Without clues, Dishonored was too difficult

This. I know I have a weird OCD of going into areas you're not supposed to go into, but the trend is to lock these prohibited zones from the player up until he's done something.

 

Disappointing, but at least you can turn off the hints. Read some stuff from one of the devs and he says the hints were a recent addition, so I guess the game isn't based entirely around the little HUD hint things, unlike Skyrim, CoD, Halo, etc., so it should work pretty well.

 

The problem is that the "meat" of Dishonored is in figuring out how to infiltrate and assassinate targets, and then escape. The premise of the entire game is founded upon free-form reactive gameplay based upon the player's play-style preferences and ability set. It's like saying Deus Ex's core gameplay consists of "the gunfights" and that getting the player to the shooting as quickly as possible is ideal because otherwise they will get bored with talking/questing/exploration/problem solving.

Dishonored is only a triple-A game in so far as it is a reasonably big-budget release. It is not necessarily designed for mass audiences but has to make compromises to sell enough copies to make back its production costs. I don't think it's surprising at all that the developers want to avoid hand-holding and all that crap because it's clear both from their history (it's goddamn Arkane) and the type of game Dishonored is that the only reason Dishonored is a triple-A game to begin with is because otherwise it would never be made at all.

 

We have no idea what the assistance entails, so I believe we can't say it forces or encourages the player to just gun down the opposition. Maybe it highlights an alternate path if you want it. Maybe it merely points you towards the objective. Maybe it plays half the game for you (which I strongly doubt). At tis point we just don't know.

I agree that assistance in a Deus Ex kind of game kinda ruins the whole point for fans of the genre (and I count myself as one, I'll disable it without a second thought if I can). But for the lamba player who picks up the game for its cool cyberpunk stuff and magic powers, it's probably less important. This second audience is who the help targets, I would assume.

As you say, it's Arkane, these guys aren't known to hold the player's hand. But Dishonored is very clearly aimed towards a wider audience than, say, Arx Fatalis, hence the perceived need for an in-game help. Again, so long as its optional, I have 0 problems with it.

 

That was the at the heart of my point, however. Communication BECOMES the concept. All it takes is time.

For example, I follow The Escapist somewhat regularly. I enjoy a few particular content creators on that site, and they recently held their own personal expo this last weekend. On one of their panels about reviewing games, they lengthily bashed complaints about their reviews being "too biased" at times, because the notion of criticizing that was so stupid. The thing is, the criticism itself is "stupid" because it's miscommunicated. Many people MEAN "close minded" when they call someone "biased", which is a totally legitimate criticism to levy against a critic/reviewer. But poor choice of words and mistaken communication/understanding becomes the line of thought. Again, it just takes time.

The best intentions, communicated poorly, become the worst ideas before long.

 

Games should not be designed without prior knowledge assumed. There needs to be some sort method to teach players how to play the game. And if a game designer has a guard that says one thing(you can't access this area) but they want the player to do the opposite(get into the area by whatever means) then that needs to be communicated to the player. Portal is a example of a game that gets this mostly right. The game never asks the player(except maybe on the challenge levels) to do anything that hadn't been explained in some form.

Remember this is playtesting where they get a bunch of random people to play a game and see their experience. So there needs to be a range of different people with different skill and game background or else it's a waste of time. This is the birthplace(or place of validation) of many, many great features and controls in video games.

But hey like whatever, continue to be elemental alkali metals(highly reactive).

 

While true, this isn't necessarily a DIRECT thing.

For instance, as with your Portal example, an obstacle can be placed and it's due to "prior knowledge" that the player knows they can get around said obstacle. There wasn't any immediate communication, and if there was it would likely ruin the experience. Again, think your Portal example: if at EVERY puzzle room the game gave a hint to let you know what to do, that'd ruin everything, wouldn't it? Instead, it's the experience of the player having ALREADY gone through an exercise that "communicates" to them the message "I can get around this".

On the other hand, you can assume that "prior knowledge" won't come into play very often in playtesting, because these testers aren't playing a complete version of the game, having gone through character creation, tutorials, and the whole gambit of gameplay up until this obstacle. But there are still other ways to communicate the intention, not small part of it is the acting of the NPCs. Even in non-dialog interactions, the way the sentences are conveyed (stressing words, or describing behavior) can communicate simple notions to players like "He's saying I 'cannot' go upstairs, but I'm hearing that he doesn't 'want' me to go upstairs". It's not a hard thing to do, sometimes it's just not done. I know that there's MANY instances of NPCs in New Vegas telling me "don't even bother, it won't do anything", and every single time I get the message "you can, but I suggest you don't", and most times I opt to try.

There are a myriad of ways to make sure players "don't get lost", and they DON'T require holding their hand. Even in a literal sense. Some games come with no built-in maps, and they force the players to form their own sense of direction to travel without getting lost. It doesn't hurt players to encourage them to utilize more enginuity and creativity, as long as you let them know what they're CAPABLE of. That's all it takes, clearly explaining the "rules of your [game] world".