Board 8 > hgr talks with the users

(+) Yeah! (+)

ideally for you would you be swimming or treading water?

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Je suis toujours serieux. D'autrefois, personne ne me penserait serieusement.

From: HeroicGammaRay | #046
ed: most people like muv-luv alternative, but you have to get through the considerably less well-received extra and unlimited to reach it (as i'm sure you know). i thought extra was downright terrible, but your mileage may vary - you're probably more tolerant of inane slice of life than i am. i would suggest looking at screenshots before trying it because the art is hilariously bad.

now i wasn't a fan of alternative either, but i'm nearly alone in that so i won't go into detail about my opinion there. though keep in mind (this is more universal) that it's really, really long and doesn't pick up for a while. on the upside, it's the highest-rated game on vndb by a wide margin, for whatever that's worth. i keep telling newbie to read it so i have another opinion but he's too busy reading japanese-only vns and informing us all of how very great and japanese they are.

i think you've already read most of what i consider good, so i don't really have other suggestions. if we're talking about navel, i very much want oretsuba to get translated, but it's extremely long and difficult. don't have high hopes (there were some rumors that it was being negotiated for a while back, but i haven't heard anything on the subject since)

Hmm, well I guess theres no harm in getting on the muv-luv line then.

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The one and only Underdog Millionaire and UCA CORPORATE Champion

Why do you think you have such "high standards" with games and such? I've always been curious as to how you seem to have a kind of narrow window of things you consider good, though maybe you're a bit different to how I remember you

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XIII_rocks, the cream of XIII fanboyism.

you're a pure math phd student? which specific subset? i'm a math/cs major right now.

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SuperNiceDog shoots the lights out

Hello. Have no idea what to talk about so...

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Oh SuperNiceDog's doing it again dude.
SuperNiceDog, you ain't no pimp dude

*looks up muv-luv*

Thats harem crap isnt it

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Oh SuperNiceDog's doing it again dude.
SuperNiceDog, you ain't no pimp dude

hey hgr, what's your thoughts on the imminent death of the university system as we know it according to the government teacher I had last semester?

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what archetype am I
what are my shortcomings and weaknesses from your perspective

also POLITICS:
what are your opinions on America in it's current state and where it is headed
and what do you think about GENDER THEORY or whatever it's called, as you can tell it has been a hot topic as of lately

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maybe, lol

hey hgr what do you think of realo

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Boomshine
~Justin_Crossing

Best 3D girl/music or worst 2D girl/music

Also archetypes

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"Eet's game time..."

HGR what do you think about XIII_rocks rallying

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working on this. deep questionz here gotta give thoughtful responses

comment on the relative merits of Ayvuir and Ayuyu. if they were both dying in a fire, and for some reason you had to save one of them (and were not allowed to have him killed afterwards), which would you pick?


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another place and time, without a great divide, and we could be flying deadly high

sirdiemsma: swimming, honestly. treading water has these associations with just getting by/not doing anything, but i find that actually doing it takes conscious effort. plus it's not in a very comfortable position. in contrast, a lazy backstroke is pretty easy and comfortable. i used to go swimming pretty regularly when i was a kid, but i haven't at all in the recent past. well, except for the dartmouth 'swim test,' wherein i found out just how out of practice i was (er, still passing easily, mind you - you just need to make two uninterrupted laps). feels bad, man.

xiii: i have high standards when it comes to everything, but let me talk a little about game design. i'll list a number of criteria i use for video games and explain how many games fail at them.

-trimness and focus: games shouldn't be bloated messes, with tons of inane and pointless tasks to complete. the elder scrolls series and mmorpgs would be textbook offenders here, but almost all non-arcade games do this to some extent because developers want their games to be 'long enough.' some people actually think a game that's 3 hours long is not worth, say, $15 even if it's good! what a joke. we'd have so many more great games if designers just focused on making tightly polished, challenging, and rewarding 3-hour experiences. of course they'd only be 3 hours long once you're actually able to beat them, but that gets into difficulty, which i'll address later.

games also shouldn't drop you into a joyless world whose creators paid absolutely no attention to good level design under the guise of 'exploration' or being 'for the experience' (newsflash: every game ever made is designed 'for the experience,' except the good ones have the decency not to be awful experiences). western 'indie' garbage does this a lot, like the recent journey or, if the game turns out to be what it looks like, the upcoming fez. in fact, i'd say the indie movement in general is gaming's biggest disgrace at the moment. for a different example, i hear shadow of the colossus is like this too, but i'm not personally familiar with it.

