No. In the case of Tekken was in developers having the wrong priorities, not knowing their own game and not listening to feedback. It's simply bad game design mixed with the good and updating the bad ideas so they are exemplified instead of fixing as if it was the end goal
Its not just me, games used to be better
- Thread starter ZebMacahan
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"Wrong priorities" is a very common reason given for an update, expansion, or DLC that people find lacking or OP.
Every expansion of GW2 for example, that I played extensively, was plagued by a new elite profession that outperformed everything else at least in the beginning.
It's a reason to incentivize the player to buy the pack since, well, ever...
I don't know if Tekken is the exception, I never played it, but I think that the overarching theme here, is common and quite old.
Complete revisionist history that games were always horribly balanced. Game developers today are so bereft of talent and creativity, they just leave game mechanics to sheer randomness because they don't know what fun actually is. It's also crazy to claim gameplay loops have become more complex.
I find games less fun now because I’m old and harder to surprise/impress. When you’re young everything is new and exciting and you’re less crotchety about small stuff. Then add a heaping serving of nostalgia on top of that.
That is not the case for me. Going back and playing a game like UT2004 for example is a breath of fresh air compared to today's multiplayer shooters.
Which is fine, but you are presenting it as a factual, objective statement that games were better without a proper supporting argument. You claim some argument (not sure which directly) is "Complete revisionist history that games were always horribly balanced" - 'complete revisionist history' is a strong phrase with negative connotations. Heck, maybe the notion games were balanced is incorrect and a revision is necessary! But the arguments are empty.
Considering all the arguments here are only personal recollections, dependent on uncoloured recall of decades-old memories, no-one should be arguing from a point of authority. It's just subjective feelings about how oneself found and finds gaming. There isn't even so much as an internet poll to sample a larger pool of opinions to find if there's even the most rudimentary evidence of consensus that games now aren't as good!
Considering all the arguments here are only personal recollections, dependent on uncoloured recall of decades-old memories, no-one should be arguing from a point of authority. It's just subjective feelings about how oneself found and finds gaming. There isn't even so much as an internet poll to sample a larger pool of opinions to find if there's even the most rudimentary evidence of consensus that games now aren't as good!
Your playing devils advocate but Tekken right now is a real mess. If things occured before, it doesn't mean games aren't getting worse. It's actually proof of the ongoing trend. Including the trend of releasing broken DLC characters to make people buy. It's a self sabotage to increase money at the cost of fun.
By comparison even the die hard prominent Tekken fans who had neutral stance talking about the wrongs and rights of the series are en masse releasing very objective and common negative feedback, that is very much unlike what they talked about before
There wasn't a Reddit 20 years ago for them to talk on. There were no echo-chambers. And we know how inaccurate those internet samplings are from the likes of ACShadowsgate, where for all the internet outrage, it sold as well at launch as other games in the franchise. There's little evidence the internet conversation reflected the opinions of the everyman.
I think it's not nostalgia talking, but the internet's influence on discourse. That's probably different for live-service games that get updates as these are inherently different to the game models of yesteryear and frequent updates of complex systems will inevitably lead to harder-to-balance games. But I dare say for every person you find who complains about current games, you can find another who thinks those same things are an improvement.
I've stopped playing Apex Legends because the latest changes of overpowered characters appal me. I think it's ridiculous and dreadful balance. Yet on the sub you find players praising the 'variety' and action and having lots of fun. The only way I can attempt to fairly point to the new game style being objectively inferior is player counts, only available on Steam. So yeah, I can say the game was better 2 years ago when it had 4x as many players, but at the same time the new changes might bring in new blood and more interest for a different player-base.
That's happening over a short timeframe of years. Over decades, it could be just the same, that tastes are different. If you want to try to argue that modern tastes that prefer the modern way are inferior and wrong, you are taking on the mantle of every old geezer over the centuries that moaned that the new music isn't as good as the old, or the new fashion, or the new language. AFAIK there's examples of this in ancient history, the Greeks and Egyptians, writing about rubbish the new trends are! So that argument is very old and yet to be proven. It needs a different approach than just complaining.
I never said they are becoming more complex.
I said (and /or) in context.
Context being, that not many things have changed for most genres over the last years.
And yes, games were always unbalanced, for the most part.
You could cheese many single player games by exploiting a move, a glitch, or an unbalanced feature.
Even darlings like From Soft games are not exempt.
Not that it's that important, Vampire the Masquerade was a buggy mess, it still is one of my favorite games.
And if you want to argue that this is not true for multiplayer games, then I might come to the conclusion, that you either have not played a lot of multiplayer games, or that you did so, but a lot more casually than you would like to admit.
Not that being casual is bad in any way.
As for game developers, "being bereft of talent and creativity today",
Denigrate critique really makes me
Because, it's not really an actual critique now, is it?
Edit.
My fondest multiplayer memories, are from Medal of Honor deathmatch...
