Katana314 Now • 100%
I’ve heard this often, but most of the games I see people consume live updates for weren’t initially planned to get such constant updates.
Ex: Dead by Daylight. Released as dumb party horror game with low shelf life. Now on its 8th plus year. Fortnite: Epic’s base building game that pivoted to follow the battle royale trend, then ten other trends. DOTA 2: First released as a Warcraft map. GTA V: First released as a singleplayer game before tons of expansion went into online. Same with Minecraft.
It just doesn’t make sense to pour $500M into something before everyone agrees it’s a fun idea. There’s obviously nothing gained in planning out the “constant content cycle” before a game’s first public release.
Katana314 Now • 100%
Reminds me of many “The reason why Call of Duty sucks” arguments I heard as a kid.
Like, my own tastes agree with you. But you don’t bring that argument into game industry discussion because fact is, the game is doing very well financially and obviously many players disagree with you. So you have to take that data, and work back to decide what the logical conclusion is.
Katana314 Now • 100%
There’s still a bit of market force, but it comes in the form of other game developers.
Imagine you went to the grocery store, and saw Hardin McCombsky’s Super-Premium Dry Seasoned Cheese was $1000 a wedge. How ridiculous! How do they expect us to pay that much for that cheese?
Only…Shaw’s Bargain Dry Cheese is $4. And it’s not the same thing - but it’s still pretty good.
Basically, this kind of thing works out in many other industries. Sometimes on rare occasion, one producer makes things MUCH better than competitors and can demand a much higher price because no one else comes close.
To give a more game-relevant example, BattleBit is $15 and compared favorably to Battlefield. In other cases where there’s no competitor and the developer hasn’t lowered their price for sales, it may be because they’re confident they did good work and made a good game. Factorio is famous for this.
Katana314 Now • 100%
As well as OP’s problems getting dud keys, I would warn that key resellers often contribute to the pickpocketing industry.
Tourist gets lost in Indonesia, kid grabs his wallet. In the time between then and when the tourist calls their bank, the kid buys as many legitimate keys of Game XYZ as he can using the tourist’s credit card, and sells them to G2A.
The bank refunds the fraudulent transactions, but even if the key retailer (eg, Greenmangaming) reports the transactions to the game dev, the dev is often pressured to not revoke the keys since it just leads to poor press off later customers that believe themselves “legitimate” for spending money on the game.
Sites like isthereanydeal.com give more legitimate tracking info and avoid key-sharing sites; the copies sold were obtained directly from publishers. They can also give price history to give you an idea of whether the game will go on sale again soon.
Katana314 Now • 100%
It also might make sense that they don't want to give details about exactly when people are successfully prosecuted, so they don't give a new guideline of how to skirt around the rules.
I recall Valve has effectively acted the same way about anti-cheat; they tend not to go into detail about how some new release works, and will silently collect data on who they know to be cheaters for a long time.
Katana314 Now • 100%
Right, but this only works if you have DuckDuckGo set as your search engine.
Katana314 Now • 100%
Reminds me of that time the Netflix UI accidentally merged show descriptions.
Katana314 Now • 96%
Remember, folks: Microsoft kept these people, and fired the ones who made Hi-Fi Rush.
That, alone, was my signal the entire console was going to slowly burn down.
Katana314 Now • 100%
That seems to be the most specific issue the article is citing.
Maybe their firing wave hit too many departments.
Katana314 Now • 100%
From what I understand, things like squeezing through walls were supposed to go away with the PS5. But, Ragnarok is still available on PS4 to cater to mass audiences, so they need that extra bit of time for loading.
Ironically, one game that’s handled open worlds a bit better is on a console less capable of handling them. Breath of the Wild uses it to promote exploring towards vantage points and then interesting sights.
Sea of Thieves does something similar. You start a session, and want treasure, so you take a basic and boring assignment with a treasure map. BUT, you spy a bunch of interesting happenings throughout the ocean and beaches on your way, and so your adventure becomes more complex. Coming across those at random feels a lot more fun than picking them as a targeted assignment on an objective board.
To be fair, even if the open world is not well used, it can provide a sense of connection for the world. It can be more fun than just having a mission select screen.
Katana314 Now • 100%
The original creator has accepted the meme treatment of his original comic, so I wouldn’t consider it beyond the pale for him to do a bit of self parody for a current political issue.
