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Joined: Aug 28 2011 Posts: 537

Thirteen pages of comments over the White Tanooki Suit in SM3DL:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=729487

95% of people side with the "who cares? it is optional" argument. A lot of harping on the words "bragging rights" -- those words should be replaced with 'sense of accomplishment'. Anyhow, read on:

Excerpts from thread:
Debate starter:

Quote:

"This 'everyone's a winner' stuff is a bunch of bullshit. If you suck, you should lose. There shouldn't even be an option for that block to appear. Back in the day, when you defeated a hard game, it gave you bragging rights, because you had to do it on your own. Having this in the game takes that away."

Responses:

Quote:

Indeed, everyone is a winner mentality is not good...in real life.
But this is a game and trying to bring life-essential principles in a Mario game needs a reality check. These are games and meant to be fun, not some bragging rights bullshit.

Quote:

The only problem I have with the tanooki suit in 3D World is that it doesn't show a faded star when you get one with the suit on. They seem to have deleted that, and I think that was a fair trade off.

Also, it kind of makes the traditional star invincibility seem like a bit of a joke. I think the tanooki suit would be better if it just gave you an extra hit or something, not full, unlimited invincibility. Let them take two hits, and get a faded star.

Also, include an option in the menus to disable it appearing completely. I don't even want to see it. I don't use it. I don't need it popping up and tempting me all the time. It's an easy thing to include in the options.

Quote:

It's optional. I don't care.

Quote:

I actually agree with Mike, even though at first I thought it was fine because it was optional. But his reasoning is right. If you're stuck, you're stuck. If you got past it, you get bragging rights. Just like what he said about beating Mike Tyson.

Quote:

Actually the "everyone is a winner" thing is great for motivating learning.

One way to teach children to read at a much earlier age than most children acquire that skill is by using errorless learning. For example, a computer program will start out by teaching the child the letter A by asking the child to click on the letter A. The letter A is enormous and takes up the entire screen so that it is impossible to fail. The child succeeds and gets praised. Gradually the letter A gets smaller and mixed with other letters and they learn rapidly. Training wheels would be a similar concept.

This isn't so much the same. The white tanooki suit/superguide/etc creates an environment where people don't get stuck without having to compromise the actual level design and gameplay by dumbing them down for everyone. Players of any skill level can get through the game and even while using the white tanooki suit players can acquire skills for playing the game without it. It only appears after you fail 5 times, so it's supposed to elicit some sort of sense of shame in using it, and using it takes away your ability to get a perfect save file until you beat the levels without it. It's function should be to make it so players who aren't very good at games don't get so frustrated that they give up and maybe they'll get better as they go so that they won't activate it as much or develop a drive to avoid activating it.

The training wheels obviously have to come off, and they do. The white tanooki suit block will not appear at all in the final level. It also takes 5 failures to make it appear in any level. So any level after you use it isn't going to have it unless you fail 5 more times.

Quote:

This debate has going on for years now. I have a pretty clear stance on the subject, but I respect both of them. What I don't respect at all is when one of the sides tells the other that they don't have a moral right to hold their opinions. If everyone could keep the ad-hominem at a minimum, that'd be great.
....
Play Super Mario Lost Levels and tell me Mario is for everyone. Fuck, give any NES Mario game to a casual player and see how they do. Mario has been progressively becoming "for everyone", but that's entirely the point. You cannot have your cake and eat it too; at some point, you start alienating hardcore gamers or even non-casual gamers. This is not rocket science, people; if it was as easy as giving players the choice, every single game would have the full range of difficulties from God Mode to one-HP mode. Why would they limit their potential audience at all?

Other interesting things posted in the thread:

Hero wrote:

What people aren't getting is that the majority of people who purchase video games don't beat them.

It's in an old Iwata Asks right before they implemented Super Play but he explained that through research they found out that a good portion of people weren't so good at games and would actually never wind up beating the game and because of that they would be less likely to purchase new games in the future.

