I think it’s cause of envy. Every once in a while, a game comes that just seems to do a lot of things and become very very successful (like red dead and gta).
Then these other studios get FOMO and turn to a go big or go home attitude.
So what you end up with is this inflation of features when only a few devs can land a big game like that.
It seems to be resonating pretty damn well for them. In fact, the competitive multiplayer has been praised for its simplicity and feeling a lot like the kind of multiplayer that we used to get so much of back in the 360 era.
It was also famous for having multiplayer modes that were just fun and didn’t ask you to commit your life to them. Some of those multiplayer modes were really cool.
Who praised them? But I don’t know what measure we’d use to determine the general reception of this particular feature. Particularly given that almost all video game journalism is mere marketing. So that’s probably not a fruitful point to argue over.
Instead I’ll offer the things that I think earn the competitive multiplayer a poor rating.
No skill or even experience based match making. Too many games are blowouts because all of the level 1 players were put on one team.
Teams are static once a match lobby has formed. If the teams are poorly balanced they will continue to be forever. Players can’t even switch voluntarily. The only remedy is to bail on the lobby and hop into a different random one.
Classes and weapons are poorly balanced. The Bulwark is a key example of a too strong and not fun design. The Assault class, and melee in general is in a pretty poor state (unless you have an infinite defense shield that lets you walk up to people). Many of the weapon options for the classes are almost unusably weak, so class loadouts tend to be very samey. Grenades are spammy and the shock grenade blind duration is not fun.
Players are randomly assigned Imperial or Chaos marines. But there is basically no character customization for the Chaos marines, while the Imperial marines have 5 or 6 different sets. Either the enemy team should always appear to be Chaos with their NPC style, or they should have included equivalent Chaos customization.
Players have minimal control over which game modes they play. It’s either 100% random or selecting a single mode. A configurable selection is a common multiplayer feature.
Map design is bland. This is perhaps a more personal preference, but I find the symmetrical, arcade arenas with no narrative character boring.
I watch and listen to a lot of Giant Bomb and SkillUp, and both had praise for the multiplayer modes, warts and all. I can’t agree with all games media just being marketing, otherwise you’d never see bad reviews for the likes of those publishers spending all that money on marketing. It may not have worked for you, but doing all of those modes has done very well for the game.
So you have valid points and I do think it needs to be better, I however love the damn game. I would disagree that the assault class is weak, I’ve play plenty of matches where a good assault player is very key to the teams success. Melee is really strong when used correctly. I also think only a few of the weapons are weak, but I’ve still found their place in a teams composition.
I do think they should of launched with more maps and modes, according to them though they are coming and I’m willing to be a bit patient. The first patch was good and another operation is coming this month. Which is good stuff.
Reminds me of many “The reason why Call of Duty sucks” arguments I heard as a kid.
Like, my own tastes agree with you. But you don’t bring that argument into game industry discussion because fact is, the game is doing very well financially and obviously many players disagree with you. So you have to take that data, and work back to decide what the logical conclusion is.
If the argument is that SM2 is successful because it limited it’s scope to execute a smaller number of features well, I don’t think that holds up. It took on three different types of games and (imho) executed merely okay. What more could they have added? Open world? MMO?
I think the more plausible explanation for the sales is that it’s Warhammer, it’s pretty, and SM1 was good.
"Of course it was cost-intensive to program an engine that will render every single eyelash at a resolution that will require the player to buy an additional graphics card for each eyelash concurrently on-screen, but now we only need twelve and a half billion people to buy, no, what am I saying, to pre-order and pre-pay the Ultra-Super-Deluxe-Collector’s Edition and we’ll start to turn a profit."
I’d be good if it was a game set in the universe where you’re a bender but not one of the main cast. For example if you’re in the fire nation you’re in the military and may have run ins with them. Same with the other tribes. You could do unique situations for each element and not be tied to the main characters
Perhaps they should just move to an earlier point of time in the universe so a lot more possibilities could open up. They could even make it an MMO kind of game with the different factions, the setting would lend itself quite well for it.
There is an Avatar TTRPG and it faces similar problems to making a new game based on the series, and handles it similarly to what you’re suggesting.
The TTRPG divides the setting into Eras, Kyoshi era with the nations still being established, Roku era with established nations, The Hundred Years War era taking place during the war but before Ang wakes, The Aang era, after the show and its sequel comics, and the Kora era taking place after TLoK and its comic trilogy. Notably, none take place during the events of the main series. This means that the can create new stories that better fit the medium and don’t break cannon, and at the same time, you can still interact with significant characters and tie your story into the cannon such as making a quest resulting from the reprocusions of, or a prerequisite for events in the main canon.
Edit: clearly none of us read the article:
It’ll put players in the role of an “all-new, never-before-seen Avatar” and take place thousands of years in the past.
They just made Space Marine 2. Great campaign and the most immersive Warhammer 40k game yet imo. As far as the look and feel of the world they really didn’t miss once. 40k is an old IP with A LOT of details and to just consistently nail those details is really a Herculean feat.
The gameplay loop isn’t exactly my cup of tea but it isn’t bad.
I don’t know who else I would pick to do this project tbh.
It’s kind of hard to have an incredibly varied and versatile powerset in a video game, simply becuase you have a limited set of inputs. So you would normally have a small set of powers that each serve a purpose. But then doing that and still representing 4 elements means each only gets very limited options.
Thinking about it, I can see two ways to make bending feel powerful, versatile and give a good representation to all elements. 1) maybe the best solution would be to have customizable load outs with various bending powers, and let you switch between those load outs on the fly so you can coordinate a few power sets that work well together but swap them when other sets are more useful to the situation. 2) An interesting idea would be to use situational awareness to execute moves without specific user inputs differentiating the exact power used. For example, you could have a single boost button that uses a different element depending on if the player is on land, water, in the air or dodging (fire rocket!). And you could have a close/melee attack and ranged attack for each element that you can specify, but the exact effect/attack it creates can vary depending on the environment and enemy type of the target. Let it feel a little bit like the character is making decisions, not just you, like Batman in combat in the Arkham games. And of course, there would be a charge up to a special attack that uses the Avatar state and all 4 elements at once.
I wonder if anybody remembers when it leaked Microsoft had a concept of a plan about restrictions on Xbox discs (used/shared), everyone gasped, Sony mocked them in a video about “sharing discs” on PS4 and became a turning point in the console wars…
Even a decade later: Remove discs at your peril! Half the reason I’ve even bought consoles is for Blu-ray movies (still unbeatable AV quality). Sony won both the console and disc drive wars FFS! Still not enough. “Line must go up more!”
I hope MS is at least mocking them back right now, for giggles. Before announcing a very similar thing next year…
Yeah. It’s crazy to think that USB can now handle 240W. And yes, the naming conventions are terribad but, at least the standards are actually open, unlike VESA’s.
They are doing this because a rotten corpse doesn’t force them to compete, they can do whatever they want. If MS didn’t shit the bed with the Series X/S, Sony would be trying harder to please customers, or at least not actively screwing them (see also: 800 EUR PS5 Pro without disc drive or vertical stand).
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Aktywne