NIB

NIB, 13 dni temu

World of Warcraft and Diablo are gacha. Every time you play, you are “pulling” and hoping for a good drop(item). What modern gacha games did, is take that gameplay/psychological feature and directly monetize it(instead of indirectly monetizing it through a subscription/1 time payment).

But both are gambling. I am ok with having age restrictions but we need to be honest with ourselves. And what is “fun” is whatever makes neurons activate. Gambling(ie rpg elements) has always been a core mechanic for many games.

NIB, 12 dni temu

Modern gacha games are more exploitative and effective. But there is a reason why almost all conventional games have “rpg elements” nowadays. I am an old gamer and i remember when this happened.

Game devs realized that if they have “number goes up” mechanics in their games, those games will be more popular and they will sell more. Thats how all games, including multiplayer competitive games, started adding temporary progression(session based, ie buying items between rounds in counterstrike) and then permanent progression(unlocking attachments and prestiging in call of duty).

Quake and unreal didnt have any progression, yet they were very popular multiplayer games. Many people blamed the lack of “parallel progression” systems in starcraft 2, for its failure(sc2 eventually added more parallel progression). Mechabellum, an autobattler(the modern equivalent of an rts), has like 3 different numbers that go up, on top of unlocking unit abilities and skins.

The mobile game market is very competitive and game development is extremely fast and iterative. So they leapfrogged ahead of conventional gaming when it comes to all kinds of user metric manipulation(addictiveness, engagement, etc). Dont hate the player, hate the game.

Funnily enough, the most popular mobile games atm are by Hoyoverse and they arent even that exploitative. They are AAA games, with decent story, graphics, gameplay and the gacha is just there for the more vulnerable/rich people. IMO playing them as f2p is not only viable but actually more enjoyable(ie challenging instead of rolfstomping everything).

If only there were more conventional games as a service that could pump the amount and quality of content that Hoyoverse creates for their games. But Hoyoverse is a private company, probably funded by the chinese government, so they can afford to reinvest all those billions back into the game development, unlike other games. And it shows.

So ultimately, gacha is kinda like real life gambling. I am kinda ok with it, as long as it isnt promoted and its profits go to a good place(funding education or creating decent games).

NIB, 20 dni temu

What keeps them engaged with Destiny 2 despite its apparent lack of a clear path forward?

There is no alternative. The First Descendant is p2w. Once Human has different structure and resets your progress every season. Warframe is pretty different and similar to First Descendant. Overwatch basically cancelled its pve. Darktide is clunky.

And none of these games have the polish and shooting satisfaction that Destiny has. If people want a pve game, with long term progression that has enjoyable shooting, Destiny is all there is. What keeps them playing? Copium.

Slowly but steadily Destiny will die. And thats when Marathon will come out. But Marathon is very different, so i am not even so sure that most Destiny players will migrate to that.

I am not even playing Destiny. Destiny is the game that i want to love so much but always shits on me, so i gave up. It seems to me that the easiest thing in the world, is to keep Destiny going and address its minor issues. But somehow Bungie doesnt think so.

NIB, miesiąc temu (edited miesiąc temu)

With geforce now(and other similar cloud gaming services), you can play all kinds of AAA games in your browser, including diablo 4.

NIB, 4 miesiące temu

Actually Halo Infinite might come out on ps5. Microsoft is publishing a lot of their games to Playstation atm. Sea of Thieves, Hi-fi rush, Grounded, Pentiment are all out on ps5.

Sea of Thieves was one of the big xbox exclusive games, developed by Rare, which is owned by Microsoft since 2002 and all the games they have made in the last 15+ years have been xbox exclusive.

NIB, 6 miesięcy temu (edited 6 miesięcy temu)

Geforce now is amazing. Much better image quality(video stream), on top of running on pc(so better graphics and fps). It is obviously more expensive(and doesnt come with any free games) but you do get what you pay for.

The microsoft cloud is “almost kinda working”/“this is neat” while geforce now “wow, i guess cloud gaming is the future”. Now if only nvidia could persuade sony and japanese devs to release their games on geforce now(though dragons dogma 2 was, which was surprising).

I have to note that sometimes, the loading times on geforce now can be long, this is not normal and varies. Sometimes load times are normal, sometimes are fucky. I think geforce now has become more popular lately and this has caused some issues. Also if a game is really cpu dependent(like dragons dogma 2), the geforce now cpus arent that great.

Another issue is that since games often use weird launchers and drm, this can cause issues. But eventually these issues are resolved.

NIB, 6 miesięcy temu

I like Honkai Star Rail, it is from the developers of Genshin Impact, but unlike Genshin, it is turned based so the grind is automatic(plus has others quality of life features). So i only have to actively play the actual content.

I think the production values are very high, especially for a mobile game. The story and characters are decent. The english localization(it’s a chinese game) is probably the best there is. And finally the music is insane. Hoyoverse is a music company that just happens to make videogames on the side.

What really blew my mind about Star Rail, was the fight against the final boss of the ice planet(second world, after the tutorial one). That was some anime good shit, definitely one of the hypest gaming moments ever and i have played thousands of games. The music they used and how it synced with the gameplay, perfect, absolutely perfect. You can watch this vod of a giant weeb playing the final fight, if you dont care about spoilers or dont intent do play the game(25mins in starts the hype part, though it is worth watching the entire video for context).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDnoJFHa4JA

The space china world was kinda mediocre but the new Dream/Inception/Las Vegas world is pretty cool. Here is the trailer for this world(this song would have easily won Eurovision this year)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7W8QR9fsFw

And the trailer for the latest character(least schizo HSR character, persona references, etc)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC6wQ-75uQU

I guess the most impressive thing about the game is how much content and care has been put into this game. You have pc/console AAA GaS games, which produce very little new seasonal content, no cool trailers, etc. And you have this, till a few years ago random, chinese developer producing high quality content and advertising all the time, they just never miss. And of course now they can do that, they make a billion+ dollars a year but even with Genshin, they are just too good, not just for mobile games but as games.

And it is pretty f2p friendly.

NIB, 7 miesięcy temu

The review is pretty fair and somewhat agrees with you.

NIB, 7 miesięcy temu

God of War? Elder Ring? Baldur’s Gate? Spiderman? Last of Us? Super Mario? Zelda? Red Dead Redemption? Cyberpunk?

NIB, 8 miesięcy temu

I wanna believe things are getting better. I have had women speak in my dota games a few times recently and havent seen anything weird. Though to be fair, the average age of dota player is pretty high. so maybe this is why.

NIB, 9 miesięcy temu

The control scheme and lack of coop are fundamental to the design and story telling of the game. The only game i have played that tells a story through actual gameplay. Playing it solo and with a controller are a must.

NIB, 9 miesięcy temu

Views dont update in real time.