10 Things I hate about WipEout Pulse

[Dogg Thang]

I want more people playing it than before and people getting rewarded by it and enjoying it. And that all flips back in part to the handling - the handling isnt the be all and end all of accessibility but it is part of it.

Out of curiosity, is that happening? Are the modern more-accessable WO games doing better than the early games? Pure seemed to do well but I have no idea how they compare.

[guillaume]

I'm not a WipEout veteran, but as a fan since Pure, I must say I'm really happy that you have to broaden your audience, even if that makes the game easier at first.
When I first launched Pulse, the first (ok, maybe second) thing I noticed was the inclusion of the manual and the tips on the loading screens, and I thought 'nice, that will make the newcomers happy'.
And then I began racing, and thought 'Ouch, I'm happy I played Pure, that must be hard enough for newcomers' :)

The more people playing WipEout, the more people we'll have fun with!
And I'm convinced that Pulse is not easier than Pure once you become a good player. The record tables will see new entries for a looong while I think, just like the previous games.
So basically, I'm just happy. Thanks :D

[Sausehuhn]

Well, I can understand that nowadays "it's all about the money". Probably that wasn't different for W'O'' as well. But it's true: big companies focus on big franchises because that's where to make money. And if WipEout is one of these it means the game is succesful, which is, of course, a nice thing.
I'm also aware of that you guys at Studio Liverpool try your best to give us good games, to make something that pleases Sony because of the money and the customers because they like the game.
But - and I can just speak for my personal experience here - the "old" handling is the last thing you would have to worry about. I know people who never, I mean never, play WipEout and after a few races they got the hang of Wip3out or 2097. Of course not Phantom and yeah they didn't reach every checkpoint at the first race (but checkpoints are dropped anyway since Fusion), but after some time they got it and then the reward for their succes.
You cannot start Pulse and do perfect laps right from the start when you've never played the game before. And same goes for WO, WO3 and 2097. Actually there's no difference in how things get started.
When people start a race for the first time the only thing that matters is the feeling of speed. If they know "oh yeah that's going to be fast" then they've the ambition to master the game. That was a problem with Pure. It was to slow in the lower classes and poeple said "no, that game is too slow" and the threw it away. That changed with Pulse which is a good thing. And I think that could work with the old handling as well.
At least to me it was always the unique feeling WipEout had. The unique handling you would never find in any other game (the tilting rear of the ships and the floatiness). And of course the perfectly executed design that build up the central theme through the game.
That's somehow missing in the new titels. And at least for me Pulse makes a step backward in terms of design, too. Not only the menu design, but some tracks just seem a bit messy to me. Basilico for example has a very strange feeling to me because it has so many design elements combined into one. I don't see any "theme" for the track if you know what I mean. Of course that's a matter of taste, but I for one miss the minimalism.
The game lost realism to me. It has a rather catoonish look. I'm happy WOHD focusses on more realism again.

I want to underline it again: I'm speaking for myself here. And I like Pure and Pulse very much. I do not want to offend somebody with my words, especially not the guys from SL because these guys did a great job with the games :)

[phl0w]

First of all thanks for not bashing me altogether, after all it was a pretty provocative post.
Second of all

but if all you're saying is that a videogame has to be immensely challenging in order for it to be any good Nope, didn't say that. If you really must subsume it than I'd say: If the only challenge a "game" provides is to find the time playing it, then it's not a game but just time passing by, as if nothing has happened. But that's rather simplified and may, again, be misunderstood.

I agree that videogames aren't art, and will never be but saying

I'm not sure Beethoven or Van Gogh had the constraints on them that game developers have is just not true. As a matter of fact most classical pieces were written due to a binding request or the composer was bound by a contract, like Bach in Leipzig who had to come up with a new cantata every Sunday and religious holiday- For 27 years! Same is true for visual arts. It was just the genius of those guys that they managed to create something that would meet requirements of their clients and at the same time create something so outstanding it would later be seen as classical art.
Anyway

I would hate to deliberately make a game elitist and I used to be a 'hardcore' gamer, but you cant have that as an aim, games should be inclusive not exclusiveAnd yet including the average gamer (an oxymoron in this context, since accessibility doesn't aim for gamers but the non-gaming mass to broaden a game's target audience, therefor that average gamer is pretty much your Joe Public, who didn't care about videogames until a product was "tailored" to suddenly fit) means catering to someone who will play that videogame for a fractional amount of the time someone with dedication does, who, in the process now may find that videogame not worth his time anymore as it was dumped down too much and looks for other activities. Now who's more suitable for a game. One who finds meaning in devoting himself to it, spends tons of time mastering it or one that buys it because he saw an awesome commercial or likes the back of the box, doesn't even complete half of it, and forgets about it after a week because it's still too hard for him to be bothered. You have to consider that videogames, or other activities, for that matter, that require skill of some sort (both intellectual and motor-driven), will always be too hard for many, no matter how easy they might seem for others. How many people don't play Go or Chess, to stress those examples one more time, because it's just too frickin' hard to play properly or against someone good? Would it be fair to tone the games down, so more people will play it? Not to those that spent their lives mastering it and more importantly not fair to the game itself- as an entity! Sure, you could include all kinds of rules or change the game to a degree that everybody is attracted by it, it just wouldn't be that game, i.e. Go / Chess, anymore. Same goes for Wipeout ( and pretty much any other game hard and rewarding enough to attract a dedicated fan base) and what people over the years have come to understand and see the essence of it. Did they misconceive it?
It's clear that from a fiscal point of view it doesn't matter who buys videogames, but who says that the road the industry is headed is the right one and not a dead-end?
Again, please don't see this as an insult or solely related to Wipeout. I very much appreciate your (Mr. Colin Berry's) and your team's work and hold you in the highest esteem to visit these boards, willing to listen AND answer to each and everybody's problems. However, It's a dilemma of identity videogames per se are suffering from. And seeing that WOZ includes many, many reasonable people and a producer who is capable of a view of the industry from a meta-level without feeling personally attacked make these boards a very futile ground for discussions. Granted it's Off-Topic, but still...

Hope I included "the odd line break". The text looks readable in the small reply-box, so I tend to forget to insert breaks every now and then.

EDIT:

You cannot start Pulse and do perfect laps right from the start when you've never played the game before. And same goes for WO, WO3 and 2097. Actually there's no difference in how things get started. I don't think so: I'm by far not one of the better WOers and I managed to complete every grid on the first try, with the exception of 2 Phantom tournaments. Furthermore, never did I clock so many Perfect Laps right from the start in a Wipeout game than in Pulse. No matter how you look at it, Single Player is too easy for someone familiar with the basic mechanics. I agree that it's not the handling that's the easy part- I actually like it very much in Pulse, but the A.I. and time limits are way too forgiving. Heck, there are tracks in Pure (e.g. Iridia) where I still haven't managed to get TT Golds in all classes.

[infoxicated]

Maybe you're just awesome at the game?

Certainly my imperfect laps far outweigh my perfect ones. Just out of curiosity, phl0w, can you post your exact statistics for that kind of thing, because I'd love to see just how easy you've found the game. :)

[Sausehuhn]

@ phl0w

Add difficulty levels to WO3 and you have the same effect.
I don't say I want WO3 again with new tracks. No. I don't. I was just talking about the floatyness and the tilting rear. I think you know what I'm talking about.
I don't need wallbumping back, either. Keep the scratching from Pure/Pulse. I'm just saying I would like to see a more traditional handling again. A combination of the old and the new ones with its focus on how the ships handle, not how they react with objects (like opponents or walls).
But I go round in circles with my argumentation as I'm just saying the same here again just packed with a few more details. It's just sad that the handling has so much more potential that isn't used, even though it requires complete recoding. But why not if there is no exact time span (WO PS3 anyone?).

My 2 cents. I'll shut up now ;)

[Dogg Thang]

Well I'm certainly not awesome at the game. Never have been with Wipeout as much as I love the series - the original took me ages just to eventually scrape through it. And, yes, in Pulse my imperfect laps far outweigh my perfect laps. If they didn't, we'd have a really serious problem.

But my Pulse perfect laps, even early on, far outweigh my perfect laps from any other WO game (can't remember about Fusion - I don't really count that). Like phl0w, the only ones I had difficulty with were the Phantom tournaments due to the blowing-upness of it all. I breezed through time trial golds and head to head first time - something I could rarely do in Pure. The only difficulty for me came from surviving the weapons and that was an all or nothing thing: if I survived, I won.

For better or worse, I have little doubt that making through the challenges set out by the game is much easier in Pulse.

And I see all of Colin's points and have always admired the direction he's taking the series but I think Sausehun makes a great point - the handling can really be AG with all that brings, while not having the game needing to be really tough for new players. Ultimately, what drew most of us to Wipeout was the feeling of flying an anti-gravity craft, and the speed. They're really the main two things that differentiate the series from other racers. The speed is still retained in the later classes but if I didn't know that and was new to the game, I'd likely think it was too slow early on. And if losing that feeling of floating and anti-gravity is seen as making it more accessible, that pretty much weakens the two main draws of the game for new players. But, as Sausehun says, there's no reason why you can't have floaty handling but not have it as punishing as the earlier games - making it accessible while not sacrificing the strengths of the series.

[phl0w]

Maybe you're just awesome at the game?
Certainly my imperfect laps far outweigh my perfect onesI'm not awesome at the game because I pinballed around tracks in Speed Lap events like a bouncing-ball, and yet I got Golds. I just said that I cleared the grids on my first try (safe for 2 Phantom tournaments) and seeing that I am not one of the better players, I assume many WOZ members did so too, for me that makes Pulse's Single Player easier than the one from other WOs.
My imperfect laps outweigh my perfect laps by far either. We talked about the "start" of the game. While I didn't know what a PL was until I got a neGcon for 2097 :) I was surprised that I could pull them off pretty regularly in Pulse right from the start. And compared to older WOs my Perfect Laps in Pulse by far outweigh those in the older ones. Phantom though is not at the start and it's my favourite speed class according to statistics, which explains why my imperfect laps outweigh PLs ;)
What statistics would you like to see?

EDIT: Just looked something up: Most favourite track: Outpost 7 White, ~700 laps on Phantom, not a single PL, there you go.

[infoxicated]

Oh, right - I see what you're getting at.

Well then yes, I'd agree it is too easy to get golds - I'm on grid 7 and I haven't been stuck as of yet and I haven't really been playing the campaign mode much. I'd rather bronze was attainable without too much trouble, but silvers required a fairly tight lap. Golds should require you to hit every speed pad and use the "sell-out" of the previous lap's turbo technique, I think.

[phl0w]

Golds should require you to hit every speed pad and use the "sell-out" of the previous lap's turbo technique, I think.Totally agree. It's true that limits are stricter on the lower grids, and require a fairly tight lap, on Phantom though you can bounce left, right and center for 5 laps and still get a Gold medal with up to 10 seconds to spare. Again, this came up a few times already, but I don't see how one, even a newcomer, can feel rewarded if a run is full of mistakes, and still the game gives out Golds like peanuts. Wouldn't they be turned off either? It's beyond my understanding. But then I can't understand how one can find satisfaction in scoring a goal in FIFA either. It seems people have lost the feeling of a healthy coherence between effort and reward.

[sakerbax]

i think you're being too harsh.. pulse was the first wipeout that i played, and and im currently at grid 11 as a total newbie (didnt even know what airbrakes were) i must say it took some time just to do the first grid, after getting used to how the game plays it started getting fun. speed and trial gave me reasons to get better and while the first were easy it starts getting harder, and the singleplayer is huge,,

if a gold is too easy for a veteran does that really matter? we have ranking tables and in a near future downloadble ghosts to keep them happy with the competitive aspect.

and for newbies, a not too easy but a little practice away gold will keep them from giving up and in the process getting better, after that you'll have a new person addicted to the game and both ranking tables and online to improve their skills

[Frances_Penfold]

I'd rather see harder events on the grid single player as well-- but I'm not sure how much difference it makes in terms of the game's difficulty.

As with most things racing, the real measure of difficulty will be pushing the limits in time trials and online multiplayer against other experienced players-- right?

[QirexAAX]

I have to say I agree with Mr. Berry, I think the whole 'games as art' debate is a bit tired and irrelevant. There isn't any other medium that would really be considered art that ends up as so obvious a 'product' as a video game. I mean, certainly films and TV series end up as DVDs and paintings get marketed as posters and postcards, but that's really only a secondary industry - even for films that gross higher on DVD sales than at the box office.

Personally, when I buy a videogame, what I'm looking out for is quality of the product, I like something that somehow seems worth owning. Games like Final Fantasy Tactics that I finished reasonably quickly, and have little interest in playing again, I am glad I own because they feel like quality products and that somehow real work and real love went into making them. I know I sound like a totally raving capitalist but somehow I feel like, even if a game doesn't last that long or is a little too easy, if you get that sense of it being a quality peice and that it's worth your time (no matter how brief) and that you are glad to own it even after you are finished with it, it's a great thing.

I certainly feel like that with Pulse. Sure there may be a few snags but it's one of those games where you get the sense that the people who made it really knew what they were doing, like the feeling you get when you get into a vintage car that smells of petrol, oil, carpets and hard work. Sure the windscreen wipers might cut out when you're driving in the rain, and you may feel the handling isn't exactly as you want it to be, but who cares?

For anyone who considers videogames to be 'art': would you really sign up to a book forum and complain that the author used syntax that disagreed with you or that the protagonist didn't say "blow and blast" enough? Would you write a memo to Klimpt and say he went a bit heavy on the gold? Art criticism is one thing but I feel in video gaming the targets for that criticism are being set a little low and a little too specific. I'm afraid that if critics want games to be thought of as 'art' they need to broaden their own horizons to meet their expectations.

Also, thanks for providing those insights into the development process Colin, I found them really interesting.

[sakerbax]

this can easly evolve into an off topic discussion, but reading about art in games, made me remember an article i read about my favorite game of all time.

and after an easy search it's still online =)

Is Quake 3 Art? (http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Editorials.Detail&id=111)

[Medusa]

After reading all this...well, we'd all love to have the "perfect" wipeout game, but it seems video games have gone the same way Hollywood has - churn out enough product to keep the money coming in. Spend too much time making something "the best it can be", and the business goes into the red.

It's really not up to Mr.Colin Berry or any one person in particular, is it? It is driven by corporate demands. Sell millions of copies of your product or find another job. Isn't that what it boils down to?

"You're a slave to the money and then you die..."

[MarcoM]

All being said, I still think Pulse is a magnificent game. It's addictive. Has great controls. Looks absolutly stunning. It offers perfect enjoyment on the psp due to its relative shorts bursts of gaming.

And I absolutly love its scalability. Scalability in many ways. First the sound. You can have your own music. Not found in every game.

Second the level of difficulty. I am relativly new to WO (started with Pure), so I think Flash is a good and fun way of AG racing. But many veterans over here play Phantom wiht hard AI. Good for them! Over even online against even better contenders. This offers true scalability in terms of competetion.

And then there's of course the extra downloads. None have appeared yet, but I hope that SL is working on many extra tracks and ships.

[Roadster]

First of all thanks for not bashing me altogether, after all it was a pretty provocative post.
Second of all
Nope, didn't say that. If you really must subsume it than I'd say: If the only challenge a "game" provides is to find the time playing it, then it's not a game but just time passing by, as if nothing has happened. But that's rather simplified and may, again, be misunderstood.


Well, as far as I'm concerned some games are simply about the experience of playing rather than trying to beat a particular challenge. Although I do agree that more games should provide a stern challenge these days, and Wipeout is one such game - it's through the satisfaction of mastering a particular challenge that these sort of games provide most enjoyment.

On that note, I also agree about the Time Trials - Gold medals should be much, much harder to achieve, as it is right now the grids just seem like a checklist. Where's the satisfaction in that?

