Is it ok for a Developer to Dictate How a Game is Played?

Page 2 - Love gaming? Join the PC Gamer community to share that passion with gamers all around the world!
/quote ipman
I think the 'lack of games without Pause' is already established.
/quote

You lost me. Probably because I am very tired, but has it been established that there are or are not games that do not have a pause feature? I only listed a few because some were saying thay had never seen any.

I verified raft, and I may have been thinking 'State of Decay 2' rather than 'Dying Light 2'

/quote ipman
I have noticed some in game mechanics that I felt were being forced on me, but usually gamers find a way to by pass restrictions, create a mod or try whatever.
/quote

Yeah like autosave only, and you alt-tab to your user folder and copy the savegame file into a backup folder LOL!

Someone acually wrote a program to do this very thing. You tell it which folder to copy, and you can click again to restore it to the game folder.
Really I was agreeing with you, there aren't many games that don't have a Save option. When you consider the total number of games available, the list would have to be massive to support this idea.

Yes I had to adapt to a Steam/game problem. I had to reinstall Steam and it auto switched on cloud save, over riding my manual saves. Lost about 250 hours of a game. But that made me start making saves on a USB at significant points in a game. In a number of games, just in case.

It would be good if you could indicate which games fit into your categories. Which games have 'no saves', 'no HUD', 'no reticule' or 'require game controller'(excepting games primarily aimed at consoles), 'no autosaves'?

I'm not sure how many devs get feedback.
I noticed on the Ubisoft forums that there was more engagement between devs and players and they did listen to feedback, obviously wanting to make their games better for users. Also you will see Ubi devs on Steam forums responding to feedback, offering solutions.
 
Dec 23, 2022
39
79
120
Visit site
@Pifanjr

Sweet :)

Sorry I forgot to reply to Shodan_ I was soo tired I went to bed early.

I have run through Below Zero 3 times I can recall. I have not played the original subnautica in at least a year probably more. I may have a look again if they have added some stuff. Even though it was too big for the board, I missed the Cyclops in Below Zero, and while very good, shorter than the ORG.

@ipman
ahh I see. Sorry, I was soo tired I could not conjugate a thought. I think this is the last year I will do heavy mechanical. I will have to start farming that out.

Well, the question was more abstract really, but I think did put in something about 'hard' things, meaning that I think all could agree on stuff like no pause, no save games etc, and 'soft' things that are more subjective like fading HUD, no HUD, no minimap.

I really only listed actual games because, well if youve never seen a game with no pause, play Raft, which I actually love BTW, just wish it had more content. Green Hell I think also had no pause, had a love/hate relationship with that one.
 
@Pifanjr

Sweet :)

Sorry I forgot to reply to Shodan_ I was soo tired I went to bed early.

I have run through Below Zero 3 times I can recall. I have not played the original subnautica in at least a year probably more. I may have a look again if they have added some stuff. Even though it was too big for the board, I missed the Cyclops in Below Zero, and while very good, shorter than the ORG.

@ipman
ahh I see. Sorry, I was soo tired I could not conjugate a thought. I think this is the last year I will do heavy mechanical. I will have to start farming that out.

Well, the question was more abstract really, but I think did put in something about 'hard' things, meaning that I think all could agree on stuff like no pause, no save games etc, and 'soft' things that are more subjective like fading HUD, no HUD, no minimap.

I really only listed actual games because, well if youve never seen a game with no pause, play Raft, which I actually love BTW, just wish it had more content. Green Hell I think also had no pause, had a love/hate relationship with that one.
Yes I was wondering what a 'bush hog' was. I sometimes do some mechanical work on my old m/bike. It's like having an analogue mindset(and the need to 'get physical'), laid over with a digital mindset. Yes Raft was a game I considered playing but it did seem to lack content.

My problem with dev teams and gaming is some limitations(or so it appears to me), but that seems to be down to the companies and profits. The companies, like film makers, can tend to stick to safe releases, so we get Game No. 2 & 3 & 4 versions of any game that was successful.

Some remakes are slightly better than the originals, but much of this indicates a lack of new ideas being explored.

Someone mentioned Dev teams not playing games much, but that's not what I see or hear in interviews.

The dev teams appear passionate about gaming and it's obvious that they are all playing each others games, learning from them and wondering how to develop it further.

