Servers cost money, adding content costs money, if you want something for free, who’s paying these costs? Because if it’s the business, they won’t be in business very long if they just spend money and have nothing coming back in.
I say this as a person in their 30s, age is irrelevant here.
FFVII for PS1 didn’t need a server. There were no mtx or post to social media buttons or pay walled content crap, just a game you paid for and played. It didn’t need to always be online or require a secondary launcher.
Fast-forward and here we are with profitability being the most important aspect of gaming. Sucking every tiny bit of money and attention away from competing games that do the same thing. Character licensing fees and in game ads literally everywhere. Single player experiences requiring online components so that even though you aren’t directly participating in the mtx system the companies you buy from are still mining your usage data and selling it off to third parties. Mtx and ads and all that are just how gaming is now. Younger adult gamers have a pretty big role in his this had turned out. Instead of saying no to these types of games, they were just like ‘meh I like posting $5 for horse armor…’ and that’s all it took.
The key difference being you paid for the game…. This is a free game… totally different scenarios. So yes I will downvote you for completely missing the point of the discussion and ranting on about something totally irrelevant.
How does a company keep paying for servers and content when they don’t charge for the game or anything else….? With proper MTXs….
I didn’t miss the point. You’re talking about free games that live on mtx and ads… That’s the problem. There shouldn’t be games that function that way, and the fact that you’re using that as some gotcha talking point just proves how normalized they are. They’re predatory.
It’s another unrelated market, mobile games can’t charge $80 for a game. People don’t even like paying $10. That style of developing is barely affordable nowadays as well for pc/console anyways, but that’s another argument and not relevant to this one.
You are comparing apples to oranges. And there’s nothing predatory when it’s done correctly, but there’s also some people who just see the devil in everything, lien you apparently.
It’s hard to take seriously because people don’t like their hobbies and interests being scrutinized.
I’m not going to argue about this anymore. It’s one of those things where the hobby I used to enjoy is no longer for me. It’s for you kids to buy your V Bucks and season passes at an ever increasing price. Let the publishers know you love giving them more and more money for beta software wrapped in a new Peter Griffin skin!
I didn’t choose it and neither did you. You had this forced on you and you were like “yes, daddy more” because people don’t have the stones to say no with their wallets. You won’t give up your Diablo IV Season Pass trinket pack with 666 Devil Coins and a new Overwatch “Dablo” skin for Moira. You’re out of your depth.
Listen if you want to piss away money on transient shit you are welcome to go and do it, but the person missing the nuances here is you. The industry moving towards these models is negatively affecting gaming as a whole and it’ll only get worse, even if you’re too blinded by tacky skins to notice the reason why.
My guy, I wasn't even trying to make a defense of micro transactions, I was pointing out the really weird comparison of a PS1 game from 1997 with no baked in online features, and a modern game with baked in online features.
Matchmaking is also peer to peer as far as anyone knows but I can’t find any info on how messages are handled. It’s entirely possible those also work on their peer to peer system but even if not a server that serves short text snippets with coordinates to all these players could be run on 20 year old hardware so not even costly enough to register.
Oh, yea, they have a verification server for shadowbans but it isn’t strictly necessary for matchmaking, if that verification process were removed you can still play. The seemless coop mod for example does that.
Saying you were 13/14 when horse armor came out doesn’t help your case arguing against their comment. It just means you were prime gaming age when dlc, map packs, and smaller content were replacing larger expansions. The acceptance of those (which based on your demographic you probably did accept) made it easier to transition to more and more egregious micro transactions.
There used to be (maybe still are) complete games released on mobile. They usually cost $6.99 and didn’t need more. If they want Elden Ring on mobile without tarnishing its reputation, they could sell a complete experience for $10 or $15 since it’s been a decade since those $6.99 prices. That’s what Elden Ring was and it was widely praised. That’s what the rest of their games have done and that has turned out well for them.
There may be servers for the multiplayer, but based on the fact none of the other From Soft games charged for it the cost must be minimal.
No, they aren’t. DLC is an expansion upon the content. The best case scenario for mtx that do not affect gameplay are cosmetic only.
If a game in any way has anything else than cosmetic mtx, the game is worse.
“But you don’t have to buy it!” Is how I often see them defended, the subtext being that, if I don’t buy them it doesn’t affect my experience.
Here is the secret, games with mtx are designed to have problems and they sell you the solution. They are designed WORSE intentionally, so you will spend money to bypass the inconveniences. Often your time.
A perfect example is something like long standing games selling boosts to max level. They’re aware the old content is dead, and they’re aware the only people playing it are the people who don’t want to spend money. Why don’t they fix that?
