We should not be applauding a company for doing what should be the right thing from the start. I used to think the Bethesda glitches were cute too until 76 came out.
It’s not cute, it’s not funny and I refuse to participate in games until all the major bugs are worked out.
I still have not bought or played the new Diablo and I likely won’t at this point because of the ongoing issues I keep hearing about. Honestly, my money is better off in my pocket to be used for literally anything else. I know it’s sucks but if you really want these devs to change you’re going to have to suffer for the cause a little bit.
Indie dev games are just as good anyways and the smaller developers work hard to earn your money. Try looking in that direction to fill the void. I’ve found some really awesome and addictive games this way.
I used to think the Bethesda glitches were cute too until 76 came out.
I enjoyed Fallout 76, but I also ignored it until something like three years after release, at which point it was in a decent state.
It wasn't Fallout 5, which is what I really wanted, but I got my money's worth out of it.
Only bug I hit that was kind of obnoxious was the occasional inability to pick up an item from a corpse, where one would have to look away from the corpse and then back. While being a bit immersion-breaking, it was also pretty easy to work around.
Honestly, the whole Fallout series has been pretty buggy, starting with Fallout 1, but still, a good series. Some of it just comes from the complexity of having a bunch of scripts running that can interact in odd ways in a relatively free-form world.
One of my bigger wants for Fallout 5 is easier diagnosing of problems with mods and trying to be more-robust against such problems. Maybe produce more-foolproof API functionality for common script tasks or something.
a big part of the hate for fallout 76 wasnt even about the bugs, to this day i am 100% convinced that it was stoked massively by folks that bought it expecting a game it was fundamentally never trying to be, never marketed to be and never going to be
That's probably part of it. A big chunk of the aspects that I didn't like about it relative to Fallout 4 -- from killing off slow-mo/pause VATS, to not having a world that can change much, to limited-size "settlements", to limited moddability, to having immersion-breaking other players jetpacking around with not-in-theme names, to having limited story content -- come from the fact that they built it to be a multiplayer game.
But even so. I've seen some footage of the game at release, and it was pretty bad. And not just bugs, but the content...I mean, a Bethesda game not having human NPCs?
I will give them props for putting a lot of effort into fixing the game post-release, but I still feel that the thing shouldn't have shipped when it did. It simply wasn't ready when it went out the door.
Also, some of the fixes they did do that I think people did like -- like reducing the severity of the food/water/radstorm survival elements, which many players didn't like having to hassle with, or reducing the role of PvP, which a lot of the playerbase didn't like -- didn't result in game rebalancing. Like, the player shelters were clearly intended to be a significant element to deal with radstorms, but radstorms are essentially ignorable. Food was intended to play a bigger role, and there are features oriented towards things like reducing the rate of one's demand for it, but that was removed.
If you look at Fallout 4 or even moreso Skyrim, modders went through and rebalanced the game long after the release. I'm not saying that everyone who played those games got to enjoy those changes, but I think that they were good ones. Fallout 76 isn't really moddable in that way, so it's dependent on Bethesda's devs to do all that...and they didn't really do that.
There were no really memorable moments from the game, the way, I don't know, the battle for The Castle or the arrival of the Brotherhood of Steel's aircraft or some other moments in Fallout 4 really stuck with me. I guess to some extent that's part of just having to make a lot of the content something that you play over and over, but it still was kinda disappointing.
And I'm not demanding that they work for free. I bought all the DLC for Fallout 4 and Skyrim. I'd happily have bought something like the (excellent) DLC packs for earlier games in the Fallout series for Fallout 76. But, instead, they only sold mostly-aesthetic content in the Atom Store. Which, okay, great, if someone really wants to decorate their player camp and wants to pay for it could be appealing to someone. But they didn't create a route to pay for more story content, more maps or the like. They did create new free content, but that necessarily has a limited budget, and again, was kinda oriented around multiplayer (and didn't catch on much with me and didn't seem to be terribly popular with players on the fo76 subreddit, either).
There are some things that I did like about it, that I don't think it got credit for. The building mode performance was significantly-improved over 4. They toned down the "everything is dark and awful and evil and every person and company is twisted" aspect in 4, which I think was a big plus; there were plenty of people just trying to live their lives in difficult situations, which felt more like 1. I'm not absolutely rabid about the new areas, but the Mire looked nice by the standards of their engine, was a good use of their engine's godrays. They did a bunch of performance and stability work (that had to happen, given that one couldn't just "reload earlier saves" if something broke in a saved game a la the single player games).
