Lurker > Punished_Blinx

HylianFox posted...

Ideally, video games should feature as little hand-holding as possible

It should up to the player 90% of the time to figure out where to go next, what can and cannot be interacted with, which item/weapon to use where, etc etc

It's more fun and more rewarding that way, and makes the player feel like they accomplished something.

Why create a video game if you don't want players to actually play it?

Video games historically have always used visual language to tell the player what to do. Always.

I don't think you realise how much of it is already there because you're so used to it.

Sure yellow paint can look a bit silly. But there's lots of silly things in video games that are there because they're video games. Why do red barrels explode? Why do locked doors look different than doors I can go through? Why can I open up a chest in front of a bed but not look through a drawer? Why can't I climb out a window? Why can't I get through this barbed wire fence.

It's always been there. Hell even simple games like Streets of Rage had a beeping notification and a big GO arrow to tell you to move on.

HylianFox posted...

What I don't get is this is like Video Game Design 101

There are tons of ways to nudge the player in the right direction without beating them over the head.

I mean, a game like Ocarina of Time made it perfectly obvious which walls were climbable and which weren't without putting garish yellow splotches all over them.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e8d04004.jpg

Regardless visually simplistic games don't need to do as much to draw the players eyes. It used to be a game could just put a universal ledge or crack in an otherwise blank wall and that would be all that was needed.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

FF7 Remake is completely linear.

This topic is about the sequel Rebirth.

FFVII Remake didn't have yellow paint as far as I remember.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

Thats why you create the landscape so that it can be seen

Is it normal for something valuable to always be seen at the top of a cliff? Don't you generally climb a cliff to see what's up there? Or are we designing a game to constantly go up and down valleys to they don't have to use yellow paint?

cuttin_in_farm posted...

Neat. And sometimes games have different colored objects that cant be climbed.

Which is why games use visual language like this to make it immediately obvious to the player what can be interacted with.

Yellow paint = you can climb or break this. It applies to everything within that game. It's immediately understandable at a glance. Most games are designed like this in some way.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

Unless youre trying to say a ladder is less effective of a climbing indicator than thing with yellow paint.

A lot of the times? Yes.

A game like RE4 is filled with detail that isn't interactable with at all. The issue they likely had was that people were walking right by both the ladders and crates because they weren't sticking out compared to the stuff you are supposed to walk past.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

Every gamer will try to climb a ladder. Every non-gamer will assume a ladder is climbable.

Many of them aren't. If a ladder isn't touching the ground or has a break halfway up it probably isn't climbable.

That's the problem with games. The visual language isn't always obvious to everyone.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

For the former, you can have ways to organically have players know to climb. Maybe a npc climbs the cliff ahead of you.

Isn't this game non-linear?

cuttin_in_farm posted...

Or something interactable can be seen at the top, implying its accessible.

But you're at the bottom of the cliff. What if the top can be seen from different angles.

cuttin_in_farm posted...

The RE example is a ladder. Feels pretty dumb, no?

The dumb thing is sometimes games have ladders that you can't climb.

I think people tend to underestimate how much of this stuff we are just used to from experience that doesn't really otherwise make sense.

Like when you watch cartoons for long enough you notice when something on a shelf is going to be grabbed because it looks slightly different. A lot of video game is designed logically like that.

Why can't I go down that corridor? Because there's a table blocking the way. Why can't I open that door? Because the door handle is missing for some reason. It makes sense to us but it doesn't really have something that's universal and easy to understand if you don't know. Why can't the player go under the table or kick the door open?

Stuff like this isn't just 'You can go here' but also 'only try to climb cliffs with stuff like that on it'

Even if someone has no experience at all they can see the yellow paint stick out and think that maybe they can do something there.

Final Fantasy doesn't even usually have climbing to begin with. So makes sense why they'd go with such an obvious design even if it looks dumb.

I haven't played Horizon Forbidden West but I seem to recall readability for which cliffs you can and can't climb was brought up as an issue.

Has anyone checked her lawn for a black jockey.

She's kickass in all the games she is in.

Jedi Survivor especially.

IfGodCouldDie posted...

It's more of a case of the optics of preferential treatment because his mom bank rolls the team.

Yeah like if a team is being funded solely by one parent isn't a pretty obvious conclusion here is that kid basically can't ever be off the team?