The answer is they did, they decided that inconvenience was acceptable in their game in order to convince the player to spend money.
MTX is not content, often it’s used to bypass content or save time. DLC is content. DLC often expands upon the experience of the game. MTX worsens the experience of the game just buy existing. Dlc doesn’t change your experience if you don’t purchase or use it. MTX changes the game at a base level no matter if you spend money or not.
I feel like it’s just wrong to call these games ‘free’. They are ‘partially free’ with the incentive to extract as much money from you as possible in order to get the ‘good stuff’ or simply to avoid endless hours of unfun grinding. It’s just inferior in every way compared to games you pay for once and that’s it, because they don’t need to drip feed you ‘fun’.
Exceptions apply to competitive games that need a changing meta and content updates. New content for non-competitve ‘free’ games mostly amounts to new stuff you can buy to surpass new arbitrary walls built in front of you.
IMTX can be fair if these don’t abuse the players time, and offer fun content.
IMTX and not wasting players time are nearly mutually-exclusive. These games are designed with the MTX in mind at every single step of the process, and are made with the soleintent of maximizing MTX sales. Them wasting your time is not a mistake, but an intentional (and meticulously-researched and -designed) feature.
There are exceptions, yes, of course, but they are few and far between.
These sorts of decisions can impact future decisions. It is to early to say that this is a trend, so people shouldn’t get all up in arms over things. But still, using other company histories as a basis, it is concerning about where this could end up.
I would argue the storyline was a big part of it. While barebones by today’s standards, compared to the likes of Doom, Quake or even Unreal, it was pretty amazing to have a continuous narrative throughout the game.
It was tricky to find actual numbers so correct me if I am wrong, but if you look at the entire lifetime net profit (not revenue) of Elden Ring since it’s launch, it appears that Dragon Ball Bokken made all of Elden Ring’s profit in just 2024 alone.
When you read Bandai’s financial reports they always open with their mobile games, with From Software titles getting an “honorable mention” at the end.
A small number of mobile games sell better make obscene money, the vast majority make a pittance or lose money. But corporate types cant stop salivating at the thought of being the ones to own the next candy crush, so they’d rather take a shot at that than produce something with merit that will likely make a reasonable return.
Supergiant Games is probably my favorite studio out there but I just can’t do early access anymore. If I play it now, I know I won’t go back when it’s released to see the stuff that changed…
Feel free, I think it’ll be a great game when you check back in.
I’m a big Hades 1 fan, and played that game in it’s early state as well. Hades 2’s early access feels roughly 90% or more complete, it’s missing pictures for some items (placeholders for now), some character portraits of some of the lesser-interacted-with NPCs. I think there will be another weapon because there’s a slot for it, and there’s seemingly some more boss content. Gameplay, basically at 100%
So if you’re likely to finish and not check back in, definitely wait because the game should be in pristine condition by then, with it being this polished already. Love this studio, love this game
I hear you, but I caved lol. You will NOT be disappointed. EA is such a weird choice for this one. It’s where I’d call it well past beta (a true beta, not the marketing betas that we usually see where there’s no time to fix anything). Like it truly is “early access” but we’re so used to that term meaning “somewhere in dev”.
If they’re targeting 2025 release this thing will be incredibly polished by then.
I know, I know. Supergiant can’t miss so I’m positive I would love it…it’s just that I don’t ever replay games like this and I’d rather wait a year for the polished version than get my fix now.
Is the story or voice acting done tho? It was my understanding with the first one that basically all the story and stuff came as hades completed early access. I feel like you can’t call it even 90% if the story isn’t there or its going to change or is incomplete. And what i loved most about the first one was the storytelling. I’m pretty sure thats why most ppl loved it.
I don’t know when the person above you played, but I didn’t notice any of that (got it last week, binged it, 35ish hours). I didn’t notice any missing graphics, and yes there are some spots where you can tell somethings coming, but it doesn’t feel janky, it feels exciting. With game loop being all about upgrades, you can tell there’s a few that aren’t available, but there’s so much meat their absence feels like part of the loop not part of the dev cycle.
The voice acting is all there, the mechanics are all there. I think I had like… One line of repeated dilouge? There’s a good breadth of characters and they’ve got that same slow, well thought out progression they did in Hades I. With only one exception that I can’t mention due to spoilers, you could tell me this a complete game with free DLC inbound.
Bug wise it’s almost entirely free. I had some crashes but I think that was due to a bad HDMI cable repeatedly becoming unstable, and making the game freak out as to what screen it should be on. I haven’t had an issue since I fixed the cable and it’s the only bug I encountered.
