I love Diablo. However, I think a big part of it is the atmosphere and also me being young and never having seen anything like it. That’s pretty hard to recreate. I heard the game Halls of Torment nailed the Diablo atmosphere, but as a Vampire Survivors-like. Basically it’s focused on the grind and progression. Maybe, that’s something for you? Personally, I haven’t found anything that is as fun as Diablo, so every now and then I play Diablo 1 with a new mod, like the new The Hell 3 Mod. It brings back the wonder of the unknown, because there is lots of new stuff in there. I also loved Book of Demons, which is basically a streamlined version of Diablo 1 with a dark comedic twist.
I think you underestimate the satisfaction that comes from clearing levels in Diablo. Yes, it could be a different theme and still work, but isn’t that proof of how potent it is? So the question is, why does it feel like a grind to you? I wager it’s because the magic Diablo had for you got lost over time. You know how they work now, you’ve seen behind the curtain and thus don’t feel the danger, the intrigue like you used to. Maybe you will find it in games like Elden Ring that you don’t see through right away?
About the stats progression: I think a very big part of the fun of progressing your character comes from doing it the way you want. It’s a form of expression. You want to be a Necromancer that only uses Golems or a Mage focused on ice. I think what a lot of Diablo-likes miss is finding a good way to allow lots of expression in character development. Too often I feel boxed in by the class and it doesn’t feel like it’s my Tinkerer, but the Tinkerer instead. A good Diablo-like has abilities that define the character instead of just simple stat increases and cooldown reductions and all that.
Lastly, if you haven’t seen it there is a great Diablo 4 Critique on YouTube that might give some more food for thought!
Basically every Oblivion DLC that was not Shivering Isles (and MAYBE Heroes of The Nine or whatever) was god awful. And Fallout 3 (aside from the last two hours of the story DLC) was only really tolerated because it was mostly sold as a season pass. Operation Anchorage was a cool novelty that made stealth trivial and the rest… existed.
I would argue that all the fo3 and oblivion DLC were decent. Some obviously better than others, but they weren’t just soulless cash grabs. They had effort go into them, and were fairly new into the DLC space so some trial and error is to be expected. They had a pretty good amount of content for the price relative to the base game, compared to the starfield DLC/ current AAA norms.
Orrery: A few spells and a player house with a fetch quest attached
Wizard’s Tower: a mage player house with a few spells and a fetch quest
Thieves Den: A few spells and items and a very small dungeon
Mehrunes’ Razor: Decent sized dungeon to get a dagger
Vile Lair: A few spells, a player house, and a fetch quest
Spell Tomes: Literally just spells
Fighter’s Stronghold: A short dungeon and, you got it, another player house
Then we have Knights of the Nine (really mediocre) and Shivering Isle (arguably the best DLC Bethesda ever made)
Oh. And…
MOTHA FUGGING HORSE ARMOR!!!
People tend to be more favorable to Fallout 3’s DLC than I am (most are incredibly tiny dungeons but with a new tileset). I suspect in large part because Operation Anchorage channeled how amazing storming the memorial was in the base game and… I genuinely don’t know why people are so obsessed with flipping The Pitt. And Broken Steel itself was one of the worse examples of “We’ll finish the game later” of the era… and I played ALL the Blizzard games.
To me, it wasn’t so much about each DLC making a huge impact or the story being amazing. It was more about already playing the game to death and then gaining access to more content to explore. Kind of like eating a delicious cake, still being hungry, and then finding another slice of that cake that was sitting out all day.
Well…except the next installations of Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Let’s be honest, that’s what Microsoft were really buying, and neither are anywhere near a release.
Judging by how Starfield turned out, will missing either of those games (which are almost certainly going to be using the same incredibly outdated engine) be much of a loss?
For those of us that miss the lore and story/atmosphere of this games, absolutely.
Don’t get me wrong, Starfield has made me truly worried about the next installment, and I truly believe that milking Skyrim has ultimately left Bethesda in a position where open world gaming just leapfrogged them. The likes of TOTK and Elden Ring have absolutely shattered what they can show to deliver in a supposedly improved generation.
All I can hope is that Bethesda really look at the feedback they received, and take the time to make the necessary changes to their engine. That alone might be enough to at least give a retro feel to the games. I’ll still eagerly await them, but my hopes for them being GOTY are long gone.
