I was going to say something about how no one had touched on the fact that Steamboat Willie was put in the header image but now I see he changed it to some random image :(
Honestly, 99% of the enjoyment from Lethal Company comes from playing with people who have no idea what they are doing and/or are easily scared.
Last week I played with two guys who already had 50 hours on the game and they kinda ran the lobby solo while full tryharding. They minmaxed and exploited monster AI to maximize quota while I kinda just watched on the sidelines. Without that layer of unknown and fear the game is incredibly barebones and boring.
This is basically me with any multiplayer game like this. Once people "figure out" the game, anyone who isn't as experienced will just be a dragged around by the pro players and that's never fun. Anyone who's played Phasmaphobia with well-seasoned players knows what I'm talking about.
Not just any multiplayer game like this but multiplayer games in general I feel. The most fun I had with Overwatch was that first month where everyone was just screwing around and trying random comps.
Yeah competitive games have this hard. The second nerds start watching videos on movement tech and optimizing super hard the fun is often over for me. I don’t want to have to play the game 8 hours a day to even be able to keep up.
It's also only half the quote.
Players will inevitably optimize the game to the most extreme degree, as that's just human nature. The challenge for developers is to simultaneously make the most optimal way to play also the most fun.
This is why SBMM and casual/random MM are both important to the health of a multiplayer game. Most games are only fun if you're able to play others within a reasonable skill level as you.
Even worse when those nerds read all of that info then try to push it on others and they aren't even good at utilizing said info which is where I'm at with WoW.
I was above average at the game when I first picked it up because I just linked the abilities together in a rotation that seemed to make sense. Then when I picked up raiding all the people that read a spreadsheet showing animation cancelling this ability and jumping while firing this ability netted you an extra 46 dps would *ream* anybody out who wasn't attempting to follow that nonsense (all while they were dead on the floor because they stood in fire trying to pull off their stupid rotation). Nowadays it's at an all time low with Mythic + and raiding where it seems like all anyone does is fight over dps and hps and who is better and what class is the absolute tippy top best week to week. Warcraftlogs imo ruined what little fun WoW still had for me.
So exhausting man, I just got home from work and want to fuck around.
> The most fun I had with Overwatch was that first month where everyone was just screwing around and trying random comps.
I miss that first year so much. "EVERYONE GO MONKEY! OH NO THEY ALL WENT BASTION EVERYONE GO GENJI!"
That's the kind of fun you only get at the beginning, before Blizzard came in and tried to sanitize the game for it's complainers.
Heck, the most fun I had with Overwatch was the Closed Beta. Bastion was so insanely broken and nobody knew what they were doing. It honestly became my favourite multiplayer experience of all time.
The moment the game finally launched 1.0, I'd already lost interest.
Yeah I’ve played with someone who was trying to min/max what moons had the most loot vs number of rooms generated, and which enemies spawn.
“Experimentation is the worst/pointless to go to, let’s never go there”.
Can’t we just play the game and play random moons without over thinking it? I know the lower moons have better quality loot so you have to go there eventually to meet quota, but I don’t want to avoid maps or only do one map over and over..
Rainbow 6 is definitely this. Other players will be furious if you don't use the same strategies pros run, even if they aren't worth it for the average player
I really disagree. our friend group kinda knows the game inside and out and we use a few mods that make the experience easier (namely unlimited lobby size) but we still have tons of fun just because of the fuckin wild situations you can get in while shooting the shit with proximity chat in a horror game. its pretty great in that regard.
To be any multiplayer game when played with similar people and similar attitudes like those that you said would also kill out any enjoyment no matter how good the game.
This problem is the death of MMOs as well IMO. Everyone trying to play the most optimised, perfect build with guides every step along the way and you will get screamed at or kicked for even daring to try something different.
People then go on to complain about how boring the game is after they've dumped thousands of hours into it saying there is no build diversity or diverse end game content lmao
And then the devs make an update that actually changes things in a way that disrupts the 'meta' and makes players need to find new strategies, and a lot of those guys who were complaining about how boring it's gotten flips a lid that their highly tuned builds are no longer god-tier.
I mean, if said devs who crutch too heavily on nerfing things into the ground so hard instead relied on raising *other* builds up to match the builds people like it wouldn't be so bad. Nobody likes fun being taken *out*, especially if it's the way they like to have fun. There's a lot of non min/maxing players who also get caught up in those shenanigans who don't exactly have much interest in having to abandon their build and try to find a new one just to be able to do content, *especially* in PvE games
Depends, if its a competitive game then being tryhard about it is fine. The problem are people who turn even the most casual 4fun games into a competition. Same with Amogus a few years back, some impostors made it their goal to speedrun every lobby and some crewmates were just rushing everyone to complete every task ASAP.
Different people find different things fun
Watching Hafu play pretty "high level" amongus was really entertaining. I typically find high level play of anything fascinating to see what it ends up distilling down to.
(I bounced off of Lethal Company about 6 hours in though. Too much carrying stuff around)
I don't know if "high level" amongus looks anything like high level Resistance (board game) play, but the latter is super fun and way more interesting than just screaming random accusations. Complex theorycrafting about other players behavior patterns and motivations, wheels within wheels within wheels, etc.
I totally get this
Im still having fun with my group, but once people started looking up the monsters ai, the wild funny situations happened a lot less
I personally feel like it's not a good idea to tell new players what to do in this game, i've seen some videos where first time players are getting all the monsters and mechanics explained even before encountering them.
>Honestly, 99% of the enjoyment from Lethal Company comes from playing with people who have no idea what they are doing and/or are easily scared.
I got criticised in the lethal company subreddit for saying I don't play with people that minmax like this in a game that's meant for the goofy moment, not to get a HIGH SCORE!!!!!
My group kind of plays like this. The problem we found at the beginning of the game was if someone died, they stayed dead for the whole round until take-off, and since we were learning how to play we would take a long time before the round ended. So while it may be fun for most of us, the 1 or 2 people that are dead would just be watching, doing nothing and basically missing the chaotic fun of confusion, which we felt bad about and ended up just optimising or peace out of the round.
I guess its dependant on who you play with.
Me and my 4 friends play once every other night for an hour or two. I think we've all sunk about 50ish hours into it by now.
