I hate when games are open world just cause. I only ever enjoy an open world when there’s an insane amount of lore like in Skyrim or Fallout, but in most games I prefer a linear gameplay or semi-open (Mass effect, Dragon Age)
At some point something happened and literally every game has to be open world now 😭
A Plague Tale is an incredible example of what can be done with a linear design. Both Innocence and Requiem were amazing.
Open world games like the Witcher 3 leave the player with this really weird interaction with plot urgency. I’m looking for someone but just barely missed them? Hurry to the next town so I don’t miss them again? But then zero consequences when I ignore that quest for twenty levels.
And that Halo game I can’t remember what it’s called, but there’s an open world Halo game and it’s awful.
The biggest problem in that game, and in general, is the fact that, yeah it’s an open world game, but there isn’t really a lot to do, so you have to run around through the level, which is usually boring, to get to the actual next bit of the game.
It wouldn’t be so bad if they just teleported you to the next bit. Then the open world aspect could be played around with on your terms, but you could also just ignore it if you wanted. But they never do that because they’ve made an open world, and they want you to look at it.
While I don’t mind openworld games, they definitely feel off, esp. with regards to the main quest. Can’t save the world, gotta get this granny laid.
One of the only games with a open world that actually REQUIRED it for the game to make sense is Paradise Killers. It’s a detective open world game on an island. The open world makes a lot of sense, because a detective has to find their clues. It’s not a detective game if there’s a counter of “clues found” or there’s a linear progression. The game never tells you that you’re done finding clues. Like a real detective in a real open world, you have to decide whether you’ve seen enough.
I mostly dislike open-world games because of the lazy travel systems. Either you have to run everywhere or you free fast-travel from any point, too any point.
There is no middelground.
I miss games like Morrowind, where you not only had to pay for fast-travel, but it functioned more like an actual transportation system. Like, you had to go to this city and take a Strider to that town and then a boat ride to get to your destination.
Giving the world some infrastructur and natural money drainers helps with immersion and facilitates the need to go do some side-quests every now then. You get fast-travel, but you also get to see the world that was build for you. And you don’t run around as the richest douche in the world by level 10 with the best gear available because nothing costs anything.
Bethesda skipped this aspect entirely back in Oblivion and never looked back. Making your characters golden gods from the get-go, with no reason to interact with anyone or do anything except screwing around and collecting trinkets.
There’s more to it, ofcause, but this is the biggest pet-peeve I have.
Here’s one I genuinely love and hate at the same time. In Dark Souls and Elden Ring, you drop your souls/runes (currency) on the spot where you last died, and if you die again before recovering them, they’re lost forever. You get souls and runes by killing enemies and generally progressing, so this leads to some interesting scenarios.
One one hand, it incentivizes you to spend your currency (to minimize risk of losing it) instead of just sitting on it, forcing you to make decisions on how you spend it, and whether to take the risk to save up to get more expensive items or level ups. It also forces you to play very deliberately, since there’s a penalty, but only if you die twice.
But… it makes me scared to progress, because I don’t know what to expect, and I don’t want to risk losing my souls/runes. Unless I have just recently lost everything and I have nothing to lose, I feel pressured to play overly carefully and never take risks and play the game in the most fun way possible, out of fear of loss. And even when I DO die and lose my currency, the freedom to play in risky ways only lasts for a short time, because as I kill enemies I start to build up my souls or runes again, and then I’m back in the same situation of not wanting to lose them.
I think that’s the main reason why I haven’t finished Elden Ring despite getting so close to the end. That overly careful playstyle is not very fun, but I can’t get over that fear of losing my runes in order to enjoy the game more.
The run back to your body helps you build up runes too, where a game where you’re loading a save it reverts progress. The souls style allows death to create progress for people struggling. If you’re dying then you’ll be forced to build runes up and can then go level or upgrade gear.
Usually you shouldn’t be too worried about losing souls though because they’re fairly easy to come by. It’s a bit of a trap in souls games to value your souls too much. There are many ways to farm them that don’t take much time or effort, including just going exploring side content and finding new equipment. Once you level up yourself or your gear a few times, the part you were struggling with will be easier. That’s how Elden Ring especially, but even Dakr Souls, is supposed to be played. If you’re struggling and don’t want to be, just go somewhere else. There’s plenty of content to do.
