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Infocom-Style Difficulty Ratings

thesporkmanthesporkman
edited March 2011 in General Chat
Just something I was thinking about... Infocom used to label and categorize their games under four different difficulty ratings: Introductory, Standard, Advanced, and Expert. Perhaps if Telltale employed a similar system they could avoid some of the negative backlash from fans and newcomers about the difficulty level of their games. If potential customers knew in advance that Back to the Future was designed to be an easy and accessible "introductory"-level adventure game, longtime adventure fans probably wouldn't have had the same expectations about the puzzle difficulty and wouldn't have been left feeling disappointed. Likewise, assuming Telltale's King's Quest is going to live up the Sierra style of gameplay, the game could be labeled as having "advanced" difficulty to let potential customers know that the gameplay will be more challenging than their "introductory" games like BttF and their "standard" games like the first two Sam and Max seasons.

Comments

  • jp-30jp-30
    edited March 2011
    They did used to do that with Bone and the first few Sam & Max episodes, if i recall correctly.
  • jp-30jp-30
    edited March 2011
    Taumel. No.
  • thesporkmanthesporkman
    edited March 2011
    jp-30 wrote: »
    They did used to do that with Bone and the first few Sam & Max episodes, if i recall correctly.

    Really? I don't remember that. My memory's pretty lousy though.
  • RAnthonyMahanRAnthonyMahan
    edited March 2011
    I'd like to know what evil man at Infocom listed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as "Standard." :p
  • zounds!zounds!
    edited March 2011
    RAnthonyMahan wrote: »
    I'd like to know what evil man at Infocom listed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as "Standard." :p

    Haha! Getting the Babel-Fish was/is the most frustrating thing I've ever experienced in a game. Knowledge of the books and TV series really helped out a lot in that game though. Still though, brutal.
  • WarpSpeedWarpSpeed
    edited March 2011
    I'd vote for this, too, except that with five different help levels, Expert can become Easy with some minor configuration. I'd prefer something that lets the user choose the challenge level, with the ability to slide back (without restarting the game) if that proves to be too frustrating.

    (I seem to recall that in one of its later text adventures, Infocom had a "HELP" that worked, and for those who didn't want to be tempted, they could type "HELP OFF" to disable it at the beginning, and it could not be turned back on without restarting the game. These days, that's probably no longer a good idea.)
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