Lurker > Paratroopa1

I'm suddenly starting to think I was giving Rittenhouse too much credit that he didn't commit murder

Hades was borderline for me - I played it for 186 hours total and really enjoyed it but I didn't feel like it had a ton of endgame depth, it's just fun to play though

Of course if you can get it for free go ahead and play it and make up your own mind, I'd love to be wrong because I think Loop Hero has a lovely concept and is very polished in most respects

I HAVE OPINIONS ABOUT LOOP HERO and they've gone unaddressed for an entire year so I have a lot to say

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

This is such a crazy turn, when it first came out, everyone was absolutely RAVING about it.

I know why. I have a rule about roguelikes and similarly replayable, procedurally-generated games. They all live three lives. The first is between 0-10 hours of play; the next is between 10-50 hours of play; and the last is after 50 hours of play.

In the first phase, before 10 hours played (although this number is not exact, it could be as few as 1-2 or as many as 20-30 depending on the game's complexity), the player is learning the game and coming face to face with the game's new concepts for the first time. This is often the most exciting period of playing a new roguelike or roguelike-adjacent; you are learning a new system and discovering new things in it constantly, making progress or gaining skill very quickly, and nearly everything is immediately novel. The promise of depth in the game seems grand, and the promise of possibilities seem virtually endless. A player might win a run in this time, depending on the game's difficulty and length or on the player's skill, but they will not exhaust the possibilities the game has in this time or meet all of its challenges, and the full breadth of the endgame is probably not visible to them.

In the second phase, the player has likely mastered, or at least gotten a strong control of, the basics of the game. They have either won a run or two, if the game is short and approachable enough, or they are at least starting to think about how to do it, if the game is a little more challenging (or if it's a campaign). They are still probably discovering new things, unlocking new things, or seeing new things for the first time, but these are fewer and further between (again, depending on the game, of course). The focus on play is not so much learning the game but about honing that knowledge into a finer point, and about exploring every possibility that the game has. The full breadth of the game, which appeared limitless in the first few hours, is now becoming limited, as possibilities are seen to their fullest extent, and paths followed to their logical conclusion, and as the game starts to run out of newer and better ways to challenge the player. With each hour of play, runs become second nature, until they are eventually habitualized.

Around 50 hours, for most games, is when I think they start to hit their third and final phase. It may take longer than 50 hours, but around this point, a player starts to master the game, at least to the best of their ability. Their head is now bumping into the game's proverbial ceiling - all of the game's boundaries and possibilities are known to them. They are no longer experiencing new things, but rather, seeking out novel possibilities previously missed, or evaluating which possibilities are the strongest. They have likely won many runs by now, and are playing them under more challenging conditions; or, they have completed the campaign and are trying again on a higher difficulty; or they may even join a speedrunning community and branch their experience out further that way. The game no longer becomes something to experience and beat, but something to conquer in every possible way.

The basic gist of this is that good roguelikes remain fun after 10 hours; great roguelikes are still fun after 50. Of course, if you only play to play for 10, that might be fine for you, though great roguelikes are often great in the first 10 hours anyway. For a game to pass "the 50 hour test", as I call it, it has to really have layers of depth that continue to reveal themselves well after mastery is achieved - new possibilities to be sought and evaluated, every run creating new challenges never before seen. To me, a roguelike can only be revealed as truly spectacular after you have played it for this long, to find out if, when you bump your head on the ceiling, do you stop there, or does the ceiling unfold into something new?

The trick here is, reviewers, and many people who recommend a game early in its life, have often not yet pushed the game to its third phase. This is not meant to be gatekeeping, of course - if you play a game for 10 hours and it's fun and that's enough for you, that's all well and good! But it's my belief that a roguelike must be played for a certain amount of time to be able to evaluate it properly, to really test the boundaries of its depth - all roguelikes will seem deep at first, but only some truly are once you have explored them.

Loop Hero is a game that spectacularly fails the 50 hour test, and frankly, I don't think it passes the 10 hour test, either.

