Here’s one I genuinely love and hate at the same time. In Dark Souls and Elden Ring, you drop your souls/runes (currency) on the spot where you last died, and if you die again before recovering them, they’re lost forever. You get souls and runes by killing enemies and generally progressing, so this leads to some interesting scenarios.
One one hand, it incentivizes you to spend your currency (to minimize risk of losing it) instead of just sitting on it, forcing you to make decisions on how you spend it, and whether to take the risk to save up to get more expensive items or level ups. It also forces you to play very deliberately, since there’s a penalty, but only if you die twice.
But… it makes me scared to progress, because I don’t know what to expect, and I don’t want to risk losing my souls/runes. Unless I have just recently lost everything and I have nothing to lose, I feel pressured to play overly carefully and never take risks and play the game in the most fun way possible, out of fear of loss. And even when I DO die and lose my currency, the freedom to play in risky ways only lasts for a short time, because as I kill enemies I start to build up my souls or runes again, and then I’m back in the same situation of not wanting to lose them.
I think that’s the main reason why I haven’t finished Elden Ring despite getting so close to the end. That overly careful playstyle is not very fun, but I can’t get over that fear of losing my runes in order to enjoy the game more.
The run back to your body helps you build up runes too, where a game where you’re loading a save it reverts progress. The souls style allows death to create progress for people struggling. If you’re dying then you’ll be forced to build runes up and can then go level or upgrade gear.
Usually you shouldn’t be too worried about losing souls though because they’re fairly easy to come by. It’s a bit of a trap in souls games to value your souls too much. There are many ways to farm them that don’t take much time or effort, including just going exploring side content and finding new equipment. Once you level up yourself or your gear a few times, the part you were struggling with will be easier. That’s how Elden Ring especially, but even Dakr Souls, is supposed to be played. If you’re struggling and don’t want to be, just go somewhere else. There’s plenty of content to do.
This is definitely one of the things I originally didn’t like about Souls games that have come to realize is a pretty cleverly designed mechanic. Earning enough souls to purchase something shouldn’t take very long and it if is, then it means you already have what you need to be succeeding in your current area. The ‘git gud’ joke is worn out, but genuinely you just need to learn how to face off with enemies (or run past them) until they stop being scary.
The game will not let you progress without learning how to engage with the systems it presents to you. There are typically several or many viable strategies, you just have to figure out what works for you.
By the time you’re dragging yourself through a toxic poison swamp you’ll realize that your level is just a number and nothing lasts forever.
I have several hundred hours across the 3 souls games and ER, and I totally get that it’s a well designed mechanic, which is why I love it. and yeah, I know that valuing souls too much is a mental trap that prevents me from enjoying the game, but I just can’t shake it in Elden Ring for some reason, despite doing so more easily in souls games. (though, it especially sucks in DS2 because of soul memory but that’s a whole can of worms)
The souls series is one of my favorite game series of all time, and I would definitely not change the blood stain mechanic whatsoever because I think it’s about perfect. Especially with rings of sacrifice (or the weird twigs) and homeward bones to give you chances to mitigate the penalty when you really think you need to. It’s excellently designed and forces you to improve at the game.
Despite that, it still causes me hesitation and demotivates me from playing the games sometimes. I have to be in a specific mood to want to improve at a game, and I’m in that mood less often as I have more things I need to spend my time on, and usually play games just to relax and have an easier time nowadays. I still love Elden Ring to death and it’s genuinely one of the best games ever made (in my opinion), and yet I have a love/hate relationship with death mechanics in these games.
I do use that. I have a Series X but I play on PC as well. Some games aren’t available on xbox and sometimes the TV might be occupied or I might want to squeeze in some quick gaming while already at my desk.
I'm trying to make a game in this genre though I describe it as a base-building/simulation/survival game, other favourites include Oxygen Not Included, Timberborn, Factorio and Satisfactory.
