Thom

@cote

he/him

Chicago Game Developer

Project lead, programmer, & composer at @CantGetEnoughGames (http://cantgetenoughgames.com)

Other socials: https://twitter.com/thom_cotay | https://mas.to/@thomcote

Thom @cote7/27/2023, 1:58 PM

Johnnemann @johnnemann

Johnnemann @johnnemann7/27/2023, 12:40 PM

Oh man Pikmin 4 feels kind of like a mess. I have no idea what development was like but it seems like the narrative is clunky and was maybe meant to be longer at the beginning? And there's waaaaay too much crammed into the first few levels as far as new things to learn go. They have added all these RPG-ass elements and menus and classes of creature and progression types. Like a weird soup of games, and none of it feels like a great addition yet. It is a really opaque beginning experience - I don't feel like it would be very welcoming to a first-time player.

I'm only a little bit in so maybe it'll redeem itself but so far it's a little disappointing

#pikmin 4 #game development

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in reply to @johnnemann's post:

evie @ewie7/27/2023, 12:47 PM

i can deffo see that. i really like pikmin 4 but imo the back half of the game is significantly stronger than the beginning

littlerat @littlerat7/28/2023, 8:22 PM

i've just reached what i believe to be the back half of the game and i don't want to say too much (don't want spoilers, don't want to spoil others) but
WOW i am more excited than i have been for a quite a while

d🔶@geometric7/27/2023, 1:04 PM

I could not suffer through the demo, it's such a shame. The first game is so sharp and brutal and focused and they just kept adding junk to it, it's painful to see.

Thom @cote7/27/2023, 1:57 PM

I've been watching an LP of it and the first 3 hours(!!) or so of tutorials have been excruciating and all the modern "progression" mechanics lumped onto everything are bad vibes all around.
The ppl I'm watching did just encounter some classic Pikmin bullshit in a relatively early dungeon so I'm hoping things improve now that they're done being interrupted by NPCs every 10 seconds

Johnnemann @johnnemann7/27/2023, 2:02 PM

Yeah the constant new information happening instead of letting me throw little guys around is really frustrating! Especially given how elegant the first games were in that regard

littlerat @littlerat7/27/2023, 2:49 PM

it feels like pikmin 4 wanted to introduce a lot of cool fun things for old players and also explain everything from scratch for the sake of new players but ended up somewhere weird in the middle where some players are annoyed by all the tutorials and some players are overwhelmed by them

i find it especially baffling that they start the game by throwing you into the initial tutorial with 100 pikmin and then you spend like half an hour without any pikmin at all learning completely different things

the other thing is that a lot of the systems in this game literally were in previous games (dandori battles, dandori challenges) and they worked great as alternate modes that you could learn if/when you wanted to, but they were like "no. you must learn them during the story. do you not like them? too bad. do you like them a lot and want to play a bunch of new ones in a row? also too bad"

it really does feel like they wanted to throw in every cool thing from the previous games in and force people to engage with them in the story because they're Cool and Good

but then they ALSO wanted to introduce new concepts of course haha, some of which work better than others imo

there's a lot of good in this game but... maybe too much good for one game, especially since you're forced to go through so many different things to progress through the game. i kind of wish the game had gone the botw/totk route of "yeah we've got a million systems but you can ignore 95% of them if you want to, do whatever you want"

Thom @cote7/27/2023, 4:16 PM

For veteran players it'd be so much improved by just having an "I've played Pikmin before" button to make it skip all the old-knowledge tutorials.
For new player onboarding - with as unique a game as Pikmin where experience with other games doesn't really apply, I feel their struggle to explain a dozen systems early on. On cold calling we've reworked the first couple levels over and over to avoid this kind of constant tutorial interruption while still making sure people understand what's going on onscreen.
Personally I think barring big early level redesigns, P4 could reduce the verbosity of its dialogue by like 50% and the new info would be a lot more digestible.

littlerat @littlerat7/27/2023, 6:00 PM

yeah I think the fact that a lot of the explanations are delivered through banter between different characters slows things down a lot

the funny thing too is they literally have the old style of explanation still in the game, in the voyage logs, so it's explained twice

And THEN they feel the need to reinforce the info again with the side mission mechanic like "remember to bloom flowers! Here is an NPC whose sole purpose is to reward you for blooming flowers with a small amount of materials you could get elsewhere anyways!"

they seem really, really worried about drilling in mechanics into players' heads, but i think backing off a little would give prople more room to figure things out on their own, which would make it easier to remember long term

like, they've actively removed opportunities for players to naturally learn some of the mechanics.

for example with how you can't accidentally throw too many pikmin at an object anymore. I don't think a new player would realize that you can throw extra pikmin and it makes the object go faster

or for oatchi.

if oatchi could swim from the beginning people would very quickly learn "oh the dog follows me into the water and is fine" but instead you have to learn "okay the dog can't swim i have to keep the dog out of the water WAIT never mind the dog swims now"

and also, the fact that you can rush with oatchi could naturally lead people to press the same button to try and rush with just pikmin... except you're barred from doing that unless you have a specific upgrade, so you're forced to go "oh that doesn't work with pikmin? WAIT it works now much later now that I have the upgrade"

I can understand conceptually "we want to ease people into the mechanics by having them locked behind certain milestones" but at least similar mechanics could be introduced at the same time, or if there's a mechanic that is potentially interesting but not required for people to learn, you can just leave it there for people to discover and figure out before/instead of having a tutorial for it

Thom @cote7/27/2023, 6:18 PM

Agreed 100%, a lot of the decisions seem to be driven by a desire to avoid the kind of frustration and potential for catastrophic mistakes that (in part) made the other games so unique! The design seems very afraid of losing players if they suffer too big a setback. I think limiting how many Pikmin you can have outside at first is a good enough way to prevent a party wipe, and the numerous other guard rails put in place on top of that are excessive.
Also I'm mixed on the dog mechanic overall - there's some cool ideas, but I also think being able to attach all your Pikmin to the dog lets you avoid the unwieldiness of babysitting 100 independently moving toddlers (a fundamental part of the series imo)
Anyway I'm trying to view it from a new player's perspective, where the main issue is just how verbose and frequent the tutorials are, but I also feel like the numerous rough edges that have been sanded down kind of defined the series for me

littlerat @littlerat7/28/2023, 5:31 PM

Sometimes I Just Want To Lose And Die...

but i do think they're trying to pull in some of the crowd that only knows pikmin from pikmin bloom, and i can understand wanting to make the transition from "world with cute little pikmin who can never die" to "world where you can lose 100 pikmin at once by jumping into the abyss" a little smoother, even if i'm not particularly pleased with the way it's been done

i do wonder how it'd feel to do a "minimum upgrades" run since i've been heavily relying on oatchi's skills. but also the world is full of games and maybe i'd rather play smth else like pikmin 1 + 2 rather than replay 4 when i'm done with it

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