Sacrificing your game in the altar of streamlining.

[zinho73]

Almost everything can be compared to sex and streamlining is no different. It is a good thing, even a desirable one, but when done in the wrong way or forced can be painful and full of undesirable consequences.

Some great (and not so great ones) games of recent are all guilt of taking too much from a game in order to make it accessible. I will start with some examples and you can follow with some of your own.

Diablo 3 ? several exaggerations were made in that game, but to me the worst offender in terms of streamlining is character development. There is none. Yes, you can choose skills, but there?s is little sense of ownership of your character and no risk in experimenting. Some people love that, but you simply cannot call your game an action RPG without RPG elements ? it is part of the challenge to have flaws in your character and make ?wrong? choices, so you can do your best and discover new ways to do things. There will always be the min/max crowd, but completely abandoning choices in building a character is only the laziest way to appeal to that crowd, not the smartest one.

SimCity ? this game is full of bugs and some of them could have been easily avoided if the desire to streamline wasn?t so powerful. What if players could plot the bus lines? What if players could zone the patrol area of their police and fire trucks? ? if your AI cannot make it, let the players do it, rule number one for simulations everywhere before the streamline disease.

XCOM: lot of good decisions on this one, but equipment loadout was very poor, offering very few choices and killing a lot of the strategies available for the player. At least separate upgrades for armor and weapons should?ve been available. Or the ability to pick up items on the ground, Or both.

I don't know, games nowadays shy away too much from complexity, sometimes with little regard to the target audience. Simulation and RPG players can sure deal with some more options to do things. Balance people, balance. Things are a little different now (after several patches) but Diablo 3 was a game that offered zero challenge in its first 40 hours (probably even more)and you can run out of interesting things to do in 5 hours in SimCity - those are huge departures from the original gameplay of those games.

 

[Sixcess]

Few things fill me with such dread as when the devs of an MMO say that they're going to streamline some part of the game. Rarely it's not a bad thing, but usually it's synonymous with dumb down

Blizzard seem to be repeat offenders, presumably in their ongoing quest to have every person on the planet playing WoW. For me Cataclysm ruined WoW. There was no more sense of exploration - you entered a new zone and were handed all the fast travel points on a plate, but you'd hardly need them since you'd go to quest hub 1 and complete those quests, then be herded to quest hub 2 to complete those, and so on ad nauseum. No exploration, no risk of getting lost, no chance of finding little quest lines off the beaten path. if you tried going to a slightly higher level zone you'd get no quests until you were exactly the 'correct' level.

And the quests themselves... you'd be sent to kill 10 ogres, and said ogres would be literally around the corner, on the other side of the hill from the quest giver. If you had a boss to kill you'd either have an overpowered NPC along to do the heavy lifting or one shot it in a scripted event. It became, as I saw one player describe it, "a game that beats itself."

It was such a relief to get to Outland and some oldschool levelling, but they're planning to update fuck that up with the next expansion as well.

I haven't been back to WoW since before MoP launched. Just reading the beta comments on the latest (streamlined) version of the talent system was depressing enough.

Dishonourable mention to Turbine for 'streamlining' the Mines of Moria. Players were complaining that it was too hard so they made it brighter and blocked off some routes so that people wouldn't get lost. So "A Journey in the Dark" is now "A Journey in the Slightly Poor Light", and you shouldn't get lost, because it's not like even Gandalf wasn't sure of the best route through Moria, right?

 

[krazykidd]

Few things fill me with such dread as when the devs of an MMO say that they're going to streamline some part of the game. Rarely it's not a bad thing, but usually it's synonymous with dumb down

Blizzard seem to be repeat offenders, presumably in their ongoing quest to have every person on the planet playing WoW. For me Cataclysm ruined WoW. There was no more sense of exploration - you entered a new zone and were handed all the fast travel points on a plate, but you'd hardly need them since you'd go to quest hub 1 and complete those quests, then be herded to quest hub 2 to complete those, and so on ad nauseum. No exploration, no risk of getting lost, no chance of finding little quest lines off the beaten path. if you tried going to a slightly higher level zone you'd get no quests until you were exactly the 'correct' level.