I could have lived with Fallout 76 not being Fallout 5, but what I wished that they could have done was to keep selling single-player content in traditional DLC form. A lot of MUDs and similar games have a "remort" feature where one can start with a new character and earn some persistent rewards for doing so, so playing through story content multiple times is still fun. "New Game Plus", kinda. The online aspect for single-player content would just be to provide DRM, so that people wouldn't just go swipe all the stuff that they're selling in the Atom Store. And the stuff on offer in the Atom Store...ugh. If you look at the mods in Fallout 4, people created high-resolution texture packs, new companions, new story content, and they don't have anything like that for sale. You could have segregated anything that affected balance out of the multiplayer areas, had very solid single-player-only content. It might not have been Fallout 5, but I think that it could have done a much better job of making people who wanted that happier while still providing a multiplayer game for those who wanted a multiplayer game.
In all honesty does anyone actually care anymore? Like, I really have no interest in a new Mass Effect or Dragon Age at all now, and I loved both series at one point. Andromeda was a mess, Dragon Age 4 was shaping up to be a live service shitshow until they abandoned it (allegedly), and this is the same Bioware that gave us Anthem. At this point I’d rather they just let both series die
Let BioWare die at this point, honestly. Like, they’ve done nothing of true note in the last decade under EA. At this point, even if they were freed from their prison, so much of the talent that made BioWare worth a damn is gone anyway.
That’s another good point, Bioware now is so far removed from Bioware then that any Dragon Age or Mass Effect may as well be them selling you fanfiction. And I would have no faith in a new Bioware IP after Anthem so at this point why keep it around?
One of the people they just laid off was the writer who created Varric fricking Tethras. I don’t have any faith in them anymore.
I want Dreadwolf to come out just to finish the story they’ve been setting up in the books, comics, and Inquisition, but I’ve accepted we might never get it. They might rush out a book like they did with the quarian arc in Andromeda when Dreadwolf falls through, maybe.
Writers are the cornerstone of any epic rpg. Character development is crucial. Getting rid of the people behind both of those pillars is shooting a nice hole in your foot
Andromeda was half decent (gameplay) the story was kinda lack luster but there was a few good moments with the characters. I would love a fifth installment. They should say screw dragon age and put that into the grave where it belongs
The gameplay was actually pretty good, but the writing, the setting, the characters, none of the rest of it was any good. I gave up after the first planet because I just didn’t care about anything at all, and I don’t have any faith that Bioware could even reach that level any more
I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda.
With more people playing video games than ever before, it is important for us to help build an inclusive entertainment industry that reflects the diversity of our players.
It’s important to have a diverse workforce, especially in entertainment, because people with different backgrounds will have different ideas. Ideas are the lifeblood of how we improve things, and especially creativity. You people who can’t see this are destined to fail. If you think this is evil rather than smart business to ensure you have the greatest strengths through differences of opinion are really blind. All of history has pretty much shown that diversity breeds creativity and growth. Hegemony breeds stagnation.
Nope. It’s important to have a skilled workforce in gamedev. Hiring based on gender and sexuality means you purposefully pick lower skilled workers in order to fill a diversity quota. Being in gamedev and having lead a team of juniors I can say this with confidence. Skill and motivation is everything, and their genders and sexuality mean zero. In fact, you shouldn’t even see their genders or sexuality. Every worker regardless of background has a unique view, and can provide creative solutions without having to be reduced to their genders, sexuality, skin color.
Hiring based on gender and sexuality is discrimination, and illegal for a reason (and these companies get around it by using unpaid internships). It breeds hate and extremism.
Also, going to need to ask for some source of that claim of yours because historically the most creative and successful games have been made by entirely asian male teams or entirely white male teams, and games with diverse teams have been failing miserably.
Hiring based on gender and sexuality means you purposefully pick lower skilled workers in order to fill a diversity quota.
Incorrect. It means that you pick the best candidate, and when they’re equal you don’t just choose the white man like we always have in the past.
I’m a straight white man. I have no issue with diversity because it makes everyone better.
Every worker regardless of background has a unique view, and can provide creative solutions without having to be reduced to their genders, sexuality, skin color.
