Stuff like "spiky evil dark moon" or "big bad" needs to go.
It's lazy and it degrades the game.
I can't think of a single game which benefitted from not taking itself seriously. It's not cute or clever, it's just lazy.
As for the technical aspect, I see that you are finally adding good animations into the game, this is great and you should keep it up and further polish and enrich all animations and effects.
Don't let anyone tell you that gameplay is separate from animations and graphics, if animations are not good the gameplay will also be far less enjoyable.
Also, I'm most looking forward to the Tinkerer class as I have always enjoyed playing engineer and similar unconventional classes.
Has this been discussed before?
It has been mentioned, but it appears that SD likes the humor, and will not change it.
Concerning humour in other games, I like it. As long as the writing good, even serious games can have a little amusement somewhere, even if it's little hidden gems. I don't think Space Rangers 2 would have captured me for quite as long if the quests weren't all a little silly, making fun of clichés and the standard RPG maguffins http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin. I like a game that can make me smile, but it's hard to be moved in the other direction, so once you make one joke any serious or dark themes lose most of their strength as you're expecting some joke... which usually goes down the dangerous slope towards crossing the line twice. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrossesTheLineTwice. A very hard and delicate line to walk, one that will always offend some of the audience.
But, for mild interface tooltip... conversational writing, AI War has this gem:"Prevent Warhead FRDIf this toggle is checked, it prevents your warheads from entering free-roaming-defender mode even when something like 'auto-FRD military' toggle or a slip of the finger when giving a move order would set them to FRD. If the purpose of this toggle is not apparent, please reflect for a moment on the words "Nuke" and "Roaming"."
I don't mind a game talking to you, chatting or making jokes. It does remind you it's only a game and can break immersion so I do think you need the right balance. Personally I like the humour more in interface/tooltips and less in quests where it's usually serious and thematic dialogue not quips about the interface or missing features. But Space Rangers 2 had quite silly, fun text-quests and that's the first thing I thought of when I saw some of the quests. Not all the fun translated well to English, but the HD version is much better than the early ones and has even more jokes spread around liberally.
This was where I stopped taking your opinion seriously as useful feedback. Disagreeing about a creative choice is fine, and this is the place to do it. But calling the choice 'lazy' when obviously significant work went into the project so far betrays a thoughtless contempt on your part. It takes effort to create cute snark, even if clever and humorous writing isn't the 'best' choice.
Pretty sure Tetris proves this poorly-tested judgement to be less than perfectly accurate. Or Frogger. Just because animations/graphics can greatly enhance gameplay does not equate them to a pre-requisite, or 'non-separate.'
Attack the argument, not the person. Always a good rule to go by. If at all possible fight fire with water. I think the argument has merits and points worth taking seriously:
Funny = Not serious
Poor animation = Jarring or uncomfortable.
The presentation of those arguments isn't really as important as the fact that it represents the honest thoughts of a single person, who may represent many.
[edit] I've also had the same words of the quote aimed at me quite recently and indeed on this very forum. It isn't nice to hear, it's part of the slippery slope to full-on fighting. (Which I actually really hate. I'm a Pacifist Veggie who's only physically fought twice, bruised and muddy only when defending another (a child and a friend respectively) never myself, even from a stabby-mugger)
I agree with this idea, geerally. Although maybe I did stray close to an ad hominem and perhaps risk hypocrisy, I did indeed evaluate the implicit argument of the OP in describing the "not taking itself seriously" writing as "lazy." Calling it lazy is hard to support, and the simple, likely fact that someone labored for at least a few hours to produce the written text shows effort was exerted, contradicting the claim of lazy ("not liking to work hard or to be active" m-w.com).
As a writer who has written modded quests for LH, I doubt that anyone banged out these quests in an afternoon. Between writing them and editing, it's a whole lot of work for just one quest, and there is a HUGE amount of quest text in just the EA beta for Sorcerer King.
I don't appreciate it when feedback leaves critical argument behind and becomes ad hominem, as the poster did in not simply taking issue with a creative choice, but implicitly attacking the character of the creator with an unsupportable charge ("lazy.")
Trolls might represent the ignorant thoughts of many, even a majority: that doesn't mean we should respect or tolerate their behavior.
I think the humour is fine, personally, but others seem to have a problem with it.
If it really, really bothers some people, since the humour is just text based, it can be easily modded.
So, I'm pretty confident there will be a straight and serious SK mod that pops up quickly.
I enjoy the humor in the base game. I feel at some point, assuming the community obtains something that makes quests much easier to create, modders will create immersive quests tailored to their specific mod or to replace the humorous quests of the base game. I too felt the OP was off-base by labeling "lazy". It is obvious to me that serious effort went into the creation of these quests.
I like it. (War)Games are not that grim anyway (no swearing, no raping etc)...I rarely see realistic crying or panic
good writing = good writing imho
higgledy piggledy
Douglas R. Hofstadter
went to his editors
asked for time off:
"I'll never finish this
self-referentialness
douglas r. hof
stadter
went to his editors ..."
Dr. Anteater: But one must have read his books to fully appreciate it.
Achilles: Gee!
I like the humor. I advocated, in the GalCiv3 threads for including the humor when many were playing the 'realism' card and asking to have the humor removed. (Realism is a space fantasy game? LOL) In any case, games include an element of entertainment. If many users don't like the humor, then provide them with a soft switch, at game setup, that turns off the humor parts of the in-game dialog. Add this option to the gamer/user options list. I'm OK if its an option. Just leave the humor in for those of us want it in-game.
Eh. Not really sure how I feel about the humor just yet. Certain parts made me laugh of course and others didn't. The game is still good and if I really hate a part of the dialogue I can always go out and mod it and boom! Dialogue I want.
As I've metnion already, I do not see how humors fits this game. That can be nice to have easter egg or smth, but humor in every dialogue in a game about world end?
If somebody will be so kind to mod it, I would appreciate it a lot.
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