No Denuvo
DRM-free versions (fuck every AAA client, give me the setup files and piss off)
Linux-friendly anti-cheat
If your game has an online component, release the server files so the community can self-host!
Basically, anything that preserves a game well beyond its prime.
Anti-cheat systems in general tend to be fragile to changes in the game environment.
Honestly, I used to want that, and I’ll believe that game devs could do better than they do today, but honestly, I think that the problem is, end of the day, fundamentally not a technically-solvable one. The only way you’re going to reasonably-reliably do anti-cheat stuff is going to be to have a trusted system, where the player can’t do anything to their system.
I’d say that it’s one of the stronger arguments for consoles in general versus PC gaming. On a console, the playing field is pretty much level. Everyone has the same software running on their system, the same number of frames on their screen. Maybe there might be limited differences to the controller or better latency to a server, but that’s it. It’s hard to modify the system to get that edge. A console is pretty close to the ideal system for competitive multiplayer stuff. On a PC, in a (real-time) competitive multiplayer game, someone is always going to have some level of an edge. Like, the ability to get higher resolution or more frames per second, the ability of games to scale up to use better hardware, is fundamentally something of a pay-to-win baked into the system.
There will always be a place for competitive multiplayer games, but I honestly think that a better route forward for many games is to improve game AI from where it is today and then use computer opponents more heavily. While humans make for a very smart enemy “AI” in a lot of ways, and using them may be a technically-easier problem than doing comparable enemy AI, there are also all kinds of baggage that fundamentally come with competitive multiplayer play:
Limited lifespan for the game. At some point, nobody (or not many) people will be playing the game any more, even if it doesn’t depend on the game publisher to operate online servers. At that point, the game will head into the dustbin of history – it’ll be hard to meet the threshold to get enough people together at any one time to play a game. Multiplayer games are mortal, and single-player games are immortal.
You can’t pause. Or, well, you can, but then that doesn’t scale up to many players and can create its own set of problems. A lot of people need to change an infant’s diaper or get the door or take a call. They can play against computers, but they can’t (reasonably) play against other players.
Cheating.
Griefing.
Sometimes optimal human strategy isn’t…all that much fun to actually play against. Like, I remember playing the original Team Fortress, and that a strategy was to have classes that could set up static defenses (pipe bombs, lasers, turrets, etc) set them up right atop spawn points. That may well be a good strategy in the game, but it’s also not a lot of fun for the other players.
Immersion. Doesn’t matter for all games, but for some it does. I don’t expect humans to role-play, to stay in character, because I know that it’s work and i don’t want to hassle with it myself. But, end of the day, playing against xxPussySlayer69xx is kind of immersion-breaking.
Latency is always going to be an issue. You can mitigate it a bit with prediction and engine improvements or more telecom infrastructure, but the laws of physics still place constraints on the speed of light. There are ways you can minimize it – LAN parties, if you can get enough people. Regional servers, though that guy who lives in Hawaii is always gonna just have a hard time of it. But it’s always going to be there; you’re never going to truly have a level playing field.
The game is intrinsically mandatory-online. If you have a spotty or no connection, the game doesn’t work.
Another issue is the advance of technology. If it isn’t there now, I can imagine a generic AI engine, something like Havok is for physics, becoming widespread. And as that improves, one can get more-and-more compelling AI. Plus, hardware is getting better. But humans are, well, human. Humanity isn’t getting better at being a game opponent over the years. So my long-run bet is gonna be on game AI tending to edge in on humans as an opponent for human players.
Okay so I fully agree on the use of better AI in games as competitors. The AI in games, though sometimes complex, is lacking in a lot of major games and the difficulty setting just basically amps up their damage and health instead of causing them to outplay you.
I think there are two solutions to better competitive games that reduces cheating and they’re already somewhat at work.
