Category Archives: Commentary
Procedural Dilemma
One of the promises of procedural generation in gaming is that each experience will be unique, because it was randomly generated. The irony is that the opposite is almost always the case, as designers seem to lack the courage to commit. Or perhaps they recognize that true randomness makes for bad gameplay experiences and thus put in guardrails that render the “procedural” bits moot.
Both Starfield and No Man’s Sky feature procedurally generated planets with randomized terrain, resources, flora, and fauna. Both games allow you to land anywhere on a given planet. But neither1 game allows there to be nothing on it. There are desolate moons with no atmosphere, yes, but in both games there will be some Point of Interest (PoI) within 2 km of your landing location in any direction. Sometimes several. And the real kicker is that there are always more PoIs everywhere you look.
There is not one inch of the universe in these games that doesn’t already have monuments or outposts on it, and the ludonarrative dissonance of that fact is never resolved.
The dilemma is that true procedural generation probably leads to even worse outcomes.
Imagine that the next eight planets you land on have zero PoIs. No quest markers, no resources of note, no outposts, no nothing. How interested are you in landing on a ninth planet? Okay, but imagine you can use a scanner from orbit to determine there are no PoIs or whatever. So… the first eight planet scans come up with nothing, are you scanning the ninth planet? At some point players are going to want some indication of where the gameplay is located, so they know where to point their ship. Fine, scanners indicate one planet in this system has two “anomalies.” Great, let’s go check it out.
But hold up… what was the point of procedural generation in that scenario? There isn’t much of a practical difference between hand-crafted planets and procedurally-generated-as-interesting planets surrounded of hundreds of lifeless ones. Well, other than the fact that those random PoIs in the latter case better be damn interesting lest players get bored and bounce off your game due to bad RNG.
Minecraft comes up as an example of procedural generation done right, and I largely agree. However, it is “one world” and you are not expected to hop from one map to the next. The closest space game to resolve the dilemma for me has been Starbound + Frackin’ Universe mod – some planets had “dungeon” PoIs and/or NPCs and many did not. Each star system has at least one space station though, so it’s not completely random, but it’s very possible to, for example, land on a bunch of Eden planets or whatever and not find an exact configuration that you want for a base.
As I mentioned more than ten years ago (!!), procedural generation is the solution to exactly one problem: metagaming. If you don’t want a Youtube video detailing how to “get OP within the first 10 minutes of playing” your game, you need to randomize stuff. But a decade later, I think game designers have yet to fully complete the horseshoe of leaning all the way into procedural generation until you come right back around to hopping from a few hand-crafted planets and ignoring the vast reaches of uninteresting space.
- NMS may have actually introduced truly lifeless planets with no POIs in one of its updates. They are not especially common, however, as one would otherwise expect in a galaxy. ↩︎
Space Combat Sucks
I have been playing Starfield exclusively for a week now, and part of that time has been spent in a spaceship fighting other spaceships. Whenever I am performing this task in any space game though, I ask myself: has this ever been fun? And I mean literally fun, not “it’s fun to be in an X-Wing because I like Star Wars.” Because I don’t think I have ever enjoyed space combat in any game.
Here is every space combat: You see one or more red triangles 2 km away. The triangles approach and lasers/plasma/whatever starts coming your way. Once a circle appears, you left-click the circle and keep it pressed down. Then you look at their shields and your shields to determine which will run out first. If it’s them, don’t move – just be a space turret. If it’s you, fly towards them and get a few seconds reprieve while both of you pivot to try and get “behind” the other. Repeat or die.
The funny thing is that I feel space combat sucks… for all the right reasons. Space is empty. There are usually no ship-sized pillars to hide behind, and many space games do not feature bullet-time, VATS, or other special powers that would make you be any different than simply a turret. And it’s easy to imagine “real” space combat maneuvering being made pointless by AI-driven targeting systems, lasers that literally deal damage at light speed, and limitations based on the physiology of the human crew. For example, we can imagine a pilotless drone ship being able to wildly spin around shooting in every direction, but not with a person at the helm.
Incidentally, I consider games not providing a lore-based excuse as for why every space battle isn’t just millions of tiny drones blasting each other out of the sky as extremely lazy. We have faster-than-light travel, we usually have AI companions, but apparently fixed-wing aircraft piloted by meatbags is the best we can do for taking down capital ships? Give me a break.
