742 replies to this topic

[soyyo]

I think that games must be variated.For example, killing the same zombies all the time with the same weapon is not funny.Games must have power-ups or something like that to keep the game interesting.

Edited by soyyo, 29 July 2010 - 07:32 PM.

[yalmic]

Btw people who use wizip should uninstall it if they want a simple way to unrar rars.
Geuss the name.


It's called Unrar!
Very tasteful don't you think?

[Me the III]

Just me, personally: I like games that "don't" end. Open-world games like Fable and Mass Effect (2, not 1) that let you play after beating them.

I hate it when games like Zelda, with their huge, explorable worlds, don't record you beating Ganon after you win, and just bring you back to your last save. It wastes so much after-game potential for me.

Now, games like Halo or Call of Duty, that are more or less set on the basis that you play through a level and never have a real "hub-world" to begin with, I don't care at all. Those games wouldn't be fun with an open-ended style of gameplay that suits Zelda or Fable, and thus, it is more fun to play through them again.

I think, to summarize:

A game that has RPG elements, an open-ended gameplay/world design, etc. should let you keep playing afterwords (my opinion).
A game that is straight-forward, without any "adventure" (more or less FPS's, to me) is "allowed" to not have any "after-game" content. It'd feel weird.

That is one of my biggest peeves concerning video games.

[yalmic]

I also find it annoying in rpg's quests are too simple with no story.
Kill this many those.
Bring me a fish.
On legend of zelda sidequests were never so boring.

[Me the III]

That mentioned...

Long, drawn-out collection games are no fun at all, unless there is a sweet prize at the end. For example, in Mass Effect, there was a long game that stretched across the endless replicated-terrain planets that involved hours of searching for small traces of minerals...not fun, EVER. Thankfully there was a glitch where you could gain twice the amount of mineral from each mineral...

In short, not fun at all. Focus should be on gameplay, not sidequests (with most games, at least).

[yalmic]

True but If you want the game to feel big you need sidequests.

[Dr. Zeus]

Main quests fuel the storyline while sidequests add a degree of verisimilitude to the game. That being said sidequests should have a story behind them and not be mindless repetitive quests used for the sole purpose of leveling. They should make sense in the context of the world and should enrich the game not dull it down.

[yalmic]

Exactly also sidequests might slightly change the outcome of the game's main quest.

[GStick]

What about Pokemon? I tend to be able to play that for about 300 hours before my attention for the game starts waning. Sure it could be helped by side quests, because 300 hours in Pokemon feels short, but that's my point. 300 hours in Pokemon feels short.

What are everyone's thoughts on what causes that sort of replay value in Pokemon? For me, I don't try to "catch 'em all" anymore, so I wouldn't personally say it's that, but I want to know everyone's opinions.

[Yal]

I'd say that the main part of Pokémon's replay value is the multiplayer aspect. Period.





(Oh, that maybe was a little short. To elaborate: Pokémon is designed for multiplayer playing - the entire trade system, the battles - the newer games also sports co-op battles in which each side has two pokémon in battle simultaneously; those 2-on-2 battles really made the game more tactical and more appealing. Being able to combine forces to race the Battle Tower and stuff like that is of course sweet, but I think most people in the target audience prefer the face-off battles. The real con with those battles is that it takes a lot of time to get a strong monster to try out new tactics with... If you just cheat to get 999 rare candies (PM me if you're interested in the cloning cheat of Pokémon Emerald, it's an interesting glitch in the save system), the monsters will be weaker thanks to those darn EVs... and you can't just equip new moves on the monsters since the old ones are lost, blah blah blah...

Pokémon is probably the RPG series with the best multiplayer mode, until there'll be both a co-op and a face-off mode in the Paper Mario series, Poke´mon will be unrivaled. And gain a lot of Replay Points without competition.)

Edited by Yal, 22 November 2010 - 02:29 PM.

[Opter]

Seems like you forgot those annoying 5 second music loops in games.

Is it just me or is it getting annoying to hear "Un tss Un ts Un ts" during some simple breakout game!
Crazy rave music is overrated in flash games.

[GideonB]

Music games which don't understand the idea of adding a new (maybe new to the series) feature to their latest mix. I'm seriously sick of Guitar Hero. Rock Band 3 got it right. I like DDR, but the way they go with their mixes is terrible.

Which is why I like the idea of Pump Fiesta EX, which is a half-update. Just adds new songs, new interface and more quest world songs (missions basically).

[grandhighgamer]

Btw people who use wizip should uninstall it if they want a simple way to unrar rars.

Does anyone still use Winzip? Every OS since Windows XP has been able to unzip files on it's own.
Personally I've been using 7-Zip for around about four years now and I haven't looked back. It is a king among compression utilities.

