Various video game stuff not deserving its own thread

[maidenhaver]

Help a ****** setup might and magic world of xeen on android phone. Any guides?

[General Reign]

Why? Do you want to wear glasses?

[Segata]

Why? Do you want to wear glasses?

His vision is augmented.

[Watser]

Microsoft has bought Activision Blizzard for 69 billion dollars.

[maidenhaver]

[General Reign]

[Segata]

CA sisters...

[maidenhaver]

What in the absolute **** is that helmet?

[Acrux]

Black Geyser (heh) launched a Kickstarter for their DLC today. If they can't raise the money, they say the company is going out of business. They are already over 50%. I don't know if that's typical for first day in a KS.

It's an okay budget BG1. I suppose this might also fit in the "Chronicling the inability of gamedevs to make video games" thread.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gr ... ref=n6vn8j

[rusty_shackleford]

Black Geyser (heh) launched a Kickstarter for their DLC today. If they can't raise the money, they say the company is going out of business. They are already over 50%. I don't know if that's typical for first day in a KS.

It's an okay budget BG1. I suppose this might also fit in the "Chronicling the inability of gamedevs to make video games" thread.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gr ... ref=n6vn8j

I had fun playing this in early access, felt like the first nostalgiabait game actually made in the style of Baldur's Gate rather than Baldur's Gate 2.
Main gripe was the awful loading times.

Hope the DLC gets funded.

[maidenhaver]

I backed it and never played it.

[Jason Bright]

CA sisters...

The most recent Total War I've played is Empire so I'm not up to snuff on why this happened. I know they've been going all in on Warhammer rather than their historical games and there have been complaints about the 'RPG-isation' of the series. Is that why this is bombing? The people who want a historical-sim game have moved on to other developers who offer that?

[gerey]

Is that why this is bombing? The people who want a historical-sim game have moved on to other developers who offer that?

No. There's several reasons why Pharaoh is being so poorly received:

1. The game itself, which is a Saga title masquerading as a Total War game. In case you're unaware, Saga titles are TW games with a smaller scope (think Troy or Thrones of Britannia), instead of fully-fledged releases, yet Pharaoh is being priced as a mainline TW game.
2. Egypt as the main focus isn't particularly resonating with the community. Many were hoping for a title with a broader scope covering many of the cultures of the Bronze Age, and chronicling the subsequent collapse.
3. Another reason is the fact CA ****** off the community with the latest Warhammer 3 DLC that offered very little in terms of content, but was priced at $20, which was followed by a CA statement where they basically threatened to pull support from Warhammer 3 if the community didn't paypig for the DLC.
4. On top of this, Warhammer 3 has been plagued by poor support since launch. Patches are rare, coinciding with the release of a DLC, they fix very few issues, and what issues they claim to fix usually aren't fixed, the game is plagued by gamebreaking bugs that have been in the game since launch, and if rumors are to be trusted CA has only one person tasked with bugfixes.
5. In a more general sense, this is the end result of the past decade of CA ******* over the community at every turn - buggy, broken releases, predatory DLC policies, poor post-launch support of games and a persistent and noticeable drop in quality and quantity of content with each new release.
6. The Hyenas debacle angering the community further when it became known just how many resources were wasted on a project everyone knew was dead-on-arrival, instead of being used to fix and expand their flagship title, Warhammer 3.

[rusty_shackleford]

7. There's just too many Total War games and they've saturated the market, they're only competing against themself.

Total War games are not games you play through once and are done, you can't make new ones every year. They're the perfect type of games for expansion packs. They could be pumping out content for 3-4 different TWs simultaneously instead of making new ones.

[gerey]

They could be pumping out content for 3-4 different TWs simultaneously instead of making new ones.

That used to be the case. Warhammer 2 had a consistent stream of content being released - new races, new lords, new units, new mechanics, patches, free DLC etc. Even Rome 2 received a lot of support despite the disastrous launch. CA kept releasing new DLCs and patching the game for cca. 5 years after launch.

Yet their most popular game by far, Three Kingdoms, was abandoned without much fanfare after just a few DLCs.

A similar story played out with Warhammer 3. CA's handling of the post-launch was sluggish at best. People had to wait for months for patches to be released, even for things that are considered critical bugs.

[Segata]

Who was in the wrong here?

[Emphyrio]

7. There's just too many Total War games and they've saturated the market, they're only competing against themself.

Yes, and they've been focusing too hard on ancient combat. Rome, Troy, Britannia, Egypt, three kingdoms. There's only so much swords-vs-spears **** people can take. They need to do something to significantly change the formula. Empire 2 would probably sell. Maybe they could even salvage Hyenas enough to make a game that won't cause people to puke.

[Lich]

New Roguelike-like-like

[General Reign]

7. There's just too many Total War games and they've saturated the market, they're only competing against themself.

Yes, and they've been focusing too hard on ancient combat. Rome, Troy, Britannia, Egypt, three kingdoms. There's only so much swords-vs-spears **** people can take. They need to do something to significantly change the formula. Empire 2 would probably sell. Maybe they could even salvage Hyenas enough to make a game that won't cause people to puke.

They should try to manage a WW1 game but that would mean they would need to actually develop new systems.

