…but I thought performance was fine, why would something fine be their top priority? Pitchford couldn’t possibly have been talking out of his ass, could he?
He wasn’t the only founder and Embracer bought them in 2021. Later TakeTwo acquired the studio when Embracer had to restructure. They operate under 2k now so he can most surely be fired.
Also probably why he is even more of a cocky cunt nowadays. He already cashed out.
Same, got 1&2 on a humble bundle. I remember one running great, and 2 bearable on a 1gb netbook att. Cell shaded games shouldn’t be this resource intensive!
Bowties are fine for formal (social) occasions like weddings and parties. Wearing them around every day is weird. Wearing them to work is (generally) weird.
Committing to wearing them everywhere and STILL buying pre-tied ones and not learning how to tie them yourself all while being a mega douche is cringe af.
Honestly, I think he might actually fall into the category of cares more about appearing smart than being smart. Not to say he’s dumb, but I do get the sense the reputation is very important to him
Celebrities with distinct looks almost by definition have to be exceptions to this discussion. Wearing a giant clock necklace to work would absolutely be weird unless it were Flavor Flav.
i think it’s more about him having gotten used to it when he played a character on a children’s programme. he also has the face for it, which randall does not.
1 was a flawed revolution and had great dlc. 2 was … A very clear sign of stagnation but has one of the greatest badguys in multiplayer gaming.
There were a few interesting moments and side stories and unique characters after that, but for example, the transitory moment of seeing Ashley Burke come alive as Tiny Tina was once in a lifetime chance that you had to live through in that year/era. Going back now, it’s not really that special since everything is derivative and we live in the future.
Glad you enjoyed the games, I suppose. But I never really cared for the Borderlands games and reading how Pitchford is behaving makes me not want to even try the games.
I like first person shooters, the original counter strike is one of my roots. I also have many fond memories of Diablo 2 and LAN parties. Borderlands 1 was a taste of what could be and was VERY exciting, as it was trying to combine two things I loved in games and really wanted (and still do). Unfortunately, Pitchford has been driving it into the ground ever since BL1, and wasting his position at the helm. Godawful behavior aside, it’s time for him to move aside for somebody with more talent for game development or something.
If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you ever care for the borderlands games? Just for frame of perspective, I want/like to understand what people like and don’t like and why.
Was going to say… Who is out there buying games way outside their machines’ specs? Seems pretty straightforward.
I do get a little annoyed at the folks angry at BL4 using a higher end engine. Like, it does look a lot better than previous iterations. That engine upgrade wasn’t for nothing.
There are a ton of looter shooters floating around that aren’t using the Unreal 5 engine. Just play one of those instead.
Sorry but when in the world is that even remotely acceptable that you consider last Gen was outside machine specs when the developers said sure two generations ago is perfectly fine, which btw, holy crap it’s not.
There’s a difference between a game being way outside of your specs because it’s graphically very advanced and your hardware is old, and a game just being unoptimized slop that expects its users to deal with by throwing higher specs at a fixable problem.
I have a brand new 5070ti that can play all kinds of UE5 games with much better graphics than BL4 at 4k resolution with ray tracing at a decent frame rate without relying on frame gen. And I’m in the top few percentiles here.
I have a 3090 in a 7800x3d box with 64 gb ram and I had to drop from 7680x2160 to 3840x1080 to get decent framerates. I get better performance in Star Citizen. After a few CTD’s I just went ahead and got a refund.
UE5 can run fine on older hardware, but most devs either aren’t given the time to properly optimize or don’t give a fuck about it and would rather rely on upscaling and frame gen tech.
It’s hard to consider an 81 on OpenCritic to be a trainwreck. People tend to buy games that review well, especially when it’s a co-op shooter with basically no competition.
You aren’t out of touch. Even the worst games don’t get that poor of a review. When you job depends on being on their side, it turns out you can’t voice an honest opinion.
I honestly don’t know what this “trainwreck” talk is. BL3 was passable. I didn’t like the antagonists, but the game played fine if purples dropped way too much and the new guns weren’t great. People make it seem like it was the Worst Game Ever and I don’t get it. The pre-sequel was hot garbage, but 3 was fine.
there’s no nuance in anything anymore. you can’t just say “oh this isn’t really for me, honestly.”
you have to write 18 paragraphs about the fall of the video game industry because of this one game and how its hot trash, kills newborns while they sleep, etc.
