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Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
What gets me is that they had a neat setting with cool characters that they could do stories with, then eventually...let those stories peter out, and threw their hands up and stopped doing them.

It sort of feels like they never really knew what to do with Overwatch, beyond it being salvaged from Project Titan.

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FishMcCool
Apr 9, 2021

lolcats are still funny
Fallen Rib
I've never been a fan of those hero-based designs personally. A set character for story-oriented games, sure, but for a FPS? I'd rather they gave you the skill bar in the form of a character class and then provide you with a good cosmetic character creation tool. That would have saved them a ton of self-made issues and allowed everyone to go to town with body shapes, skin colour, mech frames, etc. I might be the minority though, quirky heroes games seem pretty popular. Or I'm just showing my age. :corsair:

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

FishMcCool posted:

I've never been a fan of those hero-based designs personally. A set character for story-oriented games, sure, but for a FPS? I'd rather they gave you the skill bar in the form of a character class and then provide you with a good cosmetic character creation tool. That would have saved them a ton of self-made issues and allowed everyone to go to town with body shapes, skin colour, mech frames, etc. I might be the minority though, quirky heroes games seem pretty popular. Or I'm just showing my age. :corsair:

See the thing is, being able to quickly sight what a character is capable of by their general shape and such is important, as shown by TF2

FishMcCool
Apr 9, 2021

lolcats are still funny
Fallen Rib

kirbysuperstar posted:

See the thing is, being able to quickly sight what a character is capable of by their general shape and such is important, as shown by TF2

Yeah, thought of that one after posting. I guess icons don't quite cut it.

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
A lot really seems to come down to absolutely inept management. Wouldn't be surprised if the folks in the trenches actually have a decent understanding of what players want and what makes a game good, but by the time it gets through to the people who actually make decisions and back it's unrecognisable.

stev
Jan 22, 2013

Please be excited.



kirbysuperstar posted:

See the thing is, being able to quickly sight what a character is capable of by their general shape and such is important, as shown by TF2

Which is why cosmetic skins and weapon loadouts have a tenancy to ruin and bloat those sorts of games.

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.

stev posted:

Which is why cosmetic skins and weapon loadouts have a tenancy to ruin and bloat those sorts of games.

Yeah that was a definite problem for later TF2. Hats (and OW skins) aren't too bad but the differing weapons was really bad.

Mix.
Jan 24, 2021

Huh? What?


yeah, at least for mobas it's not too hard to keep track of what the enemy team is (i know smite at least keeps the god portraits the same regardless of what skins are equipped, as an example), but for actual shooters you don't exactly have the luxury of pulling up a menu mid-combat :v:

kirbysuperstar
Nov 11, 2012

Let the fools who stand before us be destroyed by the power you and I possess.
Oddly enough I don't have the same problem with Paladins despite it having moba-lite build options

:iiam:

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

FishMcCool posted:

I've never been a fan of those hero-based designs personally. A set character for story-oriented games, sure, but for a FPS? I'd rather they gave you the skill bar in the form of a character class and then provide you with a good cosmetic character creation tool. That would have saved them a ton of self-made issues and allowed everyone to go to town with body shapes, skin colour, mech frames, etc. I might be the minority though, quirky heroes games seem pretty popular. Or I'm just showing my age. :corsair:

FishMcCool posted:

Yeah, thought of that one after posting. I guess icons don't quite cut it.
If you dropped the idea of giving people control over the overall body shape of a given class, which is an issue for both hitboxes and visual clarity, you could still achieve a lot of this with some creative design. Admittedly it's a bit harder for certain shapes, but given that their character designs range far into the cartoonish, there is a lot more leeway to try weird poo poo. Stuff like skin color/race/culture would of course be very easy, since it's basically just a question of some minor details, and overall silhouette could be made very similar by bulking up with clothes and gear. Even a base "skinny woman with big tits" shape could probably be mimicked like that, if you lean into the cartoonish aspect.

LIVE AMMO COSPLAY
Feb 3, 2006

stev posted:

Which is why cosmetic skins and weapon loadouts have a tenancy to ruin and bloat those sorts of games.

That's less of an issue when the developer making the game is too slow to pump out very many skins lol

tracecomplete
Feb 26, 2017

A Buttery Pastry posted:

If you dropped the idea of giving people control over the overall body shape of a given class, which is an issue for both hitboxes and visual clarity, you could still achieve a lot of this with some creative design.
Reminds me of Brink.

I didn't hate Brink, but I was the only one.

Fruits of the sea
Dec 1, 2010

tracecomplete posted:

Reminds me of Brink.

I didn't hate Brink, but I was the only one.

