New Games Suck... Or Is It Just Me?

Anytime you're feeling down, imagine how people felt over a thousand years ago with Vikings raiding your shitty village with muddy drinking water and worm filled food, and them sticking their battleaxes up your ***.

Things ain't so bad. Even if you're feeling down, it's better to feel down with a full belly and no rampaging sava...maybe i'm speaking too soon seeing how things are going lately.

Dogma actually explained it pretty well believe it or not, (about religion but it applies to everything)

When youre small your metaphorical cup is easier to fill. You get older the cup is bigger. Takes more to fill it.

When you were 16 time didn't matter, at 40 youre cognizant of every minute. Nothing is new to you. It feels worse.

Agreed, depression is one thing, but being a pessimist is a choice and just makes you a miserable ***.

You don't get to choose, it's lack of choices that makes you who you are.

All the roads lead to the same spot.

You only get to decide how much you let it weigh on you. Your last name is never going to be gates, your options are limited, it isn't fair it just is how it is.

Man that song where the video is in a church at a funeral is pretty good!

It's just you.

I play retro games from 80-90 a lot, for nostalgia reasons. So I can compare retro games with modern games side by side using the same mindset at the same age.

I think modern games are significantly better in general: better qol, better pacing, deeper mechanics and better presentation of story from better technology.

Basically a 9.5/10 game in 1990 is more like 6/10-7/10 game today using modern standard. A 9.5/10 game today is at a level that retro games can't touch. Even if you remove the graphics.

So it's a mindset problem, not quality problem.

the sad part about Starfield being so bad is you know es6 is gonna be just as bad, with assets made in indian sweat shops and constant woke bs.

That's how legendary games like SNES FFIV would look like if it's made using modern technology and release in 2024, lol.

Current game scene either favors souls like style narrative or Hollywood level cutscenes production. So somewhere in between=what you see now.

There IS a reason why every dev and their mother uses souls-like style narrative lol. It's just more effective and easier.

I thought this was you….

It's really not. I've had the same conversation with several other people and most of the same points came up.

The way you know it's not you, is if you still enjoy older games.

What I meant was that it's just the mindset of the individual. "you" in the sentence wasn't Drayco specifically, but anyone who started a game with wrong mindset. The root of this issue can't be the quality of game design execution.

Although I love immersive sim as much as you(I even mentioned it in RT, that Deus Ex and System shock are life changing gaming experience for me), I can't deny the fact that playing those old immersive sim games in 2024 was unbearable, due to severe lack of QoL and pacing issues. There is just no way those older game design surpasses today's.

There is also a pretty good reason why immersive sim as a genre died today. If you are interested you can google for articles that discusses it. Creativity and cool ideas isn't by all end all the only aspect that makes a good game.

So I don't really buy that "old games are better because....." opinion. To me it's more of a mindset problem, not design philosophy problem.

I enjoy older games for what they are, but I enjoy newer games more.

In general, of course. Many general QoL implementation is what makes modern games following such practices much more enjoyable than older games.

Decided to do a longer reply to address specific issues.



Well yes, if you play games with a battle system, it will usually ended up like this. Because structure wise, the story is there to support the game system, not the other way around.

Once a narrative designer in an interview said, if a story can be divided into 3 acts, then 90% of video game story are 2nd act.

If you want a game story with different structure, then you can not play games with a combat system. A narrative focused genre like VN or interactive novel will have higher freedom on changing the story structure than a game with combat system.


What do you mean? Afaik people still make prototypes all the time. I see people sending and discussing their own prototypes online often. Also most game designer positions still ask for prototyping skills.

Afaik big studios do it too, according to rl friends working in big studios during the planning phase.

If you see less experiment in modern games, I would argued that's because game designers are more aware of what works and what doesn't these days, so they automatically filter out certain ideas when they try to nail down an idea. That does not mean game designers today are any less creative than game designers 30 years ago.

