Hot takes

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I seen this many many times people giving praise to Diablo 1 atmosphere and seem to dismiss Diablo 2 atmosphere.

They say Diablo 1 had a type of "horror" atmosphere that was lost in 2 but i say NO that's not correct.

Another complaint i heard is in Diablo 2 you feel like "superman" or a "commando" and again NO

First Diablo 2 takes you across the world of sanctuary while Diablo 1 happens in tristram in westmarch which is also where act 1 of Diablo 2 takes place and more or less act 1 carries the same atmosphere of Diablo 1 go into a cave or visit the rouge monastery and you will get the same clusterphobic vibes especially the catacombs.

Each act has a different type of atmosphere that is very well done , act 2 has this mysterious vibe where you are constantly battling overwhelming numbers of undead and going into ancient tombs.

Act 3 has this dangerous and toxic jungle vibe also inspired by the Aztecs.

Act 4 has this hopeless feeling to it things look so different from previous acts even jars that you break in other acts are replaced by "trapped souls".

Act 5 is well chaotic , destruction and battle remains are spread everywhere layer of fortifications after layer instilled with that sense of pride you get from harrogath music.

Each act offers a different type of "horror" while act 1 is similar to Diablo 1 , act 2 offers these tall slender mummies that raise undead Idk about you but these mfs look nasty and play nasty they hit hard both from range and up close they can poison your butt and constantly raise undead that offer no XP after killed 1st time , act 3 is this dangerous and vicious jungle with corruption running rampant it's a scary place to be in alone and unarmed there is massive spiders , small demons armed with knives as large as they are , act 4 is well corpse eaters are enough horror , act 5 shows horrific imagery of what demons did to barbarian people it serves as a constant reminder that you can never feel bad for murdering demons in whatever way or shape.


Now to the "you feel like a commando" thing what this means usually is in Diablo 2 you can fight entire groups of enemies while in Diablo 1 you needed to be quite clever and careful not to fight too many enemies at the same time.

Well they are correct....only for act 1 though as act 1 serves as the game introductory act it should provide monsters that aren't difficult to kill allowing players to level up pretty well and get themselves up and running preparing them for more difficult acts , starting from act 2 and on basic enemies can't be killed by 1 hit or they can but they also don't run away like the fallen who despite being in large numbers very often get easily destroyed by their unique fear mechanic which forces them to run away when one of their kind is killed , from act 2 and on you can't get to the center of a large horde of demons and expect to make it , you will need to pick fights carefully enemies with magic attacks become more common depending on your resistance you may or may not be able to withstand fighting let's say many burning archers if your fire resistance is bad.

Enemies get progressively tougher and so you do but most enemies don't go over 3-5 hits each , enemies in Diablo are designed to deal high damage but are quick to kill so its a matter of not fighting too many of them and being able to parry or evade pretty well.

Some people are just too attached by nostalgia , i heard the same shit "uhh i opened the door and ahh fresh meat which was the scariest thing I've ever witnessed when i was 6" like shut up man you kept saying this until they made the worst ever reappearance of a gruesome enemy that was the butcher in Diablo 3.

While Diablo 1 is quite atmospheric and it's unique in that regard i find people dismissing Diablo 2 amazing atmosphere for "muh Diablo 1 had it more dArK and hOrRiFiC" shoves Diablo 2 visual and sound design under the rug which is unfair.

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

I think if you pay into a Patreon for video game development I think you've made a more dumb decision than single pledge on crowd funding site, double if the game is a visual novel. I've seen a single VN sit on thousands a month from desperate under appreciated fans of visual novels that Japan for years ignored that too advantage of that to avoid putting out a complete product for 7 years. I've seen shitty VNs made with little to no budge with a lot of heart, plenty with cringe and then there's that one I see in my library that might never see completion on there thanks to Visa and Mastercard deciding they wanted be Karens screaming about saving the children who shouldn't even had the credit card access to begin with.

 

[GardeniaSky's icon GardeniaSky GardeniaSky]

Not everything has to be a fucking rogue-like/rogue-lite.

Give me a cohesive linear story with actual progress not your padding-time vague BULLSHIT.

 

[Sfjeov]

Sometimes, indie games calling themselves retro are too damm pretty and fluid that it's easy to tell that they don't feel retro at all.

 

[sockesocke]

Pokemon is one of the worst monster collecting games, almost every other game, old or new in the genre surpasses it.

 

[Ikagura]

Saying that the classic Sonic games reward memorization and skill isn't an excuse for them to always interrupt your speed.

Sonic games aren't about speed but momentum or else the entire level would be long hallways, it's a platformer not an auto-runner. Wonderboy 1 on the Master System is basically that.

You get rewarded for your skill by having better items if you go in the upper lanes and punishes with spikes and bottomless pits with the lower ones when you fall.

