• EA Exec: "Our games are too hard"
    128 replies, posted
Call of Duty has already gone that route. Here's a fancy hallway, move down it. Press the button we put on screen to complete a fancy sequence that sees no further input from you. Now do this while this happens but it's okay if you don't do it because it's going to happen anyway and it doesn't matter what you do. Great now continue down the fancy hallway That's boring as shit to me. And after you do it once why do it again? And it's so short that it isn't worth a $60 price every time they shit one out
[QUOTE=Code3Response;47089740]"This game sucks but i keep playing it for some reason"[/QUOTE] "Orkel in the World of Tanks thread" in a nutshell.
I'm making a game right now, and before I put in a tutorial I've watched people play. Like everyone I watched would get stuck on the first room and give up, and all it involved was walking to the left. People actually have a problem with 2 hours? Getting into the game should be easy, but the skill ceiling should be high so you feel like you're getting better over time, that's the REAL progression.
[QUOTE=Zero-Point;47091125]"Orkel in the World of Tanks thread" in a nutshell.[/QUOTE] Lets be honest and just call it "World of Tanks thread".
This is so true, I had trouble completing Sims. It was like the levels never end.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;47088039]My rule of thumb for buying games is for every dollar I spent, I expect to put at least 1 hour into it.[/QUOTE] High five! Same exact thing here, if I can't get at least an hour per $1 then I don't see the game as really worth it.
[QUOTE=MilkBagz;47088162]Wow dude, modern games are piss easy as it is. I've been playing Halo 1 a lot recently, and it's real refreshing that it's actually challenging. And that's part of the appeal, to me, of old games in general. They weren't dumbed down to a point where you can beat them in a few hours. [sp]I just hope that Mirror's Edge 2 doesn't get fucked up. I've already lost interest in the rest of their other shit, Battlefield is already a lost cause, just please don't fuck up Mirror's Edge.[/sp][/QUOTE] Halo: Combat Evolved was a great game regardless of difficulty. The AI acted like they wanted to live, and instead of trying to soak up all the bullets and stuff, they tried to dodge it. I genuinely love when enemies want to avoid getting shot because they know they aren't bullet sponges. Plus it adds a use to covering fire.
In a sense they're right. Games like Battlefield have a longer learning curve than a game like Call of Duty. As someone who doesn't have a lot of time to play video games during the week, I can definitely say that it's a lot more convenient to pick up and play a game like CoD, where all you do is pull the right trigger and someone dies. Then you have games like Battlefield, where it's a little more complicated to learn with gravity and other features in play. I'm not saying they should dumb down their games though. I'd much rather play BF on the weekends when I have more time. I love games that challenge you and reward you for your efforts, but during the week it's hard to make time for it.
[QUOTE=Soukuw;47091383]High five! Same exact thing here, if I can't get at least an hour per $1 then I don't see the game as really worth it.[/QUOTE] I don't know, there are some games like the stanley parable that I only get a couple hours out of, yet I still think they're worth every penny.
I think this is probably most of the reason almost every multiplayer fps of the last 4 years has opted to make most if not all weapons kill in 1-4 hits in most scenarios. the average player on these games has such a short attention span that if they're able to stay alive for more than 3 minutes but they can't kill anyone, they get frustrated and stop playing. people would rather die over and over again than spend a minute or two idle.
tbh I don't find challenging and fun to be mutually inclusive. I don't want to run around with god mode or anything but games like the sims where it's really easy to get into and there's not any learning curve are some of the most fun games on the market.
[QUOTE=hexpunK;47089646]I'm p. sure I'm allowed to call it stupid when I think it is a stupid metric of worth. Video games seem to be the only media where the consumers give a shit about how long they use it in relation to the cost. We don't do it for movies or music after all.[/QUOTE] Heaven forbid some of us actually try to get our money's worth out of our hobbies. Not everyone can afford to buy $60 4-hour snorefests every other week. I can buy two full price PC games [i]per year[/i]. That's it. Anything beyond that and I'm quite literally taking money out of my food budget to buy a game. I had better be getting something good for what I'm spending. I want a game that has excellent replayability, that is fun, that supports modding. A game like Fallout: New Vegas is perfect for me because, even after 1600 hours in it, I still find things I haven't seen. I still enjoy playing it. I'm not [i]forcing[/i] more hours out of it, it simply draws me back in because it's just such a damn good game. A game where I'll play through it once in 4-6 hours and never touch it again, AKA most everything EA makes, is a game I won't buy until I see it on one of those ridiculous Steam sales because I simply do not have the money to be wasting on games like that. Oh, and my game budget isn't just for games. $120 is my total yearly hobby budget. That includes ammo for trips to the firing range with my .22 rifle and my Mosin-Nagant. That includes glow fuel and glow plugs for my RC car and RC airplane. That includes supplies and new kits for my 1/35th plastic model tank collection. When you're on my kind of budget you learn real quick to be VERY picky and choosey about what you spend the precious few disposable dollars you do get on. It's a large part of why so many new games just don't interest me. I know I won't get enough value out of them to warrant the prices being asked. I look at most AAA releases these days and think 'Meh, when it's on a $5 steam sale I'll buy it' because I simply do not have disposable income.
