Subnautica legitimately made me stop and stare at my screen with mouth agape at the wonder and terror of a glowing undersea behemoth. I’ve never had a game provoke pure awe like it does.
I'm not a Linux fan, but even disregarding the OS (SteamOS vs Windows), the fact that most of these "killers" don't come with touch pads of any kind makes them an instant loss. So many PC games use a mouse, I'm not using a fiddly thumbstick in its place.
Without the trackpads, the Steam Deck would be considerably less useful. They open up a huge variety of games that would be practically unplayable with sticks alone. Disregarding them simply for more power is foolish.
Either the developers hit technical limitations of their save system and couldn’t reliably restart everything. I feel like RDR2 did this because most of their missions were very specific scripted sequences that needed to be kept on track from the start. A lot of roguelikes are unable to save during a run or within a node of that run. For example Peglin and Void Bastards. It’s much easier to say what node or position the player is at than all the AI states, combat, etc. Additionally, automatic saving has always been difficult. Everyone knows the whole “the game auto-saved and now I die instantly over and over again” bug that happens in any game. The way to negate this is to use checkpoints with areas where you know the player isn’t going to get attacked. Another way is to try to detect when you are in combat or not but this can lead to the game never saving. Overall it’s much easier to just save a state that you know the player will be okay to start back up in.
Or the designers felt like it added something to the game like in Alien Isolation. Save points allow you to exit and designers are trying to focus on keeping players playing. So save points are also an exit point. When you allow the player to save, you allow the player to exit without feeling like they must continue going. Designers use this to try to keep their games more engaging. Super Meat Boy removed a few exit points from typical platformers in order to make the game faster. A lot of games try to be so easy to keep playing that they make it hard to stop. In some ways, this can be seen as a dark pattern in game design. Typically though, designers aren’t trying to be nefarious but instead trying to keep the game engaging.
Eh, that’s honestly not a great solution. It’s a bandaid workaround. Getting better detection on when to auto-save or auto-saving at known good times is a lot better. The multiple auto-save solution is a good fallback but not the definitive answer. You could also just make the player invincible for 1-2 seconds after a save load and then also cast their position to the navmesh to make sure you save them in a place that they aren’t going to immediately fall to their death or out of the map. A lot of open-world games now just restart your character entirely leaning up against a building in the world or camping or whatever. Making it feel like the player character has their own agency and actions while you just play them for a while.
It’s also a compounding issue, that’s just one of the technical issues over many. In the end, it really depends on the type of game you are building. Every game is released incomplete, even the biggest masterpiece, the developers wanted to do something more. So you balance the technical issues between saving the real-time states or just saving off some simple data like you were at this mission in this area, with this inventory, with these player stats. Even that is a lot to keep track of and test. To then add stuff like AI states, active combat, randomization data, etc. I understand why a lot of roguelikes don’t save most of the active game data. After all, developing games is very hard and the save system is not a high priority to the general experience of the game.
No, those are all worse than just having multiple saves and more user control. I hate those approximate save systems because they force me to waste time getting back to what I was doing when I load a save.
That’s fair, you can certainly like the multiple saves and more user control. Personally, I feel like it boils down to what type of game I am playing. If I am playing a large RPG then yes, auto-save multiple times and let me have a ton of user control. if I am playing a roguelike in which a run will be over in 15 minutes, I don’t mind not having any control over my saves because I don’t care about an individual run most of the time. If I do, I spend the extra 5 minutes and finish up the run. For something like Just Cause or RDR2, I feel like their general save system is fine enough and gives a good cinematic feeling which outweighs any time I spend getting back to whatever I was trying to do. Which is typically just a few steps away from what I found.
That said I’m probably diving too deep into this stuff. I develop games for a living so I am constantly thinking about the best system for the game. I don’t think every game would be better if it had a multiple-save slot auto-save system. I can understand why it’s not in scope or would hurt the experience. If Alien Isolation had just saved where ever you are, that game wouldn’t have been as intense as it was. It’d ruin the game.
It’s fine to like the system, it works well for a lot of games but maybe it’s not a one-size fits all solution?
Ugh… I wish more developers kept their customers engaged by making good games instead of creating some meta game to keep the hamster wheel running. That feels like a lot of MMO’s…
In some cases, yes, they are trying to keep the wheel running and make the player less likely to quit by using psychology. Valve is very famous for deploying psychology in their games. Specifically DOTA and CSGO. But a lot of the time the design intent is innocent. In Super Meat Boy the intent was clearly and well stated that they didn’t want the player to blame the game and to keep them trying again as quickly as possible. If you are going to make a tough platformer then it’s clearly a good design choice to allow players to keep trying as fast as possible. With Alien Isolation, again the design intent is innocent as they are just looking to add tension and give the player some sense of relief from that tension. Most media follows a flow of tension then drops to relief a bit, then tension. If you keep the reader/player/viewer/etc tense all the time then they become dull to it. Frankly, it’s why I haven’t gone back into Red Dead 2 for about a week. The game has just mounted tension over and over again without a break to just be a cowboy. Always something to do and something to prepare for.
