In addition to Steam not being subscriptions, Valve has so far not screwed over their users. The way the Ubisoft exec suggested that we should change our attitude really showed what they in plan
He’s been involved in several of the big Unity scandals, yes.
This most recent event wasn’t one thing, it was a culmination of poor decisions. If Unity had been sunshine and rainbows all up until now, then the reaction wouldn’t have been so bad. It was the final nail in the coffin, really.
Since he’s been involved, it’s been fuck up after fuck up.
Off the top of my head there’s failing to prepare for massive changes to the ads they could run on Apple and Google’s platforms and then realising that the money they were making was way less than expected, purchasing a company associated with malware, calling game developers “fucking idiots”, growing the company enormously over lockdown and then realising they’ve pissed all their money away. I don’t really know what a CEO actually does so a lot of that could be just company decisions, but JR definitely seems like a loose cannon who can’t help being wildly unprofessional.
There was also a bunch of sexual harrassment that was swept under the rug. He’s an incredible scumbag and a shitty CEO, which is why the psychopaths that inhabit corporate boards seem to love him
9 years of everyone telling him that forcing the UNITY splash screen on “baby’s first game” was a bad idea and was hurting the engine, because people were assuming all games made in the engine were bad, because good games didn’t show they also used Unity. Now that he is gone this changes.
Also he is a huge fan of the “metaverse” idea: venturebeat.com/…/unity-ceo-john-riccitiello-the-… and I am sure some of Unity’s money went there at a time they could not afford it and with nothing to show for it.
What people might not catch is that this isn’t artists, designers or engineers. It’s voice actors only. I’m all for people getting what they deserve but as I see voice actors in the games industry demand profit sharing and more rights, I’m reminded that those who actually make the games don’t get that. They have overtime without pay.
Voice actors are among “those who actually make the games.” Voice acting in particular also is strenuous work that can and does cause physical injury when workers are compelled to work long hours doing rough voices and so on. People end up having to have surgery on their vocal cords.
We don’t need to devalue voice actors to value other game industry workers. The only difference is the voice actors organized first, probably because of the injury risk, and when you form a union you have to define a group that you can reach and coordinate. It shouldn’t be an us vs them among works.
Don’t forget mocap. A lot of actors are doing mocap for games now, which also potentially results in injury.
This also includes stunt workers (who do the more intensive motion capture work) and stunt coordinators, many of whom are in the Screen Actors Guild already.
Oh, great, trade unions. That never caused any issues for worker’s unity. If you can’t organise everyone, from tech lead to cleaning staff, in the same industrial union you’re playing right into the capitalists’ divide and conquer game.
Not so. It makes sense to organise in trade unions. The heads of those unions are on the same side most of the time, as it would be in this case, and they can easily coordinate their actions. But in some cases the interests of one trade have no bearing on another, or are even in opposition, in which case it would be somewhere between difficult and impossible to organise a balloted action across the entire union. Thus nullifying the strength of the union and playing right into the capitalist’s hands.
So instead of coming to terms with your fellow workers you rather have them fight capitalists by themselves? Leave them to the scraps the bosses deem sufficient while you’re wheeling away a wagonload of concessions won through your unique bargaining power?
You’re limiting the strength of worker’s. If train conductors don’t strike for train toilet cleaners noone will.
And any opposition between worker’s interests is negligible compared to that between workers and capital, who have no interests in common at all.
They need to unionize too. Also count actors are included in the "actually make the games" group. Everyone should be paid well, don't drag a group trying to fix that down because the rest aren't doing anything.
I’m reminded that those who actually make the games don’t get that. They have overtime without pay.
Yes, capitalism fucks everyone every day unless you fight for what you deserve, usually for decades, and even then only getting half of it. It's surprising that keeping this in mind requires reminders.
I think they asked for that in the last strike, but I haven't seen it mentioned in this one. And some speculated it was only included for something they could drop in the eventual resolution as a form of compromise.
The Bayonetta lady was asking for profits and took to Twitter to boycott the game when she didn’t get what she wanted. Claiming that she made those games what they are.
I never said it was about this strike directly but instead overall how VAs have been pushing to get more than those on the front line of game creation.
