Author Topic: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater  (Read 237038 times)

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #520 on: April 24, 2017, 02:20:36 AM »
It's "easy" when you have hundreds/thousands of people willing to work for free for hundreds/thousands of hours.

It's like saying it's easy to draw 2D art because there's lots of great pics in sites all over the web. But if you want to actually sell a product you can't just take all that public property. You need to pay people so you own the rights to that stuff and can legally sell your game.

That goes doubly when you want specific things for your game, not shinier grass #2716 or bigger boobs set #1381 or skimpier armor set #8987.

Then there's stuff like deadlines and making sure all the people are on the same picture so that when you combine the pieces it runs smoothly.

Skyrim did not run smoothly at launch. When you add a dozen mods from different people you'll be lucky if it doesn't crash outright.

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #521 on: April 24, 2017, 03:04:15 PM »
Finished PS: Torment. What an awesome game, especially the first half (before Ravel). The ending was pretty decent, too. I replayed it a few times with different answers just to see how they affected the outcome. Had it crash a handful of times, but I had saved frequently so it was no big deal. Would definitely recommend getting the enhanced version (on steam) and running through it, if you haven't before. Supposedly the original was pretty buggy, and they fixed all of that and also added a few tweaks (quick loot, etc).

BTW: it's totally about the story. If you're looking for something combat/graphics driven... this isn't it...
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Offline brujon

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #522 on: April 24, 2017, 06:06:38 PM »
Finished PS: Torment. What an awesome game, especially the first half (before Ravel). The ending was pretty decent, too. I replayed it a few times with different answers just to see how they affected the outcome. Had it crash a handful of times, but I had saved frequently so it was no big deal. Would definitely recommend getting the enhanced version (on steam) and running through it, if you haven't before. Supposedly the original was pretty buggy, and they fixed all of that and also added a few tweaks (quick loot, etc).

BTW: it's totally about the story. If you're looking for something combat/graphics driven... this isn't it...

Has some of the best characters in any RPG i've ever played, and some damn good voice acting as well!
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline SorO_Lost

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #523 on: April 24, 2017, 09:24:39 PM »
It's "easy" when you have hundreds/thousands of people willing to work for free for hundreds/thousands of hours.
You mean like the Loz fan base or the paid professions that released an HD Zelda teaser for the Wii U over five years ago and had a playable BotW demo for over three years before release?

Look the point simply is bad design decisions were made and constantly revamping the project over a period of five years, it's $100,000,000 cost had pushed people towards the get it the f**k out the door now option. You can play Nintendo/Zela fanboi and irrationally defend it until the end of time, see next quote, but BotW was released to recuperate losses and it was bundled along side an early Switch release rather than waiting for the traditional Mario game, for much of the same reason. Nintendo needed to cover losses and someone said now instead of listening to another it'll be out soon promise. And like it or not, the game is just going to serve as beta test platform of the new gaming engine and world psychics for the later, and far better, Zelda game coming in the next three years will make usage of.

Hell, BotW it's self is disgusted with it's lack of monsters. Honestly you could merge four shrines worth of effort together with some monster filled rooms/halls for thirty more traditional Zelda like dungeons. But along the way someone was like these monsters suck ass, so let's split things into four times the amount of dungeons and give one quarter the rewards hoping the player forget they only used one enemy. And that one enemy isn't even palette swapped, just equipped with different weapons. In a game where the player can just toss new weapons to any enemy they want. Zero substantial effort was clearly made in that area, and probably it's because someone at the last minute told them they needed more points of interest on the map because Skyrim had another two or four hundred more than test build currently did.

Also public PSA for those of you running the new patch Nintendo told you would make for a better experience. You can only farm 20 arrows from mounted archers. But that's ok, since they didn't code the save flags for naked island correctly you can travel to the shrine, glide down to the chest of arrows buried in the water, loot it, saves, and simply reload your file to reloot the chest again. their looted state is never saved, so reloading the save file will reload unlooted chests allowing you to endlessly loots, save, reload, over and over again.

Skyrim did not run smoothly at launch. When you add a dozen mods from different people you'll be lucky if it doesn't crash outright.
That'd be the blind fanboi rebuttal right there" "Yeah well, I downloaded a bunch of shit mods from a bunch of terrible people on Skyrim and it didn't work so well. So logical conclusion is BotW must be better!"



