Feedback on the fight

[AzzyGale]

This was a puzzle of sorts too. I entirely entirely disagree with this kind of vision without this or that added, like that action sequence in ep3..it;s just that it makes the game better for me.

Also, I do tink Graham should try new approaches, especially  the entire game play is based on adventuring type exploration?  I for one will be looking forward to this centrality of amulet of dreams....Because I love the concept. I confess to having been mad a bit abvout the arcade sequence in 3 at first but after that I grew to love it. Here, it's the opposite, I like puzzle but I absolutely love this final battle and I consider it a very good idea.  Yes, I love rpgs. Baldur's Gate is an unforgettable experience.  Rpgs tend to be very rich, long and satisfying experiences with great plots and great characters you grow to bond with.... And I loved Quest for Glory for incorporating rpg elements..made it so much more interesting.  The games gain so much by not limiting themselves to solutions just within the same classic genre! They gain flexibility and freshness and variety that makes the playthrough more surprising and thus..more interesting.

And it's just one puzzle and one battle anyway. Not like it overwhelms the game or change it from an adventure to other genre. Maks of Eternity doesn't even compare....Mask of Eternity was action adventure in poorly rendered 3d, though the story was goodm just more focused on the action. This is an entirely different story.



So on that note...maybe you could actually think of having two routes incorporated..for those who absolutely hate rpg games and for those who are very strongly in favour of this approach, tat is adding in some mixed solutions to make the gameplay more varied, rater than just relying on classic adventure solutions.

[aaadsa]

Personally, as an adventure game enthusiast, I would prefer a puzzle instead of an action sequence any day of the week. I don't think it was overly difficult, but what made it more annoying than usual was that it was a bit buggy: it got stuck (not really stuck; stuck as in neither Graham nor Shadrak do anything) from time to time and I had to quit and restore. Also, the fact that the tutorial was repeated again and again on every retry was a bit redundant.

It wasn't too bad. I'd just prefer it wasn't at all

[Numbers]

AzzyGale, I know you consider it to be more of a puzzle, but a lot of people are still going to refer to it as a boss fight, if for no other reason than the fact that Graham and Shadrack both have health meters and a variety of different attacks.  I didn't really have a problem with it, though--it just took a bit of trial and error.

[Cez]

I would agree that the skip option is something I wouldn't do.  Likewise, freezing time for reaction would take me out of the game even more.  Call me a masochist, but if it's there in the game, I have to play it just so the game doesn't defeat me.  Seir's ideas of having it be shorter is nice, as well as possibly having an adventure mode.

An adventure mode seems to be the fight without the timing. Rock, Paper, Scissors is an "adventure gimmick". And learning patterns is an adventure thing. Figuring out that you have to use wind to disperse smoke is a puzzle within itself. Turn to water so that Shadrack passes through you is a puzzle within itself. This is not Final Fantasy, this uses the idea of FF, but transforms every step into a puzzle.

I suppose that if there hadn't been the instant part of it, it would be just like a puzzle, where you stop to see what this button does, what this other button does, what happens if you press this when this happens, etc.

Somebody else mentioned that these were experiments. And to stay within the limitations of adventure games. Well, that's what I tried to do. Arcade Sequences existed in some of the Sierra games. What I've always disliked about them is that they were all about reflects and not about figuring anything out. In these sequences the point is that you have to figure something out. In both, there's a puzzle contained -- in Valanice's you have to figure the symbols out, look at them in the Box, and remember them enough to pass that information to the mirror --a very common adventure puzzle-- and in the fight, like I said before, it was a combination of mini puzzles disguised as the turn based system of FF. You guys have even said that on second try, it wasn't hard or frustrating. It just threw you off initially because you thought it was something else, but if it's just a matter of judging a book by its cover, man, that's actually a bit sad.

