RPG Design of the past

[Xenich]

I noticed something playing MM7 recently.

The game doesn't hold your hand. Everything is left to the player to actually "explore" to figure out (reading, talking to people, testing, etc...). From figuring out where trainers are, to how to get into areas, or what a shrine does, etc... everything is game play.

The "help" systems of today completely take away the mystery of exploration, figuring things out, etc...

I mean, how many times in the older games did you find something and think "What the hell is this, what does it mean, what am I supposed to do?" and then start searching the world trying to figure out what it means?

They don't do this as much anymore. Everything is "Your quest is over here... your objective is right here... follow the bouncing ball... go right here, do this... click here... etc..." as if this is a "convenience" feature rather than a direct cheat on game play.

Why is it wrong for a player to have no clue what to do and is forced to figure it out? When did research, exploration, trial and error, etc... become poor game play design?

I remember when devs used to brag about how they confused the players or made something difficult to figure out. I don't get it anymore.

I think a good developer sees themselves as the opponent of the player and does everything they can within the bounds of their games design to best the player. That is what I want, not some *** story experience where its jerkoff hour for the inept and sexually deviant. Man I miss the days of old.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Why is it wrong for a player to have no clue what to do and is forced to figure it out? When did research, exploration, trial and error, etc... become poor game play design?

When the masses began voting with their wallets on Steam. Games that are not transparent and are not easy from the get go get bad Steam reviews and tank sales until the devs rush out a patch to reverse that in the hopes that they might gain some positive reviews and bump the Steam overall review counter to green before the shortlived interest in the game is over.

[1998]

Why is it wrong for a player to have no clue what to do and is forced to figure it out? When did research, exploration, trial and error, etc... become poor game play design?

When the masses began voting with their wallets on Steam. Games that are not transparent and are not easy from the get go get bad Steam reviews and tank sales until the devs rush out a patch to reverse that in the hopes that they might gain some positive reviews and bump the Steam overall review counter to green before the shortlived interest in the game is over.

Games were being casualized even a bit earlier than Steam. At some point, failing at anything was seen as a bad thing. It was all about accessibility and lower the entry bar as much as possible.

[Tweed]

Games in the 80s didn't have room for in-game instructions, everything was in the manual and quick reference card because it had to be and the player was expected to be intelligent enough to read and understand the manual which that alone is enough to gatekeep a lot of people away from more complex games right there. Plus, that means your average player requires a certain level of innate intuition to figure things out and most games were designed with that in mind. As the games get bigger they start having more room for small in-game tutorials which eventually become entire tutorial sections, chapters, and so on to ease the player into what's expected. Intuition on the players part goes away. Furthermore, there's more people playing and budgets are much bigger. You can't afford to gatekeep when there's so many money being spent on development and marketing.

Manuals get smaller and cease to be altogether. Everything the player needs to know is within the game itself and it's taboo to trick or otherwise make the player feel uncomfortable without their consent. There's also a stark difference between the modern player and the older one. If I get stuck in an old game I can usually figure out how to proceed. If a new player gets stuck in an old game you get "WHY CAN'T METROID CRAWL?"

Why is it wrong to force the player to figure it out? Because they may not want to buy future games if they can't. Who made games this way? Game developers did.

[Xenich]

Games in the 80s didn't have room for in-game instructions, everything was in the manual and quick reference card because it had to be and the player was expected to be intelligent enough to read and understand the manual which that alone is enough to gatekeep a lot of people away from more complex games right there. Plus, that means your average player requires a certain level of innate intuition to figure things out and most games were designed with that in mind. As the games get bigger they start having more room for small in-game tutorials which eventually become entire tutorial sections, chapters, and so on to ease the player into what's expected. Intuition on the players part goes away. Furthermore, there's more people playing and budgets are much bigger. You can't afford to gatekeep when there's so many money being spent on development and marketing.

Manuals get smaller and cease to be altogether. Everything the player needs to know is within the game itself and it's taboo to trick or otherwise make the player feel uncomfortable without their consent. There's also a stark difference between the modern player and the older one. If I get stuck in an old game I can usually figure out how to proceed. If a new player gets stuck in an old game you get "WHY CAN'T METROID CRAWL?"

Why is it wrong to force the player to figure it out? Because they may not want to buy future games if they can't. Who made games this way? Game developers did.

True, but take MM7 for instance. While it does tell you what things do... spells, skills, shrines, trainers and basic systems, it doesn't tell you where things are or how to use them exactly.

For instance, a lot of the shrines have conditions that need to be met, but don't tell you what they are. Trainers require talking to people and tracking down their locations. The map that ships with the game is just a basic drawing of kingdom boundaries, not a specific of locations. Numerous puzzles, interactions, etc... aren't explained in the manual, but listed as clues in play, or referenced in dialogue.

