Tim & struppig (Hangry Era)
Dr. PhilIch habe in meinem Blog gestern noch meinen Ersteindruck zu #ForbiddenWest geteilt (dem Western Ableger von #ForbiddenPsalm ): https://blog.pnpde.social/bohemiaspielkunst/ersteindruck-forbidden-west - #TableTop #Wargaming
#ZeroDawn: Topaktuelle, spannende Mystery um Weltuntergang durch Killer-KI von muskmäßigem Milliardär, bei der sich die ganze Dramatik der unausweichlichen Auslöschung der Menschheit bei den handelnden Personen sogar noch rückwirkend entfaltet
#ForbiddenWest: Immortal Billionaires from Outer Space
I mean Aloy als Social Outcast hat am Ende von #ZeroDawn endlich eine Chosen Family, aber haut in #ForbiddenWest erstmal jedem davon bedeutungsschwanger um die Ohren, dass sie alle Probleme der Welt alleine lösen muss because reasons (눈‸눈)
Kayla Eilhart (en)I'm replaying Horizon: Forbidden West on PC (first playthrough was on TV with PS5) and not only it's extremely beautiful and well optimized for 32:9 screens, I'm also quite enjoying the relationship between Aloy and Seyka in the DLC. The cutscenes are so cute and on the computer screen I can really see movements of their eyes and changes in their face expressions.
#gaming #horizon #forbiddenwest #gamergirl
#gaming #horizon #forbiddenwest #gamergirl
Sven Scholz
Tina#Gaming #HorizonZeroDawn #ForbiddenWest #YoutubeShort
Moin.
Heute mal n kurzes Posting zu nem Thema, über das ich viel zu wenig poste :-)
Ich spiele ja seit einiger Zeit Horizon Zero Dawn und ja, ich spiele es langsam und lange nach dem es raus kam, weil ich noch nicht so lange eine PS4Pro habe. ABER, das Game hat mich sooo mega gehooked! 😍
Ich hab angefangen zu gamen, weil ich damals unbedingt Hogwarts Legacy spielen wollte. Danach hab ich direkt Horizon Zero Dawn angefangen und auch wenn ich mittlerweile einige andere Games spiele, ist dieses grafisch bisher das schönste Game, einfach weil die Open World so schön gestaltet ist und die Story so gut ist. Zudem finde ich Aloy als Charakter so toll gestaltet, dass ich mich als Frau gut identifizieren kann damit.
Mittlerweile bin ich ca. bei 80 % Spielfortschritt und mir fehlen nur noch ein paar Sidequests bis ich mich an den Endkampf und somit an das Ende der Story wage.
Zum Nachfolger, Horizon Forbidden West, hab ich dann gestern ein schön zusammengeschnittenes Short auf Youtube gesehen, das mich direkt auch wieder angefixt hat. Werde das also direkt im Nachgang anfangen, auch weil es direkt an die Story von HZD anknüpt und es ein Recap gibt am Anfang.
Das schöne Youtube-Short hier:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/15b-gFam_M0
Rating Horizon Forbidden West After 3 years #horizonforbiddenwest #ratinggames #gaming
I like how Horizon #ForbiddenWest stepped up the options to move. The new machines are gorgeous and the possibility to glide through the air and at the most the expansion to underwater environments are fun. And i like how everything doesn't "just happen" but is based in the lore.
matdaveI didn't even realize my Sunwing _could_ die! We went on so many adventures together. RIP
Seán FenianI've been talking quite a bit lately about #game #design and using #Horizon: #ForbiddenWest as a bad example.
Does this mean that I think H:FW is a bad game?
No. It has great gameplay, involving characters, and a fantastic story. But it does mean that it can be an incredibly frustrating one to play, because it collects just SO MANY bad design metaphors into one place.
For one thing, it suffers from #second-#system syndrome. This is an old-time software hacker's term for when you start out to improve an existing clean, elegant system, but by the time you get done shoveling clever new "features" into it, it's a bloated, elephantine mess.
There are SO MANY "clever" new combat mechanisms shoveled into H:FW that a careful attack plan can be derailed by accidentally triggering a special ability you didn't want to use. Given that it's a basically-dumb PC port of a console game, that means that sometimes the difference between one special attack and another is a difference in timing between click-click-click-click-G and click-click-click-click-G.
No, that wasn't a typo. It's a direct example. There's slightly longer intervals between some of those clicks. Hope you can remember which has the brief pause where. I freely admit I can't. I have over a hundred unused skill points because the game fails to properly explain the extra abilities I could spend them on, of which I have too many already.
What did I mean above by "a dumb PC port"? It means that console-controller actions were just translated directly into PC keyboard actions without any thought to whether that actually works on PC. H:FW introduces a shield-glider; the Burning Shores expansion adds a feature to gain elevation using your shield-glider by using thermal updrafts. Except that on PC, you can't stay in an updraft, because the dumb control translation turns what's a simple twirl of the left joystick on a console controller into an unreasonable fandango-on-keyboard on PC.
And that's a problem, because the developers are really proud of that thermal-updraft feature and want you to use it at every opportunity.
H:FW would be a better game if about 90% of the "clever" new combat abilities were just ripped out entirely. Or at the very least, if the mechanisms for activating them on PC were redesigned with PC keyboard-and-mouse in mind.
The take-home point for today? Think about your audience. If you're porting a game, don't just choose a 1:1 mapping of controller actions to keys and call it good. Think about your control mappings and whether they make sense on PC. Play-test and verify that they're actually usable. And don't make your players memorize several dozen new sequences of as many as five actions at a time for new mechanisms. Especially differently timed sequences of the same set of keys.
Don't build the torment nexus. And don't build the second system.
