Cowbee

@Cowbee@lemm.ee

This town, in fact, has more than enough room for the two of us

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Cowbee,

One of the most unjustified review bombings in recent years, IMO. The game is very much a standard Bethesda game, and is fine. Mods and DLCs are what people buy Bethesda games for, anyways.

Don’t get me wrong, Bethesda themselves are very mediocre game devs, but their specific style of game lends itself well to modding.

Starfield is just as mediocre as Skyrim and Fallout 4, everyone who made Morrowind great is gone, Bethesda games ride on the success of their modding communities.

Cowbee,

New Vegas has no technical issues if you mod it properly these days!

Cowbee, (edited )

Just finished Signalis, got the “Promise” ending. Feel pretty empty after that, it’s such a good game and is further proof that games don’t have to have incredible graphical fidelity or huge teams to be fantastic and look great.

Cowbee,

✨️enshitification✨️

Cowbee, (edited )

It’s a fantastic backlog killer. Main PC for new titles, steam deck for indies and patient gamer style games.

Cowbee,

Sure, you can play games like Cyberpunk on a Steam Deck! Absolutely true. I just prefer playing more demanding games at higher settings and framerates.

Cowbee,

Fair! Haven’t done that yet.

Cowbee,

I try to keep it to one longer game, and one shorter game at a time. Right now that’s STALKER Gamma and Signalis, with Signalis on the Steam Deck.

Speaking of, Signalis is fucking amazing, fantastic horror for anyone new to the genre or fans of Silent Hill 2.

Cowbee,

Fucking Factorio. Tried that shit years ago for 2 minutes and never touched it again.

Not because I didn’t like it, of course. I stopped because I knew if I played any longer I’d have to drop out.

Cowbee,

Yep, fucking terrifying.

Cowbee,

IP in general is a very difficult idea to support. In theory, it’s supposed to reward innovation, but in practice it results in stagnation and price gouging.

Cowbee,

I think “dated” is a terrible concept to apply to game design, despite being able to divide FPS games into pre- and post- Half-Life, boomer shooters are experiencing another boom.

However, Bethesda game design is simply “bad” in my opinion. The RPG mechanics are very surface level and uninteresting, typically an end-game character plays similarly to a beginning character but bullets hit harder or other such styles. Contrast that with games like Cyberpunk, and you unlock new ways to actually interact with combat in meaningfully unique manners.

That’s a very underdeveloped point, but it’s in the right direction I believe.

Cowbee,

Hot take: Starfield isn’t “dated,” it’s actually a much better RPG than anything they’ve made since Morrowind. However, because they can’t rely on the world building and writing of people who have either left the company or worked for a different company they acquired the IP for, Starfield has highlighted just how bad Bethesda game design and writing truly is when done in a wholly original manner.

It’s still going to be a modder paradise.

Cowbee,

It really isn’t, which is funny. It does many things far better than Skyrim or Fallout 4, such as quest design and role playing, it just can’t rely on fantastic lore written by people that either no longer work for the company or never did. Now that they are given the opportunity to be wholly original, the issues they’ve been having ever since Morrowind are shown at full force.

Cowbee,

Bethesda has been going downhill ever since Morrowind, to be fair. It’s just that with each release, the number of disgruntled people have been growing, and with Starfield its finally the majority opinion.

Cowbee,

Fallout 4 was even worse, that’s kind of a point I raise, that Bethesda has been riding the coattails of better lore. There are dumb fetch quests in every Bethesda game.

Cowbee,

You have to intentionally level up, you know that right? It’s not like you auto-level, you can beat the game at level 1.

Cowbee,

On the contrary, it’s precisely because you can level at your own needed pace, ie go off and grind if you can’t beat a part of the game, or keep going if you over-level, that makes it more enjoyable for more people.

Cowbee,

Exactly, that’s why people can set their own difficulty by leveling as they please. I’m not insinuating that choice is bad, I’m stating that the flexible system in ER accounts for player preference.

Cowbee,

The game isn’t hard to level up, there are numerous no-issue, fast grinding spots. It doesn’t take hours to level, it takes going to a quick position, swinging your weapon a few times, and then leveling up.

The lack of a difficulty option is a good thing, it prevents elitism and allows the game to be properly balanced without resorting to artificial difficulty increases like blanket damage changes.

