I could understand putting this kind of time in for a passion project of your own, but for like, a job for somebody else? Worse, a salaried job? That’s way too much.
This article is talking about how Sony’s service is “only a year old”?? What are they talking about? I thought this was about PS plus, which I’m pretty sure I had bought many years ago, not 1 year ago.
i reduced my plan because of the price hike. Fuck that noise. If the basic plan goes up too much more ill cancel that too. Online isn’t worth too much more than what they have it set at now.
Not sure if this is how it’s supposed to work, but someone bought me premium and I downloaded like all the good games I could fit on my drives. Now I can seemingly play them all without a membership, as it ran out months ago… so that’s neat. Seems like a loophole they might close though.
Not me - the moment when buying a game outright is no longer an option is the moment when I stop paying for video games. I already have a large library on Steam (1,700+), GoG (400+), and I’m not planning on buying any Playstation or Xbox products. I’ve never paid for Xbox game pass, or PS plus, nor do I plan to. They can scheme all day long, hike the prices every week, I already buy games only if they’re on a really deep discount or in a bundle. Never paid more than 30 bucks for a game, and I could count on one of my hands how many I paid more than 20 bucks for.
I do, of course, realize that I’m in the minority, but hopefully more people will realize how big of a scam these subscription services are.
I don’t know, I don’t think the PS Plus one is a scam. I subscribed to the mid tier one when it was cheaper for a whole year than to buy a game I wanted to play that was included with it. I’ve played a good half dozen to dozen games in the year I’ve had it. I feel like I’ve definitely got my money’s worth out of it.
I was mostly referring to the last part of the article where the author explains the entire long-term plan behind the subscription services - first they offer a large variety of games for a low price, then they squeeze the customers for every single penny after they’ve cornered the market.
See how Netflix work out their hike etc? I don’t think it would continue to work in their favor to meet the profit/sub count projection to make their stocker holder happy.
the moment when buying a game outright is no longer an option is the moment when I stop paying for video games.
That moment will not come. That would mean that every single indie developer had come under the umbrella of such subscription services and not one bigger actor would want to try to differentiate from the competition.
Gamepass isn’t a scam right now in my view. I’m able to get 50 day passes for 7 bucks right now. Once gamepass starts being more expensive than buying the games I want I’ll just go back to doing that.
Once game pass starts being more expensive than buying the games I want, I'll just go back to doing that
You may not have that option. The business model here is to burn cash, get consumers used to gamepass, then get games onto gamepass exclusively (likely in exchange for higher payouts from the service). Once we are at that point, which may be years away, prices will rise and there won't be another avenue to play most games.
This is the model right now for shows, and some movies, they are produced for streaming services and are only available on those services.
Most games already don't get physical releases. All that needs to happen to eliminate choice is that gamepass makes publishers a better offer than Steam - then there isn't a digital release either.
I think that kind of action is what would get regulators on Microsoft’s back which is why they started selling games on third-party platforms like Steam. Could be wrong though.
They are playing with fire… most games don’t require computer level graphics/cpu power. If they aren’t careful they will lose their shirt to mobile gaming and console gaming will turn into an unpopular niche thing of the past.
I’m not buying digital versions (although I have netflix) of the movies I love, so I’m not gonna start buying digital versions of the games I love.
I have a ps plus basic subscription, but I’ll not subscribe anymore if it gets more expensive. I haven’t received any email about a price hike for now though…
But how long will this last? I am not so sure that the next generation they could not get away with just digital versions not taking discs (or equivalent). The no discs versions of this generation, not just are for having a cheaper version is also a test to see how feasible could be in the future.
I mean that already is a thing on PC, although there are other reasons for it like the low adoption of bluray / DRMs / etc. Physical is non-existent except some really rare case. Even when some games are sold DRM free on GoG they aren’t sold in discs or USBs or similar.
I just checked this page and none of the games that I’m playing currently are on it (Diablo 4, Elden Ring, God of War, Jedi Survivor etc). It’s not like the games I’m playing are obscure or brand new either. Not to mention some of the console exclusives that I’m also playing, like TotK on the Switch and Horizon FW on the PS5, but of course, I understand that the cloud provider can do nothing about that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite enthusiastic about cloud gaming as well and looked seriously into it a while ago, because I wanted to upgrade my PC but the upgrade costs were looking pretty high (this was during the peak of the supply chain issues during COVID), also I wanted to break out of the constant and expensive upgrade cycles.
