Are Telltale listening to the complaints about the difficulty-level of their games?
I haven´t finished the first episode myself yet, but every text you read about the game contains the same pros and cons: Absolutely wonderful presentation, but is soooo easy. Which is the same response the Bone-games got.
Are Telltale listening to this critic, or will the coming episodes have the same diffculty-level?
I´m playing Broken Sword 4 now at the same time, and that is one game that really requires one to think, and adds some very neat minigames and puzzles. Maybe that game can be a source of inspiration for Telltale, to raise the quality of their games from "really good" to "downright excellent"?
Are Telltale listening to this critic, or will the coming episodes have the same diffculty-level?
I´m playing Broken Sword 4 now at the same time, and that is one game that really requires one to think, and adds some very neat minigames and puzzles. Maybe that game can be a source of inspiration for Telltale, to raise the quality of their games from "really good" to "downright excellent"?
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Comments
Moron? Geezz...
An adventuregame with great presentation and no difficulty = interactive movie
An adventuregame with great presentation and a healthy difficulty-level = classic.
Im not saying that Telltales games are interactive movies, but every adventuregame needs a bit of a challenge since adventuregames are games.
If I can go off on a tangent here.. It does kind of bug me that developers are so afraid of making people think.. Even prince of persia:sands of time had a few "adventure game" type thinking elements..when they did warrior within the prince was quickly a generic bad ass, it was now an action game and all those fun puzzles were quickly removed. It's a sad state of gaming is all I can say.. Grim fandango has been the last great adventure challenge (as far as the puzzles) ive played.
As for the difficulty, I'd like to suggest something along the lines of the Monkey Island 2 approach where you get to select between the "full" experience with more puzzles and a "lite" version for inexperienced adventurers.
I'm willing to bet that the better part of your customers are people who have already played the original Sam & Max (and many other adventure games) back in the days, so don't patronize us with easy puzzles - after all, adventure gamers is a pretty hardcore target audience.
My reasoning still stands though, it's fully possible to trim out some of the bigger puzzles for a "lite" option in the game, as previously shown in other adventure games. No need to disappoint long-time fans just to make it accessible to inexperienced players.
Secondly, it adds additional work for the team with very little payoff--they've already stated that they're shooting for 4-6 hours per episode, and even the most experienced players are taking 2-3.5 hours already, make it longer and, assuming most people take longer than experienced players, and you end up with game length that is outside their desired goal for episodic games--and many people, especially Gametap players, have been telling Telltale that they find the gameplay length just about right.
There are some people that can beat Super Mario in 10 minutes, but that doesn't mean Nintendo should make an easy/hard mode, or make the game harder for those players.
Best way to ramp up difficulty would be;
1. Inventory combination puzzles (eg. having to find ammo for the tear gas launcher)
2. Extra steps in puzzles (eg. needing to find a key to open closet in office)
3. Have Max give hints to make harder puzzles passable for novice palyers (this was done in Bone).
4. Have option to turn off automatic cursor, and use right button to cycle look/interact/walk. I'm always accidentally clicking my right-button where my fingers rest and accidentally skipping dialogue.
Also you might remember that Nintendo did in fact include a series of harder levels in Super Mario World called "Special World". And just recently, in New Super Mario Bros on the DS, Nintendo included a special challenge mode that turns off backtracking on levels to make it more challenging.
I'm tired of being spoonfed when it comes to difficulty, or lack thereof. I paid for the game too, don't I have a say in what's "just about right"?
Any experienced adventure gamer will tell you about that feeling you got when the next monkey island *JUST CAME OUT* and you just sat down to play it. Explore, and enjoy, and start nibbling away at some of the easier puzzles. Well that lasted about 15 seconds with culture shock.
Initially upon competition I felt relatively satisfied, but after thinking about it a little more, really this was entirely due to the fact this is Sam and Max. The actual quality of the adventure wasn’t really very good. Very entertaining, as Sam and Max always are, but it definitely lacked the feel of an early 90’s Lucas arts adventure game.
Set your sights for one of these three: Monkey island 3, Day of the tentacle, or Grim Fandango. They were all quite different interface wise but they all had the correct feel of an adventure game. Freedom, hard puzzles… a game which keeps you up at night… a game with atmosphere… a game with character… a game with oomph.
