Steam Thread: 1000xPAGES

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Steam Thread: 1000xPAGES

sirtommygunn: Mar 7, 2013

Volte posted:

If a criticism of a game system is "I have to make a decision / do a thing when the game could have just made that decision for me / done the thing for me", I don't know how else to interpret it then "I don't want to have to make decisions or do things in the game". Like the point wasn't "I think the system is badly designed and could be better", it was just "this is a thing that I have to do when I could be clicking monsters". My original point was that I want the game to give me the tools to make my own choices, and I'm pushing back against the counter-argument that no, the game should just do the things for you so you can get back to watching the number go up as quickly as possible. Maybe I didn't phrase it clearly enough but that logical conclusion is how I feel about games moving in that direction. The direction that ARPGs go when they are streamlined in the way that people seem to really want is directly towards the "passive dopamine experience where I might as well just go outside" zone.

Try reading the posts again then, because that's still not what the person you quoted was saying. Here it is again for your convenience:

kazil posted:

Transmuting gear from another class into gear for your class just seems like extra busywork instead of only having gear drop that your class can use

Where exactly is this person saying anything even remotely similar to "games are bad when I have to make choices, the game should just do everything for me"? They are talking about something very specific, and pressing that down to "I don't want to do things in the game" is absurd to start, and then you go on to say "well, logically this bullshit i made up must be applied to everything else that exists in the medium, so this person must want to destroy video games because they hate doing things" is just insane.

Besides that, I don't play Diablo, so forgive me if I am missing something, but what are the interesting choices to make with gear that does not work with your character? You can sell it, throw it away, or... what? What is the interesting decision being made here, compared to just receiving gear that actually works for your character, and which actually prompts more choices than the unusable gear since you have to consider if it is better or more interesting for the build you're currently running.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:20

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 27, 2024 14:51

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

kazil posted:

Not all decision making is compelling gameplay. Having a skill tree where all the skills are "Take 1% less fire damage from goblin type enemies" gives the player decisions, but not meaningful ones

I absolutely, totally 100% agree, but that's not a reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The decisions should be less often but more important - skills that grant straight up immunities in exchange for other vulnerabilities, and things like that (Path of Exile keystone passives are a good example). I think the incremental number stuff is directly a result of an obsession with balance in single-player games and making sure that every build can do roughly the same amount of damage, which leads directly to busywork because the things that players used to have to do to make major decisions in their build now become essentially meaningless. I would be 100% willing to go through the effort of transmuting a Barbarian weapon to a Witch Doctor weapon if it completely opened up some new thing for my build. I'm not going to do that to gain 5.7% DPS. But that's not a problem with the decision-making process, it's a problem with the itemization and obsession with smooth power curves.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:21

Hwurmp: May 20, 2005

aw man I hate it when I take fire damage from goblin type enemies

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:22

ScootsMcSkirt: Oct 29, 2013

roguelites have completely replaced arpgs for me because they condense the "roll a new character and quickly grow in power and options" section from the first 10 hours of an arpg to a 30-60 minute run and when you beat the final boss in a roguelite, you can start a new run and try a different build instead of wasting hours of your life optimizing and grinding an endgame build to be 3% more efficient

Roguelites are also perfect for randomized loot and drops since those will have huge effects on the kinds of decisions a player needs to make during their run vs being boring busywork in an arpg since the player can always just go grind somewhere to try and get better loot

Hades is a better arpg than any other game despite not being a true arpg

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:29

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

sirtommygunn posted:

Try reading the posts again then, because that's still not what the person you quoted was saying. Here it is again for your convenience:

Where exactly is this person saying anything even remotely similar to "games are bad when I have to make choices, the game should just do everything for me"? They are talking about something very specific, and pressing that down to "I don't want to do things in the game" is absurd to start, and then you go on to say "well, logically this bullshit i made up must be applied to everything else that exists in the medium, so this person must want to destroy video games because they hate doing things" is just insane.