I don't really think that time/money is a good measure to value if the game is worth it. For example I really liked the stanley parable, which I played for 5 hours (and got for over 10$), also stuff like portal and half life series are not too long, yet they're one of my favourite games of all time. If you really want to squeeze that time value just go play some good multiplayer game. I've invested over 4000 hours total in a few different multiplayer games that cost 25$ total.
[QUOTE=Waffle Lord;47088046]Buy the "super easy difficulty" dlc, only $14.99![/QUOTE] Buy the end scene for immediate sense of accomplishment! Just $9.99!
[QUOTE=PieClock;47089995]Baffles me how these people get up in the morning, go to work, make games and so on, yet they [I]have no fucking clue whatsoever[/I] about what their audience wants.[/QUOTE] No I think it is more the case of us not knowing who their audience is. Face it, in a forum initially created around a Half-Life 2 mod you are going to find a higher percentage of people who take gaming more seriously. This does not mean we are in majority. If EAs continued success in face of what we think are appalling decisions means anything, it means they know how to find or create audiences much better than the game studios we love that close down. I am not saying this is a good thing, but accusing EA of not having business-savvy just does not make sense.
that sucks because ive always found the harder a trick is to master the more rewarding it becomes. In addition, just because you spend ages fiddling with a particular mechanic doesn't mean it should be removed to speed up the narrative flow, that's dumb as hell.
[QUOTE=Mitsudigi;47088075]Was it just because I was a kid or were the games of yesteryear far more challenging and yet still approachable? Zelda, Mario and Metroid on SNES are good examples. Pretty much all of the big hits I can remember were more difficult than 99% of the crap out these days and far funner too.[/QUOTE] 3D platformers are sort of complete proof to this point: for the most part there is the jump button and a bunch of side mechanics eg crouch + jump for a high jump and more difficult puzzles for collectibles and yet the games are always more challenging/entertaining than any modern EA game. I suppose it's decent level design, EA games don't even have level design there's just a straight corridor with the occasional door an NPC has to open for you.
IMO, what EA is missing out on is good game design. A well designed game will teach you everything you need to know about the game without you even knowing it. It will also do it efficiently, so 2 hours to 'learn a game' would be a ridiculous amount of time. I fear a lot of modern game designers tend to think up mechanics that, while fun and can look interesting, they don't bother spending enough time designing the game so that the player will understand that mechanic. If someone wishes to invest time enjoying a game, you will not need to teach them everything there is about a game within the first 2 hours. You can have a game that gets progressively more complicated, just in small iterations. But then I guess it depends on the kind of game you're making. My above example would apply very well to single player games that you're meant to play for a while. I imagine with things like sports games, you're given a set of mechanics that need to be introduced to reflect their real world counterpart, so it would be tough to design a game to be easy to learn in that sense.
I get what he's trying to say. The "average gamer" is some middle aged mother playing some F2P bullshit waiting game on her iPhone. Something like Battlefield or Dragon Age is several orders of magnitude more complex to play.
I won't buy the new battlefield hardline because I had a terrible experiance with both battlefield 3 and 4, I think EA is not innovating and continue mock gamers wants and needs with greedy ambitions and highly severe amounts of ignorance. They see us as stupid just as much as I see them suffer mental retardation ever since the release of spore... I don't re commanding playing much of EA's games unless your desperate... Battlefield is already become redundant and continues to spin downwardly until one day it becomes just like how they made the new dungeon keeper game. they will rarely make games again like how dragon age inquisition became and continue to make terrible titles like Simcity.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;47088039]My rule of thumb for buying games is for every dollar I spent, I expect to put at least 1 hour into it. So if I pay $60 for a game, I won't consider it worth my money until I've put at least 60 hours into it. I personally think this is a very good rule of thumb for me, and has yet to let me down. Some notable examples: FarCry 3: Spent $7.50 (Steam sale), have 60 hours in (meaning it would have been worth full-price for me, though just barely) Xcom Enemy Within: Spent ~$40 (about $9 for Enemy Unknown, and $30 for the expansion), have 164 hours in it. FTL Faster Than Light: Spent $3 (Steam sale :v:), have 165 hours in it. Killing Floor: Spent like $15 on it (I can't even remember), have 245 hours in it.[/QUOTE] While I'm basically in the same situation, it really makes you think how shitty of a customer gamers really are. I mean, we get stingy when we get anything less than 1 hour/dollar spent on a game. 165 hrs for $3 for FTL? That's over 50 hours of entertainment per dollar spent. I've been to bars where I've spent $20+ and stayed there for less than an hour, leaving with a very 'meh' experience. I do feel kind of bad for developers.
