Honestly, I can see the argument that 'lowering the slope' is necessary to bring more people in, but then the problem becomes "ok, now we need to expand our audience again, lower the slope more". Then the whole game just ends up being viewed as obstacle and the slope encompasses everything. Then we're no longer just making the game easier to get into, we're making it nearly impossible to fail at and thus improve at. Mileage varying by genre, obviously.
I feel that at a point there's deminishing returns and that you couldnt go any further, though I see what you mean. I got back into fortnite recently and to my surprise that game has bots that front as players. This makes the game easier and more welcoming to people who are less skilled, though I almost feel decieved as at first I thought I had the right amount of skill to compete against other players, only to be let down when my friends told me they were bots. On the other hand, when you spend money on a battlepass because you want a specific skin, but may not be good enough to fight against human players to unlock it in a time frame, you might feel robbed of your money. So I think a monetary incentive might change the moral behind that.
@@Ramsker Monetary incentive is absolutely still a factor. None of this happens in a vacuum. But another recent example is how the targeting circles were adjusted for Overwatch. Lots of people in that community have commented on how ridiculous the changes are. Honestly, I'm glad that I play mostly single-player games, but those have a whole other host of issues lately imo.
Yep, Cain's statement is theoretically true, but the angle of the slope is just the game's complexity divided by it's duration, so to reach the same level of complexity with a flatter slope means a longer game which costs more money, so it typically doesn't happen. In this past this might happen in the sequel, but now game budgets are so out of controls sequels often have the same incline as their predecessor because they can't afford to alienate players who need the gentle onramp, but enthusiasts will typically tolerate being babied a bit because they love games.
I remember when I first introduced my cousin's kid (gen z) to Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, my favorite PS2 game. The lack of quest markers confused her, and she kept asking me where she should go. I had to keep telling her, "you just have to keep looking around and explore." To be fair though, she's used to open-world games where mission objectives are placed so far from the initial quest-giver that you HAVE to be told where it is beforehand in order to find it... I'm not surprised that "just look around and explore" never occurred to her as a solution, since exploring in open-world games usually just means "wander around for hours getting nothing done."
This is why everyone should play a variety of games, especially indie games, of different genres and difficulty levels. Eventually you will develop the skillset required for every type of game so that the only ones leaving you confused are either ones you're supposed to be confused in, or genuinely poorly designed ones. Then, you will never judge a game for something that wasn't actually a flaw or mistake. Because you will be able to recognize when something is user error vs developer error.
I cant remember exactly what Skyrim mod it was, but its a mod that adds quite a few quests and one of them has you trying to find something while also battling "white arrow fever" as in, you get clear intructions, and the white quest arrow will take you to the wrong place
And this is where generational labels are kinda shit (I am in the fuzzy in-between line), because I grew up with games like Morrowind and Jak & Daxter. I love Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom exactly because besides the few pointers it does give you, the games just let you explore. I love Hypnospace Outlaw because it gives me a very vague direction with the cases and otherwise let me explore an artistic recreation of the early web. I love Broken Reality for just putting you into this clearly digital vaporwave environment and let you blindly find your way through the game. Also have to include Death Stranding where you are encouraged to explore the terrain to figure out better routes. I love exploration in games when they actually let you have fun with exploring at your own pace without handholding. A lot of people do find Red Dead Redemption 2s world to be fun to explore, but me and the movement mechanics in that game are not friends to put it mildly.
@@Ozzianman I didn't know Red Dead 2 had weird movement mechanics. I am unusually fond of games with weird movement mechanics. Now I wish I had a good enough PC to run it
@@catpoke9557 It's not weird, it is just frustratingly unresponsive to the point the basic action of moving around is not fun. I feel like I often have to fight the movement to do what I want to do. The only way for me to be more specific about my issues with the movement would be to reinstall the game and do more methodical testing. 13 hrs into the game and I could not tolerate it anymore. Story upto that point was great, but I was not having fun anymore.
In Morrowind, the journal and dialogues contained the information you need to find what you need. There were no markers. At some point I tried to recreate that experience in Skyrim, using a mod that removed visual indicators. Many quests were unplayable, simply because there would be zero indication of important details. The quest would be "I need help." (Marker placed)
absolutely this. level design and dialogue is everything and what separates challenging, smart, and objectively artistic games from brain-go-off, mary sue, good dumb fun action/ porno movies you can self insert in. vanilla skyrim, like FO4 is clearly in the later, so much so that you NEED those 500 mods and to recreate the entire game from the ground up to be a challenging and thought provoking experience, because fundamentally, at its core gameplay and mechanics, its built for the lowest common denominational tier of playability possible to get more plebs to buy more Bethesda products and make microsoft more money. Nothing wrong with capitalism... until they sell you shit and wonder why you're mad their products sucks npw, then say you're the one who sucks.
@@quarterpounderwithcheese3178 They're selling you shit because of capitalism. Shareholders want studios to make more money, more money, always more money, every single financial year. Profits must always go up, every financial year. If they don't, they will fire the CEO and replace them with someone who promises to deliver said profits. That's why games continue to cater to the widest possible audience, by being so easy and brain-dead. Because the widest audience = the most customers = the most purchases = the most profit. The product being any good is irrelevant. All that matters is that enough people buy it. The long-term loyalty of fans is irrelevant. All that matters is that they buy the current game. The fact that they won't buy the next game is irrelevant. Short-term profit, here and now, is all that matters.
This is a big problem because Skyrim leans way too heavily onto its markers which, frankly, are not helpful at all at times. There are times where even with the markers you can't tell where you actually need to go because there's a VERY SPECIFIC path you have to take to get there, which may even have multiple branching paths into different, unrelated directions. And once you get there, you may not even know fully what to do. Skyrim is one of the only games with a marker system that I consistently don't know where the frick to go when playing
Morrowind is kind of a bad example I think. I feel like most people forget that the journal was kind of SHIT and they had to FIX it before it became the thing that people actually associate with the game. I am all for my quest information being in a place I have to look for it... but it still needs to be ORGANIZED. The journal in Morrowind for a LONG time just jotted down quest information you received... as you got it... in sequence......... regardless of the quest you were currently working on, accidentally participating in, intersecting with etc. resulting in a journal full of information that was SO obtuse to navigate that MOST players didn't even know what the main quest was or if they were following it almost immediately, until you killed someone and the game broke the fourth wall to be like 'yo this character is important to the main story... do you even care anymore?' and the answer, usually by this point, was NO... you didn't care cause navigating the journal to figure out what you'd done in the main quest and where you were in it would require a REAL WORLD journal of your own to reorganize. There's a middle ground somewhere and I'm not convinced that Morrowind ever actually found it, there's an argument to be made that Skyrim goes too far the other direction, but I find this to be an ENTIRELY subjective circumstance. Gamers today act as if one way of doing things is the 'correct' way or the 'wrong' way ignorant of the wealth of preferences other gamers have. Would YOU like a Skyrim experience with no waypoints? Certainly, does EVERYONE want a Skyrim with no waypoints? 15ish years of being one of the most popular games ever made seems to indicate that no, most folk are fine with waypoints. I'm not saying having options for gamers who want less hand holding aren't good or worthwhile... but I am saying that the 'Fromsoft' way of doing things isn't the 'correct' way.... it's just 'one' way.
Unmodded Skyrim has two examples of this. The Crimson Nirnroot quest and those freaking Bethom-whatever stones the Thieves Guild wants to make that goofy crown. Neither point out where the stones are via markers. This means players are expected to find them all on their own, and they're considered two of the worst quests in the game. That's because there is nothing else to give you hints as to where to find them. And that reminds me of the vanilla WoW quest where the quest giver told me to go East to find the things he wanted, which lead me to wasting 3 hours wondering around and killing countless mobs with zero to show for it because it turns out I needed to go WEST!
I tried the Skyrim quest mod "Carved Brink" a while back and thought it was terrible. It jerked itself off over having no quest markers, but didn't put in the effort required to justify their exclusion. I'd barely made it halfway through the goblin sky world place when I started failing quests because I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to be doing or where I was supposed to go.
Its also a thing of Skyrim over relying on the markers to tell you what to do Which if the mod doesn't work to fill in for that problem then ya they just sound pretentious
@@darkrogue9158 Yep I remmber a player that had played skyrim years ago (not played it for a long time). whent okey I will play skyrim and I will turn off Navigation markers. couldn´t even finish the first quest or so after the turtorial because stuff like where the fuck is my location was none existent. [Fictive example I use] quest skyrim. [Quest] Find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab. [quest text] I need to find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab it should be somewhere in skyrim. [end of quest text]. How Am I supposed to find it? if I did not have quest markers on because it points me in the location of the quest if its off you will not find it. same quest in Morewind. [Quest] Find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab. [quest text] I need to find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab it should be somewhere in skyrim. the [quest giver] told me that from what he knows it should be located where 3 rivers meet. (theres about 5 of them in skyrim). he thinks that the Libary in [another town] might have some information (spoiler it have the same info but if you look in other liberties theres more). you can also talk to random NPC and they will have random level of usefullness speak whit alchamist or historians and they say that they looked for it at 2 of 5 river meeting points and did not find any information. another NPC says that that from a Journal from one of Haralds pupils that there was a ruin next to them (just this narrow it down to 3 locations) but together whit the 2 that we deducted already. leave us whit 2 posible location. now finnaly there is the note about the river been frozen in late spring (there only 2 location that fills that... does take a bit of talking to find that info about when diffrent river meeting points frezes) and now we got the location down to 1. no quest marker needed just some pen and paper (preferable a map).
I'm absolutely okay with waypoints. What has been bothering me lately though has been everything being almost invisible in modern games. Especially in games like Cyberpunk, you can't see enemies if you have your HUD disabled.
this is why you design your games enemies without needing a hud. there is a reason in halo the covenant are colorful full of blues, reds, yellows and oranges. it communicates to the player the rank level and enemy type without the need of a HUD telling them a bunch of information.
Detail pron makes it hard to parse individual things. It's the problem that many AAA companies don't want to admit is real since that would mean dialing back on the graphics. It's also the primary contributor to the yellow paint thing.
One thing that would massively improve tailing missions is if players actually had to pay attention to what the target was doing so they weren't just following them. For example, let's say the target enters a compound that requires a keycode to get in. Aside from peaking over their shoulder with binoculars, you can learn the code either in the tail when the target talks to a NPC. In a bad game the player character would announce they know the code now making the tailing braindead. Instead the player has to get close enough to eavesdrop and repeat to the NPC the same phrase as it's a code phrase to receive the compound's keycode. This encourages engagement in the tail and opportunity to perform some intuitive spycraft. Having the code early also allows entering before the tail meaning the player can scout/make preparations before the target arrives.
The closest example I can think of for something like this is the tailing mission in Sly 3, where you have to take pictures of Octavio polluting the water around Venice.
I love the animation style you use for your avatar. The choppy movement and smoother animated segments mix in such a lovely way. It's a really unique integration of 2d animation techniques and the 3d medium.
I LOVE the original thief games because they don't give you a waypoint, or a minimap, or even show yourself on the map you're given. You have to use a compass and landmarks to navigate, and you end up taking in a lot more of your surroundings because of it.
I feel this in votv. There's map on base, and compass + satellite dishes in their formation of 3 ring-squares. It is enjoyable to navigate, seeking for clues. At first, you often miss, you need too remember your way or use targeting function. But then you become familiar with map, you can go off strict angle on compass that will lead you to next point - and truly explore
@@ИгорьМерзляков-р7д Lethal Company is also pretty awesome in this regard. You have to buy almost every tool in the game and all of it functions in an immersive way. You even have to type commands in the PC to access the shop or switch moons. I see a lot of people saying the voice chat is why the game shines, and while it's definitely a big part of it, for me the biggest appeal gameplay wise is the immersion of the game. It all feels legit rather than like you're playing a game, and mastering it feels awesome.
I love Thief so much! The hand-drawn, barely accurate maps were a great touch. The way the general area the player is in is highlighted is more of a hint of how far you are through the level or what direction is towards the goal than the modern idea of a HUD map.