The first solution is implementing AI to detect cheating which has been done but very limited in scope. This will require more data collection for the user, but I fully support that if you’re being competitive and not playing casually. Why? Because in person sports also collect plenty of data on you, often even more invasive, to make sure you aren’t cheating. This can be done in collaboration with Microsoft actually because they have the ability to lock down their OS in certain ways while playing competitive games. They just haven’t bothered because no one asks. Same with Linux potentially if someone wanted to make that.
The second important improvement is to raise the stakes for someone who plays any sort of Esport game. I’m reminded of Valve requiring a phone number for CSGO because it’s easy to validate but raises the difficulty and price of cheating and bans. Having a higher price for competitive games is also entirely possible and also raises the stakes to cheat. The less accounts cheaters can buy, the better. Should it ask for a social security card? No. But I think that system bans based on hardware and IP are also important. You can also improve the value/time put into each account to make it more trustworthy. If a person plays CS for thousands of hours, make their account worth something.
And a minor third improvement would be: match people with more matches/xp/hours with other people of similar dedication at similar skill levels. That means cheaters will decrease the more you play and a cheater would have to play for far longer with cheats undetected to get to that point.
There’s plenty that can be done, companies are just doing almost nothing about the problem because cheaters make them money.
. The only way you’re going to reasonably-reliably do anti-cheat stuff is going to be to have a trusted system, where the player can’t do anything to their system.
Even then there are possible options. (hdmi splitter etc)
These stats are what I have in my head when I am deciding on what to buy. Fact is, most people on the internet are overwhelmingly negative and unable/unwilling to give games a fair shot.
This sounds critical, but look at the numbers. I have a family member who, when asked about Cyberpunk, said it was a shit game, that enemies were too spongy, driving was terrible, and said it was “literally unplayable”. (not bug related, just gameplay) When asked about story he said “Oh I only played a couple of missions”.
Like what? I’m not saying you need to play 100% of Gollum to know it’s a bad game, but come on, talk about judging a book by it’s cover. If you aren’t going to give it a fair shot then why buy it at all, just don’t buy the game?
So many people go into games expecting them to be bad, or expecting bugs/problems that guess what, you’re probably going to find something wrong with it. Maybe watch a few less reviewers ahead of time, maybe turn off the FPS counter, and I don’t know, see if you have fun playing it.
In response to cyber punk though, it's entirely possible for gameplay to be bad enough that even a good story can't save it. Personally, I had a problem getting invested in cyber punk's story because I just was not enjoying the moment to moment gameplay. Each person has subjective opinions on where that line is, so I think it's fair for someone to judge it even after just a few missions (though I agree, it might be they enjoyed it more if they gave it more time)
To be fair to your family member, a couple of missions in Cyberpunk is a couple of hours. I remember an extremely late title card in that game. That's more than a fair shake.
I may just have not the most critical taste but I recently picked up Cyberpunk (v1.6, not the latest update) and I loved it, my first AAA game, played it for 170 hours within a few weeks. The story and worldbuilding is amazing imo.
You’re right about people not giving some games a chance. Pretty sure that Cyberpunk had quite a hate hype trend at the start.
Oh it was incredibly popular to hate it. I still see threads that are CJ’ing around about how horrible it is. Because it’s fun to hate something on the internet. Now, the people who had bugs or actually “literally unplayable” statuses - genuine. That sucks, I’m sorry, but to everyone who just jumped on the hate train, well I feel bad for people who can’t enjoy things because of that.
Well, he did play the game, he’s judging the book by the first few chapters. If you don’t like any aspect of the gameplay, even if the story could be good, it’s very understandable why he dropped it.
Some people play games to get away from the challenges and struggles of their day-to-day. Others play to find new way to challenge themselves.
I like games with clear indicators of “good”, “better”, “best”, even inside wins. Having a grade, or at least some metric by which to measure just how good my success was, is fun to me. I still load Hi-Fi Rush because, even though I’ve beaten it twice over, there’s opportunities to get a higher rank in each stage or in the post-game challenge modes. I raid in FFXIV because I like trying to parse better and better every week. “Haha number go up” is a fun goal in any game where I find the gameplay engaging.
