Orv posted:

Is this entire argument over the babies first bot/some bots matches that quite a few things do these days? It’s not like it’s easy to tutorialize BRs as a genre without just putting you in there.

Stickman posted:

I’m just concerned that soon games won’t need me to play them, and then what will I be?

KOGAHAZAN!! posted:

Yeah, it's very kill fast/die fast and you are I think intended to rely heavily on stealth. It's really not a run and gun FPS, if that's what you were expecting. You can adjust damage taken in the difficulty settings, unless they've changed it from the Realm's Deep demo.

Something that might throw you (it was not obvious to me the first time I played) is that the game doesn't expect you to successfully complete the final exam in the tutorial. It's not impossible to do (I've done it), but it's way harder than the rest of the demo (the last fight, in particular), and when you inevitably get owned they offer you a by.

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

the mobile game versions of popular fpses are egregious about this. although i'm not sure why anyone would want to play apex/cod/pubg mobile unless they literally didn't own any computer/console besides their smartphone

Voodoo Cafe posted:

bots are better than people, as far as FPS games are concerned anyway. no UT 2004 bot has ever called me a slur in chat or teabagged my corpse

Voodoo Cafe posted:

bots are better than people, as far as FPS games are concerned anyway. no UT 2004 bot has ever called me a slur in chat or teabagged my corpse

Black Griffon posted:

My take is slightly more, well, pretentious, but I'm gonna wait until I get home to my desktop to write it up. It's a long one.

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

it's not just the babies first bots, those games use bots to fill up lobbies to capacity if they can't find enough players to matchmake for a full game

the mobile game versions of popular fpses are egregious about this. although i'm not sure why anyone would want to play apex/cod/pubg mobile unless they literally didn't own any computer/console besides their smartphone

Black Griffon posted:

Orv posted:

Ah okay, yeah I could see that not being wanted so that’s fair. I also don’t see it being a meaningful problem unless you’re very bad, the bots should all be dead by the time of real fights anyway.

Voodoo Cafe posted:

or teabagged my corpse

Orv posted:

Shut up dork

Black Griffon posted:

gently caress off dipshit.

Orv posted:

Thank you for reminding me to read the Blindsight sequels

Black Griffon posted:

Black Griffon posted:

I've got Echopraxia on my kindle and it's embarrassing that I haven't gotten around to it yet.

John Lee posted:

This was a good post but I personally almost never get enjoyment from beating anybody else at anything, and even more rarely if I don't know them and only saw a dinky little avatar or a moving head, so I don't play those games

Orv posted:

I’ve been so bad about reading stuff the last few years I cannot begin to give you poo poo about that

Black Griffon posted:

Right, so let us first establish five core concepts: Agency, intent, awareness, expectation and The Eightfold Path. Agency and intent is mainly specific to the systems you interact with as a player, awareness, expectation and the lake stretches farther than the horizon, yet the expanse of blood is all visible is mainly specific to the player, but they're all interchangeable in a sense, since an important part of my thesis is the idea of real, human actors on both sides of the divide.

Agency and intent is relatively self-explanatory. A human being has needs and wants, it can decide to do something, and it can desire an outcome. These words are not applicable to code. The terms can be used as descriptors, sure, but there is no desire in an algorithm. We can dispense with terms like skill, difficulty, unpredictability and such because these are things we can actually emulate to a successful degree (with limits, obviously), the relevant terms are the ones that cannot in any possible scenario be truly emulated. You can be tricked into thinking a bot wants to kill you if you remain unaware it's a bot, but that's not true desire.

So why is it relevant whether it's true or not if the effect is the same? Why does it matter whether or not the clump of pixels you killed is real person? Well, it's of course subjective and personal, but the awareness that the person on the other end has intentions and agency heightens the experience of play (using the term in a general sense, not only in terms of video games). You can consider the fact that another human being is reacting to the things you're doing, you are enriched by the knowledge that they are forming their own experiences, going through frustrations or moments of victory. You know that even competitive play is a form of cooperation, allowing people to experience and build something together. Awareness, however, is a double-edged sword, and that's why it's relevant to the whole bot thing.