I still remember back then me and my clan playing game ARK survival. one time we got lost in some place in night time. I open the map. and I said the cordinate. "we are here, and we should move this way". this still early game. we have't the GPS thing. and suddenly all my clan member said "how the fuck you know it" as we return to our base in that time I was thinking "How to fuck you guys so dumbfuck to figure out some Silhouette of the land and just pin point it"
This is how I feel with my friends' inability to map out areas. When playing Minecraft I'll know a cave inside and out and they'll just keep getting lost. In open world games I almost always know which direction I came from and which way home is, while everyone else I know relies on GPS style maps that show your location or coordinates.
Spacial orientation is a skill in itself but ASE tends to draw in the PvP shooter crowd who are just wanting to go 'gun go brrrrr" while building metal box homes filled with enough firearms to start a revolution while largely ignoring the whole dino taming features.
@@KryyssTVthat's something I found interesting in palworld, people complaining about crafting being too long, yeah, you aren't supposed to stay in your base and craft everything by hand.
@@satibel There is an unsettling amount of gamers these days with a gun fetish. As someone who develops for UEFN I've found it quite disturbing how excited the Fortnite community get about Epic adding yet more variations of guns that are just ever so slightly different to the other existing 30 or so of the same type.
@@KryyssTV guns are cool and one of the primary way you interact with the gameworld. In a battle royale where the objective is to be king of murder mountain its pretty normal to want variation to match play styles.
Colored markers exists cause of casuals and normies, mate. The maing buying demographic of video games. Stop being so weirdly s3xually obssesed with game journalists.
@@diamondhamster4320 colored markers exist because the more realistic graphics become, the harder it is to create readable environments due to a higher amount of detail. Gamers are not as smart as they think they are, and many examples of "yellow paint virus" were more than likely implemented after rigorous playtesting.
As a teenager I also had that phase of only palying games where shooting at something was the main or only thing but after feeling bored of years of it, tried games with other focus like surival horror with RE: Outbreak and revisiting MGS actually using stealth and Hitman. The most recent deviation of my usual games these recent times has been playing Hi-Fi RUSH. I never tought I would fall in love with an action-rhytmn game before. Looking forward to revisit my lil' kid days visiting the arcades of my city to play beat 'em ups like Street of Rage 2 and even that Scott Pilgrim I saw a lot in Xbox LKive Arcade so many years ago.
A game worth checking out in a similar genre of action/rhythm mixing to Hi-Fi Rush goes by name of No Straight Roads. Debut title by its respective dev studio, much more boss-focused, shorter and not as technically complex, but nonetheless a nice game with great story, style, characters and music. (in fact, whereas Hi-Fi Rush may be more about the rhythm, good as the music is, NSR is really about the music-- why people make it, what effect it has on them, music as an industry and what effect THAT has on them).
I have experienced the opposite. I never played games where shooting is the focus. Now I have shifted a little. I still mostly play other games but I've started to really love action games, sometimes even including ones where you shoot things. Although I still need there to be more than just that. I don't like just playing levels where you have to shoot other players or NPCs and then rinse and repeat.
This is where graphics ended up costing way more than we thought, you see in a game like ratchet and clank (ps2) you know that a hard ledge is something you can grab onto, so while there may be some really obvious ledges that could be marked or whatever, any hard edge or platform can be used to boost yourself up, in modern games we're so focused on realism or whatever boring nonsense the 5000$ graphic card owners are salivating about, that we forgot to consider how and why you're allowed to do certain things like jumping, I hate seeing MMO's with a jump button because more often than not, that jump is just a stim button you use when waiting for a party.
try to jump somewhere random: you get maybe 2 inches off the ground jump when the game wants you to jump: you can scale a sheer 10 foot wall with ease 🙄
5:20 This one actually hits home pretty hard for me. Over the summer I was working as an instructor/camp counselor at a summer camp that teaches kids how to do very rudimentary/basic game dev stuff. Despite all of the stigma around roblox, it is an incredibly easy engine to develop in as I found in my time working there, and I could see why kids get into it. However - a bunch of the kids there get signed on by their parents, thinking it's just some sort of gaming camp. At least 1/4 of the students (who were now at the point of being middle schoolers) I had met needed to be instructed how to use a laptop that didn't have a touch screen. It's no exaggeration in that clip, a lot of kids these days have never touched a computer with a keyboard and mouse, or even a controller.
I recently got into Fear and Hunger and Darkwood because I loved the vibe and story of the games, but five minutes into playing I realized I was absolutely clueless. I was so tempted to grab a wiki or look at a playthrough, but I forced myself to actually use my brain and as confusing as it was at first, I slowly began to understand how to use my brain and look for things, think outside the box, develop strategies, and find the solution to a problem without a big blinking waypoint and detailed instructions on the side of my screen. It’s been an amazing experience and I feel my brain got slightly bigger!
I beat Final Fantasy 9 not that long ago. That one is an example of a game you can't play without a wiki if you want to understand some stuff. Like the frogs. Or hit chances on spells and whether "miss" means immunity. And the stupid card game the rules for which are scattered, incomplete and functionally useless because it doesn't explain the most important parts. It's the worst thing ever and leaves you unsure if you're stupid or the card game is just THAT bad.
Cool thing about darkwood is when you replay the game, you thrive. You know how to get more materials, weapons, and can mow down enemies/ avoid them easily everytime. So it feels extra good to get better at the game.
One issue with that kind of approach in Fear and Hunger is that once you're an adult, you have finite leisure time - sure, you can spend 5 hours on one boss/encounter/level, but most of people play games to have fun, not to hit a brickwall with their forehead repeatedly, while slightly moving their head while doing so, until you spot a crack in it - all while being forced to repeat everything up to that point several times. Games can get away without big, blinking waypoint (Elden Ring, (eat me alive) Astroneer, V-rising, GTFO), but it has to be done perfectly. Not only that, normal person is not going to figure out the meaning of 40 different statuses, with obfuscated mechanics and ways to trigger
Yeah, shooters were my entire game catalogue through my teenage years and now all I still play is Zombies on Waw, Bo1 and Bo2. Ever since I casted a wider net, I've enjoyed games so much more
I've graduated from shooters to survival horror. It's more intense if you _don't_ have a gun when you need one. Also allowed myself to like the occasional RPG and/or -dating simulator- choice-based adventure game.
I still enjoy Left 4 Dead 2, the workshop community really knows how to care of a good game. wht also give us new challenges, like some custom maps felt like puzzles.
That feeling of having to figure out stuff on your own is that exact experience i had playing Tunic(still haven't finished it). The game doesn't tell you anything and the little things that it tells you are often times written in a language you cannot read. However, i do like that feeling. It brings a lot of 'AHA!💡' moments and fills you with a doze of happiness and accomplishments. Which is something that remind me a lot of my childhood where games quite often required you to figure sh*t out yourself(especially in my case not being able to speak English back then).
I’m probably really affected on how maps work from Breath of the wild. You get markers for each quest, but you can also put down your own and turn any or all of them off and just wander around. It’s just great to have a map and markers as an option
A good recent example of people wanting a game to be Stupidified is the first balance patch in Helldivers 2. People who were too successful at the game due to using a broken, easy mode loadout got extremely mad when that got patched, instead asking for everything else to be lifted to that same level so everyone can play like a headless chicken. Im so glad that even some of the devs came out to say: "Skill Issue"
The other, bigger, problem with buffing everything is it creates power creep and tends to leads to those same smoothbrains saying it's too easy. So the devs make it hard. So they complain everything needs a buff again and it leads to power creeping to ever higher levels. This is most effectively avoided by just nerfing the initially OP thing down to a balanced level. I say this a Breaker main who responded it getting nerfed with just spacing my shots so recoil recovers or crounching when firing.
@@PlebNC I actually changed from Breaker to Punisher, because I realized the Punisher is now even better at clearing chaff when you have half way decent aim and it is muvh more ammo economic.
@@PlebNCPunisher is the normal pump action shotgun. They made it good in the balancing update when they increased its max ammo capacity by 50% (40 up to 60)
Man the System Shock remaster got me fucking good ngl To add, the Original Deus Ex is something I tried when I was a dumb kid with no patience but came back to a few years ago, it blew me away and it's age didn't get in the way of the enjoyment. I was invested in the story the entire time and the best part was how immersed you feel in the world because it let you play how you want with no hints or tips.
Then definitely play Prey (2016 I believe? the new one) Game that is shattering expectations, which is rooted deeply in Deus Ex's approach to world building
16:23 My dad printed the entire guides for X-Com and Terror from the Deep just so I could understand and play them. It was a lot of reading for a 13 year old. Especially since I was used to playing more faster paced games.
FromSoft’z games aren’t even complex mechanics wise. It tells you how to play it in every game. What can you do? You can attack, heavy attack, cast a spell, block with a weapon/shield, use a weapon skill, dodge, and parry. These are all you need to beat the game, it is simple to learn… but it is hard to master. That’s the best part of the games mechanics wise, getting good with these otherwise few mechanics isn’t easy. You can beat the games with beginner skills, but it won’t be easy. You are thus encouraged to actually strategize. Think about boss/enemy weaknesses, discover which weapons and armor are strongest for their category, think about which category of weapon speaks to you and feels more comfortable using. What trade-offs to make and not to make (such as increased protection in exchange for lower dodge speed and increased weight). Are you even strong enough to face this challenge? Should you leave and go grind? Maybe try incorporating skills and spells. Don’t give up after fighting the boss once, don’t even try to defeat them, but rather face them over and over to learn their attacks and movement. I mentioned parrying before, so perhaps try mastering it.
If the game needs to tell you how to play, then it's too complex for your average gamer. Yes, the current standard is THAT low. Give these "gamers" a wall with a door, and you will find them bashing their head at the wall and then complaining they're single dads with two jobs that have no time to think on how to get past that door and wall puzzle. So now devs design these walls as thin as paper so these gamers can just bash their head on it once and be done with it. I mean, just look at some replies to comments in this video, lol.
on using wikipedias to play games, i've always said: If you're struggling, use a walkthrough, if a walkthrough ruins the game, it was never a good game to begin with.
Thing in yellow paint is that in real life scenraio we can use our common knowledge on how to "get over sth" Games on the other hand have various conditions on when you can vault over sth, invisible walls, objects you cannot move etc. So in game design you can either design a room simple enough that it can be read easily rather quickly or an elaborate, hyperrealistic room that due to game limitations has to be painted over with yellow paint.
0:14 i feel the same, I never connected my xbox 360 to the internet until it was too late, i know the campaigns of games too well. Great video by the way, there's a lot of small details that really make the video enthralling and the animation is very well done.
Something interesting that we've seen recently, is grinding gear games did some testing on difficulty for new players with path of exile 2, and basically they doubled the difficulty from what they thought was correct, and they were surprised that nobody complained about it, they complained about some of the stuff that caused their death but that was very limited, and that was a big surprise for them, and a welcome one, because that means most people won't have an issue with a hard game as long as it's properly communicated.
That's why I like From games, they give subtle hints and you have to figure it out. Or how Helldivers only teaches you the basic and you have to figure out everything else by testing things.
Cool game. Many things to explore, some of them too hard and some are easy. I found some myself while having not full knowlege. Side clouds, dragon, dark cave, notes in snow way passage, shop, different parts of sun quest, desert chasm orb, eye-steps on side clouds, anvil. It is rewarding feeling to find these
Your point is valid but I wish you put more emphasis on how theres a lack of creativity in game design with the example of creators not thinking of the game device itself.
