True Gaming Arma 2 before DayZ: an experience I'll never get back, and a look at how a mod changed a game forever |
- Arma 2 before DayZ: an experience I'll never get back, and a look at how a mod changed a game forever
- PVP Games : Is intentionally bad UI a valid part of gameplay?
- Projectors Recommendations
- Why do I suck at total war Soo much?
- Games with realistic guns/gun handling that are also fun?
| Posted: 05 Dec 2017 02:22 AM PST I realize this may not go over well. Lots of people will disagree with my sentiment. But I got an opinion, and I enjoy writing things up. Arma 2: CO was the first and last game I truly got invested in and the only one I can say I played more than 1,000 hours of – which doesn't make me feel "proud" but it makes a point. I miss it dearly. I was a regular on the TAW Domination server, known as a decent pilot because I flew with an Xbox controller, and other times a dedicated combat medic that got a thrill out of dragging wounded teammates to cover. The gist of that gamemode is you spawn in a military base in a huge Russia or Afghanistan inspired map littered with enemy occupied towns and cities you need to travel to and liberate one at a time. It was the most immersive fun I have experienced from an online game. Either I've grown out of games significantly since then, or I still have yet to find something as good. One day in May 2012 I logged in and saw about 5-6 DayZ mod servers. I ignored them. Over the next week or so the servers grew in numbers to the point I had to give one of them a shot. The gameplay was very unique and thus very fun, but after a couple days it grew stale. I stuck mostly to Domination, but I can't deny that DayZ was very fun in bursts. It wasn't the first zombie survival mod in Arma, but it was the most complex. I had never seen something quite like it and was impressed by what it achieved - namely the fact you could spawn across servers in the same location, with the same gear, as much as you wanted. It took about 3-4 weeks before DayZ exploded with critical acclaim and made Arma 2 the most played multiplayer game for that time period. It was all over all the gaming websites and YouTube. Completely unavoidable. This was surreal because no one ever talked about Arma, at least not positively, and it was as though one of the best kept gaming secrets was exposed for the entire world. A couple guys I desperately tried swaying into buying the game were coming to me asking if I wanted to play DayZ with THEM (I didn't). A playerbase of maybe 7,000 reached 300k. People were interviewing Dean Hall as if they were Rolling Stone. And as such, the servers outside of DayZ went rotten overnight. Arma 2 is a gruelling game. Friendly fire is enabled across the board and should you die on a large map, gearing up and going back to the combat area takes a lot of time. You need to play slow and calculated to make it worthwhile. The learning curve is steep and too boring for many. You know when you play a game and someone tells you to "go back to CoD" when you do or say something they don't like? The entire tone of Arma is the physical (or digital) representation of that statement. DayZ attracted two different types of people to Domination: those who disrupted gameplay because they didn't know how to play, and those who disrupted gameplay because they thought it was funny. The gameplay format was an absolute goldmine for trolling. Spawning in base post DayZ was usually carnage. Inexperienced pilots crashing helicopters into hangars, guys rushing into combat like it's Battlefield, people having zero understanding or respect for side missions and blowing the game for others (like that "Leroy Jenkins" thing, in a military simulator). The trolls would actively hunt and TK you or ram aircraft into yours so they could jump onto the side chat channel and tell the admin YOU purposely flew into them to get you banned. Once I had to deal with two kids trying to ram a C130 into my helicopter for a good 20 minutes. This isn't a game where a simple respawn rectifies everything. Going from base to the AO is a mission itself. The accomplishment you get from killing another player, TK or not, is highly satisfying. Everyone was being called a nigger, "AIDS" was the new buzzword, and no one played serious. If they couldn't TK you, they would find new ways to ruin your game, such as covering everything with smoke grenades or playing as pilots and bailing on their full helicopter so the occupants meet a fiery death or parachute out in the middle of nowhere. By June of 2012, about two months after DayZ mod was launched, Arma 2 was over. The leftover Domination servers were