spankmonkey

spankmonkey, 4 miesiące temu

So they spent advertising money on freelance shills. Ok, that is just another form of advertising like paying an advertising company to do advertising.

spankmonkey, 4 miesiące temu

Do streamers call themselves influencers?

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

The original Neverwinter Nights after Baldur’s Gate 3.

NWN was fantastic for it’s time, loved the DM mode and online mods, but the clunky movement and walls of text without voiceovers just can’t compare.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

I think BG3 also does max HP for 5e classws which is higher than the edition(s) used for 1 & 2. Did 1 & 2 use random HP for first level as well?

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

While I agree with you on how mediocre voice acting drags down most games, BG3 is one of the very few where the voice acting elevated the dialogue for me and the dialogue felt a lot less rambling than in NWN and other similar games. In BG3 the player character dialogue options are pretty robust, sometimes having six or more options to choose from, since the character doesn’t speak. I haven’t played Planescape Torment or Fallout 2 to compare, so I’ll take your word on them.

On a side note, BG3 was one of the games where the dialogue choices do matter. The worst are games where there are only a few poorly described choices and they have zero impact on what happens after! While I live Battletech (2019) the dialoge choices were completely pointless other than microfosing information. They would have been better off just having the NPCs banter after a single choice.

Personal preferences of course, which is why I love how many games there are to choose from.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

I don’t normally like that kind of character but he really grew on me fast. Astarian, Gale, and Karlach are my absolute favorites but the cast as a whole is solid.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

That’s what I am glad they included enough for personal preference and included the ability to respec them so they weren’t locked into their starting classes.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

Are they getting worse overall or are we just comparing all of the current AAA games to the best AAA of the past few decades? Or comparing the current versions of series to the high points, which might just be the first game in the series?

We definitely have a number of high quality AAA games that come out each year. Most prior years had a few high quality AAA games and a lot of mediocre or terrible ones too. It’s kind of like music where the average quality over time is actually pretty consistent, but in any given year there are a lot of turds and there are certain trends that are common to those turds.

90% of every entertainment medium tends to be terrible, but when we look back we mostly remember the 10% that were good and only a few of the absolute worst to laugh at.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

If nothing else, the total volume of great games that are available to play keeps increasing because of massive improvements in backwards compatibility through steam and other online game distributors.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

Depends on the implementation.

If the promotion of mtx.is jarring or overwhelming then even limiting to cosmetics sucks. If something ends and there are multiple click through screens encouraging players to by mtx and other ads within the game to buy the mtx it can become a chore to ignore. Even if gameplay itself is not impacted, the things that happen outside of gameplay can deag down the whole experience.

An example would be those stupid unskippable season pass screens where the bar goes up slowly and it reminds you of what you didn’t get becsuse tou didn’t buy the season pass. A few seconds each time, sure, but it adds up and is clearly trying to goad you into spending money. That shit sucks even if it limited to cosmetics.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

They are ‘refunding’ the virtual currency. I would bet at least some lf the items purchased during prerelease will cost more on release.

But the main thing is they are basically trying the ‘free to play’ version of preordering, where they get your money before releasing a finished game.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

We all realize that in-game cosmetics aren’t real, right?

Yes, but the unavoidable advertising of those cosmetics frequently drag down the experience when there are multiple click through screens and progress bars on battle passes the player didn’t buy and a ton of other negatives that have nothing to do with whether cosmetics affect game play. Free to play frequently means ‘annoying nag menus’.

I happened to focus on getting their money early and calling a reset of their fake money a refund being misleading.

It also happens that my experience with early access free to play was Multiversus, where they took a moderately OK early access game that added mtx, then went silent for months and came back as a trash version of the same game with even more mtx. This being EA I expect them to go even harder into the mtx at the expense of game play.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

People just want to be mad at things because some other things that are unrelated made them mad once and they want to just smear the anger a bit.

