Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

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MarsDragon
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby MarsDragon » Wed Feb 19, 2014 11:56 am

Castlevania plots should never get much more complicated than "kill Dracula".

...okay, exception made for "you are teenage anime Dracula, try not to be evil".

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Mongrel
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Mongrel » Wed Feb 26, 2014 8:41 pm

It's behind a paywall, but the most salient bit was quoted by Skels:

Skeletor wrote:Hedge Fund Wants Nintendo to Make Mobile Games
Writes to President Iwata: Think of Paying 99 Cents 'to Get Mario to Jump a Little Higher'

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1 ... 0303908038

"We believe Nintendo can create very profitable games based on in-game revenue models with the right development team," Mr. Fischer wrote. "Just think of paying 99 cents just to get Mario to jump a little higher."
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François
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby François » Wed Feb 26, 2014 9:05 pm

First time I catch myself hoping Nintendo employs ninjas.

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Smiler
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Smiler » Sun Mar 02, 2014 6:43 pm

Its fun watching the people who for the past few months have been screeching about QTEs and holding RE4 up as the high water mark for the series when it comes to them play the new release on PC. It turns out no, RE4 probably has the most QTEs, and the most of the blink-and-you-die ones in the series. RE5 only had the cutscene leading up to the final fight, and even in its most ridiculous RE6 had huge ass QTEs that you would have to literally take a nap to miss because you are given a good minute to complete it.

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Blossom
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Blossom » Sun Mar 02, 2014 7:35 pm

People are holding RE4 up as the high water mark? Most of my awareness of that game is that it's the worst thing ever with QTEs.
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Disposable Ninja
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Disposable Ninja » Sun Mar 02, 2014 9:31 pm

That is literally the exact opposite of everything I have heard and known since RE4 came out.

Also when RE4 did its QTEs it was still new and fresh and not played out old garbage.
For the White Witch!

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Classic
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Classic » Sun Mar 02, 2014 9:37 pm

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure QTEs were getting stale back when RE3 came out.

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Blossom
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Blossom » Sun Mar 02, 2014 9:53 pm

And RE4's QTEs are just objectively terrible, who the fuck was saying these were awesome even when it came out?
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby IGNORE ME » Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:23 pm

People are holding RE4 up as a high-water mark for the RE series, not as a high-water mark for QTEs. RE4's QTEs blow and everybody likes them about as much as they like excessive acronyms.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Classic » Sun Mar 02, 2014 11:30 pm

To be fair to RE4's shitty QTE's, they are sort of an extension of the remedial CQC. Or at least, I think they're meant to be. You're meant to be able to see a LASER coming low and think, "O, I better hit up."

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Niku » Mon Mar 03, 2014 1:35 am

which is exactly the problem

the laser hallway is the only good part of the resident evil movie franchise

the laser hallway is a qte in re4

people are getting things conflated
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Classic » Mon Mar 03, 2014 2:27 am

I thought there was also the naked apple of some actresses people find attractive?

Irrelevant:
I've never entirely understood why rhythm games are exempted from the QTE umbrella.
I feel like part of what makes something a QTE is whether or not it offends the player. Like, we call the Quantic Dream Interactive Movies QTE-based games, but we don't apply that negative term to say, Zack and Wiki.

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zaratustra
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby zaratustra » Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:41 am

For the same reason Mario wouldn't be an interesting game if you only had to walk right.

Sure, the boundaries are flexible, and it's possible some game will make a QTE that is not merely a way to keep player adrenaline up during cutscenes. Walking Dead did, for instance.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Mongrel » Mon Mar 03, 2014 9:53 am

zaratustra wrote:it's possible some game will make a QTE that is not merely a way to keep player adrenaline up during cutscenes.


Isn't that already the case? Like in Tomb Raider they use QTEs for the finishing moves in the set-piece boss battles. And, arguably, in a hybrid form throughout the game for stealth melee prestige kills (maybe those don't count because you trigger them manually?).
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Bal
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Bal » Mon Mar 03, 2014 10:13 am

There are good examples of QTEs out there, but I think we can agree that ones that just kill you if you fail are not on the list. From Software made a game called Ninja Blade that was largely overlooked, and had what you might call bonus QTEs during certain cut scenes. If you did well you would keep more health, or have less enemies to fight when it was over, or something related to the QTE, but if you failed it was just harder once the game kicked back in. It wasn't an amazing game, but that aspect was done fairly well.