Besides that, I don't play Diablo, so forgive me if I am missing something, but what are the interesting choices to make with gear that does not work with your character? You can sell it, throw it away, or... what? What is the interesting decision being made here, compared to just receiving gear that actually works for your character, and which actually prompts more choices than the unusable gear since you have to consider if it is better or more interesting for the build you're currently running.

Sorry for my ranty rhetoric I guess, but everyone else seems to be able to read the posts and understand that I don't think that they're truly advocating for the abolition of all video games. My criticism is of the rationale for making certain decisions regarding streamlining video games. If the question is "why should we remove X feature and streamline the experience instead of just making X feature better" and the answer is "because it's getting in the way of number going up", then why can't you apply that rationale to basically everything else in the game too? That's not a slippery slope argument, it's basically an argument by contradiction. I'm saying "that isn't the right reason, because if it were, you could say the same about everything else in the game".

Volte fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Oct 5, 2023

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:33

Hwurmp: May 20, 2005

Hwurmp posted:

golf

darts

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:35

sirtommygunn: Mar 7, 2013

Volte posted:

Sorry for my ranty rhetoric I guess, but everyone else seems to be able to read the posts and understand that I don't think that they're truly advocating for the abolition of all video games. My criticism is of the rationale for making certain decisions regarding streamlining video games. If the question is "why should we remove X feature and streamline the experience instead of just making X feature better" and the answer is "because it's getting in the way of number going up", then why can't you apply that rationale to basically everything else in the game too? That's not a slippery slope argument, it's basically an argument by contradiction. I'm saying "that isn't the right reason, because if it were, you could say the same about everything else in the game".

ok thanks for moving the goalposts to something even slightly reasonable, goodbye

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:36

Squiggle: Sep 29, 2002; I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick.

Path of Exile is great

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:39

ScootsMcSkirt: Oct 29, 2013

Volte posted:

Sorry for my ranty rhetoric I guess, but everyone else seems to be able to read the posts and understand that I don't think that they're truly advocating for the abolition of all video games. My criticism is of the rationale for making certain decisions regarding streamlining video games. If the question is "why should we remove X feature and streamline the experience instead of just making X feature better" and the answer is "because it's getting in the way of number going up", then why can't you apply that rationale to basically everything else in the game too? That's not a slippery slope argument, it's basically an argument by contradiction. I'm saying "that isn't the right reason, because if it were, you could say the same about everything else in the game".

its not about having to make decisions in general, its about mechanics that force the player to make a decision when there is an ideal option that they will choose every time

in the original example, you were saying that allowing the player to convert off class items into class items would be better than the game dropping more class items. Why? The objective best decision a player could make with that system would be to convert all the useful drops into something they can use with their class. Theyre basically not even making a decision

Ideally, every decision a player has to make should have multiple viable options. Each option doesnt need to be equally viable, but there should be some merit to each choice so that the player needs to weigh the pros and cons

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:48

Sab669: Sep 24, 2009

ScootsMcSkirt posted:

roguelites have completely replaced arpgs for me because they condense the "roll a new character and quickly grow in power and options" section from the first 10 hours of an arpg to a 30-60 minute run and when you beat the final boss in a roguelite, you can start a new run and try a different build instead of wasting hours of your life optimizing and grinding an endgame build to be 3% more efficient

Roguelites are also perfect for randomized loot and drops since those will have huge effects on the kinds of decisions a player needs to make during their run vs being boring busywork in an arpg since the player can always just go grind somewhere to try and get better loot

Hades is a better arpg than any other game despite not being a true arpg

On the flip side I hate drafting games.
Slay The Spire and Ziggurat 2 is are probably the only roguelites I've played for more than 10 hours.

