Is gaming right now what you thought it would be?
- Thread starter Pighardia
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Game releases are just better looking mostly.
I really hoped cyberpunk would have some incredible A.I, gang fights between them, constantly changing worlds and so on. But really, most games are dead and have no proper AI stuff in them yet. NPCs are mostly pointless. GTA V seemed to move in the right direction with it's random bouts of NPCs in that regard - I think 6 will make massive improvements on it. Or succumb to the income and just concentrate on online nonsense :L
I really hoped cyberpunk would have some incredible A.I, gang fights between them, constantly changing worlds and so on. But really, most games are dead and have no proper AI stuff in them yet. NPCs are mostly pointless. GTA V seemed to move in the right direction with it's random bouts of NPCs in that regard - I think 6 will make massive improvements on it. Or succumb to the income and just concentrate on online nonsense :L
Nah I think it's great. I never thought we would have real VR but it works! And it's awesome, Half-life Alyx is truly epic.
I'm playing Horizon Zero Dawn now, and it is brilliant, and it looks great but mainly the gameplay and the story are just great. Never been a better time to be gaming IMHO.
I'm playing Horizon Zero Dawn now, and it is brilliant, and it looks great but mainly the gameplay and the story are just great. Never been a better time to be gaming IMHO.
I was going to mention VR and Half Life Alyx especially actually. I've not played much vr but from what I've seen Alyx is a pretty high benchmark and one of the first great implementations of vr imo. Very impressive.
Soldato
Successful older games had to have amazing gameplay because the graphics alone wasn't enough to get people to play the game whereas we're in the opposite phase now where "looks amazing but the gameplay is awful" is the new norm. I think the fairly modern trend (getting worse over the past decade) of releasing Beta games has been a really bad choice for the players, even if the companies finances like it.
For me at least it mirrors what's happened in Cinema - Flashy graphics have taken the place of good story/gameplay - and while the companies find financial success from this, the low end quality of the product means it's disposable with very little "wow, lets watch/play that again 5-10-15 times!!!" left.
Game wise I'm a Military Flight/Vehicle/Sub Sim nerd and from the golden heydays of Microprose, DID and Janes making dozens of great games in the 90's to the dearth of decent sims we have now (DCS, Cold Waters) is a real low point for me. I mean I enjoy DCS etc but there's JUST 1-2 good sims out there so I find myself still playing the old games like DID Total Air War (the BEST campaign mode for re-playability ever), Janes Fleet Command, SFS Dangerous Waters, Microprose B-17 etc.
For me at least it mirrors what's happened in Cinema - Flashy graphics have taken the place of good story/gameplay - and while the companies find financial success from this, the low end quality of the product means it's disposable with very little "wow, lets watch/play that again 5-10-15 times!!!" left.
Game wise I'm a Military Flight/Vehicle/Sub Sim nerd and from the golden heydays of Microprose, DID and Janes making dozens of great games in the 90's to the dearth of decent sims we have now (DCS, Cold Waters) is a real low point for me. I mean I enjoy DCS etc but there's JUST 1-2 good sims out there so I find myself still playing the old games like DID Total Air War (the BEST campaign mode for re-playability ever), Janes Fleet Command, SFS Dangerous Waters, Microprose B-17 etc.
Soldato
Broadly speaking, games have just been mostly re-hashes of previous titles, but with improved graphics over the last ~20 years. Gameplay innovation is as rare as hen's teeth.
Not always s bad thing though, give me an updated version of vice city any day! Or a modern metal gear solid remake.
I think it's the desire for sandbox games that causes problems. Not every game/story is suitable for open world sandbox and developers something's struggle to make it non repetitive ( see ubi soft).
Soldato
IMO gaming is a bit of a **** show now compared to 10-20 years ago.
I’m getting old and don’t find much joy in what the kids these days like nor do I like what my favourite franchises have turned into (Battlefield, CoD, Counterstrike; I’m looking at you).