THAT Randy Pitchford? The Randy Pitchford that, because he loves magic tricks, downloaded himself some squirt porn (sfw youtube link to moistcritical) on the same thumb drive as company secrets, and then left it at a Medieval Times?The same Randy that grabbed the Claptrap VA by the junk because he was tired of voicing Claptrap for free and had the audacity to ask to be paid so Pitchford tried to intimidate him? The same Randy Pitchford that somehow “lost” millions dollars of Segas money causing Colonial marines to bomb so that they could fund Borderlands 2 and Duke Nukem Forever He’s also not above putting journalists who bad mouth him in his games as petty revenge.
I’m not gonna sit and tell a man he can’t have a kink preference in his own home on his own time.
But Jesus fuck on the company thumb drive? Bro is a ceo and cant afford a “personal folder” usb. Here $12 for a 128Gb one on Amazon is not uncommon And then to be so distracted he forgot it.
You’ve missed the part where that was actually something he said. Who cares about what the idiot’s exact kink, he had to save his honour telling people it wasn’t “really” porn.
Holy shit, I knew about the “magic trick” girl and thought he was a quirky funny man, but assaulting an artist to force them to work for free? What a fucking asshole
If I recall the feud correctly, Eddings previously worked on Claptrap as a favor for free (or next to it). As far as the back and forth on Twitter indicates, when he said he wanted “Id like to be paid this time”, Pitchford initially pushed back, and then offered “2x union rates” (whether Pitchford actually offered that or said it on twitter afterward to garner sympathy we may never know), but Eddings refused the offer since gearbox was (at the time) about to make its 3rd lootershooter in a monsterously successful chain and he was one of the most prominent side characters. Thats what triggered Pitchford to attempt to intimidate him in front of a hotel elevator.
Bro is a blight on Gearbox. And no one is sure how or why the board hasn’t gotten rid of him.
I wish he’d hurry up and get haunted chocolatier released. Im starting to feel like Im taking advantage of our relationship here, just getting update after update without paying him more.
Just buy it for random people on your Steam friends list if you want to do that. There are still plenty of people who don’t own it (like me) and it might finally give them the push to play it.
He made it on his own. 40 Million copies even at 10$ and with steam taking 30% is still 280,000,000$. I honestly don’t think you need to worry for ConcernedApe’s financial situation.
There used to be an unspoken contract with game developers and gamers:
“I’ll release a finished game that you will never need to talk to me again if you don’t want to, and you can play it on any offline computer that meets the minimum specs. You will pay $X one-time for this and expect $0 spent on this game ever again”
“I may release an expansion pack for this game at some point in the future. It will usually cost 10% to 30% of what you paid for the original game. You are NOT required to buy this. If you like the original game the way it is, keep playing it that way. If you are a new player, you will have to buy the base game and then the expansion pack to play expansion pack content”
“I may, in the future, release a stand-alone sequel to the game. This game will have the same themes as the original, but I will increase the quality of the graphics/length of story/sound. You will NOT be required to buy the original game or the expansion packs to play this game. You will pay full price for this finished game”
Somewhere that evolved into shipping unfinished games, subscription based games, battlepasses, endless DLC, loot boxes, and forced online connections for single player games.
The game studios broke the contract. If they want endless money, that comes with endless work.
The contract was broken as soon as devs and publishers started pushing the digital download lies, because if you buy the game digitally they wont have to pay for shipping, boxes, manuals, cds, storage, etc etc etc, so the games will cost less and the devs/pubs will still manage to make more money on it than they ever would have otherwise!
and now we have 70-80 dollar charges for the standard, base version of games, with triple digits for the super mega special elite deluxe ultra edition. And you don’t even get to own the fucking game, cause sony and ubisoft have both shown zero issue with going into your account and removing things you’ve bought.
You highlight another point in the unspoken contract:
“After you buy the game, you can play it for as long as you own it with $0 additional dollars spent. At any point in the future you’re welcome to sell your copy of the game for whatever someone will pay you for it. That new buyer will be able to play the game forever paying $0 additional dollars.”
Which is what digital downloads was actually all about.
Killing the second hand market in the belief and hope that those people buying the used copy for 5 bucks, will come to the dev/pub directly and spend the 60 bucks on it brand new.
That’s why I’m really glad to see Hooded Horse and Greg Styczeń have this mindset, and that they’re actually speaking out against the GaaS mentality. They’re going back to the unspoken contract and saying the current status quo is stupid.