Its less lack of creativity and More the Money (Corporate assess ans investors whove probably never even played a modern game statistically speaking) has Decided that accessibility, Broad Market Viability, Microtranasactions and in Bungess opinion " over delivering is Bad" along with similar sentiments accross the industry are the best ways to guarantee your game scores High with Journalists and gets casuals to buy your game along with by having it so the hardcores dont have High expectations they can use deliberate Bad Design to force players to spend and unfortunately the industry is trying to push their desingers towards this what id call "Malicious Design" . Ultimately the way they see it Innovation is Costly with no Guarantee on return when we already have Science proving we cqn just manipulate our customers into giving us thousands of dollars a month in microtransactions so why design anything new wnd ultimately games have Reached a point where instead of beign entertainment for the sake of fun they're becoming more Mechanical Like a printer with the sole focus on making as much profits for the leadership whilst Bleeding their workers Passions for their older Games Dry Until their workers cant even go Indie because their soul has been Destroyed by Greed. Take note of how most Modern Games from A aaa company feel identical its because they're prioritising developing things that they can copy and Paste effectively between games Reusing assets in the form of code ro Reduce cost because they've deemed a Unique system for example movement is unneeded and unprofitable when we already have multiple ways to make movement 1 of which is the agreed Upon standard of Just moving a capsule and having animations provide the illusions of your character moving, because the Development cost to Make A new Movement system or innovate to fix the problem with the current system is deemed Unprofitable and their for not needed along with this theirs Long Hours, Months of Crunch time, Leadership which often has lets just say Problems, CEO's on power Trips announcing Games before their either Ready to reveal or even worse before the dev Team is fully started the game, Investors forcing games to release Early against the desingers wishes (Cyberpunk 2077), just to mention some of the crap the industry Puts Devs through as any attempt at creativity or Breaking the mold is systemically pushed Down and Erased Even trying to learn game design (I'm literally studying the subject and am 3 years into my studying and have switched from 1 school to a different 1 at the start of this year) the Money Driving the Education is focused less on teaching the logic behind game design and the process and more on the analyse what everyone else is doing and that will tell you how to make a Game (my Favourite genre is classic Immersive sims so ive Fully Rejected the concept of selling my soul like that and am more using the study as a way to build confidence in making projects and gaining connections in an environment where I can get to the point of making the games i want to make. By Horizon Dev team (of) 1 narrative focused Game Design
Game devs are afraid to try new things and rely on others to come up with a mechanic to then later milk it in all new games, like most recently the grappling hook
That is why I for me that game TUNIC, a Zelda-souls-like game about a fox where NOTHING is explained (like beat the boss using the starting stick, which was a pain to do, becouse I missed a room with a sword), the language used in the game is encrypted in runic writing and you have to figure it all out on your own, was really refreshing. Like it was nice to use in a game that meatball between my ears.
Slightly earlygame spoiler for those who never knew: One of my favorite moments in the game is with one of the first bosses. A room containing a reward is behind the boss, so naturally you would assume that you *have* to beat the boss in order to enter the room. However, while running around panicking and hiding, I accidentally entered the reward room before beating the boss. In most games the room would be blocked off or locked until you beat the boss, but here the game just lets you snake your way around the boss and get the reward early. It struck me in a special way because the game allowed me to think outside of the box of video game expectations and be rewarded for it.
Yes TUNIC is amazing! I especially love how yhe journal is written in a made up script. And if you want to read it, you have to decode the alphabet yourself using context. The game is never lile "this is A". You have to just look at the text and guess based on context. Working on decoding that alphabet is the most fun puzzle I've done in a game that I can remember.
Incredible video essay, I've watched probably close to a hundred hours worth of video game video essays on UA-cam and yours is one of the better ones I've seen. You also managed to cover a lot of the same topics in 17 minutes that others do in 40 minute ones where they often ramble on and reiterate their points. Bravo!
As someone who plays all sorts of games, from shooters to driving games, fighting games, open world games, rpgs, beat em ups, city builders, sports games, survival horrors, soulslikes, platformers, and even goofy puzzle games you can get on your phone, I think it's about what you make of all these games yourself for the most part, like you said. Look at driving games for example, you can play those simcade ones in so many different ways, you can just throw on all the assists and wallride to victory or you can spend countless hours testing small tweaks in tuning, or the same amount of time designing liveries, or only doing time attacks, single player or going online facing other people. Yeah there are gaming cliches like yellow paint or escort missions that cause collective sighs and eyerolls from gamers but these usually are not the entirety of the games that they feature in. There are great games with yellow paint in and objectively absolute trash ones with player agency. I think quality of life features in new games are a good thing because new gamers come up in the draft every day. You don't want to be a newb at a game or entire genre and have to pull up a wiki every time you need to take a step forward. Unless of course that's what you're into. Then we circle back to the games are what you make of them. Good vid.
I play Noita as a goofy ahh sandbox game. Usually I just try to break out of bounds and dig giant holes to fill with my own puke. It's supposed to be a rogue-like.
Literally reminds me of the original Gears of War. As soon as you get in the story it asks whether or not you want to just get right into the action or learn how to play. Genuinely still one of my all time favorite games. Also I'm now curious on your experience with Outer Wilds, thats also one of my all time favorites and I wouldn't mind watching you talk about it more in depth
I love how your art style and animation is a reference to Jet Set Radio and the spiritual successor Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, was genuinely expecting a reference to them in the video
I like the fear games, they make me feel like an utter genius when I dont go the main path and instead go one more ladder rung up to get that sweet sweet hp booster
I've had kinda the opposite issue, and it's funny you show Black Ops clips in several places because I've played that last week. I've had it sitting in the library for a really long time after a friend gifted it to me saying that it's the best one. I... didn't have a very good time myself. My first videogames were point and click adventure games, and later immersive sims and stealth games. I've played a ton of shooters since, including Call of Duty 2, but in Black Ops I kept (ironically enough) getting lost in the linear levels looking for alternative routes to flank the enemies or to find better angles on them, or not understanding where the game wants me to run. The constant breakneck pace of the action and the story was mindnumbing, and then, in the part of the mission with the Thunderbird, where you issue commands to the squad on the ground, I thought "Oh, this is like a little strategy game", and then proceeded to fail multiple times because I tried giving commands before the game told me what to actually do, or if I tried going outside of the script. Another time, in the mission where you sneak onto the island to kill the german scientist, I kept getting detected by the helicopter's searchlight even when it was nowhere near me, only to find out that what you're actually supposed to wait for is not the searchlight's passing, but for Reznov to verbally command you to move again. I kept overestimating the game and overthinking it, and ended up having a really bad time because I kept setting myself up for disappointment.
I have been experiencing this issue in reverse lately, namely I have been playing only rts, grand strategy and rpgs for years and when some time ago a group of friends invited me to play an shooter with them I found out my aim and reaction time sucks balls.
I just played Deus Ex GOTY Edition, and that was the most fun I had for a game in a long time. Way ahead of its time, for a game that came out in 2001, it feels like it could have been written today from the topics that the series frequents. I like nu-Deus Ex as well, but the original is GOAT.
Meanwhile ARMA: The Right mouse button makes you aim. And Left to shoot and Q to lean, And Shift, it makes you walk and run. And Left CTRL to raise your gun. And pressing C will make you crouch, And pressing O will view your watch, The G Key, Makes you check your pack, And pressing Enter views your back. "But where are all the zombies at?" I told you he would ask us that.
Man, there's no deeper shame to me than that feeling you get when you go back to an old favorite and completely fumble the buttons, or totally forget how to do basic things, and then also how to navigate the menu to try and find the answer 😭
I have observational issues where I have trouble picking out details in all but the most simple of environments, like my mind just paints over them randomly. Waypoints are extremely helpful to me in any case where I have to find something like an interactable in a room or a guy in a crowd, more so than it would be for others. I hope that in the future, assuming game devs pick up on the "use game design instead of waypoints" advice, something similar can stick around under the accessibility options.
Same here! I both have trouble seeing & holding controllers etc. And yet games don't feel more accessible to me. For every waypoint added a minimalistic transparent UI gets added too and difficulty settings often just take HP away from enemies instead of actually making difficult combos or puzzles more accessible. Its quite frustrating to see the dislike for easy games on the rise because ultimately that valid critisms often just falls back onto accessibility and lack thereof.
@@RialuCaos thats not even remotely how that works. Or would you recommend me to not wear my glasses anymore? My eyesight isnt getting worse by wearing glasses, I just wont be used to the blurriness anymore imeadiatly when I take them off. The same applies to my ability to visually pick up on and process things in my environment. If anything Ill get better at distinguishing important from unimportant things if I 'train' by looking at images where the important things are highlighted.
@@Parrotcat It is generally how it works, it's a common principle seen throughout nature called "use it or lose it." If something is not being used, it naturally decays through the process of entropy. Of course there are some exceptions where no amount of conditioning will help (such as color-blindness), but I am not confident that the OP's case is such.
@@RialuCaos just like colorblindness, the condition op is describing is a neurological issue nd not just a weak muscle in need of training. And even if it was trainable it would be trained by starting with easy visuals, you dont have a day one trainee fix an entire car on their own so why would you want to throw a full busy moving image at someone with poor visual processing? An option to turn on visual guides hurts no one and helps many.
I think waypoints are definitely needed in games because sometimes the in game dialogue/side mission text description is not good or frustratingly vague. Personally, i would not like to have spend countless hours trying to find a tiny item in a dark location or a hidden trigger on a certain part of a wall. I agree with the fact that having less waypoints does make the games feel more engaging and open. But it really depends on what the mission is. Is it taking out a certain enemy in a field of many foes? That could use little to no waypoints (especially those waypoints that fills up an entire area highlight where that certain enemy might be) because its open and the player can be creative with ways to take out the enemy. Is it to find an room, item or a person? That needs a waypoint because there is no creative solution for those types of missions since it is unchanging and the only obstacle there is the game design. Relying on a wiki (while vaild) makes the game feel less immersive and rewarding. Love the video and the topic (although its kind of willbly woobly with the pacing but thats just me I think)!
It really depends on the developers i think. If the devs aren't lazy peaces of shit, they will try to give good direction. If they already know that there's no way point they will atleast try to make the game around it.
There are definitely methods to work around using way points and making it work. It’s all a matter of the ones making the game. With the usage of reasonable descriptions given to the player, good level design, and decent art direction that makes what is necessary stick out as needed for a player. It’s all on who’s making the game and a little bit on the type of game whether no waypoints work.
@@lucky4d725 I'm really sorry if i came across as aggressive. It wasn't my intention. Playing 20 minutes of Genshin really messed with my mind. The dialogue and quest design is beyond horrendous. And coma inducing. I was thinking of that when writing the comment.
This is why you don't only play a single genre of game for too long: It gets harder to play any others. Personally, I play Rimworld (Modded), Disfigure, Minecraft (Modded), State of Decay 2, and Call of Duty (Black OPS 3 (Zombies (Modded))). I have also played Kenshi (Modded), Project Zomboid (Modded), Survivalist invisible Strain (Modded), Risk of Rain 2 (Modded), No Man's Sky, Rogue Tower (Modded), Defense Grid (The original game I never got into the second one), Terraria (Modded), 7 Days to Die (Tried to mod it but the mod manager I tried to use was too confusing), Skyrim (Modded for a little bit until the mods broke literally the next session), Atomicrops, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1NIT!!!1, Grim Realms... Ok you get the idea.
@@dvdbox360nfs most wanted was truly the best. I still replay it every year. It's so hard to catch lighting in a bottle like that, it happens like once every 20 years imo
The way this video is edited does a great job at driving the thesis of the video. It's so frantic that I, too, can feel the effects of your severe adhd and lack of attention span.
nah, I can somewhat confirm your theory. Personaly, I was always a guy who played single player games and always something far removed from reality (specially disliked stuff like call of duty. Going to irl based war? Boooring! ) For me it was the sonic platformers, the strategic starcrafts, the comedic and puzzle filled monkey islands, the wacky mario karts and the insane brutality and tragic story of god of war. I tapped in so many different genres and game style, but never had really much to share them with besides my brother.... now imagine you finally find someone and you hear them say they are interested in video games, and you think, finally an IRL friend you can talk about video games.... and you would not beliieve how often, whenever I ask what games they play, the first answer I hear is "call of duty" and from there all hope is lost, cause call of duty players only play call of duty or games similar to call of duty, maybe sometimes a racing game but no, no fun silly mario kart, nope the boring hyper realisitc games like need for speed or grand turismo. or in the worst case even, fifa. I swear every freakin time. And a lot of times you can't even convince a casual gamer to try something new. Heck just recently I meet a guy who could not believe that someone could play a game that looks like pizza tower. Well guess who are the people who know constantly post "video games are not fun anymore"? The casual gamers, who played one and the same thing for years. Never stepping out of their comfort zone, the one who are impressed by nothing but super hyper realsitic graphics. So yeah, from somewhat a personal experience, you are totally right.
