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MisterBibs posted:Locking people out of content is annoying and bullshit. I recall a Morrowind mod someone made that made the stats you needed for promotion way higher (presumably because the modmaker had the ehmershun brainworm), and all it meant was that you'd be able to qualify for promotion in a guild at the approximate time when you quaffed a cure for a disease that (storyline-wise) made you actually immortal. Miss me with that crap; the game explicitly tells you plot-wise things will be better if you're a muckity-muck in something for a while before he helps you out any more. Not sure how you installing a bad mod shows that forcing some consequences to actions is also a bad thing.
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Aug 10, 2020 12:27
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It's not like locking people out of content is intrinsically good, it's just that it's not really avoidable if you want the player's choices to be meaningful. If there's a game where you can kill the Shogun of the Cyber-Samurai and nobody really cares, you're not going to fix that by installing a mod where still nobody cares except that some quests go away.
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Aug 10, 2020 12:42
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Ravenfood posted:Not sure how you installing a bad mod shows that forcing some consequences to actions is also a bad thing. The mod wasn't poorly made or anything, it just had a fundamental bedrock of insanity (much like any "consequences in video games" mod or thought ever created) so intense that even Sheogorath would blush looking at it. It was Dot Textism before SA existed to even have Dot Text threads. I mean, poo poo, Morrowind was the game let you make cheap alchemy ingredients to make brief, powerful potions that increased your intelligence. Potions that, when quaffed, made your next intelligence potions even better. Repeat, if you wanted, until the heat death of the universe. Frankly, it was glorious. MisterBibs has a new favorite as of 12:54 on Aug 10, 2020 |
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Aug 10, 2020 12:49
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I prefer the Obsidian method of choice, where you can work with every faction up to a point before having to make a permanent decision. This way you can do 90% of the game's sidequests before committing, and you can easily backtrack to an earlier save if you want to see every path on the one run. Less forgivable missables are all the time-sensitive ones in Obsidian's Stick of Truth.
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Aug 10, 2020 13:00
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Ravenfood posted:Not sure how you installing a bad mod shows that forcing some consequences to actions is also a bad thing. From the sounds of it the mod didn't enforce consequences but just increased the requirements to accept a quest.
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Aug 10, 2020 13:05
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You're not locked out of content. Not being able to play as Spider-Man if you get the X-Box version of the new Avengers game, that's being locked out. If there's something you're missing in a quest or storyline because of your choices then just play it again a different way. Isn't that ideally what an RPG is? A game where you have real choices that matter?
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Aug 10, 2020 13:26
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Lobok posted:You're not locked out of content. Not being able to play as Spider-Man if you get the X-Box version of the new Avengers game, that's being locked out. If there's something you're missing in a quest or storyline because of your choices then just play it again a different way. Isn't that ideally what an RPG is? A game where you have real choices that matter? Speaking of that spiderman poo poo, Sony's been doing that bullshit for ages and it's only recently (because it's a popular marvel game) that anyone's been giving a poo poo about it. A while back I posted about how there was an established history of several big name multi-platform games either being massively delayed on other platforms (like Destiny 2 and Monster Hunter World both getting knocked back half a year or so for PC) or otherwise getting ridiculous Sony exclusive content deals (Destiny's second batch of exclusive content wasn't made available on the xbox version until after Destiny 2 had launched and Monster Hunter World Iceborne was, again, mysteriously delayed for PC.) and was called a crazy conspiracy theorist. And this isn't even the first game for this console generation to get exclusive DLC, it's just the most prominent. Control's DLC was a timed Sony exclusive as well; and it being timed is a bigger deal when you factor in just how much the first week or month of a game's life matters for its sales and support. I guess it's cool that other people are starting to realize Sony's a piece of poo poo, but it kind of burns my rear end to see people who called anyone who took umbrage with their tactics before crazy suddenly acting as if they'd always been on the side of calling for fair and good business practices and not at all just now doing it because it's impacting the game they're into.
