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[AlleeCat]

I've never looked into GamerGate, and I never will. From what I've heard it's a stupid thing that started because somebody in the games industry did stupid stuff.

[Boltgun]

I've never looked into GamerGate, and I never will. From what I've heard it's a stupid thing that started because somebody in the games industry did stupid stuff.

If only, I'd rather not speak about GG. Its not even centered on something worthy of interest.

[Isdar]

Yeah, having good ethics and standards in gaming journalism is a pretty stupid thing. Its not like other journalism has those or anything.

[Glowcat]

* Glowcat gets out hose to spray down THING WHICH MUST NOT BE NAMED talk.

You don't have to go home, but you shouldn't have that conversation here. It is a mess of communication and the penultimate incarnation of gender issue chaos with some pretty contemptible behavior as a catalyzing agent for further flame wars. Unwinding that beast's tangled tentacles requires at least another thread, and after the failures before I doubt Toady wants it on his boards.

[Boltgun]

Yeah, having good ethics and standards in gaming journalism is a pretty stupid thing. Its not like other journalism has those or anything.

Common sense prevent me from answering as this will only make this thread hostile and moderated.

[Urist Tilaturist]

But single-player campaigns have different parameters - they're meant to tell a story as well as have gameplay. "up against repaer bots" constantly doesn't give a good story flow, there needs to be pacing hence you need to be able to take down enemies in a reasonable amount of time. If every grunt had human-like AI then you would take days fighting your way out of the first room.

And I don't think "anti bot training mode" is an acceptable replacement for current single-player campaigns. That wouldn't suit most people who play single player - they're there for the action, story and exploration. If you make single player just "training mode" for multiplayer, you've lost a fair chunk of your audience. Those modes always suck more than regular single or multiplayer. They have different maps for the mode types for a reason, the gameplay isn't the same even if the game mechanics are.

I accept your point about story, but that only supports not having hordes of completely predictable enemies. Humans can be very stupid, so the grunts can make stupid mistakes, but unless they are robots (and sometimes even then) they are characters too with their own reasons to be there, even if that is just the pay. The game should not be weighted in the player's advantage any more than it makes sense for it to be (the player will be stronger if he is better equipped), since if this is supposed to be a world instead of a bot training arena then having only 1 character be vaguely competent makes little sense unless the player is the only intelligent being in a world of dumb robots or something similar. Not much exploration can happen if the player is twitching his way through the game by memory.

If you have played FPS enough you will know that tearing through a load of other players can be done very quickly indeed. A Counter-strike match is over in 2 minutes even between pro players, never mind typical pub players. The same is true of bots with the AI of a typical pubber (competent, but not that good). The game could be very fast indeed, and while the game might end in the player's prompt death if he is not very good that is the case for all such games.

[penguinofhonor]

I accept your point about story, but that only supports not having hordes of completely predictable enemies. Humans can be very stupid, so the grunts can make stupid mistakes, but unless they are robots (and sometimes even then) they are characters too with their own reasons to be there, even if that is just the pay. The game should not be weighted in the player's advantage any more than it makes sense for it to be (the player will be stronger if he is better equipped), since if this is supposed to be a world instead of a bot training arena then having only 1 character be vaguely competent makes little sense unless the player is the only intelligent being in a world of dumb robots or something similar. Not much exploration can happen if the player is twitching his way through the game by memory.

It's not supposed to be a world, it's supposed to be a game. It's weighted in the player's advantage because it is typically more fun that way.

[alexandertnt]

Yeah, a game may try to seem like "a world", but it won't actually be one, it will (and should) remain a game. Infact, the best games IMO will only try to seem like a world as far as maintaining a suspension of disbelief, anything more than that puts fun at risk and doesn't really accomplish anything more.

[Neonivek]

Yeah, a game may try to seem like "a world", but it won't actually be one, it will (and should) remain a game. Infact, the best games IMO will only try to seem like a world as far as maintaining a suspension of disbelief, anything more than that puts fun at risk and doesn't really accomplish anything more.

Well that goes with just about any gaming convention.