 

[Ikagura]

I think that the biggest issue about forgiveness is that it's supposedly a mutual agreement, what's the point of forgiving someone who still wants to harm/take advantage over you?


And same thing with the polar opposite, asking apologies over the smallest issue and asks for respect as if they're their boss (while they're total stranger) can be seen as manipulative behaviour.

Like, something can be a hiccup but not made on purpose to hurt them yet if you apologise they could bring that back any time to request things or act as if they now have some authority over you. This is like you're now condemned to be eternally grateful towards them.

 

[Ikagura]

When I've started Twilight Princess (the original Gamecube version) I've noticed how when people asks for a gritty and realistic Zelda game they forgot that even this one had quite many colours and despite its more realistic approach there are some character design that looked quite stylised.


Even the more lighthearted looking games in the series have some darker sub-plots and implicit events so that's not like the games cannot have both. People shouldn't stop just with the visuals.

 

[MasterEn]

I think that the biggest issue about forgiveness is that it's supposedly a mutual agreement, what's the point of forgiving someone who still wants to harm/take advantage over you?


And same thing with the polar opposite, asking apologies over the smallest issue and asks for respect as if they're their boss (while they're total stranger) can be seen as manipulative behaviour.

Like, something can be a hiccup but not made on purpose to hurt them yet if you apologise they could bring that back any time to request things or act as if they now have some authority over you. This is like you're now condemned to be eternally grateful towards them.

i've seen the subject of forgiveness being brought up in the comment sections of some videos that i watch. it's more about letting go of the negative feelings that you have towards a person; putting yourself into a more neutral stance than a positive or negative one. it can never be a mutual agreement. a person does it to help let go of the past and start moving forward again. what the other person does is inconsequential in this matter.

 

[tizlor]

injecting whatever the current year humor is into games.

make it stop.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Sonic games aren't about speed but momentum or else the entire level would be long hallways, it's a platformer not an auto-runner. Wonderboy 1 on the Master System is basically that.

You get rewarded for your skill by having better items if you go in the upper lanes and punishes with spikes and bottomless pits with the lower ones when you fall.

I know they are about momentum and all that, but still.

 

[MasterEn]

I know they are about momentum and all that, but still.

sonic games exist because a guy was speed running world 1-1 in mario bros 1, trying to get through the level in the least amount of time possible. speed and momentum would be important in a game based off of that. the most well liked levels in sonic adventure 2 are the sonic and shadow stages because you mostly run at full speed and do a bit of platforming here and there.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

sonic games exist because a guy was speed running world 1-1 in mario bros 1, trying to get through the level in the least amount of time possible. speed and momentum would be important in a game based off of that. the most well liked levels in sonic adventure 2 are the sonic and shadow stages because you mostly run at full speed and do a bit of platforming here and there.

And lots of romhacks of the series are quite speed-focused as well, and the Rush duology is quite acclaimed for that too iirc.

 

[Ikagura]

I know they are about momentum and all that, but still.

And lots of romhacks of the series are quite speed-focused as well, and the Rush duology is quite acclaimed for that too iirc.

Sonic's speed was also a marketing thing for the Genesis' "blast processing" but even the first game tried to have slower paced levels for that reason. Same with CD in a bigger extent.

Sure, Sonic 2 and 3&K had a better balance with fast and slow parts but if the level design was only focused on speed it would end up being boring.

Even some of the modern games like Generations' Modern Sonic levels had slower 2.5D sections as a way to bridge two main parts of a level.

That's why it's not exactly a racing game as a platformer.

 

[Phage]

Not everything has to be a fucking rogue-like/rogue-lite.

Give me a cohesive linear story with actual progress not your padding-time vague BULLSHIT.

This so much, and I'm going to throw open world games under the bus here too.

I miss games with good stories, and roguelikes/open world games becoming the easy keywords for "all the gamers will buy this" has basically drowned the market in a bunch of games that have barely-there narratives to justify their existence, and if they could find a way to get away with not having a story at all, I feel like some of them would.

That's not to say that they're *all* bad either. The Mystery Dungeon franchise has birthed some of my favorite games of all time with fantastic stories across a myriad of franchises, both beloved and original, and they're almost textbook roguelikes.

The problem is, people seem afraid to make a dungeon crawler style game that *isn't* randomized in some way, but without some manner of structure, it's very hard to tell a good story. Too many roguelikes these days are going for the Hades/Cult of the Lamb style games with 1-4 dungeons that they expect you to run over and over and over again with not a ton of variety, expecting you to die multiple times before clearing, and then giving you a nugget of plot for the effort, with other bits scattered about that rely on random spawns in said dungeons that could be missed entirely if you're unlucky. Given, Hades and Cult of the Lamb managed to do this well, but they're well-known and loved for a reason while others... aren't.

