An open letter to Ubi's level designers.

[theweaselking]

Dear AssBro, As The Kids Are Calling It These Days:

The cameraman should NOT be the most deadly enemy I face.

In particular, during a timed mission where I hit the last stage with HALF my time remaining, I should NOT be forced to redo the same ~40-second easy jump set over and over again until time runs out because even though I know exactly what to do, the cameraman swoops around and suddenly my direction is off. Bonus points: When I compensate, I'm compensating at a 45 degree angle which is further than the camera swoops for the first jump, so I have to compensate BACK AGAIN for the last one.

No love,
Me.

Comments

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I like how I bought AC2 on Steam but still have to crack it to actually play the game. Wish I'd remembered that before I bought the pack...

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

... really? The Steam version runs perfectly fine for me.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

The Ubisoft game launcher crap gave me no end of problems, so eventually I just went around it.

[weaselpants.livejournal.com]

As someone who has worked on multiple titles owned by Ubisoft I can assure you that Ubi fucking hates fun. They hate fun the way Tybalt hates hell and all Montagues.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

For a couple of their games, I can see that. For others? No, they're perfectly fun.... but then they include something annoying.

Take Far Cry 2: GREAT fun game, except that so many of the non-core missions are just "drive to the opposite side of the map and do this thing you already did three times, but on the other side of the map". Okay, side missions are a little boring, I can deal, sure... but then you get the checkpoints.

Checkpoints have a bunch of reasonably wimpy enemies, and each checkpoint has a "full refill" station for ammo or grenades or some shit. Which is to say, sometimes you'll want to hit a checkpoint, but more often you just don't care. The catch: They're at all the crossroads. So unless you want to WALK cross-country (which will take hours) or DRIVE cross-country (which is much harder than taking the roads, and is often not possible), you have to go through the checkpoint.

The checkpoints respawn, FAST. On a scale of minutes, I mean, there are more soldiers and more jeeps there. And if you drive through, you can strafe 'em and kill a few and go - but unless you managed to take out EVERY jeep at the checkpoint, the survivors (and there WILL be at least one, in a driveby) will jump in the jeeps and come after you.

And their jeeps are faster. They *will* catch up, at which point you jump out of your own driver's seat, take the mounted MG, and kill them all.

It's not difficult.
It doesn't get you any XP or money or any interesting guns.
It doesn't cost you any health or ammo worth mentioning.
It just takes TIME.

And you need to do this EVERY TIME you pass a checkpoint.

I actually had an email conversation back and forth with one of the designers on that. He basically said that playtesting showed that empty checkpoints led to the world feeling "empty" and not as exciting. So I asked him why they couldn't just have the jeeps respawn on, say, a 40 minute timer even while the infantry respawn every 2-3, so that if you WANT to blow through a previously-cleared checkpoint without stopping you can, and you'll still take some shots and need to do a little driving on the way by? And you only HAVE to stop at a checkpoint the first time, or that you haven't cleared for a long time?

He said "We didn't think of that."

[nsanity-au.livejournal.com]

Ubisoft...

You think they are bad?

Play Ninja Gaiden 2. Then come talk to me about fucked up camera man...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Castlevania on the N64 defined the term "the cameraman is your deadliest enemy". But the point is, I'm not PLAYING any of those games. I'm playing AssBro As The Kids Are Calling It These Days.

[nsanity-au.livejournal.com]

it might be a problem if Ezio wasn't insta-kill-murder-death-3000

Alas combat is only ever a challenge if you get the WHOLE city on top of you, even then its a problem due to RSI.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The knights with hammers and the Borgia guards with spears are annoying and require different techniques - but the game isn't about "combat is hard", it's about "solve the jumping puzzle, and don't let the combat get in the way".

And when I've SOLVED the jumping puzzle, and I know exactly what I'm trying to do, and the controls are fighting me because they depend on camera position and camera position is not only not under my control, it's also moving mid-sequence? That's annoying.

[drcuriosity]

The cameraman should NOT be the most deadly enemy I face.

This should be stencilled on the wall of pretty much every game development company anyhwere.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And it's even worse in Assassin's Creed because the camera is USUALLY under your control, and when you lose control of it you get no warning.

Oh, and all your controls are ALWAYS camera-relative.