Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

[Starglider]

Surely slower-paced games are still acceptable and can sell well. Otherwise RPG's wouldn't still be a popular genre.

The last two AAA RPGs I played were Lost Odyssey and Dragon Age and the combat was pretty constant in those. When you weren't fighting you were exploring; in classic flight sims there is no real equivalent, when you aren't engaging you are twiddling your thumbs waiting to get somewhere.

Games today are rigidly scripted and rely on QTE's because AAA game designers are lazy and think in terms of interactive movie storytelling only and big publishers are ridiculously risk-averse.

Sure but we're talking about flight sim specific stuff here. You can make good, critically aclaimed games on Xbox Arcade level budgets (under $1M) and 'indie' hits like Braid, Bastion etc aren't slaved to QTEs and similar conventions. Yet very few devs chose to make flight sims on those budgets, IMHO because it's viewed (at least by indie devs that I've asked) as a tired niche genere that's very hard to innovate gameplay in and very hard to create a unique interesting story or art style. Down at the bedroom coder level there are 1000 people trying to make the next Super Meat Boy, 500 people trying to clone Final Fantasy Whatever and 100 people trying to clone Modern Warfare X for every 1 person trying to make Indie Ace Combat.

And I can't be the only one who feels that way.

Looking at forums you'd think so, but most publishers and developers aren't confident that such a demographic exists in enough numbers to be profitable.

I don't think ROE Simulator Pro would be fun.

Because plot conventions to conveniently explain the absence of (boring) BVR combat = not fun? You can't have it both ways.

The problem is saying that 'you have these powerful weapons but you can't use it because of whatever'. Players hate that. The Ace Combat games have ludicrously overpowered tactical lasers, railguns and macross missile massacres because players enjoy dominating the level with them. The thing is, I have been strawmanning the 100km BVR kill as unfun but that's only in a realistic setting. The actual mechanics of setting up good BVR kills on an incoming bomber formation involve significant skill (particularly with in-flight missile course update) and could be quite interesting. But for a mass audience you'd have to abstract it with seamless visualisations and time acceleration and of course the spectacular missile chase cam bomber kill shots (although maybe in a little subwindow instead of AC7's frame-grabbing cinematics). Compress what in a SimHard game would be half an hour of staring at a simulated CRT watching blips close on other blips onto fifteen seconds of flashing to trajectory lines on a satellite view of the battlespace, with little pop-ups of missiles streaking away and bombers diving for the deck with rendered ECM spheres and acquisition baskets etc and it could be fun.

It receieved mixed reviews because game reviewers are generally more fucking retarded than the lowest common denominator gamer.

Regardless of my personal opinions of games reviewers, that attitude isn't going to sell games. As a dev you can't afford to take that view at any level.

If you ask people who actually played the game they all think it was awesome. Sort of like it was with Alpha Protocol, you know?

I don't think your personal sample set is representative of the market as a whole.

[Vendetta]

It receieved mixed reviews because game reviewers are generally more fucking retarded than the lowest common denominator gamer. If you ask people who actually played the game they all think it was awesome. Sort of like it was with Alpha Protocol, you know?

I played the demo.

It was dull, and certainly not worth money.

And I play all sorts of shit flying games.

[Edward Yee]

Did you mean Apache Air Assault or Ace Combat: Assault Horizon?

[Julhelm]

The problem is saying that 'you have these powerful weapons but you can't use it because of whatever'. Players hate that. The Ace Combat games have ludicrously overpowered tactical lasers, railguns and macross missile massacres because players enjoy dominating the level with them. The thing is, I have been strawmanning the 100km BVR kill as unfun but that's only in a realistic setting. The actual mechanics of setting up good BVR kills on an incoming bomber formation involve significant skill (particularly with in-flight missile course update) and could be quite interesting. But for a mass audience you'd have to abstract it with seamless visualisations and time acceleration and of course the spectacular missile chase cam bomber kill shots (although maybe in a little subwindow instead of AC7's frame-grabbing cinematics). Compress what in a SimHard game would be half an hour of staring at a simulated CRT watching blips close on other blips onto fifteen seconds of flashing to trajectory lines on a satellite view of the battlespace, with little pop-ups of missiles streaking away and bombers diving for the deck with rendered ECM spheres and acquisition baskets etc and it could be fun.

I agree with that. The problem I have with all these arcade flight games is that they just take the piss and treat all combat as RC plane turn fests. So they don't have to code proper flight physics, or code a competent AI. I've seen 8-week school projects space shooters where the AI behaves exactly like what you get HAWX which is AAA title. There is no doubt room for all sorts of innovation, but noones really innovating in the flight genre. Not for a long time.

