That video critiques certain elements modern video games have picked up. Elements and trends which can also be found in many modern movies and probably books as well.
23:10 onwards it is all downhill.
Automap and Quest-markers
Basically the equivalent of GPS navigation in cars. Instead of having to clue together where to go by observing the environment, the actual thinking process is reduced to a follow this map, this plan, this recipe approach. The reward the player experiences is not from overcoming a challenge but consists of mostly visual stimulation, of seeing new environments, of seeing new variations, being stimulated by newness. New impressions, new, more outrageous killings through new weapons. The reward is not found in mastering a system, an environment, any challenge but a continuous stimulation via seeing new things. This exposing of the player to sensual stimulation and variation to keep him interested is not only found in video games. It’s the bread and butter of most modern products of entertainment and infotainment. Neil Postman in his Amusing ourselves to death writes about this as well.
Story-telling via gameplay/environment
Is when you reduce the obvious story element, like the written elements, the dialogue, the obvious exposition scenes and make room for qualities of environments and the parts within to let the player piece things together by experiencing them. This can also be done in other media, even books. It’s about stating things implicitly, hiding story elements in plain sight for the reader to pick up on and piece together into something coherent. This is achieved (if it’s not just used as an excuse for incoherent story telling) by conceiving of a coherent story and fitting environments and then leaving parts out of the narrative but with still enough clues in place for the player/reader to be able to come up with at least one coherent possibility for a conclusive story. If the story was never thought out in a coherent manner behind the veil in the first place by the designer/author then this does not work out well and no coherent story can be constructed. However, this could also be the intention of the author, as to drive people mad or to allude to ones’ genius by implying that nobody can figure it out coherently.
And there is a difference between being incoherent and having some parts remain hidden because of a lack of information. Some puzzles just lack pieces but the possibility remains that they could be finished with the right pieces. Conclusively incoherent is when enough information and puzzle pieces are present to conclude that some of the pieces will under no circumstances be made to fit an overall picture, not any coherent picture.
Last edited by Anfang on Fri Dec 07, 2018 9:00 am; edited 1 time in total
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
I play this a lot with my friends who mostly play world war themed games
RTS with armor penetrations similar to War Thunder (HE, AP, APCR, HEAT ammunition) and with a direct control mode where you can control single units. Very good community with many well made mods which are even better than the original. I don't play War Thunder for now because the matchmaking is garbage.
Units have inventory's and you can pick up weapons/ammo from the ground, dead bodies, broken vehicles etc or trade with other units. Infantry have stealth mechanism while crawling and going to bushes with cease fire infantry becomes almost invisible. Tanks have a really bad sight so tanks can't spot enemy infantry without eyesight of ally infantry. Snipers can spot hiding enemy infantry with their scope (or enemy tanks from a distance) while using direct control.
You really need to place your infantry well to cover/position to take down enemy infantry efficiently or to stay alive. You can destroy enemy's super tanks even with one of your cheapest infantry units if the enemy is not careful with their tanks. Indirect fire plays a role in this as well, even though the artillery is not very accurate.
I've always hated MMORPG's with their microtransactions and monthly subscriptions, waste of money and time since once you get to certain level there is nothing to do and the story is always garbage which no one even has time read because you need to grind fast to max level...And MMORPG's are not well balanced so there are certain builds and classes that are way more powerful than others.
I don't think you even lose your inventory and weapons in PVP fights like for example in diablo 2 there is nothing at stake, in Tera online there is only 1 weapon for each class which is beyond retarded.
So I consider MMORPG's the decline of RPG's, cheap way to make money
1. You don't need a story (fluff/setting does not count as a story), and even if there is a mediocre story it's not very focused and you don't even give a shit about it while grinding your level. 2. Developers can extend the game by making few new quests and increasing max level $$$. 3. Not only buying the game is enough to play it, you have to pay monthly subscription to play it. 4. You can't get best items/enchants without microtransactions, pay to win
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
A friend of mine wanted to get me into World of Warcraft but it didn't hook me. After about 5 hours I was done with it and what kept me for that amount of hours was the social and cooperative aspect with my friend, not the gameplay itself. Levelling a character and finding better weapons is no motivation for me.
