Yeah, honestly, the state of the game is fine. Yes, they should have taken a couple of more weeks to fix up the performance, and they definitively should have chosen more sane default settings…
But, other than that, the launch state is fine. There are no major bugs, and there is nothing too major missing. A lot of things are done and designed quite well actually, I’d say.
Just give it a month or two and then look again. There’s no rush, it’s not a story game. But I’ve been enjoying my time so far.
They do invest a lot in cpu optimization. The problem here seems to be unoptimized GPU performance.
In addition, you will always struggle with CPU performance in complex simulation games with many interlocking systems. There’s only so much you can do without limiting the gameplay.
I feel like this is already the case, and has been for years. Few AAA games interest me these days, especially the ones coming out of the biggest studios like EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard, etc. The only recent one was Baldur’s Gate 3, but that by itself is an exception to the norm.
Most AAA games are just complete soulless profit generators. It often feels as if any fun and experimental things get taken out because it would involve too much “risk”, and stand in the way of earning money, instead of trying to make a good or fun or unique game. Instead they are just being made for as wide of a mass appeal as possible, allergic to anything that could make the game a little more interesting and niche.
Sounds like those game developers are about to become unemployable without further education
Also, I don’t really know how one can be a good developer without that necessary foundation. Maybe you can use a tool, but how would you know what to do with it…?
Sometimes it seems to me that almost everything that isn’t FOSS/non-profit goes down the shitter these days in the name of profit. It really does feel like the only way to avoid getting fucked over is to completely ditch commercial stuff.
“Would I like this game more if I didnt have my cool item right now?”
Hard to say yes… But in practice the answer might very well be yes. Challenge in games is rarely something you directly ask for, you want the reward after all, but often the fun is in exactly overcoming those obstacles, and not actually the reward. In that sense encumbrance might feel bad… but being able to grab every single item always could very well ruin part of the fun.
In the end games are sets of challenges presented in certain ways, and its just whether those challenges work well from a game design perspective.
I don’t see older games being rated lower as a problem. Yes standards rise over time as games and technology gets better, that’s fine! If you took a mediocre modern AAA game and showed it to a reviewer 20 years ago, I’ll bet all my money it would be game of the year.
It makes more sense to let standards rise and adjust reviews to still keep a reasonable rating scale.