Dishonored nailed a neat trick: If every game dev stops innovating immediately after you release an innovative game, your game will always be considered highly innovative.
Look at what Valve has said in response to similar questions.
Its basically a polite way of saying ‘yeah there really isn’t a better possible first person shooter, single player experience.’
So they made a reality breaking first person puzzle game, became the de facto overlords of PC gaming platforms, invented VR tech, oh and made linux be able to run every game, oh and we make console-esque PCs now too, I guess.
Hell, I don’t even know of other games that solve the ‘multiplayer fps maps are predictable and boring’ the way L4D did, where the map itself csn basically mutate, have a bunch of semi-procedural preset variants.
Nope, instead, we still have the most popular multiplayer FPS games have basically static, memorizable maps.
Turns out gamers broadly don’t actually seem to want innovation, they seem to want gacha games, as gacha games are now basically more than half of the gaming market.
Example of that: That friend you know who’s still really trying to convince you that Fallout 76 is better now.
Okay one thing I have definately noticed in L4d is that I am never stationary or still long enough to feel bored. Almost every other fps pve game is just “stand on top of hill and gun down hordes of zombies”.
Modern games feel like we are going backwards in gameplay. Atleast the graphics are nice I guess?
They really did go very in depth to the ‘game controller’, basically its a simulated DM for a TTRPG.
The … constantly on edge thing?
Systems of spawning and nudging AI states of groups of enemies, specifically designed to make you feel that near constant tension.
The other element of that is that they’re much better at traditional map design, making choke points mixed with more open spaces, giving you some options to explore/use as cover/retreat to, but also, some of those options are actually traps that will punish you.
Also uh L4D doesn’t have a 2D minimap.
It uses things like way points and object/objective stencils/borders, and, a lot of the maps are complex vertically, in addition to horizontally, so… just naively moving toward the waypoint?
Probably not gonna work so well in L4D, whereas in most games, that basically will work.
There is also a kind of problem in that a growing number of people cannot navigate their own hometowns without a real life minimap… players generally are getting worse at complex environment navigation overtime, and that’s true in both real and virtual spaces.
Half Life 2 was about 5 years too early to be considered “basically beyond imptovement”. The graphics are a little dated now, and maybe the gameplay is a little simpler than a modern FPS, but ultimately it’s pretty close to the mark. I haven’t been surprised by FPS mechanics or graphics in 10 years, so there’s basically no way for Half Life 3 to surprise us. Dishonored 1 and 2 were basically identical. If you told me the second one came out immediately after, I’d believe you.
Yeah, thats fair, I’m not trying to personally say HL2 is literally perfect, and I don’t think Valve are either…
But they’re saying that, by the time people really really wanted Half Life 3… they knew they would have to do something so revolutionary, so much better, to top it… that it actually wasn’t possible.
So, think outside the box, innovate elsewhere, all the other shit they’ve done?
Conceptually and practically easier than making a sequel that would live up to HL3 expectations.
Although, there are apparently reports that they are now actually trying to do HL3.
A bit of a tangent, but tbh I feel like Half-Life Alyx was a perfect example of where they can take the franchise, but being a PC VR title (and one that really leans heavily into the tech and loses a ton if played with non-VR mods), it didn’t have nearly the same impact as the rest of the franchise. It was definitely innovative but not in a way to appeal to the mass market. Not to mention it sets the stage for HL3 even more than Ep 2 did.
Its an outstanding achievement… but it just ain’t affordable, ain’t accessible, not unless they can somehow get a Steam Frame to be more like half the cost of an Index, as opposed to about the same price.
On the other hand…
It would maybe be neat if more just games in general were made with the idea of a/many VR player(s) vs a/many kb+m or controller players.
Make asymetrical gameplay that plays to the strenghts of each set up.
Remember Splinter Cell’s old vs mode?
Two FPS heavies vs two TPS sneakybois?
Something like that, but specialized to different control set ups.
Actually balance around different control schemes, but where each control scheme basically is a base player class, something like that.
There are a few games and modes for games that do something like this, but nothing I am aware of thats like… a whole ass game, not just basically a minigame.
Fallout 76 is better now. The monetizing is little ew, but there are lots of content and they fixed a lot of the big caveats i had with the game.
Id put that game just under a Noman sky and Cyperpunk 2077 as a game that turned around.
Also valve did not origaninally make portal. Its roots came from Kim Swifts senior project. Valve gave resurces to add the shine, but the concept did not originate from Valves offices.
They did not invent vr stuff either. First vr stuff crude as it was comes allthe way from the 60’s in the 90’s Sega had their Sega vr in some arcade racings games and oculus rift from Carmack + team was first modern style vr set on the markets.
Lots of games use similar mechanics than left for dead to make the maps and spawns feel different.