Not that I'm saying that Pulse is any easy game - just trying to safely manoeuvre the ship around some tracks on Rapier/Phantom is (for me) a challenge in itself. :)

[Colin Berry]

lots I could answer on this but I am a little pushed for time, so I'll focus on a couple of things :)

It seems to be a common misconcpetion that there are LOTS of wipeout fans out there.
Yes there is a core dedicated amount of fans that is for sure, however Pure was the first wipeout to sell over 1million. Yet despite a limited release in america, the most successful Wipeout on consoles (as I am told) is actually Wipeout Fusion. Wipeout fans are dedicated and loyal but alas it is a large genre racing, and a niche of that - futuristic, ergo we dont have the fan base of say NFS or burnout, or GT or even F1

The inital Wipeouts got a lot of acclaim and at the time they sold 'relatively' well
Its often said that in the first 3 months of ps1 in europe, 50% of people owned wipeout - that sound HUGE, but when you consider there were at most 100,000 ps1s, you suddenly see that the figures arent large.

When I talk about making Wipeout more accessible, I am not talking about attracting the people playing singstar or buzz, I am not talking about the casual market, I am talking about attracting games players who simply find the entry bar too high.

As such a new wipeout has a struggle, its a hardcore game, yet hardcore gamers are hard to please and often want something new, ergo you have to try and appeal to the gamers who are not the 'new breed' of casual gamers but who are games players who dont necessarily buy into the latest things but do have gaming tradition.


My best friend is a hardcore gamer, he buys games every week, owns almost every system and he spends as much of his spare time as his girlfriend allows, playing games, and a variety of games too. I havent given him Pulse yet, but when he played Pure it was his first wipeout since 2097, he plays a lot of racing games, but he really struggled with Pure for the first 30mins or so.
It was an eye opener for me, I thought it was too easy, yet here is someone I know is better at games than me in the most part and he is struggling early on, now he continued, cos... I told him to :D and he wanted to improve and see more, but it really made me realise how hard Wipeout is and can be even for people who are big gamers.

I think it is something that it is easy to lose sight of, I suspect these forums pretty much contain the top 200 Wipeout players in the world, indeed everyone on these forums is probably in the top 5000, even foxxy ! Its amazing to see how tricky the game can be initially for people who play games but are not Wipeout addicts. I really think again people on here would be surprised to see how hard the game is in the hands of someone not a huge dedicated fan.

Now I am not saying we make the whole game easier, but the entry bar has to be lowered in order to broaden the appeal, not to the mass market - Wipeout is niche and always will be, but it needs to be broadened to catch the eye of some hardcore fans who ignore it and also to try and catch the attention of the bulk of average gamers, and particularly racing fans.
Its tricky, because that appeal has to be there, yet we cant let down the hardcore fans who are, in reality maybe 5% of the overall players.

The point I am laboring to make :) is that the definition of an average gamer that I want to appeal to is different to what you see an average gamer as, and the reality is we need the game to appeal to more people and information.

We arent chasing buzz fans, we are after other hardcore racing fans and games players who maybe find the entry bar a little high, and it is especially compared to many games out there, and to be honest that is a flaw - Imagine spending £30 on a game for your son or buying it with your wages and getting frustrated due to the difficulty within the first 30mins - now thats not something you guys get with wipeout, because you know how to play it but its what happens to many.

So the entry bar needs lowering whilst the top end has to remain hard (which in Pulse it possibly doesnt remain hard enough)

Regarding Pulse being a little too easy at times - part of that was choice - make the campaign a little easier so more people see the game and stick with it, and then venture online where the REAL competition lies. The aim was to make the first 12 grids a challenge but doable for many, phantom is then more of a challenge (but perhaps should have been harder than it is) and the racebox hard races are actually harder than the 'hard race campaign races for the most part'.

So for people seeking more challenge racebox is useful, the grids themselves have an independant difficulty curve that means a hard race on grid 1 is easier than a hard race on grid 2 which is easier than a hard on grid 3 etc to give a progression feeling
Where as in racebox all hard races as equivalent to grid 12.

[lunar]

I might be a hopeless fanboy, but I think you`ve got it all as near to bang-on as possible with Pure and Pulse, given the considerations you described. I do know a lot of people who avoid Wipeout because they think it`s too hard, and you`ve got to address that. It`s been the case for me since I first got 2097 and started playing the game. I think it`s amazing and we`re very lucky in how much you cater to those of us with Wipeout OCD, and we`re keen enough that when we beat the game we`ll always find a way to make the game harder by competing with each other. Pulse gives us so many ways to do it that we can`t complain at all. You`ve given us a game mechanic that pleases 95% of the hardcore 95% of the time (can`t confirm the exact statistics) and we enjoy that mechanic and handling enough to go on and compete with each other in whatever way we like.

Wipeout games have never been difficult to complete. Wipeout 2097 and Wipeout 3 were easy to finish (if you had the patience in the case of the second one), but they were difficult to look good at and difficult to enjoy at fast speeds, which means flying near-perfectly. Pulse isn`t so different to that.

[Dogg Thang]

the most successful Wipeout on consoles (as I am told) is actually Wipeout Fusion.

Wow. I am so surprised by that, especially given the huge buzz and acclaim of 2097 and the impressive marketing of WO3. Fusion seemed to just slip on to the shelves with average reviews and no buzz at all except for those hanging around the Fusion boards and even things there went a little sour when the Australian version came out.

That it did better with all of that is quite shocking and pretty much discounts any thoughts I had on what the appeal of the game is. My world has been shaken.

[QirexAAX]

I quite agree with you, lunar. Pure was the first wipeout I owned and while I was able to make fairly regular progress on it, I don't think at any point that I ever felt like I was getting any good at it.

I think Pulse's grid structure addresses that really nicely because it encourages you to do speed laps and zones and eliminators to help you develop the skills you need for races and tournaments, while at the same time often allowing you to pass them by if you're having trouble with them or are just not in the mood. If you find the grids too easy all you have to do is enough to unlock all the tracks and then stick to racebox and online.

As for time trial gold targets being too easy, I refer to what Colin was saying about the proportion of top wipeout players being members of this site. Even without the online racing, that encourages competition through posting times and videos and the like, so if you want a real Time Trial challenge there are always places like wipeoutzone and the rankings on wipeout-game to get it for those who are motivated enough to look. It then becomes irrelevant whether or not you've actually got a gold medal, but for the less ambitious player who plays wipeout because it looks cool and slick and has a good soudtrack etc., they might be pleased to be able to earn the easier golds after a few attempts and then to move on.

Pulse handles this well because it has considered its online community ahead of time. Unlike some game developers that just put up a posh flash site and then never seem to show any further interest the game, Pulse actually draws you in to its online community with the skin editor and the online rankings being made very obvious to the player from the off.

My point is that it seems the Pulse team were quite aware that people who really want a challenge (and a more dynamic one than you could get in most games, at that) are quite capable of tracking it down themselves, and ensured there was a suitable framework for them to do so.

[Frances_Penfold]

I want to thank Colin for taking the time to explain his perspective on issues related to difficulty, sales and the essence of Wipeout. It isn't often that ordinary gamers like myself get to read such a candid discussion, and I appreciate it :)


I am so surprised by that, especially given the huge buzz and acclaim of 2097 and the impressive marketing of WO3. Fusion seemed to just slip on to the shelves with average reviews and no buzz at all except for those hanging around the Fusion boards


It is surprising-- but I suppose if you add together the huge PS2 user base and the lack of competition (few futuristic racers on the current consoles at the time, F-zero not released yet), it makes sense.

[HISHO[JP]]

the most successful Wipeout on consoles (as I am told) is actually Wipeout Fusion.
Then, I don't know why fusion was not released in Japan.
Because of.... publisher(BAM Entertainment)?

WO64 was going to be released by "coconuts japan.inc" in Japan.
But after being delayed and delayed, the company was broken.
So WO64 was "lost" in Japan.


US version of Pulse is coming soon, but SCE Japan is still lying (http://www.jp.playstation.com/scej/title/list/list_pre.html).

Shadow disappearing glitch should be fixed for photo mode.
192
And count down effect....
191

[Egg]

Heh. In fact, those are actually the sort of bugs (or issues) our Japanese testers would keep us up all night fixing. They're very strict compared to their slightly more ... er, forgiving, EU counterparts.

[Dogg Thang]

Dear lord. Wanting the game to be bug-free? God damn those Japanese slave drivers.

Sarcasm aside, I never thought the countdown thing was a bug. It's not needed in normal view because you can clearly see the sign.

[phl0w]

Thought so too, and I would actually prefer just the sign, because in RL as long as there's not some sort of countdown displayed via the ship's HUD, you'd have to keep an eye on the sign too.
The shadow bug didn't even occured to me, maybe because I only race in 1st person view. If it improves framerate, I say get rid of it as a whole.

[Egg]

Testers use a scale of priority - if something's not a deal-breaker (eg. shadows disappearing occasionally), it'll get put way down the list. The game will still get approved if there's a few low-priority issues, as long as they don't cause hangs or affect the experience.

Can't believe some people have such a bee in their bonnet about something so minor though ;)

[rdmx]

Shadows were in 2097/xl, if they were in there, im sure pulse can manage shadows ;).
(Granted its no longer just a flat sprite painted on the ground)

[eLhabib]

Very interesting facts by Colin, I have to say. Never quite realised that there was such an enormous skill gap between the dedicated fans of the series and 'other' hardcore gamers. The task of making the game interesting for both ends of the spectrum sure is a difficult one.
However, there is one universal statement that I think always holds true: NOTHING makes a player lose interest in a game faster than the game being too easy. Just yesterday I tried out Burnout Paradise (the full game, not the demo), and while it was impressive to see the huge map with all the hidden paths and jumps, the spectacular crash physics and shiny graphics engine, I still got bored of the game after half an hour and I don't think I'll ever put it in my disk drive again. Why? Because it's so very easy. And I'm not talking about winning races or beating certain goals in the game - that can be hard, yes, but I'm talking about the very act of driving itself. Even though you start out with a crap car, you'll be instantly fully in control of the streets, drift like a pro and dodge oncoming traffic like it's no big deal. In real life I'd be dead within a minute. Now I'm not saying it should be anywhere as hard and unforgiving as reality, but there has to be SOME learning curve.
If a game is rewarding and fun, appealing to both eyes and ears, and provides a thrill for the brief moment you are doing everything well, then it doesn't matter if it's really hard and requires some getting used to. It's like surfing, really - it's incredibly tough to get good at it, and you'll drink a lot more seawater than you like, but those first 3 seconds you ever managed to stand on your board and ride a relatively tiny wave are so full of adrenaline that they will keep you going forever, swallowing tons of seawater in failed attempts again, just to replicate that perfect moment on the wave again sometime.
Now, I know that's hard to translate into a futuristic racing game, but at least we can rest assured that the visual and aural perfection are there to provide a rush, and the speed has never been an issue. But maybe having different speed classes (and now enemy difficulty settings) isn't enough to make it beginner-friendly. After all, the handling itself is what most beginners are struggling with, even at venom speeds. They get frustrated because they bump into walls in the turns, and even on the straights, where they manage to keep the craft straight, they don't really get a rush because it's only venom, and that's not fast compared to other racing games out there. So they are effectively missing out on that 'surfer moment' I was talking about. Maybe the focus should be on making it possible for beginners to enjoy blazingly high speeds right from the beginning, utilising some kind of driving aids to keep them from crashing constantly.
Look at the Forza Motorsport series, for example. Even my mother can drive the fastest car in the game around the Nürburgring without severe crashes and have a good time, as long as all the driving aids are turned on. But if I take away the ABS, TCS, STM, Automatic Tranny, and the Ideal Line display, there is now way she would even manage to get past the first 2 turns.
Now I don't know if something like that would work for wipEout, but if there were driving aids that would enable a player new to the series to instantly enjoy phantom speeds - knowing that he is far from good at the game, but still already getting the rush - that would open the game up to everyone IMO.
Our kind, of course, would never touch any of these driving aids ;) - just as a Forza pro played the game without any aids from day one.

[Dogg Thang]

Can't believe some people have such a bee in their bonnet about something so minor though ;)

Yes, it is minor. I guess it wouldn't matter if it was the only one. The ambient sound problem is bigger. Forgetting you're using a custom skin after sleep mode, minor again. Incorrect counting in Eliminator mode, yep, another minor one. All pretty noticable though.

[Quakka]

As a bona fide newcomer to the series, I'm finding the learning curve pretty smooth so far. I'm currently at grid 5, and I've had the game for 5 days. Single races and head to head on hard AI are just about the right amount of challenge. It depends on the track a bit, on some (Arc Prime :bomb) I can't see myself winning without a ridiculous amount of luck with the item pickups.

The time trials and speed laps do feel a bit too forgiving, though. I usually land at least bronze on my first lap, and even gold seems to allow for stupid mistakes. When I do a run I myself consider good, I usually pass the gold limit by over a second.

While the easy golds are a bit dissapointing, I do appreciate that they let me progress with the unlocks. Getting stuck on an early grid because of some arbitrary time limits would definitely piss me off more than a slight lack of challenge. Anyway, since the game allows me to build custom grids with any target times, I'm planning to do that after I get the unlocks done. It seems like a really fun way to work on my lap times.

[Alucioj]

Obviously inspired by this thread (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1021).
Don't get me wrong, I like Pulse, bot nonetheless there are a few things that really get on my nerves. Let's share our thoughts about that.


01.
Just Single Race and Tournament in Multiplayer mode. I really miss eliminator here. At least modes like Head-to-Head would have been possible because there are no weapons that may not target because of lag.

02.
Hard AI is good - but why has it to be more aggressive than Fusion's? The race feels like a battlefield. Very often no fun and very frustrating. I know there's also Medium and Easy, but I want an AI that is hard to beat because of the racing, not because I'm fired by everyone.

03.
Some tracks really are no fun. Yes, they are simply no fun. They are not like "oh I hate that track because of that and that but I like in some way". I mean that they are really no fun. And yes I'm talking about Outpost 7 here, too. Everyone who knows how much I loved Citta Nuova should think I love Outpost 7 as well. But I don't. The whole track seems like a mess to me. Maybe I'll change my opinion about that in future, but all the races I had so far were simply no fun at all.

04.
The freezing. You take a screenshot in photomode and suddenly the game freezes. Same for online play. I had that so often now that I really think twice about using the photomode or pressing buttons too fast.

05.
You can't see which races a tournament contains. You just see the number of tracks and that's it.

06.
Just 5 skins savable. Seems to be the same for custom grids. Why?

07.
The leech beam. God I hate it. Well, at least the way it's been done. I like the energy drain thing, but the effect it has to you ship is just awful. When there's somebody who already gets my energy, why the hell has my ship to go uncontrollable left and right as well?

08.
The menu design. I don't hate it, but Pure's menus just seemed so... pure. I miss the minimalism in the menus and sometimes it seems like there were some bitmaps thrown together rather than being concerted.

09.
Sometimes the Magstrip feature seems to be overloaded. I can't agree with most people who say that the feature is used wisely in all cases. I don't mean the number of the Magstrip sections, I mean the parts of the track where they are used. There were plenty of sections where barrel rolling is impossible because of the Magstrip feature. I don't say I don't want it in general, but at least at some sections I think "why?".

10.
It is still not possible to barrel roll if there are too many contenders on the screen. Lame.


Surely, if there's going to be one thread that lists all the positives sides of Pulse I will have no problem to list more than just ten.
But as much as I enjoy Pulse and it's refining (woho - no roof grinding anymore!) I'm not quite sure yet if I like the game more than Pure. The game is fun, sure. But there are these things (I did not list all here) that make me unsure if I should like the game more than Pure or not.
I guess it will take a few months till I can finally say which game I like more. But that's my point of view for now.

