?? Most time you just walk off it or there's a grappling point where you press a single button and Aloy rappels down
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The climbing in Sony First Party games is boring and bland game design
- Thread starter RexNovis
- Start date
?? Most time you just walk off it or there's a grappling point where you press a single button and Aloy rappels down
Christ. Do not take that boring ass bullshit for climbing found in Botw. How is climbing like you're moving through molasses any fun? Climbing in Botw is so damn tedious and I pray no one takes inspiration from that. The only think it's good for is making you think for a split second because Link's stamina isn't good enough.
yup...threads like these are the vocal minority....
i'm not saying they shouldn't be discussed but it's almost a certainty that these were discussed by the devs themselves and even playtested but were abandoned after playtesting...
It's almost like saying why can't crash/sonic/megaman/arthur/belmont control and jump more like mario. Not every game is the same. Not every game focused on the same thing. And most certainly not every game needs to be the same/similar.
OP
OP
Just because something isnt the focus of a game doesnt mean it has a carte blanche to be boring and uncompelling. A game doing one thing incredibly well but having other parts executed in a way that is not fun or entertaining is still a game that is not fun or entertaining for some extent of the time you are playing the game. The goal should always be to make any action or part of a game fun for the player or at the very least interesting/compelling. These climbing sections are none of those things in any of the games they are in. Even the ones in which they are a core mechanic (Uncharted 4).
The climbing in BotW is brilliant, because of the stamina management. It's like a challenge every time you see a big mountain, you have to determine which places on it you might need to rest, determine how much distance you can actually cover with your stamina amount, see if you have enough spare to make any detours to items stuck on the sides, and make strategic jumps to balance getting there faster while also conserving enough stamina.
Getting to the top of a high mountain feels like a real achievement every single time.
It's a genuinely engaging and enjoyable part of the game. I honestly find it hard to believe any game could make climbing actually a fun act to perform given its repetitive nature, but BotW did it very well.
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In Uncharted 1/2/3 it was generally used as a brief palette cleanser between gunfights and story beats. UC4 seemed to somehow believe it was enough fun to be it's own pillar of gameplay with extensive climbing bits and no combat breaking it up, but I think it worked fine in the earlier games. They just have to make sure it doesn't outstay it's welcome, since it's not fun in and of itself.
i have fun with the climbing... :P So going by the dev's choice, they chose my preferences over yours :P
I'm with you Op. I just finished Uncharted 4 and I spent more time climbing rather than shooting people.
Are you talking moving Drake with the sticks? Because that's in the final game, it's just not engaging:
Real talk. It's fine for me. The control of most of these games don't lend themselves well to true platforming so the climbing in most Sony games is fine.
Which is another part of the whole "think and climb" thing he is talking about
I always prefer when they're easier like this. Timed jumps, or the worst, dying or have to restart a climb after a failed jump is what's more annoying than anything else. It's a means to an end, and not the core gameplay experience, so I don't want it making the game any harder than it should be.
Climb buttons, or parkour buttons like in some AC and Watch_Dogs 2 are so much better than any alternative imo.
Climb buttons, or parkour buttons like in some AC and Watch_Dogs 2 are so much better than any alternative imo.
Agreed, most climbing in games has turned into a more laborious, slower version of walking these days. When I see a cliff face in a game I tend to groan now a days at my fate of holding maybe 1 directional button and maybe A button for a few minutes while the game basically plays itself.
Are you talking moving Drake with the sticks? Because that's in the final game, it's just not engaging:
No, suposedly there was a stamina mechanic but got in the way of combat so they just scrapped it but the climbing lvls stayed the same.
I think my favorite was Nathan Drake on the edge of extreme dehydration, barely able to walk or crawl...... then five seconds later he's throwing himself up a 50 foot chasm with conveniently placed handholds amd punching out 30 mercenaries.
I never liked Naughty Dog climbing, but that scene was just utter garbage and instantly ruined the ten minutes preceding it (which wasn't fun or enjoyable either).
I never liked Naughty Dog climbing, but that scene was just utter garbage and instantly ruined the ten minutes preceding it (which wasn't fun or enjoyable either).
Yeah I'm really not a fan. Climbing in God of War is boring in the exact same way as in Uncharted 4. Thankfully it always seems very brief in God of War.
