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Waypoint+ |OT| "Fuck Capitalism, Go Home"
- Thread starter Mezentine
- Start date
For a long time I didn't realize that the tuning dial in my car also worked for skipping forward/back with bluetooth audio. It's a little finnicky trying to turn it just a notch or two back, but it works when I can't hit the Pocket Casts (skip forward/back) buttons on my lock screen. And for skipping ads on other podcasts.
If you haven't checked it out yet, Patrick's article on WoW addiction is really strong. Goes in depth on some heartbreaking stories while also framing games addiction in a wider context:
Yeah I just read that. I'm in that boat. I was never diagnosed with addiction or anything, but my WoW habit for sure harmed me. It's the only game I profoundly regret playing. I actually had a pleasant experience during Vanilla, when I played a reasonable amount with real-life friends. But then I got back in after Burning Crusade and joined a "serious" guild and just flushed away a year of health and productivity.
(Waypoint hire a copy editor. Pronouns and verb tenses are all over the place in that article, even within individual sentences.)
(Waypoint hire a copy editor. Pronouns and verb tenses are all over the place in that article, even within individual sentences.)
OP
OP
I go back and forth on how much I blame the game itself for things like that. On the one hand the people in the article are right, in every case there were other pressures in their lives, internal and external, that were crushing them in their own ways and WoW was just the addiction they latched onto.
On the other hand...I've become increasingly sour on "length of engagement" as some game design metric to pursue. At its most innocuous its just 80 hour JRPGs which, well, aren't to my taste but that's fine. At its worst its game design that's optimized to consume you via repetitive tasks and incremental progress, and there seem to be so many irresponsible ways to use that. We see a lot of it in the mobile (and increasingly console) space with monetization geared around bypassing the deliberately extended grind, but even more generally maybe its bad when games are designed to make it so success requires you to invest yourself so thoroughly?
On the other hand...I've become increasingly sour on "length of engagement" as some game design metric to pursue. At its most innocuous its just 80 hour JRPGs which, well, aren't to my taste but that's fine. At its worst its game design that's optimized to consume you via repetitive tasks and incremental progress, and there seem to be so many irresponsible ways to use that. We see a lot of it in the mobile (and increasingly console) space with monetization geared around bypassing the deliberately extended grind, but even more generally maybe its bad when games are designed to make it so success requires you to invest yourself so thoroughly?
Yeah, I didn't think WoW was even particularly manipulative when I played it. You could get "enough" without engaging in the horrible grinds. But it was like... oh I hit the steep part of advancing this character... why don't I just roll a new toon and rock through a different leveling route. WoW was an ocean that was perfectly happy to let you drown yourself in it.
Part of why WoW was so particularly insidious imo was the social aspect intrinsic to it just being so, so popular. Grinding aspects of the game became immediately more pernicious with the inherent social pressure of it being such a huge deal that everyone was/is playing. It's a close relation to FOMO in its darkest form.
Kind of off-topic, but I'm surprised that Patrick agreed to be on Jeff Cannata's movie podcast after he called him out about interacting with Colin M? Maybe it was Austin that was more critical, but I felt like I remembered Patrick at least agreeing with him. Anyway, kind of caught me off-guard.
It's not really Jeff's podcast though he is a regular on it. I honestly doubt that Devindra and David would be interested in interacting with someone like Colin. As far as Jeff himself goes, I do believe that he was attempting to achieve something positive with that whole ordeal though I strongly disagree with it. I also appreciate that he and Christian Spicer don't shy away from conversations about gun violence and other political issues that relate to games in some way on their DLC podcast (or just straight up telling people to vote). It's definitely not nearly as critical or in-depth as what Waypoint does but it goes in a similar direction. I think Patrick is a fan of the /filmcast in general, I also saw him wishing Jeff all the best for his eye surgery on Twitter shortly after that announcement.
