The only way to protect children on the internet is to not allow children on the internet. There is no other way to solve this problem. Parents these days treat the internet like a daycare and when a child is allowed unmonitored access to the internet, bad things are likely to happen. I don’t want government regulation and business to take over the duties that a parent has in raising their children. It is the parents responsibility, not the business’ and not the government’s.

You might convince a few parents to not allow their kids to play Roblox (or any omline game, actually) with an M rating, but most parents just don’t care. Look how many parents buy their children video games like Grand Theft Auto or Dead By Daylight, games that are rated M, without the parents ever even considering the rating or the content of the game not being suitable for children? This has been happening ever since video games began, either due to ignorance or negligence. Changing the rating wouldn’t be nearly as big as the media presence the game has already had due to literal accusation/lawsuits about child abuse. If that media coverage isn’t enough to make any meaningful change to the number of children on the platform then I have no idea what you think will.

An M rating isn’t going to change any visibility on any platform either, unless that platform has data that confirms the age of the user that created the account. Which is horrendously bad. Unless every online game with user generated content or online messaging is instantly rated AO, which is a ridiculously unrealistic ask, store visibility isn’t going to change.

No, software platforms should not be held accountable for the content their users generate. If this was the case, internet service providers could be prosecuted just because nefarious actors used it to plan or commit crime. And then of course entire platforms like Discord, Whatsapp, Reddit, Lemmy, Skype, Facebook, Email providers, etc. would also be included in that. A ridiculous conga line of scapegoats where all of the fault should be on the user that generated the nefarious content. Platforms should certainly do what they can to mitigate criminal activity, of course, but they are not to blame when someone misuses an aspect of their software that isn’t there specifically for nefarious purposes. This is like saying you are party/accessory to a crime just because criminals committing a crime stepped onto your property while they were running away from the scene/police.

Well, the problem is that if its rating changes, the game will be rated based on online content that is not actually part of the content of the game. AFAIK, it would be the first instance ever of this happening. Like if Animal Crossing became rated M because of user generated content like shirt patterns showing something inappropriate.

Its not really the game’s “fault” that user generated content is causing a problem, so changing the rating of the game wouldn’t really change anything.

Plus, who even follows ratings anymore? We used to in the 90s, but children have been playing M rated games for a long time. I don’t see how this is going to do literally anything. Unless you are going to demand age verification to get the game, which I think is a horrendous trade off. Change the rating of a game which is known to have a problem with grooming in DMs in exchange for being forced to present identification to buy or play video games?

You think a coop multiplayer Assassins Creed would have been good? From the people that dropped AC Shadows?

Anything will get less fun the more often you do it. This is more of an issue when a genre becomes popular and everyone tries to capitalize on this.

To be fair, the character designers for Highguard cooked way harder than the character designers for Concord.

Highguard’s roster has good color separation, decent color palette, and strong silhouette design, making the character designs more appealing.

Concord had issue with each of these. Poor color palette, sometimes non-existent color separation, and silhouettes that were decent on some characters but too similar between other chracters. Concord’s character designers also mistook being able to use texture variation in place of color separation, and that only really works very close up, as far away the texture goes away and its just a fast blob of the same colored pixels. Unfortunately, Concord’s characters were very unappealing, and they required entire redesigns to correct them. Essentially, it was too much work to try to recover, and would have made more sense to completely start over.

Highguard is a lot better off then Concord, even if it needs more work to improve. And I doubt we will ever see as monumental a disaster as Concord ever again.

Such a shame this is in Nintendo jail.

720p 30fps?

Probably a result of living in a highly judgmental global society that would rather form an immediate opinion, even if it is objectively wrong, than spend the time to actually investigate what the facts about something are.

As an example, some people say that any person named in my comment should immediately be jailed. I feel this is a wrong opinion, because any person can be named in a conversation that they aren’t party to. I could, for example, start talking about Mr. Rogers, and he is technically named in my comment. But some people say that the name just being in my comment is enough “evidence” to jail him forever. Rather than spending the time it would take to realize I was only saying “I liked Mr. Rogers’ show on TV,” they want an immediate resolution despite however wrong or inaccurate it would be.

Investigation and research matters, and we live in a global society that villifies this ideology in favor of forming immediate and often wrong opinions about things they spend almost no time actually investigating.

