Say what you will about what it did with the characters, but Sly 4 took the level design and art to new heights, and that was thanks to modern advancements in graphics.
Sure, but if they keep trying to go bigger, they WILL hit a ceiling. And they have yet to show a willingness to go smaller with a subsequent project when one ends up too big to pay for itself.
Squenix does not seem to know how to match a budget to the size of the market that actually exists, and only ever goes smaller in scope when something is a “side project” adjacent to a main product.
Intergrade was not as big as main FF installments, but it was well received by a lot of players. As a result they immediately scaled up Rebirth to be as big, or bigger, than anything they’ve done. And lo and behold, players coming from Intergrade love it, but it didn’t magically mean a bunch more people bought it.
I’m referring to Squenix’s habit of overspending on a franchise the moment it gets traction, and then not selling enough games to recoup cost, because there was never that much demand to begin with.
If they make money on this cross-over, then ok. But as someone with zero interest in MtG, but plenty in the new Final Fantasy games, this just feels like yet another expensive marketing stunt that will not get an actual return.
They lost money on Tomb Raider and Deus Ex, because they couldn’t stop themselves spending almost as much on marketing as they did development, expecting a fan base orders of magnitude larger to materialize out of thin air.
And then, instead of reducing scope to match the number of fans and thereby sales they could actually expect, they just axed the franchises.
This is a huge reason I never even considered getting into Destiny after the fact.
I literally can’t play it from the beginning.
It’s like if new players who wanted to get into Mass Effect, had to start with ME2, because the first game had been purged from the face of the earth, for no-one to ever play again.
The only kernel of truth required is that most people have experienced completely unfair matches, and attribute that to the shortcomings of modern skill-based matchmaking.
What exactly the mechanics behind those shortcomings are, matters little.
Not so much a counterpoint. It’s actually a factor that I’ve thought about too, and I think it adds to the problem.
In one of my other comments here, I talk about how it’s an impossible problem, and how I’d solve it by not trying to find a bunch of players of the exact same skill level to begin with. You go for roughly even teams, not precisely even players.
If you have 10 people at almost the same skill level, the tiniest difference in ability gets massively magnified, because that’s the only deciding factor that’s left.