Arkane PREY - Arkane's immersive coffee cup transformation sim - now with Mooncrash roguelike mode DLC

[Ash]

When it comes to something as complex as RPGs or immersive sims, the original System Shock's separate difficulty settings for different aspects of the game are the only way to go.

Lol that's literally my most despised feature in that game. they betray their own design vision by tempting players (who often don't know better) into picking zeroes and effectively turning it into a walking sim. Now if it had individual sliders that did NOT let you outright turn the game off with "0" settings, then sure.

Some players are good at character-building but have shit reflexes, some are the other way around. Some players have the patience to meticulously vacuum the levels for resources, but get lost without a quest compass, while others may have ADHD but be good at orientation. It's impossible to have one kind of "objective" balance or one kind of difficulty scale that would produce the same challenge level to everyone.

No shit retards have a hard time.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

No, I just say that you can't really crank up the difficulty in a single player game as compared to comp multiplayer. It will just become tedious and will shoehorn you into a specific type of behaviour without variations that are provided by human opponents.

Yes, hard games are tedious and boring. That's why difficult games like Dark Souls were never popular and faded into obscurity and definitely didn't spawn an extremely beloved or successful series of games.

There is absolutely no reason why making a game more difficult should in any way even imply it is more tedious. Just like there's no reason why making it easier should remove any tedium. If a game has bad mechanics, covering them up by making them pointless isn't good game design. Everyone is far better served by actually fixing the mechanics and improving the overall amount of player choice by making many builds viable, not just the few overpowered ones.

Yes, there are plenty of games out there that introduce bullshit tedium. Fallout 4 survival mode comes to mind. Not only is it not particularly hard, it's fundamentally badly designed. Busywork never makes for good game design. The irony here is a repetitive, thoughtless task (such as repairing your suit when it takes damage with one of your hundreds of repair kits) is more tedious than strategising and rationing, both of which are skills that engage the brain and require the player to actually think. Having a handful of resources that need to be managed is a lot less tedious than having a near-endless resource pool that has little to no value. It's why looting for junk that's worth $1-2 in many modern games feels so boring. Each piece of loot is worth so little and the act of looting so mindless that it all sort of fades into nothingness. Thief handles this much better. Loot in thief is worth something, and is often guarded by actual traps and a need for stealth, rather than just....sitting out in the open waiting to be looted for a few bucks on a bench or a table or in a drawer somewhere.

Yeah, because for some reason you can't accept the fact that all the balance changes in DS games stem from PVP crowd (which is very loud and obnoxious). Other arguments you offer are simply not related to the issue and no one disagrees with them. Yet for some reasons people still play this game specifically for PVP interactions and demand the developers to cater to their interests.

This adressed none of my response.

Who told you so? Invasions and so on are heavily built into the game world, there are even quest chains related to them. In any case, it's not related to the matter at hand.

If by "heavily built into the game world" you mean "you can literally play through the entire game world and not see a single one of them if you don't use any humanity". In fact the game seems specifically designed to make invasions rare, since humanity is *somewhat* tedious to farm, and many players (especially newer ones) will die often, invalidating their humanity status.

The sequels have a bit more leniency when it comes to invasions, but even then, they suffer from all the issues I talked about before. It's to the point where there are people who say "play on offline mode so you don't get instakilled by a hacker" pretty frequently.

Again, catering a few balance decisions to a certain PVP demographic doesn't magically make a game competitively viable.

Yes, fair, but not challenging. If you are a baddie, you'd constantly play with baddies and learn nothing and acquire bad in-game habits that will be exploited by a more experienced opponent if you meet him. There are also smurfs and other people who grief the system as well as newcomers. Also, this system ruins your precious desire to get noticed, you will always be at 50% win-loss rate no matter what (unless you are the worst or the best player in the ladder).

Did you seriously just claim that fair fights aren't challenging?

But lets get to the meat of this

"If you are a baddie, you'd constantly play with baddies and learn nothing"

Firstly. If you are playing with people of an equivalent skill level, it will be challenging by definition. And if you learn nothing and stay in those ranks forever, then it is obviously challenging to the point where you have hit the peak of your skill level. At which point it will remain challenging forever.

If you meet an enemy that is better than you and they use a better tactic, not only do they deserve to win (it's called balance), but that's by definition challenging. If you don't learn anything from that fight, it's on you.

You seem to be describing matchmaking working as intended, and somehow implying that's a bad thing.

Yes, smurfs exist. No system is perfect. But that hardly detracts from the point. Most games have systems in place to deal with smurfing, and even if they don't, it just goes to show the importance of balance. If getting stomped by a smurf isn't fun, why would getting stomped by a ridiculous AI be any different? Or flip the roles, a super easy match vs a super easy AI. My point is balance is important in singleplayer too because the methods for generating fun are largely the same, the only difference is the obstacles are computer-generated rather than being other people.

I'm tired of repeating this, I don't want to prohibit YOU to do anything with the game. I just think it's wrong to shove your ideals of balance into the throats of everyone. There's no "objective" balance, there's just your gaming experience and ideals and the developers have to keep that in mind. Things like Doom Eternal's TAG are a rare phenomenon for that reason.

Nobody is shoving their idea of balance down the throats of everyone. Unless you somehow believe I am forcing you to download this mod and enable the optional survival options.

I mean you literally have free choice here. If me simply having an opinion that you don't like is shoving an idea down your throat, then perhaps you need to learn what boundaries are.

