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Chillmatic posted:Part of being a successful artist/creative is being able to hear criticisms or feedback and parsing the useful bits from the rest. Blindly obeying the whims of your fans is a great way to end up with a game like Starfield. But since no one in the studio gave a poo poo about the game having any enduring qualities whatsoever, it makes sense they would try to please everyone in the course of pleasing almost no one. The dialog camera doesn't work without fallout 4's voiced protagonist system. You can test it if you remove the voiced protagonist with the script extender mod. People explicitly hated it because it was wrapped up with the entire voiced system. Everything from the camera angles to "they are ruining fallout by giving us premade characters" was fair game while Outer Worlds was praised for bringing the Oblivion era camera back because it was a real RPG. Making things up in your head afterwards and saying "the bulk of the criticisms that were made at them for years were never serious and should have been ignored" when they were catered to is just perfect consumerbrain. Every level of feedback to their games since skyrim was "you are removing stat management and it's granularity - the core of the RPG character progression in favour of flashy level up dopamine hits." They listened to that, added so many perk points that getting perks is less special - added obnoxious skill requirements that are worse than fallout 4's equivalents because it was supposed to be what RPGs are supposed to be. Cyrano4747 posted:Fallout 4 worked as a sandbox. If nothing else, you had a big map to build your fantasy tree house on and use as a canvas for whatever modding insanity you wanted to get up to. Hell, just exploring the nooks and crannies of that big map was fun. Lots of opportunities for fun, emergent gameplay. Same with Skyrim. Same with pretty much every Gamebryo-era TES or Fallout game. Maybe having a moddable engine that is well supported by the devs is important and part of the reason why people play games made by bethesda?
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Jan 3, 2024 20:43
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Tiny Timbs posted:Yeah definitely give it a go. There's a lot of people the game works for despite all the issues folks bring up here. On the whole, I like the game. But I don't need a game to be GOTY quality to enjoy playing it unlike some people. I'm still going to complain about all the poo poo that's hosed up. Tankbuster posted:The dialog camera doesn't work without fallout 4's voiced protagonist system. You can test it if you remove the voiced protagonist with the script extender mod. People explicitly hated it because it was wrapped up with the entire voiced system. Everything from the camera angles to "they are ruining fallout by giving us premade characters" was fair game while Outer Worlds was praised for bringing the Oblivion era camera back because it was a real RPG. Making things up in your head afterwards and saying "the bulk of the criticisms that were made at them for years were never serious and should have been ignored" when they were catered to is just perfect consumerbrain. I'm starting to feel like games should go back to: "You leveled up and you're a mage. Here are some mage abilities." "You don't want to be a mage? Cool, give me 100 bux and you can learn how to be a barbarian, instead...." I feel like that makes games a lot more playable and leads to less complaining. tadashi fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 20:53
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The skyrim system was better than that. "Do these things and you naturally get better at them. Eventually you can specialize into these things further."
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Jan 3, 2024 21:07
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They patched out the "make iron daggers for an hour" thing to level up blacksmithing, didn't they? Always seemed to me like that was a totally fair way to level but I guess the issue is that making a bunch of iron daggers shouldn't qualify you to craft daedric weaponry
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Jan 3, 2024 21:12
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Tiny Timbs posted:They patched out the "make iron daggers for an hour" thing to level up blacksmithing, didn't they? Patching out "exploits" in a singleplayer game always felt stupid as hell to me, like what's the point oh no gotta protect the sanctity of the steam achievements from people getting them by abusing in-game mechanics
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Jan 3, 2024 21:21
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Tiny Timbs posted:They patched out the "make iron daggers for an hour" thing to level up blacksmithing, didn't they? And in Starfield, you put compensators on fifty guns you loot off pirates! In summary, Bethesda games are a land of contrasts.
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Jan 3, 2024 21:22
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Tiny Timbs posted:They patched out the "make iron daggers for an hour" thing to level up blacksmithing, didn't they? Crafting in games has been the same dumb system for years. I'd like to see a game that moves on from what we've seen. I'm just not sure what gamers would accept. 1. Crafting and combat should be separate skills 2. Getting really good at making cheap lovely things doesn't really teach you how to make more advanced things. Like roasting 100 chickens won't prepare me for how to make a souffle. 3. If you have to mix combat and crafting, one of them should help with the other. In Wasteland, some of the non-combat skills unlock combat perks. My favorite dumb skill crossover of all time was the original SW:G developers putting a +5 to dodge on the Master Dancer skill as a joke because the alpha/beta testers insisted that dancing would make a combatant more agile. Speaking of which, the Star Wars Galaxy skill trees don't get enough love. They were a lot like Skyrim but you could mix-and-match, to some extent, like Starfield is trying to do. tadashi fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 21:28
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The issue with making a billion daggers was that everything would kick your rear end once you left whiterun because you weren't allowed to throw a bucket of daggers at a dragon I feel like they changed that to protect doofuses from accidentally inflating their difficulty and getting mad at the game instead of themselves (I totally did this in Morrowind via crouching in a corner overnight)
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Jan 3, 2024 21:32
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Wasn't that more of an Oblivion thing where if you built your character wrong then doing a bunch of crafting bullshit would level you up and scale the enemies to the point you could no longer play the game?
