Computer Game Sins

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I want to list some things computer games should never do. Basically some of the crimes of game design for computer games.

1) Showing more than one cutscene before presenting something resembling game play.
2) Showing more than one cutscene in a row
3) Requiring a loading screen to load the next cutscene when you are showing me multiple cutscenes in a row.
4) Defeating my guys in a cutscene with a boss they just wiped the floor with in actual game play.
5) Trying to be cool and innovative and artistic with your UI design in a way that actual makes it into an obstacle for really basic functionality.
6) Overdesigned Anime style Characters.
7) Tutorials that make you wait before allowing you to do the thing the Tutorial is asking you to do until it is damned ready and has finished telling you very slowly while paralyzing the entire interface including the ability to fucking quit the whole game.
8) Tutorials that "teach" you things like how to click the mouse on the attack card if you want to attack in the card game.
9) Tutorials that are broken up into to very tiny useless parts in between long loading screens and MORE CUTSCENES.
10) Tutorial/Intro/Prologue sequences that last multiple hours of game play.
11) Multiple hours of game play that is more cutscene than game play.

Anyway, most of the current list are all from one game and were encountered within 20 minutes of starting it and there were other more obscure sins to it as well.

The rest, and many of them in general are the symptoms of the curse on gaming that is fucking JRPGs.

[pragma]

What is the sinful game? Inquiring minds want to avoid it!

[Foxwarrior]

3) if they're fancy live rendered cutscenes they could well not have any spare VRAM for loading the next one while the current one is playing

6) I feel like if a game does this you should be able to easily tell before buying it

8) did you accidentally buy a game for babies

11) but what if the gameplay is bad and the cutscenes are good, hmm? What then?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

3) if they're fancy live rendered cutscenes they could well not have any spare VRAM for loading the next one while the current one is playing

6) I feel like if a game does this you should be able to easily tell before buying it

8) did you accidentally buy a game for babies

11) but what if the gameplay is bad and the cutscenes are good, hmm? What then?

3) They were not fancy rendered cutscenes, they were pretty much 3 layers of jpegs wobbling over each other. a potato wouldn't run out of VRAM.

6), 8) and pragma?) Sometimes they hide the worst ones. Other times you hold your nose for the game play. This specific time, I decided to let a free to play game have a chance with only cursory research and a bunch of matching genre tags. It was after all, free to try. As is all too often the case I want my money back. At least this time instead of being driven off by free to play grind and looming paywalls I was basically just driven off by cutscenes depleting my interest in giving it a chance.

It was some sort of strategy card game I never bothered getting far enough to grasp the game play but I suspect attack the spire knock off, it's called Reverse 1999. And it is not for me.

Most of the rest of the points were just brought back fresh to my memory because I was also recently given a "role playing strategy" game that is basically a fairly bog standard JRPG and those... look even Disgeae and Shin Megami Tensei are guilty of a lot of sins, the rest of the genre is just the fucking plague. I believe it was Romancing Saga II, but I don't know, might be a remake or rerelease or something, it was a gift so I tried it, the combat game play was boring.

11) Then... I'd not play the game and watch the cutscenes on youtube. Seems like a bit of a weird god damn scenario. I mean, lets face it, almost all cutscenes fucking suck. You arguable could replace half my list with "DID A FUCKING CUTSCENE". Seriously, are you a cutscene enjoyer? What sort of soulless monster are you implying you are here?

[Thaluikhain]

It was some sort of strategy card game I never bothered getting far enough to grasp the game play but I suspect attack the spire knock off, it's called Reverse 1999. And it is not for me.

Hmmm...*googles* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse:_1999

"The game takes place in a universe where a form of magic called Arcanum exists, and humans exist alongside Arcanists, a race of individuals often discriminated against and perceived as "sub-human", who can use Arcanum. On the last day of the year 1999, a mysterious phenomenon simply known as "the Storm" caused different eras in time to shift backward and forward between the 1900s, causing people and objects from the affected era to disappear, which is referred to as being "reversed".

The Storm always reverses humans, but Arcanists may survive it if they reach shelter in time. The Storm also causes something known as the Storm Syndrome approximately 24 hours before its arrival, causing humans to experience severe hallucinations and delusions that are directly tied to themes relevant to the era, such as perceiving money as food, developing a strong desire for war, and so on. As a result, time does not progress beyond the year 1999 and different eras throughout history will disappear, then later reappear in a more unstable state.

