Video Games: The General Discussion & Community Thread

[BrokenPromise]

@FamishedPants Anyone who openly admits they play Nekopara up to volume 4 and thinks saying its bad unironically will save them probably doesn't have a worthwhile opinion on VNs. I'm sure it will be fine.

speaking of fruit, I almost purchased Newton and the Apple Tree too, but I don't want to bury myself in VNs.

[Ammokkx]

@FamishedPants Anyone who openly admits they play Nekopara up to volume 4 and thinks saying its bad unironically will save them probably doesn't have a worthwhile opinion on VNs.

@BrokenPromise

hey, I mentioned Ever 17 in the same post ;~;

[SleepingSilence]

MMO's give you a goal to play toward and just boring enough to force you to make friends. That's my final say.

Because that is the one and only thing you can NOT get from any other genre. And that's just that.

@PPQ Purple

Not to stir the pot. But what you described is literally every single F2P mobile and Facebook browser game. And those aren't MMO's (usually).

Also, that's almost every modern online cooperative and multiplayer game too. Battle Royales, the newest example of how incorrect that is. Since most of those have chats and "a shared goal with other people playing the game". So better luck next time.

But I get it, you don't like WOW. We can hate it together.

---

On a separate note, a question for everyone who makes FF14 their addiction. Just how much "I'm a final fantasy fan, I know the lore, I played the games" are you on a scale of one to ten?

Because with my very cursory glance, having played a single game in the series, I wonder if that's impeding my enjoyment of the story/experience. (Which if it does, I only have myself to blame. Though it make more sense to why it's so popular still, besides the fact that its had so long in development that it has an absurd amount of content.) In the same vein, of how that alone is why that Elder Scrolls Online is still around.

Since my favorite MMO's are combat or exploration focused. Older Guild Wars 2. Firefall. Atlantica Online. Even things like Blade & Soul or Tera in those specific places. Etc Etc. But FF14's biggest pluses that I've been told, are its story. And the end game content/dungeons. (The latter, which I honestly rarely do in most MMORPG's.)

I mean FF14's fighting is fine and all. But the click/cooldown combat isn't exactly my favorite. And really, the exploration feels kind of purposely obtuse and held back for newer players. (It's perfectly fine at my current level mind, but it still could be much better with its sense of direction. I.E, quest markers anywhere with multiple floors/indoors.)

But I guess my brother literally paid for more of my sub time, so I guess I'm stuck with giving the story content another push in the near future. (And the prior encouragement was appreciated, btw.)

[Ammokkx]

But I guess, my brother literally paid for more of my sub time, so I guess I'm stuck with giving the story content another push in the near future.

@SleepingSilence

datacenter? If primal, hit me up some time. I'll help you run content whenever I'm on at the same time.

[FamishedPants]

@SleepingSilence

Like a 3 or 4?

I played 7, 12, 13 (1, not 2), before touching FFXIV. Knowing older games in the series more or less just gives you a bit of 'teehee' factor when you recognize things, and there's a lot of bosses you'll probably recognize if you're a dedicated fan. Isn't a requirement, however, and I doubt I would feel too left out even if I've never touched a game.

I think others have mentioned that beyond the blandness (YOU CAN GET THROUGH IT I SWEAR), the story picks up during Heavensward and on. Likewise, dungeons and trials do, too. I find new dungeons to be some of the most fun you can have in the game once they start becoming a decent challenge, much like trials. Also you get rewarded with great OSTs (It's a FF game so that's generally the case).

Also primal bois represent.

[SleepingSilence]

datacenter? If primal, hit me up some time. I'll help you run content whenever I'm on at the same time.

@Ammokkx

Looked it up, though I'm on Aether unfortunately. Thanks for the thought. ;P

But my brother's been playing it non-stop for months, in his efforts to push through the new content's story. So I'm sure he'll be able help me with whatever ridiculous quests that I may receive in future.

[IceHeart]

For the life of me I just can't stick with any MMO for long. I just get so bored of them so fast. The last one I remember playing for a long time was the original Guild Wars, which I did like until I got to the point I had to grind for better armor and weapons just to continue the main content. I played Elder Scrolls a bit too but frankly it just felt like the poor man's version of an actual Elder Scrolls game.

