True Gaming The case for a modern Daggerfall |
- The case for a modern Daggerfall
- The hardest part of too many games is the beginning
- Is there a website that makes recommendations based on your Steam Library?
- Do you prefer already established protagonists or ones that you can create?
- ¿What makes a good horror game?
- When First Impressions go wrong
- What do you feel makes a sidequest strong? What do you think those defining features are?
- IL2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad now has a 'Mixed' score on Steam due to the sudden mass deleting of keys of thousands of customers
- A reflection on controls and melee combat in games.
- With creation comes responsibility
| The case for a modern Daggerfall Posted: 18 Jul 2018 06:43 AM PDT Daggerfall is the second installment in the Elder Scrolls series, and, while most people might be familiar with the series as it was from Morrowind onwards, this game presented a fairly different experience. The scope of the game, especially for 1996, is astounding, with an entire region of the game's lore, roughly the size of Great Britain in real world terms, is presented on a 1:1 scale. Numerous cities, villages, and (obligatory) dungeons for the player to explore exist, divided by massive tracts of uninhabited land. Of course, a fast travel feature exists in order to prevent journeys that would take months in real time. Such a world demands something to do in it, and there is a main quest the player character is sent at the beginning of the game. However, players are completely free to ignore it and do whatever they feel like doing, should they wish to accept the consequences of such action. And what is there to do? Randomly generated quests from the game's many, many NPC characters, various knightly orders, guilds and other groups of interest, or just plain aimless exploring. This is not to say that the game was flawless, though. In finest Bethesda tradition, the game is riddled with bugs to this day, necessitating the use of third-party fixes. Combat is overly simplistic and unsatisfying, and even the extensive spell-making system does little to fix this. The heavy degree of random generation leaves many aspects of the game feel shallow and dull. The interface was not considered good even in its time, and is absolutely horrifying by modern standards. Yet, it is absolutely an unique experience. In spite of almost 22 years passing since the game's release, I haven't seen any game with quite the same feel, with only the Adventure mode of Dwarf Fortress coming close, but that game suffers from an even more hostile user interface. Frankly, I find it baffling that no one has yet tried their own take on Daggerfall's formula. I want to put to light some of the reasons I think someone should attempt such a thing.
In conclusion, I think a modern take on Daggerfall's formula could make for a good and unique, if niche, gaming experience. I would love to hear your opinions regarding this idea. [link] [comments]  |
| The hardest part of too many games is the beginning Posted: 18 Jul 2018 12:59 PM PDT I can't tell you how many games I've played where the first few hours were brutally hard to get going due to lack of resources and skills, then once you make it a little ways in you gain healing/revive capability, or have enough money to basically keep the machine of an army going, or get a cool move that you can spam to get through most situations. Your character gets stronger faster than the enemies do, and the game just keeps getting easier and easier until the end. I understand this, from a narrative perspective. It does make sense to feel like you're going from a clumsy, awkward loser to a capable journeyman and finally a badass, but from a gameplay perspective it's all wrong. Games should be gentle and easy to start (and not just literally for five minutes in the tutorial) and then slowly sawtooth the difficulty up. You can do this while still keeping the sense of progression; you just need to keep introducing larger and larger threats. Maybe you're a civilian and you start by just fighting other random nobodies who can barely fight back. Then you have to fight soldiers. Then wild animals. Then demons start appearing. Then finally massive, legendary supernatural entities. At each stage you could have a mini feeling of "Wow, those guys were hard, but now I can take them down no problem." Note that this doesn't necessarily make a game bad. I love every one of the games I'm about to list as having this problem. Series that feature examples of the problem: Dragon Quest, Metroid, Zelda, X-Com, Divinity, Megaman Series that have better difficulty progression: Disgaea, Fire Emblem, Mario, SMT/Persona [link] [comments]  |
| Is there a website that makes recommendations based on your Steam Library? Posted: 18 Jul 2018 02:20 PM PDT Steam's Discovery Queue is terrible - I think out of the ~800 games I've looked through on there I've been interested in maybe 3. It's like they don't use any information from games you own other than checking to see if a game is the same genre. Are there any better tools out there? I've found ones that suggest games you already own, or games to buy, but it's just by your selected genre. [link] [comments]  |
