Video Games Thread: For the Love of Zeus, Give Me One!

[Kalbear]

It's effecting pc sales because of what you have to compromise. You have to make the controls work for game pads - which is a huge change. You have to make only some things moddable or risk a lot of instability. You have to split your testing results. You have to spend a ton of time with the correct validation and certification on the platforms.

Or you can do none of those things and come out a year earlier.

Having consoles in mind - or at least in planning - affects the design of the game, the resources you use and can use, the scaling of the game and the overall feel. Porting a pc game that isn't planned for consoles is often a massive failure or at least a very big undertaking. Even Diablo 3 took another what, almost 2 years to come out - and they had to revamp all sorts of things in the core game to make it work right. And that's with blizzard backing it.

Doing the console doesn't lose you sales because of cannibalism, it loses them because you're not making as good a game for the PC.

[Ruhail]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW6kehLgXdY

[dread wolf]

withcer 3 was a relly awesome game im hoping cdpr would a game on asoiaf. the possibilites are endless the only problem are the rights . they can do a far better job than telltale game of thrones . that game had no creativity

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It's effecting pc sales because of what you have to compromise. You have to make the controls work for game pads - which is a huge change. You have to make only some things moddable or risk a lot of instability. You have to split your testing results. You have to spend a ton of time with the correct validation and certification on the platforms.

Or you can do none of those things and come out a year earlier.

Having consoles in mind - or at least in planning - affects the design of the game, the resources you use and can use, the scaling of the game and the overall feel. Porting a pc game that isn't planned for consoles is often a massive failure or at least a very big undertaking. Even Diablo 3 took another what, almost 2 years to come out - and they had to revamp all sorts of things in the core game to make it work right. And that's with blizzard backing it.

Doing the console doesn't lose you sales because of cannibalism, it loses them because you're not making as good a game for the PC.

Yeah, I don't buy that, especially if the console port is months after PC release. The fact that Firaxis said they will be adding controller support down the line means controller support is irrelevant to this issue as they already have that in mind and it doesn't seem to be hampering the quality of the game. All the rest of the elements of console porting are equally as irrelevant. Consoles are only a problem for developers when they are co-developing for simultaneous release. And we see that when PC is the lead development platform there is nothing wrong with game quality. It's only when lead development is on a console that it becomes difficult to achieve a quality PC release.

On to what I meant to say: Wasteland 2 was 60% off on PSN for PSN+ subscribers today, so I went ahead and snapped it up on impulse. So glad I happened to be browsing the PS Store deals, normally I go weeks between skimming through PS Store to see what's on offer so I could have easily missed this.

[Corvinus85]

I couldn't XCOM2 have come out today? I'm snowed in, and have nothing to do. 

[Kalbear]

Adding support for a controller isn't the same thing that I was saying at all.

Really you just appear to be completely ignorant about how development works. You're saying the equivalent of how engineering a car is basically the same thing as a minivan.

[Werthead]

XCOM sold a fairly mediocre number of units on console and they had to deal with the hassle of going through 360 and PS3 approval for updates and content (which you still have to do for mods on the new consoles, which is why they haven't taken off the way some people were expecting). Apparently they also got flak for the way Enemy Within integrated with the original game, effectively forcing console owners to buy the game a second time instead of melding (pun unintended) the two at a cheaper cost.

For XCOM2 the attitude of Firaxis has been, "Fuck it," and to focus on PC instead. There maybe an iOS port, as I belive XCOM did do quite well on mobile, and they'll look at ports for PS4 and XB1 if the modding situation improves. XCOM2 is focused a lot more on the modding scene, with "official" mods from the makers of the Long War mod launching on release day.

Meanwhile, the patch notes for Crusader Kings II: Conclave are more than a bit hilarious:

Quote

 

Rulers can no longer send legates to themselves to complain.

Eunuchs can no longer use seduction focus.

Blind chancellors should no longer look inappropriately at your spouse.

Being pregnant now gives a -2 personal combat skill modifier.

Your eunuch sons will no longer get the serving maids pregnant.

Fix that should stop the humans giving birth to horses.

No longer blocks female horses from being on the council.

Muslims unless they are sinful will no longer die from poisoned wine.

The writers of the chronicle will no longer try to cover-up the warning of the coming of Xuhmalz, the demon lord, whom left a message set in stone.

 

 

[Werthead]

The Lego Star Wars Force Awakens trailer is quite funny, riffing off the main trailer for the actual film.

