Before I go any further, let me just state that any comments I make
on this subject are purely for the sake of discussion... you're my
friend and I have no desire to antagonize you by going against you. lol.
The problem with judging distances, again, is that wind sound. You
can't concretely judge how far it is from you by just listening for
it.. unless you pinpoint the position of that sound in your
headphones or speakers and memorize where it is. And in frantic
fights, if you have enemies coming at you and your mind is bent on
taking care of them first, you really don't have the option to stop
and judge that sound while you're being pummelled.
The problem with judging distances like they do in mainstream games
is that, a sighted person can look at that pit and see how wide it
is, whether they need a running jump or not. In audio games, you
don't have that. Unless the dev programs the look command to tell you
how wide the pit is, you have to guess. So some people would prefer
warning sounds so they at least have a source to go on. I personally
don't care either way. I played mainstream games for long periods of
time before I even knew of audio games, so it doesn't really matter
to me. I can cope with either.
Target sounds for when enemies are in range is fair to me. Because
why stand there mashing space until you hit something? Especially in
this game, where the sound that is used to sound the attack is also
the sound that signifies the hit. There is no difference between the
two... unlike in mainstream games where you generally have a sound
for the attack and a second sound for the hit, so if you miss an
attack, that hit effect won't play. And fireballs are a different
case from pits as you can stand still and wait for it to come to
you... and there really is no appropriate time to duck. Soon as you
hear a fireball, if you wanted you could just kill nearby enemies and
stay crouched until the fireball passes by. Sounds for blades are not
necessary as that would also remove challenge from the game since the
whole point is to time your run past them. That's where sighted
people and blind gamers have the same challenge. They have to observe
the paterns at which the blades shoot out and retract. We have to do
the same... with sound.
You asked how far do we take the dumbing down approach? This is
exactly what so many hardcore fighting game fans had about Marvel VS.
Capcom 3 and Street Fighter IV when they first came out... as a
diehard fighting fan myself, I knew where the arguments came from.
Less buttons in the case of MVC 3 as compared to MVC 2, supers and
ultras in SF and the removal of the perry system from SF 3, x-factor
for MVC... I could go on and on. This was all done to make the game
more accessible for new players while still retaining depth in the
games. A lot of people said that that kind of adjustment was dumbing
the game down for the scrubs out there. Maybe they're right. Maybe
they're wrong. I personally think they're wrong... because there's
still a lot of deep fighting to be had in both games. That kind of
attitude is exactly why so many people never get into fighting
games... because the pros are so adverse to accessibility and the
like. When you look at it.. the two situations are remarkably similar.
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