Curse

Gigashadow · Feb 11, 2009, 11:07 PM // 23:07

So we know what the problem is; game companies prefer to cater to a casual difficulty level with shallow gameplay that is only difficult enough to keep them playing.

What is the solution? I think hard mode conceptually is a good idea; the company gets to re-use content that's already there, and just tweak some numbers. The problem is everyone wants the hard mode rewards too, without putting in any effort. Players will refuse to be denied their phatlewts.

One way around this is to continually introduce new content, that is very difficult initially, and then gets made easier over time as other even more difficult content is introduced, so that everyone can eventually see everything. However, only the people who beat the content when it was still hard would get the title from it.

Master Fuhon · Feb 11, 2009, 11:14 PM // 23:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

The only bulletproof item on your list of things that matter is the first one. The rest of it gets rolled into "quality of life", which means something different to everyone...(other stuff)

Relationships with self and others don't matter? Read up on solitary confinement. Locking a person in room away from other people does harm to a human being. Shut the lights off, so he can't see himself too, and you have a situation that has been known to produce existential crisis under documented circumstances. This is based on the facts that an individual’s psychological definition of self is based on relationships with both self and others. The entire basis of science oriented towards understanding people relates to understanding their relationships with self, parents, and others. Those who aren't affected by solitary confinement have a stronger definition of self that does not require sight and other people. After all, most people would have a mental breakdown the moment they went blind, if they were used to seeing the world and having that connection with self.

Instead of explaining the other two, I’ll hint a few places where your argument goes wrong. A person in a coma is surviving, and only has the quality of life improvement of having machines control his bodily functions. By my argument, the person in comatose is being denied the things that matter. By your argument, he’s doing fine because he has what he is able to comprehend matters (which is being alive). Your quality of life is relative argument is a problem; because when the person leaves the coma (and doesn’t have amnesia) he has a different priority system again.

People can move towards a greater awareness of things, which changes what matters for them. Aside from leaving a coma, the final three things I listed bring a person towards a greater self-awareness; relationships (with self and others), application of knowledge, and commitment to learning. Survival is necessary to provide the time frame for improving self-awareness, that’s why it matters. People leave games because of increases in self-awareness more often than because of game changes, because game changes usually don't happen.

And, since you said survival was the only bulletproof: A pro-rights activist might be in a state of mind where his survival doesn’t matter as much as his work. This is considered by some to be an enlightened view point, but it goes to show that there are people out there who don’t think survival matters. I listed things that matter more than education in the objective sense (more people would agree with them), but everything would matter only relatively if your argument stood up. The point was, your GW statement was highly relative, even more so than the education one. I do not make the claim to understand what absolutely matters in the universe, but I can state that certain things matter because they will lead to that understanding. If you aren't putting the time into the advice you give, stop doing it.

As for the game sales argument, taken from an issue of Forbes with Activision CEO, top sellers for that company were Call of Duty, Tony Hawk, Guitar Hero, and World of Warcraft (I think they all grossed 1.6 – 2.1 billion each all time). Three years ago the top ten videogames took in 18% of all revenue; last year it was 28%. The more interesting statistic was that the breakdown of a particular game (I think it was Call of Duty); more money was allocated to testing and marketing than it did to development and designing. When I mention that, I think of what EA did, buying Madden exclusive rights to NFL players, to reduce competition. The sales results alone do not speak for what has been done, or whether the game content is enjoyable. Other pressures are at work, but it's good that people have already figured that out since I started writing this. I also assume most companies cannot outright throw money at solutions like big companies can.

snaek · Feb 11, 2009, 11:22 PM // 23:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by gigashadow

The problem is everyone wants the hard mode rewards too, without putting in any effort.

that is a big problem...especially since anet listened and catered to these types of ppl
its also worth mentioning that hard mode in general is pretty badly implemented (read: broken)

in the current state of gw, i would be inclined to say that hard mode replaced normal mode
the key here being that its sposed to be an alternative, not a replacement

Burst Cancel · Feb 12, 2009, 01:00 AM // 01:00

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Fuhon

snip

Again, I don't see us getting anywhere here except deeper into the semantic quagmire of what does and does not matter. But hey, I'm just as capable as you are of picking out a few words in someone's post and ignoring everything else. Here, watch me do it.

