Anime How much do you hate consoles? (PC master race sentiment)

[Ol' Willy]

I may be the only non-negrophile on this site

Who are you, again?

 

[Ol' Willy]

Fallout on paper is kind of interesting, in the way a lot of pulp genre fiction is. It's really elevated by the looks and sounds of the game, in my opinion, not the experience of going back and forth to the dead bandit pile to sell all of their stuff at Shady Sands

You can't sell anything at Shady Sands, they don't have traders

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

Go touch grass, nerd.

 

[GamerCat_]

Fallout on paper is kind of interesting, in the way a lot of pulp genre fiction is. It's really elevated by the looks and sounds of the game, in my opinion, not the experience of going back and forth to the dead bandit pile to sell all of their stuff at Shady Sands

You can't sell anything at Shady Sands, they don't have traders

I seem to remember selling things to the doctor who takes scorpion glands. Or maybe it was just dragging scorpion glands back to him I remember and I'm getting confused.

 

[Nutmeg]

And when playstyles differ that much in their approach, you can't even say which one is the most "efficient" way to the goal. Even easy mainstream games like Assassin's Creed offer multiple approaches to many objectives, the choice of going in stealthy or charging in with sword drawn. Which approach is more "effective"?`One requires you to do more button mashing and exposes you to danger, the other requires you to observe enemy movement and pick them off one by one. Same with a more complex immersive sim like Deus Ex. What's the most "efficient" way of playing Deus Ex? Or what's the objectively "best" class in any given RPG? I couldn't tell you, because each class plays differently and has different strengths and weaknesses depending on which approach you want to go for.

It's not actually much of a mystery, it's whatever lets the player ignore most of the game's complexity while still winning.

I'm truly baffled by his statement that trying out different playstyles is "playing pretend", particularly when these playstyles are completely different, like a game that offers both stealth and combat as options. Obviously trying to ghost a level is going to provide a different sort of challenge from going in guns blazing.

One of the two will involve more complexity than the other. Choosing to avoid a simpler set of actions in favor of more complex ones, in order to achieve the same outcome, is indeed a form of playing pretend if the game doesn't care either way. In this case, if you did so because the simpler set of actions would be too uninteresting, then you've decided to play the role of game designer where the game developers were to lazy to do so themselves.

Again, I'm not making a judgement here, in fact I do this myself all the time with "nearly good" games, I put my judicious designer hat on and impose the restrictions I need to make a good game out the shit I was given. Sometimes you can even argue the developers deliberately made some broken aspect or the other trivial to ignore, but kept it in the final product so as not to upset the "broader audience".

Anyway, if the outcome differs, but not by whether it's a win or a loss or by score or by rank, i.e. by acknowledgement, then you have two categories of play i.e. you have a choice of two (or more) different developer defined games in the same situation -- in your example a game of stealth, or a game of action.

In this case, the complexity ceiling of the game as a whole is the complexity of its most complex path, while the complexity floor is the the complexity of its least complex path. I grant you the point that I was wrong to imply that only playing for the complexity floor was not playing pretend, if the game indeed acknowledges the difference.

But what's important to note here is that, logically speaking, the game itself is not made any more or less complex just by the fact that it offers a choice of game in its various situations.

Which brings us to:

Indeed, this is the actual CnC that RPGs are able to provide. You roll a tank, making a choice, and get consequences as in you can actually tank enemies, but unable to stealth around. When you make a different choice, rolling a rogue, you are now unable to tank and take enemies all at once, but now you get to use stealth to your advantage. This is it in the most simplified form

The preference for "multiple games in one" like this isn't really a preference for game complexity, it's a preference for content, or perhaps a preference for multiple perspectives on the same fictional world or literary theme or, dare I say it, artistic work.

There's a common meme you'll hear about Deus Ex that it's a bad shooter and a bad stealth game, I don't really know how true this is, but it seems true on the surface. For some people, that's OK, because they value the fact that you have two perspectives on the same world more than the actual complexity of gameplay from either perspective. Others will say "I'd rather just play Thief one day and Quake the other".

