The Cemu emulator is currently janky as shit, but it's impressive that they've got it this far. They're saying updates every two weeks moving forward. Currently, emulation is full of graphical glitches, no audio, and no controller support. I'm not sure what sort of touchpad support you could get.
Undertale is great, everything about it is something I personally enjoy. The story - funny and scary in equal parts. The combat - abstracted vertical shooter-esque dodging. And constant novelty and variety in the encounters, even with normal enemies.
I haven't been this enthusiastic about a jrpg since Chrono Trigger.
The Cemu emulator is currently janky as shit, but it's impressive that they've got it this far. They're saying updates every two weeks moving forward. Currently, emulation is full of graphical glitches, no audio, and no controller support. I'm not sure what sort of touchpad support you could get.
I guess. But he has mentioned the idea of only having one life for a game on the podcast before. More than once I believe. If you lose that life you are locked out.
I guess. But he has mentioned the idea of only having one life for a game on the podcast before. More than once I believe. If you lose that life you are locked out.
Yes, I have, but this isn't some new idea. People have had this idea for a very long time.
I also have the idea where you should pay per life. Also not a new idea. In fact, it's the oldest idea. This is how arcade games work. But it's a new idea for an online game to do this.
I think in people's minds they envision this as a game where "I could spend my money and then have wasted it being unable to play anymore!"
But there's no reason why a fully informed consumer couldn't spend $5-10 on a game with that in mind. They're spending the money for a specific experience, knowing that said experience could be extremely short. As long as the game advertises this, and isn't expecting to be a full-price $60 title, there's really no reason why this mechanic of locking a player out after they die once is ridiculous. I think this game is interesting, although a basic PvP shooter is the most boring and obnoxious way to implement it.
I'm curious what technology it uses to prevent someone from playing more than once? Tying it to a Steam account and requiring people to pay money is a good way to manage that.
I think the problem is that $5 to $10 is too much when there is the risk of the game being too quick. I would gladly pay $1, but not $10. I can always just watch someone else play on YouTube for free.
One of the ways that could be used very interestingly is if it were paired with an ARMA-like simulation environment. It would engender a more realistic sense of caution from the participants and create a more accurate representation of modern infantry combat.
I think you have to design the game such that even though a very quick death is possible, it's very unlikely. Here are some ways to do that and make the game even more exciting, assuming it's just a basic realistic shooter.
1) Spawn people very far away from each other. Get some time to become familiar with the game so your money isn't wasted. 2) Make guns create a lot of noise, so that shooting someone really increases the likelihood of you being next. 3) When people die they should drop some loot. Are you going to get that loot, and increase the odds of you being next, or will you camp and snipe whoever is going to go for it? 4) Very limited ammo. 5) Very difficult to aim. 6) If you get hit, and it's not in the head or heart or something, you get time to lay there with your bleeding leg. Or maybe drag yourself across the ground before you die. More for your money. 7) Don't spawn people with deadly weapons. Maybe a knife or bludgeon at most. This gives you a greater chance to experience meeting other people who don't immediately shoot you dead. 8) Give an objective, could be as simple as being in a certain place. In Battle Royale (the book/movie/comic) the contestants had to be out of certain zones at certain times to avoid instant death. Could be that simple. 9) Give lots of things to do, like fishing or whatev. 10) Fill the world with a ton of crazy crap. Hidden caves of wonders or other weird things. People will start to tell stories. A huge world and each player only discovers a small part of it. Even as something as simple as a toilet will become legendary.
A game like that would be experienced by most people through live youtube let's play. Everyone contributes their tiny piece to the story, but no one can easily re-do anyone's story.
Something structured like a DayZ or one of those other knockoff survival games would probably be optimal. The ability to build and trade would be a gamechanger. Huge proceedural environment and newbies always spawn on the outskirts, wherever that has advanced to.
You might even see something like civilization develop in the well-developed middle and have real politics going on. Some kind of bizarre government or something. That would be amazing.
No joke, I had to spend about 3 hours in work in a Second Life island. It was part of some training/professional development thing. I wanted to shoot myself.
