Kate Bush has a phenomenal voice and has done lots of wonderful music, but that "WANK-WONK" sound in "Running Up That Hill" is the utter epitome of awful 80s synths, and the song is terrible because of it.
Counter take: awful 80s synths are actually awesome and make everything they touched better.
Kate Bush has a phenomenal voice and has done lots of wonderful music, but that "WANK-WONK" sound in "Running Up That Hill" is the utter epitome of awful 80s synths, and the song is terrible because of it.
I'm sorry, I'm still laughing at Wank-Wonk.
awful 80s synths are actually awesome and make everything they touched better.
Those aren't the '80s sounds I need the most, by a lot. Instead:
People seem to rave about the comedic genius of Andrew Kaufman but the guy was mostly annoying. Christopher Lloyd was far more entertaining to watch in Taxi.
It warms my heart to see this. Kaufman felt ahead of his time in that the world of youtube pranksters hadn’t been invented yet. He’s a 70s Jake / Logan Paul.
strangederby wrote:People seem to rave about the comedic genius of Andrew Kaufman but the guy was mostly annoying. Christopher Lloyd was far more entertaining to watch in Taxi.
It warms my heart to see this. Kaufman felt ahead of his time in that the world of youtube pranksters hadn’t been invented yet. He’s a 70s Jake / Logan Paul.
He was a comedic genius the same way some people put literal trash in the corner of a museum and call themselves artists.
Kaufman wasn't really someone we were exposed to much in Australia. I think the first I ever heard of him was that Jim Carrey movie, and even then the only positive thing about that was the REM song (I know the REM song was written before the movie existed, but it had a resurgence thanks to the film. Or at least that's how my addled brain remembers it).
Everything I've read about him since just makes it sound like he was a total asshole.
Cannot express how much I hate crafting systems in modern games. Totally uninspired bloat that fills your inventory with crap to pad out gameplay time.
I do not want to endlessly update my weapons, just give me a f**king new weapon.
And the rise of "tiered" items that seems to go with crafting these days can go straight to hell too. Cyberpunk was a massive offender on this front. It is insanely stupid to play so many RPGs now where the exact same item now comes in four or five different quality tiers (Common/Uncommon/Rare/Exceptional/Legendary), which, again, serve no valuable purpose beyond just padding out the game with bullsh*t.
I've played like 2 games that used crafting where it was interesting and engaging but didn't feel omnipresent and overwhelming. Everybody else appears to just use it as a crutch, and use it so, so badly.
Which two games? I too hate crafting. Feels like work.
I'm playing through Cyberpunk right now and I agree 100%.
Path of Exile has extensive crafting, but to me, it never feels like "work". Instead, it's part of the whole puzzle of design and execution of your vision of what your character should be able to do, and how you get there.
I suspect, though, that others differ. 
Games where I enjoy crafting:
Minecraft
Games where I do not enjoy crafting:
Yes
On the "Yes" front, there's Valheim. Came out on Xbox recently, a friend started it up and invited me. Besides the immeasurably nonsensical UI (right and left to move through things on the hotbar, up to select one?), the crafting is endlessly fiddly. Going from stones to flint to copper to bronze to I stopped playing. You can't go into the mountains because you don't have warm enough clothes yet and enemies are too dangerous, and you can't cross the water because you'll drown until you can build a sturdy enough boat, plus, if you go in the water, you get the Wet condition, and you can't sleep when you have the Wet condition; you have to stand by a fire for a while. Want to sleep? You need a covered bed with a roof, and a fire. And the best part? When you kill creatures and get raw meat, you, of course, need to cook it. So, you build a fire, put up a cooking rack, hang your food, and . . . you have to watch your food cook, and, when it hisses, it's done. If you don't take your food off fast enough, it's ruined.
YOU HAVE TO WATCH YOUR FOOD COOK.
I want to throw things at these developers.
At this point I think all diablo/gear loot em up games are trash. Crafting or no. If the core gameplay can be replaced with a checkmark option to auto equip the gear with the biggest number. Bleh.
And yeah valheims crafting is a bit meh. Only the rest of the game saves it and coop. The worst for me is graveyard keeper. Cause it's really close to being amazing but the has some really stupid design decisions.
