No, it’s adjusted for corporate greed. World of Warcraft has never once raised their subscription. Also, they shouldn’t have had to raise their subscription because they introduced microtransactions in both RS3 and OSRS which further boosted revenue. You’re comparing two very different times in the game. There’s no excuse whatsoever.
The only microtransaction in OSRS is the ability to buy membership with in game gold. As someone who is normally staunchly against all MTX it’s a very reasonable tradeoff
It has unequivocally ruined old school RS. Not only do people still buy gold for real life money. They also real world trade, too. some very popular streamers have RWT permanent bans. So the bond has solved literally no problem it claimed it would. It really just allowed people to buy gear for money in real life which is really sad. I get you can buy membership with gold. But that was never a thing back in 2007 and shouldn’t be allowed now. That sort of insane feature is directly fueling the bot industry
People buying gold for real life money has literally always been happening behind the scenes (yes in 2007 as well), so again I have no issues with this. With membership bonds it even removes gold from an inflated economy. It seems to me though that you want a version of the game exactly how it was in 2007, in which case you’re SoL
I stopped playing due to all their stupid additions all the time. Like the sailing/whatever skills they want to add, it’s all bullshit and copium by and for adults wanting new stuff. Their “democratic” voting is an absolute joke; “oh it didn’t pass? let’s just poll it again with slight changes”. That’s a cheap and dirty way of pushing their own agenda.
I did the maths some time ago, a subscription to 1 Runescape character is 20 times more expensive than a WoW character.
does them adding new content somehow detract from your ability to do whatever it was you liked to do before said content was added?
“I hate that expansions are provided at no additional cost, and also it costs too much” is kinda one of the wildest takes on the game I’ve ever heard ngl
I don’t understand your last paragraph unless there’s some weird regional pricing going on. It’s $13.99 USD for a month of Runescape membership vs $14.99 USD for a month of WoW membership
Uhhh what? Are we talking about the same things? Steam doesn’t do sales to individuals. If they put a game on sale for $8 it’s that price for everyone, unless I’m missing something?
Look, you will have a sizable contingent of people shelling out an additional $20 to $80 just to play a game a few days early, with little to no other benefits. Their impatience is capitalized on.
Sometimes I wonder whether Starfield truly deserves all the bad publicity or whether people are also still upset because it became an Xbox exclusive and that is clouding their judgement. I know it does affect me for one. I got a ps5 for gaming and I’m automatically much less interested in anything that isn’t on the platform. And I was of course very disappointed when Microsoft outright bought all these huge IPs and made them exclusive to Xbox.
If you take any major gaming publications scores as at all legitimate then I have a bridge to sell you
Major publications give it a passable score because “lol glitches are Bethesdas thing”, ignoring objective critique because of reputation, as well as our of fear that they won’t be given access to the next product released by the or Microsoft because they give games “bad publicity”
Starfield is a broken, poorly written, dumpster fire of a game. It objectively doesn’t function correctly often, like many Bethesda products, and was designed by a team lead by a man allergic to basic game design ethos (seriously fuck Emil, my dog could do game design better than me "fuck design docs). It has moments of being interesting and, much like Skyrim, could be the base for some cool mods, but people hated it so much it won’t ever even get that
I was on Windows at the time and had GamePass, so I pleasantly had access included with what I was already paying for. I ended up pirating it so I could mod it (that is prevented on GamePass), because it needed mods.
No, it’s not negative because it’s MS owned. It’s a very bad game. I love older Bethesda games and I love sci-fi. This should have been an easy win for me. Wow, it was disappointing. The actual combat gameplay is fine, but everything between combat sucks. Too many loading screens taking you out of the gameplay.
The writing sucks. They make use of established sci-fi tropes, but then they don’t understand how to make them work in a story. They give you very few choices, often not including the most obvious ones.
Despite this being the “exploration” game, exploration is essentially non-existent. Every planet pretty much has the same stuff. There’s like five bases that spawn everywhere identically, and a handful of “natural” points-of-interest, which appear all over the planet identically, as well as being the same as every other planet with the same ones. You might see some benefit to explore if you’re building bases, but that system is incredibly clunky and frustrating to make operational. Even once you have things running, it’ll still require managing storages from overflowing and blocking incoming supplies. It’s really bad.
