Future improvement you're looking forward to?

[meiam]

http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/D.Silver/web/Applications_files/civ2-nonlinear-mc.pdf

But skimming it I can't find a mention of what difficulty setting it is on.

That's a strange omission, I remember playing civ 2 before I could read english and with almost 0 clue as to how the game played and I still could do pretty well on the basic difficulty. Probably in supplemental or something.

Realistically were very far from full AI playing the game, if only just because of hardware problem. But I hope dev can develop better AI (in game) using AI (the supercomputer kind) by letting one run with the game for awhile and then just copying some of the base code that the AI develop for itself.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

And, can video games get away from being obsessed with killing shit as the primary gameplay for like everything?

And do what exactly?

Videogames are typically about conflict and overcoming obstacles, and those obstacles are more interesting to overcome if they move around and fight back. Even in Undertale if you choose to be a pacifist you're still fighting enemies and beating them. You mention Team Ico as an example of games that don't adhire to this, but both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus have you fighting and killing plenty of enemies.

There's tons of things you can do in games that isn't combat. Just look at board games, just the top rated list on BGG (which is sorta a popularity contest like any other user rating system) has a game about terraforming Mars, making wine, delivering cows to the West, providing power to cities, and more. And all those games are competitive (PvP) too. I mentioned Team ICO games more so being basically AAA indie games than games without combat, though combat isn't the main thing you do in any of those games. Even in Shadow, the "fight" is basically solving a puzzle vs shooting/hacking away at a health bar. You can make those type of games on a decent budget and make money, they don't have to be isolated to the indie sector.

What?s ironic is these are the same types of games (Bayonetta, Vanquish, GR:FS, MGSO2, etc.) you?ve considered the best of the last decade. Unless you?re really getting tired of them.

I'm not saying I don't like well done combat but it just gets boring to do the same shit constantly and most combat-oriented games don't even come close to a Bayo or Vanquish. RPGs have you fighting more total time than you do in either Bayo or Vanquish, yet the combat is rarely even good. We've been making shooters with the same basic guns for 20+ years now and devs still can't balance the same damn guns that are in every shooter, game design is just so poor so often. Why am I going to play a new shooter that's not even close to something that's over 10 years old? It's a combination of the same old shit + shit game design on top of that. GRFS is not what I'd call one of the best games of really anything, it has a super innovation cover system but is also very flawed in other aspects.

Also, I've always had games like the Team ICO games as my favorite games like I gave GOTY to The Last Guardian a couple years back. I've put more hours into board gaming the last 5 or so years now than video games. I've probably played Terraforming Mars 50 times now (even played tonight and I won by 1 point) and that's a 3 hour game so over 150 hours in just that board game alone in the past year. It was pretty cool when Total Biscuit put Captain Sonar in his top 10 best games a couple years back. When you look at video games, most are really so bad in terms of mechanics. How many video games actually make money an important resource that you're not swimming in it by like mid-game (or the items you find are better than what you can buy anyway)? While every board game makes money so very vital to succeeding. It's not hard at all to make money an important resource yet constant failure by video game devs.

 

[Casual Shinji]

There's tons of things you can do in games that isn't combat. Just look at board games, just the top rated list on BGG (which is sorta a popularity contest like any other user rating system) has a game about terraforming Mars, making wine, delivering cows to the West, providing power to cities, and more.

I'm pretty sure you can find videogames that do these types of things as well. But the fact of the matter is that action games provide the most direct and tactile gameplay interaction, which is why they're typically the most "fun" to play. And most of the good action games know how to pace themselves, so that it isn't just an onslaught of combat.


And besides that, do games need to do everything boardgames do? Can't they just have their own pros and cons?

I mentioned Team ICO games more so being basically AAA indie games than games without combat, though combat isn't the main thing you do in any of those games. Even in Shadow, the "fight" is basically solving a puzzle vs shooting/hacking away at a health bar. You can make those type of games on a decent budget and make money, they don't have to be isolated to the indie sector.

