next »

[Squidly]

For platformers they suggested a pause or slow down button.

Pause is a lot easier than slow down, imo.

[Sik]

How the heck is pause an accessibility feature? It's a basic command to let you take a break from the game, it doesn't help make the games easier at all (especially if it needs to pop up a menu or something).

Platformers are not the best example probably anyway, the normal solution for that is different (usually just slightly tweaked) object layouts. For example, it could be possible to add more platforms in easier difficulties to make jumps less tricky, or reduce the amount of enemies.

Puzzles though, yeah, besides adding a hint system there isn't much you can do about it.

[gamerzap]

How the heck is pause an accessibility feature? It's a basic command to let you take a break from the game, it doesn't help make the games easier at all (especially if it needs to pop up a menu or something).

Platformers are not the best example probably anyway, the normal solution for that is different (usually just slightly tweaked) object layouts. For example, it could be possible to add more platforms in easier difficulties to make jumps less tricky, or reduce the amount of enemies.

Puzzles though, yeah, besides adding a hint system there isn't much you can do about it.

He might have meant it pauses everything but you?  Other than that I don't get how this could be an accessibility feature.

[Squidly]

How the heck is pause an accessibility feature? It's a basic command to let you take a break from the game, it doesn't help make the games easier at all (especially if it needs to pop up a menu or something).

Platformers are not the best example probably anyway, the normal solution for that is different (usually just slightly tweaked) object layouts. For example, it could be possible to add more platforms in easier difficulties to make jumps less tricky, or reduce the amount of enemies.

Puzzles though, yeah, besides adding a hint system there isn't much you can do about it.

He might have meant it pauses everything but you?  Other than that I don't get how this could be an accessibility feature.

I mean more of a system freeze pause, so you can plan out your next move a little more carefully.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

super mario bros. already had a pause like that, though, didn't it? my point wasn't that it's impossible though, my point was that it isn't trivial, and can often take almost as long as making an entirely new game (or at least an entirely new set of levels) if you go the 'moving objects around' type of thing route -- you can be talking a game taking 50% as long to make, and wind up with an easy mode that isn't very fun even for people without hands (etc.) because the level design isn't balanced around that mode as well as it was around normal mode

another possible issue that i see is that, for many people, their desire to beat a game on normal mode will be gone if they already beat it on easy mode, even if they *can* beat the game normally. that's certainly true in my case -- there are plenty of games i played through on easy or normal mode, found *too* easy and boring, wished i had played through it in hard mode instead, but, since i had already seen everything, i had no desire to go back and play it in hard mode. this has happened to me dozens of times, and in those games i think i would have more fun if an easy or normal mode did not exist for those games, so as not to tempt me into playing it. i'm not saying everyone is like this, just that i personally often am

most recently, i played through a game called paper sorcerer on normal mode. i found the battles (even boss battles) stupidly easy; sometimes i could win in a single round, no matter what i did. what was worse was that the game got easier as i progressed. it was hugely disappointing. i later heard that hard mode is more balanced, and that the game was balanced around hard mode, not normal mode, and generally people had a lot more fun in hard mode. but since i had already beaten the game in normal mode, i didn't really have the desire to go back and play it as it was intended to be played, because the newness of the game was gone, i had seen everything already

what is worse is that the game got easier as you went along, and for normal mode, the first few areas of the game felt somewhat challenging, it just became stupidly easy later on as the party's power snowballed due to level ups and power progression (the way they seemed to made the game easier was to increase your own stat growth, not to change enemy hp or anything, so you just leveled up better, so at the start of the game normal mode and hard mode were identical, but later on there was a huge difference)

this is one area in which cheat codes may be the better option for the majority of players, because it'd remove the temptation to play "under" your own skill level. if instead i had to cheat to make the game easy, i wouldn't have done it, and i would have enjoyed it a lot more. this is also an example of how *not* to do an easy/normal mode -- don't make it deceptively challenging at first, and become easier over time, through such things as changing stat growth for the player characters

overall, i believe that easy modes always need to be thoroughly tested and tweaked, and should not just by plain number changes; you need to balance an easy mode to the skill of less skilled players, you can't just blindly change numbers and hope that you didn't break the balance. otherwise you wind up with situations where you can one-hit bosses and the easy mode players don't even get to see everything a boss can do before it's dead in a few seconds, etc.

[gamerzap]

How the heck is pause an accessibility feature? It's a basic command to let you take a break from the game, it doesn't help make the games easier at all (especially if it needs to pop up a menu or something).