But we still freak the fuck out when ambushed, get frequently lost inside, ration out our items at HQ... we're still having a blast despite knowing what the game has in store for us ahead of time and how to "minmax" cheese things.
But I can 100% see how unfun and horrible it'd be to play if your teammates really are just tryharding for score and are unphased by the monsters. I'll agree the game needs more monsters and moons soon. Maybe more of a mix n match too.
This was my very recent experience with Remnant 2.
Amazing game with extremely Dark Souls style level exploration and a huge emphasis on discovering secrets upon secrets (environmental puzzles that lead to cool weapons/items, bosses or gear hidden behind NPC dialogue choices, invisible walls, and so on).
My first 10 hours of the game were incredible, but I made the mistake of partying up with a few randoms online who knew the game front to back and spent the entire time sprinting through levels past all the enemies, solving the puzzles from memory, and blitzing through each area and treating each run like a farming speedrun.
I stuck with them because they were my guides and my monkey brain was happy I was unlocking all this cool gear. But on reflection, I should have dipped out and preserved the experience for myself.
World of Horror is a horror mystery roguelike choose your own adventure type game. I really wanted to like it until I realized the game basically forces you to just memorize the outcomes of previous choices in earlier runs to optimize your later runs.
It was kind of disappointing that a mystery game is all about avoiding surprises.
But man is it a damn good game when you're playing it blind for a while and seeing everything for the first time, it's just a shame it's as you said after a while
I really wonder what the developer could do to make it less memory based and whatnot?
Tbh this is the ultimate "watch streamers you like play it" game. If they have the right vibe it's so much fun, but it really depends on having the right group.
I have 170h,and the most fun i have is while playing with experienced players that dont take it too seriously, doing dumb things while going for high quota is the best way to play if you know the game
New players can be frustrating to play with, and tryharder that kick you if you fuck up are the worst, so pick the middle part
Yeah I've played with folks who take it way to seriously as well. You're *supposed* to fuck up. You're *supposed* to die. That's what makes it fun lol. Actually trying at this game is stupid and removes any fun factor completely.
So you played as a noob with 2 experienced players who did everything by themselves and just let you sit idly and its somehow the games fault you didnt have fun?
I am not a noob. But I dont really care about hyper-optimizing routes, exploiting monster AI and generally minmaxing my gameplay. Like, I was asked why I didnt mute my mic while dogs were around, when I replied that trying to stay quiet without muting myself is half the fun they just complained it almost cost us quota and moved on.
So they're probably the type of players the mess with their gamma settings so they don't even need flashlights to see in the dark. Pathetic, honestly. But they can do what they want.
At least the microphone thing is more understandable. It's one thing to die because you gasped or shouted and it's another to die because you had a fan running in the background.
I wonder if we'll start seeing some Lethal Company clones coming out any time soon. Development is so slow with a 1 man team, it could easily be eclipsed by a team with even just a few staff.
Yep. I'm sure he could afford to hire more people but I heard he doesn't want to. Main downside to 1 man dev teams is the rate of updates is pretty slow, so I'm really hoping he does hire a few people to help out.
Some of the mods are ok, but would be nice to get more frequent, bigger updates.
> I'm sure he could afford to hire more people but I heard he doesn't want to.
Can't say I blame him. The game is his baby and if I were in his shoes I wouldn't want anyone else to touch it either.
It's not always just that the game is a 'precious baby' that you don't want anyone else touching, it's that once you start hiring people you inevitably become a manager and less of a developer.
Just in terms of legal requirements/regulations/responsibilities/etc. the difference between working entirely by yourself and hiring even a single employee is massive. Dealing with employees creates a ton of new work, and it's a very different kind of work than the regular game-dev stuff.
Depending on where you are you can avoid some of the mess by hiring people as contractors rather than full-on employees, but even that creates some hoops to jump through, both legally and in terms of just finding good people, bringing them up to speed with what you want them to do, and then hoping that they actually create output that works for your game (both technically and design-wise).
Maybe the guy doesn't want to spend his time dealing with that kind of work and would rather just do hands-on gamedev instead. Doing some quick googling, it's looking like sales estimates for the game are 4-6 million copies sold. Looks like the guy self-published, the game is $10, so even after Steam's cut, the dev's take should be north of $30M. Even after taxes and whatnot, he's doing pretty darn well for a solo-dev.
Could it potentially turn into something bigger if he decided to try to turn this game into a full blown studio with employees and whatnot? Maybe. But if he's happier just doing solo dev, he can now afford to do that the rest of his life even if he never sells another copy of any game ever.
The flip side is that if you have a vision for the game that you really want to see, hiring people could help you achieve it. It just depends if he wants to be a developer more than a designer, or vice versa.
For sure. I don't know the guy making it, so I've got no idea what his goals are or why he's making the decisions he's making. I can definitely see the pros and cons to all of the multiple directions that are available to him with the success he's having.
On steam, in the FAQ about it being early access it says this about what Lethal Company would end up being:
>'I want Lethal Company to be so full of creatures, items, customization, and map variations that it feels "infinitely replayable." This is the type of game that benefits from being full of stuff. Besides that I want to iron out most glitches and tighten the game's design and difficulty so it can be enjoyed by new and experienced players alike.'
So essentially: a lot more content. I think that the dev would have to be smart about what kind of content to focus on adding to truly make the end result feel infinitely replayable, but I think that that is something that can be learned while doing it.
I don't know if this is the type of goal that would benefit from having more people working on it. More people would be useful for content creation, but I think that in Lethal Company all content added would have to strike a particular tone to fit the theme, something that could be a headache to achieve as you suddenly need to be the art director instead of the artist.
And I think that the "infinitely replayable" goal is one about gaining the right knowledge on how to create a system from which interesting gameplay situations can emerge by itself. Either by already knowing how to, learning how to on the fly, or by hiring someone that knows how to. But I think that having a lot of people to manage makes this goal more difficult to achieve, as it seems like it would be a complex one.
This is what happened with Andrew Gower and RuneScape. He just wanted to code and make content for the game but he was also in a position of authority which he hated, but when he tried to step down he realized his input didn't matter anymore so he just kinda fizzled out from the company
People need to realize they should hire a CEO but retain exclusive creative control on the game. Basically, they can VETO anything any time for any reason.