Katana314 Now • 88%
I’m always surprised Ubisoft gets so much flak when other developers are doing much the same thing.
That said, my main annoyance with Tsushima is: You’re not a hero. 99% of side quests end with the people you were helping ending up dead, and possibly some other nameless NPCs rescued. It just feels tragic.
It’s a perpetual issue where it’s easier to code in 20 more enemies than 2 or 3 more innocent, living people to have conversations with.
Katana314 Now • 100%
I feel like the anime art style can make women of any age look pretty cute - which makes it hard for me to understand why they choose to make all of their combat-experienced, leader-professionals just entering high school or even earlier.
Dana is some sort of friggin leader-priest, and hasn’t even hit puberty. Japan is so weird sometimes.
Katana314 Now • 83%
I sometimes understand the annoyance of poor content, but in Lemmy that’s a motivator to go put up better content.
Katana314 Now • 100%
Throwing a line from Hitman in the mix to make it more confusing:
“If it looks like a conspiracy, it probably isn’t.”
Katana314 Now • 100%
If you like the random irrelevant conversations of Metal Gear, you might like Tales of Berseria. It’s basically a band of pirates, lead by an edgelord but with many people that are very world-traveled, so you get a lot of encyclopedic explanations of why the world is the way it is, or what kind of pet they’d prefer. Certainly much less happy-go-lucky conversation than the rest of the Tales games.
Katana314 Now • 100%
Easy to forget both Sony and Microsoft had nothing to do with gaming previously. Even MS had terrible inroads in spite of games for PC being written in DirectX.
I felt like Amazon and Google had pretty good chances. It was only due to terrible direction both managed to screw it up.
Katana314 Now • 100%
Dogs bowling may be a joke, but it’s surprising how many dogs enjoy skateboarding once they learn the basics.
Katana314 Now • 95%
If nothing else, it is kind of fun that they’ve merged universes a bit.
In Watch Dogs Legion, DedSec is contacted by the Assassin Order who needs their help taking down Templars that are working with Albion - basically merging protagonists/villains of both series.
Ghost Recon has also previously guest starred Sam Fisher and operators from Siege.
store.steampowered.com
Another game with a unique pixel art look to it that runs its gameplay using interviews and finding contradictions. A demo is out, which is basically only a set of 3-4 testimonies and moves pretty quickly.
This might be a slightly unusual attempt at a prompt, but might draw some appealing unusual options. The way it goes: Suggest games, ideally the kind that you believe would have relatively broad appeal. Don't feel bad about downvotes, but do downvote any game that's suggested if *you have heard of it before* (Perhaps, give some special treatment if it was literally your game of the year). This rule is meant to encourage people to post the indie darlings that took some unusual attention and discovery to be aware of and appreciate. If possible, link to the Steam pages for the games in question, so that anyone interested can quickly take a look at screenshots and reviews. And, as a general tip, anything with over 1000 steam reviews probably doesn't belong here. While I'd recommend that you only suggest one game per post, at the very most limit it to three. If I am incorrect about downvotes being inconsequential account-wide, say so and it might be possible to work out a different system.
store.steampowered.com
An HD re-release of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, Dual Destinies, and Spirit of Justice, for Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PS4.
Sales follow the tradition of supply and demand. Products come out at their highest price because of expectations and hype. Then, as interest wanes, the publisher continues to make *some* sales by reducing price to tempt the less interested parties. But this isn't the formula for all games. While we might agree that games from 2000 or even 2010 are "showing their age", at this point 5 to 8-year-old games are less and less likely to be seen as 'too old' by comparison to hot releases. Some publishers have picked up on that theme, and doubled down on the commitment to the idea that their games have high longevity and appeal; making the most of their capitalistic venture for better or worse. I recently was reminded of an indie game I had put on my wishlist several years back, but never ended up buying because it simply had never gone on sale - but looking at it now, not only did it maintain extremely positive user reviews, I also saw that its lowest all-time price was barely a few dollars off of its original price. In the AAA space, the easiest place to see this happening is with Nintendo. Anyone hoping to buy an old Legend of Zelda game for cheap will often be disappointed - the company is so insistent on its quality, they pretty much never give price reductions. And, with some occasional exceptions, their claims tend to be proven right. In the indie space, the most prominent example of this practice is **Factorio**, a popular factory-building game that has continued receiving updates, and has even had its base price *increased* from its original (complete with a warning announcement, encouraging people to purchase at its lower price while it's still available). Developers deserve to make a buck, and personally I can't say I've ever seen this practice negatively. Continuing to charge $25 for a good game, years after it came out, speaks to confidence in a product (even if most of us are annoyed at AAA games now costing $70). I sort of came to this realization from doing some accounting to find that I'd likely spent over $100 a year on game "bundles" that usually contain trashy games I'm liable to spend less than a few hours in. For those without any discussion comments, what games on Steam or elsewhere have you enjoyed that you've never seen get the free advertising of a "40% off sale"?
