Damn this is exciting. I really enjoyed “the lab” which isn’t portal but portal adjacent because of the characters etc. and was hoping valve would just do them themselves but I know that’s a big ask
I don’t know you, or what you know of the game. But I do know many people have preconceived notions of what the game is that are wrong.
If you haven’t tried it before, the early game is pretty tedious. And that can turn people off. Once you get a few bosses down and especially when you move into hard mode, it really opens up.
Protip: “It gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game.
It has to be good from the start.
If it isn’t and it can’t hook a player, you’ve just lost a customer, who likely just refunded the game as well.
Now personally: I like terraria from start to end. It got a bit boring in the middle. I used to not be able to play it at all because /something/ about the game really triggered my migraines. It doesn’t anymore, and I can play it.
Yep. The first few hours of a game are really important. If people tell me it gets better later I usually assume they are suffering from sunk-cost at that point. There are some games that genuinely start slow and end up really good, but it's not common.
Terraria is a 2D sandbox but with good progression built in with interesting bosses and items. The early game in these games are usually the most fun in my opinion, building up from nothing is satisfying.
I’m not trying to sell anyone on anything. I’m just giving honest information about the game to someone who has already said they don’t intend on playing it. I was addressing what is a common complaint about the game.
For context, I absolutely devoured that lackluster early game back in 2011. It’s just that as the game has gotten content over the years, it’s mostly been added to the latter half (probably like 2/3rds really) of the game. And also, games and peoples’ tastes have changed a lot since 2011 when the game came out.
So for me, today, the early game is a slog. And it’s something I’ve seen many others complain about. I understand the “it gets better” is often used to try to sell lackluster games, but I don’t think Terraria fits that bill. But the game legitimately gets better after the first few bosses for most peoples’ tastes.
I’d agree that “it gets better later” isn’t a good way to promote a game, but I dunno that a game has to be good (or at least at its best) from the start. Totally understandable if people don’t want to, or can’t invest the time into something that doesn’t grip them right away, but at least for me a slow start can be really nice, especially when a game ends up unfolding in unexpected ways later on. I can enjoy that kind of pacing, and sometimes it’s rewarding to have something start off kind of painful for one reason or another and become something much greater. At least personally I think a “weak start” can end up making the full experience better overall, as it’s kind of a part of the journey.
But of course, if you’re not enjoying it and you don’t want to continue and you want to refund it… That’s totally reasonable! A game that’s a slow burn is probably a much harder sell and not going to appeal to as broad of an audience, and I think that’s okay.
The issue is that "good" varies a lot from person to person. I like survival crafting games with an incremental tree of improvements more than boss rushes so for me it's good from the start.
I've started it so many times and it feels like I'm just mining and building houses for hours and hours, having to check some wiki to see how to trigger "the good stuff". I avoid YT "tutorials" because it's all from people who've put hundreds of hours in who assume you'll just breeze to a first boss in 20 minutes. Not knocking the game, sometimes just mining with a podcast on is relaxing, but, I dunno, it needs more oomph early on.
My kids and some friends play it all the time and I appreciate that it’s a well made, great game. I’ve watched them play it many times and enjoyed the glee emanatingfrom the players, they really do have fun.
I just can’t become immersed in that particular 2D or isometric style game. Excluding the little nightmares series and DARQ.
I think the important thing to note about Terraria is it is as much Zelda and Castlevania as it is Minecraft. That is what makes it special. A lot of the copy cats tried to do 2D Minecraft, but forgot how important the Castlevania combat was to the whole mix.
You can donate directly to Godot or FNA if you want to show support and don’t think that you’d enjoy Terraria. Personally, I love Terraria and have bought it for pretty much every system I own and everyone I know. I got interested in it after watching TotalBiscuit and Jesse Cox play it. (I can’t believe that was 12 years ago!)
There could be something to say for both donating directly to Godot and trying to support Terraria in some form because you think they’re doing good.
It depends on how activist the Terraria devs are, though. If this donation is a one-of statement from them, supporting doesn’t make as much of a statement on your part.
Just for some extra clarification as not everyone will read the article (not meant rudely), this is $100k to both Godot and FNA each, for a total of $200k, and $1k monthly to them both as well, for a total of $2k per month.