6 hours in Hades, 100+ in Last Epoch.
I'll take actually making a character over Roguelites every day of the week.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 16:48

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

ScootsMcSkirt posted:

in the original example, you were saying that allowing the player to convert off class items into class items would be better than the game dropping more class items. Why? The objective best decision a player could make with that system would be to convert all the useful drops into something they can use with their class. Theyre basically not even making a decision

It wasn't a great example because I didn't mean to say that if Diablo 3 just had that one thing instead of class-biased drops, it would have been better. I meant that enabling class-based drops felt like a low-effort way of papering over an inherently bad system by putting the thumb on the scale instead of doing the first thing to actually fix the system. I obviously don't want to have to go through extra steps just to get an incremental upgrade that dropped as another class item, but frankly I don't really want to get an incremental upgrade even with no effort. But if a Demon Hunter weapon dropped with some rare property that I covet for my build, and I could then make getting that on my weapon an in-game goal, then that is good. And to be clear I didn't mean there should just be a "click here to convert the item to a Barbarian item" button, because that is truly just busywork. But a proper game mechanic that allows me to make the decision that "I want that thing to be usable my character and I'm going to make getting it my next goal" is what I want. I want to feel like my character is the product of my decisions and the work I put in to get to that point.

Dark Souls did this kind of thing right in my opinion. It's not a perfect system but you have to put in the work and make decisions to upgrade your weapons - each upgrade step is a pretty meaningful damage boost, not to mention stat scaling (synergizing with your other character decisions), not to mention multiple possible upgrade paths. When you finally get a +15 weapon or max elemental or whatever, there's a feeling there like you earned it and using it feels better than if you just killed an enemy and it randomly dropped a +15 weapon.

edit: come to think of it, I think phrasing it in terms of goals instead of decisions much more clearly illustrates my position. The thing I want to be able to make meaningful decisions about are my long-term and short-term goals, as opposed to just have one almighty goal of Number Go Up. All my criticisms of Diablo 3 basically come down to the fact that there's really only one goal—maximize your damage—and really only one way to achieve that goal—play the game more-or-less unthinkingly until you find items that make your damage go up. Finding the seasonal sets is a great sub-goal, but again the only way to achieve it is the same thing, so it's still pretty passive as far as goals go.

Volte fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Oct 5, 2023

# ? Oct 5, 2023 17:00

skeletronics: Jul 19, 2005; Man

In most shmups, at any moment, you have the choice to be shooting or not shooting. Usually, the only reason to not be shooting is to briefly get rid of some visual clutter on the screen, and the result is I pretty much always want to be shooting, so I just hold the shoot button the entire time. There have been times when I thought this really seems like a non-choice, and the game should just have me automatically shooting always without the need for a button press, but that just doesn't feel as good. Games like Vampire Survivors came along and made it feel okay, but otherwise it just feels better to me to be pushing buttons. I'd like to play a shmup game where it's inverted so you only press the button to stop shooting. I wonder how that would feel.

Sometimes games offer the player a 'choice' that isn't really a choice, but more just a satisfying interaction. The interaction of picking up garbage loot and turning it into crafting mats gets significantly less satisfying and more tedious as an ARPG gets toward the end game. Like it's something I enjoy in the beginning of the game, but by the end I'd really like it to be automated or even just obviated by some other system so it can be ignored completely.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 17:22

Phigs: Jan 23, 2019

John Murdoch posted:

That cat was already well out of the bag within Diablo 2's lifespan, if not immediately upon the shift from D1 to D2. I have never once heard someone talk about an ARPG's moment to moment tactical merits.

I'll try to explain this.

Playing a melee class in Diablo 2 (solo, self-found, minimal/no grinding, no excessive potion spam) means a lot of mob manipulation and spacing. You're often a little too weak to just sit inside enemy mobs and swing away so you're constantly positioning to keep 1-2 enemies on you so the rate of incoming damage is manageable. Plus dodging projectiles, LOSing ranged enemies, killing high priority targets, and splitting up really tough groups. Strategies like drawing out melee so you can leap attack or charge onto a high priority target and survive. Whirlwinding the edges of mobs so you survive. Just all kinds of positioning and mob manipulation tactics that come from the enemies being challenging but not overwhelmingly so. That's the tactical aspect I found it a lot of fun in Diablo 2.

