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ampersandrew, 10 miesięcy temu do gaming w Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 10th

I'm back into Final Fantasy VII, which I've never finished before. I've been playing this game off and on over the past several years, and boy is that a rough way to play it. It's very difficult to remember what I was supposed to be doing next, because that game often gives you one line of dialogue about where to go and then has no in-game reminder of it. As a result, I've got a walkthrough handy to reference whenever I'm lost. I just got to the bottom of the mountain after the snowboarding sequence, and those parts of the game where you're trying to navigate the pre-rendered backgrounds are where you can feel its age the most. I'm hoping to finish this one up in the next month or so, ahead of the possible Rebirth PC port that we might be lucky enough to get this year.

I'm replaying Horizon: Zero Dawn on PC ahead of the Forbidden West release as a refresher on the story, though I'm not going to play the sequel on day 1. They made me wait several years for it already. They can keep waiting for my money until it gets a sale down to about $40, maybe this summer. I still really enjoy the combat in that game, especially on higher difficulties, but this is a game that still feels like I'd enjoy it more if I could select missions from a menu rather than going through the open world trappings. It may have made these games cheaper to develop at the same time. Oh well.

I finished The Outer Worlds and its DLC. I highly recommend it. I feel like this game gets overlooked often enough. Did you wish Starfield was better? Play The Outer Worlds. Did you want another Fallout: New Vegas? Play The Outer Worlds.

Now that I've finished The Outer Worlds, another Obsidian game, I'm back to playing some Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I only progressed one quest a little bit this past week, but I want to keep pushing forward and finish this game before Avowed comes out.

Other than the above, still more Skullgirls grind. My pushblock guard cancel skills have atrophied, and I need to run some drills. Also, Peacock zoning, even when I know the answers, is tough to deal with.

sigmaklimgrindset, 11 miesięcy temu do gaming w What's your love/hate game?

Also it’s not a “remake” in the traditional sense, the first game in this series was just called that.

Yes, I know, I was just being snarky without spoilers. The whole “remake but not” thing is kind of a big deal meta plot point the fanbase is still arguing about.

Also, we both know that SqEnix is going to release an ultimate bundle of the games when the final part releases. They’re already giving digital copies of Remake+Integrade to people for free if they pre-ordered Rebirth, which was kind of a bitter pill for the fans who paid for Remake at PS5 game prices.

lowleveldata, 11 miesięcy temu do games w Nintendo just picked a fight with open-source project Yuzu - The Code Report

The chance should be low if their main point is Yuzu allowing people to play pirated games near / pre-release

YuzuDrink, 11 miesięcy temu do gaming w Game over? Industry suffers slowdown after decades-long winning streak

I mean, gaming exploded over the pandemic. Anyone who thought that was going to become some kind of norm was an idiot. Have we shrunk below pre-pandemic levels? Or is this just idiots who thought they could keep skimming free oil off the surface once the leak was fixed?

Also, I disagree with the idea that AAA games are performing poorly. Bad ideas in AAA games and chasing “easy money” in AAA is performing poorly. Helldivers 2 seems to be doing well, whereas Suicide Squad isn’t. Baldir’s Gate 3 killed it while Starfield kind of flopped. Final Fantasy 16 didn’t meet expectations, but we know Square Enix regularly sets expectations too high anyway.

Are people tired of the same Call of Duty games over and over? Are people full up on live service games and looter shooters? Yes and yes. But are people crazy excited for the new Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth? From the communities I’m in, very much yes. Did Alan Wake 2 release and sell faster than any other game from that studio? Pretty sure I saw that headline recently, yeah.

So when Diablo 4 dies on impact, was that the fault of the gaming landscape? Or was it because Blizzard execs pushed the team to maximize systems and balance they thought would bring in easy money but actually ended up alienating their core audience and reviewers?

I’ve seen this before when working in mobile. Execs want to chase the whales so badly that they don’t allow designers and devs to make the game actually fun to play. Doesn’t matter how “well” you monetize your shitty game if nobody wants to stick around to play it.

milliams, 11 miesięcy temu do games w Baldur's Gate 3 - Patch #6 Now Live!

From what I hear, BG3 is great. The main complaint that I’ve heard about it is that Act 3 (I guess that act that wasn’t part of the pre release) is a bit janky. Are any of the patches so far (or any discussed future patches) fixing things in this area? Or is it just not as much of a problem as people have said?

jesta, rok temu do games w The Day Before studio say the game's downfall was thanks to "a hate campaign"

Recently, a lot of misinformation has emerged on the Internet from supposedly anonymous sources. Fntastic provides an official response to these statements.

Anonymous people allege that we deceived players

We worked hard and honestly on the game for five years. We didn’t take a penny from users, didn’t use crowdfunding, and didn’t offer pre-orders. Even after the game was closed, we, together with the publisher, returned money to all players, including forcibly issuing refunds to those who did not request them. How many companies return money like that? We are not a fly-by-night company. We have been operating since 2015 and have always conducted our business honestly.

