They should just get rid of the expectations of sales numbers like what current AAA get. If we want better games, less people will buy them, because a good game isn't for everyone.
I buy games that release for $40 and $50. They don't have dlc. They don't have microtransactions. They don't have cash shops. They don't have battle passes. I just pay my $40/$50, get my physical copy, often with a bundled goodie like cards or keychains, and play and enjoy my 40hr game.
It's absolutely possible because the companies that release these titles are pumping out several per year. You just.... have to stop spec racing and obsessing over 200hr playtimes and top of the line graphics and actually focus on making a decent, mid-sized game, with realistic expectations.
I pretty much exclusively buy AA at this point, with the rare AAA nintendo 1st party title that I'm happy to pay $60 for. Most AAA games though just aren't worth it. Some of those games coming out you couldn't pay me to play.
They're right that retail prices of AAA games are too low to make a profit. Which is why they've turned to microtransactions and dlc. However, the price of such games is too high, which means the budgets and profit expectations are too high. With the quality of games coming out lately, even $60 is too high. I can't imagine spending $70 or even $80 on a game.
playstation started declining with ps3 which released in 2006. PS4 released in 2013, a decade ago. PS4 wasn't worth buying. That's a decade of garbage from sony.
yes. I haven't played the game so idk the details of what's up. but at 1k+ planet-sized spaces it's hard to have a team go over that by hand. Planets are large. But I have no doubt that bethesda team was probably super lazy as well.
I didn't say it's impossible. Just that it's harder, takes deliberate effort, etc. For AAA games they don't bother with that kind of thing because it's larger expense and larger risk.
The issue with procedural generation is the game has to be built for it from the ground up and in a modular way. AAAs try to make themselves appealing by using novel new high quality assets that aren't modular.
I haven't played starfield so idk what they ended up doing, but from the sound of it they have pre-made assets/areas that they then place onto pre-generated worlds in a randomized way.
To make one of these "areas" procedural in itself, they'd then have to code a whole system for that. With AAA/3D the hard part is making modular environments without it looking repetitive or ugly.
My point isn't so much that it can't be done in a AAA game. But rather that it's risky to do (not all players like it), and you have to structure your development around it. Lots can go wrong, there's stuff you gotta sacrifice to make it work, etc.
If starfield is on the old bethesda engine then that's even more of a reason. You can't just plug and play an entire procedural generation thing in there without some fairly large overhauls or just gluing on an unrelated system.
In practice, bethesda probably took the lazy route: using their existing engine without major changes, then just making new assets for it, throwing stuff about a bit randomly, and calling it a day.
That's the thing about procedural generation is: it's a lot of effort and sucks up a huge part of the game's development and comes at some pretty strict costs (repetitive looking environments/gameplay, reduced novelty, larger programming dev time to make it work). It can be done, but for a cost-cutting AAA studio they're not gonna bother.
You can, but randomizing chests+locked doors is kinda complicated, and the more "interesting" your generations the harder it is to code and the more dev time it takes. And for a AAA game release you can't really do that.
Key+Lock randomization is something that has been solved, and has been used most notably in procedurally generated zeldalikes. But that's still niche indie territory, and not used for major game releases.
At a scale of 1k planets you're going to have to rely on reused assets and procedural generation. At which point people not into procedural generation say that it's "repetitive". Especially if you only gen once for everyone and not each run lol.
AI generation of assets and code will theoretically eventually resolve this, but that's quite a ways off. They're not even usable for such with human assistance yet. And if you have ai generating the content, it's not really a human team making that stuff lol.
The type celebrating nudity in baldurs gate are usually prudes who argue for censorship, oppose nudity and sexual content, etc when it comes to Japanese games. Sane people are pointing out this obvious hypocrisy.
You should try playing Cattails which is basically exactly that. You play as a stray cat living a regular cat life. You can hunt, socialize with other cats (some are nice, some not), etc. No humans, just cats. The start of the game you get abandoned by humans I think?