I spent quite a lot of time on the Switch, just talking with random people and helping new players. It is a very special games. Found my first love in there too. 😇
It’s the most bizarre and almost worrying thing now how much video games have transitioned into this “game of the month” thing - where seemingly everyone with a computer all goes and buys the same game each month because it got hyped up by the twitch steamers they watch or whatever.
Just strange. “Are you playing Lethal Company? Everyone’s playing it. Oh, you wanna play Lethal Conpany? Everyone’s playing Palworld now. Oh shit man, we’re not playing that anymore, Dragons Dogma 2 is out”
I noticed this after a hiatus from my gamer friend, when I reunited with them a few months back I saw how games would release and they’d buy it, even defend some aspects like kernel level anti cheat/micro-transactions as well as bad game design.
The hive mind seems somewhat new to me like I’d dabble with a few titles a year while spending considerably more time than the average gamer on my PC. And the fast action from lethal company to plate up to velhaim to palword/and hell divers over the last few months has been jarring maybe concerning too
Are they playing on console? A lot of those times the problems just aren’t equally represented, like when Wild Hearts came out and ended up with Mixed reception although buying on console I simply didn’t have the performance problems and enjoyed the game as a unique take on MH gameplay
The fast pace certainly comes from console subscriptions and trying to eke out as much value from Game Pass or PS+ Extra, on both the consumer and publisher sides. If I’m regularly paying for it, I’m gonna keep looking for new value in it, and conversely MS and Sony will look to keep adding value to it at a consistent rate. It’s simply far too much income to not throw everything at the wall to prevent it stagnating
pc but some of my buds are on pc and console, constantly hearing about game pass :P idk when it come to subscription services its normal for the initial few years to be packed with plenty to capture a large pool of customers, operating at a near loss, then prices go up and content declines. hopefully this doesn’t happen with game-pass
To be fair Lethal Company and Plate Up are fantastic games made by single devs and priced very fairly. It's not really the indie scene that's the problem, that's the holy grail right now. It's these big releases and "triple A" games that are all disgusting cash grabs driven by marketing and how many twitch streamers they can pay to play their game for the "hype".
thought we were talking in general trends. also i am not saying the games i listed were bad, instead i was describing how people are consuming more games in a smaller window of time to what i have been use to
Yeah fair enough, that's definitely true. People tend to have a 'main game' that they hop off to play the new thing, burn out and then go back to their main.
It would make less sense if the games were single player and full price, but Lethal Company, Palworld, and Helldivers 2 are all at $40 or below for the base games and have a multi-player experience.
Of course people are going to jump on lower priced multi-player games with positive word of mouth quickly so they can play with their friends and get a few dozen hours or more entertainment.
Those people have always been around. They want to be a part of the current conversation. And that’s cool. There are plenty of people who wait years to play games until the ultimate version with all DLC goes on sale for 50% off. I’m one of those people. But I also don’t care about being a part of the conversation. I’m just a patient gamer who never spends more than 15$ for a game.
Yep, and it was probably even way worse before the internet with few outlets to let people know about games, and way less resources to get different opinions on the matter.
I don't know if it was really worse, but magazines did cost money.
Most magazines that I used to buy had coverdisks with demo versions.
If the demo was no good it didn't matter what the review said. And they can't really get away with describing things that are proven false in the demo.
Worst thing would be a great demo but very little more in the main game.
But I wasn't going to pay a lot for a game if I'd not played the demo a lot.
Frankly that also proved it'd run ok on my usually very old HW.
As for getting lots of other peoples opinions - not as important if you have a decent demo.
Issue is even knowing about the games existence. So I would assume back then that it would be games that had marketing budgets and pushed by big publishers that ended up even being in a position to have a demo in a magazine. Now days games made by one dev can become hits out of nowhere to even their surprise.
shareware - I mean they probably didn't make much money.
But apogee, epic, id all came fom releasing shareware initially.
but also nethack and all that stuff.
I can't really remeber how it worked, but i think you got these bundles of paper stapled pamphlets for free with hundreds of shareware packages listed with a few lines of text describing each one.
If you didn't have BBS, you sent a real mail back to a distributor and they send you disks in the post ffor a fairly small charge.
