I’d love to read a behind the scenes on this thing. When did they decide to do this? How long did they spend on it? What’re their plans for it? How’d they balance development on this with what was up until a month ago a single player focused game? It’s such a wild thing to be be added as a surprise to what was already a pretty successful and popular open world game.
oh no tiny indistinguishable perk numbers! boo! hiss!
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I’m baffled they’d keep it a surprise; releasing 3 months after ship, almost everyone has churned out already and is never coming back. Why not promise this and keep them engaged or the game still installed, at least?
Is this a method to force people to specialize in a particular stat? Because everything was so ambiguous with low percentages I never really cared too much about whatever an equipment’s stat boosts were, but I happened to fall into a set that had several skill-cooldown boosts and that actually became really noticeable in combat. I summoned my ghost dog and the cooldown was already half full while my first ghost dog was still out. So I think it’s probably worth trying to find loot that accentuate a particular stat boost or perk.
According to this interview on IGN, Sucker Punch decided they wanted a multiplayer mode from the very beginning of development. Maybe it didn’t come together soon enough for them to feel comfortable promoting it as a core part of the game? And to be honest, I think that actually helped Legend’s reception a lot. If it were promoted alongside the single player it would probably have changed the perception of Ghost of Tsushima heavily, and Legend’s smaller scope would have been derided in comparison to other, dedicated loot games. But as a game “update”, it’s seen as an incredible freebie.
But you’re right that there’s not enough here that it’s going to pull anyone back into the game that wasn’t a GoT die hard or didn’t still have it lying around on their hard drive. One thing I do like about it is that since it’s not designed to have me play it as a lifestyle game for months, the level progression is way more enticing than any other of this kind of loot game. I can see myself hitting the gear score for the The Raid just by playing the content available rather than having to grind for weeks after I’ve already played everything. It makes the idea of participating in end game content seem feasible, practical, and respectful of a my time.
Not that I actually have anyone to play the The Raid with, but that’s not the point here.
The terrifying Fire Demon who rains fire from a sky is the game’s existing ballista model with a face that shoots flaming arrows.
All of the enemies are modifications on existing models, but after playing an entire level leading up to a confrontation with The Fire Demon, it was really funny to find what initially looked like a ballista with giant shades on.
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Some levels make you fight invisible ghosts who are only revealed during lightning strikes, through the fog, or by striking a Ghost Lantern, but for some reason in some areas they still have shadows.
I played a grueling one hour survival mission on the hardest difficulty, barely eking by with only one control point left. I was looking forward to getting a good boost to my gear to push myself up from level 83 closer to 90, the minimum score needed for Nightmare Weeklies and the The Raid. My victory reward was 7 drops, 5 of them being Charms/accessories which you are only allowed to equip one of on a character. This is definitely a loot game.
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Personally, I think small numbers like this should be viewed as bad taste just like we’d deride sloppy character feel or unintelligible attack signalling.
My values are: each gear item should create a noticeable difference that can be used to adjust play patterns. If the benefit is too small, it’s not worth awarding the gear. Big level curves throw the biggest wrench in this – you need to say that the perks on a level 80 item are better than those on a level 10 item, so you want a differentiated curve, but that’s no excuse for making them pathetic at any point in the curve.
Generally I set out the maximum and minimum bounds – at what point does giving the player this value break the game, at what point is this pointless? – and then I double the minimum value bound.
This is also easier if you: are single-player (balance is only between choices the player can make, it’s not damaging others’ experience), are not giving them something in perpetuity (roguelikes can break balance and it’s a virtue because you shake the etch-a-sketch later), have explicit abilities to give the player rather than cheap, invisible number changes.
“More impactful, more discrete, more verb-y, at the expense of breadth” are my progression values.