I do feel like Everspace 2 was the closest space combat has been fun for me, although they do “cheat” at bit. Specifically, there are a ton of special powers, including the ability to warp forward X amount of distance, and every combat features copious amounts of ship-sized pillars in the form of asteroids or derelict ships. Plus there were different “classes” of ships, one of which was essentially a carrier from StarCraft in that you spawned drones and let them do most of the fighting while you hid behind cover. Another ship class was basically an sniper assassin, wherein you used cloaking fields to escape and get into a position to fire a long-ranged weapon at your foes. So, yeah, actually Everspace 2 had fun space combat… but at a certain point, is that not basically a cover-based shooter with extra steps?
I will give a special shout-out to No Man’s Sky though. It is very much in the “space turret” combat category, but it does feel better flying around in space than most other games. Plus, unlike nearly every other game, you can seamlessly go from space into a planet’s atmosphere – with bogies still on your tail! – and vice versa.
If there are other actually good space combat games out there, let me know what they are.
The Early Starfield Reviews Are In
To be clear, I have not played Starfield – the Game Pass version is not out yet. However, there is a Reddit megathread with many of the top review sites linked. Verdict? Mostly good. Ish. A fewer big outlets like GameSpot, PC Gamer, and IGN have given it 7/10 scores though.
One common complaint about the game is the disjointedness of fast travel. There are 1,000 planets to land on in the game, but the actual landing bit is a cut-scene and/or menu prompt.
At first, this seemed like a silly complaint to me, especially when people compared it to No Man’s Sky. Yes, there is an element of fidelity to the simulation in NMS when you fly towards a planet, break through the atmosphere, and then choose to land literally wherever. But that is something they have to incorporate because the fundamental gameplay is so repetitive and shallow. If you could just instantly warp to a Point of Interest, you would “consume” everything it had to offer within 30 seconds and then be done with all the, e.g. language unlocks in an afternoon. Heading back out into space feels good, yes, but its function is padding.
The criticism harder to shake off is when the reviewers point out how segmented exploration gets vis-a-vis fast travel. You may have seen this Skyrim meme before:
That is absolutely something that happened to me while playing Skyrim. Or the times you are just wandering around and stumble across a faction fight, or bandit camp, or whatever else. There are bandit camps in Starfield, and (presumably) faction fights, and other similar events. But the nature of the game would appear to make these things less organic. They just appear on the planet menu. And so I can see how that could become an issue with some people, and possibly myself.
That said… we’ll see. I have always been a proponent of flying in MMOs despite that encouraging the exact behavior I was describing, e.g. drop in and drop out gameplay. I don’t necessarily feel the need for the NMS flying around if the destinations and Points of Interest are themselves are a worthy goal. And if planet exploration is just the equivalent of driving around with the Mako in Mass Effect, we can… just not do that.
Again, time will tell. I have been looking forward to Starfield for a long time and I love sci-fi as a setting and Bethesda games in general. I’m not quite sure why they felt the need to add 1000 planets though.
Asset Flip
One of the games I was looking forward to during the previous Steam sale was one called Grand Emprise: Time Travel Survival. The trailer was amazing, the premise novel, the gameplay was survival-crafting, it had it all! So, imagine my dismay when I read this review:
You can read the full review yourself, but the gist is that the one-person “dev” downloaded a bunch of Unreal marketplace assets and just dumped them as-is into his game. These environmental assets have demo areas already built, along with tools to customize that area or create new ones, but apparently the dev just used the demo areas. Other reviews point out that the dev has a very cynical marketing mindset wherein he publishes a lot of similar asset flips in Steam trying to determine how to generate traffic (and revenue) using as little effort as possible.
This is further supported by the fact that “Karagon (Survival Robot Riding FPS)” – yes, that’s the actual name – was another indie title this dev released three months ago. I had been looking forward to Karagon too, as a sort of ARK substitute to hold me over until the remaster/sequel got released. The reviews further reinforce the notion that the dev swoops in, dumps a game with recycled assets, and swoops away with whatever cash wasn’t refunded.
