all-knight-party

all-knight-party, rok temu

That's the fallacy of trying to understand criminal acts. For the most part, if someone were as smart, logical, and thoughtful as you are when you imagine the best way to commit murder, the kind of person to actually try and commit the murder would not be as smart, logical, or thoughtful to have gotten into that situation in the first place.

There are exceptions, of course, but it's enough of a possibility that it's probably better to take them seriously than not.

Edit: typed all that, scrolled down, some other dude already said it

all-knight-party, rok temu

The issue would be believing anything not explicitly said or shown in a pre release showcase. You don't expect anything not extremely, extremely obvious or you just let yourself down and then blame the studio for underdelivering.

A bunch of that is of course the fault of marketing itself, but this goes for almost anything marketed ever, beyond video games.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I mean, there are parts of the game's major criticisms that are understandable and do impact the game experience in a way. The worst one for me is the lack of a local map. I've gotten lost in cities or complexly laid out buildings a number of times already, which is, suffice to say, not enjoyable and nigh on unforgivably clumsy to experience repeatedly.

I'll forgive, or even enjoy, say, Dark Souls for the same thing because it's not as complicatedly laid out and the world is smaller and much more visually distinct in its areas to make it up on the back end, along with the entire design ethos being very hands off in terms of delivering info to the player, which sets a standard compared to Starfield's polished to a sheen experience, which suddenly becomes less so in other spots, creating a negative contrast.

Others, like the lack of seamless planet to space transitions were never advertised, and though having them certainly increases immersion, visual spectacle, and thus perceived enjoyment and value of a game, is not really important in the grand scheme unless you wrongly expected it. I don't have enough time to worry about a planet transition, I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do there and what I'm gonna do next within the gameplay itself. With this sort of criticism, the game would be undoubtedly better with such a feature if it wouldn't have delayed development too significantly to implement, which no one can really say for sure.

Then there are criticisms like the fact that planets are limited in scale and you can't fly your ship close to the ground on the surface, which is just wildly beyond the scope of what Bethesda would be able to deliver and still say it's the same game. That would've been so complex it would've sacrificed other features undoubtedly, and shows more about a given player's desire for "Starfield 2: We Added all That Space Sim Stuff People Wanted that we couldn't before because we'd end up like Star Citizen" than it really does about Starfield's successes or failures in the features it explicitly attempted to deliver.

all-knight-party, rok temu (edited rok temu)

The actual act of doing it gets old, but I do like the fact that you can't fast travel out of a situation in ED, it means if you go on a deep space expedition to make discovery money you are gonna be in DEEP SPACE, and you better be fucking prepared with a ship spec'd specifically for it because you do not want to turn around and give up because you couldn't fuel scoop or make a jump.

You definitely get a feeling of being a very small person in the galaxy with lots of things going on far away that you'll never see, and having limited fuel and constant frameshift jumps allows for more mechanics and complexity like fuel scooping or being interdicted.

Starfield lets you go wherever at a moment's notice which makes the galaxy feel very small comparatively and lacks stakes for exploration and jump range (along with the infinite fuel), reducing the need to have specialized ships. It also allows you to miss out on some random events that only happen when a ship in orbit with you hails you on comms. You miss those experiences if you fast travel past them all, which is echoed in other Bethesda titles with their own random encounters during travel that can be missed due to fast travel.

That being said, it's a Bethesda fantasy version of space, you want to do fun space opera things and having hardcore travel might clash with that, I can understand why it wasn't implemented that way. For example, no one mentions this, but I fucking LOVE bethesda's save system of saving the exact state of everything in the universe in that exact moment. Im a filthy save scummer and I love it. I like being able to save scum difficult space battles, and I don't think you can do that in most other hardcore space games, but I'm so grateful that I can here.

all-knight-party, rok temu

The article suggests it's strictly for smartphone apps. Could just be vague wording on the part of the article, but I struggle to understand how this would be as feasible for console or PC releases.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Finally, we can officially say this is the best Mario Kart.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Is that a hardware thing? I haven't had any real stuttering or freezing, just low FPS in the cities

all-knight-party, rok temu

Ohh yeah, this article. I've only personally witnessed about a half second stutter on occasion in the cities, I could probably count the occurrences on two hands with about 30 hours in, but that sounds about right because even Oblivion whose own optimization bottlenecks itself gets "traversal stutter" for me on PC.

