The Dimentio and Anarchy Show

[Shane]

Here's an idea: don't validate this insane retardation by discussing these ideas as if they are legitimate concepts. If these people want to keep jacking off that superiority complex of theirs, why not let them? They're clearly enjoying it a whole lot.

This.

The debate completely lost touch with reality the moment it was said Type A never focuses on "gameplay" (which is such a loose term to begin with). Can we go back to shitposting pls? Thx.

[Tim]

You're a Type A shitposter.

[James24]

You guys are way, way, way off course about type A and type B. Type A and type B are so much more than just difficulty and graphics - its a way of thinking, a culture, a way of defining your personality traits.

I shall repeat my definitions for those who missed them way back:

There are two distinct types of players who enjoy Zelda Classic. Type A players enjoys graphics, puzzles, a great story line, very low difficulty. The kinds of quests that have rated well with them include DarkFlameWolf's Lost Isle, Russ's Light of the Heavens, Nick and Link's Fairy Dream, Cole's Souls of Wisdom and MBWChampion's Hero of Dreams. The vast majority of Zelda Classic players are type A players simply because Nintendo's Zelda currently is type A - but type A is not always how Nintendo has written Zelda. Arguably, the original Zelda was written for a very different kind of player - type B players.

Type B players are the exact opposite of type A and they like very challenging quests with high difficulty and the rest of the quest including graphics, puzzles, storyline is a nice bonus but isn't very important. DarkFlameWolf affectionately calls us the "insanely gung-ho" players and has written numerous extreme quests intended to cater for our tastes. The kinds of quests that have rated well with them include OUCH!'s Armageddon Quest, my own Liberation of Hyrule, Nightmare's James quests, Phantom Menace's Demo quest, Jerome's the Hero Without a Name, Saffith's Eight Objects and Gleeok's mini-quests. Some even argue that Nintendo's first and second quests are type B due to dungeon 6 in the first quest, the difficult 2nd quest for newcomers, the lack of nice graphics and storyline. Type B players are the minority.

In type A quests, the quest maker is assumed to be writing the quest to entertain the audience. In type B quests, the quest maker is assumed to be writing the quest to entertain themselves first and the audience second. In type A quests, the quest maker is expected to let the player win. In type B quests, the player only wins if they are of equal or better ability than the quest maker. In type A quests, the quest maker is expected to adjust the level of difficulty to suit the majority of player's abilities. In type B quests, the quest maker is expected to adjust the level of difficulty to make the quest challenging to themselves. In type A quests, the quest is expected to have bug free and beautiful graphics - the slightest graphical bug is grounds for major criticism and low ratings. In type B quests, nice graphics are not very important and are only of trivial concern. In type A quests, if a few players think the quest is too hard, the quest maker will usually make it easier to suit them. In type B quests, the onus is on the player to improve their abilities if the quest is too hard for them.

People can give me shit about this all they want, but I say it is you who is ignorant of the truth and you who will have a lesser understanding of the playerbase and what they are really like due to the fact that you can't accept politically unpalatable concepts. Look at most of the other video games around you from the very first ones to the ones we have now and you can see this in all clarity. Some examples: Hearthstone, normal and heroic mode for boss challenges. StarCraft 2, every level has 4 modes of difficulty ranging from casual to brutal. Lemmings series always has levels ranging from easy to mayhem. Master of Orion 1/2/3 all have casual to impossible modes of play. The Last Stand: Dead Zone - challenge quest books for the challenge quest players. Candy Crush Saga - gotta love those occasional hexagon levels. And in all these games I can say that the difficulty buffs/nerfs are "true" in that they truly win acceptance by the audience they are intended to appease.

Gaming culture has accepted this split between type A and type B as inherent to the human species. Type B is the minority in all cases but one that is recognized to exist. The only successful way of dealing with this split is to have a team of very expert designers who are well paid by both camps to suit their respective interests. And since ZC isn't in the business of paying developers - it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being able to deal with this problem. See any quest on the database able to appease both camps yet?

[Dimentio]

See any quest on the database able to appease both camps yet?

