OK, let's choose our GOTY and our biggest disappointment of 2015

[Erttheking]

Sometimes, a point has to be hammered. Hard.

And since this is... pretty much a good post (maybe with a bit too much hate, that much I admit), it seems to recap some of the games objective problems.

I'd also add the UI and menus now. After 30 hours in the game, this shit still annoys me greatly. Bethesda will never. Ever. Learn less they are confronted with their shit

You know, you constantly spamming this doesn't make me appreciate it more. If anything seeing it over and over again makes me apathetic at best and annoyed at worst. And this is coming from someone who just thinks Fallout 4 is ok. Constantly screaming your arguments with no attempts at diplomacy gets no one on your side. And insulting fans for disagreeing with you is burning bridges with Kerosene.

Please tell me how you spamming the same copy pasted wall o text will cause Bethesda to do any radical changes. Because frankly I think they're more likely to get hazy eyes and just move on.

A point needs to be hammered in hard? How do you propose to hammer it in when no one is listening? Because spamming the same argument over and over again is just going to annoy people and eventually they're just going to skip over it. It doesn't matter how much you insist your point needs to be made.

OT: My game of the year is Bloodborne because I'm a From Software fanboy. My biggest disappointment was Hotline Miami 2 which just didn't live up to the original.

 

[fenrizz]

GOTY(s):
* Fallout 4 - I've only played about 10 hours, but it's fricking awesome so far!
* Life is Strange - Loved it to bits. GO MAX!

I did not play a single disappointing game this year.
I guess I'm getting better at picking games I thinkI 'll like.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Fanboys? I'm sorry, it sounds like you've already made up your mind when it comes to whether or not people will listen, and you word your arguments accordingly. You assume Bethesda "fanboys" (My god what a useless term. Right up there with SJW) will not listen to you, so you word your arguments in a way that insults them, therefore they don't listen to you. It's called a self fulfilling prophecy. There have been replies to you saying "I hate Bethesda and I still think you're wrong." Where does that fit into the fanboy argument?

Wonderful. Honestly I would love to see their next game to be improved, but you copy pasting the same arguments in a hostile way will most likely not do much to help and much even make some people apathetic to the situation just because they're tired of hearing about it. It's what happened to talking sexism on this website.

Did I say there was anything wrong with those points? I'm criticizing your methods. Which are flawed. Plus I in general dislike it when people take shots at fans because it always comes off as oversimplifying the opposition.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

I'm confused then. They won't listen to you no matter what you say, then who are your copy pasted messages aimed at? Non-Bethesda fanboys? Wouldn't they already agree with you? And if they don't, doesn't that indicate that your arguments may not be complete watertight? Or are you trying to reach mainly fanboys? And if that's the case, what sense does it make considering that you don't think It feels intellectually lazy. It's one of those terms that just flat out says "Anything you say about the subject matter is ill informed and I can freely dismiss it because of this term I used to label you"

No, I said a person who replied to you hates Bethesda, Barbas said that. And he also said your complaints were off. Yeah, well, take it from someone with experience with the matter, your attitude in talking about a problem means a lot, because people who might otherwise agree with you can get turned off by a bad attitude. There's an argument to be made how they're ignoring real problems over something that should be petty, but that's the way the world works and no matter of shouting at them at how they need to get tougher skin is going to fix that.

Hate to be a downer but as someone who isn't really informed about this kind of stuff your comments were the only exposure that I had to it...and the very hostile nature by which you got them across nearly made me want nothing to do with it. Well, question. If you don't think that anything will get to them then why bother taking pot shots at them? Considering that it seems to do little more than rub some people here the wrong way, it seems counter-productive.

Fair enough. It still comes off as oversimplifying the opposition though. Yeah. Not making a difference is why most of the people who have responded to you are usually angry and apathetic to your complaints. It'd be like a feminist insulting an audience filled with men and then asking them to listen to her. No one likes that.

 

[kasperbbs]

GOTY: Witcher 3, i loved everything about it except the horse races, those can f*** off.

Not much to be disappointed about since i tend to keep my expectations low.. Perhaps Mad Max, it bored me way faster than i thought it would.