Well in the end I suppose it's mostly my own fault since I'm not a very social person anyway and never really became active in any guilds.

---

Well enough of stuff I don't like, here is something I am really enjoying these days! With the sales going on I decided to give Nexomon: Extinction a go and I've been loving it! I used to be a pokemon fan but got tired with how bloated the series feels these days and the old games are just too slow to enjoy anymore. Thankfully Nexomon really has hit all the right buttons for me and I've been really enjoying it!

A good amount of monsters to collect, quite a bit of humor, a story that actually feels like something is at stake, hard boss battles you really have to prepare for, and fairly quick leveling up. I think the biggest thing I like though is the fact the monsters don't differ in base stats and there is no breeding system you have to deal with to make that 'perfect' monster. I never bothered to get into multiplayer battles in pokemon precisely because I knew I would never have the patience to max stat a 'perfect' team that would actually be viable in matches.

It just managed to scratch that itch I wanted that the original pokemon gave me back when I was a kid and I've been loving most of what it has to offer. I also generally like almost all the monster designs unlike a lot of pokemon I could mention.

So Extinction is actually a sequel to the original Nexomon game, which I also got mostly just for the back story and it was really cheap. It's also pretty good but you can definitely tell it was a mobile game first when you play it and is generally not as polished. Also a lot more unbalanced and status effects are seriously overpowered in that game. It has come a long way from its cash grab roots.

[Fabricant451]

On a separate note, a question for everyone who makes FF14 their addiction. Just how much "I'm a final fantasy fan, I know the lore, I played the games" are you on a scale of one to ten?

@SleepingSilence

I've played every mainline FF game, a lot of the spinoffs, and have written far too many essays about various games in the franchise. Even if I wasn't a fan of them, 14 would still be appealing to me just as a narrative, though admittedly I like slow burn things and will freely admit it often takes too long for 14's plot to go anywhere other than meandering - especially in the early going before they figured it out. At best, being a fan of the franchise mostly lets you appreciate some of the less obvious references (like the Crystal Tower raid in 2.0 just being Final Fantasy 3 again) in the same way that Final Fantasy 9 works as a standalone but also is filled to the brim with references of the games prior to it.

I think the concern of FF14 not being exploration based is valid if that's what you enjoy out of the genre. For me, something like Tera is fun only in the smallest bursts because quest design in that game doesn't do anything to disguise its grind, meanwhile I've tried and failed to get into Guild Wars 2 like seven times and while I like the platformy viewpoint stuff, I hate the world quest shit that seemed to be the only way to really progress outside of story content. 14 is certainly an MMO that is focused heavily on its narrative but at the same time its held back by the fact that it has a console userbase in mind - and nothing against them, but there's also a reason why the console versions of STO and Tera are, like, basically dead. (Also because who wanted them anyway)

Exploration never really becomes its true focus but at least in the expansion zones they don't just hand you full map completion for entering the area the first time so it's...something.

As someone whose main MMO for years was SWTOR, I can tolerate a...mediocre MMO if I enjoy the narrative and fortunately 14 is above mediocre, even if it takes, for me anyway, way too long for a class to truly feel 'good' to play. And nothing is worse than when you're used to how a class feels at max and then oops now you're doing Sastasha again have fun idiot all your cool shit is unusable and it's like fuck I forgot.

[Carlyle]

Muv-Luv Alternative: I'm about 20 hours in, but I really like that this game is just uncomfortable and/or underground enough that not everyone and their brother is talking about it, so I'll refrain from saying anything about it here. Just that it's a well constructed world, even if the infodumps can be long at times.

@BrokenPromise

Yeah, I've always found that weird. It's highly esteemed in the VN community and even the author of AoT said it inspired his work but whenever I talk to people most people have no idea what it's about.

[PPQ Purple]

Mate you literally can't remember shit about the MMO's you played.