I like crafting. I Lovecrafting. There's not a Dagon by that I don't enjoy crafting in games. This might make me The Outsider, but give me a good Pickman's Model and I'll get the mats for it. I think it's because I don't mind grinding. I'll go from The Nameless City to The Mountains of Madness if it means I get to make a neat gun. Then I get to sit back and enjoy the Cool Air while my awesome new weapon kills all The Other Gods while listening the mellow sounds of the Music of Erich Zann. I guess that's why they call me The Terrible Old Man. Hang on, gotta sneeze...
Cthulhu!
Which two games? I too hate crafting. Feels like work.
I wanna say Pillars of Eternity, which was very light crafting, bordering on just "weapons modification." I'm trying to think of the other but I'm having one of those moments where I know what it is and what it looks like, but I couldn't identify it if you paid me.
Honestly, I don't necessarily hate it in games where crafting is a key part of the gameplay from the beginning, mostly because I don't play those games.
This rant was inspired by Vampyr, FWIW, which I picked up on sale and would be enjoying so much more if it didn't have a CLEARLY unnecessary bullsh*t crafting system.
At this point I think all diablo/gear loot em up games are trash. Crafting or no. If the core gameplay can be replaced with a checkmark option to auto equip the gear with the biggest number. Bleh.
Like... just design a slate of good, interesting, varied weapons/armor/items. I can use this gun, because it does these things well, or I can use this sword, because it does these things well and fits with my gameplay style! That's good.
I really, really cannot express how tired I am of the tiered items stuff though. It is so, so, so unbelievably stupid to play a game where your inventory is full of versions of the exact same item. It's one of the worst developments in modern games and I assume it's just MMORPG bleed-over.
I liked Far Cry 5's crafting but I hated it in 6.
Stuff like Stardew or most survival games crafting is fine. Since it's a part of the core experience and usually involves making interesting choices.
Most loot/gear based games involve no choice. Use the higher DPS gun or fall behind on the bullet sponge enemies. Or pay cash to skip ahead.
If you can remove crafting or gear levels from your game and it's basically the same. Then it's not needed.
Along the lines of the crafting take...
I hate hate HATE bullsh*t "progression" systems in online shooter games.
I'm sick of gamers who think "grinding unlocks" is somehow a good thing to have. And how it gives them a "reason" to keep playing.
Bro, if the gameplay itself isn't enough to keep you coming back, THEN IT'S A BAD GAME. Or at least a mediocre one that you've gotten everything there is to get out of it already.
Now, I'm perfectly OK with there being challenges to achieve which unlock achievements and badges and stuff. If you want to chase 500 shotgun kills to get a badge, cool. That's not gatekeeping content. It's when these kind of challenges are put in front of you as a prerequisite to unlocking weapons, or unlocking attachments for weapons, that I find to be completely pointless and anti-player.
I didn't have to play Quake for 50 hours to unlock the rocket launcher so that I could finally not be hamstrung in multiplayer. I'm sick of CODs and Battlefields and the like having most of the arsenal locked behind time-wasting treadmills, and gamers acting like that's a good and sensible thing.
I always found it hilarious how Rainbow Six: Siege has the "clearance level" system, which does almost literally nothing. But it's a "progress bar" that goes up at the end of a match. It's like they knew the audience was going to demand a "progression" system no matter how self-sabotaging it might be, so they stuck a phony baloney one up just to shut them up. (Haven't picked up Siege lately, new UI overhauls may have finally gotten rid of this, but it was definitely prominently displayed back in the early years.)
You reminded me when I first realized the average player was silly about this sort of thing. In advance wars series, a turn based strategy game on the gameboy. The had a point shop system. Play the game get points and unlock maps for skirmish mode and other stuff.
In one of the sequels they got rid of the shop and just unlocked everything for free. No grind needed. And a lot of players really didn't like that. Which was so bonkers to me now. But players like grind and seeing numbers go up it seems.
As for rainbow six siege. I was one of the fools who bought the starter edition and still don't have the basic operators unlocked. Grind was bad and pointless then. I can't imagine how it is now after a years of not playing.
As for rainbow six siege. I was one of the fools who bought the starter edition and still don't have the basic operators unlocked. Grind was bad and pointless then. I can't imagine how it is now after a years of not playing.
The starter edition was just a silly product they should never have offered.
