Contextual gameplay

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't know if I'm phrasing it right but I mean the way in whichyour characters actions are determined by context rather than what button or combination of buttons you press. Now I'm more or less new to the 7th generation of gaming and maybe this has been discussed to death, but 3D platforming has more or less been killed by contextual gameplay, right? You don't press anything to jump anymore, all you do is keep running forward. Push the analog stick up, hold down to run and Edward Kenway runs up a wall, jumps across to a roof, swings from pole to pole, lands on a tree branch, runs up to the canopy, swings across vines, skips along some poles and goes on to climb up ledges. And there's technically no way of fucking this up. All you do, quite literally, is run forward, occasionally toggling the stick to correct direction - even if most of the time it corrects itself. What am I being tested for? It looks pretty, but where's the skill in that?

That's just an example but just as there's contextual platforming (i.e. run and the character will do the rest) there's contextual stealth, which also beats its own purpose. Edward crouches automatically in tall grass, sneaks automatically around corners, blends automatically among other people. Not only does the game not require any skill whatsoever, it also does the thinking for you.

And contextual combat. You don't have to aim or even position yourself, mash square until everything is dead while the game auto-aims for you. Another button is used for countering, dodging or rolling - whichever benefits the situation best. Again, it looks pretty, and there's a measure of skill in timing the pushes... but not that much of a challenge. It's mostly about looking good.

I don't mind terribly that games should take some short-cuts around gameplay and look good at it but fuck if this doesn't impair most of the thought process and skill-building that used to come from actually having to use and master a very limited set of tools. I certainly felt more accomplished after going from one end of an area to the other end Prince of Persia: Sands of Time than after playing Assassin's Creed 4. I'm not generalizing about this generation, I know of some very tough games that cater not, but it does seem to be a moderately growing trend.

TL;DR What do you think of the use - and abuse - of contextual gameplay?

 

[shrekfan246]

I don't know if I'm phrasing it right but I mean the way in whichyour characters actions are determined by context rather than what button or combination of buttons you press. Now I'm more or less new to the 7th generation of gaming and maybe this has been discussed to death, but 3D platforming has more or less been killed by contextual gameplay, right? You don't press anything to jump anymore, all you do is keep running forward. Push the analog stick up, hold down to run and Edward Kenway runs up a wall, jumps across to a roof, swings from pole to pole, lands on a tree branch, runs up to the canopy, swings across vines, skips along some poles and goes on to climb up ledges. And there's technically no way of fucking this up. All you do, quite literally, is run forward, occasionally toggling the stick to correct direction - even if most of the time it corrects itself. What am I being tested for? It looks pretty, but where's the skill in that?

Technically, that's the way Assassin's Creed has always been. It's more about not launching yourself off into nothingness than actually needing to manually time each and every jump, which honestly would be tedious and obnoxious considering the general control schemes of the AC games.

I'll lament the death of 3D platformers as much as anyone else, but Assassin's Creed is more of a melting pot of genres than anything else, which I think is where the big problems with its controls lead to you making this thread.

That's just an example but just as there's contextual platforming (i.e. run and the character will do the rest) there's contextual stealth, which also beats its own purpose. Edward crouches automatically in tall grass, sneaks automatically around corners, blends automatically among other people. Not only does the game not require any skill whatsoever, it also does the thinking for you.

I don't mind this either, to be honest. Needing to hold down a trigger or button to ensure that your character wouldn't stupidly stand out in the open in a patch of bush you were intending to hide within? There's not really any "skill" in that, either. The skill is in knowing when to approach targets, or when you're out of their sight and search range, and avoiding them. It's in knowing the opportune moment to strike. Admittedly, that's something the Assassin's Creed franchise in particular has stumbled with in the past few years as well, since they've made the characters so proficient at combat that there's no real penalty to getting into a big cut-up.

And contextual combat. You don't have to aim or even position yourself, mash square until everything is dead while the game auto-aims for you. Another button is used for countering, dodging or rolling - whichever benefits the situation best. Again, it looks pretty, and there's a measure of skill in timing the pushes... but not that much of a challenge. It's mostly about looking good.

As far as the combat is concerned, one of the biggest problems with the AC combat in my mind was that it's long been a simplified version of the Batman: Arkham combat system, which is a system that... just hasn't really worked for the franchise. It's poorly implemented, it doesn't suit most of the main characters, and their way of "fixing" it in the first place was just to make countering so broken that you can fight your way to victory just by spam countering every fight with the hidden blades, and you don't even need to care about all of the silly stats and whatnot they've slapped onto all of the other crap.

TL;DR What do you think of the use - and abuse - of contextual gameplay?