A mostly basic first person shooter, in it's most basic form (excluding Doom1-2, I think it was the quake 3 engine?).
Because I loved the pace of that game, and I happened to be good at it, does not mean that first person shooters are not a lot better today, and that multiplayer is not a lot more interesting.
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Even that, (on it's own) does not make it an objective way to assess qualitative change (or quality in general).
It is just an indicator, that could point to an informed conclusion when combined with other factors...
In my opinion it provides more value to publishers, than actual consumers.
And even back then there was enough griping for it to be noticeable. I don’t think things have changed much.
This is almost certainly part of it. It’s ingrained in the human psyche at this point to get old and reminisce about the good old days.
The evolution of souls-likes is a good example. Some people still claim demon souls or dark souls 1 are the best in the series but objectively that’l can’t be true as developers have iterated on the formula so many times. It may be true though that it was the best “of the time”.
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What was so horribly unbalanced about CS? What was unbalanced about UT2004? Starcraft? Quake 3? There can never be perfection, but they are far ahead of what is being put out today in the multiplayer space.
Honestly, the majority of newer gamers aren't competent enough to understand much more than "me press button see thing go boom." Of course they wont care about OP heroes/characters/weapons. I don't necessarily agree that we always look back on the past as better. TV and movies have improved dramatically as time goes on to point out one example in a similar field.
Single player games don't really even matter from a balance perspective. I have been a heavily MP focused gamer my entire life, several of which I played at a very high level. Imbalances always existed, just not to the absurd degree they exist today. It isn't due to more complex gameplay loops, just poor decision making and catering to the wrong demographic.I never said they are becoming more complex.
I said (and /or) in context.
Context being, that not many things have changed for most genres over the last years.
And yes, games were always unbalanced, for the most part.
You could cheese many single player games by exploiting a move, a glitch, or an unbalanced feature.
Even darlings like From Soft games are not exempt.
Not that it's that important, Vampire the Masquerade was a buggy mess, it still is one of my favorite games.
And if you want to argue that this is not true for multiplayer games, then I might come to the conclusion, that you either have not played a lot of multiplayer games, or that you did so, but a lot more casually than you would like to admit.
Not that being casual is bad in any way.
As for game developers, "being bereft of talent and creativity today",
Denigrate critique really makes me
Because, it's not really an actual critique now, is it?
Edit.
My fondest multiplayer memories, are from Medal of Honor deathmatch...
A mostly basic first person shooter, in it's most basic form (excluding Doom1-2, I think it was the quake 3 engine?).
Because I loved the pace of that game, and I happened to be good at it, does not mean that first person shooters are not a lot better today, and that multiplayer is not a lot more interesting.
I don't know. You haven't expressed any actual balance issues in any games, good or bad. If your argument consisted of more than "this is bad" then we might be able to explore that. My first thinking, having not been a huge MP gamer, is 1) that's a very small subset of games; are you equating the MP experience to all games? And 2) they were really simple! You had basic mechanics and a few weapons. There wasn't anything even close to the complexities of Overwatch, Apex, Marvel's Rivals, et al. Of the MP games I remember playing when I started on PS3, like MAG, Warhawk, KZ2, whatever, some had serious shortcomings within their limited systems. And other games like Mario Kart used rubber-banding to cheat balance.
Your argument needs a way to quantify or qualify the imbalances you claim. It's notably important to the discussion because you are making it personal on the reputation of game designers, saying they are all shit at their job. An assertion like that needs some decent basis to be fair.
This topic is about all games. If you are only talking about MP, you need to make that distinction.
'Wrong demographic' means 'it's not to my tastes'. Sorry, but that argument is entirely, selfishly subjective. It's like saying the new Indian restaurant is shit and the people who like it are morons because it replaced the chippy that you used to love. This is simply the 'grumpy old man angry at a changing world' argument, and you haven't added anything new to suggest otherwise and make a meaningful argument that attempts to identify what's changed and how.
We are using very generic language here like "taste" and "trends" but they dont say much. There are negative and positive trends as well as negative and positive tastes.
If I enjoy games that are fair thats a taste. If I enjoy broken games where I can troll and make other people's experience miserable, thats also taste.
If I enjoy the gameplay experience of a good game thats taste. Wasting effort, time and money on overpriced cosmetics of a broken game, thats also taste.
If more games with fair play that target enjoyment first and foremost appear, it is a trend. If more games with broken gameplay that put enjoyment on the backseat but profit at the front, thats also a trend.
So the question is where are we heading?
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You beat me to it.
I really don't get this entirely entitled behavior.
I don't like it, therefore it is hot garbage, the people responsible for it are talentless hacks, and it should never have existed.
That is the summary of the sentiment expressed, when, the only "sin" that was actually committed is, catering to anyone else but "me".
And even those were not perfectly balanced...
Most people would loose their shit, if they tried to code a 30 something year old game like Frogger.