A game with a perfect example of how to not do this that came out recently is KONA. It has no way points, just a small town covered in a blizzard. You have to explore every where to progress the story and the immersion is incredible until you drive your car into a tree so many times you start to wonder why you even started playing video games in the first place.
Try Hyper Demon. It's a minimalistic, yet incredibly advanced arcade movement fps with incredible depth and unparalleled visuals. There's nothing else like it. If you're past that point where you feel so dumbed down by fps games that you don't even like the genre anymore, HD will fix that.
I would like to add Noita to that list - the way it just throws you into a simulated world with hazards everywhere, giving you no explanation or guard rails other than your own knowledge and diligence (as far as you decide to follow it) to protect you, is so refreshing.
I actually ran into this problem too- once upon a time, tiny 11 year old me played Borderlands 2 because everyone else I knew had it and had played it multiple times. I didn't really care about story, because gun. That was what drew me in. The last couple of years I've been broadening my gaming horizons and went "I... don't really like this game. I don't have the time for it... why did I like this?" That being said, my TimeSplitters 2 was the entire Sly Cooper franchise
The lowering the slope thing has a very direct effect of requiring a longer game in order to reach the same level of complexity/difficulty. Sometimes you end up with games in which genre veterans looking for more complex experiences end up only enjoying the last 2 hours of a 30 hour long game because the rest of it felt like an unskippable tutorial.
I'm not even very good at games but I'm gonna be real some of them give me that vibe too. I usually play games that either aren't intended to challenge you anyways (you know, relaxed sandbox games or story driven games) or games that are just hellish right off the bat, so I'm forced to learn how to play the game or I don't progress. So when I play a game that very slowly becomes difficult, I really do wind up constantly wondering if I'm in the tutorial or not, all the way up until the point that it's basically over. That said, some games do this slow progression properly. Like puzzle games. They should get harder and harder over time because the point of a puzzle is to train your brain. Fighting games with a ton of mechanics also benefit from slow progression so you can memorize all the abilities.
Game design student here. I designed a game in college where you could clearly only walk in one direction. You had to climb a wall and leave through the only passage that was available. Somehow people still kept getting fucking lost. My own professor turned in a circle and gave up because “he didn’t know where he was.” It makes no fucking sense to me.
Yeah, after having all these markers it's pretty hard to get into something that doesn't guide you by the hand. I recently started playing Resident Evil 1 HD Remaster to see what I missed out on in the series. And, despite not going too far (only getting the armor key), I got completely lost at least 5 times. At some point I went on UA-cam to watch someone play the game because I had no idea what to do next.
I love your avatar and I definitely agree that way points can be really useful but it's always refreshing when a game is designed in a way that you don't even need one.
Then there's the counter-argument of playing Tales of Phantasia, putting it down for a week, coming back and circling the planet three times before you opt to just talk to every single NPC until you find the ONE in Venezia that will progress the plot, with no way to review a synopsis of what you did last or get a hint about where to go. Speaking with obvious experience. It's a balance. These days I appreciate waypoints since they save me time while playing games, but I think that's mostly my age and ever-impending expiration date talking. It really is rare when I have to activate my brain to actually make progress now, both for better and worse.
Such a good take on videogames. I kinda have the same problem of loving fps's and rpgs too much, and now that i want to get more into strategy games or anything more slowpaced i get so impatient and even drop the game in the middle. It can be frustrating but fortunately we can start anywhere and overtime start to get the hang of these different types of games. Anyway, great video, thanks for bringing this up!
...And what if I don't care about having a broad audience? That's my central issue with your defence of "lowering the slope". Artists are under no obligation to make their art appealing to anyone, let alone everyone. Artists have the right to make whatever art they want; the right to exclude any audience they want. And people respect that clarity of vision, and voice. That's why From Software has managed to repeatedly produce blockbuster hits, despite refusing to make any concessions to casual audiences in terms of difficulty. The Soulsborne pseudo-franchise is steeped in the unique voice of its creators, who were allowed to make the exact games they wanted. Games that have their own rules, and will not bend to whatever assumptions players may have coming in. Either the player learns the rules and adapts their play, or the games will stomp them flat. And people love it! Every Soulsborne game has outsold the last, produced more groundswell than the last. Elden Ring was a smash hit and popular sensation. And proved that games do not need to coddle anyone to have mass appeal.
A recent GDC talk by the publisher Humble ( the Humble Bundle indie game guys) was very revealing about this exact thing. It turns out that almost no gamers actually play games for the challenge and all of them play them to relax. I personally found that remarkable given the reputation of Soulsborne type games but then again when you hear that Elden Ring sold 20 million copies compared to most CoD selling 30 million and titles like Overwatch and PUBG being 50m and 75m respectively you can see that the figures support that conclusion. Not to mention that taking the typical releases ever year, difficult games are a niche market. So it isn't so much that the mindless shooters make gamers dumber, but rather that gamers who want to be dumb and play something where very little thought is required are drawn to mindless entertainment. And as for the claim that "shooter X is very tactical" I'd suggest you go play games with actual strategy like 4X or RTS and then ask yourself if you had to think more or less about tactics in "shooter X".
Funnily enough I find Elden Ring a really relaxing game, just mindlessly riding around the countryside on your horse looking at the colorful trees to unwind between dungeon excursions is a vital part of the gameplay loop for me.
Your argument of dipping your toes into a recent game of a genre you find hard to get into and working your way back is spot on. After I beat Elden Ring I dove into every other fromsoft game and I'm in the middle of Sekiro and Bloodborne and loving it.
Personally I don’t think the Yellow paint is THAT big of a deal. Color association is a perfectly normal thing, we do it all the time in games, like with element systems. Could we be more creative with how we do it? Yes, obviously. But if a game wants you to focus almost entirely on its rich, detailed combat system then it’s perfectly fine if there’s some yellow paint leading towards where you’ll be fighting.
The reason people are upset with yellow paint is more like, in the past developers would just make it obvious what's gameplay space and what's decoration, now they aren't even trying anymore. Extreme example would be Mirror's Edge, people were very positive about its artstyle (interactible things have bright colors, backgrounds don't) even though it's the logical extreme of yellow paint, because it looked cool and was easy to parse when you're running away from cops at high speeds and couldn't really stop to plan out a route.
@@GameDevYalI don't think that's an issue with distinguishing what's interactive or not, that's just an art style choice, you can't just make something colorful and something gray when you're going for realism or you're trying to make everything colorful, that defeats the point
Also people seem to forget that it's the same as red barrels, things being put at the center of a path, red lights, a lamp or light over an item, chests being of a different color, etc
3:11 NO even tho I am an airsoft enjoyer I don't switch between a 74UN and a riotshield while spinning at mach 7 (I tried the "dolphindive" thing and broke half my equipment + fractured 4 ribs help)
I own 500+ games on steam. When I meet somebody and they tell me they're a gamer, they play CSGO, Valorant and Overwatch, I cannot relate to them. Yeah, I play fps games like Hunt: Showdown and Hell Let Loose, but one of my favorite games is Divinity: Original Sin 2. I play rpgs, rts, city builders, logistic games, single-player story games, and so many more.
A while ago I put a friend of mine in front of one of my old NES games: Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. He told me he didn't really like it (and other old games like it) because he has a "low tolerance for bullshit". A listed example of that bullshit was, "Caves are dark and you can't see enemies until you get the candle power-up, and it's not communicated in game". Except... it was. They tell you in the manual. At that period of time the manual was considered part of the game. Memory was at such a premium that it was cheaper to supplement with printed materials than extra chips. You can especially see with with titles like Ultima 5, where the game comes with a physical expedition journal and cloth map (made of actual cloth!). Using the two props together was necessary to solve one of the quest-lines. If you just go download it from an abandonware site, you have to know to download also PDF's of the props too, or you don't have the full game. I don't think that old games are harder. I think they are unfamiliar. I can play modern games, but when I see a game made in an older style I can swap mental modes seamlessly. Watching some newer players, they have more problems doing that.
this could have been *another* "videogames suck today" video, but you actually went through enough introspection to understand the nuances of how and why modern games work and the context in which they exist to not just be a complete doomer. thank you for your service.
As a gamer, I am offended. Unfortunately there is no yellow paint guiding me towards the dislike button so consider yourself lucky.
69 likes in 3 days fell off
You must admit that they do have a point
@@tyroytrexdarlekmann8949 I can't see the point. There's no yellow paint on it
@@theshpee1214 I've been trying to find your mom but there's no red outline or waypoint at her place
Yellow paint started in rabbids go home and was charming just like rabbids go home
Honestly, I can see the argument that 'lowering the slope' is necessary to bring more people in, but then the problem becomes "ok, now we need to expand our audience again, lower the slope more". Then the whole game just ends up being viewed as obstacle and the slope encompasses everything. Then we're no longer just making the game easier to get into, we're making it nearly impossible to fail at and thus improve at. Mileage varying by genre, obviously.
I feel that at a point there's deminishing returns and that you couldnt go any further, though I see what you mean. I got back into fortnite recently and to my surprise that game has bots that front as players. This makes the game easier and more welcoming to people who are less skilled, though I almost feel decieved as at first I thought I had the right amount of skill to compete against other players, only to be let down when my friends told me they were bots.
On the other hand, when you spend money on a battlepass because you want a specific skin, but may not be good enough to fight against human players to unlock it in a time frame, you might feel robbed of your money. So I think a monetary incentive might change the moral behind that.
@@Ramsker Monetary incentive is absolutely still a factor. None of this happens in a vacuum. But another recent example is how the targeting circles were adjusted for Overwatch. Lots of people in that community have commented on how ridiculous the changes are. Honestly, I'm glad that I play mostly single-player games, but those have a whole other host of issues lately imo.
Yep, Cain's statement is theoretically true, but the angle of the slope is just the game's complexity divided by it's duration, so to reach the same level of complexity with a flatter slope means a longer game which costs more money, so it typically doesn't happen.
In this past this might happen in the sequel, but now game budgets are so out of controls sequels often have the same incline as their predecessor because they can't afford to alienate players who need the gentle onramp, but enthusiasts will typically tolerate being babied a bit because they love games.
@@TSPhoenix2 Which is why, in reality, an intention to 'lower the slope' quickly leads to actual dumbing down.
@@Ramsker When that point is reached, that is when they start cutting out mechanics and get to the actual dumbing down.
I remember when I first introduced my cousin's kid (gen z) to Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, my favorite PS2 game. The lack of quest markers confused her, and she kept asking me where she should go. I had to keep telling her, "you just have to keep looking around and explore."
To be fair though, she's used to open-world games where mission objectives are placed so far from the initial quest-giver that you HAVE to be told where it is beforehand in order to find it... I'm not surprised that "just look around and explore" never occurred to her as a solution, since exploring in open-world games usually just means "wander around for hours getting nothing done."
This is why everyone should play a variety of games, especially indie games, of different genres and difficulty levels. Eventually you will develop the skillset required for every type of game so that the only ones leaving you confused are either ones you're supposed to be confused in, or genuinely poorly designed ones. Then, you will never judge a game for something that wasn't actually a flaw or mistake. Because you will be able to recognize when something is user error vs developer error.
I cant remember exactly what Skyrim mod it was, but its a mod that adds quite a few quests and one of them has you trying to find something while also battling "white arrow fever" as in, you get clear intructions, and the white quest arrow will take you to the wrong place
And this is where generational labels are kinda shit (I am in the fuzzy in-between line), because I grew up with games like Morrowind and Jak & Daxter.
I love Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom exactly because besides the few pointers it does give you, the games just let you explore.
I love Hypnospace Outlaw because it gives me a very vague direction with the cases and otherwise let me explore an artistic recreation of the early web.
