Poll: Do you guys actually enjoy the dumbing down of games ?

[Bellvedere]

I don't think making a game more user friendly equates to dumbing it down.

Mass Effect was a bad example. I would only occasionally go through my inventory in Mass Effect 1. It was so overfull and unless you kept on top of getting rid of stuff you didn't need it would take forever to empty it again. I think on normal difficulty I would have actually looked through it less than 10 times and I never bought stuff from shops. Mass Effect 2 I actually thought was more complex, with the ammo and class/character specific powers.

Also I don't see the need for multiple classes in Dragon Age either. Having on 3 classes and being able to continuously distribute skill points and stat points made it much better than deciding on stats at the beginning and having a class that is pretty much set for skills. The way you build your character can alter the way you play in dramatically especially since there is no way to max out stats or skills.

Continually dying is no fun. But if it's really tedious I'm not going to be playing it for long. Games need to be user friendly or there will be no one buying it. I think it's possible for a game to be challenging and engaging without having to sit through an hour tutorial or read a massive manual. That's a massive turn off when starting a game. It's why I've still not passed the fifth level in nethack.

 

[MasterKirov]

It can also be seen in games such as the first Command & Conquer game versus C&C 3. In C&C 1 it made sense to combine different unit types to get a good well-rounded army whereas it's perfectly possible to steamroll people in C&C 3 using an army of Mammoth or scorpion tanks.

That's actually not so bad. Wait until you see the Undead Eldrich Abomination that is C&C 4.

 

[Amarok]

Mass Effect 1's inventory was a clusterfuck, and the thousands of different ammo types meant nothing. Straight damage increase against organics and synthetics were the best choice every time.
Same goes for guns, thousands of different guns, only 4 gun types, go for the one that does the most damage.

I honestly don't think Mass Effect 2 lost anything by way of deepness here.

 

[Antiparticle]

It sucks! A perfect example of this is the recent Aliens Versus Predator demo. I played both AvP1 and AvP2 a lot, so I was really looking forward to this new game. But after a few minutes of playing the demo I discovered this was not my beloved AvP gameplay anymore. In the place of the freeform killing from the old games there's now a Fuck You button. Just get behind your opponent, press X, and a lengthy instant kill animation will play. Sure, it looks cool (the first few times anyway), but it takes no skill. They even display the button on the screen so you know exactly when you should press it, reducing combat to just circling each other and mashing the X button.
But as someone else already said, most people are dumb, so they'll just go "lololol I ripped this guys head off I'm so awesome". And at the end of the day the developers just care about sales and making money. We can't really do much to stop this trend, except by speaking with our wallets. I for instance am not planning on getting AvP3.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Certain kinds of "dumbing down" are good. Most interface improvements that make it take less effort to articulate what strategy you want to use into what the game interprets you as wanting to do are good.

For instance: the number of units you can select in an RTS can be onerous, if the limit is low. In Warcraft it was... 9. Starcraft's 12 was an improvement, even though it arguably "dumbed down" the game by making it a bit easier to control large forces. What also occurred with Starcraft was the addition of control groups and other ways to make commanding larger groups a bit less annoying. That "dumbed down" the aspect of the game which was battling the UI to articulate simple commands like "everyone attack that thing" or "everyone go over there" or "you lot, attack that position." I doubt many people would say that wasn't an improvement, or that Starcraft would have been better if you could only select one zergling at a time. Truly, only the masters would succeed with the massive zerg rush then.

Someone might say "well, the pros used things like high templar psionic storm and other caster type abilities and those didn't need very sophisticated UI; and in fact more sophisticated strategies that didn't involve just a massive human wave attack of pick-your-favorite-counter-unit-to-whatever-the-other-guy-is-massing would have been more prevalent if the game controlled more like the original Warcraft." But that misses the point. For one, it's not true: the human wave attack in addition to special units was more effective than either alone, and that wouldn't have changed with clunkier controls. Secondly, and more importantly, even if it were true, the awfulness of the controls shouldn't be what is deciding a player's battlefield strategy. If it is desirable to make a certain strategy less effective, actually make it less effective or riskier, or have some other kind of disadvantage that makes sense in the context of the game rather than it simply being more taxing on patience or one's wrist to execute. If it takes an absurd number of button presses to accomplish what would be a 3-5 word command if the AI could actually recognize text or voice commands, then that is a problem. The kind of "dumbing down" that removes that kind of bullshit is quite welcome. The removal of things like that is where I generally see gaming headed.