The headline is poorly chosen. They aren’t saying that studios should be earning endless money without work. They’re saying the GaaS model to try and earn endless money is putting devs on a treadmill, and that this shouldn’t be the case.
I hope to see more like this going forward. I don’t think gamers nor developers are a fan of GaaS trying to stay constantly relevant.
Because it is a much safer investment to send out a 50% costed demo to see if you can break into the market then trickle out updates to make up the rest of the cost
If your demo doesn’t land then you’ve saved half the cost of a full project that would fail anyway
While I agree with this for bigger game companies the problem is people apply the attitude of deserving infinite content to smaller games as well even if they don’t participate in all the things you talked about. For example with Manor Lord the only thing from what was listed that might apply is it being unfinished since it’s in early access. And while that does come with an expectation of more content the speed people expect it at is wrong especially since this game is basically being made by one person.
And while that does come with an expectation of more content the speed people expect it at is wrong especially since this game is basically being made by one person.
I appreciate the solo developer, and that they are doing most everything else right, but he opened this can of worms because he sold early access. He could have chosen to wait until the game was finished to release it, but I imagine wanted the money up front from early access to help finance the development.
If you release unfinished, you open yourself up to your customers wanting it finished, and also wanting a say in how it gets developed. I’m not saying he doesn’t have a right to sell via early access, but he brought this on himself.
I genuinely just don’t understand the value proposition of this handheld. It’s remote play only, with no standalone capabilities, that also only works with the PS5. You could use your existing phone, and receive exactly the same product. Or if you’re committed to buying a handheld, you could absolutely get a Steam Deck, still receive the remote functionality, but also have a system that can not only play your PC games, but play like 5 generations of console games from the past
It’s good for a niche market, people who have multiple people living in the house where they have to share a TV, but don’t need to share the PlayStation. In that one niche it makes sense to me
I think that niche might be bigger and more normal than you think it is.
Why a handheld if 99% of people don’t want to use it outside of the house and just want a home-portsble
Edit to just point out how disappointed I am in this community lately. It’s become all the things that made me dislike reddit. The circlejerk here is just as strong, and all the discussions we had initially are gone in favor of updooting my opinion and downdooting everyone else.
Agreed, people on here can’t seem to understand how this product could be successful? Every post about it on here has the same upvoted comments about how people should get a Steam Deck instead. If someone comments about why they like it or are happy with it, it gets downvoted.
Personally I probably won’t ever buy one of these but to act like your opinion about something as unimportant as a this is better than everyone else’s screams of reddit to me. Why not just let people be happy with their purchase?
Yeah it was odd to read that description being presented as an oddity - that sounds like most households I know. If you have a wife, kids, or roommate and don’t enjoy being holed up in your own room the whole time you play (and those sharing your house don’t just want to watch you game all night) then in house streaming is a huge boon.
I PC game, but most of my gaming is done on the couch, streamed onto my phone. I’ve been very tempted to buy a dedicated streaming device lately to avoid draining my phone battery while playing
It’s an oddity because there’s already multiple devices in most homes that can remote play, paying for a device that can ONLY remote play is about the stupidest waste of money I can think of when I have two phones, a PC, a laptop and a tablet that can all do the same thing. Hell if you plug in an ethernet cable the PC and laptop well do it better.
It could have been a cool device if you could use it to stream from PS+/Now, but you can’t. It could be cool if it had like a vita in it or something so you could play vita games, but it didn’t. It’s an idea with potential, but they shoved all that potential in a bin and instead released something that’s completely useless unless it’s connected to your PS5. What a waste.
It’s completely useless, unless you want to play your ps5 in the same kind of way you play a nintendo switch. In which case it works super well.
it turns out a lot of people want that. People could stick a laptop on their lap and get out a controller and play nintendo switch on that too, but that’s a pain. people just want a thing they can pick up. and they are happy to have it. even if you are angry about it.
There’s multiple devices that allow you to play your PS5 like a Switch, and they all do more.
I’m not angry, you can have opinions about things you’re not angry about. I’m disappointed that Sony charged as much as possible for the bare minimum again, just a lack of ambition and abundance of cost.
we all think that it costs too much don’t worry, but also you should understand the value proposition it has. people are paying “too much” because it serves a real function.
no, we don’t want to hogtie a controller to a phone, we want the nice ergonomics of a playstation controller all built together. it’s worth understanding that value.