That’s funny I found the total opposite with red dead. Too much stupid bullshit like fishing and getting shaved and twenty minute fucking horse rides and not enough actual fun gameplay, just filler all the time. Of course I tried to play it like a completionist when I probably should’ve treated it like grand theft auto and just advanced the story by doing more missions.
I agree in that regard. It’s more story tension rather than action or shootouts. The downtime doesn’t feel like downtime to me but instead character-building. In the next parts of the game immediately something happens to that character. So they build the character up just to get you invested so when something happens it feels like it went to shit but it’s a constant rushed pace. I didn’t engage in the hunting or fishing more than what the story required as much as I am into the robbery and stuff that mainly comes from the missions but the missions bring this character drama that while really good, is too much at times.
Unfortunately email is the only way they have to verify your identity. No email, no account. But this is very much not exclusive to Rockstar.
I changed my email a couple of years ago and it's absolutely astonishing how many companies are completely unequipped to deal with someone changing or deleting their email account.
Unfortunately email is the only way they have to verify your identity. No email, no account.
That isn’t really true, I’ve restored access to multiple game accounts before in situations where I lost access to my email, it mostly involved providing information about the account that only the person using it would know, like the names of characters on it and some other stuff. If a company can’t handle this it’s because they don’t want to pay for competent customer support workers and just rely entirely on lazily coded automated systems.
Yes, things like original email and Nickname are some of those questions because after they change the public might have no way of figuring it out. Notice the support tech asked for those informations and when provided with it he said that he couldn’t verify ownership, this means OP reported wrong information for the identifying questions.
I’m not saying the service is great, asking him to access an email he claims to have lost access is dumb, but everything after that the tech support person did his best, and I don’t think he should have disabled 2FA, since it could be a social engineering attack.
Hahaha yeah. Man it seems like the further we walk in one direction the further we walk away from another.
I mean like, we’ve got so many fresh and new experiences to make our lives easier and happier, but every step we take it feels like we forget the old ones, and instead we learn new things to make us unhappy. Why can’t we make progress without losing it, or making it more complicated for ourselves?
Why I loved Nino Kuni Wrath of the White Witch it based on Studio Gibil. Excellent game and great RPG with awesome animation. The second game had potential but they turn into a grinding game. But had an awesome story as well.
Yeah I have it for the PS3. I remember pre-ordering this game. I looked it up and you can find on Steam but they want freaking 49.99 for it. Which crazy this game has to be 10 to 12 years old.
Yes, just found it on Steam but they are asking way to much for a 12 year old game. I mean I bought it new on PS3 for 40 bucks in 2013. Why is it forsale at 49.99 on Steam?
Chrono Trigger is at the way top. The greatest game of all time hasn’t been bested in 30 years. Telling the best narrative I’ve heard in my life, and packing it into 20 short hours, with timeless art and amazing music, and into FOUR GODDAMN MEGABYTES, this is one many try to beat, and none have succeeded. Not even Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
CrossCode comes right behind it. This game is much longer, but that’s okay. It’s essentially a single-player MMO with all the trappings of life within. A wonderfully smooth action combat system, more amazing music, and some of the most memorable facial expressions I’ve seen. It’s also written in freakin’ HTML5.
Zachtronics Solitaire Collection. Going purely by hours played and wins scored, this is on my favorites whether I like it or not. Every solitaire game from every Zachtronics title, right there. Special shout-out to Fortune’s Foundation.
Honorable mentions: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for the worldbuilding and music, Final Fantasy XIII for exactly the same reasons, The Talos Principle 2 for simply giving its NPCs the agency to say “nah, I don’t wanna go back, I’m staying home,” and Chaos Rings 2 for creating one of the most high-stakes yet viscerally unpleasant stories I’ve witnessed, wherein to proceed through the game, the protagonist ritually sacrifices his ever-shrinking party of people.
I wish I liked Crosscode more. I really enjoyed the writing and loved the puzzles, but the combat just didn’t feel that good to me. Ended up dropping it in the second dungeon and never picked it up again.
+1 for a Chrono Trigger ranking. For as popular as it still is in retrospect, I think people still don’t quite give it the full recognition it’s due for smashing pretty much every dreary console RPG convention that the genre had been persistently saddled with up until that point, while still remaining a console RPG. Believe it or not the developers had plans to make it even more ambitious at the beginning but they weren’t able to pull it off in the time allotted.
