Unlabelled True Gaming Why do most game developers still mess up the subtitles size?

12/09/2017 06:55:00 am
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True Gaming Why do most game developers still mess up the subtitles size?

Why do most game developers still mess up the subtitles size?

Posted: 08 Dec 2017 06:32 AM PST

I prefer to play games with subtitles on, and it is incredibly annoying when their font size is too small, which is happening with many games today, even though the subtitles have been a solved problem for half a century - there are clear guidelines regarding the most optimal size, color, background, etc.

Yet most of the games do not adhere to those, for some reason. Some of the worst examples are Sleeping Dogs and The Order: 1886, for example, the subtitle text in those games is laughably small. The optimal subtitle letter height should be around 3-4% of the screen height, and their height in Sleeping Dogs is only 1% - 3x smaller than they should be.

Here is a very good article explaining the best practices for subtitles in games: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/IanHamilton/20150715/248571/How_to_do_subtitles_well__basics_and_good_practices.php

The game developers probably think that big subtitles would be distracting, but the truth is exactly the opposite - small text requires more concentration and time spent on reading and less on looking at the game itself.

Can anyone shed some light why is this still happening frequently? Crappy testing by developers or a conscious design decision?

submitted by /u/bluemax23
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What caused a game to suddenly "click" with you?

Posted: 07 Dec 2017 08:30 PM PST

Games are fundamentally a collection of separate mechanics that connect in particular ways. Every game requires its players to interact with those mechanics in some way to progress and eventually win.

At the best of times, specific mechanics are communicated through direct tutorials. Click (B) to crouch. This communicates to players that the game expects them to crouch some number of times during the game.

These tutorials do not communicate the game's systems very clearly. Do I only crouch to get past the three obstacles in the 8 hour campaign? Do I use crouching to improve my gun accuracy? Does the gun accuracy boost really offset the cost of crouching that often? Does crouching suddenly become viable after a specific upgrade is acquired?

Ideally, over the course of the game, players identify the most important mechanics and use them together to really make the best use of the game system. It is very possible that users will give up before they really understand, though. So I'm very interested in your experiences. What caused a game to suddenly "click?" Was it an upgrade? An event? A cutscene? A testimonial online?

TL;DR I'd love to hear when a game seemed obtuse until you understood that one element that made the rest fall in place.

(Do note, it does not have to be when you mastered your reflexes to pull off the move, just once you realized the game needed you to do that.)

Example: I was getting destroyed in Shadow of Mordor and could not understand why everyone said the game was so easy. (I was try power struggles at low levels, because I'm used to side quests that buff you for story quests.) The game expects you (at least for the first half) to disengage from fights occasionally. The system features One hit stealth kills, health-replenishing herbs that are away from major combat zones, chiefs that spawn when you are at low health, and a major strengthening of your opponents when you die. It clicked after a few story missions when I had to use the stealth system regularly, and obtained a few stun upgrades. I didn't have the best reflexes for properly timing hits, but I knew how to engage with the enemy in a major way.

submitted by /u/tiiimezombie
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Why did The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild won as TGA's Game of the Year?

Posted: 07 Dec 2017 10:37 PM PST

No hate, I am actually delighted that BOTW won as the 2017 Game of the Year. i am curious on what factors made this Nintendo game bring home the bacon. As someone who's playing this as her first Zelda game, I would like to know. What made Breath of the Wild stand out among the rest of the nominees?

submitted by /u/Kyaawai
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Why is Mass Effect 1 such a loved game?

Posted: 08 Dec 2017 08:54 AM PST

I wanted to start this discussion out of personal confusion. First, a bit of background. I re-discovered RPGs as an adult and immediatly, I became quite found of CRPGs. I started with Baldur's Gate 2 and played all of the big classics with the exeption of Neverwinter Nights and the Divinity games.

I also am not new to Bioware, i played both KOTORs, Jade Empire, and the Dragon Age games. before playing Mass Effect, I noticed already that I was a bit annoyed with the plot and the very generic world and main enemy, but I found the gameplay and quests fun so I still understood the big praise.

The one game that I was seriously disappointed with was Mass Effect 1. I played 17 hours of it and couldn't finish it. in fact, it is also the only game I can remember where the overall reception was so different of mine. So Mass Effect 1 became interesting for me to understand why and what made me hate the game and why other people loved it.