Edit to just point out how disappointed I am in this community lately. It’s become all the things that made me dislike reddit. The circlejerk here is just as strong, and all the discussions we had initially are gone in favor of updooting my opinion and downdooting everyone else.
This has been Lemmy wide and growing substantially. I’m put off and disappointed as well.
Both of you had too lofty dreams for social media. Reddit itself used to be like that too, by convincing themselves that this sort of idealistic attitude could last, or that “circlejerk”, that is, the influence of majority opinion, was ever not present. This is a place for discussion among regular people, not a philosophical symposium of specialists, as if those environments were truly neutral and universally accepting either.
As platforms grow beyond the most invested niche users, most people will not put more energy into any discussion than a general agree or disagree. The tendency of downvotes is always to become a disagree button, no matter how much one might insist otherwise. In such a semi-anonymous platform, a modicum of politeness is already an achievement.
Really, if you do want to have such a perfectly open and supportive discussion group you might want to select particular people to create a small forum. But by doing that, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you won’t escape some form of circlejerk.
The good people seem to have left, maybe as a result of the reddit people coming in?
Or maybe as a result of poor moderation. The way how other instances defederated from lemmy.world comes to mind. Compared to the other instances I am in, this one seems more belligerent, and that’s not a matter of up or downvotes.
I have to admit I did come from reddit, but if there was a moment of pure, 100% jerk free discussion here, I must have entirely missed it. Then again I was on reddit before people started saying circlejerk took over, and in retrospect that was an entirely idealized memory. If anything, it overrepresented certain viewpoints far more before the “circlejerk took over”
Dunno why you stretched that point across so many words. I’m not speaking on just downvotes. There’s trigger words that will almost universally get you comment bombed along with being downvoted. We filtered everyone of the same mind from Reddit and brought them here. To the point that Reddit could theoretically be better now.
Funny how they pretend to ask a question, then downvote you when you give them an answer they don’t like.
It’s also half the price of the SD with a bigger resolution screen (bUt mUh oLEd). I pick it up, press like 2 buttons, and I’m playing in 20 sec. I was happy to pay for the convenience, have been using it a lot since I got it the day after the release.
Honestly when it drops to $150 or so, I’m in. Mostly for these same reasons. I use the PS5 on the good TV, but if I wanna be in the room with my partner while they watch a trash reality show, and keep working on my game, this is perfect. At $200, I’ll stick with remote play on Android and a Bluetooth controller, but the Portal seems better for this use case. So when the price is low enough… Sure.
Lol, would love to hear why on earth this is downvoted - guess we’re in full on reddit mode and just downvoting everything that isn’t exactly what I think lol
Get some glue and make a holder or something. Bigger screen? Use a tablet, laptop, or PC that you’ve probably already got. £200 for a device that can’t do anything on its own? Stop bending over for them.
Yeah, and convenience used to be putting multiple different functions in one device. Now apparently it’s more convenient to pay £200 for a device that can literally only do one thing instead of using the many other devices you already own to conveniently do the same thing.
No I’m disappointed they didn’t make a worthwhile device. I would’ve loved this if it had some worthwhile additions, but it’s an overpriced screen with a controller attached, useless without your PS5 connected to it wirelessly.
Even just streaming from PS+/Now would’ve done it for me, but “here’s a way to play games you already own that are installed on the console you already own, but it costs £200 and you could do the same thing with many of the devices you already own, some of which may have an ethernet connection, so they’re better at it” just feels like a waste.
Hopefully it’ll get hacked and they’ll get gamepass streaming on it or something.
It’s just a $200 pro controller with a screen. I don’t think it’s gonna have a massive market, but for what it is, it’s not entirely terrible. Not everyone has a phone with a large screen so upgrading to a $1k phone is not a move they can make, but $200 for what’s basically an extra controller with an 8in display is not terrible just very niche.
Edit: If you just want a screen controller combo for streaming, there are a myriad of android based options littered in the space for nearly the same cost and similar screen size.
Don’t get me wrong I’m sure it’ll find a small market, it just could’ve had a bigger one with comparatively little effort and now the device it could’ve been will never exist. I had hopes for this as I’d expected it to stream from Now, but it just doesn’t for no reason beyond “CBA” really.
