Do you think recent games in general hold the players hand and have become simplified

[Edl01]

The origional X-COM was on steam for $1 over the christmas sale, so I decided to buy it. It was far to complex for me, the screen had so many buttons to click on and no explanation what any of it done, not just that but having to click everything one by one made it drag on sooooo much. I trialed and errored my way through it and kept dying, then in the end I decided "screw it, in the new one I can do all this in just a few clicks and this is just plain tedious".

Maybe I'm just dumb but I don't think games nowadays aren't dumbed down as much as they aren't designed so you need a degree in flying helicopters to play them. I enjoy a straightforward and fun experience more than a complex and frustrating one.

 

[Erttheking]

I don't see how a game being easy makes it any less fun (unless it's a game like Dark Souls where it's the point. Some games are about challenge, others are about escapism) *goes back to roasting people in Far Cry 3 with the flamethrower*

 

[scorptatious]

Most mainstream games have become a little "hand-holdy" in recent years, but there's a reason for this and from a marketing standpoint it's a good one. Mainstream games are created to appeal to EVERYONE - hardcore or otherwise. You have to keep in mind that most people who buy these games aren't looking for as much of a challenge as some of us are.
Still, devs try to appeal to the hardcore too. You can turn up the difficulty or shift some settings to make things tougher. I know that Skyrim had an option to turn off the quest markers.

And you can still find plenty of difficult games outside of the mainstream AAA market. Plenty.

Summed up my overall feelings on this issue.

Gaming is a bit more accessible than it was a long time ago. But there's still plenty of games that appeal to certain audiences. You just got to know where to look.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

gives you the choice

Yes, but you see, that's the problem. Choice! People aren't playing games the way I do, and haven't been playing them for as long, and that really pisses me off! I had to suffer through bad game design and dodgy controls and all those other hardships, so everyone else must!

...Granted, I think a certain amount of "dumbing down" is actually dumb, but the above seems to be the recurring theme....How DARE you let people play the game wrong!

Hopefully I have taken your post right! (It was largely a use of sarcasm to reinforce my post, right? I am not the best at reading tone! :S)

I agree, some games have gone a bit overboard with the hand holding! I hate it when you play a game, and during a cut scene, or during a mission/quest brief you figure out the answer, and can't wait to prove how clever you were, except then the game randomly gives you a guide to show you the way... or essentially just gives you the damn answer to the quest, so it wasn't so fun! (Like if the quest said: 'The way in which you must go, is to find a man who might know. He stands in a place where he see's many, and he'll give up a beer, for only a penny.' And you think: I know! It's the pub landlord in the cheap underground bar in oldtown... But before you can move, a member of your party just damn tells you the answer, and that you have to go to the bar... AND it will be marked on your map... :/

 

[Mike Richards]

I think that, while AAA games have trended more towards simplicity, it's simply that developers recognize that there's no single 'proper' way to design a game. There are many streamlined experiences and there are many drop-you-in-the-deep-end experiences, it all depends on what games you're talking about and how you define both.

But I think it's also a sign that not all games are being judged by the same metrics now. In the early days when the majority of games were more challenging, gameplay was the sole focus and things like story or atmosphere were a novelty. Combat or loot hoarding or even just navigation were the point, and if you simplified those there would be hardly anything left. But in a game were interacting with the story or exploring the world is the focus, simplifying those other elements is just a matter of making sure they don't get in the way of the thing you're actually supposed to be playing for.

Morrowind is a brilliant piece of work that I absolutely love, but I wouldn't want Mass Effect to behave like it because they're designed to be incredibly different experiences. You might enjoy one approach more then the other but that doesn't make it more valid. The popular trend may be simplicity right now, but there have always been and will always be popular trends just as there will always be outliers that try to do something different. It could probably stand to be a bit more balanced, but this current trend just like every other one before it stems from gaming exploring new things and seeing what it's capable of now. That's a good thing.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Well there's certainly a lot more flashing "Press b to open door" icons and "Press e to enter vehicle" crap like that, which doesn't need to appear every single time I get within activating distance of an action (although you could just solve this the COD way by not including any openable doors in the game)

And this video explains a lot of how game design has gotten a lot more linear:


We've taken so many steps backwards it's quite frightening!

 

[krazykidd]

Games have reached a wider audience because of features like these that help the less skilled players get to what they need to do quickly and efficiently. But I still can't help but look fondly on those days when I'd rage from a Cliff Racer ambush while finding my bearing on the map.

Less skilled? Or lazy? Because reading and following instructions is not a skill ( unless you are illiterate ) .Anyone could do that . More often than not , people don't want to reading the quest log and figure out where to go . Usually all the intructions are right there in front of you , people just don't want to take the 2 minutes to stop ,read and look .

