True Gaming Where do you draw the line between exploits/griefing and emergent gameplay or "part of the game"? |
- Where do you draw the line between exploits/griefing and emergent gameplay or "part of the game"?
- The state of VNs on Steam
- What do you think cildren's mental health care professionals should know about when it comes to gaming?
- Why are parrying/counter systems in games with combat so difficult to get right? What games do a good job?
- Am i the only one who thinks that the argument "they don't release the full game" isn't valid?
- How to review a game?
- Complex characters in gaming, can it be done?
- Do you think Hard difficulty is the new Normal?
- Why do early FPS that lacked mouselook such as Doom use CTRL and ALT for shooting and strafing as default?
| Where do you draw the line between exploits/griefing and emergent gameplay or "part of the game"? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 11:43 AM PDT My brother and I had an interesting discussion recently that started when we were talking about the griefing potential in the upcoming 'Fallout 76'. He is worried that players will do nothing but use exploits to gather near infinite amounts of money with the sole intention of killing other players, ignoring the other aspects of the game, and pursuing the nuclear launch codes. He compared it to GTA Online, which he plays constantly, and very well; this is ironic because in GTA he is the person who does this, but he knows it, and says he does it because this is what the community in the game typically does. Bethesda has obviously been trying very hard to assuage players' worries about this, by introducing a bounty system and other anti-griefing measures, but my brother remains quite skeptical and cynical about even giving the game a chance. My counter-argument to this is there is a degree of freedom that multiplayer online games have to find a balance with, a balance between what the developers want you to be able to do and what is actually unfair. For example, my brother referenced specifically the fact that players in GTA Online take advantage of the 'Passive' mode to kill other players and not be killed themselves, which he considers to be a bald-faced exploit. He also mentioned the fact that players will kill themselves to protect their K/D ratio, instead of letting you kill them fair and square, not to mention all the ways you can easily rack up money via glitches or bugs. While I share his frustration, I also believe that the developers can't possibly keep players on so short a leash that the game is unplayable. Is the existence of these phenomena unfair, or are they part and parcel to the game itself? The spirit of the game, in other words? It's not a clear cut answer all the time. My reference to him was Overwatch, a game he does not play, but one that I play every day. Overwatch is a game where cheating and rage-quitting will get you banned. It is also a game that is constantly changing, although in small ways. Many players have opinions about certain characters or aspects in the game they feel are "totally broken", or "overpowered" as well. My argument is that while Blizzard is swift to punish cheating and unsporting players, and rightly so, there is also a certain point where players must realize that the game is what it is, how they designed it to be; just because a certain character seems to be your personal nemesis, that doesn't necessarily mean the game is in the wrong, in fact they might be functioning exactly as intended. So, sometimes the line between what should and should not be allowed isn't so clear, and sometimes it is. I directed him to Destiny's "Loot Cave" as an example of a clear exploit. Players were not cheating at all, but the cave was altered because it made the game too easy. In regards to Fallout 76, is it an exploit per se if a player were to accumulate lots of wealth and persistently chase destruction of other players? Could you not argue that the player is roleplaying just as intended, as long as they aren't literally cheating? What is stopping you from seeing it as part of the game, or maybe taking on the role of an enforcer and stopping their pursuit of the nukes? In a nuclear wasteland, wouldn't it be realistic to expect bandits, scoundrels, and murderers? You may not like the gameplay for it, and you don't have to play it, but does that mean it's "wrong", the fact that the game discourages it notwithstanding? It seems to me that the opinion between developers on what is unfair and what isn't differs somewhat; Rockstar is clearly okay with players being able to kill themselves, or use Passive Mode unfairly, while Bethesda allegedly wants to deter these actions. TL;DR: Title. Where do you draw the line between exploits/griefing and emergent gameplay or "part of the game"? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2018 12:02 PM PDT I've recently read a few thoughtful discussion threads on the state of the VN market here in the West. Some taking a negative stance, some with a more positive outlook. I thought I'd try to put some numbers on these statements and look at VN ownership on Steam, still the predominant market for PC games, and use that to analyse whether VNs are on their true route or have stumbled into a bad end. I'd recommend reading this on my tumblr post as I can embed the graph images into the post rather than require external image links. Data collectionI checked just over a million steam profiles to try and get a random sample of gamers. With Steam's new private-by-default profile settings, only 8% of those users had public game lists, but that still gave us 80k user profiles to work with. I could then compare my sample with the "leaked" owner data and scale up my numbers accordingly to represent Steam as a whole. Steam is rather haphazard with what gets tagged as a Visual Novel (RPGMaker games like A Bird Story are tagged as VNs), so I'll only be including games that also have a VNDB entry. Steam VN releasesSo let's start simple, with a simple plot of how many VNs are being released each month. At first glance things seem rosy for VN fans, there have never been more VNs being released in the West. But let's break down those results a bit: Graph Note that these trends are cumulative but NOT stacked. The EVN, JVN, and other VNs trends include only non-free VNs. Here we can start to see the reason for the differing perspectives on the state of the VN market depending upon whether you read more JVNs or EVNs. While the rate of EVNs releases has steadily increased, the number of new JVNs has remained fairly static since 2016, despite Steam's lowered release requirements. Steady release rates aren't definitely bad news, but in general profitable industries want to expand, so the lack of expansion tells you something about the industry. But as someone with a plan-to-read list that grows longer by the day, I'm not complaining if the rate doesn't increase. One under-reported development in the VN market is the recent rapid growth of Chinese VNs (listed as other here), who have quietly been doing well in their home markets, but are rarely translated. So while more VNs might be good for us fans, how does the market look for developers? Let's have a look at VN sales. Graph Note that these trends are cumulative but NOT stacked. All sales are back-dated to the release date of the VN on Steam. Free VNs count sales as the number of users who have logged some playtime in it. Unfortunately Steam's API doesn't list when someone bought a game, so we've got to group sales by the release date of the VN. That means there will be a bias towards older releases which have been out longer and so had more time to build up sales. Here we can see some justification for the doom and gloom perspectives, with more recent VN releases selling significantly less than older ones. With new JVNs in 2017 selling only half what they did in 2016. The EVN downward trend is especially stark given that the number of new releases has been increasing, so that's less revenue split among even more VNs. Not all VNs are equal, some are priced higher, so let's look at total revenue rather than total sales. Graph Note that this assumes every user pays full price, so this is more the maximum possible revenue than actual revenue. Here we can see the difference between EVN and JVN markets. While JVNs sell only half as many as EVNs, they earn almost as much revenue due to their higher price. We again see the same dip in more recent revenue though, 2017 was only 46% of 2016′s revenue, and 2018 looks even worse so far. Remember, this fall in revenue coincidences with an increase in the total number of releases, so to fully comprehend the drop on revenue, let's look at the average sales per VN. First, we should note that this massively overestimates the average revenue generated as it assumes every user pays full price. I know devs who would sell their soul for 282k per VN. Oh wait, they already did when they signed up for Steam... (just kidding, I do like Steam, but it has issues). The important aspect here isn't the y-axis total which is unreliable, but the consistent downwards trend. But it might not be as bleak as it seems, older VNs are more likely to have been in bundles and in Steam sales, so their revenue is likely overestimated compared with more recent releases. So I'd be hesitant to claim that revenue is necessarily dropping, but I think we can confidently claim that revenue isn't increasing. VN ReviewsNostalgia for a past golden age is common everywhere, not least among VN fans. It's not uncommon to hear that newly released VNs aren't as good as older ones, but can we get any empirical data on this point? We can get close by looking at the Steam reviews of VNs over time. Graph Each dot represents the average thumbs up/down ratio for any VNs released that month. Within the JVN market, we can see some truth to the nostalgia viewpoint. Older releases were more consistently rated higher. But that isn't to say there aren't new highly rated JVNs. They still maintain enviously high scores overall. As for EVNs, while they had consistently scored lower than JVNs, they're catching up and are now pretty comparable in review ratings of JVNs. Just for fun, let's