41–50 of 57 posts
If you actually played this game and read the patch notes, you'd have a different perspective on this. There's a lot of weird code and technical debt in the game client. For example, a map-wide filter (Nocturne's ult) is actually a giant minion covering the whole map.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Candy Crush is obviously well made. It's a scourge, but it's a well made scourge. That's what I find so frustrating about games these days. The most effective business models (by a long way) are the ones that lean into all of the dark patterns. They can attract great talent to work on them, and afford the time to build them well, because there's so much money sloshing around.
I understand what you're saying. I hold a different view of what is well made or not. Commercial success isn't the only measure. I believe dark patterns detract from the cultural value of a thing, which is how they came to be called that. Meta is a valuable company, but they could have made less money and provided much more value to society with different practices. There's a "rising tide lifts all boats" approach to…
Totally agree on the dark patterns though.
Out of interest what is a game you consider excellent that maybe wasn’t marketed as well?
Personally I really like dungeon keeper 1 (& 2 as well somewhat) - but Bullfrog was very unsuccessful as a company and went under. I don’t know exactly why, should look into that history
I sure wish they had posted whatver input they sent through the LLM instead. There's obviously something good behind there. There are opinions that still make it through the slop machine, and someone's story is still being told through muck.
Given the content, the disregard for the reader's experience is highly ironic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure the genre and many of its archetypes were invented in the WC3 fun/custom map scene but LoL is more than a Dota clone. I haven’t really played it (my moba time ended with HoN) but it’s obviously very well made
It has matured over time but it was absolutely a hosted dota ripoff initially, including the playable characters. The fact there are also other spinoffs isn’t really relevant to its origins and lack of recognition or even an attempt at monetary compensation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love AI. I'm just as AI-pilled as the next guy. But, somewhat ironically, LLMs are unbelievably bad at writing. I can read thousands of words from my favorite authors without getting annoyed by their tics and their grammar. People like Nikhil Suresh literally make me laugh out loud when I read their writing. But something about AI-slop-prose is just obvious and gross and annoying to read.
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That wasn't the point anyway. There's nothing of significance in LoL vs the original DotA. Same applies to DotA 2 btw. Valve is making changes for the sake of changes. Now every hero has a talent tree for example. Has the game become better because of that? I don't think so. I bet if they did A/B when they rolled that update out, not a lot of people would have stayed on the new version.
As someone who has continuously played DOTA for the last 20+ years, I appreciate Valve keeping the game fresh. Sometimes they make changes that aren't so great, but the game is always evolving so it's fine. Despite that, even after all this time they've still managed to keep the spirit of the original WC3 mod.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has continuously played DOTA for the last 20+ years, I appreciate Valve keeping the game fresh. Sometimes they make changes that aren't so great, but the game is always evolving so it's fine. Despite that, even after all this time they've still managed to keep the spirit of the original WC3 mod.
As someone who continually played LoL, Valorant, and StarCraft 2 for long periods at different phases in life, I appreciate Blizzard keeping SC2 pretty much the same the most. I guess some people like change for the sake of change, but I just want to play and practice a given game. Just like chess and Melee have thrived without updates, I would much prefer my video games to not have frequent changes. I know I'm a min…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who continually played LoL, Valorant, and StarCraft 2 for long periods at different phases in life, I appreciate Blizzard keeping SC2 pretty much the same the most. I guess some people like change for the sake of change, but I just want to play and practice a given game. Just like chess and Melee have thrived without updates, I would much prefer my video games to not have frequent changes. I know I'm a min…
But DOTA in particular, it was never just a "given game"; even from DOTA 1 they added heroes and items frequently. Adding heroes and items changes the game balance so it has to be continually rebalanced.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Candy Crush is obviously well made. It's a scourge, but it's a well made scourge. That's what I find so frustrating about games these days. The most effective business models (by a long way) are the ones that lean into all of the dark patterns. They can attract great talent to work on them, and afford the time to build them well, because there's so much money sloshing around.
I understand what you're saying. I hold a different view of what is well made or not. Commercial success isn't the only measure. I believe dark patterns detract from the cultural value of a thing, which is how they came to be called that. Meta is a valuable company, but they could have made less money and provided much more value to society with different practices. There's a "rising tide lifts all boats" approach to…
+1 to that.
AI-generated, and also highly untrustworthy given its source - Riot Games is an extraordinarily player-, community-, and pro-player-hostile company. On top of all of the new and exciting ways that they manage to not only screw up software engineering but also screw over their users, their business model is selling skins at the expense of their games (in the sames sense that Google's business model is selling ads at t…
Since selling skins is unacceptable, how would you have them make money given the game is F2P?