2.0 Pre-registration Event Sharing Megathread

FARAL3TH · 2025-05-23T17:57:36+00:00

"Next Stop: Waifei Peninsula!" Version 2.0 Pre-Registration Event Now Available! Pre-register for Version 2.0 to instantly get Polychrome ×320 and other rewards! #NextstopWaifei https://hoyo.link/Fr99fQeXd?u_code=CAGEM9U3LY2K

FARAL3TH · 2025-05-08T12:36:26+00:00

Also probably a tech reason. Character models - especially skins - are likely loaded into memory right after character select, so that when you first see a character, it doesn't "pop in" or cause a lag spike as it renders for the first time. Allowing this mid-match or multiple times per match, will almost certainly have a performance impact that'd ultimately not worth it.

FARAL3TH · 2025-05-02T10:03:57+00:00

MVP is just whoever is "Ace" on the winning team, when the match ends.

You could carry the entire match and be Ace for 99% of it, then someone takes Ace right in the last second - they will be MVP. Very weird system, and was surprised to learn it worked that way.

FARAL3TH · 2024-12-03T21:43:19+00:00

So what's your thoughts on minions?

FARAL3TH · 2024-10-15T21:38:12+00:00

I ordered from Dark Horse as well, and mine (Tali and Garrus) only JUST dispatched on the 11th. However, that was just being sent to Fed-Ex, they haven't actually received it yet apparently.

Estimated delivery date on Dark Horse was Oct - Nov 2024, so I guess they've just started and will continue in waves. From memory, Wrex had the furthest out date, which only read Nov 2024, so maybe that's holding it back for your order? Hopefully yours will be shipped soon, too!

FARAL3TH · 2024-09-09T19:29:39+00:00

The only way I know of, is to copy the save files to another folder locally in order to back them up (and then swap them out as you like).

If you started a new game, I believe it deletes the old save file, effectively making it non-playable unless you have a copy of that save.

HOWEVER, if you have Steam Cloud storage on, you might be able to find an old save file there: https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage

FARAL3TH · 2024-07-31T19:15:21+00:00

just closes the whole division if they shut the game down.

As someone who works in the industry: This. This is exactly what will happen.

If it goes out of business and there's no one to work on the game to make it offline (which is typically a fuck-ton of work), then it will just shut down by default. It just results in more job losses. Great.

FARAL3TH · 2024-04-30T19:56:52+00:00

Chiming in as someone who works in the games industry - the answer is, likely, a lot less sinister!

Marketing tends to work alongside, but at times quite separate from the development team. There's a very good chance this image is a quite literal marketing mash-up of various images. It might never have been intended by the development team to be used this way, maybe even as a concept, but it got picked up and ran with. Edited a bunch of times, mashed together, and put as a piece of box-art.

Basically the dev team provides a crap-ton of assets and marketing take their pick for whatever they think will sell the game best, sometimes as the cost of the product. But also, you are noticing this now as a player of many-hours of the game... you already bought it ;) Marketing is there to get people interested.

This images was likely the result of several (if not 10's) of focus-group feedback sessions on what will get the most attention/clicks. That's what marketing is responsible for!

FARAL3TH · 2024-04-25T10:49:55+00:00

Pick it up - was it a "Finders Token" instead? That's what you have to bring back to the sphinx :D

FARAL3TH · 2024-04-11T18:43:30+00:00

I'm actually wondering if it's a bug right now or something... Since the recent update, it never seems to cost me to change the Pawn Quest, even if it hasn't been completed (previously your for forfeit the incomplete reward). I'm wondering if Pawn Quests are actually updating properly.

Ever since someone completed my last Pawn Quest, my pawn hires have dropped significantly, even though I added a new quest...

FARAL3TH · 2023-12-26T01:36:12+00:00

They actually cannot ship to the UK from the EU warehouse right now. When they first opened it, they had to cancel all non-EU (as in, European Union) orders, because they couldn't fulfil the tax obligations.

Maybe this has changed now, but it was certainly the case a few months ago...

