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Veteran Gamer Opinion Polls - for everyone!


glasfen
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Hello, gamers! Your opinion counts. That's why I'm posting the very first Veteran Gamer Opinion Poll. The purpose of the VGOPs is simply to have fun with questions about gaming and elements of games. Yes, the name says veteran gamer, but all are welcome! It just helps to have played a variety of games.

Here's how to participate:

1. A question or situation will be posted.

2. Simply reply to the thread with your choice of a, b, c, or d.

3. Watch as others vote.

4. Check back when the votes are tallied to see the consensus.

Nothing to it! I will also offer a poll-related sig for interested parties at the end of each voting period (about a week). I hope to post the VGOPs on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. If you have any questions, pm me!

Now that the formalities have been addressed, here is...

Veteran Gamer Opinion Poll #1

In a platformer, which is more frustrating?

a) a time limit

B) one-hit deaths

c) unreachable power-ups

d) unavoidable enemies

Vote and be heard!

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How does one define "veteran gamer"? By years playing? By number of games? Genres? Number of systems owned? If you set an arbitrary date, then the majority of people here fall either too short or far above it. I think "veteran" is a dubious term to use.

That being said, B. Fucking OHKOs are frustrating as hell. Puzzles can be solved, enemies can be avoided (mostly, or the consequences are not that severe), but OHKOs are just... arrrrgh.

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How does one define "veteran gamer"? By years playing? By number of games? Genres? Number of systems owned? If you set an arbitrary date, then the majority of people here fall either too short or far above it. I think "veteran" is a dubious term to use.

Well, I use the term "veteran" loosely (plus, VGOP sounds cool). Really all it means in this context is that you have experience with a variety of games and are familiar with the classics insofar as understanding the poll questions. Case in point, for this poll, a "veteran gamer" may think of the NES and SNES Mario or Mega Man games.

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How does one define "veteran gamer"? By years playing? By number of games? Genres? Number of systems owned? If you set an arbitrary date, then the majority of people here fall either too short or far above it. I think "veteran" is a dubious term to use.

Oh Jesus H. Crispies, can't you just answer the fucking question without starting a discussion of semantics?!

B. One hit deaths. Absolutely ridiculous.

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A) A Time Limit.

In platformers, there's usually an exploratory element involved... you know, finding hidden rooms, finding the hidden path to a powerup of some kind, finding the portal to a hidden level or sub-level, stuff like that. It gets to be a pain in the ass to have fun exploring, when you have a ten minute time limit. Sure, it makes the game more "challenging" in some respects, but it does so not by making it more difficult, but by simply telling you in essence, "Okay, that's enough. Get to the end of the level now."

Giving someone a bonus for how fast they finished the level is one thing. But only giving them a set amount of time to explore that level has gotten old.

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If thats true, then so does yours, I was wondering what yours would be.

??? Ha ha, I didn't even think of submitting my own.

I'm going against the grain here, but definitely c. The Mega Man games are blatant violators in this sense. Why, WHY would you put an energy tank over there?! No love for the M-Man.

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A particular series pretty much made me jaded about one hit kills...

Gonna have to with A) Time limit

However this only applies in certain gaming situations. I hate it sometimes when the time limit can seem unreasonable yet are easily accomplished by others and then the consequences are severe when I fail to beat the clock...

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B) One hit kills are generally the worst. To err is human, after all. It's not really fair to brutally punish a player for making a simple mistake. It works okay in some games, like Alien Hominid (even if it is technically a shoot-'em-up) or I Wanna Be The Guy which are really more of a celebrations of the genre, but for serious platformers? It spells doom for the fun factor, and considering for a long time platformers were a dime a dozen, fun factor is everything to one of those games.
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D.

There's usually a potential to avoid one hit deaths (B), but, since you wrote "unavoidable" enemies, I hate them most because by definition I have no choice in succeeding to avoid them. I remember quite a few in Sonic and the Secret Rings. I hated that game.

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Hmm, I guess I'll go with D. unavoidable enemies.

It was hard for me to choose one, because they all seem to be a common occurrence (especially in older games) that don't really irritate me in the games. But I have found unavoidable enemies (except for like...bosses) to be the most irritating when I have to deal with such things, but really only in games that do so poorly? I dunno....

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I'm gonna go ahead and say A

I'm have to rule out B because, for me, a platformer is about perfecting one's path through a given level. And if one is OHKO'ed then obviously your path is flawed.

For "unavoidable" and "unreachable" do you mean all and totally unattainable (like a 1up in the middle of the sky with on way to get to it, or a three screen long lava pit with no platform or anything above it), or do you mean something that can be performed if enough practice is applied?

If it's the latter, I can rule out C and D using the same reasoning as B, leaving me with A.

If it's the former, for C and D, I still can't get to/past them therefore I can't go that way and stop trying to, leaving both of them non-issues.

(this is assuming that it is possible to beat a given game)

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For "unavoidable" and "unreachable" do you mean all and totally unattainable (like a 1up in the middle of the sky with on way to get to it, or a three screen long lava pit with no platform or anything above it), or do you mean something that can be performed if enough practice is applied?

On "unavoidable", I'm thinking large expanses of spikes, lava, quick enemies (dogs in Castlevania, Robocop, Narc, fill in the blank), cascades of projectiles, or, as Overflow said, a boss attack.

On "unreachable", see my Mega Man reference a few posts back. It also might be something like taking the wrong path in Kid Icarus so that you miss a door or have to go the long way instead.

(this is assuming that it is possible to beat a given game)

I should hope so! (unbeatable games... that sounds like a good post... or remix album)

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Any time estimates on the next question(s)?

To be honest, I didn't think this thread would get so many replies so quickly. I'll tally up the answers next week and post a new question/theme the week after. I've already got this poll's sig done but need time to work on the others.

Thanks for the patronage!

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Oh, I thought you would be doing this like... once a day or something, or just get so many responses and then move onto the next question.

Maybe a more structured format, and a longer polling time period to get even more answers? You could just put out about ten questions at once and let everyone go at it at once. That way, you can get a lot of info from lots of people.

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Oh, I thought you would be doing this like... once a day or something, or just get so many responses and then move onto the next question.

I considered that, but I was cautioned not to flood the forums with frequent posts. Also, it gives more people the opportunity to reply and I wanted to make a "prize" available in the form of an original signature. I'd rather not wear it out in one week. If people are still interested next week, or the week after, I'll keep it up.

You could just put out about ten questions at once and let everyone go at it at once. That way, you can get a lot of info from lots of people.

I had a plan for something else like that on the NOA boards which I may implement here.

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If you're worried about "flooding", there are a few sites that you can easily set up to handle the poll itself. You can enter any number of questions with multiple choices and even have it display a basic graph afterwards. That way, you can even set up different versions for different sites (like, one for here, one for NOA boards, and one for somewhere else), and get some data on which sites generate which responses, and then try to see if there is any correlation between said responses and the populations of those sites.

It might yield some interesting results.

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