[gerey]

New Roguelike-like-like

Not really new, game has been in early access for years, with the dev at one point not having updated the game for a whole 12 months. That being said, it's a fairly unique experience, and as the game is now, it's nearly feature complete, and the 1.0 release is just around the corner.

They need to do something to significantly change the formula.

That's quite literally what the Warhammer games were though. And yes, I'm aware that it's still a game focusing on melee combat, but many of the factions play radically differently from one another, and/or have unique mechanics to further diversify them from the rest.

They should try to manage a WW1 game but that would mean they would need to actually develop new systems.

I don't think the gameplay of Total War games can be modified to reflect WW1 well. The farther in history you could go is very late 19th century ala Fall of the Samurai. The moment you introduce rifled firearms and spitzer bullets and shift away from line infantry formations, the core mechanic of TW games falls apart.

What they really need is to take a good, hard look at all the various mechanics and systems they've introduced over the years, figure out what worked and what audiences liked, and combine them into a new historical game.

[Lich]

Not really new, game has been in early access for years, with the dev at one point not having updated the game for a whole 12 months. That being said, it's a fairly unique experience, and as the game is now, it's nearly feature complete, and the 1.0 release is just around the corner.

I incorrectly thought the game was released today, but it will release within a day.

[H-H-Holmes]

They were already straining for ideas when Shogun 2 was released. Yes it was an excellent game, but it was another remake, and the first signs of the Total War gameplay itself becoming repetitive and "samey" were ever so slightly beginning to show. Over a decade later and they've squeezed every last drop of life out of any fitting historical contexts, and they've also continued running the same format and mechanics into the ground.
This is the number one reason their latest productions are failing.
Gamers will forgive and forget a lot from developers, even really ****** post-launch behaviour. But people won't play the same reskinned game over and over again, they definitely won't pay full price for it. The only option left is to drop historical themes entirely and go all-in on fantasy titles, which will offer opportunities to freshen up gameplay, and keep things interesting rather than retreading old ground. Whether that be more Warhammer stuff or something else. Anything post-19th century historical is out of the question. It will end up resembling a large-scale company of heroes tactically, with hearts of iron style strategy, and nobody wants that.

[Emphyrio]

They need to do something to significantly change the formula.

That's quite literally what the Warhammer games were though. And yes, I'm aware that it's still a game focusing on melee combat, but many of the factions play radically differently from one another, and/or have unique mechanics to further diversify them from the rest.

Yes. And the warhams games were great. At least the first two. But now they've squeezed that stone dry. When did warhams 1 come out, ten years ago?

They should try to manage a WW1 game but that would mean they would need to actually develop new systems.

I don't think the gameplay of Total War games can be modified to reflect WW1 well. The farther in history you could go is very late 19th century ala Fall of the Samurai. The moment you introduce rifled firearms and spitzer bullets and shift away from line infantry formations, the core mechanic of TW games falls apart.

What they really need is to take a good, hard look at all the various mechanics and systems they've introduced over the years, figure out what worked and what audiences liked, and combine them into a new historical game.

They can make a modern war strategy game if they make it "CA's Totally Cool Wargame" instead of another Total War game with copy-pasted mechanics. CA was willing to make a game as radically different as Hyenas. Stealing some notes from Eugen shouldn't be a huge deal.

[Acrux]

the strategy game has failed to meet Paradox’s expectations, and the company now says that it has created a negative impact on costs.

[rusty_shackleford]

Who doesn't want to play as a squad of sassy brown people yassifying a bunch of evil proto-nazi antagonists?

[Acrux]

Black Geyser (heh) launched a Kickstarter for their DLC today. If they can't raise the money, they say the company is going out of business. They are already over 50%. I don't know if that's typical for first day in a KS.

It's an okay budget BG1. I suppose this might also fit in the "Chronicling the inability of gamedevs to make video games" thread.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gr ... ref=n6vn8j

This DLC has been fully funded.

[Rand]

Who doesn't want to play as a squad of sassy brown people yassifying a bunch of evil proto-nazi antagonists?

I prefer real history where all the semi-human troglodytes were kept in the appropriate places.

[wndrbr]

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/v ... -B95A-1D2A

Gaben got tired of exchange rate volatility in Argentina and Turkey, so now he's removing Turkish lira and Argentinian peso from Steam altogether.

[rusty_shackleford]

Can't imagine why video games suck so much. Completely unrelated, here's the authors page for a level design book:
https://book.leveldesignbook.com/appendix/about

Robert Yang is the founder of this project. As an indie game developer, he is most well-known for his Radiator games about sexuality and intimacy. In the past, he also contributed levels to projects like Black Mesa Source, and conducted interviews with level designers for Rock Paper Shotgun.

https://debacle.us/

That Lonesome Valley
Retro pixel gay cowboy romance about walkin', sheepin', and kissin'. (December 2022)

Rinse and Repeat HD
Male shower simulator about punctuality and submission. Give him a helping hand... when he says so. (September 2015, remastered November 2018)

Hard Lads
British masculinity simulator about smoking, drinking, kissing, and pain. Based on the viral video British Lads Hit Each Other With Chair. (June 2020)

The Tearoom
Historical public bathroom sex simulator about anxiety, police, and sucking off another dude's gun. (June 2017)

Level design?

[Acrux]

Least degenerate game designer.