Memory leaks are possible for sure, especially since Digital Foundry confirmed there's still save game load time bloat after a long playthrough.

all-knight-party, rok temu

It seems reactionary, they probably waited to see what the biggest fuss would be, then responded by saying that's now a priority. And if someone actually suggested them posting publicly about those issues before it was a snafu I'm sure any PR department would look at you like you had two heads and say "what are you, a fucking idiot? Don't admit defeat publicly before the consumer base brings it up first"

all-knight-party, rok temu

Katana ZERO. The fact that your character can fail and "die" and yet be able to control the flow of time to return and try again is not only contextualized through the game's lore and your character's usage of a drug, but becomes basically the entire story by the end of it. Brilliant game.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I almost give that game a pass purely because of how much you're meant to start over again anyway. It's not like you spent the entire time on one perfect go through with no do overs, you'd probably already restarted a bunch of times by then, it's just another crazy mistake you couldn't have known you could make in that game.

Not that that really makes it better, but it's not on par with doing the same thing in a giant RPG, unless you only got one shot or something, but knowing that game I would doubt it. I never got that far, though, that game is... weird and particular

all-knight-party, rok temu

Damn, Professor Oak fired your ass.

"No, you can't go back, this is fucking awful, give me that camera back."

all-knight-party, rok temu

You should give your house regular lunch breaks, it's unethical to make it be a house all day.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Probably because Black Flag is fucking revered and people would eat that shit up on the pedigree alone. It's an open world pirate game, which doesn't have much competition.

AC3 stands to gain more from a remake, but it would require some good faith from the community to buy into it, and it's not as unique of an overall experience from the initial premise compared to Black Flag which instantly forms a picture in your mind of a free booting high seas adventure with some light assassination.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I've never played 76, but 4 is one of my favorite games of all time. I think most people who didn't like it were going into it desiring for it to be something it wasn't. What it was impeccably good at was being a scavenging looter shooter with addicting weapon and armor modification and a fun outpost building system that wasn't for me, but did let me make my own little home.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Definitely not Bethesda's strong suit and not what I go to their games for. Their NPC interaction is made up of tons of awkward TMI introductions and dialogue too quirky to take seriously most of the time. That's a valid criticism, I would not say Fallout 4 is well written. I think it has some interesting premises like the whole synth idea, but not a well executed story.

The only overall story I really thought was good in that game was Paladin Danse's quest chain.

all-knight-party, rok temu

That's how you get your kid to never go to the beach with you

all-knight-party, rok temu

It boggles my mind how many things people say about this game that are patently untrue, obviously extremely biased against the game/studio, or make it seem like this game killed their dog.

The game has issues, for sure, some things like the nonexistent city/building local map systems are indefensible, but damn dude, I wish people would just try to have mature discussions with realistic expectations about it instead of whatever this shit show is that we call "gaming discussions"

all-knight-party, rok temu

Sure, if the game doesn't appeal to you for that value, then there will be eventual sales. It won't be worth that amount to everyone. Doesn't really excuse the overly emotional criticism, or even the overly emotional defense from others. It's a good game. A true value judgment from there will be harder and more tied to individual tastes.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Agreed. Holy fuck are there so many unique quests with full voicing (at about 20 hours in). I've heard people say they aren't getting that "losing yourself accidentally seeing five different POIs", but it's definitely still there in a different package.

I get that by going to do one quest, having to stop off at other planets along the way, where I'll poke my head in and talk to whatever named NPCs I see, who'll inevitably give me a few quests, some of which lead to other places where I'll pick up other quests.

It was especially apparent with some random side quest somebody gave me in New Atlantis where I just had to go get a dead drop package from some other planet, which turned out to be the site of the Red Mile which is its own sort of arena/quest that I then enjoyed in the middle of the other quest. I've just been ping ponging around like that picking up stuff and stopping now and again to knock a few out.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Earth Defense Force is the shit. It's not way more fun than it has any right to be, it's exactly as fun as shooting giant alien insects as an overly patriotic earth sci Fi military SHOULD be.

I think if you show the gameplay to somebody and then the addicting loot system that they'd be down, unless they just don't like the chaotic shooter-ness. But yeah, those games are fucking great

all-knight-party, rok temu

I feel you. I just hit 20 hours and I probably didn't start to fully realize how to find different kinds of content deliberately until about hour 15 after I'd got some of the faction stuff started and explored enough planets to understand how to find certain side quests.

For the first while my natural instinct just had me exploring all of the cities and stations, just talking with people and picking up masses of side quests, then I hit a point where I started actually doing them, because I was burning myself out on walking and talking.