The thing is they are only targeting that small market for PS5 gamers, they don’t want to compete in the handheld market and possibly loose those customers who would be happy with just a ps5 remote play experience vs a better more expensive device. I get it, they don’t have to have as many competitors and it makes it slightly cheaper versus the non dedicated competitors giving them a niche area to sell to.
Yeah, and convenience used to be putting multiple different functions in one device
Yeah, I always use my Swiss army knife in the kitchen, way more convenient than using my chef’s knife, because it combines so many functions.
Convenience is often a tool that does one thing and does it really well. Combining multiple functions almost always complicates things.
I used to own a combination microwave/oven/steamer/grill that I replaced with a simple microwave, as I rarely if ever used any of those other functions. Guess which one is more convenient to use?
Compare a simple black and white laser printer with an all-in-one printer/scanner/fax combo an tell me which one is more convenient.
I’d say the printer/scanner/fax combo is more convenient the second you either need to scan something or find yourself in the 1980s and need to send a fax.
It’s kinda absurd to think Sony can’t put more than one feature into this £200 device without over complicating it. There’s no reason it couldn’t stream from PS Now, all the hardware it needs is already there. It’s just the bare minimum and much of the potential was squandered.
They do sell like $5 phone clips for controllers now a days as some mobile games are adding more controller support. But if for you an extra inch or two of screen real estate for the display is worth $200 then that’s your position, it just seems like the market share for that will be pretty damn niche. Like the nvidia shield I don’t expect it to be around for to long so if you do want this you better get one while they make em but know once the ps5 is done support for this will die out as well.
My phone is nearly a 7in screen, I could Bluetooth connect a Playstation controller and have the exact same functionality, using the hardware I already have. I get that if you don’t have a phone with a bigger screen then this becomes more of a proposition as getting a newer device with a larger screen is gonna be north of $1k USD, so spending $200 to get a portable display and extra controller in a sense is not that bad value wise. I do see where people are seeing it being wasteful as other devices are capable just not at the same level, the only thing I’m wondering is how big is the market of people who wouldn’t rather get a $5 phone holder for their ps5 controller and just use their phone. I see a couple people in this thread here but if most realized they could get a similar experience for $5 for a plastic phone clip would this really look as enticing?
Correct but that screen real-estate isn’t the biggest issue as you generally have the phone and controller fairly close to your eyes, at an optimal viewing distance. Plus, I can stream up to 4k on my device or 1080p at 120fps if I wanted to stream from my pc. Think monitor vs TV gaming. Viewing distance is much more important than screen size on its own.
Most of my games are on PlayStation. The Steam Deck is clearly the more powerful and capable device, but it is also more expensive and I have no need for any of the extra features. I love the ergonomics of the PS Portal (even though it looks silly), the haptics, the huge screen, and it all comes with a seamless integration into the PlayStation ecosystem. Plus there is no need to take the case off of my phone every time I want to play it unlike the Backbone.
It’s definitely not for everyone but they call it a DadStation for a reason ☺️.
You are right. Even though I’ve had an absolute blast using the PS Portal daily ever since i got it I have made the difficult decision to return it because the internet told me that it’s actually not good.
Prehaps an ayn loki zero might be up your valley as its a full fledged budget steamdeck type pc for the same price as a ps portal this might be perfect for you as you could have playstations desktop streaming app installed and some desktop games that’ll run on the meager loki zeros hardware I hear it does a good job emulating games upto ps2 games
This again is why modern gamers are just fucking impossible to please. Bethesda gives you BOTH options. If you need to get to a planet from one solar system to another, you CAN just press a button and be on that other planet, or in its orbit if you haven’t been on it yet.
But that’s just it, you CAN instead pull up your starmap once that mission is active, see the star you’re at, and all the little dots youll follow to get where you’re going. You can then jump to each dot on the way, look around, scan planets, get hailed by ships, visit places your scans found, etc on your way to your mission. Doing this, you’ll often get sidetracked with another mission, the choice is yours. They dumbed down interstellar travel as hard as they could without it no longer resembling what interstellar travel would be like.
I’m of the opinion thats what Bethesda wants you to do, and the fast travel is just for people who want to level/“beat” the game quickly as its own end instead of taking it all in, possibly and understandably due to player time constraints.
