Why do developers hate player choice

Blame once PC exclusive FPS being getting popular on consoles.

I have.

2009-2012 truly were the dark days

I don't want to

Even if AAA is utter garbage, indie titles can still be good

Now now user we can't have you actually PLAYING the game. That might require skill. We wouldn't want you to get frustrated and hate our game

:^)

I fear a gaming crash is the only thing that can fix this

Shitty phrasing on my part. Should have said some players me included are so autistic they try everything they can to see the limits of the game world's rules and context, aka intentionally trying to break scripted events, such as wanting to see what happens in Fallout 4 if you kill the waifu and try to go alone to the Vault. Of course nothing happens. Player freedom is never real, everything is still scripted, an open-world state only means that at various points in the game the devs allow you to do different sets of things, with the sense of progression coming from being allowed to do more and more but still within a set script. I guess what I'm trying to say is that player choice is overrated, it should be more normal for devs to create a compelling linear path (or 5) instead, and that I should kill myself for playing Fallout 4.

But it's also because of what said.

Difficult and time consuming to write. You have to account for many circumstances and how each one would branch out into different consequences which result in more branching and so on and so forth. You actually do have to write this stuff down into a giant branching tree and you can't just wing it like you could an absolute but minimalist story. On top of this you also have to consider things like a player bypassing the branching path outright and how that affects the whole story, or how the player's actions affect the outcome of those choices and by actions I mean whether he killed everyone who fucked around for a long time and not speeding through the game. Since the new blood coming in are hacks who could never make it in Hollywood (which is where they want to be) or pretentious assholes who are more interested in your thoughts in deciding a choice (Bioshock infinite) instead of actually making those choices meaningful you end up with what you get today.

Some games are about a test of skill, not exploration and walking around.

Complaining about an action game being linear is like complaining about a racetrack being linear.
The only time a game environment should be non-linear is if navigation and exploration are an intended portion of the challenge.
Otherwise, just take the player from one event to the other, why even bother letting them walk there? Put that shit on rails even, like Star Fox or House of the Dead.

Im telling you to let AAA go faggot
Not vidya, vidya is still good even if less good.
Its certainly better than it was during
Even if some good shit like Dragons Dogma and Dark Souls came out of it.

usually because the devs are retarded and think everyone should have the same experience, usually involves cinematic games

For single player games giving players plenty of options(I.E skilltrees) becomes a hassle because devs are obligated to balance them. In reality so long as there are plenty of viable options its fine, Devs should only seek to balance options that are strictly better, or strictly worse than alternatives

Writing is a part of development, and many people writing for videogames can't make it writing novels or movies. If videogames had good writers they would take advantage of the unique elements video games offer when trying to tell their story(player choice being the main one). Instead they don't bother because they suck at writing and it would be very difficult.
As an aside games where choice mattered in the plot would tend to be alot shorter,since instead of a linear plot you would have a branching one. For some reasons devs think games need to be incredibly long when shorter games with more replayability are just as good.

I don't know if they bring in retards, children, or just assume everyone has the mental capacity of a ten year old but developers seem to do everything in their power to make it so people can't make "wrong" choices, to the point of removing player choice entirely(much like in WoW)

Fuck you, you'll watch my movie and enjoy it too

Linear isn't even bad, but it's just that games nowadays are cinematic experiences with almost no gameplay and the little there is is objectively garbage

Play better games.

player choice is a faggot meme started by story losers. If you like story first fuck you, you are the direct cancer of video games. If you like fallout 1 and 2, planescape torment, or deus ex for its story, fuck you, you fucking casual faggots you are ruining games. If you like majora's mask so much for its le creepy themes, fuck you, you're ruining games. Player choice goes hand in hand with story, it quickly became a choose your own dialog option that mildly changes what people say to you and removes legitimate options for choice, not fucking crawl through this vent or sneak around these desks, but entire shit like use this vastly different weapon style or this vastly different style depending on what you're good with and what is more effective

dmc3 has better player choice than deus ex but it's got a linear story so its bad for story faggots

they should all kill themselves

like what, satan?

dragdog is terrible. I've never tried so hard to like a game but just couldn't.

Now this is shitposting!

that's the subject of this tread, friendo

Not hard to get. The more divergent choices they add in to the game, the more convoluted the writing gets, and as a consequence harder to do. Not only is the volume higher but they then have to make sure the plots never conflict or prevent the intended consequences on accident. Then they often have to create new npcs, areas, maybe even get voiceovers for it. It's easy to make a game where you follow a set plot rather than a game with divergent choices or shandification.

It's funny that when a game is marketed to give the player choice in the age where player choice and expression is at the very lowest.