There are a lot of subsequent RPG titles (like even Final Fantasy goddamned Seven, not to mention Pokémon) that should have learned a bevvy of lessons from Chrono Trigger, but still didn’t. It was well ahead of its time.
CrossCode feels so much like chrono trigger to me (which is also my fav) I can’t even explain how, it’s a game on its own right with completely different gameplay but the chrono trigger essence is right there
There is one “No” she says in the story that is just … I swear they did such a good job of getting so much emotion through expressions and simple words alone, really impressive
XIII isn’t in my top 5 FF games. But the interpersonal dynamic is the absolute best in the series. The scene where Sahz discovers why his son was branded is one of the most impactful moments in gaming. Two of the most cheerful characters in the franchise, suddenly broken.
I don’t love how restricted the game is at the beginning. But each of their personal stories are magnificent, usualy leading to their Eidolon awakening.
Chrono Trigger is at the way top. The greatest game of all time hasn’t been bested in 30 years. Telling the best narrative I’ve heard in my life, and packing it into 20 short hours, with timeless art and amazing music, and into FOUR GODDAMN MEGABYTES, this is one many try to beat, and none have succeeded. Not even Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
I would lose the count of how many times I have read praises (well deserved) for Chrono Trigger, and it only makes me feel bad with myself because I left it unfinished (I am close to the 1st ending… I think) because I was lost all the damn time and needed a guide to move forward, something that I really don’t enjoy, and I didn’t have too many gaps while playing it to be fair.
I enjoy RPGs and jRPGs, even when they are not my favorite genres, but I don’t like to feel lost all the time.
Now, it should be obvious that I didn’t play this game back in its day, my last game session was about a year ago in my DSi XL (arguably the best way to experience it) so I have 0 nostalgia googles about it, although I am a Toriyama fan and I loved the art style, graphics and music, it is only the pace and the narrative that didn’t caught me completely…
I know I shouldn’t force myself to finish it as gaming is a hobby after all, but damn, I really want to complete it, at least one playthrough lol (I don’t like to leave stuff unfinished).
If anyone has tips to not feel lost all the damn time (aside of not stop playing for a brief time) I am all ears.
Unfortunately it’s a thing when going back to older games after being living in the map marker era for so long. This is a big part of why games back then came with annotated maps so you’d at least have a reference for all the locations.
I’d say at the minimum, don’t be afraid to pull up maps and take notes.
I didn’t know about this game, but honestly it is so good that others experience the same as I, of course I don’t think that I am the only one in the world that Chrono Trigger is not for him (not even sure about this myself), but definitely is so scarce to read comments of people struggling with the title compared with praises for it gets!
I love Chrono Trigger, but as far as SNES goes, Final Fantasy 6 and Secret of Mana 2 (or Trials of Mana or whatever we’re calling it now) both beat it for me.
Out of all retro JRPGs from that era, I'd say Chrono Trigger is the one that has aged the best, but it definitely is still a product of that era and that can be a bit of an acquired taste. If you haven't played any other modern JRPGs, I'd suggest checking out how the genre has evolved today, you might have an easier time getting into newer titles.
I actually started playing chrono trigger because of threads like this, but stopped playing close to the end because I wanted to do all the side quest but didn’t have the time to try things out and also played with a lot of breaks so I forgot a lot of things and therefore I started to look things up online but then it became tedious and also felt like cheating and now I can’t even motivate myself to finish it even though I am probably missing out on the best part of it.
And the people responsible were fired, right? Right?
No?
Well there’s your problem right there. That’s how common sense dies unlives on the altar of corporate profits.
Why do you think that firing someone over this is the correct response? I’m sorry but that is a really stupid mindset.
You learn and train/educate your employees so that it doesn’t happen again.
“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?”
It’s an offense that can’t be easily fixed by teaching, seeing as how that employee could have looked at a map at any time and verified that the account holder wasn’t lying. Unwillingness to access information likely cannot be fixed with forced exposure to the information they were unwilling to access.
You are simply guessing. With no way to verify your claim. For all we know, the customer support person DID google “Fort Gay VW”, and was presented with pornography. Perhaps that person should have used a dedicated map instead of a simple search. Perhaps that’s an adjustment that can be made without making someone lose their job and potentially livelihood.
You don’t just fire someone for a mistake. It’s ok to make an honest mistakes. The important part is that you learn from them.
Why would something stop being a mistake just because of post-incident actions from a third party? How does that make any sense?
Xbox Live chief enforcement officer Stephen Toulouse acknowledges the agent reviewing a fellow gamer’s complaint against Moore made a mistake.
He says keeping up with slang and policing Xbox Live for offensive language is challenging, but mistakes in judgment are rare.
Toulouse says training has since been updated.
