I never understood the hardcore gamer mentality. Not that I care if someone else enjoys grinding or developing their skills. Good for them if that’s what they like. But it’s not what I like. I don’t play games to get gud. I play games to fantasize and relax. There’s gotta be some challenge, but I’m fine with it adjusting to meet my (generally low) skill level.
In this thread:
The video is great. A shame that it’s getting downvoted.
In fiction there’s the concept of suspension of disbelief. Wikipedia describes it better than I could, but to keep it short - when you’re reading/watching/etc. a fictional story, you avoid applying your critical thinking and logic reasoning to certain story elements, in order to enjoy it.
I feel like a similar but not identical principle operates with game mechanics. I’ll call it here suspension of scepticism. That suspension of scepticism makes you willing to trust that the information provided or implied by the game about itself is factual, accurate, and relevant.
For example, if it shows you a six-sided die, you treat it as a fair die, and you treat your odds of getting a 1 the same as getting a 6, a 5, or any other number. You won’t save the game, throw the die a hundred times, and see if it’s actually fair or not.
Those “design lies” use that suspension of scepticism to deliver a better experience. And it works - for the reason mentioned in the video, it makes playing more enjoyable.
However just like the suspension of disbelief can be broken, so does the suspension of scepticism. It’s OK if the game designer is a liar, but he must be a good liar; if you lie too often or too obviously, the player will smell the lie from afar, and the suspension of scepticism is broken. And with it, the enjoyment of the game goes down the drain.
I watched 3 minutes and he advocates multiple absolutely game breaking terrible ideas.
“We don’t want players to die” is cancer. “Silently changing difficulty” when people die is cancer.
Dying is a good thing. Players learning to get past difficult segments is a good thing. A game that doesn’t respect that is broken.
It’s extremely common. You’ve probably played and loved dozens of games that do it without you knowing. Resident Evil 4 is the famous example, but to its detriment, I could see it working in the Resident Evil 2 remake as well.
Have you ever gotten through an encounter by the skin of your teeth, with just barely enough ammo and health? It’s probably because you had more health than the game told you, or that the last bullet in your magazine does more damage than the rest of them.
I know it’s common. It completely fucking destroys games singlehandedly. There is no acceptable way to do it.
Rubber banding replaces actual progress with illusory progress.
But often times, that’s desirable. Not everyone sits down with a game to be thoroughly challenged, and even with the difficulty dynamically adjusting to you, there are often other ways to further tune it up. They don’t make failure impossible, but they try to find that sweet spot for a flow state, which is going to be incredibly difficult to find with unchanging difficulty modes. If you didn’t notice, games used to have astonishingly low completion rates back when they did have unchanging difficulty modes.
It’s not desirable. Building a game that enables people to continually make actual progress is desirable. Allowing people to modularly adjust difficulty if they feel a game is too difficult is desirable.
Removing feedback to make it significantly harder to get better at a game is not desirable. You cannot get better if a game is constantly lying to you about what is good and what is bad. Rubber banding isn’t just “fake progress to get by an encounter”. It actively prevents you from being able to learn because it gives you unreliable mixed signals. It’s fundamentally broken and being forced to rely on it means your actual game design is fundamentally broken.
I think you’re overstating the importance of games as a platform for skill development as opposed to a platform for, you know, having fun. The fact is that the vast majority of players play any game on one of its lowest difficulty settings.
Rubber banding is made for the core of the game’s audience and challenge-seekers are just not large enough to be that core. Some of those rubber banding mechanics can and are disabled at higher difficulty settings. Others are needed at higher difficulty because the AI can’t compete and the investment in dev time to improve the AI just isn’t worth it because, again, very few people actually play the game at those difficulties.
It’s not possible for a game to be fun without development of skill over time.
That’s the core concept of what a game is: forcing you to make ambiguous decisions in an uncertain environment.
None of this is conjecture. These practices make their way into games because we can measure the result. The goal of the game designer, usually, isn’t necessarily to make the player better at the game but to help them to have fun. It’s why multiplayer games with matchmaking typically make your first matches against bots disguised as humans. If you lose your first match, there’s about a 60% chance that you’ll never play that game again, because you never got to have that feeling that shows why the game is fun. If you get frustrated with a difficult portion of a campaign or story driven game, you’re more likely to put it down and, among other things, less likely to buy the sequel since you never saw the end of the previous one.
You can’t “measure the result”. Hours played is not game quality, and there is very little overlap between games that stand the test of time and games that are broken by rubberbanding. It is a short term dopamine manipulation that removes the actual satisfaction of actually playing a game. It’s like saying slots are a good game because they form addicts.
If you use rubber banding, you are terrible at what you do.
Yes the people playing Mario Kart deserve to lose 100 times in a row until they git gud because every game needs to be frustrating or its not a real game
You don’t get better if the game breaks the mechanics to prevent you from getting feedback for your actions, and yes, that’s exactly why I can’t tolerate Mario Kart.
Well, not everyone plays games to get better. If I can enjoy the game, then what does it matter if games lets me think I am better than I actually am?