Calm down son, you're spilling spaghetti everywhere

Dev's hate player choice because the dev cannot account for every choice a player may make. Some games are just a method to deliver you a story that you play though and are a part of. But the story is what the dev wants to tell you and how the dev wants to tell you. They don't want your input, just your presence. If I hated a particular character but the dev wanted to push how important or awesome they were, they would find a way to prevent me from killing said character.

Going back to "all the choices" aspect, making a game that open ended would be a huge under taking. which in order to make a game takes, money, time, people, etc. If a studio had: a blank check, tens of thousands of employees (enough so that they worked in shifts so the game would be worked on 24/7) and no promises nor share holders or investors to answer to. Then yeah a huge ass game could be made. But then the issue arises of how big a game like that would be. 20gigs? 50? depends on the graphics and engine and all that.

TL:DR, Game devs have too much other shit to deal with and thus can't make deep game.

if they made the game ~5-7 hours long where it keeps a decent pace instead of a 20-40+ hour slog its entirely doable.

limited choices are what make some games fun.

turn-based, instead of real time, adds a dimension of strategy/tactics over reaction/skill.

some games have too many options and fall apart.

WEW LAD

is this schizo user? this guy surely has issues discerning reality from fiction at least

There goes user's only motivation to explore game worlds. No, "achievements" don't cut it.

AA titles were the way to go. They are almost completely gone now though.

That's because you have shit taste fam.

Whats so terrible about it?

They´re making a comeback though

It forces your choices to impact your playstyle

Here's modern dev mentality in a nutshell. Excuse the annoying greentext writing style.

>so we actually like this linear corridor shooter bullshit because all we really want to do is play the games at a snail's pace and admire the "content" and try to figure out how that guy pulled off that graphical effect

Why the fuck do normalfags even play video games? They clearly don't appreciate them as anything other than a timesink, When did it become "cool" for normalfags to pretend they give a shit about video games or even like them at all?

normalfagS GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY VIDEO GAMES

Failed film makers.

/thread

found the faggots who will gladly give up an interesting game play section so they can have a retarded "le interactive" narrative cutscene shoved in their fucking throats, then bitch online about how horrible video cutscenes are despite the fact that most games let you skip them and suck hl2's cock for putting you in the succ scenes

fucking faggots, stop killing gaming and kill yourselves

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It's not so much developers hating player choice, is that they think all of their players are idiots. Games nowadays are playtested to hell and back which sounds like a good thing until you realize that the people playtesting these games are people who generally don't play video games. They're just there to get their paycheck/free gift card. Sadly this has been going on for the better part of a decade now and thus developers have gotten used to over-simplifying shit for the general populace.

What exclusive?

I think it's less that the developers hate player choice, and more that they want to show the player how amazingly super-cool their own choice is by writing it in as the only viable option.

And naturally, it's shit.

surely they know what kind of common rubbish theyre bringing in to their test chamber. they want to get the money from people who dont normally play games, right? after all, what are the old timey gamers going to do, abandon them and make their own games?

EvE online is alright.

You want meaningful player choice?

Here fuck you.

You know what? With all the MUH OPEN WORLD AND CRAFTAN being forced into every game, watering it down into a sea of bullshit, I'd much rather have a linear game with some kind of fucking narrative or coherence of any sort.

But you know how it is. We either get the "press x to stab" cutscene "games" or the illusion of freedom in a big sea of nothingness. You either get the interactive movie or the sandbox of nothingness.

We just can't have something decent anymore.

Yes.

Fallacy. Delete thread now.

>not playing the game for BOTH gameplay and story
wew lad, I bet you'e a plebbit newfaggot who wasn't in the First Exodus.

You overestimate the lower limits of people's planning skills, foresight, and thinking ahead. This is coming from a guy with ADHD, and we're notorious for being retarded that way. Some people just go in blindly and say "I wanna make my dream MMO and it's gonna have this and this and that but WITH A TWIST!" and they get so wrapped up in their own ego that it detriments any coherent plans they might have on making their game play well while not over-generalizing their target audience. That, or they're out to make a quick buck and make bad attempts at the "kids these days like X, let's do X" gambit.

No matter how casual your game is, you have to understand and plan ahead for everything that goes into your game. Even in a really easy single-player game, you have to balance it so that your audience has fun, which is easier said than done, even if less so than a difficult multiplayer game or RPG or some shit. This is actually worse as you get bigger dev teams, because it's much less likely that everyone gonna be on the same page, so you have to dumb down the game to compensate. You have to create boring, simple, predictable experiences so that one guy doesn't make a shit level because he has no clue what he's doing and fuck the whole game.

Because they aren't game devs. They're failed film students who crawled and slithered their way up the corporate ladder at game studios. They aren't games anymore, they're interactive movies. Video games are Hollywood 2.0