[Fez]

Darkest Dungeon sure does hit a grind early-mid-game that I wasn't quite expecting. I probably should've, it is a dungeon crawler after all. But with all the lore and the clear story, I just wasn't. I'm also a bit concerned about the roster management/leveling systems. From what I've read, the maximum roster size is 24 (at least until the endgame, when survivors from quests to the final dungeon don't count towards it). That would be fine, except when characters reach certain levels (1, 3, 5) they no longer go on low level quests. I've already got 4 characters at level 3, and I've only beaten 1 of the eight level 1 bosses so far.

At this rate, I'm going to run out of roster space well before I beat all eight, and so I'll need to start dismissing higher level characters just to make room for low level ones that I need to bring in to finish clearing the low level bosses. And I don't want to do that. I've grown quite attached to my characters that have survived and thrived thus far (also, it cheapens perma-death if the game wants to me to just throw away survivors anyway). On the other hand, maybe if I start sending level 0 and level 1 characters into boss fights instead of fully upgraded level 2 characters, I won't have the same situation I did after killing the Hag, where my whole party survived and hit level 3.

Those concerns aside, I'm having a blast. This is one of the best games I've played in a long while, and I think its very likely to make my top 5 of the year.

[Rhom]

The Star Citizen alpha finished downloading...

I've never played an alpha before.  I assume they all suck???  My computer isn't top of the line, but its new enough that it ought to be able to run something better than this did.  And there was literally nothing I saw to tell me what to do.  So, I had no idea how to proceed or what to do.

I'll delete it from my hard drive and move on.

 

 

[Fez]

11 minutes ago, Rhom said:

The Star Citizen alpha finished downloading...

I've never played an alpha before.  I assume they all suck???  My computer isn't top of the line, but its new enough that it ought to be able to run something better than this did.  And there was literally nothing I saw to tell me what to do.  So, I had no idea how to proceed or what to do.

I'll delete it from my hard drive and move on.

 

 

Well if its a true alpha, rather than a beta that's being called an alpha, than yeah, I'd expect it to be basically unplayable. Full of non-optimized code, buggy mechanics, unfinished mechanics, missing graphics, etc. Even actual betas (as opposed to the 'betas' that so many AAA have now that are really just demos of the finished game) are usually pretty rough. 

[Rhom]

1 minute ago, Fez said:

Well if its a true alpha, rather than a beta that's being called an alpha, than yeah, I'd expect it to be basically unplayable. Full of non-optimized code, buggy mechanics, unfinished mechanics, missing graphics, etc. Even actual betas (as opposed to the 'betas' that so many AAA have now that are really just demos of the finished game) are usually pretty rough. 

 

They are offering free play for the rest of this week.  There was no on screen UI at all and no prompts on what or where to go, so coupled with very jerky camera movement (that could have been performance based on my end) it just didn't give me any reason to go further.

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Adding support for a controller isn't the same thing that I was saying at all.

Really you just appear to be completely ignorant about how development works. You're saying the equivalent of how engineering a car is basically the same thing as a minivan.

You said " You have to make the controls work for game pads - which is a huge change. " So I responded to that point which is to say that they are already planning to do that, so that is not a consideration when it comes to console ports. 

And well, yeah, it kinda is basically the same. Both have 4 wheels, an internal combustion engine, that normally runs on petrol, essentially the same drive train. Cars and minivans have more in common than they have differences. If you can build a car, then you can easily build a minivan. Indeed you can basically slap a minivan body onto a car chassis. And now that the basic architecture of PS4 and Xb one is the same as a cheap gaming PC so this generation's consoles have a pretty low bar for PC ports compared to previous generations. The reason Diablo 3 took a little over a year to port is because of PS3. Being such an exotic architecture made porting from PC or even from X360 a big job.

The biggest barrier to porting to console is whether you've bought PS4 dev kits.

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

XCOM sold a fairly mediocre number of units on console and they had to deal with the hassle of going through 360 and PS3 approval for updates and content (which you still have to do for mods on the new consoles, which is why they haven't taken off the way some people were expecting). Apparently they also got flak for the way Enemy Within integrated with the original game, effectively forcing console owners to buy the game a second time instead of melding (pun unintended) the two at a cheaper cost.