I mean, I remember a time where you were expected to not be able to win a game in a single sitting, and in fact, you might not get all the information about a game in the actual game. We had to read manuals for tutorials, maps, and story exposition. Try releasing a game nowadays that does that and you’re going to get slapped with a 1/10 because people nowadays have less patience than a goldfish.

Personally, I primarily blame legacy news outlets and social media for this. But I digress.

Well I suppose thats kinda my point. The headline here is really bad. I understand what they are trying to get at, but they chose to word it pretty poorly.

I love both (personally like Quake 2 better) and consider Quake 2 to be “Quake 1 again.”

Though the visual tone of the game changed, it was still a fast paced action shooter with an identity that was different enough from Doom to be called “just Doom again.” Many improvements were made, but at its core it still felt like Quake. It didn’t feel like I was suddenly playing Mario, or even another shooter at the time like Turok, Heretic/Hexen, or GoldenEye.

I guess I am trying to say I understand what the headline is trying to say, but it doesn’t really do that good of a job.

IMO, a good sequel doesnt have to change too much to be good, and is usually close enough to be called “more of the same.”.

A good sequel is good because of its similarities to the first. Otherwise you end up with Zelda 2, which is widely regarded as the worst of the Zelda games because it changed so much (outside of a small but very vocal minority that liked it). Many movie sequels also try to change too much and end up suffering because of it. Return to Oz was an interesting movie, but I wouldn’t ever call it as good as the original. Aliens and Terminator 2 are both similar enough to their respective originals while still having minor tweaks that led to a good follow up.

So in the sense of a sequel, Overwatch 2 isn’t the worst, but I think it changed too much from the original and suffers because of it. And Blizzards decision to overwrite the original obviously plays a big part in many people’s dislike of the game.

Isnt every sequel “just the previous thing again?”

Steam didn’t do that. Even Super Nintendo cartridges tried to claim in the Terms and Conditions that you legally didn’t own the copy you paid for. It was never contested, and thus we have the current software ownership debacle.

Because Valve has more money that someone winning a lawsuit can take from.

The combat doesn’t suck. Morrowinds combat is good, you just don’t understand how it works when you are new to the game.

The weapon swing animation tells the game to roll Attack dice, just like in a Table Talk RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. Then, if your Attack Roll (with modifiers like current fatigue, weapon skill, etc) beats the enemy’s Armor Class (with modifiers like their current fatigue and enchantments, etc), its a hit. Otherwise, its a miss.

The one thing Morrowind could have done better with combat is communicating the feedback to the player better. Because the game can get the result of the roll immediately, it can then change what animation plays back to the player, so rather than always playing back the same weapon swing animation regardless of result, it should instead choose different animations based on the result. Missed? Play an animatiom that looks like the player missed. Hit? Play an animation that looks like a hit. Hit but damage was blocked? You get the idea.

Perhaps it would be helpful if the game displayed a UI dice result to better communicate this, who knows. I like the game better without floating damage numbers, but they could be helpful to reduce frustration of new players that don’t understand how the game works.

Well according to Frank O’connor, a non-zero number of them hate Halo. Its why they were hired. If I had to guess, from the way they have mistreated the franchise, its more than 60% of them at the least.

Investors are not required to form an indie studio. They are not required to build a fun game that makes a lot of money. Indie studios do not require massive injections of cash. Most indie studios are formed on what is available to the team collectively. It isn’t something that is easy, it takes effort, but it is not impossible. Most indie studios are initially formed with like, less than $20k USD in total investment. Many are just one guy with a budget of $0.

It is more likely that the amount of money that an investor would realistically need to give is considered too small to be worth the PR, but too big to just give away in a whim. Enough that one or multiple studio members could easily take out a personal load to invest into the studio without needing a private investor.

Now, if those people are demanding multiple big six+ figure investments, then they aren’t trying to form an indie studio, they’re trying to form a AAA studio that is publisher independant. Which is an unreasonable ask.

343 has been ruining Halo ever since they were formed, it goes beyond Infinite.

Sounds like a massive opportunity to form a lot of new indie studios that isn’t happening. Or people aren’t announcing it.

I mean, they haven’t released any console exclusives, making all their games available on the competition console, AND they increased prices.

I would never believe if they didn’t say they were doing it on purpose to manipulate market data. Probably to try to push the idea of a cloud subscription-only, disk driveless, hard diskless plastic box.