|
I love X6 even though (or maybe because?) it's an absolutely phenomenal case study of bad game design.
|
#
¿
Nov 17, 2012 08:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:17 |
|
|
Magil of Shadow posted:This pretty much nails it. Busters are cool and all, but nothing feels better then absolutely brutalizing everything that comes your way with a Saber. It even *looks* like a toy lightsaber to boot!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 18, 2012 20:02
|
|
|
Allow infinite lives alongside the checkpoints but also have a ranking system like Zero's, with losing a life costing you a lot of points. That way, people who want to beat the game can just beat it through brute force and people that want to be good at the game can have an incentive to get better. An easy comparison, though in an entirely different genre: Bayonetta. For the few people that haven't played it, you can continue indefinitely and the checkpoints are very generous, but dying even once give you a harsh penalty to your ranking for the level.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 16, 2012 20:22
|
|
|
Tengames posted:Giving people options doesn't help much if people don't use them or if one seems better then the other. If you didnt get those game overs in X6, when would you take a break from a level and try something else? Would you willingly give up the sunk cost of having reached the end of the level just to try soemeplace else, or would you just keep fighting the boss over and over because you have nothing to lose? A sunk cost actually refers to ignoring the costs up until that point because they're already spent, and comparing the costs remaining to the value that completion would give  But instead of just being pedantic, I'll add that in X6's case, the player might know that there are various upgrades you can get from different levels, and that if they're having trouble in one stage they could see what exploring another stage will get them. That's what I usually did with the games in the X series. In fact, I think X8 did have one great solution to that, by having a shop. That way even if your exploration amounts to nothing, you can still feel like your time amounted to something because now you might be able to afford an upgrade or an item.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 17, 2012 20:00
|
|
|
So I found out the hard way that Street Fighter x Mega Man can't be stopped. And by that I mean it keeps counting key presses even while minimized. I went to get a drink and didn't put my headphones back on. I alt tabbed out and wrote some emails, and when I went back to the game I was suddenly back at the title screen. Tested it out and apparently while typing that email I unpaused the game. I must have been on my last life and since the continue screen counts down, I must have not hit any of the game buttons in time. I really hope they put out in upgraded version, because goddamn there's just a few really obvious problems holding this back from being decent.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 19, 2012 06:16
|
|
|
Casual gamers playing a Megaman game would literally be the worst thing that could happen to the franchise. No, really, what the gently caress? As long as such a mode is optional it is silly to consider it a problem.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2013 05:56
|
|
|
Honestly my younger self would have loved the Super Guide feature in the games I played back then. Like, I could never get past the speeder bike level of Battletoads, which meant that a majority of the game was inaccessible to me. It sucked! It's not too hard to see that something like this could be the case for someone playing a modern game as well.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2013 06:17
|
|
|
Hobo Siege posted:X8 has the same problem as a lot of recent Capcom games in that it has fantastic core gameplay yet does everything possible to stop you appreciating that fact. Too many of the levels are centered around some kind of stupid gimmick. That and it's pretty short compared to a lot of the rest in the series, though it can certainly feel otherwise with some of the more gimmicky levels. I really wish it had more "normal" stages to play around in.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 15, 2013 05:15
|
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:Christ no. The multiple armor poo poo was the worst thing introduced in the X franchise, which is saying a lot. Armor sets fell into two categories: 1) Pointless or 2) The only thing you'll actually want. I think X8 was the only game that did this well, since you could mix and match each piece of armor so it wasn't a huge issue. The worst is...I forget, was X6 the one where you had to get all the components of an armor before you could use it? It's been ages so I don't remember.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 6, 2013 23:10
|
|
|
MM2 sure had a few design problems. Namely, the Wily stage where you gotta use Crash Man's weapon to defeat the boss and because you get so few shots one mistake means you gotta kill yourself and *then* spend time farming weapon energy for the next try. I feel 3 is the one where they finally ironed out a lot of design mistakes.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2013 02:14
|
|
|
I think ex-Retro folks could have shaped it into something fun. Not like they were strangers to adapting 2d games to a FPS title while keeping the spirit intact (heck, before it was released people were saying that Metroid Prime wasn't really a Metroid game, and they certainly ate their words). I'd definitely have given them the benefit of the doubt if the project didn't get scrapped.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2013 04:47
|
|
|
Gortarius posted:I've tried 4 stages so far, closest I came to beating one was Nailman, who got me with a sliver of health left. gently caress. I've played 6 stages and have yet to make it to a boss. The checkpoints are really awful, plenty of times I thought I was almost near the end but then I'd die and start from the beginning. The few times I've reached a checkpoint it was clearly not even at the halfway point of the level. Mega Man Revolution had a lot of problems, but at least it had enough checkpoints that I could make it to the boss more often than not. Also holy crap, Rainbowman's stage. Note to fan game designers: please, I beg you, do not listen to people who say "the problem with Quickman's stage is that it wasn't hard enough".
