Assessing The Situation

At this point, Ardent as a blog is a little over three months old.  I've attempted to create a blog about this medium that is of higher quality and deeper thought than your typical video game blog.  I've spent many hours crafting the content that is already here.  I am proud of what I have made up to this point.  It's the kind of blog about video games that I wish someone else would write because I'd love to read it.  Thus far I've done all of this for zero reward.

And I think I'm done.

It'd be different if I got any feedback on what I was writing.  If the few people who did enjoy this blog bothered to tell other people about it to help spread the word.  But people are not like that in general, they'd rather absorb the free entertainment and move on to mooching off the next teat with little afterthought.  Well I'm not writing thought provoking articles just for the hell of it.  Ardent was created in part to generate ad revenue.  If no one is reading this blog, then that's not happening either.

The way things stand, as of today I'm taking leave of Ardent.  If you are reading this and you want me to continue writing articles for this blog, then let me know you're actually reading it.  Tell other people about this blog so that it can actually build a following.  With a proper following I'll continue to add fresh content weekly to Ardent.  But if no one is reading this stuff, what the hell is the point?  Blogger stats and Google analytics and the lack of reader comments makes its apparent there's not an audience for Ardent.

See you on the highscores board,

Exhuminator

An odyssey in pain and glory.

  
Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl is a 3DS remake of the DS RPG Etrian Odyssey.  One important change is the Story mode.  Story mode adds new areas to the original game, along with additional bosses.  To play Story mode is to be further challenged than simply playing the Classic mode.  In Story mode you can not even choose the class of your characters, meaning you're stuck improvising through Grimoire stones.  Together these factors form the hardest Etrian Odyssey experience yet.  This will matter in a bit.

Right now, I have 107 hours invested in Etrian Odyssey Untold for 3DS.  For me, that's a lot of time in a game.  To say I have a love/hate relationship with Untold would not even begin to describe the bittersweet hell it's put me through.  I mean, I thought I was an RPG god yeah, but after being forged in the fires of Untold's fury for over 100 hours... I realize just how weak I was before it.  Sure I've beaten such "tough" classics as Phantasy Star I & II, Vagrant Story, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Valkyrie Profile, and others of their ilk.  But those games are child's play compared to Etrian Odyssey Untold.  I have become a far more potent RPG player due to Untold's challenges.

That is, Etrian Odyssey Untold on Expert.

Yes, I'm playing this game on Expert, and on Story mode to boot.  Now, you might be wondering why I'd play this game on its hardest combination possible.  After all, I could be playing it on Picnic or Standard difficulty.  That is precisely what most people do.  I could have beat this game in 25 hours on Picnic, or 45 hours on Standard.  So why Expert?  The answer to that question is not a simple one.  There are multiple reasons why I'm suffering Etrian Odyssey Untold on its evil Expert difficulty level.

The first reason is one of simple spite.  Last year I was involved with a debate on a forum I won't mention, concerning the concessionary difficulty changes of Etrian Odyssey Untold and Fire Emblem: Awakening.  Fire Emblem has a long history of being an uncompromising strategy series, with its core feature being that if one of your characters dies in battle, they are dead forever.  Etrian Odyssey's series' core feature is it is designed with oldschool hardcore difficulty in mind.  That means the Etrian games do not hold your hand, and will kill you in a heartbeat with no kid's gloves whatsoever.  These elements gave both Fire Emblem and Etrian Odyssey their core distinction; pure unadulterated challenge.  A series identity.  Easy mode is not an option.

All that changed with the 3DS though.  Fire Emblem: Awakening introduced the option to turn permanent death off.  And Untold introduced the option to change the difficulty to Picnic (press A to win) or Standard (pay attention and press A to win).  In order to play Untold on traditional Etrian Odyssey difficulty, you need to choose Expert.  You can even willy-nilly change the difficulty of Untold at any given time.  That means if you're fighting a boss that is destroying you, instead of having to overcome the challenge through tactical resilience, you simply turn down the challenge.  Likewise instead of playing Awakening more intelligently, just turn off perma-death and you can just resurrect your screw ups.  Challenge be damned, everybody's a winner here!  I for one am not okay with "no gamer left behind".

