Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[sodaboard]

XCOM mentioned.
proceeding to post the video:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK4ouRWGHHI

everything in xcom came down to whether or not the funny numbers would play in your favor
utterly ridiculous

 

[SIMIΔN]

It's the same reason that X-com gets meme'd on because you can somehow miss point blank shots with a shotgun.

I think that's an issue with it being turn based. In reality, the enemy wouldn't be routed in place, they'd be weaving and attacking simultaneously. It's hard to shoot accurately when claws are coming at you from all angles.
Gameplay wise, I'm not sure about the mechanics for xcom1 but in xcom2, accuracy was capped at 95%, so 1/20 chance of missing, but even on hard there was a secret bonus if the player was losing, as clutch shots make players feel happier.

The pip boy is based. Genuine form over function archaic design that brings a tear to my eye. I'm surprised that Bethesda has continued to use it in lieu of a troon designed minimalist UI but they've settled on it being a marketing gimmick with the FO4 IRL stick-your-phone-in piece of shit toy so it's never going away now.

I like the look of the pipboy, but hotkeys and sorting are good QoL features.

there's TTW too because people can't stand the overall shittiness of fallout 3 and would rather play it on NV.

FO3 is so uninteresting that I don't even bother with TTW.

You're right, but I guess people wanted more 'dungeons' to explore with the vegas mechanics.

a funny thing, one of the most adopted mods in NV is the UI change to make it more like fallout 4 even though fallout 4 is worse??

Fallout 4 had the best UI but fell short in other areas. It's still my second favourite Fallout game.

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

I think that's an issue with it being turn based. In reality, the enemy wouldn't be routed in place, they'd be weaving and attacking simultaneously. It's hard to shoot accurately when claws are coming at you from all angles.
Gameplay wise, I'm not sure about the mechanics for xcom1 but in xcom2, accuracy was capped at 95%, so 1/20 chance of missing, but even on hard there was a secret bonus if the player was losing, as clutch shots make players feel happier.

Yes and i am saying that is an advantage to how isometric stuff is portrayed. You can kind of just excuse that not every little detail is animated.

 

[Dead Lion]

That leaves what? Sea of Thieves, Borderlands 4, and Payday 3? All games I hear are junk. Supposedly they got better with patches, but a polished turd is still a turd.

There’s darktide, DRG and probably my favourite out recently, crime boss : rockay city.

Despite the retarded title the actual game design is rock solid, and it has a stupid fun rougelike mode for single player. It definitely runs circles around payday 3 and I’ve played both. You’ll have to suffer through some god awful voice acting though.

New adventures await buddy.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

Divinity, for the king and BG3 are good co-op games. Div 1 and 2 are great old school RPGs with throw back puzzles, cracking fights and set pieces and a genuinely fun without-being-autistically-complex character builder.

XCom2 was fucking garbage made for the wankers who moan about TBC in a TBC game and want autistic action instead.
FF7 remake was soulless trash and the action/wannabe turn based mechanic is autistic aids on crack. Fucking wank.

 

[Internet-Based Lobotomy]

You can scream to the hills a thousand times about how much better Morrowind is over Skyrim, yet the results and the profits speak for themselves.

That Skyrim had much more mass appeal than Morrowind? That doesn't mean it's a good game (which just depends on your own opinion anyways). I know people claim it's "contrarian" to just not like something that's popular but this is the unpopular opinions thread.

I still remember people complaining about Dishonored for "dumb" AI because you could keep making a noise and they'd investigate it every time, or because of some obscure bug would allow you to do something dumb...

That opinion might be unpopular because there's 12 years between those games and the examples you thought of seem rather forgivable when it comes to actual gameplay.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

That Skyrim had much more mass appeal than Morrowind? That doesn't mean it's a good game (which just depends on your own opinion anyways). I know people claim it's "contrarian" to just not like something that's popular but this is the unpopular opinions thread.

Except it had the staying power of a good game, the mass appeal of a good game, and the sales numbers of a good game. Would a bad game get ported to different consoles, to be bought over and over again by people who already played the original?

Skyrim was so good, that even Japanese developers who have made plenty of good games in the past started cribbing from Skyrim's formula. When the star pupils of the class start copying your homework, you know you've got it made.

