What flasche said really...mods should show interesting new models of gameplay or are there to bring back older game mechanics on a newer engine.
Smaller in scale is definably NOT the same as lower standards. Standards = polish and features. You can have a high standard but with few levels, weapons and models. Take a look at the one month mod, renamed to something but basically it was like metroid on the source engine. Two weapons, a handful of maps but LOADS of polish. Brilliant maps and beautiful models and effects. not low standard.
That's your belief. My beliefs are otherwise. Therefore I have deduced that I should have the opinion that you are wrong. Thus without further ado: My opinion is that you are wrong. :D But only about that one thing, and only in this context. Large maps in SupCom is a feature, which can be considered 'scale' in a different context. And besides that, you really don't care what my opinion is anyway, and I knew this, so stating my opinion really wasn't the point. (This is just a longwinded way of saying that the last ten posts or so contain beliefs and not facts. Except for what Empty said; that was a combination of hyperbole and storytelling.)
2/3ths of those "mods" where pretty crappy looking when they first released, only after valve showed interest into it they became any good on visuals cs being a prime example, at first it was basically the most retarded game ever, gmod aswell in version 1 you had a crossbow that would shoot ropes that could tie 2 entities together and that was it!
so its visuals that make AAA titles? yeh as i said, make them easy as hell and visually apealing so you can sell them to the even most retarded 5yo. actually yes, thats my main perception of most AAA titles ... innovation (CS as example brought "realism" into FPS gaming - i still dont like it but cant deny that) often comes with mods. TF was a mod, a quake mod - completely new game concept - empires is an offspring of this. AAA titles, unless from extremely prominent studios cant take this risks and for me quality means gameplay, not eycandy.
This doesn't have to be a matter of opinion. The defining quality of a game's "goodness" is essentially the quality of experience a player get, at it's most theoretical basic level. A game with less features, so a less "tall" learning curve, and less maps, will be experienced for a shorter amount of time. The standard of the game, i.e the standard of the experience, is the same but for a shorter period of experience. Saying that shorter period of experience= lower quality is unfair, it's like saying a short story has lower standards than a novel. I can see where you're coming from, and it's really not that important a point though.
Presumably you have argued that a demo was less polished because it was short? Gmod is probably a bad example. Valve showed interest only by about Gmod 8 or 9. (9 is actually the last free/mod release.) Those versions have a great deal more than rope guns.
A demo is a bad example because it's intention is to get you attracted and trying to buy it. It can't be classed as a proper game, because it won't have a proper story arc, proper character development and it will generally mess with all the features, I.e give you all the weapons without any "earning" or try to throw all the tones of the game at you in the same level which is pretty bad. I stand by my point: The brevity of a game has nothing to do with it's quality. Presumably you'd say portal is a far worse game than oblivion
Yes, for that exact reason, I got a lot more playtime out of oblivion than I did from portal, portal is excellent but has next to zero replay value, whereas most of oblivion is replay, and the DLC/expansion adds a hell of a lot of content. I've played portal maybe three times through and the latter two times took maybe an hour if I played slowly. While excellently put together and highly polished and extremely enjoyable to play, it is probably one of the worst games I own in terms of how much I've actually been entertained by it. Contrariwise, oblivion is probably the best game I own, as I must have clocked hundreds of hours on it and its expansion and I still haven't finished all the stuff in it. I don't think I've played any other game that much. This is also the primary complaint I have heard levelled against insurgency, people seemed find it highly polished but the sheer lack of replayability to the game means it is difficult to play for any length of time and most people picked it up, played it a bit, and dropped it.
You're saying how good a game is can be measured in 'time entertained'? I don't think that's really a good way to look at it. True, you do have a point when buying a game, as you'd be less likely to spend money on a short game rather than a long one, but if money is not a factor, those concerns usually vanish... ...because it's value for money in that case.
Actually, some of the best games I've played (in my opinion) had very little replay value. Portal being a prime example. It may be a function of the fact that games with little to no replay tend to have a more cohesive approach. They don't have to worry about the bazillion what-ifs, they know very closely what you will do, what you have seen, and don't hide any content behind the "play again, but different, to see this" door. That being said, other games I've enjoyed immensely include more open-ended games like Deus Ex (same story, but executable differently) and several pure multiplayer games like Natural Selection. If I wanted to make the most of time vs. money pay out of a game, I'd stick completely to Source Mods (free price, multiplayer ones have plenty of time available) but I don't. I still buy those once-play-through Single Player games because they are worth it and have an excellent experience.