OT: yes too much hand holding . But i don't blame the developpers , oh no , it's not their fault . The fault lies with the lazy gamers than want everything handed to them on a silver platter . Do nothing and feel like they are awsome . Then when a game comes out and don't hold their hands , they complain it's too hard ,*cough*Dark souls*cough*.

 

[veloper]

Yes, that's the general complaint from us oldhands. The rare exceptions like DS, prove the rule.

The magic game compasses aren't the big issue though. Those arrows illustrate the problem but the real dumbing down is the lack of new obstacles to figure out for yourself.

 

[SajuukKhar]

While I do think some games "hold your hand" more, I find that a lot of the supposed "hand holding" comes simply from the fact that technology has gotten better.

In many older games, it was nearly impossible to figure out where to go because of things like
-Poor overall graphics.
-Lack of maps, or low detailed maps, if maps were provided.
-NPCs that gave stupidly bad directions.
-Poorly marked entrances/exists to areas.
-Low fields of view.
-Items that blended into the game world making them enar impossible to find.

With the advancement of graphics, amongst other things, it has become SIGNIFICANTLY more easier to mark things far more clearly in the game world, eliminating a large amount of older game's difficulty caused by poor graphics.

The same applies to the so called "dumbing down" of video game mechanics. Many mechanics in older games existed solely because technology wasn't good enough to do anything else.

Its like saying that trying to text on a 10 year old cell phone is harder to do then on today's modern phones, well yeah, but that's only because cell phone tech 10 years ago sucked.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

In certain aspects, yes.

My most hated thing is awesome set-piece moments that can't hurt you no matter what you do.

Legendary is a great example of this. You know, that one game with Pandora's Box and stuff? No? Well, there's a moment early on when the box has first been opened and shit is going down. Hundreds of Griffons flying around killing stuff, a giant 300 foot Golem smashing the city and you running for your life. But guess what? You're safe. You can go hit one of the griffons in the face and he does nothing. It LOOKS cool, but the safety of it ruins the spectacle.

I also think it's true for super linear games like the current CoD games. Always telling you exactly where to go and win.

Other than those two examples, hell no. Fallout 3 would NOT be better with a shittier map and lack of basic tutorial.

Tutorials are a GOOD thing. Forced tutorials are another issue, but still.

 

[Uriain]

There has been a general degrade in difficulty, and I think it is happening for two reasons.

1) The general push towards "broad appeal" has caused the fairly quick death of intuitive, complex and well designed difficulty curves, in favor of "give them more hp/make them hit harder" drops and rises. With the focus on making money there is a good portion of the creativity which is stifled. You can call it "not in scope" or "ran out of time", but when triple A titles now rely on big set pieces to keep their audience entertained, it dilutes not only the players experience on a whole, but knee caps the developers into pandering, for fear of backlash, to a now "lowered bar" expecting audience (edit I didn't word this properly, but cannot think of a better way to word it)

2) Instant gratification. Frankly we are all a bit guilty of this, and while its not bad (who doesn't like to see flashy things pop up on their screen for doing something) it feels like there has been to much emphasis on the "quick and dirty" aspect of rewarding someone for something. This can go both ways, there are examples of achievements/trophies which are luducrisly hard/time consuming for small return, but by in large many of these "rewards" are not overly difficult to obtain.

My personal wish, would be to have games with the difficulty/complexity from the SNES/PS2 era and combine it with the tech/story telling/scope we have today. As an example:

Imagine if Mass Effect 1 (which was a great game) gave you the open questing sytsem of Morrowind, the Combat system of Gears of War (which I think has the best third person shooter controls out there) AND the Story it currently has (as it was a great story)

To me, that is where we should be, but not where we are going. I am hoping to be proven wrong with some of the titles coming out this year.

 

[Joccaren]

What would you do if you literally were just told the name of a cave you had to go to, and then try and find it on your own!? With the map the size of a small county!?

