General Game Chat

[ShiraNoMai]

Why isn't Sony better utilizing their studios to, I don't know, make more varied content??? Like, I get that one team that you had work on your TLOU remake wasn't that good and you had to shaft it to NaughtyDog to finish the job, but don't you think that trying "again" is a bad idea? ESPECIALLY for a game that's barely hitting 6 years old (come this next Feb).

[Moonface]

I expect it's because like TLoU, Horizon is getting adapted into a TV/movie (forget which one it actually is) and so they're just trying to maximize the amount of money they can milk by pushing the first entry again right around the time the show gets pushed too. It's still bullshit but that's the common thread between the two right now which I can see as the only reason Sony would do this.

[Moonface]

Release Date Announced for Persona 3 and 4 Ports

Just saw this and know some people here were interested in the Persona port announcements back when they first happened, and now the dates for two of them have been revealed.

[Moonface]

So for anyone who uses Twitter, you may be aware of a prominent member within the gaming community on there called Nibel. Well, this morning they announced they will be retiring from games coverage and thus will be leaving Twitter and Patreon:



Their Patreon goes into more detail, and it seems part of the reasoning comes down to the financial viability of dedicating time to doing this. Patreon was intended to help find a way to make money off the time spent keeping on top of games coverage as it happened, but it apparently fell off hard after the first month.

It's gonna be weird not seeing Nibel covering any stories as they break going forward. Wario64 is the only other user I know of that comes close, but one instead of two still leaves a void. I'm sure there's gonna be people who try to jump in to fill it but I doubt anyone who tries will actually be a viable replacement.

[Mr EliteL]

I almost never use Twitter, only to look at a couple of things as a guest but nothing more so never heard of Nibel before, but sounds a shame they couldn't continue what they were doing on there.

[Moonface]

Yeah, it's a shame they chose to stop for whatever reason, but if it was due to money I just don't see how a decent number of people can ever be persuaded to donate monthly to someone who is just aggregating news. Sure they're doing a service that's useful but give it a week at best and most people will have just found another source to get news from, even if it isn't as efficiently done as Nibel did it. I am surprised though that no outlet seemed to ever reach out to hire him; given he could get shit done quicker on live events than any gaming outlet could that has multiple staff to hand tasks to, you'd think he would have been a valuable asset to getting traffic over to a news outlet by getting news put out faster and at higher quality than the competition could.

I do love seeing people who are all "If I knew he had a Patreon I'd have supported him" though, because I genuinely think most of the people saying that wouldn't actually do it. A lot of people are happy to always make claims of what they would've done when it's too late but will kick the can down the road if the opportunity to do that stuff is given to them before that point because it's easier to talk a big game when you can no longer be held to it.

[Dragon Lord]

I have no idea who the guy is, so his decision to stop doing what he was doing has absolutely no effect on me. Though I have seen posts from people saying they'll try to "fill the void" left by him. Though most of them say they won't be able to do as good of a job as he did, but that they'll try nonetheless.

Like I said though, no idea who the guy was, so this news is an, "Oh no! ...Anyway." kind of moment for me.

[Moonface]

I find it interesting that no one else here really knows of him, since I always had the impression he was a big enough name in the gaming scene on Twitter that it would be impossible to not have heard of him. Funny how someone might not be as big as you might perceive at first.


Anyway, with only two months left of the year, has anyone got a Game of the Year in mind yet? I haven't bothered to give much consideration to mine yet because of God of War Ragnarok coming out in a week which I expect to be a strong contender for my GotY.

[Dragon Lord]

So if anyone wasn't aware, Google finally made the beta for the Google Play Games program available in the United States (previously it was only running in some Asian countries + Australia). So of course I downloaded it, since I've been waiting for this since Google first announced they'd be making the Play Store available on PCs at TGA 2021. The only game they have on their right now that I play is Arknights, and so far it is amazing. The game runs smooth as hell. I'm very excited for the future of this (hopefully it won't take too long for them to add Azur Lane to it).

Emulators are fine and all if your PC can handle the huge resource demand of them, but the fact that we're now going to get to run mobile games on PC natively, using the full power of your computer, with the games being optimized for running on PC, is great. Like I said, Arknights so far is running smooth as butter on this, where as sometimes there's stutters and slight freezes on emulators despite my PC being a beast. Didn't notice any of that playing Arknights through the GPPB.

Like I said, hopefully it doesn't take too long for them to get around to adding Azur Lane to it (they are slowly adding more and more games every day -- they are going through a thorough process of making sure each game they add is safe + working with the developers to make sure they are optimized for PC). Also Neural Cloud, a newer game that I started playing and have fallen in love with.

