Games Discussion Thread

Re: Games Discussion Thread

Re: Games Discussion Thread

Yoshiiki said:

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Ubisoft is giving Assassin's Creed 3 for free on Uplay.
Personally not a fan of the series, but maybe someone will save a buck :]

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Wish I knew about this in the past before I bought it four years ago... :T

Re: Games Discussion Thread

B00marrows said:

Its yet another step down into the "modern bathesda". Neither fallout 4 or skyrim pleased me on a RPG point. They are both dull and shallow games.
Infact i think of them both as FPS games with a bathesda paintjob.

check this out:

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Cure for being disappointed by over-hyped games: Stop watching hype videos.

Seriously, don't listen to anyone talking about a game that has yet to be released. You can watch gameplay footage, but make sure that no-one's speaking or the volume has been muted.


About the only complaints from people that I don't see as being "waaaaaaah, I'm such a gullible dumbass I actually believed your game would make me cum buckets even from just the install process!!!" are the rpg combat elements being dumbed down (Over the years I've come to hate tactical RPGs so the further removed from that games become the happier I am, but alot of people do like them and would rather those core elements stay in the game. And fuck 'builds' I'm the hero, I get to be as overpowered as I want to be as long as I'm willing to put in the time to get that way), the absurd strain that very empty worlds put on your computer and the fact that 90% of the missions are RNG 'go here find this/kill this and come back' deals instead of engaging storylines. If anyone's bitching about physics glitches... well fuck 'em, I've never laughed harder than the first time a deathclaw launched off into the atmosphere only to land behind me 10 minutes later and slaughter my ass.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

Cure for being disappointed by over-hyped games: Stop watching hype videos.

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Ohhh nonononono you got me ALL wrong.

I have played bathesda games for a long time now and i have watched them get worse and worse. When i play a game i expect a sequal to better the systems in the current game NOT completely dull them down to literally NOTHING in an attempt to simplify it for the casual crowd.

Im on the same boat as you on the notion of hype and how its effect is ruining everything, tho. Shit i havent purchased a AAA game on release in over 10 years now...

Re: Games Discussion Thread

See my first beth game was Oblivion, which became my favorite game at the time (knocking Deus Ex off it's throne). I tried morrowind some years later and was quite... disappointed. Finding it very slow, counter-intuitive, and just not fun.

I managed to get to the first town (I believe this was the game that lacked quest markers, or a world map... w/e, I wasn't even sure I was in the right spot), grabbed a couple of quests that I didn't know where to go for, pissed someone off and died. Never played it again.

Honestly, I LOVED skyrim. Now I'm not blind to it's flaws, and I really missed being able to craft spells, but for the most part the simplifications didn't bother me as much as I'd thought they would have. Would have preferred not to have a soft level-cap, but I just cheated around it anyway...

The DLCs did leave something to be desired, but it's hard to measure up to the shimmering isles and knights of the nine. I really did like Dawnguard and the content that it added, even if I never used the crossbow. Moving forward I'd really like to see less underground areas from the series, since they just get so god awful boring after the 24th one or so.

Also, really REALLY want to go to the asian-themed continent and would be thrilled to have a new title in the series set there. Fuck going to the high-elf continent and FUCK MMO'ing my TES (The series is about the MC being the most badass of badasses, you just can't do that with an MMO).

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

See my first beth game was Oblivion, which became my favorite game at the time (knocking Deus Ex off it's throne). I tried morrowind some years later and was quite... disappointed. Finding it very slow, counter-intuitive, and just not fun.

I managed to get to the first town (I believe this was the game that lacked quest markers, or a world map... w/e, I wasn't even sure I was in the right spot), grabbed a couple of quests that I didn't know where to go for, pissed someone off and died. Never played it again.

Honestly, I LOVED skyrim. Now I'm not blind to it's flaws, and I really missed being able to craft spells, but for the most part the simplifications didn't bother me as much as I'd thought they would have. Would have preferred not to have a soft level-cap, but I just cheated around it anyway...

The DLCs did leave something to be desired, but it's hard to measure up to the shimmering isles and knights of the nine. I really did like Dawnguard and the content that it added, even if I never used the crossbow. Moving forward I'd really like to see less underground areas from the series, since they just get so god awful boring after the 24th one or so.

Also, really REALLY want to go to the asian-themed continent and would be thrilled to have a new title in the series set there. Fuck going to the high-elf continent and FUCK MMO'ing my TES (The series is about the MC being the most badass of badasses, you just can't do that with an MMO).

