My particularly niche gripe is bad dialogue tree options. There are so many games where the mechanism is selecting an option and watching it play out, but so many of them are shit when it comes to the difference between what you see as the option and what actually is said/done. Heavy Rain did it. ‘What should the character say next? Unreadable zalgotext option A, or unreadable zalgotext option B?’ Or ones where the options on screen are ‘A) I thoroughly agree. B) I thoroughly disagree. or C) What?’ but selecting C means the character isn’t just asking for clarification because ‘What?’ actually points at the voiceline, ‘What the fuck are you talking about, you piece of inhuman filth? I bet your a murdering rapist.’ If I can’t have some idea of what selecting an option will do, I’m not actually playing a game at that point. I might as well be trying to play Mario with a controller that remaps itself randomly.
Random my little pony and other young kid games. Hate to admit it but even the paw patrol games are entertaining in this way (had a ps+ subscription, wouldn’t have paid for these). They are short and easy, and kinda junk, nice palate cleanser, and often very cute and encouraging. You don’t know a silly morale boost until you play something that says “you’re doing great!” periodically on the easiest thing you’ve done all day.
I remember an ad for Half-Life that was like “Most shooters just have you run and shoot, but Half-Life will make you think.”
It did not. The puzzles weren’t anything a toddler couldnt solve in 2 seconds, there are barely any of them anyway, and most of the game is just running and shooting.
Drag got stuck in Black Mesa at the reception area. It looks like the way forward is through the big doorway, but it’s actually through the tiny vent drag didn’t notice for 20 minutes
And same with consumers. We aren’t a charity throwing away money for no reason. We actively seek out discounts to get more for our money. We want discounts to be given priority.
UUhhhh no? Steam doesn’t automatically change games’ visibility if it’s never on sale; it makes games on sale more visible, which encourages Devs to put their games on sale, meaning people who have never seen your game have seen it and might buy it. So in the end, MORE People have bout the game than would have otherwise, and if set at the right price, the Devs still get their cash and now have a larger market. I’m so glad I took Microeconomics in High School :)
And maybe if you studied beyond highschool level you would be aware this is a well studied thing in economics. If you sell a priority service and there is a limit to the resource in some way you are shutting out the people that don’t pay. Like its the same problem as dating apps that sell priority matching, if enough people buy I to it you either have to buy into it as well just to get a fair chance, or except you will never get seem.
Yes the Devs that buy into it get more sales. The entire point is it works for those people, if it didn’t they would have no reason to buy into it. But the people who don’t buy into it are then inherently disadvantaged.
Why would consumers want the store to not prioritize giving visibility to games on discounts during sale events?
If people want to discover games they can go to steam queue and see what is recommended that they may be interested in. But, the last thing I want a company to do is hide sales for me and pushing full retail products.
That to me would be anticonsumer. Might not be what sellers want, but visibility to discounts so my money goes further is what I want as a consumer. I go as far as using isthereanydeals to check to see if other stores sell for cheaper than Steam and alert me to targetted price drops.
That works when we’re talking about big businesses and AAA games, but the problem is when we consider indie developers, who struggle to get attention so are pressured into putting their game on sale when they don’t want to just get some attention.
And why would consumers who are trying to get the most value for their money care about that financial aspect? They aren’t a business. They are consumers looking for deals. Not to be paying full price for games as an act of charity. Many look at the store because they are looking to see what is discounted for the day. And wishlist and use deal trackers like isthereanydeals.
People who get hyped and preorder are the ones willing to pay more because they value first access. After that its mostly value based consumers left with different price thresholds. If you want the full price paying demographic you have to front load your marketing budget before the game launches.
Its like you want the store to be advertising old full priced games and suppressing sales which is the opposite of what consumers want to see.
And why would consumers who are trying to get the most value for their money care about that financial aspect? They aren’t a business. They are consumers looking for deals.
Sure if you don’t give a shit about other people, and then you can use the same logic to justify sweatshop clothes and any other shitty businesses practice you like.
