I’m okay with a little chromatic aberration and vignette.
Why? It’s literally something that pro camera tools have added in-software fixes for to remove them. Like - if you’re simulating an old JVC vidicon tube camera and wanting to make something specifically look like an image capture device from a specific time, I get it, but otherwise, it just seems like a way to hide the fact that your graphics aren’t quite hitting the realism mark and you think if you obscure it a bit, players will think it looks more “real.”
I’m very aware, I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years removing them from photography projects.
For vignette, it accomplishes a lot of the same thing in games as it does in photography in general: it is a subtle focus shifter. For some games - like some photos - I enjoy that little bit of extra emphasis on the center of the screen.
For chromatic abberation, i generally avoid it in photography, but it can be used for effect. I feel like that’s also true to a point in games. Over the top CA feels like trying to watch something without 3d glasses. A little bit on the fringes can give a smidge of retro (and, oddly, futuristic) style for effectively no compute cost. It’s definitely overused though, and I tend to turn it off more often than not.
Agreed on the “shifting focus” part for vignetting specifically - but everything else… outside of specifically tailoring to fit a particular “aesthetic” I think are crutches that are generally used to obscure an overall graphical presentation in order to work in a similar way to how squinting your eyes works.
I agree that highly stylized games like “Bodycam…”
…use things like a specific kind of grain, noise, distortion, aberration, etc. to create a highly appealing visual aesthetic designed to match an actual low-fidelity police body camera, but Battlefield and CoD have much less excuse in my book.
The camera aesthetic stuff only makes sense on things like the AC-130 killstreak in CoD where you’re emulating the on-aircraft cameras actually used in the real deal.
All controls should be remappable. All means all. Not most, not some, and certainly none of this bullshit where all you can do is toggle between “XBox 360 controller layout A/XBox 360 controller layout B.” This is especially true for titles on consoles, many of which still to this very day don’t allow you to remap their controls at all.
For 3D games, field of view. Far too many developers of FPS titles in particular have Console Disease, and feel it’s somehow acceptable to lock the FOV to 70° or some absurd number. If they allow you to adjust it at all they may be feeling “generous” enough to let you go as high as 90°. That’s completely unacceptable. On my 4K monitor that’s 25" from my face, I need at least 120°. Honestly, I want to see that slider go up to 180°. That’s right, I want to be able to look at your game world like a goddamned pigeon. On that note I really have to wonder what those people with those 3840x1080 überwide monitors do most of the time, other than spending their days in never ending torment.
Allow me to turn off the stupid pre-launch splash titles. Certainly at least after the first startup. I certainly don’t need to be told that nVidia is the way it’s meant to be played, or that your company licensed Havok, or who your publisher is, or who your publisher’s owner is, or who your publisher’s owner’s owner is, etc. Nobody cares. Usually instead you have to resort to replacing the .mkv or .bik files in the game folder with zero-byte text files or something. It’s dumb.
While we’re griping, and speaking of Console-Itis, does every PC game now need to have an unskippable message telling me that this game has auto save and urging me not to turn off my PC when the icon is being displayed? Really? Nobody’s going to do that. Tell me your game is a shitty console port without telling me your game is a shitty console port. To keep this on topic, let’s have a setting to turn that off, too, because it’s stupid. Off by default would be nice. Should there be an Idiot Mode toggle?
Granularity in subtitles. It seems too many games only have two settings: All subtitles off, or they assume you’re completely deaf. Typically I want to be able to read what characters are saying in their voice lines, but instead the developers also think I need to see the bottom third of my screen filled with [BOOM] [GUNFIRE] [JUKEBOX MUSIC] [FOOTSTEPS] [BOOM] [GUNFIRE] [BOOM] [BOOM] and so on and so forth, all the time. They should either categorize sounds and make their subtitling things individually selectable, or at least if they insist on making it a slider give it three or four levels: Off, cutscene/conversation dialog only, all spoken lines (“Cover me!” “Reloading!” “Never should have come here!” etc.), and then only the top level resulting in every single cricket and rustle of grass being captioned. Some games do manage to accomplish this. Many do not.
Oh, I thought of a good one to add to my wish list. I want every game to bring back the sound test menu. But they won’t, because every studio on Earth now wants you to spend an extra $15 for their game’s soundtrack. (As if it’s not all going to be on Youtube about twelve seconds after release anyway…)
To be fair to devs, increasing the FOV has a lot of performance implications on how much less they’re culling from the scene as you rotate the camera. In this era of open world games, I suspect it scales very poorly as that FOV increases. Temporarily increasing the FOV is also one of their handy tricks for giving you a sense of speed when you hit a boost button and whatnot, so whatever your FOV is, they need to make it more than that.
