Metacritic's next victim

[Alby_da_Wolf]

silicon said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

JWS said:

Alby_da_Wolf said:

noname2200 said:

Galaki said:

We'll see if they dumb down Diablo3...

What's to dumb down?!

Just thinking the same!    If they think console gamers need it dumbed down, then either they wildly underestimate their average IQ, or, if they are right, something horrible must have happened to 200 million brains...  =8-O   

I don't think its dumbed down for the console gamers. I think it's dumbed down for the FPS players. Fps are huge casual market sellers. So bioware whating to tap into the casual market made a game with lots of action,easy learning curve, no complex menus or complex leveling and a short game so the casuals don't lose intrest. I am surprised they didnt try to tack on some online or co-op to the game.

 

Also, who is to blame for this? Is it bioware or is EA forcing this on them?

It makes sense. After all, consoles have, and had particularly in the past, also complex and/or deep games, they managed to have them since they gained the ability to save games or resume them from checkpoints. But do devs and publishers always forget they tried this wannabe smart trick countless times and they just managed to make RPG fans furious, while earning very little interest from FPS ones? I got nothing against simple games, a simple game can still be great and bring a lot of fun. But a dumbed down game absolutely cannot.

About the culprit, the publisher is always the main suspect for this shit...

I don't think it should be considered dumbing down, however I'm not aware of 100% of the changes.

I think it's really removing something that is enjoyable because it's familiar vs. keeping an old mechanic that acts as a barrier to entry or is not used by some players.

Old mechanics aren't necessarily a barrier, almost always it only takes to improve the interface to make them more accessible. Removing deeper options because not everybody uses them changes the game's target and often it just piss the genre's fans off without really giving anything to more casual gamers. There are already tons of simplified RPGs available for those that don't like complications, and there are also good and deep RPGs that allow to learn them without excessive efforts, or at least with a gradual learning curve, ideal for those that after starting from the simpler ones want to get more challenges as they become more dedicated fans of the genre, but oversimplifying, dumbing down, deeper series to make them compete with the simpler ones is not the right thing to do, it will make the fans of the series mad and it won't make the casuals happier than playing games that were designed from the start to be simpler and appeal them. And let's not forget we are talking about RPGs: how many RPGs elements can be removed before the games aren't RPGs anymore? Trying to change RPGs so much that they aren't RPGs anymore to make those that aren't fans of the genre like them doesn't make much sense, and in fact up until now it never worked, or when it partially did, the result was so bland on every aspect that the new fans attracted were less than the old ones lost.