The non-scaling level of systems is interesting, figuring that out helped me to be able to do quests that I was leveled for and weren't super spongey, I figured out the structure of the random quest board quests so I could partake in FPS shooting, ship shooting, cargo running, or more narrative driven side quests depending on my mood.

Figuring out that the trade authority (only the manned shops, not the kiosks) is your stolen goods fence meant I could really start stealing in earnest, and the decrease in environmental items that are lootable, along with the decrease in lootable homes and apartments means stealing opportunities are harder to come by.

Even still, after being pretty cheap at level 20 I'm at about 120,000 credits, which seems close to enough to fully build my own ship, which I'm about to eagerly do in my next session. Once I've got a ship built I'll want to start and get into landing on less colonized planets and figure out the outposts and such, where I can pivot to hiring people from the taverns and getting into that whole side of the game.

I think because of the amount of things you could do, the amount of them that are basically impossible to do from the outset due to money (ship and outpost building), and the way the game doesn't guide or explain things well, it was really easy for me to create my own boring rut where I just walked and talked and ran away from tough enemies because I didn't realize I picked up a quest that was in or lead to a high level system.

For instance, I knew you could board ships, I had no idea that I needed the systems targeting skill to target engines to even do that at all, the skill description didn't mention it, and the early game mission that forces you to board doesn't require you to have the skill, you just board when the ship is supposed to "die". I was also initially upset random items couldn't be broken down into materials, but then I realized some materials can just be found as lootables, same for some craftable components.

All told, as I play more I'm coming around to it all more, but it'll probably take another ten or 20 hours before I fully understand all the systems and can make a judgment on if I like it more, less, or the same as Fallout 4, which I also loved.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I don't think it's possible for the game to flop anymore if we're going off money made. In terms of them making money after they fully "release", well... I don't know if it will ever actually "release".

all-knight-party, rok temu

I'm ready for Starfield Citizen.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I don't think they were chasing newer tech, so much as the development was taking so incredibly long that their current tech had literally aged out of the common gamer's expectations and they HAD to do it over to seem current.

all-knight-party, rok temu

That was a rollercoaster of a comment.

all-knight-party, rok temu

DAE Starfield bad??

all-knight-party, rok temu

Payday 2 had so much DLC it made my head spin. Not interested in keeping up with that, as much as I really enjoyed the gameplay of the second.

all-knight-party, rok temu

That was the same for me, but reverse. I tried to play No Man's Sky to get hyped for Starfield, but they're just such different games doing different things and one doesn't appeal to me as much as the other.

all-knight-party, rok temu

They have a whole rube Goldberg machine set up that fires a BB gun into their gut every time they get shot

all-knight-party, rok temu

I don't quite understand, provided that's true... Why would they do that?

all-knight-party, rok temu

Oh, yes. Any Arrowhead co op game will work, besides Magicka they also have Helldivers or their Gauntlet reboot.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Yes, it really knows how to make inventory management an integral and engaging part of the gameplay. Too many times is inventory management done wrong or relegated to a mechanic thought of as "busywork". .

I'd love to see more games shine a spotlight on it, because I find it very interesting.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Working my way through completely exploring the entire world of Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I really love this game, but goddamn is it enormous. I'm about 75% in.

And just picked up the switch port of Red Dead Redemption. Really glad to be able to play this one without dragging out the 360. Still an awesome game, and a damn good port.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Pssh, I fucking wish they based combat on that mod. Skyrim's combat is still a little too basic comparatively.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I wouldn't necessarily say unfun, but "not for me". Stardew Valley. I went in ready to relax and farm, but oh God, time moves quickly! And I only have limited energy per day. That wombo combo when I was starting out just stressed me out and I didn't get into it immediately.

I know there are mods for it or that it's a good game even with the time, but out of all possible farming type games there were plenty more my speed than Stardew.

all-knight-party, rok temu

They're very specifically influenced by From Soft's game Bloodborne more than Dark Souls. It's interesting to see them use Pinocchio as an anchor point for the world. The game looks quite polished and as derivative as it seems it looks like it'll be pretty fun.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I didn't know it until I saw some video about it, it sort of sells that premise short, I think the name is... Not awesome

all-knight-party, rok temu

Yeah, Ive followed Jeff for a long time and he's absolutely not afraid to say a game isn't good, and his tastes can be fickle and particular, if I were a publisher cynically selecting who to send advance codes to to manufacture a good score he would not be one of them.