God of War had a lot of good QTEs too, largely because most of them were just interactive finisher cinematics where you got to sort of control how you brutally finished off a boss or large enemy. They were also pretty logical, and some of the first to be so. Rotate the stick to perform a twisting or turning motion. Mash light attack to stab multiple times, heavy attack to do something big. Depress both thumb sticks to gouge out Poseiden's eyes. That kind of thing.

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zaratustra
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby zaratustra » Mon Mar 03, 2014 10:21 am

Mongrel wrote:Isn't that already the case? Like in Tomb Raider they use QTEs for the finishing moves in the set-piece boss battles. And, arguably, in a hybrid form throughout the game for stealth melee prestige kills (maybe those don't count because you trigger them manually?).


Bal wrote:God of War had a lot of good QTEs too, largely because most of them were just interactive finisher cinematics where you got to sort of control how you brutally finished off a boss or large enemy. They were also pretty logical, and some of the first to be so. Rotate the stick to perform a twisting or turning motion. Mash light attack to stab multiple times, heavy attack to do something big. Depress both thumb sticks to gouge out Poseiden's eyes. That kind of thing.


OK, that's the secondary function of QTEs - give the player the feeling of agency in a point of the game that doesn't have any. OOH IT'S LIKE I'M REALLY GOUGING OUT THOSE EYES. are you? Can you just go around gouging eyes of other enemies? But because you pressed the button, you feel like it was YOU that did it.

And notice how all of these are finishing moves. Why? Because the result is the same no matter what you do: a dead enemy, perhaps with a slightly different ragdoll to flop around.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Mongrel » Mon Mar 03, 2014 10:29 am

Well, luckily the TR ones had some good points that prevented me from hating them. If you failed them, you didn't die immediately, but you took some damage and the fight was prolonged (you had to deal regular damage to again set up the QTE finisher) and carried a risk of dying (i.e. you run out of gas). Plus, usually you had to successfully complete the same QTE 2-3 times per boss fight.

So they USUALLY weren't the "You can sleepwalk through this", "Give you a meaningless feeling of agency in a cutscene", variety. Though there were some "falling!" mini levels and level bridges where they did have the "Mash this now or you die" type of QTE, but those were fortunately not too often and the time window managed to avoid being too brutal or too generous.
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Bal
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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Bal » Mon Mar 03, 2014 10:39 am

I'm not sure what your point, or counter-point here is. I said that QTEs sometimes work as finishers, and then you said "Ah! But those are all finishers!" so... yes? If you're saying they can't work in another context, possibly that is true.

I know Lords of Shadow fucks this up (along with nearly everything else) by giving you mid fight, big damage QTE things you can activate, but if you fail you take damage and the enemy heals so you can stun them for the QTE again. I can think of few instance where a QTE couldn't have been replaced with interesting gameplay outside of a cut scene, though I did appreciate them in Shenmue/2 during the chase equences and suchlike where they were used. Funnily enough the game that coined them did them better than almost everyone to come after.

One game I would point to that probably handles them the best is MGR:R. Most times you have access to the Zandatsu function, which is a kind of manual QTE/finisher thing that you have to earn, and then you are occasionally faced with simple QTEs that flow naturally from the gameplay. For instance using the ninja run to run up Metal Gear Ray's barrages of missiles. It's technically a QTE, but you always have the ninja run, you'd just being asked to use it for special effect. Sometimes you are prompted to use an execute maneuver, but that's always the same command, so that's not really a QTE, or it doesn't feel like one. The only really QTE feeling stuff in that game is when you're asked to mash a button to suplex a mech or something, but you get to suplex a mech, so I have a hard time getting upset by that.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby IGNORE ME » Mon Mar 03, 2014 1:16 pm

Revengeance has some pretty nasty examples too, like the way you sometimes have to try the same prompted sequence multiple times in a row to make a boss finally die, or the way the parry input is suddenly completely different.

I've got some ideas about how to make QTEs less trash but one of the big ones is simply to make them not mandatory, unless you really are playing DDR or Dragons Lair.

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Re: Unforgivable Sins of Game Design

Postby Niku » Mon Mar 03, 2014 1:28 pm

Please insert sped-up version of Dragon's Lair to be played on a DDR pad set to driving techno here, please.
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