completely liberated by kids causing problems (every time I'd join the base would be completely destroyed, literally a fiery mess) and you could barely find them anymore because 98% of the server browser, no exaggeration, was DayZ. I complained about DayZ taking over Arma from the start but was always met with hostility because it was "attracting more players" which to others is considered good, but the ultimate proof is no, it's not. The community was tight and consistent. We didn't "need" new players. I don't understand how that benefits anyone. Yes, you could probably find your way into private servers, but I was never looking for that type of dedicated, overbearing teamwork. I subsequently tried Arma 3 but it's just not for me. I like the ideas, but not the game. Multiplayer performance issues make mil-sim gameplay hard and that aside, the majority of servers are DayZ-esque "survival" games I have no interest in. I miss you, Arma. [link] [comments]  |
| PVP Games : Is intentionally bad UI a valid part of gameplay? Posted: 05 Dec 2017 05:26 AM PST Some games are designed around intentionally bad UI. For example, survival horror games often use awkward controls in order to heighten the sense of fear and discomfort. And games like Octodad have absurd controls as the central gameplay gimmick. However, I'd like to talk about competitive PVP games. Fighting games, RTS, MOBAs, competitive FPS, etc. Quite often, when one suggests UI improvements to a game, you'll get a resounding chorus of "You want to dumb the game down?" "You want the game to play itself?" "It will lower the skill ceiling" etc, to defend the status quo. But it's a very strange argument, because none of those people ever suggests making the UI even worse to raise the skill ceiling, and I'm absolutely sure that if the game had shipped with improved UI in the first place, those people would think any suggestion to change to the unimproved version as totally crazy. A famous example might be Starcraft 1's 12 unit selection limit. Or the complex joystick commands of fighting games, especially earlier ones. In each of these cases, you'll get players passionately defending the current badness of the UI. But they never address the question, if max selection of 12 units is skillful, then isn't 10 even more skillful? 8? 6? 1? If 720 degree joystick spin is skillful, then isn't 1080 even more skillful? Similarly, they never question the existing conveniences in the UI. Aren't queued commands or hotkeys "dumbing the game down"? Wouldn't the game be even more skillful without those features, or with obfuscated versions of them? Personally, I consider the game mechanics and UI as separate things. To use an analogy, the game mechanics of Chess are separate to how you move the pieces. I don't agree with making Chess more "skillful", for example, by making pieces incredibly slippery or heavy. I feel that PVP games should be purely battled out in game mechanics, and UI should be as seamless, customisable and comfortable as possible. Just like getting the right mouse, keyboard, gaming chair, and binding hotkeys to suit your preference. I don't agree with limiting your UI to address shortcomings in your game mechanics. Eg. It's often said that, with unlimited selection limit, it's too easy to just gather a huge army, select everything, and then charge them all into the enemy. But if this is a problem, doesn't this mean that your game is poorly designed to handle large armies? Shouldn't you have mechanics in place so that large armies have disadvantages and weaknesses too, in-game? I also don't agree that limited UI makes games more skillful. If it takes 200 APM just to move 60 units from A to B in a limited UI RTS, then doesn't it mean that, in a RTS with good UI, a 200 APM player can do even more amazing things? Like control 20 separate huge armies in a coordinated attack, fight on a dozen fronts, or whatever? The final point is regarding AI players / bots. If bad UI is the thing that you're using to limit human performance and artificially require "skill", then your game will be more easily beaten by AI bots who ignore human limits, have unlimited APM and unlimited numbers of fingers, perfect timing and reactions, etc. In order to make a game that requires true "human" skill, your game needs to be deep in areas that require human thought and decision making. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Dec 2017 02:45 PM PST Wondering if anyone has recommendations for projectors that work well for gaming. Is this a thing? Consoles I use are an Xbox One, Switch, and a laptop for Hearthstone and indie steam games. I watch a lot of Blu-Rays too, I'm a collector and enjoy collecting Criterion Blu-Rays. Just wondering if I hook up my consoles, will there be anything I need to consider when buying a projector? Thanks! [link] [comments]  |