The concern about asset flips is not limited to this one specific dude, of course. In my last post, I was talking about Craftopia and all the cool things (and a lot of jank) going on there. What I had not realized was that the devs of Craftopia are the same ones as the upcoming Palworld. If you haven’t seen the amazing trailer for Palworld, take a quick peek now, because it’s worth it. Big publishers can have multiple teams working on different products, but something tells me that that isn’t exactly the case here. In PocketPair’s defense, Palworld is slated for an Early Access release January 2024 and Craftopia has a roadmap that ends in September of this year.
In PocketPair’s non-defense though, their latest trailer showed this area for a split-second:
Is it exact? No. I suppose there are only so many different ways you can construct a stone bridge. And, you know, if you need to put out a trailer for an alpha game to generate buzz, you may as well use whatever you have laying around in any case. That said, the shenanigans with Grand Emprise have made me a bit sensitive to this situation. Was Craftopia’s “Seamless Update” really intended to enhance the game? Or did they want to beta-test their Palworld alpha?
There is potentially a conversation to be had as to whether asset flips are bad at all. Things like microtransactions and DLC put the monetary side of the industry front and center, but it is easy to forget that these things that bring us joy are a product being sold. Therefore it is a bit presumptuous of me to characterize someone as being lazy and cynical when that can technically describe all capitalistic aspects of product development. I’d very much prefer devs to have a passion for the game they are making, but as long as it’s fun, who cares? There are apparently many people who played Grand Emprise and had fun with it.
…yeah, no, can’t do it.
I try to have at least one paragraph where I take the opposite side of the argument just to see if there is something I’m missing, but I don’t think so in this case. Asset flips are shitty and it’s especially frustrating to be a fan of the survival genre when it’s apparently ground zero for this chicanery. We are indeed deep in this bizarro world in which even “completed” games feel like abandonware, but Grand Emprise is a whole other level of nihilism.
I suppose we as gamers are not “owed” the same level of passion as ConcernedApe (Stardew Valley) or the people behind Terraria, but it’s still just sad. We become invested in these gaming experiences in a way that we don’t for other products. So, to me, exploiting that investment oftentimes diminishes my very capacity to be invested in things in the future. That is… just restating the definition of being jaded, but the actual diminishment feels much more personal somehow.
Oh well. Caveat emptor and all that.
7 Days to Die, Again
7 Days to Die (7DTD) received a new patch a few weeks ago. So I had to boot it up.
If you haven’t heard of it, or read any of my posts, 7DTD is a zombie survival-crafting game that has been in an alpha state for almost 10 years. It has survived this long because A) it’s a fun, more realistic zombie Minecraft, and B) it continues to receive updates, albeit on a more yearly cadence. I came in around Alpha 15 or so, and this most recent release is Alpha 21. Supposedly the game will go gold with Alpha 23, but the dev team never had anyone with project management skills, and it kind of shows.
Case in point: the devs have spent a majority of A21 overhauling the leveling system and mucking with the early game. Again. For the 3rd/4th Alpha in a row. When I started playing, the skill system was a “learn by doing” sort of Oblivion system, wherein you crafted hundreds of stone axes to increase the potency of future stone axes. Then they moved towards a Skill Point system, so you needed to focus on leveling up and assigning points into Skills that improved your crafting ability. With A21, you now need to find and consume skill magazines in order to level each of dozens and dozens of skills. The Skill Points are still there, but are more focused on 10% (etc) bonuses, although you will find more corresponding skill magazines by spending points in specific areas, e.g. Spears, Shotguns, etc.
Are these changes bad? Yes and no.
In principle, I am fine with devs trying to figure out their preferred method of player progression. This is what Alpha states are supposed to be about, after all. The problem with the Fun Police Pimps (their actual studio name) is that they are almost actively hostile to the way most people play their game. Over the years, the Minecraft elements have been nerfed into oblivion because they didn’t like players just basically digging into the ground and smelting iron and crafting all corresponding items (guns, etc). So, they nerfed the XP gains from digging and tied blueprints to either levels or loot (Skill books). When players still Minecrafted their way to castles, the devs started adding things like “gun parts” as uncraftable items you had to loot. Which, fine, whatever, but that also leads to ridiculous situations like how you need “baseball bat parts” to make a wooden bat, but can engineer a working gyrocopter out of scrap metal just fine.
