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Whirlybird, do games w Marvel's Avengers goes on sale one last time before being delisted forever

I’ll probably never play it but for that price it’s worth the risk.

Saledovil,

There’s a social cost associated with buying it, namely, that you support live service games. So please don’t buy it.

Whirlybird, (edited )

I do support live service games though. I prefer them and that’s pretty much all I ever play.

What they’ve done with handling this game in delisting it is quite frankly fantastic - get rid of all micro transactions and bundle every single one with the game and basically give the game away for free at its end of life. Now anyone what wants to play it like a regular single player offline game can for a few bucks, and I believe are least in pc it uses steam for online play so it will still be playable multiplayer. Everyone wins.

Klystron,

Well it’s not gonna be a live service game in 12 days anyway. So please don’t buy it.

Whirlybird, (edited )

Huh? I bought it because one day one of my kids might want to play it, or I might however unlikely.

Why are you trying to stop people buying it, just because you don’t like constantly updated games? Why are you against them?

yata,

“Constantly updated games” is a ridiculously disingenous description of live service games.

Whirlybird,

Is it? What’s yours then?

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

"Microtransaction Hell" is my description.

Whirlybird,

OK cool so you’ve never played a live service game. Just say that next time.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

I have played several, and the vast majority have been Microtransaction Hell, and many games that are not live service are still consistently updated.

The fact that there are one or two games that do live service without intrusive and annoying microtransactions that are frequently barriers to progression or end up being pay to win doesn't make the description invalid. They are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Whirlybird,

The vast majority of Live Service games have zero pay to win microtransactions or barriers to progression. They’re almost all purely cosmetic microtransactions because that’s been proven to be what people want.

There was a bit of a learning curve for devs to see what people would put up with and what they wouldn’t, and stuff you describe was left on the cutting room floor years ago. Even games like COD now give you all actual content for free and just sell you cosmetics, and it’s wildly profitable for them. Selling map pack dlc got abandoned because it split the player base, whereas cosmetics don’t.

Kaldo, (edited )
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

Isn't that literally what they are though? Fortnite, WoW, Runescape, Warframe or Hearthstone are all vastly different genres of games but they are still live-service games at the end. What else could the term mean besides "constantly updated", they are a living, evolving long-term service?

Whirlybird,

Yeah that’s literally what live service games are 😂. Would love to hear what they would call them, but doubt we’ll get a response.

dandi8, (edited )

Live service = always online.

It means once the servers go down you will no longer be able to play the game.

A game doesn't need to be always online to be constantly updated. See: Project Zomboid, No Man's Sky, Minecraft etc.

Kaldo,
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

What are you basing this definition on? A rudimentary google search for a definition gives more than one answer and yet none of them have "always online" as a requirement for something to be live-service.

Hitman 3 for example is an example of a singleplayer live-service game, Paradox games like Stellaris are basically that as well, and Minecraft and NMS are often used as examples too. Nobody claimed that a game needs to be online to be updated, that's ridiculous, so not sure who was that clarification meant for.

dandi8, (edited )

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service

"In the video game industry, games as a service (GaaS) represents providing video games or game content on a continuing revenue model, similar to software as a service.
[...]
Games released under the GaaS model typically receive a long or indefinite stream of monetized new content over time to encourage players to continue paying to support the game. This often leads to games that work under a GaaS model to be called "living games", "live games", or "live service games" since they continually change with these updates."

GaaS monetization can't be achieved without a central online service. Even with Hitman 3 a lot of content is locked behind the online requirement.

You can bend the definition as much as you want but this is what most people mean by" live service games".

Kaldo,
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

Your quotes just support my statement, the defining points are continued revenue and updates, not an always online requirement.

Kaldo,
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

Your quotes just support my statement, the defining points are continued revenue and updates, not an always online requirement.

Whirlybird, (edited )

Where in there does it say “always online”?

Connecting to the internet and downloading new content when you are online doesn’t mean the game doesn’t work offline.