Some shareware was so good the magazines had to cover it (for example, doom)
Also i think there just werent as many big budget titles back then (on PC),
Consoles probably had most of the money.
elite 2 was massive, but still only 1 bloke i think.
I’m doing my part to be part of the conversation by finally playing Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen. It was in my library and I’ve never played it. Figured I’d check out what all the fuss is about without dropping $70 bucks.
People never usually never (updating since absolute statements not best to make) vote with their wallet and gaming industry is way too big for people voting with their wallet to even matter, since it’s not a niche hobby. So bad press is the best outcome possible.
I also have a backlog of games and my friend just spun up his Minecraft server again, so my friend group havr been playing that a lot. My coworker took a day off to play Dragons Dogma 2. I have no desire to play that game rn.
Admittedly, most of the “Mostly Negative” Steam reviews seem to be reacting to the fact they exist at all, without considering whether they’re actually critical to your progress in the game or not (for clarity, they are not).
I didn’t know we were only allowed to write reviews based on things critical to your progress. I didn’t know how many companions you have or what your character looks like weren’t critical. I bet if we searched even a little we’d find a RockPaperShotgun review of “non critical” game features.
You can get the items for free by finding them or pay barbers in the villages for it instead. Similar to the first game, the first one was just niche so didn’t have a huge crowd throwing fits instead of reading or even playing the game
I get what they mean. A lot of the MTX seems to be items that you genuinely would find very readily in the game. Paying simply gives you a type of “very easy” mode if you’re for some reason inclined.
It’s a…. Strange decision, as it makes the game look bad. But by all accounts it doesn’t really impact the gameplay of the game. It’s just like giving you the option buy Phoenix Downs in Final Fantasy with real money. You… can. You really don’t need to, 98% of players won’t.
It’s goofy more than anything. I guess I’d rather have it rather than day 1 expansion packs like Mass Effect had.
Especially ones like Minotaur who just started commenting on Lemmy 3 days ago…
What timing.
Edit: don’t forget that sometimes people post in defederated instances and sometimes app developers for your lemmy app are so behind that shit isn’t even loading for you properly anymore
I again, never said anything about conspiracy, was just pointing out what I was able to see. Like I said in my other comment, I can only see shit you’ve been commenting up to a day ago. So either the app I’m using is busted as fuck, your instance is busted as fuck, or some other option - but I’ve only ever commented on what I was able to see.
Hopefully you understand where I’m coming from here.
Gamers throw a fit when content is locked behind a paywall because it is somehow unfair. Gamers are currently throwing a fit about content not being locked behind a paywall because that is also somehow unfair. Does that make sense to you?
It seems to me that this publisher heard the complaints about the way microtransactions were being implemented and decided to give people what they were asking for and now they’re getting crucified for it. Gamers got what they wanted. If that wasn’t what they really wanted they should have been asking for something else.
I don’t own this game nor have I ever completed a microtransaction in a major title. My spending habits don’t support the concept in any form. You know what my point is and you’re trying to high-horse your way past it. If you want to take a stand refund the game and vote with your wallet. No one wants to hear complaints about the price of cosmetics and getting in game currency quicker. It’s the most first world problem imaginable.
I dont buy these games, nor do I verbally defend such practices in them. I understand your point, but the real issue is them existing, not the form in which they exist in this case.
The whole "first world problem" is always hilarious when brought up. You can discuss or argue over anything you want, everyone experiences life differently. Just because there's people starving, that doesnt mean you cant talk about capitalist issues either. Its such a shitty dismissal everytime.
You’re free to call it what you wish. Complaining about voluntary purchases in a video game you also don’t need to buy is a vapid pursuit only engaged in by those with an excess of time and money and a lack of real world problems. If you want to waste your time debating the ethics of such a system existing then be my guest but don’t pretend you’re engaging in some lofty moral exercise. You’re just bored and looking for something to occupy your time so you chose to bitch about something inconsequential on the internet.
Making up something dumb to complain about is not the same as telling you to shut up about said dumb thing but I know you don’t really believe that anyway. You’re just trying to get a smug jab in and that’s the best you can come up with.
You are complaining about people complaining, talking down on people to get a feeling of superiority. If you dont like a conversation just move on with your life. Or is it that you have nothing better to do, so you choose to bitch about something inconsequential on the internet?