Here few from the top of my head:
Vermintide 2 (maybe 1, havent played that)
Pay day 2
Back 4 blood
Ane could argue Alien isolation is similar because it has same kind of game director controlling the game.
Remnant 1 & 2
Gunfire reborn.
games like Helldives 1 & 2 and deep rock galactica where the whole map is generated.
One could argue even most extraction shootters do that because the exctraction zones change place.
Yeah all wants just catcha games. Thats why games like Clair Obscur, Death Stranding and now Dispatch have done so poorly.
Ok uh, what can you do, in terms of actual gameplay mechanics, in Fallout76, that you can’t do in… basically every multiplayer, survival/craft/open world/fps game?
There are so many of those… and… FO76 basically came out around the tail end of the kind of craze for those kinds of games, they were trend chasing.
Uh lets see, Valve did make Portal, what happened was they saw a demo of a game (Narbacular Drop) being concepted at a nearby gaming college expo, and they basically hired all of them, taught them Source, gave them more team breadth and depth to work with.
Valve has… or had… a track record of doing this, in the 90s / 00s. Oh, thats a neat mod for our game: Hire them.
So yes, Valve did originally make Portal. By seeing a neat concept demo, hiring the people behind it, and then making Portal.
I mean, you can say that after 5 more years of development, F076 became a basically functional open world survival craft fps, sure, but like…
No Mans Sky basically revolutionized the concept of what you can do with procedural generation, oh and, they just kept adding more and more stuff, just to the base game, not as DLC, not as MTX.
CP77? Yeah very rough start, but uh, entirely different scope of production value, being an actually competent RPG that’s practically an ImSim in many ways, all with an absurd level of graphical fidelity.
Like, everyone just expected that game to be Grand Theft Auto 5, Cyberpunk Edition, started their standards there, and then got mad that it wasn’t at parity.
CD Projekt Red was a AA studio when they were making this.
They were not Rockstar. They were not Bethesda.
Ok, I’ll give you that PayDay2 does actually have similar map mutating dynamics, I also have not played Vermintide, we do not speak of Back 4 Blood, what an embarassment, I am also unfamiliar with Remnant.
What I was trying to get at is … map mutations is how you solve the age old FPS team v team problem of… if you just have better map knowledge, you tend to win, so this causes a problem where you either have to keep pumping out new maps to keep things fresh, or you have to have a bunch of other balancing gameplay mechanics to have variety from there.
But the fundamental problem is that vets will clown noobs all the time, often by just simply having the maps memorized, angles and positions figured out, etc.
Also Alien Isolation has pretty good monster AI that works with the rest of the game design, but no, thats not mutating maps.
Open world maps that move objective markers around are not mutating maps.
HellDivers 2 is a good example of doing proc gen maps… but again, thats an extraction shooter, co-op shooter type thing.
Nobody, that I am aware of, has pulled this off for mass PvP battles, like, 16-32+ vs 16-32+ players.
As for Valve not literally, technically, totally inventing VR… sure yeah ok, what I meant was they poured tons of their own resources into doing VR in their own way, they’re one of the only teams that’s made an actual AAA VR game that fully embraces the concept of ‘you are a person in another world, a world that has high graphical realism.’
Virtual reality.
The point there was they turned toward innovating in other areas, that they did more or less start from scratch and invent their own concept of VR.
Your final quip about gacha games is funny.
Just look at the numbers dude, the vast majority of money to be made in gaming is by selling MTX addiction simulators.
That’s not to say there are not still people who really do actually want well crafted, truly innovative or very well put together, fully fledged games… but the way the math of capitalism works on that is uh, those kinds of endeavors are way riskier, and have way worse ROI, than selling waifus to dorks.
I hope that actual games defeat waifu simulators, we are seeing a lot of AAAs crash and burn recently, but uh, I don’t think gacha games are going anywhere… and most of the outfits with the money to be able to undertake a truly groundbreaking project?
Theyre all incompotent morons at the management level, who, after failing hard at their attempts in the last 5 ish years, are now just gonna try and hand that all over to AI, to attempt to further increase ROI.
But, normies love ‘recognizable brand franchise’, normies consistently auto-hypetrain and nostalgia-bate themselves, normies prove that having more than half a game’s budget be marketing does brainwash them very well.
Here, I’ll end with another hot take:
If, after everything that happened with Bethesda, up to the point of Starfield releasing…
You still bought Starfield on day one, or pre-ordered it?
You’re the problem, you’re the normie, you’re the person marketing and nostalgia work on, you didn’t realize your in an abusive, parasocial relationship with Bethesda.
Dishonored nailed a neat trick: If every game dev stops innovating immediately after you release an innovative game, your game will always be considered highly innovative.
Yeah, people are always like, y no half life 3?
Look at what Valve has said in response to similar questions.
