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Aug 27th, 2016
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  1. I agree that it's a fuzzy calculation, and hard to determine whether a level has been mastered, but my point is that the demand for consistency should be backed by the relative interest of the challenge.
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  3. Like, look at that first level of Curse of Issyos. That has enemies that run straight at you, and the only challenge is timing your attacks to them, and a few different but not particularly harder enemies at the end. It only takes one or two tries to completely get used to that, so I'd say that that's definitely an uninteresting challenge that shouldn't be repeated further.
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  5. Even a dumb mistake there only means failing to get a simple timing right, whereas a dumb mistake in Dark Souls could be called that, but it usually entails a far more complex secuence of errors, like taking too high a risk and failing to position yourself correctly to escape damage afterwards. Also, NG, Nioh and DS have variation beyond the explicit one of having enemy attacks randomized. Like, in later levels of curse of issyos, the enemy patterns are more complex, even though they are invariable, but that alone makes it so that there will likely be significant changes in how you play through them. Likewise, those other games have even more complex enemies, so they still create changes without random attacks.
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  7. I get that people can use the "it's trivial" or something as excuses, but it seems important to actually examine when this could actually be the case, because if it's in the interest of the developer to emphasize tactical depth, then it's also important to deemphasize lamer challenges, that may have only been introductory. Like, the first level of contra may have a bit more complexity that may be worth repeating to test consistency at it, but the first level of Issyos is almost a one button rythm game, and even if it takes like just one minute to get through it, time is precious and shouldn't be underestimated. Besides, it'd be simple to come up with solutions that more dynamically solve this and prevent waste of player's time, like, if you got two times without getting hurt through a level, then on game over you get put to the level after that, or if you only got hit once during the last 3 runs. Yeah, mastery is difficult to quantify, but it's not that difficult to estimate when it's not worth to keep repeating a challenge.
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  9. So I think that consistency should be modulated by the depth and interest of the challenges presented. Another example I can think about is how Super Meat Boy is basically a single solution puzzle that just requires fine motor skills. On that game, you may not be consistently good at a level after passing it the first time, but their combinatoric and tactical simplicity mean that when you first pass it you basically "solved" it, ie. understood all that there is to understand about the challenge in that level, and you only may like fine tunning of your motor skills and muscle memory. And sure, the developer may be interested in this kind of skill, in developing really fine motor skills and the amount of practice involved, but it's definitely worth questioning, right? because that is a much less interesting skill than the tactical back and forth required in beat em ups or in game with enemies with more complex patterns, and, similarly, when a particular challenge can be assumed to have been overcome by a player, it's not worth it to keep pushing it just because the player is failing at a later one, so this kind of thing definitely warrants closer examination and fine tunning. Educated guesses can be made to decide when it's necessary to keep testing consistency at a challenge, and it's important to do so.
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