I talk about the issues caused by having too many gameplay options in your game. Videos I reference: Game Difficulty Settings: • Game Difficulty Settings
Yeah i think there was a game which did not let me rebind keys to WASD instead arrow keys. And Baldurs gate 3 with no option for remapping middle mouse as rotation of camera and not being able to change camera sesitivity using q and e to rotate , camera was generally difficult in that game top handle.
I'll excuse some small indie devs, because I have experience with how difficult Unity's rebind system once was. But I don't see any excuse for big studios with a bunch of professional programmers to not include a key rebind system. Also last I checked around a year ago, Unity had a free key rebind script that even I got at least partially working after some tutorials, so I don't think even Unity indies have an excuse for it now.
I belong to the group that "hates questmarkers, but always turn them ON if I can". The major reason as to why I do this, is because games that gives you the option are more often than not built to have them turned ON. The Ubisoft "south of Timothy Rock, east of Cain" which makes you search a massive area for ages before finding a chest on a stump is not fun. Nothing in the world around that place has been designed for you to find it naturally. But I without a doubt prefer games that don't have quest markers at all, because they were built and designed for you to find all these things without it
Yep, and I'm in a similar camp of "saves obsessively, even though I dislike savescumming", because I've been burned too many times by not saving often enough.
Would be cool if the game is designed from the ground up around not having quest markers or other UI assists like a mini-map, and then, after they've properly signposted the used all the tricks to catch the player attention towards locations of interest, only then would they introduce quest markers. I think a lot of open-world games are designed with UI assists in mind, then might give players the option to disable those elements as if that would make the game 'playable' without them in any way, only for it to be impossible in some cases for the player to find their bearings and correctly go to the place they're supposed to be for a specific quest.
7:03 An (imperfect) analogy to the "save anywhere" option is if an RPG had an early and always available "golden weapon/skill" that trivialized the game from the get-go. You could play the entire game pretending that you don't have it, but the fact it's always there staring at you would affect how you feel about using other options.
One of my main problems with too many options is that I don't know exactly what I should select to maximize enjoyment. I haven't played the game yet, so I'm left wondering "How is the game supposed to be?" or "What options was the game best designed around?" The developer should answer those questions for me. Control options are usually awesome, but many difficulty settings that can be changed on the fly (especially with multiple seperate sliders) usually frustrate me.
I think it's safe to say that most games have default option settings, and those are the ones that the developer intends. As for difficulty settings, there is one group that wants them at a high level (easy, normal, hard) and another group that wants a slider for every possible thing that can change (combat damage, puzzle difficulty, heal rate, fast travel while encumbered, etc). It's impossible to make both groups happy.
Project Zomboid I think is a great example of having a lot of game options, and doing it well. Obviously this is highly dependent on the game you have.
Yes, I think the most important part is that Zomboid has "presets", so that choosing your options when first getting into the game is a lot simpler. Once you've gotten familiar with it, you can start to tweak individual gameplay options.
Having a ton of options tends to work out for games built for a sandbox experience. And Project Zomboid does fit into that category. You have a big world with no pre-defined end goal, so you choose what to do and at what point to stop.
Funnily enough, I've been playing once human, and there's all these little puzzles, with really good descriptions to where to find the stuff. But there's quest markers everywhere, so it takes the fun out. There was one puzzle, that I had to find notes, that would give you a digit, and position. once you found all 4 you could open a safe. So I took my pen and paper, starting writing them down. And collect the last one, and the number is right there in my quest log on screen 😒 Kind of defeats the purpose of having puzzles.
I'm confused by your example. So you found all 4 pages containing the 4 digits and their positions, hence you solved it. If you solved it and already know the number then what's the issue with the number also being in the quest log? Do you want to be expected to commit everything to your own personal memory?
@@BradTheAmerican to me it's more of the fact that finding the 4 numbers already had quest markers, even though the quest description was pretty descriptice where to find them. But then the actual notes told you the number and the position of that number. So I'm like better write these down. But then once I got the 4th one, the numbers were all placed I. The proper order in the quest log. Which I found annoying
With the game I published, I came up with as many options as I could and I got that "options paralysis" from testers, so I had to remove a ton of stuff and commit to certain control options (like having one button for switching sub-weapons as opposed to an option to pick between one or two). And then later on the I realized I should add a couple things that I never even considered at the beginning, even yesterday I had the idea to add in screenshake reduction. It's always a good idea to make the game super modular, because you never know when you're going to make something into an option.
@@ValdVincent Naah I just needed more eyes on the game for me to see what I needed to streamline and what actually needed to be options in the first place. The options menu has three categories, Audio/Visual for stuff like fullscreen and volume control, Controls for key/button mappings, and Others which is everything else like toggling checkpoint autosaves. If there is one thing I regret not thinking of earlier that's too big of a pain in the ass now it'd be putting the confirm/cancel buttons on the top of the controls menu so people don't assume Jump and Attack are also Confirm and Cancel.
Ngl I'm always quite infuriated by games that give me "toggle between" style buttons but no "do the exact thing" buttons. Breaks muscle memory for me. Same for multipurpose keys that can't be separated (looking at you, deep rock galactic with "call resource cart" and "activate jet boots" on the same key)
@@zeropoint5794The former sounds like either balancing or controller layout issues but I can get behind the latter. In my game the default controls have Jump/Accept and Attack/Cancel be the same button but you can map them to be different.
i really like Dishonored 2's approach to quest markers. You can disable them and there are physical in-world maps of the levels that you can find and save to your journal. then you can reference the map to find places mentioned by other characters
All well said. There is at least one type of option, though, that I think there's almost no argument against if you can implement it -- simulation sickness mitigation (head bobbing toggle, motion blur slider, etc.). I feel like us lifelong enthusiasts can sometimes forget how we've learned ways around stuff, but for newcomers, simulation sickness really can be the kind of "ultimate" barrier to entry which is keeping out the (comparatively) largest chunk of the population.
I think the best way to do it was the way Silent Hill did it having a combat difficulty and a puzzle difficulty. That way, if you hate combat but want harder puzzles, you have the option for it.
Silent Hill's hard puzzle modes do not screw around either. You need to know Shakespeare from memory and stuff like that and draw diagrams and whatnot.
On the contrary, Silent Hill is very linear and simply, those puzzles that you mention are obligatory to progress and are only completed in one way. it is a game that is finished and never used again.
Great video! I was waiting for continuation of this topic. I've just got an idea for mitigation of choice paralisis: you need to make separate advanced options menu. And it should look scary. It should be like:"You better know what you're doing! You may break a lot of things with those options!" And then new players will be like:"Better not to touch any of those" And seasoned players will be all proud:"I know what I'm doing, you don't need to warn me!" 🙂
@@CainOnGamessolution: do not provide "scary options" button or any GUI at all. Options that affect gameplay are modified with dev console, dev console is disabled by default, to enable it - player must manually modify config file. Here, unmarked exploration quest!
@@vos2693 this is honestly a great compromise. I'm in the group that gets a pleasant surprise when I'm overloaded with options to tweak. The first thing I do when I open a game is go through every single setting available. I don't want to lose out on the ability to do so because other folks either don't have the self control not to ruin the game for themselves or are overwhelmed. And I mean that with no hostility, I understand wanting to appeal to various groups, but I don't ever want the power user experience to be sacrificed and I'm perfectly fine with using the console. I used to have a deeply customized Counter-Strike config that would rival a .vimrc
In my experience of playing games with varying levels of gameplay options, my personal opinion is that the best thing you can do is organize them well, name them well, and add plenty of description (ideally with a button that expands descriptive detail). People who want to make themselves suffer by enabling options they don't like and then blame the game for them are a lost cause in my opinion. I don't see them ever being happy regardless of what you do.
Hi Tim, would love to hear your thoughts regarding itemisation and inventory management in RPG's. I think it's something a lot of studios overlook and can become noticeable when it doesn't feel right, love the video as always.
In Menzoberranzan, by DreamForge, there was the simple option to use grid-step or free movement. The level designer(s) assumed that players would have free movement. There were maps that were impossible to navigate using grid-step, due to cosmetic obstructions (like stalagmites) in the path. This was unintentional, and indistinguishable from deliberately blocked paths. It also mean't that if you turned grid-step on after entering the area, it might not then be possible to exit the area.
For me personally, I don't like options in some games because often I don't know what I want or what the 'best option' for me is. I'm not talking about 'poorly explained options' like other people have mentioned. A game can have all of its options explained perfectly and concisely but that still wouldn't prevent people such as myself from picking an option that makes their experience worse. I'm going to use difficulty levels/options as an example because it's something I'm passionate about and the one I find easiest to provide examples for. The main reason I play games is to challenge myself, but when presented with an option for difficulty, I find I often choose badly. When I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I picked the lowest difficulty, Normal, because I believed myself to be bad at strategy and tactics games. I got about halfway through the game and the gameplay was boring me because I found it too easy. Some people might say, "Well just allow the player to switch difficulty any time they wish" but that's not a perfect solution. I've gone halfway through the game before I determined I wanted to switch and had a worsened experience with that half because of it. What if I switch and there's a difficulty spike? Some aspects of difficulty can't be accounted for part way through a game. For example, some games change the amount of experience you earn based on the difficulty. I can switch to a higher difficulty, but again, still have an easy time because my units are now overlevelled. Ultimately, difficulty is mostly subjective and there's no way to determine how hard you'll find a game until you've actually started playing it and become familiar with its mechanics. I find I often underestimate or overestimate myself when it comes to picking a difficulty level so I much prefer to defer to the developer in most cases. There are games I've played where I know I would have switched to an easier difficulty if there was the option and also that I would have regretted it. Pathologic is a game I've played like that which is deliberately frustrating, unfair and obtuse, but where those aspects are part of what makes it unique and engaging. It's a slow burn and it took me several hours to 'get it', but once I did, it was one of my most memorable and enjoyable game experiences last year. If I was presented with an option to change the difficulty, I would have taken it before I had that 'I get it' moment and never would have had that experience. I strongly believe games are art, and in most cases, difficulty is a part of that art and the developer's intended experience. Not all games of course, some games don't even have difficulty at all which is fine too. Dark Souls is one game where I am strongly against adding difficulty options for that reason. The difficulty of Dark Souls is an intrinsic part of its experience, themes and message. Add an 'easy mode' and I might have booted it up and thought "I've heard this game is hard, so I'm going to play on easy to be safe" and missed out on that experience. Sometimes, forcing the player to play a certain way is a good thing because it can make them step out of their comfort zone and try playing a game in a way they would otherwise shy away from because it's not what they're used to.
I remember what I learned in my early days of creating custom maps for StarCraft 2. One time i gave myself like 20ish variables to tweak for difficulty. I learned that making even small increases, but to a lot of the variables led to huge differences in difficulty. There's some sort of multiplicative or exponential increase in difficulty when you tweak multiple variables. So I had to rethink and only tweak a few of the variables between each difficulty level.
I completely understand the increased QA and dev time reasoning, but it's unfortunate that developers sometimes feel forced to simplify games because some players refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. I'm referring to the examples mentioned here about players making changes to the options and then complaining about them. As a player who loves a giant list of gameplay options (see the new Starfield update or Baldur's Gate 3 custom mode), I feel disheartened by this reality. I suppose this is why I get so much more invested in games with heavy modding scenes.
