Current Events > I'm starting to value "frictionless" gaming experiences more and more

(+) Yeah! (+)

Games where menus are readable and quick to navigate, you aren't bogged down by dozens of ultimately insignificant decisions, little downtime, no unnecessary inventory management, no bloated and terrible crafting systems, skippable cutscenes, lots of QoL features, little repetition and a good sense of "momentum", where the game never really grinds to a halt.

Xenogears is a pretty good example of maximum friction; opening the menu, screen transitions, and random battles all have around 2 seconds of loading attached to them. When the game starts loading a random encounter, you're prohibited from jumping, which can very easily fuck you over with the game's already stiff platforming. They clearly needed the time to load and knew just stopping you on the overworld for 2 seconds would be actual hell, but this solution is only marginally better. The battle system, being ATB, will necessarily have some downtime, but party members and enemies both have to move to their target, spend seconds acting out the attacks you spent half a second inputting, and move back, and this takes even longer if you use a Deathblow. The Deathblow experience system is never visible to you at any point, so unless you're using a guide, you won't even know what button combinations to use.

Battles are also incredibly long, taking 3-4 minutes on average, and even more frequent. Like, Xenogears has to have the single highest encounter rate I've ever seen in any game. When you're just trying to get through a dungeon, it's the gaming equivalent of stop-and-go traffic. If you make me feel like I'm in traffic, you've severely fucked up. It doesn't help that the dungeons themselves are mostly mazes that all look the same, and with the isometric system and constantly going into battles, you can easily get turned around and lose progress. Even worse than this is the fact that the developers thought it would be funny to put fake doors everywhere, just to make your experience even worse. Let's not forget about the text speed; even a sloth on ambien would think it's too slow, and for a game with such a massive script (300k words!), it's almost offensive that there aren't any text speed options. Faster text speeds with no option to press a button to skip the text scrolling have pissed me off, but Gears is slower while having about 10 times the word count of one particular offender (and most of that is optional!). In short, Xenogears is friction incarnate. Other friction-heavy games include Tales of Zestiria and the Pokemon Coliseum games.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Link moves fast enough that I don't feel the need for a run button, and animations are extremely quick across the board, so battles (and everything else you do) are over much faster while being more engaging. The stamina meter means it's impossible to run out of your ability to solve puzzles, and it recharges quickly enough that it doesn't become a burden on its own. The menus are polished to a mirror sheen, with pins, fast travel, and Maimai tracking divided up into specific sections of the map, among others. Text boxes (dialogue and system messages) are extremely quick to mash through if you so desire. The overworld is a manageable size for Link's movement speed (you can get from one side of the map to the other in 5-10 minutes), so it never feels like a slog to get to any point on the map. Even when you die, you get to continue without losing your progress, which is much more appealing than having to load a save and having to play the last 20 minutes over again. The most downtime ALBW has is when you switch between worlds, but it happens so infrequently that it's almost completely negligible. I can't think of a more frictionless game than A Link Between Worlds. The 3DS Fire Emblems and Indivisible (at least, the overworld and bosses) also qualify for this honor.

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ProfessorKukui posted...

can i get a frictionless tl;dr

just read the first line

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bump

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How do I move the story after I get out of the underground cave

So you'd recommend ALBW?

I may play that after I'm done with Link's Awakening DX
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teep_ posted...

So you'd recommend ALBW?

I think anyone who's not uber-nostalgic for ALTTP can recognize ALBW is the best 2d Zelda.

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Agreed. Especially as you get older and life becomes more bloated with chores and responsibilities, its nice to play a game that doesn't force you to manage an inventory or make lots of micro decisions that ultimately don't matter.

I loved uncharted 4 for this reason.

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Sometimes I want to get lost in the details of crafting or whatever. Other times I just want to jump in and blow some shit up. Depends on my mood

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Doe posted...

teep_ posted...

So you'd recommend ALBW?

I think anyone who's not uber-nostalgic for ALTTP can recognize ALBW is the best 2d Zelda.

Do I need to have played ALttP to play ALBW?
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teep_ posted...

Do I need to have played ALttP to play ALBW?

No but I imagine the reason so many like ALBW is because of the nostalgia of playing the original so you may wonder what all the fuss is about.

Also how is ALBW frictionless with the whole never owning your equipment and if you die needing to go back to a shop to rent them again?

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lzual posted...

No but I imagine the reason so many like ALBW is because of the nostalgia of playing the original so you may wonder what all the fuss is about.

As a zoomer I played it without ALTTP and it's very obviously a fantastic game. It does not in any way rely on nostalgia to deliver its experience.

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Jiek_Fafn posted...

Sometimes I want to get lost in the details of crafting or whatever. Other times I just want to jump in and blow some shit up. Depends on my mood

This, but I get where TC is coming from tbh

I grew up on CRPGs and a game like Divinity Original Sin has you managing a ridiculous amount of inventory since the game focuses heavy on collecting random loot to make money

Also theres no way to speed up turns.. theres some maps with a ridiculous amount of enemies and your initiative is so low you have to literally wait 15 something turns because your party got stunned the first 3 seconds of the fight.. CRPGs could learn something. Games like Baldurs Gate are great if you wanna check yer emails or stocks in between since youre usually clicking on a place and waiting for the party to walk to it >_>

I bought Doom 2016 and that game just flies by so fast in comparison lol really dig the quick and easy way it just goes


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Doe posted...

lzual posted...