What is holding my interest in a game is usually me getting better at something or finding new ways to do something in a game. Another thing would be cooperative gameplay and what is interesting about that to me is ultimately understanding the other player and myself in relation to them. And one more thing which is interesting is destroying your opponents, lol. But what I have learned about myself is that for a long time I have been a bad killer. I found that whenever I began to win a lot that I would find ways to restrict myself in my methods to make the kill challenging again.
I think in actual life, that's a behaviour which is suited for training with your friends, where you obviously don't go for the kill because otherwise you'd have to find new friends to train with all the time and it wouldn't be really training. But with an enemy you fight and go for the kill in whatever way is most efficient, whichever way is cheapest, and if you know that you are likely going to lose then you retreat if that's a viable possibility. You want to kill in a cheap way and not pay with some of your body parts.
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
I always play unconventionally in PVP, but this is mostly possible in RTS where you can fool/trick your opponent more devastatingly since you need to scout the map to know in advance what troops the enemy has or is going to buy to know how to counter it. Micromanaging a lot of single units efficiently takes a while to learn.
"Levelling a character and finding better weapons is no motivation for me. "
I like a lot of games (single player/ Co-op) which are based on collecting loot/weapons and improving your character, even many RTS's have slight "experience" system like in MOWAS infantry and tanks get "veterancy" after killing few enemies and they will shoot slightly more accurate.
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
Occasionally I like to watch ''video-game movies'' on youtube, buy playing not anymore since my 17th. Was for some time addicted as a child to Runescape, online roleplaying game in medieval settings - one of the reasons I developed my English better than the average child during that time and got basic understanding of how to connect certain words to skills - though much is fantasy, it was really a great means of learning and understanding.
_________________ 1. "Youth, oh, youth! | of whom then, youth, art thou born? Say whose son thou art, Who in Fafnir's blood | thy bright blade reddened, And struck thy sword to my heart."
2. "The Noble Hart | my name, and I go A motherless man abroad; Father I had not, | as others have, And lonely ever I live."
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
RS is basically a rip-off ultima online, which is a really relentless game, you spawn into a game world with nothing and if you die you lose everything you have in your inventory. My first online game was probably RS, since that was during the time I got my first internet on 5th grade.
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
One evening, I played one of those card games with a friendly neighbour. From what I remember, the game had some gold coins in it, some revealed cards for each player and some playing cards which are to be kept secret from your opponent. Anyway, the back of the unrevealed playing cards all had a black border and because of this, very small damages in the card material were very visible if one was looking for damage patterns. Furthermore the number of playing cards (Medieval character-types like knight, assassin, bishop, and so on) was very small and so it was pretty easy to tell the cards apart that way. And once you've seen it, you can't not look for it. I only used that technique for the last game though (I had won most of the previous rounds because I was apparently better at focusing while getting slowly drunk), and told the other player about it afterwards. Well, maybe it was two rounds, haha.
That must be what they call thinking outside the box... maybe..
I don't play anything anymore, aside from once in a couple of weeks turning on some sandbox game to vent aggression.
The games I would recommend off the top of my head, all of them single-player:
Gothic series and STALKER series (my favorite 2 video game series) Prototype 1 and 2 Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning Risen Call of Duty series (SP campaigns only)
_________________ "WOMEN BAD, CHURCH GOOD, NIGGERS BAD, WHITE GOOD, EUROPE CUCKED, PATRARCHY GOOD, ARISTOCRACY GOOD, DEMOCRACY BAD" - polishyouth
I was playing world of warcraft last night, traveling around Timeless Isle destroying everything and exploring..anyways, i noticed the soundtrack for that particular area of Wow to be unusually good! A little bit too good, caught me by surprise..