But the former opinion is valid all the same, I understand it. There's nothing wrong with it. Again, my issue comes with the associated chauvinism and arrogance. Having this preference doesn't make you a gigabrain, and it absolutely is not a preference for complexity. In fact, it's the opposite -- it means you prefer having a choice of two (or more) simpler games in your one video game product over having just a single more complex game throughout.

That's because this was the golden age of PC gaming and game design declined extremely afterwards

Depends on the genre. I played a bunch of UoC2 earlier this year, a good amount of FoG2 and a tiny bit of OoB some time last year based on codexer recommendations, and these hands down beat any of the golden age turn based tactics classics games no contest.

 

[Nutmeg]

Since I stopped frequenting politics subforum, I forgot how much of a shithead licorice is. I guess playing primitive weebshit has completely eroded his ability to understand how the games should actually work.

My understanding is fine.

Earlier you were talking about build variety and its effect on combat, and I can say with 100% confidence that there's more build variety in "primitive weebshit" like Verdict Day (I keep mentioning it as I've been playing it recently), as measured by its effect on combat, than there has ever been in any Western made single character (or vehicle) cRPG (or ARPG, or mech sim) to date. So by what measure is weebshit primitive? Your preference is purely aesthetic and tribal, has nothing to do with how primitive or not the games are.

 

[Lucumo]

When I wrote my original post in this thread, I knew that it was going to be Long and I would need time to write it, so I set aside some time yesterday, hoping I'd be able to get the job done. Sadly that time got eaten up by [REDACTED] shit so I just posted what was ready when that came up, without having given it the proper look-over that it deserved.

Sadly that has led to a side discussion here that is hinging on further input from me. I hereby apologize to everyone involved and hope that this time I can get this done proper.

Oh that's simple: I consider arcades to be (oversized) consoles.

I apologize for not mentioning that somewhere, that's on me.

That's a...very odd (and wrong) view. Arcades came first and consoles descended from that. As such, they can only be miniaturized arcades, not the other way around. That's also simply what they were for a time until they gained more breadth. But even with that you are wrong. Arcades were the vanguard of audio and video because they were a lot more complex (and as such, expensive). Advertisements for consoles were always about how close they were to the arcades and even then, it was more about FPS, input delays etc. In terms of audio, they could obviously never match, same with video. And when it comes to input devices...if there is anything more varied than what was/is available on the PC, it's arcades. The whole consoles in relation to arcades talk died down when arcades died in the US. In Japan, they were popular for much, much longer.

The first arcade machine was released to an empty, unappreciative market in 1971. The first commercially successful arcade machine (Pong) wasn't making strides until the first half of 1973, and it would take five more years until arcade machines started kicking off in style - but when that happened they reached for the stars. In the meantime the first proper 'console' (Magnavox Odyssey) was released in 1972. It included an electronic ping-pong game which was used as the basis for the Pong arcade machine. Following the throng of home devices that all played Pong (and similar game variants) the Fairchild Channel F arrived in 1976 and the Atari 2600 the year after that. Depending on which sources one refers, consoles were either in their first or second generation by the time arcade machines broke through in 1978. But in the years following that the Race was On, arcade cabinets jumped ahead in technology in leaps and bounds, while home consoles tried their darndest to keep up, but often lacked the finances to do so. But they still tried.

From the late 1970s/early 1980s onwards, and ignoring all that came before that, the scene is exactly as you described it. But the truth of the matter is, the big picture shows that you have the wrong view here: While arcades technically came first, it was the arcades that descended from consoles, and that both of them, together, then worked to spearhead breakthrough advancements in electronics for entertainment purposes, with home computers later joining in.

If I'm guilty of anything here, it's that my prior words for this were oversimplified and not explained well enough, to the point of appearing erroneous. Again, I apologize for that as that was never my intention.

