I was an original backer, I’ve played various iterations over the years and it really takes a lot of rose tint to find the game as it is enjoyable. The core loop isn’t even in place yet. The systems that do exist and work are interesting, the graphics and aesthetics are top notch, in parts, and at times it feels like we’re going to get something revolutionary. But then you play for a while and the unfinished jank gets to you, it’s not very fun. It’s cool, it’s impressive, the scope is insane and you can get lost in the vastness of space in ways that other games just can’t even approach. But it’s not fun. You can make it fun with friends or by setting up your own goals disjoined from the gameplay loop. Like try and jump a vehicle into the cargo bay mid flight or see how tightly you can race around asteroids. But if you just play the existing little loops it sucks. This is of course my subjective opinion. You might love the bounty system and the combat. You might love the salvage runs and transport missions but to me it’s like Euro Truck Simulator which is about the most boring shit I can imagine. And both the space and ground combat just isn’t even remotely as good as other games that just focus on that, which is understandable but I’m always left with this feeling of “will I really enjoy the finished product?” And I’m not sure. The game they said they were going to make in the Kickstarter, that game I would’ve enjoyed. I loved Chris Roberts games as a kid, but this monstrosity it has become? I just don’t know.
That said I really do believe they’re trying to make the best game ever. They just don’t fundamentally understand why we need deadlines and a fixed scope to get things out the door.
I don't think they were chasing newer tech, so much as the development was taking so incredibly long that their current tech had literally aged out of the common gamer's expectations and they HAD to do it over to seem current.
That may be. I do remember somewhere in a documentary that they kept re-developing stuff for different libraries/technologies. I think at least one was voluntary. I can't recall which doc this was, though.
I feel the same way. For the 30 or so dollars I spent as an early backer I’ve actually had some fun times in the game, and I don’t actually think it’s quite the total loss that people make it out to be, but it certainly should be far, far better than it is after a decade and 600m dollars invested in it.
Have a hard time dedicating consistent time with a single game because of other things like work. So any long story-driven game is gonna be a pass for me. If I need to remember a town name, map, or a character name and its more than a couple hours, its a nope. I simply have a hard time with dedicating the time to something like that, even if I enjoy it. MMORPGs or anything with dailies have similar issues.
I mostly tend to play games where I can spend a short period of time in a session and it doesn't matter if I come back to it in months. Over the past year or so, beatsaber and Terraria are the games that have fit that bill for me the most. Have over 1500 hours in Terraria and expect that number to probably grow over in bursts over the next decade.
I love Hades, one of my favorites in recent years.
The gameplay is tight and action packed, the loop is fun, not too long, yet different enough between each run.
There are still tidbits of story and lore, but nothing that really takes time away from actual action.
I guess the absolute opposite would be a Kojima game with 45 min cutscenes, which I usually bounce off hard.
Might be a weird comparison, but the pacing in Hades kinda reminds me a bit of DOOM2016. (Another game I loved.)
Although a completely different setting and top-down roguelike instead of FPS, I get the same action packed vibe out of it.
Well, one is a linear, turn-based, 3rd person party cRPG.
The other is open world, real-time, 1st person with optional followers, sandbox action-RPG with space shooter elements.
Utterly different animals and any comparison is as invalid as comparing BG3 to Elite, DCS or RaceRoom. I've no interest at all in BG3 because turn-based party RPG-s are not really my jam. And I've never cared much about story-telling, either. I like good worldbuilding, sandboxing, looting, crafting, trying different builds, doing whatever the hell I like at any moment while completely forgetting that something called "main quest" exists, getting technical and modding the crap out of a game and this is where Bethesda shines.
Generally the term cRPG is used for specifically tabletop RPG-s adapted to digital realm. Action RPG-s take those classical RPG concepts and adapt them to a first- or third-person action game—basically Doom with leveling systems.
Have you heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, which you’ll soon be able to play with an even further expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and the Stormblood expansions up to level SEVENTY for free with no restrictions on playtime?
