gamesradar.com

sirnuke, do games w Acclaimed roguelike studio behind Slay the Spire releases new deckbuilder after publicly abandoning Unity over fee debacle
@sirnuke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Have they posted anything about their experiences developing this? I’m curious on their thoughts of Godot vs Unity. This might be the most established studio to ship something in Godot.

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever,

Godot is pretty heavily documented at this point. I would recommend finding videos from over a month ago (so it isn’t just posturing), but it is consistently a solid “B” engine as it were.

But the real issue hasn’t changed. Because of licensing and ideological reasons, adding in hooks for console development remains a mess. And that is not something that any company (… okay, Rami Ismail/Vlambeer would totally talk about this and burn a few bridges in the process) is going to really talk about because it is a lose lose. It pisses off the platform owners AND will be viewed as “unfair” by the fanboys.

roguetrick,

“unfair” by the fanboys

There can't honestly be a lot of them. I'm sure even folks who donated don't have that much of their personal ego wrapped up in a game engine. Not to say there aren't none, of course, because there's always people who really will cling to anything.

wahming,

I see you’re new to the Internet

simple,
Schaedelbach,

Cassette Beasts was also made with Godot! godotengine.org/…/godot-showcase-cassette-beasts/

Defaced,

Cassette beasts is so damn good! It’s pokemon, but better and unique.

ManjuuLemmy,

It’s an amazing game! I never felt pressured to collect all the beasts, but at the same time looked forward to trying to level the cassettes up! If they ever do sequels, I hope they figure out an alternative solution to what is now Pokemon’s massive design strength/flaw.

HumanitysHammer,

One of the MegaCrit devs, Casey Yano, wrote a little blog post on his experience of it: On Evaluating Godot

micka190,

That was an interesting read, thanks!

Fraylor,

Thanks for this. Good article.

EarMaster,

To be fair it would have been interesting to read this from someone who actually liked using Unity in the first place…

Melonpoly, do games w Sony boss admits forcing PC gamers into PlayStation accounts can "invite pushback," but insists they have to keep games safe – which doesn't really track in single-player

Yes, because games without PSN accounts are so unsafe and Sony definitely isn’t susceptible to having their servers hacked.

ByteOnBikes,

Sony has a history of being terrible with security.

They literally built malware two decades ago.

Juvyn00b,

I still have an audio CD with their malware embedded. Ripped it under Linux, no problem.

Banzai51, do gaming w Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is"
@Banzai51@midwest.social avatar

I may not know how the sausage is made, but I do know if it tastes good or not.

sukhmel,

No-o-o, you must offer a solution to be eligible for criticism111

!Man, this is such a lame argument 😅 can’t believe people use it!<

dillekant,

100% this. The whole process of creation and critique goes way back to the dawn of film and probably before. The entire construction of positions and job titles (creative director, design lead, etc) all draw from these theories. This requires the critique to be separate from the process of creation.

Gradually_Adjusting, do games w Ken Levine says BioShock nearly went nowhere and was almost canceled: "We can't make those games because they don't sell"
@Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world avatar

We overpay executives, who overpay consultants, who tell companies to churn out cash grabs that test well.

This doesn’t pain me. I have enough indie games to occupy my time.

ms_lane,

The cancellation of Deus Ex Mankind Divided Part 2, pained me quite a lot.

But I’m sure the executives that got a fat bonus were happier than I was upset. (insert meme happiness comic)

grrgyle,

I contend that the next great Deus Ex game will not come out of Ubi, and it won’t be under the name Deus Ex, but it will be a new kind of immersive sim made with love by developers who grew up on the originals.

I contend this for a lot of the classic franchises tbh

BroBot9000,
@BroBot9000@lemmy.world avatar

This is what should happen. You like the game, make one that’s inspired by it, grow the concept and give it new life.

No. We get franchises and wallowing in profits of milked IPs

grrgyle,

Worse, you’ve even got some copyrighting gameplay concepts, Shadow of Mordor with their “nemesis system.”

Imagine if the concept of the “first person shooter” was locked down by Atari after their employees made Battlezone.

yamanii,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Just like how Thief lives on as Gloomwood.

slazer2au,

Whoh there mate, you are forgetting shareholders. They are the ones you truly need to please as they are the ones that can actually fire a board.

mrfriki, do games w Doom: The Dark Ages is introducing big changes to combat because id Software came to one core realization: "Every projectile mattered in the original Doom"

What I didn’t like about Eternal was being forced to use specific weapons to kill certain enemies. For me this kind of shooters are all about use “the right tool for the job”. If I fancy using the two barrels shotgun from start to finish, just let me do so.

Katana314,

I guarantee you that would be boring as fuck.

Might as well play with cheats on if you just don’t want to think at all. Thankfully, Doom Eternal has them in the game, you just need to unlock them.

Zahille7,

Nah. Go try out Enchain, you only have one gun for the game but it works pretty damn well.

fsxylo,

Nah, the only times I want to play doom are when I want to turn my brain off. Shoot moving thing. Great success.

