Dota 2 is great (I’ve got thousands of hours, and am still on the low side in my circles) but its hardly something I’d recommend for those who don’t want to spend time learning. Its like 50 hours to learn the basics, then another hundred to understand basic positioning and strategy.

And with good reason, given that high quality content is expensive. Even for a channel that is purely something as simple as video essays, if you’re doing a good job, its going to take hundreds of hours of research and writing, nonetheless something more demanding.

As someone who doesn’t pay attention to niche fighting games: Guilty Gear games are still being made? I thought they were a retro game or something. I think you’re overestimating it’s prominence. The only moden fighting games that come to mind as someone who has no interest in competitve play are Street Fighter, Mortal Combat (and Injustice), Smash Bros, and 2XKO. I’m don’t have confidence to say that fighting games aren’t growing, but the only news/attention I’ve seen for the genre since the launch of Street Fighter 6 has been a couple 2XKO trailers.

This isn’t a tier list tier list. Its clearly a tier list tier tier list.

Correction: asked my friend, and shoes off is the normal expectation in Nigeria. Slippers are just a personal preference, so the chart is just wrong.

Although not sure about Nigeria, are slippers and flip flops like expected to be worn or just available?

In my (limitted) experience, its expected. When I visited a friend who was Nigerian, they offered me slippers to wear in the house, and they felt uncomfortable going barefoot in my (Canadian) house.

Edit: Talked to my Nigerian friend, shoes off is expected, and slippers are just a personal preference. The map is just wrong.

It might be in including having slippers or “indoor shoes”. Nigeria is there as a shoes on, but from my understanding, its only slippers/flip flops specificly for indoors, that are normal.

Edit: Talked to my Nigerian friend, shoes off is expected, and slippers are just a personal preference. The map is just wrong.

Fallout 1 or 3, is not 99% combat

By time spent, I wouldn’t be suprised if nearing that (99%) is either going to be walking to the next location (quest or not) and fighting enemies to clear the path. Yes, you’ll spend a bit of time talking to NPCs to retrieve the quest, and on some of the better designed quests, there might be some alternative routes, but traversal and combat are still usually the focus and/or the default. When you do have a reason to use other mechanics, or make meaningful story decisions, its good - but those chances are rare.

Pokemon is a strange one here too, because that series is built around a rock paper scissors system such that you should be regularly be switching up which attacks you’re using.

I did oversimplify, but I still find it, and other JRPGs I’ve tried way too shallow. In Pokemon’s case, while there is the typing, theres is still usually an one obvious best move at any given point. I do find Pokemon better than many others, in that there is much more ability and reason to customize your party on an ongoing basis, although they largely negate this benifit by making the games so easy.

I’d love to see if your complaints hold up to Larian’s games on tactician difficulty.

Honestly, I would be interested too. The format with a larger party does interest me, and like I said, I do like a lot of tactics games like XCom and Fire Emblem, which are bordering on RPGs mechanically. I just don’t have the money to spend on new games for the time being, so I probably won’t be trying it until its price goes way down.

I’ve tried a bunch of the big ones. Fallout 1&3, Skyrim, Final Fantasy 3 and 7, Pokemon, Borderlands, a couple of different MMORPGs, and a bunch of random others. My description was a bit oversimplified, but my point was more about the general lack of care towards the primary loops that you spend 99% of the game engaging with. For example, Fallout 3 has terrible gunplay which is further limitted by the need to focus on one weapon type, and uninteresting AI which doesn’t leave room for deeper tactics. Pokemon, along with a lot of other JRPGs, often boil down to finding one or two decent buffs/debuffs to use, then spamming whatever does highest damage. MMOs obviously tend to require a lot of grinding repetitive, often easy enemies.

That said, I have found some of the RPG-adjacent games better. Roguelikes are one of my favorite genres, since they tend to center around a strong gameplay loop, while still featuring the non-linearity and character builds. Same with tactics games. Honestly Dark Souls seems like it may be a good option, but I bounced off of it due to technical issues the first time and just haven’t gotten around to trying it again.

RPGs in general, but esspecially Fallout. I want to like them. I love games with a heavy emphasis on detailed worlds and environmental storytelling. I love detailed character customization and building. I especially love varied and non-linear games. Despite all of that, I just can’t enjoy RPGs, because the primary loops are always so shallow. Melee is almost always either a matter of spam clicking or timing paries, firearms tend to be just holding left click on mindless enemies as they walk into a choke point, and stealth is either buggy and unreliable or completely overpowered. So much of the game is spent on these weak points, rather than the genre’s strengths, to the point where I just can’t enjoy them.

