More stealth games that aren’t horror and don’t allow you to punch or shoot your way out of the situation, should you get caught.
If you have any weapons, make them underpowered to the point of useless in combat (eg. Thief) or you just have gadgets to use that won’t help if you get caught (except maybe something that helps you get away like smoke bombs or some shit).
At the same time, though, I don’t want that “get caught, immediate game over” thing. You should still be able to run away and hide or whatever. Just make it exciting enough that you don’t feel like you need to load up a quicksave.
Similarly (if not directly related to stealth), more espionage/spy games. Not as many as there used to be.
I’d also like more actual detective games. Zero action and preferably ones that let you fuck up a case by accusing the wrong person or making the wrong conclusions and have it impact the narrative. Like, if you get it wrong, you get it wrong and you have to live with that. There are several currently, but I’d love more.
You think about a Mix of Thief and dishonored, i guess? Least Puzzle, more Sandbox stealth but Open for the Player to approach the Situation (and Not so much Tool/scenario Drive Like the Hitman Games). I would add Safe zones/Houses as in Nobody finds you there. So you can avoid running away from every enemy on the Map, which offen Happens If you have to flee. This could add some kind of inbetween restock or Adaptation options etc. Think espionage Thrillers and so in.
Is it weird that I think of Halo 3: ODST as one of the real detective games? Not because it’s particularly dedicated to being that, but because the default ending of the game is that you don’t solve the mystery and leave unsatisfied. You’re just some grunt and what’s actually going on is above your paygrade. Learning the truth is a bit of a pain in this ass but it’s also basically half of the game’s story. I think it was a really ballsy move for what it’s worth.
…Also Goddamn how is ot that no one has managed to make something like Theif again outside of Gloomwood (which is admittedly rad as hell?) I only managed to play Theif recently and it’s still one of the best stealth games ever. Modern games need to learn how to leave the player alone for a while and let them cook.
Rezone for higher density, lower taxes, pollute the area to lower rent values and give them something else to complain about, change to office/commercial.
High rent complaints don’t really hurt your city’s operation too much, it’s just that it’s a blocker to the businesses’ profitability or residential maintenance and can’t level up.
Steam is an infinite money generator, yes, but any publicly owned company would have fucked it up for short term profits. Valve absolutely has its problems, but its focus on the long term and respecting its customers means it can make infinite money and do stuff like this.
I’m honestly not the biggest fan of the genre, but point and clicks I feel are a truly dying genre or at the very least they are so incredibly niche today
If you haven’t looked recently, you might take another look.
I felt the same way when Slay the Spire came out in 2019 – not a lot of similar games at the time, and I couldn’t figure out why more developers hadn’t made similar games, as it seemed like a very good match for indie studios. But there have been a whole lot of games that came out since then.
I get over 600 hits, almost all of which came out in the past three years. I’d say that single-player deckbuilders – and note that I’m assuming that you’re talking about deckbuilder games, not, say, solitaire implementations or similar, as I think that there are pretty good entrants there – are actually doing pretty well.
I guess I didn’t elaborate but I specifically am not looking for deckbuilding rogue likes. Think more like Inscryption act 2 where you get to collect cards and build your own deck. Something like Magic the Gathering but it’s all single player campaign.
Valve doesn’t use physical media, so there isn’t a need to enforce DRM at the hardware level
the Deck itself is sold at a small profit regardless of the configuration, so there’s no benefit to pushing users to higher-price configurations
Valve enforces its DRM in software via the OS
The biggest reasons to lock down hardware aren’t really there on the Deck. On top of that, it benefits Valve to have other devices running their storefront, so using off-the-shelf parts when possible makes it easier for others to use the Deck as a template.
I really have no idea what this comment is supposed to be about. Do you think companies like Apple don’t make buckets of money from their app store? Or their subscription services? Do you think they “need” to charge exorbitant prices for their hardware? Do you think they “need” to strike partnerships with their suppliers to ensure they can’t sell their parts to anyone else? Do you think they “need” to lock them down so that even if you’re able to obtain third party parts, they still won’t work?