We get a lot of sequels in the gaming world, and a common criticism is when a series isn't really innovating enough. We're given an open world game that takes 40 hours, with DLC stretching it out 20 more, and see a sequel releasing that cut out it's late 30 hours because players were already getting bored. Meanwhile, there's some other types of games where any addition in the form of "It's just more levels in the series" is perfectly satisfying. Often, this is a hard measure to replicate since these types of series often demand the creators are very inventive and detailed with their content - this likely wouldn't be a matter of rearranging tiles in a level editor to present a very slightly different situation. What I've often seen is that such games will add incredibly small, insignificant "New Gameplay Features" just so they have something to put on the back of the box, but that tend to be easily forgotten in standard play (yet, the game as a whole still ends up being fun). The specific series that come to mind for me with "Level-driven games" are: *Hitman* - the way the levels are made naturally necessitates some creativity both from the level makers to come up with unique foibles and weaknesses to each target, and from the players to discover both the intended and unintended methods of elimination. *Ace Attorney* - While they series has come up with various magical/unusual methods for pointing out contradictions in court, the appeal is still in the mysteries themselves, and it's never needed much beyond the basic gameplay, and the incredibly detailed and well-animated characters to hook people in. *Half-Life* - For its time, anyway. While its Episodes certainly made efforts to present new features, quite often the star of Half-Life games isn't really in any core features or gameplay mechanics, but in the inventive designs of its levels, tied in with a penchant for environmental storytelling; making you feel the world was more than an arrangement of blocks and paths. For a long time, the wait for Valve-made episodes was alleviated with modder-made levels hoping to approach the inventive qualities of the original games. *Yakuza* - While the series has undergone a major overhaul moving to JRPG combat mode, for 6+ games it satisfied a simple formula: Dramatic stories driven by cutscenes, as well as a huge variety of mini quests, of boundless variety and very low logic. For many of their games, they weren't doing a whole lot to re-contextualize their core gameplay, being fisticuffs combat, and it still worked out well (plus, they're continuing to go that route for games like Kiryu's last game) To open up discussion, and put the question as simply as I can: Which games do you follow, that you wish could be eternally supported by their devs, by simply continuing to release new "level packs" or their functional equivalent, with no need to revamp gameplay formulas?
eggcorn-games.itch.io
Occult Crime Police is an indie-made, Ace Attorney-inspired mystery game about a local town sheriff investigating crazy occurrences in her small, four-figure population hometown of Boomtown, USA. The game is CRAZY-detailed with its animations, humor, tons of "Present Evidence" conversations, and it's available for FREE (or whatever donation price you'd like to offer). You don't go to any courtrooms, but it's the same idea, similar to the Edgeworth games; winning arguments to accuse the murder through contradictions and collected evidence. The first case has been out for a while, but recently they've premiered case 2: Medium At Large. And yes, there is at least one stepladder joke.
store.steampowered.com
Just happened to come across this one on Steam, and the reviews are generally positive. Not expecting it to reach the best points of the best Ace Attorney games, but certainly seems to be worth a try.
youtu.be
Apparently coming to the public test beta on Steam today.
www.youtube.com
Short segment on the subject, but he was aware of the issue long before many other channels. (If timestamp code does not work, go to 11:00)
This should apply to internet purchases as well as retail, up to a $2,500 limit on a single item.
