The Masterplan is a true heist game. You know that fantasy of playing out a heist from Heat? This is that game. It’s top down, and you control all of the members of the crew. You pick your time to initiate the heist, you hold up people at gunpoint, you prevent them from being a hero, and you try your best to get out with the best score that you can. It’s a real bummer that this team never got to make another game.
But for real, i struggle to play games with wasd default and now keybind changes. Part of it is as simple as my hand is just used to using esdf and I constantly hit the wrong keys in those games. But the loss of useable keys on my pinky just feels so bad.
Used to play Warframe pretty religiously with wasd, where shift was part of a key movement combo. After a year or so, developed significant pain in my left pinky.
Shifting to esdf was damn awkward for about 2 weeks. The sheer pinky comfort though.👌
I wish I could upvote twice. It just allows so much more customization, that allows much more comfortable hand positions. I often with disable my caps lock and use A and caps lock as run and crouch.
I am unable to play Fallout 4 because E is hardcoded to be “Use.” You can change all the movement keys, but for some reason you cannot change that keybinding. So you can make E be forward movement, but every time you approach a door or chest or person you will automatically open or talk whether you want to or not.
I never understood this for first-person shooters. You can’t walk forward and backward at the same time, so I don’t see why being able to press the forward and backward movement keys at the same time would be useful at all.
Top down games with 8+ directions of movement it’s great, though.
It’s not about being able to push both movement buttons at the same time, it’s about being able to push more buttons in general. For hero shooters, mobas, MMOs, and other games with lots of inputs spreading out your reachable keys is really good.
If naughty words cause you a level of righteous indignance, my recommendation is to abstain from online activities until one reaches the age of majority
Been RDFG since about 2002. One of my roommates in college was in the top thousand on Unreal Tournament. He talked me into it. God, I get good at that game playing against him.
I remember using wsad on an ascii graphics game I played back in 85 or so. I think it was called dungeons and dragons, but was not made by tsr. Larn, hack, and Moria were all similar games but I did not play those until later.
yeah HL definitely was the one popularized it as default. quake players changed the bindings for it; i know because i played that game with old-school doom/duke controls
Of the ones I’ve played, Elden Ring. The biggest aid for new players being that if something’s too tough, you just go somewhere easier and come back later. The opening area has a boss roaming a field designed to teach you exactly that lesson.
I hate other souls like games but managed my way through Elden Ring because of this and what /u/ampersandrew said about going away and coming back after exploring and leveling a bit more.
Doesn’t linking users work differently here? I thought @ampersandrew would be the canonical way to mention users, given that it includes their instance. I’m still fairly new to Lemmy, so maybe that’s app/instance-specific
The magic is similar to Dark Souls 3. I don’t know that it’s any more overtuned or anything, but there’s a lot of fun in finding broken builds, and there are tons of them.
It is the most wizarding friendly game FromSoftware has made.
Through their other games the pattern was for wizards: the level getting to the boss was tough managing your spell uses, but then the boss was easy if you reserved enough.
In Elden Ring there are less ‘levels’ and almost none of the classic ‘runback’ to a boss if you die. So you almost always can full power a boss.
Which feels easier in comparison. Though the Elden Ring bosses were designed around that more.
I liked the magic in Elden Ring. First Souls game I played magic in and I feel it was very strong. If you’re going with sorceries, just be aware that the first magic teacher is easily missed. Look up where they are if you get too far into the game without finding more magic.
For me, the only reason to jump on a game early is if it's necessary for there to be a thriving multiplayer community to enjoy the game. That's something you would miss out on by waiting for a sale. That early stage, where everyone is still figuring out how the game works and finding new strategies, can be fun. But I rarely play multiplayer games now, so I just skip that and I don't mind.
If it's a singleplayer game, there's no reason to jump on it early -- and certainly not to enjoy it as a technical spectacle. It'll look just as good five years from now.
I remember replaying the original Half-Life in 2008 for its ten year anniversary, and thinking, "This is still fun, but the graphics are almost distractingly outdated." But when I replayed the original Mass Effect from 2007 just a couple years ago -- which was more than ten years old then -- I thought it looked just fine.