Inane philosophical exercise aside, the fact is that our dear majority currently believes that GW doesn't matter. GW doesn't matter to them; ergo, no drive to get better at it. Your stance is ostensibly that people don't need to believe that things matter in order to get better at them or to be taught (your example being the child entering school). The problem is, other people (teachers, parents, administrators, community at large, etc.) do believe those things matter and, more importantly, are in a position to make them matter. GW doesn't even begin to be a comparable situation.

As for giving advice, I think you're confused. I'm only here for the argument - and of course, to inflict my mental diarrhea on all of you. I don't care what Fril or any other would-be GW professor does with their time, because - you guessed it - it doesn't matter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

What do you lose when you also, in addition to catering to the casuals, cater to those who like a challenging game?

Lose resources that could've been used further to please those who can't tell a good game from a bad? Wow, god forbid.

Again, I think everyone recognizes that the optimal solution is to make everyone happy all the time. I think it's equally obvious that if actually making everyone happy were as easy as wishing it to be so, people would be doing it already.

Then again, I think I've said that already. Today, in fact.

You talk about different difficulty levels (presumably user-selectable) in order to cater to everyone at the same time. This is a good idea for some games (see Devil May Cry), but if you hadn't noticed, Anet tried that already and it didn't work. I'm sure you've seen the threads from people bitching about how they deserve access to all of the content because they paid for the game, and that somehow playing a game is equivalent to reading a book and they should be allowed to read the whole book (I think it would take a rational person about five minutes tops to figure out the problem with that analogy).

The point is, people aren't happy with the divided difficulty system and "exclusive" elite areas. There's an easy way to call them out on their content bullshit though - remove loot as a variable. Imagine if DoA gave you no rewards, but was really freaking hard. How many people would bother with it (or be bothered by it) - and how many people would be exposed for the lying wimps that they are?

Bryant Again · Feb 12, 2009, 01:54 AM // 01:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

You talk about different difficulty levels (presumably user-selectable) in order to cater to everyone at the same time. This is a good idea for some games (see Devil May Cry), but if you hadn't noticed, Anet tried that already and it didn't work...

Congrats, you've pointed out a select minority of any game population who completely disregards a game's integrity for their own personal wants. These people are easy to single out based on a select two factors: 1. There is an easier setting, so if you're having a hard time in the harder mode go back to it, 2. Everything after max armor and weapons is overwhelmingly vanity-based.

This was part of ANet's problem, they actually listened to that minority and went "oh shit" when they realized it was too late. At least they had the balls to change Ursan.

Since you're always going to see these types of players, and since their arguments are easily discarded, I don't see how hard mode "didn't work". Even moreso when you consider the alternative: only being able to cater to one type of skill level. If it can be done in single-player games, it can be done in multiplayer.

Improvavel · Feb 12, 2009, 02:04 AM // 02:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

What is the solution? I think hard mode conceptually is a good idea; the company gets to re-use content that's already there, and just tweak some numbers. The problem is everyone wants the hard mode rewards too, without putting in any effort. Players will refuse to be denied their phatlewts.

The problem is that some of that effort requires to find 7 other people, have time analyzing the problem (if things are hard enough for it, like DoA was when was first introduced), go there, possible fail, tweak, go there again, fail, tweak and so on till you can master it.

That shift the game from skill to ability of gather friends. If you have friends with that kind of mentality you can do it. If you haven't you cant.

Lets face it, GWs PvP is (or was great) but very demanding (8ppl TT). But PvE is clearly a much more casual game - requiring 8 ppl is absurd. I remember when I was trying to do the desert missions the first time (started playing a bit after factions), it was impossible to find monks.

Heroes are nice, but they aren't as flexible as people. A team of people will trash everything that with h/h might be slighty challenging.

That's why Anet dropped GW and moved into GW2. GWs is still fun, but its RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GOed beyond repair.

snaek · Feb 12, 2009, 02:05 AM // 02:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by burst cancel

You talk about different difficulty levels (presumably user-selectable) in order to cater to everyone at the same time. This is a good idea for some games (see Devil May Cry), but if you hadn't noticed, Anet tried that already and it didn't work...

it didnt work because the concept is innately flawed?...
or because anet didnt implement it correctly?

Gigashadow · Feb 12, 2009, 02:19 AM // 02:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Improvavel

The problem is that some of that effort requires to find 7 other people, have time analyzing the problem (if things are hard enough for it, like DoA was when was first introduced), go there, possible fail, tweak, go there again, fail, tweak and so on till you can master it.

That shift the game from skill to ability of gather friends. If you have friends with that kind of mentality you can do it. If you haven't you cant.