It was not me that said that you have to decrease the choice repertoire and purposefully lock players out of certain playstyles, NO YOU, I say

I mean I literally made the argument that balance improves player choice rather than reducing it, since the players choices are more meaningful, but you are free to interpret my post in whatever way you want, even if that interpretation is demonstrably wrong.

There isn't a single "playing RPGs" skill since any sufficiently complex RPG is a combination of different systems, some of which may be easy to a given player and some not. Some players are good at character-building but have shit reflexes, some are the other way around. Some players have the patience to meticulously vacuum the levels for resources, but get lost without a quest compass, while others may have ADHD but be good at orientation. It's impossible to have one kind of "objective" balance or one kind of difficulty scale that would produce the same challenge level to everyone.
When it comes to something as complex as RPGs or immersive sims, the original System Shock's separate difficulty settings for different aspects of the game are the only way to go.

Separate difficulty sliders are a good way to go. Or what about a mod that lets you optionally include survival options that make the game harder in non-trivial ways. That sounds like a good idea, someone should get on that.

I mean you have basically spent a paragraph saying it's impossible to have objective balance, so you did an analysis of the problem and came up with an objective answer that would improve balance (separate difficulty sliders). I hope I don't have to explain the contradiction here.

 

[gurugeorge]

At the risk of saying something that's so blindingly obvious that it's been said a million times, balance only really matters in PvP, where you're trying to find out who's the better player, so the toys have to be equal.

However, to say that it only really matters in PvP isn't to say that it isn't also a desirable goal in PvE. But it's a Golden Mean type of thing. The most fun PvE games are ones where the game is largely balanced, but there are one or two ridiculously imba items or skills for those who enjoy that sort of thing. Players who want to stick to playing the game "straight" can eschew them, players who enjoy being OP can use them. Everybody's happy.

For me, it depends on my mood and my feeling for the game. If it's the type of game where everything seems step-wise and precious, and immersive, then I tend to stick to playing it "straight." Imba items tend to pull you out of the game. But sometimes that's what you want too - if you aren't particularly engaged or immersed in a game, it's more fun to take it lightly, be a god for a while, and be done with it.

 

[Israfael]

This adressed none of my response.

Which was? Do you deny that Dark Souls 2 and 3 had heavy handed nerfs to both miracles and sorceries because PVPers incessantly complained about getting one shotted that made PvE in both games a ton harder for both hybrid and pure casters of both types (and I just fnished DS3 as a melee, it was 10x easier than a pure super-optimized sorcerer), yes or no?

since the players choices are more meaningful, but you are free to interpret my post in whatever way you want, even if that interpretation is demonstrably wrong.

Yeah, we've been through this whole "meaningful choices" chore in WoW and many other games where such arguments were used by balance fanatics to cut out 90% of the game in favour of the way they wanted players to go with, which lead to WoW userbase getting cut in half or even more now. Also, "meaningful" by itself indicated the intrinsic value of choice for the player himself, not what you as a designer intended for them. If you listen to Ricardo Bare, many features in Prey were actually bugs initially that were discovered by the playtesters and later intergrated into the game. If they behaved like balance fanatics do, we'd never see such emergent features.

Firstly. If you are playing with people of an equivalent skill level, it will be challenging by definition. And if you learn nothing and stay in those ranks forever, then it is obviously challenging to the point where you have hit the peak of your skill level. At which point it will remain challenging forever.

Have you actually played any multiplayer game in any serious fashion? You seem to be of the "theoritician" type, to be frank.

And if you learn nothing and stay in those ranks forever, then it is obviously challenging to the point where you have hit the peak of your skill level. At which point it will remain challenging forever.

For example, how are you supposed to learn anything if you play against people of your skill level who know roughly the same amount of in-game tricks / strategies and have the same amount of the game sense as you do? In many multiplayer games, team coordination, explicit or implicit, is the thing that makes or breaks the games. If you play in a chlidren swimming pool of noobs, you won't ever learn how to coordinate properly and why you even need to do that as it's not neccessary to do coordinated pushes / smart defences to execute game objectives. Moreover, such systems promote solo gameplay and bad solo tactics that are detrimental for teamwork. I've had recruits who were geniunely surprised with the fact you have to use voice chat and call out your own shots on TS/Mumble/whatever so that the others would adjust their actions accordingly.

In fact the game seems specifically designed to make invasions rare, since humanity is *somewhat* tedious to farm, and many players (especially newer ones) will die often, invalidating their humanity status.

It is really irrelevant to the discussion, but there is two other games in the series apart from DS1 and yes, there's many things apart from invasions, including the yellow soapstone, NPCs that chain invade you even if you are unembered and bosses that summon players or are summoned players themselves. Just ask anyone on reddit subforums if they consider Dark Souls a single player game, you'd get a ton of laughs from them.

 

[HansDampf]

I don't understand what's fun about r00flestomping through a game using the same op weapon/strategy from beginning to end. If that's what you want, just play the game on easy (or even use cheats). That should offer many more r00flestomping options, more fun for you.

 

[DeepOcean]

I will buy this game soon... any recomended mod for the first time?

Depends of what you want, do you mind being starved for resources and not knowing the map layout? That can get a bit frustrating. The rebalance mods turn the game from its popamole roots into something closer to SS2. You might miss the opportunity of playing with mods because you might not have the desire to replay because you already know what to expect. Prey isnt like Dishonored and there are no major incentives for replaying it.