Whirlybird, (edited )

That’s not true at all. No Man’s Sky is a live service game, as is minecraft.

dangblingus,

You’re listing games that many would call, and I quote “ass”.

Kaldo, (edited )
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

A game being "ass" is subjective and irrelevant to the definition of a live service game. These are just examples.

conciselyverbose,

Because literally every live service game ever made goes out of their way to constantly dictate your engagement with it in a way that is exclusively designed for the sole purpose of taking money from you.

There are no exceptions. There is no game that has ever done live service in a way that is in any way forgivable.

Whirlybird,

That’s strange because I’ve spent about $15 all up on micro transaction since they became a thing yet I have tens of thousands of hours in live service games and I’ve had a ball.

conciselyverbose,

The fact that you can "play them" without spending money doesn't change the fact that every single element of every single feature is designed to make you want to spend money, and every interaction with every menu has ads shoved down your face.

There is exactly one design conceit for live service games, and it's "rob every player you can blind". It's the exact business model of every single one. There are zero exceptions.

Whirlybird, (edited )

Every single element of these games isn’t designed to make you want to spend money 😂. Going by your hate for them along with that terrible comment shows that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Almost every single live service game now just has optional cosmetics as the microtransactions. That’s the opposite of what you’re saying.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

Just imagine if they included all the stuff you didn't buy as part of the game instead!

Whirlybird,

That content wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t a live service game.

snooggums,
@snooggums@kbin.social avatar

Bullshit. There are tons of games with lots of variety that don't require microtransactions to access.

Especially ones that are mod friendly so extra cosmetics are free for everyone and doesn't cost the developer a dime.

Whirlybird,

Just because some games have certain content on disk doesn’t mean others would. At some stage a game has to be cut for release and is “content complete” for printing. With live service games they continue creating content to sell in-game. With non live service games they don’t.

If you’re going to bring mods into it then that’s a completely different conversation.

Kaldo, (edited )
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

Just because there are many games that do it badly doesn't mean the genre label means something different. I'm playing GW2 and Warframe which are very much live service games and I rarely, if ever, feel exploited or manipulated into giving money to them - if anything it's the opposite and the only occassion when I do spend extra on them is when I'm happy with content or updates and want to support them.

There are no exceptions. There is no game that has ever done live service in a way that is in any way forgivable.

This is subjective and I believe this might be the case for you, but it is demonstratively absolutely not true for everyone. You framing it like some absolute authority on the subject is just shortsighted and inaccurate.

hoi_polloi,

I’ve been playing Old School Runescape and I must say it’s fantastic. Selling drops os enough to pay for my subscription and there’s no microtransactions.

Xanvial,

I’ve been playing Dota more than a decade, the game that technically introduce Battle Pass. I don’t even feel pressured to buy microtransaction, the community even disappointed when Valva stop selling the yearly battle pass

dangblingus,

Everyone should grab a copy of warcraft 3 with TFT (not reforged!) and jump on W3Connect for some old school DotA. No filler, all killer.

Haui,
@Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

I think the discussion has become a bit muddy.

The argument against live service games is that you are dependent on the servers hosted by the developer/publisher (afaik).

In normal circumstances, they are able to stop you from playing or alter the terms at any time however they like.

This is a dominant/subordinate relationship which is quite risky. Especially for young people who are still learning what a healthy relationship looks like.

The alternative is a equality relationship where you decide if you buy something based on the price.

One argument against that would be that you can „rent“ an apartment as well. But legislature has shown that states will intervene on a vendor (landlord) redefining the terms of the contract. Not so much with gaming.

Now you are arguing that the game is taken off live service and you will be able to play it offline. I don’t know if that is the case but if so then buying it now would actually send the message that doing the right thing after all boosts sales.

TL;DR: Live service games are badly legislated imo but truly making such a game offline playable with all dlc would be a good thing in my book.

Just my personal opinion. Have a good one.

Whirlybird,

This game is 100% offline playable now with all dlc and microtransactions included for like $4.

