Various video game stuff not deserving its own thread

[KnightoftheWind]

They are more like actual video games than 99% of "CRPGs". If you like CRPG slop you might as well just read a book, you'd get a far better storyline, with better characters, and can finish it in a fraction of the time.

[Anon]

Trash is needed at some degree to bring some flavor and characterization to the game. A game 100% optimized is boring as ****.

If the item has no good reason to exist in the gameworld, it shouldn't exist.
Items can be situationally useful, some items can be rarer and more powerful. But items that exist purely to sell to a vendor are ******** as ****.

Why would anyone pay money for the item if nobody wants to use it?

If we're talking about items deliberately made to be trash, sure. I meant more about crap items that are so situational that are never used in practice, but were intended to have a use.

[rusty_shackleford]

They are more like actual video games than 99% of "CRPGs". If you like CRPG slop you might as well just read a book, you'd get a far better storyline, with better characters, and can finish it in a fraction of the time.

Holding down left click to make numbers go up and get dopamine is the definition of slop.
Diablo 2 and its ilk meet the absolute bare minimum to be a CRPG, but they're so detrimental to the genre that it's better off that they're not classified as such.

[KnightoftheWind]

As if clicking to read tedious, third rate dialogue written by some hack "writer" is any more involved or thought provoking than a Diablo game.

[rusty_shackleford]

As if clicking to read tedious, third rate dialogue written by some hack "writer" is any more involved or thought provoking than a Diablo game.

You don't get it. In your mind, there's only Diablo 2 and Disco Communism.
Neither of them have any adventure or intrigue.

“Storytelling” games are not RPGs. Neither are “diceless” games.

An RPG creates a story, does not follow a script. That’s a play, possibly improv theater. In a real RPG the GM develops a backstory and plot, sets the scenes, and then the PCs interact with those and by their actions create the actual tale, the events and conclusion of which are indeterminate until that occurs.

As in real life, chance and random occurrances must be a part of an RPG adventure. As a matter of fact you and I do not know what will happen in the next minute. As is oft quoted, “There’s many a slip between cup and lip.” to ignore random events, not allow chance into play, is to consign the game to predestination.

As false to the game form as the pre-scripted “story,” is play that has little more in it than seek and destroy missions, vacuous effort where the participants fight and kill some monster so as to gain more power and thus be able to look for yet more potent opponents in a spiral that leads nowhere save eventual boredom. So pure hack and slash play is anathema to me too.

Tactical, and strategic, play is a fine addition to the RPG, and if it is in-character, something I see as desirable, In this category fall such things as exploration, economics, politics, and even intrigue.

[KnightoftheWind]

I'm the kind of player who prefers actual video games to text box fests. Plenty of games aside from Disco Elysium are way too text heavy, especially retro JRPGs. I'd rather play games that "get to the point", like a Diablo game, than ever sit through some slow CRPG borefest like a Baldur's Gate. There doesn't need to be more than few lines of text to explain "Rats are in my cellar!, but those games feel the need to prattle on and on before you even move a pinky.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm the kind of player who prefers actual video games to text box fests. Plenty of games aside from Disco Elysium are way too text heavy, especially retro JRPGs. I'd rather play games that "get to the point", like a Diablo game, than ever sit through some slow CRPG borefest like a Baldur's Gate. There doesn't need to be more than few lines of text to explain "Rats are in my cellar!, but those games feel the need to prattle on and on before you even move a pinky.

Can you explain how grinding the same mob over and over to get a 1 in a million item drop while you ignore the thousands of other items dropped is "getting to the point"?

[Lich]

You don't need to grind to beat the game.

[rusty_shackleford]

You don't need to grind to beat the game.

Absolutely nobody plays Diablo 2 or its clones to "beat' the game, it's the reason the game expects you to play it over and over by having difficulties that are just the same game except with higher stats.

[Lich]

"Getting to the point" would be beating the game.

[KnightoftheWind]

Because fighting enemies and enjoying the spectacle is more fun, as a video game experience, than reading sloppy text about some random NPC no player would ever care to recall not five minutes later. I don't even read the text half the time in Torchlight 2, yet I feel more accomplished than I ever was attempting a playthrough of Baldur's Gate. As Carmack puts it, "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important". Players are more interested reading into the environmental storytelling of Demon's Souls, where not a single line of dialogue is ever read or spoken. THAT is more impactful, and makes more sense in an interactive medium.

[rusty_shackleford]

Because fighting enemies and enjoying the spectacle is more fun, as a video game experience, than reading sloppy text about some random NPC no player would ever care to recall not five minutes later. I don't even read the text half the time in Torchlight 2, yet I feel more accomplished than I ever was attempting a playthrough of Baldur's Gate. As Carmack puts it, "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important". Players are more interested reading into the environmental storytelling of Demon's Souls, where not a single line of dialogue is ever read or spoken. THAT is more impactful, and makes more sense in an interactive medium.

Again, you think the only alternative to holding the left mouse button and watching the number go up is dialogue dumps.
Both are bad.

