/vr/ - Retro Games

Compare the new Might and Magic to the old ones (III-V).

>No seemingly infinite combinations of materials and enchantments on equipment
>easier puzzles
>streamlined classes (i.e. no need to decided between ninja and robber and modify your strategies accordingly)
>less in-game tactical choices (Do I let my pally drink from the blue barrel or my cleric?)
>no kewl lewt
>more railroading

And Might and Magic X is pretty un-casual as modern games go, while the older M&M games were hardly for pro-gamers. Yet, even with these bad examples, you can easily see it. It's usually not big things, but small things that make a game nice to play (But more complicated and harder), and if they aren't there, it just feels lazily programmed.

And then you have the problem of modern designers and programmers being edgy kids from the 90s and 00s who inject Image Comics-like, questionable philosophies into the plot of games that would do better without it - story-wise modern games have the weakness that the devs imagine ONE way the story should turn out and you either play it that way or you lose.

>>1368264
Good points, but can you give an example of the puzzles of the earlier games compared to the modern ones? Some old-school puzzles ran on moon logic or were reliant on puns or knowledge of mythology (like King's Quest where you had to use the bridle on the snake to turn it into a pegasus, which was a reference to the Medusa)

>>1368249

I think that the casualization of modern games is true, but only for some genres: others are actually getting harder and there are more examples of them.

One that I think has become more challenging is Survival Horror. The genre has had a massive boost in popularity recently, and online enabled ones like Day-Z are much harder than most /vr/ examples. If only because real people are more unpredictable and fierce than PS1-era AI.

However, Fighting games have also had a popularity boost recently, but it's changed them for the worse. Just look at how Street Fighter has degraded: in Super Turbo the input window for most specials and supers is around 15 frames, and the inputs have to be exact. It's hard to pull of some moves, but you'll never do them by accident, which is for the best in a competitive game.

In Super IV input windows are gigantic, and the inputs are so vague that you can do specials by accident. For example, you could press forwards to move towards the opponent, down-back to block low, then down-right and heavy punch to do a crouching uppercut... Except if you did that too quickly, it would actually come out as a shoryuken and send you into the air, because of the huge input window and sloppy input parsing.

The overall speed of Super IV is also extremely slow in comparison to Super Turbo, meaning that players' reaction times don't need to be so good, and making the mind game element more boring because you don't have to be so fast mentally either.

>>1368264
Not the OP and definitely someone who loves the old Might and Magic games here (I'm playing through III right now). You are so vastly misrepresenting these games:

>No seemingly infinite combinations of materials and enhancements on equipment
Due to the way hit checks work in the 3-5 engine games, the only useful weapons quickly become the ones made of the hardest materials. There is basically no reason to use anything other than an obsidian weapon if you have one available to you, because lesser materials simply do less damage and elemental weapons will never ever hit.

>Easier puzzles
I don't know man, except for that ridiculous seashell bullshit in III the puzzles are pretty easy in these games. Like 90 percent of the puzzles in these games are word puzzles involving the removal or addition of letters from nonsensical phrases or structuring a series of words vertically instead of horizontally (also known as "the Might and Magic puzzle").

>Streamlined classes
Ninja is almost always the better choice due to the rapid pace at which trap disarming and lockpicking confers experience. I suppose you could make the argument that someone might not know that, but that doesn't really have any relevance on class balance. Speaking of which, any knowledgeable player will invariably stack their party with strong melee classes due to the series' extreme emphasis on melee at that point.

>No kewl loot
While impressive at the time, the diversity of loot in III-V is much less than that of even VI.

>More railroading
I'll give you this. You can do whatever you want in III-V to a degree that is simply unheard of today (or even then, really). It isn't until Darkside starts to prevent teleporting in towers that the game puts any effort into doing content in order.

isnt this topic /v/'s specialty

Seeing as how gaming has gotten more and more mainstream attention and gotten to be a highly profitable industry it shouldn't come as a suprise at all that developers/publishers would be pushing for simpler mechanics for the sake of appealing to wider audiences.

This isn't necessarily limited to game mechanics, but also changing the entire game.
Take Commandos, going from in-depth tactical game to mindless shooter. This wasn't an attempt to explore a different genre, but simply saying that the original model was too complex for the "average gamer".