The typical click and kill player is completely lost in a game like this as they miss the references and clues that are mentioned in various interactions of play.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Why is it wrong for a player to have no clue what to do and is forced to figure it out? When did research, exploration, trial and error, etc... become poor game play design?

When the masses began voting with their wallets on Steam. Games that are not transparent and are not easy from the get go get bad Steam reviews and tank sales until the devs rush out a patch to reverse that in the hopes that they might gain some positive reviews and bump the Steam overall review counter to green before the shortlived interest in the game is over.

Games were being casualized even a bit earlier than Steam. At some point, failing at anything was seen as a bad thing. It was all about accessibility and lower the entry bar as much as possible.

There are games that do the no handing holding buts that for small niche indie games.

[Xenich]

Why is it wrong for a player to have no clue what to do and is forced to figure it out? When did research, exploration, trial and error, etc... become poor game play design?

When the masses began voting with their wallets on Steam. Games that are not transparent and are not easy from the get go get bad Steam reviews and tank sales until the devs rush out a patch to reverse that in the hopes that they might gain some positive reviews and bump the Steam overall review counter to green before the shortlived interest in the game is over.

Games were being casualized even a bit earlier than Steam. At some point, failing at anything was seen as a bad thing. It was all about accessibility and lower the entry bar as much as possible.

Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I was never a big fan of consoles. While there were some gems in console games, this was the mainstream market and where you saw the bulk of the "gimmick" trend games. I remember entire walls filled with complete trash of games. While PC games did have similar garbage, the games tended to focus more on an honest attempt at game play because they didn't have that large market to work with.

I remember Atari dying because it got to the point where everything was just a garbage gimmick. Granted, there were limits on what you could do at that time, but man... there were miles of junk you had to wade through to find an intelligent implementation of a game.

Nintendo was a nice boost, but it quickly fell into the same trap and I noticed by the time PS1 came out, the gimmicks were getting more and more common.

When they started doing console to PC ports, that is when I noticed the same behavior showing up often in PC games (more than usual) and it that trend has evolved to what we see today. It feels like the Atari days all over again.

When the masses began voting with their wallets on Steam. Games that are not transparent and are not easy from the get go get bad Steam reviews and tank sales until the devs rush out a patch to reverse that in the hopes that they might gain some positive reviews and bump the Steam overall review counter to green before the shortlived interest in the game is over.

Games were being casualized even a bit earlier than Steam. At some point, failing at anything was seen as a bad thing. It was all about accessibility and lower the entry bar as much as possible.

There are games that do the no handing holding buts that for small niche indie games.

Yeah, and some are good games, but a lot of them still don't seem to find the magic that many older games had. They do some things right, but then still tend to add too many "modern audience" game play mistakes IMO.

[Tweed]

Games in the 80s didn't have room for in-game instructions, everything was in the manual and quick reference card because it had to be and the player was expected to be intelligent enough to read and understand the manual which that alone is enough to gatekeep a lot of people away from more complex games right there. Plus, that means your average player requires a certain level of innate intuition to figure things out and most games were designed with that in mind. As the games get bigger they start having more room for small in-game tutorials which eventually become entire tutorial sections, chapters, and so on to ease the player into what's expected. Intuition on the players part goes away. Furthermore, there's more people playing and budgets are much bigger. You can't afford to gatekeep when there's so many money being spent on development and marketing.

Manuals get smaller and cease to be altogether. Everything the player needs to know is within the game itself and it's taboo to trick or otherwise make the player feel uncomfortable without their consent. There's also a stark difference between the modern player and the older one. If I get stuck in an old game I can usually figure out how to proceed. If a new player gets stuck in an old game you get "WHY CAN'T METROID CRAWL?"

Why is it wrong to force the player to figure it out? Because they may not want to buy future games if they can't. Who made games this way? Game developers did.

True, but take MM7 for instance. While it does tell you what things do... spells, skills, shrines, trainers and basic systems, it doesn't tell you where things are or how to use them exactly.

For instance, a lot of the shrines have conditions that need to be met, but don't tell you what they are. Trainers require talking to people and tracking down their locations. The map that ships with the game is just a basic drawing of kingdom boundaries, not a specific of locations. Numerous puzzles, interactions, etc... aren't explained in the manual, but listed as clues in play, or referenced in dialogue.

The typical click and kill player is completely lost in a game like this as they miss the references and clues that are mentioned in various interactions of play.

