Gaming trends that irk you

[Burley]

My biggest gripes are when developers bail on a game for a trendier gameplay mode. I was so excited about the REAL Fortnite game and played a ton. Then, they released the Battle Royal mode and most people don't even know that there was a REAL Fortnite. And, what'd I get for paying full price for the game? A skin that I couldn't use, because PSN didn't want to share certain information.
I see this exact thing happening soon with Fallout 76. A few hardcore fans still playing the game, but the Battle Royal mode is going to syphon players from other BRGames (Fortnight will certainly lose players to a game with crafting, lootable monsters and auto-turrets) and people will forget all about Fallout 76. (They're also folding on their "Player Characters only" concept to make Fallout 76 into a full MMORPG.)

Just make a different game, you guys. Stop killing one game to make another one.

[Rodin]

Yeah? like, I'm playing skyrim. with some appearance mods of course, but I don't feel much of a desire for more graphics and I kind of don't want my videogames to look too much like real life, because then it starts getting into that "will I be able to tell reality from the virtual one" nightmare scenario. like I myself while like how good graphics are, much prefer it remains clear that its still a video game in looks.

we do not need better visuals anymore, we need better mechanics. better game play. like we've gotten shiny stuff now, but we're still playing the same basic mechanics we had like, a decade ago. battle royales are just a different mode for shooters, loot boxes are just randomized loot that is now being called out as a form of gambling.

at least nintendo is good. their static, slow to change way of doing things is frustrating at times, but at least they're consistently good.

For me it depends on the game. For the likes of Skyrim and the like? Yeah, the graphics are perfectly suitable and I would much rather the work went into improving the gameplay.

For other games though, the graphics do actually matter. Uncharted 4's graphics are the closest I ever come to wondering if I'm watching a live action movie, and as the game basically IS a movie it works really well. There's gameplay in there somewhere, but what you're there for is the conclusion of the story. In that case, I'm all for good graphics. They had the core gameplay figured out two games prior, and all they really needed to do was provide a bit more of it to frame the story.

Another example is the Resident Evil 2 remake. High quality graphics to really sell the immersion and amp up the creepiness factor. And in a different way - Sekiro. Incredible fluidity to the animations combined with "hitbox porn" makes a remarkable difference to the joy of playing the game. It's the most beautiful swordfighting I've ever seen in a game.

What ties all of these games together is direction. The games knew what they were going for and used excellent gameplay combined with a tight narrative and then brought it all to life with superb graphics. Where I start to get irked is games that don't feel like they have a director. These are largely open world games because that type of game is particularly prone to it, but it's by no means unique to them (Dark Souls 2 comes to mind). A lot of them feel like they were built by committee - there's a "sidequest team" and a "mini-games team" and a "collectibles team" and none of these people are actually talking to one another. The main quest may be excellent, but you'd never know it because it's sunk into a quagmire of mediocrity stuffed into the game to sell "X hours of gameplay!".

If I could have one thing, it would be for all these games to decrease in size. Maybe 100 sidequests will do instead of 500. Maybe we don't need a tower defense minigame, or a "conquer the strategic map" that is horribly under developed and pointless. Strip out the fat and start working to put more meat into your games. I would far rather have a dozen sidequests that are fully fleshed out and have consequences for the greater story than a 100 "go do generic thing" quests. Think the Mass Effect 2 loyalty quests vs. whatever the crap was going on with Andromeda's bloated quest system.

[Erloas]

So not really related to the games themselves, I'm going to have to add subscription services. Which everyone seems to be doing. Not sure how much it going to require subs in the future, but everyone is releasing sub services.

The "chase the newest trends" is very common and rather annoying because I don't really need 15 different ways to play essentially the same game. With Fallout 76 I'm not surprised their trying everything they can to make anyone care about the game. They seem to be grasping at anything that will get people to log in.

[Zevox]

So, that all sounds a great deal like something I remember quite well. From a game from the same genre as the new Mortal Kombat, actually.