| Do you prefer already established protagonists or ones that you can create? Posted: 17 Jul 2018 06:42 PM PDT Would you prefer a character who has an already established background, name, look, ect that you can connect with through storytelling or do you prefer to create a character like in most RPGs where your characters background isnt given but allows the character to truly be yours? [link] [comments]  |
| ¿What makes a good horror game? Posted: 17 Jul 2018 03:49 PM PDT So I recently finished outlast 2 and I was a little disappointed for the story in the game because first the ending was confusing, the game mechanics was frustrating and the main character was sometimes a little dumb but I know that anyone should do the things that he do in the game. I know that other games have good story but the mechanics wasn't really good or they have good mechanics but the soundtrack wasn't good as well. So I want to read your opinions and good ideas that could make a really good horror game. [link] [comments]  |
| When First Impressions go wrong Posted: 18 Jul 2018 09:46 AM PDT So, I picked up Sonic Mania Plus this week - and found it fell into a problem that rears its head every so often, in that it makes a terrible first impression. Note that very mild spoilers lay ahead. Sonic Mania's Encore mode kicks off on Angel Island from Sonic 3. One of the more iconic Sonic levels, and I was seriously excited to see it get the Mania revamp treatment. Then, I realised it was literally a 1:1 copy of the first act, up to the mid-way point. No new mechanics, no new routes, not even any updated assets - all pulled straight from S3, save for the first bonus ring area being removed. The immediate impression I got from seeing Angel Island Zone was that this is likely one of a small few new zones being added, which then immediately got me thinking about what the new zones will be like, if they'll be original designs ala Mirage Saloon, or if we'll be seeing some classic zones revamped again. And admittedly, for a €5 DLC, I was getting way too far ahead of myself - but that's what hit into my mind until I realised this Angel Island revamp was just thrown in as a small bit of a nostalgic throwback, before my ass was landed back into Green Hill Zone. Now, don't get me wrong - for a €5 DLC, Sonic Mania Plus is excellent. I got to replay through the main campaign with some small updates, some nice new graphical assets, and a few new routes - all with two new fun playable characters to boot, and a new array of special stage courses. My main issue was that I felt the opening 1-2 minutes sells what in my mind, would've been a different experience entirely. Now, Sonic Mania isn't the worst offender when it comes to First Impressions - in recent(ish) times, I also felt Skyrim opening with what's essentially a 30min interactive cutscene that has you locked into a small area of the map does a terrible job at selling the gigantic open world that Bethesda has crafted. What do you think of general First Impressions in games? Do you think they matter across the grand scope of things - or do you generally take the road I often would, and discount the first 20-30mins of a game as often not being a great representation of the rest of the content? [link] [comments]  |
| What do you feel makes a sidequest strong? What do you think those defining features are? Posted: 17 Jul 2018 07:41 PM PDT I was trying to figure out why I keep going back to some video games or don't mind playing some of them for hours and hours on end. And I knew that a lot of this was due to the sidequests. Yes I know the story and the gameplay are strong, but sometimes sidequests really strengthen a video game. At times, I find some of them better than the main story., but they're mainly designed to enhance the game. As such, what do you feel makes a sidequest strong? What are those defining features? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 18 Jul 2018 11:53 AM PDT If you go to the Steam store page for IL2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad you will see that it now has an overall and recent review score of 'Mixed'. This is an immediate and direct result of the developer 1C Game Studios (1CGS) suddenly and without any warning mass deleting/revoking the Steam keys of thousands of their customers. My personal experience with this is the following: Yesterday I emailed the developer on their official website to ask them if they could update my email address on my account. The reason being, I no longer use the old email and there is no way for the account holder to do it themselves which is strange to begin with. Soon after I sent that request, I got two messages from Steam that popped up onto my screen. Here and here. I assumed that something got screwed up with my account during the email address changeover and replied to 1CGS trying to ascertain what had happened. However, they simply did not respond to my question. They asked for screenshots of my Steam keys and purchase proof. Which I provided and then they went silent. As I became furious over the apparent theft of my games which I paid over $41 for I started searching for answers on the Steam store discussion page, the official forum, and the various IL2 Sturmovik subreddits. I soon realized that this was not a simple screwup with my account, but an intentional theft of what seems like thousands of keys from thousands of their loyal customers. Many of which have spent much more than $41 on their quite expensive game and DLC packs. The developer has only made two (unprofessional)posts about this