No gamer left behind.  I said exactly as such on said forum.  And there's where I got in trouble with some of the members.  Everyone started calling me the dreaded E word.  And I don't mean Experienced, or Elucidated, or Erudite even.  Nope, they called me an Elitist.  I was being "elitist" to say that hard games have a right to exist, and that they should not dilute themselves to sell better to the lowest common denominator.  I took great offense to this, because I am not an elitist folks.  I'm a Refinist.

Yes "refinist" is a word I made up.  There may be an existing word to describe this, but we need neologisms from time to time.  What's a refinist then?  Someone who refines themselves of doubt when faced with challenge.  Someone who tenaciously perseveres through strife until they have purified themselves of weakness, and ultimately accomplish the goal they set out to finish.  That's a refinist!  A refinist does not give up.  A refinist rather gets stronger, smarter, and tougher, and gets through adversity without artificial aid.  A refinist is insulted by a game that panders to their initial inability and offers training wheels to finish the race.  If we didn't have refinists?  The Tour de France would be ridden on mopeds.  The Olympics wouldn't exist.  We would not have made it to space.  But not everyone gets to be an astronaut!  It's true.  And not everyone gets to beat an Etrian Odyssey game.

That is, until Untold came out and made it possible for your dog to beat an Etrian Odyssey game.

So why does it piss me off, if I'm not an elitist?  Because I think people are capable of overcoming challenges if they really put their mind to it.  I believe in the inner strength of my fellow gamer.  I won't lie to you, many many times Untold has kicked my teeth in, ever taunting me to lower the difficulty.  I was stuck on one boss for almost a week alone!  But I never lowered it, and I will never lower it.  I will beat Untold on Expert, to prove a point, even if I'm only proving this point to myself.  Even if it takes 200 hours I will do this.  I will not cheat or glitch the game either.  I'll beat it, fair and square.  I will refine myself of weakness and become a strong enough player to pull this off.  There were people on said forum who said not everyone can do this, therefore Picnic mode has a right to exist.  Well I say those less determined people should stick with easy RPGs (dime a dozen) instead, and not encourage Atlus to dilute their original vision due to publisher pressure to sell more copies.

Developers.  Instead of rewarding players of little effort with "Congrats You Win", let's make them face up to true challenges instead.  Let them learn to value the taste of sweet victory after hard fought practice.  There's no Picnic difficulty switch on a guitar.  There's no Standard difficulty escalator on the side of Mount Everest.  We would laugh at such concessions in those instances, and mock their users deservedly so.  Yet it's okay to make traditionally hard video game series easier?  And you're an elitist if you disagree that it's not okay?  That's hypocritical nonsense.  Easy games have a place but so do hard ones.  Hard games build character.  I believe in gamers' character enough to know they can push through the challenges as long as they keep trying.  Spit on the training wheels and forget the floaties.  There's nothing quite like the glowing feeling of beating a truly hard game.  If you think that's not true, it's because you haven't done it yet.

 

NOTE: I did beat Etrian Odyssey Untold's Story mode on Expert, and it took me 115 hours.

The 5 Golden Rules Of Good Game Design

Today's post is an open letter to all game designers.

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Making a good game is not easy.  I know this from experience and from playing plenty of bad games.  While there is no magic formula for making good games, there are simple rules to uphold that can alleviate common mistakes.  It doesn't matter how great your game's graphics are, if it has bad game design it's still a bad game.  By following some simple rules, you can avoid the common mistakes bad game designers employ.  And here are those simple rules:

The 5 Golden Rules Of Good Game Design:

1. Fun First
2. Keep The Controls Simple
3. Never Waste The Player's Time
4. Innovate Always
5. Don't Drag It Out

Yep, that's it.  If you do those five things, your game has a good chance of not being bad.  Now let's take a more detailed look as to why this all matters below.

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1. Fun First
If you're making a pure aught video game, you are first and foremost creating a piece of interactive entertainment.  So if your piece of entertainment fails to be entertaining, it has failed its mission in life.  If I'm forcing myself to play your game, you did something wrong.  I should be missing sleep because of how fun your game is, not falling asleep because of how boring it plays.  I should never once think in my head "well maybe it will get better if I just keep going".  If your players ever think that, you screwed up.  Figure out the primary aspect of your game that is fun, and make sure the players are getting to do that fun thing as often as possible.  A game can also not be fun if it's simply too hard.  I appreciate a solid challenge, don't get me wrong.  But anytime you add something extra challenging to your game, ask yourself if it really makes the game any funner.  I promise you, players would rather have breezy fun than be tortured by a game designer's ego.  You better believe players know the difference between legit challenge and pure sadism.  Don't be boring, don't be punitive.  Always put the fun first, everything else comes second.  A game that is not fun is like a shiny car without wheels.  Pretty useless.