But everything I looked at had some or the other limitation, either they didn’t have the games that I was playing, or the service wasn’t available in my country (eg Shadow PC), or it didn’t allow you to bring your own games (Stadia), or it was working out to be too expensive (Azure VM), or had other limitations such as not supporting ultra-wide resolutions at 60+ FPS. I think for me, being able to play my own games is a big fan requirement for it to work, and the pricing of things like Shadow could work out for me, but those sort of services have limited availability, and rolling your own VM on a public cloud can turn very expensive if you’re a heavy gamer, as I’ve experienced first-hand in Azure.
Therefore, IMO, cloud gaming, while is the future, just isn’t there yet.
Right, but as so many other threads have acknowledged, not everyone is capable of paying a large upfront cost to save them in the long-term. That’s one example of why it’s more expensive to be broke. That’s why I’m responding to these comments - it’s not all ignorance or stupidity; people are broke out here.
I’ve never known any different but it still always felt like paying twice to the Internet to me. My first console with online connection was an Xbox which required Live. Before that they just didn’t have any network connectivity at all.
I know, I got the GC adapter hoping to have multiplayer Mario or Metroid games. So imagine my surprise when those never came.(I was more PC gamer back then and multiplayer is already plenty.)
Coming from someone whos never had to play for online play, i understand it cause the main driving force for someone to get x console over p console is what their friends have. The amount of ppl who only own a playstation to play COD with their friends is staggering, and moving all their friends to pc is a big task.
Until hardware manufacturers like Nvidia and Intel start getting thirsty and lock features behind a subscription :/ Only $10.99 a month to use those RTX cores, $7.99 for DLSS.
… Humble monthly? Game pass? EA play? Even PS Plus has subscriptions for streaming to a PC. People buy these things a lot. You can try to excuse Humble monthly but there are far more game pass players than Humble monthly ones. Either way, you can pretend that PC doesn’t tolerate this nonsense but many people are playing Starfield on Game Pass this month. PC players already tolerate this and in some cases, welcome it.
Those aren't the same or similar. Those are options in addition to buying that allow access to a large library of games (except humble, which is just buying games). They aren't "pay this subscription or you can't play the game you bought".
Non-endemic companies such as Google and Amazon are among the biggest threats to the games industry.
That’s according to former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden, who shared his thoughts on the future of games during the keynote at last week’s GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit in Seattle.
The irony is palpable throughout this entire article.
They only feel it would be dangerous because they have the capital to drain talents to do experimental things while not care about the fall outs of closing subsidiaries or abandoning projects. It could also drive up developer cost and make the business more risky.(IMO, the developers are getting paid in peanuts compare to what the big publishers made. Even after considering flopped projects.)
The danger lies in once people get used to the new payscale, if big capital consider it’s not that profitable, then the better talents may not keep staying or heading toward this industry. Also less loan/venture awarded to companies doing projects not passing the “market research” phase.
Yes, and lastly Tencents also don’t like competitions bidding their potential acquisition targets.
Even ignoring he’s now working for freaking Tencent, how far are we supposed to go? Even his former company Sony was technically “non-endemic” for video games before the 90s. So was Microsoft.
Nintendo was selling playing cards long before video games, and Namco was building mall coin-op rides before arcade machines. Though I guess those two and Sony were at least in the entertainment business. But in any case they weren’t created as video game companies (of course given when they were created, they couldn’t).
Subscription plans don’t make much sense to me unless it’s dirt cheap. I don’t have much time to play games so when I do, I’d like to work on games I like instead of some random games.
Most I paid for a game subscription was the $1 3 month game pass. I don’t see myself paying for a regular priced month subscription like $10/month. I’d rather spend that buying a month of Humble monthly or a discounted game.
Where tf the anti trust at? It’s an easy solution to a trivial problem. How do we stop a few companies from controlling everything??? Uhhh… make it illegal???
I don’t think it was a choice. Xbox did it first and that’s why I bought a ps3. Then sony introduced it. Then nintendo. It’s still less expensive than a PC hobby. Consumers don’t have much say in what these companies do or how they operate.
just with the sales and free online/cloudsaves PCs are cheaper in the long run
And mods are an added value, we can even include fanmade patches that fix what developers don't into that added value
Consumers don’t have much say in what these companies do or how they operate.
Yes, they do. Microsoft tried to incorporate Xbox live onto PC and it was a failure because PC consumers didn't bought it
The same goes with paid mods, Valve and Bethesda tried to make people buy mods and it was rejected by the consumer so the have to backtrack.