[Moonface]

@Dragon Lord: I wasn't aware of that, and actually remember you bringing up GPG way back when it was first announced. I wonder if any games will get more players by being available to play on PC since I'm sure there's a decent number of people out there who don't really spend time playing games on their phones but might be happy to give some of those games a bash on PC.

[Dragon Lord]

It could. Playing Arknights with a mouse feels 1000000% times better than playing it on mobile and using your finger to place and face your characters. Navigating through the game's menus also feels nicer with a mouse (same goes for Azur Lane and Neural Cloud).

Though of course people who are anti-gacha are still going to avoid the games even if there's an easy way to play them on PC available that doesn't require the use of a resource hogging emulator. Some people can't look past gacha no matter how "Free2Play" friendly a gacha game is.

[Moonface]

Though of course people who are anti-gacha are still going to avoid the games even if there's an easy way to play them on PC available that doesn't require the use of a resource hogging emulator. Some people can't look past gacha no matter how "Free2Play" friendly a gacha game is.

Yeah, I saw some comments on Twitter about how Genshin Impact shouldn't win over Sonic Frontiers just because it's a gambling simulator. I get being against predatory transaction practices in games but I can't say I've ever really heard of a popular gacha game pulling dick moves with trying to make money, and while I'm not a fan of blind loot box style systems I can at least tolerate them when they aren't being forced onto people by making the game unbalanced without content locked behind a paywall. Heck, I was curious and logged into my old Battle.net account to see whether anything was purchasable in any of Blizzard's subscription based games, and turns out there is. A lot of it. Well, at least for WoW which was the only game I cared to check. Most of the stuff is $25+ cosmetics which to me is a ridiculous price for a visual item, especially when you've already spent money to even access the game, but you don't have to buy it. I also don't know if Genshin has any system in place to gradually earn gacha rolls without spending money, like how Dead by Daylight has a system in place for players to purchase characters without spending money.

[Dragon Lord]

Genshin does have ways to earn Primogems without spending money (exploration, opening chests (finite), event rewards, etc.), but of course the rate of getting Primogems without spending money is going to be vastly slower, especially after you've played for a long while and you don't have as many chests to find any more and have explored most of the world available and done a lot of the quests. However, Genshin is also not a game that requires the newest and shiniest characters. The hardest content in the game -- Spiral Abyss Floor 12 -- can be completed with the four free characters the game gives you (Traveler, Amber, Kaeya and Lisa -- plus the game also lets you get a few other 4* characters for free). Will it be a little harder and require better playing and artifacts? Sure, but it's 100% possible.

I won't deny that there are some Gacha games out there that do design their game around needing the newest characters because they're so much better than the old ones (powercreep) and content ends up being "balanced" around those newer, much more powerful characters, leaving the older characters as inadequate for clearing the hardest content. Genshin and Arknights are not those kinds of games. Sure, hard content is easier with the more powerful characters, but people have cleared the hardest content in Arknights using just 3 and 4-star characters.

[Moonface]

I won't deny that there are some Gacha games out there that do design their game around needing the newest characters because they're so much better than the old ones (powercreep) and content ends up being "balanced" around those newer, much more powerful characters, leaving the older characters as inadequate for clearing the hardest content. Genshin and Arknights are not those kinds of games. Sure, hard content is easier with the more powerful characters, but people have cleared the hardest content in Arknights using just 3 and 4-star characters.

Do you think Genshin or Arknights will ever suffer from power creep as they get older or have there been signs already that the developers are actively keeping that in check before it ever becomes a problem?

[Dragon Lord]

Genshin never likely will have powercreep because content isn't going to get any harder than it is now. Hoyoverse came out and straight up side, to the ire of many in the community, that they don't want to give the players "anxiety" by adding in harder content. So characters that were in the game from the start will always be able to clear whatever content they throw at us, because Abyss Floor 12 will remain the "hardest" content in the game.

Arknights does have new characters that come out that are much better in their roles than previous characters, but at the same time there are characters who have been in the game since the beginning that still remain some of the best units in the game. Arknights is a game that you can clear a lot of the hardest content in the game with a team of low rarity operators aided by one or two high rarity ones. So even the characters who might not be on the top of the hill any more can still be useful. It all depends on what kind of map you're dealing with, what kind of enemies you're facing, and what kind of mechanics might be in play that might require use of certain types of Operators (like for example: the map could have a passive HP draining mechanic, meaning you'd want to bring some additional Medics over more damage dealers). Long story short: Yes, Arknights has power creep in a technical sense, but due to how the game works, it doesn't render previous Operators completely worthless. If an Operator is bad, it's because they've always been bad.