Fast travel is a convenience feature. People would be bitching if it wasn’t in there. Sometimes you just want to zip back to Whiterun Diamond City New Atlantis to sell some crap.
I think (for me atleast) the larger issue is the fact that I have to engage a cut-scene to land on a planet. I don’t have an issue with a loading screen in order to get into the system, or even just outside of the planets atmosphere, but it’s kinda weak that I also have a loading screen when landing.
It’s not really “both” from a space simulator perspective. There’s no option to fly down to a planet and skim the surface, there’s no option to fly from planet to planet without a loading screen (or even just to a moon), etc.
Starfield is a good RPG set in space and I’m enjoying it, but I think it’s fair to criticize that it was marketed like it was going to be a space sim by Bethesda and that’s not really what we got. If you were excited about the simulator part you are going to be disappointed.
I really have no idea where anyone got the idea it was a space sim from. They showed a good bit of gameplay that made it very clear that it was a traditional Bethesda game, with much more modern mechanics, set in space.
The issue would be believing anything not explicitly said or shown in a pre release showcase. You don't expect anything not extremely, extremely obvious or you just let yourself down and then blame the studio for underdelivering.
A bunch of that is of course the fault of marketing itself, but this goes for almost anything marketed ever, beyond video games.
I got a slightly better (though slightly harder to run on steam deck) version of what I expected after watching the direct. It's exactly what I wanted it to be.
It's just silly how people turn unsubstantiated wild speculation into some kind of unmet feature set.
I mean, there are parts of the game's major criticisms that are understandable and do impact the game experience in a way. The worst one for me is the lack of a local map. I've gotten lost in cities or complexly laid out buildings a number of times already, which is, suffice to say, not enjoyable and nigh on unforgivably clumsy to experience repeatedly.
I'll forgive, or even enjoy, say, Dark Souls for the same thing because it's not as complicatedly laid out and the world is smaller and much more visually distinct in its areas to make it up on the back end, along with the entire design ethos being very hands off in terms of delivering info to the player, which sets a standard compared to Starfield's polished to a sheen experience, which suddenly becomes less so in other spots, creating a negative contrast.
Others, like the lack of seamless planet to space transitions were never advertised, and though having them certainly increases immersion, visual spectacle, and thus perceived enjoyment and value of a game, is not really important in the grand scheme unless you wrongly expected it. I don't have enough time to worry about a planet transition, I'm thinking about what I'm gonna do there and what I'm gonna do next within the gameplay itself. With this sort of criticism, the game would be undoubtedly better with such a feature if it wouldn't have delayed development too significantly to implement, which no one can really say for sure.
Then there are criticisms like the fact that planets are limited in scale and you can't fly your ship close to the ground on the surface, which is just wildly beyond the scope of what Bethesda would be able to deliver and still say it's the same game. That would've been so complex it would've sacrificed other features undoubtedly, and shows more about a given player's desire for "Starfield 2: We Added all That Space Sim Stuff People Wanted that we couldn't before because we'd end up like Star Citizen" than it really does about Starfield's successes or failures in the features it explicitly attempted to deliver.
Back to the reviewers primary issue that in a traditional Bethesda game you experience the journey of going from one place to another, at least for the first time. Starfield has none of that. You never experience the journey of traveling to a new location, you just teleport. So effectively you are constantly disoriented, with no Tru sense of scale or journey.
It’s not a space sim and was never intended to be one. They made it clear almost a year ago that it didn’t have stuff like surface flying or atmo to space transitions. If you were still thinking it had this stuff at launch your weren’t paying attention.
The actual act of doing it gets old, but I do like the fact that you can't fast travel out of a situation in ED, it means if you go on a deep space expedition to make discovery money you are gonna be in DEEP SPACE, and you better be fucking prepared with a ship spec'd specifically for it because you do not want to turn around and give up because you couldn't fuel scoop or make a jump.
You definitely get a feeling of being a very small person in the galaxy with lots of things going on far away that you'll never see, and having limited fuel and constant frameshift jumps allows for more mechanics and complexity like fuel scooping or being interdicted.
Starfield lets you go wherever at a moment's notice which makes the galaxy feel very small comparatively and lacks stakes for exploration and jump range (along with the infinite fuel), reducing the need to have specialized ships. It also allows you to miss out on some random events that only happen when a ship in orbit with you hails you on comms. You miss those experiences if you fast travel past them all, which is echoed in other Bethesda titles with their own random encounters during travel that can be missed due to fast travel.