1. I agree, I wish theyd add Eliminator, having played Eliminator in the Grid setup Ive really enjoyed it and its one of my favourite events now. Maybe they will add it in time?

2. Yes again I agree, Rapier for a relative newbie like me is a shoot em up fest. Ive so far managed a silver in a Rapier race on hard, an achievement Im proud of specially since I use the Piranha but im not going to lie my flying style is similar to that of a pinball wizard game and Im constantly absorbing anything I pick up so I dont explode; Its certainly going to take me a while to adapt to the Rapier speed and im thinking the more familiar with courses I become the easier itll be but Im going to try alternating between the Piranha and the AG Systems to see if better handling helps.

3. Everyone is going to have their preferences and their hates track wise, Ive already started to enjoy some and not others just how it is.

4. Yep I suffered the freezing a few times online and once during normal CPU play and its frustrating as hell. It doesnt happen often enough to be a major issue for me and the normal game mode vs CPU was because I pressed buttons too quickly. Online Ive regularly posted my issues with the server on these forum pages but I think this is normal with online games?!

5. Yes again it would be handier to see which races are in a specific tournament because then you could practise a track you arent as skillfull on beforehand.

6. As someone else posted Im guessing the trade off between load times and online capablities?! And obviously how much space the site is willing to allow to us users.

7. Hehe I dont see this as an issue, its a feature of the game and we have to deal with it. What kind of game would it be if every weapon has a beneficial effect.

8. The menu design doesnt bother me so much, I never played Pure so maybe your argument is valid but I find navigation easy enough.

9. Thats just design issues I guess but Im overall happy with the layout of tracks and you cant please everyone.

10. Yep that is very annoying as its a skill I use lots :)

Overall Id say Wipeout Pulse is an amazing game for me. I am new to the PSP nevermind the Wipeout game on the PSP. I did have WO2097 but that was years ago and my skills have degraded it appears.

None of my PSP games are without flaws; for example in PES6 the player sprites cut up like player heads seem blocky and almost see through which annoys me, as well as WOPulse I have Sega Rally, FM2008 & Pro Evolution Soccer 6 but for me gameplay is the most important aspect of any videogame and all my games, WOPulse included, have this.

Yes there are issues but I dont know any videogame that doesnt have some sort of issues however if the overall enjoyment factor of the game is on point then you have a winner in my view and Wipeout Pulse certainly wins for me.

[Rapier Racer]

Maybe the bomb could be sorted for HD as the current idea of this weapon is horse ****. It was decided that making it time out and explode after a fixed amount of time was a fabulous idea, I suppose I agree Pure got a little bomb clustered here and there. However, what you, SL, have actually done is nothing but punish faster players and give a big advantage to slower ones. If your going to implement a system like this then do it properly and make the bomb time out faster or don't have that in the game at all, its not fair that a bomb from the previous lap which should no longer be there explodes in my face or requires me to take extreme evasive action only for it to blow up just as I've passed it and make life much much easier for the guy behind. I was racing someone I think it was Ash Omen, he deserved to win the race after nearly 5 laps of kicking my ass on Arc Prime black, but he was robbed by a bomb on the bridge which blew his ship off the side, probably left by some slower ship on the previous lap, which allowed me to take a cheap victory, he was pissed, and so would I be, and have been.

I think a better idea would be to do away with this time out crap and just have it so the bomb can hurt the ship that dropped it, that way if no one hits it then it remains for the next lap and the person who set it will have to try and avoid it just like everyone else.

[Frances_Penfold]

Hey Rapier, I could be wrong about this, but I thought bombs and mines CAN hurt the dropper in Wipeout Pulse?

[Dogg Thang]

They can but they have a limited life span now.

[QirexAAX]

This is just a totally irrelevant point but, one thing that I really hate about Pulse is this - I've just been racing on Talon's Junction and, well, I live very near to the Brecon Beacons and have been there many times and they're nowhere near as mountainous as the backdrops of Talon's Junction, I think I just saw Mont Blanc in the distance...

[Asayyeah]

They can but they have a limited life span now.
Yes you right Dogg.
Unfortunately not enough limited on one particular case if you respawn ( tech de ra )after throwing mines or a bomb you can be hit by them : subito presto the double charge ( respawn + weapons effect :o)

[Rapier Racer]

Yeah I know the bomb can hurt the ship that drops it, happens to me often when I drop a bomb right in the face of the following ship. What I mean is lets just have that system in place, where a bomb I left on the previous lap will explode if I touch it the following lap and not the time out, unless the time it takes for the bomb to explode is reduced a lot. Also before someone decides to tell me that this happened in Pure all the time, not the same since bombs did not self destruct.

[Frances_Penfold]

Ah, I see what you are saying, Rapier :)

My vote has always been for making the bombs long-lasting or permanent-- my guess is that SL determined that it tended to make the tracks become too littered (as you mention in your original post about the bomb issue in Pulse).

[zargz]

Something that sucks is that on the Player Info screen online you can only see the right side of the ship.
as I see it there are three ways to see the custom skins:
1. online/ingame, which is the worse quality.
2. in the player info screen, which is the 2nd best
3. in a community like this or send a file to your friends - best quality.

I'm guessing most of the people use 1 and 2. :?

A selfrotating ship like in the save screen in the skineditor
or being able to rotate it your self with the nub would have been nice.

[QirexAAX]

I think I just saw Mont Blanc in the distance...

Having said that, on closer inspection it looks rather a lot like Mount Snowdon.

A shoddy photoshop of mount Snowdon:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w120/kaloikagathoi/snowdon.jpg

And how the Talon's Junction mountain actually looks. (http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w120/kaloikagathoi/wo_20080130_025157.jpg)

Snowdon is over 100 miles away from the Brecon Beacons... but it IS in Wales.

[infoxicated]

It could be, of course, that Clarko - who wrote the track intro text - set it in Wales because he has has family who live there, but the artist who worked on the track was either not familiar with Wales or was not aware of the content of the intro audio whilst working on the scene.

Good effort on the picture, though! :D :+

[QirexAAX]

Very well, I can accept that. Now I'm free to get on with the rest of my life.

[tapioca]

As said before, the online section of Pulse lacks a few features.
One more thing i'd like to see is the display of every running game on the "join game" screen.
They could be grayed out with a few information such as remaining races for tournament games, so that we can decide to wait for a game to end or just join one already available.

I guess that would also give the feeling that there are many games running, because most of the time it looks quite empty, what is probably disappointing for newbies at least. The number of games is displayed on the country/language screen but it's not as user-friendly.

[Nadia Elenova]

The ten places are for... OUTPOST 7! I hate this track, I hate it.

[Rapier Racer]

lol, the black run is dire I agree, white it okish, taking away most of the speed pads on the u-turn was a bullshit idea whoever came up with it.

[BARTgai]

yeah, unlockd outpost 7 black a few days ago. i almost started tearing my hair out.

[Triple Lei]

One more thing I find a bit annoying in Pulse, especially because it's such a fast game:
The animation when you've picked up a weapon/item. It's not the animation itself, it's the time the animation takes till it really shows you the weapon.

When you're racing and you're in a fight or you need energy, you directly have to know which weapon/item you've picked up to make a fast decision. But to decide you need to know which weapon/item you've picked up and it needs too much time till you know it (even though it's already just a short moment) because of the animation.
I would get rid of the animation completely. No popping in, no drop-down, nothing. You fly over the pad and you can directly see what you've picked up. Just like in all WOs before Pure.

It's really an important element where functionality is over eye-candy.


Yes, Colin, that's a hint for WOHD ;)

I just read through all 30 pages of this thread and this issue is really the only thing I'm worried about. From the one YouTube vid I saw, it looks like I can't even distinguish by color, forcing me to wait a whole second!

Hopefully it's not still in the North American version... :|

[zargz]

yeh, that might be a good reason for buying the NA disk.

[Au_Xtr3me]

Hopefully a patch for SL could remove the weapon pad animation

[stin]

I only had a few things to say but I just cannot argue about Pulse.

1, just a few minor bugs which can be fixed!

2, Online race, I hate other players who quits in a middle of a race! and I was forced to quit!

3, My broken records which added to Wipeout.com which I want to aviod.

4, Some Zone`s tracks are slightly a bit too bright. (makes my eyes go squint)

5, Too many Barrel Rolls!

That is all I can think of, but this game is really addictive.

stevie:)

[Ash-Omen]

Just a few things that i hate, other than these a great game :D

1. The 1 and only stuck on lobby bug
2. The Dissconnectors
3. Hud Glitch
4. Alot of boring events to do in the campaign for eg venom speedlaps
5. Retarded physics sometimes gettin stuck on ur side and randomly respawning
6. being in 1st and hitting bombs >.<
7. Only 5 custom skin slots
8. I cant log into WipeOut-game.com on my psp gets session expired
9. No online Eliminator mode
10. No way of communicating online

[mdhay]

I think gocam support may not have made it...

[Medusa]

I have to add this to the thread:

I HATE the way my ship makes a "crunching" sound when it lands, even after such a small "jump" as the first curve of Fort Gale White, and even on sub-venom speeds in zone. Before Pure, anti-gravity ships did NOT crunch upon landing. If it was a huge enough jump, maybe a thunk or something, but never that horrid crunch sound. If that's what it sounds like, how come it is not damaging my ship, huh?

[Sausehuhn]

It's because in the old WipEouts the craft floated back to the ground after a jump. In Pulse (and Pure too if I'm not wrong) they simply fall down like a stone. And a stone crunches when it lands ;)

[mdhay]

I loved the floatiness, made me think they were actually floating. I wish that is implemented in future.

[QirexAAX]

Hopefully it's not still in the North American version... :|

I think it's likely that it will be. Like it or not it's hardly a bug or a burning issue with the game, and if they changed it then people using the US disc wouldn't e able to fairly compete against people with the European disc.

[stin]

http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showpost.php?p=62440&postcount=29

QirexAAX, there is the link for you.;)

I`m presuming it will be fine.:hyper

stevie:sonar

[QirexAAX]

Oh, stin, I was referring to the suggestion that the north american release might change the way items are collected. Since American and European discs are to be compatible, I think it's very unlikely that anything about the game mechanics would change.

[stin]

Oh right!, that is a very good question!

I thought you meant online game as compatable.

Seriously, I do never thought of that but is it possible?

stevie:)

[rejj]

There's only one thing I'd single out as a great dislike in Pulse, which was the same for me in pure: Barrel Rolls.

I'm just not a fan of their addition to the gameplay mechanics. But then, I'm one of the few that truely prefer W3's hyperthrust mechanic. I loved that.

Until about yesterday I played Wipeout games in first-person view. Unfortunately the barrel rolls are just too disorienting in that view, and the craft becomes too hard to control when you can't see where you are going. So now I've had to switch to chase-cam and pretty much learn to play the game all over again (it feels totally different) ... but at least I can see where I am going.

[zargz]

I don't like BRs as well but I wasn't a big fan of the shield for speed from wo3 :?
I think Colin said before that in wo3 shield for speed made the pitlanes practically a part of the track.

I like the pitlanes, they give me the F1, WTCC feeling and the shaky feeling
to have to complete a half or more lap to finally get to the pitlane :eek
in 2097 the pitlanes were a cool addition though I didn't like the instant carma! :D heh
I mean the instant energy refill, it felt like .. what's the meaning in having a long pitlane?
in wo3 they were perfect - depending on how much you needed you could (still can ;)) fly or crawl through them.
as pointed out before the thrust system ruined them :s
in fusion the slow down when going to pit was simply annoying.

for me wo3/64 pitlanes with no thrust mecanics would be perfect. :+

and hereby I end my 'bring back pitlanes with no thrust mechanics and no BRs' speech. 8)



all this said I think absorbing works ok.
.

[Chrono]

BRs are hit or miss. I like them in small quanities, like one obvious one on a couple tracks. What I don't like, however, is how they can be abused and make TTing no fun. We had talk awhile back (maybe on this thread) about thrust mechanics. The best idea was a item consumption to thrust boost, or something like that. If anyone can find it and link that would be great. Pitlanes don't interest me. It would make it to F-Zero. In a game where getting into the track and pulling off the fastest line, pitlanes have no home.

[zargz]

If there are no shield/absorb_for_speed mechanics at all and the pitlanes are used Only for recharge
then they actually become a long way around so the fastest lap will be to race the track without going into the pitlane.
as it was the case in 2097 exept one track .. odessa may be it was ..

[Rapier Racer]

Did the pit lane on Terminal (WO3) not also act as a shortcut? There were of course a few speed pads on the proper track so perhaps not. I felt it did though.

[zargz]

yes it did but my point is if there were no shield_for_speed in wo3 then for example in porto kora TT and even SR if not damaged,
the fastest way would be on the track itself.

[infoxicated]

Did the pit lane on Terminal (WO3) not also act as a shortcut?
Yeah, that one on Terminal was in a poorly designed place - you could boost all the way through it if you didn't really need the energy, so it turned it into an uber shortcut.

I think absorbing things works well, but open sided tracks and barrel rolls have essentially killed WipEout for me. I used to play it like a serious racing game, but how can I take it seriously when I have to perform four or five comedy barrel rolls per lap in order to get a good time?

Barrel rolls and open sided track sections = The Day the WipEout Died.

*deep breath*

A long long time ago
I can still remember how that WipEout used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make that Qirex dance
And maybe I'd be happy for a while
But then Fusion made me shiver
With every weapon it delivered
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more lap
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about those open sides
But something touched me deep inside
The day that WipEout died

So, bye-bye, Anti-Gravity guy
Drove my AG in a TT
But missed a barrel roll try
And them good old boys were hopin' they could still fly
Singin' this'll be the day that it dies
This'll be the day that it dies

Did you like the track above?
Called Sol 2 - it's a test of nerve.
If the Designer tells you so
Do you believe in track intro's?
Or do ya skip them cause you think they blow?

...I should stop there. :paperbag

[lunar]

Awesome! Post of the year already :lol

I`m now expecting a live performance at the convention with Pavel on guitar :D

[Medusa]

:clap HURRAH! Big cheer for infoxicated!! Definitely post of the year, and it's only February!

Why doesn't SL listen to you, I wonder...

[infoxicated]

Awesome! Post of the year already :lol

I`m now expecting a live performance at the convention with Pavel on guitar :D
I don't think we want to go there - it gets really ropey later on...

Oh, and as I was back-quaked on that stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage

;)

I mean, apologies to Don Mclean, but it sort of writes itself almost!

Medusa, Colin does listen to me a lot - hence the reason for the pack racing in Pulse and the relative parity in the teams. However, the genie is out of the bottle with regard to barrel rolls now. There is no going back.

Plus, I think I'm in a minority of one of people on the team who dislike it.

[Flashback Jack]

Suppose I'm one of the few that don't hate barrel rolls, largely because I have no difficulty pulling them off. However if we take the most insanely difficult "special" move to execute every in the history of games (my opinion), it would have to be Guile's Sommersault Justice in Super Street Fighter 2*

*Charge down back, quarter circle to down forward, quarter circle to down back, up-forward and kick.

- F

[zargz]

Plus, I think I'm in a minority of one of people on the team who dislike it.damn! that's too bad but you had it going good in the middle there with some nice rhymes! :D


// lunar

I'd love to but it doesn't seem like I'm gonna make it .. prob'ly won't afford it.
coz no real job yet after 6+ months back in sweden - a boring place for me to be atm
makes me wish I didn't leave thailand half year ago .. :?

[Medusa]

Yeah, sadly I've come to realize there's likely no going back. No going forward either...so I'll just keep witching about BRs forever I guess.:frown:

[Dogg Thang]

Wow! Impressive rhyme! What do you mean by open sided track sections?

It's unfortunate that you're the only person on the team not liking the barrel rolls. But I would have thought liking them only has so much to do with it. I mean, they really do mess about with the mechanics and how a lap is approached in a negative way. Even if considered cool, that has to be a recognisable problem within the team, hence mag strip sections in certain places.