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 2. Keep The Controls Simple

Take a look at the modern controller, the wireless DualShock 4 for example.  It's got 4 action buttons, 4 triggers, a Share button, an Options button, a PS button, two clickable analog sticks, a d-pad, integral three-axis gyroscope, a capacitive touch pad that also clicks inward as a button, a headphone jack, a USB port, vibration support, a mono speaker, and a light bar with three LEDs that illuminate in different colors that's compatible with both the PlayStation Camera and Project Morpheus.  This thing probably has other features I'm forgetting! WHY do we need such a complicated device to play games with?! It's because most modern game designers are terrible at creating intuitive simple controls.  If more game designers would bother with a simple concept called context sensitivity, we wouldn't need such a complicated controller fit for an octopus.  The same button that lets you shoot can also let you open a door, just make your game realize the situation the player is in.  Learn how to utilize a radial menu, it's perfect for an analog stick.  If your game has complex gameplay, integrate it with NUI methods.  And please don't use every button on the controller just because it's there!  If I come back to your game after a week of not playing it, and I have forgotten how to control it, your controls are unintuitive and too complex.

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3. Never Waste The Player's Time
I'm sure most of Ardent's readers have played a modern Zelda game by now.  And I'm sure every one of you have winced after the twentieth time you were told how many rupees a red rupee is worth.  There's no reason why modern Zelda games can't have an option in the menu to disable redundant messages.  The only reason is that the developers don't mind wasting your time.  Other games do this in their own ways.  We all love unskippable movies in our games we're forced to watch every time we fail, right?  NO.  No we don't.  And how many times have you had to replay an entire stage just to fight a boss that kills you in two hits?  Is there any reason why you can't just continue at the boss?  You've already proven you can beat the prior stage, it's not fun to do that over again.  It's just a waste of time.  Too bad the designers don't mind wasting your time.  It's just demeaning, belittling, and aggravating to play a game that treats your precious free time like it's worthless.  So if as a game designer you can't make a game challenging without it being terribly redundant, or needlessly punitive, then guess what?  You are a bad game designer, and your games don't deserve our free time, or our disposable income.  Listen up game designers, don't be like that!  Respect your players' precious time and they will respect your game in tow.  Lastly, progress should be saved at least every fifteen minutes in your game, full stop period.

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4. Innovate Always
If you are a game designer, I sure hope you see games as an art form.  And if you do, you should always be looking for ways to further evolve it.  That doesn't mean that every new game you create must reach for the moon with its holistic forward thinking design.  Honestly if you work for a studio beholden to a large publisher, that's probably off the table already.  However, you can follow at least one simple idea.  Make sure your game does at least one new thing that no other game has done before.  I'll give you an example of this.  I played The 3rd Birthday on PSP, it was a third person cover shooter.  A genre that's a bit played out, for sure.  However, this game let you do something I had not seen before.  It let you ghost warp around the battlefield in real time, possessing your allies willy-nilly, adding a whole new frantic dynamic to the experience.  Because of that, what could have been a generic experience became something clever.  So strive for at least one unique twist with every game you design. You're doing the whole industry a favor when you do.

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5. Don't Drag It Out
If you're in the gaming business, you've probably heard of How Long To Beat by now.  If not, well, it's a website that tracks how long games take to beat on average.  You might think at first this is something players want to track as a point of pride.  Look at how many hours I sunk into Skyrim or whatever.  The truth more often than not is the opposite.  People want to know how long it's going to take to beat a potential game out of anxiety.  I have seen time and again people on forums deny trying a new game simply because of how long it takes to beat.  So here's the big secret game designers; QUALITY NOT QUANTITY.  I understand you might have a suit breathing down your neck saying your next game needs to be 45 hours long because focus group demographics.  It's just not true.  Most players do not appreciate pointless exposition in game length.  Your players would rather have you invest those extra 20 hours of bloat extension, instead towards polishing 10 hours of awesomeness.  I promise no matter how wonderfully epic you think your game is, it does get boring if it drags on too long.  Protip: Always leave us wanting more, that way we'll actually buy the sequel.