Katana314
@Katana314@lemmy.world
- Comment on 'My Advice to Users Is to Accept Reality and Tune, or to Not Play' — Randy Pitchford Is at the 'Get a Refund From Steam' Stage of the Borderlands 4 PC Performance Backlash 19 hours ago:
Countdown to him getting fired in 3…2…3…4…8…49…
Because companies ultimately seem to love leaders that are toxic these days.
- Comment on The Purpose of Difficulty | GMTK Mini 1 day ago:
I think the death run back and the option of exploring for upgrades were always at odds. When you respawn, getting things back is your first task as a form of loss avoidance. But then you’re standing in front of the boss room, maybe after jumping some spike pits, and you might as well just go in. There’s no thought to going other places at that point.
Shovel Knight used a death run to reclaim your lost treasure, and it worked out because it plays as a linear platformer, egging you on into accomplishing the daring feat you just pulled; gating little important behind upgrades.
Soulslike Tunic basically abandoned the death run back, just having you lose 20 gold (which hangs in that spot), and the game didn’t really suffer for it especially because exploration of old areas is so key to that game.
- Comment on Trails in the Sky the 2nd Teaser (JP Version) - 空の軌跡 the 2nd 1 day ago:
I’d recommend you don’t watch this if you’ve yet to play the first game (either iteration). A few spoiler elements.
It was kind of a given that this would be made, since, while the first has a great set of conclusions, it also sets up a really compelling cliffhanger element. The two games were supposedly written as one originally, and then split to two since it was getting long.
Still, part of me predicts some people will play the upcoming remake, and then get so wrapped up in the ending they’ll just buy the old-fashioned SC so they don’t have to wait for the remake edition.
- Comment on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Tops 4.4 million sales - IGN 1 day ago:
This often happens to me in RPGs because I’m missing some combat mechanic or fundamental.
It’s made me want to design better optional tutorials for those games to help people discover certain strategies. Eg;
“Hey, you have many different tuning macguffins on this character, but it means their stats aren’t built to any one strength. For an example, try using 8 yellow macguffins to build them for taunting/defense so they can use their self-heal unique, and build up stun on enemies each time they’re attacked.”
Those things feel so witty to discover, but many RPGs now build up and prioritize so many systems it’s understandable people aren’t quickly attuned to them. What often gets me is thinking I’m not making the right decisions mid-combat, when my menu decisions around equipment/abilities are completely wrong.
- Comment on Microsoft still can't convince folks to upgrade to Windows 11 4 days ago:
My work computer is on W11. Notifications got much worse, and moved to a harder-to-reach shortcut. There’s a persistent bug with maximization, in which many forms of apps will suddenly take over the region normally reserved for the taskbar (no, I’m not referring to full screen modes) that so far as I can tell can only be fixed by logging out.
The UI is worse, making settings pages even more confusing. Windows Explorer has dived deep into iconography, while still not being clear about what those icons mean. The new context menus are missing options, so they need an extra one to go back to W10’s options.
This is of course setting aside their blatant lies about “It’s not spyware we promise we promise”, among so many other hundreds of problems. I’m doomed to stay on W10 for now to finish a project, but afterwards, I’ll be finding a distro I prefer.
- Comment on Day 422 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I've been playing 4 days ago:
I never played Remake, but when a YouTuber recently did a comparison video between some of their major scenes, I ended up respecting the original so much more.
A great one was when the plate falls. The original made directorial choices that emphasized the brutality of it all so much better, especially by choosing to cut the music. It just seems like Remake’s director was adding so many things simply because he could, making short and direct scenes so much worse by excess creation.
Of note, another JRPG from that general time period, Trails in the Sky, is being remade soon, and that one seemed quite a bit more faithful to me. Still taking liberties to change dialog, but only where it makes sense - they also greatly retooled the battle system with full respect for classic turntaking style.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 days ago:
That’s not always true when members of the team feel really motivated and inspired by a concept.
I’ve been in that zone a few times before. “Well, I’ve been working for a few hours. I guess I should take a break and play a game. …Or, I could just keep at it…?”
Of course, with such large teams now, you’re unlikely to see that happen to many of them. They’ll be working late, but usually zombies.
- Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week? 4 days ago:
Playing an indie mystery game called Dragon Detective. I’m on case 4 so far, it’s definitely held my attention with the story. It manages to do a good job with its worldbuilding.
- Submitted 5 days ago to games@lemmy.world | 0 comments
- Comment on bruh, i just realised that the last time i played Garrys Mod,Obama was still president lmao 5 days ago:
I’ve still been using it lately to animate a video. It’s nice that so many tools have been refined in that time.
