Mera'din

There is absolutely zero change to ANYTHING in a games given experience at one difficulty by adding an alternate difficulty mode. Nothing is changed about your experience or preferences. AT ALL. You saying you had to go and look at guides and stuff could be argued with the same things that are being used to defend not having a lower difficulty. You had to seek outside help to improve at the game. How is that better than the game providing a tool to teach how the game is played in a less strenuous environment? A difficulty difference doesn't have to be "lol press X to win". There are good ways to implement it and retain the integrity and feel of a game. Maybe gear upgrades are a bit more plentiful or stat increase happens at a sharper upward trend. Maybe the enemies attack a little slower, or leave themselves open to an attack or counter attack for a little longer. Maybe there's a few ridiculous attacks they can do that they won't on a lower difficulty or they animate more clearly before doing them. Even a difficulty setting like the "auto" one in Hellblade has potential. You start out at the default difficulty, and if you perform well, it shifts the difficulty up. If you start dying a lot it starts to shift the difficulty down. Therefore no matter where you are on the spectrum it will adjust to it and proceed to challenge you from there. Or even if they don't do something intuitive or interesting and it's just "do more damage, take less damage, enemies have less health" stuff, it doesn't matter. YOUR EXPERIENCE WITHIN THE GAME WILL NEVER CHANGE FROM WHAT IT IS AT THE DIFFICULTY YOU PLAY AT. Someone being able to enjoy and be challenged by the game at a lower difficulty does not take anything away from you except some weird need to feel superior to someone else in a fucking PvE video game. You can still urge a person to try it the "true" way with no change to such communities. It would just shift from "You should totally play this, here's how to make the attempt" to "You've experienced one level of this and understand the basics, now here's how to get the 'full' experience (for lack of a better qualifier)". The kind of gaming where this is even a thing is a goddamn recreational activity. You found the grind to "git gud" to be fun? Congratulations. There are a lot of people that never will. That isn't a good reason to cut them off from experiencing a game they have an interest in for a different reason. And "Watch videos on Youtube" is not a good answer to that. Some people do though I'm sure, but that's not for everyone either. More ways to experience something without affecting other peoples experience of the same thing is unequivocally a good thing.

90% of games I play, I will play purely for the story or some aesthetic that has nothing to do with gameplay. There's nothing wrong with having lower difficulties to give more people the option of that experience. There are ways to do it that isn't just "you basically can't die" and maintain some form of challenge without completely alienating people. Despite my preferences for games, I have no problems with challenging myself. I also have a fondness for going for trophies/achievements in games, and playing on higher difficulties for that purpose (otherwise I've always been a "default setting and done" type of person with most games). However, I have never gone anywhere near a 'Souls' purely because of what I hear about them from literally everyone. Have even got a couple for free through PS+ and never touched them because I ligitimately don't want the headache no matter how much I am interested in some of the story elements and things like that. If there was a difficulty option I might actually consider it and then push into the higher difficulty based on how I felt from there. It's entertainment software. There are (at least) dozens of different ways and reasons people enjoy this medium. It's stupid to limit the audience for something purely because of a "git gud scrub" mentality. Also, thinking about this topic reminds me of the video series Jim Sterling did where he would read elitist gamer comments as an 18th century french nobleman or whatever it was:

Was about to berate you for leaving out a bunch but you saved yourself. XD Were actually a few on here I hadn't seen and in one or two cases wasn't aware of though. Stuff I can think of you didn't have on the list that I've seen: Creepshow (in part) Creepshow 2 (one part for this one I think) The Mist The Stand Golden Years The Shining (late 90s miniseries) Trucks Storm of the Century Rose Red Salem's Lot (early 00s miniseries) Some of this stuff was technically "original" works for screen by him I guess, but some of the ones you listed were too so I added them. Stayed away from actual TV series' but included mini-series entries since you also included some that were. Side note: Just saw that Netflix is doing an adaptation of the novella he wrote with his son, "In the Tall Grass". That was easily one of the most fucked up stories I have ever read and I'm interested to see if they actually go all in on it. Also looking forward to seeing more from the adaptation of Doctor Sleep they're doing. That'll be an easy one to fuck up but it sounds like they're leaning pretty hard into the legacy of the Kubric version of The Shining for it. They did a really fantastic job of it too honestly. Especially since that particular story was long believed to be more or less untouchable for adaptation purposes.

I actually didn't mind the Captain America and Punisher movies they did in the early '90s. They were campy as fuck, but kind of fun. Seriously though, it's something that just has to go through the process like similar things have. They've been making comic adaptations since like the 40s (I know there was a Captain America serial at the very least back then) and it took a long time, but they've come a LONG way over the years. Alita was really good all things considered and a lot of it's story issues came from the fact that it was in development hell for over 10 years. It was originally supposed to be James Cameron's project he would be working on after the show Dark Angel was done and kept getting pushed back. Think the earliest versions of the script was floating around in like 2000 or so but not fully "done" until like 2008. The script got passed around pretty heavily from there and it wasn't until a few years ago that it was turned into a proper shooting script by Rodriguez. It was in various states of pre-production for so long that the tech developed to make the movie ended up being used in Avatar. I really enjoyed the movie overall, though I have only the most rudimentary experience with the source material. I felt like it was probably the best example of an anime adaptation thus far and if things continue to improve from there we'll start seeing some decent stuff before too terribly long I would think. Someone will get the formula right one of these days. I'll give this a shot. If it's shit then whatever, more of the same. If it's not, then cool. I have no real expectations which never hurts with this kind of thing.

