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In all seriousness, this is interesting. I don't know that it will actually change the content much - it mostly seemed that Dan was the Mouth of James once they started working together, so I'm not sure how much involvement he had in the script at this point.
I do hope the new guy brings some freshness to what has been a pretty stagnant show for a while here. Too many episodes of "a list of games" or "bad takes on industry trends" of late.
On the subject of the episode that announcement was made in: I think choice paralysis is less about having too many choices and more about not really knowing the consequences of your choice. For example, when I played Oblivion, I played as a melee-focused character, but during the main quest, I was told I had to kill Will-O-Wisps, which can only be killed by magic, meaning I couldn't progress due to the choice I made. Since I didn't know what the game was expecting, I wasn't able to make an informed decision, so rather than be faced with a similar choice in another Elder Scrolls game, I decided not to play another one. This is a similar issue to their CRPG stats example: you can assume strength is attack power, will is magic power, etc., but you don't know which stats the game will prioritize (maybe if your speed is too low, you can't move or some other unforseen nonsense). The issue can be alleviated by adding descriptions to the stats like "magic is powerful against warriors but it can't harm warlocks" so you know what the game expects of players and you don't get stuck half-way through the game since you can't kill any warlocks. For the restaurant example, the issue is alleviated by listing how the meals are prepared so you can see if it's spicy or whatever, then figure out what works best for you that day by process of elimination.
Unfortunately game devs seem to deal with it by simply not giving you any lot of the time.
Main issue is simply games being poorly balanced, so you can build characters that are simply not capable of functioning, because they made a social character in a game that in the end forces you into combat, or a fighter type when you must use magic at some point, and so on and so forth.
Or because you have no way to realisticly predict outcomes (poorly done conversation wheels are a good example of this).
Also issue comes from optimization, players like to make optimal builds, and games where difference between great of unplayable can be very thin, choice paralysis suddenly kicks in, and people can avoid not only the game, but the genre (isometric rpg's have a huge issue with this imo).
The idea of a drawnout character creator is a decent one (atleast as an option), but only works if the rest of the game follow the same logic shown in the character creator.
I dunno, even when I spoil myself (at least in broad strokes) how things can go in PoE and Tyranny, I still often found myself sitting there wondering if I was doing the "right" thing for what I really wanted to do (of course, I also have anxiety issues, so this hits me often and hard) Still somewhat shocked I was able to play Alpha Protocol to the end, since that should have been the Ur-Example of a game that would have me on the floor traumatized over what might happen because of what I was doing. (Thinking it had to do in part because of its length, but also because it was pretty good in showing off the "no bad decisions" aspect and giving payoffs for it in several cases.)
Another thing I think that games sometimes do that helps me with choice paralysis is the clear ability to do a do-over, especially in terms of building your character. I know a lot of diehard Diablo fans kinda hated on D3 giving each class every ability with no skill trees or stat choices, but the fact that I would only have to level a class once (per ladder season) and not worry about picking the wrong stats or skills for whatever legendary gear I wanted or found had me playing it much more than I did D2. Similar with Dragon's Dogma, and the important stats being 95% from your gear with unlimited vocation-swapping and infinite re-customization of your character's appearance once you've reached the post-game (which isn't really the post game, but that's the best way to describe it without spoilers) Skyrim is also a good one, not so much because of do-overability, but because pretty much every major quest line outside of the main one was accessible as soon as you left the cave (though I still always went for the shouts) which meant I could build a thief character for the Thieves' Guild, a Mage for the mage guild, a fighter, an assassin etc and head to that quest chain right off the bat.
Someone in the comments had a pretty neat trick for dealing with it: Whenever this hits you, flip a coin... But you don't choose base on whether it came up heads or tails, you do what whatever you were hoping would come up instead.
That game has huge issues with choice paralysis.
Almost every decision is, in some way, permanent, and you have no real way to know what is the "right" choice.
Starting from character creation, there is an optimal character build, that build might be different for different players, but for everyone, there is an optimal, if not quite perfect, build.
