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I hate what video games have become

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Re: I hate what video games have become

#531

Post by gigaflop »

paulmd wrote: post #484
gigaflop wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In something like TF2, I'd probably rely more on the player's name than what they were wearing. If I recognize the name (even if only in the context of the one match), and know roughly how good they are, I can have my mental preference of who I prioritize. I usually play Deep Rock Galactic, which has some non-cosmetic ways to judge people's experience. Promotion(like prestige) of a class is indicated by a border colo…

The TF2 player base is too big to recognize by name outside of smaller community servers (it's still about 100k peak and this is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago at its historical peak). Sometimes you may see one or two repeat players but mostly it's ships passing in the night and that's OK! There is something to be said for games that everyone is competitive for an hour and then everyone goes home. There is a…

I feel like your arguments on plumage could equally be applied to lower-cost cosmetics, to the point where being able to recognize that someone is 'that specific Heavy', is more important than 'a Heavy with the limited-release Sandvich Holster', and probably easier/faster.

The holster is rare, and maybe you recognize that it's rare, but they could have just gotten it out of a drop and kept it. The Heavy with the funny flip-flops and sunglasses is probable more recognizable at-a-glance, but could have bought a bunch of cheap cosmetics for a few dollars on the market.

And in the case of keeping an uber ready, won't you have to stay pocketed long enough to learn if someone is a good or less-good choice? Even if it's raining hell on your position, you'd have a rough view of the Heavy and a kill feed that highlights the assists you're getting from them. What more is there to look for?

As for the Battlefield games you mention, my biggest issue in 5 was that all of the player models seemed to blend into the background. Most of the time, I wasn't able to spend brainpower trying to figure out who is which type of class, simply because I was too busy trying to figure out if some dull, misshapen blob was part of the map or trying to kill me. Combined with the general feel of the game (poor, imo), I was never motivated to spend enough time on it to get into anything serious. Haven't bought another Battlefield game since, and BF5 was on a steep sale at the time.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#533

Post by AlwaysRock »

ericsoderstrom wrote: post #487
dado3212 wrote: post #7

I have basically the opposite opinion of this article. I often hold up Rocket League as an example of a great free-to-play game. 1) You 100% can unlock a lot of cosmetic items through free play. 2) The items that you buy have absolutely no impact on gameplay and are just visuals. For the same reason that people wear nice clothes in real life, why are you surprised that some people want to look cool in a video game? A…

I think it is a problem though when a game's revenue mostly comes from cosmetics, as it shifts the developer incentives away from "developing a game that lots of people want to buy and play" to "making the type of game that lends itself well to lots of cosmetic micro transactions". These are often pretty different types of games and it would be sad if the former were entirely replaced by the latter.

Yeah but if the game isnt interesting than the cosmetics dont sell.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#534

Post by colinmhayes »

rovek wrote: post #383
OtomotO wrote: post #151

As a (non game) developer, I can say, thay free to play is instantly dead on arrival for me. The moment something is known to become or becomes free to play is the moment I lose all interest. The dishonesty in the system itself is what makes this unbearable for me. Developers need to eat, Managers need to eat, Marketeers need to eat... And sometimes psychologists doing evil mindtricks and supporting gambling addictio…

For me the biggest negative to F2P is in competitive games, so especially Rocket League in this case, because being F2P means that the competitive element and matchmaking system is 100% worthless.

League of Legends is the most popular competitive game in the world, and is free to play. Calling the competitive aspect and matchmaking worthless in f2p games is incredibly naive.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#535

Post by colinmhayes »

Strom wrote: post #421
comrh wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What aspect is pay to win?

You need to pay for champions, they are not unlocked for free.

The best champions for new players are the ones you start with though. By the time you're ready for the other ones you've earned enough in game money to buy them.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#536

Post by LargeWu »

oneoff786 wrote: post #447
LargeWu wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FIFA is one of the worst offenders, because it's not just cosmetic. There's a constant flood of player cards of escalating ability, and you have to either keep grinding for objectives, or drop tons of cash, just to stay competitive. I've quit playing because of it because it just stopped being fun, even as a casual player.

How bad can this really be without ceasing to be a realistic feeling game? Like I would imagine you’ve got just a few stats like speed, endurance, ball handling and kicking accuracy. What does the game look like with base F2P characters vs top tier characters? Are they just laughably faster on the field?

