Rynjin

16 hours ago, Moby said:

I just watched that Squid Game thing by osmosis (brother was watching and I glanced at it every now and then)

 

What a dogshit of a series. I can't believe 10 year olds like this.

"Kaiji but dumb" is still a decent enough concept to capture the imagination of randos, alas.

I'm throwing up the outside bet for Legacy of Kain since they just did a couple remasters for Soul Reaver 1/2 out of nowhere recently.

On 6/2/2025 at 11:01 PM, A 1970 Corvette said:

Yeah I've seen that paranoia now that I think about it in online card game discussions too (in MtG Online of all things, an absolutely ancient game that predates anything resembling modern matchmaking by pretty much a decade). Maybe I can consider myself lucky that I'm not a younger FPS player who maybe had their first experiences colored by that kind of matchmaking since it seems like some people start seeing it everywhere.

It'd make more sense if they were paranoid about Arena (since Arena provably does fuck with RNG in at least one way, with the "hand smoothing" feature in bo1) but yeah MtGO is weird.

27 minutes ago, Moby said:

Aren't Elos just SBMM with extra steps? SBMM matches people between 1000 and 1200 skill levels, and Elos match "silvers" with "silvers" that in numbers would be between 1000 and 1200.

Not Elo, EOM; engagement-optimized matchmaking.

Simplified, the goal of EOM is not to place players in matches against players of their skill level. It's to track MMR and create intentional mismatches at specified breakpoints. Overwatch is a good example of this. 

If you queue into a match, it will use SBMM to find a good match for you. Then if you lose a few in a row, it will match you against a team of WILDLY lower MMR to give you an easy win (and an ego boost) so you keep playing. On the flipside, if you win too many in a row it will put you against a team with way HIGHER MMR than you, so you don't think the game is "too easy". This is because data shows players want a challenge, but never want to feel truly stressed.

A good number of games do not truly use SBMM; they use a modified SBMM system designed to create an EOM environment. A lot of FPS gamers know this and get really paranoid about it.

SBMM and EOM are different. SBMM matches you against players of your skill level; EOM is designed to keep you playing by giving you easy stomps followed by making you an easy stomp for someone else.

23 hours ago, A 1970 Corvette said:

Multiplayer FPS matchmaking systems are such a punching bag for angry players nowadays it's kind of unreal. Casual queues? Full of "sweats." Ranked? Games take forever to fire and my team always sucks. There's either too much or not enough skill based matchmaking. I'm only just now really encountering this since I made the mistake of checking discussion for The Finals now and then (previously I remember SBMM on Apex Legends being a hot topic but I mainly played in a stack and avoided discussion of the game outside of important info).

 

I've had a pretty good solo queue experience with that game honestly. It kind of just creates this weird feeling that I'm playing the same game as these people but getting a completely different experience. It's kind of impossible to verify if they're just tilted past the moon or there's an actual problem.

 

When did this all start happening though is my other question - because I played 'old' matchmaking-only FPS games in the MW2/Halo 3/Reach/Advanced Warfare era and there wasn't any kind of "fucking matchmaking is trying to poison me in my sleep" sentiment that I remember (other than perhaps recognizing certain "clan stacks" that would roll matches due to being clumps of good players in a party). Or am I just remembering wrong and that was also a complaint back then?

CoD popularizing "engagement-optimized matchmaking" poisoned a lot of people's brains. There's a lot of people out there utterly convinced that the matchmaking is specifically designed to fuck them and nothing else because TBF games that use EOM kind of are scientifically designed to fuck with your head.

The Finals, as far as I can tell, doesn't have any kind of EOM. But that doesn't really matter to people who have been trained to believe that if they do well, it's because the EOM threw them an "easy" match and if they lose it's the matchmaking trying to "bring them down a peg".

This is exacerbated for The Finals specifically because frankly it has one of the lowest skill playerbases I've encountered in an FPS in a while. Having a basic level of skill is considered a feat worthy of people calling you a liar, I had somebody say expecting a 50% accuracy rate during a firefight was considered "astronomically high" and "absurd". It's the same source as a lot of people complaining about the "invincible" Light class. The average player of this game can't shoot for shit.

But as with any game, no it couldn't possibly just be that they're bad, they need something to blame! So blame the matchmaking, because it's got a hand in every match, but there's no data to specifically disprove that you are the protagonist of the universe and getting single out by the matchmaking of this game and that's why you lose 80% of your matches.
 