They also weren't designed to be frustrating either. The fact I felt a delighting frustration when I played through Pandora's Box the first time felt cool to me, and sometimes, it's ok to have that as part of the game (hey, Sierra games were frustrating in general, and ask anyone who's played Dark Souls about frustration). The thing is there's challenge to it, you have to put some thought behind it, while things are moving around. The simplified version would have been the four wheels there, not moving, enter the 12 signs. Or enter a 12 "signs" code. I don't know, maybe just me, but after 4 episodes of this kind of stuff, I found I needed a break. Some people receive it well, some others don't, but it's a shame that adventure has never been allowed to evolve --every other genre has, by even borrowing elements of adventure and implementing them into their core, and adventure gamers sheer at this idea, but as soon as the opposite happen, you hear a lot of squirming around. Perhaps that's the reason why adventure games are in the state they are.

One interesting point someone mention is having had these two guys back to back. For some, it did exactly what I wanted, which was elevate the tension and feel the epicness of the closing sections. For others, it had the opposite effect, it disconnected them completely from the story. You guys are hard to figure out!

It's good feedback from you guys, I'm just thinking out loud, and sharing my thought process with you --not really saying my design is flawless or even good, just opening up as to what I think of it and how it was shaped together.

[Arkillian]

Can I ask- was the easy version of Pandora's box meant to spin the symbols around really fast on the easy setting? I'd hate to see what normal was like cause I could barely keep up with it.

[Damar]

Yeah, the normal version had that fast spinning and disappearing initially.  Then the wheels started fading out two at a time and switching places.  Then they started spinning clockwise while phasing in and out (which I actually found easier than the switching because I could keep track of which wheel would be where more easily.)

As for the fight, I really don't see it as a puzzle.  Figuring out that wind counters smoke or that water counters punch is as much a puzzle as when people say a first person shooter has puzzles because you have to find a key to unlock the door.  Ok, yes, there's technically some brainwork there, but it's mild.  It's not a puzzle based on interaction, exploration, and inventory, which is the calling card of the adventure genre.  And again, it wasn't that I didn't get the fight, so I had a knee jerk reaction.  Shadrack didn't just appear and cause me to hold my head and scream, "My poor adventurer brain can't handle this!"  I knew what it was.  Just because I was less frustrated the second time through doesn't mean I didn't feel it fit the game more or that I wasn't rolling my eyes at the repetitive earth attacks the same as when I first played.  I was just less taken out of the game, mainly because I restored right to that point.  I hadn't been playing the adventure straight through when I did the fight the second time.

And yes, I get that just clicking on the signs again would be seen as repetitive and you wanted to up the ante.  But no one said you had to do it again at all.  Opening Pandora's Box, while a significant plot point, is a simple and basic action that could have happened in a cutscene without any loss to the game.  I get that you wanted to make it big, but Valanice was already being told to do something she didn't understand while Rosella was being threatened.  It was already pretty big before the zodiac wheels came out.  Likewise, Shadrack was already established and everything was said between him and Graham before the fight.  Heck, the Ranger even saved Graham and pulled him away from the fight before sending him back!  So that's why I say the fight was unnecessary (other than the fact I also feel it didn't fit.)  And yeah, you could say it's too much of a Deus ex Machina to have the Ranger swoop in to save Graham, but I'd argue it's just as much of one to have him swoop in, save Graham and say, "Check it out, here's a totes cool amulet to fight the powerful bad guy!"  So, again, I get what you were trying to do, I just don't think it worked.

As for adventure games not evolving and that being the reason why they're dead, I'd argue the reverse is true.  Adventure games don't evolve specifically because they're dead as a genre.  They're driven by nostalgia.  I get that you want to revive the genre a bit, but to not only try to revive it but then also insist on evolving it is a bit much and you're going to get that kind of push back.  Besides, I've never felt that adding the attributes of another genre evolved anything.  More often than not it just leads to weakening the delivery of both the genres.  And yes, I know that some Sierra games had arcade sequences, to varying degrees of success.  And like I said before, the arcade sequence from episode 3 worked with the tensions.  This final fight just didn't.

But that's just my opinion and I'll stop repeating myself now.  Do what you will with episode 5.

[Cez]

Like I said, I'm reading the feedback, and it's been an interesting read. I haven't really disagreed on anything until now:

One thing I will eternally disagree on is to show things in just cutscenes, and leave it at that. That is a thing of the 90s and a thing of  the past. You are basically asking to have had a long cutscene from the scene with the ArchDruid and Graham all the way to the credits (about 15-20 mins of uninteractive sequences), and to me that's just a huge no-no --especially after the feedback from Ep1.

