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Balancing Challenge Against Frustration In Games
Game-ism has an article discussing the balance game developers strive to achieve between making games challenging enough to be interesting, but not so much that they are frustrating. The author points to Assassin's Creed and GTA IV as examples of recent major titles which may have suffered from gameplay that was too easy to master. Conversely, a minor title like Bionic Commando Rearmed achieved more success than expected in part due to the sense of accomplishment that comes from completing parts of the game.
Too easy? I beg to differ (you insensitive clod!) Sure, the assassinations and missions in the cities aren't that hard. But then... You first get a big battle (the 9th assassination) that is incredibly hard to win and cannot be avoided. After playing through it two dozen times I've finally discovered a tactic that worked.
Then you get another big battle, with about twelve templars, that is nearly impossible to win. And after that, instead of a chance to catch your breath or a checkpoint, you immediately get to fight a mega-uber-baddy! WTF were they thinking? Why is there suddenly such an incredible focus on combat, and why does the difficulty curve has to rise so sharply!?
Besides... The game cheats. Examples:
1. During the battle with the dozen templars, when you perform a countermove, mostly you get your weakest countermove - the one that doesn't do any damage. In normal battles, you get the weakest countermove far less often.
2. The computer plain refuses to let you target an enemy that is on the floor and therefore vulnerable. Very noble of it, let them all just stand up so they can kill me instead! And even if you point him in the right direction, Altair will think nothing of it to target someone meters away and exactly the other direction instead.
3. Maybe you can drop out of combat mode, switch weapons, saunter over to the guy lying on the floor, and stick your blade into him at leasure. But not while you are surrounded by enemies you cannot. You'll be long dead before that happens.
4. If you have a lock on one enemy and decide to attack, quite often it will attack _another_ enemy that is much further away.
5. Halfway through the dozen-templars battle, they all suddenly switch to their "hit your sword up, unblockable strike" move. That _really_ sucks.
6. Not having a checkpoint at the end of that battle is just criminal.
7. Even if you see it coming, there is precisely nothing you can do to defend yourself from attacks from behind. Those occur with regular frequency when you are standing in a circle. It is hard to _not_ stand in a circle when there is a dozen opponents.
I've won that battle with the templars three times, only to be killed by Robert de Sable each time on his first attack. Then I went to GCW and installed a cheat. That worked great.
And don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved this game! I loved sneaking around, doing the missions (even if they repeated), just walking around town and enjoying the views (and finding flags and templars), the climbing, the chases, the assassinations. But I did not enjoy the string of battles at the end, and it would have been a better game without them.
Oh, and a quicker way to leave the game would have been nice (come on, it takes like two minutes!)... And non-skippable cutscenes? What is this, 1995?
Well, I'd better go and download some flame-retardant underwear from GCW so I can fight off the waves of 1337 gamers that are no doubt coming my way...
Games where you have to string a dozen random actions together half of which are timed actions (oh and the controller has eight miles of slop) that need sub pixel accuracy just to get to the next part.
Folks when you design a game do me 3 things
1 put some logic into the puzzle (how does actions a-j fit together)
2 make more than one solution (example have a switch that reveals a ladder to bypass a climbing puzzle)
3 make it worth it to do the hard way BUT NOT REQUIRED
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Personally I'm as hardcore a gamer as they come, and I'm just plain bored of spending more than 5 min on a single challenge. I don't mind if it's hard, but once I start spending 15 min at a time to get past different parts of the game because they are ramping up the difficulty, I'm so bored. I have a job, and I can easily afford to buy a new game at that point, but what I don't have is a ton of free time. The core audience got older and games have to adapt.
After the third time you fail a particular challenge, "skip" and "easy" options should be available. It is that simple. Then they can make it as hard as they want. I paid good money for the thing, why can't I play it the way I want? Sure, keep track of the stuff I skipped and add it to a menu so I can go back and finish it if I want to claim to have completed the game. Heck I don't mind if I have to go to youtube to see the final scenes if I don't feel like finishing every damn' thing.
