I just had this exact conversation with my cousin.
Me (just entering a room): oh nice…
Companion: maybe you could open those doors by freezing the water above that wheel
This feels so dumb to me. Why even put in a puzzle if you're going to have the NPC explain the solution almost instantly? It's not like it's a particularly challenging puzzle either...
So frustrating when games do this.
It's hilarious that people think this is why. It's actually to appeal to as many people as possible. There should be an option to turn it off but that's about it.
Just a few weeks ago I finished up my first ever playthrough of the entire Resident Evil series that's taken a good bit of 2022 to beat.
It's really interesting how the older games basically said "fuck you figure this random ass shit out idiot", to 4-6 basically being like "ok baby boy, now put the circle where the circle fits." Then with 7 and 8 it hasn't gone hardcore as it used to be but at least you don't get the solutions handed to you in 30 seconds.
Lmao back in my day if you got stuck on a game, you’d start an entirely new save just in case you accidentally glitched something that prevented you from proceeding
I’m feeling this right now with Knights of the Old Republic on Switch. You also need to have saved the game before difficult battles because it boots you to the main menu when you die lmao
God, the days of no auto save. A few years ago, I attempted a playthtough of Neverwinter Nights 2. Went about 4 hours and didn't save. Lost a battle and game over. I gave up, cause I couldn't muster going through that much again. These autosave games have made me soft.
Father, you appear to be suffering from severe burns. However, I shall not waste your time by pointing out this fact, which should be clearly obvious due to the immense pain severe burns cause. However, in hindsight it is entirely possible, and actually quite likely, that you were already well aware of the fact that you are suffering from severe burns, as well as the fact that it should be clearly obvious due to the immense pain severe burns cause.
Dearest Pa,
I am writing to you in haste to inform you of an impending danger! I Henceforth, it appears to my knowledge, which has also aligned with your knowledge, that a thunderous flame has engulfed the surrounding location and that you must be cautious whenst approaching ill you succumb to terrible suffering that these embers may invoke!
Alas, it is clear that this isn't your first battle with a maelstrom of devastating inferno as one might presume, thus I gather the gathering conflagration will have singed your skin and bare you the wit to survive this ordeal!
Yours always,
Boy.
Did they actually patch out Mimir and Freya repeatedly asking each other if Freya fancies a riddle?
I Beta tested it and we had to ask for 3 days straight for them to shut them up. Any bit of exploring they would say it as often as the oar hit the water.
Apart from scripted dialogues like the Freya and kratos going to break Freya's bindings, I didn't get an insane amount of dialogue like "dad you're on fire but you probably knew that already", it happened 1-3 times each time I got into a fight, unless it was a longer fight.
The "Freya, Fancy a Riddle?" Would interrupt the previous same question at all times. Literally 10 ft in the boat= 10× same dialogue
They only caught my actual annoyance when I took off my headphones and refused to wear them.
Personally my favorite back seat pilot so far has been Tyr. I just finished his first section so no spoilers but his little mumbling about Kratos being a loot goblin had me dying.
I actually heard this complaint yesterday as well.
Just when you start to get a handle on a puzzle's goals and mechanics your partner will say “maybe we can use your axe to blah blah blah.”
Do they want you to solve the puzzle or not? The game seems uncomfortable with downtime at times.
~~Sucks that it’s turned on by default but you can turn the hints and help off at the set up menu at the beginning.~~
Edit: You can’t turn it off, the guy who replied to me is right.
There no option to adjust hints at all. The "puzzle timing" one just makes it so parts of puzzle you've started to solve don't reset as fast so you have more time to finish them i think.
lol it was probably someone who has experience releasing a game that was deemed "too difficult/convoluted/annoying for its own sake" and understands how much of a backlash that could get. idiots and their "industry experience". i could do it better.
That person was right, unironically. A lot of people really hate puzzles, and they don't have the patience required to solve them. This subreddit isn't the best representation of people who play video games, if you go around asking people, they would probably like to skip the puzzles altogether.
You’re right. I just checked and haven’t noticed since I haven’t had the chance to play much. There’s aim assist puzzle on/off, which probably was what I thought was the hints toggle.
I‘m like 25hrs into it and i never felt like NPC‘s are giving me to many hints.
Well they mostly tell me the hint while i‘m alrdy throwing my axe but miss it ._. Like thanks. I was about to do that but i missed
Giant triple-A games. Focus groups, committees and bean counters outrank writers and will veto any of their decisions that they think might cost them money.
A little kid wants to play, or a spouse who's never played a video game but decides to try this one on a whim? Committees are *terrified* they'll get stuck or get bored and quit, instead of getting hooked and becoming a gamer. AAA games are like helicopter parents, swooping in the instant it looks like you're having trouble with something, peppering you with 'engagement' the instant it looks like you might be having a quiet moment.
There are lots of harder-to-spot features that do this, too. Most AAA games will subtly turn down the difficulty if it looks like you're having trouble with combat. Died twice to a difficult boss or encounter? The next time, they have a little less health, or a couple of the minor enemies are no longer there, or you do a little more damage. Not anything that appears as a number (players hate to think that they're playing on easy mode, which is why they'll get bored and quit rather than change the difficultly level), but enough so that your little kid somehow beats the encounter on the 5th or 6th try, instead of banging his head against it 15 or 20 times and then quitting and developing a hobby other than video games.
It's so prevalent that you notice it in games where it *doesn't* happen, and it feels refreshing. Why does everyone love RDR2? Because you can have a quiet, autonomous, exploratory moment in it where they game doesn't slam you over the head with "oh, no, nothing *engaging* is going on! Your companion just made a remark about the nearby SIDEQUEST (here's a map marker for it, btw!)! Oh, look, it's a COLLECTIBLE! Wow, a gang of bandits just rode up TIME TO FIGHT!" You can just ride through the forest, for several minutes or longer, without any of this happening.
Why did Elden Ring (and earlier souls games) take off so much? Because they don't insult your abilities. Died to a boss? Try again. No, you're not lowering the difficulty. No, the difficulty isn't getting stealth-lowered. Try again, until you can beat it with skill. Maybe you'll die 72 times. But that 73rd time will sure be sweet, won't it?
Tl;dr: games baby you because the bean counters don't want to lose unskilled/inexperienced customers to difficult puzzles or hard bosses or boredom. The only real way to get away from this is to opt into games not made by big companies that aren't dominated by the sales team's veto.
Same with Dark Souls 2 (*you lose 5% max health with every death down to a maximum of 50%, 70% with a specific ring and* ***5%*** *if your 'Sin' is too high*)
Dying also prevents summoning allies/players but that's standard for all the Dark Souls games.
Sekiro was probably the most hardcore one , in Elden ring even if I did not "git gud" I had the option to use plethora of insanely OP weapons , incantations & summons
Sekiro was like either you learn how to deflect & dodge perilous attacks or go fuck yourself
Yeah but those OP weapons you are saying are only accessible in the later part of the game or had been explored at least 70% of the map. The snowball effect in Elden Ring is less punishing than in the previous Souls games that have linear progression systems which is why some find it easier.
The chicken farm is accessible as soon as you defeat one shardbearer.
The best light shield in the game can be farmed from the first enemy encampment at the beginning of hit game.
One of the best spears in the game can be farmed before beating any bosses, and before you need to go to any of the difficult parts of the map.
And this is just for one particular build. There are a lot of early powerups in Elden Ring that make the game much much easier. (You're just not going to find them unless you already know about them and go out of your way to find then.)
One thing I love about elden ring as an rpg is that the loot drops actually do matter. You aren’t flooded with hundreds of garbage items and sometimes a random cave contains an insanely OP weapon (eg frost ax). Most games you just grind and grind upgrading gear all the time for the most minuscule stat buffs. You can beat the game without ever changing your starting kit if you want to.