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Aug 10, 2020 13:47
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I am so mad at Halo: Master Chief Collection. I'm playing it co-op with a friend and that's a lot of fun, enough that I decided to try and tackle those levels on Legendary difficulty (highest) myself. And while I die a lot, eventually I do manage to beat them, so that's great! However! For some reason, the MCC has a chance of not saving progress! It is unfathomable for me how a game released this year can not auto-save correctly, or rather acknowledge that you did anything at all. For co-op, it was bad enough - officially, we never watched the opening cutscene or played the first level, despite finishing the game - but for myself, it's even worse, because I take longer, also try to collect some stuff or go for par scores, and the game is just "okay cool whatever" and doesn't show me having completed the level, give me an Achievement for the score, nothing. It's utterly bizarre. I've googled and some people throughout the history of the game's existence - XBone and now PC - seem to have similar issues, and various fixes are suggested, but it's a complete mess to find out what the correct solution could be, or if it's just random, because apparently the developers are so utterly incapable of delivering a consistently working game that my personal issue is buried under a ludicrous mountain of bugs, glitches, also bizarre but unrelated issues, to the point where the Glitch thread is currently named after a gamebreaking bug that was caused by the Achievements for Halo 3 being activated wrong despite Halo 3 not having been released yet. It's so demotivating to spend an hour on a super hard level, finishing just 100 points above par score (each death costs 100 and at some point you don't get any more), and it was for nothing. I know, I had a lot of fun along the way, but I do actually care about getting meaningless "you did it!" markers, and especially Halo which pioneered a lot of the Achievement stuff should get it right, imo.
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Aug 10, 2020 13:59
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Yup, it's been that way for me ever since it came out on PC in the first place. It remembered my very first ever completion time/score for each Halo 1 stage and it has never updated them on replays since.
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Aug 10, 2020 14:03
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Bug Fables is so loving good and succeeds as both a classic Paper Mario game and on it's own merits HOWEVER the platforming takes a lot of getting used to. Your jump is incredibly anemic and heavy, and it's difficult to gauge your position in terms of distance from the camera. The result is that I get to some pretty basic puzzles like "create ice block, push ice block into spiky pit, jump on ice block, freeze passing enemy, jump on enemy, jump on next platform" is something I'll fail 6 times in a row because I couldn't tell if I was lined up properly for a jump.
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Aug 10, 2020 15:41
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CommissarMega posted:I'd say it depends, mostly- yeah, it's pretty bad game design if I'm locked out of a questline just because my Underwater Basket Weaving skill wasn't high enough, but if I kill the Shogun of the Cyber-Samurai, I'd fully expect to be locked out of Cyber-Samurai quests and plotlines. killing the shogun is how you become the shogun, you should be getting more quests
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Aug 10, 2020 19:09
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Nuebot posted:Speaking of that spiderman poo poo, Sony's been doing that bullshit for ages and it's only recently (because it's a popular marvel game) that anyone's been giving a poo poo about it. A while back I posted about how there was an established history of several big name multi-platform games either being massively delayed on other platforms (like Destiny 2 and Monster Hunter World both getting knocked back half a year or so for PC) or otherwise getting ridiculous Sony exclusive content deals (Destiny's second batch of exclusive content wasn't made available on the xbox version until after Destiny 2 had launched and Monster Hunter World Iceborne was, again, mysteriously delayed for PC.) and was called a crazy conspiracy theorist. And this isn't even the first game for this console generation to get exclusive DLC, it's just the most prominent. Control's DLC was a timed Sony exclusive as well; and it being timed is a bigger deal when you factor in just how much the first week or month of a game's life matters for its sales and support. Wait, I thought Sony was making Spider-Man as DLC right now and he wasn't already done but just not going to be on the other versions for no reason?
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Aug 10, 2020 19:53
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There's a freeplay mode in dirt 4, but it isn't actually freeplay. You create a custom championship that involves your sponsors and counts towards winning money which means when I want to practice driving group b cars I still finish last and take a big hit to sponsor quality. I just want to hoon an rs200 into some trees!
