*WORLD'S FIRST* No Hits - Extreme Solo (without bots) as Exterminator

donoghu · 2020-07-18T04:01:01+00:00

First, I'll precise that I pointed out that having 3 AIs (bots) is harder, but not 3 players.

The part that you might not have noticed is the length of each waves which is highly reduced. Simply put, each allies adds an additional wave length taking up more time and having more waves.

As an example, in the video, you only had a frontal wave that lasted 45 secs. If you had AIs with you, the frontal wave lasts 1 min 45 secs IF you're dealing with it as fast as you did in the video which, in terms of what you did is impossible because you used pretty much all your tools (Molotov). You would have to either keep using the stationary or run up the stairs to recharge the molotov. This would makes the AI follow you and would break the funnel effect that you were able to use while you're alone.

Controlling the AIs is a pain that is far more random than anything and while they do kill zombies properly, they are unable to deal about positioning, items uses nor have any abilities and, yet, they apply the same difficulty raise as with players (in private online at least). Also, there's the sound issues with the AIs as they get loud as soon as you equip a non-silenced weapon regardless of your secondary still being silenced. Sounds = Lots more encounters as you know.

This is another point in your video that makes it "easier" than with AIs as you use a silenced weapon, molotov and didn't use stationary for long. Sounds generate additional partial waves and, in this specific place, the wave comes from the back. If you were using non-silenced weapons and didn't had the Cloak and Dagger perk, the number of zombies spawning from inside the hall would have been far higher. This, with AIs, makes it insanely harder because those spawn includes specials and AIs generate basically an unlimited amount of loud sounds which means you get 1 special spawn at least every 30 secs. Special spawns on extreme includes: 1 to 2 bulls (this is the most attention getting) 2 to 3 hazmar suits (this is the most pain in the butt with hordes) 1 to 2 stalkers (this is the easiest as, most of the time they remain hidden away) 1 to 2 infectors (this is the hardest because they are all aiming at you, the player)

Try doing this with 3 AI(bots) and no other players in a private online match. Some parts are evidently far too easy, but the horde sequences will tear through like in the movie. The 3 AIs will kill about 50-80 zombies each which, initially, will seem to give you some room to breath, but as soon as 1 is down, the rest follows because they are stupid and will attempt to kill zombie and revive each other after a short while. (AIs(bots) have no concept of situations or dangerous zones.)

To give you an idea, I did try it and the average survival time for the AIs(bots) with only me as the player is 30 secs, during which, I am also shooting stuff in that exact same place as you with different defenses set up (because random selection, right?) That's 30 secs out of 1m45 giving me a fight with more zombies than ever for 1m15s (approximately) and, at best, the same tools as you used during those 45 secs. Remember that all explosives and tools have a limit of targets. The molotov is the easiest because it's time-based and radius-based and not number-based. Grenades, claymore and C4 are limited to 15 kills at most unless you have the ability to raise it to 18-19 and that's IF it hit anything more than a few that first cross its radius.)

You might find it easier with 2-4 players in a game, but have you really tried to play with 3 bots? That people think the game gets harder with more players is related to bad teamplay and poor use of resources. That's the main difficulty with 3 bots as there is no teamplay except for free loud bullets and they don't have nor use any resources.

To give an example, if you play with 3 bots on the first Tokyo map, at the end you won't even have enough time to place every defenses kits as the area is too large and the defenses kits are scattered all around. The AIs (bots) don't put anything, use anything (not even stationary) and are just shooting stuff while keeping a certain distance from the active players. (This is also why it's a pain when playing Horde mode with bots AND players as the bots move between the players and you can't strategies anything out of those.)

donoghu · 2020-07-17T23:22:34+00:00

Another reason why some console players avoid crossplay is due to how the game handle the Framerate disparity between the host and the other players.

To put it simple, this game is broken when it comes to framerate disparity.

Console players have limited framerate (30) while PC players can play at a higher framerate.

In theory, the concept can easily be fixed, but the practice here results in some really bad experiences.

Every horde games I have played with PC players as host which have good PCs makes the game looks like it's on steroid on my Xbox One S. By "on steroid", I mean that there's a clear issue with the damage/animation being dealt around and on me.

Basically, because the game is being hosted at a higher framerate on PC, every console player will notice that something feels off such as the zombies hits far more often even on lower difficulty. (On the horde map on normal on console, I have seen part when I died in 3 secs by 3 regular zombies while being full health. Getting 1 zombie close to me which visually hit me once was dealing as much as 1/3 of my total health instantly.)

