1331 réponses à ce sujet

[Steelcan]

David let me put this plainly.

Not everyone thinks that is a good thing. Your opinion is not gospel.

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

Why would I?

Can you understand why many people do?

In a movie, the person is purely a passive observer.  You can't even make choices (which you concede players do do in a video game).

In a video game, the player has some degree of influence, in the form of making choices.  For example, I made the best choice with the information provided to me to resolve the Connor situation, which was to let his mother sacrifice herself to save her son.

Some people learned that they could go to the Mage Tower and get the help of Irving, but only if they were able to save Irving during the fight against Uldred (Irving can die during the fight against Uldred).

[dreamgazer]

David7204 wrote...

What I would like you to get from my statements is that, Mass Effect, along with the overwhelmingly majority of video games, is easy - and that's a good thing. A thing both justified and logical, that does nothing to diminish the success or heroism of the characters and protagonist. That heroism and success is justified to exist in an easy or trivial video game.

Maker, you fit it all into one paragraph. It's frakkin' marvelous.

[David7204]

Video games should have the option of being easy. You are perfectly free to enjoy games on the ultra-hardest difficulty. Nobody is threatening that. However, a game should not be made frustratration, or work, or tedium for someone to enjoy the story. The story exists as the same regardless of what the player is or how good he is.

And that all ties back into the central point. That heroism does not flow from the player.

Modifié par David7204, 31 octobre 2013 - 04:40 .

[Dave of Canada]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

In my experience, the Fallout games have been pretty good at providing very challenging circumstances.  And there's definitely an aspect of "earn your happy ending" if you consider the survival of Necropolis part of the happiest ending.  In my experience, unless I heavily exploit meta knowledge, it's very hard to complete the game quickly enough.

Loved the Necropolis chain. I adored FO1 because trusting the merchants with the location of the vault resulted in your timer being drastically reduced, situations became impossible based on your statistics and you couldn't save everyone with absolute metagame, what seemed optimal at first goes bad, etc.

[Steelcan]

David7204 wrote...

Video games should have the option of being easy. You are perfectly free to enjoy games on the ultra-hardest difficulty. nobody is threatening that.

And we are saying that having games so predictable and easy to get the "best" ending is not a good thing

[Dave of Canada]

David7204 wrote...

Video games should have the option of being easy. You are perfectly free to enjoy games on the ultra-hardest difficulty. nobody is threatening that.

Thankfully game difficulty has very little to do with the choices and story.

Modifié par Dave of Canada, 31 octobre 2013 - 04:40 .

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

What I would like you to get from my statements is that, Mass Effect, along with the overwhelmingly majority of video games, is easy - and that's a good thing. A thing both justified and logical, that does nothing to diminish the success or heroism of the characters and protagonist. That heroism and success is justified to exist in an easy or trivial video game.

Bear with me for a moment, but if you were to wager an estimate of all the people that bought and played Mass Effect 2 and completed at least 1 playthrough to the end, what would that percentage be?

[In Exile]

David7204 wrote...

What I would like you to get from my statements is that, Mass Effect, along with the overwhelmingly majority of video games, is easy - and that's a good thing. A thing both justified and logical, that does nothing to diminish the success or heroism of the characters and protagonist. That heroism and success is justified to exist in an easy or trivial video game.

That doesn't make sense. A game being easy or hard as a game - and a plot triumph being "easy" for the protagonist - are not the same thing. Indeed, because of their variable difficulty, most videogames are simulatenously easy and very hard. 

[AresKeith]

David7204 wrote...

Video games should have the option of being easy. You are perfectly free to enjoy games on the ultra-hardest difficulty. Nobody is threatening that. However, a game should not be made frustratration, or work, or tedium for someone to enjoy the story. The story exists as the same regardless of what the player is or how good he is.

And that all ties back into the central point. That heroism does not flow from the player.

Is Dark Souls and Demon Souls a good example to counter this?

[Steelcan]

David7204 wrote...

And that all ties back into the central point. That heroism does not flow from the player.

Once again with the heroism spiel?

Not all games, and not even ME have heroism as the central theme.  You can be an absolutly brutal and even cruel Shepard or Warden.

[David7204]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

David7204 wrote...

What I would like you to get from my statements is that, Mass Effect, along with the overwhelmingly majority of video games, is easy - and that's a good thing. A thing both justified and logical, that does nothing to diminish the success or heroism of the characters and protagonist. That heroism and success is justified to exist in an easy or trivial video game.

Bear with me for a moment, but if you were to wager an estimate of all the people that bought and played Mass Effect 2 and completed at least 1 playthrough to the end, what would that percentage be?

I've heard numbers of around 20%. But I certainly wouldn't trust them to be indicative of the game being difficult. Why?

[Dave of Canada]

AresKeith wrote...

Is Dark Souls and Demon Souls a good example to counter this?

I loved how Dark Souls (haven't played Demon) had a very vast world with a lot of backround into it, the plot wasn't as simple as initially thought and everything is grim but you wouldn't realize it unless you investigate into it and analyzed the world around you.

[In Exile]

David7204 wrote...

Video games should have the option of being easy. You are perfectly free to enjoy games on the ultra-hardest difficulty. Nobody is threatening that. However, a game should not be made frustratration, or work, or tedium for someone to enjoy the story. The story exists as the same regardless of what the player is or how good he is.

And that all ties back into the central point. That heroism does not flow from the player.  

Okay. Now I can follow your point. This is still mistaken, because you're misunderstanding game difficulty for plot coupons. 