There are very few times where it has bothered me. I generally don't even mind context-sensitive buttons. So long as it's fun or engaging, I'll probably find myself enjoying it, regardless of how much it "challenges" me. There are games I play for spectacle, there are games I play for challenge. There are precious few which offer both, but for everything else there's Mastercard I just go with it if it feels like it fits the game in question. I'm not usually someone who plays games for the challenge anyway. I'll go back on a higher difficulty if I really love a game (Mass Effect, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, DmC, Kingdom Hearts, and Diablo III come to mind), and I enjoy things like DMC or Dark Souls just fine, but it's hardly because of their difficulty ceilings.

 

[Brownie80]

I think it's a way of fitting all the functions on to one controller. Contextual Gaming is just a cheap developer shortcut to not run out of button space. It's appreciated sometimes, but it lowers the level of immersion. In real life, I don't automatically crouch in tall grass when I walk through it. I still love Assassin's Creed IV, but the amount of times I'm running to catch an animal and I end up climbing a tree then leaping into deep water infuriated me.

 

[Elfgore]

I play games first and foremost to have fun. I enjoyed and still enjoy the hell out of Assassin's Creed IV, even if the combat, free-running, and stealth is ridiculously easy. I'm the guy who plays COD and BF story modes on easy. I can understand quite easily why people may enjoy games for the challenges they offer. Dark Souls being a huge example. I finally decided to play it and found it boring and more aggravating. But I could see why people would enjoy it for the talent it requires to play it. But like I said above, I prefer fun over challenge.

So I don't think there is any abuse of contextual gameplay. I just don't believe it is for everyone, especially older gamers who played games in the 80s and 90s.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I play games first and foremost to have fun. I enjoyed and still enjoy the hell out of Assassin's Creed IV, even if the combat, free-running, and stealth is ridiculously easy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm having a blast with Black Flag. Boarding ships and conquering forts is fun as hell. And I don't usually mind contextual platforming... but when it fails me, and it does fail me - specially in those aggravating tailing missions - I cannot help but think "this wouldn't happen if *I* had complete control of when my character jumps/climbs/crouches and when he doesn't".

 

[gargantual]

I don't know if I'm phrasing it right but I mean the way in whichyour characters actions are determined by context rather than what button or combination of buttons you press. Now I'm more or less new to the 7th generation of gaming and maybe this has been discussed to death, but 3D platforming has more or less been killed by contextual gameplay, right? You don't press anything to jump anymore, all you do is keep running forward. Push the analog stick up, hold down to run and Edward Kenway runs up a wall, jumps across to a roof, swings from pole to pole, lands on a tree branch, runs up to the canopy, swings across vines, skips along some poles and goes on to climb up ledges. And there's technically no way of fucking this up. All you do, quite literally, is run forward, occasionally toggling the stick to correct direction - even if most of the time it corrects itself. What am I being tested for? It looks pretty, but where's the skill in that?

That's just an example but just as there's contextual platforming (i.e. run and the character will do the rest) there's contextual stealth, which also beats its own purpose. Edward crouches automatically in tall grass, sneaks automatically around corners, blends automatically among other people. Not only does the game not require any skill whatsoever, it also does the thinking for you.

And contextual combat. You don't have to aim or even position yourself, mash square until everything is dead while the game auto-aims for you. Another button is used for countering, dodging or rolling - whichever benefits the situation best. Again, it looks pretty, and there's a measure of skill in timing the pushes... but not that much of a challenge. It's mostly about looking good.

I don't mind terribly that games should take some short-cuts around gameplay and look good at it but fuck if this doesn't impair most of the thought process and skill-building that used to come from actually having to use and master a very limited set of tools. I certainly felt more accomplished after going from one end of an area to the other end Prince of Persia: Sands of Time than after playing Assassin's Creed 4. I'm not generalizing about this generation, I know of some very tough games that cater not, but it does seem to be a moderately growing trend.

TL;DR What do you think of the use - and abuse - of contextual gameplay?

Yeah there's a bit of thumbstick programming abuse in some 3rd person western titles, and spunkgargleweewee. This is what draws folks to either twitch FPS or Platinum/Namco/Capcom combat games where pressing different combinations of buttons with precise timing, or aiming and adjusting correctly actually still matter.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'm not a huge fan of it. I can see the appeal and I can see why they choose it. After all, the level design of Assassin's Creed really doesn't lend itself well to a Prince of Persia styled control scheme. Personally, though, I just don't like it and figure (most) games that do it just aren't for me. Sure, there have been exceptions, such as the Arkham games, but they generally work with the control scheme and mechanics better to actually deliver more meaningful and/or exciting gameplay experience. Most of the time, though, I just get bored too quickly.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well it's part of the whole "cinematic everyone wins without trying" design modern games go for, and I do not like it, especially the delays this puts into the action/reaction and it gets absolutely infuriating when the game decides to do actions you never told it to.