The magic med packs, the regenerating health... all things there to keep the game going and being fun without being very intrusive.

While gameplay doesn't ALWAYS win, and frankly it shouldn't always win since sometimes the fun is in the simulation, you do have to make genuine concessions for gameplay sake.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Gameplay doesn't disappear if everybody else is as strong as the player. The mechanics - what makes or breaks gameplay - are the same, and as I already said, multiplayer games already have this. They still have gameplay, or nobody would play them.

Assuming that players want everything in their favour is just that: an assumption. Fun does not disappear when the player ceases to be a demigod in a land of ordinary mortals with special help from RNGesus. It may be true for some or even most players, but not for all (largely what this thread is about). This is the main reason that I do not play adventure mode in DF: why is everybody else so weak?

Magic med packs and regenerating health are fine if everybody else gets them too or there is some good reason as to why they cannot (only the player is wearing an exoskeleton capable of quick self repair, for example), and if their presence can be explained in some way that makes sense with the game's lore. They are just mechanics. The mechanics were not the target of my criticism; it was the unexplained disparity between the player and everybody else in the world, not dependent on the player's skill (a pro CS:GO team playing a team of random pubbers will obviously crush them, but only because of skill and not because their characters are intrinsically stronger for no good reason).

Disbelief cannot be suspended if there is a lot of unexplained stupid stuff going on. An illusion of a world is rather easily broken in most cases, and the result is either to just enjoy demigod status and run rampant or try to sell the game on to some other poor schmuck.

To see a different sort of game which somehow works fine without throwing freebies at the player, look at Elite: Dangerous. It can be played in single player or multiplayer, and the player's spaceship is the same as other spaceships of the same type. The difference lies in the player's knowledge and skills.

[BurnedToast]

...I think that's a strange complaint for this thread. I'm not even really sure what your point is.

Not everyone wants super-realistic ARMA style gameplay, and not everyone wants serious sam mowing down hoards of monsters style.... that's why they make both types.

Just buy whatever kind you want, there's plenty of different choices and nobody is forcing you to play the games you don't like.

[Neonivek]

No Urist isn't against ultra-realism

He is saying that his feeling of immersion is broken when the things about him are arbitrarily for him only.

Why is the main character the only one who can use the magic healthpack? Why is he the only one who needs ammo?

Mind you I have no problem with these bits of inconsistencies and sometimes they really were explained away. Half-life for example the suit would administer the first aid on you and the energy pretty much is only helpful for your suit which only you have because it was a hazard suit made for dealing with dangerous materials (and kind of stinks at it in certain ways) with the game showing you just how fragile people are and you even, without the hazard suit.

[Urist Tilaturist]

Inconsistencies are what makes or breaks a game's immersion. Games not being immersive is fine, but having inconsistencies and a story/world the player is supposed not to just ignore does not really work.

My main objection is that earlier somebody said that the reason many games give the player freebies and elevate him above everybody else is that gameplay would suffer otherwise. I thought that that was a strange assumption to make when some games gave the player no advantages and still were somehow not ruined.

[Sheb]

Well, it depends on the kind of game you're playing.

[Tack]

I am average Cis-Male chauvanist.

I like the games we have right now, and I dislike SJW's (Or specifically, those who give bad names to SJW's.)

I play games that sexualize women, like Bayonetta, and think "gosh, that seems a bit over the top".
I play games that sexualize men, and think Nothing.

I believe that gender roles certainly exist in society, but I don't think there's anything wrong with them.
Equality does not need to be beige- equality just needs to be equal.
We just need to remember that there is, and always will be- people who defy the norm in that regard.

It annoys me that strong feminine protagonists are as uncommon as weak male emotional props.
I would prefer all women to be strong and self-confident. Because I hate all weak emotional props.
However, that doesn't change the fact that the world is full of people like that.


The question is- how much of our 'Masculine' and 'Feminine' behavior is attributed to genetics, how much to cultural identity, and how much is 'False negatives' because of teeny SJW's who decide to swim against the current despite the fact they aren't actually salmon, doing nothing but annoy their school, the salmon, and eventually the bears upstream.