That's a really good point. Sometimes the fun you can have with the game's "multi player" community isn't in the game itself.
Baldur's Gate 3 is probably the best example I can think of. (And I don't have it, and it is really tempting for the reason you just gave.) I actually overheard two people talking about it at a coffee shop today, and three people talking about it on the train a couple weeks ago. I can't think of any other game that has been like this.
The late 90s and early 2000s were a time of rapid increases in game graphics.
We went from DOOM in 1993 with sprite enemies, abstract textures, and technical limits like not even being able to have second story rooms on top of each other to Half Life in 1998 with full 3D characters and objects, physics, and much higher resolution textures.
Jumps in graphics back then could be huge. As graphics get better though, improvements on them become diminishing returns. It stops being going from 2D to 3D or going from block head models with textures pasted on to modeled faces, and starts becoming things like subcutaneous light scattering. Things will keep looking better and better but we’ve long ago hit a baseline with graphics.
Mass Effect was made on Unreal 3. While we are currently on Unreal 5, there have been lots of games released in the intervening years that either used Unreal 3 or a modified version of it.
Yeah, while there is an improvement in graphics, it largely plateaued after the PS3/360 “HD” era. We’re fast approaching a time when a 20 year old game will still look pretty good by modern standards instead of hopelessly outdated.
We’ve also reached a point where the novelty of ultra realism has worn off. People expect certain AAA games to look realistic, but nobody is wowed by it anymore.
(Anecdote time: Personally the last time I was wowed by realistic graphics was Battlefield 3. The Frostbite 2 engine was a noticeable and impressive step up, but ever since then I haven’t felt a sense of visceral awe even if I know graphics keep getting better).
In my mind the graphics themselves barely matter as much as aspect ratio, controls (for some genres), and stability on modern hardware when it comes to judging if a game is “hopeless outdated”.
Since this comment chain started with Half-Life, I admit there’s no way around it looking dated, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes or confuse me as some really old games do (Goldeneye 64 sadly falls into this category). I understand what the game is showing me, and the gameplay, art direction, and tone hold it up for me.
The last time I can recall being wowed by graphics was when I finally got an HDTV in 2008 and saw Oblivion on it (the environment, not the ugly lump of clay people). The jump to HD was huge, but ever since then it’s been incremental advancements.
Personally I just hop in an wing it. In the case of baldurs gate I already understood most classes and races because of DND but in general when it comes to games like that yeah I just wing it and hope for the best
oh man. It’s wild how prestige games are always trying so hard to be like prestige movies and TV, but somehow they have not yet adopted the practice of the recap.
No, you have misunderstood what the rule is about.
You’re not allowed to link to pirated content, such as a download link to the Barbie movie.
But you’re free to link to places that discuss the Barbie movie, places that discuss where to watch the Barbie movie, and places that teaches you how you can rip the Barbie movie yourself.
The only things you cannot link to, are direct links to pirated content
Huh, wasn’t aware of that one! Looks like it works in a similar way, so should be good. Has a graphical user interface, too, so more approachable. Thanks!
Not to play the devils advocate but they do have an argument. Not in the physics point because physics haven’t been done to death so that part of Half-life 2 IMO is still fresh. But the rest of Half-life 2 can be dull and boring and nonsensical if played today. Half-life 2 was such a cultural shift that everything great about it has been dissected, analyzed and improved upon wherever possible.
Much like Half-life 1 the things that made the game great are industry standard now. You’re used to the greatness so all you see are the flaws. The boat section is too long, the car section is poorly paced, the story is too cryptic, the list probably goes on. But anyone who played it at launch knows how fucking sick the game is because there was nothing else like it.
Friends of mine who played at two different points far after launch still found it to be just as great, even if the physics and facial animations were no longer best in class.
I personally played it some time after Portal 2, probably 2015 or so. I found it great, particularly as far as lore and pacing are concerned. Sure, there are bits that drag, characters that aren’t well written, and plot/lore details that are too ambiguous, but I’d much rather that than hand-holdy, surface-level plot of most similar shooters, or plot told through YouTube videos and flavor text like many modern shooters. IMO, its still one of the best at what it does, and its still a personal favorite for that reason.