Does this mean I play games “right” or “wrong” while you do the opposite? Not at all. I’d assume we’re just there for different reasons, and that’s totally fine. The good news is there’s games for both types, and we don’t have to play them all.
I’m glad you have fun. If I were younger, I may still enjoy this. Now, I don’t even care about achievements. It’s funny that the latest game that I have the problem with is Hi-Fi Rush.
I love characters and would like to continue with the story, but thinking of grading pushed me off, while grading in Hitman doesn’t push me off somehow.
I guess it’s because I’m bad with tempo and feel that I keep getting B or lower.
I want a game that’s somewhere between Animal Crossing and Dwarf Fortress - something with the extensive world gen of DF, but with cute goofy animals, and maybe a little less grisly. So less sudden death by wildlife/zombies/collapsing ceilings, and more adorable wagon travel, trade and founding of settlements - which you then get to live in!
I go back and forth on how much of the dwarf fortress vibes to let in. Probably it’d be a bit distressing to see your adorable villager friends just straight up die. On the other hand, it would be kind of interesting to experience them getting old and passing away, plus racking up memories, hangups, traumas and complicated social connections like the dwarves do.
Me and my SO had this idea (based on where we live lol) for a game that’s like Animal Crossing where it’s all cute and you build houses and a town for cute animal characters, except they’re all shitty crackheads so like you build a park and the next day there’s shit on the floor and all the streetlights are broken, you have to fish in the river to get old bikes and shopping carts out and so on.
I want to play a game like Fallout, with perhaps a light plot, but a much heavier settlement building mechanic.
Like, you found a settlement, and it’s filled with trash, debris, and burnt-out structures. As you scavenge and collect things, and attract people to your cause, the place slowly becomes cleaner and more structured. You can have settlers scavenge for themselves and fix up structures, farm for food, treat wounded, lead small armies against mutants and generally secure an area of a map, and really be able to treat the settlement as a home base.
Playing Fallout 4, I was bothered by how I could build out all these settlements, place structures and whatnot, help these people, and still no one had the sense to pick up a broom and sweep up the pile of trash in the street.
I’m one of the foolish ones that actually pre-ordered the game. Was super hyped for it too, did a countdown till midnight so that I can start playing at launch, and I even live streamed it (and also had a few other streams going on two laptops). Took the day off to play the game as well.
The clock hit 00:00 and less than 30 minutes into the game, I ran into my first bug. I stuck was in a dialog loop and couldn’t get out no matter what I tried, so was for forced to load an earlier save. Then I got stuck somewhere else, or something funky would happen. I’d never been so utterly disappointed in a game until Cyberpunk came along. So anyways, I was so put off by it that I’d decided not to play it any further, until they patched it all up. So the first patch came along, but this time I decided to read the reviews first - still plenty of bugs. Thought I’d wait for the next one, noope, still buggy. And the next one. And the next. And then I decided to ignore the game completely, until not only they fixed the bugs, but also added QoL stuff into the game. Like better AI, better peds, better driving etc. Make the city more immersive. I mean, I had waited for so long, so might as well wait and play until it’s at it’s best version.
So, not only will I not play now, nor when 2.0 comes out, I’ll play it only when Phantom Liberty is out, and will enjoy the game, for the first-ish time, the way it was meant to be played.
Assuming of course that Phantom Liberty isn’t a dud, but having learnt from my previous experience, I might wait a bit after it comes out and see if they release a post-launch patch or something first.
Never again pre-ordering a game… unless it’s a Zelda.
I was just totally disappointed by it… it was basically “Breath of the Wild, Director’s Cut/Remake”, and I didn’t enjoy the building mechanic at all, which seems to be what they had spent most of their time working on. If I’d waited for the reviews I don’t know if I would have bought it. I definitely would have waited for a sale at least.
