necroslut, on 02 January 2020 - 10:54 AM, said:
Lol if you don't believe "consolitis exists", then you're dumber than I thought. It was very clearly the major factor behind many of DNF's least liked design decisions.
I don't see that at all. The major factor behind *all* of DNF's bad decisions was the incompetence of the project managements. Making the game run on consoles forced NO limitations on the PC version, as George and co. could have either stuck to the original aims for the PC version, and only made the cutbacks for the consoles versions, or they could have actually did whatever was necessary to actually the get the full game working on both the PC and consoles. There's no law that says the PC version of a game has to be identical to console versions. As I said above, far more ambitious games were realised very well on the XBox 360 and PS3, because they were designed and programmed properly, with great skill and care.
Commando Nukem, on 02 January 2020 - 11:07 AM, said:
Yes, it does. It absolutely does.
Poor console ports to PC that reflect the banal nature of development of certain kinds of games for consoles over developing for PC first, that's consolitis.
First Person Shooters stricken with regenerating health, limited weapons, very linear and simpler levels? Consolitis.
But none of that is down to consoles themselves. Poor console ports are down to apathetic or rushed work on the part of the people doing the porting. If they want to do a good job then they take the time and effort, and improve the game to take advantage of the PC's higher capabilities. You can't blame an inert box of hardware for the failings of people who choose to make a quick port of a console's game, when if they instead chose to (and were allowed to, by their bosses), they could make a port that was enhanced for the greater machine's strengths.
And there are many great console FPSs that have no weapon carrying limits, no rechargeable health, levels that are the same as the PC original's levels etc. The limitations that Halo imposed were a deliberate design decision, not something imposed by hardware restrictions. The fact that (to me and lots of other people) these decisions were to the detriment of the game and that it's to the *massive* detriment of modern FPSs since so many of them now have a weapon carrying limit, rechargable health, check-points, etc, doesn't alter the fact that none of these faults are down to consoles themselves. It's down to the companies that make the games/ports. They make the decisions. And they so often don't seem to care what their customers actually want in a game.
I mean, console games used to be released almost entirely bug free, because they had to be. Otherwise the game company would receive bad publicity and might well have to spend a lot of money recalling and replacing bugged cartridges with working versions. So it was in the games developers' interests to test the game games as much as they reasonably could before they released the game. The advent of CD's made product replacement cheaper, but wouldn't lessen bad publicity much. Whereas on the PC, since PC games were installed to the hard drive, and so the data on the hard drive was alterable, games companies came to realise that they could save time and money by not testing the games properly, and could instead provide post-release patches on the internet and magazine cover-discs. PC gamers essentially became unpaid testers. And the bugged-release issues have gotten much worse over time.
And starting with the original XBox (and maybe the original PS2, I don't know), consoles began to see their games released in a bugged state. The first XBox Live! game, Unreal Championship, had a post-release patch that fixed eleven issues, IIRC. Still, on the original XBox, game patching was pretty rare, but on the XBox 360 it went up to PC levels, and today console owners are used to day one patches to fix very noticeable bugs.
So does that mean that the PC caused console games to need patches? Should we blame the PC? Should we blame bugged console games on PC-itis? Of course not. It's a *human* problem. The people who run games companies want to make as much profit and spend as little time as possible. Console games could still be released fully tested, but they aren't, and that's because of human greed, not because of the PC.
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The term exists for a reason, because this shit happens a lot.
But to me the term is utterly misleading. The problem is down to human failings (greed, lack of ambition, lack of time or programming/design skills, etc), and these factors affect all sorts of PC related areas, so to name it after one thing (a console) that is connected to the problem but doesn't actually cause it, is surely wrong.
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A LOT. And whether we think the solutions are smart or whatever, that is why the developers made those choices more often than not, to solve perceived issues with making an FPS game on a fucking console.
Do you really believe that Bungie really thought that a console FPS couldn't handle more than two weapons at once? And that a console FPS couldn't handle health packs. That Bungie really were so ignorant that they actually based those two decisons on, as you put it "perceived issues with making an FPS game on a fucking console"?
And then why did so many other console games companies adopt those weapon carrying limits and rechargable health in so many later console FPSs? Even the games companies that, up to that point, had actually made console FPS games that allowed you to carry more than two weapons and use health packs?
And what about subsequent FPS games on the PC? Any first person shooter that's designed exclusively for the PC has no unavoidable reason for having a weapon limit, or recharging health. Even a console FPS that's ported to the PC, or a game that's developed simultaneously for PC and console, has no necessity for having such limits. And in fact if the console version of a FPS had these limits, but the PC version didn't, then I think a lot of people would prefer the PC version (I know I would).