I still like its facial animation more than most Danes. They had tools that even set up random NPCs to have full lipsync and expressions for minor lines, without a mocap studio. Most AAA work these days doesn’t have that, or they dedicate such animation to when you’re in a zoomed in view to receive quests.
I tend to agree with this. I had given up on PC gaming by 2004 so did not play HL2 until the Orange Box on Xbox in 2007 and my reaction was “Jesus this is boring!”
I’ve tried to replay it a couple of times since then, most recently on Steam Deck, but it just doesn’t click with me and I give up around the Canals.
That’s an insane claim to me. HL2 set the bar for worldbuilding. From the guy muttering “don’t drink the water” in the train station, to the people and vortigaunts building homes in the sewers, to the stick legged stalkers waddling around the citadel, HL2 took “show don’t tell” to heart. It was the most immersive experience anyone had played in a video game up to that point, or for years after.
I’ll grant you that other games have learned a lot from it, but I would say the vast majority haven’t. Games still come out today where everything needs to be spoonfed to the player literally for them to stop and process what they’re looking at, instead of just running and gunning mindlessly.
When you say HL2 can be boring and nonsensical if played today, the first thing that comes to mind are all the people who turn movie subtitles on, and then for 75% of the runtime their eyes are in the bottom 1/3 of the screen, not taking in any of the visual information the filmmaker is putting in front of them. Like, yeah, HL2 is quite boring when you’re not looking at it.
Oof. I’ve played a lot of Balatro, but I finished blue stake and went “any more than this stops being fun.” Can’t imagine going all the way to gold for every deck. Is it just a completionist thing? Or is the challenge of it fun for you in moment to moment gameplay?
For a really long time I never thought I’d do more than one gold stake. That first one was the only completionist feeling one to me.
I later discovered Dr. Specter’s Balatro University and also watched a lot of Major League Balatro. I learned a ton and thought that maybe I’d give harder stakes another try. There’s a lot of dopamine to be had in applying theoretical knowledge to overcome something you previously thought was nearly impossible.
Black stake is a whole other beast though. Dr. Specter himself says if you really want to beat it you should be prepared to reset over and over for hours on end.
Sounds interesting! I’ll have to look into those, thanks for the mention! That last bit, I think, is what kills it for me at the higher stakes, I like having the POTENTIAL for victory every run. Having an occasional impossible run isn’t the end of the world, but when it’s more assured losses than potential wins, there’s a line
Dungeons and Dragons 5e is less fun than 3.5e IMO.
There was more of a sense of character progression, and ability differentiation in 3.5e.
5e achieves balance by flattening the power curve.
For example, the attack bonus for a level 20 Fighter in 5e is just 4 points higher than it was at level 1 - same as a 5e Wizard. Both get +2 at lvl 1 and +6 at lvl 20
In 3.5e, a level 20 fighter’s attack bonus is 19 points higher than it was at level 1 (+1 to +20), but a wizard only gains half that much fighting prowess as they level up (+0 to +10).
All 5e characters are pretty much the same statistically & mechanically. Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
I haven’t played any 3.5e proper, but I understand Pillars of Eternity 1 is largely based on it, and I’ve played a handful of the 2e games. I dig a lot of the changes in 5e. I wouldn’t say the power is so flat that the differentiation only comes down to role play; I’d say a lot of it comes from the apples and oranges comparisons between classes, like things beyond to-hit roles. Your fighter has no AoE attacks like the wizard has but has Second Wind and Action Surge, for instance. The advantage to flattening the differences a bit more is that your character’s role is less preordained (“you are playing class X, so you must be responsible for Y”) and that you are less hamstrung by the absence of one particular role, which scales better to small parties.
