Re: Destiny.

by **Rotaretilbo** Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:14 pm

CivBase wrote:When I was talking about innovation and said "Half Life, Team Fortress, Mass Effect, and Skyrim are hardly innovative games, but they're great because they were very well developed."

I'm assuming we're talking about Half-Life 2, based on your other posts where you said you were never talking about Half-Life. In that case, you've chosen three games that were sequels and continuations of other games that were innovative (Team Fortress 2 being the exception; I have no idea whether or not original Team Fortress was innovative, and I'm too lazy to find out). Half-Life 2 wasn't particularly innovative, but its gameplay was built fromt Half-Life, and Half-Life was innovative, no matter how hard you try to pretend it wasn't. Similarly, Mass Effect was built out of Knights of the Old Republic, which was probably innovative (again with the lazy), and Skyrim's gameplay comes from Daggerfall, which I'm fairly sure was innovative.

CivBase wrote:I listed off a number of games which were widely accepted as great and not particularly innovative. I'd still contest that HL2 belongs in that list. HL2. Not the original.

The you should have said Half-Life 2. I would argue that Half-Life 2 was innovative in places, but not in ways that redefined gaming.

CivBase wrote:Not to drop in on the discussion between you and Vigil, but....

The WarZ was a disaster for Steam, yet it's still a nightmare for much better developed small-team or indie games to get in their market (even with Greenlight).

You know exactly what I meant. Valve's game development team has yet to disappoint me. The politics of Steam are of little concern to me. And, even you have to admit that Steam is better than what Indie developers had before, which was just short of nothing.

CivBase wrote:Half Life 2 and all of Valve's games since have required the Steam platform to run on PC. We give EA and Ubisoft crap for doing this now, but Valve undoubtedly did it first.

We give EA shit about Origin because it's a buggy, poorly programmed shadow of Steam. I don't have any problem with the concept of Steam or Origin. EA just cut corners during development and, as a result, released a shitty project. If Origin were the first of its kind, I'd be a lot more forgiving, but being this late to the party, I expected they'd release something a little more polished. Honestly, Steam is probably the best solution to the DRM issue. It's hardly intrusive and at least helps to discourage piracy.

CivBase wrote:Like you mentioned, Valve promised a lot of DLC for L4D and, instead, they released a sequel with what content which could have easily been implemented as DLC for the original.

Everyone talks about some unfulfilled promise of DLC, but how much DLC did Valve promise us?

The game launched with Campaign and Versus for game modes, and with Dead Air, Death Toll, No Mercy, and Blood Harvest playable in Campaign, and No Mercy and Blood Harvest playable in Versus.

DLC provided to us, all for free on PC, is as follows:

Survival; a new game mode
15 modified portions of existing maps for Survival
Last Stand; a new map exclusive to Survival
Updates to allow Dead Air and Death Toll to be played in Versus
Crash Course; a new level for Campaign and Versus
The Sacrifice; a new level for Campaign and Versus

That's two mini-campaigns, a new game mode, and a new level, among other things. How much, exactly, was Valve entitled to give us, for free?\

And no, Valve could not have released Left 4 Dead 2 as DLC. That would have been just about the most retarded thing ever. The inclusion of new special infected, new weapons, etc changed the core gameplay. People would have been furious. It is better that the gameplay was kept separate.

CivBase wrote:Portal 2 was a pretty fun game, but its gameplay dragged a lot in the middle when they took us through the old Aperture Labs and, frankly, it was not worth $60 even with the co-op. It wasn't near as great of a value as Portal: Still Alive was.

Portal 2 was a gem. While I won't say it was better than Portal, it was an excellent game. It was easily worth the $50 on PC (honestly, who buys a first person precision puzzle platformer on console?). It had amazing environments, awesome humor, lots of interesting new mechanics to play around with, a cool story, and even featured an entirely unique, separate co-op campaign. It did everything that a sequel is supposed to do. And you greatly exaggerate the dragging in the middle. There was maybe one or two times where the big environments in old Aperature were somewhat confusing, but isn't a puzzle game supposed to be confusing at times? There was probably only one time in the entire game where I would say that the big environment detracted from the game, and that was when you're trying to get to the old test chambers and Cave Johnson was talking about asbestos.

