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One thing all these games share: not being made by one of the big companies like EA, Activision-Blizzard-King, or Ubisoft.
Hell, one of these was made by one dude, and another was made by the guys who made Magicka and was expected to have a player population of around 10k.
Yeah. A few companies made good games. Doesn’t mean most companies aren’t making dogshit games that everyone keeps gobbling up and shelling money for
This is the way it’s been since the beginning. Way more people are going to try making something good than people are going to succeed at it. Whether it’s greed, incompetence, laziness, they ran out of time, whatever.
You don’t have to give a bad product any attention at all just because it’s “big”. The box says “Suicide Squad” not “guaranteed to be good” 😅
The issue this is touching on isn’t that the big companies try to make something good, it’s that they try to make something profitable. It’s designed by the suits, not the designers. There’s no passion in them. However, they have the budget to market them and control what most casual gamers hear about. It’s rare that a team without the marketing budget the size of EA can break into the mainstream, even if they’re great.
In the same time period, we’ve gotten Skull And Bones, Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, and Diablo IV skins that cost more than the base game.
It can simultaneously be true that the big companies are churning out cash grabs while other companies are making awesome games.
Didn’t Helldivers 2 ship with a kernel level spyware? I wouldn’t put it on this list.
Did it? Most games with kernel-level systems won’t run on linux, but Helldivers 2 is running fine for me via proton.
That’s because the anti cheat is running in a fake kernel with Proton. Developers have ways of detecting when the kernel isn’t real… Sometimes… But the Helldivers devs don’t seem to mind for now.
Why is this comment downvoted? To my understanding it’s entirely accurate…
Lately I’ve been running more and more into situations where am so thankful GDPR is a thing. Law is pretty good on its own but with EU being extremely willing to use it makes it all that much more powerful. They don’t shy away from punishing the biggest and the richest and fines from GDPR violation hit percentages of income which makes it such that it can hurt everyone.
Also riddled with microtransactions and yeah it’s not the worst in that regard but there’s still a lot of game design decisions that are worse off because of it.
What the hell are you talking about? I’ve been playing it since it came out and I would totally understand if someone never even found the menu for spending real money. All the weapons all the Armor All the strategends are all in game currency that you can’t even buy. You can pretty much only get Cosmetics with the super credits and a couple hilariously enough pretty bad weapons that are so cheap that you’ll be able to buy them off the super credits you can simply find laying around in maps if you really want them
I feel like neither of you have played it with your description.
For those that havent played -
The game has 4 types of currency, Medals, Requisition Slips, Samples and Super Credits. Medals, Requisition and Samples are only rewarded through playing the game(Either for completeing missions, or found in missions).
Super Credits can be bought with real money, but can also be found in mission.
You unlock Strategems with Requisition Slips and upgrade them(Ship Upgrades) with the Samples.
You then have “War Bonds” which are where you unlock the rest of the gear(Weapons, Armour, Boosts and more). This is where you use Medals. The War bonds are most equivilant to a Battlepass, but they are not timed and do not disappear so even if you come to the game a year later you will be able to buy and unlock everything on the very first one. The game shipped with the basic war bond that everyone had, and the first premium war bond, this is 1000 Super Credits to unlock, then you use Medals to unlock items with in it.
As for other micro transactions, there is a “Super Store” that has 4 items in it that rotate ever few days(I cant remember the time it is 2 or 3 days), that has surprisingly cheap items especially compared to what other companies are doing. They are not just purely cosmetic though, but they do not really offer anything you can not already unlock through the warbonds. Armour has different classes(Light Medium Heavy), and they have a different bonus(More Stims, More Grenades, throw grenades further) and so you might find a combination that you can not get on a warbond that you want(Light Armour with more range on grenades for example). I don’t know if I would class it as P2W, no bonus is overpowered or game changing, but it is definitely not just cosmetic.