They only feel like AAA indie games, because many indie games are so desperate to replicate that style and atmosphere, and because those games are considered "art". Which belies the problem with a lot of indie games; they just want to remake the games the developer liked growing up. But Ico and SotC are no more indie than Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill.


And we have plenty of not exactly indie games available, like Journey, Abzu, Inside, Snake Pass; Games that are smaller and different, but have more of the shine of a AAA game. And no, they're not as big and popular as the God of War's, but what do you expect.

 

[Yoshi178]

waiting for a new black box that can display 8K picture resolution and has 320gb's of GDDR10 in it making it the most powerful black box on the market!!!!!

 

[skywolfblue]

I don't even get what's the point behind 4k when people can't even see pixels and the normal TV distance...

Give me AI improvements, or animation improvements.

Current animation is clunky, and has to rely on hundreds of thousands of pre-baked animations. We need advances that will let characters handle unscripted events dynamically. I would rather have a smoothly animated game, then a fully raytraced 4k game with jerky animation.

Even with mo-cap technology, there's a looot of janky animations. Games with character creation like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have very janky ones.

One's with defined characters, like HZD and Gears of War tend to do better. But it would be nice to see more improvement.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I'm pretty sure you can find videogames that do these types of things as well. But the fact of the matter is that action games provide the most direct and tactile gameplay interaction, which is why they're typically the most "fun" to play. And most of the good action games know how to pace themselves, so that it isn't just an onslaught of combat.

And besides that, do games need to do everything boardgames do? Can't they just have their own pros and cons?

Quite a few board games are technically video games now due them getting digital versions (best mobile games you can play right now). Video games don't need to try to do gameplay from board games, but video games should be a lot more varied in what they are about. Gameplay from one game to another should be rather different most of the time. Now so many video games are so homogeneous that you already know the control scheme before you even played the game.

They only feel like AAA indie games, because many indie games are so desperate to replicate that style and atmosphere, and because those games are considered "art". Which belies the problem with a lot of indie games; they just want to remake the games the developer liked growing up. But Ico and SotC are no more indie than Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill.

And we have plenty of not exactly indie games available, like Journey, Abzu, Inside, Snake Pass; Games that are smaller and different, but have more of the shine of a AAA game. And no, they're not as big and popular as the God of War's, but what do you expect.

The main element that a Team ICO game, a MGS, or Silent Hill share is that they were developed with a very singular vision to provide a very purposeful experience, which good indie games exhibit since they are made with smaller teams and not some PR committee. Now game design is just kitchen-sink design; throw in a loot system, RPG elements, a open world, collectibles, Arkham combat, crafting, a skill tree, a battle royale mode, or whatever is popular at the moment. That leads to really poor game design and everything feeling so same-y. I'm not saying the indie scene doesn't copy themselves and spit out clones themselves, but it's near a goddamn miracle that a AAA game feels like it was passionately made and actually resonates with you. That's all I expect is creators making something they care about.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The main element that a Team ICO game, a MGS, or Silent Hill share is that they were developed with a very singular vision to provide a very purposeful experience, which good indie games exhibit since they are made with smaller teams and not some PR committee. Now game design is just kitchen-sink design; throw in a loot system, RPG elements, a open world, collectibles, Arkham combat, crafting, a skill tree, a battle royale mode, or whatever is popular at the moment. That leads to really poor game design and everything feeling so same-y. I'm not saying the indie scene doesn't copy themselves and spit out clones themselves, but it's near a goddamn miracle that a AAA game feels like it was passionately made and actually resonates with you. That's all I expect is creators making something they care about.

Whether a game resonates with you isn't something you can claim rarely happens in the AAA industry like it's a fact, that depends from person to person. AAA is 95% of what I play, and I can't say I've had an awful time. Actually, I've found this generation to have been pretty fantastic in that regard. But then I've stayed away from anything Activision, EA, and Ubisoft, which seems to be what most people actually mean when they speak of how terrible AAA games are.