I do expect the episodes to be more difficult in the future, but people should not expect the extremely difficult and complex puzzles of the past--use paper cup with golf ball retriever and make a bungee rope with twine so that you can bungee jump with it to retrieve a piece of tar.
If you want adventure games to be continued to be made, you need them to be successful. For them to be successful, there needs to be certain changes made to engage with a wider audience. It may be a sharp razor to swallow, but it's true.
That was ridiculous. But I liked the whole psychotherapist part. I think it was the best puzzle.
Now, there must be a way of pleasing casual gamers (the Market...) and adventurers. It can be MORE difficult without having to write "DJ bring sekey madoule" on a tombstone
I am unashamedly RUBBISH at solving puzzles. What I enjoy is the story, and actually seeing the solutions to the puzzles. If I CAN work out a puzzle, alrighty; but if I can't, and I look up a walkthrough, I can still marvel at the insane logic of whoever designed this, and I can enjoy the outcome. Of course if a puzzle is hard because it's NOT logical, I get no enjoyment; if it's logical but I couldn't figure it out, I still get enjoyment. If the puzzle is so easy I can just do it straight away, I also get no enjoyment, and the end result is just not as wacky (the reward for solving a hard puzzle in HtR was a funny scene or just a really good animation which is funny in itself, plus story advancement and often new locations.)
However I think that it's right to start out this easy. Train up those who have just picked up the game and haven't been conditioned to pick up every object, and then in later games, get them thinking.
I think the easy/difficult mode would not be that hard to implement either.. in easy mode you use gas launcher.. set it to difficult and you cant just use it you must find ammo to use etc etc using jps example.
The risk is too high that new players who aren't used to adventure games will get stuck on a puzzle, then just abandon the game on a shelf because it's "too hard." And then of course they won't play any other of the episodes or any other adventure games maybe.
Some people get angry when they feel they aren't "smart enough" for a game, so even if they look up a walkthrough they're likely to just resent it and feel, not that they didn't get the puzzle, but that THE PUZZLE WAS WRONG. and so on...
Just look at the difficulty level in Out From Boneville (BONE 1) compared to the Graet Cow Race (BONE 2).
I have every confidence the difficulty and wackiness will increase as the season progresses.
I'm discussing puzzles akin to the "use paper cup with golf ball retriever and make a bungee rope with twine (after a whole bunch of puzzles to get the twine) so that you can bungee jump with it to retrieve a piece of tar." Or the puzzle described in Old Man Murray's article. They require a lot more than "thinking about solutions for a little bit." You need hours to figure out something like that, some people even have to leave the game for a couple of days before trying to figure it out. In today's games, and today's world of gamers--is it really that surprising that people actually are turned off if they're required to spend 2 hours to get pass the equivalent of a locked door? And nearly every adventure game puzzle basically boils down to finding a key (solution) to open a locked door (puzzle).
Not everyone can read, so lets all make picture-books, then they will appeal to everyone, right? Wrong, the people who can read will find these books unappealing. Which is why it is absolutely ridiculous to dumb down (if you pardon the expression) games to make them more accessible, alot of people will find this ungratifying and disappointing.
I saw many puzzle opportunities in Culture Shock that were pretty much handed to the player on a silver platter, I will not go into all of the due to spoilers but the creation of the helmet has already been mentioned and it's a good example of what made me disappointed.
"A lot of people"? I'm just not sure how many adventure gamers there ARE any more. But I might be wrong! I don't really check statistics!
Although now that I think about it, I'm probably underestimating how smart most people are. Even they would probably get that antenna puzzle straight away. Hmmm... I wouldn't know unless I tested the game on a few non-gamers.
If you remove that part you're essentially killing what made us interested in the genre in the first place. Creating an option for people to play the game with a tuned down difficulty is a good option, and if people are offended by the fact that they're not "smart enough" for the full version, well tough luck. But don't ruin the experience for people who are expecting more.
There are games out there that I'm no good at, I've never quite been able to wrap my head around complicated war strategy games, too much to keep track of at once. But I don't expect the developers to ruin those games for the people who do enjoy them just so I can have a click-to-win button. I much prefer the tranquil experience of solving good puzzles in an adventure game, there's something extremely satisfying about finally figuring out a puzzle that you have been stuck on for a while - I never got that out of Culture Shock.