Or what about Sim City 2013?
>Mindless zoning
>Global city services
>Less graphs and overall data
>Tiny regions
That just to name a few.
Clearly done to avoid overwhelming new players, at the cost of player options. Developers expect players to get bored within enough time to not notice the lack of depth and options.

Not all games are becoming casualized, nor is it impossible to find complex games, but i can't see how it can be denied that plenty of games aim more towards style over substance to draw in the easy bucks.

Also
>Since we're all apparently gamers here who have powerful voices and tons of degrees in game design with more years of experience than anyone else

Stop being ridiculous, obviously fans are going to have strong opinions on their hobby, it doesn't imply that anyone thinks they have a better understanding of development/design than developers.

Finally
>Implying i wouldn't a cat

Is it possible to restrict this discussion to retro games?
Modern games don't belong here.

>>1368264
no "kewl loot"? At least you can SEE that kewl black cloak on your character.

streamlined classes? In the old games you had a cleric, a sorcerer and 4 free spots. In the new games you are much more limited and your spellcasters really need to decide between more schools of magic (which is way better from 6 on by the way)

>>1368335
III had nature magic as having distinct spells (notably water walk) so there's that.

>>1368316
/v/ is incapable of civil discussion and they like to twist and exaggerate the facts to an extreme, that pic being a good example. It is true that levels back then were much more complex and elaborate, but you also spent time running about in circles until you found what you were looking for. Poorly-chosen textures can also make what was meant to be an obvious exist look like a wall decoration and not a ladder or a door. Too much complexity results in frustrating the player, but too little makes it boring. It's difficult to strike a proper balance.

One of the most complex maps I've had to deal with was the Great Crystal in FF12. I actually had to map this motherfucker out by hand because you're not given an in-game map for the area, and the naming scheme for this oversized rock is a code in itself. Most of the other areas were pretty damn large and fairly complex with detours.

I also find that multiplayer-focused shooters tend to have quite elaborate multiplayer maps of great size, while older ones were smaller and focused on a gimmick of sorts.

>>1368349
Forgot my pic. Keep in mind that FF12 doesn't use a fixed camera angle.

>gamer
I'm a booker and a movier bro.

Because modern games will hold your hand through everything whether you want them to or not. Tutorials are no longer just an overwiew of the basic controls and mechanics, and they last far longer than just the beginning of the game. This is because the developers are terrified of the idea of someone forgetting the controls or getting stuck before they reach the ending.

When the player is faced with something simple and universal like a block puzzle, the game will still take the time to explain what blocks are, how you push them, and where you're supposed to push them. You'll then get a reminder of this explanation the next time you face a block puzzle. When given so much instruction, it almost nullifies the puzzle completely.

An extreme example of this would be the infamous "What a minute, that card" puzzle in Bioshock Infinite. You're told to remember a combination, but then the game just shows you the combination when you need it. It isn't even an obstacle anymore because you just have to follow simple onscreen instructions. All it is now is just a fancy lever you need to pull to open the door to progress.

I think that's the main problem I have with a lot of modern games. Puzzles have been reduced from challenges to overcome to just fancy levers I only need to follow directions to pull.

>>1368385
Are you a native English speaker?

>>1368427
Tutorials are pretty ridiculous. Only two games I know did it right. Soul Reaver, which explained controls when they were relevant, and Final Fantasy Tactics which had a very extensive and detailed tutorial for almost every aspect of the game.

Then you get the bullshit long sphere grid tutorial in X which could be figured out by a retard.

>"Oui fyhd du rayn ykyeh?"
>"Yeah"
>*repeats the sphere grid tutorial*

Nobody thought to bring up RPGs and parallel enemy leveling? Sports/driving games and rubber-banding?

>>1368249
I believe by dumbing down certain elements, for example let's do the generic comparison: Doom had quite the expansive maps (for the time) to explore, find goodies, destroy enemies, whilst modern shooters like the oh-so-hated Call of Duty, checking it's collision map, is just a bunch of hallways, with little exploration or challenge.