And games have always chased what was popular. God of War was a giant rip off of Devil May Cry. Horizon: Zero Dawn was criticized as being just another generic Ubisoft game, but it's still some of the most fun I had this generation. Bloodborne was hailed as a masterpiece, despite being just another Souls game. And then we have Nier: Automata, which the gaming elite is currently creaming its collective panties over, eventhough mechanically it's just another Platinum game.


This mentality of 'AAA is creatively dead' seems to have a very easy and convenient OFF switch for a lot of people when they come across a AAA game they really like, which doesn't seem like that rare of an occurence.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Whether a game resonates with you isn't something you can claim rarely happens in the AAA industry like it's a fact, that depends from person to person. AAA is 95% of what I play, and I can't say I've had an awful time. Actually, I've found this generation to have been pretty fantastic in that regard. But then I've stayed away from anything Activision, EA, and Ubisoft, which seems to be what most people actually mean when they speak of how terrible AAA games are.

And games have always chased what was popular. God of War was a giant rip off of Devil May Cry. Horizon: Zero Dawn was criticized as being just another generic Ubisoft game, but it's still some of the most fun I had this generation. Bloodborne was hailed as a masterpiece, despite being just another Souls game. And then we have Nier: Automata, which the gaming elite is currently creaming its collective panties over, eventhough mechanically it's just another Platinum game.

This mentality of 'AAA is creatively dead' seems to have a very easy and convenient OFF switch for a lot of people when they come across a AAA game they really like, which doesn't seem like that rare of an occurence.

Yeah, I know it's my opinion just like anyone else but quite a bit of people post about such and such game is just another open world game or TPS or MMS or whatever. Few games now actually come up with new systems like how the Middle-earth games did come up with the Nemesis system but then just used basically a 1-to-1 copy of Arkham combat so it didn't really feel that fresh nor did they understand why Arkham combat works for Batman (because combat is just a portion of Batman, and not what you do the majority of the game as Arkham combat doesn't have the depth to carry a purely combat focused game). And like every game copied that system whether it be Middle-earth, Sleeping Dogs, and even Uncharted 3. The system becomes stale even faster then. Before, games used have their unique combat system. You mention DMC and GOW, and both combat systems were different especially if you compared them against 2 games today with Arkham combat. Prince of Persia came out in that time too, and again there's similarities of course with its combat but it wasn't just copy-pasted from another game.

I would say both Horizon and Nier were created with passion and that's one of the reasons why they stand out. Guerrilla seemed super excited to make a new IP from a couple videos I've seen about the development of Horizon. Plus, Horizon does have many similar elements from other games but the devs were quite good at understanding how to apply them to the game in a meaningful manner. Horizon actually did need its open world to house its enemies while most open world games are just open world to be open world. The thing that I feel makes Horizon never really feel repetitive is due to its reservedness to "Ubisoft: The Game". There's 5-6 "towers" vs like 30 in a FarCry, the most abundant collectible (metal flowers) only has 30 (not 100+) to find, it's vantage points do nothing but unlock lore (vs unlocking tons of icons on the map to pickup), there's only like 40-something quests IIRC instead of other RPGs that have 100s of quests with few being interesting (even Bioware fell into that trap), the loot system is really light (there's no finding a new slightly better weapon every hour to unequip sell the old one). Basically everything Aloy does makes sense in that game world, very few modern AAA games can claim that. Getting back to Nier, people love that game because of the uniqueness Yoko Taro brings to those games. If it was just the straight Platinum-lite combat that people loved, Platinum licensed games would be all the rage too. A smaller group creamed their pants over the 1st Nier too, which has shit gameplay (I played that game because I heard it has such an amazing story, slightly above average anime yarn really). I'm kinda surprised the Souls games weren't criticized as much for basically making the same game 5 times, but From definitely puts a lot into the games from lore to just really solid level design that the games don't feel copy-pasted assembly line games just rolled out to make money, plus From is the best at the Souls formula still.