Wait, did I say same genre? I meant same series. Twice. Mortal Kombat Deception and Deadly Alliance had exactly the same feature, though they didn't have two currencies. They had five. And they didn't just put skins and cosmetics in there; they locked characters behind those chests. If you didn't go read a guide on exactly where to go to unlock all the Krypt characters, you were now unlocking chests at random, from a pool of nearly a thousand. You might as well not even try. Even if you had infinite Koins (and there were ways to cheat to achieve that), it would still take nearly two hours just to go through the animations and inputs to unlock all those chests. Most of which just had concept art, song selections and other nonsense which had nothing to do with gameplay at all. And if you didn't cheat the currency, it would take hundreds of hours of playtime to grind enough to open all the chests. None of which could be versus mode, because you only got Koins from the campaign, arcade mode and Puzzle Kombat (which was garbage).

So yeah, not terribly new. Mortal Kombat specifically has been doing the 'non-paid in-game currency to unlock bonuses' thing since the PS2 era. Frankly, the version in MK11 sounds much less terrible than the one I remember from the old days. Especially in Deadly Alliance it was just horrid. Not really sure why they decided to bring it back.

About the only part of that which sounds different from MK11 is the two additional currencies (as I said 11 has three, not two) and the lack of need to unlock characters that way. Because to be clear, if I gave the impression that every chest in the Krypt in 11 is giving out cosmetics or brutalities, I did it a disservice, because they are not. Koin chests in particular mostly give out much less desirable rewards (and soul chests do too half of the time), including concept art, "konsumables" (single-use items that provide bonuses in single-player modes), augments (gems you can equip to characters' gear for minor bonuses in single-player modes), and forge recipes and ingredients. Because yeah, the game also has a crafting system on top of everything else - there doesn't appear to be a lot locked behind it compared to the other unlock methods, but it's there. Plus there's the items that exist only to allow you to open more parts of the Krypt itself, such as the skeleton keys that open locked doors throughout it.

Yeah, they don't actually make even finding all of the chests in the Krypt that easy. There's plenty of hoops to jump through just to reach all of the chambers, ranging from just finding various key items within the Krypt itself to some things that you need to do in other modes in order to acquire items that let you open more areas of it. For instance, Shang Tsung's throne room requires you to acquire the heads of each of the game's fighters and plant them on spikes outside of it. You do this by performing 25 total fatalities on each character. In a game with a character count in the mid-20s. Yeah, that'll take quite a while in normal gameplay, and is annoying and tedious to set up just doing repeatedly in versus mode. Another complication is Kenji's Blindfold, an item you get which lets you see invisible things throughout the Krypt, but only within a very short distance of you, and using it steadily consumes some of your souls. Yeah, you'll want a guide to locate all of the stuff that lets you get, so you're not wandering around half-blind, losing souls all the while. And the quantities of things you described sound like they're likely true of MK11's Krypt as well.

So yeah, basically they traded two currency types and locked characters in the older game for locking some things behind the Towers of Time. Which themselves are definitely very mobile game-y, in how they encourage you to play at specific times of the day to catch as many towers as you can if you want to unlock everything as quickly as possible. Well, and on the character front there's also the nuisance of Shao Khan being a pre-order bonus only character, despite clearly being in the base game, since even if you don't have him you will find his stuff in the Krypt, basically rendering some its chests pointless for you. Same for some of the Towers of Time.

Still, I guess there's some comfort in knowing that this is just something that the MK devs in particular are under the mistaken impression is a good idea. I just hope that the series' much greater success these days than it had in Deception or Deadly Alliance's time doesn't lead to other fighting games deciding to copy this particular element.

Achievements. Yes this started 10 years ago. Now every game is cluttered with pointless bullcrap to collect.

My issue with Achievements is just that they feel so pointless. I think the only game that I've ever see tie them to any actual rewards is Soul Calibur 4. For everything else, they're just an annoying popup telling you what you just did.

I personally like open world games. I figure that if you have it open world you can mod it to make it more linear. Whereas if it's super linear like cyberpunk 2077 might be(?), it's going to be harder to mod.

Skyrim had some mod for a time traveling murder mystery for example. Linear games also have only so much replayability value.

That's just how I feel about it.

