Honestly, I think the bar for games these days is totally warped. People expect these cinematic masterpieces with ultra-realistic graphics in gigantic 3d landscapes with massive autonomy, extensive character creation options, full voice acting, juiced up complex mechanics, and zero bugs, and they want it yesterday. If it costs more than a full tank of gas they’ll say it’s too expensive, and if it isn’t fully patched on day 1 they’ll call it unfinished.
It seems almost obvious that simpler 2D games are a better and more satisfying alternative in this landscape. No wonder AAA studios seem like they’re racing to the bottom.
How are you supposed to get all that and also have a decent story or a sense of cohesion? We need to simplify.
Paradox's games don't really do storytelling in a traditional sense. They're strategy and managememt games. Some of them are pretty damn good at creating stories dynamically through gameplay, or providing a frame upon which you can create your own stories, but they were never intended to be narrative experiences
What’s that meme? Hold on… I can dust it off since it’s still applicable. Oh, right! “I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less, and I mean it!”
I don’t need it to be super epic in scope and graphically mind blowing. I just want a tight, focused, well thought out game that isn’t buggy af. And it doesn’t have to be flawless day 1, but there should be some pretty good communication and patches in the first month.
“We need to simplify” indie games are doing just fine. It’s almost like super massive studios take much more money to make games with less replay value.
And who expects cinematic masterpieces? Most gamers skip the cutscenes and all dialog lol
Studios make the games pretty for pre sale hype. Getting people interested without game play.
Agree. The thing with realistic graphics is that it brings in soooo much complexity on a systems level that it becomes the center point everything else revolves around.
Imaging a 2d game vs a 3d game. Alone trough that you have a complete third dimension wich you have to account for.
A whole book full of new bugs are possible now.
And with realistic graphics the brain now expects the rules of the world to be realistic too.
My character looks photorealistic so, of course, the environment needs to look photorealistic too otherwise we go into uncanny valley territory.
So next thing the interaction needs to look realistic too. Think walking trough a forrest and the player character pushing leaves out of his way.
That is just to fucking much you need to test and invest time in to be flexible anymore.
The simple answer here is better art direction. Photorealism is neat but not needed.
With simpler graphics it becomes cheaper to change stuff in development so it becomes more viable to experiment with creative ideas.
You can have more diverse assets because they are, potentially, cheaper/less time consuming to make and they don’t take as much space.
Like 1 photorealistic tree needs as much discspace as 2 trees with half the polygons.
In the and gaming has become a business and people got involved that don’t play games.
For them it is just an investment and no different to a car or a garden hose. And for those people the only viable way to solve a problem is to trow money at it.
Which worked but only for making things grander not making it more interesting. For that you need people that solve problems with creativity.
And you get people who solve problems with creativity when there is less money because you have no other choice but to solve it like that.
That is clearly not the whole picture but a part of it IMHO.
I think at this point, if you are a gaming enthusiasts and are informed about the “scene” there is just no reason to buy AAA(AAAAAAA) games anymore.
And also no need to be angry about it. Just ignore them and talk about the indies that made a change. It is more productive to have that dominate the conversation than what sucks.
Because talking about shit is still advertisement for shit.
the recent avatar game is a great example of actually hitting the mark visually and superficially (probably one of the better looking games I’ve ever played) and the physics and gameplay in the world are pretty damn good. but people complain the story is boring. and yeah it’s not amazing. I don’t think it’s terrible, and it’s a game really built to explore the environment rather than complete missions.
it’s near impossible to get that perfect game that hits every single button possible. I truly think we gamers need to settle down a bit as a whole. Sure buggy messes that are unplayable are not something we should tolerate, but I think we need to stop treating everything that isn’t perfect as a pile of shit
They are part of the studios… point was “the bar” is “fun/interesting”. The vast majority of people that purchase games don’t have a bar as defined by the content I originally replied to.
I completely agree that business ghouls doing business ghoul things make studios make worse games… doesn’t really affect my point though… studios are not making games based on a “bar” set by the consumers as described in the original post…
This is a shame, I haven’t played a sims game in a while and I remember them quite fondly. The latest EA sims stuff has just been utter micro transaction slop, or at least last I checked. I hate to see a smaller studio that’s not working through one of bastard publishers get hit like this.
I’m a lot more patient with paradox than I am with other publishers. Their focus still seems on producing interesting games rather than chasing “maximized revenue”. There are realities to being a publisher though. if a studio is failing to produce something and your financials are limited, there’s only so much risk you can take on extending deadlines, and writing something off for a quick boost to financials is a alluring sirens call.
