What Games Do You Enjoy?

[Torvus]

I've enjoyed the last couple of fire emblem games well enough, but don't know if I like the direction they are going with them.

I've never played a Fire Emblem game, but from what you've described to me, they're already about a messed up as games can possibly be. What direction could they possible take that's less agreeable?!

They've gotten quite a bit easier. Up until the last two games (I'm counting Fates as a single game), there was a level of meta-tactics involved. Beyond just the single battle you also had to consider the next battle as well. Nearly every weapon and item in the game had durability or otherwise limited number of uses. You had to decide when you wanted to pull out your best weapons, knowing that every swing was wearing it down. With Awakening, this kind of flew out the window. There was a skill that characters could use that, once you'd maxed out your luck stat, meant that their weapons would never degrade. Set them up with legendary weapons and maximum forged silver/brave weapons and let em loose. Not every character could get this skill, so it wasn't necessarily game breaking, but there was also paid DLC (An issue all it's own). Some of these were good and mostly served to flesh out characters, or served homages to the previous games in the series (There was serious consideration on the part of Nintendo that Awakening might end up being the last in the series, so they were going out on a high note, revisiting the glory days of the franchise). Others provided you with loads of gold and items. Now, based on the fact that you had to worry about item logistics over the span of the game, it was necessary to provide more gold and items or else the DLC maps would be too much of a drain for anyone to actually play. However, this also meant that logistics no longer mattered. Running low on gold/weapons? Go do the DLC maps that reward a ridiculous sum of money/items.

Fates comes along and Nintendo still wants to sell DLC, and they already know what this does to durability, so they remove durability from the game. Now to their credit, they didn't just remove durability and call it a day. They made it so that each item had different modifiers and what not so that it wasn't just a simple progression of bronze->iron->steel->silver. Each weapon level now has it's own unique pros and cons. This may end up being acceptable.

I believe every fire emblem game has had relationship values. If units fight alongside each other long enough, they become friends. Sometimes in the epilogue, you might find that some of them get married, or set out on adventures together depending on how well they got along. Fire Emblem IV: Geneology of the Holy War (Best FE game imho at least of those I've played.) had a lot of marriages as having kids was a very big plot point for that game. Awakening also had kids due to the time travel plot. People enjoyed fantasy military eugenics, so they just kind of tacked it on to Fates despite it making zero sense. If that were all, it wouldn't be a problem, but since they have to have all these marriage options, it means that they had to write a lot of dialogue, and in Fates it really felt like they were phoning it in a lot of the times. It resulted in more boring characters. Or at least it seemed that way to me.

I also enjoyed Super Smash Bros Wii U and Rayman Legends.

If you're going to play a Nintendo game, it's GOT to be Pikmin. Although I've only briefly watched my brother play, it's one of the funniest (and coolest) games I've ever seen.

I have played Pikmin. I have not beaten it as it was surprisingly difficult, but I have played it. A good gae.

[Anachronic]

Are Warhammer and Warhammer 40k related?

Warhammer is just straight-up fantasy I think; it all looks pretty cool to me.

Super Smash Bros is awesome! Pikmin is a great suggestion too. I'll have to keep me eyes open for Wii copies to add to the collection. Metroid on Wii is amazing too. FPS works really well with the motion controls.

[Administrator]

Nearly every weapon and item in the game had durability or otherwise limited number of uses. You had to decide when you wanted to pull out your best weapons, knowing that every swing was wearing it down. With Awakening, this kind of flew out the window. There was a skill that characters could use that, once you'd maxed out your luck stat, meant that their weapons would never degrade. Set them up with legendary weapons and maximum forged silver/brave weapons and let em loose.

Ah yes, item decay...an extremely important consideration, from a design perspective. Fire Emblem certainly wasn't the only game out there to ax off this mechanic as time went by. If you ask 75% of players what they think of item decay, their reaction will be, "It flippin' sucks. I want to keep my ELITE SUPER SWORD forever." And so, the design is adjusted, because most people hate item decay.

