id games are too easy

[Vordakk]

Carnevil said:

Believe it or not, but a fair amount of people (even on these forums!) haven't even beaten (*gasp*) Doom 2. 30 maps is quite a bit to get through to get to the end

!!!

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd be amazed and disheartened if that was true. I'd like to think I'm on a forum with a group of peers who are at least as knowledgeable about the iwads as I am. If after 19 years, people still haven't finished DOOM 2 at least 15-20 times, that's shocking to me.

[esselfortium]

Carnevil said:

What I'm talking about is more of the progression of the game. Believe it or not, but a fair amount of people (even on these forums!) haven't even beaten (*gasp*) Doom 2. 30 maps is quite a bit to get through to get to the end - especially when it's all pretty similar. The game would probably be better if it was closer to 20 maps, and they were more differentiated and refined.

Doom 2's maps are pretty varied, especially by usual game standards.

[printz]

Carnevil said:

What I'm talking about is more of the progression of the game. Believe it or not, but a fair amount of people (even on these forums!) haven't even beaten (*gasp*) Doom 2. 30 maps is quite a bit to get through to get to the end - especially when it's all pretty similar. The game would probably be better if it was closer to 20 maps, and they were more differentiated and refined.

I've never finished Plutonia, which is not as varied as Doom 2, for example. And people here forget that Doom has an "I'm too young to die" difficulty useful for exploration and easy dispatching of enemies. So much for 'elitism'. Actually, all that is needed is enough difficulty settings from exploratory to very painful, and that is cheap to design into the game.

[Carnevil]

Vordakk said:

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd be amazed and disheartened if that was true.

Welcome to my world. I'm a pretty hardcore gamer and completionist, so finding out that most people don't finish games really bums me out. It's generally the end of games that I love the most (hell, the company name I went with is Final Boss Entertainment), and it sucks that such a small percentage of gamers get to experience that.

It also sucks as a developer (specifically an indie developer) because with Wrack, I know I'm building up to some really cool stuff later on in the game, and if people generally aren't ever going to get far enough to see that, then that really sucks. For one, they're going to judge the game based on the game's earlier (and probably less exciting) content, which hurts our word of mouth, which as an indie, is all we've got. Also, it also means that we probably spent a lot of money on content that most people won't see (money that we don't have a lot of), and aren't getting a lot of bang for our development buck (again, sucks worse for an indie). It also means that if you've got something important for the game's story towards the end (maybe a character dies or something)... people aren't going to get to experience that, and might be confused in the sequel (which they probably won't play anyway if they couldn't be bothered to finish the first one).

There are all sorts of reasons, but those are a few of them.

[Phml]

The trend of games not being completed isn't new, so it's not because of any particularity in Serious Sam 3 or Super Meat Boy gameplay.

Financial health of dumbed down games seems to work out just fine, piracy or not. World of Warcraft, Call of Duty... A testament of these games' success is that even on "dedicated" gaming forums, you will find many people praising these as genuinely great experiences.

The quality of a game is highly subjective, anyway. Many of you who rail against games being dumbed down also have a negative reaction to gameplay-oriented Doom slaughtermaps, while praising maps where fighting is almost a non-event, coming behind detail, exploration or whatever. From my perspective, you are asking for Doom to be dumbed down.

Am I right? Is gaming some kind of pyramidal structure with the dreaded "casual players" all the way to the bottom, you in the middle, me slightly higher and pro gamers or elite speedrunners at the top? Answering in the affirmative to either question would be beyond pretentious, and very silly.

Point being, while it's easy to have (and to understand why one would have) a kneejerk reaction whenever it's suggested content should be cut or should be easier, this doesn't make it into a binary situation where a game either falls into the magical sweetspot of the gaming hivemind or is boring crap. There's an entire scale, and as with every work of art the question isn't whether you should compromise your original vision but rather to what extent can you do so and still remain true to its essence.

Besides, not every idea is gold - heck, most of our ideas are garbage, and anyone disagreeing is delusional. Having to look at every part of a game extensively as to choose what to keep and what to ditch is quality control. What can be called cutting down can just as well be named polishing, and the end result being better for it.

[Jodwin]

Carnevil said:

That's not what I'm suggesting at all. What I'm suggesting is akin to film editing. Did you know that they shoot way more footage than what's actually used in a movie? When they trim it down to two hours or so, do you feel screwed over? No, of course not. You're adding value by trimming away what 90% of people would find boring, and you're also keeping it from going on for too long. It's very hard to captivate people for very long - especially in a day and age where people have so much going on, and so many things competing for their attention. So, it's definitely one of those "less is more" type of things.