Yeah, speed is one of the key meta aspects, and having a boost in that area is a major advantage if the player is good at other aspects as well. At some point your players just can't keep up. A new version of the game is released end of September every year, and by Christmas it's borderline unplayable unless you keep escalating.

Additionally, there are daily/weekly/monthly challenges that require you to do certain things, like score a goal with a player from the Belgian league in 10 different games. So players will score to achieve their goal and then disconnect, and just waste everybody's time. Or the objective will be "Win 10 games", and the community has decided that if you give up the first goal during one of these challenges, you're expected to just concede immediately. Otherwise the opposing player will take long pauses, perform every goal celebration and replay, anything to annoy you into quitting. It's become really toxic, all because of the rewards that are at stake.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#537

Post by ajmurmann »

Semaphor wrote: post #90

I’m glad there is this whole parallel universe of amazing single player (or MP-optional) games with absolutely no dark patterns, loot boxes or any of the shit people who play MP games have to put up with. I buy a game, and unless I get the DLC(s)/Expanions pack(s), that’s all I’ll ever have to pay. Civilization V: Over 2000 hours. Pathfinder: Kingmaker/Wrath of the righteous: Over 1000 hours each. Stellaris [0]: Almo…

The same is true for most AAA single player games as well. God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Zelda Breath of the Wild, Souls games. None of these have microtransactions.

The milk only seems to sour once there is a significant multiplayer component. GT7 sticks out as a recent example where the presence of multiplayer negatively impacts single player as well.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#538

Post by rolph »

midasuni wrote: post #215
bootloop wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurd. So you also don't use any software products which are a) free to use or b) habe a free tier?

Back in the 90s shareware was common, you’d get the first level of Duke Nukem, but to get the rest you had to pay That’s closer to the “free tier” stuff, and a very different model to modern “freenium” games.

also if you wanted to you could generate your own levels and manipulate the skins for the game. there used to be a big scene for this spanning many games, for free and thats the kind of game i want to pay 50 or 60 bucks for and get a disk or zip. beyond that it seems im not a gamer anymore,specifically because of what contemporary gaming has become.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#539

Post by zzo38computer »

I agree with this; there are these and other problems. However, not all computer games are designed like this.

My opinion is, the game should be made to be standalone. No internet connection should be required for the game to work (unless you wish to join an official tournament that runs using the internet, perhaps). It should be independent of the time, date, etc. It should be independent of other instances of the same game on the computer.

There are other problems too with some games, such as some are too easy. Some have too many cutscenes. Some take up too much disk space and/or RAM. etc.

Fortunately, there are still some good ones. One case of this is some people will write a computer game for older systems (e.g. NES/Famicom) and then you can run in an emulator of your choice (or on the real hardware if you have it); the emulator may include capabilities such as controls remapping, save states, etc. But there are also games written for native code too, that can also be good.

See comment 30827853 (and its replies) for some comments about dark patterns; I will write a comment there, too (later today, probably).

Re: I hate what video games have become

#540

Post by School-Cotton »

thot_experiment wrote: post #400
School-Cotton wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lot of assertions here about how society should be run without any actual argumentation.

Fair enough, it's not a great comment. I don't really know how society should be run, and I shouldn't have offhandedly emphasized a couple things that I think might lead us to a solution. That being said I'll stand by artificial scarcity being bad thing and clarify that while I don't have some master plan on how to create a functioning society where we don't have to impose artificial scarcity on the digital world; I…

> That being said I'll stand by artificial scarcity being bad thing and clarify that while I don't have some master plan on how to create a functioning society where we don't have to impose artificial scarcity on the digital world; I absolutely think that is something we should be dedicating a lot of effort to. I reject the premise that we need to deny some people things that can be copied essentially for free.

Again this just sounds like an emotional argument -- you seem convinced on a purely intuitive level that artificial scarcity is bad without actually explaining rationally how the harm it does outweighs the benefits.

There is a _very simple_ argument (which I'm not claiming is _true_ in all cases, but it is at least compelling, so anyone claiming the contrary needs to address it) in favor of artificial scarcity: taking away a major monetization strategy (often the only viable one) massively reduces the incentive to create high-quality products and we all end up poorer for those cultural outputs not existing.

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