Not Buying and Here's Why

[IceD]

I guess we differ here. I would say that today's games allow you to choose your difficulty level and allow you to skip the monotonous parts. I've been in this discussion before on the Steam forums and what it boils down to is that I get no sense of accomplishment from games. None. Zero. Doesn't matter which game. It's just not real enough. To understand my attitude, just think about something really boring. Something you really would like to edit right out of your life. Ok, now ask yourself this - if someone walked up to you and said "I just love (BORING THING), because when it is over, I get such a sense of accomplishment - you kids today have it so easy", what would you tell them?

Skippin' the monotonous moments? Your words doesn't make any sense now. Sense of accomplishment varies due to different kinds of users (players). It's the way how do you react to a certain game and how do you understand it, which is important. Some will say that Aquaria was just a "nice game" and nothing else, others will say the final ending had bring something that they haven't felt from the games in whole bunch of years of gaming on various platforms. But this doesn't have any matter at all, because they are Aquaria fans and enjoyed playing it very much. This is what games are meant to be done.

Honestly, you perceive games in a strange way...

[Sea Cucumber MkULTRA]

And, yeah, I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish. You made your point, that's fine, but why did you post again?

I posted again because I don't want to do a hit and run posting. I am really willing to engage in constructive criticism.

Like I said, lots of people enjoyed the game the first time around, I'm not sure why you'd want him to change it next time and piss off all his current fans?

No matter what the sequel end up being, some people will either consider it changed too much, or not enough. I am saying that I think a lot more fans can be gained if just a few bad design decisions were fixed, because the game has just about everything.

None of the game was too difficult, and none of it was monotonous. There, I gave just as much of an opinion as you, so I guess yours is nulled now.

Back to what I said about objectivity - there is none. You love the game, I don't. One opinion doesn't cancel another out.

[Sea Cucumber MkULTRA]

Skippin' the monotonous moments? Your words doesn't make any sense now. Sense of accomplishment varies due to different kinds of users (players). It's the way how do you react to a certain game and how do you understand it, which is important.  Some will say that Aquaria was just a "nice game" and nothing else, others will say the final ending had bring something that they haven't felt from the games in whole bunch of years of gaming on various platforms.

And some will say that they couldn't understand it because of a game design decision. Like I said to Alec, what it boils down to is that Bit-Blot have to decide whether the elements that scare people away are important enough. If they are unwilling to change those parts of the game, then they also have to accept that some people will not buy or play the game.

[IceD]

Skippin' the monotonous moments? Your words doesn't make any sense now. Sense of accomplishment varies due to different kinds of users (players). It's the way how do you react to a certain game and how do you understand it, which is important.  Some will say that Aquaria was just a "nice game" and nothing else, others will say the final ending had bring something that they haven't felt from the games in whole bunch of years of gaming on various platforms.

And some will say that they couldn't understand it because of a game design decision. Like I said to Alec, what it boils down to is that Bit-Blot have to decide whether the elements that scare people away are important enough. If they are unwilling to change those parts of the game, then they also have to accept that some people will not buy or play the game.

Yeah, and it's been accepted from the very beggining.

The game making isn't just supposed to be on a tight schedule of "we will make the game  of everything people will like". It's more like "We will make a game of our own idea/concept and people will have to decide, if they like it or not". It's obvious, that ideas can have lots of glitches, errors and mistakes. The most important thing is to have a will to fight with them so even if they occur in the game, they just won't bug the players. And it can be seen by an example of us, that those things are just minor.

You just demand to much from games.

[Sea Cucumber MkULTRA]

The game making isn't just supposed to be on a tight schedule of "we will make the game  of everything people will like". It's more like "We will make a game of our own idea/concept and people will have to decide, if they like it or not".

But even so there is a tradeoff involved in including something in the game. Another indie game that I enjoyed very much, Darwinia, is an RTS and originally had a gesture system in place where you had to use mouse gestures to build units. After many complaints and a couple of patches, hotkeys were added so you didn't have to use the gesture system.

So what is that? Should they have left the hotkeys out and stayed true to the original ideas, or was it correct to smooth over this part of the game?

Personally, I had no problems with the gesture system, but some people did, and I understand if you just want to let people get on with playing the rest of the game instead of trying to get the gesture right for the tenth time.

A blog post about usability from Introversion, makers of Darwinia: http://forums.introversion.co.uk/introversion/viewtopic.php?t=1028

[Xiagan]

I congratulate you for posting further and staying polite, I guess it is not easy to do your "job" in a crowd of people who love this game.

I think Alec and Derek will think (again) about these points because they are the main points of critism, but I don't think they'll change it. I guess that most of these issues were found out during the beta-testing and the decisions to make it this way were consciously.

[Zam]

Thanks for posting, in my option (Alec doesn't completely share it, obviously) the fact that you care enough to let them know what they need to fix (in your option) is a pretty good indicator that you'll be a good person to give out constructive criticism.

Anyway, about monotony;

What I've picked up from not only my game experience in aquaria, but what iceD was trying to say is; The long 'monotonous' parts of aquaria aren't about just getting from point A to B, it's about enjoying the journey. It's to show how large the world is compared to Naija, and how devoid she is of companionship.
Now, I understand how this doesn't float your, or many other people's boats, But some of the hugest games of these last few years are five-bazzilion times more boring then traveling in Aquaria ever will be. I'm thinking of WoW, Everquest, Guildwars, and many many RPG's that feature grinding. Killing enemy after enemy, each with the same series of attacks and death thralls, you using the same boring combination to kill them...just to get that rare item drop...

