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.
It’s not. It’s not even a bandaid. Answeroverflow has a bad indexer and the search is useless. In my experience it produces no information of value whatsoever because all it throws back are messages devoid of context unless you read hundreds of lines of some randos conversation. God forbid the conversation lasted several days, you are better off asking chat again.
If you’re indexing the content anyway, move the whole thing to a forum since it’s the same amount of work. Indexing inside Discord is just wasted hours as more and more items will continue to pile up.
Discord is absolute trash for this type of thing, and when intermediate steps are likely the same amount of work as migrating your community, why bother other than the claim of “it’s where people are already”?
I’ll say this: props to Fandom for realizing the right thing to do. I know there was really no other good solution for them, but that hasn’t stopped many companies from being so obstinate that they cut their nose off to spite their face.
But more seriously, good for those guys buying it. I hope it goes well for them.
I feel like they have a deal with Google/search engines to have independent wikis downranked. There’s no reason why UESP should show up below the TES fandom wiki.
Every time I log into that game I like to pick a car from my garage, smoke a fatty (in RL), and then drive all slow and chill from my apartment to the golf course. Pretend like I’m afraid of getting pulled over! Then I play a quick 9 holes. Generally, after that, I’m done with GTA for another month or so.
There’s a wonderful contrarian-but-is-it-really-considering-it’s-making-the-lawful-choice delight in trying to follow the rules in a game about breaking rules.
Sorta? Multiple that make you watch your speed, for sure
Driver’s law mechanics in a mission/mode of GTA would be amazing, wanted level system from 2 included (with a way to clear your on-foot wanted, of course)
People talk about getting filtered by fromsoft bosses but the goddamn driver tutorial was the hardest shit ever; especially since it used a lot of movie terms so if you weren’t really into american movies about cars half the stuff on the list was kind of gibberish.
And that is why it would be fun to troll the worldwide players with such a tactic, at least for a little while, but the world ain’t funny anymore and they wouldn’t do that with arguably the most expected game of the decade.
TF2 is one of my highest as well, but only half as many hours as you! Lots of hats… cashed out all my unusuals for an Index.
Highest is probably Diablo II+D2R, played every day in my teens, from when I got home to when I slept. Then I started playing while botting. Has to be 3k+ hours. Never been so addicted to a video game.
Same, my most played game ever. I find it funny, at least to me, a game from 2007 thats barely supported by the dev is significantly better than the other modern derivatives of tf2 like overwatch and marvel bandwaggon money maker.
I haven’t seen a single complaint about Ciri being the protagonist of the next witcher game andI believe it’s because she isn’t a “let’s put a woman here for the quotas” type of character.
Is it here, or on the internet as a whole? I have already seen a TON of vitriol in the trailer’s comments on YouTube. They’re loudly skreeeing woke, and DEI, and even the less insane ones are “so disappointed in CDPR.”
EDIT - I spoke too soon, they’re even here in this very post.
Currently I split my time a bit on reddit and Lemmy, but at this point I don’t even bother with their gaming communities. Lemmy is miles better in that regard imo as far as discussions go.
Really? Can you share them? I saw the post on lemmy complaining about wanting male/female options, but there’s also this article with gems such as below.
This actually sounds like depression. Being unable to find joy, and then unsuccessfully searching for it in places where you used to find it. I would consider talking to a professional if you can.
If we are going down this path, I’d actually recommend touching grass first (proverbially), before a sinking time and money into a professional. It’s an easy, non-committal step, that may do wonders.
Not disagreeing with you necessarily, but ADHD also fits the bill. I’m very much a happy person at the moment, I wouldn’t change anything in my life, yet I subscribe to what OP says. Games are too long, too boring to grab my attention long enough.
I managed recently to complete GTA V because I found the story hilarious, and I only managed that by skipping all side missions. That’s the only long / AAA game I’ve managed to finish in recent years.
What helps me is understanding that if I get 5h of enjoyment out of a game rather than getting to the intended 50h playtime, that’s also valid. 5h of fun also counts as fun and this is a game, not work, so there’s no pressure to finish it.
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