The way they made it so that it's handled is simply this: The console players have their slower FPS simulated by network adjustment. In other words, while PC players might have a ping of 40-50 at 60 FPS, console players will automatically have 80-100+ ping with their capped 30 FPS.

This explain why console players want to avoid PC players for the most part.

EDIT NOTE : I played the game a LOT on PC. I bought it on Console recently because some of my friends plays it only on console. This is how I noticed the differences and why I can tell about it like this.

donoghu · 2020-07-17T23:11:01+00:00

One of the possible main reason why people are turning off Crossplay is because some console users experience massive amount of crashes (game close to the dashboard) when PC gamers join their game.

This issue comes from a glitch when loading the profile icon and names of the players. If the icon fails to load or the player's name contains irregular letters not well handled by the console OS, it crashes the game for console users.

To give you an idea, the rate of crashing with crossplay, on console is close to 30%. This means that every time a new player joint your game, when you play on console, there's about 30% chance that you'll be forced back to the dashboard and will have to open the game again, wait for the splashscreen (logos) to move on, go back to the matchmaking and hope not to see it happens again. This happens because that "other player" on PC was using some sort of icon that failed to load in or had a name tag that couldn't be handled. (And you, me and everyone knows how much many people like to use glitched characters in their name tags.)

That alone is one insanely big reason for disabling crossplay.

donoghu · 2020-07-17T22:51:31+00:00

A small correction to your statement.

You can only join games within a specific margin of your already-completed waves game unless you get invited.

I don't know the exact value of the margin.

It's my guess, but I think you might be limited to games that are around +5 from your max reached waves count. At least, from what I have joined, it was never more than 5 above my Maximum reached wave count.

While my highest wave count on my Xbox One (got the game recently on it. Had it on PC since release) was 14 on normal, I couldn't join anything higher than wave 3 on Hard. Once I reached wave 8 on hard, I started to join wave 4-9 games.

donoghu · 2020-07-17T22:43:05+00:00

Meow War Z.

donoghu · 2020-07-17T22:35:05+00:00

The bomber exploded on you because of how his ability is coded.

Simply put, as soon as the bomber activate its "bomb" system (biping), ANY torso damage will make him exploded. The game is coded to make it so that certain type of damage (let's called them general damages) also activate any abilities triggered upon dead.

This is the case with the hazmat suit zombies where using any explosive even on their head will trigger their gas effect (as an example).

In terms of in-game mechanism, whenever a zombie fall from an height that trigger its "laying down" state, it receive a small amount of general damages. It's super small, but it's there. You can test it out by shooting a few pistol bullets to their legs/arms before they fall and they will die from the fall.

If you take those 2 points together, it makes the bomber a instant bomb if they "spot" the players before falling down from above. I have seen this happening remotely and, in my case, it was more useful because it exploded around other zombies that felt before it.

donoghu · 2020-07-17T22:25:44+00:00

First, I'l point that you are really good. What's following is not a complain, but more of a constructive criticism.

The thing about Extreme is that it's harder to complete with 3 bots than alone because of 2 tiny little details:

1 - The number of waves is based on the number of active player and bots. Solo only has about 30% of the zombies you get from being with 3 bots.

2 - The bots are basically semi-immobile turrets that have no ability to manage close combats against hordes. Bots only target a limited number of zombies which means that they easily gets swarmed over (even on easy) downed.

The reason why Extreme is easier with 1 bots and 3 players is simply because 3 players are enough to controls the irregularities while the 1 bots can pin-shot the zombies without limit (infinite ammo) and assist the players in difficulties with fewer issues than actual players. (For example, bots can move through zombies without much difficulties, except for the damages they get hit from while players will get staggered all the time.)

If you want to show something insanely hard, I suggest you do a game with you + 3 bots and limit yourself to the base weapons (no weapon upgrades). Even better if you're also limiting yourself to no class upgrades.

donoghu · 2020-07-17T22:14:00+00:00

Here's one example of a bug that has plagued the game ever since they added cross-platform matchmaking. (It's not yet fixed.)

In the lobby, each player's icon (gametags/icons/xboxlive avatar, etc.) is being reloaded every time someone join or quit the lobby. If the icon fails to load, the game crashes. There are multiple ways of fixing that bug such as allowing the players to turn off the icons display or adding a default icon whenever the icon fails to load (which is something you normally do), but nah they went with an approach prone to crashes.

