But like, I’m asking from a game designer hat wearing perspective. What would be your blue sky ideal feedback mechanism when you get hit in a game like this? I can’t think of a lever Zero Ranger doesn’t pull for that so I’m curious what I’m missing
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It should flash the whole screen white, pause the game for an entire second, and send you an email notification that you’ve taken damage.
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I swear I’m not being facetious or sarcastic I’m genuinely curious
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For most of the game the thing where the old ship explodes and the new one flies in from the bottom to take over would work.
That wouldn’t make sense on some of the more bizarre levels.
I don’t have a good solution. But I’ve had multiple runs where I’ve thought “well I lost a life that sucks, but I’ve only been hit once so I c…” and then been interrupted by the “PLEASE CONTINUE!” prompt because there were 3 deaths that I completely missed in the melee.
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To be serious for a moment (out of character), I played ZeroRanger not too long ago, and I had no trouble telling that I got hit. Do you play a lot of arcadey action games? It may be that you just need to train yourself to look for specific tells. I do agree with @TracyDMcGrath that the game presents all the information clearly, but I would add that it does require some user training/practice to be able to read it all when it’s all being flung at the screen at one time.
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(Jots down “Make it more like Batrider” in my game design notebook again)
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I haven’t played a serious shmup in a while. But I play enough arcade games to spot common annoying trend.
I remember when the healthbar you didn’t realise you were draining was a trait of the hated “Euroshmup”.
exactly.
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I also found it too busy. But for those who’d like more feedback, a subtle screen shake option could help
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And also you should win things by playing
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having not beat it yet i think you’re a little right. it’s got those sort of dystopian YA novel vibes but for people who might have a mortgage/have had to start being a little bit more careful when running down hills
i’ve complained about this game a lot on here so i just need to say that i really like it and think it’s cool
edit: i feel like there’s also a little bit of covid subtext too, everyone’s just dying too young and relatively young people are finding themselves to be some of the oldest people around
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Undertale is why Trump won (first term)
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Perhaps if I had mentioned the canonical example of this trend for me, Apex Legends (at least at launch). It would not have come across as trying to backseat design ZeroRanger.
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Physical things, like they should send you pencil toppers or butterscotches or something.
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I don’t like Gwent, or really any card game that’s on the side in RPGs. I haven’t played that many, so I’ll focus on Gwent.
The Witcher 3 is massive. There were enough flavors in the story and side quests that the pacing velt varied and nice. Gwent felt extraneous. The games you play in white orchard didn’t do enough to grab me and make me want to keep playing it. I was annoyed with the abundant Gwent side quests by the time I got to Novigraad, and I wasn’t even playing it. Just arriving at a quest marker to see that it’s another dang Gwent quest. From what I experienced, the strategic elements for each battle felt very trial and error. The game itself feels under-explained, despite a lengthy tutorial.
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i really liked gwent when i played the witcher, becoming one of those players who spent more time playing gwent than the actual game. so i was pretty excited to play the gwent stand-alone game when it came out, but within the first few hours of playing it i realized it wasn’t hitting the same way. it turns out i needed all the extra set dressing like quest markers and stuff.
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Playing TW3 now, and my experience with Gwent is that it’s almost impossible to win the quest battles on the first try. Once you know what tricks your opponent is going to pull, you can manage, but going in blind, it’s almost a guarantee that my opponents have better decks than I do. I usually win on the 3rd or 4th match. It’s kind of a pain to make a deck in another faction than the one you start with because you need sooo many unit cards to make it legal.
I also agree that Gwent alone doesn’t quite hit the spot. I keep telling myself not to do another Gwent quest because it’s not that fun, but then I’m there, and it’s a dialogue option to play the Baron, and I can’t seem to stop myself.
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I do not like card battle things at all but ended up loving Gwent. I think with TW3 being so stuffed with things having something borderline mindless helps avoid burnout. I completely ignored Gwent until after finishing Act 2. Felt burned out so decided to return to the starting tavern and had a blast (plus the dissonance of returning to places and having dialogues that were dated per where I was actually at in the story). Having an OP deck definitely helped get into it, playing along at pace would have not worked for me. Rejuvenated me and ended up clearing all the Gwent quests. Was pretty surprised how much I loved it. Would recommend saving it and binging as needed.
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Haha yes this is exactly what i was imagining. Like a Millennial coming of age story.
In general I’m glad a game like this was made, but in terms of my personal tastes I’m a little suspicious of it.
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the point of Gwent isn’t that it’s good in and of itself. It’s that you interrupt a huge rpg that cost a billion dollars to make to have Geralt sit down and play a dumb card game with images of himself and people he knows and has yet to meet on the cards, and this goes totally unremarked on
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Clickity-clack keyboards are overrated.
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