- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Imo part of the problem is that a lot of people doing the complaining are Ubergamers who play shitloads of new games, many being content creators who do it for a living. So they just have the stronger ingrained gamer brain that says "ah, this crack in the wall is clearly different from the other one and therefore traversable", and when games put in cues for normies to make sense of things they feel like the game is treating them like an idiot.
Like I play shitloads of video games, and I still get tripped up when a game expects me to rely on spider sense gained from playing the same kind of action adventure game over and over.
This is why the hardcore crowd inevitably lost the Dark Souls git gud wars. FROMSoft threw bone to normies by making Elden Ring free roam and loading it up with overpowered weapons and abilities. And it's literally their most successful game yet.
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- Pronouns
- She/They
Tbh I still have yet to really get past the prologue in xbc2. I do not think I am a fan of the "stand there while your character autoattacks and occasionally press a button for something else" type of gameplay
(Currently my opinion from playing a bit of it and some of ff14, is that as far as gameplay systems in rpgs goes, this system is the true loser, even over things which get a solid amount of flack like ATB.)
The thing is at that point of the game you're legitimately missing most of the core gameplay mechanics. While XB2 never gets especially hectic, once the game systems are introduced and you get into the groove you've pretty much always got something to press while building up to the Big Attacks.
- Pronouns
- Any
eh I can get people not jiving with xenoblade systems, it basically a single player mmo and it can get boring at times.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
My own lack of understanding of how Xenoblade Chronicles combat is supposed to go is largely because I'm not quite sure which type of MMORPG it's supposed to be like.
I thought it's the modern World Of Warcraft style, which is basically Always Be Casting, but whenever I tried that I immediately rip aggro from whoever the Tank is.
So I've been trying the older Everquest style, where autoattacks are the main "filler" damage, and actual abiities have to be spread out in usage. This seems to work, but I don't know if I'm doing it wrong.
I mean you could get the Zwei from the very start in DaS1 and just pancake through the game, I don't think there's any meaningful design shift or one side "winning" there.
- Location
- Ireland
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- He/Him
The combat system is weird at first but when it clicks it really clicks. I played through all three games recently (3 very recently) and it feels really good once you get into the swing of things, but XBC2 especially is so slow to introduce its systems that it feels kind of grindingly awkward to play at first.Tbh I still have yet to really get past the prologue in xbc2. I do not think I am a fan of the "stand there while your character autoattacks and occasionally press a button for something else" type of gameplay
(Currently my opinion from playing a bit of it and some of ff14, is that as far as gameplay systems in rpgs goes, this system is the true loser, even over things which get a solid amount of flack like ATB.)
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
Reminds me of Ar tonelico and Mana Khemia, which have fun (and in the case of the latter, one of my favorite) battle systems, but only after new party members trigger certain key mechanics. Before that point... not so much. I can understand not throwing too much at the player at once, but stretching it out too much I think might be worse in terms of player experience.
-Morgan.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
My hottest of hot takes that I don't like yellow paint because I don't like yellow paint.
That is to say, I don't really care about trying to clearly mark interactable points of interest. I dislike yellow paint because I dislike the idea of having one universal homogenous Game Design Yellow signpost that I see in every other game, like somebody's trying to astroturf the new Red Barrel Means It Explodes. Plus I think it's just kind of a losing game to be playing designing these Hyper-Detailed Photorealistic Environments combined with Sleek Minimalist UI and then panicking because you've lost everything reasonable you could use to communicate with the player so you resort to making it look like a rogue painter's been through the place before you and cocked everything up. We need to go back to games telling you you can move on because the biggest fucking arrow you've ever seen that says NEXT on it spawns in next to the correct door.