Lets face it, GWs PvP is (or was great) but very demanding (8ppl TT). But PvE is clearly a much more casual game - requiring 8 ppl is absurd. I remember when I was trying to do the desert missions the first time (started playing a bit after factions), it was impossible to find monks.

Heroes are nice, but they aren't as flexible as people. A team of people will trash everything that with h/h might be slighty challenging.

In one of their interviews, they did call out "buddy gaming" as being pretty important. A lot of people play with just one friend or their significant other, so perhaps the dungeons will have a special mode where they support only 2 human players, but they can bring a hero each to get the party size back up to 4 (so that you have enough skill diversity across the characters).

I tend to agree that 8 people is way too many for a dungeon party, maybe the normal party size will come down to 5-6. That's a pretty cozy size where it is a bit easier to make friends. I think them having a 2 player and 5-6 player version of the same dungeon is not a bad way to go.

If the GW2 endgame is 25+ man raids I am going to puke.

Another thing I am concerned about is GvG. I love GvG, it is the most fun PvP experience in any MMO I've played. However, getting 8 people together is supremely difficult (hell, even getting 5 people together for a WoW arena team was difficult). However, I'm not really sure GvG will be anywhere as interesting if it becomes 6v6.

Improvavel · Feb 12, 2009, 02:28 AM // 02:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

You talk about different difficulty levels (presumably user-selectable) in order to cater to everyone at the same time. This is a good idea for some games (see Devil May Cry), but if you hadn't noticed, Anet tried that already and it didn't work. I'm sure you've seen the threads from people bitching about how they deserve access to all of the content because they paid for the game, and that somehow playing a game is equivalent to reading a book and they should be allowed to read the whole book (I think it would take a rational person about five minutes tops to figure out the problem with that analogy).

The point is, people aren't happy with the divided difficulty system and "exclusive" elite areas. There's an easy way to call them out on their content bullshit though - remove loot as a variable. Imagine if DoA gave you no rewards, but was really freaking hard. How many people would bother with it (or be bothered by it) - and how many people would be exposed for the lying wimps that they are?

What if there are areas that are simply impossible and no one can finish them? The designers can create that. What would be the point?

Why should people be ranked by their PvE play? If I do an area with 8 people and someone else does it with 1p+3 heroes + 4 henchmen is that fair?

The big problem is Anet wanted to create a complex competitive team game.

But they must have realized at some point that needing a full team to do stuff in PvE was absurd. Damn it is absurd. Imagine if there were no henchmen or heroes. You would have to PuG for every single quest/mission in game!

That created a dilemma - how to create a way to make PvE playable by 1player+h/h or even 2p+6h and still keep it hard for 8p teams?

Or we want GWs PvE to become a "If you have the required people you can do it, if not you cant?". I thought GvG was like that already and is also one of the main reasons the PvP community is shrinking opposed to games where the focus is on 1vs1.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gigashadow

In one of their interviews, they did call out "buddy gaming" as being pretty important. A lot of people play with just one friend or their significant other, so perhaps the dungeons will have a special mode where they support only 2 human players, but they can bring a hero each to get the party size back up to 4 (so that you have enough skill diversity across the characters).

I really hope so. Most of the time I play with my girl and 6 heroes. Sometime I add a few more players.

Burst Cancel · Feb 12, 2009, 04:44 AM // 04:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

snip

I'm short on time, so this is going to be brief.

Devil May Cry isn't comparable because there isn't any loot, and unless you're one of those players that records SB runs and posts on youtube, there's no e-peen to be had either. Most players can be perfectly happy beating Hold-My-Hand-Mommy mode and never touching the game again.

The point of the last paragraph in the post that you quoted is that I don't think people actually care that they can't complete DoA. The whole "I deserve the content" is a red herring. People just want an equal shot at the loot, and maybe the prestige (nevermind if the prestige isn't fairly won - e-peens don't wilt from lack of integrity). At the same time, I think most of the "challenge" folks are full of shit too - if DoA had no loot, how many people would bother to do it? And if you won't do it because there's no "reward" or recognition, you're not really playing for the challenge then, are you?

So how do these crowds differ from each other, really? Neither one is actually playing for the challenge. In reality, one group wants to be recognized or rewarded for being better than other people, and one group wants to be recognized and rewarded even if they suck. Now, my point isn't to pass judgment on anyone - my point is that these are mutually exclusive mindsets.

How do you figure out which is the bigger group? You screw with the game and see how many people leave, I guess. Better hope Anet learned as much as they claimed.

