What are some classic design principles that you think have been lost to time?
Games being short
Releasing a finished product and customers not being ok with buying something that clearly shouldn't have been released yet.
>>12260148Big head modeCheats in generalGames being designed to be as fun as they could be. It's not uncommon for studios to demand inconveniences be added intentionally to better sell the fix through a cash shopCouch co-op
>>12260190the vast majority of classics discussed on here were not finished products, rushed out the door due to time/budget/hardware limitations
Games not taking themselves too seriously, specially western ones.
>>12260197Source? A year was more than enough for a complete development on retro times, as games back then were 90% gameplay
>>12260148Games being vague and having open ended puzzles. Instead of modern lock & key puzzles.Games dictating when you can save and making you earn checkpoints instead of modern save&quit anytimeTutorials being more discrete and less explanatoryAnd then arcade stuff like games being designed to be cleared with 1credit, enemies having patterns instead of flashing lights, tools being ambiguously balanced instead of RPS etc
Gameplay that's based on the player manually making a map. Stuff designed to make you get lost and/or have to figure out how to correct your map. Spinners, teleporter traps, walls rearranging themselves behind you, etc.
>>12260206Not him, but game development has always been hell. Even going as far back as the atari, companies would force individual devs or small teams to work magic and pull off the impossible on a non existent budget and time frame.Being a developer has never been a good like of work. Between mass layoffs, low pay, literal months of mandatory and unpaid round-the-clock overtime, having to comply with terrible decisions from terrible corporate leaders, and being straight up fucked and having your contract and rights pulled last hour, it's always been hell.
Linearity and hell just fucking having level design in general. Everything has to be open world or semi-open huge levels now with absolutely no structure or genuine design because now it's all about doing things in an unintentional order and pretending you got one over on the game and broke it, even though the game is made to be played like this so in reality you didn't actually do something cool you just did what was expected.These new games don't even do this as well as old games did, there were still plenty of games that offered tight, well designed challenges but with clever thinking and using the tools the game gave you you could do things the devs probably didn't intend for you to do. I remember getting a couple collectibles early in Banjo Tooie by throwing the remote control robot eggs in just the right spots and feeling like a genius. I also remember doing so much absolutely stupid shit in GTA3 to beat missions, stuff that probably took me longer to set up than if I just did it the real way, but it was fun to do. These new games just go, okay heres a single tool that breaks the physics or a platforming moveset that completely clears every obstacle in the game without even trying and you can just throw yourself to any given point in the games level with no effort. Oh cool you completely bypassed the singular thing we actually did bother to design in this level(we knew you were going to do this anyway), have a cookie were proud of you. Fucking sick of it.
I miss no quest markers on maps and having to read or ask for directions like in Morrowind
>>12260197>>12260215And people rightfully bitched when they got something that was clearly not finished, as opposed to now where they allow companies to "finish it later", despite being charged full price.
>>12260227For me, its procedural level generation. For some stuff it makes sense, like Minecraft, but its so exhausting seeing yet another 2D indie game where the devs cant be arsed to create actually interesting level design.
>>12260186FPWP
>>12260148MUSIC. If a modern game even bothers to have music at all, it's le epic movieslop. None of it is memorable. None of it is good. You can take any song from FF16 and swap it with a song in Elden Ring and never know the difference. They all look the same because of UE5 and they sound the same too.Even classic franchises are afflicted.
>>12260148Making a good game.
I miss when third-person shooting didn't make the character take up the left half of the screen.
Intant gameplay.
>>12260297Fake. E33 soundtrack slaps
>>12260148Games not trying to emulate MCU and Jewlywood tier dialogue, games not padding playtime, games not designing their entire systems with paypigs in mind
>>12260186>Games being short>>12260190Releasing a finished product Exactly. Video games are electronic toys. I demand that my toy is a finished, non-upgradeable offline product that ends right before I get tired of it.
>>12260358AI slop
>>12260394Lorien Testard is an AI? Did anyone tell his parents?
Gating off objectives/advancement behind impossibly difficult puzzles or locations to find so that you can sell more PRIMA Official Strategy Guides.
>>12260358Listening to it now, I haven't liked a game soundtrack this much since Jeremy Soule's work on TES. I'm calling it guys, good music being a "lost design principle" is busted.
Challenge being the entire point of video games
>>12260148Gameplay densityResource snowing
Also, intended difficulty spikes. These days people believe that a good difficulty spike is like a flat line slowly and gradually going up, so like a straight diagonal. This is not how things were back then, difficulty spikes were intended design to force the player to get good and therefore have fun with the next part of the games with his new found skill even if the next part is easier; before the next difficulty spike. SMB3 for instance is full of this, every castle is a small spike, every airship is another spike, and then the first 1-2 levels after almost every castle and every airship tends to be short and easy.