Platformers are not the best example probably anyway, the normal solution for that is different (usually just slightly tweaked) object layouts. For example, it could be possible to add more platforms in easier difficulties to make jumps less tricky, or reduce the amount of enemies.

Puzzles though, yeah, besides adding a hint system there isn't much you can do about it.

He might have meant it pauses everything but you?  Other than that I don't get how this could be an accessibility feature.

I mean more of a system freeze pause, so you can plan out your next move a little more carefully.

You can already do that in many games and it's usually not that helpful in platformers...

[Kingel]

Puzzles though, yeah, besides adding a hint system there isn't much you can do about it.

There's a big difference between making a puzzle game with two levels where the first is easy and the second is super hard, and five levels where the levels gradually increase in difficulty from easy to super hard. The former is going to discourage players more easily, while the latter may allow the players to solve levels they otherwise would give up on. Putting in some extra work (in this case, three extra levels) to boost the confidence of the player is in my experience well worth it as it can make the game more accessible.

[Squidly]

How the heck is pause an accessibility feature? It's a basic command to let you take a break from the game, it doesn't help make the games easier at all (especially if it needs to pop up a menu or something).

Platformers are not the best example probably anyway, the normal solution for that is different (usually just slightly tweaked) object layouts. For example, it could be possible to add more platforms in easier difficulties to make jumps less tricky, or reduce the amount of enemies.

Puzzles though, yeah, besides adding a hint system there isn't much you can do about it.

He might have meant it pauses everything but you?  Other than that I don't get how this could be an accessibility feature.

I mean more of a system freeze pause, so you can plan out your next move a little more carefully.

You can already do that in many games and it's usually not that helpful in platformers...

Look, that's what it said on the pdf. Whatever, it doesn't matter.
Slowdown, though, might be useful. Kind of like how turbo works on emulators.

[Chris Koźmik]

Whether or not you have an achievement in Civ V means absolutely nothing to anyone else.

It wouldn't if you were the only one that can see your achievements. But that's not the case, you can see a percentage and it makes you feel great if you get an achievement that has 10% completion rate.
It anyone could cheat... it would make this achievement thing rather pointless to me as a player.

Anyway, that's not important if it matters or not, all that matters is that it would make me unhappy as a player and I don't want it And unless I'm a small minority it means a problem.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

yeah i think the idea that 'nobody cares about your achievements in games' makes no sense. *i* care about them. i care that i got to gannon without a sword in zelda 1, even if nobody else does and even if there is no 'achievement' icon for doing that. similarly, i care that i reached gold 4 in league of legends, even though it's not a particularly high ranking. the idea that nobody should care about their accomplishments in a game makes no sense to me. often the whole reason i play games is to accomplish things in them

i generally think having an easy mode is a good idea, and so far most (but not all) of my games have had difficulty settings, and easy cheat keys that are in the official faq's and stuff for when even the easiest setting isn't easy enough. but not everything can appeal to everyone, there's books on the level of 'see spot run, see spot jump, jump spot jump' and there's books on the level of wittgenstein's or spinoza's philosophical works. the latter can't really have an 'easy version' that is understandable to everyone, just as nobody would have need of a 'hard version' of the spot thing. sometimes a game can have an inherent difficulty just due to the nature of play -- e.g. an 'easy version' of bullet hell games would kind of be laughable to play -- maybe you could make the game such that 1/10th the bullets are fired or something, but it'd be a pointless game at that point, not fun for anyone, even for people with no skill at shmups. often the fun of game has a base minimum skill level required. that minimum should be made as low as possible, but it can't really be zero

[Squidly]

Whether or not you have an achievement in Civ V means absolutely nothing to anyone else.

It wouldn't if you were the only one that can see your achievements. But that's not the case, you can see a percentage and it makes you feel great if you get an achievement that has 10% completion rate.
It anyone could cheat... it would make this achievement thing rather pointless to me as a player.

Anyway, that's not important if it matters or not, all that matters is that it would make me unhappy as a player and I don't want it And unless I'm a small minority it means a problem.

I dunno, I still think the Civ V mods for the most part are balanced, and Deity difficulty is still ridiculously hard either way.

I get your point, though.

Maybe have the personal achievements logged but not the Steam ranking achievements.

Honestly, if you're going to put that time and effort into the "managed to beat the game in 1 minute" achievement then it's probably just as hard no matter what you do.