The whole idea is to give the control to the player so that the players do it themselves. At the end of the day, this is a game, not a movie. And as hit and miss as the Pandora's Puzzle and Boss Fight seem to be, that is something I can't budge on as a gamer or as a designer, as especially as a gamer/designer living in this period, where it's all about interactivity and not taking control from the players.

[Lambonius]

But aren't intentionally frustrating, overly drawn out matching puzzles and contrived borrowing from other genres the worst possible ways to "keep control in the hands of the player?"

And also, if you're going to try to "innovate" by borrowing gameplay elements from another genre, wouldn't it be better NOT to choose the absolute most formulaic and uninspired video game genre of all time, the JRPG?

[Cez]

they aren't intentionally frustrating. I did find that Pandora's Box puzzle was on the too frustrating side after hearing feedback from our guys, and that's why the "easy" option was implemented. I think that was a good compromise on that one. But now that I'm getting more feedback, maybe the right way would have been to have created an "action mode" and an "adventure mode", where in the latest, it would ahve been about moving the pieces around from circle to circle until they were in the right order or something. Which is why I'm glad I'm hearing this feedback, so that we are more careful with commercial outings.

Also, I don't think that the JRPG is a bad genre per se. People play those games because their systems are fun. I've played a handful of those games in my life and if there's not a fun system, it doesn't matter how good or bad of a story it has, the game breaks down because there's so much of the gameplay between the story.

Now, the fight was born out of playing these games, yes. I always looked at the normally vast spell list these games have and wondered about the possibilities. One thing I've always hated, both in JRPGs and Western RPGs, is that you cannot really use all these spells you have in an adventure way. In a Table RPG, you can get creative, and really make use of all these spells, within and out of fights. But in computerized versions of these, all of that is lost in translation (I guess, understandable). 

So the fight was born was out of this idea. Do you have a power to turn into water? Hmm, that could be a great defense against someone trying to punch you. Do you have the power of Wind? You could dispel a spell that is all about a swirl of smoke. Perhaps, like Damar said, the "puzzle" aspect is too simple. Perhaps it would have been more interesting if you cast Wind to make Shadrack do something so that then you can do something else --sort of like the Chess Puzzle in the chessboard. But again, that's why I opened this topic to hear what exactly people are thinking and so that I can take this feedback away with me.

[Cez]

Also, another thing we are going to take advantage from in the future is to have playgame focus groups, so that we may get this feedback before the game hits out there. We've been wanting to do it, but in all honesty, these episodes have been so vast, and there's so much content, that we barely have the time to make sure they are good to go. And it's going to be people that have never played the game. Our testers are too used to the game by the time the game is functioning correctly to give us the kind of feedback we need for these things.

Getting this feedback at a point in time where we can still do something about it would be great, so that's one thing we are definitely going to start doing.

[AzzyGale]

AzzyGale, I know you consider it to be more of a puzzle, but a lot of people are still going to refer to it as a boss fight, if for no other reason than the fact that Graham and Shadrack both have health meters and a variety of different attacks.  I didn't really have a problem with it, though--it just took a bit of trial and error.

I guess, but it IS really sad, just because something has a meter, doesn;t mean it;s anything more demanding than figuring patterns, and those are predictable...gosh, just what those action/shooter games do with people?

And this is such a lovely concept.

I'm glad we got it in this episode, it mader it more enjoyable for me and I will never tire of saying this. 

 Unless of course there would be two modes, which I hooe could be the case. But even then there will be voices of discontent, I'm sure.

For others, it had the opposite effect, it disconnected them completely from the story. You guys are hard to figure out!

That's the prolem  of most game developers, I'd say. Some players will say: give us choices! Others will say: Choices kill the storyline! Well, what can you do?

How about making a poll to see how the votes go down on the preferable solution?

[wilco64256]

Heh well the problem there is that polls automatically include choices so they alienate people who don't want choices.  Unless it's a poll with only one option.