Yes, Prey wasnt a game made for its combat but the survival elements pratically die after midpoint and the combat keeps sucking so it can end on tedium like it did for me, the rebalance mods can fix that. If you in the end decide for not playing with mods, at least play with a human master race build and no alien powers, the alien powers pratically nullify the opposition.

 

[Israfael]

Okay, now we have a confirmation that Arkane games are pretty hardcore (as well as radicalising)

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Which was? Do you deny that Dark Souls 2 and 3 had heavy handed nerfs to both miracles and sorceries because PVPers incessantly complained about getting one shotted that made PvE in both games a ton harder for both hybrid and pure casters of both types (and I just fnished DS3 as a melee, it was 10x easier than a pure super-optimized sorcerer), yes or no?

I literally never denied this. I specifically said that a handful of token nerfs aren't enough to magically make a game competitive. If you think you have some "gotcha" question here, you really don't.

Yeah, we've been through this whole "meaningful choices" chore in WoW and many other games where such arguments were used by balance fanatics to cut out 90% of the game in favour of the way they wanted players to go with, which lead to WoW userbase getting cut in half or even more now.

I haven't really played much wow, but from what I've heard, people HATED when the game was so unbalanced in WotLK that you basically had to play one of 2 classes to be viable.

Then the game got more balanced and, at the same time, a lot more fun.

But if you're looking for examples of good game design, I would suggest avoiding MMORPG's altogether, as their design is so internally inconsistent it's practically impossible to design one that's even remotely good, even with the best intentions.

Also, "meaningful" by itself indicated the intrinsic value of choice for the player himself, not what you as a designer intended for them. If you listen to Ricardo Bare, many features in Prey were actually bugs initially that were discovered by the playtesters and later intergrated into the game. If they behaved like balance fanatics do, we'd never see such emergent features.

Nobody is arguing against emergent gameplay. This is not a case where someone discovered a new cool tactic. This is a case where an intended tactic is so much more powerful than the other intended tactics, and the game is unbalanced as a result.

Any smart developer will introduce features that players like. That's completely unrelated to game balance.

Have you actually played any multiplayer game in any serious fashion? You seem to be of the "theoritician" type, to be frank.

Is this like a personal attack or something? Because it's certainly not an argument.

For example, how are you supposed to learn anything if you play against people of your skill level who know roughly the same amount of in-game tricks / strategies and have the same amount of the game sense as you do? In many multiplayer games, team coordination, explicit or implicit, is the thing that makes or breaks the games. If you play in a chlidren swimming pool of noobs, you won't ever learn how to coordinate properly and why you even need to do that as it's not neccessary to do coordinated pushes / smart defences to execute game objectives. Moreover, such systems promote solo gameplay and bad solo tactics that are detrimental for teamwork. I've had recruits who were geniunely surprised with the fact you have to use voice chat and call out your own shots on TS/Mumble/whatever so that the others would adjust their actions accordingly.

By this logic, nobody would ever, under any circumstances, improve at any videogame. And yet we see people go through ranks all the time.

Take CS:GO for instance. That's a game where your team definitely matters. And yet there are thousands, probably millions of people who have gone from the Gold Nova ranks up to Global Elite.

What would even be the point of having matchmaking in any game if nobody ever improved?

I find it ironic that you have now claimed multiple times that I don't understand or haven't played competitive multiplayer games, while at the same time fundamentally misunderstanding the reality of how these games and these systems work.

It is easy, trivial even, to improve at these games. Figuring out a better strategy is not some magical arcane knowledge known only to the few elites in the top ranks. Anyone can figure out a game if they think about it. If for some reason someone is too stupid to figure out a strategy on their own, there are literally thousands of vods of professional matches on youtube they can watch.

I tend to notice the opposite problem. People will go into a game, use a "meta strategy" that they saw a pro use (which they don't understand), and lose because they failed to realise why the strategy was effective. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the Pokemon scene, where people will use a Smogon lineup and then get destroyed.

You are also completely discounting player skill as a factor. If the reason I am in the bottom ranks is because I have trouble shooting my targets, then I need to practice, not sit around pontificating about strategy. That's not hard to figure out.

Just because some of your recruits are dumb (they must be CS:GO players) doesn't mean that somehow matchmaking itself doesn't work as a concept. That's just silly.

It is really irrelevant to the discussion, but there is two other games in the series apart from DS1 and yes, there's many things apart from invasions, including the yellow soapstone, NPCs that chain invade you even if you are unembered and bosses that summon players or are summoned players themselves. Just ask anyone on reddit subforums if they consider Dark Souls a single player game, you'd get a ton of laughs from them.

Don't move the goalposts. I never claimed Dark Souls wasn't a multiplayer game. I claimed it wasn't a competitive game. If you were to go on the Dark Souls subreddit and announce a tournament or a competition, you'd get laughed at unless you set such strict rules that you're efectively covering up the games existing problems.

Prey isnt like Dishonored and there are no major incentives for replaying it.

Wait, people actually believe this?

Prey is a hell of a lot more replayable than Dishonored.

Yes, Prey wasnt a game made for its combat but the survival elements pratically die after midpoint and the combat keeps sucking so it can end on tedium like it did for me, the rebalance mods can fix that. If you in the end decide for not playing with mods, at least play with a human master race build and no alien powers, the alien powers pratically nullify the opposition.