And the quests themselves... you'd be sent to kill 10 ogres, and said ogres would be literally around the corner, on the other side of the hill from the quest giver. If you had a boss to kill you'd either have an overpowered NPC along to do the heavy lifting or one shot it in a scripted event. It became, as I saw one player describe it, "a game that beats itself."

It was such a relief to get to Outland and some oldschool levelling, but they're planning to update fuck that up with the next expansion as well.

I haven't been back to WoW since before MoP launched. Just reading the beta comments on the latest (streamlined) version of the talent system was depressing enough.

Dishonourable mention to Turbine for 'streamlining' the Mines of Moria. Players were complaining that it was too hard so they made it brighter and blocked off some routes so that people wouldn't get lost. So "A Journey in the Dark" is now "A Journey in the Slightly Poor Light", and you shouldn't get lost, because it's not like even Gandalf wasn't sure of the best route through Moria, right?

While i do agree with everything you said about WoW , the amount of money they got from that game alone is more than enough to compensate for losing the initial fanbase . So i think WoW is more of an exception . When dumbing down a game grants you billions of dollars ...

OT: can i say final fantasy please? They turned into games that play themselves . I'll admit that i still buy their games ( even the bad ones * cough * FFX-2 , FFXIII-2, FFT advance *cough* ), but not for the gameplay , soley for the story . However their fall from grace make me sad since i've supported them since the original Final fantasy .

 

[Rack]

I'm on the exact opposite end of this. Depth is all about making interesting choices, the more work you have to do to get to that choice the shallower the experience ultimately is. Streamlining lets games get at that depth and the best games are streamlined to a razors edge. Sometimes games will strip out depth along with complexity and that can be a poor tradeoff but by and large I will always support attempts to remove needless complexity.

 

[zinho73]

OT: can i say final fantasy please? They turned into games that play themselves . I'll admit that i still buy their games ( even the bad ones * cough * FFX-2 , FFXIII-2, FFT advance *cough* ), but not for the gameplay , soley for the story . However their fall from grace make me sad since i've supported them since the original Final fantasy .

Man, Final Fantasy XIII fits like a glove in the streamlining addicts group. Great call.

 

[zinho73]

I'm on the exact opposite end of this. Depth is all about making interesting choices, the more work you have to do to get to that choice the shallower the experience ultimately is. Streamlining lets games get at that depth and the best games are streamlined to a razors edge. Sometimes games will strip out depth along with complexity and that can be a poor tradeoff but by and large I will always support attempts to remove needless complexity.

I guess the problem might be on the definition of "needless".

 

[Sixcess]

While i do agree with everything you said about WoW , the amount of money they got from that game alone is more than enough to compensate for losing the initial fanbase . So i think WoW is more of an exception . When dumbing down a game grants you billions of dollars ...

True, but for me that only makes it worse. I don't believe dev teams should be slaves to every whim of the playerbase - that can only ever end badly - but Blizzard really do treat WoW players with at best indifference and at worst contempt, like when they ignored constant pleas for server mergers on underpopulated/unbalanced realms for literally years. It's like "yeah, piss off if you don't like it, there's another million suckers waiting to take your place."

It's weird - I used to enjoy time spent in WoW but I was never truly dedicated to it as some are, and yet whenever I read one of Ghostcrawler's posts about his vision of the game (which was the only one that counted and fuck anyone who thought differently) I wanted to strangle the arrogant sod.

 

[Aeshi]

To say that the ability to fuck-up is "deep" is like saying that a "Kill X of Y" quest is "deep", no it's not, it just shows that the developer in question is trying to make you do the same thing over and over again to try and pad the game out.

Old games had "You can't escape the death trap because you didn't go through the Desert to get to the Temple to get the old boot to throw at the Cat (who only appears once and if you miss him never shows up again) to save the Rat who eats through your ropes (now please start the game all over again so we can technically say this game has 70 hours playtime)"

New games have: "Kill 10 Angry Rats to proceed (and then do it 100 more times so we can technically say this game has 70 hours playtime)"

People just like to pretend the former is better out of nostalgia (and I'm willing to bet anyone who tried the former today would have a mob demanding his head on a pike)

 

[Rack]

I'm on the exact opposite end of this. Depth is all about making interesting choices, the more work you have to do to get to that choice the shallower the experience ultimately is. Streamlining lets games get at that depth and the best games are streamlined to a razors edge. Sometimes games will strip out depth along with complexity and that can be a poor tradeoff but by and large I will always support attempts to remove needless complexity.

