teawrecks
@teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
- Comment on Steam Machine is huge for indie development 1 day ago:
Steam hardware has so far been pretty niche, though. If the user experience is smooth enough, a SM could replace many people’s xbox/playstation.
We’re like 5y into the PS5/XBSX, new games are jumping up to $70-100 each, and hardly any are platform exclusives. Msft have all but canceled the next Xbox, and if Sony tries to push the PS6 in a few years, I think there’s a world where a good chunk of people say nah.
And with the amount of attention Linux is getting from the win10 eol, we could be at the beginning of an historic inflection point in gaming.
- Comment on Valves first title with a 3 in it 2 days ago:
Yes, and the best jokes are famously the ones you need to explain. Sometimes the audience is wrong and they need to be set straight.
- Comment on 3 days ago:
Then Minecraft is what you’re looking for.
- Comment on What's a recent game you've tried playing that isn't worth the hype? 5 days ago:
Differentiation comes from role play, which is the least interesting part of the game for me.
Can you explain why you would play a TTRPG if you’re not interested in role play? Seems like a battle sim like warhammer, or just a video game might be the thing you’re looking for.
As a DM, the cooperative story telling IS the interesting part. D&D has never been an airtight game system, it’s a bunch if hand waving to give just enough illusion of structure and randomness so you don’t feel like you’re just arbitrarily deciding everything yourselves. But at the end of the day, you are. The characters and story you’re left with is the only thing of value.
- Comment on For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big? 1 week ago:
There are space games with procedural large scale galaxies to the point that the entire playerbase can only ever hope to see ~15% of the systems, but that’s why I put the >50% qualifier in there. That’s TOO big. Anyone can generate an effectively infinite procedural world, I want a large world.
When I had originally conceived of this, it was in the context of a pokemon MMO. You would have your home town, and as a trainer, or researcher, or rocket member, etc, you’d travel at a real-time pace akin to the show.
Alternative IP that it could work with are dragonball (imagine the playerbase on a months long search to find/fight over the dragonballs so they could awaken the dragon and make a wish to the devs), or Avatar (each player would have a chance to spawn in as a random bender. One player at any given time is the Avatar. Events happen to strengthen some benders and weaken others. Players make war and peace at will).
There would obviously be challenges in running these types of experiences, but currently it feels like the cost of standing up an MMO is so much that no one ever does anything interesting. Instead they just copy WoW.
- Comment on For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big? 1 week ago:
I don’t consider NMS to be an MMO. If everyone went to the same location, at best, you’d most likely only see a handful of players you’re instanced with (up to 32 from what a cursory search gives me). That’s kinda the sad state of what passes for an MMO these days, but I don’t accept it. That’s not even a full raid group in WoW.
But yeah, you could squint and say that that otherwise effectively produces the experience I’m asking for. I am looking forward to LNF for sure.
- Comment on For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big? 1 week ago:
I don’t think that means it didn’t work, I think that just means it’s not for everyone. I’m a firm believer that, “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. Small indie games take firm stances on their gameplay all the time, not every game is for everyone, and that’s ok, that’s how you get unique and interesting gameplay experiences. But that’s easy for and indie game to do because making an indie game is cheap.
MMOs have the unfortunate reality that they’re architecturally complex, and expensive to operate, and thus need to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible to justify their existence to investors. They don’t have the luxury of making the experience they want, which is why they all end up just copying WoW’s enshittified gameplay, but with less polish.
My hope is that this indie revolution we’re in expands to “large scale” multiplayer games. Not so massive that it’s prohibitively expensive to run, but not so small that it’s a ghost town. I think that’s when we’ll start to see interesting MMO experiences again.
- Comment on For those of you who enjoy open-world games, how big of a world is too big? 1 week ago:
WoW is objectively huge, but they made it feel tiny by putting fast travel options everywhere. I would guess that any two points in the world are no more than 5m from each other if routed perfectly.
I want there to exist one MMO where you “live” in a city, and traveling to another city is actually so inconvenient that you only do it if you have to. Not because I want to make the trek, but because I want there to be a world just large enough that any one person has usually seen only ~1%, but the playerbase in entirety has seen >50%. I don’t know if any such game exists.
- Comment on What are your favorite games from a worldbuilding standpoint? 1 week ago:
Hah, I had thought, well it’s not quite reincarnation, because you don’t come back as something new, you come back as yourself with the same memories. But I’m just noticing that it does seem like “the Big Problem” is very similar to what [my rudimentary understanding of] the Buddhist quest for transcendence is.