Let us consider Peter Watts' seminal novel Blindsight or Ted Chiang's Division by Zero (available in Stories of Your Life and Others, which also contains the short story the Dennis Villeneuve film Arrival was based on). Both deal with the concept of a piece of knowledge fundamentally altering how you perceive the world in a negative way. You cannot forget or ignore your newfound knowledge, and it'll always poison your view of the world hence. Both are excellent reads, and I have no intention of actually spoiling the plot. Go pick 'em up.

Now let's relate it to the subject at hand. When I play a game with other people I expect to interact with humans, and I expect to be able to differentiate between humans and pure code. The problem with disrupting this expectation is that you start to doubt every interaction. It's not just that you did really good and feel cheated, it's that uncountable little moments of human contact start to feel fake. I enjoy the idea of getting defeated by an actual human being because I know that someone else had their own moment of victory, if I'm hiding in a bush with a rifle trained on a house, aware of the fact that another player is hiding in another bush a hundred meters away, I like to imagine that they also have a steadily rising pulse, that their wrists are also getting uncomfortably sweaty waiting out the timer. Experiences matter, awareness matters, intent and desire and feeling makes the game richer. But now you know it's a chinese room, now you know that the math doesn't add up. The guy hiding in the push was just bot that had reached some kind of idle trigger, the footsteps outside the house is someone trying to walk through a wall, the perfect knife throw through the window didn't make someone scream in anger somewhere in Belgium.

That anger wasn't real.

Which brings us at last to The Eightfold Path.

It is, in no uncertain terms, mandatory to immerse yourself in prescribed passages of The Spheres of Longing (Ravenor, Gideon, M41) before exploring any further. Armored in contempt, you can then read select passages from Book of Lorgar (Aurelian, Lorgar, M31). Summarizing, both out of courtesy to your soul and because we're going long, there is a vast lake of blood wider than the void between stars, and in that ocean of vitae, a mountain rises, forming at last a throne of skulls. To know the pain of the kill etched in your marrow, to ken the roaring rush of fury boring through your mind, is a thing of beauty. To slay again and again and again and again and to follow the eightfold path of chaos on a road to the realms of eternal battle, there is no sweeter taste. You cannot make a machine feel pain, and an abominable, false intelligence cannot earn victory. You can strike a cavern into a mountain with your sword, but it will never beg for mercy. An avalanche can turn you into paste, but it will never look you in the eye and tell you "Look, look upon the victor. Look upon the dagger in your heart and know that I wanted this."

So, in conclusion, it's all about the human touch baby.

fit em all up in there posted:

Any opinions on:
The Sinking City
Wingspan

Mordja posted:

Was Dark Messiah of Might and Magic the last good first-person swords and sorcery game? I thought Lichdom Battlemage was awful and the magic in Aveum looks unimpactful. I'm not counting Skyrim, partly because it's a different thing as an open world RPG, partly because its combat sucks dick.

Eason the Fifth posted:

aas Bandit posted:

I'll also recommend Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, even though it's indeed a different thing and more open-worldly RPG. It's in early access and...pretty solid? It has some rough edges and the combat is pretty simple (possibly to the dick-sucking threshold?), but I had fun with it and there's a lot to do and fart around with re: builds and suchlike. Think darkgrim Skyrim with some jank.

Kragger99 posted:

I had to check, as I thought I owned it, but I have the card builder Tainted Grail: Conquest game. Anyway, added this to the wishlist, as it looks like it could be fun.

I said come in! posted:

Yeah! I’m really looking forward to this game being finished as well. If its not in early access hell forever, it could be a good hold over until Elder Scrolls 6 finally comes out.

fit em all up in there posted:

Any opinions on:
The Sinking City
Wingspan

Venuz Patrol posted:

the possibility that the girl genius game might be good has me reeling. i'm a fan of the comic, but "webcomic team gets into gaming" seemed like a recipe for absolute disaster

RPATDO_LAMD posted:

the mobile game versions of popular fpses are egregious about this. although i'm not sure why anyone would want to play apex/cod/pubg mobile unless they literally didn't own any computer/console besides their smartphone

fit em all up in there posted:

Any opinions on:
The Sinking City