I love Broken Reality for just putting you into this clearly digital vaporwave environment and let you blindly find your way through the game.
Also have to include Death Stranding where you are encouraged to explore the terrain to figure out better routes.
I love exploration in games when they actually let you have fun with exploring at your own pace without handholding.
A lot of people do find Red Dead Redemption 2s world to be fun to explore, but me and the movement mechanics in that game are not friends to put it mildly.
@@Ozzianman I didn't know Red Dead 2 had weird movement mechanics. I am unusually fond of games with weird movement mechanics. Now I wish I had a good enough PC to run it
@@catpoke9557 It's not weird, it is just frustratingly unresponsive to the point the basic action of moving around is not fun. I feel like I often have to fight the movement to do what I want to do. The only way for me to be more specific about my issues with the movement would be to reinstall the game and do more methodical testing.
13 hrs into the game and I could not tolerate it anymore. Story upto that point was great, but I was not having fun anymore.
In Morrowind, the journal and dialogues contained the information you need to find what you need. There were no markers.
At some point I tried to recreate that experience in Skyrim, using a mod that removed visual indicators.
Many quests were unplayable, simply because there would be zero indication of important details. The quest would be "I need help." (Marker placed)
absolutely this.
level design and dialogue is everything and what separates challenging, smart, and objectively artistic games from brain-go-off, mary sue, good dumb fun action/ porno movies you can self insert in.
vanilla skyrim, like FO4 is clearly in the later, so much so that you NEED those 500 mods and to recreate the entire game from the ground up to be a challenging and thought provoking experience, because fundamentally, at its core gameplay and mechanics, its built for the lowest common denominational tier of playability possible to get more plebs to buy more Bethesda products and make microsoft more money. Nothing wrong with capitalism... until they sell you shit and wonder why you're mad their products sucks npw, then say you're the one who sucks.
@@quarterpounderwithcheese3178 They're selling you shit because of capitalism. Shareholders want studios to make more money, more money, always more money, every single financial year. Profits must always go up, every financial year. If they don't, they will fire the CEO and replace them with someone who promises to deliver said profits.
That's why games continue to cater to the widest possible audience, by being so easy and brain-dead. Because the widest audience = the most customers = the most purchases = the most profit. The product being any good is irrelevant. All that matters is that enough people buy it. The long-term loyalty of fans is irrelevant. All that matters is that they buy the current game. The fact that they won't buy the next game is irrelevant. Short-term profit, here and now, is all that matters.
This is a big problem because Skyrim leans way too heavily onto its markers which, frankly, are not helpful at all at times. There are times where even with the markers you can't tell where you actually need to go because there's a VERY SPECIFIC path you have to take to get there, which may even have multiple branching paths into different, unrelated directions. And once you get there, you may not even know fully what to do. Skyrim is one of the only games with a marker system that I consistently don't know where the frick to go when playing
Morrowind is kind of a bad example I think. I feel like most people forget that the journal was kind of SHIT and they had to FIX it before it became the thing that people actually associate with the game. I am all for my quest information being in a place I have to look for it... but it still needs to be ORGANIZED. The journal in Morrowind for a LONG time just jotted down quest information you received... as you got it... in sequence......... regardless of the quest you were currently working on, accidentally participating in, intersecting with etc. resulting in a journal full of information that was SO obtuse to navigate that MOST players didn't even know what the main quest was or if they were following it almost immediately, until you killed someone and the game broke the fourth wall to be like 'yo this character is important to the main story... do you even care anymore?' and the answer, usually by this point, was NO... you didn't care cause navigating the journal to figure out what you'd done in the main quest and where you were in it would require a REAL WORLD journal of your own to reorganize.
There's a middle ground somewhere and I'm not convinced that Morrowind ever actually found it, there's an argument to be made that Skyrim goes too far the other direction, but I find this to be an ENTIRELY subjective circumstance. Gamers today act as if one way of doing things is the 'correct' way or the 'wrong' way ignorant of the wealth of preferences other gamers have. Would YOU like a Skyrim experience with no waypoints? Certainly, does EVERYONE want a Skyrim with no waypoints? 15ish years of being one of the most popular games ever made seems to indicate that no, most folk are fine with waypoints. I'm not saying having options for gamers who want less hand holding aren't good or worthwhile... but I am saying that the 'Fromsoft' way of doing things isn't the 'correct' way.... it's just 'one' way.
Unmodded Skyrim has two examples of this. The Crimson Nirnroot quest and those freaking Bethom-whatever stones the Thieves Guild wants to make that goofy crown. Neither point out where the stones are via markers. This means players are expected to find them all on their own, and they're considered two of the worst quests in the game. That's because there is nothing else to give you hints as to where to find them.
And that reminds me of the vanilla WoW quest where the quest giver told me to go East to find the things he wanted, which lead me to wasting 3 hours wondering around and killing countless mobs with zero to show for it because it turns out I needed to go WEST!
It's true, I'm very dumb too.
same
wow its foekoe
the thumbnail looks simular to the ones you make tbh
@@deimos7500 I'm pretty sure he made the thumbnail
you're dutch, of course
fuckof, my favorite youtuber!
3:01
"I'm not a dumb teenager, I'm a dumb adult"
classic
I tried the Skyrim quest mod "Carved Brink" a while back and thought it was terrible. It jerked itself off over having no quest markers, but didn't put in the effort required to justify their exclusion.
I'd barely made it halfway through the goblin sky world place when I started failing quests because I had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to be doing or where I was supposed to go.
Its also a thing of Skyrim over relying on the markers to tell you what to do
Which if the mod doesn't work to fill in for that problem then ya they just sound pretentious
Meh... Best Skyrim Mod is Enderal: Forgotten Stories and Second Best is Forgotten City (which was made into Stand-Alone game)
Thats because you cant just remove map markers if the game is designed around relying on them and thus doesnt reliably use the environment itself
@@diamondhamster4320 Absolutely, but Enderal is so big, it barely counts as a mod. Hell,it has its own Steam page
@@darkrogue9158 Yep I remmber a player that had played skyrim years ago (not played it for a long time).
whent okey I will play skyrim and I will turn off Navigation markers.
couldn´t even finish the first quest or so after the turtorial because stuff like where the fuck is my location was none existent.
[Fictive example I use] quest skyrim.
[Quest] Find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab.
[quest text]
I need to find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab it should be somewhere in skyrim.
[end of quest text].
How Am I supposed to find it? if I did not have quest markers on because it points me in the location of the quest if its off you will not find it.
same quest in Morewind.
[Quest] Find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab.
[quest text]
I need to find Harald D the Alchemist ancient secret lab it should be somewhere in skyrim.
the [quest giver] told me that from what he knows it should be located where 3 rivers meet. (theres about 5 of them in skyrim).
he thinks that the Libary in [another town] might have some information (spoiler it have the same info but if you look in other liberties theres more).
you can also talk to random NPC and they will have random level of usefullness speak whit alchamist or historians and they say that they looked for it at 2 of 5 river meeting points and did not find any information.
another NPC says that that from a Journal from one of Haralds pupils that there was a ruin next to them (just this narrow it down to 3 locations) but together whit the 2 that we deducted already. leave us whit 2 posible location.
now finnaly there is the note about the river been frozen in late spring (there only 2 location that fills that... does take a bit of talking to find that info about when diffrent river meeting points frezes) and now we got the location down to 1.
no quest marker needed just some pen and paper (preferable a map).
I'm absolutely okay with waypoints. What has been bothering me lately though has been everything being almost invisible in modern games. Especially in games like Cyberpunk, you can't see enemies if you have your HUD disabled.
this is why you design your games enemies without needing a hud. there is a reason in halo the covenant are colorful full of blues, reds, yellows and oranges. it communicates to the player the rank level and enemy type without the need of a HUD telling them a bunch of information.
Detail pron makes it hard to parse individual things. It's the problem that many AAA companies don't want to admit is real since that would mean dialing back on the graphics. It's also the primary contributor to the yellow paint thing.
It's like how SpongeBob started working for the krusty krab and could not make any other food besides hamburgers after that
One thing that would massively improve tailing missions is if players actually had to pay attention to what the target was doing so they weren't just following them.
For example, let's say the target enters a compound that requires a keycode to get in. Aside from peaking over their shoulder with binoculars, you can learn the code either in the tail when the target talks to a NPC. In a bad game the player character would announce they know the code now making the tailing braindead.
Instead the player has to get close enough to eavesdrop and repeat to the NPC the same phrase as it's a code phrase to receive the compound's keycode. This encourages engagement in the tail and opportunity to perform some intuitive spycraft. Having the code early also allows entering before the tail meaning the player can scout/make preparations before the target arrives.
The closest example I can think of for something like this is the tailing mission in Sly 3, where you have to take pictures of Octavio polluting the water around Venice.
I love the animation style you use for your avatar. The choppy movement and smoother animated segments mix in such a lovely way. It's a really unique integration of 2d animation techniques and the 3d medium.
I LOVE the original thief games because they don't give you a waypoint, or a minimap, or even show yourself on the map you're given. You have to use a compass and landmarks to navigate, and you end up taking in a lot more of your surroundings because of it.
I feel this in votv. There's map on base, and compass + satellite dishes in their formation of 3 ring-squares. It is enjoyable to navigate, seeking for clues. At first, you often miss, you need too remember your way or use targeting function. But then you become familiar with map, you can go off strict angle on compass that will lead you to next point - and truly explore
@@ИгорьМерзляков-р7д Lethal Company is also pretty awesome in this regard. You have to buy almost every tool in the game and all of it functions in an immersive way. You even have to type commands in the PC to access the shop or switch moons. I see a lot of people saying the voice chat is why the game shines, and while it's definitely a big part of it, for me the biggest appeal gameplay wise is the immersion of the game. It all feels legit rather than like you're playing a game, and mastering it feels awesome.
I love Thief so much! The hand-drawn, barely accurate maps were a great touch. The way the general area the player is in is highlighted is more of a hint of how far you are through the level or what direction is towards the goal than the modern idea of a HUD map.
I still remember back then me and my clan playing game ARK survival. one time we got lost in some place in night time. I open the map. and I said the cordinate. "we are here, and we should move this way". this still early game. we have't the GPS thing.
and suddenly all my clan member said "how the fuck you know it" as we return to our base
in that time I was thinking "How to fuck you guys so dumbfuck to figure out some Silhouette of the land and just pin point it"
This is how I feel with my friends' inability to map out areas. When playing Minecraft I'll know a cave inside and out and they'll just keep getting lost. In open world games I almost always know which direction I came from and which way home is, while everyone else I know relies on GPS style maps that show your location or coordinates.
Spacial orientation is a skill in itself but ASE tends to draw in the PvP shooter crowd who are just wanting to go 'gun go brrrrr" while building metal box homes filled with enough firearms to start a revolution while largely ignoring the whole dino taming features.
@@KryyssTVthat's something I found interesting in palworld, people complaining about crafting being too long, yeah, you aren't supposed to stay in your base and craft everything by hand.
@@satibel There is an unsettling amount of gamers these days with a gun fetish. As someone who develops for UEFN I've found it quite disturbing how excited the Fortnite community get about Epic adding yet more variations of guns that are just ever so slightly different to the other existing 30 or so of the same type.
@@KryyssTV guns are cool and one of the primary way you interact with the gameworld.
In a battle royale where the objective is to be king of murder mountain its pretty normal to want variation to match play styles.
you see, games need yellow paint because journalists love huffing it
Colored markers exists cause of casuals and normies, mate. The maing buying demographic of video games. Stop being so weirdly s3xually obssesed with game journalists.
@@diamondhamster4320 have some chill pill
@@Layzee_15 I am more chilled than 100 of you zoomer kids combined.
feck game journalists!!!
@@diamondhamster4320 colored markers exist because the more realistic graphics become, the harder it is to create readable environments due to a higher amount of detail. Gamers are not as smart as they think they are, and many examples of "yellow paint virus" were more than likely implemented after rigorous playtesting.
