Nachtfischer
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Posts posted by Nachtfischer
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Also I think we can all agree that coming to a point where you can't progress is losing whether defined or not.
No. Not in the context of the system itself. And that's what I am looking at. Not something you made up as a player yourself. If you build a lego tower and fail at building it as high as you had planned, you have "lost" your personal challenge. But have you "lost lego"? Who would claim that? Similarly you don't lose any other sandbox system.
I'll give you one thing: you're a bona fide savant at making words meaningless and twisting other peoples phrases.
Yeah, sure. You claim that again and again without showing me one solid example of it. I could just as easily accuse you of the same thing by the way, only that you don't even address my points specifically. And I would not do it, because it's a very ill-mannered way of discussing things.
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I think it's quite obvious, but you seem to have a hard time grasping it, so I'll help you some more.
1. "Challenge = A task or situation that tests someone's abilities."
2. For a situation to be testing something, there needs to be a loss condition defined. Else you can never fail the test. Therefore it is not even a test. It's simply a task, you'll achieve or you'll decide to walk away from.
3. "I've played plenty of games with easy respawning that were challenging."
Now, "easy respawning" implies that there is indeed no loss condition in these systems, so according to the definition you gave (1.) it's not a challenge. Obviously you used yet another wishy-washy term: easy. I mean, you could call the respawning in a Unreal Tournament death match "easy respawning". But I don't think that's what you meant at all, or did you? (A UT death match is obviously a challenge you can lose, by the way.)Oh, and if you're really referring to this (which I find hard to believe):
Good games can and should limit progress with challenging gameplay, not arbitrary mechanics.
Nobody but the voice inside your head even argued with that point.
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I love the theme!
Concerning the game:
- You don't know what the buyable upgrades do until you actually buy them. I guess tool-tips would be cool!
- I assume the background is work-in-progress. It somehow confused me and made me think this is some lane-based game for five seconds.
- Is it ever viable to NOT be shooting constantly? If not, then just let the tank auto-shoot all the time, because the game is actually about positioning and dodging (and hopefully not pressing shift as often and regularly as you can). In any case: Allow the fire button to be held down instead of it having to be pressed again and again.
- Interesting thing that the enemies bump from the edges and the game board loops for your tank. That gives you a neat edge while battling them.
- I think the first waves a a bit dull since the enemies just shoot randomly (I think). You can't really do much dodging or anything. It's all about driving around targeting semi-well and pressing shift all the time. Things got much more interesting when the potatoes with glasses came in! Although these frantic fast ones made it kind of impossible to react to them in any reasonable way beyond "move as fast as you can, in any direction you can, all the time". The level where I only faced the ones with glasses was by far the most interesting to me!
Yeah, just some first impressions and thoughts. Keep it up!
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Does a game have to have a defined ending point in order to be challenging, then? Is it possible to win a game if it does not end after that 'win' condition has been met? Or does it merely need to give you an overall objective which will cause the game to end if you lose?
It has to have a win condition and a game-end condition (together they define a loss condition). Here's a neat article on the topic.
Elder Scrolls: These systems are kind of a weird blend of a sandbox and an actual game. Anyways, yes, you can win, but not lose the system. The fixed and defined end of an Elder Scrolls game sees you winning, "beating" the game. There's no other possibility. And there's a reason for it: You're the hero! How could you ever lose? You can maybe "lose" a single battle, but not really even that because you'll just reload. It's like if we're playing Chess and anytime you put me into checkmate I go: "Well, then I'll roll back 10 moves!" or something. And this reloading is part of the game. And it has to be, because it's actually a story-heavy sandbox, in which it makes no sense for it to just "end". The strengths of the Elder Scrolls game do clearly not lie in imposing any sort of "challenge" upon the player or in being contests of decision-making. And everybody actually knows that. (Because everybody will jump to the premature conclusion: That does not say that they're bad systems. Something not being a "game", a decision-contest, a "challenge" or whatever is not a value judgement.)
Does that mean Fallout 1 was challenging?
Yeah, freedom about which move to make next does not mean you can't lose. Although thinking about it, technically Fallout 1 lets you reload anytime, too. It's more aware of its gamey-ness than Elder Scrolls, though.
