If I'm going to put 100+ hours into a game, there better be a setting to mute BGM, because no matter how good the OST is I will eventually tire of it and want to listen to something else.
Similarly, granular audio options that separate dialogue from ambient from music from system sounds. Definitely don’t need my ears blown out just to hear dialogue.
I like having the background music very low, but not off, system sounds a bit above that, sound effects higher than system but lower than dialogue, which is maxed. And of course ambient sound levels really depend on the game and what kind of ambiance it has.
Same thing with granular contrast/gamma/etc. Don’t just provide a few preset options, especially if they can only be set before you start the game (also they should never only be set from the main menu, never). Let the player choose whatever they want on the fly. I love playing with everything bright so I can see wtf I’m doing, I don’t give half a shit if the devs think it should be so dark it’s not navigable. I disagree.
And by OFF, we mean actually off. The last thing I want is the game to push out a minor update 5 years after its last update, and all of the mods I have are now broken.
Yeah, you should be able to pick a specific version number for single player games. I’m fine with it defaulting to “latest”, but at least give me the option to stick to a specific version.
Also, fuck the “Would you like to share all data with the publisher, or only limited data” bullshit. It’s a single player game with no multiplayer whatsoever. I shouldn’t need to share any data with the publisher. If I see this shit, the game immediately gets blacklisted in my firewall.
That is a reason why offline installers are so important. At the very least we should be able to disable auto updates and still launch the (outdated) game.
Reminds me of one of my biggest pet peeves - a bunch of games will pop up a warning “Oh no, you’re not on the Internet! Some stuff won’t work!” on start up, always. Hate it, unless I’m trying to connect to a multiplayer mode of some sort.
Here’s a simple one. On PC, a lot of games let you use the keyboard/mouse or a controller. On some games it’ll switch the prompts to the layout of the last type of input you used. However I tend to use a controller for everything, except I’ll use a mouse for more fine tuned control since I suck at aiming with a joystick. But then what happens is the input notifications switch to keyboard/mouse and sometimes don’t switch back.
I’d love to see an option to force which input style gets displayed on screen. Keyboard/Controller/Auto
No, it means they will use LLMs (AGI™) to rewrite new electron apps from the ground up with exciting new breaking changes each release. You will have to schedule hardware updates at a yearly bases if you want to make use of your software subscription. Luckily, they will offer a hardware subscription which only costs twice as much as it should, it will come with insurance which will never be redeemable for the low cost of $30 a month.
This is my hope. There are so many cross-platform GUI toolkits out there that are orders of magnitude more efficient than electron and nobody uses them. It’s not like GTK and Qt are difficult to learn. In fact, I find them easier to wrap my head around than a lot of the JS nonsense out there.
An option to choose what controller glyphs I want to use (Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo, directional) and a option to always use those glyphs even when mouse input is detected, so I can use Gyro without the glyphs constantly flickering ☺️
Yeah. I’m getting what you mean by that. It’s weird. Black Flag with like 100 chests and a bunch of extras and I feel like a longer story didn’t feel like a grind. But this one does
Yeah, Black Flag’s seafaring was fun. It was enjoyable to guide your ship around, explore the random tiny unnamed islets, dive into the ocean and hear the crew laugh about the captain jumping overboard.
Yes, collecting every last thing was a grind. But it was a fun grind. It felt like I was choosing to do all that, even though the game was psychologically goading me into it.
(Insert philosophical discussion about free will related to a video game about genetic memory and following predicted behavior.)
Add to that how 3’s protagonist was so unlikable that Ubisoft made fun of themselves for it in AC: Rogue.
And same with consumers. We aren’t a charity throwing away money for no reason. We actively seek out discounts to get more for our money. We want discounts to be given priority.
By knowing most consumers don’t have the self control to not spend money and fall for marketing hype. Probably call those who don’t get sucked in and end up being more price sensitive and waiting or not buying karens for not being part of the initial revenue made.
I don’t complain online, I wait for a sale to bring it into my buying range, it’s entirely the business owners choice if I buy their product, that said that money represents hours of your life, why spend more than absolutely necessary when buying?
