Mudran

Why always when someone wants to describe hardcore player he imagine something nobody else can do or... want to do? Usually some long combat with a lot of punishing. Why roleplayers don't name themself hardcore then? Isn't extreme long stealth missions hardcore aswell or jumping action like in the last Tomb raider everyone said it is the worst one, but it turned out to be the best "returning to roots" kind of game in the last trilogy - why those players don't view themselves as hardcore? In this view - what is casual then? Why casual is always someone who doesn't like combat or raids? if in Roleplaying games he could be named "hardcore"? I wish this would be made right, because then we could have games we want and not games which are so annoying nobody wants to play them or so streamlined there is no point playing them.

I wish it would be something hard to reproduce in Bethesda style sandbox RPG openworld. So my take would be my favourite very interesting, also dark, almost gothic/satanic kind of theme - dragon priests. I have this prologue: A woman in rags, is hanging on a cross, her head heading down, so you don't see her face, only dirty overgrown, uncombed dark hair, her head is unnaturally clinging. The sound is quiet like in a dream, only a woman voice is singing that kind of song like R. Plant: Darkness, darkness. Camera moves out, you hear other noices as the focus is now marching soldiers with a man in robe going before them from an open gate. the came slowly enhance view to of a big open courtyard with a big gate on the further side, still open as the marching soldiers just left it with architecture like from labirinthian. When they are arriving before the woman, the camera slowly draw near, so you can see the face of the man in the front - the high dragon priest, then he starts to speak something like: You will be sacrificed to dragon and your blasphemy will end up there. Then it focuses on the woman again, but she says nothing. So it turns back to the priest, who says: what say you? Then it turns back to woman, whos head starts clinging faster and she starts to laugh with madness, when she finally looks up on the priest revealing very pale and mad face, she will just scream. Then the scene ends. Then it would continue in some nordic village - the view of people believing in old gods, leading to someone from them serving a dragon priest, and another story branch would be connected to hagravens, where we will get to know the background story of that woman. EDIT: I should google first what live-action is, but still it could be used for that anyway :)

I have cold now, so I started to ponder (under influence of this thread) why am I feeling always worse in the evening and during night, so I developed a theory that sickness is actually influenced by fazes of Moon in conjunction with Black hole, which spreads dark energy into universe and during dusk it is being transmitted until down. Because everytime anyone shows pictures of dark hole I start to feel sick and dizy.

I quite respect ACG youtuber for covering reviews of most of AA games: https://www.youtube.com/user/AngryCentaurGaming/videos He missed Outcast, but most of anything else is there, and then there are only smaller channels. So if there is someone else with good reviews, it could be posted here aswell.

Happy Christ years birthday!

So true, I was trying my whole life to follow my dreams just to find out they are all impossible. I wonder what is possible then - to do what you are ordered to do - the little corridor of your own life you are allowed...

When it comes to streaming data itself I guess the main use would be for MMO and online games, PvP games needs fast reactions and MMOs have such big data that it has usually bad impact, so I guess they could be really big without problems and it is a service already.

Another reason why they are trying to establish this is other media example/model - like spotify or netflix - thinking that if it works there, it should work for games as well. But I believe they are wrong. The problem is that 1 music track gets old very fast, sometimes an album is way too much monotonic with 1 theme or voice so you have to search for alternatives all the time, that is why radio stations are still popular. When some people prefer only the music and have internet connection, spotify is there replacing radios. The same with movies - I never bought a movie, I went to a cinema if I wanted to see it or watched it on TV. Why? Because you see it once and you don't really feel the need repeating that for a long time with some exceptions. Also it is 1-2 hours of entertainment, it is not worthy of the price which is quite often similar to discounted games. But games are for several hours, days or moths, also some people are slow players - why they would want a monthly service if they are going to play the game sporadically for a year? So the only games which would fit into this category are mobile games, but hey, free to play mobile games are so money making, so I guess there is not such a need for that on the side of devs. What worries me is that some youtubers started to propagate this model a lot - what they get out of this? It is not their problem or is it? I think they even called people who want to buy games nerds - or maybe that was for retail games, but anyway, I don't think it is connected to nerds who do like physical copies - I think quite often it is a gift for children. But overall isn't this more for those, who play a lot of games, rather than for someone who have a few favourites and even want a collectors edition from that?