And you won't know what that build is without several playthroughs, or extensive research, if even then.
Once you build your character, that's it, too late to make changes later in the game (well, there are some things you can do, but not much), one point in a stat can make or break some interactions.
Then there is everything else.
The right quest completion order, the right day to enter a map and open a container (get it wrong and you get crap loot instead of the most awesome item in the game), limited resources and not knowing what you can get later (leading me to not buy anything, ever, if i can get away with it), conversation options you can't get back to later, etc...
I still haven't finished PoE, or Tyranny, mostly because i am constantly asked to make choices blindly, and with no way to change my mind later (like the option to ally or betray people, can only do so in certain signposted moments, no pretending to be an ally until a good opportunityfor a backstab appears in Tyranny).
re:Tyranny
Also, Tyranny has New Game+ (which, IIRC lets you keep some Artifacts, some Reputation abilities, redo your stats, and at least for the Conquest, show what choices you made. Also, going through New Game+ again lets you keep an additional Artifact and Rep ability each time), so going through it to see every possibility isn't just recommended, its rewarded.
As for PoE, I'm kinda horrified that someone at Obsidian thought the Gungir chest from FFXII was a good idea. Care to spoil what you are talking about?
Personally, I went the save-scumming route - but it doesn't particularly matter if the "random" loot is pseudorandom or by designed schedule, I don't know if anyone "likes" variable loot but there's certainly a large number of people who hate it. I remember the Warhammer Online guy raving about how fantastic their "Las Vegas" roulette system for public quests was, and in practice it just pissed off a lot of people who stuck through the entire encounter and randomly got shit loot while someone who turned up in the last 30 seconds got top tier.
Magic weapons can hit them. That piddly attack spell that you always have access to would probably eventually burn them down as well.
Choice paralysis is definitely a thing, but it's important to recognize and differentiate between cases where you're being screwed over because of choices you made in the past and cases where you're being screwed over because of choices you're actively making in the present. Well-designed games will always give you some sort of out, even if it takes some effort to recognize it.
- you can reroll as much as possible
- some stats are better than others depending on your class
He said "i assumed the game face me something appropriate".
Then he died horribly and repeatedly to the wolves outside Candlekeep and never touched it again.
It's kinda interesting, but that's kind of how gaming has developed over the years with the advent and boom of digital distribution and the ease of use that accompanies it. We come to expect the game will actually tell us the information we need to know to make informed decisions (what stat does my Cleric need? what do these alignments mean and will they impact something later? etc...). However, with Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and a whole host of older games (I'm replaying some of the old Ultimas right now), literally all of that information was readily available in manuals. And, back then, actually reading the manual was an expectation rather than the exception (I mean, there's a reason we have the abbreviation "RTFM"). Even if you didn't pore over the manual(s), you still had them on hand for when you needed to read up on the more opaque systems in the games. And while those manuals still exist as PDFs, I have a feeling those files are rarely (if ever) actually opened and read.
He made the right decision. A system that punishes you for not sitting there pushing a button until you get something that isn't terrible does not deserve your time.
I asked "when did you last save"
A sad look came across his face. He was used to autosave
In Baldur's Gate, you don't really need to do that. The more important thing is moving the stat points around.
I am ok with this. I'm ready for next week's episode already.
RTFM was necessary in those days because it was impossible to fit the information in the game. But today, I'm in the camp that RTFM is, in most cases, an anti-pattern.
Seriously, geometry was the only part of math I liked.
Man I wanted to cry when I heard that.
Yeah I mean if you really want to minmax it, IIRC the only way to get some stats like 18/00 is to roll it, but you don't actually need minmaxed stats to build a good BG character, just a decent spread.
Yeah, this is a trainwreck in a number of ways, especially in their suggestions to use blockchain in the game "properly". The first idea, creating weapons with lineages - we can do that already without blockchain and the reason we don't is because such systems are logistical and game balance nightmares.
