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kalonZombie posted:There was that one time he turned into the Scarebeast. I'll talk about that. Because I thought the first half of the "As The Crow Flies" storyline was loving fantastic. Just a cool, "street level" kind of Batman story where he's investigating mobsters losing their goddamn minds and going on rampages. Turns out, it's because Scarecrow is working for Penguin and Cobblepot is trying to use the fear toxins to keep his underlings in line. It's a cool premise with an interesting dynamic on the villains because Penguin just treats Crane like complete poo poo through the whole thing, constantly reminding him that "this isn't some supervillain team-up, you work for me. Now take that ridiculous costume off." But by the end of the storyline, you've got Crane turning into a giant monster, a pre-Under The Red Hood Jason Todd sighting, oh, and Scarecrow's meek little lab assistant? Turns out not only can she exhale nerve gasses that turn people into monsters, but she can loving fly for no goddamn reason at all. Makes me want to start a thread in BSS about comic runs that started strong and then fizzled out or lost their way before the end.
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Sep 18, 2014 14:00
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Speaking of fear, I always laugh at the part in AC when Joker tries to kill catwoman and Batman starts acting like a scared little bitch that hasn't beaten the poo poo out of Joker a hundred times.
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Sep 18, 2014 14:31
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Oh man, that Firefly fight was awesome! Why were people bitching about this?
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Sep 18, 2014 14:59
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Here's a neat panel of Riddler and Scarecrow.
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Sep 18, 2014 15:08
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Oh man, that Firefly fight was awesome! Why were people bitching about this? It's a cutscene.
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Sep 18, 2014 17:46
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kalonZombie posted:Speaking of which, aside from the one story suggested earlier, is there any other good Scarecrow stories? Scarecrow: Year One is really good, particularly the art, other than the part where they decided Crane paints his nails black like a goth teenager. Rest of it's great though.
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Sep 18, 2014 17:46
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Discendo Vox posted:It's a cutscene. Oh my god you're right. I can't believe they fooled me.
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Sep 18, 2014 18:03
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Discendo Vox posted:It's a cutscene. Except for all those gameplay segments, you're right!  It was fun, it was cool, I had a blast 
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Sep 18, 2014 19:03
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Except for all those gameplay segments, you're right! 
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Sep 18, 2014 19:20
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It's not very Batman-y of me but after crossing that drat bridge countless times, I was happy to see it blown up.
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Sep 18, 2014 20:16
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Except for all those gameplay segments, you're right! "You say Lip balm, I say Napalm!" I love Firefly if only because of how much he clearly enjoys being a fire crazy loon.
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Sep 18, 2014 20:48
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He is exactly the sort of villain most of us would turn into if given a chance. gently caress y'all, I got a super suit and fire.
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Sep 18, 2014 20:50
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Some men just want to watch the world burn.
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Sep 18, 2014 20:55
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I'm honestly surprised that Christopher Nolan never used Firefly in his film series. He didn't even have to put on the suit (though that would've been cool), he could've just been Garfield Lynns the arsonist in a little villain cameo like Zsasz.
Blueberry Pancakes fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Sep 18, 2014 |
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Sep 18, 2014 21:08
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And that was the most satisfying mashing of X I have ever performed.
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Sep 18, 2014 21:13
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I always liked the bit in Long Halloween where Scarecrow and Mad Hatter work together. I want to see another story about that, I think that could be fun.Hobgoblin2099 posted:I'm honestly surprised that Christopher Nolan never used Firefly in his film series. He didn't even have to put on the suit (though that would've been cool), he could've just been Garfield Lynns the arsonist in a little villain cameo like Zsasz. He was in an episode of Arrow. Pretty much how I would expect Nolan Firefly would be.
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Sep 18, 2014 21:41
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Arrow is pretty good at Nolanizing villans. I can think of the Royal Flush Gang and Clock King off the top of my head.
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Sep 18, 2014 22:22
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:And that was the most satisfying mashing of X I have ever performed. Yes. Yes it was. Welcome to the club, my friend.
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Sep 18, 2014 22:33
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Discendo Vox posted:It's a cutscene. Except for all those parts where you play a video game and don't progress unless you push buttons to both attack and avoid damage, as well as fiddle with one or more control sticks to move and/or manipulate the camera. But, y'know, our definitions of "cutscene" could vary wildly. Been replaying Arkham Origins lately, and as a standalone game I'm enjoying it vastly more than as part of a marathon of Bat-games. Recently went for the trophy to counter all of Slade's moves, and that gets INTENSE when you get to the sword. Holy hell. I still love the poo poo out of that fight, no matter how many times I do it. Best part of Arkham Origins.
