City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Tired of the entire gaming industry?

Arcanaville

By Arcanaville,
Posted on: 2012-09-11 09:42 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

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Originally Posted by Vauluur View Post
Tried Mann vs. Machine on TF2? It's not single player, but at least it's co-op. It's actually pretty fun.
I have, and I really like it. But it's no replacement for Doom, y'know?

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Originally Posted by LittleDavid View Post
Would Black Mesa Source be relevant to your interests?)
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Originally Posted by Flying_Carcass View Post
You mean fast paced shooters? Hard Reset may be of interest.
Never heard of those. I'll have to check 'em out. And this video and this video best demonstrate how I feel about modern day FPS games.

 

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I went through a HUGE Mechwarrior phase back in the day. Even read all the Battletech novels (except maybe 3) and participated heavily in the forums (even lead a Clan Scorpion and the Taurian Concordat in RP for Kerensky's sake!). Nice to see someone else here was a fan. The new MW MMO looks cool and all, but it just sounds like it will be PvP only. That would suck.

 

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Originally Posted by Xzero45 View Post
I miss when first person shooters were like Doom and Quake, not Call of Duty and Battlefield. If TF2 ever came out with some sort of single player campaign mode, I'd probably never stop playing it.

Also miss when RPGs were like Final Fantasy 1-10, not 11-14 or Kingdom Hearts.
Like story based RPGs?:
Baldur's Gate Trilogy
Planescape: Torment
Knights of the Old Republic
Vampire: Bloodlines
The Witcher

Like First Person Shooters?
Half-Life (including Opposing Force & Blue Shift)
Half-Life 2 (including Episodes 1 & 2)

You can thank me later.

 

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Originally Posted by Xzero45 View Post
Never heard of those. I'll have to check 'em out. And this video and this video best demonstrate how I feel about modern day FPS games.
Haha! I still love the Quake one.

Black Mesa Source is a fan-created project as a response to Valve releasing Half-Life 1 for the Source engine. People were disappointed that the game didn't receive a comprehensive graphics update to match that of Half-Life 2, so a team of indie developers began working on a Source game that would do the job.

They are really going the whole nine yards, too. Bringing voice actors in to help re-voice a lot of old dialogue. The trailers they've put out over the years are amazing. Gabe Newell himself has said he really wants to play it.

On that note, I also recommend Renegade-X: Beyond Black Dawn. That one was released earlier this year, a fan-created update of Command and Conquer: Renegade using the Unreal Development Kit that Epic Games released a few years ago. Beyond Black Dawn is a short single-player campaign that follows on from Renegade's storyline, but the real meat is the online play.

I really need to fix my video card ...

 

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Originally Posted by Positivity View Post
You can thank me later.
Why? None of the games you listed are very modern or new, which is kind of what I was talking about with my examples. If I wanted to play an old game, I'd play one of the ones I listed.

Also missed my point about how the gaming industry as a whole has changed for the worse and games like both you and I listed aren't the norm anymore.

 

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Originally Posted by Positivity View Post
Like story based RPGs?:
Baldur's Gate Trilogy
Planescape: Torment
Knights of the Old Republic
Vampire: Bloodlines
The Witcher

Like First Person Shooters?
Half-Life (including Opposing Force & Blue Shift)
Half-Life 2 (including Episodes 1 & 2)

You can thank me later.
I've played all of those except Planescape. Got anything released since 2005 by chance?

Be well, people of CoH.

 

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For large production video games, the industry definitely has take a turn for the worse. When investment dollars are involved it becomes less about the game and more about stock prices and dividends. It's an environment that stifles innovation because of the amount of money involved and the aversion to risk. Minimizing risk implies rehashing previously successful formulas.

I'm no game developer, but I'd guess that indie development and smaller productions are more nimble, and not subject to the pressure to meet the higher sales numbers just to break even. I think that segment of the gaming industry has the best chances to deliver fun and innovative games. Yes, there's some noise to cut through to find games worthy to play, but the process is no different than any other forms of entertainment. I'm sure we've all suffered through bad music, movies, books, etc.

Personally, I'm waiting not-so-patiently for Shadowrun Returns.

 

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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba View Post
I've played all of those except Planescape. Got anything released since 2005 by chance?
If we're sticking with AAA titles, my favorites of the latest generation have been, in no particular order, the Assassin's Creed series, the inFAMOUS series, and the Mass Effect series. Of course, none of those are perfect--they have varying amounts of low-grade filler and their own narrative problems. But they're reimagining old gaming formulae amd pushing the medium forward in their own ways.

