling etc) in the first mission but as far as combat goes it sais something like wave wii-mote for right hand and nunchuck for left hand and then suddenly if you strike mote, mote, nunchuck, mote and nuchuck the Prince instakills somebadass by throwing them on the ground and stabing them in the heart and I am like WTF o.O

Then I go to the options menu and there's a whole list of combos'.

I agree there is way too much hand holding in RPGs nowadays. I have nothing wrong with teaching and showing me as I go but eventually you have to take off the training wheels and go. I especially don't like that there is little room for failure in games anymore.
An example that leaps to mind recently for me was playing a mission in Skyrim where at the end, the room began to fill with water, you are told you have to find a way out before you drown.
Except, you don't. Once the water reaches a certain height, the way out reveals itself and there is no way to miss it OR drown.
Yaawn.

While there are many games like that today, I don't like the old ways either when the solution could be really batshit crazy. Like search this random box for a key that unlocks a hidden box somewhere in the woods which contain a magical bomb that will only blow up a specific wall and no we wont tell you which! There's nothing fun or smart about forcing the player to stumble around hoping to find some hidden key or such.

Games with little to no handholding are still around. They're just not as common anymore, sadly.

My favourite example of a game doing it right is Dark Souls. The first bit is a tutorial. It gives you a sword and shield, and tells you "this is how you use em, have fun," and then throws you out into a huge world that is designed to kill you. There are no other tutorials past that point, except or those given by other players. If you, like me, play offline, that means no hints given by other players, at all.

That is pretty much the way I like my games to be, and thankfully they do still exist.

Lucem712:
Well, most games I play have the first mission as a tutorial and then release you. Occasionally throwing up a text box because you've been on the same puzzle for 30 minutes. I think it also helps in games with a-lot of different actions, I don't remember what game it was but I didn't realize til about halfway through how to do a certain action and I'm like, 'geez, that'd been nice to know'

Also, playing Skyrim with the claw doors. I thought it had to do something with the size of the animals/creatures depicted on the wheels. When it wasn't that, I thought it was the alphabetical ordering of the animals' names. I submitted to the wikia after being wrong many many times. I then realized that the bottom of the claws had the pattern on them. Never occurred to me to look there. So, eh, maybe I'm a bit slow.

Edit: I like the idea of spreading it out. Giving the basics and then just kind of shooting up a text box when you gain a new ability or you need an advanced move. InFamous style.

I didn't know you could look at it, so I checked the environment like it showed earlier in the game in (some other dungeon?).
Found nothing, analyzed the stupid meaningless paintings on the wall, tried every single combination. Very last one succeeds. Learn two weeks later from a guy at work you can click and look at them. This same guy didn't even know about fast travel and would run from place to place and wasted hours of precious playing time doing nothing.

Waaghpowa:

PercyBoleyn:
People actually complained about that? I mean yeah, the spells and combat system were a bit confusing at first but it's not like there weren't mobs around for you to experiment with. Didn't it feel satisfying taking down your first mob with techniques and tricks you learned by yourself instead of having someone hold your hand through the entire process?

A lot of reviews whined about difficulty and how it wasn't in your face obvious how to do things. Some people are just impatient really, and it's not like the first Witcher game was easy either. for all I know, people who complained were the ones who never played the first game.

Haha seriously. If reviewers are going to go "I got killed by the dragon because I stood out in the open while he was breathing fire! That's not fair!" imagine how they'd react to the barghests.

Depends on what game you get. The big blockbuster games, yes they have the hand holding mentality. Other games such as dwarf fortress, or Paradox interactive games are targetted at a more mature audience and have more complex game mechanics

Soo, you Reckon the Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning intro did it better?

"Here have a weapon, this is how you use it.
Repeat for other weapon.

Hey a bossfight!

Gl in the open world :3."

Yggdraz0r:
Soo, you Reckon the Reckoning intro did it better?

"Here have a weapon, this is how you use it.
Repeat for other weapon.

Hey a bossfight!

Gl in the open world :3."

Haven't played The Reckoning, but that sounds like a good way to do it.

I remember back in the day when you had to guess what an item did based on the badly translated name. Wanna know how much a certain healing item heals? Fuck off! Get in a battle and find out yourself! Ohhh, what does that item do? Save and find out, cuz fuck if I know!

I'll give something very, very simple. I play DDO, the MMO version of Dungeons and Dragons. For the first time in any MMO I've played in recent years, I could screw my character over completely like in the table-top version. This made me think harder about what to do with my character rather than just "Oh. He doesn't use magic, no intelligence." The fact it was more complicated than most MMOs was also intriguing. Sure, the game had a tutorial, but it's that level of difficulty to me.