Upvoting your own comments too :)
I wont engage any further with this, its just gonna go in circles. Have a good one.
I don’t have anything better to do. I happily acknowledge that. My life is going pretty great all things considered, but then I’m not the one pretending to be an oppressed victim fighting a corrupt system via complaints about stuff I don’t need to buy. That’s what you’re doing.
Also, Lemmy defaults to upvoting posts you make. That’s something you should probably know before you criticize people for not going out of their way to downvote themselves. It makes you look kind of dumb to say stuff like that since you could have figured that out for yourself if you thought about it for more than two seconds, which now that I think about it is a pretty good summary of the rest of the things that you’ve said in this conversation.
I agree that the way they’ve been implemented in many other titles is annoying so I choose not to engage with them in that form. This implementation doesn’t impact anything so why would you be annoyed by it much less take the time to complain about it?
The thing is they made these features as part of the core gameplay then charged for them. It isn’t like you’re paying for a boost or game mode or special companion or something. You’re given the option to earn these features through playing a single player game or pay money and get them faster.
Literally carving out chunks of the base game and offering them up for money as if it is added value. The only value is saving time IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME. If your single player game has elements that are so tedious or cumbersome that people will literally PAY MORE MONEY to get them on their terms you purposefully built a worse game than you could have.
I got AC:Odyssey during one of the sale cause I dig Greek mythology, had to get cheat engine and spare me the grind for upgrading gears and ship. Like sure you can just keep picking up randomly dropped Epic/Rare and replacement them when you leveling up(there are even player quest that put in specific spot to give you resource for those upgrades, just so other players can farm it) But I ain’t get any time for that, I just cheat engine in max out resource and upgrade my Legendary gears I found through out the game. And you know what? By the end of the game(and I didn’t find every Legendary, like maybe 60~70% of them) it would take me setting the resource to max twice to fully upgrade all my legendary + epic(with perks I like) gears. It would take probably months of my gaming time should I got it on console and can not use cheat engine.
No, upgrade gear is not required to finish the game. But after this experience I decides to never get another Ubisoft AC game nor any RPG on console or with always online feature(which means all transaction are done and authenticated to prevent cheating. ) I’ve done plenty open world, RPG, Monster Hunters without having to cheat. But the recent single player grinding + selling time saver booster pack make me whip out the cheat engine again. And I only cheat those stupid resource gating game that are designed to pad hours in to your play through.
Yeah, they know they are doing though, they are aiming for those that work 9-5 have life and kids and some spare changes and milk them hard. Like this game would take 200 hours to complete fully with X hundreds of hours of post game content that was designed to make your grind, but you can also pay for this [xp booster, resource pack, legendary set, etc] to make sure you can enjoy the post game content if you don’t have the time to grind the game how it’s “meant to be played”.
In my AC:Odessey example, I think at one point the designer might be doing a heavy zelda influenced where you just pick up stuff enemies dropped and the blacksmiths are there for you to repair items broken as resource dump. (which make sense and very fitting of that era and how resource would work) But once that MTX department put their finger in now you have a derailed system. There is a spread sheet that list the hours required to upgrade a legendary piece to which level, and recommended level to get them(as their starting level is fixed and not like the enemy droppped item that matches your level), I saw the numbers and downloaded the cheat engine table the next hour.
I saw this same thing with games like Dead Space 3. They included a cash shop, very likely hard-pushed by some asinine executive. But, you could tell by playing the game, the majority of developers likely tested with that feature off. Was it a fun game? No, but resource starvation was not the reason for that.
Basically it feels like the hands trying to microtransact for singleplayer games are not the same as the ones designing those games to begin with. It still deserves negative attention, just nuance.
You are basically betting on the developers being bad at their jobs and not being able to do what they are clearly trying to do, which is making people but microtransactions.
“They” is far, far, far too encompassing a word. If you’ve worked in any organization such as this, especially these days, they involve so many different companies (yes, more than one studio works on a game now) with so many different teams all under a publishing studio whose head may never have even played any of this genre of game.
So, a developer in one studio is often just trying to make a good RPG in their debug build (and insists no/light fast travel for world-immersion reasons), and only hears over the grapevine “Wait…they took the complaints about no fast-travel and made it a DLC? That sounds terrible, gamers will hate that.” Multiple people across the credits can have varying intentions.