That's fine for you, of course. For me, none of that is true. I play on consoles, so mods aren't even a thing to me - and honestly the couple of times I tried to use some with one of the few PC games I have it was more trouble than it was worth to me. And in any case, I wouldn't want to play something like a Bethesda game even if it were modded to be more linear, since there's a lot more I dislike about their game design than just that (such as the first-person perspective and the wonky way that results in melee combat playing). If you could do such a thing with Breath of the Wild you might have my attention, but that's a Nintendo game, so not happening.

And personally, I'd far rather replay a good linear game than play through most open world games even once. Games like Persona 3 or Metal Gear Rising were still much more fun to me the fifth time through than games like Fallout 3 or any of the Assassin's Creed games were the first time through. For me personally, replay value is just the game being good enough that I'd want to play it again, not anything that you can do different on a second+ time through.

[Aeson]

Something I forgot: New Game+ as higher difficulty level. If I want to play a more challenging version of your game, I do not want to have to beat your game first and then start a 'new' game with the character I just beat the game with to play essentially the same game but 'harder.' Especially if you screwed up 'harder' and didn't properly account for how much more powerful a character that's already beaten the game will be than a completely new character is.

My issue with Achievements is just that they feel so pointless. I think the only game that I've ever see tie them to any actual rewards is Soul Calibur 4. For everything else, they're just an annoying popup telling you what you just did.

While I agree that achievements are just annoying popups telling me what I just did, I don't want achievements to give rewards. I prefer them as the completely optional nonsense that they are, because it means that if it doesn't look interesting to do whatever's needed to get the achievement, there's no reason for me to bother with it. "Achievements" like Transport Fever's "accumulate a billion dollars in Hard Mode" won't be any more fun or interesting to do for granting a special reward, but if that reward is any more worth having than just getting the achievement itself is then getting the achievement would be a lot less optional.

Also, there are already a lot of games that have some form or another of "do something to unlock X" in them - the original Rome: Total War required you to win a campaign to unlock non-Roman factions, Thea: The Awakening requires you to accomplish certain objectives to unlock new deities to play or new bonuses on the deities you have, Slay the Spire requires you to accumulate some number of points to unlock a number of cards and relics, Surviving Mars has its milestones and sponsor objectives that provide more-or-less immediate in-game effects upon reaching them, a lot of games with scripted campaigns have optional mission objectives that give some kind of bonus for completing them, there's any number of roguelikes that require you to do some specific thing in one of your runs to unlock a new character or a starting bonus, and so on. They might not be called 'achievements' and in some cases they're repeatable rather than once-and-done, but it's the kind of thing that you're asking for, and it's not at all uncommon.

[Zevox]

While I agree that achievements are just annoying popups telling me what I just did, I don't want achievements to give rewards. I prefer them as the completely optional nonsense that they are, because it means that if it doesn't look interesting to do whatever's needed to get the achievement, there's no reason for me to bother with it. "Achievements" like Transport Fever's "accumulate a billion dollars in Hard Mode" won't be any more fun or interesting to do for granting a special reward, but if that reward is any more worth having than just getting the achievement itself is then getting the achievement would be a lot less optional.

Also, there are already a lot of games that have some form or another of "do something to unlock X" in them - the original Rome: Total War required you to win a campaign to unlock non-Roman factions, Thea: The Awakening requires you to accomplish certain objectives to unlock new deities to play or new bonuses on the deities you have, Slay the Spire requires you to accumulate some number of points to unlock a number of cards and relics, Surviving Mars has its milestones and sponsor objectives that provide more-or-less immediate in-game effects upon reaching them, a lot of games with scripted campaigns have optional mission objectives that give some kind of bonus for completing them, there's any number of roguelikes that require you to do some specific thing in one of your runs to unlock a new character or a starting bonus, and so on. They might not be called 'achievements' and in some cases they're repeatable rather than once-and-done, but it's the kind of thing that you're asking for, and it's not at all uncommon.

Oh, I'm well aware. My point was basically that, as they usually are, achievements are basically objectives of that sort, but without a reward. Which makes them feel pretty pointless to me, since without a reward, there's no reason for me to do any of them that I wasn't going to do anyway. It's why I've always just ignored them completely, and turned off notifications of when I get one on my consoles so the popups stop bothering me.