What happens when he leaves? Does she pay them forever?

dancing_cactuar posted...

Judging from steam reviews, Dead Space is good, Jedi Survivor less so.

But you know what, you constantly talking about this singular shitty publisher putting out not so good ports that I don't touch with a 50 foot pole anyway because they require a 3rd party account and have Denuvo in them, you've convinced me that the console master race is the way to go. Time to cut my nose to spite the rest of my face.

I'm not trying to convince you of anything. I'm just saying that these issues still exist.

If you wanna game on PC all the power to you. But it's not hard to understand why it isn't for everyone.

I'm not the one in a PS5 topic being confused why people still buy PS5 consoles. I don't go into PC topics being confused why people are buying gaming PC's.

Except it hasn't. It was just a handful of ports that were bad a decade ago too. It was never the majority.

It was a problem then and it's still a problem now.

I would consider a major publisher not giving a shit about the platform an issue with that platform even if it's not the fault of that platform.

Dead Space and Jedi Survivor were great games. Kinda sucks having to miss out or deal with crap because the thing you game on isn't treated like a priority.

It's also not anything particularly new with PC gaming either. You said earlier on that this stopped a decade ago.

I played Jedi Survivor on Xbox last year and had no problems at all. I'm playing Dead Space on Xbox now and it looks and performs great.

How are they on PC now? Doesn't sound like they have improved much.

Back in the PS4 generation it actually felt like it was cost effective to easily leapfrog what the PS4 was doing. Most ports were great. 60fps and IQ was a major improvement for even lower to mid range cards.

Nowadays the gap just doesn't seem worth the cost for the big AAA games. Most games on consoles are 60fps now and look great. Unless you really dislike FSR or want ray tracing there's barely any difference.

PC gaming is still great for bundles, emulation and older games but for the new stuff I don't think it's worth it tbh. I say that as someone with a 3080. Even with that I have to be selective in settings for games like Alan Wake 2 and RE4. The days of just selecting the max and moving on just isn't the case anymore. Kinda felt like I can get what I want from PC gaming with the Steam Deck.

Will_VIIII posted...

This is issue is overstated. To clarify I do have a PS5 as well.

It's still an issue. You're acting like they don't exist at all.

Will_VIIII posted...

Like I mentioned, mk1 handles this different

Yes some games handle them differently. Doesn't change the games that never did anything about it.

Having to sit and wait for shaders to compile when booting up a game isn't exactly ideal either. A big advantage modern consoles have is that immediacy of playing a game exactly where you left it.

Shader compilation stutter happens whenever a game loads in anything new. Most games have not loaded every single thing the game has to offer in a couple of minutes.

It also resets after a driver update and I believe when the game is patched.

Several recent PC ports have had major issues and stuff like shader complication stutter.

Dead Space
Jedi Survivor
Wild Hearts
The Last of Us Part 1

Wo Long and Elden Ring have shader stutter (unless you have a Steam Deck for Elden Ring funnily enough)

Like PC gaming is great but there's no reason to lie that bad PC ports isn't a thing that still happens.

It's more cost effective to buy a sack of coffee beans and use a proper coffee machine but most people are still just going to use pods or buy it from a cafe because most people don't give that much of a shit.

Barely anyone is buying both a PlayStation and Xbox as well. If they did Xbox wouldn't be considering porting their stuff over to PlayStation.

Will_VIIII posted...

Like why not just spend $500-600 on a gaming PC and have a device that will play all Xbox console exclusives and the games Sony will port?

And yes, it's definitely possible to build a gaming PC under $600 that's equivalent to the current consoles.

Because most people just want to buy a box to play games. They don't want to research and look up how to buy the right combination of parts to match a PS5 when they can just buy a PS5.

Personally I think PC gaming is overpriced for what you get and has been for quite a few years now. Especially in my region where a decent GPU alone is comparable to the price of a PS5.

Will_VIIII posted...

Sure, but why go with an inferior version then?

PS5 is good enough for most gamers.

YouTube ads and also people scrolling on Twitter and the like.

The first half I thought he was having a good day. Then it all went downhill right at the end.

WingsOfGood posted...

why do you assume it is mental illness that requires help and not just he is and always was a shitty person?

Near the end of the video he starts ranting about having to take fake bipolar medication that makes him fat because of a misdiagnosis. That a car accident gave him slight signs of autism. That this kills superheroes.

