Katana314

Katana314, wczoraj

Same for me. I enjoy the Hitman games, but they have a bit more guidance towards suggesting possibilities for you.

I’d almost like it if I could investigate just as a master hacker that can skip the breaking in portion to try checking XYZ company’s records while sitting at the crime scene, instead of going down a 2 hour rabbit hole at risk of being caught to realize “Oh, that was the victim’s ID, not the killer’s, so nothing I’m investigating has anything to do with the case.”

Katana314, 2 dni temu

I am curious if the games community has anything positive to say about major publishers at this point.

It’s fun to laugh at one failure, and it’s nice we still get occasional great indie hits. But when most major publishers fail to turn out anything of interest, and even Sony is kind of reaching vanishing expectations amid remasters of remasters, it becomes hard to even suggest what to buy an unknowledgeable kid for Christmas.

Katana314, 2 dni temu

Right - they don’t even make a game a decade anymore, and even Deadlock is in a genre many people aren’t interested in.

Katana314, 2 dni temu

The point is that it’s not just them paying the price, though. With continuous years of NO publishers putting out anything interesting, we’re at a point where people are just less interested in anything that’s coming out.

It’s a carrot and stick problem to some degree. They know now we hate microtransaction-laden live service games, but it’s harder to define what players would enjoy. Keep in mind, there’s many cases of simply letting the developers cook that haven’t worked out either.

Katana314, wczoraj

I agree when it comes to taste-specific stuff. I’m playing Steamworld Heist 2 and have Tactical Breach Wizards in my wishlist, so indie tactics games have been satisfying me - they’re certainly good and interesting, as you say.

But, those aren’t games I’d recommend to everyone. It does mean not much water cooler discussion since no one is playing the “same” games in most social circles. It used to be, a big release like Halo came out and everyone was talking about it, playing it, and discovering things together.

Katana314, wczoraj

I don’t think there’s that many big-budget releases you can invest in if you care about Denuvo. Even the Ace Attorney games, re-releases of old DS visual novels, have been getting Denuvo’d.

Katana314, 2 dni temu

100% is itself a bit of a misleading target.

I think I remember Just Cause 2 had it so the top achievement in the game was only for 70% completion because they knew they had such a ridiculously huge map.

Breath of the Wild aims the same way - they like having you come across a bunch of Korok seeds while traveling, but not scouring the land with a magnifying glass looking for them.

Katana314, 2 dni temu

Massive are the ones that made Star Wars Outlaws - so it seems the world disagrees with you.

I wasn’t so interested in Outlaws, but I’ve sometimes thought the criticism was slightly overblown. It looks a lot better than some other Ubi games.

Katana314, 3 dni temu

Ideally, Sony would handle the legal hurdles needed to allow PSN in multiple countries. But I imagine, as the publishers have invested tons of money into producing those singleplayer games, part of what they want in return is investment into the “PlayStation ecosystem”. Much like how Microsoft doesn’t care if people play their games on an Xbox, they just want an account.

Basically, I don’t think Sony is really in the business of putting down huge financial risks just to get the $60 entry tag of the rare singleplayer game they put out. Those games are meant to get you buying other Sony content as well.

Katana314, 4 dni temu

I’ll admit, I’ve kept no interest in the game or its sequel because the concept just sounds depressing. Similar to Dark Souls’ plot; “Life sucks, you accomplish nothing more than survival, and innocent people die anyway.”

Katana314, 4 dni temu

I’ve started to hate the term “Hardest”.

Give me two months in Unity, and I can make a game that’s “harder” than every game on any one of these lists. It would also be unplayable trash, that would prompt hundreds of “How the fuck are you supposed to XXX” responses due to obscurity. Part of what makes those listed games enjoyable is having a decent difficulty curve, compelling progression of skill demonstration, and a good feeling of reward. They’re getting difficulty right.

Katana314, 4 dni temu

I think there’s better patterns RPGs can use for them.

A lot of games now just put them wandering the world, and touching/attacking them prompts combat. Then, the game needs to invent various motivations for you to actually want to attack the enemy.

In a lot of games, they’re just genuinely in the way through tight corridors to a destination. A better approach can be to associate some kind of minor quest reward to directly pursuing the enemies.

But, then you get the problem that a lot of RPGs just have no interesting decisions to make in combat. And, participating in combat can lead to a slow wearing down of the party’s mana points, or the game’s equivalent. In many games, you only want to use the basic cure spell and auto-attack because you’ll survive fewer fights without mana rationing. It becomes counter-intuitive and less fun.

Some games resolve this well. Cosmic Star Heroine for instance, a short indie JRPG, heals you after every fight, and each combat is uniquely scripted in for pacing much like Chrono Triggwr.

Katana314, 6 dni temu

I think I’ve gotten more than a little tired of the “guy walks in on girl bathing” trope in anime.