There are risktakers out there, but you have to go below AAA to find truly daring ideas. I still can't believe anyone ever got Spec Ops: The Line greenlit. It's probably, what, AA? I know paying for Nolan North can't be cheap anymore.

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Newton: I observed Mercury's perihelion moving 43 arc-seconds per century more than it should. Is this WAI?
--Einstein

 

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Also, for anyone who's a fan of Wing Commander like I am, I recommend the Wing Commander Saga. It's a fan game, a full-length campaign set during the time of Wing Commander III, developed with the Freespace 2 engine, and has taken about as much time to develop as City of Heroes has been around. For a game running on an engine that old, it looks pretty darned sweet.

 

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Originally Posted by LittleDavid View Post
Also, for anyone who's a fan of Wing Commander like I am, I recommend the Wing Commander Saga. It's a fan game, a full-length campaign set during the time of Wing Commander III, developed with the Freespace 2 engine, and has taken about as much time to develop as City of Heroes has been around. For a game running on an engine that old, it looks pretty darned sweet.
It's been a long time since I've seen tigers in space. I didn't know about this project. I'm gonna have to give this a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

Speaking of space combat, have you ever tried Vendetta Online? I haven't, though I bring it up only because it's billed as a space combat MMO. It has a development team of 4 people. It's the only example that's caught my eye and hasn't been a large development production.

 

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I remember having to struggle to free up just enough of that 640K of system memory to get some games to run because they wouldn't just use the extended memory, no matter how many MBs there were...

Goodbye may seem forever
Farewell is like the end
But in my heart's the memory
And there you'll always be
-- The Fox and the Hound

 

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I keep meaning to download the Saga, now that it's finally done and ready. It's almost criminal that I haven't yet, considering that I have the first three games and the Kilrathi Saga bundle/re-release and Privateer and Academy and Armada, for God's sake...

I miss when Origin made great games, and wasn't just the name for EA's bad imitation of Steam.

My characters at Virtueverse
Faces of the City

 

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Likewise, I'm a little tired with the gaming industry as well.
EA in particular disappointed me alot with what they did to ME3 as well as how they butchered Sims series for me.

After COX is being axed I realized my faith in NCSOFT is actually quite misplaced, given the fact that NCSOFT have done the same to Tabula Rasa, Exteel and AutoAssault.

Anyway I might look into Indie Developers or I might just cut down on my gaming tremendously and look real life. There are many other things to do besides video games. Such as traveling & food.

I will miss you City of Heroes..

 

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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba View Post
I've played all of those except Planescape. Got anything released since 2005 by chance?
Tried Neverwinter Nights 2? It's not quite as good as Baldur's Gate 1&2, but for me it brought back the same overall experience and was well worth the pennies I paid for it during a Steam Sale (though it seems to be gone from Steam, at least in the EU). I enjoyed it a fair bit more than the first NWN.

(and I'd say Planescape is worth trying even now, unless they're gonna do an enhanced edition of that too to hold out for)

 

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Dragon Age 2 burned me out a bit when it came out because of how disappointing it was compared to the first game.

Mass Effect 3's ending bummed me way out.

The eventual decline of SWTOR and it's generally un-fun gameplay (to me!) burned me out.

And now that CoH is getting cancelled without so much as an explanation...I'm getting very burned out.

Honestly, the only things I play these days are CoH and Skyrim.

I haven't felt this let down since they cancelled Farscape after the season 4 cliffhanger.

 

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There's an awful lot of tripe on the market these days. Fortunately stuff that I like, like Borderlands 2, Darksiders 2, TF: Fall of Cybertron, Halo 4, Assassin's Creed 3 , Bioshock Infinite and whathaveyou are still coming.

But there are so many generic FPS games out there. A lot of 3PS too. With CoH looking like being shut I know the MMO industry is pretty much dead to me, unless Transformers Universe pulls something spectacular out of it's hat. The only other game that holds me is World of Tanks, and that's nothing like CoH.

Oh and, for the record, EA can go find a gigantic, reeking, spiky, flame filled, snake infested, pus-ridden pit of Eternal Damnation to go throw itself into. I will never forgive them for Mass Effect 3. Never. The ME series should have been the Star Wars of a generation. And it wasn't. It oh so wasn't.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

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I don't think I've ever used Charismatic to describe a video game, but, that's the impression the BL2 gives me.

Some CoH friends tried to lasso me into WoT, and despite me apparently being really good at it, I can't really get into it.

