Mirror's edge, looks promising.

Zillameth on 30/1/2009 at 15:59

Quote Posted by Wormrat

I like how you say the game is "designer by amateurs" when you're the one who has trouble figuring out where to go next (yet thinks the runner's vision is misleading). But then you also say it's too easy?

I didn't say it's too easy. It's just easier than I expected, which is actually a good thing, because I expected it to be prohibitively difficult.

Amateur gamer is not the same as amateur designer. This game fails to comply with the most basic definition of game as a set of challenges and corresponding player actions. There are both in this game, but the actions are not adequate to the challenges. The effect is a trial and error gameplay that has less to do with being "good enough" and more to do with not being clairvoyant.

However, I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it.

gunsmoke on 30/1/2009 at 17:47

Quote Posted by Zillameth

I believe the first mission of this game should be either a race, where you can't pass until you beat a certain record, or a collection of small delivery tasks that force you to traverse the same area in different directions a few times.

2 of my most HATED game things in games; Mandatory training levels that ae unpassable until some type of skill(s) is(are) mastered, and the backtracking of an area.

In my experience, these are never a good idea, let alone the preferable one. They actually could make me complately uninterested in proceeding any further in the game at all.

Just my two cents.

Zillameth on 30/1/2009 at 18:33

Quote Posted by gunsmoke

2 of my most HATED game things in games; Mandatory training levels that ae unpassable until some type of skill(s) is(are) mastered, and the backtracking of an area.

Almost all games are about mastering one challenge or another, and don't let you pass until you overcome some difficulty. In most first person shooters, for example, if you're not good enough, your avatar dies. Very few games let you skip a level.

Many people have a lot of bad experiences with time trials, because these are usually very demanding. Authors ask testers to give it a few tries, then they loook for where the top 10% threshold is, and then ask all players to be as good as the top 10% of their testers. This can be unfair, but is also easy to alleviate. Just put that threshold at the top 90% mark. :)

As for backtracking, that's not what I meant. Imagine that a mission area is a square and each task has you travel from one vertex to another. Even though it's the same level all the time, there are six different routes. The point of this is to literally take a look at the same elements from varying points of view and see how their relevance changes. This is, actually, quite the opposite of backtracking.

As for tutorials, tutorial is not a kind of level, it's a kind of game content. It has to be there, because you can't require player to know how to play your game prior to playing it. Especially when the game is not similar to other games. So either you give them opportunity to learn the rules, or you're doomed to setting the difficulty level very low, which usually means the game becomes less sophisticated. Then veteran gamers complain about it being "dumbed down".

Generally, tutorials don't need to resemble lectures or lessons. Again, Portal is a very good example - the first half of game is a tutorial, but it pretends to the countrary.

Fafhrd on 31/1/2009 at 03:00

Quote Posted by Zillameth

A bunch of stuff about colour coding

This is stupid and wrong and betrays a fundamental lack of understanding about the movement system in Mirror's Edge (or a desire to replace the movement system with something else, and significantly worse). As Shakey-Lo already said, every single vertical surface is wall-runnable. Every single ledge can be climbed on. The system is almost exactly like Thief's in that it's based on geometry and relative height with the player character, not static meshes with 'wall run' or 'climb' scripts enabled (the only exception for this is vertical pipes, which work exactly like ladders, horizontal swing pipes, and I believe springboards).

And Thief may have a visual code, but it isn't anything like you seem to think it is, and certainly isn't any sort of pre-planned colour scheming to direct the player. 'All the climbable elements are brown?' Fuck off. Most things that are made of wood are brown, yes, and you can stick an arrow into everything made of wood. But there are many other materials that you can ALSO stick arrows into, and it's based on common sense in regards to the relative density of the materials and has nothing to do colouration (anything you can stick an arrow into in the real world, you can stick an arrow into in Thief). The placement of architectural elements, and the materials used for those elements, is based on attempts to create realistic architecture for the fictional world, allowing solutions for each level to arise in an emergent manner by the player, with no set 'this is how the level designer wants you to do this, and stuff is laid out to create an easy to follow path to lead you there.'

The only mistake DICE made in Mirror's Edge was having Runner Vision at all, since it seems like all the 'It's too hard. Too much trial and error. Too much forced combat' complaints come from people who follow the runner vision.

Quote:

Imagine that a mission area is a square and each task has you travel from one vertex to another. Even though it's the same level all the time, there are six different routes. The point of this is to literally take a look at the same elements from varying points of view and see how their relevance changes.

Mirror's Edge does this. It's called Time Trials. And in the course of the single player game a couple of different chapters occur over essentially the same architecture, but moving in different directions.

Zillameth on 31/1/2009 at 08:57

Quote Posted by Fafhrd

Technically, yes, but functionally, no, it's not, because even if you climb somewhere, you don't necessarilly get anywhere. This game is full of predefined paths and dead ends, and a lot of junk in between.

And I will not discuss such complex topics with you if you keep insulting me.

Jason Moyer on 31/1/2009 at 09:03

I can't think of a rooftop level with a single path. A single optimum path, which makes sense since the same thing applies in any kind of racing, but not a single path. Anyone who has spent significant time in time trial mode has probably seen how many different ways there are to reach each checkpoint and tried several of them before figuring out the optimal way.