[Keltest]

I like the way Deadfire handled achievements: they give you points that you can spend on quality of life upgrades on subsequent playthroughs, like starting with a small fortune or having the map explored. Bigger milestones give more points, so the more of the game you have seen and played through, conceptually the faster you can get to the parts you missed or like more the next game.

[warty goblin]

I'm irked by the lack of good FPS games in the last couple years. 2016 was great, between DOOM, Titanfall 2, and even the actually sort of acceptable Infinite Warfare, it was a good time. Now, alas, we seem to have forgotten what a good thing we had going there.

I'm also irritated by the insistence that every game under the sun include RPG mechanics. Sometimes a grenade is just a grenade. I want to throw it at the enemy and blow them up. I am not thrilled by the prospect of unlocking a more powerful grenade later to customize my playstyle. Firstly because this means either

a) the starting grenade is as effective as a dry fart in a hurricane
b) the upgraded grenade breaks the game
c) the enemy HP increases right along with the upgraded grenade's damage, so the upgrade is meaningless.
d) a mythical fourth option, whereby we pretend that upgrades don't increase your power, just your options, and that game designers actually build games this way.

And secondly because I don't want to customize my playstyle through powerful unlocks in the first place. I bought the game so a game designer would figure out how to make a game fun to play, build that game, and let me play it. Because I find doing the same exact thing for 60 hours boring, I'd prefer it if the game designer used the full suite of gameplay mechanics to create a lively and diverse set of challenges and circumstances. Thus the sniper level, the shotgun level, the 'you've lost all your stuff except a pistol' level. Stealth levels. Vehicle levels. Underwater levels. Customizing my playstyle just means that every challenge in the game can be beaten with every set of tactics, and because I went with skill tree 1 instead of skill tree 2 I can't even change my tactics.

I used to joke that RPGs which make you choose your class at the beginning of the game is like a shooter where you choose between the shotgun, the sniper rifle, and the assault rifle in level 1, and that's the only gun you get for the whole game. I should have kept my mouth shut, because we're damn near there now.

[tonberrian]

I really dislike rpgs that have very limited weapon pools, such that each character only uses one type of weapon, and there's no reason not to use the highest tier you've unlocked. ANYTHING to make the weapons different and thus in edge cases better, please.

[LibraryOgre]

I dislike the indiscriminate use of the term "role-playing game" or "RPG" on things that are in no way RPGs.

[Rodin]

I dislike the indiscriminate use of the term "role-playing game" or "RPG" on things that are in no way RPGs.

Do you want a 50 page thread on the definition of RPGs? Because that's how you get 50 page threads on the definition of RPGs.

Seriously though, I do understand and agree with the complaint in general.

Something I forgot: New Game+ as higher difficulty level. If I want to play a more challenging version of your game, I do not want to have to beat your game first and then start a 'new' game with the character I just beat the game with to play essentially the same game but 'harder.' Especially if you screwed up 'harder' and didn't properly account for how much more powerful a character that's already beaten the game will be than a completely new character is.

New Game+ with higher difficulty done right can be a lot of fun. Sadly, most games don't do this, because developers don't want to put the time in on a game mode that 90% of the players won't touch. If you're doing a proper "Second Quest" mode, you need to do more than just increase the stats of the enemies. Add end-game enemies into level 1. Give bosses extra attacks. Do stuff that would be outright unfair for a level 1 character to make that tutorial area kick your ass.

[Rynjin]

[COLOR="#0000FF"]New Game+ with higher difficulty done right can be a lot of fun. Sadly, most games don't do this, because developers don't want to put the time in on a game mode that 90% of the players won't touch. If you're doing a proper "Second Quest" mode, you need to do more than just increase the stats of the enemies. Add end-game enemies into level 1. Give bosses extra attacks. Do stuff that would be outright unfair for a level 1 character to make that tutorial area kick your ass.

Say what you will about Dark Souls 2, which is constantly **** on (even in this very thread ), but it's the only game in the extended franchise that does this, and it adds an actual reason and surprise to playing NG+, which is great.