- Comment on What are your favorite games from a worldbuilding standpoint? 1 week ago:
Rainworld
spoiler
All living things are trapped in “The Cycle”, and no one likes it, they all want to die and be free of the burden of living. They called this “The Big Problem”. To try and find a solution to “The Big Problem”, people* built 3 AI that would constantly be running to try and compute a solution to The Big Problem. This requires a ton of energy, and an ocean’s worth of water to keep them cool. The AIs are generating so much heat that it evaporates oceans worth of water, resulting in periodic violent rainstorms (thus the name of the game). People moved to structures built above the clouds to be safe from the rain. One day, one of the AI finally solved The Big Problem, notified the other AIs that it was solved…and promptly died before sharing it. The remaining two AI (named “Looks to the Moon” and “Five Pebbles”) continue to iterate on solving the problem, but both have all but given up hope. You play as a Slugcat, a species specially evolved by the AI to squeeze through pipes and keep their systems clean.
…but when you start the game, you are merely trying to survive and explore a living ecology full of hostile creatures. The game doesn’t care if you understand any of the lore, it doesn’t care if you “finish” the game, it’s just there to be experienced.
- Comment on 'Valve does not get anywhere near enough criticism': DayZ creator Dean Hall says the 'gambling mechanics' of Valve's monetization strategy 'have absolutely no place' in videogames 2 weeks ago:
And you can build your own PC and peripherals, yet every aspect of the gaming industry is funded and driven by corporations. Always has been, and Linux gaming is no exception.
I specifically acknowledged the FOSS efforts to eliminate depenence on valve, I think it’s great, but even Bazzite uses the SteamDeck UI. Do you know if there’s a FOSS deck UI replacement that unifies all storefronts/repos, and works as smoothly? I want that to exist.
Steam is just objectively the smoothest linux gaming experience for the largest number of people right now. It’d be awesome if that wasn’t the case, but for now it is.
- Comment on 'Valve does not get anywhere near enough criticism': DayZ creator Dean Hall says the 'gambling mechanics' of Valve's monetization strategy 'have absolutely no place' in videogames 2 weeks ago:
I’ll be the first to say I don’t like Linux gaming’s dependence on valve. I wish steam wasn’t the best experience, and I applaud all the effort that the FOSS community puts in to keep them honest.
But for the “gambling” monetization in particular, this is really a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” situation. It’s on people/govts to regulate this. If Valve said tomorrow, “you’re right, we’re not going to monetize gambling anymore because we think it is unethical”, they would just lose to a competitor who is less ethical.
It’s the same as saying, “if you’re rich and are pro higher taxes, why don’t you just choose to pay more? Nothing is stopping you.” Because that’s not going to fix anything, it’s just a losing strategy. What you need is a system where everyone is required by law to behave in a way that benefits the society.
To that end, Valve’s most ethical move would be to lobby the govt to ban unethical monetization. I know they’re making bank, but whether they’re making enough to out-lobby all the others who are also doing this, I don’t know…also we all know the US is not exactly positioned for effective FTC policies right now…
- Comment on US government uses Halo images in a call to 'destroy' immigration, Microsoft declines to comment 2 weeks ago:
Guaranteed, he’s going to count the Console Wars in his list of wars he’s ended.
- Comment on Remedy CEO Tero Virtala steps down after nine years 3 weeks ago:
AW2 was incredible, but I knew it wouldn’t do well when I played it, because it’s too niche. I love the Weird Fiction universe they’re building, but it’s just not pulling the Resident Evil audience.
Firebreak I think was their attempt to monetize the IP, but oof, it’s just not fun. I feel like they could have gone more “friend slop” in tone and been much more successful. Imagine a game loop like Repo or Lethal Company, but set in the Oldest House, interacting with weird, goofy phenomena. Instead it’s a very dry shooting experience wrapped in a very dry upgrade system. I want to support them, but it feels like work to play this game…
- Comment on Xbox ditching hardware and exclusive games "makes sense," former Microsoft exec and Blizzard boss says, as "only a moron would continue" making consoles as games go third party 3 weeks ago:
More accurately, PCs are becoming consoles, but yes, they want to converge it all into a locked down hardware as a service industry.
- Comment on Ex PlayStation exec says Sony can't keep "increasing the graphics power" with new consoles after tech plateau, but PS5 has already "made almost every game a better game" 3 weeks ago:
The “paid more to work less” part is not tenable. The games that fit that bill that you’re thinking of represent less than 1% of their peers. They are outliers, not a sustainable industry; the exception, not the rule. For every Silksong there are maybe 100 that make just enough to make ends meet, and 1000 duds that will never pay for themselves that you’ve never heard of.
What you’re saying is you want fewer steady incomes and more lottery winners. Sure, that’d be nice, but it’s not a sustainable strategy.
Ex. Wildgate launched recently. They deliberately opted to sell the game for a flat $30 rather than going F2P/P2W. As a result, they regularly get reviewed negatively by people saying “dead game, greedy devs won’t lower the price to compete with F2P games” and “the cosmetics you unlock by playing look better than the ones you can buy” (yes, there are people unironically posting those as negative reviews).
So at least understand why the most common strategy is often exploitative, and why it’s actually not a simple solution that a bunch of armchair experts have figured out in a comments section.
