Various video game stuff not deserving its own thread

[Rand]

******* think that autoclickers and keybinds that frame-perfectly execute intricate combos in fighting games are not macros, and they also believe that macros are not cheating tools.

They also think eyeglasses and casts have "medicine in them".
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[rusty_shackleford]

There are 'soft' video game genres which tend to be hard to define by a rigid checklist of mechanics. They rely less on the mere presence of certain features and more on the consistent application of specific design principles. 'Immersive sim' is probably the one people know the most. RPG itself straddles the line, there are example of games considered by most to be good RPGs that have very simple 'RPG systems' but instead have deep, consistent expressions of core RPG principles through world design, quest structure, factions, character progression, etc., That is, they're RPGs not because of mechanical complexity but because the whole game is consistently built around RPG principles.

If Gothic's exploration, character interactions, quest design etc., was poor it would lose most of the claim it has to being an RPG. It does not have strong RPG systems to fall back on like Morrowind, but instead just rudimentary character advancement, equipment, and so on far below what the average FPS game has nowadays - which have stats, loot, XP, skill trees, and rarity colors but yet do not feel like an RPG because these are merely reward mechanics rather than an expression of RPG design principles, they lack any integration with the world or character's interaction thereof.
Diablo 2 is now retroactively being considered an (A)RPG by many but it was called a hack-and-slash at the time - despite it having significantly more complex RPG mechanics than Gothic does.

RPG mechanics are the body of the genre: formal systems associated with RPGs such as XP, levels, equipment, skills, classes, and so on. "RPG elements" in marketing speak.
RPG principles are the soul of the genre: the broader design commitments that couple the player character to a responsive world model so that who he is, what he can do, and what constrains him shape access, action, resolution, and consequence. This is where player agency, meaningful constraints, exploration, continuity, choice & consequence, and so on come from.


We could liken mechanics to the Player's Handbook, and principles to the DM's design and adjudication philosophy.

[Rand]

Diablo 2 is now retroactively being considered an (A)RPG by man

When it's a Roguelike, albeit an action version.

[rusty_shackleford]

Diablo 2 is now retroactively being considered an (A)RPG by man

When it's a Roguelike, albeit an action version.

It's not. Consider how it lost most or all of the principles category when it threw away various roguelike mechanics. There is very little, if any, consequence for your actions. The world isn't even persistent, whereas roguelikes are persistent for each character at minimum.


All it kept was the mechanics, and without the principles it's just a game with "RPG elements".

[Roguey]

Blizzard was calling Diablo II an RPG

https://www.mobygames.com/game/1878/dia ... ver-34368/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/1878/dia ... e-1091519/

Max Schaefer and Josh Sawyer got into a debate on Usenet with regard to what makes an RPG https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/dig ... st-3305680

Hello,

First, I have to make the disclaimer that I'm extremely biased
about this issue. I'm one of the co-founders of Blizzard North,
and am heavily involved with making Diablo II. Obviously, the
topic of whether the Diablo games are RPGs is of more than
passing interest to me.

I will go on record here as claiming that both Diablo and Diablo
II are absolutely RPGs in the classic sense. Obviously, whether
or not one agrees with this depends on the working definition of
RPG.

However, most people here would say that the old-school
pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons was clearly an RPG.
Obviously, those of us responsible for Diablo and Diablo II
played a lot of D&D in our past. Perhaps we weren't quite as
highbrow as some of the readers of this forum, but our adventures
tended towards revolving around killing monsters and finding cool
stuff. The characters we "role-played" were really only
semi-developed archetypes of the sort of personality that struck
our fancy at the time. We did not use the opportunity to make
cookie-cutter characters with cheesy mystical names like
"Northwynde" who spoke at length in "olde" English. The word "ye"
rarely crossed our lips.

Today, it seems that to be considered a true Computer RPG, game
designers must comlpetely saturate their games with pre-written
dialogue. Conversations with NPC's usually involve listening to a
poorly written story-driving soliloquy followed by an opportunity
for the "role-player" to choose between three canned responses
(none of which ever correspond to what I would really like to say
in those situations.) It seems that the more defined and rigid
the storyline, the more it's considered an RPG. And the more
actual sword-fighting or adventuring there is, the less it's RPG
credentials.