HidingCat,

Sorry you got downvoted by this Lemmy circlejerk. There's a certain toxcicity in these parts; basically anything not Linux and offline with the slightest hint of privacy issues is downright hated here.

Kaldo,
@Kaldo@kbin.social avatar

Which is funny since the fediverse by its core principles has 0 consideration towards privacy.

It is really astonishing how reddit-like the hivemind here has become already, people don't care about even objectively discussing the terminology if they can circlejerk about "GaaS is bad ehmahgerd" instead, just going straight for extreme viewpoints and seeing it black and white. Really thought I got away from that when I joined here...

dangblingus,

Live service games represent lazy, copy and paste style game mechanics. They’re insulting to the gaming consumer’s intelligence, and they’re basically just jobs. Daily inconsequential tasking that eventually allows you to do an inconsequential raid, where you have a 1 in 1000 chance of dropping a rare item. All so you can stand around in the game world’s hub and show off your meaningless cosmetic item that isn’t really all that useful because you’ve accomplished all of your mundane, copy and paste goals. Oh, and the casino mechanics that psychologically incentivize buying microtransactions.

The game being “constantly updated” isn’t the issue. The issue is that the “constant updates” are basically nothingburger, repetitive tasks that you’ve already done a thousand times.

Do I care enough to go on a crusade and slap boxes out of people’s hands? Fuck no. But they are a stain on gaming

Whirlybird,

You clearly don’t understand what “live service” games are if that’s what you think.

What did PUBG copy paste and from what? Overwatch? Diablo? Battlefield? Counter strike? Forza horizon and Motorsport?

Your definition of them seems to be a super narrow scope of basically a F2P mobile game.

MomoTimeToDie,

deleted_by_author

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  • Whirlybird,

    Yeah quite often this place seems like it’s composed of the neckbeards that even Reddit wouldn’t accept 😂

    raptir,

    I don’t know about that. The game has now removed all of the live service elements, so I would say it’s showing that there is interest in this type of game without the live service.

    dangblingus,

    You probably wont’ be able to play it soon. Servers will get shut down sooner or later if they’re delisting the game.

    Whirlybird,

    They’ve explicitly talked about this, the game is entirely playable offline after the delisting.

    McDuders, (edited ) do games w Marvel's Avengers goes on sale one last time before being delisted forever

    Kind of mixed on this one for me. On one hand it’s a win against microtransactions, since a big name like Marvel isn’t enough for people to buy it, so much that it has to be delisted. I think that’s a huge win and I think it’s worth mentioning.

    On the other, preservation is a thing and I’m wondering if this game could somehow still be played if it’s taken off the store. Granted I’m not familiar with this game so I don’t know if physical copies work, or if they’re just codes with a plastic shell. Or even if this game would be playable once the servers go down. I know it’s not the best game to keep around, but history deserves preservation, etc

    pastermil,

    preservation is a thing

    so is piracy

    also, not everything is worth preserving

    McDuders,

    I disagree. I think games are definitely worth preserving, even if they aren’t that fun. Regardless, this game has historical significance and should at the very least be playable after it’s delisted.

    OscarRobin,

    What is and isn’t worth preserving is not something that can be known at the time of preserving. The point of preservation is so things can be accessed later if and when they’re needed. Even shitty games like Avengers may be relevant in many ways in the future, even if just to reference as ‘a shitty game’.

    PastaGorgonzola,

    I recently saw this video about the British Library. They collect everything that’s published in the UK (books, magazines, papers, leaflets, flyers, …). One of the librarians makes a pretty good case about the use of collecting and preserving everything. Even (or especially) the things you don’t think are worth preserving.

    Pxtl,
    @Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

    “Good” is not the metric for preserving things. “Important” is. Marvel’s Avengers is important to preserve because this failure is a major historical milestone.

    Like, imagine if somehow every copy of ET for the Atari 2600 vanished. Would anything fun be lost? Of course not. But would we lose some critical context in an important historical event? Yes. Very much so.