Renacles,

It’s a good thing Doom 2016 exists then.

fsxylo,

When you want to win an internet argument so badly that you miss the point on purpose.

verdigris, (edited )

For me Doom 2016 was a hugely more enjoyable experience than Eternal. 2016 is arguably one of the greatest linear single player shooters ever made. Eternal felt like a chore once you had all the tools unlocked and I lost interest shortly after. I could have lowered the difficulty so weapon selection didn’t matter, but that was clearly not the design intent.

Ultrakill does the “swap between weapons quickly for interesting combos” much better IMO – it’s not necessary but it’s a value add and it’s super fun to pull off.

leave_it_blank,

I lowered the difficulty, and I were able to kill bigger enemies with the weapon of my choice. But they became bullet sponges. There’s no fun in that. I too prefer 2016, I like my shotgun.

morphballganon,

Sounds more like an “easy mode” thing. Have certain enemies immune to certain guns on the harder difficulties. Want to just use the shotgun? Play easy mode. Want to be more strategic? Play a harder difficulty.

LunarLoony,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Doom II wasn’t boring.

grrgyle,

The Super Shotgun game

gaylord_fartmaster,

If you could play through all of Doom II using only the super shotgun without constantly running out of ammo you were playing on easy.

LunarLoony,
@LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Okay, so while you can’t literally use nothing but the SSG for the entirety of Doom II (especially since you don’t get it until MAP02), you can comfortably use it at least 90% of the time on UV. Shells are plentiful throughout the game.

rob_t_firefly,
@rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world avatar

<span style="color:#323232;">  Doesn't suck - GM
</span>
otp,

Some guns are better for different situations, but most guns are useful in any situation.

Why’s that boring? It sounds better than rock-paper-scissors with different guns

PresidentCamacho,
@PresidentCamacho@lemm.ee avatar

That isn’t the point. The point is you shouldn’t feel shoehorned into playing a specific intended route. Doom is about turning off your brain and slaying.

BrotherL0v3,

I’m glad I’m not the only one with that criticism. I enjoyed the first game so much more because of that.

Kir, do gaming w Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is"
@Kir@feddit.it avatar

While this is true, it is a terrible way of debating with the public.

And while users may not be able to understand game design decision and background, they can well be aware that those decisions brought to a really bad game.

andrewrgross,

Not only that, but their blindness is the result of developers choices on what they share. If you don’t want people making incorrect assumptions, give them more info. Don’t tell them to just forego having any opinion on the matter.

If it looks like a decision was made cynically, prove otherwise, don’t just say ‘No, you’re wrong, you just don’t know!’

MudMan,
@MudMan@kbin.social avatar

I don't love how this is phrased, but it's not wrong.

The harsh reality of creative industries is that people are gonna be uninformed, dickish smartasses on social media (and... you know, traditional media, too), but they don't owe the creators anything, so if they don't like a thing they don't need to be right about why they like it.

But hey, I also don't resent any creator for venting reasonably on social media about this stuff every now and then. I think it's a dumb, potentially career-ending thing to do, but I get it.

BruceTwarzen,

You don't have to be a chef to realise that a shit sandwich tases bad.

Poggervania,
@Poggervania@kbin.social avatar

But gamers don’t actually need to understand game design or why a certain choice was made.

I said this in another thread: if it’s a shit design, it’s a shit design. Knowing why the shit design was made does not suddenly make it not shit. In fact, I do not care to know why you made that decision in the first place - if it’s bad, then just own up to it and either try to fix the issue or actually resolve to do better next time.

teuast,

To borrow a phrase from Steve Hofstetter, I’ve never flown a helicopter, but if I saw one in a tree, I could still be like “dude fucked up.”

RightHandOfIkaros, do games w $843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players

This lawsuit build on a false premise. Steam doesnt have a price parity clause for other stores. What this lawsuit alleges applies to Steam keys that the developer generates through Steam. If the developer lists those keys for sale at a price lower than what the game is listed for on Steam, then the price of the Steam Store purchase price must match it, so that people visiting the store page on Steam get the same discount. It doesn’t matter if you list your game on GOG and discount it there.

Its literally helping players.

haui_lemmy,

Just for clarity: how would it do a disservice to players if a dev can sell their steam keys for any price, no matter which platform?

RandomException,

Steam is a service that costs money to keep running - lot’s of money actually in their scale. When you sell a Steam key outside of Steam, they don’t get their cut which goes toward running costs and whatnot. It doesn’t of course matter if it’s just some random few keys but if almost all devs started to do that, it could cause some serious funding problems to Valve. That could then lead to reduced service levels of Steam and that would hurt their customers - the players - the most.

So while it’s not a big problem currently, it could be if it wasn’t prevented properly in contractual level. People who think that is an unfair clause don’t probably understand what it actually takes to run a service like Steam or they are straight competitors trying to run them out of business in any way imaginable.

E: And actually if Steam still allows selling the Steam keys in external services but only requires the price to match the price in Steam, it’s already a quite charitable policy. I guess they count on not too many people buying the key externally for the same price than in Steam store.

OrgunDonor,
@OrgunDonor@lemmy.world avatar

Just think about how this works.

Steam currently allows you to generate keys and sell them for free, only stipulating that they must be sold for the same price as on steam.

Let’s say they are told that stipulation can’t be enforced.

Valve, will probably go with 1 of 2 options.