Here's the thing, you shouldn't just be told the name of the cave. For one you'd have the map with all landmarks on it, preferably with the fast travel buttons so that people who want to can fast travel others can walk. Would prefer if you weren't shown on your map, but had to find your way to places based off locations that you know of. Of course I'd make them a bit more sparse, but the ability to stand outside Whiterun, look at the map and say "Alright, what I'm looking for has been marked by the person who gave me the quest, and is just to the North East of Whiterun", then head in that direction to find it.
Additionally, verbal and written instructions should be there to inform the player of where to go. Roads with signposts should be abundant, as they are, and following a road even in Vanilla Skyrim will generally lead you to most of the caves and such, you just need to know which road to go down.
Worst case you should be able to hire a guide who will show you the way there. Of course saying "Here's a blank map, now get to Mistwater Grotto" is going to do f*** all for you, but giving you a map with Whiterun, Morthal, Markarth, Solitude, Falkreath - ect. and Mistwater Grotto marked, and saying "Follow the great North road from Whiterun until you come to an intersection with a trail leading to Riften. Follow this trail past Ivarstead [Not geographically accurate, doesn't need to be for this example] and then North when it splits at [Insert name made up for a waterfall here]. After a few minutes walking down this path you will encounter a small cave. This is Mistwater Grotto" should be more than sufficient to get you where you need to go.
And the map would be the size of a VERY small Country, not a ton larger than Vatican City. There aren't a lot of countries you can walk across the breadth of within 1 or 2 hours =P


OT: Yes and no. The option should be there for those who don't want to think but just want to watch a movie and press buttons, and it should be possible to turn off quest markers and such for those who want to play a game. Of course quest markers are only one of the issues. Using Skyrim as another example, the majority of the dungeons are quite boring. They're just a linear path towards a goal. No exploration, there is one path for you to take and you must take it. Kinda ruins half the fun of exploring dungeons. IMO most dungeons should be larger and non linear. This is a problem that has spread to the campaigns of almost every AAA game these days, and even a number of non AAA ones. Sure, it lets you make more levels, but I prefer quality over quantity. I enjoy being able to explore Rapture in Bioshock, even if it does still largely guide you everywhere you need to go. I don't enjoy "Exploring" most places in the Mass Effect games because I'm not exploring, I'm walking down a corridor.
Its not necessarily a bad change, but its one that I can't enjoy. It makes games into a Hollywood Cinematic experience with button pressing elements, which isn't why I play games. Its similar to the problem I've been having with AC3. Recently bought it and started it up, still only playing with Hatham, but its moving waay too quickly. Its like I spend 5-10 minutes per mission just heading to a quest point, doing action, heading to next quest point, then being teleported to where I need to be and told to watch a bunch of cutscenes. I've probably spent more time watching those cutscenes than I have playing, and its because such things have to look cool. They don't have to be fun to play, they just have to make it look like a Hollywood movie. The teleportation is the worst of it in the way of simplification. Start a mission. Do I have to find my way to the area and my target? Nope, I'm teleported into the area around 100m from my target.
It takes most of the fun out of the games really. Its why I stopped playing after a little over an hour in. It was boring. I wasn't playing, I was watching a movie, and that's what a lot of this simplification gives the effect of. I get its the sort of thing some people like, but its not for me.

 

[Nomanslander]

Yeah, I heard that swinging the expression "hand holding" around as if it was a dead cat is apparently internet speak for "I'm good at videogames, now notice that and be amazed"...

Sorry, being cynical. But there's some truth in this:

Truth? Yes! If the gamer is 12 and hasn't yet found a group of friends where he doesn't have to be vain with.

As for me? I'm bored with handholding, and me being bored =/= me being elitist pompous jerk. It's still just bored.

 

[PeterMerkin69]

I'd say that yes, a lot of games are too simple. To continue using Skyrim as an example, things like fast travel and map markers take a lot of the exploration out of the world, which seems self defeating, but only if you're actually interested in exploring and playing, and not just zipping along from scene to scene to see the story or whatever. There's a huge market for that, obviously, but I'm just not a part of it.

Unavoidable tutorials are inexcusable, but I wouldn't mind other forms of simplification so much if they were purely optional features. But that's just not the way the world works. Developers don't like spending resources on things players don't use, and if most players use fast travel and map markers, there's no incentive to provide adequate descriptions or clues for the few people who want to explore. So even if you simply don't press M, or turn something off in the options, chances are their presence will still influence the design and, thus, the way you interact with it.

Can you really blame Bioware for phoning it in with ME3's ending when only 42% of its players managed to see it? You're lucky there was an ending at all. As far as their bottom line is concerned, you may as well have teleported into a room filled with purple and green alien phalluses and a continuous laugh track. Hurr, lookit this gal, she done played the game all the way. What a moran!

Oversimplification is apparently an unavoidable consequence of a profit-oriented industry pandering to players who don't actually want to play. I don't blame developers for that, it's not like they can or should try to make people enjoy something they don't like, but I do have to wonder why those gamers are even bothering with the medium if all they want is passive entertainment.

It should be noted that Skyrim was a special kind of simple, in that the solutions to the few puzzles in the game were literally carved into the walls above the keystones. There isn't a facepalm big enough or hard enough for that.

