Since you haven't actually played the game, you wouldn't know that the mechanic of using the winch escalates, becomes a puzzle you have to solve and eventually pays off in a great action set piece. It is gameplay, you're just ignorant of that fact.
Gameplay elements, evolution, and enjoyment not for everyone? [2019+] *spawn*
- Thread starter orangpelupa
- Start date
Since you haven't actually played the game, you wouldn't know that the mechanic of using the winch escalates, becomes a puzzle you have to solve and eventually pays off in a great action set piece. It is gameplay, you're just ignorant of that fact.
Then you shouldn't be on forums, they are there for discussions. I played UC4 and found almost half of the time either watching a cutscene or something like this:
If that's something you like that's ok, but it's also ok for another to not like it. I don't lay much time on SP gaming anymore, and when i do, i want to be actually playing, some cutscens ok, but the new cinematic approach doesn't attact me. I do like the story, and the setting, the graphics, and gameplay mechanics aside from the cinematic bits are great.
For MGS, those are really special games, enjoyed MGS1 the most.
Haha, yes
Maybe this discussion, as here in this thread, is partially pointless, but in general it is not.
I agree with everything that you say above. Games apply limitations to players on purpose, that's necessaey because we want games and not simulation of reality.
But the more we advance towards being able to do so, the more options we have to design new and better games, because we as developers become unrestricted. That's the point i try to make.
Example: In real life i can go to the supermarket, grab some bread and leave without paying for it. But i won't do this, because of the consequences.
In a game i open a dialog box, and i have the option to exchange 2 gold vs. one bread.
In both cases i will pay for the bread, because of the law, or because of the code. But the former case is much more interesting.
Conclusion: As a game designer, using a reality simulation engine, you can still force the player to pay for the bread, or to watch HL introduction. But forcing with consequences is more interesting and feels less restrictive than the dialog box.
Additionally, if this becomes possible, current games will appear very dated with their limited abilities to play back recordings.
So there is nothing wrong with what you say about state of the art, but we do not want to get stuck at this.
Our goal is believable simulation of reality. What we then do if this becomes possible, how we still restrict the player - that's a question of game design, personal preference, target audience, etc. Surely subjective and a matter of creativity.
But if you agree with reality simulation being our goal, to get all those options we never had and so might not know what we miss, then you also have to agree with: A cutscene is no simulation, or third person perspective is not believable. But you still may want to use those things even if techically you no longer had to.
What wonders me personally is the fact so many game devolpers disagree with the statement "Reality simulation is our goal".
(i see i'm a bit out of the norm here with talking about the future but not current games)
Or worse, random gameplay rule-changes mid-game. Yeah, I'm looking at you Uncharted-Boss-On-A-Train. These are an abomination as you cannot win them by applying what you know of the game, but have to fail using your existing knowledge-base until you've learnt the new rules. Yeah, a rocket-launcher has worked against everything else so far including a helicopter, but this dude here has to be punched but there's not even a mention of that before you meet him.
Game designers can do pretty weird things.
There are quite many people out there who could do without the cinematic gameplay, also who are demanding this kind of games then? Highly doubt the average gamer wanted or requested that?
Then why are you participating in the discussion?
There are people who don't like it, it's quite a phenomenon on the internet/various forums and YT comments. Listen to @JoeJ he explains how games could be improved upon this, obviously he explains it much better then i do. It's a fact games have moved, and in special the Sony ones, to more cinematic style of games, be it cutscenes, non-interactive moments, motion blur, even third person, and there are people who want to see improvements there, or better said 'alternative ways'. That opens up for discussions, nothing wrong with that, it's what forums are for.
Exactly. Yes, you can use prior experiences & other alternative means to make that informed decision, but you don't need to experience it yourself fully in order to make that decision. With your food analogy you can choose to buy the food to eat it & have a 100% certainty to know that you will or will not like it. But you can just as well not buy the food(because you're trying not to waste your money) & watch a food commercial, review or show to determine whether you think you will like it with < 100% certainty.
Back to the original discussion. SB made the latter decision & decided he had enough certainly from watching somebody play HZD to determine that he thought the gameplay loop was boring. Could he make a better decision if he had played it himself? Sure. More data points is always better than less. But he decided he had enough info from watching somebody playing instead. He thought the gameplay was boring & he's fine with that. He doesn't need to go play the game just to come to the same conclusion. And he doesn't need somebody else telling him his opinion & decision are wrong.
Tommy McClain
Where?
Winch timestamps below:
3:53:41
4:03:20
4:06:04
4:20:30
7:56:15
Couldn't find any others in this play through, so either I missed it or whatever the case is. But I see no escalation in the mechanic, and don't see how it's used to solve a puzzle when it's telling you what to do every single time. It's about as deep as getting Lara to use her climbing axe to triple hit open some rubble.
