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Destiny

Discuss all things Destiny.
Edited by burritosenior: 2/9/2013 6:46:21 PM
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Destiny: Treating Gamers as Idiots

The above video is one of my favorite videos on youtube, ever. Megaman X was one of my favorite games of all time, and the video itself is just so funny the entire time. It's hilarious. However, while it is funny, it also brings up valid points about gaming. The section I wish to discuss is mainly about how gaming is aimed towards dolts. It is disgusting to me when a game has to tell you 'use the thumbsticks to move' or 'use this button to shoot.' Or when it gives you hints to obvious patterns that any human being should be able to figure out- to recognize simple patterns in your head like any human being should be able to do and NEEDS to do in order to... be. There are games that teach you concepts as you play. Take Dead Space 3 as a recent example. No story spoilers, but there is a part where a vent opens up and glows bright red. Now as gamers, we assume walking over that vent would kill you. That's just something standard to assume. Yet despite that, we aren't told "hey, do not go over that vent or you'll die!" A necromorph pops out of a vent onto the glowing vent and... is completely obliterated. So there. By something put into the game, we now know that the vents will kill us. We didn't need some lame tooltip or a conversation that breaks the fourth wall saying, 'Hey vents opened up- I bet they will kill me so I should avoid them!' No. Instead, we were taught the concept in that controlled environment as we played. Now, I'm not saying Dead Space 3 does everything perfectly- it has obvious and annoying tooltips in the beginning. Only one or two are warranted- like holding the right thumbstick in to activate the blue line. OK, tell us. I wish it could be done in a way that doesn't assume we couldn't figure it out on our own, but yeah. Still, the vent example is something done right. In Dead Space 2, we are introduced to the babies in the school. There is a part where a woman in a room, whom you can see through a window, is calling to her baby to come to her. It is clearly a Necromorph baby and is glowing. It hugs her and explodes, killing them. Boom- dramatic, realistic, and interesting way to let you know what that enemy does. Halo has done something similar before. In the beginning of Halo games often it would say 'Look up. OK, now look down.' You all remember that. What you might not have known was that regardless of if you pushed up or down on your stick, you would go in the direction the person said. This was a way to set an inverted controller scheme if you wanted WITHOUT having to go into the menu. It was immersive, realistic, and innovative to me. Yet even Halo has done the tooltips, if I recall. Oh, and don't even get me started on Dark Souls. They give you the most basic controls (would be nice if we didn't even have that but yeah), but leave everything else for you to figure out. That makes the game great. Every developer should learn from that. Destiny is a new start for Bungie. This game is meant to be social, and open to all. But WHY does a game being social/casual and rated below M (they are going to a T for Teen rating) mean the players have to be treated like dolts? Bungie is trying to set up something completely new here. I am very excited. But this is also a chance for them to be innovative in all the right ways in addition to the new ways. Don't treat us like idiots, Bungie. Let us figure things out. Don't break immersion. Don't think of us as fools and children. The target audience for Destiny might be younger, I suppose. But what developers need to understand is that needing to figure things out for ourselves will NOT just frustrate us and make us hate a game. Rather, it gives us a chance to actually THINK and ENJOY solving the simpliest of things. Experimenting with controls and understanding concepts. That is brilliant. I pray Destiny does this, and I can think of no reason for it not to. So, community, what are your thoughts on this trend? Do you have examples of this being done well or poorly? And of course... what are your hopes for Destiny regarding this?

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  • Remember that not everyone who plays games has a decade or more of experience as we on this site do. Those things aren't meant for you, so ignore them, rather than interpreting them as an insult. Also, Bungie traditionally does a good job of keeping these things to a minimum and only showing them when necessary. There are a lot of tooltips in Halo games that only appear if the game thinks you're doing something stupid (i.e., running around looking down at the ground; the game interprets this as "the player doesn't know how to look around" and displays a message to use the left/right stick to look around). Also, remember that 20ish years ago, video games came with instruction manuals (the horror!) and had NO tutorials, tooltips, or other aids. Damn spoiled kids these days, gosh. :-P

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  • While having long dragged out tutorials can go farther than they need it is unrealistic to expect modern games with current gen controllers to be held to standards games with an incredible amount of less content had no trouble fufilling.