 

[Uriain]

I'd say that yes, a lot of games are too simple. To continue using Skyrim as an example, things like fast travel and map markers take a lot of the exploration out of the world, which seems self defeating, but only if you're actually interested in exploring and playing, and not just zipping along from scene to scene to see the story or whatever. There's a huge market for that, obviously, but I'm just not a part of it.

While there is merit in not using fast travel, I don't think that it should be removed. Removing fast travel, or the ability to skip tutorials (when that option happens) is swinging to far in the other direction. Some people like to walk around and explore, battle creatures in "random encounters" and take in the world. Others like to experience the story/quests more than walking around. Both aspects are good, and both should be allowed to happen, as it doesn't take anything away from the "wanderer" if there is fast travel, as he doesn't have to use it.

Just my opinion on that particular aspect, as I believe there should be choice, as much choice as possible in your gaming options, as it allows you to enjoy your experience to its fullest.

 

[Nadia Castle]

Depends on the kind of hand holding you mean. Killing off those awful trial and error games is great (as much as I loved the old Syndicate game, too much of it revolved around try tactic, fail, spot obvious solution). The other extreme was its in name only reboot that literally walked you room to room to look at the graphics engine for six hours. There has to be a fine line between discovery and progression. Unfortunately too many games focus on progression. Still the best example to me is Wind Waker, there was an obvious line to supposed to walk, but the world is carefully blocked off what you weren't supposed to see yet, so you could still bolt off and explore the high seas if you we're in the mood without wrecking the narrative. Arkham City also came close but frustratingly had Batman narrate exactly how to progress through each level instead of letting you experiment with new toys.

 

[skywolfblue]

Do you think recent games in general hold the players hand and have become simplified?

No.

I think games have become streamlined and more intuitive.

Rather then relying on obtuse and obscure elements to make things difficult, a lot of games now have hard modes that challenge your reflexes, your tactics, and your creativeness in using the spells that you've been given.

While I do think some games "hold your hand" more, I find that a lot of the supposed "hand holding" comes simply from the fact that technology has gotten better.

In many older games, it was nearly impossible to figure out where to go because of things like
-Poor overall graphics.
-Lack of maps, or low detailed maps, if maps were provided.
-NPCs that gave stupidly bad directions.
-Poorly marked entrances/exists to areas.
-Low fields of view.
-Items that blended into the game world making them enar impossible to find.

With the advancement of graphics, amongst other things, it has become SIGNIFICANTLY more easier to mark things far more clearly in the game world, eliminating a large amount of older game's difficulty caused by poor graphics.

The same applies to the so called "dumbing down" of video game mechanics. Many mechanics in older games existed solely because technology wasn't good enough to do anything else.

Its like saying that trying to text on a 10 year old cell phone is harder to do then on today's modern phones, well yeah, but that's only because cell phone tech 10 years ago sucked.

^ This.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

What would you do if you literally were just told the name of a cave you had to go to, and then try and find it on your own!? With the map the size of a small county!?

And the map would be the size of a VERY small Country, not a ton larger than Vatican City. There aren't a lot of countries you can walk across the breadth of within 1 or 2 hours =P

Check again fella!

Also... I like the map concept you replied with, but that is because, like you, I like maps, and can read them easily!
I am an officer in the military, and my job involves reading maps on a regular basis. I also teach map reading and orienteering to juniors as a part of their development! You would be surprised to find how many people don't have the visual mind needed to correctly read a map! Seriously, some people can literally stand in between 3 pylons on hills, see the pylons IRL, see them on a map/chart and not correlate the two to figure out where they are!

As much as it sounds good I think it would be a game changer for a lot of people!

 

[lapan]

No... I think it is what is perceived due to the natural progression of games...

Old 'classic' games involved 3-4 buttons, a D-pad and a lot of going right... Or simple corridors to run down! Games nowadays are gorram HUGE! There are countless ways to go, and places to see, and things to do...

I will use Skyrim as the example, because it's the Bethesda games that seem to be on people's lips... What would you do if you literally were just told the name of a cave you had to go to, and then try and find it on your own!? With the map the size of a small county!? Having the marker not only tells you where the next objective is, it also gives you the choice to ignore it and find something else, if you so wish!

Not completely true. While skyrim is huge in actual map size, the dungeon designs are rather straightforward and "corridory". Older games had smaller maps overall but often the dungeons were much more complicated to make up for it.

 

[Olas]

Yes, but to be fair in the old days navigation more or less consisted of continually moving to the right until you got to the end. Perhaps it's somewhat a necessary evil of having larger more complex open worlds and more complex mechanics. Or perhaps it just requires good level design.

I'm playing through Bioshock for the first time right now and Rapture is just an impossible labyrinth to me.