Consumers have all the power in their wallet they decide what course the companies take. If a company does something that goes against your interests as consumer is as easy as stop giving them money, if you hurt them economically, they'll have to go back to the business model that gave them profits (this works only if the average consumer is intelligent enough to protect their own interest/rights)
Used or loaned games (provided you have libraries offering them in your area) are still a huge benefit for (most, ie physical media “enabled”) consoles.
The subscription model is broken by default, regardless of Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo, and is only good and cheap until it isn’t anymore.
Agreed that consumers have a say, to some extent, however some are too far “into the ecosystem” to either care or be willing to boycott or make a change that would inconvenience them, so they’d rather give in.
100% agree with that, but even then the sharing of physical media seems like it’s being slowly replaced with sharing digital libraries. PS4 allows a hokey way of sharing libraries between two people, and Steam does offer a similar janky way of sharing libraries between multiple people. With GOG, you should be able to download a standalone installer on a USB and then give that to a friend (which now I think about it, is the PC equivalent of lending your friend the disc lol).
Wondering how long it will be until people go “remember when we used to share discs with each other?”
Oh absolutely, I know I’m already part of a minority when I favour physical over digital media.
We’re likely seeing the last (or, more realistically, second to last?) generation of consoles with physical media as an option and that’s a bummer…
GOG is great on the PC side of things, but as someone with a Steam Deck as their only PC, it isn’t always the best option (some games have been giving me a headache or end up straight up not working - eg I’ve had to rebuy Gris because the GOG version would show a white screen with any version of Proton I tried, while the Steam version was perfectly fine).
just with the sales and free online/cloudsaves PCs are cheaper in the long run
This may be true, but then i think this is just annother example of how it is more expensive to be poor. Even if PCs are cheaper in the long run, it’s hard to scrounge up the $1000+ upfront to buy a worthwhile PC if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck. Over 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. If you are living that way, it’s much easier to come up with the $300-500 for a console (in the US, that’s an average tax refund amount), and then the $15 a month for gamepass/PS plus. And don’t tell me you can buy a lowend PC for that price - any PC you buy for $500 is gonna play games worse than the comparable console.
In cases where our only power is in our wallet, people with bigger wallets will be the only ones with actual power.
It’s not common sense, that’s a common false judgement applied to people with less means - it’s a value judgement and diminishes their struggle. This is a reminder to be nice on our instance.
I'm not rich, I know what I'm talking about. When I'm going to spend money I have to look the best way to spend it, which is the best "invest". Being wasteful is an luxury I personally can't afford.
Fantastic, I’m great you have that going for you. I’m letting you know that making value judgements on other poor people for being poor is not okay. Don’t do that on Beehaw.
I told you that you need to change your behavior and all you’ve done is attempt to argue with me rather than understand why your behavior was not acceptable. You’re getting a 7 day ban so you can have time to think this over.
Only if you plan on either never paying for an online sub for the console or paying for an online sub for less than 5 years on the console, and also take into consideration that a PC can both game and be a computer you can use for other things.
A gaming PC has a higher upfront cost, but it’s a better long-term value. Let’s say you buy a PS5 for $500, and then pay for 5 years of PS+ for the old price, $60. That’s $800 for a friggin console already, but let’s also consider that most people either have a laptop or a tablet for doing computer-related tasks. Reasonable people would pay probably somewhere in the $400-$600 range, but let’s give the console a chance and say we got a $400 laptop. That’s $1200 now.
Using that $1200 as a budget, you can get a computer with a 4060ti, a 12th gen i5, a 1TB NVME SSD, and 16GB RAM for around $1100. Note that, say, 5 years down the line from buying this PC, you can just swap in and out parts as you want and be able to sell old parts for some money back, so staying up-to-date to play whatever current games can be cheaper too depending on the part prices.
Also anecdotally parts seem to be lasting much longer than they used to. Maybe I’m just playing fewer games, maybe I care about graphics less, or maybe there actually is a technical reason but in the early 00s when I first started building computers I was essentially forced to upgrade about every 2 or 3 years but now I’m still running on my 7 year old desktop with a 1070 – I was going to upgrade the graphics card but the crypto mining boom priced me out and lo and behold I’m still able to play whatever I want with nary a difficulty. Even Baldur’s Gate 3 runs just fine, with a little chugging.
The percentage of the industry that can afford to push modern graphics to their limit has only shrunk over time as the development time required to make games that taxing has increased. That's why most of what you play isn't particularly high-spec.
Ok. Logitech G203 for $20 and a Redragon K552 for $45 - a tiny bit cheaper than a PS5 controller which retails at $70 before tax.