While Starfield introduced a lot of gameplay options in the May update and I love that they did that (and that it changes the rate of XP gained), I do think at least one of them is not without its fair amount of issues. The environmental damage difficulty option that makes planetary conditions (extreme cold, heat, radiation in a planet without atmosphere if it's daytime or if you're in a tidally locked planet in a location facing the sun) is extremely punishing, and sometimes when you're exploring it puts WAY too much pressure on the player - it forces you to rush exploration, and that is at times a detriment to your enjoyment and to the exploration itself (sometimes you just want to stop and see a planet or sun rise, or you just want to loot everything!)... The issue is exacerbated by the fact that some of the quests take place entirely in exposed places, with NPCs stopping to talk to you and at times having lenghty conversations, all of that before/after you already fought and explored a lot, so your suit protection is already severely depleted. It's possible to increase the player's protection if you select a space suit with specific protection targeted to the specific environment you're going to explore, but - and here's where I think the feature is broken and wasn't completely tested - people did the math over on reddit, and found out that even appropriate suits don't have enough protection to last for an entire UC Vanguard quest that take places in an extremelly cold planet. All in all, I can only imagine what a nightmare it was to balance all of these new gameplay options plus the cut fuel economics system that Todd Howard talked about in his Lex Fridman interview. While he said to Lex that the reason why they decided to cut that feature from the game was because it wasn't fun, I imagine that balancing concerns were quite a priority for them and maybe the difficulty to balance it all was why playtesters didn't find it fun enough. But I'm still happy that they seem to be reintroducing those survival features, hope that they improve the balance and above all I hope they reintroduce the fuel economics system (I have a theory that even the narrative design for the tutorial mission on Kreet had to be changed after they cut that system from the game - as it stands, there's literally no reason for you to not jump immediately to Alpha Centauri after leaving Vectera, but there would be if you needed fuel to make the grav jump, and conveniently there are huge Helium-3 tanks on top of the pirate facility on Kreet!).
Honestly, I've always preferred games that have standard difficulties and then also have a subset of "advanced options" that allow you to more tailor the experience after you've played for a while. This is especially important for more simulation style games where some aspects of the simulation, I just don't enjoy or want to deal with. Or I want to play a specific experience for this play (see all the options for Stellaris, which a lot of people find to be too many and confusing but I don't touch except when i want specific experiences).
To the point of having to test all the options which is completely true it goes both ways while yes it’s a much tougher thing to develop and test it will also show in the experience for people because u put more work into the project
Imagine if they had to play a game that shipped with a dev console, or modding capability. If only DoomEngine wasn't made open source, and we could have less options. These people are the reason game companies are preventing mods, and milking players for every last cent these days. "I wish I had less options with this product I own". They don't need less options to chill out and enjoy their game, they need medications.
Very interesting video, Tim. I will say that I fall somewhere in the middle, I play a lot of games with options and enjoy them, but sometimes I prefer games with no options. On "people will blame games for options they choose,"I think this could fall under the idea that players will optimize the fun out of your game. If elden ring had a difficultly slider, I would have used it instead of fighting margit, realizing he's way too tough and then exploring the world, getting new spells and weapons. This would have taken away such a fun, rewarding moment for me. Hope this gives some insight, keep on making amazing videos ❤
@@CainOnGames And most of that is the players fault and I don't think a dev should take options away from people who want them, solely because a crybaby elitist minority will pitch a toddler fit over it if it's there. Elden Ring and the souls series are a prime example. The elitist whiners will cry if there is a difficulty setting, so Fromsoft doesn't do it. But would that really be a bad thing? The people crying the hardest lack the self control to NOT use those sliders--that's not my problem, and it shouldn't be the devs problem or consideration either. Choices make a game better, not worse--> Gamer standpoint right here.
@@shawnwolf5961 I really hate the elitist argument. Fromsoft don't add difficulty options because they don't want to fragment the user base. Having everyone go through the same challenges means everyone has a strong shared experience. It's part of why Dark Souls got so popular in the first place. The Ornstein and Smough Player A fights is the same one Player B fights so they can immediately relate to each other's experience and discuss it with each other. Add an "Easy" difficulty option and people will pick it because "they always play games on easy" or they get walled and change it in a moment of frustration. The playerbase will be more fragmented and those people who picked easy may have actually had more fun on the intended difficulty, but they have no way of knowing that. Even if me or you are perfect human beings who never make an error in judgement and never 'lack self control' (which neither of us are), you can't know what the ideal difficulty option is for you in most circumstances. Difficulty is inherently subjective after all. The ultimate in 'giving choices' would be for every game to come with an ini file that allows the player to modify the stats of themselves and all enemies in the game. I think you'll agree this is a horrible idea. It'll result in the dreaded choice paralysis and again, even if you are the perfect human who knows exactly how hard or easy they want a specific game to be, you can't KNOW how hard or easy it'll be until you play and experience it. Even at a high level there are games where I've picked the "Easy" option and regretted it or vice versa with the "Hard" option. Choices/options in games are not ALWAYS a good thing. It depends on the game. Some games benefit from it (Kid Icarus Uprising as an example), but others such as the Dark Souls series don't, especially because in Dark Souls case, the difficulty is inherently linked to the intended experience and message of the game. I play games to experience the DEVELOPER's vision, and difficulty is part of that vision in most cases. I've always thought the wealth of games out there ARE the options. Why would you play Dark Souls, the game known for its crushing difficulty, if you don't want to have a hard time? It'd be like going into a theatre to watch a scary movie when you can't handle scary stuff and then complaining they didn't present you with a "no scares" option. Even if they did, it wouldn't be the same movie.
How do you handle games that ship with a dev console? Mods? Server options? Games with cheat codes? Gaming before 2015 must be a nightmare world for you.
@@Deadener Some games benefit from all or some of those and it's a false equivalency to the ini file example I mentioned. And in the case of mods and cheat codes, they're something you actively have to search for outside of the game, which does change things compared to an official in-game option.
About the viability of builds in RPGs at different difficulty settings. I've seen how they "solved" the issues at Owlcat Games, quite the relevant example in my opinion, as they give very open and also granular difficulty settings' customization to the player. In the Pathfinder games, at the highest difficulty setting, only a handful of builds are actually capable of finishing the main campaign. Indeed, I think the process of planning and putting together a build for the highest difficulty is a core mechanic of those games, when your understanding of the systems and how they interact is what you are thinking about all throughout: that's the main challenge if you want to master the Pathfinder games. Because of that, I also think the Pathfinder games hugely benefit from the inclusion of game modes that allow to test builds "outside" of the game campaign. They did that with a DLC in Wrath of the Righteous, that allowed for a somewhat isolated rogue-like gameplay section for the added content, in which the progression is much faster than in the base game, and you can test your builds vs a variety of different enemies. Thanks for your videos!
I'm curious on thoughts about options available in-game vs options available in menus. Because I'm helping on a project where the quest marker/HUD topic became a major point of tension. Can't speak on spesifics but it was hell testing without them and making these elements menu options or tieing it to difficulty raised many of your issues. Prototyping ways of making these systems available as abilities, rewards or at in-game cost. For example HUD elements use the same resources as power-ups, maps must be purchased and theres ideas to earn objective markers. Dramatically increases the work load and a lot to still figure out, but it does feel like a better fit for the fiction.
Grayzone warfare actually does a great job of quest design without markers. You read the quest dialogue, and they pretty accurately (if vaguely) describe where you can find that location and objective
I give almost no gameplay options to players to begin with. Then during testing/early access I'll see what players ask for the most, I'll try to add it to the game and A/B test it for viability and engagement (lower engagement = it doesn't go in the public release). What I tend to do is try to add gameplay options in context of the game rather than as part of settings. Like if players want an objective marker, I'd add it as a spell that they have to make effort to learn. If players want
When it comes to people using options they dislike, I almost feel like the default is a signpost of how a game is meant to be played. Or at least of where all the stuff is. As an example, save scumming. I had the option and didn’t choose it in Disco Elysium because DE so consistently made failure rewarding and substantial. If failure was always just a null result, and the game was more oriented around striving for a “best ending” or player expression (like a New Vegas), I’d have had a hard time not save scumming. Choosing not to scum can’t really elevate the experience without well-considered failure, regardless of what I choose. Quest markers are probably the easier example. Turning those off in a game with no other navigation tools is just opting for a worse experience. A player who doesn’t want markers needs a bunch of dialogue and level design support that won’t materialize by toggling a setting off.
One of my most recent games ive spent a long time playing was palworld, the gameplay options did a lot for making the game fun for me. If you play with default settings the game is quite tedious and i really enjoyed that i could speed up the slower grind portions of the game
One solution I came up for this is "custom difficulty", which only unlocks after you've beaten the game once. The options would be entirely inaccessible without either unlocking CD, or using a cheat/console command. This way, most players will play the game and have their own nitpicks about what to change, and then earn the ability to change it.
Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2 did this for the difficulty settings. You unlocked them after beating the game, but they were version exclusive. Black 2 got hard mode and White 2 got easy mode. Which was very weird since you would barely have any reason to change difficulty after beating the game. And if you struggled or found the game easy halfway through, you couldn't change it. Only way to unlock the other difficulty setting was to trade data with someone that had unlocked the setting and had the other version 😅
@@JG0NE I still need to get around to the later Pokemon games. Poking around, it looks like they made a bunch of little changes, and some of them would be difficult or problematic to implement half way through a playthrough. That's probably why they don't let you change it, though its really weird that one game had Easy and the other had Hard. I would've hated that if I had bought White version. Leave it to them to have a good idea and implement it in the most awkward, halfassed way.
I don't think many players react poorly to options, they react poorly to options ***that are poorly explained,*** which is WAY WAY too common. Maybe it's just me, idk. Give me all the options, just explain them to me. Additionally, I don't think a valid reason to omit options is because other players don't have self control. To be clear, i don't think that you're arguing that it's a good idea, I just hear that argument all the time in the indy dev scene and its a frustrating one.
About the option to turn off quest markers. Assassin's creed 1. You can play with interface, have quest markers that will lead you where you need to be. But the game was also designed to be played without interface. There's lots of signs to lead you to different cities, characters give very good descriptions of where you need to go, etc.
quest markers situation is exactly what happened in skyrim, and not only the devs assumed this, but they also trained gamers to think this way. and it really shows when skyrim players go back to play morrowind for the first time - they ask what they need to do, often told to go to X, they leave immediately then whitout ever asking where the hell is X exactly, then it usually takes them from 30 seconds to 5-15 minutes of moving in a random direction to actually stop and ask themselves - so, where am i going exactly? as for other more gameplayiy option i prefer to trust the dev to know better. for example if kcd devs decide there shouldn't be a crosshair for archery then imo it's silly to install it through mods because it's what you're accustomed to, same for saving, same for other core game play mechanics. like in aforementioned morrowind if there's progression, feedback loop and resource management implemented around hitting chance then it's bad to through everything out of the window and install a 100% hit chance mod.