They've been working on it for 20 years straight!

Yakuza 0 is the objectively correct answer. It is simultaneously probably the best game in the franchise, one of the best-constructed prequels ever made, and one of the greatest games of all-time.

You could quite comfortably just play Y0 and never touch another game in the series as it IS self-contained, but if you do happen to continue on to the rest of the series, the connection to the characters you form over the course of Y0's story SIGNIFICANTLY enhances the impact of plot beats in Yakuza 1 (best played as Yakuza Kiwami for the additions to the story) onward.

If you end up liking the gameplay but don't feel like continuing the main plot, Yakuza Isshin is a great game to play afterward as it has similar gameplay to Y0 (as opposed to the other games made after it like Kiwami 2 and Yakuza 6) and is a pure spinoff set in feudal Japan with no connection to the others.

Otherwise I'd definitely suggest giving the whole series a crack in order: 0 , then Kiwami (the remake of Y1 in an updated engine), Kiwami 2 (ditto for Y2), and then 3/4/5/6 don't have any weird numbering. Judgment and Lost Judgment are solid too, but use Kiwami 2 and 6's combat system (though more refined and less...slidey) which is very "love it or hate it"; these two are also standalone with each other.

I, personally, did not like 3 or 6 (the latter to the point that I never finished it) but 3 is worth pushing through just because 4 and 5 are AMAZING. I haven't touched the soft-reboot games because I'm not a big fan of turn-based JRPGs, but most people say they're good.

On 3/4/2025 at 12:05 AM, Silent said:

The First Berzerker: Khazan

Not an indie game, but I remember seeing this in some showcase and thinking it looked okay. I don't know ANYTHING about Dungeon Fighter Online but it's a soulslike set in that universe. After hearing that the combat is amazing, I gave it a shot and that's exactly how I feel. This is exactly what I wanted from Lies of P, it's like the devs know exactly how to make every aspect of combat feel responsive and meaty, and then turned that up to the max with shit tons of flashy effects that don't impede attack readability. Ended this demo very much wanting to play more of it. 

I gave it a try after this post and came away with kind of the opposite feeling. The combat is extremely clunky. You're dual wielding nominally fast weapons but have to commit about the same as swinging a greatsword in Dark Souls. This is also combined with the classic Souls imitator problem of having enemies either having zero hit stagger from ANYTHING and being chainstunned by the equivalent of a light breeze, sometimes on the same enemy.

I recently tried to go back and replay (modded) Dark Souls 3 and Khazan gave me the same feeling of "wow this was pretty good a decade ago but games in this genre have gotten better since then".

I like Souls-likes, I even like what I played of DFO years and years ago (and DNF Duel more recently) but this game was just not it for me at all.

Khazan being a more flashy anime-styled game SCREAMS to have some kind of animation cancelling tricks like Nioh but instead somehow feels stiffer than Lords of the Fallen, which I enjoyed quite a bit but is still definitely Temu Dark Souls. As-is Monster Hunter Wilds currently feels more responsive than what I played of Khazan, and that game deliberately makes things kinda clunky.

Death of the Outsider was definitely odd, yeah. I didn't hate  it, but unlike 2 and especially the original I've had zero desire to go back and replay it. Typically I at least do one Shadow/Ghost/Pacifist run on the first go around and a "kill 'em all" on a follow-up later, but I didn't really see much point in the latter playthrough for DotS.

It's more of one of those AAVE phrases that has existed for years but white people recently "discovered". Pretty sure I first saw it used in an RDCWorld video like 3 years ago.

Exactly. The concept of a handheld is, at this point, retro in and of itself. You're also basically saying the last created 8-track player isn't allowed to be called retro by that logic.

I forgot the series was even still ongoing, I dropped it while the Monster Association arc was still dragging on and on and on and oooooooooooooooon

1 hour ago, A 1970 Corvette said:

I would enjoy thundermountain enough if each cap was its own map. Doing all three back to back is a fucking grind, then you realize now you have to play it on the other side too.

 

Especially last which I think is a really interesting map with the tower and indoor areas. If both teams are actually aware of the map (rare) then the different areas all are defended differently and it is really varied for a single map.

They should have made Thundermountain a TC Payload map, eh?

Not really on topic, I'm just consistently sad they never made more TC maps after Hydro. I will never understand how the game mode was THAT unpopular.