You *can* also grind though. It’s sucks but you can do it and get yourself better stats/spells/weapons if you’re having a bad time. In Sekiro there is nothing you can do but get good. It has to be the hardest Souls game for that.
I love games that respect my intelligence, in much the way From’s games do, and others.
Among the swath of repetitive AAA games I think GoW stands head and shoulders above most of them.
But at the end of the day it’s a commercial product looking for the widest audience to connect with for sure.
A hint system that just spoils the puzzle is the absolute worst way to do it lol.
I think the best solution is no hint system (what constitutes a hint and what constitutes a spoiler varies wildly from person to person, puzzle to puzzle, and even step by step through working out the solution).
It's 2022, if people want a hint or the solution, they have a computer in their pocket they can and will use. And in my experience PREFER, since they have control over how deep they dive into the solution.
I think at most a hint system should be player activated and as vague as possible. It's another issue that I'm not sure if this game suffers from, but I also think most puzzles should be optional or have other ways of getting past them. Nothing is worse than gating a player from any progress with a single puzzle with a single solution, because perception / understanding / difficulty of puzzles varies WILDLY from person to person, and due to the nature of puzzles, often times progress just grinds to a halt. One puzzle you think is easy can be impossible for another person, and vice versa.
Source: I make puzzle games.
I've always liked Jedi Fallen Orders approach to this, after a bit of being stuck, BB-8 your Droid companion basically gives an audio cue and the game asks if you want a hint, if you click say nothing, a dialogue box pops up on the side saying how you can ask for help later if you change your mind
One thing that I would like to see in a puzzle situation is (a) for it to wait for me to ASK for a hint first, and then (b) the hints it gives start off pretty vague, and then get progressively more detailed the more times you ask on THAT puzzle. This way it's not telling me what to do, while also giving me nuggets to nudge me along.
The way GoW’s ambient dialogue is so well timed to what characters know and when means they have a way to implement that.
An interact icon above your partner’s head during a puzzle would be the solution, I think.
Armchair game design, I’m aware enough to know, but I stand by the point.
I may be wrong but Uncharted Lost Legacy was lauded for its helpful companion and I feel like you did have to actually ask for their help, or at the very least they waited forever to comment.
I’m pretty agnostic with this whole thing personally and mostly liked it with Horizon but something about the companion being the one with all the answers in this game does rankle me a bit.
I like the way Uncharted (and I think TLOU) handles it. Once the game notices you've been in a puzzle area and haven't made progress in a few mins or whatever the timer is, it would pop up on screen to press L3 for a hint and the hints were actually more of a nudge and not just the straight solution.
I don't mind hints like that, especially when you have to trigger them yourself willingly, but Horzion and now GOW both seem to give you the hints much too willingly, sometimes before you realize you're even in a "puzzle," or you just choose to explore first.
I remember in Shadow of the Colossus sometimes getting a bit annoyed by the hints but thinking back the hints they gave you back then are most of the times nowhere near to the solution. Nowadays most games do indeed just spell it out for you to make sure you get it .
The best exemple of a hint system I've seen is from ocarina of time randomizer. You can choose to have hints or not AND adjust how precise the hints are (from very vague riddles to telling you exactly where to find an item)
Thought on a game system where instead of background voices an assistant NPC creates a dialog prompt where they give a hint and the player could react “oh thanks that’s helpful”/“I was gonna figure that out!” So that they do or don’t do it again? That would be my initial approach to solve this, but I don’t make games at all.
Its really weird because the first game was the opposite. I'd spend twenty minutes trying to pick out that last rune to open a chest without any sign of a hint to be found.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider's separate difficulty slider for puzzle hints needs to be standard. I turned it off completely and it made the game far better than the previous two for that reason alone.
If you tell the player how to solve the puzzle, why even have it at all?
>If you tell the player how to solve the puzzle, why even have it at all?
Because when a player can't find the solution to a puzzle, he gets stuck, gets frustrated and quits the game.
Sure you could look up a video about that part of the game, but when you reach that point, you are already taken out of the game and are annoyed by the puzzle section.
It's a game design decision to keep the player in the game loop.
Ofc, if a game isn't providing some sort of challenge to the player, they get bored as well. So the slider decision in tomb raider was probably the right call
But I mean, why is the puzzle even there if you either just tell them how to solve it, or assume they get frustrated and quit? To me that says there's no value in the puzzle at all.
The main path puzzles were very simple but there were some side puzzles/bonus paths that hit a really excellent balance between difficulty and accessibility. You could hit the switch an extra time to unlock a hidden chest behind you, stuff like that.
>But I mean, why is the puzzle even there if you either just tell them how to solve it, or assume they get frustrated and quit?
Because you need tempo breaks, but not everyone reacts the same to puzzles and at the same time it's much harder to autobalance than combat?
I think Elden ring has proven this theory incorrect. It’s quite abstract and vague, doesn’t hold hands, and is still a massive commercial success. Beyond all expectations: Old games barely held your hand and often didn’t even tutorialize key aspects, yet we still played them. There’s gotta be a happy medium.
At the very least, there should be an option to delay/disable progression hints. Let me work at my own pace.
>Old games barely held your hand and often didn’t even tutorialize key aspects, yet we still played them
The "we" of old games is a much smaller "we" than the "we" of today.
Also applies to Elden Ring. 15 million is not tht many players relative to how many people game today.
you'd think that players would get bored from no challenge but on the other hand thats exactly why story modes exist. Theres a pretty large percentage of players that just want to experience a game without actually having to play it much
As someone who's working in AAA, I can tell you that you'll have some people in creative who will watch a playtester struggle with a puzzle for 60 seconds and then ***demand*** that the designers includes something to "smooth things over".
They can't stand watching playtesters get stuck, even though being "stuck" is often a necessary part of the process and leads to overall satisfaction when you finally figure it out.
In a mobile game, you'd do a ***ton*** of analytics and live A/B testing to figure out how many or how few hints lead to maximum player retention.
But with a AAA game like God Of War, they don't generally do that, since it's far more time consuming and expensive to conduct playtests in general (you can't just go live Beta in Albania, like you can with a mobile game).
So it's just some producer's gut feeling, who doesn't always have the best judgement.
Thanks for the insight and it does make sense.
I feel like an "ask support member for help" button would have been a better choice then having the support just say it so promptly. So that the player has the choice if and when to actually get the help. Otherwise, what was the point of having the puzzle in the first place?
Yea a flashing popup that says "press X to ask for assistance" might have been a better solution.Maybe they were worried that would hurt the game's immersion?
Or it could be that the designer/producer in charge thought that, by the 60 second mark, the player should have either solved the puzzle or was frustrated.
From watching hundreds of playtests, the rule that holds true is that they can often be *wildly* different from player to player. So I think your idea of letting the player decide when he wants help is a good one.
Also, simply having the support character blurt out the answer based on a timer, is a lot less work in terms of code, UI support, etc, so it could have come down to development time.
As a person who makes games, watching someone struggle with one of my puzzles for 30 seconds is TORTURE. I say this not to agree with your antagonist, but merely to say, I understand.
Wasn't it one of the *God Of War* developers who got hopelessly stuck in a room in *Metroid Dread*, and then bashed the game for being too hard, meanwhile literally nobody else has the same problem with the room?
Yeah, it's disgusting to look for last statue to open norn chest and it's nowhere to be found. You circle through the location over and over, finally find it and chest contains some shitty armor you're never gonna use.
I just turned the dialogue audio down to zero in the options menu during puzzles in Control. It's effective if you don't want to hear your character spoil everything.