I'm not trying to come across as being combative, I'm just genuinely curious as to how you'd define it.
Oh, you're not! Your posts are by far the most reasonable reactions to the whole topic yet.
Wouldn't trying to beat the high score be a self-imposed challenge unless the game explicitly listed it as a goal and punished you for failing that goal?
Yes. But most games implicitly do so. Some have a rather lose winning condition going on, like you can put your name on a "top ten list" if you beat any score in the top ten. But if you don't, then you don't. It just "muddies up" the winning condition a bit, but it's still the implicit goal and therefore a challenge. Another well-fitting article.
In most fighting games the objective is merely to beat the level without dying
Some are. The thing is, if there is a score, then that implies that it has meaning. Well, it should have. Obviously there are some games making really bad use of score (like Super Mario Bros. where it's just a vestigial "Well, we have to have a score in a videogame, don't we?" thing) and that are actually about completion (Mario explicitly tells you that at least, you have to go through all the levels to save the princess... which makes it even weirder to have a score inside it, but it basically says: "Ignore it!"... so it's kind of a non-issue and just adds a little useless noise to the system).
EDIT: Replying to your edit above. Don't Starve is somewhere between a game and a toy. It allows for exploration of the system's inherent rules. That's explicitly meant to be a part of it. Then however, it does have challenge. You're even given a score (although nobody really knows if it's important, I guess). There's also some ultimate winning condition. And you can die permanently. It's basically just full of fundamentally different things and wants to be kind of a "one size fits all" system. A problem that many modern videogames have. They sort of fit everybody, but they don't really fit anybody.
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Ah, finally a real answer!
I don't think it's fair to say sandbox games inherently lack challenge just because the game doesn't formally challenge you with a win/loss objective.
But that's exactly what an inherent challenge would have to provide. I mean, how can you find the combat challenging in our sense of the word here, if you don't even know (i.e. the system does not explicitly/inherently tell you) if you have to win the combat? In a true sandbox you can pose a challenge upon yourself called "I have to lose 50 fights in 10 minutes!" And the point is: This challenge is as good as any other in the context of the sandbox. Because it is a sandbox. It does not value your interaction with it. There are no "good" or "bad" moves in such a system.
As far as I know, Dark Soul explicitly wants you to beat the game. There's a well-defined ending point (there are even multiple ones, I think). Obviously you can sit around all the time, but that does not help you in reaching the implicit goal of the game.
EDIT: Oh, and concerning the "unfairness". I never said sandboxes would lack challenge. I think they do not have it. And if they have it, there's an inherent conflict going on in the system. It's not at all a critique of a sandbox system to say that it has no challenge. It's a plus.
EDIT 2:
and if checkpoints/continue options after death remove challenge, then it's impossible for any game other than roguelikes with permadeath to be challenging.It is a shame we attribute "permadeath" specifically to roguelikes anyways. Tetris has permadeath. Pacman has permadeath. Monopoly has permadeath (and 99 % of all board games out there).
We have to look at specific systems, though. Continues don't automatically remove challenge. In some arcade brawler, you might be able to continue after death, but you'll usually lose your score up to that point. So you'll probably (maybe) fail the inherent challenge of beating the highscore. In the end it's still a challenge you can absolutely lose!
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your (see? subjective!) definition of challenge
What the hell? I never even gave a definition! Rathlord provided ONE possible definition of "challenge" for us to have a basis on which to discuss objectively.
If you fail to understand that I can not help you.
1) And furthermore games can't all and shouldn't all be made challenging by being a game over on fail.
2) Good games can and should limit progress with challenging gameplay, not arbitrary mechanics. I've played plenty of games with easy respawning that were challenging.
3) For all of its many, many flaws World of Warcraft used to e a legitimate challenge. Gear was a necessity, but even then often 1% or less of the population was beating the endgame content. Being one of them myself a long time ago, I can tell you those fights stretches the limits of my brain power, reflexes, leadership, and muscle memory.
1) I assume you're talking about games in the colloquial sense in the sense of "videogames" in general. And as I repeatedly stated: Of course they should not all have permanent failure or even challenge.
2) Again, you're then not using the definition of challenge you gave yourself, lol.