I prefer having multiple gameplay options especially if game wants me to stay for the story most part rather than providing challenging gameplay , even simple difficulty option would be nice. As when i am in my gaming mod i can't focus on story , it's a weird thing and as my attention has gotten worse , i have trouble understanding dialogue if there are complex words , so a previous dialogue box or being able rewatch cutscenes is just perfect or better yet rewind them or pause cutscenes. I am save scummer but deciding not using it can serve as a self control practice , but i don't mind lack of quicksaving if frequent checkpoints , i will still reload checkpoints again n again to save that potion or bullet lol. Also having gameplay option inside the game itself is pretty cool , like in Sekiro you could ring a bell to increase enemy difficulty but gained a bit more abilty points and drops. Skyrim had pillars or altar of gods. So players would access them slowly and not get freezed.
JA 2 had alien/mad science bug things you could turn on and off. Was a huge chunk of content. I think a big issue is if you don't have difficulty options the least common denominator leads to games like bethesda where you can walk past liches at level one, which would have been instant death back in TES: Arena or Daggerfall.
Ok, that was kind of a flavor thing. People who dont want fantasy nonsense in an otherwise grounded combat game could turn them off. But the game should then not have those fantasy elements in the first place.
Interesting discussion. Makes me realize how much work must have gone into Wrath of the Righteous and the toggling of turn-based and real-time with pause.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an example where it needed that many game settings. Developer wants a very immersive cinematic experience while some players would find it distracting and detrimental to gameplay, so it needs those settings for players to choose.
One idea is to make the player EARN some gameplay options by beating the game in a certain way, accomplishing some feats, etc. That way, if they already "played out" a certain aspect of the game, they can choose to make that aspect easier / faster / skippable for future playthroughs, while introducing a new aspect / making an existing aspect harder / different.
Ark and palworld has literal guides on UA-cam to explain all the gameplay options I am also guilty of changing something in the settings and forget about it and coming back and playing the game on hard without knowing. Then there are games like Pokemon which remove gameplay options that have been a staple of the franchise Like switch/don't switch, permanent exp share etc I got choice paralysis when I played fallout 1 in April when creating a character and went with pre made charisma character. In my game I plan to make gameplay options for a new game plus, so people who want to continue will understand all the options and can curate that experience themselves.
5:43 - Choice paralysis is real ! I remeber trying to play Pathfinder Kingmaker, I saw just the sheer number of races, classes, feats and spells and just NOPE-ed out of the game. At lest for now. One day, I will bite into this game, but wow, it is not easy to get into for new players 😅.
I find that little to no gameplay options works only when the game has a very focused design. The Souls and Soulslike games made by FromSoftware are a good example of that. They want you to have a specific experience, and the entire game is geared towards providing that experience. 7:25 Re: quest markers "even if the game is fully playable, and fully fun, with them off" - I have yet to find a game with quest markers that truly caters to the "markers off" experience. The game has to be designed from the ground up for that: - the world/dungeons/levels/maps etc. need easily recognizable landmarks and pointers and hints and clues and such. - the directions to your target have to fit decently well with the above. Games with quest markers typically lack both of those things. After all, you have quest markers, why bother doing all that extra work to make the game just as playable without them? I understand that, so it's not a criticism, just pointing out what I've learned from my personal experience.
The worst way to do options is and this has annoyed me to no end. When games let you pick an option, and say it can be changed later. Only for you to have to beat like 3-4 levels before you can change it. The worst example for me was Far Cry if I recall, that made difficulty like that. Difficulty that says you can change it but isn't, and some other options like it, are what will drive people to always pick X option, even if they would like Y option. Getting soft locked or otherwise punished for little things will also do this.
Sandbox games that allow you to customize the smallest settings are cool. Have you seen Project Zomboid? It has a lot of options, like how often certain types of items do spawn, if vehicles are good condition or not much, how strong zombies are, can they run, how long they chase, how far they see you or hear, how fast your character levels-up, your starting equipment, etc. A lot of options. That’s great. But not all games are sandbox.
It does depend on the kind of game, too. I for one don't really care about gameplay options for CRPGs or for action games, but for sandbox simulations the more the merrier.
The "the developer should pick a design and keep it" people are missing one thing... if the game has a lot of gameplay options, that is the design. Personally, I think it's cool for some games to have lots of options to be customized with, and other games to be a very specific streamlined experience. I do think I sometimes end up abusing quick saving/loading and quest markers even when they aren't needed, but it has never ruined a game for me. It just makes the game a different, less tense, experience than a game that doesn't have those options. I think that's ok.
Great Video, I was wondering if you have talked about progression and upgrade systems for equipment/armor/tools , what makes them engaging and fun from your experience and what different designs are used?
Your last point is a reason why I'm not in favor of explicit Dark Souls difficulty settings. Some people complain about getting chess when they wanted to play checkers.
I returned Project Cars because the font size was too small on a 48 inch TV 6 feet away. And to play Cyberpunk I ended with a strange combination of colourblind modes just to make the UI and subtitles readable.
The one argument I've heard against options is over difficulty settings in Souls games. The creator is giving you a very specific experience, and the difficulty is a part of that. But i believe in player choice in games, and things like that could be circumvented with communication with the player. If you say in-game what the intended experience is, you give them your experience, with the option to freely choose between.
I love the souls games, I even have a bloodborne tattoo, but I really suck at them and would enjoy them more if they had gameplay settings. Sure, elden ring is more accessible if you use summons and broken builds but I just want to play the game how I want to and have a slightly easier time. Same with roguelikes, there are so many I love, like darkest dungeon, but I'm horrible at them so actually playing ends up not being as fun. And even if I wanted to play in an optimized way and learn all the strategies and etc, I rarely have the time for that nowadays.
@@SamFisher338 Right? If these games are adjusted with adults in mind and most adults don't have time to get into them, then what're we doing here, lmao?
What if instead of picking and choosing different skills/approaches for each skill point/interactions, it was more on the rails? Just have a stealth skillset and play through the entire game in that way. So you could play several times as brute force, stealth, magic/ranged, charisma/speech check, etc. from a production/testing pov, wouldn’t this be easier, as it’s essentially the same places/people things but it’s fixed for the entirety of a gameplay cycle. You could still name and design your own character, but this way you could make certain interactions easier with different builds, and encourage players to try beating the game with all build styles.
What do you think about how Goldeneye/Perfect Dark did it? You had your basic settings, but all the fine-tuning settings are hidden unless you complete the game on the hardest difficulty. Keeps the options away from newbies, and rewards those who want the challenge, without having the newbs immediately know what theyre missing (obviously now with internet, most could find out if they wanted)
Hey Tim! You mentioned that you love metrics. I'm curious what kind of metrics and alerts you're interested in as a game director vs what a typical developer may create metrics and alerts for. For example, I imagine a developer writing netcode may be interested in latency or bandwidth spikes to a particular datacenter or a backend developer may want to know if a certain instance or server crashed. What are you looking for in terms of metrics and alerting (even tracing if we extend further into observability) as a game director?
Hard to hear because I want to make a "hardcore stealth game" which will be niche and thought that I could include options for players to change to make the game "less boring" for a casual player which would make the game more stealth action and options for tuning your own rules and experience sort of like a sandbox game
I can't help but feel like Options given to the player work best when they're integrated with the gameplay and lore. For example, you can be given ranged attacks and faster character movement, but then you need to pick a class "ranger". You can have an enemy deal much less damage to you, but then you need to equip heavy armor like a tank. You can see in the dark, but you need to choose an elf - etc etc.
The more you take this idea to its logical conclusion by extending that logic, the more it appears as what it is, which is a completely irrational proposition At its limit, when you give "all" the options to the player, you have essentially removed the game, and given the player a motherboard and transistors to code their own game from the ground up. "There you go, you can have exactly what experience you want to have now!".
I think if anyone's confused about choice paralysis in games, they should play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. That game has so many options for character development that even as a person who doesn't usually get analysis paralysis I find that game exhausting to play. It's definitely a downside to creating such a rich wealth of options for player characters.
Warframe has so many options (11 years old online game) they literally added filter text box to that menu last year. The good part is if youre looking for something you will most likey find it, but the descritpions arent alwayas thr best. DE add options when they sense a scjism in player preferences including legacy color palettes from before threy fixed their gamma curve. And as a side effect they miss some standard things like a contrast and brightness callibrarion image, but thats not that importnat with the ally and enemy outline highlight option.
I hate save scumming, but I do it, unless the game has a good checkpoint system. I love that challenging games are having a moment, but it's frustrating if making a small mistake means you have to re-traverse a long, uneventful stretch of space or rewatch a cut scene just to try again. Be generous with your automated checkpoints, and load quickly on failure.
I think in th end it comes down to the two routes there are so far in gamedesign, either a predefined way and a rather limited box of tools available for the player to use in the game, or the other way with give players the freedom to do stuff their own way. and these two ways also have the different handling of various game options. But from developer perspective yeah it is just a horrible teadious amount of work^^
i know super mario is not an RPG but there is a video on youtube about how nintendo implemented invisible difficulty settings in super mario games (that have no menu difficulty option) so that the player can choose just by playing the game... and it is genius
A thought occurs to me as I watch this. I'm one of those people that will always eventually pick the most optimal options, even though I dislike having them on because it makes the game too easy and less enjoyable. The reason is I can't stand not using the optimal way of playing the game. I'm not exactly a min-maxer, I don't have to have the most optimal builds and I don't always research best builds on the internet, but I also don't feel good about making the game difficult on purpose just because it may or may not be more fun. I also never play on easy nor hard, I always play on normal because that's how the game was intended to be played (or at least that's what most games say when you select "normal") And I want that. I want the intended gameplay. I want to experience the game exactly as it was designed to be, and when you put my quest markers on by default, I'm gonna roll with it no matter how much I'd rather investigate myself, because I just can't trust the game to not get my stuck at some stupid puzzle or quest for 3 hours because it never accounted for me now having those markers, or context clues, or whatever. So I don't exactly know if others would agree, but I think it would actually help me if there was an optional similar to the difficulty option, but regarding options.. so an options option. I'm not talking about accessibility options, or graphics options and such either. I mean if before I picked the difficulty I was asked if I want a customizable experience or a default experience, where that savefile would simply be locked from toggling any options once I started it, that might be enough of a psychological trick to make me certain that the game will be playable as intended with all defaults, because it's something that's clearly spelled out and the designers probably thought about it. It's simply not enough to have defaults. It's like having cookies in a jar in your kitchen... If they are there, the moment you stop fighting the urge to get cookies, you gonna get cookies... So games should take this into consideration as well probably. Allow me to modify my environment in such a way that that urge is not there. Psychologically speaking, we're learning a lot of new things in terms of self control and how the human brain works, and one thing we do know is that it's kinda exhausting for some people to keep fighting urges and options they have when they are easily available. That's why apps that lock off your phone for some time period work so well for some people, they remove the availability and as such remove the need for self control, which makes resisting trivial. In general I think more options are good and there should be included if it makes sense and people might use them to improve their experience and fun. Having fun is ultimately one of the most important aspects of any game. But having a dedicated button locking off the options would be an useful option in itself for some people, at least for me I think it would.
I chuckled at the idea that games get tested. Because a lot of the games that I've played lately, on release feel like they haven't been. Really, day one purchasers or even people that purchase the game in the first three months end up with the worst experiences as all the negative inclusions that used to not be present on release are ironed out. Multiplayer connection problems, basic balancing issues. Gamebreaking bugs - Borderlands 3's launch springs to mind. Or just features promised in promotional material just aren't included. Like coop multiplayer in cyberpunk 2077.
basically, you have to design a game's options around preventing the players from screwing themselves over. Most of the time, its a user-created issue whenever gameplay options are involved.