 

[Thyunda]

Yeah. That is why I am still not even at Diamon City and why I uninstalled it from my PC today. Sure.
It is an unplayable mess. Am going back to better games until this is fixed. Not worth it. And dont think I spend 3 hours on stuff. When I said I spent more time trying to fix the shit, I meant it. But at one point it is not worth it, even if fixing it was fun for the first 5-6 hours.

-snip-

And yes. Yes it is special. Here I strongly disagree, that train of thought is either super-nihilistic (which I kind of understand) or barbaric. Sorry.

Sorry to cut out most of your post, but these are the two main points I wanted to deal with.

First one - you describe Fallout 4 as an unplayable mess. Yet, I am now ten hours in. Clearly it is playable. That's the problem with hyperbole - it's subjective opinion playing as objective fact and holds no water as an argument. While you might thing those aspects of the game are poor, they didn't make the game unplayable - because people are playing it.

The second point - there's nothing nihilistic about it. I trained as a copywriter and editor for part of my degree (so if I fail as a writer, I can make a living off of successful writers) and there is nothing any less inherently materialistic about books.
It's a noble idea, to reckon that authors write because they absolutely must get their message out to the world, but that's not the case. That's rarely the case. Authors write because they need to eat, and because they're good at writing. It's their trade. Half the greats were written by bored, wealthy people, and the other half were by people who worked out writing was a decent way of paying the bills. I don't understand where your logic comes from whereby as soon as the written word is played out by actors (who have an art all of their own) (and I'm not just saying that because every girl I've ever dated ended up being an actor or a model) (apparently I have a type) you decide that the words are now invalid as an art form. Is a script not a book formatted differently? I mean, sure, scripts get hammered out for Sharknado movies that are nothing more than blatant cash grabs, but the exact same thing goes for books, too. Check out the erotica industry. It's fucking massive, and it's just full of shit. Next time you're at an airport or a service station, have a look at the bookshelf. Look at all the novels about a handsome American with a fondness for classic cars hunting for secret treasure and evading foreign secret agents. I'm pretty sure every author on those shelves is just another nom-de-plume for Clive Cussler. I'm absolutely certain he's the only author who writes in that genre and just pretends to be other people.

And that's without covering the romance novels. Back in the second half of the 18th century, Caroline FitzGerald warned her daughter Margaret that those romance novels would rot her brain. She was right. Romance novels are brain-rotting. Especially since Margaret's little sister Mary tried to elope with Colonel Henry FitzGerald and that guy ended up being shot by her brother and both her brother and her father ended up escaping justice via the privileges of lordships - basically Mary got her damn head full of romance novels, tried one out in real life and people ended up dead.
Though Margaret herself was brought up by Mary Wollstonecraft and became close friends with Wollstonecraft's daughter Mary Shelley, and I don't have to tell you why those two names are important. You clearly read a lot - so you must recognise them both.

And both of 'em were aware of the damage romance novels can cause. And they're just shit novels.


I would certainly say that if you're looking for avant-garde material these days, you should study film. Auteur projects, specifically. The advantage films have as a newish medium is that they can still do new things, whereas books have pretty much stagnated. There are some great stories, sure, but there are only so many plots, and now it is not enough to be narratively original. If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things is a fairly recent novel, and I would say it's pretty damn good - but it's the narrator's voice that makes it good. The overuse of simile actually works. But the story? Nothing new whatsoever. But interesting and original devices in novels are more and more infrequent, and directors are finding so many more ways to make film fresh and interesting.

Maybe I'm just studying books too much. But I'm bored of the bloody things. I used to read many, many different authors and I'm honestly bored of them to the point where I barely read for pleasure anymore. Until Peace Talks and The Swallow's Tower are released in the United Kingdom, I can only really see myself reading history books on the train. And they're so fucking dry.

 

[Nimcha]

I honestly can't think of a single game I completed for best this year. I've been enjoying Dragon Age Inquisition a lot this year but apparently that came out in 2014. Just started Fallout 4 and I love it so I'll pick that one.

Biggest disappointment is easily Cities:Skylines. Played it for a few hours until my city reached a decent population and that was it. What a shallow husk of a game that was. At least it wasn't very expensive.

 

[Fox12]

2015 was a hell of a year, and it certainly made up for last years scarcity.

