setsneedtofeed

setsneedtofeed, 3 days ago

Hold up, “enshitification” is just turning into a buzzword now.

Enshitification has from the beginning described a service or product which is first released one way, and then over time is made worse for the users in ways designed to squeeze more profit out of them.

Without some serious mental gymnastics, forced stealth sections tend to just be bad design choices. Not every bad thing is the same kind of bad thing.

setsneedtofeed, 3 days ago

There’s a danger in any game where it might be largely designed and marketed to be one thing, and then has lengthy mandatory sections where it becomes another.

Poorly made stealth sections are a prime example. Game designers want to change things up, but if the game isn’t made to do stealth, it can easily turn into an annoying mess. There are a few (not a ton, but a few) games where the mandatory stealth sections are well liked, but they were made to carefully take advantage of the game’s strengths and knew when to end.

setsneedtofeed, 3 days ago

Wikipedia isn’t the end all, but in this case I think it provides a working definition.

Enshittification (alternately, crapification and platform decay) is a pattern in which online products and services decline in quality. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders.

setsneedtofeed, 5 days ago

Oh boy. Time for an 800 comment long flamewar about Star Citizen. I’m ready.

setsneedtofeed, 5 days ago

Unfortunately the good taste of people who actively comment about games often has only slight overlap with what makes money.

Three of the top ten US game earners in 2024 were yearly sports game rehashes. One of the top ten games was Call Of Duty. One was Fortnite.

These are money making machines. We can argue and beg and plead all we want. There is a huge mass of gamers out there was simply don’t care, and who will continue to buy formulaic rehashes and microtransaction infested treadmills.

The AAA publishers are not in it for the art. Look at AA and indie if you want games that are willing to appeal to a niche. I’m talking to you and everyone else reading this because this might actually have an effect. Saying what AAA publishers and developers should do is pointless, not like they will ever read it.

setsneedtofeed, 5 days ago

Personally, I think Star Citizen is shallow and pedantic.

setsneedtofeed, 4 days ago

“What makes money” is always relative to how much it costs to make though.

Season passes, microtransactions, and DLCs. Additionally creating brand recognition among the masses along with flashy trailers. These are all reasons that AAA behemoths are still banked on to make huge net profits.

Sometimes these massive games fail and lose money in spectacular ways, but it happens a lot less than us enlightened good taste gamers would like to imagine. Money gets shoveled into creatively safe massive games because they usually make a huge profit. I love say, Wasteland 2, but that game probably has made less money in its entire life than the newest Fifa game made in a week.

setsneedtofeed, 4 days ago

Its a educated wish.

setsneedtofeed, 4 days ago

Indeed.

setsneedtofeed, 9 days ago

Unironically, I would play this.

setsneedtofeed, 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago)

Not every design choice fits every game (obviously). With that in mind, rarely is any specific design choice always 100% good or bad.

I think rather than just taking a vote, it is more useful to think about what makes a good random encounter, and what kinds of game designs work well with them.

I enjoy CRPG styled games. Often in these random encounters happen when moving through an overworld. This kind of design doesn’t disrupt exploration, since once it is over, you continue on your way. It does disrupt when you are going between known points and just trying to tie something up. That can be annoying. Ways that I think can make random encounters enjoyable for CRPG styled games:

1. Not every random encounter has to be combat. Some can be combat, some can be social, some can be vendors, and some can just be flavor. Non-combat encounters can be used as sort of optional bonus content for players to learn about the lore or explore, and they might even feel special since it is a random occurrence the player gets.
2. The ability to put points into some kind of skill that gives the player the option to avoid a random encounter and/or start a combat encounter with a bonus.
3. Encounters should be tied with regions of the overworld in a way that makes sense. Put tougher encounters in endgame areas to discourage players from poking around too early. Make encounters in certain areas tied to the main faction or location in that area.
4. Ease up on certain kinds of encounters as the game goes on, so they don’t outstay their welcome. For example, in the early game if there are lots of low level bandits attacking in random encounters, it can be fun, but it gets old once you are powerful enough to rip through them and are just trying to get bigger things done. Solve this by, for example saying that routes between major hubs are secured thanks to player actions. Now the player can travel between main routes without getting hassled.
5. Be very thoughtful about combat random encounters triggered by NPCs after the player due to player actions. These tend to be more annoying since these are usually higher level NPCs that pack more punch. Making their appearance totally random can be very annoying. It also often feels like a grind if the encounter happens repeatedly. I would prefer the consequences of player actions to firstly always be telegraphed so they know a certain action means a revenge squad is after them. Second, I would prefer this encounter to be scripted- either concretely in a specific location where the game knows the player hasn’t yet been by virtue of the trigger happening while certain areas are still locked by the main story, or in a floating fashion where one of various possibilities is chosen by the game based on whatever triggers first. Once the player defeats whoever is after them, they should never be chased by an identical kind of threat.

These are all CRPG ideas, but I think mostly translate to action RPGs conceptually.

setsneedtofeed, 18 days ago

Wasteland 3 is a good CRPG style game with modern presentation. There is backstory from the first two games, but the third one is self contained enough that you won’t be confused by the story.

I think making regions safe is a great idea but I would want it tied to a challenging side quest. Like maybe you can intentionally fight a harder version of an area’s enemies to make it safe?

That’s one way to tackle it. The point is that there is something to prevent the experience of being super high level and getting mugged by guys with rusty shivs. I’m throwing out many ideas, which could be refined by specific games.