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Jan 3, 2024 21:35
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Tiny Timbs posted:Wasn't that more of an Oblivion thing where if you built your character wrong then doing a bunch of crafting bullshit would level you up and scale the enemies to the point you could no longer play the game? I want to know what the endgame spaceship fight in Starfield is like with a Frontier that's never been improved.
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Jan 3, 2024 21:36
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Tiny Timbs posted:Wasn't that more of an Oblivion thing where if you built your character wrong then doing a bunch of crafting bullshit would level you up and scale the enemies to the point you could no longer play the game? Oblivion was actually better about it iirc. In skyrim, you level up automatically once you get enough skill levels, but in Oblivion you have to sleep to level up. So you could just be an insomniac and avoid the issue.
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Jan 3, 2024 21:40
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tadashi posted:Crafting in games has been the same dumb system for years. For RPGs with far more commitment to crafting, see the Atelier series, which have very elaborate crafting systems they focus on --- rather than throwing together fixed inputs to produce fixed output, you have choices of ingredients and partial inheritance from them, so the same recipe can produce things that widely vary in effectiveness.... which for many of these includes your party's equipment. (They also tend to separate Alchemist and Adventurer levels). Edit: the systems are mutually supporting in that exploration/combat get you better ingredients for alchemy, which lets you make better equipment and attack/healing/buff/debuff items. OddObserver fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 21:47
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tadashi posted:Crafting in games has been the same dumb system for years. Re: 1, I think gamers would throw a ticker tape parade if Bethesda turned crafting and combat into different skill trees and made it so you could pursue one without "needing" to delve into the other. Want to spend 20 hours being a combat level 1 merchant baron to blacksmith your way into endgame gear way early? Go for it. Want to ignore it and hit people with a stick until they die and drop the next weapon you use? Go do that instead. How many MMOs have done exactly that for years? Hell, how many other games have crafting systems that are technically there either nascent "dump items into your weapon to upgrade and the only way to get better items is be later in the game" things or otherwise completely optional for the sake of crafting better health potions or temporary stat buffs that you don't actually "need" to complete the game? I feel like games that have crafting inherently tied to/reliant on level-up progression are the minority, at this point. Re 2 and 3, it's all going to boil down to "how good it feels", not anything inherent to them existing that way in the first place-- some games have roadblocks of sidequests you have to do at the skillup point and it's all down to the developers about how well they're recieved; and the same goes for the balance point of a side skill being "useless", "optional but cool", or "required", and that balancing is the hard part. Ursine Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 22:15
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Phenotype posted:I get you on the time investment involved to get a grasp on the game, but I always hate that argument against "not spending actual money even though it only takes X hours of work." I don't have a side hustle or anything, I work 40 hours a week and those are the only hours of my life that are getting converted to money. If I'm sitting around smoking weed and playing video games, no one's offering to pay me for that time instead. And frankly, I wouldn't want them to -- it's leisure time, not working time, and if I wasn't playing Starfield then I'd be doing something else relaxing and unproductive so I can rest up for work the next day. And I always hate the argument free time is not worth anything, especially if someone is saying it about my free time. If you don't want to attach any money value to your own time that's your business, but if someone is going to argue that I should spend 10+ hours on something but that it's not worth spending under a hundred dollars on, I'm going to point out that I value the 10+ hours they're saying I should spend more than the $70 they're telling me it's not worth spending on the game. "It's not worth spending the money it costs to get Pho for 2 delivered or what a night out drinking usually costs, but it is worth spending multiple days' worth of free time on" requires some very particular valuations of time and money that absolutely makes no sense to me. I would have to value my free time very little for that to make any kind of sense. For me (and a lot of other people), saying that a game isn't worth spending a normal amount of money on (not pay-to-win games where you drop hundreds or thousands of dollars) is saying that it's definitely not worth spending 10+ hours on, and Behesda games are definitely setup to be 10+ hour games. infernal machines posted:If your time is limited enough that you can't just dip into something for the sake of messing around with it, then yeah, skip Starfield because it is the most "aggressively mediocre" game I have ever experienced. It's not so much about time being limited as there being better 'somethings' to dip into in however large or small amount of free time someone has. I already have games that are "aggressively good" "flawed but the really good parts appeal to me more than the falws bug me" "pretty good" "unknown but I expect to be pretty good or better" and the like sitting around not being played, why would I want to spend time on the "aggressively mediocre" one over the others? The question isn't 'do I have time to experience this game', it's 'would I rather experience this game or one of the dozen or so that scratch a similar itch while being better than aggressively mediocre?'