As a consumer, I love him because he has integrity, likes what he likes, and says what he means, and I even can tell sometimes when he dislikes a game that I'd still like.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Expecting anything that particularly in-depth without being shown explicit pre-release footage of it is an expectation trap. Bethesda was never going to make a space sim, any space sim features are a bonus and were far from guaranteed.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I can understand the link between seamless exteriors and the equivalent of what that would mean in the context of a space game for Bethesda, but the technological implications of having a galactic system flight mode and seamless planet to space transitions are both completely new ideas to Bethesda and are also technically complex to implement in a game already knee deep in new tech and systems only from what we'd been shown.

There's a reason things like seamless planet transitions are only something you might be able to expect in recent years. While Bethesda could totally make that happen, it's not where I'd expect them to put their money, or they'd have probably dropped a line showing it off in the pre release footage.

At once, I understand why you might've expected that, but expecting anything not explicitly shown is never a good idea when it comes to tempering expectations.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I think it does make sense to expect that up until you realize how much of a technical undertaking it'd be to do so and whether that payoff seems worth it to them. Seamless transitions seem to me to still be in a category to show off if you have it, so that they didn't should be a red flag, but if you didn't watch all the footage then you wouldn't realize that, which I get, and I dont expect everybody to watch both the showcases like I did, thats probably over an hour of footage.

I can see why you'd expect a similar seamless experience due to their previous maps, but implementing that is completely different due to the style of game and requires new engine features to do so unlike their previous games which were already capable of it since Morrowind. You could expect them to consider doing it, but it wouldn't be a given

all-knight-party, rok temu

I remember when GTA 5 hit PC in 2015 and was around 90 gigs. Seems like we've finally hit the point where most AAA games are around its size. How time flies...

all-knight-party, rok temu

I found Fallout 4's shooting night and day better than NV and 3's. It's a shame you didn't feel that. It's still definitely RPG shooter territory which is a lot harder to make feel satisfying than a conventional FPS, but the movement still didn't feel very good, certainly.

Moment to moment feel is definitely a strong issue from previous Bethesda titles. I'm confident Starfield will feel better, but how much better is impossible to tell until we can get our hands on it or there can be some common discussion about it after release. The manicured, manufactured movements of pre release gameplay make it very hard to tell how that stuff has changed aside from their claims of redone animations systems.

all-knight-party, rok temu

I think the effort towards changing that starting with Fallout 4 shows, it seems like it's now a priority for them. Their engine has always been their greatest asset in terms of gameplay possibility, world object physics, immersion through radiant AI scheduling, an open and very moddable design, and it's obvious specialization towards open world format (less of a big deal for an engine nowadays).

It's also been one of their greatest weaknesses, with stiff and awkward animation and movement/combat on both NPCs and the player, the inability for crouching to allow you to pass under certain objects, poor pathfinding and scripting on NPCs in combat and for your followers who constantly get lost or hung up on geometry, the radiant AI which through complication of scripting can cause quest NPCs to be in the wrong locations or be missing the correct dialogue.

Ever since the creation engine rebrand I partially lamented that they didn't scrap the engine, but over time I've come to accept that it's not just Bethesda that makes Bethesda games, it's the gamebryo engine. To remake an engine with their unique systems, mechanics, moddable format, and familiar console commands would be an enormous undertaking and I understand why theyve chosen to dig in and modify it further instead and their acceptance of those pros and cons.

I think any true lover of Bethesda games has to understand what they're really good at, and what they're really bad at, and you have to want them to get better, or else that's not love at all.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Noah is one of my favorite games analysts of all time. An excellent, excellent writer.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Sometimes physics bugs can be funny, but I'd rather it not be buggy because I always hated things like getting hung up on geometry, having a physics enabled object kill me because I happened to touch it, or worst of all, realizing I haven't seen my companion in the last ten minutes, somehow they got lost somewhere and only showed up after I manually teleported them to me with console commands.

The first two of those Bethesda seemed to nip in the bud by Fallout 4, but the bugs are not always charming.

all-knight-party, rok temu

Yeah I think saying it's a must have for any gamer is a bit too much, no game is for literally everyone. Disco Elysium's humor doesn't strike me as overly humorous anyway, it's not really a comedic game, more of a dry chuckle now and then.

And the fun is really just reading/hearing any of the dialogue or descriptions, it is very well written. You get a lot of different choices depending on the "build" stuff, but it's really mostly all well written and should be enjoyable if you're into the style at all