- Comment on A player before me destroyed a bridge in [the Tides of Tomorrow] demo, so I had to build it again in this narrative adventure where your choices have consequences for others 4 weeks ago:
Don’t give From ideas lol
- Comment on A player before me destroyed a bridge in [the Tides of Tomorrow] demo, so I had to build it again in this narrative adventure where your choices have consequences for others 4 weeks ago:
How are you defining “live service single player” game? This is a narrative adventure game. I will be surprised if you ever actually interact with another player directly at all. The dev has said that it supports completely offline play.
- Comment on A player before me destroyed a bridge in [the Tides of Tomorrow] demo, so I had to build it again in this narrative adventure where your choices have consequences for others 4 weeks ago:
These comments are severely overestimating the level of autonomy players are given in this game. It’s just a branching story, where the branches one player is presented with are dependent on the branch another player chose. I imagine if only a single person plays this game, it will just make stuff up to make it seem like there are other players affecting the world.
Also, also the cynicism on Lemmy is a stale meta at this point. Be the change you wanna see or stfu.
- Comment on I am attempting to get into self hosting after a shockingly frightening experience. I am very lost though. 5 weeks ago:
They use OpenVPN for some reason. Wireguard is superior in every way. In case you set up a VPN.
- Comment on Scoop: Ubisoft cancelled a post-Civil War Assassin’s Creed last year 5 weeks ago:
This is accurate. They don’t care about the political instability aspect, because they don’t care about making political commentary. They just don’t want to publish something that is guaranteed to get review bombed and not sell as much as it could.
- Comment on More Online CO-OP Games should have option to pause 5 weeks ago:
Pausing in StarCraft allowed any player to pause, and any player to unpause. Additionally, each player could only pause a finite number of times (like 5 per game). I think this could work in nightreign.
The hard part is that there’s no chat in nightreign, so someone will pause and you have no idea if it’s legit or they’re just griefing.
- Comment on I finally decided to go full piracy against big companies 5 weeks ago:
There’s so much competition in gaming right now, and good AAA games are so few and far between, that I don’t see a need for piracy. For every $90 piece of garbage there are ten $20 diamonds (don’t forget Devolver in your list of good small companies). I don’t ever buy dlc/deluxe/etc editions unless the company/game has earned it (almost never).
I will admit, Rockstar creates some high quality experiences, but their monetization practices are down there with the worst of them.
I can’t justify not pirating, I just think for me the motivation isn’t strong enough right now. Too many affordable good games to choose from.
- Comment on I've been playing 'Ruby's Rebalanced HALO: CE' mod and it is fantastic. 1 month ago:
Brings me back to the days of modding Custom Edition. Good times…
- Comment on Relooted - Game made by South Africans has been bombarded by right-wingers 1 month ago:
“Does this game have any non-white or non-male characters?”
FTFY
- Comment on Hades II v1.0 Is Now Available! 1 month ago:
Nice, I’ve been holding off on playing it until 1.0. Might have to take a Silksong break and try it out.
- Comment on RFK Jr. Blames violent video games for Mass Shootings. 2 months ago:
What’s old is new again…
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 2 months ago:
If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I barely consider that one a run back. It’s like 40s to get to the boss from the bench. And at that point I the game, I noticed myself start hitting the bounce plants much more consistently after having to do this run many times. Up until then I hadn’t been forced to repeat the same small section yet.
And (staying vague to avoid spoilers), the bench itself was particularly “surprising” specifically because of the long gap without any benches leading up to it, forcing you to repeat the same long platforming/combat sections over and over. Players would not have been “surprised” by it if they weren’t so desperate for a bench.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 2 months ago:
I will need to play more of silksong to be able to comment fully, but I felt that, even though you could understandably say all the same stuff about Hollow Knight, I still do think that the only times I struggled in HK (on required content) I later found out about an upgrade that was available if i had looked that would have made the fight much easier (nail upgrade, ability, charm, more hp, etc).
No, not to the same degree as Elden Ring, i agree, but I do think HK’s exploration played a very similar role as it did in Elden Ring. In both games i would tell people to only bash your head against a boss if you want to hurt yourself, otherwise go explore.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 2 months ago:
Do you believe DS and Megaman could have been even more iconic if they had listened to players and made their runs back shorter?
My point is, it’s not like the designers didn’t know what they were doing, this is a very obvious aspect of their gameplay. And regardless of how minor inconveniences like this make us feel as players, we don’t know that it’s not precisely those lows that contrast with the highs to create the intended experiences which made those games cult hits to begin with. You wouldn’t look at a Rembrandt and say, “look how much of the painting is just black! You’re wasting all this space! You could add so much detail and context in there!”
I’m a firm believer that “given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. If players weren’t complaining about the run back, then they would be complaining about the empty flask drinking animation. Inconvenience is not a convincing argument to me. Just like any art, games are free to evoke any and all emotions. It only becomes a problem if the emotion they keep evoking is boredom lol. But even then, boredom is a valid tool on the artist’s palette; sometimes the only ones who are getting bored are the boring people.