It’s your right to like or dislike any features. Just as it’s our right to like or dislike any features. There is no objectively good or bad in it.
If you like self-improvement then why do it at something useless like a game? Maybe the people like to use the game to take a break from the time they spend on improving actually productive skills in their life.
That’s literally what play is and why our brains do it. It’s exploration and learning in an imagined world.
Anything without a continuous ability to explore different decisions and their consequences is tedious and mind numbing. Mario Kart is less fun than watching paint dry.
Fun is also what fuels exploration and learning. I think the overall point here is that there are people who have fun with different experiences that may be at odds with each other. Some people like struggling with something until they achieve success, and others just want to relax and have a good time.
Personally, I’ve had my fun with hard games in the past, but I’m turned off from the idea of getting stuck behind a skill barrier because I’m older now and have less time to spend on games.
Players can lower the difficulty themselves, the game shouldn’t do it for them. The game can prompt, but it should never be automatic IMO, especially when strategies can change depending on the difficulty level.
That’s a mentality that was the norm back in 2010, and one of the reasons the og dark souls got called a “very hard game”. It wasn’t that hard of a game, it was just a game that let you die as many times as mistakes you made, and it’s both objectively a better game for it, while also being hugely influential to the industry on this particular matter. To the point that it has been given the title and award of “ultimate game of all times”. Deserved for reminding that games are supposed to be games, and failing is 100% supposed to be part of it.
To the point that it has been given the title and award of “ultimate game of all times”
I wish people into niche genres with limited appeal would stop making claims like that. By all means enjoy the game but also acknowledge that this kind of play style is not for everyone, especially not for people who don’t have hundreds of hours to put into a game.
It’s not a claim I made though. It got that award from the voting public by the golden joystick. And souls are definitely no longer niche, Elden Ring success is an obvious clue, but the fact that most AA or AAA action games with a melee weapon from the last 5 years implements some mechanics from souls games is another huge indication of the mass appeal and impact dark souls has had on gaming culture.
Nobody is denying that it founded a new genre, doesn’t mean that that genre’s mechanics are now needed in every game ever made in the future or that it is the most popular genre among all players.
It’s not what I’m saying either. I don’t know where you found any such claims in my comment. All I said is that games are supposed to be games, and failing is supposed to be part of games. You can fail even in a chill game like Stardew Valley, and you probably will on your first playthrough if you don’t look anything up. The game won’t game over because of it, but you will spend your entire second year suffering and trying to fix the mistakes you made in your first year. I can’t remember a single game I played where failing was not something that could happen that felt better because of it. Case in point: I was playing Jusant and was interested in the game, until I realized I couldn’t truly fail in that game, and all of the mechanics in place that looked like they were game mechanics, were actually just smoke and mirrors.
It almost like, when you learn the lesson the encounter is designed to teach you, you get better at the game 🤷🏼♀️
This rubber banding bullshit is like if Mario’s original 1-1, very carefully crafted to introduce you to the basic mechanics of the game, just started letting you walk through pipes if you never jumped over it. You don’t have a game any more.
Haven’t watched the video, but it depends on the game. For some games, these are very valid choices.
I whole heartedly disagree.
Any existence of either of those things is an effectively insurmountable barrier to a game I can tolerate in any way. “Fair” is a core element of proper game design, and if you make your game unfair by cheating for or against the player, you’re breaking your game, and you’re a bad game designer.
I am sure this title is totally not rage bait and is signaling exactly the opinion it sounds like it does.
Short version: feeling fair is more important than being fair.
Funny that this releases so soon after Frost’s video about Nick’s lies.
Holy crap Frost left? His stuff and yahtzee are the only reason I’m subbed to second wind at all. The rest of the content on the channel just seems like cringe click bait clutter like this and all the other God awful design delve videos.
After watching this video about what Frost is saying about Nick Calandra, it really makes sense why the Second Wind channel is the way it is.
EDIT: Holy Jesus. Giving this a second listen to make sure I didn’t mishear anything. This Nick Calandra guy running Second Wind is a Grade-A twat. Fuck him and any thing he touches. Anyone supporting Second Wind needs to watch this.
Second Wind made a response. Everyone else at Second Wind disagrees with Frost and is happy with Nick. Quote from Yahtzee:
I wish him well and that he’d focus on his future rather than trying to stoke petty drama in ways that reflect badly on him more than anyone else.
Did they address any of the pretty clearly unethical things Nick has done that Frost showed some pretty hard to deny evidence for?
Just because it would be easier for everyone to sweep the shitty things Nick did under the rug and move on doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Boy, this one really struck a nerve, huh? I didn’t think he was saying anything that people didn’t already know, but I guess he was.
I absolutely hate this, and it’s a big part of why I don’t play Assassin’s Creed and most other mainstream action-adventure games unless I’m really interested in the story, despite loving the genre. The mainstream titles just seem absolutely terrified of the player losing that it removes any real feeling of danger. If I can’t lose, what does it mean to win?
