I think people often exaggerate the issues in Sierra games though - granted, there are several dead ends in many of them but it's also often quite obvious when you encounter a dead end.
And I always liked how you could die so easily, never frustrated me at all - I found it quite entertaining
Sierra games really aren't all that hard, the majority of them. The biggest problem in my opinion is - several games with otherwise good difficulty levels might have one or two very unfair puzzles... that seems to happen in several of their games.
I think I'm happy about the difficulty of TTG at the moment. I like to have challenges, but I also like to have easier puzzles. I want the difficulties mixed in with each other, and at the moment I feel like that is what I'm getting.
It's wonderful to be stuck in a difficult puzzle and after using lots of careful thought, being able to solve it, then the next couple of puzzles being slightly easier to help with game and story progression. I suppose, if anything, a couple more challenging puzzles wouldn't go a miss, but I'd still want a few of the easier kind thrown in as well as it makes me feel like I am progressing. I really don't like playing a game for hours on end and feeling like I've gotten nowhere at all.
I think people often exaggerate the issues in Sierra games though - granted, there are several dead ends in many of them but it's also often quite obvious when you encounter a dead end.
And I always liked how you could die so easily, never frustrated me at all - I found it quite entertaining
Sierra games really aren't all that hard, the majority of them. The biggest problem in my opinion is - several games with otherwise good difficulty levels might have one or two very unfair puzzles... that seems to happen in several of their games.
I found a number of the puzzles in Sierra's series of adventure games (such as that stupid STUPID crossing the street bit in Laura Bow in: The Dagger of Amon Ra, that was so pointless, and even if you did check both ways, Laura's stupid ass could STILL get run over) to be really unintuitive. Dying doesn't bother me in games and Sierra was always witty about them. When I die because a puzzle solution just doesn't make logical sense, or when I simply get curious, that's when I get annoyed and I felt like that happened to me a lot in Sierra games. Not so much the Gabriel Knight games or the later King's Quest games, but very much so in some of the others (the Space Quest series springs to mind).
You have to differ. From my point of view, some games simply are too easy, these mostly were the games in the beginning, when they often felt more like interactive movies. Then they've increased the difficulty slightly but in a very unsexy way without that the riddles also got more interesting, unique and so more entertaining.
Whatever the reasons are for continuing not coming up with better ones, i really miss originality, fun, emotions, variety and sometimes a tiny bit more complexity in the riddle design. Leave me alone with all your shader and camera voodoo, a really good adventure doesn't need any of those ingredients, they are nice to have but nothing else.
At the latest when small Flash games kick TTG butt when it comes to telling tales and emotional aspects, i would expect them to reflect on their own work and hopefully make some changes.
I guess I'll toss my two cents worth into the pond here.
Challenging games are well and good, but I think there's a fine line between being challenging in a way that engages a player and being challenging in a 'Guide Dang It' sort of way, to take a term from TVTropes. The former is the type of challenge one really wants in a game, at least in my perspective. You want to be engaged in the experience, and there's definitely a certain satisfaction which comes with solving a puzzle for the first time with no help.
When a game is hard for the sake of being hard, that removes me personally from the experience. I want to be challenged, not forced to have to go look up the solution to your puzzle on GameFAQs or need to have my laptop available at all times so I know specifically what I need to do because your game functions on moon logic. This is the reason that I have so little experience with the Sierra adventure games, the ones that I have played I enjoyed the stories to, but I ended solving 90% the puzzles by just using everything on everything else.
My experience with TTGs has been mainly through Tales of Monkey Island and playing a friend's copy of the Sam & Max seasons (Minus 304 and 305) and while they may have tended towards the easy side of the spectrum at points, I found most of the puzzles were inventive and figuring out the solutions came pretty naturally if you were paying attention. So I don't really have a problem with TTG current difficulty. I can understand how some would want more difficulty and I wouldn't mind it kicked up a bit, but I really would hate to see the games become hard simply for the sake of being hard. Being tricky and inventive is one thing, being teeth-grindingly hard is another.
I agree with all of this. A lot of TTG puzzles are straightforward, but I like that I get a feeling of "oh, I see where we're going with this" a lot in their games, as opposed to a puzzle where I'm blinding applying every item in my inventory to a hotspot to try and get some kind of reaction because the game has given me no idea as to what I'm supposed to do. As much as I like a challening puzzle, hitting a wall for a solid hour or so isn't much fun.
