Posts by Sentura

There's certainly no accounting for taste, but what strikes me from that review are arguments like these:

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Quote The thing about Demon's Souls[/i] that's so great is that it's hard, but it's hard without resorting to lame, half-hearted gimmicks. The difficulty mostly comes from learning how to finesse your way through the combat. If you can get good at the combat, then you're not likely to have much trouble getting through the game, with the exception of the odd environmental hazard here and there, and a few enemy types. The game is very rarely cheap. If anything, the game has a much greater propensity for letting you lame your way around its challenges than the other way around.

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Quote Having your game be hard is a difficult trick to pull off because most generally, people only react well to fair challenges, not cheap garbage, and the open world is one of many ways that Dark Souls[/i] is cheap garbage, as opposed to being genuinely difficult.

Generally the cheapness, "trolls" or what have you I would consider to be bad design. It's not enough to be aware of your surroundings, some things you will not be able to get around unless you've played the game through once. For instance the dragon that spews fire on the bridge in the undead burg. Maybe it's just me but I fail to see how that's anything but a gimmick. I wouldn't exactly call it approachable either, but maybe that's just me.

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Quote It only serves to artificially pad out the length of the game by making you backtrack all the way back to Firelink from the first bell tower, and then back to Firelink again from the second bell tower. Now think about that for a minute. How much backtracking is there between Quelaag and Firelink? Is that a fun round trip to make the first time? The answers to those questions are 'way the fuck more than there should be' and 'absolutely not.'

Although I didn't make it far enough to talk about this, it certainly seems to be valid point as well. I certainly wouldn't want to have spent 8+ hours of getting to the first bell just so I could "have fun" going all the way back. It speaks to the grind aspect of the game I mentioned earlier as well, but I guess world of warcraft could never have taken off if people didn't thoroughly enjoy grinding.

Speaking of the combat: It may be predictable on a larger scale as you would assume from a system that only allows 4-6 different inputs, but that isn't the problem with combat. The problem is the physics based animations and button inputs are temperamental and that animations in general feel sluggish. I get that the developers wanted me not to trust the game. I'm on board with that. Even with some of the trolls I would be ok since death doesn't really matter that much. What I'm not on board with however is that they apparently wanted me to not trust my controller either. Again, it just feels like a lazy excuse to create bad design in lieu of having real difficulty.

Quote from tomm

5 hours ago, tomm said: How is there little feedback when moving or attacking? each weapon type has different animations, you can actually feel the weight of a giant sword the way you swing at enemies.

I never tried a giant sword, but the one handed swords alone already felt like you were swinging a giant sword. Or maybe closer to a giant unweighted brick. Animations are winding up with a ridiculous slow speed, which made me second guess myself whether I did an attack sometimes, and even the lightest attack is unrealistically heavy. Sometimes (most of the time really) I wouldn't get a kick when inputting the exact motion for one. That's not good feedback. Compared to Street Fighter, a game that seeks to achieve some of the same elements in its combat, it falls so much shorter.

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Quote And wearing heavy armor without enough endurance makes you slow and fat roll.I'm gonna assume you haven't killed capra demon yet. Which also means you're in the beginning of the game and have seen very little of it. Yes it does get better later imo.

Maybe it does, but I'm not going through 8 hours of boredom just to have a few hours of fun.

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Quote The messaging system and blood stains are there to show you there are other people suffering as much as you, so you won't get discouraged. And for occasional help or trolling. It's a big part of the game.

Cool interpretation, but still doesn't make it more than a band aid over broken design.

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Quote The game wants you to explore the world, it won't throw anything into your face other than enemies and environmental hazards.

If you cared to read the link I posted, it actually rebuts this argument beautifully (among many others): https://www.destructoid.com/blogs/stubblem…y--240010.phtml

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Quote It's why it's called prepare to die. Some people enjoy it, others don't.

I guess I'm one of those people, because dark souls for me is one of the greatest games I've played in recent years. There's zero hand holding and I wish more games incorporated similar multiplayer mechanics(single player - but not quite).

Zero hand holding doesn't mean it has be bad design, which is the case in Dark Souls. I would still refer to the article I posted because it does well in explaining how its predecessor actually seemed to have better design incorporated while sticking to the exact same concept.

