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Horizon: Forbidden West releases on Steam with lower player count than Horizon: Zero Dawn

Pedro Motta

Pedro Motta

Member
They all complain, but they are all playing it.
SlimySnake said:
Games need to be fun. I dont think reviews understand what makes combat fun. You saw this recently with FF7 Rebirth. The delicate balance they cultivated in FF7 is thrown out the window with aggressive enemies, flying enemies, and a pulled back camera that makes it hard to track enemies. 93 metacritic. Elden Ring had those enemies who just would never stop attacking. Ever. I even saw the video where it shows how the AI reacts to your inputs the second you hit them. there is no delay so any time you pull out your estus flask, they will attack you without delay. Then there were those stupidly long delayed attacks that made dodging a pain. 97 metacritic.

I dont mind challenge. i have dozens of platinums and most from back when they used to require beating games on the hardest difficulty. ive beaten all souls games multiple times. dozens of times. i started with bloodborne. the most difficult of them all. difficulty can be mastered, but poor combat design is poor combat design. Elden Ring and Horizon focus way too much on creating DPS builds that take out enemies in a few hits instead of focusing on that dance of defense and offense that makes games fun. i have posted dozens of videos of me killing horizon bosses in one hit in the end game. but that was after 100 hours of farming and building up DPS.

Here is how a combat scenario typically goes in HFW:
- Enemies go aggro right away and charge.
- Smaller enemies start lunging at you with melee attacks
- You dodge them but the bigger enemies now have range attacks and they throw stuff where you would land
- you dodge around 5 to 6 times to give yourself enough time to get a shot or two in.
- 5/10 times you hit the armor for 1 damage.
- You finally get hit after saying fuck it and decide to stop dodging like a little shit, and immediately get staggered.
- now you are stuck in an animation while you try and get up as they all gangbang you like riley reid.
- Rinse and repeat.

Every single encounter is like this. 1v1 against bosses are slightly better, but there are actual combat design decisions they made here that deserve criticsm. If they werent actual criticisms they wouldnt have changed the timings on the stagger animations. let alone the frequency of getting staggered.

There is nothing wrong with making enemies more aggro, giving them range attacks and mixing in different kinds of robots for varietys sake. However, you need to give the player the tools and no more elemental types are not enough. Aloy needed a shield. A parry move. Allies like in Dragons Dogma 2 that kept you in the game by distracting other enemies. BB did this 9 years ago. Made enemies aggressive as fuck and upped the tempo but then gave you the tools to tackle them. They increase attack speeds, they let you gain your health back, they gave you an easy parry with a massive timing window. they gave you range attacks and designed bosses around those mechanics. it never felt unfair, and always felt fun. Cant say the same about horizon.
Click to expand...
LOL, git gud.
 
rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
SlimySnake said:
Steam users review bombed dragons dogma an hour after the pre-load became available at 8PM est the day before launch. I dont trust these fools. They are those drama queens you see on reality tv shows like real House wives of beverly hills. bored housewives just looking for reasons to get outraged.

Metacritic user reviews are similar. They just do it for different reasons. Anti-woke, politics, blah blah blah.

I say to both, play the fucking game. This is why ive always preferred forums to review scores. I can come in here and articulate whats good about the game, and what doesnt quite work. Cant do that on twitter with that 140 character limit. Cant do that on steam with that up/down voting system. Surprisingly enough, youtube comments have become a rather decent place to talk about anything in a more critical fashion. Reddit's voting system is trash too but at least they let you type more than 140 characters.

The only problem with forums is that they are infested with fanboys. People who like brands instead of games. I remember Hamas Sympathizer Bo_hazam literally openly said that he likes Sony as a brand. I am like i like sony because i like the games they make. When they start making games i dont like, i wont continue to like sony. But he's like nope, i will love sony forever. People like him make discussing games on forums an absolute nightmare because you dont want to discuss anything with a blind fanboy. So you have to swift through replies and accusations of trolling and mocking just to have a decent discussion with people who genuinely like the game on the game's shortcomings.

