Epic Games has decided to stop the exclusives and start caring about the consumers

[Lord Vile]

3 hours ago, JZStudios said:

No, it really doesn't. A console exclusive forces you to buy new hardware, a digital store exclusive only forces you to make a free account. Epic accesses literally the same information as Steam, and this spyware accusation is exceedingly tiring with zero actual evidence behind it. Even the reddit post where it originated just said "Their information is encrypted, so therefore it's shady."

 

What troll? I vastly prefer GOG over any other platform because they're the most pro-consumer and the closest thing to having physical copies. I could point out the bonuses that GOG has over Epic and Steam. All I'm saying is, Steam is treated like a god send and people willfully ignore the scummy business practices they themselves started and people lament other companies do.

 

But otherwise, no, I don't think Epic offering devs money or a more beneficial share is harmful to the PC gaming community. There's a lot of stuff only sold at certain physical locations, and no one gives a shit about that. Epic even only has a year long deal.

 

Which they invested heavily in, did they not? I'm not saying they shouldn't make money or do business decisions, or whatever, but if they're such a great, wonderful, innovative company, why not make a new IP instead of reviving a dead franchise? It's more than fine that they're making a VR game, but the last time they did anything with a new IP was like 2009.

I play racing and flight sims, and they could've designed the game around solely steering wheels and yoke+pedal setups without paying attention to any other hardware, but they didn't. They went out of their way to make sure that their product would be a good experience on any hardware someone would reasonably expect to play it with, while most of the companies making that gear didn't lift a finger. They deliberately designed input methods for other hardware setups because they did want the largest possible customer base.

There's people that play Dirt Rally with a keyboard, lots of people play it with a controller, and some play it with wheels. There's generic controllers to deal with, and within the wheels there's 3 different major manufacturers with different models available, and hey look, they all work. And then there's bonus addons like clutch pedals and shifters.

Same thing could be applied to War Thunder. You can play with keyboard, mouse, joystick, full cockpit, triple screens, etc.

 

Now, is it harder to implement other VR hardware? I don't know, maybe. But stop acting like it's good guy Valve when it's literally just the same exact thing that's been happening for decades. Designing their game to work with other pre-existing hardware is just making their potential audience larger, thus they make more sales, and then hopefully people think "Man, this would be even better on the Valve headset, I should buy that!"

...I guess "in-house" perhaps, but I know they had a hand in the HTC Vive, the Steam Controller that I'm pretty sure they recently discontinued, there was an AR department they either cut or merged into VR (Including firing the lead there), the Steam link, Steam Machine, it's not hardware, but there was SteamOS. They've done stuff, just none of it was successful except for the Vive so far. The new hardware will probably be successful, but it's still new.

Side note, people have talked about Valve's push to start games on Linux, which considering SteamOS is Linux based, I'm betting that push happened around the same time, to coincide with attempting to sell their hardware and OS. Which again, is fine, but it's not "good guy Valve," it's just business. Their OS they were trying to sell was Linux based, so logically they need games to run on Linux so they can sell their product. But then that didn't take off so they just started making the Steam link and ignored the Steam Machine manufacturers that ended up just installing Windows on them and selling them without SteamOS.

Which again, they invested heavily in. Hell, maybe even GabeN is just amazed by VR himself so he treats it like a personal hobby, I don't know.

They haven't mentioned Half Life 3. I've heard the ending of Alyx one again leads to a cliffhanger. Personally, I've never played any of the Half Life games because I missed that time period, so even if HL3 was released it wouldn't be the second coming to me.

I suggest you go and reread the articles regarding it. And it does because it’s a 3rd party buying games for the store to make you use that store exclusively, sure you don’t have to buy a console but the consoles but you have to buy the PC, so you’re buying hardware anyway. Your friends list is split because some play on steam and a couple play on the EGS, your games library is split because of the 2 different launchers, you have to manage the 2 different accounts. It’s just stupid. It’s just another bloody launcher and they’re essentially trying to buy a user base through practices that aren’t exactly consumer friendly. Be fine if it was just their own games like blizzard does or EA does but it’s not, they bought exclusivity for games that people had already paid for on other platforms. 

