Every game has a flaw... WHY?!

[Edcrab]

This is a well known fact but really gets to me sometimes. I know true perfection is impossible, but why do such great games have mind-bogglingly pointless difficult/boring/unstable (or somehow all three) points that often lower their overall calibre?

Take Half-Life. I hated Lamda. I hated the teleporter puzzles. I got used to jumping in Xen (more or less... urrgh) thanks to quicksave, but I could've gone without it.

Take Medal of Honour. I see it as overrated but certainly solid, and I thought the ending was a wee bit lacklustre (I actually quite liked HL's compared to some people... very mysterious.) I thought the infamous Sniper Alley was pure idiocy.

KotoR, one of the best RPG's ever, had to have a sequence where you walk very slowly in an atmospheric suit after completing a repetetive (albeit simple) puzzle.

Put simpy... WHY?! What posseses developers to put these moments in? Are they missed in play testing? Do they genuinely believe players will enjoy them? Or have they all signed a top secret document dictating that they won't produce a game so incredible so that some shady intergalactic super-corporation's massive Artificial Reality Simulating Emulator (ARSE for short) will be instantly voted the best game ever?

There must be some reason. Right...?

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

So uh...what did you like about those games?

I think halflife was great, and i didnt mind xen even though it could have been better. I think though, a lot of the crappy parts of games are simply filler because either they didnt have the time to put something decent there, or they just couldnt think of how to bulk it up. I suspect that games such as....Hl2 will have less of that due to the expereince that has been gathered by developers over the past few years. Remember FPS's are relatively new compared to most ofther games. I mean there was doom, but that was just showing what could be done, it wasnt trying to be the best story or whatever.

 

[The Dark Elf]

I know true perfection is impossible,

but why do such great games have mind-bogglingly pointless difficult/boring/unstable (or somehow all three) points that often lower their overall calibre?

I think you answered your own question there

 

[Edcrab]

Yeah, but the thing is I sometimes get the feeling that dev's have deliberately inserted such-and-such a misguided feature just to throw me off course... although I am technically insane. :rolling:

I'd agree with the point about dev experience of course. Hopefully we'll see less filler and more intuition in upcoming titles. If not, I'll continue complaining! And believe me, I am ANNOYING.

Consider yourself warned, dev's.

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Ah....i see you are from Cumbria. That would explain the annoyingness

I suppose games like Hl2, stalker and such like will show us if they really have moved on from the old style puzzles.

 

[Anthraxxx]

Ah....i see you are from Cumbria. That would explain the annoyingness

I suppose games like Hl2, stalker and such like will show us if they really have moved on from the old style puzzles.

Never!! Old style puzzles will never die!!!
One of the games I think comes pretty close to flawless is Starcraft....

 

[Foxtrot]

Starcraft had too many 1337 d00ds on battle.net...every game has its flaw.

 

[Karis]

I LOVED jumping around in Xen. Espicallt in interloper. For some reasom I thought the idea was to jump into thoes things that spit you out really high, land on the top flying thing, then slowly make your way down. And yes, I really did land on the top flying thingamajiger once, but eventually figured out how off I was. After that I liked it

And star craft... War Craft 3 IS out you know. I really don't know why some pepole thing SC is better than WC3, but it's a lot easier to play (due to improvments in AI. Remember the ghost EMP missle, selecting the whole group of ghost just to use one emp, and end up wasting 11 emp missiles when one could have done the job?)

Basically, part of it's the fact that not everyone will like the same part of the game as another does, and part is the fact programming a program with zero bugs on this level is an almost impossible task.

And yes, some do actually have it cause they can put a "10,000,000,000,000,000,000,023.5 hours of playtime" sticker on the game.

 

[DarkStar]

I LOVED jumping around in Xen. Espicallt in interloper. For some reasom I thought the idea was to jump into thoes things that spit you out really high, land on the top flying thing, then slowly make your way down. And yes, I really did land on the top flying thingamajiger once, but eventually figured out how off I was. After that I liked it

Uhh...isn't that what you're supposed to do on that level? Am I missing something? How are you supposed to play that?

 

[dawdler]

"KotoR, one of the best RPG's ever, had to have a sequence where you walk very slowly in an atmospheric suit after completing a repetetive (albeit simple) puzzle."
All the puzzles in KOTOR are repetitive and simple.

At any rate, the problem is off course angle. 99.9% of the games does exactly what they set out to do, otherwise they wouldnt play like they do. The problem is that annoying players (ie you) look at the game from a different angle, and thus dont like it. I know this from Savage, everyone goes (as a carnivorous predator) "OMFG!!1!1 MELEE ME YOU NOOB!!!!" and go on and on about how 1337 the melee is, how you shouldnt interfere when someone duel, etc etc etc... Well DUH! On human side the only weapons researchable are *ranged* weapons. That leads me to think the developers actually thought we would use them. Yet people go on about how this game was designed for melee, and how ranged sucks and is overpowered and so on. Snipers are REALLY frowned upon, its that kind of attitude.
You can easily see where its going. The players *think* its supposed to play one way, and they ignore simply playing the game for what it is.