Yeah, it's called Isle of Rebirth and it's very highly rated lol

The impression most people seem to get about this "type a/b" is that if a game has good graphics and fair (fair as in "if you die it's your fault", not fair as in "official zelda easy") difficulty and has polish, then it can't be a Type B quest and it must be a Type A quest. To me it just seems like """Type A""" is basically people who put in the effort of making something amazing, and stick with low difficulty to not scare people away. Why can't """Type B""" do the same, but just add difficulty? You seem to act like difficulty balancing takes the same amount of time and effort to do as good graphics and polished gameplay. Aren't you basically saying that Type A's are lazy then?

Also, if Type B's are a minority, aren't you basically saying "Well PureZC is made of two people: People who only care about high difficulty, and the rest"? I mean, obviously you're going to be able to split them into two groups if you do it that way. I can split PureZC into two groups: people who think AGN is a good website, and the rest. Or people who like MLP, and the rest. Or People who believe in Type A/B, and the rest. See the fallacy, yet? Why not just call yourselves "difficulty purists", and everyone else "non-difficulty purists"? You'd at least avoid confusion and people getting pissed at you over labels that way.

[Shane]

Most of your post sounds like an armchair critic rambling about a black/white and overly simplified/generalized version of a complex topic. I think it'd be easier to just own the fact that you don't want to listen to criticism because you're not interested in making a good game outside making it very hard and entertaining for serious masochists (which might be good to those people). There's a reason the majority dismiss this type a/type b nonsense, because it's such a silly and simple solution to a complex situation and it excludes all the grey. Not to mention the ulterior and personal motives behind them of basically dismissing criticism. And bringing this up in such a thread is only making it look more like a joke at this rate.

If you truly want to make a quest for yourself, you wouldn't be spending years talking about this made up stuff because you wouldn't actually care what others think about your stuff and how they misunderstand it. If you truly made a quest for yourself, you wouldn't of uploaded it to a community you know consists of "type a" players, players that you look down upon when they give the time of day to play your public quest. It's really silly. Here's a simpler solution, since you seem to like simplicity: Just own the fact you don't want to listen to criticism. Ignore it, actually ignore it. And you might end up creating a small safe corner for yourself in the ZC community and you wouldn't be so caught up speculating what sort of motive each negative reviewer has. The fact that you saw this shitpost of a petty feud that extends beyond some terrible "type b" quest and thought this had something to do with this "type a/type b" nonsense is truly a testament to how deep the rabbit hole the idea has taken you.

Now this is truly the cherry on top.

[Orithan]

*walks into thread expecting countless flames, reads Type A/B discussion*

[Chris Miller]

*walks into thread expecting countless flames, reads Type A/B discussion*

You have a micropenis and you smell bad.

[ZoriaRPG]

You guys are way, way, way off course about type A and type B.

[...]

Gaming culture has accepted this split between type A and type B as inherent to the human species. Type B is the minority in all cases but one that is recognized to exist. The only successful way of dealing with this split is to have a team of very expert designers who are well paid by both camps to suit their respective interests. And since ZC isn't in the business of paying developers -

I accept payments in the forms of souls, human sacrifice, and vats of blood. Type B or A, or AB.

it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being able to deal with this problem. See any quest on the database able to appease both camps yet?

In all fairness, I have. Try some of the newer stuff from Evan.

These days, I play or view plays of games most often for story, to relax, but I've beaten LoH, AQ, and some others. I can play some of the hardest NES titles, and I find games such as SMB2J childishly easy. I also beat some of the Kaizo Mario games.

I have no clue where, in this dichotic system that you have devised, that I would fall. I'll say that I can tell when difficulty is artificial or unfair, based on random factors or just silly mechanics. That doesn't stop me from trying, but I'm still a general sadist, not a massochist. I do this stuff for the satisfaction of the victory, not because I enjoy the pain.

...Also...designing a kaizo game around fixed mechanics of an engine is fine, but designing one on bug exploits--while also fine in theory--is potentially a terrible notion, as if those bugs are ever fixed, the game might break, and there's not a 'snowball's chance in hell' that I will care. Fair Warning to All: If you abuse a bug, or a glitch, that's on you mate. :/

I'm not generous-enough to spend hours of my finite lifetime slicing hacks into the ZC engine to facilitate abuse of engine bugs in quests.

