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What went wrong with Little Big Planet?
- Thread starter RP912
- Start date
crowphoenix
Banned
For me it was the floaty physics and the three plans. Made moving cumbersome and a chore for me.
digitalrelic
Banned
All I can say is I kind of hated LBP3. I bought it day one as I figured it would be the perfect game to play with my gf, but alas, it was shit. One of my worst day 1 purchase ever. I think I put about 3 hours into it.
Zomba13
Member
Yup. I love the idea of LBP. I love Sack Boy, I love the weird characters in the story mode, I love the look and feel of the customisable things but the game it sooo floaty. Rule one of platformers is it should feel good to play, rule two should be good level design.
Kenshin001
Member
Visually it never evolved, but instead devolved.
3 looked dreadful, barely any logical colour design to it. Meanwhile, Nintendo adopted the "real life hobbycraft" textured approach to Kirbys and Yoshi's, and showed what could be done with the concepts and not 0.5% effort art design:
Other than that, it also went SUPER COMPLEX with its creation tools (actual coding, circuit boards, etc) which is great for the hardcore minority of LBP superfans, but completely off-putting to everyone else.
Adopted? Looks like they ripped it off.
Acquiescence
Member
So how do you explain the commercial success of the first two games then?
did you read the OP?
I'm a huge fan of platformers, and I wrote this, a while back, about LBP's physics. In MM's own levels, I never really had a lasting problem with LBP's physics, to be honest. It required a bit of mental realignment, I guess, but once that was done, it was perfectly adequate. However, user levels weren't quite as discerning, and I think a bunch of times they made structures which were interesting to build but not actually much fun to platform off because they hadn't taken the physics into account.
However, I do think some physics of approximately that nature are kind of necessary for the sort of game LBP is; if you're going to have abstractly-shaped objects with their own physical properties, it's inherently going to inject some unfamiliar behaviour into the platforming as the platform you're propelling from is at an odd angle or moving in a strange direction; it just needs the level author to take that into account.
Winterfang
Banned
Gameplay wasn't that great.
astrogamer
Member
Rainbow Curse is hardly similar to LBP and while Yoshi has similar art style, a world made of arts and crafts isn't that original especially since Yoshi applies the yarn aesthetic to the gameplay
Nintendo > Sony > Nintendo?
I felt that the main purpose behind them was to serve as filler. Game was super short.
DistortionOfReality
Member
Tbh I know it's a massive part of the games, but the editor was a big turn off for me.
Pushed as such a big part of the game, but setting up a decent level was too fiddly, and often more obtuse as the series went on (not to mention my innate lack of imagination with platforming levels)
The fact that this area was clearly intended to be bigger than the single player, and that the level building community was such a huge part of the game, meant it was time for me to tap out.
Pushed as such a big part of the game, but setting up a decent level was too fiddly, and often more obtuse as the series went on (not to mention my innate lack of imagination with platforming levels)
The fact that this area was clearly intended to be bigger than the single player, and that the level building community was such a huge part of the game, meant it was time for me to tap out.
Acquiescence
Member
What, all two lines of it? I sure did.
The series clearly did jive well with its audience, since it has sold good numbers. From what I recall, the first game sold over four million copies. That's got to be a whole fuckton better than what Sonic has managed these past few years.
LBP 3 is the outlier. It flopped because it was rushed out, released at the same time all the annual big-hitters were coming out, and it reviewed substantially worse than previous installments.
Graphics Horse
Member
Yes they ripped it off Yoshi's Story and ...Clay Fighter respectively.
MrNyarlathotep
Banned
I've said it before, but what Sony SHOULD have done is gone all out and embraced sackboy as a Sony mascot, and installed LBP without the campaign / story on every PS3 instead of Home, and every feature they experimented in with Home been a LBP feature instead.
Let you customise your sackboy cardboard box better, award you new stickers / avatar features as trophy rewards, sell content packs, let you make your Home room your own personal LBP levels hub, etc etc etc.
Let you customise your sackboy cardboard box better, award you new stickers / avatar features as trophy rewards, sell content packs, let you make your Home room your own personal LBP levels hub, etc etc etc.
