What kind of single player games can still hook jaded gaming veterans?

Yeah, I could totally get into that if I had a group of friends to play with. But these days I only play games for like a few hours each week, and people generally annoy me, so I stick with single player stuff.

 

Sounds like you are at the core of their target audience and I'm outside of it. Back in the days I only very briefly tried one or two of the Rainbow Six games and I felt way too dumb for them and didn't have the patience for the planning phase mechanic at all. I wanted to go in solo or not at all. Then I tried one Rainbow Six game (Vegas?) on the xbox 360 and found the switch between first and third person too jarring. I only really started putting hours into the franchise with R6 Siege and Ghost Recon Wildlands. I'm too dumb for legit tactical shooters / milsims I think. Maybe I only like Insurgency, because that's the one multiplayer game that I can play and feel somewhat competent at.

I've started playing Ironsight (Imho almost better at being COD than COD nowadays) recently and after a few consistently good matches at the beginning I'm now almost always paired off against way better players and get crushed. Combined with the weapon balancing being straight up broken in the game, I'm probably dropping it as soon as Insurgency Sandstorm is released. Though it is yet to be seen whether I can still be good in that game or if they have changed things too much. Some reports of players in the beta sound not so promising to me.

If the mic / voip is always open and can't be turned off, that'd be a reason for me not to play a game. I don't want to talk to other players and I don't want stranges to hear me rage when I die. Muting other players is also a must have feature in multiplayer games.

Insurgency always was pretty lethal, with many weapons being one-shot kills. I hope they keep that up or even push it further with Sandstorm. In Ironsight it takes like 3 assault rifle headshots to drop an enemy.


P.S.: The first 3 Thief games are on sale on steam. Well worth exploring for anyone who is into stealth games. The first two are true classics imho.

I've played a bit of Dishonored 2 again. I hope I can keep it up till the end this time.

 

Ground Branch doesnt have any of the planning nonsense. You can just go in solo and wing it. It's probably a lot like Insurgency, really. The thing is that NPC enemies have really fast reaction times, so you just have to be really cognizant and spot them first, and be really careful about ever assuming any place is safe. You don't really got to be smart so much as just cautious, patient, and do sometimes make more forward thinking decisions rather than going at every thing head on. But as far as controls and general gameplay premise goes, it's very simple. You choose a map, you pick your gear, and you go kill bad guys. Nothing else to it.

There is a legit campaign planned from what I've heard. I haven't put much time into MP, but I imagine that is actually easier than terrorist hunt (PVE) in a way. HUmans just wont have as quick reactions of automaticcally spot you all the time.


About the Thief games, I did try them out, never having played the originals, but I don't think they've aged well. I didn't enjoy it. I felt like I alredy knew how to trick the AI, and lack of guidance just meant I was creeping around a dark level for too long, not knowing what I was even supposed to be doing.

In other news, Shenmue 1 and 2 remastered comes out tomorrow. I loved these games back in the day -- no idea if I still will or not, but I'm gonna give them a try. Actually I never played the sequel.

 

Keeping the mic open at all times is really unoptimized network wise. We detect when you are talking and then send to the server if any players are within hearing distance or if radio button is pressed. Server validates and send it to hearing players and teammates over radio if radio button is pressed. Whats cool is that also hearing players will here so you have to be careful using the radio in a CQB scenario. But there is no option turning it off no. When you die you are muted though so they will not hear you scream Muting other players are on the backlog.

 

Creating AI that is balanced in this regard is really hard. We are working hard on this right now for our bots. We probe the interpolated light probes etc to sample light conditions, we validate how much of the player thats in plain sight, we have a vision cone that reflects human peripheral vision etc. We also are working on a prefire system. oh, and the bots are never cheating btw, we never use cordinates of the player if the player isnt visible

 

Sure, I understand that.

Right now in Ground Branch though, the enemy AI spots you all the time every time and fires in milliseconds and with almost perfect accuracy.

They did have some toggles so you could change AI detection parameters, but they moved this to an ini file, and the code isn't clear at all to me. Anyway, I hope they either put at some info how to change this code soon or update the AI. I'm sure they will, lots of people have been complaining about it.

It might be more balanced if you're playing coop, but single player its too hard -- basically impossible to kill more than a few terrorist.

 

Usually you first make them as good as you can, the you add reaction times etc. Maybe they have not come to that yet

 

I don't know. THe reaction times are such a problem its hard to notice anything else. They have advertised that they have some special guy doing the AI and that it's a really involved system.