UUhhhh no? Steam doesn’t automatically change games’ visibility if it’s never on sale; it makes games on sale more visible, which encourages Devs to put their games on sale, meaning people who have never seen your game have seen it and might buy it. So in the end, MORE People have bout the game than would have otherwise, and if set at the right price, the Devs still get their cash and now have a larger market. I’m so glad I took Microeconomics in High School :)
And maybe if you studied beyond highschool level you would be aware this is a well studied thing in economics. If you sell a priority service and there is a limit to the resource in some way you are shutting out the people that don’t pay. Like its the same problem as dating apps that sell priority matching, if enough people buy I to it you either have to buy into it as well just to get a fair chance, or except you will never get seem.
Yes the Devs that buy into it get more sales. The entire point is it works for those people, if it didn’t they would have no reason to buy into it. But the people who don’t buy into it are then inherently disadvantaged.
Why would consumers want the store to not prioritize giving visibility to games on discounts during sale events?
If people want to discover games they can go to steam queue and see what is recommended that they may be interested in. But, the last thing I want a company to do is hide sales for me and pushing full retail products.
That to me would be anticonsumer. Might not be what sellers want, but visibility to discounts so my money goes further is what I want as a consumer. I go as far as using isthereanydeals to check to see if other stores sell for cheaper than Steam and alert me to targetted price drops.
That works when we’re talking about big businesses and AAA games, but the problem is when we consider indie developers, who struggle to get attention so are pressured into putting their game on sale when they don’t want to just get some attention.
And why would consumers who are trying to get the most value for their money care about that financial aspect? They aren’t a business. They are consumers looking for deals. Not to be paying full price for games as an act of charity. Many look at the store because they are looking to see what is discounted for the day. And wishlist and use deal trackers like isthereanydeals.
People who get hyped and preorder are the ones willing to pay more because they value first access. After that its mostly value based consumers left with different price thresholds. If you want the full price paying demographic you have to front load your marketing budget before the game launches.
Its like you want the store to be advertising old full priced games and suppressing sales which is the opposite of what consumers want to see.
And why would consumers who are trying to get the most value for their money care about that financial aspect? They aren’t a business. They are consumers looking for deals.
Sure if you don’t give a shit about other people, and then you can use the same logic to justify sweatshop clothes and any other shitty businesses practice you like.
You consider sales to be equivalent to sweat shops?
So do you go out of your way to avoid sales and pay full price for everything?
Anyways, pretty confused why you expect the store part of a business to not prioritize promoting sales, since that’s what consumers want in that section. The discovery queue is where titles that might be of interest is shown without regard to discounts. Its like going to the mods section and being upset there’s only mods being displayed.
Sales page prioritizing visibility to sales is coercion? Damn everything is coercion then. You must hate sites like isthereanydeals deals with them encouraging coercion. And sites like pcpartspicker encouraging coercion showing discounts. If only consumers were kept in the dark about sales. Must fill you with rage using visiting places like GOG too and seeing them showing games on sale or any site for that matter showing sales.
Again you’re only listen to a part of what I’m saying to make it more convenient to argue against.
Pc part picker is not a distributer with a functional monopoly on the pc hardware market, nor are AMD Nvidia and Intel small indie teams. That’s the key here.
Steam use their position as THE retailer of PC games as leverage to make small indie Devs put their games on ridiculous sales even when they don’t want to, just to get featured, in order to benefit themselves by being the place that has the crazy sales.
If you want a more apt example think of companies that use unpaid or underpaid inters for work in return for “the exposure” it’s very similar and widely considered exploitative.
Damn GOG is evil too for leveraging their platform to show sales? I didn’t know sales were so evil. Maybe consoles…oh no sales are everywhere being promoted. The horror. Can’t escape it. Where is the sanctuary where everything stays at retail price.
Honestly this sounds like some logic EA or Ubisoft CEO would make up to try to push the idea of sales as evil so games stay at retail prices longer or go up in price.
There are plenty of examples to the contrary of this. In particular, I know that factorio has literally never gone on sale on principle, and has only ever gone up in price upon leaving early access. Despite this, it shows up with some regularity in the store.
It’s certainly the case that Steam can be a rat race for developers to get attention, but I don’t believe your framing is accurate.
