If you do not enjoy something, that doesn't make it bad. You bring no objective reasons here, only that it is too slow for you. That you would have preferred a different style of gameplay. That you feel your time is wasted. Just like you cannot tell people that they have a wrong favourite color if they like a different one than you do, you cannot say something is shit simply because of your personal preferences.
You are not some kind of gold standard.
It is very sad that you are not capable of seeing behind your own bias here and really seem to believe that your opinion is some kind of fact. And it brings your position down to that of some brat crying for more candy, you are not argumenting, you are just raging.
For the most part, Sunless Skies achieves what it sets out to do. That makes it an objectively good (but not perfect) game. A game that achieves what it sets out to do can generally be found out by looking at its ratings (NOT from major magazines, but from actual players).
It never set out to do what you would have preferred it to do, at least nothing I ever read suggested they were going for fast paced, action loaded, very challenging gameplay with little to no downtime. Sucks for you, obviously, but doesn't make the game bad.
I agree.If you do not enjoy something, that doesn't make it bad. You bring no objective reasons here, only that it is too slow for you. That you would have preferred a different style of gameplay. That you feel your time is wasted. Just like you cannot tell people that they have a wrong favourite color if they like a different one than you do, you cannot say something is shit simply because of your personal preferences.
You are not some kind of gold standard.
It is very sad that you are not capable of seeing behind your own bias here and really seem to believe that your opinion is some kind of fact. And it brings your position down to that of some brat crying for more candy, you are not argumenting, you are just raging.
"but everything is subjective" is another fallback of those with no standards.
Ignoring for a moment that that is just marketing blurb and should be taken with a grain of salt anyway, I actually read it again and - nope, you are just spouting lies here. There isn't a single part of its Steam description that is false.For the most part, Sunless Skies achieves what it sets out to do. That makes it an objectively good (but not perfect) game. A game that achieves what it sets out to do can generally be found out by looking at its ratings (NOT from major magazines, but from actual players).
It never set out to do what you would have preferred it to do, at least nothing I ever read suggested they were going for fast paced, action loaded, very challenging gameplay with little to no downtime. Sucks for you, obviously, but doesn't make the game bad.
Not to mention you can see Sunless Skies failed at many things it supposedly set out to do just by reading the steam description.
Obviously, that's not a given any more?
- Key remapping and full controller support
I don't really think that effect can really be attributed to him, though. As in, he's not the one that discovered it.Yeah, that's the VD effect I'm talking about -- it's a point he often made (one I hadn't appreciated till he pointed it out; I'm slower than the average bear).
Is it so hard to understand that having the majority of your time spent waiting for your train to reach the next port is not good gameplay?You have brought not a single argument that doesn't boil down to "I don't like this".
Literally the first sentence:Ignoring for a moment that that is just marketing blurb and should be taken with a grain of salt anyway, I actually read it again and - nope, you are just spouting lies here. There isn't a single part of its Steam description that is false.
I fully understand that that is gameplay someone wouldn't like. I fully understand why you don't like it.Is it so hard to understand that having the majority of your time spent waiting for your train to reach the next port is not good gameplay?You have brought not a single argument that doesn't boil down to "I don't like this".
Whenever I leave a port for an expedition, I explore new areas.Literally the first sentence:Ignoring for a moment that that is just marketing blurb and should be taken with a grain of salt anyway, I actually read it again and - nope, you are just spouting lies here. There isn't a single part of its Steam description that is false.
"Sunless Skies is a Gothic Horror roleplay game with a focus on exploration and exquisite storytelling."
How does something have a focus on exploration and storytelling when most of your time is spent playing delivery man?
Is it so hard to understand that having the majority of your time spent waiting for your train to reach the next port is not good gameplay?
So is it another piece of evidence of the Vault Dweller effect that, despite improving in every way, the sequel's Steamcharts peak number (2285) are <60% of the first game's (3869) during launch month? (I guess maybe the peak could get higher later in the month.) User ratings are a bit lower, too.Seriously, though, Sunless Skies improves upon Sunless Sea in pretty much every aspect.
On the topic of the game, I can only echo the sentiment that Sunless Seas didn't really leave anybody lusting for more.
Kinda like the Banner Saga, they mistook the success of the game as demand for more of it.
So is it another piece of evidence of the Vault Dweller effect that, despite improving in every way, the sequel's Steamcharts peak number (2285) are <60% of the first game's (3869) during launch month? (I guess maybe the peak could get higher later in the month.) User ratings are a bit lower, too.Seriously, though, Sunless Skies improves upon Sunless Sea in pretty much every aspect.