Corporations don’t care about “needs”. Their goals are to extract as much money from the consumer as humanly possible.
Apple’s business model is to sell hardware, in order to “extract as much money from the consumer as humanly possible” they “need” to protect hardware sales first and foremost.
Valve’s business model is to sell software, in order to “extract […] possible” they “need” to have as much compatible hardware as possible.
You can argue that Apple’s business model is antiquated or suboptimal, but you’ll have to prove that freeing their hardware and reducing prices, would mean an equal or higher increase in benefits from their app store and subscriptions.
That is incorrect. Apple sells a wide variety of software and subscription services, including ALL apps in the App Store, with a whopping 30% share of any app purchase or in-app purchases, much like Steam.
Valve’s business model is to sell software
Valve could just as easily decide they want to profit from the hardware, just like Apple. Especially now that they’ve sold several million of them. They choose not to.
You can argue that Apple’s business model is antiquated or suboptimal
It is absolutely neither of those things. They have a brilliant business model. So much so that they’re able to sucker people into paying 100%+ more than any of their products are actually worth while simultaneously pissing in their faces and telling them it’s raining by building in a locked ecosystem, disallowing the users to decide what software they want to use, and making their hardware almost completely irreparable.
Lovecraftian horror games. There have been some games in recent years but I think there’s definitely a larger design space for this kind of thing. This could mix with other genres as well like survival and potentially rogue-like stuff.
I think that Lovecraft’s setting is actually virtually the only fictional setting where you’re spoiled for choice, because Lovecraft permitted other people to use his setting. Like, you only get to do a Star Wars game if Lucasarts licenses it, because they leverage their copyright on the setting. Most people and companies who create a setting don’t allow other people to freely use it, and copyright law permits them to make that restriction. But Lovecraft was unusual in that he specifically encouraged other people to build on his world.
Maybe Robin Hood or a small handful of others from history, like Greek or Norse mythology, that developed before copyright law had really become the norm.
I dunno. Maybe there should be some kind of Creative Commons license that permits use of setting and maybe characters, while still keeping an individual work copyrighted, to encourage creation of collaboratively-developed settings like that.
This could mix with other genres as well like survival and potentially rogue-like stuff.
One of the top entries I see on Steam – though I’ve never played it – is an Overwhelmingly Positive-rated game, Disfigure, that appears to be a Lovecraftian action roguelike that just came out a couple of months ago.
I’ve actually looked into this a little bit, and it seems that the best strategy is to have a lot of money. It doesn’t actually decrease the rent at all, and in fact makes it worse in the long run, but it keeps it from becoming a problem for YOU.
I think that if we’re doing real-history FPS games, I would like to see other conflicts. Give me a War of 1812 game or let me play as a Chinese soldier during Japan’s mid-1900s occupation or something.
People brought this up at the time, and the go-to problem with it is if you go too far back, like your 1812 example, you have to deal with reloading a gun being one of the most time-consuming actions you can perform. WWI was taboo for a while due to chemical and trench warfare, and for the most part, devs still shy away from it.
If you’re going non-fantasy (in which case you can put in whatever), I think that one factor is also that in, say, the Napoleonic era, using soldiers in formation in warfare was an important multiplier, and that’s not super-friendly to FPSes. I mean, a lot of the game would be following orders to move into a formation or move in formation.