I thought about mentioning factorio in the original comment, but yeah as you say there is some exception, factorio. Being wildly popular and the game that more or less birthed an entire genre helps and even if you don’t play the same game it’s still entirely possible to succeed through word of nouth. But for less popular indie games it’s still true.
I never buy games at retail price anyways, so I do kind of get it past launch. I don’t care about buying a game until it is on sale and its a big part of why I wish list games to keep track of when they go on sale to see if its hit the price point I want.
You mean the game will only show up in the list of games that are available on sale if the games are actually in the sale? Because that’s just literally how that works
Wow, it’s like people want the games that are part of the big sale going on! How are you twisting the ability to sort by what’s on discount into being evil?
Because the big sale only happens because steam presses Devs into it in order to get promoted. So Devs that don’t buy into the sale, get sent to the back of line.
Then explain better, because at the moment all you are doing is pearl clutching about people wanting a good deal on a product they want, what would your solution be?
A way to start a fresh save. Or better yet, allow multiple saves/profiles. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to search online for where save files are located and delete them myself.
And if it’s a Steam game, you also have to worry about cloud saves undoing whatever you did. Please, just make it simple for players to do this.
for that matter, why can’t we ever add a note or a tagline to save files? too many rpg’s and console rpgs have multiple save slots, multiple endings and all that other added content jazz, but no way to internally identify the save files that matter?
Why do you want to get into a horror game in the first place, if you don’t handle horror games well? I don’t see how that could work, as shocking and horrifying the player is kind of the whole point of the game.
It also depends on the game too. I’m one of those people who hate horror tag to the guts but there are a couple games I was able to play and DDLC was one of them (The other was Neverending Nightmares).
Currently evaluating to play Needy Streamer Overload but my friends say don’t. :)
My partner played Needy Streamer Overload and loved it lol. Not sure what that means for you, but I guess any game’s worth the two hour demo that Steam gives you at least.
I might like it if it’s kinda similar to DDLC as in horror aspect. According to HLTB, one playthrough is ~2 hours, so probably won’t go that way, since I succeeded to stayed spoiler-free until now.
For some reason, I don’t see psychological horror as pure horror. At least I can tolerate it at some point, most likely not all though. :)
I just mash mod key + backspace on hyprland to kill it haha. Bye mfer!
But also sometimes lately hyprland hasn’t been playing as nice with steam games and my mouse doesn’t interact with the game. The fix I found is to fling the steam client over to the other monitor. Works I guess. Linux problems lol.
Relatedly, I’ve noticed ports of console games, particularly by Japanese devs, and especially Sqeenix, not actually having an option to quit to desktop. Sometimes hitting Esc will pop a plain system theme window with an option to close the program, but I’ve seen ones that didn’t even have that and had to be killed externally. It’s not as bad as it used to be, but even exiting DragonQuest 11 is a pain.
This is also hella common in a lot of online or multiplayer live service games recently. Forces you to alt-F4 if on PC. Especially bad with Sony’s playstation ports; they treat it like you’re on the PS5 and can just switch games to automatically close the running one.
Everything should be controllable. Give me all the options. Every graphical feature, every UI element, even gameplay mechanics. If it is as simple as adjusting a number or selecting something from a table, give me the option to control it myself.
Please let me invert y-axis for games where I control the field of view. Nothing takes me out of a game like suddenly staring at my feet when I try to look up.
I’ll tell you, the original game is just okay. It’s kind of fun, but it never really drew me in… The big wildcard here is the mod scene. Mods like Frackin’ Universe (which we are running) turn a game that holds most people’s attention for a few hours into a game that’s highly addictive, which tends to span for months on end.
Our last season was expected to run for a few weeks (that’s how long we lasted with the non-modded server). Instead, it ran something like 4-5 months. And most of us put hundreds of hours into it.
So, if you check it out, be sure to check out mods like Frackin’ Universe along with the core game. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that Frackin alone adds many times more content than the original game serves up.
It’s the perfect game for Lemmy in that respect. It’s all about free contributions (mods) from the community. They basically saw potential in a base game, and decided to create hundreds of hours of content for the entire community to enjoy. Very inspiring stuff in a somewhat darkening time in human history.
