well yup and thats what they want the games to be. a service. multiplayer diablo2 was much like an mmo but no servers needed. You could run the server and play with your friends or even open it up but everyone needed to have a copy of the game. so it has been done and they want to do it more and more.
While I’m super into self hosting instances, that usually defeats the point of MMOs. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that the publishers of MMOs often defeat the point of their game after long enough anyhow.
All that has generally pushed me towards round based games where the only advantages are my own personal skill.
Perhaps. I think in terms of Fallout they may have made the maps kind of “stylized” like how the rest of the pip-boy is, but it definitely didn’t make the game very fun. Especially when I was lost in one of the many maze-like dungeon levels and the map just wasn’t helping.
The indoors Fallout map is the worst thing ever. I don’t think it’s ever once helped me out of a jam or cleared up confusion. If there are multiple levels (and there always are) it’s all just slapped together in a single plane on the map so it makes less than zero sense.
Yeah. The worst case of it I’ve seen is in the “Come Fly With Me” quest in New Vegas. The indoor area is split into two sections each that are both multiple floors, and both of the floors vary surprisingly not at all in the way they look. Especially the underground section. The quest has you navigating the whole building about a dozen times too, so it just becomes a nightmare.
"A little jarring" is being very generous. For me, Skyrim's map is one of the worst maps I've ever had the displeasure of using. Skyrim is a grey game with grey landscape, and the map really emphasizes how grey everything is: grey land with grey icons on top and grey clouds covering most of the landscape (such a great idea). I don't mind that the map is 3D, but the camera angle limits is what pisses me off, they seem to choose the worst possible angles to showcase the map. There are no road markings whatsoever, and the LOD is so low that you can barely make out any feature on the map (considering you're lucky to find a patch in the map that isn't covered by the grey clouds).
I know that Fallout's maps are bad as well, you can barely see shit in them except for the markers, but at least it's in theme with the game, so it gets a pass. Starfield's is in theme and is pretty much like the Fallout maps, but the fact that there's literally no other features make it terrible as well, but I much rather have a completely blue screen with some markers spread around than trying to navigate Skyrim's map.
Oblivion's where it's at. They should have expanded on what they did there: simple 2D maps that are in theme with the game, clearly depicting main roads and some minor paths and simple depictions of the main cities' walls.
I just wrote a little jarring because I frankly didnt play much of Skyrim. I know, I’m such a heathen ;). So I was just going off of memory. You’re right that it’s bad though now that I’ve looked at videos of it.
I think hogwarts sold so well because of the JK backlash. Brought a lot of attention to the game. It was a good game though. Baldurs is getting attention because of how good it is. And treating your customers with respect goes a long way. I just bought DOS 1 & 2 because of how much I’m enjoying BG3 and wanted to vote with my wallet. Plus I hear they’re also really good.
I think Hogwarts sold well because it was a genuinely good game which captured the spirit of the franchise, a decent story line, an explorable world and had some decent combat mechanics.
I think the JKR boycott did help in an underhanded way because most of the protesting was shrill straw man character assassination. People tuned it out and bought the game anyway based on word of mouth. The real losers in this nonsense were gaming websites who undermined their own credibility by boycotting the game or scoring it badly just and turning the review into a diatribe about gender politics.
This update added a lot of new stuff to the game not counting the new really big island. Human bosses, an “arrogant pal tamer” that wants to see specific pals, a NPC that asks you to do specific emotes and one hidden npc that gave me a book that increases 1 work thingy by 1 (got one for handywork, the game crashed, then got one for planting, so there’s possibly one for each work)
My biggest gripe at the moment is with predator pals, which don’t always spawn where they’re supposed to (fixed locations, unmarked on the map) but drop predator cores, which are needed for the inventory expansion, as well as giant pal souls.
It also added some high QoL chests: one that lets you check ALL the chests in the base and the Guild Chest, which acts as a shared base chest. Another super useful building is the skill fruit farm: plant one, get 3 of the same skill.
The new island starts with several anti-air missile places, but at least it seems you only need to disable them once. Whether the missiles will go through walls or rocks and kill your flyer seems to be random chance, but it at least tries to be physical projectiles.
OMG two games don’t work! How many others do? O yea that’s right, thousands…the library for the deck is magnitudes larger than pretty much every console out there…hell I’ll say it, every console released has smaller libraries than the deck.
This one and FairGame$ are both screwed, and they’ll mark the end of an era for Sony and live service. What’s funny too is that Bungie was purchased in large part for being experts in making successful live service games, but it reminds me of something in investing where those who appear to be very smart after a string of successes are compared to being “expert coin flippers” who just got heads a number of times in a row. As we’ve gotten a peak or two behind the curtain after the purchase, it certainly looks like Bungie was only lucky.
Bungie is a lot like Bioware in that regard: Some real bangers on the resume, but none very recently. It should serve as a reminder that companies don’t make games, people do. If the right people aren’t involved, or too many of the wrong people are, past successes are entirely meaningless.