The highly specific version of this gripe that doesn't matter but inordinately annoys me is windows in RE4R. RE4 the original makes a point of locking you in the house at the very start of the game once you kill your first ganado, so whether you stick to ground level or explore upstairs you're forced to jump out a window to proceed, which naturally teaches you that Leon's flesh is made of kevlar and he can leap through glass no problem. RE4R forces you to head upstairs to play a new cutscene then has Leon jump out the window in said cutscene, removing the teachable moment, and subsequently covers all jumpable windows with yellow masking tape... but jumpable windows also have hovering 'interact' prompts on them which display whenever you get reasonably close, meaning they doubled up on prompts to teach you a thing that the original already taught you, better.
That is to say, I don't really care about trying to clearly mark interactable points of interest. I dislike yellow paint because I dislike the idea of having one universal homogenous Game Design Yellow signpost that I see in every other game, like somebody's trying to astroturf the new Red Barrel Means It Explodes. Plus I think it's just kind of a losing game to be playing designing these Hyper-Detailed Photorealistic Environments combined with Sleek Minimalist UI and then panicking because you've lost everything reasonable you could use to communicate with the player so you resort to making it look like a rogue painter's been through the place before you and cocked everything up. We need to go back to games telling you you can move on because the biggest fucking arrow you've ever seen that says NEXT on it spawns in next to the correct door.
The highly specific version of this gripe that doesn't matter but inordinately annoys me is windows in RE4R. RE4 the original makes a point of locking you in the house at the very start of the game once you kill your first ganado, so whether you stick to ground level or explore upstairs you're forced to jump out a window to proceed, which naturally teaches you that Leon's flesh is made of kevlar and he can leap through glass no problem. RE4R forces you to head upstairs to play a new cutscene then has Leon jump out the window in said cutscene, removing the teachable moment, and subsequently covers all jumpable windows with yellow masking tape... but jumpable windows also have hovering 'interact' prompts on them which display whenever you get reasonably close, meaning they doubled up on prompts to teach you a thing that the original already taught you, better.
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Honestly my favorite marker for ledges and stuff is straight up just bird shit. Even if it makes me think that the character ought to slip off every once in a while. Because it means that the critical path in the game is always your character getting guano on their fingers.
It's not really about difficulty though, it's all about the intimidation factor of the game. A big thing that bounces people off the series is running into an enemy that kills them over and over and being told that that is THE way to go. Free roam basically just alleviates the intimidation factor by giving other options.
"Just main zweihander" is also a hard sell for normies even if it's easy, as is any game that encourages you to play with the leveling system only to pull the rug out from under you hours later because you built the character "wrong". Now there's multiple zweihanders you can find on your own by exploration instead of getting frustrated and just looking up the one monomaniacal strat to carry you through the game.
It's not really about difficulty though, it's all about the intimidation factor of the game. A big thing that bounces people off the series is running into an enemy that kills them over and over and being told that that is THE way to go. Free roam basically just alleviates the intimidation factor by giving other options.
"Just main zweihander" is also a hard sell for normies even if it's easy, as is any game that encourages you to play with the leveling system only to pull the rug out from under you hours later because you built the character "wrong". Now there's multiple zweihanders you can find on your own by exploration instead of getting frustrated and just looking up the one monomaniacal strat to carry you through the game.
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Other games have absolutely no roadblock boss in Souls like Margit is for the early game. The great value of Elden Ring is that once you realize it you can just Pick a Direction and Ride, but new players bouncing off him or getting trapped into Caelid is far, far more intimidating than anything previous games threw at you.
World of Warcraft is way more fun singleplayer with a bunch of bots. You can pretend like it's an open world party based rpg, like the Rexxar campaign in Warcraft 3. Multiplayer WoW is an unfun experience because people are too obsessed with minmaxxing and don't want to take the time to smell the flowers or read quest descriptions. This way, you can explore the world and the dungeons without worrying about your gear score or dps meter or whatever dumb crap people obsess over and just, admire the last really good game a once legendary company ever made.
If someone were to combine the bots with some LLM thing to give them dialogue, it would be more social too, because nobody talks in mmos anymore. They all use discord if they communicate at all.
