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GeekNights Tuesday - Games

Tonight on GeekNights, returning from holidays, weddings, vacations, parties, Utena episode preproduction, and early spring, we talk about all the games we've been playing lately. Fantasy Football (Wonderbolts just won the Superbowl), Towerfall, Risk of Rain, Mottainai, Rocket League (online and at a LAN party), Civ V against humans, and more. The Burning Wheel Codex cometh. Netrunner's rules have changed significantly. The PS4 has some strange failings when attempting to do local multiplayer. We'll be live at PAX South with three panels!

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  • The politics in Puerto Rico: trying to sit on the new person's left.
  • ScoJo and I had our own separate dealings on 1/1.

    Discussions, moreso than dealings.
  • Haven't listened to the episode, but if you're talking about the rocket league ps4 local multi, that is specifically a rocket league crossplay issue.
  • Haven't listened to the episode, but if you're talking about the rocket league ps4 local multi, that is specifically a rocket league crossplay issue.

    Mostly the "controllers log people out of other PS4s" and the "Towerfall makes everyone sign in or click through a bunch of crap to play as a 'guest' stuff". ;^)

  • Back on the Xbox 360, you could join a game without a profile, you'd be a guest. When you turnt on the controller, you'd have the option to sign in or play as guest.

    Is that not the same for PSN?
  • Dazzle369 said:

    Back on the Xbox 360, you could join a game without a profile, you'd be a guest. When you turnt on the controller, you'd have the option to sign in or play as guest.

    Is that not the same for PSN?

    That shit is super crazy annoying.

    On a PC, I just plug a controller in and someone plays. No one has to "log in as a guest" or anything silly like that.

  • The only advantage signing in gave you, was sharing game content. I kind of thought that Nintendo had that idea with the Nintendo Wii. You could bring your Wii-mote with you, and it had your ID on it (your Mii), so that when you connected to a new console, it was essentially just that. But with the advantage of bringing saves with you/ content. But Nintendo never followed through.

    Definitely the culture of pickup and play multiplayer games is dying out. Even the new Halo, doesn't have split screen.

    1 console, 1 player. Makes sense for 3D games since the performance is divided between the players on a splitscreen. At least for consoles.

    image
  • I've played more local coops recently than the last 5 years due to HTPC.
    Also there are a few games coming out where the controllers can be smartphone or gamepad which makes party games great.
  • OK, I give up. What is broken about Hero Quest? I know it's a simple game and all, but did anyone actually take it serious enough to find flaws? I assume you mean a fundamental flaw of some kind. TELL ME...
  • Rym said:

    Haven't listened to the episode, but if you're talking about the rocket league ps4 local multi, that is specifically a rocket league crossplay issue.

    Mostly the "controllers log people out of other PS4s" and the "Towerfall makes everyone sign in or click through a bunch of crap to play as a 'guest' stuff". ;^)

    I don't really see what you're saying for the first because that's how literally every platform works.

    The second is that PC doesn't allow people to have multiple active accounts at the same time. The Xbox and Ps4 does, so that's why that occurs.
  • I've gotten standard Civ V multiplayer to work for a while. I once got it to work where we played, saved the game, stopped, and reloaded. The reloaded game worked for a little while.

    While I understand the benefit of play-by-mail, my computer always takes so long to boot up Civ that it would just drive me crazy to do it that way.
  • MATATAT said:



    I don't really see what you're saying for the first because that's how literally every platform works.

    Why does each controller need it's own account to play a simple local multiplayer game? Why do we have to go through a whole bunch of "log in as guest" crap three times just to play an ephemeral local game?

    No one else's steam account needs to log into my PC to locally join a game I launched. Just pick up a controller and go. The Steam user logs in at the Steam level, and then can launch any game it owns: anyone with meat in the room can just join the game.
  • The console market is like another world. People want to log into their Sony/Microsoft accounts at their friend's houses so they can rack up their cheevos. I don't get it either.

    I haven't listened to the episode, so I don't know how arduous this process is on PS4, but back when we still played 360, the "log all the controllers in as guests" thing was something I would just do as the host before handing anyone a controller, rather than sit through the "OK NOW EVERYONE PRESS DOWN, NOW EVERYONE PRESS A" "wait, which one is A?" bullshit.
  • edited January 2016
    I guess I'm going to be the sole defender of the "log in" on consoles. Hear me out:

    I have a PS4 and a WiiU. When I play local co-op Diablo III on my PS4 with my roommate, we both log in and anything that he earns while playing "my" game transfers over to his account when he plays by himself in his game. Any gear he earns playing with me, the experience he gets, the quests he completes, even when playing in "my" game transfers over to his game when he plays solo because he's not just playing as a "guest," he's signed in so the PS4 recognizes him.

    Contrast that to the WiiU. I have the new Mario Kart game, which is awesome. However, anything that I unlock in my profile does not transfer over to my roommates' profiles, even when they're playing multiplayer with me. The WiiU does not allow my roommates to log in as themselves, they're just guests or other human players, so even if we unlock a new race course or a new driver, or whatever on my profile, my roommates have to do it all over again on theirs.

