Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
In Pokémon games, you have to do a lot of manual capturing, let alone not knowing if certain things evolve into certain other things or how often without looking at a guide. Most Pokémon have, at most, three forms, but a lot have two, but you'll never know any of this without a guide.
In Digimon games, you automatically scan each creature's data and can go back to the lab to create whichever ones you want, and basically every Digimon can Digivolve or Dedigivolve into at least 20 different forms, so even if I do create a team I feel is very 'me' I don't think I've lost out. I mean, getting those final forms is a nightmare, but it's really worth it.
I also feel like the interface for what moves do is really annoying to figure out, especially since Pokémon can only know four moves each. Digimon can know like, 11 (outside of the basic attack function) and each time you use one you're faced with what it does.
Also, honestly, every battle in X takes forever, even if you turn off Battle Animations because that doesn't turn off fainting animations and for goodness sakes why does picking up an item/receiving an item take so danged long.
I do think Pokémon could be reworked to allow mons to have access to more than four moves at once. I think this limit was probably just a hardware limitation built into the design (four move names fit snugly onto the moves list in the GBC interface style, without covering any other UI elements than the menus), and then this design was perpetuated since people thought it made for interesting strategic considerations. I'm personally more fond of having an MP bar and a list of spells.
Re evolutions: I get the feeling that Pokémon's design inspiration for evolutions is insect or amphibian metamorphosis, and so basically you have a huge variety of animal-like creatures that each have relatively distinct identities, aside from those in evolutionary chains. And if you've seen a higher evolution of something without knowing it, chances are you can probably guess most of them, aside from deliberately misleading ones like magikarp -> gyarados. If you're talking about going in *really* blind where you don't even count seeing stuff other trainers use (which is de facto the case for some pokémon), then I think part of the fun is discovering that your mon happened to evolve into something new.
I don't know Digimon well at all, but I'm guessing that it's meant to be themed on the idea of digital enhancement, rather than species metamorphosis? Which sorta implies a very different way of thinking about it, specifically that this would be more about customization rather than discovery.
Though if I had like 20 forms to choose from, and a "gotta catch 'em all" mindset, that'd be more of a pain than simply having simple, short evolutionary chains for most pokémon.
Well I think the concept is more like, data can be anything? Of course there are "true" routes that fit this digital enhancement model like Agumon>Greymon>etc but then you get things like Koromon, who does indeed become Agumon, but can also be Guilmon or Shoutmon but can't become Agumon (Black).
I guess this is true, but I just remembered another really big part of this. In Digimon, you'll know whatever level your Digimon evolves at. That's not the case in Pokemon.
Yeah I guess I can see that, but with only 6 slots in your party at a time and a plot to go through/world to explore, you will skip using a lot of them to try and figure out what certain others become. It's like, a sort of forced uniqueness rather than a desired uniqueness; your party will look the way it does not because you have an easy way to tell what becomes what, but because you made hard decisions based on not having much information when you made them.
Like, unless you put off fighting the Elite Four, you can't even take your perfect team to fight them.
One Digimon has 20 forms over like, 5-6 stages. They can go back and forth pretty easily aside from the Mega forms.
It makes catching them all relatively easy aside from the ones that are purposefully hard to get.
I guess MP bars vs set moves is a real quandry, and I'd like to hear why Pokémon enthusiasts prefer the latter. I mean I guess competitively it makes battles harder, but I think it limits strategy to some extent. It makes each Pokémon more specific than it has to be. And, as has been said before, Pokémon really really suck at healing themselves.
It is somewhat akin to spell slots in D&D and derived games (e.g. the early Final Fantasy games, in their original NES form), where you have to choose beforehand which spells you have available, but I don't think it was inspired by this.
With regards to feeling like one has a library of options to work with, yeah, Pokémon isn't as great. Compare, even , Final Fantasy VI, and not just the spell lists, but something like Gau's ability to "become" a monster complete with their special abilities and statuses. The game just throws the entire giant list at you at lets you have at it.
Some people just like having stuff to think about I guess. =P
But yeah, I can see how it introduces strategic elements, in ways that aren't present in some other games where you have greater access to a litany of abilities. In turn I'd characterize Pokémon as a strategy JRPG (with some sim elements) as a result. Even if we're not talking about competitive battling, there's still stuff like managing who you teach HM moves to, and having to acquire badges or do other quests to trigger event flags to give you access to more gameplay options (in the form of more pokémon to choose from) so you're thinking about how best to overcome a number of challenges within a reasonable amount of (real-life) time.
