If they wanted to just give the monopoly to Unreal Engine and be directed on a path to irrelevance, they could just placed a banner on their website “please use Epic Unreal Engine”. Much easier than enraging devs and tracking all the installs via internet (Tracking gamers without consent can be legal in Europe?)
20 cents per install is insane especially for old games bundled with other stuff when they got pennies
With as many Unity games as there are, saying only 10% of developers will end up having to pay is still quite a large number of developers.
Also, I wonder how against the TOS it would be for game devs of existing titles to sandbox Unity behind a firewall and prevent it from accessing the internet. And they say the change applies to old games, do older builds of Unity have the telemetry already? How long has it been in place?
The fucked up part is charging devs who used their products under the idea that they would be charged certain fees, and now the company they built their business model around is turning around and saying “now you owe us more of a cut if you continue to offer the thing you built”.
Imagine buying a fleet of delivery vans and suddenly Ford wants 5% of your revenue forever. It’s fucking racketeering.
There's just no way this was ever going to go well, no matter how they clarify. Oh, you can inform Unity of upcoming charity bundles to be exempt from fees? You know what's better than that? Not having a fee for something that stupid. No need to inform anyone of anything.
By the time I get to playing a series usually several games in that series have come out. I usually play games that are 5+ years old, I don’t have time to keep up with current releases and that’s more expensive anyway. Playing on a multi-year delay keeps me away from over-hype of game releases and by the time I play them they’re patched, have all dlc, whatever else is applicable. I don’t do it for every game obviously but it’s my typical way of buying games
Honestly, Immortals: Fenyx Rising was superior to Breath of the Wild in every way (for me at least). The world wasn’t “stretched” in size needlessly, “shrines” integrated directly into the overworld, instead of being seperate, the collectibles were sometimes fun (compared to Koroks, which were always bad), there were far more interesting characters and side quests, the world was more alive, the combat was better (if we ignore BotWs weird physics stuff, which has fuckall to do with an action RPG), exploration had an actual point, because you might actually find something nice that doesn’t break five swings in, the story was superior, and the humor was great (to me).
TL;DR: Ubisoft cancels a sequel to their best game in some time, no suprise here.
Yah. I felt exactly the same. I got it on a massive sale for $10 and didn’t think I’d likenit much but I actually liked it more the BOTW. It solved a lot of the problems that BOTW had. I’m bummed they canceled it.
Disappointing. Obviously, there's no way to tell whether the game would have actually been good or not, but stepping away from the Ubisoft formula and taking some inspiration from Elden Ring would have been a step in the right direction.
I feel like I’ve heard this “it’s different this time guys, we swear” spiel about every Ubisoft game in the past five years. Hard to believe or care at this point.
The game you’re looking for is Trackmania, although it’s technically developed by the team Nadeo which is now owned and managed by Ubisoft. (they’re now called Ubisoft Nadeo)
Even the UIs of their games look similar, even though they are from different genres (Division looks similar to AC looks similar to Settlers). IMO that alone shows that they are not about making unique games, but about hammering their franchise into the heads of gamers. They don’t foster creativity, they try to apply the same formula to everything.
Watch Dogs and AC feel eerily similar, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are just swapping out assets, a map, and a standardised game story file format at this point.
IMO their game engine, formula and approach to franchises need to change drastically, if they truly want to demonstrate a fresh start to the public. Anything short of all three is going to feel like a half baked Ubisoft Special, regardless of how talented their writers may be
I don't think that's a bad thing. A big part of effective software development is building things in a way they can be re-used, then adapting that re-use to your use case. You don't want to re-invent the wheel every time.
With UX specifically, user expectations also play a bigger role, and you need to be careful with how and when you violate expectations. There's a reason most FPS games have settled on the same control scheme. Unless you have a very good reason for a change, it detracts from the user experience instead of improving it.
There are issues with the fact that the games are done so fast that none really have their own soul, but shared core UX (that's pretty comparable to most other similar games) is reasonable. It's the fact that it's not as good as it should be (mostly by shoe-horning in all the ads for shitty monetization) that's the issue.
I disagree. The UX design is a critical part of the design language of a game. The Settlers has a completely different setting than Assassins Creed or The Division. For The Division a “cold” and technical UI feels fitting, since this matches with the world it plays in. For Assassins Creed it’s a mixed bag, but since the back story in AC is also extremely futuristic and technical, it still fits. It would likely still be better if the UI was more aligned with the main-setting of the game than with the background-setting, IMO. And finally The Settlers doesn’t fit at all into this theme, yet the UI still looks like it.