Ranged has similar things with kiting and shaping enemy mobs for your AoE and whatnot but I personally found it a little less compelling. Still fun though.

Diablo 3 ruined if for me because it was so binary. You either stomped everything or you got 1-shot, often from off-screen. There was no sweet spot like Diablo 2. And the only moving you had to do was to dodge 1-shots or bullshit on the floor. Moving because some bullshit is on the floor is so much less compelling than moving to manipulate the enemies in the same way that quicktime events are less satisfying than actual combat mechanics.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 17:26

Stabbey_the_Clown: Sep 21, 2002; Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?; Taco Defender

I played Diablo 2 (and eventually 3), I just never got invested enough to start doing endless farming runs to get better gear to do endless farming runs 2% better. I never developed a speed-runner's mentality, and to me playing a slow-paced clearing out a lot of the dungeons (if not all) and using what I found was the most interesting, even if it was not the optimal way to farm gear.

I won't say that the way the skill mechanics worked in D3 is necessarily better than D2, but I did like it. The rune system is a clever way to build your own synergies between skills, and the way the skills and alterations to skills gradually trickled in as you leveled up - at least the first time you played that class - kept things fresh and encouraged you to experiment with builds to find combinations you liked (or didn't). That loot aimed for your character dropped more often was also helpful. That giant 2-H unique spiked mace I just picked up would normally be useless for a Wizard in most games, but in D3, it's actually a solid damage boost, which is better than being a piece of inventory clutter.

I haven't touched or read much about D4 and am not likely to.

Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Oct 5, 2023

# ? Oct 5, 2023 18:23

Upsidads: Jan 11, 2007; Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates

Re-spec are a crutch for games that allow for bad load outs

Some games ride above it but you lose any sort of narrative cohesion with gameplay if you make giant changes to your character often

Bg3 would lose a lot of it's luster if every long rest every player did a total redo of their character

Sometimes it's necessary but if you keep doing it to min/max every encounter it sucks

That said POE let's you make a build that steamrolls all but the last act and let's you take back 2% of a 98% flawed build

# ? Oct 5, 2023 18:29

ImpAtom: May 24, 2007

Upsidads posted:

Re-spec are a crutch for games that allow for bad load outs

Some games ride above it but you lose any sort of narrative cohesion with gameplay if you make giant changes to your character often

Bg3 would lose a lot of it's luster if every long rest every player did a total redo of their character

Sometimes it's necessary but if you keep doing it to min/max every encounter it sucks

That said POE let's you make a build that steamrolls all but the last act and let's you take back 2% of a 98% flawed build

Baldur's Gate 3 literally has the ability to respec any time you want for a pittance of gold (and you can steal the gold back from the guy you pay for 0 consequences anyway.) Like you chose for your example a game that is a great example of why quick and easy respecs are good.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 18:33

Squiggle: Sep 29, 2002; I don't think she likes the special sauce, Rick.

I have a loving life to live and a fickle disposition, more respecs at all times, always, let me do whatever the gently caress I want

# ? Oct 5, 2023 18:36

Snake Maze

Jul 13, 2016

3.85 Billion years ago

Having seen the explosion on the moon, the Devil comes to Venus

Respeccing because you're 20 hours in and aren't really enjoying your current character, or because a perk doesn't interact the way you thought it would, or something: totally reasonable, completely justified, nothing to worry about.

"Tactical" respects for minmax purposes (like starting with normal dex until you get the gloves that set your dex to 18, then respeccing to have minimum dex): lame, boring, reveal the player as a Fake Gamer.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 18:51

Jack Trades: Nov 30, 2010

On-demand respeccing is cool and good.