This and the floaty physics. I was excited to try LBP2 since it was on PS+ for free but got annoyed. Single player had its fun moments I guess.
The online was "waiting to connect" muffled little kids yelling and disconnecting randomly. Didn't care about the level creator since 1) it seemed too complex to easily get into and make an interesting level and 2) the physics being crap.
Tried Little Big Planet Karting since it was on PS+ too later and rage quit since it was about a half hour of "witty" characters talking and no racing. Deleted from my PS3 HD to make room for other games.
The OP says that LBP didn't hit the masses like Mario and Sonic.
Mario is the most popular, most critically acclaimed, and best selling game franchise of all time.
Sonic is a mangled and deranged parody of the 90s mascot platformer. It's the shame of the industry, limping along on the crutches of perverse nostalgia and perversions of other kinds.
I'm not really seeing why LBP would ever need or want to be compared to either of those. If it remained a game that scored ~9s and sold 3 million copies each, I think everyone would be content with that.
The Yoshi series has had handcrafted aesthetics for ages, since arguably Island itself. You don't really want to go down this path.
papercan55
Member
this 100%.
an absolutely disgusting way to treat your growing fan base, make an unfinished short mess of a game and then charge £60 for it and release it alongside far cry 4 and gtav which were both cheaper and finished products.
probably a good point, but he went there
orthodoxy1095
Banned
Tell me more about this core audience.
Rabid-Coot
Member
It got a little too weighed down by its legacy, its great being able to bring all the old assets into 3 but maintaining compatability with the previous 2 games community levels feels like more trouble than it's worth.
I have to think it hurts the series a lot that there are a ton of 2D indie platformers out now that are actually fun to play.
well it's a very complicated audience. you know, a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-you's.
The physics was terrible. I could never get pass it.
User created levels felt so cut and paste and disjointed.
Enemies never felt like enemies, just stuff moving around to avoid.
....but don't worry, we have Yoshi Wooly World for the beautiful craft aesthetics, "real" enemies and creative level design.
Mario Maker for user created content and classic Mario gameplay.
User created levels felt so cut and paste and disjointed.
Enemies never felt like enemies, just stuff moving around to avoid.
....but don't worry, we have Yoshi Wooly World for the beautiful craft aesthetics, "real" enemies and creative level design.
Mario Maker for user created content and classic Mario gameplay.
This. I bought a PS3 for LBP and was disappointed with how it felt to play. The framerate was also too low for a 2D platformer even though it was rock solid.
It's a cool concept and charming as hell. But they didn't nail the fundamentals.
Tyrant Rave
Banned
I haven't tried it in a while but it was broken for all of my friends and I. It's not the typical broken game hyperbole on GAF, it was a legitimate mess. It wiped out my save data once, it was difficult to get all of us into a room together, the actual netcode was awful, and there were bizarre visual glitches like the world turning orange for one player but no one else. I'm sure there's more but those are just a few of the bugs I experienced.
The games have always had kind of a subpar online experience (netcode has always been weak and LBP1 took some time to work properly online) but this was a new level of bad. I was extremely disappointed and I'm a pretty big fan of the series.
Pretty much this. I loved 1 and 2 but LBP3 killed my interest in the series (at least until a better game comes out). It's not that LBP3 was that bad, but it was flawed, bugged and incredibly short, had poor technical performance (at least on PS4) and was generally far less inspired than the first two. On top of that, things like not offering a way to play the campaigns from 1 & 2 within LBP 3 didn't help.
Also, the franchise didn't evolve enough. At some point, a clean cut with the past and a substantially new game should be made, on current gen consoles only. And they should do something about the floaty controls. I didn't bother me but it sure bothered a lot of other potential customers.
orthodoxy1095
Banned
Fascinating.
BlackBanditSho
Member
Completely agree.sörine;162313906 said:
;p
I was basically just pointing out that the ceiling for sales of a 2D platformer on a Sony console is lower than that of a Nintendo console and ::time travel:: a Sega console.
the OP was kind of loaded in that regard because like someone already pointed out the series has done relatively decent and comparing it to something like Mario or Sonic is kind of unnecessary.