[Dash Lambda]

43 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

It hasn't been touched in 13 years. Any other franchise would be considered dead at that point. Shit, even games that haven't been dead that long have been called reboots like Tomb Raider, Doom, and even GOW. Rockstar could release a new Midnight Club (Or Bully) tomorrow and it would be a revival of a dead franchise.

But I might buy that if Half Life 2 Episode 3 was supposed to be a full independent release and wasn't promised 13 years ago, or if either HL2 episodes did anything new. Instead after 13 years they made a new game that wasn't the one they promised, still with no word on it.

 

I also highly doubt this argument because at least of 2012 the writers were afraid to make a conclusion because fans might not like it. The ending of HL1 apparently was pretty lackluster, and ME3 had come out and the fans hated the ending. Then they go on to say that people have unrealistic expectations or something and won't ever be satisfied with anything they do at this point since it's been so long.

Then again, all of the HL writers have since left Valve, so that might not apply anymore.

As far as I know, Valve has been effectively silent about Half-Life for most of the gap. The devs being interactive is kind of a new thing.

 

Regardless, Half-Life 3 is a weird case. Whether or not it was a dead franchise was an active debate right up until the announcement of Alyx, and now I see it will continue in a different form for god knows how long after. I don't consider it a reboot because I didn't consider it dead, but that's just me.

 

52 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I agree. VR is kind of inherently limiting. You really need to design around the hardware, but people will always have at least the headset, hand controllers, and an amount of headset tracking. You design for the lowest common denominator and then work your way up.

But really, it's still just marketing it to the biggest potential audience as VR is already very limited. Again, I have no issue with the fact that they made a VR title, or are using it as marketing for their new headset, I just don't like that they're using a dead IP and feeding off nostalgia. And going from Critical Nobody's review of HL:A, it's a perfectly fine game, but it doesn't really do anything revolutionary. You can't even hit anything.

I'm not sure what you mean by limiting. It both places heavy restrictions on game design and opens up extraordinarily huge doors at the same time.

 

Also, I haven't seen that review, but it's an hour long... I'll watch it, but not before I respond here. The thing is, Alyx isn't revolutionary for any one feature. It's the first AAA game we've got that's VR-only with all the trimmings; the visuals, attention to detail, and polish blow every VR game that came before it out of the water. I was irritated by the lack of melee, but seriously, if you were to play through the game and your first takeaway was "but I couldn't hit people," I... I honestly don't know what I would think.

 

The part from this quote that really strikes me, though, is "or are using it as marketing for their new headset,"
... I do not like to fall back on "you're not reading what I say," but I'm really questioning that here. I argued that point to death, and you didn't quote anything about it, you just seem to be ignoring it. I know I argue with novels, just... tell me if I'm writing too much, please.

 

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

Y'know, I was thinking about this, and those games are sold through Steam, meaning Steam is still taking 30% of the profits from it, which to me sounds like a reasonable amount for having someone else make your IP. In terms of modding tools, I'd point to Rockstar. Generally pretty favorable among the modding community, but they have disgusting grinds and microtransactions online. So I'm not giving "modability" a pass.

I don't know whether or not being on Steam was a condition of being allowed to directly use the Half-Life IP for stuff like Black Mesa, and I imagine if it was there's probably a line in the contract that prevents them from saying so, but most of the Source mods on Steam are free, and there are tons of Source mods that aren't even on Steam. So that doesn't really apply.

 

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

It very well could be that Gabe is just super into VR. But what I've heard about the "flat hierarchy" is that it's more groups of cliques and it really doesn't work well. It's also why so many things are just exceptionally poorly handled. I believe I included links in my first big comment.

Yeah. I have no idea how well it works as a business, I imagine there are many sides to it, but it does explain a lot of the behavior we observe. Both the good and the bad.

