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Indivisible: Lab Zero's Action-RPG! (General Discussion)

There is a great invention for people who want to see a game's story but doesn't want to play it. It's called youtube.
Yeah, it's totally great. Except that doesn't give Lab Zero another sale.

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So now I must ask: do you think a "skip gameplay" mode would be really a feature so important that would be a sales-driver?
 
So now I must ask: do you think a "skip gameplay" mode would be really a feature so important that would be a sales-driver?
Depends on how easily it can be done. Besides, my point in the discussion isn't that it's something that NEEDS to be in. Just that it's kind of weird that it's said that it's something that needs to be hidden or 'earned' if it *is* implemented.

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So now I must ask: do you think a "skip gameplay" mode would be really a feature so important that would be a sales-driver?
You do remember, that Mike implemented features for blind people in Skullgirls, right? Can't imagine that was worth it monetarily.
 
So now I must ask: do you think a "skip gameplay" mode would be really a feature so important that would be a sales-driver?
100%. Or rather, there will be people who will buy the game that would quit midway through, and this lets them enjoy the whole thing.

There are 2 kinds of fans: fans of the game as a game, and fans of the game as a story (characters, plot, lore, setting, dialogue, etc.) Both are equal types of fans, and if I can make the game better for one without making it worse for the other, I will. For example, the fact that SG doesn't care what difficulty you beat Story Mode on.
 
like what?
Beo's chair and Fortune's head-off constantly make sound?
Different meter levels create different sounds when reached?
Every normal(?) has its own unique voice clip?
Yada-yada, I can go on like this forever
I know there's a video of 2 blind guys playing skullgirls and pointing out the things but I can't be arsed to find it.
 
There is a great invention for people who want to see a game's story but doesn't want to play it. It's called youtube.

The issue at hand with the topic as I brought it up, like in that article, was that it isn't the gameplay in general, it was the combat being difficult. People still enjoy the feeling of controlling a character, exploring an environment, and probably mashing some buttons in simple combat, but can't find the drive to pull themselves up against the challengeing combat stuff. There still is something to be had with playing the game, just that some people don't want to deal with frustration when they can't understand something that's at play in the mechanics.
 
The issue at hand with the topic as I brought it up, like in that article, was that it isn't the gameplay in general, it was the combat being difficult. People still enjoy the feeling of controlling a character, exploring an environment, and probably mashing some buttons in simple combat, but can't find the drive to pull themselves up against the challengeing combat stuff. There still is something to be had with playing the game, just that some people don't want to deal with frustration when they can't understand something that's at play in the mechanics.

Souls games are difficult and still enjoy massive popularity. If the problem is the level of difficulty, the solution is not to eliminate any challenge but to fine tune it.
 
Souls games are difficult and still enjoy massive popularity.
Souls games aren't really hard insomuch as they're different.
The joy that a person gets from a souls game is from acclimating to those different systems and learning commitment.
While Indivisible, on the otherhand, would really be more about optimization of attack cycles. Not everyone can really do that, or feel satisfaction from that.
And really, you can fine tune the difficulty all you want, someone somewhere is gonna want to get invested in the world and experience it themselves but their experience is going to be hampered by the fact that they just can't understand the combat.
That's why I think something like UNIEL's auto-combo would be useful. Hell, think of it as a fighting-game. You give them the auto-combo and that takes away the tedium and difficulty of combos but they still get to learn and enjoy the neutral game themselves.
 
There was a great Gaijin Goomba episode on this. Too bad I cant link it cause my phone is stupid. But as he AND MIKE earlier said, more settings for play mean more people can get it and fine tune that experience to their tastes. Heck, the director I believe of Dark Souls said he was at one point considering an easy mode for Dark Souls so that newer players could pick up the game, enjoy it, and likely build up the skill to best it on normal or NG+ difficulty on their next run.