Indeed, the AAA game industry began to dumb down itself, much like Hollywood once it became big, since games surrounded by hype tend to be forgiving interactive "movies", as opposed to the yesteryear games which were challenging. Plenty of developers are obsessed with games being "movies" and the developers want you to see the entire plot, it leads to hand-holding, whilst in old games there was no promise you'll be able to finish the game, let alone that the ending was going to be worth it.

You could argue yesteryear games had hand-holding in the form of secret codes, like the Konami Code, however, such codes were usually hidden from the player and usually kids back then thought they were either silly rumors until they got home and tried said codes.

We got the technology to create the expansive worlds we as kids just dreamed of, but it's seldom used. Vidya aren't "adventures" anymore, they're glorified CGI B-Movies.

>>1368461
>Vidya aren't "adventures" anymore, they're glorified CGI B-Movies.

Damn, like clockwork.

Stop playing Activision games, you tools. But I guess that would require you to do some work and a little exploration for lesser known game titles...as well as having to change your blanket outlook on the industry.

>>1368468
I don't even play Activision games anymore, the only exception being Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions.

I usually play stuff from newer/smaller 3rd parties, well-knowing they might have something new/good in hands.

No, my point is, long ago, the AAA game industry USED to be a symbol of excelent gameplay and challenge, you were gonna play a game, find a lot of secrets, some easter eggs, and usually heart-crushingly challenge.

And now the AAA industry is... Well, you know already, with your Activision example.

5th~6th gen (roughly from 1995 to 2005) had the perfect balance between difficulty and technology. Games from that era aren't hard overall, but they aren't constantly holding your hand either. The vast majority of your favorite games are and will be from that era, although various others will certainly be more than 5 years off that range.

Overall, I think modern games are an improvement, I think Final Fantasy XII and Dragon Quest VIII are extremely high quality games. Sadly from 2007 onwards there has been a major change in game design, that seeks to prioritize multiplayer gaming, casuals and profit maximization.

>>1368491
All AAA means is that it got a high budget. The term itself is completely meaningless. I'd put it on the same level as New York Times Bestseller, give or take.

Casualization started very early. The Megaman games are casual, because there are no time limits and farmable items. Even incompetent people like Arino from GCCX can grind their way to victory.

>>1368510

And there you have it. The meaninglessness of the concept of "casual" encapsulated in one sentence.

>>1368510
Nigga please, at least you have a choice, but that's not even the point.

Not everyone wants every game to be Battletoads.

Megaman games have MORE than enough difficulty, they don't have to get any harder.

>>1368516
The only people who benefit from having the choice are casual players. Hardcore players are harmed because optimal player (farming) is boring.

>>1368525
Then don't play it that way. Besides, optimal play in games is based more on score and speed than anything else.

>>1368385
>reader, cinephile

I've never understood the hate for the term "gamer."

>>1368560
>score and speed
>Mega Man games

There is literally one MM game with a score if you ignore the arcade titles.

>>1368563
Speed then, no need to be passive-aggressive over technicalities.

>>1368570

It's not really being passive aggressive. Score is not something MM is known for.

Speed is also arguable, as there are no time limits and you can proceed at your leisure.

The difficult genres are dead.

RTS and twith FPS for example.
The only alive and relevant RTS today is Starcraft 2, aside from that the genre is dead. Games such as CoH are around, but they don't have any basebuilding, making them a lot easier to play because there are simply less things to keep track of.

Even Starcraft 2 itself is easier than its predecessor. Most of this is due to unintuitive design, admittedly, but not entirely. It just has flat out less units to work with, aswell as in general smaller maps, giving you less options and therefore making the game easier.

As for twitch FPS, well, there's Quake Live, which is essentially just a browser version of Quake 3 and is on life support at best. Warsow is dead. Tribes: Ascend was promising, but the dev's fucked it in the ass and it died too. Counter-Strike is still around, but it lacks the speed and bunnyhopping of Quake. It's difficult, but not as difficult, and in a different way.

>>1368498
It makes me buttfrustrated that you actually compare multiplayer gaming, which is objectively the most difficult form of gaming only competing with speedrunning, to casuals and profit maximization.

For people who wanted a honest challenge in video games, multiplayer was a fucking god send. It was hard as balls, it was super competetive, it was massively fun.

For gamers who wanted true difficulty, multiplayer was the best thing to ever happen to the industry.

