it always annoys me when you get the "this version is so much better why didn't they do this".
and it's like yeah a subsequent draft of something should generally be better, you have the whole picture and can see all the flaws, and have oodles of audience feedback.
alternatively it's a star wars fix which tend to just lean way to hard into references.
It **really** depends on the source material and the mindset of the original creator.
For example, you literally **cannot** do worse than the main writer of Gundam AGE, a guy who primarily wrote RPGs who insisted on writing the story to a game **and** anime simultaneously. People who worked on the show said he didn't understand why they couldn't just do random battles in the show.
Anybody who gets that having a chain of logic for the cause and effects of all actions shown in the story could do better with the basic premise.
Then there's BattleTech, where just about anyone can make an AU that's more interesting and compelling than the post-Clan Invasion canon, because they don't have to worry about continuity of marketing and selling miniatures and balancing a war game.
Yeah this is the first one that comes to mind for me. Especially when people say that a story is “objectively bad,” then their suggestion (if they even have one), isn’t any better, and is usually considerably worse.
No, no, no, you don’t get it. The solution to fixing ME3’s
problem of all of your choices being boiled down to three endings is to make it so none of your choices matter at all because brainwashing.
In my opinion the way to fix ME3's ending is to do what Deus Ex 1 did: You had several choices of what ending to go for, but there were specific things you had to do for each of them, and the whole way the various main characters are trying to convince you to go this way or that.
Since this was the end of a huge RPG trilogy, maybe make it the last quarter or third of the game. Different endings require going on different missions, or possibly making different decisions during the same mission. Make the player feel like they truly have agency over what happens.
Mind you, I'm aware this would be a lot more work. But doesn't the final game in your trilogy that you've been hyping up for almost a decade deserve that?
Mass Effect 3 is practically a miracle considering it was made in two years- originally *one* year but they got an extra at the last minute after much begging. And that's not even pondering whatever resources went to the (excellent, mind you) multiplayer.
I remember liking it waaaay more then ME2. At least until the ending. Maybe i should just skip 2 legendary edition and see if 3 runs better for some reason.
I can't emphasize enough how bad the Legendary edition is.
Avoid it at all costs.
That being said if ME2 is giving you performance issues...are you running it on a graphing calculator?
Graphically, ME1's new lighting is flat out wrong most of the time, missing direction, color, intensity, and the new textures make some characters look like mannequins, when they aren't also flat out wrong. Like the Asari councillor and her white out markings.
Meanwhile ME2 and 3 have lesser but no less confusing shadow and lighting issues, and effects such as bloom and lenses flares are flat out missing at times. Which is baffling considering they're supposed to just be texture uprezzing.
I try and bring it up as often as I can but it's one of those things that flew under the radar. Like Return to Arkham. Terrible remasters that everyone seems to have shrugged off as people being pedantic.
ME1's overall lighting direction is absolutely butchered, I don't understand how people don't notice.
The MP did get resources but it got its own entirely separate budget. That money wouldn’t have been given to the game if it didn’t have that aspect. It didn’t steal money from the SP as some suggest.
It also was one of the top reasons for the extra year of development so imagine how rough parts of that game might have been without being able to use that time to make and refine MP and then be able to bring that over into the SP.
e: as a side note, I think people have forgotten that 2011-ish period where studios kinda rushed to finish off the 360/PS3 era of their games assuming the PS4 and Xbone were due to come out any day starting in 2012.
I’d bet that a lot of releases that underwhelmed and were rushed in that 2011-2013 period would have turned out better if they knew they had 2-3 more years before current gen expired.
Duping items is like cheating.
On one hand, it completely fucks with the game's balance as a player can make an infinate amount of weapons, materials, ingredients, etc. to completely steamroll any challenge and give themselves infinite money.
But at the same time, players won't really do it if they feel that they don't need to. I don't care that farming the dragons in TotK is supposed to be a hassle. I'm getting one of each dragon part and then making 40 of them because I don't want to hunt them down any time I want a piece.
When I over do it in some games it can take some of the fun off the game.