And horizon has plenty of those shortcomings despite the extraordinary visuals and production values. There is an insane amount of content which to some people just means the game must be amazing. But to me, FF16's MMO quest design is no different from Horizon's fetch quest design. Just because HFW packages its dialogue scenes in stunning cutscene fidelity doesnt mean the formula isnt the same. There are issues with the combat here too. Again, people see dinobots and fancy combat animations and they are like it must be amazing! But no, it was amazing in the first game but the minor but consequential changes they made to the combat systems made the game a chore to play. It removed the fun and turned every encounter into an exercise in gymnastics. Game simply doesnt work when enemies dont give you a breather and just gang up on you. At least you PC guys dont have to live with the insane stunned animations the game locked you into at launch. But if we werent allowed to bitch about it, you wouldve been playing the most frustrating game ive played in years.
Click to expand...
Yeah it’s a forum so only somewhat passionate people find their way here. At least you would hope.

I like Sony because they won me over by… not changing too much. I had 360 and loved Xbox back then. It had more good games and better console tech. And piracy… I was a kid.
But Microsoft got too greedy, I hate gaas and they ruin everything they touch now. So sony is obvious choice. So is switch I guess.

Pc of course too but I just like playing on console at this point in my life.

As for quests, hfw had better quests than ff16 but ff16 have some good ones in there. They start terribly mmo tho
 
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Griffon

Griffon

Member
When I'll people finally understand that steam concurrent hourly players are a shitty metric for single player games and doesn't correlate well with actual sales.

Especially if you can finish the game in a few days. You aren't supposed to logon into those games forever, this isn't live service trash.
 
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GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
SlimySnake said:
Games need to be fun. I dont think reviews understand what makes combat fun. You saw this recently with FF7 Rebirth. The delicate balance they cultivated in FF7 is thrown out the window with aggressive enemies, flying enemies, and a pulled back camera that makes it hard to track enemies. 93 metacritic. Elden Ring had those enemies who just would never stop attacking. Ever. I even saw the video where it shows how the AI reacts to your inputs the second you hit them. there is no delay so any time you pull out your estus flask, they will attack you without delay. Then there were those stupidly long delayed attacks that made dodging a pain. 97 metacritic.

I dont mind challenge. i have dozens of platinums and most from back when they used to require beating games on the hardest difficulty. ive beaten all souls games multiple times. dozens of times. i started with bloodborne. the most difficult of them all. difficulty can be mastered, but poor combat design is poor combat design. Elden Ring and Horizon focus way too much on creating DPS builds that take out enemies in a few hits instead of focusing on that dance of defense and offense that makes games fun. i have posted dozens of videos of me killing horizon bosses in one hit in the end game. but that was after 100 hours of farming and building up DPS.

Here is how a combat scenario typically goes in HFW:
- Enemies go aggro right away and charge.
- Smaller enemies start lunging at you with melee attacks
- You dodge them but the bigger enemies now have range attacks and they throw stuff where you would land
- you dodge around 5 to 6 times to give yourself enough time to get a shot or two in.
- 5/10 times you hit the armor for 1 damage.
- You finally get hit after saying fuck it and decide to stop dodging like a little shit, and immediately get staggered.
- now you are stuck in an animation while you try and get up as they all gangbang you like riley reid.
- Rinse and repeat.

Every single encounter is like this. 1v1 against bosses are slightly better, but there are actual combat design decisions they made here that deserve criticsm. If they werent actual criticisms they wouldnt have changed the timings on the stagger animations. let alone the frequency of getting staggered.

There is nothing wrong with making enemies more aggro, giving them range attacks and mixing in different kinds of robots for varietys sake. However, you need to give the player the tools and no more elemental types are not enough. Aloy needed a shield. A parry move. Allies like in Dragons Dogma 2 that kept you in the game by distracting other enemies. BB did this 9 years ago. Made enemies aggressive as fuck and upped the tempo but then gave you the tools to tackle them. They increase attack speeds, they let you gain your health back, they gave you an easy parry with a massive timing window. they gave you range attacks and designed bosses around those mechanics. it never felt unfair, and always felt fun. Cant say the same about horizon.
Click to expand...
I don't know what to say, i thought the game was fairly simpler than ragnarock on the hardest difficulty, that one was way more overtuned but still fun because i like very hard game.

And i fucking played 90% of hfw with a spear melee build :lollipop_grinning_sweat:

Did you even used the valor skills? Some of them were super op and let you destroy groups of enemies with ease.