Windows you can literally get for free from Microsoft directly. You’re basically paying a license to get rid of the “Activate Windows” bit and to be able to change wallpapers, but functionally you can play games and do computer things with an unactivated Windows license. You can also opt to play on Linux instead since Steam offers Proton with their Linux version, and you can also use WINE for games that won’t run on Proton. Linux is also free.
If you want a mouse with a good sensor for competitive games and a linear switch mechanical keyboard with NKRO, those are generally the two best entry-level options. Rechargeable wireless mice can be a bit pricey, which is why I’m assuming you used a vague descriptor of “quality” and specifically mentioned it just for the sake of being arbitrarily on par with what a PS5 offers. But if you want a good budget option for a wireless gaming mouse, you can with a Logitch G305 for around $50.
As for the OS stuff, that’s a good point, and it’s true - if you’re talking about 5 or so years ago. Once Steam said “hey, we’re integrating Proton into our Linux version of Steam”, it’s been leaps and bounds in improvements for Linux gaming. By the way, fun fact: the PS4 used FreeBSD for the system’s OS which is based off Unix - and surprise, Linux is also based off Unix. Wouldn’t be surprised if the PS5 OS is also based on FreeBSD.
How is that a bad faith argument? The PS5 Controller is not entry level quality. It’s not my problem equivalent PC peripherals are expensive. My Razer Viper Wireless cost $150 and the build quality is just slightly worse than a Dual Sense. It’s built to be lighter weight so that’s understandable. But it’s twice the cost, and that doesn’t include a keyboard. I tried the G305 and didn’t care for the build quality personally. Equivalent wireless keyboards with the quality control of Sony are $80-$100 too. I’d probably cheap out on the keyboard before the mouse, but every keyboard I’ve used under $85 had Quality control issues from switches stop functioning to buggy software (Anne Pro II), and Wireless was terrible on all of them.
I’ve heard issues dealing with multiplayer and anti-cheat as recently as this summer, so it’s nice to see it’s better, but until games are officially supported with no third party patches or workarounds, I don’t count it.
PS5 is FreeBSD based, so yes it’s Unix-like. But that doesn’t mean anything. MacOS is also Unix-Like and it’s terrible for gaming. It all comes down to support. At the end of the day I don’t want to have to deal with drivers, or configurations to play a game. I want to press a button, and start gaming. For me personally Consoles are going to win that war 95% of the time. But I’m dumb. I spent almost 3 times the cost of a PS5 on a Graphics card last year for some reason.
The PS5 Controller is not entry level quality. It’s not my problem equivalent PC peripherals are expensive.
You’re right - it’s the only entry in at that price point. If you just want a wireless PS5 controller, you either pay Sony $70… or you pay an approved 3rd-party retailer $150+ at minimum for a non-Sony controller. So it’s comes out the same as the Viper Wireless you mentioned.
My Razer Viper Wireless cost $150 and the build quality is just slightly worse than a Dual Sense. It’s built to be lighter weight so that’s understandable. But it’s twice the cost, and that doesn’t include a keyboard. I tried the G305 and didn’t care for the build quality personally.
How the fuck can you compare build qualities between a controller and a mouse?? Like, how do you actually do that? You’re comparing apples to oranges here at best, and at worst you’re doing a strawman argument by cherry-picking things that support your point. You also prove that enjoying build quality is subjective - I personally loved the G305 mouse and how it felt in my hand, and I have used stuff like the Viper Wireless and Glorious Model O. But you what the best mouse I have used to date is? The CoolerMaster MM720, which is a $30 wired mouse. The consumer have choices at different price points when it comes to gaming peripherals, and you are right that they can be crazy expensive at the top end - but don’t pretend $180 controllers don’t exist, either, and don’t try to conflate high-price point items as being good, because you can easily get a good quality mouse with bells and whistles in the $60-$80 space.
Equivalent wireless keyboards with the quality control of Sony are $80-$100 too. I’d probably cheap out on the keyboard before the mouse, but every keyboard I’ve used under $85 had Quality control issues from switches stop functioning to buggy software (Anne Pro II), and Wireless was terrible on all of them.
That I will give you, but you’re also deliberately shopping in the $40 range for stuff like the Anne Pro II Keyboard you mentioned. I can say every PS5 controller I used under $70 was awful, but that doesn’t mean much once I mention I was buying $20 controllers.
I’ve heard issues dealing with multiplayer and anti-cheat as recently as this summer, so it’s nice to see it’s better, but until games are officially supported with no third party patches or workarounds, I don’t count it.
Anti-cheat has also been on consoles for decades now - not as bad as PC to your point, but once again don’t act like consoles don’t experience the issue either, especially when stuff like Xim exists.