If someone were to combine the bots with some LLM thing to give them dialogue, it would be more social too, because nobody talks in mmos anymore. They all use discord if they communicate at all.
cB557
voOOP
I'd argue Gundyr is more intimidating than Margit. Gundyr is probably objectively easier in terms of execution expected of you, even compared against a player facing Margit at an appropriate level instead of after bee-lining to him, but the way you're fighting Gundyr like five minutes in before you've really gotten a feel for the gameplay or even unlocked leveling makes me think he's probably way more likely to make a new player go "I guess this game is too hard for me."
I so want to reply in agreement but I can't fit a monowire between this and the topic of soulsborne difficulty.
Gundyr is easily the hardest "First Souls Boss" gatekeep in the Fromsoft games, it's not even close. He's one of the ones that don't let you run off to level up or grind in any way before the boss, and the only others that do that - Demon's Souls Vanguard and Dark Souls 1 Asylum Demon - are piss easy with the level itself giving you advantages against them (tons of firebombs/turpentine for the Vanguard, and the plunging attack to chunk its HP for the Asylum Demon).
Meanwhile, Gundyr is for some reason the devs deciding "yes we need a two phase boss literally five minutes into the game when the player's only experience up until now is anemic hollows that die in two hits and an optional murderous crystal lizard they probably ran from". Sure, he's not particularly hard by DS3 standards or for a player that's played a Souls game before, but if you're starting someone completely fresh on the Souls series I don't think Gundyr is a particularly good first boss to throw someone at, unless you're trying to unironically spout "Git Gud" memes at them.
Meanwhile, unless you're stubborn and/or stupid, sure Margit is a harder boss, but you can also explore like a full 80% of the world map before fighting him if you want. Just don't be bullheaded and you can come back and destroy him, or at least make the fight a bit easier by exploring Limgrave for weapon upgrades and a couple levels.
Meanwhile, Gundyr is for some reason the devs deciding "yes we need a two phase boss literally five minutes into the game when the player's only experience up until now is anemic hollows that die in two hits and an optional murderous crystal lizard they probably ran from". Sure, he's not particularly hard by DS3 standards or for a player that's played a Souls game before, but if you're starting someone completely fresh on the Souls series I don't think Gundyr is a particularly good first boss to throw someone at, unless you're trying to unironically spout "Git Gud" memes at them.
Meanwhile, unless you're stubborn and/or stupid, sure Margit is a harder boss, but you can also explore like a full 80% of the world map before fighting him if you want. Just don't be bullheaded and you can come back and destroy him, or at least make the fight a bit easier by exploring Limgrave for weapon upgrades and a couple levels.
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Gundyr is also your first exposure to the Bloodborne-ish incomprehensible Lovecraft gribbly monster design in DS3. Which is perfectly fine. Intimidating the player by having the bosses being chaotic masses of writhing flesh is a great way to psyche out players and make the game feel harder than it is. But it's kinda fucking mean to drop that on the player as the first boss. Having that shit pop out of a basic mob later is a better introduction imo.
Even if they're completely bounced off by Margit and Caelid a normie is still getting shitloads more out of the game then they would if they bounced off the Capra Demon in DS1. And the wider game world means that if you need to power through Margit with raw levelling you can do that with exploration instead of grinding.
Like some parts may be more intimidating but the point is the intimidation factor isn't a hard stop to the player enjoying the game.
Even if they're completely bounced off by Margit and Caelid a normie is still getting shitloads more out of the game then they would if they bounced off the Capra Demon in DS1. And the wider game world means that if you need to power through Margit with raw levelling you can do that with exploration instead of grinding.
Like some parts may be more intimidating but the point is the intimidation factor isn't a hard stop to the player enjoying the game.
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- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Almost every streamer on Earth has to have a rule against backseating because the needs of both playing a game while entertaining the people in the chat divides so much of their attention to such a degree that they frequently miss things in the game and story. I haven't run the numbers or anything but it seems like the rise in signposting is not unrelated to the growth in streaming as a form of entertainment.