Anonymous people allege that we deceived the investor

This is not true. We still have a great relationship with our publisher. The closure of The Day Before did not affect our partnership. Since 2021, we’ve had a New Zealand venture called MytonaFntastic (mytonafntastic.com) and a successful game, Propnight, which has sold almost a million copies. Propnight also co-financed the development of The Day Before.

Anonymous former employees tell different stories about the development

We’re unsure whether these employees are real or not, but we had excellent relationships with our team. Despite being a small indie company with a limited budget, we assisted employees with relocation and healthcare and helped some of them to buy equipment and with their mortgages and other personal matters. We offered an extra non-working day off each month, vacation pay, and timely salary payments, along with the option of working remotely. Our low churn rate and the fact that half of those who left returned to the company demonstrate our positive work environment. One hundred percent of the team did everything they could to make The Day Before a success.

Who made money on The Day Before?

Certain bloggers made huge money by creating false content with huge titles from the very beginning to gain views and followers, exploiting the lack of information about the game’s development. Their actions triggered a gold rush among content creators due to the game’s pre-release popularity.

Why do they say that the released game is not the same as that in the trailers, and why was the game closed?

We implemented everything shown in the trailers, from home improvements and a detailed world to off-road vehicles. We only disabled a few minor features, like parkour, due to bugs but planned to include them in the full release.

Remember the experiment where you’re asked to count pink objects in a room and then recall the blue ones? You won’t remember any. It’s all about focus. The negative bias instilled by certain bloggers making money on hate affected perceptions of the game. Look at unbiased gameplay like Dr. Disrespect’s stream at release. Despite the initial bugs and server issues, he liked the game, which we fixed later, and the game received improved reviews over the weekend. Unfortunately, the hate campaign had already inflicted significant damage.

By the way, after sales closed, many people wrote to us that bloggers had deceived them and they liked the game, and they asked for access. We also heard that petitions were created to continue development, and on the black market, the game’s price exceeded $200, and some even began to make their own mods.

We are grateful to all the senders of mails who expressed support and appealed not to give up and to continue to work. Finally, we encourage you to subscribe to our social networks to know what will happen next.

pacoboyd, rok temu do gaming w Palworld Has Huge Weekend, Sells 5 Million and Overtakes Cyberpunk 2077 in Steam’s Most-Played Games List - IGN

Thier last game (released over three years ago) is still in Early Access and they already got thier pay day. This is why I hate modern gaming. Gamers can’t help but pre-maturely ejaculate over some new thing, so devs are able to keep shoveling eternal Early Access games. I vote with my wallet and don’t buy EA games, but my game group still does. I miss out on a lot of gaming sessions because of it.

Personally I think gaming companies should not be allowed to charge for Early Access and basically just go back to free betas for testing. Or if they do have an Early Access, they should be forced to have a published release date or automatic refund if they miss. That will prevent devs from releasing half baked content and coasting on it for years.

They can still provide content and fixes via standard updates.

ampersandrew, rok temu do gaming w What are some good games that have a bad reputation due to unreasonable expectations?

How do you get 13 years? It's been 11 years since the pre-rendered teaser trailer, and it was less than that between announcement and release. They also were open about not being full force on development for the game until Witcher 3 finished, and the announcement trailer served as a recruitment tool, something that most studios don't do anymore.

Vlyn, rok temu do games w Employees Say ‘Sizable Portion’ Of Gearbox-Owned Studio Has Been Laid Off

That’s simply not true, projects are usually done in stages. You got pre-production, production, testing, launch, post-production, …

So take an employee who mainly works in pre-production. Based on what you said they’d be laid off after everything is done and production starts, right? But that’s not how it works. Those people immediately start with the pre-production work of either the next project, or the DLCs for the current one.

There’s always more to do, after launch of a game you can’t have your developers sit around idle, you need the next project already prepared and ready to go. That’s why game DLCs sometimes release only months after launch, they have been worked on for a while.

Ashtear, rok temu do games w Many players have become "patient gamers". What are games people might miss out on by waiting for sales?

Owning physical editions of games can be a problem for patient gamers. As digital distribution continues to expand (even in previously resistant markets such as Japan), we’re again getting to a point where pre-orders may be necessary if you want a physical copy for small releases.

NIS America has also increased prices on their games, although, unlike Factorio, they have sales. Also unlike Factorio, they don’t spout nonsense like “inflation” for the increase. That doesn’t track on a game that already has virtually zero marginal cost and sunk development costs now that development has moved to a paid expansion. Dude would have been better off just announcing the increase and keeping his mouth shut on the rest.

audaxdreik, rok temu do games w Steamworks Development - AI Content on Steam

Disappointing, but somehow inevitable.