Yeah like i said, i take an unfair challenge over no challenge, one at least make exploration and progression even more rewarding, the other has no plus at all, i take overtuned dinobots over the lethargic enemies in dogma2 that offer zero challenge, i know what is more fun for me.
 
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SlimySnake

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
GymWolf said:
And i fucking played 90% of hfw with a spear melee build :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
Click to expand...
Well, there you go. You played a shooter as a melee game. I am talking about its shooting mechanics. You probably liked people gangbanging you because you wanted battles to be up close and personal. I dont think shooters should be designed like that.

and yes, i used the valor and stamina bars extensively but once you run out getting them to fill up is a pain.
 
SlimySnake

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
solidus12 said:
As a PlayStation gamer, I’d say that’s good news.

How many flops will it take for Sony to forget about pc releases of single player games?
Click to expand...
the ports cost them just $1-2 million. so even if these things flop and they sell 100k copies. they still make a sizeable profit.
 
Vick

Vick

Member
GymWolf said:
I don't know what to say, i thought the game was fairly simpler than ragnarock on the hardest difficulty, that one was way more overtuned but still fun because i like very hard game.
Click to expand...
Game at Ultra Hard was in fact significantly simpler than Ragnarock at max difficulty for me.
And you know I played the game with basically only the hunter bow and with no frigging reticle on screen.

OverHeat said:
This thread is turning into a shit show. Bail out.gif
Click to expand...
After eight whole pages of an ignominious mess of a thread.. now it's turning into a real shit show. Now that people are starting to argue about the game with detailed posts instead of:

OverHeat said:
I’m always in a discord chat when I play this game so I would not now since I don’t pay attention hahaha
Click to expand...

Or the embarrassing (and proved premature) stuff filling the first pages...

Feels like watching a swine freaking out because his farmer's trying to remove some of the filth it thrives in.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
SlimySnake said:
Well, there you go. You played a shooter as a melee game. I am talking about its shooting mechanics. You probably liked people gangbanging you because you wanted battles to be up close and personal. I dont think shooters should be designed like that.

and yes, i used the valor and stamina bars extensively but once you run out getting them to fill up is a pain.
Click to expand...
Dude melee build was hard mode inside the hard mode, wtf are you talking about?

If you think you had problems while shooting from afar, imagine the problems i had while staying still close to enemies to charge the heavy spear attack (basically the only attack that was doing damage), and i would still not call the game super unfair, you can't cheese jack shit with a melee build.
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
solidus12 said:
As a PlayStation gamer, I’d say that’s good news.

How many flops will it take for Sony to forget about pc releases of single player games?
Click to expand...
Flop is probably not the best word here, it’s actually #1 on the Steam global top seller list for single player-only games.
 
SlimySnake

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
GymWolf said:
Dude melee build was hard mode inside the hard mode, wtf are you talking about?

If you think you had problems while shooting from afar, imagine the problems i had while staying still close to enemies to charge the heavy spear attack (basically the only attack that was doing damage), and i would still not call the game super unfair, you can't cheese jack shit with a melee build.
Click to expand...
It's not about whether or not you had a challenge. The point is that you played the game as a melee while I played as a shooter and with my shooter playstyle the game simply did not gel like the first one did because of aggro enemies.

The aggro enemies fit your playstyle more because they lunged themselves at you leading to close quarter combat which suited your playstyle far more than it did mine.

Maybe thats what happened. They went in an RPG direction trying to fit in a lot of different playstyles and to give you a challenge they made enemies constantly lunge at you and ended up breaking the careful balance they had created for the original.
 
Kacho

Kacho

Member
SlimySnake said:
Here is how a combat scenario typically goes in HFW:
- Enemies go aggro right away and charge.
- Smaller enemies start lunging at you with melee attacks
- You dodge them but the bigger enemies now have range attacks and they throw stuff where you would land
- you dodge around 5 to 6 times to give yourself enough time to get a shot or two in.
- 5/10 times you hit the armor for 1 damage.
- You finally get hit after saying fuck it and decide to stop dodging like a little shit, and immediately get staggered.
- now you are stuck in an animation while you try and get up as they all gangbang you like riley reid.
- Rinse and repeat.
Click to expand...
Kinda want to YOLO cop and put this to the test. See if I feel the same. Maybe after DD2.