Perhaps again it was just our youthful ignorance, or our
borderline ADD, but our Dungeons and Dragons experiences never
found us choosing A), B), or C) responses, and never had
inflexible, overwrought storylines. Like I said, we made cool
characters, invented cool worlds, and went out to slay monsters
and find cool stuff.

I'm not saying the aforementioned (and semi-mocked) CRPG
structures cannot result in a compelling game-play experience.
Clearly it can, and Baldur's Gate is an excellent and
high-quality example. But for us, staying true to our RPG roots
found us creating the Diablos.

We make a loosely structured world in which you can truely be
whatever sort of character you'd like: from chivalrous hero to
brutal warrior to annoying mennace. Within this world, you can
explore at length, develop and improve your character, kill cool
monsters and find cool stuff.

Call it Short Attention Span Theater, call it instant
gratification. Maybe it is somewhat mindless. Maybe the emphasis
is on hacking and slashing. Maybe we weren't quite the
computer/RPG nerds that we were thought of growing up. But for us
at least, Diablo IS our vision of RPGs.

Max Schaefer
Vice President, Blizzard North

PS: The opinions expressed above are mine alone, and I do not
speak for the company.

tl;dr, creating paper thin characters and going into dungeons to kill monsters and acquire loot is how they played Dungeons and Dragons.

[rusty_shackleford]

the broader design commitments that couple the player character to a responsive world model so that who he is, what he can do, and what constrains him shapes what can happen, how actions are resolved, and what consequences follow. This is where player agency, meaningful constraints, continuity, choice & consequence, and so on come from.

I'd amend this to include exploration after thinking on it:

the broader design commitments that couple the player character to a responsive world model so that who he is, what he can do, and what constrains him shape access, action, resolution, and consequence. This is where player agency, meaningful constraints, exploration, continuity, choice & consequence, and so on come from.

---

tl;dr, creating paper thin characters and going into dungeons to kill monsters and acquire loot is how they played Dungeons and Dragons.

Those were hack-and-slash, it was applied to tabletop RPGs first.

Some choice Gygax quotes:

Anyway, Jean had good design ideas, ran compelling game campaign sessions, and I was sorry when she decided she didn't want to continue working for the company. She did include action in her material, but Jean did encourage roleplaying above hack & slash, I agree. Although the latter is more popular, there is no question in my mind that hacking must be levened with yakking to make gaming a complete axperience.

To the best of my knowledge "hack & slash" was a term coined by fantasy authors/fans as a put-down for action-based yarns such as Robert E. Howard wrote--and I still love. I believe that "hack & slay" better describes the RPG activity concerned with dungeon crawls and seek & destroy missions common in CRPGs. I do not mean to belittle the entertainment value of such play when I use the term.

ARPG should be treated not as a subgenre of RPG but as a divergence from RPG.

[fork]

dark souls level hall of fame:
-prison of hope
-sen's fortress
-frozen elyium loyce
-hunter's nightmare
-miquella's haligtree

dark souls boss hall of fame:
-old hero
-kittyman and fatso
-burnt ivory king
-ludwig
-godfrey

dark souls boss hall of gay:
-shiteaters (maneaters)
-ceaseless discharge
-ancient dragon
-rom, the ****** spider
-commander gayus

Sad! A disgrace for the souls community! But since you're mentally ill so-called furry ******, your opinion can be safely disregarded.
God bless America!
Thanks for your attention to this matter.

[Rand]

Diablo 2 is now retroactively being considered an (A)RPG by man

When it's a Roguelike, albeit an action version.

It's not. Consider how it lost most or all of the principles category when it threw away various roguelike mechanics. There is very little, if any, consequence for your actions. The world isn't even persistent, whereas roguelikes are persistent for each character at minimum.

All it kept was the mechanics, and without the principles it's just a game with "RPG elements".