But, as you correctly identified, removing this simple mechanic takes so much of thinking (and ultimately fun) out of a game. Anti decay kits practically ruined Star Wars Galaxies for similar reasons. And in the long run, some portion of those players who might initially have said, "I hate item decay," will find the experience less satisfying when it's actually removed.

Is this to say that player feedback and requests are to be ignored? Certainly not, but the point here is that sometimes, players might not know exactly what they want. Or rather, they might know what they want, but they might not know how to articulate it in terms of design choices that will work for a particular game.

I really wonder what the specifics were that went into the FE team choosing to nix this mechanic, and whether it was the sort of thing that was driven by test groups or feedback.

Not every character could get this skill, so it wasn't necessarily game breaking, but there was also paid DLC (An issue all it's own).

Uff, now this is much less ambiguous on the good-bad scale for a game, especially when the paid DLC is implemented as pay-to-win microtransactions. For me, this just ruins a game, as it turns the gameplay into the "enter your credit card number adventure". I won't play that. As a game designer, it's very easy to understand why developers incorporate paid DLC into successful products - because each one of those $4.99 maps bought someone a mansion in the Caribbean.

I find my stance toward paid DLC becoming fuzzier when it comes to really significant enhancements to a game, and I think the distinction between a paid DLC and classic "expansions" is somewhat capricious. I don't remember anyone complaining 20 years ago that Brood War was a heinous money-grab, but angst and consternation are the gut reactions to most paid DLC today, no matter how large a change it represents.

Regardless, paid DLC is here to stay for one simple reason: consumers embraced it. It makes money. If nobody bought the DLC, it wouldn't exist, but people do.

Metroid on Wii is amazing too. FPS works really well with the motion controls.

Oh yeah man, when I first heard about the Wii, I figured it would be awesome for FPS sorts of games! I've never really played a Wii, but for some reason, the serious FPS play never seems like it caught on with the console. Why is that? Is the fidelity of the Wii controller insufficient for serious FPS action?

[Anachronic]

I've never really played a Wii, but for some reason, the serious FPS play never seems like it caught on with the console. Why is that? Is the fidelity of the Wii controller insufficient for serious FPS action?

It should have but my theory is that most FPS players are lazy and don't want the exercise. The Wii controller worked great for it! I dug it. Probably one of my funnest FPS memories since being addicted to Heretic and Quake way back in the day.

[Administrator]

It should have but my theory is that most FPS players are lazy and don't want the exercise.

Hahaha, I wouldn't be surprised if this were the case. The concept just seems perfect to me. Do you remember those awesome arcade games that guns looking like uzis mounted to them? Those arcade shooters where you actually point at the screen were amazing. I absolutely loved those things, and it seems like the Wii controller should've been the same!

Probably one of my funnest FPS memories since being addicted to Heretic and Quake way back in the day.

Oh man, original Quake was one of those pioneering sorts of games, and Quake deathmatch is still great. I think the first FPS I ever played online was Team Fortress: Classic, and I have no idea how it was possible, but it worked reasonably well on our 56k connection. That time period was really one of the most important for me as a game player, because the advent of gaming over the internet for me changed everything.

Did you ever do any dial-up gaming, man? I was a fiend on the MSN Zone, TFC servers, and tons of Red Alert: 2 (I think the finest game that Westwood ever made).

[Anachronic]

Did you ever do any dial-up gaming, man? I was a fiend on the MSN Zone, TFC servers, and tons of Red Alert: 2 (I think the finest game that Westwood ever made).

Played Doom and Heretic over dial-up, maybe some Duke Nukem 3D too. Heretic was/still is my favorite FPS. Played the first episode a few years ago on mobile but the app got taken down.

[Administrator]

Heretic was/still is my favorite FPS.

Oh man, I just googled Heretic, and I can't believe I never heard of this one. This appears to be a snazzier version of Doom with some deeper mechanics, and as I read about it on Wikipedia, it did a bunch of ground breaking stuff!