I think there's a type of person out there that wants less gameplay options for the sake of leveling discussion and comparing experiences. Because rules are changing (at such an anally granular level) suddenly it's not the same game anymore. I don't necessarily agree with them, I love options -- but in recent years I have noticed some may unintentionally backfire on the user. For instance an action game with an FOV slider may play differently when the FOV is turned up since the camera will 'see' more enemies on-screen, which affects how the AI behaves. Or the time immemorial option of playing with mouse and keyboard VS gamepad. We all know aiming is easier with mouse, but not all PC gamers realize how much better movement in most third person games feels on gamepad, thanks to joystick.
My argument against having gameplay options is that level or game designers are expected to create an experience, which is a series of decisions. If these options affect gameplay, make the decision as a designer. Do not leave it to the player. I know creating an experience is hard, but make a decision and stick with it. I think Yatzee said it is like instead of writing a book, you hand down a notepad to someone and say, "Here, you write the story you want to read".....
There's an interesting 4th option here: mods. Sometimes, the best way to allow a variety of gameplay options is to make enough of the gameplay modable (not configurable). It removes the expectation of developer-level testing, it places the change into a category that makes it obviously an optional change, and it can even introduce gameplay options you didn't even realize you should have added. The downside is that testing an exposed modding interface is a whole different category of development and testing, so it's definitely not an easy trade-off.
BG3 does it well. There is an easy, normal, hard, very hard and custom. hard and very hard are basically the same but with one save file. My only neg would be that I want more custom options.
I truly will always think u can only dislike having options of u don’t know what u want perfect example is save scumming people will always say they hate the option to save scum ok then don’t do it but if when presented with the option u find urself doing it and then wanting to think u don’t want to maybe ur just conflicted about what it is u actually want
I'd rather have simple gameplay done very well instead of complex gameplay done poorly. That said, I'd most prefer to have complex gameplay that has a simple approachable entry that offers more as you choose to do more with it. Similar with game options. I want to be able to have an enjoyable experience without having to modify anything. But then, should I choose to modify things, I would prefer to have the option to simply and elegantly tune gameplay to what I would enjoy or prefer. That said, I know it is horribly difficult to make things both functional and intutive.
When I played Hellblade 2, I chose to not turn on subtitles. Usually I always play with subtitles because sometimes other sounds make the dialogue less coherent or I'm too focused mashing buttons to listen. I also found the text placement to be distracting and made me focus on reading instead of the amazing visuals (the game multiple voices in the main character's head that guide her). But after playing through the game, I kinda wish there was a third option. I went through the game without knowing the side characters' names. Which also made it harder to follow the story. The names were nordic (probably Icelandic), but pronounced in an english way. So kinda weird the names weren't spelt out unless you check the subtitles. Another thing is that the game is in 2.39:1. Makes for a cool cinematic experience. Unless you have a tv lightstrip like Hue or Govee. Then the black bars become even more apparent. And this wasn't even an option.. (I guess the lightstrips are an option, but they make movies and games even more immersive)
Interesting video about gameplay options, but what annoys me much more is that many indie games, especially walking emulators or similar, don't allow reassignment of controls. Even if a game is free this basically will make me deinstall it immediately because I am used to a specific control scheme for twenty years!
I think for me it also depends how an option is presented. While I do on paper like options, I feel the consequences of turning those options on&off should be understandable to someone who never played this game before, and I think potential unbalanced problem should be made separate as “unsanctioned” options (maybe like 2nd wave options for XCOM, or Deadfire’s blessings/God’s Challenges). Do I or do I not want perma-death and maiming in your game? Do I want full or reduced critical? Well, that very much depends on the kind of game you made, doesn’t it? Still, I think desire for options will vary on players experience. The better player knows the system, the more they know what they like/dislike and what consequences will their choices have. Some players praise pathfinders for its customisable difficulty but I found them frustrating on my first go, and would prefer for default difficulties to have less erratic difficulty curve.
I know you are mostly talking about RPGs and singleplayer but especially multiplayer have the issue of those 'forced options'. Like the classic ultra low graphics deleting foliage or having togleable player markers giving the person having them active an advantage
For me, a game is a piece of entertainment art, and I want a curated experience. If the game designer have decided that one of the games challenges is going to be finding the quests, then don't put quest markers in, but i hope you have a point with that choice... You have to make it fun to me, and test it. If I am running around the wilderness for hours, because the dialogue is poor, thats annoying. If the dialogue contains a riddle with multiple answers, and i find fun stuff if I get it wrong... Thats an awesome feature....
Im definitely one of those people who save scum if its possible, and I prefer games that dont allow it. I dont remember who said it, but players will optimize the fun out of a game if you allow them to.
I always thought it was Sid Meier, but it was Soren Johnson. Also, I'm in the same boat. I desperately hope, every new BethSoft game, that they leave fast travel out or give me the option to turn it off at game creation. Lately I've been making a point of playing games the "hard" way. Hardcore WoW, but never using flight paths and taking professions that make my gear and never buying any. Space Engineers, but with the Scrapyard mod and H2 turned off. It's reinvigorated my interest in gaming. People complain that games aren't what they used to be. I would challenge that it was us that ruined it in the first place. I was never more at home in a game than when I had no idea what was going on, and the only expectation was that I figure it out as I go.
Regarding save scumming tho redoing a whole hour long dungeon just to die on a last boss is not fun. Frequent check points could help. And save scumming for checks could be lessened if fail options were interesting in their own way. If a game clearly rewards frequent saving then players will do it , regardless of how much i don't like to remember to press quick save again n again.
i always do the first playthrough with default options except difficulty slider depending on the genre. quest markers ruins the fun of the game in general.
Ah, that’s a very good question. I wonder that about a lot of design choices I make. There are people who are quite vocal about it, but I don’t know the percentage.
@@CainOnGames It's anecdotal experience, but I can say in my 30+years of gaming, the vast majority of people I have ever been friends with, talked to , and interacted with *want* choices and like them. It's the elitist arseholes that typically cry when a choice is available because suddenly more people can enjoy their niche game that makes them so special.
@@shawnwolf5961This sounds about right. I’ve also been playing games for 30 years and it appears to me that normal people who play video games like having options and the “real gamers” yell like they’re losing something personally when other people have options.
Any reason to not have customizable features that make life easier and the product more attractive to your customers that starts with "but it makes my job harder" needs be shutdown right there.
The game options you mean, most of them can be EASILY be done by modders. All I want the devs allow me to do, is rebind ALL the keys. Games these days have the WASD by default but I like using the arrow keys for movement. And I want the game to recognise I did so, so that any tutorial will tell me the correct key for something.
Yeah, it's tough. The more options you give to players the harder it can be to know who your audience is you're trying to market to, outside of the audience that yells YAY OPTIONS. Which is a decent crowd.
I normally like a lot of game options but I am also the person who ends up underpowered in classless games because I've saved 75% of the points I got after leveling up XD
Gamers are fickle creatures, I've done a few things that you talk about gamers doing (though I don't complain about it to people on the internet) I like the idea of having simple options accessible in the menus, and more granular options available in a config file in the game files somewhere because then it feels like it's more extreme than just flipping a switch in a menu All the settings being set in game should be tested as much as feasibly possible to have it work as flawlessly as possible because they're right there and people expect them to work as intended When people go into the configs and start changing values in a text editor, it feels like it's much more off the beaten path and more like you're tinkering with a car engine or something that you very well may break if you do something wrong
The problem with gameplay options is that they feel as if you are cheating . Maybe because i am old school but i like to perceive game as challenge made by game designers .
I will say as well to options and customizability is look at the popularity of mods and mod-able games Minecraft is literally the most popular video game of all time and Skyrim is still arguably the most popular rpg of all time they’re also the two most modded games of all time and what are mods if not options?
I don't really play games to have the "perfectly designed game experience"™ I'm a way bigger fan of sandboxes like the arma series, project zomboid, rimworld, paradox games, etc. But hey, good thing we have different games and genres. Trying to appeal to everyone sometimes just means you appeal to no one And i get that's kind of a 'niche genre'. So it's not exactly that commercially attractive, even though it has a growing audience To me it sounds silly to playtest every combination of options since most won't be used And i don't even mind finding imbalances or bugs that come from that. To me that's part of the fun of messing with settings But i get why that could bother people The choice paralysis i don't really get, considering i love tweaking games To me it sounds funny that people would complain about someone "making multiple games in one", because the game settings alter it so much. That just extends how long i have fun with that game, since i'll be trying those out
My main issue with Gameplay Options is the lack of communication. If there is a main "way to play" the game was designed for, which it is? If there are Quality of Life options (like Save everywhere) that will dramatically affect the game feel or difficulty or pace, is such a thing clearly communicated? In some cases, what are the exact gameplay modifications made, instead of just a nebulous % slider? Basically, devs don't communicate enough. It's already a common plague in technical settings, with (if we're lucky) arcane über technical shortcuts and acronyms everywhere. Instead of very clear text explanation, with images or videos on the side if possible. Be clear. Be direct. Explain things. Yes I mostly personally don't need it, but I've been playing computer games since the release of Ultima 3. Other people should not be required years of experience to know what are the gamefeel implication of "health regen outside of combat or not", or what the fuck "sharpness applied to DLSS super resolution in a FSR frame generation renderer" is! As a side note, on PC mods are a thing. If a dev is unsure if his game should allow 2 or 3 weapons at the same time on a character, and after months they finally decide on 2 and they don't offer 3 as an option in the menu; keep that path in the code and make modders work slightly easy to mod it in if they so wish. I'm not advocating for the Bethesda caricature of "let's make half a game and let modders do the rest", just in that specific case of gamedev paralysis or hard choices, there is a third way between "too much options" and "not enough options".
Button remapping has to become standard for every game.
The fact that it's 2024, and there are still games that don't let you remap certain keys--ESPECIALLY THE EFFING MIDDLE MOUE BUTTON--is insane to me.
Yeah i think there was a game which did not let me rebind keys to WASD instead arrow keys. And Baldurs gate 3 with no option for remapping middle mouse as rotation of camera and not being able to change camera sesitivity using q and e to rotate , camera was generally difficult in that game top handle.
@@yourstruly5013 In BG3 you can rebind the middle mouse button. I was using Z to rotate my camera when my MMM was broken!
It mostly is for PC, the big exceptions are when you cant have two things on the same button, or two different actions need to be on the same button.
I'll excuse some small indie devs, because I have experience with how difficult Unity's rebind system once was.
But I don't see any excuse for big studios with a bunch of professional programmers to not include a key rebind system.
Also last I checked around a year ago, Unity had a free key rebind script that even I got at least partially working after some tutorials, so I don't think even Unity indies have an excuse for it now.
I belong to the group that "hates questmarkers, but always turn them ON if I can".
The major reason as to why I do this, is because games that gives you the option are more often than not built to have them turned ON.
The Ubisoft "south of Timothy Rock, east of Cain" which makes you search a massive area for ages before finding a chest on a stump is not fun. Nothing in the world around that place has been designed for you to find it naturally. But I without a doubt prefer games that don't have quest markers at all, because they were built and designed for you to find all these things without it
Yep, and I'm in a similar camp of "saves obsessively, even though I dislike savescumming", because I've been burned too many times by not saving often enough.
