Recent reviews by KyleStuff

Fun in the way games used to be.

TL;DR: Buy game, play game, and DON'T SPOIL ANYTHING FOR YOURSELF BY READING/WATCHING!

I have never liked "Souls Games." I've always enjoyed watching other people play them, but would always hit a difficult area/boss, become frustrated, and go play something else.

Elden Ring is a different animal. The inclusion of a HUGE open world means that when I hit something frustratingly difficult I can just go somewhere else. I can continue playing the game. Not only does this keep the fun escapism of a video game from turning into a feeling of bashing one's head into a wall, but it also affords the player time to level up, find new gear, and master their attacks and skills. When you return to that difficult area/boss you're fresh, and better prepared. You'll still die a ton, but having that fresh, non-frustrated mindset is key to conquering any challenge this game can throw at you. Speaking of mindset...

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What do you want to do?

If you said "kill bosses," or "beat tough dungeons," I'd encourage you to reframe that as Overcoming Through Mastery. You can certainly kill all kinds of difficult enemies, but when you fail, if all you want is to beat them, you're going to start having a bad time. Accept that victory over your foes will come from learning and mastery. The advice "just get good," is like telling a first grader to "just get smart." Pay attention to the attacks the enemies make. Feel the timing of their swings. Watch the enemies' weapons, not their bodies. Learn. Once you've mastered what that particular enemy does, you'll get 'em. And what a sweet reward is that feeling of having Overcome Through Mastery.

If what you want to do is explore a vast open world, I'd encourage you to think of it more as a desire to Experience Wonder. Yes, there are incredible vistas almost everywhere you turn. Yes, if you pick a direction and run you'll find something new. And yes, you'll die. If you go running off towards the sunset, you'll eventually find something that will annihilate you. That's great! Getting one-shot off your horse by some giant monstrosity you've never seen before is hilarious. Enjoy that feeling of smallness, the awe you have for that creature that killed you. Later on in your journey that enemy might feel banal, so really take it in while they're at/above your level.

It's easy to overlook a hodgepodge of soldiers resting around a fire as just another group of baddies to beat. But if you're really out to Experience Wonder you'll see the story. A broken cart, corpses of soldiers bearing the same heraldry, corpses of creatures you've never seen before. The story of an ambush laid bare before you. These few remaining enemies are the survivors of an attack. Are the ambushers still nearby, readying another assault? How difficult must they be to have taken out half the force of soldiers? These sorts of stories abound in Elden Ring. For every line of spoken dialogue, there is a novel-worth of environmental storytelling. Wonderful.

For maximum fulfillment, I recommend trying to enjoy both Overcoming Through Mastery and Experiencing Wonder. And for Marika's sake, DON'T SPOIL YOURSELF. Looking up a boss fight guide takes away from the feeling of accomplishment when you overcome. Watching a video on all the hidden dungeons takes away the wonder of stumbling upon a tucked-away door in the cliff face.

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So, you've probably heard about one of the writers. This game is not a book, so don't expect this tale to be told the same way as "Game of Thrones." I liken the delivery of the story to the flavor text on Magic: The Gathering cards. You pick up a fallen soldier's sword, and in your inventory it treats you to a little blurb of lore. Every item give you a little blurb of lore. NPCs that are willing to speak to you often only have a few lines of dialogue, barely more than a blurb of lore. Each blurb, though poignant and evocative, is insufficient to feel as though you've learned anything about the world. All those blurbs together, strewn across the truly massive world full of environmental storytelling, reveal all. There is depth and richness and reason behind all that you experience in Elden Ring. The first time through an area, you may wonder why this one group of enemies seems out of place. Hours later you'll realize why they were there. Trust that even in the open world, enemies have been placed with purpose and thought behind them. Having completed the game and acquired all achievements, I feel I have a very clear understanding of the past and present of the Lands Between. I'm not quite at join a discord to discuss the minutiae of the placement of different types of moss levels of knowledge, but I definitely feel as though I've gotten a book's worth of story. A very good book.

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Elden Ring is my favorite game. I played as a sword and board beefcake and as a glass-cannon spellslinger. I climbed frozen peaks and plumbed inky depths. I'm on Journey 4 at the time of writing this (my third New Game +, so to speak) and the game still has areas I haven't fully explored. I'm still finding new things. Are there negatives? Sure. Sometimes an enemy clips through a wall a bit, sometimes the UI feels clunky, sometimes you don't have that one upgrade material you need but you have all the ones you need beyond it so your options are to either wander the world to try to find one or to look it up online (and here, I relent, maybe you would have more fun if you looked up where to find that smithing stone), but none of that matters. I really didn't even notice any of the negatives on my first go. It's like finding one un-popped kernel at the bottom of your popcorn: it's honestly just impressive that there aren't more of them. Do yourself a favor, set aside a good chunk of time, and play Elden Ring.

