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What are controversial gaming opinions you have?

Ford Prefect said:
It could. Alternatively it could be used to justify treating this video game about ghosts with the gravitas it deserves, not acting like it's the original sin.
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You're right, "kill yourself and you'll be happy" is exactly the gravitas the subject deserves.

Are you just gonna ignore the rest of what I posted? Because italics and sarcasm aside I'm trying to argue in good faith here, and I'm a bit miffed you don't seem to care to.
 
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I'm mean, sure, it's fuck up. But from my personal So Bad It's Good standpoint the romanticized suicide is like a cherry of Fucked Up on top of the Haha What the Fuck sundae.
 
Jace911 said:
Willem DaFoe's character loses his wife and child to a drunk driver. That's awful and tragic and a sober example of something that happens way too often in the real world. Another example of something that happens way too often in the real world is people becoming consumed by grief and seeking relief through suicide. I have no issues with a story that examines that sort of tragedy, but I don't want to be anywhere near any story that presents it as a good thing.
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You know there are people that might actually see that as a good thing. Some people might actually take comfort in the idea that people that commit suicide find relief and comfort. It's better than thinking they're doomed to suffer.
 
Jace911 said:
You're right, "kill yourself and you'll be happy" is exactly the gravitas the subject deserves.

Are you just gonna ignore the rest of what I posted? Because italics and sarcasm aside I'm trying to argue in good faith here, and I'm a bit miffed you don't seem to care to.
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I apologise, I'm on my phone and it's awkward to write at any length. Ultimately I'm not fussed that you don't like it - that's your prerogative as part of the audience (I didn't like Beyond much either). I take issue with trying to make it out as some egregious moral failing on Cage's part to have included it.

e: speaking of being on your phone ...
 
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Ford Prefect said:
I apologise, I'm on my phone and it's awkward to write at any length. Ultimately I'm not fussed that you don't like it - that's your prerogative as part of the audience (I didn't like Beyond much either). I take issue with trying to make it out as some egregious moral failing on Cage's part to have included it.

e: speaking of being on your phone ...
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I don't think it's out of malevolence, just utter thoughtlessness. It's a tangled and ugly subject to approach, and Cage displays not even the slightest care in doing so. It's not even a focus for him, just sort of a bellyfeels afterthought intended to elicit an "awww" from the audience. It's his entire style as an artist: wave hammers around hoping a house will magically build itself, until he accidentally throws one through a window.

VolantRedX said:
You know there are people that might actually see that as a good thing. Some people might actually take comfort in the idea that people that commit suicide find relief and comfort. It's better than thinking they're doomed to suffer.
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And there are people who look at the number of times they came within an inch of losing a friend or loved one to suicide, and they would strongly disagree. If there wasn't such a powerful stigma against suicide in our culture, I have no doubt I would have fewer living friends. In that case would it comfort me to imagine they found peace? Probably, but I would much rather not be in that position in the first place. It's the worst sort of Catch-22.

At any rate I think we've derailed the thread enough. Suffice it to say the criticism aimed at Cage's works is largely earned.
 
Jace911 said:
At any rate I think we've derailed the thread enough. Suffice it to say the criticism aimed at Cage's works is largely earned.
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On that I totally agree. Cage writes like he's a robot made by an alien civilization with only old radio dramas to teach him about the human race. Honestly the moment I found the most appalling in any of his games wasn't the suicide thing. It was that rather off putting sex scene in Heavy Rain. I actually remember a fic that took the logical outcome of that scene (that the stress and injuries of the last few days would have rendered lead guy totally impotent and he was likely too injured to move much anyway) and it was hilarious.
 
Re: RTS

I think base building is probably what's holding the genre back in the first place. It was okay as a mechanic that gates the players from starting the game with the biggest unit and as a way for scouting to have some importance, but there are better methods of doing that now. Most games also don't do anything interesting with the base building mechanic in the first place save for the Starcraft series, Grey Goo, and maybe the TA/Supcom/PA games.

Resource collection can simply be player income (ala Wargame/Steel Division or World in Conflict), automated ticks independent of worker units, or be a consequence of actions on the game map. Line of sight, camouflage, and fog of war mechanics makes scouting just as, if not more, important than before. As with World in Conflict the type and availability of units can either be baked into the design (i.e. armor players get heavy armor while air players get the best helicopters), or as with Steel Division units can be gated behind arbitrary phases so that the chosen decks with early unit availability are more notable for it.

Eliminating base building can also help maintain interest in individual game sessions for both the players and the spectators as the game is now more about the battle and spectacle and the strategy and tactics are more apparent.
 
The dude who's doing Detroit: Become Human is too far up his own ass for my taste. I fully expect that Nier: Automata will still be a better commentary on transhumanism than Detroit will be. Not sure if that's "controversial" or not idk
 
Exterminatus said:
Re: RTS

I think base building is probably what's holding the genre back in the first place. It was okay as a mechanic that gates the players from starting the game with the biggest unit and as a way for scouting to have some importance, but there are better methods of doing that now. Most games also don't do anything interesting with the base building mechanic in the first place save for the Starcraft series, Grey Goo, and maybe the TA/Supcom/PA games.

