The base price increase would still raise the total with DLC. Not including the DLC is still worth talking about, since there are plenty of ways to enjoy a game without it.
I don’t understand looking at Sims 4 as an example. The game has had progressive additions for a long time; it’s basically a live service game, and now comes free.
It’s rare for anyone to feel they want all the DLC - usually it would just be a few things they want and have fun with.
I actually do want all the DLC in a game like that. The fact it’s prohibitively expensive just means I’ve never actually bought any and stick to the Sims 3, a game where I do have all the expansions.
True, but iirc sims 4 also released in a more cut-down state than sims 3 - in fact it was one of the pioneers of “paradoxification” of games and victim of other bullshit that EA was trying to pull, just like with simcity.
Anyway, my point was that with EA the up-front price they charge is not awfully relevant, because you have lootboxes, p2w, mtx, gambling, dlc of varying dollar value etc. so you might end up paying a crapload, live service or not.
well DLC has always cost money on top of the base game so i’m not sure what your point is.
edit:
you’re ignoring that if you buy all DLCs you get much more content compared to old $60 games. If you want to look at this fairly you need to come up with some way of quantifying the content involved which is not easy to do.
I do agree that some DLCs are clearly designed as money grabs (like most premium/gold launch editions). But i disagree with lumping all DLC into that category, especially bigger expansions that release a year or more later.
The ones by big publishers? No, they’re feature complete at best for the sake of the game loop but sell the rest in overpriced DLCs. The base game is the hook, that’s why Epic keeps giving some away for free or are sold at a heavy discount on Steam. You only need to scroll down to notice.
agree to disagree i guess. i don’t find base games to be any less feature complete than they ever were. they fact that DLCs are sold on top of the base game does not change that.
User accidentally opens Uplay when trying to double-click Steam
A store banner ad shows ‘Skull and Bones’
User immediately frowns in disgust and tries to spam the X button to quit Uplay
Uplay privacy-invading telemetry captures an image of the user frowning via the webcam, and tracks the movement of the mouse cursor moving across the banner ad of ‘Skull and Bones’
Uplay closes, telemetry is uploaded to Ubisoft’s servers
surely Edgerunners isn’t fair to count toward that? That was already in the works before launch, it’s not as though they had a bad launch and thought “wow we should do an animated series to repair reputation”
Pre release I was so hyped for cyberpunk, was patient and waited for reviews, so voted with my wallet and didn’t buy it, and just forgot it even existed
Watched Edgerunners animated series off the cuff and it had no business being as good as it was (same as Arcane - gj netflix)
The next time it went on sale I snapped it up and havent regretted it one bit. One playthrough on my old hardware, obligitory playthrough to test after I got an Rtx, and another now 2.0 is out - definitely got my moneys worth
A lot of the hate was undeserved, IMO. Besides one absolutely hilarious bug where I called my ride in an odd place, and another where part of a mission didn’t trigger so I had to reload the last Autosave which was about 30 seconds back, the game ran well for me and a lot of friends at launch. And CDPR responded quickly and had patches out within a week fixing most of the gameplay affecting bugs.
I typically judge games pretty harshly, and my only experience with CDPR prior was Witcher 3, which dropped with some bugs but was patched within a week, and really didn’t understand the level of shade CDPR received.
I had a midrange PC at the time, and only encountered a handful of bugs my first play through.
Performance could be rough in downtown sections, but it’s was far from unplayable on day one.
I am firmly convinced that most of the people experiencing horrible performance or mystifying bugs were attempting to play the game on their smart fridge or something. If you had a decent gaming machine from the last 7 years or so, the game ran fine.
That being said, it should have never released on Xbox one or PS4. Those consoles were just too old and the performance wasn’t their.
A lot of the problems and stupid glitches people had were from playing off of a hard drive. The game really needs flash storage, even if it’s SATA. That should’ve been a recommendation from the start, if not an outright requirement like it is now with 2.0.
I think the console releases were largely to blame for the bad rep. Esp the older gen ones. I played from launch on PC and I had a lot of bugs but nothing game breaking and it didn’t stop me from thoroughly enjoying myself.
They fought to change the name since the beginning because they knew it would be impossible to deliver a real sequel and while this name might get initial sales it would cause blowback killing the game almost immediately…
Which is exactly what happened.
Like, they’d have loved to make Masquerade 2, but they weren’t given the time or funds to make it.
