For anyone who wants an example, go to the Helldiver’s 2 patch logs on the Steam Community Hub.

No matter which one.

Last of Us 1: “You have the freedom to kill this doctor, or you can just shoot him in the leg or something.”

*Player shoots him in the leg*

Last of Us 2:

At those time frames it’s not just feature creep you have to worry about, but tech- and social creep as well. Think back what games were popular 12 years ago and what hardware we had. That’s why usually in longterm, large scale projects you have a technological freeze, where you essentially ignore all progress made outside of your project for the sake of completion, which Star Citizen clearly hasn’t done.

The problem is also how YouTube compartmentalizes the content. I like the Alveus Sactuary Channel, Maya Higa has probably one of the most noble causes for streaming. But because she’s related to OTK, YouTube thinks it’s fine to blast me with the full dose of their cringe drama. No amount of “not interested” or channel blocking is going to solve that, because there’s always gonna be copycat clipper channel reposting the same twitch clips over and over.

It’s funny how YouTube killed early short form animation channels (which was arguably peak YouTube content at the time) in favor for long form content, but then introduced Shorts. But those barely pay anything so people either rehash their 10+ minute video into 20 YT Shorts or spam AI generated garbage en masse. There’s also apparently no copyright enforcement on those shorts, since you can essential watch the entirety of a 2.5 hrs movie in segmented shorts with shitty music layered on top.

I wish YouTube allowed for blacklisting words in video titles for your feed. I swear if I see another “*insert vtuber* broke everyone by saying *insert mildest sexual innuendo*” I’m gonna loose it. What also sucks is that YouTube shorts got entirely integrated into Twitch, so the clips you see posted of any streamer is most likely some 3rd party clipper channel leaching off the actual streamer. Which means spam goes up, quality goes down. Sure its awesome for the streamer, they get a lot of traction and new followers but at the cost of their content flooding other platforms through reposts.

I realy can’t judge a person I don’t know personally, but I sure is hell can judge their content. And for Asmonds videos and streams, there’s just nothing there. There is literally zero content. You know those memes that imitate Joe Rogan, well here is one for Asmond.

“Yeah, Yeah”

“They way it is, is actually…” *blanket statement*

“Yeah, Uh Huh, No”

“Well actually…” *other blanket statement*

“What I would do is…” *some nonsense*

“Yeah, Yeah, Uh huh.”

Continues to pause and unpause a 10 minute video over the course of an hour.

That’s basically it, it’s almost an anomaly how content like that can get somebody filthy rich. It ads zero value to the platform or any of the viewers lives. I can even excuse other creators doing their YLYL challange #547, because it at least involves humor and engagement. But if Asmond would disappear over night, I bet not only would nobody miss him, there wouldn’t even be anybody to replace him, because his success is a straight up anomaly.

All these shitty reaction streamers are literally standing on the great shoulders of Filthy Frank, Jontron, early H3H3, early Idubbz, Cinemassacre, Ray William Johnson, etc. But those at least had weight behind their reactions, with bits and actual production behind every video. Those reaction streamers literally sit on their ass watch videos and somehow people pay them solely to hear their opinion, what a sad existence on both ends. To be frank, this is barely a step up of those YT shorts of a guy just staring into the camera while the top half of the screen shows some random video. I know YouTubes moto was “Broadcast Yourself” but some people really shouldn’t take that to heart.

That’s why you use 2-factor-authentication

Bitwarden. There’s no excuse not to use a password manager.

I think nobody gives a damn about the PS5 anymore, neither the devs, the players or Sony. And for PC, the reason why the original game worked was, because it is a playable movie, and it belongs on a TV screen, not a desktop monitor. Even if it ran flawlessly and looked better people wouldn’t exactly rush to pay $70 for a 10 year old game.

Old people when they see a staircase without a railing

This is a genuine invitation for disscussion.

Let me tell you, over more than a decade I’ve played a lot of Battlefield Bad Company 2, like a lot a lot.

Last year, in December the servers for it got officially shut down by EA. And you know how I felt? I barely cared. It is still one of my favorite games of all time, and while there are private servers still active, I have no intention to play. And the reason for it that is simple. I’ve played enough of that game, I feel fully unsatisfied with the time I’ve spend with it. Its like 2 people growing apart over time.