Seriously. How is GTA too easy? The gameplay gets so repetitive before it is half way over, you wouldn't want to spend entire evenings grinding through it!?!
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When I think of games, for me, I think either adventure, first person shooter or arcade, because to me, that's what I like most on computer games.
What I want in an arcade game is: fast, fun, you should be able to start easy to play, but must become skilled in order to reach higher levels, and must have a strong level of unpredictability in the game. Avoid games designed in such a way where one can learn patterns in order to beat the game. (original PacMan comes to mind..)
What I want when I play an adventure game is: a compelling story, a diverse world to play in, the complexity comes with experience of play, the rewards are new skills and most of all, the ability for the game to expand into new modules, allowing you to bring your characters into them. if You can play a game where you don't need to be forced into any scenarios, but can explore the "environment" and play based on the encounters, even more fun! :)
For a first shooter game: wicked weapons, all kinds of abilities to display and use, incredibly hard odds to beat, amazing graphics and sounds, the visual and auditory offers clues to the environment, out of the box effects and storylines.
It would be fun to have your character evolve and take him to future levels, but most of the time, the whole point of a first shooter game is to start with modest abilities and weapons and acquire more as you go.
But, if a Doom like game would create expansion packs which would actually build on the experience and game play you have, and your character starts with whatever he's finished with from a previous module, thus, getting into even harder game play, that would be wicked too!
There's different kinds of frustration. There's not knowing what to do next (Myst). Perhaps worse is knowing what to do, but not seeing how you're meant to be able to accomplish it.
Sometimes the game engine is a little bit broken - it used to annoy me no end in Perfect Dark that sometimes (just sometimes) a weapon would be at your feet and you simply could not pick it up. Maybe the boss monster has an unusual attack pattern and is only vulnerable to having acorns thrown at his toes, while, mysteriously, a rocket launcher to his face has no effect.
A lot of the stupid frustrations have been taken out of play by the internet - "How do I do X"-level frustrations are mostly taken care of by walkthroughs. It's handy to know that you're failing because the only way to kill the vampire is with the Holy Stake, which you forgot to pick up on Level 3.
I think sometimes difficulty-level frustrations can come about because of play-testing. If testers have been playing the game for months, they may have gotten significantly better at it than most people would ever do in normal play. Consequently, they can find levels easy to complete, and bosses very straightforward. So the difficulty level gets ramped up by doubling the hit points for all enemies, and suddenly the game is too hard for 95% of the final audience.
The worst frustration is when a game goes on the shelf, or back to the shop as a trade-in, because it reached a certain point, which was simply impassable - a race I couldn't win, or a boss I couldn't beat, and that's it - the rest of the game is forever closed to me. I'm tone-deaf - finally managed to get to the second island in Myst, listened to the musical tone key for the bunker and realised I was never, ever going to be able to finish the game.
Cutscenes yes, but never un-skippable cutscenes, never. Better hope I never find out where you live if you're the man who rubber-stamps an un-skippable cutscene in a game I play. Case in point...Resident Evil. I've played several of the games in the series more than once. In fact all of them reward you with enhanced gear for your next play-through when you beat certain time-limits or what have you. So, on the second or third time through a game, when all I'm trying to do is waste zombies and solve puzzles in the most efficient manner possible, if I'd been forced to sit through cutscene after cutscene, then I would have been plucking eyeballs.
Cutscenes are great and they can be awesome, but unless there's something in there that is absolutely essential to my progress, there is no way I should be forced to watch it. The one time I could forgive an un-skippable cutscene would be if it was only un-skippable on the first run through, and then allowed skipping on subsequent attempts/runs through...
Wait, you're saying Valve failed to properly convey the storyline in the Half Life games? That's absurd. They did a fantastic job of forcing the player to watch story events while still providing the illusion that they're in direct control of Gordon. I can't think of any game (with scripted OR FMV cutscenes) that has more effectively incorporated the player into the plot.