I’m a massive FFVII fan, and that 2 year wait ALMOST lost my interest. I finally picked it up, where it remained the most expensive game I had purchased for a good long while. I was happy with that, because I heard “the other installments will be included!”
Guess I heard them wrong. They lost me. I won’t pay 90 bucks again for another chapter of a 2 year old remake of a 30 year old game.
For those who don’t want to read the article to know what this has to do with Smurfs:
Smurf accounts are alternate accounts used by players to avoid playing at the correct MMR, to abandon games, to cheat, to grief, or to otherwise be toxic without consequence.
As always: if leaving or sucking ruins a game for everyone else, your game is badly designed.
Only MOBAs have this level of toxicity. All MOBAs have this problem. Maybe lashing strangers together for forty-five minutes, in a zero-sum contest where half of them will lose, with so much inter-dependence and complexity that nobody feels responsible, is not great for the human psyche.
You can’t even kick someone. Losing them for any reason ruins the game. You have to tough it out, for most of an hour, after waiting however long just to start the game, and the inevitable loss will still count against you. No kidding people get wound-up.
I’d add the caveat “badly designed for solo matchmaking.” Dota with friends–especially a five stack you get along with and play well with–is sublime. Dota with four randos is a complete and total crapshoot, though if your behavior score is good and you’re not in the total shit tier ranks it’s usually pretty fun.
I absolutely agree. I think the time investment is the biggest reason. I can easily shrug off a loss if it only took 5 minutes. It’s much harder to swallow when you feel like you just wasted the last hour of your life. Honestly I don’t know how to fix it though - the farming and leveling is kind of baked into the formula. You can speed up the process like Heroes of the Storm did but it’s going to feel like a “lite” version of the original.
If you could leave, you’d never be trapped in a long game. You would enjoy every long game. The ones that suck wouldn’t last.
Root problem: the game requires a fixed number of human players, from start to finish. If bots worked then you could just take the L and quit. Or safely eject someone who’s being a total cock. Or possibly even split the game in two, so both the “fuck this” and “fuck you” groups see everyone else replaced with bots.
Bots don’t have to be good with every character. Bots don’t even have to play by the same rules as humans. They just need to be balanced. Which you’d figure these developers are really really good at, after fifteen years of pouring new characters into these games.
Individual scoring would be almost as powerful. A high-level player with a low-level team should ideally be scored on their skill - not a binary win / lose condition. Especially if half the players are guaranteed to lose. Long matches provide oodles of time to evaluate. And if bots work at all, the game can quietly run simulations from snapshots of the ongoing match - checking if players did better or worse than a player-like script would, and by how much.
Compare sports. You have a regulation basketball game. On one side is the 2023 Miami Heat, minus Jimmy Butler. On the other side you have the AZ Compass Prep Dragons, plus Jimmy Butler. The Dragons’ chances of winning are approximately diddly over fuck. But a talent scout watching those high-schoolers get smoked 132-15 can still recognize which of them are doing especially well under the circumstances. And Erik Spoelstra can still give Tyler Herro side-eye for ever missing a free throw. Despite a blowout loss, every individual can be judged for how they played, both in terms of independent actions and productive teamwork. (This new kid at Arizona, Jimmy somethingorther, is really good.)
Yet in a video game - where every moment can be scrutinized frame-by-frame, and statistical analysis is so easy you’d think this was baseball - there is only total victory and utter defeat, and only for whole teams. Everything from Smash Bros to Overwatch has little trophies to hand out for leading performance in a bunch of arbitrary details. So why doesn’t a loss caused by one feeding troll count as 90% of a win for the players who almost eked it out in spite of them?
More importantly: why doesn’t the game make it feel like they were doing good, when they were doing great?
Hit the nail on the head, I'd say. Some future competitive game that endeavors to weigh in an evaluation of personal contribution over just the binary win/loss condition and that implements ways to automatically mitigate the negatives enumerated for long duration matches is going to start off in a really good place.
Handling those issues honestly seems like Step 1 in tackling the kind of negativity that is notorious for cropping up in these sorts of games. If everyone's having a better time and doesn't feel punished for things outside of their control, it seems reasonable to assume that the baseline behavior will be a lot more chill.
If the smurf detection/etc is good, then that’s the first way to alleviate those toxic behavior. It’s a really bad feedback cycle when smurfs are involved. My main game is rocket league, you can have smurf that win the game single-handedly and then start to play 1v3 or 2v4 because he decides that he wants to lose these games to keep playing at lower rank, or something you did the smurf don’t like, and you might be some MMR away for your next promotion and it doesn’t matter. The MMR matchmaking this little shit to your matches because he decides to smurf instead of playing at his normal level.
I don’t know much about dota or moba games, but the idea is the same, smurf will pump more negativity into the game.
