@RandoCalrandian@kbin.social
@RandoCalrandian@kbin.social avatar

RandoCalrandian

@RandoCalrandian@kbin.social

Advocate for user privacy and anonymity

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RandoCalrandian,
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I’m totally adding that back into my vocab now 😂

Wish it could sound more like Farquaad, but maybe that on its own is a good enough one. Kinda rolls off the tongue

RandoCalrandian,
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Worse is how he actually thinks he’s that

RandoCalrandian,
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And what they're saying is that those elements are fun to the people who play these games.
Weighing different priorities to choose the best or preferred option for the future is flexing some very serious psychological muscles. Developing strategies to do it well is these types of people's version of practicing 3 point shots.

Reading you complain about it (which is fine, it doesn't have to be your sort of game!) is like listening to someone complain about how many times they have to throw the ball in basketball. "I just wanted to dribble and dunk, what are all of these other silly elements for? They're just getting in the way!"

If you want a really good comparison between these types of gamers and others, look at Path of Exile versus Diablo 4. Diablo took the mass-market appeal route, and de-prioritized many of the elements that more serious gamers enjoyed.

Now Path of Exile is a free to play money printing machine, and Diablo gets headlines for how poorly it's doing. There are many detailed analysis' online about why, and most of the reasons come down to removing the 'complicated' parts you're talking about.

RandoCalrandian,
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That’s all well and good but the game often doesn’t give you the knowledge required to make those choices thoughtfully

This is a complaint. One that other commenters have addressed.

It’s often an intentional and critical part of the vision of the game and why people play

Elden Ring, specifically, hides information from the player on purpose, intending for them to discover things through experience.

It doesn’t hold your hand at all and is arguably one of the better games in the last decade, in no small part due to features you are referencing.

RandoCalrandian,
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Perhaps this conversation would be more constructive if you told us some of the games you do like, instead of the ones you don’t.

Because I’ll tell you right now, unless you prefer interactive novels which are only arguably games, every game is based on repetitive gameplay.

Specifically, building repetitive gameplay on top of repetitive gameplay is what makes games, games.

Like with chess. You have a repetitive “chess game” loop which has many “your turn” loops inside.

What I’m asking is how you sort it out

To address this specifically, this is what the community of the game is about. It’s why wikis are created and maintained. And so the answer would change based on which game you’re talking about and your goals in that game

For borderlands specifically, a few quick heuristics you can use is to ignore all weapons of not legendary color while in lower level areas, or to stop picking up lower tier items when you don’t need the cash, or to skip everything that isn’t a shotgun because that’s the only piece you need to update

RandoCalrandian,
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Aren’t most gamers technically mobile gamers? Pokémon Go has a user base most PC games only dream of

RandoCalrandian,
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Ok, then don’t play them. No one is forcing you.

You said BG3 was a gift, so it’s not costing you anything to not play something you don’t like.

Given what you’ve said, I would suggest avoiding anything with an RPG label anywhere.

For BG3, if you want to keep playing, you can skip the character creator. They have a dozen prebuilt options you can play without doing the detail work.

For inventory, you can ask your brother to handle it and send everything to camp.

But even with those, you’ll likely not enjoy BG3 because even the fighting mechanics are based around that type of complex decision making, making you pause all the time so that you can make those decisions.

It’s ok to tell your brother you don’t enjoy the gameplay. You don’t have to like it just because other people do.

RandoCalrandian,
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That particular decision was to keep them immersed in the game, and exploring.

But back to your warning label topic, what do you expect that to look like?

“E for e=mc^2”? Or “S for Seseme Street approved”?

We already have shenanigans in the rating system, this would be monumentally worse.

I am really curious what a metric for game complexity would even look like

RandoCalrandian,
@RandoCalrandian@kbin.social avatar

The crux of this issue comes down to trust.

Do I believe the “journalism” whatever outlet you make produces, that it’s what it pretends to be: an unbiased, honest, authentic, and objective opinion piece on a game? Or is it going to be (now or in the future when you sell out) marketing garbage whose purpose is to try and get me to spend money, no matter what lies it needs to tell to do so?

So classic User Value versus Profit motive conundrum.

It’s not a conflict that’s easily resolvable, and I’m far more stingy these days of allowing myself to be profited off of without concrete (to me) value in return, and tbh I don’t see how any type of game review service could avoid the temptations of profit enough for me to trust a damned thing they say.

Good luck, tho

RandoCalrandian,
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You can have an unbiased and objective opinion, pretty easily, in fact
You simply don’t pretend your own opinions are facts everyone should take wholesale, and say as much

RandoCalrandian,
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which is why you clarify your opinions as such, removing the subjectivity from the objective parts.

ffs, it's called journalism

RandoCalrandian,
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it really is as simple as being able to distinguish opinions from facts, and clarifying each in the revew.

Facts: This game has X combat, Y selectable characters, the crafting looks like Z, etc.

Opinons: This game is amazing! 10/10! Best story of all time! GOTY!, etc

You absolutely can have an objective game review, it's just that no writer wants to do that. They'd rather make it more about their opinions of the game than of the game.

RandoCalrandian,
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The coders have their copyrighted works replicated infinitely without royalties as well.

What makes a voice actor’s contributions more meaningful than that? Especially since they can get a half decent voice performance out of any coder and the right generative software which already exists.

RandoCalrandian,
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Or ensures the others get locked out, as the business feels the financial sting of the first effort

RandoCalrandian,
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Have you tried growing up?

No, seriously.

You support more unethical bullshit buying avocados and meat than you do video games. To even give the issues you’ve mentioned as much attention as you have, while ignoring the much less ethical things you purchase far more often, shows how disingenuous and shallow your objection to those products really is, and it leads to more problems than it solves.

For example, Balders Gate 3 is a pretty fantastic game, with no micro transactions or as far as I can see any other form of end user manipulation.

They’re also one of the few studios I’ve seen recently that the devs dont seem burnt out on, which says a lot about how they were managed.

And they just license the content from wizards, to go “oh they’re tangentially related so it’s evil!” (Which you also did with hogwarts legacy) denies all the hundreds and thousands of passionate developers of a chance.

Indie games are a great alternative, true, but as others have said indies can be as toxic as the big companies when they want to be. Not to mention the long term consequences of that direction being developers can’t work together to make AAA games anymore, because according to your rules if a shithead makes it to the top everyone else’s work should be thrown away.

RandoCalrandian,
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You’re right I am, but I do stand by it.

Mine is simply a more specific example of the “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism” argument that has been repeated here many times.

It was a reasonable to assume OP frequently purchases food

RandoCalrandian,
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And those are far better reasons than being upset about what a fanfic author wrote on Twitter one time

RandoCalrandian,
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See?

Signal virtue before all else, reason included

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