but it makes no digetic sense. People in real life don’t do a squat mid-air if their only intention is to step up to a higher object.

I kinda gotta disagree with this entire premise, it is very common to lift your legs up when trying to jump on something higher than your starting position.

I don’t think a mantling system is a good drop-in replacement for crouch jumping. As you say, it simplifies the movement, meaning the player will no longer have the variety of “jump, without being able to land on higher surfaces” and “jump and be able to land on higher surfaces.” I think having that extra functionality is a benefit to purposeful player movement.

It also means that they can connect other important game functionality to the Crouch button if that keybind just doesn’t do much for the intended gameplay.

What other functionality could be tied to the crouch button that is mutually exclusive with crouch jumping? Like I get some games with more movement abilities would have double jumps and air dashes, but those movements are already pretty well accounted for with the jump button and sprint button.

What’s wrong with crouch jumping?

Quake movement raises the ceiling for sure, I saw a graph once showing the optimal angles for bunnyhopping and it seems crazy precise.

Accessibility is always a concern, which is why I’m glad Black Mesa introduced an auto-crouchjump option for those that want or need it, but generally I think it is a good thing when the range of things a player can do is expanded.

Yeah I think I’ve heard of mechanics where you can crouch to “charge” a jump, but not like, jumping while in the crouch interpolated state.

What games use crouch jumping like that? I thought that had to be wrong, but apparently in CS:GO you can just barely clear higher objects if you crouch and then immediately jump.

It might sound awkward, but IMO it is very intuitive, if you imagine crouching as bending the legs instead of going down.

The worth of a thing is determined by what people will pay for it.

No, that’s how price is determined, not worth.

I don’t think you’ll earnestly want to argue that 1 hour of movie entertainment is in general worth multiple hours of gaming entertainment

Depends on the movie and depends on the game. Some games with lots of content are good (if they’re well made), others are filled with trash content that is a waste of time to go through. Same with movies, there are some fantastic 75 minute cinematic experiences, and there are some that drag on for 3+ hours and do not successfully utilize their resources into a good movie. And vice versa.

but if you compare those of similar quality, the fact stands that the game will give you more for your money

If it’s a good game, sure, but we’re talking averages here and the average game is not good, so needing to play even more tedious uninspired levels doesn’t add any value, it in fact just makes it a bigger waste of time.

I gather that gaming doesn’t seem to really entertain you for the most part.

I actually love gaming, and I wish more consumers would have higher standards to not enable the terrible practices of the industry.

The average movie isnt worth ticket price either IMO, and length certainly doesn’t equal quality.

And I’d certainly say “most games” are absolutely not worth it, as the majority of games are simply lacking in terms of inspiration, innovation, compelling gameplay or story, or anything else to set it apart and give me a reason to play.

Choosing presentation over game quality is what caused the games industry to be bloated beyond belief.

I’m not talking about about adding hours, I’m talking about adding quality.

But at below AAA levels, I’m often served extremely well for $35.

yes, good games exist at that price point, but the average game is not good, and is not worth that.

You mention things like better resolutions, better frame rates, better voice acting, more modern, more better, etc, but none of those things are what makes games good or worth more money. AAA games with cutting edge graphics and star-studded voice acting are not automatically good games, and in fact it frequently has an inverse effect where focusing so much time and money on stuff other than the game leaves a shitty game that will be forgotten about in months; that would absolutely not be worth $30, despite having all your superfluous qualities

That used to be the norm, and we were happy with that

Then you should be supportive of deflation in the video game industry, instead of making excuses for why we should pay more for less

Video games are afraid to be only a couple hours because they are afraid of charging less than $10

If your game is short, doesn’t offer replayability, and doesn’t have any novel gameplay to truly set it apart, then youtube Lets Plays offer real competition of getting basically the whole package.

but if you multiplied a movie’s runtime by 2-3x for some extra production value in your game, you end up at that $35 price point easily for a game that’s 5-10 hours long

That’s making a couple assumptions though, that price point is for large studio releases and non-matinee prices. If I go see a movie on a Tuesday afternoon, it’s only $7, a perfect price for an average small game.

Even for a direct comparison to Atom RPG, I’d rather pay 2-3x as much for a Wasteland game to get what I’m looking for

Atom RPG isn’t exactly a Wasteland game, it leans pretty heavy on classic Fallout, which while inspired by Wasteland, have diverged noticeably in the end product. So if you wanted to get what you’re looking for in this case, Fallout 1 and 2 are $10 each, or you can get a bundle of 1/2 and Brotherhood of Steel for $20 (more like brotherhood of steal amirite).

