There's a problem with collision in some games. Ark is a prime suspect. But why is it Wildcard hasn't gone in and fixed all these fundamental immersion shattering shitty problems?
To be fair, Ark's collision issues have been addressed.. but more in the 'our world's collision is so shit players don't bother going into caves and so they are missing out.' Originally the world design in Ark was so poor that most of the routes into caves had collision missing in the floors such that you'd inevitably fall to your death. I did once and swore off caves, and almost swore off playing such in shit poor game.
But they supposedly fixed it. At least they addressed the caves situation since it was critical. Wildcard however hasn't addressed the shit poor collision, pathfinding, hit detection, and various other shitty things about the game. They are too busy adding content. And that's fine. At first they had legal and money issues which made it understandable that actually polishing the game couldn't be a priority.. they were trying to save their business by making the game appealing to new players. But once they sold enough games to fix their money issues and that legal problem.. why continue making new content when the game is broken?
Ark is almost two years old now. More than time enough for Wildcard to be talking about a sequel. More than time enough for people to quit the game for good.
What's more important? making the game fun to play or just shoveling more shit onto the pile?
WTH?!
Ark has major issues.. though you can get used to most of them after some time with the game.. they are inexcusable. Frankly Wildcard needs to stop producing content and fix the game. This is something that most game developers are guilty of at some level, but their games aren't perpetually broken.
Jackie doesn't understand what language The Article about the hit boxes problem was posted in nor why collision, hit-detection and animation are still immersion breaking issues in modern games.
Off the top there's some issue with what he's saying. Generally speaking people want to play a video game. They know they are playing a video game. That game world is supposed to make up its own rules and we're ready for that.. however when the game contradicts its own rules or is just too buggy for a session to remain enjoyable, for the player to remain immersed in that game world.. something is wrong and it needs to be fixed.
It isn't just about collision but what the game offers you and how well you can do everything the game offers without any of it causing issues.
Ark and HZD are a couple of games that fall into this category. Giving you all kinds of cool things to do but with little issues that take you away from the fun every now and then. They are both games where they are realistic enough that players are immediately immersed into a world where everything makes sense without us being told (by someone outside of the game), what we need to do.
But that comes to a screechy halt with Ark when you try to interact with almost anything. It'll either not work the way you expect it should.. or you realize it is working like it should and you need to get used to what the game does.. the examples are the sizes of things and what fits through a given door, how things react when hitting each other.. and how dinos move around the world or fail to. One excuse is that Wildcard works rather quickly and they do get a lot done except the quality of the resulting work isn't all that great. On the surface the world, the characters, the dinos all look ok, but several hours with the game.. and no.. not so much.
You look at HZD and it's like you can get lost for hours without seeing too much that's immersion breaking. There are things here and there but it isn't pervasive.
Will Wildcard get around to fixing Ark ever? Problem and hopefully not. It had a good run and Wildcard might be mature enough now to make a proper sequel and release it to steam. They however are too open with the community at this point for any new game to matter. At least in my opinion. The Ark community might feel betrayed and resentful if Wildcard decided to just release a new game while all of the above is still floating in the pool.
I was even thinking before playing Ark that it should be time for a game like Ark to allow the player to have a no-UI experience. No menus, no inventory tables, no clicking to make things happen that doesn't happen in the game world itself.
Example.. all inventory should be visible or at least in its own carrying space. The more of something you have, the bigger the sac gets because there's something inside. There's always units of something. If you kill a dino you should get a given amount of units of things based on the size (variable per creature because of it's maturity, its health, etc). What you see should be what you get.
Ark doesn't work like that at all. One of the smallest creatures gives you 10 times the amount of hides resources as something 10 times bigger than it. 2 years into this bullshit and no one even questions it. The game is just dumb about such things and that's the end of it.
However.. It shouldn't be this way. If you kill a dino.. and skin it, and take all the meat, organs, bones etc off the carcass, you should have several new piles of things and should require several types of containers for each. All the bones by themselves should to be carried as is, or be crushed up into piles of bonemeal or powder. Cut a tree down and get stacks of logs.
This is why there either should have been carts in the game originally, for piling all these things on, or several kinds of containers, like bags. Each that would get bigger and heavier. If you damaged them they'd open and spill powdered items into piles.
