Should the skill IDENTIFY be required to identify all monsters and items or is it ANNOYING?

[Norfleet]

It existed long before the internet becoming mainstream.

Yes, but in the era of mainstream Internet, with much larger populations, to boot, access to this information is too readily available. In the old days, maybe 1% of your game population would have access to the Interwebs, and of them, only 1% would write anything. Your game might sell a few tens of thousands of copies to maybe a few hundreds of thousands if it was a big hit. 1% of 1% of that was on the order of maybe double digits of people who would have anything to say.

These days, literally just about everyone and their dog has access to the Interwebs. 1% of that is now a very large number of people coughing up what they've learned.

Stores/magazines used to sell complete walkthrough guides, cheat codes, even devices for consoles that provided such.

Yes, but back THEN, the developers could directly profit from such deals. So there was a direct incentive to make your game a "guide dang it" game where it would be practically impossible to learn the game normally just by playing through it. Players would therefore either lose repeatedly with nothing they could realistically do to prevent it given their lack of information on how to play the game, or shell out for the guide.

Nowadays you can't really sell that information anymore. And people have much shorter attention spans due to the sheer number of games they have to get through. Making the game inscrutable and sadistic is now likely to hurt your sales, whereas in the old days, there weren't enough games to give people a choice and they were all that way to sell the guides.

[Oyster Sauce]

If every copy was personalized, you wouldn't be able to look things up

[Norfleet]

Identifying stuff is not fun and I play games for fun

Identifying stuff CAN be fun, but it's only entertaining if the identification is based around solving uncertainties due to fog of war, rather than uncertainties due to not knowing how to play the game.

Trying to identify what that unknown blip is on your radar is, and how you should thus respond to it, is an interesting game, as this challenge remains even after you know exactly how to play the game. Trying to identify whether the red sword is BIS, cursed, or vendortrash, is simply based purely on your ignorance of how to play the game. And not knowing how to do things has long since lost its shine to those of us who are not children.

If every copy was personalized, you wouldn't be able to look things up

Nah, because you'd still be looking up the procgen tables for how that works.

[Faceless_Sentinel]

Stores/magazines used to sell complete walkthrough guides, cheat codes, even devices for consoles that provided such.

Yes, but back THEN, the developers could directly profit from such deals. So there was a direct incentive to make your game a "guide dang it" game where it would be practically impossible to learn the game normally just by playing through it. Players would therefore either lose repeatedly with nothing they could realistically do to prevent it given their lack of information on how to play the game, or shell out for the guide.

Nowadays you can't really sell that information anymore. And people have much shorter attention spans due to the sheer number of games they have to get through. Making the game inscrutable and sadistic is now likely to hurt your sales, whereas in the old days, there weren't enough games to give people a choice and they were all that way to sell the guides.

This is a strange statement, given that almost all games came with books with this information (for example, with the cartridge of Final Fantasy was a book that had images, descriptions and characteristics of monsters, what they are immune to and what they are vulnerable to, where you can meet them).

[Xenich]

It existed long before the internet becoming mainstream.

Yes, but in the era of mainstream Internet, with much larger populations, to boot, access to this information is too readily available. In the old days, maybe 1% of your game population would have access to the Interwebs, and of them, only 1% would write anything. Your game might sell a few tens of thousands of copies to maybe a few hundreds of thousands if it was a big hit. 1% of 1% of that was on the order of maybe double digits of people who would have anything to say.

These days, literally just about everyone and their dog has access to the Interwebs. 1% of that is now a very large number of people coughing up what they've learned.

Stores/magazines used to sell complete walkthrough guides, cheat codes, even devices for consoles that provided such.

Yes, but back THEN, the developers could directly profit from such deals. So there was a direct incentive to make your game a "guide dang it" game where it would be practically impossible to learn the game normally just by playing through it. Players would therefore either lose repeatedly with nothing they could realistically do to prevent it given their lack of information on how to play the game, or shell out for the guide.

Nowadays you can't really sell that information anymore. And people have much shorter attention spans due to the sheer number of games they have to get through. Making the game inscrutable and sadistic is now likely to hurt your sales, whereas in the old days, there weren't enough games to give people a choice and they were all that way to sell the guides.

Most PC gamers had internet connections and access to any type of guide online. Those 1% of internet users were also your PC gamers.

