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[UXLZ]

Let's talk about how dumb depth of field and motion blur are. Stupid graphical gimmicks or stupidest graphical gimmicks?

Depth of field is alright, motion blur is holy-hell-what-the-fuck stupid.

[flame99]

Let's talk about how dumb depth of field and motion blur are. Stupid graphical gimmicks or stupidest graphical gimmicks?

Depth of field is alright, motion blur is holy-hell-what-the-fuck stupid.

This. I actually kinda like DoF, honestly, but motion blur makes me want to claw my eyes out.

[Hugehead]

Let's talk about how dumb depth of field and motion blur are. Stupid graphical gimmicks or stupidest graphical gimmicks?

Depth of field is alright, motion blur is holy-hell-what-the-fuck stupid.

At least depth of field and motion blur are effects you get in real life through your eyes, though video games tend to exaggerate it to ludicrous degrees, a new effect games are using is chromatic aberration, which causes artifacts like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's caused by light going through a lens and getting distorted, but in first person games where you're ostensibly looking out your character's eyes it makes no sense to have it.

[Rose]

They also use lens flares, which have the same issue.

[Nick K]

Let's talk about how dumb depth of field and motion blur are. Stupid graphical gimmicks or stupidest graphical gimmicks?

Depth of field is alright, motion blur is holy-hell-what-the-fuck stupid.

At least depth of field and motion blur are effects you get in real life through your eyes, though video games tend to exaggerate it to ludicrous degrees, a new effect games are using is chromatic aberration, which causes artifacts like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's caused by light going through a lens and getting distorted, but in first person games where you're ostensibly looking out your character's eyes it makes no sense to have it.

You can get that if you wear glasses. I've had those blue/orange 'halos' in the past after getting stronger ones. They seem to go away after a while, but that might just be that the brain gets used to them and filters them out.

[TripJack]

Depth of field is alright,

This. I actually kinda like DoF, honestly,

Really? Depth of field is completely baffling to me. I can't wrap my head around the idea of doing all this fancy modern high fidelity graphical rendering and then intentionally applying a bunch of blurring so that 50-80% of the image can't be seen. And my eyes can only focus on one part of the screen as it is, what is the point of this graphical filter that forces me to also move my character's view whenever I want to see something clearly? It makes screenshots look more like photographs, but in motion DoF usually just gives me a headache.

a new effect games are using is chromatic aberration, which causes artifacts like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's caused by light going through a lens and getting distorted, but in first person games where you're ostensibly looking out your character's eyes it makes no sense to have it.

wow, yeah that is pretty awful too

[Parsely]

Like any effect, it's fine if you use it in moderation and where it makes sense (RGB separation in Outlast when you're looking through your camera makes sense). Most people just don't use it where it makes sense (in your character's eyeballs in Payday 2).

[Levi]

I still hate free to play.

Do you mean you hate freemium, or do you really hate all (mostly or fully) free games?

Fully free games are fine.  I hate the F2P business model.  I think its inherently exploitative and is never better than a one time payment.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

I still hate free to play.

Do you mean you hate freemium, or do you really hate all (mostly or fully) free games?

Fully free games are fine.  I hate the F2P business model.  I think its inherently exploitative and is never better than a one time payment.

It has potential to be good, it's just done so horrifically bad right now.

[Levi]

I still hate free to play.

Do you mean you hate freemium, or do you really hate all (mostly or fully) free games?

Fully free games are fine.  I hate the F2P business model.  I think its inherently exploitative and is never better than a one time payment.

It has potential to be good, it's just done so horrifically bad right now.

I can't think of a single way to make it good, just less bad.  Even when its done arguably right like Dota 2 or Path of Exile, you are still being constantly encouraged/advertised too to waste cash on pointless things.  I'd still rather just pay up front to avoid being asked to pay for things and to ensure I've got the "complete" experience.

[itisnotlogical]

I still hate free to play.

Do you mean you hate freemium, or do you really hate all (mostly or fully) free games?

Fully free games are fine.  I hate the F2P business model.  I think its inherently exploitative and is never better than a one time payment.

It has potential to be good, it's just done so horrifically bad right now.

I can't think of a single way to make it good, just less bad.  Even when its done arguably right like Dota 2 or Path of Exile, you are still being constantly encouraged/advertised too to waste cash on pointless things.  I'd still rather just pay up front to avoid being asked to pay for things and to ensure I've got the "complete" experience.

I personally prefer the idea of paying exactly as much as I want for a game. I like Star Trek Online and might buy one or two real-money items in the future, and to me that is a much more consumer-friendly business model than "$30 a month or nothing" or "$60 for a game you might not even like". I can still earn all of those real-money items by playing long enough and exchanging one in-game currency for another, so I don't even have to spend any money to experience the entire game; it'll just take a bit longer to get the very best-of-the-best items.

Of course they are going to advertise their real-money items rather aggressively; they are still a company trying to sell a thing after all, and modern AAA video games are expensive to produce and maintain.

[Levi]

Of course they are going to advertise their real-money items rather aggressively.
Of course they are going to put grind into a game so that you can skip it for money.
Of course they are going to let you pay for an early advantage in the game.
Of course they aren't going to let you access a portion of the game without paying more.
Of course they are going to make it easy to purchase, so children and the mentally ill can purchase lots.

These are all things I don't like about F2P.    I don't care about the business end, I care about what I'm playing.  F2P doesn't add a single good thing in my book.

[Rolan7]

The free-to-play games I've enjoyed tend to have a reasonably priced package with permanent rewards.  So if you like the free content, which in bygone days we would call a "demo", you can unlock the rest of the game for a one time $20-$40 fee, formerly known as "purchasing the game". 

Most F2P games are actually way more generous with demo content than in the old days, though for the multiplayer ones that's understandable since the free players can be useful for keeping the player count high enough.

Microtransactions are a different issue, but I don't really mind them.  I bought fancy weapon skins for Killing Floor because I was grateful to the developers for their continued efforts.  Whereas I'd never buy a TF2 hat (mostly because I seldom play) but the sale of crate keys to impulse buyers allows Valve to offer us the game for free.

And when microtransactions give significant bonuses, there's no shame in losing to some cow who spent a lot.  And if it gets frustrating, you can walk away - everyone else probably is.  So generally games only try that stuff when they're already crappy, or if they have massive balls (like Diablo 3, which I think mostly downplayed the real-money auction thing after launch).

[Shadowlord]

I would say "allows Valve to continue to update TF2" since a lot of us, myself included, got TF2 in the Orange Box.

[Graknorke]

The main reason that devs pick F2P is because it means that they don't have to decide a price point for a game. Realistically setting a price of £200 on even a massively complex game would just be business suicide, but with F2P you can get people to "buy" your shitty watered-down tycoon game for in the hundreds, easily.