Again, if it was so bad, it would've tanked like Concord instead of making Todd Howard six wazillion dollars. The people have spoken with their wallets.

Most 90s PC games are treated like this, but Thief is one of the worst. I still remember people complaining about Dishonored for "dumb" AI because you could keep making a noise and they'd investigate it every time, or because of some obscure bug would allow you to do something dumb. But when you point out the AI in thief can bump into and still not find you, or that you can run around archers to get them to shoot themselves, those issues don't count and I'm being a mean cherry picker.

It always ends like this. You get some asshole claiming that some popular games are bad, but their example of what a great game is winds up being some broken mess that would've been laughable even in its time.

I've played games from the 90s; games like Super Mario World which had superior stage design, or games like Starcraft which had balance and a serviceable enemy AI that will gut you if you don't know what you're doing. The games they're propping up, I would've laughed at them back in the 90s, and I'm laughing at them now. Thief would be one of them. If a game is so broken that I can have an enemy soldier unalive himself with his own arrows, that is not good game design. They need to go back to the drawing board. I know what great games from the 90s look like, that isn't it.

Same thing with a game like Morrowind; I played RPGs from that same era, from JRPGs like FFX to WRPGs like KOTOR, both of which were far better designed and far better to play. At least I don't miss when I aim dead-center at a target and attack; you see the enemy character sidestepping or your shot missing him when you miss. I saw Morrowind as a minor curiosity back in the 2000s, and that's what it is to me-a curiosity. Even back then, when its fanboys were claiming that it was state-of-the-art, I could find games in the same era and genre that looked and played way better.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

Skyrim was so good, that even Japanese developers who have made plenty of good games in the past started cribbing from Skyrim's formula. When the star pupils of the class start copying your homework, you know you've got it made.

That's not really proof of anything since Japanese devs, even ones who have made multiple great games I like, almost all have retarded inferiority complexes when it comes to Western AAA games and will praise the most banal goyslop as some kind of artistic achievement because it has pretty graphics and sold a lot of copies.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

That's not really proof of anything since Japanese devs, even ones who have made multiple great games I like, almost all have retarded inferiority complexes when it comes to Western AAA games and will praise the most banal goyslop as some kind of artistic achievement because it has pretty graphics and sold a lot of copies.

Most of them have the opposite; they have a very entrenched superiority complex where they ignore all foreign influences until their shareholders tell them otherwise.

For example, even at the height of Bioware's fame and success, there's practically almost no major Japanese RPG maker that decided to crib from their style of making games. Even when Bioware was hot shit to the point where gamers believed they could do no wrong, the Japanese devs couldn't care less.

The same thing happened with Halo during the Bungie era. Japanese game devs couldn't be bothered to give a wet fart about it despite the fact that Halo online matches ruled the online gaming circuit in the West, nor did they care that Halo became as famous as Star Wars. Frankly, I think the only reason they care about Star Wars was that it was partially inspired by Japanese influences, and they could always be counted on to accept that form of flattery.

Then they saw how many times Skyrim was sold and re-sold, again and again on different platforms, and I imagine their shareholders sat them down and asked "Look at all the money Bethesda is making. One game making over a billion dollars. Why don't we have something like that?" The only reason they started copying Todd Howard's homework was because he was making the kind of money that they wish they had. And the only reason that was happening was because the game was just that good, people kept buying it.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

Most of them have the opposite; they have a very entrenched superiority complex where they ignore all foreign influences until their shareholders tell them otherwise. For example, even at the height of Bioware's fame and success, there's practically almost no major Japanese RPG maker that decided to crib from their style of making games. Even when Bioware was hot shit to the point where gamers believed they could do no wrong, the Japanese devs couldn't care less.

Then they saw how many times Skyrim was sold and re-sold again on different platforms, and I imagine their shareholders sat them down and asked "why don't we have something like that?"

I've head this stereotype before, and I see no real truth in it. I don't feel like trying to dig up sources, but I remember seeing tons of statements by Japanese praising or saying they took influence from the most random shit like Assassin's Creed or some open world game. Not to mention Japanese RPG devs way back in the 80s and early 90s weren't shy about saying they were ripping off Wizardry and Ultima. If anything, Americans have a superiority complex considering American branches to Japanese companies are always trying to take over decision making powers they shouldn't have and will whine about racism if the Japanese HQ ever slaps them into place.

