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The elegance of movement in Silksong

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Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#211

Post by fatata123 »

rkomorn wrote: post #156
TriangleEdge wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoilers: Silksong has arenas with 3 mobs that throw discs plus you. Idk about you, but I can't track 7 things moving at once. This isn't fun. Nor is it challenging, you just have to get lucky. I like Silksong, but the only way some the bosses were made challenging was because of constant adds. Hollow Knight rarely had this.

The older I get the more I find boss fights off putting. I get literally zero satisfaction out of learning whatever pattern you have to learn to perform whatever correct action, at the correct time, you need to defeat a particular boss. It's just a time consuming chore. Edit: the "boss" escape sequences in the Ori games were also entirely frustrating and and unsatisfying to me.

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Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#212

Post by kevinwang »

shinymark wrote: post #93
kevinwang wrote: post #34

I remember reading an essay (probably from here?) about how a great way to build a game is to build it around a "toy" -- something that is pleasurable to simply interact with, even without objectives. I can't find it anymore -- the closest I can find is https://medium.com/@keerthiko/toys-to-games-25d35b40425d but I don't think it was that, although it's based on the book "The Art Of Game Design" which may have been a…

This article from 2005 has the toy idea. It has stuck with me. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/how-to-prototyp...

Thanks, that was a fun read!

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#213

Post by threetonesun »

slightwinder wrote: post #169

Interesting how different impressions can be. Elegance is not really how I would describe movement in Silksong. Yes, the animation is smooth, but the actual movement and its controls are very crude and twisted. It's in the realm of those annoying games which feel very unnatural, unintuitive.

I'm a big Metroidvania fan and could never get into Hollow Knight for this reason. But I also played it around the same time as the first Ori game, so maybe it's a tough comparison.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#214

Post by sfn42 »

slightwinder wrote: post #165
sfn42 wrote: post #11

> You could play Silksong's predecessor, Hollow Knight, and not be all that good at it. Hollow Knight was a tough game, but I think you could get through it and fall in love with the environmental story telling and the lore and the music and characters. Silksong has all of this in spades, too, but it is so damn hard that you will not be able to access any of it unless you are willing to put in some serious effort. As…

> If you went to Hunter's March as soon as you found it you probably had a bad time but going in there later on was honestly pretty easy. That's probably a significant part, too. Silksong is more open than HK, where the lack of abilities put a natural wall around the areas which are too hard at that point of time. But in SK you can easily stumble into areas where you are not supposed to be, which can be frustrating.

Yeah, that might be a potential improvement. They did put a really big and mean doorman outside which worked on me, but putting another obstacle there as well like an air vent or climbable wall might have been better.

You can go there before you even get the hover ability, and I totally see how that would be demoralizing.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#215

Post by quchen »

whatevaa wrote: post #196

I found Act I not harsh but full of frustating elements. Traps in piss you off locations, 90% of flying enemies who dodge and are tanky for some reason. Like that one particular fly which spawns in exact precise location in runback to boss for you to collide, unless you are sprinting. Bullshit like this. Act II get's better as you unlock more movement and the lore develops. There is some unique stuff there. Boses are…

I’m curious about those traps. I used to hate Soulslikes, Elden Ring made it click, and I binged them all on PC. Traps became part of some twisted humor, I started waiting for the (literal) punchline. I missed traps, or as I started calling them, »FromSoft bullshit«, when there weren’t any for a while. I’m super careful and alert in all games now.

I wonder whether Silksong’s traps scratch that itch, or whether they’re just annoying.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#216

Post by wrinkl3 »

dfxm12 wrote: post #203
furyofantares wrote: post #81

> Silksong as a game should not exist. It is so brutally difficult that it stretches the very definition of the word "game". Games are supposed to be fun. They are meant to delight with their whimsy. Sometimes, yes, they are meant to be challenging. But that challenge is in service of fun. Games, more than any other form of entertainment, offer skill challenges. As they've become more popular they've gotten better ab…

After reactions to Elden Ring, I can't blindly trust people saying a game is not enjoyable because it is too "difficult".