Quote:

Only 10% of avid gamers completed the final mission, according to Raptr, which tracks more than 23 million gaming sessions.

source:http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/08/17/finishing.videogames.snow/

Then there is this term I just learned:

KarmaCow wrote:

I'm really against this idea of "content tourism" where people mindlessly just hold forward through the game just to see everything. It seems like such a vapid exercise in a video game where interaction is important. It's a video game, people will live if they don't see the end.

Posted: Dec 07 2013 06:35 pm

Okay, Vert, I'll bite. As you have posted quotes from both sides, what is your opinion on the matter?

Joined: May 22 2008 Location: Goshen, VA Posts: 6544

No one real gives a fuck. Therefore, Vert isn't real.

Joined: Aug 28 2011 Posts: 537

Shigeru Miyamoto weighs in on the thread:

Quote:

[These are] the sort of people who, for example, might want to watch a movie. They might want to go to Disneyland," he said.

"Their attitude is, 'okay, I am the customer. You are supposed to entertain me.' It's kind of a passive attitude they're taking, and to me it's kind of a pathetic thing. They do not know how interesting it is if you move one step further and try to challenge yourself [with more advanced games]."

Miyamoto's comments mark the first time a Nintendo executive, and a longstanding member on its board of directors, has publicly outlined intentions to shift away from casual customers.

Quote:

In an age where Apple and Android smartphones have become the leading games platforms for the casual audience, Miyamoto says Nintendo no longer needs to reach out to those customers.

"In the days of DS and Wii, Nintendo tried its best to expand the gaming population," he said.

"Fortunately, because of the spread of smart devices, people take games for granted now. It's a good thing for us, because we do not have to worry about making games something that are relevant to general people's daily lives."

source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/475384/miyamoto-explains-nintendos-renewed-passion-for-the-core/

Joined: Oct 19 2009 Location: Nashville, TN Posts: 1479

The new Star Fox Zero apparently has an easy mode that features permanent invincibility, for really young gamers who struggle but want to play through the whole game. The entire mode is, of course, entirely optional.

Neckbeards across the internet are decrying this move as the death throws of The Greatest Generation, "when I was a fat, uncoordinated elementary schooler who could not run I never received a participation trophy for playing soccer badly", etc.

I only wish Vert1 were still around to give his delightful touch of insanity to the inane, pitiably self-righteous sniveling of the proceedings.

Posted: Mar 15 2016 11:49 am

I never understood these arguments. It's optional, so who the fuck cares...

I like that there are super guides (NSMB) and hints (Link Between Worlds) because my kid can then enjoy the games more. He was six when he beat LBW by himself, using only those hints which could be purchased by play coins. I'd rather that than basically solve a ton of puzzles for him.

Posted: Mar 15 2016 05:51 pm

More than anything, I miss Vert1.

Posted: Mar 16 2016 10:17 am

They're probably just jealous they never got supportive features like that in their childhood games.

I'm thinking it could be something like a time attack. Without having to worry about dodging or saving shields, how fast can you go through a stage? It'll be like Time Crisis 1, where you got infinite lives but the timer was stricter than normal.

Posted: Mar 16 2016 01:44 pm

It's really no different than when games had cheat codes. Now it's just an option instead of a secret.

Posted: Mar 16 2016 03:29 pm

I wonder if the people against this honestly believe that there will be people who will try to claim they beat this game using the easy options, and that it will somehow make the people who beat it normally look bad or something.

Posted: Mar 16 2016 06:03 pm

It's a Nintendo game anyway. I doubt this will effect the difficulty at all.

Posted: Mar 17 2016 09:35 am

Yeah, they're pretty hard no matter what they do. Fucking Sector Z.

Joined: Oct 19 2009 Location: Nashville, TN Posts: 1479

I wonder what percentage of ragetarding neckbeards go online and look stuff up when they can't figure out how to move forward in a game. Which, don't get me wrong, is not in and of itself a shameful act (duh). I've done it before. I'll bet most of us have, depending on the game, our emotional commitment to beating without help, busyness of our current life stage, etc. I just think it would smack so hard of hypocrisy for the types of people who think adding an optional easier way is somehow wrong and immoral.