I find it odd that the main argument for your view is Mass Effect. JRPGs and Bioware games were very divergent from one another at that point, of course they weren't going to completely change how they looked at designing RPGs because the first Mass Effect did well. This is a just regurgitated rhetoric from old-ass game journalism articles from circa 2010 where journos would would jerk off American game devs' egos by vomiting up some shit about Mass Effect being a godsend and FF13 being shit so therefore American games have finally proved themselves superior to Japanese games and everyone should admit it. A reminder that Mass Effect eventually shit itself with third game and isn't even wholly looked back on fondly because of that.

And guess what, despite your statement about share holders badgering them to copy successful games, JRPGs never tried to be like Mass Effect. Japanese games eventually started copying Skyrim and other open world slop. And so did Bioware, for that matter.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

Skyrim is a shite game but a fun sandbox. There's about 50 hours worth of content before it gets boring, but those 50 hours are quiet fun. Just mooching about to the music and world is great,the mods make it better.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

A reminder that Mass Effect eventually shit itself with third game and isn't even wholly looked back on fondly because of that.

Er, no. That pretty much tells me you didn't see the actual fan reaction to it. The people loved most of the third game and just hated the ending. Hell, most people were OK with the third game up until the starchild showed up and their three games' worth of choices came down to with color the ending screen was. But prior to that, 99.9% of the game was loved. Hence why fans campaigned to change the ending instead of writing off the game altogether.

I've head this stereotype before, and I see no real truth in it. I don't feel like trying to dig up sources, but I remember seeing tons of statements by Japanese praising or saying they took influence from the most random shit like Assassin's Creed or some open world game. Not to mention Japanese RPG devs way back in the 80s and early 90s weren't shy about saying they were ripping off Wizardry and Ultima. If anything, Americans have a superiority complex considering American branches to Japanese companies are always trying to take over decision making powers they shouldn't have and will whine about racism if the Japanese HQ ever slaps them into place.

Not what I've seen. Ever since FF7 became a household name in RPGs, the Japs have stopped taking influences from WRPGs and instead delved more into anime-style plots and action. They basically built themselves a bubble and pretended that nothing outside existed, only to stop once they saw Todd Howard making a billion dollars with a single game. Guys like Spoony and Razorfist who hated JRPGs noted how insular Japanese game design got by the late 90s and early 2000s. And while I don't agree with them on everything, I did see what they were talking about.

I find it odd that the main argument for your view is Mass Effect. JRPGs and Bioware games were very divergent from one another at that point, of course they weren't going to completely change how they looked at designing RPGs because the first Mass Effect did well. This is a just regurgitated rhetoric from old-ass game journalism articles from circa 2010 where journos would would jerk off American game devs' egos by vomiting up some shit about Mass Effect being a godsend and FF13 being shit so therefore American games have finally proved themselves superior to Japanese games and everyone should admit it.

Yes, and so was Skyrim. Skyrim took no notes from Japanese game development, it was way more free-wheeling and versatile than most JRPGs, and it took its cues from other western titles like New Vegas and Oblivion. Skyrim is just as divergent from the JRPG formula as Mass Effect was; in fact, there are times when I see more in common between Mass Effect and Skyrim than any other JRPG. Give the original Mass Effect a few more sidequests and some tweaks, and it could easily have been Skyrim in Space. But you know what Skyrim did that Mass Effect did not? Make a billion fucking dollars from one title alone. That's why the Japs copy Skyrim while they ignored Mass Effect.

And guess what, despite your statement about share holders badgering them to copy successful games, JRPGs never tried to be like Mass Effect. Japanese games eventually started copying Skyrim and other open world slop. And so did Bioware, for that matter.

That was my point. The Japs ignored Mass Effect while they copied Skyrim, because Skyrim made so much money. And it did so because so many gamers saw that it was good and had a great time playing it. More so than Halo, Mass Effect, or the previous Elder Scrolls games.

And again, the naysayers towards Skyrim promote broken games as something far better, when those games were ignorable, broken experiences even back then. For every time someone says Morrowind was great for early 2000s standards, or Daggerfall was great for 90s standards, I can just remember the games that came out during those years when I was there, and how I'd be laughing my ass at games like Daggerfall and Morrowind when comparing them to games like Diablo 2 or KOTOR.