So why do PC FPSs, either PC exclusive or ported from consoles, share the Halo-esque limited weapon carrying, and rechargeable health? It's because the people making the game/port choose to make the games that way. It's nothing to do with consoles themselves, the fact that Halo itself first came out on a console is irrelevant. Halo came out, sold massively, and became the template that so many games designers and marketing men want to copy because it's an easy to understand formulae that's easy to plan out when first designing a game. If Halo had come out first on the PC, and sold massively, we'd still be inundated with Halo wannabees, regardless of what platform it debuted on.
And look at all the PC exclusive games coming out nowadays. Mostly indie or smaller teams (which isn't a great loss for PC gamers, as AAA games are in rut, I think), but there are many excellent modern PC games. But I've not seen one that wouldn't work on a console. Of course I've not seen 99% of the best games nowadays, but if consoles were holding back PC gaming, then amongst the countless PC exclusives we have access to then we'd see some amazing new things since these games are free of console hardware constraints. But I've not seen even one PC game where you can have a really convincing conversation with an NPC, or with a game world that has absolutely real and believable destructibility, or a companion who you could really believe was real because of the way they can intelligently think and act in a wide variety of ways. People still say Elizabeth from Bioshock: Infinite is a full believable character, but even at launch she was transparently just an indestructible NPC who's purpose was to act or speak a given way at a given trigger or point in the game, and to magically find ammunition or salt when you needed it during combat. She was better done that most, maybe all, of her peers, even today, but that's still a very low bar indeed.
We don't see major landmarks in games simply they would be too much hard work to make, for too little return. No one buys a game for the intelligence of it's NPCs, or because you can go into every single house in a new GTA game, or because you could intelligently debate your proposed strategy with your companions in an RPG or RPG/strategy game.
Instead, every time a new Medal of Duty: Cutscene Reds game comes out, with it's cliched story, it's linear levels, it's emphasis on realism (i.e. your recharging health that all real life soldiers apparently have), it's imagination-free range of weapons, and it's admittedly amazing graphics, then it either comes close to, or actually manages to, break all sales records, and almost becomes a cultural event, it's launch is so massive.
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Yep. We know for a fact that there were issues with memory mapping that forced them to limit things. It's a shame that the prevailing wisdom now is to make all ports of a game almost identical. They could have made the PC game at least a little more bearable and fun if they hadn't put the choke hold on so many aspects of the game.
I also hate how fewer and fewer PC FPSs are moddable. My favourite thing about PC gaming is the modding scene, it's why I love the PC so much. I mean, even DOOM 2016 wasn't moddable. A Doom game (and an absolutely excellent one at that). SnapMap is OK to us to kill a bit of time, but it wasn't nearly as good as it should be. And if the game did support external modding, then some of the mods would have been incredible. Bioshock 1 and 2 are two more games where I was massively disappoint with their inability to support mods. Plus Titanfall, Vanquish, and the Batman Arkham games, amongst many others.
And Timeshift, a variable quality FPS would have been monumentally improved by talented modders. Timeshift's time manipulation abilities (which were superb but underused in the game) could have been used in some magnificent game mods, but sadly not.
Edit: Forgot to add Prey 2017. That game is so close to superb that it almost hurts when you think of it's problems. None of it's problems are fatal, but added together they really bring down the game. The enemies, for example, are too predictable, don't wander too far, and aren't nearly as dangerous as they should be. And like System Shock 2, Prey 2017 randomly spawns enemies to give the illusion that there are always enemies wandering around, but whereas System Shock 2 does this to excellent effect, Prey 2017's enemies tend to stay close to where they spawn, and aren't nearly as creepy or unnerving as System Shock 2's enemies. Making the different enemies more varied in their looks would help, too. And add more possessed humans for you to fight or cure, especially in the later parts of the game. Actually add more enemies, more threats, and if possible give more feeling/dialogue to the surviving, untouched humans, as they are very unconvincing and don't engage your interest or concern at all.
Prey 2017 also lacks System Shock 2's threatening atmosphere, and the ambience that says things have gotten really bad. And more randomisation in subsequent throughways would have improved the game a lot. More weapon variety would be nice, more randomisations in the quests to help the replayability, and a real ending, both gameplay-wise and in the final cutscene (the existing final cutscene tells you almost nothing, and instead just raises many more questions).
Sorry this post is so long, BTW. I'm trying to get some work done, collating work reports, but it's boring, so I'm eager for things to distract me.
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