Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

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Mongrel
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jan 30, 2014 6:38 pm

Whoops, there goes the last vestigial urge I had to try out ST:O!
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François
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby François » Thu Jan 30, 2014 6:58 pm

It's still the ubiquitous "amusement park" model of MMO, by which I mean that almost all of the potential fun comes from social interaction with friends in a particular context. And Disneyland doesn't make you grind teacups for days before it lets you on the roller coasters.

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Blossom
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Blossom » Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:00 pm

To clarify, daily-limited stuff has been in there since day 1. They've been using it a lot for their event giveaways, along the lines of "Log in and run the 3-minute mission with the 20 hour cooled 25 times during this 35-day event, and you get a fancy spaceship!" but there's also a lot of content that you can only do once a day. What they're adding is a cash shop consumable that you can use to zero out your cooldowns. It's some serious Candy Crush bullshit.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Mongrel » Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:41 pm

See any of that sort of stuff drives me nuts.

I prefer an irregular schedule in play and work. When I play games I may play them intensely for a few days or weeks, then forget about them for months or years. My more enduring interests (collecting MTG cards, painting wargaming figures, TF2) sort of continue as low-level continuous background radiation, but even those fluctuate significantly.

Nothing drives me away faster than a game that wants me to play by their schedule and not mine.
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Stush
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Stush » Thu Jan 30, 2014 9:39 pm

That's why I could never really get into animal crossing or games like that. I like to sit down and play a game for like 8 hours straight. It's just the way I do things! I'm a person of action!

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Thad » Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:11 pm

In the old days of dialup BBS's, there was a good excuse for games having a limited number of fights/turns/etc. -- because it was freakin' dialup and there were a limited number of people who could connect at any given time.

Even back then, I don't know of any that charged you for extra turns. There was shareware, sure, but that's a whole different thing.

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Smiler
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Smiler » Fri Jan 31, 2014 2:47 am

Do they actually have a problem with too many people playing their game?

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TedBelmont
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby TedBelmont » Fri Jan 31, 2014 9:40 am

More likely, they figure anyone dedicated enough to stick with the game this long won't be deterred by blatant cashgrabs, so they're milking them for all they're worth while they can.

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Smiler
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Smiler » Fri Jan 31, 2014 11:08 am

From what I could see though, it wasn't blatantly cashgrabby. In fact I think you could get the premium currency just by playing the game. So it probably is a "Too many people playing that won't pay for dumb shit" deal.

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Blossom
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Blossom » Fri Jan 31, 2014 12:53 pm

Smiler wrote:From what I could see though, it wasn't blatantly cashgrabby. In fact I think you could get the premium currency just by playing the game. So it probably is a "Too many people playing that won't pay for dumb shit" deal.


Yes, you can earn Dilithium, which can be traded for cash shop currency or spent on the many Dilithium-sinks in the game. However, there's two things with this:
1) You earn Unrefined Dilithium, and have to convert it to Refined Dilithium in order to spend it. A character can only convert 8000 Dilithium per day. At current exchange rates, this gets you about 64 cents worth of cash shop currency, and takes a couple hours of play to earn.
2) Almost all the decent Dilithium-earning activities are locked down under the aforementioned 20 hour cooldown.
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sei
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby sei » Fri Jan 31, 2014 3:55 pm

Ziiro wrote:Set phasers to nickel and dime

We need karma back for posts like this.
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Smiler
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Smiler » Mon Feb 10, 2014 12:13 pm

Lords of Shadow. All of it.

This time in particular, a boss fight I did last night did damage in an attack with an animation that lags a good two seconds behind the actual damage hitbox. The dude will be winding up for an overhead swing, but I will die in front of him right before he brings the hammer down. No game designer worked on this game.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby IGNORE ME » Sun Feb 16, 2014 11:15 pm

Boss health bars that include the amount of health taken off during a cutscene, especially at the end. Effectively this means you don't actually know how much damage you have to do to defeat the enemy unless you have presience, so the health bar only serves to let you know that you are, in fact, doing damage (which is in itself a solution whose problem is getting way too common).

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Smiler
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Smiler » Mon Feb 17, 2014 11:21 am

When you take damage from a huge enemy and your getting hurt animation is literally just your dude laying down. Too many fucking games do the same thing but instead of it just being "Oh you're hurt" it's "Oh you almost got hurt."

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Blossom
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Blossom » Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:57 pm

... I'm not sure what you're describing there. Can you give an example?
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Smiler
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Smiler » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:23 pm

Of which? Because I'm uploading the Lords of Shadow stream right now. There are games which I don't remember at all right now where if you barely manage to avoid getting hit you stumble/fall/get stunned but you avoid getting damage. In Lords of Shadow, you fight a giant troll who just punches the ground over and over again, and if you get hit, your main character just kind of lays down on the ground. It's hard to tell what the hell is going on for a while because he just keeps laying down when he almost gets hit. It's not until you get completely smashed when you realize that you've been getting hit by every attack. It gets better when you aren't anywhere near the dude's fist and Gabriel is just laying face down on the ground.

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Smiler
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Smiler » Mon Feb 17, 2014 3:25 pm

Like, a damage grunt or something would have been nice, but nope.

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Sharkey
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Sharkey » Tue Feb 18, 2014 3:12 pm

We can probably just put "everything about Lords of Shadow" here for the sake of brevity.
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby IGNORE ME » Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:37 pm

... we already did.

The problem is everything that's an issue in some other game is also an issue in Lords of Shadow.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Sharkey » Wed Feb 19, 2014 2:27 am

Speaking of, not too long ago I figured there was no way I was ever going to finish those games so I just said fuck it and read a plot summary. I don't think I've ever gave much of a damn about the "plot" in a Castlevania game, but... haha. Wow.
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