Any chance of this being a flop? Years ago, we would have said no way, but we’ve seen some high-profile screwups before. It’s certainly at the time period where Rockstar might have brain drain on its better developers.
I agree with you and coming from a different perspective. I’ve tried the games and they just don’t do it for me for whatever reason. I don’t see this flopping at all. I also think recent launches will make sure they have things ready to go. It will sell like crazy and the fans that love the games will love it I’m sure.
Fucking flaming gasoline trails, vehicles actually running out of gas after having their tanks punctured, it seems like the ejection was really toned down in GTAO but you could really get out of the windshield in single player.
I did get ejected through an incoming car in cyberpunk recently and was like "wow been a while."
I haven’t played in a couple years. Are you still bombarded with texts and phone calls as soon as you load into the game? And is theininap barely visible because of all the mission/activity markers?
Because that’s how it was last time I got on there. And that was right after they added the demolition derby stuff.
Reading this comment makes me give kudos for letting GTA V (singleplayer) exist as its own thing. I haven’t played GTAO since probably 2015 and have no idea what it’s like because of how little Rockstar pushes it on Singleplayer players.
No, they’ve done a couple of really nice qol updates lately that got rid of most of those, or at least reduced the calls to texts. I mean there’s still some annoyances, but it is better than it was. At least, last time I was there. Only join in maybe once a month or so now.
I get that things felt sparse but Starfield does have over 200 hours of content. That’s roughly how much went into my first playthrough and I never felt like it was repetitive. I also didn’t go for completion so there were likely another 100 hours I skipped.
Despite what others are saying, the game is fine (at least compared to its previous state/status)… They’ve made a lot of changes to improve the onboarding experience and remove pain points. They’ve made things less grindy and more engaging every expansion.
The last DLC just had kind of a meh story to it, “the discovery of strand.” The environment they used also wasn’t all that pretty or interesting. It wasn’t snow, it wasn’t a swamp, it was a minimalistic city-scape with some canyons.
That, plus increased pricing and over dramatization of the loss of the red war and foresaken content (which wasn’t even that good compared to the new stuff mind you – it was extremely short and grindy) has almost definitely caused the profit loss.
Not to mention, playlist activities still feel bland… Implement map voting and modifier voting, and make a higher difficulty playlist for PvE content. I swear once you’re caught up, it’s either stomp over everything in the same 5 maps over and over, or face the exact same somewhat challenging (or extremely challenging) encounter over and over for an entire week. They have all this content they could open up to high end rewards and mutators, but they don’t.
Except Bungie isn’t creating a new game here, they’re continuing a game they’ve been supporting for years. They have years of metrics and they should have a pretty good understanding how much revenue to expect. Even if they were overly optimistic and set an unrealistic projection it doesn’t explain missing it by 45%.
I can’t really comment on the current quality of the game in 2023, since I noped out about 4 years ago, but there are any number of explanations.
Lack of new content. I haven’t seen the game discussed much in the gaming press, which means there probably haven’t been any notable content drops for a while. It sounds like the game’s next expansion has been delayed, and the game is being maintained by a skeleton crew while the rest of the studio focuses on Marathon.
Competition. With few exceptions, good games always slowly bleed users as shiny new alternatives attract players. This is compounded if you’re running a live service game and have a long content drought.
My point isn’t “Destiny good”, I don’t really know that. My point is that we can’t really draw conclusions about the quality of the game based solely on missed revenue targets.
I agree that you can’t draw conclusions about the quality of the game simply by the fact that it missed the revenue target. But I’m not drawing the conclusion based on the fact that it missed the target but rather based on by how much the target was missed. If they missed by 15% then sure, it’s not an indication because maybe they really did overestimate their target. But 45%? You don’t miss by that much when you have yearly revenue numbers showing you the trend. My point is that such a severe miss in this case does end up being indicative of the quality because the explanations, even yours, will end up being negative about the game.
It sounds like the game’s next expansion has been delayed, and the game is being maintained by a skeleton crew while the rest of the studio focuses on Marathon.
FWIW, they have ~650 people even after the layoffs for destiny 2 alone. Hardly a skeleton crew. The content drops have been the same as they’ve been for years, seasonal content drops in-between expansions. There is definitely a lul period where there’s not new stuff getting released to give people a chance to catch up.
Competition. With few exceptions, good games always slowly bleed users as shiny new alternatives attract players.
There is some of this. I think there also just seems to be a general recoil of players at what games are costing these days. I’m personally fine with it, but I see what feels like infinite complaining about how greedy … basically every company that isn’t indie is being.
Realistically, I’d say it’s A) bad PR and B) a failure to make new gameplay loops that shake things up significantly C) a failure to fully utilize old content (there’s not a lot of reason to play old strikes, not a lot to encourage players to help others out in old story missions, etc – replay value is artificially neutered by making too many things curated which limits choice)
I think there also just seems to be a general recoil of players at what games are costing these days. I’m personally fine with it, but I see what feels like infinite complaining about how greedy … basically every company that isn’t indie is being.
