I wish people knew more about the way business works in general. Focusing on quality of product or service is a strategy only the smallest businesses can afford. In the big leagues it’s all about triggering purchasing behavior and minimizing price sensitivity by using well-proven psychological techniques to sell cheap minimally-viable and soon to be obsolete products to as many people as possible, and sell them the solutions to the problems left in the original product as “optional” add-ons. Developers all want to make good games, but the businesses they work for couldn’t care less since they make their money in other ways. Welcome to the 21t century, consumers!
Yeah but businesses typically don’t go out and rub that in their customers faces. That’s basically what most of the complaints are about: Bethesda should just shut the fuck up and swallow their pride. Is some/most of the stuff people throw at them unfair? Likely. Is it completely unwarranted? No. Should they defend it? Also no.
A lot of these comments from developers read to me like “We really tried guys, but you don’t know what it was like.” Given this is usually without commenting that industry norms are toxic since that can get you blacklisted. Their marketing department doing damage control is of course way less sympathetic to me.
I would consider Todd Howard to be part of development (since he directs the creative and narrative angle, from what I understand).
He defended bad performance with “get better hardware”. He defended criticism of the content with “you play the game wrong”.
Both are bullshit “excuses”. The first one was even debunked by modders who showed that there was potential for optimization. And modders are far more limited than engine devs. The game doesn’t look ugly, but there are far better looking games with more scene complexity out there that run better.
And “you play it wrong” is bullshit because if enough people play it wrong to have an effect on the rating of the game, then the game is badly designed. Part of game design is making sure the game explains itself or subtly pulls players in the right direction. Either they failed with that, or there simply is no clear direction. But that’s not the players fault.
Sounds like a terrible business model that deserves the problems it runs into. If a company doesn’t prioritize the quality of its offerings, why should anyone give them a cent?
I used LibGDX years ago when developing my own engine on top of it for android gaming, but gave up after a year when it became evident I had to refactor more and more because I didn’t know what I was doing when I started.
BG3 is incredible, but I think Cyberpunk ties with that in many scenes (though there’s much fewer sets of dialog). The rigidity of the dialog in Starfield is one of my biggest complaints, and that’s coming from someone who really quite enjoys the game despite the many, MANY, things it could do better.
I don’t usually dig into behind the scenes stuff in games but I’ve been watching a ton of bg3’s stuff. I didn’t realize how integral to the development some of the actors were - specifically Neil Newborn, Astarion’s actor. Larian seems like a cool company to work with…it feels like they really “get” it.
I love BG3 and I have nothing against it’s animations. But what is it that you like? Honestly, I see a lot of people praise the animations, but besides a few scenes, the animations just seem “good”. Not mind blowing, but not bad in any way. So I don’t get that praise, but I’m sure there’s something that other people see in it that I don’t.
That being said the game is great. I haven’t had this much fun since KotOR.
For a CRPG their fucking great, also I wouldnt be surprised if a lot of that praise is coming from folks who play CRPGs on the norm. When your standard frame of reference is fucking Arcanum it tends to be a bit scewed. Also play Arcanum: of steamworks and magick obscura its really fucking good.
I just miss the sport games of 10-20 years ago. They were just fun. Of course they weren't perfect but we didn't care. Now microtransactions have ruined everything....
In my experience it’s like 2 players have full agency to play independently, unlike other coop games where the experience for player two is often driven by player one.
In BG3 you can run off in completely different directions, engage with your own NPCs in conversation while the other player starts a fight and it’s seamless
I’ve played both divinity games in co-op with my partner. You have an entire (quasi) open world game fully explorable by both players independently. At one point in the main town in DOS1, I was running around tracking clues for a mystery while my partner (a rogue) was stealing everything she could get her hands on from the market. Once I reached the climax of the mystery quest, we joined back up for the final battle.
This freedom engenders a lot of creative flexibility and is just overall a chill way to play a game together. I agree that it makes for the best co-op experience I’ve ever played (especially when you’re playing with an otherwise non-gamer).
Yeah that feeling of spacial awareness as you’re kiting around groups of enemies. Helps to have simple, easily identifiable level geometry for that matter.
I tried the demo, it has a lot of problems outside of it being a AAA single player shooter. The “magic” system is just reskinned guns, the story is nonsensical at times, and the movement is stiff and slow. It’s like they never play tested the game and just said it was done one day. That’s not even mentioning the almost ten minute walk around the city at the beginning doing nothing but following what I will assume is a non critical character to the plot.
They cleaned a lot of that up, at least on the console version I played. And that character ends up being quite critical to the plot. You also revisit that city later in the game, so that intro serves to establish the setting and starts the plot.
My God they cleaned it up?! I can’t imagine it being a longer intro. The fact that you revisit the city later is just disappointing, that city was terrible in it’s design.
I remember Half-Life 2 opening with a walk around a city, and it was so memorable to me. I guess in part because it was reliant on its own atmosphere, and still let the player be an interactive part of it rather than bound to a tight track.