 

[Judge Dredd]

Oh I dont reccomend lethal, I said repo for a reason. Lethal lacks any kind of playerside depth or mechanics, you run and jump and thats about it. Theres 1 ot 2 low tier enemies you can hit with a shovel.

None of these titles "replaced" another. If you only play a game because it's popular there's something wrong with your brain.

My mistake. I had assumed REPO was just a Lethal Company mixed with a bit of Phasmophobia.

Honestly, I don't mind flavour of the month games since I got into Vampire Survivors after it's peak. I've been putting some thought into past FotM games like Thief Simulator or Treading Card Store Simulator.

My real problem with FotM is the limited shelf life . I bought Lethal Company but have never played it due to everybody being "done" with it. And I can't get anyone to buy into Witch It despite it being a more polished prop-hunt.

anyone still remembers schedule 1? me neither.

I do. Mainly for being a stick in the eye of AAA gaming.

It's on my wishlist. I'd just like it to be finished first.

And guess what, despite your statement about share holders badgering them to copy successful games, JRPGs never tried to be like Mass Effect. Japanese games eventually started copying Skyrim and other open world slop. And so did Bioware, for that matter.

I think it's more the timing. Back at their peak, Japanese devs refused to copy WRPGs because they "couldn't tell a story" if the player had any choice. It was the era of shitty corridor JRPGs. It wasn't until Zelda Breath of the Wild towards the end of the next console generation that they started to take ideas from them,.

Skyrim is a shite game but a fun sandbox. There's about 50 hours worth of content before it gets boring, but those 50 hours are quiet fun. Just mooching about to the music and world is great,the mods make it better.

Same with Fallout 4.

I know fans keep demanding a better story and stronger adherence to lore, but I disagree. What FO4 needs is more, and bigger, dungeons. Fallout 4 is at it's best when you're just walking around, raiding for scrap, and using that to upgrade gear (and build settlements if you have sim settlements 2). What it could do with is something like the NV mods World of Pain or Mighty Dungeons. FO4 keeps interrupting that with uninteresting story.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Skyrim is a shite game but a fun sandbox. There's about 50 hours worth of content before it gets boring, but those 50 hours are quiet fun. Just mooching about to the music and world is great,the mods make it better.

If a game gave you 50 hours of joy, how is it shite? Many great games give people 8-20 hours of joy before they move on. Skyrim players spend 50, 100, even 200 hours mucking about before they finish or start a new playthrough. Would it not count as a great game if people are willing to play it for that long?

 

[Retarded Weeb]

Not what I've seen. Ever since FF7 became a household name in RPGs, the Japs have stopped taking influences from WRPGs and instead delved more into anime-style plots and action. They basically built themselves a bubble and pretended that nothing outside existed, only to stop once they saw Todd Howard making a billion dollars with a single game. Guys like Spoony and Razorfist who hated JRPGs noted how insular Japanese game design got by the late 90s and early 2000s. And while I don't agree with them on everything, I did see what they were talking about.

Why would JRPGs being taking influence from WRPGs in the late 90s to early 2000s? The CRPG genre was a winding down for a while in the mid 90s or so, and the games that had success in the late 90s to early 2000s weren't selling as much as the biggest JRPGs were, and were especially unknown in Japan. If anything, why weren't WRPGs at the time taking more from JRPGs? Why are you expecting this to be a one-way street? In what way really were JRPGs more "insular" than WRPGs at the end of the day?

That was my point. The Japs ignored Mass Effect while they copied Skyrim, because Skyrim made so much money. And it did so because so many gamers saw that it was good and had a great time playing it. More so than Halo, Mass Effect, or the previous Elder Scrolls games.

They started copying Skyrim because everyone was. Or more so, everyone in all countries started shoving open worlds into every fucking game ever, regardless of how well it fit.

And again, the naysayers towards Skyrim promote broken games as something far better, when those games were ignorable, broken experiences even back then. For every time someone says Morrowind was great for early 2000s standards, or Daggerfall was great for 90s standards, I can just remember the games that came out during those years when I was there, and how I'd be laughing my ass at games like Daggerfall and Morrowind when comparing them to games like Diablo 2 or KOTOR.