But it's the second suggestion that makes me want to grab Matt and James, smack both of them with a rolled up newspaper, and say "No. Bad devs." This suggestion was to build coin miners into a game as a form of revenue.
...have you not been reading the news? We have a word for such applications - malware. This is an unconscionable ask of gamers, and this idea needs to be drawn, quartered, and the remains sent to the four corners of the earth as a warning.
Which is a shame, because the second suggestion is kinda of interesting.
Celeste [Switch] - She'll be wrestling with inner demons when she comes...
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age [Switch] - Sit down and watch our game play itself
James is pretty anti consumer in his views, he's basically fine with throwing slot machines at children because otherwise EA will go broke
nothing, and blockchain has the added problem of being completely unable to undo anything in the past, even if a bug or exploit was involved
I... respectively disagree.
On the first idea, making growing weapons might be an issue, but having, say, unique-to-the-world/server relics that players can fight over (or, in a PvE game, lose after defeat to an NPC that another player has to kill to reclaim) could be pretty cool, and blockchains would be much better at ensuring that the relic isn't duped or hacked stolen (at least, in a non-sanctioned way) because IIRC those current ways of tracking who got what are mostly keeping a global record of transactions, rather than each item keeping its own record.
As for the second. Bit Torrent anyone? The concept of letting a program use a part of your system as "payment" for the service is not new at all. I believe there is even a way to intentionally opt in to a botnet as a way to donate some of your processing power to research. The problem, of course, is having the mining going on when you are *not* playing, or without informing the player that that is what the game is going to do in the background, which would 100% make it malware.
The real scary part for me was the early talk about having the player truly owning the blockchained item in question. *That* would open a whole flipping can of legal worms that I'm pretty sure isn't worth it, from possibly making it impossible to ban players, stop/limit gold selling, to dealing with lawsuits for destruction of property when it's time to turn the game off.
As far as requiring blockchain tech, yeah, I don't think that's necessary at all. The item evolution idea though is feasible.
The rest of the shit about having bitcoin mining built into games, yeah, fuck that. I'll defend James' assertions on previous topics (especially most aren't as hard-leaning as people think) but this one is just super blatant and stupid. Methinks someone has a digital currency investment ongoing and wants to promote their growth.
No. No wait.
Doesn't matter how good it is. There's no justifying that.
Also, what kind of people think bitcoin is an actual currency?
The people who have invested a substantial amount of actual currency to accrue bitcoin currency?
Alternate answer:
The manufacturers of graphics cards who are pulling in loads of actual currency to enable their customers to accrue bitcoin currency.
Blockchain doesn't do anything you describe well. Blockchain allows you to conduct financial transactions between remote institutions absurdly slowly without trust. A video game central server does not need to trust anyone (as it does all logging and record keeping itself and if you disagree then screw you) and requires very fast communication to the local players about what is going on.
Blockchain is stupid and solves no problems. Video games cannot create a new problem which blockchain might be useful to solve.
The kind of people who don't understand why we got off the gold standard. And/or doesn't realize that just because it's digital doesn't mean it is super cheap to make.
IIRC there is also something about how it would work that would make things like online and large $$ transactions much simpler (think about not having to involve a bank?) but the whole "We went with paper fiat for a reason" kinda holds that back.
I'll admit that I don't know much about how you *make* crypto currencies, other than it normally takes a shitload of electricity. I'm assuming what they have in mind isn't to run people's CPUs to the verge of exploding.
Crypto currencies are backed by "I said so" or energy consumption. There may be an intricate database in place as far as transaction logs go, but that isn't exactly a "backing." It's a security measure.
That's people who think Bitcoin is an investment, not a currency. But there's a whole thread for that discussion.
I was thinking more that it's pretty much impossible to have a stable currency that can keep pace with economic growth and/or inflation unless said currency has a perceived value that is greater than it's material value/harvesting cost.
Otherwise you risk a deflationary death spiral when either inflation grows faster than you can print new money, or the source of said money exceeds the value of the currency itself