Does this mean that I think H:FW is a bad game?
No. It has great gameplay, involving characters, and a fantastic story. But it does mean that it can be an incredibly frustrating one to play, because it collects just SO MANY bad design metaphors into one place.
For one thing, it suffers from #second-#system syndrome. This is an old-time software hacker's term for when you start out to improve an existing clean, elegant system, but by the time you get done shoveling clever new "features" into it, it's a bloated, elephantine mess.
There are SO MANY "clever" new combat mechanisms shoveled into H:FW that a careful attack plan can be derailed by accidentally triggering a special ability you didn't want to use. Given that it's a basically-dumb PC port of a console game, that means that sometimes the difference between one special attack and another is a difference in timing between click-click-click-click-G and click-click-click-click-G.
No, that wasn't a typo. It's a direct example. There's slightly longer intervals between some of those clicks. Hope you can remember which has the brief pause where. I freely admit I can't. I have over a hundred unused skill points because the game fails to properly explain the extra abilities I could spend them on, of which I have too many already.
What did I mean above by "a dumb PC port"? It means that console-controller actions were just translated directly into PC keyboard actions without any thought to whether that actually works on PC. H:FW introduces a shield-glider; the Burning Shores expansion adds a feature to gain elevation using your shield-glider by using thermal updrafts. Except that on PC, you can't stay in an updraft, because the dumb control translation turns what's a simple twirl of the left joystick on a console controller into an unreasonable fandango-on-keyboard on PC.
And that's a problem, because the developers are really proud of that thermal-updraft feature and want you to use it at every opportunity.
H:FW would be a better game if about 90% of the "clever" new combat abilities were just ripped out entirely. Or at the very least, if the mechanisms for activating them on PC were redesigned with PC keyboard-and-mouse in mind.
The take-home point for today? Think about your audience. If you're porting a game, don't just choose a 1:1 mapping of controller actions to keys and call it good. Think about your control mappings and whether they make sense on PC. Play-test and verify that they're actually usable. And don't make your players memorize several dozen new sequences of as many as five actions at a time for new mechanisms. Especially differently timed sequences of the same set of keys.
Don't build the torment nexus. And don't build the second system.
More #gaming/#gamedesign ruminations
(1/2)
There's a saying in the software industry that all software sucks; some software merely sucks less. There was once an unofficial release shirt for MacOS (that's old style, classic MacOS, not OSX) 7.5. The shirt read simply: System 7.5: Sucks Less
If some software sucks less, then it follows that some software sucks more.
Games tend to suck more. You want evidence, just go and look at the file size of the unofficial community patches for any Bethesda games. Skyrim SE's, for example, is 161MB. And that's not adding or improving any content, it's just bug fixes.
As those of you who have been following along know, I've been working through #Horizon: #ForbiddenWest for the past week or two. And H:FW is a great example of Sucking More.
Today we're going to talk about gear acquisition and upgrades.
Like most games, H:FW features tiered equipment. (Except, for some reason, your spear. Your spear never gets any better throughout the game, except once right at the beginning — at the end of the prologue — you're given a slightly better tier-2. Horizon has four tiers: green items are common, blue rare, purple "very rare", gold legendary. All of these (except the spear) are upgradable. Weapons and armor may have anywhere from three to five tiers of upgrades. Higher tiers of upgrades require more and rarer materials, as do upgrades of higher-tier weapons. You're most likely almost at the endgame before you get your first Legendary (tier 4) item, and you're going to find that right from the second upgrade tier they require some of the rarest items in the entire game to upgrade.
This is already quite bad enough from a game design standpoint, because it means that you're on track for the endgame, it's right in front of you, it's urgent, the game's story is telling you that you need to get right on it, but the games mechanics are making you hurry-up-and-wait, potentially days of grinding high-level materials to fully upgrade the one or two legendary items you finally just got before you go into the end battle.
Seriously, game developers, don't do this. It SUCKS. It destroys the flow of your story and it frustrates players.
(1/2, contd in comments)
(1/2)
There's a saying in the software industry that all software sucks; some software merely sucks less. There was once an unofficial release shirt for MacOS (that's old style, classic MacOS, not OSX) 7.5. The shirt read simply: System 7.5: Sucks Less
If some software sucks less, then it follows that some software sucks more.
Games tend to suck more. You want evidence, just go and look at the file size of the unofficial community patches for any Bethesda games. Skyrim SE's, for example, is 161MB. And that's not adding or improving any content, it's just bug fixes.
As those of you who have been following along know, I've been working through #Horizon: #ForbiddenWest for the past week or two. And H:FW is a great example of Sucking More.
Today we're going to talk about gear acquisition and upgrades.
Like most games, H:FW features tiered equipment. (Except, for some reason, your spear. Your spear never gets any better throughout the game, except once right at the beginning — at the end of the prologue — you're given a slightly better tier-2. Horizon has four tiers: green items are common, blue rare, purple "very rare", gold legendary. All of these (except the spear) are upgradable. Weapons and armor may have anywhere from three to five tiers of upgrades. Higher tiers of upgrades require more and rarer materials, as do upgrades of higher-tier weapons. You're most likely almost at the endgame before you get your first Legendary (tier 4) item, and you're going to find that right from the second upgrade tier they require some of the rarest items in the entire game to upgrade.
This is already quite bad enough from a game design standpoint, because it means that you're on track for the endgame, it's right in front of you, it's urgent, the game's story is telling you that you need to get right on it, but the games mechanics are making you hurry-up-and-wait, potentially days of grinding high-level materials to fully upgrade the one or two legendary items you finally just got before you go into the end battle.
Seriously, game developers, don't do this. It SUCKS. It destroys the flow of your story and it frustrates players.
(1/2, contd in comments)