Gave the game another try after the update and I’m actually enjoying it now. Gotten to the 2nd map and there are a ton of enemies fighting everywhere now. They really did increase the amount of NPCs you see around the map.
Wanted something moody/dark to play during October and this has scratched that itch.
Only played solo but I’d rate it as a 6.5/10 now. The original version would be like a 5/10 to me.
It doesn’t matter if a game with microtransactions makes them easier to get or even free. If a game was designed with microtransactions in mind, the game has to be made tedious, grindy, and/or or frustrating completely on purpose to incentivize buying things.
Meh. A competitive monopoly has a better outcome than the near monopoly PS4 got when it came to exclusives. Yeah a lot of existing IP will be for one or the other. But for third party studios, they will be much less likely to make exclusive games if the console market is more balanced between the two. Nintendo is kind of in a world of its own. And with the steam deck helping push PC into a base level standard, I think we might see some opening up of high quality third party stuff.
Honestly I’m okay with this one, but it’s mostly because Activision Blizzard has great IP with some seriously awful management … and Microsoft actually has been doing much better in that department for games.
Yeah… In practice, every time a company gets anything that even slightly resembles a captured market, they stop investing in quality and starting shafting consumers.
Make no mistake, that is Microsoft’s end game. And that’s why they’re buying Blizzard.
Luckily, Activision Blizzard already stopped investing in quality and started shafting customers quite a while back, so worst case scenario (in this particular case, your criticism is still valid for most others) nothing changes, best case scenario Microsoft actually cleans house and the market becomes slightly less anti-consumer with one of the worst offenders gone…
Microsoft even with Activision Blizzard would not have a captured market. Valve, Crytek, Sony (which now holds Bungie), Epic, Electronic Arts, CD Projekt Red, Take-Two, and Ubisoft are all still quite potent AAA capable studio just in the PC space … along with tons of independent studios (e.g., Ghost Ship Games, Shiro Games, Hello Games, Re-Logic).
The Microsoft internal doc leak said they’re mostly after King Games (mobile games) anyways. I’d wager at worst Microsoft will let the traditionally Activision & Blizzard studios do their things… at best they’ll clean up the executive teams and let the devs “play” a bit more with the IPs.
The enshitification of Mojang has begun. Ridiculous privacy policies and bans in singleplayer. And the biggest introduction under MS was the engine rewrite, which was already underway when they were acquired.
I mean, it’s had plenty of success with its own IP… Heard of Starfield? Minecraft … and it’s nth successful Spinoff? Forza Horizon 5? Sea of Thieves? Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition? Age of Empires IV? Age of Empires XYZ DE? Fallout 76?
The only major “flop” I can think of that wasn’t corrected (at least so far) is Halo Infinite and … that largely seems to be a 343 issue. There’s also Redfall, but that was a new IP in an over saturated space … it’s not like they’ve stopped developing IPs, fixing games, and trying new things.
Go look at Fallout 76’s reviews, it was unpopular at launch (IIRC) but it’s doing very well now … and that’s the point, they kept the lights on until the majority of players were happy.
Minecraft has had several games derived from it, that were entirely different games set in the Minecraft universe.
Microsoft bought Bethesda 3 years ago. To say that they had no ability to influence and/or didn’t take a risk on Starfield is … lazy at best.
And yes, they own Redfall as well, time will tell if they fix that one or it’s just a straight up failure.
How many games game out this year? Thousands. There is absolutely zero possibility that MS or anyone else is anywhere near holding monopoly status on the production of entertainment software. Even if they bought EVERYTHING new creators would enter the space the very next day.
They did not make that claim. The article is just wrong. The devs said they’re removing in-game monitization and only having DLC on the store page. It’s functionally identical I assume, but there’s less pressure on players playing the game.
But… Like… Did we ask for that? If you cant afford to keep developing a game after shipping it… Dont?
Just make the game, wrap it up finished, and let me buy it. It doesnt need to be a subscription, I dont need to play it for 6 years, you can move on with your life and design a different game.
Ill pay cash, just give me the whole game for crying out loud
Most of the gaming community did, yes. Players want servers that last forever and updates that never stop, and they’ll throw a hissy fit if it costs them a cent more up front than it did 30 years ago. I’m not a fan of it either, but it’s where the industry is right now.
More importantly people don’t want to buy into closed game environments. They promise of ongoing development attracts players that want that type of scale, and also allows devs to continue to eat. It’s a win/win.