Its basically a polite way of saying ‘yeah there really isn’t a better possible first person shooter, single player experience.’
So they made a reality breaking first person puzzle game, became the de facto overlords of PC gaming platforms, invented VR tech, oh and made linux be able to run every game, oh and we make console-esque PCs now too, I guess.
Hell, I don’t even know of other games that solve the ‘multiplayer fps maps are predictable and boring’ the way L4D did, where the map itself csn basically mutate, have a bunch of semi-procedural preset variants.
Nope, instead, we still have the most popular multiplayer FPS games have basically static, memorizable maps.
Turns out gamers broadly don’t actually seem to want innovation, they seem to want gacha games, as gacha games are now basically more than half of the gaming market.
Example of that: That friend you know who’s still really trying to convince you that Fallout 76 is better now.
Okay one thing I have definately noticed in L4d is that I am never stationary or still long enough to feel bored. Almost every other fps pve game is just “stand on top of hill and gun down hordes of zombies”.
Modern games feel like we are going backwards in gameplay. Atleast the graphics are nice I guess?
They really did go very in depth to the ‘game controller’, basically its a simulated DM for a TTRPG.
The … constantly on edge thing?
Systems of spawning and nudging AI states of groups of enemies, specifically designed to make you feel that near constant tension.
The other element of that is that they’re much better at traditional map design, making choke points mixed with more open spaces, giving you some options to explore/use as cover/retreat to, but also, some of those options are actually traps that will punish you.
Also uh L4D doesn’t have a 2D minimap.
It uses things like way points and object/objective stencils/borders, and, a lot of the maps are complex vertically, in addition to horizontally, so… just naively moving toward the waypoint?
Probably not gonna work so well in L4D, whereas in most games, that basically will work.
There is also a kind of problem in that a growing number of people cannot navigate their own hometowns without a real life minimap… players generally are getting worse at complex environment navigation overtime, and that’s true in both real and virtual spaces.
Half Life 2 was about 5 years too early to be considered “basically beyond imptovement”. The graphics are a little dated now, and maybe the gameplay is a little simpler than a modern FPS, but ultimately it’s pretty close to the mark. I haven’t been surprised by FPS mechanics or graphics in 10 years, so there’s basically no way for Half Life 3 to surprise us. Dishonored 1 and 2 were basically identical. If you told me the second one came out immediately after, I’d believe you.
Yeah, thats fair, I’m not trying to personally say HL2 is literally perfect, and I don’t think Valve are either…
But they’re saying that, by the time people really really wanted Half Life 3… they knew they would have to do something so revolutionary, so much better, to top it… that it actually wasn’t possible.
So, think outside the box, innovate elsewhere, all the other shit they’ve done?
Conceptually and practically easier than making a sequel that would live up to HL3 expectations.
Although, there are apparently reports that they are now actually trying to do HL3.
… these things, they take time.
A bit of a tangent, but tbh I feel like Half-Life Alyx was a perfect example of where they can take the franchise, but being a PC VR title (and one that really leans heavily into the tech and loses a ton if played with non-VR mods), it didn’t have nearly the same impact as the rest of the franchise. It was definitely innovative but not in a way to appeal to the mass market. Not to mention it sets the stage for HL3 even more than Ep 2 did.
100% agree!
Its an outstanding achievement… but it just ain’t affordable, ain’t accessible, not unless they can somehow get a Steam Frame to be more like half the cost of an Index, as opposed to about the same price.
On the other hand…
It would maybe be neat if more just games in general were made with the idea of a/many VR player(s) vs a/many kb+m or controller players.
Make asymetrical gameplay that plays to the strenghts of each set up.
Remember Splinter Cell’s old vs mode?
Two FPS heavies vs two TPS sneakybois?
Something like that, but specialized to different control set ups.
Actually balance around different control schemes, but where each control scheme basically is a base player class, something like that.
There are a few games and modes for games that do something like this, but nothing I am aware of thats like… a whole ass game, not just basically a minigame.
We are lucky coz Half-Life 3 is currently in development 😏
I was with you until your last sentence.
Fallout 76 is better now. The monetizing is little ew, but there are lots of content and they fixed a lot of the big caveats i had with the game.
Id put that game just under a Noman sky and Cyperpunk 2077 as a game that turned around.
Also valve did not origaninally make portal. Its roots came from Kim Swifts senior project. Valve gave resurces to add the shine, but the concept did not originate from Valves offices.
They did not invent vr stuff either. First vr stuff crude as it was comes allthe way from the 60’s in the 90’s Sega had their Sega vr in some arcade racings games and oculus rift from Carmack + team was first modern style vr set on the markets.
Lots of games use similar mechanics than left for dead to make the maps and spawns feel different.