Zillameth on 31/1/2009 at 09:23

Quote Posted by Jason Moyer

Of course there are multiple feasible paths. It's part of game's appeal, but it also constitutes a major design challenge, because it makes the number of potential paths bigger. It's all fine when there's a racing track which you pass dozens of times, because with each pass you get a glimpse of the level, and you may spot something, and maybe next time you'll take a better path. But the campaign doesn't give you that many tries. It's a story mode, and usually you're time-constrained.

To put it simply, if you have three paths, and each of them requires you to make three different jumps, then you have nine different "jump objects" at your disposal in the given arena. Now, since you've never been to this arena before, your mind registers those as nine separate objects, and not three predefined paths (yes, they are predefined, they left very little room for actual improvisation). Some of those objects will be close enough to each other to look like a potential path, but will not constitute a feasible one (because, for example, you can go that way but it's going to be very slow). Since everything is white, and usually you don't get to take a look at it from "ground level", and your vision is blurred most of the time, the processing of what you see takes time. And since there's very little time, people end up playing this game by trial and error.

Edit - I'm not sure if I understood your intent correctly. Did you mean to refer to the part where I mentioned the tutorial idea? My vocabulary is somewhat limited, and I used "path" and "route" to describe two diffferent things. Take any race track as example. There is always a single route, because you have to visit a predefined set of waypoints in a predefined order. But there are multiple paths connecting those waypoints. Some tracks use the same area with different routes, which I think was a good idea that should have been utilized in the campaign for learning purposes.

Shakey-Lo on 31/1/2009 at 09:55

Quote Posted by Zillameth

Generally, tutorials don't need to resemble lectures or lessons. Again, Portal is a very good example - the first half of game is a tutorial, but it pretends to the countrary.

It does nothing of the sort... it's simply that both the player and player character are going through a tutorial together, so it seems less arbitrary. That's why amnesia is so popular (and cliched) in player characters. An equivalent in Mirror's Edge would be to have the player character as a new recruit learning the ways of the runners, but that would change things in the narrative and so on.
I really don't see how you think Portal doesn't resemble lessons because that's the whole point of it, that you are a test subject being trained in the use of this device.
Sorry, but from a couple of points you've made it sounds like you've listened to the Portal/HL2 commentary, used that as a bible for game design and consider any game that deviates from it as flawed.

Zillameth on 31/1/2009 at 10:27

Quote Posted by Shakey-Lo

It does nothing of the sort... it's simply that both the player and player character are going through a tutorial together, so it seems less arbitrary.

I've said it many times, and I'm probably going to say it many times more - do play Portal with developer commentary turned on. Typically, there is a part where they explain something more or less overtly, followed by an obstacle or two which explain nothing but "guide" your thinking in a deliberate way. Sometimes they serve to remind you of something - GlaDOS explains one rule to you, but the obstacle actually requires you to use a different one. They did that on purpose, and most of the time they didn't tell you about it.

Quote:

That's why amnesia is so popular (and cliched) in player characters. An equivalent in Mirror's Edge would be to have the player character as a new recruit learning the ways of the runners, but that would change things in the narrative and so on.

Actually, the game uses exactly the same trick, because it's openly stated that Faith had had an accident and needs to train in order to get back into shape. Her body "forgot" how to move, even if herself didn't.

Tutorial is a kind of content, not a kind of level. You can put it inside of the game's main narrative. A delivery mission is a simple example. You're not "training", you're "doing your job" (that's what runners do, after all, they deliver stuff).

Shakey-Lo on 31/1/2009 at 11:14

I have played through Portal with the developer commentary on. And TF2, and parts of Left4Dead.

I get the feeling that if other games had developer commentary, you'd be in here explaining how clever they are instead. Any game has tricks that the developer could explain to you, Valve aren't the only ones doing these sort of clever, subtle player guidance things, they're just the first to explain it to interested players through commentary.

Also, there is a difference between the Player and the Player Character's learning in Mirror's Edge... one is supposedly 'relearning' how to jump while another is learning that jump is bound to the left bumper - as well as the fact that jumping, running etc is crucially important, something Faith would already know. In Portal the operation of the portal gun - which is new to both player and PC - is simple (left click here, right click there) but what both the player and PC are learning is how to 'think with portals'. Also, Faith already knows about the world of Mirror's Edge, the role of runners, etc, but we have to learn about it through scraps mentioned in conversation. In Portal we play a test subject who is (almost) as new to the world of Aperture Science as we are, and who learns the same way we do (through Glados).

I don't see how structuring the tutorial as running a job would be better. It would create even more of a disconnect between the player and the PC.
That's why your Portal example doesn't work for me. The whole game (well, not the whole game...) is a series of lessons - explicitly called 'Test Chambers' - where you and the PC undergo the same development, which makes the 'tutorial' element more transparent. If you're playing an experienced runner doing a run of the mill job and the game has to take time out to explain that you have to roll when you land, the tutorial element becomes more apparent.

Almost this exact topic was touched on in (http://iholdstock.blogspot.com/2009/01/greek-tragedy-and-its-relevance-to.html) this article recently.