Yes, the game is very broken. A rebalance mod might be a good choice. I generally recommend playing vanilla first because it helps people appreciate mods for what they fix, however I can see why some people would want to not have to put up with 30 hours of an unfun easy enemy-destruction simulator. Although, if this thread is anything to go by, people apparrently enjoy that.

 

[Israfael]

. I specifically said that a handful of token nerfs aren't enough to magically make a game competitive.

How on Earth is competitive equal to PVP? I repeat - I offered an example of how PvP balancing ruined the single-player gaming experience. How is that not comprehensible?

I haven't really played much wow, but from what I've heard, people HATED when the game was so unbalanced in WotLK that you basically had to play one of 2 classes to be viable.

Well, it surely tells, as in every expansion "people had to play one of two classes" (mage and hunter, of course) if you talk purely in terms of DPS. But actually before the "balancing" disease fully set in (about the time Cata/MoP were released), it was always useful to have "non-viable" classes/ specs because of their utility like traps, gates, aoe stun and so on (which is a very stretchable notion - for some even 1% deficit on paper (as in SimC default turretbot profile) makes the spec unviable, for the others it's within the margin of error because of inevitable mistakes and RNG / mechanics-related happenstances). In actuality, before Cataclysm there were several DPS specs with varied levels of utility (frostfire mage, HaT rogue and so on), in the later expansions Blizzard went into full retard balance mode which forced everyone to play the same cookie cutter build (and if something interesting was discovered / happened by chance like haste-double dipping or warlock builds revolving around the 100% crit proc trinket, they were mercilessly nerfed).

Then the game got more balanced and, at the same time, a lot more fun.

So fun that the WOW playerbase tanked from 10M to less than 4M in two years because balancing and pruning left nothing apart from raids with one or two cookie cutter build per class, arenas with inherently broken 1v1 balance and rated BGs that required certain comps. And I'm pretty sure people like you and the "other elite single player gamers" (tm) (C) here were or would be lamenting here or on bnet how it was better in the olden times if you did not fit into the current_year meta (and it was a serious issue - Blizzard suddenly decided that 20M raids were more "balanced" than 10M and 25Ms that people were used to, so they killed 9/10 of guilds on my server and caused us and other survivors to migrate to bigger realms) And if you actually read what developers said, to their surprise they found out that people don't like the challenge and almost never try to improve their gameplay to rise to that challenge.

https://www.engadget.com/2013-04-25-ghostcrawler-on-the-lessons-learned-in-mists.html
https://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/11/world-of-warcraft-patch-52-greg-street-interview

But if you're looking for examples of good game design, I would suggest avoiding MMORPG's altogether, as their design is so internally inconsistent it's practically impossible to design one that's even remotely good, even with the best intentions.

Yeah, because there can't be games that people play for anything else than pure by-the-numbers balance, like human-human interactions, collective problem solving and other things But yes, this notion is very endemic to the current gaming world, hence all the "single player" (failed) MMOs like TESO, TOR, BDO and so on, while old school MMOs like Wildfire spectacularly failed (a substantial part of which was, yes, overtuning and balance )

You are also completely discounting player skill as a factor. If the reason I am in the bottom ranks is because I have trouble shooting my targets, then I need to practice, not sit around pontificating about strategy. That's not hard to figure out.

So, the skill to communicate your actions / plan ahead does not count? In any case, I just offered few examples of the things that are absent in single-player games. Also, not even pixel-perfect aim will save you from a coordinated enemy push in team games. I'm talking about the level _above_ the basics.

By this logic, nobody would ever, under any circumstances, improve at any videogame. And yet we see people go through ranks all the time.

Depends on the game. If a person is not very attentive and has problems with prioritisation of his /her actions, even 2 years of me constantly watching them and calling their attention to void zones / timers etc never fixed them. All people are different in terms of mental acuity and intellect, but you and mister "death to casuls" arent getting it, apparently. (Also, never take in any weed-smokers or former heavy drug addicts into your teams, the first have impaired attention and ability to concentrate, the others are completely unhinged and unpredictable in their mood swings and actions)

Take CS:GO for instance. That's a game where your team definitely matters. And yet there are thousands, probably millions of people who have gone from the Gold Nova ranks up to Global Elite.

So what? As I said, it's the way developers keep you inside the hamster wheel and make you shell your sweet shekels for their fancy hats or weapon skins. Illusion of progress is the best way of keeping someone on the treadmill.

I tend to notice the opposite problem. People will go into a game, use a "meta strategy" that they saw a pro use (which they don't understand), and lose because they failed to realise why the strategy was effective. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the Pokemon scene, where people will use a Smogon lineup and then get destroyed.

Great discovery, no one really noticed that Try recruiting people in WoW and you'll see how "meta strategy" adherence will correlate with the players worthiness (hint: they are completely unrelated)

 

[Israfael]

ust because some of your recruits are dumb (they must be CS:GO players) doesn't mean that somehow matchmaking itself doesn't work as a concept. That's just silly.

Oh it works, just not in the way you want. I haven't played the game for ages, but I don't think there were even one avid FPS player on my roster (apart from myself and I don't play CS). Some guys played Division or something like that together, but they did it because they got acquainted in-guild.

 

[Ash]

I don't understand what's fun about r00flestomping through a game using the same op weapon/strategy from beginning to end. If that's what you want, just play the game on easy (or even use cheats). That should offer many more r00flestomping options, more fun for you.

