Penny Arcade - Comic - Skipr

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Penny Arcade - Comic - Skipr

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Lttlefoot

This is the way

Well, what I really want is to be able to skip as fast as I want but also for it to be archived so I can go back and read it if I accidentally skipped something important

RatherDashing89

I play games primarily for the story and still contest that all dialog and cutscenes should be skippable (but not accidentally skippable).

The other thing that I want, but almost never get, is the ability to pause cutscenes without skipping them!

Overkillengine

I'm pro skipping feature enabled due to how many games have a very....meh, story, if not outright cringe. But the rest of the game is still good and worth playing.

But I prefer that the writing *doesn't* make me want to skip it if at all possible.

dennis

Well, skipping has to be there, because people play games multiple times. Or have to restart a game for various reasons. In the rare games that don't allow it, I feel personally insulted.

YoungFrey

RatherDashing89 wrote: »

I play games primarily for the story and still content that all dialog and cutscenes should be skippable (but not accidentally skippable).

The other thing that I want, but almost never get, is the ability to pause cutscenes without skipping them!

Treat them like the videos they are. Pause, reset, rewind, fast forward, and skip. I get that some implementations of this might be next to impossible. But if your cut scenes never have anything so cool a player might want to see it again, why did you even make it a cut scene?

MarcinMN

Let's not forget that Tycho already provides services that deal with this problem.

KalTorak

I've heard lots of glowing things about this game, and I still don't really know what it is.

Lucascraft

KalTorak wrote: »

I've heard lots of glowing things about this game, and I still don't really know what it is.

It's skippable!

Lttlefoot

A few games have introduced this idea of making strategic choices (cards, powers or whatever) in real time. I guess the rhythm roguelikes might be another example of this (cadence of hyrule). Does it take a certain kind of mind to be ok with working at this speed? What if you’re the sort of person who takes over an hour to slay the spire?

zepherin

Sometimes there is too much lore. I YouTubed a lot of lore items for Elden ring. I also YouTube’s the alternate endings I didn’t choose.

H3Knuckles

dennis wrote: »

Well, skipping has to be there, because people play games multiple times. Or have to restart a game for various reasons. In the rare games that don't allow it, I feel personally insulted.

Pursuant to this, for the love of god don't make people sit through a cutscene for each attempt at a boss fight. Just make a temporary checkpoint after the cutscene, so it only shows once per play session.

Lttlefoot wrote: »

This is the way

Well, what I really want is to be able to skip as fast as I want but also for it to be archived so I can go back and read it if I accidentally skipped something important

YoungFrey wrote: »

RatherDashing89 wrote: »

I play games primarily for the story and still content that all dialog and cutscenes should be skippable (but not accidentally skippable).

The other thing that I want, but almost never get, is the ability to pause cutscenes without skipping them!

Treat them like the videos they are. Pause, reset, rewind, fast forward, and skip. I get that some implementations of this might be next to impossible. But if your cut scenes never have anything so cool a player might want to see it again, why did you even make it a cut scene?

Some combination of these would be ideal.

Lttlefoot

Btw, you don’t get a free pass if you build your story/cutscenes into the game like high hrothgar. I still expect to be able to skip it

zepherin

Lttlefoot wrote: »

Btw, you don’t get a free pass if you build your story/cutscenes into the game like high hrothgar. I still expect to be able to skip it

Let people skip cut scenes and pause.

I fucken hate those two features not being standard anymore.

LtPowers

Tycho's newspost is unusually impenetrable this time around. I mean, more so than usual.

Just for starters, and the easiest example, I have no idea what "VN" means in the context of gaming.

Also, I assume "Fucking try to avoid those mechanics, now" is hyperbole? I've never even played a deckbuilding game. Okay, I played the Star Wars CCG once. But I didn't build my own deck.


Powers &8^]

YoungFrey

LtPowers wrote: »

Tycho's newspost is unusually impenetrable this time around. I mean, more so than usual.

Just for starters, and the easiest example, I have no idea what "VN" means in the context of gaming.

Also, I assume "Fucking try to avoid those mechanics, now" is hyperbole? I've never even played a deckbuilding game. Okay, I played the Star Wars CCG once. But I didn't build my own deck.


Powers &8^]

VN = Visual Novel

It's not hyperbole for Jerry. He's been hip deep in deckbuilding games forever. They attack his weak point for massive damage. There are no shortage of them. If you read the newsposts with any regularity, you'll have seen him mention them dozens of times. Steam shows over 500 games with the "card game" and "deckbuilding" tags.

Tofystedeth

Slay The Spire is probably the game most responsible for bringing deck building into the mainstream video game visibility, though I have a soft spot for Card Hunters which has been around for like 10 years and is still going it seems.

But yeah, there's more pure-ish deck builders like StS, Vault of the Void, etc but also just a ton of games of various genres which have "card mechanics" because it turns out cards/decks/hands are a very convenient way to represent powers abd stuff.

dennis

Context is important. And not everything is written for every reader, and that's okay.

Lucascraft

I'd say I have to look stuff up as much as 60% of the time after reading Jerry's newsposts.

My interests are very well defined and I'm an old out of touch gamer.

Jerry forces me to broaden my horizons, or at the very least it forces me to encounter concepts and ideas that I never would have known about otherwise.

Tigrerojo

His first mistake was writing for games intended for an american audience; prolly' should have thought of that during those 10 years...

Quid

Tigrerojo wrote: »

His first mistake was writing for games intended for an american audience; prolly' should have thought of that during those 10 years...

Yeah, nah, Americans aren't to blame for people wanting to skip hours of tedious scenes. The vast majority of games have at best mediocre writing.

Hahnsoo1

I'd like to believe that the current strip and this past strip are two sides of the same situation/game:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2021/07/26/skip

Armored Chocobo

"My story is how death is a form of labor in the afterlife"

So does Death's Door and Have a Nice Death.

Evermourn

Is that guy's nose meant to be a jab at some real life person? I know Gabe has his "nose style" but this seems a bit much even for him.

YoungFrey

Evermourn wrote: »

Is that guy's nose meant to be a jab at some real life person? I know Gabe has his "nose style" but this seems a bit much even for him.

I thought he was supposed to be Jerry at first. And then several additional times rereading the comic. Because of the ol' "retina" version.