Carighan

Carighan, wczoraj

This is interesting. I mean of course, I am aware of the reasons they did this massive change, and on paper they all made sense ahead of time.

They also massively degraded the game feel, and IMO were ultimately the wrong solution for the problem(s) they were facing. I understand why they did it, much like I understand why they chased the eSports-hype, but I disagree with all actions taken and their outcomes regardless.

The game had already mostly lost me by the time OW2 rolled around, and between the very intense-feeling 5v5 that was nothing like the chill chat-with-friends-while-playing-some-OW we had before and the rampant monetization, I just dropped off. I don’t think this will at all make me come back to the game, but on a conceptual level I really enjoy them at least experimenting with undoing a lot of the shit they did to the game over the years, this isn’t the only thing they’re reverting after all.

Carighan, wczoraj

The biggest issue is that IMO, even nowadays balance isn’t remotely as good as it was before the change, owing to the massive imbalance on all ends the 5v5-switch introduced, and them only working through that at a glacial pace. But even more so, this is annoying because of how it essentially undermines the reason they did this.

Sure, the queue time argument still stands. Yeah. But on a balance level, “Double tanks were problematic for game balance” is a bit of a moot point in hindsight. Yeah, they were, sure. Less so than 5v5 is, it turns out.

Carighan, wczoraj

Overwatch 1.2, which would be more accurate?

Carighan, wczoraj

It’s worth it to read the director’s take that goes with this announcement, it’s quite long but goes into great detail about the motivation and effects.

I hate the change, but I can totally understand why they did it. Much as I personally dislike it.

Carighan, wczoraj

It also essentially undermines the whole idea of the game. “More FPS focus” and “more focus on individual gameplay” are not why I enjoyed OW1 in the first place, after all. It was the game to play with real life friends while hanging out on voice chat and relaxing after work. The mix of high-precision, low-precision, no-precision, tanking, healing, everything meant that there was something for everybody and we could all easily play together and just spend an evening talking shit and doing shit.

Carighan, wczoraj

Microtransactions don’t have to affect gameplay any more. The video games industry has successfully sold this narrative (“Please ignore cosmetic microtransactions mkay?!”) while also raising a whole new generation of gamers that value ingame cosmetics to a social-interactions-affecting degree.

There’s a reason kids laugh at one another over default skins in Fortnite or lack of cash in Roblox and so on.

Plus just as importantly, they normalize mtx on an industry level, making selling of other types of monetization easier in the future.

Carighan, wczoraj

I mean, cars aren’t essential to existence either, just don’t buy them <-- technically correct, but not at all a helpful statement when discussing car-price-related issues.

Carighan, wczoraj

No you should not, you should add her as a red flag on your dating profile.

Carighan, wczoraj

Personally I get why 5v5 was done, but I utterly hate it. It removes all the things that made Overwatch 1 so cool compared to other FPS to me:

• Slow TTK as a result of two tanks in front of the team.
• High focus on healing, as someone who enjoys playing healers in all games this was heaven to me.
• Lower focus on personal damage contribution and aim, as syncing ults, creating trap spots and selectively bursting targets was how you got kills, not just aiming.

In total, this resulted in me and my friends easily having a game we could all enjoy on a few characters each (me on Moira, Mercy, Torbjörn, Symmetra and Bastion, for example) and talk shit while just playing the entire evening.

This whole “social” spirit was lost as they slowly pitched the balance towards faster and faster TTK, and ultimately with 5v5. It’s a “competitive FPS” now, but honestly, I don’t need a competitive FPS. Never did. I did however need a social fun low-stakes FPS, back when OW1 came out. And that spot is no longer filled, sadly.

Carighan, wczoraj

I mean, they can undo the buffs to the other tanks, and do the equivalent nerfs to the new tanks.

Carighan, 20 godzin temu

Oh the grenade part was so silly. “Hey we are removing the stun, too much CC and let’s be honest, it makes it far too easy to blow up stunned flankers”.

…

“Here, as a replacement that’s a homing grenade that just straight up kills the flanker, no stunning necessary.”

Okay, I guess. 🤷

Carighan, wczoraj

How so? As in, who is being excluded and how so?

Carighan, wczoraj

Never in my life have I heard anybody say “Are you going to get new game …? I’ve heard you can play as a black woman in this one. So cool.”

Hrm, anecdotally I have quite a lot of formerly non-gamer friends who were really hyped for say, Life is Strange: True Colors, specifically because they were excited about how Alex breaks some beauty norms and gets to flirt with Steph on top of that.

Of course, anecdotally.

But it’s important to keep in mind that we’re no longer an industry of 5 teams creating 20 games a year. There’s so many games that there is more than enough space for every game. From absolutely purist near-identityless gameplay-only designs (Which exist in droves) to huge mass-market hyper-produced open worlds all the way to purist story/feels only visual novels and experimental art pieces.

And each of these categories has more games each year than the entire market around the Gameboy time had. Gaming is insanely big now.

Carighan, wczoraj

I think you missed the point of the person you replied to.

Carighan, wczoraj

No you did, keep thinking.

Carighan, wczoraj

The most refined form of play is unstructured, spontaneous, and uses imagination.

[citation needed]

Carighan, wczoraj

I mean on the plusside, you always know that whenever anybody uses the word “woke” as if it were a real word, you can immediately add them to the blocklist or ban them. Nothing they can add has any value any more.

Carighan, wczoraj

Can you make that bigger? 😛

Carighan, 7 dni temu

The thing is that by and large, only #2 out of your list is included in the big profits of these companies.

The other thing is somewhere between 1 and 3, namely grown-ups with cash from work but who find it absolutely normal to pay a certain amount per week for their favorite game. Because they’ve never known different.

And then of course, there’s the really fucked up group: problem spenders. Who are explicitly targetted and exploited by these shit companies.