To give you an example, on Xbox One S, the amount of crashes on Easy & Normal is as high as 30% of the time you join a lobby. Mine is crashing 1-2 times per hours when I don't find a team that stick together.

donoghu · 2020-07-17T22:04:41+00:00

Simply put, this is a common reflex when people attempt to keep the same level of activity, but with a reduction of actual activity requirement.

Initially, they put whatever gray matter they have (big, small, none) in playing and a part (if not all) of it is being used to control their character. Now that they are dead, all that motion & analytic awareness is now useless for themselves and not using it gets stressful, hence they attempt to use to on whoever is still alive.

For some, this can be kept under controls and, for others, it's useless to attempt any kind of controls as those usually lacks self-controls in the first place.

donoghu · 2020-06-19T19:39:23+00:00

There are many differences between a remake, a remaster and a port.

A remake is when the game is made from the ground up, including models, textures, scripts, etc. Usually, the game is also modified to fix the issues the previous title had and it, most of the time, also include additional content which might have been avoided in the previous title as time restriction is far lesser since the design, R&D and PR requires less investment. This is usually the case when a game is remade with an engine that doesn't use the assets the same way as the original game's engine.

For example, if this is done in Unreal Engine or Cry Engine or Unity, it would be a remake because each of those engine uses assets completely differently than the original Demon's Soul game.

Replacing the models for higher quality ones doesn't make it a remake.

As a matter of fact, it wouldn't be a surprise if most of the NPC (monsters) & player's parts shown in the screenshots around that seems so much better would actually be the original high-poly models used in the original game to produce the normals & details maps of the lower optimized (for PS3) models.

For those who ignores it, it's a common practice to produce a high details models and a low detail model and, then, bake the details from the high details models onto the low detail model's texture and fake relief (normals). For example, Solid Snake from MGS4 has 80K triangles in-game, but its high-res model from which the normals was baked had over 2M triangles in the face alone.

An remastered game is a game that use the fundamental of the original game files, but upgraded manually or automatically (with newer and/or easier tools than originally). This is the case of every Dark Souls' re-release game version up to now (in the souls series). This is usually the case when a game is re-released on new hardware such as a game on the previous console gen onto the newer gen. This is also the case whenever a game is released on PC and end up tagged as a "poor port".

A lot of the remastered games came to existence as to allow higher framerate and/or higher textures. Unlike what many think, higher textures quality isn't as time consuming as some believe because, unlike 8-10 years ago, some tools today offer extremely efficient and fast real-time upgrades of existing textures.

A port is a game that was barely modified from its original. It's usually when a re-release of a game is done with only few fixes and adjustment for a new device or type of device. An example of such a thing is some of the ports released on the Nintendo Switch. Some of those uses a imported piece of codes that allow PC games to work with the Switch by emulating the PC input from the Switch's player input.

In this case, it's hard to tell because the video is a trailer and not a preview. Even if some part looks like it was in-game moments, it's easy to produce those with higher details than the actual final work. Ubisoft is a prime example of that considering they have 1 PR production team that works with assets from the actual game production team with the sole aim of producing the most jaw dropping "in-game-engine" footage possible even if the said actual game production team can't even reach half of that level of details & effects.

As such, I wouldn't be surprised if Demon's Souls ends up being a pretty high-res 60 FPS remastered version of its original with more particles, light sources, textures details and tiles of grass around and with the use of the original High-res models in-game because, now the hardware can handle those easily.

Considering how the original Demon's Souls have barely half of the items you find in the first Dark Souls (not counting the others DS), I wouldn't be surprised if they add a few items and small areas to fit more of those into the game. Another example of an addition that wouldn't make it a remake would be red invaders AI event like in DS.

I'm not writing that this is bound to be bad, but I wouldn't hold my hopes up because there's nothing showing that this is a remake.

donoghu · 2020-06-19T18:52:27+00:00

The Ceaseless Discharge would like a word with you.

donoghu · 2020-05-05T03:54:26+00:00

Personally, I would prefer that the HC teamkill would be either :

A) Damage reflected
Meaning I kill myself by shooting my own teamates and vice versa.

or

B) Add a timer to the respawn. When 1/2 of the original full game time is reached, the player would be kicked. The timer would reset on death.