But I have no reason to think you're lying about it because that's pointless so here's the thing; I don't have an issue that the winch is used for a great action piece, but it's a boring shallow mechanic that for the most part when combined with nothing else, has no challenge (they highlight where you winch) there is no real action on the player whether to do it or not. If they decided to start with the set piece and work it's way backwards, I get that, but there are 5 times in which the winch was used and there was nothing going on around it. It's loading screen as far as I can see.
And bonus this doozy here of awesome gameplay that clearly the game isn't loading in the background.
8:05:45
I mean, this isn't even all of them, but I'm just saying on a second playthrough, these sequences will always be completed the same in the same time frame. By every single player that ever plays this game. This isn't gameplay there's not even variation here.
People talk about varied gameplay, but I see something not very wide and not very deep.
The term as wide as the ocean as deep as in inch?
These adventure titles are certainly deep as an inch, not even sure if it's as wide as an ocean either.
There's more game mechanics working in harmony in the Titanfall 2 tutorial than all I saw in all of UC4. That's not even being hyperbolic, they made a little game of it. After it teaches you the mechanics of the game, you're given the chance to play against a global leaderboard for the gauntlet run. People thought they were fast under 1 minute.
People got cocky at 29s because after the first attempt that most players try, they're putting in minutes to complete the course. We haven't started the single player campaign yet.
^ record board
Now this is gameplay, because you decide how to run the gauntlet it's both easy to understand but impossible to master.
That is gameplay, that is depth. And that is single player. And everyone will remember the time this guy did a crazy gauntlet run that no one else had the creativity to do.
Making everyone do the winch the exact same way always having the exact same outcome is not.
I'm not even trying to be an asshole here; like I'm just calling out mechanics that are imo being used to hide loading screens. Some people love the cinematic experience where control is taken away from you; and that's fine; just don't call it gameplay when there are no decisions, dexterity, timing, or actual input to be made by the player.
You pull the winch you lock it, you wait. Everyone does it in the same amount of time. And everyone does it the same. And everyone has to do it to progress.
Last edited:
I don’t think he’s wrong. I like to call it the “illusion of gameplay” because it feels like you’re doing something, but you can’t pass, fail, win, lose and it doesn’t require skill, timing or even chance. Many games string along sequences of buttons presses that result in animation, but are closer cinematics cut up into 5-10 second pieces. I don’t think it’s always to hide loading screens though some of them are. Some people are more wrapped up in the visuals so as long as a game looks exciting, that’s all that matters to them. I prefer those canned moments to be used sparingly and mostly leave the control in my hands. I’d rather fail fifty times trying to master a sequence of jumps than press up and occasionally press A as my character climbs and almost falls, dangling by one hand, as they grab things that inevitably break. One is exciting, the other just looks it.
What? This makes no sense, I shouldn't be on forums because I don't want to have an uneducated opinion on a topic I haven't experienced.
I guess that's why Sony's recent games are selling better than ever before.
This is the most ridiculous thing I've read in a long time. Next you will say walking or running to cover is not gameplay and you should just zoom there so you can get to the shooting part, ridiculous.
In fact I almost enjoy the downtime as much as the action and it's one of the biggest improvements over older games.
Thank God most people don't have your opinion, how boring single player games would be otherwise.
Imagine how much worse of an experience uncharted or the last of us would be without the downtime. In fact I rated Gears of War as one of the best games of that generation just because the way they introduced story by the communication of the characters while you walk to the next battle.
To point how meaningless it is?Then why are you participating in the discussion?
Reality simulation as in making a world that opens up all possibilities like the real world 100% of the time is not suited for all experiences. It may be interesting, but not necessarily fun for many cases.Haha, yes
Maybe this discussion, as here in this thread, is partially pointless, but in general it is not.
I agree with everything that you say above. Games apply limitations to players on purpose, that's necessaey because we want games and not simulation of reality.
But the more we advance towards being able to do so, the more options we have to design new and better games, because we as developers become unrestricted. That's the point i try to make.
Example: In real life i can go to the supermarket, grab some bread and leave without paying for it. But i won't do this, because of the consequences.
In a game i open a dialog box, and i have the option to exchange 2 gold vs. one bread.
In both cases i will pay for the bread, because of the law, or because of the code. But the former case is much more interesting.
Conclusion: As a game designer, using a reality simulation engine, you can still force the player to pay for the bread, or to watch HL introduction. But forcing with consequences is more interesting and feels less restrictive than the dialog box.
Additionally, if this becomes possible, current games will appear very dated with their limited abilities to play back recordings.
So there is nothing wrong with what you say about state of the art, but we do not want to get stuck at this.
Our goal is believable simulation of reality. What we then do if this becomes possible, how we still restrict the player - that's a question of game design, personal preference, target audience, etc. Surely subjective and a matter of creativity.
But if you agree with reality simulation being our goal, to get all those options we never had and so might not know what we miss, then you also have to agree with: A cutscene is no simulation, or third person perspective is not believable. But you still may want to use those things even if techically you no longer had to.