PS5 is FreeBSD based, so yes it’s Unix-like. But that doesn’t mean anything. MacOS is also Unix-Like and it’s terrible for gaming. It all comes down to support.
Good point, forgot Macs exist tbh lol. It is also only one OS that doesn’t have good gaming support, but honestly it’s a toss-up. Linux has gotten some really good support though.
At the end of the day I don’t want to have to deal with drivers, or configurations to play a game. I want to press a button, and start gaming. For me personally Consoles are going to win that war 95% of the time.
Which is a completely valid point - but that’s not the point you were making initially. Since you said right off that bat:
Need to add a good quality mouse and keyboard to your numbers at minimum. Consoles come with controllers. Should also add a $99 Windows license too.
You made it a point to talk about the price of the computer versus a console, not the ease of use of it.
I spent almost 3 times the cost of a PS5 on a Graphics card last year for some reason.
Because you deliberately chose to spend that much on a GPU that outperforms a PS5 in graphical power? I bought a $400 GPU that slightly beats the PS5 out a couple of years back, so that’s moot.
How is that a bad faith argument?
Because I’m dumb and I just learned what “bad faith” actually means lol. My apologies on that, it was the wrong usage - “cherry-picking” is literally the word I should have used.
So it’s comes out the same as the Viper Wireless you mentioned.
No, it comes with the console. So to be fair, just subtract $70 from the cost of the PS5 = $330 for the Digital Version
How the fuck can you compare build qualities between a controller and a mouse
Easy, the Plastic and Switches on the Razer feel cheaper / more brittle. There is more flex to it when squeezed. The charging dock connectors are less reliable. To be fair, the mouse did come with a dock with my model, I think it may be a bit cheaper without it.
you can easily get a good quality mouse with bells and whistles in the $60-$80 space.
You absolutely can, but you didn’t include anything originally and that’s why I made a point of bringing it up.
you’re also deliberately shopping in the $40 range for stuff like the Anne Pro II Keyboard
I paid $90 for in in late 2019. Assuming that’s not a counterfeit listing (Official site lists it for $90 with $10 off but OOO). The macros and software customization is incredible… when it works. Bluetooth was worthless, I had repeated key presses from time to time, and the config kept getting erased randomly when I would unplug it.
Anti-cheat has also been on consoles for decades now
I meant anti-cheat preventing the game from working. I stopped playing competitive a long time ago.
Linux has gotten some really good support though.
Subjective I guess. ProtonDB still lists a lot of games with issues. Not a lot are natively supported by the devs.
You made it a point to talk about the price of the computer versus a console, not the ease of use of it.
Yea I did, and the Ease of use is tied to the cost through the Windows license or lack there of. In all of these comparisons the PC side neglects to include the cost of Keyboards, Mice, and Windows.
Because you deliberately chose to spend that much on a GPU that outperforms a PS5 in graphical power? I bought a $400 GPU that slightly beats the PS5 out a couple of years back, so that’s moot.
That’s the entire cost of a PS5, and a few years back an equivalent SSD was $200.
cherry picking
That’s basically my original point. You can’t leave out a mouse and keyboard.
I used an Xbox controller for years yes. Now I use an 8bitdo with gyros. I don’t play fps games. But yes I do have a wireless m+kb for games that are better with them.
You know, you see thus argument every so often online. I’ve had an excellent and subscription free Linux gaming experience over the last three years. If you enjoy console gaming and getting nickel and dimed for increasingly shitty online services then power to you
Considering piracy equivalent to hardware theft is just intellectually dishonest. In a lot of ways, but relevant to this discussion is that piracy is way less risky, so more people do it. If you try to steal a PS5 from a store I’d go as far to say you’d probably get caught and jailed. With piracy you almost definitely won’t get caught.
I think this debate can get lost in the numbers when it’s more about the user. For some people that upfront cost is going to make sense, for others it won’t. The math isn’t the hard part. Specifically though, a PC hobby isn’t exactly a cheap hobby.
Gaming in general isn’t a cheap hobby. You can get a 320$ steam deck, dock it and plug it into an old monitor add a cheap KB and mouse and you are PC gaming. Or you can spend 3,200$ on a top of the line rig. Its whatever you want to make of it. I wouldnt say its more expensive than console gaming, but you can make it one and you will get a better experience for it. Either way personally I would consider PC the best option by a fairly large margin.
Well, I’m still using my $200 laptop from 7 years ago for my basic computer needs. And that doesn’t seem like it’s going to change soon. Also, someone who buys a gaming PC is likely going to have a cheap laptop to do their basic computer stuff still.