Finished PS: Torment.
How long did that take you O.o

Edit - Less than six days.
« Last Edit: April 24, 2017, 09:42:45 PM by SorO_Lost »

Offline trappedslider

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #524 on: April 25, 2017, 08:00:13 AM »
I would have thought that the PC version of FO4 would have had less bugs/glitches than the console version..but nooo, I had to use console commands to get around 3 issues  :shakefist

However, I still enjoy playing it so there's that lol.

And since the next Call Of Duty is going back to WWII, I think I may pre-order a copy. I haven't pre-ordered a copy of CoD since Ghost.

Offline brujon

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #525 on: April 25, 2017, 08:20:28 AM »
Well... It IS a Bethesda game. And it IS the same engine as Skyrim, only tweaked a bit , so... IDK what you expected, of course it'll be bugy AF  :lmao

Don't preorder... That's a sin. Especially CoD games which are basically annual cash grabs, incomplete games filled with DLC's. Throwing money their way only encourages that behavior in other developers, seeking to emulate their success...

That being said it's sad that the state of affairs is unlikely to change as people won't stop preordering or buying those games. Gamers simply aren't organized enough to boycott.
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline trappedslider

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #526 on: April 25, 2017, 11:03:43 AM »
Well... It IS a Bethesda game. And it IS the same engine as Skyrim, only tweaked a bit , so... IDK what you expected, of course it'll be bugy AF  :lmao

Don't preorder... That's a sin. Especially CoD games which are basically annual cash grabs, incomplete games filled with DLC's. Throwing money their way only encourages that behavior in other developers, seeking to emulate their success...

That being said it's sad that the state of affairs is unlikely to change as people won't stop preordering or buying those games. Gamers simply aren't organized enough to boycott.

Considering our taste in games vary wildly and the fact that I said MAY and I didn't brother with the last few CoD (mainly cuz the settings didn't interest me) and I find it ironic that you call CoD annual cash grab...would that make Mairo etc annual console cash grabs?  :P

As for Beth...I knew going in it would be buggy,just not THIS buggy lol but like i said I'm still having fun ^_^

Speaking of annual cash grabs...every successful franchise becomes a cash grab with a set time line for releases sooner or later....

Offline brujon

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #527 on: April 25, 2017, 11:26:30 AM »
I actually really like CoD and similar games... I was into Modern Warfare biiiiig time, hundreds upon hundreds of hours played back when it was first released, but i got extremely upset with how bad the support for the game became after MW2 and later releases. It just seemed like the fanbase is extremely fickle and quick to jump into the next game's bandwagon, and the devs give absolutely zero fks about the game after the next one's released. So basically after MW2 launched, the first one started having less and less players until the game was basically dead. Meanwhile, MW2 played almost EXACTLY like MW, except the game's balance was even shittier than it was in the first one, then MW3 even more so, and the trend continued with Black Ops 1 and 2 and Ghosts. Every year, they release a new title with some new gimmicks and somewhat improved graphics, you have to spend a lot of money to "upgrade" or get stuck into a game with zero players.

Between spending money to get into a game with shittier balance, but better graphics and an active playerbase, or simply dropping the franchise altogether and just pirating the game to play the single player campaign, i chose the latter.

No reason to support devs who're only after your wallet and don't give two shits about the game or the player base.

Same reason why i got majorly pissed with Left 4 Dead 2.

In fact it seems like most FPS games suffer from this issue. It's just... I don't even.

You have to pay to get new maps? No new content just... Some skins, maps, and that's it?

The state of FPS games today is completely and utterly bonkers.

CS 1.6, CSS, Quake 3 Arena and many others from the heyday of shooters, there was none of this bullshit. Hell, they still have support to this day. I'd much rather play one of these than to endorse this new state of affairs.
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline trappedslider

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #528 on: April 25, 2017, 12:29:04 PM »
There isn't honestly a lot you can do with an FPS to make it "new" and "exciting". Ghosts was meh, but I think you're out of step with the majority on BLO 2, since that one had gotten lots of praise and along with the different ways the story line could end depending on your actions on some of the missions, which apparently from that point on has been asked for with each CoD.

As for the zombie mode..I honestly think that they should just make a stand alone game for it....

As for the fan base...recall that Infinite Warfare became the most down voted video in all of CoD history..now as to if that was due to them making a cash grab with MW remaster being bundled or folks just sick of the future who can say...I myself recently got the edition that bundled MW remaster for half of it's normal cost (cheers for amazon, I even't even installed infinite warfare lol,only MW))

Sad to say but micro-transactions are the wave of the future...it's a chicken or the egg...one side will say "Pirate due to micro-transactions" the other will say "we need to came up with more money due to pirates."

