Fear_the_Booboo

I want to try mostly EVERYTHING (I normally skip COD, Battlefield and I'll skip AC this year) but I don't need to finish them. I don't mind spoilers, I just want to have an opinion on everything to get real angry at the GOTY discussion :).

P.S. Breath of the Wild is the best AAA game from the past few years.

Few things, but let's start with the rough stuff. Been dealing with chronic pain for more than a year and a half now and it's been a real challenge. My daily routine became difficult and I feel like I've been on the edge of going crazy for the last year or so (I'm seeing on the regular a doctor, a physical therapist and an actual therapist, don't worry about me I'll manage, it's just rough).

One good thing is that I'm babysitting this cat for nine months, my situation makes it so that I can't really have pet for a few years so getting one would be irresponsible, but I love the little buggers. It's a siamese cat that is so unbelievably pretty I just can't even (sorry I have no better way to explain it). He's kinda dumb and siamese need a LOT of attention, but they're also very affectionate, and having him around for the past month has been great.

The other thing is that I released my first game ever on steam yesterday (I won't name it for obvious reason, I guess it's not hard to find if you do some research) and the reception has been extremely positive. It being free helped a lot for sure, but I wasn't expecting to get those numbers this quickly (it dwarfed my itch.io launch in an hour). It gives me the motivation I need to do something bigger, maybe even a paid game one day. That's been super great.

Third thing, I like that new redesign, so here's that.

Good thread @sombre, I feel like just writing it down can help sometimes.

Diablo mobile sounds dope, I dunno why the hell “enthusiasts” need to dismiss every game that’s not exactly what they want for.

It was certainly a misfire out of Blizzard to announce it this way I guess, seeing the reaction, but I’m way more embarrassed at the Diablo “fans” than Blizzard here. I played so much Diablo 3 and if the mobile game is good I can see myself playing tons of it.

@ballisticbooger: It does though. It’s as simple as that.

@ballisticbooger: nah sorry you’re wrong. Some people won’t get cancer from smoking, it’s still unhealthy. Some people won’t get muscular pain from crunch like I did, it’s still unhealthy. In a world where voluntary overtime wasn’t creating expectations in managers I MIGHT be able to see your point but even then it’s a massive stretch.

Considering most work is made in a team, you should do what’s more efficient for the team, not for individuals, so yeah everyone is different, so we should have working conditions that are sustainable for everyone.

I’m not citing studies, I’m telling you to seek them because you’re obviously completely oblivious to the whole conversation going on about crunch.

@ballisticbooger: It takes 30 seconds of googling to find why working more than 40 hours week is unhealthy. All research point to it, some may think they can do it, and they can like I could before, but it’s literally unhealthy living. Then you’re basically encouraging something that’s actively destroying their health, it’s not hard to comprehend how toxic that idea is.

There’s like plenty of research on why there’s more efficient way of working that don’t involve crunch and thus don’t alienate part of your workforce. People that work 60 hours a week are rarely more efficient or working harder than people that work 35, they’re not more « capable » they’re just putting more hours.

Again, you’re coming in an ongoing conversation, please inform yourself on the damage crunch does to people, even if it’s « voluntary », it far outweighs the advantages and those are arbitrary put in place by the system of crunch. We should rework the system to need the least amount of overtime possible or we’ll alienate most people, it’s hardly productive.

@ballisticbooger: At this point I’m not even sure if you’re trolling or not. « Oppressing people that want to overwork themselves »?? What the hell. The point is to create sustainable working environment for everyone, there’s no oppression going there except the one of management forcing lower paid people to overwork themselves.

I’m currently suffering through health issues that were caused mostly by overworking. I simply CAN’T do more than 40, in my condition even the low number of 40 is near unbearable. My health issues started when I was 29 and you can easily pinpoint overworking as a cause. It’s not normal for someone this young to go through that shit.

People that voluntary overwork themselves create expectations in managers that other should do the same and it’s simply toxic, because not everyone can and simply put, nobody should. If you NEED to overwork yourself to advance forward in your career, then the system is unsustainable, it’s not that hard to comprehend. The fact that other industries do the same or are worse is not an excuse, it’s actually damning.

Obviously some people can go through this shit and get at the end of it okay, it still doesn’t make it sustainable that some luckier one don’t get permanent health damage from it.

Your take is not unpopular because it’s new or anything, your take is unpopular because it’s awful and has been adressed countless times by criticism of crunch. You’re coming into an ongoing conversation without acknowledging most points that have been made within it.

That Austin’s tweet is a valid answer, your take is awful and toxic.

Scripting error is not something you can inherently solve with technology right now, it’s just more manpower. RDR2 doesn’t compare to Fallout 4 in terms of possibilities and player agency to the world and I still think Jeff’s take absolutely is arm-chair development. At some point I think he said that if they can’t fix those games, they may as well not make them, but on the other hand there’s a lot of players (myself included) that are willing to accept those issues in a game that has this many moving parts. I find it extremely dismissive to say that’s having low expectations, it’s more about wanting ambitious games and being realistic with the problems that come with this ambition.

RDR2 is more on the level of the Witcher 3 with more seamless interaction, which is still infinitely impressive. It’s also unfair to compare anything to a Rockstar game because they have infinite budget (and act like they have infinite manpower too, as we’ve seen). Obviously RDR2 is not without issues but it’s much cleaner than a Bethesda game. Also everything that is mainline in RDR2 is extremely linear, not sure it’s really because of the same reasons but it’s obvious they don’t want you to mess with their scripting too much (I had multiple fail states because I strayed too far from the main path).

Brad and Austin were still absolutely right, as disappointing as it can feel. The Witcher 3 and RDR2 are maybe the closest thing from a Bethesda game we’ve seen from another studio, but they’re still extremely far from it in term of scripting possibilities.

@mems1224: You need to sell it to a trapper (paw symbol on the map), after you sold it, it becomes part of the trapper crafting inventory and it’ll let you craft some silly outfits.

There’s a quest (don’t remember if it’s a main or side one) that leads to a trapper.

There’s rumbling on reddit about the fact that you can’t lose legendary pelts cause there’s a finite amount of them, that if you let them in the camp to disappear it’ll automatically go to the trapper invention, but I cannot confirm that.

It’s the best open world ever made in a game...

But then I think they don’t find any good way to exploit it. For all the systemic stuff in place, all the missions are painfully linear, which feels jarring and antiquated. I’ve had mission failures because I strayed too far from the waypoint line, I think we were past that as design goes. Obviously the challenges are the open stuff in here, but they’re a sidenote.

I feel the game should have scripted mission, the writing is even great sometimes, but a lot of it should’ve been edited out for more freeform “main” activities (that said I think they’re too much in love with their story and cinematic style to do that and that annoys me). With the camp motif, I think there was way to make the game more open-ended, there’s a seed of that in the camp fund systems and all the food/medicine/ammo stuff, but it doesn’t amount to much. In the context of the game being so linear, I feel all those systems become busywork whereas if the game wasn’t this scripted, they could’ve been used to create your main goals.

For a game that has this much work in, it’s super disappointing to me that I’m simply going marker to marker like any other open world game. It’s my favourite open world ever and I love it even as I’m just following waypoints, but I also see it as a massive missed opportunity.

Small sidenote: I took an hour to hunt for three 3-stars rabbits for a challenge and it baffles me that killing those rabbits was a more involved task than killing people. For all the systemic bullshit they added in that game for realism, the killing of other humans is still so videogamey that it feels hypocritical to me. But then maybe I’m expecting too much of big budget games.