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Aug 10, 2020 20:35
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RareAcumen posted:Wait, I thought Sony was making Spider-Man as DLC right now and he wasn't already done but just not going to be on the other versions for no reason? Sony's main tactic since like the PS2/Gamecube era has been to just throw money at anything they can and they've been getting less and less subtle about it. Whether it's paying Capcom off to get them to renege on a contract with nintendo so they can put RE4 (an exclusive that was selling gangbusters on the Gamecube) on the PS2, or hoarding exclusive IPs throughout the PS3 era they had basically no interest in ever actually doing anything with besides letting them molder for over a decade. More recently titles tend to just randomly get delayed for other platforms if they're something Sony is highly anticipating to be a big seller for their platform, or Sony will negotiate for exclusive DLC deals to try and force a monopoly on sales for said game. I suppose it's one of those "It's Just Business" things but given that nintendo has basically dropped out of the big race, PC doesn't have a single company in charge of negotiating for deals and poo poo like that only individual storefronts like Epic and Steam, and Microsoft not only treats its PC division like second hand goods but also very rarely ever has interest in actually trying to compete with Sony directly in this regard (the usual result is just a "timed release until next year" sort of deal) it feels kind of skeevy.
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Aug 10, 2020 23:46
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People have speculated that Bloodborne is one such behind the curtain handshake. Souls has always been a first-party Sony backed series, including Demon's which was published by SIE Japan (Atlus in the west), but aside from Demon's each of them has eventually made its way onto PC or at least a Microsoft competitor. But not Bloodborne, and it will likely stay that way. The general consensus is that since Fromsoft was developing Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne at the same time, the latter was propped up monetarily by Sony under the condition that it would stay a PS4 exclusive. I don't think that's ever been confirmed or hinted at, but it makes sense. Bloodborne is a confirmed system seller, hell I bought my PS4 just so I could play Bloodborne, so they have no reason to want to give that up until at least the PS5 comes out.
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Aug 11, 2020 00:26
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CJacobs posted:People have speculated that Bloodborne is one such behind the curtain handshake. Souls has always been a first-party Sony backed series, including Demon's which was published by SIE Japan (Atlus in the west), but aside from Demon's each of them has eventually made its way onto PC or at least a Microsoft competitor. But not Bloodborne, and it will likely stay that way. The general consensus is that since Fromsoft was developing Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne at the same time, the latter was propped up monetarily by Sony under the condition that it would stay a PS4 exclusive. I don't think that's ever been confirmed or hinted at, but it makes sense. Bloodborne is a confirmed system seller, hell I bought my PS4 just so I could play Bloodborne, so they have no reason to want to give that up until at least the PS5 comes out. Bloodborne can be played on a PC But also how dare Sony fund a game to keep on their systems. How dare Nintendo fund Bayonetta 2 and 3 and keep them on Nintendo systems
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Aug 11, 2020 00:37
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Making all games available to everyone sounds dangerously close to a little something called socialism, friend
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Aug 11, 2020 00:39
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Just for the record the ps2 version of re4 was in development before the GameCube game had been released, it was the lack of commercial success of capcoms previous games on that platform that made them make that move. For example how many of you realized re2 and 3 have GameCube ports.
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Aug 11, 2020 00:43
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Len posted:Bloodborne can be played on a PC Bloodborne can be played on a PC... using your own PS4 and Sony's proprietary app that you pay monthly for, yes. So actually no, Bloodborne cannot be played on a PC, it can be streamed to a PC. CJacobs has a new favorite as of 00:50 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 00:47
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CJacobs posted:Bloodborne can be played on a PC... using your own PS4 and Sony's proprietary app that you pay monthly for, yes. So actually no, Bloodborne cannot be played on a PC, it can be streamed to a PC. no, dude, it has been on ps now for like two years lol, you can play it on any lovely machine with a decent data connection if you go and sign up for the trial month right now you could stream it from your ps4 without a subscription if that’s what you’re getting confused with
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Aug 11, 2020 00:55
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Len posted:Bloodborne can be played on a PC People were furious about nintendo's exclusive ownership of bayonetta 2 and still complain about it from time to time.
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Aug 11, 2020 00:56
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CJacobs posted:Bloodborne can be played on a PC... using your own PS4 and Sony's proprietary app that you pay monthly for, yes. So actually no, Bloodborne cannot be played on a PC, it can be streamed to a PC. food court bailiff posted:no, dude, it has been on ps now for like two years lol, you can play it on any lovely machine with a decent data connection if you go and sign up for the trial month right now It's okay even videogame journalists forget it's on PC all the time https://www.reddit.com/r/PlayStationNow/comments/etrgh1/is_bloodborne_on_psnow/ Still up as of 6 months ago
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Aug 11, 2020 01:00
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food court bailiff posted:no, dude, it has been on ps now for like two years lol, you can play it on any lovely machine with a decent data connection if you go and sign up for the trial month right now PS Now is what I was talking about. I didn't know you could stream it to PC from your console without a subscription if you own the game, I thought you needed one just to use the app. Either way it's laughable to equate that with a game being actually multi platform. It's literally still running on a PS4 somewhere. Len posted:It's okay even videogame journalists forget it's on PC all the time Demon's Souls can be streamed to PS Now AND played on PS4 in Japanese if you have a JP account because it never came to the English-speaking store, does that count too or are we just being pedantic now? CJacobs has a new favorite as of 01:06 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 01:02
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CJacobs posted:People have speculated that Bloodborne is one such behind the curtain handshake. Souls has always been a first-party Sony backed series, including Demon's which was published by SIE Japan (Atlus in the west), but aside from Demon's each of them has eventually made its way onto PC or at least a Microsoft competitor. But not Bloodborne, and it will likely stay that way. The general consensus is that since Fromsoft was developing Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne at the same time, the latter was propped up monetarily by Sony under the condition that it would stay a PS4 exclusive. I don't think that's ever been confirmed or hinted at, but it makes sense. Bloodborne is a confirmed system seller, hell I bought my PS4 just so I could play Bloodborne, so they have no reason to want to give that up until at least the PS5 comes out. So, this isn't completely true. A brief primer on the history of Soulsborne Game Publishing: Demon's Souls was originally published and funded by Sony in Japan, but they very quickly regretted it. They wanted a competitor to Oblivion, but creative decisions instead gave them THAT. It was hated by Sony mostly for the difficulty, and bombed in Japan to the point where Sony refused to even publish it outside Japan. There was positive word of mouth among importers in the US, though (helped in part by the decision to do English VA even for the Japanese release), and Atlus picked up the US publishing rights for a pittance because they were already known for hard RPGs so it fit their image pretty well. Dark Souls comes along, funded and published by Bandai Namco, who can see this could be a pretty good investment. With no Sony involved, they're happy to do a 360 version, especially because while the 360 wasn't very big in Japan, it was among the western audience that saved Demon's Souls. It crossed the million sales threshold and Namco decides to do a PC version, a platform that both them and From Software have never really stepped into, but there's confidence that if any of their properties will excel on PC, it's Dark Souls. They end up being right, and the other two Dark Souls games hit Playstation, Xbox and PC on launch day. PS4 starts happening during Dark Souls 2 development, and Sony starts REALLY regretting that they missed the Dark Souls exclusivity train because of execs scared about difficulty. So they put down money for another exclusive, and with Bloodborne From prove that the Souls games weren't a fluke. Come Sekiro years later, From actually have the ability to publish games independently in Japan, thanks to both Soulsborne and Armored Core success. They don't have the backing to do that internationally, though, so Activision step in to publish what is, now, a proven success. So in short: Sony only had any money in Demon's Souls and Bloodborne. And took years to not regret their handling of Demon's Souls.
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Aug 11, 2020 01:02
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CJacobs posted:PS Now is what I was talking about. I didn't know you could stream it to PC from your console without a subscription, I thought you needed one just to use the app. Either way it's laughable to equate that with a game being actually multi platform. It's literally still running on a PS4 somewhere. Sure sounds like you can play it on PC to me then? But also please see my first point of "How dare they fund a game to be exclusive to their system?!" I want to play Pokemon on my PS4
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Aug 11, 2020 01:05
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Len posted:Sure sounds like you can play it on PC to me then? My man I think you may be an idiot.
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Aug 11, 2020 01:07
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CJacobs posted:My man I think you may be an idiot. I mean probably? I know my posting brand. But to get grumpy that Sony puts out games exclusive to their system (which might even be changing since Horizon just hit PC?) when that's the only thing Nintendo has going for them feels ridiculous I might also be a bit touchy because I've got a console warrior coworker who came in this morning going "Len, did you hear about what Sony is doing with the next system? You won't be able to use any of your peripherals at all. Unlike XBOX where we can use all our XBOX ONE stuff" and it's all i heard about for the first two hours of the day
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Aug 11, 2020 01:14
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“You can’t play it on PC as long as you ignore the multiple ways you can do exactly that” is a fresh hill to die on, I guess
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Aug 11, 2020 01:36
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Len posted:But to get grumpy that Sony puts out games exclusive to their system (which might even be changing since Horizon just hit PC?) when that's the only thing Nintendo has going for them feels ridiculous Nobody is arguing against this. Len posted:Sure sounds like you can play it on PC to me then? This is the stupid part. food court bailiff posted:You cant play it on PC as long as you ignore the multiple ways you can do exactly that is a fresh hill to die on, I guess Playing it on PC, and it being a PC game, are two different things, and I have to assume y'all are being deliberately obtuse about that.
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Aug 11, 2020 01:37
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Lobok posted:Isn't that ideally what an RPG is? A game where you have real choices that matter? "RPG" is a totally nebulous term and you will rarely get two people to agree on a single, coherent definition. I like games with choices and consequences, but even I wouldn't necessarily consider that a fundamental element of the genre, as huge and unwieldy as it is. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter, but what it sounds to me like is Morrowind's mutually exclusive options aren't particularly satisfying, bordering on arbitrary. I don't think Skyrim letting you do everything is strictly superior or inferior, you just gotta get the implementation right. One solution might be to craft two versions of each of the core guild stories, one for members and one for outsiders. The Mages Guild quest in Skyrim is like, half faffing around Hogwarts and half completely normally adventuring but sometimes there's slightly more magic involved. And if anything it only improves the immersion factor to be able to, even as a non-guild member, stumble across the Mages Guild getting up to something and invite myself along and get tangled up in events. Meanwhile, full guild members get a more nuanced and detailed look at the situation, the characters involved, etc. so if you want some of that replay value there it is. I guess the lingering problem is that there's no obvious break point for "I am not joining this guild, goodbye" vs. "I haven't joined this guild...yet". Also it would take 8000% more work to fill out all the variables (ie, what if I hung out with the Mages Guild for a while but then joined way later after that was all over?). I feel like they flirted with an interesting way to go with the Dark Brotherhood in Skyrim, where you can choose to wipe them out entirely instead. It would be interesting to have situations where the same crime gets committed no matter what, but depending on your allegiances you're either the one doing it or the one solving it. At the very least, I'm sympathetic to the idea of keeping things more open than not because "just play again to see what you missed" is kind of a crazy big ask for lengthy RPGs that people spend tens if not hundreds of hours on. I guess my rambling, roundabout take is that restricting content isn't bad, but you need to do it carefully. In the same way good DMs will not hinge entire adventures on a single binary lockpick check, hard choices should open new avenues and new stories rather than waste time explicitly shutting them down. To use the Dark Brotherhood example again, I like the concept but the execution blows. You can either be a cool assassin doing the usual fun Elder Scrolls skullduggery, all the way up to assassinating the Emperor - that's rad! Or....you can kill one of their number, tattle on them to the authorities, then kick their door down and kill the rest of them in like two seconds and that's the entire alternate questline. Lame. From a roleplaying perspective I appreciate having that choice, but as a player my experience was vastly less fun or interesting as a result. John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 01:50 on Aug 11, 2020 |
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Aug 11, 2020 01:47
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What was the first big game that really turned unnecessary cosmetic microtransactions into a thing? When Oblivion dropped horse armor it was made fun of for being worthless and unnecessary but now we have entire games that exist because people buy $5 skins or 99 cent loot boxes in the hopes of getting a $5 skin. Was LoL the tipping point?