see how the total review count compares between VNs. Graph The two free-VN spikes are for Emily is Away and DDLC. As I'm sure anyone familiar with the VN community can tell you, JVN fans are vocal, and it shows in the total reviews VNs get. Despite there being only half as many JVNs as EVNs, they still attract more reviews than EVNs do. This is perhaps because JVNs are typically far longer than EVNs, so might be worth the time of writing a review. What free-VN fans lack in the wallet, they make up for in their word-count. Although this is massively skewed by two free VNs which compromise 70% of all free-VN reviews: Emily is Away and DDLC. They seem anomalies rather than trends. As shown by the graph when we exclude those two: Graph *Excluding Emily is Away and DDLC. Despite the drop in position, free-VNs still out-perform what we'd expect given their lower count of total owners, but that may be because EVN and JVN totals include users who own the VN but have never read it. Whereas the free-VN total only includes those who have logged playtime in that VN, so there's a larger pool of possible reviewers. Potential IssuesThere are a few sources of uncertainty in the dataset. The selection of users who have set their profiles to public might not be representative of the wider Steam userbase. It probably undercounts more casual fans who are less likely to configure their Steam profile. We also don't know when someone purchased a VN, so it's possible VN sales are increasing, but a lot of that money is going to older releases, especially if they're in bundles and Steam sales. In inclusion of VNs in game bundles may be distorting the image of the VN fandom, as it'll include those who have little interest in the medium and only own a VN by happenstance. We should also remember that "Steam" is not synonymous with the VN market. There are plenty of competitors in the VN scene, namely Mangagamer and itch.io, who tend to cater to different tastes than Steam does. So we're only getting a partial picture of the Western VN scene. ConclusionThere's data here to support both the optimistic and pessimistic commentary. On the positive side, there have never been more VNs being released as there are now. EVNs are improving with higher average ratings and a few have reached mainstream attention. On the pessimistic side, it seems like there are ever more VNs competing for a fanbase that isn't significantly growing. While I'd be wary of claiming profits are falling, it seems highly likely they aren't increasing, and a stagnant market is not a healthy one. Personally, I think the future is bright. While VNs might not be destined to become blockbuster successes, there is enough of sustainable fanbase to support lots of indie developers, who are the most prone to innovate and write interesting new stories. As a VN fan, I'm excited to see what comes next~ I hope you found the article interesting. I had wanted to include a section analysing the Steam users, how many VNs do JVN fans purchase compared to EVN fans etc. But I want to spend a little longer going into more depth on it, so I'll have a post up next week on that. If you're interested in more until then, check out my other tumblr analysis posts, look out for updates on my twitter, or give me a yell on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616). Special thanks to /u/8cccc9 for collaborating on the analysis, and Part-time Storier for proof-reading. I just do these analyses for fun, but if you want to support my work with a tip, I accept small donations at ko-fi. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Sep 2018 11:08 PM PDT I'm a mental health care professional working with children. Since I'm a gamer myself, my colleagues often comes to me for advice when they encounter a child who spends most of their time gaming (which is quite often). And now I have been assigned to give a speech on this topic.. So, as any other nerd out there I turn to the internet for advice. What do you think is the most important thing for mental health care professionals to know about this subject? Thank you for your help! [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2018 02:52 PM PDT I'm just going to be asshole and say that if I can't figure out your parrying/counter system then I think it is a bad system. Granted I suck at video games. So take this with grain of salt. Why are countering/parrying systems so hard to get right and which games do a good job? I think pretty much everything made by Platinum Games pretty much nails. They figured out how to do it right at some point and they've subsequently included almost the same system in variety of games (Metal Gear Solid Rising Revengeance, Bayonetta, Wonderful 101, Neir: Automata). The counter systems are pretty much identical in each of them. Counters feel same in Bayonetta as they do in Neir: Automata. I am not sure what makes them so good, but they just seem to work. A lot of games seem to have bad parrying systems. I am forever wondering what the correct timing of the buttons. They're all described in the same way "press this button just before the attack" but