Posted: Mar 20 2016 01:36 pm

I think the people who complain about things being dumbed down or easier forget how things used to be. There was a time where games were harder only because of the lack of information available due to size limits. Sometimes the manuals came with information that gave you an idea of what you should be doing, but people were more reliant on word of mouth, magazines or calling paid hotlines. So, that was just the way it was, there were not many options, and saving games was not like it is nowadays, which also made them feel like they were more difficult because you had to play a whole game through in one sitting unless it had passwords or a battery save (non-pc games mostly) it It makes perfect sense that people would complain about stuff now because of looking back with rose colored glasses, when it wasn't really better at all. I myself really love challenging and difficult games, but I do enjoy being able to actually have fun messing around in games and also being able to complete more games. I love being able to have the option of looking stuff up online for free instead of buying a 20 dollar guide or paying a 5 dollar a minute fee to talk to a game master over the phone. People will always complain that the new way is not as good as how they like from when their particular golden time of gaming was. Getting into pissing matches over it is a waste of time.

Posted: Mar 21 2016 05:58 pm

It's mostly a pride thing. "I beat it without help from anybody, I'm a strong independent badass and you can't take that away from me, and I feel threatened that others can get to where I am without putting in the same amount of work that I had to."

Posted: Mar 22 2016 05:08 pm

Yeah, I can understand that. Damn those rich kids, born into making as much money from their allowance as I do from my job, they didn't put the time and effort into making as much money as I do from working!

Haha, welcome to life on Earth! Shit ain't fair, motherfuckers.

Joined: Aug 28 2011 Posts: 537

unknown wrote:

[Last Blade 2] I loved the Dreamcast (Japan) Port of this game. It had the right-trigger as the super move button which made it a blast.

Interesting that one-button specials in fighters came before GC-ism in Capcom vs SNK 2:EO.

Joined: Oct 19 2009 Location: Nashville, TN Posts: 1479

Vert1, assuming you read the ten or so posts above yours before you necro'd, I'd like to apologize if any of my language offended you. It wasn't meant to be directed at you personally, I was being over-the-top on purpose for humor's sake, and I didn't think you'd ever be back around here to read any of the threads.

Joined: Aug 28 2011 Posts: 537

No apologies necessary. While I don't cringe at any posts I made in this thread, this thread was created negative (title alone and the practically a disclaimer "in the spirit of negativity") and how it played out makes perfect sense. I did a U-turn on this line of thinking when I finally gave a purchase to a mobile game I had written off without playing as "dumbed down" or "a waste of a time". You can guess which one it is with a little searching.

@om*d wrote:

I think the people who complain about things being dumbed down or easier forget how things used to be. There was a time where games were harder only because of the lack of information available due to size limits. Sometimes the manuals came with information that gave you an idea of what you should be doing, but people were more reliant on word of mouth, magazines or calling paid hotlines. So, that was just the way it was, there were not many options, and saving games was not like it is nowadays, which also made them feel like they were more difficult because you had to play a whole game through in one sitting unless it had passwords or a battery save (non-pc games mostly) it It makes perfect sense that people would complain about stuff now . . .

Agreed. Yea, some of the older titles like the above have hilarious requirements to beating them if you do a "media blackout" (i.e no guidebooks).

Playing a game in a long sitting is better than savestating games. I absolutely hate long passwords in games such as Metroid and Legend of the Mystical Ninja that using them is simply not on the table. But I think the cumbersome password encourages gamers to avoid breaking their games into episodic content. Those two games aren't meant to be broken up into segments on a playthrough imo. Same thing for Resident Evil [GC].

Joined: Aug 28 2011 Posts: 537

heh. the number one prefix of this gen is 'auto-'.

On Castlevania

Quote:

The newly published description also confirms that it includes Castlevania: Circle of the Moon in 2001, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance in 2002, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, as well as Castlevania: Dracula X. There is also a "Rewind" function and other handy features.