Not to say that every TTG puzzle is a winner, though. There have been times where I've thought "they made that too obvious" and I've stumbled upon a pretty blatant hint just by going through dialogue before, so I can understand where people are coming from in this topic.
I think the biggest problem, though, is that it's largely subjective. What's just fine for me is too easy for another and too hard for yet somebody else.
It's a good thing that they have a hint level thing. I think the problem is when even with hints on zero you keep getting them.
I wouldn't have much problem with hints going as far as giving you the actual solution if you ask for it if there was also a way to remove them entirely. The games offer a range of hint options, it's annoying that among these, "no hints" actually means "more hints than I want or need".
I have a problem with the hint system in general. I find it ridicilous that in this day and age Telltale feels the need to not only include a hint system (which is basically not a hint system as much as an outright "provide me the exact solution at the slightest notion that I might be stuck system"), they default it to the nearly maxed out setting, forcing me to manually turn it off each time I install a new episode or (worse yet) forget to turn it off and have the game spoil itself for me. It's like every time I get a new game I have to directly tell it "please do not treat me like an imbecile" because it automatically assumes I am one.
Also, yes, I agree that recent Sam&Max series provided too many hints, visual cues and outright spoilers even with hints set on "off". Either Sam reiterated what you needed to do (or worse yet told that there's nothing to do on a particular location), or Max's future vision blatantly showed your next move, or there was exactly one dialogue option which made a NPC switch from simply answering you to breaking the conversation and doing some behavioral pattern that only lacked a big "REACT TO THIS!!!" sign. I must say that with a reduced set of location, tiny inventory, and the verb system scaled down to only one ("use") I have found these myriad of "helpful nudges" a bit condescending.
I do not want to say that the games need to go back to "tons of items, tons of locations" times. But forcing the player to jump through a few more hoops before solving something doesn't instantly make the game frustrating or too hard. Why not put in some red herrings? Let a character do something uncharacteristic that actually isn't part of the solution? Or force the player to make an effort to grab a crucial item instead of having it simply lying on the ground?
Here's an example - let's take MI2 (again) and check out a particular series of puzzles, how they were designed back then and how I think Telltale would do this now in todays games.
Scenario 1: Guybrush sees a map piece in governers house. He tries to pick it up but Elaine comes in, has an argument and throws it out the window (regardless of how conversation went). Guybrush finds the map later on in the other part of the island, down the cliff. To reach it he needs a fishing rod, which he must make a fisherman on the other location give him somehow (separate puzzle). Upon finally "fishing" out the map piece a bird flies and grabs it from him. Guybrush must now find a way to climb on the tree (again a multi-part task). Upon (finally) climbing he realizes the map piece sits on a huuuge pile of other map pieces, meaning he still has to work to get this piece.
Scenario 2: Guybrush sees a map piece in governers house. He tries to get it but Elaine comes in, takes it away and refuses to give it. Guybrush must go through all the options in a dialogue until he triggers the one that will make Elaine throw the map out the window. Guybrush goes out and gardener tells him "Hey, did you see that map piece flow out the window? I think it landed on those cliffs". Guybrush says "Oh no.. I hate cliffs. But it seems I must go there now". Guybrush comes to the cliffs and sees the map piece, but it's too far. Luckily, a depressed fisherman sits right there. Guybrush turns to the camera and says "Hmmm.. that fishing rod would come in mighty handy now". Guybrush manages to cheer him up by choosing the right dialogue option, and the fisherman gives him his fishing rod. Guybrush tries to fish out the map piece, but each time he tries a bird flies, takes away the map piece and places it back on the cliff. If Guybrush tries this more then two times, he will turn to the camera and say "Hey, I still have that stale piece of bread! Perhaps it might be useful here...". This piece of bread is one of the four items in his inventory, and he got it automatically via a cutscene upon reaching the island. Guybrush distracts the bird with it and fishes out the map piece.
Isn't getting the map piece in Scenario 1 much more rewarding than getting it in Scenario 2? But isn't Scenario 2 what we're basically getting over and over again?
isn't Scenario 2 what we're basically getting over and over again?
No. Not really.
We are not getting this:
If Guybrush tries this more then two times, he will turn to the camera and say "Hey, I still have that stale piece of bread! Perhaps it might be useful here...". This piece of bread is one of the four items in his inventory
At least when everything works like it should when hints are turned off. Sadly this is not the case in every Episode of S&M Season 3.
No. Scenario 1 is just a cheap way to extend gameplaytime to make YOU feel like you got more game for your 50$.
