Your video game hot take(s) thread

[Dirty Hipsters]

I am beyond bored and tired of the cycle of a new fighting game (See any mainline Street Fighter sequel). Sequel comes out and people complain or whine about hating to learn new mechanics or the legacy skill not being carried over. Suck it up people and take it like adults. Whenever a new fighting game came out, sequel or not, I am always happy to learn new game play mechanics that are good or that work. Max Has talked about this several times before. I usually never follow fighting game rumor reception that much as a kid nor as a teenager much, but whenever a new fighting game sequel came out; I was hyped no matter what.

​

If every time a new fighting game came out all of the old skills carried over directly then new people would never get into fighting games because they'd get absolutely crushed. Introducing new mechanics into a game that old players have to learn along-side newer players slightly evens the playing field at the start of the game's life-cycle and allows newer people to compete a bit more.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

If every time a new fighting game came out all of the old skills carried over directly then new people would never get into fighting games because they'd get absolutely crushed. Introducing new mechanics into a game that old players have to learn along-side newer players slightly evens the playing field at the start of the game's life-cycle and allows newer people to compete a bit more.

"But I spent years learning these systems so that I could crush noobs! I shouldn't have to be a noob!"

 

[Piscian]

Common Enemy health bars should not exist. I was originally going say "specifically in FPS games", I think this might be a fair statement universally.

I bought far Cry New dawn this week because, after beating Far Cry Primal, my craving for open world FPS was not quite quenched, and the only two games in the series I've not played are New Dawn and Blood Dragon. However about 30 minute into the game I had my first big battle, being swarmed by enemies. Headhot!..wait no. This enemy has 3 health bars. Not a boss. Not wearing a helmet. It just..takes more shots to kill them. Ok. pew pew pew...Then another one...pew pew pew...then another one..



It was kinda like all the air just went out of my excitement tires. Inside of a minute I went from having fun playing a visceral action game, to cleaning up my recycling bin.

I'm not sure if it applies to all games. Especially with big scary armored, shielded up bosses I'm kool with health cars, but like when I'm in a fire fights it should feel epic when I get a perfect head shot on a sniper a second before they blow my head off



This Shit?



I might as well be filling out a 1099 for all the excitement this brings.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

"But I spent years learning these systems so that I could crush noobs! I shouldn't have to be a noob!"

It's funny, the fighting game community is well known for being rather small and struggling as far as "competitive gaming" communities go (and this was especially true like 10 years ago), so they're constantly trying to get new blood into the scene. The moment a new player shows up though, it's a matter of pride for players to smack them down as hard as possible and make them quit. It's like a gang jump in.

They want new players, but they just want the new players to be there so they have someone to beat on. Might as well just play against training dummies at that point.

The FPS community has a similar issue, and devs attempt to fix it with skill based matchmaking. What ends up happening? Players complain that all of their matches are too hard and sweaty all the time, and they shouldn't have to be paired against people of their same skill level for every game. Sometimes they should be allowed to stomp new players and feel good about themselves.

So XDefiant comes out, and has no skill-based matchmaking, to big cheers initially. Well it turns out that the lobbies are actually harder and even more dominated by the high skill players, and the people who were complaining about skill-based matchmaking being too strict in other shooters now want skill-based matchmaking back in XDefiant. They've found out that skill-based matchmaking wasn't protecting noobs from them, it was actually protecting them from the REAL killers at the top. Fucking lol.

Common Enemy health bars should not exist. I was originally going say "specifically in FPS games", I think this might be a fair statement universally.

I bought far Cry New dawn this week because, after beating Far Cry Primal, my craving for open world FPS was not quite quenched, and the only two games in the series I've not played are New Dawn and Blood Dragon. However about 30 minute into the game I had my first big battle, being swarmed by enemies. Headhot!..wait no. This enemy has 3 health bars. Not a boss. Not wearing a helmet. It just..takes more shots to kill them. Ok. pew pew pew...Then another one...pew pew pew...then another one..

View attachment 11453

It was kinda like all the air just went out of my excitement tires. Inside of a minute I went from having fun playing a visceral action game, to cleaning up my recycling bin.

I'm not sure if it applies to all games. Especially with big scary armored, shielded up bosses I'm kool with health cars, but like when I'm in a fire fights it should feel epic when I get a perfect head shot on a sniper a second before they blow my head off

View attachment 11454

This Shit?

View attachment 11456

I might as well be filling out a 1099 for all the excitement this brings.

So is the issue the health bars themselves, or the number of shots/time to kill? Would you make the same complaint about something like Halo, which doesn't have health bars but which has a pretty long time to kill generally?

