Games you hate, yet everyone else cherishes.

[Touchfuzzy]

Actually, WoW was aimed at a more casual player of MMOs on purpose (faster leveling, less penalty for dying) to try to hit an audience outside of the current (at the time) MMO crowd. WoW is the definition of a game designed for mass market appeal.

Also, Tai, if you really think designing for a niche means mediocre design, just wait until fans of the punishing roguelike games get ahold of a mediocre designed roguelike game and see if they don't have a lot to say about it. Good design is about how well the game works for your target audience. Mass appeal is not a part of good design unless mass appeal was the point of the design.

Put it this way: Most of the things that punishing roguelike fans like are NOT things that the masses even LIKE. So how would it being good at appealing to that target audience grow its popularity outside that audience? How would a game that is specifically made to stack against you unfairly in a way where you lose everything you have done so far in the game because of a random occurrence (something that can definitely happen in a punishing roguelike) gain mass appeal? It won't, the masses in general would just toss that game right out. But is it badly or even a mediocre design? Nope, not at all. It works inside the target audience.

 

[Tai_MT]

The Mass audiences who don't like Roguelikes never heard of savescumming, 'eh? 

 

[Milkdud]

You can't savescum in Roguelikes. And if you can, what's the point of even playing it?

 

[Tai_MT]

I've played several Roguelikes where I found ways to savescum.  Most of the time it simply involves creating a savefile from the "save and quit" option.  You go to where that file it stored, then make a copy of it in a different folder.  That way, it can't be deleted when you die or quit and can be recovered whenever you like.

The point of savescumming in a Roguelike is to stick your finger in the eye of the people who made it.  On top of that...  Just because you can savescum, doesn't mean the game actually gets any easier.  Besides, I look at it as "insurance" against "random bullcrap that you have no chance of avoiding".  Difficult and Brutal are one thing.  Losing a character because the programmer was a malicious jerk who likes to play unfair is quite another.  D&D refers to these kinds of people as "bad DMs" and people who play D&D refer to these people as "Killer DMs" and the campaigns as "Character Grinders".

Death because of lack of knowledge or experience or even good equipment is one thing.  Death because you entered a room and the ceiling randomly crashes down on your head is quite another.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

You can't savescum in Roguelikes. And if you can, what's the point of even playing it?

Well, people who really like roguelikes likely won't... but others who just suddenly played a roguelike will probably do it...


really, I think these features should have been part of the description or feature list... so if they are there, then you already know what the game is about before you even play it, so if you don't want those kind of features, then simply don't play the game...

 

[Tai_MT]

If the Roguelike is Dwarf Fortress, then there's no reason you should be savescumming.

After all:  Losing is fun!

 

[Milkdud]

There's no reason to save scum in roguelikes period.

 

[Shades]

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow -- Mirror of Fate for 3DS. I wanted Castlevania, but I feel as though I got Tomb Raider mashed together with a bunch of cutscenes instead.

Most of the FInal Fantasy games and JRPGs in general -- While a few of them are fun, most of the "Japanamanga" style role playing games just don't do the RPG thing right. Everything is too over-the-top and the characters and story are on rails. That isn't what RPGs are about, IMO. RPGs should give the players as many options as possible, not shove every story decision down the players' throats.

There are probably a ton more, but I'll let that suffice for now.

 

[Tai_MT]

You haven't played many Roguelikes before, have you Confederacy?  Ha ha.  I started savescumming in them because of malicious jerk programmers.  There are a few Roguelikes I enjoy and play them as you normally would.  It's just the vast majority of them that I have played, savescumming is practically a requirement if you want to live past the 30 minute mark due to how unfair the games are.  With a proper roguelike game, you are meant to learn from each death.  You are meant to spend some time experimenting and experiencing different aspects of the game so that you can play them better on your next character.  A proper roguelike will teach you to not make mistakes as well as which things are mistakes.

But, then you have the other crazy people who make these types of games who think that "random pointless death" should exist just to make the game "harder".  There is more random unfair death in these games than there is in Real Life.  Yeah, I'm sure some people like the "challenge" randomly dying for absolutely no reason and in the most unfair way possible provides...  But I do not.  I like to learn from my mistakes, create a better character as a result, and get much further in the game than I previously got last life.  If a game leaves me no option to do so and has me frequently losing characters at really low levels or early on in the game despite my experience and knowledge of the game, I get bored, annoyed, frustrated, and then begin savescumming because it's obvious the game programmer was a jerk and never intended for anyone to ever get far in their game.

 

[Galenmereth]

So you're saying a randomly spawning creeper dropping from above, blowing out the ground beneath you, making you drop into lava and dying on hardcore in Minecraft is the devs being jerks? Because sometimes, **** like that happens, and it's not because the developer is a jerk; it's because the nature of semi randomly generated worlds and challenges is just that – semi random. You might be dealt a rough card by the random gods, and no matter how much experience you have, and how much better you are at the game than ten lives ago, you can still die after five minutes if you're unlucky. It's impossible to make absolutely sure every death is "fair" when there's randomly generated content involved.