-structure: this is a related concept, but it's one that's worth mentioning. it is beyond belief that nowadays games draw criticism for being 'linear.' if you want to make an open-ended game in the style of planescape: torment (which had some good ideas but still hasn't been properly followed up on after 12 years, by the way), then fine, good for you. but games absolutely don't NEED to be that way. linearity is completely natural, and i appreciate a video game that has a clear structure and presents me with concrete, sequential goals. too often games go too far in an attempt to present an unstructured or 'sandbox' environment and end up creating a world in which you can do anything yet there is nothing worth doing. in addition to some of the previous examples, simcity was a lot like this - okay, it's fun for a couple of days while you're still discovering all the new ways to build stuff, but then what? it's ultimately pointless. luckily the ideas behind that game were later adapted to the rts genre, which lets you both build your own empire and tear your opponent's down.

-respect for the player's time: i tried playing skyward sword a few months back. while i've never really been a zelda fan, i figured i'd take a look at what the series has become and hopefully find one or two things to appreciate. instead, i found probably the worst loz title yet. the tedious fetch quests, the insufferable hand-holding, the hilariously ill-conceived harp segments, the goddamn tadtones - all of these loudly announced to me that the game did not respect me at all. even the dungeon puzzles advance this idea; zelda puzzles are designed to take only time, not any kind of thinking or originality. if you ever don't know what to do in a room, it's because you simply didn't see something in the room that would solve the puzzle. and don't get me started on crap like the fludd room in lanayru mining facility or the first puzzle in the ancient cistern which makes you swim all over the main chamber at the designers' whim to find those symbols to unlock the door. it's just work and more work - no sense of play. when i 'play' this game, i feel like i'm doing slave labor.

-challenge: very few modern games are the least bit difficult, and even most of the classics are easy. indeed, when you look at the back of a game's box, you'll find a little blurb telling you exactly how long you're expected to take to complete it. games are designed so that you can beat them in essentially a set amount of time, which means there's little room for displays of skill - or else the really talented players would be able to get through a game with much less trouble than the less experienced ones, who might need to practice for months to get anywhere. at most, there are more difficult optional modes or 'post-game content,' but these have no bearing on a normal playthrough of the game and force you to play designer to some extent, which a game shouldn't do (e.g. bastion and its idols). when was the last time a game not made in the arcade style took you months to beat - and not because you got bored and stopped playing?

note that even those modern games that CLAIM to be hard, like indie darlings vvvvvv and super meat boy, in reality pose little challenge because there's a checkpoint every goddamn screen/level. sure, you might die a lot because the physics are wonky and the game makes you micromanage all your button presses, but if you fail you can just try again and again with no consequence until you fluke your way through. once you get through a sequence of obstacles, it is immediately forgotten, never to be seen again unless you feel like going back for some reason - the game certainly won't force you back there if you die on the next part. this cheapens the entire experience. what's more, everyone who plays these games ends up beating them, and in fact people tend to beat vvvvvv in a single sitting. that's not difficulty. a segment like doing things the hard way is fun because it actually requires a relatively long stretch of error-free play, but that's just one (optional!) part of a much longer game. vvvvvv would have been much cooler if the entire game were like that.

non-action games have these issues too, of course. braid has interesting ideas, but just as it's showing you the basics of what you can do with each aspect of time manipulation, the world ends, the current mechanic is dropped, and we're back to square one with the next world's gimmick. the result is a collection of mostly flat puzzles with one or two clever pieces (crossing the gap was pretty nice, i'll admit). i would have really enjoyed some diabolical constructions that forced you to use everything you'd learned in more advanced ways than in the warm-up stages, but this apparently runs contrary to jonathan blow's design philosophy, or something. almost every stage feels like a warm-up stage.

i'll be brief and stop here. a sample of my thoughts on games, i guess. all that said i do like fair amount of stuff, just not most of what this board raves about.

kakashi: yeah, it's pretty much harem crap. people tolerate it because it turns into mecha crap later. weird, i know.