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
I like those (realistic and high risk) games that if a player dies, loses everything. I'd like to devise a game that if a player dies, cannot "respawn" for a day or week or something like that. Make death and loss painful and time consuming. However these types of games tend to be unpopular.
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
I don't play anything anymore, aside from once in a couple of weeks turning on some sandbox game to vent aggression.
The games I would recommend off the top of my head, all of them single-player:
Gothic series and STALKER series (my favorite 2 video game series) Prototype 1 and 2 Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning Risen Call of Duty series (SP campaigns only)
Only worthy mention (so far) I found from that thread was Dark souls series, one of the best games ever made it's really relentless and cruel game
Skyrim is garbage with it's waypoints, when I first played skyrim I uninstalled it after I killed a dragon during a main quest while I was level 1 and couldn't get back to it in half a year (I felt so insulted that game lets me kill a dragon without me even trying)...Only good thing in skyrim is Cicero and dark brotherhood. Even if your character is a dragonborn I thought it was retarded that you go to that one monastery where you learn "FUS-ROH-DAH", these monks have been dedicating decades to learn the shouts and you go there and learn everything in less than 5 minutes because you are the "chosen one"...And the music is recycled from the previous games, skyrim theme song sounds like a lazy rip-off from previous themes (oblivion).
Morrowind on the other hand is one of the best RPG's ever made along with daggerfall (I haven't played this one). MW theme song has the Heart of Lorkhan pounding in the beginning so even the music reflects the story, unlike skyrim you actually have to read the quests to complete them, there is no way points and you cannot complete puzzles just by pulling switches. Hitting the enemies is based on your skills, so you don't always hit them even if you swing at them, so you basically make hit rolls in melee.
Somebody posted Final fantasy in that thread too, now that is insulting, that game series has probably the most retarded plots/story ever written.
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
One of my favorites, but very time consuming, grand strategy which is extremely complex. My goal is always to defeat Ottomans, but they are very powerful in this
This one is a little more difficult for me, but still a great game. This guy playing is incredible, defeating worlds largest army with Belgium
I've heard WOW 1.0 was good, but after that PVP was unbalanced and you could get max level in a week, everything was made too easy
Hmm I wouldn't know, didn't take an interest at that time, even now my interest is mild brought to my attention by a friend who seems somewhat obsessed with the game. With that said though, I reached lvl 90 within 3 months..now I have to buy an extension pack or something to get to lvl 100. It's a fun game, but I'm not sure if i could go though that leveling process for the second, third and forth time, the way my friend has...
Aeon wrote:
I like those (realistic and high risk) games that if a player dies, loses everything. I'd like to devise a game that if a player dies, cannot "respawn" for a day or week or something like that. Make death and loss painful and time consuming. However these types of games tend to be unpopular.
Indeed. This reminds me of those old arcade games, like Alex the Kid, where you would get all the way to the end, through level upon level only to die and be sent right back to the beginning! furiously annoying!!! It strangely made everything more meaningful, you had to be more careful. Ha, games might be made easy today due to feminization, especially with the rise of the female gamer..endless lives, it falls in tune with..you can be anything you want at anytime..
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
Obviously they had to say stupid politically correct remarks like "Everyone knows Hitler is going to start some shit in Europe", but you can play any country you want and ally anyone you want.
I can't really stand any other military FPS after playing squad, the best war simulator out there and it's not even a beta release yet. Waiting for vehicles, helicopters, tanks etc, and probably there might be winter maps.
Communicating with random people in the game works so well
Few can resist shouting "allahu akhbar" in local voice chat and shooting in the air while playing ragheads
What I like to do during board games is to distract the other players by telling inane jokes or just spewing nonsense constantly and being as loud as I can and during that time, I do sneaky things with the board.
I did it each time when it was my turn, so when it came to moving the pieces on the board, everybody was distracted and giggling and nobody was paying attention to what I'm doing, so I moved it one or two spaces ahead, sometimes even moved theirs one or two behind.