3) Oh, so now we're talking WoW and not GTA? Of course raids and dungeons in WoW are a challenge you can lose. Your "logical" conclusions you claim to draw from anything I said are totally ridiculous.
1) I think it's hilarious that he hasn't responded to my previous post, personally. On top of "I'm right because I think so," add "Oh shit, he's right... better ignore it" to the mix. This is like a party!
2) Your posts are full of contradictions. You criticize games for things, then backpeddle and say you're not.
1) Cut the trolling, will you?
2) They are not. Show me a specific contradiction and I'll show you it isn't one. You simply didn't understand. I did never "backpeddle" the tiniest bit throughout this whole thread. There's really no reason to.
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So you think GTA isn't challenging because you think it isn't.
No, I explicitly don't. Read the rest of the thread please... *sigh*
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Challenge can't be defined objectively.
But I have yet to see a counter-argument using the same definition of challenge.
Oh the irony ...
So, you didn't read the first part of my post? Cool!
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Challenge can't be defined objectively.
What? A definition is by definition (lol!) objective. You can easily define "challenge = apple" and work from there. I just don't think anyone would use that definition in his everyday life! The one in this thread though is quite reasonable and commonly used, I think.
I disagree (see I say it clearly now). Don't Starve isn't boring at all to me. Neither is PZ which should suffer from the same problem.
To me PZ isn't based on exploring rules as much, it's more about the exploration of the generated space, about the experience. I thought Don't Starve was rather boring after I saw everything there was to see. The exploration of the world was not as interesting as the exploration of the mechanics (i.e. what can I build, what can I research etc.). I've seen lots of people agree with that sentiment actually. By the way, I don't strongly dislike Don't Starve. I just think it could have been better (and it's just the same with GTA).
Why? Because you present your arguments as facts.
Only if I believe they are. Which holds true for anything I've said about GTA in connection to the definition of "challenge" used in this thread (again, that's objective as long as we're all using this specific definition). I can still be wrong, though. But I have yet to see a counter-argument using the same definition of challenge.
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"In fact, I think you could (reasonably!) re-define "challenge" for GTA to have it. And I'd likely think that's a bad thing."
Wow thats some destructive communication.
So you offer him one way to go, then expect him to succeed and then subvert his argument.
That was just a side note, I do not whish to explore further (at least not yet, until we have resolved open misunderstandings or disagreements).
By the way, you are being the very opposite of constructive with your posts here.
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Well, I don't care for subjective opinions. Anyone can have any opinion. Cool! So what? Why even discuss that? That's why I wanted to start by defining "challenge". So than we can actually have a fruitful and objective discussion!
So you want an objective discussion about an (as you said yourself) subjective topic such as challenge?
You didn't understand. I wanted "challenge" defined, because people implicitly assume different definitions of such a word. When it's defined however, we enter the realm of objectivity in the context of this definition.
What I gather from your posts is that you suggest that a game only can have a real challenge when the player can lose "everything". Maybe you should think a bit more about your "toys" and "interactive systems" and why frustration ~= challenge.
Do you assume, I'd want the player to lose everything in GTA? Or Skyrim? Or Minecraft? Or Diablo? Or whatever persistent 1000 hour system there is? Obviously not, that's ridiculous. In fact, the opposite is true! These systems need persistence. A toy with permadeath ends up utterly broken. Something like Don't Starve heavily suffered from that inherent conflict: You explore the system as a player, but as your character (permanently) dies, you have to "re-explore" (which is inherently boring). Your character has forgotten everything, but you still know it. It's clearly a conflict of wanting to be a game and a toy at the same time, and it ends up being a highly inefficient game and a toy becoming boring rather quickly.
EDIT: If you disagree with the statement that there's no challenge in GTA, then you simply disagree with the given definition of "challenge" in this thread. I'm not saying that's wrong, but to have an objective discussion, we have to assume a common definition (or change it now and start a new discussion!).
In fact, I think you could (reasonably!) re-define "challenge" for GTA to have it. And I'd likely think that's a bad thing.
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It's a bit of a head scratcher, especially your last statement about open-sandbox = not challenging.