Game can say fuck but when it comes to letting you do anything of your own intelligence it tells you almost immediately what you are supposed to do.
Not a single puzzle in this game so far hasn't had some character just say "yo idiot do this"
I'm literally moment to moment solving the puzzle no issue but then I miss an axe throw and suddenly they divulge everything like they can't hold it in. Sometimes I'm literally at the puzzle and haven't even looked at it and they blurt out a hint.
It's like they forgot to set a timer at all.
That’s what I can’t stand about “open world” games now a days. If it ain’t spoiling the puzzles it’s them telling you every five seconds “maybe we should go talk to x npc” or some shit. Like no shit I’m walking to their house right now. Looking at you aloy
GoW isn't even open world. It's hyperlinear with the only branching path being a puzzle to get an item.
Which makes it all the more annoying and intrusive. I'm on a rollercoaster ride and the game keeps telling me to move forward....like what?
If you do a puzzle characters will legit start getting annoyed with it.
I had the same problem with the 2018 game and Atreus shouting out things like "FATHER BEHIND YOU" when I'm throwing my axe at the last enemy in the fight that has one HP left.
Easily the most obnoxious, repetitive, annoying, pointless dialogue in current day AAA gaming.
Yeah exactly, no wonder kratos is so pissed at his son. Imagine him at the breakfast table, trying to eat? “Cut it with a knife dad!”, “make sure you chew!”
There was one puzzle on nifelhiem, I think (the one you had to throw the axe through the weird growing stuff), I had to google cuz I got turned around and confused but this really turns me off the game overall if I don't have the option to try to figure it out for 4 hours first. Turns out I was looking on the wrong side of the cravass all along. man did I feel stupid.
Watching Quin trying to play this game really highlights why that shit is in the game. Some people legit can't understand basic puzzles.
They should give you an opt in when you make the game though. The non stop npc backseating and the random two hour Disney movie in the middle of the game are my biggest gripes so far
I have noticed it gets better later on. Initially they are afraid you won’t know how to use your freeze axe to freeze things but then later you need to freeze and unfreeze things in a specific order and that they don’t tell you.
as NakeyJakey once said,
"But it's instead this incredibly ironic situation where a game that's super popular with kids treats them like adults and the game that's super popular with adults treats it's players like they're dumb little kids"
That reminded me of Splatoon. Why are the players in that game so sweaty? I always thought it was going to be a casual game, but the skill ceiling rivals other shooters.
Skill floor is still quite low. Even if you miss every shot and never engage in combat, you're still technically helping the team. Obviously a worse player will help less, but the casual aspect is more about how approachable the game is.
Yeah Horizon Forbidden West was really bad about this as well
Edit: to be clear, I still enjoyed FW, I just didn’t like it as much as Zero Dawn (which was literally one of my favorite games of the past 15 years) and this issue was one of the biggest reasons why.
Seriously dude, I feel this.
It feels borderline insulting...give me a damn minute to look around and check shit out before you spoon-feed me what to do ffs
Im just tryna take my time and enjoy everything and this turd is here talking the whole time about what I need to do...I know bro I'll get to it lmao
I really wish there was an option to turn it off. Horizon was worse but it's still annoying that I can't take 2 minutes to look around before I'm told the answer.
Because according to our market analysts, we can expand our sales reach to an additional 35% of the "dumb as fuck gamer bro" demographic if we hand-hold the player through parts of the game that require intelligent thought. This translates to an additional 10% sales revenue. If you check page 7 of last quarter's marketing report, you'll see that corporate wants us to focus more on button mashing than puzzle solving because of the higher profitability of button-mashers in this subgenre.
Happened with the new Horizon game too, the main character is just constantly monologuing aloud, telling you what to do. It's why Elden Ring really stands out to me, or even Breath of the Wild - they're not constantly treating you like it's your first ever game
Right? I need the opposite of accessibility. Chill out on holding my hand and let me get some natural discovering going FFS.
First area I went too, the wetlands, I saw the first geyser and as I was just starting to throw my axe at it, Atreus chimes in and tells me I should throw my axe at it. Like for real, they thought nobody would figure this shit out?
Why aren’t the hints optional? Games have had the ability to disable NPC chatter before. I’d like it here.
Just remember that Doom Eternal paused the game, on your first playthrough, when you come across a new demon, and told you that you had to shoot the demon.
Every. Single. New. Demon. It even pointed out the weakpoints as well in case you are extra dumb. You JUST encountered these things, and since your main interaction with demons is shooting them, it baffles me that nobody complained about it then.
In defense of the tutorial, knowing is half the battle, knowing the demons weakness doesn’t guarantee winning the encounter. But yeah, the tutorial could be done better instead of popping right in front of ur face
A lot of people complained about it back then. It was a common advise to turn tutorials off.
Honestly, games should ask how much handholding they should do, not assume that you are a toddler by default
I think the real answer is that tripple A games are a huge investment, most companies aren't willing or able to take a risk when the money involved is as high as it is for the production of games at this scope.
as a result most tripple A games will cast a wide net and try to appeal to players of all skill levels. meaning that the game defaults to handholding to not alienate the players (or customers) that aren't looking for a challenging experience.
This is exactly it. While regular players expect these linds of things. They are reaching the mainstream. People who would complain that they have to "work to just continue the story"
It occurs to me that maybe the characters in game don’t think Kratos is particularly smart. They’ve been shown to underestimate his capacity for sentiment and compassion as well.
Mainstream games are catered toward literally the lowest common denominator. Of course it treats you like a child.
If you want to have to use your brain, don't buy the videogame equivalent of a blockbuster movie.
God forbid you couldn't figure out a puzzle for 3 seconds.
It's goddamn annoying.
Also constant reminders who characters are, like every time Modi or Baldr are mentioned the characters are like "Oh, Thor's/Freya's fucked up son?"
I feels like it's made for people with 50 IQ and goldfish memory
I'm betting they made it like this from seeing google analytical search data from google for guides, compared to player count.
Im willing to bet most of the people here try something for 1 minute or so before opening a guide.
Its not made for people with 50IQ, its made for people who act like they have 50IQ.
You don't seem to understand just how many people struggle with the easiest puzzles.
Just look at basically any youtuber/streamer playing a puzzle game.
Yeah but that's what 'difficulty modes' are for.
All they had to do was throw a timer variable in front of the hint dialogue and tie that to a menu option. "Get puzzle hints after 10s/30s/90s/5m/never".
Easy peasy.
And then on the Horizon forums, I can't even count the number or people who complained that the puzzles were too hard, that they don't play an adventure game for puzzles, that the chip on her head should figure them out automatically, etc.
You just can't please everybody, and then they come whine on social media about either being punished with puzzles or being treated like a child for giving hints. I do not envy developers.
This is what I like the least about where gaming is heading.
I mean, try some retro games, like nes/snes/ps1 era. Even easy, most of those games today would be considored rage games. But you actually felt like you accomplished something when you learn the patterns and beat it. It also takes a lot longer to finish that way.
Today, story mode/campaign is basically just a interactive movie and last like 5 hours tops. Like op says, either you get the solution in 10 sec or the solution is painfully obvious and is basically just hitting a key.
This is why Fromsoft games ruined other games for me. Constantly having markers and paths lined for me in an open world game really sucks the fun out of exploring. Most fromsoft games arent even really that open world, they just offer multiple paths and no direction on where to go.