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Sep 18, 2014 22:46
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Discendo Vox posted:It's a cutscene. lol
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Sep 18, 2014 22:58
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Can you show us on the Limited Edition 3' Batman Statue where Discendo Vox touched you, Sleepy Owl? You seem a little broken lately.
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Sep 18, 2014 23:09
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kalonZombie posted:Been replaying Arkham Origins lately, and as a standalone game I'm enjoying it vastly more than as part of a marathon of Bat-games. Recently went for the trophy to counter all of Slade's moves, and that gets INTENSE when you get to the sword. Holy hell. I still love the poo poo out of that fight, no matter how many times I do it. Best part of Arkham Origins. Plenty of people have very valid criticisms of the Deathstroke fight, but yeah it's probably my favorite part of Origins as well (gameplay wise at least, there are stronger moments in cutscenes/narrative like Batman detailing what happened to Black Mask's girlfriend, or the whole segment of Joker's rescue and incarceration). Everything from Batman being hauled out of the room by his ankle to Deathstroke's horrified,"....WHAT are you....  " ending is just an absolutely blast for me to play. Whether I survived the fight by the skin of my teeth or countered every single move he made and "effortlessly" finished him off, beating him marked the moment where I felt like Batman was moving beyond his "rookie" year.
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Sep 19, 2014 00:08
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From an isolated design perspective the Deathstroke fight is much better than any of the other bossfights in the game. It avoids the system overlap problems other fights have, portrays internal progression both mechanically and visually, and rewards and reinforces experimentation by using the available player actions to the hilt. From a standpoint locating it in the broader game's structure it's a bit weaker. It doesn't serve very well as a teaching point for the counter mechanics that it's supposed to teach you, and it doesn't prime you for later scenarios (nothing that deathstroke does is anything that any later boss or enemy does). It serves as the peak of Batman's narrative-framed ability in the game, despite being the first real boss fight outside the intro(the "what are you" would be a lot more effective after character development by Wayne). It's just weird that the assassin who is arguably the most competent, and most an assassin, gets beaten relatively early, before relatively weak enemies like Firefly or Deadshot. My best guess is that the fight was developed very early, either as an internal showcase piece(here's how the bossfights will look, give us the project), or before the workflow schedule tightened up and giant chunks started getting taken out of the development timeframe. It's very hard to reconcile the relative depth of the fight with the Firefly or Bane fights, and even less with the other assassin fights.
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Sep 19, 2014 00:47
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Uh, the Deathstroke mechanics are (slowed down) very similar to the Martial Artist 'delayed counter' mechanic. It's a pretty effective introduction to the idea that pressing counter right away won't always work.
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Sep 19, 2014 00:50
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I'd argue it's not because the feedback is different. Deathstroke communicates a counter chance with slowdown, while the martial artists communicate it with unique animations. Importantly, Deathstroke has enough different animations that players don't naturally rely on the animations to determine when to counter. At launch, a tremendous number of players had a lot of trouble understanding what was going on, usually because they'd hit the attack button and cancel out of the counter chance animation before the counter chance (and slowdown) even came in (part of the problem was that the tootip text explaining what was going on with the slow motion only made sense if you actually saw the slow motion- players getting hit wouldn't see it and couldn't understand what they were doing wrong!). The playerbase basically bifurcated on whether or not they understood how countering worked in that fight, and those in the much-too-large "not" camp wound up learning about how the martial artists worked separately and later.
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Sep 19, 2014 01:23
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Discendo Vox posted:At launch, a tremendous number of players had a lot of trouble understanding what was going on, Literally the only person I saw have trouble with it was in this thread. Even in launch-day Youtube walkthroughs people did it without trouble. I don't doubt that there are people who missed it but implying it is even 50/50 is silly. You have a really bad habit of assuming that everyone who plays games is super-stupid except for you. Some people legitimately disliked the fight for feeling like a QTE or whatever, of course, but that's pretty different from not understanding the concept behind it. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 01:25
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kalonZombie posted:Except for all those parts where you play a video game and don't progress unless you push buttons to both attack and avoid damage, as well as fiddle with one or more control sticks to move and/or manipulate the camera. I dunno how it went for other people, but when I fought Firefly I found it trivial to stun lock him with glue grenades and batarangs, and I wasn't even looking for an exploit. Just playing the game normally the guy literally never had the chance to attack me.