I'm a big Yu-Gi-Oh! fan and got back into it in a big way when Master Duel came out as an insanely affordable way to keep up with newly released cards, becoming possibly the definitive format of the game.

I decided to give Magic Arena the same shot at the tail end (heh) of Bloomburrow since I'd never played Magic before and one of my friends is into it. I built a single deck (Boros Mice), grinded to Mythic in the week before Duskmourne came out, and was left with the appalling realization that I would not have the resources to build a Duskmourne deck, and wouldn't be able to grind enough before the next set came out to build one either. The game is just too unbelievably stingy.

It's insane looking at the difference in player friendliness between the two games, and by everything I've heard that extends to the paper formats as well. YGO is far from perfect, but its aggressive reprint policy makes acquiring power cards pretty cheap if you're willing to wait a few months, but the already existing community of "investors" combined with the Hasbro acquisition seems to have turned MtG into a PURELY collector's hobby, not an actual game.

Pretty much; the assumption was that the app worked properly, but as with any free service YOU are the product. There's a lot of similar services out there attached to your credit card that do the same thing (eg. Capital One has a coupon service that's basically identical).

I've been waiting for news on Soulframe for a while; Warframe is really fun but being on constant "catchup mode" is tiring. Really interested to see what the experience is like starting on the ground floor. Thanks!

Oh boy! 1000 more years of Fiendsmith dominance!

I really enjoyed my Iconoclast run, right up until I started hitting multiple showstoppers in Act 5. I really should get back and finish it sometime, assuming those bugs are fixed.

I wish the game had a bit more give and take with the Chaos path. Like you're never "tempted" to join Chaos, you need to basically already BE a Chaos cultist from day 1 for any of your character choices to make the slightest lick of sense. You're offered one really good turning point in Act 3...but it's too late by then, you've already missed all the cool Chaos rewards you need to lock in in Acts 1 and 2 (like the sword) so you'd just be doing it for the evulz anyway.

But overall I played Baldur's Gate 3 and Rogue Trader pretty much back to back and ended up enjoying RT more.

So it's like a single player Tribes? Sounds pretty fun.

Sounds like a strict upgrade, at least for my preferences. Dead Rising 1 always leaned closer to "frustrating" than "challenging" in my book, it sounds more like the remake takes the approach the actual franchise takes starting from DR2, which is just "have fun with it, fam".

For gameplay, anyway. I never like it when they change a voice actor for no reason. Especially for a remake of an existing game, so there's not even any like "the voice actor's talents no longer fit our needs for the role" thing going on like with God of War. It's the same game with roughly the same dialogue, just use the same damn guy.

7 hours ago, FreshHalibut said:

I'd still argue that if you're not a 40K fan you wont get as much out of it, but for me it was really fun seeing the Tyranid in an action game. Makes me want to go replay Dawn of War 2.

Not just a 40k fan; I'd argue you specifically have to be an Ultramarines turbo-fan to really get the most out of the campaign. Spoilery thoughts below.

There are also whole-home electric/tankless water heaters which do the same. They're actually not all that expensive (I think the one in my current place was like $400 back when I last reviewed one, though that was years ago) and work way better than the traditional tank heaters.

I reinstall DOTA 2 whenever the rogue-like co-op game mode comes back around but that's about it.

1 hour ago, Gyokuyoutama said:

In other news, Valve finally admitted that they are making that game that was leaked a while back:

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1422450/Deadlock/

 

I know that there's been a lot of reporting on this before (though nobody talking about it here) but I think this is the first time that Valve has officially confirmed both the game's existence and that they plan to release it (i.e. it's not just one of their experiments that ends up going nowhere.)

 

As far as I can tell it's supposed to be a MOBA in FPS mode with UT2k4 movement mechanics and Overwatch-style Hero shooter aesthetics and character branding?  That seems either incredibly ambitious or the laziest take you could make, depending on whether the game design or the marketing came first.

 

Right now all I can say is that in the private Beta gameplay available nothing has great readability, from the character models to the UI, so I can't tell what the hell is going on.  But that's also one of the easier things to fix in Beta, so who knows.

A guy on the Giant in the Playground forums was able to play it if you want his impressions:

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Since they lifted their totally-not-an-NDA, I can talk about Deadlock now.