I have my issues with how paradox studios design is affected by their DLC model, but I don’t think there’s a better way to bring in ongoing revenue to fund further development.
It’s a mess, all of it, but it is a results of the context and system they exist with in, not necessarily the will of those making the calls at paradox. Paradox tends to do a better job of existing with in the system without making pure slop than other big publishers, so they have my patience for that.
The latest EA sims stuff has just been utter micro transaction slop, or at least last I checked.
Feels like the only valid way to play the Sims these days is to pirate it. No one wants to pay $500 for the complete DLC collection, and if you don’t have that you’ll always be plagued with fomo and possible mod conflicts.
All I want is someone to make an open world Sims 3 like game with 64-bit support and better multicore support. Can’t wait to see if Paralives and Life by You will deliver
Sims 3 was best, no? I feel like it was the full package and mostly complete right out of the box. Didn’t have the same feeling in 4 at all. Been some years since I tried 4, but when it launched I remember going back to 3 almost immediately after a couple weeks.
I did the same thing. It may have been because there weren't as many dlcs and expansions, but it just felt really dull. Plus it didn't have the completely open world like 3 did. Sitting through all those loading screens every time you wanted to go somewhere was a pain.
I tried playing Sims 3 again recently and holy hell is the performance bad. Like the FPS is running at whatever I cap it at but there are constant freezes and stuttering with no FPS drops even with all the recommended performance mods. I then remembered I stopped playing for that very reason ages ago and now my desktop is like 100x more powerful.
Edit: it sounds like they are actually delaying to ensure a more polished release. Given the massive scope of the game, this seems totally reasonable. I wish Paradox would push deadlines more often honestly, given the sorry state of their most recent titles on release day (CS2 and Vic3 in particular) Though I am still disappointed we won’t get LBY sooner.
Good choice, a favorite of mine as well. In the middle of the night when I’m supposed to be sleeping with a theme that often makes no sense in reality but I’m bought in 100% anyway until my alarm goes off.
Exactly! I spent an entire night playing a football game over and over in my head that didn’t happen and wasn’t important to the team. But John Elway just could not throw for a first down to save his life…
What’s happening to RPS? I’ve been seeing more and more articles from them about games the writer has never played, with no useful information. Like this one, basically copy and paste of the patch notes and a summary of steam reviews. Used to like them for in depth game reviews, guess that’s going the way of the dodo.
Gave it a whirl. Basically, you can now scrap ships to get their components to create a new ship inside any station. Couldn’t find any merchant within the station selling pieces, so you have to go out and explore, or scrap some of your own ships.
Stations now look slightly different from one another and no longer have those semi-hidden rooms that nobody cared about. Alien vendors now give a discount if you’re at a good standing with their race. Guild “vendors” offer a list of stuff for free, but I don’t get why the prompt is red instead of white. Performance is still mostly CPU bound.
Overall decent update, but the new features don’t warrant playing more than 1 hour.
They had to have seen the writing on the wall at least a year or two before they brought this to market.
I seem to remember that at about a year before launch there was some reporter (Jason Schreier?) who had an inside tip that they were changing some stuff in the face of the realization that GaaS were not the money maker they were thought to be once upon a time, but the tipper also said that they were too locked into the GaaS paradigm to make the sort of meaningful changes that would salvage the experience. I don't think there's any rescuing this one if they knew they were in trouble a full year before delivery and still couldn't shape it up into a product worthy of attention.
There was a similar comment about that. How they are in a sunk cost fallacy for all the GaaS promises they made a few years ago. And to not release it means they make zero.
Versus releasing and maybe they make some money back.
Fuuuuck, Elite Dangerous is so fucking good. Anyone can make a zoo sim or other games. Very very few can make a massive space Sim with good controls, multiplayer, and the sheer scale and intensity of E:D’s FPS ship combat.
Exactly. My ideal game would be a mix of Elite Dangerous, X4 Foundations, and Starfield. ED has the galaxy map, flight model, and combat down. It just needs to be more of a game.
Some people here are blaming paradox but honestly, I don't envy any game releasing in this period. We've had so many great (and expensive games) in the past few months but even if that weren't the case, personally I'm not willing to pay 50€ for something that looks like a blander XCOM game (or 65€ if you want the special additional character, bleugh).
Then again maybe I'm just not the diehard fan and their target audience, the only game of theirs I played was shadorun many years ago and I wasn't interested in battletech either. If I were in a mood for a turn based game I know I'd sooner pick up BG3 since their price is relatively close...
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