"Wait, THAT'S how they wanted me to play?"

[Neverhoodian]

I've been on a retro FPS kick lately, particularly DOOM (once I learned about source ports, that is; the original gives me motion sickness) and Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight.

I was flipping through my old, tattered Prima strategy guide for the latter when I noticed some very peculiar advice. It was recommending that players approach enemy engagements in a stealthy manner, advocating such tactics as crouch-walking to mask one's footsteps, edging around corners and creating distractions. According to the author, these tidbits came directly from the dev team. While it is effective, it doesn't really feel like the "natural" way to play.

You see, Jedi Knight's core gameplay tends to borrow heavily from DOOM, with fast player movement, labyrinthine level design and an arsenal of weapons with spreads and damage output that favor close quarters combat (there isn't a single sniper rifle in the bunch). Throw in a freaking lightsaber and Force powers and you have a game that seems to encourage charging into the thick of things, relying on agility and projectile deflection to survive. Indeed, this approach is quite effective and it's how myself and many others play through the game.

Anybody have similar anecdotes about playing games differently than the devs intended?

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Crysis. Been playing it a lot on Steam, and maybe its because I'm using a controller, or maybe it didn't age well, but I'm getting my ass handed to me left and right! 11 hours in and I'm on mission 3. Because I keep getting killed.

But what I notice when I eventually get through to the next checkpoint is all the shit that I suppose I'm supposed to be using? Like okay, I'm in the woods with my silenced machine gun and there's like a little village of yonder. And its guy dudes and a machine gun emplacement, and a truck with another machine gun. And so I take a long time sniping them one at a time from vantage points using cloak. Boom headshot, boom headshot(and I'll point out the enemies have stupid amounts of health! Even headshots take 3 or 4 to take them down)

And I know if they ever see me, they all have 100% accuracy, even in pitch blackness, from a thousand yards, behind trees and buildings. Their shots truly seem to just pass through terrain. and the mounted machine guns seem to have firing arcs that are impossible if I ever try to use it.
So I get it done and move into the town an hour later and what do I find? Like 6 rocket launchers, fire bullets, a combat shotgun with a chainsaw attachment and full ammo, and like a bazillion grenades! And I'm sitting there like 'OH! Was I suppose to using this?! How rude of me!'



Another game? Any RTS basically. Because I just do the game equivalent of the Zerg Swarm. Like last night I was playing Dungeon Keeper 2 campaign and there was like 2 other Keepers I had to whack for their diamonds. So I tunneled into their dungeons and just turned the entire tunnel into the battle of the Somme with lvl 1-4 goblins. And like 20 at a time, getting hacked apart, but slowly but surely taking the enemies down.

And only later do I find a bunch of hidden rooms and trapped lvl 10 Dark Angels just waiting for me.

Even Dawn of War. I find the best tactic is just infantry swarms. Guardsmen are hysterical, but mass drop-poding Tactical Squads or Rhino Swarms always seems to work. The most basic units are always the best.

 

[Aerosteam]

Does this count? It's a scene in BioShock Infinite that you don't really play in - and that's the problem.

Spoiler

 

[aba1]

I remember when I was playing bayonetta for the first time my friend was getting annoyed with me because I would just casually walk around enemies shooting them from a distance. I was rarely getting injured for the longest time in the game and it drove him insane.

 

[NPC009]

I think most Darkest Dungeon players have more than a few stories. When the game went into early access, it was difficult, but people soon started to create strategies to overcome obstacles with ease. For instance, four Hellions using Breakthough = poor, poor random encounters. Of course, the developers stepped in and changed things up to prevent players from using those methods. Players, of course, saw that as a challenge and continued their quest for cheese. Developers change things up, players react, developers patch, players discover new forms of system abuse and so on.

I spend dozens of hours playing after it was officially out, but I'm not sure I played it right. Like, the death of a hero is supposed to be a big deal, but sending fresh recruits on near-suicide missions is actually a very effective way to get gold. You don't get attached to characters, you don't fear their death, you fear the loss of time and resources. Is that the point of the game? Or was I just playing it wrong? I have no idea.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Crysis. Been playing it a lot on Steam, and maybe its because I'm using a controller

Just...why? Why on earth would you do that? Crysis is one the most singularly designed-for-PC AAA releases of the last 10 years. The amount of key bindings in that game takes up like half the keyboard. Why would anyone play it with a controller on PC?

