Real Games Have Curves: Welcome to the Competence Zone

DoctorProfessor · 2 years

Hey! Leave my prestigious awards out of this! :)

Of course games should provide challenge for skilled players. And of course they should also be possible for new/handicapped/injured/elderly players to get into as well. Because we are talking about videogames, the two are not exclusive! (Predictably, I wrote an article about this too.) We can have multiple difficulty levels in a single game. And in case it wasn't clear, my position is not that Mega Man 9 should have had flat-out unlimited lives - it is that limited lives should have been optional.

DoctorProfessor · 2 years

Where you see "too easy," I see "accessible." For some gamers, it is not feasible to "actually become good" as you put it. Not all gamers are able-bodied and at the right age to have fantastic reflexes. (Of note, I wrote an article on this subject.)

Also, a high-punishment design doesn't mean the player has to become good to progress - it means the player has to spend a lot of time replaying mastered segments in order to progress. (Again, I wrote an article on this subject.) Sending players back to the beginning of a stage if they lose to the boss at the end doesn't mean you have to be more skilled to beat the boss. It just means you have to burn more time replaying the stage.

There are a lot more quality games out there than there used to be, and I have a lot more responsibilities than I used to. I only have so much time in a day, and I'd rather not spend it playing through the same level over and over just to get to the part of the game I'm actually trying to master.

DoctorProfessor · 2 years

I absolutely, 100% agree with this. What I don't want to see is designers treating "old games" as homogeneous. Resurrect the good ideas and let the bad fade away. Lumping them together moves us backward, not forward.

DoctorProfessor · 2 years

Actually, I didn't buy Mega Man 9. The demo was fun at first, but it made it clear to me that I'd be replaying levels from the beginning a lot, and I am not sufficiently nostalgic for Mega Man to put up with that level of punishment in a game. My roommate is sufficiently nostalgic, and he bought it. I watched him play it. I'm confident I would have bought it too, if only I could have turned off things like limited lives.

And that's the point - videogames aren't cars. They can offer both experiences. They can provide an option to behave in a modern way or the old way - as demonstrated by Mega Man 9's optional "Legacy Mode" with sprite flicker. The purist can have what the purist wants, I can have what I want, and Capcom can have money from both of us.

DoctorProfessor · 2 years

Interestingly, Keiji Inafune talked about why they left those out. From the same interview I quoted him:

GamesRadar: By the sixth installment, Mega Man had gained several moves (sliding, charge shots, Rush help). Will any of these make it into part 9 or are you aiming for a more Mega Man 2-style game?

Inafune: Mega Man 9 will be much closer to Mega Man 2. As mentioned earlier, in the process of going back to our roots, we came to conclude that those fancy moves were unnecessary. There are many gamers who claim that Mega Man 2 is their absolute favorite. I took it as an indication that Mega Man is not all about the moves. The beauty of Mega Man actually lies in its simplicity and a fine mixture of simple gameplay, puzzle-like thrill of maneuvering tricks at the last minute, and battles. Instead of new moves, we’ve tried to find an excellent balance in the game design and to achieve “simplicity and fun” in the very detailed-oriented age.

DoctorProfessor · 2 years

Actually, I'd argue it leaves the challenge completely untouched. What it diminishes is the punishment inflicted on the player.

I wrote an article explaining this idea, and because it's an important idea I recommend reading it, but here's the gist: Challenge is when a game actually tests your skill, and punishment is when a game inflicts negative consequences for failing a challenge - often in the form of making you replay part of the game.

The combat and jumping puzzles are Mega Man's challenge. The limited lives are punishment, because they mean that (for instance) when you die too many times fighting a Robot Master, you have to play through his level again, despite already demonstrating you are skilled enough to get through it. This is not challenge. This is just wasting the player's time.

DoctorProfessor · 2 years

Can you elaborate on this? It sounds interesting, but I can't follow your logic from such a small glimpse. Especially since the levels are linear. You can just pick their order - until Wily's castle, anyway.

ninzfilter · 2 years

I thought this game was beautiful and fascinating as a minimalist exploration of how to make players care about characters. With simple graphics and no dialog, the player still is quickly lead to see the humans as friends - they help and feed the player character, and the player character grows because of it. So when things went south, I was surprised to see how motivated I was to protect the little humans. When I finally died, I was sad not for myself but because I couldn't keep them safe anymore.

I think about this in comparison to Torchlight, which I was very excited about. I quickly tired of that game, because I just couldn't care about the world or its characters at all.

pixelnoir · 2 years

It pisses me off enough that I wrote an essay about it: Buy Before You Try: The Problem With Pre-Orders

DoctorProfessor

TROPHY CASE

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