Also, this article really nails my issues with the game in even greater detail (I haven't played Demon'ssssssssssouls): https://www.destructoid.com/blogs/stubblem…y--240010.phtml

Had some spare time, decided to try out Dark Souls for real. For all the praise I've heard over the years for this, I expected so much more from this game... maybe wrongly so. It's not even that it's unintuitive or the bullshit about "lol it's supposed to be hard." It's just bad design everywhere. The combat system has to be one of the worst I've ever tried. There is so little feedback during movement and attacking. Sometimes you can arbitrarily change direction during an attack or while using an item while other times you can't. It also seems like most moves are driven by physical animation but then some moves aren't physics based. Sometimes it even seemed using the kick input was temperamental, only kicking when at the perfect angle from an enemy. Where is the consistency or reliability in this? Or maybe more importantly, what's so fun about this?

I don't even feel the game is particularly punishing since death doesn't really matter. It just becomes a grind instead to farm enemies in order to level up. The normal enemies are either too easy or too annoying to deal with, which when combined with the inconsistent combat system made me want to avoid normal combat altogether. The bosses I experienced weren't challenging and became more a question of where to roll in order to kill them off - but then I didn't really venture deeper into the game. Does it get better? Maybe. Is it worth 8+ hours before it "gets good"? Nah.

The game's comment system feels like trying to band aid over bad design decisions. Most comments are helpful, but most of them are helpful in regards to not getting "trolled" by the game in the first place. For instance the boss battle on the bridge where you have archers hitting you in the back. You can immediately go kill off the archers technically, but the ladder is completely hidden from view when you enter the level. You don't know they are even there before you start getting hit by them while fighting the boss, unless someone has been nice enough to put down a comment about it. That's just lazy. The only redeeming quality would be the grand intricacy of the level design, with its interesting moments of connectivity between areas, even if it does feel like a remnant from the PS2 era.

I feel the game would have been so much better if it was just a series of boss fights instead of trying to make it an RPG, or hack and slash or whatever this type of game is. You could have had 3 stats instead of 15 and it would still have played the same. Or maybe even removed the stats, the items, the combat system altogether, have the bosses paraded in front of the player in a sort of castle gallery and just renamed it Shadow of the Colossus 2.

gameplay looks super dope. The character feels very uncanny valley though

Quote from (HP)

On 8/24/2016 at 11:45 PM, (HP) said: Yeah... Let's spend 5 years polishing a game to perfection and then overpower the player with crazy bonuses right off the bat.

The modern immersive sim in a nutshell... =(

Quote from 3Dnj

On 8/7/2016 at 11:16 AM, 3Dnj said: 10th day of gastroenteritis.. I'm soooo tired (I look like a junnkie), sooo bored and sooo skinny now (loss of 1/10 of my weight). This was the worst week of my life

And it's still not finished.

Sucks dude, I had this after I got my gallbladder removed

Quote from (HP)

On 7/25/2016 at 11:38 PM, (HP) said: I watched the pilot yesterday, I have more questions than answers at this point, i guess it makes the title justice? lol

Yeah I think this is one of the biggest problems (mild spoiler),

Spoiler [...]That the series never really goes on to explain why or how these things happen in any way. I kind of have a theory that the whole season is like allegory for cancer/coma and death, but that may just be me.

Because of this I also felt like rewatching the X files, and I feel in many ways that Stranger Things pales in comparison to it, while attempting to cash in on similar concepts. Still, if anything, X files season 1 was also one of the weakest of the bunch, so if they move forward well from this, I think it's going to be really awesome.

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Went through the whole thing, it's decent. It doesn't have any of the cringe pitfalls many series who attempt this genre have and it has a satisfying end. I felt it would be better if they had a monster of the week thing going for them, but maybe we get to see that per season. All in all a positive thing.

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Also watched this entire thing. It's one season and ends on a cliffhanger, but goddamn it's one of the best TV series I have ever seen. People face real consequences, they die and in general the plot just makes a lot of sense. I definitely recommend watching even though it got cancelled after the first season.

I read about the attack in the news, it's really sad that it happened. I would say more, but out of respect for the victim's families I won't. I hope everyone on here is OK.

Generally hasn't Turtle Rock been hit or miss? CS: Condition Zero wasn't good either, until Raven Software came along with the Deleted Scenes (which were awesome). Left 4 Dead was decent and fun to play with friends together at school/work, but it's not something I would come back to play by myself, let alone online.

If Evolve is just one player being the tank from L4D all the time while the rest are survivors I could see it being stale.