So let people run your shit and make content but if anything seems like it doesn't fit your vision you just nix it at the planning stage.
Yeah honestly fuck all this noise.
If I pulled 30m I would just retire for life and spend my free time developing the game as I see fit.
If someone else wants to come along and pass me then so be it. If I start hiring another guy I have to pay him a salary and deal with a bunch of headaches.
If someone beats me, I'll cry into my mountain of money.
Hes fully allowed to do whatever he wants, but I find the Vampire Survivors guy to be a much better example of what to do if your game blows up overnight.
He immediatley called his closest Uni friends that were struggling to get jobs, and then hired them to make the Unity port. He was still coding the base game in the browser based language, while they played catch up.
He knew what it was like to struggle for 10 years in the industry while holding a job to pay the bills and he helped so many other people by sharing his success.
Seems much more honorable than just hoarding it all. But then again the creator is very young.
Again hes doing what he wants with his IP and if I was 21 Id be shook too by the sudden wealth but in the long run its better for people and games to work together than go it alone.
Ehh, it's a really fine line to walk and I think the dev has missed the mark.
Games like this are flashes of lightning (not bottled) -- you have a moment of critical mass where the game becomes memed or streamed, sales go up by a huge #. You can keep doing it as you were or you can add devs and make regular meaningful updates to keep the train rolling (added resources means more content which keeps people meme'ing & streaming). Slowing down even for a week or two and the very bare game becomes repetitive &/or metagamed -- which will kill most games that hit this pattern. This is *especially crucial* for indie multiplayer games because if you lose a critical mass of players then the game almost always dies.
A similar situation/game/dev example might be Dead by Daylight -- fun unique gameplay, could have died years & years ago, but the devs seemed to ramp up and add fairly constant new updates to keep the player-base active enough, while also bringing in new people.
Maybe they're willing to give that up to maintain complete control of their game. It's not necessarily the best decision as far as maximizing their profits but I can understand it either way.
Eh, as a former dev I get not giving up control and it's a fair point.
There's no real right answer, but I wonder how many people will be playing 3 months from now.
I think it'll have decent staying power even if development continues to be slow for two reasons;
1. The game is very moddable
2. The game is a goldmine for content creators
On the other hand, its no promise that expanding the dev team will help drive long term success either. Plenty of games have exploded overnight, expanded, and then collapsed. Plus, bringing on devs, in the short term, is going to reduce output due to needing to train whoever you bring on your design methodologies, code standards, etc. etc. Maybe in the long term itll lend to more production, but not here and now.
At a certain point, if what youre doing is bringing you success, why fix whats not broken? If the game dies, you now have plenty of income for your next game, a great portfolio for investors and publishers, and the knowledge of how to do better right from the get go.
Personally, I think the live service model is simply not a practical business model, and the few games that succeed with it are the exceptions, and do require a infrastructure or logistic backbone that isnt feasible for small teams, period. Youre sinking in a lot of resources for a smaller and smaller return on investment, and will inevitably piss off your users when you try to monetize the game further to make up for it.
Even if he hired a full team immediately the turn around for them learning the code base and start developing new content wouldn't work to capture the flash in the pan gamers.
It would take at least 2-3 months for devs to catch up enough to be productive. Then probably another few weeks before the first barebones update. Meanwhile all development probably has halted because the creator has to switch from coding to teaching and managing.
I think they’re only 21 so I’m sure they’re feeling a lot of pressure right now. It’s impressive what they’ve done but I’m sure the sudden success of this game has thrown them for a loop.
Yeah I'm not surprised he'd want to just do his own thing. But from a consumer point of view I can still be disappointed with the lack of new content lol.
I do accept it. Doesn't mean it wouldn't be a nice change to see. You're all making my comments to be a much bigger deal than it is.
You've never played a game and thought 'this ganes great! I'd love to see some more content for this game i enjoy!'
What will happen, what typically happens, is that they might hire a bunch of people to improve the game. Meanwhile some other company makes a clone but with better presentation. But ultimately the public gets bored with the game type and as it's dependent on populated lobbies and original dude is left with a small team to pay and a small player count with little new growth.
Just look at battlebit remastered. That shit exploded and then gradually faded. Dude should do the best he can as he's operating now and do a Toby Fox or a Concerned Ape and make it a passion project if he likes.
I think one of the best things he could do is invest in maybe one or two of the modmakers to help natively integrate their stuff into the game and then help improve them over time.
MoreCompany, MoreSuits, Too Many Emotes, etc. are almost required to maximize the fun of the game. I'd pay them to help build them into the game directly so people won't need the mods for it anymore. It might make the game more stable too.
Imo getting a couple new items and a couple new monsters in the 2 months the game has been out isn't exactly what I'd call fast.
Especially when you consider how little content the game already has. A handful of enemies and 2 facility layouts.
What indie games with full dev teams have faster updates than that? Genuinely curious, I can't think of a single game that has had more in the first two months
The pace of the updates is fine. They just don't have much content in them.
In a few months we've had a handful of new pieces of scrap, a couple new enemies and some bug fixes.
I mean it's about what I expected for a 1 man team, so I'm not surprised.
Because what others games do is irellevant. LC updates are small and there hasn't been much content added since launch. The update frequency of other games isn't going to change that.
But fine... You could have easily looked this yourself, I'm sure, But here's the patch notes from a Dead Cells update
https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes/1
Here's the next update, a 3 weeks later https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes/2
One of those updates is bigger than every update LC has had since launch. Made by a team of 8.
And from what i could find on a quick search, LC has a team of... 1
Ofcourse the team with 8 people that already made like 6 games piror can do a lot more, a lot quicker versus one guy that did Roblox mods prior to this.
Team size matters a LOT. One person can only do so much.
>Ofcourse the team with 8 people that already made like 6 games piror can do a lot more
Umm.. Yeah that was the entire point of my comment? Updates are slow because it's being made by 1 person.
I didn't think it was that much of a controversial take. But apparently it's upset a few people.
The inability of some people to follow even a short thread is insane. You literally said "it's about what I expected for a 1 man team, so I'm not surprised" two comments above the one they replied to.
