General Video Game Thread

18485878990215

Comments

  • whyyy does that thing with white highlighting keep happening
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    What are you actually doing when you quote, Jane? Are you using the quote button or copypasting?

    i ask because i see people having problems with quotes all the time and it's weird to me because i never seem to have these problems and i'm not exactly great with computer stuff
  • Because I was saying that I think people were focusing on the wrong part of what I said. I felt like this was hampering our ability to adequately communicate. 

    ok so what is your actual problem then

    I'm sorry if I seem short but you have a bad habit of making your sentences like four times as long as they need to be and it makes your posts confusing to read.
    The means of delineating different categories of difficulty is inadequate to creating engagement. It has a tendency to foster feelings of obligation if not outright compulsion. It is allowed to continue because it superficially meets criteria for being engaging despite it being an impediment to player engagement oftentimes and hampering the medium's approach to difficulty.

    On FE:A, I believe that it allowed certain thematic/mechanical elements to be undercooked and were poorly implemented while making them a major part of the gameplay and narrative, and this resulted in frustration. In less general terms, the themes were undercut by making the mechanic of death optional.
  • What are you actually doing when you quote, Jane? Are you using the quote button or copypasting?
    copypasting but only because big quote stacks cause problems of their own

    Because I was saying that I think people were focusing on the wrong part of what I said. I felt like this was hampering our ability to adequately communicate. 

    ok so what is your actual problem then

    I'm sorry if I seem short but you have a bad habit of making your sentences like four times as long as they need to be and it makes your posts confusing to read.


    The means of delineating different categories of difficulty is inadequate to creating engagement. It has a tendency to foster feelings of obligation if not outright compulsion. It is allowed to continue because it superficially meets criteria for being engaging despite it being an impediment to player engagement oftentimes and hampering the medium's approach to difficulty.
    First of all, "delineating"? I actually had to look that up.

    Secondly, while I agree that difficulty levels can be inadequate I would argue it depends on what they actually do. It's an umbrella concept and not all are the same. If it's just multipliers and dividends (as it is in many RPGs and strategy games), then yeah that's inadequate but a lot of them aren't just that either and many are legitimately engaging to the point that they do allow the player enough agency.

    Furthermore I question the idea that things have to be done in service of a vague idea of forward progress in general, which your use of the word "hampering" implies.
    On FE:A, I believe that it allowed certain thematic/mechanical elements to be undercooked and were poorly implemented while making them a major part of the gameplay and narrative, and this resulted in frustration. In less general terms, the themes were undercut by making the mechanic of death optional.
    I have not actually played FEA so I will leave this part of the discussion be.

    I will say that the mandatory permadeath in the earlier games bothered the shit out of me.
  • Hampering: by which I meant the broad implementation thereof has led to inferior ideas of design.
  • Kexruct said:

    Hampering: by which I meant the broad implementation thereof has led to inferior ideas of design.

    Yeah but that's basically the same thing as what I was saying I don't agree with.

    I don't think there's some kind of peak design that can be achieved, and I don't think artistic innovation (on any level, in any medium) moves in just one direction. To put it another way, there are very few bad ideas and many more good ideas executed badly.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    @ Jane: Basically i think what's happening is when you copypaste, you're actually copying a bunch of markup stuff that the quote button would strip out.

    You can of course strip it out manually using the html mode but that's effort.

    This is probably not important but mystery solved.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    Although there is a panel in front of me that offers various markup options, the existence of a html mode means i am compelled to use it, meaning that i must type any tags that i want to use manually. :p
  • Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    It takes me like five fucking tries to get the quotes the way I want them to.
  • Tachyon said:

    Although there is a panel in front of me that offers various markup options, the existence of a html mode means i am compelled to use it, meaning that i must type any tags that i want to use manually. :p

    someone on here said that they do this one time and they're lucky that I forget who they are.
  • edited 2015-06-23 03:37:24
    imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    (not a dig at you or for that matter Kex, just being silly)

    ^ wait seriously?  i was joking about this discussion, not referencing anything else
  • I use HTML mode because the WYSIWYG editor is garbage but im p sure i wasnt the person who said that
  • naney said:

    I use HTML mode because the WYSIWYG editor is garbage but im p sure i wasnt the person who said that

    I FOUND THE NERD
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    i use html mode too

    not all the time or anything, just when it's quicker/easier to do so
  • We can do anything if we do it together.
    I vary between the two modes, but when I use WYSIWYG mode, I always make sure to strip out that nonsense before I finalize a post.
  • Have you ever wanted Fred Durst to follow you around the wasteland? Me neither I don't even know why I made this.
  • Tre said:

    image

    you wanna mess with limp bizkit?
    you can't mess with limp bizkit

    because we get it on
    every day, and every night

    and this platinum thing right here?
    yo we're doin' it all the time

    so you better get some beats
    and a some better rhymes
  • Sup bitches, witches, Haters, and trolls.
    MachSpeed said:

    image

    i don't know enough about fucking fire emblem to say shit about it but i can say that kamen rider w was the good shit (at least until they got xtreme, then it weakened)
  • Sup bitches, witches, Haters, and trolls.
    but nobody's perfect
  • honestly the Extra Credits video on Dark Souls II seems to basically be praising DSII for having an integrated, more immersive difficulty selector, which I guess is cool, but not necessarily appropriate for all games.

    Tachyon said:

    i posted my thoughts on the specific case of Fire Emblem: Awakening on the bottom of the previous page.  i don't consider that game's Classic/Casual distinction a typical case of mere difficulty settings.

