sgc_meltdown said:
20 Eyes said:
Yeah, because removing mandatory hand-holding bullshit isn't a substantial change and it's not the kind of thing that the codex spends 95% of its time (true statistic) bitching about.
But I guess it's easier to just reply with a hivemind-solidifying meme.
Making part of the UI optional is a bold design move? That's what substantial means for you? Allowing players to turn off a self-contained component is not restructuring. Putting how easily impressed you are aside, how about you think about the trivial work needed for that implementation versus large scale design document changes that reflect the kind of developer feedback and work resource commitment I'm talking about and get back to me.
I have zero game development and minimal project management experience, so I'm not going to argue about how difficult this adjustment was. I know from reading interviews with these guys that seemingly minor changes are sometimes much more difficult. I don't know if they just had to check a box somewhere or if they spent a week fucking with the engine and redoing various code/art to accommodate for the change.
But if I'm 'easily impressed' by a AAA game team REMOVING mandatory hand-holding features, then I guess I'm easily impressed. Usually it's the other way around, so even a small step in the right direction is impressive to me. The highlighting would change the game for the worse, and it goes beyond the UI because instead of looking around for items/shortcuts you'd just run from yellow highlight to yellow highlight. It certainly qualifies as a 'significant change'. If they left it mandatory, I can only imagine how many Codex posts mocking/bitching about it I'd have read by now.
They didn't make it optional because they were nice, they did so because it was an easy compromise that in no way would require touching the actual underlying framework of a game, like a numbers balance tweak in an mmo for people screaming that a class in their F2P korean mmo is broken.
Does anyone do anything in this industry because it's 'nice'? Realizing that a feature is going to piss off a sizable portion of your customers and making it optional to appease them is just the logical thing to do, in some cases. The MMO cycle of class balance is an interesting thing in itself, but Minimum effort -> Maximum profit is the driving force behind the entire gaming industry.
As stinger said, it took fan outrage to make that easy tweak.
If you bothered to read the posts you reply to, you'd realize I said this in my very first post in this thread.
What would it take for them to make bigger changes? You see where the feedback line ends here?
I don't know. Indie game developers and even smaller studios can have good feedback with the players. But what do you think would justify a AAA game readjusting their budget and deadlines to the extent that you seem to be desiring? It's easier to say 'this would be nicer if it was more fleshed out' than it is to actually do it. As for more fundamental changes that you and I and other people on the Codex are clamoring for, as I'm sure you know the big companies see us as a small dying breed of consumer and I doubt this is going to change any time soon. We're not worth catering to in their eyes. I disagree with this, but that is how it is.
Do you think making a toggle to turn off the quest compass for Oblivion would have impressed anyone here and make them think, oh, Bethesda cares about the game they're making and just won back the Morrowind fanbase?
Oblivion would still be shit because it's shit on every level, but it would be a change in the right direction. If they put some sort of control on level scaling, which from my vast game developing experience I can assume would be an effortless change taking less than an afternoon's worth of work, they'd have eliminated two of the biggest things I see people bitching about around here.
Perhaps you think the upcoming Hitman: Absolution goes out of their way to cater to old fans in the sense that they say they're turning off the radar vision for higher difficulties?
No idea, I'm not a Hitman fan.
See, when you make something modular the dilemma of having the game work for people with it on or off still remains. So instead of designing a game securely around an excellent principle (no health regen, say), you end up with a bland half-here and there mess that sort of keeps you awake with either health regen on or off because you have to average out the baseline challenge for either camp and keep the specialist features out.
I agree with this, for the most part.
Therefore, do you think they added environmental clues or subtle hints along with turning off the highlighting for the people who did, and make arriving at these objectives more satisfying?
Probably not. If I recall correctly the change was made a few months or so before release and I doubt they'd have the time to readjust the entire game. I'm admittedly not very far in the new Deus Ex because I just started playing it recently, however I'm not having any problems without the yellow highlight. In this specific case, I don't think too much additional work was absolutely needed because there is still a quest compass of sorts guiding your overall direction. The descriptions of where shit is located seem pretty decent so far, but I'll get back to you when I finish the game.
But sure, it would have been smoother if it had been part of the game's initial framework.
Save the glib defensive backpeddling and follow your own advice about thinking before replying just for the sole purpose of making your little revelation stick. Easy enough for you?
Yes.