Also, I get my subscription for $40 on sale, mostly for the games and discounts. So it really just pays for itself in the games I get from it.
I think you’re vastly underestimating how cheap most computers are; consumer laptops are around $300-500 median, that’s what most people use. And those laptops don’t game. The enthusiast computer market, while larger than its ever been, is still a ridiculously small percentage of computers sold.
big published reviews don’t mean anything to me and I’m surprised they do to most people. everything is an 8-10 out of 10. how do people not find an issue with that
The only conclusion to make is that the video game industry has matured to a point where only masterpieces are released. Bad games just don’t exist anymore.
I think you can explain much of the lack of lower scores by the fact that the games that would get lower scores are also likely to be ignored by just about any established reviewer.
There are thousands of games released every year that a site like IGN will never review. Would you find it valuable for IGN to scour Steam or the Switch eShop for terrible games just to use more of the score scale?
Find an independent critic you respect and listen to the tenor of why they say a game is good. Or ignore critics and develop your own taste and sense of which studios, directors, artists, composers, or otherwise will compel you to buy a game.
i use word of mouth mostly but its not that all critics are bad, just what seems like most, but if you find that you consistently align with a critics opinion I’d trust them
Exactly, it feels like 50/100 is the baseline and 75/100 is mediocre. 75/100 tells me I have to be a fan of the genre to enjoy it. This rating inflation really shows how dependent reviewers are. This is one of the reasons I like organisations like Stiftung Warentest instead of depending on some biased product comparison blogs.
You may notice that this parallels the american school grading system to a T. Most major gaming review sites and such are done by americans that spent anywhere between 4-10+ years with that being the what grading/reviewing/scoring was done in almost every interaction they ever had past childhood, there’s no wonder it’s the standard here even if it’s changed the scoring paradigm.
Exactly this. 50/100 looks like an F, because that’s what it would be on a school paper. Often we’d even be given points out of a hundred just like that. So giving a 50 to a middling/okay game feels really harsh, vs 70 (aka a C) or 80 (B).
Even gollum, by far the buggiest and most boring AAA game to come out in a few years was given a 64% by pc gamer. At least gamespot was honest and gave them a 2/10
I don’t understand the purpose of big company reviewers (for subjective stuff like media at least). If I’m watching a smaller reviewer my goal is figure out their tastes so I can ignore the criticisms that I know don’t bother me, and pay very close attention to where their tastes align with mine. Like if dunky calls a game buggy or slow paced, that’s probably more a positive than a negative, but if he says the controls are clunky, I’ll probably agree. ACG tends to like games that are less mechanically adventious and easy compared to what I like, and we have evry different tastes in storylines, but he’s a really good barometer for sound and graphics.
If kotaku or whatever releases a review it’s really hard for me to understand whose voice I’m getting, so the review is pretty useless, how do I know if the guy calling the game a challenge is that infamous cuphead reviewer or a guy that has been beating dark souls since he was 4.
You’d start loading a game from tape and then you might as well go have dinner with your family because it would be 30 to 60 minutes before you could play.
Or, it could hit a loading error 5 minutes after you walked away and now you have to start all over again…
I bet you'd complain about your new car having roll up windows or no ac. Times have changed and we can do better. Especially with their budget and 6 years. It's pathetic.
This shows you've missed the point and haven't researched the game.
It's all the animation transitions between space and ground. No Man's Sky had fifteen developers and accomplished this years ago. Bethesda is pathetically incompetent.
no mans sky had deep quests and deep conversations with unique characters? and they also used creation engine? i had no idea no mans sky was so brilliant! youve changed my mind!
Bethesda doesn't have deep quests either. The creation engine is a weight around the devs necks. I'm not sure what you're trying to say but you're making my points for me.
Unfortunately most of the folks in gaming media that I follow don’t write or produce proper “reviews” anymore. Reading a review from IGN or Gamespot… I don’t know anything about the reviewer so I take it with a grain of salt. Like with Starfield, I give the same weight to IGN giving it a 7 as I do with some no-name whatever tiny website I never heard of giving it a 9.5
Just have to read through the reviews. If someone docks the game for not letting you fly manually between solar systems like you do in Elite Dangerous then I just have to write-off the negativity because… of-course fucking not, did anyone expect that? With something like, the repeated knocks against the barren nature of the procedural generation leading to repetitive tedious travel - I take that more seriously, because it was something I was hoping they would have addressed when moving that direction. Something like the story sucking or the NPCs having cringey dialogue is completely subjective and means nothing without knowing the reviewer’s tilt.