And honestly, your entire argument here is fundamentally flawed. You say it wasn't worth the money, then back up this statement by saying Portal was a better value. That's like saying that since Halo 2 wasn't as good as Halo: CE, it wasn't worth $50. Halo 2 was still a great game, and was definitely still worth the money, despite lacking a proper ending. Moreover, of course Portal had a better value! It was free!

CivBase wrote:DOTA 2 didn't even come with a tutorial. A DOTA-style game without a tutorial? Who thought that was a good idea?

First of all, DotA2 was marketed at the hardcore DotA players who felt like LoL was too simplistic. The target audience is people who have already played DotA.

But more importantly, the game isn't out yet. It's effectively in semi-open beta right now. To put that into perspective, LoL's original Tutorial, which showed you how to move, use an ability, and buy an item, and noted that turrets would rape you, was not introduced until near the end of beta. I started playing LoL in April of 2009. The Tutorial was introduced six months later in October of 2009, less than a month before the beta ended and the game launched. The more comprehensive tutorial wasn't released until November of 2010, well after launch and into Season 1.

So your gripe about the DotA2 beta not having a tutorial is stupid. Plain and simple.

CivBase wrote:Also, DOTA should not be a $60 game. Almost ever other DOTA-style game is free to play, so at least put it at $30 or less.

Your information appears to be somewhat out of date. Steam users could pay $60 to gain access to the DotA2 beta, as well as several items from the store (which would normally cost them money anyway). That stage of testing ended like a year ago, and it has been available for $30 since then. Once Valve has the infrastructure in place to support the full release, it will be free to play.

CivBase wrote:Finally, Steam's tiered pre-order scheme is probably one of the worst possible things for the game industry right now. We have a big enough problem with titles like Duke Nukem: Forever and now Aliens: Colonial Marines; do we really need more emphasis to pledge money to something we can't even sample?

Wait, what? It's Valve's fault for having a pre-order system? Because last time I checked, everyone offers some kind of pre-order system, and pretty much everyone has various unique awards for pre-ordering from them. You can't single out Steam for doing what everyone else has been doing since forever. I mean, hell, Destiny, a game for which we have seen all of a few minutes of gameplay of, which the developers won't even define in specific, realistic terms, is already accepting pre-orders.

CivBase wrote:Oh, and Spore had a lot of great procedural technology in it. It was very innovative in that regard. The gameplay was just crap. In fact, Spore is another game which nicely illustrates my point about innovation.

Spore actually lacked most of the promised procedural animation. There was an engine which handled basic animations, but the number of animations was awful. For example, four quadrupeds, there were three possible walking animations: front legs shorter, long legs shorter, and even. These animations were effectively static. If the front legs were a few ticks shorter, it would do this retarded animation where the front legs go really fast and the back legs go really slow. We were promised procedural animation, and realistically, we got a handful of cheap, universally applied animations, which can barely be called procedural. The vehicles were even better examples of this. No matter what weapons you used, no matter how you oriented those weapons, and no matter how big or small the weapons were, all ground vehicles had the exact same artillery attack animation, all air vehicles had the exact same laser attack animation, etc. It was retarded.

by Nocbl2 Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:45 pm

Guys. Destiny thread = for Destiny.

Shut up.

by **Lord Pheonix** Thu Feb 28, 2013 11:50 pm

A slight debate i'd be fine with since it does technically pertain to Destiny, but you guys are blowing it into another entire discussion that Destiny is an example of.