@Ammokkx

Because they did their job of locking me and a bunch of other people in a room with the explicit order that none of us are getting out before each has at least one friend good enough that I don't have to remember them. Plus frankly once you get to my age I'll see if you can remember stuff from over a decade ago. These days the only stuff from my youth I generally remember is the stuff that stood out for one reason or another either by being very good or very bad.

Like half the reason why I remember Silkroad Online is because in the later years the devs didn't realize it was a bad idea to allow botters to accumulate ingame currency by botting 24/7 and than sell it for real money which actually triggered an ingame hyperinflation. And I found the whole situation to actually be quite educational from an economics perspective. So it stuck in my memory.

[Ammokkx]

Because they did their job of locking me and a bunch of other people in a room with the explicit order that none of us are getting out before each has at least one friend good enough that I don't have to remember them.

@PPQ Purple

But

They don't

want you to get out

they want you to keep playing and spending money on it

I literally cannot fathom this perspective of yours. Even the original Everquest in all its archaïc glory was built to be a fun game for a certain crowd of people. The devs behind Everquest didn't want you to quit and not play their game. And that is one of those MMO's that, as you put it, "locks you into a room until you've grinded 300 tigers"

Fucking

Final Fantasy 11 is the epitome of a game that forced(/forces) its community to come together to achieve anything and while people loved that at the time of its release, they took every wrong lesson from it for FFXIV 1.0 and that game did so bad it nearly caused a goddamn financial crisis at SE.

If a good MMO, by your definition, is forgettable and retains no players then PPQ, mate, I'd rather go play the bad ones.

[BrokenPromise]

Oh, and before the steam sale ends, let me plug two more games I enjoyed.

I'm sure everyone who's going to play this probably owns it already, but Code Vein was an enjoyable experience. Edgy anime darksouls. Though while the cobat is clearly inspired by darksouls, a few things prevent it from feeling like a souls game.

#1: Everything feels less janky. Hit boxes and animations are tight, etc.

#2: You're never alone. You can play every part of the game with an AI companion, and they even have unique dialog as you explore.

#3: its... not hard. Not as hard as other souls likes.

If you want anime dark souls, this is probably as close as you're going to get. But if you're looking for a challenge, eh, might wanna look elsewhere.

Second game I'd like to introduce everyone to is Iconoclasts, which is a puzzle platformer. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but quite a few of the bosses are "trial & error" types of challenges and the plot kind of doesn't know what to do with itself towards the end. The characters are quite charming though. A small warning though, the game does deal with some darker themes, so don't be totally fooled by the cutesy presentation. Not my favorite game, but it's a steal at 6$!

Also bonus third game: Hades is 20% off. If you have any interest in rouge-lites, Greek mythology, good gameplay, etc, it's a must play.

[mickilennial]

I literally cannot fathom this perspective of yours.

@Ammokkx

Same. Of all of my years lurking GameFAQs, NeoGAF, etc. I have never heard such a take and there have been some fairly spicy ones. I cannot even understand this perspective because it doesn't make any sense to me.

[PPQ Purple]

...

@Ammokkx

I do not think you understand what I am saying. Or rather you are refusing to understand on account of the fact that you stubbornly refuse to accept that there is a difference between the commercial success and failure of a product and its success or failure as representative of a genre.

You can have a movie that's billed as horror but isn't scary at all. And yet such a movie can make huge amounts of money. Does this mean that it's a good "horror" movie? NO. It makes it a good movie overall that did good as a movie but it still fails at its genre. And that's what I am saying here as well.

A good "MMO game", two words combined and not just one, is a game based around having fun through group socialization within the context it provides. Therefore in order to succeed both as a product AND as a MMO it has to tick not one but both of those boxes. It has to combines both a set of good team and/or PVP activities to engage you and keep you engaged when you have friends around and a good set of mechanics to forcefully make sure even the most awkward shy person ever could make friends so as to ensure nobody was stuck awkwardly playing alone and missing out on the true content, which is the fun of socialization. It's a game that creates conditions for forced (if stealthily so) socialization and than makes that socialization fun.

And if it fails at one or the other it either fails as a game overall or it fails at its genre. And the two are, like in the movie example, completely separate things.

