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Helldivers 2 uses nProtect GameGuard, which is a notorious kernel level anticheat. It is notorious for being problematic to uninstall and causing issues on systems it is installed in (such as straight up preventing some programs from running or causing them to crash and other terrible nonsense that should never happen). Combine that with the fact it’s ineffective and the game is PvE, and it’s nonsensical why it’s around.
It’s to keep design space open and to minimize developer work.
Let’s say we decide to keep an overperforming gun. It does all the things. It has all the ammo, all the damage, all fire rate, all the reload speed. Now, all future weapons have to be made with that as a consideration. Why would players choose this new weapon, when there’s the old overperformer? The design space is being controlled and minimized by the overperformer. Players will complain if new weapons aren’t on the level of the overperformer.
Now, let’s say we have ten weapons with one clear overperformer. Now, we can either nerf a single weapon to bring it in line with the others, or buff nine weapons to attempt to bring them up to the level of the overperformer. Assuming the balance adjustments of each weapon are the same amount of work, that’s 9x the effort. However, if we assume we do this extra work to satisfy players, now we have ten overperforming guns and players find the game too easy, so now we also have to buff enemies to match. However, the game isn’t designed to handle these increase in difficulty. Players complain if we just add more health to enemies, so we have to do other things like increase enemy count, but adding more enemies increases performance issues. It’s a cascading problem.
I consider nerfs a necessary evil. It’s absurd to ask developers to always buff weapons and give them so much work when they could be developing actual additions to the game. Sometimes, a weapon really does need a nerf.
Went and watched the original.
Seems like he just doesn’t like the direction and it’s a ‘different strokes for different folks’ kind of thing. I think his point about Ragnarok is fair, the writing is a bit all over the place and that can make characterization suffer.
Warframe
Skyrim (Okay, maybe the Modding Community of Skyrim, really)
A Narrative Game (Okay, so, there’s a number of games with narratives that have managed to make me really feel and really think. Whereas Skyrim and Warframe are easy to decide upon because I love Warframe’s gameplay and Skyrim’s modding, there’s no shortage of narrative games that have impacted me in a way that makes them all irreplaceable and as equally ‘top’ in my own mind. Undertale, Persona 4, Bastion, very recently there was Slay the Princess… I cannot possibly say any is above the other.)
Noita, the best game I can never recommend because of just how crazily deadly it is unless you know exactly what you’re doing and happen to get the right perks early on. I can’t say a roguelike where your 12-actual-hours-of-playing session ends with nothing to show for it just because you accidentally zapped the wrong thing out of frame that you couldn’t have known was there is well-designed as a game, especially when exploration/experimentation’s main reward is death. It’s a very good sandbox, though.
I also got back into Risk of Rain 2. First time playing the new DLC, and I very easily managed to finish off the new content. Honestly, a bit disappointed as my favorite part of RoR2 was the unlockable items/achievement hunting and the DLC had really none of that outside of unlocking a new character and unlocking the alternative abilities for a pre-unlocked character.
Satisfactory is something I’ve been playing on and off. I definitely prefer Factorio’s sense of danger over Satisfactory’s chill, but it’s still fun and has its own things going on. The more permanent bases and the fact the game is 3D makes for more fun, but I hope one day either a DLC or a mod will introduce base defense somehow.
I just finished off every achievement on Steam in Brotato. It was a fun, simple roguelike, took me a bit to grind through it. I might return to it someday, but for now it can rest.
There’s a difference between offering choices, and taking them away. All the things I mentioned take away choices, choices you would’ve had before. A game can have rules and limits, but when those rules and limits change you have to be very careful, especially when they’re narrowing down and removing choice.
Knockdowns/stuns/silences/freezes on the player, and immunities that enemies have, are bad game design because they all have the same issue: they remove player choice.
The issue with knockdowns/stuns/freezes is that they remove the player’s ability to do anything, at least how they work in most games. They make you take a timeout, essentially, and that’s very unfun for the player. Essentially, it’s removing your choice of what to do in the moment. You can’t react, you can’t flee, you can’t fight, you just get to sit and wait or maybe press a button repeatedly just to wait a bit less. It is terrible game design that is wholly uninteresting, and it needs to be telegraphed nearly as hard as an instant-death move to be anything other than completely bad.
Silences do much the same thing in that they limit the player’s ability to react and use their cool tools you just gave them. It’s like handing a lumberjack a chainsaw and then saying “cool, now don’t use it”. It’s not as bad as a stun, but it’s pretty close.
Immunities for enemies are similar in that they limit player choice. You wanted to use cool X thing? Too bad, you literally can’t win with that method. Resistances are fine (within reason, doing 1 damage is no different from 0 damage in a lot of games) because they allow a sufficiently-skilled player to still use a method they like (ideally), but immunities do nothing but kill build variety.
You’re not wrong, but anyone with the budget to buy both will (and even some without the budget, unfortunately) when there’s enough exclusives. You state that ‘most of the library overlaps’, but that’s my point. When enough of the library doesn’t, when enough games are exclusive, suddenly you have two gaming consoles that don’t compete.
For instance, take the Nintendo Switch. While attempts have been made to port over games to the console, its hardware is a limiting factor and the Switch has many exclusives. There’s no shortage of people who own a Switch and a PS5.
Does it drive competition? I would say it does the opposite. It encourages buying multiple consoles so you can play the games you like (if they happen to be split between consoles). If you buy both consoles, that’s no longer competition.
I don’t disagree that buying the entire block is bad, but not having access to the block and making your own that doesn’t necessarily compete isn’t great either. One’s a monopoly, but the other is just two monopolies. Microsoft has had pretty crappy exclusives recently, but I’m sure if they started pumping out games as good as Sony you would find people would start having two consoles rather than switch over, at least those that could afford it.
Exclusives are the opposite of competition, though. It’s why streaming platforms are so crappy, because if you want to watch what you like it’s probably split between 2+ platforms and you have to pay for multiple. If you want to play the games you like, ultimately that’s probably asking you either own multiple consoles or just be very patient and have a PC.
Also, not sure about Nintendo, the literal god of exclusives.
Warframe: Really loving the Duviri update. I’m an old player but there’s suddenly a reason to build out a lot of weapons that I’ve mostly ignored beyond Mastery farming. Fortunately, I kept everything so the only issue is having enough forma.
Minecraft: Randomly wanted to play it again (heavily modded, All the Mods 8, I have to scratch that automation itch). Haven’t played in ages, so pillagers were a vanilla surprise and so was the fact you can now dig past y=0 (along with the new interesting caves and berries). In the end, though, I’m still a dirty melon farmer that subsists solely off my melons.
Kenshi: I also started Kenshi a bit ago. It’s an interesting game, but it’s certainly a slow burn which I don’t necessarily like. I’m up to 10 characters now, but only two of them can handle combat with any degree of competency and everyone else keeps falling over from the slightest breeze. I’m currently just living out of Squin until enough passing by herbivores get stomped that my team can handle real combat. Fortunately, mining is extremely lucrative so I don’t have to worry about food.
The biggest missed opportunity this century.