You're being too humble. Only actual retards want to stomp. It's literally mindlessness and repetition. I figured out at like 8 fucking years old that I was ruining the fun for myself by playing Doom with idkfa and God mode enabled. A game that demands ever-evolving strategy, tough choices and consequences, new challenges etc are far superior to games where you can just stomp all the time and never have to actually engage with all the systems and challenges presented.

I get it, feeling like a untouchable god is a novel feeling only games can provide and CAN be fun, but it is very limited in its capacity to entertain (because mindlessness, simplicity and repetition). Ideally games occasionally present to you cannon fodder here and there to get this feeling (that you actually earn more through your display of skill than actually being untouchable because you have a completely OP build, preferably) and teach the player new mechanics and such in a non-threatening environment.

 

[gurugeorge]

I don't understand what's fun about r00flestomping through a game using the same op weapon/strategy from beginning to end. If that's what you want, just play the game on easy (or even use cheats). That should offer many more r00flestomping options, more fun for you.

You're being too humble. Only actual retards want to stomp. It's literally mindlessness and repetition. I figured out at like 8 fucking years old that I was ruining the fun for myself by playing Doom with idkfa and God mode enabled. A game that demands ever-evolving strategy, tough choices and consequences, new challenges etc are far superior to games where you can just stomp all the time and never have to actually engage with all the systems and challenges presented.

I get it, feeling like a untouchable god is a novel feeling only games can provide and CAN be fun, but it is very limited in its capacity to entertain (because mindlessness, simplicity and repetition). Ideally games occasionally present to you cannon fodder here and there to get this feeling (that you actually earn more through your display of skill than actually being untouchable because you have a completely OP build, preferably) and teach the player new mechanics and such in a non-threatening environment.

That's the thing though, occasionally you want to roflstomp "red" or "purple" mobs, "grey" mobs are no fun. Even though it's functionally identical, it's a pscyhological trick.

IOW it's no fun to roflstomp mobs that the game tells you are "low threat."

What is most fun to me is to be able to build up the strength of my character till by the end of a game I'm able to roflstomp the mobs that have been considered "high threat" all through my progression. A little bit of power fantasy towards the end of a game is a good thing, and a perceived reward for all the struggle. But then by the same token it's also a bittersweet sign that the game is nearly over.

 

[Tacgnol]

I don't understand what's fun about r00flestomping through a game using the same op weapon/strategy from beginning to end. If that's what you want, just play the game on easy (or even use cheats). That should offer many more r00flestomping options, more fun for you.

You're being too humble. Only actual retards want to stomp. It's literally mindlessness and repetition. I figured out at like 8 fucking years old that I was ruining the fun for myself by playing Doom with idkfa and God mode enabled. A game that demands ever-evolving strategy, tough choices and consequences, new challenges etc are far superior to games where you can just stomp all the time and never have to actually engage with all the systems and challenges presented.

I get it, feeling like a untouchable god is a novel feeling only games can provide and CAN be fun, but it is very limited in its capacity to entertain (because mindlessness, simplicity and repetition). Ideally games occasionally present to you cannon fodder here and there to get this feeling (that you actually earn more through your display of skill than actually being untouchable because you have a completely OP build, preferably) and teach the player new mechanics and such in a non-threatening environment.

That's the thing though, occasionally you want to roflstomp "red" or "purple" mobs, "grey" mobs are no fun. Even though it's functionally identical, it's a pscyhological trick.

IOW it's no fun to roflstomp mobs that the game tells you are "low threat."

What is most fun to me is to be able to build up the strength of my character till by the end of a game I'm able to roflstomp the mobs that have been considered "high threat" all through my progression. A little bit of power fantasy towards the end of a game is a good thing, and a perceived reward for all the struggle. But then by the same token it's also a bittersweet sign that the game is nearly over.

That's what a good zero to hero curve should feel like. Starting pitifully weak and being almost unstoppable by the end game, except for specific challenges.

Most games fuck it up by making you hit the hero part mid game.

Gothic 2 + NOTR is one of my favourite zero to hero curves, though it suffers the same issue if you rush certain upgrades and game the system.

 

[Citizen]

Okay, now we have a confirmation that Arkane games are pretty hardcore (as well as radicalising)

Lol is that what the conservatives/republicans look like in the US? Looks like some soyboy muh craftbeer hipster crowd

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

So it seems pretty much everyone is violently agreeing on the fact that games just aren't fun when they are mindlessly easy.

And yet it seems to be extremlely difficult to take the next logical step: A balanced game is therefore more fun than having an OP strategy that trivialises the game.

It's like the last 3 pages of this thread have been people not understanding this simple concept, instead bringing up matchmaking, competitiveness, multiplayer, playstyles, etc etc.

Lol is that what the conservatives/republicans look like in the US? Looks like some soyboy muh craftbeer hipster crowd

It looks like a fatter, younger version of Richard Stallman. I half expect him to eat some fungus from his own foot in the middle of a speech about how free (as in libre) the USA is.

 

[Average Manatee]

You have to define mindlessly easy though.

For example shooting things being easy becomes mindless. You can see this in how the assault rifle in SS2 is universally talked about as game-breaking because you just go around and get to murder everything without thinking much. The extent of thinking is loading in anti personnel or armor piercing bullets, except normal bullets still kind of kills everything anyway so it doesn't matter much. Having just done an energy weapons run of SS2 it became pretty mindless around deck 4/5 when I could stop caring about any kind of recharging and just blam blam forever.

