Borderlands

Use3D: the complexity of Bad Company 2 revolves around the expectation that human players will be the only ones playing it. If games were founded on that humans will be able to compete against AI, the whole concept of the game wouldn't include needlessly complex features that would be sincerely difficult to program AI to get a hold of.

Membrain: It is bad. But as consumers you're just as welcome as I am to be unmoved by my opinion and continue to buy these games as I am to boycott them. Based on my observations here, where every post in every video game thread is basically "well this is pretty good but i kinda wish it had this and this and this and that this didnt suck and blah blah blah im gonna go back to playing it now" If one doesn't want their games to suck then stop buying and playing them!

When something is not perfect that doesn't mean it sucks so much we shouldn't buy it. I can't imagine what carrying an attitude like this all the time does to your friendships.

40oz said:

Membrain: It is bad. But as consumers you're just as welcome as I am to be unmoved by my opinion and continue to buy these games as I am to boycott them. Based on my observations here, where every post in every video game thread is basically "well this is pretty good but i kinda wish it had this and this and this and that this didnt suck and blah blah blah im gonna go back to playing it now" If one doesn't want their games to suck then stop buying and playing them!

Soooooo... we shouldn't buy games unless they are perfect? Even some sub-par games can be worth the money, and there is no such thing as perfection in something so subjective as entertainment taste. Being able to look past faults and enjoy what is presented isn't a bad thing. Judging by how you feel about the industry, it's seems that we're having a lot more fun than you are, regardless of how "horrible" these games are.

What I'm seeing more in what you're saying is that you want more games to cater to your interests in difficulty and play-style, which is absolutely understandable. But criticizing others based around them not having the same tastes and blaming them for the obscurity of games that satisfy you is not.

I wish that video games targetted all population, not just undemanding teenagers. If seniors were considered potential buyers of many video games, the quality standards would have raised.

Membrain said:

Soooooo... we shouldn't buy games unless they are perfect?

Well of course. Unless, you know, the imperfections are just texture misalignments and a couple code errors that require patching up to v1.9. Then you're ok to contradict yourself. :P

40oz said:

If games were founded on that humans will be able to compete against AI, the whole concept of the game wouldn't include needlessly complex features that would be sincerely difficult to program AI to get a hold of.

I guess we're lucky most game developers have friends, then.

Aliotroph? said:

When something is not perfect that doesn't mean it sucks so much we shouldn't buy it. I can't imagine what carrying an attitude like this all the time does to your friendships.

Quite swimmingly thank you! I can be pretty selective, yes. I don't like to pretend that old high school acquaintances are at all "friends" but I do however have few people in my life that I can count on to spend time with at any given moment that I am very very close to and I'm much more satisfied having few awesome friends than a million I never talk to.

Membrain said:

But criticizing others based around them not having the same tastes and blaming them for the obscurity of games that satisfy you is not.

Since when?

Use3D said:

I guess we're lucky most game developers have friends, then.

Who's we? Take a look around you. You're all by yourself in front of your computer screen.

I can usually be found on my headset gaming with my friends. It was my way of saying I'm just thankful for multiplayer gaming and what it has given back to the gaming community. Sorry if that was too obtuse.

printz said:

I wish that video games targetted all population, not just undemanding teenagers. If seniors were considered potential buyers of many video games, the quality standards would have raised.

If seniors were targeted, think about what that would do to "objectionable" content in video games..

40oz said:

Since when?

Since... ever? Validating points through longevity is pointless, anyway, and not even relevant to the conversation. Suffice to say that if you think that it's okay to base your complaints around people not liking everything you do down to a tee (This being a pretty selective viewpoint), then you really need to rethink your complaints.

Just because you like one thing and other people like something else, doesn't mean that they are the reason for a lack of variety in the things you like. So yes, insane bullet-hell shooters are a niche market. Or whatever you call what you like. It's not because people are buying "shitty" games. It's because they are buying games that are enjoyable to them. What you in particular think of them really does not matter, at all. Seriously, there -are- a lot of problems in the video game market, but the things you continuously mention, and the examples you use for them, are entirely subjective and obviously are not shared by the consumer majority. And that's capitalism.

What makes playing against a human fun? Working out your opponents strategies then finding ways to counter them and get the upper hand.

Now what makes this exciting is that humans make mistakes, even pros. AI, being robots, don't. They don't get bored camping the same spot for hours like a human does. They don't miss an easy sniper shot "because."

The other side to this predictability is that they will end up making the same mistakes every time. MK2 was mentioned in this thread; the AI was perfect by any reasonable definition of the term, except for the fact that you could jump kick it into oblivion without getting a scratch. Unlike a human, it won't think that maybe it should try something else. The excitement factor of the unknown is missing.

TL;DR "intelligent" AI is irritating while being as boring as watching paint dry. Play some Doom.

Membrain said:

Since... ever?

The selfish discussions about how stupid and uninformed the rightwing republican party is or how people with very adamant religious views are ruining our planet that are a dime a dozen on the internet are okay though, right? The tables have turned now. Someone comes in out of nowhere to question your religious views and the only arguments you have are throwing bible quotes at him. The exact same principle is happening here as I define what you describe as fun to be a unrecognized addiction before anything else and the only thing you've got on your side is to throw some games at me that might convince me otherwise or call me a hypocrite without weighty evidence to back it up.

heh, you aren't yet a religion, 40oz. :p

I know but I'd argue that people who ritualistically play addictive video games on a regular basis are just as tied to their video gaming habits as rightwing republicans are to their religious views.

Now, what exactly makes you an expert on people who ritualistically play addictive video games on a regular basis?

Xaser said:

Now, what exactly makes you an expert on people who ritualistically play addictive video games on a regular basis?

