i am misunderstanding it. i said as much in my first post.
equally, when talking about game design, ‘wide-open sandboxes’ and all that guff, you have to understand that ‘linear’ has specific connotations.
can you explain to me - like i’m 12 - how you’re using linear in the ‘more direct goal’ context? i’m really having trouble equating the two, especially since the goal is imo as open ended as something like minecraft’s goal to simply survive?
i addressed this earlier.
the game encourages such play with the scoring system, yes, but it doesn’t do anything to stop players doing what they want.
this doesn’t seem like an important distinction, but i don’t think the game would be half as popular if it had og splinter cell-esque conditionals that directly impacted gameplay (see the reaction to such things in any thread about escalations).
You’re absolutely correct that if losing silent assassin caused an immediate game over, a lot of players would have abandoned it a long time ago, I think.
To add to the linear thing, I understood the term to mean that the goal of the level is relatively static. You have to kill target A (and sometimes B, C, D, etc.). That doesn’t change based on what you bring in, how you approach, or whether you kill only that target or everyone on the map. As opposed to a game like MineCraft where there is no real goal, or a completely open-world type of game where there is a main plot but the player is free to ignore it, Hitman is linear in that the level ends after very specific criteria have been met. You could probably just hang out in Hawke’s Bay for days without doing anything, but the level’s end-state is still “target killed, 47 exits”.
yeah, i don’t think it’s necessarily about the goal. my understanding of linearity in gaming is a game or level where every player faces the same fixed sequence of obstacles/challenges, in the same order.
for example, if you ask a few players how they got through a typical mario level, i would be surprised if the explanations were very different. on the other hand, if you ask a few players how they finished a typical hitman level, i imagine the explanations will vary wildly even if the goals are the same for everyone.
Well, as @Dribbleondo said, he probably used the wrong word in that the definition you gave is the more commonly understood one for linear-ness in a game. I got what he meant from the context, but in general, “linear” is usually used in contrast to “sandbox” or “open world” or something like that.
There have been great games with zero end-goal. The Sims, Minecraft, Pac Man…none of them have a goal in mind (other than maybe a score, but there’s no way to “win” the game). Hitman certainly isn’t like that.
Don’t sweat the semantics, they are important. The quality of our conversations and our thoughts are only as good as the quality of our language and how we use it. RIP George Carlin.
100% agreed. This is the same reason I very rarely use abbreviations or acronyms - even for things as widely known as “ET” or “SA” - I always spell them out because language is important and meaning can be easily confused.
From what i understand from reading everything so far, the majority considers balance in terms of casual/competitive or liking/disliking.
You are missing out on the perspective of design intent and design goals. The game becomes imbalanced when the gameplay begins warp around something not intended.
Such as infinite combos in fighting games or abusing mechanics like enchanting in Skyrim. There is a reason why the person in last place receives a blue shell in mario kart. There are design reasons why health and ammo pickups are placed in particular spots in Half-life.
So here is a hypothetical. Lets say a recently released game has decided to include a new weapon that can shoot through one wall. All the levels in the game were designed around no penetration. The designers might want to keep a target hard to kill so they would have to go back into the level and add a couple of extra walls because that item warps gameplay too much. But now since they added some extra walls, the item becomes balanced without having to change the item itself.
Similar for the molotov except the only way io knows how to balance things is to remove them. So everyone is scared its gonna go bye bye.
Also please stop pretending that this is not a multiplayer game. And please stop saying it doesn’t need to be balanced because it is a single player game. It’s not. You are wrong. And there are plenty of people who enjoy playing with or against each other. Contracts mode even incentivices it.
Speaking of contracts mode. The main argument for getting rid of the e-phone was this mode. I got a buddy that wanted to show off a difficult electric kill on a target. That target was a civilian. Then the e-phone came out. Now is contract is warped and no longer solved by its intended design. So he remakes it. But now he has to add yet ANOTHER target as electrocution and it has to be a civ because i can just bring tasers for guards. His contract is now being designed by the new broken item instead of the contract maker. Also it kinda sucks to include an extra target just to waste an op item on.