It's not only the people, it's the people at specific timepoints, nobody wants a remake of skyrim and another iteration of assassin's creed is only gonna get a lukewarm reception. Games are lightning in a bottle, their successes are basically impossible to replicate because there's so many variables at play.
That’s what weirds me out when people say things like: i will always pre order the new (insert developer name) game because i trust them. It’s not the shareholders or the suits who make the games, it’s the people, and these people may work somewhere else 10 years later.
It is a little funny that even after Sony backpedaled hard on live service after Concord, the one studio they bought to make live service games instantly started failing too. Destiny hasn’t been doing too great either. Sony have been very unlucky this generation.
Maybe, but their own actions helped. Everybody said that the 12 live games was a terrible idea. They replaced the guy behind the idea, but they're still pushing marathon without any single player nor co-op.
This smells like another Concord, to the point where I will be absolutely surprised if it lasts even 2 months.
I think Bungie still has experience making successful live service games, Destiny 2 has been a massive success for Bungie. The issue with Bungie is that they've forgotten how to release good games. Destiny 1 released kinda meh, but a year after launch started crawled back to being generally well received. Destiny 2 release (followed by the Curse of Osiris expansion) almost killed the studio, a year after launch started crawling back into being great and only in the last years really dropped off (when resources were pulled away from Destiny to Marathon). It feels almost like there are some head up their ass lead designers at Bungie who just won't listen to feedback and release a shitty game. Then the live team takes over the project, listen to actual feedback and fixes the stupid shit that should've been fixed the first time around.
Even with Marathon they had that event where streamers (and some other media people) got to play the game at Bungie and then Bungie asked for their feedback and when they got feedback on some really stupid things (like not being able to take off attachments from guns) they just went "We know, that's intentional". They're deliberately making design decisions that anyone with experience within the genre would instantly say "that's a bad idea". I don't know whose head needs to be pulled out of their ass but if Bungie doesn't want to release Marathon as a flop they need to do it quickly.
On a slightly different topic. I love how some people got to experience Marathon and Arc raiders in close proximity. Prior to the playtest people were cautiously optimistic about Marathon but Arc raiders evoked no emotion in anyone. And now it's more than reversed. People are praising Arc raiders and Marathon is seen as a lost cause.
I can name plenty of shooters that don’t let you take attachments off of guns. That might not be your best example of ignoring feedback, because the presence or omission of that feature can be for any number of very good reasons.
I was talking in the context of extraction shooters. I can't think of a single extraction shooter where you could add attachments but not remove them. I've also yet to see anyone familiar with the extraction shooter genre think it's a good idea. If you think it's a good idea you're free to defend it.
Oh yeah, didn’t they pull the Stranger Things rights from DBD in order to use them for this… and then gave them back after releasing two Stranger Things games known only as “Jack” and “Shit”
That’s not really a good comparison. After 5-10 years you’re going to need a PC upgrade as well if you want to keep up with current game tech and run games at high settings. That can easily cost $700. Remember, consoles are usually mid-range computers.
True, but that’s just more of an added benefit of PC. I have to assume the vast majority of people who build PCs for games have the desire to play new games that come out. There may be a few people who build PCs with only the desire to play old games. But i don’t think that is the majority.
Plus if someone doesn’t want new games then they wouldn’t need or care to upgrade their console from one gen to a next. So i don’t think that’s relevant in this discussion.
Considering Nintendo selling very old games just emulated on their switch for almost full price I’d say people want both new games and their classics. The point is you don’t have to decide which games to get. I play Baldurs Gate 3 but also Age of Wonders 1 or the early Devil May Cry games. I can actually play the whole DMC series on one device while my PS5 is collecting dust as every game costs more there than on PC and I don’t have a big library of games.
Also I’d have to pay way too much money just to be allowed to play online on servers that Sony doesn’t even run. Over the span of 5-10 years I’d have to pay probably around 400-800€ just to play online.
I’m not 100% sure anymore but my pc with an AMD GPU and CPU cost me maybe 1300€ and runs everything i want on highest settings so far. I think the biggest price point on PC is people getting duped by sites like userbenchmark to think they need an Nvidia card that’s ridiculously expensive.
But you aren’t required to upgrade, it will just not be as fast/HD as it would be on newer hardware. On console it is very likely the old hardware will not be developed for at a certain point, so you will not be able to play it even if technically it would run decent on the hardware
I’ll try to respond below. Lemme know what you think:
Consoles:
Need to upgrade every 5-7 years if you want to play new games on next gen consoles. Can play your old games indefinitely.
PC:
Need to upgrade every 5-7 years if you want to play new games that are more demanding and require next gen parts. Can play your old games indefinitely.
In terms of playing new games on an old PC, try playing cyberpunk on a PC from 2013 (7 years prior to CP77 release in 2020). You’ll get like 2 fps. Not even playable.
So to conclude, sure, you can try to play new games on your old ass PC, but it’ll run like crap and won’t be a good experience.