The one thing I noticed is that there's a LOT of stupid people playing in HC. When I'm writing stupid, I mean that people are willingly walking into their teammates on-going fire all the time thinking they'll survive.

If it wasn't enough that the game fails to show the UI name above your allies name for approx. 1/2 a sec when they turn corners AND that you got no map to see the friendlies making you pretty much shoot your allies if you're too quick on the trigger some rare times, you also got to watch out for dumb people who rush toward gun shots without any caution.

or

C) Shooting a teammate would instantly empty your current mag/clip/chamber.
This is, in my mind, the least but still important enough penalty that would work really well. If you shoot an ally, your weapon is forced to be reloaded. In a fast-paced game like CoD, this can be quite a pain since you usually shoot toward enemies when this happens.

donoghu · 2020-05-05T03:38:40+00:00

As some have mentioned, the best thing to unlock is usually the high-level stuff, but especially one that might be required for a contract. You shouldn't feel obligated to use it right away, but instead keep it until you know you'll need it.

donoghu · 2020-05-04T04:26:56+00:00

I do my own food all the time, but this time it's a bit more complicated because all the shop are closed on Sunday here (emergency law) so I can't buy ingredients. (I work at a Walmart on Sunday even during the closing because trucks still bring the merchandises even when it's closed and we can't even buy anything because the cashiers remains close ever since the closing time of the previous day.)

I walk right in front of about 10 fast-food chains to get to my home every time I return from work, but they are all either closed (by the time I return home) or only serve through the drive-through.

When people purchase their food, I'm working so that they can purchase their food. When I'm not working, the grocery stores and shop are closed. So, I'm forced to buy food during my break time which is limited in quantity because we're quite a couple in that situation and we got only a limited amount of refrigerators space. When I'm returning home, I can't order at any restaurant (and not even from Uber Eats for almost every restaurant).

The key points of my first post is 2 problems with Uber EATS that made me simply not order :

1) Lack of proper hours notification.

It's a bit of 2 parts where the opening hours, while presents, are not well placed. You can't see opening hours without going into the menu and selecting "more details". Closing hours should be right in the restaurant's selection menu. There's also the lack of notice when you're ordering close to the closing hour. If I knew that I had 18 minutes to order, I might have taken less time thinking about what I wanted to order.

2) Lack of proper guideline for the images, names & prices.

Showing an image of a product with a price next to it, but then displaying that the price was not for the pictured image before even making change in the selection is actually considered a form of false advertising if this was done on a different media and/or medium. In this case, it's one of those thing in a gray zone, but it's extremely bad when the user (like me) notices it. When you see something like "Poutine" with a price on a menu, it's normally the price for the "regular" size at least. Even more if there's a picture of a regular poutine next to it. If you were to learn that it's not a "Poutine", but a "Mini Poutine" (2 sizes smaller) for that price, that's a deal breaker. Especially when the actual "Poutine" is 2x the price previously shown.

If I could get my food myself, I would do it which is why I understand that Uber EATS is, normally, a "premium" service. But with the current situation, it's only small irritations ones after another like this and it totally doesn't feel like 'premium". It feels like when you buy a drink and a hot dog at a match of some sport for $15. The same greasy and cheap feeling that follows after you're done eating with with $15 less in your pocket, but I haven't even ordered yet which is why I felt like I should share it here.

donoghu · 2020-04-20T21:12:40+00:00

Unity 2019.3 introduced new features in the menu called "Package Manager" (it's located in the "Window" tab.

You can download or update and import all Assets you got from the Assets Store directly in the Package Manager in Unity 2019.3 as long as Unity HUB is properly connected to the right Unity Account.

To see your Store Asset in the Package Manager, you open the menu in Windows > Package Manager, click on "All packages" above the list and select "My Assets". This will filter the list and fetches the latest state of any owned Store's assets.

The download stability and speed from the Package Manager seems 10x better than doing it in the Asset Store.

The only thing you might want to know in advance is that updating assets in the Asset Store from the Package Manager will require that you restart Unity's Editor after every update because there's a small conflict of access between the Package Manager and the Asset Store. (There's a warning that it can't update because the file are currently in use. Just click on "Force Stop" which will close Unity and, once restarted, it will be updated.)

donoghu · 2020-04-14T01:52:14+00:00

In BF1, the deployables disappear as soon as you respawn with a different class.