For XCOM2 the attitude of Firaxis has been, "Fuck it," and to focus on PC instead. There maybe an iOS port, as I belive XCOM did do quite well on mobile, and they'll look at ports for PS4 and XB1 if the modding situation improves. XCOM2 is focused a lot more on the modding scene, with "official" mods from the makers of the Long War mod launching on release day.

Yeah, that makes more sense to me. Though it seems like with Enemy Within they already said "fuck it" to consoles. XCOM obviously did well enough on consoles that they thought it was worth releasing Enemy Within and The Bureau. Just a pity The Bureau was a stinker.

[Kalbear]

Quote

You said " You have to make the controls work for game pads - which is a huge change. " So I responded to that point which is to say that they are already planning to do that, so that is not a consideration when it comes to console ports. 

Sorry, I wasn't clearer. I thought I was later on.

You have to make the UI usable and make sense via gamepads. Making gamepads simply function in a game isn't super hard (it's not trivial,  but it's not amazingly hard). But making the UI make sense and not be a horrible mess of suck or painful with a gamepad is really hard. It took Diablo 3 almost a year just for that, and to do that they had to change a couple of mechanics (notably the roll system and the way you pick up loot) just to make it work. For a game that is so heavily menu and context driven it's much, much harder. 

Quote

And well, yeah, it kinda is basically the same. Both have 4 wheels, an internal combustion engine, that normally runs on petrol, essentially the same drive train. Cars and minivans have more in common than they have differences. If you can build a car, then you can easily build a minivan. Indeed you can basically slap a minivan body onto a car chassis. And now that the basic architecture of PS4 and Xb one is the same as a cheap gaming PC so this generation's consoles have a pretty low bar for PC ports compared to previous generations. The reason Diablo 3 took a little over a year to port is because of PS3. Being such an exotic architecture made porting from PC or even from X360 a big job.

Yeah, you can slap that body onto a car chassis. It won't pass safety regulations, won't accelerate worth a damn and wont' be able to corner property, but it'll drive. Same is true for games. You can easily port to PS4 or XBox a core game without insane difficulty, but it'll be a shitty port that doesn't work very well, probably has bad performance and won't be able to do much of the UI nicely. 

You can port from a PC to console. It isn't impossible. But in order to do it well, and with quality, it takes time and resources. You can't do it easily if you have a team of 20 people working on it. You can't do it quickly if you have a small team, either. You can't do it quickly if you're focusing on PC first and optimizing based on choices such as a big hard drive, more memory, a mouse/keyboard combo and a high resolution monitor. 

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying that it will take longer to do. With XCom 1 they built in the PC/console system from the getgo. They planned their menus for use of gamepads and UI. They planned their save game architecture to be small. They planned on not having particularly high quality artwork or graphics. They planned their menu so that they were easily visible with low resolution monitors. All of that are costs that made the PC version not as good as it could have been, and it made testing take longer. They didn't do that here, and as a result we got a game with significant overhauls in most categories of the game - graphics, maps, saves, progression, planning, modification - at the cost of not doing the port. 

Here's an example from work. Ori was a game that was developed for the XB1. Porting from the XB1 to Win10 is supposed to be really easy - they even share the same development kit. The team of about, I think, 20 people has taken 9 months to do it. They aren't changing the UI, they aren't changing the input system. It still takes that long. It takes that long because going to another platform and making it work well has very little to do with changing the overall code (most of that is either easily ported or is taken care of by some of the game engines things are on) and much more to do with testing, certification, and optimization to the new platform. It takes time. 

[Werthead]

Quote

Yeah, that makes more sense to me. Though it seems like with Enemy Within they already said "fuck it" to consoles. XCOM obviously did well enough on consoles that they thought it was worth releasing Enemy Within and The Bureau. Just a pity The Bureau was a stinker.

I actually quite liked The Bureau. As a third-person cover shooter it was perfectly adequate. As an XCOM game it was subpar, but a great game in the franchise followed by a fairly middling one is standard for how it goes.

Have you read the story behind its development? It's completely barking mad. They're lucky they ended up with something as playable as they got.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

well its nice to have something developed for PC in mind. Playing Skyrim or Fallout on a PC is a subpar experience, all the UI and interaction is built with console in mind, which means that its clunky and unusuable almost on PCs. The PC seems to be the second thought when it comes to game design these days.