Sound test menus are a remnant of arcade design, and when arcades starting dying, this feature made less sense. The OST sale is usually more of a revenue stream for the game’s composer, as I understand it.
That might be fine for consoles which have known performance limitations built in. But if I’m on my PC, let me make that decision. Don’t try to make it for me.
I understand the desire, but then that might have implications on support tickets, advertised system requirements, separate maintenance and optimizations for only one platform, etc. It might be that turning up the FOV even a smidge over their maximum requires a super computer that doesn’t even exist yet, depending on what it has to render and how it works under the hood.
Given I’ve never seen that actually become the case even in games with engines I had to apply configuration hacks to increase the FOV, I find all of that highly unlikely.
Fully remappable controls is my biggest wish. I hate WASD and swear by EDSF, but some games like Fallout 4 hardcode some controls. E is hardcoded to “interact” or “open door” or something, but the game DOES let you map “move forward” to E. So I can run around like normal, but every time I run past a door it auto opens to a zombie hiding behind it.
Allow me to turn off the stupid pre-launch splash titles.
I can guarantee that those splash titles are included because of contractual obligations. The same way a movie lists the publishing companies in the intro. Including a “skip after first launch” option would violate their contract. If it were up to a game’s director, they would almost universally prefer to drop you straight at the title screen. But they legally aren’t allowed to do so.
Oh, you want us to publish your game? We can require the game designer to show our logo for {x} seconds when the game launches. Oh, you want your game to be G-Sync compatible? Nvidia can require that you show their logo for at least {x} seconds when the game launches. Oh, you want to use our game engine to build your game? Unreal can require that you show their logo for {x} seconds when the game launches. Et cetera…
Quite famously, Unity had a reputational problem because of this. Free users were required to show the splash screen, but companies with larger war chests could pay the higher rate to skip it. It led to Unity being associated with low-budget and amateurish games, while higher quality games running on the same engine, which would be better advertising for Unity, tended to not show the logo.
Sometimes I want to blow things up and get headshots. So I’ll see if there’s a Call of Duty on sale and just play the single player. It’s rare though, and at the moment my blowing things up itch is being scratched by Space Marine.
This is why I play Ravenfield. Sure, it’s bots. But an hour session usually scratches the itch for a few months. Plus I don’t have to deal with awful lobbies and trash talk.
As much as Starfield is hated, I like how they did the difficulty settings. Each type of interaction has different settings, the easier the less XP the harder the more XP earned. I like fragmented difficulty settings, not just easy, normal, hard and nightmare fuck myself have no fun.
I didn’t realize it had gotten that bad. I bought 2x16gb DDR4 RAM in 2021 for $204 CAD. I bought the identical set for $69 in 2024. The same set (this is all on Newegg) today is $279. That is insane!
Same but I upgraded to 4x8 a while ago so I have 4x4 just sitting here and it’s worth like 20 western money units (pick a currency, doesn’t really matter)
Kingdom Hearts. The writing is equally sappy and edgy fanfic crossover slop. But there’s something so satisfying about the combat, especially after the introduction of the command deck.
I remember back when streamers and big YouTubers weren’t a thing. I watched a complete play through of kingdom hearts when i was sick. No commentary nothing. I’m still not convinced that game isn’t a fever dream. Somehow i never really heard of it, just the name and i don’t know anyone who has played it.
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?
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. 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 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.
Heroes of Might and Magic III, although I don’t think the game is bad.
What’s bad is that there’s really nothing new to it and yet from time to time I sink lots of hours into a new campaign.
It’s a kind of time machine bringing me back to more innocent times…
For the same reasons I need to beat some computer opponents in Broodwar on Big Game Hunters every once in a while.
I played a bunch of HoMM 3 but I don’t think I understood how to really play the game. That game is a lot more complex than it initially seems and it’s not trivial to me when to add new heroes, explore and split your units.
have you played HoTA(Horn of The Abyss)? its a community made expansion + rebalance of HOMM3, I found out about it this year and I have lost soooo much time to it, new towns new maps new artifacts…
I thought about this right after replying. Really, the GC, Wii and Wii U were more exception than rule with Nintendo. They’ve always liked their cartridge formats.
People seem weirdly attached to the idea of discs, in my experience. Without anything but anecdotes to back it up, I feel like people view discs as adult and cartridges as childish.
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.
A remove HUD options. I’d also like it if they put a big warning in the graphics section explaining how higher graphics can affect the game.
I see a lot of people bitching about lag, but if my shit connection and potato PC can run the game on low, I’m pretty sure the complainers need to reduce their expectations, accept that they don’t have a top of the line computer anymore and bring down their settings.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne