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Gamers put way too much stock in a 10 second cutscene that plays immediately before they never play the game again.
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Oct 8, 2021 17:32
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achievements are fine but a lot of people treat them as things they need to get all of in their first playthrough instead of saving challenge runs for later attempts obviously a lot of games these days are long enough that you're probably only playing them once, but even more reason to play it however it comes naturally if you can
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Oct 8, 2021 18:14
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I've put a few hours into Metroid Dread and I'm loving it so far. Samus hasn't said a word (so far) and there is so much personality in her animation, especially the kill cutscene for the first boss. A nice thing they've done with the map is that rather than being made out of squares like the rest of the 2D games it's an actual outline of room, but when you find a map room it doesn't give you the detailed version of the map but instead a simplified version which as you explore gets filled in with the detailed map. Also, the map has a 'highlight icons' button which when you select a type of icon on the map will highlight all icons of that type, so when you get a new ability you can figure out where you've been that can use it by just highlighting those doors or whatever. A new movement option you have in this game is a slide that lets you get through floor-level tunnels and can help you dodge some enemies. A surprising result of the slide is that they don't have to give you the Morphball straight away, and they don't. I've reached the second area and I still don't have it, so you're constantly being teased with tunnels just off the floor that in almost every other Metroid game you'd probably be able to get through much earlier.
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Oct 8, 2021 18:59
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exquisite tea posted:If there is ANYTHING in the game that provides the player with a perceived advantage, whether real or imagined, people will do that one thing over and over then complain they're forced to play that way. I imagine this frequently drives game developers insane. Man, drives me a little crazy too. I like to post vids of some of my gameplay and there's invariably someone in the comments going "y'know instead you could have just done [a really powerful move]" and some players just cannot fathom playing in any way other than for maximum efficiency.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:18
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Bayonetta and their ilk have a nice counter to that in combo ranking. For example, I found a really powerful combo that would kill even bigger enemies super quick in Bayonetta, but it gave me no combo points so my fight rank was still pretty mediocre. It was only once I slowed down and engaged with the other mechanics and weapons more that my ranks started to improve. Of course this requires you to care about the ranking in the first place, but if you only play those games to get from point A to B as fast as possible I can’t help you.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:27
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Its the eternal accusation of games like Assassin's Creed and Horizon being "collectathons" by people who absolutely cannot resist the compulsion to scour the map for every feather and skull because there is a tracker for it. I find that the venn diagram of these people and "the writing is bad" guys is just a circle.
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Oct 8, 2021 19:37
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Sandwich Anarchist posted:Its the eternal accusation of games like Assassin's Creed and Horizon being "collectathons" by people who absolutely cannot resist the compulsion to scour the map for every feather and skull because there is a tracker for it. I find that the venn diagram of these people and "the writing is bad" guys is just a circle. When rewards are gated behind mundanity, it's bad. Also when developers have spent time on something mundane and pointless rather than, for example, more enjoyable mechanics, it's also bad. Regardless of of you feel 'forced' to get everything or not. Mind you calling something a collectathon simply because it has stuff to pick up in a list, like Horizon, is dumb (especially since there are so few of them, and they add stuff like lore and whatnot anyway).
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Oct 8, 2021 20:07
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One nice thing in the recent Hitman games is (last mission of 3 spoiler) after all of the missions where you are heavily, heavily encouraged to use stealth and shoot outs are basically impossible to win, the last one has you only with people who were responsible for the whole story and it switches to telling you that killing everyone is allowed. There are still ways to do it perfectly stealth if you want but I chose blasting. The level is extremely linear to make it more feasible to do with the slightly jank open combat controls in the game. More of a coda than a real level but satisfying.
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Oct 8, 2021 20:27
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Vic posted:You killed a lot of virtual people so Jensen reflects on himself with one paragraph. That's what constitutes a penalty in your brain. my whole problem isn't that it's a penalty but it completely is at odds with the situation in the introduction that counts against it, holy poo poo guys
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Oct 8, 2021 22:08
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I've started replaying Rise of the Tomb Raider as I never 100%ed it and I like how the map is laid out. You get vague outlines showing how the areas are shaped that show the full map as you hover over and zoom into them. It shows how the areas connect and form the world, making it feel cohesive, without sacrificing readability by having a million icons everywhere.
