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2019-11-21, 11:28 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Funnily enough, I loved these cheeky difficult settings and always wished more games did it. I think the recent resurgence of arcade style shooters (like Ion
MaidenFury, Amid Evil and Dusk) has brought it back a little bit, but there must be more of these, not less."Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-21, 08:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Apr 2006
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I could go either way on idiosynchratic difficulty names, but I can recall my best friend in High School and I had a horrible time with the PC game Messiah because we mistook the difficulty level for the level of mechanical power we'd have. I ask you, who'd choose to be a cherub when you can be an archangel?
Avatar gladly adopted from Ink!
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2019-11-22, 12:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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2019-11-22, 08:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I also enjoy it a bit. It's humor. I literally cannot imagine being so overly sensitive that I'd ever get upset about a video game making an incredibly mild joke with no real intent to offend anyone. Even if it's technically insulting me, I'm a functional adult and I'm capable of understanding that it's all in good fun. Nor do I want to live in a world so sterilized that people are scared to make jokes like that for fear of not being "pc"
Last edited by Anteros; 2019-11-22 at 09:00 AM.
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2019-11-22, 03:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I could take the joke back when I was a kid that barely, if even, understood english, so I'm with you on this one.
That little setback pointed aside, probably the same I always used: the worst difficulty is usually the last in a top-to-bottom list. Or the one twice to the right in a left-right menu selection. The actual phrase used ultimately mattered less, as that was my meta understanding of how games worked, so it disregards language barriers (which was how I figured out the higher difficult levels on Yu Yu Hakusho: Sunset Fighters, which I only got access to as a Japanese cartridge).Last edited by heronbpv; 2019-11-22 at 03:24 PM.
"Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-22, 04:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2011
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- Canada
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Being able to take a joke doesn't mean it's still not necessarily good TO take. I can absolutely take a few punches to the face, but I wouldn't want to.
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2019-11-22, 04:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
But it is, for developing a sense of humor does you good in the long run. I don't share your sentiment that the game is attacking the player, simply that it's making a snark comment. Which is hilarious.
"Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-22, 05:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
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2019-11-22, 05:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2019
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Random battles every five steps.
Octopath traveler kinda-sort does this, but it's like ten steps instead and there's more than three random encounters repeated in a dungeon. And there's a fast travel option between towns.
Later Pokemon games do this (onl played Y) but you're either intentionally on grass or need to traverse grass for short periods.
Oldschool games? You could would forget where you were going if the character wasn't facing the same direction because only 5% of the time spent crossing the room involved looking at the room.
I think that's the point of departure. IMHO calling easy mode "wuss" is only a "joke" in the loosest sense, let alone hilarious. If it's actually funny, that's one thing. If it's only a joke in the sense of "we're not actually insulting you, even though we explicitly are", that's much less assuming. Doubly so if the name for hard isn't a joke/attempt at wit.
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2019-11-22, 05:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
"Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-22, 06:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2006
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Maybe, but I'd say 'Don't Hurt Me' is at worst borderline when it comes to the complaint. It's not the idiosyncratic nature of the names that's the problem, it's the underlying implication of the ones that are actively insulting that people who play on easier difficulties are doing it 'wrong'.
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free,
You can't take the sky from me.
Defender of
Don't make me trot out Smite Moron!
Thanks to Sneak for the Avatar.
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2019-11-22, 06:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
"Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-22, 06:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2008
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2019-11-23, 08:09 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I mean...get over it? Or just don't play those games I guess. Neither one is very offensive at all. "Oh no! The video game compared my skill level to a child's!" If the insults were tailored towards certain groups (or actually insulting) then I would get the complaint. Getting upset about something this mild is mind boggling to me. I don't see how you can be that sensitive and also be a functional member of any society.
It's not that different from games that outright refuse to cater to audiences that want a casual experience, and there's nothing wrong with those games either. The games are meant to be played a certain way, and the game is light heartedly mocking you to encourage you to get better.Last edited by Anteros; 2019-11-23 at 08:11 AM.
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2019-11-23, 08:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2011
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- Canada
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
That is not true. I I said all people who play games on easy mode are losers, which is the exact sort of thing these punching down difficulty names do, I'd be (correctly!) lambasted for being a rude ass bitch. It's not directed at anyone specifically, and the people taking offense are those who "can't handle a joke" I say, but we all the truth. I mean the words I say, and they are insulting. They're not aimed at a specific individual, or even a specific "group" necessarily, but people who have to play easy mode, for whatever reason, has some degree of scratch on them. It doesn't matter if they can take it or not, because being able to take it or not does not stop you from having to take it.