4e did some really cool stuff while also going a bit off the rails for me. I think overall I like 5E more, but we played a ton of 4e and I’ll always remember it fondly. I was really into the more defined roles, and how classes were a bit more self contained so they could just keep making more and more niche ones
Heartbreaking that they decided static item attack rolls and DCs was a good idea. It’s my biggest gripe with the system. Some items, like the Holy Avenger, subvert this and are pretty good, but most items suuuuuck the instant you outlevel them. Like, Sparkblade is cool, who doesn’t like chain swordbeams? Anyone over level 4, aparrently, because every creature you come across has learned to dodge lightning from that sword in particular
I feel the 5e rules are poorly organized, too. Lots of interdependent rules scattered far from each other in the books, and sometimes buried in the middle of seemingly unrelated sections, so unless you’ve memorized multiple chapters, understanding how to resolve common situations sometimes requires stopping the game for 15-30 minutes while someone digs through the books to find all the relevant factors. Even when you do find the relevant info, it’s often in ambiguous language describing what could have been made perfectly clear with a few keywords. The books are pretty, and the text might be nice to read for entertainment, but they’re pretty bad the the job of being game manuals.
Does 3.5e use the d20 system? Does it have the advantage/disadvantage mechanic? I like those aspects of 5e; they’re simple and they help keep games moving along.
Maybe I should give it a try. Or perhaps 4e, which I have read does a better job of clearly defining its gameplay mechanics.
3.5 does use d20, but lacks advantage/disadvantage in favor of doing a lot more math every moment of every round of combat. This is the biggest appeal of 5e, it’s approachable and keeps the games moving.
I wouldn’t recommend 4e, it strongly suffers from the aforementioned “everyone can do everything and feels samey” much more than 5e.
Pathfinder 1e is basically just dnd 3.5, and as others have mentioned, PF2e is more of a middle ground
Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
Can you explain why you would play a TTRPG if you’re not interested in role play? Seems like a battle sim like warhammer, or just a video game might be the thing you’re looking for.
As a DM, the cooperative story telling IS the interesting part. D&D has never been an airtight game system, it’s a bunch if hand waving to give just enough illusion of structure and randomness so you don’t feel like you’re just arbitrarily deciding everything yourselves. But at the end of the day, you are. The characters and story you’re left with is the only thing of value.
I started TTRPGs with Pathfinder (1e). Some people talk about it like some impossible thing to play. It does have a lot more detail than 5e, but it isn’t that bad. (I did play one character as a wrestler, who did grappling a lot, which is notoriously one of the most complex systems.)
5e sells itself as being simple, and it is in how little control it gives you. However, the rules are anything but simple. There’s so many contradictions and stipulations every player has to memorize. It’s a mess. For example, some spells can be used as bonus actions, but not if you’ve already cast a spell, except for some that can anyway. It’s stupid.
Pathfinder 2e seems to make things so much simpler for everything, while still giving players freedom. Actions are just actions. If you’ve got the points you can use them for anything. Movement, attacks, spells, etc. Pretty much everything just is what it says.
The TES series in general for its massive, expansive lore.
But Morrowind in particular has absolutely incredible world-building with incredible creativity and originality. There is a reason why so many people keep going back to the n’wah simulator and it’s because the world is so rich and fleshed out. So much of the following games was built off Morrowind’s stunning work.
Twice now I have tried to make a top level comment and accidentally responded to a thread instead… Anyway…
Instead of leaving this deleted I will agree wholeheartedly that while I personally am not the biggest fan of the TES series they have some of the most deep, complex and (somewhat) organized lore there is.
I just wish they would hire better script writers and weren’t so afraid of locking content behind player choices. Always having every option available just feels a little silly.
Yeah. And Skyrim really needed better VAs. That one guy who voiced Farengar just did not properly understand some of his lines and consequently butchered them.
As someone whose first TES was Morrowind, it set the bar so high in terms of worldbuilding, I was honestly a bit disappointed with the later entries into the series. Oblivion (more generic fantasy setting) and Skyrim (nordic with dragons) definitely played better, but the worlds were much less unique and memorable.
The problem isn’t that they’re private, the problem is that there’s not many to choose from. Visa gets to throw their weight around, because they have a stranglehold on a huge swath of banks and businesses. MasterCard has another big chunk, and the rest go to AmEx and Discover.
If there were more providers to choose from, this would be a non-issue, but that wouldn’t be very capitalist (/s), and I doubt the big names would simply allow new competition.
The reason there’s so few is because people don’t want to have to figure out beforehand whether or not they can use the payment provider they have at the store they want to go to.
I’ve seen this happen multiple times especially in Japan when the barcode payment craze started. There were like 13 competing payment providers and now there are 2. Because people don’t want to have to carry around 13 different types of card or payment types and have 13 different types of payments. They want one that works everywhere.