Would be cool if the game is designed from the ground up around not having quest markers or other UI assists like a mini-map, and then, after they've properly signposted the used all the tricks to catch the player attention towards locations of interest, only then would they introduce quest markers.
I think a lot of open-world games are designed with UI assists in mind, then might give players the option to disable those elements as if that would make the game 'playable' without them in any way, only for it to be impossible in some cases for the player to find their bearings and correctly go to the place they're supposed to be for a specific quest.
The Gothic series is a shining beacon of master level design.
7:03 An (imperfect) analogy to the "save anywhere" option is if an RPG had an early and always available "golden weapon/skill" that trivialized the game from the get-go. You could play the entire game pretending that you don't have it, but the fact it's always there staring at you would affect how you feel about using other options.
One of my main problems with too many options is that I don't know exactly what I should select to maximize enjoyment.
I haven't played the game yet, so I'm left wondering "How is the game supposed to be?" or "What options was the game best designed around?" The developer should answer those questions for me.
Control options are usually awesome, but many difficulty settings that can be changed on the fly (especially with multiple seperate sliders) usually frustrate me.
I think it's safe to say that most games have default option settings, and those are the ones that the developer intends.
As for difficulty settings, there is one group that wants them at a high level (easy, normal, hard) and another group that wants a slider for every possible thing that can change (combat damage, puzzle difficulty, heal rate, fast travel while encumbered, etc). It's impossible to make both groups happy.
Project Zomboid I think is a great example of having a lot of game options, and doing it well. Obviously this is highly dependent on the game you have.
Yes, I think the most important part is that Zomboid has "presets", so that choosing your options when first getting into the game is a lot simpler. Once you've gotten familiar with it, you can start to tweak individual gameplay options.
Having a ton of options tends to work out for games built for a sandbox experience. And Project Zomboid does fit into that category. You have a big world with no pre-defined end goal, so you choose what to do and at what point to stop.
Funnily enough, I've been playing once human, and there's all these little puzzles, with really good descriptions to where to find the stuff. But there's quest markers everywhere, so it takes the fun out. There was one puzzle, that I had to find notes, that would give you a digit, and position. once you found all 4 you could open a safe. So I took my pen and paper, starting writing them down. And collect the last one, and the number is right there in my quest log on screen 😒
Kind of defeats the purpose of having puzzles.
I'm confused by your example. So you found all 4 pages containing the 4 digits and their positions, hence you solved it. If you solved it and already know the number then what's the issue with the number also being in the quest log? Do you want to be expected to commit everything to your own personal memory?
@@BradTheAmerican to me it's more of the fact that finding the 4 numbers already had quest markers, even though the quest description was pretty descriptice where to find them.
But then the actual notes told you the number and the position of that number.
So I'm like better write these down. But then once I got the 4th one, the numbers were all placed I. The proper order in the quest log. Which I found annoying
Unrealistic example, NO ONE would mess with Bob in the Shadowcave...
With the game I published, I came up with as many options as I could and I got that "options paralysis" from testers, so I had to remove a ton of stuff and commit to certain control options (like having one button for switching sub-weapons as opposed to an option to pick between one or two). And then later on the I realized I should add a couple things that I never even considered at the beginning, even yesterday I had the idea to add in screenshake reduction. It's always a good idea to make the game super modular, because you never know when you're going to make something into an option.
Could have an advanced options menu.
@@ValdVincent Naah I just needed more eyes on the game for me to see what I needed to streamline and what actually needed to be options in the first place. The options menu has three categories, Audio/Visual for stuff like fullscreen and volume control, Controls for key/button mappings, and Others which is everything else like toggling checkpoint autosaves. If there is one thing I regret not thinking of earlier that's too big of a pain in the ass now it'd be putting the confirm/cancel buttons on the top of the controls menu so people don't assume Jump and Attack are also Confirm and Cancel.
Ngl I'm always quite infuriated by games that give me "toggle between" style buttons but no "do the exact thing" buttons. Breaks muscle memory for me. Same for multipurpose keys that can't be separated (looking at you, deep rock galactic with "call resource cart" and "activate jet boots" on the same key)
@@zeropoint5794The former sounds like either balancing or controller layout issues but I can get behind the latter. In my game the default controls have Jump/Accept and Attack/Cancel be the same button but you can map them to be different.
i really like Dishonored 2's approach to quest markers. You can disable them and there are physical in-world maps of the levels that you can find and save to your journal. then you can reference the map to find places mentioned by other characters
Thanks for being clear that accessability is different, it's very important for me as a blind player.
All well said.
There is at least one type of option, though, that I think there's almost no argument against if you can implement it -- simulation sickness mitigation (head bobbing toggle, motion blur slider, etc.).
I feel like us lifelong enthusiasts can sometimes forget how we've learned ways around stuff, but for newcomers, simulation sickness really can be the kind of "ultimate" barrier to entry which is keeping out the (comparatively) largest chunk of the population.
I'd put these under the category of accessibility options - motion sickness should be treated the same as color blindness or hearing impairment.
I think the best way to do it was the way Silent Hill did it having a combat difficulty and a puzzle difficulty. That way, if you hate combat but want harder puzzles, you have the option for it.
Regardless of how you tune the difficulty, the essential experience is preserved, which should be always be the goal.
Silent Hill's hard puzzle modes do not screw around either. You need to know Shakespeare from memory and stuff like that and draw diagrams and whatnot.
System Shock nailed this back in 92.
On the contrary, Silent Hill is very linear and simply, those puzzles that you mention are obligatory to progress and are only completed in one way. it is a game that is finished and never used again.
@@zabutai You got NG+ and ++. If I recall it changes the difficulty up one each time, you unlock a few weapons, and an ending or two each time.
Great video! I was waiting for continuation of this topic.
I've just got an idea for mitigation of choice paralisis: you need to make separate advanced options menu. And it should look scary. It should be like:"You better know what you're doing! You may break a lot of things with those options!"
And then new players will be like:"Better not to touch any of those"
And seasoned players will be all proud:"I know what I'm doing, you don't need to warn me!" 🙂
And the third group will be like: "why did you provide these? I can't resist touching them and now it's your fault that game isn't fun for ME!"
@@CainOnGames And fourth group will complain that ESSENTIAL game option is off by default and its hidden in scary options
And Fifth Group be like "What Options ?"
@@CainOnGamessolution: do not provide "scary options" button or any GUI at all. Options that affect gameplay are modified with dev console, dev console is disabled by default, to enable it - player must manually modify config file. Here, unmarked exploration quest!
@@vos2693 this is honestly a great compromise. I'm in the group that gets a pleasant surprise when I'm overloaded with options to tweak. The first thing I do when I open a game is go through every single setting available. I don't want to lose out on the ability to do so because other folks either don't have the self control not to ruin the game for themselves or are overwhelmed. And I mean that with no hostility, I understand wanting to appeal to various groups, but I don't ever want the power user experience to be sacrificed and I'm perfectly fine with using the console.
I used to have a deeply customized Counter-Strike config that would rival a .vimrc
In my experience of playing games with varying levels of gameplay options, my personal opinion is that the best thing you can do is organize them well, name them well, and add plenty of description (ideally with a button that expands descriptive detail).
People who want to make themselves suffer by enabling options they don't like and then blame the game for them are a lost cause in my opinion. I don't see them ever being happy regardless of what you do.
Hi Tim, would love to hear your thoughts regarding itemisation and inventory management in RPG's. I think it's something a lot of studios overlook and can become noticeable when it doesn't feel right, love the video as always.
Have you watched my video Player Hoarding?
ua-cam.com/video/ESVby0UG-Ao/v-deo.html
In Menzoberranzan, by DreamForge, there was the simple option to use grid-step or free movement. The level designer(s) assumed that players would have free movement. There were maps that were impossible to navigate using grid-step, due to cosmetic obstructions (like stalagmites) in the path. This was unintentional, and indistinguishable from deliberately blocked paths. It also mean't that if you turned grid-step on after entering the area, it might not then be possible to exit the area.
For me personally, I don't like options in some games because often I don't know what I want or what the 'best option' for me is. I'm not talking about 'poorly explained options' like other people have mentioned. A game can have all of its options explained perfectly and concisely but that still wouldn't prevent people such as myself from picking an option that makes their experience worse.
I'm going to use difficulty levels/options as an example because it's something I'm passionate about and the one I find easiest to provide examples for. The main reason I play games is to challenge myself, but when presented with an option for difficulty, I find I often choose badly. When I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I picked the lowest difficulty, Normal, because I believed myself to be bad at strategy and tactics games. I got about halfway through the game and the gameplay was boring me because I found it too easy. Some people might say, "Well just allow the player to switch difficulty any time they wish" but that's not a perfect solution. I've gone halfway through the game before I determined I wanted to switch and had a worsened experience with that half because of it. What if I switch and there's a difficulty spike? Some aspects of difficulty can't be accounted for part way through a game. For example, some games change the amount of experience you earn based on the difficulty. I can switch to a higher difficulty, but again, still have an easy time because my units are now overlevelled.
Ultimately, difficulty is mostly subjective and there's no way to determine how hard you'll find a game until you've actually started playing it and become familiar with its mechanics. I find I often underestimate or overestimate myself when it comes to picking a difficulty level so I much prefer to defer to the developer in most cases. There are games I've played where I know I would have switched to an easier difficulty if there was the option and also that I would have regretted it. Pathologic is a game I've played like that which is deliberately frustrating, unfair and obtuse, but where those aspects are part of what makes it unique and engaging. It's a slow burn and it took me several hours to 'get it', but once I did, it was one of my most memorable and enjoyable game experiences last year. If I was presented with an option to change the difficulty, I would have taken it before I had that 'I get it' moment and never would have had that experience.
I strongly believe games are art, and in most cases, difficulty is a part of that art and the developer's intended experience. Not all games of course, some games don't even have difficulty at all which is fine too. Dark Souls is one game where I am strongly against adding difficulty options for that reason. The difficulty of Dark Souls is an intrinsic part of its experience, themes and message. Add an 'easy mode' and I might have booted it up and thought "I've heard this game is hard, so I'm going to play on easy to be safe" and missed out on that experience. Sometimes, forcing the player to play a certain way is a good thing because it can make them step out of their comfort zone and try playing a game in a way they would otherwise shy away from because it's not what they're used to.
I remember what I learned in my early days of creating custom maps for StarCraft 2. One time i gave myself like 20ish variables to tweak for difficulty. I learned that making even small increases, but to a lot of the variables led to huge differences in difficulty. There's some sort of multiplicative or exponential increase in difficulty when you tweak multiple variables. So I had to rethink and only tweak a few of the variables between each difficulty level.
I completely understand the increased QA and dev time reasoning, but it's unfortunate that developers sometimes feel forced to simplify games because some players refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. I'm referring to the examples mentioned here about players making changes to the options and then complaining about them.
As a player who loves a giant list of gameplay options (see the new Starfield update or Baldur's Gate 3 custom mode), I feel disheartened by this reality. I suppose this is why I get so much more invested in games with heavy modding scenes.
While Starfield introduced a lot of gameplay options in the May update and I love that they did that (and that it changes the rate of XP gained), I do think at least one of them is not without its fair amount of issues. The environmental damage difficulty option that makes planetary conditions (extreme cold, heat, radiation in a planet without atmosphere if it's daytime or if you're in a tidally locked planet in a location facing the sun) is extremely punishing, and sometimes when you're exploring it puts WAY too much pressure on the player - it forces you to rush exploration, and that is at times a detriment to your enjoyment and to the exploration itself (sometimes you just want to stop and see a planet or sun rise, or you just want to loot everything!)...