Aww man, I really liked Brink :(

The game not running on AMD gpus for a month after release, plus a couple of the maps having incredibly dumb bottlenecks killed whatever potential there may have been though.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
PC gaming certainly has a wide variety of upsides, but being kind of broke in college and looking forward to a new game for months and then discovering WHOOPS this game was built entirely on NVIDIA machines and your AMD card can’t even play this stupid game sucks on a level so proudly deep that I still feel the pain thinking about it a decade later…


RAGE :negative:

Baller Time
Apr 22, 2014

by Azathoth
I thought this was a different thread

Baller Time fucked around with this message at 16:17 on May 16, 2022

Toad King
Apr 23, 2008

Yeah, I'm the best
https://twitter.com/Vahn16/status/1526238137428721665

quote:

[Sony Interactive Entertainment] will not approve ANY statements from any studio on the topic of reproductive rights.

nobody tell them

Rarity
Oct 21, 2010

~*4 LIFE*~
Sony: we will definitely support your cause unless you ask us to do so publicly in which case we definitely didn't

kliras
Mar 27, 2021
i assume jim ryan was siloed somewhere in the arctic back when sony did a pretty upstanding job of responding to the george floyd protests

Assepoester
Jul 18, 2004
Probation
Can't post for 11 years!
Melman v2

Ghost Leviathan posted:

A lot really seems to come down to absolutely inept management. Wouldn't be surprised if the folks in the trenches actually have a decent understanding of what players want and what makes a game good, but by the time it gets through to the people who actually make decisions and back it's unrecognisable.
Sounds like it goes all the way to the sex-predator-protecting top

Why would the literal head of the entire company be dictating what to do to the overwatch team?

https://twitter.com/RiotLavaliere/status/1483872726272004102

sure okay
Apr 7, 2006





yospos found the character that maxes all the OW diversity stats

Itzena
Aug 2, 2006

Nothing will improve the way things currently are.
Slime TrainerS

Unlucky7 posted:

What gets me is that they had a neat setting with cool characters that they could do stories with, then eventually...let those stories peter out, and threw their hands up and stopped doing them.

It sort of feels like they never really knew what to do with Overwatch, beyond it being salvaged from Project Titan.

I mean, they hurriedly dumped their original story plans shortly after launch (including cancelling a basically-complete comic series) because everything the fans were coming up with was better than what they had themselves, and they somehow realised that.

Tankbuster
Oct 1, 2021
Good to know that the TF2 comics aren't the only colourful FPS comics that didn't get a satisfying end. Also most of OW's fanfic seems to be shipping written by YA enthusiasts.

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




Yeah, I remember that they had announced something along the lines of a “lore bible” book for OW that was supposed to come out a little bit after launch, but then they quietly and inexplicably canceled it, and never did get around to doing anything like it again (at least not back when I was still into it).

Ragnar34
Oct 10, 2007

Lipstick Apathy

sure okay posted:

yospos found the character that maxes all the OW diversity stats


I have the same affection for our boy that I have for goatse, dickbutt and loss. He's just nice have around.

busalover
Sep 12, 2020

Valve Steam Deck posted:

Sounds like it goes all the way to the sex-predator-protecting top

Why would the literal head of the entire company be dictating what to do to the overwatch team?

https://twitter.com/RiotLavaliere/status/1483872726272004102

Outlast and won how? He's walking away with a fat bonus, that Twitter user probably not.

Fruits of the sea
Dec 1, 2010

Blizz did once upon a time have a rep for avoiding sunk cost fallacy and cancelling/rebooting projects if they weren't up to their standards of quality.

Although maybe that's gone since the last several WoW expansions are basically just throwing poo poo at the wall to see what sticks.

Ironslave
Aug 8, 2006

Corpse runner
These days I'm inclined to think that reputation was just PR spin on their atrocious and ineffective work cycles and abusive culture.

kliras
Mar 27, 2021
diablo 3 seems like a good example that they just did not have a clue at all on anything

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
Yeah I’ve been a lifelong Blizzard game-enjoyer and they have basically been beefing every single release besides the first few WoW expansions pretty much the whole time. Like, Brood Wars was the last time I think everyone felt 100% confident in their products.

kliras posted:

diablo 3 seems like a good example that they just did not have a clue at all on anything

In their defense I don’t think anyone at the time really understood what having the cash Auction house would do to the game, and I think maybe it wouldn’t have taken them 5-10 years to get the game where it is now if they’d had that foresight, but Diablo 3 as it stands today is the game that every other loot based game in the world is still cribbing notes from, so the Loot 2.0 teams really deserves some credit for revolutionizing the genre

Bust Rodd fucked around with this message at 13:02 on May 18, 2022

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.
I don't think you can blame the problems of Diablo 3 1.0 entirely on the AH. If anything the problem was balancing the entire game around the supposedly untested AH, which is something they absolutely had the choice not to. If you know something is untested it's generally not a great idea to bet everything on it turning out perfect the first time?