I have come to accept that this is a PR campaign to plaster the name everywhere all over social media and let it worm its way into currently pissed off gamers’ heads for a few months down the line when they’ve calmed down and inevitably buy the fucking thing.
Pitchford is a slimeball. Rarely has a man who is allegedly not an insurance or used-car salesman given off such nakedly scummy vibes.
We need to stop giving free publicity to this little marketing man, and to this poorly optimised, expensive game.
I don’t think there’s anything that well thought out, and it’s just someone who takes things personally and cant resist blurting out their thoughts.
Since after what he said my thinking was even if my friends beg me to get the game on discount I wont because of how personally irritated the comments have made me.
Not casting aspersions towards you personally, but we all know how gamer boycotts go generally. As in, they don’t. People cave and buy the games anyway, once they’re over the initial outrage. This is 100% marketing.
Those people buy games regardless. But this feels like a personal challenge of being called out. Like the face popping out and going “yeah I knew you couldn’t resist bitch”. Usually there isn’t that psychological push back being put out there. It’s not needed.
We’ll see how it comes out in the sales figures, I suppose! I would like to believe you’re right but I just have absolutely not a jot of faith that people will stick to their outrage. 😂
The game already charted high on steam before he said anything. The game didn’t need customers to be directly insulted to get attention, and there’s so many better ways to get attention if controversy is the intent like saying people can’t see over 60 fps and that over 1080 is something most people don’t notice. Gamers are spoiled expecting more when 30 fps was the standard, etc.
Telling people to refund if they don’t like it is just bizzare. The game isn’t struggling for marketing. And there’s many other things that can be said. BL4 will sell just fine but if headlines and calling out consumers was effective marketing then Saints Row and Concord would have sold better. Its more BL4 will sell well inspite of Randy’s attempts to tank it.
A lot of comments tying runbacks to difficulty, when they have nothing to do with each other. I haven’t playing silksong but I played about half of the original and uninstalled it, despite the fact it is so many people’s favorite metroidvania and metroidvania is one of my favorite genres.
Not putting checkpoints close to boss fights is not difficulty. It is disrespectful of the player’s time, which is a problem hollow Knight was full of.
I liked Hollow Knight, but yes, it kind of was. Frequent destinations were far away from fast travel, and there was a low level area that they transformed into a high level area later in the game specifically so that crossing the map wouldn’t be a cake walk. I’d argue that earning the power to make an area like that into a cake walk is a core part of the fun.
Not putting checkpoints close to boss fights is not difficulty.
You're pointing a finger at the Soulslike genre here, not only HK. Some games may abandon it, but this is common enough to be called a genre stable.
Just like the "hit hit, dodge/parry, hit hit" combat pattern, losing/recovering currency, enemies respawning on bonfire use… etc.
I think this whole genre is wack, TBH. I don't even find it difficult, I just think what they test is perseverance in the face of misery and tediousness, which's a bizarre thing to test in a video game. It's almost as if it's straight up telling you: this is a serious video game, no room for fun here.
Meanwhile, Ninja Gaiden proved you can simultaneously have extreme difficulty AND fun like one million years ago.
It’s true that I’d prefer it in no games, but it’s also less frustrating in straight soulslikes. The problem with HK is that it is a synthesis of metroidvania and soulslikes in the most time-disrespecting ways possible. Really most of my frustrations are with map design, and then they add not getting maps until you find the map guy (in samey environments I can’t remember well enough without a map).
What made me put it down was playing for an hour going through multiple zones without finding either a map guy or a bench somehow then dying. I’m pretty sure just being able to see the map would have been enough to keep me playing.
For this new fangled soulsvania genre there are numerous better entries that I thoroughly enjoyed. Ender Lilies and Blasphemus are the first 2 that come to mind.
Personally I think we’d all be better off not even calling them Soulslikes, for this very reason. Full-blown Soulslikes have so many more nuances and systems that add to the experience.
Yeah, huh, apparently HK is tagged on Steam as a Souls-like, but I disagree… just brutal difficulty in a melee-heavy game isn’t enough to merit that badge, but oh, well.
Agreed. I’m not sure why I would waste my time with shit like this when it’s just objectively not fun for me to play.
Different strokes for different folks, so if you like it more power to you, but I’d rather play games that are fun to play for me.
I only have a certain amount of time to play video games, and if I can’t make any progress at all in an hour or two, why would I bother continuing when an hour or two is usually all I have in a day to play your game?