I don’t have the game yet, but I’m planning on getting it and… That sounds annoying as fuck and needlessly complicated. What’s wrong with just having a single currency? What you earn by playing is a single currency, everything you buy in game only uses that 1 currency. Everything you only get with real money is just purchased outright, without the need for some BS currency that only has value in that 1 game. Why the hell does nobody do that?
It’s not annoying. It wasn’t explained that well I guess but it’s very easy to get into and play with the progression system.
The reason for having multiple resources for these is the same reason for having multiple resources in a tabletop game. It’s fun to balance what you do, risk reward with different modes of play.
Long term goal is finding samples on the map and extracting alive with someone that has carried them with you. If you die you drop them etc. This resource loop makes sense it is a whole secondary to the main missions and will net you upgrades in the end that are for your ship which means anyone that joins your squad.
The money you get from everything and is used for unlocking the “spells” and they are also gated by xp. This is also great and well thought out as the player will unlock toys in bursts and have time to learn them side by side with learning new mission types.
When you select a mission you get to choose an operation which is several missions in a row with increasing medal rewards for completing main objectives.
You can do side objectives and clear enemy sites for more rewards at the end.
All this is also balanced by the run having a timer which makes the enemy count increase steeply, so you have to balance if you want to complete more or less, if you want to safely extract, if you want more medals or money etc.
This creates a dynamic difficulty choices so the players can together calculate different risk reward scenarios based on what they want and how intense.
You can win big on a hard mission, but can’t extract unless you fail. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and run out of reinforces (extra lives)
Gosh it’s so much brilliant progression and gameplay choices put in here and it makes my game design brain gush. It’s so anti pay to win which is very refreshing, you get the suoercredits to unlock stuff in missions and in passes and it doesn’t give better stuff exactly, it gives different stuff, like the tf2 weapons or something like that, and it’s just different tools to finish jobs that needs to be done, which makes all players be able to contribute in their own way. It’s just very very smart.
I have played it, but I guess im just not as receptive towards microtransactions as most people.
The main issues I have with it are the grinding rpg style gameplay loop, and forcing players to return to the ship as often as possible.
Maybe I’m being too cynical but I assume its to try to get people to play as long as possible and look at the storefront as often as possible.
You can unlock a lot of things for free including some premium currency, but that’s just to increase player familiarity with the premium store and to make the player think about the cosmetic upgrades as often as possible.
Another issue is with the difficulty scaling: it doesn’t scale with the number of players or add AI players to the game if someone drops out. On its surface this can be explained by not wanting to spend the man hours to develop smart friendly AI or put more work into difficulty balancing, but the financial incentives also work against this as without it people are encouraged to invite friends to play with them, thus generating free advertising for the in game store.
That’s just a couple of examples, but every game design decision gets influenced to some extent by the way players interact and think about microtransactions. This isn’t really the case with baulders gate 3, which is in a completely different league in terms of quality(and dev budget tbf) to hell divers: it feels a bit like comparing McDonald’s with a michelin star restaurant 😂 (I haven’t played lethal company so can’t comment on that one)
Calling you back to the ship frequently so that you have the ability to change planets or change systems. The entire map of the game is basically real time and dynamic with a game master occasionally coming in to fuck with things.
You’re supposed to tug of war fight with the AI over different planet systems and objectives. A lot of people are just basically sticking to One Planet their entire gaming session and it’s currently causing super Earth to not really gain much ground because they will simply hard liberate a planet say from the automatons but then rush over to the bugs who have taken over a planet in the meantime. You’re supposed to try to spread your effort out like it’s an actual Active war
And there is so much design language in the game that shows this, did you know that if you are looking out at the ships while you’re at a planet that those are fairly real time? Not perfectly obviously but when you see ships out your window shooting down orbitals sending down drop pods or exploding that’s all something that was caused by an active gameplay session on that planet.