Spawning into the "safe zone" from when you couldn't attack in New Game and immediately getting assaulted by hyper-aggressive enemies that don't really show up anywhere else is a great "Welcome to New Game Plus, bitch, prepare to die some more" moment.

[Aeson]

New Game+ with higher difficulty done right can be a lot of fun.

I don't disagree, but it still shouldn't be the game's only hard mode.

[Rodin]

I don't disagree, but it still shouldn't be the game's only hard mode.

Oh, no question there.

The ideal should be something like the RE2 remake. You have Easy difficulty with reduced enemy health, aim-assist, and limited health regen. Then you have Normal which is, well, normal. No aim assist or health regen, standard difficulty. Then there's Hardcore with greatly increased enemy health, enemy damage, no assists, and saving is limited to boot.

Once you beat the game, you unlock the B story. You play as the other character from your A story, and the path through the game is slightly different. Item placement is more restrictive, ammo is scarcer, and enemy placement has been significantly changed around to keep you on your toes. Best of all, the B story has a difficulty setting just like the main game.

Voila! Replayability, in a way that is easy to implement for the developers and entertaining for the players without adding a bunch of bloat.

Edit:

Something to add to my Peeve list: Pre-orders for a game that is a ridiculous distance into the future. I just saw a pre-order for Cyberpunk 2077 with the release date of April 15, 2020. There's no way they know the date this far out. There's no way for us to know if it's good this far out. The game has maybe hit Alpha. Don't try and get me to pay $60 for it this far out. It ain't happening.

[LibraryOgre]

Do you want a 50 page thread on the definition of RPGs? Because that's how you get 50 page threads on the definition of RPGs.

Seriously though, I do understand and agree with the complaint in general.

Hey, if one gets out of hand, I'll just lock it and ban everyone.

Seriously, though, the one that keeps popping up in my head is Star Wars: Uprising. You could pick from a few different races. You could be male or female. You could choose your precise mix of skills and weapons (iirc). Otherwise, you were just a cog in the story. Your sister varied only in her race... she was always your sister with the big ideas and the cheap cybernetics. You interacted with everyone the exact same way. There was no role to play.

[Man_Over_Game]

Hey, if one gets out of hand, I'll just lock it and ban everyone.

Seriously, though, the one that keeps popping up in my head is Star Wars: Uprising. You could pick from a few different races. You could be male or female. You could choose your precise mix of skills and weapons (iirc). Otherwise, you were just a cog in the story. Your sister varied only in her race... she was always your sister with the big ideas and the cheap cybernetics. You interacted with everyone the exact same way. There was no role to play.

The Zelda games were considered RPGs, despite having a character with hardly any personality, no interaction in cutscenes, and having no level up elements.

When people think "RPG", they're really referring to one of these things:

1. Watching a character's narrative (Zelda)
2. Choosing a character's narrative (Fable, Mass Effect)
3. Leveling Up (What most people think of when they think RPGs)

Defining RPG as the #1 choices in the list doesn't make much sense, as almost every game would then be considered an RPG. Playing a single character shouldn't define the game's genre, yet that's what people once used the term for.

I guess my point is, as long as an "RPG" is either #2 or #3, I don't think it's an improper classification for the game, if only because we refuse to come up with better names for them.

[deuterio12]

I really dislike rpgs that have very limited weapon pools, such that each character only uses one type of weapon, and there's no reason not to use the highest tier you've unlocked. ANYTHING to make the weapons different and thus in edge cases better, please.

That's one thing I really love about Fire Emblem. Since weapons have limited uses (usually) and you can't grind for gold (usually), then the game can throw you high-end weapons right at game start plus "super effective against X and average against everything else" and "this can attack/counter at melee and range but has crappier stats otherwise" so you decide when best to use them or if a cheap iron sword is fine too.

[tyckspoon]

That's one thing I really love about Fire Emblem. Since weapons have limited uses (usually) and you can't grind for gold (usually), then the game can throw you high-end weapons right at game start plus "super effective against X and average against everything else" and "this can attack/counter at melee and range but has crappier stats otherwise" so you decide when best to use them or if a cheap iron sword is fine too.