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Oct 8, 2021 22:23
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Rockman Reserve posted:my whole problem isn't that it's a penalty but it completely is at odds with the situation in the introduction that counts against it, holy poo poo guys okay but i think people were talking about the conversation about 'good'/'bad' runs in general and not your specific issue
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Oct 8, 2021 22:25
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Barudak posted:I really liked in Watchdogs 2 that the baton which a lot of players thought was non-lethal since you clonked people on the head with it at close range and this is a video game accurately counted as murder. it was a poolball in a sock iirc.
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Oct 8, 2021 22:28
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sebmojo posted:it was a poolball in a sock iirc. Pool ball with bungee cord drilled through it. To keep it on topic, the Devs actually looked at DIY self defence designs, because it would be in character for the protagonist to do that kinda thing
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Oct 8, 2021 22:36
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I remember I played a bunch of WD2 as non-lethal (so I thought) until I realized that the pool ball was lethal. Thought "eh gently caress it" and pulled out the machine gun for all future missions.
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Oct 8, 2021 22:51
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Deathloop encourages you murder people in exciting and bizarre ways and is also( really big spoiler picked up from reading all the bits of hidden lore in the intelligence sites, a bunch of stuff from the level design, and the final sequence)a stealth sequel to Dishonored
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Oct 8, 2021 23:07
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Rockman Reserve posted:my whole problem isn't that it's a penalty but it completely is at odds with the situation in the introduction that counts against it, holy poo poo guys The endings were half baked and generalized into n > x,y,z npc's killed. Here's a transcript for all of them. You'll see that it's Jensens internal reflection on whether he was right or not, and each just contemplates pros and cons of the approach, badly. Your whole problem is apparently the intro where Jensen is justified in killing the PMCs but not the anti-aug terrorists the next mission after even though they killed the same people. If you said morality shouldn't be represented by a dumb mooks killed meter I would wholeheartedly agree my friend. Vic has a new favorite as of 23:48 on Oct 8, 2021 |
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Oct 8, 2021 23:17
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Cleretic posted:I'm genuinely impressed with how well the stealth/horror sequences in Metroid Dread are implemented. So I'm not very far but this first EMMI zone is super scripted. The EMMI resets to the same room in the same spot every time I leave the zone
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Oct 9, 2021 00:04
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Len posted:So I'm not very far but this first EMMI zone is super scripted. The EMMI resets to the same room in the same spot every time I leave the zone Preorder cancelled
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Oct 9, 2021 00:53
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I always thought Splinter Cell: Blacklist had a really good take on the lethal vs non-lethal divide in immersive sims. It still did the usual 'ghosting is worth more than violence' thing, but it split the score into 3 categories representing ghost, lethal stealth, and loud playstyles and gave a separate high score for each category on each level. As a result you were incentivised to not just ghost the levels, but also come back later and go out of your way to go completely loud - up to and including deliberately alerting enemies you've otherwise got the drop on to avoid their deaths counting for lethal-stealth. Made for a fun way to use all those lethal toys that otherwise gather dust
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Oct 9, 2021 01:20
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Kinda wish the Hitman series did something similar. You gain access to so many weapons and way to murder people stealthily, but are always disincentivized for doing so. Something in the challenge system could allow for doing a much louder or even silently murderous run.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:07
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Len posted:So I'm not very far but this first EMMI zone is super scripted. The EMMI resets to the same room in the same spot every time I leave the zone I'm not sure if you're talking about the first EMMI or the REAL first EMMI, since you fight a broken one to introduce you to the mechanics before the first 'real' one (the white one from the trailers). But while they might be fairly structured, they aren't what I'm thinking when I say 'scripted', which is the way Metroid Fusion basically just did one-off story beats that forced you into a stealth/evasion role. It's like any other good stealth game; the patrol is predefined, but will inevitably cross your own path at some point, and then all bets are off.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:27
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moosecow333 posted:Bayonetta and their ilk have a nice counter to that in combo ranking. For example, I found a really powerful combo that would kill even bigger enemies super quick in Bayonetta, but it gave me no combo points so my fight rank was still pretty mediocre. Bayo- and most of Platinum's games- are sort of built on the assumption that you'll blunder your way through at first, get low scores/trophies for everything, but hey, you still beat the game, and then on subsequent playthroughs try to improve.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:36
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Pingcode posted:I always thought Splinter Cell: Blacklist had a really good take on the lethal vs non-lethal divide in immersive sims. It still did the usual 'ghosting is worth more than violence' thing, but it split the score into 3 categories representing ghost, lethal stealth, and loud playstyles and gave a separate high score for each category on each level. There's also entire side-mission chains built around each playstyle (eg; infiltrating and exfiltrating a facility somewhere without being detected AT ALL in classic Splinter Cell-style, or just going loud and ripping through enemies). And they all have unique maps for them rather than reusing story locations.
