Original post by Kallisti Designers are always looking for ways to make games hard. One way is to make the controls painful to use. After all, going the other direction also have the expected effect - the controls could be made some easy that the game plays itself!
What kind of an idiot intentionally designs bad controls? I really doubt anyone has ever said, "Hmm, we need some more difficulty...I know, we'll make the controls clumsy and unresponsive!" That'd be like leaving known game-crashing bugs in the game to keep the players on their toes.
I wouldn't be surprised to see that technique, either. Don't give 'em any ideas [wink]
I see a lot of comments on why it's bad but not many or how to make it better or why it has to be bad to start with. I've played (Xbox, PS2, PS1, SNES, NES, PC, Atari) games that had a ton of controls that worked well, lately the trend is for more not better.
Why can't a camrea go through walls? If your afraid I'll see something important, don't put anything important near the walls. I've seen it done once before where tha camrea passes through objects and they turn invisible, that should be the standard used by everyone.
Why do I have to fight peolpe I can't see? Camreas at to high an angle, showing me an even 20' circle around me, I can see farther in fron of me than behind I would be ok with that in a game also.
Controls that have multiple actions shold not be programed in such a way that the various actions are non-conforming. Actions should be smart, no one is going t acedently back flip off a clif or randomly turn thier back to an attacker and fire into a wall.
Spartan:Total Warrior got it's blocking right, when you press block he auto turns to block attacks from any direction, but you know this and if he turns to block an attack there is an attacker there so pressing the hit button at least has some reward. Now the attacks are spotty, about 1/3 of the time his supper attack happens in a direction where no one is standing.
I understand bad things happen if you press the wrong button, or press it at the wrong time but but over the last couple of years at least half the games I'v played were quit because of controller dificulties.
Most of the new games are very much like older games with improved art, but since the controller hnow has 8-12 buttons inseat of 4 designers feel they need to use all of them. Just call this feedback from a consumer if you want but sucky controls can and will ruin an otherwise good game.
Game controls will always go downhill as controllers get more complex. Gamecube has the worst controller I've ever used, XBOX's controller practically snaps my hand in half, and playing games on keyboards these days requires about 50000 shortcut memorizations. Don't have the patience. I'll stick to my Atari 2600, thanks.
Let's just assume that the player REALLY needs to see his character through a thrird person perspective. What happens when the character gets his back to a wall is that the disctance between the camera and the back of the head of the character should REDUCE!! and not suddendly change direction!! Up to the moment when the camera is actually WITHIN the head of the character, and showing a first person view.
At any rate, if you want to have a fighting system a la Prince of Persia, then you need some room to do so. Static camera is your friend, here, because turning around and spinning tops with the camera tied to the back of your head will just make the viewer motion-sick in no time at all... If you want to create an action packed game, with a sense of trailing the character, then keep the camera tied to the back of the character's head, with the camera coming closer, not suddendly changing direction. And you should make sure than you don't get motion sick by having the camera fly off in every direfction every time your character turns. Just give the camera a delay of, say, five seconds, or maybe only three if there is no control input meanwhile, before it turns and goes back to it's behind-the-head place.
And if you REALLY, REALLY MUST do a set camera behind the head of the character, then do so, but don't give any of this "can't get through the walls" rubbish. Make the walls castle-wide, and create plain objects, which won't reveal anything if the camera DOES get through. Make sure your level design makes all this possible, too. No sense in creating walls wide enough to hold the field-depth of the camera, and put two walls a cigarette's bredth away...
Original post by Kallisti Designers are always looking for ways to make games hard. One way is to make the controls painful to use. After all, going the other direction also have the expected effect - the controls could be made some easy that the game plays itself!
Difficulty should be in the gameplay, not in accessing the gameplay...
Original post by Fournicolas Just so that I could say it...
Let's just assume that the player REALLY needs to see his character through a thrird person perspective. What happens when the character gets his back to a wall is that the disctance between the camera and the back of the head of the character should REDUCE!! and not suddendly change direction!! Up to the moment when the camera is actually WITHIN the head of the character, and showing a first person view.
At any rate, if you want to have a fighting system a la Prince of Persia, then you need some room to do so. Static camera is your friend, here, because turning around and spinning tops with the camera tied to the back of your head will just make the viewer motion-sick in no time at all... If you want to create an action packed game, with a sense of trailing the character, then keep the camera tied to the back of the character's head, with the camera coming closer, not suddendly changing direction. And you should make sure than you don't get motion sick by having the camera fly off in every direfction every time your character turns. Just give the camera a delay of, say, five seconds, or maybe only three if there is no control input meanwhile, before it turns and goes back to it's behind-the-head place.
