/games/ - Games

I never played genocide cause I'm not a psycho so I wouldn't know lmao

>>32542
I 100% games mostly because I like the challenge and winning trophies and bonuses and the feeling that I've really finished the game instead of merely zipping through it. This kind of mindset makes you appreciate the game more.

>>32559
Do you ever set your own challenges?

>>32562
>Do you ever set your own challenges?
I don't have enough creativity for it but communities do. And speedrunning is basically a self-imposed challenge. I like when you can actually track your progression, whether it's on some online leaderboard or achievements page.

One of the things that prevents me from playing lots of RPG games is that they give you freedom to make your own character, have some choices you can make, basically expect you to identify with the protagonist to some degree, but then gameplay is designed in a way that forces you to become the genocide man. In particular I hate this with animals and monsters, where you are supposed to enter to their habitats and scour them clean of all life so you can loot the treasures, or just get XP, with no moral weight on those actions whatsoever. Or with human enemies, its typical to slaughter throngs of nameless mooks, only to be given an option to spare the last final one.

Fundamental problems is that virtually all video games dont really design hostile NPCs as characters opposing the player, but a mere gameplay obstacle to be overcome in order to progress. They have no sense of self-preservation and will tirelessly pursue you as long as they have a single HP left, they cant be negotiated with, will never try to get away from fight they are loosing, run away in fear, beg for mercy or be incapacitated in any way other than murder.

>>32542
compeltionism is like ocd to me. When I see the list of achievements and it's not 100% it feels like I have to do unlock, even If have to go great lenght or outright fuck with the code to get them without playing.
It reaches a point that it genuinely kills my enjoyment of games.

>>32656
Same as I said above, though it doesn't kill my enjoyment.
>>32655
Firstly, the RPG elements are very capitalistic actually so you're basically forced to exploit mother nature for resources. This is actually too much like real life, it forces you to ask these questions but IRL we don't even care because somebody else does the killing for us. Secondly, negotiating with enemies is also… kinda hard IRL. Especially if you work for the state (whether it's an empire like in Skyrim or the global government like in Deus Ex). The ACAB slogan exists for a reason, when radicals get into a shootout with the police they don't ask themselves questions like "WHY ARE WE STILL NERE!? JUST TO SUFFER!!?" Otherwise they would be dead. Such a liberal mindset honestly, the idea that we can "negotiate." The purest form of class collaborationism.

>>32674 (me)
I think Undertale is similar not to games like Skyrim where there are clear hostile factions but more to classic JRPGs. In classic JRPGs you're not fighting some ideological enemies, you're fighting some "monsters." Why are they monsters? They just are. Why are you fighting them? You have to.

Undertale is an allegory on racism.

>>32542
>the culture industry or trends in game design and marketing
It is also totally a personal failing. One so widespread, it became marketable.

>>32655
The reasons for this is that the easiest way to program the game is for all hostiles to just charge you without any thought, and for winning in a scenario to entail deleting the NPC from the game.

You could make a game where the characters are more careful and deliberate with how they behave towards you. You could make a game where you aim a cursor at people and click the mouse to say words. If you do that, you are going to be doing a lot more work coding how those systems operate. Just programming things to go after and kill you is easy. Turning the NPC into a ragdoll and turning off its behavior system when you shoot it enough times is easy.

>>32755 (me)
also shooters (especially FPS) are one of the easiest 3D games to build. you just control a camera and click on the right things to win. the rest of it is basically window dressing.

>>32755
But its not complicated though. The absolutely simplest version is just having enemy attempt to run away and despawn when their health get below certain threshold. Or rudimentary morale system, like if their ally got killed near them, they have % chance to leg it. And especially when we talk about AAA titles with development budget in millions, the issue isnt in it being too complicated or time-consuming to program, but industry being too stale to innovate basics of gaming in such a way.
Out of the top of my head, Gothic games lets you beat NPCs without killing them, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance you can leave wounded enemies live, and in Warband soldiers flee when battle goes south for them.