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Oct 9, 2021 04:00
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I really wanted to like Blacklist, but after playing MGSV the controls just felt too drat clunky. It was like I was constantly fighting them instead of getting into a flow state
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Oct 9, 2021 04:02
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Vic posted:If by "dump" you mean +20 extra xp per nonlethal takedown. For reference there are 238,470 XP points in a single playthrough. You can just blaze through the game when all you do is dome people anyway. If you go stealth but lethal, you get all the ghost and smooth operator bonuses. I feel like it's a bit disingenuous to just say +20 out of context. It goes from 30 to 50. You get nearly twice as much XP for pushing the nice button that as was said is already innately superior to the naughty button. I feel like even casual players catch on quickly that stabbing dudes with your cool arm blades is just objectively worse in every way. You don't need to be playing hyper optimized and wringing out every last XP bonus to see that. Placing that against the total amount of XP in the game is also odd to me because it's not like I'm worried about being able to get every upgrade in the game before the end or w/e, it's that non-lethal takedowns help me get access to more/better toys faster than lethal ones do. (And FWIW I actually have done a Terminator run. It was boring because the lethal guns are all really, really dull outside of the omni-powerful pistol and the exotic weapons you get to mess around with for five minutes before the game is over. But it was also before I had the pre-order DLC/Director's Cut so I didn't have the double-barreled shotgun. Maybe that adds some pizazz.) Gaius Marius posted:If you'd made the lethal takedowns in HR silent and non lethal audible you'd have solved half the complaints with the game. Switching which one made noise always made sense to me too. At one point the plan was to have non-lethal ones cost more battery power to perform, but presumably that was trashed because the game didn't need even more problems with energy management. Also still mad that they didn't make lethal the hair-trigger button tap and the non-lethal the hold down button input. Barudak posted:I really liked in Watchdogs 2 that the baton which a lot of players thought was non-lethal since you clonked people on the head with it at close range and this is a video game accurately counted as murder. One of the devs commented on this specifically and the argument was, in essence, that since melee takedowns were riskier to perform you should be rewarded with a "full" takedown no matter what (since in WD2 stuns are incredibly weak anyway) and that you shouldn't consider them lethal if you don't want to. Realistically it was also probably that they didn't feel like fleshing things out to have two different types of takedown or w/e and frankly all of that stuff was pretty half-baked in general.
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Oct 9, 2021 06:54
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John Murdoch posted:it's that non-lethal takedowns help me get access to more/better toys faster than lethal ones do. Oh yeah that's the reason? Okay let me do the math: 
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Oct 9, 2021 08:30
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 I'm not sure what you're trying to mathematically prove at this point but okay.
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Oct 9, 2021 08:54
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John Murdoch posted:non-lethal takedowns help me get access to more/better toys faster than lethal ones do. Math posted:non-lethal takedowns help you gain 1.5 praxis point at the end of the game if you methodically crawl and punch literally everyone in the mouth Vic has a new favorite as of 09:09 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 09:07
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realtalk the way you can sum it up is that if developers didn't want at least some people to play the game in a given way they wouldn't have developed the game in a way that supports that playstyle. getting an ending that says 'boy you sure did gently caress a lot of stuff up' is there for people who want to see what happens if you gently caress a lot of stuff up, and if the devs didn't want that to happen they just outright wouldn't let you do it.
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Oct 9, 2021 09:10
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The scary monster in the next Resident Evil game is just gonna be a guy who'll give you a F for your performance if he catches you once you start shooting zombies.
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Oct 9, 2021 09:10
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The elusive hunt for that 69,420th praxis.