    Fortunately, Atari games aren’t the kind of ephemeral media where we have to worry about that like cloud-service games or pre-code cellulite films.

    Whirlybird, (edited )

    Physical and digital copies will still work, they’ve made that explicitly clear.

    dangblingus,

    Is preservation of GaaS actually important though? We’re not talking about niche shovelware that somebody is nostalgic for, we’re talking about preserving a thing that wasn’t meant to ever be preserved, that hurt the gaming industry and represented gaming’s modern backsliding into corporate greed.

    Nfntordr, (edited ) do games w Marvel's Avengers goes on sale one last time before being delisted forever

    Not a problem, fitgirl to the rescue!

    bionicjoey, do games w DC Comics adamant The Wolf Among Us' source material is not in the public domain, as its creator calls them 'thugs and conmen' and insists it is

    If there’s an ownership dispute between the creator of the thing and the people who sell it, I’m always gonna side with the person who created the thing. Publishers are a cancer.

    LiveLGNProsper, do games w Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder

    I just went to PS5 when the shut it down easy peasy and that was the last straw for me I deleted my Google account and all google services.

    canis_majoris,
    @canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

    I stuck with Gamepass because I am a PC gamer. I toyed with PSN but the PS5 controller was not natively recognized by the client at the time I was testing it, which is dumb as fuck. Steam will pick up the controller and use their drivers for most games, but the PSN service just didn’t work with the PS5 controller natively.

    LiveLGNProsper, (edited )

    Yeah I used to play on PC too but some of the AAA titles had terrible ports that required more performance in my opinion than needed and it was cheaper to switch to ps5 there is no perfect solution I guess lol but the ps5 can play those titles with damn good graphics and not drop many frames but on my PC framrate just sucked and I got sick of windows bull shit as well.

    Nioxic, do games w Diablo 4 continues to walk back changes from its fiendishly unpopular 1.1 patch, boosting XP gain on World Tiers 3 and 4

    This wont save the game…

    It was pretty dreadful before the patch too.

    chrisphero,

    I already sold my physical copy and I really don’t regret it at all.

    My group of friends and I where really excited and played through the story together, but the endgame just wasn’t fun. I don’t know what exactly it was, but we kinda stoped playing.

    The new season and “patches” didn’t really improve it a lot imho… a shame, really!

    CthuluVoIP,

    The game feels unfinished. The seasons forcing you to reset so shortly after the game just launched only to replay content you just went through in order to get season rewards that don’t even pay for the next season’s pass feels punitive.

    I haven’t played since the first season launched, and likely won’t until they release the expansions. It just doesn’t have enough to keep the game interesting in the meantime, which is a shame because mechanically it’s a much better game than D3, but suffers the same problems with being a single player / co-op PvE game that Blizzard is desperately trying to make into an MMO.

    canis_majoris, do games w Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder
    @canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

    One of the main issues with Stadia is that they didn’t even do the basics. I saw basically no marketing, and on top of that, I heard all kinds of rumors about the business model that were entirely false. They made no effort to combat the misinformation. It was never the case that you literally had to purchase the game on top of the subscription fees, but that was like the number one issue brought up in every discussion.

    Facebones,

    It’s been how long now? TIL that was false. 🤷

    canis_majoris,
    @canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

    I know, right? Service has been down almost an entire year.

    Facebones,

    The “pay for sub then buy games on top of that” was 100% how I heard it worked and NEVER heard anything different from anywhere.

    That’s kinda nuts.

    conciselyverbose,

    It was basically true.

    There was a bad experience version you could use without a subscription to games you purchased outright, and they included "free" games with your subscription, but to get a reasonable experience you had to pay for both.

    Chozo,

    The subscription was only necessary if you wanted to play in 4K or wanted "free" monthly games. Everything else worked just fine without the sub, with no change to performance.

    conciselyverbose,

    The subscription was absolutely required for performance not to be a complete dumpster fire.