I feel like this is far and away one of the hardest aspects of being a game developer - reaching people who might enjoy your game. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a marketing expert, and I know even less about marketing in the video game domain.

But even as a game consumer, I'm finding out about incredible, amazing, awesome games all the time that I just somehow never heard of. I sometimes wonder whether the proliferation of advertising mediums has made advertising a game harder or easier. In the days of Heretic, your options seemed pretty limited: take out an ad in PC magazine, get a commercial on TV if you've got a big publisher, maybe post on the BBS.

But today, there's this huge sea of options. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, blogs, game journalism websites, Instagram, the Indie Game Database, Steam / its forums, and probably 50 more options that I'm not even aware of, each of which is swamped with a thousand other games that are all scraping and clawing for attention.

As a consumer, at least for me, the end result is that I never hear about / remain unaware of so, so, so many awesome games.

I know I'm getting a bit off-topic there, and perhaps I should make another thread talking about how we all discover new games. My main point here was that there are some really cool games that I've discovered just because of this thread!

[Anachronic]

Heretic was/still is my favorite FPS.

Oh man, I just googled Heretic, and I can't believe I never heard of this one. This appears to be a snazzier version of Doom with some deeper mechanics, and as I read about it on Wikipedia, it did a bunch of ground breaking stuff!

I feel like this is far and away one of the hardest aspects of being a game developer - reaching people who might enjoy your game. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a marketing expert, and I know even less about marketing in the video game domain.

But even as a game consumer, I'm finding out about incredible, amazing, awesome games all the time that I just somehow never heard of. I sometimes wonder whether the proliferation of advertising mediums has made advertising a game harder or easier. In the days of Heretic, your options seemed pretty limited: take out an ad in PC magazine, get a commercial on TV if you've got a big publisher, maybe post on the BBS.

But today, there's this huge sea of options. Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, blogs, game journalism websites, Instagram, the Indie Game Database, Steam / its forums, and probably 50 more options that I'm not even aware of, each of which is swamped with a thousand other games that are all scraping and clawing for attention.

As a consumer, at least for me, the end result is that I never hear about / remain unaware of so, so, so many awesome games.

I know I'm getting a bit off-topic there, and perhaps I should make another thread talking about how we all discover new games. My main point here was that there are some really cool games that I've discovered just because of this thread!

Probably couldn't hurt to start an Outer Colony marketing thread... I'd be interested in reading other people's suggestions ... Saw a Twitter post today for a book called "Hype-Driven Development" as was like, is that a real book or a parody image? Seems like their is something to it regardless what with the big success of Fez and others that gained a lot of publicity over the years before they were released. Something in my brain tells me that it's still really about shelf appeal. Back in the day I used to just buy a lot of games off the shelf because they looked cool. So now having a really cool page for you game with good media on Steam, GOG, Google Play, etc. is so so important. I think that's why you see a lot of devs/publishers using concept art and fancy feature graphics instead of in-game art in their store front images. Like with PC games having these elaborate 3D intros that look awesome, but nothing like the actually gameplay...

[Administrator]

Saw a Twitter post today for a book called "Hype-Driven Development" as was like, is that a real book or a parody image? Seems like their is something to it regardless what with the big success of Fez and others that gained a lot of publicity over the years before they were released. Something in my brain tells me that it's still really about shelf appeal. Back in the day I used to just buy a lot of games off the shelf because they looked cool. So now having a really cool page for you game with good media on Steam, GOG, Google Play, etc. is so so important. I think that's why you see a lot of devs/publishers using concept art and fancy feature graphics instead of in-game art in their store front images. Like with PC games having these elaborate 3D intros that look awesome, but nothing like the actually gameplay...

