I think we need to distinguish between a few cases:
Complex games that lack a manual. These games, if released in the 90s, would have come with very thick, luxurious manuals. Nowadays, it’s easier to rely on youtube videos and wikis, especially because each patch makes large changes to the gameplay. These games include the Paradox games, flight sims etc.
Information-based games. These are games where you are deliberately missing information, and the goal is to uncover the secrets that will help you win the game. Adventure games fall into this category, but so do games like Don’t Starve. Unlike adventure games, where (at least in the good ones) you could just try things until they work, in games like Don’t Starve, if you lack the information, you will most likely die and have to start from the beginning. Personally, while I like adventure games, I don’t have patience for these types of games that don’t respect your time, but people seem to like them.
Games based on skill, where information makes a huge difference. The classic example of this for me is Binding of Isaac. I fell in love with BoI. It appeared to me to be a tough-as-nails game of skill. But the thing is, if you happen to read the wiki or watch professionals playing, you’ll find that with the right knowledge, the game is quite easy. In other words, the difficulty of the game changes radically based on your level of knowledge of the game’s secrets. This is something that I strongly dislike, and is the pitfall of having too much esoteric knowledge-based gameplay. The more you know, the less the game taxes your abilities.
My categorization is much simpler. The games where the dev made an effort to incorporate an explanation as to how to play it, I play. Those where they didn’t make an effort I don’t play.
So if they entirely relied on youtube and/or wikis to explain how to play, I’ve likely never played their game.
For example, in Civ4, knowing the detailed AI attitude thresholds for individual leaders (i.e. what minimum thresholds needed to be met for various diplomacy options to succeed) was super helpful for basically “manipulating” in high level / deity gameplay.
e.g. knowing that Catherine is willing to accept a third party declare war request even at friendly (so super dangerous neighbor), or that she’s willing to open borders while annoyed, but only trade maps at friendly, and knowing exactly what gets extra bonus opinion modifiers to get to those thresholds.
But none of that is directly exposed and is left up to player experience through replays or digging through the XML files, but the big +/- numbers adding up to the attitude is on full display (unlike in early Civ5) and is arguably not needed to play the game, only to break the game over your knee.
On another note, Civ4 tooltips were super good.
Similarly, for CK2, do you really need to know the exact Inbreeding calculation outside of more inbreeding = bad outside of obsessive multi-generation eugenics projects?
No, but Paradox outsources documenting even more rudimentary mechanics to their community. They do have good tooltips, but there is plenty, ‘what does this effect / give me an idea how much this effects’ - type questions that are only answered in the wiki. I remember when I was learning to play their games I was frustrated because I had so many questions about how stuff worked that I needed to lookup in the wiki - and since it is community driven you never know if it is 100% correct for everything.
You know, one of the worst offenders has to be Illwinter, and their Dominions series. And they don’t even have a wiki, you have to rely on word of mouth, forums, discord, and programs that read the game files.
Final Fantasy games in general are one of the biggest culprits of needing a guide to play. ‘You have to stand on a 1 pixel big rock, in the middle of the ocean, at exactly midnight on the 3rd month to unlock your ultimate weapon’…sort of crap. All of the FF games are literally loaded with this kind of stuff.
I don’t mind it so much when it comes to easter eggy sort of stuff, but when it’s part of the “normal” gameplay loop that you are suppose to experience, I sort of hate it. Having a puzzle to work out is one thing, and that can be fun, but stuff that’s just obtuse on purpose is pretty grating.
I’ve got more tolerance for obtuseness when it’s hiding things like ultimate weapons that you don’t need to finish the game, but it’s pretty egregious when it’s something you need to do to just play the game.
To me the absolute worst offenders were games that don’t fit any of the categories mentioned yet. And that was first person shooters where you don’t know where to go next. That used to be fairly common back in the 90s, but it hit its pinnacle with Jedi Outcast. Oh look, I hit a dead end. Maybe I need to backtrack? No, 10 minutes of searching yields nowhere else to go. What the heck. Exit the game, look it up online. Oh, I need to force jump to a platform above me that I couldn’t see from where I was. Ok, that makes sense. If you’re Raven Software, I guess that makes sense. About the 10th time I had to exit the game to look up where to go by searching outside the game, I hated it with a red hot passion.
Don’t Starve’s obtuseness is really mild in comparison. Ok, so you encountered an object you don’t know how to use. Who cares? You can still explore and search for food or shelter or do any number of things. In games like Jedi Outcast, if you were stuck, you were stuck, there was absolutely no options left on doing anything.