[ChickenViking]

That mentioned...

Long, drawn-out collection games are no fun at all, unless there is a sweet prize at the end. For example, in Mass Effect, there was a long game that stretched across the endless replicated-terrain planets that involved hours of searching for small traces of minerals...not fun, EVER. Thankfully there was a glitch where you could gain twice the amount of mineral from each mineral...

In short, not fun at all. Focus should be on gameplay, not sidequests (with most games, at least).

Ever played NEverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide? A dwarf sent you on a long quest to fetch something important. It took a really long time to get through it, but then you did. You went back to him, handed over the stuff you should get and expected a big reward. And what did you get?

"You have gotten a lot of experience and treasures along the way. I'm sure that will should be enough."

In other words: you didn't get anything. I almost broke the disc when he said that. What I wanted to break was his face.

Edited by ChickenViking, 10 January 2011 - 05:15 AM.

[Unsung Hero]

Personally, I think that having too many saves is bad. HOWEVER, you can simply put in a pause function to stop the game for a while if you need to do something and then save if you get past a checkpoint or a boss. Or maybe you could put a limit on saves (just a suggestion; you could try it to see if it's a good idea or not).

[Zeddy]

Slowly scrolling text and unskippable cutscenes are already mentioned here, but I shall do so again because, seeing as they still exist, they haven't been mentioned enough yet.

Dear everyone who makes games: I am playing Cave Story for the Wii at the time. Anyone know about Cave Story? Probably the best received independently developed game of all time? Charming music? Epic bossfights? Adorable characters? Tight mechanics? It is my understanding that a couple of people have heard about it. The Wii version introduced some nicely touched up graphics and remastered music that's still chiptunes. I love chiptunes! I love good graphics! I love the jumping and the shooting and I love all the guns here! The bubble gun is so excellent that I have no idea why every side scrolling shooter made after this game hasn't copied it! It is a terrific game.

Everyone got that? This is a great game!

And I don't think I can stand it for another second.

See, the bossfights are great. But every one of them is preceded by at least a dozen lines of dialogue I have to slowly scroll through before I can get to the fight. If you hold the jump-button down, the text will scroll almost half as fast as you can read it. There is no button to skip the cutscene in its entirety or even skip through the entire text-box in a single press.

Right now, I'm fighting Curly Brace. She's not particularily difficult, but since I'm on hard mode I die in one hit from any given thing (This is an excellent thing. Hard mode is excellent.), so I flubb up and get hit while she's got maybe two hits left. The fight is pretty good. It's a good boss-fight precisely because I'm dying at it. Every time I die, however, I'm thrusted back to the previous save point (again, nothing wrong about that in particular), I make my way up the practically empty corridor to the bossfight and I skip, fast as I can, through the lead-in cutscene to the bossfight.

I haven't timed this, but I estimate the time spent here to be about 30 seconds.

Then I fight her. Mashing the fire button and dodging machine gun bullets. I make a minor mistake and die.

I haven't timed this, but I estimate the time spent here to about 5 seconds.

Can anybody tell me why the game spends six times as long to completely waste my time with what's effectively a loading screen than it does to provide me with fun? Does this not annoy anyone else to the point where they wouldn't even want to touch the game anymore? Am I completely alone in this world? How do develop a game over the course of five years and not fix this? Do most people simply like to have their time wasted?

I would rather start the game over from the beginning than having to go through a cutscene I've already seen before. Why, you might ask? Doesn't this waste my time even more? To this I'll say that the only reason you ask this is because you don't enjoy playing videogames. The ten minutes it would take to play my way back here (excepting cutscenes) is time spent jumping, shooting, dodging and other fun things. Even if I die and am thrust back to the beginning the only thing awaiting me would be more fun. What's currently awaiting me is enormous amounts of tedium. If I spend 35 minutes failing at this bossfight (unlikely, but bear with me here) then half and hour will have been spent on not having the least bit of fun.


Dear game developers: When adding a feature, I want you to ask yourselves: "Does this feature do anything except for blatantly wasting the players time? Even at repeated exposure?" If the answer is "Huh, I guess not" then scrap it! If the answer is "Uhm, well.." then scrap it! If the answer is "Yes, it adds atmosphere and immersion" then ask yourself "Even the dozenth time it happens?".

I can't believe unskippable cutscenes hasn't been disposed of years ago.

[Rusty]

What I want to know is, why have loading screens? I remember the original Tekken, it's start up loading screen was a little (but awesome) mini-game. The game can load during cutscenes, during mini-games, during animations (exiting buildings, entering buildings, climbing ladders, etc.) So why but an annoying screen there to give me "hints and tips" that I've read so many times that my eyes are on the edge of bleeding?