walrus: i'm going to be one in a few months. my areas of interest are still not completely determined - right now i'm thinking i want to go into analysis but i fully expect that to change once i start the program and interact more with the faculty. i could never really get into cs because of all the coding busywork in the intro courses; i hate having lots of small, annoying things to do. i'm sure it gets more interesting once you're past the intro-level stuff, but yeah.

regaro: well, it would be bad for me! i think the perceived value of a university education is probably going to go down over time as the internet develops and people become more aware of alternate methods of education, as well as less trusting of established authority figures. i know some who think it's a bubble that's going to burst - hopefully that won't be anytime soon. for what it's worth i'd say there are strong forces that resist change in this area; political and business leaders tend to have degrees from prestigious institutions and have an interest in ensuring that america's universities continue to be respected. i have no clue what's going on internationally, though.

silver: you're the little kid who plays pranks on all the adults and tries pinning them on someone else.

anyway, i'd say your biggest problem is that you lack subtlety and charisma. it comes up a lot in mercs and mafia: you have good ideas, but you can't quite get people to do what you want. when you do something scummy, it looks twice as scummy as anyone else would have looked doing the same thing. now this isn't all bad - it's fun to watch and evinces a kind of youthful exuberance - but it can be counterproductive if you're trying to play the puppet master or take any kind of leadership role. i don't really know how to fix this since i'm naturally good at playing scum, and i can't say that i want it to change anyway. it's a big part of what makes you you.

people care way too much about gender. i had no problem with the miss universe thing; i think it's totally reasonable to exclude m->f transgenders from contests that rely heavily on sexuality. then again, i think it's reasonable for private organizations to exclude anyone from anything for any reason, but this issue? not a problem no matter how you look at it. 'discrimination' has become such a buzzword that it's hilarious - ANYTHING that distinguishes among different people is by definition discriminatory. the popular use of 'discrimination' really means 'discrimination i don't like,' which is a total platitude.

From: HeroicGammaRay | Posted: 4/1/2012 3:18:44 PM | #067
regaro: well, it would be bad for me! i think the perceived value of a university education is probably going to go down over time as the internet develops and people become more aware of alternate methods of education, as well as less trusting of established authority figures. i know some who think it's a bubble that's going to burst - hopefully that won't be anytime soon. for what it's worth i'd say there are strong forces that resist change in this area; political and business leaders tend to have degrees from prestigious institutions and have an interest in ensuring that america's universities continue to be respected. i have no clue what's going on internationally, though.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with this for the most part.

I do think though, that as time goes on a bit more, less and less people will go to university for anything other than degrees in Engineering/Computer Science and maybe the Hard Sciences. Math (And Business, for that matter) is kind of on the edge there, but I can definitely see the whole Liberal Arts category dying out, even if not the University System as a whole.

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sup HGR

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Soul Eater > One Piece
The Internet is for porn.......but if you're not into that, then it has wrestling too. - Strife2

am I really that EXCITING

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Good thing HGR gave a bunch of positive examples in his game mechanics thing in order to give people an idea of what good game design looks like.

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

I will be sure to try and apply HGR's teachings to game Jordan.

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not relevant to the question tbqh

Explain what that Assault Crisis game is all about to me.

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ONLY FIVE CAN LADDER.
Sushi, kamikaze, fujiyama, nippon-ichi...

You already gave negative examples, there's no reason not give positive ones! No good reason to exclude them other than laziness or incompetence, and given your copious word diarrhea on the subject I'm leaning toward the latter.

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

the reason would be not to make everyone die of old age before they finish reading my posts. if someone asks that question i'll field it, of course.

if you had to spend a week on a desert island with swirldude or swordz9, who would you choose

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(1)Jesus Christ (Bible) - 14 (16)GANON1025 (Board 8-) - 10 Never forget.

We're already dying of old age because you're talking to some uncultured wag in your topic instead of churning out more posts tbqh. Now back to your posts.

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

nice tsun

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also, what do you think are the factors that caused the decline and downfall of b8anime

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(1)Jesus Christ (Bible) - 14 (16)GANON1025 (Board 8-) - 10 Never forget.

what are some poignant examples of good game design?

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thelefty for analysis crew 2008 imo -tranny
I have a third degree burn in flame-o-nomics -Sir Chris

Good read.

I completely agree on the criticism of the anti-"linearity" attitude, too. I mean I don't particularly like just going in a straight line, but having something specific to aim for, without superfluous stuff added onto it, seems like it is kind of underrated now.