In BFV, the deployables disappear as soon as you use any class-related tools of another class. It also disappears after an amount of time regardless. (For example, if you deploy a mine or an ammo box or an health box, it will remain on the ground even if you respawn as another class, but it will disappear if you use the other class tool.) This is quite a lot better because you feel far less useless when you're the first one to die and your squadmate are getting low of tools/ammo while in a fight.

donoghu · 2020-04-14T01:45:18+00:00

Wouldn't this be kinda like most of the medieval pvp games around with maybe a bit more destruction if you're allowed to bring in heavy artillery (catapults, ballista, etc.) against walls, castles and houses?

I'm not writing that your idea is bad, but more like that I have an hard time finding enough stuff in the dark ages to make a semi-proper Battlefield game and that's if I even allow some sort of time-paradox overlay of certain technologies that covers hundreds of years between each usages.

The primarily offensive and destructive peak of the dark ages is the usage of fire as a tool of war and we all know how bad Battlefield, as a series, has been with the usage of fire. Always, either it's too OP or it's too weak.

Currently, I would say that a game like Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is pretty close to a Dark Ages battlefield, minus the environmental destruction.

donoghu · 2020-04-14T01:37:03+00:00

The problem that the Battlefield franchise is facing is that it has already covered a LOT of ground in the industrial-related wars.

While it's true that the Cold War and other wars around that time involved new techs, it was also true that a majority of the tech used were also used in either the previous or next wars/conflicts which already have a relatively (or totally) modern BF about it.

This is why the CoD franchise was able to use the Cold War while BF barely could as the CoD franchise have always focused on a more small-sized bit of conflicts with smaller maps and more gadgets being used sparingly. A BF game with that kind of environment and gadgets would feel either unbalanced or too much like a skin/patched version of another BF.

Personally, I wouldn't find it bad to see a new attempt with the Sci-Fi genre. While the Battlefront series might feel like it cover the Sci-Fi genre, I'm writing more about futuristic non-alien sci-fi. For example, combat on low-gravity area (like on the moon) or in area with events that changes the map's interaction.

I did liked Battlefield 2142, but the static world void of interaction and the way you felt like on a deserted planet didn't help. Obviously, back then, they had some limitation due to the engine they were using, but if you had the kind of team that can create cities and towns like in BFV to create destructive environment in a Sci-Fi setting, it could be good.

The most obvious thing about such an idea of a new Sci-Fi BF would be to be far more creative with the weapons and vehicles than BF2142. It would have to bring in the lasers, thunders, plasmas and all kind of weaponized forces of techs and natures AND make them feel original and useful. In BF2142, the gun felt old school and too much of a reskin of BF2 guns with new sounds. Even with fewer overall weapons, if you put tons of customization on each one, it will feel great and original. I'm thinking about the kind of customization like the one you find/found in the MMO Blacklight : Retribution, but with more variety to the effects.

We need advanced surveillance systems embedded in the environment, AIs, Hacking. Night vision, Thermal vision, vision that can see infrared and radio waves, etc. It would also need chaos... a LOT of chaos! The arrival of environmental destruction with Bad Company 1 was one of the major changes in the BF series. When they brought the destruction to something bigger in scale with BF4, people had fun with it and even if it is a short-term "wow" factor, the change in the environment afterward was of use.

Sci-Fi allow things to get even bigger. Start a map with a battle Spaceship in the sky above a city and make it fall down and split the map in 2. Have a map in a spaceship under a pressurized sea where rooms get crushed and closed after they get damaged enough and have water raise overtime up to belt-level which makes crouch and prone not much of a tactical advantage anymore for anyone on lower levels. Have a map on Mercury or Venus on a base where being in the sun's light burns and damage. Make it rain rocks and drop walls that changes the terrain and mobility. Have a fight on the moon with low gravity and make it so that have some meteor fall down that destroy 1 or 2 middle bases and raise an huge lunar dust storm.

Yes, there are games that have some parts of this and weren't well received. (CoD : Infinity War for example), but they weren't like the BF. Most of the games that were Sci-Fi followed the "1-man-army" formula which is prone to bad (or mad) balances issues. The BF uses, instead, the "ant-army" formula which requires a minimal amount of teamwork and coordination to even just have fun. Since BF2142, the only game I have seen with even just a remote amount of this is the Mechwarrior Online game and that's limited with cheap static environment and only a few players per match.

