Probably the Total War series is up your alley… sounds exactly like what you did in Civ 6… you amass a giant army and go around putting everyone in their place… and often enough someone shows up to put you in yours… also for the combat you can just select auto and it will just do the battle for you, ORRRRR you can manually do the combat and control each of your units (cavalry, swordsman, officers… etc) it’s really pretty neat if not a little overwhelming at points.
Yes, the two hour limit affects game design. Based on what I’ve read about Blue Prince, it probably didn’t affect that one much at all. The business model always affects the game design. When games were expecting to be rentals, the first few levels would be front loaded with the best that the game had to offer, and then later levels would be more phoned in. In the arcades, games would be louder to catch more attention, they’d be harder to make you put in another quarter, they’d reduce downtime to get the next person on the machine, etc.
When games were expecting to be rentals, the first few levels would be front loaded with the best that the game had to offer, and then later levels would be more phoned in
Still happens today. First impressions matter, budgets are finite, and sometimes reviewers only play the first few parts.
sometimes reviewers only play the first few parts.
Not just the reviewers unfortunately, games shed players at every step, it's why most games are front-loaded and fall off the further you get into them.
I always find it interesting to see the percentages drop on Steam achievements when you progress through a game. The drop-off curve is very different from game to game. I always wonder about the people who drop off just before finishing the game.
I always wonder about the people who drop off just before finishing the game.
They probably don't want the game to end, there's a certain finality that comes with an ending. I've had this happen to me for a few games and books but i usually power through.
Yeah, the theory if front-loaded design is just reality of game development reality. No, D2 Ac4 wasn’t limited because of rentals - it was bad,because one year of crunch and still nit enough time does this to a product.
Halo1 last third is bad, because they did not have enough time, nit because they cared about rentals.
Game content dev generally starts at the beginning.
I haven’t heard of the game but see that it’s going for $27. For me at least, buying a $27 game, I’d expect 10 hours minimum of enjoyable gameplay, which throws the free refund out the window if it would deliver.
It could be possible that they wanted to increase their game length to justify the price and stretched things if the first 80 minutes were tedious and slow. I’m sure there’s some consideration to front load the enjoyment into the first few hours, with or without the refund, but I would assume lesser priced games would focus on that and not one going for this price.
gotta avoid sunk cost, I used to buy 30$ games and say if I got 10 hours its worth it when I didnt enjoy the game and wouldve been better off spending my time (which is always more valuable than the amountt of money lost on a game 20-70$) elsewhere
The other elephant in the room is if steam refunds are meant as a demo for everything or just to check technical issues like FPS and network connection issues
I’m pretty sure that the refund window isn’t primarily intended to create an ad-hoc demo of games, but to let you return a game that doesn’t function correctly on your system.
Game developers who do want to create a demo can (though I’ll admit that it’s a less-common route than one might expect).
I’ve seen many devs cite the refund window as why they don’t need to bother maintaining a demo. They’re wrong about not needing a proper demo, but people definitely do treat the refund window as a demo phase, not merely a technical test.
IMHO, two hours is not nearly enough to get a feel for a game. At least, not for the sorts of games I tend to play. I spend longer than that just working through initial technical issues, configuration, and (in games that have one) the character generator.
I have to conclude that Steam’s return window is either intended to be just enough to see if you can get it running, or as much as Valve could talk publishers into tolerating.
imo the 2h refund window is not so you can judge if you’ll like the game, it’s so you can judge if you can tolerate it long enough to form an informed opinion
there’s been a few games i played under 2h of and thought to myself “this is terrible, i’m not having fun and i actively dislike playing this”, Steam’s no questions asked refund was a cure for regret i’d have felt if i had to see that game in my library forever. Games that i know take much longer to judge i borrow from a friend who’s into fitness and a girl, that’s what saved me from buying Starfield or Avowed
Two hours is the length of some high-budget media; eg, movies and plays.
I know that some games are slow-burn, but that’s something people have to weigh themselves. Ideally, you’d enjoy the slow burn itself. When I tried to “force myself through to the Good Part of Nier Automata”, I ended up hating the whole thing.
C&C Generals 2, they got canceled and then made in to a mobile game. I considerd staying 10 hours in line to try it out at gamescom in köln 10-12 years ago, decided to get drunk instead.
Yeah that was a letdown for sure. Still better than releasing it as a mobile game I think.
If you haven’t heard they recently released the source code of C&C generals and zero hour and there’s multiple efforts working on a community patch.
I’ve been watching the competitive scene of zero hour for a few years now. It’s really exciting and now that the source code’s out, sky’s the limit on what we can achieve.
Apparently UE5 only for rendering, the game logic still on the old gamebryo engine.
Because if done well, UE5 is fairly pretty and if it’s used just for graphics, maybe it won’t perform as badly either. The mixture of two engines tells me at the very least that the devs spent some amount of thought and time on the engine(s).
But yea, when it comes out and I find out it runs like crap on my 5700xt, I’ll just wait until Skyblivion is out. Not gonna be too long anyways.
Depends on how much work they put into the graphics. Sure, if they keep UE at default settings, it’ll look like any run of the mill UE5 game. But if they cared enough to combine two engines, maybe they also cared enough to actually make UE5 look and feel more unique and more Elderscrolls-y…
Also, keeping gamebryo for logic might be a good thing to make the game feel more like the original.
It’s not actually done by Bethesda though but by Virtuos Games, which have both a history of making excellent remasters and miracle ports, and remasters that were very buggy at release.
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