[AzzyGale]

Wilco, what I meant is that some players in say, some rpgs, like to have alternative paths to explore and choices that affect the outcome. others will criticise it, saying it;s bad for story. Just an example I used for saying that game developers are forever falling from frying pan into the fire, it would seem.

My statement was unrelated to the question of polls, lol. Sorry if I made myself unclear.

Of course poll would have multiple choices, and perhaps it would be interesting for you to see how the voices break down regarding this battle.

Although really..perhaps it would be too generous, considering the status of this game?  I am usually of the opinion that game developers are there to show their vision to te players and the player may  take it or not and besides all players do not have to agree with all decisions made by the game developer, as long as the general vision is what the player takes a shine to.... If it's not what he or she wants, they wouldn't be touching the game in the first place, in my humble opinion.   This is why I always prefer the finished complete product...which conveys the pure vision of a game developer as THEY want it (Including solutions they pick.. Has proven especially worthwile in the case of this game; even if I don't know how much it was influenced by players since I came here only now, but I'm guessing most of it IS the vision of those hwo made the game) and that it's a once and for all decision..

some game makers, I think,  even of some small free games, implement patches to satisfy some of player suggestions..and sometimes to me it seems like a compromise of the integrity of that vision. It's an artist's vision.

 And I am in favour of having different ways of experiencing the story implemented into one game...it gives new life to it and also the element of surprise...when suddenly you get something which is different...it's so nice to break away from traditional storytelling and traditional adventuring and piecing things together. Juat as long as balance is maintained and not one element of these other solutions overtakes. And obviously in adventure it;s the adventuring that needs t stay the focus. All of this was done here.

And I actually took something out of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity, if only the idea of what it COULD have been, though I may not have liked its direction, as much as I liked KQ7. The very fact that it featured a different character made the change into action game more acceptable, even if I thought that that crazy company was mad to have done such a thing, overall.  But I took it for what it was, in the end, a fantasy action game  a genre which may perhaps fit a young questing knight.  I recall it was dark and had too many fights and that action thing made it monotonous but I suppose it was written into the storyline, though I seem tor ecall that the very idea of some Mask of Eternity was somehow cheesy. Acgtion games in general are cheesy and uncreative and very stupefying. That's the word.  I have to replay it one of these days...

I don't know, it's a matter of being open to certain things, rather than closing oneself in some clearly defined, narrow boundaries..I guess.  

And this battle is really a small thing, overall.  And I certainly do not mean it in terms of work required to implement it.

[Madd]

Quote :
Besides, I've never felt that adding the attributes of another genre evolved anything.  More often than not it just leads to weakening the delivery of both the genres
: Quote

The sentence above (from Damar) just about sums it up for me ....

I want my RPGs to be RPGs and my Adventures to be Adventures. otherwise what's the point of having "genres"  ??

I was liking The Silver Lining just fine without the hybrid content 

[Nonpartisan]

I must be weird or something, because I loved both the box puzzle and the boss fight.  My problems with them were technical, not content-based.  I had to make a phone call right as the box puzzle began, so I shut down the game, and when I went back to play it again I had to go back to the Isle of Mists and watch the whole cutscene again -- there should have been a savegame after the cutscene.  And the fight was ridiculously buggy.  Two problems I noticed were that my cursor stayed a crown icon throughout almost the entire sequence (so it was hard to tell when I could click on anything) and that the amulet seemed to lag far behind the actual gameplay -- often it would let me put up my defense just a second before the attack hit me, or wouldn't let me attack or defend at all until after the moment had passed.  Another problem: if you get knocked off the boat, the game puts you back ON the boat (while the narrator tells you you're dead) and you continue fighting Shadrack...until your health meter runs out, and then the game glitches and has to be shut down.

Those things were frustrating -- but they are glitches and will be fixed before the game is complete.  And I loved both sequences as gameplay!  I even played the box puzzle on normal and enjoyed the heightened difficulty of it.

[Delling]

I don't think anyone ever accused the SQ-series of being hybrid or non-adventure (though that could just be ignorance on my part), yet it combined arcade and strategy mini-games fairly consistently into its content throughout its whole run. (And they were often a combination of fun and frustration. )

Just my two cents on the presence of mini-games/other-style puzzles in TSL.