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Sep 19, 2014 01:31
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I'm not sure your sample is any more or less valid than mine- I spent a lot of time reading official and other forums during the release period because of my tech problems with the game (grayed out batwing locations, the bugged riddler tower, etc). There were a lot of problems with folks understanding what that fight was supposed to "teach", far more than for other parts of the game. (I suspect they noticed this in internal testing, which is why they have some of the barks that occur during the fight). To speak to my "players are stupid" bias more generally, that's a discussion that's been going on for a long time in game design. Game design is, in many respects, about communicating concepts to players consciously or surreptitiously (Valve are pioneers and much-imitated in this area). Problems of gameplay design, or the things which gameplay-related design are trying to address, are mostly cases where the playerbase suddenly and seemingly inexplicably divides over whether or not they recognize something. When this happens, designers and developers are left to dissect what went wrong in the planned order of player experience and thought, then change things so that all, or almost all, players pick up the lesson the devs wanted them to. TechnoSyndrome posted:I dunno how it went for other people, but when I fought Firefly I found it trivial to stun lock him with glue grenades and batarangs, and I wasn't even looking for an exploit. Just playing the game normally the guy literally never had the chance to attack me. That's the intended way to play it, pretty much. It's the only thing you can do in that fight aside from dodge left or right.
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Sep 19, 2014 01:32
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Discendo Vox posted:From an isolated design perspective the Deathstroke fight is much better than any of the other bossfights in the game. It avoids the system overlap problems other fights have, portrays internal progression both mechanically and visually, and rewards and reinforces experimentation by using the available player actions to the hilt. lol
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Sep 19, 2014 01:32
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Discendo Vox posted:To speak to my "players are stupid" bias more generally, that's a discussion that's been going on for a long time in game design. Game design is, in many respects, about communicating concepts to players consciously or surreptitiously (Valve are pioneers and much-imitated in this area). Problems of gameplay design, or the things which gameplay-related design are trying to address, are mostly cases where the playerbase suddenly and seemingly inexplicably divides over whether or not they recognize something. When this happens, designers and developers are left to dissect what went wrong in the planned order of player experience and thought, then change things so that all, or almost all, players pick up the lesson the devs wanted them to. You have the problem is mistaking "players may overlook or misunderstand things" with "players are stupid and miss things directly in front of them," which is basically useless in game design and ends up leading to over-simplification in the wrong areas. Arkham as a whole is a great example of how simplification and guiding players can work wonders when done correctly but part of that is that it doesn't assume its players are overtly morons. An important element of game design is that many things players miss are not things they miss because they're dumb but things they miss because they're not versed in the 'language' the game is speaking. A key concept is to make the language of the game design as transparent as possible without making it blatant. This isn't because the people involved are dumb but simply because a lot of game design is based off other game design which doesn't always make sense. The Deathstroke fight has things which are worth analyzing but you seem to approach all analysis as "they didn't understand it because they're dumb! How can we help the dumb people?"
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Sep 19, 2014 01:39
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Deathstroke was an incredibly easy fight as soon as you realized that you pressed Batclaw to win. Much like a common thug, Deathstroke never learns to dodge the Batclaw and you can get a few free hits on him every time. Not using the Batclaw turns the fight into a beautiful and complex dance of violence, but if you can't get the counters down then the Batclaw will win the fight for you and I only ever met one or two people who didn't realize this and struggled. Most people will use everything in their arsenal against a boss they are having trouble with, if only to try it once.
