It looks cool, but frankly I’m far more interested in how it’s going to be monetized. I bought into PoE early access back in the day but stopped playing after a few years because I got fed up with how its game design is compromised in order to accommodate its business model. Specialized stash tabs for currency, maps, cards, etc. are basically a mandatory purchase, since inventory management is hell without them. Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but IMO deliberately introducing game design problems, such as tedious inventory management, so that you can sell the solutions is a scummy practice. The same goes for drop rates, which are frustratingly low in order to force you to trade instead of finding your gear yourself, since in order to trade effectively, you need to buy a few premium tabs. Even though I actually made all these purchases to overcome these artificial hindrances, being squeezed like that left such a bad taste in my mouth that I just couldn’t enjoy the game anymore. If they keep this up in PoE2, I’m going to steer well clear.
…but IMO deliberately introducing game design problems so that you can sell the solutions is a scummy practice.
This isn’t your personal opinion. This is a valid complaint from many avid gamers. I am not one of these avid gamers. However, I have read about this issue from many gamers in this particular space (i.e. non-casual players).
I dunno, the game seems extremely popular and successful despite this, so clearly a lot of people don’t mind. It’s hard to gauge what the majority opinion is.
On the one hand I totally agree, on the other hand I spent like 40€ on PoE for everything I wanted and got way more gameplay out of it than of many full price games.
I also have a lot of playtime in it, but most of it wasn’t really quality time. I tried real hard to like the game, but in hindsight I should’ve given up on it way sooner. Even with all the tabs, inventory management is still a nightmare. I hate the currency system with a passion, I resent the fact that there’s no loot vacuum, I despise having to manually identify items. I don’t like trading, and trying to find my own gear was like being rolled around in a zorbing ball made out of sandpaper. There’s way too much friction everywhere in the system for no good reason. I love the core gameplay, the monsters have cool designs and are fun to kill, the skills feel punchy and satisfying to use… It’s just the overarching structure built around that that ruins it for me. Shame.
In modern ARPGs, you automatically pick up currency just by being near it. In PoE, you have to individually click each currency item to pick it up. Given that PoE has a very sophisticated loot filter system, I find it very strange that it requires so much clicking to pick stuff up. You’ve already decided what loot you want to pick up when you set up your loot filter, so the clicking is mostly superfluous and could be automated. IMO that would make the game play much better, since having to stop to pick up loot interrupts the gameplay and breaks the flow.
That would require every player even new ones to make very complex loot filters and understand what loot is valuable and not to automate it.
Every item in PoE that is automatically picked up doesn't take up inventory space (Metamorph organs, Expedition fragments, Sulphite, Azurite). The concept is that players make an active decision of what they're picking up and that they're aware of what they have because they made an active decision to pick it up.
It doesn't take control of their inventory away from the players.
It also feeds into the dopamine loop, when you get an exciting drop you see it on the ground it doesn't automatically just get sucked into your inventory.
That would require every player even new ones to make very complex loot filters and understand what loot is valuable and not to automate it.
No, it wouldn’t, because it would not be mandatory (just like loot filters themselves aren’t).
Every item in PoE that is automatically picked up doesn’t take up inventory space (Metamorph organs, Expedition fragments, Sulphite, Azurite).
You’re this close to getting it. The extremely limited inventory space in PoE and other ARPGs is a severe design defect, the games would be much better if inventory space was simply infinite. I’ve had a long and complex discussion about this very topic with someone just a day or two ago, so I don’t feel like explaining myself on this point all over again. Feel free to check that if you’re interested.
It also feeds into the dopamine loop, when you get an exciting drop you see it on the ground it doesn’t automatically just get sucked into your inventory.
That would be much better solved by having a pop-up show you the exciting drop as you automatically pick it up. That way the player would still get their dopamine hit without the game also constantly filling their annoyance meter by making them pick up garbage manually.
Yeah, hard to criticize the model when you can just get everything you need for less then the price of a AAA game. It just makes it a “free to try” game, instead of a truly free to play one, and that’s fine.
And besides, in recent leagues they have gone less hard on the specialized stash tabs model, and more on the cosmetic one. They haven’t added a league specific stash tab since delirium league, and that was over 3 years ago.
They’ve said that all microtransactions from PoE1 will carry over to PoE2, which implies that all of those stash tab requirements will still exist, and we can presume they’ll just keep adding more.
Wasn’t that back when PoE2 was supposed to just be a big update to PoE1? I haven’t followed the development news all that closely, but I know that used to be the plan.
Nope, they said it again during the live stream where they had two people play part of the third act this exile con. Every mtx that effects something that is present in both games will be shared between them. I’d guess stash tabs will be included in both games, so those should carry over.