It's surprising to see a tutorial in MM7 when neither 6 or 8 bother, but it seems like they poured the most production values into Blood and Honor and that was during what could be considered the apex of NWC's development cycle with HoMM 3 going strong. 8 was originally going to be an expansion and then it became a full-blown game when they hit dire straits. But the release dates all seem to add up. Compare to Daggerfall which had a small optional tutorial that could be activated inside their non-optional tutorial dungeon and that was 1996, but you'd still need to read the manual to understand the interface. Once you left Privateer's hold you were on your own to do as you please. Morrowind had an even shorter tutorial and that was 2002, it even ends with a small suggestion to visit the trade house and tells you "good luck". The main audience was the PC and coming over from Daggerfall, but a new platform showed up, the Xbox and everything would change when Oblivion came out.

The mouthbreather complaints about Morrowind didn't start until years after the fact when newer generations tried to play the game and didn't understand why their weapons didn't connect with enemies. Or people who couldn't find anything that wasn't marked without a quest compass.

I still seethe over idiots denying us the Forge in HoMM 3 because people were unfamilar with Might and Magic lore.

[rusty_shackleford]

Games in the 80s didn't have room for in-game instructions, everything was in the manual and quick reference card because it had to be

The effect of this is really underrated when discussing old vs new design.
A lot of those games would have had ingame tutorials if they could actually fit the text for it on-disk.

Same reason story-heavy games would tell you to go read a certain page in the manual to get the text.

---

My tolerance for intrusive tutorials is near zero, if a game has more than two popups telling me what to do I'm probably going to quit.

[1998]

Games in the 80s didn't have room for in-game instructions, everything was in the manual and quick reference card because it had to be

The effect of this is really underrated when discussing old vs new design.
A lot of those games would have had ingame tutorials if they could actually fit the text for it on-disk.

Same reason story-heavy games would tell you to go read a certain page in the manual to get the text.

---

My tolerance for intrusive tutorials is near zero, if a game has more than two popups telling me what to do I'm probably going to quit.

That's actually one of the very few good more modern trends, you can usually deactivate those popups.

[Tweed]

This is why all my attempts at replaying Borderlands fail.

Well that and the braincell killing "humor".

[rusty_shackleford]

you can usually deactivate those popups.

The problem is with games that actually require you to read those.
Basically any lower budget space game(read: game where you directly pilot a ship in space) will fall into this zone because it's one of the hardest genres to make intuitive controls/gameplay for.

[Yankee Zulu]

A few points here

- internet changed everything. Nowadays with a few clicks you can find tons of info about any game - guides, builds, puzzle solutions, etc.
- people do not have the time anymore to brainstorm game mechanics, they simply want those mechanics to be served to them on a silver platter
- the average age of gamers has increased hence see above
- this concerns not only video games but other things as well. People nowadays need an instructions on how to use the toilet paper.

[WhiteShark]

- people do not have the time anymore to brainstorm game mechanics,

I'm not sure that time is any more restricted than it used to be, just willingness.

[Xenich]

A few points here

- internet changed everything. Nowadays with a few clicks you can find tons of info about any game - guides, builds, puzzle solutions, etc.
- people do not have the time anymore to brainstorm game mechanics, they simply want those mechanics to be served to them on a silver platter
- the average age of gamers has increased hence see above
- this concerns not only video games but other things as well. People nowadays need an instructions on how to use the toilet paper.

Well, getting hints on games was still possible even back then. Game shops, magazines/hint guides, phoneline hints for some games, etc...

The "people do not have time" is a narrative argument that has no knowledge of the past. I watched the progression of computers from only businesses/schools and a hobbyists on up to now and I would say most people had less time than now because they didn't spend their time in front of computers all day. People still worked very long hours depending on job, had external activities, etc...

Gamers increasing is true, but what this did was increase the number of people who wanted to be "entertained", not play games. The people who just wanted to play a shallow interactive experience like the old arcade consoles. The demand for easier, simpler, non-intellect entertainment by "mainstream" is what I would say had the biggest influence, but this was also driven by company practices to monetize on gimmicks that promoted such.

[wndrbr]

"WHY CAN'T METROID CRAWL?"

it's a legit question though.

[rusty_shackleford]

the answer is because nintendo sucks at designing games for people who are capable of thinking on their own

[rusty_shackleford]

Well, getting hints on games was still possible even back then. Game shops, magazines/hint guides, phoneline hints for some games, etc...

Very strong trend to forget how hard tiplines/strategy guides were pushed, entire industry around making games with parts that required you to use tiplines or buy the strategy guide.

[Xenich]

Well, getting hints on games was still possible even back then. Game shops, magazines/hint guides, phoneline hints for some games, etc...

Very strong trend to forget how hard tiplines/strategy guides were pushed, entire industry around making games with parts that required you to use tiplines or buy the strategy guide.

