Miyamoto wonders why Pikmin hasn't sold more and why people think the games are difficult

Seems like time and time again, Nintendo is always trying to sell games to an audience of people who do not wish to play video games. For a sequel, I figured Nintendo should focus on their core audience of Pikmin fans but it seems like they’re always changing things to appeal to people who don’t play games while in return alienating the people who want more sophisticated gameplay and challenges.

What are your thoughts?

stappern,

You literally have a time limit no? That would turn off a lot of people

spriteblood,

Yeah it's a common complaint of Majora's Mask, too, even though it's less of a time limit and more of a timeline that you repeat over and over. It's just that extra mental barrier for people to deal with, that seems like it affects some people more.

I hear the time limit isn't in Pikmin 4 though?

sirspate,
sirspate avatar

As someone who gets random fragments of time for spare time (due to being a key participant in too many family activities to have a consistent schedule--aka, parenting) any game that requires me to optimize a non-trivial activity to fit into a specific amount of time is rarely even worth my checking out. I have between 2-5 hours per week, in increments from 25m to 90m, for gaming. Often I'm exhausted from trying to fit things into my schedule during the day. I don't need to think about doing stuff for a schedule in my 'fun' time.

tojikomori,
tojikomori avatar

Pikmin 4 may be worth a look, then. The time limit's been removed for this one.

spriteblood,

How do games like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and some of the Super Mario platformers with timers fit into this? I ask because they're more on the casual side of the spectrum compared to something like Zelda.

sirspate,
sirspate avatar

Never felt like I made progress in Stardew Valley. Graveyard Keeper was ok at the start because all the tasks were pretty close together and time didn't matter as much, but later in the story it got too busy.

Animal Crossing doesn't feel like I'm making progress. Enjoyed the original GC one, but that was before getting married.

I did try BotW, and that was fun as long as I was just doing dungeons, but the less constrained parts were much harder for me to justify putting time into because they spanned multiple gaming sessions and I'd always forget what I was doing last time.

Mario's great, but the kids have the Wii U. :P

Some games I find myself playing more of these days: Donut County, Grow: Song of the Evertree, FF13, Noita, Pixel Puzzles.

Outer Wilds was decent. Its loop is approaching an order that works for me. Ideally I want to do a minimum of 2 loops in the time I have available, to feel like I'm spending my 'fun' time productively/getting better, and often I only had time for 1 loop.

TPushic,
@TPushic@pgh.social avatar

@spriteblood I don’t know anything about Pikmin but I’ll confirm the time limit in Majora’s Mask made it basically unplayable for me. I don’t know why. I even tried it again maybe two years ago and with having to relearn all the controls on an emulator plus the Zelda puzzles, plus deal with the time limit, I found myself looking up how to complete things more than just organically playing through and never made it far

Orvanis,

I absolutely loved the Pkimin 4 Demo. Having played all 3 prior games, 4 resonated better with more emphasis on exploration and removing the “you have X days” pressure. Made it far more enjoyable personally.

The only thing I really wish they hadn’t eliminated was proper co-op. My son was very disappointed that all I could do was throw rocks and items rather than run around the world with him.

emeralddawn45,

What? That was going to be the main reason I played this. It was so good for me and my girlfriend to play togsther, she loved it. What the fuck is with these companies not making coop games anymore? Do they think noone has friends?

