We are in the dark ages of gaming.

[Zombie Enthusiast]

Creativity is stifled to a crazy extreme these days, because we can't offend anyone or risk having some perpetually offended weirdo with blue hair that's addicted to SSRIs complain about something. That would be a big no-no. Games have to have the same monotonous gameplay loop or the studio could risk losing out on money -- according to some coke-sniffing CEO who has never played a game in his life. You can't do anything new or at least try it because the budget for developing a game has sky-rocketed to unimaginable heights, even though no one has ever asked them to do such a thing. Games must be saddled with a bunch of useless features that no one actually cares about and most disable it anyway upon playing, like chromatic aberration, film grain, motion blur, etc. Got to have another MOBA or hero shooter, even though the market is already saturated with them. Why not have five more, right? A game with a dedicated single player campaign that last 20 hours? Wth are you talking about? Better make it into yet another open world game that plays exactly like the last 20 open world games you played before, just to be safe.

I'm not gonna lie: If the industry collapses today, I wouldn't shed a tear. They brought it upon themselves.

[BJWyler]

Incorrect, bub. We are actually in the highlight of the gaming age.

I, for one, am glad that there is such a plethora of choice on Steam, although my wallet may disagree. If one sees nothing but trash, then one needs to look in the mirror, because not only am I finding treasures on Steam on a daily basis, but I'm practically tripping over them in my perusals.

I've been gaming since before PCs were a thing. To me gaming today is levels above what it was 20 or 30 years ago. And that is in thanks directly to development studios, indies, and platforms like Steam.

Pound for pound, it is cheaper to be a gamer now than it was 40 years ago. I can buy games for $20 that will give me dozens upon dozens of hours (if not hundreds) of entertainment. Back in the day, I would be lucky if I could get more than 30 hours of playtime out of a $40 or $50 game.

At least half the games on my wishlist are ones that I am looking forward to coming out in the next year or two. There is a plethora of choice right at my fingertips. The Indie scene is thriving with thousands of quality games and more coming out every week.

We have continued to push the boundaries of technology to bring about the most amazing games. I can drive a load of TVs to California in the morning and slay a band of orcs with people from all over the world after dinner. I can top the leader board and pull out a win in a battle on the sea with a bunch of random noobs, or fight a robotic dinosaur in a post apocalyptic world on my own.

No, my sweet summer child. Gaming is far from dead, and platforms like Steam are far from trash. In fact gaming has never been more alive and a treasure to enjoy, despite what the drones of the bigoted Group Think Overlords regurgitate. More people are able to enjoy this luxury hobby than ever before and find games that appeal and call out to them. The industry is far from collapse, and no amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who refuse to live in the 21st Century and only desperately want to return to the dark ages will ever change that.

[ReBoot]

There's a huge crap-ton-giga-load of creativity in gaming. There's a huge selection of games NOT offering the same (boring) gameplay loop over and over again.

Why don't you even care about the tenth/hundredth/thousandth hero shootet/MOBA? Why even care about games riddled with pointless features?

I mean, yeah, there is games ruined by gsmification of all things (like reward streaks & similar ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥). But there's also heaps of games without any of this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's heaps of games offering hours of SP campaign content, not "live services". If you can't be bothered looking at those, that's a "you" problem.

Gaming is fine. If you, however, decide to only look at the bad parts of it, that's your choice.

[Mathius]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

There's a huge crap-ton-giga-load of creativity in gaming. There's a huge selection of games NOT offering the same (boring) gameplay loop over and over again.

Did it ever occur to you that these gameloops were popular because people like them and the changes that are being made are not popular because people don't like them?

It's a crazy concept, I know.

You guys love to say, "tRy INdy GaMES!" but most Indie studios don't make the types of games I like to play, and as soon as one made one close and I offered criticisms, the fanbase called me a troll, told me to "git gud", and the name calling got worse from there.

[wesnef]

Originally posted by Zombie Enthusiast:

Creativity is stifled to a crazy extreme these days, because we can't offend anyone .

Yep, creativity is being totally stifled these days, because of the constantly-offended Angry Online Dudes, endlessly screaming "woke!" about anything that dares to not be Straight Macho Dude & Big Tits Girl. Biggest bunch of fragile snowflakes history has ever seen.


(really not sure what they have against the punk crowd though. Blue hair, really?)

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Zombie Enthusiast:

Creativity is stifled to a crazy extreme these days, because we can't offend anyone or risk having some perpetually offended weirdo with blue hair that's addicted to SSRIs complain about something. That would be a big no-no. Games have to have the same monotonous gameplay loop or the studio could risk losing out on money -- according to some coke-sniffing CEO who has never played a game in his life. You can't do anything new or at least try it because the budget for developing a game has sky-rocketed to unimaginable heights, even though no one has ever asked them to do such a thing. Games must be saddled with a bunch of useless features that no one actually cares about and most disable it anyway upon playing, like chromatic aberration, film grain, motion blur, etc. Got to have another MOBA or hero shooter, even though the market is already saturated with them. Why not have five more, right? A game with a dedicated single player campaign that last 20 hours? Wth are you talking about? Better make it into yet another open world game that plays exactly like the last 20 open world games you played before, just to be safe.