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I for one am shocked that Austin likes the game where you work with other people to build infrastructure
anyway I really need a death stranding spoilercast asap
anyway I really need a death stranding spoilercast asap
I was roughly at that part where Austin is just now and enjoyed that part of it. I believe I referred to it elsewhere as "lounging back and forth between bunkers doing drops while haphazardly tossing coal into the infrastructure furnace," and that part of it was great.
Then the end of Chapter 3 happened and there was like a solid 40 minutes of dumb Kojima bullshit that takes you all the way out of that interesting stuff. I wonder how he'll feel come Friday.
Very curious too since Austin's already beaten it, apparently on a whim?
that... sounded like a good thing? especially since he stopped playing death stranding (which he was enjoying) to play it
Kinda bummed there wasn't a further XIV update from Austin this episode. He's just on the cusp of some really cool stuff that should be up his alley
sounds like Cado has made a brand new character so maybe we'll be blessed with more Final FAustiny: A Cado Reborn talk on friday
that's the best I can come up with
that's the best I can come up with
I did the same thing and Felix literally said something along the lines of "that's what I love about you boss, always going off the beaten path"
it was quite cute and I feel like Felix is a touch underrated (this could change)
yeah, it's definitely odd, but the game does play with their...nonentityness at least a little bit
like, at some point a character from a marginalized group straight up calls them "not even human," and their whole presence kinda dots the world(s) with a weird subtext
actually heard the line above soon after watching Parasite, and couldn't help but think to myself, damn, what happened to class solidarity
holy shit, this is amazing
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That Parvati article is a good'un. She's legitimately one of the best RPG companions out there; a character you'll never forget, and always want to be with.
I was really looking forward to this since listening to Monday's podcast. I don't love Outer Worlds but I still feel Waypoint kinda did certain aspects such as Parvati "She's just Kaylee" a disservice. Then on top of that I wish the game went into her character deeps. Like why the fuck does her introductory dialogue feature her saying their Salt Tuna processing doesn't work because it's not Salt Tuna then never go into that?
Holy shit the game could have been so much better if it went into her justifying that along with having to justify her towns religious dedication to work whilst remaining a positive good character. Then if you could just challenge those concepts in a meaningful way and justify your own decision before the first major quest choice...
Also good God I hate that Waypoint have a huge issue with Marauders but not Mules.
Mules are explained, even if ever so tenuously. Marauders are simply a force of nature that go unaddressed. (From what I've seen/heard of both, at least.) The latter is just so video gamey it hurts.
As such, I don't think it's a fair comparison.
And as for Parvati being Kaylee... she really evokes Kaylee, from the way she speaks to the words she uses, to the whole "space engineer" aesthetic. So if you've seen (or maybe even, just know of) Firefly it's impossible to avoid the comparison; you just can't not notice it. The thing is, I don't think anyone says it to drag Parvati--both are great characters.
I'd have loved if she was a more central character in the game. She really is the reason I'm sticking with TOW.
Okay, as for some mild spoilers.
Mules want cargo no matter what, they're willing to kill people for it, there are a bunch of porters (you never see due to shit design) then for some reason they're aren't constant void-outs.
Marauders: At worst are random NPC enemies that kill for territory, at best there are details throughout the game such as in the terminals in Cascadia Waypoint never reference. Still, they'd never cause a cataclysmic extinction.
As for Parvati evoking Kaylee, I agree in some ways? But I think that beyond her being a plucky engineer the similarities aren't too deep.
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Marauders are contextualised through a bunch of NPC dialogue, terminals and datapads. Like, on the first planet, the Bounty quest to kill three Marauders has a bunch of background and details about who they were and what happened to them.
Now all of that is "optional" to engage with, but saying writing and quests in an Obsidian game are optional is kind of missing the point of playing an Obsidian game.
I'm a huge Firefly fan and never made the connection until Waypoint brought it up. I did not notice it myself at all in the 30~ hours I've played.
I still don't particularly agree with it, beyond some very surface level similarities.
I read Jeff tweeting about being called a radical centrist but didn't know it was from Waypoint lol.