If I was the programmer, I'd keep the detection system simple and instead put my focus into AI reactions. Never seen a game where the enemies didn't make stupid decisions. Basically they either stay in place or rush at you in every game ever. How they detect you will go unnoticed by the player -- I mean there needs to be some logic but player will never notice any deep nuance. They'll find one proven way to cheese the AI and do it over and over.

But what I'd like to see is AI that falls back if you get the drop on them but dont kill them, gathers reinforcements, stays behind cover unless their AI buddy is firing.... stuff like this to make them seem like actual humans and not attack-robots.

 

I have collected 2 new data points about the phenomenon of losing interest in games and declining attention spans. One is a friend of mine who is only slightly older than me and recently said that Factorio was the only game in recent years that has managed to pull him in, and beyond that gaming doesn't really interest him anymore. I find it interesting because our taste in game used to have big overlap, but Factorio didn't manage to pull me in in the same way.


The other one is this podcast, which I would urge you to listen from 1:08:28 till the end:

I thought "attention economy" is a very poignant term to describe all the things that compete to lead our eyes and fill our minds. And even though I am one of those rare weirdos that still refuse to have a smartphone, much of what he says sounds (too) familiar.



P.S.: I love that visual style in the video, if you can think of a game concept that could work in a look like that, let us know.

 

I'm replaying Doom 3 in VR, and its something very perfect how they balanced the monsters vs the weapons. It just feels very satisfying, for example with the IMP you can choose to take ut out from afar with the machinegun or you can dodge the fireballs and wait for it to come up close and take it out with one shotgun shell to the head.

Little things like that makes a classic

 

Strange Brigade from Rebellion studios just came out and I'm a big fan. I really like rebellion's games -- Sniper Elite series, Zombie Army Trilogy. They are just pure games, and really excel at putting fun and replay-ability above everything else.

 

I played Doom 3 some more tonight, and I must say the AI is pretty brilliant. Its a very simple AI, in many ways alot simpler than the AI we are developing for our own game, but its just a perfect balance of speed etc. I tried to capture the essence in a video but not very easy.

 

Do you mean the "AI is clever" or the "game is well paced"?

To be honest this looks pretty lame to me and I'd rather play a non-VR version of any Doom game. Is this scary to you? It looks almost goofy to me.

 

Yeah, all the atmosphere in the world is immediately worth nothing once player learns the enemies are both slow and harmless.

 

It would be pretty cool to throw some harmless zombie enemies at the player for a little while just to lure them into letting down their guard.

 

Minecraft

 

It's clever designed, the AI isnt very clever its pretty dumb, but the pacing its very well thought out for the purpose.

Well, I'm a very skilled player at Doom 3, might look lame because of that, plus I have backup by a drone, should maybe have
choosen a section of the game were I was alone. Anyway, the AI on the desktop version is the same as the VR version, Doom 3 is a slower game than Doom 1 & 2 and the new arena shooter game (which to me is a lame game). Everything with the VR verson is cooler than the desktop version, from peeking out from cover and doding fireballs to lobbing grenades from cover.

I'm not very easy scared but some parts of the game does scare me a bit, when the atmosphere is right etc. For example the CPU complex with tight narrow corridors and almost pitch dark. In the orignal Doom 3 you could not have the flashlight up and the weapon up at the same time, that design decision was scrapped by the VR mods, so some of the elements was taken away from the desktop version.

 

I liked Metal Gear Solid 5 a lot and wanted something similar but different, so I gave Metal Gear Survive a shot. And honestly, I quite like it. I'm ~20 hours into the game, and the story hints at a possible end being close and I was thinking "well I don't want it to be over yet, I think I'll explore and expand my base some more first". I think it is a quite well designed game and if it didn't have all that baggage about Konami and Kojima I think it could have been received pretty well.

In one of the other Kojima threads we discussed the possibility to set the voiceover language to japanese and see how that makes the tone of a game feel different. I did that with MG:S and I think with this framing of "this is an anime that you are playing" that this creates for me, everything "makes much more sense". Makes suspension of disbelief a little easier for me I believe.

I think the game does a pretty good job of giving you clear goals and lots of freedom to persue them at your own pace. I feel like I'm having a little more agency than in most AAA games. And I like that you build your own basecamp and occasionally have to defend it. Does a good job of grounding the player in the world and feel invested into something imho.

 

Doom 3 never really scares me, but F.E.A.R on the other hand, is something I'd like to avoid playing alone at night. Not just that it has good AI, but the atmosphere is just sometime waay to creepy and the way it build tension is just right...

 

If there is, let me know. My daughters and I will be there.

 

Ya'll need to run for office (more).

 

Maybe one of my daughters...an artist for president, wow! lol