By management in that statement I was referring more to project management. Employee management is shit all across that industry pretty much. Those guys need a fucking union. Not sure how likely that is though with how spread out the game development industry is.

Saw that just a bit ago. Hopefully they can start to iron this shit out though I'm not overly hopeful. Most high end developers are probably almost identical (in terms of stress and morale for the employees. Not necessarily the shitty mismanagement).

Probably the best cover of that song I've heard honestly. Was really well done.

So apparently the timed exclusive shit with Epic doesn't apply to console. Logged in to BL2 and they had a pre-order overlay on the menu with the Sept. 2019 date. Side note: I logged in to use some codes. They apparently hid shift codes into both trailers and the box art image they released. Gives some of the community day skins that you had to farm the shit out of the game to get before. There was also a code for 100 golden keys but that apparently expired on the 1st.

All joking aside, they apparently are going to have DLC for the game so I'd expect to see some of them via that probably as Nomura said some of it will add story and fill in gaps in what we got.

Makes me think of a cross between Ledger's Joker and the old 1960's Batman Joker. Not sure how I feel about it, but there is promise there, and knowing Phoenix's acting ability I'm willing to wait and see how it goes before getting too judgmental. My knee jerk reaction is to not like it, mostly because I'm not sure I care for the aesthetic at all but there's promise in the pieces so I'm interested to see how it does.

The game was an absolute bat shit crazy mess and I loved every second of it. I feel sorry for a lot of people who played it though because KH is my THING and I barely could follow what the fuck was going on half the time. Qualifications: KH is my favorite series and I've played every game in it multiple times and even actively play their scummy gacha mobile game for the story. >_> P.S. Fuck that fucking black box and Maleficient for bringing up every 45 fucking minutes during the game with no payoff. XD P.P.S. Also fuck them for kidnapping all the Final Fantasy characters. They're probably what's in the fucking box.

Yes. I didn't at first, but one of the sales when they had you use the discovery queue thing to earn cards I tried it out and really liked the idea and have looked through it a few times and added things to my wishlist before. I also look at the new games list but shit gets buried so fast there that it's pretty much meaningless a lot of the time. 9050 games in 1 year is an average of nearly 25 games a day and I sure as fuck don't look at Steam every day. It's too much and a LOT of it has no reason to be there. As far as what they can do? A lot of this shit is legitimately just asset flips of stuff from Unity or whatever. Ban shit like that. Remove it from the store, ban the person who puts that kind of thing up. Having to pay $100 to put the shit up is obviously not stopping them since they can get it back anyway so they need to figure something else out. Maybe restrict what can be put on the new release page via some sort of criteria? I'm sure there's lots of things that are a lot more direct then everything they've done so far put together. That last statement is mostly hyperbole because I know they HAVE been trying to do things it just seems like it has no actual impact sometimes and comes really slowly. Part of the problem with their system being so great and open and easy to make use of is the scum of the industry will be there to exploit it in any way they can. A big part of it is the achievements and trading card shit. To be fair, I THINK they starting restricting games being able to have them through some means or another late last year? I don't remember for sure but I thought I saw something about it since that's how these people made their money back since there are people that will pay $1 for shit that isn't even really a game if it will give them achievements and steam cards. Not sure how thorough it is though.

Steam wouldn't have this problem either if they did ANYTHING about it. Literally the most they've done to stem the tide is stop Greenlight (and replace it with a system that just made it so people had to pay them first instead of getting votes to throw up all over the store), and overhauling the curator system so that they can let other people do the work they should probably have somebody doing themselves. The discovery thing is one of the best features they've added in quite a while I think. They had the right idea with opening the platform to people who want to make games and have a centralized place to get them some exposure, but they had NOTHING in place to stop abuse of the system and have done nearly nothing to stop it from happening since it became an issue in like 2014 and it only gets worse as time goes on. Steam is a great platform that is literally buried under heaps of shit and it's hurting them. If Epic really can ramp up their storefront quickly, they'll be in a prime place to take a share. If Valve can sort some things out though they can cement their hold because Epic's roadmap puts them even pretending to be comparable to steam a minimum of 6 months out (more for a few things). Also, the "Recently Shipped Features" section makes me lol every time I see it because imaging an online store without some of those features is ridiculous. Here's the roadmap in question: https://trello.com/b/GXLc34hk/epic-games-store-roadmap

Yeah, he updated the original article stating that he sent them an outline and then they published their response pretty much minutes after his article went up without actually reading the full thing. Sounds like they COULD start learning from their recent mistakes. There are some hopeful threads in the article overall now that I've had a chance to read the whole thing, but they really don't have any missteps left at this point. Glad to see that the people who will more or less be running the game now seem to have their shit together a little better too. The updates so far have done a decent amount for the game and I'm honestly more impressed with it now knowing the specifics of what the dev cycle was like on it. If they can keep up the pace they may actually be able to turn it around in the public eye but will have to see how it plays out. They've been weirdly quiet since the last patch. Haven't even seen their community guy on reddit recently.