Hell, even indie scenes are full of hentai, rogue-like and deck building genre. Because everyone knows those genre sells best. Certain things sells more is what really kills creativity, IMO. Not the lack of game mechanics experiment on designer's end.

I'm not sure you even read any of page 1 or my original post very well.

I will completely disagree with your statement that modern game practices are more enjoyable than older games. I absolutely dispise the "click here. now here. run here. click here." BS that happens for actual hours of new games now. All developers have to do is add an option to "disable hand-holding" and I would be drastically happier. Figuring things out on your own is very rewarding.

What modern practices are you even refering too? We've had a pretty established form of video game controls, hit boxes, ect for a long time now. Early 3D worlds were rough, but it was basically figured out after PS1.

How these things works were drastically different during PS1 era though.

Go back and play PS2 era game, they are significantly different in terms of control feels. Modern game has better use of sounds, hitting effects, and "feel good moment" such as deathblow from Sekiro. Those were non-existent in PS2 era action games. But they absolutely played an important role at making the combat feels good.

Making combat feels good in games is a LOT more works than putting a controller on the 3D model and code some hitbox. There are many in and outs that didn't exist before.



So you like 90s adventure game with moon logic puzzles then? It's rewarding to figure things out!

I mean, I am fine with letting players figure things out as part of gameplay. But there is a difference between "don't handhold for the sake of prolonging game length" and "don't hand hold for the sake of satisfaction". And they are different.

I can give you a very specific example. Yesterday I was playing a 1994 genesis game called Monster world IV. One of the puzzle in a dungeon was to find an invisible door to the next room, out of a dozen big rooms. Except the game doesn't give you a hint on which room may content the doors.

So good luck spamming interaction key in every room against every pixel of wall, in a very big dungeon. If this is "fun" to you, then idk what to say... because to me it's just progression blocking to the next boss fight(the real gameplay), it is not even puzzle solving that tests my puzzle solve skills. It is progression blocking.

Modern games don't feature puzzles like this. In modern games puzzle will have at least a clue somewhere. Maybe the player can find a book in the dungeon that says "5 steps left from elevator" then players can figure out where the door is based on the hint, and feel smart after they figured out.

There is just no way that older games did puzzle designs better than modern games.

As for quest marks etc, they don't exist as a gameplay challenge. They exist as fast track to the next challenge, such as next boss, or next dungeon etc. Quest mark etc isn't inherently a bad design, it depends on the purpose and how it's used.

Personally I don't mind quest mark design at all. If I play a game for combat or story, then I would want the least downtime between them. I don't think quest marks as a feature kills a game on it's own.

There are 400 million ways to implement sense of discovery even with quest marks.

Some games, like Elden Ring for me, are too big for their own good. You almost have to have yellow paint to have the slightest clue what to do because the scale of things is much larger than it used to be. Figuring out puzzles is still just as fun now as it was back then, it just has to be done a bit differently.

If the developer wanted, they can easily implement sense of discovery even with quest marks. In Deus ex human revolution there are quest marks for the main quest, but there are still many secret tunnels to enter, computers to hack, and secrets to find.

Having quest marks doesn't really kill a sense of discovery nor puzzles in game.

Most of the time it's more like the developers didn't implement secret things to discover, then players blame "handholding" for the lack of exploration.

In this case the problem isn't QoL, it's the lack of content.

You're right, quest markers aren't inherently bad by themselves, but game design is definitely dumbing down things each generation. Whether this is QOL and an improvement, or restricting gameplay making it uninteresting is hard to say. It can go either way. I think Drayco is saying it is more of the latter to him, and I can definitely see that pov.

I don't feel so, either. I've been playing a lot of Master system/Genesis games recently. Most of them are side scrolling platforming with one button for attack, one button for jump, one for guard, maybe a bit of rpg elements like equipments. That's it. Some games like Sonic didn't even have attack nor guard, just move/jump.