You consider sales to be equivalent to sweat shops?
So do you go out of your way to avoid sales and pay full price for everything?
Anyways, pretty confused why you expect the store part of a business to not prioritize promoting sales, since that’s what consumers want in that section. The discovery queue is where titles that might be of interest is shown without regard to discounts. Its like going to the mods section and being upset there’s only mods being displayed.
Sales page prioritizing visibility to sales is coercion? Damn everything is coercion then. You must hate sites like isthereanydeals deals with them encouraging coercion. And sites like pcpartspicker encouraging coercion showing discounts. If only consumers were kept in the dark about sales. Must fill you with rage using visiting places like GOG too and seeing them showing games on sale or any site for that matter showing sales.
Again you’re only listen to a part of what I’m saying to make it more convenient to argue against.
Pc part picker is not a distributer with a functional monopoly on the pc hardware market, nor are AMD Nvidia and Intel small indie teams. That’s the key here.
Steam use their position as THE retailer of PC games as leverage to make small indie Devs put their games on ridiculous sales even when they don’t want to, just to get featured, in order to benefit themselves by being the place that has the crazy sales.
If you want a more apt example think of companies that use unpaid or underpaid inters for work in return for “the exposure” it’s very similar and widely considered exploitative.
Damn GOG is evil too for leveraging their platform to show sales? I didn’t know sales were so evil. Maybe consoles…oh no sales are everywhere being promoted. The horror. Can’t escape it. Where is the sanctuary where everything stays at retail price.
Honestly this sounds like some logic EA or Ubisoft CEO would make up to try to push the idea of sales as evil so games stay at retail prices longer or go up in price.
There are plenty of examples to the contrary of this. In particular, I know that factorio has literally never gone on sale on principle, and has only ever gone up in price upon leaving early access. Despite this, it shows up with some regularity in the store.
It’s certainly the case that Steam can be a rat race for developers to get attention, but I don’t believe your framing is accurate.
I thought about mentioning factorio in the original comment, but yeah as you say there is some exception, factorio. Being wildly popular and the game that more or less birthed an entire genre helps and even if you don’t play the same game it’s still entirely possible to succeed through word of nouth. But for less popular indie games it’s still true.
I never buy games at retail price anyways, so I do kind of get it past launch. I don’t care about buying a game until it is on sale and its a big part of why I wish list games to keep track of when they go on sale to see if its hit the price point I want.
You mean the game will only show up in the list of games that are available on sale if the games are actually in the sale? Because that’s just literally how that works
Wow, it’s like people want the games that are part of the big sale going on! How are you twisting the ability to sort by what’s on discount into being evil?
Because the big sale only happens because steam presses Devs into it in order to get promoted. So Devs that don’t buy into the sale, get sent to the back of line.
Escape from Tarkov, but single player (SPTarkov, not the paid upgrade). Lots of controversy surrounding the game, but I quite enjoy it playing at my own pace and difficulty
Final Fantasy VIII impressed me in my childhood and since then I’ve finished it 4–5 times. The story is a bit of a mess and doesn’t make sense sometimes, the fighting mechanics are peculiar, but the game is very dear to my heart. Thinking about giving it another go now, ha!
As a kid I picked up VIII before VII (thanks to demo discs) and it has always been my favourite FF game despite its predecessor’s huge shadow. Learning all of the quirks of the games systems felt really rewarding, though I can understand why it didn’t appeal to many.
2-5 times a year I get really into Enlisted. It’s a really grindy free to play game, it feels like 90% of my teammates fail to work toward the objective, and every other round there’s an enemy player that paid for overpowered equipment wiping us out.
But man, it is a thrill to charge through whizzing bullets to get into the midst of the other team before firing round after round from a lee enfield bolt action. And if I am playing with friends there is constant strategic and tactical chatter that makes it so engaging.
