[…] 3 has almost no insurmountable waist high fences but it does make a liberal use of rubble and ruins and occasional un-scalable chain link fence. The […]

Nah – I don’t really get upset – just disappointed and/or annoyed. Mostly because it’s so prevalent.

And I don’t really take games all that seriously. I usually play few hours on the weekends, and sometimes for like an hour or so on some weeknights if I have time, and nothing else to do. I’m not very competitive, I do not usually play online, I’m not a big fan of MMO’s. I’m really a casual gamer – I play to unwind, and have some fun blowing stuff up.

So I know “it’s just a game” and all of that. But hey, it’s a product that I spent my money on. I should be able to complain if it doesn’t live up to my expectations, no? :mrgreen:

I’m a huge fan of your blog, but we’re I’m gonna have to share some fatherly advice (not that I’m older) — but get over it… It’s a video game… How old are you to be taking games so seriously? Last time I was so upset by a game was in the 3rd grade… :-)

@Matt` – very true. But I’d still rather have mines or super-sniper than an indestructible waist high fence.

And I think varci does have a point here. It is difficult to design a level that is both open ended, balanced and still contains scripted story driven events.

varci – It’s all about design choices and game mechanics. If the game is well thought out, you can severely restrict players movement and he will hardly notice these barriers. Look at hitman games – while you were constrained to a very specific mission area, the game offered huge degree of freedom in the way you actually conducted the mission. So while you could not leave the mission area, there was no reason to do so.

Or FarCry for example. The outside levels really made you feel like you are exploring this immense game world even though you pretty much had to move from point A to point B crossing X, Y and Z on your way – without much room for open ended play. Still, the illusion was there.

It all really depends on the game.

Even worse than the waist-high fence is the invisible zone line. Seen less in FPSs and more in MMORPGs. “I’ll just run over this shallow hill… *bonk* oh… I can’t”. How hard is it to put a cliff or a wall instead? Or even water if your game doesn’t allow swimming?

But yeah, the indestructable waist-high fence is a major annoyance. Unless you’re trying to accurately copy a real-life environment, there is no excuse for this shit.

Matt’ – one thing that I’ve learned since I started testing software is that it’s not as simple as it looks. I used to be one of the ‘but it’s so obvious’ crowd myself, but once you start working with complex software, there’s a hundred things you need to juggle in your head, and even if you do them all well, someone will complain about the hundred and first thing.

Sometimes the sales guys will ask be about Unusual Feature(tm) and how the testing for it has gone, to which I reply ‘I haven’t even thought about that aspect, but I’ll get onto it’. They respond with ‘But it’s so obvious, you should have been testing it’. To which I respond with ‘If it’s so obvious, why isn’t it on the spec sheet you authored? Why didn’t you think about it then?’

If you ask a gamer about what makes a good game, most won’t say “it won’t have waist-high fences”. It’s definitely an annoyance, but it’s not really that obvious.

Reminds me of this: “The best way to keep players on the railroads is to place large obvious landmines on either side of the tracks” (Shamus Young… I think)

As you said, instead of forcing the issue, it’s better to make it extremely hard or undesirable to play any other way (although too obviously impossible is just as bad – e.g. if jumping the fence triggered a sniper shot to the head 100% of the time, but standing out in the open just elicited normal enemy fire)

How is it that all gamers can know these things, but so few game designers take them into account