I think I've made my point. But to add to that, in Aquaria, you can easily get faster forms. Spoilers

By going to the kelp forest after the first boss, you can grab the fish form which dramatically speeds up travel. And the beast form after that also speeds things along.

There are plenty of games on the market that get just plain stale from playing them. That's one of the things the dev's worked so hard on in Aquaria; They did their best to make every area different by featuring hordes of enemies, and boatloads of different wildlife; they wanted Aquaria to have as much eye candy as possible, so it wouldn't get boring. They tried their best to make it so every time you went exploring into Aquaria, you'd find something new.

[Xocrates]

But even so there is a tradeoff involved in including something in the game. Another indie game that I enjoyed very much, Darwinia, is an RTS and originally had a gesture system in place where you had to use mouse gestures to build units. After many complaints and a couple of patches, hotkeys were added so you didn't have to use the gesture system.

Actually, if I recall correctly, the icon system was included as a requisite to distribute the game through steam. And even so a reasonable amount of darwinia players prefer the gesture system (and indeed, while I don't use it, I admit that it was part of the initial charm of the game).

Second, IV has stated that they are now becoming a "proper company", and they hadn't made a usability test until defcon so it could go on Steam. At this point bit-blot are those two guys who made a game and decided to sell it. In fact, while still indie, IV is trying to go mainstream, something I'm not sure Bit-blot is aiming to.

Look, I too have some gripes with the accessibility of Aquaria, in fact I said so in another thread, however I have no issue with what the game is and what Alec and Derek want it to be, which is not necessarily the same that we, the players, do.

Perhaps the point that you're missing here is this: the game wasn't designed for you. It was designed for the devs and those who might enjoy it. If you don't enjoy the game, that means the game simply wasn't meant for you and probably never will be.

[blackzeroflame]

You seem awfully caught up in the idea that all a game is, is a game.  I think when Derek and Alec made this game, they didn't make it for you, or me, or anyone else.  They made it for themselves.  Just like many artists (and when you make a game like this, that's what it is, art.)  they make their art for one of two reasons, because THEY like it, or because it holds something they want to share with the world.  With the exception of a few glitches, this is exactly how they wanted Aquaria to be.  Honestly, I doubt very much that they'll even consider changing anything about this game, just because people didn't like it, the point is that THEY like it.  And that even when people say they are having trouble with the game, or don't like some part of it, they still keep playing.

[dhakkel]

Yeah, your "change it to get more fans" thing doesn't make sense. They'll lose fans.. and gain some. Why would they wanna do that? Wouldn't it be easier (and better for me personally and the other people who liked Aquaria like it is) to just.. make more of what we already like?

So, yeah, I guess go play/buy another game if you aren't going to enjoy this one? There are lots of games out there.

[Alec]

Really it boils down to: do you like the game or not.

You don't, that's great:

Bye bye!

There really is nothing for me to discuss, we made the game we wanted to, its done, we'll fix what we can, the game is what it is.

I still like it, tbh.

Is it flawed?
Probably.

Will every one like it in the same way?
Uhh... No, they won't.

Do I care?
Not really.
I'm not going to spend a year rebuilding it to see if it works better a different way because some loudmouth thinks it will.
I don't want the game to be needlessly annoying, and we took great pains to ensure that it wasn't. We'll also fix issues and tweak/patch things as necessary to improve the game, as we have been.

But you hate the way the game is structured, and that's not something we're going to agree on.
 
I'd also love to work on a new game and try out some new stuff.

Oh, but you'll probably hate that too.

Cool. Maybe your monocle will pop even further next time.

[dhakkel]

I think he was telling you this for future games, not in the hopes you'd remake this one.

[Alec]

Yeah, but I don't think we're going to be consulting with him to make sure that we make a game that he approves of for future projects; we'll probably just end up doing something that is interesting to us again.

So I think the chances of him ever liking anything from us are pretty slim.

[Sea Cucumber MkULTRA]

Cool. Maybe your monocle will pop even further next time.

You know Alec, I don't think I've done anything that deserves ridicule.

We obviously don't agree on what makes a good game, and I don't expect us to reach an agreement on that. But you have repeatedly (via your website, when exiting the game, in the readme etc.) given me your sales pitch for the game, and asked me to pay $30 in order to play more of it. Since I took the time to evaluate your sales pitch, and to try out the product you were pitching, you can at least hear my reply and reasons without responding in such rude a way as you have done.

I've written to other game developers, and while, for example, Valve, only gave a one-line response back and I don't know if they even read what I wrote (for all I know, "Realm Lovejoy" is the name of an auto responder), none have edited what I wrote to make it seem silly and generally acted like a bully.

I might swing by and check any replies to this, but otherwise, as you put it, "bye bye". Wishing you all the best in your game development and business endeavors.

[Alec]

To be fair, I didn't edit anything you wrote, but I did add a picture of a rather refined gentleman underneath your text inside your post.

My apologies if that was offensive.

In case it makes up for it, I've added one to mine as well, albeit mine is significantly more scruffy, old chap.

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