I am afraid the same could happen to the molotov. It limits contracts by designing around items instead of with them.
Just to reiterate this point hard. Why go through the trouble of designing an open world sandbox full of interactive accident kills, if 47 can just bring 4 portable accidents in his pocket.
IMO, balance has absolutely nothing to do with difficulty or accessibility per se.
My own definition is this: in a game that offers multiple options, balance is achieved when all these options are relatively useful or at least have a use in special circumstances.
Simply put, a game is unbalanced if some options are so overwhelmingly better that they make everything else pointless (in other words, the devs have wasted their time by creating content most players won’t even consider unless they want to handicap themselves on purpose).
What’s balanced might not be obvious or relevant to new players. One example that comes to mind is that in Starcraft competitions, the Terrans were considered the weakest faction so few pros used them. They’re probably just fine for most players, though.
Is Hitman balanced? Ehh, sorta, IMO. No item is really overpowered but the equipment system is kinda broken anyway. The basic pistol is so useful is makes almost every other unlock pointless. There’s a ton of melee weapon unlocks that are no more useful than stuff that’s literally everywhere on the ground. I’d be curious about IOI’s analytics, but I’d guess more than 80% of the time it’s the same half-dozen items being used by all players. Accidents are the one thing that needs a setup from the environnement, so it makes sense that an item letting you do that is contentious.
I quoted this review before, but hey it’s one of the best reviews of this game:
I think you and I are ready to go down the same hallway in this argument, @schatenjager, if that image is anything to go by. It’s just one example that I’m ready with.
Is your idea of multiplayer 2 people sitting in a room with 2 controllers playing at the same time? That would be a very myopic viewpoint considering the game has a way to create and share with a community, a friends list, online leaderboards. There is no true multiplayer mode besides the co-op sniper assassin and ghost mode mods. However there are multiplayer elements that friends, family, and the online community has embraced to go beyond a limited solo experience. It is even encouraged by the description of the modes by the developers and the reviewers.
Contracts mode is an asynchronous multiplayer mode.
Please listen to the devs, behind the scenes as they explain that contracts was designed to be a competitive multiplayer mode / creative showcase mode.
Watch the video, the multiplayer mode was always there.
You are operating under the erroneous belief that “multiplayer” and “competitive” are the same thing. They are not. Multiplayer means multiple players (see how that worked?) are playing the same game at the same time, in ways that directly affect each other’s gameplay as it’s happening. In fact, I’ll even make an allowance for games that let multiple players log into the same game but only lets one player actually play at a time, and then moves over to the next player to try their hand immediately afterward; I’ll allow that. What you are taking about, competitions, is not a feature of the game. It is able to be done, sure, but that’s a spoken agreement among the players, not something the game actively sets them up for. By your logic, Pac-Man (as demonstrated by @schatenjager up there, and yeah, I know it’s Mrs.), pinball and whack-a-mole can all be considered multiplayer games, simply by virtue of the fact that multiple people can choose to compete with each other at them, disregarding that they are not playing the same game simultaneously with each other. Under that train of logic, single player and multiplayer both lose all their meaning and none of us should use either term ever again. But, that’s not the case.
Hitman, irrespective of whether there are contests or not, is a single player game. Even the contests and competitions you are referring to are done by single, individual players at times and places that have absolutely no involvement with other players whatsoever. Even if there’s 8 players in a room with 8 systems set up on 8 TV sets or PCs, that’s still 8 separate players playing single player, just doing so simultaneously with the intent of comparing with each other afterward.
Asynchronous multiplayer is a form of multiplayer gameplay where players do not have to be playing at the same time.(Multiplayer video game - Wikipedia)
I don’t know what else to say. I’ve explained the multiplayer. The devs of the game have explained the multiplayer. There are articles on this type of multiplayer. I can only assume that ya’ll are trolling at this point or just being willfully ignorant.
I mean its really aggravating to listen to the developers of the game explain how it was designed for multiplayer intent, then have yall say that the developers are wrong. This is a single player game.