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  • What would make sense would be to have a question at save-file creation which asked, "Are you a beginner?" Or, like in Halo 1 (can't remember for the others) Tooltips would come up only if you were playing on Normal or Easy difficulty. When I go back to play Normal just for fun, it reminds me of the juvenile difficulty setting that I'm playing at, so I almost feel like I deserve it. :) None appear on Heroic or Legendary. Bungie knows what's up. This video is really insightful. I recently just watched "Freeman's Mind" Episode 1, where he is going through the training course, talking about how stupid everyone must think he is, and it is spot on.

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  • Title seems a little misleading.

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    • No offense, but this Topic is.. well, let me put it this way: You'd say "Hey Bungie, I don't like texts on my screen when I'm playing; I want to keep it realistic, so please, [i]PUT AN OPTION TO DISABLE TUTORIALS.[/i] Which also seems unnecessary as many games these days have the ability do disable Tutorials. Either way, such a long post for something that could be said in a Line. I don't want to sound like you're wasting your time. Just letting you know.

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    • Bungie is allowed to go for an M if they wanted. They will not be punished at all.

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    • To add to discussion I don't think tutorials are a bad thing to have, sure they can be annoying to us veteran gamers but they actually do come in handy. For example, when my sister tries to play fps games she fails horribly. She can't get the hang of the joy sticks. As far as I know she isn't a complete idiot as she graduated college and is fairly smart, it's just that she has no experience when it comes to video games. /my2cents

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      • The ONLY thing that online community based games should focus on is a great network connection, such as dedicated servers or great netcode. This is where Halo 4 FAILED - cause 343 were only concerned about they're USA player base, but have no seen how many non-USA players there truly are, as they're population has dropped right off. If you get the netcode wrong, you'll lose players and never have the chance to make it up to them cause they would have walked (which is myself and 80% of those experiencing bad connections with Halo 4), at least if the connection is enjoyable, then other flaws can be ironed out with updates and/or next version of the game. Activision already cater for a certain critique of gamer, so i highly doubt that Destiny will be competing with that as it wouldn't make sense from this pairing. I'm confident that Bungie know how to make a great game, especially after seeing how the Halo Stewards weren't able to carry Halo with the same love and devotion as its creator. I'm also confident that they can learn a lot from Activision as they have proven models in gaming that are a huge success - so all in all we're onto a winner. I'm hoping that Bungie and Activision will both give me all the gaming I need in the future :)

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        • So what you're talking about here is a mix of design, tutorial, and player immersion. I don't think, regardless of what kind of game Bungie is making or who they're aiming at, that they'd sacrifice their excellent design history to "dumb it down". There's some incredible designers over here, and I'm confident that they're a helluva lot more innovative than that kind of "Stay away from the vent" type thing. I'm not worried about this game in any capacity.

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        • Keep in mind that teaching a player how to play a game works differently in today's games. Old school 2D games were a lot easier to handle in that regard, because they just weren't as complex. Most games today require multiple button inputs that just wouldn't make sense to someone trying to get into games for the first time. Bungie has usually been really good about tutorials, all the way back to Myth (which is the first game that I played from them). I'm sure they will find a way to make Destiny have a tutorial that teaches new players how to play, while not frustrating veterans such as ourselves.

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        • Sometimes i wish games where not that popular, so that devs wouldn't focus so much on the dumb masses.

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          • Every game ever invented has a tutorial of some description, even pong. I never used to read the instructions and when I jumped into any game I avoided the tutorial and just pressed buttons and remembered what did what.