I have read through this topic, and yes, there are some people who say "don't make stuff too hard, that's just a cheap way to extend play time" and that's fine but do you mind explaining, how is making a puzzle longer by adding more good puzzles between you and your goal a cheap way of extending play time?
Too many puzzles in an adventure game? Is that even possible?
Yes, it extends the game time as opposed to just picking up the map piece (like in the Lite version), and it's not streamlined, but it's certainly not a cheap way, as every single one of those puzzles had to be coded, has its own animations, characters, dialogue, locations and everything. If that doesn't qualify them as "real" play time, then what does?
Does every single puzzle have to contribute to the story? I felt that precisely that puzzle chain contributed a lot to the fun and the mood of the MI series, while not directly advancing the plot. But it gave you not only one but several of those "oh curse you, LucasArts!" moments, just when you think you solved a puzzle (and mind you, you DID solve the puzzle, you just didn't get the map piece directly).
No. Scenario 1 is just a cheap way to extend gameplaytime to make YOU feel like you got more game for your 50$.
lol...adding more puzzles/interactivity is a cheap way to extend gameplay time, but adding a lot of non-interactive dialogue is not? This is like saying that adding a few more levels to a sidescroller is "a cheap way of giving people a longer and more enjoyable experience".
I can't remember a single situation where the hint system really worked for me in a helpful way. Either it was telling me stuff i didn't want to know or it was giving me no hint at all.
Whilst saying so i think the idea is good but the problem is to fill the hints up with enough reasonable offerings and picking out the right ones for your individual problems. In this aspects it needs much more work and isn't effective so far.
The help in the second editions was simple but got the job done.
Comments
And I always liked how you could die so easily, never frustrated me at all - I found it quite entertaining
Sierra games really aren't all that hard, the majority of them. The biggest problem in my opinion is - several games with otherwise good difficulty levels might have one or two very unfair puzzles... that seems to happen in several of their games.
It's wonderful to be stuck in a difficult puzzle and after using lots of careful thought, being able to solve it, then the next couple of puzzles being slightly easier to help with game and story progression. I suppose, if anything, a couple more challenging puzzles wouldn't go a miss, but I'd still want a few of the easier kind thrown in as well as it makes me feel like I am progressing. I really don't like playing a game for hours on end and feeling like I've gotten nowhere at all.
I found a number of the puzzles in Sierra's series of adventure games (such as that stupid STUPID crossing the street bit in Laura Bow in: The Dagger of Amon Ra, that was so pointless, and even if you did check both ways, Laura's stupid ass could STILL get run over) to be really unintuitive. Dying doesn't bother me in games and Sierra was always witty about them. When I die because a puzzle solution just doesn't make logical sense, or when I simply get curious, that's when I get annoyed and I felt like that happened to me a lot in Sierra games. Not so much the Gabriel Knight games or the later King's Quest games, but very much so in some of the others (the Space Quest series springs to mind).
Whatever the reasons are for continuing not coming up with better ones, i really miss originality, fun, emotions, variety and sometimes a tiny bit more complexity in the riddle design. Leave me alone with all your shader and camera voodoo, a really good adventure doesn't need any of those ingredients, they are nice to have but nothing else.
At the latest when small Flash games kick TTG butt when it comes to telling tales and emotional aspects, i would expect them to reflect on their own work and hopefully make some changes.
I agree with all of this. A lot of TTG puzzles are straightforward, but I like that I get a feeling of "oh, I see where we're going with this" a lot in their games, as opposed to a puzzle where I'm blinding applying every item in my inventory to a hotspot to try and get some kind of reaction because the game has given me no idea as to what I'm supposed to do. As much as I like a challening puzzle, hitting a wall for a solid hour or so isn't much fun.
Not to say that every TTG puzzle is a winner, though. There have been times where I've thought "they made that too obvious" and I've stumbled upon a pretty blatant hint just by going through dialogue before, so I can understand where people are coming from in this topic.
I think the biggest problem, though, is that it's largely subjective. What's just fine for me is too easy for another and too hard for yet somebody else.
I have a problem with the hint system in general. I find it ridicilous that in this day and age Telltale feels the need to not only include a hint system (which is basically not a hint system as much as an outright "provide me the exact solution at the slightest notion that I might be stuck system"), they default it to the nearly maxed out setting, forcing me to manually turn it off each time I install a new episode or (worse yet) forget to turn it off and have the game spoil itself for me. It's like every time I get a new game I have to directly tell it "please do not treat me like an imbecile" because it automatically assumes I am one.
