Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Submissions have to be related to games
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No excessive self-promotion
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
I think this is great. Acknowledge the talent and give them an opportunity.
Maybe Sims 5 will hire the wickedwhims creator and add their skills to the next game...haha
I'm kind of surprised that The Sims doesn't have more competition.
It's been many years that the series has been kind of the only entry in the genre.
Yeah, a lot of the other classic Sim games don't have analogs either (though Sim City does), but The Sims is pretty commercially successful.
Much like Bethesda games, they take quite a lot of work to make for what is essentially a position that has been unchallenged for years. Very high risk, but only like somewhat high reward.
Like just breakdown what the Sims into its fundamental components. The characters, the fashion, the homes, the skills, the jobs, social interactions, possessions. It's a lot of work.
Like just breakdown what the Sims into its fundamental components. The characters, the fashion, the homes, the skills, the jobs, social interactions, possessions. It’s a lot of work.
That's the thing that gets me is the core life sim gameplay loop is actually pretty simple, mostly because it was originally an architecture simulator with people you could play house with and then Maxis realized playing with the people was a ton of fun so they built onto that gameplay.
Basically you just need several values which count down over game ticks for the needs, modifiers on how much it each goes up and down and then add a bunch to the value when the sim does something to satisfy the needs
Social interactions are purely plus/minus a few points with a bit of RNG and modifiers for the traits, mood, hygiene level, etc.
Careers are basically just bad quests from an RPG. Your sims happiness (is the average need level greater than or less than X) chooses whether their career performance value is increasing or decreasing per game tick while at work, skills and work style (working normally, working hard, etc.) will modify the value that's added or subtracted per tick, add in a skill check when that value reaches promotion and you have rabbit hole careers
Tons of games have structure building mechanics which I won't pretend to understand from a game engine level but I'd say that's a pretty well solved issue
Really the hard part is the graphics but if games like Minecraft, Terraria and Stardew Valley can be such hits with 8-bit inspired graphics, I think a strong core gameplay loop can outshine average Steam shovelware-grade graphics
So basically, if you want to create a Minecraft mod to play the sims, there's the recipe. Honestly if I was any good at programming I'd take a crack at it but I don't have the patience nor skill to do that at this stage
One man can only dream!
That's awesome! Elianora's mods have been basically a mandatory download for me for years because the quality is always incredible. She absolutely deserves this.
I wonder who they hired to do the facial modelling. The environments look really good but the faces look like games from 15 years ago. I really expected more from the game that Microsoft has been making so much fanfare over.
I really expected more
I'm sorry, but why? Why do people do this every time a new game comes out? This is what Bethesda does, and Microsoft isn't much better.
Every new game it's like people forget what these companies do.
You should've expected a Bethesda game.
Btw elder scrolls 6 will suck, too.
It's crazy.
Bethesda have owned id Software, the best graphics engineers in the business, for a decade. They now even have Microsoft money. This is still, somehow, the best they can do.
No it is not the best they can do. I haven't played starfield yet, but it should be obvious that no company with shareholders to whom they need to answer is ever going to do "the best they can do".
That isn't even their target, at least not overall. Their target is maximum profitability. Putting forth maximum effort for the best graphics is not going to result in max profits, so they were never going to do that.
And that's to say nothing of the fact that graphical showcases just aren't what Bethesda does in the first place. No one should have expected that. This isn't an id game.
Starfield.....doesn't suck though.
I've sunk 20 hours into it so far and it's amazing. You people just have your expectations up the ass for a company that is great at one formula and expect them to do the other when they never said they would. It's ya'lls fucking fault for expecting No Mans Sky to be the greatest fucking game of all time at release over a company that made fucking Joe Danger.
Cyberpunk 2077 I can understand more as it was made from the guys who made The Witcher 3, so feature wise I can understand the betrayal and they fucked up by lying to us. But it's still ya'lls fault for expecting it to not be buggy and broken as fuck when it was delayed 3 fucking times. The red flags were there, and you STILL bought it.
Oblivion and Skyrim have the same basic formula with little differences sprinkled in here and there mechanics wise that make it feel different, but familiar. Starfield is the same way and I fully expect ES 6 to do the same. But that's fine. I don't want anything groundbreaking. I just want Skyrim but with modern graphics, animations, different setting, and some new mechanics.
Good god you people are negative.
It’s ya’lls fucking fault for expecting No Mans Sky to be the greatest fucking game of all time at release
Yeah, having read over a bunch of comments here, a lot of the comments that are unhappy about Starfield are basically people expecting it to be like No Man's Sky, or some people who just don't like Bethesda games in general. The ones that are happy tend to be people comparing it to earlier Bethesda games that they liked.
I really like Bethesda games, so for me, that's great. But I do also get that there are people who don't like Bethesda games, and for those people, being told that they're wrong and that they should like it drives them nuts.
I think a good rule of thumb is to probably expect Starfield to be similar to earlier Bethesda games, like Skyrim and Fallout 4. If you like those games, you'll probably like Starfield. If you dislike them, you're probably going to dislike Starfield.