Like, somehow this is a world where no one knocks, and the first thing girls do in an unfamiliar environment is get a bath.

Katana314, 7 dni temu

This is probably the biggest lesson against the gamer mindset of “Give the developers time to work, and they’ll polish it to a shine.” Sometimes, even time doesn’t improve the end product if the idea wasn’t great. It might even indicate that on some instances where publishers scrapped a ‘cool’ project that was in the works, it was actually the right call. It might have been a Concord waiting to happen.

Katana314, 7 dni temu

FF14 has sort of an unwritten rule, that you should ignore all side quests that are represented with the plain gold circle. They’re not even worth the time for XP and rarely have anything interesting happen in them. It’d be interesting if the same rule applies for FF16.

Katana314, 7 dni temu

It’s one of those series that has expanded so far, with favoritism towards its characters, that they even decided to drop the name “Yakuza” in favor of the Japanese title, since so much of it has little to do with being a Yakuza anymore. Honestly, I can’t remember any game in which you’ve done actual Yakuza-like actions such as shaking down businesses, running loan shark scams, or executing hits. When you do end up making money, it’s through perfectly legitimate businesses whose biggest problem is “thugs keep attacking us!”

Katana314, 7 dni temu

RGG studio: “We hear you…”

Katana314, 6 dni temu

I totally get disinterest, but I get rubbed the wrong way when people “want games to fail”. I want the world to have more games that are good - and yes, occasionally those would come from publishers we traditionally grumble about.

I had no interest in Concord, but I’m not making video content laughing at its failure. I think that practice is a bit weird sometimes, and even victimizes some of the game devs that didn’t do anything wrong. I would guess at least 80% of Concord’a devs did their job well - just based around a bad concept.

Katana314, 10 dni temu

I sort of picture this happening more often at the graphical plateau. It used to be that these franchises needed big face lifts to stay relevant, but even that can sometimes happen with a lighting update.

The other reason might be if they want to do subtractive redesigns of the core concept but I’m still not sure what that should be for The Sims.

Katana314, 12 dni temu

I honestly tried to get back into it with an old account. Apparently, the entire world went up in power level with no exceptions, but not my character - meaning there was literally not a single enemy I could kill across the PVE environment to gain better gear/levels to contend with enemies.

I did not feel like making a new character or redoing the tutorial so I decided to not even bother, taking it as a sign the game was poorly thought out.

Katana314, 12 dni temu

It’s a small measure, but I’d really like to see a law where gacha games need to publicly advertise their odds and allow independent verification.

The biggest effect it would have is, the odds would need to be static. Many gacha systems have been accused of putting a hand on the wheel, assuring someone “so close to their needed item” must keep going through a series of failures.

Katana314, 4 dni temu

Possibly because the same person made two posts recently about it. I notice one is “Trailer 2”, but still.

Katana314, 15 dni temu

The article author honestly made a very valid point, but wrapped it up with a terrible headline.

I even feel like the PS4 and Xbox One currently serve the use case of being “the cheap consoles”. There are a number of games they cannot run or would run poorly - but for their price point they’re much more of an option for the non-wealthy, primarily in other countries. It’s like it’s all one console generation with no signs of ending, and a varying range of specs.

Katana314, 16 dni temu

Downvoted for censoring Gamers. I will always downvote people using that stupid fucking asterisk. Don’t be a child.

Katana314, 16 dni temu

I mostly play new games, but I respect admiration for old games. It’s fun to see people speedrun old SNES games - but it’s disturbing to think an entire generation will just become inaccessible to history, even if a lot of the games in question were kind of bad.

I actually agree with you in the case of online multiplayer games - I don’t think the devs can keep them available forever. But when a game is singleplayer, like The Crew, it feels like planned obsolescence.

Katana314, 15 dni temu

I’m going to agree with you, but only in the sense they hired more people than they should’ve, not that they should be firing people.

I really blame Telltale Games as one studio that demonstrated this issue in a microcosm. They had some successful games. Then they hired enough extra hands that they MUST make excellent games. Their next few games were not excellent. Then, everybody gets fired.

Katana314, 17 dni temu

It’s hard to tell if this would have been the case in past generations. I think this only became true once we crested the graphical plateau where all games look “good enough” in HD.

Katana314, 17 dni temu

I was very close to getting a digital PS5, but I still need the drive for my old PS4 games and movies. If I were just getting into Sony now though, I imagine the story would be different.

Katana314, 17 dni temu

They can still kind of kill physical games with good service. The whole “honey rather than vinegar” argument.

That’s what happened with the PSVita. While overpriced game cartridges existed, most of its lifespan people were buying its games digitally which worked great for indie developers that didn’t have a budget for physical releases.