I think people sometimes mistake something being "linear" for it being "boring". I don't see why you would dislike a game for having a defined end point and a clear, "straight" pathway to get there... but I can see why you'd criticise it if the obstacles on that pathway required you to do basically the same thing every time, or were essentially the same thing but with slightly different aesthetics. And while that is the game being "linear", the linearity is not the problem - that's just boring game design.

The checkpointing idea makes sense but then I don't like beating parts of games I've already basically mastered, multiple times, to get to the hard part. Something like Land of the Livid Dead in Rayman Origins handled this pretty well, because it's essentially 4(?) miniature levels and you have to get the jumping/running/timing sequence almost perfect in each one.

That's great for me, because if I know I can do the second jump or the third jump but I mess it up every now and then, I get annoyed with myself, not the game - I can't expect the game to checkpoint me "mid-sequence" if you know what I mean. But when it gets to a natural break in the gameplay (the end of that part of the level in this case), that's where I would expect a checkpoint.

But if Land of the Livid Dead didn't checkpoint me somewhere I would be pissed off with the game - I'd master the first and second sequence but get stuck on the third or fourth. And I'd have to do the first one again and again just to get to the part I actually find challenging. It's also a mental issue, because after beating say the second sequence I would tend to get more on-edge when I finally got to the part I struggled with.

So I get what you mean about liberal checkpointing being a problem - but at the same time, I wouldn't want to be forced to continuously replay a part of a game I know I can do, just to get to the part I haven't mastered yet.

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XIII_rocks, the cream of XIII fanboyism.

From: XIII_rocks | Posted: 4/1/2012 3:59:49 PM | #083
The checkpointing idea makes sense but then I don't like beating parts of games I've already basically mastered, multiple times, to get to the hard part. Something like Land of the Livid Dead in Rayman Origins handled this pretty well, because it's essentially 4(?) miniature levels and you have to get the jumping/running/timing sequence almost perfect in each one.

yeah I'd play Touhou a lot more if I could just start at stage 3 or the stage 2 boss for most games, rather than having to go through S1.


practice mode doesn't count.

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From: HeroicGammaRay | #067
walrus: i'm going to be one in a few months. my areas of interest are still not completely determined - right now i'm thinking i want to go into analysis but i fully expect that to change once i start the program and interact more with the faculty. i could never really get into cs because of all the coding busywork in the intro courses; i hate having lots of small, annoying things to do. i'm sure it gets more interesting once you're past the intro-level stuff, but yeah.

I'll probably end up in algebra when it's all said and done and CS theory is more related to that than to anything else. Coding busywork is a pain in the ass but I'm pretty much done with that after this year.

Would you want to purely function as a researcher/professor after you get your degree? Do you think that math as a field is largely closed to groundbreaking new discoveries? My motivation for also exploring CS was the greater variety of job options and the relative newness of the field compared to math.

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SuperNiceDog shoots the lights out

silver: forgot to comment on the current state of america. things just keep getting more and more ridiculous, honestly. each protest movement is even more incredible than the last. obama has continued and even expanded most of the old bush/cheney policies while simultaneously managing to convince a lot of people that he is not doing so. the media is, as ever, completely subservient to the administration, and it refuses to do any investigative journalism. anyone who dares to do real reporting is immediately vilified and possibly even charged with material support of terrorism, etc. you've got to think things are going to come to a head eventually, but i don't know how or in what form (and no RON PAUL 2012 is not the answer, especially because it's never going to happen). i personally don't care that much about politics until i'm personally affected, but it might really get that bad, to say nothing of the issues that already do matter to me, like internet regulation. tl;dr america is a circus and it's going to get worse before it gets better.

incidentally there are lots of interesting parallels between the 'journalism' you see on the news and games journalism

The proof for the existence of such parallels is left as an exercise for the reader.

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You're messing with me! You're messing with me, aren't you!?
You're making fun of me, aren't you!? Aren't you!? You definitely are! I'll murder you!

SO I guess its a good thing XIII is a journalist then huh.

