Posts by Taylor

Boo, I was hoping Doom would return as an arcadey monster blaster.

The characters convey what they want to say but not with any real... character. Although, I think the main problem with the dialogue is it's much longer than it needs to be and I found myself doing the normal gamer thing where I scan for key words before it closes.

The actual gameplay stuff is much nicer than what I played before! Anna, or however you spell it, moves a lot nicer now. The combat could be a bit better but I'm a combat snob and it certainly works.

Gratz man, it's such a nice place to work.

I have nothing against a penalty for swapping in new skills, I was even happy with the penalty when it took 30 seconds! My problem is, unless I’m gravely mistaken, the previous two-second process of swapping around existing abilities has turned into this:

Unless I'm completely missing something. I tried right clicking slots (the old method), dragging stuff, all combinations of mouse clicks, all menu options, etc.

The only supposedly positive change with this overhaul is prescribed skill slots, which you admit to turning off immediately! My post praised Diablo 3’s skill system for stepping away from the cookie cutter build promoting system of Diablo 2, my problem is it's now attempting to hide this for no good reason.

Runestones were completely changed this patch.

I logged onto the beta again today and a lot has changed. As I’ve said in a few other responses I’m largely okay with removing attribute allocation and permanent skills. I see them as traps for newbies that promote cookie-cutter builds over experimentation. But man, this new new skill system is proper Fisher-Price.

By default you can’t even pick what skills you want in each slot; the game has an ideal control layout and puts constraints on what abilities can go where. This massive clunky system only seems to exist to undermine character customisation in the name of “accessibility.” You can turn this off in options (“elective mode” – you will want to do this) but that won't stop its other characteristic of locking out abilities 15 seconds after they’re assigned (to stop hot-swapping). So, for example, if you want to swap two abilities around on your hot-bar it will take you 30 seconds, and then you’ll have to wait another 15 to use the last skill you assigned. This lock happens in town, too.

They’ve also added in Runestones now but you can’t experiment with them in beta because they’re all no-brainer upgrades. The other big change this patch are new item affixes based around status effects, so the chance of getting a useable item has dropped again.

I hope there’s a stealth section.

But will the gameplay be as flat as Uncharted?

I actually started playing Final Fantasy 5 again via SNES emulator. It’s not my favourite of the series but it’s certainly better than most of the modern ones and it’s such a fantastic contrast to the abysmal FFXIII.

Dungeons are dungeons and not straight paths monsters on them. It is fundamentally linear but there are plenty of optional tasks and areas within each bubble of content. The job system is still my favourite RPG system and lends itself to a lot of customisation; it is not overcomplicated presentation making learning skills in a predetermined sequence look like choice.

You hardly have to be a tactical mastermind to beat the battles but because of the job system you never really feel like you’re just going through the same motions. Whereas in FF12 the battles were automatic and in FF13 the battles were automatic but you had to keep pressing the play button. Shocking.

I also got Soul Calibur 5. It’s a lot of fun when you’re playing against friends and the occasional Ranked opponent who is playing properly but it’s a mashers dream. They’ve added in supers now that all seem to be +0, which basically means if you’re not blocking when the flash happens you’re getting hit by it.

However, as with most 3D fighters, the controls are bad. You have a lot of moves but only 3 attack buttons (plus guard) so you end up with different moves on 5, 4, 1, 2, 3, 6 and 8 for every button, double directions, holding directions, double direction and hold, all double buttons (but A+K), holding buttons, pressing buttons then immediately pressing another, pressing one or two buttons then immediately pressing three, releasing buttons after charge, varies contexts (dashing, stepping, rising, backwards, etc.), stances, arbitrary fireball motions, and all variations in-between. And half the moves that hit you in the shins have to be blocked standing for no apparent reason so you need to learn everyone’s data. They’ll even give two characters the same move with different blocks.

Anyway, I don’t dislike the game as I said and I’ve stopped playing UMvC3 ever since I got it. Which is lucky because this rant would be about 10 times longer if I was playing that instead.

Well, for crowd funding to work you need to be between being quite famous and not having enough money. For Tim Schafer this is a good fit, but I think even people in the IGF circlejerk would have trouble pulling this off.

I think an adventure game would be a good fit. Psychonauts and Brutal Legend had an amazing concept, fantastic characters and good humour, etc. but the game part needed more attention.

So yeah, this has been live for a while now. The old statistics were great because they were useful for all classes, and thus most equipment could be useful for all classes too. This meant sometimes you would see people running around in weird gear (e.g. Witch Doctors with two-handed hammers) but you were getting a lot of little upgrades.

But the old system had a scaling problem – you would finish the beta content at around 25dps, but after a bit of maximising with magic items you could break 150dps quite easily. This wasn’t a twink in second-hand equipment or someone who has ran a hundred boss runs; it’s just experimentation with the blacksmith. This seems to create a dilemma for balancing content because you either assume natural progression and anyone who plays with crafting destroys it, or you create a difficulty spike and force unlucky people to grind.