Although those same high-end weapons are almost irreplaceable, thanks to being unpurchasable/too costly to buy in the one secret shop that actually sells them/there only being two repair staffs in the entire game, which at least for me often leads to Too Valuable to Use (insert your own TVTropes link here.) It also tends to lead to selection bias in your army, where the troops you use all the time and level up the most are the ones who are strong enough to just kill things with basic iron weapons, because you don't want to waste your Killer/Brave/S-class/artillery-tome weapon uses cutting through nameless enemy Soldiers.

(That said, most of the more recent Fire Emblems do allow some kind of grinding, whether it's repeatable world-map encounters or a side dungeon or just hanging out for ten extra turns in a map with an Arena, which allows you to grind money, XP, weapon skill XP, and healer XP healing up the dudes who are going through the Arena.)

[Traab]

totally unrelated to the thread, but yess! someone else who likes idle games. do you have any good recommendations, i have played a bunch and my current one, NGU idle is slowing down so i would like to add another to my screen of number filling up :)

I will name a few, but you probably played them, Trimps is a lot of fun and they are still adding in new stuff if you havent burned out on it yet. Wizards (And Minion) Idle is a newish one thats been out for a bit, also is still getting plenty of new tweaks added. If you liked NGU you will like this game as it has a lot of similarities. Lets see, ive really gotten into Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms. Its Crusaders of The Lost idols only its got all the drizzt world characters in it instead. Lots of events, lots of characters to unlock, plenty of farming to do and some mild to moderate story stuff as well if thats your thing. Idle Mage Attack is kind of an odd one but it was enjoyable for quite some time.

Back on topic. Someone mentioned graphics, I agree and actually have for some time. I remember, WAAAAY back in the old days, when the playstation and xbox were brand new, I despised xbox because it honestly felt like they sacrificed all gameplay to make things pretty. I still remember being horrified when I played some sort of bruce lee adventure game that was setup at the local eb games. It had what amounted to some cheesy attempt at mocap of bruce lee kicking and punching his way through an adventure. It played like it was a sega genesis game in quality while looking like the very pretty turd that it was. That was the worst i saw but in general the entire platform turned me off of it because it felt like it was focusing on style over substance. It didnt help that im an rpg nerd and playstation was WAY better for that genre anyways but yeah, I hate when games concentrate on appearance over substance. There is a reason i still play the first 7 ff games (Plus 9 but thats an outlier as it looks gorgeous as well as playing that way) Give me gameplay and a story like ff6 any day of the week over being able to see photorealistic patterns of raindrops in puddles reflecting my face. I wont refuse gorgeous games, but I will despise them if it feels like they spent more time making it look pretty than on making it fun to play.

[deuterio12]

Although those same high-end weapons are almost irreplaceable, thanks to being unpurchasable/too costly to buy in the one secret shop that actually sells them/there only being two repair staffs in the entire game, which at least for me often leads to Too Valuable to Use (insert your own TVTropes link here.) It also tends to lead to selection bias in your army, where the troops you use all the time and level up the most are the ones who are strong enough to just kill things with basic iron weapons, because you don't want to waste your Killer/Brave/S-class/artillery-tome weapon uses cutting through nameless enemy Soldiers.

True in a first playtrough on normal, but in second playthroughs and/or higher difficulties you can (or need) manage the fancy weapons properly.

(That said, most of the more recent Fire Emblems do allow some kind of grinding, whether it's repeatable world-map encounters or a side dungeon or just hanging out for ten extra turns in a map with an Arena, which allows you to grind money, XP, weapon skill XP, and healer XP healing up the dudes who are going through the Arena.)

Arenas have been around since the first game, but they're a gamble since sometimes they'll throw something that can actualy threaten even your best character or they land a lucky crit and suddenly you have to reset the whole level.

World-map repeatable encounters vary quite a bit. Like in Awakening depending in the difficulty the world-map repeatable encounters scale super fast so if you're playing lunatic you can only grind a few until they become unwinnable. And for Fates, Birtright allowed grinding and Conquest doesn't. Although those also removed limited use weapons besides staves, but then added a bunch of extra limitations for most medium/high-end weapons (like huge speed penalties and/or can't crit nor activate special abilities nor make double attacks) besides the personal uniques so that the best tactic was probably to just upgrade the basic weapons instead.