>>32766
>But its not complicated though.
It's more complicated is the point. Video games are a business, so things are going to be biased toward the easiest (cheapest) option.
>The absolutely simplest version is just having enemy attempt to run away and despawn when their health get below certain threshold.
No, that's more complicated because you have to code for the fleeing behavior as well as checking to despawn them after they are out of sight etc. It's way simpler to just have them de-activate and drop as a ragdoll.
>Or rudimentary morale system, like if their ally got killed near them, they have % chance to leg it.
This is already a lot more complex. You need to have some kind of routine that runs every so often to check for whatever you set as the condition to run. You need to program in the behavior and the checker, and you need to record dialogue so the player knows they are running in fear and it's not the navigation bugging out. It's way easier to record the voice actor doing a few death screams and just program

 if health <= 0 {self.die()}

and make a die() function that plays a death sound, switches off the normal programming and turns them into a ragdoll.
>And especially when we talk about AAA titles with development budget in millions, the issue isnt in it being too complicated or time-consuming to program, but industry being too stale to innovate basics of gaming in such a way.
That's part of it but also a big part is that it's a business and they will cut corners if possible. Even the biggest budget games with the most attention to detail still end up cutting a shitload of corners for this exact reason. Red Dead Redemption 2 is currently treated as the high water mark for all of that kind of thing, but it's still got lots of scrapped content and features that are obviously unfinished, because Rockstar decided to work on GTA Online, which was a lot more profit for a lot less effort.

>Out of the top of my head, Gothic games lets you beat NPCs without killing them, in Kingdom Come: Deliverance you can leave wounded enemies live, and in Warband soldiers flee when battle goes south for them.
And there's free mods for Skyrim that gives you like a dozen options besides outright killing people. The problem is not that it's not doable or something. The problem is that doing it requires work, and people have to be paid to do that work, and businesses don't want to pay more than the bare minimum.

>>32768
Its no more complicated than million other things already present in a game. Its not like games are being stripped to their core basic, the trend in the industry is exact opposite, lack of focus, with every AAA title being bloated with different (usually unconnected) mechanics. More options on how to deal with enemies isnt an issue of budget, but of conventions.

>>32772
And a lot of these mechanics are arcane rather than apparent, like Skyrim's stagger being fully reliant on RNG rather than what you would expect either mechanically (stagger/poise stat) or realistically (based on weight and attack impulse). Like a lot of AAA titles have the right ingredients for the game soup, but cannot quite prepare them properly, which ruins the flavour.

>>32772
>Its no more complicated than million other things already present in a game.
That's true in a vacuum, but we're talking about the core mechanics here. Those have to interact with more moving parts in the game than any of the subsystems tied to more specific and contextual things. The more complex you make something, the more it will be subject to change when you iterate on it. If you have some more complicated social mechanics, if you change how those pieces fit together, you are then going to have to make sure none of the related systems break with the new changes. If the social mechanics are one of the minor subsystems (like dialogue trees in a typical ARPG), there are fewer things connected that you have to review and possibly change whenever you iterate on that system. On the other hand, if you change the XP, skills, or combat systems a lot of other things are going to have to change, because those are the central mechanics and connect to a lot more things.

>>32772
>>32792
>every AAA title being bloated with different (usually unconnected) mechanics.
And to put a finer point on this, it's precisely the lack of connection between mechanics that makes things cheaper. Making the pieces interact is where the most complexity comes from since the pieces become interdependent and iteration on one entails iteration on another. You need to have the different departments at the dev studio coordinating with each other to update the connected mechanics or else you will break things. It's much easier to have the fewest related pieces and let the team split up to make largely unconnected parts that still tie into the bare minimum core systems.

>>32792
you don't need "complicated social mechanics" to sell a concept of an enemy fleeing. like look at fucking metal gear revengeance, if you tear enough limbs, your enemies will just say fuck it and "activate their cloaking" (they just despawn). it isn't a technical feat, and though they were obviously going for it being goofy, it's enough to sell an enemy retreating.