This is why I have made it a point, not to document bugs that could be thus-abused, in any public venue.

This also, is why, if you don't test your quests in an update while it is in beta, and it breaks in release, I won't care until we're at the next major beta phase.

Nn.nn.patch versions are dead for non-critical shyte, at least untilwe have more staff.

P.S. What is the category for games such as 'Dark Castle'? It's difficult AF, but in a purely idiotic way (useless controls). Are those... Type O?

P.P.S. Using the above James24 definitions, @NewJourneysFire , Akumajou Dracula/CV4 for the SFC/SNES is clearly 'Type A'. The X68K version is in dubious territory.

P.P.P.S I'm pretty sure that this entire Type A/B concept stems from 1st year Famicom/NES games that had a mode select:
1 Player Game A
2 Player Game A
1 Player Game B
2 Player Game B

Think back to 'Donkey Kong', 'Mario Bros', 'Excitebike', and so forth. Originally B-mode was harder, until 'Tetris' wrecked the entire system. Tro-lo-lo.

[NewJourneysFire]

Cole's Souls of Wisdom

This quest was criticized heavily for bad design. It's certainly not catering to any Type A gamers. Not those with any taste anyways. ;p

It was the biggest cheese I ever made. Sure, it was popular, it was very popular for a small bit of time, but it was never known for being good or being able to measure up to quests like Isle of Rebirth or many of Moosh's wonderful quests. I've been spending years improving my skills and I hope it shows in my newer projects.

Who does my newer projects cater to? Type A and Type B gamers. If you feel that's impossible, then believe what you will.

[James24]

Regarding Evan's quests, you guys seem to be ignoring the rather long comments/ratings section in pure about it. The fact is that despite the numerous difficulty levels, there was quite a lot of criticism that its easy mode difficulty was artificial and simply halving the damage dealt is not an acceptable way of nerfing a quest. There was no "true" nerf where Evan changed the enemies and their attack patterns to make things truly easy. And when I see those criticisms how else can they be interpreted other than a type A rejection? Just ask Lunaria here who is eating popcorn and I'm sure she will be very happy to tell you all about it.

Now, Evan continued this pattern of nerfing into his later quests like Umbral Cloud and it seems like he will for his upcoming quest too (I haven't seen it). But if those earlier criticisms caused so much criticism and the mechanism was not fixed - then how can it possibly have got better? I know many of you would like to sweep the bad news under the carpet and herald it as proof that the dichotomy was solved and can be solved by a free community - but the evidence says otherwise. And even if I were to somehow accept this miraculous case that did appease both camps, then its a pure fluke a one off that took 15 years of ZC existence to produce. It'll probably take another 15 years before another miracle. And in the meantime, we're going to have lots of these lovely bitching sessions about type A and type B Zelda of which Zelda 3 was the latest catalyst.

Shane, you're pretty much right - I don't care about anyone else's enjoyment apart from my own when it comes to spending my precious time making quests. Its nice if other people like it, play it and rate it well but if not then I'm prepared to go it alone. The thing is that I'm ballsy enough to say such a thing whereas most other quest makers will pretend - "oh yes I care about the community and I love their feedback" - but deep down they will do the same thing as I do. They lie to keep everyone happy but their actions speak louder than words. When it comes to the actual quest - surprise, surprise - they only ever look after their own enjoyment and don't give a rats ass about what anyone else wants. And if they do, then it'll be some cheap nerf like Evan's IoR. Actions talk - bullshit walks. Take a look at your own Rite of Storm Shane - did you give a crap about type B when you designed it? Nope - and as long as you do like that then type B will continue to do likewise.

Zoria - how is anyone supposed to know whether something is a bug or not in Zelda Classic especially if something is an edge case? That is why I will forever play AQ in 1.92 Beta, The Hero Without A Name in 2.10. Can't trust backwards compatibility for exactly the reasons you specify.