Resource collection can simply be player income (ala Wargame/Steel Division or World in Conflict), automated ticks independent of worker units, or be a consequence of actions on the game map. Line of sight, camouflage, and fog of war mechanics makes scouting just as, if not more, important than before. As with World in Conflict the type and availability of units can either be baked into the design (i.e. armor players get heavy armor while air players get the best helicopters), or as with Steel Division units can be gated behind arbitrary phases so that the chosen decks with early unit availability are more notable for it.

Eliminating base building can also help maintain interest in individual game sessions for both the players and the spectators as the game is now more about the battle and spectacle and the strategy and tactics are more apparent.
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People love base building. Get rid of that and you've sunk most of your PvE and big game draw
 
Re: RTS.

Base building is an important part of an RTS. Where to place your turrets, walls and barracks are important strategical decisions. You might get away haphazardly putting your buildings everywhere but a smart player will set their miners and builders in a far more uniform manner reaping optimum rewards.

However I'm not the biggest fan of "10 riflemen/spearmen shoot/stab a building till it collapses". It's fun to destroy a nuclear power plant in RA2 the first dozen times but I'd much prefer gruelling urban combat in a military base, something I feel no game has managed to emulate.
 
My own controversial opinion on RTS: Planetary Annhilation had the right idea in removing all upgrades and activated abilities. Those two changes make the game massively more accessible. (Of course the devs made a bunch of other decisions that completely nullified those gains.)

Mutton said:
People love base building. Get rid of that and you've sunk most of your PvE and big game draw
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People love certain parts of base building. It's fun to set up your turrets, walls, and other defenses. It's not fun to have to find a worker to build another power generator or supply depo every two minutes. Those parts of base-building could easily be automated.

Tasrill said:
I mean I own everything from TA to planetary annihilation and I am downloading ashes of the singularity. Automation and easy user commands are a thing every needs. They still could do with faster games. I mean my dream game would be more homeworld 1 capital ship slug matches with better automation and easy to manage scouting and more compressed gameplay. Not every game needs to last an hour for one match.
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PA matches rarely last longer than 20 minutes on reasonably-sized maps. If you're taking an hour to finish a match you're doing something wrong.
 
Gitaxian said:
People love certain parts of base building. It's fun to set up your turrets, walls, and other defenses. It's not fun to have to find a worker to build another power generator or supply depo every two minutes. Those parts of base-building could easily be automated.
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That's a super tiny portion of any given RTS though. Don't think it really cuts to the core of what irritates people about micro.
 
Hykal94 said:
However I'm not the biggest fan of "10 riflemen/spearmen shoot/stab a building till it collapses". It's fun to destroy a nuclear power plant in RA2 the first dozen times but I'd much prefer gruelling urban combat in a military base, something I feel no game has managed to emulate.
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Closest really is Total War for some eras, and in the 20th/21st century there's relatively more offerings such as Company of Heroes, Men of War, and Wargame/Steel Division. There's also Dawn of War 2 I guess. I haven't seen much of the gameplay for CoH 2 but I can attest that Steel Division's model for infantry combat has improved over Wargame and certainly feels like a meatgrinder when urban combat starts ramping up. Although at the scale the game is at, it may feel simplified relative to CoH or DoW 2 if there's only infantry fighting infantry. It feels good when vehicles, artillery (direct and indirect), and airplanes are coming into play though.
 
Thought of another one: I am perfectly happy with the concept of ports, and depending on the game I will be more than happy to pay full price to play it on a new system.

Granted I've been selling my old consoles to subsidize the new ones, so I'm grateful for anything that mitigates the opportunity cost of doing so.
 
Here's one based on how MMO's have been created in the last few years - players used to have to buy increasing ranks of skills. So Attack 1, Attack 2, Attack 3, and so on. As a result of that process players got access to the vast majority of their character's abilities relatively early. Contrast that with how modern games give a player new abilities over time. The first approach lets players learn the "fighting style" of the class relatively early. It lets them figure out how to play the class well. (If they are paying attention, that is.) And, most importantly, it lets players figure out if a given class's play style is fun. I'd much prefer that over spending hours and hours leveling some-random-character and then discovering that the full list of abilities just isn't fun - or that I just don't get the class and should try something else if I want to excel.
 