Back in the 80's and the 90's most of what the average western played were action games, so obviously they got good at it. Meanwhile in Japan the average player played action games less and RPGs and adventure games more, and didn't have the same competitive "It's me VS the game!" mindset as a western player. So, sometimes Japanese games were made harder for the west and western games were made easier for Japan.This is a design principle people these days fail to comprehend because this principle of "getting good is the entire point of the game" was lost to time, and since people can't comprehend that standards could ever be different they make up all kinds of weird copes like "it was because of rentals!" or "it was to sell strategy guides!", something "everyone knows!!" without having any actual proof it applies to everything outside of the same two examples they base their entire theories on.
>>12260358Literally the same faux-art movieslop as the other games I mentioned, and you would fail to distinguish between them.
>>12260514>competitive "It's me VS the game!" mindset>"getting good is the entire point of the game"Competitive players moved on to compete against other players in multiplayer games over the internets, grandpa
>>12260514>it was to sell strategy guidesStuffing secrets into games was used to sell strategy guides, though. Nintendo was pretty shameless about it with Nintendo Power.
>>12260542true, but at least nintendo power was cool and high quality
>>12260460What is resource snowing?
>>12260541Multiplayer is a degradation. It's fundamentally RPS>>12260440You didn't beat the game
>>12260148Have it working right on release. >>12260197Very different from buiding in "we'll fix it after a year" into the design.
>>12260297More listenable than any metroid soundtrack
>>12260210>Games being vague and having open ended puzzles. Instead of modern lock & key puzzlesYou cannot convince me that this was a common thing in the past.
>>12260186FPBPGames have so much filler nowadays that just insult the player and artificially lengthen gameplay by forcing the player to complete the most simple but time-consuming tasks ad nauseum.Yakuza 0 is a good example of this. The cabaret minigame, the real estate minigame and collecting money, the weapon search function -- these are the three largest, most obvious offenders. I don't know why do many people like that game when it's clear the designers hate their players enough to insult them like this
>>12260618The irony is that the modern gamer claims that difficulty in old games are designed to "artificially extend the play time". They're so used to games pulling shit like that that they think the logic applied before.
>>12260623The difference is that THAT sort of game demanded you actually engage in the gameplay and get better at the game itself. The example I gave is not the same at all -- you're not forced to improve at the game, you're just forced to complete an ever-growing checklist of time-wasters.Of course, there are retro games that are bullshit hard. Lion King is an often cited example, but the giraffe level has nothing on the emu race, the wildebeest stampede, and the damage sponge jaguars in pretty much ever single late game level
>>12260186Holy shit this. The thing his everybody bitches about games being too short nowadays. Who has time for these fucking 100+ hour games? Give me a sub 10 hour banger
>>12260618>Yakuza 0 is a good example of thisWow a JRPG has filler
>>12260638Calling Yakuza a JRPG is about the most brain-dead claim I've ever heard.Also:>Filler(`ー´)>Filler, Japan(ω)
>>12260613Not sure if trolling but play Alundra
>>12260648It's on my to-play list, I have a copy.But a single example does not make it a common trend that existed, like you're trying to claim
>>12260618Not only that, the game has a 10 minute cutscene for probably every 10 minutes of actual gameplay.
>>12260652I don't normally play these kinds of games, I usually play action games, but it's something I noticed playing that and Conan for the gameboy
That fundamentally failure should occur regularly. This doesn't mean bullshit design like many 2d platformers have with enemies attack you instantly on screen transition but game design should aim to have it so the player will fail a given section on the first try in a fair (enough) way so they learn what the challenge is and how to overcome it. Obviously you can't have every part of the game like this as progression just stalls but modern games tend to be designed to allow progress no matter what which entirely defeats the point.Any other gaming hobby such as tabletop wargames, board games and the like will have the player lose regularly, yet suddenly slap a controller in your hand and that is verboten. Hell even actual sports played for fun will have people losing regularly because they were out played.
>>12260687How about sports games
>>12260542So let me get this straight. You believe that Nintendo (Japan) designed their games in such a way just so that Nintendo (US) could sell magazines years afterwards? Does this also apply to games designed before Nintendo Power was even a thing? What about Konami, Capcom, Sunsoft and other third party devs, NP covered their games, were they also in cahoot with them? I suppose publishers during the 4th gen were also noble enough to design their games in a specific way just so EGM could sell units! Please enlighten me on just how deep this conspiracy goes! I must know if 8-16 bit RPGs were also designed to sell strategy guides even though the strategy guides came with the games!
>>12260705You don't win every game of handegg or divegrass.
>>12260709In video games?