When people call down supplies you see that, if their ship explodes it means they just lost the mission, it helps you gauge how well a planet is currently going with the idea being you can now decide whether or not this planet is in need of more help or you should go elsewhere.
You also may want to change your loadout, you may have gotten enough metals to unlock a new weapon enough samples to unlock a new strategym or a ship module. So if you weren’t frequently going back to the ship to spend them you would be stuck on an equipment set for quite a while which could easily kill the pace of the game.
Literally everyone I know is currently playing the game and I did a little bit of a pole in my group and most of them don’t even remember that there is a store for spending real money and not a single one of us ever has spent any real money the game really isn’t pushing it hard you can ignore it completely very easily
I’m not saying it’s difficult to ignore the microtransactions, but it influences the design in a way I don’t like 😂
I guess it’s just not for me as I couldn’t care less about the lore or the global state of planets and position of other players ships 😂
One form of microtransaction that can be obtained through regular gameplay instead can’t be classified as “riddled with”
I agree, except I’m hesitant to include hell divers because of the kernel level anticheat. I don’t need to give a video game of all things access to my kernel. But the general idea is right, I am playing so many fire video games all made by indie devs right now.
I’m not sure what that has to do with Hell Divers being a cheap cash grab though?
Do you have a rundown of what that means? First time I’m hearing about this
the game’s anti cheat has access to literally everything in your computer. every file, every memory address, every input, every network packet, etc. How that info is stored and used is entirely up to them
Oh wow. Are there any plans to have this removed? Isn’t this quite a major privacy concern?
Yes, it’s a pretty big privacy concern, unfortunately Riot kinda already boiled that frog with Valorant. Not that Valorant was the first, but it was kinda the first one that people seemed to be okay with. Weirdly, Valorant only really got popular because CS:GO and Overwatch were getting stale, and neither Valve or Blizzard were doing much to keep their games fresh.
No, because their plans were explicitly for adding it in. Almost at the last moment too, as if the devs knew they were gonna get backlash for it.
Lol I remember when the masses were beating their own meat just a few weeks ago saying how it’s already game of the year.
How time changes things
Are you certain it has kernelt level anti cheat? Because it’s working on Linux which it absolutely would not be doing if it had kernel anti cheat
That’s because the anti cheat is running in a fake kernel with Proton. Developers have ways of detecting when the kernel isn’t real… Sometimes… But the Helldivers devs don’t seem to mind for now.
I don’t know where the hell you got that information but that’s not how proton works. There is no “fake kernel” it’s not a virtual machine or an emulator it’s just a translation layer that translates Windows syscalls into linux syscalls
The syscall translations that would go to the nt kernel, can be seen as a “fake kernel”, no?
Wine has a process that works as a substitute for the Windows NT Kernel. How that works in detail, which calls are abstracted with an internal model, and which are mapped on to Linux kernel calls, is a bit silly to get hung up on, no?
I think it’s perfectly fine to call that concept a “fake kernel”. I don’t know what you’d need in order to qualify more?
just a translation layer that translates Windows syscalls into linux syscalls
“Just”?. No. It also has an internal model. Which system calls end up as Linux syscalls, and how, is not a stateless translation. The NT kernel is modeled. And although you are right in your straw man argument that it isn’t a “virtual machine”, or an “emulator”. Neither of those are a requirement for the concept of a “fake kernel” either. Seems a bit rude to go so balls out hard against it, as you did.
None of the things needed for a true kernel level anti cheat are in a translation layer, some of them just can’t be. It’s why games with actual kernel level anti cheat have never worked in proton and never will. Historically the only way to play those games is either be on windows or use a vfio virtual machine (which also probably won’t work even with tons of vm hiding techniques depends on just how sensitive the ac is). Wine/proton simply can’t translate the upper parts of the nt kernel needed for it.