[Sullen]

23 hours ago, Fez said:

Darkest Dungeon sure does hit a grind early-mid-game that I wasn't quite expecting. I probably should've, it is a dungeon crawler after all. But with all the lore and the clear story, I just wasn't. I'm also a bit concerned about the roster management/leveling systems. From what I've read, the maximum roster size is 24 (at least until the endgame, when survivors from quests to the final dungeon don't count towards it). That would be fine, except when characters reach certain levels (1, 3, 5) they no longer go on low level quests. I've already got 4 characters at level 3, and I've only beaten 1 of the eight level 1 bosses so far.

At this rate, I'm going to run out of roster space well before I beat all eight, and so I'll need to start dismissing higher level characters just to make room for low level ones that I need to bring in to finish clearing the low level bosses. And I don't want to do that. I've grown quite attached to my characters that have survived and thrived thus far (also, it cheapens perma-death if the game wants to me to just throw away survivors anyway). On the other hand, maybe if I start sending level 0 and level 1 characters into boss fights instead of fully upgraded level 2 characters, I won't have the same situation I did after killing the Hag, where my whole party survived and hit level 3.

Those concerns aside, I'm having a blast. This is one of the best games I've played in a long while, and I think its very likely to make my top 5 of the year.

Don't be afraid of sending Level 1's against the early bosses, with the exception of the Cove bosses (that's more of the dungeon itself though), they're all quite manageable. Trinkets make all the difference, and by now you should have plenty to equip on your level ones, enough to turn the tide.

[Fez]

25 minutes ago, Sullen said:

Don't be afraid of sending Level 1's against the early bosses, with the exception of the Cove bosses (that's more of the dungeon itself though), they're all quite manageable. Trinkets make all the difference, and by now you should have plenty to equip on your level ones, enough to turn the tide.

Yeah, I've gotten better a little better at that. I've now also killed the necromancer and the swine prince and I only have 7 level 3s instead of the 12 that I potentially could have. So at this rate I should be able to clear all 8 of the level 1 bosses without dismissing anyone. I also realized that I could just start doing some of the Level 3 quests already, since I'm sure that would start thinning out my roster again, but I wanted to finish all the level 1 bosses before moving on.

It helps that the level 1 content actually turned out to be pretty easy once I better understood the game systems. I restarted my game from scratch on day 1 after my first attempt on the hag ended with a party wipe and I had almost no money. But my second attempt has gone so well that I ended up turning corpses back on for more challenge, and I've still only had one character killed so far (and I could've saved her, but she stressed out and was selfish and I figured my party was better off with her dead). Some of the classes and potential party combinations are incredibly OP.

[Sullen]

3 minutes ago, Fez said:

Yeah, I've gotten better a little better at that. I've now also killed the necromancer and the swine prince and I only have 7 level 3s instead of the 12 that I potentially could have. So at this rate I should be able to clear all 8 of the level 1 bosses without dismissing anyone. I also realized that I could just start doing some of the Level 3 quests already, since I'm sure that would start thinning out my roster again, but I wanted to finish all the level 1 bosses before moving on.

It helps that the level 1 content actually turned out to be pretty easy once I better understood the game systems. I restarted my game from scratch on day 1 after my first attempt on the hag ended with a party wipe and I had almost no money. But my second attempt has gone so well that I ended up turning corpses back on for more challenge, and I've still only had one character killed so far (and I could've saved her, but she stressed out and was selfish and I figured my party was better off with her dead). Some of the classes and potential party combinations are incredibly OP.

Out of curiousity, what party configuration do you often end up using?

I find that Houndmaster-Occultist-Bounty Hunter-Bounty Hunter is doing wonders, especially against bosses,

[Fez]

3 minutes ago, Sullen said:

Out of curiousity, what party configuration do you often end up using?

I find that Houndmaster-Occultist-Bounty Hunter-Bounty Hunter is doing wonders, especially against bosses,

My favorite is pretty similar to yours, just with a Hellion in the 1 spot. Sometimes I stick a Crusader in the 2 spot and ditch either the Houndmaster or the other Bounty Hunter.

But I feel like the Occultist, Bounty Hounter, Houndmaster, Man at Arms, Hellion, and Crusader are just at a whole other level from the other six classes, and sticking with just them makes the game incredibly easy. The other six classes mostly all have their uses, but it almost never worth taking one over them.

Although I did make a Vestal-Plague Doctor-Man at Arms-Hellion party that was pretty fun. Between Bellow and all the stuns, I'd never get hit after the first turn. And if I surprised the enemy, I wouldn't get hit at all.