 

[BrawlMan]

Common Enemy health bars should not exist. I was originally going say "specifically in FPS games", I think this might be a fair statement universally.

I bought far Cry New dawn this week because, after beating Far Cry Primal, my craving for open world FPS was not quite quenched, and the only two games in the series I've not played are New Dawn and Blood Dragon. However about 30 minute into the game I had my first big battle, being swarmed by enemies. Headhot!..wait no. This enemy has 3 health bars. Not a boss. Not wearing a helmet. It just..takes more shots to kill them. Ok. pew pew pew...Then another one...pew pew pew...then another one..

That's not a health bar issue; it's a shitty RPG grinding and enemy leveling/scaling issue. ND's enemy scaling issues are widely known. How did you not know about this?

Common Enemy health bars should not exist

They should be allowed to exists; especially in the beat'em up genre. Unless you're Double Dragon, but even Double Dragon Gaiden decided to bring in the enemy health meters to great effect. Not every game needs them, but you're mook or boss better be showing physical damage. I am glad health bars never left. 7th generation tried to make them dissappear for the sake of "immersion and realism", but everyone got tired of that shit. I got tired of it at day one.

 

[Piscian]

So is the issue the health bars themselves, or the number of shots/time to kill? Would you make the same complaint about something like Halo, which doesn't have health bars but which has a pretty long time to kill generally?

I think the difference in something like Halo is the context and animation quality where in Halo, granted I've only played the first couple games, the enemies are inhuman and you'd see physical reaction as you take them down. I remember the grunts would take two or three shots to kill, but you'd see their shields get knocked out and see them stagger like Mike tysons punch out. I do think theres an additional problem with Modern Ubisoft games where the enemies just stand there continuing to shoot you as you ping them between the eyebrows and watch their meter deplete that makes it so miserable.

That's not a health bar issue; it's a shitty RPG grinding and enemy leveling/scaling issue. ND's enemy scaling issues are widely known. How did you not know about this?


They should be allowed to exists; especially in the beat'em up genre. Unless you're Double Dragon, but even Double Dragon Gaiden decided to bring in the enemy health meters to great effect. Not every game needs them, but you're mook or boss better be showing physical damage. I am glad health bars never left. 7th generation tried to make them dissappear for the sake of "immersion and realism", but everyone got tired of that shit. I got tired of it at day one.

Well I think theres a bit of context there. Guns are generally a novelty in a beat'm up so it makes sense that an enemy takes two-three hits to take out. I've never found a health bar necessary in a beatm up because enemies aren't generally sponges. Bill Bull and Axl, nor foot clan robots needed health bars. I'm fine with bosses and mini bosses having health bars because it adds to the sense of panic. I don't think health bars are needed for low level thugs. Makes me feels like I'm doing paper work. The point earlier though maybe the reaction is the difference. With health bars in Beat'm ups you still feel engaged because theres some staggering on the enemies part to make you feel that sense of progression.

To answer the other quote no, I was completely unaware or had forgotten Far Cry New Dawn added the awkward pseudo RPG stuff. I'd just finished Far Cry Primal which didn't. I just watched a review that mentioned Ubisoft thought since people accepted it in Ass creed that they'd add it to Far Cry. I checked reddit and it does seem like I'm not alone on this one and its pissed a lot of people off. I thankfully got a refund. I hope they remove it on the next one.

Apparently you can mod or turn off health bars according to google but in retrospect I don't think that's enough for me. If you a people and you aunt wearing a helmet headshots should work in my mind. Actually it occurs to me the way it worked far Cry primal is that enemies were sly as shit, constantly ducking under covering or trees or whatever when not firing at you. So even when an enemy would take two or three shots to kill it felt earned.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think the difference in something like Halo is the context and animation quality where in Halo, granted I've only played the first couple games, the enemies are inhuman and you'd see physical reaction as you take them down. I remember the grunts would take two or three shots to kill, but you'd see their shields get knocked out and see them stagger like Mike tysons punch out. I do think theres an additional problem with Modern Ubisoft games where the enemies just stand there continuing to shoot you as you ping them between the eyebrows and watch their meter deplete that makes it so miserable.

That makes sense, so it's not really the health bars themselves or the ttk that's the issue, just the fact that the enemies don't react in a satisfying way. When said like that though, it's kind of obvious.

It's interesting how some companies spend so much time on combat "feel." Making the guns sound punchy, making the reload animation stylish, having the enemies react and crumple when shot in the head, or stumble when shot in the legs, etc. And then there's other companies who don't bother with any of that, and just give you a canned reload animation, and essentially have enemies as cardboard targets that don't react at all to the holes you're making in them. Then those lazily made games inevitably make less money (Far Cry New Dawn apparently sold just a quarter of what Primal did) and the publisher wonders what happened.