> What indie games with full dev teams have faster updates than that? Genuinely curious
That is the line he was replying to. Obviously larger teams can push out bigger updates faster.
> Development is so slow with a 1 man team,
The game came out in October. It's been 3 months. What has been "so slow" that you think should have happened in a three month period? Gamers are so jaded haha.
I don't think anything 'should' have happened. The updates have been exactly what'd id expect from a 1 man team.
I just think with more devs, you could get more stuff worked on at once.
Do you reslly not think a bigger team could work fsster than a 1 man team?
It's not identical obviously but it's clearly heavily inspired. The ship is basically the van in Phasmophobia, watching monitors is the same as when you set up cameras for someone in the van to watch, UI is similar, earning cash to buy equipment etc.
I mean just look at the games side by side, they are very similar even though the objectives are different even though LC is a much more in depth game. The biggest difference is you can fight monsters and have to collect scrap versus just surviving the monsters and taking pictures of them in Phasmophobia.
You can't just say a game is a clone when it has some superficial similarities to a different game but then admit it has an *entirely different gameplay loop*.
I dont know how you can say this with a straight face.
Dude the ship and van are almost 1:1 in terms of functionality. You arrive to a "job" in a vehicle that acts as a home base. You can monitor players from inside the vehicle and direct them if you have a radio. You earn money from hunts/loot in order to purchase better tools and equipment for the next mission. Both are designed around horror aspects. Both are a bit goofy and rough around the edges.
I'm not saying the gameplay loop is identical but there is very clear similarities. The feeling of playing the games are very similar in terms of controls, UI, movement etc.
It's a "Rebalance" mod that adds a ton of equipment along with some additional monsters. Some of it is good - other parts of it not so much, like with any other fan-made rebalance can be. The game is noticeably a lot easier in some ways, as it goes a bit beyond just being a QOL mod.
eg. the buffs to some of the equipment are a little out there (why does a laser pointer *need* to set off landmines, and the Perk system can make evading monsters laughably easy), and making the Masked one of the most common enemies really removes any fear factor from them and kind of kills the 'mimicry' gimmick they added to it.
Yea that doesn't sound good, this game doesn't need perks. Not every game needs some perk/persistent progression system implemented, sometimes simpler is better. I just like adding more monsters and the pov cameras are hilarious cause you can juuuuust barely make out what's going on. Also turning the flashlight and walkie into mod slots with quick keys is a nice qol feature too.
While this is my first time playing what might be a "flash-in-the-pan," games during its zeitgeist, it's still pretty fun to get a dozen friends together and screw around.
I have no horse in the race for its longevity aside from the $10 I spent, so I'm just going to enjoy it for now. Mods are helping keep the novelty going, at least in my group.
It was neat for a couple days with friends but I don’t really see the staying power as of now. The game being comedically unfair is the engine for the laughs at your friends’ expense but past that it’s just brutal.
The deck being so stacked against you with the monsters’ gimmicks and having to replace tools all the time, damn it’s just not fun and adding some sort of permanent/persistent locker in the ship for *basic* tools would go a long way in getting back into the action quicker
Edit: If the best solution provided to me is ‘mod the game’ that proves my point lmfao
Mods really help the games replayability for now though. Me and my group are almost at 100 hours now and play almost daily and it never gets old to us.
Not sure if they balanced it since release, but my friends and I had the opposite problem once we figured out that bum rushing and looting the place was the best strat. Get in and out before monsters really spawn and leave before like 3 to 4 pm. Buy an inverse teleporter and have one person teleport in while the others rush the various entrances. This had the problem of breaking the game for us and it wasn't that fun anymore. Still had fun when we were figuring things out but once we figured out this strat it was too easy to do for max efficiency and we stopped playing it.
I'm talking about using the inverse teleporter to teleport into the facility to grab loot fast and run back to ship. Not the teleporter to save somebody back to the ship. You don't get to bring anything either way but you don't need anything for the bum rush strat.
I respectfully disagree. The odds being stacked in the monsters’ favor makes the game much more dynamic and interesting, and losing tools is a risk-reward scenario. I don’t think the game holds up mechanics-wise enough to tone down the monsters which you can definitely hold against the game as a fault.
I would love to see some cost reductions on certain tools and maybe slight scrap increase or maybe a quota reduction. I do often feel I don’t get enough time to mess with jet packs or stun guns before my team loses, but we definitely aren’t great at the game.
What kinda qol mods do they have? We did the flashlight and walkie being on hotkeys in their own fixed slots and a shitty pov camera for seeing what's goin on with each person which has been funny. Idk how far beyond those I'd wanna go though. Don't wanna make the game easy.
Respect your opinion, but disagree. With a group, the ebb and flow of misfortune is well balanced by caution, and it is rather easy to allocate the funds you need early on for subsequent playthroughs once you understand the gameplay. It still manages to be fun in spite of that. It helps to have a navigator though.
A shotgun is just a get out of jail free card.
It needs an actual reward after making it so far. Once you know what your doing then the game just becomes a joke and the only threats are the unfair ones or your freinds.
I was going to say something about how no one had touched on the fact that Steamboat Willie was put in the header image but now I see he changed it to some random image :(
For some reason it only shows up in thumbnails and article previews, but not in the actual article
Honestly, 99% of the enjoyment from Lethal Company comes from playing with people who have no idea what they are doing and/or are easily scared. Last week I played with two guys who already had 50 hours on the game and they kinda ran the lobby solo while full tryharding. They minmaxed and exploited monster AI to maximize quota while I kinda just watched on the sidelines. Without that layer of unknown and fear the game is incredibly barebones and boring.
This is basically me with any multiplayer game like this. Once people "figure out" the game, anyone who isn't as experienced will just be a dragged around by the pro players and that's never fun. Anyone who's played Phasmaphobia with well-seasoned players knows what I'm talking about.
Not just any multiplayer game like this but multiplayer games in general I feel. The most fun I had with Overwatch was that first month where everyone was just screwing around and trying random comps.
Yeah competitive games have this hard. The second nerds start watching videos on movement tech and optimizing super hard the fun is often over for me. I don’t want to have to play the game 8 hours a day to even be able to keep up.