I never claimed EVERY AAA game is passionless products, but most definitely are and you can feel just playing the games. It only took an hour of playing the Destiny beta years ago to know nobody on the project was excited about the game. Top notch voice actors were completely bored to death reading lines. Then, you can easily find how bad the state of Bungie's development on both games is with very little work and all they really care about is meeting their contractual obligations to Activision, and Bungie's tech for the game is really really shit too.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Yeah, I know it's my opinion just like anyone else but quite a bit of people post about such and such game is just another open world game or TPS or MMS or whatever. Few games now actually come up with new systems like how the Middle-earth games did come up with the Nemesis system but then just used basically a 1-to-1 copy of Arkham combat so it didn't really feel that fresh nor did they understand why Arkham combat works for Batman (because combat is just a portion of Batman, and not what you do the majority of the game as Arkham combat doesn't have the depth to carry a purely combat focused game). And like every game copied that system whether it be Middle-earth, Sleeping Dogs, and even Uncharted 3. The system becomes stale even faster then. Before, games used have their unique combat system. You mention DMC and GOW, and both combat systems were different especially if you compared them against 2 games today with Arkham combat. Prince of Persia came out in that time too, and again there's similarities of course with its combat but it wasn't just copy-pasted from another game.

Neither AAA nor indie are giving us new systems. And part of the reason for that might be that games play so well now mechanically that there's not much reason to change things. And that what's left is just to refine things and add some bells and whistles. I'd argue that Breath of the Wild's climb everywhere mechanic was a very unique and new way to play an open-world game, but it's not what you'd actually call a new mechanic.


As for something like the Arkham combat getting copied, that honestly seemed more like it was just Warner Bros. lazily adding it to every other game they produced from then on. Because I can only really see Shadow of Mordor and Mad Max straight up copying it. Uncharted 3 really didn't seem like it was trying to ape that type of combat, otherwise it would've been at least competent.


And the similarities between DMC and GoW isn't so much in the combat, but in the 'collect red orbs for EXP, and combat areas locked off by force fields'. Dave Jaffe even made a parody of himself in jail, because he so blatantly stole from DMC.

I would say both Horizon and Nier were created with passion and that's one of the reasons why they stand out. Guerrilla seemed super excited to make a new IP from a couple videos I've seen about the development of Horizon. Plus, Horizon does have many similar elements from other games but the devs were quite good at understanding how to apply them to the game in a meaningful manner. Horizon actually did need its open world to house its enemies while most open world games are just open world to be open world. The thing that I feel makes Horizon never really feel repetitive is due to its reservedness to "Ubisoft: The Game". There's 5-6 "towers" vs like 30 in a FarCry, the most abundant collectible (metal flowers) only has 30 (not 100+) to find, it's vantage points do nothing but unlock lore (vs unlocking tons of icons on the map to pickup), there's only like 40-something quests IIRC instead of other RPGs that have 100s of quests with few being interesting (even Bioware fell into that trap), the loot system is really light (there's no finding a new slightly better weapon every hour to unequip sell the old one). Basically everything Aloy does makes sense in that game world, very few modern AAA games can claim that.

Yeah, but here we run into what I was talking about, because there's plenty of people who would claim H:ZD IS just another generic Ubisoft open-world game, and proof that there's no creativity in AAA and that it can only copy what came before. There's people who thought God of War '18 was not like the usual over-the-shoulder third-peron action games at all, but then there's others who labeled it as a pefect example of everything that's wrong in AAA game design.


There's a lot of people who claim AAA is devoid of passion and creativity, but when it comes to specific examples they suddenly don't seem to be on the same wave length no more.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Neither AAA nor indie are giving us new systems. And part of the reason for that might be that games play so well now mechanically that there's not much reason to change things. And that what's left is just to refine things and add some bells and whistles. I'd argue that Breath of the Wild's climb everywhere mechanic was a very unique and new way to play an open-world game, but it's not what you'd actually call a new mechanic.