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The simplification added in each game was what killed it for the hardcore fans.
Theres less and less RPG elements in each game they make, skyrim is basically a just a first person dungeon crawler.
The games so ahllow that even the combat is shallow.
"Wide as an oceon deep as a puddle" i think someone described it, but even i think thats a compliment sparing from the world building. Since you spend most time inside dungeons the world is lost. Making it as wide as a river pushing towards a casual failure of a game.
It may be a harsh opinion but i liked what they made, morrowind was great it had its flaws and shows its age but it was still great. Oblivion again had its flaws (more then morrowind) but fixed a few minor issues with morrowind....Skyrim? its like collage students "my first FPS" got a paintjob from bethesda.
I can hope and plee as much as i want that the next game wont be another console based droolfest... but i doubt it.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

You're going to have to focus on specific examples of how things were done in previous games in order for me to understand here. As I said, I know next to nothing of them, and am loathe to attempt them from what I do know.

I'm worried that you might be bemoaning the loss of a turn-based system, if that's the case I can't really sympathize.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

You're going to have to focus on specific examples of how things were done in previous games in order for me to understand here. As I said, I know next to nothing of them, and am loathe to attempt them from what I do know.

I'm worried that you might be bemoaning the loss of a turn-based system, if that's the case I can't really sympathize.

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Turn based?
HAHAHAHAHAH!

"Casualisation" is a great word.
Im an idiot and bad im bad at explaining things well, so i quickly found a nice video that seems to cover what im trying to say:

Hopefully that explains what im trying to say.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

See, to each their own on that. Personally, the spellcrafting system kinda sucked for me, and tended to get a bit on the confusing side because you'd easily bloat up your spellbook with spells you either gained on your travel for minor upgrades and the scaling factor, plus you could accidentally delete 'special' spells that wound up being not that special after all. Admittedly my time in Oblivion wasn't that long (like... iirc the farthest I got was a few daedric quests and returning Martin to Cloud Ruler Temple) but warrior always seemed like a better choice... then again, for a warrior character that basically boiled down to 'Hold shield. Bash. Enemy stunned? Power attack, repeat till DEAD.' Honestly the complaints about Skyrim combat beyond magic baffle me because it's more or less the same system AS Oblivion, right down to sneakarcher being a secret monster- though I feel Skyrim's perks eventually allow some better ability usage than Oblivion's only 4 stops on the skill tree for buffs.

Then again I will consent there is a few things in Oblivion that does feel like got dropped hardball ahead. I've seen it pointed out that Oblivion and Skyrim was built pretty much for fast travel as a start, something that Morrowwind didn't have and yet compensated with all sorts of fast travel systems. Hell I've even fixed up some mods for movement fast around the world and yet can't resist it because it's much easier to send myself flying across the continent in breakneck speed and the quest placement is so insane and annoying without it. And while I prefer Skyrim's spell setup and how it allowed more creative mod spells, the lack of Touch classified spells and some scaling in vanilla games did lower some useful options, specially as the best Heal Other spells tended to work best on Touch distance. Thank gods for Lost Grimore and Ultimate Apocalypse.

Really, a good chunk of why I probably am a lot more OK with Skyrim's mostly due to the dragon fights and the power as a mod base, I've probably have had more fun with doing mod quests like Wheels of Lull or Cursed Collar, or sneaking up north and letting Deadly Dragons spam assault after assault just so I can beat up as many dragons as possible until they spawn something nasty and kill me, than I did actually doing the main quests. In general main questlines suck anyway in Bethesda games, but still...

Hrm. Should at very least try to finish the questlines on my normal save though.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

I think one of my largest issues is that instead of fixing the game and improving on the old mechanics they stuffed a new mechanic in than compensated for its failure.

Take the radient AI for instance, its a great idea!
But...oh no our world full of dragons THAT WE CRATED could kill our poorly designed NPC's... or they could wonder the world full of barbrians, thievies, assasins, etc and get themselves killed... Oh how could we ever fix that... Ah yes just make them completely invincible so even the player cant kill them... so smart!

Than theres the world...
A huge wasteland of nothing! Where you spend 90% of your time in recycled dungeon cells, underground or in towns....
Ah yes fast travel will make it so people dont have to walk our completely barren stretched out world of emtiness!
so smart!

Oh no some peopel will get comfused with the stats system... Ah yes just throw it out completely in favor of a perk system!

You get the picture, i really hate the path they went down. HAHAHA!

Re: Games Discussion Thread

Eh, alot of this seems like cutting the fat to me.

I don't care what generic npc #3546 has to say about the state of the town, I can assess that for myself. And I certainly don't care about their story, the only reason they are there is to give me a task I can complete for a reward. Main NPCs however, could see some more character development, in fact I can't even remember a single NPC's name from skyrim or oblivion (This could be attributed to the shear volume of games I play though, or the fact that there are just so many NPCs and locations).