Regardless of my personal opinions of games reviewers, that attitude isn't going to sell games. As a dev you can't afford to take that view at any level.

It doesn't make them any less retarded, though.

I don't think your personal sample set is representative of the market as a whole.

So what is representative of the market then? The market loves Modern Warfare, so we should all just make Modern Warfare clones over and over? No thanks.

[Stark]

AAA wasn't that bad, aside from the brain-damaged coop system where the pilot has to TELL THE GUNNER TO FIRE FIXED-AXIS ROCKETS.

The ACAH demo was shit because the chopper bit was horrid, just like in the full game.

[Starglider]

So what is representative of the market then? The market loves Modern Warfare, so we should all just make Modern Warfare clones over and over? No thanks.

Here is how this works. If you personally are going to make a game, either yourself or by paying a few million in cash to a studio to do it for you, then you can do whatever you like. You can make assumptions on who is likely to buy your game based on chatting to your friends and if you're wrong no one loses except you.

If you are asking or expecting other people to make the game you want, that is a completely different proposition. Most devs want to make fun and interesting games, but all publishers want the lowest risk highest return on investment possible. First person shooters win on all counts; engine devs get to mess about with the latest tech, game designers get to put in their big idea (FPS-with-parkour, FPS-with-jetpacks, whatever) without having to work too hard, art designers get to come up with cool environments, and publishers are happy because there is a large proven market for FPS games. In fact the only problem with this segment is that it's crowded, and the amount of AAA money being thrown into it makes it hard for second-string studios to be competitive on production values (but not impossible; see Hard Reset for a recent example).

Flight sims by comparison fail on all counts. Devs don't like it because it's seen as a solved problem and there's limited scope for engine improvement / shader showing off. Art designers don't like it because how much freedom in models and environments do you really have when making Ace Combat 8? Game designers don't like it because they think it's a tired genre with little scope for mechanic innovation. Publishers don't like it because they think flight sims target a small niche which is pretty much impossible to please, and don't want to risk AAA money on a small market.

You can see that Ace Combat 7 is as much a reaction to those development-side issues as it is to the mainstream player complaints that Stark was voicing. The over-the-top cinematics are good for trailers but also get devs and modellers excited about making destructible planes and buildings. I've already said that the minigame / QTE design is due to professional game designers trying to innovate along theory-of-fun lines, but on a purely mechanical level without any real feel for what flight sims should be. The combination of long-running franchise and 'gritty realism' (don't laugh) plot reassures the publisher that a reasonable number of copies will sell; both franchise fans, whoever buys HAWX and modern warfare / battlefield players who think 'ooh, fighter jets are cool'.

A realistic proposal for a next-gen AAA combat flight sim, of the sort you could actually pitch to a studio and to a major publisher, has to address all of these concerns.

[CaptHawkeye]

It seems to me that the arrival of wide-scale games like Operation Flashpoint and ArmA really became the next step in the evolution of hardcore milsim titles. They take advantage of scope and raw mass of content while throwing in enough individual detail in to basically render single vehicle sims pointless.

[Julhelm]

Flight sims by comparison fail on all counts. Devs don't like it because it's seen as a solved problem and there's limited scope for engine improvement / shader showing off. Art designers don't like it because how much freedom in models and environments do you really have when making Ace Combat 8? Game designers don't like it because they think it's a tired genre with little scope for mechanic innovation. Publishers don't like it because they think flight sims target a small niche which is pretty much impossible to please, and don't want to risk AAA money on a small market.

All of which are self-fulfilling prophecies based on assumptions, mind you. All of which I've encountered being a professional developer myself btw. If there really was no market for "sim-lite" on console, why is it that Gaijin seemed to make enough money from Birds of Prey and Apache to make not one but two sequels to Birds/Wings of Prey? Surely someone, somewhere, must have bought the games. There's obviously enough of an interest in flight-themed games to make the genre financially valid, or we wouldn't have Ace Combat 8 or HAWX 2. What I'm having a problem with is this idea that every new game has to be less complex and more linear/dumbed down/riddled with QTEs and basically play themselves or it somehow won't sell. It's almost as if we're headed back to Dragons Lair-type "gameplay".

[Sephirius]

Flight sims by comparison fail on all counts. Devs don't like it because it's seen as a solved problem and there's limited scope for engine improvement / shader showing off. Art designers don't like it because how much freedom in models and environments do you really have when making Ace Combat 8? Game designers don't like it because they think it's a tired genre with little scope for mechanic innovation. Publishers don't like it because they think flight sims target a small niche which is pretty much impossible to please, and don't want to risk AAA money on a small market.