 

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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba View Post
I'm guessing that this is because I'm an old fogy pining away for days long gone.
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. It's why the Steam Greenlight is full of "challenging 8-bit retro platformers." I'm afraid I can't join you in that, though, Bubba. I have what I'd describe as "counter-nostalgia" - I tend to remember games of the past as being inferior to games of the future, largely because I will often go back and play them. I used to think that the Lost Vikings was a superior game to its predecessor... Until I found it on FreeOldies.com and remembered just how **** gaming at the time was. Occasionally, I'll go back to the Prince of Persia 2 and remember exactly why I never finished it - because it's bugged and not very good. Sure, it was better than everything at the time, but that doesn't make it good NOW.

About as far as my nostalgia will go is old Capcom Arcade games, like Marvel vs. Capcom and Knights of the Round, or old SNK gems like Metal Slug, but only up to the second or at most third game. Maybe older Blizzard titles, like Blackthorne. Possibly Commander Keen games. Maybe I won't see them as so damn difficult now that I'm not eight years old and actually speak English.

However, if we're talking about business models, I'd say today's MMOs are better than a lot of the crap we got back then. The 90s, especially, were rife with crap, rushed, bugged titles. Anyone remember Fallout 2 without any of the subsequent patches? These days, if you buy a game, you kind of expect it to work and not crash of its own volitions. Back in the 90s, when I bought a game, whether it worked or not was a crapshot. Sometimes I didn't have the right hardware, sometimes I didn't have the right software, sometimes I didn't have enough EMS or XMS or what have you. And that's just trying to run shovelware the calibre of Action 52, or trying to win unwinnable games like Rick Dangerous or Dangerous Dave.

I'm not a fan of selling games to me in little bitty pieces, but if City of Heroes showed me one thing, it makes for better customization and a greater chance I could get what I wanted. Since my tastes are naturally counter-popularity, that's not as easy as you'd think. I'm always looking for something "different," and it's much easier to find this in a weird DLC costume set than in a whole game's overriding thematic.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

 

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Originally Posted by Biowraith View Post
(and I'd say Planescape is worth trying even now, unless they're gonna do an enhanced edition of that too to hold out for)
They want to, and they have the source code. It depends on how well BGEE and BG2EE do.

@Quasadu

"We must prepare for DOOM and hope for FREEM." - SirFrederick

 

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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow View Post
These days, if you buy a game, you kind of expect it to work and not crash of its own volitions. Back in the 90s, when I bought a game, whether it worked or not was a crapshot. Sometimes I didn't have the right hardware, sometimes I didn't have the right software, sometimes I didn't have enough EMS or XMS or what have you. And that's just trying to run shovelware the calibre of Action 52, or trying to win unwinnable games like Rick Dangerous or Dangerous Dave.

I'm not a fan of selling games to me in little bitty pieces-
Then I'm amazed you're still sane. That's only gotten WORSE since then. Game buggy as hell on release? Never mind, release it anyway, maybe do a patch later because it's dead easy to patch stuff now with everything on the net. Full game on release? Lolnope Day-1 DLC that's on disc locked. Expansion packs? What are they?

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger View Post
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon View Post
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

 

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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
Then I'm amazed you're still sane. That's only gotten WORSE since then. Game buggy as hell on release? Never mind, release it anyway, maybe do a patch later because it's dead easy to patch stuff now with everything on the net. Full game on release? Lolnope Day-1 DLC that's on disc locked. Expansion packs? What are they?
I got pissed off with Temple of The Eternal Night D&D Game. Played it for 100+ hours, got up to a point which would crash the game and computer.

There were no patches that fixed that problem.

Solution:

Restart the game.

 

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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha View Post
Then I'm amazed you're still sane. That's only gotten WORSE since then. Game buggy as hell on release? Never mind, release it anyway, maybe do a patch later because it's dead easy to patch stuff now with everything on the net. Full game on release? Lolnope Day-1 DLC that's on disc locked. Expansion packs? What are they?
I'm not communicating the problem properly. I'd buy one of those pirated "game compilation" CDs and of, say, 150 games, I'd be able to make, say, 20-30 work, and of those maybe two or three would actually be worth playing. I really need to dig out my friend's Лучшие Игры 100 and see if I can't get any of them to run. For any Crusader: No Regret or Lode Runner: The Legend Returns there are 98 crap games that I honestly can't even remember the titles of. Some don't run at all, some run and crash, some run with glitches, some just plain old suck and so forth.