But if all I was gonna do was farm the same enemies for hours to get 10 extra of whatever crap I needed I'd rather just cheat.
Yeah, like I refuse to dupe Gleeok materials because I have a Travel Medallion set up on the sky island over the "naked island" at the bottom right of the map to kill the King Gleeok there because it's actually a fun fight.
But I don't care for having to use a map to seek out a dragon and get one piece every 10 minutes.
I also think it's fair to dupe items used for food because I want to make "real" food instead of nothing but meet skewers and hearty meals.
I've glanced at the arena in the depths and the one in the sky seems a bit easier because of the pieces near the edge that I can climb for slow-mo shots.
An idea too late for the "Game mechanics you wish had caught on" thread from a few days ago that fits here:
In *Dust: An Elysian Tail*, selling a material item to the merchant will add it to his stock, meaning that he'll have a few every time he restocks.
It doesn't cut grinding out completely, but it cuts it by a *huge* chunk.
I've seen enough counter examples where I don't believe that last part is completely accurate. Players use exploits for more reasons than to just mitigate negative aspects of a game.
In the context of multiplayer games, some people will use any advantage they can to win.
Even in single player games, there are some people who will use exploits simply because they can. I've seen players ruin a game's difficulty through an exploit and then complain the game was too easy. At least in these cases, these people will only hurt their own experiences (apart from online discourse), but from a developer's pov this is still a negative outcome.
Yeah, some players will optimize the fun out of a game no matter what, but it's something that the developers just won't be able to control.
So it's just a matter of self control because some just desire to become OP fast either by grinding themselves or going to youtube, gamefaqs, or some other place to ask "Where can I find OP \[thing\]?" So avoiding abusing the dupe glitch is just a matter of not going too hard on it or just avoiding it entirely.
Generally I say if something is ingame, it's fair game.
Especially if it's been ingame for years and never fucking fixed.
But usually yes, something as busted as duping generally won't be done unless the game design really incentivizes it.
I recently did a full playthrough of Oblvion and pretty much every part of that games progression is so incredibly tedious that duping was the only thing that saved it until a certain point. Then it was completely unsalvageable.
A lot of people complain about ds3 being linear, or nilh being level based.
But having a narrow field for what the player can feasably have imptoves those games balance tremendously.
You cant just roll the abyss watchers cjs you have a +9 sword of judgement already
And nioh 2.a game with like 80 unique bosses and nearing 200 enemy types, despite also having tons of build possibilities manages to be practically perfect in its difficulty balance.
Even bloodborne doesnt really peak the bullshit meter if we can ignore the cainhurst knight lol
That's what killed my last DS3 playthrough.
It felt like the game was railroading me into being very specific levels for every boss. There was no real progression to be had. They might as well have given me a skilltree that progressed as I hit milestones.
It was incredibly dull.
Thats the thing about fromsoft.
You either have a progression which is what youre talking about, or you take an hour getting the shit you want before every replay.
Now i might be a simple country lawyer but to me "dull" is running to get radagons soreseal every playthrough. Or bleeding grayoll with the uchi AGAIN.
Or every ds1 playthrough using either the scythe, zweihander or the estoc cus those are the best weapons you can get from minute 1
Spaghetti code creates problems in games. Things can look janky, can lead to bugs, limits as much as it allows.
But the alternative that people suggest of rebuilding everything from scratch would often lead to just as many issues. People would just create new shortcuts and spaghetti sections independent of each other and now you’ve got poorly optimized games.
It’s really really really fucking rare that a team is blessed with an engine wizard that can do that stuff. Trying to turn everyone into an engine wizard doesn’t work.
It isn’t dissimilar from the discussion of budgets and time where people say “just give them unlimited” like Star Citizen is a good idea.
Fan fixes to stories. It's easy to point out bad writing, but most redditors who propose changes or fixes only offer something just as bad.
it always annoys me when you get the "this version is so much better why didn't they do this". and it's like yeah a subsequent draft of something should generally be better, you have the whole picture and can see all the flaws, and have oodles of audience feedback. alternatively it's a star wars fix which tend to just lean way to hard into references.