On the other hand melee, even when easy, tends not to be mindlessly easy. You want to sneak up on things and need good situational awareness to do so. Getting caught out in the open by a powerful ranged enemy tends to mean taking a lot of damage or death. Melee has been very powerful in System Shock and Bioshock games (haven't specifically tried a full wrench-focused run in Prey), but it's never gotten to the level where you can just turn off your brain, stop paying attention, and beat the levels with an IQ of 50. So things can be overpowered, they just need to be overpowered in a way that still tests the player's ability to interact with how the levels and enemies work.

My experience with Prey is that both ranged weapons and ranged spell damage becomes overpowered as long as you use the damage type designed to counter the enemy you are facing. Hence it devolves into mindlessly easy once you stumble across enough resources to have 50 psi hypos or 100 shotgun shells banked up. You could make changes to fix this. Nerf direct damage attacks, make the player rely more on stuff like the gloo gun or powers like mimic (which needs to actually work) and possessing enemies.

 

[DalekFlay]

Many who enjoy the mechanics of, say, survival games, associate "difficulty" with things like "oh no I'm in a situation where I am low on bullets and health packs." Many others associate difficulty with simple things like "man this guy does a ton of damage and moves fast." I could go on and on down the line with stealth mechanics ("difficult guard patrol routes!") and tactical strategy ("this boss casts a defensive shield in round one and my characters are glass cannons!"). A game like Prey that tries to welcome all kinds of different playthrough styles has to try and balance difficulty for all those different approaches, which is a very difficult task. People more inclined to like one type of challenge might find it easy, whereas someone into other challenges might fight it difficult (indeed there are many people on many sites out there who complained about Prey being too hard). My point is, objectively arguing about balance and difficulty in a game like this is mostly pointless as how you play (and how you want to be challenged) dramatically change the experience.

 

[Israfael]

My point is, objectively arguing about balance and difficulty in a game like this is mostly pointless as how you play (and how you want to be challenged) dramatically change the experience.

I've tried to explain this to our balance wonks but they don't get it...

 

[Average Manatee]

Many who enjoy the mechanics of, say, survival games, associate "difficulty" with things like "oh no I'm in a situation where I am low on bullets and health packs." Many others associate difficulty with simple things like "man this guy does a ton of damage and moves fast." I could go on and on down the line with stealth mechanics ("difficult guard patrol routes!") and tactical strategy ("this boss casts a defensive shield in round one and my characters are glass cannons!"). A game like Prey that tries to welcome all kinds of different playthrough styles has to try and balance difficulty for all those different approaches, which is a very difficult task. People more inclined to like one type of challenge might find it easy, whereas someone into other challenges might fight it difficult (indeed there are many people on many sites out there who complained about Prey being too hard). My point is, objectively arguing about balance and difficulty in a game like this is mostly pointless as how you play (and how you want to be challenged) dramatically change the experience.

Incidentally this reminds me that SS2 actually has a very under appreciated stealth system that works similarly to Thief. Sadly I don't think anything similar exists in Prey, it's just straight LoS + distance checks right?

The thing with Prey is that, as mentioned, the difficulty levels just don't work. If you understand the mechanics then Nightmare feels fairly similar to Normal, and if you don't then Normal feels a lot like Nightmare. If you just completely don't understand how certain weapons counter certain enemies and aren't great at FPS games then I'd expect even Easy to be difficult (obviously Story mode was added for these game journalists).

 

[gurugeorge]

Many who enjoy the mechanics of, say, survival games, associate "difficulty" with things like "oh no I'm in a situation where I am low on bullets and health packs." Many others associate difficulty with simple things like "man this guy does a ton of damage and moves fast." I could go on and on down the line with stealth mechanics ("difficult guard patrol routes!") and tactical strategy ("this boss casts a defensive shield in round one and my characters are glass cannons!"). A game like Prey that tries to welcome all kinds of different playthrough styles has to try and balance difficulty for all those different approaches, which is a very difficult task. People more inclined to like one type of challenge might find it easy, whereas someone into other challenges might fight it difficult (indeed there are many people on many sites out there who complained about Prey being too hard). My point is, objectively arguing about balance and difficulty in a game like this is mostly pointless as how you play (and how you want to be challenged) dramatically change the experience.

Very nicely put.

 

[DalekFlay]

Incidentally this reminds me that SS2 actually has a very under appreciated stealth system that works similarly to Thief. Sadly I don't think anything similar exists in Prey, it's just straight LoS + distance checks right?

Yeah, after my very first play session I came on here and said something about not getting the stealth route in the game. Someone responded basically saying it was all about getting the jump on enemies, rather than ghosting or even sniping or whatever. I switched to a sort of "haha motherfucker take a shotgun blast to the back" playstyle and it worked much better.

 

[RoSoDude]

My point is, objectively arguing about balance and difficulty in a game like this is mostly pointless as how you play (and how you want to be challenged) dramatically change the experience.

I've tried to explain this to our balance wonks but they don't get it...

Dude, you've been arguing that balance is meaningless in a singleplayer game and essentially isn't worth striving for at all. I never said it was the sole metric to design around. Playstyle flexibility, expression and player fantasy, clarity of communication, agency, hell even narrative constraints (as much as this often bothers me with e.g. psychoscope locked off for the first three levels of Prey or Exotic weapons being available too late in SS2) can take priority. But balance is a thing that exists (with some layer of subjectivity depending on the player's awareness and skill, of course) and is worth designing for to some degree, because it's an inherent part of designing any system in the first place. When Arkane decides what damage, accuracy, recoil, range, reload speed etc. to assign to each weapon, they are making and iterating on a design decision based on how it plays with the other elements. Those numbers didn't fall out of the sky, they were chosen in a particular manner because they don't want you one-shotting every enemy from across the room with plentiful ammo, because that's not the kind of experience they want the player to have. That is to say, they attempt balance the options against one another to give the player interesting and relevant choices to make.