As for something like the Arkham combat getting copied, that honestly seemed more like it was just Warner Bros. lazily adding it to every other game they produced from then on. Because I can only really see Shadow of Mordor and Mad Max straight up copying it. Uncharted 3 really didn't seem like it was trying to ape that type of combat, otherwise it would've been at least competent.

And the similarities between DMC and GoW isn't so much in the combat, but in the 'collect red orbs for EXP, and combat areas locked off by force fields'. Dave Jaffe even made a parody of himself in jail, because he so blatantly stole from DMC.

I don't really agree that games play that well nowadays, several genres have devolved IMO. Shooters aren't nearly as good as they used to be mechanically. There's always a different way to do something. Since that Escapist's 'A Thing About Stuff' featuring Heavenly Sword is at the bottom of the page right now, Heavenly Sword was far more than just GOW with a chick, the combat system was its own thing. You need new systems or solid tweaks to known systems because there are diminishing returns on the same system no matter how great it is. Even like Divinity Original Sin is pretty much an old-school isometric RPG but it's combat system has an awesome elemental system that interacts with each other.

Uncharted 3's 'Arkham' combat was pretty janky but they tried doing the whole attack/counter thing Arkham does. Spiderman is basically an evolved version of Arkham combat adding aerial combat into the mix.

DMC and GOW feel like different games to me and delivered rather different experiences. GOW is much more of an adventure and kinda splits its gameplay between combat, puzzles, exploring, platforming whereas DMC just does combat really. It's not at all like GOW vs Dante's Inferno for example.

Yeah, but here we run into what I was talking about, because there's plenty of people who would claim H:ZD IS just another generic Ubisoft open-world game, and proof that there's no creativity in AAA and that it can only copy what came before. There's people who thought God of War '18 was not like the usual over-the-shoulder third-peron action games at all, but then there's others who labeled it as a pefect example of everything that's wrong in AAA game design.

There's a lot of people who claim AAA is devoid of passion and creativity, but when it comes to specific examples they suddenly don't seem to be on the same wave length no more.

I'm saying that you can actually look into the development process of games and see whether the devs were "into" the game or not. Look into Destiny or now Fallout 76 for example, neither were made with passion and that's just a fact. Horizon had elements found in Ubisoft games, but the core gameplay were the machine fights and that wasn't copied from really any game. Whereas the core of Ubisoft games are the Ubisoft elements. I found new GOW to be a bad game due to poor game design but it wasn't because the devs (Santa Monica) didn't have passion, they just aren't good game designers IMO. The only good game they've made was the 1st GOW with Jaffe IMO. They messed up all the little things that make combat feel right in the new GOW. The new direction and camera angle weren't the problems, it was the execution and the stupid RPG elements that don't belong. God Hand played just fine with a similar camera angle.

You can just tell most games are basically made with maximizing profits from the marketing and executives, it's not like some expertly hidden agenda that I brilliantly figured out, it's pretty blatantly obvious. Companies are literally telling us what their intentions are like say Ubisoft's presention [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSQOJqikw8c] to turn games into services or them saying they will only make games that can be turned into franchises. Or EA saying single player is dead. It's no coincidence that Activision, EA, and Ubisoft all made/making basically the same game with Destiny, Anthem, and The Division. You can tell these publishers aren't really upset with basically pissing off the core gamers either because they know they can sell less copies and make more money via microtransactions. So what if a million core gamers boycott some new game, it'll still sell millions and rake-in money from microtransactions post-launch easily making up for any lost sales.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Well once we have Ultra HD photo-realistic graphics then game designers can start putting more of the money they currently funnel into graphics development back into parts of the game that actually matter, like world-building, story-line and core mechanics.