Try fingers
but hole

Really well put together. Feels like a full game already. Anything beyond what's here is just icing on the cake. The quick matches make for a game you can play with 10 minutes of spare time, and the engaging gameplay will keep you going at it for hours.

Two days ago there was no demand for paid mods. Outside of your little secret meetings and emails the idea of paying for mods was considered absolutely absurd.

This system is not working. The implementation is completely idiotic and needs a complete overhaul. Cancel the experiment; it's already lost you a ton of money and goodwill. Your actions have already killed tons of popular mods, and more to come -- SkyUI is becoming paid-only, which is a mod that thousands of other mods rely on. We are losing uncountable content overnight.

Now, for some questions and specifics.
PROBLEM 1.
1) 75% of the revenue goes to Valve and the publisher.
This is one of the most important problems people have with this. People already bought the game, mods (and the existence of mods) help sell the games just by existing, and now you (and Bethesda) want to dip into the wallets of consumers years after the game has stopped receiving any kind of update.
And you do this by completely shafting the people who want to make content, by offering a measly 25% for doing - let's face it - all of the design and artwork most of the time.
Why? Why this, instead of a donation button? Why this instead of a Patreon model? If you want to get people used to the idea that paying for mods is a thing they want to be doing, you should nudge them in the direction of the guy who is making money off of modding Cities: Skylines right now. That's working.
This isn't about making modders get paid for their work. If it was, a Patreon system to get people into the idea would be much, much more effective. This isn't about wanting modders to get paid. Valve and Bethesda take a MASSIVE cut off the work of someone else, and you couldn't justify that under a Patreon model.
Is this just because you want people to get used to paying for mods ahead of time, so that when the time comes - and it is fast approaching - where, for certain games, ALL mods on the workshop will be paid-only, that practice will be much more accepted?
PROBLEM 2.
There is zero quality control. It is currently buyer beware, and Valve is offering refunds for obvious and immediate scams or abuses of the system -- within a 24 hour period after purchasing.
This is another problem. Your laissez fair attitude towards content in your workshop, however laudable you may think it is, means that most of the content on the store will be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ skins, useless trinkets, or - as we've already seen - early-access mods with benefits given to people who buy them early, and in-game popups asking players to pay for and use the paid version of the mod they are using.
We are seeing a lot of mods that used to be free, but now aren't -- and we are seeing mods that were uploaded without the consent of the original creator. And the only thing we can do about this is report it, that your legendary customer service may occasionally take a peek at it?
That's what you're selling us?
Intermediate and longevity problems:
PROBLEM 1.
Mods have all sorts of compatibility issues. When modders come together to work on things for free, you get the Nexus, a place where modders collaborate and offer solutions to compatibility issues with other people's mods.
There is no such system in place on Steam, and modders are under no obligation to make their mods compatible with anyone else's, nor offer support for people who have these issues. They are not required to fix anything broken.
Once the game updates, will the mod remain compatible? Frequently the answer is no, as API changes are frequent and things break on a regular basis. Like the above situation, modders are under no obligation to patch their mod to work with the latest game (and it would be unreasonable to expect it). You are buying something that may be entirely transient.
Like with point one, when mods are free, modders are much more likely to collaborate with each other, offer patches, offer compatibility updates, and generally rely on each other's content. Very frequently, mods have other mods as requirements and dependencies. SkyUI is the most prominent example right now.
SkyUI is a mod that has been around since the beginning. It is a UI overhaul that adds a lot of accessibility and functionality.
Thousands of mods rely on SkyUI to work.
And the creator just said SkyUI will now be paid-only.
Under this new system, content creators will be tempted to scramble for air time and popularity. They will be better off if they do not promote or rely on other mods at all, or do anything that can hurt the sales of their own content. They may even engage in anti-consumer practices. That is what is happening here. This limits the overall quality of content and hurts the consumer.
What happens if SkyUI refuses people to make money off their work for free? What happens if paid content depends on free content from elsewhere when they are under no obligation to share their revenue with their dependencies? I don't think Steam has any idea what is going to happen here.
Also, how will you determine the legality of not only the actual mods, but of the games themselves once mods are front and centre as a selling point on Steam? How will you deal with mods using unlicensed names of people, vehicles, guns, or other gaming characters? How will you deal with regional problems with mods introducing (or reintroducing) cut content that is illegal in some countries, but not others?
This is not a stable environment.
I think this is a humongous misstep from Valve. PC mods being free is a large part of why so many games have enjoyed such longevity for so long, and putting everyone on an even playing field so to speak is why I love the PC platform on the whole. Additionally, I have problems with the heavily abusable system to the incredibly skewed monetization (with 75% of the revenue going to Valve and the game publisher rather than the person who did the work on the mod).
Everyone completely hates your system, Gabe. Shut it down, come up with something better.