The issue is exacerbated by the fact that some of the quests take place entirely in exposed places, with NPCs stopping to talk to you and at times having lenghty conversations, all of that before/after you already fought and explored a lot, so your suit protection is already severely depleted. It's possible to increase the player's protection if you select a space suit with specific protection targeted to the specific environment you're going to explore, but - and here's where I think the feature is broken and wasn't completely tested - people did the math over on reddit, and found out that even appropriate suits don't have enough protection to last for an entire UC Vanguard quest that take places in an extremelly cold planet.
All in all, I can only imagine what a nightmare it was to balance all of these new gameplay options plus the cut fuel economics system that Todd Howard talked about in his Lex Fridman interview. While he said to Lex that the reason why they decided to cut that feature from the game was because it wasn't fun, I imagine that balancing concerns were quite a priority for them and maybe the difficulty to balance it all was why playtesters didn't find it fun enough.
But I'm still happy that they seem to be reintroducing those survival features, hope that they improve the balance and above all I hope they reintroduce the fuel economics system (I have a theory that even the narrative design for the tutorial mission on Kreet had to be changed after they cut that system from the game - as it stands, there's literally no reason for you to not jump immediately to Alpha Centauri after leaving Vectera, but there would be if you needed fuel to make the grav jump, and conveniently there are huge Helium-3 tanks on top of the pirate facility on Kreet!).
Honestly, I've always preferred games that have standard difficulties and then also have a subset of "advanced options" that allow you to more tailor the experience after you've played for a while. This is especially important for more simulation style games where some aspects of the simulation, I just don't enjoy or want to deal with. Or I want to play a specific experience for this play (see all the options for Stellaris, which a lot of people find to be too many and confusing but I don't touch except when i want specific experiences).
Tim, your videos coming out is the highlight of my day at work. Thanks for keep coming up with topics. It wouldn’t occurred to me to ask about.
To the point of having to test all the options which is completely true it goes both ways while yes it’s a much tougher thing to develop and test it will also show in the experience for people because u put more work into the project
Some of these points break my brain, it seems like some people can't take a basic level of responsibility for thier own enjoyment.
Imagine if they had to play a game that shipped with a dev console, or modding capability. If only DoomEngine wasn't made open source, and we could have less options.
These people are the reason game companies are preventing mods, and milking players for every last cent these days. "I wish I had less options with this product I own". They don't need less options to chill out and enjoy their game, they need medications.
Very interesting video, Tim. I will say that I fall somewhere in the middle, I play a lot of games with options and enjoy them, but sometimes I prefer games with no options.
On "people will blame games for options they choose,"I think this could fall under the idea that players will optimize the fun out of your game. If elden ring had a difficultly slider, I would have used it instead of fighting margit, realizing he's way too tough and then exploring the world, getting new spells and weapons. This would have taken away such a fun, rewarding moment for me.
Hope this gives some insight, keep on making amazing videos ❤
That's a great comment. Some games have lots of options and others don't, and there is room enough in this world for both kinds of games.
@@CainOnGames And most of that is the players fault and I don't think a dev should take options away from people who want them, solely because a crybaby elitist minority will pitch a toddler fit over it if it's there. Elden Ring and the souls series are a prime example. The elitist whiners will cry if there is a difficulty setting, so Fromsoft doesn't do it. But would that really be a bad thing? The people crying the hardest lack the self control to NOT use those sliders--that's not my problem, and it shouldn't be the devs problem or consideration either. Choices make a game better, not worse--> Gamer standpoint right here.
@@shawnwolf5961 I really hate the elitist argument. Fromsoft don't add difficulty options because they don't want to fragment the user base. Having everyone go through the same challenges means everyone has a strong shared experience. It's part of why Dark Souls got so popular in the first place. The Ornstein and Smough Player A fights is the same one Player B fights so they can immediately relate to each other's experience and discuss it with each other. Add an "Easy" difficulty option and people will pick it because "they always play games on easy" or they get walled and change it in a moment of frustration. The playerbase will be more fragmented and those people who picked easy may have actually had more fun on the intended difficulty, but they have no way of knowing that.
Even if me or you are perfect human beings who never make an error in judgement and never 'lack self control' (which neither of us are), you can't know what the ideal difficulty option is for you in most circumstances. Difficulty is inherently subjective after all. The ultimate in 'giving choices' would be for every game to come with an ini file that allows the player to modify the stats of themselves and all enemies in the game. I think you'll agree this is a horrible idea. It'll result in the dreaded choice paralysis and again, even if you are the perfect human who knows exactly how hard or easy they want a specific game to be, you can't KNOW how hard or easy it'll be until you play and experience it. Even at a high level there are games where I've picked the "Easy" option and regretted it or vice versa with the "Hard" option.
Choices/options in games are not ALWAYS a good thing. It depends on the game. Some games benefit from it (Kid Icarus Uprising as an example), but others such as the Dark Souls series don't, especially because in Dark Souls case, the difficulty is inherently linked to the intended experience and message of the game. I play games to experience the DEVELOPER's vision, and difficulty is part of that vision in most cases. I've always thought the wealth of games out there ARE the options. Why would you play Dark Souls, the game known for its crushing difficulty, if you don't want to have a hard time? It'd be like going into a theatre to watch a scary movie when you can't handle scary stuff and then complaining they didn't present you with a "no scares" option. Even if they did, it wouldn't be the same movie.
How do you handle games that ship with a dev console? Mods? Server options? Games with cheat codes? Gaming before 2015 must be a nightmare world for you.
@@Deadener Some games benefit from all or some of those and it's a false equivalency to the ini file example I mentioned. And in the case of mods and cheat codes, they're something you actively have to search for outside of the game, which does change things compared to an official in-game option.
About the viability of builds in RPGs at different difficulty settings.
I've seen how they "solved" the issues at Owlcat Games,
quite the relevant example in my opinion,
as they give very open and also granular difficulty settings' customization to the player.
In the Pathfinder games, at the highest difficulty setting,
only a handful of builds are actually capable of finishing the main campaign.
Indeed, I think the process of planning and putting together a build for the highest difficulty
is a core mechanic of those games,
when your understanding of the systems and how they interact is what you are thinking about all throughout:
that's the main challenge if you want to master the Pathfinder games.
Because of that, I also think the Pathfinder games hugely benefit from the inclusion of game modes that allow to test builds "outside" of the game campaign.
They did that with a DLC in Wrath of the Righteous,
that allowed for a somewhat isolated rogue-like gameplay section for the added content,
in which the progression is much faster than in the base game,
and you can test your builds vs a variety of different enemies.
Thanks for your videos!
I've rarely been as pleased by a game's options menu as when I first opened the options menu in Owlcat's games. Wonderful stuff.
I'm curious on thoughts about options available in-game vs options available in menus. Because I'm helping on a project where the quest marker/HUD topic became a major point of tension.
Can't speak on spesifics but it was hell testing without them and making these elements menu options or tieing it to difficulty raised many of your issues. Prototyping ways of making these systems available as abilities, rewards or at in-game cost.
For example HUD elements use the same resources as power-ups, maps must be purchased and theres ideas to earn objective markers. Dramatically increases the work load and a lot to still figure out, but it does feel like a better fit for the fiction.
Grayzone warfare actually does a great job of quest design without markers. You read the quest dialogue, and they pretty accurately (if vaguely) describe where you can find that location and objective
I give almost no gameplay options to players to begin with. Then during testing/early access I'll see what players ask for the most, I'll try to add it to the game and A/B test it for viability and engagement (lower engagement = it doesn't go in the public release).
What I tend to do is try to add gameplay options in context of the game rather than as part of settings. Like if players want an objective marker, I'd add it as a spell that they have to make effort to learn. If players want
When it comes to people using options they dislike, I almost feel like the default is a signpost of how a game is meant to be played. Or at least of where all the stuff is.
As an example, save scumming. I had the option and didn’t choose it in Disco Elysium because DE so consistently made failure rewarding and substantial. If failure was always just a null result, and the game was more oriented around striving for a “best ending” or player expression (like a New Vegas), I’d have had a hard time not save scumming. Choosing not to scum can’t really elevate the experience without well-considered failure, regardless of what I choose.
Quest markers are probably the easier example. Turning those off in a game with no other navigation tools is just opting for a worse experience. A player who doesn’t want markers needs a bunch of dialogue and level design support that won’t materialize by toggling a setting off.
xcom second wave settings are an interesting way of doing options too. Changes the game fairly fundamentally but it warns you about it beforehand.
One of my most recent games ive spent a long time playing was palworld, the gameplay options did a lot for making the game fun for me. If you play with default settings the game is quite tedious and i really enjoyed that i could speed up the slower grind portions of the game
One solution I came up for this is "custom difficulty", which only unlocks after you've beaten the game once. The options would be entirely inaccessible without either unlocking CD, or using a cheat/console command.
This way, most players will play the game and have their own nitpicks about what to change, and then earn the ability to change it.
Pokémon Black 2 and Pokémon White 2 did this for the difficulty settings. You unlocked them after beating the game, but they were version exclusive. Black 2 got hard mode and White 2 got easy mode. Which was very weird since you would barely have any reason to change difficulty after beating the game. And if you struggled or found the game easy halfway through, you couldn't change it. Only way to unlock the other difficulty setting was to trade data with someone that had unlocked the setting and had the other version 😅
@@JG0NE I still need to get around to the later Pokemon games. Poking around, it looks like they made a bunch of little changes, and some of them would be difficult or problematic to implement half way through a playthrough. That's probably why they don't let you change it, though its really weird that one game had Easy and the other had Hard. I would've hated that if I had bought White version.
Leave it to them to have a good idea and implement it in the most awkward, halfassed way.
I don't think many players react poorly to options, they react poorly to options ***that are poorly explained,*** which is WAY WAY too common. Maybe it's just me, idk. Give me all the options, just explain them to me. Additionally, I don't think a valid reason to omit options is because other players don't have self control. To be clear, i don't think that you're arguing that it's a good idea, I just hear that argument all the time in the indy dev scene and its a frustrating one.
About the option to turn off quest markers.
Assassin's creed 1.
You can play with interface, have quest markers that will lead you where you need to be. But the game was also designed to be played without interface. There's lots of signs to lead you to different cities, characters give very good descriptions of where you need to go, etc.
quest markers situation is exactly what happened in skyrim, and not only the devs assumed this, but they also trained gamers to think this way. and it really shows when skyrim players go back to play morrowind for the first time - they ask what they need to do, often told to go to X, they leave immediately then whitout ever asking where the hell is X exactly, then it usually takes them from 30 seconds to 5-15 minutes of moving in a random direction to actually stop and ask themselves - so, where am i going exactly?
as for other more gameplayiy option i prefer to trust the dev to know better. for example if kcd devs decide there shouldn't be a crosshair for archery then imo it's silly to install it through mods because it's what you're accustomed to, same for saving, same for other core game play mechanics. like in aforementioned morrowind if there's progression, feedback loop and resource management implemented around hitting chance then it's bad to through everything out of the window and install a 100% hit chance mod.