My favorite games don’t seem to hold any punches:
- Europa Universalis IV - yeah, sometimes you’ll get back-to-back 99% siege ticks; sieges shouldn’t use this mechanic, but at least they’re fair
- Ys - especially older titles like Ys 1&2 and Ys Origin - if I die fighting a boss, the boss doesn’t get easier, I just have to “git gud”
- Mount & Blade: Warband - at higher “difficulty” settings, the game is absolutely brutal
I guess I don’t like the “flow” aspect the author is describing here, because it means the game isn’t challenging enough. I largely play indie games these days, probably because they don’t have as much of this BS.
If games had an option to disable this nonsense, I’d probably play more AAA games. But when everything feels like its holding my hand, I’ll find something else to play.
First off, I think you’re absolutely right about your right to disable “this nonsense”. I support you in that.
But “this nonsense” is what makes games fun for me.
I’m not about struggling and finally overcoming.
I’m about having an adventure. It’s the interactive version of a book, where I engage my brain a bit more and explore or solve puzzles, instead of the book just telling me the answers immediately. I enjoy gun fights in games, but I don’t want to play them even twice. I want to win them and move on to more content. Losing a scenario doesn’t make me feel even better when I win. It just drags me down.
I have enough things in my life that I’ve accomplished by struggle that I don’t need it from games, too.
But again, if that’s what does it for you, I think you should have it, too. There’s no good reason you can’t disable it, IMO. (Other than the devs just not providing the option.)
And that’s what difficulty settings are for. If you just want to explore the story, puzzles, and some action, set it to easy. Or maybe they could have a “dynamic” option, which adapts to your ability if easy is too easy.
I want a consistent, challenging experience. Often “hard” is less fun than “normal” because it often pumps the HP of enemies, limits my resources, and allows the AI to cheat a little, which might be fun for a second playthrough, but not a first playthrough. I want a consistent experience as the devs designed it, and if that means I need to replay a segment a dozen times because I’m just not getting it, I’m fine with that, as long as I know it’s fair. Perhaps after a few tries it should ask me if I want to switch it to easy, but it shouldn’t automatically switch it.
I want a consistent, fair difficulty, and I’m happy to disable a difficulty scaling option in the settings to get it (ideally it would be an option at the start though).
You can lose. Some games are better about hiding their lies than others, but I can’t think of one that actually makes failure impossible. My favorite lie, from a Twitter thread years ago, was a racing game from the PS1 where all the cars had different stats and such on the select screen, but under the hood, they all behaved exactly the same. Your indie games probably lie to you too; the author of this video works on Rainworld.
I’d be interested in some kind of database where I could check if games lie to me. I feel like I’m good at detecting that, but maybe I’m just good at picking the more subtle games.
And yeah, driving games are total BS. I played Horizon Chase Turbo with my kids, and the only reason I kept playing is because my kids liked watching. It definitely felt like there was a ton of BS in it because I could still win pretty much any race whether I got the optional upgrade or not. So I don’t play many driving games anymore, because they all feel like they use a ton of rubber-banding.
They always have. Rubber banding has been common in racing games for as long as I can remember. We complained about it then too, but it’s not like developers didn’t try the game without it first.
If you want to find out if/how your game lies to you, you’ll have to either ask the devs or expose more information via mods or Cheat Engine.
True, which is why I very rarely play racing games. I play Mario Kart with my family and friends, but that’s about it. I’d much rather lose a race than have the game keep giving me second chances, just let me fail if I screw up so I can learn.
If you enjoy a game, but later find out that the game had some internal check where it auto-adjusted difficulty, will you stop liking it?
Again, not all games should have it. And not every dev implement it properly, that doesn’t mean a feature is inherently bad. There are places where it should be used, and where it should be used.
will you stop liking it?
No, but I’d certainly feel cheated, may hesitate to recommend it to others, and I would certainly think twice about buying another game from that studio, unless they had really good writing and that’s what I was there for.
For me, a game either needs really compelling gameplay or a really interesting story, and if it has both, I’ll buy every game in the series. That’s how I feel felt Ys: I loved the “git gud” feel of Ys 1 (Ys 2 was a bit of a letdown), and that continued in Ys Origin, so I’ve been dutifully playing through the series. I’m less excited about the later games, which have added group combat (difficulty feels nerfed), but Ys 1 and Ys Origin are two of my favorite games of all time.
I love a good challenge and I love a good story, and I’ll put up with a lot if I can get either. And that’s why I’m not playing anything after AC: Brotherhood, the gameplay is kind of boring, and the story completely fell off a cliff. The same goes for most other popular action-adventure games, they just don’t appeal to me because they feel too hand-holdy. I really like Dark Souls though.
That’s understandable. Everyone has their own preferences, and there is nothing wrong with that.
I can’t think of one that actually makes failure impossible.
Cookie Clicker. If it qualifies as a game.
But the way that you can’t lose has nothing to do with adaptive difficulty, IIRC.
Sure. Just thinking about games with no loss condition at all. It’s kinda rare.
This guy is the only person on the second wind team that produces such insufferably bad content. Death is bad? Crawl outta your own ass buddy.