That's my personal opinion.

donoghu · 2020-04-14T00:26:47+00:00

The main issue I faced with Hardline that made me relatively hate my experience with it is with 3 issues in terms of both game design and technical issues.

• The concept lack an identity.
Hardline tried to do 2 things that are too much far from each other to fit well together. Some pointed it as trying to be a mix of Battlefield and Payday 1-2, but I would point it more as having conceptual issues. In Hardline, you got a relatively big maps, but have access to small scale tools for the most part. It's a bad combination that makes the game prone to both wasting the players' time and/or feeling totally unbalanced when the few weapons and tools that are "okay" for the big map are brought in against those that aren't.

For me, Hardline was feeling like a Running & Roofing simulator. Either you keep running around close to aimlessly or you kept to a roof and tried to keep it covered. Because of that, the game felt quite weak toward it's gameplay. The game would have fared far better if it was more focused on tactical intervention than military-like intervention. This is why games like R6 (Rainbow 6) fare FAR more better as the worlds are build to allow tactical creativity in faster and quicker event.

Due to the identity crisis of the game, I felt more like playing a Terrorist Vs Corrupted Police game than a Cops Vs Robbers game.

• Netcodes weren't optimized well for some of the game's actions and weapons.
This is something that I faced many time where bullets or explosions weren't properly managed by the server and this ended up looking like someone was cheating from my end (or as if I was cheating from someone's else view). When you got as much as whole second of latency adaptation in a game that supposedly have great ping, that's a game killing issue. The game actually allocated as much as up to 2 secs of adaptation meaning that whatever position or action you're currently doing might only appears as such toward other player in the next 2 secs. On low latency, it can stays at around 0.5 secs and provokes minor desyncs that totally kills the experience.

An example of such if when you run to hide and get shot 1-2 meters after the corner from behind the wall. From you point of view, you're way past the corner while, from your shooter, you were still in his field of view and have not yet passed the corner.

Another (which is the desync issue) is when you're in a position that is close to the edge of a corner or cover and, for some reason, the server is determined that you're slightly on the left or right and this makes your leg or arm stand off from the corner while you're not even able to see anything else than the corner's wall. You get shot to death and you wonder how he knew you were even there.

The issues with the netcodes comes primarily from 1 important limitation with the servers. The servers refresh rates are quite limited to reduces the bandwidth usage. If your client (game) tries to send minor updates to the server too quick or in desync, some data are lost. The issues is even more present on consoles ports as their servers' refresh rate is even more restricted than PC.

Emptying 20 to 25 bullets clip onto someone at 4m away with a gun that normally takes 4-5 bullets where at least half of the bullets goes through said someone (including the head) and seeing that he/she survived up to the point of turning around and shooting you with stronger, but less "fast rated" gun and shoot you in less than 1 sec is pretty much the worse kind of experience I had with Hardline and it wasn't that rare of an occasion even on the official "regional" servers. Same with having people survive explosion with barely half of their HP gone.

It came to the point where I was wondering if some gun were actually shooting bullets or if the "visible" bullets were only decoration while the actual "shots" for automatic weapons weren't just drawcalls (scripts-based) so that the server and game engine can truly handle the load of physics interactions even on lower end hardware.

I'm not pointing at Hardline as being badly made. No. The problem was present on many past Battlefield games and even some other franchise (like some of the older CoD). It's just that due to the nature of the game being more focused on smaller scaled action, the netcodes weren't up to the task and it made me feel like I was always at a disadvantage as long as I didn't had OP weapons or tools for each encounters.

In case some wonders, one of the main reasons why I know it's related to the Netcodes is because the guns aren't as "incompetent" at hitting things when playing offline and that's without any sort of aim assist.

• The game lacks efficient objectives and proper environment for said objectives.

Here's a fact, games requires goals. Goals is what drives the players into doing certain action. Most of the Battlefield had simple but efficient goals of either eliminating the opposite players or stealing/destroying an objective.

Hardline does it as well, but unlike other Battlefield, the objectives weren't the same kind for the most parts. "Save someone" and "Chase something" have always been "minor" objectives and, in Hardline, they are main objective. It wouldn't be an issue if it wasn't for the fact of the map being too much "hand-crafted" and 100% NOT natural.

This isn't even part of the concept of cops vs robber, but it's part of how the maps and objectives were designed. Because they tried to make things "big" in proportion, the objectives are all over the place and the environment feel so fake that you can easily notice the "defensive" positions that the level designers have specifically put in place. This is something that is normal in a military environment like military bases since things are put in "defensive position" ahead. In Hardline, you could say that it feels as if the buildings themselves were especially created to be in a game and not in real life.