It’s why games with actual kernel level anti cheat have never worked in proton and never will
Some games that use EAC, BattlEye and GameGuard, work fine in proton. Afaik, whatever these do and are abstracted to, or is offhanded to some linux native process, it’s still all running in userspace. I’m sure this relies on individual game developers playing along with it, and not 100% “proton emulating the nt kernel” in order to “fool them”. Is this the point you’re arguing? That it won’t be possible by a purely proton/wine translation layer?
If you know details on how exactly this works, or want to point to some resource on this, I’d be happy to read more about it.
My guess is that there is nothing technically impossible about fooling a rootkit by faking whatever syscalls from the game, but that it becomes a impossible task to maintain, as the AC developers can make minor changes that would require a lot of hard work to “emulate”. I’d love to learn more, but it was hard to find good resources on this.
EAC has an explicit linux support that valve worked on them with, it’s not full kernel AC. same with battleye and GG those are not full kernel root anti cheat implementations. I can’t point at any specific documents unfortunately but the wine/proton irc channels are public and lurking let’s you learn a lot as they talk through issues with games and anticheat.
In order for linux to support kernel level AC a module for the Linux kernel would be needed. And i doubt Linus will ever allow that lol
Yes, and part of these make the anti cheat believe it’s running in a kernal.
None of the things needed for a true kernel level anti cheat are in a translation layer, some of them just can’t be. It’s why games with actual kernel level anti cheat have never worked in proton and never will. Historically the only way to play those games is either be on windows or use a vfio virtual machine (which also probably won’t work even with tons of vm hiding techniques depends on just how sensitive the ac is) . Wine/proton simply can’t translate the upper parts of the nt kernel needed for it.
If the anti cheat is working in wine/proton it’s not kernel level
The key difference is Originality.
“Originality” is overvalued. Yes, it’s an important aspect, but even near-clones can be great. Just look at Stardew Valley vs Harvest Moon.
Imo, the real key to making a great game (along with skill) is heart/care. If a dev is only making a game to make bank, it’s going to come through. And when a game is made with care and attention, that comes through in spades. All of these games have creators that clearly care about the game itself and, while they are being rewarded for their efforts, that wasn’t and isn’t their primary drive in developing or maintaining the games.
Counterpoint, “originality” almost never really refers to something that has never been done before. Instead it refers to something that the intended consumer has no, or little, reference for. Prime example is stardew valley and Helldivers.
Harvest moon has existed for awhile but few potential consumers have reference for it when playing stardew. So it succeeds. Helldivers is an alt version of many games but earth defense force is one of the genres it’s in. They’re very similar games at the core. Yet most people have no reference for it so it can still be “original” to them.
While I agree these games have heart and care, the success is largely to do with having a genre that already works with some audiences and then polishing it up and adding that heart factor to reskin it and try a new audience.
This is what indie games are great for. Take core ideas from big studios that work. Then don’t skip the part where the heart is ripped out for profit. And bam it’s a good game.
Instead it refers to something that the intended consumer has no, or little, reference for.
I’d argue that’s novelty, not originality, though you may be right in that it’s what was meant. I’d still say that’s not the critical piece in a successful game. Passion and care matter much more, imo.
Yep, it’s usually passion that drives a game (or any art) to greatness. If you’re passionate about it then you’ll see the flaws. If you’re just doing a job then you only care about completing goals and getting it done.
Lethal Company seems pretty original but the other 2 are franchise games built upon very saturated genres, so idk about that take.
And not coming from a massive company
Not always. Remember starwars battlefront? What ruined it wasn’t because of it being starwars related, but because ea gave up on it. Even in a broken state, people were still having fun.
I dont really see how that refutes the claim that massive companies ruin games.
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Yup.
Yeah when people say that, they’re talking abt AAA. 2/3 of these are indie games.People are sick of corposlop. Indie games are the only games we have left, with some exceptions.
There’s also tons of REALLY good games that are made by small developers and cost about as much as an energy drink.