The universe is incredibly unreactive too. If you thought this was true for their previous games, it’s worse in Starfield. There’s no ships bringing supplies to colonies. No colonies being built that weren’t there at the start. No fighting between factions, besides pirates randomly and it’s the same random event that happens when you warp into a place, not something that happened because pirates are raiding a supply line or something. It just doesn’t change ever.
Basically, no. Starfield actually sucks. I really wanted to like it, but there’s nothing to like in my opinion. I’ve seen some people say they like it, but I honestly don’t get it. Every aspect seems like a downgrade from FO4, which had its own issues but had reasons to like it too.
Thanks for the review. Disappointing to be sure. I was hoping to play it at some point and that it wouldn’t suck as much as people say it does. Or that they would turn it around in time.
Still give a try, it’s not for everyone and it’s not to the same quality as their previous games but it’s honestly not a bad game. At worst I’d say it’s aggressively average. But I still have a great time with ship combat and exploration, the loading doesn’t bother me as much and people act like the quests and writing are BAD, They are not, it’s just not to the level of their previous games. But there are still a few quests I absolutely love.
I would say most of the writing is bad. There are a handful of interesting quests, but most aren’t. Then there’s things like the generation ship, which they don’t do anything interesting with, it uses the same technology as the modern ships, and also the quest path to end it is stupid. There’s also so many things that just don’t make sense in the universe it’s set in, and it’s overall just boring.
I agree overall the game is just aggressively average though. It plays fine enough, but it gives no reason to want to play it. It’s not actively painful to play, but it gives no feedback to make anything feel worth doing.
I really enjoyed the Ryujin quest line, the quest where the world was shifting, and there’s tons of great smaller quests and interactions, but I agree the generation ship was a big miss, the main quest flounders and flops hard about half way through and overall they didn’t do enough with universe building.
I was holding out hope that the modding scene would help support the game, because traditionally speaking Bethesda modders have done some incredibly amazing work on other titles. But no, alas, Starfield is such a fuckin’ trash fire that not even the modders are willing to put in the work to unfuck this heap of shit. Somebody might release a killer overhaul for it after they’ve had a couple more years to basically rewrite the entire engine, but frankly I don’t see anyone caring that much about this game to make it happen. I know of at least one guy who rather than getting involved in the mod scene, instead got on Steam and said fuck you, I’ll make my own fuckin’ Starfield, and started whipping up Spacebourne 2, and even this half-baked early access alpha jank has clear signs of being the seed of a better game than Starfield was. I’m sure that others have had similar ideas.
I feel like starfield is an experiment in user driven content (mods) to sell a game. The issue with Skyrim is that there is really only one map, and before any map extension mod came out, there were so many mods out there that competed for space on the map. Even today, large world overhaul mods are constantly stepping on the toes of other mods. City redesigns are also a problem unless you’re really good at load orders and merging.
Starfield feels like each world is an open map, ready for people to start designing content: either a colony, a cave, or anything really. The story seems loose and open ended so that it won’t interfere with large collaborative content. It’s not a game they are selling, but a modding storefront. It’s like Skyrim Creations, but putting the horse (armor sold separately) before the cart.
The UI and perk system is actively hostile to playing the game. It was one thing when you could always try to pick the lock in Skyrim and the more locks you picked the better you got. Now you must take the perk and it’s a requirement to pick locks before the next perk.
You cannot even craft or use core gameplay mechanics without perks. Booster pack? Perks. Targeting sub systems? Perk. (Which is hilarious because it’s in the tutorial mission and they just hard coded the event ship not to blow up. So until you visit the Internet you don’t actually know how to board other ships)
Out post building is ridiculously complex, resources take up a bajillion spaces in your inventories, there’s no guidance on production chains, and basic resources aren’t even on the same planet. So you’re back to just buying resources to get it off the ground and why are we even building an outpost again?
To be fair, the story, the fly here, shoot this, listen to story parts of the game are fine. But literally everything else around it is made as obtuse as possible because yes I want to go through a loading screen every time I need to access my main stash.
As some one said when it released. It’s Fallout 4 in space. But if all the ancillary stuff was made 100 percent more inconvenient.