I don't know why but devs seem to have forgotten the feel of the game trumps everything else that comes next, do not fucking leave issues with action response and false moves for a later date because that is glass shards in underpants sort of horrid.

 

[Zhukov]

That's not so much contextual gaming as it is just Assassin's Creed being Assassin's Creed. Fro better or for worse.

Although of course I'm sure other games out there do it from time to time.

I never really minded the auto platforming. The combat is shit on a stick though. Always has been.

 

[Aceskies]

I haven't played ACIV but I don't understand what's the problem with that. Game mechanic must be as simplest as it can, because the difficulty should come from the dynamic. I mean, AC would be too easy if the goal (dynamic) were to jump all the things you can, no matter where you go or what you jump. But it's not. Sometimes you have to escape the enemies so you have to achieve the best way to go away from them, jumping from one building to another or hiding through the people on the street in the right moment. It just don't work if you go straight and run so it's not easy.

Anyway it's true that it has some fails at the gameplay. I always think combat system is a shit. The only thing you have to do is learn when the enemy will attack you to do counter-attack, and that only happen with the hardest enemies. It's not a good gameplay although it seems complex when you do it: animations are very amazing and complex, but you are doing an invisible Quick Time Event.

 

[Ryan Hughes]

I don't know if I'm phrasing it right but I mean the way in whichyour characters actions are determined by context rather than what button or combination of buttons you press.

Phrasing it right? yes and no. I know that you are getting the phrase from the 'contextual' button press, but even that is a bit of a misnomer. "Context" just means something outside of but alongside the "text," and in art, a "text" is literally any full work. Seriously. A novel, a painting, a sculpture, a board game including the instructions and the pieces, these are all referred to as a "text." From that, you cannot have something happen inside of a game that is contextual.

In terms of gameplay though, what you are describing is nothing new, and actually happens to a certain extent in every game. I learned long ago on my SNES that there were two types of games: games that required timed, accurate button presses, and those games that did not require them. So, Street Fighter was built around these timed button presses, while Final Fantasy could be largely ignored while you went to answer the door, even without pausing (if the game was set to the 'wait' battle mode.)

Sid Meier famously said that "a good game is a series of interesting decisions," the main issue between SF and FF being the time limit given to the player in order to make those decisions. In SF, you may have a few frames of animation to make a decision about what to do. FF compensates for its lack of a time limit by allowing more potential choices for the player to make.

Though make no mistake, in both cases it comes down to merely giving instructions to the player character and having the character act out those choices. It is the same for Assassin's Creed. You are merely giving instructions to Edward Kenway, and those instructions are being carried out on-screen. No matter what a developer does, pressing a button on a controller will always take far less work than actually stabbing some poor person with a hidden blade. Even assuming such a thing is possible, pressing a timed sequence of buttons to launch a special move in SF is far easier than doing that special move yourself. Gameplay is always just a representation, that is all. It is just that some games -like Final Fantasy- embrace the fact that they are representations, while others prefer to give some kind of illusion of more direct interactivity.

It is not that one method is better than another, these are just simply two different approaches. Assassin's Creed sits somewhere in the middle. Requiring timed button presses, but also allowing much automation of the player character under specific circumstances. If this is not for you, then it is simply not for you, there is nothing wrong with that. In the end, every game has a different level of gameplay connection to its player character, but none of them should really be disliked because there is disconnection between the controller input and what happens on-screen.

 

[Casual Shinji]

There's way too much enviromental graby bits for the platforming to not be automatic in some way. However if this is your first AC game you might be unaware that the series used to have a separate Sprint/Free-Run button along with the standard Run command. This meant you could just run around the environment without free-running if you got too close to a wall. Only doing so when you pressed the A-button to clamber up structures. It had it's faults, but by making free-running constant whenever you want to move fast, you're fully depended on the contextual mechanics to not screw you over. Which unfortunately will happen from time to time.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

*snip*

I agree completely with you on this. Although I've always called it "rail combat" or "rail platforming", your term sounds a little bit more all encompassing. Honestly, it's not even a matter of skill, it's a matter of control for me. It feels like it's taking the control of the character out of my hands and all that I'm choosing is which rail I currently want to follow along. The most irritating thing in the world is to be playing AC and trying to jump forwards and to the left when the game decides that you actually want to be jumping straight forward and snaps you to the forward rail.

It also feels far less cool when you're free-running through a city and all of those flips, leaps and such are happening completely independent of your input. I never feel like I'm doing any of that, all I'm doing is telling the character to go into freerun mode in a general direction. Batman: Arkham Asylum does exactly the same thing with its combat as someone already mentioned and it bugs the hell out of me.

