Vlyn

Vlyn, miesiąc temu

I don’t condone this, but we already had $60 games 10 years ago. If you simply add inflation you’d be at $81 today. That doesn’t even take into account that modern games also have larger budgets compared to back then.

Video games really are a cheap hobby comparatively speaking. I still wait for sales of course :)

Vlyn, miesiąc temu

Actually around half the budget of an AAA game is just marketing cost. Which feels wasteful, but if you need to recoup hundreds of millions it might be necessary.

Vlyn, miesiąc temu

Actually around half the budget of an AAA game is just marketing cost. Which feels wasteful, but if you need to recoup hundreds of millions it might be necessary.

Vlyn, 10 miesięcy temu

I tried it out a while ago and didn’t mesh with it at all. Like the options I had was gather things, minor crafting and traveling. But zero goals or combat (as far as I could tell at the beginning). So after going around, gathering and crafting a bit I got bored and gave up.

Hell, I even traveled around to just find if there are any encounters or places with more happening and I didn’t find anything.

So it felt meaningless to grind with nothing to grind for.

Vlyn, 10 miesięcy temu

Ah yeah, I’m not a big mobile game fan and heavily play PC games. I just missed the draw of it, but had wrong expectations probably. In my head it was more of a sandbox combat game with gathering/crafting, so I kept trying to get to the actual game part :)

While I’m not motivated at all by just achievements or grinding for grinding sake (incremental games are a slight exception there, but progress is much faster / you do have some goals dangled in front of your face). You’re probably aiming more for a classic fitness tracker, but instead of step counts, graphs and so on you present it in game form. Which is valid, but just not what I was after.

As it gets brought up in this thread: When it came out I actually liked Pokemon GO, because the gameplay was interesting. Originally it only showed Pokemon near you and how far they are away (with 1, 2 or 3 foot steps). Which meant you wandered around and actually met people back in the city, grouped up to search or they knew where it was. That all got dumbed down until everyone was just sitting at the same spot and farming unfortunately :-/

Vlyn, 10 miesięcy temu

Also there’s already a ton of depth on the game

I think I’m too jaded in this regard. Reading the wiki I don’t really see depth. Sure, there are activities with fun names, but they are all the same (you start the activity, you walk to finish it, you get random rewards). And all the items seem to be either for selling, basic crafting or just giving you a boost percentage for the activities you’re already doing.

What the activities are missing are risk/reward, decision making, surprises, etc. Or as you’d say in game design “meaningful choices”.

Sure, you have the choice on what skill you work on, but besides skill go up, items to make the activity faster and gold (not sure what it’s for, besides buying mats/items again?) that seems to be it.

I guess combat could help if there’s actual resource investment and risk there. Like are you going to tackle this level 10 monster for higher rewards, with more likelihood to either fail (or spend extra resources on healing potions or whatever)? Or play it save and go against weaker monsters? There should also be extra gold sinks to work for / use the money you accumulated, be it limited use items, cosmetics and so on. And of course ways to play the game differently from other players, like classes, masteries, skill trees or whatever (and no, clicking an activity that says “Sandcastle Building” vs clicking “Ship repair” aren’t really choices).

Just from someone who values gameplay a lot, I don’t see much difference in playing the game for an hour or 100 hours, in the end it keeps boiling down to the same actions with no depth attached. Personally I didn’t see the game value of it, compared to a step tracker (just that the step tracker doesn’t stop counting when it’s “full”, I didn’t like the step mechanic either where you get bonus steps only. If I’ve done my walking for the day I want to spend the steps, not select an activity and I get double steps for it next time I walk).

Vlyn, rok temu

No ultrawide support, no DLSS, no removed fps cap, no precompiled shaders to remove the stutter, …

From makes good games, but when it comes to technology they either suck or are just lazy as hell.

The biggest joke is that ultrawide already renders the full screen width, they just put black bars on top to not give the player an advantage, lol.

Vlyn, rok temu

There’s an easy mod to uncap fps, it works. There’s a mod for ultra wide, it works.

It’s not an engine limitation, you can already play like this with mods. But you can’t play online because of changing the files…

Vlyn, rok temu

The issue is that the mount is only available in this way. So if you want it you have to buy the “bundle”, making it a $65 purchase either way.

Vlyn, rok temu

Skyrim has only been out for 13 years. It’s not that old :)

Vlyn, rok temu

I got out of the cycle when I finally realized how many cheaters there are. Worthless to play an extraction shooter under those circumstances. www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LfGcDB7Ek

Vlyn, rok temu

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.

Vlyn, rok temu

What has that to do with this argument? The lay-offs in the last six months were mostly due to massive overhiring while money lending was cheap. Now interest rates are up and those companies are trying to keep their profits up (or become profitable in the first place).

And the thing is: They hired so many people, even with the lay-offs the headcount is still higher than it was a few years ago.

Vlyn, rok temu

I’d rather wait for shader compilation than getting random stutters whenever a boss whips out a new move. Looking at you, Elden Ring.

Vlyn, rok temu

That was fast. Their claim of 5 years in development is histerical.

The city map is a bought asset for a few hundred bucks. The survival mechanics were a bought kit too.

If you cut out marketing you could build that type of asset flip in weeks to months.

Vlyn, rok temu

Holy shit that’s a beefy update. It also modernizes the gameplay with active dodges and cooldown potions.

I really need to get back to it after D4 :)

Vlyn, rok temu

Less sleep it is!

Vlyn, rok temu

I mean releasing a game on Steam is not free. You pay a $100 fee per game to Valve to release on their store.