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Oct 9, 2021 09:20
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Except for some reason you keep ignoring the word "faster' and keep making comparisons to the absolute total theoretical XP available in the game as if it's at all relevant or something the average playthrough is going to reach. My whole point also has very little to do with the exact math of the XP system and is instead about player psychology anyway. Saying it all more or less evens out in the end isn't the slam dunk you seem to think it is. Edit: If anything, it proves the opposite, which is that there was no real purpose in giving takedowns two different XP values. And at best it shifts the problem from "you're penalized for using lethal" to "the game tricks you into thinking you're penalized for using lethal for no reason". John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 10:02 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 09:48
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vic log off
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Oct 9, 2021 09:56
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Gee Vic is making bad takes in the thread again, what a surprise. To contribute, I played Back 4 Blood last night, and while I'm not that far in it, the fact that it felt like being back in 2009 with L4D2 was a perfect little thing. Not in terms of gameplay, which is a definite revision and refinement of the formula, but of the sheer fun and excitement of blasting through the zombies.
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Oct 9, 2021 09:56
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Vic is not wrong from a rational standpoint, but games also need to feel good and you can't prove that with math. I was also super into "oh no I want to perfect stealth and nonlethal everything" at first and had to really disabuse myself of that, or I wouldn't have finished the game, that's true for Deus Ex and for Dishonored. I was lucky to have a wife who is happy to watch me play games, but not if I try to play "optimally"; she yelled at me to just kill people, and that finally made me break out of the bad habit of trying to stealth everything on the first go. I later did a full ghost run for the achievement on my own and after knowing the game; much, much more enjoyable. What I'm getting at is this: for a really, really well designed game, the designer takes over the job of the "you know, shooting them is faster, easier AND more enjoyable" wife voice.
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Oct 9, 2021 10:12
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How the gently caress is a player supposed to know any of that math when they're just playing the game normally? The game is rewarding you for performing certain actions, and it's not absurd to assume that those rewards are meaningful. It would be nice to assume that, in fact, because it means that your decisions are having an actual impact on the experience.
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Oct 9, 2021 10:24
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Hattie Masters posted:Gee Vic is making bad takes in the thread again, what a surprise. Rockman Reserve posted:vic log off Lethal takedown (+10 XP) John Murdoch posted:Except for some reason you keep ignoring the word "faster' and keep making comparisons to the absolute total theoretical XP available in the game as if it's at all relevant or something the average playthrough is going to reach. It absolutely means that nonlethal takedowns are the slowest way of accumulating XP. Game's 30 hours to beat if you're going completionist playthrough, and that's 0.05 praxis point per hour. You're much better off focusing on every other aspect of the game. If we're talking about the psychology, I'm not a fan of XP for combat being there at all. But engaging with the game at it's own terms, the xp rewards make sense, and rather than blaming the game for the FOMO it's better to try to fight the point hoarder mindset. EDIT: My last playthrough of DXHR was no combat (or takedowns of any sort) followed by full terminator playthrough. It was very cathartic. Vic has a new favorite as of 11:05 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 10:56
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Vic posted:It absolutely means that nonlethal takedowns are the slowest way of accumulating XP. Game's 30 hours to beat if you're going completionist playthrough, and that's 0.05 praxis point per hour. You're much better off focusing on every other aspect of the game. Well, no, in so much that lethal takedowns clearly are even slower still. But you're still wildly overthinking things here. Nobody is playing the game like an MMO trying to maximize their XP per minute. 50 is a larger number than 30. That's all it boils down to. I will get access to the fun cyborg toys that go brrrr faster because one number is larger than the other and having them sooner is itself valuable. The XP isn't even the fundamental problem, it's that lethal takedowns serve little to no purpose and the lower XP is just one of multiple factors that inform that. Vic posted:But engaging with the game at it's own terms, the xp rewards make sense, and rather than blaming the game for the FOMO it's better to try to fight the point hoarder mindset. I have no idea what you're saying here. Like, I get that in a broader sense maybe they tried to balance XP such that knocking out fewer, key targets for slightly more XP would even out with murdering every enemy in the level, but the whole reason I'm harping on about takedowns is that it's a very easy comparison to make because they're so similar and I feel like on average get used about the same amount in similar contexts. (Discounting funny Youtube video style runs where you just go on a takedown rampage for the lulz.) John Murdoch has a new favorite as of 12:01 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 11:54
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praxis is an actual thing with points in the game? I thought that was some broke brained cspam posting
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Oct 9, 2021 12:03
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ilmucche posted:praxis is an actual thing with points in the game? I thought that was some broke brained cspam posting Skill points are called praxis points for whatever silly reason.
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Oct 9, 2021 12:06
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