If adding one element requires patching the holes it created, it would seem obvious to remove that element. To me, I mean...

And while I'm at it, there are very few people on the face of this planet who don't name 2097 or WO3 as the best WO game. Surely that's got to point to something?

[infoxicated]

Wow! Impressive rhyme! What do you mean by open sided track sections?
I mean the likes of Sol 2, Tech de Ra, getting shunted off the sides during multiplayer and the weird and wonderful respawn points they bring by necessity.

[Dogg Thang]

Ah yes. I probably wouldn't mind them so much (or at all actually) if not for my own personal 'you ruined WO' rant - the aggression in the AI and the effect that weapons and getting knocked have on the craft. If that were toned down closer to WO1 levels and the craft didn't bounce off like rubber balls, I don't think it would be as much of a problem, even in multiplayer.

[Rapier Racer]

If adding one element requires patching the holes it created, it would seem obvious to remove that element. To me, I mean...

I would have to totally agree with you on that one.


And while I'm at it, there are very few people on the face of this planet who don't name 2097 or WO3 as the best WO game. Surely that's got to point to something?

Is that based on this forums member group, or a survey of people a certain age that have been around since the 2097/3 time? Lets say a new pilot comes along and starts out with Pure, Pulse or even HD and has say 8 months constant playtime under their belt with one of those games. You then come along and throw 2097/3 at this person, somehow I can't see them leaping from their chair exclaiming its the best Wipeout they ever played.

Also as much as I love Tech De Ra and Sol 2 I could do without the wall less sections, on that note why are Pulse walls so damn small.

[Dogg Thang]

I disagree. I think the problems in Pure and Pulse are apparent regardless of previous play and, while the earlier games would be at a disadvantage without nostalgia or graphical power, I think their merits would be obvious to anyone even now who gave them a good go. I'm talking 2097 and WO3 here. I think the unforgiving mechanics of WO1 wouldn't go down well with most new players.

[infoxicated]

The unforgiving aspects of Manic Miner wouldn't go down with most platform gamers nowadays.

[Dogg Thang]

Yep that's true. But Mario mechanics, which improved on that, still cut the mustard (odd expression) and, regardless of modern 3D platformers (some of which are a mess), 2D platform games can still hook people in. Sometimes more so.

Same with WO. I don't agree that people wouldn't see the merits in the 2097 or WO3 play systems just because they didn't play them back in the day.

[infoxicated]

It's a matter of patience, I think; Gamers no longer have it. Well, not the "mass market" holy grail type of gamer that every publisher panders to.

I blame EA, myself - their "vertical slice" philosophy of allowing the player to see pretty much everything the game has to offer in the first ten minutes of play has destroyed the perseverance in most casual gamers. Within a few minutes of playing Burnout Paradise I was drifting like a Pro and winning races and challenges like I'd been playing it for ever, despite the fact I haven't played Burnout in years.

Go back to WipEout 3 after a bit of time and the handling is unweildy to the point where most casual gamers would be running for the hills screaming for their copy of Need for Speed like the sky was falling.

Remember the bit about WipEout having to be more accessible to attract the casual market recently? Well that's why we have an abundance of barrel rolls and craft that never really feel like they're cheating gravity. It helps the journalists at game shows feel better about themselves when they're playing it in front of a crowd of their peers, executing barrel rolls and slamming into the track at high speed without having to pitch up the nose or learn a greater degree of control. It makes them look cool - that's all that matters, regardless of the lack of effort required to do so.

They tell marketing that ease of entry and a vertical slice is what they want to see. Then marketing tells the producer that. Then the producer tells the designer that. Then the game is made more mass market, with more check-box features for the back of the box the game will end up in.

Then the game peaks at #19 in the PSP only charts, holds for a couple of weeks at #20 and then drops off the face of the Earth entirely. That's the mass market for you. Three years ago they were stampeding in the streets, knocking over grannies who happened to be standing in front of game stores - tins of cat food scattering everywhere in their wake as they surged to the counters clutching a copy of WipEout Pure.

In 2208, dripping with mass market features (you want your Project Gotham vehicle skinning? CHECK!), for whatever reason WipEout Pulse cant even inspire the grannies that survived to buy a copy for their grandsons.

That's the mass market driven games industry for you.

It's no wonder that we hanker for games from the past when the future holds none of the hope we thought it did.

[Rapier Racer]

Oh, the barrel rolls were put in as something for new players? How ironic then that they never use them.

[Sausehuhn]

Hah! That's too true :D

[TearsToShreds]

I wish I could quote you for truth, fox, but my PSP doesn't allow that much text.

[Triple Lei]

What's with all this hate for barrel rolls and love for anything Wipeout 3?? :brickwall

Barrel rolls make me pay attention to the terrain that much more, especially since some also require a Turbo... and who doesn't love doing all that while using Auto Pilot (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdQIQ88duic)? It's not like they're guaranteed, either. Too many times I've landed before the full barrel roll and I didn't get the boost, but I still lost shield. That's as much risk & reward as anything else, right?

As for Wipeout 3, I've been meaning to make a "10 Things I hate about WipEout 3", but I don't want to get banned already... :| I wouldn't be posting about anything illegal; I just really, really hate that game. (Although I suppose I'd hate any Wipeout immediately following Wipeout XL...)

[omega329]

So, bye-bye, Anti-Gravity guy
Drove my AG in a TT
But missed a barrel roll try
And them good old boys were hopin' they could still fly
Singin' this'll be the day that it dies
This'll be the day that it dies


American pie with wipeout lyrics, that sounds familliar... hey! wait a second! I said I was trying to do that back on the wipeout song thread I made! No fair!

[Sausehuhn]

and who doesn't love doing all that while using Auto Pilot?
As far as I remember that's not possible in Pulse anymore.

[lunar]

It's not like they're guaranteed, either. Too many times I've landed before the full barrel roll and I didn't get the boost, but I still lost shield. That's as much risk & reward as anything else, right?


That aspect of it isn`t risk and reward in a positive sense, it`s just a random annoyance. It`s as if you decide to play your cards in a game of poker and they change into different ones when you put them on the table. You have to know what is going to happen for your assesment of the risk to be meaningful, and sometimes the BR just doesn`t work, or it works late so you don`t get your boost, although this is something less of a problem in Pulse than Pure. There is good risk and reward in the game, particularly through the absorb system where you sometimes have to gamble on using a weapon or taking the energy. I guess there is risk and reward if you`re on your last pixels of energy and need a BR to win the race, but the negative points of Barrel Rolling outweigh this, imo.

I don`t see why you shouldn`t start a "Ten things I hate about Wipeout 3" thread if you want to. I could post a couple, but would be hard pressed to get to ten.

[tapioca]

Then why not include a "classic mode" with no Barrel Rolls ? Although that would make more figures to navigate through on the wipeout-game tables, that could also make everybody happy…

Single race, zone, eliminator, speed lap, time trial, head to head, tournament and then : classic TT (and/or classic SL, but SL isn't so classic, even if i personnaly enjoy it more).
We could even get rid of TT for classic TT (there's still Speed Lap for BR's)

At least that could be an option for multiplayer (like weapons on/off). Doesn't sound to hard to include, right ?

And i don't have anything against barrel rolls, personnaly. The only points i'd like to see enhanced are the frame-based issue and the hazardous first person view (rotate the HUD only with a little shake, maybe, but not the full screen).

[Rapier Racer]

As far as I remember that's not possible in Pulse anymore.

Yeah thats a good thing, you can do a BR then quickly activate an Auto Pilot to control it though.

[mdhay]

I wish I could quote you for truth, fox, but my PSP doesn't allow that much text.

Annoying, isn't it?


Shame about the whole mass - market affecting WipEout. It was going to happen anyway.

[Dogg Thang]

I guess so but it seems slightly self-defeating to me. The Burnout crowd is well catered for with games like, well, Burnout. I love popping it on and getting straight into some cool races. That's the draw of a game like that. But looking at the huge sales figures of something like that would, to me, show a market that already has their needs filled.

And Wipeout is unlikely to really capture that crowd.

It's like trying to sell a fine wine to beer drinkers. Diluting the wine and trying to make it more beer-like won't make for a better drink and will just alienate the wine drinkers. Everybody loses. Best thing to do is accept what it is and try to make the best fine wine possible.

Hmmm... that sounds familiar. I think I've made that analogy before. Possibly a few times.

[infoxicated]

As for Wipeout 3, I've been meaning to make a "10 Things I hate about WipEout 3", but I don't want to get banned already... :|
That... well, that's just about the most ridiculous thing you could have said.

If you really think you'd get banned for giving your honest, considered opinion on any of the games then I don't know what forum you've been visiting, but you're confusing it with this one. :rolleyes:

[guillaume]

Before listing any bad points about Pulse, here is my 'WipEout profile'. :)
I didn't know about WipEout before Pure.
I played Pure, I'd say, at least 200 hours. I played internal view only. I played multiplayer about one hour. I played Triakis and Piranha mostly.
I played Pulse about 20 hours, solo only, Assegai only, internal only, hard difficulty level only.
I started a first profile, played about 4 hours, then read about the records bug on WZ. Checked my profile, dropped it because it was buggy, started a new one. Played it about 3 hours, then saved a broken record. I hadn't realized that leaving a tourney after exploding is not enough...
So I started a third profile, which is clean until now. Probably because I quit the game the second my ship explodes, and that I check my single race records about each time I start the game. I am a maniac freak.
So! :)

The first point would be:
- The records bug! How come a bug like that made it through debug sessions? It was in Pure already (as well as the missile thingy which appears even after you shot the missile).

- The fact that your ship will stop completely for a second or so if you hit a wall at high speeds. It looks like the collision system isn't fast enough to compute the results.

- Linked to the collision system: you can often see the inside of the track ground, eg when you drop from a jump, you go "lower" than the track ground, which is quite disturbing.

- The AI aggressivity. It is too much. I don't know if Assegai is made of paper, but it feels like I can go from 100% to 0 in 5 seconds.

- The difficulty level bug when resuming a tourney. So with what is listed above: I blow my Assegai on Outpost 7, the 7th track of a 12 tracks tourney. I quit the game. I re-launch the game. I delete the tourney progression. So I have to start the tourney all over again. Boohoo me :)

- It feels like the ships stick more to the walls than in Pure. Maybe that's just me. Shouldn't the ship go away from the wall instead of sticking to it?

- I liked having each ship's time at the end of a race. I miss it in Pulse.

- In a tourney, I don't like the fact that the results screen switches between race and tourney, most of the time I skip the first thinking that I'll see the second one later, then realize I missed it.

- I don't like how loyalty points are displayed at the end of the race. Why not have '10 x 1 zone' instead of 1 zone, 1 zone, 1 zone, ...?

- I don't like mag-strips very much. When they're implemented like in Vertica, because I get sick. And when they're looping because I don't see more than two meters in front of me.

- Some tracks are too dark. Because the PSP screen is like a mirror and that I can't always close the curtains. So I get better on tracks that are clearer.

- I don't like intro movies the way they were made. Why not show all the track, instead of parts so tiny that I don't understand what I'm looking at?

- I don't like the bomb's blast radius. It is so big that when I drop a bomb it usually touches me. Having to look backwards before dropping a bomb is not very newcomer-friendly :)

- I don't like the leech-beam making your ship go crasy. Isn't it enough that it sucks my energy? And you're still able to pick up weapons while using your leech-beam, which makes it a super-weapon to me.

- I don't like that you cannot pick up weapons while using autopilot. Once you knew the tracks well in Pure, the autopilot was only useful in precise locations of the tracks. It's become even weaker in Pulse.

- I don't like the barrel roll bug. If it couldn't be fixed in Pulse, well... it should have been! :) At least, couldn't the energy be taken only if you actually got your boost?

- I don't like eliminator mode. I would have been happy if the time spent on it would have been bugfix time instead.

- Less details, less FXs would have meant no sound glitches nor framerate drops. When you boost then do a barrel roll, you never get the sound of the latter, even if it worked (I think so).


I guess I have to stop :) Sorry my post is not very 'forum-friendly', it went in all directions... It's more like a customer report...
Because until now, I think I prefer Pure over Pulse. But there's a good chance it'll change in time! And there are many things I like, so I'll post in the '10 things I love...', otherwise it wouldn't be fair to the game :)

[rejj]

However, the genie is out of the bottle with regard to barrel rolls now. There is no going back.

Just because there've been barrel rolls for two games now doesn't mean that they are a must have feature for every game to come, surely.


Wipeout 3 didn't have a turbo pickup.
Autopilot behaviour has changed greatly between games.
We now respawn instead of having a rescue wagon.
Fusion let you shoot backwards.


etc.
Things always change. We have barrel rolls now, but hopefully we don't have to always have them.

I think the recent (PSP) games have made some great additions to wipeout, also - sideshifting and absorb are both changes that I like. I don't want to sound totally down on Pulse: I've been having fun playing it. I'll use barrel rolls because they are in the game, but I wish they weren't.

[HISHO[JP]]

I saw this (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/news.php?action=display&id=140).

So one new hate thing is "Mirage is not free for multiplayer".


£1 = about 240~260yen
£3.49 = about 872yen

Maybe Mirage is not free in JP version too... :frown:

[Rapier Racer]

Heh hey they are charging for the packs, as I expected.

[TearsToShreds]

Mark my words, theyll release some sort of special pack after the initial packs with one extra track and all ships available online. :/

[Tomahawk]

I've finally reached more than 35 hours of playtime on pulse. Time for my two cents in this thread.

1. the finish line bug
I don't know if it's a real bug or if the developers wanted it to be like this: if you're crossing the finish line with your ship sticking too close to the tracks' wall you'll hit an "invisible post" and your ship will all of a sudden come to a complete stop and/or fly straight up into the sky. I want to see what I can hit with my ship! If I don't see it, I can't fly around it!

2. collision with walls
For me it often feels like my ship is "sucked" into the walls in pulse. I've experienced that when I hit a wall and want to steer close of it again by pressing the nub away from the wall I just don't get away from it. Instead my ship sometimes sticks to the wall as if it was glued onto it. I have to steer away from it by holding the nub in the direction I want to go for a long time. In the higher speed classes this kind of "necessary heavy steering" made me hit the wall on the opposite side of the track right after I came free...

3. race time bug
It's been said often enough I guess, but I have to repeat it again: If I get killed in a tournament race a broken record is saved to my profile and I can do nothing to delete it. A bug like this should never have made it through into the final version of the game not because it's simply annoying to everybody. It's also causing some serious issues on the official records tables at wipeout-game.com where I can only upload my full profile to the database and am not able to select single records to upload. The tables look like they'd be full of cheaters this way.

4. no tracks shown in tournaments
If I'm entering a tournament I don't see what tracks the tour is made of or how many tracks the tour consists of. I really like the idea to be able to customize your tournaments for offline or online racing, but I'd really like to be able to see at first sight what tracks I have to race before the tour starts.

5. no free play mode
What's the deal with the speed lap race mode? Only 7 laps but I can race it as often as I wish in racebox? That feels like a crippled free play mode including unnecessary long loading times. I think it would have been better to put the free play mode into the game instead of the new speed lap mode.

6. weapon collison
This might be the point that has been the most frustrating for me until now. It seems like it doesn't matter what kind of weapon hits your ship, nearly everything makes you come to a complete stop, be it missle, rockets, quake, a few rounds of the cannon, a bomb or mines... It's also most annoying that if I get hit by something and my ship gets pushed over the edge (on the free track sections at tech de ra or arc prime for example) the game won't let me continue racing immediately after I'm respawned. Instead I have to wait another fraction of a second until the weapon damage effect wears off completely as if being pushed over the edge and getting respwaned isn't enough punishment already...