There was a (recent) PCGamer article that specifically called out stash tabs as being something that would be shared… I don’t know if they were basing that on anything or just speculating, but as you note, it seems obvious that that mechanic would be in both games.
It’s all in what you think is worth it. For me, it’s my favorite genre. I have spent about $400 or maybe $500 for over 2500 hours of gaming since the beta in PoE which is way less per hour than most games I’ve paid for up front. It’s worth it to me for playing a fun game for all that time. I also don’t really think they purposely design the game to need stash tabs. It’s just what it is. Look at D4 and all the people complaining they can’t buy more. They obviously didn’t design it like that. It’s just that type of game.
Bottom line for me is I haven’t spent money in that game in years and still play every league because everything I ever bought is still there and will be in PoE2 as well from what they say. I wonder about the tabs…
I actually love PoE’s inventory management, but I play the game “wrong.” I hardly ever trade, except to grab a cheap unique here or there that enables a build. I pick up and manually ID all the items that could be useful, even knowing that there’s only like a 1/10,000 chance that they actually are. I pick up all currency, even portal scrolls. I clear maps at a pace that might be described as “puttering.” And typically I RIP early in maps and start the league over, so most of my playtime is in the story, where successive characters can pick through my stash for junk my old character was hoarding for no reason, that might now have some use for levelling a different build.
You’re basically playing PoE like an incremental game. Your first character advances at a glacial pace, and dies. Your stash is basically prestige currency your next character can draw from to be faster. And so on and so forth.
man I’m glad that works for you but that sounds awful to me. I would make so many more alts in poe if it weren’t for the torturously boring and needlessly long campaign.
Completely disagree. It’s a good game made by good people. You can finish the campaign with just the default tabs, then can buy more tabs if you are enjoying the game.
It is a game developer driven by passion and not corporate profits.
It’s an online ARPG, the campaign is basically just a tutorial, the real meat of the game is in the endgame. So yes, you’re right that you can finish the campaign just fine without making any purchases, but that’s not saying much. Also, the low drop rates will kick your butt throughout the campaign and forever after regardless of whether you make a purchase or not.
I guess, but lots of players do Solo Self Found, ignoring trade entirely. It’s like doing race mode.
Depending on the build you’re going for, it can be more fun. Sucks if you need specific build-enabling uniques that you can’t farm for with div cards, but it works well for lots of builds.
You can still trade between your different characters on the same account, too, so it can be fun to create a character for the items you’ve found.
You get tens of hours of high-quality gameplay for free when you go through the campaign. How is that not saying much? I feel like it is not a bad deal at all. If you like the game when you probably need to drop some money to get most out of the experience. I think that’s fine. Though it is a fine line where they are walking in terms of monetization through inventory management. Would be interesting to know how large portion of the income is from stash tabs etc vs cosmetics.
Many (most) people have not had fun playing the campaign in PoE 1. And we sure as hell hope GGG s doesn’t listen to people who only play through the campaign and quit. Although they don’t spend any money so it shouldn’t be an issue.
I should play the campaign through again. Haven’t played the game after the 10 acts became a thing so essentially I’m just a noob again. I’ve mostly read that people are sick of the campaign because they have already played it a billion times, and not that first timers are having a bad time.
You get tens of hours of high-quality gameplay for free when you go through the campaign. How is that not saying much?
Because the high quality doesn’t come in until way later. When you’re playing through the campaign for the first time, you have neither the knowledge nor the resources to make a proper build, so the gameplay is very bland in comparison to what you can do later. Which means that the fact that the campaign is so long is actually a negative. It’s a tutorial that takes like twenty hours to slog through. This seems to be a common problem with free-to-play games. Warframe devs acknowledge and joke about the fact that the game starts getting good a hundred hours in.
In comparison to how the game is once you get a proper build going, yes, the campaign is bland as hell. Basically all ARPGs are like this due to the way their progression works.
I watched some streams of Starfield, and I just can’t understand how they made a game that looks so dull and boring. Skyrim had some soul to it, I remember being wowed by the trailer. The world and music in Skyrim are really beautiful too. Yeah it’s a janky Bethesda game in many ways, but it is also more than that.
My thoughts exactly. Whatever issues were in Morrowind, Oblivion, New Vegas, Skyrim etc there was still a uniquely engaging game there.
I’ve been poking around and their lead concept artist died before he got to work on Fo4, and the two main writer producer guys Emil & Pete(?) have basically admitted on game dev talks that they’re no longer trying to tell a coherent story or create a world anymore, just keep a player playing. Maybe this is why?