If someone docks the game for not letting you fly manually between solar systems like you do in Elite Dangerous then I just have to write-off the negativity because… of-course fucking not, did anyone expect that?
I think a lot of people expected that. This is the see-that-mountain-you-can-go-there studio.
That surprises me… each BGS game is extraordinary iteritive over the previous one ever since Morriwind. They’re like 20 years into iteritive design and arguably each iteration, while doing some interesting new things also takes a step or two back. Very obvious looking back over their history. They’re really a one-note-studio.
To all of a sudden expect Starfield would manage to be that revolutionary (to their formula) seems shortsighted. Even the concept of having a fully-realized BGS RPG with a near infinitely open space exploration system seems like an impossible feat. On a technical level, sure, but the space between planets would be empty and desolate… and even expecting an interesting procedurally generated continent is a big ask today, let alone a planet, let alone a solar system, let alone a quarter of a galaxy.
I wasn't expecting it to be revolutionary. I expect Bioware RPGs to be on dozens of finite maps, and I expect BGS games, other than interiors, to be seamless maps. I was expecting procedural generation to cover the difference, and I expected that if No Man's Sky could do it with maybe two dozen employees, BGS probably could too, especially given when the game went into full production. I was not, and still am not, expecting the vast majority of their planets to have something interesting on them just due to how many there are.
I can understand the link between seamless exteriors and the equivalent of what that would mean in the context of a space game for Bethesda, but the technological implications of having a galactic system flight mode and seamless planet to space transitions are both completely new ideas to Bethesda and are also technically complex to implement in a game already knee deep in new tech and systems only from what we'd been shown.
There's a reason things like seamless planet transitions are only something you might be able to expect in recent years. While Bethesda could totally make that happen, it's not where I'd expect them to put their money, or they'd have probably dropped a line showing it off in the pre release footage.
At once, I understand why you might've expected that, but expecting anything not explicitly shown is never a good idea when it comes to tempering expectations.
They showed so much of the game that I was bored before I could sift through anywhere near all of it (not to say I wouldn't enjoy the game, but I know what I'm getting with a Bethesda RPG). I'm not knocking it for having a load screen between space and landing on the planet, but because we've seen that done a handful of times in recent years, as well as expectations set up from their previous games' maps, it makes perfect sense to me to expect that to be in the game.
I think it does make sense to expect that up until you realize how much of a technical undertaking it'd be to do so and whether that payoff seems worth it to them. Seamless transitions seem to me to still be in a category to show off if you have it, so that they didn't should be a red flag, but if you didn't watch all the footage then you wouldn't realize that, which I get, and I dont expect everybody to watch both the showcases like I did, thats probably over an hour of footage.
I can see why you'd expect a similar seamless experience due to their previous maps, but implementing that is completely different due to the style of game and requires new engine features to do so unlike their previous games which were already capable of it since Morrowind. You could expect them to consider doing it, but it wouldn't be a given
Having played the game some last night, the load screens haven’t been what’s bothering me but if I had to complain it’d be for the menu diving. Tab goes back a page and there are 3-4 levels of map, the city you’re in, the planet that’s in, the {system?} that’s in and the galaxy it all resides in. You can travel to any of them so you can directly land in a city on a planet in its galaxy, or just outside one.
For a little while it was telling me to press R to bring up a system map but I think that’s only in certain situations, so I’ve been pressing tab and selecting map (galaxy) or M for local map (then tab to pull back a menu).
So far there have been other little quirks, like F in scan mode prevents M, L, I, (map, quests, inv) it gets tedious but it’s again, trying to nitpick something that stood out as annoying but doesn’t actually matter? Like, it minorly affects me but then I press F and continue on my way lol.
I’d say a much bigger oversight is quest streamlining. Without too much in specifics, I was captured via “trait” (I assume) at level 5 put into a level 12 situation. My ship couldn’t survive the scenario and I had to pull back to the previous auto save (technically it was 2-3 previous, but only because I tried to win). That situation was also made more annoying due to a bad energy distribution and getting attacked pretty immediately jumping out of hyperdrive, if there was a fight advantage number I’d have been at -7 at least lol.
Rolling back the save was fine though, I didn’t continue that quest and will level up some before going back to it. First time I had to do it though and it was a little jarring since you’d expect the game stealing you to put you in relatively level-appropriate scenarios.
Overall I’ve been enjoying the game though. These gripes are pretty minor overall and I think just a little more information and distance between jumps and being attacked and it was hardly have been an issue. Oh, last thing about information I do wish the shops and certain trade areas had more labeling for like weight or details, I’ve been making a point to not overloot the raw world but even just enemy encounters fill up your weight fast and sometimes it’s hard to tell exactly what is taking it all up.
