onpon4 {l Wrote}:I do tend to agree that locking tracks adds nothing meaningful. Actually, I think locking karts adds nothing meaningful, too. I think the reason people like it in games like Super Smash Bros and Mario Kart is because it makes them feel like they're getting new stuff, but in those cases they don't know what they'll be getting or when.
I fail to see why what is applicable to those games wouldn't be to STK ?
Wuzzy {l Wrote}:I think this is a design flaw and makes STK more annoying to use. It adds no gameplay value. Tracks are essential to the game, it's bad that most tracks are unplayable at the beginning.
Progression mechanics are essential
onpon4 {l Wrote}:Progression mechanics are essential
In some form, sure, but in the case of a racing game, the important progression mechanic is within a single race, not being required to play a crappy story mode before you can play your favorite tracks. If unlockable content is so essential, why don't AssaultCube, Xonotic, Teeworlds, Freeciv, MegaGlest, Warzone 2100, Hedgewars, Battle Tanks, Red Eclipse, or OpenArena have it? Are these all bad games because they don't have long-term "progression" and instead focus on the experience of a single match?
Let's take Warzone 2100 as a good example of a game that has both a campaign and "skirmishes", just simple rounds. Would Warzone 2100 gain anything by locking a bunch of skirmish maps until the campaign is beaten? Of course not. Not everyone is going to like the campaign, and not everyone who likes the campaign is going to have the patience to beat it, especially not multiple times (which will inevitably become necessary when you lose your save data).
I can actually only think of one other libre game that has an unlockable thing, Alex the Allegator 4. In that case, the unlockable content is just a scrolling shooter. That works because the scrolling shooter isn't mentioned at all anywhere until it's unlocked, is nothing like the regular game (which is a platformer), and isn't exactly something you're going to go crazy over (it's just a standard scrolling shooter). So it's unknown and unimportant. It makes it so that when you 100% the game (that's what unlocks it), you think, "Oh, cool! I just unlocked a little mini-game!" and you feel rewarded for your efforts. But it doesn't make a new player think things like, "Come on, I've got to 100% this stupid game so I can play that mini-game!" because they don't know about it, and even if they've heard of it somewhere, they know it's nowhere near as great as the actual game.
Let's compare that to SuperTuxKart. Here, we have the story mode, which as I said is really crappy; you're pretty much just playing a bunch of pre-defined races, which you could easily have done on your own if the game wasn't locking up the tracks. The fun part is to just pick a track and mode and race. And it's less fun when you have fewer tracks to choose from. It would be bad enough if the locked tracks were hidden and made the game look smaller, but instead, the locked tracks are shown and make you frustrated that the game won't let you play that interesting-looking track until you play a crappy story mode. And some of these tracks really are very nice.
If all tracks are always unlocked in multiplayer, that's good, but I think the solo player trying the game out for the first time should be kept in mind, too. How many people come to STK as solo players, only play what's available to them in the beginning, conclude that STK is less good than it is because they don't get the full experience, and then never even try multiplayer because of it? It can't be good for the game's popularity.
For a racing game example, albeit proprietary, there's the very successful TrackMania franchise which has different difficulty levels with only a few (3 if I remember correctly) tracks within each difficulty unlocked from the beginning. Most tracks are in fact locked and you need to beat a ghost replay per track in order to unlock the next track.
And I don't understand the argument that because people know there's lots of extra content to be unlocked they give up on the game - if they don't know there's more to unlock they would probably conclude there just isn't much content.
Unlockable content in games exists to reward players for completing challenges and making progress.
onpon4 {l Wrote}:I've never heard of it, but more importantly, "another game does it" doesn't explain how STK benefits from locked tracks and locked game modes. Should STK also introduce a permadeath (loss of all progression) feature because games like Ninja Gaiden, Super Mario Bros, and Sonic the Hedgehog have such a thing? Should it introduce dead-end states that force you to go back to a previous save because the successful King's Quest series does so? Or should it include "freemium" stuff because that's common in other games?
Now, don't get me wrong, the whole locked tracks nonsense isn't a deal-breaker for me; it's easy enough to just modify the config file to say that I unlocked everything. But I do think it's a misguided design flaw; I see no reason for it and see some potential for it to drive new players away.And I don't understand the argument that because people know there's lots of extra content to be unlocked they give up on the game - if they don't know there's more to unlock they would probably conclude there just isn't much content.
You have a point. The "frustrated" event is an optimistic result. The pessimistic result is that they simply ignore it entirely and judge the game as they saw it, so for example, if they missed the game mode and track that would have made them love the game, they'll leave thinking the game is just a mediocre Mario Kart ripoff and never come back.Unlockable content in games exists to reward players for completing challenges and making progress.
There are much better ways to do this. An achievements or trophy system, for example. It works just as well to encourage people to progress without hampering the fun of just racing.
You didn't mention SuperTux because it's a different type of game but think Ninja Gaiden etc have relevance?