I prefer having multiple gameplay options especially if game wants me to stay for the story most part rather than providing challenging gameplay , even simple difficulty option would be nice. As when i am in my gaming mod i can't focus on story , it's a weird thing and as my attention has gotten worse , i have trouble understanding dialogue if there are complex words , so a previous dialogue box or being able rewatch cutscenes is just perfect or better yet rewind them or pause cutscenes.
I am save scummer but deciding not using it can serve as a self control practice , but i don't mind lack of quicksaving if frequent checkpoints , i will still reload checkpoints again n again to save that potion or bullet lol.
Also having gameplay option inside the game itself is pretty cool , like in Sekiro you could ring a bell to increase enemy difficulty but gained a bit more abilty points and drops. Skyrim had pillars or altar of gods. So players would access them slowly and not get freezed.
JA 2 had alien/mad science bug things you could turn on and off. Was a huge chunk of content. I think a big issue is if you don't have difficulty options the least common denominator leads to games like bethesda where you can walk past liches at level one, which would have been instant death back in TES: Arena or Daggerfall.
Ok, that was kind of a flavor thing. People who dont want fantasy nonsense in an otherwise grounded combat game could turn them off. But the game should then not have those fantasy elements in the first place.
Interesting discussion. Makes me realize how much work must have gone into Wrath of the Righteous and the toggling of turn-based and real-time with pause.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an example where it needed that many game settings. Developer wants a very immersive cinematic experience while some players would find it distracting and detrimental to gameplay, so it needs those settings for players to choose.
It could just not be the game for those players. Not every game needs to be for everyone.
One idea is to make the player EARN some gameplay options by beating the game in a certain way, accomplishing some feats, etc.
That way, if they already "played out" a certain aspect of the game, they can choose to make that aspect easier / faster / skippable for future playthroughs, while introducing a new aspect / making an existing aspect harder / different.
Ark and palworld has literal guides on UA-cam to explain all the gameplay options
I am also guilty of changing something in the settings and forget about it and coming back and playing the game on hard without knowing.
Then there are games like Pokemon which remove gameplay options that have been a staple of the franchise
Like switch/don't switch, permanent exp share etc
I got choice paralysis when I played fallout 1 in April when creating a character and went with pre made charisma character.
In my game I plan to make gameplay options for a new game plus, so people who want to continue will understand all the options and can curate that experience themselves.
5:43 - Choice paralysis is real ! I remeber trying to play Pathfinder Kingmaker, I saw just the sheer number of races, classes, feats and spells and just NOPE-ed out of the game.
At lest for now. One day, I will bite into this game, but wow, it is not easy to get into for new players 😅.
I find that little to no gameplay options works only when the game has a very focused design.
The Souls and Soulslike games made by FromSoftware are a good example of that. They want you to have a specific experience, and the entire game is geared towards providing that experience.
7:25 Re: quest markers "even if the game is fully playable, and fully fun, with them off" - I have yet to find a game with quest markers that truly caters to the "markers off" experience.
The game has to be designed from the ground up for that:
- the world/dungeons/levels/maps etc. need easily recognizable landmarks and pointers and hints and clues and such.
- the directions to your target have to fit decently well with the above.
Games with quest markers typically lack both of those things.
After all, you have quest markers, why bother doing all that extra work to make the game just as playable without them?
I understand that, so it's not a criticism, just pointing out what I've learned from my personal experience.
Jesus the quest markers on option hit so close to home
The worst way to do options is and this has annoyed me to no end. When games let you pick an option, and say it can be changed later. Only for you to have to beat like 3-4 levels before you can change it. The worst example for me was Far Cry if I recall, that made difficulty like that. Difficulty that says you can change it but isn't, and some other options like it, are what will drive people to always pick X option, even if they would like Y option. Getting soft locked or otherwise punished for little things will also do this.
Sandbox games that allow you to customize the smallest settings are cool. Have you seen Project Zomboid? It has a lot of options, like how often certain types of items do spawn, if vehicles are good condition or not much, how strong zombies are, can they run, how long they chase, how far they see you or hear, how fast your character levels-up, your starting equipment, etc. A lot of options. That’s great. But not all games are sandbox.
It does depend on the kind of game, too. I for one don't really care about gameplay options for CRPGs or for action games, but for sandbox simulations the more the merrier.
The "the developer should pick a design and keep it" people are missing one thing... if the game has a lot of gameplay options, that is the design. Personally, I think it's cool for some games to have lots of options to be customized with, and other games to be a very specific streamlined experience.
I do think I sometimes end up abusing quick saving/loading and quest markers even when they aren't needed, but it has never ruined a game for me. It just makes the game a different, less tense, experience than a game that doesn't have those options. I think that's ok.
Having distinguishable icons near each slider would make it easier to find than just words imo
Great Video, I was wondering if you have talked about progression and upgrade systems for equipment/armor/tools , what makes them engaging and fun from your experience and what different designs are used?
Your last point is a reason why I'm not in favor of explicit Dark Souls difficulty settings. Some people complain about getting chess when they wanted to play checkers.
I get you. Why play chess if you want checkers.
I returned Project Cars because the font size was too small on a 48 inch TV 6 feet away. And to play Cyberpunk I ended with a strange combination of colourblind modes just to make the UI and subtitles readable.
6:20 Changing the slider from normal to medium is the worse! Happens to me all the time
The one argument I've heard against options is over difficulty settings in Souls games. The creator is giving you a very specific experience, and the difficulty is a part of that. But i believe in player choice in games, and things like that could be circumvented with communication with the player. If you say in-game what the intended experience is, you give them your experience, with the option to freely choose between.
I love the souls games, I even have a bloodborne tattoo, but I really suck at them and would enjoy them more if they had gameplay settings. Sure, elden ring is more accessible if you use summons and broken builds but I just want to play the game how I want to and have a slightly easier time.
Same with roguelikes, there are so many I love, like darkest dungeon, but I'm horrible at them so actually playing ends up not being as fun. And even if I wanted to play in an optimized way and learn all the strategies and etc, I rarely have the time for that nowadays.
@@SamFisher338 Right? If these games are adjusted with adults in mind and most adults don't have time to get into them, then what're we doing here, lmao?
What if instead of picking and choosing different skills/approaches for each skill point/interactions, it was more on the rails? Just have a stealth skillset and play through the entire game in that way. So you could play several times as brute force, stealth, magic/ranged, charisma/speech check, etc.
from a production/testing pov, wouldn’t this be easier, as it’s essentially the same places/people things but it’s fixed for the entirety of a gameplay cycle. You could still name and design your own character, but this way you could make certain interactions easier with different builds, and encourage players to try beating the game with all build styles.
What do you think about how Goldeneye/Perfect Dark did it? You had your basic settings, but all the fine-tuning settings are hidden unless you complete the game on the hardest difficulty.
Keeps the options away from newbies, and rewards those who want the challenge, without having the newbs immediately know what theyre missing (obviously now with internet, most could find out if they wanted)
Hey Tim! You mentioned that you love metrics. I'm curious what kind of metrics and alerts you're interested in as a game director vs what a typical developer may create metrics and alerts for.
For example, I imagine a developer writing netcode may be interested in latency or bandwidth spikes to a particular datacenter or a backend developer may want to know if a certain instance or server crashed.
What are you looking for in terms of metrics and alerting (even tracing if we extend further into observability) as a game director?
Hard to hear because I want to make a "hardcore stealth game" which will be niche and thought that I could include options for players to change to make the game "less boring" for a casual player which would make the game more stealth action and options for tuning your own rules and experience sort of like a sandbox game
I can't help but feel like Options given to the player work best when they're integrated with the gameplay and lore. For example, you can be given ranged attacks and faster character movement, but then you need to pick a class "ranger". You can have an enemy deal much less damage to you, but then you need to equip heavy armor like a tank. You can see in the dark, but you need to choose an elf - etc etc.
The more you take this idea to its logical conclusion by extending that logic, the more it appears as what it is, which is a completely irrational proposition
At its limit, when you give "all" the options to the player, you have essentially removed the game, and given the player a motherboard and transistors to code their own game from the ground up.
"There you go, you can have exactly what experience you want to have now!".
I think if anyone's confused about choice paralysis in games, they should play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. That game has so many options for character development that even as a person who doesn't usually get analysis paralysis I find that game exhausting to play. It's definitely a downside to creating such a rich wealth of options for player characters.
Warframe has so many options (11 years old online game) they literally added filter text box to that menu last year. The good part is if youre looking for something you will most likey find it, but the descritpions arent alwayas thr best. DE add options when they sense a scjism in player preferences including legacy color palettes from before threy fixed their gamma curve. And as a side effect they miss some standard things like a contrast and brightness callibrarion image, but thats not that importnat with the ally and enemy outline highlight option.
I hate save scumming, but I do it, unless the game has a good checkpoint system. I love that challenging games are having a moment, but it's frustrating if making a small mistake means you have to re-traverse a long, uneventful stretch of space or rewatch a cut scene just to try again. Be generous with your automated checkpoints, and load quickly on failure.
I think in th end it comes down to the two routes there are so far in gamedesign, either a predefined way and a rather limited box of tools available for the player to use in the game, or the other way with give players the freedom to do stuff their own way. and these two ways also have the different handling of various game options. But from developer perspective yeah it is just a horrible teadious amount of work^^
i know super mario is not an RPG but there is a video on youtube about how nintendo implemented invisible difficulty settings in super mario games (that have no menu difficulty option) so that the player can choose just by playing the game... and it is genius
A thought occurs to me as I watch this. I'm one of those people that will always eventually pick the most optimal options, even though I dislike having them on because it makes the game too easy and less enjoyable. The reason is I can't stand not using the optimal way of playing the game. I'm not exactly a min-maxer, I don't have to have the most optimal builds and I don't always research best builds on the internet, but I also don't feel good about making the game difficult on purpose just because it may or may not be more fun. I also never play on easy nor hard, I always play on normal because that's how the game was intended to be played (or at least that's what most games say when you select "normal") And I want that. I want the intended gameplay. I want to experience the game exactly as it was designed to be, and when you put my quest markers on by default, I'm gonna roll with it no matter how much I'd rather investigate myself, because I just can't trust the game to not get my stuck at some stupid puzzle or quest for 3 hours because it never accounted for me now having those markers, or context clues, or whatever.
So I don't exactly know if others would agree, but I think it would actually help me if there was an optional similar to the difficulty option, but regarding options.. so an options option. I'm not talking about accessibility options, or graphics options and such either. I mean if before I picked the difficulty I was asked if I want a customizable experience or a default experience, where that savefile would simply be locked from toggling any options once I started it, that might be enough of a psychological trick to make me certain that the game will be playable as intended with all defaults, because it's something that's clearly spelled out and the designers probably thought about it. It's simply not enough to have defaults. It's like having cookies in a jar in your kitchen... If they are there, the moment you stop fighting the urge to get cookies, you gonna get cookies... So games should take this into consideration as well probably. Allow me to modify my environment in such a way that that urge is not there. Psychologically speaking, we're learning a lot of new things in terms of self control and how the human brain works, and one thing we do know is that it's kinda exhausting for some people to keep fighting urges and options they have when they are easily available. That's why apps that lock off your phone for some time period work so well for some people, they remove the availability and as such remove the need for self control, which makes resisting trivial.