Also, yes, I agree that recent Sam&Max series provided too many hints, visual cues and outright spoilers even with hints set on "off". Either Sam reiterated what you needed to do (or worse yet told that there's nothing to do on a particular location), or Max's future vision blatantly showed your next move, or there was exactly one dialogue option which made a NPC switch from simply answering you to breaking the conversation and doing some behavioral pattern that only lacked a big "REACT TO THIS!!!" sign. I must say that with a reduced set of location, tiny inventory, and the verb system scaled down to only one ("use") I have found these myriad of "helpful nudges" a bit condescending.
I do not want to say that the games need to go back to "tons of items, tons of locations" times. But forcing the player to jump through a few more hoops before solving something doesn't instantly make the game frustrating or too hard. Why not put in some red herrings? Let a character do something uncharacteristic that actually isn't part of the solution? Or force the player to make an effort to grab a crucial item instead of having it simply lying on the ground?
Here's an example - let's take MI2 (again) and check out a particular series of puzzles, how they were designed back then and how I think Telltale would do this now in todays games.
Scenario 1:
Guybrush sees a map piece in governers house. He tries to pick it up but Elaine comes in, has an argument and throws it out the window (regardless of how conversation went). Guybrush finds the map later on in the other part of the island, down the cliff. To reach it he needs a fishing rod, which he must make a fisherman on the other location give him somehow (separate puzzle). Upon finally "fishing" out the map piece a bird flies and grabs it from him. Guybrush must now find a way to climb on the tree (again a multi-part task). Upon (finally) climbing he realizes the map piece sits on a huuuge pile of other map pieces, meaning he still has to work to get this piece.
Scenario 2:
Guybrush sees a map piece in governers house. He tries to get it but Elaine comes in, takes it away and refuses to give it. Guybrush must go through all the options in a dialogue until he triggers the one that will make Elaine throw the map out the window. Guybrush goes out and gardener tells him "Hey, did you see that map piece flow out the window? I think it landed on those cliffs". Guybrush says "Oh no.. I hate cliffs. But it seems I must go there now". Guybrush comes to the cliffs and sees the map piece, but it's too far. Luckily, a depressed fisherman sits right there. Guybrush turns to the camera and says "Hmmm.. that fishing rod would come in mighty handy now". Guybrush manages to cheer him up by choosing the right dialogue option, and the fisherman gives him his fishing rod. Guybrush tries to fish out the map piece, but each time he tries a bird flies, takes away the map piece and places it back on the cliff. If Guybrush tries this more then two times, he will turn to the camera and say "Hey, I still have that stale piece of bread! Perhaps it might be useful here...". This piece of bread is one of the four items in his inventory, and he got it automatically via a cutscene upon reaching the island. Guybrush distracts the bird with it and fishes out the map piece.
Isn't getting the map piece in Scenario 1 much more rewarding than getting it in Scenario 2? But isn't Scenario 2 what we're basically getting over and over again?
No. Not really.
We are not getting this: At least when everything works like it should when hints are turned off. Sadly this is not the case in every Episode of S&M Season 3.
I have read through this topic, and yes, there are some people who say "don't make stuff too hard, that's just a cheap way to extend play time" and that's fine but do you mind explaining, how is making a puzzle longer by adding more good puzzles between you and your goal a cheap way of extending play time?
Too many puzzles in an adventure game? Is that even possible?
Yes, it extends the game time as opposed to just picking up the map piece (like in the Lite version), and it's not streamlined, but it's certainly not a cheap way, as every single one of those puzzles had to be coded, has its own animations, characters, dialogue, locations and everything. If that doesn't qualify them as "real" play time, then what does?
Does every single puzzle have to contribute to the story? I felt that precisely that puzzle chain contributed a lot to the fun and the mood of the MI series, while not directly advancing the plot. But it gave you not only one but several of those "oh curse you, LucasArts!" moments, just when you think you solved a puzzle (and mind you, you DID solve the puzzle, you just didn't get the map piece directly).
lol...adding more puzzles/interactivity is a cheap way to extend gameplay time, but adding a lot of non-interactive dialogue is not? This is like saying that adding a few more levels to a sidescroller is "a cheap way of giving people a longer and more enjoyable experience".
Whilst saying so i think the idea is good but the problem is to fill the hints up with enough reasonable offerings and picking out the right ones for your individual problems. In this aspects it needs much more work and isn't effective so far.
The help in the second editions was simple but got the job done.