What if leveling up didn’t make number get big, but instead gave you more options in a fight?
Horizontal progression is pretty cool .
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want that. They want to feel cool and competent without actually doing anything. That’s not to say like you need to “earn” your fun or whatever. But that the progress quest number go up don’t think too hard is immensely popular with a lot of people. They don’t want to be challenged.
And that’s fine. It’s a game. It’s just not a game I want to play all the time.
Guy I know worked for a pretty big video game studio or two. (You’ve definitely heard of some games he worked on). Then he realized it sucked. Took a job in FinTech, made like double the money for half the work.
Fingers crossed for total conversions. Give me some non-5e rule systems. (Unlikely, I know. Double unlikely to get anything other than maybe Pathfinder, but I can hope)
Modern fallout games do difficulty badly. Walked up to one of those boomer guys in fo:NV , he gave me some shit, so I shot him in the face with a revolver. He didn’t fall over dead.
I got a bunch of mods to make everyone a lot more of a glass cannon, but made power armor very effective (and other armor somewhat so). Was a lot more fun. But also there was a lot more reloading because, like, sometimes a baddie would get the drop on me and I’d be dead from two shots.
Review bombs and “boycotts” are frustrating because it seems like the average player has the willpower of a hungry toddler. “Hey, don’t buy this game. They make their developers work 20 hour days.” -> “Oh yeah fuck them! …ooh, but there’s a shiny angel wing skin if I preorder? Well mmmmmmm well sure it’s just $90 what does it hurt”
But I don’t know. I’m kind of in a mood lately where I feel like I’m surrounded by overgrown toddlers.
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
I also had a programmer friend that was anti-union. He was like “If the place I’m working at sucks, I’ll just find another place.” Very short sighted and optimistic.
I don’t really know details about who does what at Blizzard, but isn’t he the guy responsible for the utter train wreck of Diablo3’s writing? Whoever wrote and approved “How tastes your fear, Nephalem?” did a bad job.
I agree with your ideas on micro transactions here. They create a lot of temptations to make the base game worse. “Your inventory holds 12 items but for a very reasonable price you can hold 6 more!” may seem harmless but it also sucks. The game is objectively and arbitrarily worse without that transaction.
Purely cosmetic skins are a little better, but you end up taking advantage of people who buy more than they should.