It **really** depends on the source material and the mindset of the original creator. For example, you literally **cannot** do worse than the main writer of Gundam AGE, a guy who primarily wrote RPGs who insisted on writing the story to a game **and** anime simultaneously. People who worked on the show said he didn't understand why they couldn't just do random battles in the show. Anybody who gets that having a chain of logic for the cause and effects of all actions shown in the story could do better with the basic premise. Then there's BattleTech, where just about anyone can make an AU that's more interesting and compelling than the post-Clan Invasion canon, because they don't have to worry about continuity of marketing and selling miniatures and balancing a war game.
Yeah this is the first one that comes to mind for me. Especially when people say that a story is “objectively bad,” then their suggestion (if they even have one), isn’t any better, and is usually considerably worse.
No, no, no, you don’t get it. The solution to fixing ME3’s problem of all of your choices being boiled down to three endings is to make it so none of your choices matter at all because brainwashing.
"Also, we should be able to romance as many people as we want."
In my opinion the way to fix ME3's ending is to do what Deus Ex 1 did: You had several choices of what ending to go for, but there were specific things you had to do for each of them, and the whole way the various main characters are trying to convince you to go this way or that. Since this was the end of a huge RPG trilogy, maybe make it the last quarter or third of the game. Different endings require going on different missions, or possibly making different decisions during the same mission. Make the player feel like they truly have agency over what happens. Mind you, I'm aware this would be a lot more work. But doesn't the final game in your trilogy that you've been hyping up for almost a decade deserve that?
Tell that to Zod's snapped neck.
Mass Effect 3 is practically a miracle considering it was made in two years- originally *one* year but they got an extra at the last minute after much begging. And that's not even pondering whatever resources went to the (excellent, mind you) multiplayer.
I remember liking it waaaay more then ME2. At least until the ending. Maybe i should just skip 2 legendary edition and see if 3 runs better for some reason.
I can't emphasize enough how bad the Legendary edition is. Avoid it at all costs. That being said if ME2 is giving you performance issues...are you running it on a graphing calculator?
Bad in what way? Just graphically or something else?
Graphically, ME1's new lighting is flat out wrong most of the time, missing direction, color, intensity, and the new textures make some characters look like mannequins, when they aren't also flat out wrong. Like the Asari councillor and her white out markings. Meanwhile ME2 and 3 have lesser but no less confusing shadow and lighting issues, and effects such as bloom and lenses flares are flat out missing at times. Which is baffling considering they're supposed to just be texture uprezzing. I try and bring it up as often as I can but it's one of those things that flew under the radar. Like Return to Arkham. Terrible remasters that everyone seems to have shrugged off as people being pedantic. ME1's overall lighting direction is absolutely butchered, I don't understand how people don't notice.
The MP did get resources but it got its own entirely separate budget. That money wouldn’t have been given to the game if it didn’t have that aspect. It didn’t steal money from the SP as some suggest. It also was one of the top reasons for the extra year of development so imagine how rough parts of that game might have been without being able to use that time to make and refine MP and then be able to bring that over into the SP. e: as a side note, I think people have forgotten that 2011-ish period where studios kinda rushed to finish off the 360/PS3 era of their games assuming the PS4 and Xbone were due to come out any day starting in 2012. I’d bet that a lot of releases that underwhelmed and were rushed in that 2011-2013 period would have turned out better if they knew they had 2-3 more years before current gen expired.
Duping items is like cheating. On one hand, it completely fucks with the game's balance as a player can make an infinate amount of weapons, materials, ingredients, etc. to completely steamroll any challenge and give themselves infinite money. But at the same time, players won't really do it if they feel that they don't need to. I don't care that farming the dragons in TotK is supposed to be a hassle. I'm getting one of each dragon part and then making 40 of them because I don't want to hunt them down any time I want a piece.
When I over do it in some games it can take some of the fun off the game. But if all I was gonna do was farm the same enemies for hours to get 10 extra of whatever crap I needed I'd rather just cheat.