One argument about that kind of system is that it is tedious to deal with. More like so was hair and clothing. But we finally have games that render good hair and flowing fabric clothing that doesn't have much clipping or other immersion breaking visual problems. Why isn't it reasonable to expect granular objects in current games? Stuff that the player's character could shovel or hand scoop in real-time? As well as fluids and molten substances with reasonable proportions?
I mention again the Blaze resource that underlies the machines in HZD. Assuming Guerrilla did try a little harder you could see those Blaze canisters filling up. There could have been an intermediary system where more shell-walkers and a few other machines (similar sized to the watchers but would take the canisters from the grazers to the shell-walkers) would get those canisters and fill up their crates (that could hold other things besides) to take Blaze back to the cauldrons.
There's this huge Blaze economy, and material recycling economy (scrappers).. that's utterly missing from HZD.
It became apparent when they said the cauldrons were still functioning, of course, but there's nothing linking them to the actual outside world. None of the new creatures are actually getting outside. No new creatures are being designed. It is actually very sad because they spell out very clearly how the world in HZD should work.. but it's all the same bullshit spawn zone nonsense from any other video game. The player doesn't even have the ability to disrupt it even though you can dive into any and eventually all of the cauldrons if you wanted.
Same shit for human tribes. All 2 of them. The Nora get their asses handed to them a few times so there's little expectation they'd have any kind of materials economy going on.. but The Carja, sun and shadow should have had at least a rudimentary trade system going on.
Nope. Not a single cart. At least the story says that's all slowed down because the machines all went crazy and it's too dangerous to have normal trading and hunting going on.
Fine. Wtv.
It's possible to see that kind of stuff happening in Ark.
Looking at how most people play Ark though.. it's very unrealistic to see x1000 stacks of a given item in a menu. I'd rather see realistic representations of things, being poured into containers, and being mixed and cooked in the game, rather than in a menu.
I imagine that seeing piles of ore being turned into molten metal, then formed into weapons is more fun tan clicking a button to have an extra item appear in a menu... but more than that.. it removes some of the possibility of players getting used to having ultra powerful items for nothing.
HZD offers the regular menu system but they do make many improvements that make it so much easier to deal with. There's so much less time spent in the menu.
I was like.. between these two games and their sequels.. both up in the air.. As both Guerrilla and Wildcard could just make DLC for now.. What would the sequels need to be?
HZD might be as immersive as it is because its world is based on the real world. There are apparently several real world locations you can find in the game. It doesn't just look real. But it does feel compact and too small once you've been in there for a while, or if you played Ark (or any MMO with a massive game world and flying mounts).
The question of why Guerrilla decides against adding mounts and leaving Aloy to trudge around on foot, in an admittedly rich world for trudging around on foot, it hardly feels empty anywhere.. I was left wondering even from the start how immersive it would be at a bigger scale.
And that the main immersion break in this game is the constant death and load screens. Due to the player death by almost oneshot machines (again not unfamiliar to Ark players) it hardly matters that the world doesn't have any load times when you're actually travelling. It could be hard to notice even because you're too busy doing things.
The same can be said of Ark, in that one of the only good things about the game is that you can mount just about any dino and go wherever you want. If you're up for exploration you can have the game make a world for you and fill it with dinos. Jump on one and away you go. You can even have your friend hop in.
HZD doesn't have multiplayer or any option for modifying the world.. but it is still fairly large.
I wondered.. what if it was to scale though?
What if, you actually could stay alive for extended periods because you didn't get murdered by random machines all the time.. like if the camera was faster, and Aloy was snappier.. and you got flying mounts and vehicles (and roads, rail etc)
UTAH is a massive state and given the above extra modes of transportation and Flying machines, like helicopters, jets.. And even being able to override Glinthawks and Stormbirds.. It almost feels like HZD's open world could easily rival Ark's.
Or rather if Wildcard meant to do a sequel.. they have to take into account what Guerrilla did that they couldn't. HZD achieves player immersion and holds it with an iron fist even though the player can't really change the world at all.
Ark players looking at HZD's machines would salivate at the awesome animations and AI.. even the pathfinding is amazing. All the complexity here and it all just works.
Of course Wildcard doesn't have anywhere near the resources Sony does but... the idea is HZD sets an example. One that plays on things expected from Ark that never happened.