Carighan, 11 dni temu

You know, in a world of dozens and hundreds of game makers losing their jobs on relatively short notice because some rich fart gambled too high on a potential buyout, the lesson should really not be “They’re killing your favorite video games”. I’m sorry, but that’s just in poor taste.

Carighan, 13 dni temu

I mean it’s fancy, but als pointless since that’s the price point of a Steam Deck, a strictly superior device.

Carighan, 15 dni temu

I mean, personally it just feels like there’s too many games. And consequently too many game studios.

On top of that, the cleft between the production value of a triple-A game and anything not that is gotten so big that the moment you aren’t some Call of Duty or Dragon Age or something, you might as well be a 1-person hobby project that as a result has no need to keep making money as it can trivially just go at whatever pace it wants. Add that it’s not uncommon to make the vast majority of your money via an unfinished game that you can then leave unfinished so you can reduce costs while making most of the money, and you got a recipe for disaster for any A or AA development studios wanting to scrape by.

You basically got to have your own little reliable niche, while also being lean enough so you can make games with extremely little cost per game. Hence everyone turning to mobile, where exactly that MO has become established.

Carighan, 17 dni temu

Still need to play that. But soooo much to play, and I already got a few games I’m actively playing. And I stopped buying onto backlog when I said I’ll need to improve that spending habit of mine on NY 2015. Heh, actually stuck to one of my NY promises for once. 😅

Carighan, 17 dni temu

Sure, but independent of whether we are spending money or not, we can critique their changes, no?

Carighan, 18 dni temu

Yeah, far as I know they also started to struggle with Risen already, as cost started going up for 3D RPGs with open worlds. If you are a niche creator, that’s a problem as your niche cannot be endlessly expanded.

I never tried ELEX or ELEX 2 (kinda should, but eh, bit late now), but they looked fine. Nothing noteworthy, but decent. But the thing is, I have a long long list of just RPGs that I still want to play that are on my backlog, like even Baldur’s Gate 3. And now Dawntrail for FFXIV just released. It’ll be years more before I get around to ELEX. I wish they had gone more something more artsy in style than just generic-3D open SciFi world, as that ages badly. Look at Mass Effect 1 and so on.

Carighan, 19 dni temu

Definitely. Age of Wonders 4 was awesome to play at launch, but it definitely feels more “complete” now that all 4 DLCs are out. It feels like it was clearly hacked to pieces to be sold separate.

Carighan, 18 dni temu

Oh I meant that, that’s why I worded it that way.

Carighan, 20 dni temu

Hrm, you’re not wrong but Hades also exemplifies why quality wins over quantity when in replayability.

Carighan, 20 dni temu

Geezus fucking hell, 40 minutes. For the answer that is just “do the same thing as the first Switch because that thing prints money despite what everyone predicted”.

Carighan, 21 dni temu

EA just means “we released unfinished and we’re still working on it”. Because factually that’s what it is.

So Coffee Stain:

• Released a game quite unfinished (but still fun, don’t get me wrong!).
• Actually invested the time and money to get it finished and fix it up after release.

Carighan, 25 dni temu

Yeah I was thinking the same.

I mean sure, someone needs to make a decent Left 4 Dead 3, yeah. But that should not be Resident Evil, especially considering how mediocre the action-centric titles were in hindsight (they were good for their time though, granted).

Carighan, 25 dni temu

Just report then block him, don’t feed the troll.

Carighan, 25 dni temu

Ugh. How to kill all hype in one headline.

Carighan, miesiąc temu

Yeah that’s a fair take.

It is reprehensible and disgusting behavior, but it doesn’t mean we should universally apply labels across vast swaths of different issues, as it devalues said label and poisons future discussion.

Simple labels simplify discussion of course, but that runs the risk of losing nuance for the specific way someone was a disgusting creep.

Carighan, miesiąc temu

I did not disagree with that, so I’m not sure what you’re on about.

Carighan, miesiąc temu

Yeah I do. I disagree with most of their posts, but I agree with the motion that using the same labels indiscriminately is a problem in online discourse.

For example, far as I know so far, I’d call him a pedo, but I am unsure whether I’d call him a predator (of course, language differences apply, too). That’s just because I need words to express the predatory nature of people like Maxwell who prey on teens and YA.

That’s kinda what I meant, there’s too few words to just use the same label across the board sometimes. Doesn’t make something someone does less reprehensible. Rather i prefer to sometimes use full sentences instead of quick labels because it more accurately expresses the matter.

Carighan, miesiąc temu

Nah, it’s not that old.

looks it up

Fuuuuuck I’m old! 😭

Carighan, miesiąc temu

I’m not disagreeing, although I will say that as I have aged, I started to prefer either of:

• Turn-based
• Real-time-with-pause (granted, this is mostly RPGs)
• Pre-submitted concurrent turns (ala Frozen Synapse)

I don’t know. I just no longer find the extra stress from the real-time element engaging. I used to love it, but preferences shift of course, and now I prefer the relaxation of taking my own time to figure out what I want to do, then checking whether I “solved the puzzle”, basically.

Carighan, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

I think one possible resolution for increasing the popularity of RTS is to take a hybrid real time approach. You can build and do things in real time, but under the hood battles and the economy operate in discrete chunks of at least several seconds.

Come to think of it, I saw two approaches that were similar to this before:

1. In Frozen Synapse, you plan your turn, eventually commit it, then it plays out at the same time as the enemy planned turn. You can even move enemy units while planning to simulate possible movements and attacks they might make.
2. In the fourth Battle Isle game, Battle Isle The Andosia War, you did your strategic turns with your units, then in real-time as everyone else did those turns, built your production base and produced units. So the longer you take for your strategic turn, the more time everyone else gets to work on their economy.