That being said, it's a Bethesda fantasy version of space, you want to do fun space opera things and having hardcore travel might clash with that, I can understand why it wasn't implemented that way. For example, no one mentions this, but I fucking LOVE bethesda's save system of saving the exact state of everything in the universe in that exact moment. Im a filthy save scummer and I love it. I like being able to save scum difficult space battles, and I don't think you can do that in most other hardcore space games, but I'm so grateful that I can here.
Maybe it’s because I’ve only just made it to Mars, but I didn’t know there was any other way to travel except for clicking and fast traveling. Click load click load click load planet. The tutorial tells you to do just that… is there something later on that says differently?
Hard disagree. For no other reason that it’s impossibly difficult to find/sort missions by proximity. You got one blue blip on the map or hud, maybe a white blip if it’s not active, but no options to make it active or to even find the mission in your mission list.
Not to mention, all travel is menu based. In space when you target a planet as your next destination, all it does is bring up the menu to fast travel to a location on that planet instead of… giving you the option to fly there yourself at warp speed.
Sure, you could do it one planet at a time instead of skipping systems… but it’s all the same experience You never truly experience the part of exploration involved in experiencing the space between origin and destination. So it might as well all just be exploration by menu, even if you pretend you aren’t.
I can agree that you absolutely can navigate without fast travel, but the whole design seems to be guiding you towards just fast traveling. From the menus always offering a “show on map” option, which then pulls up the prominent “land” prompt, to the fact that even fast traveling you’re apt to hit 4 loading screens completely killing any sense of continuity, and that only gets worse if you try to actually navigate.
It feels like a big series of set pieces broken up by a ton of liminal either loading screens or menus, depending on your preference of poison. I’ve never felt like I was discovering cool things, just going to the next set piece.
I don’t think fast travel is the problem. The problem is that there is an actual “exploration” part of the game, where you wander around planets scanning things and looking for points of interest, but it is by far the most boring part and I have not had much fun when interacting with it. There is nothing exciting to find, and it primarily rewards materials that I mostly haven’t had a lot of use for, because when I need something specific for research or crafting I can buy it at the store, because materials are nearly worthless in terms of credits.
The mini-dungeons and other points of interest you can find need to be way cooler for the wandering-around-on-planets to be worthwhile, and the actual exploration gameplay needs something more than walking across plains and hills in order to be interesting.
The best parts of the game are when you pretend it’s Fallout In Space and hang out in cities doing quests for randoms.
I mostly agree and have been defending it from haters recently myself. But there is one thing in the way of “You can then jump to each dot on the way, look around, scan planets, get hailed by ships, visit places your scans found, etc on your way to your mission… I’m of the opinion thats what Bethesda wants you to do.”
Starfield is a “looter shooter RPG” like other Bethesda games. And like other Bethesda games, your time off-leash is limited by your inventory size, with valuable items dropping that take up to 10% of that or more a piece. Awkwardly, ship storage is just not that incredible, until/unless you either go all-in on outposts or all-in on megaships. Which means you do end up having to stop and go to a city often, probably the one with your next mission goal.
It’s not a huge gripe, but I think Bethesda has always used inventory to drive people back to populated centers to pick up quests.
Basically your choices with travel are “how many load screens do I want to see between here and my destination.” And that’s not really what anyone wants. It is not the same as being able to walk from Solitude to Dawnguard. Not even remotely close. You can’t even walk from settlement to settlement on a planet because they only ever have the one settlement.
I remember fondly playing overwatch 1 with my friends and sinking in hundreds of hours. If they wanted to break into the steam market they should have done it with the first one. Not with their lackluster, phoned in sequel. This was just stupid of them.
I loved Assassin's Creed 2, so I didn't bat an eye buying Brotherhood and Revelations as they had the same basic background. They were full price games and I played for about 15 to 20 hours on each. That's not much for full price. They were basically just new story lines for the main game.
Personally, I sometimes like when a game feels like just a new storyline (and map) for the same game. Sometimes I just want more of a good thing and don’t want to have to learn new mechanics or risk the game making things worse.