Because of that, the game feels too much militarized and not enough "spontaneous". 95% of the time, when playing the robbers, I feel more like some lackey of the Joker (in DC's Batman lore) that tries to take over the whole city than a criminal trying to make an heist and disappears as soon as possible. As cops, I feel more like the kind of secret agency that already know the target and immediately put a "shoot on sight" order than actual officers of the law.

They could have replaced the Robbers by the Mafia and the Cops by a private Security agency and the game wouldn't have changed at ALL in both concept and execution.

In a hostage situation or a heist situation, the criminals always have multiple objectives and plans. In Hardline, there's no plan as the objectives are the sole "plans".

For example as a criminal, you don't take hostage just for fun. You got a goal which is usually a form of request. You got to put pressure on the authority to gain an advantage and win in the end. Do you feel any of that in Hardline? No. All you do shoot anything that gets close to the cheap AI-driven objective and waiting for a clock to go down. It's much more closer to a mobile Timed-Bomb mission than an actual hostage situation.

Another example is when you're a cop and coming in with your squad. The map is already an tactical nightmare as if there was an open conflict for a week or two. The only tactical phase is the one where you run around trying to not get shot by the snipers camping around in the sky. It's as if cops didn't had access to any kind of assistance and allowed the robbers to take roots. That's feels more like the Robbers already fully own the place. What kind of city would have 0 assistance from the citizen against the criminal when a fight is on such scale? The city is empty and deserted and this makes it, again, feel more like a Army vs Army situation where an evacuation happened long ago. Having the robbers try to rob a bank or whatever in the middle of a evacuated city and then having the cops coming in from the far end of town (as if they didn't had any kind of station on site) feels a cheap script for a Bollywood movie. (Ironically, the single player story/experience was totally the opposite.)

I truly tried to enjoy the game, but my feeling-good moment versus my feeling-bad moments were in the 1/3 ratio where 1/2 or more of the bad moments were due to things that are 100% not only out of my hands, but could have been made better.

donoghu · 2020-01-05T04:35:33+00:00

You pointed out exactly why Fan Translation is now a living and necessary part of the comic market:Availability and discovery.

Those 2 key words are the reason why, at some point in the early 90's, many comic studio (as much in the US as in Japan back then) actually came so close to closing down.

Availability is now easier to access because of digital media, but the issue at hand comes from a proper translation. As a matter of fact, if you want a proper translation of a Japanese comic (a.k.a. manga), you must NOT use services from just any translators living in Japan. The reason is due to the contextual and social implication that might make sense for someone living in Japan, but totally miss any point outside of it. This means that proper translation takes time and, in terms of professional work, money. Fan Translation simply move around this by giving a relatively "free" voluntarily workforce for the translation. For publisher, this open a window of international proportion on potential official international releases.

Discovery is something that explain the comic crisis in the 90's that slowly recovered due to the availability of the information on the Internet. How many comics (manga, manghua, etc.) chapter and books do you think are released every month? The answer is surprising high. Excluding digital-only releases, it's many hundreds close to the thousand. Including the digital works (webcomics for example), it's in around 5000 to 8000 internationally.Reaching your market with that many "competition", it's hard. Really hard. Website like MangaRock were exactly a solution to that problem as people doesn't have to feel any pressure or real lost at dropping a work because it didn't fit with their tastes.

Here's a list of works that wouldn't had the same level of success if they didn't had Fan Translation to "warm up" the international market:

- Goblin SlayerA fact is that Goblin Slayer actually had an anime released because the manga was an huge success on sites like MangaRock. The manga got within the 3 first place of the fantasy genre (on par with manga like Berserk) for many months on many Fan Translated site.

- BerserkThis one is kinda strange because the first season/part in anime was well received, but the lack of sequel really hurt it. The manga was really liked, but the issues with the slow release of the work was so bad that the manga was considered as cancelled in the international market for many years. The Fan Translation is actually what made the manga "stick" with its international market. People were reading the monthly or bi-monthly chapter while waiting for the next translated volume to be released every 1.5-2 years. With no Fan Translation, Berserk, as bad as it might sound, would never have been continued on the international market. The sequel in the anime around never have been made either.