- Comment on A demo for Digimon Story: Time Stranger is now available for PC, PlayStation, and Xbox – Digitally Downloaded 5 days ago:
This makes me realize the last time I interacted with Digimon was the age-old TV show that began with an Isekai.
I’m curious how the series has changed. Apparently some of the newer stories lean a bit darker?
- Comment on Borderlands 4 Launches To Mostly Negative Steam Reviews Over Performance Issues And Crashing 5 days ago:
When listening to the dev commentary of Valve games, they talk about how much work goes into level design planning even just for the sake of optimization, like clearly delineating barriers between major regions (doorways) so the engine can unload objects from other areas.
I get the impression the “First step easy” setup from UE5 may have made it so that more people can give us unoptimized messes, but still only a few rare devs understand proper optimization at all levels of development.
- Comment on 5 days ago:
When I run a social media site, it will be a rule to use uncensored terms, and any use of asterisks or alt-words like “unalive” will result in a warning or suspension.
- Comment on Xbox fans are compiling lists of all the Activision, Bethesda, and Microsoft games still missing from Xbox Game Pass — and it's pretty huge 6 days ago:
I mean, you changed the topic onto the subject of pricing, which is the main thing driving sentiment that Microsoft is anti-consumer. There are other smaller gaming subscriptions out there, and I don’t call many of them anti-consumer.
- Comment on Subscription models like Xbox Game Pass are "not properly valuing" developers, says former Bethesda exec 1 week ago:
It sounds plausible Sony and Microsoft don’t have very fair algorithms to decide what a dev earns for their subscription. That’s an internal element, and we don’t get to see that calculation.
Imagine a guy hears about Game Pass, and sees he can play Spiritfarer on it. “Spiritfarer!? That awesome emotional experience that everyone says they cried at? I’m definitely playing that!” 5-ish hours later, they’ve finished the game, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but the subscription is still going.
At this point, the subscriber decides they may as well play State of Decay 2 mindlessly the rest of the month, often without much interest, but trusts another excellent singleplayer indie darling will arrive next month.
I’d bet the algorithm may pay the SOD2 devs far more in that case because numbers show that’s what “kept them engaged”, not to mention live service games like SOD2 have DLC to entice people into.
Theres absolutely a danger in that thinking, since most people bought a PS5 after seeing Sony’s incredible singleplayer games, and I believe that’s primarily what gets people into Game Pass too.
- Comment on Xbox fans are compiling lists of all the Activision, Bethesda, and Microsoft games still missing from Xbox Game Pass — and it's pretty huge 1 week ago:
So this is basically an observation about raising prices. But I think there’s a misconception on social media that you have to be reading the news and on your soapbox to alert people to those things.
Pricing has always very readily affected people’s spending behavior. Not just people that follow gaming news, but people browsing GameStop for whatever’s new. We’ve even seen that - stats are showing people spent much less on games this year. Some people are even spending less through the option of going for a subscription rather than buying 8 games through the year. The publisher plan is certainly to tune up that cost with time, but personally, I don’t think that plan has a high chance of success.
And there’s a very worrying reality on the publisher side that gamers have many alternatives, especially as quality falls in these AAA products. You can imagine someone starved for a Soulslike might’ve spent $70 on generic copycat “Folly of the Dodgeroll 7”, if not for seeing Hollow Knight Silksong for $20 one shelf over.
So basically, I never hated the subscription model itself as a “weapon of capitalism”; just the constant attempts to shrinkflate as has been happening to most else.
- Comment on Xbox fans are compiling lists of all the Activision, Bethesda, and Microsoft games still missing from Xbox Game Pass — and it's pretty huge 1 week ago:
I have different reasons I hate MS and Game Pass specifically, but I was never convinced by this argument.
It works on the argument of “We would like to stop offering direct purchase models, and require consumers to play by subscription.” But no one has done that. No one has really come close to doing that.
People argue the price will steadily go up; and that’s one of the reasons I don’t play Game Pass anymore. I knew that I wouldn’t maintain access to the games on there, which is why I bought the ones I wanted to keep playing - not very many.
- Comment on Brad buys a house 1 week ago:
How do modern kids even develop a signature? They used to teach cursive and it’s based on that, but cursive isn’t used anymore
- Comment on Sexualized video games are not causing harm to male or female players, according to new research 1 week ago:
Much as I’d predict support for that conclusion, I feel like there’s room to doubt the survey process used - as has often been the case for studies on gamer behavior.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
This excuse stopped working the day I opened a tough-as-nails game like Furi, saw it had a difficulty menu, said “That’s nice”, and went back to challenging myself against the bosses on default settings.