A grift implies that someone is making bank off of it.
No, Chris Roberts is instead burning money by having devs do work, then redo work to add in some last minute shit that he thought of, then repeat until the feature creep completely overtakes their lives. It's the Chris Roberts way.
Work is being done on the game, but remember that treading water is also a lot of work.
He isn’t, but he’s not out there buying multiple sports cars and a yatch either. I really do believe there isn’t anything sinister going on, just a whole bunch of good intended people wasting a collosal amount of money on a dream project where devs get to do exactly what they want and don’t need to adhere to deadlines, no crunch, no job security threats and just no pressure. It’s probably bliss working there but they have no hope of ever making an actual finished product because there is literally noone there with the goal to push a product out the door on X date. It will be done when it’s done, and everyone who’s ever worked in such a loose environment knows that means never until someone comes in and lays down the law.
And before someone comes in and says “Y indie project bla bla” remember that there is a VAST difference between a small game with say 1000-5000 man hours behind it and a large AAA game which Star Citizen aims to be which entail at minimum 100.000s of man hours of work. You can be extremely loose and take your time with a small idea like say Vampire Survivor and scope creep it to hell and back and it still won’t take more than a year or two until there just isn’t anything more to do but release it.
There is probably some clever parallel to draw here to utopian political ideologies but my brain is mush after a grueling week so I’ll leave that to someone else.
The biggest waste is all the employees and the offices to house them. Details like decorations and conference tables are just a red herring, it’s not the real issue. Just look at their road map, and then consider that they have 1100 people on payroll working on that roadmap, not including third parties like voice actors etc. It’s fascinating.
It’s just because that irks you when there are layoffs. But office supplies are assets, they’re on the books and while they depreciate over time it’s still something that can be sold and doesn’t cost anything after you’ve bought them. The actual office building is different, since you generally rent it and the staff you need to pay monthly and you can’t sell them to recoup part of the investment. High quality chairs etc cost a fortune, but they also last a decade plus in many cases. Still earlier this year they had 1000+ employees, that isn’t sustainable for a game relying on donations basically. You need predatory microtransactions for that to workout which is of course part of the reason CIG monetizes in the way they do, they need to keep the boat afloat.
If the average salary is just $20k yearly were looking at a salary spend in excess of $20 million a year, not including offices or payroll taxes, benefits etc. And I imagine that the average salary is higher than that. If they are laying people off the reason is that someone in finance is putting his foot down saying this just can’t go on.
Haha, that’s not a yatch. That’s a motorboat, we’re talking in the $100k-$1000k range with the topend being unlikely. I agree the optics aren’t the best but it’s not at all crazy to afford something like that on a business leader salary. Sure from a pure ethics standpoint he should take a modest salary and keep at it until the game is released and his obligations to his supporters fulfilled and then get rich. But who has ever been that principled? I can’t really fault him for something everyone does. He’s also been fairly successful for a long time already so he likely had money before SC as well. Now if I’m wrong and another angle shows this is some gaudy 10 million dollar+ yatch he bought recently then I’ll absolutely reevaluate!
He isn’t, but he’s not out there buying multiple sports cars and a yatch either. I really do believe there isn’t anything sinister going on, just a whole bunch of good intended people wasting a collosal amount of money on a dream project where devs get to do exactly what they want and don’t need to adhere to deadlines, no crunch, no job security threats and just no pressure.
Source, your uncle works at CIG?
It's been years since I followed it closely but I remember seeing a youtube video documenting in detail the nepotism and mismanagement going on at CIG like 5 years ago with evidence from their actual videos or public info on websites. Wasn't there also a huge forbes article a while ago talking about the same thing? And if anything, the fact that all these years later we still don't have any new info about SQ42 that was supposed to be almost done in 2018, less alone a finished game, just goes to confirm that they were right about at least some things.