It's better than I expected, managing to capture the macro feel and emergent objective nature of a MOBA while still hinging heavily on the shooter element. It's not Overwatch or Team Fortress 2, with its clear focus on MOBA staples like laning, ganking, and snowballing. That said, it's quite a bit faster than most MOBAs - despite having a 4 lane map, you can cross it in no time and the addition of ziplines to and from your base make it relatively quick to switch around. Shooting also plays a big role. This is significantly sweatier than the shooting in Monday Night Combat or Smite. Headshots give significant bonus damage, many character models are on the lithe side, and everyone has a lot of mobility so sticking your crosshair is a significant challenge.

Unfortunately, I still have misgivings about it. The shooter mechanics don't map well to real shooter gameplay. Most everyone, even the sniper, has a fully automatic weapon with a magazine size of a dozen or more. Reloading takes 3-5 seconds which makes it feel awkward in the middle of a fight. Everyone seems to have the same range, reaching maximum damage around <20m, though shotgun wielders get better when they're closer. It all ends up feeling usable, but "mushy". Like nobody has a serious identity through their weapons. There's also no characters like Reinhardt or Winston who fight without needing serious aiming skill. You can make builds that deemphasize bullet damage, but so far it seems difficult to ignore the gunplay.

Abilities are fairly varied in a DotA sense. They're simple and easy to understand, with the complexity coming from how your kit interacts together. Some of the kits have weird combinations, though. I'm unsure why a squishy, ranged character whose normal abilities include a slow field and a stacking burn from normal shots has a point-blank AOE explosion as their ult. There's also two sniper-like characters that have very similar ability sets (trap, throw a bird, fly in midair, big empowered shot), just shuffled around. Moreso than that, I find most of the character designs boring. They're going for a sort of "Noir York" mixed with an occult undertone, which translates to putting a lot of general fantasy archetypes in 1920s clothing. Also Hellboy is there, but he's blue.

Games tend to be fun, though matchmaking needs some work. It apparently tries to both match teams and set up lanes against equal skill, but sometimes you end up with serious blowouts because a teammate has no idea what's going on. It's an alpha, but I assume most people can pick up on "The enemy team is inside your base attacking your final building!" as a time to defend, but I've seen people out wandering the map doing nothing during these times. Maybe it's a symptom of Valve refusing to put surrender mechanics in their games, so people find creative ways to surrender instead.

More rough to deal with is the perspective. There's a lot of maneuverability. Characters have a universal stamina mechanic that can be used to quickly roll/dash in any direction, dash jump, or double jump. That's on top of many characters having abilities that let them fly, teleport, or go invisible. In a top-down game, these aren't that difficult to deal with. The camera's pulled out far enough that you can track everything, even move your camera into the distance to track a fleeing enemy. In third-person, it's very easy to lose people or get hit from behind simply because you can't cover every angle. Teamfights can become an absolute mess, especially when AOEs start going out occluding your vision. Maybe I just need to adapt to this, but it's very offputting as a new player to get blindsided so often.

Overall, it's been enjoyable for the 12 hours I've put into it and I'm not against playing it more with my friends, but I have a hard time believing it's going to attract a huge playerbase. The MOBA mechanics are too prominent and the shooting too wonky, which will annoy shooter fans; however, aiming is still extremely important and a good FPS player can wreck a MOBA diehard who understands macro control simply by virtue of locking onto their head for 50-100% extra damage. It feels like it's only going to work for the small cross-section of players who want both a skilled shooter experience and the knowledge checks of a MOBA. If you lean either way, there are better games that cater to your tastes.

(In response to me saying it sounds Paladins-esque:)

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It really isn't a hero shooter. It's very much a MOBA at its core, just with the perspective shifted to over the shoulder and the autoattack overwritten with a gun. I never played Paladins, but from what I've heard, that game was far more Overwatch with the serial numbers filed off.

Despite the MOBA elements, shooting is just stupidly important in this game, though. Someone like Yamato, the generic Japanese swordswoman, still uses throwing darts as her main attack. Her sword abilities are utilities. The primary gameplan is to use her grapple hook ability to get in close and click your head for 800+ damage a shot (where most characters in the endgame have 1500-2000 HP). There are a few characters you can kind of build into ability-users, but you still need to be decent at shooting. Especially in the lane phase. Every time you kill an enemy minion, half the XP/money floats out in a little orb that both sides can shoot. If your opponent shoots it before you, they steal the whole thing.