Dr. Zoidberg
Member
This is the major issue. Plus I would add that people overestimate the value of the user-creation aspects. The vast majority have no interest in creating their own levels, and if you want to casually play a few user levels at random, you will find that most of them are simply not that well made. Most people will just quit trying after a few stinkers. Finally, while sackboy is certainly cute, he really has no "character" per se. The first two are good games but if you're not creative, it gets old. The whole arts and crafts aesthetic got old too.
Media Molecule invented arts and crafts.
Tyrant Rave
Banned
Yeah, a good chunk of the community levels are junk. MM did a pretty good job at highlighting the good stuff but it was hard to find good ones and I don't think I played any that compared to the story levels in LBP1.
It didn't help either that quite a few of the online levels were just copy/paste jobs. There were a million Mortal Kombat and shark survival levels that all used the exact same objects and creations except with different colors or music.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
The games are good and are made with a ton of heart. They're appealing on the face of it. But the problem is, the platforming is only "okay". LBP is one of those games that looks much more fun than it is to actually play.
The lack of tight, addictive platforming resulted IMO in a meh reaction from enough people so that on the creation side, it never reached critical mass for a lot of potential fans. It seems like most level creators just make things to show off what they can cleverly hack together, rather than make great platforming. (LBP may also inadvertently demonstrate that being a game designer is in fact really hard. It is not easy to create compelling gameplay people will keep coming back to.)
The lack of tight, addictive platforming resulted IMO in a meh reaction from enough people so that on the creation side, it never reached critical mass for a lot of potential fans. It seems like most level creators just make things to show off what they can cleverly hack together, rather than make great platforming. (LBP may also inadvertently demonstrate that being a game designer is in fact really hard. It is not easy to create compelling gameplay people will keep coming back to.)
GabeTheGrouch76
Member
On the point of it not being a hit back in 2008, I'd like to add that console 2D platformers were still kinda dead in the water at that time. It would take NSMB Wii a year later to really bring console 2D platformers back into the mainstream via its "psuedo-retro" approach.
As a big fan of the series, I think this is also true. I do remember revisiting LBP largely for completing the story and playing some of the user-created levels (usually the popular ones that were mostly clones of a specific type of game, like others have said). As for making the levels themselves, I didn't put much time into that either (and the levels I did make were nowhere near as elaborate as the showcased user-created levels); and that too unfortunately shows in the shared levels-Sturgeon's Law really does come into effect when you truly look into it (though MM Staff Picks does help alleviate that for a bit). And the playtime I put into LBP2 was nowhere near as much as I did to LBP1-compared to completing the story mode 100%, I've only done what, one playthrough of LBP2's mode, and I've spent much less time creating and playing user-generated levels. I've been thinking about finding time to revisit it, but even then I'd also have to stomach sitting through the hours of continuous patches MM usually deals out every now and then.
I do agree with this part though, when looking at LBP from a critical reception standpoint. MM's first two games were fantastic, the PSP and Vita entries were only a few bars down the ladder, and even LBP Karting, while technically being a reskinned ModNation Racers (which I also love, but haven't really put much time into), was still a good spinoff.
Sumo Digital's take with LBP3, however, seems to be that its design brief was a mission pack sequel to LBP2, with its focus on platforming and refinement of the existing tools, rather than a big leap like LBP2 was (create a level that could effectively be of any game genre), and even then its execution wasn't refined enough (bunch of bugs and glitches galore upon its initial release, and the game design --the implementation of the Sackimals being one of the more noticeable points-- not being up to par with the MM additions). From what I've heard still a good game (and I still plan to get it for PS3), but is really a step back as a sequel to the first two console games.
I'm really going to be disappointed if LBP3 is the note Sony/Media Molecule is going to leave this series on, because I really, really do love this series. Presumably (and preferably in my view), a PS4-exclusive third MM LBP title would give it a genuine leap into 3D movement and controls; it is in my view the obvious (final?) frontier the LBP formula has yet to expand into.
EDIT: As for the bits on the game's physics, it personally never bothered me in most cases (I only remember getting frustrated with how the game could sometimes lag over online connections, upon which the floaty jump physics were REALLY noticeable), but I do remember critics listing it as an inconvenience to the experience. So I take people's word for it that it turned a lot of people off from the game.