Now, I'm not saying all roguelikes are good games, far from it. But again, it's not as black and white as you make it out to be. Try looking into how to make randomly generated content and you'll understand both the challenges of that, and why people enjoy random and seemingly unfair deaths.

 

[Tai_MT]

That's actually not a random death.  That kind of death is preventable with experience (the game teaches you that using torches keeps mobs from spawning, the game also teaches you to look up and down when you're in caves underground so you are not surprised by enemies dropping down on you from above.  This means you can learn from the experience and actually combat the semi-random nature of the game).

The problem your argument actually has is that you're comparing "random content" to "random unnecessary unfair deaths".  It isn't the same at all.  I've played a lot of Roguelikes.  There are fair deaths in a good many of them.  If you aren't prepared, you die.  If you are inexperienced, you die.  If you do something stupid, you die.  If you aren't paying attention, you die.  These deaths, even if they can be harsh, are all VERY fair.  They are preventable.  Randomly spawned monster that's out of your league which can kill you in a single hit?  Part of the learning curve.  It kills you, you learn that the monster is really deadly, you either avoid it in the future or learn to avoid areas where it typically spawns.  Fair and preventable deaths.  Enemy gets a critical hit on you and kills you outright?  It's fair as you can sometimes do the same to other enemies.

The game has a randomly generated room in which you walk into it and die instantly because... who cares why?  That's unfair.  There was no chance to prepare.  No chance to avoid it.  Nothing to even be learned from it, other than the dev is a jerk and you need to savescum to avoid that kind of stupid nonsense.  Yes, there are roguelikes where stuff like that happens.  Frequently.  I enjoy a random death as much as the next bloke (I wouldn't play Roguelikes or even Dwarf Fortress if I didn't), but I actually like it to have a PURPOSE.  If the death in the game serves NO PURPOSE, then it need not happen.  If it is impossible to prevent or learn something from, then it's a pointless unfair death in which the only lesson a clever player can take from it is to savescum as a measure of "prevention".

Ever play ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)?  First Roguelike game I ever played.  The learning curve on that game is really high.  To this day, I've never beaten the game.  It has a storyline and clear cut goals.  But, the game gets so much harder as you progress, than I've lost every single character I've ever created within the game.  Is it frustrating sometimes to lose a level 25 character in it?  Yes it is.  Is it ever UNFAIR?  No, it's not.  Because of the learning curve, you will be using your first 100 deaths as learning experiences of what to do, what not to do, and how to find some decent equipment to survive longer.  Sometimes, randomly high leveled enemies spawn and murder you.  It happens.  These deaths are preventable though.  These situations can be prepared for.  I've been killed by starvation.  I've been killed for shoplifting.  I've been killed because of an accident with which key I pressed.  I've been killed because I've offended the Gods.  I've been killed from being sick.  I've been killed from being poisoned.  I've been killed by being corrupted.  I've been burned, frozen, and melted to death.  I've been killed because a dungeon fell on my head (don't kick staircases in dungeons even if it's a great way to train your STR stat...  Random chance of dungeon falling on you each time you do it).  I've been eaten by a Grue (if you are cursed and step into darkness without a light source, there's a chance you will be eaten by a Grue each turn you spend in the darkness).  I've drowned.  I've been killed by about every trap imaginable.  I've been eaten by piranha.  I've even been killed by old age (some ghosts can age you with each attack they successfully land against you).  None of these deaths was ever unfair.  Especially the ones where I'd gotten sick or poisoned (which happened because I ate things I wasn't meant to, or drank things I wasn't meant to).

The subject really is fairly black and white.  Either deaths could've been prevented in some way, or there was absolutely no way it could've ever been prevented or learned from.  Random nature or not, a developer should take pains to minimize these "random deaths for absolutely no reason" if they exist, or strive to eliminate them entirely.  I prefer MMOs that work like Dungeons in Dragons in execution (I don't mean systems, I mean in philosophy of design).  That means, you are always given a chance and something around 80% or more of your deaths are from things you did yourself and not from the game just beating you to death with the RNG while the dev put in "instant kill" sections that are impossible to learn from.  The other percentage should just be "well, sometimes crap happens and that's the way the game rolls".  Sometimes a weak enemy gets a crit and you just die.  It's not really unfair, it's just how the damage formulas and RNG work.

But, if you really want my actual opinion on it, it's a couple posts back.  I said that I savescum in Roguelikes where just getting to the 30 minutes of play benchmark is a massive accomplishment that is rarely achieved.  These are your roguelikes with malicious devs and programmers.

 

[Galenmereth]

Then we are in perfect agreement on this, Tai_MT. I must've misunderstood your previous post  

 

[Milkdud]

You haven't played many Roguelikes before, have you Confederacy?  Ha ha.

And this matters, why?

