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

[Metalix Knightmare]

Yes I do, but in general I don't think it's a "bad" thing. The games in ye olden days could be pretty freaking complicated sometimes, especially if you don't have written instructions. Heck, just an optional (Key word there; OPTIONAL!) tutorial would make a number of those games a heck of a lot easier to get into.

Let's take for example Ultima 4. I recently acquired it and attempted to get right into it without first reading the manual. Simply put, I could not play it. At all. I stepped into a town, somehow started attacking some poor villager, and got stomped on by guards. I couldn't even work out how to quit the game! I had to alt-tab out!

Granted that was almost entirely my own damn fault for not reading the manual, but just quitting a game should NOT be more complicated than pressing the Esc key with these older games! A tutorial would have been GREATLY appreciated!

 

[goober1988]

Markers can be extremely, but only for navigation purposes. If there are markers in combat then the devs did something wrong, and they should try to make the game more organic.

This is pretty much it. It's how games have evolved. I grew up on Nintendo and classic games, now-a-days we have games which have emphasis on story or a certain aspect of gaming (like multiplayer for example). The range of video games has expanded since the days of old. There are games out there that "hold hands" but that is just a sub genre. There are a lot of other games that don't hold hands, specifically indie games (like super meat boy) that are hard as heck and have the classic feel. It's not necessarily that games have gotten soft, but that game formats and GUI's have expanded and evolved.

 

[goober1988]

Oops, quoted wrong post.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Absolutely. Assassin's Creed 3 practically broke my heart with its fucking stepping stones. Give the player some credit, let them work something out. And for those who say 'Well quest markers help some people, you can just ignore them', no, they ruin my experience because I'm trying to believe I'm a freerunning assassin with many ways to get things done and a brain that functions, and every quest-related branch and cart is adorned with a fucking green triangle or something. And the counters have fucking blinkers like you'd expect on a car! It makes me incredibly irate. Story as well, you go from place to place and never have any player agency, never decide what to yourself. You're told by other characters who orchestrate the plot, or decide within your own character in a cutscene. Although I suppose that's just linear games in general. FPSs are the same with directions that would initiate a facepalm in a child of 5 years and enemies that respawn infinitely until you interact with the one object that ends the scene.

Which is why I've been playing Dark Souls for the last couple of months.

EDIT: And to address older games being almost inherently restricting, yes, Mario goes from left to right, but they don't also have an arrow to the right that appears whenever you stop moving and text up the top that say "Move towards the right and occasionally up or down". Modern games are different because you can see the possibility of them being better. Mario is as non-handholding as a Mario game (2d platformer I'm talking) can be. There are no superfluous instructions like 'jump to hit crates'. Assassin's Creed 3 is about as overcompensatingly handholding as it can be. There's a difference between self-evident and overstated.

And an anecdote if anyone cares: Assassin's Creed 2 I think, there was a large, heavily defended building just standing around, and while I was screwing around I thought "I bet I'll have to get into that at some point", so it took me a little while but I got up the columns into the ramparts and finally had a good ol' time with the archers. I left secure in the knowledge that I could infiltrate the building. Later in the game, mission comes up, centred in that building. I give an inner smirk knowing my hard work had paid off. The game proceeds to show a mini cutscene where it explicitly shows you the way in. Ruined the moment.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

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.

And they were nice and brightly lit, were made of square tiles and only had 90 degree turns... The graphics repeated themselves too, so any switches to press or items to find stuck out like sore thumbs!

 

[Cheesus Crust]

I get pissed when the hand holding is what is stopping the game from being great. Case in point Ass Creed 3. I loved in Ass Creed 2 how it was something like "Okay there's your target, kill him." That was it, it pointed me in the right direction and left me to my own devices on how to approach and kill the target. Ass Creed 3 felt like the exact damn opposite of that.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Yes and no. You may or may not have been around long enough to remember it personally, but there was a horrific period in games where they became so ridiculously complicated without any assistance that a player was practically forced to buy the "strategy guide" which read like more of a scripted walk through of the most obscene hand holding you could possibly imagine just to get through a game. Thankfully, that period was a brief transition from the games that you could play on your own wits with no hand holding because they were - even the more complex ones - limited to a more simplistic state by the technology available and the extremely complex games we have now which are far less fettered by issues like disk space or processing power.

Believe me, whatever hand holding a game does with quest markers and such is far less aggravating than having to have a "book buddy" read your next steps out to you through the whole game because the game itself doesn't contain the information to be played on its own merits. It can still be over done, but the majority of game seems to find an acceptable balance to me. Some outliers are just disappointing one way or the other, but that's more in the margins in my opinion.

 

[Ryan Minns]

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.

Serious question but isn't Skyrim one of the smallest elder scrolls maps ever?


Skyrim aside my issue these days is people confuse genuine streamlining with dumbing down or butchering. All of these three things happen but if game A is streamlined it's fans scream that all games are improved as long as the dev says 'streamlining' as their reason for butchering or dumbing down and the same goes the other way

 

[TrevHead]

The way I see it is that AAA games are becoming more dumbed down in single player, while MP is becoming more complex through its competitive nature with MOBAs leading the way. Many ppl play SP to relax and lead around the nose by the dev and blast through asap and expect every game to have the usual convience trappings.. It isn't what I want from my SP games, I like playing at my own pace and thinking for myself, however I don't want to invest 1000s of hours getting competitive at a single MP game like a MOBA or Tribes, I played only EVE Online from 2007 to 2010 i'm done with that sort of commitment to a single game.

It's been awhile since I've played Morrowind but I can't remember getting overly lost, there's map markers isn't there?

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 developers , 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*.

That's the wierd thing as while many ppl said Dark Souls wasn't difficult but they hated the lack of a tutorial or couldn't work things out by themselves and found themselves banging their head against a brick wall in the graveyard or carpe demon.

(I'm not blowing my own trumpet here but) While I went into the game knowing to pick the Pyro and thieves key and had a rough idea about humanity, I didn't need a wiki to tell me how to play, it all seemed rather self explanatory just looking at the menus and testing things out. And it was figuring things out for myself that made playing the game so enjoyable not just the hard boss fights etc.

If what some ppl in the industry say is true like the Hitman and Dishonered devs about their playtesters, then the problem lies with who modern gamers just don't analyse gameplay problems the same way as what some of us old timers take for granted. Hopefully as more ppl play Dark Souls and indies like FTL they'll improve.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Serious question but isn't Skyrim one of the smallest elder scrolls maps ever?

Actually, based on the total map size, Morrowind is the smallest out of Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim.

Oblivion > Skyrim > Morrowind.

Here is a comparison of the height maps between games
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/69777065@N06/6350916624/

Morrowind only seemed large because of
-The super low field of view
-The incredibly slow walk speed
-The terrain that made it impossible to walk in a straight line for more then 3 seconds.