 

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

I don't know. I can't imagine beating the end of Halo 2 and hearing "Master chief, what are you doing on that ship?" "Sir, finishing this fight" and then Halo 3 literally never happens and after 13 years they just make Reach. And then at the end of Reach have it say "We have work to do."

That's... not an apt analogy. The context in the story is wildly different. Half-Life 2 ends with Alyx crying over her father's corpse, the last words are "don't leave me" whispered under sobs. It's an "oh my god what are we going to do now" cliffhanger, not a "hell yeah let's get the party started" cliffhanger. And Reach is a pure prequel, it doesn't do anything for the main story, because at that point the main story was, in fact, over. The war was won. Alyx puts a bridge at the end of an incomplete story that allows Valve freedom to totally circumvent the plot that everyone has been predicting and discussing to death for more than a decade and signs off with a "hell yeah let's get the party started" cliffhanger. And, with the way Valve approaches these things, I do not see how that can be anything but intentional.

 

The first game I ever bought with my own money was The Orange Box, and the second was Halo. I generally try to keep aware of my biases, in this case I grew up with both, so I think this is a pretty fair comparison. But, hell, there's no such thing as an unbiased perspective... I just hope it makes sense.

1 hour ago, JZStudios said:

I'm still calling that as an investment. It costs money to make money. It also goes into the sunk cost fallacy a little bit. If they can get VR to take off and be a big proponent of that then they have a lot to gain.

Yes. Valve is a business. Each person involved has their own motivations, but in the end if they didn't see a lucrative market potential than they would never have gone through this much effort. Their actions are not for us, they're not for any particular employee, not even for Gabe Newell, they're to drive a market that they think will benefit them. I appreciate the market they're targeting and I respect the tactics they're using.

 

Which I just realized is more or less how my last one ended... I'll try to minimize the repetition.

[JZStudios]

21 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

I suggest you go and reread the articles regarding it. And it does because it’s a 3rd party buying games for the store to make you use that store exclusively, sure you don’t have to buy a console but the consoles but you have to buy the PC, so you’re buying hardware anyway.

What articles? I'm not rebuying a PC to use Origin, uPlay, GOG, Epic, etc. I have a PS4, if I want to play Forza I need to buy an Xbox and the game. Compared to I have Steam, I need an Epic account to play.. what's a current big "exclusive?" Borderlands 3? Okay, sure. 

I have Steam, I need a free account to play Borderlands 3. Sure it's annoying, but I'm also already annoyed that I'm required to use Steam. End of the day it makes virtually no difference. Especially now actual good guys GOG are making Galaxy 2.0 and I can just use that for all my games everywhere.

22 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Your friends list is split because some play on steam and a couple play on the EGS, your games library is split because of the 2 different launchers, you have to manage the 2 different accounts. It’s just stupid. It’s just another bloody launcher and they’re essentially trying to buy a user base through practices that aren’t exactly consumer friendly.

Jokes on you, I don't have any friends. I do know that GOG has certain games be "cross-platform" with Steam, but I'm pretty sure that's up to the developers. I don't know what it takes to do that, especially if they're hosting their own servers instead of Steam servers. Cross-platform is now finally a thing between consoles and PC. Dauntless on EGS I know will play with PC, PS4, Xbox, and Switch all together.

In any case, most of the other launchers don't do "cross-platform" so I don't know why EGS should get any heat for it. GOG has games also available on Steam, and that also splits the userbase. Are they evil and anti-consumer? No. Also, if EGS is buying exclusivity to Borderlands 3, then it by default is not splitting the user base as it's the only place to get it.

22 hours ago, Lord Vile said:

Be fine if it was just their own games like blizzard does or EA does but it’s not, they bought exclusivity for games that people had already paid for on other platforms. 

I don't really understand this sentiment. What's the actual practical difference? People really also need to stop bringing up the "Bought on other platforms" argument. That was one instance, and those pre-orders were either fulfilled or refunded so no one actually lost out. Never have I had something be refunded and been pissed about getting my money back. Or alternatively got the product I paid for.