Speaking of PC releases, this is a thing I always wonder about when playing RTSs. Like in Dawn of War there's cover mechanics, characters with special abilities, units designed for infiltration and surprise attacks, subterfuge, sabotage, speed, cannon fodder and so on, but all I ever did in those games was mass a huge fuck-off horde of all the best elite units and tanks and just steamroll from one end of the map to the other. It usually worked. Though it did lead to one skirmish in the Dark Crusade expansion that took several days for me to finish, because the enemy was spread out over so many bases, and the map was fucking huge, so it took forever. This is part of the reason why I haven't really played RTS games "properly" in a very long while, and likely will never again.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Dragon Age Inquisition

While it doesn't redeem the game any, when I suddenly discovered the value of tactics and behavior options in the Character Record menu the game became far less of a chore and actually at points enjoyable. Before I discovered it, which was roughly 15-20 hours of playtime, it was frustrating to the point of making me numb. I dropped the difficulty to the lowest setting, just because I couldn't be arsed dealing with the horrendously implemented tactical mode and the AI was far too unreliable for ANY engagement whatsoever.

Where once the AI seemingly did random shit with little impact in tough fights, suddenly Tanks were Tanking, DPS was Damaging and Support were supporting, all without requiring too much input from me. Now I can play the game on the harder difficulties, with Friendly Fire on, and not feel like I'm trying to demolish a building with my exposed bellend.

Games still shite, but I can tolerate it at least. Fuck you Bioware for making me invested in this garbage from 2 games ago.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I had that happen to me in the end of the XCOM2 final mission the other night. x_X

Spoiler: seriously, spoilers, although Imma try to not make it too obvious

Ok, so I start carefully blasting my way though the map with my 3 grenadiers, stealth Ranger, Medial specialist and sniper, running into HUGE mobs of enemies most of which I dealt with how I usually deal with them (Lots of explosions). I spend the entire map keeping my new "special" unit (which is awesome BTW), safe on the back lines doing very little, since if I lose them, the mission fails.

So I get to the final room, and get MAULED by swarms upon swarms of reinforcements, and I'm there going "Dear GOD, I wish I still had some explosives or free reloads on my sniper (For Multiple shots from my Serial skill) for all of this...But there were too many huge mobs in the level and I-" And then I realize. Oh. The special unit I have. They have various AOE abilities. On cooldowns. Unlimited uses. I should have been using THOSE during the level to preserve my other resources for the final chamber. D'OH.

These kinds of slip-ups happen a LOT with me. If I find something that works I don't change it until the game slaps me and goes "NO, that won't work anymore, find a better strategy!" >_>

Not to mention Persona 4. I made it to the True Final Boss having done VERY little persona fusion and lose horribly twice. So I tell my friend who lent me the game how much trouble I'm having and he asks what Persona I'm using on the hero. He proceeds to balk when I tell him and goes "Have you even been fusing?!" And I'm like "Not really? This one's pretty decent and I haven't really seen many other fusions that look worth it..."

...I should have been fusing all of personas constantly to get more options. x_x Fortunately, a few hours of grinding later, I had something GOOD on the hero and got the job done in the end.

 

[zidine100]

Command and conquer red alert 2.

I replayed it recently and as it turns out making more buildings of the same type makes building units faster.

I found this out after beating it countless times over the years, it was one of the games from my childhood that I absolutely loved and it confuses me that I had the patience to wait for the extraordinary long build times to get the forces together to destroy the ai. It just blows my mind how easy the game gets when you know this. You no longer have to be very very careful on what you build and how you use them, instead you could just zerg rush the enemy. I dont know whether i should be happy or embarrassed that i bet it on the hardest difficulty not knowing that, I put it down to a misspent youth..

 

[shrekfan246]

Crysis. Been playing it a lot on Steam, and maybe its because I'm using a controller, or maybe it didn't age well, but I'm getting my ass handed to me left and right! 11 hours in and I'm on mission 3. Because I keep getting killed.