Okay, I've been thinking a lot about the 1-life to live games and here's what I think would be the coolest.
For the sake of this example, imagine this as a WW2 game structured in imitation of Red Orchestra. There's a big Stalingrad map and for everyone to fight over and its all infantrymen with bolt-action rifles and submachine-guns and stuff.
This will be a bit controversial here, but a major element would be that the control scheme would make twitch shooting impossible. You can rotate your head nice and quick but your gun doesn't really follow unless you aim down the sights, which locks your view change to Real Slow. You also have to deal with ballistics and it takes like ten seconds to reload as you fumble around with cold fingers for a new magazine. Nearby bullets punch your vision a bit and make aiming harder. That sort of thing. Basically, it's pretty hard to kill somebody the way you would in a counter-strike and you really need to ARMA it up and play in a team.
This is because, if you die, the game locks you out for a week.
Not forever, but basically the map is running a, say, 3 week long grudge match. There's a safe zone base for each side the enemy can't enter where you spawn and you can disconnect safely, and about a kilometer of ground between them to fight over. Every few hours objectives go out to take and hold a building, retrieve something, capture a flag, etc. The more people on the server, the more objectives go out and the more the flanks of the map come into play to spread everyone out.
If you die, you're out for seven days, enough time for the battle to swing one way or another. You also lose all progression and weapons and stuff. If you get badly wounded but retrieved (and generally "instant death" is pretty rare), you're out for a day. If you get captured by the enemy, there's a prisoner exchange by player rank every 12 hours, so you'll be back in the fight within 24 hours unless your team is getting savaged. There's a key you can press that drops your guns and raises your hands, and there's local microphone chat so you can talk to the enemy up close.
Basically, a problem with a lot of the ARMA-y, Red Orchestra-y games is twofold. The first is that it is very easy to aim precisely with a mouse, making people more accurate than they ought to be, and the second is that people aren't really afraid to die, so they don't behave with the right level of caution. This ruins the simulation by basically making things too immediately lethal. A persistent game with ponderous controls and a real dickpunch if you die might bring the meta of a war sim closer to the level of simulation that the gear and stuff provides for a more consistent experience and more interesting situations.
And because there's a cost associated with losing, it's a game where you could actually be selfless and awesome in ways that have a big impact, like if you lead the charge on the objective even though its mad dangerous or rescued some wounded guys. Having some community managers who make highlight reels of super-badass or heroic actions would be incredible!
Anyway if this existed I would never play another video game ever.
I'm a video game horder on steam (I can't help those 10 games for 2 dollar bundles... So I ended up with about 460 games with cards to a total of about 1536 cards I could have if I started playing them to earn them. However there is a totally legit way to get those cards without playing games. It's called "idle master" and it's by the same person who created enhanced Steam. It idles your games 30 at a time to get them to 2 hours (when they start earning cards) and then runs them individually. You can even play other games while they run. So far it's idled thru my games adding 2 hours to them all and has been slowly going thru each one. I've got about 50 cards from it and over 5 dollars! for not much... steamidlemaster.com/
Only problem I've had with it so far is occasionally it loses connectivity with my steam client. It's also completely legit and not a bannable thing to do.
I used Idlemaster a long time ago to get cards. I sold 'em and then bought DLC for a game with the cash. You don't get a ton, but it's not chump change.
I'm curious to see what comes out of that. I have respect for Paradox for publishing and making good games and I have lot of love towards the old Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Though I don't really care about the World of Darkness itself, so I guess the time will tell if what comes out of this is actually interesting.
Comments
I haven't been this enthusiastic about a jrpg since Chrono Trigger.
I also have the idea where you should pay per life. Also not a new idea. In fact, it's the oldest idea. This is how arcade games work. But it's a new idea for an online game to do this.
But there's no reason why a fully informed consumer couldn't spend $5-10 on a game with that in mind. They're spending the money for a specific experience, knowing that said experience could be extremely short. As long as the game advertises this, and isn't expecting to be a full-price $60 title, there's really no reason why this mechanic of locking a player out after they die once is ridiculous. I think this game is interesting, although a basic PvP shooter is the most boring and obnoxious way to implement it.