7. barrel rolls
Too much of them in the game, you can't pull them whenever you want to do so (framrate issues) and the ability to be able to link one br to another only by using the airtime and speed you get from the first br just pisses me off. If the br feature is added to the game in this way it's not necessary to do the most perfect laps or have the best racing line on some tracks, but to do the most barrel rolls at the most ridiculous places during a race and the win is yours for sure. Simply annyoing!

8. cheating AI
I say that the AI is cheating in pulse, at least in hard mode! I've never been on the edge of throwing my psp out of the window and stomping the pulse umd to tiny bits and pieces so often compared to any other game I own. If I'm overtaken on the long straight at moa therma black by an AI ship using a turbo boost and the same AI pulls over right in front of me after it passed me, dropping a bomb right in front of my nose without passing over a single weapon pad then I call this cheating! It's also always very surprising to see how the AI seems to be able to control turbo boosts right through the narrowest curves and 180-turns or how often I get hit by two or three quakes in a row after I have taken first place in a race... The AI in pulse is the best and hardest to beat compared to any other wipeout game up to today, but I still don't feel as if they'd really be racing me on a fair basis.

9. price for DLC
I've written enough about my opinion on the price of the pulse DLC, so I won't go into any details or repeat myself over and over again here. Just two words: RIP OFF!

That's been 9 points that I don't hate about pulse, but that I really don't like about the game and I hope that they'll be fixed in some way for the next wipeout game that'll be released.

[BARTgai]

couldn't agree more with 3, 5, 7, and 9

[guillaume]

I completely agree with your 6th point. And one of the consequences of being completely stopped in a race, combined with the packed racing of the AI, is that you often go from 1st to 8th just because of a weapon hit. I may be exaggerating a bit but not that much. With the AI being that aggressive, it's hard to pass all ships, then in one second I come back to 8th.
And then I'm sad, you see. :)

EDIT: A weapon hit also annules the boost of a barrel roll. So instead of trying to BR to countereffect the hit, you avoid the BR to avoid losing energy for nothing. I'd very much like to know if it was thought this way or not.
Because it's naughty. :)

[zargz]

yeh, the annoying part is that when landing you can hear the boost-sound.
I think that if you do the br, get hit in the air and when you land don't get the boost
it's ok, fair enough but if you don't get the boost then don't do the sound :?

on the other side you could get stopped in the air but then when you drop like a stone
may be you should get the boost anyway since you've completed the br.

which one is more logical? I dunno. either way sounds ok to me
however if there's a sound there should be a boost, logically.

now that I've noticed that I don't count with a boost anyway.

[Dogg Thang]

Well I think I'm at a point now where I can contribute to this thread. In particular order -

1. Bug: Ambient sound vanishing. In general, I wish more had gone into the ambient sound. For example, I feel the crowd in Amphiseum should sound huge and I'd love more sounds from the ships in Vertica. But it wouldn't matter anyway as, once the PSP goes into sleep mode, crowd sounds vanish and the other sounds disappear randomly. It's a bug that never should have got through.

2. Overpowered weapons. Coupled with the overly aggresive AI (which I'll just lump in with this one), the weapons are a pain in the ass, plain and simple. That producers interview where he talks about pure racing and balance is quite ridiculous. Unless you're doing TT or have weapon off, this is a combat game.

3. Price of download packs. Beyond ridiculous when you consider what percentage it is of the full game price. Of course the full game contains the game itself with all the coding that entails, the music, 12 tracks, 8 ships, all the modes, front end and so on. So to charge what they are for just 4 tracks and 4 ships is quite crazy. Splitting the black and white runs is nasty. And the ships can't be used online? I imagine that is due to a bug or two.

4. Bug: crashes caused by the addition of the download packs. I'll also add the horrendous loading times in here too. I was happy enough with the Pulse loading times on my PSP Slim but the packs have bumped them up far too much. Everything takes too long to load. That assumes, of course, that it will load and not crash which seems pretty common now. That should not happen. At all.

5. 'Leave no space unfilled'. SL can model some lovely background elements but, in my opinion, composition is a real problem and few, if any, of those elements are used as well as they could be. This was a problem in Pure - everything felt so close and claustrophobic. Pulse is much worse in this regard. It's hard to tell what is what half the time because everything is thrown onto the screen at once. I didn't know there even was a ship in Vertica until I crawled through the track on a sightseeing mission. Why model it if you can't see it? Edgewinter is the ultimate in this.

6. Bug: Just a small one but a little frustrating. The game won't remember you're using a custom skin after coming back from sleep mode. Why?

7. Barrel Rolls. Don't like them but we can also add, Bug: they don't alway work because of the frame system.

8. Bug: Race time bug. I'm not even all that competitive when it comes to games like this so I hate to think how annoying this must be for the serious wipers. This should never have happened.

9. Floatiness, or lack of. Coupled with the odd inconsistency like, Bug: when your craft stops dead after a jump and then suddenly boosts for no reason whatsoever.

10. Waiiiiiiiiiting for online games to continue. Given that with the loading times and the amount of botched games due to bad connections or people leaving or whatever, to compound that with almost a minute of waiting between anything online seems nuts to me. Quite simply online is too slow an experience for me. It's far more waiting than play.


Seems there's a pattern with much of this: bugs, bugs, bugs. Wipeout Pulse is by far one of the most bug ridden games I have ever played. Now Pure was pretty buggy so I would have hoped more effort would have gone into quality control in Pulse but it seems that hasn't happened. The only other game I can think that compares was a cheap conversion of Super Puzzle Fighter for the GBA that crashed on a regular basis. I can think of no other that is in the same league as Pulse. Why no quality control?

And of course the packs have tipped this well over the edge with their crazy pricing and adding loading time and more bugs and not being able to use the craft online, allowing me to get to 10 'hates' quite easily.

[BARTgai]

I have noticed a few bugs...

1. When the AI fires a Leech at another AI, my ship will sometimes show the blue energy waves on my craft, but they wont be moving. happens a lot more on eliminator

2. On Talons Junction, the part where the track makes the U-Turn under the suspended car things that move along the tracks. There are a few where the car is missing, but the bottom is still there, so it looks like one car with a floating light in front of it.

3. Metropia. on the black run in the intro, there are two smaller buildings on the left. in the white run, they are missing.

all I have found so far...

[Nadia Elenova]

Now that I made up my mind about outpost 7, it's no longer on my list but:

1- Leech beam effect on player's ship. You all know what I'm talking about.

2- Dark track sections or entire dark tracks. Makes it impossible to play in good lighting conditions. (Even on a rainy day)

3- Sucking walls. Mag-Strips on walls too? no, thanks.

4- Player's ship is the AI's target of choice. Why shooting a missile to the ship in front when you can drop a bomb to player's ship? And they always have a quake when you're first.

5- The price for download packs.

6- When you're hit your ships makes a full stop, why? You can drop from firts to last just because a missile hit.

7- No unlockable concept art.

8- Finishing line bug, landing bug, etc. that makes your ship stop and then boost without a reason.

9- Consecutive Turbo for an AI, should have been restricted, when you got two or three consecutive Turbos?

10- It's pretty difficult to eliminate a ship, that's because the AI barely hits each other, as mentioned in point 4.

UNBELIEVABLE UNFAIR AI BEHAVIOR
Ok, I've just played a tournament, rapier, medium difficulty, track: Moa Therma Black. I was first place, then I got hit by a missile, my ships stops (as always) and then I got another missile hit (well, annoying but may happen). Then, when my ship is ABOUT to start moving again I got ANOTHER MISSILE HIT from the last ship. At this time my ship is about to explode, but I continue the race, pick up a weapon and absorve it. When I passed the last ship, IT SHOOTED ANOTHER MISSILE and set me about to blow (and my ship too). So I got last place in the last lap just because the AI is WAY TOO UNFAIR. If it were in hard difficulty, what the AI would have done? Wait behind a corner aiming backwards with a Plasma loaded? Don't **** me!
:p (<--- smile at the end)

[Nadia Elenova]

Some people got reaaaaaaaally confused when reading my previous post so I wan't to say I'm not complaining about AI developing at all (wiper since 2097 and now this :|). It was just a curious thing that happened during a race and posted for fun. Maybe needed a smile at the end. :p

[guillaume]

Other negative points to me:

- When you shut down the music, you don't hear the man voice during introductions.
- Colliding with other ships gives damage. What is this for? Realism?

Overall, I think that Pure was almost pure, and that Pulse is messy. Too ambitious with not enough time, maybe. Certainly not enough tested.
That makes me wonder, even if I don't know if this can be answered:
What did SL want for Pulse? What did Sony want?
I don't know how reacted the majority of newcomers to WipEout, but despite the efforts made for them, I believe Pulse is too frustrating, because of both bugs and some elements of gameplay (sticky walls to name a major one).
So if Sony rushed the release of Pulse, and that at the same time they wanted to enlarge the audience, I think they made a mistake. I wouldn't advice anyone to buy Pulse, whereas I'd go on for hours worshipping Pure.

[zargz]

- Colliding with other ships gives damage. What is this for? Realism?
imo that's a good thing :)

[BARTgai]

Overall, I think that Pure was almost pure, and that Pulse is messy.

That is exactly what I thought :p

[master bruce]

1. difficulty level. I believe this game is too hard for most average players. I think that while hardcore players welcome the challenge, I think the points necessary to unlock things should be lowered.

2. not enough rewards. I think the game should have more rewards...ie for getting all gold in a grid.

3. the DL packs seem a bit too pricey imo...buying all four would make the game about $60!

-------------

this is mainly a response to Colin:

As a casual gamer and newcomer to Wipeout, I just wanted to offer you my perspective on how you could make the next Wipeout even more accessible to mass audience. I think this board may skew people's perspectives, since as you said, most of the this board are the very top players.

1. add a tutorial mode: to give wipeout noobs an introduction to how wipeout physics differ from normal driving games and to introduce the weaponry and items, to teach the barrel roll, airbrakes, etc.

reason: even though most on this forum will consider it unnecessary, having a tutorial mode (even one that isn't that useful) will really make it feel more accessible and friendly to newcomers. Also, you will get brownie points with reviewers who will point out accessibility to beginners.

2. Lower the bronze requirements - so players can generally open up all the grids. This doesn't affect hardcore players since gold requirement can still be set high so good players are still rewarded, but noobs can still finish the campaign rather than getting stuck and giving up on the game.

3. make the AI on the easy level easier. I find them still to be too aggressive.

4. have more rewards (concept art, more skins, etc) to motivate the noobs to stick through the initial learning curve

5. maybe have a story campaign mode...where each team gets a story to progress through. This would give someone more of a reason to play through the game rather than the arbitrary goal of getting medals and such.

6. make the differences between the ships more obvious

[Lion]

6. make the differences between the ships more obviousthis is the only part of the preceding post I want to expand on..
In team fortress 2, valve found that players found it much more acceptable that the different classes had wildly varying stats once the wildly varying silhouettes were introduced. eg: heavy class definitely looks like it should be slower and have more hit points than the scout. their entire appearance hints at that.

This is not something that's particularly echoed in many wipeout ship designs...
ag-sys looks like it should be light, that succeeds. but it looks sleeker than it's speed stats reflect. triakis doesn't look as heavy as it flies, but icaras is the opposite.
in wipeout (original) ships had varying numbers and sizes of engines. this gave some indication of some of their characteristics, it's a feature of the ship design that's no longer present. I'm guessing that there's now a pre-designated position from which engine trails start, and the ship model is simply positioned and/or shaped to match up with this?

The existing ship designs are beautiful, and in most cases reflect the team identity quite well, but they don't all handle the way they look like they should.

[phl0w]

While I agree with you on most of your suggestions, I don't see the point in number 2, it contradicts everything else you mentioned. Tutorials, in-depth detailed manuals and the like are there for a reason: To prepare a player. What's the point in having a tutorial when you demand an even lower general difficulty anyway so a "noob" can clear the grids?


2. Lower the bronze requirements - so players can generally open up all the grids. This doesn't affect hardcore players since gold requirement can still be set high so good players are still rewarded, but noobs can still finish the campaign rather than getting stuck and giving up on the game.

Your second point in general reflects casual gamers' approach to games and the unfortunate accomodation by producers nowadays: Everyone should be able to complete a game. While I agree on that everyone can, I don't think each and everybody should, not without practice, trying and a decent amount of dedication. You said "but noobs can still finish the campaign rather...". Isn't that the complete opposite what a game should try to do? I.e. feature a learning curve that requires the player to get better in the process and eventually when he has reached a certain level (usually found by producers through balancing) will release him from that "noob" status, and as a result he will finish the game. Don't you think, that, by that, a "noob" shouldn't be able to finish any given game in the first place anyway? It would make the whole task of video gaming redundant.
Pulse is the easiest WO to date, by far. It's been said many times that even Pulse's Gold requirements ignore many, many mistakes, whereas they required perfect use of Boost Pads, and (most of the time) perfect laps in Pure (and the former WOs, for that matter).
Maybe it's just my being from the first gaming generation, but I don't see the point in an easy game I know I will finish with time anyway, rather than having to try hard- really hard and with some games still won't finish them because I didn't try hard enough (Ikaruga, anyone?).

[guillaume]

About the damages when colliding with other ships

imo that's a good thing :)

It might be, it's just that with the AI already being really aggressive, when my ship explodes because I touched another ship, it makes me bitter :)

Slightly off-topic, can anyone confirm (or not) that you won't get a perfect lap in SR if you touch a ship, even if you don't touch any walls?

[master bruce]

While I agree with you on most of your suggestions, I don't see the point in number 2, it contradicts everything else you mentioned. Tutorials, in-depth detailed manuals and the like are there for a reason: To prepare a player. What's the point in having a tutorial when you demand an even lower general difficulty anyway so a "noob" can clear the grids?


Not all gamers are created equal.

There are many who can play Wipeout Pulse for 100 hours and may not be able to advance past grid 5. While others can play for 2 hours and get gold on phantom.

But guess what, both guys paid $30 for the game. The guy who is bad at racing games will not be able to enjoy 80% of Wipeout's levels simply because he isn't skilled enough...but he didn't pay 20% of the price, he paid 100% price.

By reducing bronze requirements, you alleviate that issue. Yet by keeping or even increasing gold requirements, you reward hardcore experts without penalizing the newcomers.

Or maybe not even bronze, have a lower segment called 'pass' or 'qualifying' that is more lenient than bronze but gives no points or something like that.

[Rapier Racer]

Why don't they just give out medals and chocolate watches for every performance to keep the babies happy? If you can't get bronze your clearly not trying hard enough, is this the way 'casual' gamers are? Casual gamers = lazy/want it handed to them?

eech I've just about had enough of hearing how everything should be easy for causals, demise of the industry?

[master bruce]

I don't understand how easing up bronze requirements effects the game for hardcore players in any way if the gold requirements are still kept very challenging?

the game won't really change at all for you!

btw, Colin and his firm makes game for 2 reasons:

1. it's their passion

2. MONEY

and the bigger the market Wipeout can attract, the MORE MONEY Colin and his firm makes, and the more money = more and better sequels

[phl0w]

Not necessarily, as more money usually doesn't result in better games, that's something the past has shown clearly.

But guess what, both guys paid $30 for the game.
Nobody forces you to play a game, or study applied physics. Do you beg people to change curricula so you pass them without great effort? Things that come effortless are worthless.

[TearsToShreds]

It has been my expierence that the harder the game, the better. (Battletoads, anyone?) What's the point in playing something that you can finish without any practice? The reason so many games fade into obscurity is because they're not challenging. Now there's the option to get downloable content that usually only offers more of the same to lengthen its lifespan. I personally don't care about the content and still have much more fun with the original Wipeout. It is so much more rewarding.

[phl0w]

Amen.

[master bruce]

the thing is, I'm not advocating making the game easier. It's not like I'm not saying:
- make the tracks straighter
- make the vehicles slower
- make the AI worse

etc., in which case I think you guys would have a legitimate gripe.