What I'm trying to say is: It can't be inherently challenging, because a sandbox has no inherent goals. That's the whole point of a sandbox. It provides constrained interaction without a specific goal. You make up your goals. You create your own challenge. It's however NOT part of the rules of the system. I mean, an apple is not "challenging" in itself, just because you can make a challenge out of throwing it as far as you can.
I still don't see how challenge requires loss in the sense of having to start all over again
Challenge as defined for this thread is a "test". A test requires being able to fail. Failing at a test is losing. Losing is starting all over again (see below).
Why isn't it challenge when I can still fail?
You can't fail. The system does not tell you "you lose". It's not built into the rules. You can just "walk away".
I'm sorry, did you miss the rest of the thread?
I don't think so. But maybe you did? I mean, I explicitly stated it's not about something being "fun" or not on the first page...
Where do you come up with these rules? Why should it suddenly NOT have challenge? It should immerse you into an open world, into a story, that's a must, challenge or the absence of it is not a requirement.
1. I come up with them from seriously thinking about interactive systems for several years now. (No, that's not an argument, but since you asked...)
2. "Suddenly"? I never said it should have challenge. In fact, I repeatedly stated how I think it should embrace its sandbox nature even more!
3. Yes! Immersion, that's it. That's what these systems I call "toys" or "fantasy simulations" are meant to do! And I definitely see GTA's strengths in this sector (by the way, I think that's even largely agreed upon).
To elaborate on 3.: I strongly believe there are different interactive machines, that have a very specific value to the human mind. On a fundamental level I call them toys (bare interactive systems, "sandboxes", "simulations" --> allow exploration of the inherent rules), puzzles (a specific goal, one or multiple pre-defined solutions, a binary solution state --> allows pure mental problem-solving), contests (comparison of the physical or mental degree of perfection of multiple participants --> allow a measurement of this degree), games (contests of ambiguous decision-making --> create understanding).
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Don't think anyone can change your mind, as you only read the opposite of what everyone says...
I don't even know what you're trying to say here?
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The underlying premise that for any game to be fun requires it to be challenging.
Wrong. Where did you get that from?
GTA is in it's basis an open world story game.Right. That's why it should not have challenge.
What is a game where you can't just "restart"?Well, obviously a game that you can actually lose? Like... Tetris? When you restart it, you reset the whole system. When you "respawn" in GTA, you're right back in.
then you haven't played Dark Souls yet... but that probably isn't a game because it cloaks itself in 3d, story and stuff that isn't relevant ...
1. I've played it. It's sort of okay-ish. The checkpoints are stupid, though. But the system wouldn't work without them.
2. 3D, story and "stuff" is not a reason for something not being a game. (Oftentimes for it being a bad game, though!)
Btw all games define a loss condition. In PZ you lose loot, in GTA you lose money
What? In PZ you die and have actually lost the game. Or do you mean a variant without permadeath? In GTA you just respawn.
Concerning "ideal games" in my opinion (since somebody asked):
That's a topic to write several books about. I've started by creating dozens of articles over the last years, but I hope to get there someday.
Anyways, here are some examples of very well crafted games: Puerto Rico, For The Win, Acquire, Through The Desert, Dominant Species, Samurai, Battle For Hill 218, Peloponnes, Wabash Cannonball, Diaballik, Saint Petersburg, Outwitters, Defense Of The Oasis.
EDIT: Oh and Rathlord... "by the fact that people disagree with you"? I didn't see anybody actually disagreeing yet. Just misinterpreting and/or overreacting. If there was actual disagreement, please point me to it. Thanks!
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Seriously, if either nobody has to say something useful or the topic has simply been covered completely (which might well be, I in contrast to some other users here didn't think it was worth a discussion or even thread to begin with), this thread is done.
So am I. I will refrain from posting and keep my babbling on places less immature and hollow.
I'm sure you're all fine with that. Bye.
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Ah, so this is what happens to a more thorough and serious discussion in this forum. Good to know. Anybody, please just close the thread.
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Care to elaborate?
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Oh, that was not even meant to be taken seriously. I just tried to tickle a definition out of you!