This reminds me of conversations I've had with Magic the Gathering players. When I first tried creating a card, I would pretty much run on flavor elements related to the in-universe stuff of the cards. For example, I created a card for Ridley (the space pirate dragon from the Metroid series), and I gave him a direct damage ability, an artifact destruction ability, and an ability to "collect intel" (by looking at the top cards of decks). (And I think an earlier version of the card even had a healing ability?) I was criticized for (among other things) putting abilities on him that were outside the purview of the card's color (for which I chose Black), and I got a long lecture about how each color was supposed to be good at some abilities (e.g. Red does direct damage and artifact destruction, Blue does information gathering) and bad at others (Red and Black don't have healing for example). (I later tried making a cycle of cards that did things that were "out-of-color-character" but at a higher cost, but those ideas were still considered poor.)
I didn't really get it at the time, but I think the design intent for these sorts of strategy-based games is that they involve intentionally preventing some units to do certain things, thereby limiting their options and forcing the player to make tradeoffs.
That's not really how I tend to play these single-player games, usually -- I did basically try to give every esper to every character in FFVI so they'd learn every spell, for example -- but I can see how someone with a different preference would appreciate these sorts of tradeoffs.
And it's something that informs my understanding of game balance in 100% Orange Juice and Team Fortress 2 these days.
I was actually going to say a "greater degree", but I think that's my own personal bias towards a job being harder than it has to be showing.
Poor or entirely game-breaking?
Color identity/flavor is a huge deal in MtG and among those, that black can't get rid of artifacts is among the strongest there are (the intel-gathering one sort of depends on circumstances), it's no wonder that would raise some eyebrows, and that's before getting into balance issues. I think it'd have been received better if the abilities included some token off-mana cost, as a stand-in for the character being somewhat associated with those colours.
As for Pokemon move limits, I think it's simply a matter of having more meaningful options when it comes to setting up your mon; if there's a limit of one move, you get an amount of options equal to the number of available moves. If there's no limit, the one "obvious" option is to
catchhave them all. If there's a higher but-not-too-high limit it greatly increases the amount of options (e.g. there are 230300 movesets (disregarding move order) for a mon with 50 available moves. For one reason or another the devs chose 4 as the magic number. Of course it's more complicated than that (many options are pointless, this takes away options in-battle, etc.) but I think that's a big part of it.I've been thinking of something similar when it comes to how it's become easier to play multiple colors in MtG, coincidentally.
Also I don't think Game Boy cartridges could store that much data in save files, so it was probably either setting up a limit of some sort or do away with customization and make all mons of a species above some level have these moves or something.
That said the more moves available in each generation, the more it stings not to be able to have more than 4, maybe at some point it should be increased?
On unrelated stuff:
anyway, it seems to be talking about hardware differences, so i won't guess
here's my guesses:
1. cartridge vs. CD - storage space. this is the obvious one.
2. the little bit of the N64 that was 64-bit?
3. cartridge vs. CD - piracy issues?
4. Nintendo licensing? but that's not a hardware difference
actual list
1. storage space
2. read speed
3. rasterization
4. controller ports
I should have been able to guess that second point, about cartridges loading faster.
And the fourth point seems obvious now that I think about it.
Also, the video is nicely informative after wasting the first minute and change.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/237630/DuckTales_Remastered/
edit: better source for the delisting times, including for non-PC platforms: http://www.capcom-unity.com/capkel/blog/2019/08/06/pick-up-ducktales-remastered-on-sale-now-before-it-leaves-digital-storefronts-starting-august-8th
Yeah, I've had some fun with custom empire creation.
I started playing as Aqua, because she's pretty fast and she's the only character in possibly the whole Kingdom Hearts franchise whose moveset is mostly magic-based. If I do complete her route, I'll want to do Terra next and finally Ventus, as I like his play-style the least.
And, Willa Holland, I love you and your work, but your voice acting as Aqua is only saved by the fact that whoever is playing Terra thinks he's voice acting for a school project.
Such are the consequences of not being in perfect attunement with the internet.
[1:38 AM] Quint Lindwurm: i first noticed it on the title logo of Freedom Planet, which spells out the name in katakana for no real reason, given that it's a game made by westerners, and besides, its lore references Chinese myth, rather than Japanese myth, so gratuitous Chinese would make more sense
[1:39 AM] Quint Lindwurm: the spiritual sequel to the Momodora platformer series, Minoria, just released like yesterday or so and i checked that out, that's got gratuitous Japanese on its title too
[1:39 AM] Quint Lindwurm: its developer (or devteam lead at least) is Brazilian I think
[1:40 AM] Quint Lindwurm: and the game is, according to the store page on GOG, "inspired by the history of medieval Europe"
[1:41 AM] Quint Lindwurm: and since i was on GOG i checked out their current deals and one of them is for a game called Bulb Boy, which was made by "two guys indie studio proudly located in Krakow, Poland", and which also has gratuitous Japanese on its title.