Given how it's a game based solely on luck (unless you can somehow control the outcome of the dice), I maintained a constant advantage throughout the game with my underhanded tactics, and won
And that's how I made a boring game fun.
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
I remember two incidents of cheating when playing the board game Monopoly.
Actually it wasn't Monopoly but the local version of Monopoly. Basically the same game with a different art style.
Anyway, at the beginning of a game of Monopoly everybody gets an equal amount of cash from the bank (the central money depot in the game). In the first story, a friend was hiding a big stash of money under the carpet which he had secretly taken at the beginning of the game. By the way we were playing the game on the floor and so he could easily get the money into the game and buy up all the best properties in the game and plant hotels on top of it.
The second story about cheating was another friend using debt in the bank to his advantage. The actual rules of Monopoly state that if you run out of money that you have to take a loan from the bank on your properties which reduces the rent which you receive from them. But the way we played it, there was simply taking loans out of the bank whenever you ran out of money and writing them down on a piece of paper (with zero interest to be paid). Now those rules were still followed by everybody but one of the players decided to not pay back his loans whenever he got into some money. So while other players paid back their loans whenever they got some money, he kept the money and used it to buy up more properties while the debts in the bank kept rising. At the end he had all the properties and had deprived all the other players of their major sources of income and had thus won the game. This is pretty much what's happening in the world of finance today btw. now that I think about it and we were only 14 or about that age so it's not such a genius move, it just takes a certain attitude.
I really don't mind the kind of cheater in the first story. He's an honest cheater, he knows and admits to his cheating when being caught. The second story shows a lawyer-y kind of cheater. Everybody knows that it's cheating but by finding not agreed upon loopholes he continues to scam openly. And who likes lawyers?...
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
One of the first games I've ever played, never played the board game though, still holds up
" The overall objective of exploration is to find the lair that holds one of the four keys. The player who gathers together all four keys (either by finding them or by stealing them from rivals), will have access to the Valley of the Gods at the center of the map. The knight will have to fight against the Guardian in order to win a 'moonstone'. The moonstone corresponds randomly to a lunar phase, and grants the knight more power during that phase. The moonstone must be returned to Stonehenge for the game to be completed. "
This is a very complex game, still holds up and very fun to play. I still can't figure out how to hell produce the better knight even when I have tons of gold.
Quote :
You start by selecting a good place to put your castle, this holds all your settlers and resources, use a geologists report to begin with to find a good place with plenty of raw materials, coal, stone, gold and iron and place your fortress nearby. Locations rich in granite, lakes and trees are also good for basic building resources and food.
Once the castle is placed the game can begin, you will need to build paths to point your settlers in the right direction as well as to begin building structures. By using the mouse to highlight areas of the map you can see where to place certain types of structure, economic structures can be placed almost anywhere but military and advanced structures such as the blacksmith need to be placed on certain spots (these choices can be highlighted using a right/left mouse click combination on the building tab) Once a path is created and building placed the builder and settlers will begin carrying resources to the site (via flags) and begin building.
You need to gather resources to expand your empire, food to feed the miners, settlers to work and build, and gold to pay the soldiers. In order to expand your borders you are required to build military style buildings (huts, guard towers and garrisons) on the frontiers of your empire, you'll hopefully do this before the enemy expands theirs and burns down vital buildings.
In order to win you must defeat the enemy settlements; this can be achieved by sending knights to the enemy and defeating their knights in one on one combat, eventually you'll want to send them to the enemy castle, do this well and you can even cut off vital resources and buildings in the process by pushing your borders in certain directions. There's certainly no room for complacency or alliances when facing the computer and saving before any major offensives or building projects is advisable.
The intro sequence exceeds expectations and is the perfect introduction to the game, obviously the loading times ruin its flow slightly along with the disk swapping but it's definitely worth seeing the whole thing through at least once. The animation is cartoony, bright and colorful and its fun to watch each settler at work, whether they are fishing, mining, chopping down trees or sword fighting. The geologist also does a little back flip if he discovers raw materials. The sprites are well drawn and really add to the fun of the game.