The problem is deciding how to fine tune those other modes/difficulties so that you still get an entertaining and immersive experience. That's what I see the problem as. You could have like Dev notes places around that players can turn on or off. Players can then listen to them if they want and they might contain little dev talks in addition to general hints on how to progress in the coming area. You could add a litle wisp that displays tutorials once or twice on how to use a new tool in the platforming right after getting it so people will know what to do, but the wisp only shows up then so it's not intrusive. Probably a ton of other ideas for how to tune the experience last those examples. But whatever is done, well still know that if the prototype is anything to go by, well see plenty of contextual clues on how to use new toys in the level design itself, which is always grand. :D
 
Then it becomes an anime movie with serious padding between talking scenes, which is the meat of what they are trying to consume.
 
Then it becomes an anime movie with serious padding between talking scenes, which is the meat of what they are trying to consume.
Well, if an option like that is implemented if somebody actually does want to buy it and play it that way then it's win/win.

Players get to play it and watchers still get to experience it. Nobody loses. [emoji93]

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Then it becomes an anime movie with serious padding between talking scenes, which is the meat of what they are trying to consume.
So, is your argument that easy/story modes shouldn't exist in a game because it somehow ruins how the game is "meant" to be experienced?

If that is the case, then shouldn't hard modes also be frowned upon/not included? You might say that an easy mode ruins an experience by removing the tension from certain situations in the game, or it might make things like skill/weapon choice less meaningful because everything just kills everything. But hard modes can be guilty of the same things. A battle that used to be a tense battle of wits might just turn into "do I have enough HP/Def to tank this boss' spam?" or it might force you to use strategies that "cheese" enemies in order to actually survive. It becomes all or nothing. You either know how to exploit everything and you're guaranteed to win, or you don't and you're guaranteed to lose. Weapon and skill choice can also become completely pointless, but instead of everything being equally overpowered, there's only one or two things that have enough damage/utility/niche usefulness to warrant using.

The thing is, not all hard modes do this, and even the ones that do aren't necessarily bad. They often add a nice bit of challenge for someone who might already be intimately familiar with the systems/mechanics of the game. Either from playing the game a lot, or from playing a lot of games in similar styles/genres. Hard modes provide something extra for players who have gotten good enough at the "standard" difficulty that it's no longer challenging. I've played tons of Fire Emblem, to the point that I often just start on Hard Mode difficulty by default, even with new entries. To me, I've gotten to the point where normal doesn't really present the same level of challenge or reward anymore, and I know many others feel the same way. Should I be fighting for Fire Emblem to just remove normal difficulty then? Personally, I don't think so. I have hard mode right there, there's no reason to make the experience worse for a ton of other people, and there's especially no reason to make their experience worse when it doesn't affect my experience in the slightest.

To me, this whole argument against (single player) games having super easy modes is just pure insanity. It's giving more people more options to play the game how they want to play it. To use the Souls series as an example, there are a number of people who are really into to the lore of those games that, based on personal experience, would argue you're not really experiencing the game if you don't read all of the little bits of info found on the items and exhaust all of the NPC dialogue. Yet loads of people couldn't care less about this and its fine. People still get salty about it, but it's nothing like when you suggest an "easy" mode and everyone loses their goddamned mind. Even though they're both just different ways to experience the game.
 
like what?
Experience for yourself:
1. Go get ClipReader here.
2. Add the launch option -useclipboard (or -useclipboardsound which will make a sound anytime anything new is copied to the clipboard, which you don't really want with ClipReader).
3. Run the game.
There were hella articles about this stuff back when I did it.

Souls games aren't really hard insomuch as they're different.
Nope, they're basically standard for beat-em-ups.
Here is a very-difficult-to-read article wherein the author goes through what he likes about Souls and Bloodborne by reinventing terms for things that fighting games have had terms for forever:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/240839/Bloodborne_You_are_the_experience_points.php

The joy that a person gets from a souls game is from acclimating to those different systems and learning commitment.
While Indivisible, on the otherhand, would really be more about optimization of attack cycles. Not everyone can really do that, or feel satisfaction from that.
Er? You don't have to optimize nothin' to play or enjoy Indivisible. Plenty of people told me, "When I finally learned blocking against the boss, that was when everything really clicked and the prototype became a ton of fun."
In both games, the point is that the player improves, rather than that the game improves the player character and the player themselves doesn't get much better.