The engine isn’t why Starfield sucks. Sure, the constant loading isn’t great but it isn’t the reason there’s nothing fun or interesting to do. It’s also a solvable issue, but they haven’t made the investments they need in the engine.
Starfield is just soulless. The characters are boring, the stories aren’t interesting and don’t let the player choose fun options. The universe is static and nothing matters. There’s just no reason to be involved in the world, so there’s no reason to want to be in it.
They could fix this. I’d say the way they need to go to do so is to stop targeting literally every player. They need to figure out who they’re making the game for and target them. I’m a big sci-fi fan, and I like older Bethesda games. I should have been an easy target for Starfield, but I hated it, not because of the engine but because the stories, characters, and universe weren’t engaging. The engine is an easy target to complain about, but it isn’t what’s holding them back. Indie games can do more with worse engines.
The engine really isn’t suited for the kind of game Starfield wants to be, so it really works against it. But you’re right, even if it were a new shiny engine with the same writing and characters, it would still suck. Likewise, if it had the same creaky engine but actual good stories and characters the constant loading would be easier to overlook. It just has the worst of both worlds.
Bethesda’s game design is just too old. Playing Starfield felt like playing an RPG from a decade ago. Bethesda just got complacent from back when they were one of the only companies that could seriously do an open-world RPG, now we have CD Projekt-Red and FromSoftware with wildly different, significantly more innovative gameplay experiences. Hell, even other AAA devs like Capcom have been able to outperform in the open world space, Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a ton of fun.
No, sadly I think the design is too new. Morrowind was 22 years ago. It is the direction I’d like to see them go again. A complex world that feels lived in, and actually gives players options to play how they want and figure things out for themselves. The newer boring “design for everyone” approach sucks. There’s no soul and nothing interesting.
FromSoft is somewhat notoriously old-school. Their game design has directly evolved from their older games. Look at King’s Field and then look at Dark Souls. There’s so much similarity. Yeah, ER is more cleaned up with a fuck-ton more money and technology available, but it’s essentially the same design.
Obviously Balder’s Gate 3 is just an evolution of classic RPG design, and it did very well. I’d argue CDPR also has taken classic RPG inspiration more than modern ones. A modern RPG design wouldn’t do half the stuff Cyberpunk did, because it’s not targeting everyone (and no one).
Modern AAA design doesn’t pick a target. Their target is everyone and everything, so they do nothing well. Classic design is knowing who your game is for and making a game for them and not anyone else. Bethesda is doing the former.
Holy fuck gamers really do have the worst memories. Cyberpunk is still a shit game after 4 fucking years of patches. CDPR has like 5 titles and one of them is pretty good. FromSoftware has a legacy of bangers a mile long. These 2 companies aren’t even in the same wheelhouse.
Cyberpunk is very much not a shit game, it’s a pretty good RPG with a great variety of character builds and fantastic writing. The devs did an absurd amount of work in order to make the gameplay significantly more fun. I’d also make the argument that Witcher 2 is a really good game, and is what popularized the series enough for Witcher 3 to be such a colossally known hit. The two companies make very different RPGs to one another, for sure, but you’re just being a contrarian if you think the pedigree of the two companies is vastly different.
but you’re just being a contrarian if you think the pedigree of the two companies is vastly different.
Even if we ignore all the other bootlicking and fanboying in the above comment, this statement alone is completely absurd. FromSoftware has developed over 50 games and CDPR has…4? Maybe 10 if you count mobile trash? By the year 2000 FromSoftware had released more successful games than CDPR has released total, good or bad, to date.
It’s no wonder that cyberpunk is such a piece of garbage really when you realize every other game CDPR ever developed has “the witcher” somewhere in the title.
Discounts on games creates a sense of urgency in the buyer, as most discounts are temporary. Since discounts are often shown on the front page of a storefront, it gets a lot of eyeballs on it. If someone’s wishlisted the game then they’ll even usually get a direct notification.
Another way to look at it is that the game is always available at the full price. But if you’re a patient gamer then you can expect to get a lower price eventually.
Depending on how much discretionary income you have, you might be forced to wait for a sale. Or the difference in price might be no object to you. Or you may have to hoist the black flag.