For all the Bethesda games I’ve played (barring Starfield), I’ve been instantly hooked and wanting to play more. There’s always been something to keep me playing. But in Starfield I feel like there’s just nothing there, I’m not feeling any sense of wanting to explore and find out more. I’m glad I didn’t pay for my copy, would have been a waste of money imo
so glad we have to give huge corporations tons of access to our private data just to play a game we paid for! so cool!
Real talk: Not all multiplayer games require kernal level anti cheat. Fortnite is a good example. If this type of anti-cheat, forced secure boot is so necessary to prevent cheating, why doesn’t Fortnite have problems with rampant cheating? Or do they and I just don’t notice because I’m losing either way? lol
PirateSoftware used to pop up in my feed all the time, and I’d roll my eyes every time he whiteboarded the most basic dev concepts like they were groundbreaking insights. The tech industry is full of these self-proclaimed gurus who oversell fundamentals and act like they’re reinventing the wheel. I’m glad people are finally catching on to him.
I mean, I could see if they tried to make this rent-to-own over 2-3 years. At half the price they’re offering.
But renting… where you’re paying over the entirety of the price in a single year, is fucking insane.
If renting, and updating it every 2 years, then for like 1/4th of the price then sure. I could see it being promoted how they are. Rent out older stock for 50% retail to at least get some value out of it while allowing people to pay ~$30 a month for a decent computer. (and then you could “upgrade” the lower tier with this to end up recouping 75% of retail over 4 years.)
But who the fuck is paying 10% of the cost a month to borrow an okay computer, even ignoring the full month cancelation fee, and ridiculous contract. (which is… ignoring a LOT.)
It is sad to see NZXT lowered to this as I used to have a decent view of them. They make some nice cases. CAM kinda lowered that view a bit, but I was in the beta for that and got a free water cooler out of it so I could overlook that (it’s improved a lot since beta, though it gathering data is still not great it’s less horrible than it was.). And pushing their own not as great products for the prebuilts still seemed okay for prebuilts for those scared to build on their own. But this is just… too much to overlook. Wild.
The only way this is marginally correct is if he is comparing to the money needed to create an AAA title. And in the end the company making the AAA title will have the cost operation to host/distribute and have all the others features Valve offers if they decide to do it in their own storefront.
Also look how much of their “development costs” are actually marketing budget. They fully recognize that increasing sales is worth paying heavily for, and steam increases sales by meaningfully more than you’re paying them (which is why every AAA publisher who experiments with leaving comes back).
The fun part is, unless you’re doing stuff that’s extremely shady, they’ll basically give you as many keys as you want to sell the game externally. Of the hundreds of games in my Steam library, it’s a very small fraction that have been purchased through Steam, or that they’ve made any money on. Their 30% is closer to a commission than a platform fee, and a 30% commission on a product that’s all margin isn’t unusual.
And people use Steam because they’re actually way better than any other option. The “freedom” platforms like GOG can’t be bothered even having a client support Linux, while Valve invested a good bit into working with community projects to make most of their (already sold about as much as they’re going to) back catalogue compatible and smooth. Steam input is also, by itself, more value added than any other store, and there are several other meaningful features.
There’s something I’d like to call “the Bethesda” bar. It’s basically an industrial bar lower than most. Let’s define what that means:
releasing the same game over and over
make games so buggy that a release with only a couple hundred of glitches is deemed "polished*
ignore progressive development for things like NPC AI
put all the money in marketing and hype
make the user think they’re getting something new, rather than just another boilerplate game
I’m sure the story writers did some characters justice, but I won’t be playing this game - especially since Bethesda claims it “can’t run on older hardware”, despite the fact that modders are proving them wrong.
The Betheada bar is a cancer upon the industry and I view it as consumer facing psy-ops, relying on brain-dead fanboys with nothing going on in their lives to squeal with glee as a new AAA-title is released to fill that void.
Ah yes the “everyone who likes something I don’t like is a brainless zombie” argument, coming from someone who doesn’t like Bethesda and hasn’t even played the game.
Early Bethesda games in general focused on giving you more freedom and the tools to do what you want. Where later games tried to give you more cool things to do. I think the quality decline is obvious from the change.
ESO is great, though? It just has a shitty combat system with attack weaving. Even 76 isn’t that bad anymore. Honestly just seems like you get your opinion out of gaming journalism.
I have literally never watched or read a review of ESO or Fallout 76.
I played both.
ESO fails at being a solid Elder Scrolls game because it’s tailored more toward an MMO experience. The writing is awful, and the quests are boring. The combat sucks, and the social features are abysmal given you can’t even share quests. Literally the only reason I could imagine anyone playing this game is because they want to grind out an MMO every day that’s set in the Elder Scrolls universe.