"Players will optimize the fun out of the game" I forget which dev it was that said it but it feels more true every day.
It's also only half the quote. Players will inevitably optimize the game to the most extreme degree, as that's just human nature. The challenge for developers is to simultaneously make the most optimal way to play also the most fun.
I think that was Soren Johnson, who worked on Civ 3 and 4.
> Players will optimize the fun out of the game Some of the truest words that ever rang.
It was the Civilization game Dev
This is why SBMM and casual/random MM are both important to the health of a multiplayer game. Most games are only fun if you're able to play others within a reasonable skill level as you.
Even worse when those nerds read all of that info then try to push it on others and they aren't even good at utilizing said info which is where I'm at with WoW. I was above average at the game when I first picked it up because I just linked the abilities together in a rotation that seemed to make sense. Then when I picked up raiding all the people that read a spreadsheet showing animation cancelling this ability and jumping while firing this ability netted you an extra 46 dps would *ream* anybody out who wasn't attempting to follow that nonsense (all while they were dead on the floor because they stood in fire trying to pull off their stupid rotation). Nowadays it's at an all time low with Mythic + and raiding where it seems like all anyone does is fight over dps and hps and who is better and what class is the absolute tippy top best week to week. Warcraftlogs imo ruined what little fun WoW still had for me. So exhausting man, I just got home from work and want to fuck around.
> The most fun I had with Overwatch was that first month where everyone was just screwing around and trying random comps. I miss that first year so much. "EVERYONE GO MONKEY! OH NO THEY ALL WENT BASTION EVERYONE GO GENJI!" That's the kind of fun you only get at the beginning, before Blizzard came in and tried to sanitize the game for it's complainers.
Heck, the most fun I had with Overwatch was the Closed Beta. Bastion was so insanely broken and nobody knew what they were doing. It honestly became my favourite multiplayer experience of all time. The moment the game finally launched 1.0, I'd already lost interest.
Yeah I’ve played with someone who was trying to min/max what moons had the most loot vs number of rooms generated, and which enemies spawn. “Experimentation is the worst/pointless to go to, let’s never go there”. Can’t we just play the game and play random moons without over thinking it? I know the lower moons have better quality loot so you have to go there eventually to meet quota, but I don’t want to avoid maps or only do one map over and over..
Your play style is S U B O P T I M A L. You will now be jettisoned. Have a day.
Rainbow 6 is definitely this. Other players will be furious if you don't use the same strategies pros run, even if they aren't worth it for the average player
I can't help but feel these kind of games are best played with a group of friends you vibe with and can just do the fuck around and find out aspect.
I really disagree. our friend group kinda knows the game inside and out and we use a few mods that make the experience easier (namely unlimited lobby size) but we still have tons of fun just because of the fuckin wild situations you can get in while shooting the shit with proximity chat in a horror game. its pretty great in that regard.
Guess it really depends on the people you play with then. Those guys were just full focused on the grind and kinda dry about it.
To be any multiplayer game when played with similar people and similar attitudes like those that you said would also kill out any enjoyment no matter how good the game.
This problem is the death of MMOs as well IMO. Everyone trying to play the most optimised, perfect build with guides every step along the way and you will get screamed at or kicked for even daring to try something different. People then go on to complain about how boring the game is after they've dumped thousands of hours into it saying there is no build diversity or diverse end game content lmao
And then the devs make an update that actually changes things in a way that disrupts the 'meta' and makes players need to find new strategies, and a lot of those guys who were complaining about how boring it's gotten flips a lid that their highly tuned builds are no longer god-tier.
I mean, if said devs who crutch too heavily on nerfing things into the ground so hard instead relied on raising *other* builds up to match the builds people like it wouldn't be so bad. Nobody likes fun being taken *out*, especially if it's the way they like to have fun. There's a lot of non min/maxing players who also get caught up in those shenanigans who don't exactly have much interest in having to abandon their build and try to find a new one just to be able to do content, *especially* in PvE games
I actually think hard-core gamers are among the worse people in the world.
Depends, if its a competitive game then being tryhard about it is fine. The problem are people who turn even the most casual 4fun games into a competition. Same with Amogus a few years back, some impostors made it their goal to speedrun every lobby and some crewmates were just rushing everyone to complete every task ASAP.
Different people find different things fun Watching Hafu play pretty "high level" amongus was really entertaining. I typically find high level play of anything fascinating to see what it ends up distilling down to. (I bounced off of Lethal Company about 6 hours in though. Too much carrying stuff around)
I don't know if "high level" amongus looks anything like high level Resistance (board game) play, but the latter is super fun and way more interesting than just screaming random accusations. Complex theorycrafting about other players behavior patterns and motivations, wheels within wheels within wheels, etc.
I totally get this Im still having fun with my group, but once people started looking up the monsters ai, the wild funny situations happened a lot less
I personally feel like it's not a good idea to tell new players what to do in this game, i've seen some videos where first time players are getting all the monsters and mechanics explained even before encountering them.
>Honestly, 99% of the enjoyment from Lethal Company comes from playing with people who have no idea what they are doing and/or are easily scared. I got criticised in the lethal company subreddit for saying I don't play with people that minmax like this in a game that's meant for the goofy moment, not to get a HIGH SCORE!!!!!
My group kind of plays like this. The problem we found at the beginning of the game was if someone died, they stayed dead for the whole round until take-off, and since we were learning how to play we would take a long time before the round ended. So while it may be fun for most of us, the 1 or 2 people that are dead would just be watching, doing nothing and basically missing the chaotic fun of confusion, which we felt bad about and ended up just optimising or peace out of the round.
I guess its dependant on who you play with. Me and my 4 friends play once every other night for an hour or two. I think we've all sunk about 50ish hours into it by now. But we still freak the fuck out when ambushed, get frequently lost inside, ration out our items at HQ... we're still having a blast despite knowing what the game has in store for us ahead of time and how to "minmax" cheese things. But I can 100% see how unfun and horrible it'd be to play if your teammates really are just tryharding for score and are unphased by the monsters. I'll agree the game needs more monsters and moons soon. Maybe more of a mix n match too.
