General Video Game Thread

Bobotron

Bloodstained is the Castlevania game we all didn't know we needed. It's really good, controls are snappy, lots of options, good voice acting, pretty art, and MICHIRU YAMANE COMPOSED THE MUSIC.

Jaded

@Bobotron said in General Video Game Thread:

Bloodstained is the Castlevania game we all didn't know we needed. It's really good, controls are snappy, lots of options, good voice acting, pretty art, and MICHIRU YAMANE COMPOSED THE MUSIC.

See I told you guys! Don't take my word for it. Bobotron is on the train too. Choo choo! Join us!

Sparks

@Ganymede - whines I don't have time to run a game! Stop making me want to create an HZD game! I swore an oath to myself I would never headwiz again, and I don't want to break it. Even if it's so tempting...

Thenomain

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@Ganymede - whines I don't have time to run a game! Stop making me want to create an HZD game! I swore an oath to myself I would never headwiz again, and I don't want to break it. Even if it's so tempting...

I would actually code Ares to help.

But I should never staff again.

Jennkryst

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@Ganymede - whines I don't have time to run a game! Stop making me want to create an HZD game! I swore an oath to myself I would never headwiz again, and I don't want to break it. Even if it's so tempting...

I would actually code Ares to help.

But I should never staff again.

I could do it, but have requirements. And would rule it with an iron fist, which people might not enjoy.

But we're getting off topic of the thread.

Atomic

I could do it, but have requirements. And would rule it with an iron fist, which people might not enjoy.

JuntaMU. Players are all bucking for the position of head ruler, and gunning for it at the same time. Or would that be TropicoMU?

More fully on topic, has anyone found a technique that renders things like FO4 and Borderlands playable for people with eye tracking issues other than shrinking the display window size?

Auspice

In general, Wizards Unite is a better game than I expected (Pokémon Go with a HP skin did not appeal to me at all originally), but this energy thing is a huge problem.

There's no passive energy regen. You can only get more by buying it or visiting Inns. But not all locations are Inns. Some are fortresses or greenhouses. And those don't give energy.

My work has a bunch of locations around it....not one is an inn.
My apartment has nothing nearby.

And I live in an urban area. I feel bad for people who live in more remote areas. I can't/don't play while driving and I work second shift (meaning my ability to just go somewhere and hang out is v limited).

There's just no point to me playing. As intriguing as the game is.

Sparks

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

In general, Wizards Unite is a better game than I expected (Pokémon Go with a HP skin did not appeal to me at all originally), but this energy thing is a huge problem.

There's no passive energy regen. You can only get more by buying it or visiting Inns. But not all locations are Inns. Some are fortresses or greenhouses. And those don't give energy.

My work has a bunch of locations around it....not one is an inn.
My apartment has nothing nearby.

And I live in an urban area. I feel bad for people who live in more remote areas. I can't/don't play while driving and I work second shift (meaning my ability to just go somewhere and hang out is v limited).

There's just no point to me playing. As intriguing as the game is.

So, not an official thing or anything, but a friend at Niantic who works on the project mentioned they are examining whether they need to rebalance to add at least some passive energy regen.

From what I gather, the fact that the algorithm for which POIs are handled as greenhouses combined with the one to pick which are fortresses (or gyms in PoGo) could result in areas with only those and no inns to speak of apparently did not come up until after release; the places where their external playtesters tended to be did have a lot of inns. So I gather they figured people would only need to buy energy if they were in a rush to do something; buying energy is evidently meant to be an expediting mechanic, not one that's required to play. Hence a bit of, "hm, do we need to change the algorithm so some of the greenhouses are still inns and thus encourage folks to still get out and walk around, but maybe lose greenhouses in areas that don't have a lot, or do we need to just add passive energy regen?"

(Side note: greenhouses actually will give energy. Not every time, but when they do, it's usually a decent chunk in my experience. Like 6-10 energy. And if your ingredients vault is full, it seems to start giving you energy a lot more often.)

ETA: And yes, I'd hope they expected to encounter some sort of balance issue like this, given they saw something similar at PoGo's launch, where the paltry number of Pokéballs you'd get from Pokéstops meant that anyone who wasn't in an area all but carpeted with Pokéstops would run out of Pokéballs to actually catch anything with, so they upped the number of balls Pokéstops would give you to address that. Initial design rarely survives first contact with end users unscathed, and that goes double for the balance of multiplayer game mechanics.

Auspice

See, I was assuming it was just to try to force/push people to spend money since Nintendo/Pokémon is fairly against money mechanics and makes them very secondary (it's been an actively stated goal for the Nintendo mobile games that they're trying to encourage kids not to spend money and when I worked with Pokémon on the online tcg, they were very adamant that it'd never cost money or have money options).