In general I think more options are good and there should be included if it makes sense and people might use them to improve their experience and fun. Having fun is ultimately one of the most important aspects of any game. But having a dedicated button locking off the options would be an useful option in itself for some people, at least for me I think it would.
I chuckled at the idea that games get tested. Because a lot of the games that I've played lately, on release feel like they haven't been. Really, day one purchasers or even people that purchase the game in the first three months end up with the worst experiences as all the negative inclusions that used to not be present on release are ironed out. Multiplayer connection problems, basic balancing issues. Gamebreaking bugs - Borderlands 3's launch springs to mind.
Or just features promised in promotional material just aren't included. Like coop multiplayer in cyberpunk 2077.
basically, you have to design a game's options around preventing the players from screwing themselves over. Most of the time, its a user-created issue whenever gameplay options are involved.
I think there's a type of person out there that wants less gameplay options for the sake of leveling discussion and comparing experiences. Because rules are changing (at such an anally granular level) suddenly it's not the same game anymore. I don't necessarily agree with them, I love options -- but in recent years I have noticed some may unintentionally backfire on the user.
For instance an action game with an FOV slider may play differently when the FOV is turned up since the camera will 'see' more enemies on-screen, which affects how the AI behaves. Or the time immemorial option of playing with mouse and keyboard VS gamepad. We all know aiming is easier with mouse, but not all PC gamers realize how much better movement in most third person games feels on gamepad, thanks to joystick.
baldurs gate 1 has some great options. I want to put a reshade style option in my game just for visual purposes.
My argument against having gameplay options is that level or game designers are expected to create an experience, which is a series of decisions.
If these options affect gameplay, make the decision as a designer. Do not leave it to the player.
I know creating an experience is hard, but make a decision and stick with it.
I think Yatzee said it is like instead of writing a book, you hand down a notepad to someone and say, "Here, you write the story you want to read".....
There's an interesting 4th option here: mods.
Sometimes, the best way to allow a variety of gameplay options is to make enough of the gameplay modable (not configurable). It removes the expectation of developer-level testing, it places the change into a category that makes it obviously an optional change, and it can even introduce gameplay options you didn't even realize you should have added.
The downside is that testing an exposed modding interface is a whole different category of development and testing, so it's definitely not an easy trade-off.
hmmm i love gameplay options
BG3 does it well. There is an easy, normal, hard, very hard and custom. hard and very hard are basically the same but with one save file. My only neg would be that I want more custom options.
I truly will always think u can only dislike having options of u don’t know what u want perfect example is save scumming people will always say they hate the option to save scum ok then don’t do it but if when presented with the option u find urself doing it and then wanting to think u don’t want to maybe ur just conflicted about what it is u actually want
I'd rather have simple gameplay done very well instead of complex gameplay done poorly. That said, I'd most prefer to have complex gameplay that has a simple approachable entry that offers more as you choose to do more with it. Similar with game options. I want to be able to have an enjoyable experience without having to modify anything. But then, should I choose to modify things, I would prefer to have the option to simply and elegantly tune gameplay to what I would enjoy or prefer. That said, I know it is horribly difficult to make things both functional and intutive.
When I played Hellblade 2, I chose to not turn on subtitles. Usually I always play with subtitles because sometimes other sounds make the dialogue less coherent or I'm too focused mashing buttons to listen. I also found the text placement to be distracting and made me focus on reading instead of the amazing visuals (the game multiple voices in the main character's head that guide her). But after playing through the game, I kinda wish there was a third option. I went through the game without knowing the side characters' names. Which also made it harder to follow the story. The names were nordic (probably Icelandic), but pronounced in an english way. So kinda weird the names weren't spelt out unless you check the subtitles.
Another thing is that the game is in 2.39:1. Makes for a cool cinematic experience. Unless you have a tv lightstrip like Hue or Govee. Then the black bars become even more apparent. And this wasn't even an option.. (I guess the lightstrips are an option, but they make movies and games even more immersive)
Interesting video about gameplay options, but what annoys me much more is that many indie games, especially walking emulators or similar, don't allow reassignment of controls. Even if a game is free this basically will make me deinstall it immediately because I am used to a specific control scheme for twenty years!
I think for me it also depends how an option is presented. While I do on paper like options, I feel the consequences of turning those options on&off should be understandable to someone who never played this game before, and I think potential unbalanced problem should be made separate as “unsanctioned” options (maybe like 2nd wave options for XCOM, or Deadfire’s blessings/God’s Challenges). Do I or do I not want perma-death and maiming in your game? Do I want full or reduced critical? Well, that very much depends on the kind of game you made, doesn’t it?
Still, I think desire for options will vary on players experience. The better player knows the system, the more they know what they like/dislike and what consequences will their choices have. Some players praise pathfinders for its customisable difficulty but I found them frustrating on my first go, and would prefer for default difficulties to have less erratic difficulty curve.
I know you are mostly talking about RPGs and singleplayer but especially multiplayer have the issue of those 'forced options'. Like the classic ultra low graphics deleting foliage or having togleable player markers giving the person having them active an advantage
Starfield has this in a great way, surprisingly. Can toggle almost any setting at cost or gain of a % of your XP
For me, a game is a piece of entertainment art, and I want a curated experience. If the game designer have decided that one of the games challenges is going to be finding the quests, then don't put quest markers in, but i hope you have a point with that choice... You have to make it fun to me, and test it. If I am running around the wilderness for hours, because the dialogue is poor, thats annoying. If the dialogue contains a riddle with multiple answers, and i find fun stuff if I get it wrong... Thats an awesome feature....
first one i thought about was pause on enemy sight; i can't imagine trying to balance a d&d game around people not pausing
Im definitely one of those people who save scum if its possible, and I prefer games that dont allow it. I dont remember who said it, but players will optimize the fun out of a game if you allow them to.
I always thought it was Sid Meier, but it was Soren Johnson. Also, I'm in the same boat. I desperately hope, every new BethSoft game, that they leave fast travel out or give me the option to turn it off at game creation. Lately I've been making a point of playing games the "hard" way. Hardcore WoW, but never using flight paths and taking professions that make my gear and never buying any. Space Engineers, but with the Scrapyard mod and H2 turned off. It's reinvigorated my interest in gaming.
People complain that games aren't what they used to be. I would challenge that it was us that ruined it in the first place. I was never more at home in a game than when I had no idea what was going on, and the only expectation was that I figure it out as I go.
Regarding save scumming tho redoing a whole hour long dungeon just to die on a last boss is not fun. Frequent check points could help. And save scumming for checks could be lessened if fail options were interesting in their own way. If a game clearly rewards frequent saving then players will do it , regardless of how much i don't like to remember to press quick save again n again.
i always do the first playthrough with default options except difficulty slider depending on the genre. quest markers ruins the fun of the game in general.
How many people do you think actually hate options? 10%? 20%?
Ah, that’s a very good question. I wonder that about a lot of design choices I make. There are people who are quite vocal about it, but I don’t know the percentage.
@@CainOnGames It's anecdotal experience, but I can say in my 30+years of gaming, the vast majority of people I have ever been friends with, talked to , and interacted with *want* choices and like them. It's the elitist arseholes that typically cry when a choice is available because suddenly more people can enjoy their niche game that makes them so special.
@@shawnwolf5961This sounds about right. I’ve also been playing games for 30 years and it appears to me that normal people who play video games like having options and the “real gamers” yell like they’re losing something personally when other people have options.
Any reason to not have customizable features that make life easier and the product more attractive to your customers that starts with "but it makes my job harder" needs be shutdown right there.
Imagine activating the subtitles and then complaining about there being text on the screen. 👀
a lot of games give the option to disable HUD but make it impossible to play without it and have no bind to toggle it.
No bind to toggle it is a crime but every game should have an option to toggle HUD to make screenshots.
@@proydoha8730 i feel more immersed without hud.
Slider 57 on page 3 sounds like Unreal Engine’s Project Settings 😅 The only game I play nowadays… 🤣
The game options you mean, most of them can be EASILY be done by modders.
All I want the devs allow me to do, is rebind ALL the keys.
Games these days have the WASD by default but I like using the arrow keys for movement.
And I want the game to recognise I did so, so that any tutorial will tell me the correct key for something.
For those who played POE (Path of Exile) I quite the game the moment I opened the skill forest.
Yeah, it's tough. The more options you give to players the harder it can be to know who your audience is you're trying to market to, outside of the audience that yells YAY OPTIONS. Which is a decent crowd.
I normally like a lot of game options but I am also the person who ends up underpowered in classless games because I've saved 75% of the points I got after leveling up XD
Gamers are fickle creatures, I've done a few things that you talk about gamers doing (though I don't complain about it to people on the internet)
I like the idea of having simple options accessible in the menus, and more granular options available in a config file in the game files somewhere because then it feels like it's more extreme than just flipping a switch in a menu
All the settings being set in game should be tested as much as feasibly possible to have it work as flawlessly as possible because they're right there and people expect them to work as intended
When people go into the configs and start changing values in a text editor, it feels like it's much more off the beaten path and more like you're tinkering with a car engine or something that you very well may break if you do something wrong
The problem with gameplay options is that they feel as if you are cheating . Maybe because i am old school but i like to perceive game as challenge made by game designers .
I will say as well to options and customizability is look at the popularity of mods and mod-able games Minecraft is literally the most popular video game of all time and Skyrim is still arguably the most popular rpg of all time they’re also the two most modded games of all time and what are mods if not options?
I don't really play games to have the "perfectly designed game experience"™
I'm a way bigger fan of sandboxes like the arma series, project zomboid, rimworld, paradox games, etc.
But hey, good thing we have different games and genres. Trying to appeal to everyone sometimes just means you appeal to no one
And i get that's kind of a 'niche genre'. So it's not exactly that commercially attractive, even though it has a growing audience
To me it sounds silly to playtest every combination of options since most won't be used
And i don't even mind finding imbalances or bugs that come from that. To me that's part of the fun of messing with settings
But i get why that could bother people
The choice paralysis i don't really get, considering i love tweaking games
To me it sounds funny that people would complain about someone "making multiple games in one", because the game settings alter it so much.
That just extends how long i have fun with that game, since i'll be trying those out
My main issue with Gameplay Options is the lack of communication. If there is a main "way to play" the game was designed for, which it is? If there are Quality of Life options (like Save everywhere) that will dramatically affect the game feel or difficulty or pace, is such a thing clearly communicated? In some cases, what are the exact gameplay modifications made, instead of just a nebulous % slider?
Basically, devs don't communicate enough. It's already a common plague in technical settings, with (if we're lucky) arcane über technical shortcuts and acronyms everywhere. Instead of very clear text explanation, with images or videos on the side if possible.
Be clear. Be direct. Explain things.
Yes I mostly personally don't need it, but I've been playing computer games since the release of Ultima 3. Other people should not be required years of experience to know what are the gamefeel implication of "health regen outside of combat or not", or what the fuck "sharpness applied to DLSS super resolution in a FSR frame generation renderer" is!
As a side note, on PC mods are a thing. If a dev is unsure if his game should allow 2 or 3 weapons at the same time on a character, and after months they finally decide on 2 and they don't offer 3 as an option in the menu; keep that path in the code and make modders work slightly easy to mod it in if they so wish. I'm not advocating for the Bethesda caricature of "let's make half a game and let modders do the rest", just in that specific case of gamedev paralysis or hard choices, there is a third way between "too much options" and "not enough options".