Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

See, if I had even paid attention to this, I could have said that any game based on one player vs. a team of players, where the one player takes on the role of antagonist, would fail because well over 20% of players would seek out the role of the antagonist. It's basic goddamn math.

Or maybe my brain is just too big to work in the games industry.

Or rather, when matchmaking, you get 5 people together, they get assigned randomly to each team, then rotate over the course of the play session. This way everyone is guaranteed a shot at being the Director or the Villain or the Monster or whatever if they want it.

I'm too smart for this.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 4th 2020 at 11:11:12 AM

How did the Friday the 13th game deal with that? You figure everyone wants to be Jason, for instance.

Dead by Daylight has the same premise and it's a huge hit.

I believe Friday the 13th did the matchmaking where you're randomly selected as either one of the campers or Jason for each round.

That’s probably the fairest way to do that. Well, that and have it so the game isn’t over till everyone has 1 round as Jason.

Jedi Knight had a mode where there was one lightsaber on the map, and whoever had it was the Jedi Master, gaining sole access to all the force powers and credit for any kill that happens until someone manages to kill them (which will probably require some teamwork). Once that happens they drop the lightsaber and whoever picks it up becomes the new Jedi Master.

Edited by Anura on Apr 5th 2020 at 12:15:52 PM

XP Boosters Are Some Sinister Bullshit (The Jimquisition)

He just posted this few minutes ago

Edited by Dhiruxide on Apr 6th 2020 at 3:52:09 PM

Reminds me of the times I spent on Star Wars: The Old Republic. That game is full of this stuff. In fact, it's even the primary lure for people to subscribe to it: you can complete the whole game without paying, story and all... but you earn xp at a quarter of the normal rate if you're not a subscriber. They even taunt you with occasional free boosters as quest rewards, but those only last about an hour each if you're not paying.

I love Jim's ending gag of trailing off into unscripted rambling once he "runs out of things to say". It's quite endearing.

Oh, right, something about experience booster microtransactions in that RE multiplayer thing. Yawn. Wake me up when the video game industry grows a soul, a conscience, or goes to prison.

It's not like I'd ever buy them, but clearly someone is, and they're apparently dumb enough to fall for it, so the industry wins and we all lose. GG WP.

You know what they say, the customer is always wrong

Hey let's not call predatory business practises "customer stupidity". These systems are designed to manipulate people, and expecting everyone to be business savvy to notice is kinda unfair.

In the end all it does is deflect blame from the scumbags for implementing predatory practises to their victims.

It's like saying "Hah, doesn't that stupid alcoholic know that alcohol is addicting and that they shouldn't drink it? Dumbass"

Edited by PippingFool on Apr 6th 2020 at 11:11:15 PM

If there weren't a market, people wouldn't sell it. Consumers have to at least share in some part of the blame here.

True, customers do share some of the blame. The 'whales' are at the least unwittingly giving these companies fuel for their anti-customer practices. Putting these gambling mechanics in games aimed at young kids though is a special kind of puppy-kicking that these fucking cu- ♪SKELETON WARRIORS♫ are engaging in.

Yes, kids don't have the discretion to see through those mechanics, and parents often lack the knowledge to supervise them. I agree with the people who want to ban microtransactions in child-rated games.

If you place too much blame on the customer, I'd argue that implies they actually aren't a bad thing. I mean, if the customers were buying them of entirely their own free will, then microtransactions wouldn't be a problem sort of by definition.

I'm not placing anywhere near all the blame on the consumer, but let's be real. There is a type of player out there who will gladly pay money to get an advantage over other players no matter how easy the game is. It's the same mentality that makes people hack leaderboards or use cheats in multiplayer.

In that sense, these transactions fulfill a genuine market demand, although there is plenty of argument to be made that it's not healthy to indulge them.

There is also a difference between designing a game to be a complete experience with extras that players can buy if they choose; versus intentionally designing a game to be incomplete, frustrating, or extraordinarily difficult without those extras.

I don't mind Blizzard selling WoW mounts and pets for real money. Well, I do a little, but it's not like I'm forced to buy them if I want to keep up in raids or PvP or anything. Selling character level boosts and/or XP boosts is a little dickish, but it is already super easy to level characters and it doesn't give you any advantage once you reach max level.

However, games that are intentionally slow-paced or frustrating and that sell you the chance for the game to be less frustrating or slow are absolutely horrid and inexcusable, especially if that forms a core business model. There's also gambling mechanics: I pretty much reflexively reject anything that has loot boxes, for example.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 6th 2020 at 11:12:50 AM

The main problem I have with paid lootboxes is that they don't add anything positive to the game and exist solely for the benefit of the publisher. In fact, they tend to have a negative impact on the game design overall.

I randomly stumbled upon this video again & watching it kinda synched with me because I was playing the most recently released Warriors game, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4.

2 years later, the complaints of cut content & cheapness is still pretty applicable which is sad because there actually is improvements.

They completely overhauled the combat. The simple addition of jump button (a first for the series) has enabled aerial combos so characters can have twice as many moves now. They even put in 4 switchable special moves that can be either cinematic ultimate attacks or super modes. As a result the combat plays fantastically with returning characters playing differently.

It's just a lot got cut out. For instance the story is completely butchered. Pirate Warriors 3 managed to cover every major One Piece arc that was out then, up to 21 arcs all heavily condensed of course but still most of everything was kept. 4 by comparison only covers 6 arcs. Sure it goes into more detail for some arcs like Marineford got 4 levels but it feels like such a letdown compared to 3 for covering the entire story.

Also characters got cut-out. 3 didn't have any DLC I believe so it came out with 37 characters while 4 came out with 43 characters. Only 7 characters got cut-out & pretty big ones too like Enel or Kuma which hurts.

And the most lowkey sign of cheapness is that characters never wear the right clothes. Sure characters in these games only ever got one model & so are always wearing the wrong clothes in arcs but its worse in this case. Every major stage they recolor Luffy's clothes but never actually change the model leading the game to consider simple recolors of the same shirt blouse & pants as different costumes. The worse moment was in Whole Cake Island, an arc where Luffy wears a red & black dress shirt & in-game his shirt is colored black to mimic the shirt he wore in the arc. They tried to trick you into thinking he's wearing the black dress shirt but its clearly just the same blouse lazily colored black.

Seriously the combat is phenomenal but everything is weirdly cheap.

Edited by slimcoder on Apr 9th 2020 at 12:43:31 PM

We all know Hyrule Warriors was the best one.

This is what he's doing instead of FFVII Remake.

Clearly the superior product.

I've been playing Steamworld Heist, and I just got to the hat shop which sells the Cloud wig. That's, like, serendipitous or something.

Sephiroth Kills Dumbledore: A Video About Spoiler Culture (The Jimquisition)

Oh yeah, spoiler stuff. Especially if people are gonna spoil things that have already passed like years or decades earlier, such as Darth Vader being Luke's father, Sephiroth killing Aerith or if you fail to destroy all of El Oscuro's eggs, one of them hatches years later and destroys the world. I know not everyone's watched those films or played those games but honestly I feel you gotta draw a line somewhere.

Was that a Rise of the Triad reference? MK, it's nowhere near as popular as Star Wars or Final Fantasy

Edited by Dhiruxide on Apr 13th 2020 at 4:13:31 PM