 

20 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

I'm not sure what you mean by limiting. It both places heavy restrictions on game design and opens up extraordinarily huge doors at the same time.

 

Also, I haven't seen that review, but it's an hour long... I'll watch it, but not before I respond here. The thing is, Alyx isn't revolutionary for any one feature. It's the first AAA game we've got that's VR-only with all the trimmings; the visuals, attention to detail, and polish blow every VR game that came before it out of the water. I was irritated by the lack of melee, but seriously, if you were to play through the game and your first takeaway was "but I couldn't hit people," I... I honestly don't know what I would think.

Well, for one you'll never get something like Doom proper. You'll never be running around at 50mph. There's just things you can do on a traditional game that you can't in VR, and yeah, vice-versa. But... for me, I've tried the Oculus demo at a Best Buy, and it's neat, but I just don't understand this fascination with having to pick up and throw everything in VR. Like... are you a toddler? Outside of the "immersion" I honestly just can't really look at anything in VR and be particularly amazed or interested in it. It would be cool for my racing sims, but I'd also probably end up getting real annoyed by wearing goggles on my face, which is also why I use my surround sound instead of headphones.

I don't know. I did the mountain climbing thing on the Oculus and my takeaway was "Eh." Otherwise it doesn't seem like a whole lot more than 3D with laborious physical movement and strapping a scuba mask to your face. I think Jeff Gerstman from Giant Bomb really summed it up by saying something like "Yeah, it's neat, but once you get past that novelty it's all the same." 

 

Like I said before though, it's cool that HL:A is the first game to be an actual proper VR game, but in terms of mechanics it otherwise doesn't do anything really new or interesting, even for the VR field. The fact it has no melee is especially bizarre considering that's a big part of so many other VR titles, and a huge part of the Half Life franchise, and it shouldn't have been that hard to implement with systems already in place, including "traditional" games.

That review was also the entire series in succession. The part about Alyx is at the end and is only ~10-15 minutes.

21 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

The part from this quote that really strikes me, though, is "or are using it as marketing for their new headset,"
... I do not like to fall back on "you're not reading what I say," but I'm really questioning that here. I argued that point to death, and you didn't quote anything about it, you just seem to be ignoring it. I know I argue with novels, just... tell me if I'm writing too much, please.

I just don't agree that it's not in hopes of marketing their hardware, either through the Vive or Index. There's nothing in the game that couldn't be done in a traditional fashion, which applies to most VR games which is what really butters my buns. A lot of games are VR only, but they just... don't need to be. I don't believe that if Valve didn't invest so heavily in VR and it's hardware that A. This game would've been made, or B. It would've been a VR title. It's like the old game commercials, y'know, "Plays best on Playstation" or whatever. Yeah, you can play it on an Oculus, but the hope is that suggestion will make you want an Index.

21 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

I don't know whether or not being on Steam was a condition of being allowed to directly use the Half-Life IP for stuff like Black Mesa, and I imagine if it was there's probably a line in the contract that prevents them from saying so, but most of the Source mods on Steam are free, and there are tons of Source mods that aren't even on Steam. So that doesn't really apply.

I don't know how Steam manages the Source engine. But releasing stuff free means they aren't making profit on it, so it doesn't matter. In any case, Valve is getting enough money on Steam they don't really have to worry about it. They are very tight lipped about how much they make, but an estimate as of 2019 was around $3 billion for 250 employees, which is insane.

21 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

Yeah. I have no idea how well it works as a business, I imagine there are many sides to it, but it does explain a lot of the behavior we observe. Both the good and the bad.

Again, based on the link I provided with people talking about working at multiple locations that do a similar thing, it really doesn't. It works as a startup company, but once money starts rolling and things start happening it needs more structure. I was working with my dad at a shop he started with just him,my brother, and an associate for electronics and it was kind of that way, but that works because we only have limited funds and 5 people (including my mom at the front desk.) Even then we still had to meet deadlines. I suspect Valve does a lot of nothing because they have a huge source of income that just... happens regardless of what they do.

