Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SewingPin]

I do not care ifthe games are AAA, indie or whatever. Big publisher, small publisher, that is void to me.

What I am pissed off about is that the actual game designers stopped frying their brains about game mechanics. These days, they just build a normalized frame, pop a smoke and give it to the next guy, JOB WELL DONE. I understand why games such as CoD 365 will sell as kids grow up and are subjected to this content for the first time, unlike us. Given the fact that 90% of todays market tends to be unimaginative graphics whores who refuse to play these older games with slightly less polygons and not HD ULTRA SUPER DUPER textures, I am not surprised the trend is as is.

If only ONE person in the company can be an actual gamer with years of experience and actual passion for gaming and innovation, by the gods it has to be the mechanics designer. Everyone else can do their job just fine without actualy touching a game. Coders will bitch and moan about the implementation for certain, but 90% of the time they can actualy pull off making mechanics work. And I am not counting testers since they are either outsourced or, more commonly, the customer tends to be the QA tester.

What I am seeing now, "game designer" is just a title. No wonder we have not yet seen asymetrical balance pulled off with perfection in a game without the community calling it "rock, paper, scissors" balance.

[alexandertnt]

These days, they just build a normalized frame, pop a smoke and give it to the next guy, JOB WELL DONE.

Im sure most do, I expect it to be the case, but does every single one?

Given the fact that 90% of todays market tends to be unimaginative graphics whores who refuse to play these older games with slightly less polygons and not HD ULTRA SUPER DUPER textures, I am not surprised the trend is as is.

What are these "older games" you refer to. I hope you are not just cherry picking some of the greatest classics and comparing it against the average quality of modern games, becase thats not going to get you a reasonable comparison. Also this ignores the fact that there have been some major sucesses with "retro" styled graphics.

On top of that, some people like detail in their graphics, I dont see how that would make anyone an "unimaginative graphics whore". It also seems somewhat offensive to some people who are quite interested in computer graphics (myself included) and the quality workmanship that went into their creation. It also just seems like the "the majority of people have differing opinions to me therefore they must be stuped" argument.

If only ONE person in the company can be an actual gamer with years of experience and actual passion for gaming and innovation, by the gods it has to be the mechanics designer

Do you want inexperienced programmers making the games? Becase the result will likely be a buggy and unplayable game, regardless of the vision of the mechanics designer. How about an inexperienced manager? Game will probably run 5x over budget and ship broken 6 months too late. Everyone working on a game needs good experience for a major project to be sucessful, game developmet is serious business and is much more complex then you are making it out to be.

I have played plenty of good games recently (DF, Minecraft, KSP etc), maby you are just looking in the wrong area?

[SalmonGod]

I love graphics, myself.  I almost never want them to be the primary focus of a game, but I sure as hell won't complain about them.  I'd love the ability to import a 5 million polygon sculpt straight out of zbrush (which would also negate the need for textures), but I'm an artist who actually does that stuff.  If you can appreciate a beautiful painting, why not a beautiful game?  Games are the most multi-disciplined art form ever, and require a balance of quality across all spectrums.  One lackluster feature can drag everything down, including graphics.  Maybe not the awesome technical shininess of graphics, but bad graphical design can easily make a game unplayable.

Honestly, though, when people complain about graphics, they're usually complaining about how upgrades to hardware and engines generate so much buzz, but those things help procedural generation, physics, AI, etc just as much as graphics.  All those things make games mechanically more complex and interesting.

[Zangi]

Even people who are selling these games think their audience is mentally ill.

"We like to think that the ones spending vast sums on these games are sons of Dubai oligarchs, but we have the data to prove that they're not, and that they probably can't afford to spend what they're spending. We're saying our market is suckers - we're going to cast a net that catches as many mentally ill people as we can!"

Know what is sad/funny?  At least in my opinion; It may just end up being a matter time before China starts regulating the shit out of F2P/P2W games, just like how the US does gambling(I don't know how or if China regulates gambling.).  Followed by the West doing the same... or at least voluntarily self-regulating to avoid the crazy restrictions.  Like the self-voluntary ESRB rating thing.

Though... it seems that some of the States in the US are trying to tap into online gambling...

[Neonivek]

The worst thing is a lot of Free To Play games intentionally set themselves up like the longest extended demo ever!

Dungeon Fighter Online for example is a rather fun game and there is an entire additional set of equipment which are costume peices (and the only reason these costumes arn't "Pay to win" is because they are random and you can pay ingame currency for them. Albiet spending a month+ to afford some of them) and you can get through 75% of the game completely untempted to buy anything.

Afterall the gameplay is fun and nothing is really barred from you and even the costume peices arn't too amazing.

Then you hit the 75% mark and you lack the inventory space for all the quests... So you go "You know what, I'll just take is slowly" but they also made your moves take resources you have to lug around, eating up your inventory space even further.

A lot of Free To Play games are based around drawing you in and making the game continuously harder to play without spending cash.

---

I remember watching my mother play the new Farmville. One of the quests requires you to have a resource you cannot get normally (bunny fur). You can find ways to get it without cash, which can take months, but it will come at a trickle.

Or you can spend a little cash.

Anyhow I think Facebook games are garbage anyhow. So I am not the one to talk about them.