I know their isn't much info about the game yet but there is undoubtedly another topic to focus on about it. If not I will step off of my throne from on high and descend down to the masses to create one myself.

by **CivBase** Fri Mar 01, 2013 12:26 am

Rotaretilbo wrote:I'm assuming we're talking about Half-Life 2, based on your other posts where you said you were never talking about Half-Life. In that case, you've chosen three games that were sequels and continuations of other games that were innovative (Team Fortress 2 being the exception; I have no idea whether or not original Team Fortress was innovative, and I'm too lazy to find out). Half-Life 2 wasn't particularly innovative, but its gameplay was built fromt Half-Life, and Half-Life was innovative, no matter how hard you try to pretend it wasn't. Similarly, Mass Effect was built out of Knights of the Old Republic, which was probably innovative (again with the lazy), and Skyrim's gameplay comes from Daggerfall, which I'm fairly sure was innovative.

That's fine. Games can take from previous titles which were innovative. This doesn't make them innovative in their own right, though.

Rotaretilbo wrote:The you should have said Half-Life 2. I would argue that Half-Life 2 was innovative in places, but not in ways that redefined gaming.

I thought I made this clear two or three replies ago.

Sigh... I guess we're talking about Valve now. Since everyone is complaining and this part doesn't have much connection to Destiny, I'll hide it.

Spoiler:

Rotaretilbo wrote:You know exactly what I meant. Valve's game development team has yet to disappoint me. The politics of Steam are of little concern to me. And, even you have to admit that Steam is better than what Indie developers had before, which was just short of nothing.

Steam still reflects on Valve's character and reliability since it is one of their products.

Rotaretilbo wrote:We give EA shit about Origin because it's a buggy, poorly programmed shadow of Steam. I don't have any problem with the concept of Steam or Origin. EA just cut corners during development and, as a result, released a shitty project. If Origin were the first of its kind, I'd be a lot more forgiving, but being this late to the party, I expected they'd release something a little more polished. Honestly, Steam is probably the best solution to the DRM issue. It's hardly intrusive and at least helps to discourage piracy.

Origin isn't any more buggy than Steam. Even if you don't, a lot of people (myself included) are frustrated that publishers are pushing proprietary platforms (which rely on always-online accounts) onto our computers just so we can play our games.

Rotaretilbo wrote:Everyone talks about some unfulfilled promise of DLC, but how much DLC did Valve promise us?

The game launched with Campaign and Versus for game modes, and with Dead Air, Death Toll, No Mercy, and Blood Harvest playable in Campaign, and No Mercy and Blood Harvest playable in Versus.

DLC provided to us, all for free on PC, is as follows:
Survival; a new game mode
15 modified portions of existing maps for Survival
Last Stand; a new map exclusive to Survival
Updates to allow Dead Air and Death Toll to be played in Versus
Crash Course; a new level for Campaign and Versus
The Sacrifice; a new level for Campaign and Versus

That's two mini-campaigns, a new game mode, and a new level, among other things. How much, exactly, was Valve entitled to give us, for free?\

And no, Valve could not have released Left 4 Dead 2 as DLC. That would have been just about the most retarded thing ever. The inclusion of new special infected, new weapons, etc changed the core gameplay. People would have been furious. It is better that the gameplay was kept separate.

Even if it wasn't free, a lot of people feel that the few modifications made between L4D and L4D2 were just split off and re-packaged at a higher price than is reasonable. I really doubt people would have been angry at Valve for adding content to their game.

Rotaretilbo wrote:Portal 2 was a gem. While I won't say it was better than Portal, it was an excellent game. It was easily worth the $50 on PC (honestly, who buys a first person precision puzzle platformer on console?). It had amazing environments, awesome humor, lots of interesting new mechanics to play around with, a cool story, and even featured an entirely unique, separate co-op campaign. It did everything that a sequel is supposed to do. And you greatly exaggerate the dragging in the middle. There was maybe one or two times where the big environments in old Aperature were somewhat confusing, but isn't a puzzle game supposed to be confusing at times? There was probably only one time in the entire game where I would say that the big environment detracted from the game, and that was when you're trying to get to the old test chambers and Cave Johnson was talking about asbestos.