As a teenager I also had that phase of only palying games where shooting at something was the main or only thing but after feeling bored of years of it, tried games with other focus like surival horror with RE: Outbreak and revisiting MGS actually using stealth and Hitman. The most recent deviation of my usual games these recent times has been playing Hi-Fi RUSH. I never tought I would fall in love with an action-rhytmn game before. Looking forward to revisit my lil' kid days visiting the arcades of my city to play beat 'em ups like Street of Rage 2 and even that Scott Pilgrim I saw a lot in Xbox LKive Arcade so many years ago.
A game worth checking out in a similar genre of action/rhythm mixing to Hi-Fi Rush goes by name of No Straight Roads. Debut title by its respective dev studio, much more boss-focused, shorter and not as technically complex, but nonetheless a nice game with great story, style, characters and music.
(in fact, whereas Hi-Fi Rush may be more about the rhythm, good as the music is, NSR is really about the music-- why people make it, what effect it has on them, music as an industry and what effect THAT has on them).
I have experienced the opposite. I never played games where shooting is the focus. Now I have shifted a little. I still mostly play other games but I've started to really love action games, sometimes even including ones where you shoot things. Although I still need there to be more than just that. I don't like just playing levels where you have to shoot other players or NPCs and then rinse and repeat.
This is where graphics ended up costing way more than we thought, you see in a game like ratchet and clank (ps2) you know that a hard ledge is something you can grab onto, so while there may be some really obvious ledges that could be marked or whatever, any hard edge or platform can be used to boost yourself up, in modern games we're so focused on realism or whatever boring nonsense the 5000$ graphic card owners are salivating about, that we forgot to consider how and why you're allowed to do certain things like jumping, I hate seeing MMO's with a jump button because more often than not, that jump is just a stim button you use when waiting for a party.
try to jump somewhere random: you get maybe 2 inches off the ground
jump when the game wants you to jump: you can scale a sheer 10 foot wall with ease
🙄
THIRTY ISN'T OLD.
*Cries*
Yes there's still a good few decades left!
just middle aged 😎
It's only as old as you look and are healthy.
@@Turahk Middle-aged is like, 45.
il make you feel better. pewdiepie is 34
5:20
This one actually hits home pretty hard for me.
Over the summer I was working as an instructor/camp counselor at a summer camp that teaches kids how to do very rudimentary/basic game dev stuff.
Despite all of the stigma around roblox, it is an incredibly easy engine to develop in as I found in my time working there, and I could see why kids get into it.
However - a bunch of the kids there get signed on by their parents, thinking it's just some sort of gaming camp. At least 1/4 of the students (who were now at the point of being middle schoolers) I had met needed to be instructed how to use a laptop that didn't have a touch screen. It's no exaggeration in that clip, a lot of kids these days have never touched a computer with a keyboard and mouse, or even a controller.
The biggest challenge over the next decade of game design is going to be how to create challenging experiences while still maintaining accessibility.
I recently got into Fear and Hunger and Darkwood because I loved the vibe and story of the games, but five minutes into playing I realized I was absolutely clueless. I was so tempted to grab a wiki or look at a playthrough, but I forced myself to actually use my brain and as confusing as it was at first, I slowly began to understand how to use my brain and look for things, think outside the box, develop strategies, and find the solution to a problem without a big blinking waypoint and detailed instructions on the side of my screen. It’s been an amazing experience and I feel my brain got slightly bigger!
I beat Final Fantasy 9 not that long ago. That one is an example of a game you can't play without a wiki if you want to understand some stuff. Like the frogs. Or hit chances on spells and whether "miss" means immunity. And the stupid card game the rules for which are scattered, incomplete and functionally useless because it doesn't explain the most important parts. It's the worst thing ever and leaves you unsure if you're stupid or the card game is just THAT bad.
@@MrMiarnetetra master was popular enough to get its own application on mobile phones in japan
Cool thing about darkwood is when you replay the game, you thrive. You know how to get more materials, weapons, and can mow down enemies/ avoid them easily everytime. So it feels extra good to get better at the game.
As obtuse as it is, you should try La-Mulana, you could probably enjoy its challenge!
One issue with that kind of approach in Fear and Hunger is that once you're an adult, you have finite leisure time - sure, you can spend 5 hours on one boss/encounter/level, but most of people play games to have fun, not to hit a brickwall with their forehead repeatedly, while slightly moving their head while doing so, until you spot a crack in it - all while being forced to repeat everything up to that point several times.
Games can get away without big, blinking waypoint (Elden Ring, (eat me alive) Astroneer, V-rising, GTFO), but it has to be done perfectly.
Not only that, normal person is not going to figure out the meaning of 40 different statuses, with obfuscated mechanics and ways to trigger
Yeah, shooters were my entire game catalogue through my teenage years and now all I still play is Zombies on Waw, Bo1 and Bo2. Ever since I casted a wider net, I've enjoyed games so much more
I've graduated from shooters to survival horror. It's more intense if you _don't_ have a gun when you need one. Also allowed myself to like the occasional RPG and/or -dating simulator- choice-based adventure game.
I still enjoy Left 4 Dead 2, the workshop community really knows how to care of a good game. wht also give us new challenges, like some custom maps felt like puzzles.
Diversifying your media palette is always a positive
The smoother the experience for the brain, the smoother it becomes.
bo1 zombies were the best. that time period for cod and gaming in general was the peak
That feeling of having to figure out stuff on your own is that exact experience i had playing Tunic(still haven't finished it). The game doesn't tell you anything and the little things that it tells you are often times written in a language you cannot read. However, i do like that feeling. It brings a lot of 'AHA!💡' moments and fills you with a doze of happiness and accomplishments. Which is something that remind me a lot of my childhood where games quite often required you to figure sh*t out yourself(especially in my case not being able to speak English back then).
Playing Control without using map at all was the best experience I ever had. I just fricking remembered the whole bureau's layout, lol
I’m probably really affected on how maps work from Breath of the wild. You get markers for each quest, but you can also put down your own and turn any or all of them off and just wander around. It’s just great to have a map and markers as an option
BotW's navigation has spoiled me so much that navigatin in BG3 annoys the hell out of me 😓
Also, some the quests gives you a marker to the area but the area itself is the puzzle. So they are just a reminder of where the puzzle is.
A good recent example of people wanting a game to be Stupidified is the first balance patch in Helldivers 2. People who were too successful at the game due to using a broken, easy mode loadout got extremely mad when that got patched, instead asking for everything else to be lifted to that same level so everyone can play like a headless chicken.
Im so glad that even some of the devs came out to say: "Skill Issue"
The other, bigger, problem with buffing everything is it creates power creep and tends to leads to those same smoothbrains saying it's too easy. So the devs make it hard. So they complain everything needs a buff again and it leads to power creeping to ever higher levels.
This is most effectively avoided by just nerfing the initially OP thing down to a balanced level.
I say this a Breaker main who responded it getting nerfed with just spacing my shots so recoil recovers or crounching when firing.
@@PlebNC I actually changed from Breaker to Punisher, because I realized the Punisher is now even better at clearing chaff when you have half way decent aim and it is muvh more ammo economic.
@@Bitt3rh0lz I forget, which one is the Punisher?
@@PlebNCPunisher is the normal pump action shotgun. They made it good in the balancing update when they increased its max ammo capacity by 50% (40 up to 60)
@@Bitt3rh0lz Ah yeah, that's a good one. Plus it has single shot reload so you don't have to worry about wasting ammo when reloading.
Man the System Shock remaster got me fucking good ngl
To add, the Original Deus Ex is something I tried when I was a dumb kid with no patience but came back to a few years ago, it blew me away and it's age didn't get in the way of the enjoyment. I was invested in the story the entire time and the best part was how immersed you feel in the world because it let you play how you want with no hints or tips.
Deus Ex is the best.
Then definitely play Prey (2016 I believe? the new one)
Game that is shattering expectations, which is rooted deeply in Deus Ex's approach to world building
@@guidedexplosiveprojectileg9943 Digital Devil Saga pfp, Prey 2017 banner and a taste for Deus Ex?!? How can a man be so _based?_
16:23 My dad printed the entire guides for X-Com and Terror from the Deep just so I could understand and play them. It was a lot of reading for a 13 year old. Especially since I was used to playing more faster paced games.
FromSoft’z games aren’t even complex mechanics wise. It tells you how to play it in every game. What can you do? You can attack, heavy attack, cast a spell, block with a weapon/shield, use a weapon skill, dodge, and parry. These are all you need to beat the game, it is simple to learn… but it is hard to master. That’s the best part of the games mechanics wise, getting good with these otherwise few mechanics isn’t easy.
You can beat the games with beginner skills, but it won’t be easy. You are thus encouraged to actually strategize. Think about boss/enemy weaknesses, discover which weapons and armor are strongest for their category, think about which category of weapon speaks to you and feels more comfortable using. What trade-offs to make and not to make (such as increased protection in exchange for lower dodge speed and increased weight). Are you even strong enough to face this challenge? Should you leave and go grind? Maybe try incorporating skills and spells. Don’t give up after fighting the boss once, don’t even try to defeat them, but rather face them over and over to learn their attacks and movement. I mentioned parrying before, so perhaps try mastering it.
If the game needs to tell you how to play, then it's too complex for your average gamer. Yes, the current standard is THAT low.
Give these "gamers" a wall with a door, and you will find them bashing their head at the wall and then complaining they're single dads with two jobs that have no time to think on how to get past that door and wall puzzle. So now devs design these walls as thin as paper so these gamers can just bash their head on it once and be done with it.
I mean, just look at some replies to comments in this video, lol.
7:11 "To *s o a k* in the world..."
"..it's wet."
I almost spit out my coffee 🤣
on using wikipedias to play games, i've always said:
If you're struggling, use a walkthrough, if a walkthrough ruins the game, it was never a good game to begin with.
Thing in yellow paint is that in real life scenraio we can use our common knowledge on how to "get over sth"
Games on the other hand have various conditions on when you can vault over sth, invisible walls, objects you cannot move etc.
So in game design you can either design a room simple enough that it can be read easily rather quickly or an elaborate, hyperrealistic room that due to game limitations has to be painted over with yellow paint.
0:14 i feel the same, I never connected my xbox 360 to the internet until it was too late, i know the campaigns of games too well.
Great video by the way, there's a lot of small details that really make the video enthralling and the animation is very well done.
Something interesting that we've seen recently, is grinding gear games did some testing on difficulty for new players with path of exile 2, and basically they doubled the difficulty from what they thought was correct, and they were surprised that nobody complained about it, they complained about some of the stuff that caused their death but that was very limited, and that was a big surprise for them, and a welcome one, because that means most people won't have an issue with a hard game as long as it's properly communicated.
That's why I like From games, they give subtle hints and you have to figure it out.
Or how Helldivers only teaches you the basic and you have to figure out everything else by testing things.
From Soft quest design are fkn awful, it is WAY obscure and doesn't give you a hint.
May I introduce you a little game called Notia... *manical evil laughter*
Maybe Noita?
Noita
Cool game. Many things to explore, some of them too hard and some are easy. I found some myself while having not full knowlege. Side clouds, dragon, dark cave, notes in snow way passage, shop, different parts of sun quest, desert chasm orb, eye-steps on side clouds, anvil. It is rewarding feeling to find these
i was wondering if anyone else had suggested the Wizard Torment Nexus :)
Your point is valid but I wish you put more emphasis on how theres a lack of creativity in game design with the example of creators not thinking of the game device itself.
Its less lack of creativity and More the Money (Corporate assess ans investors whove probably never even played a modern game statistically speaking) has Decided that accessibility, Broad Market Viability, Microtranasactions and in Bungess opinion " over delivering is Bad" along with similar sentiments accross the industry are the best ways to guarantee your game scores High with Journalists and gets casuals to buy your game along with by having it so the hardcores dont have High expectations they can use deliberate Bad Design to force players to spend and unfortunately the industry is trying to push their desingers towards this what id call "Malicious Design" .