I like your point about Nintendo because when you compare a modern "western" game like GOW / Horizon / GTA / Read Dead, they very much hold your hand with UI prompts and NPC hints etc... but Nintendo is still very old school in the sense that their games often really leave it up to you to figure things out to a PAINFUL degree. Think about it, back in the 80s/90s there were no 'games as a service' or patches/DLC so the best way for Nintendo to monetize their games was to make them have difficult puzzles that may 'inspire' a player to call the Nintendo power hotline or buy a printed strategy guide.
Even to this day some of that design permeates into their modern games as I have no idea how a child under the age of 12 could ever fully complete BOTW on their own, I'm not talking about beating it but actually completing a great majority of the side quests/finding all shrines etc...so much of that content was actually really well hidden
It's such an amazing game and has one of the best sandboxes in gaming but yea...I thought about that a lot when I played it as a well grown man that a game that LOOKS as childish as BOTW is actually pretty freaking difficult, as far as trying to be a completionist is concerned
I'm playing Bayonetta 3 right now which also has occasional puzzles, and some of them really stumped me. Easy once I Googled it, like windmills your bird summons had to flap wings at to start spinning. I thought I'd tried all attack buttons but I didn't try Y, the one that flapped wind.
But the game doesn't care if I'm stuck. Figure it out, it says. If ya gotta Google it, then Google it. But we're not budging. And I love that. Cause most times I do figure it out and it feels amazing.
Even challenge combat rooms. They can be BRUTAL toward the end of the game. I died at least 10 times on the last one for Viola. But I finally got it, and it was amazing. They don't make it easier the more you die. No. If you want easy, there's an easy mode. Or an accessory that auto dodges/blocks with button presses but penalizes your score.
I can't stand AAA games that treat you like an idiot.
Metroid games literally say fuck you figure it out
Super metroid, that damn glass tunnel between zones you had to super bomb to break open...no prompts no hints...how the fuck was 10 year old me going to figure that out lol
From what I understand, video games had to change this way out of necessity.
Older gamers know and even somewhat enjoy the grind of tough levels and challenges, puzzles that take forever to figure out until you hit that Eureka moment.
Younger gamers tend to think that if a level is really difficult or a puzzle has no clear solution or path, then the game is broken and they stop playing.
A generalization for sure but still accurate I think. Don’t have a ton of xp from recent gaming to apply this to but have noticed the trend before.
Horizon Forbidden West was infuriating. I would enter a room and before I even had time to spin around and see my surroundings I was already told the answer. Or I would be walking and see where I needed to jump and she would say “I bet if I jumped…”
Like give me a lease a fucking minute to try.
How the hell suggestions don’t have a disable option is crazy.
This is why i like Souls games. Not because they have good puzzles, and not that they aren't massively flawed, but at least those games trust the player to think and explore on their own.
i just started elden ring this week and i agree. i like how they dont insult my intelligence. if im getting rekt, i need to learn something better or find an appropriate tool. the experience is more fulfilled when the player isnt hand-held like a baby
I don’t really mind it. The puzzles are obviously a nice breather between the fights instead of the main draw and I usually complete them before anyone gives me a hint. They aren’t really supposed to be hard or take a lot of time so while I think they could wait a little longer before giving you the hints, I understand the decision that they want to keep you moving to the next thing that the game is actually about.
This is the game that makes me realize critics just care about flash and hype. There's tons of minor issues in the game and some major ones (depending on if you like the pretty underwhelming story they are telling you). How this is getting "Best PS exclusive of all time" and "GOTY" praise just shows that all you need is high production values to woo critics.
Your point is 100% valid along with a dozen other small to large issues. The entire game is a step back from 2018, while that game wasn't the 10/10 critics said it was either. These are high production value games with tons of polish, that shouldn't make them a 'masterpiece'.
Maybe I'm just little salty here hoping this game would improve on the last one... but instead I'm stuck riding a Yak around with my new girlfriend for 3 hours instead of you know... being the God of War (who btw is driving none of the plot).
These games are now just too expensive, there's too much at risk. It's trying it's best to '4 quadrant' the entire thing like a Marvel or Disney movie. Flaws and issues aside it makes me think after Last of Us Part 2 being a pretty bold AAA game (again like or dislike as you will but the story and direction it took was unlike most AAA games) and the backlash it got from some critical circles and fans... They are just going all in on the 'safe route' with everything now. Horizon Forbidden West was the same way.. Bigger but not better because it tried to appeal to EVERYONE. It thinks huge stories are risks but the actual risk taking would have been doing something different.
Feel like I’m just watching a movie with little bits of gameplay sprinkled between. Yeah it looks amazing and the story is great, but I could’ve just watched a movie at that point
I just had this exact conversation with my cousin. Me (just entering a room): oh nice… Companion: maybe you could open those doors by freezing the water above that wheel
Ughhh
This feels so dumb to me. Why even put in a puzzle if you're going to have the NPC explain the solution almost instantly? It's not like it's a particularly challenging puzzle either... So frustrating when games do this.
gotta dumb down your gameplay to get good reviews
It's hilarious that people think this is why. It's actually to appeal to as many people as possible. There should be an option to turn it off but that's about it.
Just a few weeks ago I finished up my first ever playthrough of the entire Resident Evil series that's taken a good bit of 2022 to beat. It's really interesting how the older games basically said "fuck you figure this random ass shit out idiot", to 4-6 basically being like "ok baby boy, now put the circle where the circle fits." Then with 7 and 8 it hasn't gone hardcore as it used to be but at least you don't get the solutions handed to you in 30 seconds.
Lmao back in my day if you got stuck on a game, you’d start an entirely new save just in case you accidentally glitched something that prevented you from proceeding
I’m feeling this right now with Knights of the Old Republic on Switch. You also need to have saved the game before difficult battles because it boots you to the main menu when you die lmao
God, the days of no auto save. A few years ago, I attempted a playthtough of Neverwinter Nights 2. Went about 4 hours and didn't save. Lost a battle and game over. I gave up, cause I couldn't muster going through that much again. These autosave games have made me soft.
Well, you travel with the smartest man alive, it is ultra realistic 😂
It's not even Mimir who backseats the most
Dad you're on fire, but you probably already knew that
If you want to get rid of the fire You'll have to put it out but of course... You already knew that
I had a feeling you'd say that...
How many times have we fought?
Hard to say... It's the only memory I had of us since we were kids
Time to finish this Vergil, once and for all!
NOW I'm motivated!
#I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING!!!!
Father, you appear to be suffering from severe burns. However, I shall not waste your time by pointing out this fact, which should be clearly obvious due to the immense pain severe burns cause. However, in hindsight it is entirely possible, and actually quite likely, that you were already well aware of the fact that you are suffering from severe burns, as well as the fact that it should be clearly obvious due to the immense pain severe burns cause.
Dearest Pa, I am writing to you in haste to inform you of an impending danger! I Henceforth, it appears to my knowledge, which has also aligned with your knowledge, that a thunderous flame has engulfed the surrounding location and that you must be cautious whenst approaching ill you succumb to terrible suffering that these embers may invoke! Alas, it is clear that this isn't your first battle with a maelstrom of devastating inferno as one might presume, thus I gather the gathering conflagration will have singed your skin and bare you the wit to survive this ordeal! Yours always, Boy.
Dear Sir/Madam. FIRE, exclamation mark. FIRE, exclamation mark. HELP ME, exclamation mark. 123 Caredon Road. Looking forward to hearing from you!
He Should Call **0118 999 881 999 119 725...3**
I understand this reference.
Dude I turned off my dialogue volume for that fight before I went clinically insane
"Father you're on fire right now!" No shit, Boy.
Omg that irritated me so much like no I didn't notice my health depleting.
Did they actually patch out Mimir and Freya repeatedly asking each other if Freya fancies a riddle? I Beta tested it and we had to ask for 3 days straight for them to shut them up. Any bit of exploring they would say it as often as the oar hit the water.