The speed at which the Storm arrives depends on how much social unrest exists at the time; events such as assassinations of political figures, economic recessions, and wars will increase the speed at which the Storm takes effect and the severity of the Storm Syndrome. "

That's...different, at least. Though it seems like the above should have it's own listing in Computer Game Sins.

[PseudoStupidity]

I don't quite understand the dislike of anime characters (or is it just overdesigned ones, but then what is the breakpoint where we go from good design to overdesign?) and I fully agree with fuck cutscenes outside of introducing an area or setting the scene right before gameplay.

I mostly wanted to say hell yes for 7. So many games have garbage UI but it's stylistic and so you're supposed to like it. But fuck you game designers, if all your choices make it harder to see and play your game I am not going to play it. Style is cool, I like some of the older Guilty Gear fighting games even though they are drenched in often-questionable style choices. But Guily Gear Strive? Some of the worst UI I've ever fucking seen. Not sure if they ever fixed any of it, but their combo counter used to get so big it would become larger than the screen size (and the numbers would shake as they grew). Add this to the slowdown effects on certain hits (counterhitting basically pauses the game for a quarter second) and obnoxious camera angle switching cutscenes for certain abilities and effects and you are left with a game that feels like it is actively trying to give you a headache. I like stupid over-the-top fighters like DBFZ and DNF Duel, there is just something about how all the elements come together in Strive that make it an intolerable experience.

To add to it, the single player campaign of Strive is literally just a 4+ hour series of badly-animated cutscenes. That's not a joke, there are 0 fights in that fighting game's campaign.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

People go on about Elden Ring being fantastic, which it flat out isn't in nearly every respect, but UI wise?

At release you could borderline softlock the game just with the menu system because it would open a message infront of the menu you needed to interact with to remove the message.

Among many other UI crimes, no, UI war crimes even. I don't care even IF the rest of the game was game of the year material (which it wasn't) and I definitely don't care if it has a blindly loyal rabid fanbase ready to tear any even mild critic apart (which it does), the UI alone was so bad on its own it should have made it a WORST game release of the year contender.

[Kaelik]

LMAO

A problem I've never heard about that was probably fixed immediately, that borderline softlocks (which I presume means doesn't softlock) is not a) Really about UI design at all, and b) lmao worst game of the year.

Like you can't just complain about the UI of a game, you have to say some weird shit about it being the worst game of the year just because you are mad people like it. Lots of games have glitches that just crash to desktop, so your worst game of the year has to somehow justify itself past a bunch of those before you start explaining how elden ring is worse then apparently free to play grindfest trash.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Every aspect of Elden ring is sub par, I know that is a very generic criticism, but that is genuinely the case, I am not amazed people like it, people like all sorts of medoicre shit, I'm amazed people think they can elevate it as a masterpiece when its so generically sub par across the board.

Every aspect, graphics, basic combat/game play, advancement pacing, level design, it's all bad, it all adds up to a pretty shit experience. But the UI really is a war crime, it had plenty of other issues beyond the message pop up issue, that issue was just the hillarious and blatant incompetence in UI design at its peak. And the message pop up issue I only called it a borderline soft lock because after early patching there WAS a button you could press to get out of it, but typical of the insane UI design philosophy the game didn't tell you that and it wasn't any button you would normally press to close a message dialog. Seriously, press a random letter key no one told you about to exit this message dialog? And you want to defend that as solid UI design? Game of the year material even?

Fuck off. It was bad, it was laughably bad. Why would you defend that?

[Kaelik]

What if pl, you read literally any part of my post and responded to that instead of to the imaginary post in your head you hate.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

What if pl, you read literally any part of my post and responded to that instead of to the imaginary post in your head you hate.

You post was basically just an empty "nuh ah" an attempt to argue that giving a single example of something described broadly as bad is actually proof that that is the only example and it is good actually.

Elden Ring has a horrendous UI, it is well known for having one, it's actual fan boys will admit that... and then make various excuses, but no one, no one defends Elden Ring's UI or ANY FromSoftware PC port UI, or just plain UI period, not that I know of and I've certainly seen numerous of them critised widely. FromSoftware as far as I'm aware is actually INFAMOUS for making bad UIs especially in the context of the basic standards any PC game would normally take for granted. INCLUDING the basic standards most PC shovelware meets.