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
This is a very complex game, still holds up and very fun to play. I still can't figure out how to hell produce the better knight even when I have tons of gold.
In The Settlers 1 gold improves the morale of your knights. They always fight at a 100% when defending but at a much lower rating (25% with zero gold in storage) when attacking the enemy. Gold in storage and guard-huts, towers, castles improves their morality even beyond a 100% eventually. So in the late game they will be better at attacking than defending eventually.
To get better knights you have to keep a large number of them in the main castle (the starting building) or in a warehouse. They have a certain chance to level up per second. So the more knights are in the main castle the higher the probability that one of them advances in rank. They don't level up in guard huts and they only level up very, very slowly in guard-towers and guard-castles. Btw. you can exchange knights in the guard-buildings with better ones from the main castle, one at a time with a button in one of the menus but when you do this you are at risk of being attacked while having one knight less in the guard-buildings.
Edit - morale not morality.
Jarno
Gender : Posts : 2281 Join date : 2015-08-27 Age : 32 Location : Finland
Aaaah, the manual is like 30 pages long so I didn't find that from there.
Do you know how storage buildings work? I always build the extra storage building when I have large quantities of resources, but they never bring the items there even when it's closer than the main castle. So it always ends up that every road is full of coal/gold or iron because they don't bring it to the closer storage building. I've also tried to click the different icons relating to storing, but I didn't really understand what had changed.
Though if I keep asking I am sure we will be here all night, not the easiest game to explain.
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
There is no limit to how much can be stored in a warehouse or the main castle, at least I haven't encountered any limit yet. There is a limit on how many settlers in total you can have and that's dependent on the map size and the number of players among which that total maximum is equally split up.
Having an efficient net of paths is key to managing your economy. The path a certain good takes in that net is dependent on the number of flag poles along that path. It doesn't try to minimise the path length itself but minimise the number of flag poles along its way. So if you have two parallel paths running to the same destination then the good will take the path with the least flag-poles on it.
So what you want to do is plan your buildings and path net in such a way as to minimise traffic length. Like, build the iron smelter close to the mountains where the iron-ore and coal is mined so that it gets turned into an iron-bar and voila, they only have to continue transporting one iron-bar instead of one iron-ore and one sack of coal. Then you want to build your blacksmith relatively close to your main castle (or warehouse as a secondary option) because you want to minimise the path that your coal and iron takes.
Next important thing is how you plan your paths in more detail. Try to avoid very steep slopes (red and dark-red). Your settlers will be very slow transporting your goods on such steep slopes and more importantly they will immensely slow down other settler who are transporting or travelling along the same path. When you observe your settlers transporting goods, you will notice that they sometimes stop and wait for their fellow settlers finishing their transport to a flag-pole and so on. So in short, make sure that you avoid steep slopes if feasible, rather make the path a bit longer than making it too steep (balance length with steepness, this takes a bit of experience). And in particular, avoid steep slopes around flagpoles because it slows down traffic immensely when they have to wait for their fellow settlers to finish their transports.
Around the main castle take particular care to avoid steep slopes. and spread at maximum three path-routes from the castle (or warehouse) entrance. Otherwise they all begin to block each other.
Last thing, don't produce too many goods all at once. What you want is optimise weapon and gold production and produce just enough coal and gold- and iron-ore and food to supply your weapon manufacturers and gold-smelters at the end. It doesn't make your settlers stronger to have large amounts of coal in storage when all that coal production slowed down traffic and weapon production and now you have fallen behind militarily and your enemy is attacking and destroying your settlement.
Anfang
Gender : Posts : 3989 Join date : 2013-01-23 Age : 40 Location : Castra Alpine Grug
Also, don't forget to keep an eye on your enemy, you want to try and have your key buildings, like the blacksmith in the hinterland where they are not vulnerable to attacks from the enemy.