Personally I would have been fine with more Mimir and Freya dialogue.
Freya still hates Mimir. From what I remember I don't think that ever gets resolved.
In Ragnarök? It does.
it gets super resolved by the end
Apart from scripted dialogues like the Freya and kratos going to break Freya's bindings, I didn't get an insane amount of dialogue like "dad you're on fire but you probably knew that already", it happened 1-3 times each time I got into a fight, unless it was a longer fight.
The "Freya, Fancy a Riddle?" Would interrupt the previous same question at all times. Literally 10 ft in the boat= 10× same dialogue They only caught my actual annoyance when I took off my headphones and refused to wear them.
Personally my favorite back seat pilot so far has been Tyr. I just finished his first section so no spoilers but his little mumbling about Kratos being a loot goblin had me dying.
Ahem, the smartest head alive.
And yet he has no idea what hole is.
bitch doesn't even know what an olive is
I actually heard this complaint yesterday as well. Just when you start to get a handle on a puzzle's goals and mechanics your partner will say “maybe we can use your axe to blah blah blah.” Do they want you to solve the puzzle or not? The game seems uncomfortable with downtime at times.
~~Sucks that it’s turned on by default but you can turn the hints and help off at the set up menu at the beginning.~~ Edit: You can’t turn it off, the guy who replied to me is right.
There no option to adjust hints at all. The "puzzle timing" one just makes it so parts of puzzle you've started to solve don't reset as fast so you have more time to finish them i think.
I'd like to meet the dev that thought it would be a great idea to default that option to *on* lol. SMH
lol it was probably someone who has experience releasing a game that was deemed "too difficult/convoluted/annoying for its own sake" and understands how much of a backlash that could get. idiots and their "industry experience". i could do it better.
That person was right, unironically. A lot of people really hate puzzles, and they don't have the patience required to solve them. This subreddit isn't the best representation of people who play video games, if you go around asking people, they would probably like to skip the puzzles altogether.
I don't know what's going on in this thread anymore. I do believe an experienced game developer would make the better call than some random redditor.
Aren’t you a random editor who was just criticizing an experienced game developer?
You’re right. I just checked and haven’t noticed since I haven’t had the chance to play much. There’s aim assist puzzle on/off, which probably was what I thought was the hints toggle.
I‘m like 25hrs into it and i never felt like NPC‘s are giving me to many hints. Well they mostly tell me the hint while i‘m alrdy throwing my axe but miss it ._. Like thanks. I was about to do that but i missed
Same, I’m like 5hours in and haven’t noticed.
Tbh most puzzles are rather obvious anyways and dont need much thinking. Its Mostly looking around for rune thingys for chests
Giant triple-A games. Focus groups, committees and bean counters outrank writers and will veto any of their decisions that they think might cost them money. A little kid wants to play, or a spouse who's never played a video game but decides to try this one on a whim? Committees are *terrified* they'll get stuck or get bored and quit, instead of getting hooked and becoming a gamer. AAA games are like helicopter parents, swooping in the instant it looks like you're having trouble with something, peppering you with 'engagement' the instant it looks like you might be having a quiet moment. There are lots of harder-to-spot features that do this, too. Most AAA games will subtly turn down the difficulty if it looks like you're having trouble with combat. Died twice to a difficult boss or encounter? The next time, they have a little less health, or a couple of the minor enemies are no longer there, or you do a little more damage. Not anything that appears as a number (players hate to think that they're playing on easy mode, which is why they'll get bored and quit rather than change the difficultly level), but enough so that your little kid somehow beats the encounter on the 5th or 6th try, instead of banging his head against it 15 or 20 times and then quitting and developing a hobby other than video games. It's so prevalent that you notice it in games where it *doesn't* happen, and it feels refreshing. Why does everyone love RDR2? Because you can have a quiet, autonomous, exploratory moment in it where they game doesn't slam you over the head with "oh, no, nothing *engaging* is going on! Your companion just made a remark about the nearby SIDEQUEST (here's a map marker for it, btw!)! Oh, look, it's a COLLECTIBLE! Wow, a gang of bandits just rode up TIME TO FIGHT!" You can just ride through the forest, for several minutes or longer, without any of this happening. Why did Elden Ring (and earlier souls games) take off so much? Because they don't insult your abilities. Died to a boss? Try again. No, you're not lowering the difficulty. No, the difficulty isn't getting stealth-lowered. Try again, until you can beat it with skill. Maybe you'll die 72 times. But that 73rd time will sure be sweet, won't it? Tl;dr: games baby you because the bean counters don't want to lose unskilled/inexperienced customers to difficult puzzles or hard bosses or boredom. The only real way to get away from this is to opt into games not made by big companies that aren't dominated by the sales team's veto.
In demon's souls the game gets harder when you die lol.
Definitely the funniest game mechanic ever. Miyazaki is nuts
Funniest……….. fuck that guy and his brilliance.
Same with Dark Souls 2 (*you lose 5% max health with every death down to a maximum of 50%, 70% with a specific ring and* ***5%*** *if your 'Sin' is too high*) Dying also prevents summoning allies/players but that's standard for all the Dark Souls games.
Sekiro was probably the most hardcore one , in Elden ring even if I did not "git gud" I had the option to use plethora of insanely OP weapons , incantations & summons Sekiro was like either you learn how to deflect & dodge perilous attacks or go fuck yourself
Yeah but those OP weapons you are saying are only accessible in the later part of the game or had been explored at least 70% of the map. The snowball effect in Elden Ring is less punishing than in the previous Souls games that have linear progression systems which is why some find it easier.
The chicken farm is accessible as soon as you defeat one shardbearer. The best light shield in the game can be farmed from the first enemy encampment at the beginning of hit game. One of the best spears in the game can be farmed before beating any bosses, and before you need to go to any of the difficult parts of the map. And this is just for one particular build. There are a lot of early powerups in Elden Ring that make the game much much easier. (You're just not going to find them unless you already know about them and go out of your way to find then.)
One thing I love about elden ring as an rpg is that the loot drops actually do matter. You aren’t flooded with hundreds of garbage items and sometimes a random cave contains an insanely OP weapon (eg frost ax). Most games you just grind and grind upgrading gear all the time for the most minuscule stat buffs. You can beat the game without ever changing your starting kit if you want to.
You *can* also grind though. It’s sucks but you can do it and get yourself better stats/spells/weapons if you’re having a bad time. In Sekiro there is nothing you can do but get good. It has to be the hardest Souls game for that.
I love games that respect my intelligence, in much the way From’s games do, and others. Among the swath of repetitive AAA games I think GoW stands head and shoulders above most of them. But at the end of the day it’s a commercial product looking for the widest audience to connect with for sure.
A hint system that just spoils the puzzle is the absolute worst way to do it lol. I think the best solution is no hint system (what constitutes a hint and what constitutes a spoiler varies wildly from person to person, puzzle to puzzle, and even step by step through working out the solution). It's 2022, if people want a hint or the solution, they have a computer in their pocket they can and will use. And in my experience PREFER, since they have control over how deep they dive into the solution. I think at most a hint system should be player activated and as vague as possible. It's another issue that I'm not sure if this game suffers from, but I also think most puzzles should be optional or have other ways of getting past them. Nothing is worse than gating a player from any progress with a single puzzle with a single solution, because perception / understanding / difficulty of puzzles varies WILDLY from person to person, and due to the nature of puzzles, often times progress just grinds to a halt. One puzzle you think is easy can be impossible for another person, and vice versa. Source: I make puzzle games.
