Mauricio_Magus
Banned
No, game design doesn't need to cater to you and your scrubbiness.
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Lives and continues have no place in games post-SNES/Genesis
- Thread starter Odoul
- Start date
And so, the entitled generation has spoke.
I remember an "article" a few years back on how by paying for the game, you where entitled to access at will all the contents in it from the beginning, be it guns, cars or even the ending. Who knew that kind of mentality would be not only prominent, but direct the changes in the "gaming" industry.
I remember an "article" a few years back on how by paying for the game, you where entitled to access at will all the contents in it from the beginning, be it guns, cars or even the ending. Who knew that kind of mentality would be not only prominent, but direct the changes in the "gaming" industry.
Lives are a rather archaic concept in certain aspects, I agree. Games like Rayman Origins/Legends would be worse off with them as failed attempts flow into new ones never breaking the pace, and I have no idea why games like Puppeteer has them for any other reason other than getting something out of it's pointless coin collecting.
Depends on the game, I suppose. In most cases, I would agree that getting a game over and exiting me to the title screen is usually stupid. But nothing wrong with forcing me back to certain checkpoints, however far away they are from my objective. Or if the levels are fairly short and self-contained, nothing wrong with lives and continues either.
But that game also has lives/continues.
Unforgiving checkpoint system is not a problem for DmC.
Rayman 1 is a perfect example.
The game was stingy with lives.
Continues? You get two. For the entire game. The game never offers you a way to gain more.
And the game was hard as shit anyway.
Run out of lives and continues and you're stuck on your last save. Forever.
Game would have been impossible to defeat without the 99 lives cheat.
This was a game aimed at children. Sadistic bastards.
Flachmatuch
Member
It is an industry. Content costs money - a lot of money in fact. Costs are also rising. If most people cannot access some piece of content, it will simply not be worth making it and it will not be made. As long as it's an "industry" and games are thought of as content you buy, they will have to become more and more like this. Well at least this is how the generic "management" methodology seems to look at this stuff. The extra content also has a place - in DLCs. And no, I don't like this, but I think that's how things are going and I think it is rational on some irrational level.
KojiKnight
Member
If there is no means to punish the gamer, the gamer will play through the entire content in an afternoon, and then they'll take the game and return it, where in best buy will resell it for $5 less with no profit going to the developers.
It's a balancing act. You can't just give someone a win without trying, and even with how "easy" most games are now, only 10% of people end up beating the games anyways.
BibiMaghoo
Member
This is often stated, and is not true at all.
You get better through trying, not through punishment.
It is easily possible to have a failure in a game without punishment, allowing something to be retried until you get it right, without making you lose x amount of time in progress. That is bad game design. It is also not helpful to a player that is failing.
Edit: I'll expand on this.
Picking door locks. Many games have this mechanic in various forms, that generally involve playing with an analogue stick and lining things up or turning them. Failure will result in failure of that task only, it doesn't move you down three hallways and a bunch of encounters. Having the same mechanic with in game death is perfectly fine, and causes minimum stress to the player, meaning it is more fun. There is no excuse to have a game that punishes a player in place of teaching them.
And now those children have now grown up and are probably beasts at that game. Same with Mario, Zelda, Contra, Megaman... we actually learned to play games back then
Whether or not we as adults have time to learn games now is another discussion, but the goal of a life/continue system is to teach you to learn from your mistakes.
K
kittens
Unconfirmed Member
Writing off an entire gameplay mechanic is silly.
AcceptableGhost
Member
digita1alchemy
Member
There's not nearly as much tension if you've got nothing to lose. Have you never had one of those "No lives, no continues, 10% health, final hit on the boss" moments? It doesn't get much better than that.
-MD-
Member
I'd write off regenerating health and not think twice about it.
Not even if it was a Wolverine game?
Outright Villainy
Member
I agree, not for every game but definitely when a game is trying to challenge you then punishing you for mistakes is an important aspect of that. This is also the reason I find it maddening when so many people find a lack of quicksaving to always be a flaw, whereas its a design decision that adds a tension that would be completely removed otherwise. Dark souls' difficulty would be almost trivial if it had quicksaves for instance.
CouchMaster
Member
Yeah try DMC3, its like the easiest of them all. And get the vanilla western version, not the special edition or JPN version. You'll enjoy it
I kind of agree to some extent. I mean, lives are fine in some games, but they just don't make sense for others. Besides, the origin of lives and continues were in arcades to make money (they're seeing a resurgence in iOS games due to the freemium craze- also just to make money). I wouldn't be sad to see them go.
Anticitizen One
Banned
This is what happens when a generation grows up with QTEs and tutorials
Every design call has its time and place. Though in this case I actually do think something like DMC's better off without them, lives/continues work better for games where it's relatively fast to replay stages or whatever, nothing where it'd regularly take you 30+ minutes to reach a boss fight that can murder the fuck out of you, not unless you can at least retain some of your progress akin to Demon's Souls and Dark Souls.
