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Comments
^^^^ For Colors? The Wii version. I didn't play Colors DS.
ITT: INUH and Alkthash have never played a Megaman game.
I only played Generations 3DS, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't take a life from you whenever you retry a stage.
That's what I was thinking of!
A game can't exactly punch you in the face or make you sit in the corner for failure. Games have no real consequences, because (gasp!) they're not real! What games can do is give you illusory consequences. Done right, the lives system can offer a very, very realistic illusion of consequence. I'm not saying that all lives systems are perfect, I'm saying that the lives system in itself is not intrinsically flawed.
Oh. I was playing the Steam/X360/PS3 version.
Doesn't matter, unless you're telling me that Sonic Generations doesn't let you save your progress, in which case I will concede that it's perfectly valid for it to have a lives system.
So...would you like to tell us why they're such a great argument for the lives system, or...?
Obsessive gamers pretty much account for 50% of sales for most games.
Yeah but after the game has been sold the company doesn't care about you anymore since you have already purchased it, or shows their love in money sucking ways like releasing DLC and expansions to pad the longevity of the game.
No, not really. Just that your description of why lives systems don't work in a game with saving doesn't really apply to them. (i.e. you can save your progress in between levels. Game overs just boot you to the level select screen. Dying without getting a game over just sends you back to a checkpoint)
But DYRE - you're not telling us why our arguments are wrong, you're just saying we are wrong. At least we explain our position about why we think that lives are outdated and annoying.
Why?
Well, that is horrid game design.
Edited my post for explanation.
Again:
Hmmm...that kinda depends on how long a level is. In brief levels like Sonic games tend to have, it doesn't really accomplish anything, but if the levels are really long, I can see it.
Play Dark Souls.
I don't agree. I've played some Sonic games, and the difference between losing a life when you've got thirty and losing a life when you've got one is that you have to go back to the main menu and do maybe a minute of gameplay over again. That's not a consequence; that's a timesink.
Why... why would you go back and edit a response and make a new post to indicate you put your thoughts in there? If you are going to make a new post, just put in the new information there to cut out pointless backtracking through the conversation.
If that system is in place, what is the fucking point of lives then? Just kick people back to their save points instead of carrying over a system that isn't necessary anymore.
I'd say the sensation of wasted time is a very real consequence of bad game design.
Hold on, I want to get something straight.
Here's the current system:
Here's your proposed system.
Is that right?
It would be pretty silly to call them game overs (that term, incidentally, is also mostly an arcade holdover, referring to the point where you have to put in another coin).
I edited it before you all posted. Or at least before I noticed you posted.
Sending players back to the start of the level every time they die would be absurdly punishing. Sending players back to a checkpoint with no lives system would not be punishing enough, and then there'd be no distinction between barely making it past part of a level by chance after several tries (which would leave you with few or no lives in a lives-based system), and actually knowing what you're doing and being able to get through it easily (which would leave you with plenty of lives).
A couple minutes usually, if you aren't dying. So getting a game over isn't a huge waste of time.
You lose like 5 minutes of progress at most if you die, and you can run past every single enemy in the game with ease. Dying isn't punishing so much as it is tedious to run back to where you were when you died.
Pretty much. It would then fall to spacing the checkpoints in such a way that it wasn't an absolute annoyance to get kicked back and redo the whole level.
Which Sonic game are you talking about?
Should there be? I mean, unless we want games to only be marketed to people who are already gamers (hint: we don't, unless we want the medium to crash again), it should be reasonably possible for anyone to finish a game, with the largest amount of difficulty coming from truly completing it (i.e., stuff like S-ranks)
Then why are there checkpoints at all?
I was referring more to losing your souls and going hollow, which makes players really not want to die, even though objectively speaking it doesn't set them back much.
Adventure 2 was my first, and Shadow was my second and, being Shadow, my last. Though I did pick up Generations in a Steam sale at one point; I haven't really played it much.
Nah, it depends on how hard you make the level and how far apart you space out the checkpoints. But the kind of gameplay you seem to be advocating where you have to fail constantly and map out detailed and strict plan to execute to get to the end... doesn't seem fun at all. It's making things a chore of execution once you get the plan figured out.
It should also be reasonable for someone to want to finish a game, which is what challenge does.
Checkpoints are basically so that losing a life is less big a deal than losing all your lives.
There's tons of fun in it. As there are illusory consequences for failure, so are there illusory rewards for success. A game that requires strategy and challenges the player is not always a bad thing.
Somehow I'm pretty sure there is some kind of medium in between marketing all games to hardcore gamers, and allowing everyone to finish every single game easily.
There is a difference between challenge that comes from figuring out how the game works and using it to your advantage and stuff that is just tedious length padding like enemies with a ton of hp but not much actual danger or lives systems that only seek to... have lives systems basically.
I'm not saying every single game; I'm mostly talking about Sonic, Mario, etc. You know, stuff that will likely be someone's introduction to the medium. Also I don't mean that it should be easy, more that it shouldn't be overly frustrating.
These aren't very good lives systems. My problem is that you think that the concept of lives itself is intrinsically flawed. I disagree with that, mainly because executed well lives systems can add challenge to a game.
They don't add challenge though. Well not without adding a lot of tedium and timid play and backtracking to find the one execution strategy that works. Checkpoints properly spaced add all the challenge of a lives system.
If you can get to a checkpoint easily and it's the stuff after it that's giving you trouble, I'm not sure I see the point of making you do a whole bunch of stuff you've already proved is easy to you before taking another shot at the actual difficult stuff.
In your first sentence, you stated that lives systems don't add challenge.
In your third sentence, you said that checkpoints can add challenge just as well as lives systems. This implies that lives systems do, in fact, add challenge.
Done poorly, yes. Checkpoint systems can, in fact, be timesinks too.
I never would have guessed.
Properly spaced, I guess this works. However, checkpoints can be done so that they basically lead up to "stuff that is just tedious length padding like enemies with a ton of hp but not much actual danger", too.
I have to say, though, that most of the games you have mentioned so far as a good example of a lives system are not really good because of the fact that they use that. Or at least you have not explained why does such a system contribute to the experience.
For example, Megaman's gameplay and main known features (Hard gameplay, mostly) doesn't depend on the lives system to work. You can easily just have the player not have lives and then put him back further on the stage and there wouldn't be much of a loss in terms of gameplay design.