I’ve decided not to bother picking up silksong because I found HK tedious, frustrating, and unrewarding.
People who enjoy such games are clearly masochist who don’t know what a good game is if it hit them in the face. Idk why these sorts of “gamers” even exist. I long for the halcyon era where good stuff like Mario, Zelda and Sonic were the staples of hardcore gamers.
You're pointing a finger at the Soulslike genre here, not only HK. Some games may abandon it, but this is common enough to be called a genre stable.
You should try Salt and Sanctuary, Sekiro, Bloodborne, The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, or Lies of P—all had boss runbacks, and that's ignoring HK, Silksong, and the original Souls games.
Apparently I shouldn’t. But if there’s a list of soulslike games that do it, and a list of soulslike games that don’t, then it is not in fact true for the genre and is instead true for specific games.
You can make the case that it’s not a fun use of our time but how is it not tied to difficulty? Being able to get to the boss with enough health or consummables is certainly part of the intended challenge.
I haven’t played silksong, but most games like Dark Souls and the like, getting back to the boss without taking damage is pretty easy. It’s not difficulty, it’s just time.
I never actually liked FromSoft’s themselves, but several Soulslikes I really enjoyed did away with runbacks, or always had checkpoints right before bosses.
I really just want people to start evaluating each design decision Dark Souls made on its own - stop worshipping the whole as being perfect, because it most definitely is not. So many of the knowledge checks (poise, anyone?) are just there for experienced players to lord over confused shrubs.
I’m not really used to metroidvanias having runbacks honestly. Most I’ve played either have save points close to the bosses or just drop you outside the boss room if you die.
Have you considered that the run back is trying to tell you something? The game doesn’t want you to bash your face against the same enemy the same way. It may not even want you to fight that boss yet at all.
The run back is meant to be an incentive to think about your options. Do I have other areas to explore? What do I keep dying to? Am I overlooking an obvious weakness during a particular boss mechanic, or am I not using an ability as effectively as I could be to stay alive?
If you let the player immediately run back into a boss, they will veg out and do just that until they eventually get lucky and barely down a boss by the skin of their teeth. But that’s not how you should be approaching these fights.
Sometimes the most productive run back even involves a good night’s rest.
The other day, I fought the boss of the abyss in the dark souls 1 dlc. It took me 5ish attempts, and I changed my gear to have more magic resist after I got further in the fight and got merked by magic attacks. All spending 2 minutes between each attempt running back to the fog gate did was make me zone out and wish I could just get right back to it.
Btw, the original runback was mega man, where you get to try the boss until you run out of lives then you have to do the entire level again. Still way more interesting than running past everything in souls games.
Do you believe DS and Megaman could have been even more iconic if they had listened to players and made their runs back shorter?
My point is, it’s not like the designers didn’t know what they were doing, this is a very obvious aspect of their gameplay. And regardless of how minor inconveniences like this make us feel as players, we don’t know that it’s not precisely those lows that contrast with the highs to create the intended experiences which made those games cult hits to begin with. You wouldn’t look at a Rembrandt and say, “look how much of the painting is just black! You’re wasting all this space! You could add so much detail and context in there!”
I’m a firm believer that “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. If players weren’t complaining about the run back, then they would be complaining about the empty flask drinking animation. Inconvenience is not a convincing argument to me. Just like any art, games are free to evoke any and all emotions. It only becomes a problem if the emotion they keep evoking is boredom lol. But even then, boredom is a valid tool on the artist’s palette; sometimes the only ones who are getting bored are the boring people.
I loved Ender’s Lilies and it had save points outside the boss rooms. I do not believe the game would have been more iconic if I had to run through several rooms of enemies before fighting a boss again.
The joy of victory came from overcoming a difficult fight, not from avoiding a tedious repeat.
Have you considered that the run back is trying to tell you something? The game doesn’t want you to bash your face against the same enemy the same way. It may not even want you to fight that boss yet at all.
The run back is meant to be an incentive to think about your options. Do I have other areas to explore?
Would be a lot more effective if I didn’t have to go pick up my shade. Which often can’t be accessed without locking yourself into the fight again.
I disagree, runbacks are as much difficulty as having to recover your currency after death, or even having to recover your items after dying in Minecraft. It’s a punishment for dying, and a way to make you treat it seriously.
It can incentivise the wrong things, punish experimentation and make players stick with what they know, even if better options exist. You’re free to dislike it, and it has downsides, but dismissing it as “not difficulty” is just dishonest.
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