21 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

That's... not an apt analogy. The context in the story is wildly different. Half-Life 2 ends with Alyx crying over her father's corpse, the last words are "don't leave me" whispered under sobs. It's an "oh my god what are we going to do now" cliffhanger, not a "hell yeah let's get the party started" cliffhanger. And Reach is a pure prequel, it doesn't do anything for the main story, because at that point the main story was, in fact, over. The war was won. Alyx puts a bridge at the end of an incomplete story that allows Valve freedom to totally circumvent the plot that everyone has been predicting and discussing to death for more than a decade and signs off with a "hell yeah let's get the party started" cliffhanger. And, with the way Valve approaches these things, I do not see how that can be anything but intentional.

It wouldn't be if Reach came out after Halo 2, there'd still be no resolution. And HL:3 was promised to happen after two expansions. I think it is apt, it's only two parts of a trilogy where the promised third never arrived. But then you could say that Reach changed things so I don't know, maybe Reach was saved, and it invalidated the prior games. Nothing about that seems good to me.

[Dash Lambda]

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Well, for one you'll never get something like Doom proper. You'll never be running around at 50mph. There's just things you can do on a traditional game that you can't in VR, and yeah, vice-versa. But... for me, I've tried the Oculus demo at a Best Buy, and it's neat, but I just don't understand this fascination with having to pick up and throw everything in VR. Like... are you a toddler? Outside of the "immersion" I honestly just can't really look at anything in VR and be particularly amazed or interested in it. It would be cool for my racing sims, but I'd also probably end up getting real annoyed by wearing goggles on my face, which is also why I use my surround sound instead of headphones.

I don't know. I did the mountain climbing thing on the Oculus and my takeaway was "Eh." Otherwise it doesn't seem like a whole lot more than 3D with laborious physical movement and strapping a scuba mask to your face. I think Jeff Gerstman from Giant Bomb really summed it up by saying something like "Yeah, it's neat, but once you get past that novelty it's all the same."

I think that a lot of that is because most of the content for VR has been arcade-like games. I get terminally bored with most of them. My biggest interest in VR is just exploring a world from a truly first-person perspective. The difference between looking at a screen and having just a field of vision is stark, and once you have some meaningful experience with VR it's irrevocably immersion-breaking to walk up to a crank and press E to spin it, or to not be able to just poke my gun over cover, etc.. That's how it is for me, anyway.

 

And yeah, the climbing games suck. You would need Ready Player One technology to even attempt to simulate rock climbing in a way that isn't sinful.

 

Of course, everyone is different -I just know that what you're describing doesn't represent my experience.

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

Like I said before though, it's cool that HL:A is the first game to be an actual proper VR game, but in terms of mechanics it otherwise doesn't do anything really new or interesting, even for the VR field. The fact it has no melee is especially bizarre considering that's a big part of so many other VR titles, and a huge part of the Half Life franchise, and it shouldn't have been that hard to implement with systems already in place, including "traditional" games.

Valve says they experimented heavily with melee but just couldn't find a way to do it that they're happy with right now. And honestly, given how janky most of the VR melee systems are, I believe them.

 

The thing is, resistance is generally implemented by having your hands stop moving in whatever direction. That ends up making it feel like what you're doing with your hands is merely a suggestion to the in-game hands, rather than making you feel like the in-game hands are your hands. Alyx seems to deliberately avoid anything that'll cause that disconnect as much as possible. It really does bug me that there's no melee, and I can imagine better ways of doing it (like just not stopping your hands), but I would rather have Alyx's interaction without melee than Boneworks's interaction with melee.

