More games should actively tell the player figure it out and fuck you plz die

Yeah, that title. So what I mean is. People like the Soulsborne as it tells the player to fuck off but it's fun you keep coming back for more. It's a very punishing game. Most games these days are not like that. Most hold your hand. Skyward Sword still giving tutorials in the final damn dungeon I have read. Botw, on the other hand, says fuck you in the very start. Most enemies will one-shot kill you. Granted it does get easier as you play it more but not really because Link gets stronger as that surely plays a part but mainly you as the player just get better. If we go back tot he height of arcade games they were punishing to suck more quarters out of you. Home console games still used this philosophy. They were punishing and difficult. Then you have a game like Battletoads or even better. Castlevania Bloodlines. Those 2 games say fuck you. Eat shit. Really punishing and the best part. They did have a tutorial. It just wasn't done by MEGA MAN MEGA MAN PRESS A TO SHOOT! It was done with the very first level of the game. Taught you everything you needed to know. Botw and Souls in 3D do this as well. Not saying they are the first by any means but it's so well crafted. They don't hold your hand at all. There is putting obstacles in a characters way and then there are games right from the start want you to die. You are not getting over hurdles..you are surviving it. Not every game these days needs to be difficult like this of course. I do feel more should stop holding the player's hand and teach by design rather than a menu or button prompts. Sorry for the rant but how do you feel?

Yeah, games for the most part have been getting easier over time. More hand holdy too with excessive tutorials and prompts. I don't mind as long as there is a difficulty selection so you can adjust it to your liking. One modern game that comes to mind is Bioshock Infinite. After you beat the game, you unlock "1999 mode". Everything is much harder, and I enjoyed playing this mode very much. The Witcher 2&3 was also a solid challenge on higher difficulty.

I think there are three reasons for games getting easier over time. These mostly apply to big or AAA games, and not really indies.

1. More adults playing games. Adults usually have less free time than kids. A lot of people I know just want to play something easy after work, and don't want to punish themselves over a very difficult game.

2. Games must appeal to a wider audience. Games are expensive to make, and developers have to make a game appeal to as many people as possible to make a profit. This sometimes results in dumbing down or hand-holding.

3. Games these days are longer. 8/16 bit games were harder therefore took more time to beat even though there was less content.

I was listening to HappyConsoleGamer's friend, Rob, on Youtube recently, where they did the whole "Gaming, Then and Now" routine. Rob makes an interesting observation where he points out Super Mario World as the beginning of the end of video game manuals.

It was more about how that was around the era where video game tutorials started to take place.



At the end of the day, I really don't mind easier games. I just play to have fun. If the games are too damn hard (looking in your direction Cuphead:?), they become like something of a turn-off for me. But I do get part of Rob's frustration where a game forces you to go through a tutorial before getting started.

Some games do this very fluidly. More recently, I remember ReCore being highly self-intuitive. Lovely game, that one. :)

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Originally Posted by ComradeOj

One modern game that comes to mind is Bioshock Infinite. After you beat the game, you unlock "1999 mode". Everything is much harder, and I enjoyed playing this mode very much.

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You can unlock this mode without beating the game by using the Contra code. That's how I first played it. It's not very "1999", i.e. System Shock 2 in design, but it's a nice challenge above the regular settings.

Most games have tutorials now, because they don't include a manual. I was trying to play Sim City 2000 SE on PC last year. It was a free game from Origin. I didn't get very far, because what the game was asking me to do was not intuitive. I seem to recall that those Sim games came with not just your normal manual, they literally had a book included. My Amiga copy of Sim Earth had a manual that was well over 200 pages.

I think the Game Save/Load also plays a big part in making things easier to go trough.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...94/807/694.png

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Originally Posted by Thief

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...94/807/694.png

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Either contribute to the convo or get the fuck out. Don't shit post in my thread.

I don't necessarily appreciate punishingly hard games myself, but I also don't prefer the cake-walks. Balancing the challenge is a science of many great games, and those are the best ones to me. Something that becomes increasingly more difficult as the player is likely to get better. Haven't played enough modern games to know if they're all too easy now, or what. All I know is that Mario Odyssey felt too easy.

I agree that basic instructions should be in a manual, not littered through-out the stages. That, or put a tutorial mode as optional somewhere in the game. The thing about games, mostly older-school games that irritated me, was coming to parts where you just don't know what you're supposed to be doing. Maybe I need hand-held sometimes, but I hate those WTF do I do now moments and then it's something you never would have thought of. I always felt it was kinda cheap for a game to throw you into a mind-boggling part that you probably won't progress past early on in the game, so you never get to see most of the actual game because you'd usually give up and turn it off. Save that stuff for the later part of the game? That's why I like games that with a fair challenge, you get more out of them. The basic psychology of humans is similar to rats in that we need to be able to win at least some of the time, or we simply will not want to play anymore. It was a good strategy for arcades to make money, but I don't think home console games need to be punishingly hard.

I just found this and describes exactly what I meant about the first level of being a tutorial. Coincidently it's about Mega Man.

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

The Great Plateau in BotW is exactly this philosophy.

2018 and Dark Souls still needs to be explained. For one DS has the perfect tutorial stage because you have short signs on the ground that explain the game basics and controls, signs that can be avoided therefore aren't forced upon you (handy for replay).

http://www.megabearsfan.net/image.ax...parry_fail.jpg

Domon's Souls had messages left by other players online. You could leave 1 sentence with a hint for the next guy coming along.

Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, all the same game under different skins. In all of them you and other players online can leave msgs for other players, but in the tutorial stage these msgs are of the devs explaining the game.

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Originally Posted by SegataS

Either contribute to the convo or get the fuck out. Don't shit post in my thread.

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How is he shit posting? Relax. Thief hasn't done anything... yet.

Getting to your topic, no. I'm not against wanting some challenge, but I sure as hell wouldn't want things to be exactly like the NES days.