Bay 12 Games Forum

You're just saying that because your opinions are wrong.

/sarc, just to be clear.  It was getting way too cereal in here.

Well, as long as we're exploring why Platonic Ideals of suck matter for a product whose quality is wholly subjective, I'll grab popcorn, too.

I wouldn't bother looking at any kind of ratings for video games as a way to measure merit.  For one thing, /v/ bombs metacritic user ratings for games the zeitgeist is against.  For a second, most reviewers are total hacks.

The issue with kickstarter is that publishers actually do perform a job, with regards to QA and, yknow, making sure the developer can actually do what they're saying.  Kickstarter is pretty clear proof that publishers aren't bad guys all the time and that customers aren't necessarily well-equipped to decide what projects are viable.  Now, if you look at kickstarter as a system for donating to projects that you like, you won't be too upset.  If you look at it as an investment, you're going to get burnt, badly and often.  Most kickstarting games are on kickstarter, because they're too early or too rough to get funding anywhere else.  There's often a reason for that.

Publishers being incredibly short-sighted and seemingly actively seeking to lose customers seems to be a side-effect of the market for gaming ballooning dramatically.  EA and acti-blizz are the best example of this.  If a dev is bought by EA, you can watch the quality of their games drop from release to release.  Acti-blizz has been more of a slow, sad decline, though perhaps not so slow in the last 2 years or so. 

Of course, it doesn't matter much, because the price for a game is relatively small and few customers practice their disdain with boycotts.  Unless they release many truly awful games, plenty of people will buy them just to have them.  Thanks to pre-orders and a large number of really horrendous reviewers and publications, plenty of people will buy awful games regardless of how terrible they are.

Nostalgia certainly informs our opinions.  We can look at the best games of yesteryear and ignore the bad ones.  However, it's hard to avoid the feeling that there's less variety of games and less effort in producing well thought out gameplay.

It might be interesting to compare design and art budgets between the 90's and now.  And throw advertising money into that bar graph, just for the lulz.

edit:

I honestly wonder if we might actually be getting close to a Triple-A collapse.

I doubt it, because my 3rd paragraph.  AAA's in general haven't been losing money [citation needed] and that's what needs to happen for bad companies to go bankrupt, which coincidentally might free some unutilized IP, like SMAC or Ogre Battle.

snip

This is Bethesda's MO now.  I think they realized sometime during production or after release of Morrowind that they could release unfinished games as long as they made modding accessible.

I've been getting into this game.

I tried making some beds but wasn't very impressed.  IMO, plasma hurts large, low-tier gunbeds a lot.  Spaced low-tier armor doesn't do anything against plasma, especially considering it's heavy and poorly maneuverable.  Today I made a gunship/hovertank that I'm fairly happy with, though.  My inspiration has been Hinds and Havocs.  Relatively heavily armored front with hover-blades as interior as I can get them, and an assful of laser.  I tried plasma 1's, but they suck and you have to aim well the first time, or you'll be shredded, armor or no.  I changed the armament to lasers and I couldn't be happier.  It seems like most people in the very low tiers build their hovercraft with little armor and few armaments, so no one expects a 6 laser hovercraft with a totally armored front.

... Robocraft doesn't like screenshots with prtsc.

Is there any way to anchor myself firmly?  I find that I slip and slide around when I land, which is really problematic with plasmas.  I really want to build some fighter-craft, because I've seen some and it seems like most satellites are completely defenseless.  I really can't figure out the control schemes and type of blocks I need though.   The controls seem very ill-suited to aircraft control.

I seriously thought about making a hovercraft with just some really powerful blades encased in an enormous sphere of white blocks.  It wouldn't serve much use, except to draw enemy fire and be hilarious.

IMO, it'd be really effective.  Well, maybe not with white-blocks, but a wrecking ball of armor would probably be effective against most teams.  There doesn't seem to be much tactical sophistication at my tier.  I expect plenty of people would shoot it until it died, while they were being flanked by your teammates.

Star Wars: Rebellion was a gsg-ish strategy game released in 98.  No idea if it's possible or worth it to get it running again.

A couple variations on a central idea:

The central idea is a grand strategy game with a procedural world and equipment/visible technology .  My biggest complaint about most GSG's is they are historical 'sims', so the scenarios are limited and the playing field is static.  Technology doesn't need to be procedural, though it should be flexible (read: freaking complicated) and relatively unconstrained by 'invisible walls'.  There would be no reason you couldn't try to discover and use gunpowder in your prehistoric nation-state, if you have access to the raw materials and a culture that allows systemic thought.

Freespace, for example, is a cool setting for this kind of thing.  You generate a galaxy map and solar system maps and generate some fluffy faction traits (that still have some crunch) for your initial vasudan and human polities.  You'd generate research based on what planets you hold (Ancient artifacts and records), what you build (practical experience), whether you capture enemy ships/supplies (reverse engineering), and deliberate scientific research.  Research would both modify existing technology and unlock new ones.  So, when you finished researching a Maxim or torpedo, you don't get +2 to anti-capship weapons; you get to start building and equipping maxims on your fighter wings.  Expanding to other solar systems would carry a risk of insurgency/independence movements and finding Shivans.  You would probably go minimal on micro-managing for this game, so you could focus on fleet movements and let the player spend lots of his time piloting/captaining/admiralling in battles and wars.

Or if space isn't your cup of tea, consider a planetary version.   This is basically alpha centauri or civ with a different tech system and tactics beyond dice rolls.  The civilization style of tech-tree is very focused on paradigm shifting technologies, with very little attention paid to refinements on existing technology.  IMO, any kind of military strategy you can apply in those games is strategic, not tactical in scope.  good AI is a big plus for this iteration; the AI needs to be good at research and flexible in expansion and warfare.  The AI in civ5 flounders on water worlds and won't expand or war like a human would.


A separate idea:

More games in the style of ogre battle.  I'm disappointed that FF:T became Square's go-to tactics game, after I played through ogre battle and bahamut lagoon.  These styles of TRPG are basically unknown and they are quite fun, but show their ages quite badly.  Hell, BL seems like it was probably dated at release.  Presumably squeenix owns the rights to all of quest and square's IP, which includes stuff like secret of mana and ogre battle.   The only thing squeenix has done with them is release March of the Black Queen on the wii shop.  The only RPG franchises they do anything with anymore are FF and Dragon Quest.