Edit: just to clarify, my opinion is from the perspective of someone who wants to play new demanding games. If you play super easy to run new indie games, then yea I agree with your point. Added benefit of PC is the ability do that indefinitely.
Or a steam deck. The cheapest option for that is like a bit under 400 I think and it doubles as a PC while having a massive library of games plus emulation.
Even the bigger model of LCD with 512 GB compared to the cheapest 64 GB model is on sale at the moment, for about 350 Euros (still under 400 US Dollars I think). It’s crazy!
The Steam Deck isn’t really a 1:1 replacement for a home console though, it really depends on your use case. It’s great at what it does, but not everyone is looking for a handheld. And if you’re into more demanding games the Deck also struggles to keep up. I love my Deck but if I had to choose between it and my desktop gaming PC I’d choose the desktop every time. Although it admittedly also was quite a bit more expensive.
True, if you wanna play games with really high requirements you need to cough up mu h more than 700 euros, I’m just saying the Steam Deck is better value than a PlayStation.
@FluffyPotato@astrionic Agreed, it doesn't even compare. Something I always forget since moving over to PC now is that console players have to pay monthly to play online, even when they have an internet connection. The concept is just absurd to me now on the PC side of things.
Saying the Steam Deck is better value than a PlayStation isn’t really a meaningful statement without further qualification because they are two very different devices. That was kind of the point of my previous comment. If you don’t need any of the handheld features and just want to play on your TV then the PS5 is better value. If you want a handheld a PS5 is obviously completely useless and the Steam Deck is insanely good value.
Also, if you want to play current, demanding games, a €700 PS5 Pro surely is enough. Even a regular PS5 should do for now since the Pro isn’t even out yet. Personally I prefer a more powerful gaming PC, but if you just want to play some of the latest AAA games on your TV you don’t need to spend more than 700€ unless you have other specific requirements.
Something I’ve been saying since the beginning, nice that people are catching up…
FTA: “The Xbox Series S was cheaper, but lacked the horsepower of the more expensive Series X.”
It’s not just that, the Series S lacks the power of the PREVIOUS GEN Xbox One X. The RAM limitations makes it impossible for it to run backwards compatible titles with the Xbox One X enhancements. AND it doesn’t have the 4K Blu Ray drive present in both the Xbox One S and Xbox One X.
This is the first time a console developer has released a new machine less capable than equivalent machines in the prior generation. PS3’s switch to cell architecture springs to mind, which put game devs on their back feet trying to write code for it and made backwards compatibility impossible without including a PS2 in the case.
Sorry but I cannot agree with that take. The PS3 was difficult to develop for, sure, but it was immensely more capable than the PS2 architecture. See what naughty dog was able to produce on it in the last years of the console lifespan.
But I do agree that for developers, the PS3 was a step backwards in terms of ease of use and tooling. And luckily they fixed that by basing PS4 on PC architecture.
I was looking at that game. Looks really cool. I’m interested to see a more historically based rpg game without mages and whatnot. I think it’s based on some section of polish history?
It’s the sequel to the first one, and historical accuracy was like, at the center of of that one. Your character starts off the game not knowing how to read, because in medieval Europe, literacy was not widespread and the son of a blacksmith certainly wouldn’t know how to read, so books you pick up in the game are total gibberish until you learn to read.
If every news outlet avoided a topic because the company wouldn’t outright confirm its existence, we would never have reporting based on leaks and rumors. That’s dumb and would make journalism worse for everyone.
It wasnt a rumor or hearsay but literally breaking a gentlemans NDA.
I havent played it but as I heard they requested not to show it and the journalist supposedly recorded whole gameplay and wrote about it?
Seems like a clear deal to me to cut of and ban his account for breaking an agreement for early access.
Reporting about leaks and rumors is totally fine. But that’s like being the primary reporter of a whistle blower
“Gentleman’s NDA” is not a thing. It’s either a legally-binding NDA or it’s not. It’s within Valve’s right to ban him from the game but saying the game shouldn’t be covered at all is silly.
If I call you a friend and tell ypu something confidential I trust you to not talk about with someone else and you do regardless, I will quit the friendship.
Maybe if the games did anything, uh, interesting. Didn’t play Hogwarts because I can give 0 fucks about the H Potter universe. Starfield was definitely one of the Bethesda games of all time. Just a smattering of mechanics stolen from other games and simplified. It was fun but by no means anything to write home about. Put about 140 hrs—will probably not play it ever again. Did put 120 int BG3, will probably play again in a couple months.
Hogwarts legacy was good until the hype wore off and then you notice that it’s not very good story/gameplay wise and the whole game coasted on the castle itself.
That’s a terrible idea. You’d pay more than an entire paycheck just to play a typical JRPG which typically have 40+ hours of gameplay. I’m not paying $600 to play one game.
This is developers incrementally conditioning you to accept an even worse state of things for games. And if they follow through, I’ll pirate their shit and never give them a dime of my money again.
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