>>1368596
Fighting games are still alive.
Shmups are still (barely) alive.

>>1368617
Fighting games ARE still alive. There's nothing to "debunk"

>>1368614
>Fighting games are still alive.
Someone already debunked those above. I also don't play them so I can't speak for them.
Also, SSB doesn't count.
>Shmups are still (barely) alive.
That's my point. Sure, RTS is still somewhat alive, but only barely. Same goes for twitch FPS, not completely gone of course, there will always be a niché audience, but it is truly on life support.

>>1368596
Quake Live isn't dead. It's got "live" right in the title!
I play it every day. I mean, it's not nearly as lively as the community would like it to be but it is still very easy to pick up and play a game in much of the world.

OP, a textbook example of what you're talking about is how the goals of the multiplayer FPS have transformed over the years. Games like Call of Duty won over Q3A in popularity because Q3A took a lot of time and effort to master, and until you were good the game really let you know just how not good you are. Now we have games with much smaller apparent skill gaps that deliberately set out to do as much as they can to hide differences in skill. The genre used to focus on exactly the opposite and started, in the late nineties, to become tailored towards satisfying those who were looking to expand their skills in an environment that rewarded them for doing so.

The same is true of single-player FPSes, where we have traded id for Valve by valuing scripting over level design.

>>1368596
I disagree about CoH. I always did better at older RTS because they're more about the larger strategy of things, most of them go a lot slower, especially something like C&C. CoH and its ilk just make me feel overwhelmed because there's so much damned micro that goes into the game. I can't just give an attack move order to something and go do something else, everything requires babysitting.

>>1368618
So? That's ONE genre. ONE. The majority of difficult genres are still fucking dead.
>hurr there's nothing to debunk xd
Oh god read the fucking thread you blubbering moron.
According to this person >>1368303 they are popular but have gotten easier, which just goes to prove my point that casualization is a fucking thing.
>>1368620
I did say its on life support. I also checked a recent Quake Live tournament and it had 1.5k viewers. That is a lot less than most games have without any tournaments or anything going on. Even smaller SC2 tournaments, which is considered to be on life support by the way, tend to have around 2k-3k viewers.

It isn't completely dead, but if you compare it to larger scale of things, it's pretty dead by comparison.
>>1368625
C&C is a casual RTS and a bad example. It isn't particurarly fast in comparison to SC:BW or WC3:TFT.

>>1368617
>Also, SSB doesn't count.

Why? its played at a competitive level

inb4 Masahiro Sakurai says its not.

>>1368629
I know, my whole "it's got live right in the title" thing was a joke. The competitive scene is still very strong in terms of the level of growth that it sees from its players; the issue is that it's only dwindling in size because the game is basically not marketed at all.

Also, you don't know anything about fighting games. You should probably stop commenting on them because it impacts on the credibility of your posts. The opinion that there's less skill in fighting games today is, at best, a fringe one.

See, some of us enjoy being challenged but aren't looking for competition.

When I was a teen with something to prove, you only had to be the best player in your arcade and actual cute girls would hang around and just watch you wipe the floor with scrubs at Killer Instinct or MK2 or Tekken.

These days, you have to be one of the best players in the WORLD to get real recognition and it's only from other ubernerds, none of which I would want giving me a hummer in the service corridor.

>>1368629
>According to this person

So in other words, you have no idea what you're talking about. Street Fighter is one series, and doesn't account for the rest of fighting games. KoF13 has some pretty long, execution-heavy combos.

Also, while ST has some of the hardest inputs in the SF series, they're also rare: The vast majority of SF games (even those in the 90s) don't have inputs that are as hard as ST.

Also, the reason I pointed out fighting games was because that's the one area I'm knowledgeable about. What the hell is up with retards on 4chan thinking you have to refute everything they typed? Dipshit, I'm refuting that which I can refute or that which I find wrong.

>>1368631
It's designed to be a casual game on purpose.
>>1368640
>So in other words, you have no idea what you're talking about.
Good job on figuring that one out, sherlock. I even mentioned above that I don't play fighting games, what the fuck do you expect?
I never said I knew anything, I never said I even had an opinion, I just said "well this guy mentions that there is casualization happening there too so maybe there is idk" because I don't play the genre.

