The Video Game Thread v3

[chemgear]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1682187267425574914

[btimbit]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Yeah, all this Uncharted talk has me itching to go again lol.

Are they gonna do a remaster of the remaster for the PS5?

Was wondering that myself as well, since they did that Legacy of Thieves Collection for PC and PS5, maybe The Nathan Drake Collection will get the same treatment next

[chemgear]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1682155679941902337

[Minnie]

Don't get me wrong, I've loved all the games. I think what I like about 3 is that there was much less of the zombie mutant whatever stuff (aside from the spiders lol) until the end, so it was just the core elements of run/jump/swing/roll, exploring/treasure hunting/storyline and of course, my favorite - shoot 'em up, explode, and kill everything in my path.

I really enjoyed the newer elements, like being able to toss the grenades back, or when he'd tuck them into an enemy's outfit, the punch out and flip the gun into his hands and the newer ffirepower.It felt like they improved the graphics even more and I could see where they developed things better for TLOU2. I love how they tucked Easter eggs into TLOU2 from Uncharted.

Really looking forward to 4. Now that I have a better handle on the controls/game play, I'm going to have to look at the other Naughty Dog games.

[chemgear]

When you are done, I would recommend checking out Horizon Zero Dawn series, Ghost of Tsushima and the new God of War series. Spiderman too. What you have learnt from Uncharted and The Last of Us would serve you well there.

Great gaming experiences and worlds.

Jealous all those would be brand new to you.

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by chemgear

When you are done, I would recommend checking out Horizon Zero Dawn series, Ghost of Tsushima and the new God of War series. Spiderman too. What you have learnt from Uncharted and The Last of Us would serve you well there.

Great gaming experiences and worlds.

Jealous all those would be brand new to you.

I think she had mentioned that she didn't like open world games and was looking for more stuff like TLoU which is why we all said to go play Uncharted, lol.

Really looking forward to 4. Now that I have a better handle on the controls/game play, I'm going to have to look at the other Naughty Dog games.

Well, the bad news is once you've done Uncharted and The Last of Us, you're kind of done with that. There's the Jak and Daxter games that are excellent but those are very different (the first one is like a Banjo-Kazooie style collectathon game, the next two are more action-platformers) and the old original Crash Bandicoot games, which have a great remaster on PS4 but again are very different style games, just straight old-style PS1 platformers.

[Minnie]

Didn't ND have a hand with the final dev of GoW:Ragnarök?

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Minnie

Didn't ND have a hand with the final dev of GoW:Ragnarök?

Directly? I don't think so. Naughty Dog developed Uncharted and The Last of Us. Santa Monica Studio did God of War and Ragnarok.

They are under the Sony Studios umbrella and they definitely exchange ideas and tech information certainly. Things like Accessibility options and the like too.

Even though some of the other games are open world, I think you'd enjoy them. Especially with the "introduction into it" via Uncharted 4.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by photon

The dumbest thing in Diablo IV is my Rogue runs faster than my horse.

EDIT: Finished the campaign at level 54, jumped straight to WT3, it's quite a bit harder, but I assume better gear will drop.. I just found a yellow crossbow that's almost 50% more damage than my current one!

I also didn't realize that the Lilith Altars you find are for all the difficulties in eternal mode, I didn't spend much time hunting them down I guess I should do that first thing as that's a lot of stats.

I'm liking Diablo IV so far. I like the throwbacks to the original Diablo with the mood, setting, and music. The original Diablo was still the best IMO, considering when it was released. I just think loot based games are better when you don't have to think about classes and can just roll with what drops. Use a sword for a while, then a staff that shoots fireballs drops, so you can just switch to that. And then that breaks in the middle of a dungeon, so you go with whatever you happened to pick up and just roll with what the RNG gives you. With the Diablo IV and pretty much all games like it these days, the loot is just comparing numbers and doing math to see what is better. Nothing really compels you to have to experiment or adapt on the go. I guess I miss the rogue-like aspects that they have moved away from.

All in all, I love Diablo IV and I think it is the best sequel so far that captures the spirit of the original while making things new at the same time.

[photon]

I haven't got too far into paragon boards but I think my only complaint is the system doesn't seem to make it really easy to do different builds, but sounds like they're addressing that with a scroll that resets all your points and today I think they said they're decreasing spec cost by 40%.

What's the point of having it cost anything to respec, does the game really need a gold sink? You can't really buy anything meaningful can you? I assume that later on gold will be one of the primary things used to tune your gear, why not just have an NPC to talk to to reset all your points? Or have different spec loadouts you can swap between.

EDIT: Aaand it seems to be down currently, was going to play some this afternoon. Oh well I should do some stuff around the house anyway.

EDIT2: Or even if they didn't want to go to the trouble of having different spec loadouts, they could make a system where your spec loadout can be exported to a code, and you can import a code. Then you could go to a spec website, make a loadout, export the code, import in the game and BAM done.

[Minnie]

Well, loaded up Ghost of Tsushima and am having a go at it. Gorgeous game, holy cow.

I suspect I'm going to be just a frenetic, demented player at first, but I'll get there. Eventually.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by photon

I haven't got too far into paragon boards but I think my only complaint is the system doesn't seem to make it really easy to do different builds, but sounds like they're addressing that with a scroll that resets all your points and today I think they said they're decreasing spec cost by 40%.