This is an extremely interesting topic, and while I could probably write a ton about it, I'll just present my concise thoughts. Hype might determine whether a person buys a game, but content defines whether a person enjoys a game. At the end of the day, I'd rather provide a rich, amazing experience for players than to sell a bunch of units using shyster-tier hype. It's a point on which I have to try to hold my tongue to an extent, but there's a severe lack of ethics in the industry with the way some of these developers shamelessly and borderline fraudulently hype their games. And when consumers complain that the released game doesn't mesh with what was promised, these developers appear not to give a damn, and why would they? They're probably kicking it in the Caribbean on a yacht full of bikini models - at that point, what do they care about what a bunch of goofs say on the internet?

Well, if you've got any kind of integrity, then you'd feel severe remorse for selling a game based on fabricated hype. Whether it works or not, it's decidedly unethical. Outer Colony is a matter of 100% delivery on everything I say. That's why the free, public release is so important. Consumers don't have to trust the heavy-hitting claims I make, and I don't expect them to. They've been hoodwinked enough times. But everything I describe anywhere on Twitter or the website is in the game right now. The AI is real and does all the interesting things I've described, the simulation is real and has all the depth that's described, and all the gameplay and mechanics are all present and accounted for.

I suppose that what I really hope for is that people will enjoy all the interesting things about Outer Colony, and that it can be the sort of software that people care about and remember. I hope that someday in 10 or 20 years, in some forum thread or games list somewhere down the road, somebody will fondly describe Outer Colony as an enjoyable, impactful game that made them think differently about what software could be.

[Anachronic]

This is an extremely interesting topic, and while I could probably write a ton about it, I'll just present my concise thoughts. Hype might determine whether a person buys a game, but content defines whether a person enjoys a game. At the end of the day, I'd rather provide a rich, amazing experience for players than to sell a bunch of units using shyster-tier hype. It's a point on which I have to try to hold my tongue to an extent, but there's a severe lack of ethics in the industry with the way some of these developers shamelessly and borderline fraudulently hype their games. And when consumers complain that the released game doesn't mesh with what was promised, these developers appear not to give a damn, and why would they? They're probably kicking it in the Caribbean on a yacht full of bikini models - at that point, what do they care about what a bunch of goofs say on the internet?

Well, if you've got any kind of integrity, then you'd feel severe remorse for selling a game based on fabricated hype. Whether it works or not, it's decidedly unethical. Outer Colony is a matter of 100% delivery on everything I say. That's why the free, public release is so important. Consumers don't have to trust the heavy-hitting claims I make, and I don't expect them to. They've been hoodwinked enough times. But everything I describe anywhere on Twitter or the website is in the game right now. The AI is real and does all the interesting things I've described, the simulation is real and has all the depth that's described, and all the gameplay and mechanics are all present and accounted for.

I suppose that what I really hope for is that people will enjoy all the interesting things about Outer Colony, and that it can be the sort of software that people care about and remember. I hope that someday in 10 or 20 years, in some forum thread or games list somewhere down the road, somebody will fondly describe Outer Colony as an enjoyable, impactful game that made them think differently about what software could be.

I hear you about the hype thing and it's frustrating as a dev, because I'd rather focus on development and then be able to sell a finished product, rather than trying to sell the idea the whole way through. It seems like the only real way to get any sort of notice as an indie dev though is to be marketing as much as possible all the time. There's definitely an ethics issue in the industry too; I agree with you 100% on that, while also still supporting my claim that Flippy Uncle is the best mobile game of 2016 despite the year only being like half over before starting to say that

This list brings up some interesting things about how to market game ideas to gamers. There's a pretty big market for games inspired by yesterday's classics, but the market for games based on obscure dos titles and other old systems is only going to get smaller in the future. You've got a good thing going with taking the inspiration from Civilization, because there are still new games being made in the series. I desperately want to try remaking two games in particular, Stellar 7 and Dark Legions, but that ideadoesn't seem nearly as marketable as something inspired by say, Super Mario or Sonic.

Sorry that go way off-topic. I'm also wondering if there are any open-source games that people love or are contributing to? I just learned about GearHead RPG recently and love the idea of a mech roguelike.