And it was something people were hoping would save the game. But, it’s unfortunately more confirmation that Bethesda can no longer produce quality games.
he’s saying “they” haven’t improved since 76 came out. i don’t know what else he could possibly mean by that, especially since 76 itself has improved immensely since coming out
So Bethesda is good because Starfield might be worth playing 10 years after it was released? You’re obviously not understanding the point here.
It doesn’t matter that they improved '76 after the fact. It matters that they keep releasing top dollar garbage that needs years of work after the fact to even be playable.
Like imagine if you bought a brand new car that broke down immediately after you drove it off the lot. You take it back to them and they tell you “We understand you’re disappointed, so if we get time we’ll fix it for you and should have it back to you in a year or two.” Are you going to be satisfied with no car and no money for that long? Does it really make it better if they do actually fix it at some undetermined point in the future?
Is that my “line of thinking” when I never said anything of the sort? I don’t think so.
I’ve never played Cyberpunk 2077 nor No Man’s Sky and have zero opinion on them, but you bringing them up out of nowhere as some sort of ‘gotcha’ screams “my argument is based on emotion and not fact.”
what is factually wrong about 76 being improved after release? that’s the entire thing, i’m not the one convienently ignoring those facts because it doesnt support my argument 😂
For the fourteenth time, it’s completely irrelevant to the discussion.
You talk about conveniently ignoring things while you’re ignoring the whole topic so you can keep talking about some updates to Fallout '76 as if that has any bearing on Bethesda trending toward doing worse and worse with each new release. You’re making a completely separate argument to the rest of us.
actually its only the 6th time, not 14th. how can i trust your word now?
and 76 has gotten new releases pretty frequently. they are called content updates or dlc, which are free on that game. i think bethesdas only released 2 other games since 76, redfall, which was done by a different studio, and starfield
they’ve done a really good job culling the bots in osrs, imo the biggest hurdle in it is the long boring grinds it takes to get to midgame pvm where it starts getting really really fun.
I’d also say that if you think rs3 is the default game you are very mistaken
they’ve done a really good job culling the bots in osrs
You’re badly misinformed. Their official subreddit is rife with complaints constantly about how bad the bot problem is. Some top ranked players on high scores are bots too.
Example one where top fishing skill players are bots.
Example 2 The top 25 Bandos highscore ranks are dominated by ranged-only tick-perfect bots, with a combined kill count of 1.7 million, generating approximately 225 billion gold from Bandos sets and 50 billion gold from hilts, and similar botting issues persist across other high-level bosses and activities.
Example 3 where CVC admits they have no fucking idea how many bots there even are but that they’re important to OSRS and part of the game.
The bot problem is out of control and they obviously profit from it massively, banning them takes away subscribers
example 1 is from a year ago, 2 is new so it may still be a thing but likely something they’ve already dealt with and 3 is from “someone close to CVC” how on earth are you gonna take that as fact?
from mod ayiza’s response to that 3rd one:
"To give some context in the form of data, here are some ban stats:
Last year we banned over 6.9 million accounts.
So far in 2024, each week on average, we ban over 2,300 RuneScape accounts.
So far in 2024, each week on average, we ban over 67,000 Old School RuneScape accounts.
Of these accounts, 2,800 are for botting popular boss-related content.
Each week, around 1.5T GP is removed from the RuneScape economy.
Each week, around 900B GP is removed from the Old School RuneScape economy. "
they’re playing wack-a-mole because there’s no possible way to preemptively ban bots, but they’ve done a good job of it and will continue to.
In addition to what the other commenter said, it’s more likely as someone newer and thus engaging in lower level activities to encounter bots since it takes less time to set them up and get going than mid to late game content. I find it rare to encounter an obvious bot as someone doing high level pvm/skilling
I play old school maplestory on maplelegends. They have strict “no real world trade” rules and no pay to win. It really is just the game how it should be played, which really highlights all the flaws in the game (there are many)
Obviously the main draw is nostalgia, so if it’s something you’ve never played it won’t have much value, but the community is great and it’s an mmo with lots to do and endgame content to aspire to
It’s quite easy, actually. I usually play everything years after release, however, if I’m really into a certain series, I’ll buy it right away. If I don’t care for the wait, I probably don’t care enough about whether or not a sequel is being made.