Here few from the top of my head: Vermintide 2 (maybe 1, havent played that) Pay day 2 Back 4 blood Ane could argue Alien isolation is similar because it has same kind of game director controlling the game. Remnant 1 & 2 Gunfire reborn.
One could argue even most extraction shootters do that because the exctraction zones change place.
Yeah all wants just catcha games. Thats why games like Clair Obscur, Death Stranding and now Dispatch have done so poorly.
Ok uh, what can you do, in terms of actual gameplay mechanics, in Fallout76, that you can’t do in… basically every multiplayer, survival/craft/open world/fps game?
There are so many of those… and… FO76 basically came out around the tail end of the kind of craze for those kinds of games, they were trend chasing.
Uh lets see, Valve did make Portal, what happened was they saw a demo of a game (Narbacular Drop) being concepted at a nearby gaming college expo, and they basically hired all of them, taught them Source, gave them more team breadth and depth to work with.
Valve has… or had… a track record of doing this, in the 90s / 00s. Oh, thats a neat mod for our game: Hire them.
So yes, Valve did originally make Portal. By seeing a neat concept demo, hiring the people behind it, and then making Portal.
I mean, you can say that after 5 more years of development, F076 became a basically functional open world survival craft fps, sure, but like…
No Mans Sky basically revolutionized the concept of what you can do with procedural generation, oh and, they just kept adding more and more stuff, just to the base game, not as DLC, not as MTX.
CP77? Yeah very rough start, but uh, entirely different scope of production value, being an actually competent RPG that’s practically an ImSim in many ways, all with an absurd level of graphical fidelity.
Like, everyone just expected that game to be Grand Theft Auto 5, Cyberpunk Edition, started their standards there, and then got mad that it wasn’t at parity.
CD Projekt Red was a AA studio when they were making this.
They were not Rockstar. They were not Bethesda.
Ok, I’ll give you that PayDay2 does actually have similar map mutating dynamics, I also have not played Vermintide, we do not speak of Back 4 Blood, what an embarassment, I am also unfamiliar with Remnant.
What I was trying to get at is … map mutations is how you solve the age old FPS team v team problem of… if you just have better map knowledge, you tend to win, so this causes a problem where you either have to keep pumping out new maps to keep things fresh, or you have to have a bunch of other balancing gameplay mechanics to have variety from there.
But the fundamental problem is that vets will clown noobs all the time, often by just simply having the maps memorized, angles and positions figured out, etc.
Also Alien Isolation has pretty good monster AI that works with the rest of the game design, but no, thats not mutating maps.
Open world maps that move objective markers around are not mutating maps.
HellDivers 2 is a good example of doing proc gen maps… but again, thats an extraction shooter, co-op shooter type thing.
Nobody, that I am aware of, has pulled this off for mass PvP battles, like, 16-32+ vs 16-32+ players.
As for Valve not literally, technically, totally inventing VR… sure yeah ok, what I meant was they poured tons of their own resources into doing VR in their own way, they’re one of the only teams that’s made an actual AAA VR game that fully embraces the concept of ‘you are a person in another world, a world that has high graphical realism.’
Virtual reality.
The point there was they turned toward innovating in other areas, that they did more or less start from scratch and invent their own concept of VR.
Your final quip about gacha games is funny.
Just look at the numbers dude, the vast majority of money to be made in gaming is by selling MTX addiction simulators.
That’s not to say there are not still people who really do actually want well crafted, truly innovative or very well put together, fully fledged games… but the way the math of capitalism works on that is uh, those kinds of endeavors are way riskier, and have way worse ROI, than selling waifus to dorks.
I hope that actual games defeat waifu simulators, we are seeing a lot of AAAs crash and burn recently, but uh, I don’t think gacha games are going anywhere… and most of the outfits with the money to be able to undertake a truly groundbreaking project?
Theyre all incompotent morons at the management level, who, after failing hard at their attempts in the last 5 ish years, are now just gonna try and hand that all over to AI, to attempt to further increase ROI.
But, normies love ‘recognizable brand franchise’, normies consistently auto-hypetrain and nostalgia-bate themselves, normies prove that having more than half a game’s budget be marketing does brainwash them very well.
Here, I’ll end with another hot take:
If, after everything that happened with Bethesda, up to the point of Starfield releasing…
You still bought Starfield on day one, or pre-ordered it?
You’re the problem, you’re the normie, you’re the person marketing and nostalgia work on, you didn’t realize your in an abusive, parasocial relationship with Bethesda.
Remember, no pre-orders.
The friend 👆
Sucking on todds dick must feel good to you eh bootlicker.
Did momma not love you? Or did daddy love you too much?
You think one of the most popular and best-rated games of 2015 “did poorly?”
Sorry. I forgot the /s
Oh damn lol that was some serious commitment to the bit