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oh dang that’s a good way of thinking about roguelikes imo
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you may substitute ‘pulling the pachinko lever’ if you’re one of those roguelike-dislikers
Yeah, that’s a good way to look at it and touches on why I’ve always disliked Gear Score mechanics. It’s a single stat that overrides all other qualities on equipment. It provides a general stat boost but no actual discernible effects, and it’s only purpose is to gate you from progressing through a game quicker than intended (much like mobile game progression). Increasing your gear score doesn’t actually give you anything new, but it also causes you to have to ignore any special perks equipment has because none of those are ever as important as gear score.
At least until you hit the max gear score cap, but then you’re only looking for specific “unique” type equipment with consistent, pre-determined effects that define them. All other equipment in the game is filler. And at that point rarity systems lose most of their meaning too.
Right, there’s that other problem where a combination of leveling causing gear to depreciate and stat bonuses increasing by level on gear means that you might be able to make interesting builds at max level but nothing before that point. Stinks.
I’m less solid on how I feel about rarity-gating. The idea that you need commons to make rares and legendaries special rings true and climbing the ladder in a Diablo/MMO-system where you barely find rares at low level and feel progression at high level because rares are trash can work under certain tuning, but I’d so much rather design the drop rates so that each one can be meaningful and useful.
Rarity drops in a system of constrained pulls, like a roguelike, are more meaningful because it represents a direct gamble win – you can’t just hang around grinding to get more pulls, so you can appreciate a rare drop as a victory.
I love the philosophy of Magic: The Gathering where rares are powerful but exotic and may have specialized uses, while commons are just as strong but in more down-to-earth ways. It’s tough to make that fit into a level progression system but I was happy in Shadow of War to see the community never able to reconcile whether the Legendary sets or the Epics were better because I specifically wanted that build flexibility.
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Cool boss.
I like how the conceit of this Legends mode is that it’s just another set of tall tales being told by a wandering bard except he’s like “Look man, this the truth no one is telling you. The mongols have a zombie army, and the only thing stopping the mongols from taking over Tsushima is a group of four samurai who are fighting an undead priestess in the demon realm. This is going on right now!” Except the bard is telling this story to Jin, a guy who has been on the frontlines of the war against the Mongols from the beginning to the end and clearly would know this is all a load of BS.
I tried taking on the three part the The Raid by myself since I don’t actually know anyone else playing this, and it became clear very quickly I was not equipped to even consider this. (Also I think it’s designed in such a way that it probably isn’t possible to solo.)
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I am curious, this game is said to not bring much improvement gameplay wise, and just follow / refine the concepts of other games.
Now, I haven’t played many open worlds, apart from Zelda Breath of the Wild and part of Witcher 3.
Haven’t played any GTA, Assassin’s Creed, RDR.
Which games have you guys played, for which you’d feel a bit tired of this one? Asking because I might find it fresher… perhaps!
This thread was a treat to re-read/watch and this game is impossibly dumb.
Like I just finished Lost Judgement and immediately hope for the charm and polish of a Japanese studio as opposed to the AAA slop.
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This and it’s ilk are too self-serious for that.
I bought the DLC that lets you do some new story on a separate island, but then it gave me a warning that if I start the DLC I won’t be able to come back to the main island again for a long time. I hadn’t completed all the main side quests yet, so I decided to not start the DLC yet, and then ended up not completing the side quests and thus never playing the DLC I bought.
It’s Final Fantasy 7 all over again, where I got to the mouth of the crater, saw it was a point of no return, and then decided to get all the character’s strongest weapons before I finished the game. And then never got all the weapons, and never finished the game. I still don’t exactly know how that game ends other than the CG cutscenes I watched using Action Replay.
The Tsushima DLC is probably best played after the end of the game. At least from what I remember, anyway.
Yeah, I actually meant I hadn’t done any of those character side quests, your main companions in the game who have their own quest lines. Are those worth doing or should I just consider putting those on hold and playing the DLC?
Not gonna lie, it’s been so long I couldn’t tell ya either way. Mostly just remember going out of my way to find the sorta goofy other-Sony-game themed gear.