Do you have any names you can point out? I’m always looking for some great indie dev games!
cost about as much as an energy drink.
checks local price of energy drinks.
Monster energy can ~1.20 USD
Some local, questionable brand, less than 2 dollars for 2 liters
I usually only find games in this price range when browsing GOG’s catalogue of old games
But gamers wanna complain rather than open their goddamn eyes.
Can someone sales pitch help divers and the other one?
I’ve noticed a thriving hell diver community here and I need to decide if I want in
Helldivers is a game where you play in a squad of 1-4 (solo, friends, or it’ll pair you with randoms) to drop down to planets and try to survive against bugs or automatons while completing some objectives.
The galaxy map is dynamic, with aliens pushing from multiple directions toward “Super Earth”, and the more the entire community fights on planets, the more they’re pushed back. Planets can be liberated, or we can lose them (RIP Malevelon Creek). It’s chaotic and fun, and basically “Starship Troopers the video game”.
Ooh, that actually sounds like it kicks ass.
I love PvE of small teams against monsters way more than PvP. (Mostly because I get railed in PvP because there’s not enough time in my day to get that good).
It’s a “glorious chaos” kind of game. The developers made a wide variety of explosive weapons on purpose so that things got chaotic. There is no (and never will be) PvP mode strictly speaking, but friendly fire is always on and cannot be turned off. Teammates will kill each other accidentally all the time, but there’s little penalty for dying, they just call you right back in. Seems kinda grindy to me to get to level 10 where you start to unlock much better weapons.
If you enjoy the game, it doesn’t feel too grindy. I highly recommend playing with friends if possible. Killing each other on “accident” is incredibly fun.
I’ve been having a blast with it. It really feels like you’re in a movie.
Helldivers is a game where you play in a squad of 1-4 (solo, friends, or it’ll pair you with randoms) to drop down to planets and try to survive against bugs or automatons while completing some objectives.
Wait… that’s just Deep Rock Galactic!
(With a skybox)
It’s very similar in a lot of good ways.
Always found DRG to be a bit boring. I know thats hearsay but Helldivers just feels a lot more alive
DRG can be hard but you can basically control every important combat variable. Helldivers gets super chaotic which makes for some really funny/awesome/desperate moments
Think you hit the nail on the head. The tension is far greater in Helldivers. I never really felt stressed in DRG… it was more zen.
Yeah, same here. I love both games but DRG satisfies my need to execute/show off with perfect maneuvers and optimize the hell out of every movement or action (both as an individual inside a team, and as a team when everyone coordinates on more “important” stuff).
Whereas helldivers is basically designed so you can definitely “play well” and have more impact, but also, unless you’re some god gamer, some stuff is gonna go completely sideways sometimes. Which also means that impactful suicidal plays can absolutely be valid !
And the automaton part feels like being in “Terminator the video game”
Well, you sold me on not playing Helldivers for the same reason I will never play Lethal Company: bug creatures.
You don’t ever have to deal with the bugs if you don’t want to. There’s an entire second war going on with the Automatons, and the devs have clearly left themselves room for at least 2 more factions. I guess the first game had another faction of aliens that isn’t in the game yet.
But I get it if the bugs are enough to put you off getting it, I had to essentially solo part of Elden Ring in co-op for a buddy because the hands in that game trigger his arachnophobia.
Yeah, if you don’t like bugs, you’re going to have a bad time.
I wish I had the time to invest, but with a new born I’m lucky to get 30 minutes to myself a day
You’ll get some time back soon! I mostly play after my little one goes to sleep for the night.
The launch trailer is pretty good, though I honestly feel like the actual graphics at launch turned out better than the trailer showed.
In short, on one side of the war it’s Starship Troopers. On the other side, it’s the Terminator Wars. There is a developer assigned to act as a DM of sorts, and they influence the way the war unfolds while the entire community fights to achieve the goals of said war.