I am saying they’re doing a shit job at delivering a game to us backers. I just don’t think it’s nefarious, just sheer incompetence. They value making the best thing highly, they think the best thing means the most feature rich and realistic thing, and thus they allow scope creep to literally eat money via man-hours in a way that can only and will lead to CIG going bankrupt long before a game is ever released in a finished state. Unless someone high up over there wisens up. Forces a hard deadline and cuts the scope down agressively to meet it and gets the game(s) released. But I find that exceedingly unlikely.
They have outright lied about state of development and progress being done. I remember when CR himself said on citizencon stage that SQ42 demo had to be delayed for a few weeks due to some last minute animation issues that would ruin the first impression, but that other than that it was practically done. Then few weeks later they released a crying video about how much work it is and why it takes so long and asking for understanding.
That was like in 2018 or 2019, and now 4 years later we still don't have anything to show for it, even regarding sq42 alone. At one point it stops being incompetence, they are just full of shit most of the time.
That might very well be. My take on everything I’ve seen so far is that it likely was ready. Just that CR or someone else said “wouldn’t it be cool if we also had X in there?” And then they just said fuck releasing, we need X in there! Then X lead to Y and along the way someone proposed A and that would be so cool but if we have A why not B and…
If we had access to their Jira or whatever they use I can all but guarantee that the backlog grows faster than they can close issues.
And it’s also undeniable that they are developing stuff. Just very questionable stuff at times and they decide to redo stuff all the time.
I’m wondering if this would help get a solid 60 outside of interiors/around loads of NPCs. Only my GPU doesn’t meet requirements, and it’s still playable. But is mostly 30-40’s unless I’m in a small interior or an interior with not many NPCs. The NPCs are more bound to CPU so I’m not sure if having lower res/filesize textures would help. I don’t think the VRAM is the problem.
It’s a little better. I’m pretty sure it’s gotta be the NPCs now. Video card is handling it all quite nicely, despite not having RTX or even DLSS support, but everywhere there are crowds it slows down by 20 fps. Currently just standing in the main road of Neon and it’s around 40-45, dropoing to 35 when I run, but get a solid 60 when no NPCs are visible by looking up at an animated billboard or something.
It’s BS though. People with TOTL hardware are having issues. Those systems don’t underperform because the game is advanced or anything like that – the game underperforms because it is a new release that is poorly optimized. It’s also expected because it’s on a senior citizen of a game engine that likely needs a few other nudges.
Todd Howard forgets that PC users see this shit all the time, and it’s pretty obvious with this one. Hoping to see talk of optimization in a coming patch instead.
Edit: a good example – not hitting 60fps in New Atlantis, but concurrently, CPU usage in the 50s and GPU usage in the 70s. That’s a sign of poor optimization.
My friend and I were just discussing the likelihood that some hardware producers pay game devs to purposely output bad optimizations so users are encouraged to spend more on upgrades.
I mean, that’s probably why he would make the push. The bait’s in the mouth (people have the game), then comes the pull of the hook (they have to upgrade to try and handle its poor optimization, fulfilling the benefit of AMD backing them). And Beth doesn’t lose anything if its too frustrating and people stop playing over it because they already have the money.
EDIT: Admittedly I keep forgetting that game-pass is a thing, but maybe even that doesn’t really matter to Microsoft if it got people to get on gamepass or something? That makes my earlier point a bit shakier.
While I’m no fan of paid sponsorships holding back good games, this is untrue.
Neither nvidia nor amd block their partner devs from supporting competing tech in their games. They just won’t help them get it working, and obviously the other side won’t either, since that dev is sponsored. There are some games out there that support both, some of them even partnered.
So yes, it’s bullshit. But it’s not “literally paid” bullshit. Bethesda could have gone the extra mile, and didn’t.
AMD blocks partners from implementing DLSS. You're probably right that it's not paid bullshit as the payout isn't monetary. But it's still being blocked due to the partnership.