There is zero rationality behind the decision, especially given that it’s retroactive and there’s no language in their decision that handles unique user versus multiple users versus multiple accounts.
I’ve had two gaming PCs over the last ten years. On my last one, I replaced the hard drive twice, and I’m on my second hard drive on the newest one. With each hard drive replacement, I’ve had to reinstall all my games. I’m not paying for all of them again with each install but just getting the same files off Steam and installing again. According to this decision, the devs of these games would have had to pay Unity four extra times just due to my hardware upgrades. How is that on the developer at all, and Lord help us if Unity tries to run some BS where players have to pay for each new installation.
The entire gaming industry, even from the “disc era”, doesn’t work with a cost per install model.
Not to mention that it’s such a sudden announcement. I mean, sure, they gave people 3 months notice in advance, but when you consider the scale of many games probably take longer than 3 months to make the decision AND actually make the switch (or make up for the switch), it’s cause for quite a bit of harm.
Granted, the majority of people may not be affected by it due to needing to meet a requirement of like earning $200,000 and 200,000 installs at a minimum, but I feel like the once you reach that, it’s just downhill from there.
In addition to your example of costing the devs for reinstalling the game, you now have to consider the possibility of a user (or group of users) maliciously reinstalling their games to financially damage the developer. Sure, Unity says they’ll have fraud detection for stuff like that, but then it’s literally up to the people you owe money to decide whether you should pay more or less money to them.
That’s exactly what they’re trying to do because their CEO is a nut job crazy man who’s grasp of business economics is embarrassing even when compared to my cats.
The problem with that is that it relies on the idea that people are able/willing to pay and aren’t willing to try something else. Game devs are naturally technical people who are okay with trying new things if their current solution stops being an option. Then there are indie devs who must work cheaply or they will not make anything off their games.
Its a bold strategy cotton, let’s see how it plays out for them.
PM: Hey Steve! Yes, you from development! How can the, uh, that runtime of yours, tell if it’s a new install or a reinstall? S: As of right now it can’t, we just have aggregate data. We’d need to update it to support that. We have an item on the backlog already if you – PM: No need! I have all the information I need!
I mean legally. The devs agreed to a contract, it can’t be changed with different economic terms later
If someone published an Unity game 4 years ago, has now abandoned the project, doesn’t release any update, why needs to pay a per install fee “for supporting the runtime”? The version is now ancient. I could understand if it was “from version xx.yy”
I also asked the question, and got an answer. The hypothesis is that they’ll release new versions under a different license, also meaning that if the devs never agree to the new license, they’d avoid the fee. Of course, that would mean that any engine level bugs in their game would become unfixable. This also means that large developers would be exempt, as they likely have contracts in place that supersede the license agreement.
Could also be. I’m not sure about how the legal situation works exactly. My understanding is that you can’t change a contract, such as a license agreement without the other party’s consent. Maybe they have a clause in it allowing them to revoke the existing licenses, meaning the developers would be forced to agree to the new license or be without a license.
Im trying to think like a money hungry, out of touch POS CEO here.
Unity uses a subscription model right? Where each year you have to renew it and agree to new ToS. Well if they just put in their new ToS that companies have to pay retroactive fees and that company “agrees” to those ToS, then that means it’s not illegal since they technically “agreed” to it…
Hope to he’ll it doesn’t hold up in court but if Unity goes through with this who knows.
This feels so wrong to me that I feel like they must be going against some law, or they need to be sued to set precedent. I’m not a lawyer, I just think this smells completely like a giant corporation scamming people.
oh no stop, please, don’t make John riccatello tell us to hold his beer. think of his track record at EA. the out of touch competition isn’t even at full stakes yet. I have a feeling more is coming before the IPO.
Much like Darkest Dungeon, game development is a dynamic and challenging effort where tough choices must be made using imperfect information. Making and releasing a game is an uncertain endeavor, with treasures never guaranteed. But that uncertainty should lie in the marketplace, not with fundamental business terms around which a project was built.
We believe Unity has made a grave misstep in introducing a poorly thought out fee mechanic and then compounded that threefold by making it apply to games that have already been released. We are sympathetic to the idea that companies must sometimes change how they operate, but these changes should be carefully planned, communicated, and enacted in such a way that partners may choose whether they wish to accept these new rules for their next projects.
We built Darkest Dungeon II using Unity, and a large part of our decision to do so was the relative cost certainty around the license and subscription model. We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on licenses, and far more than that in engaging Unity to help us with parts of development. It is hard for us to imagine building another game with Unity unless we know we are protected from the possibility of massive changes to how we pay for that technology being introduced at the whims of executive management.
Part of game development is knowing when a mechanic is not working and then having the courage to swallow your ego and undo the mistake. We call on Unity to recant this blunder.
I could see this encouraging a whole new form of brigading. Imagine if a developer pissed off the community, thousands of people could go about uninstalling and reinstalling the game over and over, driving up the engine monthly bill for the company.