I love the /Filmcast and somewhat like Jeff but he can be really frustrating at times. I do think him and Colin have had a falling out since there, some pretty heated back and forths between 'em on Twiter so hopefully Jeff can see the dude is just somebody leeching off an industry that's slowly becoming more progressive.
Kaylee and Parvati are both Plucky, Upbeat Southern Space Engineers. I don't think it's hard to make that connection.
Also yes, fuck MULEs. Game didn't need them and after all of Kojima's talk of "rope, not stick" filling the landscape with people who are Mad For Delivery Juice just so you have some opposition to run from and fight against was super dumb.
The game does go into what their Saltuna is. It's mushrooms that grow on the planet that they mess with to make it taste like saltuna, because those fish aren't native to that planet. I believe I got that info from the guy who leads the town. Parvati presumably knows this because she works there and sees them trying to feed things that aren't supposed to be fed into the machines she maintains. I don't doubt that everyone who works in the cannery knows, but they're all company stooges so the toe the company line.
Also yes, fuck MULEs. Game didn't need them and after all of Kojima's talk of "rope, not stick" filling the landscape with people who are Mad For Delivery Juice just so you have some opposition to run from and fight against was super dumb.
I think it was a thing on twitter first where Jeff responded to it, and that's what led to WP mentioning it. Regardless, Jeff so often kept giving Moriarty the time of day for so long, when he was so clearly a bad actor, that it reeked of an oldschool "reach across the aisle" mindset that just can't happen with such extreme positions in American politics these days. And he should have known better. I stopped listening to his video game show shortly after they brought CM on for an episode as a guest. I don't need that shit.
Oh, really? I figured it was Sprats because you see a bunch of Sprat corpses near the "input" for the cannery machine.
That could likely have been what gummed up the machines that time, at least. Wouldn't shock me if they kinda just tossed whatever in there.
The "lore" behind them is laughable, but the game absolutely needed human enemies that you have to deal with but shouldn't kill. Otherwise the whole hoopla about death would have no meaning.
For a brief moment the game makes the very idea of owning a gun feel terrifying. It had real potential to do something meaningful, instead it immediately drops the ball with catastrophic results by giving you the, um, "tools" that let you headshot people to sleep, permanently.
The inclusion of "Non-Lethal Assault Rifles" makes Death Stranding the weakest noncommittal anti-gun faux pacifist statement ever, even more so than the shallow action setpieces that let you play war in another dimension.
The entire gun situation in this game just makes me sad. Can't even begin to comprehend what thought process led to filling this "rope game" with assault rifles. It's not like the game abandoned its original pitch due to publisher pressure or whatever, it took me 30 hours to get to the point where the game suddenly gave up on having anything to say about guns in games.
The entire gun situation in this game just makes me sad. Can't even begin to comprehend what thought process led to filling this "rope game" with assault rifles. It's not like the game abandoned its original pitch due to publisher pressure or whatever, it took me 30 hours to get to the point where the game suddenly gave up on having anything to say about guns in games.
Discussing two topics simultaneously is the future, just imagine how much time it will save in this
The future is streaming... of consciousness.
The pokemon talk felt kind of out of place. Like an exact comparison to the 'some racists will try to use the anti china sentiment from the hong kong protests to promote their own filth' talk but with the people who talk about game freak devs being lazy and counting triangles on models or naming anything 'dexit' dismissing what is ultimately a lot of valid frustration over the biggest most profitable IP in history delivering less with each iteration and trying to say that the purposely low-key reveal of the pokedex cuts during the after e3 presentation treehouse interview constitutes fairly warning the fans publicly that this was coming months ago only to immediately make the mistake of thinking that pokemon could or would be patched in at a later date when they won't like that's not exactly the kind of information that many fans are only just now finding out and getting freshly outraged about. And i know he even mentions that there are valid criticisms inside the outrage but the whole attitude of the podcast positioning it as a majority of bad actors and dunking on it like the pokemon company needs defenders is super weird, even if you know some demoralized game freak devs personally who are getting piled on in an unfair way, that can't invalidate the very justified backlash for these decisions.