Posts by Jetsetlemming

Quote from blackdog

12 hours ago, blackdog said: I don't think of those themes much, I mean there oppressive corp or government is a staple of the sci-fi genre. Also I think a game like Deus Ex should allow you to choose your own path, be a fascist if you feel like oppressing the pueblo

Examples brought up before are real history, stuff that most don't even know. Because my Italian heritage I have been dreaming of making a game set in the 70s, one of the darkest periods. There's so much espionage and detective that you could source from. As well stuff like JFK assassination. But it's difficult, even to get to publish these games… remember of that Iraqi war game that was pulled (by T2 I think?), Falluja?

Yeah, GENERIC oppression. But so many people today think of "oppression" as something that happens to other people, mostly in the past. Games tend to take that point of view even more so, because the people that can afford to work in video games is inherently a tiny part of the population, and the best people in the general field frequently tend to leave it. What set Deus Ex and Red Faction apart is that they both deliberately tried to make you connect the events of the game to your own life by talking about real issues. At the end of the first level of DX the "terrorist leader" literally starts talking to you about tax rates and how corporations don't pay anything anymore compared to average Joes! For most games, talking about real issues doesn't go much farther than "Nazis are bad" most of the time.

Quote from blackdog

7 hours ago, blackdog said: Yeah, I think we should have more historical and informative pieces of story in games. Not all games, but some could do. Guess the big problem is presenting events in a way that doesn't force an opinion to players.

I saw this video the other day:

And it reminded me of how political (and radically political!) the original Deus Ex was. Too bad they ruined that in every sequel by making you an agent of authority, with the bad guys portrayed as corrupting the otherwise good system. In Deus Ex, the bad guys are just part of the already garbage system, and while you start as a UNATCO agent, you go rogue when you learn about what's going on. That's what good cyberpunk is about, not just crime stories with computers in them, or existential pondering about putting computers in your body! The augmentations are an RPG system and part of the initial plot setup with the Grey Death, but not THE plot of the game!

Thinking about this, it also reminded me of Red Faction 1 and Red Faction: Guerrilla. Both have a pretty traditional story of joining a ragtag group of rebels fighting against oppression, a story that's a dime a dozen in video games because of Star Wars. However, in these games the oppressive institution is a private corporation, abusing its workers to maximize profits, away from public oversight. The rebels you're a member of are pretty explicitly collectivist (I mean, it's right there in the name "red faction"). Like with Deus Ex, sequels tried to fuck it up (why can't you let good games be good, industry!?), but I'm glad we got RF:G, at least, which got back to the proper revolutionary marxist feel of the first game. Eidos Montreal could learn a thing or two from RF:G.

Quote from Alf-Life

On 9/14/2016 at 3:53 AM, Alf-Life said: I'm glad not every game is as bonkers as his, but I'm so glad Kojima exists, and so glad he says he wants to continue in the AAA space. The story was a bit half-baked but I loved the world and especially the gameplay in MGSV. I loved the Death Stranding teaser so much and I can't wait yearssssssss to play this next thing!

Same, actually most of all FOR the story elements. What other game developer, regardless of country of origin, covers topics like the poisoning of the Navajo lands (which to this day still hasn't been cleaned up btw) or South African Apartheid?

Quote from AlexM

On 9/13/2016 at 3:19 PM, AlexM said: Sooooo.... Is overwatch ever getting a map editor?

It's a new engine they made just for Overwatch, apparently, so I doubt this would be coming any time soon, unfortunately.

Quote from DrywallDreams

On 9/12/2016 at 8:43 PM, DrywallDreams said: There is no exploitable problem, though. The issue with hitboxes/hitcapsules in the current live version of the game is that player's angles don't update properly when a player is stationary, there isn't any bug with crouching.

I meant the movement stuff referred to before. IIRC, those "spin" hacks are based on exploiting it by making the player essentially impossible to hit.