I'm not sure now after I read my post if all the French games are the same or if I like them for the same reason. So here is comparison to german games: the most known are Gothic/Risen games from Pirahna Bites studio. They are the opposite - quite baren looking, even though German language is more close to English, the dialogues are usually much worse, they don't have even strong memorable NPCs, the combat is even worse, so what is the reason they have so many fans? The world building, quest design and player character development. They are the only European studio who always was doing something similar to Bethesda openworld formula, but they developed their own unique one. It is based on choices incorporated in the world, only player choose the order how the story will develop, so it does cost less because you don't skip that much, while it still does feel like a lot of choices. The reason why I miss Risen 1 combat is combos based on ranks you learn in the weapon of your choice, while NPCs also do have the same ranking system, so you see them using the same combos like you do and you can react to that. so you have feeling of progress and a lot of player's own skills is involved in their combat. Sadly after complains about bad combat PB decided to streamline it instead of dealing with the real problem - the biggest problem of all those smaller studios is that the combat or even movement is not smooth - so things like autointerrupt of equipping weapon by any attack of mobs, not intuitive camera locks on target, no basic autoattack and things like that are still there, but the fun part was cut off :(

I just realized that the same way Bethesda felt like not in touch with players who are independently using mods for years without them being involved, PC games was one area of gaming industry not being monthly monetized. Isn't Google Stadia and other technology like that (for now) a nice way how to monetize monthly PC gamers the same way how console players are the whole time and wasn't payment of console players the inspiration model for this? I'm in depression from devs and their assclimbing friends from online games changing your favourite games to worse with you not being to do anything about it - that is why I prefer singleplayer games on GOG, so I guess I can see the black future of the world of Cyberpunk and Watch Dogs Legion before me only... (I mean the fight with corporations not the games)

Thanks :smile: AtomRPG was recommended to me by someone before, maybe I will try it one day. There are some French and German studios making the same games, so I guess it is enough to go to their sites and see what are their games, so here is my most favourite from older to newest French games I played: Mars: warlogs - the combat is a bit of pain, because you do very little damage, and it is very corridorish, but it has quite immersive story and surrounding - I liked the art style of Mars colony environment. Sadly in the sequel - The Technomancer they concentrated on the weakest part of their game - combat and it felt the same only more bugged, and it had even more corridors between larger rooms with more of combat or bigger empty city, where they clearly didn't have the time to add enough of details. Also the story was trying to be more epic, but felt more empty as well - clearly too big project for their size. I wish they would drop the action combat, making it more tactical and concentrate on developing characters, with less annoying corridors (with constantly respawning enemies). Still for some people it was good enough game. in cooperation: Of orcs and men - I guess one of the reason why this doesn't have good score is that it has the console games formula, but still if you make it interactive enough, it is a way for smaller studios how to make 3rd person view game - if it will have a good story, interesting characters and really good environment - one of the few games I finished. Corridors with some avoiding enemies and looking for armors (if I remember it correctly), tactical combat hybrid and a lot of cinematics, worked well for me. The game of thrones - the old 3rd person view game, with characters from the TV series. Another problem with movie game label, but this game has really high quality of dialogues, because it was made with advices from the writer RR. Martin himself, so very good characters, superb medieval environment (one of the best I saw in games for me), a lot of dialogue choices and even quite harsh consequences. Sadly the weak part is not only half tactical combat, but mainly the bit messy skill trees x classes - some of it doesn't match and you are not told forward (or someone like me will not notice it as usually). so you will end up with broken build. Also the camera movement felt a bit clunky. Recently I played Vampyr - very solid RPG game with strong characters, but it is newer version of the previous games with similar problems, only with action combat it was a bit more obvious and less forgiving, still with some guides I managed to play normal difficulty on harder mode - without drinking any blood - quite fine. Very high artistic style of old London, music, even boss fights - one of the most artistic games I played, so I was almost worried how it will be received and I have respect for the devs to release it knowing it will be a niche game and not trying to be mainstream.

I newly discovered game called Outcast - second contact, remake of an old game. https://www.gog.com/game/outcast_second_contact I was afraid it will have something bad, it will be boring, unplayable, because nobody was talking about it at all. But I was surprised by quite immersive scifi-fantasy world, simple, but still not that annoying UI/movement mechanics. It gave me the feel of old RPGs games, which I didn't feel for long time - the desire to find unknown, to discover what the world will offer. I'm slow player, so I'm still at the beginning, but it looks more promising than just screenshots I saw before. The graphic style is realistic mixed with more fantasy like stylized zones, because it is not total rework, but it makes the old engine graphics look OK, not breaking immersion. The setting is similar to Avatar - you are some sort of soldier sent into a portal to cater scientists, only without the blue (which is sad, because blue is good), but I quite like the world so far.