And really, you can fine tune the difficulty all you want, someone somewhere is gonna want to get invested in the world and experience it themselves but their experience is going to be hampered by the fact that they just can't understand the combat.
Or maybe the platforming, or maybe the exploration. Or maybe the fact that they understand but don't LIKE the combat, which is what happened to me with the Souls games.
I think you're hung up on something dumb, honestly. Tons of people quit Super Metroid after getting to Norfair the first time and getting lost. (Or even after getting Bombs and not figuring out what to do...but that's a different level.) There's no way to predict what a person's tolerance level will be. For any given thing that has player interactivity, someone somewhere is going to want it removed so they can "just do the other things".
Instead, I have to make the decision of, what am I comfortable forcing players to learn vs what can they skip?
Example - the wall of spikes section in Doppler 2 of Megaman X3. The argument can be made that that section is too hard for most bad-to-intermediate players, and should not be critical path. In that vein, if you needed to use something in Indivisible to scale a wall of spikes - that wouldn't kill you, but they'd knock you down to the bottom - the argument could be made that people who don't care should be allowed to skip it if they wanted, if they spend more than say 15 minutes on it and can't be arsed to continue.
I might not necessarily agree, but I just wanted to point out that it's not strictly combat that one has to consider.

That's why I think something like UNIEL's auto-combo would be useful. Hell, think of it as a fighting-game. You give them the auto-combo and that takes away the tedium and difficulty of combos but they still get to learn and enjoy the neutral game themselves.
The prototype has that, though, it's called "mash buttons". You're still gonna die without blocking. Even with auto-combo in UNieL, you still have to defend. It was the neutral game that people didn't understand. :^P

Remember, the goal of this particular discussion was: If someone were really just going to watch a Let's Play, what can we do in the game to get them to buy and play it themselves, instead? The answer to THAT is, remove as much of the gameplay as possible. Again, I may not necessarily agree, but it's a good discussion to have.
 
Another thing I feel a lot of people forget is that often times, when someone falls in love with a game, they'll play it more than once. Imagine someone plays through. Indivisible on a hypothetical super casual mode, lloves it, and wants to experience all the game has to offer. So they do a new game on the standard difficulty and, using the knowledge of how to play it they got on the casual run, is able to quickly grasp everything new the standard mode throws at them and has an even greater time than the first.

Yeah this won't happen for everyone, but I think if the game ends up being grand enough, and I have a good feeling jt will, having that option to introduce worse players to an easier version of the game never hurta, because some, in fact many, will come back for the full experience if the easy mode is still fun for them.
 
I'm going to have to disagree with a game having a mode where the gameplay is removed to have a player who can't handle the combat. Having a good progression of monsters/bosses that promote player growth and frequent and well placed checkpoints that were demonstrated in the prototype should be enough. Those two things push a player to get good and are nice and forgiving. I imagine that at least 90% of the people that tried the prototype actually beat it not including the secret boss. As for exploration, it was quite balanced in the prototype. I imagine every big area to be something similar to that difficulty.

If any combat does hamper a player's progression it should be the bosses. I felt that the three mechanics that were most important in defeating the boss in the prototype is Razmi's down + attack, knowing when to use a special in accordance to your action bar and just blocking the reactable stuff. Blocking is something everyone will get used to especially since you have such a large window to block preemptively depending on your Id meter.
Razmi's down+attack will probably be explained or at least more visually noticeable, while using a special in accordance to your action bar may appear as a tip somewhere I imagine.