Even so, developers didn't forego putting various things in games using the reasoning that it would be a waste of time because their players would cheat.

Console gamers on the other hand, cheating went hand in hand with play. I am not saying everyone who played a console was a cheater, but the market of cheat guides in the console industry was HUGE. It was a common practice for game stores to push the hint guide with the game sale as a up-sale and they made massive money on this practice.

Fast forward to today and the PC gaming market is really just the console market now. Since selling guides isn't profitable, console gaming design has fell away from practices that spend effort on secrets and features (at least that I have noticed) and I would say it is because, as you said, they can't make money on it anymore, so why bother?

This is another one of those things where the console market has driven PC game design because PC gaming never had this issue and had always had easy access to information to cheat the game.

I think this is a key concept to the mindset between the original PC gaming market and Console. One seeks to play a "game" because of what a game is, so would view "cheating" it constantly to be counter productive to that goal while a console gamer tended to just play the game for "entertainment" (ie muh fun!) and so cheating as just a normal process of play.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.

[poseidon]

It should all fall under a skill called "autism" that gives you general good advice about any niche subject about the game you need

[GhostCow]

Identifying stuff is not fun and I play games for fun

Identifying stuff CAN be fun, but it's only entertaining if the identification is based around solving uncertainties due to fog of war, rather than uncertainties due to not knowing how to play the game.

Trying to identify what that unknown blip is on your radar is, and how you should thus respond to it, is an interesting game, as this challenge remains even after you know exactly how to play the game. Trying to identify whether the red sword is BIS, cursed, or vendortrash, is simply based purely on your ignorance of how to play the game. And not knowing how to do things has long since lost its shine to those of us who are not children.

To me it's just an extra step and I see it as busy work

[rusty_shackleford]

Identifying stuff is not fun and I play games for fun

Identifying stuff CAN be fun, but it's only entertaining if the identification is based around solving uncertainties due to fog of war, rather than uncertainties due to not knowing how to play the game.

Trying to identify what that unknown blip is on your radar is, and how you should thus respond to it, is an interesting game, as this challenge remains even after you know exactly how to play the game. Trying to identify whether the red sword is BIS, cursed, or vendortrash, is simply based purely on your ignorance of how to play the game. And not knowing how to do things has long since lost its shine to those of us who are not children.

To me it's just an extra step and I see it as busy work

Playing the game is also busywork, why not just watch your favorite sloptuber play it?

[Wretch]

If it is done tastefully and in the right speed and tone of game it’s kino. It has no place mechanically in an action RPG. Beastiaries, hidden weaknesses, and little secrets take the place and mesh with the gameplay and atmosphere much better. Games need a certain level of depth like that to even have soul.

Otherwise it’s just another bland soulless cash grab.

[rusty_shackleford]

If every copy was personalized, you wouldn't be able to look things up

An easy way to achieve this is to make the player perceive it from the character's perspective.
IRL I can identify a snake from a lizard or a frog. I have no idea if a snake is venomous or not, as I have no special knowledge of snakes. I'd have to get a good look at it, ask experts, and consult books. I'd stop confusing similar snakes with each other with enough experience. And after getting bit enough times perhaps I'd know which ones are going to send me to go seek help because they have dangerous venom or its mostly harmless.

Change the graphics, sound, and name used by it as the character learns more. The less the character knows, the more generic the creature looks and sounds.

?SNAKE?

[Norfleet]

This is a strange statement, given that almost all games came with books with this information (for example, with the cartridge of Final Fantasy was a book that had images, descriptions and characteristics of monsters, what they are immune to and what they are vulnerable to, where you can meet them).

You're confusing games where published, sold-separately guides existed, with "games that had manuals". **** in the manual, today, WOULD simply be presented to you in the game, but back in the old days, they had to print them on dead trees because there physically wasn't room on the disk for them. This is an entirely separate issue.

To me it's just an extra step and I see it as busy work

It depends on the game. In many games, it is just busy work. There's no prospect for error, deception, or misdirection involved. There's no opposition that's trying to trick you. The information or lack thereof, and the means of obtaining more information in-game, isn't actually a meaningful mechanic, as opposed to, say, an actual radar or sonar system you're operating to detect and identify what's out there, and an opponent that's actively attempting to screw with you.