But HP isn't governed by the same rules, so...

This is the issue with the companies being based in these really major metro areas. I mean, Austin is a big metro area but the instances of locations dies off a lot outside of downtown. In PGo, I'm actively annoyed by how many raid locations there are now as compared to standard gyms.

Sparks

@Auspice — Yeah, algorithmic generation of game resources is great, but it is not inherently balanced well for all locations. On the other hand, anything other than algorithmic generation of game resources (out of their POI database, I mean) is not even close to feasible for a game with a literally global reach, so...

ETA: I should screenshot downtown Seattle tomorrow to show you. The algorithm is very favorable here; it's just a sea of different types of inns, with usually a greenhouse every other block or so, and pretty much anywhere you stand there's almost always at least one fortress only a block away. Anyone who's in downtown Seattle will not need to buy energy because you could just walk around for like ten minutes and refill. To be fair, though, back in the Ingress days people basically carpeted downtown Seattle with POI entries, and the benefits of that have carried on into PoGo and Wizards Unite.

Auspice

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@Auspice — Yeah, algorithmic generation of game resources is great, but it is not inherently balanced well for all locations. On the other hand, anything other than algorithmic generation of game resources (out of their POI database, I mean) is not even close to feasible for a game with a literally global reach, so...

In this case I think it just wasn't weighted very well and/or needs checks for 'how many inns are in a general radius?'

Because I only have a couple in my daily commute, but I have way more fortresses and inns.

I also wonder if it'd be possible to identify locations people might reasonably hang out at and weight those more with inns.

I was at a lady geeks event at the library near my house on Sunday and it had just a fortress: everyone present who is playing was vexed by that and few of them have found restaurants,cafes, etc. with Inns.

Heck the nearest one to my apartment is at an intersection almost a mile away. I'm uh, not gonna just hang out at a busy intersection. And I wouldn't want any kids to do so either!

Sparks

@Auspice — One thing is that sponsored locations—i.e. companies/chains that have paid to have a presence in the game—will always be inns, and those inns will seemingly consistently drop extra energy compared to most. Out here that's AT&T stores and (I think) Starbucks.

Auspice

@Sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

ETA: I should screenshot downtown Seattle tomorrow to show you. The algorithm is very favorable here; it's just a sea of different types of inns, with usually a greenhouse every other block or so, and pretty much anywhere you stand there's almost always at least one fortress only a block away. Anyone who's in downtown Seattle will not need to buy energy because you could just walk around for like ten minutes and refill. To be fair, though, back in the Ingress days people basically carpeted downtown Seattle with POI entries, and the benefits of that have carried on into PoGo and Wizards Unite.

I might be in the pool of people to blame for some areas being inundated with locations as I was an Ingress player (tho I began in SC)

But I used to go to the park in Bellevue, near the Pokémon offices. I am very familiar with how dense it is.

And maybe that's part of my gripe! I know how it could be. Mox in Bellevue was great. A gym and two pokestops.

PuppyBreath

@Auspice I'm currently in the middle of no where waiting on my car to be fit to drive. There's nothing around me! I drove with my mom through the nearest town the other day and it was still pretty barren. You're crushing my hopes of having better pickings in Austin, haha.

Auspice

@PuppyBreath said in General Video Game Thread:

@Auspice I'm currently in the middle of no where waiting on my car to be fit to drive. There's nothing around me! I drove with my mom through the nearest town the other day and it was still pretty barren. You're crushing my hopes of having better pickings in Austin, haha.

There's a lot of locations here, but I he algorithm sadly seems to have made most of them fortresses or greenhouses. I'm hoping in an update that gets fixed.

Auspice

'25 items from your Steam wishlist are...'

Wallet

Deleted

@Auspice Every time there is a sale I go down my wish list, and if I don't feel like buying the game at the sale price I remove it from my wish list. It's a good system.

Auspice

@Admiral said in General Video Game Thread:

@Auspice Every time there is a sale I go down my wish list, and if I don't feel like buying the game at the sale price I remove it from my wish list. It's a good system.

Not a bad idea at all.
I usually review mine once or twice a year.

The main 'glut' on my list is all the Stellaris DLC. Someday it'll go on sale while I'm actively playing the game (I mean it goes on sale p often but I'm usually playing other things).

Jaded

@Auspice
Yeah the update for Stellaris that came with the Megacorp DLC pretty much made it a whole new game to play and learn. So if you've not played in some time you'll have to get used to new systems.

Lotherio

Why must everyone disagree on FF in all the threads?

***=Duck rolling you all***

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