    But if you're going to talk about "validation at the price of other player's frustration" then you might as well ask whether *any* challenge in a game is worth the frustration it's going to inflict on a less experienced or less skillful player.

    i haven't played Dark Souls 2 which i think limits what i can say about this happy medium of yours, but going by the description in that Extra Credits video it involves fundamental changes to gameplay (ranged attacks as opposed to close-quarters combat; levelling in particular skills), not merely increased challenge.  So it's not what i typically look for in a hard mode, which is to play a game by the same rules but with the overall difficulty increased.

    wait wah

    I didn't watch it because I'm fundamentally opposed to the concept but you don't level skills in the Dark Souls games

    you don't even really have skills.
    Odradek said:

    He meant stats

    i still find it slightly jarring that D&D calls "ability scores" what pretty much everything else calls "stats" while it calls "[class] features" what other people would "[class] abilities" and so on.
  • also all i know from my experience with Fire Emblem is that Fire Emblem crossed with my tendency toward optimization can potentially create a frustrating combination
  • and i use HTML mode to correct when the editor displays stuff wrong and i can't fix it in the editor
  • I have finished Gone Home, it was enjoyable.

    I can understand it's divisiveness given that it's essentially a queer YA novel in video game form, but I liked it.
  • Alright, I'll concede that Arkham Knight's thing where the Joker appears as a figment of Batman's Scarecrow-induced psychosis (at least, I assume that's what it is) is pretty cool, and a decent way for Rocksteady to write themselves out of the corner they dug into like BP looking for oil.

    Buut the co-op looks pretty terrible, and they apparently forgot still haven't learned how to write female characters in a way that doesn't make half of the human population gag, so I remain unmoved.
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    It gon be fun
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    I'm pretty sure they didn't add in Man-Bat or Maxie, so I'm not sure what you're talking about.
    image
  • Sup bitches, witches, Haters, and trolls.
    still waiting for lil b to come out against gamergate
  • Nuclear Throne updated, and now locked characters are locked properly

    On the one hand, I have to unlock the Glowing Death Orb again. On the other hand, my favorite characters are still available, so I don't care!
  • I respect the idea but don't really agree with it myself.

    The whole time and tedium issues that the article brings up are both things I find that I value more than any desire to emulate a quest as faithfully as possible. I know that the concept of being able to explore and journey through different worlds is a big part of the appeal of gaming in general, but if there's a system in place to make that journey easier for the player I don't see any reason not to make use of it.

    The only series I play that uses it extensively is Borderlands, though, so that may be part of the reason I feel the way I do. The way the game's designed prioritizes exploration within individual areas more than journeying through the whole world without interruption (loading screens are anything but scarce), which makes the idea of eschewing a fast travel system more trouble than it's worth more often than not. Furthermore, since the series is sci-fi it's a fairly natural concept to include; Pandora and Elpis are the kinds of places where teleportation and respawning machines would be fairly expected.

    Salt grains, etc.
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    It definitely is a personal preference thing.
  • Odradek said:

    It definitely is a personal preference thing.

    Basically, that.

    It depends on what kind of experience you're trying to get out of the game.
  • So, having given up all hope of playing Arkham Knight and caring about its story, especially with the new Steam issues, I've gone ahead and spoiled myself on the entire plot.

    Jason Todd? Really? Frig, casting Hush as Arkham Knight would have been less hackneyed than this. 
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    it gon be fun
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    Grow Home is like Octodad meets Mountain.
  • edited 2015-06-28 22:31:28
    06-28-15
    New (Complete): Hocus Pocus - Episode 4: Destination Home  (GOG)
    New (Complete): Hocus Pocus - Episode 2: Shattered Worlds  (GOG)
    New (Complete): Hocus Pocus - Episode 1: Time Tripping  (GOG)
  • My dreams exceed my real life
    Finished Grow Home.

    It's relaxing as hell and also cute. Play it if you want to unwind.
  • I have a serious addiction to The Sims 3.

    I need help.
  • edited 2015-07-02 11:37:36
    Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
    The AI in Dragon's Crown is stone-cold stupid and brilliant.

    Smart enough to go for the shield and raise it when fighting red dragons, but so stone-cold stupid that they run into fire traps and spikes.

    It's very confusing.

    EDIT: Still fun though.
  • Bought Hitman: Blood Money for pennies on the dime.

    The tutorial level has you infiltrate a drug operation by a black gang, and let me tell you, I've never seen something so over the top in its racism. 

    I know what you're thinking. Yarrun, this can't be worse than the usual CoD 'shoot the brown people' business. But you don't understand. We're talking do-rags and bandanas. We're talking Samuel Jackson levels of swearing. We're talking girls doing the actual drugmaking in bikinis, giant afros and high heels. And Snoop Dogg is somehow in it, but an alternate version of Snoop who's a complete jerk. The only person who wasn't a completely terrible human being was the white guy that I was supposed to assassinate. I'm not even insulted. I'm impressed that this got to market without anyone going "hey, maybe this is a bad idea". Sure, this was 2006, but still.

    And the series is Danish-made, so I'm blaming Humon for this.
  • imagei will watch the heck outta this pumpkin patch
    You know that reminds me

    i expressed concerns about TVT's glowing Humon article, and some time later, they got around to checking it

    they decided it was fine and have not discussed the matter since afaik

    their standards are bad
Sign In or Register to comment.