"This will enable us to release the vast majority of games that use it. "

So it sounds like the floodgates are opening and now it’ll be up to the users to sort out the flood of BS. None of this is truly surprising, while I’m not cynical enough to suggest their temporary stance was a quick way to score some easy points with the anti-AI crowd, we all kind of have to acknowledge that this technology is coming and Steam is too big to be left behind by it. It stands to reason.

I also understand the reasoning for splitting pre/live-generated AI content, but it’s all going to go in the same dumpster for me regardless.

I certainly think it’s possible to use pre-generated AI content in an ethical and reasonable way when you’re committed to having it reach a strong enough stylistic and artistic vision with editors and artists doing sufficient passes over it. The thing is, the people already developing in that way would continue to do so because of their own standards, they won’t be affected by this decision. The people wanting to use generative AI to pump out quick cash grabs are the ones that will latch onto it, I can’t think of any other base this really appeals to.

Vodulas, rok temu do gaming w Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 24th

Picked up Lies of P yesterday. I am enjoying it a lot, and a lot more than I thought I would. I saw some pre-release playthroughs that left me hesitant, but it is on GamePass, so I figured why not.

It is a great mix of FromSoft concepts, pulling a lot from Bloodbourne and a little from all of them. Highly recommend if anyone wants a soulslike but don’t want to play Elden Ring again.

mammut, rok temu (edited rok temu) do games w What's up with Epic Games?

This is the same kinda shit that Valve / publishers pulled when Steam launched, though.

Half-Life and Counterstrike originally didn’t require Steam, and then one day Valve told everybody they’d need to start using Steam if they wanted to keep playing the games they’d already bought. That’s a Valve game, but it’s akin to Epic moving Rocket League to EGS (which also pissed people off).

For more general / non-Valve games, there was a time period where you’d pre-order a physical copy of game and honestly not know if it would require a launcher. Tons of games that launched in early days of Steam didn’t bother to tell consumers upfront that Steam was required, and consumers wouldn’t find out until the game hit the shelves and there was a little note on the back of the box, “Internet access and Steam account required.” In that case, non-Steam pre-orders weren’t even given an exception – every copy required Steam. That seems even worse than the Epic mess IMO. There, the publishers at least made an exception for people who thought they were ordering a Steam game. If you thought you were gonna get a real physical copy of game that didn’t require a launcher, and it ended up requiring Steam, the publisher just told you to either use Steam or pound sand.

I don’t like the behavior either, but pulling already announced / released games and forcing them onto a different launcher is standard practice when a new launcher comes out. It’s happened to paid and non-paid exclusives. It’s happened to EGS and Steam (and probably Origin or Uplay or others too). I don’t see any reason to be any more upset at publishers over the EGS debacle than the Steam one.

My take is that launcher exclusivity shouldn’t exist, because every single launcher has just pissed off / screwed over consumers when there is exclusivity / any requirement to use the launcher.

RaincoatsGeorge, rok temu do games w The Day Before Servers Shutting Down Next Month, Leaving Game Active for Just 45 Days - IGN

This was a scam from the start. They fucked themselves because their trailer was popular and they promised the world. Their goal was to create a shit early access game with pre-made assets, get lots of buy in when it was released, endure some bad reviews, promise to fix things but then slowly dump support for the game. I’ve watched this exact thing happen probably ten times now.

What killed them was the hype and popularity. They were called out immediately for what they were doing and got stuck having to now make an actual game or face legal repercussions.

At the very least these cash grabs are getting spotted early and they’re not getting to sneak by without facing consequences.

loobkoob, rok temu do games w The Day Before Servers Shutting Down Next Month, Leaving Game Active for Just 45 Days - IGN

I don't think consumers were the target of the scam; if they were, I don't see a reason why they wouldn't have accepted pre-orders for the game. In fact, I think they know that accepting pre-orders would have left them open to false advertising lawsuits which is why they didn't go for them, and I think they were well aware that people could just refund the game so trying to scam consumers (in this instance) was probably not worth attempting.

Instead, I think the investors were the target. The brothers who own(ed?) the studio have been living off investor money for the last few years, and which how suspicious their finances are (their ludicrously high travel expenses, in particular) I'm sure they've hidden away a bunch more money.

The game that exists is a shameless, cheaply-made asset flip that I suspect only exists at all because it makes it much harder for investors to sue for fraud when there's an actual product. If they'd just tried to take the money and run without releasing anything it'd be obvious fraud, but now they can claim they tried their best, expectations were too high, etc, and it's difficult for the investors to prove otherwise.

Neato, rok temu do games w The Insomniac Hack Reveals The Ugly Truth Of Video Game Hype - Aftermath

Yep. When the industry can cut off the only way for games journalists to reliably make money (pre-release review copies) then they are totally controlled by the industry. A real journalism industry would see one company not given a copy or blacklisted and the refuse to cover their release entirely in solidarity. Otherwise none of them can be trusted.