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[Holey Moley]

Holey Moley Website System Administrator Offline

look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology

Holey Moley says,

I've been playing Dark Souls lately. It is seriously impeding my ability to work on Sword of Moonlight things. That is because I am probably not half way through the game, and I already have nearly 60 hours logged on my game!

Granted it is a little inflated because I have to constantly leave the game on while I wander off to do other things because there is no pause feature and I grew tired of constantly quitting to the title screen just to go to the bathroom. Hopefully you don't get invaded/killed while you are doing your business!!

I do worry about the waste of electricity but I have a feeling the PS3 would still consume vast amounts of the stuff even while paused.


I am writing, and stickying, this post/thread because I am seriously bothered by the trend in gaming for games to take so many full time work weeks (40hrs in US America) to finish. This is a huge drain on productivity worldwide and generally a waste of everyone's time. Because most of these games that take more than 40 hours to finish, twice that at a leisurely rate, could easily make their point in 5 or 10 hours or even less, but they pad out the game because the commercial companies that make the games apparently want everyone to feel like they got a whole of value for whatever they paid for the game. Can you believe people pay 60USD for games? People do. Personally I've never played a game worth more than 20$. And I love games.

I can't sit down and watch a movie for more 30 to 60 minutes. I think I watched too much (good/mostly pre 90s) anime as a kid. The movies tended to run for an hour or less. I usually watch a feature length movie/show in 2 or more sittings. Can you believe people sit in a movie theatre for 3 hours to watch movies nowadays? It's insane! 15 years ago a movie longer than 80 minutes was seen as a very tough sell to a general audience.

Needless to say the stakes are even higher for video games. We have to be even more careful about how the player spends their time in the game.


We've put up with this. I reckon because there are not that many games being released every year even though at a point a half a decade ago there were so many games coming out every week it was crazy. Thousands of games a year. But this decade it seems like there are almost not enough games coming out anymore. Especially not enough games being made by companies like From Software. From' used to put out an addition to its series once a year. Increasingly these big budget big risk games are coming out 4 years, even 8 years in between. And there are increasingly fewer and fewer studios producing them. And the sales figures for the games From' puts out are not even that impressive. Most games are not as successful as Dark Souls. But if you look it (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-02-dark-souls-worldwide-sales-1-5-million-shipped) that's not a lot of money sales wise, much less on the profit side of things. Armored Core V was not a 5th of that I think.


So where are we heading? If there is ever going to be a lot of games to be played. I mean what if every Sword of Moonlight game expected players to spend 40hrs playing the game? We'd have a dystopic scenario were there are so many great games but there is no time for any of us to ever be able to play with them all!


This is my point. Sword of Moonlight games have to make their point. And make it fast. No padding, no backtracking, tell your story, give the player their adventure, and get out!

If your game is awesome, it needs to be 15 hours of play at most. Not beginning to end, but 95% completion rate. If your game is sub-awesome it needs to be 5 hours, but even shorter is better. Not every game has to be epic. If your game is arcade like, the kind of game that rewards skill and does not go very deep, it needs to be as short as possible. Dark Souls wants to be epic and arcade like. It could easily be 4 games. Which was actually From's business model for the entire PS2 era. Just look at Armored Core.

The weapon upgrade system in Dark Souls is a totally pointless waste of time. The repair system is totally pointless because you can fully repair anything for 200 souls by just upgrading it! The excessive backtracking and interlinking of the world doesn't enhance the sense of adventure, it just wastes the player time, assuming they are not playing with a deluxe guide. Don't do this to players. Assume players have a life and things to do! And while you are at it assume players are not guide users spoiling all of the fun for themselves.


Dark Souls has a fabulous multiplayer element. What's so fabulous about it is the whole thing is asynchronous. You have a single-player game, and still have multiplayer within it. And what is the coolest is you can have a Save/load system and the multiplayer does not interfere with that at all.... or wait there is no save system?! Never mind, the multiplayer is bullshit then. Seriously the only reason you can't save and load your game in Dark Souls is to prevent item duplication.