I'm not gonna lie: If the industry collapses today, I wouldn't shed a tear. They brought it upon themselves.

Quit playing the same mainstream swill you see on Youtube. There's a wealth of indie games which are interesting and worth playing.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Mathius:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

There's a huge crap-ton-giga-load of creativity in gaming. There's a huge selection of games NOT offering the same (boring) gameplay loop over and over again.

Did it ever occur to you that these gameloops were popular because people like them and the changes that are being made are not popular because people don't like them?

It's a crazy concept, I know.

You guys love to say, "tRy INdy GaMES!" but most Indie studios don't make the types of games I like to play, and as soon as one made one close and I offered criticisms, the fanbase called me a troll, told me to "git gud", and the name calling got worse from there.

Did you offer criticism in a polite and constructive manner? Or did you throw a bunch of "This game is trash!" sentences?

[Mathius]

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

Did you offer criticism in a polite and constructive manner? Or did you throw a bunch of "This game is trash!" sentences?

Does it matter on the internet at all these days? Look at your above post that tells people to play Indy games after I already responded to people who tell people to play Indie games.

People don't read and they can't comprehend what they read, so it doesn't matter what I say, how I say it, or what my opinion is.

You just huddle in your tribalist groups and sling words.

If I wasn't so damn bored all the time, I wouldn't even bother.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Mathius:

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

Did you offer criticism in a polite and constructive manner? Or did you throw a bunch of "This game is trash!" sentences?

Does it matter on the internet at all these days? Look at your above post that tells people to play Indy games after I already responded to people who tell people to play Indie games.

People don't read and they can't comprehend what they read, so it doesn't matter what I say, how I say it, or what my opinion is.

You just huddle in your tribalist groups and sling words.

If I wasn't so damn bored all the time, I wouldn't even bother.

It matters. Because feedback is more likely to be taken into consideration if worded POLITELY. As for my own post, I replied to the OP, so unless this is an alt of the OP account, you pretty much crashed a conversation.

[Mathius]

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

It matters. Because feedback is more likely to be taken into consideration if worded POLITELY. As for my own post, I replied to the OP, so unless this is an alt of the OP account, you pretty much crashed a conversation.

Congratulations, you missed the point again.

I can phrase a conversation as politely as possible, but people aren't going to read it that way, they're going to take it as an attack because I don't like the thing that they like and the thing that they like is superior to the thing that I like.

I didn't crash anything. This is how a conversation works. I spoke before you.

You showed up late to the conversation and couldn't be bothered to catch up.

Because obviously your opinion is superior, so you don't need to read what anyone else thinks.

Like I said. Why bother?

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Mathius:

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

It matters. Because feedback is more likely to be taken into consideration if worded POLITELY. As for my own post, I replied to the OP, so unless this is an alt of the OP account, you pretty much crashed a conversation.

Congratulations, you missed the point again.

I can phrase a conversation as politely as possible, but people aren't going to read it that way, they're going to take it as an attack because I don't like the thing that they like and the thing that they like is superior to the thing that I like.

If there aren't indie games you like, well, that's unfortunate. But in the end, it's still your, not everyone's loss. If a game has a community which LIKES it but you are an exception, why would the developer alter the game to cater to you specifically if other players are fine or like it? Maybe you aren't the target audience?

[Mathius]

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

If there aren't indie games you like, well, that's unfortunate. But in the end, it's still your, not everyone's loss. If a game has a community which LIKES it but you are an exception, why would the developer alter the game to cater to you specifically if other players are fine or like it? Maybe you aren't the target audience?

Except that's an obvious contradiction of the original point I responded to, where the poster talked about people being tired of the same gameloops.

The games that I played were part of a very popular gameloop because they're some of the best selling and formerly best game studios of all time. (which is exactly why the indie games don't apply to me)

It was until they started catering to this supposedly new demographic, this "community" you speak of, that they all started losing money, losing credibility, losing their reputations, etc.

In other words, if Indie games were actually following what was popular, there would be more games like the ones I want.

In fact, your whole argument is a contradiction. If they were making games to cater to the community, they wouldn't be Indie studios, they would be rolling in enough money to be legit.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Mathius:

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

If there aren't indie games you like, well, that's unfortunate. But in the end, it's still your, not everyone's loss. If a game has a community which LIKES it but you are an exception, why would the developer alter the game to cater to you specifically if other players are fine or like it? Maybe you aren't the target audience?

Except that's an obvious contradiction of the original point I responded to, where the poster talked about people being tired of the same gameloops.

The games that I played were part of a very popular gameloop because they're some of the best selling and formerly best game studios of all time. (which is exactly why the indie games don't apply to me)

It was until they started catering to this supposedly new demographic, this "community" you speak of, that they all started losing money, losing credibility, losing their reputations, etc.

It would help if you told me which game that is.

[Mathius]

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

It would help if you told me which game that is.