1 - you can no longer generate keys. So all the great key sites(GMG, Fanatical and so on) no longer exist, because no steam keys.

2 - Valve charge an upfront fee for keys generated. Now smaller pmdevs and publishers can no longer supply keys to sites, because they can’t afford the upfront costs.

What incentive does valve have to continue offering this free service? If it can be exploited for the detriment of steam, they will stop providing it.

haui_lemmy,

Let me try and understand this by altering the product.

Valve now produces cars and the devs are people who make these cars inside factories. Same as is currently the case, these employees get cars cheaper and are asked to not undercut the seller by holding onto the cars for a certain amount of time before selling them used.

It does make sense for me to view it that way. One could argue that the couple cars that get sold by employees doesnt do anything to hurt the brand and that pressuring them to keep the price high manipulates the market.

Also, doesnt the work of steam accumulate to hosting mirrors of a game and hosting a large website they get billions in revenue for?

OrgunDonor,
@OrgunDonor@lemmy.world avatar

This analogy is so bad, it is not even close to what is happening.

I will try and adapt to cars for you(I dont know why), but this is just really really bad.

Say you have designed a car, you can produce them on a very small scale, but you have come to valve(they make cars now) to mass produce. They do so, for a 30% cut(that reduces the more they sell) for everything they sell from their direct sales at the price you have set. There is no material costs or labour costs, just that cut of the price you have set.

Now valve have a sales page and are selling, and you decide that actually I would like more people to see the car, and so you consider selling it at other dealers. Valve says, sure, you can even have the cars for free from us(no 30% cut) and you can have basically an unlimited supply of free fully built cars to sell else where. We only ask that you sell the car at the same price you have set with us if you are selling a car we made.

You want to go sell it new cheaper? You are more than welcome too, but you cant sell the car we produced.

Such a bad analogy, but that is closer to what is actually happening.

haui_lemmy,

First of all, people sometimes use analogies that dont make sense to you. No need to be a dick about it. You could just make a better example.

Staying with cars, I see my mistake. Valve is not producing the cars in this example, valve is doing the car sales for the (small) manufacturer. They dont provide any part of the car, only the exposure and surrounding community. Its not nothing but has zero to do with the product.

What they are asking is „you can sell cars from our showroom, just dont sell them for cheaper than we do“. Which does make sense.

stardust, (edited )

Seems like that’d be hard to track with so many stores selling steam keys just looking at isthereanydeals.

Weird thing is it is the publishers themselves that are able to set the price so they are choosing not to put the game on sale same as it is elsewhere. Probably to not devalue the price of their game like the Nintendo strategy when it comes to certain storefronts.

furikuri,

Probably operates closer to corporate software licensing deals, i.e. “we might not catch you but if we do it’s over”

FontMasterFlex, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"

I think EA makes games like this to reinforce THEIR notion that single player games are dead so they can use that as leverage to make more “games as a service”. If they made things people actually wanted to play, they’d find that single player (yes even shooter) games are still just as popular as they ever were and poorly thought out, poorly executed, and poorly marketed games still suck.

dumpsterlid, (edited )

The thing that we all keep missing about this is even though EA sucks because it is an example of late stage capitalism hollowing out everything for profit, doesn’t actually mean the idiots with MBAs from Harvard or whatever running the company are actually making intelligent choices about profit.

The system of capitalism actually perpetuates itself better when things periodically catastrophically fail from wildly incompetent leadership since it keeps worker power from organizing, wipes out competitors that aren’t also massive corporations that can be easily colluded with, and provides a perfect backdrop for the rich to say “sorrrrrry it all broke again, guess we are the only ones that can fix it, so we will maybe take this chance to buy up more of the economy :) “.

So yes in a very real way I think EA functions to devalue the labor of game developers, keep competition of smaller game development studios categorically unable to create products like EA, and serve as a vessel to ritualistically dissect smaller game companies so that companies like EA have an infinite, desperate workforce and consumers have no better choice for video games. Just because these processes are twisted and rationalized under a story about the ruthless, noble pursuit of profit doesn’t make them have any real connection with efficiency or profit. One could perhaps say this all has much more to do with violence than it does profit.

That is the thing about ideologies, whether they have any connection to reality or not is actually not very important at all to the truly successful ones that permeate the way societies think about themselves.

Additionally, anything that can help massive corporations that are strip mining the gaming industry claim the gaming industry is sliding into a tough period where it’s hard to make games that turn enough of a profit to steadily employ game developers, is EXTREMELY useful to companies like EA because they see this whole AI thing as an opportunity to deal a permanent blow to the quality of life and general leverage workers have in the game development industry. Thank god the movie industry saw it coming a mile off, but video game culture is too full of toxic conservative little boys screaming at each other to understand what is about to happen (and is already happening).

