Nobody really expects RPG's to be as big and deep as BG3, they just want a complete game that works without shitty microtransactions everywhere and always online for no reason. Plus, having interesting characters and storylines, quests that can be solved in more than one way, and gameplay that's actually formed by taking player feedback and listening to it is what people reacted well to, among other things. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't even have Denuvo!
If there's one thing that I hope competitors learn from Larian and BG3, it's that respecting your players and giving them what they want leads to success. Similar to Elden Ring and from software, like that video mentioned. Now compare BG3 to Diablo 4 and Immortal, or the upcoming Starfield and you'll see why people love it. It's not about specs or scope, it's about designing a game to be actually FUN.
It's not about specs or scope, it's about designing a game to be actually FUN.
This is the key point that these publishers and studios are trying to avoid.
How much of most AAA budgets are spent on designing microtransaction psychologically manipulative money sinks (dark designs)?
How much of most AAA budgets are spent on creating addiction in the player-base so that they keep playing the game (and spending money)?
How much of most AAA budgets are spent on bullshit DLC (not actual new content)?
How much of most AAA budgets are spent on bullshit to satisfy shareholders?
How much of most AAA budgets are spent on shit the devs don't want, but executives do?
How much of most AAA budgets are spent on bullshit padding for marketing purposes?
How much of most AAA budgets are spent on bullshit DRM?
And keep in mind, by budgets here, I mean both the dollar amount AND time spent by devs that could be spent elsewhere (which is part of the dollar amount since salaries, but I wanted to make it clear that time spent is also important).
Some of the absolute best games in the industry have literally none of that, and people still want to play and buy them years after release because gasp they're actually fun, but these publishers and devs don't want to compare to those, because they WANT the industry to be a bunch of "GAAS" bullshit that's basically a vacuum pushed into people's wallets, cause hey, if it worked for Candy Crush....
To summarize the actual tweets/comments/etc that these videos (there are multiple) are panicking about.
Smaller studios aren't going to be able to replicate the scale and complexity of BG3. So people shouldn't be using BG3 as the bar to compare future titles/RPGs from other studios going forward. Larian is comparable in size (or even larger) to Bethesda when they released Skyrim, and no one has been able to compete directly with Skyrim either.
Not all games and RPGs need to be as complex and long as BG3. Expecting open-ended, 100 hour-long RPGs for every future game/RPG isn't realistic. Not all games require that scope, it's rare to get such a budget for this type of game, and even if you did, most companies won't be able to replicate the game in a meaningful way. Just like how companies other than Rockstar would struggle to replicate the scale of games like GTA and RDR.
There, I've summarized multiple 20 min videos. Just without all the hand-waving and drama.
BDobbinsFTW seems pretty dialed into what's going wrong now and in the past that lead to this outcome. I agree with a lot of what he's saying because, even as a bystander to the COD scene, I can remember noticing what he was talking about. The gradual enshittification of COD as a franchise. To address the symptoms, the root cause must be dealt with: billionaires and the people that support their stupid schemes that break economic systems.
What. Like as in a remake of the original? I never even beat it but with it being deck verified now, I probably will play it again. I wonder if I can import my old characters somehow…
I do like the combat and atmosphere but that’s about all the videos showed and I can’t be impressed by that. Only combat and atmosphere is not a reason to play a game. There needs to be a purpose and I didn’t see that.
For example in Vintage story survival is the purpose to play the game. You need to go out and find food or you’re going to starve. You need to build farms because the vicinity of your base will eventually run out of easy to access food sources and you’ll starve. You need to build storage pots because your food can spoil and go to waste. You need to build a cellar because you need to store food for the winter. In Vintage story you go exploring because you have a reason to explore. There is always something to do and getting to the point where you actually have nothing to improve is like hundreds of hours away.
That is what was kinda missing from Minecraft. Once you’re past surviving the reasons to explore drastically drop off. And based on this video it seems like Hytale will run into the same issue as Minecraft. You end up with a nice looking world and interesting combat but with very little reason to go explore or fight.
Combat and movement look fun and satisfying, graphics look amazing. So many moody areas, from gritty snowscape to colorful caves. Mojang could learn a thing or five from this trailer.
I do hope there will be more breadth of gameplay especially on the creative side so those promising exploration mechanics do not feel stale after a few hours of running around and blasting skeletons. That’s one thing mojang does get right, if anything they have too much breadth and not enough depth.
Not sure about the ease of movement when scaling multiple blocks. Figuring it how to get from point A to point B with the limited movement options is a core part of most Minecraft gameplay loops, especially when caving and/or fighting. Seems they made up for it with good fighting mechanics, but they will have to make up for it in the other gameplay loops as well.
Either way I wish them the best and hope they light a fucking fire underneath mojang’s ass.
EDIT:
This is the original legacy engine from the 2018 trailer, running on a four-year-old build as we push Hytale forward again.
Now hold the fuck up. What do you mean this is the 2018 engine? What the fuck have they been doing the past 7 years? Did they rewrite a whole new engine for no good reason? It looks fucking beautiful and seems to run great! I’m sure they had their reasons, and I don’t think we can draw accurate conclusions by speculating, but the insider perspective on the development cycle must be absolutely wild.
EDIT2: Okay their blog post explains quite a bit more. Seems to paint a picture that Riot wanted the engine to be cross-platform (makes sense for consoles) and they could not make it work with a full rewrite away from their otherwise functional Java/C# engine. Kind of a crazy play on Riot’s part to make Java/C# devs and former minecraft modders write a modern game engine from scratch in C++ if that’s the case. Probably a tough lesson to learn for everyone involved. If only they could learn from an incredibly popular voxel-based building/aventure game that went through the exact same engine rewrite away from a GC VM language and faced similar struggles.
As a PC player, great news that they’re sticking to .NET and Java. It will make modding much easier.
Just play Vintage story at this point. The development of this has been such a dumpster fire in terms of how the project has been handled from a top level from the very beginning that I don‘t have any hopes it will release in a decent state under its new old owner.
This is not true, development has stalled the past few years because Riot demanded they port it to a new engine, which was why it got indefinitely delayed and eventually cancelled
Things were moving well before that. The original developers took back control of the project and are back on track
I just think this is going to be a bit of a mess no matter what way it goes. People have such a different idea of what this game is now based on the riot drive.
& I can't help but think that's kinda the point of buying it, because you only need to sell it in one burst of hype to make a quick buck, look at cube world for example.
Also the game has been sold off once, if someone like M$ came knocking, even just to kill it, you think if he makes a huge profit off the purchase, he'll say no?
I think a lot of people have been waiting for this & the hype around it is just going to lead to disappointment.
Happy about this. Been checking it every few months since it was announced, and the cancellation felt really shitty. It seems like it will be playable by the end of the year!
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