SlimySnake said:
as they all gangbang you like riley reid.
Click to expand...
full
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
SlimySnake said:
It's not about whether or not you had a challenge. The point is that you played the game as a melee while I played as a shooter and with my shooter playstyle the game simply did not gel like the first one did because of aggro enemies.

The aggro enemies fit your playstyle more because they lunged themselves at you leading to close quarter combat which suited your playstyle far more than it did mine.

Maybe thats what happened. They went in an RPG direction trying to fit in a lot of different playstyles and to give you a challenge they made enemies constantly lunge at you and ended up breaking the careful balance they had created for the original.
Click to expand...
Nah dude, when they attack you still have to avoid all of their attacks, it change nothing in terms of things to avoid, and that was your problem, too many things to avoid, i can assure that they did me no favour in gangbanging on me like they didn't for you.

Also, i fought all the big enemies with ranged weapons because melee was way too hard without a proper shield, that's why i said 90% of the time, i experienced the ranged combat against the hardest enemies in the game.

And i did the whole dlc with ranged because i found a legendary warrior bow that had 5% chance to apply ice or acid, i was super op so enemies being overtuned was the only way to have a challenge.
 
captainnapalm

captainnapalm

Member
This game is really something else with DLAA enabled and all the bells and whistles. The artists definitely knocked it out of the park. And I have to say, did not expect the soundtrack to be this cool -- just an awesome science fiction score.

I just wish the game had more interesting characters. Sylens is literally the only one I like. The whole 'woman trying to be a gruff action hero' thing they do with Aloy just comes off as cringy. But even still, this is quite a feast for the eyes and ears.
 
SmokedMeat

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
solidus12 said:
As a PlayStation gamer, I’d say that’s good news.

How many flops will it take for Sony to forget about pc releases of single player games?
Click to expand...

Pump the brakes on single player games and full speed ahead on GaaS.

That’s what’s going to happen. You need these games to be big on PC. Especially with the console market being in stagnation for generations.
 
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GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
captainnapalm said:
This game is really something else with DLAA enabled and all the bells and whistles. The artists definitely knocked it out of the park. And I have to say, did not expect the soundtrack to be this cool -- just an awesome science fiction score.

I just wish the game had more interesting characters. Sylens is literally the only one I like. The whole 'woman trying to be a gruff action hero' thing they do with Aloy just comes off as cringy. But even still, this is quite a feast for the eyes and ears.
Click to expand...
Where do you turn on dlaa? From ingame settings?

Also yeah, the soundtrack may be one of the most underrated thing in the game.
 
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Kings Field

Kings Field

Member
Game is trash. If you played the first one, there’s no need to play the second one. Such a boring half assed game.

Looks good but graphics don’t make games good
 
Fredrik

Fredrik

Member
solidus12 said:
What about Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart? Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection? Returnal? Sackboy?
Click to expand...
Those did far worse when looking at the concurrent player numbers:
Ratchet 8k
Uncharted 10k
Returnal 6k
Sackboy <1k

Forbidden West has a peak concurrent player number of 40k now. It’s doing okay no doubt. Not quite as high as Zero Dawn though, which is their top seller on Steam going by leaks, or was before Helldivers 2.
 
Zathalus

Zathalus

Member
solidus12 said:
As a PlayStation gamer, I’d say that’s good news.

How many flops will it take for Sony to forget about pc releases of single player games?
Click to expand...
Days gone only had a peak of 27k yet has sold 2.4 million on Steam so far.

So bad news for you cupcake.
 
Gaiff

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
GymWolf said:
Is it super duper heavy?

Dlss has some artifacts that i don't like but it also make the game run at like 100fps :lollipop_grinning_sweat:
Click to expand...
It’s heavier than native so you’ll get a much lower fps than with DLSS. I don’t suppose you’re on a 40-series card?
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
Gaiff said:
Frame gen and reflex aren’t broken as far as I’m aware.
Click to expand...
OverHeat said:
Both work fine
Click to expand...
So this is not true?