February 2018:
On the topic of the game, I can only echo the sentiment that Sunless Seas didn't really leave anybody lusting for more.
Kinda like the Banner Saga, they mistook the success of the game as demand for more of it.
Back in July:So is it another piece of evidence of the Vault Dweller effect that, despite improving in every way, the sequel's Steamcharts peak number (2285) are <60% of the first game's (3869) during launch month? (I guess maybe the peak could get higher later in the month.) User ratings are a bit lower, too.Seriously, though, Sunless Skies improves upon Sunless Sea in pretty much every aspect.
After the remarkable high of the Kickstarter, the response to Sunless Skies in Early Access hasn’t met the level of Sunless Sea in terms of sales. It sold about 15% as many copies as Sunless Sea in the comparable time period.
We think there are a few reasons for this. In hindsight, we went into Early Access too early. The game wasn’t immediately ready for media attention, we lost a key promotional moment; people aren’t talking about the game as much as we’d hope.
The marketplace is also hugely different to the last time we launched an Early Access game (in 2014), and Sunless Skies just isn’t as visible as Sunless Sea was. The success of our Kickstarter probably also led to fewer people buying it at EA launch, which will have made it less visible on storefronts; thousands of people had already picked up their copy.
if the devs had taken the Sunless Seas criticism to heart
Can I ask a dumb question -- which perhaps is just a symptom of my affluence? If a game is tedious and not worth playing for long, why should the price point matter at all? "I wouldn't waste 20 hours of my life on this if I had to pay $10 for it, but I'll happily do so if I only have to pay $2.50" seems off to me. (By contrast, being a cheap sonuvabitch myself, I totally agree on principle with refusing to pay anything more than scrape-the-bottom prices if you don't have to. But I just don't understand how a game that's a boring grind at $10 becomes anything better at a lower price.)
I went as far as going on their damn forum and trying to argue with them, but the response was always that if you don't like the 20+ hours of grinding that makes up the mid-game, then it's your fault because you're not cultured and sophisticated enough to understand it. And then I was dumb enough to buy Cultist Simulator and it's the same goddamn shit.
There's a huge problem in gaming in recent years that I think got obscured by Gamergate. It's the growing gap between customers who expect a good product and developers who think they're smarter than us and expect us to swallow whatever shit they serve up for us. So anyway, I'm not gonna buy this until I hear multiple reliable sources telling me that they've completed the game and it fixed the problems of the last one.
Yes, this is exactly what I though when I learned that they started out with some browser/mobile thing.I think their design suffers a bit from having grown up on a F2P/pay-to-advance model. Nurtured a mindset of wasting players’ time.
[edited to fix typo]
Some games are worth playing primarily for the novelty even if you don't intend to finish them. I mostly pay for games these days based on what I think the devs deserve- if it's already a huge success I'll probably wait for a sale, but if it's a hidden gem I'm more willing to pay full price, and also more willing to pay more for things in genres that are mostly dead.Can I ask a dumb question -- which perhaps is just a symptom of my affluence? If a game is tedious and not worth playing for long, why should the price point matter at all? "I wouldn't waste 20 hours of my life on this if I had to pay $10 for it, but I'll happily do so if I only have to pay $2.50" seems off to me. (By contrast, being a cheap sonuvabitch myself, I totally agree on principle with refusing to pay anything more than scrape-the-bottom prices if you don't have to. But I just don't understand how a game that's a boring grind at $10 becomes anything better at a lower price.)
Finally got off my ass and installed Cheat Engine so I could speed cheat and reduce travel time and it seems pretty beneficial.
You're not wrong. I can sorta understand why they'd do it a bit (Makes the "Weird/big reveal" parts supposedly have more weight since you've been spending 10 hours with your thumb up your ass staring at the travel screen, also makes you more inclined to savor the writing rather than clicking through since it took for fucking ever to get there, etc) but they do it so much it just ends up pissing me off. Skies was less guilty of it than Sea but I finally cracked regardless. Just doing a small 1.3 speed right now, may set a 1.5 or 2 for quicker cranking on paths I've already been, 1.3's been good for sailing into the unknown since it still speeds up downtime and isn't fast enough to prevent you from bopping back to normal if needed.Finally got off my ass and installed Cheat Engine so I could speed cheat and reduce travel time and it seems pretty beneficial.
That settles it for me. Pace is a fundamental part of making a game like this enjoyable. This is their second game now where players can decide that better than the developers. Fuck that. I'm not gonna pay for a game that was poorly-tuned just because the developers don't believe in creating a good experience for players.