If you want to make the narrow argument that the existing balance is fine as is (and that my balancing philosophy is too aggressive in tamping down certain strategies, for example), or even that balance shouldn't take primacy over some other value in general, that's fine and I relish the opportunity to talk about nitty gritty details. However, you're operating from the hyperbolic and frankly laughable starting point that balance in singleplayer games is a made-up lie that's irrelevant to design. Please, enlighten us where developers are divining the numbers for literally every interaction in the game without ever bringing balance into the equation. It's completely absurd.

Incidentally this reminds me that SS2 actually has a very under appreciated stealth system that works similarly to Thief. Sadly I don't think anything similar exists in Prey, it's just straight LoS + distance checks right?

Yeah, after my very first play session I came on here and said something about not getting the stealth route in the game. Someone responded basically saying it was all about getting the jump on enemies, rather than ghosting or even sniping or whatever. I switched to a sort of "haha motherfucker take a shotgun blast to the back" playstyle and it worked much better.

Yeah that was me. There are genuine problems with the stealth feedback (hence the semi-necessity of UI indicators filling up and music stings for alerting enemies), but it's effective as a supporting strategy for combat, which all players will likely be engaging in except in niche cases. I think the game's Split Affinity and No Needles achievements turned a lot of people away from engaging with the fun stealth options because most of them are locked in the alien trees, which many stealth players will be avoiding by doing a human-only run. There's actually a ton of playstyle support for it that gets thrown in the trash by strictly doing one or the other, not to mention that the game already has a mix of organic incentives and drawbacks for dipping into both areas (human-focused runs can benefit from 2 alien abilities before turrets register them as a threat, and alien-focused runs actually benefit more from the scientist tree with hacking, psi, and psychoscope investment).

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

There's actually a ton of playstyle support for it that gets thrown in the trash by strictly doing one or the other, not to mention that the game already has a mix of organic incentives and drawbacks for dipping into both areas (human-focused runs can benefit from 2 alien abilities before turrets register them as a threat, and alien-focused runs actually benefit more from the scientist tree with hacking, psi, and psychoscope investment).

Speaking of turrets, I really wish the mechanics around them were made more clear. When returning to an area, it seems largely random whether or not turrets are destroyed. Throughout my first playthrough, I would often find areas where my turrets were fine for multiple entries-exits through the airlock, and points where they would get destroyed almost instantly. I was completely unable to figure out if it was genuinely random, or a weighted calculation based on some conditions (like respawning the area).

In many ways, I wish it was communicated in a better way, and the mechanics were more interactive. It especially seems like fortifying turrets makes no difference, to the point where I stopped bothering to fortify them eventually.

The major use case for turrets seems to be locking down certain areas - morgans office, the entrances to airlocks (run through, have emeny follow you, they get gunned down), but the implementation seems to have largely rendered them little more than gimmick devices that can occasionally help out a little bit. Them being dead most of the time means you can't really use them as safety nets - they need to be completely prepared before each battle, upfront, and often there's no way to know if there will be an enemy or not (for example, there might be a phantom near Morgans office. There might not be).

I think it could have been especially awesome if Arkane had enabled a sort of "turret based" playthrough, like a real turretmancer.

 

[Ash]

Many who enjoy the mechanics of, say, survival games, associate "difficulty" with things like "oh no I'm in a situation where I am low on bullets and health packs." Many others associate difficulty with simple things like "man this guy does a ton of damage and moves fast." I could go on and on down the line with stealth mechanics ("difficult guard patrol routes!") and tactical strategy ("this boss casts a defensive shield in round one and my characters are glass cannons!"). A game like Prey that tries to welcome all kinds of different playthrough styles has to try and balance difficulty for all those different approaches, which is a very difficult task. People more inclined to like one type of challenge might find it easy, whereas someone into other challenges might fight it difficult (indeed there are many people on many sites out there who complained about Prey being too hard). My point is, objectively arguing about balance and difficulty in a game like this is mostly pointless as how you play (and how you want to be challenged) dramatically change the experience.

King mole-pop, Sir, this essentially reads as "some players will be shit at certain types of challenge, so you have to dumb it all down like Prey did just to be safe".
A game is supposed to be fun and ALL challenges are supposed to be enjoyable. I can not think of one common style of video game challenge I do not enjoy when implemented well, unless you count mindless grinding as a legitimate challenge. If a subset of players doesn't like a particular challenge type included in your design vision, fuck them. It's not for them. You as a designer know it is good and many will enjoy it. "Oh sorry guys we couldn't make combat require good aiming precision, nor require reasonable resource management, nor give a particular enemy a goddamn shield in any relevant manner because some players may not like those kind of challenges, and so we decided to dumb it down just to be safe."