>>12260705it was based when it was simple pvp but now it's pay to win with myplayer microtransactions>>12260708Shitters get stuck for 5 seconds and go to gamefaqs immediately and then cry. They don't even give themselves a chance to beat the game. Playing without guides makes all RPGs 1000x more enjoyable. But guides trivialize the game and if you're used to that babby mode way of playing it's hard for them to switch off of it
>>12260708It's really not that deep of a conspiracy, brainlet. Nintendo is a publicly owned company who gets revenue from AMERICA, so yes, of course they would stuff secrets in JAPANESE games in order to sell strategy guides and raise money from their tip hotline, which would spillover into AMERICA.And yes, all the publishers did it. They had licensing agreements with strategy guide manufacturers, so they made money whenever strategy guides were sold.It's really not that deep of a conspiracy; it's just basic business strategy. Of course the rise of Gamefaqs rendered strategy guides mostly moot, and that's probably why the practice dropped off over time. You attempt to sound condescending but you just sound like an ignorant brainlet.
>>12260728This. Making money off game secres wasn't invented by Nintendo, people were doing it during the original video game boom. I had a copy of a book called something like "How to Win at Video Games" that had tips and patterns and secrets for Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and a bunch of other arcade classics back in the day. It's not a very long walk to get from "we can make money selling various materials that reveal the secrets in games" to "we should encourage our developers to put more secrets in so we can sell more books and magazines"
>>12260708>I must know if 8-16 bit RPGs were also designed to sell strategy guides even though the strategy guides came with the games!There the attempt was to sell a jrpg to americans. Earthbound still didn't do well.
>>12260740>I had a copy of a book called something like "How to Win at Video Games" that had tips and patterns and secrets for Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and a bunch of other arcade classics back in the day.Isn't that just western journos trying to grift off the backs of japanese craftsmenif your game forces you to get a guide your game will get perceived as shit. And word of mouth is free.
>>12260742>Isn't that just western journos trying to grift off the backs of japanese craftsmenI don't know what brand of retardation this is, but I hope it's not contagious
>>12260742>Isn't that just western journos trying to grift off the backs of japanese craftsmenHis example is a bit different. It's not really the same thing. It's more about mastery of mechanics, and wasn't something that influenced the design of the games themselves.>>12260742>if your game forces you to get a guide your game will get perceived as shit. And word of mouth is free.This is a very zoomer take. Tons of jrpgs required guides if you wanted to get/do everything. In fact, I think it was mostly jrpgs that pulled this stunt, but there were some action games too.Also, loading a game with obtuse secrets that forces you to consult a guide is a practice that still exists today. The SotC remake had some collectables so well hidden that you could never find them on your own. GTA5 has literally hundreds of collectables that are impossible to find without a guide or without their dumbass out-of-game app or whatever.
>>12260728The brainlet take is making such a generalization out of it when you consider just how many games had such design elements and how few strategy guides there really were; and when you take into account that even if a book publisher paid licensing fees to make an official strategy guide, the money the game publisher would make out of that would be peanuts considering the amount of money they'd make on the game. That's without mentionning the plethora of strategy guides and cheat books that were unlicensed and as such never gave game publishers a dime.What you're doing is taking a marginal existing practice and blow it completely out of proportion by taking a few examples and pretending it applied and dictacted game design principles in the entire industry. In other words, it's schizo conspiracy theory.
>>12260767>blah blah blah here's what i think. btw i base this all on assumptions and no factsPokemon guidebooks generated $142 million in revenue.GTA generated sales of 1.6 million copies.Metal Gear guides sold 3 million copies.These guides usually sold at a high price, around $30 or $40. So, that's $120 million in revenue for the Metal Gear series alone. If game publishers took just 10% of the revenue, that's $12 million across the series (with most sales probably coming from MGS through MGS III). That's not peanuts for game publishers.Just the fact that guide publishers worked closely together with video game publishers should tell you that there was money to be made in encouraging guide sales, but I guess you're stuck on your preconceived notions and not willing to consider the facts.
>>12260186fucking sick of paddingthe biggest an overworld should be is shit like OOT, maybe SOTC
Tower of Druaga is the single most destructive game that ever came out. A true shitstain on Namco's legacy.
>>12260708Dude Japs were sold strategy guides too.
>>12260786>Pokemon guidebooks generated $142 million in revenue.>GTA generated sales of 1.6 million copies.>Metal Gear guides sold 3 million copies.And all of those games are trivial to beat without a guide. The notion that game designers schemed and potentially sabotaged their own games just to print more games is hilarious. It was way for publishers to print money by selling merch to consumers. the devs didnt factor it in their game design decisions at all
>>12260984anon, stop. just admit you're wrong about strategy guides and how they were a viable revenue strategy for many companies.