Re-using the engine and the development tools is completely logical and a good thing. But the UX should be in line with the setting of the game, not the company that it was developed from. Because that breaks immersion.
It’s unfortunate that Ubisoft Quebec will not be able to try and shake things up with an unusual setting and a more challenging game play. From what’s described in the article, it sounded like a welcome iteration over the open-world formula.
We also expect much more from sequels these days. Most old games’ sequels are just more content on the same engine with minimal new features. Spyro 2 was Spyro 1 with swimming, ice, and powerups. I don’t remember Crash Bandicoot 2 changing anything but the hub world. Did Guitar Hero make any major changes between 1, 2, or 3? Nowadays, Elder Scrolls gets significant engine upgrades between each game, as does Halo, as did Horizon. Totk’s biggest critique is “its just DLC cuz it’s in the same engine”, even though there have been some substantial, non-graphical, physics based upgrades.
As much as I love the first Immortals for the characters and setting, it still felt very much like a typical Ubisoft game. I’m only mildly disappointed at this cancellation.
The major franchises are, by and large, sponsored by the platform holders and major publishers at this point. They can actually spend a few years working on a game. More time means less crunch
And as a consumer? I already got way too many games to play. Right now I have Baldurs Gate 3 (!), Armored Core 6 (???), Alan Wake 2 (… I have to have died and somehow got put in The Good Place, right?), and LAD Gaiden (that actually is sane) in the next few months. Let alone whatever I managed to forget because this shit is so insanely stacked.
But also? it doesn’t really matter i I play a game at launch. Last of Us 2 and God of War 2 were some of the bigger games ever with massive twists that EVERYONE cared about. And… because I ignored threads about it, I was pleasantly surprised (well, mostly bored but…) when I finally got around to them a year or three later.
And… for as big as these new games are? I still got Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld and Warframe to check in on way too often.
So yeah. I am perfectly happy with the big sequels getting more time in between games.
Kenshi is fun but always feels like too much of a time investment to get to the fun parts. Sort of like a roguelike where the first hour is always the same but you still will probably die. Caves of Qud is VERY different, but has a similar “let’s do some weird stuff in a weird world” but is “fun” from the first few minutes.
Starsector I could just never get on with, but keep trying every year or two. I think the problem is that I “grew up” in the peak of the elite game genre and with stuff like EV Nova. And now that Cosmoteer is out, that is more of what I want from that style of game. Just a shame the quests are so weak and there are no mini-narratives… yet.
That’s a fair critique of Kenshi, yeah 😂 I have a soft spot for it because I started following it back in, like, 2011, when Chris was the sole dev and didn’t even want to do a Kickstarter for it. It’s up there with Grim Dawn amongst the greatest success stories of games I’ve backed (it’s quite a short list lol).
Star Sector is indeed a bit tough to get into, and I still don’t like actively piloting ships. This might be attributable to inputs: I’ve got a Kinesis Advantage II ergo keyboard, which is stupid comfortable for 14-hour stretches of typing, but means I have to remap every single key in every single game I want to start playing. What keeps me playing is the sheer amount of community-made content available, which adds a lot of replayability in the form of new ships, weapons, factions, and questlines. Also Nexerelin, which adds a lot of 4X elements, changes the gameplay significantly.
I was looking at Cosmoteer just recently, funnily enough! I was thinking about buying it, but my brain actually used the meme on me:
We have Cosmoteer at home
I’ve just pulled up the store page again, will probably watch some more recent Let’s Plays to get a better idea of the experience.
How about Avorion? I like what I’ve played, I just suck at building and haven’t put in the time to learn it any better, but it has heaps of good reviews.
I’m 36 now and we’re still at least 6, probably 8, years from Elder Scrolls 6. If there’s going to be an Elder Scrolls 7 I probably won’t live to see it.
The definition of “good” can be adjusted, depending on how desperate you are.
That said, I m against sacrificing my standards when it comes to paid things, I want to get what I paid for, and definitely back the people praising BG3 and want games of that caliber now that Larian has shown everybody that it’s possible.
What’s your jank tolerance like? If “moderate to high”, Mount & Blade or Outward might scratch the itch for you. If you’re up for post apocalyptic ronin shenanigans with more of a strategy feel, Kenshi might be enjoyable. Technically, Noita is an open-world fantasy game. It’s really hard (I’m really bad), but I love it nonetheless.
Going more mainstream there’s shedloads of mods for classics like Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim to update graphics, mechanics, or just new content. Witcher 3 is still really good, too.
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Aktywne