But what I notice when I eventually get through to the next checkpoint is all the shit that I suppose I'm supposed to be using? Like okay, I'm in the woods with my silenced machine gun and there's like a little village of yonder. And its guy dudes and a machine gun emplacement, and a truck with another machine gun. And so I take a long time sniping them one at a time from vantage points using cloak. Boom headshot, boom headshot(and I'll point out the enemies have stupid amounts of health! Even headshots take 3 or 4 to take them down)

And I know if they ever see me, they all have 100% accuracy, even in pitch blackness, from a thousand yards, behind trees and buildings. Their shots truly seem to just pass through terrain. and the mounted machine guns seem to have firing arcs that are impossible if I ever try to use it.
So I get it done and move into the town an hour later and what do I find? Like 6 rocket launchers, fire bullets, a combat shotgun with a chainsaw attachment and full ammo, and like a bazillion grenades! And I'm sitting there like 'OH! Was I suppose to using this?! How rude of me!'

Don't worry, the game is still poorly balanced even if you're using mouse and keyboard.

OT: I wonder if this would apply to everyone who turned games like Pokemon and Super Smash Bros. into competitive things.

Personally, it tends to mostly apply to games that I'm not very good at. Certain types of RPG and RTS are the most prone, and the occasional puzzle game that actually allows for multiple solutions to its problems. In the former games, I tend to just zerg rush the enemies and hope I can overpower them with sheer numbers (be they in the form of levels or actual unit count). I'm not particularly fantastic at tactical thinking and thinking on the fly.

 

[Fox12]

I remember playing Megaman X4 as a wee lad. I was probably about five or six at the time. Compared to most of the games I was used to, it felt like Dark Souls on crack. I was convinced that certain enemies were simply impossible to kill. But I kept playing anyway, and after a few years, I muscled through it. I didn't know that certain bosses had weaknesses, or that you could obtain secret armor. I probably beat it in the most obtuse way possible. I could probably finish the game in a lazy afternoon now.

The same thing happened when I first played Pokemon yellow. I just couldn't figure out why my one pidgey and my one pikachu were having so much trouble with Brock.

 

[DoPo]

Command and conquer red alert 2.

I replayed it recently and as it turns out making more buildings of the same type makes building units faster.

I found this out after beating it countless times over the years, it was one of the games from my childhood that I absolutely loved and it confuses me that I had the patience to wait for the extraordinary long build times to get the forces together to destroy the ai. It just blows my mind how easy the game gets when you know this. You no longer have to be very very careful on what you build and how you use them, instead you could just zerg rush the enemy. I dont know whether i should be happy or embarrassed that i bet it on the hardest difficulty not knowing that, I put it down to a misspent youth..

Yep, adding more unit production stuff, makes the units be produced faster. Also, if you're playing against AI, it actually doesn't matter. I've repeatedly beat the AIs using, like, two tanks. OK, it's two Apocalypse tanks but still - only because they shoot ground and air. Using Allied forces, I've taken them on using a couple of IFVs withChrono Legionaires.

The AI is just exceptionally dumb and a huge force produced fast, isn't really needed.

 

[default]

I remember when I was playing bayonetta for the first time my friend was getting annoyed with me because I would just casually walk around enemies shooting them from a distance. I was rarely getting injured for the longest time in the game and it drove him insane.

That's an issue with the DMC-style hack and slash design. Why bother with melee which is faster but puts me in danger when I can just sit back and spam ranged attacks in total safety? It doesn't so much need incentive for risking yourself and playing aggressively as it requires punishment for playing passively. Perhaps the guns overheat or temporarily lose damage the more you use them within a fight, or there could be a 'rage bar' needs to be constantly kept topped up or you start bleeding health. Or lose the guns entirely, I'm not convinced of their place within the system.

These are pretty inorganic solutions to the problem though, it's more an enemy design issue. They need to have the same ability as the player to quickly dodge, block and close distances and make the guns useless.

 

[EHKOS]

I would still love to ask Kojima-san how the level Traitor's Caravan is supposed to be beaten. The Skulls don't pop unless you get close to the truck so you can't just set them off by sniping the driver at 100M and waiting.

 

[LordLundar]

I remember when I was playing bayonetta for the first time my friend was getting annoyed with me because I would just casually walk around enemies shooting them from a distance. I was rarely getting injured for the longest time in the game and it drove him insane.

That's an issue with the DMC-style hack and slash design. Why bother with melee which is faster but puts me in danger when I can just sit back and spam ranged attacks in total safety? It doesn't so much need incentive for risking yourself and playing aggressively as it requires punishment for playing passively. Perhaps the guns overheat or temporarily lose damage the more you use them within a fight, or there could be a 'rage bar' needs to be constantly kept topped up or you start bleeding health. Or lose the guns entirely, I'm not convinced of their place within the system.