I imagine some devs may not want to play their own games too much, having worked on it for 1000's of hours, but I imagine they enjoy the finished product.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
Every time people start talking about save games, I think back to Outer Wilds. Even though that game is at least a dozen hours long, it could have gotten away without having a save system at all. That's because progress wasn't really measured by how far you had moved, what items you had discovered, or anything like that. It was measured by what you learned! There was an in-game computer that tracked the stuff you learned and keep track of mysteries you've found, but I think you could do without it if you were playing every day.
 
Dying Light 2 lets you pause at any time, at least when you arent playing co-op. But Dark Souls and Elden Ring dont let you pause at any time, which they should.

I split the things in two categories, hard things like no pause, no savegames, and soft things like no HUD, no reticule, game controller required, autosave only.

What are your thoughts? Right? Wrong? Things to add to the list?

Do game developers get to tell us how to play

Talking exclusively about action games here. 4x and strategy games generally include loads of options to customize games settings and parameters.

1. As far as no pause goes I fully support anyones right to pause a game at any time. Annoying when you can't.

2. Changing the HUD, no reason it shouldnt be totally customizable. Maybe a game choosing to have no minimap is a design choice I could understand as that can change the way a player explores and experiences the world.

3. Having a checkpoint system is more complicated. I actually prefer a check point system in a lot of more linear action games because it forces the player to engage with a games systems and learn them to get past an encounter. If you're not interested in learning how to beat an encounter with the tools given by devs, and just want to save scum your way through and wing it then it doesnt sound to me like you are having fun playing the actual game.

Sometimes check points aren't done well, there has to be a good balance of challenge and frustration. That could be an options slider as well, do you want frequent auto save or less often up to 'Iron man' on each level? Most of the time it would be good if a boss battle has 3 phases that the game saved after each was beaten, for example.

4. Something to add to the list. @Zloth s post about Outer Wilds set me thinking about games that include options in their design instead of as a menu slider and brought me back here.

Its the difficulty in (Souls) games again. Since that thread I've watched/read/listened to a lot of different opinions and there's some things that didnt get mentioned. Summons were touched on previously in the old thread but I think its worth expanding on a bit.

Elden Ring doesn't have a difficulty slider. The game is the game. BUT.

-You can choose to use a spirit ash summon which gives you an AI companion. Some of these are very powerful and other just provide a distraction to draw agro.
-You can summon another person to help with co-op.
-You can explore more areas/grind previous ones to gain levels and weapons then come back stronger later.
-You can figure out elemental/technical weaknesses and use a specific character build to make a boss trivial by playing to its weaknesses.
-There are sometimes items in game that make a particular boss or enemy weak that you can find by exploring and reading lore entries.
-You can also just keep banging your head against it until you get gud and win.

All of the above are ways of managing the difficulty of the game included by the devs. Apart from spirit summons you can do all of those across the Fromsoft Souls games.

The point being that not all games need a difficulty slider if the developer can come up with ways to mitigate difficulty within game mechanics. Makes things much more interesting IMO than just making you take/receive less damage and altering the number of mobs. Takes a lot more work on the devs part, but it makes the player engage with the game a lot more and is much more rewarding to the player in the end.
 
You would, reading gaming forums, think that dev teams and gaming companies are the worst. That's mostly down to individual players not getting what they want. Like a game personalised just for their needs and likes.

But I'm sure dev teams have reasons for their decisions.
And as I sometimes point out, without those teams and companies we wouldn't have the massive range of games we do. Profits can be used to develop the next level of their games and pre release costs can be high for a game that's not guaranteed to be a success.

The reason I like a difficulty slider is because it allows for multiple play throughs. Or just to keep you interested as you as the player gets better. Some games have hardness levels that change different aspects of the game, not just the combat.

There's also a certain kudos from saying you're playing on a higher level.

I think the OP's question relates to a few of the games that he plays.(but it's still an interesting question).
 
The reason I like a difficulty slider is because it allows for multiple play throughs. Or just to keep you interested as you as the player gets better. Some games have hardness levels that change different aspects of the game, not just the combat.

I was trying to point out that the difficulty slider in Elden Rings case is the fact you can choose to use all the helps available, or to solo the game entirely without even AI help. In the extreme even you could not level up at all, plenty of people do SL 1 runs in all of those games.

Just about every other dev in existence uses difficulty settings, most games I like do, in fact :)

I think the OP's question relates to a few of the games that he plays.(but it's still an interesting question).

Also I hope my post didnt come across as an attack on OP? it is an interesting question that raised other ones on top in my head.
 
Dark Souls and Elden Ring dont let you pause at any time
What? That can't be right… can it?
Are you saying if I Alt-Tab out to do sth else, the game will keep running and I'll presumably return to dead me at last spawn point?