All of which are self-fulfilling prophecies based on assumptions, mind you. All of which I've encountered being a professional developer myself btw. If there really was no market for "sim-lite" on console, why is it that Gaijin seemed to make enough money from Birds of Prey and Apache to make not one but two sequels to Birds/Wings of Prey? Surely someone, somewhere, must have bought the games. There's obviously enough of an interest in flight-themed games to make the genre financially valid, or we wouldn't have Ace Combat 8 or HAWX 2. What I'm having a problem with is this idea that every new game has to be less complex and more linear/dumbed down/riddled with QTEs and basically play themselves or it somehow won't sell. It's almost as if we're headed back to Dragons Lair-type "gameplay".

I wasted money on Birds/Wings of prey. Never again. I assume many of us got suckered into it as I did, expecting the next IL2:1946.

Gaijin I AM DISAPPOINT.

[Vendetta]

Did you mean Apache Air Assault or Ace Combat: Assault Horizon?

Apache.

Ace Combat had a pretty wank demo as well, of course, but I was at least familiar enough with the series to recognise first-mission-itis when I saw it.

They both suffered from the same problem. The tutorial is a fucking bad demo of your game.

[Vendetta]

All of which are self-fulfilling prophecies based on assumptions, mind you. All of which I've encountered being a professional developer myself btw. If there really was no market for "sim-lite" on console, why is it that Gaijin seemed to make enough money from Birds of Prey and Apache to make not one but two sequels to Birds/Wings of Prey? Surely someone, somewhere, must have bought the games.

However, neither of those games were made on large budgets, and whilst some people might have bought them, only enough to continue the low budget niche development, not enough to actually push that type of game up the food chain into higher development budgets.

It's also worth noting that Ace Combat's sales have been in steady decline since Ace Combat 4, hence the shakeup for this one, because people aren't buying it in enough volume to justify continuing without some new selling point.

[Stark]

It seems to me that the arrival of wide-scale games like Operation Flashpoint and ArmA really became the next step in the evolution of hardcore milsim titles. They take advantage of scope and raw mass of content while throwing in enough individual detail in to basically render single vehicle sims pointless.

Since games like ArmA and Flashpoint have really, really terrible plane stuff and they by nature dilute focus and increase complexity, this seems pretty dubious - even if you put aside that none of those games have 200 missiles and 'thrilling' plots about superweapons. Flying planes is so boring in simhard games that its difficult to mix in with whatever singleplayer experience you've got going on without trying to simplify it or make it more interesting.

I mean, you can make a ridiculous soldier simulator by adding a bunch of buttons for fire mode select and shit to your shooter. An actual for-serious flight sim, by contrast, demands an entire set of skills from the player to even work, and that shuts out most people. Like Starglider suggests, the stylised and simplified approach to flight games could work more if they used mechanics based on flight concepts, rather than 'turning a lot' or 'magically you are following a rail now'. The older Crimson Skies-style games made it all about speed, but never got any altitude or energy elements. If you could work out how to make those elements game-relevant without requiring the player to own a special joystick and be an actual pilot, maybe you could make a not-terrible flight sim that was fun.

What I'm having a problem with is this idea that every new game has to be less complex and more linear/dumbed down/riddled with QTEs and basically play themselves or it somehow won't sell. It's almost as if we're headed back to Dragons Lair-type "gameplay".

Oh dear. Anyone complaining about Ace Combat being 'dumbed down' is a very amusing person. 'Game plays itself' - the keening wail of the nerd over a changing genre.

[Julhelm]

Oh dear. Anyone complaining about Ace Combat being 'dumbed down' is a very amusing person. 'Game plays itself' - the keening wail of the nerd over a changing genre.

I wasn't talking about Ace Combat in specific (As I rather like the series) but the trend of AAA gaming in general. But don't let that get in the way of your trolling.

[Stark]

Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Can you name a single AAA title that plays itself? No? Then drop the elitist hyperbole and accept that most of the market isn't nerds, but people who want to enjoy themselves.

[Vendetta]

But Stark, if the game doesn't demand that you personally micromanage every element of whatever it is trying to present, it is playing itself.

And don't think people haven't noticed that games these days have accessable and usable control interfaces, and that will just not do. I was recently accused of blasphemy for the suggestion that if you wanted to put the original Syndicate on a console you could do so with no other changes than a twin stick control scheme, because this would destroy the "depth" and "strategy" of the game. (Which as I recall was "hide at a corner and fire flamers around it to torch enemies that ran blindly through the flames").