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I just don't agree that it's not in hopes of marketing their hardware, either through the Vive or Index. There's nothing in the game that couldn't be done in a traditional fashion, which applies to most VR games which is what really butters my buns. A lot of games are VR only, but they just... don't need to be. I don't believe that if Valve didn't invest so heavily in VR and it's hardware that A. This game would've been made, or B. It would've been a VR title. It's like the old game commercials, y'know, "Plays best on Playstation" or whatever. Yeah, you can play it on an Oculus, but the hope is that suggestion will make you want an Index.

There are two places where the store page for Alyx mentions the Index: Way down at the bottom of the description where it says you don't need to buy the game if you already have an Index (You already gave them $1000, I'd be shocked if they didn't do this), and in the supported hardware section where it's listed right next to Vive, Oculus, and WMR.

 

They did do an early-bird thing where if you had an Index before launch you got different weapon skins (the game has no skin mechanic, they just implement it as a "DLC" package that changes a few colors), which I wasn't thinking of before, but my point still stands: Alyx is not made to sell the Index, it's made to sell VR. It's definitely selling the Index, but Valve would've made it just the same if they made no hardware whatsoever, because their interest, and yes, their investment, is in VR as a whole.

 

And I have to single out this quote in particular:

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I just don't agree that it's not in hopes of marketing their hardware, either through the Vive or Index. There's nothing in the game that couldn't be done in a traditional fashion, which applies to most VR games which is what really butters my buns. A lot of games are VR only, but they just... don't need to be.

You have not played the game. You cannot make that claim looking at a fact sheet.

Yeah, a lot of VR games don't need to be VR. But Alyx? Alyx is a VR game.

What I mean by that is, it's not a Half-Life game that Valve decided to make VR exclusive. It's a VR game for which Valve used the Half-Life name and story. Alyx doesn't contain any one basic mechanic that requires VR, but the detail, the interaction, and the immersion they accomplished with the whole thing would be absolutely impossible on a flat screen.

 

I haven't yet successfully explained this to someone who has no experience with the game, but I've also only had this discussion with people who haven't tried the game. If you were to try it and still hold that opinion, then... At that point, you win. You can't be convinced. But the idea of Alyx in non-VR, to me, is simply an oxymoron.

8 hours ago, JZStudios said:

I don't know how Steam manages the Source engine. But releasing stuff free means they aren't making profit on it, so it doesn't matter. In any case, Valve is getting enough money on Steam they don't really have to worry about it. They are very tight lipped about how much they make, but an estimate as of 2019 was around $3 billion for 250 employees, which is insane.

Again, based on the link I provided with people talking about working at multiple locations that do a similar thing, it really doesn't. It works as a startup company, but once money starts rolling and things start happening it needs more structure. I was working with my dad at a shop he started with just him,my brother, and an associate for electronics and it was kind of that way, but that works because we only have limited funds and 5 people (including my mom at the front desk.) Even then we still had to meet deadlines. I suspect Valve does a lot of nothing because they have a huge source of income that just... happens regardless of what they do.

Valve has Valve Time and a history of bad reactions, stupid failures, and wildly unpredictable behavior. They also make amazing stuff like the Steam Controller, the Index, the Half-Life series, and the Portal series. If they didn't have Steam, they would probably evaporate due to lack of organization turning into a lack of productivity and revenue -but they have Steam. There aren't a lot of companies I can imagine trying to make games like Alyx nowadays, and Valve is the only one of those with truly absurd resources.

 

Valve either astronomically fucks up or hits it out of the park, and I appreciate that, because the alternative for a company that successful is consistent, profitable mediocrity.

9 hours ago, JZStudios said:

It wouldn't be if Reach came out after Halo 2, there'd still be no resolution. And HL:3 was promised to happen after two expansions. I think it is apt, it's only two parts of a trilogy where the promised third never arrived. But then you could say that Reach changed things so I don't know, maybe Reach was saved, and it invalidated the prior games. Nothing about that seems good to me.

Alyx isn't a resolution, yes they did promise HL3 and it wasn't a great decision to just drop the project, and Alyx changed the very last scene of the very most recent game in a way that is entirely consistent with the story and feels justified. It's not even a retcon, part of the story of Alyx is changing it. Everything in all the games still happened exactly the way it originally did except the last 40 seconds of Episode 2.