Orvanis,

Technically Pikmin 3 also didn’t have co-op when it first released, that was a feature added with Pikmin 3 Deluxe. However definitely extremely disappointed they removed it for 4. Maybe it can be added later, but likely not until they release DLC or another Deluxe version…

Clown_Tempura,

Nintendo has this weird habit of thinking extremely little of their players and assuming they are simply too stupid to play video games, and therefore need to have their hands held or be distracted with flashy gimmicks. Their actual base gameplay mechanics are some of the best in the business but they rarely actually ask the player to apply themselves. I don’t think anyone likes to be condescended to. If it weren’t for Metroid and Zelda, I don’t think I’d put up with their underpowered shield tablet.

thorbot,

I never really played Pikmin as a kid so I don’t have the same nostalgia-hook like I do for Mario and Zelda games. I’m not trying to spend $60 on a game I don’t know if I will like and don’t have prior experience with, especially when I can get a baller indie game on my Steam Deck for $10-$15.

drasticpotatoes,

Two reasons: Switch exclusive and $60.

stephfinitely,
stephfinitely avatar

This isn't an indicator of anything for Nintendo. They have many exclusive games and all are around $60, even one released 10 years ago and many of those games sold tons and still sell tons.

Pulptastic,

Most Nintendo games aren’t worth $60. Most console games aren’t worth $60.

Kerred,

Hollow Knight felt like a $60 game I got for $15.

steal_your_face,
@steal_your_face@lemmy.ml avatar

I heard you can download and emulate Nintendo games for free and they play at better resolution and frame rate when emulated. I don’t know anything about that though….

Derproid,

I have 3,000 hours in RimWorld, almost no games are worth buying these days for me.

DrQuint,

Oh come on, games don’t need ludicrous thousand plus hour play times to be worth the money.

… But I do still have 135 hours in Against the Storm, the last game I bought, just saying…

Derproid,

Haha I know, it’s just hard for me to find value in a game where I get less than 10 hours per dollar in these days. Like Skyrim, Fallout 4, Stardew Valley, and Terraria could all meet at least that.

Saneless,

Executive: great analysis. $70 it is

echo64,

I didn’t pick it up because it’s a full priced game, and it’s just pikmin again. Great there’s a dog now.

Nintendo has a big sequelitis problem these days, for every new idea they have they have a bare bones sequel to some ip that’s the same thing as ever.

PoopingCough,

That’s kind of a strange complaint, given that there’s always so many complaints about Nintendo ruining core gameplay mechanics in sequels. Lots of us want sequels as long as the gameplay loop hasn’t changed much beyond adding a few new features. I would kill for another Paper Mario with PPM 64/Thousand Year Door mechanics but they’re just straight up averse to doing exactly what you’re accusing them of for a lot of their game series.

echo64,

it’s not a strange opinion, it’s just different from yours. we have different opinions. you want sequels that are the same, I want sequels that are different.

Sanctus,
@Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

I love Pikmin, always have. I will always go out of my way to Pikup one of these games.

JoumanaKayrouz,

I played the Demo and wanted to die from boredom. Why are tutorials so long these days? Let me play the damn game, I’ll figure it out.

Crampon,

The tutorial is a reason to not do another playthrough of Breath of the wild or tears of the kingdom.

JoumanaKayrouz,

BotW wasn’t as bad as TotK. I couldn’t get anywhere in the Sky Islands and it was frustrating. However, I do like how they let you play the game to figure out the dynamics of the game. Pikmin was like reading a book, which is not what I’m looking for in the hour a day I get to play games.

SgtAStrawberry,

An so fucking railroaded. Like there must be a level between no tutorial at all and you can only press this specific button exactly when we say so and do it on repeat for 3 hours.

Hextic,

All games need a “this isn’t my first rodeo” option.

Bonesince1997,

Civilization does something like this, and one better. Like a returning player who isn’t new to the series but new to the specific game. I don’t recall how well it worked at showing you relevant things, but if it only showed you things you didn’t already know, that’d be what we’re looking for! Hard to pull off sometimes. Other times it’s just a ridiculous under estimatation of skill with long, skip mashing tutorials!

CoderKat,

That’s the best. A lot of sequels are 80% the same controls and mechanics and sometimes I just need a reminder of that.