They're named after a terrible non-alcoholic beer!
C.Olimar788
Member
I disagree that they have no place, but they certainly don't need to be in the vast majority of games nowadays. Which is good, because they aren't. I mean, fairly mainstream platformers like Rayman Origins tend to not bother with them anymore, so...
Nintendo just needs to break their habit and we'll be set.
Nintendo just needs to break their habit and we'll be set.
Sir Ilpalazzo
Member
If the game is any good, you aren't losing "x amount of time". Death means you weren't good enough to make it past a certain scenario, so making your way back to where you died is your chance to improve your skill, which is fun. If a game isn't fun to replay, and there's no enjoyment in learning to beat it better than you did before, then it wasn't worth playing in the first place.
The example you're looking for is Super Meat Boy.
Failure yes, punishment no. You instantly go back to the beginning and thrown into the action. Because the levels are very short (usually less than a minute) the feeling of being punished is completely dulled and you just try again over and over until you perfect the level and get to the end of it.
A game that's willing to frustrate you can often be more satisfying than one that gently shuffles you back to a nearby checkpoint with no other penalties. The stress induced by penalties for failure makes you feel like you've accomplished something instead of just completed it.
It's called effort justification, and it also plays a big role in why a lot of people enjoy TV series, books, movies, etc. with convoluted plots.
Holy Order Sol
Member
Perfect.
Seriously. I just beat tlou on survivor, and that is probably the kind of low-challenge game OP is looking for. Unlimited lives and ridiculously generous checkpoints, and it's the hardest difficulty the game has to offer.
Lol, I agree that dmc is a solid game but to say that the console versions run like butter is ridiculous. It's the Pam spray or margarine to the slow-churned butter that was the previous dmc games.
Freezie KO
Banned
It raises the tension if there's some sort of drawback to not succeeding. Without starting over the level, you could just try the boss over and over again until you get it. There's no heart-racing close calls because there are no stakes.
I'm not suggesting they start your whole game over, but a little bit of "punishment" for poor play actually enhances the game design.
I'm not suggesting they start your whole game over, but a little bit of "punishment" for poor play actually enhances the game design.
TheBlueBomber
Member
Learn to play the game??
Dacvak
No one shall be brought before our LORD David Bowie without the true and secret knowledge of the Photoshop. For in that time, so shall He appear.
While they started as devices to limit your time playing arcade games, they eventually evolved into devices that put pressure on the player to succeed. Since games are virtual, there's nothing to risk but your time and emotion. Many games don't and can't rely on emotion (like most 2D platformers, for example), and so to give you a sense of urgency and put more pressure on the gamer, they use a lives & continue system. It's not always the best solution, but it's not a horrible one.
IdreamofHIME
Member
I just beat Crash Bandicoot 1 and that game has the craziest and most sadistic lives/continue system. Not only are some levels totally trial and error that just eat your lives...you can't always save the game at that particular level to play it again when you continue.
You can only save the game if you collect 3 hidden tokens in a level and then beat a bonus stage...and not every level as those tokens, so sometimes the game forces you to continue on without a save for backup. It's insane.
The whole thing is messed up, I'd love to know what ND were thinking when they came up with the system.
You can only save the game if you collect 3 hidden tokens in a level and then beat a bonus stage...and not every level as those tokens, so sometimes the game forces you to continue on without a save for backup. It's insane.
The whole thing is messed up, I'd love to know what ND were thinking when they came up with the system.
Bayonetta is definitely less tense. None of the games in that genre are really arcade-level intense or anything, but Bayonetta is more relaxed than DMC due in part to the more casual retry structure. "Similar" doesn't fit here.
goldenpp72
Member
Just when I thought challenge in games couldn't be devalued even further. Now even hardcore gamer are complaining about it.
Rickenslacker
Banned
I find myself getting more attached to games that do use lives/continues, the only thing I don't really like are limited continues (in consoles games at least, in arcade ports they're fine).
I got a lot more out of Perfect Dark Zero than I would have otherwise because of its harsh punishment. You wouldn't be able to save whenever you wanted, or get auto-checkpoints every several steps, no, the game expected you to know the level intimately to get through it on harder difficulties. Frustrating? Absolutely. Rewarding? Incredibly. It's not something I'd put myself through for most games, but having that limitation alone made the game a considerably more memorable experience than most other FPS I've played through the generation.
I got a lot more out of Perfect Dark Zero than I would have otherwise because of its harsh punishment. You wouldn't be able to save whenever you wanted, or get auto-checkpoints every several steps, no, the game expected you to know the level intimately to get through it on harder difficulties. Frustrating? Absolutely. Rewarding? Incredibly. It's not something I'd put myself through for most games, but having that limitation alone made the game a considerably more memorable experience than most other FPS I've played through the generation.
Perfect.