People are asses sometimes, but whenever these conversations come up, I wonder: What do you even want from us? How are random people on the internet supposed to hold random anonymous trolls on the internet “accountable?” You can call them asses, but so? What if they don’t care? They’re anonymous. You could get mods to ban them, but if it’s a free service they can always make another anonymous account. It’s even more confusing in the context of something like an online game as opposed to a forum. What are you supposed to do about someone being an ass when you’ve probably never seen them before and probably won’t see them again?
Some people probably know them in real life. Like, you might have a friend who’s like “Yeah this [slur] wouldn’t update her mod so i posted [hateful thing] on her insta”. You could talk to them. People listen to their in-group more than randoms online.
But then again, the worst sort of people probably mostly have the worst sort of friends, and reinforce their bad behavior.
I mean, call them asses. Maybe they don’t care, maybe they do, but we keep the problem relevant by being vocal against this kind of thing. To not do anything at all is to encourage trolls.
The prevailing wisdom for dealing with trolls in the past has been report, block, and move on. You never know if someone is going to thrive on that kind of conflict and a whole lot of motherfuckers love it.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong because honestly I don’t know. I’m just sad they’re running off people contributing to their community and mad that they’re sexually harassing people.
People are not assholes just because they’re anonymous. They’re assholes because they’re sociopaths. The Internet still is the refuge for isolation and escapism. I don’t think that will change, but maybe those people will be happier in the future.
Looking forward to talking to an NPC, going to the specified location, slaughtering every man, woman, and animal in sight, then returning to the NPC for my reward in the new Something Wicked game
Lots of respect for Doug Cockle, the VA. He could use the outcry to try to get another big deal and make more money as the main character, but instead he recognizes the witcher is bigger than him or his character and is happy to have another person take the lead role and the spotlight.
Perfect example of how hopelessly out of touch these suits are. Normal humans see a speeder and think “oh nice, hoverbike thing that’s sweet”. These executives watch the movie, see that the bikes are used sparingly pretty much only during chase scenes and think “oh chase scene, that’s what people love about speeder bikes, the chase scene.”
I’ll reiterate here that I think it would be funny to see steam actually lowering their cut to 20-10% or something and the mass migrations of developers from other competing stores to steam, and finally making the other store even more insignificant. That’s what they want isn’t it? And even more funny when after the changes are applied there is no difference in price because after all, publishers get more money for free, why should they lower their profit? If anything, when the policy is reversed/back to when it was, we will only see an increase in game price lol.
The thing is when people put games on Steam they account for the fee that they take. So in a sort of way the lawsuit is right, Valve are effectively causing players to get overcharged for games.
But if I put the same game on both Steam and GoG And make the gog one 20% cheaper, I still get more sales on the Steam page. If I only have it on GOG people actually complain even when you point out that it’s cheaper that way.
So Valve are causing players to get overcharged but players are forcing publishers to put their games on Steam. So players are causing players to get overcharged, so what can you do?
Alright, I don’t have the data nor time to research it now. But just try to check the pricing on EGS when a game was exclusive there AND after the exclusive deals run out AND the game is then sold on steam. Did the price increase? Or if that feels flawed (which I get it, maybe the dev has no intensive to change the price), try to get the average cost of those exclusive AAA games from other stores and compare it with average AAA games on steam. See how different it is.
Sony's always kind of been uncool like this. Before, all PSN games weren't available on PC, so it didn't affect regions that couldn't register for PSN.
CMV: if No Man’s Sky’s gameplay was identical to Starfield in 2016, people would have been even more disappointed than they were. The only reason people gave Starfield a pass in 2023 is because we’re so conditioned to being disappointed by Bethesda that fanboys shrugged it off, and everyone else just looked at them weird. I legitimately believe NMS when it first released was a better game than Starfield.
Imo launch day nms is more varied (in generated content, at least) with less loading screens (so you get to do the fun action of atmospheric flight -> space flight yourself) - starfield is better in other ways but the end result is I find nms more fun (even on the day 1 version)
In principle, I agree, but I feel like part of that is just AAA vs. indie.