The game's reflex is broken and severely limits GPU usage for me and seemingly other people on Reddit and Steam forums. With a 4080/7800x3d, my GPU usage gets hard capped to around 90% whenever reflex is on, goes even lower with on+boost. This also translates to frame gen ofc because it goes with reflex, and frame pacing becomes terrible whenever FG is enabled. I go from great frame times and 99% with FG/reflex off, and around 90-105 fps in the early area before the first machine appears, to

Also, frame generation gets turned off for in-game cutscenes for no reason, and it gets turned off for many UI element pop-ups (try opening a car trunk and looking at RTSS overlay while looking at the loot menu). Cutscenes stutter on every frame cut every time, and the game looks horrible the lower you go with DLSS because there is extreme oversharpening. This makes dynamic resolution (that DF recommended) look awful because the sharpness values are constantly changing with the resolution.

Well shit, then i'm gonna try framegen + dlaa tonight.
 
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Gaiff

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
GymWolf said:
So this is not true?

The game's reflex is broken and severely limits GPU usage for me and seemingly other people on Reddit and Steam forums. With a 4080/7800x3d, my GPU usage gets hard capped to around 90% whenever reflex is on, goes even lower with on+boost. This also translates to frame gen ofc because it goes with reflex, and frame pacing becomes terrible whenever FG is enabled. I go from great frame times and 99% with FG/reflex off, and around 90-105 fps in the early area before the first machine appears, to

Also, frame generation gets turned off for in-game cutscenes for no reason, and it gets turned off for many UI element pop-ups (try opening a car trunk and looking at RTSS overlay while looking at the loot menu). Cutscenes stutter on every frame cut every time, and the game looks horrible the lower you go with DLSS because there is extreme oversharpening. This makes dynamic resolution (that DF recommended) look awful because the sharpness values are constantly changing with the resolution.

Well shit, then i'm gonna try framegen + dlaa tonight.
Click to expand...
I definitely don’t experience that. I have DLAA+Reflex+FG and my GPU usage is at 99%.
 
Mr Nash

Mr Nash

square pies = communism
This is one of those games I could see myself playing in a year or two after the price comes down and there are some good sales. It's pretty rare for me to pull the trigger on a game day one now.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
I have weird graphical gliteches in the skills page and in the weapons page, like i can't read some stats in the weapons page, and in the skill page i have this weird big black arrow that cover part of the video that shows you how the skill work, could it be caused by the fact that i don't have the latest nvidia driver for the game?

I'm gonna put some pics later.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
rofif said:
Comparison is in.


Looks identical. ps5 sometimes better like better Aloy textures but seems like a bug.
So yes. Image quality is indeed already perfect on ps5. You are not winning that one.
PC version offers higher fps. Everything else is more less identical.
Click to expand...

The biggest difference are framerate and better anisotropic filter yeah.

Tbf playing the game at 4k120 frames compared to 30 is night and day during combat on the hardest mode.

Also being able to use a controller with asymmetrical stick make aim much better for me.
 
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rofif

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
GymWolf said:
The biggest difference are framerate and better anisotropic filter yeah.

Tbf playing the game at 4k120 frames compared to 30 is night and day during combat on the hardest mode.

Also being able to use a controller with asymmetrical stick make aim much better for me.
Click to expand...
AF doesn't matter. It's under the grass.
Controls are subjective. I played just fine with a controller.
And don't forget, ps5 offers performance and unlocked performance modes.
 
Gaiff

Gaiff

SBI’s Resident Gaslighter
rofif said:
Comparison is in.


Looks identical. ps5 sometimes better like better Aloy textures but seems like a bug.
So yes. Image quality is indeed already perfect on ps5. You are not winning that one.
PC version offers higher fps. Everything else is more less identical.
Click to expand...

Alright, AF and resolution don't matter. What else can we cross off the list? Might as well just get an RTX 3060 and you can play everything.
 
GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
rofif said:
AF doesn't matter. It's under the grass.
Controls are subjective. I played just fine with a controller.
And don't forget, ps5 offers performance and unlocked performance modes.
Click to expand...
It matter because not everything on the ground is covered by grass, it's not a gamechanger but it is noticeable here and there, the desert area being the biggest culprit.

I'm also playing with a controller, but i can chose the stick disposition and i'm not forced to play with the dildosense5.

Both perf mode have way lower res and framerate, on pc you don't have to pick one, you get the best graohic and the best framerate all at once, and a super hard, fast pacing tps need all the frames you can get, and the better visual clarity is also a plus.

The game doesn't look much better, but it play infinitely better, the difference between 30 and 120 is wild.
 
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