Meanwhile, over the years the devs started adding “dungeon” Points of Interest (PoIs) into the game. Whereas existing homes and shops were set up in a logical manner, these new PoIs were designed around players going along set pathways and encountering zombies in scripted ways, with extra loot at the end. These are cool… the first time you encounter them. Unfortunately, the devs has since turned every PoI into a dungeon, making looting a bit of a slog. Until/unless you have memorized where the main loot in located and can just break through doors/walls/ceilings to bypass everything.
Meanwhile meanwhile, the devs have also been tweaking zombie AI over the years to counteract players. The eponymous 7 Days horde is a bunch of zombies who attack at a sprint, always knowing your exact location. When I started playing, they couldn’t dig straight down, so if you found or built a bunker, you were basically immune. Clearly, that was a bit too easy. Zombies were then allowed to dig, making underground bases problematic. Players then started just driving around all horde night on motorcycles, so devs made zombie vultures move at 300% speed when you’re in a vehicle. People then started making zombie mazes. Devs wildly overcorrected and gave all zombies perfect omniscience as to the block HP of everything between you and them, so that they make a direct beeline towards the weakest part of your base. Not only was this nonsensical – how does a zombie know this concrete block has 495 HP instead of that one? – but it invalided all “real-world” defense strategies like installing spiked walls everywhere. Players then made zombie obstacle courses that end in impossible-for-AI jumps, so the devs reduced zombie fall damage and made them “rage” a bit, attacking any nearby blocks (e.g. support pillars).
Oh, and new to A21: glass jars and tin cups have been removed from the game. The stated goal was to make water a more important concern in the early game, as otherwise you could craft/find tons of containers, fill them up at a nearby lake, and boil your way to eliminate thirst. I mean… sigh. Maybe being able to craft glass jars in a Forge with just sand is a bit much. But that just makes bodies of water useless, throwing out another element of rational post-apocalypsing in favor of abstract game design. Instead, we must imagine you drinking bottles of water and throwing the container away, while you desperately collect enough coins to purchase a Water Filter from vendors, which you use to craft Dew Collectors, which generously grant you 3 Water (containers!) per day… from the aether.
Games change over the course of Alphas, especially when they have gone on for ten years. But at a certain point, you have to question whether the devs even want to finishing make the game they started. One of the leads once admitted on the forums that if they could go back in time, they would not have allowed players to dig into the ground. Which… is kind of a big deal for a voxel-based game.
All of the changes mentioned above though make digging immaterial to begin with. There used to be a tension between looting buildings and still saving enough time to build your own base to survive horde night. Now the optimal, dev-directed course is to spam quests from vendors – oh yeah, quests were introduced a few Alphas ago – to get PoI loot + quest loot, and just camp on the roof of a bank or whatever for the hordes. The zombies will eventually tear down the building after a few weeks of hordes, but by that time you will have enough high-level loot to kill them with ease, especially after creating a little obstacle course.
The good news is that 7 Days to Die has already attracted some quality mod authors over the years that have put out some transformative overhauls. So even if the Fun Pimps continue to go all-in on making the game just a series of scripted zombie encounters, there is still hope for an experience more akin to the game it used to be. Which is more than can be said for many titles out there.
Microsoft (All But) Acquires Activision-Blizzard
The FTC has lost its injunction case against the Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard merger. Minutes later, the remaining regulatory holdout in the UK appears to be in back-room discussions with Microsoft. Although the FTC can still technically appeal the decision, in all likelihood things will be buttoned up by the time this post goes live.
I have not been following the court case itself too closely. The armchair legal experts on Reddit though suggest that the FTC’s arguments were weak, but don’t really go into convincing detail as what alternative arguments would have been stronger. On the face of it, everything seemed to hinge on Sony – who currently owns 45% of the entire console market – being negatively impacted by the merger. Considering Xbox is just 27.3%, one might surmise that the merger would actually increase competition in the console space. At least the UK’s argument was about cloud gaming… something that basically doesn’t exist, with even Google and Amazon unable to get it to work.
I am sympathetic to the argument that buying publishers and game companies is detrimental generally. There are no doubt millions of PS5 owners who probably wanted to play Starfield on their console of choice. Sort of like how I would have liked to play Ghosts of Tsushima on PC, which isn’t even considered a console by Sony/courts, but nevermind.
Perhaps it’s a bit myopic, but I’m obviously in Team Game Pass. I don’t care about Call of Duty and I doubt WoW will change, but potentially seeing Diablo 4 show up without having to spend $70 on it is a welcome surprise. No doubt the good times will come to an end at some point, especially considering the recent subscription price hikes, but it’s still worlds better (and cheaper) than the alternatives.
Will everyone come to regret this outcome 10 years from now? I kinda hope so. Because that means things are normal enough in 2033 that we can still give a shit about video games and not play Fallout 5 by walking outside our front doors.
Reddit Protests, pt 2
Almost a month ago, there were a series of protests on Reddit concerning a pivot to essentially ban all 3rd-party apps via charging a ridiculous amount for API calls. These 3rd-party apps were not just better from a user-perspective, they also made moderation easier (or even possible for blind users). However, these apps did not run ads, so the revenue (if any) Reddit received was minimal. There can be a debate as to whether the Reddit admins were “justified” in basically shutting them all down, but I think in the aggregate it is/was clear that a better approach of A) charging less, and B) giving the apps more time to adjust to changes would have cooled things down.
So, what is the status of Reddit two weeks after the implementation? Simmering to boil.
The subreddit blackouts clearly did not effect much change in of themselves. However, the admin overreaction to the blackouts – mainly in the form of threats and disparagement of mods – has emboldened said mods into new forms of malicious compliance. Seriously though, the Reddit CEO went on NBC and said this:
If you’re a politician or a business owner, you are accountable to your constituents. So a politician needs to be elected, and a business owner can be fired by its shareholders. And I think, on Reddit, the analogy is closer to the landed gentry: The people who get there first get to stay there and pass it down to their descendants, and that is not democratic.
“Landed gentry.” It is difficult to imagine a bigger slap in the face from someone who gets paid for what he does (spez) despite producing zero content, to all the unpaid (!!) mods who spend donate dozens/hundreds of hours of their time to ensure that subreddits aren’t just filled with trolls, hate-speech, and/or porn. According to this article, Reddit mods are (very conservatively) doing work worth $3.4 million per year. But, sure, they are all easily replaceable via “democratic processes.” Like… how?
The new front in the guerrilla protests is making subreddits NSFW. The notion is that by changing the classification to NSFW, Reddit will no longer be able to monetize that subreddit due to advertisers not wanting their product ad displayed next to something graphic. I have heard a few different arguments that this doesn’t actually work, e.g. ads are still displayed, but the reaction from the admins clearly suggests otherwise.
The first step was made by the mods of /r/interestingasfuck who basically all-but-encouraged their users to submit porn. Which they did. While I don’t believe it was a default subreddit, it does have 11.2 million subscribers, so what ended up happening was a flood of literal porn started appearing on peoples’ homepages. The Reddit admins quickly removed all the mods from the subreddit and essentially archived the whole place; there has not been a single new post there in 18 days. Presumably new mods will be installed via “democratic processes” at some point, but who knows when.
Other major subreddits are taking less explicit, but still hilarious routes. /r/Pics is default sub with over 30 million subscribers, for example, and the mods changed the subreddit rules such that “All posts must feature John Oliver.” This was done in a democratic fashion, just like the admins doubtlessly wanted. The mods also changed the overall subreddit category to NSFW with the justification that what constitutes NSFW by the admins themselves applies to the subreddit (profanity, potentially “offensive content”). Unfortunately, the admins have threatened the mods with removal for changing the subreddit category against its historical norms. While the mods are debating their next moves, they have let everyone know that all /r/Pics users can now label any post as NSFW.
True to their name, the mods on /r/madlads took it a step further and basically gave every one of their 1.7 million subscribers mod privileges. Now everyone is landed gentry! /r/politicalhumor did it too with their 1.6 million subscribers, but it’s less funny.
The admin threats do appear to be resonating in some ironic circles. For example, /r/NonCredibleDefense flipped back to SFW despite the purpose of the subreddit being military memes that frequently display graphic blood/gore. /r/DnDMemes mods also blinked, despite demanding an Intimidation check from spez. There will still be goblin smut and related porn allowed there, but apparently all is well as long as the individual posts are labeled NSFW.
The fundamental issue is that mods are not (easily) replaceable, but neither are the communities. Back in the day, there was a lot of concern that when /r/FatPeopleHate or /r/the_donald got banned, there would be “contagion” insofar as the users would migrate and infiltrate other subs. This basically didn’t happen – deplatforming works.