DreamWind · Feb 12, 2009, 06:50 AM // 06:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by snaek

that is a big problem...especially since anet listened and catered to these types of ppl
its also worth mentioning that hard mode in general is pretty badly implemented (read: broken)

in the current state of gw, i would be inclined to say that hard mode replaced normal mode
the key here being that its sposed to be an alternative, not a replacement

Very well put. I hadn't heard it put that way before. Anet really screwed up on so many levels IMO.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

So how do these crowds differ from each other, really? Neither one is actually playing for the challenge. In reality, one group wants to be recognized or rewarded for being better than other people, and one group wants to be recognized and rewarded even if they suck. Now, my point isn't to pass judgment on anyone - my point is that these are mutually exclusive mindsets.

How do you figure out which is the bigger group? You screw with the game and see how many people leave, I guess. Better hope Anet learned as much as they claimed.

Meh...now you are getting philosophical and off topic. I could argue that nobody does anything strictly for the challenge, but it wouldn't be relevant to this thread. What IS relevant is that Anet screwed up by reducing overall challenge, badly implementing new challenges, reducing reasons for people to pursue challenge, and increasing reasons to stay unchallenged. This in turn caused the community to suck more just by sheer conditioning of the game and the players who play it.

Bryant Again · Feb 12, 2009, 07:08 AM // 07:08

I'll agree with DreamWind that this doesn't really focus much to the topic, but I'll bite (at least a bit):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burst Cancel

So how do these crowds differ from each other, really? Neither one is actually playing for the challenge. In reality, one group wants to be recognized or rewarded for being better than other people, and one group wants to be recognized and rewarded even if they suck. Now, my point isn't to pass judgment on anyone - my point is that these are mutually exclusive mindsets.

How do you figure out which is the bigger group? You screw with the game and see how many people leave, I guess. Better hope Anet learned as much as they claimed.

What about the group of people who actually want the game to maintain integrity and depth?

For me, I put those for an easier game in the same crowd as those against but for the reasons of staying "elite". While it's a bit thoughtful that the latter wants the game to stay more difficult, it's for the wrong reasons.

In regards to which one is bigger: not really gonna matter, since both are dwarfed compared to the "carefree" majority of the playerbase. But you shouldn't be catering to which one is bigger, anyways.

But to go back to my point in my previous posts that is pertaining more to the thread: How come a difficulty setting wouldn't work in GW? It's worked in numerous RPGs, most notably WoW. Why not us?

DreamWind · Feb 12, 2009, 08:02 AM // 08:02

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

In regards to which one is bigger: not really gonna matter, since both are dwarfed compared to the "carefree" majority of the playerbase. But you shouldn't be catering to which one is bigger, anyways.

But to go back to my point in my previous posts that is pertaining more to the thread: How come a difficulty setting wouldn't work in GW? It's worked in numerous RPGs, most notably WoW. Why not us?

In all fairness, the difficulty setting was supposed to be other players...which is the ultimate difficulty setting. But that would probably go off topic...

zwei2stein · Feb 12, 2009, 08:11 AM // 08:11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Improvavel

What if there are areas that are simply impossible and no one can finish them? The designers can create that. What would be the point?

Why should people be ranked by their PvE play? If I do an area with 8 people and someone else does it with 1p+3 heroes + 4 henchmen is that fair?

The big problem is Anet wanted to create a complex competitive team game.

But they must have realized at some point that needing a full team to do stuff in PvE was absurd. Damn it is absurd. Imagine if there were no henchmen or heroes. You would have to PuG for every single quest/mission in game!

That created a dilemma - how to create a way to make PvE playable by 1player+h/h or even 2p+6h and still keep it hard for 8p teams?

Or we want GWs PvE to become a "If you have the required people you can do it, if not you cant?". I thought GvG was like that already and is also one of the main reasons the PvP community is shrinking opposed to games where the focus is on 1vs1.

I really hope so. Most of the time I play with my girl and 6 heroes. Sometime I add a few more players.

Obvious and very simple answer to this problem is to create HM by halving party size without any other adjustments.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bryant Again

But to go back to my point in my previous posts that is pertaining more to the thread: How come a difficulty setting wouldn't work in GW? It's worked in numerous RPGs, most notably WoW. Why not us?

Entitlement. Players feel that they should be able to steamroll HM. That they deserve to "win".

Add in fact that GW puts very little boundaries to entrance to HM: Players can enter basically with everything they have by time they reach L20 and after they beat campaign.

