Hints upon death

[SusanTheCat]

I just finished playing "Scar of the Doll" on my iPod.

One of the things it did in the first part of the game was tell you what you did wrong and give you a hint. i.e. "You shouldn't have gone into the office. Maybe there is someone else you can talk to."

I like it because it lets me know that I'm on the wrong track. It saves me from having to look up a walk-through.

I don't like it because at times I wanted to yell back at the screen.
Game:"You shouldn't have gone into the office."
Me:"{sarcasm}You don't say.{/sarcasm}"

What do you guys think about giving hints if the player dies? I think it could be useful is done well and annoying if done poorly.

Susan

[Stainless_Steel]

I like hints like your example of telling the player what to change after a death after all chaning one this might aviod the death, but you could still get a different overall ending depending on the game. It's hints like Prince Lover or Ninja Love that I dislike a bit: big gold sparkles appear when you picked the right choice for the best ending completely giving away if you picked wrong.

[fleet]

I'm in favor of in-game hints, but only if the player asks for them.

[Gambit74]

This is what I liked about Tsukihime and Fate Stay Night to be honest, so I'm all in favor of hints as well. Instead of telling me directly what to do, it should just tell me where I went wrong (If it doesn't end right after) and hint at what I can do to avoid it.

[saguaro]

I'm in favor of in-game hints, but only if the player asks for them.

Yeah, I agree.

I think my ideal would be having a little hint button that pops up when you reload after dying or something like that, and if you don't click it goes away in a minute or so.

[Ionait]

I am in favor of hints but I would hope they are not as obvious as the example you gave. If I gave hints in my game, I wouldn't say "You shouldn't have gone into the office". I would try not to mention location at all. I don't want to outright tell them what their error was, but give a clue that helps them use the other information in the game or even common sense/process of elimination.

And I concur with having a button or some sort of popup instead of just giving the hint. You should always ask the player's permission before just giving something away.

[Percon]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent did this pretty well; the clues upon death were usually vague enough that it wouldn't make the player feel stupid or spoil anything too important should the player not actually want the hints.

Though, yeah, generally, you should ask the player if they want any tips. Some player may feel insulted by mandatory hand-holding.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I'm generally not a big fan of hints on death. I feel pandered to. Often, I'll KNOW what I did wrong that resulted in my death, because it just happened - like your "You shouldn't have gone in the office" example.

I like it when games recognize that I'm struggling. Like maybe I've died 3 times in a row in this area - then it can ask, "You seem to be struggling. Would you like a hint?" Then it can dispense progressively more spoilerific hints the more I die and ask for them, eventually progressing to just outright telling you the answer.

[Destiny]

I would make it an option under preference.
This way a player can choose to enable and unable it anytime, making it possible to stop hints most of the time but getting some when they are seemingly needed.

But I would find it hard to choose HOW they should look.
To give a hint not too obvious but still not unhelpful...
But yeah, I guess, I would try making it like in Professor Layton, maybe even with the game recognizing you fail often and as such making the hints more and more obvious and finally asking if you want the solution (BUT I guess I would make it a penalty by making the choice to take the solution equal with disabling the player getting the best ending).

[Victoria Jennings]

Actually, I was going to implement a similar feature in collective, only, instead of giving them to you upon death, they're given to you right away, albeit subtly.

For example, close to the end of the game, you find a new potential lead, and you have the option to discuss it with one of your online buddies, at which point he posits that it's likely a dead end, and it's improbable that investigating it will lead to substantial results. On the flip side, if you show it to your other online friend, she expresses a kind of desperate hope, and half-heartedly encourages looking into it. If you go through with it, you end up missing a crucial piece of information that changes the ending from a bad to a good one. Several other instances of this occur, where your friends, both online and off, will encourage or discourage you from investing in a lead, and it is up to you to determine which of them are trustworthy.

I suppose I just need to focus on making them as un-blatant as possible...