The most recent example is Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. Every youtuber that covers the game is calling it the "Skyrim killer".

The game copied quite a lot from the Bethesda game formula.

I am very interested in the game. Overall, I would very much like to see it succeed.

Specifically, I only played the demo. A demo is obviously supposed to entice you to buy the full game.

The full game itself is in Early Access, which of late is controversial.

But I find the combat to be terrible. The combat physics are slow and not fun. The simple concepts like dodge, parry, and block are not only not explained within the game, but don't function well.

Blocking an attack, for example, takes about 1/3 of your stamina AND does damage to you. While apparently Parry is done by simply tapping block instead of holding it, which is not explained.

Dodge is never brought up at all, and can only be found in game by experimenting with the keys (something that resulted in me consuming every potion I own by mistake), or by going through the key binds (which are broken (I could give examples)).

I was told I needed to "git gud." This is bizarre, because not I did complete the demo, implying that I was "gud." I also previously finished the demo on the 0.7 release. (the newest is 0.9)

SO many people came in to comment something to the effect that Skyrim is a low bar.

This is also bizarre:

1. Skyrim is one of the best selling games of all time.

2. If Skyrim's combat is bad, then that doesn't automatically make FoA good.

3. I asked several times for specific reasons why this game was supposed to be better than Skyrim and received basically crickets or generalizations.

Someone even made the comment that nobody plays Skyrim with "vanilla" combat. _I_ have a combined probably 4000 hrs across 4 versions of Skyrim with the stock combat. (No, I didn't pay for Skyrim 4x. I bought it on PS3, and then Steam. The SE version was free, and so was the Xbox 360 version.)

I also made the mistake of putting down Elden Ring and saying that I play games like this for story because combat is repetitive.

This of course led to a stream of comments saying I should play on easy mode or story mode, etc. Which again misses the point.

If my skill level is an issue, then how did I complete the original God of War on hard, or grow up with the original Ninja Gaiden, etc.

My comments were largely to point out the changes made from 0.7 to 0.9 and how I found them undesirable

Also, I was largely pointing out that if this game is not overrated, then they need a better Demo to showcase what this game is. (which was largely the point of my title.)

[MonkehMaster]

you cant convince those with bias, all they resort to is arguments.

i agree with your post, but its on the big studios that are dying out and their reasons are obvious (greed is the major factor, then comes narratives), the indie are doing great with low prices, zero greed, no bs.

in general, yes the industry is tanking, all due to big studios with massive egos... but the indies will keep it alive, just have to keep them from following the same path.

[The nameless Gamer]

Originally posted by Mathius:

Originally posted by The nameless Gamer:

It would help if you told me which game that is.

The most recent example is Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. Every youtuber that covers the game is calling it the "Skyrim killer".

The game copied quite a lot from the Bethesda game formula.

I am very interested in the game. Overall, I would very much like to see it succeed.

Specifically, I only played the demo. A demo is obviously supposed to entice you to buy the full game.

The full game itself is in Early Access, which of late is controversial.

But I find the combat to be terrible. The combat physics are slow and not fun. The simple concepts like dodge, parry, and block are not only not explained within the game, but don't function well.

Blocking an attack, for example, takes about 1/3 of your stamina AND does damage to you. While apparently Parry is done by simply tapping block instead of holding it, which is not explained.

Dodge is never brought up at all, and can only be found in game by experimenting with the keys (something that resulted in me consuming every potion I own by mistake), or by going through the key binds (which are broken (I could give examples)).

I was told I needed to "git gud." This is bizarre, because not I did complete the demo, implying that I was "gud." I also previously finished the demo on the 0.7 release. (the newest is 0.9)

SO many people came in to comment something to the effect that Skyrim is a low bar.

This is also bizarre:

1. Skyrim is one of the best selling games of all time.

2. If Skyrim's combat is bad, then that doesn't automatically make FoA good.

3. I asked several times for specific reasons why this game was supposed to be better than Skyrim and received basically crickets or generalizations.

Someone even made the comment that nobody plays Skyrim with "vanilla" combat. _I_ have a combined probably 4000 hrs across 4 versions of Skyrim with the stock combat. (No, I didn't pay for Skyrim 4x. I bought it on PS3, and then Steam. The SE version was free, and so was the Xbox 360 version.)

I also made the mistake of putting down Elden Ring and saying that I play games like this for story because combat is repetitive.

This of course led to a stream of comments saying I should play on easy mode or story mode, etc. Which again misses the point.

If my skill level is an issue, then how did I complete the original God of War on hard, or grow up with the original Ninja Gaiden, etc.

My comments were largely to point out the changes made from 0.7 to 0.9 and how I found them undesirable

Also, I was largely pointing out that if this game is not overrated, then they need a better Demo to showcase what this game is. (which was largely the point of my title.)

Sounds like a typical "not the target audience" case for me. I just looked up the game. 85% positive reviews. Means that there is a very satisfied player audience which doesn't share your opinion. It strikes me as if somebody tried playing Touhou and started complaining about too many bullets.