This is definitely one of the things I originally didn’t like about Souls games that have come to realize is a pretty cleverly designed mechanic. Earning enough souls to purchase something shouldn’t take very long and it if is, then it means you already have what you need to be succeeding in your current area. The ‘git gud’ joke is worn out, but genuinely you just need to learn how to face off with enemies (or run past them) until they stop being scary.
The game will not let you progress without learning how to engage with the systems it presents to you. There are typically several or many viable strategies, you just have to figure out what works for you.
By the time you’re dragging yourself through a toxic poison swamp you’ll realize that your level is just a number and nothing lasts forever.
I have several hundred hours across the 3 souls games and ER, and I totally get that it’s a well designed mechanic, which is why I love it. and yeah, I know that valuing souls too much is a mental trap that prevents me from enjoying the game, but I just can’t shake it in Elden Ring for some reason, despite doing so more easily in souls games. (though, it especially sucks in DS2 because of soul memory but that’s a whole can of worms)
The souls series is one of my favorite game series of all time, and I would definitely not change the blood stain mechanic whatsoever because I think it’s about perfect. Especially with rings of sacrifice (or the weird twigs) and homeward bones to give you chances to mitigate the penalty when you really think you need to. It’s excellently designed and forces you to improve at the game.
Despite that, it still causes me hesitation and demotivates me from playing the games sometimes. I have to be in a specific mood to want to improve at a game, and I’m in that mood less often as I have more things I need to spend my time on, and usually play games just to relax and have an easier time nowadays. I still love Elden Ring to death and it’s genuinely one of the best games ever made (in my opinion), and yet I have a love/hate relationship with death mechanics in these games.
I would like a language learning video game which is set up as a MMO, and you “reverse” level. You start with massive equipment because you need it to be able to fight the learning monsters, but as you get more proficient you get hit less(fewer mistakes) and do more damage (faster language entry) so you can start dropping equipment. So the monk running around in a loin cloth is the goal. All sorts of multi-player interactions are possible around setting up conversations, handling larger readings, etc.
this sounds awesome. I don't know if it's on your radar but there's a game coming out called Newcomer that looks like a half decent language learning video game.
That's the one I was trying to remember, I'd heard about it back when it was just starting out! Unfortunately, it still doesn't support türkçe, and I'm not exactly in the position as a learner to help add it or I'd be all over that :(
I’m currently playing The Outer Worlds on the hardest difficulty which, among other things, disallowes fast-travel. For the most part, the worlds have been small and it hadn’t been a problem, but yesterday I had to go back and forth to 3 locations several times in a row in different corners of the map. It only took a five minutes each time, but ugh. It got old.
I kept reading r/Eve for years after winning. Seemed to slow down after the casino war, then the Mittani left. Just today I see that Pandemic Horde is disbanding.
I think eve might be winding down honestly. New player experience is still fucking awful and the people that had time and money in the past to dedicate to eve seem to be moving on.
Not saying it’s going to die soon probably just a gradual slow down.
I never really played that one or followed the stories on it, but I always thought it might be a good fit for me because I remember there were a lot of excited players when Excel integration was announced.
A user base excited about data and spreadsheets? Hell yeah.
Almost never. I've stopped even changing difficulties for difficult boss fights. Gives me more satisfaction and makes me feel better at games than I actually am. If I die 24 times and manage to get it on the 25th, then at least I was actually able to do it eventually. Just more fun imo. No shame in it though, just a personal preference.
The one and only time I “cheated” at Elden Ring was to spawn in some DLC weapons (hand-to-hand arts and perfume bottles) for a brand new character. Not because they were overpowered but because I hadn’t used them on any of my previous characters and they looked fun so I wanted to use them for a full playthrough. And they were quite fun. Better than I expected too, but certainly not top tier weapons.
Of course I could have just asked a friend to drop them for me instead but it was easier to just “cheat” them in :)
Yeah, I completely understand that. Sometimes you're not trying to bust your ass for some cool items, just easier to do that (idk if this is how weapons in Elden Ring work, haven't played it yet). I used to allow myself to lower the difficulty significantly in Fallen Order for one specific boss, which, imo, is fucking awful, even on medium (Knight) difficulty. I replayed the game about a week ago on the highest difficulty, and while some sections were harder than others, I only got hit once and beat it on my first try. It felt good to beat everything in the supposed hardest possible way that was intended. Having fun is the only thing that really matters, and I think that a decent amount of people have seemed to forget about that.