It's why the 7th gen was so flooded with military shooters trying to ape Call of Duty and Battlefield and none of them understood why they just didn't make the CoD money when they were making virtually the same games.

 

[Piscian]

That makes sense, so it's not really the health bars themselves or the ttk that's the issue, just the fact that the enemies don't react in a satisfying way. When said like that though, it's kind of obvious.

It's interesting how some companies spend so much time on combat "feel." Making the guns sound punchy, making the reload animation stylish, having the enemies react and crumple when shot in the head, or stumble when shot in the legs, etc. And then there's other companies who don't bother with any of that, and just give you a canned reload animation, and essentially have enemies as cardboard targets that don't react at all to the holes you're making in them. Then those lazily made games inevitably make less money (Far Cry New Dawn apparently sold just a quarter of what Primal did) and the publisher wonders what happened.

It's why the 7th gen was so flooded with military shooters trying to ape Call of Duty and Battlefield and none of them understood why they just didn't make the CoD money when they were making virtually the same games.

Yeah on an aside New Dawns campaign opens with you in the middle this absolutely gorgeous canyon river and these deer, these radioactive pink deer prance past you and it's meant to be awe inspiring but the deer clearly make no physical impact on the environment. Like they run through tall grass but the grass doesn't move or sway. The deer..I'm not sure the technical term but they sort of ghost through it and theres a sense of uncanny valley where you as the player can tell there's a 3D plane and these are objects that exist in a different programming layer of the game. My brain immediately thought like "shit what is this 1998 3D gaming?"

 

[BrawlMan]

Bill Bull and Axl don't need health bars....

Yes they do. In Final Fight, Streets of Rage, and those directly modeled after the them, they're needed, because they add a sense of weight to who or whom you are fighting. A personal touch and the name adds to something to the looks or personalities they have. There are many reason why Poison and Hugo Andore are so popular. It's progress to let you know how much damage you're actually doing. In Final Fight, the more health an enemy has, the more damage they can do to you. Meaning an Andore or Wong Who can kill you in 2-4 hits. Streets of Rage doesn't do that though and it's just enemies respond faster and use their more hard hitting moves/counters on harder difficulties.

nor foot clan robots needed health bars.

That at least makes sense as they don't have that much health to begin with most of the time, and in the NES games they usually die in two hits. Aside from some special variations or non-Foot Ninja mooks.

I was completely unaware or had forgotten Far Cry New Dawn added the awkward pseudo RPG stuff. I'd just finished Far Cry Primal which didn't. I just watched a review that mentioned Ubisoft thought since people accepted it in Ass creed that they'd add it to Far Cry. I checked reddit and it does seem like I'm not alone on this one and its pissed a lot of people off. I thankfully got a refund. I hope they remove it on the next one.

Yeah, enemy leveling and scaling show up again in Far Cry 6, and I have no idea what they're planning for FC7.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Yeah on an aside New Dawns campaign opens with you in the middle this absolutely gorgeous canyon river and these deer, these radioactive pink deer prance past you and it's meant to be awe inspiring but the deer clearly make no physical impact on the environment. Like they run through tall grass but the grass doesn't move or sway. The deer..I'm not sure the technical term but they sort of ghost through it and theres a sense of uncanny valley where you as the player can tell there's a 3D plane and these are objects that exist in a different programming layer of the game. My brain immediately thought like "shit what is this 1998 3D gaming?"

They're just no-clipping through the environment.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

It's interesting how some companies spend so much time on combat "feel." Making the guns sound punchy, making the reload animation stylish, having the enemies react and crumple when shot in the head, or stumble when shot in the legs, etc. And then there's other companies who don't bother with any of that, and just give you a canned reload animation, and essentially have enemies as cardboard targets that don't react at all to the holes you're making in them. Then those lazily made games inevitably make less money (Far Cry New Dawn apparently sold just a quarter of what Primal did) and the publisher wonders what happened.

It's why the 7th gen was so flooded with military shooters trying to ape Call of Duty and Battlefield and none of them understood why they just didn't make the CoD money when they were making virtually the same games.

It’s why Killzone 2/3’s presentation was fucking awesome because it had all that in spades. Playing CoD after that felt like I’d been lobotomized.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

They want new players, but they just want the new players to be there so they have someone to beat on.

And then they get angry at the publishers when their well of scrubs dries up, and they don't have anyone to mock and laugh at with their Twitch chats anymore.