I guess the problem might be on the definition of "needless".

For me it's any complexity that doesn't lead to an interesting choice, or any that could be simplified while still offering the same or a more interesting choice. A choice only counts if all (or at least more than 1) of the options are valid. Choices in which only 1 of the options is ever valid always fall under the heading of needless complexity.

 

[zinho73]

To say that the ability to fuck-up is "deep" is like saying that a "Kill X of Y" quest is "deep", no it's not, it just shows that the developer in question is trying to make you do the same thing over and over again to try and pad the game out.

Old games had "You can't escape the death trap because you didn't go through the Desert to get to the Temple to get the old boot to throw at the Cat (who only appears once and if you miss him never shows up again) to save the Rat who eats through your ropes (now please start the game all over again so we can technically say this game has 70 hours playtime)"

New games have: "Kill 10 Angry Rats to proceed (and then do it 100 more times so we can technically say this game has 70 hours playtime)"

People just like to pretend the former is better out of nostalgia (and I'm willing to bet anyone who tried the former today would have a mob demanding his head on a pike)

In a Role Playing Game the possibility to fail is key and can add a lot of depth and replayability. In Planescape, death was a part of your character development. In Dark Souls is part of the learning process and adds to the tension of every decision.

I kind of agree with your point, but to me it is not related to failure, it is related to hoops. Players have to do this conga line of things in order to advance - that's lame. I like how Dark Souls handles the matter - you can skip a lot of content or do a lot of things in any order you desire and it is still possible to advance in the game.

Hoops are a sub-product of streamlining. In fear that the player might get lost or frustrated, designers line up your objectives and your path, offering you a safe and monotonous experience.

 

[shrekfan246]

Few things fill me with such dread as when the devs of an MMO say that they're going to streamline some part of the game. Rarely it's not a bad thing, but usually it's synonymous with dumb down

Blizzard seem to be repeat offenders, presumably in their ongoing quest to have every person on the planet playing WoW. For me Cataclysm ruined WoW. There was no more sense of exploration - you entered a new zone and were handed all the fast travel points on a plate, but you'd hardly need them since you'd go to quest hub 1 and complete those quests, then be herded to quest hub 2 to complete those, and so on ad nauseum. No exploration, no risk of getting lost, no chance of finding little quest lines off the beaten path. if you tried going to a slightly higher level zone you'd get no quests until you were exactly the 'correct' level.

And the quests themselves... you'd be sent to kill 10 ogres, and said ogres would be literally around the corner, on the other side of the hill from the quest giver. If you had a boss to kill you'd either have an overpowered NPC along to do the heavy lifting or one shot it in a scripted event. It became, as I saw one player describe it, "a game that beats itself."

It was such a relief to get to Outland and some oldschool levelling, but they're planning to update fuck that up with the next expansion as well.

I haven't been back to WoW since before MoP launched. Just reading the beta comments on the latest (streamlined) version of the talent system was depressing enough.

Right... except there are quests that are off the beaten path.

And quest variety is higher than it ever was back in Burning Crusade.

Hubs were always there, in no greater or lesser number than they are now. It's simply easier to continue because you actually get to grab every quest from a hub at once instead of going out, killing fifteen monsters, running back to turn it in, and getting another quest from the same guy or someone next to him.

Exploration is encouraged, especially in Pandaria where you once again can't fly until you reach the level cap.

And the talent system was laughable. You'd get scoffed at if you were using anything except a cookie-cutter build for your spec, and a large number of the talents were either required, stupid choices, or flat % increases to spells/abilities. The "streamlined" version actually has an impact on your class now outside of "Fireball deals 5% more damage" or "You gain 4% more haste".