It breaks my heart, but what is happening right now will likely deal a blow to the vibrancy of video games as an art form that will reverberate for decades. After all, once a worker exits the game development industry because they can’t find a job it doesn’t matter how passionate they were about video games, how special their talent is, how creative or unique their ideas are… they sure as hell aren’t coming back once they get that a job in an industry that doesn’t hate its workers so much and besides a deep sense of burnout about something you love is truly one of the most awful experiences in the world… not many people are willing to revisit a place they experienced that.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

When a company like this catastrophically fails and Baldur's Gate 3 or Palworld do gangbusters, that signals to others who also want to make money what they should be making in order to make money. Where the money does go, like a Larian or a Pocket Pair, now has profit to spend on growing their studios and making more of what actually works. They end up hiring the talent that was let go. Not all of them; this is less efficient than if the first studio that imploded had instead made something that the market actually wanted, but this is not a situation so dire that the industry will feel it for decades like you say. New studios form all the time from mismanaged large companies that lay people off after making bad bets.

dumpsterlid, (edited )

Look, you are describing a perfectly rational theory for how events could play out in a theoretical universe, but you are just stependously, horrifically wrong if you think this story corresponds to reality in a meaningful way.

The truth is these companies have so much power (money) behind them that they don’t just keel over and die when they fail, they annihilate entire industries, catastrophically derail promising career trajectories for countless workers, structurally give themselves an impenetrable advantage with regulatory capture and most importantly utterly dominate the material reality of being a worker in that industry, even if the worker doesn’t work at the company.

Look at Uber, remember years ago when Uber keeled over and died once it became apparent that Uber wasn’t profitable unless drivers are exploited to an extreme degree? Then all those workers went and worked for other ride sharing companies that ran more effective businesses and treated their employees more humanely (in retrospect the by now well documented extremely sexist and toxic culture of upper management at Uber alone doomed it from the start)… The market solved the problem by rewarding rideshare companies with better technology and business models than Uber. I remember in California, Uber could have blocked legislation that was going to improve the lives of rideshare/gig workers immensely but they realized that the consequences of drivers and riders seeing Uber openly shit on their face and spend massive amounts of money to keep drivers from getting a tiny, measly amount more money and control over their work environment would spell utter disaster so they refrained. The wisdom of the market!

Wait… the exact, precise opposite of all that happened while Uber ran for years at a massive loss as a venture capital superweapon ripping millions upon millions of dollars into a gaping black hole and completely devastating the taxi industry without providing a truly humane or long term viable alternative for most workers or cities?

sigh do you really not understand what is happening right in front of you?

ampersandrew, (edited )
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

No, this is the reality. The likes of Activision, EA, Ubisoft, and Take Two rule the industry by market cap, but that's because their games notably sell to the type of person who only buys a few video games per year at most. If they utterly dominated the material reality of the industry, how on earth could Baldur's Gate 3 or Palworld even happen? How could Hades or No Man's Sky, made by former EA devs, happen? Your view of reality is quite overly pessimistic. How can you even measure some of the claims you're making?

dumpsterlid,

How can you even measure some of the claims you’re making?

I don’t know, my ideas are so wild and I am pulling them totally out of thin air. It isn’t like there is a massive amount of scholarly work on this topic, a pre-existing history of legal cases pertaining to these issues that have caused society defining laws to be passed in most major countries and many political movements that explicitly attempt to define and critique these processes at our fingertips on the internet waiting to educate and inform us.

And you know, the funny thing is I really for once was feeling a little optimistic about this kind of material existing for me to read and educate myself with but I guess in this case my pessimism was well founded.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

You slipped in an edit while I was responding, and I think the gist of it is that you and I fundamentally don't agree, especially not the hyperbolic flourish you used. I think you'll continue to see plenty of great games come out in the next decades, because people still want to buy games and other people still want to make them.

dumpsterlid,

If you are only concerned about this from the perspective of having enough good games to keep you personally occupied and not a step further to the experience of human beings working in the industry (beyond the narrow range of game companies you directly buy from) that makes the art you love, then yes you and I fundamentally disagree and I would never want to be misconstrued as making the kind of argument you are making.

Also thank you for complimenting my flourish :)

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

There will continue to be games to play because people will continue to make them. A bad experience in one place leads to a new studio designed not to repeat it.

space,

That’s why AAA+ is failing and indie games are getting better than ever. It’s insane how good the tools and engines have gotten. Making games had become much more accessible than ever.

dumpsterlid,

Making games had become much more accessible than ever.

Making music has become MASSIVELY more accessible than ever, but you know what? It’s just a hobby now, capitalism has destroyed making and recording music as a livelihood unless you manage to get a handful unicorn jobs.

Just because it is easy for a company to enter a market doesn’t mean that structural, toxic issues with that market magically are nullified as problems. Gamers as a category seem to have a REALLY hard time wrapping their head around this.

HobbitFoot,

Part of it is that modern games are getting too expensive to make, especially with all the assets to the fidelity given by current technology.

c0mbatbag3l,
@c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world avatar

I doubt it, this kind of logic is the same as “medical costs are insane because modern medical tech is expensive.”

It completely ignores the entire economy all functioning under advanced technology to create and produce advanced goods more cheaply with the technology that costs money. It’s also mismanagement in the same way the movie and TV industry has seen, they don’t want to hire writers cause they don’t want to pay them, so instead they just spend hundreds of millions on reshoots because having a writer being paid 60k on staff 24/7 was too costly apparently and some suit got a promotion for “saving” that money.