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          • There is nothing wrong with a short tutorial. And you are missing the point of the "look up, look down" exercise. Early on it was tutorial (remember Halo 1 or 2 was the first FPS most people played on a console) but in ODST, it's to help you choose inverted or not inverted. All of these things have a purpose. Bungie has the best tutorials hands down.

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            • This is all about lowest common denominator. The fact is that there will be some completely inexperienced players, or brand new gamers, who pick up a game. There MUST be some sort of fallback situation that caters to them to set them on their way. Whilst it may seem patronizing for you or me to see these obvious tutorial sections, no matter how immersive they might be, it's not about you or me. It's about that other guy. The guy who walks into walls, and then has to look at the joypad to find "the stick thing that makes you turn". Playing Portal with my gf has made me realise that what is intuitive and natural, through years of playing, is completely alien and bizarre to the new player.

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            • Some people grab a game they've heard about without ever having played a video game before. Literally no experience. And instruction manuals seem to be a dying breed.

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            • Why are they trying to go T? Seems like thats a severe limit on creativity

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              • God forbid the developers try to help out the newer generation of gamers.

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                • Maybe we need manuals again, for some reason i dont like these one page manuals you get now. PS dead space 3 is fantastic.

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                • this doesn't usually bother me. it would look completely out of place in a game like dark souls however. either way, this seems like a non issue and if the actual game is good then tooltips aren't going to hold it back at all. for me anyway.

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                • That's the thing about [i]a lot[/i] of games these days, they're geared toward the young and impatient population. A group of people who need to be spoon fed and kept constantly entertained with gimmicks and shallow gameplay mechanics to keep coming back. Sure [i]some[/i] of those techniques aren't bad but jeeze, don't go overboard. Look at Battlefield 3, how many weapons can you get, how many attachments do you need?! Halo 4 even entertained this idea by having ranks related to available emblems... It disgusts me. This is why titles such as Dark Souls/Half Life are very appealing; they don't you your hand, you're left to teach yourself. If Bungie steps in this direction with Destiny, I will have lost a lot of respect.

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                  • I completely agree. I hate the direction that a huge portion of games have gone in order to attract more people and make them feel good about themselves. I've been playing a bunch of N64 games like Banjo Tooie and have been thinking to myself "why is a game designed for 10 year olds 10-20 years ago exponentially more difficult than something like Fable, a series designed for adults!?" I feel like so many game developers have forgotten that a lot of people feel so much accomplishment when the game gets confusing or difficult because they feel like they applied the skills that they learned on their own and were smart enough to overcome a challenge that left them dumbstruck for a few minutes. Nowadays, so many games are holding your hand until the end and have no backbone.

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                    • Nice Video. It was quite funny. I agree with what you are going for, destiny really needs to make it easy for everyone to pick up. Even though we do not know the gameplay mechanics yet and how exactly the game will run. I really do hate reading while in games. If i wanted to read stuff then I would buy a halo book or something :)

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                    • I agree with OP, as long as Destiny is intuitive don't waste my time with annoying noobie lessons, I can read the manual or google something I don't know.

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                    • Edited by Neph: 2/10/2013 4:37:48 PM
                      When I was a young gamer myself, I recall being chucked into games with very little in the way of guidance - generally you had to figure things out yourself. Yes it got frustrating at times - but when you finally worked out how to do something, it really did feel like an achievement (this was before they popped up on the screen, giving us points for completing level X...) As for working out how to shoot, move etc. there used to be glorious things called GAME MANUALS that came in the box. Oh, how exciting those were to read in the car on the way home from the shops! Pity they've all but disappeared now. :(

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                      • Dude just because a game is rated T doesn't mean they are aiming for a younger audience, it just means younger kids can play it too.

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                      • Edited by TFOcelot: 2/10/2013 5:27:55 PM
                        I agree, but I don't think we have anything to worry about as far as Bungie is concerned. I mean the shield test in halo 2 to show you that shields recharge after a while (or even exist at all) was pretty clever. It also taught you that there are interactive buttons.

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