There are some games that have all the computational involvement of being an accountant, and are about half as fun. Those are the kinds of games that could use "dumbing down." However, I welcome games that might challenge our abstract spatial reasoning, timing, and things of that nature.

It can also be seen in games such as the first Command & Conquer game versus C&C 3. In C&C 1 it made sense to combine different unit types to get a good well-rounded army whereas it's perfectly possible to steamroll people in C&C 3 using an army of Mammoth or scorpion tanks.

That sounds less like dumbing down and more like pisspoor unit balance (I'm not really experienced with either of those titles.) However, I would note that even having just one kind of unit can be interesting if choices about how you control them matter and are numerous enough. For instance, if the unit has a few different ways available to attack, has variable effectiveness at different firing angles and on different terrains, and if the game has sophisticated enough objectives and mechanics, then that could be very interesting, and perhaps even a more intellectually challenging game than any of the RTS with lots of kinds of units that all do more or less the same thing but have different amounts of hitpoints and damage, can hit different sorts of targets, and with a few special disabling or area effect abilities thrown in for good measure. But from what little I've gathered about C&C, it's not the sort of game that is terribly sophisticated beyond "how do I build as much as possible, what do I build, and where do I tell them to go?"

But in principle, you don't need that many different kinds of units to make something interesting. A ship-to-ship battle in the age of sail could be interesting, for example (unless both captains decide to make it the vulgar brawl that it certainly can be.) You just need a lot of different things to matter, some in what might not be obvious ways. Going beyond "Firebats kill Zerglings which kill marines which kill just about anything if you have enough of them, but aren't particularly good at killing any single kind of thing, but do well enough against hydralisks, which kill firebats and just about anything in the air, including battlecruisers which kill most things but are utterly destroyed by ghosts and anything that can hit air unless accompanied by enough medics, or can be made irrelevant with stasis field or killed by devourers+hydralisks or mutalisks..." is a good thing. Trying to take advantage of a frigate's speed and maneuverability to wear down a very dangerous ship of the line sounds more interesting to me than that rock/paper/scissors/automobile/wrench/corrosive acid/baking soda/mushroom design.

 

[oppp7]

Hell no. I like it when games are complex. And I'm tired of this RPG trend that games need to be more about storyline. Example 1: Guild Wars. "Hay, letz relees Guild Wars Tew instead of moar ecchspanshun pacs because Guild Wars iz bcomin tew complects." It's been several years and Guild Wars still hasn't been updated. I mean, I love the idea of playing as Charr, but as of now that's about the only thing that would make it better than maybe one expansion pack, but considering it could have been about 4 or 5 by now, that argument isn't holding up anymore. And what's wrong with it being more complex? New players will learn it the same way we did; play the tutorial for Prophecies first, then another expansion, onward. It's a MMO. That means it's supposed to be a huge, complex game.
Example 2: Pokemon. At least they seem to get it right. The games have never just been completely revamped for no reason. I mean, they are remaking some of the games, but they aren't making them incompatible with the rest. And the more Pokemon they add the more complex it is. In just about every game they add a new mechanic for capturing or evolving a new Pokemon. Examples would be Milotic, Feebas, Magnezone, the honey trees, and many others.

 

[ChipSandwich]

Mass Effect 2 was streamlined. Fallout 3 and Deus Ex: IW were dumbed-down. There's a difference.

Mass Effect 1's inventory system was clunky and tedious, and removing all of that burdensome micro-managing made the game better off.

In Fallout 3, with a bit of searching, you can pretty much get every skill to 100, V.A.T.S as a gameplay mechanic was incredibly shallow (still fun to watch a slowmo headshot though), and a lot of other things like traits and post 100 skill ranks were also removed for some reason. Deus Ex: IW would have been a decent (not super, but decent) game of it's own accord, but unfortunately it had to be in the shadow of a deep and rewardingly complex system presented in the first game.