The worst part is that this failure will probably kill any chance of The Chinese Room getting to actually take a proper swing at this, from scratch, with time and a real budget. It really feels like if they were allowed to do that they would hit it out of the park. Bloodlines 2 is a much better game than the review scores suggest, mostly weighed down by the expectations people put in the Bloodlines name.
Chinese Room is clearly a bad fit for Bloodlines. They have zero experience with RPG games.
They make good walking-sim style gaming experiences with strong atmosphere and world-building, but they've never made any RPGs. Bloodlines was a living world full of dynamism (remember the Voerman twins missions?).
Their gameplay also tends to be subpar. The original Bloodlines had some flaws with gameplay (combat), but you still had a lot of different gameplay options and approaches.
Why shouldn't people have expectations for a strong roleplaying experience and player freedom for a Bloodlines game?
They absolutely are, in terms of gameplay. Ozzy Mandus and The Crank Hog Machine sacrificed most of the gameplay Frictional’s Amnesia became known for. There are no light mechanics. Barely any physics puzzles. The pigmen are braindead, which removes the challenge and the tension. Even if it’s a better story and atmosphere than The Dark Descent, it’s a lesser game. Even Still Wakes The Deep only goes as far as “throw the object to make the thing look away” when you’re not just responding to non-diegetic prompts.
You can make the argument that walking simulators have a place in the gaming landscape, and you’d be right, but by their nature, they are the exact opposite of what Bloodlines 1 was and what Bloodlines 2 should have been. Why Paradox decided it was a good idea to entrust with it a studio that has only made things that it never should have been is a fucking mystery to me.
Those two studios for the game because it was Hardsuit’s idea to make the game in the first place and TCR barely kept Paradox from canceling the have after they kicked Hardsuit out of the project.
I think it basically went like this (simplified):
Hardsuit: “Hey Paradox, we wanna make Bloodlines 2. We have everything worked out, we have the best possible writers involved, and it’s a real passion project; here’s our pitch.”
Paradox: “Wow, that pitch convinced us completely! You get all the green lights in the world!”
Hardsuit: “Now keep in mind we’ve never done a project on this scale before so we’ll need plenty of time—”
Paradox: “We set you on an extremely aggressive schedule. Surely that’ll motivate you into delivering perfection!”
Hardsuit: “That’s literally the exact opposite of what we need.”
Paradox: “But it’s the exact non-opposite of what you get. Now chop chop, we already gave the release date to the press.”
Hardsuit: “We’re not getting the game done in that timeframe.”
Paradox: “No problem; we’ll delay a little bit. Surely nobody will mind.”
Hardsuit: “It’ll take more than ‘a little bit’. We told you that—”
Paradox: “Okay, sure, whatever, the game’s canceled now. Don’t call us back.”
TCR: “Hey, can we try to salvage this? We really wanna see this made. But we’d like to throw away all of the writing, characters, and gameplay. Everything except the setting, really.”
Paradox: “Okay, sounds reasonable. But make it snappy.”
TCR: “We’d also like to change the name because what we can deliver won’t really be a proper sequel to—”
Paradox: “Bloodlines 2 it is. Good discussion. Glad we talked about this.”
TCR: “That’s literally the exact opposite of what we asked for.”
Paradox: “Can’t hear you; too busy launching the sequel to one of the most beloved cult classics in the action RPG genre.”
Customers: “Well, this is a pretty bad sequel. Decent game but they really shouldn’t have called it Bloodlines 2. We’re disappointed.”
Paradox: “The only logical course of action is to swear to never release a non-strategy game ever again because nobody appreciates our art.”
With the second paragraph I agree, it’s a bad fit for a sequel and this is consensus (probably, I didn’t enjoy Bloodlines much), even TCR thinks so. But is this a scale? Is Bloodlines 1 a lesser game with subpar gameplay because it’s systems weren’t as complex as other CRPGs? “Game” is just the term we stuck with, it doesn’t mean that the fidelity of the gameplay, the mechanics and dynamics is paramount. If I value narrative, and it is, has become, a narrative medium, I very well might think that A Machine For Pigs did a better job.
I enjoy walking sims (Soma is one of my favourite games of all time) in general and TCR's releases as well.
That doesn't mean one can't recognize that TCR tends to struggle even with relatively simple gameplay and that a game like Bloodlines requires strong gameplay design/implementation skills.
