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Randomly Mine - Pet Peeves Edition
🕑 Added 2018-07-14 03:05:52 +0000 UTC Hello everybody, and welcome to an edition of Randomly Mine that has to do entirely with a hypothetical world, where I own the entirety of game publishing, and have certain rules which everybody must uphold. Starting with...Master Volume
Any game without built in Master Volume control and only allows players to tweak individual settings, will be impossible to sell in my world. The same would also apply to video-games that only have a master volume slider and nothing else.
I understand that on the PC you can use the windows sound manager, but that's assuming the game is alt-tab friendly which many to this day still aren't with changes in framerate or sound-glitches that sometimes force people to restart. Speaking of which...
Alt-Tab
Yes, this is going to be a very PC focused document which is probably why many of these little quibbles haven't been resolved in many games. It only has to do with a portion of a game's audience. But that portion continues to grow with 1.8 billion gamers in the world, a billion of whom own a PC and not a console.
Which means, we should be able to check our desktop at anytime without the fear of crashing like it's 2004 and you're playing Counter Strike: Source.
Full Patch Notes
No, this doesn't have anything to do with Siege. What are you talking about?
Microphones
Never, ever, have them on by default and allow players to easily and adjust and change them. It's incredibly stupid to need to spend a few minutes googling tutorials on how to mute the microphones in a story driven game like A Way Out.
Skippable Cutscenes and Logos
Is this really a thing we still need to tell people? Think of it this way. The people who don't know who made the game but want to know? They'll watch the logos during the start of the game. Those who do know or don't care to know, all you do is piss them off before the game has even started.
Congratulations, unless your experience is a 9/10, it's all downhill from there.
Mod Support
I'm not going to list down the various arguments that've been made a thousand times in regards to the benefits of modding, not just consumers but for companies, here's one however I don't hear often.
It's assumed that companies aren't in favor of mod support because of the potential with gamers ignoring the paid-DLC in search of free content made by users, here's the thing though...
Mods often are things that could never be DLC.
You ever look at the most popular titles on Moddb? Lots are just total conversions that involve a licence no publisher bother negotiating for, let alone able to for a minor piece of downloadable content.
You'll never be able to officially release a Game of Thrones DLC pack, but you'll have one modded in for free within the year, why not take advantage of that?
Comments
James Conway
Wait, what? No comments? Well, in any case, as a PC gamer myself I totally agree with much of what you've said, Lucas. I'd probably add something about not mapping multiple actions to the same keybinding because keyboards, as it happens, have more keys than a controller. :) (Although there _are_ situations where the same key can do multiple things that are context-dependent.) Also, if TotalBiscuit were still alive (may he RIP), he'd likely add FOV and/or other accessibility options, as was his wont.