It is actually insulting, cause you don't know WHY someone is picking the easy mode. Imagine you're someone with muscular distrophy who has difficulty playing video games, but wants to because you like them. Would you appreciate being put on baby child mode, and being told, implicitly, that by playing this mode you're just a baby and not playing the "real" game.
There are ways to go about making idiosyncratic difficulty names, and taking a wild swing at the player, on the assumption they can avoid it or just don't care is not the way to do it.
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2019-11-23, 09:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2006
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- Elemental Plane Of D20
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Or you could choose just not to be offended by the name of a difficulty level in a computer game. Seems like a lot energy to care about if words in a game implies you're a child...
I mean, I get why you'd be offended if it was something actually offensive like "easy mode is for homosexuals" or something in that regard, but for the difficulties discussed, I sincerely hope anyone with a handicap playing games has something better to do with their time and energy than getting worked up over what is more or less just another wording for "kid gloves".Last edited by Driderman; 2019-11-23 at 09:53 AM.
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2019-11-23, 10:12 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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2019-11-23, 11:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2011
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- Canada
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
They're not wasting their time getting upset, they're rolling their eyes and saying to friends "ah this sucks" and then playing the game.
But there's only so many times you can do that before it starts to wear on you. I'm able to endure some ****, but the fact that I can and have endured it doesn't mean I WANT too. Even if I can brush it off, it's still something that hit me, even a little, and death by a thousand cuts is a thing.
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2019-11-23, 12:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
This isn't exclusive to older games, but I really hate when you face an enemy, defeat that enemy, and then the game proceeds as if you lost. This is doubly obnoxious if losing to the enemy results in failure to progress.
Either make the fight super difficult/impossible and then let me progress after being defeated, or don't make me play through the battle at all.
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2019-11-23, 02:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2006
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I think we need to leave the "take a joke" thing because it isn't going anywhere and the people that don't understand why it is a problem aren't going to figure it out here. There is a lot more to say on it, but it all doesn't fit in this thread and most of it isn't appropriate for these forums.
It is especially annoying when you've not only beat them, but beat them thoroughly and with no difficulty at all.
It is even more annoying when they "surround you" with a few more mooks than normal and suddenly you can't win the fight in a cutscene even though the game has shown you over and over again that you can beat them without even trying.
But that is almost always a case of bad writing more than anything else and it happens in virtually all mediums, plenty of movies do essentially the same thing.
To go back to the "too many skills" thing earlier and the complaint about Wastelands 2 in particular, having just finished replaying the game a couple days ago, without grinding or doing anything unusual, I had every non-combat skill at 9-10 (max) by the end. With the exception of bartering, but I ended up with like 15-20k of scrap so it's hardly like I needed it, and every character had max in their weapon, but I didn't have all the weapons between the party, I even had several with a dozen skill points just sitting around because I didn't have any reason to put them to anything.
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2019-11-23, 05:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
@Erloas:
Nor do the people that take that as a problem is going to figure out it isn't because it's just a joke, for just as I said, there are different points of view on the subject, but alas, agreed on leaving the case closed myself.
@On Topic:
As for a old mechanic that I do not miss: RPGs with sprawling large dungeons, without in-game auto-mappers. If the dungeon is small, it's ok because you get the gist of the layout in time (e.g. Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, which was first person even). But when the dungeons are too big and/or too confusing (e.g. Phantasy Star 2 for the same console, which is also very difficult and with ridiculous random encounter rates), it could easily overwhelm. That's when the good and old method of mapping by hand comes into play, but I was never all that good at it, and it consumed more timethat I could spend grinding."Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-23, 07:02 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2006
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I think this is one that 100% depends on the genre and style of the game. Minecraft doesn't have an automapper by default and I think that is very fitting for the game. At least when MC is viewed as a survival game, when it is a free form builder then it should. That is of course one of those things that is commonly added with mods, and even in survival mode you can plug the seed into a website and build a map, but those are things that the player actively has to do to fit a desire for divergent gameplay styles. There are also games like Tarkov where realism* is very important and it would break the verisimilitude they're working for.
*yes there is a lot about any shooter that isn't realistic but they've removed pretty much every UI helper and similar that they could.
The main question is: is getting lost/not knowing where you are a key point to the game design or is it simply a way to force players to waste time?