Something else to consider is that the perceived value of the game differs from buyer to buyer. If I’m a big fan of a niche genre, I might be willing to spend more on a weird game than the average user. A $30 game might be worth it for me, but you might only think it’s worth $20
And more to that point, it’s extremely difficult to nail down the exact value of a game. What honestly separates a $12 game from a $15 game when they both offer a unique experience?
Anyway, all this to say, I don’t think having sales on games is strictly a predatory thing. Sometimes a discount is the only way you’ll get eyeballs on your game, or a way to reach more of the market that wouldn’t have otherwise bought your game.
I do agree that modern AAA prices are out there. I don’t pay very much for games now, and usually AAA prices me right out of the market
I get the concept behind it. But it just seems so predatory that older games never depreciate in value. Back in the olden days of GameStop, they would adjust prices. An old game was reduced in price after a certain time since it’s no longer new.
Now, that’s no longer the case. Valve seems to be the only one that does this, as an exception. Left 4 Dead 2 is now $10 standard and that’s not some crazy percentage off discount. That’s just the base price now. Other games though are silly as hell with the pricing. Battlefield games are the most obvious. Priced at a full $60, but the value plummets to $8 when on sale. Why don’t they reprice it to $30 and then on sale for $8? Seems less psychologically manipulative
I agree that it’d be nice if they depreciated in value like in the days of physical media.
In those days though, the store only has a certain amount of shelf space. So in that sense it makes sense that they depreciated because a new game is always going to have a higher perceived value.
Digital storefronts don’t have that problem. The game can be shared infinitely without accruing a ton of publishing costs. There’s always more shelf space.
In this sense, there’s no financial motivation to depreciate. And we all know the social responsibility of big companies will be to only do what they’re forced to do.
We often feel games ought to depreciate because that’s how it’s always been. But just because that’s how it’s always been doesn’t mean that’s how it always will be.
Battlefield is an interesting case though where each game in the franchise is highly derivative of the previous game. So if each new game is essentially an upgrade of the previous one, then I’d agree that there should be an expectation that the older version is less expensive.
The same could be said about many of the giant titles. Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed, and most major sports games come to mind.
One final thing to think of is that many games have continuing development. It’s basically the early access model (a whole other can of worms), and you could argue that many of these games appreciate in value. Some notables have - Factorio comes to mind.
I don’t think Battlefield 2042 falls into that category though
There’s still a bit of market force, but it comes in the form of other game developers.
Imagine you went to the grocery store, and saw Hardin McCombsky’s Super-Premium Dry Seasoned Cheese was $1000 a wedge. How ridiculous! How do they expect us to pay that much for that cheese?
Only…Shaw’s Bargain Dry Cheese is $4. And it’s not the same thing - but it’s still pretty good.
Basically, this kind of thing works out in many other industries. Sometimes on rare occasion, one producer makes things MUCH better than competitors and can demand a much higher price because no one else comes close.
To give a more game-relevant example, BattleBit is $15 and compared favorably to Battlefield. In other cases where there’s no competitor and the developer hasn’t lowered their price for sales, it may be because they’re confident they did good work and made a good game. Factorio is famous for this.
I am really enjoying this downfall of Bethesda, Blizzard, Ubisoft and EA, more than I enjoyed anything they published in half a decade. I wish death also to Gearbox. It’s coming and after Randy bought and promptly ruined RoR2, my schadenfreude is tingling.
I think it's far too late for that. Publishers have been testing the waters with $70 AAA games for a few years now, and people kept buying them. I don't expect that to change any time soon.
This has nothing to do with the gaming industry, specifically. This is a basic (very effective) marketing strategy. But typically federal regulations prohibit them from advertising something as “on sale” perpetually so it has to be advertised at retail price for x% of the time.
Had a CyberMaxx VR headset back in the days. It had a whopping resolution of 505x230 per eye at a combined 60 Hz (so each eye only got 30 Hz). Headtracking worked with 3 degrees of freedom. The included mouse driver for DOS made the head tracking available for every DOS game even if it didn’t have support. It came with Tekwar and a Flight Unlimited demo I never could get to run.
Some games worked with stereoscopic 3D. That was about the only really awesome thing about the headset. But the 30 Hz displays made sure that you could only play for a short while anyways. Descent was nausea inducing on its own. But in VR it was a guaranteed pukefest.
Thinking about playing with the headset was always much better than actually doing it. I’d pull it out every few years and then put it back into storage. Last I heard it died at my brother’s.
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