    The free tier wasn't mediocre. It was unplayable.

    HarkMahlberg, (edited )
    @HarkMahlberg@kbin.social avatar

    From everything I can see, you did have to buy games on Stadia. They would give you a free game a month, but if that wasn't the game you wanted to play, you had to buy it. The base version of Stadia was free, but the Pro version gave you a discount on games - it did not make them free.

    This is the official support forum and there are many Q&A's about purchasing games:

    https://community.stadia.com/t5/Payments-Billing/Can-t-buy-games-in-the-Store-OR-HDT-01/m-p/52482

    Got my Stadia Pro account with a credit card...

    ... If you have an Android device, you can also try via the Stadia app to purchase games (once purchased, you can play them everywhere, on mobile, TV or PC).

    Stamau123,

    So it wasn’t bullshit? Well in the end the environment was confusing, as thus it died

    conciselyverbose,

    The "wrong" part was that you could theoretically play games you owned without the subscription active.

    But it was downgraded heavily enough that it wasn't really worth doing.

    Astroturfed,

    I couldn’t figure out how to do anything with one without paying the subscription. The interface was horrible and clearly designed to force you into subscribing before you could even use the thing.

    Molecular0079,

    It was never the case that you literally had to purchase the game on top of the subscription fees

    It depends on the game. There were a bunch of games under “Stadia Play” that came along with the subscription, GamePass style. And then there were games you had to outright purchase.

    Trihilis,

    The main problem with stadia was Google. I knew it was doomed from the start and that’s why I never bothered with it. I actually know a lot of people that didn’t bother with it because it was from Google. It’s basically a self fulfilling prophecy at this point that most of their shit ends up on the Google graveyard.

    A lot of people actually don’t trust Google anymore since they’ve already been screwed over many times by them.

    cdipierr, do games w Former BioWare manager wishes Dragon Age had kept a 'PC-centric' and 'modding-driven' identity like Neverwinter Nights

    The timing on these comments reads to me like: “I sure am sad EA made us dilute Dragon Age into a third-person action game and chase trends, now that BG3 proved CRPGs can still sell”.

    Though TBF, the genre went on life support for a reason. It will be interesting to see if we get more CRPG mainstream hits going forward.

    Kichae,

    Not just that CRPGs can sell, but "Man, look at how much success they're having with our CRPG franchise!"

    ZOSTED,

    I’m loving BG3, but DA is honestly not that far off the mark. It’s missing crunchy, turn-based combat, and the sprawling story, but they probably have the tech and writing chops to pull that off, too.

    cdipierr,

    I believe 2008 Bioware had the chops for it, Post-Anthem Bioware gives me such doubt. I think EA has made it impossible for them to make a game like that again.

    Corkyskog, (edited )

    Why did the genre go on life support? I have been missing a couch co-op game since the days of PS2, my wife and I used to love playing together. Speaking of old RPGs, anyone know if there are any plans to reboot Champions of Norath? That used to be our favorite game.

    I also get confused by all these RPG prefixes, probably too old. In my day I would walk into the gamestop or Babbages and just say “got any new good RPG games” then they would point me to one of the Final Fantasy games, and then I would say “actually I mean, do you have any new hack and slash RPG games?” Then they would say “no, but you can pre-order Call of Duty” and then I would rifle through the bargain bin, and then leave. Good times.

    Which means I have essentially been asking for Baldurs Gate 3 for 18 years now (Champions 2 was released in 2005, a year after BG2).

    cdipierr,

    The golden age isometric RPGs (BG1 & 2, NN, Fallout, etc) were dubbed Computer RPGs, because the idea of translating a pen & paper roleplaying game to the computer was novel. But as the 2000’s marched forward and 3D graphics became an expectation - and video game budgets ballooned - simulation and writing took a backseat to visual spectacle, action gameplay, and set-pieces. Niche CRPGs became too expensive to be worth the risk, leading to KOTOR, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, etc; which would have more mass appeal.