Valid critique. I felt like it really built on the first game in positive ways in gameplay and story. They basically hid the existence of the Depths until the games release. I spent very little time building stuff, and a lot of time fucking around in the Depths.
For a game existing in the same world as the previous title, I think it worked well for what it was. Also, far fewer people complained about Far Cry 4/Far Cry Primal having the exact same map, slightly tweaked, so the complaints about it seemed a little confusing for me.
However, I would agree that while I think it’s bigger than a DLC, it really shouldn’t have been $70 brand new, especially when they had no plans to make DLC for it.
…did a countdown till midnight so that I can start playing at launch, and I even live streamed it (and also had a few other streams going on two laptops). Took the day off to play the game as well.
Every time I read stuff like this, I just shake my head, no matter what game is being discussed. I won’t say this has NEVER worked, but certainly not for the last decade or two. Games have just evolved to the point where big budget releases are always problematic right at launch. Whether it’s full of bugs like CP2077 or it has server issues like all the “live service” games, there is always something that makes playing right at launch just not viable.
I really like having learned delayed gratification. There are plenty of great games (and shows and movies and music) that I’m happy to wait to experience later when I’m ready for them. The only issue is just time-sensitive things like spoilers from other people or games that depend on live servers/seasonal events and I try to avoid those. And being patient often means better discounts, game of the year editions, multiple DLCs, humble bundles, more mods, etc. As long as you aren’t worried about FOMO, it means you’re far less likely to be surprised or upset over the quality or price point of any particular game.
I got it yesterday too, and I think it’s fantastic. This is one of the few soulslikes that feels right.
You can tell it’s a love letter to the FromSoft games, made by people who understand what makes them fun: big intimidating bosses, different playstyles to experiment with, largely linear levels with secrets and paths that loop back on top of each other.
The difficulty feels well tuned and challenging. Some bosses have given me a little trouble, so I get to chase that high of “mastering” the fight by the time I beat them. I’m really enjoying it.
I’ve only gotten past the first major boss but I never felt like it was too difficult or too easy. A lot of the souls like games seems to struggle with the right balance of difficulty and just don’t seem to “get it”. The combat feels good, hits feel solid and I don’t feel like I’m getting screwed over. I’m really liking the game so far, the enemies and environmental storytelling are definitely souls inspired. Also, screw the chimney sweeps.
I was only able to get through the first zone yesterday because I played the beta earlier this year that showed the entire first area. I think they absolutely listened to feedback and tuned some enemies up and down.
The dodging took a little bit to get used to, but once you have a feel for it, it’s great. I honestly felt the same way about bloodborne dodging the first time I played it - it was just a little different, and I needed new muscle memory. Also FYI, I looked up the weight thresholds, and 60% is when you start moving slower.
There was nothing wrong with the gamefaqs model, not every game needs or deserves a fully fleshed out wiki. Wikis are great if you want to know more about a game universe and its characters but are pretty awful as walkthroughs.
Agreed. I could completely understand why Gamefaq FAQ creators stopped though.
It’s A LOT of work. For no payoff besides name recognition and being a good guy. If there were community built GameFAQs sure, but they’re by author. I’ve never seen a community based Walkthrough in the classic text based only format.
Pretty sure that Revanced still has google tracking since its a patched version of the official app.
Also if anyone here intends to use it: Please be careful. The real revenced site (www.revanced.app) has awfull SEO and usualy appears way below fake websites (that sometimes spread malware). The only real websites are revanced.app and the github.
Also you have to patch the app yourself for copyright reasons so don’t trust and websites that offer a direct apk of revanced (the real website offers a manager app that you can use to patch the official app)
I was of the impression that the ia doesn’t delete, but instead puts files in quarantine until copyright runs out. Else they’d have to digitize it again later.
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