I suppose that could be rephrased simply as "leaving out the filler"? In terms of Doom maps, or levels for pretty much any game, you often have lots of filler with a few big fights in the middle. Or "tunnel tunnel tunnel big room tunnel tunnel tunnel room exit." The filler segments, or tunnels, tend to repetitive and get boring over time while the meat of the gameplay is in the rooms. In such scenario cutting down the filler would actually help keep the player interested as there are less boring bits left. Of course the optimal situation would be to replace all filler with something awesome, but in reality that that's never going to happen.

Carnevil said:

It also sucks as a developer (specifically an indie developer) because with Wrack, I know I'm building up to some really cool stuff later on in the game, and if people generally aren't ever going to get far enough to see that, then that really sucks. For one, they're going to judge the game based on the game's earlier (and probably less exciting) content, which hurts our word of mouth, which as an indie, is all we've got.

May I suggest something as ludicrous as creating a demo that contains both early and late content? Ie. having E1M1 and E1M5 or something in a demo would probably give players a much more balanced view of the game than just showing the first two levels. Plus when (or if) they actually play the game they won't get bored right away for playing over all the levels they know from before. If you look at Doom, it did give quite a balanced view of content by giving a whole episode away for everyone to try.

[Aliotroph?]

Vordakk said:

!!!

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd be amazed and disheartened if that was true. I'd like to think I'm on a forum with a group of peers who are at least as knowledgeable about the iwads as I am. If after 19 years, people still haven't finished DOOM 2 at least 15-20 times, that's shocking to me.

Well, I certainly haven't finished it that many times. I don't like Doom II nearly enough to do that. I never have and I never will. I also guarantee you I've never legitimately beat it on anything higher than "I'm Too Young to Die." That was the first time I played it. I tried doing it on UV a few times and usually quit because I was bored. Lots of the vanilla levels are pretty meh. I've tried doing map30 on UV and didn't have the patience for it.

Now that I'm thinking about it I probably don't finish most games. I had a little more patience for it when I was a kid. Now if I get bored I just walk away. If the difficulty suddenly spikes a lot or I encounter a game-breaking bug I'll often just walk away too.

As for Wrack, a demo with a variety of gameplay sounds like a good plan. It avoids players having an opinion based on only the start of the game if things do change a lot throughout, and it avoids the opposite problem where the demo is the best part. That's a problem with Doom. I'd rather play E1 again than play most of the other maps. Works out well since E1 is free.

[Doom_Dude]

Finish Doom 2, 15-20 times? Holy shit, I played through Doom 2 a couple times and that's it. Nowadays if I get the urge to play some Doom, I'll play some user made levels and call it a day. I don't even play that many custom levels. I think the most time I spent in Doom is testing my own maps.

I try to finish most games I buy but there's always a few I get about 3/4 of the way through and get bored, then I go and play something else for a change.

[Krispy]

And you call yourself 'Doom Dude.' Ptooey!

[schwerpunk]

Doom 2 is pretty hard... But even if I haven't beaten it legitimately, I still enjoy the game quite a bit, and I don't feel dissatisfied with it. Subjectively, I don't see any connection between games I think are good & games I've completed. Perhaps even the inverse is true - I beat Rage, and didn't particularly enjoy it.

Unless your game has a story that you feel is important enough to tell (sign #1 that it may not be fun to play), then I can see players being unable to finish it being detrimental - in that case it's like a book, or a movie. But most games (especially retro, classic) are meant to be played in a more cyclical manner. You pick 'em up, play 'em; put 'em back down again. Maybe you play them later, maybe you even beat them, but that's not important. What's important is that you enjoy the God damned game.

I'll bring up the D Souls again, because I can't think of a better modern example: I haven't beat either of them, but I regard both of them with absolute ardour.

[geo]

I read some game design article a few years back about the Mario effect. Making games easy until a certain point. Games where you don't die or get challenged for a while in the game. The longer you live and the less downtime between lives the more likely you are to keep playing.

[Doom_Dude]

Krispy said:

And you call yourself 'Doom Dude.' Ptooey!

I prefer to make levels for Doom 2, rather than replay it over and over again and that's a bad thing somehow?

[schwerpunk]

I think he was being facetious. Gentle ribbing an' all that.

[yellowmadness54]

I can't even say I've played through Doom 2 all the way 5 times.

Maybe twice I've done it, but I have completed it. And I tend to now just skip around levels doing stuff in the 10-20 minutes of the day I play doom.