I hate when games try to make you feel like you have player agency when it’s really just a cutscene and you’re pressing a button. Whether it’s a QTE or “Press F to Pay Respects.” Recently RDR2 was a huge offender of this, featuring probably half a dozen cutscenes where all you do is press W or up on the controller to walk forward or whatever you’re doing. Like there’s one where it’s probably 5 minutes of walking forward interspersed with dialogue. I understand why the developers made you walk that far. It adds to the tension and it adds to the feeling of despair that the character is currently going through. But I think it would’ve been fine if it was just a regular cutscene instead of “Press W to walk” and if you let go you stop walking, meaning you can’t even take a break.
edit: also I dislike stealth games with unrealistic “alert” systems. In a good example like Metal gear solid v, you get a solid 5 to 10 seconds if a guard is outside hearing / sight range of other guards, so even if you’re spotted you’re still fine as long as you take them out quickly and silently. And even if you dont take him out quickly, he’ll still only be able to alert people nearby or he needs to take some time to alert on the radio. On the other hand, in cyberpunk 2077 if just one guard saw you for even a fraction of a second, the entire base would be alerted. I guess lore-wise it makes sense, but from a gameplay perspective it was the least fun I had in that game. Trying to stealth my way through an entire place only for the whole thing to come crashing down because somebody saw my shoulder from 15 meters away. It came to a point where I was just going in guns blazing because stealth just wasn’t worth it.
Spider-man from 2018 was also like this. The enemy hideouts or whatever were based very heavily around the game’s stealth mechanics, but if just 1 guard became alerted, everybody would become alerted and it would start its stupid wave system. The game heavily encouraged you to take out guards silently so it didn’t send in wave after wave of them, but it was just so incredibly punishing to be silent in that game.
Yeah it makes me feel like a dumbass.
I recently bought marvels midnight suns because it was on sale, i didn't even onow it was a card game. I usually don't really play card games. The game is fine, actually i kinda like it. But the things i don't like are the things when you don't play the card game. You just awkwardly walk around in 3rd person. After every fight it's the same. You walk to a guy, go to bed, skip 3 cutscenes, walk to the forge, walk to the upgrade thing, walk to whoever you have to talk. Probably 1/3 of the game is walking the same path every ingame day.
Make an option to skip all of that. Make it a drop down menu or something.
Ehh I disagree with using RDR2 as an example, but I think QTEs in general are probably my least favorite game mechanic. I actually quite like walking around in RDR2 during the missions. A huge aspect of the game is just immersing yourself in the map/world and listening to the NPCs. I can see it getting old during replays but for me it's a hell of a lot better than watching a cutscene and being prompted to hit a button. I vividly remember fishing with Dutch and Josea for at least a half hour just listening to them chat with Arthur
Agree with you, I remember where the person is talking about, press x to walk on guarma, which did drag on, but they were shipwrecked and he didn’t know what was happening yet. Rdr gets exceptions to me because it’s so cinematic, to me the game is realistic, but so much that you aren’t playing a game, you’re watching a movie.
My issue is less that it drags on and more that it’s basically barely even gameplay. You’re pressing a button for minutes on end, then letting go when they talk, then pressing again when they walk again. It’s boring. For a game as cinematic as RDR2 you’d think they wouldn’t be afraid to just make it a cutscene. If they wanted gameplay then at least let me walk around a bit.
Right but it’s a story, it doesn’t all have to be rootin tootin cowboy shooting, the storytelling is a major part of it. It helps the player really feel like theyre expercing Arthur. I get what you’re saying, but they definitely purposefully chose these devices from a storytelling perspective.
Yes and I’m saying the made a bad decision, no matter how purposeful it is. I find your reasoning to be really flawed here. Just because they chose to tell the story that way doesn’t mean I can’t complain about it.
Remnant 2 has been a blast. I do wish there was 1 more world in it to make it feel a little more full, but I love every moment of these games.
Its crazy to find a secret area in a secret area, pick up a melee weapon, then discover that the secret secret weapon unlocks a secret area with another hidden area inside it for a super secret ability.
Remnant 2 is so great! What an unexpected surprise treat of a game! It really scratches a lot of my gamer itches at once.
I agree that I wish it had one or two more worlds to explore but there is so much replayability already, it’s easily worth the $50 price of admission. Looking forward the first big patch; hopefully they make respeccing significantly cheaper.
Honestly I wouldn’t mind the traight cap if they would just let us do loadouts and pay a small fee in our inventory to swap them.
It feels stifling to need to run to Wallace to make any build changes in traight layout.