The stats system was worthless to any non-casual anyway, you were going to max your stats at some point, and skyrim's perk system works exactly the same way, only now the bottom tier has been combined with the top. Do an action, the related ability gains experience until you get better at it. Saying the stats system is necessary is like saying you need a separate tree for each type of sword you can acquire shortsword, longsword, cutlass, rapier, katana instead of just having a swords tree. It bloats the menus and gives you a false sense of customization (you get the same abilities in the perk tree that you would have gotten from the stat menu).

Not failing, well, he's spot on. I don't want to spend 5 minutes reloading each time a situation goes against the way I want it to (I get enough of that by playing any Japanese stealth-based game), and why bother making that a feature when 70-80% of players are just going to reload a save anyway?. Though I do inevitably end up reloading it's typically due to buggy AI, some quest essential NPCs are still killable and frequently die, or outcomes that I couldn't predict (More on this later).

Less fat cutting more different ideals:

I can't stand the way that morrowind handled quests. And I think this is a much deeper dispute than 'it's too hard', stemming from two different schools of thought. One in which the player spends time learning about the world and then later on uses that knowledge to complete quests. The other, which I belong to, is that quests are one of the ways for the player to learn about the world, picking up information (and rewards) as they progress through and complete the quests. Honestly, it seems like a lot of wasted time to try and sift through all the NPC information to figure out which cave I need to go to and KILL or PICK UP something (too many people that bitch about casual games seem to forget that their un-casual games use the same repetitive objectives for the bulk of their quests.) in a world FILLED TO THE BRIM with caves, to me. TL;DR keep my arrow out of this brah, or there's gonna be problems.

Loss of impact on the world. Well this seems like a production decision to me, sure they could have made generic NPCs address you differently but that's about the extent of what they could reasonably be allowed to do. Again this is a deeper dispute than 'it's too hard to deal with the consequences of my faction alignment', being more the same reason why villains don't REALLY win in movies: I'm playing games to have fun and enjoy a story, what happens when I get to a point and find that I don't like where the story is headed? I don't want to rape that village full of women for the glory of the empire, but oh, I'm 50 hours into my playthrough and can no longer work with any of the other factions. Why would I want to spend ANOTHER 50 hours to only find myself in a similar situation with a different faction? Because guess what? Any game that has real impact on the world from your actions has some sort of bullshit like this, whether it's forced actions after a massive time-sink, unclear or unforeseeable consequences. Why would I buy (or play at all, really) the sequel to a game that made me say 'enough' and stop playing it?

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

I don't care what generic npc #3546 has to say about the state of the town, I can assess that for myself. And I certainly don't care about their story, the only reason they are there is to give me a task I can complete for a reward. Main NPCs however, could see some more character development, in fact I can't even remember a single NPC's name from skyrim or oblivion (This could be attributed to the shear volume of games I play though, or the fact that there are just so many NPCs and locations).

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Than logically you should be against them fleshing out NPC #3546 too right? which is what they did... or attempted to do..

super_slicer said:

The stats system was worthless to any non-casual anyway, you were going to max your stats at some point, and skyrim's perk system works exactly the same way, only now the bottom tier has been combined with the top. Do an action, the related ability gains experience until you get better at it. Saying the stats system is necessary is like saying you need a separate tree for each type of sword you can acquire shortsword, longsword, cutlass, rapier, katana instead of just having a swords tree. It bloats the menus and gives you a false sense of customization (you get the same abilities in the perk tree that you would have gotten from the stat menu).

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Than instead of completely deleting it they shoud have expanded on it to allow for a more diverse/fun experience.
Less removing of content more expanding on whats there for a deeper more enjoyable experience.

super_slicer said:

Not failing, well, he's spot on. I don't want to spend 5 minutes reloading each time a situation goes against the way I want it to (I get enough of that by playing any Japanese stealth-based game), and why bother making that a feature when 70-80% of players are just going to reload a save anyway?. Though I do inevitably end up reloading it's typically due to buggy AI, some quest essential NPCs are still killable and frequently die, or outcomes that I couldn't predict (More on this later).