Making sure your healer cures every little scratch for the xp is standard Fire Emblem tactics though, I even saw the term "HEALER LEVEL!" being thrown around by some players since they basically level up in a different way than the rest of the characters (unless it's the first game, in which case healers didn't get xp for healing, instead they got xp for taking a hit and surviving, which was as risky as it sounds).

Now one xp grinding trick since the first game is good old "find a immobile boss lacking a range 2 weapon in a healing tile and slowly shoot the crap out of them while not allowing them to die", which is usually only doable early game since eventually every boss gets a range 2 weapon. Although Fire Emblems where cavalry can "rescue" an ally and move away allowed this tactic most of the game.

[Sermil]

AIs in strategy games, especially turn-based strategy games, getting dumber and dumber. Civilization 5 & 6 in particular.

I think this is actually less AIs getting dumber and more the strategy games getting more and more complex and difficult for the AI to handle, with no commensurate increase in the skill of the programmers (or maybe of the time the programmers have to work on the AI). But the effect is the same -- the AI in Civ6 usually just seemed content to sit around and wait for you to roll over it and its un-upgraded warriors. Most people are going to play Civilization in single-player mode, Firaxis, give us some decent AIs to play against.

Same thing for Total War; I gave up on that series a while ago because Rome: TW's AI was just so bad.

[Hunter Noventa]

AIs in strategy games, especially turn-based strategy games, getting dumber and dumber. Civilization 5 & 6 in particular.

I think this is actually less AIs getting dumber and more the strategy games getting more and more complex and difficult for the AI to handle, with no commensurate increase in the skill of the programmers (or maybe of the time the programmers have to work on the AI). But the effect is the same -- the AI in Civ6 usually just seemed content to sit around and wait for you to roll over it and its un-upgraded warriors. Most people are going to play Civilization in single-player mode, Firaxis, give us some decent AIs to play against.

Same thing for Total War; I gave up on that series a while ago because Rome: TW's AI was just so bad.

There is a serious ever-increasing challenge involved in creating an AI that is challenging that doesn't just plain cheat. It's also harder to make an AI with 'personality' than one that plays perfectly every time. And you don't want the latter either.

[Blackdrop]

More of a marketing trend, but cross-promotion between games. I've spent an ungodly amount of money of Game A for collectibles for completions sake, why should I have to spend another $50 dollars on Game B, that I've never played, to get something for Game A.

On an unrelated note if anyone is playing TESO: Elsweyr and isn't playing The Elder Scrolls: Legends and would be willing to help a brother out, hit me up.

[deuterio12]

There is a serious ever-increasing challenge involved in creating an AI that is challenging that doesn't just plain cheat. It's also harder to make an AI with 'personality' than one that plays perfectly every time. And you don't want the latter either.

Don't really buy that since we see plenty of modders create great AIs for different strategy games.

Plus some official devs themselves have come out saying "lol we just make the AI cheat because it's the minimum effort option."

And sadly most players probably just don't care, the big money are on shiny graphics and PvP, so there just isn't much economical incentive for scripting proper AIs. Like Dawn of War II campaign was pretty popular despite the AI there being completely braindead with either "wait until player approaches then suicidically attack" or "scripted boss battles where the big bad just repeats the same pattern over and over in an arena".

Kudos to Intelligent Systems for making interesting challenges in the basis of enemy position. Their AI is usually pretty simple too, but the way they and the map are setup creates interesting challenges like "if I attack X I expose myself to Y and Z that have weapons effective against what's in turn effective against X."

Meanwhile Super Robot Wars becoming more and more of "here's another map with zero terrain features and a bunch of copy-pasted enemies in an huge block that mindlessly charge you while the boss hangs back and waits a bit before attacking despite the boss having a leadership aura that buffs the mooks but they make zero effort to stick together".

[Keltest]

Don't really buy that since we see plenty of modders create great AIs for different strategy games.

Plus some official devs themselves have come out saying "lol we just make the AI cheat because it's the minimum effort option."