The only reason why I'm not playing Path of Exile is because it actively discourages experimenting with builds by making respeccing a giant waste of time.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 18:54

Antigravitas: Dec 8, 2019; Die Rettung fuer die Landwirte:

In Guild Wars 2 you can just decide to change your build any time you want outside of combat, and you can store builds and swap between them. You can experiment as much as you want. And it's very good.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 18:58

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Jack Trades posted:

On-demand respeccing is cool and good.

The only reason why I'm not playing Path of Exile is because it actively discourages experimenting with builds by making respeccing a giant waste of time.

It's not the same thing as what you mean by experimenting, but the offline PoE build planning tools from the community are incredibly powerful. The build experimentation aspect of PoE comes from planning out builds offline to figure out what you need to make it work and how well it will work on paper, and then getting in game and putting it into practice, making smaller adjustments as you go. It's totally not for everyone, including me which is why I always loosely follow a pre-made build guide, but I appreciate the sense of focus it gives me over constantly swapping out one power for another and never feeling like I'm really heading towards a specific goal.

I think I'm starting to realize that the thing I really want in games, regardless of genre, are the tools to be able to set my own meaningful goals and to be trusted to be able to take the steps to meet those goals without too much hand-holding or railroading. That even explains why I like Bethesda games against all logic and reason but get bored of very similar checklist-based games where completion is the only real target.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:08

Orv: May 4, 2011

Volte posted:

I think I'm starting to realize that the thing I really want in games, regardless of genre, are the tools to be able to set my own meaningful goals and to be trusted to be able to take the steps to meet those goals without too much hand-holding or railroading. That even explains why I like Bethesda games against all logic and reason but get bored of very similar checklist-based games where completion is the only real target.

Sure that seems reasonable if fairly unlikely in most games, but the fact that you consider Bethesda games to exemplify that makes me wonder at your definition.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:22

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Orv posted:

Sure that seems reasonable if fairly unlikely in most games, but the fact that you consider Bethesda games to exemplify that makes me wonder at your definition.

It's not unlikely in most games at all. In fact it's typical of pretty much every game I've ever enjoyed that's not just a literal straight-ahead story game. Bethesda games let you set your own goals and pursue them at your leisure, it's not complicated.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:26

fit em all up in there: Oct 10, 2006; Violencia

Platinum Collection for October 2023 on Fanatical.com
3 for $9.99/5 for $14.99/7 for $19.99

quote:

Tinkykin
Dead Estate/Repella Fella double pack
Nitro Kid
Happy Humble Burger Farm
Wizard Chess
The evil within 2
Wytchwood
Arena Renovation
Not for broadcast
Plateup!
Fallout 4
Trail makers
Aquarist
The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The amulet of chaos
Patholgic 2
Frostpunk

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:29

Jack Trades: Nov 30, 2010

Volte posted:

It's not the same thing as what you mean by experimenting, but the offline PoE build planning tools from the community are incredibly powerful. The build experimentation aspect of PoE comes from planning out builds offline to figure out what you need to make it work and how well it will work on paper, and then getting in game and putting it into practice, making smaller adjustments as you go. It's totally not for everyone, including me which is why I always loosely follow a pre-made build guide, but I appreciate the sense of focus it gives me over constantly swapping out one power for another and never feeling like I'm really heading towards a specific goal.

Ah yes, the best way to play the game is to not play it. That's very cool and good.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:32

skeletronics: Jul 19, 2005; Man

Idle clickers have always been the logical endpoint for ARPG evolution.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:34

sirtommygunn: Mar 7, 2013

Upsidads posted:

Re-spec are a crutch for games that allow for bad load outs

Some games ride above it but you lose any sort of narrative cohesion with gameplay if you make giant changes to your character often

Bg3 would lose a lot of it's luster if every long rest every player did a total redo of their character

Sometimes it's necessary but if you keep doing it to min/max every encounter it sucks

That said POE let's you make a build that steamrolls all but the last act and let's you take back 2% of a 98% flawed build

