• UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Time-wasting respawns/progress loss seems like a very blunt tool with which to motivate the player to keep playing.

      Tried playing a game of tennis with my friends. 0, 15, 30, 40, Point. Then if you’re two scores ahead the game resets. Wtf! Why did the game reset? I was 30-40 and now I’m back to 0? I should be allowed to keep my 30 into the next game.

      Now I’m being induced into playing more tennis! I hate this.

      And tennis has so few maps! Almost everywhere I go is concrete. Very luck to find a clay court anywhere. You need to buy the DLC to find grass, and only if you’re really lucky.

      Its repetitive. Its exhausting. The rules barely make sense. And the match-making is completely fucked. I’m either playing people I trounce or getting my ass handed to me almost every time I go to a court.

      I think I’m going to try and pick up chess instead. Does anyone know how I can upgrade my pawns to queens, though?

    • tetris11@lemmy.ml
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      8 hours ago

      It’s not quite the same though, souls still keeps the items you dropped, its just up to you to retrieve them.

      You can’t claim you climbed a mountain, if each time you fell you just resumed from where you lost grip. Falling and reclimbing with renewed tenacity means that when you finally conquer the mountain, the view is all the more sweeter for the huge experience you’ve gained along the way.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        You can’t claim you climbed a mountain, if each time you fell you just resumed from where you lost grip.

        Well, good thing games are better than real life. Or they would be worthless.

      • gedhrel@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        You can’t claim you climbed a mountain, if each time you fell you just resumed from where you lost grip.

        Sure you can; it’s called redpointing.

          • gedhrel@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            Thanks. My preference is intersectional second ed. I don’t mind conflict as long as it’s not derived from lazy racist tropes.

    • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      I think soulslikes are appealing to a certain type of player. Personally I love Dark Souls it’s my favorite game.

      But I like playing with stakes. I remember stumbling around in the forest, down to my last scrap of health, with no more heals, desperately trying to reach the next bonfire. That for me is fun. Is it frustrating to lose your progress? Sure. But the only “penalty” is you have to try again or change your approach and try something else. And really, is being forced to replay a section inherently punishing? If the game itself is fun, you should still be having fun fighting and exploring even if you aren’t progressing.

    • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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      9 hours ago

      It can be the only way to punish people in certain games.
      If there’s no punishment for failure, there’s no reason to respect any dangers the game presents.
      In Minecraft, what should happen if you walk north for an hour and die? If you respawn with your inventory, why not just do that again and die as a quick way to get back? Why even bother with equipment or food at that point? Suddenly, half the game mechanics have lost their meaning, and there’s a lot less to do for the player.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        If the punishment for failure is wasting time, then I’m just going to play something else.

        Games are supposed to be enjoyable.

        • Semperverus@lemmy.world
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          22 minutes ago

          For millions of people, having to try again when you die IS enjoyable. Many people don’t like being treated like a baby and have everything handed to them, they want to earn it.

          Being sent back to try again is not wasting time, its giving the player the opportunity to learn and grow.

          Video games are the only medium where someone can be denied progress based on their skill. That is their major draw. If you don’t like this, you probably don’t like video games and I recommend you try movies and books instead of trying to turn video games into them.

  • paultimate14@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    I know this is a sarcastic troll post but some QoL improvements can actually help old bad games. Like Save States.

    And yes, Super Mario Bros was always bad. I never understood how it got so popular, even when I was a kid in the early 90’s.

    • kipo@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      I don’t think it’s fair to say Super Mario Bros. was always bad. People played the heck out of it when it released. One could argue that’s because it was bundled with the system, but I believe the consensus is that it is considered one of the best games of its time. It’s probably one of the top 3 NES games still played today. It is legendary.

    • notarobot@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      It was the best game i had. The bar wasn’t high but it still was the best. Too bad I was a kid so I never really got past 1-3. Also at the time I didn’t speak English (nor did my parents).

      Save states are OP. I like the Celeste approach you go back to tag section and each section was its own challage. It doesn’t waste any time because you are not beating any challenges you have already beaten

  • Victoria
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    16 hours ago

    streamlining

    you mean instead of playing the game, i could pay you to not play the game i’m playing instead?

    sign me up

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      I have this same mindset and it’s great because it results in 0 temptation to spend money on game progression or items. If I’m playing a game where it feels like spending money like that is the only way to have fun with it, I just drop the game.

      Actually, I don’t even really bother with any games that I understand to have p2w aspects or any mtx that aren’t just cosmetic.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        If I’m playing a game where it feels like spending money like that is the only way to have fun with it, I just drop the game.

        A big part of the “hook” in GACHA and other whale-hunting games is the initial hook of a fun and engaging setup. Genshin Impact and Sword of Convallaria both stick out to me as initially very fun and captivating games. They draw you in with the cut scenes and ramp up the curve like a normal open world JRPG.

        But the longer you play, the more you start tripping over resource requirements and timers on abilities and the need to do “daily” activities that involve logging on every day. All of this is fun in the early cycles but feels more and more like work by the later stages of the game. Dungeons start looking more and more basic - big empty rooms with a bunch of respawns in the center. Fights feel more contingent on having a bigger number than any kind of strategy or skill.

        If you’ve played older traditional JRPGs before, it’ll start feeling weird because you know you should be expecting the game to pick up towards a dramatic conclusion after 100 hours of play. But these games just… go on forever. There’s no payoff. You get tired and bored and you leave.