[Stark]

It's a laugh to compare Freespace to modern games; at the time it was a 'light' game, dropping many sim aspects from 'real' plane games for cinematic excitement and speed.

Now, it's clunky, obtuse, and slow. ACAH might be a bit of a broken experiment, but it's faster, more interesting and more accessible than other similar games. Oh... No?

Ps twin-stick Synd would even fix the fucked control of the original. Want to shoot behind the fixed terrain? Better learn the trick, or you just fucking can't. CLASSIC COMPLEXITY.

[weemadando]

https://mobile.twitter.com/#!/weemadand ... 4461625344

CONSOLIFIED.

[Julhelm]

Yeah, that's what I'm doing.

Can you name a single AAA title that plays itself? No? Then drop the elitist hyperbole and accept that most of the market isn't nerds, but people who want to enjoy themselves.

Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Homefront, Uncharted - all of which take control and choice away from the player in favor of sticking to the linear scripted interactive movie narrative. But I guess elitist hyperbole means wanting games where the singleplayer experience is more than just a 6hr glorified lightgun game with zero replay value once you beat the various set-pieces.

[Stark]

So you've moved the goalposts from hyperbole crap like 'plays itself' to the more honest 'doesn't play the way I like'. Wasn't it easy to be honest?

Are you saying BLOPS has less player choice than DOOM? Less player choice than AVP2? Less player choice than Blood? Less player choice than 90s shooters in general? Do you have an example?

Frankly, people who describe games they don't like as 'glorified lightgun games' have fucking problems. Shooters - especially on PC - have always been about putting your dot on the other guys dot and pressing 'win'. Be a grownup and stop wanking off to stupid crap like 'game plays itself' and focus on actual criticisms of those games, like spawn closets, overuse of scripting, etc.

Can you describe how a modern shooter would be made better by having more 'player choice', what form this choice would take, and whether or not there is actually a market for such? Bear in mind that there's a fucking reason COD is the best selling shooter of human history.

While you're doing that, I'll be laughing at you honestly saying that COD plays itself. You can just turn it on and watch it go! No player input required!

[Vendetta]

Are you saying BLOPS has less player choice than DOOM?

Well, you could choose to bimble around the level and not pick up the blue key. Y'know, if you wanted.

A maze where stuff tries to kill you doesn't really have any more player choice or control than a linear path between setpieces, you either solve the maze and progress or you don't and are stuck, but the range of failure states is different. Doom has a failure state other than "die and reload", "stuck and wandering around", and that can make people feel like they're more in control of the progress of the game (as long as it doesn't go on too long, at which point they get bored and play something else), and has a path out of that failure state that doesn't involve returning to a checkpoint.

I think that's really the thing that is really missing from modern shooting games, an intermediate failure state between constant forward progress and reloading a checkpoint which impedes progress without being regressive and is rewarding in its own right to overcome. (Edit: And isn't a block pushing puzzle, are you listening Dead Space?)

[Stark]

Maze levels also end up with heaps of boring dead-time, where you're stumbling around the same twenty square meters trying to find the button on the wall texture that actually exists, or the foozle in the fluma fluma that opens the next door, or whatever. It's still linear if you get stuck because of a stupid setpiece or a stupid button you can't find, etc.

And that's the problem, I think; shooters have always been either 'shitty puzzle' or 'linked setpieces'. You either get stuck because you're not thinking like the developer or you get stuck because you're not thinking like the developer... only one is prettier and sells better.

That said, I consider the shooting games fat nerds obsess over to be a kind of hybrid adventure shooter, where exploration or problem-solving or whatever are a part of play (like Halflife, or even Deus Ex). Proper shooters aren't like that; they're just shooting and always have been. Sure, you could make BLOPS like Halflife; but then it wouldn't be a blockbuster movie with you as the hero. People who lie about BLOPS 'playing itself' because they want to trick themselves into thinking they have choice like in a more adventure focused game shoudl just play the adventure-focused games. Y'know, like Deus Ex.

[Julhelm]

Ok, since you're just being fucking retarded here I'll spell it out for you since you just don't seem to get it:

"Game plays itself" means:

The game is linear to the point where you are literally not allowed any exploration - see Call of Duty, Homefront, etc

The game constantly hurls you toward the next scripted set-piece. If you walk astray you either get "come back in 10s" or they just kill you outright - See Call of Duty, BF3, Uncharted, etc

The game acts like a curling-parent where it forces you to play second fiddle to AI squadmates who open up otherwise impassable doors and paths for you when the scripting decides you should progress. Again, if you don't play along you will at best be mowing down a never-ending stream of monstercloset enemies until you figure out how to trigger the scripting at which point monstercloset ends. The point being that you never advance past your AI teammates.