Someone made a better version of “the day before” with a few grand in purchased assets and a couple months using UE5. If you were creating your own resources instead of buying them and you had an actual vision then you absolutely can make a game for less than hundreds of millions that will return that money back to you. How much did pal world take in? How much is helldivers 2 currently making? What were their production costs?

Just because some inept studio run by corporate bean counters can only churn out tech demos for millions of bucks doesn’t mean that’s the actual standard for cost and production of gaming.

CileTheSane,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s only expensive to make if studios decide to make them incredibly expensive. There are plenty of high quality indie games made by a single person.

The problem here is they went all in on “THE BEST GRAPHICS EVAR!!!” And it flopped because of the lack of story and gameplay. The lesson here is to not make it incredibly expensive to develop by focusing all efforts on graphics, and instead focus on gameplay and story and people will tolerate much less flashy visuals.

guacupado,

Games are getting too expensive to make because they’re adding extra shit that no one cares about, not because of the cost it takes to make a decent game. Too many admin managers in charge at companies and not enough artists or engineers at the management level.

Mr_Dr_Oink,

Case in point. Baldurs gate 3.

Single player (with optional co op multiplayer) but massively successful.

Not to beat a dead horse. Its just the first example that came to mind.

A huge amount of very successful indie games are single-player and even other AAA games.

They talk about the genre being dead but they forget that most games dont charge you to play them anymore. They make money through in game purchases selling cosmetics and battle pasees.

These game genres could be described as dead by the same criteria if they cost actual money.

guacupado,

Its just the first example that came to mind.

Uh, in this case it’s a single-player, shooter, from a brand new IP. I’m probably just commenting just to argue but I don’t think Baldur’s Gate 3 is a good comparison at all.

Mr_Dr_Oink,

I think you might be, haha.

But in the i terest of a fairer comparison, i had a quick google and found this game “atomic heart,” a generally well received game with high ratings and the following from Steam Revenue calculator

“We estimate that Atomic Heart made $55,756,625.68in gross revenue since its release. Out of this, the developer had an estimated net revenue of $16,448,204.58.”

New ip, single-player, shooter.

Comparatively, immortals lost money and tbey apparently laid of 45% of the staff who made it to avoid losses.

space,

No, AAA+ blockbuster games are dead. The 150 million budget is insane. Spending that much on a game, you end up having to minimize the risks and having to cater to the widest audience possible.

If you split that budget into maybe 2 larger and a few smaller games, you don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. You can take more risk, experiment with new mechanics and ideas. You can target different types of players. You can give a chance to smaller, lesser known writers who might have potential.

conciselyverbose, do gaming w GTA 6 and Alan Wake parent companies are locked in a trademark dispute over the letter ‘R’

Suits like this should permanently get everything you own, including subsidiaries and parent companies, placed in the public domain immediately.

JusticeForPorygon,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar
VelvetStorm,

Sure would be nice to be able to read those links.

JusticeForPorygon,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Are you not able to? I don’t have a problem

VelvetStorm,

The second one is behind a paywall/requires an account.

JusticeForPorygon,
@JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world avatar

Weird, doesn’t seem to be the case for me.

Try this one

VelvetStorm,

Ya, that one worked. Thanks for the link.

Hiccup, do gaming w Why did Baldur's Gate 3 blow up? Larian lead writer says it's thanks to "a big gamble" with CRPG standards

The first game in ages where it actually feels like the company/ developers actually put in effort and released a complete product. It’s not that hard to understood why consumers are flocking to it. People are just fed up with the garbage EA and ubisoft have been putting out. Honestly, I’d be fine with ubisoft dissolving and going out of business.

balderdash9,

This. No matter how talented the game devs are, it feels like the suits do everything they can to squeeze every last drop out of the game. And the game feels incomplete because they often take things out of the game so that you have to pay to get it back in.

Gordon_Freeman,
@Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social avatar

The first game in ages where it actually feels like the company/ developers actually put in effort and released a complete product

I miss the time when this was common

Schlock,

The first game in ages where it actually feels like the company/ developers actually put in effort and released a complete product

Ironically the only people who say this about BG3 have not reached the third act yet. Still my favourite game in years, but the later stages of the game really could have done with more playtesting. there are bugged quests, disappearing characters, people ignoring story events in dialogue, missing cutscenes and multiple outcomes for storylines happening at the same time.

stopthatgirl7,
!deleted7120 avatar

I just started Act 3, and yeah, there are some bugs with the dialogue, like Gale chewing me out for making a decision in a quest I hadn’t even started yet (I was very confused when he started chewing out my character for making a deal with a devil, a deal I had not even gotten offered because I hadn’t started that quest line, and I was like, “Wait, what?”) With luck, the next patch will fix stuff like this.

For some reason, my game really likes bugging out with Gale dialogue, like Gale acting like we were in a relationship when I had just turned him down flat. He now is benched and doesn’t get to come out anymore.

Schlock,

I think I know exactly which dialogue bug you are referring to. Happened to me as well, although after I turned down the deal. The second part might just be Gale being Gale

gk99,

It’s the same as when Elden Ring dropped. Even people who never played Souls games prior were picking it up because it was just a complete, solid open world RPG.