 

[Tai_MT]

It matters because if you had like I have, you would have noticed that there's a sizable chunk of them out there that are really just exercises in futility because of the dev or programmer just out to be a jerk with their game and not because their game is any fun to play.  You'd know that with those kinds of roguelikes in the world, the only real option is to savescum them if you ever intend to get farther than 30 minutes of gameplay.

For the people who somewhat know me, this will be old news.  For you, it's probably new news:  I don't really condone cheating in video games.  I don't really condone modding in video games.  Not that I see these things as "wrong" in any way.  I just can't see breaking the way the game actually runs in order to have fun with it.  So, when I tell you that I savescum in some Roguelikes, you kind of have to infer just how bad some of these actually are to make me resort to a method of "cheating" just to play them.

 

[Dark Phoenix]

Most of the FInal Fantasy games and JRPGs in general -- While a few of them are fun, most of the "Japanamanga" style role playing games just don't do the RPG thing right. Everything is too over-the-top and the characters and story are on rails. That isn't what RPGs are about, IMO. RPGs should give the players as many options as possible, not shove every story decision down the players' throats.

I find that "giving the player as many options as possible" frequently turns into "we don't give a rat's ass about developing an interesting world or story; just do whatever you want".  Seriously, I love the Elder Scrolls games for the wide open sandbox and the utter openness of the game itself, but the main storyline stuff is absolutely lame.  Same for Dragon Age, to be honest.  I'd rather play an RPG where the game makes me feel like a specific person rather than a game that makes me generic RPG hero #78, who's name cannot be mentioned because it's so wide open the devs have no clue what you're going to stick in there.

 

[Napdevil]

Speaking of Elder Scrolls, Oblivion was such a disappointment that it turned me off from the ES series for good. Morrowind had its flaws too, but it was fun to explore the alien world and admire all the different architecture. Every settlement, dungeon, and cave in Oblivion felt too same-y, and scaling monsters/loot meant I never felt the desire to stray from the beaten path. They went waaay overboard with the procedural content and it really dampened the whole experience for me.

GTA: San Andreas was when Rockstar introduced RPG elements by having you monitor your diet, do physical exercise, train in combat, etc. A lot of people liked that, but I felt like I was playing the Sims. I also thought Vice City had a more compelling setting (Miami Beach in the 80's vs. Los Angeles in the 90's) despite being a much less expansive game.

Bioshock. To be fair, this is mainly me being bitter since the developers touted Bioshock as being the "spiritual successor" to System Shock. I thought Dead Space was a lot closer to hitting that mark.

 

[Touchfuzzy]

San Andreas and Vice City are 1 and 2 on the top GTA games honestly. (Haven't played V yet, hoping its good).

My complaint was that IV was waaaay waaaaay too dry, way too bland. It was missing the humor of III/VC/SA. I just couldn't even get into it at all.

Also, seriously they have got to update that control scheme (please tell me the GTAV control scheme is better...)

(Just looked up the controls: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD ROCKSTAR, TAP BUTTON REPEATEDLY FOR SPRINT STILL, ITS 2013 JESUS CHRIST)

Rockstar needs to just straight up steal the control scheme from Saint's Row III

 

[Shades]

I find that "giving the player as many options as possible" frequently turns into "we don't give a rat's ass about developing an interesting world or story; just do whatever you want".  Seriously, I love the Elder Scrolls games for the wide open sandbox and the utter openness of the game itself, but the main storyline stuff is absolutely lame.  Same for Dragon Age, to be honest.  I'd rather play an RPG where the game makes me feel like a specific person rather than a game that makes me generic RPG hero #78, who's name cannot be mentioned because it's so wide open the devs have no clue what you're going to stick in there.

You have a good point. I tried to play Oblivion twice and just wound up uninstalling it both times (certain flaws just made it not fun to play for me), so it can definitely go the other way as well.

My whole thing with RPGs is that the concept is traditionally a collaborative effort. It's the Game Master's (or designer's) job to set up the world and all the wacky and wonderful things in it. It's MY job as the player to set up my character, his backstory, and everything else about him. I don't try to do the GM's job and I likewise don't like it when the GM tries to play the game for me (in the case of the JRPG example, that would be writing the character's entire role in the story and not giving me any character development options). And honestly, with all the world building going on the developer has enough stories to tell without trying to dictate my character's personality and purpose in life to me.

I think there is a proper balance to be struck between the two extremes (hard to find as it seems to be), and that is the balance I will eventually seek in my own games.

 

[Grubilman]

I wouldn't say that I really hate specific games.  Rather, that I strongly dislike some of them.  Two that stand out in my mind are The Witcher 2, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadows.  

 

[Alexander Amnell]

Rockstar needs to just straight up steal the control scheme from Saint's Row III

This I strongly agree with... Take one of the few good things that exists about Saint's Row 3, make something good come out of that game. ( I actually liked saints row 1 and 2 better than gta, but 3 just got way to stupid.) Yeah, I've lost more than one controller to Rockstar's foolish choice to include that particular running mechanic in every game they ever make for some reason.