56 replies to this topic

[TheLegend_njf]

I believe it is much more respect to the quest designer to not use F1. I feel if I watched somebody use F1 when posting an LP on YouTube, it gives the impression on those watching that if quest players have to resort to F1 to speed through quests, than quests themselves must be boring.

I also find it very distracting to watch, and hinders on the gameplay experience.

But this can go both ways, perhaps quest designers shouldn't make boring quests (including myself). It will stop the majority of the F1 use. But considering some people are excessive F1 users, it almost comes as second nature.

Edited by NewJourneysFire, 06 August 2013 - 08:29 AM.

[Shane]

Basically, this is like asking if you're the only one to use F3 (pause button). Since Zelda Classic is a well know program know by a least hundreds, there's no doubt you're not the only one.

 

And for the record, I do not use it. It's rather useless since you can bump into enemies, hard to walk at times and not to mention you could get hit by enemies a lot quicker. There are several other reasons but I don't want to get into detail.

Edited by Shane, 06 August 2013 - 08:44 AM.

[strike]

NewJourneysFire- I think it's more of the quest makers fault. Players only use F1 for a few reasons:

1) When gameplay gets boring, predictable, and repetitive.
2) To abuse a mechanic that relies on the player playing for long periods of time.

1 is obviously just bad design, and 2 isn't very good either. The player shouldn't have to just stand around waiting to get their magic refilled. You could argue that the refilling mechanic tries to balance the game, but in the end all it does is punish the player for using the items he or she is required to use. Neither are that great.

-Strike

[Aevin]

I have to disagree with strike, especially on #2. It's not a matter of punishing players for using required items. It's to put a limit on the item use when they would otherwise be too powerful. When I decided to use regenerating magic, for example, it was actually to allow the player to use the magic items MORE, because otherwise they would run out of magic and be unable to use the items at all until they collected more magic.  Instead, the regenerating magic allows for a burst of rapid firing of magic weapons if you start at full, but if you use it so unnecessarily frequently that it would otherwise be game breaking, you'll drain your magic and have to wait another ten seconds or so to fire again. The alternative is to make weak, boring items that have limitless uses.

 

And personally, I think far too many people use F1 purely out of reflex. I don't think the problem is always that the quests are boring, but that players are impatient. Questmakers often try very hard to tailor their design toward a certain kind of experience, and fast forwarding through it can break that experience. It's especially frustrating when people F1 through cutscenes and dialog. I can, of course, agree that forcing you to backtrack across the same level tons of times is just bad design.

Edited by Aevin, 06 August 2013 - 03:00 PM.

[Jubbz]

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned me yet.

 

I'm like, the face of Uncapping. If you watch my streams, you see that I uncap to my death all the time. Lately, my uncappage has gotten to the point where ZC goes out of control, so I've been forced to uncap less. >_>

 

but seriously guys. Don't uncap. It has a 90% chance of leading to your death.

 

I should know.

[strike]

Aevin- So you're saying that standing still in an empty room for 10, 20, sometimes 30 seconds befor going on to the next room adds something to the gameplay? I know you're not, but that's what happens if you don't use F1. If you use magic regeneration as a form of balancing, I think there are better methods. I like the suggestion of having enemies drop magic a lot along with having a quick boost after a certain amount of time. Those methods seem a lot better.

I am not one to use F1 willy-nilly, only when the situation calls for it. Also I think it's questionable design from the quest maker when the player feels no need to understand the story to progress which is the reason most people use F1 in cutscenes. Further more, I don't think I have ever played a quest where standing around doing nothing has ever helped the experience or running through empty locations elicited any emotional phenomenon in my mind. These things just don't help quests.

-Strike

Edited by strike, 06 August 2013 - 03:21 PM.

[Aevin]

In my quests, I don't expect a player to stand around doing nothing for 10-30 seconds, ever.  I expect them to try different things to beat enemies instead of abusing the same weapon that wasn't meant to be used in that way.  I just don't understand this idea that not uncapping means you'll spend whole minutes just standing around doing nothing. Yes, if that were the case, it would be horrible design on the quest maker's part, but I've yet to see anything like that. Regenerating magic almost never means you'll be stuck standing in one place waiting for your magic to regenerate. It means you'll move forward using one of the many other tools at your disposal until you're able to use that item again. In my own quests, in the few places where you need to use magic items to advance, I DO supply large amounts of magic bottles to make sure the player never runs out. I agree that regenerating magic can be used badly, but what bothers me is your assumption that it's ALWAYS bad, no matter how hard the quest maker works to balance it.  That seems to be the crux of your entire argument - 'if people F1, it's the quest maker's fault.' In some cases, maybe you're right, but you seem to deny the very possibility that players can abuse it out of habit.  You say players ONLY use it for two reasons, and I believe that's a laughable extreme that just doesn't hold water.