[JWRAC]

It's hard, in my opinion... to make a game that everyone will enjoy.
Not for the fact that they might not like the genre, but because of what you put in there...

Let's see, first time I ever played "The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion."
I used to listen to everything all the characters said in real time voice acting, then I realised there were only 6 to 8 variations of the voices... and it annoyed me when I played the game a 3rd/4th time like you wouldn't believe, I skipped every voice sequence.
Voice acting, even if it's good, people will enjoy it... but the problem with games are there are always limits. And people reach them and don't play the game anymore.

An example of a game that a lot of people enjoy, is MineCraft... and I'm guessing the reason so many enjoy it, is because it has no set direction...
It doesn't necessarily fall into the category of a type of game, I even reskinned my MineCraft to look like Red Faction 1. And it was cool.
So it offers a lot of freedom, but however I do get bored of MineCraft, because... there is too little direction...
And that's why today, I still play Oblivion, because I lack in that direction I don't get form MineCraft.

So the two kind of counterbalance or something.
Because one game offers a decent amount of freedom, but has a lot f set directions for you to choose, the problem is, it has not too much replay value, for the fact that there are limits to those directions.
MineCraft on the other hand, offers limitless possibilites... but the problem is, there is no set direction whatsoever as of yet.
*something I think would make MineCraft great would be more types of dungeons and ancient ruined cities, and, an official sense of magic.*
^That however might just be Adventure Mode, soon to come.

Since nobody can really make a singular game that will make everyone enjoy it.
A good idea when making a decent sized game is to think of diffrerent aspects to play it from.
The first step is making different game modes, like common "survival camp out" and "super happy fun go nuts" modes.
The next best step to take, although taking a lot of time, including something like the following in the main package is a fantastic idea to keep the player going...
"Official Mods and Game Mode Add ons."... Doing this will add a bunch more variety to the game, but, if you want to get the most appeal to this, somehow incorperating it into the game that already exists in the main game package,
is the best thing you could possibly do.
An example would be "To unlock this game mode you need to reach Chapter 13 of the main story."
Or, to unlock this item you need to unlock the "blahblah achievement by performing blahblah".
Game sometimes already have these... but incorperating them into mods and outlying game modes will almost force the player into playing the story "just once more".
Or perhaps trying a harder difficulty on another game mode.

I think, hopefully, I will make soemthing like this in my DeadBase game, so people will like it.
It's good to get these ideas out, so what do you guys think?

[Smarty]

What I want to know is, why have loading screens? I remember the original Tekken, it's start up loading screen was a little (but awesome) mini-game. The game can load during cutscenes, during mini-games, during animations (exiting buildings, entering buildings, climbing ladders, etc.) So why but an annoying screen there to give me "hints and tips" that I've read so many times that my eyes are on the edge of bleeding?

The trouble with loading screens is that there is actually stuff happening in the background. Just how much there is going on is entirely dependent on the game, but you can take some guesses - resource loading, unpacking, reading models, generating textures, terrain et cetera. For some games the load on the system resources during that loading sequence may be low enough to permit video / music playback or even a small game without any noticeable effect - for others this won't always be the case, especially if the system configuration is sub-par. And if whatever goes in between doesn't play smoothly, it's just an annoyance. One likely way to solve that is to give less priority to the background loading thread while it's displaying the loading screen, but is increasing the fun of waiting worth increasing the waiting time itself?

You could just do what everyone else does when waiting in between levels - sit back, relax, take a sip of that drink in front of you that has gone cold because it took you too long to get there, and crack your knuckles for the next level.

Edited by Smarty, 29 January 2011 - 12:04 PM.

[Zeddy]

AND HERE WE ****ING GO AGAIN!

I'm at a later boss (for those who have played the boss: It's the huge thing at the end of the labyrinth with the water), and the checkpoint could not have been placed at a more retarded position!

Guess what? It's right before the easiest puzzle ever! You press a button (reading lines upon lines of a computer basically saying "OKAY, I'M DOING STUFF NOW!"), watch four gates open, walk to the fourth gate, shoot the fourth gate, backtrack to the button and press it (With more ****ing text!), go down to the newly opened passage, wade slowly through water, press another button (And guess what? The button has lots of text!), wade slowly back again through the water, and only then can you initiate the long-ass dialogue before the boss fight! Unless you want to pick up the optional thing that gives you the proper ending. Guess how you get it? You wade slowly through water and back again! ****ing thanks, Pixel! I've played games intended to annoy player less frustrating than this!

During all this, I'm one door away from a save point that could let me keep the puzzle solved and go straight to the boss, but it's locked because Pixel hates you and everything you stand for. I've fought the boss a grand total of three times and my blood is boiling already.