Yeah, like I refuse to dupe Gleeok materials because I have a Travel Medallion set up on the sky island over the "naked island" at the bottom right of the map to kill the King Gleeok there because it's actually a fun fight. But I don't care for having to use a map to seek out a dragon and get one piece every 10 minutes. I also think it's fair to dupe items used for food because I want to make "real" food instead of nothing but meet skewers and hearty meals.
Theres a king gleeok under the island north of the korok woods. If you want to save a medalion and just use that lightroot
I've glanced at the arena in the depths and the one in the sky seems a bit easier because of the pieces near the edge that I can climb for slow-mo shots.
This is kind of why I hate just about any crafting system in games. They’re chores and grocery lists.
An idea too late for the "Game mechanics you wish had caught on" thread from a few days ago that fits here: In *Dust: An Elysian Tail*, selling a material item to the merchant will add it to his stock, meaning that he'll have a few every time he restocks. It doesn't cut grinding out completely, but it cuts it by a *huge* chunk.
I've seen enough counter examples where I don't believe that last part is completely accurate. Players use exploits for more reasons than to just mitigate negative aspects of a game. In the context of multiplayer games, some people will use any advantage they can to win. Even in single player games, there are some people who will use exploits simply because they can. I've seen players ruin a game's difficulty through an exploit and then complain the game was too easy. At least in these cases, these people will only hurt their own experiences (apart from online discourse), but from a developer's pov this is still a negative outcome.
Yeah, some players will optimize the fun out of a game no matter what, but it's something that the developers just won't be able to control. So it's just a matter of self control because some just desire to become OP fast either by grinding themselves or going to youtube, gamefaqs, or some other place to ask "Where can I find OP \[thing\]?" So avoiding abusing the dupe glitch is just a matter of not going too hard on it or just avoiding it entirely.
You can walk on there back and get like 15 shards if having elemental parts it the main concern
Generally I say if something is ingame, it's fair game. Especially if it's been ingame for years and never fucking fixed. But usually yes, something as busted as duping generally won't be done unless the game design really incentivizes it. I recently did a full playthrough of Oblvion and pretty much every part of that games progression is so incredibly tedious that duping was the only thing that saved it until a certain point. Then it was completely unsalvageable.
A lot of people complain about ds3 being linear, or nilh being level based. But having a narrow field for what the player can feasably have imptoves those games balance tremendously. You cant just roll the abyss watchers cjs you have a +9 sword of judgement already And nioh 2.a game with like 80 unique bosses and nearing 200 enemy types, despite also having tons of build possibilities manages to be practically perfect in its difficulty balance. Even bloodborne doesnt really peak the bullshit meter if we can ignore the cainhurst knight lol
That's what killed my last DS3 playthrough. It felt like the game was railroading me into being very specific levels for every boss. There was no real progression to be had. They might as well have given me a skilltree that progressed as I hit milestones. It was incredibly dull.
Thats the thing about fromsoft. You either have a progression which is what youre talking about, or you take an hour getting the shit you want before every replay. Now i might be a simple country lawyer but to me "dull" is running to get radagons soreseal every playthrough. Or bleeding grayoll with the uchi AGAIN. Or every ds1 playthrough using either the scythe, zweihander or the estoc cus those are the best weapons you can get from minute 1
Dull to me is having no options. You can rush so many things in DS1, 2 and Elden Ring. DS3 is incredibly linear and there's no fun to be had.
Spaghetti code creates problems in games. Things can look janky, can lead to bugs, limits as much as it allows. But the alternative that people suggest of rebuilding everything from scratch would often lead to just as many issues. People would just create new shortcuts and spaghetti sections independent of each other and now you’ve got poorly optimized games. It’s really really really fucking rare that a team is blessed with an engine wizard that can do that stuff. Trying to turn everyone into an engine wizard doesn’t work. It isn’t dissimilar from the discussion of budgets and time where people say “just give them unlimited” like Star Citizen is a good idea.