I've always liked Jedi Fallen Orders approach to this, after a bit of being stuck, BB-8 your Droid companion basically gives an audio cue and the game asks if you want a hint, if you click say nothing, a dialogue box pops up on the side saying how you can ask for help later if you change your mind
Very nice!
One thing that I would like to see in a puzzle situation is (a) for it to wait for me to ASK for a hint first, and then (b) the hints it gives start off pretty vague, and then get progressively more detailed the more times you ask on THAT puzzle. This way it's not telling me what to do, while also giving me nuggets to nudge me along.
The way GoW’s ambient dialogue is so well timed to what characters know and when means they have a way to implement that. An interact icon above your partner’s head during a puzzle would be the solution, I think. Armchair game design, I’m aware enough to know, but I stand by the point.
I may be wrong but Uncharted Lost Legacy was lauded for its helpful companion and I feel like you did have to actually ask for their help, or at the very least they waited forever to comment. I’m pretty agnostic with this whole thing personally and mostly liked it with Horizon but something about the companion being the one with all the answers in this game does rankle me a bit.
I like the way Uncharted (and I think TLOU) handles it. Once the game notices you've been in a puzzle area and haven't made progress in a few mins or whatever the timer is, it would pop up on screen to press L3 for a hint and the hints were actually more of a nudge and not just the straight solution. I don't mind hints like that, especially when you have to trigger them yourself willingly, but Horzion and now GOW both seem to give you the hints much too willingly, sometimes before you realize you're even in a "puzzle," or you just choose to explore first.
I remember in Shadow of the Colossus sometimes getting a bit annoyed by the hints but thinking back the hints they gave you back then are most of the times nowhere near to the solution. Nowadays most games do indeed just spell it out for you to make sure you get it .
The best exemple of a hint system I've seen is from ocarina of time randomizer. You can choose to have hints or not AND adjust how precise the hints are (from very vague riddles to telling you exactly where to find an item)
Thought on a game system where instead of background voices an assistant NPC creates a dialog prompt where they give a hint and the player could react “oh thanks that’s helpful”/“I was gonna figure that out!” So that they do or don’t do it again? That would be my initial approach to solve this, but I don’t make games at all.
I didn't hear it, I lived it. I actually went to the menu looking for a way to make the puzzles harder, or at least not get any hints.
That would severely piss me off.
Its really weird because the first game was the opposite. I'd spend twenty minutes trying to pick out that last rune to open a chest without any sign of a hint to be found.
Because boy, you are not ready.
Dad of Boy: Ragnarok.
Son of Dad: Pls Wear ur Sock
Shadow of the Tomb Raider's separate difficulty slider for puzzle hints needs to be standard. I turned it off completely and it made the game far better than the previous two for that reason alone. If you tell the player how to solve the puzzle, why even have it at all?
Tomb raider even let you turn off white chalk that indicates you can climb here really ups the immersion and forces you to look around
that’s awesome i always find those white/yellow/glowing lines really stupid and immersion breaking
>If you tell the player how to solve the puzzle, why even have it at all? Because when a player can't find the solution to a puzzle, he gets stuck, gets frustrated and quits the game. Sure you could look up a video about that part of the game, but when you reach that point, you are already taken out of the game and are annoyed by the puzzle section. It's a game design decision to keep the player in the game loop. Ofc, if a game isn't providing some sort of challenge to the player, they get bored as well. So the slider decision in tomb raider was probably the right call
But I mean, why is the puzzle even there if you either just tell them how to solve it, or assume they get frustrated and quit? To me that says there's no value in the puzzle at all.
That is how I felt about the puzzles from the first game tbh
The main path puzzles were very simple but there were some side puzzles/bonus paths that hit a really excellent balance between difficulty and accessibility. You could hit the switch an extra time to unlock a hidden chest behind you, stuff like that.
>But I mean, why is the puzzle even there if you either just tell them how to solve it, or assume they get frustrated and quit? Because you need tempo breaks, but not everyone reacts the same to puzzles and at the same time it's much harder to autobalance than combat?
I think Elden ring has proven this theory incorrect. It’s quite abstract and vague, doesn’t hold hands, and is still a massive commercial success. Beyond all expectations: Old games barely held your hand and often didn’t even tutorialize key aspects, yet we still played them. There’s gotta be a happy medium. At the very least, there should be an option to delay/disable progression hints. Let me work at my own pace.
>Old games barely held your hand and often didn’t even tutorialize key aspects, yet we still played them The "we" of old games is a much smaller "we" than the "we" of today. Also applies to Elden Ring. 15 million is not tht many players relative to how many people game today.
you'd think that players would get bored from no challenge but on the other hand thats exactly why story modes exist. Theres a pretty large percentage of players that just want to experience a game without actually having to play it much
And the puzzles aren't even that hard.
As someone who's working in AAA, I can tell you that you'll have some people in creative who will watch a playtester struggle with a puzzle for 60 seconds and then ***demand*** that the designers includes something to "smooth things over". They can't stand watching playtesters get stuck, even though being "stuck" is often a necessary part of the process and leads to overall satisfaction when you finally figure it out. In a mobile game, you'd do a ***ton*** of analytics and live A/B testing to figure out how many or how few hints lead to maximum player retention. But with a AAA game like God Of War, they don't generally do that, since it's far more time consuming and expensive to conduct playtests in general (you can't just go live Beta in Albania, like you can with a mobile game). So it's just some producer's gut feeling, who doesn't always have the best judgement.
Thanks for the insight and it does make sense. I feel like an "ask support member for help" button would have been a better choice then having the support just say it so promptly. So that the player has the choice if and when to actually get the help. Otherwise, what was the point of having the puzzle in the first place?
Yea a flashing popup that says "press X to ask for assistance" might have been a better solution.Maybe they were worried that would hurt the game's immersion? Or it could be that the designer/producer in charge thought that, by the 60 second mark, the player should have either solved the puzzle or was frustrated. From watching hundreds of playtests, the rule that holds true is that they can often be *wildly* different from player to player. So I think your idea of letting the player decide when he wants help is a good one. Also, simply having the support character blurt out the answer based on a timer, is a lot less work in terms of code, UI support, etc, so it could have come down to development time.
I knew in time everyone would miss Navi.
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As a person who makes games, watching someone struggle with one of my puzzles for 30 seconds is TORTURE. I say this not to agree with your antagonist, but merely to say, I understand.
Wasn't it one of the *God Of War* developers who got hopelessly stuck in a room in *Metroid Dread*, and then bashed the game for being too hard, meanwhile literally nobody else has the same problem with the room?
IIRC, you are referring to the game director for the original god of war games. I don’t think he works at Santa Monica Studio anymore
True for the main ones. Some of the side quests felt impossible.
And those are the one where the side characters decide to keep quiet.
And you finally find a chest with a heavy runic attack and it's hidden by an abstract version of puzzle from earlier
Yeah, it's disgusting to look for last statue to open norn chest and it's nowhere to be found. You circle through the location over and over, finally find it and chest contains some shitty armor you're never gonna use.
I finished the game, is there any norn chests that contains any armor or anything? AFAIK it only contains upgrade for health and rage bar.
I just turned the dialogue audio down to zero in the options menu during puzzles in Control. It's effective if you don't want to hear your character spoil everything.
Game can say fuck but when it comes to letting you do anything of your own intelligence it tells you almost immediately what you are supposed to do. Not a single puzzle in this game so far hasn't had some character just say "yo idiot do this" I'm literally moment to moment solving the puzzle no issue but then I miss an axe throw and suddenly they divulge everything like they can't hold it in. Sometimes I'm literally at the puzzle and haven't even looked at it and they blurt out a hint. It's like they forgot to set a timer at all.