Easy mode is something I'm personally iffy about because I believe there can be a well balanced mode for at least 95% of people especially in this type of game.
 
I felt that the three mechanics that were most important in defeating the boss in the prototype is Razmi's down + attack, knowing when to use a special in accordance to your action bar and just blocking the reactable stuff. Blocking is something everyone will get used to especially since you have such a large window to block preemptively depending on your Id meter.
If you just want to tank it, all you really need is balancing healing and blocking. Slow is not necessary at all, nor are supers.
 
Souls games are difficult and still enjoy massive popularity. If the problem is the level of difficulty, the solution is not to eliminate any challenge but to fine tune it.

Yes, and the article I was talking about specifically mentioned Dark Souls. That writer said that there are certain games which you play for the pure gameplay experience, and that would be something like Dark Souls where it's meant to be hard. In those cases, you don't really need something along these lines, at least as far as he was concerned. But for games with story emphasis to get players engaged in the world/characters/story, he felt like this would be appropriate to make sure everyone could get that story experience and not lock them out of it.


Then it becomes an anime movie with serious padding between talking scenes, which is the meat of what they are trying to consume.

There is more to the experience of a game than the challenge of a combat system though, especially in jRPGs. I started off with saying "This is for people who can't finish the game but still find value in playing, so they can't go to youtube". It IS pretty specific, and I said as much in my post as well that the standard games did for a long while on something like this was "get good", but that isn't necessarily the case these days when you see other games that have done little things to help players get on through.
 
Extra Credits made an episode on Souls actually already having easy mode. You just use spells or bow and that really simplifies things for you. By adding exploitables skills/items/tactics devs can let people decide for themselves how challenging the game should be. As a slacker kind of player I appreciate that.
 
Experience for yourself:
1. Go get ClipReader here.
2. Add the launch option -useclipboard (or -useclipboardsound which will make a sound anytime anything new is copied to the clipboard, which you don't really want with ClipReader).
3. Run the game.
There were hella articles about this stuff back when I did it.
Cool. trying it out now.
-robo fortune would have loved this job.
 
Extra Credits made an episode on Souls actually already having easy mode. You just use spells or bow and that really simplifies things for you. By adding exploitables skills/items/tactics devs can let people decide for themselves how challenging the game should be. As a slacker kind of player I appreciate that.

I don't know if I agree with an "easy exploit" being the solution to difficulty. I feel like when that's the case A. you have to either know the game well enough or be involved with the community enough to find that out, and B. the player is constantly choosing not to use it as opposed to occasionally choosing to use it.

I dunno, maybe that second one is just me, but when I'm aware of an exploit that makes a game easier, I'm always tempted to use it, and whenever I do use it the result is less satisfying, so if I do want a challenge, I'm forcing myself to not go for the exploit for as long as I'm playing, or at least, for most of it. And it's usually tempting to go for it the second that the difficulty ramps up, which is not good for difficulty progression and again, kinda sucks the satisfaction out of it.

Maybe if you had a class or weapon/weapon-type that's "good for beginners" but still comes with its own set of pros and cons then it could work.
 
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I dunno, maybe if you had a class or weapon/weapon-type that's "good for beginners" but still comes with its own set of pros and cons then it could work.
I think this could fit pretty well into the game: An early-met Incarnation or weapon that, while overpowered compared to things nearby, doesn't have any room to grow and is kind of boring to use, encouraging players not to use him. Perhaps that's Dhar's character arc. "Oh just kill it already, here." "Nonononononono, you stay inside while I learn more about this wide world around us."