Though some games could really use some form of really brief tutorial that just reminds me in a forgiving setting how to play, but doesn’t assume I need a lengthy and agonizingly slow tutorial. Civilization games don’t have that problem, but a lot of action games do. I’ll go back to the game cause a DLC is out and I can only remember bits and pieces of the controls and combat is way unforgiving cause it’s supposed to be end game DLC.

drcouzelis,
@drcouzelis@lemmy.zip avatar

A lot of sequels are 80% the same

“Welcome to the world of POKÉMON!”

EVERY SINGLE GAME. XD

CoderKat,

Ugh, pokemon is the worst at this. They’ve somehow gotten only more handholdy. Yet they bizarrely don’t even try to explain the advanced concepts in most games (SV’s school was the first in game reference for some of those, though it’s still not that great of an explanation).

DrQuint,

Reminds me of the Vampire Survivors guy saying he really liked One Step From Eden’s main menu and wanted to do the same.

Open game. Press X three times. You’re playing. Perfection.

picandocodigo,
@picandocodigo@lemmy.world avatar

I didn’t play the demo and I went into the game blind today. I’m feeling this so much I want to abandon the game. I hope it’ll be fun but the start has been excruciating so far. 10 seconds of tutorial/dialog every 5 seconds of gameplay. WTF?! It’s intense, I’m pushing through, but I’m not having fun yet…

Zanshi,

I never really played Pikmin. Never had a Nintendo console other than GBC growing up. Then I played DS/3DS and a Switch. I don’t get the appeal now that it’s fourth entry in the series.

mekkagodzilla,

You absolutely can start with 4. The worst thing that can happen is that you love it and are slightly disappointed when you try the first 3 games after 4. It could be worse.

wccrawford,

I think the tutorial for Pikmin 4 is boring and painful for people who already know the deal. And I think the constant, slow interruptions absolutely kill the pacing, at least at the beginning.

I’m there for the gameplay loop, not to read the same recycled trash dialogue that every Pikmin game has, and it’s ridiculously similar to other basic games, too.

The devs seem to think I’d rather watch the UI do pretty things than play the game, and they couldn’t be more wrong. Maybe that crap snappy, let me skim through dialogue at rocket speed, and let’s get on with the fun.

sirspate,
sirspate avatar

The amount of text bubbles in Pikmin 2 seemed reasonable, and could be accelerated by clicking a button. I think the over-tutorializing only started in Pikmin 3, when Nintendo started outsourcing development to Eighting.

It's been a while so I might be misremembering this, but I think a similar thing happened to the Luigi's Mansion series with LM2 when they started outsourcing to Next Level Games.

JoumanaKayrouz,

I’ve never played the Pikmin games before. I played the Demo and almost drop kicked my switch out into the front yard. The talking kept going and going and going. I kept playing because my daughter wanted to play it, but eventually I handed her the controller and left the room because it was the most boring Nintendo experience I have ever had. Terrible game IMO.

Eddie,

What gets me the most is that we’re talking about the same company who created Super Mario Bros., a game famous for it’s lack of tutorial. People call the level design “genius” because it teaches you what power-ups and enemies are immediately.

What in the actual frick happened to this? Didn’t Miyamoto create Mario for crying out loud? What happened to these core principles? Money? Demographics for children?

PoopingCough,

Not that I’m advocating for super in-depth tutorials or anything, but comparing the complexity of SMB to something like Pikmin is a bit disingenuous. In the former your options for inputs are run and jump, which is a lot less than having to corral little plant dudes using a whistle and splitting them up/using them for specific purposes.

Having said that I think the best compromise is to have a tutorial that tells you what you can do/what buttons do what without making you actually do those things just to check if you’re too dumb to understand simple instructions. Also space out the instructions so that they happen while actually playing the game instead of in one big tutorial section right at the beginning.

steve228uk,
@steve228uk@lemmy.world avatar

It feels like these games are just marketed to people who already know what Pikmin is. They’ve put 4 out at an absolutely dreadful time too… The average player is still chugging through TOTK!