Let's take ME1-3 as an example. You can play the games - by choosing outcomes on the easiest difficulty - that will alter the world from heroic - with the protagonist saving everyone almost perfectly at every turn - to a game about a genocidal, psycopathic villain protagonist who is only the hero in virtue of the antagonist being eldrich abominations. 

Herosim flows from the player, because it's possible to be the villan. KoTOR 1 and KoTOR 2 are another set of examples. Which simple "save the puppy" or "kill the puppy and wear its skin" type choices, the player determines whether the protagonist is a heroic protagonist or a villain protagonist. 

Heroism absolutely flows from the player because the player decides which outcome occurs - heroic or not - and that choice has nothing to do with gameplay difficult. 

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

Video games should have the option of being easy. You are perfectly free to enjoy games on the ultra-hardest difficulty. Nobody is threatening that. However, a game should not be made frustratration, or work, or tedium for someone to enjoy the story. The story exists as the same regardless of what the player is or how good he is.

Difficulty in terms of being able to complete the game is very different than difficulty in terms of being able to get an ideal solution.

I agree that video games such as ours should have lower difficulty levels for those that seek to engage in the story, but are not good at combat elements.  As this is what our difficulty level represents.

In terms of the content of the story in our RPGs, difficulty has virtually no impact on that at all (minor exceptions, such as Irving being able to survive).

As you say, the story exists regardless of the player's skill.  What people are referring to with "earn your happy ending" isn't about player ability or player skill, but rather the sequence of choices in a game of narrative choices (which are not affected by difficulty).  In this sense, since the difficulty doesn't affect the story, players would like the optimal ending of the story to be as a result of making decisions in a particular way in the game.

[Estelindis]

David7204 wrote...

What I would like you to get from my statements is that, Mass Effect, along with the overwhelmingly majority of video games, is easy - and that's a good thing. A thing both justified and logical, that does nothing to diminish the success or heroism of the characters and protagonist.

Exactly what kind of ease are we talking about here and why is it relevant to the meaningfulness (or meaninglessness) of a tragic ending?  Combat can be harder or easier depending on difficulty setting, but there are no different settings for the difficulty of moral choices.  In my opinion, moral decisions contribute hugely to the different kinds of endings one obtains in DA:O.  By contrast, many of the toughest fights (e.g. the High Dragon) are optional.  You are not a better leader because you were better at beating the combat but because you made particular decisions based on the moral situations that you faced.

And I really have to reiterate the difference between video games and other media.  You claim that playing a game is just as easy as watching a film, but that really isn't true.  You cannot just sit back, do nothing, and have a Bioware game play itself.  Dara Ó Briain says it best: http://www.youtube.c...UsbOO24#t=1m20s  "You cannot be bad at watching a movie.  You cannot be bad at listening to an album.  But you can be bad at playing a video game, and the video game will punish you and deny you access to the rest of the video game!"  

[David7204]

The choice flows from the player. But the competence flows from the character. And it's the competence we're talking about.

[The Night Mammoth]

David7204 wrote...

Video games should have the option of being easy. You are perfectly free to enjoy games on the ultra-hardest difficulty. Nobody is threatening that. However, a game should not be made frustratration, or work, or tedium for someone to enjoy the story. The story exists as the same regardless of what the player is or how good he is.

And that all ties back into the central point. That heroism does not flow from the player.

What, exactly, would be frustrating or tedious? 

Where, exactly, is anyone proposing such? 

I think you're vastly over exaggerating what level and type of challenge the average person is capable of dealing with before it becomes frustrating or tedious.

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

I've heard numbers of around 20%. But I certainly wouldn't trust them to be indicative of the game being difficult. Why?

Just curious.  And I agree that it's not indicative of the game being difficult.

[Dave of Canada]

Estelindis wrote...

"You cannot be bad at watching a movie.  You cannot be bad at listening to an album.  But you can be bad at playing a video game, and the video game will punish you and deny you access to the rest of the video game!"  

That's a pretty great quote.

[Steelcan]

David7204 wrote...

The choice flows from the player. But the competence flows from the character. And it's the competence we're talking about.

Sheprd can also screw everything up royally, sabotage the cure under Wrex, rewrite the heretics then choose the quarians, sell Legion, stuff like that.

So the choices are coming from the player, thus the competence is coming from him as well.

[Allan Schumacher]

David7204 wrote...

The choice flows from the player. But the competence flows from the character. And it's the competence we're talking about.

Then you're too fixated on the term "earn."  Which frankly is simply because that's the name of the Trope.

What people are asking for is that making choices in a particular, hopefully not ostensibly obvious way, can result in outcomes that may be considered superior or ideal than the most obvious path.


When people talk about "earn your happy ending" in RPGs, they're talking about being rewarded for the choices that they make, not the game's difficulty (and hence, character competence).

The competence in making the correct choices comes from the player, however.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 31 octobre 2013 - 04:55 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Steelcan wrote...

David7204 wrote...

And that all ties back into the central point. That heroism does not flow from the player.

Once again with the heroism spiel?

Not all games, and not even ME have heroism as the central theme.  You can be an absolutly brutal and even cruel Shepard or Warden.

Yes. Emphatically yes. I'm not heroic. My Shepard isn't heroic. My Warden isn't heroic. We have our ideals. We have our own motivations. We have our goals. And we'll do whatever it takes to reach our goals whatever they may be, no matter the cost. One minute we can show warm compassion, the next wrathful brutality, and the next apathetic indifference to civilians, and understanding, admiration, respect, and even like for our antagonists.