The first game was persistent. There were NO respawning monsters or treasure.
The dungeon was randomly generated, as was the treasure both in placement and in abilities.
The monsters were capable of being randomized both in placement and in special powers (if any).
It was even on an obvious grid.

Blizzard was calling Diablo II an RPG

In case it has not become obvious by now, Blizzard were mostly idiots most of the time.
Fortunately they occasionally had a few people who had good game ideas, until they made WoW.
Then the money poisoned the company. Add in Activision/Kotick, the Vivendi cretins, then Microsoft...

[fork]

Diablo-likes have been called ARPGs for as long as I can remember.

[Roguey]

Yeah, back in the 00s, "action RPG" was synonymous with "Diablo clone" and games like Deus Ex, Gothic, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect would often just be called "RPGs."

[rusty_shackleford]

Diablo 2 is now retroactively being considered an (A)RPG by man

When it's a Roguelike, albeit an action version.

It's not. Consider how it lost most or all of the principles category when it threw away various roguelike mechanics. There is very little, if any, consequence for your actions. The world isn't even persistent, whereas roguelikes are persistent for each character at minimum.

All it kept was the mechanics, and without the principles it's just a game with "RPG elements".

The first game was persistent. There were NO respawning monsters or treasure.
The dungeon was randomly generated, as was the treasure both in placement and in abilities.
The monsters were capable of being randomized both in placement and in special powers (if any).
It was even on an obvious grid.

Diablo took randomized levels/items from roguelikes, it didn't inherit much else and its roguelike lineage is overstated.

Randomized items were taken because it's addictive

So the loot lottery is kind of a system
by which random items are generated,
and the best analogy is it's a slot machine.
Every time you kill a monster,
you put a quarter into the slot machine
and you pull the lever and out can come nothing,
you get your quarter back, you know,
you could do pretty well, or you could hit a jackpot.
[game chimes]
And so if you can think of pulling the lever
as every time you kill a monster,
it's got kind of this addictive quality.
Just as slot machines are addictive,
so is the, I am going to maybe win something big here.
It was kind of loosely based on the system
that came from Moria, Angband, Umoria,
those kind of style games.

Randomized levels because they could advertise "unlimited content"

A lot of RPGs were like, oh, we've got a hundred hours,
and things like that, of content.
And we were saying,
basically you have unlimited content here.

Important for later:

We wanted to be everything that RPGs weren't,
and one of those things was,
we want to just press a few buttons
and get right into the game.
Character creation was this big deal in RPGs.
You would end up answering a bunch of questions
about your history and giving yourself a backstory
and putting numbers into all sorts of stats
before you even knew what the stats would do.
So we wanted to bypass all of that and get directly in.
And that philosophy permeated every decision that we made.
Time from boot up to kill was like,
it's gotta be under a minute kind of thing.

This was kind of a philosophy that was the, again,
kind of anti-typical RPG.
RPGs at the time were things like,
oh, you're playing as a cleric,
and as a cleric, I can't hold a sword.
It didn't make any sense at all
that, you know, a person who claims to be this cleric,
can't just actually pick up a dagger or pick up a sword.
They could only use maces.
And so in a lot of ways, we wanted to make
the anti-system for that,
which was this kind of like multi-classing,
or everybody can do everything, kind of system.
So as a warrior, you could cast spells.
You may be a lot worse at it.
It may take you extra mana.
Your spell casting animations are longer,
but you could do it.
It was the system where you could make any class you wanted.
There were no restrictions,
like so many of the other things
that we thought were just barriers to fun.
And so making it so that it was kind of
this free form was really important to us.
And again, it was more of the anti-RPG at the time.

---

If we return to how I defined 'RPG principles':

RPG principles are the soul of the genre: the broader design commitments that couple the player character to a responsive world model so that who he is, what he can do, and what constrains him shape access, action, resolution, and consequence.