I’ve never played Baldur’s Gate before, but I’m probably gonna pick 3 up to play with my roommate in splitscreen.

ms_lane, do games w Ken Levine says BioShock nearly went nowhere and was almost canceled: "We can't make those games because they don't sell"

Skyrim was made with a staff of around 100 people.

Starfield was made with a staff of around 450. It’s worse in almost every way.

Too many cooks.

grrgyle,

Also too many mouths to feed. When you’ve got so many people (including admin) to keep paying, then you can’t “afford” to make a cute little experiment. You’ve got to go huge production, latest fads, cutting edge, and super broad appeal.

What kind of identity can a game like that even hope to have?

A_Random_Idiot,

One that appeals to a mindless horde of idiots that need the newest shiny.

ripcord,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

So, a hit…?

Carbonizer,

No, a game crammed with psychological tricks to keep players addicted while milking them dry through microtransactions.

exu,

You’re forgetting all the labor by mod authors to fix Skyrim.

/s kinda

ArcaneSlime,

And skyrim<Oblivion<Morrowind. I don’t like the trend.

HawlSera, (edited )

Morrowind is only “good” because of nostalgia goggles Oblivion > Morrowind

BigTrout75, do games w $843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players

How can this be? All the games I buy on Steam are cheaper than on other platforms. Where are these cheaper games?

Simulation6,

I think that is the main point of the lawsuit, if developers sell their game on Steam they can’t sell it cheaper somewhere else. If Value gets 30% the developer has to raise the price a bit to compensate and they have to raise it everywhere. Outside of sales I don’t think most games that are not on Steam are much cheaper elsewhere, so not sure how this plays out.

samus12345,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

So don’t sell the game on Steam? Either the huge boost in visibility is worth a 30% cut or it’s not.

masterspace,

If you have a point to make about why Valves is not abusing it’s monopoly position make it. Otherwise no one wants to hear your dumb ‘but the free market is always right’ statement.

trafficnab,

As far as I know, this only applies to Steam keys: developers are allowed to generate Steam keys for free to sell on their website (Valve does not get 30% of these sales either) with the restriction being they cannot be cheaper than the price on Steam

I don’t think there’s ever actually been any proof that Valve disallows selling games for cheaper elsewhere as long as you’re not selling those freely generated Steam keys

masterspace,

Proof? What would proof look like?

Do you expect companies to just leak contracts they signed while under NDA?

ByteJunk,
@ByteJunk@lemmy.world avatar

Not the companies. But some anonymous whistleblower? Sure

masterspace,

Like the anonymous whistleblower who went to a lawyer and triggered this lawsuit?

trafficnab,

This suit seems to just be vaguely, “30% is too high”, along with requiring that DLC for a game bought on Steam also be bought on Steam, it was the Wolfire case back in 2021 that alleged they’re not allowed to sell their game for cheaper on other platforms

masterspace,

According to Shotbolt, the developer and digital distribution company is “shutting out” all competition in the PC gaming market as it “forces” game publishers to sign off on price parity obligations - supposedly preventing them from going on to offer lower prices on other platforms.

trafficnab,

This is true and public knowledge though as I said (details seen here in the “Steam Key Rules and Guidelines” section), if anything Valve is giving devs a lot of leeway by allowing them to do that at all, not only are they giving up their 30% cut but are also then distributing and committing to updating those copies of the game for free

masterspace,

The allegation says nothing about steam keys specifically.

Donut,

That’s exactly what they’re trying to say. It could have been cheaper if Valve didn’t have pricing clauses that doesn’t allow developers to price things cheaper elsewhere.

PM_Your_Nudes_Please, (edited )

Which is deceptive, at best. Steam doesn’t have pricing clauses for developers’ games. The devs are free to sell their games anywhere they want, at whatever prices they want. But Steam does have pricing clauses for Steam keys. Basically, what allows you to register a game to your Steam account.

You can sell your game for whatever price you want, as long as it’s not the Steam version of the game. They don’t want you giving away Steam keys for cheaper than you can often buy them on Steam. And this makes sense; Steam has a vested interest in protecting their own game keys, and encouraging players to shop on a storefront that they know is reputable; Lots of steam key resellers are notoriously shady, for instance.

Basically, the dev can go sell it cheaper on GoG, or Epic, or their own storefront if they want. As long as they’re not selling Steam keys, they’re fine. But players like having games registered to their Steam accounts, because it puts everything in one place. So devs may feel shoehorned into selling Steam keys (which would invoke that pricing clause) instead of selling a separate version that isn’t registered to Steam. But that doesn’t mean Steam is preventing publishers from selling elsewhere, or controlling the prices on those third party sites. It just means Steam has market pull, and publishers know the game will sell better if it’s offered as a Steam key.

Donut,

Yep, I was only summarizing their angle. Here are the specifics for anyone who wants to read the source documentation: partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3

The only thing that doesn’t sit right with me is developers stating Steam threatened to delist the game when they expressed wanting to sell elsewhere. I haven’t seen any proof except just the statements, but it would be weird for a developer to lie about that stuff. If anyone has any more sources on that, it would be appreciated

jalkasieni,

Given that said game is also for sale on the Humble Store, I find those statements dubious at best.

