| Gnizmo said: Running speed and inertia are absolutley key to jumping distance, and stopping. The faster you run, the farther you can jump. With a low star and stop time for max speed you could jump to middle platforms and use them to jump to the further out goal. You might not know this, but platformers tend to be entirely based around these kinds of jumps. Going from platform to platform is kinda key. I always found it weird that platformers were built around jumping from platform to platform. The camera is mostly just there so you can see your surrondings, and accurately get a feel for the timing of the jum, and where you are in relation to the target platform. In contrast a FPS is more defined by how quickly your enemies can be killed. Getting the right guns and maintaining the ammo for them is key. Knowing where to aim to most effectively cripple your opponents also becomes pretty important. Quicker aiming simply lets you get shoot at the place you want to with less hassle. This is not without some draw back though. You can also shoot past your target more easily. Running to the goal more quickly isn't as helpful as you still have to kill the bad guys when you get there. My answer is the same for customization. Your example simply makes no sense. One version of customization significantly alters how the game can be played. Platformers are defined by where you can or cannot jump. Changing inertia and run speed completely changes how far you can jump. You would be able to make it to further platforms by simply increasing the run speed and inertia and hitting the A button. By your own admission the changes in a FPS simply alter the feel of the game. Redefining what is or is not possible cannot be described as a simple change in feel. Even if the aiming becomes easier, it does not suddenly change what a player is theoretically capable of in a game. The end result is that if the default controls are good enough, then no one will complain about the lack of custimization. It doesn't "destroy" a games feel since you can simply ignore the custimization aspect. There isn't a big window that pops up and says "set controls now cause we were too lazy!" This is attempting to provide the maximum enjoyment to the maximum amount of people. You are welcome to ignore the custimization if that means you get a gretting satisfaction from it. An really, thats what this boils down to. Whatever arguement you make about the design decision it ultimately boils down to how fun the game is. If it is more fun with different controls then that is not the customer being spoiled. That is the customer demanding a product worth the price. The more people you please then the better you did on design decision. There is no need to sacrifice for "art" if the target audience doesn't want it. This is true of every business in existence, and will continue being true until the end of time. |
My point is that changing your turning speed/acceleration curve/dead zone ( and that's related to inertia and angular momentum, for whoever said that it's physics that defines the feel of a game ) is as deep a change for an FPS as changing inertia would be in a platformer - please note that you can change the inertia in a platformer without changing the jumping distance. That would change how hard or easy it is to pinpoint jumps, changing what the player can do through the controls, not what the character can do. You went on about how the two genres play, but in the end you didn't really support your opinion that customizable controls for some reason are something every FPS should come with, but every platformer should not have.
But in the end I think that we can agree that we disagree on what game design should be, as I strongly oppose the parts I bolded.
PS: this whole conversation about control customization is slightly tangential to the OP, but it's a long time peeve of mine. You'll find that I expressed the same opinion back when the KZ2 controls storm in a teacup was raging. Seeing control customization being underlined as THE new idea that the Conduit brings to the industry feels overall underwhelming, besides grating with my personal taste.