All in all, I don’t see what your issue is. Are you arguing that ER shouldn’t have leveling at the pace the player chooses, and instead increases in level based on what area you have unlocked, or something?

Cowbee,

Yes.

Cowbee,

No problem! As a rule of thumb, just pump Vigor if you’re struggling.

Cowbee,

Yes, it prevents elitism. If you have difficulty sliders, rather than accessibility options, in a game known for difficulty, you will have endless numbers of elitists claiming only the hardest difficulty is valid.

Rather than having difficulty options, allow players to tailor the difficulty to their own preferences via leveling at their leisure.

You still haven’t explained what you actually want.

Cowbee,

You did not. “Scaling” already exists in the game. What change to scaling do you want to make? Have the content match your level, regardless of location? That has numerous issues, not the least of which being a complete removal of player choice with regards to difficulty, or the absolute removal of any sense of progression.

Playing at level 1 vs a difficulty slider is a flexible choice. If there’s a difficulty slider, unless you have literally hundreds of options, you cannot fine tune difficulty. If you automatically level, you cannot maintain your chosen difficulty and match it to what you want.

You just don’t understand game design, that’s not my problem.

Cowbee,

You threw insults first, you said I fell for the marketing, rather than acknowledging that I had a different opinion.

You still never answered what you actually want, just a vague “scaling” desire despite the game already having scaling, and there being countless types and formulas for scaling. We can’t even discuss anything if you won’t say what you think can do it better, lol.

Cowbee,

I directly asked you what you wanted. You said “scaling,” that’s nothing without specifying what you actually mean. That’s like saying “sword” would fix Elden Ring, lol.

You clearly don’t want to actually talk, just virtue signal.

Cowbee,

🎵PROPAGANDA🎵

Cowbee,

The ending of Outer Wilds legitimately made me cry, it’s a very bittersweet ending.

Cowbee,

Starfield frustrates me, because in many ways its a major step in the right direction. It has much better roleplaying mechanics than Skyrim or Fallout 4, but at the same time the lore is half-baked and the skill system is fairly weak. It has great potential, but a lot of it feels toned down and less “real” because of it. Space exploration has a lot of potential as well, but setting every objective so far apart on planets ruins exploration by filling it with monotonous procgen.

That’s why I’m fairly confident that once properly patched, and mods/DLCs are in full swing, it will probably be remembered very fondly despite the release state. It’ll pull a Cyberpunk.

Cowbee,

I would agree with you if Bethesda games haven’t always been saved by modders, rather than Beth themselves. If we had to depend on Beth to fix their own game, Skyrim would’ve been abandoned long, long, long ago, same with Fallout 4.

Cowbee,

No harm in waiting for Starfield! It will only get better, while Cyberpunk is largely complete. I loved cyberpunk, especially the DLC.

Cowbee,

Oh I’m anti-Bethesda and Bethesda practices, I’m just sure it will eventually be a great game once the community steps in and fixes it. It isn’t an excuse for Bethesda, but rather admiration for the modding community, and an example of why FOSS and a rejection of the profit motive is so good.

Cowbee,

100% I actually think Starfield has the best bones, even if it has the worst meat, so to speak, so adding meat gives it a much higher ceiling in a few years time.

Cowbee,

I think it’s fully possible to criticize Bethesda’s incomplete and highly flawed game design and praise their willingness to support the modding community with great tools at the same time.

Cowbee,

We’ll certainly see! I trust modders.

Cowbee,

The funny thing is, I think the fact that the RPG mechanics are finally better than the last game developed by Bethesda, instead of worse, highlights just how mediocre Bethesda games are.

I still think once mods and DLCs come out in full force it will be remembered more positively.

Cowbee,

Because mediocrity and popularity go hand in hand, it’s the profit motive at work. Being largely inoffensive and generally palatable is profitable.

Cowbee,

What’s good and what’s popular do not necessarily align. Removing “complicated” features for the sake of mass appeal makes the game worse, but more profitable, much of the time.

GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour (www.forbes.com)

While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.

Cowbee,

I don’t actually disagree with moving from the 60/70 USD standard, but instead I think big budget blockbuster studios should die off, and focus on making optimized, shorter, and more creative games.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • fightinggames
  • All magazines
    •