[Theryan]

In my quests, I don't expect a player to stand around doing nothing for 10-30 seconds, ever.  I expect them to try different things to beat enemies instead of abusing the same weapon that wasn't meant to be used in that way.  I just don't understand this idea that not uncapping means you'll spend whole minutes just standing around doing nothing. Yes, if that were the case, it would be horrible design on the quest maker's part, but I've yet to see anything like that. Regenerating magic almost never means you'll be stuck standing in one place waiting for your magic to regenerate. It means you'll move forward using one of the many other tools at your disposal until you're able to use that item again. In my own quests, in the few places where you need to use magic items to advance, I DO supply large amounts of magic bottles to make sure the player never runs out. I agree that regenerating magic can be used badly, but what bothers me is your assumption that it's ALWAYS bad, no matter how hard the quest maker works to balance it.  That seems to be the crux of your entire argument - 'if people F1, it's the quest maker's fault.' In some cases, maybe you're right, but you seem to deny the very possibility that players can abuse it out of habit.  You say players ONLY use it for two reasons, and I believe that's a laughable extreme that just doesn't hold water.

I agree that regenerating magic forces the player to alternate between weapons and techniques to clear a room, but once that room is cleared, they will almost certainly want to wait there until they are 100% regenerated before jumping into the great unknown of the next room, so why not speed the game up a bit while you wait instead of just standing in place like a statue for 20 seconds? If magic is infinite(which regenerating magic essentially makes it), players will most certainly be using those items to their full extent, unless non-magic items are better. If they use up all their magic in most battles, they'll be using that uncap feature to get back into the game at full power as soon as possible.

 

 

I don't think the problem is always that the quests are boring, but that players are impatient. ... It's especially frustrating when people F1 through cutscenes and dialog.

The 1st bold part is 100% true. The second I don't agree with. ZC only displays text at a certain speed, even while pressing "a". It's annoying to wait through literally dozens upon dozens of strings if they display much slower than you can read.

[strike]

No, regenerating magic can be used correctly. In your quest it sounds fine. I have just never seen a quest that had regenerating magic where I would every once and a while stand around doing nothing to regain magic which is just boring. I still think that when using F1 helps the player, it is a design fault of the quest maker. The more I think about it the more I feel certain that besides the use of F1 out of habit, the only reason a player uses the button is when he or she is disengaged from the game: which is ALWAYS the fault of the quest maker whose main job is to engage e player. As Jubbz has stated, the use of F1 out of habit kills you about 10 times more often than it helps you. The only time one can use it for benefit is when the game becomes monotonous- the quest makers fault.

-Strike

P.S- I gues a third use would be when the quest maker intends you to use it which is fine.

Edited by strike, 06 August 2013 - 04:01 PM.

[Binx]

The 1st bold part is 100% true. The second I don't agree with. ZC only displays text at a certain speed, even while pressing "a". It's annoying to wait through literally dozens upon dozens of strings if they display much slower than you can read.

Y'know, if you hit "b", it auto finishes the string for you.

[Aevin]

Theryan: On the subject of speeding up text so you can read it faster, I see no problem with that. The thing I take issue with is players using it to skip past text completely without reading it.  As for regenerating magic ... I believe it's the player's choice to stand there and wait for magic to regenerate if they truly want the magic that badly for the next room. Regenerating magic offers that choice - a period of time to regain your magic. I believe that in the majority of cases, a player would choose to move on to the next room after a few seconds instead of waiting for their magic to fully restore. Uncapping removes that choice completely. If it only takes two seconds to restore all your magic because of uncapping, of course you'll wait. Uncapping makes the choice obvious, affecting the balance of the game. And, again, skilled quest makers should design the quest so waiting in place for long periods of time is never required.