She would be his Aunt actually.

Seems like they're mixing it up a little at least. From how the trailer looked and what I've heard it seems like "The Siren" has a melee oriented monk sort of vibe to her which could be interesting. The robot guy summons AI controlled "pets", one of them controls a mech and the other guy was described as being "like batman" ie: rich guy with a bunch of gadgets.

It's not entirely a greed issue per say (in some cases at least). This game was in development for 6 years. That's 6 years of dozens to hundreds of people working on a game where no profit is being made from the work done. There's a breaking point where SOMETHING needs to be released and mismanaged companies like EA just make it more obvious when resources aren't being properly allocated or there is a lack of oversight ("Bioware Magic" will see us through). Where one game needs maybe some better QA testing and a solid day one patch, others need a years worth of scrambling and some massive overhauls to set straight. Unfortunately the latter is becoming more common with the advent of 'live services' where the company can see a base line pay out for work performed thus far and finish it on the run (FUCK IT! WE'RE DOING IT LIVE!). Much like how the loot box concept in F2P games was taken by AAA publishers and shoved into full priced games, this is basically the AAA version of "early access". That being said, I sincerely hope to see a turn around of Anthem in a shorter time than it's contemporaries which all took about a year and the work so far seems to lean in that direction but the state of morale that appears to be prevalent at Bioware currently is a bit disheartening. Also makes me worry about what may ultimate happen with the next Dragon Age game if it continues. Side note: I find it mildly baffling that apparently the flying was not a constant in the game since it's easily one of the best and most well rounded systems the game has by far. Give whoever planned that shit a raise. O_o P.S. Polygon's turn apparently: https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/2/18292304/bioware-press-response-anthem

Similar shit with Andromeda too. That particular writer is really big on exposing that kind of stuff. Think he actually wrote a whole book about the situation at various AAA developers.

It's almost impossible to find anything on Steam anymore unless you know exactly what your looking for. Trying to browse new games is nearly impossible sometimes because there is so much shoveleare and asset flips being thrown up that everything gets buried. There were over 9000 (lol) games released on Steam in 2018 and it's been nearly that bad for the past few years. They don't even pretend to police what's going on at all. It's pretty much WHY their refund policy improved. And they know it too. They've actively invited bigger names in the gaming community to voice opinions on how to improve the state of things on the platform but only made minor changes without addressing the core problems. Having said that, you're right though. Nobody has the options they have right now and they have done a LOT of good in there with the lazy fuck fest. But competition is not a bad thing for something like this and I wish Epic and whoever else tries their hand at taking them on luck. Even if it only amounts to Steam improving it'll be for the better.

Missed the part about the game's lead designer dying in July 2017 as well. That probably rocked the boat harder than a lot of other things. Here's the blog post Nick referred to that acts (in part) as a response to the Kotaku article: http://blog.bioware.com/2019/04/02/anthem-game-development/ Jason Schreier (Kotaku article writer) has since responded to the blog post, specifically highlighting the part that says "We don’t see the value in tearing down one another, or one another’s work. We don’t believe articles that do that are making our industry and craft better."

I love Symmetra. Favorite strategy on King's Row attack right now for my friends and I is to teleport a Bastion onto the head of the statue at the first point and sow confusion. XD My main go to's right now are Brigitte and Moira for healing and Pharah and Mei for DPS but I'll pull Sym or Ashe depending on the situation.

They have it planned out to get it to the point that Steam is at, but they're just kind of failing at basic store features in general right now which is why I don't care for it. The paying for exclusives thing isn't going to be forever either and they've said as much. Seems like they mostly are trying to get a foothold. Yes, it's stupid and annoying but it's nothing new. It's a MUCH better platform for developers though (they only take a 12% cut vs Steams 30%) so I wouldn't be surprised if it starts to take off when they finally work through their roadmap of planned features.

That's fair. I play a lot of support personally but get pretty aggressive. I like him but I can't get a lot of value with him because I can't hit shit with his gun at the moment though I have the healing down pretty well. I like his kit a lot but I probably won't pick him up for now.

Wouldn't surprise me if it was. They have the money to throw around and Gearbox doesn't give a fuck. I honestly don't know why it matters all that much. It's still on PC regardless of how you buy it and Steam needs the damn competition so that maybe someday Valve can dislodge their head from their ass. My only complaint is Epic needs to ramp up their fucking launcher updates if they actually want to be that competition. Their roadmap is a fucking joke. How do you launch a storefront that doesn't have a fucking SHOPPING CART?? Never mind everything else.

He's easily one of the best balanced heroes they've ever released. You just don't care for him or what?