Open world games are also victims of their own genre. Too many of them have taken "absolute freedom" as the basis of the genre and forgotten that it wasn't one single aspect that made that genre great in the first place. The reason open world games became popular was because a few really good ones with fantastic plots and lots of exploration blew up. Now the genre seems allergic to having any kind of meaningful story at all, because that would push too much implication onto your character and we can't have *that*. You have to be a completely blank slate, and free to go anywhere in the world from the word go, and characters can't interact with you too much, lest their dialogue impose characterization on you, and it ultimately just creates a bland, pointless experience that's huge and empty without a purpose.

Look back at games like Jak and Daxter on the PS2 and you can see an open world adventure that had strong characters, a great story, and a world built such that you could explore within the limits of your abilities, guiding you towards story events that gave you NEW abilities, allowing you to further explore the world and subtly funneling you towards the next story events without making you feel like you were restricted or forced. Good open world design can essentially be categorized as a sprawling 3D metroidvania. It's *okay* to not be able to run straight to the final dungeon, or scale the tallest mountain with nothing but a loincloth and a dream. It's fine to create an obstacle that the player can't surpass right away, because it gives them excitement to return later and find out what's past that mysterious boulder blocking the pass when they obtain an ability to break boulders.

Basically, both genres need to remember their roots and what specifically made the genre so popular to begin with. Randomization without purpose is just chaos for no reason. If I want a random game with no point, I can go play solitaire. If I play a video game, I want to feel like I'm accomplishing something, not just exploring a vast, empty world for no reason, or doing the same hard-as-nails dungeon over and over in the hopes that *this* clear will tell me why I'm doing it in the first place. Bring back structure in games. A bit of linearity is not a sin.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Sonic's speed was also a marketing thing for the Genesis' "blast processing" but even the first game tried to have slower paced levels for that reason. Same with CD in a bigger extent.

Sure, Sonic 2 and 3&K had a better balance with fast and slow parts but if the level design was only focused on speed it would end up being boring.

Even some of the modern games like Generations' Modern Sonic levels had slower 2.5D sections as a way to bridge two main parts of a level.

That's why it's not exactly a racing game as a platformer.

Ok you might have a point but the character is always centered to the screen and it makes your reaction times shorter or something

 

[Deleted member 598440]

Sub shops are mostly a waste. Unless they do hot subs that utilize a conveyor, griddle, or both you should just grab what you need from the market and make your own.

 

[Ikagura]

Ok you might have a point but the character is always centered to the screen and it makes your reaction times shorter or something.

Usually the obstacles aren't in the road so you couldn't react to them.

 

[KaiserMk7]

Final Fantasy XIII is fine.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Usually the obstacles aren't in the road so you couldn't react to them.

Yes they are

 

[Ikagura]

Yes they are

I've replayed the game not long ago and I don't recall having a surprise obstacle that I couldn't react to.

More often people's least favourite levels in the first game were the slower paced like Marble and Labyrinth and for the sequel Metropolis because both had a slower pace yet never talked about the obstacles in the middle of a fast section.

I'd still say that the third game has drastically improved the pacing and level design.

 

[Burzuru]

rouge-likes/lites
survival crafting
metroidvania
doom clones/boomershooters
simulation

its all so tiresome.

 

[Sunnyside]

-snip-

Perfectly said! I wish I could give this post 100 hearts. It's everything I hate about modern game design (monetization aside).

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

-Most Indie-horror games either are Resident Evil-knock offs or Silent Hill -clones but in bland . Why not trying an entirely fresh concept ?

-Most Pseudo-Jrpgs are good-looking garbage with great pixelart but with bad stories and with more problems than JRPGs already . Sometimes even worsen the problems of JRPGs much more.

-Metroidvanias arent instantly fun just because of putting the souls-like combat into it.

-Soooooo many cancled games with great concepts can be found that never came to fruition and could be made into an own game to push boundaries as an indie-project . Why do we get another Doom Eternal-homage boomer shooter with generic Andrew Hulshut-metal soundtrack that can be ignored too like the thousands of others of tge same "Homages" ?

There are alot of underrated indie-games and some that actually try to have great gameplay and designs . But man ... how often im dissapointed with indies lately cant be bad luck alone .

 

[Burzuru]

-Metroidvanias arent instantly fun just because of putting the souls-like combat into it.

-Soooooo many cancled games with great concepts can be found that never came to fruition and could be made into an own game to push boundaries as an indie-project . Why do we get another Doom Eternal-homage boomer shooter with generic Andrew Hulshut-metal soundtrack that can be ignored too like the thousands of others of tge same "Homages" ?

i am so tired of souls combat

also the sequel to hypnospace outlaw, "dreamsettler" got canceled and i am so mad about that.