This is the right choice by devs. I haven’t played it and honestly I probably never will, but I respect the decision.
Do you not remember when a title would get released and stay in a buggy state forever rendering the game useless?
Have you never enjoyed a game so much that you wanted more content for it
I don’t want a product that’s going to go stale the second I buy it, I want a game I can play for 10 years with new content being added to keep it fresh.
Let me guess, you think movies should just be perma running live streams?
Calling a game “stale” for not having an unending stream of spectacle creep is a wild opinion. Its a game, not a lifestyle. Not ending is why so many games are shit now. Because they dont stop when theyre good, they stop when its become too bad to play, and everyone leaves.
Enjoying a game so much you want more content was, and still is, filled just fine from dlc and sequels. The best part? They dont require permanently altering what you thought was good, so if theyre trash you still have the original.
Well games used to not have Servers and be peer to peer they did not have season where New content got Put in or if they got New content they Split the Player Base Because they Sold the New maps, classes etc. So selling cosmetics and giving away the New classes maps etc is actually great. So that way the person not spending much gets New content and the person that love the game can Support them more. At the Same time Yes time is spend on Those skins etc and not New stuff but What would you like. A game being shut down and not being play able like battleborn? Or a game that gets New stuff but also New cosmetics?
Yeah, the headline is just awful. The Inkbound Dev notes that they’re removing all in-game microtransactions. The goal is to move away from pressuring you to spend money on microtransactions as you play, and keep them where they belong: on the store page.
The devs are doing exactly what they said. The headline is either click-bait, or a result of awful reading comprehension.
To me, updates and DLC serve different purposes. Updates are for bugfixes, new features, feature enhancements, etc. DLC is new game stuff, like additional characters and levels and so on.
I agree with your interpretation, but I really wish publishers would go back to calling additional levels or story content an "expansion" instead of DLC. It's a lot more clear and differentiates from other types of content like a character costume or a soundtrack.
In a statement posted to Steam, developer Shiny Shoe said […]
What a sloppy and lazy article. They don’t even bother linking to the statement from the devs. Seriously, that would have taken less then 1 minute to add.
The badness this game had at launch really can't be overstated, though. At launch, this was a paid early access always online mostly-singleplayer-with-coop game with a premium currency shop and a battle pass. And it was one of those games where the shop was the most fleshed out part.
They've added offline mode and are now reworking the microtransactions to Steam DLC, but I'm still very skeptical of them. That launch was so blatantly over the top bad.
I ignored all the mtx stuff, which was pretty easy, and have had a blast with co-op. I can’t think of anything else that comes close to this in terms of meaningful synergies with friends. And Shiny Shoe has proven they know how to use EA to turn out a good product with Monster Train so I wouldn’t give up on them quite yet.
I don’t think you’ll regret it. Shiny Shoe knows what they’re doing in terms of design and Inkbound is phenomenal. They’ve been making solid improvements throughout EA.
Microtransactions in general are the reason I avoid the majority of games like the plague, if you have to purchase the title and it’s on PC. The only exceptions I accept is the one RPG series I play and the spin-off auto chess card game. They have it figured out, at least, that shoving the paid features down your throat is bad for the player.
Gonna read this later, but already thanking you for posting this! Random super interesting gaming deep dives is one of my favorite things to stubble upon in my feeds. So thank you so much!!!
Realised it's not that cheap, US$500? Feels like it's at a price point where I could spend a couple of hundred more and not get Meta involved. Made more sense when it was US$300.
Yea, but the cost of having FB acquire your data doesn't feel so... worth it? I'm not completely privacy-focused like many on the fediverse but I do view it as a trade-off, and at US$500 the trade-off no longer feels warranted.
Was thinking about the HP Reverb G2, it's a little more expensive than the Quest 3, last I checked.
Privacy isn’t normally my primary concern but with VR I find it to be a bigger deal than I usually would, particularly because the headsets can hypothetically gather data about what you’re looking at exactly (especially once eye tracking becomes more of a thing - then it’ll be exact, and that’s kinda terrifying at that point).
And this is Meta/facebook, so. They’ll 100% do it and say they aren’t.
And they probably scan your surroundings and upload it to the cloud. Only thing creepier would be Amazon making the same thing and then sending you ads for stuff that goes with whatever they saw you had or replacements for old stuff you have.
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