DOOM. *cue ball*

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to mow down zombies in starport corridors: he leadeth me beside the shores of hell.
He respawneth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of revealed hell for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the corridors of the house of pain, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy berserk and thy BFG they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou feed my hunger with pwads; my HDD runneth over.
Surely addiction and rituals shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the doomworld of the Lord for ever.

God hates fa... CoD and Borderlands!

Xaser said:

Now, what exactly makes you an expert on people who ritualistically play addictive video games on a regular basis?

By longterm observations of my own behavior over the course of my lifetime, observations of my younger brother who is a gamer, his gamer friends, and people I've talked to who regularly play video games, and all the posts I've read on this forum concerning video games. Is that a fair amount of things to base my analysis on? My question to you is how could you be so blind?

40oz said:
The selfish discussions about how stupid and uninformed the rightwing republican party is or how people with very adamant religious views are ruining our planet that are a dime a dozen on the internet are okay though, right? The tables have turned now. Someone comes in out of nowhere to question your religious views and the only arguments you have are throwing bible quotes at him.

Membrain said(In the sentence directly after what you quoted):

Validating points through longevity is pointless, anyway, and not even relevant to the conversation. Suffice to say that if you think that it's okay to base your complaints around people not liking everything you do down to a tee (This being a pretty selective viewpoint), then you really need to rethink your complaints.

40oz said:
The exact same principle is happening here as I define what you describe as fun to be a unrecognized addiction before anything else and the only thing you've got on your side is to throw some games at me that might convince me otherwise or call me a hypocrite without weighty evidence to back it up.

Exactly what definition are we talking about? Perhaps TF2's obviously MMO-style item-based gameplay which forces people to waste entire days grinding for items, I suppose. Except it doesn't. Or... another random game you've never played but nevertheless hate with such fervor that you need to hijack other people's threads to cry for attention.

Oh wait, we're not even talking about that, are we? We're talking about this boycott stuff you keep trying to force down everyone's throat. As in, not buying or playing ANY game until devs release a "perfect" game. Except that you define perfect only by your own standards, and fuck everyone else. But that's okay, because you're not a religion, I guess.

I said nothing about you being a hypocrite. I did say that you are doing little more than that one kid who came on and made a bunch of topics worshiping Doom and bashing the game of the day.

40oz said:

By longterm observations of my own behavior over the course of my lifetime, observations of my younger brother who is a gamer, his gamer friends, and people I've talked to who regularly play video games, and all the posts I've read on this forum concerning video games.

You're starting to sound like Super Jamie's last speech.

Membrain said:

I said nothing about you being a hypocrite.

It didn't need pointing out, But 40oz's own project UAC Ultra claims it was designed for..you guessed it, co-op multiplayer. Not unlike Borderlands. However as a staunch anti-multiplayer zealot I hope he remembers to design UAC Ultra2 around the limitations of the cajun bot, I mean, the complexity needs to be toned way down in order for the bots to play co-op properly. No steep stairs, teleporters, or switches, things like that which seem to confuse the AI. :)

40oz isn't a hypocrite, he's a metalhead.

printz said:

40oz isn't a hypocrite, he's a metalhead.

40oz is THE MAN. Got my support over here.

Please tell me this isn't going to turn into a situation where white knights are called in now. If you're going to hop into a thread and proclaim how "great" he is and how he's got your "support", the least you could do is put some actual content and reasoning behind it.

Bashe said:

STOP LIKING WHAT I DONT LIKE

lol internet

Xeros612 said:

Please tell me this isn't going to turn into a situation where white knights are called in now. If you're going to hop into a thread and proclaim how "great" he is and how he's got your "support", the least you could do is put some actual content and reasoning behind it.

At least, I hope this is the case. >.>

I haven't played Borderlands yet, it looks nice... but after hearing from my brother that it suffers from the same sindrome most RPGs do... that you eventually get to a level where nothing is a threat to you anymore and suddenly everything gets boring. I'd try it out if I had friends to co-op with, but I'm not very social so I won't.

Use3D said:

designed for..you guessed it, co-op multiplayer.

That's debatable. If that were so then playing it on single player wouldn't be an option and the additional monsters and ammo that would have appeared on coop would have been it's standard gameplay. The coop monsters and ammo were added so that cooperative playing was an available option. UAC Ultra was never designed for one specific thing. Many of the people that played UAC Ultra played it on single player which was exactly one of the things it was designed for. Nice try Use3D.

Also UAC Ultra is boom compatible so I don't see where this cajun bots business is coming from, since they aren't part of doom for boom. If you're gonna call out UAC Ultra for not being playable with the stuff you try to run it with that is outside of what it was intended to be run with, then I could just as easily complain about why Borderlands can't be run as a Doom pwad.

Membrain said:

hijack other people's threads to cry for attention.

If validating points through longevity is so pointless then what are you trying so hard for? I'm too adamant in my views and once gave video games that have been released within the last 10 years a chance and am completely unsatisfied with them, and how much they are depreciating since Doom. As long as you continue to deny that that's the case, I will continue to draw attention to your intent to bask in your ignorance.

printz said:

40oz isn't a hypocrite, he's a metalhead.

i dont get it.

DeathevokatioN said:

I haven't played Borderlands yet, it looks nice... but after hearing from my brother that it suffers from the same sindrome most RPGs do... that you eventually get to a level where nothing is a threat to you anymore and suddenly everything gets boring. I'd try it out if I had friends to co-op with, but I'm not very social so I won't.

The original does get pretty easy if you grind side quests. That's one of the issues they addressed with General Knoxx's Armory, since most, if not all of the quests are oriented towards high level players. Some of them seem oriented more towards multiple players as well. There's a side quest where you fight a boss that always scales 4 levels above you and is pretty damn hard to kill on your own.