Did they put anything in place with their new rules to prevent this from being abused?
I trust they did their best.
I also trust that any sufficiently tech savvy individual will be able to bypass that system. It only takes one person to pull it off and then it’s public knowledge. Sure, they’ll fix it, and then someone will do it again.
Small companies can’t afford to take that risk and larger companies won’t want the hassle.
It’s a shame too. I liked Unity more than Unreal. Oh well.
The point was, do you trust their software to accurately detect and ignore repeat installs and pirated copies, when it’s in their obvious interest to half ass that detection and charge devs more?
We at Red Hook know something about madness… Much like Darkest Dungeon, game development is a dynamic and challenging effort where tough choices must be made using imperfect information. Making and releasing a game is an uncertain endeavor, with treasures never guaranteed. But that uncertainty should lie in the marketplace, not with fundamental business terms around which a project was built. We believe Unity has made a grave misstep in introducing a poorly thought out fee mechanic and then compounded that threefold by making it apply to games that have already been released. We are sympathetic to the idea that companies must sometimes change how they operate, but these changes should be carefully planned, communicated, and enacted in such a way that partners may choose whether they wish to accept these new rules for their next projects. We built Darkest Dungeon using Unity, and a large part ofour decision to do so was the relative cost certainty around the license and subscription model. We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on licenses, and far more than that in engaging Unity to help us with parts of deve lopment. It is hard for us to imagine building another game with Unity unless we know we are protected from the possibility of massive changes to how we pay for that technology being introduced at the whims of executive management. Part of game development is knowing when a mechanic is not working and then having the courage to swallowyour ego and undo the mistake. We call on Unity to recant this blunder.
(used Google’s text detection to copy/paste, so may not be perfect)
We at Red Hook know something about madness… Much like Darkest Dungeon, game development is a dynamic and challenging effort where tough choices must be made using imperfect information. Making and releasing a game is an uncertain endeavor, with treasures never guaranteed. But that uncertainty should lie in the marketplace, not with fundamental business terms around which a project was built. We believe Unity has made a grave misstep in introducing a poorly thought out fee mechanic and then compounded that threefold by making it apply to games that have already been released We are sympathetic to the idea that companies must sometimes change how they operate, but these changes should be carefully planned, communicated, and enacted in such a way that partners may choose whether they wish to accept these new rules for their next projects. We built Darkest Dungeon I using Unity, and a large part of our decision to do so was the relative cost certainty around the license and subscription model. We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on licenses, and far more than that in engaging Unity to help us with parts of development. It is hard for us to imagine building another game with Unity unless we know we are protected from the possibility of massive changes to how we pay for that technology being introduced at the whims of executive management. Part of game development is knowing when a mechanic is not working and then having the courage to swallow your ego and undo the mistake. We call on Unity to recant this blunder. Red Hook
ETA: Ah, shit sorry I didn’t see someone else had already posted
It’s like Cyberpunk again, people gave themselves grand ideas about what a game would be regardless of what the Devs were saying, then got upset it isn’t the game they imagined but the one they were told they were getting.
I get what you’re saying, this happens with almost every major release but cyberpunk promised far for than it delivered. The version 2.0 that released soon should have been what we got in the initial release. We were promised multiplayer, that got cancelled. We were promised multiple dlc, phantom liberty is the only dlc they’re going to release. I’m still excited nonetheless.
They would be very similar. if Bethesda was competent both games have lots of similar elements from, yes having ships to scanning resources on a planet to having a jetpack. So it is fair and understandtable to compare these games pretty much the biggest difference is that Bethesda not having seamless apace travel and I ain’t letting them off the hook for “well they are just different games 🤓” bullshit.
Depends, of you’re jumping to a system you have enough range/fuel for it is, it don’t need to be scanned to enter the sector, sometimes your forced to go though other places you may want to avoid.
I don’t think it’s unfair to point out that many of the people who were interested in Starfield leading up to launch thought they were getting more of a space sim than they did, proceeded to look for alternatives, and NMS was there being pretty good at what it does now. The OP article demonstrates this and is not a comparison between the games. In my case, Starfield just reminded me that NMS exists and I decided I’d rather be playing it. Fundamentally comparing the games is ridiculous, but it’s no surprise that NMS ended up in the conversation.
I recently started playing NMS again right before Echoes, although I didn’t know Echoes was coming up. While I never made a conscious link between seeing all of the news about Starfield and me choosing that game when I was last looking through the plethora for something to inspire me, I think it may have had a subconscious effect on my choice.
Maybe they should have paid attention to what was actually being said by the Devs then. They clarified that it wasn’t going to be like NMS/Elite/etc at least a year out from release.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about you, I’m just so sick of YouTube. The ads are out of control. I think the number one thing I’m jealous of with Android users is YouTube Revanced
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