It’s why there needs to be sovereign digital payment systems that are legally enforced.
Yeah, like what need is there for these intermediaries in the first place? I get that there was probably a need once upon a time, but that seems superfluous now
In Germany we usually use Debit bank cards for payment (if something like a credit card isnt included).
The GiroCard is standard across all banks and usually every shop accepts that method.
Problem is: They don’t work on the interwebz.
where do we think we would be at at this point if electronic payments were handled by government entities? Not trying to defend Visa or Mastercard, just genuinely curious what others think.
We’d be in the same place. It’s not any better or worse for a private versus a public entity to do harm.
Also, the government is already part of this. If the DOJ told Visa, “hey, stop fucking around with that, you don’t need to be trying to control legal agreements between parties, that’s our purview” (or if they even thought the DOJ might), they’d drop this behavior in an instant. They are doing this in large part because they believe it is in line with the government’s ideology. Preemptive compliance.
Every company is headquartered somewhere, or has some market that it cannot afford to withdraw from, and that makes them all ultimately subject to said governments. No business decision is made free from pressure when it comes to governments.
Again, the issue is this is an American company setting American content policy internationally.
Storefronts and brands can set up local branches and sell through those using the local digital payment provider without getting in trouble with their headquarter’d country. They can’t do that with a private entity that’s decided to set their global content policy to align with America’s.
Again, the issue is this is an American company setting American content policy internationally.
That is not the issue. That may be the subset of the issue that you have a problem with, but the actual issue is a payment provider setting purchase restrictions period. That it is happening in the US is not uniquely bad; it would be equally bad happening anywhere else.
Interpreting the international impact to be “the issue” would mean that if this were only affecting Americans, this would be fine, which is absolutely not the case.
Storefronts and brands can set up local branches and sell through those using the local digital payment provider without getting in trouble with their headquarter’d country.
To set up and sell in that country, they then have to comply with the local payment providers. Which shouldn’t be deciding whether people can purchase something, just as Visa shouldn’t be.
Wed probably be in a similar place, but the advantage of a private entity being that it can bridge the already existing digital payments, so if a store big enough like steam had the option to, they could integrate with that country’s digital payments directly.
You probably have different gaming habits than me, or a hell of a memory. I’ve likely played over 4 thousand different games over the course of my life so far.
… Now I want to use one of those tools to try to figure out this number.
I can definitely see the appeal of being able to do stuff with the information, and I doubt I could sit down and make a list of every game I've ever played. However my memory is pretty good for this sort of thing. It's very rare for me to lose objects as I have a database-like memory for that stuff.
Amusingly this means that if someone else moves things then I'm comedically awful at searching for whatever it was, and if I move house or re-organise then it takes me a few weeks for my brain to record all the new data. Until then I'm a clueless idiot.
Oh and as I said in another comment - time is my nemesis. I often don't know what day of the week it is and anything beyond about a week and a half into the future has almost no meaning to me. It's not a very useful trade-off!
I have definitely not played 4,000 games. I tend to stick on a few games till I beat them and then I move on, sometimes returning to replay. I don’t have an astounding memory, but if a game is mentioned I’ll remember if I played it or not and that is good enough for me. If I forget a good experience, well, that’s another opportunity to have it for the “first time”, a la that old tumblr post about wanting to be able to selectively erase your memory so you could re-experience your favorite book for the first time.
If by remembering you mean “I use no tools to keep track of games I’ve played and make no special effort at remembering, either I do or I don’t”, then same. But also in the last few years I’ve been playing a lot less games than I used to (and I didn’t really play that many to start with).
No. I remember all the games I’ve played. I can’t list them all, however if you were to ask me “hey have you ever played xyz”, I would remember if I had or not.
Hmm… for me, it's less about memory and more about helping myself see a pattern of what I like and what I don't, which eventually helps me make better purchasing decisions.
Like, when I look at a list of my favorite games, I can conclusively tell you: I like challenging, replayable games with real-time action, synergy among their mechanics, and mechanical variety.
For me, this knowledge would not have been attainable if I didn't sit down and put together a list of what I like/what I don't like.
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