And honestly, your entire argument here is fundamentally flawed. You say it wasn't worth the money, then back up this statement by saying Portal was a better value. That's like saying that since Halo 2 wasn't as good as Halo: CE, it wasn't worth $50. Halo 2 was still a great game, and was definitely still worth the money, despite lacking a proper ending. Moreover, of course Portal had a better value! It was free!

Your opinion on Portal 2's value is definitely one which is contested by many people.

Rotaretilbo wrote:First of all, DotA2 was marketed at the hardcore DotA players who felt like LoL was too simplistic. The target audience is people who have already played DotA.

But more importantly, the game isn't out yet. It's effectively in semi-open beta right now. To put that into perspective, LoL's original Tutorial, which showed you how to move, use an ability, and buy an item, and noted that turrets would rape you, was not introduced until near the end of beta. I started playing LoL in April of 2009. The Tutorial was introduced six months later in October of 2009, less than a month before the beta ended and the game launched. The more comprehensive tutorial wasn't released until November of 2010, well after launch and into Season 1.

So your gripe about the DotA2 beta not having a tutorial is stupid. Plain and simple.

Valve has a beta for a DOTA game on the market for $60? This is much worse than not having a tutorial.

Rotaretilbo wrote:Your information appears to be somewhat out of date. Steam users could pay $60 to gain access to the DotA2 beta, as well as several items from the store (which would normally cost them money anyway). That stage of testing ended like a year ago, and it has been available for $30 since then. Once Valve has the infrastructure in place to support the full release, it will be free to play.

I see. $30 is much more reasonable, but the notion that users should pay for a beta for a free-to-play game is still ridiculous.

Rotaretilbo wrote:Wait, what? It's Valve's fault for having a pre-order system? Because last time I checked, everyone offers some kind of pre-order system, and pretty much everyone has various unique awards for pre-ordering from them. You can't single out Steam for doing what everyone else has been doing since forever. I mean, hell, Destiny, a game for which we have seen all of a few minutes of gameplay of, which the developers won't even define in specific, realistic terms, is already accepting pre-orders.

I said tiered pre-order system. Pre-orders cause enough problems as they are.

by **Lord Pheonix** Fri Mar 01, 2013 12:34 am

Spoiler:

by **CivBase** Fri Mar 01, 2013 12:49 am

So yah... Destiny.

Spoiler:

by **Lord Pheonix** Fri Mar 01, 2013 12:59 am

This is the reason I want discussion to stay on track, debates happen then someone responds to one part of a post then that part gets argued and then everything is fucking derailed and it's no longer even about the original topic.

Like this argument below, I know it has nothing to do with the topic but I feel the need to respond to the part I feel is wrong. Does the argument we've been having below have a single thing to do with Bungie developing Destiny? No. No it doesn't. But I typed the below message before this one so damned if i'm not going to post it.

Spoiler:

by dragoon9105 Fri Mar 01, 2013 2:20 am

You could just move the argument into another thread, Sounds like a rather easy Solution. Granted this has been like what the seventh time this same
"Waa Waa Bungie burned down my home town and ruined my childhood" complaining has started an argument.

Anywho, on the blatant promotion in the Devdiary/Trailer, That's to be expected. People don't act humble in advertisements, which is what a dev diary in the end is. No commercial is going to tell you "Well it might work.. it probably wont though Buy now!" Naturally Bungie is also probably excited to be working on something besides halo so they are pretty optimistic.

by **Lord Pheonix** Fri Mar 01, 2013 2:32 am

Especially since they've been working on it in some form or another since ODST at least.

by **Rotaretilbo** Fri Mar 01, 2013 4:20 pm

CivBase wrote:That's fine. Games can take from previous titles which were innovative. This doesn't make them innovative in their own right, though.

But the point was that many of the things that made them great were innovative in a previous title by that developer.

Also, I did a little poking around, and I think Team Fortress actually was innovative. I'm told that it basically started class-based shooters. I had forgotten that early FPS games with moulteeplayir were arena shooters.

CivBase wrote:I thought I made this clear two or three replies ago.