I'm enjoying the hell out of Fallout 4 and Undertale at the moment, but I haven't had the time to really sink my teeth in. They're both pretty phenomenal games so far.

As of now, I'd have to go with Bloodborne, even though my excitement petered out a bit towards the end. The art direction, combat, and atmosphere were some of the best I've seen in years. It really was a work of genius. I can't think of any major complaints.

It's probably a good thing Persona 5 got delayed or I'd be a mess right now.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Biggest disappointment: Probably Wasteland 2's enhanced edition/director's cut or whatever. I don't know what I expected going into it (I only played Fallout 1 for a brief while back in the day) but the entire game feels utterly disappointing to me. Skill-hoarding is the order of the day, there's no apparent point in taking any combat skill in anything other than assault rifles, melee combat is terribly unbalanced and whoever designed the Ag center scenario seemed to have a vindictive interest in displaying everything that could possibly be 'bad' with the game. I haven't finished it yet and I doubt I ever will.

Anyone willing to tell me if the game gets 'better' further on? I stopped at around the point of the Scorpion prison...

I recently finished playing through the Director's Cut, straight to the end. Does it get better? Uhhh...

Generally? No. I considered the original release to be a turgid, terrible disappointment, and while the DC cleans up some of its more egregious flaws, the same rickety framework is still in place. All the problems you've indicated stand out like sore thumbs. Absolutely WOEFUL RPG system, with clear critical/dump stats for every character and utterly one dimensional skills making character creation and leveling a rote exercise in numbers going up. Combat is unbalanced (although Sniper Rifles outclass Assault Rifles, IMO) in favor of ranged alpha strikes. There's very little in the way of tactical variation or flavor. There is a VOLUMINOUS amount of writing, but the writing is mostly QUITE bad. This is a perfect example of a game that "rewards choice" by giving you lots of it and then giving you a little slideshow ending that reflects the things you've done, whilst having wretched presentation. I guess some people prefer this to something with a fixed ending? More power to em.

It's not a TERRIBLE game any more, but it's not a very GOOD one, either. That you've clearly played Divinity will just make Wasteland 2's warts stand out all the more clearly, as Divinity...while having a hilariously stupid and pointless "story" of its own...at least has juicy/crunchy tactical combat, and thus a reason for existing.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Yeah. That is why I am still not even at Diamon City and why I uninstalled it from my PC today. Sure.

It is an unplayable mess. Am going back to better games until this is fixed. Not worth it. And dont think I spend 3 hours on stuff. When I said I spent more time trying to fix the shit, I meant it. But at one point it is not worth it, even if fixing it was fun for the first 5-6 hours.

Okay I'll bite. I've yelled as loud at Bethesda as most anyone on these forums regarding the launch state of Fallout 4, and could sit here for an hour detailing its many technical and functional woes. I am confused, however, by the assertion that someone could spend 5-6 hours trying to fix it and be left with a game that is "unplayable". What exactly are you trying to fix, and finding to be unfixable? Is this just a case of the game not meeting an aesthetic or personal enjoyment standard, and you're applying "unplayable" as a hyperbolic slam? Or are you actually not able to get the game working/functional? What's going wrong? Do you need help?

 

[Silverbeard]

Biggest disappointment: Probably Wasteland 2's enhanced edition/director's cut or whatever. I don't know what I expected going into it (I only played Fallout 1 for a brief while back in the day) but the entire game feels utterly disappointing to me. Skill-hoarding is the order of the day, there's no apparent point in taking any combat skill in anything other than assault rifles, melee combat is terribly unbalanced and whoever designed the Ag center scenario seemed to have a vindictive interest in displaying everything that could possibly be 'bad' with the game. I haven't finished it yet and I doubt I ever will.

Anyone willing to tell me if the game gets 'better' further on? I stopped at around the point of the Scorpion prison...

I recently finished playing through the Director's Cut, straight to the end. Does it get better? Uhhh...