What wonders me personally is the fact so many game devolpers disagree with the statement "Reality simulation is our goal".
(i see i'm a bit out of the norm here with talking about the future but not current games)
This might work for open world games like GTA, but we have a market for both linear and open world games. The former is not a limitation for the other.
You will see that in the context of each game, even in games that dont need cut scenes like Super Mario Odyssey, because the protagonist is a certain personality that acts in certain ways, the rules of the world are limited.
In a shoot em up game the rules of the virtual world are even more limited. You can have 100% gameplay and zero cut scenes and it will still have limitations because thats what makes the game fun. It wants you to focus on certain gameplay mechanics and enjoy them.
A game like the original DMC had it's meat purely in the stylish gameplay. It needs to defy the rules of the real world in a specific "bounding box", not to simulate reality. This is what allowed the game to be simple, accessible yet so deep.
But even in games where it suits to simulate reality like GTA, when it wants to tell it's story it requires from the player certain actions. If for example the game plot desires you to steal from a bank because your character is a douche nut case, it would wouldnt serve the purpose if you decided to work in a garment shop like a civilized man. Some games are story tellers and thats one of the things that makes those games interesting. The player wants to find more and where it will lead.
A game that simulates reality can be it's own type of game, like a Sims on steroids or something. Or it is suited for more complex games which may be some people's cup of tea and not for others like any game.
D
Deleted member 11852
Guest
This.
Herein seems to lie the problem. From the sounds of it, some people feel having the player do something, even if minimal, is gameplay. To others, if there's no decision or influence, it isn't gameplay. I side with the latter. In the case of movement, you choose where to move. If you don't, if it's heavily scripted like TLoU, then you basically have a walking simulator. Those moments are mostly there to lead you to your next gameplay encounter. I'd say as Scott-Arm puts it, game interactivity where "you can’t pass, fail, win, lose and it doesn’t require skill, timing or even chance," isn't gameplay. In these scenarios, there isn't even a time limit. You as the player are required to play the part. It's more like acting. So a Naughty Dog adventure will come to a point where you have to follow a series of explicit instructions, like hold triangle to open the door, and the whole game will wait for you. Really, really stupidly. If you're happy to play the part as scripted, then it's fine, but I keep breaking it and it ends up stupid and frustrating that you have no freedom and are just there to signal the cut-scenes to advance.
The motivation in these cases doesn't come from you wanting to do something, but in being forced to followed the games orders. As there's no agency, I'm don't feel it's gameplay. If we contrast that with a David Cage game, all you may be doing is pressing a button every now and then, but it's your choice, there is timing involved, and you can fail, so that's gameplay. Having the game stop until you walk to a spot and press triangle, with absolutely nothing else to do in that area and no reason to do anything other than walk to that spot and press triangle, is little different from pressing the pause button to resume the game. A little bit of that for plot exposition is fine, but I find it pretty intrusive in the ND games. I haven't played or watched GoW, HZD or Spider-Man for comparison.
We turn in circles, like everybody else here. I can only repeat that using the reality simulation engine you can implement both GTA or Super Mario, but using Super Mario engine you can not implement GTA. Thus the reality simulation is proofen progress and preferred.
Fact is: Super Mario is now 3D, and there is no turning back, while 2D Super Mario Maker is still nice and happening.
And the same will happen to cutscenes: In the future, when we are able to evolve story dynamically in real time during playing the game, we will look back to cutscenes and realize how limited this approach of offline story telling has been.
That's very unrealistic. It'd require computers to be able to think and create. It'd require accurate, quality scripting of new events on the fly, and behaviour simulation. In the distant future, anything's possible, but for the scope of this discussion it's not really worth mentioning. We can't even simulate reasonable open worlds with any particular accuracy, let alone populate them with believable people capable of creating engaging stories through synthesised dialogue!
Agree, but GTA was unrealistic too whan Atari 2600 came up.
It's not important how unrealistic this is, what matters it is, realism IS our goal with games. Games become graphically and physically more realistic over time since the start, this goal is where we are heading, no matter if we want or realize this and what the current state. (Note the word 'evolution' in the topuc, which is about the future too.)
You see this discussion is lost and stuck in subjective opinion. My approach is the only one in the whole thread that avoids this issue by using generalization instead opinion.
So how can this be out of scope for discussion about cutscenes, when being the only non subjective argument at all?
I am not sure if you understood what I said. You are suggesting the ability of the engine to create it's own "story" which is a very complex mechanism that lets the engine decide based on random actions. Even if that ever becomes feasible the director or developer, depending on the game will want more or less control of what is happening either in terms of story or how the game is played to provide a certain experience. Unless you are also suggesting that the engine works like some super AI that has superhuman creative, artistic and game design skills that decides on the fly for any 3D game in the same manner a director, developer or game designer plans for months or years. In other words even if that ever happens, developers will opt in or out in variable degrees depending on the game they want to make.