Yet they think that those shortcomings they find in a AAA game that got a 7/10 are easy pickings, correcting those "mistakes" should be a matter of days, and balancing a multiplayer game is second nature.
Either my echo-chamber declared that game a "10/10 masterpiece" or it's for the gutter.
arandomguy
Veteran
Your comment is still highlighting the subjectivity issue he mentioned in that your assigning positive connotations to your preferences and negative connotations to your dislikes which is completely subjective.
I picked a small subset of games that I played for thousands of hours each at a high level. They were not really simple. StarCraft in particular is one of the most complex games ever created. The other three games don't have an inordinate amount of heroes, but the actual gameplay mechanics have more depth and allow for proper skill scaling. Let's look at Marvel's Rivals as it is a game I have played recently. It's pretty much a carbon copy of what I remember from Overwatch. The heroes and abilities are almost a complete match. There are huge issues with the game design. A large number of abilities are focused on removing your opponent's ability to interact at all with the game. They basically turn off your opponent's M+KB for a predetermined amount of time. What's worse, these abilities can be chained together in such a manner that for some 10-15 seconds you are just sitting there twiddling your thumbs. These types of mechanics are simply trading one player's enjoyment for another's. It's weak and lazy game design. It has no place in a competitive, PVP shooter. Less bad are the abilities where you press a single button to become invincible and deal massive damage over a given area. There is no counter play to many of these abilities other than another hero simply pressing a button to deny damage over a given area. This is another example of weak design that trades enjoyment between players. For games with such large numbers of characters, it is a problem when at the highest levels of play you see the exact same heroes being used by almost everyone. Overwatch pro play for example was very often just a mirror matchup between teams.
It may come off selfish but it makes perfect sense. These games are being developed and balanced around the bottom tier of gamers. Balance and game design hardly matters at this level. They just wanna unlock skins and see cool effects happen when they press buttons. You could design the gameplay around a higher tier without affecting the enjoyment of the lower tier. The reverse is not true.
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I would rather say that your comments highlight the resistance towards describing things as they are and rather treat all phenomenons as generic trends and tastes as if they are all equal in a debate that sounds more philosophical rather than practical.
In the same vain everything can be questioned and gaslighted. What is enjoyment anyway? Who decides what's a good game or not? Everything can be covered under a layer of subjectivity to ignore the elephant in the room. Therefore all games are equally fun and equally good.
Who decides if my comment is subjective or objective? Who decides if your comment is subjective and therefore highlights that you can't objectively say I am assigning connotations based on my personal likes and dislikes?Therefore then there are no negative and positive trends or behaviors as long as someone enjoys some of them. Even if I am hypothetically a comfort eating overweight who enjoys spending 18hours a Day socializing on social media, and playing games for the cosmetical aesthetics and releasing my emotional tension on MP chat. See? I used positive connotations now.
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The problem is that entirely subjective takes, are presented as universally correct with an air of expert authority.
I'll say it again.
I personally intensely dislike From Soft's take on action combat.
Do I think Elden Ring is a bad game?
No.
It is not for me.
I am not the target audience.
If you want to describe things as they are, if you want to be objective and practical, then you should take into consideration the actual spectrum of quality.
If a 7 out of ten game is abysmal in quality, and the developers that made it are useless and uninspired, then what is "The Lord of the Rings : Gollum"?
Do you think that Gollum is the worst the gaming industry has to offer?
If you do, then you are sorely mistaken.
Because Gollum, is a 4 out of 10 compared to the nightmares that exist out there.
Quality is comparative, the rest is just taste.
Yes, there are good games, bad games and, something omitted from the discussion like it doesn't exist, everything in between.
The thing is, most games, are in the in-between, as they should be.
If you don't like the in-between, then you probably shouldn't be here.
You went to the horror movie forum, and started complaining about all cinema because the only thing you like is Hitchcock movies.
Mate, modern cinema is not for you, move on.
I'll say it again.
I personally intensely dislike From Soft's take on action combat.
Do I think Elden Ring is a bad game?
No.
It is not for me.
I am not the target audience.
If you want to describe things as they are, if you want to be objective and practical, then you should take into consideration the actual spectrum of quality.
If a 7 out of ten game is abysmal in quality, and the developers that made it are useless and uninspired, then what is "The Lord of the Rings : Gollum"?
Do you think that Gollum is the worst the gaming industry has to offer?
If you do, then you are sorely mistaken.
Because Gollum, is a 4 out of 10 compared to the nightmares that exist out there.
Quality is comparative, the rest is just taste.
Yes, there are good games, bad games and, something omitted from the discussion like it doesn't exist, everything in between.
The thing is, most games, are in the in-between, as they should be.
If you don't like the in-between, then you probably shouldn't be here.
You went to the horror movie forum, and started complaining about all cinema because the only thing you like is Hitchcock movies.
Mate, modern cinema is not for you, move on.
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