But then why am I even responding to your second and even more content free "nuh uh"? It was lazier than a FromSoftware title.

[Kaelik]

Wow, thanks for once again responding to the imaginary post in your head you hate instead of my actual post.

I'll be sure to let the imaginary person you hate know that you think their imaginary claim that elden ring's ui is good is wrong if I ever meet them in the land of imagination.

For fucks sake, it's really my fault for ever trying to talk to you about anything.

[PseudoStupidity]

I'm an Elden Ring disliker, but it's entirely based on personal taste. I tried it earlier this year; I either made a new game or continued an existing one (I don't remember which, alright?) and then played for ~1 hour. During that hour I killed some cat statue boss (I think it was a cat statue? It had fire breath and a few other attacks iirc) with whatever melee weapon I had, then wandered around for a while in the overworld and killed a couple other monsters in fights that were just "time your roll or die" or "abuse AI or die" and lost all interest I had in the game. I was thinking I'd get some really interesting combat, but every combat was super boring. Invulnerable dodge rolls are cool and good, but ideally your combat system has more to it than dodge rolls and those dodge rolls can't be used to beat 100% of enemies in the game. I'm sure there are more effective things to do than dodge roll and sneak an attack or two in, but fuck that worked in every combat I did (died a few times while learning the timing of certain attacks, like some fucking random giant that was wandering around near the starting area?) and that will always kill my interest in an RPG.

I was thinking I'd love Elden Ring because I love me some bullet hells and roguelikes (or both, like Enter the Gungeon) where you spend most of your time trying to figure out how to survive against dumb bullshit, but Elden Ring felt very slow and easy. If I didn't get so bored fighting the big bags of HP that they call boss monsters I'd of probably played it for longer, but dodge an attack 20 times and you get pretty fucking sick of it. It is entirely possible the game gets much better and all fights can't be won by dodge rolling and then tickling the bad guy, so I don't actually think Elden Ring is a bad game or whatever, but I do personally think it's boring and dumb. But maybe that's because I'm a l33t g4m3r who knows how to press the roll button at the right time. That's it, that's my story now. I disliked Elden Ring because I am too good at video games. Cat Quest II is better, play that instead.

[Kaelik]

My understanding (from hearing other people talk, because I am bad at video games) is that skill expression in elden ring is how little you dodge, because by not dodging all the time you have more stamina to attack to defeat those "giant sacks of hp" bosses faster then if you dodge a lot.

I cannot confirm whether this makes the game more or less fun, because I am bad at video games tm, so I merely pick the biggest weapon possible and smack bosses as hard as possible to stun them because if I try to dodge several attacks in a row my brain shuts down and I get hit.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Actually, and I have had this explained to me in detail by fans, one of the philosophies of boss fights that FromSoftware has developed is that learning a bosses attack pattern and dodging it is somehow bad wrong fun. So, increasingly they make bosses that do not telegraph and have very random attack patterns which include absolutely deadly high damage wide targeted and/or super fast attacks you CANNOT dodge.

The actual most likely first boss you fight in Elden ring is not just an example of this but apparently a deliberate extreme example of this to try and "train" the player not to try and learn and respond to boss attack patterns.

The result is the actual correct way to fight it is to actually ignore the boss attacks and actions in general and just try and run in and deal as much damage as possible. Then you just win or lose based on how much damage the randomized attack patterns deal, so you just do it 3 to 10 times until you luck out on a low damage draw and win. But if you TRY and dodge in that fight, you will need substantially more than 3-10 attempts.

Again. This sort of thing is why I call Elden Ring and everything FromSoftware does, bad games.

[phlapjackage]

that were just "time your roll or die" or "abuse AI or die" and lost all interest I had in the game. I was thinking I'd get some really interesting combat, but every combat was super boring. Invulnerable dodge rolls are cool and good, but ideally your combat system has more to it than dodge rolls and those dodge rolls can't be used to beat 100% of enemies in the game.

As someone who has played 0% of any of these types of games (except Salt and Sanctuary on Vita, great game!), how does Elden Ring combat differ from any of the other souls-like games? Because most of the videos I've watched on any souls-like game seemed very "dodge, roll, attack...repeat".

[Kaelik]

You have misunderstood what people told you.