Generally? No. I considered the original release to be a turgid, terrible disappointment, and while the DC cleans up some of its more egregious flaws, the same rickety framework is still in place. All the problems you've indicated stand out like sore thumbs. Absolutely WOEFUL RPG system, with clear critical/dump stats for every character and utterly one dimensional skills making character creation and leveling a rote exercise in numbers going up. Combat is unbalanced (although Sniper Rifles outclass Assault Rifles, IMO) in favor of ranged alpha strikes. There's very little in the way of tactical variation or flavor. There is a VOLUMINOUS amount of writing, but the writing is mostly QUITE bad. This is a perfect example of a game that "rewards choice" by giving you lots of it and then giving you a little slideshow ending that reflects the things you've done, whilst having wretched presentation. I guess some people prefer this to something with a fixed ending? More power to em.

It's not a TERRIBLE game any more, but it's not a very GOOD one, either. That you've clearly played Divinity will just make Wasteland 2's warts stand out all the more clearly, as Divinity...while having a hilariously stupid and pointless "story" of its own...at least has juicy/crunchy tactical combat, and thus a reason for existing.

I rather liked Divinity's story, actually. Slowly discovering who my characters are (or were) while digging through this huge world with its own history and characters is quite entertaining. That the combat is good is an added bonus, not the primary draw. Plus there's the new ending to see. Haven't got there yet but it's there, at least.

Wasteland 2 could have stood to learn from that example, if nothing else. I sort of figured the game would end with one of those 'narration-over-storyboard-montage' sequences but if they'd worked a new ending into the game it would have given existing owners some motivation to play through the game again. As it is there doesn't seem to be much to see for returning players and newcomers like me have no older version of the game to compare with. All we see is the bland and tepid product before us, which is supposed to be the best version the game the devs could make.
I'd have agreed with you on sniper rifles except for the bits where one needs to run and shoot on the same turn (basically all of Ag center). It takes two turns to move a sniper away from an oncoming podhead and shoot back while a rifleman can manage a decent move and shoot each turn.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I'd have agreed with you on sniper rifles except for the bits where one needs to run and shoot on the same turn (basically all of Ag center). It takes two turns to move a sniper away from an oncoming podhead and shoot back while a rifleman can manage a decent move and shoot each turn.

Ag Center is literally the only time in the game that's a consideration, and even then the stupid disease they give you is more of a nuisance than an actual factor.

I lucked into a wandering vendor early who sold me the best sniper rifle Arizona had to offer before I even GOT to Ag Center, and my Sniper had high CI, so I would open combat by one-shotting a pod person and then go first in the combat order and one-shot a second pod person. Really trivialized a vast majority of encounters when you could begin them all by eliminating the two biggest threats.

Of course I like sniping, so that was the big draw for me. =D

Anyway we're derailing the GOTY thread. Wasteland 2 stinks! It's not GOTY! Don't play it!

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Tell me how to lock it at 60. If you can not... how to make the 30 fps feel better, as right now it is frustratingly... sticky and slow to move that way. Either of the two will help me greatly man.
The other issues... they would require an AMD driver update + some patches +/or advanced Bug Fix mods. Though I suspect the dual and tripple world view issues were due to the engine bugging out badly.

Simply put as it is right now, apart from the bugs, I can either play Sticky out 4: No control edition or Speed of Light: The reckoning you can not talk to anyone nor lockpick anything edition.

Hey I *can* help. I had the EXACT same issue as you (the frame lock to 30). In my case it was causing crazy mouse jitter, so I sat there banging away at it until it was fixed.

Simply unlocking your frames doesn't fix the problem, as you've found. It basically breaks the game. This has been the case for a long time with this engine (game speed is tied to your frame rate, whee!). You need to use whatever the AMD equivalent is to the NVidia control panel to apply Vsync outside the application. This will lock it to 60 FPS.

Your issues likely won't end there, because the game has some serious issues with its shadowing. It causes massive FPS drops in cities, and the tiers are not implemented properly. Low and Medium both render shadows at 3000 (super low range), high takes a staggering jump to 14000, and ultra is 20000. Setting it to ~6000 in the ini helps. It's still chuggy in places, but it's a lot more bearable, and it won't feel like you're moving through molasses every time you go into the city. If you want a nice clean frame rate and don't care about shadows, just turn the shadow draw distance to low and Bob's your Uncle. And make sure Godrays are off. It's my understanding non-Nvidia cards do not play nice with godrays.

That SHOULD restore your game to proper working order.