What game mechanics do you love and hate?
Addfwyn @ Addfwyn @lemmy.ml Posts 0Comments 113Joined 2 yr. ago
Addfwyn @ Addfwyn @lemmy.ml
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I am not the expert on the genre by any means, but would limiting invasions to "only other people on the same difficulty" just segregate the player base too much?
I have definitely heard that argument, and I understand it, but at the same time there are a good number of us who would just simply not play the game then.
I realise it is up to the devs who they want to make their game for, and I am probably not their target audience, but banging my head against a wall until I get through something doesn't give me any kind of feeling of triumph when I manage it. I just feel frustrated. Whereas the soulslike games I have played where I could turn the difficulty down, I enjoyed way more.
And I’m not going to be able to argue against your first hand account of rural North Korea.
Unless you are from the US or SK, when things open up a bit more that is looking to be possible again. I would encourage you to try visiting if you have the time and means. Even if we totally divorce things from the politics, there's a lot of beautiful nature there.
Anecdotally, you seem relatively reasonable and I think it would be an interesting experience.
However, I don’t see the people of North Korea being able to put political pressure on their government to change policies.
It does depend to what extent, people can definitely enact policy change. While all political organizations do ultimately belong to the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, they have multiple political parties under that umbrella that do different on some issues. Obviously they aren't going to suddenly pass laws making the place capitalist, but they can do and do change some things. The Social Democratic Policy is notably more liberal in their attitudes as it was formed by a lot of the petite bourgeoise. They actually have published journal articles that are critical of the ruling party.
I probably would group those into the Manamement/Tycoon genre. More economic than colony builders, but smaller scale than city builders.
The Two Point games are pretty good versions of those, if you light the more light-hearted atmosphere.
Should try Industrial Revolution 3. Electricitiy is like the third "tier" you get. You have to do burners for a while and then steam power where you are directly feeding steam into every machine.
I have a IR3 game going now, I am sitting around 20 hours with the first two science packs automated and just retooled my whole base around electricity.
Krastorio is probably still my favourite Factorio mod. It hits that sweet spot of complexity and new stuff for me. It's the only mod I have finished to date. I loved the concept of Nullius, but the byproducts made my brain hurt.
K2 really does feel like Vanilla+, which is a good thing.
I would consider them a few different genres, but they are easily my favourite types of games these days. I cateogrize them in my steam list as below.
-Colony Builders: Games about building well, a colony, often from little to nothing. Often lots of You vs Environment friction, with the natural world. Tends to have a bit more focus on the individuals that comprise the colony. Examples: Rimworld (my favourite game of all time), Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, Stranded Alien Dawn, Space Haven.
-City Builders: A bit broader in scope than a colony builder, working more on the macro level. Friction is often economic, sometimes adjusted with the natural world. Cities Skylines is kind of the prime exampe of this, but also games like Timberborn or Anno.
-Automation: Games about building a factory that...builds things automatically. Challenge tends to be logistical complexity but some games do feature combat as well. Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program (my personal favourite), Satisfactory, and Captain of Industry are the Four Horsemen of this genre to me. Techtonica is very early still but seems to have some promise as well.
For many of these games, there is a whole world of content to explore if you are interested in mods. Rimworld players regularly run hundreds of mods, my current game has about 350. Factorio has extensive overhaul mods that can take literally thousands of hours to finish in some cases (Py's). Satisfactory has a surprisingly robust mod scene for an early access game too.
Finished what is available in Techtonica, so went back to Dyson Sphere Program for a bit to work on missing achievements. DSP is definitely my favourite of the Factory-Automation games at this point.
I still have a Factorio (Industrial Revolution 3) game going too, but am feeling DSP more at the moment right now.
I am kind of used to sometimes poking the bear on this one in particular. It's what I personally dislike though, I don't necessarily think they are badly designed. I totally get some people absolutely love that kind of thing in games, and I am glad they have games that scratch that itch. It's just an instant turn-off for me though.
That said, I have never quite understood the people vehemently opposed to having a difficulty slider though; just keep it on hard and it's literally no different.
Not a game I hear mentioned much, but man Secret World had so many great things going for it. The best quest design in a MMO* I have ever seen, and a really unique setting too. Shame it was managed so badly, in an alternate world where TSW took off and was still getting content updates, I would be thrilled.
*MMO-ish in Legends.
I feel save points themselves are becoming an increasingly archaic design choice. Just let us save anywhere, especially in a single player game. I think most people are just suspending games without expressly saving most of the time.
I am really conflicted on this, and I think there needs to be some balance or cost/reward. I mostly agree though.
An example I often use about this is in MMOs. WoW felt like a huge world, especially back in vanilla. You could fly end to end and never hit a loading screen, it felt awesome. If you gave me a map of Azeroth and asked me to label all the zones, I probably could. It's moved a bit more to people teleporting place to place, but I still can fly end to end of a continent.