Perfect. Chris, the commander isn't the problem. The game is very much a paradime(sp?) shift for many players. Most are used to playing TF2 or CS:S or whatever, where they pick up a gun, learn to use it, and shoot other people. Advanced uses include using other guns, and learning to use nades too. THATS IT. The complexity of empires is on a greater level. Even TF2, in spite of all its skills and what not, is pretty basic. There are no great changes in speed (vehicles vs infantry), modular spawn points (APCs with APD / placable barracks), modular research paths affecting the entire team (UP RPG, HeMG, HMG, Nukes, various armor, faster or slower engines, etc). Maps which use flags as resource nodes, others that use them as spawn points, others that use them as bleeders, and some in the official rotation that use them as a mixture of these (WTF FOG TOWN BLEEDER + SPAWN POINT + VEHICLE SPAWN POINT = COMPLEXITY FACTOR 11). TL;DR I could go on but my point is the game is complex. Not just for commanders but infantry as well. Not just in skills but in map terrain, research paths and usages, class skills, squad points and squad class skills, ETC. Someone on Money yesterday just told me that he had been playing this game for 2 years now, and JUST FIGURED OUT (after I yelled at him for 2 minutes) THAT SQUAD ENGI LEADERS CAN SQUAD REVIVE. COMMANDING = NOT RELATED. Yesterday I played silo. I helped to get our team to get 75% of the resources, and got a VF, with HMGs and Uraniums (I was battle comm, took out a barracks, put up two refs, etc). We had 3k res. I begged our team to get vehiclees. Literally I said until 5 vehicles are made i#m not going ot stop spamming the mic: Heyguyswehaveavfguysguysusethevfgetvehiclesguysheyvfisusefulspawnwestandgeturaniumsanhmgsandgorushthemguysgetvehiclesguys. It took 5 minutes of that to get 5 vehicles out at the same time, and we then proceeded to almost lose the map due to their infantry going around alone taking out our refs. We had the map, we had the win, we had an easy, fun, and inviting way to keep map control (vehicles) and we had at least a few people on our team who's names I knew. Everyone just ignored the need and usefulness of vehicles, which are intuitive gameplay and fun to use. Teamwork defines this game, not commanding, and not infantry, but people working together and making intelligent decisions. This is in EVERY. ASPECT. OF. THE. GAME. So if you want to remove them all, good luck
i agree, but i wanted to bring across the fact that people liked it anyway, and installed it because it was innovative and new (and free) the only solid difference between mods and atitle games on a bought engine is that a mod is free to play because the makers "borrowed" an engine all the rest differs greatly to what the "modders" want to make if they want to make an atitle like game as mod, they can, if they want to try something original, they can the fact that atitle game producers cant just create a game that has not proven its gamer market yet (is highly original but unknown if people will like/buy) has nothing to do with the fact that mods CAN do this (because if they fail, nothing of value was lost
If thats the same game of silo I'm thinking of, I won that for you with a ninja and a swiftly commandeered APC with spawns combined with stuns. :D However, it was pure luck we managed to kill ikalx, very few people spawned and none of them knew how to drop walls, instead preferring to place ML turrets and decon the CV. Also silo is a fucking poor excuse for a map that ties far too many people up in (useless) middle.
That was a mean game... I had epic's 'enDs' taking middle with foxtrot and most of our forces for the first half of the game, and we lost SW, and had nothing but half of middle. Then you came into the base, and they wouldn't come back... They were right, middle was good, but that's not really a good reason to lose all our bases. Then we retook a whole lot of the map...and I was fine everywhere outside of the base because our APC's would come to help, but inside the main base, and no one could understand what was happening, apparently. No one really wanted bases on my team in that game, that was really strange...i'm not a skirmish comm, I like to have bases.
I play games for entertainment, as does everybody else I know of, by that standard 'time/amount entertained' is the only standard that can apply. Whether I buy it or not I expect to enjoy a game a lot, if I only play it for a few hours I have not enjoyed it as much as I am a game I play for hundreds of hours, as I have a finite capacity for enjoyment so time is the primary method of gauging how much I get from a game. I can't experience 400 hours worth of fun in 3 no matter how cleverly designed the game was. I enjoyed portal immensely but I only enjoyed it for a few hours, I enjoyed oblivion with perhaps a bit less intensity, but I continued playing it for many hours, so oblvion is the better game for me. If all of that was actually enjoyable to most people then empires would have many more players, it would not have people joining, playing a game, having it suck, and leaving never to play again. As I said before, if it comes to a toss between you/a few other people who play empires to be commanders or be commanded, and every other gamer in the world, there is no contest. Empires can continue to be a 'niche game' which is simply another word for 'so bad only a few desperate idiots would play it', or it can try and become a popular game, which is another word for 'so good everyone and their mother enjoys playing it'. Paradigm.
Quality of time? We're not digital here Chris, we're not all 1's and 0's of entertained y/n? There are such things as crap, mediocre, fair, good, great, excellent, etc. I can play Oblivion and be entertained, but it's not on the same scale as Deus Ex, for instance - similar to how watching 'friends' may keep you entertained, but it's not on the same scale as 'the matrix'.
