Chimpzy said:
Palindromemordnilap said:
Thaluikhain said:
ObsidianJones said:
Dalisclock said:
Afaik, devs often purposefully allow AI opponents to cheat, because said AI is usually pretty bad, and would get curbstomped if put on a level playing field against even mediocre human players.
Basically, if it feels like the AI is playing by different rules, it's probably because they are.
Oh, I get that. It's just a number of games do a bad job of hiding that there's cheating going on under the hood. When the AI blatantly doesn't play by the same rules you do, it breaks immersion somewhat. Esepecially in games where an economy is in place, where you can downright cripple their supply lines/completely blockade them and they still somehow have hidden resources to pump out more units(which is sometimes due to the AI getting free money).
I'm a big Dark Souls fan, but when "Tough but Fair" comes up, I always counter "Well, except when floors that were previously stable collapse under you for no particular reason, Enemy weapons can phase through objects that your weapons will bounce off of, clearly messed up hitboxes(The Pursurer is a major offender here) and nobody else has to worry about stamina".
Hawki said:
Dalisclock said:
Well, considering Jack is literally a toddler who was somehow aged up 20 or so years in a single year before the start of the game I can only imagine Jack doesn't talk because "Jack shoot?" "Dada Golf" would be fairly immersion breaking considering the rest of the story.
We hear him talk at the very start of the game. He's certainly reasonably erudite there. And in a world of plasmids, I don't think the game needs to justify it. I mean, even if he couldn't talk, and that's the reason for it, he still has no trouble using a variety of firearms, or hacking, or using plasmids, or...
I know it's wierd that that should bother me, but the sticking point is again, Jack is somehow a functional adult depite literally being a year old. And this was done for the sake of a really stupid twist to explain why Jack can use the vita chambers.
It would make a lot more sense if Jack were a normal human turned into a sleeper agent via hypnosis or some crap, instead you have to buy the "We managed to grow a baby to an adult in less then a year, avoid any serious health or development issues, and manage to make him indistinguishable from a normal human who had 20+ years of life experience to shape his character.
Forget the city under the ocean. That would be a world changing event right there. That's up with The Patriots managing to Cure Cancer with a hypo and bring World Peace at the Press of a button in MGS4.
They don't explain how the ADAM works in Bioshock other then "Magical Sea Slugs". Hell, or how the fuck you'd even build a city that far down with 1940's tech. Why come up with some a bizarre and convoluted explanation for why Jack is the only one who can use the vita chambers? System Shock 1/2 just went "Shodan turned them off. You turned them back on. Go with it". Bioshock imported them and tried to explain them in a way that made no sense just because Bioshock was essentially a sequel to system shock, just like Bioshock Infinite imported the Vigors/Plasmids for the same reason(and the reason for the vigors don't make any sense either).
EvilRoy said:
(Bad) weapon degradation
Sometimes weapon degradation makes sense and can be a good balancing mechanic. Yes, the crazy sword you just got is super rad but, no, we can't let you keep it all game because it would screw the balance. Save it to wreck a boss or easymode an encounter, but that's all.
Makes sense. What doesn't make sense are clubs, pipe guns, etc. Breaking up very easily. Because they suck. It doesn't hurt anything to let me keep the crappiest weapons forever (so at least I have something) or if you are going to break them, do not tell me that it requires a piece of wood to fix a club. Thats stupid, and not how clubs work.
Yathzee had a good take on this.
"Also, you have one second to name any game in which weapon degradation has been a good idea. [beat] Time's up! That's what I thought! There's something very wrong about a katana that shatters after five or six hits, one that ostensibly isn't made out of glass or chocolate."
It's hard for me to think of a game where Weapon Degradation was done well, because it's almost always obnoxiously implemented. Melee weapons with few or no moving parts shouldn't degrade to any notable degree unless you're using a sword to chop down a tree(which would dull the blade like crazy) and even guns, which do have moving parts, shouldn't degrade in the short term unless you're never cleaning it or firing it so much that the barrel is warping from overheating(which is why machine guns have swappable barrels exactly for this reason). Certain guns are known for being less reliable(There was a french machine gun from WW1 which allegedly never fired an entire magazine without jamming, that's how unreliable it was) but that shouldn't apply to every gun. I think the early fallout games would possibly have guns misfire or even explode if your weapons skill were low enough.
The only game I can think of that actually justified it well was Balders Gate, where the Iron coming out of the local mines was flawed(read: Sabotaged) and thus anything made with it(weapons, but also tools) would break far too easily. It was a notable plot point in the game though.
Dark Souls 2 was also really annoying about this(where weapons seem to fucking melt, that's how fragile they are) so much that getting to the next bonfire can be a challenge before they break, especially in early game. Presumably it's justified by "End of the World" but none of the other games have weapons degrade with such vigor despite the same setting. Hell, in Dark Souls 1 the degradation is barely noticable. Buy the repair kit(which is cheap) and use it once in a blue moon when the durablity starts getting fairly low.
The UberWeapon example might make sense, but it only works if the weapon degradation is limited to that OP weapon, but it never is. Instead, pretty much every weapon will degrade way too quickly no matter what kind it is. You could either say "This weapon is really old and can only withstand a few more uses before it breaks forever" or just make it a late game addition/locked behind a bonus level/boss. An alternative(often done) would be have the really good stuff powered/fueled by a scant or extremely valuable resource. The original XCOM, for example, had plasma weapons as the top tier weapons, but it required an alien element you couldn't produce to make the weapons. You needed to capture that element from UFO crashes to get more of it(granted, that's what you were doing anyway but it gives you more incentive to minimize damage to the UFOs during the battles).