I think the problem is that $5 to $10 is too much when there is the risk of the game being too quick. I would gladly pay $1, but not $10. I can always just watch someone else play on YouTube for free.
1) Spawn people very far away from each other. Get some time to become familiar with the game so your money isn't wasted.
2) Make guns create a lot of noise, so that shooting someone really increases the likelihood of you being next.
3) When people die they should drop some loot. Are you going to get that loot, and increase the odds of you being next, or will you camp and snipe whoever is going to go for it?
4) Very limited ammo.
5) Very difficult to aim.
6) If you get hit, and it's not in the head or heart or something, you get time to lay there with your bleeding leg. Or maybe drag yourself across the ground before you die. More for your money.
7) Don't spawn people with deadly weapons. Maybe a knife or bludgeon at most. This gives you a greater chance to experience meeting other people who don't immediately shoot you dead.
8) Give an objective, could be as simple as being in a certain place. In Battle Royale (the book/movie/comic) the contestants had to be out of certain zones at certain times to avoid instant death. Could be that simple.
9) Give lots of things to do, like fishing or whatev.
10) Fill the world with a ton of crazy crap. Hidden caves of wonders or other weird things. People will start to tell stories. A huge world and each player only discovers a small part of it. Even as something as simple as a toilet will become legendary.
You might even see something like civilization develop in the well-developed middle and have real politics going on. Some kind of bizarre government or something. That would be amazing.
For the sake of this example, imagine this as a WW2 game structured in imitation of Red Orchestra. There's a big Stalingrad map and for everyone to fight over and its all infantrymen with bolt-action rifles and submachine-guns and stuff.
This will be a bit controversial here, but a major element would be that the control scheme would make twitch shooting impossible. You can rotate your head nice and quick but your gun doesn't really follow unless you aim down the sights, which locks your view change to Real Slow. You also have to deal with ballistics and it takes like ten seconds to reload as you fumble around with cold fingers for a new magazine. Nearby bullets punch your vision a bit and make aiming harder. That sort of thing. Basically, it's pretty hard to kill somebody the way you would in a counter-strike and you really need to ARMA it up and play in a team.
This is because, if you die, the game locks you out for a week.
Not forever, but basically the map is running a, say, 3 week long grudge match. There's a safe zone base for each side the enemy can't enter where you spawn and you can disconnect safely, and about a kilometer of ground between them to fight over. Every few hours objectives go out to take and hold a building, retrieve something, capture a flag, etc. The more people on the server, the more objectives go out and the more the flanks of the map come into play to spread everyone out.
If you die, you're out for seven days, enough time for the battle to swing one way or another. You also lose all progression and weapons and stuff. If you get badly wounded but retrieved (and generally "instant death" is pretty rare), you're out for a day. If you get captured by the enemy, there's a prisoner exchange by player rank every 12 hours, so you'll be back in the fight within 24 hours unless your team is getting savaged. There's a key you can press that drops your guns and raises your hands, and there's local microphone chat so you can talk to the enemy up close.
Basically, a problem with a lot of the ARMA-y, Red Orchestra-y games is twofold. The first is that it is very easy to aim precisely with a mouse, making people more accurate than they ought to be, and the second is that people aren't really afraid to die, so they don't behave with the right level of caution. This ruins the simulation by basically making things too immediately lethal. A persistent game with ponderous controls and a real dickpunch if you die might bring the meta of a war sim closer to the level of simulation that the gear and stuff provides for a more consistent experience and more interesting situations.
And because there's a cost associated with losing, it's a game where you could actually be selfless and awesome in ways that have a big impact, like if you lead the charge on the objective even though its mad dangerous or rescued some wounded guys. Having some community managers who make highlight reels of super-badass or heroic actions would be incredible!
Anyway if this existed I would never play another video game ever.
steamidlemaster.com/
Only problem I've had with it so far is occasionally it loses connectivity with my steam client. It's also completely legit and not a bannable thing to do.