I'm also not held responsible because you want to whine about how I "present" what I write -- the content of what's being said, and the objective purpose thereof, is what matters.
This is phrased oddly. Are you saying you're not responsible for the presentation of your writing?
Anyway, I'm going to respond to the apparent
content of what's being said in this sentence and the overall post, like you asked. I read this as saying "ignore everything but the meaning of my words." I get that tone criticism can be misused. It can be viewed as a refutation of the content, but it's not a valid counterargument. But not all discussions are debates. What I'm saying isn't meant to discredit you or your argument.
Tone is part of a message. I don't think responsibility is a good term, so I won't use it, but this is similar to saying "you are responsible for your tone". The tone of your message is another level of communication, and it affects how your words will be understood. If the tone you use does not help your words, it is as if your writing is filled with typographical errors. The intended meaning can still be seen, but it takes more effort and many people will simply give up or make assumptions. If someone suggests changing the tone you use, treat it as somebody giving you the preferred spelling of a word. It is to facilitate better communication and discussion. It is not an attack.
Here is an example of the kind of tone criticism I'm talking about (so we aren't talking past each other):
What is the goal of your first two paragraphs? If you think you shouldn't post this, then don't. If you think you should, then saying you shouldn't achieves nothing. Similarly, insulting people is not likely to decrease the amount of arguing and yelling. Similarly, "I'm telling you the truth and it's your own fault if you can't see how obviously right I am" isn't a productive sentence. If you want people to believe you, then try improving your tone. If you don't care about whether people believe you, why are you writing about how people don't listen to you? And in the last paragraph, it sounds like you are bragging about your superior mental health. Perhaps that wasn't your intent, but that's what it looks like. If you don't want people to misunderstand you, you should look at your tone.
You are correct that the majority of the difficulty of DF lies in its clunky UI. You are presented with a pile of colored letters, and you interact with them by pressing keys. But once you understand digging, building, etc., you can survive indefinitely as long as you have mud. Turtling is incredibly powerful. Airlocks let you continue to interact with the outside world, but if you don't, you can make all the food and drink you need with a small farm, and that's it. The recent updates have increased the needs of dwarves, but the community fortress
Rockfalls is a great example of this. It's really quite easy to Win once you understand the UI. And it's also quite boring. Beating the computer isn't that fun...
But that's not the point of DF! It was never intended to be You Versus Machine. As the creators have stated, DF is a fantasy world generator. It's all about making narratives. So you do something interesting and see what happens. You impose restrictions on yourself, or set your own goal. Do you want to make a tower out of soap? Feed your entire civilization? Never make anything out of rock, wood, or metal? Make the world's best library? Succession fortresses are fun because you collectively tell a story, and the rapidly changing overseer presents challenges (often in the form of crazy hodgepodge designs).
(The earliest versions were quite different. They were much harder IMO, and there was actually a chain of events that would inexorably lead to the downfall of all fortresses. Winning was
impossible. There was no reward at the end. Although this seems opposite to the current version, it's actually the same in an important way. Winning is not the focus. It's the stories you create while trying
and the friends you make along the way.)
I'm not saying this is the only good way to make a game. Each game has something that the player can gain from playing it, whether it's the satisfaction of beating a challenge or a memorable story. But keep in mind the differences when you compare games with different goals.
You claim that many things are bad game design, but you don't explain why you think that's the case. You just throw out a pejorative and move on.
- Difficulty settings: the point of many games is to present a challenge that can be overcome with effort. Difficulty settings make games accessible to more people, whether they're utter newbs or skilled veterans. Yes, you can choose Easy if your goal is only to Win. You will probably be disappointed, because people don't like Winning in and of itself. They like Winning through challenge. So know thyself, and choose the right setting. (What's it to you if somebody uses an easier setting? Elitism alone doesn't justify anything.)
- Tips, hints, and tutorials: most games (except experimental/meta ones) don't try to put the difficulty into the UI and system. So it makes sense to explain how the system works so that players can move on to the actual playing part.
- Cutscenes and cinematics: if the goal is to tell a story, this can be useful in moderation. Making them skippable opens the game to both story-based and non-story-based players. If story is fluff, you won't like cutscenes and cinematics. That's fine. Not everything needs to be built for people like you.
- Compasses: actual objects that exist in real life. If your complaint is that you don't have to view a compass being pulled out of a bag whenever you check your compass... why? User interfaces exist for a reason.
- Abstractions (maps, stealth meters, health bars): useful shortcuts to convey information more quickly and readably. If your goal is not to simulate the difficulties of keeping track of intelligence while fighting Nazis, but just to simulate the difficulty of not dying to Nazis, then you shouldn't focus on simulating the difficulties of keeping track of intelligence. Games don't have to be about everything.
- Fast-travel: if your goal isn't to simulate the drudgery of traveling long distances, then you shouldn't simulate the drudgery of traveling long distances. I like it when I have the option not to fast-travel sometimes, but I wouldn't gain much from pressing w for an hour whenever I want to go to another town.
- Predictability: if the main goal of a game is very predictable, then it can really only be played once or twice. That's better than zero times. If a side detail is predictable, then that's fine. Unpredictability can be good to a limit (the UI should remain constant, the basic concept of the game should stay the same, unless you're doing a very arty game), but predictability isn't the worst thing.
- Turn-based games: just an abstraction, although one with wide-ranging effects. If your goal isn't to simulate being pressed for time as you do things, turn-based games work fine. In fact, you can still simulate it. It just doesn't extend to the physical player needing to move quickly. The adventurer still only has one minute before the demon is summoned. In DF, the abstracted player interactions with the world correspond to a dwarf making plans. Without a pause button, planning a simple boxy building could take more time than building it. It makes sense that realtime designations shouldn't run at the same ingame pace as when it's unpaused.
- Birds-eye views: third-person is an abstraction that can help the game. Roguelike displays are minimalist. They're just a different way of presenting information.
The point of a game isn't always to learn how the UI works. That's almost never the case.
If someone wants to spoil themselves, they can do that. If you want to discover it yourself, you can do that. Nobody's stopping you.
The path of least resistance always exists. It may be more resistant in an absolute sense, but you can't say "having a path of least resistance is bad."
If nothing can be explained, you don't have a game or a challenge. Unless you mean "you can only learn it in an intuitive sense which cannot be explained with words".
I very much doubt that you have worked out a superior system to Dwarf Fortress v1.0 that you could code in a week by spending some time with graph paper.
You are not the only sane man in a sea of idiots. You're not even the only elitist and overconfident gamer.
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Topic: Suggestions About What the Game Needs to Not Have (Read 47509 times)