The last FPS I played on my computer was maybe a match of L4D2, but other than that I've just been plugging away on my xbox.


Offline Kuroimaken

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #529 on: April 25, 2017, 12:35:23 PM »
I am personally biased against FPS games. Frankly, they seem like the damn laziest way to make a videogame. You don't need to invest in character design, at least for the protagonist; you can artificially jack up the difficulty by making silent enemies attack you from blind spots; camera control is ridiculously easy to do (and fails to capture peripheral vision EVERY TIME).

Frankly, the only way FPS can innovate at this point is with the use of VR. And I'm talking some more realistic shit - like, your head can actually move, instead of making your whole body on a swivel depending on your POV. Where you can look at yourself, over your own freakin' shoulder if you have to, instead of twisting your body around an axis in a way that doesn't make physical sense. Of course, you'd need a more complex control scheme to do that...
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Offline brujon

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #530 on: April 25, 2017, 12:53:59 PM »
Perspective is actually something i was reading about recently. The perspective they use in videogames plays EXTREMELY poorly with big FOVs, so you lose peripheral vision, otherwise you create massive distortions. There are several MUCH better projections available.

This video exemplifies some of the projections using a house from Life is Strange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaREC6hwaR0

Pannini seems to give the best results, but Mercator can be good as well depending on FOV. Fisheye is just weird.

The point being... There's a lot that can be improved with FPS games from changing the projection that's being used ALONE.

Games are stuck using the same projection that were used for Wolfenstein.

This is baaaaaad. Currently technology CAN do better...
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline trappedslider

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #531 on: April 25, 2017, 01:00:23 PM »
I am personally biased against FPS games. Frankly, they seem like the damn laziest way to make a videogame.

That's how I feel sometimes when it comes to RPGs that give your character a name and backstory, when they do that it just feels like I'm reading a book instead of playing a game.

Offline ketaro

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #532 on: April 25, 2017, 01:21:06 PM »
A book still has more varied and/or unique content than most FPS games~

But you can't realistically compare games across genres. They're entirely different things. It's like writing up a comparison between Civilization and Dark Souls.

Offline trappedslider

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #533 on: April 25, 2017, 01:29:13 PM »
A book still has more varied and/or unique content than most FPS games~

But you can't realistically compare games across genres. They're entirely different things. It's like writing up a comparison between Civilization and Dark Souls.

I don't think I was comparing them, mainly applying his feelings to explain how I regard some RPGs.

Offline trappedslider

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #534 on: April 25, 2017, 04:48:51 PM »
Getting back to comparing things https://gamerant.com/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-map-skyrim-comparison/

*Waits for the rant* :P

Offline phaedrusxy

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #535 on: April 25, 2017, 06:38:42 PM »
I am personally biased against FPS games. Frankly, they seem like the damn laziest way to make a videogame.

That's how I feel sometimes when it comes to RPGs that give your character a name and backstory, when they do that it just feels like I'm reading a book instead of playing a game.
I love books... What's wrong with that? :D I did think more than once that torment is basically a fancy "choose your adventure" book... but I actually was happy about that realization. :P
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Offline trappedslider

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #536 on: April 25, 2017, 07:22:22 PM »
I am personally biased against FPS games. Frankly, they seem like the damn laziest way to make a videogame.

That's how I feel sometimes when it comes to RPGs that give your character a name and backstory, when they do that it just feels like I'm reading a book instead of playing a game.
I love books... What's wrong with that? :D I did think more than once that torment is basically a fancy "choose your adventure" book... but I actually was happy about that realization. :P

It honestly comes down to my mood at the time. I bet once I get passed the whole can't name the or customize the character I'd enjoy any number of RPGs, but for me the setting would need to make up for it.  After spending so many hours in skyrim, I'm all fantasy setting out....give me something modernish or steam punk or sci-fi you know?

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #537 on: April 25, 2017, 07:34:25 PM »
Perspective is actually something i was reading about recently. The perspective they use in videogames plays EXTREMELY poorly with big FOVs, so you lose peripheral vision, otherwise you create massive distortions. There are several MUCH better projections available.