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2013 17:29
|
|
|
So after playing it some more, Megaman Unlimited is a great case study of what can go wrong with fangames. You know what would have done wonders for quality control? Have one of your testers be someone who has never played a Mega Man game before. People that are really passionate about a project can have blind spots, and boy are there a bunch of those here. Fanboys know what they love, but they tend to not know what makes the thing they love good. I've played each stage several times but I just can't make it to any boss, the checkpoint placement is just so terrible. My will to go on is just sapped when I go through a tedious section time and time again because the checkpoints aren't located in sensible places. The NES games weren't like that at all with most checkpoints, so this is just something that adds frustration for the sake of it. I could stand this if I was finding the challenge engaging (I was enough of a masochist to 100% X6 on the highest difficulty, and that is an incredibly poorly designed game) but most of the levels are a slog to get through. It's not fun at all to spend several minutes going through tedious sections time and time again just to get another shot at the bullshit insta-death parts. I'm sure I could get to the bosses if I tried enough times. But I'm not having fun with the stages themselves, so I don't think the boss fights will be fun enough to make up for that. And speaking of which, gently caress Rainbowman's stage. Even ignoring the trial and error insta-death layout, it's nigh-impossible to beat without getting other weapons first. That is objectively bad game design and whoever came up with that stage should feel ashamed of themselves. I really want to like Mega Man fangames. But in my experience the ones I've tried just lose sight of what made the original games so good, and they try to compensate by cranking up the difficulty.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2013 20:42
|
|
|
At least with Guts Man's stage you have an indicator of when the moving platforms tilt. It's quite challenging, but you don't have to make pixel-perfect jumps to beat it. Nor do you need to memorize the layout to have a chance at beating it. Also more importantly, it's a fairly short stage with checkpoints in reasonable locations! Having just played the stage for the first time in years to refresh my memory, even with a few deaths I was able to beat the entire level faster than it takes to reach most checkpoints in MMU.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2013 17:59
|
|
|
It certainly helps that making an 8-bit styled game is a hell of a lot cheaper than going with modern graphics. That was probably the biggest factor in their decision.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2013 21:31
|
|
|
Discendo Vox posted:How much would it cost to make an offer on the collective megaman IP? We could set up a kickstarter, make Capcom an offer. Enough that random fans would never be able to raise money for it. With rereleases and licensing (see: the Mega Man comic, figures, etc) they're still seeing money from the brand even without new games. An offer of a few million dollars for a 25+ year old brand that can still make money would just get you laughed at. Srice fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Jul 22, 2013 |
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2013 00:16
|
|
|
It's not too uncommon for games to have an encyclopedia of their series-specific jargon, there are plenty of examples. And most of the time you never even have to take a look inside them, so at worst they're just an inane but non-intrusive addition.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 23, 2013 23:52
|
|
|
TheKingofSprings posted:Instead of killing the insane mad scientist who killed 80% of the world's population and ravaged the planet, the then leaders of the world elected to put him in an immortal body, and then made him gently caress off into the desert. Look, if you make him immortal then he'll *have* to think about his crimes for all eternity. There's absolutely no downside to that plan at all.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2013 06:57
|
|
|
The Jorts of Zeus posted:I think there is a distinction that some people are missing. I might be the only one, but I don't consider "pixel art" and all 2d art to mean the same thing. Yeah. Even though MM9 and 10 couldn't be done on a NES, they still chose to make it look like a NES game, and reused plenty of sprites from the older games. Enough cost saving went around that the only explanation I could buy is that some accounting shenanigans were used. Perhaps they allocated expenses from another project over to it? They certainly wouldn't be the only company to do something like that. It's a lot more believable than sprites made to mimic the NES limitations being hella expensive (especially since we're talking about a company that made sprite-based games up to the DS).