[Fierce Deity]

I haven't got to the end yet because of a detrimentally game-stopping bug that will force me to start over from the beginning, but if I could add my two cents for what a boss battle should be in an adventure game, I'd say "a confrontation with actual consequence".

For instance, King's Quest 6 didn't really have a quote on quote "boss battle", but they had moments where the tension arose and you had to combat the situation with wit. For instance, when I was a kid and I played KQ6, I got to the Isle of Wonder and met with the sense gnomes. I remember I kept forgetting one of the items needed to get past them, and every time I went back, the pressure was on, because I knew that if I didn't get it right, it was Game Over.

Now, those instances aren't really boss battles, but they might as well have been, because you have to be quick on your feet, but you are still adapting to the adventure-style of gaming. Using items in a certain order to get past a puzzle. There were tons of instances in KQ6 where these occurred. The Minotaur, the Isle of the Dead, Shamir, and even Alhazred with the sword fight. The game didn't change genres for these parts, it was still a point-and-click adventure game, but it applied the element of tension into each encounter.

Or, you could do the Tell Tale thing and just relieve the player of consequence as they sit around trying to fiddle around with the same three objects hoping that they can get past it. Not a bad route, but certainly not the most epic one either.

[Aurelind]

I'm with Damar that I'd rather not have these sequences at all, but if you feel the need to include them, then I think any or all of the following ideas would help:

1. Stop with the Interface Screw (spinning controller in this case), or at least keep it out of the Easy mode.  It's enough for some people to just have to learn the new interface of the minigame/fight scene without it continuing to change on them.  If you want, you can leave it in the more difficult mode for those who do want the extra dexterity challenge.

2. The fire option being useless until the very end felt like a sneaky way to prolong/add difficulty to the fight.  The player needs some hint as to why fire would be ineffective now and effective later, even if it's a subtle one (some elemental pun in the villain's fight banter, maybe?).  Reward us for observation, but don't punish us for information we couldn't possibly know, is what I'm saying.

3. Keep it short and simple.  Someone brought up the Mordack wizards' duel in KQV, and that's a good example to consider.  There, you each take 4 distinct forms, no repeats, and it's done.  The tells are obvious (no mistaking the dragon for the snake), and the counters have at least adventure-game logic behind them.  Even if you aren't sure what some of the graphics represent, you can still learn by process of elimintaion and trial and error, and the fight is short enough that going back to the beginning doesn't hurt as much.

[Karens12345]

I think CEsar's action/adventure mode idea is excellent, that way everyone gets what they want,,
well, maybe not the programmers, but that's another story

I think giving the player more freedom (or a sense of freedom) is always good, for me the option you had in Monkey Island was quite revolutionary at the time, choosing the mode of amount/difficulty of puzzles,,

 I think TSL did an excellent job after people complained about overly long narrations, and having a short version is an excellent compromise. It gave the gameplay a jolt and made it a lot faster and more fun (for some people!),

cause it just shows that everyone's idea of fun and drive is relative and individual, and I think that's the way to go if you wanna create a solid, fun game.

and I actually think you could do the same for other parts of the game too, speeding up the gameplay (which in imo is by far the game's biggest problem, it's just too darn slow),

and there's a lot you can do, like an optional hint system, (doesn't have to be complex, maybe something like the universal hint system where you can click at different levels and get clues that are more and more revealing, gradually,,

and the option for a transportation map system that would extend the normal sea map to every screen (like in the kq3 fan game),

I think a lot of players would start out with the regular map, exploring the entire land by foot and then, the second time around check the option for a more in depth screen to screen transportation map system instead.

At least for me, that would have made the difference between waiting for the walkthrough or playing it,, right now!

but my point is, it doesn't have to be part of the game per se, like with the narrations, but an addon, bonus thingie you can choose from the main menu,, that way the purists have their way and the more impatient, action hungry people can have theirs,

and more freedom, more fun,, always

[snabbott]

Hey! It's Karen. I recognized you by the double commas!