Quote from 3Dnj

2 hours ago, 3Dnj said: I heard a lot of people complaigning about being raped in comp but playing alone as a pickup.

C'mon, get some friends, nerds

I had this same problem in dota, but the truth is it gets really boring really fast with friends. It's too much comfort zone. Anyway I don't play Overwatch so I don't know if it translates to here, but I could imagine there being the same problem.

I don't really play that many games anymore, but I used to go back to these (and probably will again):

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I was being facetious. I don't condone war or violence, obviously.

It's interesting as a hypothetical though, because it would reshape the politics and political rhetoric of today. I wonder if there is any other such way to make that happen?

one could hope the remain and leave sides will go into a civil war that will discourage all the fucking nationalist plebs for voting the way they do. It would be a win for everyone.

Quote from Buddy

1 hour ago, Buddy said: I could care less about Football but i want Iceland to win the whole tournament, just to see those overrated, overpaid and over celebrated faces crying in despair.

Poland tho???

I think you're right in thinking that many games have this kind of approach, but that doesn't mean it is a good approach. Popular opinion should not dictate whether something is inherently good or bad, as I'm sure you would agree. More so when you consider that there are still many open questions/problems that still haven't been solved in game design and the games industry as a whole.

I'd wager the reason these kinds of approaches are still used is because novelty matters more to people who play games than game depth does, and given that most players may only play the first 20 minutes to 1 hour of your game, you can use these gimmicks to your advantage as a wow factor early in the game, at the cost of making them less useful later on, when you will (hopefully) have engrossed players into the story and world so much that they don't notice or care.

And of course there is always going to be an "arsenal" of abilities at the player's disposal, but in my experience what makes an ability system great is that each ability should not overlap with other abilities in their use, and that they should not break the game by conventional use. I have the following arguments for this:

The argument for the former is that players will always use the path of least resistance, so if an ability is complex to use (in terms of setup time, timing, placement etc.), but has the same effect as an ability that is simple to use, then players will favor the simpler ability more. That makes the other ability gimmicky at best, and redundant at worst. The player should not use an ability once and then forget about it because the game emphasizes too many new abilities or just does not provide enough situations where setting up an ability is "worth it" for the player.

The argument for the latter is that abilities can allow you to break the game experience by either overpowering the player to the point where the challenges in the game become trivial, or by allowing players to avoid gameplay challenges altogether. In these situations, it's very easy to break flow/immersion and therefore make the player's experience worse while at the same time forcing players to use these abilities to progress the game following their "playstyle."

I think you're also right that in many ways it's not my type of game. I like the core loop experience of these types, but it feels like they are adding too much clutter/gimmicks/Michael Bay obscuring the core of what could otherwise be a great game. Maybe it's because it's 2016 and people think the genre should evolve in terms of the tools at a player's disposal. I personally think that games should evolve the gameplay challenges first before evolving the tools.

I think this video explains these kinds of issues much better than I can, so feel free to watch (Thief series are by no means perfect games, but they do have some very, very good design):

Ah cmon man, you're making me look bad for giving valid feedback

Quote from Greg D

5 hours ago, Greg D'Alessandro said: Anyone know?

Also, why should you not use Unity for level design?

I don't really want to get into detail here with stuff other than in the talk, so let's put it like this: Unity is barebones. Everything you want to do extra, you have to do yourself. You have to learn javascript or c# in order to script properly, and you have to develop your own tools for it if you want to automate parts of your workflow. Level design has to happen either by purchasing plugins or by using 3rd party applications such as max or maya; which, like learning a programming language, will take some time getting used to. For someone who is just starting out doing level design, dealing with pipelines and incomplete workflows, and mastering two separate disciplines at once is not something you want to do.

Focus on engines where you can put ideas into gameplay spaces the fastest. UE4 is a good choice, the BSP tool is amazing for quick blockouts. You can also work with Source; which will provide you with more game ready content, but will give you less creative freedom in terms of what kind of game you want to make. Stop caring what people think about BSP or Max or Maya or whatever, just start making something. Talk is cheap, and if you choose to not use a tool because others say its bad, you're doing yourself a huge disservice in not finding out yourself why it is bad (or good, for that matter). Focus on getting shit done, not beating around the bush with discussions. I'd rather see a screenshot of a work in progress than these kinds of questions that in the end will do nothing to help you at your current level of experience.

If you're stuck with what to do, just start by putting down boxes and see if you can get something playable out of it, regardless of what it is.

don't use unity for level design