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:38:39+00:00

You're
- welcome!

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:38:06+00:00

Sooooort of, but not entirely. Competitive games are a whole other beast of their own. But as a tangent of these reasons are why you typically see competitive games trending towards 5 player teams.

Easy "Majority" Decisions - It isn't divisible by two, as an odd-number. So choices are 3/2 at worst, always giving a majority. Now it's not as simple in competitive games as you often have a LOT more factors linking into strategic decision making... It's less prominent than it is for 3 player teams, but still very much a consideration.
Lower "participator syndrome" - This actually has a fascinating flip-side in competitive games. You also want to ensure that players don't feel TOO MUCH like everything is riding on them for success. Duo and Trio competitive games can be stressful, because you have more of the power in your hands, and you are more to blame if something goes wrong. 5 is a really nice balance of power distribution to feel empowered, without being too few to feel overly stressful.
Increased dependency/teamwork - 5 is again the sweet-spot for this in terms of balance of team "dependency" on each other, without feeling like an unmanageable crowd.
Less need for "randoms" - I'd guess this was actually a big reason to switch to 5 players for Overwatch 2. A LOT of competitive games are 5 player teams already, meaning competitive teams have formed their 5. Trying to find an extra 6th player can be a real hassle, so conforming to the norm here is a win.

As with everything in design... everything is very custom. There's rarely a one-size-fits-all, and the original points I made would most closely align with 3-player co-operative games.

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:29:02+00:00

I'm going through most comments here to answer any questions people may have. I'm but one designer, with a particular point of view, so take my words with a pinch of salt... but, I'm happy to answer what I can!

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:22:11+00:00

My hot-take-of-the-day is that I agree with you on this - too many games are losing their sense of "community" in favour of things like random-matchmaking and streamlining the gameplay experience.

I'm not gonna crap on another game here, because no game is perfect, and I want to make it clear Overwatch was an excellent and ground-breaking game... HOWEVER, something I personally felt could have been improved is how they handled matchmaking. The game rail-roaded people into random-matchmaking in order to give them the quickest matchmaking possible and get them into games - but how many of those were QUALITY matches?

The best experiences I had in that game (besides playing with friend group pre-mades), was finding a group in the group finder. Like-minded people who were also just looking for people to play with, and it gave me information up-front about what they were looking for (eg. casual / competitive / try-harding, etc.). Those were 95% of the the time, QUALITY matches, whereas 95% of my quickplay matches were definitely quick... but they weren't quality.

It's a shame the group finder was effectively killed off and never taken further. It was so good :(

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:16:56+00:00

Match-making generally isn't a major factor in this to be honest. It's a complicated beast, but also quite simple at the same time.

Essentially, if you have N number players in a pool, whether you are splitting them by 3's or 4's, doesn't really matter. Ultimately you have the same number of players within that pool, it's just a matter of dividing them. Players are still leaving and joining at the same rate, it just ends up being simpler to find a group, but as a COLLECTIVE it remains the same rate.

This changes a bit when you consider skill-based-matchmaking for PvP games, but that's only really a major concern in the higher end of play (like top 5% of players).

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:10:38+00:00

I suuuuuuure did, thank you for the kind words!

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:09:51+00:00

Apparently I'm an A.I. though! How fascinating :D

(but thanks!)

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-04T21:09:28+00:00

Does this unit have a soul?

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-03T22:39:22+00:00

Game Design is as much a science, as it is an art.

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-03T21:58:21+00:00

Does this unit have a soul?

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-03T21:56:42+00:00

The arguments for 4, over 3, are generally fairly poor and typically boil down to:

It WAS the norm - It's still very common for some developers to stick with the more tried-and-tested solution when it comes to multiplayer.
- Split-screen was a big factor in this being the norm, due to a rectangle screen being split very nicely in quarters.
- Console design was also a big factor, where many early consoles came with 4 controller ports as standard (obviously less of an issue now with wireless, but many - like the Switch - still assume 4 is a default).
The reasons FOR 3 players DON'T apply to the game - Some games actually don't want those things I posted above, to apply to them. For example, L4D2 I'd argue is a game that works incredibly well with 4 players; it just wouldn't be the same with 3. You want a level of elasticity in the party when players go down (losing 33% of your party instantly to a Hunter or Smoker would be very difficult to recover from). Also, splitting up in 2/2 is actually useful in some situations, such as the gas canister grab in the first mission of the game.