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Aug 11, 2020 03:02
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TF2 crates I think, that was 2010.
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Aug 11, 2020 03:08
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I started Dishonored 2 and it first launched at 800x600 resolution. It was so bad I could barely read the menu options.
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Aug 11, 2020 04:51
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Len posted:What was the first big game that really turned unnecessary cosmetic microtransactions into a thing? When Oblivion dropped horse armor it was made fun of for being worthless and unnecessary but now we have entire games that exist because people buy $5 skins or 99 cent loot boxes in the hopes of getting a $5 skin. Was LoL the tipping point? There's probably a good argument for it being WoW's Celestial Steed, circa April 2010. While it cost a fair bit more than what immediately comes to mind when you say "unnecessary cosmetic microtransaction" it hit a huge playerbase and any developer/publisher would have looked at it afterwards and realized that if people would shell out for a $25 horse skin they'd absolutely buy the same skin they have now BUT IN PINK for a buck or two.
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Aug 11, 2020 05:51
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I think everyone in my guild bought the Sparkle Pony when that came out. I think they gave some of the money to a charity? Can't remember, but Blizzard have definitely done that since.
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Aug 11, 2020 05:58
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I don't know where it started to take hold, but Overwatch was definitely the tipping point.
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Aug 11, 2020 06:16
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The little thing dragging down Ghost of Tsushima is that I put the disc in my PS4 2 hours ago and it's still repeatedly trying to install or download poo poo and failing. Cool
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Aug 11, 2020 06:16
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Memento posted:I think everyone in my guild bought the Sparkle Pony when that came out. I think they gave some of the money to a charity? Can't remember, but Blizzard have definitely done that since. There was a lot of pushback against the sparklepony despite it owning bones, we got a lot of people bitching about having to pay money and how if you didn't pay money you'd never have the sparklepony. I don't think it heralded the beginning of the end like loving TF2 hats and LoL skins though. I don't remember if the sparklepony was a charity one but yeah, there were several others. Blizz jumped on the microtransaction train pretty slowly with WoW but that was mostly because all that money-grubbing brainpower was going into the RMAH poo poo for D3, and then Hearthstone. I quit both working there and playing in 2013 so I have no idea how many microtransaction combat pets there are now but "a fuckload" would not surprise me. gently caress Activision-Blizzard and Bobby Kotick in particular, not specifically for that but just sort of in general
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Aug 11, 2020 06:27
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Lobok posted:You're not locked out of content. Not being able to play as Spider-Man if you get the X-Box version of the new Avengers game, that's being locked out. If there's something you're missing in a quest or storyline because of your choices then just play it again a different way. Isn't that ideally what an RPG is? A game where you have real choices that matter? I've always thought of RPGs as games where you're playing an actual "role" and for that to mean anything, there has to be more than one selectable class. I know games like The Witcher or the recent Assassin's Creed games like to brand themselves as RPGs and while they have some trappings of that, to me they're more like big single player action-adventures.
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Aug 11, 2020 09:40
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yeah it's a Role Playing Game where you don't get to choose the role. I've never really played the AC games but taking Witcher 3 as an example, you can choose how you play Geralt of Rivia, but that's who you're playing. All of the history and baggage is for one person. And you know what? It's a much better game for that. Trying to be everything for everyone is what makes Skyrim mile wide but inch deep.
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Aug 11, 2020 09:51
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