Dude definitely doesn't take his meds.

This seems to much like a parody it's hard to believe it's real. The random dives and rolls while yelling shots fired. The shooting at nothing. His insistence that he has been hit. Him asking the cop at the end if he has been hit.

The only thing that doesn't make it super funny was that there are clearly terrified civilians screaming for their lives and that he nearly killed people.

When you are a cop in a country where you can be shot from anywhere and anyone this is what happens.

I'm sure there was. Also shows about funny and raunchy commercials, stunts gone wrong etc.

World's Dumbest
World's Most Amazing Videos
America's Best Caught on Tape/Real TV
Maximum Exposure

I'm sure at least one of these had a bloopers episode.

Sony went with a Madame Web movie because they had to cancel their plans for a cinematic Sinister Six universe.

I wish I was joking.

Gabe: Available login servers or another luxury yacht? I'll go for the luxury yacht.

Like yeah it's neat but why are people acting like this is the only game that does this?

Dakimakura posted...

Watch all the AAA shills and companies try to tear this game down for no reason.

This game is from a AAA publisher?

She has a concert in Melbourne Australia in two days. I have a feeling she's not on that plane.

I remember that Hayden Panettiere rumor was spread by some sort of anonymous blogger that people thought was Charlie Sheen for some reason.

No idea if people ever verified his other claims. It just resurfaced an old and useless memory.

I wish I remember how to find that blog. It was a long time ago. Like before Sheen started talking about tiger blood and stuff.

Edit: Oh it wasn't Charlie Sheen it was Robert Downey Jr. Blogger was called Himmm.

Edit 2: The blog was bullshit. I don't think this claim came from anywhere else but people did believe the stuff spread from it at the time.

https://nypost.com/2012/04/01/how-crazy-days-and-nights-fooled-hollywood/

Tyranthraxus posted...

Cliffy B tried it twice and it failed miserably so clearly there's more to the equation than just "rip off someone and release a glitchy game"

Yeah Pokemon.

Xerun posted...

Personally I think the opposite. Palworld should be the nail in the coffin for dev creativity.

If a game launching early access, with buggy AI, little to no content apart from creature collecting and breeding, assets that look like they could be stolen and no real story can sell so many copies. Then what the f*** do gamers actually want in a game.

like I enjoy Palworld and cant wait for some updates. But man if I had to pick a game release in the last 3 years to sell that much. It sure wouldnt be that

If Ubisoft or EA released Palworld gamers would be furious at them.

Considering The Day Before was the most preordered Steam game of all time nobody should be wanting anyone to copy what is lucrative on there.

buddah86 posted...

Palworld should be a wakeup call to the industry.

If a game launching early access that isn't AAA, super big budget, advertised everywhere etc can sell millions of copies, why the hell are these companies spending and wasting so much of their money on duds.

I would rather they not try to cash in on the early access crafting survival game trend tbh

Sure. But that leads to those people saying they know the person but not the music.

WingsOfGood posted...

maybe but I go to like walmart or stores like that and they are constantly playing her songs

this is why people who are like "I never ever heard her songs before!" are either really ignorant or lying

I don't wanna be too rude but a lot of vocal guys on the internet are pretty out of touch with modern society in general. A lot barely go outside or go to any social functions at all. It's a point of pride for many of them that they're out of touch.

Regardless hearing a song in Walmart isn't really the same as the days of hearing songs over and over again while driving around to the radio.

1337toothbrush posted...

Lots of musicians tour worldwide, I mean that fever pitch popularity isn't as big elsewhere.

Nah. It's pretty ridiculous how popular she is in Australia right now.

There was a 10 minute segment on our morning show yesterday that's literally about how fever pitch popular she is right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqotjRHniQk

She's all over our TV and radio right now.

WingsOfGood posted...

wouldn't a growing population and the internet allowing for faster transmission actually mean we should easily surpass what was in the past?

It's different because the internet means you can curate what you watch and listen to. It used to be that everyone was listening to the same radio stations and watch the same TV shows.

I do find it a bit amusing that people still act like she's a fad or that she'll drop off.

She's been in the proper mainstream music business now for 17 years. She could do variations of this Eras tour for the rest of her career and still make a shitload of money.