Of course that only works if you don’t get hyped easily. I play a lot of games, but usually only 1-2 per year are released within said year.
Remember when Cyberpunk fucked up their release. They knew they fucked up and owed it to the gamers. They told their board and stockholders to hold off, and that they needed to rebuild trust with their users before they could make line go up.
So they took their time, they redid many of the mechanics that people didn’t like, the fixed all of the bugs, and then they released Phantom Liberty - one of the best expansions I have ever seen in gaming history. Good enough where it could have been a game on it’s own.
That is how you rebuild trust with the community. You tell your stockholders to shut the fuck up and let you do what you do best. If they don’t trust you to do that, then fuck em, they can sell their stock, why are they holding stock in a company they don’t trust?
I might need to revisit cyberpunk, I didn’t know an expansion was ever released. I kind of hit max level doing mostly side quests within 4 months of launch and lost interest.
Oh trust me, I had a decent time playing it. I played through it 100%, did all the side stuff, did the base building - everything. But, I still felt annoyed and bored a good chunk of the time. The game was fine. But it was only fine. I wouldn’t say it was revolutionary or anything Bethesda said, it was just… fine.
I would definitely need a new character, nothing worse than picking up an old save and having zero clue about what’s going on in game. I think I’ll put that on my list, I really did enjoy the game at the time I played it, and I definitely got 100 hours playtime from it.
basically the major points of change was launch, then cyberpunk edgerunners clothing dlc patch (1.0 but bigs fixed). 2.0 rewrote some of the games mechanics that dropped before the expansion. and then the expansion was released (which added new endings)
Post-2.0 Cyberpunk is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had in a long time. You can tell it’s a product of effort, and love for the project. They have taken in a considerable amount of feedback from pre-1.5.
Meanwhile, Starfield is a complete miss in just about every way imaginable, and the expansion has followed through the same footsteps. On top of that, the studio actively gaslit people who expressed disapproval, even when it was constructive criticism.
I fully expect them to say it’s getting “review bombed” now, which is the current industry redefining of a term to make it come off as “It’s not us, it’s the stupid gamer’s fault”
It’s not a review bomb if it’s fully deserved. If you make a bad product, you deserve a bad review, and maybe Bethesda should have thought about that ahead of time
Bad cars don’t have good maneuverability is you full press the speeding stick, I imagine that that stick is an acceleration pedal and only full press it when I don’t need to do sharp turns. I would say that cars feel maybe too real.
You playing with a controller? I always thought the driving was optimized for the controller as I can’t half press acceleration on a keyboard.
It’s a little bit better after the updates, but it’s still suboptimal I think.
Yeah, as most 1st person view games it’s just less taxing in my hands. I agree that not being to half accelerate would feel bad, you would start drifting all the time and that would suck for control. Try using W as an acceleration button, not a “forward” button. If you see that you need to take a turn stop accelerating for a while and then S before you start turning, like with a car.
I think they have changed the driving a bit in one of the earlier updates.
Saw it in one of the patch notes but havn’t played myself so I couldn’t tell you what’s different about it…
Cyberpunk was buggy, unoptimized, and kind of unfinished, but the fundamental game design was sound.
Starfield on the other hand is broken at its core. The Bethesda RPG experience just does not translate to the open worlds space map they built the game on. So they can’t take the cyberpunk approach because they’d have to build an entirely different game from scratch.
I don’t know why anyone decided that that engine was the right way to go. The number one thing that killed the game for me was the endless loading screens. Constantly. Whenever I started feeling immersed, a new loading screen would pop up and it ruined it for me. We have engines left and right that don’t need to do this anymore, but starfield, the game that’s trying to base itself to be a realistic exploration game, decided that endless loading screens were still the best way to go
even without the loading screens it would still be terrible. get a quest, go to your ship, take off, travel to other system, land, exit your ship, walk to destination, reverse all that to turn the quest in, rinse and repeat. it’s just a tedious experience.
the best part of Bethesda games is just being able to wander around aimlessly in a pretty environment, likely stumbling upon little easter eggs or side quests along the way. none of that exists in Starfield.
Reading it like that, the loop sounds straight off Diablo 1 on PSX. Get quests, head to the dungeon, loading screen, wipe the floor, loading screen, wipe next floor, back to town, loading screen, turn in.