The FPS community has a similar issue, and devs attempt to fix it with skill based matchmaking. What ends up happening? Players complain that all of their matches are too hard and sweaty all the time, and they shouldn't have to be paired against people of their same skill level for every game. Sometimes they should be allowed to stomp new players and feel good about themselves.

"I don't want to deal with sweaty tryhards; I just want to pwn some noobs and have fun", said without the slightest hint of self-awareness.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Because you clearly are just looking for the answer you want to hear, or otherwise keep arguing its own sake regardless of how much I’ve already explained why in the last few pages.

I'm asking what's the point of having a lock-on system that sets the camera for you when the game puts the attack buttons on the shoulder buttons so you have your right thumb free to move the camera?

That still has the potential to throw you off and cause you to move incorrectly, especially if you have multiple enemies behind you and the soft lock may pick one slightly to the left or to the right of the one you expected. Imagine fighting in Blighttown or the Depraved Chasm and soft-lock locking onto the wrong target as you go to attack and just falling right off a bridge, or it turning your character just enough that you fail to block an incoming attack and just get punted right off a ledge.

The fact of the matter is, the Souls games are actively putting more control into your hands, so that when you mess up it's generally your own fault rather than a game system fucking you over (camera wall collision issues with Demon's Souls and Dark Souls 1 not withstanding because those are older games that hadn't quite figured out the camera yet).

If you fell off a ledge because the soft lock targeted the wrong enemy you'd probably be way more pissed off than if you walked off the ledge yourself.

Again, you're used to soft lock in games that have you fighting on a relatively even plane, in a large mostly open arena. These kinds of arenas generally only exist in boss fights in the souls games, but that's also where hard-lock generally isn't going to have any downsides either.

Outside of maybe the soft-lock going to a fly in Blighttown, I really don't see the issue because Souls games don't really mob you with enemies in high numbers to where you'd have trouble pointing the left stick accurately at the enemy you want to hit. Whereas something like the OG God of Wars or Batman Arkhams have tons more enemies you're facing at any one time with a more zoomed out camera. The block can also have some soft lock help for the player.

I generally like more control in a game as I like shooters to make you switch weapons to use your knife or grenades for example. But something that I wouldn't have to concern myself with in real life (hitting a target with a sword that's not actively dodging) is not something I want to worry about in a video game.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I'm asking what's the point of having a lock-on system that sets the camera for you when the game puts the attack buttons on the shoulder buttons so you have your right thumb free to move the camera?

Because your thumb does more than just turn the camera?

Outside of maybe the soft-lock going to a fly in Blighttown, I really don't see the issue because Souls games don't really mob you with enemies in high numbers to where you'd have trouble pointing the left stick accurately at the enemy you want to hit. Whereas something like the OG God of Wars or Batman Arkhams have tons more enemies you're facing at any one time with a more zoomed out camera. The block can also have some soft lock help for the player.

I generally like more control in a game as I like shooters to make you switch weapons to use your knife or grenades for example. But something that I wouldn't have to concern myself with in real life (hitting a target with a sword that's not actively dodging) is not something I want to worry about in a video game.

You're really going to bring up original God of War, where your weapon attacks fill half the arena you're fighting in, making it nearly impossible to miss just based on the hitbox of your attacks, and the Batman Arkham games, where hitting the wrong person in a crowd actually happens all the time? Like I literally could not count the number of times in Arkham Knight that I would try to punch a normal mook and instead it would target the guy with the shield next to him.

 

[Drathnoxis]

I'm asking what's the point of having a lock-on system that sets the camera for you when the game puts the attack buttons on the shoulder buttons so you have your right thumb free to move the camera?

Except your thumb is sitting on the face buttons waiting to dodge on a split seconds notice.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

The FPS community has a similar issue, and devs attempt to fix it with skill based matchmaking. What ends up happening? Players complain that all of their matches are too hard and sweaty all the time, and they shouldn't have to be paired against people of their same skill level for every game. Sometimes they should be allowed to stomp new players and feel good about themselves.

So XDefiant comes out, and has no skill-based matchmaking, to big cheers initially. Well it turns out that the lobbies are actually harder and even more dominated by the high skill players, and the people who were complaining about skill-based matchmaking being too strict in other shooters now want skill-based matchmaking back in XDefiant. They've found out that skill-based matchmaking wasn't protecting noobs from them, it was actually protecting them from the REAL killers at the top. Fucking lol.

If your game has such problems it's because it's 5v5 e-sports garbage. If you encourage narcissism, you'll get it in spades. Give me dedicated servers, I'm trying to relax here not LARP as a pro-gamer.