When it comes to random mobs, a game which relies on them is Kenshi, as an example. Without wandering random mobs to encounter, the game loses a lot of flavor. Kenshi does a few things uniquely, with the main one being that many random encounters that end in defeat don’t end in death. Rather than it being a case where a random mob annoyingly forces a start from a previous save, Kenshi can often be played past the defeat with the player now enslaved, in jail, or injured. The emergent story telling from those fights is what makes the game.

setsneedtofeed, 24 days ago

Probably because it makes a ton of money. The opinions of people who post online represent a small fraction of people who play games.

setsneedtofeed, 25 days ago (edited 25 days ago)

I’m legitimately having difficulty following the flow of this question. The formatting vacillates between question and statement, and I am sincerely having trouble fully discerning the connection between points.

I think this post comes from disappointment with Star Wars Outlaws, which by all reports largely follows the Ubisoft formula for open world games. For this, yes Ubisoft has struck upon a formula that is applied to seemingly all of their open world games, which is indeed overly predictable. For that, I do agree that the rote steps of a collectation heavy game where the player secures territory of the game in order to advance the story is overplayed.

Otherwise, I am stuck trying to tease out the rest of the post’s intention.

Recently the 2 “highly praised” Star Wars “open world” games

I don’t know what the other Star Wars game referred to is supposed to be. Is this referring to Jedi Survivor? That game did have a number of technical problems, but it wasn’t ever intended or marketed as an open world game. Putting even that aside, why are two Star Wars games used as the pillars of western AAA games? What is the point or critique here?

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

I’m hoping that was done for some sort of misguided “cinematic” reason for the trailer. I caught a moment at 0:50 that looks like full screen scoping in, and then later at 0:54 that looks like a clearly cinematic angle where the scope-in-screen seems visible in the corner.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

There’s no good 1-for-1 way to represent it on a screen.

In real life, the entire image in one eye would be the scope, and the other would be everything else. On a monitor with a little scope pop up you have a small image-in-an-image that you’re looking at with both eyes and bouncing back and forth with to the surroundings. Your brain isn’t processing it the same way.

This is a case where i don’t think it is possible to replicate the real experience, but that doing image-in-image is a more annoying choice than others. I’d veto it on being annoying to play with grounds, and do hope what we see in the trailer either doesn’t represent how it works or is an option.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

For people who want FPS single player, squad control games. The choices are really original Ghost Recon, GRAW, Brothers In Arms, and kinda-sorta Full Spectrum Warrior.

Arma is more open ended. There is a niche for a game that is out of the box squad control with missions designed around it.

Sure you can tell people to keep replaying those old games over and over, but new entries into the genre would be nice. The graphics of this new game are a mix of indie game devs knowing their limitations and appealing to original GR era nostalgia.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

It sounds like you specifically don’t like the sub-genre as a whole. Thats perfectly fine, but can you accept that there are people who do like these games? I mean clearly, since those older titles still have fans those people exist. That is the audience for this game.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

But I’ve never seen it done right.

So you don’t like GRAW, Brothers In Arms, or Full Spectrum Warrior. Thats fine. This game is made for people who do.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

Yes, but I believe they are only a publisher. The actual dev team seems to be a two person operation with a few indie titles under their belt.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

Yes that new Delta Force game really looks like it is just cashing in on the attitude of modern Rainbow 6 Siege and generic modern military gameplay. Shame.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

It has a bright and cartoony aesthetic, which isn’t inherently bad. Objects are easily readable, and the style is very flexible for adding all sorts of characters from various settings. The style also ages better than attempting photo realism.

Otherwise, yeah sure it’s a shooter which happened to catch on for the younger audience especially, and the increase of social areas and events gave it more varied content.

I played it for about 10 minutes, it’s not really for me. I don’t think about it much, but I understand why someone might like it. Just because it isn’t for me doesn’t mean it’s bad. People that getting really riled up about it existing or being popular give the same aura as 12 year olds vocally making fun of things 10 year olds are into to prove how mature and sophisticated they are in comparison.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

The trailer with the despairing astronaut and the skull themed rollercoaster is a positive sign.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

The Precursors.

A first person scifi FPS-RPG. Developed in Ukraine. Very unique experience wrapped inside of a concept that’s been done before. High slavjank tolerance required.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Honestly 5 had a lot going for it. It removed radio tower puzzles. It way cleaned up on absurd collectaton mechanics of 4, which had gone way too overboard. The survialist bunkers were a neat mechanic to replace a lot of collectaton stuff. I actually enjoyed the side games like the fishing. The gunplay and the customization was iterated on and improved. The editor where you could make your own missions and post them online was really cool (I made a lot of super complicated stealth missions).

The vibe of the game was pretty good, and the villains were engaging enough. It’s really just the main plot that falls to pieces and only at the very end does it become impossible to ignore how dumb it is.

I think that in mechanical design, 5 is a straight improvement on 3 and 4.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

XCOM 2 came out in 2016. Let’s get another XCOM game. Maybe humanity pushing into space and creating a colony which then comes under alien attack. You have to defend the colony, cut off from earth, and take out the alien menace.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

It was a strange moment created by my accidental breaking on some game triggers. It was odd how easily and unintentionally I broke the flow of the level. I believe this was the only time in the game I needed to kill specific people as objectives.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago

Section 8, a scifi game did a similar respawn using drop pods.

setsneedtofeed, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Fair use is determined in a court. If somebody sues you, you can’t just say “Nah actually it’s fair use” and then not show up to court.

The C&D letter wasn’t a lawsuit yet, but a warning that one would be coming. The mod team had the choice of complying or going to court, which costs time and money. In court, even if they ended up winning, it’s not guaranteed that the dev team would be granted legal fees. Atop that, who wants to spend the next few months to years stressing on a court fight?

It’s an unfortunately lopsided situation where a C&D is enough to make most small time projects fold at the prospect of even having to go to court.