Because with passing of TB almost no youtubers take time to play and make good reviews of AA games, they are obsessed with AAA publishers and failures of their studios, in better case, in worse case, there are youtubers, for whom the only indies who does exist are pixel simple games made by 1 person, and they are even attacking all middle studios for not having AAA quality, like if they would make it in lesser quality on purpose. They can apologize 1 man studio, but not 50 men studio capacity and capability. They for some reason don't see any quality in those games, they criticize them for imperfections which are fine for them in "indie" pixel games, but the moment it is bigger like Vampyr, they are criticized for limitations like the lack of jumping, like they couldn't live without it. This could lead to exhaustion of those studios, when they try to make it perfect, but without perfect engine or tools, everyone will say that it doesn't look good enough anyway, and they will not have time to make perfect system/ story, which is something their fans do care about, so they will end up without any support. Or they will remove features, which were unique - like combat system of Risen 1 - I still miss that. I'm afraid that is one of the reason why the last year almost all independent small studios were bought by bigger publishers, which can be atleast neutral like if they were bought by Microsoft lead by Phil Spencer, but who knows what will happen next. Everyone is talking about publishers having money, nobody is talking about small studios and their struggles. So I tried to promote atleast some of interesting games like Outward here, but it could be misused, so I'm creating this thread to hopefully promote good for some reason AA games, where you don't play them for being perfect, you play them for originality and for innovative mechanics, for being passion project, thus being even more vulnerable for critique like done by certain youtubers. I know that almost all isometric games are fine, but I don't play isometric games, because I'm not so much into strategy, I know story puzzles are interesting, but I'm not so much into it, because it is very static, I know there are players who just want perfection, which is fine, if they are aware of it, if they don't attack games made for different reasons. That is maybe also one of the reason why a lot of RPG games lately don't have 3rd person view, because it is hard to do it well, but there are players who just cannot play first person view games and are OK with AA quality. I know that 3rd person view open/half open games are the hardest to make, so that is probably the reason why they take the hardest critiques. Players made it possible for games like Darksouls to be valued highly, I just wish they would do the same for RPG games - to be able to see why they are made, what is perfect there, because it is the focus, maybe to even help them to find the right focus to be the kind of games for the right audience - the same way like hardcore or combat games are now. I know that reddit would be better for this, but Nexus feels more reliable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbhCPt6PZIU I somehow wish Woodstock would happen again and this wouldn't be long past :( The flower generation.

I forgot to add the final piece: so if you list all the possible players I would place their territory on the map: - builders will not mind being around vault, also it is a good lore reason why they wouldn't want to wander more far away from the starting point - now you don't have to force them to do it, also it could be a place for town, loaded separately. If they would want to build outside with danger it is up to them. Now in most of survival games you can build towns, but you have to be in a guild or some power group, I wish it could be really just an independent town - explorers would like to go to the corners of the map - pvp players would want to have their ground somewhere in the middle together with grinders, it doesn't have to be big towerdefense, it could be something similar, but smaller, or just outposts. There are a lot of alternatives how to do PvP, I'm not really happy with the openworld version which is now in games, but a lot of players seem to enjoy it, so I don't know. All of those should have their equal rewards, so it wouldn't feel like wasting their time for nothing and feel forced to play what they don't want. I'm not sure if it would work - I guess they were looking at survival games like Rust like something similar to their vision of natural openworld, but maybe there is not enough from their playerbase who would enjoy it - I never played Rust or Arc, so I don't know why it is successful. EDIT: maybe those survival games are successful because 1) they really go for that feeling of danger, where you have to survive harsh conditions/players and that is something I don't think Bethesda would ever want to do - they tried something similar in hard mode, but it is not the same like a whole gameplay based on that. 2) because of the complicated crafting mechanics, where you have the feeling of growth, and that is something Fallout don't have as well 3) complicated building mechanics - missing in F76 4) because you can harass other players with your group I guess :tongue:, or it is easy to manage a group of players going anywhere, killing hard mobs together or building their towns - that is something they tried to add in F76, but for me it is the most annoying part of survival games - this forced group content giving power to dedicated groups over others. But I have no idea why for example Arc is more successful than Miscreated or why Rust is better than DayZ. Maybe Arc has more of mechanics like taming dinosaurs, or Rust shooting/building mechanics, because all of them have a lot of bugs.