In fact, I'm not saying the game should be changed at all. So I don't really see how this would effect hardcore players at all, can someone explain how hardcore players would be negatively effected by lowering the bronze requirements (which hardcore players wouldnt care about in the first place since they only go for golds)...in my opinion,by lowering bronze requirements, you make it more accessible for novices to progress but by raising gold requirements, you reward hardcore players for their expertise...it's a win-win situation.

[guillaume]

Sorry to interrupt, I've just spotted something. ;)
I finished a tournament with 32 points, and was listed in second place, but I noticed that the first ship had 32 points too. Yet I won a silver medal. In real life, a tie in first place means 2 gold medals, right?
Yet another negative point? Or is there another criterium to determine who should be first and who should be second?

EDIT: 1st place, 30 points, 2nd place, 30 points, 3rd place, 30 points -> bronze medal. Anyone?

[Lance]

''1. difficulty level. I believe this game is too hard for most average players.''

Since when should the average receive rewards they don't deserve until they've become non-average through working at it? A game is worthless if it's easy for the beginner; he has nothing to strive for, no reason to spend time getting better, no sense of accomplishment from winning.

I would throw such an easy game away, would never buy more of the same either as download packs or later versions of such a game. And I say this as someone who is not amongst the elite game-playing talents.

---------------

''The existing ship designs are beautiful, and in most cases reflect the team identity quite well, but they don't all handle the way they look like they should.''

Just like real life. :)

[master bruce]

''
Since when should the average receive rewards they don't deserve until they've become non-average through working at it?

Since they pay for it. Not everyone plays the games for the same reasons...maybe someone just thought driving a craft in free race was relaxing and enjoyable and wasn't interested in competitive play and therefore don't want to or can't devote as much time to master the racing.

Again, you haven't addressed my question, how does lowering bronze requirements affect your experience with the game at all? If anyone could answer this question, I would love to hear it.

[lunar]

Well I don`t think what you`re suggesting is exactly the end of the world ;) We should be able to just enjoy the game whatever our level, nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with seeing the issue from both sides either.

They could call an extremely easy mode "baby" mode, or something, so that it would allow you to unlock most of the game, but very few would want to play it with that name. I think R-Type Final had a mode in this name, and it would allow you to see pretty much everything, and it still didn`t stop it being a totally hardcore mutha**** of a game if you wanted to play it "properly." I don`t see the problem, your suggestion is about freedom of choice and I can`t see a problem with that, so long as those who want a monster challenge are given just that, and it`s clearly indicated that "normal" or "hard" is the default and "proper" way to play it, and those who play like that are given some sort of reward for doing so.

Having said all that, I`m not 100% convinced it`s really necessary for you to have bronze easier with Pulse, and I think you probably just need a bit more practice. Most of us have had the benefit of two or three years playing Pure before Pulse came along. It took even the fastest of us a while to get good at Pure, but with Pulse we`ve been able to take to it quickly because of this experience. You will probably get better and wonder why you ever struggled. But if they had put in a "baby" mode, which would enable a total rookie to unlock almost all of the game while playing on an overcrowded tube train at rush hour it would not spoil my game, out here in the lovely quiet countryside, one bit. :)

[guillaume]

I believe you can lower bronze medals times, and many players will still have the feeling of achievement when they get them. It will even probably make them want to play more, and get the silver and gold medals, instead of putting the game on a shelf. As Rob said (I think), there are many games out there, so if one you try doesn't give you enough pleasure (part of it being in the sense of achievement), you'll try another one.
I kept playing Pure (first WipEout I ever played) only because it was a gift, until I realized how good it was. I keep playing Pulse because I have the feeling that once I'll get good, I'll have fun. But for now it's a pain, as Pure was at the beginning.
To me, trying to reach a bigger market doesn't have to mean making the game pointless. It can be quite the opposite, bringing newcomers to the game, and "share the love" :), if done the right way.
So basically I agree with you master bruce.
(and while we lower the bronze times, we may as well make the gold medals harder to reach. but I've said that elsewhere (http://www.wipeoutzone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4656&p=82795), I wouldn't want to hijack the topic ;))

[Lance]

I feel no sense of achievement or gratification or pleasure in beating a game or a part of a game that is designed to be beatable even by the least skilled player. Some games used to use cheatcodes; people who didn't want to do the work required to see all the game could use them. Everyone knew it was cheating and called it cheating. IMO, a special easy mode is still a form of cheating in a game that is inherently about skill, I think that is the basis of my objection. I like a game that is inherently great and which does not ask me to love it, and makes absolutely no concession. I love chess or go because they are great, not because they are easy to master. Granted, you can see all the pieces and all the territory even before playing. :D Though you cannot experience the true essence and greatness of the games till you've gotten good at them. Which requires practice. Which all players of the game can do. In fact, it is when you play against a human or an AI that is better than you that you really learn, that you truly become better. It was not till I played WO3 [through posting times on the records tables] against someone better than me that I began to get better. Till then, I made no progress in the game. My innate competitive drive [such as it is] and the thrill of sometimes being able to do something difficult is what gave satisfaction, made me want more, want to play the game.

[Frances_Penfold]

I'll be another minority opinion that agrees with Master Bruce :) IMHO the best approach to game difficulty is "easy to learn, hard to master."

So if lowering the bronze metal requirements allows more people to proceed through a Wipeout game, unlocking content and enjoying the process, well, lower the damn requirements! Just don't lower the gold metal requirements while you are doing it! (Gold metal requirements are probably too low as it is, especially at Rapier and Phantom speeds.)

Speaking for myself, I don't think that the grid system has much relevance to the difficulty and depth of the Wipeout experience, at least for the PSP games. The real fun is in time trials and online multiplayer :hyper

One last thought-- is the initial learning curve for videogames IN GENERAL correlated with the size of the hardcore fanbase? I mean, think Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, Halo... all of these games are very approachable yet have some of the most dedicated player participants anywhere!

Anyway, just my $0.02, for whatever it is worth ;)

[Medusa]

My goodness. I didn't think they could make it any easier, you only need a bronze medal to unlock the next grid!?!
The handling is disgustingly easy and the mag-strips and invisible track walls make it near-impossible to go off the tracks!! It's a wipeout game! WIPEOUT! Doesn't anybody realize that the very name implies a high level of difficulty!?!?!:o:o:o

[phl0w]

Since they pay for it.No, they're not. Price is paid for the UMD, development, manuals, R&D, testing, in short: man-hours. You do not, however, pay for your experience. That's the beauty of videogames. I don't wanna even think about what would happen, if retailers set prices depending on experience. What would games like Final Fantasy (to name one that's said to offer great experience, although I don't think so), or Rez (to name another) cost? 150$, 200$, 500$? And that's the common misconception "casual" gamer's as part of modern entertainment society suffer from. They feel authorized to demand tailor-made entertainment whenever they see fit, just because they paid for "it", which, however, as mentioned above is not true.
Anyway, now for something completely different:

maybe someone just thought driving a craft in free race was relaxing and enjoyable(...)don't want to or can't devote as much time to master the racing. That's a contradiction. If you really have that much time at your disposal to just kill it by roaming games, you might as well practice instead. Just a thought.
Finally, to address your question: Games always had an inherent goal, that is an achievement within a game that required practice and repeated play to reach. It's not as if we were good at WO from the beginning you know? It took endless hours of play. And believe me, it was not always fun, more like hard work. But that's ok, because WO always stood for "hard" and the thought of being good at something difficult is always motivating and keeps you on your toes. Finishing a game was a satisfying, rewarding experience, because it took skill. With games hitting the mass-market producers had to adopt to people that would not invest that much time in games, thus don't have the required skill to beat them. The consequences where easier games overall and in particular the advent of difficulty levels. The problem with that is, that now that a wider target-audience should be able to complete a game, the focus was shifted from actually playing and getting better to investing a certain amount of time which ensured one to play through the game. The difference between finishing and giving up vanished and instead became a difference of conditions (easy,normal,hard,...) under which that goal was achieved. Both, the good player and the beginner would reach their goal. It's only, that the beginner feels false accomplishment and the better player feels betrayed, because although he mastered the game there's no reward from the game itself. Pure had concept art for Gold medals, Fusion and XL the almighty Piranha, WO3 prototype tracks and ships. Pulse on the other hand? I finished the grid with all Golds (236) in about 15 hours and got nothing. Not even the feeling of achievement because it was too damn easy. So why would a good player waste time when he might as well finish a game on easy level in a fraction of time, when there's no reward anyway? The crux is, that if there were, casual gamers would whine again about their not being able to see everything from the game, although they paid for it. See, we're I'm going with that? No? I don't any more either. Rant over.

[master bruce]

I do wish we got something for getting all golds in a grid...as of now, I guess I derive some satisfaction in the superficial reward of having a good looking grid that's all completed

I've logged in 26 hours and have over 140 golds

[Dogg Thang]

I would recommend Lego Star Wars for players who can't put in the long minutes it takes to get to grips with WO. It's rather fun and no challenge whatsoever.

[master bruce]

I think people are misconstruing what I'm saying, since I'm not advocating making the game easier.

I want to use an example of a game: Street Fighter 2

You could beat the game on 8 stars (hardest difficulty) or even 4 stars and still get to watch the ending.

Did that ruin the game for hardcore players? No, not at all. Experts still chose to play at 8 stars because they enjoyed the challenge, and less skilled players could play at 4 stars while still getting the ending. It was a win-win situation for everyone.

[Dogg Thang]

But four stars on SF2 was still a hell of a challenge back in the day. Sure, nothing compared with the 8 stars but a novice player would get their ass handed to them at 4 stars.

So it's much the same - you had to put in some time to get to know the game and get a little better at it.

[Sausehuhn]

As long as you give the skilled pilots the feeling they do better than the less skilled and the other way around I really have no problem with the concept.

Let the medals untouched and give them a "minimum qualification" that unlocks the next race. Give the advanced players more reward, it has to be visible that you mastered the game on easy or hard.
This way not only the skilled pilots feel satisfied but also the noobs feel like "hey, wait, there's more to get when I play with hard difficulty!".
More concept ships for example. Or more images in the gallery (yes you would have to add one again ;)) and maybe even more game settings for the people who master the game on a higher difficulty level (make races available with custom number of laps for example).
Stuff like that.
So noobs are interested in playing more of the game and the skilled people are happy with what they get and they see that they are good.

In Pulse you just get a small info on the screen that tells you if you raced in hard or in easy mode. That's all.

And it should clearly visible that there are different difficulty settings available. If I didn't know it was in, I probably had not seen it.
Remember: not everyone reads the manual.

[rageagainstgeorge]

I disagree about having content that is only unlocked at very difficult settings. The content should be the same no matter how skilled the player is.

I used to be able to invest loads of time in games and in the process became quite good at some of them. I can't do that anymore so i always feel a cheated when i have to do something very hard in a game to unlock something.

I was really pleased to see in Pulse that you got nothing extra (aside from a few points) when playing on hard. This is the way it should be.

[Rapier Racer]

Have to completely disagree with the above.

I feel cheated when there is no reward for more effort. The lack of time really is your problem. If there is something special only available for people who put more effort in then perhaps more players would try to get it thus increasing the games life.

Extra rewards for skill and dedication, that is the way it should be.

Put more time into the one game instead of quickly moving on to another and another.

[Colin Berry]

I think masterbruce makes a very valid point and it is one that is certainly being debated more and more in the industry.

Frankly lowering the requirements for opening up a game should not damage the enjoyment for the hardcore masses

Why should Hardcore player A feel aggrieved if casual gamer B has raced the same levels as he has even though he is not as fast around the tracks ?

I used to have that attitude tbh, I used to be quite a hardcore gamer importing games, and really sinking hours in. These days. .. I'm 33 I have a silly amount of consoles to play on I have about 25 games stacked up at home UNTOUCHED stretching back to GOD of War 1, they remain in my to play when I get time pile, I sink hours into World of Warcraft and I play on my PSP and my PS2 when I get chance, sometimes on the Wii (res evil 4 atm) sometimes the DS, sometimes my 360, although even that in itself is largely sitting there in a to do pile. At 33 with a girlfriend and other commitments I dont always want games that challenge me sometimes I want a game that merely entertains me (example is res evil 4, its not hard, but its great fun).
I can understand the elitist hardcore mentality but its one as I get older, I find myself moving away from. I'd like to see gaming more popular than it is, I'd like it to be more inclusive. I dont want to see all games being easy, but if you take something like wipeout I think it should be easy enough to open all tracks and ships and classes, but hard to master.

Now some folk on here think even the hard on Pulse is too easy, but then they are the top players in the world and it is hard to balance a game and make it competitive for the top 0.01%

Certainly in Pulse I think the gap between hard and easy was probably too close, in hindsight I'd have the hard harder and the easy a little easier, if people want to play it on easy spend their money and experience the whole game without mastering it, cool. If people want to play on hard and test themselves and become gaming gods, cool, I think both should be allowed to co-exist, indeed I think games that can cater for both are rare and should be applauded. Games are afterall entertainment, you dont need a degree to read a book or watch a film, you dont need special god like eyes or ears to appreciate music and video, why should you need elite skills to enjoy a game, surely having a game that provides fun for new players and established is something to welcome ??
Football is popular the world over because all you need to play it is a ball, not even a football ! a tennis ball will do, and young and old you can experience the fun of football, imagine if professional footballers turned round and said, its too easy to play football, from now on you are not allowed unless you put in more time and effort and can do this this and this and have this.
Anyone should be able to pick up and play a computer game, then when people compete online, people who are good can compete with each other, people who are average can compete with each other and people who are learning or dont ever want to be expert can compete and have fun, personally I think that is ideal.

I do feel those who play 'on hard' should maybe get extra token rewards (in terms of end fmvs etc or special ship skins) but its not always viable to include them. The time it takes to produce for example, a 2min FMV could actually be used to create 16 additional skins, and that is a conservative effort. In Pulse we gave more loyalty for people playing on hard as such they open the alt skins etc quicker, but casual players who arent as good can still open those eventually.

I like the idea of rewarding the hardcore player, but I dont like the idea of making the game elitist and only the good will see the later stages of a game. Games being elitist and exclusive is far more likely to kill the industry than games being easy.

Ultimately with Wipeout HD, the main game is not simply the campaign mode, the campaign mode is where you learn about the tracks and the ships and the speed classes, but the long term competition comes from the online play.

We are aiming to make the HARD in HD a challenge, but the easy, easy. Hopefully the more people play it and enjoy it, the more they continue to play it and the more they will be encouraged to go online and experience the fun that brings.

[master bruce]

exactly Colin, make the hard harder (and include some side rewards) this will satisfy the elites for their challenge quest

make the easy easier, so the casual gamer can get a taste of all vehicles and levels

to me, it's a win-win and no one suffers



I think people are neglecting the perspective of game creators, who are in it to make a profit. They can make the most profit by creating a game with the broadest reach, not one with the narrowest audience.

btw, Wipeout Pulse is my fav PSP game currently. :)

[Dogg Thang]

I want a game that merely entertains me

That's fine, Colin, but that doesn't have to be every game. That's what Burnout is for.

It's not every book either. And few, if any, books try to be all things to all people.

But it sounds a bit like you want WO to be all things to all gamers. And, in that scenario, something has to give. And I would say something has. When you take a game that required great skill, time and effort to learn and master, and say you want to cater to people who aren't able or willing to put any time into doing that, of course something's going to give.

I'm in my thirties with a young daughter too with little time to play games so I know where you're coming from. But I don't expect every game to cater to me and certainly wouldn't want games to try to be something they aren't at the expense of the actual fans to cater to me who will just pick it up and toss it after thirty minutes because that's all the time I'm willing to put into it. If they cut Final Fantasy games down to 15 minutes so people like me can see the ending, they wouldn't be doing the franchise a favour.