Yeah but the trend towards more clearly directing players predates streaming too - the shift from e.g. the journal and quest directions of Morrowind to the compass and map markers of Oblivion and Skyrim happened a long time ago now. Then we have things like that infamous quote from the pokemon devs about how they were worried that any kind of friction would cause kids to stop playing and go play on their phone or something.
And then there's the same long running shifts towards greater "accessibility" (or whatever the right word is) and streamlining in MMO design.
I think this is more just part of a long running industry trend.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Some amount of signposting is obviously valuable. Gamers famously don't look up for example, so in every Destiny 2 mission where the devs want you to engage with the verticality in a level there will be one brave little guy who pops out to shoot at you so you know where to jump. That is all pretty normal stuff and there have been numerous solutions ranging from map indicators, compasses, waypoints, wear and tear, Isaac Clark's holographic projector, specifically placed lighting and, yes, big floating arrows over the door. That's all fine.
The yellow paint backlash happens because it's so common, for many people it feels lazy and, speaking personally, it's ugly. With how frequently it's used there isn't much sense of craft to it, so it can't really be appreciated as a design decision. With it standing out so much, some people will lose immersion, or feel like they're being treated like an idiot.
If it's going to be a universal standard in game development I would like a universal option to turn it off.
I'm not very invested in the question, but I think philosophically I'd rather have a non-diegetic interactable-glow type effect than a seemingly-diegetic 'look, we had to use up all this spray paint and came up with a very specific solution' effect.
Oh sure, I don't disagree. That strikes me as much the same problem as Skyrim map markers though - it's a lazy but very easy solution for the devs that doesn't require more challenging environmental design work.
And that then has the same problem optionswise - you can't just "turn it off" because the games haven't been designed to work with it being turned off. If Skyrim has map markers removed you just can't find anything because the game hasn't been designed to support players finding anything without markers. If the games designed around yellow paint lose the paint then players just won't be able to work out how they're supposed to interact with the environment much of the time because they weren't designed to guide them without it.
- Location
- Russia
The way Mirror's Edge did its signposting is probably the best I've seen it done. Somehow both subtle and yet in-your-face at the same time.
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- He/Him
Yeah, Skyrim without markers on the *map* would be extremely frustrating, but you can mod the compass to not display them unless you're directly atop, and it actually works well, because Skyrim's geography is pretty thoughtfully designed to expose you to PoIs.
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- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This always makes me think of half life 2, which was religiously focus tested to put in more cues any time a tester got turned around or went off track for most of the levels in it. (I think towards the end they were rushing, of course.)
But it's all lighting cues and little sound bites or something moving, and while you can look and see guard rails they fade out pretty well. A question of how much effort you want to spend redoing your level designs to create sight lines pointing the player around, I guess.
But it's all lighting cues and little sound bites or something moving, and while you can look and see guard rails they fade out pretty well. A question of how much effort you want to spend redoing your level designs to create sight lines pointing the player around, I guess.
Fair. I was mostly remembering the lack of quest directions and the mod that adds directions to the quests in your journal so you can find the locations without map markers.
I want more games that make navigation interesting and give you tools for it.
The latter qualification because not getting lost in vanilla minecraft without cheating by checking console coordinates can be interesting - but you pretty much are limited to memory or out-of-game notes as pathfinding tools.
The obscure game Miasmata had a thing I enjoyed with the mapping requiring you to locate yourself by triangulation with known landmarks, and to triangulate the position of distant landmarks from multiple vantages in order to locate them on your map.
I'd love to see that sort of thing more, especially in a procedural-map game.
The latter qualification because not getting lost in vanilla minecraft without cheating by checking console coordinates can be interesting - but you pretty much are limited to memory or out-of-game notes as pathfinding tools.
The obscure game Miasmata had a thing I enjoyed with the mapping requiring you to locate yourself by triangulation with known landmarks, and to triangulate the position of distant landmarks from multiple vantages in order to locate them on your map.
I'd love to see that sort of thing more, especially in a procedural-map game.