I have no clue where you are getting from that which you are writing. Even if you look at something like *shudder* Wikipedia, it states:

Nutting ordered an initial production run of 1,500 units of Computer Space, an optimistic decision given that a hit arcade game at the time would sell around 2,000 units, though a handful had reached 10,000. Reception to the game from distributors was mixed. While some were excited by the game, others felt it confusing and would amount to nothing more than a passing fad at best. By spring 1972 the game had sold over 1,000 units, and according to Bushnell in 1976 ended up selling between 1,300 and 1,500 units. While this was a commercial success, making over US$1,000,000 (equivalent to about $7,284,000 in 2023), it was a disappointment to Nutting, which had been hoping for a large-scale success like Computer Quiz.

So, while it didn't become a "hit" by selling 2000 units which certainly makes sense, it sold 1000+ in just a couple of months (it released in November/December 1971). It also was a commercial success. And regarding Pong:

After a well-received trial run of a demo unit at Andy Capp's Tavern in San Jose, California in August 1972, Pong was first released in limited numbers in November 1972 with a wider release by March 1973. Pong was highly successful, with each machine earning over US$40 a day, far greater than most other coin-operated machine at the time.

A limited release eh? I wonder why.

A few days later, the prototype began exhibiting technical issues and Gaddis contacted Alcorn to fix it. Upon inspecting the machine, Alcorn discovered that the problem was that the coin mechanism was overflowing with quarters.

After hearing about the game's success, Bushnell decided there would be more profit for Atari to manufacture the game rather than license it, but the interest of Bally and Midway had already been piqued. Bushnell decided to inform each of the two groups that the other was uninterested—Bushnell told the Bally executives that the Midway executives did not want it and vice versa—to preserve the relationships for future dealings. Upon hearing Bushnell's comment, the two groups declined his offer. Bushnell had difficulty finding financial backing for Pong; banks viewed it as a variant of pinball, which at the time the general public associated with the Mafia. Atari eventually obtained a line of credit from Wells Fargo that it used to expand its facilities to house an assembly line. The company announced Pong on 29 November 1972. Management sought assembly workers at the local unemployment office, but was unable to keep up with demand. The first arcade cabinets produced were assembled very slowly, about ten machines a day, many of which failed quality testing. Atari eventually streamlined the process and began producing the game in greater quantities.coin-operated machine at the time.

So your "Pong wasn't making strides until" is questionable. It was making "strides" from the very beginning, they just couldn't keep up with the manufacturing demand.

Ah yeah, the Magnavox Odyssey which they considered discontinuing after disappointing sales. As for their tennis/ping pong game, it makes sense. Tennis for Two released in 1958, it's a natural game for what can be done with limited hardware.

I also have no clue where you are getting the "arcade machines broke through in 1978" from. Looking at revenue data:

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

You say this, then continue framing discussions as though "PC" and "consoles" are monolithic forces. You like one historic culture of game-production. Nobody's a "poser", that doesn't even make sense. But you are idiots who don't appreciate or understand what you like or want.

They are monolithic.

Completely irrespective of old PC games, if I was only to play AAA slop year on year, the PC would still be the best platform to do it on, especially if I want something resembling a worthwhile frame rate, or want to have enough space to actually install the latest call of duty without needing to overspend on proprietary external hard disks.

People in this thread are really trying to justify consoles because "console games good", and people are trying to rebut with "console games bad", but it really doesn't matter. In fact, even having that discussion is exactly what console manufacturers want - there's literally no good reason to ever buy a console, so they have to rely on the one thing they can control, which is exclusivity. If they can buy enough exclusives, they can convince people to buy a bad product by holding games hostage.

So lets not have this discussion. It's moot anyway. All console games eventually make their way to PC, either officially, or via emulation. Console exclusives are, at best, timed exclusives, but the reality is that the hardware is what matters.

When it comes to anything related to hardware, consumer rights, freedom, control, or overall quality of day-to-day gameplay (like how smooth everything is), consoles just suck. No matter what games you're playing.

Please don't buy into the "console games" vs "PC games" grift. It's a marketing ploy by console manufacturers, and a desperate cope by console gamers to try and defend an indefensible product. It's nothing but an attempt to reframe the discussion in their favour. "We have Bloodborne!" they say, expecting us to forget the laundry-list of very good reasons why the PS4 an actual piece of literal garbage that nobody should ever waste their money on.

