I hate what video games have become • Hacker News Board

Re: I hate what video games have become

#581

Post by evandale » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:21 PM UTC

holler wrote: post #66

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…

One complaint I've had with RL recently is that it seems like they've put all their energy into new visuals and cosmetics while leaving the game mostly unchanged. The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix; spheres, tubes, different physics, goals in the center, figure 8 map(?), embankments (like map in season 1), etc. I guess it's simp…

>The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix

They tried that with the original wasteland map and there was huge pushback from the community and people demanded the maps be standardized.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#582

Post by evandale » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:25 PM UTC

bart_spoon wrote: post #303

holler wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One complaint I've had with RL recently is that it seems like they've put all their energy into new visuals and cosmetics while leaving the game mostly unchanged. The standard multi ranked map sometimes feels boring and I've wondered why they don't add different types of maps to the mix; spheres, tubes, different physics, goals in the center, figure 8 map(?), embankments (like map in season 1), etc. I guess it's simp…

The reason is because people absolutely hated that Tokyo map with the embankments, myself included. Rocket League is unique in that the core gameplay is so good, that messing around with it is just a bad idea. It’s like asking why there aren’t new pieces being released for Chess, or why people don’t start adding unconventional elements to a soccer field. It’s because novelties like those take away from what is alread…

Oh god, I forgot about how awful that Tokyo map was. I enjoyed the wide slightly sloped wasteland though.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#583

Post by philipov » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:32 PM UTC

setr wrote: post #544

philipov wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not have to pay for champions, you can unlock them for free using easily-obtainable Blue Essence. Paying to unlock champions is pay-to-progress, because it gets you caught up to everyone else faster, but doesn't give you a competitive advantage.

You say progress, but it’s kind of both an endless treadmill and you’re weaker usually by lack of options; When I used to play LoL, like 5-7 years ago, I was playing a rate of like 3-4 hours daily, which barely scraped by the amount of essence needed to buy the next releases champion, let alone the runes system they had introduced at the time (don’t know if it’s still around) which had a fairly dramatic impact on the…

You don't need options. It's best to play around 3 champions for your main position, and 1 or 2 for the other 4 positions. That means you want around 11 champions in your pool. More than that is too difficult to improve with. Let's round that up to 16 champions and give a bit more flexibility and experimentation. This is all you really need, and you will get it very quickly. By the time the meta changes, or you've played it enough to consider changing direction, you'll have more champions unlocked.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#584

Post by pharke » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:33 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #405

__ryan__ wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look “good”? Come on. If not having the Pickle Rick decal for your car makes you play worse it has nothing to do with looking “good”. Perhaps look “like I own this exclusive cosmetic”, which applies to offline as well, don’t you think? The real problem is that loot boxes are gambling, and are addictive, period. It triggers something in otherwise rational people, especially children, that makes it feel good to spend m…

At some level it probably does. Even in Rocket League, which is more cosmetic than most, if your teammates are passing to you more than they would have with the default skin, then you'll do better. As a medic in team fortress 2, I usually pocket and ubercharge the players with cosmetics. It's an important team resource, and the odds of someone with a "default" skin making good use of it are fairly low. Much like plum…

If you make all skins and cosmetics available to everyone then you're back to square 1 and people will use some other heuristic to decide who they should pass to. I think this is actually an argument for paid cosmetics, it would improve gameplay for the people who spend the most time playing the game by allowing them to identify other people who also dedicate a lot of time and money to the game.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#585

Post by kkjjkgjjgg » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #574

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is just certain games that rightfully have a bad reputation, not all F2P games. As others said, in rocket League or Fortnite you don't get advantages from buying things. You can buy levels in Fortnite, but they only unlock cosmetics.

It depends on the game. If cosmetics are the only (or primary) reward a game offers, then I still feel that it matters. If cosmetics are a purely orthogonal thing, then I agree that its not an issue.

Fortnite only has cosmetics as rewards if you buy the battle pass, which costs less than 10$ for a season that usually lasts about 3 months. That is less than for example World of Warcraft used to cost, which was more like 15$/month (iirc).

It is an ongoing massively multiplayer game which also incurs server costs, so I don't think asking for a voluntary subscription is too much.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#586

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:03 PM UTC

oneoff786 wrote: post #455

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on... GTA(3, VC, SA) with cheats were great games to play... get all the weapons, be invincible, destroy everything, instead of a baseball bat, use a rocket launcher, instead of a bike, drive a tank.

God mode tends to be fun for an hour or so

It's also fun to go through the missions, without doing the hard part.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#587

Post by einpoklum » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

IMHO, purely-online or mostly-online games which are not community-run FOSS are fundamentally suspect :-( I'm not saying they are all problematic, but my basic tendency would be to steer away from those.

Also - old-school games, people... by now, there are over 40 years of games if you count old-time stand-alone consoles (Galaxian anyone?) that's probably more than you could play in a lifetime of gaming. Ok, maybe not, but more than you could play in a lifetime of gaming in your spare time if you are actually holding down a job :-P And the best thing is that those games either don't have a way to scam you, and the ones which do (say online games with vanity item monetization) from 10 years ago probably don't work anyway these days.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#588

Post by phatbyte » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:13 PM UTC

"...you are watching Avengers End game in Netflix and they ask you if you wanna pay 5 dollars more to watch Captain America use his well known outfit instead of regular clothes?..."

For the love of whatever-god-or-not-you-believe, don't give them ideas

Re: I hate what video games have become

#589

Post by lol_what » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

qwery wrote: post #211

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…

The whole 'preying on the vulnerable' thing kind of puts me off. But I want to respond to this: > The items that you buy have absolutely no impact on gameplay and are just visuals Cosmetic items are not just visual though. They are real elements in the game. Cosmetic items are interactive. They are unlockable, collectable, wearable items. Further, visuals do impact the gameplay. You could argue about the difference b…

you and everyone else concerned about the preying on vulnerable thing should be aware that we have literally no evidence that such a thing is happening. the absolute worst thing we know off in practice are extreme edge cases (i.e. not applying to 99% of people even within the whale demographic) of above average earners spending their money on waifu shit instead of buying themselves a car they don't need.

the more regularly occuring thing is probably that parent's don't properly set up their kids phones and then they buy a few hundred or worse thousands bucks of something they shouldn't. but again those occurances are rare and don't cause really cause any actual damage, especially since you can get refunds for this stuff if it gets expensive very easily. kids regularly do stuff a lot more expensive than that. in fact kids themselves are a lot more expensive than that as a baseline.

the supposed exploitation of things like loot boxes has literally zero evidence behind it. all you will find are a few genuinely bottom of the barrel studies (as in that australian government study from some years ago, should literally be taken as an example in a book of how not to run a study).

and the constant comparison to gambling is really tiresome, because it's obviously not the same. people play themselves out of all their belongigs regularly with actual gambling, because their goal is to make a profit with gambling and their last gamble will surely turn it around. such a thing isn't possible even in the few online gaming markets remaining where you can resell your items for real money because its a big hazzle to liquidize all your assets.

Re: I hate what video games have become

#590

Post by vl » Mon, Mar 28, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

auto wrote: post #558

vl wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite spending thousands on Halo over the years But how could you have spent thousands? Original Halos don’t have micro transactions.

Slightly disingenuous to say I spent thousands on Halo specifically , but I used to run LANs/tournaments, so at one point or another I've owned multiple copies of every installation in the series, bought multiple of the same consoles for the sole purpose of those events, combined with controllers, etc.

We still have Halo LAN party with friends every week.