Not only that, NM is deceptively easy, meaning that there is huge jump in difficulty and failure rate for most of people who were doing fine in NM. That hurts egos. It seems unfair.

And last, but not least, 8 player party sizes mean that it is very well possible to get carried through game, without learning anything other than getting "pro party".

Div · Feb 12, 2009, 09:32 AM // 09:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

1) Are GW players really that bad?

Most players that play this game are fairly casual players. They simply don't care to be effective. They rather play a build they "enjoy" playing than one that others use. After all, it's more "fun" to run a gimped bar than a good cookie-cutter one. Then you have your typical 14 year old, who is generally fairly bad but thinks they're the shit. Bad players who don't realize they're bad won't improve.

Even a lot of the RPG veterans suffer in this game. When you played in previous RPGs like Diablo, you were able to do everything on one guy (granted, you could play with others, but it's not necessary). You were able to do all the damage, all the healing, and all the support. GW is a new system, with the game being virtually unbeatable without other people/henchies/heroes. The do-it-all mentality still carries over, so you see warriors with lots of defense, good healing, and minimal damage.

Quote:

2) Could it be that they haven't been taught how to play the game correctly? Maybe they missed resources like GW wiki, PvX and Guru (without even going into the "cookie cutter build" mentality)? Or they didn't have the time, given that it's a game and they don't want to invest much time in it?

See the RPG veteran argument from above. GW is a team game, and a lot of people don't realize that a character is simply unable to do everything by himself well.

Quote:

3) Isn't it rather so-called "good players" that are bad at teaching how the game works? (not helped by lack of in-game good tutorials on many aspects of the game)

Who are the good players? I've seen many who claim to be good, but are in fact terrible (even by my bad standards!). When you have a blood magic warrior call a mending wammo out for being bad and trying to teach him how to play, there's a problem.

The game has enough tutorials to get around. It's just hard for people to adapt to a different style of RPG.

Bryant Again · Feb 12, 2009, 09:33 AM // 09:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by zwei2stein

Entitlement. Players feel that they should be able to steamroll HM. That they deserve to "win".

Add in fact that GW puts very little boundaries to entrance to HM: Players can enter basically with everything they have by time they reach L20 and after they beat campaign.

Not only that, NM is deceptively easy, meaning that there is huge jump in difficulty and failure rate for most of people who were doing fine in NM. That hurts egos. It seems unfair.

And last, but not least, 8 player party sizes mean that it is very well possible to get carried through game, without learning anything other than getting "pro party".

That reply is sure one hell of an eye-opener, ouchies ANet.

the_jos · Feb 12, 2009, 09:44 AM // 09:44

The 'fact' that it's hard to get a full 8-person party is partly caused by the overall problem Burst Cancel pointed at: "Inane philosophical exercise aside, the fact is that our dear majority currently believes that GW doesn't matter. GW doesn't matter to them; ergo, no drive to get better at it."

In an online game, meeting and socialising with other people matters.
And to form 8-human teams regular you need to socialise a lot.
But we got this thing called guilds and when active enough they provide enough people to do things together.

But there is a catch here.
First of all, many players don't want to team up with others. Because on the box..... Or because PUG sucks. Or because they don't have time, have other commitments, whatever.
And, people don't always like to do what you want to do. I might be up for DoA but if most people in my guild want to go into FoW I have to find others who are up for DoA or just join FoW.

With titles, a new problem was introduced.
People started working on character based titles, reducing teaming posibilities.
Even if you find 8 human players to do something, they might not be able to because they can't make a solid team with their preferred characters.
Something I faced a couple of times is the lack of guildie warriors for Deep for example.

Back to the 'most selling game list'.
Look at it. Mario, Pokemon, Wii Sports (flawed, includes bundled sales), Sims, Tetris.
It's all single player games. But they ain't easy when looking at the group they are marketed for (6yr and above), with the exception of Sims (I think, never got into it).
Sure, they start out easy. But they require some serious time to beat. Getting a high-score in Tetris is easy at first, but gets more difficult since you always need to be better than last time. Pokemon requires getting and leveling the right creatures and beating the elite four (I think) would even require either very high level creatures or playing very smart. And if you put me on a later level of the Mario games, I can tell you it will be failure for me. So those games ain't as easy as they look at first.

But, one thing is sure. Except WoW all best selling games up to date are single player.
And the reason is simple, you can pick them up and put them away anytime you want.