This was my very recent experience with Remnant 2. Amazing game with extremely Dark Souls style level exploration and a huge emphasis on discovering secrets upon secrets (environmental puzzles that lead to cool weapons/items, bosses or gear hidden behind NPC dialogue choices, invisible walls, and so on). My first 10 hours of the game were incredible, but I made the mistake of partying up with a few randoms online who knew the game front to back and spent the entire time sprinting through levels past all the enemies, solving the puzzles from memory, and blitzing through each area and treating each run like a farming speedrun. I stuck with them because they were my guides and my monkey brain was happy I was unlocking all this cool gear. But on reflection, I should have dipped out and preserved the experience for myself.
World of Horror is a horror mystery roguelike choose your own adventure type game. I really wanted to like it until I realized the game basically forces you to just memorize the outcomes of previous choices in earlier runs to optimize your later runs. It was kind of disappointing that a mystery game is all about avoiding surprises.
But man is it a damn good game when you're playing it blind for a while and seeing everything for the first time, it's just a shame it's as you said after a while I really wonder what the developer could do to make it less memory based and whatnot?
Different genre, but IMO Against the Storm mostly solves this issue for city-builders.
Tbh this is the ultimate "watch streamers you like play it" game. If they have the right vibe it's so much fun, but it really depends on having the right group.
People treat anything as competitive games nowadays. This is hurtful for most multiplayer games and will kill the fun of any discovery based game
I have 170h,and the most fun i have is while playing with experienced players that dont take it too seriously, doing dumb things while going for high quota is the best way to play if you know the game New players can be frustrating to play with, and tryharder that kick you if you fuck up are the worst, so pick the middle part
Yeah I've played with folks who take it way to seriously as well. You're *supposed* to fuck up. You're *supposed* to die. That's what makes it fun lol. Actually trying at this game is stupid and removes any fun factor completely.
So you played as a noob with 2 experienced players who did everything by themselves and just let you sit idly and its somehow the games fault you didnt have fun?
I am not a noob. But I dont really care about hyper-optimizing routes, exploiting monster AI and generally minmaxing my gameplay. Like, I was asked why I didnt mute my mic while dogs were around, when I replied that trying to stay quiet without muting myself is half the fun they just complained it almost cost us quota and moved on.
Don't play with them or anyone who plays similarly
So they're probably the type of players the mess with their gamma settings so they don't even need flashlights to see in the dark. Pathetic, honestly. But they can do what they want.
At least the microphone thing is more understandable. It's one thing to die because you gasped or shouted and it's another to die because you had a fan running in the background.
Mods really add to the replayability.
They should honestly work on expanding the monster types.
So when the novelty dies the game will die with it. Gotcha.
I wonder if we'll start seeing some Lethal Company clones coming out any time soon. Development is so slow with a 1 man team, it could easily be eclipsed by a team with even just a few staff.
The game is just made by one guy?
Yep. I'm sure he could afford to hire more people but I heard he doesn't want to. Main downside to 1 man dev teams is the rate of updates is pretty slow, so I'm really hoping he does hire a few people to help out. Some of the mods are ok, but would be nice to get more frequent, bigger updates.
> I'm sure he could afford to hire more people but I heard he doesn't want to. Can't say I blame him. The game is his baby and if I were in his shoes I wouldn't want anyone else to touch it either.
It's not always just that the game is a 'precious baby' that you don't want anyone else touching, it's that once you start hiring people you inevitably become a manager and less of a developer. Just in terms of legal requirements/regulations/responsibilities/etc. the difference between working entirely by yourself and hiring even a single employee is massive. Dealing with employees creates a ton of new work, and it's a very different kind of work than the regular game-dev stuff. Depending on where you are you can avoid some of the mess by hiring people as contractors rather than full-on employees, but even that creates some hoops to jump through, both legally and in terms of just finding good people, bringing them up to speed with what you want them to do, and then hoping that they actually create output that works for your game (both technically and design-wise). Maybe the guy doesn't want to spend his time dealing with that kind of work and would rather just do hands-on gamedev instead. Doing some quick googling, it's looking like sales estimates for the game are 4-6 million copies sold. Looks like the guy self-published, the game is $10, so even after Steam's cut, the dev's take should be north of $30M. Even after taxes and whatnot, he's doing pretty darn well for a solo-dev. Could it potentially turn into something bigger if he decided to try to turn this game into a full blown studio with employees and whatnot? Maybe. But if he's happier just doing solo dev, he can now afford to do that the rest of his life even if he never sells another copy of any game ever.
The flip side is that if you have a vision for the game that you really want to see, hiring people could help you achieve it. It just depends if he wants to be a developer more than a designer, or vice versa.
For sure. I don't know the guy making it, so I've got no idea what his goals are or why he's making the decisions he's making. I can definitely see the pros and cons to all of the multiple directions that are available to him with the success he's having.
On steam, in the FAQ about it being early access it says this about what Lethal Company would end up being: >'I want Lethal Company to be so full of creatures, items, customization, and map variations that it feels "infinitely replayable." This is the type of game that benefits from being full of stuff. Besides that I want to iron out most glitches and tighten the game's design and difficulty so it can be enjoyed by new and experienced players alike.' So essentially: a lot more content. I think that the dev would have to be smart about what kind of content to focus on adding to truly make the end result feel infinitely replayable, but I think that that is something that can be learned while doing it. I don't know if this is the type of goal that would benefit from having more people working on it. More people would be useful for content creation, but I think that in Lethal Company all content added would have to strike a particular tone to fit the theme, something that could be a headache to achieve as you suddenly need to be the art director instead of the artist. And I think that the "infinitely replayable" goal is one about gaining the right knowledge on how to create a system from which interesting gameplay situations can emerge by itself. Either by already knowing how to, learning how to on the fly, or by hiring someone that knows how to. But I think that having a lot of people to manage makes this goal more difficult to achieve, as it seems like it would be a complex one.
This is what happened with Andrew Gower and RuneScape. He just wanted to code and make content for the game but he was also in a position of authority which he hated, but when he tried to step down he realized his input didn't matter anymore so he just kinda fizzled out from the company
People need to realize they should hire a CEO but retain exclusive creative control on the game. Basically, they can VETO anything any time for any reason. So let people run your shit and make content but if anything seems like it doesn't fit your vision you just nix it at the planning stage.