Or maybe they are annoyed by the things they gave examples of instead of being some kind of crazy conspiracy.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

Being mad loudly online at a frequent punching bag with a bad reputation is sheer mob-induced dopamine and that’s why that headline exists and why this conversation happens.

Or maybe they are a punching bag because of the things they repeatedly do, did you consider that?

It isn’t like multiversus is the only one that did this. I clearly said they were an example of a larger trend.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

You keep acting like those are different concerns, but the reason for concern is the combination of mtx, free to play, and being in alpha.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

So you refuse to accept that people mean what they say and feel the need to defend a for profit company by twisting any complaints into some kind of faked outrage conspiracy.

Have fun with that.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

I don’t think interacting with your reality is very productive.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

If a game is going to have mtx, they shouldn’t be charging for it during a prerelease. They have multiple ethical ways to handle it that would garner better feedback.

1. Leave it out entirely and focus on the gameplay. That is what should be selling the game anyway.
2. Have the mtx but without a way to pay real money. Give the players the option to ‘purchase’ in game currency and give them a running total.

The latter would be reset at release, but would gather feedback on what people want to spend and if the promo process is well implemented.

Both would run counter to the actual purpose of the vast majority of mtx which is fleecing whales and this is EA.

The most ethical implementation of mtx that I know of is actually for a paid game, Helldivers 2. The in game promo stuff is minimal and does not negatively impact the menus or interacting with the ship. The option to buy stuff doesn’t use dark patterns, but it is easily available. When they did set prices too high for a collaboration thing they apologized due to feedback and gave the other half of the stuff that would have been for sale to every single player. It is basically the exact opposite of Call of Duty’s mtx.

spankmonkey, 5 miesięcy temu

Yes, and it was a lot more fun that working.

Maybe you played shitty games?

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

Like cgi and other visual effects, realism has some applications that can massively improve the experience in some games. Just like how lighting has a massive impact, or sound design, etc.

Chasing it at the expense of game play or art design is a negative though.

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

Did those go for realism though, or were they just good at balancing the more detailed art design with the gameplay?

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

They clearly balanced the more detailed art design with the game play.

GTA didn’t have detail on cars to the level of a racing game, and didn’t have characters with as much detail as Resident Evil, so that it could have a larger world for example. Colossus had fewer objects on screen so it could put more detail on what was there.

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

Yeah. So like every other game.

Except for the ones that don’t do a good job of balancing the two things. Like the games that have incredible detail but shit performance and/or awful gameplay.

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

What a petty, childish, incel themed administration we elected.

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

The game wasn’t great, but was entertaining at the start of the open beta. I think they did a decent job with the characters, the style, and the moves like Shaggy throwing his sandwich. I had hopes that they would improve the netcode and hitboxes, but still got like 40 hours of fun out of it playing in a group with a friend.

The microtransactions were bad to start and only got worse. Charging for seasons in a beta? Stupidly high priced skins? Ugh. Then the went away for a while and the official release made the game playworse, microtransactions bascially assaulted you constantly, and any shred of fun was gone. They did the opposite of the feedback from the beta to chase microtransactions and that is why the game is dead already. They actively killed it.

Now I’m sad again.

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

That assumes that going all in on mtx an in game currency is the way to go and not other options like offering the game at a decent price and then selling skins and other mtx at reasonable prices.

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

free to play

other options like offering the game at a decent price…

spankmonkey, 6 miesięcy temu

I’m talking about possible ways of monetizing these types of games, not 2XKO specifically.

spankmonkey, 7 miesięcy temu

Does gran turismo have open world roaming where you can get achievements for knocking down centuries old cactii?.

spankmonkey, 7 miesięcy temu (edited 7 miesięcy temu)

I love that your criteria for being dead is that you don’t like it.

It sounds like you like the large scale (32 or 64) battle FPS games, whoch are not as popular currently as they do tend into the issue you mention which is not having enough players makes matchmaking drag out happens faster than small team short round games.

I do play block ops 6 because it is one of a few cross platform games one friend enjoys. It isn’t terrible, just an average cod game, but it doesn’t have the vehicle maps like modern warfare and I kinda miss those.