Kekin,
@Kekin@lemy.lol avatar

The one example I can think of is the Remnant games, at least for Remnant 2 on release it was cheaper on Epic Store than on Steam, by like 10 USD if I recall correctly

Franconian_Nomad, do games w $843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players

Smells like a smear campaign. Some idiots try to get some fake-ass grass roots movement going.

Bold move, let‘s see how it plays out for them.

Dadifer,

I actually was sort of on board after I read the article. Why should a publisher be penalized if they offer a lower price on a different platform?

stardust,

Do they? Haven’t felt like that s the case as a long time user of /r/gamedeals and isthereanydeals which is all focused on game sales.

SuperIce,

They don’t really though. They’re talking about selling steam keys in a different platform, not selling the game on a different platform (like Epic Games for instance). You can sell the game for cheaper on Epic or GOG if you want to.

Aielman15,
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

When new video game stores were opening that charged much lower commissions than Valve, I decided that I would provide my game “Overgrowth” at a lower price to take advantage of the lower commission rates. I intended to write a blog post about the results. But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.

From the source cited by the article.

Nibodhika,

They don’t. The thing most people who have never published a game on steam don’t know is that valve gives you infinite steam keys (for free) that you can give or sell as you wish. This is to allow studios/publishers to give keys to whoever they want, and also allows them to sell those keys on their own or third-party websites. This is a HUGE deal, Valve is letting studios/publishers sell games on a separate site without charging anything while hosting the game themselves. The only condition to those keys is that they can’t be sold cheaper than on Steam.

That’s a completely different thing from what you’re claiming. This means that games can be cheaper on GoG, Epic, etc as long as they don’t give you a steam key together (which they could, for free).

TheBat, do games w EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea"
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

The what of what now?

EdibleFriend,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Literally the first I’ve heard about it as well. Maybe should have tossed a bit of that money at the marketing department.

Buddahriffic,

Disagree. The fact that I’m only hearing about it now that it’s flopped is a good thing because I might have given it attention before. Well, probably not because it’s EA.

I just hope that companies that aren’t EA don’t take what they say about single player games at face value. EA games probably need friend group hype to succeed at this point. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking that there are many others like me who want to avoid anything from that company and thus would only play when pressured by friends.

But if EA does fail, there likely will be a period where they try to talk about it like experts and will just say, “oh, gamers must not like x genre anymore”, when gamers really just don’t like overproduced garbage games that are clearly tuned to sell MTX rather than be fun.

echo64,

They did, 40million of the budget went to marketing

EdibleFriend,
@EdibleFriend@lemmy.world avatar

Oh. Oh dear.

TwilightVulpine,

What did they do with the two bags of chips after someone pocketed 39,999,990 dollars?

TheAlbatross, do games w Starfield's lead quest designer leaves Bethesda to join other RPG veterans making a new open-world game

After playing Starfield, I, uh, wouldn’t be chomping at the bit to hire their lead quest designer.

Phanatik,

Don't work at Bethesda. Not going to claim this is in anyway accurate. Maybe the reason they left was because they weren't allowed to design interesting quests and thus were tired of being railroaded. I say this because any quest designer is essentially a storyteller so for quests to be so bland to lack character has to be intentional.

Fredselfish,
@Fredselfish@lemmy.world avatar

Is the story lacking?

BigBananaDealer,
@BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

i personally find the main quest to be bethesdas best. lots of great quests i just played one a few days ago that left me speechless

PoopMonster,

Agreed and much like skyrim this game is better enjoyed with minimal fast traveling, the problem is that fast travel is just too convenient and people will complain that it’s just talking and loading screens without actually enjoying the exploration.

baropithecus,

I’m intrigued, how the hell do you explore in this game? I thought the only way to get from system to system and planet to planet is to click through menus. The only choice seems to be whether I’ll go back to the ship and click through menus or stay where I am and click through menus.

Goronmon,

Within a system you can bring up the "scanner tool" view in the ship to then point yourself to a planet and travel that way.

But to to travel to various systems, yes you'll need to use a menu. But then I'm not sure how you would expect to fly between systems without some form of menu to select where you want to go.

Epicmulch,

You could try walking around a planet instead of fast traveling.

PoopMonster,

Use the scanner tool, I find I have the opposite experience most people have while exploring. Many people say there’s nothing to do, I hate it when I pick a random ass moon in some god forsaken system and keep fining structures littered all over the damn place. I just wanna be the first person on this planet and find animals and shit, yet there’s always a solar farm, mining rig or small lab in the middle of fucking nowhere.

BigBananaDealer,
@BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

when i first played skyrim i fast travelled everywhere. then years later i did a no fast travel playthrough and wow, the sheer amount of quests i had never seen before was astounding

Epicmulch,

That’s what I’m saying. Almost all of the main quests are some of Bethesdas best ever. I really don’t get all the hate for this game. It’s not perfect by any means but to say it’s garbage is just wrong. I’m pretty new to Lemmy and I can’t help but compare it to what I see back over at reddit. More hive mind bull. The Internet told me I need to hate this thing so I hate it.