[1:46 AM] Quint Lindwurm: and unlike the first two, this game ("inspired by Machinarium and Gobliiins") doesn't even have anime-style art.
Capsule Chix do this a bunch. Most prominently, the corner on the box where its says "Remix" in katakana. They were designed by Garret Sander, who takes lots of influence from GothLoli stuff when doing his designs (ie Draculaura from Monster High).
EDIT: There's even more here.
free game
Ice Man: precision jumping.
Elec Man: Fudge until he's on the left, on top. Cheese.
Cut Man: Drop down and cheese, tanking first one or two hits.
Bomb Man: Get close to cheese him.
Guts Man: Shoot. Jump over debris. Hope he doesn't jump onto the left.
Fire Man: Damage race, but you should still dodge.
Crash Man: Patience and precision. 28 hits. A time-waster.
Bubble Man: Damage race, but still try dodging.
Quick Man: Try to avoid his pattern? Ehh, it's a mess anyway.
Flash Man: Damage race. Messy.
Wood Man: Precision jumping and more. Jump over the Leaf Shield. Jump early to avoid the falling leaflet. Cross over when apt. He will eat time.
Heat Man: Alternate sides. Beware of fast switch.
Metal Man: The other jumper. Sorta messy.
Air Man: Maybe sneak in some damage early on, but stay on left. Wail on him in the second set. Damage race.
Needle Man: Very, very messy. Needles shot will try to target you. Dunno what else to say. Play this by ear. The jumper. Horrible.
Magnet Man: Time-waster.
Gemini Man: Precision jumping and shooting in first phase -- go to right side of third (or fourth?) block, face left, wait for every 2nd Gemini Man to come down, and shoot, then jump. Second phase, tank or preferably avoid hits, keep shooting to deter Gemini Laser. Difficult.
Hard Man: Damage race.
Top Man: Precision sliding wins this one easily.
Snake Man: Take one hit on first pass, then stay behind him.
Spark Man: Damage race. Avoid hits wherever possible, but relatively easy.
Shadow Man: Every third landing is a slide or a shuriken. First several are: slide, shuriken, shuriken, shuriken, slide. The rest is a horrible mess.
Bright Man: Damage race. Avoid damage where possible -- should only get hit when he freezes time. Don't get antsy on the three-shot.
Toad Man: Just keep shooting.
Ring Man: Be patient! Remember the pattern: Low to you, high, cross, optional low. Don't be greedy. Only two hits per pass.
Drill Man: Time-waster. Wait two seconds before walking when he goes offscreen. Damage race when he walks.
Pharaoh Man: Hope he gets stuck in his rut.
Dive Man: Three (or sometimes one) dashes, then one or three missiles. Bait him as appropriate.
Skull Man: He doesn't walk to the edges. Play this by ear.
Dust Man: Jump straight up to avoid dust. Time-waster.
Gravity Man: Precision shooting.
Stone Man: Shoot when he's jumping. Have fun doing this as fast as you can.
Wave Man: Be patient! Charge a shot, shoot him on his landing.
Star Man: Precision sliding, but otherwise easy. Two shots when he shoots his shield in the air.
Crystal Man: A mess. Charge first shot and hit him in middle of screen. Try to time shots to hit him when he jumps.
Gyro Man: Shoot first, charge constantly. Jump horizontally over gyros. When he's offscreen, he always fires one gyro from a position away from you, then drops on you.
Charge Man: Shoot him right after the coal. If you're too far away, he'll charge (invincibly). He walks at same speed as you, dash away and turn and shoot and turn back and keep moving.
Napalm Man: Slide under missiles. Easy pattern: Shoot on hop, shoot on landing, repeat.
Wind Man: Easy.
Blizzard Man: Easy, as long as you actually try to dodge Blizzard Attack.
Yamato Man: Be patient! The speartip is a deceptively fast weapon.
Flame Man: There's a certain spacing to the ground flames.
Plant Man: Precision sliding. Do it right and you can get in some bonus damage.
Centaur Man: If he last disappeared on the right, he'll appear on the center left, and vice versa. Somewhat of a time waster.
Tomahawk Man: Slide under projectiles. Slide under jumps.
Knight Man: Jump straight up to avoid Knight Crush.