Even something like CS used to be a computer lab/LAN-party game. Online there were at least 3 people having sniper duels at dust2 double doors. If team balance was atrocious, the map rotation took care of it, or people left the losing team and new players came in. It's getting auto-balanced either way. The few who wanted to used a third-party MM. Nowadays, MM is the game, and now people are having mental health issues over a game they hate.

Turns out forcing people to play like the top 0.1% is a really bad idea. Constantly being judged by an omnipresent gaze doesn't help either, neither is always being on the edge because you might lose hundreds of hours of progress in a losing streak. Even with the perfect MM where everyone is equally skilled, the team with the best telepathic teamwork wins every time. If one guy has a mic and/or is playing with friends, it's over.

 

[Piscian]

Square: "Every final fantasy game must evolve and be completely different, with different mechanics and character names like VCR and telemetry-beth."

Yakuza: Like a Dragon: "Man remember OG Final Fantasy? That game was the shit."

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Square: "Every final fantasy game must evolve and be completely different, with different mechanics and character names like VCR and telemetry-beth."

Yakuza: Like a Dragon: "Man remember OG Final Fantasy? That game was the shit."

Pretty sure Yakuza: Like a Dragon is referencing Dragon Quest, not Final Fantasy.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Square: "Every final fantasy game must evolve and be completely different, with different mechanics and character names like VCR and telemetry-beth."

Yakuza: Like a Dragon: "Man remember OG Final Fantasy? That game was the shit."

Wait, what's the hot take?

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

I'm asking what's the point of having a lock-on system that sets the camera for you when the game puts the attack buttons on the shoulder buttons so you have your right thumb free to move the camera?

Outside of maybe the soft-lock going to a fly in Blighttown, I really don't see the issue because Souls games don't really mob you with enemies in high numbers to where you'd have trouble pointing the left stick accurately at the enemy you want to hit. Whereas something like the OG God of Wars or Batman Arkhams have tons more enemies you're facing at any one time with a more zoomed out camera. The block can also have some soft lock help for the player.

I generally like more control in a game as I like shooters to make you switch weapons to use your knife or grenades for example. But something that I wouldn't have to concern myself with in real life (hitting a target with a sword that's not actively dodging) is not something I want to worry about in a video game.

Spoiler: As I've mentioned already,

Your video game hot take(s) thread

Thanks @BrawlMan for the parry videos. Yes, outside of maybe one ranged weapon in the game (which awkwardly can use the telescope for assistance in manually aiming pretty effectively) that’s the extent of their function. The bullets are limited (but farmable or purchasable) to prevent spamming...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Your video game hot take(s) thread

Thanks @BrawlMan for the parry videos. Yes, outside of maybe one ranged weapon in the game (which awkwardly can use the telescope for assistance in manually aiming pretty effectively) that’s the extent of their function. The bullets are limited (but farmable or purchasable) to prevent spamming...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Your video game hot take(s) thread

Thanks @BrawlMan for the parry videos. Yes, outside of maybe one ranged weapon in the game (which awkwardly can use the telescope for assistance in manually aiming pretty effectively) that’s the extent of their function. The bullets are limited (but farmable or purchasable) to prevent spamming...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Your video game hot take(s) thread

Oh, we're b*tching about lock-on mechanics? My only complaint is when the lock-on dictates my character's physical positioning. I've had a few instances where my being locked-on to an enemy who's precariously close to a ledge and goes over, and my locked-on status caused me to swing around to...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Your video game hot take(s) thread

Oh, we're b*tching about lock-on mechanics? My only complaint is when the lock-on dictates my character's physical positioning. I've had a few instances where my being locked-on to an enemy who's precariously close to a ledge and goes over, and my locked-on status caused me to swing around to...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Your video game hot take(s) thread

Oh, we're b*tching about lock-on mechanics? My only complaint is when the lock-on dictates my character's physical positioning. I've had a few instances where my being locked-on to an enemy who's precariously close to a ledge and goes over, and my locked-on status caused me to swing around to...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Your video game hot take(s) thread

Oh, we're b*tching about lock-on mechanics? My only complaint is when the lock-on dictates my character's physical positioning. I've had a few instances where my being locked-on to an enemy who's precariously close to a ledge and goes over, and my locked-on status caused me to swing around to...

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Others like Dirty Hipsters have also elaborated on this. If that isn't enough, then again,

Your video game hot take(s) thread

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Your video game hot take(s) thread

forums.escapistmagazine.com

Other than that, I'm not getting stuck in this insanity loop here any longer.