The Door Problem of Combat Design

Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design by mrec on Saturday August 10, 2019 @04:23PM (#20664326)

Same here. For reasons which now escape me, I decided to play through the whole [1] of Quake II without ever getting hit or otherwise taking damage. I don't remember it making the game easier, just differently difficult. I spent a lot of time reloading.

I get very irritated by game designers who decide that I'm just not having the right kind of fun. Enemies spawning right behind me in an area I've just cleared, or infinite spawns, usually trigger an immediate uninstall. The Deus Ex games got this mostly right, mostly. (Those abysmal boss fights being the exception; I gather they were done by a completely different team, and my god it showed.)

[1] Right up until the final boss fight, anyway. I think I made an exception for that. I think I swore off consumables like the Quad Damage too, but don't recall the details.

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Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design by teddyh on Saturday August 10, 2019 @05:27PM (#20664610)

> I spent a lot of time reloading.

Mike, the saveaholic:

https://web.archive.org/web/20080106232309/http://archive.ga...

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Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design by mrec on Saturday August 10, 2019 @05:53PM (#20664702)

Ha! Firstly, that's spot-on. Secondly, you have remarkable powers of recall when it comes to 18-year-old observational humour.

In my defence, it was only that one playthrough. Most games I approach more normally (albeit with a sneaky-snipey style wherever possible).

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Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design by teddyh on Saturday August 10, 2019 @06:46PM (#20664966)

> you have remarkable powers of recall

I’ll tell you my secret. It’s called… <whispers> Bookmarks:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15574890#15575460

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Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design by mrec on Saturday August 10, 2019 @07:33PM (#20665203)

That doesn't really help, it just replaces the intimidating powers of recall with equally-intimidating powers of managing twenty years of bookmarks without drowning under them.

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Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design by teddyh on Saturday August 10, 2019 @09:18PM (#20665595)

I currently have 1324 bookmarks, many of which are obsolete and/or dead. One might reasonably argue that I am drowning under them.

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Re:The Door Problem of Combat Design by blattimwind on Saturday August 10, 2019 @08:59PM (#20665535)

> (Those abysmal boss fights being the exception; I gather they were done by a completely different team, and my god it showed.)

Those were indeed done by a different studio that was otherwise not integrated into the development at all. The Director's Cut somewhat works around these areas.

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