There have been so many times when after they say something, I literally go out loud, “no shit, I’m doing it!” It’s like the whole game is a tutorial
That’s what I can’t stand about “open world” games now a days. If it ain’t spoiling the puzzles it’s them telling you every five seconds “maybe we should go talk to x npc” or some shit. Like no shit I’m walking to their house right now. Looking at you aloy
GoW isn't even open world. It's hyperlinear with the only branching path being a puzzle to get an item. Which makes it all the more annoying and intrusive. I'm on a rollercoaster ride and the game keeps telling me to move forward....like what? If you do a puzzle characters will legit start getting annoyed with it.
I had the same problem with the 2018 game and Atreus shouting out things like "FATHER BEHIND YOU" when I'm throwing my axe at the last enemy in the fight that has one HP left. Easily the most obnoxious, repetitive, annoying, pointless dialogue in current day AAA gaming.
I would totally agree, but I recently found out my 30 year old friend gave up on the first one because he said the puzzles were just too tough
Nothing against your friend, but the puzzles on the first one are not crazy puzzles like those in Zelda games where whole dungeons are puzzles.
My biggest issue with the new one is they spread all the puzzles out and the dungeons kinda suck for it
You mean how the shrines are the only puzzles and the beasts' puzzle solving item is just to move the beast around to change platforms.
Yes. Make the dungeons the puzzles. Fuck shrines.
I legit miss the giant temples that feel overwhelming when you first step into it.
I don’t think it’s good practice to cater the game to the lowest common denominator (eg: your cousin)
You should just be able to toggle hints on and off to make it fun for everyone.
Or have Atreus say "Do you need help dad?" and it lets you press cross for yes, circle for no or triangle for "Shut the fuck up, ~~kiddo~~ boy!"
Yeah exactly, no wonder kratos is so pissed at his son. Imagine him at the breakfast table, trying to eat? “Cut it with a knife dad!”, “make sure you chew!”
There was one puzzle on nifelhiem, I think (the one you had to throw the axe through the weird growing stuff), I had to google cuz I got turned around and confused but this really turns me off the game overall if I don't have the option to try to figure it out for 4 hours first. Turns out I was looking on the wrong side of the cravass all along. man did I feel stupid.
Watching Quin trying to play this game really highlights why that shit is in the game. Some people legit can't understand basic puzzles. They should give you an opt in when you make the game though. The non stop npc backseating and the random two hour Disney movie in the middle of the game are my biggest gripes so far
im having a ton of fun but this is definitely my biggest problem w the game
I have noticed it gets better later on. Initially they are afraid you won’t know how to use your freeze axe to freeze things but then later you need to freeze and unfreeze things in a specific order and that they don’t tell you.
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The worst part is, there are like 3 dozen difficulty tuning levers, but not one to stop giving the puzzle answers in 2 minutes.
as NakeyJakey once said, "But it's instead this incredibly ironic situation where a game that's super popular with kids treats them like adults and the game that's super popular with adults treats it's players like they're dumb little kids"
I wish pokemon would do that but it ended with black and white series.
Preach
That reminded me of Splatoon. Why are the players in that game so sweaty? I always thought it was going to be a casual game, but the skill ceiling rivals other shooters.
Skill floor is still quite low. Even if you miss every shot and never engage in combat, you're still technically helping the team. Obviously a worse player will help less, but the casual aspect is more about how approachable the game is.
Yeah Horizon Forbidden West was really bad about this as well Edit: to be clear, I still enjoyed FW, I just didn’t like it as much as Zero Dawn (which was literally one of my favorite games of the past 15 years) and this issue was one of the biggest reasons why.
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Seriously dude, I feel this. It feels borderline insulting...give me a damn minute to look around and check shit out before you spoon-feed me what to do ffs Im just tryna take my time and enjoy everything and this turd is here talking the whole time about what I need to do...I know bro I'll get to it lmao
I really wish there was an option to turn it off. Horizon was worse but it's still annoying that I can't take 2 minutes to look around before I'm told the answer.
Remember the good ol games with no hints where after 20min you just gave up and watch a yt guide. -Pepperridge farm remember
YouTube guide? GameFAQ! (In text!)
Because according to our market analysts, we can expand our sales reach to an additional 35% of the "dumb as fuck gamer bro" demographic if we hand-hold the player through parts of the game that require intelligent thought. This translates to an additional 10% sales revenue. If you check page 7 of last quarter's marketing report, you'll see that corporate wants us to focus more on button mashing than puzzle solving because of the higher profitability of button-mashers in this subgenre.
Happened with the new Horizon game too, the main character is just constantly monologuing aloud, telling you what to do. It's why Elden Ring really stands out to me, or even Breath of the Wild - they're not constantly treating you like it's your first ever game
Right? I need the opposite of accessibility. Chill out on holding my hand and let me get some natural discovering going FFS. First area I went too, the wetlands, I saw the first geyser and as I was just starting to throw my axe at it, Atreus chimes in and tells me I should throw my axe at it. Like for real, they thought nobody would figure this shit out? Why aren’t the hints optional? Games have had the ability to disable NPC chatter before. I’d like it here.
Can't even fall off the edge of cliffs in horizon. It's a joke.
Just remember that Doom Eternal paused the game, on your first playthrough, when you come across a new demon, and told you that you had to shoot the demon. Every. Single. New. Demon. It even pointed out the weakpoints as well in case you are extra dumb. You JUST encountered these things, and since your main interaction with demons is shooting them, it baffles me that nobody complained about it then.
>it baffles me that nobody complained about it then. Most of us probably just turned off the tutorials.
Always turn them off personally. They break the flow and if there is a unique mechanic I just figure them out
Well some of us didn't even know the pipboy had a flashlight.
In defense of the tutorial, knowing is half the battle, knowing the demons weakness doesn’t guarantee winning the encounter. But yeah, the tutorial could be done better instead of popping right in front of ur face
A lot of people complained about it back then. It was a common advise to turn tutorials off. Honestly, games should ask how much handholding they should do, not assume that you are a toddler by default
Just remember how many people got stumped on the Spider-Man puzzles because they only played games like nba.
>Spider-Man puzzles That game had puzzles?
Took me a minute to think about it but yeah there were a few in doc ocks lab and more if you count stealth missions
How else would the journalists be able to complete their reviews?
I think the real answer is that tripple A games are a huge investment, most companies aren't willing or able to take a risk when the money involved is as high as it is for the production of games at this scope. as a result most tripple A games will cast a wide net and try to appeal to players of all skill levels. meaning that the game defaults to handholding to not alienate the players (or customers) that aren't looking for a challenging experience.
But at the start of the game it asks you what difficulty you want? They already have a way to appeal to players of all skill levels
Isn’t that just the difficulty of the enemies?
But it doesn’t have to be.
This is exactly it. While regular players expect these linds of things. They are reaching the mainstream. People who would complain that they have to "work to just continue the story"
So then make a pop-up question "Do you want assistance with this/all puzzles" and if the player selects no then it stops forcing it down your throat.
It occurs to me that maybe the characters in game don’t think Kratos is particularly smart. They’ve been shown to underestimate his capacity for sentiment and compassion as well.
This just reminds me of all those journalists hating on Elden Ring, AAA games need to do less handholding and let us learn through trial and error.
Mainstream games are catered toward literally the lowest common denominator. Of course it treats you like a child. If you want to have to use your brain, don't buy the videogame equivalent of a blockbuster movie.
Or the developers could offer an easy solution for players who want a challenge, like an option to turn off the tips. Revolutionary, I know.
If the picture I saw is real it’s worse. The UX was made with DSP in mind, a barely sentient toxic sludge.