>>1368640
>What the hell is up with retards on 4chan thinking you have to refute everything they typed?
Also this, I wasn't even trying to fucking refute you. I even said I CAN'T SPEAK FOR THEM. Which is why I quoted someone else to just.. bring something to the table. Just for the sake of it. I wasn't trying to refute or even deny you. I just went hostile because you decided to act retarded and go "hurr no they didn't" so I decided to make it really fucking clear which post I meant.

>>1368249

Just compare series that have existed until today and how they've changed.

>Thief 1/2 vs. Thief 4
>Fallout 1/2 vs. Fallout 3
>System Shock 1/2 vs. Bioshock series

etc. The differences are obvious. The games are watered down.

AAA games are pure cancer.

>>1368668
>Fallout 1/2 vs. Fallout 3
The fallout games were always easy.

>>1368668
Except that proves absolutely nothing because you're not giving any examples or listing any points. You might as well hold up two CDs and say "MUSIC IS SHIT NOW!" because that would have the same effect and hold roughly equal weight.

>inb4 someone holds up a Charlie Daniels CD and a Justin Bieber album

>>1368672
He probably means how Fallout 3 is a mindless shooter, whereas Fallout had much more nuanced options. However, New Vegas is just as complex as the original games and a fine sequel. That oblivion engine is hideous and buggy, but hey, Fallout only looked marginally better in 1997 and is notoriously buggy itself.

>>1368249
While there's no denying some games' difficulty were toned down, the term "casual" is a flawed, elitist gamer thing.

For example, to some people, such as Spoony and Yahtzee, everything that's not a violent game with guns and zero strategy, it's a casual game, whilst for others, a casual game is any kind of mini-game-esque puzzle or sports game (like the often-cited WiiSports), despite basically the later being a "rennaisance" of sorts to the "arcade-experience-at-home".

There's all sorts of different types of gaming, and all different types of gamers seem to have a lot of elitists who looks down upon the rest, the software version of console/pc fanboys.

I blame all these stigma and bickering upon forcing videogames as art, they forgot the fact they're videoGAMES, things to have fun and amuse ourselves, no matter the genre, not art.

There's no such thing as hardcore or casual.

Back in the 90s Mexico, if didn't matter if you played Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Tetris, Sonic, Fighting or Sports games.

You were playing a videogame, you were already a "player" or videoplayer ("videojugador" or "jugador" respectively, the term gamer didn't exist in Mexico yet) regardless of genre.

The big-budget games kind-of became like Hollywood blockbusters, mostly banal, but there's still great experiences.

I played Epic Mickey recently, didn't had this collect-a-thon fun since Donkey Kong 64.

TL;DR: It's a stupid myth, game what pleases you and makes you happy, let others play what they please and make them happy. Live and let live.

>>1368712
>For example, to some people, such as Spoony and Yahtzee, everything that's not a violent game with guns and zero strategy, it's a casual game
Stopped reading there, you clearly have no clue who Yahtzee is.
Yahtzee adores games like Monkey Island, Silent Hill and Portal. He believes mindless shooters are awful, I can't imagine him stating they're hardcore nor stating that Silent Hill is casual.

>>1368697 new Vegas did alot to help fallout reconcile new with old. Honestly I like the first or third person perspective over top down In Most instances. My main complaint in the modern fallout games is that anyone with a bit of sense and rpgs experience can create characters that are very very broken. It's not a huge flaw considering it's all single player but they really could have made it a bit less broken. At least new Vegas had hardcore mode and the hard modes that limit your ammo are a challenge but you can easily make a melee character to avoid all that.

>>1368712
>TL;DR: It's a stupid myth
yeah bruh difficulty is a myth, anyone can be a quake pro
jesus christ, I can see where you're trying to go with this, but it completely misses the point of the thread. Casual isn't synonymous for unenjoyable, it's synonymous for easy.