AAA games need to provide lots of lukewarm content, because many more casual players will buy them and expect much bang for their buck + haven’t seen this lukewarm content a million times already.
On the other hand, indies will basically only be bought by people more enthusiastic about the hobby. As such, they have to pick out one or two aspects and excel at them, so that it’s something new for that crowd.
Hello Games was indie and unknown at the time, so likely only attracted that gaming enthusiast crowd, which would have been more easily bored by the extremely lukewarm content in Starfield.
And I expect they were a very similar audience. So I don’t think the bar for what to expect was very different. If anything, the bar should have been much higher for the AAA game.
I’ve never read the books, but… It was clear from game 3 that she was going to play an important role in the future. The entire plot of the main campaign in Witcher 3 was about HER powers. The Wild Hunt wanted her, not Geralt.
Plus also she’s awesome anyway. What the fuck is wrong with people? Oh I can’t enjoy my vibeo game with a wahmen as main character, it’ll ruin my mood!
Honestly I’d rather be looking at a cute girl dashing around than an old man, even if I identify more with the latter. Video games are for exploring things. Fantasy worlds, dragons, wraiths… And the biggest problem with suspending disbelief is playing a character who isn’t the same gender as the player? lmao.
Maybe I’m just not enough of a gamer. Only been two and a half decades or so since I first touched a computer and played games.
Tomb Raider is not a woman protagonist game though, at least in the first game they wanted to have Indiana Jones but didn’t got the rights to it. So the developers replaced the assets with a female.
In whole series there is not much that makes her a woman, more like an American gun-maniac guy that looks like a girl.
The first game didn’t have much in the way of story. The focus was on the puzzles and adventuring. I don’t think that makes her less of a woman character. In a video game, the assets are the only difference, anyway. Not that women can’t be rough and adventurous and physical and like guns.
I’ve only played Witcher 3, and I thought it was obvious that it’s Ciri’s story being told from the perspective of the supporting cast, and that is an incredibly cool literary device.
Yeah. I haven’t played 1 much beyond the first 10 minutes, was too janky. 2 was mostly focused on the war, with Geralt being the most important character IMO. In 3 he was no longer THE most important character, but he was a close second - out of a large cast of supporting characters that aided them on the way.
Honestly the longform books take a similar approach, telling several very important people’s stories from the perspective of how their stories intertwined with Geralt’s and later Ciri’s
Plus also she’s awesome anyway. What the fuck is wrong with people? Oh I can’t enjoy my vibeo game with a wahmen as main character, it’ll ruin my mood!
That’s what I don’t understand, like, have people not played the Horizon games? They’re awesome, they’re fun as hell.
The main bullshit complaint I’ve seen about the Horizon games boils down to “Aloy doesn’t make my peepee hard”. There are dudes out there who only want to see women they can goon to.
People like Geralt, they like his brooding attitude. Making. Game about ciri means they don’t get a game with Geralt. And they really want another game with him for some reason.
Cranky brooding swordsman is kinda a one trick pony. It’s brilliant and hilarious to respond to everything no matter how threatening with just a grunt or dismissive comment, but after 3 major games, it’s time for something else
I didn’t played the game or read the books but I think if you are playing a game that is called Witcher and the Witcher himself is missing that is a big issue.
Normally you would get a new game with a new title but big companies want to use the IP and think using a known title is always better than coming up with a new title.
As I said I didn’t played Witcher 3 so dunno if it makes sense, but I wouldn’t be surprised if people are unhappy when their main character is missing in the game.
I guess if they didn’t read the books, watch the show, or play the most popular and most recent game in the series, then it is fairly reasonable for them to be confused as they won’t know shit.
Yeah so others already explained it to you, but I’ll give you a quick summary.
Witcher is kind of a job title, but to get in you pretty much join a cult that gives you mutagens that give you cool powers, but also make you infertile and I believe resistant to STDs (this is why Geralt fucks so much).
Ciri trained with the witchers of the Wolf school. I don’t remember if she went through the mutations or not, but she has elder blood so she’s already more powerful than Geralt. She’s part of an end of the world prophecy. She’s also essentially Geralt’s adoptive daughter.
