Playlist (November 2019)
Added 2019-11-29 14:00:03 +0000 UTCBusy month (as usual, these days) but found some time to check out two big releases.
Cheers! Mark
Comments
There’s an upgrade you can get that makes stims fully refill your force gauge, and it’s probably the most game changing upgrade in the game. Force powers should all of a sudden be used constantly, so you can empty your gauge before you need to heal again and waste any unused force.
Tom T
2019-12-10 03:50:11 +0000 UTCI don't think Mark needs to remind us that his judgments are "driven by [his] priorities," because, well, isn't that obvious? Where my values differ from Mark's (which they often do), the best way for Mark to ensure that I can judge whether my experience of the game will align with his is if he clearly explains/argues how he came to his judgments about the game, which anyway is kind of his whole job.
Blaine Talbut
2019-12-06 22:28:52 +0000 UTCMark, I know the Playlist videos are more off-the-cuff than your mainline videos and I'm not trying to slam you for word choice here, but I want to point to an example of something that I think has caught you some flak in other videos. When describing your experience with The Outer Worlds, you said "on the default difficulty setting, the game is just way too easy." Then you went into how this doesn't encourage the player to engage with the game's related systems, and so the next time you play you're going to do so on Hard. And, like, that's fine, and it makes sense, and it's totally valid - but I think it's worth recognizing that this was your experience with the game and was driven by your priorities. Especially since you're leading up to whether you recommend the game to others. Of course other players will - for various reasons - find the default difficulty harder (or even easier) than you did, but on top of that players will seek out different experiences from the game. Players who enjoy coming up with effective character builds and testing them in tense combat will want to have the pressure of higher difficulty; players who just want to explore the game's world, story, and characters might prefer lower difficulty so they don't have to spend time mucking about with mechanics they don't find engaging or worry about having to repeat fights over and over to be able to access the content they actually want. Given that, if you want to present broadly useful consumer advice I think the angle here isn't "the default difficulty makes the game too easy", it's something closer to "The combat-related mechanics matter more on higher difficulties and genre veterans might find the default difficulty too easy to make them relevant and would be better served by Hard Mode." Obviously it's also fine to discuss your experience with the game - to say that you found the default difficulty too easy and disliked that this meant a lot of the mechanics could be ignored and think you'd have a better time playing on Hard - but that's not quite what you said. You said the difficulty was too easy and this is bad because it means a lot of the mechanics can be ignored and thus you are more reluctant to recommend the game. You talked about your own experience with the game, but mostly left yourself out of it - instead phrasing it like you were talking about things that would be true of your entire audience, presenting it as consumer advice. By including but not acknowledging assumptions about the player's skill level and what they want to get out of the game, you send the message that other players' experience and preferences don't matter. This is going to make some of those players feel disrespected and from there it's a short road to those players yelling at you for not being objective enough (which isn't quite the real problem). Again, I'm not, like, mad about this video or anything. But I think this is a nice tight example of something to keep an eye on in your mainline videos. It's fine to talk about your experience, and it's fine to talk about elements of the game's design that will affect all players, but maybe try to avoid doing the first using the language of the second. I hope you enjoyed my unsolicited advice. :)
Doctor Professor
2019-12-04 18:07:16 +0000 UTCIt killed me to see so people compared Jedi Fallen Order to so many other games except God of War, it really reminded me of that game except being less polish and glitchy with a less focused combat/story (seriously, most of your move set is tied to you force gage that rapidly depletes, limiting you combat freedom) Don’t get me wrong, I really REALLY liked Jedi Fallen Order and I’ll definitely play it again. My respect to Respawn grew a heck of a lot more after seeing how much they accomplished from a genera they are not that used to. And Sony usually gives their developers more time to make their games more polished while EA demands their game to be released in a specific time no matter how unpolished it is. I just wished Respawn had a better publisher so they can let their wings spread wider, but someone gotta pay the bills and EA own the listens for Star Wars for now ... :/
N_11
2019-12-01 06:43:43 +0000 UTC