I'd rather play a broken game than a shallow one. If that's an unpopular opinion, well then I'm in the right thread.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

I know fans keep demanding a better story and stronger adherence to lore, but I disagree. What FO4 needs is more, and bigger, dungeons. Fallout 4 is at it's best when you're just walking around, raiding for scrap, and using that to upgrade gear (and build settlements if you have sim settlements 2). What it could do with is something like the NV mods World of Pain or Mighty Dungeons. FO4 keeps interrupting that with uninteresting story.

Pretty true. Fallout 4 is a terrible fallout game but as a sandbox it's aight. I disagree on the settlement though, that was a crap idea and poorly implemented. Having one main base is fine, but running around the waste saving places was tedious af (i let them all die)

Roaming around killing shit and collecting scrap to sell to survive would be a fun mode. Fallout/Skyrim meets Minecraft.

 

[Duane Dibbley]

If a game gave you 50 hours of joy, how is it shite?

Because the game itself is shite. I've probably got 300 hours in skyrim and have never taken the main quest further than the greybeard mountain. I have no interest.

as a lego set of 'make your own adventure' it's an enjoyable backdrop.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Because the game itself is shite. I've probably got 300 hours in skyrim and have never taken the main quest further than the greybeard mountain. I have no interest.

as a lego set of 'make your own adventure' it's an enjoyable backdrop.

If a game is shite, you'd have tossed it away. The correct way of phrasing it is that the main story mode is shite for you, but the game and the mechanics are far more fun to fuck around with.

The main quest is just one of many quests you can take. I've seen many playthroughs that ignore it entirely. Hell, I did the same for both Skyrim and Oblivion; I ignored the main quest as much as I could until I beat all the guild quests and DLCs and fucked around for hundreds of hours. Then I did the same thing for New Vegas and Fallout 3. Ignoring the story to fuck around is a proud Bethesda tradition at this point. I only do the main campaign once I've done all the fucking around I could do.

 

[Gog & Magog]

XCom2 was fucking garbage made for the wankers who moan about TBC in a TBC game and want autistic action instead.

I enjoyed Xcom 2 after stuffing it to the brim with random ass mods. Wish there were more Xcom-likes around.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Why would JRPGs being taking influence from WRPGs in the late 90s to early 2000s? The CRPG genre was a winding down for a while in the mid 90s or so, and the games that had success in the late 90s to early 2000s weren't selling as much as the biggest JRPGs were, and were especially unknown in Japan. If anything, why weren't WRPGs at the time taking more from JRPGs? Why are you expecting this to be a one-way street? In what way really were JRPGs more "insular" than WRPGs at the end of the day?

Weren't you just talking about JRPGs taking influences from the West? What I said was that when FF7 showed a formula that was far successful than any WRPG, the Japanese devs became insular and didn't give a shit about western RPG influence. Not in the late 90s or early 2000s, not even in the late 2000s when WRPGs were becoming popular again. Only when Skyrim made a billion dollars did they change their mind.

They started copying Skyrim because everyone was. Or more so, everyone in all countries started shoving open worlds into every fucking game ever, regardless of how well it fit.

And pray tell, why were they doing that, when they ignored other successful WRPGs like Mass Effect and New Vegas? Answer: neither of those titles had the profits or the staying power Skyrim had.

I'd rather play a broken game than a shallow one. If that's an unpopular opinion, well then I'm in the right thread.

I suppose you are. But given how many even here echo your tune, it's not an unpopular opinion in the least. Also, a shallow game wouldn't be able to keep players playing for 50-200 hours. Most good games have the attention of the average gamer from between 8 to 20 hours before they move on. A shallow game is a game they'd throw away before the 4-hour mark. Skyrim obviously isn't that, otherwise millions wouldn't have spent dozens or even hundreds of hours in a single playthrough.

And again, most of those "broken" games that people claim are better than Skyrim weren't even the top dogs during their day. I've played great games from the 90s, I played great games from the 2000s, broken games like Daggerfall and Morrowind would pale in comparison to the great games I played during those years. If those broken games landed on my lap in those years, I'd probably fuck around with them for a while before admitting they had bad game design and go back to playing the good games of those times.