Or was it an attempt at an argument of the type reductio ad absurdum?
You seem to be grasping at straws here, trying to convince us that something we've been doing for many years is something that's keeping people from playing the game.
they could play through each one once and then stop playing, also coming to the conclusion that STK is a mediocre MK ripoff.
There isn't much of a likelihood that the outcome would change drastically based on the number of available tracks from the start
You seem to be grasping at straws here, trying to convince us that something we've been doing for many years is something that's keeping people from playing the game.
And why is that an absurd suggestion? You don't know how many people download the game, play it, and then never do so again because they don't like it. That's what happens; people rarely complain, they just leave and never come back. Given that you don't even know who they are, you're never going to notice.
And it's not like STK is a super-popular game. Far from it, any time I've ever brought STK up, the people I've talked to either never heard of it or know it as "that open source Mario Kart clone".
By the way, it's not just tracks, it's game modes, too. If anything, I'd say that it's even more important for game modes to all be unlocked from the start.they could play through each one once and then stop playing, also coming to the conclusion that STK is a mediocre MK ripoff.
Do you suppose, then, that locked tracks makes people play races (which does not unlock tracks) more often? I find that an absurd proposition. I think if all anyone wants to do is explore through the game and forget about it, first of all, they're not this game's target audience, but second of all, whether tracks are locked or not is going to have no effect on how far they get through the story mode and what they think of it.There isn't much of a likelihood that the outcome would change drastically based on the number of available tracks from the start
This is a 180 from what you said before.
So then, why not just unlock them and avoid the hassle, if it's not having any significant effects?
Due to the success of the TrackMania series, Guinness World Records awarded the games six world records in the Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. These include "Biggest Online Race", "Most Popular Online Racing Sim" and "Largest Content Base of Any Racing Game", with hundreds of thousands of user created tracks and hundreds of unique cars available for download.
Thing is, it's you and Wuzzy asserting that it's harmful with locked content
which is the status quo, so it's actually on you to come with data or arguments to convince us to change things.
And "it's not like STK is a super popular game" can't be a relevant argument if TrackMania having such a system and being super popular doesn't show such a system is possible with a popular game.
Where did I ever say that STK has a bigger chance of success due to locking tracks?
now we have a way of ensuring people play the easier tracks first and unlock more difficult tracks later, instead of people running into Old Mine and XR591 as their first tracks and finding it too difficult and giving up from that.
onpon4 {l Wrote}:Thing is, it's you and Wuzzy asserting that it's harmful with locked content
No, please look back again. My very first post in this thread was disputing that claim.
I have a different claim: that it's pointless and not worth the (admittedly minor) setbacks.which is the status quo, so it's actually on you to come with data or arguments to convince us to change things.
Which I did. Not data, but arguments.And "it's not like STK is a super popular game" can't be a relevant argument if TrackMania having such a system and being super popular doesn't show such a system is possible with a popular game.
You're doing this a lot. You're misapplying things I'm saying to other things that are not related. The fact that STK is not popular is an argument against your implication that because you have been doing it "for many years", it must be having a positive effect or no negative effect. It's an invalid argument, and I pointed out that STK is not popular because that fact is inconsistent with your implication.Where did I ever say that STK has a bigger chance of success due to locking tracks?
You didn't say that specifically, but your mention of Track Mania seemed to me to strongly imply that were in favor of the locked content and considered it to be a positive.now we have a way of ensuring people play the easier tracks first and unlock more difficult tracks later, instead of people running into Old Mine and XR591 as their first tracks and finding it too difficult and giving up from that.
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere. Convincing players to start with the easier stuff. That is a goal I can get behind.
Now, to achieve this goal, you don't need to lock tracks. You only need to hide them, perhaps behind an "Advanced Tracks" menu or some such thing. Then beginners see a nice list of the easy, basic tracks to start with, but they also see that more are available (and calling them "basic" and "advanced" tracks gets the message across that the "advanced" / harder tracks are more fun to play). That sounds like a nice solution, no? I'd certainly be willing to implement it.
Of course, this motive does not apply to alternative racing modes. I still see no reason to lock those.
First off, I'm sorry for misattributing the harmful allegation to you. I'm reading and writing this on my phone since I'm away from home for a few days, and this forum isn't very good for a 5" phone screen, so I didn't check to make sure I understood you correctly, which I should have. Incidentally it's also why I don't do like you and divide quotes in a nice fashion.
The reason I brought up TrackMania was because you brought up a number of games earlier not locking content, so I wanted to give a popular counterexample.
Hiding more difficult tracks in a different category is possible, but we've already had people asking where the add-ons they installed went to, when the select track screen has tabs for choosing between categories like All, Standard and Add-Ons.
Wuzzy {l Wrote}:Finally, what was the reason for STK devs to lock so many tracks in the first place? What possible benefits did you hope for? I mean, what was the design goal here?
Maybe we can then work on that reasoning.
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