As such it's really a trend that I'd love to see more games move away from. I like it when as much of my character's actions are dictated by what I tell them to do, and the game isn't just trying to guess what I want them to do. It's pretty much without fail that the games with my favorite gameplay do this, and largely why I prefer a lot of games on older generations. Dark/Demon's Souls is a good recent game that does almost none of this though. The only exceptions are backstabbing and parrying, which still require a fair bit on the player's input

 

[Pink Gregory]

There was some mighty unnecessary streamlining in between AC2 and AC3.

The combat wasn't difficult by any stretch, but then they added those killstreaks in Brotherhood...urgh. At least give me a reason to be sneaky.

Same with the free-running. Again, not difficult or complicated by any means, but at least you had to press a button to jump. Now, Assassin's Creed with Tomb Raider-esque controls would have been interesting, but would it have impacted the flow?

But that being said, AC3 was a misstep, and I still don't really know why they decided to change those things.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

TL;DR What do you think of the use - and abuse - of contextual gameplay?

First off, Assassin's Creed probably wasn't the best game to go after. As you note, it contains platforming, stealth, and combat - it's at least three different types of game in one. AC's attractiveness has always been from being able to take whatever approach you want to a mission rather than the quality of the controls. In most AC games, I tend to ignore a lot of the plot/main quests and spend my time exploring, climbing, and jumping about having fun. The plot - and main mechanics - are secondary to just messing around. The controls are great for just messing around. ^^

Of course, I bailed on the series after Brotherhood. No European setting, no interest. **shrug** Now, Brotherhood I will replay just to climb the Colosseum again.

Anyway, actually on topic....

Elder Scrolls making the "Talk" button and the "Pick Up/Steal" button the same button is really, really, really annoying.

Walk into a shop in Oblivion or Skyrim, walk up to talk to the shop keeper, accidentally mouse-over a random item sitting on the shopkeeper's desk, and BAM - you're being arrested for stealing when you were just trying to talk.

In Divine Divinity, when you pick up an item in a store (accidentally or intentionally) the shop keeper interrupts and says "oh, you're interested in that?" and immediately opens the shop window with the icon on the object picked up. It prevents the player from getting in trouble for stealing over an accidental button click.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

TL;DR What do you think of the use - and abuse - of contextual gameplay?

First off, Assassin's Creed probably wasn't the best game to go after. As you note, it contains platforming, stealth, and combat - it's at least three different types of game in one. AC's attractiveness has always been from being able to take whatever approach you want to a mission rather than the quality of the controls. In most AC games, I tend to ignore a lot of the plot/main quests and spend my time exploring, climbing, and jumping about having fun. The plot - and main mechanics - are secondary to just messing around. The controls are great for just messing around. ^^

I don't think I can take whatever approach at all. Half the story missions in AC4 are "follow the guy" or "follow the ship", and you have to take a very strict approach lest you get spotted randomly and start all over.

In any case the thread wasn't meant as an attack on AC in particular, I was just using it as an example. I really think streamlined/contextual/rail controls, or however you want to call them, are a bit of an abuse these days.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I don't think I can take whatever approach at all. Half the story missions in AC4 are "follow the guy" or "follow the ship", and you have to take a very strict approach lest you get spotted randomly and start all over.

I can't comment on AC4 (I didn't get AC3 because I have no interest in parkouring on American architecture) specifically, but in the earlier games, one could typically choose if they wanted to "follow the guy" on the ground or on the rooftops and if one wanted to use pure stealth or distractions to avoid detection. I loved roof-running, so I almost always followed that way. 90% of my kills in AC2 were "death from above" style by dropping off a roof directly onto my target, killing him, and then running like hell to escape the massive pile of guards trying to murder me right back.

Of course, on occasion the game would be like "no!" and slap my hands away from the controls. That always sucked. I remember the end of AC2 being really frustrating for that reason (the game wanted me to do it the "right" way and threw a pout when I didn't wanna play that way).

In any case the thread wasn't meant as an attack on AC in particular, I was just using it as an example. I really think streamlined/contextual/rail controls, or however you want to call them, are a bit of an abuse these days.

Fair enough. AC certainly has flaws, don't get me wrong (see above). However, I don't think AC was trying to be a platformer. A stealth game, yes, but the parkour is less about precision (like, say, Mirror's Edge) than just being a fun way to get around.

Also, I'm actually kinda hard pressed to think of other contextual button games. Elder Scrolls (and the talk = steal issue) was the only other one that came to mind. I don't play a lot of games that use a lot of contextual buttons aside from a generic "interact" button.