[KnightoftheWind]

But CRPGs don't even have the gameplay to back it up, turn based combat is for boring old boomers who enjoy watching paint dry, or who have no skill in actual games. You don't feel like a powerful warrior or a mage when playing a CRPG, you feel like a prick ordering other pricks to move one foot in front of the other in slow motion.

[Lich]

But CRPGs don't even have the gameplay to back it up, turn based combat is for boring old boomers who enjoy watching paint dry, or who have no skill in actual games. You don't feel like a powerful warrior or a mage when playing a CRPG, you feel like a prick ordering other pricks to move one foot in front of the other in slow motion.

This depends entirely on the qualities of individual games.

[KnightoftheWind]

I put CRPGs in the same category as SimCity, a "software toy" and not a real video game. Any game where you read text 90% of the time and engage in slow, very casual play, is not a real video game. At least dungeon crawlers are more like video games, because you are more actively engaged. You are either exploring around, charting a dungeon map, or fighting enemies, with only a basic story to get you on your way. It's partly why I enjoy Arx Fatalis, because in that game there isn't a whole lot of dialogue and what is there doesn't overstay it's welcome. You are more free to enjoy the environmental storytelling and worldbuilding without Farmer Ben explaining his life story to you.

[Vergil]

[Segata]

[Oyster Sauce]

Just remembered the very fun storms in Pathfinder that would slow your party down to an almost unplayable speed and didn't relent even if there were no enemies on the map and all you wanted to do was loot.

[Breathe]

Oyster, why do you always have a ****** as your prof pic?

[Oyster Sauce]

What video games do you think the coveted black woman demographic play the most? Real games, I mean, not phone apps. I asked two different search engines and couldn't find a single answer after quite a bit of scrolling. There are plenty of articles about why it's important for there to be black female characters, but a not a single one helped me figure out which game has the highest percentage of black women in its playerbase.
Is it Forspoken? The Walking Dead Season 2? Death of the Outsider? Age of Empires 2?
The answer has to be a game that doesn't appeal specifically to women in general or it wouldn't make sense to cater to black women all the time.

[maidenhaver]

They prefer tabletop scene like Bolt Action, and D&D. In particular 3.5.

[Oyster Sauce]

Are there any games that cover any of the new Star Wars movies besides Lego Star Wars? There used to be literally too many Star Wars games to actually get around to playing.

[maidenhaver]

What video games do you think the coveted black woman demographic play the most? Real games, I mean, not phone apps. I asked two different search engines and couldn't find a single answer after quite a bit of scrolling. There are plenty of articles about why it's important for there to be black female characters, but a not a single one helped me figure out which game has the highest percentage of black women in its playerbase.
Is it Forspoken? The Walking Dead Season 2? Death of the Outsider? Age of Empires 2?
The answer has to be a game that doesn't appeal specifically to women in general or it wouldn't make sense to cater to black women all the time.

When I was working as a mallcop, I took my laptop to play games all night, and the black woman who relieved me liked homm3.

[jcd]

The success of Palworld (aka Pokemon with guns) and its developer Pocket Pair (which has previously released a Zelda clone) proves that there is a viable business model in identifying cult classic games with huge followings but that did not get a satisfying installment for some time, copying everything, and releasing with additions that you can come up with after scouring reddit or forums for a few hours.

[Vergil]

blizzcucks get what they ******* deserve
Diablo 4's latest microtransaction controversy is a $30 portal recolor: "You can get Palworld for this price"
https://www.gamesradar.com/diablo-4s-la ... his-price/

[Rand]

Watching this footage you'd think this game came out recently, but these are visuals from 2012. Not that games should look "better" than this, I'd argue they definitely should not, but modern developers can't even match the quality of E3 2012 Watch Dogs.

And that game was a graphical/fidelity disappointment when it came out.
The game in the original trailer looked awesome. Of course it was not only fake, but rendered because no computer could realtime render the "gameplay" shown.

[Rand]

Tried playing ff7 remake and it has an insane amount of cutscenes. Japs need to just make movies instead of movies pretending to be games, ffs.

They tried. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
Bombed.

[KnightoftheWind]

Watching this footage you'd think this game came out recently, but these are visuals from 2012. Not that games should look "better" than this, I'd argue they definitely should not, but modern developers can't even match the quality of E3 2012 Watch Dogs.

And that game was a graphical/fidelity disappointment when it came out.
The game in the original trailer looked awesome. Of course it was not only fake, but rendered because no computer could realtime render the "gameplay" shown.

It was real though, as you saw in the video. At the time only PCs could run it, and Ubisoft didn't want there to be an obvious downgrade for the next-gen consoles at the time, so they just lowered the quality of the PC version to match. That's how these missing effects were found, they were left in the game and can be modded back in.

[jcd]

Watching this footage you'd think this game came out recently, but these are visuals from 2012. Not that games should look "better" than this, I'd argue they definitely should not

Worse is better. Ugly is pretty. War is peace.

[Segata]