Fallout 3 bits and pieces

[Beelzebud]

Young gamers don't like hard games, so it's not surprising they're making the game easy. We aren't their target audience at all.

I remember after Stalker came out reading a comment from someone that said "I liked that game but I died too much so i quit playing it". That pretty much sums up younger gamers.

They'd shit if they had to play those old arcade games that didn't cut you any slack at all.

 

[Matt K]

Young gamers don't like hard games, so it's not surprising they're making the game easy. We aren't their target audience at all.

I remember after Stalker came out reading a comment from someone that said "I liked that game but I died too much so i quit playing it". That pretty much sums up younger gamers.

They'd shit if they had to play those old arcade games that didn't cut you any slack at all.

Frankly I would probably quit a game if I died frequently too (and I am not a young gamer). However, what you need is a balanced approach of making the game hard but not that difficult. BS seems unable to perfect this but games like Fallout of PS:T weren't that difficult but still managed to produce challenging fights.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

I pretty much approached most situations in Fallout 1 and 2 in a diplomatic approach, solving quests, gathering items, weapons and armor and building up to the phase that I could enter a conflict and actually win it.

A game should have challenging difficulty,, not to easy but not to hard that you can not win it other than through random luck and not skill and planning.

That doesn't mean you should make earlier enemies easier by giving them less life points, just make their attacks less powerful or use less powerful offensive and defensive equipment.

 

[Zacirus]

Young gamers don't like hard games, so it's not surprising they're making the game easy. We aren't their target audience at all.

I remember after Stalker came out reading a comment from someone that said "I liked that game but I died too much so i quit playing it". That pretty much sums up younger gamers.

They'd shit if they had to play those old arcade games that didn't cut you any slack at all.

Being 17 I agree with this statement mostly, the youth of today (My pathetic generation of wannabe thugs and "gansta's" with a shorter attention span then a gnat) is not truly interested in RPG style of games anymore, anything where you have to think about your actions, hell even plan a strategy, they will not have any part of it. Many of the people I know would rather play GTA IV or Madden, hell I have some roommates that don't even give games like Fallout or Baldur's Gate a chance, just because the graphics don't make your PC cry out in pain. I've stated this before in another post of mine but it's true.

Are you talking about games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat 2? I still play those, and I have never once shit myself.

But all in all your right, my generation does not like hard, story driven games. Thats just a fact.

 

[rcorporon]

I think he means games like Mega Man 1.

I recently replayed that, and have no idea how I beat it when I was 11. That game is ruthless.

 

[Zacirus]

I think he means games like Mega Man 1.

I recently replayed that, and have no idea how I beat it when I was 11. That game is ruthless.

Megaman 1 to the best of my knowledge was only available for the NES console, no U.S. arcade version was released.

They'd shit if they had to play those old arcade games that didn't cut you any slack at all.

He said arcade games, if he stated otherwise I would have acknowledged games like Megaman, Ninja Gaiden, or Star Force. Not trying to sound like a complete dickwad towards anyone, hopefully that impressed was not implied, but just trying to keep the facts straight.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Well Contra or Super Contra is pretty much murder.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

Or Total Carnage . Okay okay, Total Carnage is insane so probably something more like D&D: Tower of Doom.

The massive amount of adversity to dying is annoying and absurd, you want the player to die many times throughout your game in order to keep things interesting. Games that don't challenge me are a waste of my time but new gamers give up on a game if they struggle with it, I remember when I bought Devil May Cry 3 (on release day or the day after) that the guy behind the counter said that someone had already returned the game after playing it for like five hours because it was too hard. Not many games are being made for gamers anymore, they're being made for "casual gamers" or the TV couch potato crowd only interested in mindless activity (not so sure that Madden [or many modern sports games] falls into this category).

 

[rcorporon]

He said arcade games, if he stated otherwise I would have acknowledged games like Megaman, Ninja Gaiden, or Star Force. Not trying to sound like a complete dickwad towards anyone, hopefully that impressed was not implied, but just trying to keep the facts straight.

I missed the "arcade" part in his statement.

Apologies.

 

[The Dutch Ghost]

Or Total Carnage . Okay okay, Total Carnage is insane so probably something more like D&D: Tower of Doom.

* sigh * I remember that game, and its predecessor Smash TV.
Some people look down on Total Carnage but I think it was awesome and its spoofing of the Gulf War hilarious.

 

[Zeld]

Good example of "games must be easyyy":

When Xbox360-game Dead Rising (zombie hacknslash, very funny & original game) was released, it gathered good reviews. But almost every reviewer complained about one bit in game, saving system that is not in fashion today. It had only single save and you could save only in specific locations. To me, that was a trill. For example, I had saved about 1 hour ago and done lot of things. Suddenly, this boss character appears in front of me. Should I run away or fight? Save system made things more interesting. Put to reviewers, that was game biggest minus point. Hell, they complained about that more than about bad AI....

I got a 6 year old little brother who plays game like Megaman 1 & 2 and Super Contra on Gameboy. I don't remember that he has ever beaten Megaman or got past the third stage of Contra. I asked him about that and he just replied that it was fun to play em anyway... It seems that 6 year old kid can concentrate more than 30-year old reviewer...