These are pretty inorganic solutions to the problem though, it's more an enemy design issue. They need to have the same ability as the player to quickly dodge, block and close distances and make the guns useless.

Well combat is ranked and unlocks are based off that so if you want certain unlocks you have to play more aggressively because two factors are the combo meter and the time taken. The ranged shooting is safer but it's a safer bronze instead of a riskier gold or higher.

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I remember when I was playing bayonetta for the first time my friend was getting annoyed with me because I would just casually walk around enemies shooting them from a distance. I was rarely getting injured for the longest time in the game and it drove him insane.

That's an issue with the DMC-style hack and slash design. Why bother with melee which is faster but puts me in danger when I can just sit back and spam ranged attacks in total safety? It doesn't so much need incentive for risking yourself and playing aggressively as it requires punishment for playing passively. Perhaps the guns overheat or temporarily lose damage the more you use them within a fight, or there could be a 'rage bar' needs to be constantly kept topped up or you start bleeding health. Or lose the guns entirely, I'm not convinced of their place within the system.

These are pretty inorganic solutions to the problem though, it's more an enemy design issue. They need to have the same ability as the player to quickly dodge, block and close distances and make the guns useless.

My answer to this is simply playstyle...these kind of games are designed to challenge you in some form, by giving you a huge range of mechanics and to utilize as many as possible. Sure, you can just plink away with low-damage ranged weapons, but it's tedious and slow. It's like playing Batman Arkham games using only counter and punch. Can be done, but boy is it boooooring.

How cool is it that you can integrate ranged weapons after an air juggle attack, blast them to keep them in the air while you prepare a downward slam or jump up there too for an aerial rave. The mechanic of holding down buttons for burst fire was incentive enough for me.

OT: I like the way Hitman games encourage you to play stealthy. Because there are so many mechanics designed around that, disguises, hidden routes, distractions, finding extra tidbits of info to allow you to mess around the way the NPC's move around and interact. The reward for doing these successfully? "Silent Assassin" rating, which gives you a shiny new, and probably loud as hell gun. Which you can then use to lock 'n load, go back in there and blast every living being into smithereens, which anyone would admit is just as fun as doing it the other way.

The main type of game that has me scratching my head though is RTS and racing games. RTS I usually just find the cheesiest way to get around whatever the threat is, trial and error. Which is how you're supposed to learn I guess? But I rarely factored skill into it, except when I played Warcraft 3 online.

By racing games I mean arcadey ones like Need for Speed, with the horrendous rubber-banding. I can never get my head around those, many times resorts to me just driving slow enough to keep around the second place guy, then slamming NOS (or the other car) just before the finish line. Yeah, fucking lame, but that's how it is, when even a perfect run doesn't mean shit.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I would still love to ask Kojima-san how the level Traitor's Caravan is supposed to be beaten. The Skulls don't pop unless you get close to the truck so you can't just set them off by sniping the driver at 100M and waiting.

Clearly you're supposed to cover the truck, the ground, and everything within a square mile radius with smoke using all your smoke grenades and then fulton the truck.

...what? FULTON EVERYTHING, that's why it's in the game.

Seriously though, smoke grenades pretty much break the game in a lot of encounters.

 

[FPLOON]

My best friend was FLOORED (in text form) when I told him that I was going to play Undertale with my PS3 controller...

Other than that, while playing Splatoon for the first time in single-player, I completely skipped the first introduction to the ink turret... So, for about 5-10 minutes, I'm shooting ink up a literal tall wall that could have been done in mere seconds...

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

To be fair I haven't had any real problems with the controls. I've had problems with the massively OP enemies, their magical ability to teleport into areas I have already cleared and really obtuse level design. Like I start with an all American 'cheeseburger and fries' carbine and it shoots bullets and told to go have a meaningful exchange with those dirty no good North Koreans. And all is well.

Except they give you like two extra clips and nothing else. And each bad guy takes an entire clip, at close range, to the face to die.
So you scrounge a lot of ammo, but there's never enough.

...never enough...

 

[TelosSupreme]

It's actually funny that you bring up Jedi Knight, since I'm part of the game's modding community. Yeah, it very much is a Doom/Quake-inspired, arena FPS. Heck, frantic multiplayer matches are half the fun in that game, or all for a lot of remaining players.