My point was that you should have made it clear two or three pages ago. But it doesn't matter. I looked into it, and I was wrong. Half-Life 2 was majorly innovative. It invented real physics engines.

I had assumed that Havok had done it first, but I looked into it, and calling the pre-Source Havok engine a "physics engine" is somewhat of a joke. When Havok released, it could handle basic collision and ragdoll physics, and that was it. Source was a whole new ball game. It was a real physics engine. It handled things like momentum, acceleration, reflection, realistic collision, realistic gravity, the whole shebang. Before Source, when a structure collapsed, the entire thing was scripted. After Source, structures could be allowed to freefall and, if the model was built of smaller objects rather than a single object, you could use Source to simulate it falling apart as it collapsed without having to script every single piece falling off. The Source Engine was groundbreaking for years.

Spoiler:

dragoon9105 wrote:Granted this has been like what the seventh time this same
"Waa Waa Bungie burned down my home town and ruined my childhood" complaining has started an argument.

Please jump off of a building, cliff, bridge, or some other point that is relatively higher than all other points around it. This had little and less to do with my gripes about Bungie's writers intentionally alienating the minority of their fanbase who actually gave a shit about story because they could sell their games to Shootshoot Bangbang fans who are so used to shoveling shit that they won't know the difference. Even ignoring that, Reach's story was so pitifully written, terribly executed, and completely bland, that it perfectly accentuates the fact that some, possibly even a majority, of Bungie's writers don't have a clue what they're doing.

dragoon9105 wrote:Anywho, on the blatant promotion in the Devdiary/Trailer, That's to be expected. People don't act humble in advertisements, which is what a dev diary in the end is. No commercial is going to tell you "Well it might work.. it probably wont though Buy now!" Naturally Bungie is also probably excited to be working on something besides halo so they are pretty optimistic.

There's a difference between not acting humbly and making grandiose claims that you won't be able to follow through with. BioWare didn't come out and say that Mass Effect 3 would not only change our lives, but also get us all jobs and solve all conflict in existing relationships we might have. And more importantly, the devs normally aren't the ones doing the marketing, so we normally take marketing with a grain of salt. Normally, it's the publisher who does the advertising, and we all know that the publisher probably doesn't know jack shit about the game. If EA wants to say that Mass Effect 3 will change my life, get me a job, and solve my relationship issues, then I don't really give a fuck, because I know that anything that comes out of EA's mouth is a step below rubbish and a step above hippies. This is different. This is the developer making these claims. Hence why Virtual Shackles compared them to Peter Molyneux. Hence why I defended that comparison.

by Gauz Fri Mar 01, 2013 5:16 pm

Okay, trying to hide the argument with spoiler tags is pretty regressive. Just make a thread for Yog Sothoth's sake.

by Nocbl2 Fri Mar 01, 2013 7:24 pm

Or go to pm's. That's why we have those.

by **KrAzY** Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:03 pm

I for one am in full support of arguments, since they keep this forum alive

by **Rotaretilbo** Fri Mar 01, 2013 8:55 pm

Are we disrupting any actual discussion? No? Then fuck off. If you guys have some real Destiny shit to talk about, then I could understand your concern. But as it stands, there's jack shit to talk about.

by Nocbl2 Fri Mar 01, 2013 9:00 pm

We could be discussing things like what we expect in core gameplay, or how systems will play out. Arguments over totally unrelated shit kill discussion.

by laxspartan007 Fri Mar 01, 2013 10:17 pm

discussion kills argument. also dont we have a debate section for a reason?

fuck you rot...

by **Rotaretilbo** Fri Mar 01, 2013 11:57 pm

Nocbl2 wrote:We could be discussing things like what we expect in core gameplay, or how systems will play out. Arguments over totally unrelated shit kill discussion.

Then feel free. I don't see how Civ and I having a debate prevents you from trying to discuss stuff.

laxspartan007 wrote:discussion kills argument. also dont we have a debate section for a reason?

fuck you rot...

First of all, if discussion kills arguments, why is our arguing a problem?