But trying to convince people who really like Bethesda games that they suck or to convince people who really dislike Bethesda games that they're great is kind of not likely to work well.
that's your opinion. A lot of people have a lot of fun with bethesda games...
In Fallout 4 and Skyrim, modders did ultimately put out high-poly-count heads, high-detail eyes, etc. I imagine that if tradition holds, there will be modders doing the same in Skyrim.
TBH the faces look fine for me. At least on major NPCs that have a role. All of the NPCs out in the cities are the ones that look wonky. I give it a pass though considering you'd have to be fucking staring at them immensely to actually notice.
Either way, modders will take care of it. That's the beauty of these games. Anything remotely dumb that Bethesda overlooks, (which is every game) will be fixed.
Still having a ton of fun.
Meh, being able to build your own ship like Skyrim and kerbal space progran had a baby sounds like it makes up for that but I haven't played the game so idk. Most space games are either a massive ripoff (think Star Citizen) or a major grindfest (Elite Dangerous) so it's good to see someone try to make a space game that isn't like that.
No Man's Sky and Stationeers are almost similar games that are good but in those games the space ship game mechanics and functionality just aren't there.
I've been playing it and it's a great game. I just wish they could have gotten the faces good enough for the game to showcase what the Xbox and PC are capable of. The environments even look great. They really dropped the ball considering it's Microsoft's biggest first party launch in something like 5 years.
The shipbuilding is limited in order to try and not break the game.
You can only have one cockpit, warp drive, fusion generator, and shield generator. You can't have dual core and double shielded guns with an cockpit strapped to them that obliterates anything in sight.
It is more like Fallout meets Cyberpunk 2077 in space with a complex loading screen mini game that doubles as a remote inventory, which you can spend hours customizing somewhat.
NMS's use of ships is far better, like being able to fly around from place to place instead of loading screen around. NMS's ship flying with SF's shipbuilding would have been ideal.
Hopefully modders will be able to fix the shipbuilding.
Have no real interest in playing it, but do they still do the Skyrim thing where they have like 5 wildly different voice actors, so it feels like the guards are following you from town to town?
Why do you think Bethesda is so supportive of the mod scene?
It's a job application.
A few folks who worked on Skyrim worked on Oblivion mods.
Folks who worked on Fallout made Skyrim mods.
Id software (Doom) also hired modders.
Everyone hires modders. Bioware has been hiring them since 2005. Mods are basically a portfolio.
At a recent talk at Exilecon, one of the creators of Diablo 1 and 2 said that the best thing you can do to get into the game industry is to mod, the first thing they look at is modding experience.
Not just a job application, it's basically also free training and familiarity as well.
Why do you think Bethesda is so supportive of the mod scene?
Because it creates content for their game without them having to spend money.
Think of more of a platform being sold. I can't think of any other studio that openly embraces the modding community like Bethesda does.
Not to mention Valve.
Anybody remember the Deadly Reflex Oblivion mod that Bethesda essentially based Skyrim's combat on?
Oh yeah I do. Wow that takes me back. Stamina, kicks, acrobatics, finishing animations and beheadings. That was a great mod.
The lung collapse from a piercing arrow blew my mind. The gasping and desperately grabbing at the arrow while they collapsed was so advanced.
The Skyrim animations were smoother and more polished. The Deadly Reflex mod was more gritty and badass.
Pssh, I fucking wish they based combat on that mod. Skyrim's combat is still a little too basic comparatively.
I agree with your sentiment, maybe the word I should have used was 'inspired.' The mod was definitely better than Skyrim's system imo.
In 2050, when Bethesda releases TES 7, it will be just a launcher to Creation Engine editor with half-assed models and a single empty map where modders collaborate to make the game themselves.
In 2127 with the early-access TES 8 it will be just a README file where they say that game should be ready for Christmas of 21XX, if modders won't fuck around and finish making the damn engine.
hiring modders, which is what folks have been telling bethesda to do since skyrim, is bad and lazy actually
You joke, but I think a collaborative game project like that would be interesting. Maybe not good, but I'd love to see what would happen with such a thing.
Ooooh... What if the SCP community collectively build the best damn SCP game possible? 🤤
Skyblivion is showing a lot of promise.
I think Starfield has the best lighting I have ever seen without ray tracing. The reflections in puddles of water on Neon are so good.
Better than Cyberpunk without RT? Note, I haven’t played both games, just a question
Really? I'll have to look at the puddles when I get there; I was disappointed to see that mirrors don't work.
Cool to see Bethesda being inspired by modders' work and even hiring them
It's a welcome change from when they tried to charge money for people to use Skyrim mods
Ohhh I knew there was something different about the clutter placement in Starfield! There's so much of it I catch myself triple checking areas to make sure that I didn't miss anything worth picking up.
Like your 345th plant or cup? Just me?
I gotta make sure I collect all the foam cups.
I was surprised to see all of the styrofoam still being used in the future.
It's actually all the old styrofoam that never decomposed.