Oh, and the game is only $5-6 if you get a cd key! Be careful when using these services, but I’ve yet to be ripped off after buying dozens of games this way.
Fair enough! I put the cdkey information out there for those that can’t afford the full $15 price tag. It’s been a hard year for a lot of people, so I always try to be sensitive to that. I think I paid $10 back in the beta myself.
weren’t chucklefish the ones that strangled this game in the first place?
now take thus with a big chunk of salt, I do not remember at all if this is any true but feel like I read it somewhere
Customisable difficulty. Have a single or multiple presets balanced to what you’d like your players to experience but give me an option to adjust some of the stuff to my liking. There are SO MANY games I’d love to play way more than I do but none of the difficulty options feel “right”, bringing the whole experience down.
It’s also a great feature from an accessibility standpoint - pretty important thing for those who literally can’t play your game for reasons that could be easily worked around if such customisation was there.
“But my artistic integrity and vision!”
No, shut up. Your vision doesn’t mean squat if my experience with the game is annoying to the point where I don’t even care about the lore implication of an enemy placement or how gameplay systems intertwine with themes and story of the game. It’s important, sure, but it shouldn’t be more important than player’s enjoyment of your product.
Balance your game how you imagine it but let me play with the sliders to make it feel how I want it to. Just drop a scary message about it not being the intended way to play and it’ll be fine.
I’m generally with you, but there are implications for the online game and matchmaking in the likes of Dark Souls games. By the time they got to Elden Ring, they seemed to care way less about things like invasions.
Oh totally, I’m mostly focusing on solo and co-op titles like Terraria/Minecraft/Raft or whatever is popular for multiplayer these days. That said, it’s not like Souls games have to by played with online functionality even now - it’s already off when not in human form after all.
It’s not a perfect choice for every single title but a good chunk of games could support it without worrying about matchmaking and the like.
No, shut up. Your vision doesn’t mean squat if my experience with the game is annoying to the point where I don’t even care
Nah, miss me with this bullshit. Not every game is for you, and it doesn’t have to be. An artist is not required to water down their vision because you’re picky.
I agree to an extent but there’s a difference between “we made a specific design choice because it fits with what we want the game to convey” and “well, normal mode works like X and feels super easy to anyone experienced with gaming but on hard all the enemies are bullet sponges with 5x HP and player dies in one hit”. The latter approach brings nothing to the table and that’s what I’m against. Plus already mentioned accessibility options for those who need them.
Besides, many games ALREADY HAVE easy modes - giving me ability to adjust things manually (which in my case is usually up, not down) wouldn’t affect their vision any more than it’s already possible.
Monopoly has been one of the most popular board games for about a century, and hardly anyone plays by all of the official rules. Once I buy a game, if I want to play with house rules, I should be able to. Putting the sliders and such in game, even with the warning message mentioned above, just makes it easier to do so without having to rely on the community to make mods.
I have successfully (?) played (sometimes semi-suffered, cough, Sekiro) through a buncha popular hard games and have a way less „strong“ opinion on this but also think that an „easy mode“ as an accessibility feature is a good thing.
If, for example, a parent wants to connect with their child and also experience that game they‘re playing, it‘s really no big deal to me if they could turn on easy mode in, say, Sekiro to stand a chance. Not like it‘d impact my own experience at all, and I don‘t feel the need to force them to go through my own experience either. In Celeste, for instance, you can literally fly through the whole game if it makes you happy, and yet I still grabbed all strawberries the normal way and don‘t care if others did as well or just flew to them.
It‘s less of a demand from me and more of a „if you can you should definitely include it,“ though. Obviously doesn‘t work for full on competitive multiplayer titles or something similar though.
Not even sure how much of this addresses your remark specifically, but my feelings on this felt best placed below yours lol
Sekiro can be used to make an interesting point about easy mode. One could argue that the first playthrough is the easy mode because in new game plus you can give away Kuro’s charm which means only perfect blocks prevent chip damage. Does easy mode mean it has to easier or does it mean it has to be without challenge?
Absolutely. Normal is easy mode, charmless is normal mode and charmless with bell demon is true hard mode. After I completed a charmless run, normal really did feel so much easier.