While I loved the atmosphere of Still Wakes the Deep, there were many situations where weak gameplay undermined the ambiance and immersion.
I hope I was able to at least share my own reasoning (even if you don't agree). And I think we can both agree that TCR does not have any experience in RPG games.
Sweet, just in time for the pro. Fingers crossed the next revision doesn’t play games at all, just $1000 to pipe Morbius trailers to my TV. It’s all I ever wanted.
Isn’t it rad that Sony designed the ps5 to have easily replaceable side panels and then for some reason only releases the really cool panels as part of a full console?
There will probably be loads of third-party panels just because of that lol, just need some spray paint for the the glossy middle part or something for the finishing touch
I don’t know if you were part of the memers who got Morbius re-released but if so hats off because back then my in-laws were so excited to show me this movie they discovered on Netflix.
Which makes perfect sense - none of the previous producers have. Mostly, they’ve just used their stock characters and locations, and made a game that they thought would be fun out of them. There’s a couple of games that qualify as ‘direct sequels’ (Ocarina -> Majora’s, Wind Waker -> Hourglass) but even then, it doesn’t benefit you much to have played the preceding one. Would be weird to try and twist the games into a chronology that strikes me mostly as ‘fanon’ anyway.
Nintendo did try that, though, and mixed it around again whenever they felt like it. “New research uncovered that…” blah blah. Better off if they don’t bother anymore.
I wish these idiots would quit trying to tell the people playing the game that they are wrong for not liking it. Like, no man, listen to them, this is feedback. You can’t take all of it without a pinch of salt but if you see a common theme, then you should address it.
Yep, would get this over the meta headsets that I have stayed away from if it got full PC support. Until then just going to wait to see if Valve releases anything new.
Or at least actually finished, for some reasonable definition of “finished”. I’m going to buy Haunted Chocolatier on release and I’d pre-order that given the chance and I never pre-order (I’m actually 1 for 1 on pre orders, I pre ordered Star Trek Voyager Elite Force).
Elite Force was absolutely incredible! Considering you were trapped in like a ship graveyard the variety of environments was pretty impressive. The combat was fun, the story was interesting…could’ve used a little more ship exploration on voyager, though.
Bethesda, simply put, doesn’t know how to react to criticism. Instead of taking this feedback and improving their product they double-down and insist that you should like it because they said so. If it’s boring it’s boring man. They are simply as disconnected as possible. Remember the whole canvas bag fiasco? Then they said “ah, canvas costs too much, we aren’t planning on doing anything with the nylon one”… deal with it in other words. Then they were puzzled why people disliked them to all hell.
I can’t believe how ignorant you are of the worldwide canvas shortage of 2018. Canvas became a global strategic resource. Lack of canvas destabilized numerous nation states.
The idea of frivolously wasting that precious canvas on a video game trinket is frankly offensive.
Yup. And shitty plastic shell for the rum. Then people who requested refund got their info and CC numbers leaked by their system which they took offline immediately.
I’m not 100% sure but I think FO76 is maintained by BGS Austin. They seem to be far more interested in taking feedback and making the game better than the main Bethesda studio. FO76 may be fundamentally flawed but post-launch it’s definitely getting more care than Skyrim, FO4 and Starfield combined.
They also took class action lawsuits for that game as well, so that might be affecting that push to fix the game. But even if they fix it, doesn’t negate the fact they said they don’t plan on fixing canvas issue, or any problem they caused. Only when there was an outrage they reacted. Remember the horse armor for Skyrim or when they tried to sell mods that were included in previous game. I do.
Given how many features use generative AI to build user-generated content I would say mark this moment. There is a future of slop-centric Roblox stuff everywhere and this may well be where it starts.
I'm not as mad about that as most will be, but... yeah, I've mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
I appreciate it more because it’s generative AI based off of user created content and their own content. I respect that more than using outside sources that got their training data from god knows where and just slap that shit in there and call it a day.
How is it based on UGC if the game wasn't out when they implemented the GenAI? As far as I can tell they're using a whole bunch of ML-based tools built on Unreal tech for animation and model creation and what seems to be run of the mill Gen AI for textures. I could be wrong, but hey, I'll hold you to that being cool when EA or Ubisoft show up with their version of the same thing.