    As Larian has been showing, the ability to pack all that story and character moments, and present it with a cinematic look and feel is becoming increasingly possible (with years of hard work). Larian and Obisidian have been whetting everyone’s appetites for the CRPG format, and now BG3 seems to be reaping the rewards.

    I found a nifty little video discussing the rise, fall and rebirth of CRPGs if you want some more info: The CRPG Revival: DnD to Baldur’s Gate 3

    DrQuint, (edited ) do games w Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder

    I will never, ever, understand why Stadia was something thay had to be “ported into” at such high cost. Specially for games that were ALREADY working on Linux. Like, what the fuck was the hold up. I read up stories that it was basically like porting to a fourth console and that just sounded outrageously stupid in my head.

    Whatever tech stack they had, they could have made it way more profitable by making it generic windows boxes that partially run your library elsewhere. I dunno if there’s some hubris or some licensing bullshit behind it, but fact is, if I want to do this on GeForce Now, I can do it, no questions asked, and as the costumer, that’s the beginning and end of my concerns.

    redcalcium, (edited )

    Google engineers always choose the hardest route to solve problems. Why wouldn’t they? If your products are going to be shutdown in a few years anyway, might as well have a glowing resume from working on those products (resume-driven development).

    Think about it, every time Google made a product with sensible tech stacks, those products were actually started outside Google and later bought by Google (Android, YouTube, etc). If Google made Android from scratch, there is no way they’ll use java and Linux, they’ll invent a new language and made their own kernel instead (just like fuchsia os which might be canned soon).

    anemomylos,
    @anemomylos@kbin.social avatar
    • Kotlin: "are you talking to me?"
    hesusingthespiritbomb,

    Kotlin was made by Jetbrains and later adopted by Google.

    sznio,

    But Kotlin is actually an improvement over Java.

    Golang thoooooo

    atocci,

    TIL Fuchsia hasn't been killed quite yet.

    smeg,

    Does it actually even exist? I feel like I’ve been getting whispered rumours about it for years and years, but never anything sold!

    atocci,

    Yes! Nest Hub devices run it

    smeg,

    Oh wow, I’ll have to have a read up

    merc,

    might as well have a glowing resume from working on those products (resume-driven development).

    This is so true. Getting promoted requires showing impact. If you use off-the-shelf tools (that happen to be easily maintainable) that’s not an impressive impact. If you invent a new language (and make up a convincing reason it was necessary) and so-on, that’s really impressive and you can get promoted. The minefield you leave behind that makes maintaining your solution so difficult is just another opportunity for someone else to get promoted.

    Zeth0s, (edited )

    Only Microsoft can run decently windows in a decently big data centers. Because they can tweak it, as they do for Xbox os as well. For everyone else scaling windows server VMs or containers is a pain, because windows is a bad, poorly optimized, resources-hungry OS developed with main goal to make hardware obsolete every 3-5 years.

    I don’t know what nvidia is doing, but when I use it at my friends’ places, lags are painful.

    Linux was the right call in theory, in practice gaming industry is pretty broken on the PC side with its lock on windows, as we see on every new AAA port… Let’s hope valve can save it, but I doubt.

    smeg,

    I don’t think the people downvoting you have ever experienced the pain of dealing with Windows in a cloud environment

    Pxtl, (edited )
    @Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

    No, we’re downvoting because of conspiracy theories about planned obsolescense.

    Yes, it’s disappointing how hardware requirements climb for minimal appreciable improvement, but Hanlon’s Razor applies.

    Zeth0s, (edited )

    It is not a conspiracy though. Planned obsolescence is a well known real thing. There is a reason unix computers last on average longer than windows computers, and Linux is the stereotypical OS for old pcs.