I think this is mostly just the fact that the people who spend the most time on social media are also basically kids with very little spending money. None of my millennial peers even blinked when AAA game prices went up to $70 with the new console generation. We have fairly mature careers and have paid off our student debt by now.
Maybe, but we’re also seeing it in reviews in such high quantities, it feels like it has to be more than just kids. And like, sure I’d love if the games were cheaper, but they certainly haven’t gotten cheaper or less risky to make.
It’s frustrating either way… I don’t care if the game is $100. I want to know A) does it have pay to win mechanics or gambling (things I actually consider to be predatory – another word that is significantly over used right now), B) is it fun?, and C) how much replay value is it (i.e. should my expectations be set for a really great 80 hours or potentially hundreds – I’m okay with the former sometimes, but it’s nice to know what I’m getting into).
Lately with steam reviews it’s like “tHiS gAMe coSt toO muCh. Y u So gReDy!?!” Which tells me none of those things and just gives me old man yelling at a cloud energy about how things (particularly live service stuff) does cost money to develop and run beyond a 1 time purchase of $25.
So it sounds like the developers had a better bead on why D2 has been losing numbers and there’s no way for them to provide feedback. And as a result, they were probably tied into the layoffs. Talk about some obvious mismanagement. The wrong person was laid off.
The last thing workers want to hear is “the right people” when they see their friends and colleagues laid off. I was at a company that said that after a round of layoffs, the CEO got absolutely roasted for saying it.
Man, how about you rather try to not make the game an insufferable grind fest. I love the gameplay so much, but each time I decide to log back in and give it another go it doesn’t take long before that fun layer is peeled back and I see the grind lurking underneath.
the grind keeps attach rate though, it’s no good for them if you log in, have fun, do the stuff and log out again for six months
this is what all these GaaS are based around, I gotta grind this magical stick, I gotta grind Diamond, I gotta grind this battlepass or I’m losing money!
Honestly if I could play all of the game without having to grind like a fucking mad man, I'd probably regularly buy expansions and pay for a season pass.
I love the coop. I love the gunplay. I love most of the game except the grind.But I have kids and real life shit to do. I tried getting back into it during witch queen, but the amount of time I had to spend daily on it made it damn near impossible to play the dungeons and stuff. I had a little extra free time when I did that too. By the time I managed to hit the cap, I realized I was not having any fun doing it. So I quit. Had a clan I liked chatting and playing with. It was cool. But I'm just not going to keep paying for and playing a game that just feels like a tedious as fuck job.
you aren’t profitable to these GaaS companies, you have kids and real life shit to do. you aren’t gonna bring them in money.
The people bringing in the money do the grind. it’s what all these GaaS games are. I too would enjoy if these studios made traditional games that are made to be enjoyable rather than made to keep attach rates up. but that’s not what they set out to make.
I mean I was purchasing the expansions and the season pass. And on games that I feel I'll stick with for a while I even get some cosmetic stuff at times.
I doubt it is even a matter of them measuring the profit. I imagine that a lot of it is they (and many other gaas games that aren't pay to win) are trying to be the only game a person plays. To make them feel devoted to it. Like they would have wasted so much of they give up (sunk cost fallacy) and that by switching games they'll get behind in their main game. Because of they aren't profitable with a repeatedly paid game and season pass off of a person then they have some real bad management. In fact, me paying for a season pass and the expansions and using the server less should make me more profitable than most players except for the whales that buy all the cosmetics too. Especially when Fortnite and Warframe are f2p and profitable.
except for the whales that buy all the cosmetics too. Especially when Fortnite and Warframe are f2p and profitable.
🔔 🔔 🔔
people paying for the cosmetics, and the battlepasses are the profit generators for GaaS games. Destiny just keeps their expansion setup because it’s even more extra money
think about it. Fortnite is free to play, and it’s funded epic games basically singlehandedly since, all the aquasitions, unreal engine, their store. it’s all fortnite money, it’s all battlepass and microtransactions
Also not gatekeeping modes and content I already paid for if I can’t afford the newest expansion, and just straight up removing content that was paid for
I hate grind, but I used to enjoy just playing D2 weekly, way beyond the weekly content.
Then they decided that literally everything needed to be a slog, and that being overpowered was bad, and they ruined my fun. I went from 80 hr weeks (I know this isn’t healthy) to 1 hour weeks over the course of a couple seasons. I still spent a lot of time after the launch of the latest DLC, but after that was done, and they upped the base difficulty by removing the effect of levels on almost all base content, I struggled to stay engaged. This season, I just gave up. I’ve got like 15 levels, when I usually have 200-300 in the battle pass.
I’m not saying they don’t have a grind problem, too, but it wasn’t what killed it for me.
Bungie milked their audience with a hard drive occupying piece of shit. The design of Neomuna was crap. The characters were crap. The story was awful. The level design was amateurish at best.
It makes me mad that I have an addictive itch that needs scratching.
ign.com
Aktywne