[JZStudios]

11 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

I think that a lot of that is because most of the content for VR has been arcade-like games. I get terminally bored with most of them. My biggest interest in VR is just exploring a world from a truly first-person perspective. The difference between looking at a screen and having just a field of vision is stark, and once you have some meaningful experience with VR it's irrevocably immersion-breaking to walk up to a crank and press E to spin it, or to not be able to just poke my gun over cover, etc.. That's how it is for me, anyway.

 

And yeah, the climbing games suck. You would need Ready Player One technology to even attempt to simulate rock climbing in a way that isn't sinful.

 

Of course, everyone is different -I just know that what you're describing doesn't represent my experience.

True, it comes down to personal experience, but things like opening doors in first person or pressing E to spin crank are what's known as video game shorthand, to make needless, repetitive, mundane, or otherwise boring tasks and automate them to save time and boredom. Just because now I can "physically" do tedious, boring, repetitive tasks doesn't make it more engaging for me.

It's like RDR2, a lot of people complain about how long it takes to loot bodies or shelves, one object slowly at a time. Or how he automatically puts his rifle in the saddle holster, but doesn't automatically pull it back out. Yet at the same time you walk over guns and just magically absorb ammo, or get off a horse and Arthur just casually tosses the reigns over a hitching post and it cartoon grapples around into a perfect knot.

11 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

Valve says they experimented heavily with melee but just couldn't find a way to do it that they're happy with right now. And honestly, given how janky most of the VR melee systems are, I believe them.

 

The thing is, resistance is generally implemented by having your hands stop moving in whatever direction. That ends up making it feel like what you're doing with your hands is merely a suggestion to the in-game hands, rather than making you feel like the in-game hands are your hands. Alyx seems to deliberately avoid anything that'll cause that disconnect as much as possible. It really does bug me that there's no melee, and I can imagine better ways of doing it (like just not stopping your hands), but I would rather have Alyx's interaction without melee than Boneworks's interaction with melee.

Ehh. Yeah, of course there's no resistance, but the game has rag doll models and allowing the player to swing objects uses pretty standard physics and mechanics. And in the case of Half Life where a man wields a crowbar like it's nothing I'd say it'd be pretty apropos. Ever try swinging a crowbar? It's not that easy.

 

11 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

There are two places where the store page for Alyx mentions the Index: Way down at the bottom of the description where it says you don't need to buy the game if you already have an Index (You already gave them $1000, I'd be shocked if they didn't do this), and in the supported hardware section where it's listed right next to Vive, Oculus, and WMR.

 

They did do an early-bird thing where if you had an Index before launch you got different weapon skins (the game has no skin mechanic, they just implement it as a "DLC" package that changes a few colors), which I wasn't thinking of before, but my point still stands: Alyx is not made to sell the Index, it's made to sell VR. It's definitely selling the Index, but Valve would've made it just the same if they made no hardware whatsoever, because their interest, and yes, their investment, is in VR as a whole.

I don't understand why you're so stuck on this. I can use Pandora or Spotify for free, but they still hope I'll end up paying for it. Similarly, Valve can very well make a game in the hopes it entices people to buy their hardware. And if they make it only work with their hardware then they would have an exceptionally limited audience. I don't understand why this is a counter argument to them not using it as a marketing tool. Valve doesn't do marketing, they have the community do it for them for free.

 

I disagree. I found THIS which I find pretty funny. They didn't want to make games for the PS3 because "it was too hard" and then say they won't support 3D or movement controls because it doesn't matter, and then says Portal 3. Brilliant.

I mean, I guess, hey, this is VR and move controls, but it sure isn't Portal 3.

11 hours ago, Dash Lambda said:

And I have to single out this quote in particular:

You have not played the game. You cannot make that claim looking at a fact sheet.

Yeah, a lot of VR games don't need to be VR. But Alyx? Alyx is a VR game.