The new system solves this problem by heavily reducing the likelihood that you will find an item that’s actually worth equipping. You need to maximise a certain primary statistic, they’ve lowered magic item drop rates, and they’ve removed double affix Magic items (from beta). So rather than going “yay, upgrade” a few times per dungeon you end up just salvaging everything and then rolling ten copies of an item at the blacksmith hoping for your primary. :neutral:

Also, the obligatory Rage mechanic on the melee classes has starvation problems in my experience. Basically as party damage goes up the amount of hits a Monk is going to get off before monsters die becomes fewer, which means less Spirit and less special abilities. This is not helped by them having to spend a flat amount of Spirit each fight just to reach monsters before they are killed by arrows, lasers and miniature galaxies.

If everything is dying so fast you can’t use a varied amount of Spirit Spenders then you’re probably in no danger, but you end up just focusing on being self-efficient with Dashing Strikes. This is nowhere near as fun as it is when you’re splashing around in Spirit. I can see Crippling Wave -> Rising Tide and Dashing Strike -> Quicksilver being staple in the future.

Not really, though. No matter how you spin it, Blizzard and Valve did not take Everquest and Quake 2 and just dress them up differently. Pedantically distilling everything down to its base components doesn't really mean anything. Creators being inspired by existing products and making better versions of them is good, and historically is how gaming has progressed forwards. Making a duplicate of an existing product doesn’t take us anywhere.

Quote from Thrik

Yeah, see this is what I mean. There're plenty of ways you can lay out a bingo game and obviously bingo itself is as old a creation as it gets, but Zynga is just so brazen and shameless about it. It's like when a kid traces a drawing rather than doing it properly. Disgusting IMO.

I'm sure we remember this from a while ago. Emphasis mine:

Quote

In light of Zynga's phenomenal rise, one former senior employee recalls arriving at the company eager to discover what new business practices were driving its success in a market where other popular Web 2.0 ventures struggled to make money. What was Zynga's secret? Not long after starting work, he got an answer. It came directly from Zynga founder and CEO Mark Pincus at a meeting. And it wasn't what he expected."I don't fucking want innovation," the ex-employee recalls Pincus saying. "You're not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers."

The former employee, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about his experience at Zynga, said this wasn't just bluster. Indeed, interviews conducted by SF Weekly with several former Zynga workers indicate that the practice of stealing other companies' game ideas — and then using Zynga's market clout to crowd out the games' originators — was business as usual.

America bends over for the media companies and we bend over for America.

So how are Atari getting away with firing lawyers at everything that represents their classic games? I'm certain if someone cloned an original Zynga game (if such a thing can exist) it would be shut down immediately. There would just be so much money and arseholes in suits flying around that something would have to happen.

The guy is right when he says being able to copy other mechanics is part of the progress of gaming, but copying something exactly is not part of that advancement. Everybody just cloning each other is a creative cul de sac. Also I think his closing statement, and thus the articles conclusion, is entirely wrong:

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To make money with, for example, “yet another farm game,” it needs to be a better farm game, not just a clone.

No, you just need to be seen by more people. The entire threat of sticking your neck out on the iOS or Flash platforms is your game can be stolen, put through a robotic cloning process and marketed by a gigantic corporation before it goes anywhere. I think this is a threat to innovation and not an incentive.

Anyway, I don't think Nimblebit considered for a second to pursue legal action against Zynga. Nor could they afford it even if they wanted to. I would've said the image they released only had two purposes:

[*][*:3meu4syw]Call Zygna out as lazy and uncreative.
[*:3meu4syw]Advertise Tiny Tower.[/list]And they’ve been mostly successful. Except for a few people who think all games with the same noun in their name must play the same.

Quote from Serenius

http://imgur.com/ajaYt

Luckily common sense reigns in the comment thread.

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments ... ust_zynga/

(Also the guy who made that image says he hasn't played Tiny Tower or researched it past looking at screenshots)

Saying Dream Heights is to Tiny Tower what Tiny Tower is to Sim Tower is completely incorrect.

There's a big difference between being inspired and copying someone elses game in your own handwriting.

Quote from e-freak

wait, wasn't nimblebit zaphod's studio?

Yup

Quote from Ginger Lord

I've not played the game, but they both look like Sim Tower clones so to me its a bit of a pot/kettle issue.

Nah, Tiny Tower doesn't play much like Sim Tower. And Zynga are being as po-faced as usual about the rip.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

Just noticed something watching the trailer again: They show four playable characters. Leon, Chris, and then two new guys I didn't recognize (merc with Ashley from RE4, military guy that was just a dude who knows), though I wouldn't be surprised if they were previous side characters, like Steve from Code Veronica or Carlos from RE3 or something. That number immediately makes me think "L4D mode"

Well, Operation Racoon City is already this:

Heh. It's been action orientated since RE4 on the PS2, though.

The zombies are more like mind-controlled guys than anything else, which is why they give them weapons and stuff. The cover section in RE5 wasn't too bad, and to be fair the moment the player takes cover he gets his brain eaten.

Quote from Mazy

RE4 is one of my favorite games of all time, but after RE5 I kinda feel that I've had enough, probably shouldn't have replayed RE4 like 6 times :GOh well, will probably still end up playing this

Aye. Resident Evil 5 was a good game but everything it did was already done better in RE4 (except co-op, obviously). This looks like it has the action of RE4 with the atmosphere of RE2 - that's a good combo.

I know we are all supposed to mourn the loss of tank controls and armour keys, and comment on how stupid Wesker is now, but RE4 was a landmark game. They certainly handled the transition better than Silent Hill, which is currently so schizophrenic it could probably be a lead protagonist.