I wouldn't expect there to be enough trolls to warrant buying a game enough times to make a significant impact on achievement percentage.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

another thought is, if all someone wants out of a game is to see the content (the story, music, etc.), then wouldn't it almost be as good just to watch a let's play of it? those are, in essence, zero skill, because someone else is playing the game, all you have to do is watch it and you can experience the entire game. i know it's not interactive, but if there's a game that i can't beat, and i want to see the ending, watching it on youtube isn't really a big deal to me, i've done it before (e.g. with games with really really hard final bosses, like digital devil saga 2)

another issue with easy modes is that they broaden the possible successful strategy base, often to including almost every strategy a player might think of. for example, in my game immortal defense, i had eleven difficulty levels (from 00 to 100 in increments of 10). at the lowest level, literally any tower placement you could do would probably succeed. is that really fun -- when anything you do would succeed? i don't know. it's there just in case people want it, but to me, higher challenge levels are more fun because fewer and fewer strategies are successful at the higher challenge levels, so you have to think more. perhaps i went about making easy mode in the wrong way, but in my game, if you set the difficulty easy enough, the "intended" successful strategies for a level were no longer important, you could do whatever you wanted and still win. i'm not sure that's fun for people with low skill levels; a lower skill level doesn't really mean you want every possible thing you can do to result in victory. but that was the result from stat changing (reducing enemy hp for each difficulty level).

[Squidly]

You know I'm talking about difficulty levels for people who physically would need them, right?

Since Tower Defense games have large pauses between waves, and most have a pause button, pretty much anyone can play them as they are.

[Sik]

Look, that's what it said on the pdf. Whatever, it doesn't matter.

Pause is mentioned because amusingly there are still people making games without implementing a pause feature, as basic as it seems. You'd think it'd be obvious, but nope...

sometimes a game can have an inherent difficulty just due to the nature of play -- e.g. an 'easy version' of bullet hell games would kind of be laughable to play -- maybe you could make the game such that 1/10th the bullets are fired or something, but it'd be a pointless game at that point, not fun for anyone, even for people with no skill at shmups.

And here we go again with a bad example. Touhou is like the poster child of bullet hell games and it still does have an easy mode, the main difference is the pattern of the bullets (this is also from where the jokes about Cirno come, her easy pattern basically leaves the entire area in front of her as the blind spot, probably the biggest oversight ever in Touhou).

[Giovanni]

If the basic gameplay doesn't allow you to make it easier, then no. The "Souls" series does a ton of stupid things simply for the sake of atmosphere and seeming harder, but most of them couldn't be taken out without making the game a dull hack n' slash. Some games would be a waste of time if they were too easy.

[Squidly]

If the basic gameplay doesn't allow you to make it easier, then no. The "Souls" series does a ton of stupid things simply for the sake of atmosphere and seeming harder, but most of them couldn't be taken out without making the game a dull hack n' slash. Some games would be a waste of time if they were too easy.

I dunno, I feel like if they want to, let them.

I mean, most people will end up playing the game at max difficulty anyways, but why not let people not play lower?

I'm reminded of the Doom games, which put it pretty well:

I'm too young to die
Hey, not too rough
Hurt me plenty
Ultra-Violence!
Nightmare!

It's essentially asking you: how do you want to play this game as opposed to "how much should we dumb it down for you?"

[Giovanni]

I dunno, I feel like if they want to, let them.

I mean, most people will end up playing the game at max difficulty anyways, but why not let people not play lower?

I'm reminded of the Doom games, which put it pretty well:

I'm too young to die
Hey, not too rough
Hurt me plenty
Ultra-Violence!
Nightmare!

It's essentially asking you: how do you want to play this game as opposed to "how much should we dumb it down for you?"

I agree. It's mostly dependent on the game, hence the Souls comparison. Some games, like Kirby ones, would highly benefit from higher difficulties whereas others need to be brought down a few notches. To better answer the question, the game designer should figure out what they want their game to be both stylistically and gameplay-wise. If the tone or gameplay has to be changed for the worse to do so, then don't bother. Some games are perfectly balanced the first time around - a good example is Super Castlevania IV. The game allows you to fail by having unlimited continues but doesn't use that as an excuse to baby the player at all. The end result is a challenging game that nearly anyone can beat if they put enough work into it.

Or, you know, make a "Super Baby American Extreme" mode where none of the enemies move or attack and the game says, "You're a winner!" every time you take a step.

[Squidly]

Either way, I think the 'difficulty levels ruin the game' excuse is just not acceptable anymore.