The game takes concepts that would be interesting such as melee combat and replace them with scripted QTE's which only has you mashing buttons when qued to do so. And to top it off they're usually only available when the script demands so. Can't have the player walking up to an enemy of his own choice and punch him out using the same QTE, can we? This bothers me because it makes no sense at all from an immersion point of view. If I get to punch out badguy A with a QTE, why is it that badguys B and C instaknife me as soon as I come near them? How about letting me decide when I want to play a QTE?

And let's be honest here. We all know why CoD is the best selling shooter ever: It's lowest common denominator entertainment, just like Michael Bay movies. People love to rant (rightfully) about how shitty quality entertainment it is but the masses go watch them anyway. You don't have to be a fat nerd to lament the lack of AAA action geared towards a more mature audience, you know.

[Vendetta]

Ok, since you're just being fucking retarded here I'll spell it out for you since you just don't seem to get it:

"Game plays itself" means:

The game is linear to the point where you are literally not allowed any exploration - see Call of Duty, Homefront, etc

The game constantly hurls you toward the next scripted set-piece. If you walk astray you either get "come back in 10s" or they just kill you outright - See Call of Duty, BF3, Uncharted, etc

I think the problem is that you've failed to accurately grasp what the game was intending to be. Modern shooters have chosen to refine one aspect of play, the combat encounter. The game is a sequence of firefights constructed, hopefully, to each provide a slightly different challenge to the player due to the different area layouts (this is never more clearly evident than in Gears of War 3, which is literally "uniquely purpose designed combat arena, corridor, uniquely purpose designed combat arena, repeat until stupid boss")

The game isn't playing itself because the game is the firefights that occur in those combat arenas. All those things you complain about being absent are absent on purpose, for the same reason that there isn't an FPS level in Professor Layton, they're not what the game is about. You're complaining that the game plays itself because you don't get to play the logistics driver that delivers all those bullets, something that isn't relevant to the actual game.

Now, you can argue that the game would be better if it did attempt to have some of those elements, but not having something it wasn't trying to have is not the same as "playing itself".

And let's be honest here. We all know why CoD is the best selling shooter ever:

Multiplayer. Sure, people will play the campaign, but the core market of the series is online multiplayer.

[Stark]

Game plays itself = something not related to playing itself, but actually related to a feature I personally want in games but millions of others don't.

Are we clear now?

It seems clear that he's simply been scarred by poorly designed levels he doesn't have the skill or persistence to beat. This is fine, because that shit is bullshit (which nobody is defending, but the nerd gotta rage) but deciding 'car drives itself' means 'car steering wheel wrong shape' is ridiculous.

Vendetta, it's sad we can have a conversation about shooter design priorities rough the years with someone yelling 'BUT I HATE IT WAH' and it isn't even me.

Amusingly, DEHR is a recent adventure shooter, and those logistics elements are actually lame. Searching for bullet in the setting is lame. Exploring whole rooms or hidden areas that contain nothing is lame. Having to read the shit map to progress the story is lame. Even the inventory system is lame.

Fundamentally, there isn't much difference between needing to reach the next quest giver to start the next fight and simply walking down a corridor. Games with adventure elements just feel more 'free' even if they aren't and there's nothing important to do off-quest line. This is probably why such elements - being work intensive and not particulalrly popular - were streamlined out.

At least the protagonists talk now. Half life improved!

[Stark]

Game plays itself = something not related to playing itself, but actually related to a feature I personally want in games but millions of others don't.

Are we clear now?

It seems clear that he's simply been scarred by poorly designed levels he doesn't have the skill or persistence to beat. This is fine, because that shit is bullshit (which nobody is defending, but the nerd gotta rage) but deciding 'car drives itself' means 'car steering wheel wrong shape' is ridiculous.

Vendetta, it's sad we can have a conversation about shooter design priorities rough the years with someone yelling 'BUT I HATE IT WAH' and it isn't even me.

Amusingly, DEHR is a recent adventure shooter, and those logistics elements are actually lame. Searching for bullet in the setting is lame. Exploring whole rooms or hidden areas that contain nothing is lame. Having to read the shit map to progress the story is lame. Even the inventory system is lame.

Fundamentally, there isn't much difference between needing to reach the next quest giver to start the next fight and simply walking down a corridor. Games with adventure elements just feel more 'free' even if they aren't and there's nothing important to do off-quest line. This is probably why such elements - being work intensive and not particulalrly popular - were streamlined out.

At least the protagonists talk now. Half life improved!