|
|
#
¿
Jul 25, 2013 21:42
|
|
|
Kaubocks posted:I don't think I'm going to back it because it probably won't have any trouble getting funded without me but it's definitely a thing I'll want to pick up when it comes out. I think that's gonna be my plan too since all the images are just concept art and they don't expect to have the game ready until 2015. I am perfectly fine with waiting for it to get released on Steam. I'm pretty optimistic about it but at the same time $20 sounds steep for a Mega Man clone. Steam sales have kinda spoiled me 
|
|
#
¿
Sep 1, 2013 04:47
|
|
|
TheKingofSprings posted:Actually this makes me wonder, what do you suppose Capcom values Mega Man at, if some company were to buy up the brand? I want to think it'd be at least a few millions? Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than that. They aren't making Mega Man games right now but the overall sales record for the franchise ain't bad. IPs can be valuable over a long period of time (plus their annual report says that Mega Man is one of their main franchises) even if they aren't actively being used right now. Capcom may be making a lot of dumb decisions lately but they definitely aren't dumb enough that they'd let go of one of their oldest IPs for chump change. My rather uneducated guess would be somewhere in the hundred millions before they'd consider an offer.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 4, 2013 17:45
|
|
|
Potsticker posted:On the other hand, in terms of Inafune, I don't really doubt that he and his will be able to deliver a fun game experience. I think the major thing to watch out for is community involvement, having the minimum value for voting be a higher donation tier is interesting to say the least. I think that's my main worry about the project because at that price level you'll only get the hardcore fans. And if the recent fangames that were released in the past few months are any indication, most hardcore fans don't know what makes a Mega Man game good.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2013 04:26
|
|
|
It's probably a third party that wants to use the license. And honestly even if it wasn't a third party and was Capcom themselves doing it, Kickstarter is a drat good way to gauge consumer interest these days. They can figure out if they'll make a profit before they spend the money.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 25, 2013 06:36
|
|
|
Let's not forget that if you die at the turret wall boss you gotta spend time grinding enemies to refill your crash bomb ammo. Basically, gently caress that stage.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 3, 2013 05:34
|
|
|
I think it's funny to harp on iOS for having a lot of low effort games when talking about a series that sold best during the days of the NES. I mean, it's the sort of thing that hasn't really changed all that much over the years. There were plenty of companies that shat out awful games with almost no effort back then too (to name one of many random examples, ask anyone who ever played a LJN game). The difference back then was you'd be out about $60 or so instead of a few bucks (if that, considering how you couldn't get demos on the NES either).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 4, 2013 15:27
|
|
|
Penakoto posted:So, I've never actually played any of the X games except the first, despite being a huge fan of the original games and other series, and have heard some are really great, and some are terrible? Play them all. 6 is the bad one but honestly I kinda like it in a weird, twisted way. It's like a great example of what not to do with game design, but it's not impossibly hard or anything.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2013 04:47
|
|
|
Oh whoops, I was just thinking of what was included on the Mega Man X Collection. Yeah, don't buy 7. Watch a LP or something if you want to know what happens in it. Just don't play it.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2013 05:09
|
|
|
Penakoto posted:You guys are just making me curious about X7 now. In a nutshell they tried to make the franchise 3D in a way that would have been embarrassing during the PSX era, nevermind PS2.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2013 05:19
|
|
|
Network Transmission's difficulty curve is really stupid but other than that it's alright. I just remember having a lot of trouble early on and after getting newer cards the stages became really easy. Fireman is a pretty good example of this, since he gives very little margin for error even though he's the first boss (I believe it's something like getting hit 2-3 times will kill you? That is really dumb for a first boss). It has a lot of half-baked ideas that probably would have been better implemented in a sequel, but alas.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 13, 2013 22:22
|
|
|
So wait, the excuse that terrible nerds are using for hating that a woman is involved is that she wasn't a Mega Man fan? If Mega Man fangames have taught me anything, it's that having someone who isn't a diehard fan of them could be a good thing
|
|
#
¿
Dec 11, 2013 19:00
|
|
|
blackguy32 posted:Its like they have a reason they don't like her, but they know that they can't use that for the reason, so they are stumbling to come up with anything to discredit her that they think the average person would consider valid. Don't forget that she got the job because she knew the right people! Networking is okay to do if you're a guy but it's a lovely thing to do if you're a woman - a thing nerds believe
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2013 22:17
|
|
|
Dehry posted:In defense, that's probably just there for design purposes. I doubt there would be a naked humanoid robot running around. Yeah it's probably like a barbie doll or something.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 29, 2013 18:52
|
|
|
Considering how terrible plenty of gamers are, I am positive the people being lovely over the MN9 stuff are, indeed, hella Mega Man fans.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2013 05:53
|
|
|
Inafune leaving was definitely the biggest nail in that coffin. When the head of what is very clearly a pet project leaves, it's not surprising that said pet project gets shut down. If he stayed we definitely would have seen the demo at the very least. And since it sounds like the people that were passionate about Mega Man at Capcom have all jumped ship, it sure as hell isn't surprising that Mega Man games would be put on hold; like ImpAtom said it has been a long time since a Mega Man game sold well and when you have nobody pushing for it, they're just going to look at it in terms of how much money it will make.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2013 22:19
|
|
|
Zaphod42 posted:I think the only way to translate Megaman to 3D without turning it into Quake would be to use Metroid Prime as a template. As a matter of fact, the people that made that FPS prototype were ex-Retro folks that worked on Metroid Prime.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2014 17:01
|
|
|
It's still a pretty big design flaw. And it's hardly the only boss to suffer from that flaw (the boss that requires Crash Man's bombs probably holds the record for the worst designed fight in the classic Mega Man games).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 2, 2014 18:15
|
|
|
MML3 was a pet project. When a guy helming a pet project leaves, you tend to only continue development if it's gonna be profitable. And it looked rather doubtful that it would be, really (because hey, if it's easy money it wouldn't be just a pet project).
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2014 04:52
|
|
|
They were planning on charging for the demo, but on the other hand they would have to spend money on final work on the demo.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2014 06:40
|
|
|
LordAndrew posted:Capcom could have just not half-way announced Mega Man Legends 3 was happening in the first place, and it really could have done without bringing in fans to help give ideas and concept art just to say "nope, it isn't happening guys sorry" later on. To be fair when they made that announcement I'm sure they did not expect Inafune to just up and leave like that.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 8, 2014 19:14
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 00:17 |
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:Metroid Games Worth Playing: 10 And Metroid probably sells more copies per title on average than Mega Man to boot.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 21, 2014 02:08
|
|