>>1368675

>Except that proves absolutely nothing because I've been living under a rock and have absolutely no knowledge of this multi-million selling games and the differences between them and the originals. Or at least I like to pretend like I don't so I can get people to engage in conversation with me. Also, I once had a pair of shoes that I nicknamed Edna and Betty. I lost Edna when I was sitting in a pier with her shoelaces untied and she fell from my foot onto a man's head. That man looked cross at me and threw Edna in the river. Betty missed Edna so much that when I got home later that evening I put her in the toilet bowl, doused her in lighter fluid and set her on fire. Then I flushed her. I'd like to think they met out in the ocean and spent the rest of they afterlife(s) making friends in the sea but when I turned 16 I found out we had a septic tank.

>>1368715
Yahtzee is a huge faggot who is noticeably distressed and alarmed when any game takes any real skill (or just effort) to complete. That isn't actually what makes him a huge faggot, mind you (his euphoric fedora explains that part), but it is what makes him the sort of "gamer" that is half the reason why games suck. He's the other piece of the puzzle that fits in with the CoD dudebro.

>>1368715
I've seen Zero Punctuation, I know he doesn't like mindless shooters, I meant more like open sandbox, which he does like, and his attitude reeks of "If it's not an open sandbox where I can beat up NPCs, it's not good".

Isn't it more the game design is much more forgiving and with more options to make it easier than changing game mechanics?

>>1368734
I want to add that a lot of retro games for consoles are from arcades and they were ment to be hard, so you pay more and try again.

>>1368715
>Stopped reading there

The guy uses "elitist" in a games context to describe "casual". That should be enough of an indication.

>>1368732
But his GOTYAY, as said, are Silent Hill 2, Portal and Prince of Persia.
At least two of those (I haven't played Prince of Persia) are not sandbox. His videos are also mainly done for entertainment, it's his job, you have to remember that. Take it with a pinch of salt.
>>1368728
At times, yeah, but he also complains when things are super easy.
He's like egoraptor and puts shit like atmosphere on a fucking pedestal which is what makes him cancer.

>>1368717
That's fine, but making a broken character in Fallout is ridiculously easy. My favorite is the 10 agi melee character who can attack 10 times a turn with the power fist.

A bigger complaint would be that the Oblivion engine makes all characters feel samey, and a character with very little gun skill is basically just as good with guns as long as you fight manually (that is, you've ever played a shooter in your life) instead of using VATS.

>>1368728
Yahtzee wears a Trilby.

>>1368735
Another reason why ye olde games of yore were hard was because they wanted to make sure you got value out of the game.
A lot of old games are really fucking short because they couldn't fit more onto the tiny carts, so they had to make them really hard to make it take way longer so you'd feel like you got your moneys worth on the game.

However this is only relevant up til & including SNES at most, beyond that it isn't a valid argument. Games like Starcraft and Quake were really fucking difficult and were neither arcade games nor limited by size constraints.

>>1368723
But there have always been easy games.

No, my problem with the word "casual" is that so many people give it different meanings, some say unenjoyable, other "it's easy, so it sucks", others "it has no epic plot, it's just making points" and others "puzzle games are casual".

That's why I say it's a myth, it seems to me "casual" term became an elitist way of saying "I play real vidya I am Master Race!" instead of an actual thing.

I don't deny some games have become easier, to cash in wider lazier audiences.

>>1368751
Yeah but easy games weren't always the norm, and even hard series have become easier over the years. Hard genres are substantially less popular.

>>1368740
Thing is, sadly, it seems a lot of people don't take his reviews with a punch of salt, but as the damn gospel, that's what dissapoints me.

The problem with both him and Egoraptor, is that they're so focused on going "muh art", being the cancer as you said.

It's kind of like having a 12 year old screaming and wailing "BUT I'M A BIG BOY NOOOWW!!"

>>1368749
I know many games were really short, but aren't there pretty big rpg games too?

>>1368754
>Hard genres are substantially less popular.

Exactly.

What's the thing to do?

Why, start every game in hard/veteran/whatevername mode, and look for actively hard and engaging games.

Sadly, hard games aren't the norm now, as gaming became mainstream, there's nothing we can do in the short run, but talk with our money, when devs do a hard game, that's both hard and engaging, support them and let them know we want more like that.

>>1368757
On the NES? Not really, they were mostly padded out with grinding, hence the whole random enemy system.
SNES, somewhat, but not really. It's still pretty short in comparison to newer games.
I don't really know actually.

>>1368561

Some people just can't handle the modern convention of verbing nouns.