 

strike: Personally, I try to avoid using words like "always," because there's ALWAYS exceptions.   I admit there are times in quests that drag - nobody wants to cross the same vast expanse of dungeon five times to solve a puzzle. That tries the player's patience and of course they'll look for a way out. But I think there are cases where the player abuses it for no good reason. One reason we can agree on is just doing it habitually. However, I wouldn't quite agree that if the player isn't engaged it's always the quest maker's fault, either. Different games appeal to different kinds of gamers, and sometimes it seems like a number of players expect constant stimulation out of every quest they play. Some players would grow anxious and impatient even with the greatest of games and speed it up if they could.

Edited by Aevin, 06 August 2013 - 04:17 PM.

[Avaro]

Y'know, if you hit "b", it auto finishes the string for you.

Only if the questmaker allowed it, though.
 

Theryan: On the subject of speeding up text so you can read it faster, I see no problem with that. The thing I take issue with is players using it to skip past text completely without reading it.

Just place required hints and whatnot all over the dialogues and text messages. That way it forces the player to read (of course a nice and good story would help too)

 

Then if the player asks in a help topic how to progress you can say: "You should have read the texts, silly player!"

[Sheik]

I mapped F1 to one of my gamepad buttons in Xpadder for ZC so that I can speed through areas that would be otherwise tedious.

Honestly speaking, the quest might not be worth your time/ might not be worth playing if it features areas that are so tedious that you have to speed through them to tolerate them.

[Theryan]

A lot of people have brought up the reasonable point that if players opt to use an uncapping method such as F1 or tilde in ZC, there is some fault on the part of the questmaker and they shouldn't have put such a tedious part in the quest to begin with. If I may mention something unrelated to ZC, but related to the topic of uncapping in general, I'd like to point out that many gamers, myself included, use uncapping in professional games, including many classic video games praised for their impeccable design. Therefore, I don't think players use these methods as a result of poor design on the creator's part. I think Aevin hit the nail on the head when he said it's the players that are impatient, although that may be a bit of a negative phrasing. The truth of the matter is that no game or quest can be 100% free of tedious or superfluous content that players will find unnecessary to wait through. Unfortunately, games often have tedious gameplay as a negative side effect of major systems within the game itself: Any open world or adventure game, including many titles in the Zelda series, have the unfortunate side effect of excruciatingly tedious travel without warping. Even when warping is an option, it often involves a small cutscene of about 5-10 seconds that, while short, is still unnecessary and pointless to the gamer who has seen it a few dozen times already. In my many years of Chrono Trigger playing, I've seen Crono attack with a sword more times than the world's greatest supercomputer can count to; I really don't need to or want to sit through that animation every time it comes up in battle. And as far as long dialogue goes, some players just aren't interested in story whatsoever, no matter how good it is; s why should they be expected to sit through walls of text explaining something they don't even want to know about.

My point is that although gamers use uncapping to avoid parts of a game/quest that they have deemed unnecessary to the experience of the game, annoying, or superfluous, that is no reason to assume there is something wrong with the game itself or the way the designer made their final product. It simply means the player decided they aren't interested in sitting through that part of the game at normal speed. You can't have every piece of your quest or game appeal to all players, so you can't possibly expect every player to want to sit through the entirety of your game at normal speed. Uncapping is a tool used by players to improve their individual experience of a game. Even if it isn't something the designer intended, players use it to make a quest less tedious, more enjoyable, and in some cases playable.

[strike]

Theryan- You make good, solid, reasonable points. Your opinion is obviously well thought out and logical.

I will say that I am not an impatient player though. I pretty much only use it when going through barren overworld, or refilling magic. If uncapping was allowed for sailing in the Wind Waker, I don't think I would do it. When there is ANYTHING to be gained from sitting through and taking the slow route, whether adding to the asthetic experience or gameplay wise, I will do it.

Thinking about it, I wonder if through scripting it would be possible to disable the button. Keep in mind I am not a scripter. Would it be possible to make a global script that ignores the pushing of F1? Or perhaps a script which does nothing but is purposely ill designed to slow the game down to 50 or 55 FPS so that when uncapped it runs at the same speed. To accommodate for slow computers there could be in the opening segment of the game a seperate script that compares and keeps up with the FPS and adjusts the intensity of the script until it hits a predetermined level in which hitting uncap is uneffective but the game still runs at a tolerable speed. Maybe it's just impossible.

-Strike