Let's make everyone suffer to prevent item duplication... when item trading probably just breaks the game, and could be done in special bazaar areas (what's a "bonfire"? Or a Nexus for that matter?) if it were absoluetely necessary. Don't abuse players. If a game can't save and load itself then it isn't a single player game. And if a game isn't a single player game then it shouldn't have a story to tell. End of story.

People make mistakes. Accidents happen. In the game, and in your life while you are playing the game. Some players might want to play a game at the end of the day to relax. Maybe they are getting tired, its been a long hard day, and its almost their bedtime. Maybe they've consumed some mind altering substances earlier in the day. Should they have to live with the consequences of the decision to play their game in a less than optimal state for play? Or should they have to live with not being able to play their game without adopting a monk like lifestyle? In other words, anything that makes games feel like work, whether its pointless grind, 40hr commitments, having to be on your best behavior, is outrageous and completely unacceptable.



A game must have a pause feature. Unless you are in a friendly competitive match that can be cancelled midway through then there is no reason to not let players pause. Even in an MMORPG a player must be able to pause, even it means that they become invincible. What happens in a tense moment in Dark Souls... your phone rings, what is more important? That phone call or a ****ing video game? Seriously what has become of us? If you can't save/load the video game you may well have to choose the video game. Now you are wasting the time of people not even playing the game. Congratulations video game companies. Congratulations.

We have to, we must be, more ethical than video game companies.

Try to do more with less. Especially with players' time.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Feel free to contribute some amendments

Formerly "Holy Diver" ("Holy") [Holy will be back as soon as I'm back to full form]

[Verdite]

Verdite Offline

Verdite says,

 

Dark souls has an autosave that activates every time you pick up an item or press start. You can effectively exit the game at any time, even when invaded... By holding down the ps button and manually quitting. Problem is that if you are faced with an enemy when your phone rings you are more likely to be beaten up before finishing the process or warping to a bonfire.

Totally agree about the save / load. But dark souls is almost a leap into the unknown, different setup and breaking traditional gaming methods. Or should i say ethics.
Strangely alot of people prefer it this way, or just dont notice.

The trekking back and forth in my opinion is like pushing players to keep noticing the detail. Or to make people think the game is huge when its not that big.

 

Author of Moratheia. Lurker, for now.

[Holey Moley]

Holey Moley Website System Administrator Offline

look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology

Holey Moley says,

I don't mind the backtracking except that it becomes gratuitous menial work.

I don't mind traversing a vast empty landscape as long as I feel compelled to do it myself. In fact I think if just traveling is fun then you know a game is doing things right. I think games probably should be more about doing totally banal things, if that is the right word. But crossing through an miniature environment full of artifice mowing down monsters in the way that pose no real threat just to boost your credit score doesn't fill that bill for me.

I don't even like teleportation systems. I say if its not fun to just traverse the world of the game whenever there is good reason to do so, then something is amiss. I don't like how in Shin Megaten everything is built around teleporter technology, even if the teleporters is how the demons made their way out of the demon realm I don't give a dime. Crossing a post-apocalyptic landscape is the whole appeal of post-apocalyptic landscapes for chrissakes. You don't just teleport from place to place.

The weapon upgrade system is the same way. I understand how having +X this and that radically increases the variety of equipment in the game. I don't mind if you just find or buy a +3 bow, or a +7 bow, etc. I just don't want to be bothered with leveling them up. It's just busy work.

I don't like having to turn off the game to quit. It just feels like a slap in the face. Sometimes I just don't want to deal with an invader. Often they will hide amidst monsters and keep fleeing so to be an ever present pest. I also heard the other day the invader wins half of your souls, but I've never noticed my souls being lost win killed by one, so I'm not sure what that means. But if I didn't want to lose my souls I would sure quit the second the game goes into lock down. And often an invader shows up while I am winding down and about to quit.

But like the subject says. I think these are a bill of rights. Meaning no game should ever exist without these features. You can opt out of them if you want to. But that is a choice up to the player.

I think a fine way to do pause would be to have the player turn into stone. Any attack that was about to connect before pressing pause would connect, but none after that. We have to realize that games are here to serve human beings, not the other way around

Formerly "Holy Diver" ("Holy") [Holy will be back as soon as I'm back to full form]