Aging gamers were reportedly delighted to see that a new video game called Eldric Quest has accessibility features catered specifically to people their age who do not have enough time to actually play a video game.
“I came back from the office at around 7 p.m. and was so happy to see this mode implemented because holy shit am I tired,”
I would absolutely choose this mode without any shame. I already spend plenty of time in “Story Mode” difficulty; I don’t care to spend hours of frustration trying to hit just the right dodge pattern for a boss because I no longer have the finger dexterity that I did when I was 20.
Real talk: I’d rather kill my hour bashing my head against something challenging then progress actively through something not challenging. “Beating the game” just isn’t a drive for me. I play while it’s fun, which often (but not always) involves the game being challenging, and often, unless the story has particularly gripped me, I don’t care to “finish” it.
But that is me. A lot of people derive their enjoyment from progressing in games. Good, adaptable difficulty settings are so important for games, and the sooner we recognize that instead of shaming people for wanting things the be accessible, the better.
I feel this. Gaming for me is about getting better at the game, and playing with it’s systems. I think it’s why I typically gravitate towards competitive games over story ones. But having the time to master competitive games is proving more and more difficult as time goes on.
“We’re here for you and we know that being 35 is really really really old, whether you’re willing to admit it or not.”
I feel seen.
I’m 55 and I hate this. Yeah, I know, it’s satire. So is mine. Kinda.
Pretty sure a lot of people will embrace this mode if it exists. When you are an adult with responsibilities, beating a “challenging” game simply isn’t a priority.
As a 40yr old developer of a FOSS RTS game (not released yet), I generally aim at games taking from 20 - 30 minutes. This is because I usually have only about 1 or 2 hours to play games with the bois after work. Additionally, I am usually extremely tired, so I try to implement a lot of QOL features that make the game less arduous to play.
Recently a popular RTS game that uses the same engine as mine has had a lot of sweats complaining about widgets (Long story, but they are unsynced bits of lua code that can extend things. They have limited access to the synced state, but are still pretty powerful). Basically people complaining about a specific widget that will make your units try to stay at max range when in a fight. While this sounds pretty useful, in the case of players who are relatively decent with rts gameplay, it’s more of an irritation to deal with than anything else.
But as a developer of this type of game, I have a vested interest in making players who aren’t as good be able to compete with players like myself who are really good. If that means some (very) rudimentary AI will try to make your units behave somewhat intelligently when you aren’t paying attention, I’m totally down for that. I find that as I get older, even though I am extremely experienced and good in rts games, I appreciate such tools existing for the players who simply aren’t that great. I don’t get my dopamine hits from steamrolling another player, I get my hits from good fights and satisfying battles. A lot of people I talk to make me feel like an outlier, but I know good and goddamn well that there are a lot of lesser skilled players that just wouldn’t bother with speaking up.
I have a very large problem with games that don’t respect my time. Elite Dangerous is a perfect example. I avoided it for a very long time because people went on and on about how hard it was to fly. Turns out, anyone who played descent 1 and descent 2 (And now Overload on steam (seriously, buy this shit, it’s modern descent built by the original devs and it’s amazing)) can fly the crafts with ease. The space combat is pretty shit tier. However, it’s gorgeous, and super cool, BUT, the developers refuse to implement any sort of fast travel. The sheer amount of time that it takes to get anywhere is mind boggling. I would spent 6 hours flying on a day off, and still not manage to really get anything done. This is the perfect example of a game that does not respect my time. I HATE games like this. I try to understand that time literally is money. That isn’t only a cliche. As you get older, you realize that time is a resource, and as you get older, you find that you have so little free time, that any time lost can be a really heavy blow.
You have a name and/or link tothe game under dev? Would love to see it!
So I spent some time thinking about this. Imma send you a like to a vod of me playing against one of the other devs (he does all of the balance design) instead of linking it directly. It isn’t done yet. It is fully playable, and on our discord there are some download codes for people to use if they want to play test with us.
Just understand at best it’s alpha currently.
https://twitch.tv/videos/1873895670
We have a lot of good discussion on our discord and generally our dev chat stays open for all to read. A modicum of googling will find the GitHub and horrendously out of date wiki + discord and probably even our itch.io listing
Wow that looks really good. I like the map style of choosing where you started. And it seemed to run really smoothly performance wise.
This is sea of thieves for me. I had a friend who was obsessed with it, but you’re basically required to dump multiple hours in to complete anything and even then … You could get your ship sunk and lose it all. It’s incredibly frustrating.
Make this but for real, though
That’s funny.
Reminds me of Dungeon of the Endless, where the difficulty modes were “Easy” and “Too Easy”. Cheeky stuff.
This is how gaming dies. Easy mode should be forbitten as default and game should be always at hardest diffuculty and focus on challenging content and not grind. Hard challenges keep everyone busy, dosnt matter if you have infinite free time if you suck gaming. That should be the direction of a real game and not this no sense cringe “don’t have time to farm, here pay 80$ for your season-extraExp-bigEzRewards”. Fucking ridicoulus. Fucking Devs should actually rewarding the player who spend little time that the fucking no life grinder. Damn make % base drop chance -10% chance of legendary loot for each hour of the day log inside the game and gg.
This is Beehaw, we expect you to be(e) nice here. Gatekeeping isn’t nice.
Besides, there are people who play games that are of all skill levels and time constraints, and they deserve to be able to enjoy games as much as you do. Have some compassion.
Damn make % base drop chance -10% chance of legendary loot for each hour of the day log inside the game and gg.
Man, for someone who wants things to be “hard”, you really want to be rewarded for time spent, as opposed to skill. Hilariously, you’re the target audience for those $80 content skips: people who want to feel like they’re good, whether or not they’re actually good.
You’re out here talking about “no sense cringe” while posting nearly illegible drivel about how you feel entitled to success because you have more hours to kill. Step back, get some perspective. Most people have made their time valuable. It’s not on them if you’ve failed to do the same.
Easy there, tiger. You will get there, don’t worry.
Thanks