It's no different with WO.

[Lance]

@phlow: good post, especially this part:
''It's only, that the beginner feels false accomplishment and the better player feels betrayed,...''

I think that's the core of the disagreement about this. Some of us feel that the game's integrity is compromised; that the unworthy [because of lack of commitment] are superficially rewarded to the same degree as those who have put so much of themselves, their energy, time, and spirit into becoming really good at it.

From the standpoint of a gameseller, it is an advantage to create a game that be can be bought, then quickly beaten, dropped, and replaced by the purchase of yet another new game, since this turnover is what generates continual excitement in the market and more sales. From the standpoint of a gamer, it is an advantage to have a great game that always rewards effort and keeps doing so no matter how long it is played. That it is in essence a great long-lasting value.

[master bruce]

but Lance, my suggestion also included making the Gold requirements harder (along with some rewards: unlockable concept skins perhaps), so there would be greater value for the hardcore players who can get all golds as well

and you guys realize that anyone can just download saved files to get access to all levels and ships as of now anyways...does that impact the enjoyment any of you have from the game? I would assume not. Although by your logic, allowing dling of a saved file is almost akin to have a cheat code that allows noobs to enjoy the full content of the game.

[Dogg Thang]

So then those who don't want to spend time, you know, actually going through the whole icky process of actually playing the game are already catered for with these game saves.

[master bruce]

So then those who don't want to spend time, you know, actually going through the whole icky process of actually playing the game are already catered for with these game saves.

but isn't your whole argument that allowing noobs to bypass the challenge of earning their way through the levels detrimental for hardcore players?

well, having saved games directly allows anyone to access the entire game without playing a minute. Yet that doesn't affect your enjoyment of wipeout at all, does it? So, in effect, saved files are like cheat codes that are available, yet they DON'T have any detrimental effect on hardcore players.

Another argument someone said was "if you make bronze easier, why would I bother to get golds". Well, guess what, there are saves with 100% completion, yet I'm sure most of you guys still play the game rather than just download the save. My point is having an option doesn't mean you have to use it. Having an easier bronze doesn't affect hardcore players at all since they only go for golds in the first place.

[Dogg Thang]

Circular argument.

When it comes down to it, if you're looking for a quick play game with no challenge, the WO franchise would not be the first place someone would look. Nor should it be. It has never been that game.

And that's why I recommend Lego Star Wars. That is that game and does it well. It's good fun.

Different games for people with different playing needs.

[lunar]

I agree with you master bruce, Colin summed it all up pretty well, as did Sausehuhn, for me, when talking about rewards. I think no-one has at all convincingly answered your question about what`s really wrong with your suggestion.

A racing game allows you to offer these sort of difficulty options, whereas other types of games perhaps don`t without cheapening the experience. You don`t want to turn Final Fantasy or any adventure game into a walk-through movie, it would ruin it, but in a racing game the structure can allow you to have it both ways, I think, particularly if some reward is offered to those who play it on hard.

I like the game to be tough, but as long as Wipeout has walls that make you stop, and tough human opponents around, it will be tough. I`d also like some tough targets to aim for, mainly so that I`ve got something to think about while learning the tracks. Personally, I don`t give a hoot what anyone else does with the game or how they play it, so long as they don`t cheat and affect other people in that way. If somebody is playing some sort of super-easy mode, crashing all over the place, while I try (and fail) to fly a Perfect Race on Platinum Rush, with 3 BR`s per lap and every speed pad, it won`t bother me one bit. Why on earth should it? I`m not going to impress anyone, get rich or become more attractive to women because I can play super-hardcore Wipeout that is only available to those with ninja-reflexes and years of zen-training. As long as SL keep giving me games I get a kick out of (and with less barrels rolls please) I really don`t see the problem with them also offering a way of playing that might cause the game to include more people and sell more copies, in fact I`m all for it. If they make a game as unforgiving as Wipeout 1, I might love it, but it would probably be the last Wipeout game ever made.

[master bruce]

Circular argument.

When it comes down to it, if you're looking for a quick play game with no challenge, the WO franchise would not be the first place someone would look. Nor should it be. It has never been that game.

And that's why I recommend Lego Star Wars. That is that game and does it well. It's good fun.

Different games for people with different playing needs.

I still think you're missing my point.

Did I say "make the vehicles slower, easier to control, make the levels straighter, make the physics less punishing?" NO. I'm not saying you should change gameplay AT ALL to accomodate novices.

I'm saying keep the gameplay exactly the same. So your needs would still be served exactly the same, in fact I'm advocating raising the gold standards, so you will be getting a HARDER game.

[Dogg Thang]

But Bruce, the vehicles have been made easier to control. The levels have been made straighter. The physics are less punishing.

On lowering the bronze alone, I personally have no problem with it. But when WO tries to be all things to all people, the game dilutes. It has already been severely diluted and, while you're right that lowering brozes would not affect better players, the idea that games should be made to a point where anyone can pick it up and get everything out of it right then and there I disagree with.

And that's what this is about and what Colin is talking about. And it's not as simple as difficulty options as Lunar says because Wipeout, at the very core of what the game is, is about mastering those AG craft. WO1 could have had bronze medals set at over three hours a lap and it would still be challenging. Now WO1, in my opinion, was crazily tough but that's the starting point of this franchise.

[Medusa]

"I`m not going to impress anyone, get rich or become more attractive to women because I can play super-hardcore Wipeout that is only available to those with ninja-reflexes and years of zen-training..."
Well actually...;)

*little voice says* "Ditch the boyfriend who says he doesn't like wipeout. Got to at least pretend to like it..."

Maybe I wouldn't be surprised at the suggestion to lower medal standards if the actual gameplay wasn't made so easy, as Dogg Thang says.
I partially agree with lunar in that yes, regardless of the standards, the human competition is where the real challenge lies - but at the same time I prefer a game with inhuman speeds and difficulty like Wip3out SE. There is something wrong (in my opinion) when the tracks are so easy you can get perfect laps whilst jousting for position the entire lap against three human opponents!

[master bruce]

But Bruce, the vehicles have been made easier to control. The levels have been made straighter. The physics are less punishing.



well, I completely agree with you on the point of not changing gameplay to make it more accessible. Which is why I specifically noted that I don't want any aspects of actual gameplay to be changed to make it easier.

[rageagainstgeorge]

There's so many good points in here I don't know where to begin.

I agree with making bronze easier and gold more difficult. That would keep all the OCD people happy by having to pour hours into the game to get all golds. It would also keep the newbies happy. They can go through the game and still get all the cool unlocks without "wasting" 20+ hours replaying each track to get it down to a t. That way, everyone's happy.

I still don't agree with locking extra stuff to very difficult levels. Surely the reward for spending hours playing and getting really good is itself. You can smile that grin you get when you nail a fast lap or hit a really high zone.

Pulse does this very well.

[Dogg Thang]

Then on the specifics, Bruce, we're actually in agreement. Which is nice!

[lunar]

I didn`t say it`s simply about difficulty options, I just said I see no harm in having them set wider. Having said I don`t mind that idea, I don`t see why anyone would ever be satisfied with a mode that was so easy you could get a medal while playing constant kill-the-walls, because Wipeout isn`t really any fun while you`re smashing the walls all the time anyway. Overcoming that is part of the point, as George pointed out. While it`s still bloody hard to beat the best players, I agree with many of the points made that the basic gameplay has got easier, but that`s a different matter, I think, and I`ve already contributed enough to the off-topic expedition! :)

[Lance]

To use reductio ad absurdum to point out what I believe to be the fallacy of the make-it-easier-for-newbies argument:

[sarcasm alert]I've got an idea: to make it easier for newbies or casual gamers to enjoy the game, we could ease the difficulty of getting at least a bronze medal so they can 'progress' through the game and open content by offering Level 1 difficulty rating, which would allow you to select a ship which would then be run by the autopilot and automatically win bronze. This would not cheapen the game at all or compromise its integrity nor make achievement empty. Level 2 would allow the user to have speed control, but automatically control all other functions, which would gradually all be put under player control by level 6, at which time you would be able to open exactly the same content as you would at level 1, but would actually have to work for it.[/end sarcasm alert]

Thoughts?

[master bruce]

To use reductio ad absurdum to point out what I believe to be the fallacy of the make-it-easier-for-newbies argument:

[sarcasm alert]I've got an idea: to make it easier for newbies or casual gamers to enjoy the game, we could ease the difficulty of getting at least a bronze medal so they can 'progress' through the game and open content by offering Level 1 difficulty rating, which would allow you to select a ship which would then be run by the autopilot and automatically win bronze. This would not cheapen the game at all or compromise its integrity nor make achievement empty. Level 2 would allow the user to have speed control, but automatically control all other functions, which would gradually all be put under player control by level 6, at which time you would be able to open exactly the same content as you would at level 1, but would actually have to work for it.[/end sarcasm alert]

Thoughts?

I think your argument has a fallacy...since it seems to imply that any game that has cheat codes are worthless.

I enjoy playing Wipeout because I gain satisfaction from mastering the vehicles, levels, and nuances of the game. My level of enjoyment is unchanged whether someone else plays the whole game on autopilot or not.

You seem to be saying that if someone else plays the game on autopilot, it will diminish the enjoyment I get from mastering Wipeout without it. And I simply don't see the connection.

For example, many old school games were challenging. But there were also cheat codes that allowed people to breeze through those games. According to your logic, those games would've all been worthless since there was the option of breezing through the game, yet it certainly wasn't the case.

[Task]

Oddly enough, in my opinion games with cheat codes ARE worthless.
I think if WOXL didn't have that "code input" screen I would like it more. As it is, it and WO64 are the versions I play the least.

Just my opinion, but it only takes one counter-example to disprove a general theory.

[master bruce]

that's a whole lot of games! and with game-genie/game shark, essentially every old school game had cheat codes.

[Task]

The difference between a cheat code (typing in "idgod") and a gameshark (specialized hardware/software to allow runtime memory editing) is pretty enormous.

Are you on the Analogy Police Top 10 Most Wanted list? 8 D

[q_dmc12]

LOL:o

[Animagic]

haha Task, nice.
8)

[Colin Berry]

That's fine, Colin, but that doesn't have to be every game. That's what Burnout is for.

It's not every book either. And few, if any, books try to be all things to all people.

But it sounds a bit like you want WO to be all things to all gamers. And, in that scenario, something has to give. And I would say something has. When you take a game that required great skill, time and effort to learn and master, and say you want to cater to people who aren't able or willing to put any time into doing that, of course something's going to give.

I'm in my thirties with a young daughter too with little time to play games so I know where you're coming from. But I don't expect every game to cater to me and certainly wouldn't want games to try to be something they aren't at the expense of the actual fans to cater to me who will just pick it up and toss it after thirty minutes because that's all the time I'm willing to put into it. If they cut Final Fantasy games down to 15 minutes so people like me can see the ending, they wouldn't be doing the franchise a favour.

It's no different with WO.

What I actually said was

"sometimes I want a game that merely entertains me "

you missed the sometimes off my quote when you quoted me ....

I didnt say it had to be every game



I do however want wipeout to be more inclusive, traditionally it has been elitist and I dont know why that is seen as beneficial. I dont think it will ever be all things to all gamers, but I do know for a fact that it could be more appealing to more people, and I do know that as part of my job I have to make a game that appeals and is popular amongst more people than a top 0.1% hardcore. Through user testing and studies one thing that has always been levelled at Wipeout, be it from Sony Europe, Sony America or Sony Japan, is that the entry bar is too high, the game is too hard. So we were told to make Pulse easier, rather than make it easier across the board we included difficulty levels to allow new players to start on easy and not feel the traditional frustrations. We put hard in to provide a greater challenge to the more experienced player. We got it partly right, the easy mode is easy but the game is still frustrating for people who havent played it before, as such we have revised it further with Wipeout HD and introduced racising assists for new players who can turn them on / off to help them adjust to the controls of Wipeout.

But I can honestly say that if someone here has been playing wipeout for 10yrs then its very unlikely we will ever make a wipeout game that will be hard for them to play, because people have built up such a wealth of experience and skill. Each time a new pro evo comes out I set it to difficulty max but its not long before I have it mastered and the challenge comes from playing other people not the AI. It was the same with Street Fighter in years gone by. It is the same for some people with Wipeout and that unfortunately comes from being a dedicated fanatic.

But then I still cant see how a hardcore players experience of wipeout is cheapened by making the easy mode easier which was what masterbruce suggested.

Now if you feel the game as a whole has been made easier that is really a different argument, its not what he (masterbruce) suggested nor advocated. And it is true, the handling model is more forgiving than earlier days the physics etc have changed over time, and I am sure for some people it is a change for the worse, likewise for some a change for the better. Am I completely happy with the game its handling, physics etc... It depends who you are speaking to... Colin Berry the Designer who has a job to do and has to adhere to certain criteria and answer to other people, or Colin Berry the Wipeout fan (who adores 2097 and dislikes Wo3) then well.. . . . . .. As either I am never satisfied and often for different reasons.
I am not making the game for me, it isnt nor should it ever be Colin Berrys Wipeout. I am happy with many shifts in the game and with many things it does, I get my personal stamp on a lot of it and I get to help steer the direction, but I do not have complete control to do as I choose. That doesnt mean I personally as a wipeout fan agree or disagree with everything. I dont. But I win more battles than I lose and the designers tend to get a good enough say in things. Sometimes we have to give a little to get a little though.

[Sausehuhn]

Always nice to see the developers giving their statements.
Could you tell us a bit more about the WO:HD's assistant? I can't quite imagine that right now :)

And there was a thing that just came to my mind. Why not make 10 difficulty levels you can select from a sliding bar? So if you feel like "easy" is to easy and "hard" is too challenging, you take whatever in between. I think that would make sense :)

Ah and btw: why don't you give your stamp a bit of WO:2097's handling and floatiness? ;)

[Asayyeah]

Awesome posts Colin, thx for spending time lurking and posting when you got time.
As you know i am a deep passionated wipeout pilot and be qualified to include the 0.01% of Wipeout hardcore racers list and i am completely ok to let the game easier access for the newbee and make the game harder for us the diehard pilots without degrading the gameplay. What you did for Pulse with the 3 categories of AI is great, maybe like few others said let the 'easy' been easier and the hard far more harder. and set up about TT a platinum medal = racing the racetimeghost of your best beta tester or someone from here ;) :D

[Colin Berry]

Well we are currently finalising the difficulty for HD and we are making the easy a little easier.... we are also making the hard... harder. We are going to try and push it to as hard as we can / are allowed to (note this is the AI not time requirements)

We've made a few other little changes too, a couple of weapons pads have gone from a few tracks, the barrel roll remains but gives less of a boost, its less of a deal breaker... it also costs more energy to use it so it becomes far harder to chain them and more of a risk, its something we are still fiddling with to find something we are totally happy with. The aggression has been toned down a little, but you still get some races that have a lot of weapons and others than dont, its the nature of the randomness of the weapon pick up logic but I'd say its reaching a happier balance, in 10 race you might have 2 sedate, 2 weapon heavy and 6 around middling...

There are lots of other refinements and little additions but I dont want to say too much other than mention the above as these are things oft commented on. And ther eis one thing thats going to blow people away, but words cant do it justice.

Naturally I am bias, but right now HD is looking pretty damn good and though there are many things left to polish and fix and get done and time is as ever against us, its shaping up well.

Its probably the happiest and most confident I've been about a project at this stage of development, seems every 2 weeks when I sit back and look at it in a detached way, its really moved on in many aspects. Lots of work remains though

[G-Hob]

Sorry to barge in and fire off a question, but is there any chance Wipeout HD will let you scrape against walls without slowing down like you could in 2097?

I think it would make the game more appealing & inclusive if just barely scraping against a wall gave you a cool graphical & sound effect, rather than immediately slowing you down.