    If people are downvoting for this, they should learn how computers and operating systems work

    Zeth0s, (edited )

    Don’t worry, I was expecting the downvotes. This place is full of angry windows fan boys that believe they are tech expert because they watch ltt and can install a skyrim mod. Less than reddit luckily

    Astroturfed,

    The thing was clearly designed to force you into paying a subscription fee. You can’t let people have something they could possibly easily use and play games that aren’t on your subscription if your entire purpose is to milk a monthly subscription from the users. Google, fuck you capitalism woohoo.

    DarkGamer, do games w Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder
    @DarkGamer@kbin.social avatar

    Because everything ran locally at a datacenter, the real killer app of Stadia would have been a super-massively multiplayer game. There wouldn't be any problems with latency between game states, (any lag would be between the server and the console.) Imagine massive wars or mediaeval battles with thousands of participants. They never developed games that took advantage of what was unique about the platform.

    merc,

    AFAIK, MMOs keep all the game state on the servers already. The difference is that what they send to the client is key deltas to the game state, which the client then renders. Stadia type services instead render that on the datacenter side and send the client images.

    With their expertise at networking and so-on, Google might have been able to get a slight advantage in server-to-server communication, but it wouldn’t have enabled anything on a whole different scale, AFAIK.

    IMO, their real advantage was that they could have dealt with platform switching in a seamless way. So, take an addictive turn-by-turn game like Civilization. Right now someone might play 20 turns before work, then commute in, think about it all day, then jump back in when they get home. With Stadia, they could have let you keep playing on your cell phone as you take the train into work. Play a few turns on a smoke break. Maybe play on a web browser on your work computer if it’s a slow day. Then play again on your commute home, then play on the TV at home, but if someone wanted to watch a show, you could either go up and play on a PC, or pull out your phone, or play on a laptop…

    DarkGamer,
    @DarkGamer@kbin.social avatar

    Larger massive multiplayer capability was one of the features Google was touting upon Stadia's launch:

    Over time, Buser [Google’s director of games] says we should not only see additional exclusive games on Stadia, but also cross-platform games doing things on Stadia “that would be impossible to do on a console or PC.” Instead of dividing up virtual worlds into tiny "shards" where only 100 or 150 players can occupy the same space at a time because of the limitations of individual servers, he says Google’s internal network can support living, breathing virtual worlds filled with thousands of simultaneous players.
    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/6/18654632/google-stadia-price-release-date-games-bethesda-ea-doom-ubisoft-e3-2019

    merc,

    Sure, they claimed that, but it’s telling that nobody ever took them up on that.

    Google’s internal network may be good, but it’s not going to be an order of magnitude better than you can get in any other datacenter. If getting thousands of people into the same virtual space were just a matter of networking, an MMO would have already done it.

    A shard is going to be storing the position, orientation and velocity of key entities (players, vehicles, etc.) in memory. If accessed frequently enough they’ll be in the processor’s cache. There’s no way the speed of accessing that data can compare with networking speeds.

    That doesn’t mean there couldn’t have been some kinds of innovations. Say a game like Star Citizen where there are space battles. In theory you could store the position and orientation of everything inside a ship in one shard and the position and orientation of ships themselves in a second shard. Since people inside the ship aren’t going to be interacting directly with things outside the ship except via the ship, you could maybe afford a bit of latency and inaccuracy there. But, if you’re just talking about a thousand-on-thousand melee, I think the latency between shards would be too great.

    EnglishMobster,

    You’d only be able to play with people local to you, in the same Stadia datacenter. If Stadia wanted to minimize latency, they would increase the number of datacenters (thus making fewer people per instance).

    Gamey, do games w Former BioWare manager wishes Dragon Age had kept a 'PC-centric' and 'modding-driven' identity like Neverwinter Nights

    The truly sad part about the BioWare story is that they fucked up a lot too, you can’t even blaim all of the disapointments on EA! :(

    sugar_in_your_tea,

    That’s not going to stop me from blaming EA.