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Ill admit, the save system on is a bit of a wonky arguyment. While im against save scumming (you should pay for your failures), skyrim literally needs it due to the buggy ass fucked up game it is....EVEN today.

super_slicer said:

I can't stand the way that morrowind handled quests. And I think this is a much deeper dispute than 'it's too hard', stemming from two different schools of thought. One in which the player spends time learning about the world and then later on uses that knowledge to complete quests. The other, which I belong to, is that quests are one of the ways for the player to learn about the world, picking up information (and rewards) as they progress through and complete the quests. Honestly, it seems like a lot of wasted time to try and sift through all the NPC information to figure out which cave I need to go to and KILL or PICK UP something (too many people that bitch about casual games seem to forget that their un-casual games use the same repetitive objectives for the bulk of their quests.) in a world FILLED TO THE BRIM with caves, to me. TL;DR keep my arrow out of this brah, or there's gonna be problems.

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Rather than expanding on what they had, they decided to treat you like a fucking child and literally point you to target A removing all enjoyment and adventure of any quest.
Id rather have to pay attnetion to what people are saying and where they are pointing me to than follow and on screen arrow.
If there enough of a straightforward description of your task like "go to derp lake and kill the mudcrabs" and they add a map marker of the lake to your map than yes thats fine!
But a compas marker that literally holds your hand all the way there is too much.
To each their own.

super_slicer said:

Loss of impact on the world. Well this seems like a production decision to me, sure they could have made generic NPCs address you differently but that's about the extent of what they could reasonably be allowed to do. Again this is a deeper dispute than 'it's too hard to deal with the consequences of my faction alignment', being more the same reason why villains don't REALLY win in movies: I'm playing games to have fun and enjoy a story, what happens when I get to a point and find that I don't like where the story is headed? I don't want to rape that village full of women for the glory of the empire, but oh, I'm 50 hours into my playthrough and can no longer work with any of the other factions. Why would I want to spend ANOTHER 50 hours to only find myself in a similar situation with a different faction? Because guess what? Any game that has real impact on the world from your actions has some sort of bullshit like this, whether it's forced actions after a massive time-sink, unclear or unforeseeable consequences. Why would I buy (or play at all, really) the sequel to a game that made me say 'enough' and stop playing it?

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Your issue seems to stem from the issue i have with the "world full of nothing", should you really have spent that long on 1 character?
Wouldent it have been more fun to have played through as a few different characters/classes/storylines/guilds? Or 1 character through 1 story and 1 guild that took 50 hours and now your fucking annoyed with the choises you have made?
Skyrim fails at this style of gameplay BUT it also fails at the deeper longer more story driven style too.
With no impact or reflection to the time you have poured into the game, you feel pointless/worthless like you have acomplished NOTHING and you have done just that, NOTHING.

Eh, im drunk and its late. Man i hope what im saying here is what im thinking...

Re: Games Discussion Thread

B00marrows said:

Than logically you should be against them fleshing out NPC #3546 too right? which is what they did... or attempted to do..

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B00marrows said:

Than instead of completely deleting it they shoud have expanded on it to allow for a more diverse/fun experience.
Less removing of content more expanding on whats there for a deeper more enjoyable experience.

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Without going full RPG I can't see a way to deepen the stat system from oblivion. The only real difference is that it's been condensed, instead of having a secondary screen to up your str it increases effectively whenever you raise the skill level for str-based damage weapons. Oh and I guess you can't train the hell out of athletics to spend the points on willpower, but boo hoo. More on this when I address your class comment below.

B00marrows said:

Rather than expanding on what they had, they decided to treat you like a fucking child and literally point you to target A removing all enjoyment and adventure of any quest.
Id rather have to pay attnetion to what people are saying and where they are pointing me to than follow and on screen arrow.
If there enough of a straightforward description of your task like "go to derp lake and kill the mudcrabs" and they add a map marker of the lake to your map than yes thats fine!
But a compas marker that literally holds your hand all the way there is too much.
To each their own.

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Never even looked at it like that. I use it to give myself a general heading and set off on adventure! If I run into something that's not my quest objective before I reach it, well I guess the arrow's going to have to wait a bit! Plus it's just an awesome way to find the tiny-ass gem that's my quest objective, when I do decide to actually try to complete the quest objective I got 5 hours ago...

B00marrows said:

Your issue seems to stem from the issue i have with the "world full of nothing", should you really have spent that long on 1 character?
Wouldent it have been more fun to have played through as a few different characters/classes/storylines/guilds? Or 1 character through 1 story and 1 guild that took 50 hours and now your fucking annoyed with the choises you have made?
Skyrim fails at this style of gameplay BUT it also fails at the deeper longer more story driven style too.
With no impact or reflection to the time you have poured into the game, you feel pointless/worthless like you have acomplished NOTHING and you have done just that, NOTHING.

Eh, im drunk and its late. Man i hope what im saying here is what im thinking...

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Well, there are several ways to implement a class system in a game like this two viable options are to either A: Give classes truly unique abilities (Overwatch characters come to mind) or B: Impose limits on the proficiency each class can reach in certain abilities, ok there's C: combo of both as well.