Ultimately the way they see it Innovation is Costly with no Guarantee on return when we already have Science proving we cqn just manipulate our customers into giving us thousands of dollars a month in microtransactions so why design anything new wnd ultimately games have Reached a point where instead of beign entertainment for the sake of fun they're becoming more Mechanical Like a printer with the sole focus on making as much profits for the leadership whilst Bleeding their workers Passions for their older Games Dry Until their workers cant even go Indie because their soul has been Destroyed by Greed.
Take note of how most Modern Games from A aaa company feel identical its because they're prioritising developing things that they can copy and Paste effectively between games Reusing assets in the form of code ro Reduce cost because they've deemed a Unique system for example movement is unneeded and unprofitable when we already have multiple ways to make movement 1 of which is the agreed Upon standard of Just moving a capsule and having animations provide the illusions of your character moving, because the Development cost to Make A new Movement system or innovate to fix the problem with the current system is deemed Unprofitable and their for not needed along with this theirs Long Hours, Months of Crunch time, Leadership which often has lets just say Problems, CEO's on power Trips announcing Games before their either Ready to reveal or even worse before the dev Team is fully started the game, Investors forcing games to release Early against the desingers wishes (Cyberpunk 2077), just to mention some of the crap the industry Puts Devs through as any attempt at creativity or Breaking the mold is systemically pushed Down and Erased
Even trying to learn game design (I'm literally studying the subject and am 3 years into my studying and have switched from 1 school to a different 1 at the start of this year) the Money Driving the Education is focused less on teaching the logic behind game design and the process and more on the analyse what everyone else is doing and that will tell you how to make a Game (my Favourite genre is classic Immersive sims so ive Fully Rejected the concept of selling my soul like that and am more using the study as a way to build confidence in making projects and gaining connections in an environment where I can get to the point of making the games i want to make.
By Horizon Dev team (of) 1
narrative focused Game Design
that's simply because all the money is put towards marketing instead of game design. open and shut case with most modern and AAA games today.
Game devs are afraid to try new things and rely on others to come up with a mechanic to then later milk it in all new games, like most recently the grappling hook
@@sharkenjoyerThere is a grappling hook trend again?
That is why I for me that game TUNIC, a Zelda-souls-like game about a fox where NOTHING is explained (like beat the boss using the starting stick, which was a pain to do, becouse I missed a room with a sword), the language used in the game is encrypted in runic writing and you have to figure it all out on your own, was really refreshing. Like it was nice to use in a game that meatball between my ears.
Slightly earlygame spoiler for those who never knew:
One of my favorite moments in the game is with one of the first bosses. A room containing a reward is behind the boss, so naturally you would assume that you *have* to beat the boss in order to enter the room. However, while running around panicking and hiding, I accidentally entered the reward room before beating the boss. In most games the room would be blocked off or locked until you beat the boss, but here the game just lets you snake your way around the boss and get the reward early. It struck me in a special way because the game allowed me to think outside of the box of video game expectations and be rewarded for it.
Yes TUNIC is amazing!
I especially love how yhe journal is written in a made up script. And if you want to read it, you have to decode the alphabet yourself using context.
The game is never lile "this is A". You have to just look at the text and guess based on context.
Working on decoding that alphabet is the most fun puzzle I've done in a game that I can remember.
Decoding the language all by myself was one of my biggest gaming satisfactions
This video is pretty much like: “I used to play fallout now I keep trying to jump using triangle and spamming vats on every single thing”.
i love how stylistic and expressive the animation in this video is, great stuff!
Incredible video essay, I've watched probably close to a hundred hours worth of video game video essays on UA-cam and yours is one of the better ones I've seen. You also managed to cover a lot of the same topics in 17 minutes that others do in 40 minute ones where they often ramble on and reiterate their points. Bravo!
As someone who plays all sorts of games, from shooters to driving games, fighting games, open world games, rpgs, beat em ups, city builders, sports games, survival horrors, soulslikes, platformers, and even goofy puzzle games you can get on your phone, I think it's about what you make of all these games yourself for the most part, like you said. Look at driving games for example, you can play those simcade ones in so many different ways, you can just throw on all the assists and wallride to victory or you can spend countless hours testing small tweaks in tuning, or the same amount of time designing liveries, or only doing time attacks, single player or going online facing other people. Yeah there are gaming cliches like yellow paint or escort missions that cause collective sighs and eyerolls from gamers but these usually are not the entirety of the games that they feature in. There are great games with yellow paint in and objectively absolute trash ones with player agency.
I think quality of life features in new games are a good thing because new gamers come up in the draft every day. You don't want to be a newb at a game or entire genre and have to pull up a wiki every time you need to take a step forward. Unless of course that's what you're into. Then we circle back to the games are what you make of them.
Good vid.
I play Noita as a goofy ahh sandbox game. Usually I just try to break out of bounds and dig giant holes to fill with my own puke. It's supposed to be a rogue-like.
@catpoke9557 you mean you're not supposed to build a wand that annihilates everything including you?
Literally reminds me of the original Gears of War. As soon as you get in the story it asks whether or not you want to just get right into the action or learn how to play. Genuinely still one of my all time favorite games.
Also I'm now curious on your experience with Outer Wilds, thats also one of my all time favorites and I wouldn't mind watching you talk about it more in depth
your lack of pants bothers me... yet i cant imagine you with pants
I love how your art style and animation is a reference to Jet Set Radio and the spiritual successor Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, was genuinely expecting a reference to them in the video
2:32 I love the synth design with your artstyle
I like the fear games, they make me feel like an utter genius when I dont go the main path and instead go one more ladder rung up to get that sweet sweet hp booster
I've had kinda the opposite issue, and it's funny you show Black Ops clips in several places because I've played that last week. I've had it sitting in the library for a really long time after a friend gifted it to me saying that it's the best one. I... didn't have a very good time myself. My first videogames were point and click adventure games, and later immersive sims and stealth games. I've played a ton of shooters since, including Call of Duty 2, but in Black Ops I kept (ironically enough) getting lost in the linear levels looking for alternative routes to flank the enemies or to find better angles on them, or not understanding where the game wants me to run. The constant breakneck pace of the action and the story was mindnumbing, and then, in the part of the mission with the Thunderbird, where you issue commands to the squad on the ground, I thought "Oh, this is like a little strategy game", and then proceeded to fail multiple times because I tried giving commands before the game told me what to actually do, or if I tried going outside of the script. Another time, in the mission where you sneak onto the island to kill the german scientist, I kept getting detected by the helicopter's searchlight even when it was nowhere near me, only to find out that what you're actually supposed to wait for is not the searchlight's passing, but for Reznov to verbally command you to move again. I kept overestimating the game and overthinking it, and ended up having a really bad time because I kept setting myself up for disappointment.
16:49 oh god I just can't escape it can I
I have been experiencing this issue in reverse lately, namely I have been playing only rts, grand strategy and rpgs for years and when some time ago a group of friends invited me to play an shooter with them I found out my aim and reaction time sucks balls.
I love the amount of effort that was put into this editing! Your avatar is awesome and I like the 3D animated portions.
I just played Deus Ex GOTY Edition, and that was the most fun I had for a game in a long time. Way ahead of its time, for a game that came out in 2001, it feels like it could have been written today from the topics that the series frequents. I like nu-Deus Ex as well, but the original is GOAT.
"A game made for everyone is a game for no one"
Remember when games weren't afraid to use over half the keyboard? Now there's only Elite: dangerous and some indie games
Meanwhile ARMA:
The Right mouse button makes you aim.
And Left to shoot and Q to lean,
And Shift, it makes you walk and run.
And Left CTRL to raise your gun.
And pressing C will make you crouch,
And pressing O will view your watch,
The G Key,
Makes you check your pack,
And pressing Enter views your back.
"But where are all the zombies at?"
I told you he would ask us that.
@@jeremychicken3339you see, the Arma players simply glassed them
@@ghoulishgoober3122 yes.
The Rain World controls are abysmal
@@catpoke9557 perhaps deliberately so, but it does make it less enjoyable
Man, there's no deeper shame to me than that feeling you get when you go back to an old favorite and completely fumble the buttons, or totally forget how to do basic things, and then also how to navigate the menu to try and find the answer 😭
I have observational issues where I have trouble picking out details in all but the most simple of environments, like my mind just paints over them randomly. Waypoints are extremely helpful to me in any case where I have to find something like an interactable in a room or a guy in a crowd, more so than it would be for others. I hope that in the future, assuming game devs pick up on the "use game design instead of waypoints" advice, something similar can stick around under the accessibility options.
Same here! I both have trouble seeing & holding controllers etc. And yet games don't feel more accessible to me. For every waypoint added a minimalistic transparent UI gets added too and difficulty settings often just take HP away from enemies instead of actually making difficult combos or puzzles more accessible.
Its quite frustrating to see the dislike for easy games on the rise because ultimately that valid critisms often just falls back onto accessibility and lack thereof.
Generally if you have trouble with something, having a crutch to compensate just gradually makes you even worse at that particular thing.
@@RialuCaos thats not even remotely how that works. Or would you recommend me to not wear my glasses anymore? My eyesight isnt getting worse by wearing glasses, I just wont be used to the blurriness anymore imeadiatly when I take them off. The same applies to my ability to visually pick up on and process things in my environment.
If anything Ill get better at distinguishing important from unimportant things if I 'train' by looking at images where the important things are highlighted.
@@Parrotcat It is generally how it works, it's a common principle seen throughout nature called "use it or lose it." If something is not being used, it naturally decays through the process of entropy.
Of course there are some exceptions where no amount of conditioning will help (such as color-blindness), but I am not confident that the OP's case is such.
@@RialuCaos just like colorblindness, the condition op is describing is a neurological issue nd not just a weak muscle in need of training. And even if it was trainable it would be trained by starting with easy visuals, you dont have a day one trainee fix an entire car on their own so why would you want to throw a full busy moving image at someone with poor visual processing? An option to turn on visual guides hurts no one and helps many.
What an amazing style of editing to keep things fresh and entertaining as you talk about the subjects at hand.
I think waypoints are definitely needed in games because sometimes the in game dialogue/side mission text description is not good or frustratingly vague. Personally, i would not like to have spend countless hours trying to find a tiny item in a dark location or a hidden trigger on a certain part of a wall. I agree with the fact that having less waypoints does make the games feel more engaging and open. But it really depends on what the mission is. Is it taking out a certain enemy in a field of many foes? That could use little to no waypoints (especially those waypoints that fills up an entire area highlight where that certain enemy might be) because its open and the player can be creative with ways to take out the enemy. Is it to find an room, item or a person? That needs a waypoint because there is no creative solution for those types of missions since it is unchanging and the only obstacle there is the game design. Relying on a wiki (while vaild) makes the game feel less immersive and rewarding.
Love the video and the topic (although its kind of willbly woobly with the pacing but thats just me I think)!
It really depends on the developers i think.
If the devs aren't lazy peaces of shit, they will try to give good direction. If they already know that there's no way point they will atleast try to make the game around it.
There are definitely methods to work around using way points and making it work. It’s all a matter of the ones making the game. With the usage of reasonable descriptions given to the player, good level design, and decent art direction that makes what is necessary stick out as needed for a player. It’s all on who’s making the game and a little bit on the type of game whether no waypoints work.
@@mdshishir322bro calm down
@@mdshishir322unnecessarily aggressive but ok. Guess misspelling "piece" leads to being aggressive for no good reason....
@@lucky4d725 I'm really sorry if i came across as aggressive. It wasn't my intention.
Playing 20 minutes of Genshin really messed with my mind. The dialogue and quest design is beyond horrendous. And coma inducing. I was thinking of that when writing the comment.
Man, just wanted to say how much i appreciate the expressive design and animation of your channel mascot, it adds SO MUCH to the commentary!
This is why you don't only play a single genre of game for too long: It gets harder to play any others.
Personally, I play Rimworld (Modded), Disfigure, Minecraft (Modded), State of Decay 2, and Call of Duty (Black OPS 3 (Zombies (Modded))).