Telltale said themselves before Sam & Max came out they are targeting the seasoned adventure gamer.. This isn't Bone.. You think the 30, 000 people that signed that petition to save freelance police are gonna struggle to figure out culture shock.. 30, 000 X a $9 is 270, 000 an episode.. you dont want to lose your core audience to appease a few casual gamers who may only stick around for an episode or two..
There are 30 people listed as Telltale staff, it would cost a million dollars a year just to pay them the average salary in America, and probably 2-3 million+ to pay them the going rate in the computer games industry. Add in costs for computers and bandwidth, office space, advertising, music creators, voice actors and everything else associated with game production, and its going to be a hefty production cost.
As I said before, if adventure games were extremely profitable, Lucasarts and Sierra would still be making them left and right.
I do not fault Telltale for altering the adventure-game formula to try to reach a larger pool of customers.
I'm here for the story, the jokes, the writing, the environments... the fun. I'm not here to be able to sit in smug satifaction that I used maple syrup on cat hair to make a fake moustache to disguise myself as somebody who doesn't have a moustache (for example).
I will admit that for some the puzzles ARE the enjoyment. For me though, they're just the mechanism by which to progress the story and set up the jokes.
Don't get me wrong, I love figuring out puzzles too, but they're certainly not the top reason why I like adventure games as a genre.
Why cant you reach the same pool of customers with a harder game? I think its a dangerous thing to dumb things down with a property like Sam & Max..
Whenever the difficulty question is raised someone brings up this point which I think is unfair. No one is asking for ridiculous puzzles when they say they want it harder. If the only item in a room is a piece of cheese, and you have to use the cheese to solve the puzzle, that's just not even a challenge. Dave Grossman is an excellent game designer, all the solutions in culture shock made perfect sense, it was just too easy to get there. Puzzles are not the be all and end all of adventure games, but they are an important ingredient. You need all working, humour/story/puzzles etc to make a great game.
"Personally, even though they can be tricky and require a lot of tuning, I like designing the mini-games/puzzles because it's fun and sometimes just as much a puzzle to design it as to play it. I think the hardest for me is the traditional adventure game inventory based puzzles. I am very resistant to puzzles that just don't make any logical sense to the player, so it is sometimes really hard to figure out a puzzle that makes sense and isn't completely ridiculous. It takes a lot of work, a lot of brain-storming, and a lot of bouncing ideas off other people in the office. And then you have to hope that the gamers' brains will work like your brain and the brains of the people you've bounced it off of. Occasionally we'll come up with something that isn't completely satisfying but in order to get the game done we just have to leave it."
We're also 13 years more experienced in game playing (and in life) now, so maybe the internet, and us getting older is partially a factor in the new game's relative ease.
My quote was a direct response to the assertation that "we're only here for the puzzles" which, for many, is absolutely untrue.
But frankly, I do not see what internet has to do with the difficulty of this game. I'm not one of those people who run off to read a walkthrough as soon as I'm stuck, that's cheating.
I wouldn't be here complaining about the lack of puzzles if I actually got stuck somewhere.
It may have existed, but it wasn't available in everyone's house. And even then, outside of Usenet, there weren't many places to get game walkthroughs.
You might not be one to run off, but there are plenty here who do.
I understand you thought the puzzles weren't hard enough. I could have done with a few extended ones (elsewhere I've suggested finding ammo for the tear grenade launcher, finding a key for the office closet etc) too.
But I totally understand and agree with the logic behind making the first episode on the easy side to attract a new audience - because without a new audience to tap into (or resurrecting an audience that hasn't played an adventure in 10 years), Telltale is going to struggle.
I'm all for attracting new players to the genre, I just don't see why you have to scare off the old fans in the process.
I've already suggested how they can make the game appeal to both veterans and novices, it's a little more work but it should be worth it if it ends up selling to a bigger audience. Right now I see lots of people passing up on the game because they've overheard it was too easy mumbling something about how they might get it once all six episodes are released - and that can't be good for business.
I think Sam and Max have some deep flaws when it comes to marketing though - it's not for children, but adults don't want to be seen playing a game with a talking dog and rabbit... Telltale also have put so, so many references to previous Sam and Max things but aimed the puzzles at newcomers. Weird contradiction.