What's the point of having it cost anything to respec, does the game really need a gold sink? You can't really buy anything meaningful can you? I assume that later on gold will be one of the primary things used to tune your gear, why not just have an NPC to talk to to reset all your points? Or have different spec loadouts you can swap between.

EDIT: Aaand it seems to be down currently, was going to play some this afternoon. Oh well I should do some stuff around the house anyway.

EDIT2: Or even if they didn't want to go to the trouble of having different spec loadouts, they could make a system where your spec loadout can be exported to a code, and you can import a code. Then you could go to a spec website, make a loadout, export the code, import in the game and BAM done.

I mean, why would you even bother actively doing stupid #### like slowing down portal casts just to leave a dungeon from 3 to 5 seconds.

They're just actively working to slow down people and their progress with their changes. The fact that they were withholding storage for future monetization while handing you 32 hearts to take up more space is . . . something.

1 to 50 was decent enough. Probably just come back in a few years.

That campfire was a #### show. Chat was demonstrative how negative the reception was. The hosts look like the killed and ran over their own cat. 3 times. So much obvious stuff, you have to wonder if they are just modifying a spreadsheet and not actually playing the game.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by Minnie

Well, loaded up Ghost of Tsushima and am having a go at it. Gorgeous game, holy cow.

I suspect I'm going to be just a frenetic, demented player at first, but I'll get there. Eventually.

Once you progress a little bit you'll pick up some stealth options. It's part of the balance of the story (way of the samurai or not) but you can methodically deal with threats silently if you like . . . or go absolutely ballistic if you like.

Like this aggressive player (hidden if you don't want to see gameplay down the road)

Spoiler!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1647692306244329473

[photon]

Originally Posted by chemgear

I mean, why would you even bother actively doing stupid #### like slowing down portal casts just to leave a dungeon from 3 to 5 seconds.

I wonder if there was some kind of technical reason behind the scenes and they just didn't want to admit it.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by photon

I wonder if there was some kind of technical reason behind the scenes and they just didn't want to admit it.

They didn't seem to say that during the chat, just that they didn't think it was a big change. Nevermind you would even choose to bother to add another method to slow down players.

I think you were right. Make things ####ty, force people into the seasons and in front of the Battle Pass for the money. I didn't think they would also go dark pattern UI to try to trick people to use their Battle Pass on this season on top of all this #### show.

Wonder how long it will take for them to "fix" that intentional dark pattern UI trickery. Didn't Fortnite get sued for half a billion for that recently.

[Sainters7]

Originally Posted by Minnie

Well, loaded up Ghost of Tsushima and am having a go at it. Gorgeous game, holy cow.

I suspect I'm going to be just a frenetic, demented player at first, but I'll get there. Eventually.

After you're done, the Iki Island DLC is well worth it too. And lots of new features/upgraded graphics compared to the base game.

[Minnie]

Originally Posted by OutOfTheCube

I think she had mentioned that she didn't like open world games and was looking for more stuff like TLoU which is why we all said to go play Uncharted lol

It's not that I don't like them like them, it's that my brain/personality won't stop with open world - it tells me that I *must* get ALLTHETHINGS and KILLALLTHEPEOPLETOBEKILLED. It ends up driving me a little cookoo (you know, more than usual lmao) when I just want to have fun.

I'm liking GoTs so far. It's beautifully crafted and I like having a character to control as opposed to feeling disembodied by FPS type stuff. I'm trying GoTs and telling my brain to shuttie about all the things, but we'll see if that works.

[photon]

Yeah the fact you can click a button and it goes through and charges you for the Battle Pass with ZERO interaction has to be intentional. There's always something to verify your purchase.

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah the fact you can click a button and it goes through and charges you for the Battle Pass with ZERO interaction has to be intentional. There's always something to verify your purchase.

He mentioned later that he'd gotten a free Battle Pass Activation with the level of the game he bought. It looks like if someone like me, who got the basest level game (and is unimpressed with it) wanted a Battle Pass, I'd have to verify it a couple times.

But he said the was saving his 'free Activation' for a 'better season'. So since he had a free activation, it's likely that's why he didn't have to verify anything, it just did.

Scummy still, IMO, but not the downright sleaze of a bought Battle Pass.

[chemgear]

Even if you bought it, you would have been exposed to the same exploit. Basically if you have the Ultimate or Digital Deluxe editions, you paid for a (accelerated) Battle pass that could be used on this season or saved for any other future season. You just have to choose to activate it.

However, they built the season progress screen so that it automatically defaults you to activating it immediately if you press a button every time you visit that page, no additional confirmation allowed. And it shows up every time you go to that screen so it's obviously built for you to trigger it like a trap (accidentally or otherwise).

In the twitter thread, a whole bunch of normal people responded saying they also accidentally had it activated - who wanted to save it for a future season rather than this gongshow one.

One of the Blizzard campfire guys on twitter admitted that it shouldn't have been done that way. It's obviously scummy and exploitative.

It's an easy example of dark pattern UI. I wouldn't be surprised if it were outright illegal in the EU and something the FTC forced Fortnite to pay half a billion for.

(I doubt it gets "fixed" quickly, it is an obvious intended trap on their part.)


EDIT:

I disagree with Rhykker here (even he had to comment how dumb this is), imagine being forced to load up a cosmetic purchase option every time you open up your inventory lol. But at least it would be a tad less scummy.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1682432902628364289