Is WoW a little simpler than it was back in 2007? Sure. But that's because it was obtuse as fuck back in 2007. When I first started playing, I got all the way to level 70 on a warlock without even knowing that hit rating was a required thing, because fuck-all of the gear leveling up to that point had hit rating on it. Haste, crit, spell power, spell penetration, spirit, intellect, none of those things were explained in-game. You had to read up on them in secondary places like MMO-Champion or Elitist Jerks just to know what the hell you were supposed to be doing. And for the most part you still do, since classes and specs all weigh stats differently and it's never explained in-game which stat combination is better for what class. At least now they tell you in-game what percentage you have left until you've reached the hit cap for your class.

You can go on hating WoW and Blizzard for 'ruining' the 'glory days' or whatever, but I, for one, am glad that the game has been "streamlined".

 

[Sixcess]

Right... except there are quests that are off the beaten path.

A few, granted, but only a few. I'm talking revamped Azeroth here, no idea about the Cata zones or Pandaria.

And quest variety is higher than it ever was back in Burning Crusade.

Also true, but there's so many needless mini-games I can never shake the feeling that the devs are terrified that their players have such short attention spans they'll get bored and log out if they're not hit with a new vehicle based mini-game ever ten minutes. The fact that it's literally impossible to fail many of these quests doesn't help either.

Hubs were always there, in no greater or lesser number than they are now. It's simply easier to continue because you actually get to grab every quest from a hub at once instead of going out, killing fifteen monsters, running back to turn it in, and getting another quest from the same guy or someone next to him.

Exploration is encouraged, especially in Pandaria, because you once again can't fly until you reach the level cap.

This I have to disagree with. Yes there were hubs, but you weren't pushed from one to the other as zealously as you are now. The example I always refer back to is Silverpine Forest, which pre-Cata was one of my favourite zones, but was turned into a ludicrously linear succession of scripted set pieces. I could almost literally take a map of that zone and draw the exact route that my character has to follow, and I don't mean hub to hub, I mean literally step by step. It's not a place to explore anymore, it's a movie set or a flat stage backdrop. The entire zone could be done as a 60 minute cutscene for all the freedom it allows you.

You can go on hating WoW and Blizzard for 'ruining' the 'glory days' or whatever, but I, for one, am glad that the game has been "streamlined".

It's a matter of individual preference of course, but I've never had much interest in optimal builds or endgame, always preferred the levelling game, and I've always got the impression that Ghostcrawler et al agrees entirely with the "the game starts at endgame" crowd and is building the game accordingly, to enable a smooth, painless, effort free trip to level cap so that the 'real' game can begin. In that mindset levelling isn't part of the experience, it's a tiresome obstacle to be overcome.

Possibly MoP is different - even Blizzard have admitted that at times the Cata revamp overdid the linearity - but unless I one day go back and try it I'll continue to say that Cataclysm was, for levellers like me, the worst thing that ever happened to World of Warcraft.

 

[Fluffythepoo]

Diablo 3 ? several exaggerations were made in that game, but to me the worst offender in terms of streamlining is character development. There is none. Yes, you can choose skills, but there?s is little sense of ownership of your character and no risk in experimenting. Some people love that, but you simply cannot call your game an action RPG without RPG elements ? it is part of the challenge to have flaws in your character and make ?wrong? choices, so you can do your best and discover new ways to do things. There will always be the min/max crowd, but completely abandoning choices in building a character is only the laziest way to appeal to that crowd, not the smartest one.

SimCity ? this game is full of bugs and some of them could have been easily avoided if the desire to streamline wasn?t so powerful. What if players could plot the bus lines? What if players could zone the patrol area of their police and fire trucks? ? if your AI cannot make it, let the players do it, rule number one for simulations everywhere before the streamline disease.

XCOM: lot of good decisions on this one, but equipment loadout was very poor, offering very few choices and killing a lot of the strategies available for the player. At least separate upgrades for armor and weapons should?ve been available. Or the ability to pick up items on the ground, Or both.

