I guess there's still people who just *have* to hate on this game...

"Oh noez, teh Wii haz a core game that people actually like, and they liek teh controlz, I must make pointless biased points to prove they are wrongz!!1"

dude this is exactly the point i wanted to read. i agree every single fps on the pc is customizable as in buttons. even counterstrike you can customize your button layout. what i absolutely hate about fps on a console is the turning speed and how the buttons are layed out. and the conduit made that part customizable? i havnt played the game yet but if you can customize how you turn by different buttons or whatever is so much better then having to go with the default like COD3 was i mean cmon yes you can point an dshoot around the screen but what if the guy goes off screena nd you follow and your screeen moves and the other 5 enimies that were on screen are now off and kills you that is very very very very frustrating. if anyone wants to know why goldeneye was such a hit on the n64 was controls how it was mapped out was great and the best i have played on a console.

i can see what everyone else says but if you are only able to change those type things it makes the game better and not worse. and comparing SMG to the conduit control wise is just plain dumb. the only thing i can think of that would make SMG better is camera angle customization. but then again i think the few that are like hating the idea of customization in a FPS only plays console shooters and not ever would play a pc shooter cause if they did they would find out that a pc shooter owns a console shooter 1,000,000,000 to 1. pc shooters would always beat the console shooters. unless you can made the perfect FPS console game which i have yet to play one that rivals teh pc shooter.

exactly there are too many ps3 and xbox360 fps fanboys that think the wii cant have a core FPS that blows all theirs out of the water.it makes them soooo angry

@WereKitten

Customization is GOOD!

A platformer is not a FPS!

Some people like to turn faster and some like to turn slower! Adding customization would make them able to compete in the same level in the same game instead of on being better in another game because the controls are slower!

get it?

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.

I know your point. Your point was wrong. You said it would be equivalent to changing inertia and run speed in a platformer. You have since dropped the run speed portion so I will assume you are just going to silently agree that was a bad example. Now I will move on to explain why inertia is just as critical for what the in game character can actually accomplish.

See a common theme in platformers is jumping across a series of platforms. I know sounds weird, but stick with me. The amount of inertia you carry through with each landing and jump defines how well you can control the character, and how far forward you can go with a jump. Some platforms might not be long enough to keep a full speed bounce across going making it key to take time and consider how to proceed. This is critical to how you can or cannot achieve certain feats. It would make certain goals impossible when set incorrectly, and impossible paths possible when set perfectly. This is simply not the case with turn speed in a FPS. Not even close.

I am not saying you shouldn't have customizable controls for platformers though. I am saying the equivalent level of control is already present in the genre. Camera control changes the game in a major way. You can learn enough about the lay out of the land to entirely trivialize what should be a hard portion by seeing whats about to come up. Equivalently being able to control your turning speed allows you to maximize your ability to keep the enemies in sight and allow you to better utilize your skills to dispatch them. People openly bash 3D platformers with bad camera control, and should openly bash FPS with bad aiming/turning speeds.

As for agreeing to disagree I just don't see how thats possible when you disagree with that statement. You are saying that game designers should not try to appeal to everyone? That they should attempt to exclude certain players from having fun? Cause if the pinnacle isn't making everyone happy then you must be trying to only make certain people happy. Why an artist would want their work to only be appreciated by a certain segment is far beyond me. From a business stand pointit is just retarded to not go for the biggest audience. I really don't see how you can claim to have any logical arguement against this.

Where do I begin here... ok the customization in The Conduit is like the customization in standard PC shooters... there is no advantage you gain from customizing things to fit how you like other then you can actually stand to play the game.  The thing The Conduit does different then most console shooters is mapping your controls, and even then most shooters have that with at least a few presets KZ2 comes to mind, and you can even customize turning speed in those shooters too... huh funny how that works.

Where The Conduit gets it's feel is the design of the weapons, one gun doesn't feel like the other at all, and pretty unique guns for an FPS a genre where just about everything has been done before, but this is where it gets it's feeling and you don't become good at using these because you customize your controls, and if you want to bring up running speed honestly it doesn't matter in the SP and in MP everyone runs the same speed so there, your points are all pretty much moot here.

That's the end of it.

young company? didnt they make lego racers for N64 back 1999?

Stating that my point was wrong doesn't further the argument one bit: of course you think it was wrong, or we wouldn't be talking right now. Now let's go to the meat.

First, I didn't mention the speed anymore for the sake of brevity, and because the turning speed<->inertia parallel sounded plenty. But if you think that running/Jumping speed in an FPS is not important you haven't played enough of them.

And the fact that inertia is more visible in what it makes easy, hard or plain impossible in a platformer - because you limit your observation to a single jump or a single sequence of jumps- , doesn't detract one bit from the fact that turning inertia in an FPS can determine how easy, hard or plain impossible it is to go past one ambush or set-up through a certain route. Not to talk of the difference it makes in multiplayer.

Your bringing up camera controls as a parallel to turning speed reeks of old. It's maybe appropriate in FPS games where you are a "camera on a stick", where your character/weapon has no inertia and weight. But if the camera is attached to your character then turning speed is part of the physics of the game. Exactly like inertia is in a platform.

As to my disagreement about game design: no, I don't think game designers should try to appeal to everyone. And even more, I don't think that the best way to manufacture a good experience for everyone is giving everyone what they think they want. I think it is part of a designer's (or artist's) duty to find out what the users/receivers really need, that is a whole different thing.

@MaxwellGT2000

You can stop being so defensive. I never said anywhere that the Conduit is a bad game, I'm sure it's a solid old-school shooter. I'm debating the idea that letting you customize deep details of control such as your bounding box is a step forward in game design, as I am even opposed to let you customize things such as your acceleration curve in Killzone 2.