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Sep 19, 2014 01:41
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ImpAtom posted:You have the problem is mistaking "players may overlook or misunderstand things" with "players are stupid and miss things directly in front of them," which is basically useless in game design and ends up leading to over-simplification in the wrong areas. Arkham as a whole is a great example of how simplification and guiding players can work wonders when done correctly but part of that is that it doesn't assume its players are overtly morons. I appreciate that. I am saying that my understanding of the Deathstroke fight isn't based on "players are stupid", but that a disproportionate amount of the discussion among AO players, outside of SA, during the period after release, consisted of people not understanding how counters worked in the Deathstroke fight. I'm not beginning from the point that players are dumb, I'm beginning from the point that players missed that part of what the fight was supposed to teach, so that part of its design didn't work. CuwiKhons posted:Deathstroke was an incredibly easy fight as soon as you realized that you pressed Batclaw to win. Much like a common thug, Deathstroke never learns to dodge the Batclaw and you can get a few free hits on him every time. Not using the Batclaw turns the fight into a beautiful and complex dance of violence, but if you can't get the counters down then the Batclaw will win the fight for you and I only ever met one or two people who didn't realize this and struggled. Most people will use everything in their arsenal against a boss they are having trouble with, if only to try it once. Yeah, the devs tried to make it so he would always dodge the batclaw after a couple hits in each phase of the fight, but it was still effective to just spam it-you could almost always follow up with a counter-free punch after it (also, whenever Deathstroke flips over you after a neutral exchange, you can hold the back key and hit him in the middle of his recovery animation- something else the devs didn't catch during testing). As a result, a lot of people learned the lesson of spamming batclaw, because the counter mechanic didn't give them clear feedback. They didn't understand how the slowdown was supposed to work. Let me be clear here: I think the Deathstroke fight was very good- probably the best fight in the game. Its micro strengths didn't all translate to macro strengths, however. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:48 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 01:42
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TechnoSyndrome posted:I dunno how it went for other people, but when I fought Firefly I found it trivial to stun lock him with glue grenades and batarangs, and I wasn't even looking for an exploit. Just playing the game normally the guy literally never had the chance to attack me. And yet if you don't push buttons and/or move the control stick, you die from his attacks and the game will not progress. That is not a cutscene, in which the game progresses without input from the player. I understand why people say that QTEs are basically glorified cutscenes, and I agree to some extent. Especially in "do it or the game does not progress yet you can't die" scenarios like in the first Force Unleashed game. However, since the Firefly fight is not a QTE boss fight, and you must input commands for the game to progress in a positive manner, it's literally the exact opposite of a cutscene. Just because it may be trivial or easy to you does not make it a cutscene. Just because you do not enjoy it does not make it a cutscene. Firefly is not a cutscene. He is, in every definition of the word, gameplay. Maybe to some people not very interesting or challenging gameplay, but gameplay none the less.
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Sep 19, 2014 02:04
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Wait, you can counter Deathstroke properly? You aren't just supposed to spam the batclaw? What else did I miss in that game!? 
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Sep 19, 2014 02:57
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paragon1 posted:Wait, you can counter Deathstroke properly? You aren't just supposed to spam the batclaw? What else did I miss in that game!? I was never aware of the Batclaw spam trick. I just kept countering and punching him. The only time I ever use the Batclaw on him is when he drags his gun out.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:01
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I had some trouble with Deathstroke at first, and it was even worse when I played on New Game + because there were no counter icons. Once I realized you just waited for slow mo it was pretty easy, but I still love the grace and timing of it. I do think it's odd that he's basically a boss version of the martial artists yet you fight him before you meet any martial artists. It seemed like it should have been the culmination, not the tutorial version.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:23
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Jurgan posted:I do think it's odd that he's basically a boss version of the martial artists yet you fight him before you meet any martial artists. It seemed like it should have been the culmination, not the tutorial version.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:30
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paragon1 posted:Wait, you can counter Deathstroke properly? You aren't just supposed to spam the batclaw? What else did I miss in that game!? The obvious immediate reaction to fighting Deathstroke when you see the counter icon (if I recall correctly, before New Game+ you couldn't turn these off?) is to counter. Deathstroke will then smack Batman about because you reacted too quickly and left yourself open to Deathstroke adjusting on the fly. The fight is all about timing, learning to recognize that Deathstroke is attacking but choosing the optimum moment to counter his attack rather than just auto-reacting to the icon and mashing the counter button. In amongst that you can pull off a few gadget moves on him as well, but once you figure out the timing you can pretty much just effortlessly block every move he makes and smack him around while he gets increasingly frustrated and finally, very satisfyingly horrified of Batman. 
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Sep 19, 2014 03:34
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paragon1 posted:Wait, you can counter Deathstroke properly? You aren't just supposed to spam the batclaw? What else did I miss in that game!? If you use the Combo Takedown on him, you can do a cinematic attack to Deathstroke that he can't block.
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Sep 19, 2014 03:34
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Yeah I just Batclaw Slammed all the way to victory, because countering when I saw the counter icon (AND WHY WOULDN'T YOU) just kept getting my rear end kicked. There were like three other people in the room with me at the time and none of them figured it out either!
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Sep 19, 2014 03:51
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