I don't know, games nowadays shy away too much from complexity, sometimes with little regard to the target audience. Simulation and RPG players can sure deal with some more options to do things. Balance people, balance. Things are a little different now (after several patches) but Diablo 3 was a game that offered zero challenge in its first 40 hours (probably even more)and you can run out of interesting things to do in 5 hours in SimCity - those are huge departures from the original gameplay of those games.

Wait if D3 had character development itd be changing the game in the name of streamlining.. but instead they stuck to the same system they had in diablo 2 and 1 with back stories for the playable characters that dont change. Also its not an rpg its an ARPG.

Now adding an auction house so that people can get gear without having to spend hundreds of hours farming for said gear.. thats streamlining, thats breaking the system in favor of mass appeal. But on the bright side it let us experience the joys of forced online DRM. Though that was only necessary because of the real-money auction house which was blizzard streamlining its streamlining.

 

[Quadocky]

I think streamlining is a bad word in conjunction to identifying what exactly the problem is. For example, while Team Fortress classic may have had unique movement styles given the Concussion Grenade or Rocket or explosions, it didn't change the fact that most characters were completely useless in that game. In comparison, TF2 (which is streamlined) is a godsend in terms of control and play and overall quality than TFC.

 

[zinho73]

snip

Wait if D3 had character development itd be changing the game in the name of streamlining.. but instead they stuck to the same system they had in diablo 2 and 1 with back stories for the playable characters that dont change. Also its not an rpg its an ARPG.

Now adding an auction house so that people can get gear without having to spend hundreds of hours farming for said gear.. thats streamlining, thats breaking the system in favor of mass appeal. But on the bright side it let us experience the joys of forced online DRM. Though that was only necessary because of the real-money auction house which was blizzard streamlining its streamlining.

I have nothing against innovation. Torchlight 2 changed the system in a very interesting way, with very few "wrong" choices.

And about the ARPG, that's exactly my point - you would think that the game would have action AND RPG elements, but that's not the case. The only RPG thing it has is the loot, and even that is distorted by the auction house (as you point out). There is no character development, no interference in the story. There is no roleplaying because every role is the same: every barb will have the same abilities and will have experienced the same history by the end of the game -and - if you have some money to spare - will even have very samey equipment.

And I agree about the Auction House. It is an weird exercise in social dynamics and a detriment to the game. Alas, the whole Diablo 3 seems to me more an experiment in digital addiction than a game.

 

[zinho73]

Streamlining isn't automatically bad, just as complexity isn't automatically good: in the end, it's all about the execution.

Agreed.

I'm not against streamlining and I think simplifying systems is actually a sign of evolution, but some games nowadays simply doesn't know when to stop and a lot of games treat players like they were dumb.

 

[Storm Dragon]

Has anyone mentioned Mass Effect 3 yet? Because it suffered from this (and no, this is not about the ending). The dialogue was the first offender that I noticed. Guess how many lines Shepard says on her own at the beginning of the game before you're allowed your first choice. The answer is eight. I counted. The rest of the game more or less maintains this ratio save for the bits where you can ask people to tell you more about such-and-such. Then there's the downright skeletal sidequests that make WoW-style "collect 10 bear asses" quests seem engaging in comparison.

 

[Zigot66]

What I want to know is this: did developers just forget about "Auto-manage" as an option?

I like being able to tinker and tweak complex things, but I know not everyone else does. It wouldn't bother me if I just had to uncheck that box so I could have my fun, and most other people wouldn't even know it was there.

 

[an annoyed writer]

Has anyone mentioned Mass Effect 3 yet? Because it suffered from this (and no, this is not about the ending). The dialogue was the first offender that I noticed. Guess how many lines Shepard says on her own at the beginning of the game before you're allowed your first choice. The answer is eight. I counted. The rest of the game more or less maintains this ratio save for the bits where you can ask people to tell you more about such-and-such. Then there's the downright skeletal sidequests that make WoW-style "collect 10 bear asses" quests seem engaging in comparison.

That was a rather bad offender. The game was rushed and it showed: hell, the fetch-quests had you scanning planets to retrieve lost items. That was rather boring. And those single-response debates wouldn't be so bad if they didn't replace the more complex dramas between NPCs. That was the most bare-bones Mass Effect, and that made me sad.