Katana314, 17 dni temu

If a PC GPU is only slightly better than a console counterpart, typically its games will run slightly worse - since it loses the benefit of devs spending time optimizing for that profile.

Katana314, 17 dni temu

Myself, I count the catalog of PS+ as an “exclusive feature”, plus it’s nice to play some of the PS4 games that struggled on a better machine. I loaded my God of War save and went from 30 to 60fps, which was great (sad that it was one of few games to offer PS5 enhancements in the PS4 version)

Katana314, 17 dni temu

They do exist; but also constantly debate with stores like Steam about what can be allowed since Steam is ultimately much more visible. They make it murky with the occasional VN that’s “90% cryptic folk mystery, 5% romance, 5% visuals of non-consenting animated minors in the nude being victimized by a tentacle”.

Steam, for very understandable reasons, has waffled back and forth on whether to allow those games.

Katana314, 18 dni temu

Much as I’ve come to hate Xbox, this could be the beginning of signs of monopoly - they don’t have so much competition anymore, so they can do what they want. Certainly doesn’t help that unofficial controllers have never been good.

Katana314, 21 dni temu

There have definitely been times that copying other people worked out well.

Fortnite and Apex copied the BR trend when PUBG wasn’t satisfying everyone’s needs. The former even lazily reskinned a zombie defense game for the battle royale approach. Lots of games reskin the theme of Dark Souls and do okay.

Even if it’s lazy or uninventive, once in a while one of those reskins has a particular element of the concept it reinvents in a much better way. Seems Concord never came up with any such ideas, which could have been great since many people are currently tired of Overwatch specifically.

Katana314, 21 dni temu

Marketers actually place these into different categories of advertising goal. One kind might just exist to make people aware of a product and its role (eg, vacuum cleaner attachment) whereas others spend longer convincing customers it’s something they want/need. There’s yet another category that I think relates more to direct advertising and isn’t as common for mass products like games.

Katana314, 21 dni temu

To the people that worked on it, even when the result kinda sucks, there’s some level of attachment. They spent literal years of their life investing into it. That might be where the tone is coming from.

Katana314, 22 dni temu

Or, The Bunkererer: Also called “Conscript”, another survival horror game about World War 1.

Katana314, 23 dni temu

Why do you think they keep rereleasing Skyrim? It’s the last good game they made.

If you want Elder Scrolls 6, look to spiritual sequels made by other companies. Bethesdead.

Katana314, 23 dni temu

I remember distinctly Danganronpa’s problem with shock value.

I finished the first case of the third game, and thought “Wow! That was incredible! I hadn’t anticipated that ending at all!”

And then, once the dust on the case had settled, because of the effects of that change in circumstance, I had no interest in playing the rest of the game.

Katana314, 24 dni temu

I want to paint easy villains into the world as much as anyone, but I didn’t see anything especially “evil” about Concord; just poorly planned and uninteresting. It’s more of a tragic failure of incompetence than anyone being greedy or hurtful.

Katana314, 24 dni temu

Free-to-play is often a lazy comment from social media that represents an incomplete business plan. Developers have to get paid, and you need a plan for how players will be pushed into that.

The assumption is often on a vague “skins and charms” type of thing but it depends on whether the game was built for that expectation. They likely knew they wouldn’t be putting out compelling reskins of their characters.

Katana314, 25 dni temu

The only Chinese game I’ve spent money on is a mystery game by an indie studio. And, in a bit of cultural irony, its premise is based on a famous Japanese franchise.

Don’t really intend to consider Chinese games much, or spend money on the F2P ones.

Katana314, 25 dni temu

Game Pass owners fired the people who made Hi-Fi Rush, so I wouldn’t expect many bangers from them in the coming months.

Katana314, 27 dni temu

Funny thing is, I mostly agree with you, but in Epic’s case, it’s a launcher written by a company that’s 40% owned by a Chinese corporation. I can sometimes stomach running their executables while playing something, but not having it constantly running.

Katana314, 27 dni temu

The “slows down your game” bit has always been hotly contested. There are certainly occasions where a modified exe without Denuvo runs faster, combined with accusations that that specific game integrated Denuvo in a very poor last-minute implementation that calls it dozens of times a second.

I don’t work on video games, but my own experience with software engineering and release management suggests those sorts of murky answers are likely to be the norm.

Katana314, 27 dni temu

Given that I already mentioned there are anecdotes of that happening under poor coding, I sincerely hope you have a more reliable source for that.

Katana314, 26 dni temu

…Great, so you’re going to start giving just as much criticism to devs for writing debug logs every so often?

There’s an order of magnitude between a difficult task slowing operations, and pure inefficiency / bad coding doing it. Can you describe something that actually proves you know the slightest thing about how programming works?

Katana314, 26 dni temu

Given that I already mentioned there are anecdotes of that happening under poor coding, I SINCERELY hope you have a MORE reliable source for that.