While that is a theoretical possibility, my point was that it's an unlikely possibility no one could plan for, and right now and for the majority of his career, Jeff's RPGs have been niche products. Niche products aimed at experienced, older gamers at that. And he's found out that he shouldn't make his games difficult on the default setting.Phoenixwarrior141 wrote:In a few years, due to how RPG genre standards evolve, his games might be the norm
I pointed that out as a counter-argument to your claim that Jeff was making games to appeal to the most people. That, in turn, was your argument against my claim that Jeff has lots of experience and information about what gamers like, and that his opinion was valid across the gamer population.
I'd now like to refine my original argument: Jeff has found out that many of the hardcore RPG gamers of the 90s and 00s prefer games that aren't too hard.
Whether or not genres evolve is irrelevant to my argument, which was about gamers, not games. The exception would be if genres evolved in a way that countered my premise, such as Dark Souls, roguelikes and other extremely difficult games became the norm among older players.
Yes. Sure you are. That's fantastic.But I'm a fucking Phoenix...
True. This isn't incompatible with something like "on default difficulty, most of the time, a player shouldn't lose unless he makes a gross mistake". That is against the roguelike mindset, but might work even in some roguelike-inspired games.Like I said: Even casuals like a sense of difficulty, even if it's built to make them THINK they'll lose, but actually they'll win.
If someone is playing a game to feel like they accomplish something, and they get that feeling, didn't they just accomplish the very thing they set out to do?Casual players get the rush of feeling like a badass by crushing everything.
Hardcores get this by overcoming a difficult obstacle.
While Hardcore gamers (Really hardcore) will try and argue the point of "A game is only as hardest as it's easiest difficulty setting" people who like a challenge will still just play on the harder difficulty setting.
The deep insensitive hardcore gamer in me wants me to say "Well, they aren't actually accomplishing anything so they shouldn't feel good!"
But that would be wrong, they feel like they're accomplishing something, but they might not be.
Hardcore gamers are accomplishing something, and feel good as a result.
And the thing that they didn't accomplish, the "100% completion", was never something they even cared about, so the fact that they didn't achieve that doesn't really even register for them.
Some people approach games with a different goal in mind. I don't think there's anything wrong with a developer looking at his or her game, and considering if his game could support more than one the goals people set in for games.