Just to play devils advocate here. What is the benefit of forcing developers to provide access to old games that require online functionality indefinitely, instead of just hard limiting them to say 10 years wich is essentially indefinite in terms of non-live service games. If you haven’t managed to get enough joy out of something during a decade of you life, then maybe the developer isn’t responsible for your personal issues.

By this time The Crew 2 would’ve been 6 years old. I agree that’s fairly short time to turn of the servers, but would people be still as frantic about the server shut down in say 2028? Wouldn’t 10 years be enough? Why straight up go for indefinite access.

I really recommended you the 2nd Misson in the Soviet Campaign in CTA Gates of Hell. It took me a good 3 days to get through it but its as close to All Ghillied Up as you can get.

Quite the contrary, I love this subgenre more than any other one regarding shooters. But I’ve never seen it done right. If you know any game that doesn’t end in frustration about the AI, please tell me.

I’m more than OK with micromanagement in games, but that’s not how it should work in shooters. Men of War is a good example, it’s a strategy series with a notorious amount of micromanagement, but the difference is, you get all the information needed to manage your units and you as a player are not part of the battlefield. No enemy unit can look up in the sky and shoot down your birds-eye camera. But in shooters, not only do you have limited information about your enemies and your own team, you can also be killed during micromanagement. This is not how it should work. Your friendlies being a little bit more pro active is the least one could ask for.

Like imagine you storm Osama’s hideout and every time your soldiers have to ask you - the captain if its OK to shoot the terrorist in the room, or if its OK to move onto the next room, or its OK to take cover, that’s how it feels.

And because you’re essentially responsible for every single action of your team, you also feel responsible for every single mishap, whether it actually was your fault or not.

Also modern shooters themselves have already fairly demanding controls, pairing that with the ability to command different units means compromises have to be made in user experience. Your commands are usually limited by line of sight, you can’t tell your units to advance behind this wall and search for cover. Arma 3 tries to address this issue with the “Command Mode” that let’s you zoom out the camera to a birds-eye view, but that’s essentially what a strategy game is anyway. You also can’t command multiple squad simultaneously, each squad needs separate attention, while the AI computer can do everything at once, putting you even more at a disadvantage.

Developers also rarely bother implementing actual military techniques. The only 2 examples I can think of are Arma 3s combat advance (half the units cover, the other half moves) or Ready or Not’s room clearing. What ends up happening is, people just take 4 machine gunners with scopes or 4 snipers, since all units essentially behave the same AI wise, there no downside to that.

In my opinion a squad control game should essentially play itself, meaning that if your character dies, the rest of your AI should be smart enough to finish the mission or at least retreat on their own, just like a real squad would if their commander dies. The challenge shouldn’t come from janky controls or cheating AI, it should come from having the odds stacked against you. The goal shouldn’t be to just finish the mission, but have everybody come out alive. A lot of those games become almost trivial, if you just leave the AI at spawn and run through the mission yourself.

I’ve played all the games you mentioned and I am a huge fan of squad control games. I’ve recently looked through Steam games with tags “single player” and "shooter"most recent titles are primarily arcade style shooters. One thing I’ve noticed while playing CTA Gates of Hell is that no AI, whether friendly or not has ever had any sense of self preservation, and this is true for any game. So what ends up happening is, you as a player always end up babysitting your AI. You expect a squad full of capable soldiers, but end up having one capable one and a punch of crayon eating babies. That’s why most modern titles cheat with their friendly AI, making them immortal, invisible, teleporting them and giving then wall hacks. I’ve mostly given on the Idea that a squad control game can have satisfying AI interaction. If I have to tell every single unit where to go, who to shoot and when to hide, I’m not playing a shooter, I’m playing a strategy game in first person.

While I see that nothing like this currently exists on the market, I can kind of see why. The reason old school shooters look and play like they do is because of technical limitations. There’s a reason new Ghost Recon games don’t look like Ghost Recon 1 anymore, even if Ghost Recon 1 is still available and playable today. And if you’re interested in ultra janky gameplay, we have Arma 3. I just don’t understand who this game is for exactly.