Whether it should have a dedicated “easy” mode or not, I’m really torn. It took me months to get through my first playthrough but the sense of achievement was immense and like no other gaming experience before. I simply wouldn’t have had that feeling without the struggle. But I also have no accessibility concerns so it’s a very one sided opinion.
I’m fully of the opinion that difficulty is a matter of determination. If a quadriplegic can beat Elden Ring then I really don’t know what kind of a disability someone would have to have to not be able to play difficult games.
I’m not against difficulty options. I turn the difficulty down in some games because I think the higher difficulties simply funnel you into a certain playstyle (looking at you Bethesda). But difficulty options IMO are more of am accessibility for the sake of convenience rather than a necessity and as such I don’t think every game requires difficulty options.
Video games are the only art medium where people find it acceptable to gate-keep the art from the unskilled or the disabled.
Imagine buying a movie ticket, then the theater goes “no you aren’t good enough at watching movies to watch this movie. You only get to see the first 10 minutes. It just isn’t for you.” Imagine paying to go to a museum, and they tell you “sorry, you are only allowed to look at the art in the foyer because you aren’t good enough to enter the rest of the museum.”
Difficulty settings are, first and foremost, accessibility settings. Don’t want the game to be too easy? Don’t fucking turn down the difficulty. Saying “I don’t want the game to be easier” is really just saying “I know I don’t have any self-control, and would inevitably turn down the difficulty when I hit a roadblock.”
Video games are the only art medium where people find it acceptable to gate-keep the art from the unskilled or the disabled.
Yes, deaf people are famously well-accomodated by music, and paintings are always very accessible to the blind. Games are the first medium to ever be inaccessible to people.
Don’t want the game to be too easy? Don’t fucking turn down the difficulty. Saying “I don’t want the game to be easier” is really just saying “I know I don’t have any self-control, and would inevitably turn down the difficulty when I hit a roadblock.”
You’re complaining about players opinions, but I’m saying the artist is not required to sacrifice their vision for accessibility reasons. Not all art is for everyone, and that’s fine. You don’t have to play every game.
That’s a pretty ignorant take. I work in a music venue and art gallery as an event planner and curator, so it’s pretty funny that you listed those two things specifically. I personally know three blind artists who consistently blow me away with what they are able to produce.
One has tunnel vision, and can see an area about the size of a quarter held at arms’ length. He tends to work with textiles and wood carvings, which he can feel.
The second can see shades of brightness, but very little color; she primarily works in shades of grey or sepia. She has a bright light over her workbench, so she can see the contrast as she lays down darker material that soaks up the light.
The third went fully blind in his 20’s due to a degenerative condition. He grew up with full vision, then he had to adapt later in life as his vision degenerated. He uses paint thinner to thin out the various colors to different consistencies, so he can feel which colors are where. I have one of his prints hanging on my office wall right now, and it is absolutely breathtaking even before you learn he’s fucking blind.
Art galleries have taken steps to make things like paintings accessible to blind patrons. Unless it’s something like watercolor that soaks into the canvas and lays flat, paint has depth and texture. Especially thicker paints like oils. 3D scans of paintings allow people to feel the paint layers on printed busts. Artists like Van Gogh used paint texture as an inherent part of their piece, and galleries have attempted to turn that into a tactile experience. You haven’t truly seen Starry Night until you have seen it in person, (or at least seen a 3D scan of it). Flat prints simply don’t do it justice. And for other mediums, guided tours have descriptive service options for blind patrons.
And we get deaf/HoH patrons at concerts all the time. They enjoy the crowd experience, and they can feel the beat via vibration. Hell, I just organized a concert for next week, where we have an ASL interpreter. Deaf/HoH people regularly have music fucking blaring on kick ass sound systems. They may be able to hear certain parts of it if it’s loud enough, or maybe they just enjoy the beat. But regardless of the reason, they absolutely can enjoy music.
You gave lots of examples that accommodate these disabilities, and that’s awesome and obviously I support that!
What you aren’t arguing for anywhere in this comment is that every artist be required to do these things. Somehow game developers are exempt from this grace? You called out watercolor but don’t appear to be angry at watercolor artists like you are at game developers. Why are all games required to accommodate all people, but other art isn’t? Why is that where your line is drawn?