I played it for the later half of yesterday, so maybe 4-6 hours or so? The main story is a little silly but it’s a fine premise so far. People calling it absurd or ridiculous, I just don’t see what they’d want instead? The character creator was actually pretty fun with seemingly fairly varied possibilities. One encounter I’ve come across is a religious cult who are known to openly attack. Well, you can trait to be one of them so hopefully the game plays into that. If it does, I’d say the game is actually going to be quite great. If it does not, then I’d say it’s a Bethesda game that could have a little more depth but is also pretty fleshed out for the early game. Like I said, I’m only a few hours in and I’ve not visited many planets. I’ve been pleased with the choices I have available, the options I have to complete them, and the results of them even if it didn’t succeed the way I had hoped lol. I’ll have to see non-settled planets more before I comment on those.
Tl;Dr there’s some flow issues that I’ve encountered, mostly with how many menus and how often, could do with a little more information in some spots and a little less in others but overall it feels like a prettier space Bethesda game and I’ve been more pleasantly surprised. It’s ran well on a 5800x3D and a 10gb 3080 with everything but motion blur on ultra/native with RT/med. Some areas do feel less smooth, but not choppy or anything like that. Just feels like 165hz vs 60+ variable. That said, with the hardware it’d be a shame if it ran poorly.
I see what you’re getting at, I could see how someone might assume an seamless outer space based on that. As soon as you realize how much of a technical undertaking that is though, it’s easy to assume they wouldn’t go that route and not have blown that horn 2+ years ago as a huge feature. Something like that combined with a BGS RPG would be massive and I can’t imagine a world where a company like BGS or Microsoft would be wanting to keep that a secret until release.
Expecting anything that particularly in-depth without being shown explicit pre-release footage of it is an expectation trap. Bethesda was never going to make a space sim, any space sim features are a bonus and were far from guaranteed.
When it comes to movies and audience scores, sure, look at the rotten tomatoes score or whatever. But everyone should realize that the average score of EVERY CRITIC is just going to be a useless number.
Not only that but reviewers who represent entire companies like the people at IGN and elsewhere aren’t giving an honest opinion. I know this because a few of them have given their honest opinion before. They got fired for low scores.
This is the reason that I enjoy watching reviews from people like ACG or SkillUp. They don’t need to give a score because their opinion isn’t a number. Enjoyability isn’t a number. Both of those reviewers enjoy games slightly different than I do, but when I watch their reviews I get a sense of if I will enjoy them.
Seriously if you go to outlets who give scores on games commonly, stop. Very little time is put into choosing these numbers and they reflect nothing about enjoying a game for you personally. Go watch a review from ACG or SkillUp. Outlets like IGN or PCGamer can’t hold a candle to these guys.
They could easily all be giving their honest opinion at IGN: if the reviewers who tend to like everything are the ones who don’t get fired, the output of mostly positive (or sometimes groupthink negative) reviews would be the same, even if individual reviewers never lied.
Take a read of this summary (by IGN) of their Madden 22 review:
“ Madden NFL 22 is a grab bag of decent – if frequently underwhelming – ideas hurt by poor execution. Face of the Franchise, to put it mildly, is a mess. Homefield advantage is a solid addition, but it doesn’t quite capture the true extent of real on-field momentum swings. The new interface is an eyesore, and the new presentation is cast in a strange and unflattering shade of sickly green. It’s smoother and marginally more refined, but in so many ways it’s the same old Madden. In short, if you’re hoping for a massive leap forward for the series on the new generation of consoles (or on the old ones), you’re apt to be disappointed”
Now, I want you to read that and ask what you’d rate it based on this info (or the whole review).
IGN has a scale approximately this: 10. Masterpiece 9. Excellent 8. Great 7. Good 6. Okay 5. Mediocre
I don’t think I need to tell you that the user reviews for this game don’t even reach mediocre. Not to mention the gambling inclusion that IGN doesn’t take seriously in any sports game it reviews. But IGN still called Madden 22 a 6 or an “okay” game.
I’m not saying they’re lying necessarily but the result is the same. The honest critiques are ignored to keep receiving review codes. That score should be left out entirely but they refuse because it drives clicks. It’s a joke.
This is just one example of how boiling down a review to a number is flawed. My favorite reviewers of games in general have been Matthewmatosis and Mandalore Gaming. IIRC neither of them provides a final score of any sort. Even whether a game is “recommended” or not may come with some caveats depending on what you’re looking for in a game.
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Aktywne