Basically my only complaint though. I want this team to keep making these style games. I’ve always been a big fan of randomized tiles or other forms of procedural generation.
It’s incredible how they manage to still blend some of the best puzzles and lore into this system of world generation.
For me, I enjoyed D4 as a nice campaign. Played through a few times, once with my partner and another solo.
D4 pros: Impeccable game feel, moment to moment combat, graphics and even some nice storytelling. Enjoy the QoL features for alts and the myriad of endgame loops; Helltides are a lot of fun.
D4 cons: Dungeons are boring to me. Builds that feel fun and powerful are limited to 0-2 per class; a big letdown. Weird network / instance lag which stands out among the otherwise polished aesthetic. Middling open world re: exploration to reward ratio.
PoE pros: Deeeeeep. Hardcore. Aspirational? Still haven’t cleared the campaign despite getting closer each league. Lots of builds and skill variety.
PoE cons: Feels like the oldest baguette ever to exist. Wildly stiff gameplay. Ugh its such shit compared to D4. Like DMC vs Skyrim level of difference. Disparate, cheap feeling UI and tacked on storytelling. Exudes HardXCore__Statzz.xls energy and feels practically impossible to navigate a viable build without a guide.
In the end I think Grim Dawn outplays both D4 and PoE. Check it out if you love ARPGs
I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.
I love New Game + mechanics. I think it’s a travesty more games don’t have them.
I hate excessive collectathons or overly repetitious cutscenes or dialogue. I love TotK, but the end-of-shrine bit got old real fast; I found myself missing pre-BotW heart container hunts where they could just be in a chest somewhere. I also feel exhausted just thinking about all the Koroks; I like trying to 100% save games, and the Koroks start to feel like work after a couple hundred in total.
I like when fps weapon recoil moves the player view with the recoil, particularly if the view resets back to where the player was aiming as the recoil cooldown ends. It’s satisfying and also gives the player an odd feeling of agency because the recoil mechanic lets them play “can I control the hose?”
I think Achievements are useful if they’re tracked separately by each save game. Minecraft does this, and I find it helpful when I return to a world save after a long time because I can use the achievements I unlocked to help remind me what I was doing and resume from there instead of looking at what clues may have been left behind.
That only works, though, if the achievements resemble game progress. Some games use achievements as entirely optional bonus challenges…
Fair, but from back when I played a ton on my 360, a large number of a games’ achievements were progression-based, sometimes entirely. That being said, tracking optional challenges within the save game itself can also be helpful in some instances.
For example, if there are challenges that require you to not use special weapons at all, and then you violate the challenge requirements, it could be grayed out to signify that the player locked themselves out of anything related to completing that challenge in that playthrough.
Resident Evil 4: Remake already does this to a degree, though my thought is that it would be most helpful in long rpgs, where it may not be clear after loading where you are in story or what you have and haven’t done if the save hadn’t been touched in months.
Oh yeah, I’m not arguing against your idea. It would need to be implemented per game anyways, so the devs can decide themselves, whether they want their achievements to be suitable or not.
Having said that, maybe what you really want is a similar idea, which I saw pitched a while ago: Dynamic recaps.
Basically, the game would detect that you haven’t started it in a while, so could offer a quick rundown of the controls. And if you’re loading a save from a few months ago, it could offer a quick summary of your most recent milestones in the story / game progression.
So, yeah, pretty much your idea, but it’s not re-using achievements for that…
I’ve been mostly playing Risk of Rain 2, but over the weekend I finally beat it after about 30 hours lol. I honestly didn’t even try to beat it, I was just having fun killing a bunch of things. I think it’s one of the only games where I don’t feel bad losing a 1hr+ run
After finishing this game, I think I might have the confidence to go back and try to finish Enter the Gungeon. This time I might just look up a guide on how to finish it since I’ve been strictly trying to beat games without outside influence in recent years and I have no idea about anything outside of what I have discovered in the 15+ hours of gameplay I have so far
I don’t post gaming memes myself so it won’t directly affect me, but how do you count a “Monday” if taking other timezones/countries into consideration? Just curious.
This is a fair question. I was just going to base it off my pst timezone, but not every mod is there. I want to say we’re all relatively close timezone wise so I don’t think it’ll be an issue, but if it is we will discuss further
bin.pol.social
Aktywne