Fallout 2 was HIDEOUS with bugs. Every so often, my car would disappear so I can't get into it, and I'd have to leave the zone and come back in again. I bought a battery for it so it'd run longer, but I couldn't install it because the game said I needed to install a battery. A quest became uncompletable because the part I was sent to retrieve, I stole by pickpocketing the person who had it. Suddenly, the person I was supposed to take it to didn't acknowledge I had the part and the person I stole it from wouldn't give me the conversation option to ask for it, even when I "pickpocketed" the part back on his person. And that game had ridiculous save file bloat. At first save files started small, mere KB in size. I only realised something was wrong when I ran out of hard drive space and realised the game's save files had bloated to over 30MB. Hell if I know why.

Or how about Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura? That game had numerous quests that could never end and, famously, the MAIN quest couldn't proceed if you took one of the perks the game offered you - "allergic to magic," which prevented you from equipping a magic medallion needed to progress the game. Combat was glitchy as hell.

Even decent games had a crap shot of running. For instance, the 1989 Prince of Persia game. I was running it on an EGA 16-colour monitor. The first three levels of "dungeon" worked just fine, but as soon as you stepped onto level 4, the "palace level," I saw a muddled mess of polygons that made playing the game impossible. The old 1996 NBA game wouldn't even run, and for half of my old DOS games, I had to run selective startup and turn off autoexec.bat items to free up enough EMS, even though I didn't know what that meant or what I was turning off. I STILL don't know what the hell I did to get that to run

Yes, games today launch with bugs and their release ethics aren't top notch, but at least they START. If you buy a game and it doesn't run on your PC at all, you can take it back, or at the very least you can be angry on the Internet and people will understand. When I bought a game back in 1994 and it didn't run, I just shrugged because half the games I had didn't run. These days, we expect games to work, we expect customer support and we expect patches. There was a time when patches didn't exist, customer support didn't exist and whether your game ran on your computer was luck of the draw. That we can get angry at a game not running today is a sign of significant improvement.

It's a lot like me going back to the original Diablo because Diablo 2 pissed me off so much, and realising the graphics are ****, all the weapons and armour sets look the same, combat is horrid and the game isn't nearly as good as I remember it. I strongly suggest you check FreeOldies or Abandonia and try some of your old favourite games. You just try getting anything made since 1994 to run AND have sound, then see how buggy those old games are. And I hope you know what your sound card's IRQ and DMA are, because I had to find that out by trial and error. And no, I don't mean this as a challenge - a lot of old games are still great and work with no issue in DOSBox. Hell, 1989''s Blockout will work even under windows with no issues, and it's a damn fun game. But trying to find an old game that's as good as you remember it AND actually runs is a sobering experience.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

 

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Originally Posted by LittleDavid View Post
Also, for anyone who's a fan of Wing Commander like I am, I recommend the Wing Commander Saga. It's a fan game, a full-length campaign set during the time of Wing Commander III, developed with the Freespace 2 engine, and has taken about as much time to develop as City of Heroes has been around. For a game running on an engine that old, it looks pretty darned sweet.
I love you.

Seriously, thank you for the heads up. Wing Commander was the shiz.

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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze View Post
Nice build

 

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Originally Posted by CatMan View Post
Indie developers.

Like: Mojang

If I was going to develop a game, I would do it along the lines of Minecraft and avoid the producers. Notch essentially self-published the game.
Minecraft is the other game I play a lot.

I was never very good at the First Person Shooter and Real Time Strategy games. As I'm getting older I don't even try any more.

What I'm looking for in a game today is:
1) Ability to play with friends.
2) Either allow you to create your own content, or lot's and lot's of content.
3) No long learning curve or grind.

I don't care so much about the graphics (see Minecraft), even though I do have a high end system and played CoH in Ultra at 1080p easily.

There are a lot of people nowadays, in their 30's like me, with jobs and money to spend who grew up on games in the eighties and nineties and now just want to be a "casual gamer" as the WoW crowd would call it.

I wish I discovered City of Heroes sooner, I've been here less than a year.

Don't let my Premium status fool you, I did my part to support this game. I got to Tier 9 in 9 months. I was only unlucky enough to have my subscription lapse for the last week of August, while I was on holidays.

Any suggestions for another game are welcome. Especially something with good stories. The stories in this game were the most immersive I encountered since the MYST series.

 

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Originally Posted by Obitus View Post
I love you.

Seriously, thank you for the heads up. Wing Commander was the shiz.
Don't forget Privateer. Found that tweaked version for my dad (73 year old dad) when he offhandedly mentioned he missed playing it. He was very happy. Runs fine in Win7.

Be well, people of CoH.