I’m getting old and don’t find much joy in what the kids these days like nor do I like what my favourite franchises have turned into (Battlefield, CoD, Counterstrike; I’m looking at you).
Associate
Im mostly into VR these days but iv give me left arm to have a week back in the day when CS 1.6 and the original Wow first came out..I miss them days
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I would also trade your left arm to experience that once more.
I agree with what's already been said.
However, I tried Alyx on a quest 2 over a month ago. For the first time in years I was truly blown away. I played 6 hours but couldn't get over the motion sickness. But it has stuck with me as really next gen. If you haven't tried it you really should. I'm planning my pc upgrade so that I can run it at higher fps to manage the sickness. Can't wait to get back into it.
That and a few other vr games is where I had envisioned gaming to be.
However, I tried Alyx on a quest 2 over a month ago. For the first time in years I was truly blown away. I played 6 hours but couldn't get over the motion sickness. But it has stuck with me as really next gen. If you haven't tried it you really should. I'm planning my pc upgrade so that I can run it at higher fps to manage the sickness. Can't wait to get back into it.
That and a few other vr games is where I had envisioned gaming to be.
vr is still in it infancy, a niche of a niche with a poor casual experience or at least that's mine. The best headsets today still lack in the visual department in ways that destroy immersion, and setup and configurations is extraordinarily difficult
For me, I thought the windows implementation of HDR was bad, that was until I tried VR in windows then I really saw what bad looks like
But its heading in the right direction. Throw your quest 2 on with no cables is very welcoming. For someone who was casual newbie to vr, I was blown away.
I think the next quest 2 with meatier hardware will do the trick.
I have the same problem with motion sickness, i heard you should only play small amounts like an hour to begin with then stop. Gradually it gets better.
Deleted member 236143
D
Deleted member 236143
Games have no risk now or innovation. Large devs swallow other companies up and are happy to dish out the status quo in gaming with better looking graphics but no real change at all.
Some small independent titles pop up, Among Us, Little Nightmares, Inside, Fall Guys.
Devs take no risks and rely on large budget advertising and pulling power to win the day. Avengers pretty much failed yet Spiderman was a decent title.
There has been no "next Gen" in gaming for a long time.
The last time for me was Half Life 2.
It brought new graphics, and physics together. Bullet penetration, things float or sink, gravity, fire etc
Since then we have all that just a little better.
Now we have open world games that are great and a lot of effort in story etc. Horizon Zero Dawn, RDR2, Death Stranding.
But they are still rooted in Far Cry, Elder Scrolls, even GTA and Ultima too perhaps.
Just bigger and more attractive.
Still Half Life 2 physics though. Fire can be started, but you cannot burn down an entire town or village and technically break your quest line.
We are still steered through the story of these games.
Cyberpunk actually made me think of what could be possible with a new GTA 6. A GTA that has a growing RPG element in it. Along with a more complex multiple thread story inside a growing living world.
AI is still standard for years. In many games difficulty is just a level of total unforgiveness, versus AI actually freaking you out in how it fights you.
I think perhaps a smaller team might lead the way and take a new approach to gaming formats. They will have no deadlines no cares and enjoy trying to do what they want to do. And then boom. Every big studio will want their take or feel added to their games.
Games are making more money than movies. And for a while the movie industry instead of gambling with a story or idea, they choose a reboot, or a sequel. More of what you liked before. I mean if you like it? Why change it?
And who pays any attention to games reviews now? They are always 9/10 etc - again just money and advertising.
I still enjoy a variety of games but in everything new I just see the emperors new clothes really.
Some small independent titles pop up, Among Us, Little Nightmares, Inside, Fall Guys.
Devs take no risks and rely on large budget advertising and pulling power to win the day. Avengers pretty much failed yet Spiderman was a decent title.
There has been no "next Gen" in gaming for a long time.
The last time for me was Half Life 2.
It brought new graphics, and physics together. Bullet penetration, things float or sink, gravity, fire etc
Since then we have all that just a little better.
