Comments on: Touchy Feely

By: Piratepete

Piratepete — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:58:35 +0000

I’ll give you that the mechanics in Wow are very simplistic relative to most modern games, but I don’t think bioshocks Vita chambers improved ‘The Death Experience’ either. (God that sound horribley like a sales and marketing meeting.)

“Ok people, blue sky thinking now. How can we improve ‘The Death Experience’ for our customers”
*Draws box in air with fingers
*faceless exec raises hand
“Ok Roger, hit me” points a roger with other finger on nose.
“Erm well the thing about death is that, well its eternal isn’t it”
“Great, thats far too long a time for the busy housewife with kiddies. Make it shorter,Next!”
Points at another faceless exec
“Go Urquart!”
“Am i right in saying that when you are Dead you can’t actually move”
“Brilliant Urquart, make death a more…mobile experience. Fantastic!”

etc etc.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:38:50 +0000

Yes, but point being Bioshock is over by the time you’ve moved beyond Newb stage in WoW. It doesn’t matter if you learn your way around it – it’s just shit.

By: Piratepete

Piratepete — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:35:20 +0000

Kieron tho. Baby. Darling. Is that not a little erm how do I put this delicately. N00bish to fight where you know something is likely to spawn? If you need a hunter to show you how to pull I know a good one on Aszune :)

By: Jens Arnesen

Jens Arnesen — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:32:05 +0000

In regards to dying in Bioshock, yes, it’s a bit silly that you resurrect without any penalties every time you die, but that doesn’t mean you have to exploit it. The res chamber function in Bioshock is only as bad as you make it yourself. if you try to immerse yourself in the game and actually give a damn about trying to stay alive instead of the much too common “oh-hey-it’s-a-pre-added-God-mode” attitude, you won’t be nearly as annoyed about it.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:46:17 +0000

Iain: You don’t think WoW kills you unfairly? In a game where an enemy can just spawn beside you when you’re in a struggle, I think you’re plain wrong.

By: Seneca

Seneca — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:32:00 +0000

Actually, I think the criticism on Bioshock vita chambers is a bit misdirected here as they are mostly a design remnant from the System Shock series. System Shock 2 had _hideous_ loading times on my old machine back then but I still dogmatically refused to use the resurrection chambers (or whatever they were called). A curious quirk was that you could only resurrect in the section you died in if you had activated the chamber there. If the chamber wasn’t activated, dying took you straight to the main screen (I always wondered why I couldn’t just resurrect in the previous section).

An interesting version of this whole resurrection business is playing one of the original Doom games in Nightmare mode. The player has infinite lives but starts every level from the beginning with only a half-loaded pistol in hand when he dies. On the negative side, the monsters do resurrect too and stay dead for only a minute.

As a result, the whole gameplay dynamic changes. Instead of every mowed down wave of enemies taking you closer to your goal, the carnage serves no discreet purpose. You have to pin down the focal points of a level (keycards, levers) and then blitz them. Keycards are a bitch, as they are not recovered when you die. Doors opened by pulled levers thankfully stay open. Health boosts and other bonuses do not regenerate so the levels get harder on multiple tries.

Massive adrenaline-fuelled fun, especially on multiplayer.

By: Chris R

Chris R — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 00:22:40 +0000

I didn’t really enjoy Prey (only played maybe the first 1/3 of the game), but didn’t that game put a spin on the death system? It’s been about 2 years since I’ve played it, so my memory is a bit fuzzy, but I seem to recall going to a “spirit world” whenever I “died” and I could shoot… spirits? or something to gain my health back before coming back to the world. I remember thinking that it was pretty cool since I didn’t have to hit a reload button.

By: Thelps

Thelps — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:32:52 +0000

I believe the ultimate detracting aspect of a game to the slightly nebulous concept of ‘flow’ is overt game mechanics placed in a game by a slightly hyperactive developer (that’s a MOUTHFUL). It’s my firm belief that a game that takes place in a quasi-real setting (i.e. anything that isn’t a full on, abstract, puzzle-game, like Tetris, for example) needs to react to the player’s input in the expected way. That is to say that if I knock over a barrel, the barrel needs to fall and tumble like one. If I shoot out a car’s tires, the car needs to swerve and behave like a blown-out car. Any aspect of a game that interrupts this assumption of reality is, by relation, interrupting my suspension of disbelief and detracting from my immersion in the game. I attribute the rise of physics in games to this attitude, since, even in a game like Half-Life 2, I would argue that the presence of physics as a background effect (rather than as a direct game mechanic, as seen with the gravity-gun, physics puzzles, etc.) contribute almost as equally as their directly intended purpose (see game mechanic parentheses).

The subject of death, as discussed in this thread is probably the hardest issue to address to the player in a manner that doesn’t shatter the immersion of the game, since the game can’t, by definition, render death in an authentic way (short of deleting the game from your HD and rendering your CD-key useless). Death needs to carry a suitably heavy penalty so that the player genuinely fears it, but the consequences of death cannot frustrate the player overly, or, if they do, death has to be envisaged, by the developer, as something that will happen very rarely, and only, as mentioned by Schizoslayer, after numerous negative warnings have been issued to the player that if they continue their pattern of mistakes, they will die.

The holy grail of death, in my opinion, is a consequence that the player fears, that penalizes them in some way, but, crucially, that DOES NOT cause them to reload a save game.

By: Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 13:03:01 +0000

Direct link to the article:
http://www.vodafone.com/flash/receiver/17/articles/index01.html

By: Piratepete

Piratepete — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:29:38 +0000

To be honest I had a bit of a marathon Bioshock session over the weekend, and once I became tired I realised that I was just rorting through it, dying frequently and only suffering a slight annoyance of getting back to the point where you died. Prior to this I had tried to keep myself alive, but cos I was tired I ceased to care and just ploughed onwards ever onwards. As soon as I realised this I realised the game had lost some of its sparkle for me. Shame.

However to reiterate the point I was making in the gameplay versus graphics thread recently, it is the gameplay, flow if you will that really creates the dynamic tension in the game. I don’t think you need DX10 for that otherwise we wouldn’t have us all obsessing about games.

By: Iain

Iain — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:25:32 +0000

Most deaths in WoW can be put down to player error (accidentally aggroing multiple mobs, panicking in PvP, soloing in contested areas, etc) whereas in Bioshock they’re more due to difficulty spikes. I can take the time penalty in WoW because, more often than not, it’ll be my fault that I’ve died, not a flaw in the game design.

I get annoyed with Bioshock making me retrace my steps after death because it actually makes the game easier to play: I don’t have to use all my resources to get rid of a tough enemy – I can just die and repeat, die and repeat and wear them down with attrition, and that’s not why I play FPS games.

By: Bozzley

Bozzley — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:04:11 +0000

WoW penalises you for dying in the one area you do have a finite resource – your playing time. 5 minutes of tedious running back to my corpse? No fucking thank you not very fucking much (see also: armour damage).

Bioshock does have a shite system for dealing with player death, but you’ve neglected to mention that it doesn’t restore your ammo. This isn’t a big deal really either (as stated, the wrench can always be used effectively), but it’s surely worth a mention.

Sorry for the swears, but I’ve only just got back into playing WoW, and I’d forgotten how much I loathe dying in that game. I really, really hate it.