Their manuals are probably the best in the industry, even when outdated.
The problem is that not even that is enough to cover all the ridiculous depth and obscure mechanics of those games.
Pretty much all of that stuff IS easter eggs or extra bonuses though – you’ll have no problem finishing the game without it, and probably won’t even realize there was something you missed unless you look it up later.
I think for the most part the intended experience is that there are some things more or less tucked away that not everyone will see. An average player might stumble across a few of them, while an obsessive completionist or someone who wants to do all the ridiculous post-game content can use a guide.
I don’t generally use guides unless I’m actually stuck, but I’m fine with not seeing every scrap of content a game has to offer.
I loved the lack of waypoints and/or guide markers in the old Jedi Knight games. I really miss that in games, that you can actually kind of get lost, and will need to figure out your way through. I remember in the original Dark Forces there was a point where I got stuck in the garbage somewhere and I couldn’t figure out my way to the end of the level - in fact, I don’t remember how I got through, I probably just lucked on it and kept going, but I do remember just being flustered and wandering. You don’t really get that anymore.
The mechanics are obscure because that’s how they want it. It’s only recently that spell descriptions have been made more accurate in game, but those were (and still are) some of the worst offenders, especially unique national summons. Without Dominions inspector, it’s hard to tell what some of the spells do.
Dominions loves to make vague statements in spell or unit descriptions, and its up to players to figure out whether these statements impact the game mechanically. Like, what happens when you have Sohei and Yamabushi together? They have a vague statement, but eventually an event pops up that there is a fight. Eventually. Sometimes.
National events are another unique feature. If you have a certain pretender, you might get a Dragon Princess event. Randomly. Not a certain nation, but a particular pretender chassis.
Unique events, like unique summons, just aren’t explained, and for a game that only really shines in MP, it means that you really can’t plan for what is to come.
Oh, yes, the in-game descriptions are borderline useless - which I don’t consider good design. The game would still be a very tough nut to crack even if the descriptions weren’t as useless as they are…
Which I consider great. Keeps things interesting. You can never be sure what will happen next turn.
Also means you don’t have to spend hours for each turn as you cannot plan perfectly anyway.
Still takes way too long to do a single turn, which is why I stopped playing (online, anyway).
And yes, Dominions balance is… peculiar. I like that they have so much useless fluff spells, but they could really increase the number of good ones as everyone essentially uses the same handful of spells all the time.
That exploration is to me what the single player game is about, and it was my favourite part of the game. Not only mechanically, but for the lore as well, in a Dark Souls sort of way.
It might be wasted time to some (although I don’t quite understand how anybody can be interested in playing Dominions in MP when balance is a concern of theirs), but it was how I enjoyed the game.
How can Dominions be a single player game, when the AI can’t use 3/4 of the features that Illwinter put into the game? Sure balance is any issue, but I don’t want to leave over half the game unplayed because of it. You just ban certain nations, and hope your Diplomacy Game evens out the rest.
The AI doesn’t understand raiding, or thugging, just making giant armies that eventual starve to death. It won’t try to create an Undead army, to bait you with Poison Clouds. It won’t realize that water battles are won by the nation that can summon the most Water elementals (water battles in Dominions 5 are really boring these days). It won’t arm the most powerful recruitable Super Combatant correctly.
In MP games, you have to counter what other players throw at you, like T Strikes, large Communion enslavements, or something simple like Dryad Assassin, swarm, and Cloud spells.
Right now, sadly, the meta is dominated by buffing troops, but thankful, there are a fair number of balance mods that help.
There are a fair number of feature in the game that you just won’t use, or will be used against you in a Single Player Game, and these features and hidden mechanics aren’t explained in the manual.
Well the flip side of that is that, because of modding, those modifiers are exposed and mutable for the end user through XML and the like. So actually viewing the calculation thresholds and scripting is possible, so those explanations are highly accurate (to a given patch)
I will give you Jedi Knight (I haven’t played Dark Forces). In Jedi Knight, when I was stuck for a long, long time, it was at that facility where you’re messing around with the water, trying to find out where the secret area is in the facility. So it actually made sense to me in context that Kyle as a character would get stuck here, unable to locate the secret entrance that had to do with opening and closing the water. I was stuck for a long time, but I didn’t mind because Kyle would be stuck there a long time.
But in Jedi Outcast? There’s no reason for him to be faffing about the same area over and over trying to get… where exactly? The only reason he’s moving forward in that particular direction in the game is that there’s only one way to go. That’s not how directions work within a city. :-P