Sure, that’s true because everyone has a different background. However, a straight white Christian man would likely never think of some of the things a gay Muslim would think of, because they have faced different issues and been taught different things.
For example, there’s an issue with IQ testing, where the tests were designed for typical western education. However, different cultures can be better or worse at certain questions just by how they’re phrased. Some cultures may think of something geometrically. For example, all math by the ancient Greeks were done with shapes, not numbers. They would solve math problems in totally different and unique ways than a typical modern day western educated person would. They aren’t less smart for it. Their brains were just wired differently because of the way they were educated.
Not every person thinks the same. Cultures, education, oppression, trauma, pleasures, and everything else effect how you think and you you’ll think of. Diversity in thought allows us to take advantage of this as much as possible.
Incorrect. It means that you pick the best candidate, and when they’re equal you don’t just choose the white man like we always have in the past.
That is not what is happening, and your scenario cannot happen unless by equal you mean based on a very shallow measurement. You’ll never find two people who are equally good. It also doesn’t say the program is for women, non-binary or skilled men. It excludes men entirely.
However, a straight white Christian man would likely never think of some of the things a gay Muslim would think of, because they have faced different issues and been taught different things.
I disagree with this view. “Only people of X can produce quality X” is just shallow thinking, and can in fact be used just as much as a counter argument like “only men can make quality games for gamers who are mostly male, so we should hire mostly men”. A straight white christian male can absolutely have similar views and ideas to a gay Muslim.
Also, if you’re hiring a gay Muslim over someone else just because they are gay and Muslim, how do you think that makes them feel knowing this?
But more importantly, what does gender, sex and ethnicity contribute to a team of programmers, which is half the workforce of gamedev?
In hiring, when asking for expert opinions, when looking for quality, the best gender is always “any”. The best sexual orientation is always “None of my business”, and the best race is always “Human”
Assassin’s Creed is not relevant enough to justify a live service game but I’m not surprised ubisoft didn’t stop halfway through production to change course.
Not relevant enough? Valhalla made Ubisoft $1 billion. It's one of those games that sells to the type of person who only buys a couple of games per year alongside sports titles and Rockstar games.
Valhalla was one of the few games that launched on newer consoles, with visual enhancements over the previous gen, which may have had something to do with it. People were looking for something that would take advantage of the hardware they just sank a lot of money on and there weren’t many choices on the market at the time.
I’d say Mirage, the more recent game, should be indicative enough of the health of the series and made them $250 million, which is still good but not Valhalla level.
I’m assuming that this one will perform better because a Japan game is what people have been clamoring for this whole time, but I think this is still going to demonstrate a downward trend for the series overall.
Ghost of Tsushima 2 is rumored to be announced sometime soon, though, and that’s what I’m holding out for.
Assassin's Creed has just been doing numbers basically since forever, which is why Ubisoft turned into a machine that puts out one of those games every year. Valhalla was no exception. Mirage, however, is the exception. Ubisoft showed their lack of confidence in the title by pricing it lower. It was no secret to those who followed its development that it was spun out of a DLC for Valhalla, and reviews reflected the amount of effort Ubisoft put into it.
This makes me so sad that Aperion received the cease and desist. This game really deserves a fan-made resurrection. I never felt like any legitimate company would do it justice.
I can see a lot of bad new standards develop from this, but i also recognise it gets more than just early review copies out rhe door before the majority buys the game making it a tactic bad games cant do and will reward good games to cash in. Still. Lots of potential bad stuff is intertwined with these same points
My concern is when I'm seeing streamers play games like Starfield and run into a ton of bugs, often game-breaking ones, but then go and praise the game to high heaven.
I just want a basement level of proper standards, that's all I'm asking for.
have you seen what happens if you say you didn’t like it? you’re told you’re a troll, you’re negative, you “just don’t get it”, or they take your criticism and then act like the only alternative is the complete and total opposite of that and try and pull a ‘gotcha’
on one hand I would obviously LOVE for reviews (across the board, not just in gaming) to be realistic and not all be 7+/10 but I also understand why they don’t to an extent
As long as they’re not game breaking, that’s the best we can hope for. Or at least that they are entertaining bugs. With Skyrim, I admit after the patches I missed seeing flying mammoths and cows.
I remember encountering those giants outside whiterun on launch and having one yet me practically to dawnstar. It was hilarious and I wasn’t mad at all.
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