I have also played Kenshi (Modded), Project Zomboid (Modded), Survivalist invisible Strain (Modded), Risk of Rain 2 (Modded), No Man's Sky, Rogue Tower (Modded), Defense Grid (The original game I never got into the second one), Terraria (Modded), 7 Days to Die (Tried to mod it but the mod manager I tried to use was too confusing), Skyrim (Modded for a little bit until the mods broke literally the next session), Atomicrops, I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MBIES 1NIT!!!1, Grim Realms... Ok you get the idea.
That's a lot of modded games. Modding games is a godsend and one of my favorite games to play is stalker gamma which is a mod pack for stalker anomaly
i think you like modded games
@@user-wz1jf1cd7jisn't stalker anomaly itself also a mod? A mod pack for a mod.
@@dvdbox360nfs most wanted was truly the best. I still replay it every year. It's so hard to catch lighting in a bottle like that, it happens like once every 20 years imo
Also about waypoints... I like the Payday 2 approach. Showing up within a time window as if saying, "IT'S HERE, YOU IDIOT"
I love the animation style of your persona. A truley underrated channel. Keep up the good work
The way this video is edited does a great job at driving the thesis of the video. It's so frantic that I, too, can feel the effects of your severe adhd and lack of attention span.
nah, I can somewhat confirm your theory. Personaly, I was always a guy who played single player games and always something far removed from reality (specially disliked stuff like call of duty. Going to irl based war? Boooring! ) For me it was the sonic platformers, the strategic starcrafts, the comedic and puzzle filled monkey islands, the wacky mario karts and the insane brutality and tragic story of god of war. I tapped in so many different genres and game style, but never had really much to share them with besides my brother.... now imagine you finally find someone and you hear them say they are interested in video games, and you think, finally an IRL friend you can talk about video games.... and you would not beliieve how often, whenever I ask what games they play, the first answer I hear is "call of duty" and from there all hope is lost, cause call of duty players only play call of duty or games similar to call of duty, maybe sometimes a racing game but no, no fun silly mario kart, nope the boring hyper realisitc games like need for speed or grand turismo. or in the worst case even, fifa. I swear every freakin time. And a lot of times you can't even convince a casual gamer to try something new. Heck just recently I meet a guy who could not believe that someone could play a game that looks like pizza tower.
Well guess who are the people who know constantly post "video games are not fun anymore"? The casual gamers, who played one and the same thing for years. Never stepping out of their comfort zone, the one who are impressed by nothing but super hyper realsitic graphics. So yeah, from somewhat a personal experience, you are totally right.
A game with a perfect example of how to not do this that came out recently is KONA. It has no way points, just a small town covered in a blizzard. You have to explore every where to progress the story and the immersion is incredible until you drive your car into a tree so many times you start to wonder why you even started playing video games in the first place.
Try Hyper Demon. It's a minimalistic, yet incredibly advanced arcade movement fps with incredible depth and unparalleled visuals. There's nothing else like it. If you're past that point where you feel so dumbed down by fps games that you don't even like the genre anymore, HD will fix that.
I would like to add Noita to that list - the way it just throws you into a simulated world with hazards everywhere, giving you no explanation or guard rails other than your own knowledge and diligence (as far as you decide to follow it) to protect you, is so refreshing.
My favourite games are more "hidden object" based. I almost remember the countless times I played Shop N Spree.
Man I played that game soo much.
MAN THE GATES GUARDSMEN! LORD RAMSKER HATH RETURNED!
Random UA-cam recommendations actually coming in clutch
I actually ran into this problem too- once upon a time, tiny 11 year old me played Borderlands 2 because everyone else I knew had it and had played it multiple times. I didn't really care about story, because gun. That was what drew me in. The last couple of years I've been broadening my gaming horizons and went "I... don't really like this game. I don't have the time for it... why did I like this?"
That being said, my TimeSplitters 2 was the entire Sly Cooper franchise
The lowering the slope thing has a very direct effect of requiring a longer game in order to reach the same level of complexity/difficulty. Sometimes you end up with games in which genre veterans looking for more complex experiences end up only enjoying the last 2 hours of a 30 hour long game because the rest of it felt like an unskippable tutorial.
I'm not even very good at games but I'm gonna be real some of them give me that vibe too. I usually play games that either aren't intended to challenge you anyways (you know, relaxed sandbox games or story driven games) or games that are just hellish right off the bat, so I'm forced to learn how to play the game or I don't progress. So when I play a game that very slowly becomes difficult, I really do wind up constantly wondering if I'm in the tutorial or not, all the way up until the point that it's basically over.
That said, some games do this slow progression properly. Like puzzle games. They should get harder and harder over time because the point of a puzzle is to train your brain. Fighting games with a ton of mechanics also benefit from slow progression so you can memorize all the abilities.
Game design student here.
I designed a game in college where you could clearly only walk in one direction. You had to climb a wall and leave through the only passage that was available. Somehow people still kept getting fucking lost. My own professor turned in a circle and gave up because “he didn’t know where he was.” It makes no fucking sense to me.
Yeah, after having all these markers it's pretty hard to get into something that doesn't guide you by the hand. I recently started playing Resident Evil 1 HD Remaster to see what I missed out on in the series. And, despite not going too far (only getting the armor key), I got completely lost at least 5 times. At some point I went on UA-cam to watch someone play the game because I had no idea what to do next.
it's honestly a little insanse to compare soapstones in Dark Souls to using wikis and installing mods
love your little dude and how you animate him into the scenarios you are explaining, very cool :p
As a furry myself. I like your fursona
Not sure if Ramsker is a furry. I think that's just his mascot
I love your avatar and I definitely agree that way points can be really useful but it's always refreshing when a game is designed in a way that you don't even need one.
babe wake up Ramsker dropped another vid
Seeing PirateSoftware pop up outside of shorts was like a flashbang, give me time to prepare before you throw big man Thor on the screen!
In other words infantilization.
Then there's the counter-argument of playing Tales of Phantasia, putting it down for a week, coming back and circling the planet three times before you opt to just talk to every single NPC until you find the ONE in Venezia that will progress the plot, with no way to review a synopsis of what you did last or get a hint about where to go. Speaking with obvious experience.
It's a balance. These days I appreciate waypoints since they save me time while playing games, but I think that's mostly my age and ever-impending expiration date talking. It really is rare when I have to activate my brain to actually make progress now, both for better and worse.
RAMSKER 3D MODEL!?
I'd love to get my hands on one :-)
Discovering this channel is like discovering some ancient artifact in a temple.
Idea: you should animate your avatar putting their feet up on the table
Such a good take on videogames. I kinda have the same problem of loving fps's and rpgs too much, and now that i want to get more into strategy games or anything more slowpaced i get so impatient and even drop the game in the middle. It can be frustrating but fortunately we can start anywhere and overtime start to get the hang of these different types of games.
Anyway, great video, thanks for bringing this up!
...And what if I don't care about having a broad audience?
That's my central issue with your defence of "lowering the slope". Artists are under no obligation to make their art appealing to anyone, let alone everyone. Artists have the right to make whatever art they want; the right to exclude any audience they want. And people respect that clarity of vision, and voice.
That's why From Software has managed to repeatedly produce blockbuster hits, despite refusing to make any concessions to casual audiences in terms of difficulty. The Soulsborne pseudo-franchise is steeped in the unique voice of its creators, who were allowed to make the exact games they wanted. Games that have their own rules, and will not bend to whatever assumptions players may have coming in. Either the player learns the rules and adapts their play, or the games will stomp them flat.
And people love it! Every Soulsborne game has outsold the last, produced more groundswell than the last. Elden Ring was a smash hit and popular sensation. And proved that games do not need to coddle anyone to have mass appeal.
The 3 seconds of Lunacid footage brought me great joy.
A recent GDC talk by the publisher Humble ( the Humble Bundle indie game guys) was very revealing about this exact thing. It turns out that almost no gamers actually play games for the challenge and all of them play them to relax. I personally found that remarkable given the reputation of Soulsborne type games but then again when you hear that Elden Ring sold 20 million copies compared to most CoD selling 30 million and titles like Overwatch and PUBG being 50m and 75m respectively you can see that the figures support that conclusion. Not to mention that taking the typical releases ever year, difficult games are a niche market.
So it isn't so much that the mindless shooters make gamers dumber, but rather that gamers who want to be dumb and play something where very little thought is required are drawn to mindless entertainment.
And as for the claim that "shooter X is very tactical" I'd suggest you go play games with actual strategy like 4X or RTS and then ask yourself if you had to think more or less about tactics in "shooter X".
Funnily enough I find Elden Ring a really relaxing game, just mindlessly riding around the countryside on your horse looking at the colorful trees to unwind between dungeon excursions is a vital part of the gameplay loop for me.
and there we are a animated fury calling me a stupid dumb gamer
Oh yay better Pyro
He's like Pyro, but without the slop (and pretending to get harassed for views) :3
Most positive pyro fan
if there is one game that will cure you of your gamer idiocy, it will be noita.
Is this skibidi toilet?
Don’t u say its name
@WizardGuyIguess we don't like to hear that
No it’s Sigma Ohio mogging
Absolutely not
go back to the womb
Your argument of dipping your toes into a recent game of a genre you find hard to get into and working your way back is spot on. After I beat Elden Ring I dove into every other fromsoft game and I'm in the middle of Sekiro and Bloodborne and loving it.
Personally I don’t think the Yellow paint is THAT big of a deal. Color association is a perfectly normal thing, we do it all the time in games, like with element systems. Could we be more creative with how we do it? Yes, obviously. But if a game wants you to focus almost entirely on its rich, detailed combat system then it’s perfectly fine if there’s some yellow paint leading towards where you’ll be fighting.
The reason people are upset with yellow paint is more like, in the past developers would just make it obvious what's gameplay space and what's decoration, now they aren't even trying anymore.
Extreme example would be Mirror's Edge, people were very positive about its artstyle (interactible things have bright colors, backgrounds don't) even though it's the logical extreme of yellow paint, because it looked cool and was easy to parse when you're running away from cops at high speeds and couldn't really stop to plan out a route.
@@GameDevYalI don't think that's an issue with distinguishing what's interactive or not, that's just an art style choice, you can't just make something colorful and something gray when you're going for realism or you're trying to make everything colorful, that defeats the point
Also people seem to forget that it's the same as red barrels, things being put at the center of a path, red lights, a lamp or light over an item, chests being of a different color, etc
3:11 NO even tho I am an airsoft enjoyer I don't switch between a 74UN and a riotshield while spinning at mach 7
(I tried the "dolphindive" thing and broke half my equipment + fractured 4 ribs help)
I own 500+ games on steam. When I meet somebody and they tell me they're a gamer, they play CSGO, Valorant and Overwatch, I cannot relate to them. Yeah, I play fps games like Hunt: Showdown and Hell Let Loose, but one of my favorite games is Divinity: Original Sin 2. I play rpgs, rts, city builders, logistic games, single-player story games, and so many more.
Well, every gamer has their preferences. Rarely do two gamers have the exact same taste.
A while ago I put a friend of mine in front of one of my old NES games: Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. He told me he didn't really like it (and other old games like it) because he has a "low tolerance for bullshit". A listed example of that bullshit was, "Caves are dark and you can't see enemies until you get the candle power-up, and it's not communicated in game". Except... it was. They tell you in the manual. At that period of time the manual was considered part of the game. Memory was at such a premium that it was cheaper to supplement with printed materials than extra chips. You can especially see with with titles like Ultima 5, where the game comes with a physical expedition journal and cloth map (made of actual cloth!). Using the two props together was necessary to solve one of the quest-lines. If you just go download it from an abandonware site, you have to know to download also PDF's of the props too, or you don't have the full game.
I don't think that old games are harder. I think they are unfamiliar. I can play modern games, but when I see a game made in an older style I can swap mental modes seamlessly. Watching some newer players, they have more problems doing that.
HOLY SHIT HE DROPPED ANOTHE VIDEO!!!!
this could have been *another* "videogames suck today" video, but you actually went through enough introspection to understand the nuances of how and why modern games work and the context in which they exist to not just be a complete doomer.
thank you for your service.
i shit like the black ops guy
personally i do the halo 4 sad master chief
Man, you really do put effort in the animations of your sona, that thing looks *clean*