Nintendianajones64,

Tears of the Kingdom is going to last me until the end of the year. I’m taking as long as I need to finish it. Especially since I just found a damn colosseum in the depths where I have to fight 4 God damn Lynels. God I hate those guys lol

thoriq,

@Nintendianajones64 @steve228uk it’s a hard challenge if you aren’t prepared lol, I had to use every trick I had to beat it. You do get majoras mask though which is worthwhile.

steve228uk,
@steve228uk@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve not even found a Lynel in that game yet!

Kiosade,

(Psst… it’s actually 5 lynels…good luck 😉)

Cryst,

U fight 5 in a row? Wtf?

Kiosade,

Yep! The last one is a cracked out one with rock armor. Strong boi

Cryst,

I hVe a hard enough time with 1 lynel. I don’t think I could survive 5 even with a full inventory of potions.

Kiosade,

I will say, it makes a checkpoint after each one you kill, so you dont have to restart from the beginning or anything if you die. And your teammates can help. I especially loved when the little bird dude would shoot them in the face and cause them to fall down. I abused the mechanic where you can ride them and stab them in the back a bunch if they fall down, b/c they’re tough otherwise.

Cryst,

I didn’t know u could do that. Will have to try it next time.

PenguinTD,

Well that’s Nintendo for you. I got disappointed by the Yoshi and Kirby going kindergarten level difficulty, so I haven’t buy any sequal on switch. It looks cute and have nice mechanism, and maybe some harder extra level that’s not required for completion dotted around. But it’s not enough, like even little big planet have more variety of difficulty than wiiu/switch Yoshi/Kirby. And LBP isn’t a hard game to begin with.

Cute and hard game with proper progression is how you curate a new generation of players. Cause they ain’t playing gore flying hack-and-slash from 5yo.

TheMinions,

Are you talking about Yoshi’s Crafted World? I found some of those bosses genuinely hard when you didn’t play on Easy mode with the wings on.

Two player also made it a lot easier, but my second player was my 5 year old, and he definitely couldn’t have beat it without help.

Grangle1,

Yeah, designing games geared towards kids and younger audiences isn’t just about story/aesthetics, it’s also about difficulty. Most young kids don’t have the attention span or critical thinking skills to sit there and try to beat an enemy or puzzle that older kids or adults would find genuinely challenging.

I could split Nintendo games (I’ve played) into three groups based on target audience:

Younger: cute art style, simple challenges, short game play for young children; Kirby, Yoshi

All Ages: easy-to-learn basics to get you through the main game, but there’s more complex stuff and greater challenge if you want it; mostly pick-up-and-play but not TOO short; Mario, Pokemon, DK Country, Super Smash Bros.

Older Gamers: more (relatively) mature subject matter, challenge from the beginning, complex mechanics and/or puzzles or both to get teen/adult brains going; Metroid, Xenoblade, Fire Emblem, Zelda BotW and TotK (previous Zelda games would be in my All Ages tier)

CoderKat,

Zelda BotW and TotK (previous Zelda games would be in my All Ages tier)

I’d consider frankly pretty much all Zelda games more mature. I haven’t played them all, but the pattern I’ve noticed is that the more recent games feel easier (though the open world makes them more time consuming). The bigger puzzle dungeons of older games could get quite difficult sometimes. Easy to get lost and confused. The 2D games often were extra cryptic and combat was more punishing.

As a kid, I bought oracle of ages as my first ever Zelda game and couldn’t figure out where to go after the first dungeon, so had to sell it. As an adult, I beat it and the seasons equivalent just to see what I missed out on. I had to use a lot of save states and recall some bizarre minigame that was just horrible, horrible, horrible (90% of my save states would have been that one minigame). I had to Google multiple times where to go. I dunno how kids could do it. Sometimes I wondered if it was all a ploy to make kids call that pay number for video game tips that predated the internet answering all these questions. Also, I seriously question why I even put myself through that. It wasn’t that fun.

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