Facecamping has pervaded DBD since its release, and this anniversary, Behaviour announced a planned change to the game's core mechanics to disincentivize camping. The changes are not live, or in any PTB, and there has been no date announced for it; nor has there been any demonstration of its particulars yet. As of yet, we've just had the concept described to us. The summary, from [their website](https://deadbydaylight.com/news/anniversary-gameplay-updates/): ----------------- With this update, whenever a Survivor is being face-camped by a Killer, a meter will build over time. This meter is only visible to that Survivor. Once it’s completely full, they will be able to escape from a Hook without need of another Survivor, gaining Endurance and the Haste Status Effect. Note that this system can activate in both the first and second Hook stages. # WHAT IMPACTS THE METER FILL-RATE? The meter fills when the Killer is nearby, with the rate of fill increasing based on the Killer’s proximity to the Hooked Survivor. Please note that this will not impact instances of proxy-camping, nor the times when a Killer is actively defending a Hook from a group of swarming Survivors. In fact, the presence of other Survivors in the vicinity will reduce the meter fill-rate, though the rate itself will never be negative. # WHAT DISTANCE QUALIFIES AS FACE-CAMPING? A Killer being fewer than 5 meters away from a Hooked Survivor will significantly increase the system’s fill meter. Between 5 and 10 meters, the rate of fill will still raise, albeit not quite as quickly. If the Killer is more than 16 meters from the Hooked Survivor, the system will not activate. Please note that the presence of additional Survivors will have an impact on the rate-of-fill, slowing it down. # WILL THIS INTERACT WITH PERKS? If a Survivor can self-unhook as a direct result of being face-camped, they will be able to use any Perk that triggers following an unhook – for example, Dead Hard and Off The Record. Survivors who escape via this system will also be granted the Endurance status as usual. # WHAT ABOUT TWO-STORY MAPS? As it stands, this system will remain active and function as intended on Maps with multiple floors like The Game or Midwich Elementary School. We’d like to clarify that this may possibly lead to edge cases where a Killer is falsely punished for face-camping, so we will be monitoring this closely following release and adjusting as needed. -------------- What are your thoughts on this system? Do you think we'll see it hit live? Do you think it can be abused? Crucially, will it fix face-camping? Or do you think tunneling will become the next point of blame for people's fun?
I have traditionally used GFYCat for a few things, but their uptime has been questionable lately; on last use, clips that I uploaded stayed in the "Encoding" phase indefinitely, and were discarded when I came back. Searching for "video hosting site" tends to produce ads for many business-focused cases, not necessarily made for embedding into a site like Lemmy.
I’ve been working for several years on a novel, and in a lot of ways it’s been fun. I have some very interconnected themes, some plot twists that tread the line between being surprising, and meaningful, and a fair few characters that develop through a lengthy confrontation. I’ve started to consult an editor about tuning it into something publishable. Due to the way I was writing it, I only recently got the tools to calculate a total word count, and we realized that in the end, it’s far longer than I wanted it to be; on the order of 370,000 words. Apparently people like George R. R. Martin can sometimes get away with this length, but I understand this is way out of line for a first time author. I’ve been looking at ways of trimming this down, and admittedly, there’s a few chapters with low hanging fruit I can get rid of; but I think I’m in need of a lot more than that. My editor was suggesting getting rid of entire main characters that don’t have as much development as others. But at a lot of turns, it feels like trimming out X causes 5 other problems (plot points lost, throwbacks disconnected) that might threaten to either make the book soulless, not make sense, or even fail to reduce word count when I tie things together. The option of simply splitting it into 2+ books has been there, but…it doesn’t seem practical. There’s a very clear villain, with a steady buildup to their dethroning, that would feel unsatisfying pushed off to another story. If I assume publishers, or even just readers, would show only mild interest in a 300k word book, it makes me feel a bit stuck. I’ve already committed a lot of time to the story, and it feels grueling to go back and redo large parts of it; while also aiming to make it shorter. Curious if anyone has thoughts on what they’d do in this situation.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/73425 > Boston has always been a confusing city for transit. Recently, in an effort to improve the Somerville region of the city, the construction group extending the green line completed work on a walking and biking path that follows the green line's tracks, connecting the Magoun Square area, through to the new stations at Gilman Square, East Somerville, and Lechmere. > > The most significant part of the new extension is that it takes pedestrians and cyclists past two major obstacles of the area; the MacGrath Highway, a four-lane road with high-speed traffic, scant crossings, and a history of cyclist deaths, and the "Inner Belt" area, a network of blocked-off rail tracks for the railways coming from North Station. > > The community path's new end destination at Lechmere takes pathgoers through Cambridge Crossing, a rising center that runs many outdoor events, through to connections that take people across the Charles River Dam into downtown, or through North Point Park and the pedestrian North Bank Bridge to reach Charlestown and the Navy Shipyard.