Several characters, all keepsakes, all fish except, I think, one, at least one background element…
The voice acting is all there
I’d be very surprised if the number of voiced characters isn’t significantly higher in the finished game. And, of course, we’re missing the top end of the relationship interactions with all characters, which will definitely be voice acted.
the mechanics are all there
I wouldn’t be surprised if we get some new mini games in certain parts of the map we can’t access yet.
Apart from these minor nitpickings, however, I completely agree (well, except that I haven’t had any crashes or significant bugs); I’m already enjoying the game as much as the first one, and I definitely feel I got my money’s worth, which is sadly quite unusual for too many supposedly complete games these days.
The only crash like I said was almost certainly due to a multi-monitor display and one monitor disconnecting and reconnecting. I didn’t even bother submitting a report.
And yeah there’s definitely going to be a few extras. Its wild, like I never play games at launch, specifically because they always ship broken, and here this thing is with the stones to call itself early access when it’s so polished narcissus would gaze at himself in if.
There are parts of the story and maps we simply can’t get to because they aren’t there yet (I imagine about 30 to 50%), and there’s a limit to how much we can improve our relationship with the various characters (which means that there’s probably a significant amount of voice acting we can’t hear yet), all of this clearly indicated as provisionally cut content (“you might be able to do this in the future”, “can’t go there yet”, “what happened after this is, for now, literally indescribable”, that kind of thing).
There’s also what’s clearly provisional concept art from time to time, and plenty of placeholder character models and art (plus keepsakes, and fish, the later even having generic descriptions), and there’s almost certainly missing gods and characters (though there’s no indication of which those might be and in which number).
So, yeah, it’s not complete, by a long shot.
That said, I’m fairly certain that there’s already as much content and story as in the complete first game, if not more, or at least it feels like it. And it’s just as fun.
Supergiant is probably the only studio I’d still buy an early access from, even day one. Even when I end up not liking it that much (like Pyre), it is interesting enough to be worth the asking price.
To this day, Hades is still my most played game on the Switch (I even managed to get a physical copy), and I will probably do the same with Hades II… Maybe on the Switch 2, who knows 😆.
I’m going to use this as an excuse to go back and play Hades 1. I bought and binged it when it first released EA, and never went back to play the released version.
I miss when dumpster fires used to burn out after a day or so. Devs need to learn when to shut the fuck up and walk away. Fleece some more rubes in another 5 years or so.
Ah Paradox is finding their model of releasing unfinished games and getting around to solving it later less appealing!
That is a little disappointing, actually, as Paradox made some damn good games this way. Crusader Kings 2, Hearts of Iron 4 and Stellaris were all made like that.
Look, I get it, but the state of DLC in Paradox games has moved beyond even the memes. I think they took those as inspiration. There’s a fucking monthly pass now!
I deeply enjoy their games, but the DLC bloat confounds me.
I feel guilty about it, but I appreciate the monthly pass. I played EUIV for exactly one month, at a total cost of like $7 (got the base game for free at some point) with all the bells and whistles. It seemed like a good compromise because you’d have to pay it for years at this point to cover the DLC out right, but it is a disgusting level of rent seeking behavior.
Now it bothers me that I’d need to put another $7-$10 into the machine to access those saves, but not as much as if I’d throw down hundreds of dollars on it to own the content for a 10 year old game.
It’s been nice if they had a “perpetual fallback license” approach where you are granted everything you’ve subscribed to for at least 12 months even if you cancel subscription.
That may be true but with that kind of success behind them, one would assume they have the budget to finish their games without needing the support of the crutch that is the Early Access model.
Stellaris is one of my all time favorite games, but the late game really becomes unplayable from lag. I have over 1000 hours in it because I love it’s modding and the immersion possible with it, but the performance is a real problem.
They have tried to address this too, with minor success, but that doesn’t help when the start of each month from 2350 onwards takes seconds to load.
Sims 4 released in 2014. They had plenty of time to address bugs in-between the millions of stupid updates, but they didn’t bother. Who honestly expects any real work from these guys at this point?
If I’m given a choice between some fixes and no fixes, I’ll take some. You know they’ll dump the code like a hot potato once Sims 5 starts rolling out micro expansions.
I think the real news is that they are no longer making new content cause the new mainline game is now all hands on deck with whoever’s leftover just working on minor updates for 4 now
I don’t even know how I feel about this. On the one hand, it’s great we’re moving away from 4 which was always a shitshow to begin with, on the other hand I have no faith whatsoever 5 is going to be even on par with 4.