The only fair comparison between PC and consoles is how they perform compared to each other. In every metric, consoles fail miserably.

 

[GamerCat_]

You say this, then continue framing discussions as though "PC" and "consoles" are monolithic forces. You like one historic culture of game-production. Nobody's a "poser", that doesn't even make sense. But you are idiots who don't appreciate or understand what you like or want.

Completely irrespective of old PC games, if I was only to play AAA slop year on year, the PC would still be the best platform to do it on, especially if I want something resembling a worthwhile frame rate, or want to have enough space to actually install the latest call of duty without needing to overspend on proprietary external hard disks.

"AAA slop" (i have never met an intelligent person enamoured with the latter term) is a western phenomenon further localised in time. It only came to exist after a certain year, I'm sure even you'd agree. You're talking about late western multiplats. Something extremely specific.

Consoles just suck. No matter what games you're playing.

Trying to reframe the discussion is just copium. The only fair comparison between PC and consoles is how they perform compared to each other. In every metric, consoles fail miserably.

All of the most interesting things for each platform happen exclusively there. You judge consoles as inferior PCs because you refuse to acknowledge anything but the very limited space of overlap between them. In 1990 a gameboy beat your PC in being able to play portable tetris.

 

[Ol' Willy]

The preference for "multiple games in one" like this isn't really a preference for game complexity, it's a preference for content, or perhaps a preference for multiple perspectives on the same fictional world or literary theme or, dare I say it, artistic work.

As i said, "a soldier can't eat two bags of turnips". Complete lack of understanding as your brain is destroyed by weebshit (among other things like sniffing gasoline)

 

[Ol' Willy]

"AAA slop" (i have never met an intelligent person enamoured with the latter term) is a western phenomenon further localised in time.

In 1990s, the place of contemporary aaa slop was reserved for... console based weebshit. It dwarved any westoid game in terms of game budget, advertisement and press coverage, and was considered the commercial apex of gayming

FF7 is a good example of this. It even has the obnoxious political message, but instead of niggers it's climate change

 

[Ryzer]

The preference for "multiple games in one" like this isn't really a preference for game complexity, it's a preference for content, or perhaps a preference for multiple perspectives on the same fictional world or literary theme or, dare I say it, artistic work.

As i said, "a soldier can't eat two bags of turnips". Complete lack of understanding as your brain is destroyed by weebshit (among other things like sniffing gasoline)

Find me a better and more complex PC combat game than God Hand, I'm still waiting.

 

[Gastrick]

You seem to be confusing the game's systems potential to be abused with the term "complex gameplay".

I don't think I am confusing the two, rather I am emphasizing the distinction.

A complex simulation (or abstracted system) can give rise to more or less simple games within that system or simulation. The complexity (or lack thereof) the game is distinct from the complexity (or lack thereof) the system.

PC game chauvinists tend to pat themselves on the back for playing extremely simple games within ignorably complex systems, and look down upon "console peasants" who are often, ironically, playing just as or even more complex games, arising from systems which have been more lovingly pruned from excess fat (to mix metaphors).

It's actually a behavioral pattern with regards to a certain kind of player that goes beyond tribal affinity too. For example, non tribal codexers who frequent the Asian game subforum, frequently express love for e.g. Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, which suffer heavily from PC game syndrome (complex systems, braindead games), even though they are Japanese console games.

My own psychoanalysis is that these people have some kind of learning or mental disability that allows them to still enjoy playing pretend, which is something most people grow out of as they transition from childhood to adolescence. Hence why it doesn't matter to them what the game actually is, as long as the interactive media product they are consuming gives them the tools to play pretend, they will enjoy it all the same.

"Pruning of excess fat" is a big problem in game design as it tends to "prune" complexity away and make everything into some kind of an "elegant puzzle" instead of a simulation. For example, this is why you get the degeneration of everything into a "mana" in Paradox games as the head autist probably reasoned in some such way as "it's resource distribution anyway so let's be elegant and make it all a single resource". This "I am very smart" attitude on the part of the devs is highly annoying. The best mods often try to fix this "elegance" (e.g. Long War for X-Com, MEIOU & Taxes, etc.)

