VOLRATH'S PROFILE

Honestly, I read this whole thing and it seems like a very long way to say "I wish Zelda games were harder." I also find the hand-holding in newer Zelda games sometimes obnoxious and it really was over the top in Skwyard Sword. However, I don't really support a return to the days where you were urged to put bombs on every tile of rock in the entire world map because there was no other way to find out which walls had secret passages behind them. That might have been engrossing when I was a young kid, but I'm a married adult now with a full-time job and I don't want to devote my limited free time to carpet-bombing entire mountain ranges. Regardless of what else we might say about them, Zelda games have never stopped being a massive time commitment. For the record, I completed the first Zelda eventually but never the second quest. It was just too obtuse. I also beat Zelda II....somehow.

The writer has been alienated by the transformations Zelda has undergone through various console generations and I feel for him. I could say the same about Ninja Gaiden. The first one is one of my favorite games of all time (and in terms of difficulty, right up there with the old Zeldas) and the Xbox Ninja Gaidens don't interest me. But it's not like the original Ninja Gaiden disappeared. Any time I'm feeling nostalgic, I fire it up on the Virtual Console.

author=Craze
Time to blanket-vote for Star-Stealing Prince.

For sure. I hope the fact that it's coming out so early in the year doesn't work against it. I would have nominated the demo for a few additional awards if I could have.

Yeah....it's probably not advisable to tell someone that a suggestion is "not optional" or that they HAVE to fix it. I realize that those comments are not meant literally, but someone implying that I don't have a choice in anything is a major pet peeve of mine and I highly doubt I'm the only one. After all, this very thread is full of people who were none too happy at a perceived suggestion that they HAD to give or take criticism in a certain way.

How's this? Gets the same point across, I'd say.
"The utterly random difficulty swings made this game nearly unplayable. Your battles vary wildly in difficulty as though no thought were put into the player's power or the game's difficulty curve. As it stands some of them are literally unbeatable and the game is ruined because of it. You should read some articles on designing game difficulty curves - or, hell, just play some games and pay attention to the difficulty curves - and completely redo your game's enemies with that knowledge in mind if you don't want people turning it off in frustration."

The fine points of giving/receiving criticism are likely to get discussed in any community where people show off their work, but there does seem to be an inordinate amount of discussion about it here. There's a thread like this probably once a week, and more often than not it degenerates into people not so subtly just defending their own right to be obnoxiously critical/super sensitive rather than talking about it in a broad sense.

I still maintain that if you actually want a game to improve, whatever criticism you give should come with at least a little bit of humility or sensitivity. That's only if you genuinely want to see improvement, though. If your goal is just to sit at your computer and grin with pride at the exquisite sarcasm you have unleashed on some poor 14-year-old kid who just wanted to show off "Legend of the Seven Dragon Crystals," well then that's different. Just lower your expectations for the game getting any better. You can write for numerous paragraphs about how people should just accept and compy with all criticism, even if it's nasty and full of RANDOMLY PLACED CAPITALIZATION, but "should" is not "will." I have yet to see anyone react to nasty feedback with "MUHFUCKAZ I'M TARZAN SUCK MAH DICK" but I've seen some conversations that got fairly close to that. Yeah, it would be nice if people were less sensitive. It would also be nice if nobody was poor. At some point you have to ask if you want to just rant about principles or if you want actual results.

Let's not forget that the original idea behind this thread was how to treat beginners, not oldbies like most of us who are used to the often caustic tone of the RM community. If you want new people to stick around (especially if they are on the younger side), you'll be nicer. It's not that different from making connections in real life - if you want to recruit someone to your club or cause or whatever, you're not going to start off by yelling at them and telling them the various reasons why they suck. Sure, you CAN, but that's not the issue. You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. But if the majority of folks don't particularly care if newcomers feel welcome, then carry on.

It's nice to know there are some things in life you can count on.

I'm not sure if the votes for the game were determined by Arc VII itself or a sort of appreciation for completing the game as a whole. If someone had told us that the game was ineligible because it's won in the past, we wouldn't have put up a fuss. Of if someone wanted to designate it as "Master of the Wind: Arc VII" I would have been okay with that too. But we never heard either of those things.

Also, the game has come a long way since you originally played it. I hope you give it another shot and hopefully get through more than the first hour or so (try turning the sound on this time too).