What I mean by that is, it's not a Half-Life game that Valve decided to make VR exclusive. It's a VR game for which Valve used the Half-Life name and story. Alyx doesn't contain any one basic mechanic that requires VR, but the detail, the interaction, and the immersion they accomplished with the whole thing would be absolutely impossible on a flat screen.

VR fans argue that about any game, and yet it's never really true. RE7 works perfectly fine in both mediums. There's no reason the interaction would be dampened much, and the detail would remain the same. Immersion is debatable. I wasn't blown away by VR, it's neat, but I can also get fully immersed in traditional games.

[Dash Lambda]

4 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

True, it comes down to personal experience, but things like opening doors in first person or pressing E to spin crank are what's known as video game shorthand, to make needless, repetitive, mundane, or otherwise boring tasks and automate them to save time and boredom. Just because now I can "physically" do tedious, boring, repetitive tasks doesn't make it more engaging for me.

It's like RDR2, a lot of people complain about how long it takes to loot bodies or shelves, one object slowly at a time. Or how he automatically puts his rifle in the saddle holster, but doesn't automatically pull it back out. Yet at the same time you walk over guns and just magically absorb ammo, or get off a horse and Arthur just casually tosses the reigns over a hitching post and it cartoon grapples around into a perfect knot.

I'm using token examples because they're easy to isolate, but ultimately it is two different approaches. There are plenty of games where I think having to physically do everything would be tedious, and others where it's incomparably better. What I meant by "irrevocably immersion-breaking" is that I notice it now. It turns into one of those things that just feels like the game is subtly shouting "hey! I'm not real!" There are some games where it doesn't matter, and some games where it undermines the whole thing. Alyx would be one of the latter on a flat screen.

 

In fact, all the projects to mod in a flat-screen mode for Alyx are showing just how much it takes away. It becomes a boring, slow shooter with most of the world interaction stripped out. That's not because they used VR as a crutch, it's because VR was the entire point.

13 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I don't understand why you're so stuck on this. I can use Pandora or Spotify for free, but they still hope I'll end up paying for it. Similarly, Valve can very well make a game in the hopes it entices people to buy their hardware. And if they make it only work with their hardware then they would have an exceptionally limited audience. I don't understand why this is a counter argument to them not using it as a marketing tool. Valve doesn't do marketing, they have the community do it for them for free.

Because Alyx wasn't just made to sell the Index. You're summarizing its entire intent and impact as a marketing ploy for a single hardware product that can only make up a negligible fraction of Valve's net income, when according to everything we've seen and know it is an integral part of a larger push for an entire industry that Valve has invested heavily in. That is overtly diminutive. I'm focusing on this because I'm trying to argue the larger importance of Alyx for VR, and that isn't possible if I ignore comments that fundamentally belittle the subject.

28 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

I disagree. I found THIS which I find pretty funny. They didn't want to make games for the PS3 because "it was too hard" and then say they won't support 3D or movement controls because it doesn't matter, and then says Portal 3. Brilliant.

In all fairness, Valve is hardly the only developer to complain about the PS3.

And comparing PS Move in 2010 to room-scale VR is like comparing a tricycle to a sports car. The headset is what defines VR.

33 minutes ago, JZStudios said:

VR fans argue that about any game, and yet it's never really true. RE7 works perfectly fine in both mediums. There's no reason the interaction would be dampened much, and the detail would remain the same. Immersion is debatable. I wasn't blown away by VR, it's neat, but I can also get fully immersed in traditional games.

Again, what experience do you have with VR? You've only mentioned a demo at BestBuy of a couple arcade/party games. I wouldn't see much point either if that was all I had to go on.

 

I'm not telling you your experience doesn't apply, I'm just telling you you experienced a bad demo. VR, for whatever reason, has always been a thing that people just don't really understand until they try it proper. That's why smartphone VR and the cheapy WMR kits get people so pissed off, because people will try those and think that's what VR is, ruining public interest.