I don't think the problem is we need to make things nearly impossible, we need to make more games that make us think carefully about what we're doing. That's the reason I play the MMOs I have. They force you to learn these new tactics and in the process, you are brought into a state that requires more thought than just "Shoot this target."

I would say their is both a lack of intelligent design and too much hand holding in today's games. It's really quite absurd how bad it has become. The worst offender I find is the "make things that are important glow" when most of the time a simple much more natural color identifier would do the exact same job but far more elegantly.

Take a simple lever you need to pull to open a door but the lever is in another room. Any normal player would search around for said lever and perhaps notice it eventually but give that lever say a red handle and make the rest of the machinery around it more subdued colors and wabam they will easily solve the puzzle and not feel like someone was yelling LOOK LOOK OVER HERE DO YOUS SEE IT DO YOU?!?!

Kahunaburger:
Haha seriously. If reviewers are going to go "I got killed by the dragon because I stood out in the open while he was breathing fire! That's not fair!" imagine how they'd react to the barghests.

You know, it's people like that who forced Blizzard to put "Don't stand in fire" as a loading screen tip for World of Warcraft.

I'm all for a tutorial level at the beginning of the game, or a tutorial option in the menu.

But when a game goes Arkham City on me--that is to say, giving me button prompts for hopping over a ledge when I'm near the end of the game and already having hopped over many ledges in my days, or having Batman literally tell me how to solve the current problem--then it just becomes silly.

Evilpigeon:
The problem I had with it was that the interface was horrible for looking stuff up and that the opening section is quite difficult when you don't quite understand what's going on. I just about got to the first village before I got fed up, speaking here as someone who enjoyed the first game and is generally a fan of large, complex games.

Every time I start an RPG I hit "J" for a journal, "I" for inventory and "K" for skills. Most of the time I'm dead on and it was the case for the Witcher. For me it was simply logic.

This was one of my biggest complaints with Alice: Madness Returns. On EVERY. SINGLE. PUZZLE. or collectible, if you used your Shrink ability, the answer would be spelled out for you on the wall somewhere.

I know there was another game that basically spoon-fed you the answers, but I can't think of it right now. I think it was a DS game...>3>

I still think the best option is old-school tutorials like the Hazard Room in Half-life (similar in Opposing Force) or the tutorials in Deus Ex or System Shock. A clear and concise (and fun) tutorial section seperate from the rest of the game.

Kahunaburger:

Yggdraz0r:
Soo, you Reckon the Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning intro did it better?

"Here have a weapon, this is how you use it.
Repeat for other weapon.

Hey a bossfight!

Gl in the open world :3."

Haven't played The Reckoning, but that sounds like a good way to do it.

You can get a demo :o. Wich basicly includes just this.

Yeah, games do that now.

Batman:AA drove me crazy by telling me hours into the game and after having it done numerous times that I can press button A to smash a wall.
And then there are quicktime events.
These days, some games feel like they're playing you, not the other way around. Like the game says: "Push A you little monkey!"

I hate hinting in RPGs. There have always been stupid RPGs that just told you to find some dude so you had to mouseover and/or approach every NPC to read his name. I never liked that.
But now they're just putting dots and distances on your radar (oh, how immersive) and big fat arrows on your target. Once again, it feels like the game is playing me. "Go right there a--hole, right where I put the arrow!"

Good RPGs have always been great with telling you: Find 'Dave', he's a stocky dude with a red helmet and usually hangs out by the giraffe on the eastern marketplace. Boom. Is that really so hard?

I'm all for options, though. Give people who are only interested in the storyline and/or the fighting fat markers. But make them switchable and give good directions.
Also, since so many people talk about difficulty, I don't want to spend hours battling one stupid boss. For me, make an option to have bosses just twice as hard to kill as regular baddies, not a hundred times.

Lucem712:

roushutsu:
~Le Snip~

Sorry, I just noticed your post count/Join date and felt the need to say, 'Hello!'

So, HOLA! Welcome to the Escapist!

You were supposed to mention the basement. Now they might go into the basement, and we'll have some explaining to do.

Minecraft did the "no hand-holding" thing pretty well. They just dump you in the game, no help or tutorial at all; you just have to fend for yourself and try things out and explore. Admittedly, I first played it when the beta came out, so I'd already heard in passing that you needed to punch trees to get wood, but besides that, it was a nice challenge :)

I haven't played it in a while though - have they added tutorials or the like yet?

"green arrow blindness"was what one modder called it in oblivion. from what i heard he got bug reports, abuse, death threats, flamed, etc because his quest mod had a journal entry that told you go to such and such camp and search for an item rather than relying on putting a huge ass arrow above the item that said "go here"

people come to rely on the hints like big arrows, their brain shuts off and they dont pay as much attention

Buretsu:
Required link for this discussion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

^This sums my thoughts up.