And if you REALLY, REALLY MUST do a set camera behind the head of the character, then do so, but don't give any of this "can't get through the walls" rubbish. Make the walls castle-wide, and create plain objects, which won't reveal anything if the camera DOES get through. Make sure your level design makes all this possible, too. No sense in creating walls wide enough to hold the field-depth of the camera, and put two walls a cigarette's bredth away...
exactly, with new controler typs comming out recently. Nintendo's new controler DS's stylist and who know what else is int e works. Let's not get carried away with the gizmo factor and only use what needs to be used to play the game. I have never needed to see all 360 degrees of my charcter yet almost all new games have the option to do so, that control could be used for a better purpose.
Like I said mostly this was to get people to think about how we play as much as what we play.
This reminds me of the Tomb Raider series. The first 2 games were great fun, well designed and played really well. Tomb Raider 3 was a step in the wrong direction; the controls suddenly became clunky and the general gameplay wasn't about rewarding the player, it was more about, "Oh look, there's a boulder you have no chance of escaping. Reload and try again." At least in the first two games, you were rewarded (by living mostly) for being aware of your surroundings and avoiding traps. All of them since have been nothing but half-assed crap.
Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness, took this to new levels. The controls were the most unresponsive I've used in a long time, the camera was absolutely awful and to make things worse, the controls would "reverse" depending on which way you were in relation to the camera. It was bloody awful.
Luckily, I stopped buying the games after Tomb Raider 2, but my dad is an avid fan, and unfortunately he's purchased a lot of them still clinging to the hope that they'd improve. After Angel of Darkness though, even he gave up.
It just amazes me that people who are developing these games aren't spotting things like rubbish controls in play-testing. Surely beta-testers or something would report problems.
Your ability to do well in a game shouldn't be limited by the controls nor the interface.
It just amazes me that people who are developing these games aren't spotting things like rubbish controls in play-testing. Surely beta-testers or something would report problems.
Your ability to do well in a game shouldn't be limited by the controls nor the interface.
I think a lot of the problem is they hire pro gamers to play test games and use gee wiz functions to get backing and the latest art to get reviews and ... and forget about the player in the process, this isn't the audiance you will sell to.
People ask why don't women, older people and so on play games, maybe because they don't have the base skill set to build on to play newer games. There is no way my parents could play any new game, hell new multifunction remotes give them problems. A game where you use one directiona pad or joystick for movement and one button for fire and another for jump can but just as "Fun" or more so than one that has 15 combo controls that really serve no purpose.
I've been a gamer for 20 years. I no longer feel compelled to finish a game just to say I did. If it sucks to play I quit, and tell oter not to waste thier money on it.
A game that had good controls and still had a great learning curve: Guild Wars. You will get completely slaughtered by a seasoned guild, even if everyone has the same level/equipment value character. However, the controls themselves are simple, usefull, and context sensitive. For example, the ctrl-clicking something tells your allies about it. If you ctrl-click your health bar, it tells them how much health you have, if you ctrl-click on your death penalty, it tells them how much death penalty you have. Guild Wars has some very simple controls, but it is in no way 'kiddish' or 'immature'
Original post by Kallisti Designers are always looking for ways to make games hard. One way is to make the controls painful to use. After all, going the other direction also have the expected effect - the controls could be made some easy that the game plays itself!
What kind of an idiot intentionally designs bad controls? I really doubt anyone has ever said, "Hmm, we need some more difficulty...I know, we'll make the controls clumsy and unresponsive!" That'd be like leaving known game-crashing bugs in the game to keep the players on their toes.
Probably the same types of idiots that put time sinks in games on purpose...;P
But back on topic, lousy controls irritate me greatly. The Halo series of games has some of the best controls I've ever used, as does Devil May Cry 3. The key to controls is that they are predictable and intuitive. "Hardcore" gamers scoff at Halo for having aiming assistance, but it really just makes the game more intuitive. When I move the analog stick, I'm not trying to arbritrarily position my cursor. I'm trying to shoot at THAT GUY. Instead of rewarding you for superhuman agility, it rewards you for intention. That's what people tend to count - intention. Loosing is only annoying when you feel that it was unfair and you didn't get to try your best. Taking the middleman out and connecting intention to reaction more closely (via a good control scheme) is 9/10ths of the law.
The only qualms I have with Halo and DMC are that the Halo duck button is rather unreliable, and in DMC targeting can sometimes be a pain, as can the camera angles. Otherwise, smooth as silk. Oh, and the FOV in Halo is retardedly small.