By the end of Witcher 3, Geralt is getting kind of tired. There’s literally no other Witcher in the universe more deserving to be the next lead than the spacetime manipulating princess who doesn’t even want to inherit her real father’s continent spanning empire because she’d rather be a badass Witcher.
I’m trying to remember the first game I played with a female lead and I think it was portal. And that woman didn’t speak. Strangely the next was transistor and she technically didn’t speak either.
Female protags are rare. They used to be epic loot, but it’s getting better now.
I guess it’s Portal for me too. Then Oblivion with a female character with that golden armor from shivering isles for shiny boobs. I was a horny teen and porn was getting boring lol
She is great in the books. One of the most unique characters in fiction imho. CDProjekt did really well adapting the continuation of her story in the games.
It’s amazing how companies only do things after a “gobernment” scare, the fight does not stop, this isn’t just about The Crew, it’s about every game that won’t work without internet.
He focuses on the visual aspects of the game, which are indeed wonderful and contribute a lot to immersion, but to me, a host of other elements contribute at least as much to making this game stand above the rest. The writing, acting, world richness, player agency, variety of story possibilities, battle mechanics, and sound design, for example. There’s so much to love that even with all the bugs, it’s still a lot fun.
I think I agree with him. It's not just that it looks good and that it's cinematic; it's that it brings what they were doing well already to that cinematic standard that we got from the big studios for years. But those big studios were frequently sacrificing the depth of the RPG in the process. Mass Effect 1 had a full character sheet and a bunch of mechanics that never really came together. Mass Effect 2 had fairly simple skill trees. That series was good for lots of reasons, but in order to make each sequel in only 2 years, they threw away what didn't work rather than iterating on it to fix what didn't work. BG3 is iterating on Larian's previous successes and still letting us get that cinematic experience from Mass Effect. It's definitely what caught my attention when it was previously barely on my radar.
I think live play podcasts and shows might help also. I’m a big live play DND/ttrpg listener despite having never played in person with people. I bought it pretty much instantly and I’m loving how much it feels like those podcasts.
I know CRPGs based on ttrpg mechanics still hit with people back in the 90s and early 00s but I’m guessing it wasn’t the selling point. Like I’m pretty sure people didn’t buy Fallout back in 97 because it used a system that was similar to GURPS.
The Adventure Zone podcast by the McElroy brothers came out in like 2014 and the live play podcast genre skyrocketed since. Pretty much every podcast network has at least a few DND shows plus a few more using other unique systems. There’s even podcasts parodying live play like Offices and Bosses, an improv comedy where they play fantasy monsters playing DND with human characters. Theres no way people would have come up with that format before the adventure zone.
To this day, I really wish BioWare had iterated on their mechanics in Mass Effect instead of trying to make it more of a shooter in RPG clothing. I liked how certain classes could only wear certain armor or use certain weapon types, and how you had more choice in how your Shepard was built.
To be fair, audiovisual and name recognition is huge. People talk about the game as if nothing like it has ever existed. DOS 1/2, Kingmaker/WotR, PoE I/II, and many more are similar games, also varying levels of amazing, but without large cinematic budgets and mo cap and extensive voice acting and DND name recognition, they don’t even get mentioned in most comparison articles which always just go to DragonAge.
Well I have had dreams of reading books. They’re weird. Like, I know it’s a dream and the sentences don’t make any sense. But I keep reading it anyways.
I didn’t even buy Borderlands 3 for $60 and there’s no way in hell I’d pay $80 for something similar. I spent the full price of Baldur’s Gate 3 for myself and two of my friends for a total of $180. Make the game worth it and you have my money. If the development cost of games has gone up then prove it and make better games.
It and it’s DLC sold just fine because BL3 is miles above BL2 in gameplay (though yes it’s story and voice acting are painful, 2 hasn’t aged as well as many of us might remember it did in that regard, either)
Tbh I expect the same thing for this one: better gameplay, worse writing
Having seen the tonal shift in the gameplay preview I’d actually expect better writing, or at least more bearable writing. Gameplay looked more fine tuned but mostly the same as 3.
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