And since dev time is limited, I think in theory, this could mean more time could be spent on making the story missions perfect. But in practice, I don’t think that usually happens. Publishers would rather cheap out.
Lol when I first updated it the game didn’t replace my desktop icon so it was still saying overwatch 1 so yes just stupid patch that ruined a perfectly good game haven’t returned since
An update implies they changed something to the game. This was just an update to the monetization. A blatant pure cash grab sold as a sequel game. Its a travesty, and if they had any decency they’d scrap it, apologize, and release “Overwatch 2 A Realm Reborn” that is an actual legitimate sequel to the original game.
The last of America’s Army games, see this steamdb page for screenshots. I tried it years ago and got a vibe of proto-insurgency, it’s somewhat realistic, even the tutorial is decent, but as you can imagine they just wanted a good recruitment tool and this wasn’t it.
I played it back in like 2003. It was pretty fucking high class back then, when it came to realism. You could cook nades and decided whether you roll or toss them. You could also peek/lean. I believe it’s kinda common nowadays, but those were some fancy things back then. CS wasn’t even CS:GO back then, but like CS 1.5-1.6.
I never played it through Steam though.
Played on American servers and always had like 180 ping. Still managed to snipe decently.
But even back then I understood it was obviously propaganda, because you’re never allowed to play as “the bad guys”. You’re always an American, and you’re shooting people vaguely Middle-Eastern enemies. From your POV, you’ll rock an M16, but from your enemy’s pov, you’re using an AK47.
I think if they hadn’t tried forcing that bit, it might’ve seen more success.
It seems better on launch with the nvidia driver for it than it was during the first open beta but I think they’re right with the overly aggressive culling and texture streaming causing issues. They said it’s still more than playable at 4k60 with my 3080ti and I’m having a blast
I updated my NVIDIA drivers to play and it broke display port support so I had to change the monitor cord to my motherboard display port and rollback drivers 😎
I think when all these famous studios were interesting, they still by inertia functioned the way people with actual skills founded them. I’m thinking of BioWare, Black Isle, Obsidian, but reading the history of any famous video game studio gives that impression. It was a rather personal business in 90s and early 00s, it seems.
Then the “professionals” came and started “fixing” everything, and something about today’s computing makes me personally deeply disgusted of anything advertised there.
I don’t want a shooter not better than a hundred Q3 clones, but taking 50GB disk space. I don’t even want it with “photorealistic” (no they aren’t) graphics. I don’t want CK3 because it’s slow and has too much bullshit happening, the secret of success is in quality of content more than amount, and more is not always better if a player gets bored with small events. I admit, I haven’t tried Hogwarts Legacy, put from what people say its open world is as useful as Daggerfall’s map the size of England, because most things on that map are all the same, though as a dungeon crawler Daggerfall is still better than typical modern game. And Star Wars - its Expanded Universe mostly came into existence in the 90s, it’s designed the way very convenient for all kinds of video games, or any entertainment and any secondary art at all, and George Lucas approached that theoretically before making the first movie (the “obscenely huge profits” part he may or may not have considered, but it came as a welcome bonus, I suppose), and still every modern time Star Wars game is just not interesting to me ; my favorite one is KotORII, so there is, of course, a gap between me and the majority, but it’s still baffling how didn’t they even try to make an X-Wing remake.
One can go on. People want to play interesting games. Very few people play games because of “more, better, wider” in ad. The whole idea of a game is to be interesting. It’s entertainment. It’s not “I’ve got a new iPhone and you don’t” dick size contest. Some game being very technically cool, but absolutely bullshit in gameplay, writing, UI design, character design, location design etc, - is not entertaining. Some other game being technically a visual novel (not necessarily), but with all those things done well, - it is entertaining.
So, making a good game doesn’t even require a lot of very competent and very stressed CS heroes working since dawn till dusk to the extent of their ability.
I live in the midst of something that can be very carefully called capitalism. It was called socialism once and then the “socialist administrators” did sort of a rebranding.
I think the big “issue” is that there’s a notable lag between loss of goodwill and loss of income/profit/value, and there’s an even bigger lag between trying to fix goodwill and returns on that. It makes it too hard for any profit-first company to get right.
External MBAs taking over running businesses will either result in this or making a billion dollar company through the heavy exploitation of their workers and the consumers. I think the vast majority are the former though.
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