A 2017 study published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, examining “the causal effects of the ban on both participating users and affected communities,” found that “the ban served a number of useful purposes for Reddit” and that “Users participating in the banned subreddits either left the site or (for those who remained) dramatically reduced their hate speech usage. Communities that inherited the displaced activity of these users did not suffer from an increase in hate speech.”[12]
When you zoom into a micro level with just your own life, it makes sense. How you act with one set of friends is typically different than how you would act with a spouse, your extended family, work friends, etc. Everyone has masks for every occasion. So, I do not begrudge the mods who blinked in the face of potential subreddit annihilation, as there are often times nowhere else to go.
As with Phase 1 of the protests, we will have to see where things end up with Phase 2. Is it another flash in the pan, to be smothered by the wet towel of admin threats? Or will things continue to boil under the surface, with mods “laying flat” and/or “quiet quitting” and/or “acting their wage”? And what of the meat of Reddit, the user-submitted content? Will people get over it and move on to the next meme, or have things been permanently overcooked?
I myself have deigned to download the official Reddit app so as to continue consuming memes and information away from my PC. Amusingly the 3rd-party Reddit is Fun app still technically works, but I cannot log in, so all I see is the myriad of default subreddits and popular posts with no customization possible. Which means it is functionally useless to me. I have been following Wilhelm’s reviews of other social media sites with interest though, to see if any might possibly be an overall Reddit replacement despite not really being advertised as such. Discord sure as shit ain’t it, after all.
But as mentioned earlier, it’s likely that no replacement is possible. Both Reddit and Twitter are apparently not profitable as-is, so who in the world is going to try (and succeed) at making a replacement? I mean, other than the half-dozen venture capitalists doing exactly that. I have the various subreddits I enjoy but I am not married to them to the same degree that mods might be. If something is better, I will go there today. Unfortunately, it’s looking more like “you get what you get, and you won’t throw (much of) a fit.”
Mid-Year Game Plans
Finally, with the Summer Steam Sale, my wait is over:
Of course, the best part of seasonal Steam sales these days is that it leads to 3rd party storefronts offering even steeper discounts. For example, I won’t be purchasing Elden Ring on Steam for $41.99, I will be purchasing it from DLGamer for $36.99. Using 3rd-parties has bit me in the past, but “Steam Activation” are the magic words. Well, provided there aren’t delays in getting the keys. The only real downside is losing the ability to refund the game within the 2-hour window, but I’m thinking that won’t be relevant here. Probably.
Aside from Elden Ring, there are a number of items on my wishlist that are on sale. Unfortunately, I cannot trust any of them to not just magically show up on Game Pass by the time I get around to playing them. For example, My Time at Sandrock is currently 20% off with an estimated 1.0 release date of September. The devs have stated that once the game is out of Early Access, it will be more expensive. I really enjoyed My Time at Portia to the tune of 107 hours. But here’s the thing: My Time at Portia is already on Game Pass right now. Is Sandrock currently listed as an upcoming Game Pass title? No. Does the original game being there make it more likely that sequel will be too? I’d like to think so.
It helps/hurts that Game Pass is becoming the new hotness for survival/crafting games, including Early Access ones. Coral Island, Grounded, Little Witch in the Woods, Homestead Arcana, Farworld Pioneers (ugh), Stardew Valley, 7 Days to Die, Disney Dreamlight Valley, No Man’s Sky. Story of Seasons: Mineral Town just hit the service too. Meanwhile, my Steam wishlist has:
- My Time at Sandrock (EA)
- Stoneshard (EA)
- Scrap Mechanic (EA)
- Travellers Rest (EA)
- Roots of Pacha
- Sons of the Forest (EA)
- One Lonely Outpost (EA)
- Forever Skies (EA)
- Survival: Fountain of Youth (EA)
- Voidtrain (EA)
- Life Not Supported (EA)
Which of those will land on Game Pass? Or in a Humble Bundle, for that matter? Who knows.