She's the modern equivalent of The Beatles, Elvis or MJ. There's no getting bigger than what she is today. With the rise and popularity of music streaming today isn't the same as it was 40 years ago so trying to draw direct comparisons is silly.

Necronmon posted...

Spears may indeed have been a part of the long line of Disney made Idol products but her breakdown, however insane, was her own, same with Milly Cyrus.

Meanwhile...there's something so...fake about Taylor...like her entire existence is calculated on being a idol.

The difference with Swift is that her entire existence is calculated with her as the boss. She's not under the thumb of a label or producer.

If anything she's the opposite. She didn't even start off as a pop idol. She started as a teen country singer.

KogaSteelfang posted...

They could only start once you get close. Unlike the glaring ugly splashes of yellow flung around on everything as it is.

But the point of this stuff is to draw your eye from a distance as well. No matter how far away you are you can immediately tell which cliffs you can climb.

If it was distance related you could potentially be wasting time walking towards cliffs to see if they start glowing.

Isn't the game quasi open world in certain sections? A random assortment of glowing ledges probably wouldn't look great.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/54199c2f.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e18b2bd2.jpg

Are we expected to believe that the Whomps took time out of their day to paint yellow arrows for Mario? Ridiculous.

Stop doing it and make what instead?

I never said you did. Video game 'journalists' most definitely use this crap for easy clickbait articles constantly. They did the same thing with Palworld today and Suicide Squad earlier this week. They'll continue to make articles about Suicide Squad several times over this year like they did with Redfall last year.

It's just content.

The same narrative as anyone makes with Steam Concurrent numbers.

Either this game is a massive success or a massive failure. I'm assuming this is meant to be the latter?

People can compare games to whatever want to paint the narrative they want to make.

I can make an article that Sonic Superstars has lost 75% of its player base in a few months. I can point out that more people are playing older Sonic games as well.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/928e363f.jpg

If I had an axe to grind against Sonic Superstars or the current state of the Sonic franchise I can very well do this and it'll be the exact same narrative as this topic.

That's the magic of making stories about Steam concurrent users. We don't need to think about how the Steam audience interacts with games. We don't need to compare price points. We don't need to compare the state of mods. We can just look at whoever is playing the game more and paint whatever story we want to make.

WingsOfGood posted...

As mentioned already:

Red Dead 2
Elden Ring
Baldur Gate 3
Eurotruck simulator 2 (what even)
Cyberpunk 2077
Monster Hunter: World
Fallout 4

4 of those games have multiplayer

For shits and giggles I'm gonna look up some of the other notable games from the latter half of last year

Remnant 2 - 2,474
Sea of Stars - 477
Immortals of Aveum - 102
Lies of P - 1,556
Mortal Kombat 1 - 1,505
Sonic Superstars - 38
Robocop: Rogue City - 268
Persona 5 Tactica - 42

Kinda looks like Steam users don't really care about playing single player games all that much.

At the very least Starfield may not be some universally popular blockbuster like Skyrim and Fallout were but it still did a lot better than the average game did on Steam. That's with it being on Game Pass too.

People should probably not fall into the trap of thinking that the major success stories represent the majority.

People should also probably stop pretending that Steam concurrent users represent the health and success of a video game.

The worst thing about Steam giving these numbers are the sheer amount of clickbait articles people make about basically any game in the discourse.

I had played for 100 hours when I stopped in December.

How much longer was I supposed to play it to stop it from flopping?

WingsOfGood posted...

Skyrim is not a typical single player game?

and btw I answered that already with Baldur Gate 3 and Elden Ring

None of those are typical single player games no. The latter two do have multiplayer components for example.

But yes Starfield isn't as popular as incredibly popular and acclaimed games of their respective years. The far majority of games aren't.

NhojAnec posted...

What I don't get is why the media has gotten so obsessed with her over the last two years even though she's been popular for more then a decade. What is it about the last two years that made the media say "OK, let's start reporting about every single thing she does, no matter how trivial"?

The world tour showed a high level of demand. That lead to a lot of stories in general. Chances are you live in a state or country she'll eventually come through.

Then those stories are successful so they do more. And so on.

Dating Travis Kelce has also amped things up more than usual.

I think this would have to be her peak year surely. Like I've been thinking that several times in the last decade. But I don't think there's anything higher she can get to.