>>12260206Yes of course it has always been hard, especially back then. That's what filtered many and why some of the best video games of all time are still retro: it was real skilled developers.But this whole "all retro games are unfinished!" discourse seems hyperbolic, like peoole get a rush out of telling others online that this or that popular game is "ackshually unfinished!"
>>12260984Yeah sure anon, no one back then cared where to catch and acquire every Pokemon, where to get rare candies and rare stones, how to solve the obtuse puzzles and mechanics within MGS, or where to get all collectables in the GTA games. Sure thing bro.>sabotaged their own gamesYou couldn't more obviously be a zoomer even if you called me a skibiddy rizzler right now
>>12261126>they were a viable revenue strategy for many companies.That's different from "games were designed to sell guides">>12261186>no one had gamefaqs
>>12260984If the pokemon guidebook in question is pic related then nobody was buying it for actual help with the games. It was just a cool book with good pictures of all the pokemon. It famously peddles misinformation on some pages too
>>12260192Underrated post.
>>12261190>strategy guides are a viable revenue stream>but let's do literally nothing regarding game design to help sell themHoly shit you get more retarded with every single post>no one has GamefaqsThe point was that sites like Gamefaqs and others led to strategy guides eventually becoming obsolete, anon. Can you follow a single simple discussion or is it too much for your ADHD-adled TikTok-melted brain? Even still, the early years of Gamefaqs did not compare to strategy guides in terms of depth, attractiveness, and ease of access.
>>12261191i had a yellow one that I just used for tracing the illustrations I didn't even own yellow
Telling a story or trying to establish an atmosphere or mood through the gameplay and audiovisual elements alone.Super Metroid has done that in 1994 and yet most modern Metroidvanias today can't do this without having so much text.Another one would be sound design integrated with the gameplay.Thief : The Dark Project and T2 : The Metal Age have much better use of sound than most modern videogames because it's all integrated with the AI and the mechanics.
>>12261204>but let's do literally nothing regarding game design to help sell themthis but unironically. none of the examples you gave were designed to sell guides. and gamefaqs was already active when those games launched. i know because i was there. they were the exact same as guides or better because they weren't made by journalist retards. you can still read guides written by gamefaq users in 90s today.
>>12261227>I am the only market and the only market is meok anon
did you fucking pathetic scumbag american pieces of shit not get free guides in your game magazines?
>>12261214>Another one would be sound design integrated with the gameplay.>Thief : The Dark Project and T2 : The Metal AgeAre there other examples?
>>12261191>>12261230>Maria S. Barbo to Satoru Iwata>Hey I'm an American author, I make guidebooks for your games. I would really appreciate it if you make your next game really cryptic and hard so I can maybe sell more books. It might alienate your target audience and ruin the cash cow you created but I need to make more shekels off of your hard work. Please do it.>"guy do booku? nani? "
>>12261239Honestly I don't know.I don't think there are games that did this better than the first two Thief games.
>>12261252How about games that did it at all?
>Hello Miyamoto-san, would you allow our humble guide company access to beta builds so that we can launch a guide as soon as your game releases?>Ok!>We'll even give you a cut of the sales>Ok!>So it would be in your interest to encourage sales of the guide>Ok!>So will this additional revenue influence the way you design the game?>Hmmm... No.Yeah just like how the rental market never affected how games were designed either huh anon
>>12261214Good sound in general is never coming back because gamers stopped caring about it as a feature a long time ago.
>>12260213Spinners and teleport traps will never be a good design. Not even nethack uses that shit.
Have jannies given up on this board? This is clearly a thread about modern gaming, and should be on /v/.
>>12260708>weeb has his reality shattered and tries to cope by hiding behind condescensionAmazin
Maria S. Barbo is the mother of modern Pokémon.
>>12260490Sakurai agreeshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be6km65CuuM
>>12261241>needs to make up retarded scenario that never happened to detract that he's been flat out wrong about strategy guidesit's amazing how fragile some people's egos here are. they will go to great lengths to talk complete gibberish to distract you from the fact that they have 0 idea what they're talking about.
>>12261456>the implications of what I said is complete gibberish>but u have 0 idea wat u talk bdw
>>12261241>"Hello, this is Nintendo, we need to sell Nintendo Power, give us 15 secrets from your game to fill our magazine's page count or else"
>>12261270Arctic Fox on the Amiga used positional stereo sound to indicate where enemies were. Included a stealth mechanic too, where you could bury your tank in the snow and hide from them.
>>12260210Why the fuck would you ever want the second thing back?Is convenience not a thing for you le epic gamer people?
>>12261593>he never 1CC'd beforeEven the euphoric rush of earning a hard fought checkpoint in Crash 1 mogs any modern game
>>12261386Shit opinion. There's nothing inherently good or bad about them, it's how they're used.
>>12260604