What I do know is that it will be difficult to find time to play all of the things anyhow. Just look at this:
- Hearthstone: Titans (Expansion) – August 1st
- Baldur’s Gate 3 – August 3rd
- Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure (expansion) – August 22nd
- ARK: Survival Ascended (Remaster) – August 2023
- Starfield – September 6th
- Lies of P – September 19th
- My Time at Sandrock – September 26th
- Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty (DLC) – September 26th
Needless to say, August and September are a little stacked. It was even more stacked on the September side until the devs for Baldur’s Gate 3 decided to release it a month early to avoid competition with Starfield. Of course, I do not necessarily plan to purchase all of these games… huh. Actually, both Starfield and Lies of P will be on Game Pass, and I’m eagerly anticipating the Cyberpunk DLC. And Hearthstone is Hearthstone. And GW2 is GW2.
So, uh, yeah. Maybe I will just wait on any more deal purchases until the Winter Sale.
In An Age 
Murder Hobo
Oct 3
Posted by Azuriel
In Starfield, I roleplay exclusively as a murder hobo. Oddly enough, Wikipedia has an entry on that:
murderhobo (plural murderhobos or murderhoboes)
I was reflecting on this the other day. I found myself on a planet and inexplicably, irrationally, exploring. Everything is procedurally generated, there is zero environmental storytelling, and the payout for fully scanning a planet is not even remotely worth your time. But… I do it occasionally. So there I was, walking towards a Point of Interest, and then a ship landed nearby. These are technically a random encounter, but the ships often leave the area stupidly quickly, making you wonder why Bethesda bothered programming them in.
So, I zip over there fast as I can, expecting some pirate action. Instead, they were neutral NPCs. I talk to them, they say they are low on supplies, and ask for some water. I give it to them. Then I check out their ship. Lockpick my way past the hatch, empty their cargo hold of cash and valuables, and then… look at the captain chair. Then I sit in the captain chair and blast off into space. A few menu screens later, I land the ship in New Atlantis, register it, sell it, and then fast travel back to the planet I was exploring originally.
In the abstract, I think this sequence was literally the most psychopathic thing I have ever done in a (non-Rimworld) videogame. This small group of people landed on an uncharted planet, desperate for supplies. A random passerby graciously gave them water. Then, moments later, they had to watch as their only means of survival is stolen out from under them. They are literally stranded on a desolate planet with no breathable atmosphere, no shelter, no hope.
Also, no consequences.
Now, obviously that is the problem here. I do not usually murder hobo my way through Baldur’s Gate 3, or Cyberpunk 2077, or Mass Effect, or really most other games. I was thinking about that though: why don’t I? What is enough of a consequence to augment my behavior? Some kind of automatic karma penalty like in Fallout? That often led to some arguably more murder hobo-ish behavior insofar that stealing from “bad guy” was apparently worse than just killing him and taking the now-ownerless items. Companion dissatisfaction? That can certainly be annoying, especially when you want to be a bit more “Renegade” in your dialog choices. Often though, this can be gamed by simply selecting different companions, doing what you wanted to do, and then swapping them back in once you’re done.
Honestly, I think it comes down to the possibility of accountability. I do not know every permutation to your choices in Baldur’s Gate 3, but I have read enough posts and interviews to know that characters you interact with in Act 1 may or may not show up in Act 2 and Act 3 based on your actions. That leads one to a different posture when it comes to negotiations; the more people survive, the more possible quest givers exist for the late-game. This requires a certain level of detail though, which is not always possible in a more sandbox-lite environment.
One method I would like to see though, is almost a metagame appeal to empathy. Every named NPC in Starfield carries 800-1200 credits, which is kind of a lot for how easy it is to pickpocket them. If you lose the roll, you get caught, and have to Quick Load your way out of consequence. But if you succeed… nothing happens other than credits in your pocket. What if NPCs had dialog lamenting their loss of credits? About how they won’t be able to make rent payments? What if they asked other NPCs (or even you) for help looking for a lost Credstick or whatever? What if that group of now-stranded civilians put out a mayday asking for rescue? Or really just a personal appeal to return their ship?
Sometimes being a murder hobo is its own reward, but often I think it is just a natural consequence of game incentives/lack of disincentives combined with a failure of immersion. If NPCs don’t matter, it doesn’t matter what happens to them. You can make them matter using elaborate penalty systems or story hooks, or make them matter by making them “real” enough to care about.
Or maybe this is all just me, and I have a bit of the Dark Urge IRL.
Posted in Commentary, Philosophy
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Tags: Consequences, Immersion, Murder Hobo, NPC, Starfield