. Tiny Timbs posted:Wasn't that more of an Oblivion thing where if you built your character wrong then doing a bunch of crafting bullshit would level you up and scale the enemies to the point you could no longer play the game? It happens in Skyrim as a general thing, if you powerlevel your crafting and other noncombat stuff you'll end up with enemies scaled for your level 30 character who's two-handed weapon, bow, destruction, or whatever skill is at the 20 or so it starts at instead of the 50 or so it expects you to have by them. In Oblivion the trick was you made your class by which skills level you up, so if you picked non-combat skills as your class skills then leveled the skills you picked you'd end up with enemies scaled to unbeatable levels, while if you didn't level the skills you picked enemies would stay at base level even if you maxed your combat skills. It means that the optimal 'class' builds were to pick skills you're not going to use regularly but that are easy to level up at will, then improve those skills when you're ready for enemies to be tougher.
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Jan 3, 2024 22:20
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Tankbuster posted:The dialog camera doesn't work without fallout 4's voiced protagonist system. Ever played Baldur's Gate 3? It uses exactly the same dialogue camera system as FO4 did, without a voiced protagonist. quote:Outer Worlds was praised for bringing the Oblivion era camera back Provide a source. quote:Making things up in your head afterwards and saying "the bulk of the criticisms that were made at them for years were never serious and should have been ignored" when they were catered to is just perfect consumerbrain. Ok, dingdong. Were you the one paid by Bethesda to respond to steam reviews? Same vibes, here.
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Jan 3, 2024 22:22
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:Re: 1, I think gamers would throw a ticker tape parade if Bethesda turned crafting and combat into different skill trees and made it so you could pursue one without "needing" to delve into the other. Want to spend 20 hours being a combat level 1 merchant baron to blacksmith your way into endgame gear way early? Go for it. Want to ignore it and hit people with a stick until they die and drop the next weapon you use? Go do that instead. The small percentage of gamers who want something complicated and deep can be happy. The 99.999% of gamers who want to shoot poo poo and get constant dopamine hits can focus on combat... Or is it that gamers will gather stuff or make stuff, but they don't want to do both? tadashi fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 22:33
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Tiny Timbs posted:They patched out the "make iron daggers for an hour" thing to level up blacksmithing, didn't they? thats just cheesing. The option is there if you want to power level on a character, just like you can join every guild if you want to. Chillmatic posted:Ever played Baldur's Gate 3? It uses exactly the same dialogue camera system as FO4 did, without a voiced protagonist. The game with a narrator? https://www.reddit.com/r/theouterworlds/comments/dpil35/the_falloutstyle_dialogue_cutscenes_werent_a/ Also here's the example of a guy specifically mentioning that the fallout style Dialog camera sucks and getting clowned for it. Tankbuster fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jan 3, 2024 |
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Jan 3, 2024 22:38
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Tankbuster posted:The game with a narrator? You're comparing a narrator who occasionally chimes in with a voiced player protagonist? Do you have a carbon monoxide detector in your home?
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Jan 3, 2024 22:47
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what else is common between the types of games bethesda makes and Baldur's Gate 3? Since you are a professional gamedev I am sure you will be able to explain.
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Jan 3, 2024 22:53
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they both won 2023 steam awards for starters
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Jan 3, 2024 23:09
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No I mean in terms of gameplay and other assorted systems. One is a classic CRPG with a premium on visuals. The other is daggerfall+ with amazon TV characteristics.
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Jan 3, 2024 23:16
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Nobody should start playing Starfield right now. If they actually commit to updates every 6 weeks starting in February, then check back in 6 months. The upcoming QoL updates they mention like adjustable carry capacity, vendor credits, ship building options, city maps are worth waiting for. I don't even think the DLC will bring me back, maybe after 2 years of updates. I only made it 75% through Cyberpunk 2077 at launch and waiting 2 years to pick it up again seems to have paid off.