On the other hand, FFXIV is a series of maps with loading zones between all of them (a necessity because of the older console architecture, I understand) and teleports in every town. You never actually go end to end of Eorzea. If you gave me a map of Eorzea and asked me to label only the three majors cities on it, I doubt I could. It is definitely convenient to just be able to warp around place to place for a trivial amount of currency.
It takes a lot out of the feeling of "world" to just have a bunch of arbitrary areas, I admit. It's a tough balancing act between player convenience and player immersion.
Hate:
-Real Time Timers: Think FF13 Lightning Returns. It doesn't matter how many mechanics there are to alleviate the pressure, they make me so stressed out that I don't enjoy playing the actual game.
-Unrepairable Durability Mechanics: I mean things like Breath of the Wild where you can use a weapon X times before it breaks with no way to repair it. I end up never wanting to use "my good weapon" and tryto beat entire games with a 2x4. If I can go to a vendor and repair my gear, I don't mind as much.
-Superhard Games without difficulty options. Looking at you Soulsborne games; I appreciate that some people like a challenge, but I really think that whole genre would only benefit from giving the player options. I have noticed that seems to be getting more common though.
Love:
-Meaningful Choices: Not two dialogue options with the same end result, but things that shape either story or gameplay. This could be a major branching story choice OR something like a talent tree.
-Base Building: I like build base. It doesn't have to be a city builder or strategy game (Though I absolutely love those), but I am a sucker for games including any degree of base building. It's my favourite part of the XCom games as an example. Bonus if I have to make choices about my base, see previous point.
I don't actually miss much, but I also don't really use my phone a whole lot. I have a smartphone, but it's pretty close to factory settings. I don't really install apps outside Line, I very rarely make calls on it. It probably gets used for transit directions/maps, mail, and Line 90% of the time.
Maybe not a specific feature, but I do dislike the general trend towards large and larger phones/screens. I must prefer the smaller phones we used to have; I know Apple had their smaller phone lines recently but I think they didn't do particularly well.
Japan, you usually use "Taro Tanaka" as the goto placeholder name. Tanaka is a very common surname here and it's super easy to write as well (田中). Sato is actually the most common but also a lot harder to write (佐藤). Tanaka is also a very "working class" name, it litearlly means "in the rice field" and most likely comes from families with a background of rice farmers. Taro also a very common given name; there have been quite a few Taro Tanakas throughout history despite being the placeholder name on most forms and the like. Taro, incidentally means "Big/Strong Son".
I am not sure offhand of a female equilvalent, it's usually Taro as the placeholder.
I was there in for several months in graduate school doing research for my thesis, wasn't part of a tour. Based out of Kim Il Sung university at the time. I spent about a year in South Korea as well prior. Since I wasn't on a formal tour, I was left to my own devices a lot of the time unless I needed a guide to help me get access somewhere.
Technically yes, every rural farming village could have been secretly micced with hidden cameras on the off chance that a foreigner was going to stop by, but that seems unlikely. This was a little over ten years ago so cell phones (which would be a fairly common metric of government surviellence) were not as prevalent in the DPRK yet as they are now, so a lot of people weren't carrying one. I was a no-name graduate student, not a well-known diplomat, I don't think the government was particularly invested in spending large sums of money tracking me. So yes, technically they COULD have, but just as much as any other state could have.
Obviously anecdotal, but from the people I spoke to in the DPRK, generally very well liked. And no, I did not have government minders making sure they said "the right thing". Several programs were quite popular, particularly housing programs. There was a big push for community-based activities during my stay, even smaller towns had community centers where people could go after work to learn new skills or continuing education. The university I was based out of was pretty international as well, but even there people didn't spend that much time thinking about the US, nor did they have a particularly negative view of the average American citizen. More curious than hostile.
will just continue to indoctrinate its population with propaganda.
Oh yes, definitely that doesn't happen in any of those "civilized" western countries right? Nobody making up things like "North Koreans have no word for love" or "We push trains to work every day".
Why would the people of North Korea tolerate the current government other than to resist invasion?
The Kim family has done a lot for the people in the DPRK, and is generally very well liked. It's not all sunshine and rainbows, but a lot of the problems stem not from the current DPRK leadership but the international (read: US) sanctions placed on them. Compared to the hypercapitalist hellscape of SK, the work-life balance in the DPRK seems downright utopian. Prior to the US invasion, the Korean peninsula was fairly unified in their support of socialism.
The people would certainly welcome peace, I just don't know how that is possible while the threat of the USA looms. People like to portray them as an aggressive country, but they have never done anything to another coountry except threaten to defend themselves.
Totally fair. Particularly in survival horror where saves are explicitly limited to highten tension, that makes sense.