This is hardly the first game to do this. Jedi Survivor, RE4 have the same problem. AMD sponsored FSR2 only. The work required to implement FSR2 or DLSS is basically the same (motion data). That's why DLSS mods were immediately available.
Since FSR2 was released not a single AMD sponsored game has DLSS added. Even games done in engines like unreal where all the dev has to do is include the plugin.
There is circumstantial evidence, no direct evidence as contracts are not public. There is no evidence, (circumstantial or direct) that AMD is allowing partners to add DLSS.
Every single AMD sponsored game released since FSR2 launched does not include DLSS despite it being trivial to add if the work is being done for FSR2. For Unreal engine games it can be enabled by including a completely free plugin, the work is already done. Yet, the AMD sponsored games don't. There is even a game that announced DLSS support before it released and then removed it after becoming AMD sponsored (Boundary).
I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe brute forcing a 26 yesr old engine that makes skyrim have a stroke if you try to play above 30fps isn't a good idea
Ill see if I can find it when I'm at my PC, but in an interview a dev said it was still using significant amounts of code from their Gamebryo engine from 97
They could have called it Creative Engine 129030129784.32985 for all that it matters. It’s just a name for an engine update, as they do for every new game. They didn’t re-write it from scratch; that would be a billion-dollar venture.
From what I’ve read it’s the exact same engine as FO4 with better lighting (and of course, as with every new game, some improvements locally relevant to the gameplay).
But, fundamentally, underneath the fancy lights, still the same engine. That explains the 2008-esque animations, the bugs, the performance issues, and general flatness of the game. It can’t be more than “Skyrim in Space” because that’s what it technically is.
What devs see is “all those other devs are too lazy to make a good game”.
What players mean is “all those other games are full of micro transactions and sell missing content and features as dlc”, which is not the same thing.
What players want to be addressed is the bad influence investors have on the products. Publishers aren’t interested in publishing good games, they only care about money.
Devs don’t go about making a game only for the money. Most of them would rather do it the same way Larian does it, focus on quality and provide a good gaming experience, but their hands are tied.
So the message gamers try to get out goes to the wrong recipients, and it’s obviously being taken the wrong way.
And that’s why I generally prefer indie games. Many indie games are made with passion, with money being down the list of priorities. AAA games are made with money first, though there is certainly passion as well, it’s just not the top on the list. As studios and budgets get bigger, so will their expectation of profits.
So if you want better games, buy from smaller studios. Show them that you value passion over high budget.
But when a game like BG3 comes out, with all the stuff no indie studio can afford to do and it has this level of passion without sticking its hand in your pocket, it absolutely reminds us that AAA doesn’t have to be like it is.
As good as indie RPGs are, Disco Elysium was only able to afford voice acting after being a giant commercial success. No small budget team is going to be able to have mocap work on the level of BG3. These things cost a lot of money and involve paying a lot of workers. BG3’s Kickstarter got to be carried by the name recognition of Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons & Dragons in general, following a huge popularity surge for the latter thanks to the rise of real-play podcasts and such.
Do games need hundreds of voice actors and incredible mocap to be good? No. But it’s something that only AAA studios have the ability to add, and it’s a shame that it’s all going into the next fifa/COD/whatever other money pit GAAS the industry is shitting out.
Agreed. But I’d much rather sacrifice AAA features like mocap, voice acting, and RTX if it means a higher chance of playing a game with a lot of passion put in. Those are nice to have, but not the reason I pick a game.
Yup. And I wish more AAA titles took more risks in gameplay and storytelling, but those seem to be few and far between.
Starfield is a fantastic example. If you asked me to describe a Bethesda game set in space, it would look a lot like Starfield (but I probably would’ve missed the procedural generation). Usually AAA games are pretty much as expected, with one or two surprises on the side, and that’s it.
BG3 basically delivers on Cyberpunk’s promises (branching storylines, mocap, great visuals, etc), and it did so on launch, which is really rare.
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