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When a game is too Complicated or too Simple
- Thread starter Myzt
- Start date
I actually have no clue because I love complicated games. You'll probably play them several times before you understand everything. My favorite manga "tsubasa reservoir chronicles" also took a few times to read untill I understood everything XD
Seriously i think these super complicated games are awesome, but not if the player has to think tooo much and becomes desperate. I think it depends on the story and puzzle, character relationships and worldbuilding if the game is complicated. I like the surprise when you play a game which has been built smartly and if things happen you didn't think that they ever could.
Too complicated could also mean fe a bs with too many rules to remember which would become too annoying for me to play then to be honest. Or a complicated gameplay system (fe with as many special rules as chess had). I'd be too lazy to play it then (BC I'm lazy, sorry that's my nature) but not if there is a interesting storytelling, character, design or whatever which keeps me play the game.
However, I don't have a plan how to define a game as "too easy" and if I'd play it then or not. Hope this helps xD
Seriously i think these super complicated games are awesome, but not if the player has to think tooo much and becomes desperate. I think it depends on the story and puzzle, character relationships and worldbuilding if the game is complicated. I like the surprise when you play a game which has been built smartly and if things happen you didn't think that they ever could.
Too complicated could also mean fe a bs with too many rules to remember which would become too annoying for me to play then to be honest. Or a complicated gameplay system (fe with as many special rules as chess had). I'd be too lazy to play it then (BC I'm lazy, sorry that's my nature) but not if there is a interesting storytelling, character, design or whatever which keeps me play the game.
However, I don't have a plan how to define a game as "too easy" and if I'd play it then or not. Hope this helps xD
Complicated in story or complicated in mechanics?
When it comes to story you can have a good complex story but it required a lot of good 'experiences' to drag you along to stay invested. A good example is as @Cunechan said, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.
But typically these kind of stories work well as huge epics. To translate into games we're looking at a story at the length of something like Tales of Symphonia or Final Fantasy VII(There are others but these are the two most known of their respective franchises.)
So we may be playing this story for 40 or more hours, we can excuse the complexity thanks to having all this time to take it in an actually viewing every angle.
Exposition is hard to follow, Show Don't Tell is ideal, so you need that time to allow the latter.
An example of an incredibly complex story in a short game would be the Fate route in Fate/Stay Night. This relies on a lot of tiresome exposition in order to understand every mechanic in the story. The reader needs to know about: The Holy Grail War, Servants, Masters, Prana, Noble Phantasms, Classes, Mystic Codes, Bounded Fields, Reality Marbles, and even the importance of everyone's identities and how it ties into everyone's abilities.
The Fate Route's storytelling is god awful, but we can excuse it because the world is very interesting. As a standalone though it would be pretty bad overall(sorry Saber fans.) However this style of storytelling allow the player's two subsequent 'playthroughs' to tell entirely different stories assuming that the reader is 'initiated' and can 'follow the world.'
If possible you want to minimize exposition. So for example Illya's reaction to Archer's Unlimited Blade Works(Paraphrased)
"A Reality Marble!? He's forcing his internal reality onto the world!? That should be impossible!"
Whereas they could've used something more concise..
"!?"
"Is this his internal world?.."
Archer's 'internal world' holds a lot of weight in the story. He afterall is a man who was broken by the real world. Instead of focusing on the mechanics they could've focused on the emotional weight that it has.
In addition they had no excuse for this style of exposition, they had 'Stat Pages' accessible at any times on any character that has been seen/displayed an ability. They could've just of easily placed in the stat page.
"Unlimited Blade Works ... *stat information*
A Reality Marble, an internal representation of the world forced onto reality...
... lore stuff here ..."
This way story flow isn't unnaturally broken but if the player wants more information then they can just look it up.
Well, this post ended up longer than I thought, I'll give my opinion on simple/complex mechanics in a separate post after awhile.
When it comes to story you can have a good complex story but it required a lot of good 'experiences' to drag you along to stay invested. A good example is as @Cunechan said, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.
But typically these kind of stories work well as huge epics. To translate into games we're looking at a story at the length of something like Tales of Symphonia or Final Fantasy VII(There are others but these are the two most known of their respective franchises.)
So we may be playing this story for 40 or more hours, we can excuse the complexity thanks to having all this time to take it in an actually viewing every angle.
Exposition is hard to follow, Show Don't Tell is ideal, so you need that time to allow the latter.
An example of an incredibly complex story in a short game would be the Fate route in Fate/Stay Night. This relies on a lot of tiresome exposition in order to understand every mechanic in the story. The reader needs to know about: The Holy Grail War, Servants, Masters, Prana, Noble Phantasms, Classes, Mystic Codes, Bounded Fields, Reality Marbles, and even the importance of everyone's identities and how it ties into everyone's abilities.
The Fate Route's storytelling is god awful, but we can excuse it because the world is very interesting. As a standalone though it would be pretty bad overall(sorry Saber fans.) However this style of storytelling allow the player's two subsequent 'playthroughs' to tell entirely different stories assuming that the reader is 'initiated' and can 'follow the world.'
If possible you want to minimize exposition. So for example Illya's reaction to Archer's Unlimited Blade Works(Paraphrased)
"A Reality Marble!? He's forcing his internal reality onto the world!? That should be impossible!"
Whereas they could've used something more concise..
"!?"
"Is this his internal world?.."
Archer's 'internal world' holds a lot of weight in the story. He afterall is a man who was broken by the real world. Instead of focusing on the mechanics they could've focused on the emotional weight that it has.
In addition they had no excuse for this style of exposition, they had 'Stat Pages' accessible at any times on any character that has been seen/displayed an ability. They could've just of easily placed in the stat page.
"Unlimited Blade Works ... *stat information*
A Reality Marble, an internal representation of the world forced onto reality...
... lore stuff here ..."
This way story flow isn't unnaturally broken but if the player wants more information then they can just look it up.
Well, this post ended up longer than I thought, I'll give my opinion on simple/complex mechanics in a separate post after awhile.