You are welcome :tongue: Still I'm not sure what to think about F76, it is clear they are trying to clear their name because of Starfield, still their "biggest" project even with their new roadmap doesn't look like having that ambition, unless it is - we never did survival game, we never played survival game, so for us it is the "biggest", the same with pvp, the same with MMO aspect, which is maybe the reason why it looks like Anthem, and also question why they didn't start with an MMO version of Fallout 4 if their the biggest ambition was - make it survival pvp and online only, because everything in F76 looks like that - like Fallout 4 online, which would be fine for many players. That is why I didn't like F76 - because it felt like filling all points of "what players of FNV wouldn't like" instead of "what would work well together in MMO". Or like someone's version of MMO - like what people who play MMOs would like and everything mixed together without any real plan. For a standalone MMO I believe is important something Todd also never did before - to divide players into categories and cater those people equally with all the details instead of usual Bethesda: good enough for everyone. Then you would see there are probably 4-5 possible groups of players: builders, pvp players, explorers, roleplayers and pve grind players (they are the only one left with enough of content to do). Then I would think about what is the most important feature for each group, and would end up with something like this: - builders needs safe building, place where they could concentrate on building, maybe even buying things for that from an online shop, you need those things not to be destroyed. - pvp players needs good balanced combat, something timed if you want to bring them together, that means something like tower defense - explorers need something harder to discover and maybe combined with harder conditions of environment, they usually travel alone, so perfect combination is something where groups cannot go - roleplayers need a lot of costumes, a lot of tools and even skill based builds generally, they are sometimes confused for casuals, because they need similar just for fun features - farming/grind players - I guess they are the only one with content with events Generally survival shouldn't be about chores, it should be about an obstacle, where you need skills to overcome it and it gives you reason to go out there and not to feel too much safe and bored. So if all listed here, I'm not sure if just another feature with NPCs and dialogues added on the pile of all kind of MMO features will help the game, or if it will just bring another group of players unhappy with the rest of content in the game, but maybe they have some plan or there is something more to it.

Thanks the author has a lot of interesting videos. But sadly nothing about theory of relativity. I tried to watch other videos, but those arguments didn't make sense for me. I would understand from videos of that author the time in blackhole or any gravitation object bends a timeline to curve as a capsule, where something else can happen if you take the longer curve around, but if you go straight line, you experience less time but nothing about accelerated speed. Accelerated speed is there only relevant to the speed of light, but all the explanations look relevant only to other observer and not general time. It looks like in space - the time is speed of light, which is the speed of information about something happening somewhere. And according to that author cosmos is expanding equally for everyone, that means you don't see anything moving in time if it is moving from you, but still what if there is some "general time" from some other perspective we don't have?

So basically travelling in time is from some rotating centre (like black hole) to outside - if you could move the centre, there would be no time. And, yes I have no idea what theory of relativity is and yes, I tried to read about it.

When I imagine I was laughing at the idea of everyone in Bethesda replaced by synths, thus the theme of Fallout 4... that it was a secret message... I'm not laughing anymore

Age of Conan - akhet : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lEOwf89FSw&list=PLB2139D8119F19CB1&index=17

Duncan from Dragon Age Origin and I don't know why - there are others, more funny and longer with player.

The AC editor does sound awesome, I really appreciate their effort, but if it will not be voiced I guess it will not be that immersive - something similar was a fan made plugin in Secret world MMO and it was strange to hear no sound. and I guess audio files are too big? I'm still not sure if I want to play Odyssey - it doesn't have Bethesda formula of openworlds - It is still an action game without assassin kind of roleplay/story like in previous AC games with more of historic story. I was hardly playing Witcher 3 - I liked it because it was a strong character with strong roleplay of a witcher and the world felt authentic, but still I wish I could play different characters from that world, but those 2 characters in AC feel more generic - they look like they are not strong enough for me to play the game. But maybe I would change my mind after I would see their background. But I really love the idea of Watch dogs Legion - play as anyone, only I don't need a squad, I would play different playthrough. The best service model for me is still GTA/RDR2 - a strong singleplayer game, not trying to stretch the time of playthrough by the length or repeatable without reason events, with online version of the game with different characters and not that important story.