Hah! That game is such a mess. It is so ridiculously mismanaged I doubt it will ever leave beta. There’s no matchmaking, most of the lobbys are 50%+ bots and the bots are laughably bad in all the worst ways, every single update they break something and introduce new bugs so every update has a follow-up “oops” update trying to fix what they broke. Oh man I could go on and on but despite everything the actual gunplay and the buildable spawn point tactical meta game is actually very fun.
Oh and the community! A janky Russian WW2 f2p with low moderation? Yep. It’s bad. Really bad.
It is definitely my guilty pleasure game. It’s full of bots, noobs and console players so just being half decent is enough to make you feel like Rambo out there. I’ve introduced 2 friends to it and they laughed at me for playing it. :(
Anything from Paradox, but right now it’s Europa Univeralis V. I really like some of their grand strategy staples, even if it’s an abusive relationship where they sometimes release updates that make the games worse and annoy you into buying overpriced DLC to make the last update slightly less bad. The new Crusader Kings 3 DLC is excellent, though. I hope they do more like that.
I try to be careful where I play it because the character designs are pretty uh… well the characters have huge personalities, usually. That’s not why I play the game, but I recognize some people have more of a problem with that than others so I try to be respectful about it. Also, NIKKE is a mobile gacha game, which a lot of people dislike. So I would say it counts as a guilty pleasure, although I don’t really feel guilty for playing the game.
For me, I don’t really spend money on it. Except for their two collabs with Neon Genesis Evangelion and one collab with NieR, because for me it is literally the law that I pay at least a little for IPs I really like. I am not a Whale (Richard Nixon impression lol), I am not even a Dolphin(?) I think I am called a Minnow. Whatever they call a basically F2P player that spends so rarely they might as well not spend at all. Besides, I have played for 3 years and only spent $60 total, I think that’s a pretty good deal so far.
Anyway, I like the gameplay. I realize to some people this might sound like I am saying “I read Playboy for the articles,” but hear me out.
When I was younger, I really enjoyed going to arcades. In the tail years of the arcades, newer games started to pop up, among them being lightgun games. I really enjoyed playing Time Crisis and Lethal Enforcers, and later on playing Silent Hill The Arcade, Alien, Terminator, and others. It was fun while it lasted, but now arcades are dead and game developers don’t really make those kind of games anymore. Beside my home arcade cabinet where I emulate the older games (and get a worse experience because I have neither the pizza grease and cigarette smell, nor the different shaped controllers), I don’t have new options for lightgun games these days. Then NIKKE came out and the gameplay was close enough for me that I felt that same fun of a lightgun game. I enjoy my time with the game mostly because it reminds me of the fun I had in actual arcades with lightgun games.
Far Cry games at least until 4. I like mindlessly collecting 300 map markers sometimes. Funny enough, I don‘t like 5 cause there doesn‘t seem to be a collectibles map that lets me just move up and down the map collecting everything lol
Fortnite. No story to catch up on, no true goals besides winning, no long-term strategizing. I’m sure PUBG is the same/better, but my SO is entertained by the cartoonish nature of FN. It brings us excitement when I’m close to winning. With the introduction of zero build, I fair well. I used to feel more guilt for it being a “bad” game and for not giving time to the betrer story/campaign titles, bur you know what? I’m tired and my time is limited as an actual adult. I’ll take my dopamine where I can get it, thank you.
I’m replaying Ace Combat 7 right now. I can’t believe how bad the writing is. I played it in 2020 and had a grand time with probably 6 runs for the various achievements. Turns out, I remember basically nothing of the story. It’s definitely amusing to revisit the AI story aspects now that “AI” is in full swing. I guess AC5 set my standard for AC stories, but maybe that doesn’t hold up well either. Regardless, I’m in it for the fun, respectable flight physics. Just don’t ask me where I keep 144 missiles stored.
Well certainly it had a lot of bugs. I remember there was one that bothered me when I first bought it, though that was fixed and I think more were fixed than you seem to imagine. Also being re-released on every platform hardly makes it a bad game, and special editions are only an issue if you’re buying multiple copies I’d say. All the bugs aside though I’ve never heard someone call it a bad game exactly.
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