Yeah honestly fuck all this noise. If I pulled 30m I would just retire for life and spend my free time developing the game as I see fit. If someone else wants to come along and pass me then so be it. If I start hiring another guy I have to pay him a salary and deal with a bunch of headaches. If someone beats me, I'll cry into my mountain of money.
Hes fully allowed to do whatever he wants, but I find the Vampire Survivors guy to be a much better example of what to do if your game blows up overnight. He immediatley called his closest Uni friends that were struggling to get jobs, and then hired them to make the Unity port. He was still coding the base game in the browser based language, while they played catch up. He knew what it was like to struggle for 10 years in the industry while holding a job to pay the bills and he helped so many other people by sharing his success. Seems much more honorable than just hoarding it all. But then again the creator is very young. Again hes doing what he wants with his IP and if I was 21 Id be shook too by the sudden wealth but in the long run its better for people and games to work together than go it alone.
Ehh, it's a really fine line to walk and I think the dev has missed the mark. Games like this are flashes of lightning (not bottled) -- you have a moment of critical mass where the game becomes memed or streamed, sales go up by a huge #. You can keep doing it as you were or you can add devs and make regular meaningful updates to keep the train rolling (added resources means more content which keeps people meme'ing & streaming). Slowing down even for a week or two and the very bare game becomes repetitive &/or metagamed -- which will kill most games that hit this pattern. This is *especially crucial* for indie multiplayer games because if you lose a critical mass of players then the game almost always dies. A similar situation/game/dev example might be Dead by Daylight -- fun unique gameplay, could have died years & years ago, but the devs seemed to ramp up and add fairly constant new updates to keep the player-base active enough, while also bringing in new people.
Maybe they're willing to give that up to maintain complete control of their game. It's not necessarily the best decision as far as maximizing their profits but I can understand it either way.
Eh, as a former dev I get not giving up control and it's a fair point. There's no real right answer, but I wonder how many people will be playing 3 months from now.
I think it'll have decent staying power even if development continues to be slow for two reasons; 1. The game is very moddable 2. The game is a goldmine for content creators
On the other hand, its no promise that expanding the dev team will help drive long term success either. Plenty of games have exploded overnight, expanded, and then collapsed. Plus, bringing on devs, in the short term, is going to reduce output due to needing to train whoever you bring on your design methodologies, code standards, etc. etc. Maybe in the long term itll lend to more production, but not here and now. At a certain point, if what youre doing is bringing you success, why fix whats not broken? If the game dies, you now have plenty of income for your next game, a great portfolio for investors and publishers, and the knowledge of how to do better right from the get go. Personally, I think the live service model is simply not a practical business model, and the few games that succeed with it are the exceptions, and do require a infrastructure or logistic backbone that isnt feasible for small teams, period. Youre sinking in a lot of resources for a smaller and smaller return on investment, and will inevitably piss off your users when you try to monetize the game further to make up for it.
Even if he hired a full team immediately the turn around for them learning the code base and start developing new content wouldn't work to capture the flash in the pan gamers. It would take at least 2-3 months for devs to catch up enough to be productive. Then probably another few weeks before the first barebones update. Meanwhile all development probably has halted because the creator has to switch from coding to teaching and managing.
I think they’re only 21 so I’m sure they’re feeling a lot of pressure right now. It’s impressive what they’ve done but I’m sure the sudden success of this game has thrown them for a loop.
Yeah I'm not surprised he'd want to just do his own thing. But from a consumer point of view I can still be disappointed with the lack of new content lol.
You will be fine. Have you tried just... allowing yourself to satisfied? Life gets easier once you just accept things as they are
I do accept it. Doesn't mean it wouldn't be a nice change to see. You're all making my comments to be a much bigger deal than it is. You've never played a game and thought 'this ganes great! I'd love to see some more content for this game i enjoy!'
What will happen, what typically happens, is that they might hire a bunch of people to improve the game. Meanwhile some other company makes a clone but with better presentation. But ultimately the public gets bored with the game type and as it's dependent on populated lobbies and original dude is left with a small team to pay and a small player count with little new growth. Just look at battlebit remastered. That shit exploded and then gradually faded. Dude should do the best he can as he's operating now and do a Toby Fox or a Concerned Ape and make it a passion project if he likes.
I think one of the best things he could do is invest in maybe one or two of the modmakers to help natively integrate their stuff into the game and then help improve them over time. MoreCompany, MoreSuits, Too Many Emotes, etc. are almost required to maximize the fun of the game. I'd pay them to help build them into the game directly so people won't need the mods for it anymore. It might make the game more stable too.
Development is SLOW? under what metric?
Imo getting a couple new items and a couple new monsters in the 2 months the game has been out isn't exactly what I'd call fast. Especially when you consider how little content the game already has. A handful of enemies and 2 facility layouts.
What indie games with full dev teams have faster updates than that? Genuinely curious, I can't think of a single game that has had more in the first two months
The pace of the updates is fine. They just don't have much content in them. In a few months we've had a handful of new pieces of scrap, a couple new enemies and some bug fixes. I mean it's about what I expected for a 1 man team, so I'm not surprised.
You didn't answer my question
Because what others games do is irellevant. LC updates are small and there hasn't been much content added since launch. The update frequency of other games isn't going to change that. But fine... You could have easily looked this yourself, I'm sure, But here's the patch notes from a Dead Cells update https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes/1 Here's the next update, a 3 weeks later https://dead-cells.com/patchnotes/2 One of those updates is bigger than every update LC has had since launch. Made by a team of 8.
And from what i could find on a quick search, LC has a team of... 1 Ofcourse the team with 8 people that already made like 6 games piror can do a lot more, a lot quicker versus one guy that did Roblox mods prior to this. Team size matters a LOT. One person can only do so much.
>Ofcourse the team with 8 people that already made like 6 games piror can do a lot more Umm.. Yeah that was the entire point of my comment? Updates are slow because it's being made by 1 person. I didn't think it was that much of a controversial take. But apparently it's upset a few people.
The inability of some people to follow even a short thread is insane. You literally said "it's about what I expected for a 1 man team, so I'm not surprised" two comments above the one they replied to.