I’m both hopeless and optimistic at the same time. I want it to be good so I’ll reserve judgement until we get actual concrete info.
Yeah, I got sick of the way they dealt with dlc for 4. Early on it was still kind of annoying but if you were of a certain persuasion you could look past it. But compared to how it ended up being, the early days of 4 expansions now look like heaven.
Instead of playing 4 I’ve been messing around with XP and playing 1, 2 and the Stories games. I’m sad the series had ended up how it is but I’m glad of the earlier games still though and they bring me endless joy.
Where did you see that they are no longer making new content for Sims 4? The article doesn’t seem to say so and the last I heard they planned to release content for Sims 4 alongside Sims 5. FYI, I would prefer they stop with Sims 4 content.
Oh okay. A while back, their VP Lyndsay Pearson explicitly said they plan for Sims 4 to continue to exist side by side with Project Rene (aka Sims 5). I was wondering if that had changed. My cynical take on the plan to keep both going is that Sims 5 is probably going to be a live service abomination, which they wanted Sims 4 to be, so keeping Sims 4 might be hedge in case Sims 5 fails hard. Of course, they could also have been lying.
It’s funny how as soon as two competing projects (Life By You and Paralives) start to get closer to release they suddenly care about improving stuff they’ve ignored for 10 years lol
They’re the only games I enjoy. And I could’ve sworn I’ve seen people all over the internet lamenting the loss of story-driven single player games in this era of GTA online. These douchebags are either salivating looking at GTA online profitability and talking bullshit or they’re so goddamn deluded with their head so far up their own ass that they can’t tell their colon from their pancreas.
On the topic, anyway: my favorite games are RDR2, Cyberpunk, and Alan Wake 2. I wasn’t always a gamer, but the graphics have gotten so good and the stories so involved (in these here specifically) that I became one later in life. But now I’ve played all three of those games to death. Do you have any recs for similar games I might enjoy? I was just looking around the PS store and felt like I was swimming through nonsense. I really wanted to play Stalker 2, but it’s not out for PS5 yet. The next game I’m eyeing is a silent Hill 2 remake. Not a big fantasy person, either. I like stories with their feet in the real world. Don’t mean to single you out to give me advice, but figured I’d ask in case you had something you really liked.
It had a bit of narrative (killing the corrupted son of the traitor out of mercy and to save the world, killing the corrupted angel like beings because they are a threat to humanity), but you’re right, what really drives you is the fun gameplay loop and the challenge of escalating difficulty.
im getting really tired of all of these MS acquisitions. I know the nintendo one is very unlikely, but i would be pissed as fuck to see valve swallowed up by this terrifying beast.
Valve isn’t any more likely than Nintendo, given you can’t buy shares because there are none, and it’s a money printing machine that would have a truly absurd value.
“You don’t need (and therefore shouldn’t want) this obviously good thing” has this connotation that the Minecraft team has been wasting their time on pointless features, when in reality first-party support for a feature is nearly always more stable than a mod.
Plus read the article, the author is a vehement hater of Minecraft. What a joke.
I migrated my emails to my own domain and needed to change the address on every service. They don’t even allow changing the email address for years now, judging by their faq. It’s fucking embarrassing.
Good as a supplement, but the RPS article gives context itch.io is too much of a cowardly little bitch to include like: “Collective Shout describe themselves as a “grassroots campaigns movement against the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls”, but are associated with outspokenly homophobic and anti-abortion Christian conservative groups, according to a now-deleted Vice article.”
Wow, holy shit. How fucking far Vice has fallen. There was a time they would go the extra mile to cover wild shit that no one else was doing. Greed and the wealthy’s critical need to have control over the media ruins everything.
This game looked like a scam before release. The developers copied art style and their trailer scenes from other games, and never shown gameplay videos. In the trailers it looked like AAA, but was developed by a studio without required experience. There were doubts the game existed at all. Well, it existed, but was far from what trailers shown.
I remember like a week after the first trailer dropped some YouTube dude made a video saying it was sus and wondered if it was real. I can’t remember their arguments, as of was a while ago, but they were convincing.
Also, for how long it was supposedly in development, what they released doesn’t even make sense… Like it kind of looks like a hobbiest could make that on their own pretty quickly (assuming they used free/bought assets)
I use a CC, so I really don’t give a shit if someone steals my number.
Last time my card got skimmed it was $0 and <30 seconds to fix, including hold time. They don’t fuck around when you’re reporting stolen info, because legally it’s their money, not yours.
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