I haven't played any of the Souls games, but the booklet in my copy of Super Meat Boy includes some analysis on how they were able to get away drawing in the casual market despite being freakishly hard. Perhaps they could help?
  • "Difficulty = (% chance the player will die) X (penalty for dying)." So, a "hardcore platformer" can get away with as much death as it wants, with little to no penalty for dying.
  • "Keep the levels small"- with the end always in sight, there's "lower stress of not knowing what's to come and the distance they will have to start over from if they die."
  • Instant respawns so the pace never lessens and the player doesn't think about dying before going in. "The player never leaves the action before they want to."
  • Level replay system as a reward for finally getting past lots and lots of deaths. Reminds the player of how hard the thing they just beat was, so they feel better about it.
  • Dark World levels that are unlocked for beating a normal level really well, that way more hardcore players can jump to higher difficulty.

Indivisible isn't focused on fast-pace and intense difficulty, but it already benefits from many of these things: frequent checkpoints before fights, good sound transitions in and out of battle, player tips upon death, and hidden secrets for tougher players. Given that much of the focus so far is on exploration, and exploration is experienced through gameplay, I think Indivisible's already on the right track.
 
Or you just turn Ajna's fist weapon into the one punch man glove where every time she enters battle state, the player presses a button for a screen clearing punch while singing "ONE PAAAAAAAWNTCH!"
Only problem is that it may get old after awhile (or really fast) unless the sequence itself is nice and short
 
Yeah, I don't think you're getting a lot of memes/refs in this game. :V

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Well, level of exploitability may vary of course. Shovel knight had Phase locket for instance. That's a cool "easy mode" skill.
 
Arguably the shields in Dark Souls were "easy mode" items, since you could just hang out behind them with a spear, or just until you were ready, then attack. You didn't have to learn how to use rolls or anything twitchy like that. Granted the game was built around shields, but it's starting to sound like the question is one of phrasing and perspective. If you take the most challenging approach to a game to be the "default", then anything else is "easy mode". Whereas if you take using everything the game gives you to progress as "default", then everything else becomes "challenge mode".

Given that going shieldless, or melee-only, or fists-only, etc. are considered challenge runs, looking down on not abiding by those rulesets as "easy mode" doesn't really capture how people typically look at non-modal difficulty options in games.
 
I'm actually really enjoying how everyone has a different idea of what was dark soul's "easy mode." For me, zweihander + havel's armor set beat all of the lord soul bosses free.
 
I've always thought the most elegant way to ease a player of lower skill level into games is to give early access to a mechanic that teaches players useful skills, and which rewards those skills with high power for the early game, but it's effectiveness tapers off by midgame. For example an Incarnation who (And this is by no means a suggestion, more of an illustration) who has attacks which deal percentage-based damage that is inversely proportional to an enemy's health, and gains a small damage boost from a successful block. It gives a powerful tool for players new to the system, and encourages new players to learn effective use of mechanics, while still requiring people to eventually learn the mechanics enough to become proficient in the game by the end. Of course, still not all players would be able to actually learn the mechanics, but those people were likely not going to reach the endgame anyway with anything short of a 'skip battle' option that works for all encounters (And then they would probably complain that it was too easy)

I'm actually really enjoying how everyone has a different idea of what was dark soul's "easy mode." For me, zweihander + havel's armor set beat all of the lord soul bosses free.

Off topic, but I would love to see how your non-stop fat-rolling build would do against the Bed of Chaos.
 
Off topic, but I would love to see how your non-stop fat-rolling build would do against the Bed of Chaos.
I couldn't dodge roll through the hand sweeps naked and kept getting knocked into the hole. I switched to havel's just for fun and somehow dodged everything perfectly. :/
 
On difficulty, there are the cheap ones of making enemies easier. Having fairly easy enemies you can best with little risk and still having bosses be tough enough that players will generally pick up blocking just to make their lives easier.

I think by this point it's become obvious how subjective this all is. I'm living reading this to see everyone's take on ways to do an easy mode yet keep the fun of the game alive. Its been greatly rewarding
 
if there's an easy mode, though, I'd love a hard mode too. Something that makes every encounter something you CAN die to, especially if this game is anti-grinding like I'm pretty sure was said before. Even a Hard Game New Game + where you have all the tools and 'canrations from the start so you gotta use em right.
 
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