I don't want "every single word needs to be redefined for use in context of video games". I want words to be defined when I'm talking to people in general. It's not like "challenge" is some triviality, that everybody has exactly the same views on. For example, some people define "challenge" as something hard to achieve. Like, a strong man could say "Oh, lifting one kilogram is not a challenge for me!" But if you put that lifting into the context of a weightlifting contest, it indeed is a challenge according to the definition you gave! It is a test of someone's abilities. It is probably one that is sure to be passed, but nevertheless, it's a "challenge"! You see what I mean? This has nothing to do with video games or "redefining", it's just about the basics of fruitful discussion!
Okay, so now we have a rough definition to work with. Now let's look at GTA.
First, what's the inherent goal of GTA? Probably completion of the story, since there is nothing else that you're tasked with by the system itself? Now, is this completion a "test of your abilities"? You could jump to the conclusion that it surely is, because it takes dexterity (maybe even a little thought?) to achieve it. But is it really a "test"? I don't think so, because for something to be a test, it would have to define a clear loss condition. And since you can't lose in GTA (you just retry over and over again), it's not a test and therefore not a challenge by your given definition. You could say "walking away and never completing the story" is a loss condition, but that's clearly not defined by the system itself. It would be some kind of "house rule" you'd have to force upon it yourself.
See? That's why I said GTA has no "challenge". I actually had quite a similar definition in mind as you just gave. What's all the fuzz about to begin with?
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I don't know what you're even getting it. I've not even tried to make any argument yet?! All I wanted was for you to define challenge, so we can discuss whether GTA has challenge according to your definition. If we start with a definition, then we can make objective statements about that. If everbody uses his own definition, then we might just let the matter rest to begin with.
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The criteria we use to judge games are completely arbitrary and vastly superficial. It's literally like a game gets a 6/10 on GameSpot, because it had "some funny jokes". Another game is praised for its number of units. Another one for the graphics. Anything for anything.
If we actually established reasonable criteria, then we could indeed make objective statements about games, according to these criteria. If we don't agree on the criteria, then obviously we don't even need to say anything. But I hope I don't need to tell you why it would be good to actually have criteria to advance the craft and the art of game making...
@harakka: Again, I'm totally in for a objective discussion! But it seems, Rathlord just doesn't want to define "challenge" at all.
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Sorry for being inflammatory then. But that's still better than saying nothing at all.
Well, I don't care for subjective opinions. Anyone can have any opinion. Cool! So what? Why even discuss that? That's why I wanted to start by defining "challenge". So than we can actually have a fruitful and objective discussion! (Actually, I wanted Rathlord to define challenge, since he asked the original question.) I know, many people think like "nobody can ever say anything that's not subjective about videogames". Well, that's not true. We just haven't established useful criteria to do so yet.
But it seems nobody here is interested and it's probably the wrong site for that altogether. It'd probably be best to just close the topic then.
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Yeah, that's almost the same thing but not exactly.
I didn't say: "I don't find the game very challenging." That's phrased like you don't really want to say something and it can't be countered anyways, because hey... it's what YOU FIND. So this statements just floats around randomly and will never cause any useful discussion to happen.
(I know, that's just how we "politely" phrase things, but I don't think that's useful at all. We need to get rid of the whole "feeling attacked" if someone makes a bold and clear statement.)
I say: The core system of GTA has NO challenge. And that's great!
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Thanks for supporting my point!
To elaborate: The question was never if GTA was "good" or "fun" or "worth buying" or "to be liked by anyone". It was "Does GTA have challenge?" Which is apparently, just as I mentioned before, not the case. People often tend to get confused about these things and automatically enter some weird "I have to defend the thing I like" mode, which turns into an even weirder "I have to defend MYSELF" mode. Even if nobody ever attacked them.
To go even further: I think it's great, that GTA has no challenge. That's just embracing its nature as a totally contest-less toy.
Watch_Dogs anyone?
in General Discussion
Posted
The review of Rock, Paper, Shotgun is really good. It shows a surprising amount of honesty and clarity about what makes games unique and what "good quality" means for an interactive medium. Here's the verdict:
The first paragraph is also really nice, not only in regards to Watch_Dogs, but also 90 % of "sandbox games" and, in fact, most modern day video games:
In general, there seem to be two types of stances on the game:
a) The technology is great, but the gameplay is flawed, flat and uninteresting.
b) The technology is great! *drool*
Go figure.