I played it for about 20-30 hours, because it's a campaign and it takes about that long to beat - and I have a friend who wanted to watch me so that spurned me on a bit. It's a pleasant looking game with a really good idea behind the mechanics, and I did want to see it through to see if the game would have any depth. If you play the game for a few hours and tinker around with it, it might seem pretty fun conceptually, but it really shows its limitations quickly. Frankly I don't think it even starts with much depth; the game has a lot of design problems and mechanically it's just not that very interesting to make decisions in, so the only thing that kept me going was the skinner box nature of it - that little adrenaline rush at finding new items and making meta-progress. I was starting to get a little bored of it after a few hours, but I pressed on in hopes that it would become more involved as I reached the endgame - nada. I beat the game feeling completely unsatisfied by anything I'd experienced.

But, for a few hours, it works well enough; and I suspect that this is a large part of the reason why it had glowing reviews but people have come down harder on it later. I've honestly found that almost none of my roguelike friends really found much enjoyment in it.

Honestly I think it's fine, being turned into a waifu is like the highest form of flattery in both Japan and Korea

Is a character like Noelle from Deltarune who was previously only a bit player and only became a fully-fledged character as of 2021 eligible, or does that fall short of qualifying for 'new'? dunno if this is something that's ever been adjudicated, sorry - I sort of lean towards the latter actually but I felt it's worth asking

Oh, I also think Darkest Dungeon is really good, it's a really tight and quite challenging rpg, extremely sweaty game, not for everyone

Baba Is You is a puzzle game masterpiece, can't recommend it enough

So is The Witness but it wasn't in the poll

Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds were mentioned in this topic and I must also boost them

I feel like these four games get recommended in some sort of tandem a lot but I do consider them to be four best games of the last 5 years, so.

I absolutely do not recommend Loop Hero. It was... not good.

wow, I can't believe a landlord would do something shady and illegal. it's truly unthinkable

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Went to the YT comment section

that was your first mistake

Damian Tenma

WKRP in Cincinnati's thanksgiving episode

why didn't you heat it up though

Nobody has the right to criticize you for being desperate after they ate your only food in the house

Change from Browns to Raiders

Level 6: New England -3.5

Bonus: 10

Los Angeles Chargers
Cleveland Browns
New England Patriots
Buffalo Bills
Arizona Cardinals
New York Jets
Dallas Cowboys
Philadelphia Eagles
Jacksonville Jaguars
Cincinnati Bengals
San Francisco 49ers
Los Angeles Rams
Baltimore Ravens
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Minnesota Vikings

It kinda makes sense that the DLC does well - all of those characters are really carefully crafted to be interesting and detailed and have cool mechanics

There's obviously recency bias - that sort of thing would happen here too I'm pretty sure, people like the new, fresh characters a lot. That's why I'm so surprised that GANONDORF of all people is sixth, he's as stale as they come!

how did ganondorf get 6th

I don't think Aria of Sorrow is objectively better at all, I like Circle of the Moon more just in general

Congratulations, 15-20 years later you still basically wound up with the same opinions everyone has about these games

G2-5's music

RPGlord95 posted...

As helpful as hey let's ignore the opposite side because they make me feel bad.

Oops, my finger slipped and hit the ignore button! I guess we're no longer on speaking terms, dang, how did that happen

New Pokemon Snap was unforgivably robbed considering some of the shit that did make this list

RPGlord95 posted...

Like most things on the internet this has devolved into

My side is right
No my side is right
Well your side is worse
No your side is worse

wow! you're very smart! good job!

2-1's intro

Hey by the way, if anyone is wondering why people might have been concerned whether or not b8 was a welcoming place for trans people, I would like to offer the fact that people even being willing to talk to Ulti instead of blocking him would be a big reason why, at least for me

I'd feel a lot more comfortable here if people just blacklisted bigots and I didn't even have to read people replying to transphobia etc

I'm okay with Phoenix not getting into Smash because Phoenix in MvC3 was already awesome enough and kinda sated my desire to see him in a fighting game. He's not even the biggest snub as far as Nintendo-affiliated games or franchises go, so it's fine.

oh good I see we've just devolved into completely dumbass politics with people I have on ignore

Gregory Edgeworth's voice clips

Anagram posted...

How good is Layton vs PW? Relative to the PW games.

As far as the AA series goes, it has one really excellent case and the rest is kinda meh. I overall like it more than AA4 and AAI1.

LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, I forgot to mention that aspect of Barnham's character. He's very adaptable and seeing him beat Phoenix at his own game for the first time was a "whoa" moment.

I like that they manage to do this too without making Barnham seem too smart or too capable - it does actually feel like he's learning how to be a better prosecutor over the relatively short course of his appearances in the game

MrGreenonion posted...

I remember leaving the board a number of years ago when I realized I was trans bc it didn't seem like the kind of place where that was gonna go well (this was just after the 2016/2017 era which was maybe the low point in B8 history), and now I come back and there's a whole community.

this is, of course, why there's such a 'sudden rise' of people identifying as trans in the last 5-10 years

I like Barnham a lot. He's a fun opponent - I like how he comes into it being shocked by Phoenix's use of things like logic and reason but actually shows development in learning how to play Phoenix's game over the course of the trial.

Even funnier is that there are no teams currently qualifying for the bonus as it is

lol the Bengals did end up blowing an OT lead to lose the game, but they never blew a 4th quarter lead

at least I passed level 5, I can't complain

MZero posted...

Bonus Question:
Choose a team to lose the game after being in the lead at some point in the fourth quarter

lmao the bengals currently have the lead in OT without the game being over but they never had a fourth quarter lead, RIP me

NeatoAnAccount posted...

I never realized what % of b8 was trans

none of us did either

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

It generally has been when I've seen it but I can easily accept there's people for who it isn't so alright

I might be ENTIRELY mistaken about this since it's not really my area of expertise, I just thought fae/faer pronouns were a separate matter, like most genderfae people would just use she/they

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Well, it is. It's not "literal fairy."

Genderfae is describing a specific nonbinary, specific genderfluid identity that does not include maleness. Which is different from "a woman" because sometimes a fae would not feel like a woman. And sometimes someone might feel this way but not want to use these pronouns anyways.

So this is another good reason to respect neopronouns in general because sometimes they are describing some real phenomenon but just about all the discussion is that it has a silly name.

I actually don't think fae/faer pronouns and genderfae are related, oddly enough, as my understanding goes

whatever it was that happened I missed by making use of the insta-ignore

masterplum posted...

I think what we are trying to avoid is a gluten free situation where people with celiac disease arent treated seriously because Karens are waltzing in claiming to be gluten free and demanding bread.

You dont want everyone to roll their eyes at trans people because of interactions that make people believe they are the equivalent to high schoolers going through a goth phase where they believe they are actually elvish.

What you aren't getting here is that the neopronoun users, in this analogy, also have celiac. They're just making their own gluten-free bread instead of buying store-bought.

Literally nobody in this topic up to this point is concerned that we'll be taken less seriously because someone wants to get creative with pronouns. It's just not happening! It's a false concern. It doesn't even matter if it's a childish high school phase. Maybe it is. That's part of the fabric of the wider trans and nonbinary community, not a outside threat to it. People are allowed to have "phases," it's a healthy part of growing up and self-discovery (including throughout adulthood), and if it turns out to have not been a phase, then I'll have been right to have supported them from the start.

Either way, they are part of the community, not an outside threat to it. I'll keep hammering this point all day long until it gets through.

StealThisSheen posted...

It'd be different if trans people were expressing concerns

One word of caution here; quite a few of them do. I don't think they're correct either, but what's key is the understanding that the trans community doesn't just not have a problem with neopronouns, but neopronouns are themselves part of the trans community and most standard-pronoun-using trans people are just fine with them - or at the very least, there are multiple examples of standard-pronoun-using trans people being fine with them here. (That's not a response to you directly but just a word of concern about this line in general - exclusionary trans people exist and while they occupy a different perspective in the argument I do not believe they are any more entitled to exclusionary policy)

StealThisSheen posted...

Also, that scientology example's not a good example.

It's like the whale thing. What you're doing is, as a shark, trying to tell whales why they're hurting the cause for dolphins, when dolphins themselves are going "uh dude we're cool."

I should actually have extended my metaphor because in actuality the dolphins are actually just other whales in this scenario, but I guess they're both cetaceans so it still kinda works, whatever

oh no, the topic got hot and now it's tracking bugs into the house

I always have it saved just in case