Now we have open world games that are great and a lot of effort in story etc. Horizon Zero Dawn, RDR2, Death Stranding.
But they are still rooted in Far Cry, Elder Scrolls, even GTA and Ultima too perhaps.
Just bigger and more attractive.
Still Half Life 2 physics though. Fire can be started, but you cannot burn down an entire town or village and technically break your quest line.
We are still steered through the story of these games.
Cyberpunk actually made me think of what could be possible with a new GTA 6. A GTA that has a growing RPG element in it. Along with a more complex multiple thread story inside a growing living world.
AI is still standard for years. In many games difficulty is just a level of total unforgiveness, versus AI actually freaking you out in how it fights you.
I think perhaps a smaller team might lead the way and take a new approach to gaming formats. They will have no deadlines no cares and enjoy trying to do what they want to do. And then boom. Every big studio will want their take or feel added to their games.
Games are making more money than movies. And for a while the movie industry instead of gambling with a story or idea, they choose a reboot, or a sequel. More of what you liked before. I mean if you like it? Why change it?
And who pays any attention to games reviews now? They are always 9/10 etc - again just money and advertising.
I still enjoy a variety of games but in everything new I just see the emperors new clothes really.
What we think of as AI is still mostly scripted as it was 20 years ago, it's not possible to give different mobs some parameters and let some AI engine deal with the details to make a realistic world - that's where graphics have got to. AI not even nearly.
Maybe one of the chip makers will design an AI chip and corresponding AI API and tool chain that gets into Direct X - that'd be a game changer, but sadly take years and years to result in any substantial change in games. That delay would give competitors time to copy and the first mover get no commercial advantage from it.
RT is a superficial gloss on a game, but the number of games that demonstrate it well are still few - for games to use AI well I feel they'd need to be built from the ground up around it - thus 3-5 years lag while they tool up, train up, then develop a game!
Maybe one of the chip makers will design an AI chip and corresponding AI API and tool chain that gets into Direct X - that'd be a game changer, but sadly take years and years to result in any substantial change in games. That delay would give competitors time to copy and the first mover get no commercial advantage from it.
RT is a superficial gloss on a game, but the number of games that demonstrate it well are still few - for games to use AI well I feel they'd need to be built from the ground up around it - thus 3-5 years lag while they tool up, train up, then develop a game!
Soldato
I still get annoyed with buggy releases and sequel upon sequels but will say I am pleased with the way gaming subscription services are going as well as things like the Epic Game Store offering decent free games here and there, have certainly built up a big library on there for no money which is great. Bit annoyed at all the different launchers now but at least it makes it competitive for companies to try and pull people to buy games on their platform.
Why expected continually improvements and innovations in such areas as gameplay, interactivity, immersion, complexity etc? Are novels 'improving' in such ways year on year? Or are today's novels basically the same level as those of the 1950s or 1900s? In gaming, the hardware improves rapidly - which drives rapid improvements in the visuals - as we've seen. But it doesn't follow that other areas of gaming should improve similarly just because rendering performance improves.
Just as novels have reached the limits of their platform (arguably a century+ ago), maybe those aspects of gameplay, interactivity, immersion, complexity are also approaching their limits. Sure there'll be some (subjective) improvements with future hardware improvements, but don't expect games a decade from now to be dramatically more 'fun' than those of today, just as today's games aren't dramatically more fun than those of 2010 despite huge hardware advances.
2D gaming has got far too stale. Open world games in particular seem to be getting increasingly similar.
For me, VR is where it's at. Many of the existing game design tropes don't work in VR, and developers are having to innovate. In many ways VR is like the 1980's era of video games, where new games and gamplay were being discovered all the time, and everything was new and fresh.
For me, VR is where it's at. Many of the existing game design tropes don't work in VR, and developers are having to innovate. In many ways VR is like the 1980's era of video games, where new games and gamplay were being discovered all the time, and everything was new and fresh.