You can enter a text prompt and they spit out a texture based on it, which sure seems to just be a good old image generation model. They do generate mesh from images, which probably has some ML involved, although it's harder to tell how much is just good old photogrammetry, and they do face and body animation from video source. I think that's all part of the Unreal Engine 5 metahuman package, which I'm pretty sure does use some machine learning. Oh, and I am pretty sure a bunch of the writing and character AI has been machine-created, be it in real time or baked offline.
Part of the problem is that people aren't super clear on what "AI" is supposed to mean, so it's hard to know what they're supposed to be angry about. The texture generation thing at least is clearly in the GenAI danger zone.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
How many people are actually playing the game to find out though? I’m always strongly suspicious every time some new game explodes onto social media. Why couldn’t they use AI to generate user reviews and comments also?
There’s a lot of suspiciously crap games that manage to explode to the top of the steam trending list. I’ve been bitten before.
This one has art that looks so generic I can’t even tell if they’re screenshots or promo pics unrelated to the game. It suddenly makes sense now I know it’s genai. It’s not trying to communicate anything to a user it’s just vibes man.
No no it’s good, this is actually better than them making a proper announcement. Community loves this shit.
Quick summary:
Dev changes name, handle, and pfp on twitter. Posts a cryptic message about keeping your eyes closed tomorrow.
Reverse image search of pfp leads to a recipe released April 2nd
Cryptic message appears to be a reference to an Imagine Dragons thing from April 2nd
“Tomorrow” was interpreted as being related to the big switch 2 reveal, launching April 2nd
The name and handle also appear to be references to things having to do with April 2nd
The community is ablaze right now. Without a hint of irony: there is more genuine belief in the game actually coming out this time than there was before the original delay was announced in 2023, back when we had an official release date
I have a hard time accepting the way social media works. The whole chain of logic you just spelled out makes me want to vomit. I don’t want to have my strings pulled, my chain yanked, or my goose got. I want to be talked to like I’m a person, and I know it’s just going to keep happening less and less and one day it’s going to do my head in.
I get that, but you’re also not quite getting the full picture with this specific instance. The community on Reddit has been waiting for Silksong so long that they have been over-analyzing every single game convention for years to see if we’re going to get a release date, and had a heated debate over whether or not a blood sacrifice of a member of the community would bring the release. They’re a little crazy over there.
The context only increases the granularity of my distaste. We live in a society of conspiracism and forgetful unthinking chaos. I don’t want to read entrails for clues about the future, I want to wait patiently for a good game and not become schizophrenic trying to connect meaningless dots.
I don’t want to read entrails for clues about the future
But, you don’t have to. This is them hinting about a upcoming announcement of a release date. For the average player like you and me, it’s just the announcement itself that we need, and we’ll get that.
Just… don’t pay attention to it? It’s something that interests other people. Imagine if somebody said that about something you liked that they had no interest in.
The silksong community is one of my favorite of all time for years now. Every couple of weeks a new “theme” of insane shitposting evolves. Most fun and creative silly posting I’ve ever seen.
One common post is “_____ every day until silksong comes out”. People are doing fanart challenges, one guy posts a video of himself petting a cat every day which is very popular. The cat had to get a surgery at one point and needed a cone but was fine.
It’s not just noise. It brings people a lot of joy. There’s been several posts over the years from people basically grieving the potential loss/change of the community once the game actually drops. I’ll miss it, too
Tbf there are a lot of people who love solving cryptic puzzles and getting info out of very little, thats why ARGs are a thing. The good thing is, you don’t have to engage, you can just wait for proper announcements but for the people who love this shit they get to have fun, and presumably the devs too for making it.
And imo it shows that team cherry is interacting with the community in a positive way and might actually be finishing the game
It’s not for “normal” people, it’s for die-hard fans in their community, a little brain teaser / clue hunt. For the rest of us, there’ll be a proper announcement and a trailer.
Then don't engage with it lol? You are free to wait for proper official announcement or confirmation of the game instead of being here discussing a cake picture
Don’t get me wrong, I sincerely hope it does come out soon! But I’ve been on the hype train long enough to no longer get my hopes up. Instead, I’ve reached the true hype nirvana: There is no Silksong. There never was any Silksong. It’s merely a collective delusion.
It would be quite funny then to have them shadow drop it on april 1 with people freaking out about trying to tell others only be be met with disbelief as credibility of any statement about game release was already heavily compromised. Bonus point if they add 'coming soon" to logo on steam page for that day.
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