To me, Siege's new set of operators each year are like expansion packs. I don't mind buying expansion packs. But I remember the days of expansion packs in shooters were map packs, which ended up splitting the player base. So the idea of selling operators instead always struck me as a better way.
I do wish Siege had made them more explicitly as expansion packs, rather than as "grindable" content that you can instead unlock via purchase of the "Year Pass". But for years, I would buy the new Year Pass each year, and get an expansion pack's worth of new content at an expansion pack's price tag, and I was satisfied.
I didn't have to play Quake for 50 hours to unlock the rocket launcher so that I could finally not be hamstrung in multiplayer. I'm sick of CODs and Battlefields and the like having most of the arsenal locked behind time-wasting treadmills, and gamers acting like that's a good and sensible thing.
There's so much of that stuff out there now to just pad out "gameplay" and it's awful.
I like crafting. I Lovecrafting. There's not a Dagon by that I don't enjoy crafting in games. This might make me The Outsider, but give me a good Pickman's Model and I'll get the mats for it. I think it's because I don't mind grinding. I'll go from The Nameless City to The Mountains of Madness if it means I get to make a neat gun. Then I get to sit back and enjoy the Cool Air while my awesome new weapon kills all The Other Gods while listening the mellow sounds of the Music of Erich Zann. I guess that's why they call me The Terrible Old Man. Hang on, gotta sneeze...
Cthulhu!
Weapon breaking in Breath of the Wild was and is a good system. They did not and do not need to rebalance it or make the weapons break more slowly or make any other changes. 10/10 game design decision, no notes.
Weapon breaking in Breath of the Wild was and is a good system.
I played the game recently for the first time. Got a stick, hit something with it, stick broke. I stopped playing. Tried it again for a spell. The "making my own waypoints on the map with a f*cking telescope" bullsh*t made me quit entirely.
They did not and do not need to rebalance it or make the weapons break more slowly or make any other changes.
Hard disagree. I think absolutely nothing would have been lost by reducing the rate of decay, except for tedium.
By the mid-game, you're swimming in weapons, so the system really doesn't do anything except briefly waste your time periodically. It's like I'm eating a meal and I have a backpack full of plastic forks, and I have to throw one away and start using a new one every 5 bites.
The same "get you to cycle through weapons instead of using one forever" could have been achieved by having fewer weapons available to pick up, but that decay slower. Same effect, less tedium.
The weapon decay in the beginning of the game is really interesting. As you are scrambling around with whatever you can get your hands on. While managing you're limited slots of space as best you can. And is honestly a core part of the design as it constantly use new weapons to reward you for exploring. It's just by mid game it becomes pointless as you start tossing spare gear.
Taking it out or slowing it down would completely change the game without adding something to replace it. Oddly enough adding more things to craft could help it. Like scraping or upgrade weapons, base building, or something else that it can reward you with as you play. Or dare I say something like far cry where you capture points or change the map.
Overall still love the game but get how people really don't like that mechanic.
I maintain that the two best ever crafting games are Minecraft and Factorio. And the commonalities are:
1. There's always choice involved - you're not upgrading "sword" into "obviously better sword", each item has it's uses and whether to craft depends on what you intend to do.
2. There are very few material-only items, that have no game use besides as crafting ingredients. Minecraft has none of these; Factorio has some but very few for its genre.
One of my Gamedev Theories is that those are the two elements for a great crafting system.
I don't hate crafting in general, but I remember thinking it was annoying and unnecessary in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Crafting I like: Dead Rising 2. Fun, weird, completely skippable
Crafting I don’t like: Minecraft, Breath of the Wild, every survival game.
I’m another who tried Breath of the Wild, completed a shrine or two, gritted my teeth through changing weapons all the time, and when it expected me to collect some mushrooms and junk for making better potions or recipes or whatever, uninstall.
I don't hate crafting in general, but I remember thinking it was annoying and unnecessary in Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Dragon Age: Inquisition was annoying and unnecessary.
(OK, that's a little harsher than what I actually mean, but man was that game like the poster child of aggressive mediocrity. I remember being absolutely mind-boggled that it was the Community Game of the Year on this very website, in a year where RPGs like Wasteland 2 and Divinity: Original Sin released).
Divinity: Original Sin 2's crafting wasn't necessary either.
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