Traditional roguelikes express RPG principles much more strongly than Diablo. Roguelike characters may be narratively thin, but very deeply rooted in the rules of the world. His capabilities are not merely killing monsters but tools for survival and creative problem solving. And likewise his limitations are not just lower damage numbers but things like encumbrance, cursed & unidentified items*, racial limitations, etc.,
* — I know Diablo has these, but it's just part of the loot lottery. It has no real impact due to item selection and the mechanic being trivialized.

Diablo uses some mechanics from roguelikes in the same way it uses RPG mechanics, but largely detaches them from the RPG principle of coupling the player character to a responsive world model. Instead these mechanics are used in service of replayability and rewards. Neither the capabilities nor constraints make the world substantially different between characters beyond how effective they are at killing and looting.
The decision space is expanded by capability and shaped by constraint, Diablo's decision space is narrow and poorly differentiated. Your choices are largely boil down to combat efficiency.

Diablo is an RPG mechanically and genealogically, but not in terms of actual game design logic. The dominant design logic of Diablo is that of a hack-and-slash looter.

---

People often mistake "choice & consequence" for dialogue trees and quest branches but that is not so. Deciding whether to descend another floor, rest, fight, flee, identify an item, wear something unknown, spend a consumable, eat food that may be rotten, carry too much, or enter a dangerous area can all be RPG choice if the game has a world and character model that actually preserves the result.
So if you wanted to say "RPG principles" is just "choice and consequences"… then, yes. But it's a very broad interpretation of choices and consequences that starts at the character selection screen. Roguelikes embodying RPG principles under this definition is a rebuke of the idea that RPGs should solely or most importantly be about branching dialogue.

[asf]

diablo started all the decline

[Rand]

So, shall we start on this "indie" darling of the game influencer and access media, named: "Mixtape"?

Let's start with it being in its own special category of "indie" (as well as soyfaggotry).



Plus, it's hardly even a game. It's a game journalist level of difficulty experience. It's, like, a VIBE, man.

[KnightoftheWind]

When it's a Roguelike, albeit an action version.

It's not. Consider how it lost most or all of the principles category when it threw away various roguelike mechanics. There is very little, if any, consequence for your actions. The world isn't even persistent, whereas roguelikes are persistent for each character at minimum.

All it kept was the mechanics, and without the principles it's just a game with "RPG elements".

The first game was persistent. There were NO respawning monsters or treasure.
The dungeon was randomly generated, as was the treasure both in placement and in abilities.
The monsters were capable of being randomized both in placement and in special powers (if any).
It was even on an obvious grid.

Diablo took randomized levels/items from roguelikes, it didn't inherit much else and its roguelike lineage is overstated.

Randomized items were taken because it's addictive

So the loot lottery is kind of a system
by which random items are generated,
and the best analogy is it's a slot machine.
Every time you kill a monster,
you put a quarter into the slot machine
and you pull the lever and out can come nothing,
you get your quarter back, you know,
you could do pretty well, or you could hit a jackpot.
[game chimes]
And so if you can think of pulling the lever
as every time you kill a monster,
it's got kind of this addictive quality.
Just as slot machines are addictive,
so is the, I am going to maybe win something big here.
It was kind of loosely based on the system
that came from Moria, Angband, Umoria,
those kind of style games.

Randomized levels because they could advertise "unlimited content"

A lot of RPGs were like, oh, we've got a hundred hours,
and things like that, of content.
And we were saying,
basically you have unlimited content here.

Important for later:

We wanted to be everything that RPGs weren't,
and one of those things was,
we want to just press a few buttons
and get right into the game.
Character creation was this big deal in RPGs.
You would end up answering a bunch of questions
about your history and giving yourself a backstory
and putting numbers into all sorts of stats
before you even knew what the stats would do.
So we wanted to bypass all of that and get directly in.
And that philosophy permeated every decision that we made.
Time from boot up to kill was like,
it's gotta be under a minute kind of thing.