That at least seems to stop the flood of shovelware a tiny bit.

Vlyn, rok temu

Really? I was against Steam when it came out, it felt like insanity: I have to create an account, then register my CD key and it’s gone!? How will I be able to share this game with my friends?!

But after a while it’s straight up better. Do you still remember SecuROM (which shut off its servers, so you can’t even get games with it to run nowadays)? Or having to go to the developer’s website to manually download update 1.0.1a to 1.0.1b to 1.1 to 1.1.2 to 1.3a to 1.4 to … (if you were lucky they offered bigger patches where you could directly jump from 1.0.1a to 1.4 or something). And then years later the developer was bought up or shut down, so the patches were no longer available.

Don’t even remind me of having to stand up, go over to my pile of games, find the right box, open it up, grab the CD, go back to the PC, put the CD in, then start the game I want (hopefully the CD wasn’t scratched). Nowadays I don’t even have a CD drive anymore and I currently have ~70 games installed that I can start in a second or two.

I grew up with sharing CDs (and keys) with friends, or putting a CD into one computer, boot the game, put the CD in a second computer, boot the game, then play on LAN. Steam is way better still. If you don’t like it, buy from GOG.

Vlyn, rok temu

Not every game on Steam has DRM. There are plenty of indie games on there where you can download it, copy the files away and play them offline. And for what it’s worth: Gabe Newell did promise that if Steam ever shuts down they’ll offer you all your games as downloads (though so far they have been solid).

I’ve never heard of a legitimate Steam account getting banned. You might be thinking of VAC bans (where your account is flagged as a cheater), which can force you out of multiplayer servers. But losing your entire Steam library? Unheard of so far if you don’t mess up on purpose (like trading stolen items, excessive account sharing, using a stolen credit card, doing chargebacks, etc.).

Vlyn, rok temu

Go and do a chargeback on literally any other service on this planet and see what happens, whatever account it is will get nuked from orbit.

Reselling didn’t even work back in the day with physical copies. The CD key was often only good for x activations, then at some point you had to call a support line. It’s a dubious argument.

Yes, pay to license a game that doesn’t belong to you isn’t great, but I’m confident that at least in the EU Valve wouldn’t get away with taking access away from an entire game library. Especially for random TOS violations.

But we haven’t had a single legitimate case so far, so discussing what might or could happen is moot.

Vlyn, rok temu

and there are absolutely examples of people losing access to large libraries out there.

Do you have an example? I’d love to read it. I only find people who lost their account (like forgetting their credentials), who got hacked or did illegal things (stolen credit cards, scamming, selling stolen items).

I can’t find someone legitimate so far who lost all access to their Steam account for ToS reasons.

Vlyn, rok temu

For detailed ships all you need to do is hire a 3D artist, you don’t need a game for that.

The rest is a mess. Free fly weekend? I load in and all the NPCs are T-Posing and standing around. Or sitting half in the ground. The surroundings are lifeless, there is absolutely nothing to interact with besides some doors/elevators. And don’t even get me started on the bugs and performance (I have a 3080 and 5800X3D at 1440p, so it should run fine…).

So no matter how much content they might add in the future, it doesn’t feel like they have the technical side down at all. And the technical part is the entire make or break it topic as they are trying to build something on a scale no one has done before (and a MMO on top…).

For years now my personal bet is that the game will never come out. And if it ever does it will get negative reviews for being an unplayable mess.

Vlyn, rok temu

That might be the way it works in your head, but the reality looks different.

AAA games make the most money on PC. And even those games despite micro transactions, DLCs and so on are easily overshadowed by mobile games.

My favorite games are indie games, but indie is simply not feasible in some genres. Take MMOs for example, every stab at it has burned to the ground or was abandoned (or a scam).

Criticizing the big publishers is the only thing we have, because obviously voting with your wallet doesn’t work. You might not buy it, but several million other people who saw a shiny cinematic trailer did. And they will continue to do so, even when Call of Duty 23 sucks they’ll go and buy 24 next year.

Vlyn, rok temu

OP might have used the term aRPG, but clearly didn’t mean isometric games (Their example was Elden Ring and they like Witcher 3).

Besides that, Diablo II Remastered is anything but easy (rough start and then pushing towards hell difficulty you get slapped with immune enemies).

Vlyn, rok temu

If you liked Witcher 3, grab Cyberpunk. Better gameplay and very similar approach (main story quests with decisions to make, side quests, tiny bit of exploring). And it’s a western game on top.

Of course this only works if you’re actually interested in the Cyberpunk Scenario and you don’t want to play mostly Fantasy games.

Vlyn, rok temu

Someone has to stop these mad men, they just keep delivering.

Grim Dawn is a total gem.

Vlyn, rok temu

Well, how far did you actually get?

Maybe you just played the wrong masteries (classes). I’m not a huge fan of guns, grenades and so on, so style wise it took a bit to find something I enjoy playing in Grim Dawn. Playing a mage also didn’t vibe with me too much.

The furthest I got was with Oathkeeper + Soldier (Warlord), throwing your shield, charging groups etc. was super fun.

As for gameplay: The secret areas and chests are neat, you’re getting rewarded for actually exploring the world. Loot is pretty good too, especially as you can target farm because the monster type you kill matters.

Story is there too, but to get fully into it you need to read a lot (as the meat of the world building is in the messages/logs you find strewn around).

The base game is nice, but they really knocked it out of the park with Ashes of Malmouth, it’s a huge expansion with really good set pieces.