Really, the proper solution is to kill the exploitable problem in the first place. I don't have the kind of hitbox issues in any other game I play. I dunno if Source 2 fixes them by using more reliable bounding boxes or something, but I hope so. Some of the historical stuff Valve's still invested in is good, like BSP, but some areas other companies have made a lot of legit progress in, like online systems.

Achievement Unlocked: Pissed off the Klan

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/txMDRio.jpg]

Quote from PaulH

10 hours ago, PaulH said: I can't comment on specifics but I can say that as gamers ourselves we saw the issues throughout (narrative and otherwise), raised them many times and were unable to gain any traction on course correcting them. Just one part of this project being so difficult.

I'm glad you're enjoying the level design though, it's the one thing the reviews agreed on that was actually pretty decent, which was kind of bittersweet for me and the other designers

The only complaint I have so far with the level design is that all the sections of the city so far look/feel like North Philly, except the intro/tutorial area (which the map places to the north) looking like West Philly. That's a really common type of thing to come up for basically everything set anywhere, though, and if I wasn't a Philly native there's no way I'd notice it. And hey, Center City appears to be there, in the right space and all, in the skyboxes!

Played it a bunch last night. The plot, both overall and particular beats, is awful. The writer seemed to think "If I use jingoistic shit from America but slapdash it and try to move past it quickly it'll be okay" and that actually makes it way, way worse. Also, the silent protagonist makes a ton of these early scenes super awkward, sometimes hilariously so (like the "beam the guard in the head with a cellphone" moment), sometimes infuriatingly so; why are the supposed good guys kicking me and stomping on my face and about to torture me, until some random dudes walk in the room and make everything fine? Is the game protagonist character actually supposed to be mute? Why am I a specific named guy if I don't talk or interact with the plot at all? Really annoying, to the point where it makes other niggling things lots of fiction gets wrong (you can't just knock somebody out, especially via BOOT TO THE FACE, and have them be fine after a brief transition nap) a lot more apparent, because there's no good will in the audience to flow us over those points.

Finally, though once all that very bad first impression shit was out of the way and I was actually in the game, it was super fun and enjoyable! I really like how the vast majority of buildings are open, it doesn't feel like any of these are just decorated boxes to fill up space like in many games in urban environments. It was fun to run around, explore, and fight guys, as I tried real hard to ignore all the racism and ridiculous shit NPCs were saying. I'd bet (hope?) so far that this stuff is leading up to a twist of some sort, like a Korean traitor/sympathizer helping you, or the worst of the rebel guys turning out to be plants/traitors/whatever themselves and become enemies, but so far it's basically the worst I've ever seen in a modern game. A quest giver character literally sent me a message saying "remember, they don't think or feel like us", for fuck's sake. The game basically was lucky it had other issues taking up space in the press when it came out, because this shit could permanently sink a company if it was the focused on heavily.

But yeah, the play itself is fun, especially the level design and weapon systems. I like them a lot. Lolled hard at the very obvious Wendy's in the second area, too.

I've almost reached 2700, but then had three bad games full of assholes yelling at each other in a row and dropped back down to the low 2500s.

Had a fun game with a team we kept calling "the new three tank meta": Reinhardt, D.Va, Zarya, Reaper, Zenyatta, Ana. We had enough dps to make up for only having one "official" dps hero, and the three tanks kept us supports alive and kicking ass in the midst of them. We rolled Point A on Numbani in <30 seconds with that comp at the start of the round, before the enemy team knew what hit them, lol. I was somewhat worried long range would be an issue, but Reinhardt's shield plus a good Ana actually kept us just fine.

Quote from grapen

6 hours ago, grapen said: They really amped up the reward requirements. GM required for 3k points? Like holy shit, I was expecting 3k entry at diamond. Still think they could do something more interesting than golden guns honestly, like player icons or something that's account specific.

Yeah, weirdly enough player icons are absolutely the category of unlock I like the most. Being able to get a cool Hero specific unlock with a golden gun would make that a lot more interesting to pursue for me.