I will first make a small list of things that made me hate the game (and I really do not use the word hate lightly) and then i will list the tings that I think made some people to fall in love with Mass Effect 1.

Why do I hated my time with Mass Effect 1

  • Too high expectations. Of course, I expected Mass Effect to be the summit of writing, story, characters and world building. I expected a masterpiece and was truly excited to play it.

Gameplay

  • Clunkiness. I was very used to the fast unrealistic movement in the game. You click on your party, it moves instantly somewhere. Here, everything felt slow dragging or tedious. Shep felt like a tank, the mako felt like steering that droid from the new star wars trilogy but with the ball full of water.

  • The RPG system felt like it was forced in. I had no fun at all in the progression system. I never had any power fantasy with it, I never felt like "woooh i found that cool artifact" or something like this. it was there and i HAD to deal with this instead of feeling compelled to do it. But this has to do with my next points.

  • The combat felt bad. I never could really feel good fighting, i was missing constantly, I had trouble seeing clearly and I couldn't visually or numerically see the effect of my weapons or systematic changes. And it felt, well, clunky. If this would be refined and cleared and that RPG system basically more or less cut away, I would probably enjoy it more.

But that is only the gameplay. I just had no fun at all with the gameplay. If the gameplay is either bad or not that compelling but the story is good, I would be the first to forget all the flaws.

Story and World

  • Story density felt cut down from my other experiences. Playing BG2 or PoE made me used to a lot of story. I also had nothing against a compact straight story, I for exemple loved Bioshock. But Mass Effect felt as if they would take that old CRPG style, cut it down with a chainsaw to be able to voice it and... well... left no compensation in form of something else which leads to another point:

  • The story itself felt.. cliché. Yes, cliché. This is probably the thing that infuriated me the most and made me question my own taste. I was thinking, how is this considered great? It is microwaved food, we are dragging the same world saving clichés as we always did. I could swallow it in KOTOR 1 because it was Star Wars and I was just into the new Star Wars movie watching other Star Wars movies before so I expected light, cliché, easy stuff. But here again, my expectations clashed with the reality. i expected something original and great, something unique. And I got another tale that was also so similar in themes to Dragon Age: Origins (especially the main threat) that I was completly caught off guard.

  • The dialogues and the choice. The dialogue just made the clichés stronger. They are always screaming that they will stop the reapers and save the world etc... My choices felt ridiculous. I either had choices that made no difference whatsoever or that made me go into one of the two directions, paragon or renegade. This should go into the trashbin of RPGs. This is fine in Star Wars because of the lore being already focused on this and the easy nature of it, but Mass Effect 1 took itself seriously. The dialogues also felt like the sam thing as in other CRPGs but chainsawed to be able to voice them.

  • Side Quests. The unacharted worlds were horrible. I did one or two and never again did that. They were all the same tedious things gameplay wise to reward you with some lore. The lore was probably the depth that I needed to enjoy, but the trade off of hours of tedious gameplay to get some bits of text scared me off. The citadel on the other hand, was actually fun. But on that in the small section of what I liked,

I liked

  • Characters. Nothing to say more, they were inventive and interesting.

  • The citadel section. Interesting side quests, not much busywork. Not extremly unique, but I liked it.

Why I think people love it

  • It did something where the demand was high and the supply low. Apparently, there was a desperate need for a RPG, story heavy, world building rich space opera that nothing could do until Mass Effect. It is like Pillars of Eternity, it hits a certain demand in the perfect moment.

  • I am not fascinated with science fiction, other people defintly are much more passionate about this. And therefore they loved a science fiction RPG that, again, was not an usual thing in 2007.

  • The bringing of Bioware style RPGs into the "modern" cinematic age which was, at the time, very impressive.

  • The characters taken directly of the CRPG genre with the depth and development along the voyage that was not the norm in that generation of AAA games and impressed a lot of people.

  • Later games that, from what i have been told, improved the gameplay massivly thus making people remember Mass Effect as trilogy and not a single game, which is not my case. mass Effect for me are these miserable 17 hours.

But this post is not supposed to be a vent, it is supposed to start a discussion. i would love to hear the thoughts of people who loved this game, Why did you love Mass Effect 1, what made you so fascinated with this?

Also, sorry for the eventual bad writing, wnglish is not my native language.

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