…I just want Linux to keep being used for gaming. I hope people throw some working into getting Linux distros running good on the Windows devices that seem to be coming out.
It's a huge shame that newer devices from other companies would rather half-assedly shove Windows and bog it down than to try to run their own optimized Linux distro
there was an interesting take about that on the wan show (not ms but steam). the emphasis was on steam’s value, which is unknown but actually very high
I have to imagine he has something planned (inb4 GabeN AI Overlord) for after he’s gone.
He’s a bit crazy about prepping for disaster iirc. He lives in New Zealand now and has since the Covid outbreak. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a very long document that lays out a lot of rules for if he’s gone and Steam is to continue
At that point I’ll probably too old and have lost interest in gaming anyway, so I’ll just let the next generation of gamers figure it out themselves. Kinda like boomers leaving us to deal with high property price problem because it’s no longer their concern anymore.
Yeah but just the amount of games I own on Steam already (not to mention the Steam Deck), if all that ended up getting enshittified by Microsoft it’d be like having to start over from scratch pretty much.
EGS is really the only thing remotely close to what Steam does, though.
GOG will always be an afterthought as long as they have their DRM-free policy in place. They’re super cool, but they’re a niche and will never grow beyond that without losing what makes them cool.
Origin (or whatever EA’s calling their store now) gave up pursuing third-party sales years ago. They still do it, but they clearly have no interest in actually making a go of becoming an actual competitor to Steam.
The Windows Store is terrible for a number of different reasons, even if it’s better than Microsoft’s previous attempts at getting into this space (coughGWFLcough). EGS is more likely to overtake Steam than Windows Store is to even rival EGS.
Uplay (or, again, whatever Ubisoft is calling their store these days) is like Origin - I don’t even know for sure if Ubi is doing third-party sales, but if so, it’s very much an afterthought for them.
And then everyone else just sells Steam keys. They’re not in the same market as the others, so don’t really fit into this conversation. If you’re 100% reliant on the store you’re “competing” with, you’re not competing with them.
A lot of games on Steam are DRM-free, but not (yet) on GOG. GOG isn’t an afterthought just because of their DRM-free policy, it’s also because they’re so small.
But they did allow it, unfortunately. And MS could simply argue that it already has dominance in the PC space as 96% of PC gamers are Windows users. So owning Steam is just buying 1 out of many stores (here they tout Epic, Amazon, etc).
I mean it's a bad argument but MS made a lot of bad arguments to get their way and they seemingly worked.
Activision-Blizzard-King isn’t a dominant company in any segment. You can’t say the same for steam. Regulators would have a much easier time blocking such an acquisition.
Plus, at least from my perspective, Activision-Blizzard was already bad enough that if MS made it worse, it wouldn’t affect me because they were already bad enough that I’d swore off their games. MS owning them was an improvement or at worst more of the same.
That’s absolutely not the case for Valve. They are one of the few large companies that I respect plus they are playing a big role in breaking the windows stranglehold over OSes when you like to play games.
The level of popular opposition to MS acquiring Valve would be on a whole other level than the opposition to the blizzard acquisition. It might even rival the opposition to Nvidia acquiring ARM.
The regulatory bodies hand waved actiblizzard through. Let’s not pretend anything else happened there. Microsoft can do whatever they want and no one is gonna stop them. Same as every other big company.
The only thing stopping Ms. is that valve is a privately owned company. But everyone has a price.
Yes, that is just how the American system works. The actual body here is the doj. The ftc tried to sue and was slapped back immediately. This was the ftc trying to show claws and the actual ruling body saying no, you have no power and Microsoft can do what they want.
It was a huge loss for the ftc that has been trying, and failing to fight big tech
ANY gaming, or even tech, company looking at possible acquisitions is interested in Valve. In the same way that everyone would be down to clown with Ryan Reynolds if he knocked on their door but we know it won’t happen.
Sensationalist media will grab at anything, really.
I mean, the Nintendo thing started with an email Phil Spencer replied to titled “random thought,” and the email was basically a lot of “Yeah that sounds great, but here’s why it’s not going to happen. But sure, though, it would be nice to own Nintendo, and I know a guy who’s been trading some of their stock if you wanted to maybe buy some.”
gamingonlinux.com
Oldest