A good and fun multiplayer game that does not create those conditions, one that does not in fact have a way to push people into forming bonds almost against their will whilst making them feel like it's organic natural and even their own idea is not a good MMO. It's just a good multiplayer like DOTA or Warthunder or Counter Strike. It might be fun, it might be successful and it might rack in a lot of cash. But like our movie example above it still fails at the genre it's trying to belong to.

Equally so a game that creates those conditions and does so fantastically but that just isn't fun to play is a good MMO but a crap game. It succeeds at its genre and might do so brilliantly. But because its just not fun it fails at the "game" part and is thus doomed to failure, and rightly so. Just like a "horror" movie that is incredibly frighting but otherwise just plain crap.

But those are two separate things that need to be looked at separately. Because you can and do have plenty of situations where you fail at one and succeed at the other.

[Ammokkx]

A good "MMO game", two words combined and not just one, is a game based around having fun through group socialization within the context it provides. Therefore in order to succeed both as a product AND as a MMO it has to tick not one but both of those boxes. It has to combines both a set of good team and/or PVP activities to engage you and keep you engaged when you have friends around and a good set of mechanics to forcefully make sure even the most awkward shy person ever could make friends so as to ensure nobody was stuck awkwardly playing along. It's a game that creates conditions for forced (if stealthily so) socialization and than makes that socialization fun.

@PPQ Purple

I have mentioned about 7 different games that all do this and you refuse to acknowledge any of my examples in favor of the ones you can't even remember.

And commercial success does factor in, because people playing the game means people are socializing in the game.

You explicitely left these supossedly social experiences because they had nothing to offer you. The most you can remember is a bot crisis in one game, while RMT activities are shit that happens in every MMO.

I'm done with this. You are completely talking out of your ass.

[PPQ Purple]

I have mentioned about 7 different games that all do this and you refuse to acknowledge any of my examples in favor of the ones you can't even remember.

And commercial success does factor in, because people playing the game means people are socializing in the game.

@Ammokkx

Not necessarily. If a game offers a decent singleplayer experience you can play it without ever having to socialize heavily. And that defeats the entire purpose of a MMO which is to force you to socialize and than make said socialization fun.

You explicitely left these supossedly social experiences because they had nothing to offer you. The most you can remember is a bot crisis in one game, while RMT activities are shit that happens in every MMO.

I'm done with this. You are completely talking out of your ass.

No, that is not what I said. But it's a simple fact that in life (at least my life) friendships and communities don't tend to last more than a couple years before everyone gets bored and moves on. This is true on the internet as well as in reality. Like I literally have zero contact with people I was best friends with 5-10 years ago. Like what sort of person remembers stuff that happened a decade ago anyway?

Plus I newer said all the games I played were good. That's your inference. I said I played enough of them to get a feel for the good, the bad and the ugly. Which I have and did. And let me tell you the majority of them are not in fact good.

[mickilennial]

Like what sort of person remembers stuff that happened a decade ago anyway?

@PPQ Purple

People who make memories and, generally, have fun.

[Fabricant451]

You can have a movie that's billed as horror but isn't scary at all. And yet such a movie can make huge amounts of money. Does this mean that it's a good "horror" movie? NO. It makes it a good movie overall that did good as a movie but it still fails at its genre.

@PPQ Purple

I didn't find Midsommar particular scary but it's still a really fucking good horror movie.

[Fabricant451]

<Snipped quote by Ammokkx>
And that defeats the entire purpose of a MMO which is to force you to socialize and than make said socialization fun.

@PPQ Purple

This is like saying the entire purpose of Call of Duty is shit talking minors just because it's an element of the game. You're never forced to socialize in an MMO. You're incentivized to join a guild be it for XP buffs or whatever is on offer but you're not forced to do so. You could queue for random dungeons and never say a goddamn word to the others you're running content with. MMOs have come a long way since the days when everything was obtuse and grindy to disguise the lack of shit to do at max level. Back then maybe yeah you'd have a point where the social interaction was a bit more vital, but these days? Not at all.

[BangoSkank]

I loved Midsommar but it generated some hilariously self centered hot takes.

I think my favorite takes on multiplayer have been the Diablo series, Monster Hunter World, and GTA IV