That’s from the source Wikipedia cites.
They made a mistake, eventually it was recognized, and they claim they’ve since updated their training to prevent similar incidents in the future. Isn’t that a good outcome? The guy got his account back. And Xbox apologized and took steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again. What else do you want?
Honestly the greater issue I have is with developers that haven’t touched enough grass to realize that some people are named Gaylord or live in Cunthorpe or whatever.
That, and the stupid culture which insists that baby must only see baby words, not mean old grownup words.
The people in charge of those decisions just shouldn’t have such power. And if a user names themselves removedHater1995 you can still intervene based on reports from others.
Are devs supposes to know every single weird old name in existence beforehand and add that to a giant exception array?
They just can’t ever do anything right then.
If they do, do something. Someone fell through the cracks and Xbox sucks and devs needs to be fired.
If they don’t do anything, then the Xbox sucks because they enable racism, homophobia, harassment, etc. And devs needs to be fired.
What do you want? Besides firing everyone involved apparently. The problem got fixed. They updated their training to ensure customer support handle these cases better in the future.
This was in 2010. Have there been more of those incidents since then?
somebody who repeatedly chooses to remain ignorant, not do their job, and not look into this is NOT somebody that can be trained. they will just revert to their ways soon after trying to address it and maybe showing improvement
source: my anecdotal evidence of very single poor performer I have trained
Why imagine? It wasn’t, and if it had been, they would have been right to uphold the ban.
But making that distinction is the job and they failed to do it right. Quite possibly, as others here have suggested, out of willful ignorance. One of the worst traits I can personally imagine a person to have, and one that by now, mainstream American culture is built upon. can’t hear you
And how do you know it was a person and not an automated system?
The answer is, you don’t. You’re just guessing. You’re being outraged over an assumption you have, without any way of verifying if that is the case. Do you think that’s a healthy mindset to have?
Probably because kids would use gay as part of some random homophobic insult in their location field lol
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and the main (still sadly all too relevant) problem here is customer support not just reacting and fixing it.
So therefore the dev(s) who wrote the system should get fired? All because they enacted on tickets to stop people from using what they thought were slurs in their location tag?
What part of that do I need to think twice about? You really want this to be about some ban happy dev (that you assume is the case) that you completely skip over the real problem of customer support not managing to solve what should have been an easy fix.
If you read the sources on the wiki. You’ll see Xbox apologized and updated their training to ensure it doesn’t happen again. That sure sounds like the best outcome to what we know happened.
I appreciate the sentiment, I really do. And yes, the problem is more of a systemic one. But we need real people to personally feel the consequences of this idiocy if we want things to change for the better. Otherwise, everyone will just keep on pretending everything is fine. this is fine
Who’s to say they didn’t receive any consequences? But that consequence doesn’t mean you have to lose your job over what easily could have been an honest mistake. Bear in mind, the person (if it even was a person) that terminated the account, and the people in customer support are most likely different people. I’m not saying that customer support couldn’t have handled it better. But calling for someone to be fired as the first resort is simply not a good mindset.
I came here to say this exact same thing. Videogames are an art form, and the history of that art should be preserved, both the successes and the failures. People should be able to look back on what was a hit and what was flop, on the ideas that worked and the ones that didn’t, on the well made games and the badly made games. All of it matters, all of it is part of the same story.
I would honestly follow where your community/friends are at. The minecraft modding community is extensive and amazing at bringing endless experiences to you, and the amount of active playthroughs willing to accept new members is likely higher on Minecraft than Minetest instances.
However, if you wish to develop and mod yourself rather than play on pre-existing modded and vanilla content, I could see some great experiences from joining a community on Minetest. But to me, Minetest is a development and educational tool, not a game.
Edit: I would highly recommend playing on the Java edition of the game, rather than bedrock, and feel free to take your time exploring the wealth of updates you likely missed.
Holy fuck why did Collective Shout go full nuclear and go behind the platforms’ back and straight to the payment processors. Like they could have at least talk to the Itch.io people.
If they wanted any games banned all they had to do was talk to the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in Australia, where they’re based. Any of the games listed would have likely been added to the ‘Refused Classification’ list and thereby banned from sale and import in Australia. If they wanted them pulled from Steam or Itch entirely they could have talked to those platforms.
But they didn’t want to raise objections through appropriate preexisting channels, they wanted to push their Christian-based ideology on the whole world by going Karen on the social media of all the payment processors.
I believe while Sonic games do sell well, they aren't huge enough for Sega to focus on them. Their other franchises like Persona, SMT, Yakuza/Like A Dragon etc perform way better.
Since they abandoned their consoles Sonic has been a mascot they use for franchising. Movies, tv shows, comics, tie-ins... They probably make way more money from those than video games
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