in practice it is far more complicated than that. I could never get the hang of the Dark Souls parry system (or anything else from that game for that matter). Bloodborne was a little easier, but I've still ended up in situations where I've successfully parried (enemy is stunned) but I still get hit. The Yakuza games feature counter moves, but the timing on them seems random and inconsistent. I recently replayed the Shemue games (which I think are great) and the behaviour of the dodge/counter system seems kind of random. So what makes for good countering/parry system? In my opinion it necessarily one that easy, but one that is predictable. If I fuck up a counter, I should clearly know why that happened. In a lot of cases I am left wondering what exactly I did wrong. It's fine if it is difficult, but I should be able to see exactly why it is that I failed. If know the rules of the system I can practice and work to get better, but if it is inconsistently applied it is hopeless for me. Maybe it isn't so much that the systems are bad, it is just the "rules" of the system are so unclear that I can't really make use of it. In which case it isn't so much a failure of mechanical design as much it is a failure to make the mechanics clear to the player. What games do countering/parrying well? Maybe I am entirely wrong about everything because I am so bad video games. Maybe many video games have excellent systems and I just too stupid to figure the majority of them out. [link] [comments]  |
| Am i the only one who thinks that the argument "they don't release the full game" isn't valid? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 11:36 AM PDT i mean when developers release a game that has a full story line and add DLC which consists of a story they just pulled out of their ass then it's fine! don't get me wrong , i don't condone DLC's, they purposely try to make us pour as much money as possible in their purse, but saying "they don't release the full game" when we play can it through from start to finish is not true! for me is a game not a full game when the ending is a DLC [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 06 Sep 2018 12:45 PM PDT What makes a good game review? I'd like to start reviewing games for fun, and because I usually disagree with the mainstream opinion or find their reviews lacking in some way. Not trying to say that I'm "better," but I think I'd bring a slightly different perspective. That said, my only experience in writing is a senior level philosophy "metaphysics" class in college and a "creative writing" class in college. Is there some sort of rubrik or format I should follow? Things to keep in mind? Tbh, I used to like oldschool amateur gamefaqs reviews where people divide the sections by "gameplay, sound design, visuals, story" ets, but it now seems sophomoric to write that way. The biggest "gimmick" I'll probably use is the "BLUF" rule: bottom line up front, because I just think this is a stronger form of communication that should be adopted in every medium, though I'm sure many would disagree. Anyway, any tips specific to writing good game revews would be appreciated. [link] [comments]  |
| Complex characters in gaming, can it be done? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 08:20 AM PDT As a big fan of story driven games, I am really rooting for any efforts that advance the way characters are built up and portrayed in games. Or am I? Minor spoiler ahead: When the protagonist in The Last of Us could not save the world because he needed to save the girl, I LOVED it. It was not heroic, it was selfish, but it was understandable and relatable which made it believeable. However, probably one of the more maturely fleshed out characters in gaming is Niko in GTA IV, a game I never finished because, well, I just hated that guy. He, understandably, did unrelatable things that I simply did not like doing. I guess I am shallow that way. So, can it be done? Can the characters we play make us do unpopular things and, in doing so, become all the more human and relatable to us? Or do we forever need to be shallow heroes taking on -often far more interesting, complex and relatable- nemeses (I am looking at you, Vaas)? [link] [comments]  |
| Do you think Hard difficulty is the new Normal? Posted: 06 Sep 2018 05:36 AM PDT Most games I've played on hard have forced me to utilize mechanics I never previously needed in order to progress easily. For example, in Horizon: Zero Dawn, the higher difficulty forces you to be mindful of how you approach certain situations and encourages you to exploit weaknesses as things get tougher more frequently. What do you think? [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 05 Sep 2018 07:35 PM PDT Its so annoying! Especially with how its show easy to accidentally press the windows key and escape DosBox! I already customized my controls but I'm so curious who's the morons who decided this would be a intuitive default control? I mean have they ever thought someone might exit the game multiple times by accident? [link] [comments]  |
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