Now let's get some true RL multi-player games. The first one is called chess. If you like to play chess, you have to arrange something with someone who can also play chess. Getting two people together is somewhat easy, but given a game of chess could take 1-2 hours this might be somewhat of a problem.
Now let's play a game of cards. Requires 4 players. Meaning even harder to schedule.
Want to play soccer (football for UK readers)? You need a team of at least 11 players together. And another team of at least 11 players. Meaning you have to do some serious scheduling ahead.

I think this is where part of the community fails.
They don't want to schedule and wait, they want to play now because they want to have fun and paid for the game.
Strange, people don't think that way when playing chess, a game of cards or soccer.
Take soccer. People get up early on saturday or sunday to play matches (and not only professionals do that) and many also train together during the week.
Maybe GW just attracted the wrong kind of players, the anti-social kind that doesn't want to play together unless they are forced to do so.
Or people who are highly unorganised. I've seen the arguments: "But I need to play solo, because my kids/job/husband/wife...." Well, this means you also can't play soccer or cards because they kids/job.... would also be a problem.

Think there should be a huge warning on GW2 box: "This game requires interaction with other players!"

Now this isn't only a community issue.
A-net messed up with the introduction of Factions. There were no decent ways of teaming except being at the outposts at the right time. And this didn't improve much, even with the new party window. I've been in empty euro districts where several groups were forming in US with no way of knowing except changing to US.
Things got somewhat better with NF (in this perspective I think heroes are a blesssing) but it made the game more 2-human + 6 heroes. The most time-efficient way of teaming outside organised parties.

This is also part of the learning problem.
The best way you learn is to play with others.
If I would go and play soccer, first thing they would tell me is to get in better condition.
Without improving it, I can't play a full match for sure.
Then put me on the field somewhere and see how I perform. Learn me some tricks.
And if I feel I don't fit there, they might assign another place on the field.
The team is at it's best when I play on the spot I play best.
The team can also tell me what I'm good at and how to work with that. Or which things to improve.

But it means getting involved, getting into a group willing to become better with you and playing with other people, preferably a fixed group.
But then, as Burst Cancel said: "GW doesn't matter to them"

maraxusofk · Feb 12, 2009, 09:50 AM // 09:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by the_jos

Back to the 'most selling game list'.
Look at it. Mario, Pokemon, Wii Sports (flawed, includes bundled sales), Sims, Tetris.
It's all single player games. But they ain't easy when looking at the group they are marketed for (6yr and above), with the exception of Sims (I think, never got into it).
Sure, they start out easy. But they require some serious time to beat. Getting a high-score in Tetris is easy at first, but gets more difficult since you always need to be better than last time. Pokemon requires getting and leveling the right creatures and beating the elite four (I think) would even require either very high level creatures or playing very smart. And if you put me on a later level of the Mario games, I can tell you it will be failure for me. So those games ain't as easy as they look at first.

Most of your points are correct, but i must point out that some of the above ones are so very wrong. if pokemon was not multiplayer, i guarentee you it would not succeed. wii sports is incredibly easy. maybe it is hard if you are crippled, have down syndrome, or are just plain old, but the game is incredibly easy.

Greedy Gus · Feb 12, 2009, 09:51 AM // 09:51

The community as a whole is going to be pretty far behind the curve, but I think the masses are improving slowly. I noticed today that survivor inscriptions are actually worth more than radiant ones.

the_jos · Feb 12, 2009, 11:52 AM // 11:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by maraxusofk

Most of your points are correct, but i must point out that some of the above ones are so very wrong. if pokemon was not multiplayer, i guarentee you it would not succeed. wii sports is incredibly easy. maybe it is hard if you are crippled, have down syndrome, or are just plain old, but the game is incredibly easy.

The catch with Pokemon is that owning only one version of the game doesn't allow a player to achieve the ultimate goal: "Gotta catch them all".
That's because some creatures only exist in one version of the game.
Sure this boosts sales.
But I don't consider this multiplayer (rather smart marketing) and I doubt that the true multi-player part (fighting against others) made the difference for pokemon players and contributed a lot to the success.

The Wii is marketed towards a huge crowd and it's only because of the bundled sales with the Wii that it could end with that amount of sales.
But just stating that it's incredibly easy is putting aside the people Nintendo wanted to sell their console to.
What's might be easy for you and me isn't easy for everyone.
When comparing the included games to full console releases of those games, sure they are easy. But then, the main target audience for the Wii isn't the dedicated console player.
And I think there is enough challenge for the once in a while player for a substancial amount of time. And that's not because it's easy