As for weapons, you could do archery, I suppose. There have been a number of games (Thief, Skyrim, etc), that have an archer running around on their lonesome, though that probably wasn’t historically all that accurate. Well, not that having a solo character going Rambo on a World War II-and-post battlefield was necessarily all that common. If it did, it was pretty unusual:
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Staff Sergeant (then Sgt.) Hooper, U.S. Army, distinguished himself while serving as squad leader with Company D. Company D was assaulting a heavily defended enemy position along a river bank when it encountered a withering hail of fire from rockets, machine guns and automatic weapons. S/Sgt. Hooper rallied several men and stormed across the river, overrunning several bunkers on the opposite shore. Thus inspired, the rest of the company moved to the attack. With utter disregard for his own safety, he moved out under the intense fire again and pulled back the wounded, moving them to safety. During this act S/Sgt. Hooper was seriously wounded, but he refused medical aid and returned to his men. With the relentless enemy fire disrupting the attack, he single-handedly stormed 3 enemy bunkers, destroying them with hand grenade and rifle fire, and shot 2 enemy soldiers who had attacked and wounded the Chaplain. Leading his men forward in a sweep of the area, S/Sgt. Hooper destroyed 3 buildings housing enemy riflemen. At this point he was attacked by a North Vietnamese officer whom he fatally wounded with his bayonet. Finding his men under heavy fire from a house to the front, he proceeded alone to the building, killing its occupants with rifle fire and grenades. By now his initial body wound had been compounded by grenade fragments, yet despite the multiple wounds and loss of blood, he continued to lead his men against the intense enemy fire. As his squad reached the final line of enemy resistance, it received devastating fire from 4 bunkers in line on its left flank. S/Sgt. Hooper gathered several hand grenades and raced down a small trench which ran the length of the bunker line, tossing grenades into each bunker as he passed by, killing all but 2 of the occupants. With these positions destroyed, he concentrated on the last bunkers facing his men, destroying the first with an incendiary grenade and neutralizing 2 more by rifle fire. He then raced across an open field, still under enemy fire, to rescue a wounded man who was trapped in a trench. Upon reaching the man, he was faced by an armed enemy soldier whom he killed with a pistol. Moving his comrade to safety and returning to his men, he neutralized the final pocket of enemy resistance by fatally wounding 3 North Vietnamese officers with rifle fire. S/Sgt. Hooper then established a final line and reorganized his men, not accepting treatment until this was accomplished and not consenting to evacuation until the following morning. His supreme valor, inspiring leadership and heroic self-sacrifice were directly responsible for the company’s success and provided a lasting example in personal courage for every man on the field. S/Sgt. Hooper’s actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.[4]
That’s a pretty unusual MoH citation out of Vietnam, and that’d probably be about par for the course for a single – maybe part of – a WW2 FPS level. I mean, if you want realistic World Wars fighting, the largest chunk of characters would probably just be killed by random artillery fire, not pulling off 100:1+ kill ratios in infantry combat, which…isn’t all that much fun as a first-person game.
A skilled longbowman could shoot about 12 shots per minute. This rate of fire was far superior to competing weapons like the crossbow or early gunpowder weapons…
So, as to the hail of arrows, archers shooting heavy warbows confirm that releasing twelve arrows in one minute is possible, but that such a rate cannot be maintained subsequently. Practical experience argues for a shooting rate of about 5 to 6 arrows per minute being feasible over a period up to 10 minutes.
That’s definitely a lot slower-paced than a modern FPS, but it’s still a lot faster than nearly all 18th century firearms.
Skyrim kind of ignored fatigue and let you lug around a huge store of arrows and blast them without regard for your arms getting tired, so it’s not hard realism, but I think that people enjoyed the archery aspect.
Genre peaked at, like, Red Alert 3 or Starcraft II, either-or. And the only notable title in the past (N) years has been like… Age of Empires 4. Which is good but also… It’s AoE. It’ll always be more of a multiplayer oriented game yanno? Give me my cheesy campaign stories with cool hero units and/or cheesy FMV uwu
Tbf, deserts of kharrak had a cool mp mode, too, and it’s a shame it died out immediately. It is a fairly novel and unique rts in a lot of ways, and very pretty to boot, so not sure what happened. I guess the maps are all very samey
The Homeworld Series (1+2 at least) comes Info mind in general.
OP ist right though. A masterpiecish RTS ist nowwhere to ne found. I think, it has something To Do for other genres innovating out of the RTS Framework (DotA, LoL, even Pikmin).
All can be played without the mechanical sweatfest traditional RTS turn Into, but instead focussing in Player knowledge and engagement.
However, there ist the new Company of Heroes Game, though…
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