BigBananaDealer,
@BigBananaDealer@lemm.ee avatar

yep exactly, everything about bethesda has been shit on ever since fo4 release, and 76 made it much worse. its like nobody actually enjoys gaming anymore, its just a side picking insult throwing cult

distantsounds, (edited )

Yes, it is a lifeless game in its current state. The framework is there, but everything has the feel of a shopping mall that’s going to be torn down in couple months EDIT: a screenshot of New Atlantis

Chet_Awesomelad,
@Chet_Awesomelad@kbin.social avatar

The writing is the strongest part of the game in my opinion. But the writing almost NEVER translates to interesting gameplay.

As an example, there's a quest where you're tasked with tracking some bad guys through a labyrinthine canyon, then you need to search for clues to find out where they came from, who hired them, etc. The gameplay for the quest is about the least imaginative way to interpret that story - the tracking is just following waypoint markers on your screen; the combat is just shooting four basic enemies; and finally the "search for clues" is just looting one item from the enemy leader's corpse. Then you fast travel back to the quest giver and get some credits as a reward.

Nearly every quest is like this. They present an interesting story via the dialogue, but then the actual gameplay for the quest is always just travel to a location, shoot some bad guys and/or pick up an item and/or talk to a person, then fast travel back and get some credits.

echo64,

maybe, but also they were a /lead/ so should have had some level of agency there.

rockerface,

in an ideal world, maybe

echo64,

I’m more trying to be realistic, It’s difficult to imagine how you would hire a lead anything and not give them any agency into what they are doing. That’s the whole point of lead, to lead the others in the goal of whatever that thing is.

I think that you can be marginalised and restricted, but it’s pretty unlikely this person, as a lead, had no agency about quest design

That also does not mean that they couldn’t do something better elsewhere. Just that assuming that they were locked down by bethesda into writing boring one note quests seems… like a reach.

Fredselfish,
@Fredselfish@lemmy.world avatar

Haven’t played yet is the game not good.

Wogi,

It’s fallout 4 with a different texture painted over the top, with all the charm removed and replaced with loading screens.

Fredselfish,
@Fredselfish@lemmy.world avatar

Yikes I couldn’t even finish Fallout 4 it was so bad.

Marsupial,
@Marsupial@quokk.au avatar

Eh 4 was fine.

3 was the worst, they turned such a great series into a mediocre and janky FPS.

Haui,
@Haui@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

NV got me in an aggro loop and kept me from finishing the game. Worst experience yet.

AFallingAnvil,
@AFallingAnvil@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s a firm 7/10 without mods. It’s a great framework but it lacks content past a certain point

TheAlbatross, (edited )

The game is fine. It’s on Gamepass so I’d play it through that, I wouldn’t pay the full retail for it.

Mostly I was referencing that the quests are fairly flat and uninspiring.

For what it’s worth, game quality-wise, I finished one playthrough in about 80 hrs and while there’s a NG+ mechanic that many seem to be enjoying, I wasn’t too interested in that. I really liked the ship building mechanic, and I had a lotta fun leveling up to see all the new ship parts and play with em.

Maybe after the modding scene develops more (though it looks like it’ll get there) I’ll come back to it if it’s still on Gamepass

dan1101, (edited )

It’s atmospheric and good, but player choice during many missions is lacking. Choices often boil down to “Yes” or “Not yet.” But you’ll go the way the mission wants you to go or you won’t finish it.

GreenMario,

UC Secdef: choose to remain undercover or go double agent and side with pirates

UC Vanguard: choose how to handle not just Terrormorphs but what to do about [Subject REDACTED]

Ryujin: I think there’s three possible outcomes there.

There’s also a few side quests that can go either way, like the beer run mission. There’s quite a lot more choice and consequences for a Bethesda RPG.

droans,

You also have options that change depending on your skills and progress.

You can choose to bribe, persuade, manipulate, flex your muscles, or do them a favor. Sometimes you can choose to kill them if they’re not cooperating. If a task is related to one of your skills, you can show off your knowledge.

The whole no choice paradigm was much more true for FO4 than for Starfield.

GreenMario,

I really like it. These people are hating because it’s memey to hate Bethesda.

Phanatik,

Yep, no legitimate criticism to be found. None whatsoever. Just wait for mods, they'll fix a game for free. The multi-million dollar studio did nothing wrong.

mnemonicmonkeys,

There is legitimate criticism, but there’s a lot of complete shit. I’ve heard people complain about procedurally generated planets that you have to go out of your way to interact with. There’s complaints of bullet sponge enemies from people who insisted on going to level 40 areas at level 20. Both of those complaints are bullshit

sirfancy,

"Why do planets have borders, I want to circumnavigate Mars"

  • Statement spoke by the utterly deranged
mnemonicmonkeys, (edited )

Agreed. I often spend 30-60 min in an area trying to find an ideal outpost location. The limuts on how far you can go on planets are already huge. From what I recall, the total area is comparable to Skyrim, though I’ll have to double check that

Edit: Yeah, literally every individual explorable area in the game is larger than the entire map of Skyrim or Fallout 4. Source: thenerdstash.com/how-big-starfield-is-open-world-…

Renacles,

It’s really good but the Bethesda hate train is still going strong. It’s definitely not for everyone though, it’s not a space sim by any means.

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