    I would much rather spend an extra 30 seconds or whatever logging in and being able to keep anything that I achieve playing than having to do it all over again because I can't log in and I'm just playing as a guest.
    Post edited by jabrams007 on
  • I didn't even know you couldn't just select four player multiplayer, connect four controllers, and just play. Then again, I've not played any modern console except the WiiU.
  • Sure, logging in for games where there is a player state is nice. But FORCING people to login for a non-stateful game, or when a player doesn't care about saving state, is a huge hassle. Imagine pulling out River City Ransom on the NES and having to connect to the Internet and login to PSN just to be able to have both Alex and Ryan.

    Just press start at GO!
  • Yeah, the Wii U is just "pick up and play."

    What I was saying in my post is that the whole user account/guest login is actually what the Sony/Microsoft console crowd wants. It's useful to them. If you and your buddies all have those consoles, it's a valuable feature.

    If you're entertaining friends who don't often touch consoles, it gets in the way. For most people, it's a small enough roadblock (press 2 buttons to get into the game) that nobody complains about it. But we are on the Internet here, people.
  • Apreche said:

    Sure, logging in for games where there is a player state is nice. But FORCING people to login for a non-stateful game, or when a player doesn't care about saving state, is a huge hassle. Imagine pulling out River City Ransom on the NES and having to connect to the Internet and login to PSN just to be able to have both Alex and Ryan.

    Just press start at GO!

    I'm sorry, maybe I'm too "techno-savvy" but hitting the PS button, moving the thumbstick to guest and then hitting the "X" button doesn't sound like a HUGE hassle to me. Additionally, you can do this even when the console is not connected to PSN. An internet connection is not required. The console will just save anything locally and update the cloud the next time it's connected.

    If a person is savvy enough to play River City Ransom, he or she should be savvy enough to follow simple instructions on how to log in as a guest. Is it a little inconvenient? Sure, but we're not talking about anything of Sisyphean proportions.
  • It took a few minutes for everyone to "log in as guest" every time we started a game or changed games.

    To compound it, if the person who started the game logged in on the other PS4 (by habit as much as for a reason), it crashed/fucked the game being played in the other room unrecoverably. This happens even if the other players WERE logged in and OWNED the game.

    Consoles should be the "just play" platform. It's weird that they're encumbered so, especially for a game like Towerfall that has no advancement and exists pretty-much solely as a local multiplayer experience.
  • Rym said:

    It took a few minutes for everyone to "log in as guest" every time we started a game or changed games.

    To compound it, if the person who started the game logged in on the other PS4 (by habit as much as for a reason), it crashed/fucked the game being played in the other room unrecoverably. This happens even if the other players WERE logged in and OWNED the game.

    Consoles should be the "just play" platform. It's weird that they're encumbered so, especially for a game like Towerfall that has no advancement and exists pretty-much solely as a local multiplayer experience.

    That does sound like a bad experience, but the problem is with the system not working correctly, not with the inherent system itself.
  • edited January 2016
    Rym said:

    MATATAT said:



    I don't really see what you're saying for the first because that's how literally every platform works.

    Why does each controller need it's own account to play a simple local multiplayer game? Why do we have to go through a whole bunch of "log in as guest" crap three times just to play an ephemeral local game?

    No one else's steam account needs to log into my PC to locally join a game I launched. Just pick up a controller and go. The Steam user logs in at the Steam level, and then can launch any game it owns: anyone with meat in the room can just join the game.
    That comment was directed towards you saying "controller log people out of other PS4s". But it's the same with Steam and their sharing program. As soon as someone boots up the game that they own and their buddy is playing then of course it's going to be like "Yo, two people can't play this". Of course they could get rid of this feature and make it like Netflix or something where you can have multiple people logged into the same account. But for obvious reasons they'll never do that.

    The second one comes from a little bit of poor architecture probably, but also comes from people who want persistent statistics. You don't, of course. But what I was trying to say was that the Xbox and PlayStation platforms were already on the track of "multiple people on the same console" because consoles have a legacy of that. So their systems were designed around allowing other people to have accounts active so that they can get their achievements, etc. Their API was probably just designed to say "You'll always be guaranteed an account will be active", and their achievements platform is probably heavily tied into that concept. The other part is it's probably just easier to leverage that instead of toggling between alternate states within your game. Becomes a minor inconvenience for the sake of simplicity.
    Rym said:

    To compound it, if the person who started the game logged in on the other PS4 (by habit as much as for a reason), it crashed/fucked the game being played in the other room unrecoverably. This happens even if the other players WERE logged in and OWNED the game.

    I guarantee this is a bug in the game, not the platform.
    Matt said:

    What I was saying in my post is that the whole user account/guest login is actually what the Sony/Microsoft console crowd wants. It's useful to them. If you and your buddies all have those consoles, it's a valuable feature

    Didn't read this until after but you have it correct. It's not beneficial to everyone, but I am pretty sure in betting that they have usage statistics on this.
    Post edited by MATATAT on
  • Microsoft/ Sony want you to log in! Meaning owning an account. A step closer to paying for a subscription.
  • Dazzle369 said:

    Microsoft/ Sony want you to log in! Meaning owning an account. A step closer to paying for a subscription.

    Yeah, I mean, that is another part of that user model is that you need to pay to play on Xbox and PS4 servers. This isn't something that has ever happened on PC (except on MMOs of course)
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