Unfortunately, A really just adds some more abilities to an already bloated list. And B is something I despise, if I want to be a master lock-picking paladin I should be able to be one. As long as my paladin spends enough time picking locks there's no goddamn reason he can't outclass any rogue at it. And skyrim is GREAT at that, I can play a jack of all trades and as long as I'm willing to put the work in I'm not locked out of ANYTHING.

But you and I are quite different gamers it appears. I'm a complete everything on one playthrough and ignore the game until additional content/mods come out or never pick it up again. And when I say 'complete everything' I mean EVERYTHING, I've cleared every location in skyrim, completed every non-repeatable quest, filled out the perk trees, and obtained all unique items.

lurker said:

snip..

Really, a good chunk of why I probably am a lot more OK with Skyrim's mostly due to the dragon fights and the power as a mod base, I've probably have had more fun with doing mod quests like Wheels of Lull or Cursed Collar, or sneaking up north and letting Deadly Dragons spam assault after assault just so I can beat up as many dragons as possible until they spawn something nasty and kill me, than I did actually doing the main quests. In general main questlines suck anyway in Bethesda games, but still...

Hrm. Should at very least try to finish the questlines on my normal save though.

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I can certainly understand your feelings on the spellcrafting, I just ended up frustrated when 1. Spells of a higher level were 'flamethrower' dot casts when I just wanted to chuck sparkly fire damage from afar and 2. The final levels of elemental spells have shit long charge times and derp locked animations.

I can definitely agree on skyrim's awesome potential as a mod-platform, it's about the only reason why I kept it on my HD as long as I did.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

Tell me how this:
Is less cumbersome and fleshed out than this:

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I never said it wasnt, i said they should have improved on what they had instead of simplifying things to a point of almost pointlessness.

Anyway,
Heres an idea. Each of the npcs could have a slighly different way of describing or giving different details on a situation and you(the player) collects point to build your own story of said situation in your journal.
If you want more details you ask around and collect info than read it in full detail in your journal, if not than you just read the short/simplified bit of info that 1 npc gave you and role with that.

This gives people who want to read about it the ability to and also gives the people who dont a quick and to the point answer of the info they needed.
This also opens a flood gate of other options.

But, thats what i would have done.

super_slicer said:

RPG

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TES used to be an RPG series... HAHAHA!

Re: Games Discussion Thread

From the video you linked the clips from the titles look like action-RPGs to me...

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

From the video you linked the clips from the titles look like action-RPGs to me...

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Eh, clearly you dont want to discuss anything. Whatever.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

huh?

I thought we were having a pretty civil discussion here

I didn't respond to your other point because from a story perspective it's pretty valid and while I can poke holes in it to justify why I don't want things that way ( from a development point that's a lot of time poured into text and voice [if they kept it for anything but high importance NPCs at that point], that could just be better [rather, more entertainingly] used elsewhere.), it's down to a matter of opinion at this point. Which we are both firmly on opposite sides of, I like a giant world sparsely populated that has simple quests and allows me to be the biggest badass ever. Not all the time mind you, but in skyrim it works.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

huh?

I thought we were having a pretty civil discussion here

I didn't respond to your other point because from a story perspective it's pretty valid and while I can poke holes in it to justify why I don't want things that way ( from a development point that's a lot of time poured into text and voice [if they kept it for anything but high importance NPCs at that point], that could just be better [rather, more entertainingly] used elsewhere.), it's down to a matter of opinion at this point. Which we are both firmly on opposite sides of, I like a giant world sparsely populated that has simple quests and allows me to be the biggest badass ever. Not all the time mind you, but in skyrim it works.

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Than what was with that last post??
ERGH, whatever.

Yes i agree we have differing opinions.
I hate the cookie cutter, dull, simplified, closed, unimersive and empty game that is skyrim.
The removal of both classes and statistics leaves little to no room for character development and diversity.
The oversimplification leads to dull dribble inducing gameplay.
The lack of character impact and emtiness of the world leavs me feeling like im in an MMO or something, HAHAHA!

But thats just my opinion.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

Are they not action-RPGs? I mean, I didn't see a turn-based system so they kind of can't be a traditional RPG.

Re: Games Discussion Thread

super_slicer said:

Are they not action-RPGs? I mean, I didn't see a turn-based system so they kind of can't be a traditional RPG.

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The key is in the words.
A turn based RPG would be an RPG with turn based mechanics/combat.

This logic is applied to an action RPG too. Action + RPG

RPG is a machanic on its own, not just a fancy aditional word.