It's so difficult to achieve a sensible degree of challenge and balance when the game is a SS2 clone and SS2 offers far superior balance and challenge. That game's RPG systems do have problems, but the devs clearly played it conservatively: there's very little overpowered shit, most of the balance problems lies in certain things being underpowered and therefore bordering useless or not worth the investment. Others are obvious oversights (double laser pistol). Prey it's the opposite. There's clearly many big boons offered to the player that should not be, but this is post-mid 2000s money-oriented game design that bends over to the lowest common denominator.

A reasonable standard of balance is not "very difficult" to achieve if decades of video game history is anything to go by and clearly not this subjective, abstract problem that can't be solved with brains. The vast majority of games manage to achieve an obvious state of acceptable or greater balance. If it were very difficult and highly subjective, this would not be the case. For those that can't handle the heat there's lower difficulty modes. That doesn't make balance and challenge subjective, that means a player is handicapped and can't meet the objective standard everyone else can. It's really not that variable. Nobody denies Dark Souls is at least moderately challenging and nobody denies it is at least moderately balanced. If they think it's ridiculously easy or the balance is all over the place, they're simply wrong.

What are these infinitesimal playstyles that Prey supposedly supports anyway? Combat, partial stealth that still uses offensive tools, to use psi or not to use psi as major modifiers for both and? By being so easy I guess it supports more playstyles than SS2, e.g a directionally-challenged person's "playstyle" because there's objective markers. SS2 absolutely did filter out those with navigation issues, to the benefit of those of us that can handle orienteering-based gameplay. If you are more referring to the progression a player takes through the neuromod trees than that's not much an argument either as literally every neuromod is about making you a more efficient killer, even indirectly. Inventory space lets you carry more killing tools. Hacking grants you access to more killing tools. There is not one upgrade that does not relate to survival, so no matter what path you take you're levelling up at a similar rate to another player. I guess one "playstyle" (we're using that term broadly) that may be mentioned is one that doesn't scavenge much and thus doesn't get as many neuromods, but that would also be missing the point. the game is about loot whoring as much as it is anything else if not more. Not engaging in it is failing to play the game correctly. Now if Arkane wanted to cater to and include such a player, clearly the game has to suffer, a.k.a dumbing down: for better or worse the game is heavily designed around scavenging.

Again you guys are the same that like the simple easy bland power trip blink-choke simulator that is Dishonored anyway, not sure why I'm getting triggered by people whose opinion I do not value and are clearly content with the current state of dumb video games. Clearly not being challenged nor engaged is your idea of a good time. Too bad AAA devs these days don't use higher difficulty modes as a means to cater to people that expect legitimate and harmonious game design. Honestly that would entail changing half the game in most cases so whatever, it is what it is. The sad thing about Prey is it is so close to being a great game, just having a few things adjust based on difficulty (much like in SS2, actually) would go a significant 20% of the way to making it so...and that's not sarcasm. 20% is still significant to me.

what is most interesting is how this game fucked up in its attempt to cater to the casuals. In the beginning, Prey is not forgiving. The old SS2 meme is "the game doesn't even give you a gun wtf I quit" but it DOES if you pick the correct career path. Prey gives you a wrench and balloon gun and you don't find a direct offense gun until the lobby. Resources are tight at the start. When the balance falls apart, it's toward the mid to latter half of the game. I guess that's why you stompers are happy and the rest of us are not. so anyway, what I'm saying is it doesn't appeal to "hardcore" gamers (I hate that term really, I just expect that old boundary pushing, player-engaging gold standard), it doesn't appeal to casuals. It appeals to you guys that clearly love games even when they're mindless repetitive stomping (you're still casuals that probably grew up playing storyfag RPGs and adventure games, but you are clearly more dedicated and capable than say the Gears of War or Flappy Bird crowd).

Certain people are so strange with what standards of entertainment they have defined for themselves. There's people that go around and play games with the sole intent to collect achievements. they replay a game with zero replayability right after with the "remastered" edition just to get duplicate achievements. They play games they don't like just to get the achievements. They refuse to buy games that do not feature achievements ("no achievements no buy"). Insanity I tell you. It's not all subjective, these people just have something wrong with them, same with microtransaction whales; a digital version of junk hoarders. The game design preys on their lack of self-control and lack of standards.

 

[Israfael]

Dude, you've been arguing that balance is meaningless in a singleplayer game and essentially isn't worth striving for at all.

No, I'm saying that trying to "balance" some builds against each other is laughable and impossible affair. If the multiplayer devs can't really do that without turning games dead simple and shoehorning players into very specific modes of behaviour, what do you hope to achieve in a game which strives to create as many interactable systems as possible? And why you actually need it, it's like additional layer of difficulty selection, some games (like Nox, for example, which started as a purely PVP game and is actually a damn good pvp game) even explicitly used it (warrior - easy, wizard - hard). You can't really balance the game so that ___everyone___ will experience it in the same way, some people will inevitably find your hard mode too easy as well as some will find easy too overtuned (cue in Verge grade players and various youtubers who are resource starved even on medium or whatever it is called in Prey).

That is to say, they attempt balance the options against one another to give the player interesting and relevant choices to make.

Why do you believe that player choices are only guided by efficiency? You guys are so mired up in the metagaming that you don't see why most people play the games. For example, I played the PF:KM on hard with fully vanilla companions and without meta-guided dips which would make them more "optimized" and such. I still finished the game and had _some_ challenge. The game does not prevent me or anyone else though from going completely munchkin and building hyper-optimized party with vivisector dips, 1000hp critting saints and so on. Would you also "balance out" such possbilities or make the game even harder so that munchkins will not kill everything by simply looking at the enemies?