That is also the part which was hard for me to get over in ME2. Most of all I didn't like design of that part of the ship. ME1 looked similar, but at the same time more authentic. When I watched video about Star Trek the game, which for some reason wasn't received well, I realized that this is typical console model of games - action, scripted action, corridors, dialogues in cutscenes. Games like Lost Planet - I tried to play it because it looks good, there is some story, it can be immersive even, but for some reason I didn't feel any need to continue. It is a good game, still I didn't want to play it. So I wonder what is the difference with ME - it looks similar, but maybe it was created with different focus, and maybe that is enough. It has simply more of freedom and interactivity, I cannot see any other reason. Maybe that is also reason why I never played AC games, there was always that tutorial where I was told go there, to do that, all timed, while timed tasks can be good sometimes, I just couldn't get over it. I don't know how other players see it, but I prefer different temp in games - where I can focus on different things and let my mind rest, maybe that is why I prefer Bethesda open worlds, where you had this freedom of your own pace and different gameplays - and Bioware games was let you do it as well, while those console games were constant action. But maybe that is just me - I have hard time concentrate longer on 1 thing.

To RG Mage2: That doesn't mean individualistic view is wrong, even if it is different - still it does mean facts, which can be implemented into conditions, circumstances, background and different personalities and can be very valuable for historical and mainly psychological research. To Black Swan Falcy: Thank you for more detailed description, I finally remembered what I was told at school and did some additional research. Communism is an ideology of no ownership, socialism is state control over economy. So put that two together and you get people with nothing working for the state, which is what russian communism was basically. You had minimum salary, owned almost nothing, everything belonged to the state (atleast in most of cases, I know some countries had exceptions or didn't follow that rule totally). But that is what gamers would call hard core version. I think most of EU states has something like democratic socialism, which is the version I was describing. That State owns strategic things like roads, some education, some hospitals, some forests, historical buildings, army =things no individual should own, and at the same time they support growth and individualism of ordinary people, having higher taxis, but take care for poor, old etc. It is not beaurocrat who decides, but law, which government is responsible for that, which is voted by people, who are responsible for good votes, or organizing their own political group. The statement of humen rights are important in this, for me it has the most safeguard against totalism - it is still a group of people, but not 1 person. By having laws about different groups responsible for different areas, the influence of 1 overly rich person is limited. Still possible, but you have tools to fight it. So what you described as socialism is russian version, what you described as communism is small community, which i also said it could work, if there is some greater good - like religion, nationalism, relatives (clans), or extreme conditions, but cannot work at the level of state because of reason described before. EDIT. I would like to know why communism is so attractive to some christians. In Bible I could see only form of charity - give what you have above your needs and what you want to give willingly. Many things were done based on charity and it works much better than no ownership. Because people who are capable of making a lot of money then have that money left for charity (if they wish), because they are encouraged by ownership, while in communism you was forbidden to have anything more, so you was discouraged from bigger activity. Maybe there is some "soft" version of communism possible, but it doesn't sound attractive to me. I admit - I have strong desire to own things I like - I really want to own every game I like, so I don't even prefer service model, because it doesn't offer it. Also I can see why before giving everything was attractive to poor people, but I don't see how it could work for everyone.

You didn't answer my question... For me socialism is better because it leaves some ownership to state in exchange for taking care for the poor and old. They don't care about your opinions, your believes (ideally) , if you work for yourself or others, if you are rich or poor, if you are artist or worker. That does sound a lot better than communistic "theory". Like we are all equal, so even women will work the same like men, so my country is full of bitter old tired women, who used their energy to take care for kids, they don't have any hobbies, they don't have any dreams. If you ask what was the worst about totalistic communism it wasn't only the lack of freedom, a lot of people will answer: uniformity and that is one of the basic teaching of communism... After seeing the new HBO mini TV series about Cernobyl I realized how this feeling is impossible to pass on. The impossibility to be yourself, express yourself and live what you want - I know that was totalism partially, but most some of it is product of communistic theory. You are saying that we should read books, but isn't that similar to hearing from people who lived under that? Talking to many people describing their feelings during communism? Isn't that history recorded alive making your own mind? You can read some theories in books, but the reality check is important aswell. Also what I read usually is that nobody really knows what communism is anymore. It started as revolution against feudalism then capitalistic feudalism and then maybe it is time to say which branch you are describing. And you are attacking others for the lack of arguments, but you didn't offer any. If there is so much more why someone didn't describe it here?