I don’t like that they used them in the first place, but I’m glad to see this move. They certainly have the money.

Dementia

Sounds like it’s a little more nuanced than I thought. In my play throughs it seemed like everyone was always ready to go!

Do you mean the being shot down part? Cause the devs have said in interviews that they purposely made the characters player-sexual.

I also would love to see this!

🫡

Thanks for writing all that! I’m interested as someone who isn’t asexual, so I find your perspective really interesting since it’s not something I can personally experience.

I haven’t played mass effect, but that write up mirrors how I’ve felt about a lot of games with tacked on romance. Also, as someone who does enjoy sex, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good sex scene in a game. Baldur’s Gate 3, for all the hype about the sex in it, was still pretty weak imo. You’re not missing much in other words!

I mentioned it in another comment on this thread about BG3, but it sounds like mass effect also went with the “player-sexual” approach, meaning every character is into you no matter who you are. I find that approach really off-putting personally. I would much rather have characters love or hate you based on the character you made. This means you could even try and get shot down, which would be a nice realistic image of dating where that is always very possible (even more bonus points if a game let you fuck up the relationship after it started).

I like how you emphasize the focus on a relationship in Haven. I think most romances in games are dating simulators, not relationship simulators, and I hadn’t been able to put that into words until you said all this.

I’m someone who has always preferred the stability and comfort of an established relationship over the high stakes feeling of dating, but that’s not true for everyone. Some people who only like the beginning, and once things settle they lose interest. I’ve been happily married for a long time, and I don’t miss dating at all. It seems like there need to be more relationship simulations so that people like you and I can enjoy romance in games more!

I agree with that, but negative reviews also affect the algorithm. If enough of those reviews drown out positive ones it will reduce the chance you see the game at all.

If you don’t mind sharing, what are the differences in how sex is portrayed in this game vs how you don’t like it?

I think it also makes them feel more shallow because the characters are all “player-sexual” to use an industry term. Basically every character is into you if you want them to be.

I’d love to see more games have characters with preset likes and dislikes and how you’ve built and played your character will determine who will be interested (and who will shoot you down!)

What does it have? Those are some pretty major features.

“Art is something that we think is a little outdated in the modern business landscape” - this guy probably.

I agree, and the performance thing was my suspicion as well. It just seems off to have a large scale siege game be so small.

To be honest 5v5 still seems kinda small on paper to me, but I haven’t played it.

The focus on player dropoff is always misleading. Free to play games always lose massive numbers of players within the first week generally. What matters is who’s left, and what the company’s operating budget is. 10k players or even less can be plenty for a small team for instance. With such small player team sizes in-game, that would also be more than enough for a populated feeling queue.

Welcome to the stock market: where the money’s made up and the rules don’t matter!

The team size is so baffling to me in this game, but I’ve been wondering after watching this if it’s actually a performance thing.

It sounds like the game is woefully poorly optimized, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it can’t handle a more fun number of players.

Do you like puzzle games? I played Blue Prince with my wife and that was pretty fun. She’s not much of a gamer, so I just drove and she took notes. We talked about decisions/speculated on puzzles together.

I wish more games did better sign posting too. I’m not a fan of following the dotted line, but I see too many games where there’s no other way to do it. The NPC tells you to go somewhere, and doesn’t actually give you directions.

I thought the same thing. I would honestly argue that metroidvanias were open worlds before we had that term. There are some that are more linear than others, but many of them are very exploration heavy and don’t have a single order you must do things in.

Beef has gotten truly insane where I live. I’ve completely stopped buying it.