Mega Man 3 has the nastiest robot masters.
* For any game that I can configure the controls of, I make them something that -- based on my own experiences with games -- suits my taste in control schemes. When I can't do this, or if I'm entirely unfamiliar with the control scheme, either I lose interest in a game, or I have an awkward period of trying to adapt to the controls assuming I like the game enough to keep going. So as a result I often stick with genres I'm already familiar with, because it's just easier for me to get the fun I want out of them.
* I had a similar experience as the one she had with that FPS game with mouselook -- I didn't know how to change my perspective. Not sure whether it was specifically an FPS game with mouselook, but it was definitely a game where I didn't know how to change my perspective for a while and then suddenly realized I could turn my perspective in different directions. (And for what it's worth, early FPS games didn't have mouselook either, but just used character movement for perspective the same way a typical 2D platformer does...)
* Y'know, I don't know how I learned to run by holding B in SMB1. I do know I didn't learn it from the manual, so...I think I may have picked it up from a friend.
* Genre-savviness with pathing is a thing in video games that can lead to strange results. Like, these days, I pretty much automatically explore paths I expect to be dead-ends first, so as to thoroughly complete my exploration, but this in turn can lead to breaking of immersion. Similarly, sometimes doing a bunch of sidequests in JRPGs before advancing the main story quest can result in the same problem. I've considered consciously asking myself to try to ignore genre-savviness in a story-focused game when appropriate, by trying to think what the character would do, or what I'd do in the character's in-universe context, but it's not quite the same as an "innocent" perspective.
* I have definitely tried interacting with elements in the game world that look like they can but actually can't be interacted with -- all of us have. But this problem is definitely more acute in 3D games. That said, some devs reward players with easter eggs or achievements for doing these things, and I just like exploring stuff so it's still interesting to me to some extent (when it's "can I go there?"), but not always (e.g. when it's "why can't I grab this element?" or "why can't I go through this opening?"). At least in my genre-savviness I can systematically bang my head against things like those wrong paths with the infected and by doing so essentially reverse-engineer the level design. But this doesn't work for things that are just represented inconsistently.
* Games are definitely a lot cooler after you have learned and gotten used to their mechanics, to the point where you feel able to do stuff in the game. If you're stuck in the tutorial level, it is rarely ever glorious. And sometimes I wonder if having so many games these days makes me less patient to play through those tutorial levels and learn the mechanics and thus makes me treat games with unfamiliar control schemes "less fairly" than I could and perhaps I could get more enjoyment out of them...but then again I'm not exactly obligated to enjoy them, just that I'd like to.
* Games, particularly recently, are designed to fit a certain set of expectations, and have design conventions to help guide design toward this goal. The newer the genre, or the newer the player, the less expectations exist, and thus the more room for all sorts of weirdness to happen, some good and some not so good. These expectations are what allow us to more consistently know how to derive a certain form of appreciation out of something, but they are also structured limitations that can pigeonhole a set of experiences.
* He tested a bunch of games that involve real-time action (specifically controlling one character alone) in some form or another. I wonder how she would have felt if he'd included, say, turn-based RPGs or dungeon crawlers, strategy games, simulation games, and more abstract puzzle games in the mix.
So, during a conversation on the very video posted above, with a likewise non-gaming person, I described the basic premise for Mass Effect and my experience of it. "You're a sort of space policeman, running around shooting at bad guys and boning bisexual blue-skinned alien babes". So I'm telling how during character creation I had had a moment of epiphany, concerning what exactly I expected of the game. Running around shooting at bad guys. So I tell how I set the difficulty at lowest and indeed had a lot of fun playing the game. To which my interlocutor replies, "did you set the difficulty of boning blue alien babes at easy too?"
This made me realize, difficulty settings in games tend to involve usually combat, which is nowadays only a part of the experience. Now that I'm telling you this, it does sound sillier than it did then, but it got me thinking. Some sort of two-axes difficulty system, where one axis is combat, and the other, narrative? Like, the game gives you a helping hand to get through side-quests or romance subplots. Perhaps the resident blue alien babe is easier (the cheesier version), or the game guides you through the plot and offers additional information on what goes on and what will happen (the less cheesy).
I'm wondering if this makes any sense.
I always wish a game would like, record the events so far in a simple manner just so you can get back to the plot after a while (a month, a year, whenever) but games that do have an event recording function seem to want to do it in a really ridiculous way (like just describing events in an artistic manner rather than in detailed notes).
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2019/10/18/crusader-kings-2-is-free-now/
I wonder what mods are there.