Fallout 76, I don’t even know where to start. Again, the MMO mechanics tear out everything good about Fallout games to deliver a bland, grindy MMO with bad combat.
I really dislike most of the games Bethesda makes . Skyrim I found glitchy and the sword play felt really bad . Fallout 3 the gameplay seemed like walk backwards and shoot. I did like death loop thou
I felt the same until I modded the shite out of Skyrim this year and now my mod list hit critical mass and I‘m having an absolute blast with it. Starfield runs worse and looks worse for me so that game needs some time in the patch and mod oven before I dive into it… I‘m patient.
I don't disagree that the mods for Bethesda games are cool, but problem is that the barrier to getting a massive mod list set up and working after years of mods have come out is considerable.
I feel like, given the sheer size of the mod library, mod managers need something like a list of base, curated set of mods to start with, kind of what Wabbajack does, but then have the ability to add mods to it. That way, to get you most of the way to a heavily-modded game, you just pick from among a few popular modlists.
Choosing that curated set to start with would let you avoid spending hours poring over reviews of different mods and culling obsolete information to determine what you think the current-best, say, lighting mod is.
And have the ability to update to the latest version of the modlist, or roll back to an earlier.
Once that's up and going, then if you want to go tweak it or add or remove a particular mod, you can.
This is the way to be. I won’t be buying Starfield for at least a year, likely longer. By that time GPUs will be able to run it easier and I’ll be due for a new one. The game will have also seen its most significant bugfixes in that time.I haven’t bought a new game hot off the press in almost a decade. #patientgamers
Don’t eat your burger hot off the grill, let it cool and allow it to congeal the fats a little bit. That way it doesn’t fall apart on the first bite. ;)
You should try Prey if you enjoyed Deathloop, it’s DLC “Moon crash” was made a few years prior to Deathloop and incorporates similar mechanics except the map is randomized on each playthrough so it’s always a little different.
Same company, but it feels like Moon crash was a more interesting version of what DL did. Plus Prey occasionally just goes on like 90% off sales (one time I snagged it and the DLC free on Epic Games.)
I can see why the reviews are between ‘Best game ever’ and ‘worst game Bethesda made’ and it’s so strange. I personally love Starfield and it’s universe while my friend hates it because it’s boring for him.
Tbh, me and at least 2 other people I know bounced off it hard, even after giving it multiple chances in 10+ hours of playing. Some people just aren’t jelling with it even with playtime.
It really is. I often find myself avoiding long games with intermittent text or dialog (RPGs!) because I get bored when there’s none and want to listen to a podcast but can’t because then I’ll miss the next dialog.
There’s also the “I’ve got something to do so I can’t deal with starting up a game” and then spending an hour on youtube
I’ve got a problem with having to watch YouTube or listen to a podcast while playing. And that includes RPGs… Though Expedition 33 has had me engrossed enough to shut the laptop while I’m playing
The good ones aren’t “blur”, they’re “subpixel rearrange”.
It takes about 4x4 square pixels to emulate the subpixels of a single round one… just like it takes about 4x4 round pixels to emulate the subpixels of a square one.
All pixels are a “blur” of R, G, and B subpixels. Their arrangement is what makes a picture look either as designed, or messed up.
For rendering text, on modern OSs you can still pick whichever subpixel arrangement the screen uses to make them look crisper. Can’t do the same with old games that use baked-in sprites for everything.
It gets even worse when the game uses high brightness pixels surrounded by low brightness ones because it expects the bright ones to spill over in some very specific way.
That’s still some Vsauce level reaching that “we don’t actually even see anything”. The tech doesn’t matter when playing and if it looks blurry, then it is blurry.
I said that it doesn’t matter. Only the end result does. There is no game I would play on a CRT simply because it looks worse. It’s not an objective fact but my preference. I don’t care how you are trying achieve the “CRT look” since it looks like shit and I don’t want to see it.
Have you checked the examples…? I feel like we’re going in circles. There are cases where the CRT looks objectively better, supporting examples have been provided, technical explanation has been provided… it’s up to you to look at them or not.
If you wish to discusd some of the examples, or the tech, I’m open to that. Otherwise I’ll leave it here. ✌️
The objective part is in whether it matches what the creator intended.
Sometimes they intended crisp contours, like in ClearType; sometimes they intended to add extra colors; sometimes they designed pixel perfect and it looked blurry on CRT; very rarely they used vector graphics or 3D that can be rendered at better quality by just throwing some extra resolution.
Many artists of the time pushed this tech to these limits, “objectively better” is to emulate that.
That looks bad sure but I wouldn’t look at that closely anyway and the filtered one looks even worse. I have played that game without any filters and I didn’t get any urges to use any. I have also played it on CRT but there wasn’t any choice back then.
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