You would, reading gaming forums, think that dev teams and gaming companies are the worst. That's mostly down to individual players not getting what they want.
Here I am, an example :) But my grief is with the marketing, what 'they' tell me the game is about—and more importantly, what 'they' don't tell me. Design a game any way you want—but don't deceive me into thinking it's something else.

The reason I like a difficulty slider is because it allows for multiple play throughs
Same here. I always start on Easy, cos if it's a game I don't particularly like, I don't want to get bogged down in it while learning its systems and mechanics. If I like the game, I'll replay—and can up the difficulty if that'll increase my enjoyment. My choice. But there are usually variations of Kaamos' '-You can' options to customize it well enough.

interesting question
Indeed it is :)
 
What? That can't be right… can it?
Are you saying if I Alt-Tab out to do sth else, the game will keep running and I'll presumably return to dead me at last spawn point?

If you stop at a Site of Grace and save the game is paused, if you alt tab afaik the game doesnt pause. Theres a cheat workaround you can do by selecting a specific menu but otherwise no.

Probably related to the game being online. You dont see messages in the world unless you are online and if you are online you can be invaded by another player. Dark Souls games were the same, but Sekiro did have a pause and does not have co-op or invasions so might be related to programming.

That would make me think that I'm supposed to do those things, I think. It depends on the presentation.

You have to do some work to make it easier for yourself. That would probably annoy some people because its not a familiar way of doing things. But it does make winning in the end feel good, rather than slightly disappointed that you gave in and lowered a menu setting.
 
You have to do some work to make it easier for yourself. That would probably annoy some people because its not a familiar way of doing things.

Doing some work to make the game easier seems like it would be very familiar to most gamers. A lot of games let you grind XP or consumables whenever you want, which (usually) makes the game easier.
 
Doing some work to make the game easier seems like it would be very familiar to most gamers. A lot of games let you grind XP or consumables whenever you want, which (usually) makes the game easier.
They do, but if theres a 2 click option to just make it easier then thats the path of least resistance I would think a lot of people take.

For Elden Ring in particular I was thinking if you treated it like an RPG it would go better. If there's an encounter that's a struggle, check gear, potions, scrolls and spells to see if using a different tactic will make things easier, and that's a lot of the fun of combat. If you came to it more from a place of melee based action games, then maybe that wouldn't occur as naturally and you'd be more likely to get frustrated, as purely grinding levels in these games takes a lot of time to feel any power benefit. Elden Ring is a bit different than the older games as well, as it allows you to just go somewhere else, so levelling up doesnt feel as much of a grind as backtracking and beating up the same enemies time and again.
 
Last edited:
Here I am, an example :) But my grief is with the marketing, what 'they' tell me the game is about—and more importantly, what 'they' don't tell me. Design a game any way you want—but don't deceive me into thinking it's something else.
Yes you have to develop a sort of 'marketing' filter. Which games were you thinking of that didn't match your expectations?

I find the hype often puts me off games, or sometimes what's said on forums on Steam.
I didn't play GTAV for years because I thought it was about hoods and hookers. It is a sort of hood sim, but really it's just a great driving game.
 
you have to develop a sort of 'marketing' filter
Yeah, I mostly got that—I spent 4 years as an internet marketer, and then plenty of exposure via our online biz for the last 2 decades.

Which games were you thinking of that didn't match your expectations?
The big 2 that jump out are Far Cry 5 and Metal Gear Solid the Phantom Pain. I've detailed them here before, so very briefly:

FC5—the infamous capture sequences, either 9 or 12 of them, which infuriated many FC fans. Literally grabbed you out of the game—some players reportedly grabbed while flying a chopper!—and dumped you into off-genre run n gun episodes. I dumped the game until a wonderful modder came to the rescue.

MGS5—my first Kojima experience, the god-awful opening sequence. I screwed with it for 30-45 minutes, and I still couldn't tell you when I had control of my character, or not. I'll check back periodically to see if the mod community have fixed this—this isn't the only game with a bad intro …merely by far the worst I've encountered… and modders often produce skip-intro mods.

Nothing in any marketing or reviews or comments prepared me for these unexpected and unwelcome experiences.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ipman and Pifanjr

Zloth

Community Contributor
Nobody's making any mods because the MGS5: PP opening is COOL!! An assassination attempt, a burning guy, a child wearing long sleaves that can fly, a tank smashing through the door, riding on a horse to escape THIS:
full
 

TRENDING THREADS