Quote from Taylor

6 hours ago, Taylor said: Ranked is back... With no word on fixing healers being discriminated against or enemy rage quitters denying your rank up. Can't wait to get incredibly salty.

There was a long thread on the forums with the lead taking feedback. Despite tons of people saying "Just make rank changes universal among a team, you can't measure every individual contribution fairly" they're sticking with an individual system, but they said it's balanced to be more fair to dedicated healers somehow, vaguely. Apparently accuracy is a tracked statistic for ranking, which is so dumb and backwards in a game with infinite ammo.

Had a game just now where about a dozen people were in chat talking about how they spawned without weapons. I could use the medic's rifle, but no other equipment on any class. We instead had a nice chat about war history until the Ottoman Empire won (ahistorically). The XP screen said nobody did anything and that I was at level 0. It also didn't want to let me quit playing, had to force it. lol

Quote from Tisky

11 hours ago, Tisky said: New skins and emotes this Patch. Bye bye credits

Junkrat's "Lounge" emote is so good, I want to see if I can find places in the game to hide using it, for ambushes

Quote from r1ar

9 hours ago, r1ar said: [Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/HNfYrDk.gif]

I like how the soldier kept pointing at the tank.

"Hey guys, a tank!"

...

"Hey guys, tank's sideways now!"

Rush mode sucks so bad right now. Nothing but tanks and snipers. No point playing any other class, because you'll get killed before you can do anything.

Also the "skip revive" feature just needs to be fucking cut, immediately. Everyone's just holding space and I'm injecting unresponsive corpses.

Quote from dux

3 minutes ago, dux said: http://imgur.com/gallery/R2vQi

lmao all the comments angry at the gifs as if they're serious attacks on the game

FINALLY got to play it (thank u for capitulating to terrists Pampers).

The game actually runs way nicer than I was expecting. At 1080, all graphics settings on low, it runs at 45-60 FPS on my i7 + gtx 550 system. Nice! It played kinda alright, I guess. Definitely need to get used to it, and also unlock shit, and also figure out the unlock system. So many things are locked behind "Three bar icon: 1" and there's no explanation of what that means. I guess it's a level requirement but I have no idea how much I need to do to get to one "three bars" icon. I'm currently at level 6, w/ one bar. Got vastly more war bonds than I can actually spend because so much is locked.

Tanks fuck up everybody if the tank driver knows what they're doing and isn't constantly adjusting position and throwing off gunner aim. The antitank grenades should maaybe come with more than 1 per person. I actually managed to disable an armored car with the "K Bullets" of the scout class, which felt awesome for three seconds until the driver got out and killed me, lol.

Only got to be in a plane once in four matches, and it was over very quickly. The view bounced around way too much to track things with the gun as the pilot tried to fly around crazily to avoid getting shot. Put 200 rounds into the sand, maybe 1 into another plane, and then we died. I wish it would auto-level to try to make the gunner view less puke inducing.

The revive indications for living medics is way too tiny and almost impossible to see. I barely found anyone to revive, as everyone quickly was taught to give up on trying to get revived and just mashed space bar, in a big ole negative feedback loop that made me give up on playing medic.

I know it's a desert and all, but dis bloom is ridic. Actually hurt my eyes in a couple instances, including some unpredictable moments when in a vehicle and the world suddenly lit up like an asteroid was hitting, taking ~20 seconds to fade back into visibility.

Quote from Pampers

2 hours ago, Pampers said: we're being DDOSed

give in to their terroristic demands already, I wanna play a videogame

Still can't connect to the EA servers ingame. Starting to get annoyed by the "Hey, you enjoyed the beta right? Buy the full game now!" pop up when I quit the demo after giving up on trying to connect. I hope the game sucks so I'm not missing out on anything.

Tried to play, but the game just keeps giving me a "failed to connect to EA servers" message. lol, gg

e: EA's support site it tells me to visit gives me a 503 service unavailable error, lol. I'm guessing something's gone terribly wrong on their end.