[QUOTE=FunnyBunny;47098339]While I'm basically in the same situation, it really makes you think how shitty of a customer gamers really are. I mean, we get stingy when we get anything less than 1 hour/dollar spent on a game. 165 hrs for $3 for FTL? That's over 50 hours of entertainment per dollar spent. I've been to bars where I've spent $20+ and stayed there for less than an hour, leaving with a very 'meh' experience. I do feel kind of bad for developers.[/QUOTE]And that is exactly why developers casualize their games. Casuals don't care about dollar/hour ratios or any of that junk. Personally I'm absolutely open to paying $20 for a 5 hour adventure I enjoyed. It's about the quality, not the hours for me. A game that makes you run for 10 minutes to reach 2 minutes of story can be a really bad game even if it spans through 10 hours or so. It's more than just hours:dollars when it comes to see if a game is good or not.
[QUOTE=itisjuly;47098575]And that is exactly why developers casualize their games. Casuals don't care about dollar/hour ratios or any of that junk. Personally I'm absolutely open to paying $20 for a 5 hour adventure I enjoyed. It's about the quality, not the hours for me. A game that makes you run for 10 minutes to reach 2 minutes of story can be a really bad game even if it spans through 10 hours or so. It's more than just hours:dollars when it comes to see if a game is good or not.[/QUOTE] It is less about how long it takes to finish a game, but more about how much time you are willing to put in it by replays and such. Maybe it takes five hours to finish your 20$ game, but maybe it was so brilliant, you decide to play through it 4 more times, trying new approaches, playstyles exploring more etc., or in the case of FTL trying out new ships and weapons. Linear "Cinematic" experiences can't give you that. Dishonored is a great example, by encouraging certain challenges, such as "Don't kill anyone", "Don't ever be seen" or "Don't ever buy extra magic stuff". You can make up your own challenges to go through the game and find new ways to go around obstacles. This is how you create content, not by adding more corridors or hats.
[QUOTE=Kaios;47088009]I have a friend who pretty much only plays cod or battlefield and one time I let him play the last of us. You could tell what he usually plays since he just rushes through the levels without exploring anything and doesn't really bother thinking much strategy when fighting people, or even try something different when he keeps dying at the same fight again and again. This kind of attitude will create more players like him and developers will have less and less incentive to create detailed environments.[/QUOTE] Let's be honest - if tlou had a mouse and keyboard control scheme he could do just that. The fights in the game aren't really hard or bad. The controls are imprecise and sluggish to the point of that I'm annoyed by them.
What is the hardest EA game ???
[QUOTE=Seriousshakey;47099945]What is the hardest EA game ???[/QUOTE] Hard is incredibly relative. For some a shooter is incredibly tough. For others platformers. RTS games are often considered some of the toughest games because you have to keep a lot of things in mind. Not to mention that "hard" can have a lot of different appearances as well. For instance playing mass effect on the highest difficulty is hard, but it's more frustrating hard rather than something I'd consider a genuine challenge, since you don't have to play significantly differently, just grind trough massive HP pools. Likewise a game with bad controls can be hard due to them, but few would consider that a good kind of hard. Essentially games should provide a challenge without actually being frustrating about it. And since there's so many different kinds of gamers, doing that can be incredibly tough.
proof that ea execs dont actually play video games or know what they are or their demographic and target audience apparently
[QUOTE=Rakmon;47088293]videogames have become shit do something else with your life[/QUOTE] Then gimme your Steam account. Obviously you don't want it.
[QUOTE=gk99;47101453]Then gimme your Steam account. Obviously you don't want it.[/QUOTE] That's neither funny nor clever
[QUOTE=TestECull;47087975]I'll preface this by saying that I like easy games. I don't play them for the challenge and don't find 'hard' or 'difficult' to be very fun. Rage inducing, yes, fun, no. Fuck off, EA. There has to be some challenge to the game. Even someone like me who usually puts the game on 'easy' wants [i]some[/i] substance to the combat, and it's undeniable that a lot of gamers seem to have a hard-on for games that fuck them in the ass every other step. The popularity of Dark Souls is a testament to this, as it's an entirely average at best hack'n'slash if you strip out its insane difficulty.[/QUOTE] The Souls games are mechanically unique and the art direction/atmosphere is masterfully executed. There wasn't anything else like it. I remember the threads about DeS and no one was going "omg this is so hard XD". Blame Namco Bandai for their stupid marketing gimmick and PC users for that. Sure, it's challenging but it's fair. There's a reason why people play these games for thousands of hours. Seriously, the Souls community went to shit the day it came to PC. I love the PC versions of the games and I'm glad they're on the platform but thank Christ I can avoid the community.
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