For example, consider this bizarro description:

HoMM3 is simpler, as it's about visiting tiles with a cursor (hero), and the order in which you do so is determined by simple exploration heuristics and a fairly static ordering of tile values (e.g. Griffin Conservatories and other tiles granting high level creatures are valuable) (with some tiles only being accessible after meeting a certain power level). There's also a logistics chain set up puzzle aspect to the game.

In reality, it is not about "visiting tiles with a cursor (hero) in a certain order" but mostly a simulation of a tabletop war game. You get squads, you fight other armies, there are many options for squad composition, you have to consider the resource costs, they all interact with your heroes, and so on. There is a wide variety of factors to consider which means a large number of possible courses of action, meaning substantial application of judgement that is not reduced to a couple of "impactful decisions". There is no artificial narrowing of them to "truly significant factors" based on an attempt at elegance. Elegance may be important in a board game but not a PC game where you have plenty of processing power, no time limit on explaining rules to other players, etc.

Unfortunately, devs seem to be easily bullied by some game philosophers that discuss games as systems in those autistic terms. This might be one of the reasons we get declining gameplay compared to the late 90s when they were seemingly less prevalent.

Lastly, that is a pretty strange attack on imagination as a mental disability in the last paragraph. Games are generally supposed to stimulate your imagination and encourage immersion, but they must also be responsive to what you do. If when playing HoMM3, the way you see it is "a cursor with ordering of tile values", this sounds a lot more like a mental disability.

No sorry you are misunderstanding me. I am not saying games should be "streamlined" or less complex. I like complex games, the more complex the better, in fact.

I am just explaining to you the games you think are complex are actually not very complex at all -- you simply mistake simulation complexity with game complexity.

In my experience, and I can find examples on this forum if need be, PC gaming chauvinists usually balk at actual complexity in games let alone challenge. What they like are complex simulations with (multiple) very simple and challengeless games arising from the simulation with plenty of opportunity for infantile play pretend. Your own post outlines this to a great degree.

Within the context of games (games like HoMM3, not "games" as in "type of interaction within a game" - if you want to introduce that concept, come up with some other name), complexity means things such as a large amount of interrelated elements which produce many potential outcomes, so players compete based on who is better at assessing this very large number of factors. Usually the best way to produce such complexity is through simulation, which often leads to many unexpected interactions as the dev simply tries to earnestly simulate something instead of predicting every potential outcome. These interactions are often so numerous that they cannot all be considered by the dev - which is why sometimes you get exploits and "strictly better variants" as there is such a large variety of things to consider that some end up unfair and strictly better than others even as the dev tried to have more balance. However, it is also quite common that some guy decides he found the strictly better variant, only to be beaten in MP, on a harder map, in circumstances where this unit is unavailable, etc.

(Probably there is some lesson about central planning here.)

His claims about PC games being less complex than console games sound even more retarded when you consider multiplayer PC Games like Starcraft II, where even the AI developed by Google wasn't able to match the top players when it wasn't allowed to cheat. Whereas it can win no problem in Chess and Go.

 

[JarlFrank]

The preference for "multiple games in one" like this isn't really a preference for game complexity, it's a preference for content, or perhaps a preference for multiple perspectives on the same fictional world or literary theme or, dare I say it, artistic work.

As i said, "a soldier can't eat two bags of turnips". Complete lack of understanding as your brain is destroyed by weebshit (among other things like sniffing gasoline)

Find me a better and more complex PC combat game than God Hand, I'm still waiting.

 

[Nutmeg]

His claims about PC games being less complex than console games sound even more retarded when you consider multiplayer PC Games like Starcraft II, where even the AI developed by Google wasn't able to match the top players when it wasn't allowed to cheat. Whereas it can win no problem in Chess and Go.

(Unbroken) RTS games are the most complex multiplayer games in existence and RTS is one of the few genres I still play today. I even have a thread about RTS games in the strategy subforum. I have no idea why you think that I think that RTS games aren't complex.

When played single player they boil down to simpler games since human like AI players do not exist yet.

Do you think every PC game is an RTS?

