Originally Posted by
Fencers
Oh totally. The world is wide enough for all different styles. Let me be clear, I am not slamming your position at all. "Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't", so to speak.
Well, I was more talking about the part that quoted with the pitching metaphor. I should have made that clear. My bad, I was trying to quote the part but it's a little clumsy on my phone to quote. The auto-correct misreads the forum formatting.
That is the goal of a pitching sequence though. To apply it here, which I thought was a good metaphor, they need to feed you some high tight fastballs a few times before throwing a sinker or curveball. That is the entire point of the pitcher/batter conflict- and so to the designer/player dichotomy.
Now it may be that one is the Ted Williams of video games. I mean, awesome if you are. Though that is not likely the dominant scenario for most at the plate. Which it wasn't, obviously. Most batters strike out more than they hit.
I understand that POV. They obviously weren't catering to it expressly with that design inclusion we are discussing.
A game with invisible walls, ladders, floors, and hidden trigger events is not being overly precious about our time. Clearly.
Well, this part is incorrect though. You personally may not have been 'thrown off' but it is true the game does stymie many players as such.
There are countless posts, videos, and streams of players getting whacked by a hand-spider coming out the ground, a crossbow dude landing one arrow from behind as they dueled some other foe, a goat ramming someone in the rear, falling off a ledge, underestimating an encounter, et cetera.
Objectively, From Software was successful or these tales, streams, videos, and posts wouldn't exist to testimony the design encounters in the game get many players even after a fair bit of playtime.
A few days ago I saw a video of a well-known 'Souls' streamer getting destroyed by the soldiers outside the gate in Stromveil. The dude was 300+ hours into ER and who knows how many 100s of hours in other From games. People still get got even by 'mundane' encounters, relatively speaking.
Maybe an individual's play experience was so routine they could no-level/bare fist their way through the Capital. I would say that is quite the opposite for the vast majority of players and the design that reinforces that experience is extremely successful.
This is just a personal mentality thing. It does not speak to From's design or why their design exists as it does.
I am not gonna argue against one of the best games made in New Vegas. I mean, of course.
Though these games are also expressing different things. New Vegas isn't trying to give you an experience of mystery or ambiguity in gameplay expression. It's not trying to design mastery into its encounters for the sake of it alone.
These are different approaches to different ends by the games. It makes sense for New Vegas to have a lot of economy in its world. Specifically to make those things stand out and seem remarkable. There is a lot of distinction to New Vegas- which as a side note all the other Beth FO games don't have and they mostly are terrible IMO.
This is a great point. Naturally, the other From Software games do behave more like Doom Eternal in layering the player's skills/encounter. I think most playing ER have played the other games. So really we all know how they work by now.
It's a different approach, obviously. One might prefer this style of design in the context of a linear game as you point out. Or the opposite, here in the open world of ER. Again, I would say is pretty effective based on the sales, reviews, and engagement players are having with ER other From Software games have not had to the same degree.
Of course. I don't think it is sensible to tell someone how they should or shouldn't, do or don't enjoy entertainment. That's ridiculous.
I really don't care about or comment on the personal play experience of others for this reason. I am only talking about how they designed some of these things with a mind to why that would work or otherwise be a different experience as a game if changed. That we can apply analysis outside of the individual play experience.