Respeccing rules actually, even if it's used to minmax encounters. Like in Paper Mario, part of the reason I enjoy the combat is that you can swap out your badges at any time to completely rebuild and answer whatever challenge you're facing. It lets the game designers create a wider variety of enemy encounters when you're allowed to change the tools you've picked because they don't have to design around someone building badly. If you put all your points into fighting armored ground enemies and the boss or random encounters are a bunch of high damage flyers, you can just go into the menu and swap some things around rather than grind for an hour to get the raw stats needed to overcome the unfavorable matchup.

sirtommygunn fucked around with this message at 19:44 on Oct 5, 2023

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:39

Hwurmp: May 20, 2005

re-re-re-re-re-re-re-respec (just a little bit)

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:40

Awesome!: Oct 17, 2008; Ready for adventure!

fit em all up in there posted:

Platinum Collection for October 2023 on Fanatical.com
3 for $9.99/5 for $14.99/7 for $19.99

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle

i liked tinykin quite a bit.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:40

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

Jack Trades posted:

Ah yes, the best way to play the game is to not play it. That's very cool and good.

It's not the best way to play, it's just a way to experiment with builds. For many, coming up with those interactions and synergies is a big part of the fun. Coming up with the builds is the setup, seeing the builds come to life in-game is the payoff. Even if I don't have the time to invest in doing that much myself, I respect it and enjoy the fruits of that process.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 19:58

John Murdoch: May 19, 2009; I can tune a fish.

skeletronics posted:

In most shmups, at any moment, you have the choice to be shooting or not shooting. Usually, the only reason to not be shooting is to briefly get rid of some visual clutter on the screen, and the result is I pretty much always want to be shooting, so I just hold the shoot button the entire time. There have been times when I thought this really seems like a non-choice, and the game should just have me automatically shooting always without the need for a button press, but that just doesn't feel as good. Games like Vampire Survivors came along and made it feel okay, but otherwise it just feels better to me to be pushing buttons. I'd like to play a shmup game where it's inverted so you only press the button to stop shooting. I wonder how that would feel.

I feel like this has been already addressed in stuff like bullet hell games where you're usually choosing between, say, wide vs. focused fire or something like Ikaruga having you switch colors. Plus a number of shmups that have more involved weapon management. And while I see your point re: the tactile satisfaction of firing bullets, it does kinda lose its luster if I end up giving myself a cramp holding down a single button all game long.

Phigs posted:

I'll try to explain this.

Playing a melee class in Diablo 2 (solo, self-found, minimal/no grinding, no excessive potion spam) means a lot of mob manipulation and spacing. You're often a little too weak to just sit inside enemy mobs and swing away so you're constantly positioning to keep 1-2 enemies on you so the rate of incoming damage is manageable. Plus dodging projectiles, LOSing ranged enemies, killing high priority targets, and splitting up really tough groups. Strategies like drawing out melee so you can leap attack or charge onto a high priority target and survive. Whirlwinding the edges of mobs so you survive. Just all kinds of positioning and mob manipulation tactics that come from the enemies being challenging but not overwhelmingly so. That's the tactical aspect I found it a lot of fun in Diablo 2.

Ranged has similar things with kiting and shaping enemy mobs for your AoE and whatnot but I personally found it a little less compelling. Still fun though.

Diablo 3 ruined if for me because it was so binary. You either stomped everything or you got 1-shot, often from off-screen. There was no sweet spot like Diablo 2. And the only moving you had to do was to dodge 1-shots or bullshit on the floor. Moving because some bullshit is on the floor is so much less compelling than moving to manipulate the enemies in the same way that quicktime events are less satisfying than actual combat mechanics.