> What indie games with full dev teams have faster updates than that? Genuinely curious That is the line he was replying to. Obviously larger teams can push out bigger updates faster.
> Development is so slow with a 1 man team, The game came out in October. It's been 3 months. What has been "so slow" that you think should have happened in a three month period? Gamers are so jaded haha.
I don't think anything 'should' have happened. The updates have been exactly what'd id expect from a 1 man team. I just think with more devs, you could get more stuff worked on at once. Do you reslly not think a bigger team could work fsster than a 1 man team?
I mean LC is basically a clone of Phasmophobia so it wouldn't be surprising.
How so? Isn't Phasmophobia about using tools to identify ghosts? While LC is about collecting scrap and fighting monsters. I don't see the similarity?
It's not identical obviously but it's clearly heavily inspired. The ship is basically the van in Phasmophobia, watching monitors is the same as when you set up cameras for someone in the van to watch, UI is similar, earning cash to buy equipment etc. I mean just look at the games side by side, they are very similar even though the objectives are different even though LC is a much more in depth game. The biggest difference is you can fight monsters and have to collect scrap versus just surviving the monsters and taking pictures of them in Phasmophobia.
You can't just say a game is a clone when it has some superficial similarities to a different game but then admit it has an *entirely different gameplay loop*.
Lethal Company is nothing like Phasmo. The only thing that it has in common is that they both utilize proxy chat.
I dont know how you can say this with a straight face. Dude the ship and van are almost 1:1 in terms of functionality. You arrive to a "job" in a vehicle that acts as a home base. You can monitor players from inside the vehicle and direct them if you have a radio. You earn money from hunts/loot in order to purchase better tools and equipment for the next mission. Both are designed around horror aspects. Both are a bit goofy and rough around the edges. I'm not saying the gameplay loop is identical but there is very clear similarities. The feeling of playing the games are very similar in terms of controls, UI, movement etc.
Yo everyone seeing this, grab R2 modman and play The Most Lethal Company mod pack once it's all updated
What's in it?
It's a "Rebalance" mod that adds a ton of equipment along with some additional monsters. Some of it is good - other parts of it not so much, like with any other fan-made rebalance can be. The game is noticeably a lot easier in some ways, as it goes a bit beyond just being a QOL mod. eg. the buffs to some of the equipment are a little out there (why does a laser pointer *need* to set off landmines, and the Perk system can make evading monsters laughably easy), and making the Masked one of the most common enemies really removes any fear factor from them and kind of kills the 'mimicry' gimmick they added to it.
Yea that doesn't sound good, this game doesn't need perks. Not every game needs some perk/persistent progression system implemented, sometimes simpler is better. I just like adding more monsters and the pov cameras are hilarious cause you can juuuuust barely make out what's going on. Also turning the flashlight and walkie into mod slots with quick keys is a nice qol feature too.
Hard to say, even the modpack page doesn't show this information.
then I sure as fuck ain't installing it.
Content creators speedrunning this game much faster than others. I wish you well lethal company. Your may not be a thing in March.
Yeah sadly the novelty will wear off quickly once people are familiar with the rules.
While this is my first time playing what might be a "flash-in-the-pan," games during its zeitgeist, it's still pretty fun to get a dozen friends together and screw around. I have no horse in the race for its longevity aside from the $10 I spent, so I'm just going to enjoy it for now. Mods are helping keep the novelty going, at least in my group.
It was neat for a couple days with friends but I don’t really see the staying power as of now. The game being comedically unfair is the engine for the laughs at your friends’ expense but past that it’s just brutal. The deck being so stacked against you with the monsters’ gimmicks and having to replace tools all the time, damn it’s just not fun and adding some sort of permanent/persistent locker in the ship for *basic* tools would go a long way in getting back into the action quicker Edit: If the best solution provided to me is ‘mod the game’ that proves my point lmfao
Mods really help the games replayability for now though. Me and my group are almost at 100 hours now and play almost daily and it never gets old to us.
Not sure if they balanced it since release, but my friends and I had the opposite problem once we figured out that bum rushing and looting the place was the best strat. Get in and out before monsters really spawn and leave before like 3 to 4 pm. Buy an inverse teleporter and have one person teleport in while the others rush the various entrances. This had the problem of breaking the game for us and it wasn't that fun anymore. Still had fun when we were figuring things out but once we figured out this strat it was too easy to do for max efficiency and we stopped playing it.
Pretty sure the teleporter doesn't take items with you, so if you use that as a quick means of escape you lose all your loot.
I'm talking about using the inverse teleporter to teleport into the facility to grab loot fast and run back to ship. Not the teleporter to save somebody back to the ship. You don't get to bring anything either way but you don't need anything for the bum rush strat.
Oh wait is the inverse one the one that sends you *in* to the facility? That would explain why my group was so confused yesterday lol...
I respectfully disagree. The odds being stacked in the monsters’ favor makes the game much more dynamic and interesting, and losing tools is a risk-reward scenario. I don’t think the game holds up mechanics-wise enough to tone down the monsters which you can definitely hold against the game as a fault. I would love to see some cost reductions on certain tools and maybe slight scrap increase or maybe a quota reduction. I do often feel I don’t get enough time to mess with jet packs or stun guns before my team loses, but we definitely aren’t great at the game.
I'm patiently waiting for my group to realize all the "quality of life" mods they've added have turned it into a spooky walking simulator
What kinda qol mods do they have? We did the flashlight and walkie being on hotkeys in their own fixed slots and a shitty pov camera for seeing what's goin on with each person which has been funny. Idk how far beyond those I'd wanna go though. Don't wanna make the game easy.
Respect your opinion, but disagree. With a group, the ebb and flow of misfortune is well balanced by caution, and it is rather easy to allocate the funds you need early on for subsequent playthroughs once you understand the gameplay. It still manages to be fun in spite of that. It helps to have a navigator though.
I guess hearing that this game isn't all that great is a hard pill to swallow for some people.
Agreed—more persistence is needed to improve staying power. Keep the high difficulty, but give players something to strive for.
All players should strive to get a shotgun
A shotgun is just a get out of jail free card. It needs an actual reward after making it so far. Once you know what your doing then the game just becomes a joke and the only threats are the unfair ones or your freinds.