5 Words I'd like to see Retired from Game Discussion (TotalBiscuit)
71 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Zephyrs;49531621]Early access is the classic case of "this is why we can't have nice things." Done right, it's great. You can count the number of those games on your fingers rather easily. In general, it's pure cancer. I'd rather not see the handful of good instances of it because it doesn't exist than not see the handful of good instances because they are hidden in an ocean of shit.[/QUOTE]
Early Access is fine as a concept, and you can't blame anyone other than the consumers for buying into it. On the other hand, you can blame Valve for not taking any measures to properly moderate it.
Consumers should be cautious of buying into early access, and they're becoming more and more so and as a result developers should be more cautious of using early access - see Killing Floor 2 for example.
[QUOTE=FunnyStarRunner;49527127]The five words in case you'd rather not sit through 42 minutes:
1. [sp]Pay-2-Win[/sp]
2. [sp]Cinematic[/sp]
3. [sp]Overrated[/sp]
4. [sp]Roguelike[/sp]
5. [sp]Beta[/sp][/QUOTE]
Without having the patience to sit through a 45 minute video, I think "Cinematic" is the only one I can agree with here. It's a dumb adjective that can be stuck to any game that has moments you can sit through for their beauty or plot heaviness; or that's at least how I feel it's evolved with its' use in games rather than being a more negative "this is actually very similar to a movie" definition.
The rest of these words have evolved. Mostly negative, but other people get real huffy when "rouge-like" is used to describe games that involve death and lost progress as a titular focus, and some amount of randomization, instead of a flat ASC-II dungeon crawler. Beta as a definition, has simply been abused by developers, but the fault lays with people using it as a scapegoat and not the word itself. Overrated still very much applies as much as it did twenty, thirty years ago with gaming. And Pay-2-Win is a very key word that I would never like to see "disappear" because when applied properly, it denotes a game or mechanic that is greedy and broken to the core, or at least in part.
"Pay-2-Win" often gets confused with a non-titled "Pay-2-Skip-Grinding" mechanic many games have. And true, if the grinding is absurd, then newer players are at a disadvantage, but regardless they have the opportunity to (eventually) level the playing field without paying (even if that is shit game design.) I still think it's an important word to have, people just need to stop mis-applying it and actually call out games with miserable grinds.
[QUOTE=Fayez;49527228]I've never thought of overrated as "it's popular so it's bad". I've always considered it to be when people considered a game more than it is. A recent example would be Undertale. It's a fine game, but the general community think of it more than it is.[/QUOTE]
You say "it is" as if its an objective thing. I mean I think I get where you're coming from. A person can play a game and not think it was as good as others made it out to be, and call it "overrated" because of that. But its just a pet peeve of mine when people treat subjective things as objective.
[QUOTE=Doom14;49531980]
"Pay-2-Win" often gets confused with a non-titled "Pay-2-Skip-Grinding" mechanic many games have. And true, if the grinding is absurd, then newer players are at a disadvantage, but regardless they have the opportunity to (eventually) level the playing field without paying (even if that is shit game design.) I still think it's an important word to have, people just need to stop mis-applying it and actually call out games with miserable grinds.[/QUOTE]
I think there is a grey area between having content available for grinding only or from the get go or letting people pay to unlock stuff outright or earlier than free players that gives people who pay an advantage. The defense in such cases is usually "Well free players can unlock it too, it just takes time instead of money". So it's not technically paying to win, it's just paying to have an advantage over the 80%-90% who don't spend money for however long the game stays alive through new players.
[QUOTE=Ltp0wer;49531665]
The problem with this is that people don't have the same definitions as you.
When I hear overrated, I don't think [B]"User reviews scored below critic reviews". I don't think a lot of people do. In fact, sometimes I think the opposite (Mad Max 3 comes to mind personally, emphasis on personally) .[/B]
To the guy that said something akin to "Words' meanings change totalbiscuit, deal with it," that's exactly his point. These words have changed too much.
If the usage of a word changed but still meant the same thing to everyone, it wouldn't be an issue. This isn't what has happened to the words he mentioned. He addresses it in the video, some words change to have multiple definitions and get too ambiguous to be useful.[/QUOTE]
Do you mean Thunderdome or Fury Road? Because Thunderdome [I]was [/I]a case of the critics liking the movie far more than the fans. And in Fury Road's case, everyone loved that movie, both critics and the general population.
Game developers (atleast, those not relying on the mobile market) are smart enough not to release a F2P shooter where you can buy an item that makes your bullets do 10% more damage straight up. I haven't seen anything like that in years. What they can do is have is the Veterans M16 which does 5 more damage per shot available for spending $12 on the game or reaching level 37. The problem is reaching level 37 takes 20 hours. So for 20 hours you are getting the pay2win experience but it's defensible because hey you don't have to pay to get it. I hate that shit.
[QUOTE=cdr248;49532205]Do you mean Thunderdome or Fury Road? Because Thunderdome [I]was [/I]a case of the critics liking the movie far more than the fans. And in Fury Road's case, everyone loved that movie, both critics and the general population.[/QUOTE]
Oops. I have no idea why I put that 3 there. I meant the newer game that came out after Fury Road.
edit: oh, I've been playing a lot of max payne 3 lately.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;49532212]Game developers (atleast, those not relying on the mobile market) are smart enough not to release a F2P shooter where you can buy an item that makes your bullets do 10% more damage straight up. I haven't seen anything like that in years. What they can do is have is the Veterans M16 which does 5 more damage per shot available for spending $12 on the game or reaching level 37. The problem is reaching level 37 takes 20 hours. So for 20 hours you are getting the pay2win experience but it's defensible because hey you don't have to pay to get it. I hate that shit.[/QUOTE]
Agreed. In fact, even if you can't pay for it, a progression system like that is terrible in either way. Progression systems should involve getting side-grades and customization options, not outright upgrades, not in multi-player games.
[QUOTE=Rossy167;49530651]Overrated is basically the one word I'd use to describe Bioshock Infinite and [i]I wouldn't say it's a meaningless term[/i]. Everyone loved it because it was a middling shooter that pretended to be all artsy and full of emotion and thematic exploration when really it was just rail-roading you through a somewhat interesting world and telling a relatively silly story in a way that took no advantage of being a game instead of a book or a movie... kinda like the Last of Us.[/QUOTE]
It is meaningless because it is completely different from person to person. It may be a generic shooter with a narrow on-rails plot, but a lot of people enjoyed it. "Overrated" in this example just means "[b]I[/b] didn't like this thing as much as everyone else so everyone else should like it less." It's entirely subjective, so it means nothing.
I disagree with "cinematic"
we should definitely keep on talking about how games want to just be movies like The Last of Us and have nothing really special gameplay-wise yet they get praised as "the citizen kane of gaming".
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