Point being, what you see as a flaw is something that it is the game, whether you like it or not. Some people like KOTOR ("KotoR, one of the best RPG's ever"), I think the entire game is one big gameplay flaw, not even worthy of being called an RPG due to extreme linearity, worthless stores, worthless rifles, extremely easy fights, repetitive worlds, small levels and annoying puzzles with the solution *always* on a datapad 10m from the problem. See?

 

[Prince of China]

No one is perfect.

 

[Sorze]

I'll have to agree a bit with the first post, but not completely...

I don't think all games have this anymore, even if they might've used to..


Anyone remember any old games you could never complete!?
Some pre 16bit, and possibly some obscure japanese 16bit games aswell really couldn't be completed!!
The developers ran out of time or funding or whatever, and simply made that last jump 4cm too far to make it accross! That way they could sell their half completed game at full prize (well, sell it at all really) without completing it. Be glad that's not possible nowadays...


I agree totally with the KOTOR bit... I really liked kotor, even though I didn't play throught it completely twice (once for the light side, once for the dark side), and that underwater part SUCKED!!! I got so damn frustrated, I thought I was finished with something (or made some mistake, I forgot which), and wound up running around in the water more than I was supposed to, and it took so godamn long!!
I don't get why they implemented that, KOTOR is already long enough y'know!!


Of course they can't make perfect games, but one would think they would notice the worst parts in playtesting..
I think the reason they don't notice things like Sniper Alley is that by the time they're testing it, they know their game inside-out, and are so leet they can just run through it no problem.

 

[Sui]

its all because the game has a release schedule, and u cant contuinue to perfect the game forever or itll never be released. Give DE:IW another year and i bet everyone would have loved it.

 

[Narcolepsy]

its all because the game has a release schedule, and u cant contuinue to perfect the game forever or itll never be released. Give DE:IW another year and i bet everyone would have loved it.

Now let's see if your theory holds true. Will 5 or more people chime in and say how bad it was?

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Starcraft...i didnt think of that. Come to think of it, for its time that game was perfection in gaming. If that game was remade with todays graphics, it would be amazing.

 

[dawdler]

its all because the game has a release schedule, and u cant contuinue to perfect the game forever or itll never be released. Give DE:IW another year and i bet everyone would have loved it.

It wouldnt be the same game anymore, since they would basicly have to scrap the engine and remake every level and every model from scratch.

It is true time is an important part though. Mostly in conjunction with graphics. If you release a big game fast or on time, the graphics will be pretty, but people will with 99% certainty have something to complain on in the gameplay area. If you delay it for years (take DNF as an extreme example), the graphics will be so woefully obsolete that people wont even begin to complain on the gameplay.

 

[mortiz]

Everyone's idea of fun is different.

Did you ever think that during HL-1 play testing the person who was in charge of testing the Xen levels found it really fun?

 

[Edcrab]

Oh yeah... Starcraft. I can't really think of a moment in that which pissed me off beyond measure. But many RTS's really entertain me full stop... strategy just kills the finnicky part of me in many cases.

With Savage, it's a great point; I hate people who try and enforce a particular spur-of-the-moment game type on others.

/me coughs uncomfortably

Did you ever think that during HL-1 play testing the person who was in charge of testing the Xen levels found it really fun?

Um... yes. I actually visibly wrote how maybe some of the parts so many people seemed to feel let down by may have been seen as genuinely enjoyable. It's not as if a dev would limit themselves to one tester per chapter of course...

I'm still being annoying by the way, I'm not letting up.

 

[Dedalus]

sometimes developers will put things into a game to get you into a certain mindset. example: Halo. there are levels and levels of huge repetitive scenery and enemies and it's just the same for almost 3 hours of gameplay. now you could take this as the devs being lazy, or you could take it as the devs trying to tell you how huge Halo is, to give you an idea of how vast it is. of course a dev's vision doesn't always translate perfectly because the medium is perfect and every piece is open to interpretation. but keep that in mind the next time you're annoyed by xen.

 

[dfc05]

Uhh...isn't that what you're supposed to do on that level? Am I missing something? How are you supposed to play that?

that's exactly what i was thinking... now i'm gonna have to go play through the whole game just to figure out what Karis was talking about.............

 

[clarky003]

not even our real world is perfect, geesh imagine a perfect game, . its the imperfectness thats fun.

 

[Letters]

Or is the imperfectness that allows us to enjoy the perfectness?

 

[csmighty1]

^ well said

 

[clarky003]

yeh thats it, .