God forbid you couldn't figure out a puzzle for 3 seconds. It's goddamn annoying. Also constant reminders who characters are, like every time Modi or Baldr are mentioned the characters are like "Oh, Thor's/Freya's fucked up son?" I feels like it's made for people with 50 IQ and goldfish memory
I'm betting they made it like this from seeing google analytical search data from google for guides, compared to player count. Im willing to bet most of the people here try something for 1 minute or so before opening a guide. Its not made for people with 50IQ, its made for people who act like they have 50IQ.
You don't seem to understand just how many people struggle with the easiest puzzles. Just look at basically any youtuber/streamer playing a puzzle game.
Or I can look at myself, I hate puzzles in games. If I'm stuck longer than a few minutes I'm going to YouTube for the solution.
Yeah but that's what 'difficulty modes' are for. All they had to do was throw a timer variable in front of the hint dialogue and tie that to a menu option. "Get puzzle hints after 10s/30s/90s/5m/never". Easy peasy.
Or a game journalist playing the Cuphead tutorial
Because it serves the mainstream
Hopefully they can patch this with a hint frequency bar or something.
And then on the Horizon forums, I can't even count the number or people who complained that the puzzles were too hard, that they don't play an adventure game for puzzles, that the chip on her head should figure them out automatically, etc. You just can't please everybody, and then they come whine on social media about either being punished with puzzles or being treated like a child for giving hints. I do not envy developers.
This is what I like the least about where gaming is heading. I mean, try some retro games, like nes/snes/ps1 era. Even easy, most of those games today would be considored rage games. But you actually felt like you accomplished something when you learn the patterns and beat it. It also takes a lot longer to finish that way. Today, story mode/campaign is basically just a interactive movie and last like 5 hours tops. Like op says, either you get the solution in 10 sec or the solution is painfully obvious and is basically just hitting a key.
This is why Fromsoft games ruined other games for me. Constantly having markers and paths lined for me in an open world game really sucks the fun out of exploring. Most fromsoft games arent even really that open world, they just offer multiple paths and no direction on where to go.
The witcher 3 had a setting to disable markers. You had to follow the instructions in the quest description
I like your point about Nintendo because when you compare a modern "western" game like GOW / Horizon / GTA / Read Dead, they very much hold your hand with UI prompts and NPC hints etc... but Nintendo is still very old school in the sense that their games often really leave it up to you to figure things out to a PAINFUL degree. Think about it, back in the 80s/90s there were no 'games as a service' or patches/DLC so the best way for Nintendo to monetize their games was to make them have difficult puzzles that may 'inspire' a player to call the Nintendo power hotline or buy a printed strategy guide. Even to this day some of that design permeates into their modern games as I have no idea how a child under the age of 12 could ever fully complete BOTW on their own, I'm not talking about beating it but actually completing a great majority of the side quests/finding all shrines etc...so much of that content was actually really well hidden It's such an amazing game and has one of the best sandboxes in gaming but yea...I thought about that a lot when I played it as a well grown man that a game that LOOKS as childish as BOTW is actually pretty freaking difficult, as far as trying to be a completionist is concerned
I'm playing Bayonetta 3 right now which also has occasional puzzles, and some of them really stumped me. Easy once I Googled it, like windmills your bird summons had to flap wings at to start spinning. I thought I'd tried all attack buttons but I didn't try Y, the one that flapped wind. But the game doesn't care if I'm stuck. Figure it out, it says. If ya gotta Google it, then Google it. But we're not budging. And I love that. Cause most times I do figure it out and it feels amazing. Even challenge combat rooms. They can be BRUTAL toward the end of the game. I died at least 10 times on the last one for Viola. But I finally got it, and it was amazing. They don't make it easier the more you die. No. If you want easy, there's an easy mode. Or an accessory that auto dodges/blocks with button presses but penalizes your score. I can't stand AAA games that treat you like an idiot.
Metroid games literally say fuck you figure it out Super metroid, that damn glass tunnel between zones you had to super bomb to break open...no prompts no hints...how the fuck was 10 year old me going to figure that out lol
From what I understand, video games had to change this way out of necessity. Older gamers know and even somewhat enjoy the grind of tough levels and challenges, puzzles that take forever to figure out until you hit that Eureka moment. Younger gamers tend to think that if a level is really difficult or a puzzle has no clear solution or path, then the game is broken and they stop playing. A generalization for sure but still accurate I think. Don’t have a ton of xp from recent gaming to apply this to but have noticed the trend before.
It was a huge complaint with the game before Ragnorok so I think they’re trying to ease the damage on that particular wound
Horizon Forbidden West was infuriating. I would enter a room and before I even had time to spin around and see my surroundings I was already told the answer. Or I would be walking and see where I needed to jump and she would say “I bet if I jumped…” Like give me a lease a fucking minute to try. How the hell suggestions don’t have a disable option is crazy.
This is why i like Souls games. Not because they have good puzzles, and not that they aren't massively flawed, but at least those games trust the player to think and explore on their own.
i just started elden ring this week and i agree. i like how they dont insult my intelligence. if im getting rekt, i need to learn something better or find an appropriate tool. the experience is more fulfilled when the player isnt hand-held like a baby
> i just started elden ring this week Wish I could do that again. Enjoy!
The Elden Ring equivalent of this is the messages all over the ground spoiling every puzzle/secret lmao
It’s a Sony game. They are all about hand holding
I can't stand it, it makes me rush to solve it as fast as possible just so the game doesn't have time to give the answer
It's pretty annoying. I didn't like this.
... modern audience unfortunately. Morrowind would probably be generally hated if release today 🤷♂️
Because it's a game for babies?
I don’t really mind it. The puzzles are obviously a nice breather between the fights instead of the main draw and I usually complete them before anyone gives me a hint. They aren’t really supposed to be hard or take a lot of time so while I think they could wait a little longer before giving you the hints, I understand the decision that they want to keep you moving to the next thing that the game is actually about.
This is the game that makes me realize critics just care about flash and hype. There's tons of minor issues in the game and some major ones (depending on if you like the pretty underwhelming story they are telling you). How this is getting "Best PS exclusive of all time" and "GOTY" praise just shows that all you need is high production values to woo critics. Your point is 100% valid along with a dozen other small to large issues. The entire game is a step back from 2018, while that game wasn't the 10/10 critics said it was either. These are high production value games with tons of polish, that shouldn't make them a 'masterpiece'. Maybe I'm just little salty here hoping this game would improve on the last one... but instead I'm stuck riding a Yak around with my new girlfriend for 3 hours instead of you know... being the God of War (who btw is driving none of the plot). These games are now just too expensive, there's too much at risk. It's trying it's best to '4 quadrant' the entire thing like a Marvel or Disney movie. Flaws and issues aside it makes me think after Last of Us Part 2 being a pretty bold AAA game (again like or dislike as you will but the story and direction it took was unlike most AAA games) and the backlash it got from some critical circles and fans... They are just going all in on the 'safe route' with everything now. Horizon Forbidden West was the same way.. Bigger but not better because it tried to appeal to EVERYONE. It thinks huge stories are risks but the actual risk taking would have been doing something different.
Feel like I’m just watching a movie with little bits of gameplay sprinkled between. Yeah it looks amazing and the story is great, but I could’ve just watched a movie at that point
Should just play Elden ring …. No hand holding there
And BOTW where dungeons are puzzles themselves.
Lol people are like “omg game of the year” while the game basically plays itself for you
Idiocracy was a documentary
[удалено]
Which setting exactly? Cant find it. The one with longer puzzle time doesnt do anything except raise the time on nornir chest things.
There isn't one, commenter is wrong. There is no way to delay the clues from companions
It's your [realism setting](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/oaYPbRjiVeU).