Or importing new maps and characters, imagine somebody porting the Resident Evil Mansion or Raccoon Police Station with the Resident Evil Characters. Playing Resident Evil 1 with 5e rules would certainly be something. People have already done it with Men of War Assault Squad 2.

I would love to get a code break down and see how Bethesda spaghetti recoded the Skyrim horse mechanic into a vehicle.

O’Brien?

I disagree. The rule is “sex sells”, always has, always will be, period.

The people that complain about “wokeness” in games are a small but loud minority. The majority doesn’t care, hells seeing the steam achievements for some games the majority doesn’t even care to finish a game past the tutorial yet alone care about story or characters.

The problem is the approach to game design has changed. In the earlier stages of gaming, you would take a fun concept (finding perfect fits for boxes) and make it into a game (Tetris), that was all there was, Super Mario was literally called “Jump & Run Man” at one point. It was the essence of fun presented in a replayable form. Now games have to have a story, morals, relatable characters or some sort of overlaying message. This together with good gameplay can create a very good game no doubt. But each aspect has to be good on its own.
Take away the story from Last of Us and it’s essentially a 3rd person arena shooter, but it’s a good one at that. This alone would be a good selling point, add on top the story and you have an objectively good game.
But take Saint Row 5 as an example, take away the story and it’s a less than mediocre 3rd Person sandbox game, the fact that the story isn’t compelling either makes it objectively bad.
Rember the Hot/Crazy scale from His I Met Your Mother? Well there is also a Hot/Boring scale for games. If your game is boring it has to compensate by having hotter characters, if it’s fun it can get away with uglier ones. I can name countless examples where this is true.

Studios often overlook this connection. I’m all for diversification of the actual development environment but not the games themselves. It should always be fun first.
Never in my life have I heard anybody say “Are you going to get new game …? I’ve heard you can play as a black woman in this one. So cool.”
Studios then get upset because their model “Here diversity. Where money?” isn’t paying off.
It’s like not wanting to buy a cheaply made plastic valve for a boiler over a solid metal one and the company asks “Why are you not buying it? We made it blue.”

The fanbase is never going to change, because at some point we all realize that we want value for our money and often times studios spend so much time and effort making a game diverse, they forget to make it fun.

What the hell are these points?

Steam forces developers to ask for higher prices?
Ah, yes, because Activision is so eager to sell Call of Duty for just $20 but big bad Steam is just forcing their hand and they have to sell it for $70. See if you look at their own store where they can set their own prices its… also $70… hmm, that’s weird. Maybe others… nope same prices across all platforms. Almost like publishers can actually freely decide on their prices.

Steam also forces customers to buy DLCs for games on their platform.
Well, how else is this going to work? I buy a game on Steam and then call up the devs to venmo them $2 and they send me a DVD in the mail? Or should I make a new account on some other website and get my DLCs seperatly from there? Most games don’t even sell you DLCs, they sell you credits so you can unlock content that’s already in the game. Often times you have to buy those credits trough the devs website and link your account to Steam. That’s already a pain it the ass.

Steam takes 30% of the cut.
True, that sound like a lot. Imagine you’re a solo Dev and you’ve been working 9 years on a game. 3 of those years you’ve essentially been working just to pay off Steam. But look at what you get for those 3 years. You get a seperate store page for your product that you can essentially design however you want. You get access to high speed distribution servers all over the world, that also allow you to effortlessly push updates out, the option for regional pricing, the industries most reliable user review system, an integrated discussion and fan art forum, third party controller support (important for people with disabilities), and a refund system. Sure 30% still sounds like a lot, but would you be able to provide all this if you would’ve self publish the game, probably not.

Steam is consistently the cheapest option to buy games on sale. And even if it isn’t the cheapest, at no point in time have I thought, man Steam has this game for $7.49 but EGS has it for $6.99, I better get it on EGS. Maybe on GoG but no where else.

It’s mind boggling to think that through inflation and some shortages almost all groceries have nearly doubled in price over the last 20 years, but a AAA game is still $60, even though the cost of making a game has skyrocketed. Imagine gas prices would’ve stayed the same over the last 20 years and people would complian that gas station sandwiches would tast like shit.