Planning DLCs before you’ve even launched the game should be illegal. So pretty much. They are planning to release an unfinished game where micropurchases rule supreme so everyone gets on the same content level.
Hey you bought the game? Cool. But if you wanna play with us you need this this and that DLC pack. It’s only an extra 40 bucks.
I mean even if they hadn’t announced, it’s Payday it was expected. Fuck it I even prefer this, I am surprised companies do this, now we know what is on it and what is coming and if is worth it buying it now or not. The alternative is finding out when you already bought the game.
I dont want to defend this kind of monetization, but pd2 probably had the best kind of approach, as only the host needed it start it, so if someone had it in your friend group had it you were good. Well exept for the weapon and perk decks, as you only got them if you had the dlc, but it didn’t split the playerbase. (also fuck the loot boxes)
I get triggered as a gamedev when people complain about dlc because if a game came out and it was $200 for all the content made you would probably scoff and pirate it. The harsh truth is nobody wants to front the actual production cost of games anymore. PS2 games were $40 back in 2003 when my old ass was entering high school and you could still find a decent slice of pizza for just over a dollar. It’s 2023 and it’s basically the same price now after 2 decades of insane inflation. You may find an outlier or two on steam but even AAA titles tend to stay 60 or under.
It’s honestly the best option. Just buy the base game then. By definition you don’t need anything else. You get what you afforded and you don’t get upset. Don’t forget the company that made Payday filed for bankruptcy not too long ago. This isn’t quite EA shitting out a Madden update with the same code and 3d models. They were restructured and probably have loans or investors to pay back. I’m just happy we got a payday 3.
go ahead and downvote, but just consider what I said with an open mind afterwards.
The problem with DLCs isn’t the DLC. It’s how it’s used. And your whole argument is total bullshit, proven wrong by so many great games who does not have to rely on predatory DLC requirements.
The problem here. Is that they’ve already started working on DLCs before the game has even launched. You don’t see a problem with that from a consumer standpoint?
And be real. They’re not implementing this DLC strategy because they have to, because funding is difficult for them. It’s because it’s proven to be the most profitable With PayDay2 as proof.
The problem here. Is that they’ve already started working on DLCs before the game has even launched. You don’t see a problem with that from a consumer standpoint?
Sort of a complicated scenario. Where do you draw the line for it being anti consumer? Say the people on the dev team who do: concept art, writing, modeling, etc. What should they be doing. At this stage most of the development going into the game is very final touches (if that) and bug squashing. I don’t think it’s out of line for those people to be working on future content. Seems a bit strange to hold them until the release date. It definitely is a tough line to find though, and can change depending on the context of when and how the dlc development started.
Oh cry me a river. These hacks don’t deserve the pity they’re clearly trying to win because they have already proven they don’t know how to make a technologically sound game. Every single one of their games has suffered from save-breaking glitches, and yeah I might be one of the unlucky ones to have experienced at least one in all of their games but I can count the amount of developers that have given me a similar experience on one fist (yes, I mean “fist”, not hand).
I have an up-to-date system, more than meet the requirements for this flaming turd of a game and even among the insane amount of loading screens, there are still frequent hang-ups from the game needing to load while walking through a plaza while the game is running on my SSD. That’s simply not good enough. The last time I experienced such behaviour in a game was when I was playing on a potato over a decade ago or playing online with abysmal internet.
Critics don’t have to be developers to be able to spot in what ways a game is bad and neither does the general public. This is very different from “I don’t like this so it’s bad.”. This is a case of “It runs like ass, the writing is boring and the traversal of their mostly-empty crafted universe is little more than a lag-hung menu with a stupid amount of layers to access what you’re actually looking for and a whole ton of loading screens and thus it is bad.”. They haven’t crafted some grand open universe like they advertised, they made a bunch of levels, added a slow fast travel system and a standard fast travel system and called it quits. They’re now finally being called out as the bunch of half-asses they really are and they have more than earned it.
“We were riding the limits of what was possible” is a common excuse given. Then maybe don’t bite off more than you can chew. “Overcome technology itself”. A bad craftsman blames his tools. Maybe stop using an engine that isn’t fit for purpose. The “Creation” engine - or as we might as well call it, Gamebryo - has long been cited as the cause of many problems and barely workable. Take time to retrain your developers to a user-friendly engine and you’ll quickly make up the lost time in efficiency but they insist on holding on to that dinosaur of an engine.
As a member of the general public, I can’t say I know how to make a game, let alone a good one but given the constant stutters, mostly empty world, boring writing, frequent instances of forcing grind to pad play time and ever-increasing tedium in their gameplay loop, I have to assume that Bugthesda doesn’t either. The fact they saw to set team members on reviews instead of fixing all the problems with their games, I have to say their priorities aren’t in the right place and the ones who are “disconnected” are Bethesda who seem to be under the delusion that they’ll get nothing but praise just for releasing a game, no matter the state it’s in.
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