Whenever a game of this kind has a massive launch, a bunch of criticism will come from people who are either unfamiliar with the genre or just plainly don't enjoy it. That said, there's a very legitimate conversation to be had about difficulty in Elden Ring's DLC - I love FROM games and I genuinely couldn't enjoy the final bosses of SOTE due to the amount of bullshit they throw at you.

In general these games have an issue where each new entry (1) gives the player more tools to use, and thus needs to up the difficulty to balance it out, and (2) caters to a fanbase of people who have spent hundreds of hours playing the previous games, and thus expect increased challenge. The end result is that if you go to Dark Souls 3 after completing SOTE you'll be pretty amazed by how easy that game is by comparison.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#217

Post by fatata123 »

slightwinder wrote: post #169

Interesting how different impressions can be. Elegance is not really how I would describe movement in Silksong. Yes, the animation is smooth, but the actual movement and its controls are very crude and twisted. It's in the realm of those annoying games which feel very unnatural, unintuitive.

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Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#218

Post by slightwinder »

eviks wrote: post #198
slightwinder wrote: post #169

Interesting how different impressions can be. Elegance is not really how I would describe movement in Silksong. Yes, the animation is smooth, but the actual movement and its controls are very crude and twisted. It's in the realm of those annoying games which feel very unnatural, unintuitive.

What's the best alternative?

Alternative for what exactly?

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#219

Post by kartoffelsaft »

rkomorn wrote: post #170
zwnow wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I used to play Path of Exile a lot, recently joined the new league in Path of Exile 2 and the balancing is so bad you have to play a particular build to beat the campaign in a reasonable time. In a game that is all about build versatility... Common responses from the playerbase: skill issue, build issue, etc. While the game clearly has a balancing issue (which is fair considering its not at v1.0 yet). Bosses…

I'm an unashamed, unabashed, could-not-care-less "casual" when it comes to games, which definitely shows up even more in multiplayer. I played Minecraft with some online friends and I was off messing around, exploring, and doing nothing worthwhile, and got back to "base" where they had like.. monster farms and stuff?! Because they were trying to finish the newly released IDK.. expansion, ASAP? It was a very clear "oh…

I've found the way minecraft has evolved over the past 14 years to be unsatisfying for this reason. Most of the games systems feel like they exist for the purpose of being exploited, and the rest of the systems encorage the player to interact with the former.

As an example, if I want to go exploring, I'm thinking I'm going to want food, so I'll want crops either to eat them directly or to breed livestock. If I want to do that in a way that doesn't require waiting I'll need bone meal. But at some point they changed it so you require more bone meal to fully grow. And now the game has funneled me into building a mob grinder when I actually wanted to explore.

Sure, there are mobs out there you can fight who drop those items, and that's more engaging, but "fun" and "effective" are so misaligned in the game currently that I find myself avoiding it. So much so that I end up mostly either playing really old versions that aren't this way (b1.7.3 in particular) or modpacks that do a better job of this kind of progression.

Re: The elegance of movement in Silksong

#220

Post by Moomoomoo309 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #3
Analemma_ wrote: post #2

There are probably a bunch of videos in this genre, but I found [0] to be a particularly good explanation of why Hollow Knight felt so good. If you’re experienced at game design none of this is probably news to you, but if you’re unfamiliar with terms like “coyote time”, “jump buffering” etc., this video is a great introduction to how video games break physical realism to provide a better-feeling experience, and how…

> Silksong is presumably using all the same techniques. But Silksong feels terrible. Its movement is awful and difficult to control. Hollow Knight felt smooth. Silksong is the opposite of that. This very post is mixing its message: >> The secret to why this game is like crack is the movement. The movement is so buttery smooth that simply getting back to the boss that just ripped you to shreds is a complex, skillful,…

Get the Wanderer crest, once you have that, your moveset is almost identical to the original Hollow Knight. It makes a big difference.
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