Same here. I’ll intentionally play on the hardest difficulty (hell, sometimes I’ll find a mod that adds even harder difficulties if there is one) and don’t mind running boss fights 50 times if that’s what it takes to beat them. Just makes it all the sweeter in the end.
Though some games take difficulty settings way too far in lazy and unfun ways. Like when Oblivion Remastered came out, I tried it on master difficulty and quickly noticed I was getting one-shot by enemies in the tutorial and was almost unable to hurt them because I was doing 6x less damage and taking 6x more. I tried it for a while but it just wasn’t fun in the slightest so I lowered it eventually.
Oblivion is pretty unbalanced imo. It was a good game, but designed strangely. I personally think that difficulty should just be about the player taking more damage, not enemies taking less as well. Leveling up making the game harder was also interesting. Worth playing though. I think I started on the medium difficulty and stayed there tbh.
I usually don’t mind enemies having more health or taking less damage, but there’s gotta be a limit, and 6x is definitely far, far above that limit. Oblivion Remastered in particular was funny, because the damage multipliers only affect you. Meaning your followers or summons deal and take normal damage from enemies. If your sword feels like a wet noodle but your allies are doing just fine, something’s wrong. The difficulty sliders in that game were just poorly designed.
I think I eventually swapped to whatever setting is right above 1x damage taken/dealt. Fights were a bit too easy imo, but at least every mud crab wasn’t practically a miniboss.
Hopefully this doesn’t count as excessive self-promotion. This is actually largely a very single-player oriented game, and as such we don’t need additional players to enjoy it by any means… this said, I thought it would be really neat to connect with other Lemmy folks and bond over Starbound!
Our group primarily uses Discord to communicate (I know, it’s a terrible platform, but it’s really hard to replace when you’re trying to keep gamers connected to one another). It’s a very active discord - we chat every single day with one another in it. It’s been a hot minute since we’ve advertised a new server, what with the country and the world being so chaotic and negative lately… but I believe distractions like Starbound can be really important!
I hope a few folks check us out. It’s a great group of people, and we enjoy some really fun games together on a regular basis.
Got a list of the mods used or does the client automatically download the required mods when connecting? Like others here I dropped it shortly after the 1.0 release and finishing the game rather quickly.
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
That was the worst. One time I had a remote desktop host software running, nothing was even connected, but it was detected first or something stupid, and I couldn’t input the game at all. What an absolute nightmare to troubleshoot. I ended up just never actually playing that game with those friends because I couldn’t, and everybody ended up not playing more of it or any of the sequels as a result.
For over-the-shoulder games, separate field-of-view AND CAMERA DISTANCE.
For player-hosted games, an option to reject hosts using unsuitable hardware or low bandwidth, high latency networks. My gripe is specific to Warframe on the Switch 1, but if the developers of any game can’t/won’t operate public game servers and choose to offload the responsibility to the players, the choice should belong to the players.
spongy bosses don’t always mean they’re challenging. I can’t count how many times I’ve fought a boss who isn’t hard or interesting but just wastes time cause they have a ton of health.
I love my older retro games, like I’m a huge Metroid fan, but jebus to Betsy, they fall for this trapping all too often.
I don’t fault them, those were the Wild West of gaming when devs were still figuring things out, but damn does it make going back to older games a bit rough.
Quests that demand that the player finds X of an unimportant item in a world which has exactly X instances of said item. Thankfully most games nowadays will offer up more of said item than needed to complete the quest, so that one doesn’t end up scouring the map over and over again, in search of that elusive last bottle/scroll/pigeon, because nobody got time for that. And not even talking about optional collectathon quests for those who want that sort of thing, some games would have this sort of quest in the main storyline.
To add, give me some way of tracking these collectables.
If I’ve collected all of the trinkets in a given area, mark that area in some way. If there are 100 trinkets, number them and give me a list. Give me a map, hints, thing that beeps, something.
I don’t need any of the above to be unlocked from the start. You can add it in the post game or after I’ve collected some percentage of them or make it a side quest.
It’s annoying going online and someone has posted “I found 99 of 100 things, where else to look?” and basically no one can help them. It’s annoying being that person, to be so close and yet so far.
It comes with documentations for the game and the mechanics. One of those has some cheats you can put in to play your way. Their previous romhack Emerald Seaglass was the same way.
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