Second of all, the debate section is for threads with the sole purpose of debate. This thread is not such a thread, and my argument with Civ was related to Destiny, so it does not belong in the debate section.

Finally, please die.

by **Lord Pheonix** Sat Mar 02, 2013 4:08 pm

Do you think they'll keep to the gameplay feel of Halo or change it up to feel a bit more realistic?

Interested to see how they will take damage and health into account as well. The amount of health you have in Halo might not work as well in an MMO setting if you can't revive teammates or they respawn at checkpoints(which we know neither about yet)

by dragoon9105 Sat Mar 02, 2013 4:14 pm

The difficult seems to be what determines that, Will it scale like Borderlands/diablo where the more people there are the stronger enemies are or will there be more high level 'zones' like MMO's. I'd rather they didn't do the zone strategy but whatever works i guess

by **Lord Pheonix** Sat Mar 02, 2013 6:48 pm

I don't like Zones but it does keep everyone of a certain level grouped together. You go to the Fields of the Traveler and all the enemies are level 40 so you aren't going to see any level 20 players around and will group up with similar leveled players who know what they are doing.

by Nocbl2 Sun Mar 03, 2013 10:57 am

I think they could do something like Borderlands with a mix of Diablo/WoW. What I mean is that they could have 4 players or so together and the enemies would be leveled with that group. If the party split up, you could go find more peeps and enemies would then level to you.

by **CivBase** Sun Mar 03, 2013 4:46 pm

I feel like debates are valid aspects of a discussion, but we are refining this one to a point. LP, you win regarding DOTA 2. Rot, let's get back to how our debate pertains to Destiny.

I feel like Bungie has been a pretty decent developer over the years. They've released some great titles in this genera. Even if some have had minor issues or inconsistencies, or even fundamental flaws in story and characterization, my experiences with their games has always been positive. They've also done a pretty good job of delivering the game exactly as they want it, unlike many developers who loosely decide how the game should be and create something that often lets us down more than anything.

They're not perfect and nobody should ever expect a game to be amazing. I still think that Destiny is among the most interesting looking games in development right now, though, and this is bolstered by the positive history of the developer.

There have been too many failings from developers who I used to respect a lot. BioWare had big problems in SW:TOR and ME3, Blizzard screwed up Diablo 3, Bethesda was way off with RAGE and I felt Skyrim dropped the ball, Dice has been burring Battlefield since Bad Company, and then Gearbox completely botched DN:F and now Aliens. Bungie is one of the few developers I'm still interested in.

by **Lord Pheonix** Sun Mar 03, 2013 4:56 pm

CivBase wrote:There have been too many failings from developers who I used to respect a lot. BioWare had big problems in SW:TOR and ME3, Blizzard screwed up Diablo 3, Bethesda was way off with RAGE and I felt Skyrim dropped the ball, Dice has been burring Battlefield since Bad Company, and then Gearbox completely botched DN:F and now Aliens. Bungie is one of the few developers I'm still interested in.

Pretty much what i've said.

They've got the track record to make a good game but others have fallen off the wagon lately so i'll get interested but not hyped.

At this stage anyway.

by Gauz Mon Mar 04, 2013 11:23 am

Destiny is one of the most interesting games in development in that it's a sci-fi shooter.

As for failings, why isn't Halo: Reach a failing for Bungie? It wasn't a catastrophic failure (for the most part) but I'm pretty ready to blame Bungie for it.

I'm interested in Destiny though, it looks like it could be good. I'm interested in how the narrative will go though. If it's going to be somewhat MMO-style then I'm interested how the player will feel like a unique hero when there are tons of other players just like you, and in the same world.

Who's going to be the main antagonist too? There are quite a few enemy factions, so I'm wondering how all of them will feel relevant if there are going to be so many. Who's that one motherfucker we can all rally against?

by **Lord Pheonix** Mon Mar 04, 2013 11:31 am

All gripes i've heard for Reach stem from story, not gameplay.

by Sponsored content