That kind of loop is not bad in itself, but Bethesda applied it to the wrong type of game.
That was one of the things that really helped with the immersion for me in Witcher 3 and even Cyberpunk. You walk into a building, house, etc and the world outside just continued and was present. I’m still quite impressed with their engine and it is a bit sad that they’ll be switching to UE5 for the next Witcher.
I know! Red engine honestly is pretty great once they got the bugs worked out, I’m sad they’re leaving it. It was extremely immersive, and there’s definitely something about it that feels different.
Same with No Man’s Sky. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but they buckled down and delivered on almost every promise that they failed on back at release. Not only that but every update since the game came out has been for free. Both No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are fantastic games, and they were garbage on release. Bethesda has been doing the opposite approach and avoiding feedback from fans since Skyrim came out the first time.
At launch, for me at least, it was a cool lonely scramble to survive.
Now it’s a multiplayer game with a bunch of super easy shortcuts all over the place, even outside of the multiplayer. I enjoy playing with my friends, but the solo experience is definitely worse now.
I never figured a reason to even bother with multiplayer in NMS, except maybe to speed up base building. The only real challenge of the game is surviving the first hour, even on hardcore/permadeath.
Yeah, I have the permadeath achievement. Once you get off the first planet you’re fine.
It used to be harder for a lot longer. Now you can just teleport anywhere you want at anytime.
You answered a question with a good answer, just not to the question they aske. They asked about the comment - “it’s not the game we bought into at launch”. They were talking about how a lot of people complained that what the game was at launch wasn’t what had been advertised - what people “bought into”.
You seem to be explaining why it’s “not the game you bought at launch” - which is definitely a valid argument too, just to something else.
Oh god, so there is absolutely nothing they can ever do to make up for it, I guess. Even after like 10+ MAJOR updates and expansions over 6+ years for free, they can’t possibly ever do enough for some people, I guess.
I mean, it all hinged in the fact that under all those glitches and bugged mechanics CDPR still had a nice game. Starfield can’t be salvaged cuz the core game is just mediocre shit.
I wanna say it’s a failed IP at this point, but who knows how many copies sold. What is sure is it doesn’t deserve any more of my time. I have the DLC but won’t reinstall that garbage
It certainly sold a lot. Bethesda once claimed to have over 10 million players across all platforms. Even if we assume half of those were using gamepass, that’s still 5 million sales.
Of course, if you compare it to Fallout 4’s first 6 months, with reported 12 million sales on day-one, that’s a significant letdown.
Starfield is a very real “could have been”, if only [huge list of changes] happened.
I didn’t play it at the time because of the bugs, but from what I saw the good parts of Cyberpunk were already present. Stuff like storytelling, interesting characters etc.
Starfield has none of that.
I’m still mad the monowire doesn’t work how it was said it would and that the cops can’t be bribed and shit like that. It’s a great game now and a lot of fun to play but I won’t ever trust another game company again like I did with them after they made witcher 3.
The difference is, there is no fixing Starfield, it is rotten to the core. You would have to re-do most of the story elements and writing, and the disjointed, empty world. On top of that you’d have to fix the bugs and technical limitations like the constant loading screens. At this point you would be throwing out most of the game and basically starting from scratch with a few systems done, like the ship building and possibly gunplay.
I think cyberpunk never became what many wanted, but if you let go of your expectations, it is a good game.
Funny thing is that shipbuilding also felt annoying to me. There were so many arbitrary restrictions that I felt like I couldn’t actually make the ship I wanted, it always felt the same
That’s exactly how I felt too. I tried SO MANY times to build the ship I wanted. Never could get it done. I even console-command-cheated vendor stock to allow myself access to every part at my home base, and even STILL THEN I could never get it the way I wanted it. It was important to me for role-playing purposes for every crew member on board to have their own bed, and a good kitchen, living space, bathrooms, etc… Stuff that just makes sense for a spaceship that is essentially a flying house. But so many times I could never get the damn ship builder to do what I wanted. I’d change some random part, and then BAM some of my beds would disappear for no reason? Ok well now two of my crew members have nowhere to sleep. wtf.