[phl0w]

"barely scraping against a wall" does not slow you down that much in Pulse either. The difference is, that in Pulse you will get sucked against a wall more and more (depending on your ship's angle against the wall this sometimes happens immediately) if you don't sideshift your ship away from it.

@Topic: I can't remember who suggested it, but having Ghosts to beat like in F-Zero or MarioKart is a great idea. Like in those mentioned games it could be an option that unlocks after you beat the (already very hard) Gold requirements. I mean, there simply has to be something in games that should be possible in theory but remain unreachable for the majority of gamers in practice.

[lunar]

We already have that, it`s called "beating Arnaud." ;)

Thanks for that great information, Colin. I`m very excited about the whole thing now, and love the sound of the developments, in particular what you`re doing to the dreaded Barrel Roll. :)

[Asayyeah]

lol Stephen :lol

[guillaume]

Slightly off-topic, can anyone confirm (or not) that you won't get a perfect lap in SR if you touch a ship, even if you don't touch any walls?
Oh, I'll be delighted to answer! :g
Well I don't know about Single Races, but that indeed happens in Head To Head.
I'll get back to you as soon as I have more information!

[Asayyeah]

Sorry not to answer you sooner, with Dag we tested it last time and if you been hit by a weapon or a ship or a wall in SR you won't have a perfect lap

[guillaume]

Oh don't be sorry, I was just joking :)
And thanks for the answer!
Even with a weapon? Do you reckon this was done on purpose?
It's a bit hard, don't you think?

[Asayyeah]

Colin may answer better on that question, Guillaume
Hard to acheive a real perfect race with 5 PL on hard mode SR phantom Outpost 7, lol for sure it is!! and not only due to the 1st lap :g
Seriously having a PL really means what it is : no collision at all in any way.

[lunar]

You can ride on top of a wall and still get a Perfect Lap. I`ve tested this with my dodgy Phantom piloting. I think the PL may be awarded for a lap where you don`t take any damage points. With a shield you can hit stuff and get a PL, I think.

In Pure you could be hit with weapons and get a PL. On Kai you`d do a 55 second lap of Sebenco Climb, ploughing through about 11 bombs and getting a couple of backquakes in your face for good measure, finally make it back to the start and get "Perfect Lap." Well, hardly...... :dizzy

[Asayyeah]

With a shield you can hit stuff and get a PL, I think.
Yes you get a PL in this case.

About riding the top of a mini wall i didn't knew this , thx Stephen ;)

[Rapier Racer]

You can also get a perfect lap if you fall off a bridge, yes, how perfect.

[blixabargeld]

First, i think I think that pulse is the best wipeout game since 2097/XL, but there are few things which i don't like.

-track design is good in general, but amphiseum and de konstrukt are really boring and less ispired than others. (imho)
-the game is easer than pure, which was already easy.
-the menus are really functional, but pure's one was the best ever: why change it? I also don't like hint and tips during loading time, is Wipeout, not Burnout..
-freezing is becoming a problem until i saved new race packs and mp3s.
-of course, the impossibility to use downloaded ships in multiplayer matches
-ships are not too well balanced in stats, it's easier to win with piranha, triakis or icaras
-the remixed song of Kraftwerk, "aero dynamik" really sucks: original version was way better.

[TearsToShreds]

Things I don't like:

1. The atmosphere. Something's just missing... It's all a little too neon with all the funky lights and effects everywhere. Loved the first 3 incarnations' atmosphere, especially the one from Wipeout 2097. I can't quite put my finger on what's missing, but as others have pointed out before, there's TOO MUCH going on. Every track has the same general feel, except for Platinum Rush, which I find awesome. For me this is the most important thing next to the handling in a Wipeout game. Of course this is a personal thing, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot of Wipers who like to see a difference.


2. Handling. Controls are too easy which has led me to use the less manoueverable ships most of the time. Those ships feel a little more like old Wipeout. When I'm going for some Time Trialling it's harder for me to see what I've done worse or better than on other laps (in perfect laps, that is... ), except for missing the obvious Barrel roll or two. During most of my time trials all I have to do now is focus on not missing any barrel roll and not crashing against any wall afterwards (especially in places where it's less usual to use a BR). This is just incredibly boring. Racing lines are still there but it just doesn't feel as rewarding as before getting it right, because it's too damn easy.

3. Bugs, bugs, bugs. These have all been pointed out.

4. The music. Not very strong and some songs annoy me. Exceeder is okay but too repetitive.

There are no other things I don't like about Pulse, but if these 4 points had been better, I'd enjoyed the game a whole lot better.

[Delci]

The only thing that irks me are the Time Trial and Speed Lap races in general; I find myself frowning every time I see either event in a grid. The harshly strict gold medal time-limit they expect you to cross the finish-line under borders on needing near-supernatural skill.
That, or select the 'race again' option four to seven times until you reach the limit just nanoseconds before silver or - ugh - bronze. The only way to achieve gold in those challenges seems to rely entirely on not hitting anything, crossing every mag-strip (again without colliding into anything) and using the free turbo in just the right spots: with all of these accomplished, you will be lucky to make it with barely under a second left to spare.
One thing I agree on is how in Rapier, the AI tear you apart with weapons...but that's not as annoying as, again, the time-limits of Time Trial and Speed Lap. I haven't made it to Phantom yet, though, and I hear that's where the frustration kindles...
On a completely different note, I find myself missing the old sound-effects of the menus from earlier games. My favorite WipEout incarnation so far was the original for the PS1 in 1995 (it was just plain 36K, I think); the quirky menu-sounds, the weapon-grid activation sounds during races, the 'dark' atmosphere and most definitely the music.
Pulse's vibrant colors, intricate graphics for its type and the almost-poetic descriptions of the tracks spoken by a robotic voiceover before each race makes it a highly worthy WipEout installment; there are some good music tracks here and there, but others lack the classic WipEout 'feel'; even so, this version hits home, even with the flaws that people seem to be finding.

[Sausehuhn]

Hm. I think the Time Trial times for gold are not too hard (more the other way around). Especially not compared to Pure. A few barrel rolls (urgh) here and there and you will easily get the gold medal.

[Delci]

LOL...I was trying to hide the fact that I'm too stubborn to use a faster craft for those challenges. >_>'

[Kyang]

Ha, I used to have the same reaction. Now though, the Speed lap events always make my smile, since I only have to beat the gold medal time for one lap, and I can just end the session to claim my prize. :) .

[Delci]

I didn't know that...! I thought it counted up how many gold times you got, and how many silver/bronze times you got and whichever one you had more it just gave you the corresponding medal.
...hm. Oddly, though, this still doesn't make me want to leave them incomplete. xD

[blixabargeld]

The only thing that irks me are the Time Trial and Speed Lap races in general; I find myself frowning every time I see either event in a grid. The harshly strict gold medal time-limit they expect you to cross the finish-line under borders on needing near-supernatural skill.
That, or select the 'race again' option four to seven times until you reach the limit just nanoseconds before silver or - ugh - bronze. The only way to achieve gold in those challenges seems to rely entirely on not hitting anything, crossing every mag-strip (again without colliding into anything) and using the free turbo in just the right spots: with all of these accomplished, you will be lucky to make it with barely under a second left to spare.
One thing I agree on is how in Rapier, the AI tear you apart with weapons...but that's not as annoying as, again, the time-limits of Time Trial and Speed Lap. I haven't made it to Phantom yet, though, and I hear that's where the frustration kindles...
On a completely different note, I find myself missing the old sound-effects of the menus from earlier games. My favorite WipEout incarnation so far was the original for the PS1 in 1995 (it was just plain 36K, I think); the quirky menu-sounds, the weapon-grid activation sounds during races, the 'dark' atmosphere and most definitely the music.
Pulse's vibrant colors, intricate graphics for its type and the almost-poetic descriptions of the tracks spoken by a robotic voiceover before each race makes it a highly worthy WipEout installment; there are some good music tracks here and there, but others lack the classic WipEout 'feel'; even so, this version hits home, even with the flaws that people seem to be finding.

delci, in phantom class time trial time-to-beat are made for idiots.. when you'll reach that speed class you could even go backwards and still get gold! just wait and hold on

[Delci]

Yeah, mostly I was talking about Venom (and maybe Flash) Time Trial times...but Rapier is easier, and Phantom...I can only imagine.

[blixabargeld]

It's strange.. I mean, the game is supposed to get harder while playing, and upper speed class should mean harsh times to beat..
Well, on the other hand phantom class seem to me a little faster than it was on pure. anyone noticed?

[packetmon]

From what i recall, it was alot harder to win phantom races in the old wipeouts.
Its been many years since I played though so maybe I forgot.
Some people mentioned the atmosphere/mood of the game and I agree.
XL had a better vibe to it and those slamming menus were killer.

Seems like in Pulse the hard AI is awesome at shooting but not so much in flying.

What the heck is this barrel roll stuff???
Its been a month or so and I'm still getting used to them.
Landing upside down and sideways is not fun.
But I see that people have mastered it so I'll just keep practicing.

The floaty parts of some tracks on phantom really ruin the flow.

I think it sucks that americas got the game months late and still can't get expansion packs.
I want my icarus, fool! :mr-t

There sure are some quirks about Pulse and they have been covered enough in this thread but I think in general its great and the online play is awesome.

[guillaume]

if you been hit by a weapon or a ship or a wall in SR you won't have a perfect lap
Are you sure about that Arnaud?
I just got two perfect laps, one where I got hit by machine gun bullets, and another one where I got hit by a quake.

[Asayyeah]

I am not even sure of me and my memory : Scottish syndrome :g

[Lance]

I was thinking it might be Scotch Syndrome, instead. Glenfiddich, maybe? ;) :D

[taqili]

that is a quality ale, and one that I would highly recommend if wipeout and alcohol are to be combined.

[Lance]

Not exactly an ale. :) A good bit stronger stuff.

[Echthroi]

well, I think the problem with Outpost 7, was the fact that the track in some areas were just way too ridiculously narrow[other than that portion of wide open space].

I remember in that game XGRA, there was a track with lots of wide open spaces, but it had tons of pillars in between that you had to dodge. I think that would have worked out better in creating a challenge. The rest just needed to be a littttle wider.

As far as bugs and glitches go, in eliminator mode, or if there's just too many weapons flying around at once, the sound starts to skip.

Other than that...Pulse hasn't froze on me...ever. Runs clean as a whistle.:D

[komatos]

Glenfidditch and Jameson's: the gentleman's Scotch and Whiskey. :nod

[NightArh]

There is too low amount of FPS in some scenes (especially in Eliminator Mode on tracks with transparant track surfacing) :-

[archman]

Yes, NightArh, I believe you. We love OFW, and we love to suffer from low fps. :)

[NightArh]

I am not so strong in English what does mean abbreviation OFW? Original FirmWare? Or something else? :nod

[MrSmadSmartAlex]

It stands for Official Firmware, and CFW stands for Custom Firmware, but we're not to discuss that here, or we get our wrists slapped!;)

[NightArh]

One more thing... I have 82 audio tracks on MS in Wipeout folder, but the game recognizes only 30 :donut

[KIGO1987]

I can tell you one of the ten things i hate about Pulse. One is when bloody Mr Croatian nudges me off the track on Tech De Ra twice in one race. Other than that Pulse is pretty ****ing awesome.

[MrSmadSmartAlex]

@KIGO - hahah! Yeah, getting smashed around by arch is one of the things that I hate about Pulse too (or maybe all 10)!:lol

@NightArh - The game just does only recognise 30 tracks. It says it in the manual somewhere. Also, make sure they're .mp3 - I was well ****ed off when I found that none of my .wma tracks showed up

I don't think there are really 10 things I hate about it though. Only the constant ****ing respawns get to me:mad:. I even get them in the middle of the track!?!
Overall though, it's up there with the best games of all time IMO.

[Avenger2197]

Just to answer Nightarh's post:
Pulse can ONLY recognize 30 tracks in the custom playlist. I believe the manual states this on what to do.(not sure)

So, unfortunately, you'll have to pick out the 30 best tracks out of your 82. It was hard for me to decide when I did it, as I wanted as much of my music collection as possible.:) Ahhhh...choices, choices....:p

[NightArh]

Me too :rock I did the same

[archman]

I hate the thing that I need to play the game on the "default" cpu online.

[The Mirage]

You know, the one thing i hate is the DLC problem. It's not right for people in Europe to get it and we people in America CAN'T! I like Mirage, but because of the DLC problem, i CAN'T race with it. very ironic. well. i hope i find a way to get them or i could just argue with Playstation. and yep, some tracks are very boring. i feel like im wasting my time more than enjoying the thrill

[ACE-FLO]

Boring? Care to elaborate? Coz you can only get bored of a track once you've mastered it... and I see no evidence of mastery, on your part...

... Pulse, boring? er - No! :D

[leungbok]

Yeah true, Ace ! But it's boring to race tracks without improving, hard games are usualy boring, because it needs will to improve, what a boring concept :rolleyes: !!

[NightArh]

Wanna something new in Pulse... :P Oh. I ve just remembered one thing... I am still without DLC :P

[ACE-FLO]

It can get boring if you don't have the will to improve your piloting skillset - true, very true! Cheers Leungbok!

Night - Aah! The DLC! lol! I don't have it either :D

[AppleJack]

I don't play Pulse much. If I do more than a few races my hands tend to cramp up and makes it hard to play :(

The only thing that irritates me about Pulse is Sony's idiocy in not lettung US players get the DLC (or putting out the PS2 version in the US). I have naver understood why they flat-out refuse to let US players have the DLC, even though Pulse itself is available on PSN for download. I personally like Harimau, but I'll never get to race with it on Pulse because it's in one of the DLC packs and the morons at Sony don't want the US players having the DLC.

[MrSmadSmartAlex]

Yeah, it really does seem that way...
To make it even more ridiculous, the DLC actually works on the US version of the game. All 4 packs combined are about 35MB or something, so it's not a bandwidth or space issue. They can't even use the "Well... uh... there's no market for them in the US." excuse, because they went and put the game up there for download.
There's really no excuse for them not putting those packs on the US PSN Store. Unless there's some licensing issue, but I can't think what that could possibly be...

[ACE-FLO]

Could it be that Sony are asses :D it does sound quite probable - this love hate relationship with sony reminds me of my relationship with my x-gf... schit happens, but its a passion we can't do without LOL

[Temet]

I don't play Pulse much. If I do more than a few races my hands tend to cramp up and makes it hard to play :(

I had the same issue at the beginning... and I then switched buttons :
- square for thrust
- cross for firing weapons
- triangle for absorb

This has SO changed my life that even on PS3 I play like this now!!! Much more confortable!!!! Give it a try. ;)

[Albino Ace]

That's the configuration I've used since I got the game. Unfortunately, my square button is flattening out; the gas briefly goes out a bit randomly while I race. : (

[MrSmadSmartAlex]

...this love/hate relationship with sony...
Dunno... I hate Sony, so maybe. :lol

AA, my Cross button has been cutting out like that for quite a while, so maybe I'll try the configuration you use. I won't be able to use rear view though... :( LOL
With the standard configuration, I take my index finger off the right airbrake and press Triangle.

[Xpand]

The thing I hate about Pulse is the absence of tail slide. In Pure for example the ship tail slides very well putting me in an effort to make the ship stay straight in the exit of the curve. That makes me more imerse on the game than Pulse makes... And if we go to Wipeout 3 it's even harder to corner with the airbrakes...

[AppleJack]

I had the same issue at the beginning... and I then switched buttons :
- square for thrust
- cross for firing weapons
- triangle for absorb

This has SO changed my life that even on PS3 I play like this now!!! Much more confortable!!!! Give it a try. ;)

Hmm...Hadn't thought of that. I'll have to give it a try. Thanks for the info :)