 

[Nutmeg]

The preference for "multiple games in one" like this isn't really a preference for game complexity, it's a preference for content, or perhaps a preference for multiple perspectives on the same fictional world or literary theme or, dare I say it, artistic work.

As i said, "a soldier can't eat two bags of turnips". Complete lack of understanding as your brain is destroyed by weebshit (among other things like sniffing gasoline)

Can you make a cogent point, dumbfuck? Or are these gay little quips all you can resort to cause I destroyed your delusions that playing your simple toddler peg in hole games makes you a genius? Fucking imbecile.

 

[Nutmeg]

"In my country we have joke "man with mismatched color shoe goes to old man, why do you have 7 lemon on your desk?". Old man answers "the 3rd lemon is an orange" Funny right? Oh you are not laughing? Is shame. Joke indicate Western superiority over my native Russia, they usually find it funny."

*sighs, looks dreamily into the distance*

'Western culture so beautiful. Anyway I have to go back to playing Fallout now, when I press on little man in virtual slum he tell me phrase of deep meaning"

*clicks on NPC*

*clicks dialogue choice*

*tear rolls down cheek*

"Is so deep. Is so profound. Weebshit lover never understand"

 

[Nutmeg]

The preference for "multiple games in one" like this isn't really a preference for game complexity, it's a preference for content, or perhaps a preference for multiple perspectives on the same fictional world or literary theme or, dare I say it, artistic work.

As i said, "a soldier can't eat two bags of turnips". Complete lack of understanding as your brain is destroyed by weebshit (among other things like sniffing gasoline)

Find me a better and more complex PC combat game than God Hand, I'm still waiting.

Perfect example of a complex simulation leading to a simple game. Or do you really think this is a more complex vs. fighting game than say, MvC2 or Asuka Limit Over?

 

[JarlFrank]

idk, is real life fencing more or less complex than the fighting games you listed?

This tries to simulate how real swordfights work. Yeah, the AI is still bad, but if it's improved, or if multiplayer is added (the game is still in prototype phase, many things will improve and be added), how can you get more complex than this, a full physics simulation of medieval combat? It has pixel-perfect hitboxes so anything from the length to the shape of your weapon matters in how you approach a fight.

 

[Ryzer]

When I think about it, I should definitely make a thread about God Hand which definitely put most PC games to shame with their shitty unfun primitive gameplay.



This game is too based and ahead of time.

 

[Nutmeg]

idk, is real life fencing more or less complex than the fighting games you listed?

This tries to simulate how real swordfights work. Yeah, the AI is still bad, but if it's improved, or if multiplayer is added (the game is still in prototype phase, many things will improve and be added), how can you get more complex than this, a full physics simulation of medieval combat? It has pixel-perfect hitboxes so anything from the length to the shape of your weapon matters in how you approach a fight.

Real life complexity comes from moving your limbs and all the fine control you have over the exact configuration of your articulated body and muscle tension states etc. Pressing keys or moving a mouse to control a simulation is never going to be as complex -- you'd need motion capture at the very least.

And it doesn't matter how granular the simulation is, if the game that results is mash attack and hope for the best it's not going to be very complex is it?

 

[JarlFrank]

But the game isn't about mashing attack and hoping for the best. It's about controlling your weapon's movements exactly with the mouse, and countering the enemy's weapon movements.

Some people on youtube have uploaded videos where they use real medieval fighting techniques in the game.



Can you do this in something more abstract? No, you can't.

 

[Nutmeg]

BTW simulationist approach to 3D vs. sword fighting was first done ON CONSOLES by Square's Bushido Blade (AFAIK). Not nearly as sophisticated a simulation as the above (for obvious reasons) but the point stands.

 

[Nutmeg]

Can you do this in something more abstract? No, you can't.

Depends on the abstraction but again it says nothing about how simple or not the game arising from this wonderful complex simulation is. Just because some IRL fighting technique can be replicated doesn't mean it would be competitive to do so, or that it adds any meaningful or interesting element to the competitive game each vs. fighter aspires to be.

 

[JarlFrank]

Okay, I get it, all you care about is winning the game, not actually engaging with its systems.