Come on guys, it's 2014, stop designing games like we're doing Atari.

Heck, even Atari Adventure had difficulty levels ._.

[Lee]

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

Clearly other people here disagree with you on that. (Not that it "ruins the game" -which I just want to point out that absolutely nobody said- but that a game with a set difficulty level can be a good thing. And that it should be up to the developers discretion whether they want to do other difficulty levels.)

I don't see why you are so vehemently against a set difficulty level. Lots of people have pointed out to you that there are many many games that do have difficulty selections, even some very old games have it as you've pointed out.

Beethoven became increasingly deaf, and yet even when he was completely deaf he still composed music. He kept on creating music that many have enjoyed... Despite the fact that he himself could not enjoy it along with other deaf people. And despite the fact that it pained him immensely to be unable to hear. He absolutely wanted to create beautiful music for others and didn't stop just because he and others could not enjoy it. That is the point: the music was for people that could hear, it had a specific audience and design.

You cannot dictate to developers what they should do with their games. When it comes down to artistic mediums or the works of a handful of individuals they should be free to design and develop how they see fit.

With mediums like film, television, and games we can accommodate deaf people to some degree by providing subtitles and closed captions. That's basically an extra layer on top of the game. It doesn't change the game itself in any way. It's an additional accommodating feature.

With things that change the nature of the game itself (which difficulty changes absolutely does) then it's not additional to the game. And that stuff should be up to the developers discretion.

I completely agree that developers should be as accommodating as possible. To the extent that their vision of the game allows.

--
Things that don't change the nature or artistic vision of the game and are "additional" to the game:

• Key mapping.
• Subtitles and closed captions.
• Changing input sensitivity.
• FOV sliders.

Things that don't significantly change the nature of the game but do alter the artistic vision of the game:

• Colour blind aware visuals/options.
• Game presented in high contrast.

Things which change the nature of the game:

• Keyboard only -for some games-, impossible for games which require 3D aiming in practicality.
• Mouse only -for some games-, may be extremely clunky or difficult to design for.
• Slowmo.
• Difficulty, broad multipliers or specific e.g. enemy/level traversal/puzzle difficulty.
• "No button mashing", "No precision needed", "Timing of movement/button pressing not important", "No mandatory quick time events" ... These basically wall off a ton of games and mechanics and are very impractical.

Only things from the first category could potentially be added to a game without worrying about any other aspects of the game. In fact I would say they should be added as they can only make the game better. The second category can't realistically be taken into account for the majority of games throughout development, however I think it would be good to check over the game when complete/near complete to make sure there aren't any issues with key elements. The last category is completely down to the developer. There's probably more you can add to each category.

[Squidly]

You're comparing a man who's work was selfless despite his disability to working on games despite disabilities.

Look, imagine an emulator.

I use emulators all the time, some RPGs, like Final Fantasy VII, cannot be played in a reasonable amount of time without them. Why? Speed up. There are 1:00 attack animations with no value, skipping them makes you lose power, it's ridiculous.

So I grind. In order to make grinding not take forever, I also speed up the grind.

Is this what the developer intended? Hell no.

Is this ruining the game? Not really.

Is this taking away from my enjoyment of the game? It's adding to it.



I'm saying, look, design your game at its hardest. Then allow people to tune it down. You can put it in another menu or something, but just let that option be there.

For example, Ground Zeroes has that slow-mo thing (when you're detected) that you can turn off to make the game play regularly. Same with Hitman: Absolution. If you want the game to be at its hardest without any of this 'modern' crap, then allow people to turn it off/on.

XCOM did this wonderfully, they have save files, you can ignore them. You can also turn off the 'set seed' system that ensures that all damage is the same from a given save file to make it generate a new one. Then you can turn on ironman mode which doesn't even allow you to have a second save.

We really gotta stop thinking of 'artistic vision' as playing a game exactly as a developer intended it to be.

That's exactly what games aren't.

That's what a movie is, that's what a book is, but games are supposed to be about options. How to attack, where to jump, etc. You can take options away to make the game damn impossible, such as pixel perfect collisions and so forth, but you should allow people who need it to do it.

It's like that QTE thing, God of War is absolutely nothing without its Quick Time Events, right? But it's also absolutely nothing if people can't play it in the first place.

Imagine if I made a game with a high pitch frequency sound cue, so that anyone over 18 could not hear it. Unless my point was to make a game which nobody over 18 could play, then making it a lower pitch isn't taking away from my artistic vision.