I also play Helldivers 2 which is 3rd person that has first person aim down site options, although it is 4 player vs environment.

I do miss the battlefield games, they were hella fun back when I played them.

spankmonkey, 7 miesięcy temu

It apparently works well enough.

spankmonkey, 7 miesięcy temu

All that money and updates still require restarts.

spankmonkey, 7 miesięcy temu

I can play any number multiple repetitive/nonlinear games that don’t require keeping track of a story or events. So racing games, most FPS, etc. Right now I can switch between Helldivers 2, Call of Duty, Forza Horizon, Valheim, Tekken, and so on at the drip of a hat. I do end up customizing controls so they are similar within a genre, so HD and COD get trmapped to my standard first person shooter control scheme.

But I cannot stay engaged with more than one game that has a storyline/things to rememeber like the Witcher, Red Dead Redemption 2, or Horizon Zero Dawn even if they have handy in game reminders for what to do. Switching between stories is my dealbreaker for playing at the same time. I also have trouble sticking with a story long enough to complete those types of games which is a bummer because I like the idea of them.

spankmonkey, 8 miesięcy temu

That could also be done by having improved techniques to quickly dispatch the rats without needing to also scale up the character’s toughness so their bites are less effective.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

That song sounds like what AI would spit out if it was told to make a song that sounds like an anime intro that includes every fucking cliche from a superhero team up.

Yes, the song gets even worse as it goes on.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

Probably counterstrike back in the day, possibly battlefield 2 including the Project Reality mod. That was back when gametime wasn’t really tracked and I had a lot more spare time Possibly WoW, but I only played for a couple of years or less and for a few hours a day at most.

Currently my highest is Forza Horison 5 with like 1200 hours. Have a few others with 500+ hours although a few are inflated at least 100+ hours because the game locked up on closing and counted as played for several days multiple times.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

Its like sometimes people don’t see every single post.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Comment ratio is not an indication of whether someone is online, just whether they feel the need to comment a lot. I tend to spend the same amount of time reading whether I’m commenting or not.

Lurkers can be terminally online.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

Is it the same user posting both?

If not, they most likely missed the first one. I doubt most people check whether something that looks new to them has already been posted.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

I don’t care if different people do or don’t post it multiple times across multiple days. I already get to see some cross community duplication, so someone posting because they are late to the game gets lost in the noise.

It isn’t like a discussion can only happen one time and if people miss it then they are out of luck. If someone posts late and nobody wants to engage the repost will fade off into obscurity.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

We had a silly mod for Unreal Tournament back in the day for LAN parties that switched out the headshot theme for crotch shots. Whoever did the voice was spot on with the game’s announcer.

CROTCH SHOT!

CROTCH SPREE!

CROTCH RAMPAGE!

CROTCH DOMINATION!

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

That’s a good 'un!

Juntax? Who you want me kill?

It’s been a couple decades and I don’t know how it was spelled, but that’s what I remember hearing. Loved playing the Horde.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

Yeah, at the time I assumed that the people intentionally spreading in game were just trolling because there was no actual danger to themselves. Reality proved that tons of people are fine with harming themselves as long as they harm others at the same time.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

Apparently the announcement was made in stealth mode.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

I’m so sick of action rpgs including crafting or an endless list of slightly different weapons. Give me a small mix of situational weapons at most and let the gameplay be how difficulty works.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

While additional cosmetic options can add variety and personal expression to the game

I guess if bragging about spending extra money to advertise for some company is personal expression, sure.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

Unattainable achievements aren’t achievments, they are lies.

Some might be extremely difficult or tedious though.

spankmonkey, 9 miesięcy temu

An article about Joker 2 has the novelty factor of bombing as a sequel to Joker, which was a massive hit. They will got a lot more views on any one of those five Joker 2 articles than they will from multiple articles about a game nobody heard about.

More views = more money. It doesn’t matter whether something is more ‘worthy’ or not.