My point is that it is an option, and still a competitive one, when so many still use this option. If it wasn’t, these games wouldn’t have succeeded and/or would have died off. Its an option middlemen have to out-compete, and I’d argue many don’t.

Every other storefront that has attempted to compete seems to either trip over itself by trying some anti-consumer behavior to increase short term profit(EGS, Uplay), lack discoverability features(itch), or not offer enough benefit to endure cost of change(GoG)

I’d argue that GoG also falls into the lack of discovery catagory.

That said, I’d argue that the lack of discovery isn’t just a player issue, but ties back into the other side: publishers and devs. These storefronts/launchers are unessisary middle men. A software company can run its own store, and make its own launcher. Just look at so many of the big titles over the last two decades: Minecraft, League, Tarkov, War Thunder, Roblox, and more recently Hytale. Looking at players is only half the puzzle, the other half is how these storefronts compete against each other, and even against direct-to-customer sales for publishers.

So, for publishers/devs, what does Steam offer?

• Payment processing
• Distribution
• A very robust support system
• Discoverability
• Tools for online play and social features
• Lightweight DRM for those who want it
• Modding tools
• A community forum
• Tools to add compatibility to your games
• A plethora of extra features that improve your product for the players

And at what cost?

• 30% cut
• Tied to a forum, whether you want to be or not

Now to compare to, lets say, GOG:

Offers:

• Payment processing
• Distribution
• Some user support

Costs:

• 30% cut
• DRM is banned

Because of this, its no wonder that they can’t get more of the market. Why would someone choose to sell there over Steam, or even over direct-to-consumer?

I personally played it some time after Portal 2, probably 2015 or so. I found it great, particularly as far as lore and pacing are concerned. Sure, there are bits that drag, characters that aren’t well written, and plot/lore details that are too ambiguous, but I’d much rather that than hand-holdy, surface-level plot of most similar shooters, or plot told through YouTube videos and flavor text like many modern shooters. IMO, its still one of the best at what it does, and its still a personal favorite for that reason.

While I don’t think it deserves the win over Blue Prince, it does have some interesting gameplay innovations compared to others in the genre, as well as some interesting tech.

In particular, the included PvE element, as well as the sorter session and decreased death penalty makes the game much more accessible. It also helps offer an incentive to not shoot-on-sight, as the bots serve as a common enemy and shared threat. Its a difference between games like PUBG where games are tense, hour-long affair, and something like Fortnite where its colourful, easy to get into, and despite still being competitve, filled with other diversions for those who won’t win.

To be fair, between the overzealous pushes from the Linux evangelists, the lack of accessible documentation, the buggyness of some of the common software, and the heavily-relied-upon community support, its usually very hard to tell if your experience will go smoothly or not.

For example, previously, when I had problems with Linux Mint, it was with a pretty bog-standard B350m mobo’s built-in sound. According to the dozen or so people I consulted over it, it should have worked, but for whatever reason, didn’t. More recently, I decided to take another shot. I knew my mouse (A Razor Naga X) wasn’t supported, but google told me Open-Razer covered all the important functionality. This turned out to be wrong, as Open-Razer was mostly for customizing RGB and lacked core functionality like button rebinding.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use Linux on some secondary devices, and consider it a (mostly) viable Windows alternative, but blaming all the problems on users ignores the massive number of issues with current Linux desktop.

It has been a little while since I last played it, but I found that scale-wise, it felt small (I’m guessing this is what you mean) with major locations too close together, but content-wise, it felt sparse, empty and ultimately pretty boring, which was the much bigger issue in my enjoyment.

Basically, how much of the world is interesting/fun.

For example, Fallout 3 doesn’t do a great job of this, as much of the world is baren with no story or gameplay. Half of the world feels like it could be cut out without much loss. The Yakuza games on the other hand, have smaller worlds but they feel massive and fun because there’s always something to do moments away.

The work-around is to make travel fun, so the “empty-space” is just more gameplay. The Just Cause games are the perfect example of this. All the movement mechanics are quick and satisfying, from the grapple and parachute, to the driving, to the OP wingsuit.

Yep. The post was removed, but I can still see the comment on my profile from two weeks ago:

The whole website seems to be just AI nonsense, and AI nonsense running at 2fps at that.

Edit: Also, the formatting on mobile is horrid

My game last night was more like a couple minutes of lag. Luckily, Dota has an in-built system to detect it, so the game wasn’t recorded and those of us who didn’t leave spent the remainder of the game messing around.