Oh I loved the whole desert part! The way I see it people just "need" control and agency every last second of a game, I don't know why is that, some just have zero patience.
But it's not boring at all. There was plenty of character interaction that kept me engaged while climbing. Dunno what to tell you, go play a platformer if you prefer jumping challenges to character dialogue.
Oh I wasn't aware. I feel like that wouldn't have added anything so it makes sense that they removed it.
What? you would even fight on climbing sections on previous games and that surely wasn't fun.
Hahaha what? Sands of Time was NOT a huge commercial success. Not by a long shot. That's the very reason the sequel was changed so much.
Are you talking moving Drake with the sticks? Because that's in the final game, it's just not engaging:
No, it was something else entirely. Neil Druckmann talks about it in his one-on-one with Ted Price here, starting at 32:00 into the recording:
http://interactive.libsyn.com/neil-druckmann
There was a stamina meter, for example. They wanted to give players more agency and make the climbing sections tense.
Gaming in general is neutered, in almost all aspects, for AAA big blockbuster games, and I think in part you might understand this a little easier if you simply remove SONY from the title. It isn't just Sony. It's EVERY publisher that has climbing segments in it. The new Tomb Raiders are BORING to climb and navigate because of no failure states. The old series was big on that, and it was harder and more interesting for it. Assassin's Creed has BORING easily done climbing segments, it basically climbs itself. Uncharted/GoW/Horizon as you already mentioned, do the same thing. Pick ANY AAA game released in the past 5 years at least with climbing mechanics and it will be like this.
People like easy things that look cool. It appeals to more people than hard combat/climbing etc. It's just the way of the beast. Developers attempt to appeal to as many people as they can when so much money is at stake.
Your confusion comes from your odd focus on a certain publisher and not realizing that this has been don to all games in all mechanic categories (combat, mission design, strategic layers, etc) and IS complained about a lot on these forums. You just finally ran into a particular item that it seems to bug you on. This isn't new or selective to Sony. It's a plague that the entire industry is succumbing to, lol.
This is precisely why indie games got so big in the past decade as well. They are cheaper to make and therefore can take more "risks" with the gameplay design, making them harder or more niche. There is a large market out there for difficult game design (look at Souls). It just isn't going to sell Assassin's Creed/CoD/Uncharted/GTA numbers. So publishers won't put as much money into them.
These kind of threads make me think that there are people with no patience at all. Like you can't stand a couple of seconds of gaming time not doing what defines the genre of the game you're playing.
And by that logic... why have dialogue in pokemon? It's filler between battles!.. why have platforming in kh? Just filler between battles! Etc.
And by that logic... why have dialogue in pokemon? It's filler between battles!.. why have platforming in kh? Just filler between battles! Etc.
OP
OP
I couldve sworn i read that it ended up being very profitable for them. The reboot however was absolutely not.
Not the greatest of examples when the dialogue was the thing in the recent Pokemon that made it a genuine slog to get through.
It's not that people don't like climbing. They just want it to be more engaging.
If its going to be a linear path without any fail states I'm more than happy for the devs to allow an auto-pilot type cheat thing so I can sip my coffee in the mean time or something. Sometimes it can be fun to look at but it isn't really enjoyable to play at this point, not when we've seen it so many times before.
I kinda like the climbing in Infamous Second Son. It was simple, fast and fun.
You could literally hang to everything lol
You could literally hang to everything lol
As someone who finished gow and jumped into horizon right after, I completely agree. Especially in gow, so many segments of "hold L stick up to advance". So stupid and fucking boring. Not as prevalent in horizon, but equally as soulless. Idk if it's to mask loading, but I guess I'll take the boring climbing instead of a load screen.
Spin it this way: Why Nintendo games don't have deeper more complex stories!? shouldn't people call on this too!?
Well, no, the writen stories is mostly no the point of their games.
I feel like you need to re-read the OP - this is not what he's saying at all. It's not a thread railing at downtime or dialogue segments - it's that platforming in Sony first party titles has become overly simplistic and homogenized between titles.
Platforming and climbing should be engaging and challenging just like the combat, but Sony first party studios have clearly emphasized the latter and de emphasized the former.