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2019-11-23, 08:12 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2016
Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I actually forget that Minecraft doesn't have a map by default since I believe JourneyMap is the single most commonly used mod, to the point that it even shows up on servers meant to be largely Vanilla. It may as well be added by default because a server or modpack that doesn't use it is as rare as hen's teeth IME.
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2019-11-23, 08:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
As an aside, I knew pretty close to nothing about Minecraft until very recently when I watched some gameplay from A_Seagull on youtube. I always thought it was just some kind of open world block builder, so the lack of an automapper on it seems a bit too much (and I indeed don't remember seeing one in his videos). Are there enough recognizable landmarks to serve as references, at least?
But yes, I agree with your point, the design of the game should dictate if an automapper is needed, and also how it's implemented. But in the case of an traditional RPG (think Final Fantasy or Phantasy Star), if the game includes gigantic dungeons with labyrinthine interiors as part of the regular challenge, I fail to see a reason not to include one, outside of budget."Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-23, 09:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2014
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
You can build your own landmarks, at least, plus there are in-game maps that you can craft that will map your surroundings as you move, and it'll also show your position on it (as well as the positions of other maps showing that area). During my short foray into Minecraft, that's something I immensely enjoyed - just slowly building up a gigantic wall that was a huge map of the area surrounding my home. ...I do understand why people'd love a minimap or auto-mapper. Especially with waypoints.
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2019-11-23, 11:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2004
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- I wish I knew...
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Pardon, but I read this as
"Sorry, but if the game includes gigantic labyrinthine interiors as part of the regular challenge, I fail to see a reason to not negate that challenge and obviate the purpose of the maze-like interiors entirely."
The whole point IS the difficulty, which you solve by either manually mapping or remembering landmarks. A minimap would defeat this, and trivialize a substantial portion of the engagement and entertainment value.
Then again, I'm also one who cut their teeth on the Wizardry series, starting with the original, so I'm no stranger to manually mapping.SpoilerQuite possibly, the best rebuttal I have ever witnessed.
Joker Bard - the DM's solution to the Batman Wizard.
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2019-11-23, 11:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
Personally, I don't particularly enjoy getting lost. So games without maps negate a lot of their potential entertainment value.
Here's one: I am of the view that when Supreme Commander came up with strategic zoom, any RTS or TBS over a large landmass has no business not having at least some version of it. The ability to get a decent and immediate overview of the strategic situation is far too useful, and renders the classic minimap in the bottom of the screen at the very least obsolescent.
Alas, because halfway decent RTS games are about a common as hen's teeth in this benighted age, I will tolerate this lack in any that do come along.Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.
Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman, 1906.
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2019-11-24, 04:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I think that Supreme Commander still needed the minimap. Otherwise, I felt half-blind when playing it, because, once in a while, you do need to zoom in, and then you are completely unaware of what's going on elsewhere. Probably the best option would have been to play with two monitors, a main one for zooming and a secondary one with the map, but I never could try that.
I say that it needed a monitor for the minimap because of just how many units there could be on the map, and the vast distances they could need to go. By comparison, Age of Kings had a beautiful, small minimap that also showed units under attack (complete with audio and video signals when the attack started outside your view), but it was possible because of the smaller scale of the game.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2019-11-24, 06:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2010
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
That's when the choice of how to implement it comes in play. If part of the challenge is to brave the interiors, then make the automapper do the same you are going to be doing manually. Even better, gate it as a resource, just like Shining in the Darkness did (you had to either spent mana to cast a spell or buy/drop a consumable that took precious and very limited inventory space to access a view of your surroundings only). Also, never show the whole map, just your current position and direction, and all the squares around you have already visited.
Last edited by heronbpv; 2019-11-24 at 06:48 AM.
"Stop talking." - Roy
Surprised Champion Predictor of the Rastakhan Rumble's Card Rating Competition in the Playground - "I could predict pretty much anything, besides winning this competition!" - Myself, probably
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2019-11-24, 07:27 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2014
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Re: What's One "Old Game" Mechanic That You Don't Miss?
I don't mind insulting difficulty options. If I'm playing on easy because I'm just looking to blow through some bad guys I know that's what I'm doing. The game can make fun of that.
I'm more likely to be insulted if I'm actually trying but I'm still stuck in difficulty "easiest", regardless of whether it has an insulting name. Because that makes me a bad player. The game double dog daring me to try something harder does not.The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!