This was kind of a philosophy that was the, again,
kind of anti-typical RPG.
RPGs at the time were things like,
oh, you're playing as a cleric,
and as a cleric, I can't hold a sword.
It didn't make any sense at all
that, you know, a person who claims to be this cleric,
can't just actually pick up a dagger or pick up a sword.
They could only use maces.
And so in a lot of ways, we wanted to make
the anti-system for that,
which was this kind of like multi-classing,
or everybody can do everything, kind of system.
So as a warrior, you could cast spells.
You may be a lot worse at it.
It may take you extra mana.
Your spell casting animations are longer,
but you could do it.
It was the system where you could make any class you wanted.
There were no restrictions,
like so many of the other things
that we thought were just barriers to fun.
And so making it so that it was kind of
this free form was really important to us.
And again, it was more of the anti-RPG at the time.

---

If we return to how I defined 'RPG principles':

RPG principles are the soul of the genre: the broader design commitments that couple the player character to a responsive world model so that who he is, what he can do, and what constrains him shape access, action, resolution, and consequence.

Traditional roguelikes express RPG principles much more strongly than Diablo. Roguelike characters may be narratively thin, but very deeply rooted in the rules of the world. His capabilities are not merely killing monsters but tools for survival and creative problem solving. And likewise his limitations are not just lower damage numbers but things like encumbrance, cursed & unidentified items*, racial limitations, etc.,
* — I know Diablo has these, but it's just part of the loot lottery. It has no real impact due to item selection and the mechanic being trivialized.

Diablo uses some mechanics from roguelikes in the same way it uses RPG mechanics, but largely detaches them from the RPG principle of coupling the player character to a responsive world model. Instead these mechanics are used in service of replayability and rewards. Neither the capabilities nor constraints make the world substantially different between characters beyond how effective they are at killing and looting.
The decision space is expanded by capability and shaped by constraint, Diablo's decision space is narrow and poorly differentiated. Your choices are largely boil down to combat efficiency.

Diablo is an RPG mechanically and genealogically, but not in terms of actual game design logic. The dominant design logic of Diablo is that of a hack-and-slash looter.

---

People often mistake "choice & consequence" for dialogue trees and quest branches but that is not so. Deciding whether to descend another floor, rest, fight, flee, identify an item, wear something unknown, spend a consumable, eat food that may be rotten, carry too much, or enter a dangerous area can all be RPG choice if the game has a world and character model that actually preserves the result.
So if you wanted to say "RPG principles" is just "choice and consequences"… then, yes. But it's a very broad interpretation of choices and consequences that starts at the character selection screen. Roguelikes embodying RPG principles under this definition is a rebuke of the idea that RPGs should solely or most importantly be about branching dialogue.

WTF I love Diablo even more now!

[anvi]

Playing an Everquest server and I am reminded that people are annoying/illogical with their traders. You set the price for items to sell, and people are so determined to get the sale that they will undercut everyone else. To the point that you see people selling items for less than they could just sell it to an NPC for. Totally ********. The more expensive items are the bigger nuisance though. There is something that was about 20k a few days ago but more are showing up on the traders now and first you get someone do 18k then 15k and then 14950, then 14k, and now the stupid thing is being sold for 800p. It is worth way more and now I can't sell mine without basically giving it away.

[Rand]

It is worth way more and now I can't sell mine without basically giving it away.

Then buy the market excess and hodl them.

[Oyster Sauce]

Saw this at Costco today

https://www.woojer.com/products/vest-4

[rusty_shackleford]

Saw this at Costco today

https://www.woojer.com/products/vest-4

I actually think these things(& similar) are cool but I suspect so few, if any, games will have support specifically for it so it's just going to trigger the same time as controller rumble.

[Oyster Sauce]

Saw this at Costco today

https://www.woojer.com/products/vest-4

I actually think these things(& similar) are cool but I suspect so few, if any, games will have support specifically for it so it's just going to trigger the same time as controller rumble.

I liked the 4D rollercoaster seats at the theater the few times I've tried them.

[nepbnhurj]

I was talking with a friend about a similar idea the other day. What if for those VR combat sport games, you could buy shock vests that would zap you in response to physical damage taken in the virtual reality simulation?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Trying to recreate the holodeck is ridiculous. I am reminded of that video from a decade back where a guy was playing Skyrim with a VR headset on while strapped into some sort of omnidirectional treadmill like a baby in a crib so he can simulate walking through the game world. I can see the appeal in creating motion tilting Star Citizen or Forza cockpits, but not this.