That’s true, I’m using hours per dollar as a shorthand for value, but on the flip side if video games are going to be a couple hours of one-time fun, they gotta expect to have a price point similar to movie theaters which have a similar experience, which is like $10-$15

I’d gladly pay $30 if they are worth it, most games are simply not worth it. Recently I’ve put over 75 hours into Atom RPG the last two weeks, and it’s $15 full price, and the developers have released a spinoff and announced a new project, so they seem to be doing fine.

Hopefully you can sit down with a calculator and figure out that things can be better.

8 full time 100k salaried employees is quite a bit more than “small team.” Doom was 6 people. That many people are simply not required to make the games that are being produced; they can choose to size down any time they want. If they want to go “all in” on making a “AAAA” game, then they need to deal with that reality and make a game that is actually worth $60.

Their games ranged from $30-$50 and had every sale, bundle, giveaway, and promotional opportunity you could think of.

Perhaps that’s part of the problem? Maybe they should have priced their works more fairly from the start and not rely on bundles and givaways which surely aren’t going to make them more money.

My point is, the “average” game is absolutely not worth $30. Most games should flop because they’re overproduced trash, and we should return to smaller, more artistic-focused development with a smaller scale, more consumer friendly pricing, and where the (few) devs get more slices of their pie.

“Moderately budgeted” compared to what? Modern AAA game budgets have absolutely exploded and are not sustainable, turning game dev cycles into 5+ year marathons and giving it Hollywood Syndrome where every game needs to be a blockbuster to be considered a success and no risks are able to be taken because of the massive investment each project requires. Do you think that’s sustainable? Or do you think that perhaps things have gone out of control when a $90 price point is being floated, even in conjunction with money printing anti-consumer features like lootboxes?

“Compared to the rest of the industry” is damning with faint praise.

I’d say most games are maybe worth $20, more only for the ones filled with content that you can replay many times.

I have Lemuroid and it emulates a lot of systems, plays Gran Turismo pretty well with a controller

I specifically mean their in-house single player games, so only GTA V and RDR2 for the last decade.

Rockstar’s games are the rare few I’d say are worth a full $60

they want it to be open source so that they can’t do a unity

That has nothing to do with open source, that has to to with licensing, which I’m pretty sure isn’t an issue anyway since I think Unreal versions are tied to specific license versions, i.e. if you download the engine under one term, thats the only one you have to use

But the code is easily visible and you can compile it yourself. If you say “I only run software I 100% knows what it does because I can read it’s source code” then Unreal Engine fits, it’s open source.

Under that strict definition, software under the GNU GPL would not be “open source” because the license stays with the code, and is not truly “for any purpose,” which is the same deal with the Epic license: you may use, study, change, and distribute the Unreal source code, but it stays under Epic’s license.

If you are talking about the FREEDOM to fork and publish and share and whatever, then you mean Free software.

Being able to fork and publish your own versions is integral to the open source philosophy

No, that is an enumerated freedom of the free software movement, not open source

It is source available

Yes, open source.

Not Open Source

You mean free/libre? Open source literally just means you can see the source.

Unreal is completely open source, you can compile it yourself.

If the only way for me to get single player games is to buy a console, so be it.

It’s not though, that is a false dichotomy. Just because the major publishers are pushing trash because it’s profitable does not mean that single player games are impossible for cross platform.

Look at FromSoft, Bloodborne is made with the same engine as Dark Souls 3 which is available cross platform, same as Dark Souls 1 and 2, yet Bloodborne is exclusive because Sony is intentionally crafting a captive audience.

Both, your gripes with major publishers and console exclusivity, come from corporate putting sales above all else, yet you excuse one but not the other.

Exclusivity has nothing to do with viability

If Sony doesn’t invest in their own studios, the consumer just doesn’t get the game those studios make. Without PlayStation, gaming would look significant worse over the last 30 years

Not true, Sony could have easily created or funded the studios anyway and make games just like they produce films right now under Columbia Pictures; they do not need to run a hardware business to make and distribute software, that’s what I’m saying. Nowadays it’s an artificial limitation to try and boost hardware sales.

Most of my favorite games are Sony exclusives.

And wouldn’t you like it if more people could play them and share those great experiences? Do you really want meaningless limitations on who can participate with art?

But they have the same result, so ultimately it has the same rating of consumer friendliness, which is “non”

Starting first party studios to facilitate unique games being made on your platform is not anti-consumer

I mean, it kinda is. The end result is the same: a product that can only be used in a closed ecosystem.

Story is meh but lots of people will say how the open ended nature of Crysis was fun and a pity that it was removed for a more linear CoD style in Crysis 2