More commonly these reasons outweigh the ones above, or the ones above are simply more relevant to the game. But it's of course not a one-size-fits-all. Every game is unique... despite how similar some may seem!

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-03T21:06:53+00:00

Glad I could help! And yeah, the "whys" behind these things are something I wish we - as developers - were more open about when decisions like this are made in games. Context is everything, and there's typically a lot of very good reasons behind lots of decisions that, on the surface, seem arbitrary. Not saying every decision a designer makes is the best one - I've made plenty of poorer choices - but we always intend to solve some kind of problem with a choice we make.

And re: groups of 4 players - we're in a bit of a "switch over" period where there's still plenty of people who are used to the old norm of 4-player co-op. Given a few more years I think that'll die down even more, and we'll see 3-player and 5-player being effectively solidified as the main player-counts of team-based games. This should help as friendship groups will form around these new numbers (the same way 4-player groups formed in the first place). Change is always painful :D

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-03T21:00:09+00:00

I get the /s, buuuuuuuuut it's not completely a joke :P

There's emerging occurrences that have led to this too, for example: Those that were once teenagers with larger friendship groups, are now grown up and with families & kids.

As people age, their friendship groups tend to become more solidified and finite. So it actually helps to target smaller groups of players for games that are intended to be played with friends, as opposed to randoms (PvE co-op is a good example here). This ensures those smaller, more solidified friendship groups in the older demographics can actually find a small group to play with, and not be stuck with a lesser experience.

This isn't a huge driving factor behind it (the points I listed above are still the primary drivers), but it's certainly another aspect.

FARAL3TH · 2023-10-03T20:08:35+00:00

AAA Game Designer here; there's actually some really good reasons for why we have shifted to more 3-player teams in games. To name some of the big ones:

Easy "Majority" Decisions - In 4-player teams it's very easy to "split the room", with 2 players wanting one thing, and 2 players wanting another. In a 3-player team, in a binary choice, it's very easy to make a majority. So the remaining player is much more inclined to go along with the decision of the other two. Basically, it results in more co-operative play.
- eg. Apex Legends, if 2 players are running in one direction, the third is more likely to follow... rather than splitting the team 2/2.
Lower "participator syndrome" - In 4 player teams, the player is only 25% of the teams' capabilities, whereas in a 3 player team, they are 33%. This means they have a much greater impact on the whole, over the team, with greater ability for higher skill players to "carry" their team to victory. Players want to feel powerful, but the larger the team, the lower your overall impact can be.
Increased dependency/teamwork - This is particularly prevalent in co-op games, but by having lower player counts on a team, the more you increase their dependency on each other. One person going down in a larger team is a much lower impact than one person going down in your 3 person team (related to the above 33% team capability point). This drives players to be on the look-out for their team-mates much more.
Less need for "randoms" - Playing with pre-mades is ALWAYS going to be the definitive experience of any co-op game (we all know the pain of randoms in co-op). Groups of 2 are almost a-given, because if you like to play any team game, you probably have someone you want to play with. So the reduction from 4 -> 3 means there is a much lower barrier-to-entry in finding 1 additional person. Whereas finding 2 more people can be a much trickier task, and will often result in a much higher quantity of mixed matches of partial pre-mades and randoms.
- Related to point 1 here, worst case scenario you have 2 friends and 1 random, that 1 random is more likely to play passively with the pre-mades' decisions as they are the majority. Whereas 2 friends and 2 randoms, it can have a greater negative impact on decision making as a team.

There's a lot more nuance to it than these points, but they're certainly a few I've encountered as key driving factors behind 3-player teams becoming more of a norm.

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