[Mordred]

Trying to recreate the holodeck is ridiculous. I am reminded of that video from a decade back where a guy was playing Skyrim with a VR headset on while strapped into some sort of omnidirectional treadmill like a baby in a crib so he can simulate walking through the game world. I can see the appeal in creating motion tilting Star Citizen or Forza cockpits, but not this.

hmm i can see such a contraption to gamify cardio.

[anvi]

You can spend a zillion bucks on VR gadgets but still end up with Skyrim ha ha

[Breathe]

You can spend a zillion bucks on VR gadgets but still end up with Skyrim ha ha

There are so few good VR games. Plus, until VR is as easy as putting on sunglasses it will never be big.

[DecadeRiptide]

Saw this at Costco today

https://www.woojer.com/products/vest-4

I actually think these things(& similar) are cool but I suspect so few, if any, games will have support specifically for it so it's just going to trigger the same time as controller rumble.

Maybe I'm just fat but I thought this was a weight loss vest at first

[sheet]

"How do you know it's bad/woke if you haven't played it?"
"Do you only get your opinions after waiting for your favorite YouTuber to give you it?"

Counterpoint: The game designer is obliged to make their game not appear as wokeslop for us to form interest in the first place. By now, the cat is out of the bag and feigning ignorance when your game looks like a Fortnite knockoff is no longer an acceptable excuse.

"People wrote off Marathon/Concord/Highguard without even playing it!" Yeah, and you could have easily predicted this and gone back to the drawing board but you didn't. Influencers/Reviewers defending one of these games can easily acknowledge this while still enjoying the product and trying to convince others to play it, but trying to scold an audience that's recognized these aesthetic patterns only serves to stagnate any emergent trends by artificially extending the bright color ADHD beanmouth Fortnite fad.

[ThulsaDoomer]

"How do you know it's bad/woke if you haven't played it?"
"Do you only get your opinions after waiting for your favorite YouTuber to give you it?"

Counterpoint: The game designer is obliged to make their game not appear as wokeslop for us to form interest in the first place. By now, the cat is out of the bag and feigning ignorance when your game looks like a Fortnite knockoff is no longer an acceptable excuse.

"People wrote off Marathon/Concord/Highguard without even playing it!" Yeah, and you could have easily predicted this and gone back to the drawing board but you didn't. Influencers/Reviewers defending one of these games can easily acknowledge this while still enjoying the product and trying to convince others to play it, but trying to scold an audience that's recognized these aesthetic patterns only serves to stagnate any emergent trends by artificially extending the bright color ADHD beanmouth Fortnite fad.

The most boring part of this current trend is that they all use the same ideas and concepts, since end-game liberalism is creatively bankrupt and destined to reuse existing material rather than creating original works, since they cannot comprehend anything but their zogslop masters wishes. In some positive manner, this makes it even easier for us to distinguish good from bad. I know a lot of these people feign ignorance of how dogshit their media is, but the ones who genuinely pivot to these arguments amuse me the most. They have no awareness of how gormless they are, and actually believe everyone around them shares the same low IQ.

[Algol]

Saw this at Costco today

https://www.woojer.com/products/vest-4

I actually think these things(& similar) are cool but I suspect so few, if any, games will have support specifically for it so it's just going to trigger the same time as controller rumble.

Maybe I'm just fat but I thought this was a weight loss vest at first

You're probably just a ******, if I had to guess. Looks like something they would wear.

[rusty_shackleford]

"transmog" is just proof that devs got it right to begin with by having gear not show up on your character. Some even let you pick from various visuals or (even better) had it progress with you.

[nepbnhurj]

"transmog" is just proof that devs got it right to begin with by having gear not show up on your character. Some even let you pick from various visuals or (even better) had it progress with you.

There are PvP games where devs are unwilling to transmog and vanity as systems because they are information advantages to be held over other players. These games are good