And sadly most players probably just don't care, the big money are on shiny graphics and PvP, so there just isn't much economical incentive for scripting proper AIs. Like Dawn of War II campaign was pretty popular despite the AI there being completely braindead with either "wait until player approaches then suicidically attack" or "scripted boss battles where the big bad just repeats the same pattern over and over in an arena".

Kudos to Intelligent Systems for making interesting challenges in the basis of enemy position. Their AI is usually pretty simple too, but the way they and the map are setup creates interesting challenges like "if I attack X I expose myself to Y and Z that have weapons effective against what's in turn effective against X."

Meanwhile Super Robot Wars becoming more and more of "here's another map with zero terrain features and a bunch of copy-pasted enemies in an huge block that mindlessly charge you while the boss hangs back and waits a bit before attacking despite the boss having a leadership aura that buffs the mooks but they make zero effort to stick together".

That's not quite accurate. We see lots of people who can program AIs to take fights really well. But the only way they win games is by being superhumanly efficient at taking fights (ie cheating, basically). Their ability to actually strategize and make decisions is still fairly limited. Theres a team trying to make a learning AI for StarCraft 2, and right now its not able to compete with humans without disabling the restrictions that force it to behave within human limits.

[deuterio12]

That's not quite accurate. We see lots of people who can program AIs to take fights really well. But the only way they win games is by being superhumanly efficient at taking fights (ie cheating, basically). Their ability to actually strategize and make decisions is still fairly limited. Theres a team trying to make a learning AI for StarCraft 2, and right now its not able to compete with humans without disabling the restrictions that force it to behave within human limits.

Humies winning in the end is a feature, not a bug.

But there's a significant difference between "AI that puts up a proper fight with interesting tactics but still loses" and "AI that either mindlessly charges you or waits for you to roll over it".

[Keltest]

Humies winning in the end is a feature, not a bug.

But there's a significant difference between "AI that puts up a proper fight with interesting tactics but still loses" and "AI that either mindlessly charges you or waits for you to roll over it".

In this particular instance, the goal was to create an AI that can compete with humans in its decision making. So to that end, being unable to win without cheating is undesirable.

[deuterio12]

In this particular instance, the goal was to create an AI that can compete with humans in its decision making. So to that end, being unable to win without cheating is undesirable.

Which humans? Pro champions with years of training whose job is literally to play the game? Casuals that get their asses kicked even by the basic AIs at anything higher than "very easy"?

Either way we're talking about all the other instances where we want an AI that can provide a nice, fun challenge but the human still wins in the end. So who cares if the fancy AI can't beat the top human players, that's just fine by my standards since I doubt I would be able to win against said top pro player either.

So fun AIs that can do interesting tactics and thus put up a proper challenge are doable, yet most companies don't bother and just go with braindead AIs that just cheat higher combat/resource numbers at higher difficulties.

[Keltest]

Which humans? Pro champions with years of training whose job is literally to play the game? Casuals that get their asses kicked even by the basic AIs at anything higher than "very easy"?

Either way we're talking about all the other instances where we want an AI that can provide a nice, fun challenge but the human still wins in the end. So who cares if the fancy AI can't beat the top human players, that's just fine by my standards since I doubt I would be able to win against said top pro player either.

So fun AIs that can do interesting tactics and thus put up a proper challenge are doable, yet most companies don't bother and just go with braindead AIs that just cheat higher combat/resource numbers at higher difficulties.

Pros. The AI isn't meant to be used for the game, its literally trying to develop AI tech to get it to behave closer to a human at all.

The problem right now is that AIs cant strategize for crap. Once you figure them out, you can manipulate them to no end and even the best AI will only win at that point if the human makes a mistake or they use their superhuman APM and ability to multitask to force a situation that humans literally cannot create themselves. The learning AI is getting better at it, but its still a long time before it will be able to play StarCraft on the same strategic level as a human.

[Djiini]

This is sort of general, but...

The 'well, making things up to X quality is a lot harder than making them up to the Y quality of yesteryear!' as an excuse for why (for instance) games from 2009 may have far more features than games in 2019. If that's the case...was it really worth upgrading what's used to create them? Or is it just a convenient excuse?

My general go-to examples of this being combining the two different versions of Star Wars Battlefront, or comparing City of Heroes to more modern MMOs.