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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Well, the problem is that if its rating changes, the game will be rated based on online content that is not actually part of the content of the game. AFAIK, it would be the first instance ever of this happening. Like if Animal Crossing became rated M because of user generated content like shirt patterns showing something inappropriate.

    Its not really the game’s “fault” that user generated content is causing a problem, so changing the rating of the game wouldn’t really change anything.

    Plus, who even follows ratings anymore? We used to in the 90s, but children have been playing M rated games for a long time. I don’t see how this is going to do literally anything. Unless you are going to demand age verification to get the game, which I think is a horrendous trade off. Change the rating of a game which is known to have a problem with grooming in DMs in exchange for being forced to present identification to buy or play video games?





  • To be fair, the character designers for Highguard cooked way harder than the character designers for Concord.

    Highguard’s roster has good color separation, decent color palette, and strong silhouette design, making the character designs more appealing.

    Concord had issue with each of these. Poor color palette, sometimes non-existent color separation, and silhouettes that were decent on some characters but too similar between other chracters. Concord’s character designers also mistook being able to use texture variation in place of color separation, and that only really works very close up, as far away the texture goes away and its just a fast blob of the same colored pixels. Unfortunately, Concord’s characters were very unappealing, and they required entire redesigns to correct them. Essentially, it was too much work to try to recover, and would have made more sense to completely start over.

    Highguard is a lot better off then Concord, even if it needs more work to improve. And I doubt we will ever see as monumental a disaster as Concord ever again.




  • Probably a result of living in a highly judgmental global society that would rather form an immediate opinion, even if it is objectively wrong, than spend the time to actually investigate what the facts about something are.

    As an example, some people say that any person named in the Epstein files should immediately be jailed. I feel this is a wrong opinion, because any person can be named in a conversation that they aren’t party to. I could, for example, start talking about Mr. Rogers, and he is technically named in my comment. But some people say that the name just being in my comment is enough “evidence” to jail him forever. Rather than spending the time it would take to realize I was only saying “I liked Mr. Rogers’ show on TV,” they want an immediate resolution despite however wrong or inaccurate it would be.

    Investigation and research matters, and we live in a global society that villifies this ideology in favor of forming immediate and often wrong opinions about things they spend almost no time actually investigating.

    I mean, I remember a time where you were expected to not be able to win a game in a single sitting, and in fact, you might not get all the information about a game in the actual game. We had to read manuals for tutorials, maps, and story exposition. Try releasing a game nowadays that does that and you’re going to get slapped with a 1/10 because people nowadays have less patience than a goldfish.

    Personally, I primarily blame legacy news outlets and social media for this. But I digress.



  • I love both (personally like Quake 2 better) and consider Quake 2 to be “Quake 1 again.”

    Though the visual tone of the game changed, it was still a fast paced action shooter with an identity that was different enough from Doom to be called “just Doom again.” Many improvements were made, but at its core it still felt like Quake. It didn’t feel like I was suddenly playing Mario, or even another shooter at the time like Turok, Heretic/Hexen, or GoldenEye.

    I guess I am trying to say I understand what the headline is trying to say, but it doesn’t really do that good of a job.


  • IMO, a good sequel doesnt have to change too much to be good, and is usually close enough to be called “more of the same.”.

    A good sequel is good because of its similarities to the first. Otherwise you end up with Zelda 2, which is widely regarded as the worst of the Zelda games because it changed so much (outside of a small but very vocal minority that liked it). Many movie sequels also try to change too much and end up suffering because of it. Return to Oz was an interesting movie, but I wouldn’t ever call it as good as the original. Aliens and Terminator 2 are both similar enough to their respective originals while still having minor tweaks that led to a good follow up.

    So in the sense of a sequel, Overwatch 2 isn’t the worst, but I think it changed too much from the original and suffers because of it. And Blizzards decision to overwrite the original obviously plays a big part in many people’s dislike of the game.






  • The combat doesn’t suck. Morrowinds combat is good, you just don’t understand how it works when you are new to the game.

    The weapon swing animation tells the game to roll Attack dice, just like in a Table Talk RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. Then, if your Attack Roll (with modifiers like current fatigue, weapon skill, etc) beats the enemy’s Armor Class (with modifiers like their current fatigue and enchantments, etc), its a hit. Otherwise, its a miss.

    The one thing Morrowind could have done better with combat is communicating the feedback to the player better. Because the game can get the result of the roll immediately, it can then change what animation plays back to the player, so rather than always playing back the same weapon swing animation regardless of result, it should instead choose different animations based on the result. Missed? Play an animatiom that looks like the player missed. Hit? Play an animation that looks like a hit. Hit but damage was blocked? You get the idea.

    Perhaps it would be helpful if the game displayed a UI dice result to better communicate this, who knows. I like the game better without floating damage numbers, but they could be helpful to reduce frustration of new players that don’t understand how the game works.


  • Investors are not required to form an indie studio. They are not required to build a fun game that makes a lot of money. Indie studios do not require massive injections of cash. Most indie studios are formed on what is available to the team collectively. It isn’t something that is easy, it takes effort, but it is not impossible. Most indie studios are initially formed with like, less than $20k USD in total investment. Many are just one guy with a budget of $0.

    It is more likely that the amount of money that an investor would realistically need to give is considered too small to be worth the PR, but too big to just give away in a whim. Enough that one or multiple studio members could easily take out a personal load to invest into the studio without needing a private investor.

    Now, if those people are demanding multiple big six+ figure investments, then they aren’t trying to form an indie studio, they’re trying to form a AAA studio that is publisher independant. Which is an unreasonable ask.




  • I hate this. Not because it exists, but because it reminds me how old I am, lol.

    I used to know people that would all join up for Quake II, CounterStrike 1.5/1.6, and Diablo II LAN events, but it’s getting harder and more expensive to travel these days. Playing online just isn’t the same for me, so I won’t be joining, but I do hope that the community continues to thrive and remain as drama-free as it can.