event. One on their official forum and the other on the Steam store discussion page. They are locking all the threads about it on their forum and appear to be trying to sweep the entire thing under the rug. Their justification for what in my opinion amounts to an unethical mass theft of customer money and violation of their consumer rights is that these keys were sold second hand "grey market" websites. I for one knew nothing about this grey market thing until now. And I'm absolutely positive many others also did not. When I bought my copy of the game in April I simply Googled it to find the best price and bought it accordingly. It's not clear or explained how the developers expect the average customer to know that they are only allowed to buy their IL2 Sturmovik game keys on a certain couple websites and no others. And if they do buy it from the wrong website their money can be effectively stolen at any time by the developer, which has probably been $100+ for some people considering how expensive the game is. It's also worth noting that some people are even saying that their Steam-bought keys have been deleted. I am beyond disappointed with this developer. They are being greedy and spiteful and irrational. I would like to know how they think deleting the keys of thousands of their customers will create any positive outcome. Surely they don't expect these people to buy their expensive game and DLC all over again after their money was just effectively stolen. I for one will never be buying another IL2 Sturmovik game and this is coming from someone who has been playing the series since the original and has invested a lot of money into HOTAS setups. I feel compelled to make official complaints with Consumer Affairs, the BBB, the FTC, the State AG, Steam support and the like. Apparently Ubisoft did something like this recently and then walked it back and reversed course and restored the keys after public outcry. Let's hope 1CGS does the right thing and returns the thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars worth of keys they've taken from their loyal fans. [link] [comments]  |
| A reflection on controls and melee combat in games. Posted: 18 Jul 2018 01:51 AM PDT You have noticed that in most modern games centered on melee if there are no enemies to focus on them, you can not walk backwards or take side steps, as in Dark Souls or The Witcher 3: you can only walk backwards and take side steps if you perform lock-on on someone, and the lock-on is derived from that they are designed to be played with controllers, not keyboard and mouse. But I do not like this design, because games without lock-on like Jedi Academy and Rune allowed more control and did not need lock-on: at all times you could walk backwards and take side steps, or turn to the sides using the mouse, and if you want face an enemy, aim it with the mouse. It is more elegant, because you do not have to divide the movement in two: out of combat and in combat, and more precise with the movements of the mouse. [link] [comments]  |
| With creation comes responsibility Posted: 18 Jul 2018 05:01 AM PDT This might be a controversial opinion, dunno. In the recent backlash over various things (Last Jedi, Detroit, Battlefield V, etc), there's often a defense saying, "They are the owners / creators, they can do whatever they want with their property, and people who don't like it should shut up and just leave / dont buy." However, I don't think that's a good defense. Companies want people to become emotionally invested in their products, their stories, their characters. Companies want people to be intrigued by the mysteries, fall in love with the characters, laugh at the comedy, mourn the tragedies. Companies want people to become attached to these stories, because it becomes more profitable for them. They want people to buy the merchandise. Talk about it with their friends. Promote it on the internet. It seems to me, that if a company wants to profit from people's emotional attachment, then a certain amount of responsibility, or at least risk, is part of the deal. If the company betrays that attachment, they can't turn around and tell fans they are wrong for caring about the product only when fan reaction is negative. Certainly, the ways in which this backlash manifests is often extremely wrong - (eg. death threats and harrassment on social media targeted towards female actors who were only doing the job they were told, etc), but nevertheless, everyone involved in creation should be aware of the emotional attachments and expectations of the fans you are trying to make money from, or have made money from in the past. Avoiding the backlash in the first place would also avoid the toxicity. This might mean that companies and creators have to be a bit more conservative when it comes to existing franchises - eg. no more "DmC:Devil May Cry"s, all-girl Ghostbusters, etc. But in an ideal world, it should also mean that companies and creators must be more willing to create new franchises as well. Any time a company wants to radically reboot an existing franchise, they should probably just give up on the brand awareness and make something new instead. So yeah, don't you think that, if a creator seeks to profit from people's emotional attachment to their products, they should accept the risk & responsibility that comes with it? [link] [comments]  |
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