It’s such a huge cop-out of self control, and especially falls to acknowledge that the forms of difficulty in a game are often varied - and someone might suck at only one of them.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong Sparks Debate About Difficulty and Boss Runbacks 1 week ago:
I never actually liked FromSoft’s themselves, but several Soulslikes I really enjoyed did away with runbacks, or always had checkpoints right before bosses.
I really just want people to start evaluating each design decision Dark Souls made on its own - stop worshipping the whole as being perfect, because it most definitely is not. So many of the knowledge checks (poise, anyone?) are just there for experienced players to lord over confused shrubs.
- Comment on Hands-On: Borderlands 4 wants you to forget Borderlands 3 ever happened 1 week ago:
I certainly remember getting some meaningful and surprising twists in the Telltale game, at least.
- Comment on Scary games. . ? 1 week ago:
One game that nailed PS2 aesthetic while also having its own identity is Homebody. It’s mostly puzzles, but has a very creepy mansion aesthetic and always has you worried about the monster. It’s a “Groundhog Day” game where the protagonist remembers dying, and is caught in a loop.
Another one I enjoyed with a bit more combat is Tormented Souls. The sequel is coming soon, too.
- Comment on UK government trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot finds no clear productivity boost 1 week ago:
Ugh, thought this could’ve referred to a Trial as in “All rise for the judge”, not Trial as in “Your free trial has expired”.
We’re way overdue to put AIs on former trials.
- Comment on Hollow Knight: Silksong is out now on Steam - and it broke Steam servers for 15 minutes and counting now 1 week ago:
I’m gonna be real with you: I don’t like Dark Souls. It felt poorly designed and obtuse with no payoff. But, it took me a long time to learn it’s completely unconstructive to bash it in places where people are admiring it. Whether I like it or not, other people do.
If you must, give a word of caution so people know what to expect. “It’s a Metroidvania, I didn’t like it because it’s very black and white, and goes hard on difficulty.”
- Comment on 007 First Light – Gameplay Reveal 1 week ago:
Sometimes it’s an unfortunate demo effect where the devs have a form of gameplay they prefer that just doesn’t impress investors on a big screen. So, they shift toward the run-and-gun playstyle.
I seem to remember getting surprised by some AAAs in this way, where I expected them to be brainless action, then find myself strategizing in ways that E3 didn’t show since those bits are slower paced. Haven’t watched the video just yet though.
- Comment on Left 4 Dead creator teasing new four player co-op shooter 1 week ago:
That video is completely out of date. I watched a sampling of the bugs they were showing, and none of them appear for me, even when playing with bots.
I remember it being shared on release, and its focus on things like physics within maps was a very specific thing - after Half-Life 2 many games gave up on physics especially in online, because it was more likely to lead to glitchy and unexpected behavior than emergent gameplay.
There’s so much in that video you’d have to pick out what matters to make your case, but to take melee reactions: B4B didn’t want the shove to be so powerful or delay the horde much, so it made sense zombies wouldn’t fall to the ground from one shove; the animation length would end up locking up the difficulty.
Death reactions is another gameplay choice. With automatic weapons, I wasted alot of ammo in L4D2 simply because it wasn’t instantly clear an enemy was dead - they were just playing out their lengthy Oscar death. Sometimes it’s a tradeoff between showcasing the enemy design, and showcasing the weapon’s effects when dozens of other enemies are bearing down.
- Comment on Alternatives to Twitch and YouTube for livestreaming gaming? 2 weeks ago:
I feel like a growing solution would be to simulcast to Twitch as well as other platforms, and hopefully slowly encourage users to view via the other platforms.
Kudos to the OP - I stopped watching Twitch when Bezos went full Nazi, but couldn’t get YouTube off my list.
- Comment on Left 4 Dead creator teasing new four player co-op shooter 2 weeks ago:
Maybe it matches with my hate of L4D’s high-level-focused Versus mode, but I couldn’t make it past two games of Evolve, while I’ve played a lot more B4B.
- Comment on Left 4 Dead creator teasing new four player co-op shooter 2 weeks ago:
I’m still not sure what people disliked most about it. I installed it again relatively recently and had a lot of fun.
It’s certainly following some different concepts than Left 4 Dead, but I really like some of the resource management and build planning you can do.