That said, I don' really judge a game based on complexity. If I think it's fun, then it's fun.

 

[Gladion]

Oh, I realize most people find it boring, but I suppose that's why I hate most people. The masses are scared of actually having to use their head, even slightly.

First of all, I'd like to adress that I, myself, don't like trying to get my head around massive amounts of menus/very complicated gameplay mechanics. It has less to do with it being complicated but more with it being no fun. I understand you do find that enjoyable, and I respect that. But I won't respect being called stupid (although I realize this wasn't directed towards me, as you stated later in your post), just for not enjoying an overly complicated gameplay mechanic, because I'm not.

I love extremely complicated books - I read Hawking, I read Nietzsche. But I don't like this in my games, that's all. I believe many people are like this (yes, I always try to convince myself that people are not completely stupid, no matter how many times I get proven wrong).

 

[Weaver]

Oh, I realize most people find it boring, but I suppose that's why I hate most people. The masses are scared of actually having to use their head, even slightly.

First of all, I'd like to adress that I, myself, don't like trying to get my head around massive amounts of menus/very complicated gameplay mechanics. It has less to do with it being complicated but more with it being no fun. I understand you do find that enjoyable, and I respect that. But I won't respect being called stupid (although I realize this wasn't directed towards me, as you stated later in your post), just for not enjoying an overly complicated gameplay mechanic, because I'm not.

I love extremely complicated books - I read Hawking, I read Nietzsche. But I don't like this in my games, that's all. I believe many people are like this (yes, I always try to convince myself that people are not completely stupid, no matter how many times I get proven wrong).

Ah, that's quite alright! I understand where you're coming from. I'd imagine most people want to game as a form of recreation and that over-complicating things would likely make the game strenuous instead of relaxing.

What Nietzsche piece is your favorite? Beyond Good and Evil is probably my top pick. It just had such wonderful rhetoric and I found it's message empowering. Though I suppose his ideas are more fleshed out in Thus Spoke Zarathustra - but I still prefer Beyond Good and Evil, such a powerful work.

 

[Gladion]

What Nietzsche piece is your favorite? Beyond Good and Evil is probably my top pick. It just had such wonderful rhetoric and I found it's message empowering. Though I suppose his ideas are more fleshed out in Thus Spoke Zarathustra - but I still prefer Beyond Good and Evil, such a powerful work.

I suppose my favourite work of his is The Antichrist (the original German title is 'Der Antichrist', I think it's the same in English, isn't it?), although I especially like Thus Spoke Zarathustra a lot, too.

Wow, we've gone seriously offtopic

 

[squid5580]

Well considering Bioware listened to the fans. Made cuts that people all over gaming forums requested and still haven't been able to please everybody. What more can you possibly ask from them?

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I think that using the Mass Effect 2 example lacks weight because they didn't dumb down the game. The quality in the story, visuals, and voice acting are evidence that no dumbing down was done. I think that the micromanaging in Mass Effect 1 was interesting; however, I love RPG's and even I started tugging my hair out near the end of the game when customizing my team on the Normandy. Sure I 'll miss picking stuff for my team; but the trade off is that you can look more deeply at the story and enjoy the gameplay more.

exactly, the micromanaging wasn't the best in the first one either, it was do-able, but not very good as it is, mass effect 2 was able to concentrate way more on smoother better combat and and the story, which is why i loved that game, your just being a bit nostalgic about it, if you dont enjoy the games, then dont play any of the popular games, that seems what you are pointing at, since they make it "more accessible" and less micro managing involved, doesn't mean the game is worse or dumbed down, just more user friendly

 

[Mr.Lucifer]

There's a difference between dumbing down and getting rid of annoying features.