Why? Is there some kind of real cost to changing appearance or fast travel that it needs to be limited? Or is that there solely so they can sell MTX?
I’m playing Baldur’s Gate 3 right now and you can do both at any time for free. It’s literally a standard UI thing across games with large maps and character creators.
Hey, why even have to buy dyes? The game should give them all to you for free. And supplies can be gathered, you should just get infinite supply packs too
??? Renting companions of your level has always been free, they only cost rift crystals if they are higher than you. Killing strong monsters and getting your pawn rented give plenty resources.
The character creation tome is easy to get, idk what to tell you.
If you want to throw horseshit to a wall, not this one please. If you had played the game you wouldn’t have even mentioned half of what you did.
“They only cost rift crystals if they’re a higher level than you”
Ah yes this is additional value and content that you should pay money for, right? It’s not core gameplay to recruit companions regardless of their level like in almost every fucking game I’ve ever played right?
Imagine licking boot so hard that you actually believe this
Rift crystals are an in game currency, you don’t need to pay money for it! I’ve been recruiting companions 1-4 lvls above me all the time, I’m lvls 30 now, with the in game currency. The higher the pawn is you get less exp so it’s not something that you should do anyway.
Imagine thinking that renting a LVL 200 companion is core gameplay. Geez…
This game is an improvement over the first one in almost all sides, with great content. It’s stupid reading all this takes from people that clearly have not played it, let alone the original.
And before you mention the eternal ferrystone from the original, that came with the expansion, not the release.
It’s ok that I can buy in game currency for my singer player game! It’s fine! It’s good actually! Recruiting high level companions, a THING THEY BUILT INTO THE BASE GAME DELIBERATELY THEN LET YOU PAY EXTRA FOR, using in game currency I can buy isn’t pay2win. Recruiting companions isn’t even core gameplay if they’re strong enough, bro.
It’s ok that Capcom sent reviewers a game without micro transactions that were in retail! That’s fine, it’s fine! The microtransactions were paying for now were expansions before so it’s uh…it’s better, yeah. I actually prefer my $70 USD single player games to have gameplay benefitting microtransactions.
You sound like you’ve swallowed the boot my guy. You’re so far gone you can’t see the way back. Glad you’re enjoying the game, though. Sounds like it was worth it to you.
I’m gonna ignore all that stuff you extrapolated from my strawman.
Anyway, of course I’m enjoying it! I loved the original and this is the same and more. This is a great game with BS corporate microtransactions sprinkled in. I agree that the MTXs are BS, but saying that the game was designed around baiting the player into using them outs you as someone that wouldn’t enjoy the first one nor the intended gameplay, so it’s kinda pointless dosucssing further.
Have fun lying to yourself about the intended mechanics I guess.
Rift crystals are earned by playing just like the first game. Their only purpose is to hire higher level pawns, but you earn them when people pay for your pawn or you complete their quests. It’s part of the interplay of players exchange pawns.
Recent Capcom games have all done this where it’s a great game and right on release they stuff a bunch of micro transactions in for in-game currency but you would have to be an absolute chud to buy any of it because it’s so trivial to earn.
DMCV did the same thing with trying to sell red orbs, the primary upgrade currency, but if you didn’t see people complain about it online, you wouldn’t even notice it in game.
Yeah that’s like the whole problem, not a triviality. I’m sure DD2 is fun. Ive watched a lot of it streamed. Seems cool. I’m not gonna buy it because they did this shit, same reason I didn’t buy DMCV and haven’t bought a Capcom game in years. Stop rewarding scummy companies.
Full price games with microtransactions are negative, end of story. Everybody saying otherwise grew up after they where implemented in every other game so they don’t know better.
They got trained, like animals, to swallow that shit.
I grew up after them. I think they’re fine in certain circumstances. If the game is supposed to have free content updates for weeks and months and whatever else after launch then yeah sure, why not
“Of course they don’t stop progress… you’ll just be stuck grinding for way way longer with our patented unfun^tm^ systems unless you pay, peasant valued consumer”
I love how in your example “perfect” is not having moneygrubbing microtransactions and the “good” compromise we’re supposed to accept is the microtransactions the chose to put in for no purpose other than money
rockpapershotgun.com
Aktywne