Response to Siyan

Origin:

1) I wouldn't be surprised if some of us have already played 5 longer than any one person in dev did.

Completely irrelevant regarding what I said:

1) People haven't been playing the game for 10 years, despite the cliché. They were playing DMC with a bunch of breaks, playing other games, and only a few really play since 10 years.

Because you said that play-time surpasses development time, implying that it took much longer to burn-out DMC4.

This doesn't deny the obvious: if you have been testing mechanics over and over for 1 - 2 years, the way you would enjoy a fresh new perfect DMC6 would be significantly different. Even if you are not completely burned-out. And it's worse if you have played: 3, 4 and 5, and there are similar mechanics (but with improvements). Psychobiologically it simply can't be as rewarding.

...by the time the final product is released, there would be a burn-out... With a burn-out I didn't mean we wouldn't want to touch the game ever again.

This is why people take breaks. There is a burn-out and habituation -> breaks (exposition to other stimuli: games, sports, whatever...); the very same stimulation is not present during a while -> habituation and boredom are mitigated -> you miss DMC -> you go back.

The cycle itself also has a limit. This is why at some point not even breaks work. And this is why if we were testing the game for at least one year, there could be a burn-out by the time it's released, even if not a definitive one.

2) You think players don't check mechanics over and over? How closely do you think people have looked at the specifics of how one single move works with another? "Freestyle" is the result of understanding how this stuff works - testing wouldn't affect this whatsoever.

My focus when playing DMC since the beginning, besides doing combos, has been trying to understand mechanics as well as possible to exploit any options that we could have missed. And yes, of course it affects, which is partly why I have little motivation to play again with Vergil in DMC4SE after playing 1 - 2 years with him. Not like I needed this to predict it, since habituation is one of the most universal and basic learning processes.

I try to ignore your condescending tone (in this point and others), but maybe you should try to choose better your wording depending on whom they are directed to in a concrete debate.

What I said in point 2 was:

2) One thing is to play, and another one to test. In the first case you "play". In the second one you "work". There would be of course a lot of fun while testing, but it involves to be forced to check mechanics over and over. Which has nothing to do with "playing" as combo-makers or freestylers properly "play".

Because of the character limitation I didn't want to clarify the obvious: that you also test in combo-making and freestyle...

But again: one thing is to test mechanics to optimize your skill set in combo-making or freestyle, and another one to be forced to test them over and over to adjust them. Developers would like you to minimize your time spent farming a combo like combo-makers in DMC4, or perfecting your freestyle, and optimize the time spent testing which mechanics are broken, which can be applied to different enemies, which have to be adjusted, how balanced are techs and glitches found, etc.

Or else the development could take 4 years.

And while this would be partly the point of playing the full game despite 1 - 2 years of testing, a big chunk of the potential fun of the learning process would be already gone in the much more tedious approach of testing over and over in the development. Let alone that at some point any human being would be immune/tired of seeing FG, JdC cancel, lucifer glitch, inertial rainstorm or whatever is implemented. And once more, this is how habituation works, it's universal, and it's not black or white, but a constant process when you are exposed to similar stimuli and routines.

3) You're not going to find everything during dev time. The devs would have intended certain moves to work with others in 5, but that doesn't mean they tested every possible interaction. This is why we still find shit in games years after.

We are not the devs. You are contradicting yourself here keeping in mind how you implied that devs are far from any veteran player (obviously we agree on this part) and how any of us has played 5 for more time than any of them... And obviously it's related to how we have played as well.

We would most likely find the most part in 1 year, unless a bunch of changes are done in the last moment. The stuff that has been found in DMC4 after the first 1 - 2 years was additional minor tech. Nothing big or game changing like:

- Lucifer Glitch versions;

- FG;

- Inertial Rain Storm and the rest of the stuff related to inertia, like bullet magnetism (not entirely sure about this one, but probably too).

More recently the glitch that let's Dante keep pins in his hands, or other minor tech and concrete unique set-ups, but nothing really big.

And by that time players didn't communicate as much as we do nowadays, let alone the experience we have currently.

Regarding:

You make that point about the inertia, you think the people that came out with the inertia fix knew about that certain interaction? No, it was just a result.

I don't know what this has to do with:

Like the sensation I had when realizing that with mods I could now do inertial rose-shot, or when I found WS RT glitch with Vergil.

I found this stuff first or at the very least without having seen anybody else doing these techs before me; mods only allowed it mechanically (in the first case).

This was to argument why part of the fun would be already gone in the testing process in the development of the game.

Once I found these techs, I could immediately test the set-ups and combos I wanted in an already released and modded game (even if it could be further improved). Not as a mechanic found in a half-game on the developing process, being forced to test it in a much more standardized and tedious way.

While for most genres your points might make sense, I think this is one of few exceptions.

Boredom and habituation are sadly universal. Of course DMC3 - 5 and DmC are much more complex than other Single Player games, which means they offer a richer and more varied stimuli, and a more complex learning process, but there is still a limit.

Testing in a development would simply take a big part of the enjoyment in a more strict way of playing, becase we agree that testing is part of playing, what I meant is that in this case it would be almost only testing.

You will still have surprises during dev time; not every decision originates from intention. Even making glitches into mechanics is far from unheard of in the series.

Nothing here that I haven't said myself ever since I started playing this game since 2017, and more recently in my entry The Importance of Tech in DMC.

And actually you are once more contracting yourself with:

3) You're not going to find everything during dev time...

They are not mutually exclusive per se, but you said both of them like if they were strong points at the same time... Not everything is obviously slightly sarcastic.

a) You will have many surprises in the development discovering tech + b) you will discover a lot of stuff once the game is released... Sadly no.

We would have to pick one... Both aren't realistic. And mainly only the first one is true, the second one isn't.