 

[Mash101]

Simplicity draws a bigger audience, WoW showed us that. Will I do like complex systems it draws one major flaw: time wasting. The one thing I'm really starting to hate is this digitized era of gaming. Borderlands releasing DLC a few days after release charging for it? Now they've gone to far. Making the exact same game with less quality like ODST did to Halo 3 or this continuing sports/guitar hero craze? Now you've lost me. This quick game/DLC for a buck is killing the quality of mainstream games but the companies don't care as long as they still get your money, or your parents money (like 80% of the current Guitar Hero audience).

 

[More Fun To Compute]

If games can be as simple as the creators want while still being interesting and keeping whatever meaning they should have then I don't care, in many ways it is better. If it is too simple or has too much pointless complication and filler content then the game has a problem either way. I don't have to buy them and didn't buy Mass Effect 2 after finding Mass Effect already a bit boring so I'm in an easy come, easy go mood about the whole situation.

 

[Premonition]

It's not as much dumbing down as it is fixing or changing the pace of the game to give the player the experience they wanted them to have.

 

[Bloody Crimson]

Sometimes a game can get "To easy" but at the same time I don't freakin care. Just try to keep the game's basics, will you? So keep the items, armor, weapons and stats in an RPG and then you're set. You can add cool stuff, but the cool stuff doesn't always work.

So just keep the basics, add the things that make it "Your Game", add story and characters and you've got a decent game half the time. If you manage to "Dumb down" that, you've degraded us all.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Lately I've seen a lot of positive reviews of and opinions on Mass Effect 2. To me it's just the last step in a trend which I've seen, and hated for a long time.
In order to make the game more 'accessible' and 'streamlined' the inventory management of Mass Effect 1 where you had to manage weapons and armor across teammates have been ripped out of the game entirely.

A similar example was the butchering of the Deus Ex franchise with Deus Ex 2 where lock picks and multi tools were combined into a single tool, all ammo types being discarded in favour of a uniform ammo resource and the skill system was done away with entirely.
( Ok, you can claim there's a minimal amount of management in the form of armor customization, but I completed the game just fine without *ever* concerning myself with this. I never even bought anything from a vendor, meaning it's reduced to a useless gimmick)

Similarly, one can look at Dragon's age which reduced the complex class-based systems seen in previous fantasy games from Bioware with 3 classes (was it ? I simply stopped playing this game before I was 10% done with the story).
This seemed even more simplistic than the original class system of the KOTOR series which also used a custom non-D&D set of rules.

It can also be seen in games such as the first Command & Conquer game versus C&C 3. In C&C 1 it made sense to combine different unit types to get a good well-rounded army whereas it's perfectly possible to steamroll people in C&C 3 using an army of Mammoth or scorpion tanks.

This, of course is seems even more shallow and awful when held up against the original Starcraft game in which there seems to be a counter to almost every unit and general strategy.


Sure, there are some counter-examples to offer such as CoD 1 to CoD 4 where perks and weapon upgrades have introduces a level of customization which was non-existent before. But to me it seems a pretty general trend that games get dumbed down nonetheless.

So, my question is, am I the only person who gets put off by this push towards "cinematic" experiences at the cost of core gameplay mechanics being dumbed down ?

I'm really getting sick of this "dumbed-down" idea in gaming. Just because a system is streamlined, does not mean that it's dumbed-down.

In case of ME2: before the change in order to be ready for combat I had to individually check the armor and weapons of each of your six team-mates, buy new upgrades, and generally do what people do in a RPG. This meant that I spent roughly 10-15 minutes of every hour AWAY from the combat of the game, doing things akin to a desk job. That is not the point of a game. If I wanted to do logistics, I'd work at UPS. And if I didn't do that? Well then the game would go from fun to impossible.

In ME2, they made the upgrades simple and easy to use, which meant that I could spend more time ACTUALLY PLAYING THE GAME. You still require skill to win, it's now just easier to get your squad to do what you want, and you don't have to spend hours in total making sure that they have the absolutely positively best gear.

this. there is a massive difference between dumbing down and making a game smooth

just because the game is more streamlined now doesn't mean you need to throw a pissy elitist fit, big deal, play all your old games then if your in so desperate need for a "challenge" or, i'd recommend demon souls, as its one of the more challenging and complicated games i have played as of late