ichpokhudezh said:
Why would you assume that? If a game could be played with general understanding of the setting and system at the beginning how's that 'poor play'? There are difficulty settings for that very reason.
I am not talking about tweaking the difficulty of the game's extant setings, e.g enemies have more hps or use cover more often or there are more of them (none of which incidentally I really like very much in terms of uppiing a game's difficulty - but different issue). I am talking about the game itself, i.e. how the game is designed. Therefore if it has been included in a game's system that morale will have an impact on troop or character performance, failure to understand this "nuance" and instead behaving as a player as if it didn't exist will result in poor performance on the part of the gamer as well as a poor interpretaion of the game. Should the player ignore this and just click the attack button irrespective of the inclusion of morale checks, I would regard that as poor play.
ichpokhudezh said:
If I understand you correctly and try to shift your point to a completely different environent, try this with some other games. Say, scroller shooter - and you don't have any health bonuses so you must rely on your skill. Say you play Doom and the only choice you have is the Nightmare mode - you will need to be able to know nuances of monsters/AI/weapons to play it. Playing FO first time, did you really need to know
_everything_ about SPECIAL?
What do you mean by "everything? I think it was pretty important to understand SPECIAL rather well to play FO. Could I as a player fire the game up, choose a pregen PC and click on enemies till dead? I suppose. *Maybe*. Would I do better and would the game be more aligned with designer intent as well as more fun if I understood the advantage/disadvantages to the Perks, Traits, Skills? The difference between a high Charisma Speech oriented stealth PC and a ham fisted brawler? And knowing these differences tailor my character creation and progression accordingly? If this is what you mean by understanding SPECIAL then yes I think it neccessary.
ichpokhudezh said:
Same with any type of the game. As long as you give your target audience time to adapt to the system, the higher levels of detail should give you more insight/enjoyment, not detract from the initial experience.
I agree which is why a good tutorial and the ramping of difficulty and complexity is included in most games. Got no problem with this.
ichpokhudezh said:
The finer point is the issue of the balance - just how much the 'novice'/'easy' difficulty level should translate into the game? How would you do the 'training' mission to avoid creating the discrepancy in the setting (an example of poorly executed training mission: KotOR, an example of an ok training: FO2, good training (imo): PS:T)
I have not played KoTOR, but I fucking *HATED* the tutorial in FO2; PS:T was well done. I prefer the tutorial be outside the game, i.e choose from a main menu as opposed to an integral part of beginning a new game. If I am replaying FO2 I really do not have any need whatsofuckingever to go through the goddamned Temple of Irritation one more freaking time. Irenicus' dungeon in BG2 was almost as bad but at least it gave some insight into what was going on and introduced some plot elements/quests etc. Still I would rather skip it if I was gonna replay.
[quote="ichpokhudezh"
Cannot really argue with you here - I'm not a wargaming fan, just what I heard from my friend, who didn't have his ass handed to him every time, btw
[/quote]
I'll take your word. Nevertheles my point remains the same. Not reading the manual/ not paying attention to the details seriously detracts from much of what makes the game great. I assume your friend did pay attention or was aware of these details.
Something is very wrong with your example. To play a stealthy game as a kill-on-sight fare would
not be a 'failure to understand subtle differences', it'd be more of 'missing the point completely'.
Fair enough, I did exaggerate a bit. But OP Flash is a pretty good example. It is not a srealth shooter. An early mission puts you into the middle of a pretty large firefight. Should you play this mission ala DOOM or a typical FPS (that is largely ignoring basic real infantry combat tactics) and try the ole circle-strafe and shoot you are going to wear out the reload button. Faliure to understand the physics of shooting a bullet across distance, of how to fire from cover without getting shot yourself, of how to fire into cover ,of suppression fire etc which if used at all in most FPS games are used rather arcadey (and nothing wrong with this I loves me a good FPS) you will again be hitting the reload. In other words, fire the game up and it looks like a typical FPS; play by typical, simpler FPS rules and die often and quickly.
I actually think for the most part we are in agreement on the issues here.