Super Mario Bros. is, according to Guinness, the most sold game in gaming history. And it's not certainly really easy game to beat. It is just helluva fun to play.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

When Xbox360-game Dead Rising (zombie hacknslash, very funny & original game) was released, it gathered good reviews. But almost every reviewer complained about one bit in game, saving system that is not in fashion today. It had only single save and you could save only in specific locations. To me, that was a trill. For example, I had saved about 1 hour ago and done lot of things. Suddenly, this boss character appears in front of me. Should I run away or fight? Save system made things more interesting. Put to reviewers, that was game biggest minus point. Hell, they complained about that more than about bad AI....

Not having played the game I can only go off what I've read but going an hour or more between saves (what I read is fairly common in Dead Rising) is very player unfriendly and generally bad for the gameplay. Again, I really need to play the game but action games and long waits between saves (more than a half hour) really don't go together well in my experience.

 

[Per]

In the first Prince of Persia, if you didn't constantly think about what you were going to do, you would become graphically impaled on spikes and chopped in half. In the newest Prince of Persia, you cannot die. According to the developer, this allows casual players to play like they want to, while hardcore players will still "internalize the failure" of having almost-died so they can still feel bad about it as they apparently want to do (what's wrong with these people anyway).

 

[rcorporon]

The last game that I played and thought "This is easy" was Wind Waker on the GCN.

I don't know what the game over screen looks like, as I didn't die once.

Shame, because the old Zelda's are phenomenal games.

 

[Matt K]

I don't think I have played a game I found too easy. Too hard maybe but never too easy. Then again, these days I do not have a lot of time to play games so when I do I like to play a game I can enjoy. To me, constantly dying and reloading is not fun. Then again, what you guys find too easy I might just be calling boring and since I play infrequently I have no time for boring games. Also, I love being able to save anywhere since I don't have a ton of uninterrupted time to play a game (so Dead Rising would have gotten a negative for that from me as well).

Like I said above, there are ways to make a game that is both challenging and yet not frustrating. Fallout was a pretty good example, same with the other Black Isle games, Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain Defiance (which was easy but fun to play).

Overall, I don't blame anyone for making games easy since that is not the problem. The issue is developers like BS making the game boring by removing any challenge in the game. Also some games can good even if they are easy and have little challenge if the game has a engaging story or play mechanics (which again Oblivion lacked).

 

[Zeld]

I dislike the feature to save anywhere. Especially on PC, where you can have hotkeys for quicksave and -load, and so on. That easily leads to "kill enemy -save- kill enemy -save"-syndrome.

In Fallout, that was thing that easily ruined the whole Steal thing. Its hard to not press quickload button if you fail to steal. Put thats just how our human nature is, i quess.

 

[Matt K]

I dislike the feature to save anywhere. Especially on PC, where you can have hotkeys for quicksave and -load, and so on. That easily leads to "kill enemy -save- kill enemy -save"-syndrome.

In Fallout, that was thing that easily ruined the whole Steal thing. Its hard to not press quickload button if you fail to steal. Put thats just how our human nature is, i quess.

But for me, constantly reloading for each failure gets boring so I only did that occasionally. I think the benefits outweigh the problems. Especially for people who can't put in an uninterrupted couple of hours. Save anywhere makes the game more attractive to play since I can easily start the game and just as easily stop.

 

[UncannyGarlic]

I dislike the feature to save anywhere. Especially on PC, where you can have hotkeys for quicksave and -load, and so on. That easily leads to "kill enemy -save- kill enemy -save"-syndrome.

In Fallout, that was thing that easily ruined the whole Steal thing. Its hard to not press quickload button if you fail to steal. Put thats just how our human nature is, i quess.

The problem with stealing in Fallout was that it was completely controlled by dice rolls and could be done successfully against any(?) character in the game with a minimum steal score, making it a useless stat to up. There is a simple solution which is to do a direct comparision of skill to skill (your steal skill to their defensive skill), thus putting a lower limit on the try and, if you really want, you could then have dice rolls after that.

The thing to keep in mind when translating PnP to PC is that there are some things which don't work well in singleplayer games. Online you can't abuse skills like stealing but in a singleplayer game it's broken. It's not the player's duty to make up rules to play by in order to increase the fun, in fact that's very bad for games, it's the game's duty to set up the rules for the player. Can saving anywhere be abused? Only if the game doesn't address the issue (Wizardry 8 did a pretty good job with this). If a feature is abusable it's the developer's fault for not addressing the problem, not the player's fault for using the game's rules to their maximum advantage.

 

[Voice Of Reason]

I think the problem with quicksave is also caused in not-so-good game design. you usually do quicksave/load if otherwise your character would die or suffer significantly, thus threatening your hardly gained xp or whatever. this usually happens with games that feel more like working than playing a game (doing repetitive tasks etc).

games that handle damage well (imho), are for example mechwarrior (getting damaged is part of the game, dealing with being damaged is important) or the diablo games (you can run away, suffer damage, heal yourself, even dying is an option).