    Gamey,

    You shouldn’t, they certainly aren’t inocent in this case, they just aren’t the only scumbags in that story! :/

    Decoy321, (edited ) do games w Former BioWare manager wishes Dragon Age had kept a 'PC-centric' and 'modding-driven' identity like Neverwinter Nights

    You know what kind of news about Dragon Age would actually interest me? News on a goddamn release date. It’s been 9 years. They can either make the damn game or shut the fuck up.

    micka190,

    or shut the fuck up

    I’d love some news about them going back to the dark fantasy and writing style of Origins/Awakening over the high fantasy BS Inquisition set them on, tbh.

    Signtist, (edited )

    Origins’ story was so good that it got me to go to the library in the height of my teenage “reading is lame” phase just to get more exposition from the books. I really wish they’d stayed in that vain in the sequels.

    stopthatgirl7,
    !deleted7120 avatar

    At this point, I won’t believe Dreadwolf is actually coming out until it’s on store shelves.

    sugar_in_your_tea,

    That’s how I treat all games, and even then I try to ignore it until a few weeks after launch when most of the worst bugs are patched.

    ZOSTED,

    There’s another DA game in the works??

    Decoy321,

    There’s been one the whole time. The question is whether or not they’ll actually finish it.

    GeneralEmergency, do games w Stadia's death spiral, according to the Google employee in charge of mopping up after its murder

    Not exactly a unique situation to Stadia. Look at any failed console and lack of games is a prominent reason given why.

    Not to mention the issues raised from a cloud service streaming platform that plagued previous attempts. I’m honestly surprised Stadia lasted as long as it did.

    mushroom,

    Which is why steam went whole hog into proton development for the steam deck. It’s brilliant strategy. Suddenly their game catalog is immediately available on the device. So users can play games they already own and will have access to hundreds of others day one.

    Sanctus, do games w Diablo 4 continues to walk back changes from its fiendishly unpopular 1.1 patch, boosting XP gain on World Tiers 3 and 4
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    The problem with this game is its design choices. Over simplified enemies leave much to be desired from previous titles. A world that levels with you means you never feel like you get better. I had to get lucky with a fucken item drop just to make my druid viable. Restarting every season? Only streamers and NEETs have time and desire to do that. This game was a pile of the worst design choices of the last 10 years. They even managed to make an established character (Lilith) bland by trying to make her seem morally grey. Chick has been trying to turn Sanctuary into her own faction for the Eternal Conflict since its inception. If I could I would refund this game, which sucks they already got their money.

    ugo,

    I agree with you on some things and disagree in others. Random mobs don’t need to be particularly complex imho. I have skipped D3 but in D2 the most complexity random mobs had were the immunities, which imo is also not good design. The boss battles is where skill and brains and preparation should play a role, and in that regard I think D4 does a good job. The problem is that when playing I felt everything was a slog and enemies were a damage sponge at all times.

    Also, seasonal resets were a known quantity and are standard for this kind of game, so I don’t really see the point on complaining about those. PoE also does resets and it’s never been an issue. The forced grind is where the problem lies.

    As for Lilith, I didn’t feel she was morally grey. I felt that she was manipulating everything in such a way as to always be or be perceived as the lesser evil, trying to find her way to the top via underhanded means and manipulation, but always purely out of self interest. Definitely a black character, but in a more interesting way than the simple “I am evil so I must destroy”

    That said, I have not touched this game since I completed the campaign. The story was decent, but the game was simply not fun, even though I like a lot of the artistic and technical details.

    Hopefully it’ll be fun at some point, for now I still consider the money I spent to buy the game strongly in the not well spent category

    pancakes, (edited )
    @pancakes@sh.itjust.works avatar

    The somewhat niche ARPG space is already competitive enough in strong game design with the likes of PoE, Grim Dawn, and Last Epoch for subpar games to make it long term.

    dangblingus, do games w Marvel's Avengers goes on sale one last time before being delisted forever

    This game was mocked when it was announced as late to the party, mocked when it was demoed as looking like some wish.com avengers characters, mocked upon release as being a shallow experience, and now it’s being delisted. My backlog remains resilient. Thank God I put on my Himalayan Walking Shoes!

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