No but I imagine the reason so many like ALBW is because of the nostalgia of playing the original so you may wonder what all the fuss is about.

As a zoomer I played it without ALTTP and it's very obviously a fantastic game. It does not in any way rely on nostalgia to deliver its experience.

Thanks, I'll check it out!
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Want to avoid frictionless gaming experiences? Just don't play anything made in Japan

rats5 posted...

Want to avoid frictionless gaming experiences? Just don't play anything made in Japan

plenty of western games are filled with bloat. probably due to trend-chasing management inflicting arbitrary design ideas on the developers. Remember Anthem? Holy shit.

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Nintendo is great at it. There was a period of time where I was just burned out on gaming, and a damn Mario game on a TI-83 brought me back. It was so simple. Get to the right side of the screen.

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I think this is an common thing as people get older, which is interesting.

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Nintendo Switch games have often been good at this frictionless experience in relation to starting up a game. Mario Odyssey has like 15 seconds of cutscene then you directly transition to waking Mario up pressing A and you're controlling him from there on. BotW doesn't even have an animated splash screen you just hit start and Link wakes up.

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This is pretty much why I appreciate roguelikes. No pressure to make progress when you're likely to lose it all anyway. Something like Risk of Rain 2 is a great way to kill an hour or two with no stress.

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Squall28 posted...

Nintendo is great at it. There was a period of time where I was just burned out on gaming, and a damn Mario game on a TI-83 brought me back. It was so simple. Get to the right side of the screen.

Can totally see this - Nintendo has always been we know this is your forever home even if you leave the nest lol

Something just plain fun to play, I used to be a fan of MGS2 style cutscenes and gushed over a fleshed out verse of conversation but those days are few and far in between

Depends on how many games youre trying to clear too - I stopped trying to amass a backlog unless it was games on a some sort of incredible sale. I have no interest in trying to rush myself through a boat full of games if I give them a once over.. usually the good, bad, and the ugly is enriched with a second passing

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Doe posted...

It does not in any way rely on nostalgia to deliver its experience.

I agree as a standalone game it's still good. But you can't deny it reuses the map from the original with some tweaks and there are definite throwbacks to the original that you are going to miss if you didn't play it. So whereas it's not 100% based on nostalgia, not that I claimed that, it definitely helps and I feel someone who played LTTP is going to get more out of it.

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Yeah, I've been thinking about this too. It'd be nice to have a Jak and Daxter over a Metal Gear Solid 5 sometimes.

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Doe posted...

I think anyone who's not uber-nostalgic for ALTTP can recognize ALBW is the best 2d Zelda.

This CAN be true, however, only because the dungeons in ALBW have better puzzles. There are some people that put dungeon/puzzle design above everything else in a Zelda and that's fine.

However ALTTP's dungeons aren't really puzzle based, they're more like mazes where finding your way and dealing with traps and enemies is the focus; it's a bit more retro in design.

So people without nostalgia can find more fun on getting lost, exploring and avoiding traps than puzzle solving, leading to more fun with ALTTP than ALBW

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lzual posted...

No but I imagine the reason so many like ALBW is because of the nostalgia of playing the original so you may wonder what all the fuss is about.

Also how is ALBW frictionless with the whole never owning your equipment and if you die needing to go back to a shop to rent them again?

You can buy them a bit later

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RedJackson posted...

Can totally see this - Nintendo has always been we know this is your forever home even if you leave the nest lol

Something just plain fun to play, I used to be a fan of MGS2 style cutscenes and gushed over a fleshed out verse of conversation but those days are few and far in between

Depends on how many games youre trying to clear too - I stopped trying to amass a backlog unless it was games on a some sort of incredible sale. I have no interest in trying to rush myself through a boat full of games if I give them a once over.. usually the good, bad, and the ugly is enriched with a second passing

Yeah I'm the same way. I used to love cutscenes and story, but now it's like let me play the damn game!

This SNL skit hits the nail on the head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEDKVNoE2ws&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive

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This just sounds like you're mostly whining about older game loading times

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Yeah, you're getting older

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Balrog0 posted...

Yeah, you're getting older

I am 20

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So you're one of the people that enjoys "Afk" "games"??

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I dig a good mix of both. Though the vast majority of my time is spent grinding total war or paradox games.

Also, to your point about Xenogears having a high encounter rate, it's bad no doubt, however there was an early PS1 rpg called Beyond the Beyond that had, to this day, the worst encounter rate of any game I've ever played.

Like to the point of getting out of one battle, taking a step, then going right into another battle.

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Perascamin posted...

So you're one of the people that enjoys "Afk" "games"??

No, I enjoy games that don't fight me every step of the way.

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i didn't realize they were called "frictionless" games... i just called them games with good pacing.

i've become an impatient gamer myself and usually finish a text before long before the speech is finished which is why slow text also bores me.

anyways, just started crosscode and that basically fits the whole thing to a tee which has made me realize that voice acting in games accounts for a major part of slow pacing in general.

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Garioshi posted...

I am 20

Yep.

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AsucaHayashi posted...

i didn't realize they were called "frictionless" games... i just called them games with good pacing.

It's a term I made up. That being said, I don't think "frictionless" is synonymous with good pacing. Resident Evil 4 has arguably the best pacing in any game period, but it's by no means frictionless.

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Friction is basically homeless spikes for video games

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bump

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