The game is both very fun and very challenging. It has a good balance of making you feel completely badass one moment, and then absolutely humbling you moments later. The missions can get very intense at a moment’s notice. I’ve also had a pretty good time playing with randoms, and toxicity is incredibly rare (I have yet to encounter any, myself).
Everyone compares the game to starship troopers and Terminator but I haven’t seen anyone mention that the game loop is literally left4dead. I guess everyone forgot about those games.
I could see that, with the horde shooter aspect; but you can’t call in airstrikes and orbital bombardments on top of the horde (and your friends). The missions in L4D are also linear, compared to the open area/extract method of HD2.
Thanks, that sounds pretty cool!
Does it still have kernel anti-cheat?
Yes, though the devs have stated that replacing it is something that they’re considering as there’s still been issues with cheaters and I think they said 2 out of every 150 players were having gameplay problems directly related to the anticheat. I don’t expect to see kernel level anticheat go away completely, but I hope that they’ll at least replace it with something less nasty like Easy Anti-Cheat.
Yeah that was pretty much my dealbreaker for the game. Happy they are looking into it. Seems like a fun one
Help divers launches helpers to a planet to help bugs and bots. Help them stop being a menace.
You should know Helldivers 2 did at one point (still does?) install GameGuard, a kernal level (root kit) anti-cheat.
Developers response (from 2 months ago):
https://www.reddit.com/r/Helldivers/comments/19dp2qw/helldivers_2_nprotect_gameguard_anticheat/
Have you seen Starship Troopers?
Yes, but I watched it on a date and I don’t remember the movie, maybe I should watch it tonight though.
Service guarantees citizenship.
I just finished watching Starship Troopers, I only remembered a thevstart, and the Klendathu scene with the bug butts.
Fantastic movie! The only good bug is a dead bug!
It depends on whether the game was designed with shareholders in mind or the player. Most AAA games are designed with profit in mind rather than what’s fun. For example, buying skins and doing the same thing on repeat is not fun. Roleplaying as Starship troopers with your friends is fun.
I dont get the hype for Helldivers or Lethal Company.
I think Lethal Company is popular because it is a great experience with friends, especially with mods. The horror aspect of people just going silent when dead and not knowing if you are the last alive, feeling like everything is going fine and turning a corner to find a monster that has you dead to rights, and the non-serious almost parody meta make it entertaining beyond the core gameplay.
Helldivers is also a great friends game and the bigger picture meta of the game gives a greater goal than to just complete the mission. It feels like you are part of something bigger than just that match while you are just ripping through enemies. It apparently was originally a Halo ODST Helljumper game pitch that Microsoft didn’t think was good, hilarious that they didn’t greenlight it in retrospect.
Lethal company is by far not the first game to do this tho and it’s not really the most polished one out there.
The lack of polish is charming and not detracting because the gameplay and in-game universe is fun.
Me neither. Personally I have had more fun with Nightingale and Enshrouded and hope they will continue working on these games.
Lethal Company it’s an Indie Game, so it doesn’t fit in the “Game made by a Company” Category
AAA studios are making crap games recently, the more middle grade ones that absolutely rocking it.
So what’s the point of the grades?
It’s not like the grades are regulated or anything. It’s just a vague indicator of how much money went into a given game.
thankfully it lets me know what studios to avoid unless it becomes an internet sensation, but I think the AAA/AA studio thing is something the studios started with.
Company size, probably. AAA = extremely bloated with more bureaucracy to get anything done and approved than most governments.
They are just production value. How good a game looks and sounds, which isn’t necessarily related to how fun a game is.
Need to add Remnant 2 to that list
Oh yeah, Remnant 2 was a great one.
I just recently finished Final Fantasy XVI and I think its GOTY nomination was well earned, despite its shortcomings. A hell of a journey.
I agree with all of these picks too.
That story was amazing for as far as I got, but the combat was too repetitive and underwhelming to stick it through. I need to see if there’s a movie cut on YouTube