This video exemplifies some of the projections using a house from Life is Strange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaREC6hwaR0

Pannini seems to give the best results, but Mercator can be good as well depending on FOV. Fisheye is just weird.

The point being... There's a lot that can be improved with FPS games from changing the projection that's being used ALONE.

Games are stuck using the same projection that were used for Wolfenstein.

This is baaaaaad. Currently technology CAN do better...

Thing is, Call of Duty and clones still sell like crazy and are a main fraction of the video game market. The core mechanics kinda have solidified and most players out there simply don't want something like a new perspective tech that would completely change how the game plays and invalidate all their years of competitive multiplayer. The companies producing the games themselves don't want to take the risk either. If people buy it, don't change the core formula. Just add shinier graphics and a new gimmick or two. Then go back to your WW of choice and the cycle starts again, rinse and repeat.

Now for a rant of my own, I kinda hate how MOBAs have pretty much taken over RTS. There's new MOBAs everywhere I look, but RTS are becoming more and more rare, and don't even really seem to try anymore.

Offline brujon

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #538 on: April 25, 2017, 08:08:22 PM »
RTS games age really well. Just look at AOE II, and the HD release is more or less same graphics, but scalable to modern resolutions. It's just a bit prettified. Brood War still has a very loyal following, and there are still tournaments being held for it, despite Starcraft II being out since 2009 and the Legacy of the Void expansion being released relatively recently.

There are other problems:

- Takes time to develop skill in RTS. Macro, micro, timings, hotkeys, build orders, soft/hard counters... It's so much stuff to memorize, and you gotta do it for however many races the game allows. It's really hard to become good enough at a competitive level. This means people will dedicate more time to a particular RTS, and play it in detriment of others.

- RTS's aren't as popular as other genres.

- There's competition within the "Strategy" market: Grand Strategy vs Turn-based Strategy vs Real Time Strategy. All three genres have their flagship titles that more or less reign supreme and uncontested, and all other games of the same genre have more or less mediocre sales, if you compare them to any run of the mill MOBA or FPS.

- It's arguably the hardest genre of all to balance for. It's really, really difficult to design balance for an RTS. Keeping every race roughly on par with the others, while still keeping their playstyle unique is really difficult to succeed at, and is one reason why Brood War is still played today despite being so old. It's just extremely balanced.

- One of the bigger reasons: RTS games play extremely poorly on consoles. You just need the amount of buttons present on a keyboard, and the fine control provided by the mouse. Anything else just doesn't feel right. This cuts on profit margins, makes it even more difficult to develop new RTS games.
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life

Offline oslecamo

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Re: Videogame Discussion III - Snake Eater
« Reply #539 on: April 25, 2017, 08:50:20 PM »
Thing is, Turn-Based Strategy and Grant Strategy have been pretty popular in recent years. Fire Emblem was almost binned but now is on Fire (pun intended), Civilization is still pretty popular, there's the X-COM reboots. Go to kickstarter and you'll find plenty of people wanting to make either Turn-Based Strategy or Grand Strategy. Even the Switch is getting a new IP turn based strategy game.

And none of the above are really balanced or have big competitive scenes. What they do have is great single-player experience with proper campaigns or sandbox against AI. You don't need to get uber balance for a RTS to be popular if fighting the AI scenarios is fun. Age of Empires in particular had some really sweet campaigns, as did the original Starcraft/Broodwar. SC II's campaign isn't bad per se, but just felt inferior. Similarly Dawn of War Winter Assault had that great campaign where you could switch between all sides and then backstab your ally before the final mission and then the risk-style campaign of Dark Crusade that was made worse in Soulstorm followed by Dawn of War II super-grind campaign where you don't even pretend you're playing by MP rules. Retribution had a nicer campaign, but was  pretty short and all missions but first and last were the same regardless of what faction you picked. While Dark Crusade and Soulstorm had corny awesome custom dialogues for each faction's boss depending on who they were fighting.

Meanwhile Total Annihilation was a pretty sweet game while Planetary Annihilation pretty much flopped. Is it really that hard to just take Total Annihilation and spiff it up with some 3D HD graphics and better UI? Batallion Wars was also a nice new take on the genre where you controlled things from an unit's perspective.

As for "plays poorly on consoles", so does League of Legends and clones. And also demands micro timing, hotkeys, item build orders, soft/hard counters, memorizing every hero and item's abilities, even macro on the form of managing your gold income.  But League of Legends is pretty much the most popular game on the planet in recent years.