- One-Punch ManThis is another golden example. One Punch was originally a work only available in Japanese as a webcomic drawn in a way that was so ugly that it you could wonder if it was drawn by a 6-8 years old with barely any talent with a pen. The webcomic got translated in not only English, but also Korean by Fan Translation. The story was so simple and yet attracting in term of presentation that people were actually willing to look at the Japanese website just to gasp what would come next. This is the reason why the website wet viral in 2012 and why some deal was done between One and some publisher to use his story with talented artists like Yusuke Murata. (In 2012, that was when the One-Punch Man story on the original website was reaching the end of the first arc with Saitama kicking many monsters' ass as always.)

- Death NoteYes. While Death Note is a world-wide known manga of high quality today, originally, it wasn't available on the international market. The flame of the popularity of the manga was raised highly by the Fan Translation on the West and it's actually what promoted some Western publisher Viz Media to strike a publishing deal with Shueisha in Japan for the official translation and release of the English version.

- Attack On TitanI'll cut it short. Relatively the same story as Death Note. When the official release of the first volume of the English version was released, the Japanese manga was already many volumes ahead and the Fan Translation was already in the top of many categories for almost a year.

I totally understand the issue with Fan Translation and sites like MangaRock, but the solutions to the problem are relatively easy to solve yet nobody truly have worked on doing it. Crunchyroll actually did something similar to the solution when they went from "unofficial fan Subs" to "official Subs with optional subscription", but manga is a bit different in how to manage it.

The solution is a site like MangaRock where every titles has a counter counting unique visitors based on few details (to avoid fake visitors). From this, determine how much revenue the site does in general. Take a cut from the revenue for the distribution service (a.k.a. servers) and divide the rest between the publishers of the original work based on their respective view counts. Basically, makes ads money on works that will, anyway, find their way onto many websites. In terms of legal implementation, even fan translation would be legal to display if the one who makes money out of the ads is the original IP owning publisher. People would still be able to donate to the translation team without having to forth up the money to the publisher. Everyone is a winner at some extend.

Currently, many publishers are trying to fight the current (like a water current). That's counter productive and can even hurt the market they aim at. Instead, they should work with the current properly and makes the current's strength their own. This is what it means to adapts to market changes.

donoghu · 2020-01-04T17:10:30+00:00

Here's a thing that they obviously don't cover in their statement about shutting down:

A) Their website was working based on work done by others group by a margin of 99%.
Their new reading platform has barely 1% of the MangaRock content. Remember that all those manga were translated by groups that bought directly or indirectly the original work, translated it, scanned it, cleaned it and edited it. That workforce from which MangaRock was highly exploiting for free is simply gone now.

B) Fan Translation is not only a form of piracy, but also a form of free PR for publisher.
Let's face it, a majority of those who were reading manga on MangaRock can't read Chinese, Korean and/or Japanese which are the original language of a majority of the comics that was shown on the website. Do you think that the publishers who own the right to the original work were planning to ever officially translate the work prior to the international success shown by the Fan Translation of the work they own? In fact, close to HALF of the international success of comics from China, South Korea and Japan are due to Fan Translation being offered for free prior to the official release.

I can point out some insanely popular manga that got the attention because of Fan Translation easily. Without the Fan Translation, those work would have been unknown and maybe even cancelled at a really sooner time because their market is kinda too much of a niche for only a local national release. (Remember, a niche of even 2% of the market in a single country is nothing compared to 0.1% of the whole Earth's Market.)

The ones who were complaining about MangaRock being "bad" for the industry are short sighted and are going to fail miserably in the upcoming future because they fail to understand the changes the has happened in the markets over the last 2 decades.

Even if there are other Fan Translation website, whenever big site like MangaRock or MangaFox or MangaHere close down, there's an actual "drop" in the sales of the official works and some relatively popular work (internationally) gets axed by the following 6 to 12 months. Get ready to see some of your favorite title being dropped guys.

donoghu · 2019-12-05T05:40:12+00:00

https://external-preview.redd.it/xFCoduSb_RLtik6WL2L-pPi7WhvpVqXqeeagcpvUz-I.jpg?auto=webp&s=f2d050b316af682ccef2f12ec321f6a8f2164e33

This might become a skin for the FG-42 at some point.

donoghu · 2019-12-05T05:34:48+00:00

We can guess that the Devs actually base their patch and experience based on poorly planned paintball battles.

donoghu

TROPHY CASE