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Jan 4, 2024 00:46
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I beat cyberpunk at launch. Honestly there were a lot of visual glitches but I only got a single quest killing bug on the entire playthrough (one of the cyberpsychosis guys refused to activate). Not sure why the console versions were so bad, but pc was playable
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Jan 4, 2024 00:51
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PeePot posted:Nobody should start playing Starfield right now. If they actually commit to updates every 6 weeks starting in February, then check back in 6 months. The upcoming QoL updates they mention like adjustable carry capacity, vendor credits, ship building options, city maps are worth waiting for. I still haven't played C2077 because they're still patching it, lol.
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Jan 4, 2024 00:56
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PeePot posted:Nobody should start playing Starfield right now. If they actually commit to updates every 6 weeks starting in February, then check back in 6 months. The upcoming QoL updates they mention like adjustable carry capacity, vendor credits, ship building options, city maps are worth waiting for. yeah thats a good way to look at most games now. I just picked up company of heroes 2 on sale and am enjoying the campaign.
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Jan 4, 2024 01:13
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At least remember to photograph all toilets and people that fell down in funny positions so that they show up as loading screens
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Jan 4, 2024 05:08
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I'm surprised the toilets in neon don't have blue lights.
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Jan 4, 2024 13:32
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Ngl I love my blue light toilets at home, super nice to not have to turn on the bathroom lights to see the bowl
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Jan 4, 2024 13:37
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Megazver posted:I still haven't played C2077 because they're still patching it, lol.
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Jan 4, 2024 14:06
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Inspector Hound posted:At least remember to photograph all toilets and people that fell down in funny positions so that they show up as loading screens You can’t interact with the space shitters, but you can use another object to prise them open. A surprising number of these toilets contain med packs, which raises some concerning questions
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Jan 4, 2024 15:22
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I'm attracted to reading about games that wreck like a vulture. It's so much more interesting to read about why a game failed instead of succeeded and all the kicking it gets after. That's a consolation prize, though. I would have much, much rather have had another Bethesda rpg to sink 500 hours into. Starfield just came out and it makes ES6 feels like it's forever away.
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Jan 4, 2024 17:18
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Starfield got Fully Ramblomatic (replacement for Yahtzee's Zero Punctuation) #1 blandest game of 2023 and I've never seen a less controversial award
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Jan 4, 2024 17:23
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I honestly think it is supposed to be kinda bland
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Jan 4, 2024 18:09
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hawowanlawow posted:I honestly think it is supposed to be kinda bland The one part of their vision they managed to fully deliver on.
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Jan 4, 2024 18:48
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What if we made Fallout 4 but with less personality? is certainly a vision.
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Jan 4, 2024 18:54
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infernal machines posted:What if we made Fallout 4 but with less personality? is certainly a vision. Also an achievement, in a way.
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Jan 4, 2024 19:00
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No game is ever done. All games is always bad
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Jan 4, 2024 19:22
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hawowanlawow posted:I honestly think it is supposed to be kinda bland  I had to finally admit to myself that I'm never gonna finish this thing and uninstalled it. I'm normally a sloppy glutton for open world games with lots of dumb busywork, but there's just nothing. The universe is so awful and boring, and even by Bethesda standards this is some of the worst writing I've ever seen in a narrative work (both in an overarching plot sense and in a character and dialogue sense). I could probably look past that if the gameplay loop was satisfying, but I spend three quarters of my time in menus and a quarter of my time walking from place to place - shooting bad guys, picking locks, exploring PoIs and vacuuming loot are a rounding error, and every other system demotivates any sort of chase because they all vary from "laughably incomplete" to "actively hostile to the player." I think my last straw was walking into a bar in Neon, taking sixteen steps from the front door to The President Of All Crime (who immediately grants me a personal audience), and then hearing him slowly explain the concept of crime to me like I'm an expat from Candy Land with a fresh head injury. The doors are very good though, I do have to admit that
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Jan 4, 2024 20:28
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On the plus side I'm going to play Skyrim again.
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Jan 4, 2024 21:18
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DoombatINC posted:I think my last straw was walking into a bar in Neon, taking sixteen steps from the front door to The President Of All Crime (who immediately grants me a personal audience), and then hearing him slowly explain the concept of crime to me like I'm an expat from Candy Land with a fresh head injury. You can't, like, just shoot him either, for reasons. I fully expected a mission where you'd work your way up to assassinating/replacing the guy but somehow he just kinda exists to vaguely menace you a couple times and then invest in a business opportunity on New Atlantis
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Jan 4, 2024 21:28
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