A Buttery Pastry
Sep 4, 2011

Delicious and Informative!
:3:

Ironslave posted:

These days I'm inclined to think that reputation was just PR spin on their atrocious and ineffective work cycles and abusive culture.
Blizzard's best games were made by Blizzard North, a completely different company that it absorbed.

kliras
Mar 27, 2021

Clarste posted:

I don't think you can blame the problems of Diablo 3 1.0 entirely on the AH. If anything the problem was balancing the entire game around the supposedly untested AH, which is something they absolutely had the choice not to. If you know something is untested it's generally not a great idea to bet everything on it turning out perfect the first time?
yeah the drop rates are probably the biggest problem the game had. they just designed a game that flat out was not fun: bad story, weird choice in voice actors, and then the loot mechanic felt like a step back instead of forward. and the whole "broken equipment" tier was just so dumb. and a lot of stuff that should didn't have auto pickup iirc

makes sense that it was with the ah in mind, but it was just a flat out bad loot system on launch. good luck getting a set item

the completely unbalanced torment difficulties and unique mob abilities were a lot of fun, though, even thought they was obviously broken in some way

Kanos
Sep 6, 2006

was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Blizzard's best games were made by Blizzard North, a completely different company that it absorbed.

This probably pushes revisionism a bit far. Blizzard North was responsible for Diablo and Diablo II, which were obviously both masterpiece games, but they had nothing to do with the -craft games which were also genre-defining classics.

Bust Rodd
Oct 21, 2008

by VideoGames
I think time has shown us that being able to buy items from other players in a loot game is bad and leads to exclusively bad things. Literally the only benefit is to the No-lifers and botters who abuse the system, it literally never makes the game better or adds to its longevity. That was an important lesson for the genre, IMO

kliras
Mar 27, 2021
all publishers want in-game rmt they can get a cut of, until they're forced to learn how fraud and virtual economics work

it's pretty amazing the rmah made it that far without anyone pulling the brakes on it, especially with it possibly happening at the expense of the game design

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

kliras posted:

yeah the drop rates are probably the biggest problem the game had. they just designed a game that flat out was not fun: bad story, weird choice in voice actors, and then the loot mechanic felt like a step back instead of forward. and the whole "broken equipment" tier was just so dumb. and a lot of stuff that should didn't have auto pickup iirc

makes sense that it was with the ah in mind, but it was just a flat out bad loot system on launch. good luck getting a set item

the completely unbalanced torment difficulties and unique mob abilities were a lot of fun, though, even thought they was obviously broken in some way

hey being able to run around with the security officer from enterprise i had a crush on in middle school was great

kliras
Mar 27, 2021

Arivia posted:

hey being able to run around with the security officer from enterprise i had a crush on in middle school was great
this is hilariously exactly what informed blizzard's hiring of voice actors. booting glynnis talken as friggin kerrigan in starcraft 2 because you're a horny bsg dork sure is a choice

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

kliras posted:

this is hilariously exactly what informed blizzard's hiring of voice actors. booting glynnis talken as friggin kerrigan in starcraft 2 because you're a horny bsg dork sure is a choice

the big difference was that the templar was a new character as far as i'm aware

Fruits of the sea
Dec 1, 2010

Bust Rodd posted:

I think time has shown us that being able to buy items from other players in a loot game is bad and leads to exclusively bad things. Literally the only benefit is to the No-lifers and botters who abuse the system, it literally never makes the game better or adds to its longevity. That was an important lesson for the genre, IMO

I'm looking forward to people rediscovering this with all the "metaverse" games. No you can't earn money by playing, because the economy is dominated by some combination of bots, price-fixing cartels and a bunch of low salaried office workers in the Philippines/India/North Korea/etc.

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FishMcCool
Apr 9, 2021

lolcats are still funny
Fallen Rib

Bust Rodd posted:

I think time has shown us that being able to buy items from other players in a loot game is bad and leads to exclusively bad things. Literally the only benefit is to the No-lifers and botters who abuse the system, it literally never makes the game better or adds to its longevity. That was an important lesson for the genre, IMO

Do you mean RMT? Because otherwise I would argue that the player market is a tremendous success and a key part of Warframe's success for example. There's enough premium currency being bought to flow around that it allows anyone to 1) earn some from trade and gain access to store items and 2) circumvent the most aggravating sequences of bad RNG luck by buying off the item from a player instead.

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