| Why do I suck at total war Soo much? Posted: 05 Dec 2017 06:33 AM PST I remember when my brother-in law first showed me age of empires, that was my gateway drug to the world of strategy pc games, I've played a 4 hour campaign with him in that AOE3 Amazon map, I like to think that to this day people still sing songs about that glorious final skirmish. I love civ series (go nuke your mom Gandhi, leave my beautiful cultural cities alone), the old tycoon games, sim city 4, even cities skylines. Remember battle for the middle earth series? Some times I still scream "BUILD" like that Isengard constructor for no reason at all. Soo I must enjoy total war right? is the perfect crossover between AOE and civ right? Right guys!!!? Why do I suck Soo hard at it? I lowered my self to play on easy mod just to enjoy one single campaign story but couldn't take the humiliation. I write for you all today so I can take this weight off my soul, have you ever been trough something like that? Like with other games? I can't be the only one. [link] [comments]  |
| Games with realistic guns/gun handling that are also fun? Posted: 04 Dec 2017 05:18 PM PST So I started play Destiny 2 and the guns in that game kind of drive me nuts. I know it is a sci-fi setting, but the guns aren't handled realistically at all. When you reload, and you haven't completely emptied the gun, the character still operates the bolt/slide even though there should still be a round in the chamber. There should be no need to actuate the action action at all. Why can't reloading simply have more than one animation? If I recall correctly, The Last of Us handles guns pretty realistically. When Joel reloads the revolver, he doesn't simply dump everything on the ground and insert six new rounds. He puts in the number he needs. Speaking of revolvers, they are generally portrayed unrealistically. It's kind of convention that revolvers are super powerful, but slow to fire with high recoil. And this is somewhat true in real life. More powerful cartridges can be loaded into a revolver than you would typically find in a pistol (there are exceptions of course, like the Desert Eagle, but the Desert Eagle doesn't operate the same way the majority of pistols do). These will also have more recoil, and will likely have more stopping power than a semiautomatic pistol, or a gun that uses pistol ammo (like a submachine gun). So powerful revolvers are fairly congruent with reality, for the most part, but what bothers me is that they are often way more powerful than rifles. Yes, a .44 Magnum round can have the same or maybe more muzzle energy than an assault rifle chambered in 5.56×45mm NATO, but it isn't necessarily more lethal. If body armour is a factor, the 5.56 is going to penetrate it more easily owing to it's smaller cross section. Personal defence weapons like the FN P90 are designed for greater effectiveness against body armour as well as better range than SMGs chambered in pistol-caliber cartridges. The 5.7x28mm cartridge doesn't have much more muzzle energy than a 9x19mm Parabellum, but it has been designed with terminal ballistics and armour penetration in mind. I kind of got sidetracked there. The point is super powerful revolvers are a lot of fun, which is probably why they are in so many games, but video games make them waaaaaaayyyyy to powerful compared to rifles. The unrealistic guns are probably an intentional design choice because they are fun—which I'm inclined to agree. However, I can't really think of many games that have very realistic guns. Titanfall 2 is actually quite good in this respect. All the guns are fictional, but they behave "realistically". You can shoot people from really far away with the rifles (especially the heavy machine guns) and still kill people. In fact, I've found that there really isn't enough distance to make sniper rifles necessary (or maybe I just suck). Sniper rifles are a little more powerful than regular rifles, but not absurdly so. Because the guns are designed to shoot reasonable groups at what amounts typical engagement distances, an assault rifle is generally the better choice. TL;DR: Guns in video games aren't always realistic. Sometimes this is due to just ignorance as how guns work. Often times unrealistic guns are probably an intentional choice to make the game more fun. Are there any games that are committed to both realistic guns and fun? [link] [comments]  |
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