They have attacks that cannot be dodged because they have to be jumped, they have attacks with delays to punish panic rolling.

And the first tough boss, Margit, telegraphs his attacks with some of them having delays so that if you panic dodge in reaction to animations you will get hit coming out of the dodge, and you have to actually respond to the specific attack he is doing, not just hit dodge when you see every attack.

There is basically one weird niche build in the entire game that can simply trade attacks with bosses and win at all as you describe, and you can't even have the necessary components to do that until half way through the game.

You are pretty much required to read boss attacks and dodge attacks and that's actually what margit teaches.

But you can do a lot more damage if you learn how to avoid attacks without dodging them with good movement.

[Kaelik]

that were just "time your roll or die" or "abuse AI or die" and lost all interest I had in the game. I was thinking I'd get some really interesting combat, but every combat was super boring. Invulnerable dodge rolls are cool and good, but ideally your combat system has more to it than dodge rolls and those dodge rolls can't be used to beat 100% of enemies in the game.

As someone who has played 0% of any of these types of games (except Salt and Sanctuary on Vita, great game!), how does Elden Ring combat differ from any of the other souls-like games? Because most of the videos I've watched on any souls-like game seemed very "dodge, roll, attack...repeat".

Elden rings combat is easier because they made magic spamming and having minions easily accessible and usable option to win pretty much every fight.

Elden rings combat is harder because if you ignore those things to "prove you are good at video games" then there attacks usually hit for slightly more damage and they have occasional large aoe attacks that you have to jump instead of dodge or run from instead of dodge.

They also added a lot more movesets that punish panic dodging, either with long delays on the attack after the telegraph or a fast follow up attack so that if you dodged as soon as they start attack 1, attack 2 hits you out of the dodge before you can dodge again, and you have to delay your dodge to include both attacks or dodge away from where the second attack will be.

They also made it easier by adding the ability to stun and stagger bosses, which is nice.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

You have misunderstood what people told you.

Not what I was told at the time, no mention of jumping and I was flat out told there was NO telegraphing you could respond to.

And the advice worked, face tanking it succeeded within very few attempts.

So... what did that first boss actually teach me? And what you think it was meant to teach me after a year or so for fanboys to get their story straight... two different things.

I might suggest that if that boss was meant to teach me what you claim, it was a shit job of it.

edit: No, wait, I went and looked it up to be sure, and I am pretty sure we are talking about different bosses. Possibly because the one I was talking about might count as a mini-boss and is genuinely the likely first boss-fight type encounter the game throws at you before even the one you are pretty much meant to auto-lose for story bullshit.

[Kaelik]

I mean the first boss you encounter period is the tree sentinel who you also definitely cannot face tank when you first walk out of the door opening.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

There is a knight miniboss in the fucking Tutorial dungeon Kaelik.

Literally the intro to the game that teaches you the games supposed conceits. It introduces the concept of a boss fight room right down to the save point directly before hand.

[Kaelik]

Lmaoooooo.

Oh my god.

That's just a normal enemy pl. You can fight like 13 of them at once before you fight margit.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Fuck you misrepresenting shit, it is a clear god damn teaching point for how boss encounters are going to work inside dungeons.

Is it easy? Gee I don't know do you THINK the very first teaching encounter for these things might be easy? Does that in any way make your shit points about this shit game make sense?

[Kaelik]

It's extremely relevant to your claim that the way to beat bosses is to face tank all their attacks that doing so would result in you losing to every boss in the game.

That you beat a regular enemy by face tanking which was in fact your claim to understanding, that you followed the advice on how to beat this "boss" and then it worked, so now you know how the game wants you to fight bosses.

Pl, you can just not like a game without making up shit that's so obviously wrong that a guy who has only ever seen videos of dark souls gameplay instantly knew you were wrong because the game does not function if you fectank bosses.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

You are claiming that a save point before the boss room, that the game even if I recall threw at least one warning message before, where you fought a bigger enemy than before, with more complex attack patterns that resemble a lesser form of later boss attack patterns and enemy design in a one on one fight you HAD to pass, is NOT a boss fight or a mini-boss fight because later there are more of those guys until they become a regular enemy?

You think mini-bosses for instance do NOT later become commonplace? That that negates the earlier mini-boss encounter's status as a mini-boss encounter?

HAVE YOU EVER PLAYED A VIDEO-GAME?