        But if you haven’t played older traditional JRPGs, you’re just falling into this skinner box of induced anxiety. The game becomes habit-forming. The induced reflex to trigger a feature or use a power that’s increasingly paywalled encourages you to open your (parent’s) wallet.

        Actually, I don’t even really bother with any games that I understand to have p2w aspects or any mtx that aren’t just cosmetic.

        There’s a networking effect to a lot of these games. Up front, you’re strongly encouraged to get your friends to join in. And friends playing a game together can have enormous staying power. I know people who have been running the same D&D game for 20 years (literally the same characters and world, going on into the level 200+ range as they just crank those numbers higher). I know a couple that’s been doing WoW for their entire relationship - they started playing when they started dating and now they’ve got their ten-year-old son along for the ride.

        I think part of what gives these games staying power is that they don’t require you to empty your savings account to participate. But I think its naive to discount the addictive power of a community space you’re comfortable socializing in.

        These places are predatory. I can’t discount them just because I’m not one of the ones that got eaten.

        • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Agreed, I’m hoping to impart my mindset on my daughter so she recognizes the trap before spending money on it. The games use an exponential growth curve, which means you can spend some money to be dominant for a little while, but the enemies will always catch up because that’s what it’s designed to do. So any power purchase is temporary and will set you up to feel like you need to spend even more to “keep” the “investment” you’ve already made.

          Which also makes quitting harder because quitting entirely is admitting whatever money was spent on in game shit was wasted. It’s just sunk cost fallacy and there really should be regulation on shit like that.

          And, to add insult to injury, the people running the game can decide at any point that it’s not worth running anymore and just shut it all down, leaving players that wasted tons of money with nothing.

          I prefer subscriptions over that and still to this day don’t mind that I spent a lot of money on my wow subscription because I knew what I was paying for.

  • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
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    15 hours ago

    Recently I re-played Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3 on an emulator and did not feel ashamed by making save points everywhere to avoid re-playing the levels, I had time for that as a kid.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      I get the urge, but I wouldn’t reccomend doing that on any of the later Wario Land games. They’re puzzle platformers, so (especially in 2 and 3) the punishment for messing up is the short window of time it takes to get back to the start of the puzzle.

      • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca
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        8 hours ago

        I used save states on them also, I can’t remember if there were any problems with the puzzles.

    • Lurker@sh.itjust.works
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      13 hours ago

      I use save function though but differently instead of saving everytime I breath I just save once at start of Level then everytime even if I take a single hit or Fall somewhere. I load my last start save no matter progress. That’s why it take me around 1 week just beat one game.

    • Adm_Drummer@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      The difficulty settings are your stats. Literally.

      Depending on your build and your personal skill level the game becomes easy or hard. The souls games are notoriously difficult because people don’t have the attention span to learn boss patterns and want to kill every other enemy they see. The game punishes arrogance and forces you to figure out the mechanics yourself.

      Once you get a hang of it the games become really easy. Not even joking. I have a harder time playing Space Marine 2 than I do Dark Souls.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        So what, I have to dive in deep just to get the correct stats to have the difficulty that I want?

        How about my old retired dad, is he not allowed to play dark souls because he doesn’t have the same reflexes he did 40 years ago? Because it would otherwise invalidate your sense of pride for being able to beat it?

        Dark Souls should have a story mode difficulty. Every game should.

        Claiming it shouldn’t is selfish.

      • lime!@feddit.nu
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        9 hours ago

        sure but you won’t know that as a new player unless you go outside the actual game for info.

        • Adm_Drummer@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          The game provides everything you need to know that though.

          If one hit takes most of your health away, then clearly you need more health. So buff your health stat.

          Still learning and need to survive better? Wear armour.

          Casting magic? Maybe you need more Mana.

          Maybe as a person who’s been playing games my whole life I have a cognitive dissonance or something when it comes to people not understanding game mechanics.

          Here’s a good video that helps me understand a bit better.

          But like… You can literally see what each stat buffs and by how much each time you sit at a bonfire to level up.

          The game doesn’t hold your hand but it’s not difficult to understand enough to play the game.

          • lime!@feddit.nu
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            3 hours ago

            ah, so it’s king’s quest style progression. i played enough of that in the 90s.

        • djsoren19
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          7 hours ago

          You should! The game desperately wants you to! That’s why stuff like the messaging system was created, to incentivize the player to player share of information. Yeah, all the messages left these days are going to be trolling, unfortunately, but there’s still plenty of videos and info from the era it was released on the internet.

          There’s absolutely no shame in looking something up when you get stuck and can’t progress further, or asking a friend where to go next. That’s FromSoftware’s intent.

          • lime!@feddit.nu
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            7 hours ago

            but that’s not interesting to me. i want immersion. that’s also why their multiplayer aspect seems like such a weird idea.

            • djsoren19
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              6 hours ago

              Then they might not be the games for you. Immersion is probably the last thing I’d really think of for Souls. They’re very much a series of videogames that feel like videogames, especially when you realize how many of the assets and animations get re-used from game to game.

              • lime!@feddit.nu
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                3 hours ago

                that’s… the most concise way to explain it i’ve ever seen, and something that has never clicked for me until now. it’s always looked to me like this lore-heavy dark RPG and i’ve never been able to square the gameplay with the feeling. hearing that it was never supposed to gel at all and it’s all just background noise makes a lot of sense, and made all the remaining curiosity i had for the series disappear.

                now if only other games could stop getting infected by the fromsoft bug…