Nicholai said:
Here's one based on how MMO's have been created in the last few years - players used to have to buy increasing ranks of skills. So Attack 1, Attack 2, Attack 3, and so on. As a result of that process players got access to the vast majority of their character's abilities relatively early. Contrast that with how modern games give a player new abilities over time. The first approach lets players learn the "fighting style" of the class relatively early. It lets them figure out how to play the class well. (If they are paying attention, that is.) And, most importantly, it lets players figure out if a given class's play style is fun. I'd much prefer that over spending hours and hours leveling some-random-character and then discovering that the full list of abilities just isn't fun - or that I just don't get the class and should try something else if I want to excel.
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Guild Wars 2 basically did that, where you have your abilities off the bat and buy some minor talents. Players hated it. You lost a lot of the sense of progression where you're learning new abilities and getting stronger in a way other than just bigger numbers.

I mean, I tend to vastly prefer it as it means I can hop around and figure out what I want fairly quickly. WoW also implemented a form of try before you buy with lvl100 Class Trials. But on the whole it gets a lot of pushback from communities that value the leveling experience.
 
Mutton said:
Guild Wars 2 basically did that, where you have your abilities off the bat and buy some minor talents. Players hated it. You lost a lot of the sense of progression where you're learning new abilities and getting stronger in a way other than just bigger numbers.

I mean, I tend to vastly prefer it as it means I can hop around and figure out what I want fairly quickly. WoW also implemented a form of try before you buy with lvl100 Class Trials. But on the whole it gets a lot of pushback from communities that value the leveling experience.
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Hence why this is an unpopular opinion. Not that I'm saying the old system of repeatedly buying the same thing was "good" or even "marginally fun" - it was honestly rather annoying. But I think the current solution is a poor one.
 
The biggest problem with Bioware's games for me isn't the shitty plotting, or problematic tropes or whatever, it's that a lot of the time the characters don't come off as real people. Like, they have characters that are cool or liable, but only a handful actually accomplish giving the illusion that they could actually exist.

I look at other games that do this way better, like Wolfenstein: the New Order, and the Witcher 3, and I realized that the problem is kind of the presence of the RPG Bioware protagonist itself. Bioware likes to try to let you "roleplay" conversations like you're character is actually talking to this other character. But the problem is that a character like, say, Shepard or the Warden has no actual set personality, so unless you're really immersed in it it feels like the other character is talking to a robot, but they're acting like the robot is a person, and because the dialogue choices tend to be pretty simplistic the characters aren't responding to anything of real substance and they have a hard time articulating their thoughts or showing off their deeper personalities.

The most interesting Bioware characters by far are the ones that don't actually seem to give a shit about the protagonists input and will just go off on their own tangents. Chief here is Wrex and Dorian, both of whom less have conversations and more use your attempts as conversation as a jumping off to just start talking about whatever the hell they want, because Wrex likes to wax about the good old days and Dorian likes to hear himself talk. Sten is pretty good too, because he actively treats the protagonist as if he was exactly as dumb as simplistic as a CRPG protagonist really is and responds in kind unless you hit his "Lecture people on the Qun" button.

I really think dialogue systems where most of your interaction is formlessly asking random-ass questions are best for interacting with companions. Obsidian understands this. In Pillars of Eternity and Fallout New Vegas most of your dialogue options for party members is asking them for their ideas and opinions and they do a much better job of fleshing out their characters by letting them monologue for a bit.

Also, I think the reason why Dragon Age 2 (and Inquisition to a far lesser extent) does way better than Origins and the Mass Effect games for me is because Hawke kind of has a set personality outside the player. Just enough for party members to bounce off something.
 
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Nicholai said:
Hence why this is an unpopular opinion. Not that I'm saying the old system of repeatedly buying the same thing was "good" or even "marginally fun" - it was honestly rather annoying. But I think the current solution is a poor one.
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I think Blizzard solved this reasonably well. You can have the classic character leveling process and you can try out any class at max level for free. In addition you get 1 free character boost and can buy more.

FFXIV also has their leveling dungeon, Palace of the Dead, which quickly gets you up to max level (well, pre-Stormblood max level) and gives you all your tools to mess around with. Those are the two biggest MMOs around so I think this problem is somewhat taken care of.
 
Low drop rate of items for MMO is a mechanic that needs to be phased out. If i want to grind, then i would pull out my pasta maker and make some pasta.

Souls game need boss run mode for new game plus. I will even pay money on top of souls for it.

Endless Space 2 is odd, i somehow won a economic victory without warning.
 
VoidZero said:
Low drop rate of items for MMO is a mechanic that needs to be phased out. If i want to grind, then i would pull out my pasta maker and make some pasta.

Souls game need boss run mode for new game plus. I will even pay money on top of souls for it.

Endless Space 2 is odd, i somehow won a economic victory without warning.
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Then uh, why are you playing a themepark MMO? A game genre designed around repeatedly doing content for loot? There's an argument to be made that MMOs should be focused less on the endgame but this certainly ain't it.

I feel like a lot of this topic consists of people going "I'd love if it genre X was actually genre Y." Why not go with "I'd like more games that follow this sort of style as exemplified by this these other games or ideas?" It's way better discussion fodder!
 
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