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The one and only Underdog Millionaire and UCA CORPORATE Champion

To be fair he's right about investigative journalism being kind of a dying art

Well, if my lecturer was right, anyway

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well i was talking about american journalism i won't pretend to know what it's like overseas

also that would have been too far off topic toukaoone
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ed b: aesthetic sense is hard to describe, but i suppose i like lovingly crafted art that displays a lot of energy and passion from the artist (though most anyone would claim to like something along these lines). not to mention talent. to get more concrete, i tend to enjoy visuals from 2d games more than those from 3d ones, which often seem dull and lifeless. there's also an uncanny valley effect arising from our advances in technology that makes 3d characters look really unpleasant. for example, uncharted 3 gets a lot of praise for its visuals, but i think it's ugly. even in 2d something like team meat's art, which tries way too hard to look vulgar, is no good. a lot of attempts at 'minimalism,' such as limbo's art style, are crude and ineffective - i remember reading reviews calling it beautiful and wondering what the hell people were thinking. on the other side of things, a game like refrain ) looks quite pretty. good use of color goes a long way, and you can tell the designers put a lot of thought into how the patterns looked. i particularly enjoy the light/dark contrasts here - they give the stage a kind of otherworldly feeling. also, i'm a sucker for lasers.

to go beyond games...well, let's see. painting started to get ugly with impressionism and is mostly garbage now, but a number of the classic pieces are good (as well as sculptures and so on). i don't like the idea that you can just put crap on a canvas or screen and have it 'represent' something. quality art takes a lot of talent, experience, and dedication.

From: Silverliner182V | #058
what archetype am I
what are my shortcomings and weaknesses from your perspective

these.

also: have you ever had anything in media that resonated with you emotionally? your opinion on journey and its ilk made me think of this; you said you like the idea of yanderes, but is it something that you like sympathize with, or do you just agree with the ideology conceptually?

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You saved science, SuperNiceDog!
Call me numbers.

walker: realo is quite an entertaining character. he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, and he can be overbearing, but i really like reading his board posts because i can tell that he cares a lot about things. even if he's completely wrong, he'll defend his position with utter conviction. much more interesting to observe than the 'too old/cool to care' mindset that has become increasingly commonplace on the board in the past few years. basically, he's fun to talk to and watch arguing but frustrating to argue with yourself (or at least that's the impression i get - i don't attempt to argue with him for precisely this reason)

luis: you're a minor member of the student council who pops up once every dozen scenes to remind everyone that you're still alive, but you don't get any major screentime

not really sure what you're asking with the other thing. i thought i knew, then drak had a different interpretation (it's like mercenaries). could you clarify?

saveus_maria: 'betrayed' xiii

backstabbed
turned on
no longer appreciated

anyway as you know i think it's hilarious and hope we can continue to laugh about it for months to come. rallying is one thing; getting caught rallying is quite another; and getting caught rallying while staunchly denying guilt and trying to blame the host for the situation is just unreal. nonetheless, i confess disappointment in user th3l3fty for not being consistent and also dqing rpglord95 along with various other characters. need to take out all the garbage.

It meant which of the two is best. Don't worry, it was a joke.

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"Eet's game time..."

drak: ayuyu is a total waste of space, but you can at least laugh at him (did you see that topic where he described his attempts to date his co-worker it was gold). additionally, he doesn't like bioware and jennifer hepler, and i also don't like bioware and jennifer hepler. with that much common ground, i'm sure we'd be great friends.

ayvuir has never written a sentence worth reading and is probably the single worst user on the board right now. no one else so perfectly exemplifies pathetic attention whoring. and it's not just plugging his ridiculous user lists, which is already bad enough - he shoved 'saving bacon' down our collective throat, he created the vile plague known as the uul, and he's written such insightful topics as 'ayvuir's top 25 most vital and inspirational users to board 8.' i could go on, but instead i'll just link this: http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Ayvuir. never before has so much self-promotion been so unwarranted, or at least i'd like to think so. anyway, yeah, easily the pick to die in a fire.

he's written such insightful topics as 'ayvuir's top 25 most vital and inspirational users to board 8.'

to be fair I would read every word of 'hgr's top 25 most vital and inspirational users to board 8'

edit: also man that prestonstarry video


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another place and time, without a great divide, and we could be flying deadly high

Silverliner182V posted...
what archetype am I
what are my shortcomings and weaknesses from your perspective

This. Pretty sure I know what you're gonna say but it'll be interesting to see anyway.

Also, honest question: do you like anything other than shmups? I don't think I've ever seen you say you like a game from any other genre, but I haven't paid very close attention.

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Black Turtle did a pretty good job.