Sliders: I Don't Get It

[rom3]

Sliders have been a great addition to sports games because it allows you to customize the game to your style and difficulty. Most people enjoy playing a game that is challenging and fits that skill level. If I have to set "house rules" to play a game against the CPU to make it competitive I am not going to be playing it very long without losing interest. In my opinion most games that use the sliders settings have done a very good job at creating games that allow the user to customize the game to a skill level that makes it enjoyable and fun.

[militia23]

Ok I have playing sport games for quite awhile. I found the sliders out of box were to easy. So I started playing with sliders and going online to find sets. The problem though is I can never get the game to my liking. So i spend all my time adjusting and readjusting. Which has slowly taken the fun out of playing. This years madden 09 has a great idea of having ai adjust to you. Needs work but it should bring the fun back to sports games. So hopefully this is the decline of sliders in sport games.

[bsb13]

Sliders should always be in sports games though. If someone doesnt want to use them they dont have to, but they should still be there for those that do.

[asu666]

Is the point of this article that developers should strip even more options away from the people who purchase their games? Waste of space imo.

[dave374]

Sliders are absolutely critical for every sports game.

[KG]

"Sliders are a shameful downward spiral of inadequacy. Developers use them to make programming easier, and sports gamers use them because they are there. Too lazy to put in the practice to excel in the game as it was designed, gamers slide the almighty sliders to adjust to their individual whims. They do not realize that if they were proud and held themselves accountable for their gaming that developers would no longer be able to use sliders as a development crutch. "

Yes and no. Sliders are the users ability to tailor the game to their unique playing style. The reason why they are so popular on OS is because most of us consider ourselves to be "sim" players so we're looking for the most realistic gaming experience. We use them to help make the game mirror it's real life counterparts.

As a guy who uses sliders I am 100% for companies putting them in. Without adaptive AI, games become stale and predictable. If a game has good sliders (NBA 2K/College Hoops/FIFA), you can tweak the way certain teams play to ensure that the gaming experience is unique to that team. If you play the Warriors in an NBA game and they play the same was at the Spurs then you have a major problem in my eyes.

I don't view them as the developers being lazy or as a crutch in any way. I applaud them for giving us the choice to customize our game. Hell, a lot of us want the ability to edit/customize everything.

[DubTrey1]

I love having the option myself. If you like the game out the box - then good for you, but I like having the option to set the game up to my liking. And if Madden 09 is any indication of this with the "My Skill" mess, then we all know one thing, it ain't goin away.....

[Steven547]

Sliders aren't a bad idea, but as one poster said, you can spend the entire time tweaking and not enjoying the game. Sometimes, too much of something is not a good thing. And, one can look at this in two ways: 1: User has the option to adjust the game to their liking...or 2: The developers have become lazy over the years and decided to just let us do most of the work now. It goes both ways. Personally, I get tired of constantly tweaking sliders because as someone posted, the game changes each time. I'd rather spend 3 hrs playing the games, then tweaking the sliders.