Modern action game system is generally more complicated. Not only you still have attack/jump/rpg elements etc, you also have multiple skill trees, different movesets, companions, deathblows(the feel good moment), 2nd meter/resources such as MP, posture, stamina or style gauge.

Modern game enemy designs are also more varied. Such as enemies "react" to player action, not just repeating the same AI pattern like players don't exist.

Mechanic complexity wise there is no way that modern games lose to retro games.

I think people just forgot what retro games were like. Go play a genesis or SNES/nes games, and don't play the one that you have nostalgia google on, so play old games that you didn't play as a child. Then see if you seriously like those games way more than modern games. That would be a more fair comparison.

There are exceptions of course, BG3 did so well precisely because it was so complex and satisfied the demand for that depth in an RPG. Compare that to Elder Scroll games, for example, from Morrowind to Oblivion to Skyrim. Or Final Fantasy SNES games to PS4/5.

If you talk about rpg specifically, then I agree that certain things got removed. Especially in the space of crpg.

There are so many skills or builds in older crpg that pretty much existed only for roleplaying purpose, but not so useful in actual gameplay. Some traits or perks got used a few times in the entire game. Sometimes when I look at certain skills in old Fallout or pre-1999 crpg games I wonder what's the point to even have them. Other features like weight did nothing to the gameplay, just more annoyance on inventory management.

KOTOR is probably the first step towards simplifying all of these things so player can actually focus on dialogue selection part of gameplay. Tbh when I played KOTOR for the first time I was mindblown, because it made crpg way less of a pain to play compare with older ones. It was the first step for crpg QoL improvement.

Then bioware continue to dumb down streamline the system to Mass Effect 2 level. Ironically this is pretty much the peak of the series.

So I think that's the reason for crpg dumb down: people just prefer it.

As for FF, they changed the genre from jrpg to action. So dumb down happened for a different reason from crpg change.

Oh and btw, I tried to play Fallout 2 for the first time about an year ago and found it almost unplayable using modern standard too, even though I LOVED Fallout 1 back then. My mindset on QoL has changed so much over the years.

So I would say I still prefer more streamlined(better word than dumb down) modern crpg still. ;)

Modern games are made for the modern audience, thats why they dont resonate with you :)

Pretty much.

I once watched the market target was people in their teenager years, so they can be sucked for longer than trying to appeal millenials like us, that have overall 30 years of so to consume their junk.

Who is the "modern audience" though.

That to me is code for "we don't know our own customers so here's some tepid watered down BS to appease the gits on twitter - you're welcome."

Does the "modern audience" even play games? Or watch TV or movies for that matter. The "modern audience" seems to be mythical.

Am I the only one enjoying Tekken 8?

I don't think it's age problem lol.

I am about as old as everyone else here but I play new games and enjoy them ;)

Though most of the time I don't play a game expecting that it'll be the best thing ever.... unless it's a metacritic 90+ game.

Most of the time I only play games to get inspirations on new ideas. Even bad games can give me useful ideas, such as an interesting piece of lore, a cool way to set dress an environment with plants, or an interesting quote in the dialogue.

Even bad movie like street fighter has the famous "it was Tuesday" fun quote, needless to say even bad games could have interesting ideas somewhere in the game.

I also only buy games during sales so I almost always feel I walk away with something worth the price even if I played a mid or bad game.


You just need to change the mindset if you are old. Then you can enjoy any game for any age! :D

As usual you make your point over an unrelated subject and sell it as the opposite.

I didnt even tried to make a point. I merely told a fact that supported Nynja's theory.

We arent even talking about the same thing, how can I even answer to that?

Go talk to Nynjas instead, not me.

Hes the bad guy

Fun fact: You're no better than the pirates if you're waiting 2 years to buy fully finished games at 75% off. At that point, the people looking at the financials have deemed whatever they were selling a bust. I'm sure your moral compass is satisfied though.