The problem is I don't like the sound of any of that either. It sounds more like playing DROD or some flavor of Gauntlet and it's a sort of false depth only achieved by numerical fiat rather than interesting mechanics. Either that or they're such a fundamental aspect of normal play that I don't even perceive them as interesting tactics. It's like praising a shooter's deep tactical choices because you have to reload your guns and take cover. It's not that it doesn't add anything at all, but it's kinda just there by default. I don't think D3's elite effects were amazing, but at least needing to dodge crazy laser beam spam and goo puddles was a bit more lively and injected some more action into an action RPG. Though I also did not encounter that sort of rocket tag, all or nothing kind of stuff except maybe at the highest high end greater rift play and the like. :shrug:

Like to be clear, I'm not that big of a fan of either game. I think D3 made some steps in the right direction, but in other ways it absolutely did go too far. But the answer to me is not to revert back to how D2 did things. In fact, my #1 complaint about the entire ARPG genre is that people just can't get over Diablo 2 and continue to unthinkingly copy its design.

Though ultimately what I was specifically getting at in the quoted bit is that it's just plain disingenuous to paint the genre as if it was an endlessly deep, complex, and tactical one right up until Diablo 3 poo poo all over it with its 800mph high speed, low drag nonsense. That ethos was already alive and well and D3 was more like the apotheosis of where things were inevitably headed.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 20:04

Volte: Oct 4, 2004; woosh woosh

I don't think Diablo 2 was the alpha and omega of ARPG design by a long shot, but I think it exemplified the type of ARPG that I enjoy, where you have to put in some effort to get out the biggest payout. It's a different kind of dopamine hit that comes from building something up over time and successfully achieving what you set out to do, versus the minute to minute shower of loot and green number that says +6.2%. There's been some contempt for the idea that an ARPG should ask you to put some of yourself into it in order to get something out of it, as if the ARPG concept is inherently a passive experience, and I've never seen the phrase "I just want to turn my brain off" used more often than in the space of ARPGs. I just want an ARPG to require or at least allow me to keep my brain on to some extent. My brain isn't too happy when it's turned off.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 20:14

Phigs: Jan 23, 2019

John Murdoch posted:

[...] Either that or they're such a fundamental aspect of normal play that I don't even perceive them as interesting tactics. It's like praising a shooter's deep tactical choices because you have to reload your guns and take cover. It's not that it doesn't add anything at all, but it's kinda just there by default. [...]

Yep that's pretty-much it. There's a default tactical fun to an ARPG as long as the game is balanced well enough and the encounters are varied enough to keep the feeling fresh throughout the game. Diablo 2 is the shooter equivalent of a standard FPS while Diablo 3 is like the shooter equivalent of a shooter where you can just run around shooting and ignoring incoming damage until oops you definitely have to use only cover and can only pop in and out or else you'll die, and sometimes you get a grenade notification and have to move to a different bit of cover. It stripped out all the middle section where the actual interacting with the mechanics of movement and space and enemies takes place.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 20:19

mystes: May 31, 2006

I guess there may be a fundamental difference where some people want a game that's about optimizing your equipment and skills or trying to get items that are very rare universally across a multiplayer game, and I just want a fun single player game where you run around dying a lot but sometimes getting neat items and doesn't turn into an addictive time sink with no endpoint where you spend hours for minimal improvements in numbers?

Maybe I just need to give up an ARPGs and buy baldurs gate

mystes fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Oct 5, 2023

# ? Oct 5, 2023 20:20

Shuka: Dec 19, 2000

ScootsMcSkirt posted:

Hades is a better arpg than any other game despite not being a true arpg

Hades got me into roguelites and you're right, I haven't been able to get into more contemporary arpgs at all lately.

Plus it's awesome flexing random old Greek mythology at work with the old timers

# ? Oct 5, 2023 20:37

HopperUK: Apr 29, 2007; Why would an ambulance be leaving the hospital?

fit em all up in there posted:

Platinum Collection for October 2023 on Fanatical.com
3 for $9.99/5 for $14.99/7 for $19.99

https://www.fanatical.com/en/pick-and-mix/platinum-collection-build-your-own-bundle

There's some good poo poo in this one! Tinykin I hear is amazing. I love Not For Broadcast. Wytchwood, Plate Up, Pathologic 2 - goddamn.

# ? Oct 5, 2023 21:00