Sep 24, 2007 at 12:12 AM
Hi my first post, have been registered for couple of months, but as there is so little discussion at the moment. I decided to create my own. Anyone can write freely what they think.
So i confess, i have been looking to the main page, waiting eagerly something when the next update about the Calatia would hit. I decided to write to you with my concerns, that if taken to consideration could make the game better. What i am concerned of is , how much more or less challenging it will be compared to the original or other hacks?. That usually are on the hard side because they want to bush the limits of the gameplay. And are designed from the standpoint of designing levels that look insanely awesome after the elite play it trough. They show creativity but are chore to actually play through instead of enjoyment. And for a new player, that kind of design is a detriment for the progression towards player seeing the full vision the designer had.
So the challenge level that pushes gameplay is a tricky thing to do right, because when you do this you also want to match perfectly this for your target audience Zelda fan (If you want them to enjoy it to the maximum extend with you without going to long save/load vortexes). And at the mean time not giving too much of frustration to the guy who is new to the game and not the beta tester who knows it inside out, but wants to experience its awesomeness too and knows how to play well. I know hacks usually are too difficult for 98% of the players to play through without dying all the time, which can be game brakingly annoying because the designer or the testers got too good playing the game over the years compared to the new players who experience for the first time. And from designers viewpoint its okay to start locking these challenges to be the new defacto standard. Because that particular tester/designer is succeeding against gameplay pushing level design and new invented mechanics newer found to be in particular engine to be bushed like that before. The majority of players in the other hand often find cumbersome with the little amount of practice they had to enjoy it fully without the before mentioned save load vortexes that are taken as standard difficulty in the hack world. So designers often loose track how to convey the challenges to the new gamers in a way that would eventually lead to a understanding of the way the designer intended for the scene to unfold, or they just pretend that its fun for us because so often its not. So i hope Zelda 3C is not designed solely for someone who knows Calatia, who has been cumulating skills while making but for a gamer that wants to experience what the world of Calatia and is a Zelda player and does not need to try to see it from the perspective of the designer to appreciate it (that is more often than not the case, because people are not trained to see world through the eyes of another being. Even they usually want to think they know what others want).
I am one those who can play through hard hacks with will power if nothing else (Nowadays i dont have the time though). But i think parallel worlds hack, was too difficult for me even as i played through a lot of it in a speedy manner, it was because i Saved/Loaded A LOT!!!. I liked the way it bushed me to the limits, but it did needed too many savestates to be loaded because there was so little healt to get when wandering around back and forth trying to spot the routes that unlock items. Dont get me wrong, i like it to be very challengin in all the ways possible. But im wary that it does not force to the levels of savestate abuse for all the time from the first castle onward. I dont want to master the game in the first hour or two, no commercial game witch is played even professional competitions never does this in the beginning. I want to experience its awesomeness while trying my best. I do like to be needed to feel that im very good at the game when last levels hit the screen im needed to pull all the skills together. but sometimes i feel the hacks are just morseless for the player, giving little to nill rope for the player when he/she is drowning in the pits of even less hope and is forced to give up. This is what i want you to remember ,when laughing at the though of putting 100 knights in to a dungeon and thinking the sweating foreheads we are going to have when trying to drop down this sucker with little to no health when wondering where is the next key.
So obviously one method to see how a new zelda gamer would fare with the challenges of Calatia. Is to ask one over and take notes how it goes. Perhaps from this new information and viewpoint, make it little bit more smooth there and there for enjoyment. Designers like shigeru miyamoto do it this way, And stuff like this makes us gamers happy, And is the mark of a truly awesome game.
-Is difficulty hack is possible?: Easy , normal, hard?. Easy example would give plenty of healt in all places and lower the damage the enemies , More enjoyment for not so avid players?,
-Or could there be three different versions that come in the same patch baggage all having more or less health and damage needed to make against bosses/enemies?.
So thats all for now.
Thanks for making this gem for us, i am eagerly waiting to play it.
So i confess, i have been looking to the main page, waiting eagerly something when the next update about the Calatia would hit. I decided to write to you with my concerns, that if taken to consideration could make the game better. What i am concerned of is , how much more or less challenging it will be compared to the original or other hacks?. That usually are on the hard side because they want to bush the limits of the gameplay. And are designed from the standpoint of designing levels that look insanely awesome after the elite play it trough. They show creativity but are chore to actually play through instead of enjoyment. And for a new player, that kind of design is a detriment for the progression towards player seeing the full vision the designer had.
So the challenge level that pushes gameplay is a tricky thing to do right, because when you do this you also want to match perfectly this for your target audience Zelda fan (If you want them to enjoy it to the maximum extend with you without going to long save/load vortexes). And at the mean time not giving too much of frustration to the guy who is new to the game and not the beta tester who knows it inside out, but wants to experience its awesomeness too and knows how to play well. I know hacks usually are too difficult for 98% of the players to play through without dying all the time, which can be game brakingly annoying because the designer or the testers got too good playing the game over the years compared to the new players who experience for the first time. And from designers viewpoint its okay to start locking these challenges to be the new defacto standard. Because that particular tester/designer is succeeding against gameplay pushing level design and new invented mechanics newer found to be in particular engine to be bushed like that before. The majority of players in the other hand often find cumbersome with the little amount of practice they had to enjoy it fully without the before mentioned save load vortexes that are taken as standard difficulty in the hack world. So designers often loose track how to convey the challenges to the new gamers in a way that would eventually lead to a understanding of the way the designer intended for the scene to unfold, or they just pretend that its fun for us because so often its not. So i hope Zelda 3C is not designed solely for someone who knows Calatia, who has been cumulating skills while making but for a gamer that wants to experience what the world of Calatia and is a Zelda player and does not need to try to see it from the perspective of the designer to appreciate it (that is more often than not the case, because people are not trained to see world through the eyes of another being. Even they usually want to think they know what others want).
I am one those who can play through hard hacks with will power if nothing else (Nowadays i dont have the time though). But i think parallel worlds hack, was too difficult for me even as i played through a lot of it in a speedy manner, it was because i Saved/Loaded A LOT!!!. I liked the way it bushed me to the limits, but it did needed too many savestates to be loaded because there was so little healt to get when wandering around back and forth trying to spot the routes that unlock items. Dont get me wrong, i like it to be very challengin in all the ways possible. But im wary that it does not force to the levels of savestate abuse for all the time from the first castle onward. I dont want to master the game in the first hour or two, no commercial game witch is played even professional competitions never does this in the beginning. I want to experience its awesomeness while trying my best. I do like to be needed to feel that im very good at the game when last levels hit the screen im needed to pull all the skills together. but sometimes i feel the hacks are just morseless for the player, giving little to nill rope for the player when he/she is drowning in the pits of even less hope and is forced to give up. This is what i want you to remember ,when laughing at the though of putting 100 knights in to a dungeon and thinking the sweating foreheads we are going to have when trying to drop down this sucker with little to no health when wondering where is the next key.
So obviously one method to see how a new zelda gamer would fare with the challenges of Calatia. Is to ask one over and take notes how it goes. Perhaps from this new information and viewpoint, make it little bit more smooth there and there for enjoyment. Designers like shigeru miyamoto do it this way, And stuff like this makes us gamers happy, And is the mark of a truly awesome game.
-Is difficulty hack is possible?: Easy , normal, hard?. Easy example would give plenty of healt in all places and lower the damage the enemies , More enjoyment for not so avid players?,
-Or could there be three different versions that come in the same patch baggage all having more or less health and damage needed to make against bosses/enemies?.
So thats all for now.
Thanks for making this gem for us, i am eagerly waiting to play it.