What you aren’t arguing for anywhere in this comment is that every artist be required to do these things. Somehow game developers are exempt from this grace? Why are all games required to accommodate people, but other art isn’t? Why is that where your line is drawn?
Quite the opposite. I fully believe that if art can be accessible, it should be. That’s why I listed things like 3D scans for oils, descriptive services, or textiles and sculptures that people can feel.
And things like ASL interpreters are legally required by law, and we as the venue can be sued if we refuse to make reasonable efforts to accommodate them. We can’t even charge those patrons extra for tickets, despite the fact that the ASL interpreter is more expensive than the entire price of their ticket. If they request it within a reasonable timeframe, we are legally obligated to hire an interpreter for the show that the patron will be at, even though we know we will lose money on it. We can’t even ask for proof that the person is deaf, because that would put an undue burden on the person with the disability; We just have to take them at their word, and hire the ASL interpreter on blind faith that they’re not forcing us to spend money extraneously.
We also have hearing assist devices integrated into our sound system, for the HoH patrons who just need a private audio feed. We can provide either wireless headphones, or a magnetic loop which hearing aids can tune into. So they have the option of controlling the volume directly with headphones, or using the hearing aids they already have and like. That cost is taken on entirely by the venue, because it allows those HoH patrons to get a similar experience as the rest of the audience. Because (again) the law requires that we make reasonable accommodations to ensure every patron (including those with disabilities) gets an equivalent experience.
As someone who regularly has to do extra work to accommodate people with disabilities: People with disabilities shouldn’t be excluded from art simply because it is extra effort to accommodate them. Accessibility isn’t something that should be optional, because it helps everyone eventually. Would you argue against accessibility ramps for building entrances, because it would ruin the architect’s artistic vision for a grand staircase? Would you argue against subtitles for a movie, because it would take up screen space that the director had intentionally used for action? Would you argue against Velcro or bungie-lace shoes, because the fashion designers had flat laces in mind when they designed it? Would you argue against audiobooks for blind people, because the author is dead and couldn’t collaborate to choose a narrator that fit their artistic vision? No? So why is other art required to take reasonable steps to provide accommodations, but video games aren’t? Why is that where your line is drawn?
Difficulty settings are, first and foremost, accessibility settings.
I’m not opposed to more options but I think this tactic is distracting and generates more pushback than it wins converts.
Are games art? I’d say so, usually. Some are more like toys than art, but many have creative expression
If they are are, must all art be accessible to all people? Well, what does accessible mean exactly? To understand it completely? Then I’d say trivially no, because there are many books that are incomprehensible to many people. No one is going to say “House of Leaves” is inaccessible and the author did a gatekeeping by writing it as such. No one is going to say Finnegans Wake is ableist because it’s hard to understand.
Must all aspects of all art be completable by all people? I’d also say trivially no. You might have a segment in French that doesn’t translate well. You can dub it or subtitle it, but the original experience will remain inaccessible unless the audience spends years mastering French.
I bring that up because some games will have within the game, not a metagame menu setting, easier or harder routes. For example, Elden Ring with a big shield and spirit ashes is significantly easier than a naked parry build. Is the expectation that everyone should be able to finish in both styles? If there’s a hard mode, must everyone be able to finish it?
Should everyone be able to trivially 100% every game?
Personally I think the floor is everyone should be able to interface with the game. Change inputs. Add subtitles.
I don’t really think “I can’t party this spear guy” is an accessibility problem the same way “I’m color blind and can’t read the text” is.
But again, I don’t care if someone wants a god-mode with auto-parry. It just feels like it’s bundling some unrelated ideas together. You’re not necessarily disabled if you’re bad at parrying in dark souls.
I think it’d be better to have assist modes than difficulty options. As difficulty is traditionally associated with changing things like health and damage (or worse, opaquely disabling mechanics) that are fundamental to game balance I think it is too easy to be abused as a cop out from having to balance the game.
Things like slowing the pace of the game, adding aim assist, visual indicators for audio cues, more lenient hit boxes, more frequent saves would be way more useful imo. Optional mechanics or modifiers can exist, but they shouldn’t be bundled with other random stuff.
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