Yep, the I remember Al Lowe (Sierra) saying that they made more money on their hint lines than they did the game.

[Yankee Zulu]

Like it or not that **** is never coming back. All you can do is dream about the 'good ol times' and 'golden age'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age

[Xenich]

Like it or not that **** is never coming back. All you can do is dream about the 'good ol times' and 'golden age'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age

It will come back if gaming dies. The only reason it is done now is because even for the "honest" developer, there is far too much money lost not at least trying to compromise with the idiots.

When they move on and their audience becomes those who don't tolerate that crap, you will see those things slowly disappear.

The real question is, where do the idiots go next and there is the issue of multiple generations who grew up on gaming with these ******** design habits so unless a new trend evolves that attracts them, gaming is going to struggle with these types claiming they are gamers when in reality they are just inept tools looking for buttons to push to pass the time.

[J1M]

Picture in your mind's eye the employees of a game studio today. Now, ask yourself, why would I trust that those people are capable of creating the type of experience you are referring to?

It's not that I am too impatient to try different things to succeed. It's that I cannot differentiate between "the designers didn't implement this correctly" and "this solution is invalid for a non-obvious reason".

[Dorateen]

A competent designer of role-playing games creates a world, an environment; populates it with interesting encounters, mysteries, NPCs to interact with.

And then gets the hell out of the way.

[Nooneatall]

You have to be careful what you wish for here because this is very easy to **** up. Older games didn't hold your hand but in many cases doing the next thing was easy enough to discover. That might be a journal like in Morrowind or just more linear gameplay like in console games. IIRC mm has a map built into the game you can annotate and you aren't really in danger of getting lost if you can read.
I don't trust modern devs to do this kind of stuff because they are usually **** at writing and game design. Their idea of leading the player is yellow paint everywhere or a marker that shows you exactly where to go.

[Gastrick]

I remember when devs used to brag about how they confused the players or made something difficult to figure out. I don't get it anymore.

When it clicks as well that this was what you're supposed to do for a hard segment it's a great feeling when done properly. For the past year I've been playing games fully blind without ever intentionally looking anything up, taking a step into the unknown where you don't know whether you'll find the item you want or useful NPC; also adds extra impact when you do. The leap of faith feeling that things will eventually work out. Being able to cross over things that seem completely impossible to do even with unlimited practice is really the rawest form of challenge out there, and uses your head instead of motor skills.

[Nooneatall]

I remember when devs used to brag about how they confused the players or made something difficult to figure out. I don't get it anymore.

When it clicks as well that this was what you're supposed to do for a hard segment it's a great feeling when done properly. For the past year I've been playing games fully blind without ever intentionally looking anything up, taking a step into the unknown where you don't know whether you'll find the item you want or useful NPC; also adds extra impact when you do. The leap of faith feeling that things will eventually work out. Being able to cross over things that seem completely impossible to do even with unlimited practice is really the rawest form of challenge out there, and uses your head instead of motor skills.

I'm ******** and hate using my brain. I like games that hold my hand and tell me what to do while I listen to Ben Shapiro and eat pizza off of my gut.

[Tweed]

I remember when devs used to brag about how they confused the players or made something difficult to figure out. I don't get it anymore.

When it clicks as well that this was what you're supposed to do for a hard segment it's a great feeling when done properly. For the past year I've been playing games fully blind without ever intentionally looking anything up, taking a step into the unknown where you don't know whether you'll find the item you want or useful NPC; also adds extra impact when you do. The leap of faith feeling that things will eventually work out. Being able to cross over things that seem completely impossible to do even with unlimited practice is really the rawest form of challenge out there, and uses your head instead of motor skills.

I'm ******** and hate using my brain. I like games that hold my hand and tell me what to do while I listen to Ben Shapiro and eat pizza off of my gut.

Whatever is coming after the current generation of Jack Me Into Machines will be perfect for you.

[Rigwort]

Yeah, games from tabletops to computers have developers and referees that have no teeth. It seems people seem to want "experiences" rather than challenges.

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

You have to be careful what you wish for here because this is very easy to **** up. Older games didn't hold your hand but in many cases doing the next thing was easy enough to discover. That might be a journal like in Morrowind or just more linear gameplay like in console games. IIRC mm has a map built into the game you can annotate and you aren't really in danger of getting lost if you can read.
I don't trust modern devs to do this kind of stuff because they are usually **** at writing and game design. Their idea of leading the player is yellow paint everywhere or a marker that shows you exactly where to go.

Modern devs are **** in almost aspects in game design and there getting exponentially worse each passing year.

[asf]

remember these are people who cant get anywhere if a gps doesnt point the place precisely