Just wound up abandoning my entire build and going back to the same ol ship I’d been using the whole game.
spoilerIt’s also absolutely bizarre to me that the end-game ship, the one I had been looking forward to for SO LONG is just completely and totally 100% empty. When I had my crew members on board, they just stood still in place and stared at the wall. What the hell is going on here!??!?!?! That really ruined the entire ship for me. Could never get over that.
I dislike the narrative that something is “unfixable”, everything is fixable if there is a will to do so.
I don’t know why game developers seem to have inhibitions of changing the game too much after release. For instance reworking and extending the main story in a game seems to be a big red line for them.
For instance I would have wished in Cyberpunk 2077 to actually play Vs introduction into Night City and the individual fixers myself, instead of just watching a cut scene. A DLC could have extended the start of the game a bit.
The same for Starfield, they could extend and improve the main story, characters and locations in an update, but seem hesitant to do so. Something like directors cut, that adds cut content as well as tons of side quests into the game.
If people still want to play the original game, they can make the extended story optional, like sleecting what version you want to play at the game start.
For bugs, they could work together with the community and the “unofficial patch” and engine fixer modders, instead just ignoring them. In Skyrim SSE for instance they still had many of the same bugs that Oldrim had and where fixed by thr community.
Bethesda could improve, and even fix their games, if they would decide to do so. Their DLC just doesn’t seem to be worth what they ask for, it could have been just part of a free update, so that some more people buy the base game.
I have a strong suspicion that truly talented writers who are able to build memorable stories in great worlds are few and far between, and those that are willing to work in the games industry of today are as rare as hen’s teeth. Most companies, including Bethesda, simply don’t have the talent at hand to fix their mess, or there wouldn’t be a mess in the first place. The truth is probably somewhere between this, and the ol’ “eh, good enough”.
I just ment you’d have to cut so much that at that point it would basically be a new game. I’m thinking a bit more from the dev point of view. Like an old rusted-to-hell car, everything is fixable. The question is cost: if you have to replace or re-fabricate every piece than you’re better off starting from scratch.
I’m the case of Starfield, changing the core story, characters, missions, and theme is basically the same as replacing the entire car body.
On that note, how is Cyberpunk still 60 euros on Steam? I know it’s been getting better with the DLC and everything, but the game’s been out for ages.
That said, I might have to buy Phantom Liberty. I bought and finished the base game like 2 or 3 years ago I think and I really enjoyed it even back then.
Personally I think it’s worth it, it’s one of the few games I happily would pay full price for again. They did a full redemption arc, their game is now up there as one of my favorites of all time, next to Witcher 3 and RDR2. I think they deserve my money. What I really think is that Cyberpunk deserves 60. How the fuck can Assassin’s Creed think that they’re on the same level (or higher) than that?
I just finished playing it for the first time and I was blown away right from the start! Guess I’m glad I waited for the polish, but the world design, voice acting and overall storyline was absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t help feel bad for all the artists that clearly put a lot of love in to the world only to be overshadowed by bugs and poor implementation.
I’ve given up on every major developer/publisher, so-called AAA garbage, except for capcom for monster hunter and square enix for final fantasy. I’ll be extra sad the day they too go the way of every other greedy lazy “AAA” game company…
At least indie devs care to make a good game and not try to make a money printing IP machine with some game like aspects in it.
Even Capcom I’m not preordering. If wilds is getting good reviews a couple days after launch I’ll get it. (Even though I’m pretty sure it will be a good game)
I feel like monster hunter is kinda hard to mess up, unless they suddenly decided to make it turn based with micro transactions for extra turns or something lol
The “story” is: omg big monster messing up the ecosystem, go fight! So it’s really all down to gameplay lol
$70 is going to be the new normal price for AAA. Prices haven’t increased in decades. I don’t like it, but that’s what it is. It’s not AAAA because of the price, nor is that even a thing.
AAA comes from credit rating scores. It essentially means nearly guaranteed returns. It was used to identify games that need to be stocked for game stores. AAA is going to sell. AA is slightly less but still good. Etc. There is not AAAA credit rating. That was just stupid marketing buzzwords that don’t matter.
as a hige indi/small developer fan i see great times ahad. AAA will fail, clmpanys will close and developers will find new homes in smaller teams. by 2030 i predict a golden age for AA and and perhabs also a new golden age for indi.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne