Why AAA? Come on Sega, you can get it to AAAA, have people pay for time like back in the arcade days! Game starts, you get “Insert coin” and a microtransaction!
The problem is that ad-driven businesses are price dumping by tricking people into using their services by telling them it’s free, and thus killing the market for everyone else. I am not turning my adblocker off. I do not expect “free” content in perpetuity. I expect the “free” content business model to die off.
Try the Total War games, especially the older (non-Warhammer) ones. Units take time to carry out actions, there is no point and not really a way to do insane actions per minute counts, as if a unit is engaged in melee, it can’t really disengage without losses. There is also a great scale to the whole thing. I loved Shogun 2 for example.
I also like Eugen games like Wargame, Steel Division or Warno if a modern shooty type thing is more your game. Maybe try Regiments, that one is also good and maybe a bit less complex than Eugen titles.
Neither of these has base building, both are more of a “this is how many soldiers get for this battle, use them wisely” type game.
This is such a weird thing to be upset over, and a weird side to take so passionately that you do.
I don’t even play Helldivers, nor do I plan to after this, it’s just on the one side there’s random upset people, on the other side there is the corp that got infamous for distributing straight up malware in a weird effort to enforce DRM. Why would people go back to being happy with a company that tried to fuck them over, and then walked its position back to the status quo with no commitments of not trying this again later.
The problem is who can you give money to for entertainment if not to the same 3 corps who have bought everything, and how else can you protest them doing stuff that’s outrageous even by their standards?
The fuck clowns are buying up our culture. It’s hard to not participate in it. I don’t play these kinds of games, but I’ve nothing on people who do. We should beat up the fuck clowns until they serve society again.
And just to be clear, I am advocating violence in the form of stringent regulations binding corporations towards socially beneficial paths. I advocate for violent anti-trust measures to the point even the execs don’t know who is still working for them and who has been broken off to another company to compete freely. And I want worker protections that cause mind-bending fear in wage thieves.
Sorry, I went too deep into sarcasm in there. I wasn’t advocating for violence, just laws protecting society and people that are strong enough to deter corps from breaking them.
I tried and failed to dust off Fallout 4. Got hit by bugs, and some of my mods that fix immersion breaking (for me) stuff don’t work either, so I’ll wait.
No mods, on my first clean install, all the Automaton voice lines were missing, so the robots were mute. I did a reinstall, that fixed it, so I only had the rest of the “normal” bugs.
My favourite bug someone just found is that if you build stuff in any of the indoor settlements, like Vault 88, it breaks pathing in subtle ways everywhere. If you put down something, it marks the coordinates in that indoor cell for NPCs to walk around, so that they don’t try to walk over beds and such. The problem is that it actually marks those same coordinates in all cells everywhere, so the bed shaped “no-go zone” is there in every single interior in seemingly random places. That means, the more you build in these places, the less NPCs can walk in indoor cells, and they might get randomly stuck.
BTW the immersion breaking thing for me is that I’ve always hated that unlike previous Fallout games, or like all games ever, when you holster a weapon, it just disappears into thin air instead of being holstered in some way. There is a simple mod that fixes that, but it got broken by the next gen update, which also broke F4SE. So now I wait and play sg else.
If you don’t go public with your company, some other company will go public, and buy your company or your customers from under you with the money they got from Wall Street. There are some companies that can try and resist, but the field tilts against them.
Epic is trying to IPO and has all kinds of investors. It tried to undermine Valve by buying out its partners by just spraying money at them for exclusives - you know, “disrupt” the industry. Steam prevails because they are real good at what they do, and they had a head start, but it takes a Gaben to not sell out, a good team and a lot of luck to manage that. Steam is playing against a tilted field is what I’m saying, and is one of the few players who successfully are managing it. They are the exception.
The point is that you can say no to selling it, but for that to work you need to:
Actually own a deciding majority of the thing
Have a good enough product to resist your business partners (eg. game developers) being paid with investor money to switch over to you, sapping value from your product.
The point is that if Steam wasn’t so much over the competition, Epic could have taken market share over with the exclusive deal shenanigans, or publishers could have started up their own marketplaces. The biggest reason for that is that Steam was early to the party and could get to a good product before others tried to enter the market.
If Steam didn’t have that, people would have switched over to Epic and publisher stores, and we’d be bitching over Steam not having any good games on it because of backroom deals.
The point I’m making is that let’s say Gaben did not have the headstart or the loyal player base. What is Steam or Valve? Its customer base or market share? Those are for sale, they can be bought with “free” services, exclusive deals with publishers, or other fuckery. Its team and employees? How would you pay them without revenue if someone else is price dumping the market?
Yes, Gaben could keep the logo with the bald guy with the valve on his head, but that’s pretty much it. Everything else he has to fight for, invest in, keep alive. And the opponent, Wall Street, has literally unlimited money.
What I’m saying is that it’s not as simple as “just don’t sell out”. And I’m speaking from experience, not as the sellout guy, but as the employee where the company was sold out from over me a few times already.
I get that a lot of people are saying “oh this has been taking forever”, but from what I’m seeing these guys are producing an AAA-sized title with an engine they don’t own, with an IP they don’t own, all on volunteer time.
I haven’t really got into HD2, too online for my tastes, but I can see its appeal. I think there is a broader phenomenon of a divorce between where big studios are heading and where “traditional” players want to be.
They’ll see a live service game doing well and think that people want more live service games, not fun games.
To most of us, this is probably just a summary of events over the past year or so. But, it’s good to know that this sort of news is reaching non-gaming channels.
Vote with your wallet means people with more money get more votes than you do. MTX does not target people at large, they are fishing for the small amount of whales for whom money is no object. It ruins gaming for the rest of us.
There is a reason industries get regulated. Swill milk killed a ton of babies, and sold like hot cakes.
You playing for free illustrates my point perfectly. You are there to provide entertainment for whales who actually pay for the game. The deal is that you get some entertainment of your own so that you stay around. But the game is not made for you, and that becomes apparent every time the owner puts the screws on to extract some more money.
I think ARPG is just broader than that. Bethesda games are also described as action RPGs, yet they are neither really about builds or gitting good, it’s more of an exploration / virtual theme park thing.
I think the definition of an ARPG is “an RPG where the player’s skill in controlling the character in an action-game like fashion has a major role in gameplay, as opposed to games where the character stats or strategy is solely decisive”, like in Divinity or most older RPGs.
It’s like when people describe both Doom and Six Days in Fallujah as an FPS, yet they are nothing alike.
On the one hand, it kinda devolved into a generic open-world time-waster, where I and II were mostly story-based action-adventure games. Car handling, as someone else said also made the game what it is for a large part, driving a Model T felt like it was from that era. The low acceleration especially made car chases high impact, which I haven’t seen done in any other games. The story was actually about the Mafia, as in Italian-American organized crime, and I felt it got diluted by the change of atmosphere in III.
I don’t think III is a bad game, it’s just not a Mafia game. They could have sold it under a different name, and made a proper Mafia III.
UPDATE: Ahoyoo has confirmed that Trimming the Herbs was uploaded with TAS tools, meaning that The Last Dance was the final legitimate level all along! Congrats to kazeihinn on the Last First Clear! The journey continues in Super Mario Maker 2…...
then it better be significant to the character’s identity
I was saying the same thing a few years back, but now I don’t even think it’s the case. I think it’s more like “if it’s significant to the character’s identity or the game’s world, make it make sense”.
For example, Cyberpunk’s Judy was a great character. You could have several full playthroughs, and wouldn’t know she was into girls if you didn’t try to jump her bones that one time. You could maybe infer she was more than just good friends with that other character. And that’s how it should be. I mean in normal conversation it comes up very rarely who are you into sexually.
All I’m saying, it’s not natural in real life to know who everyone would do in real life, and it’s not natural in a video game.
As a straight guy, I think I can relate better to a gay woman in an RPG than a straight woman. Romancing men is something that knocks me out of the thing still, more than anything else about playing a woman.
That said, about most games IDGAF. It’s not like straight men would not play Tomb Raider because the main protagonist is a woman. And even some RPGs, if the female voice actor is better, or the story makes better sense with a female lead, then that’s that.
These laws will ban rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-ins.
Microsoft/Asobo is responding to the community asking for historical weather conditions instead of only now-current ones, they say it’s very hard to impossible to do it due to a lack of data and existing data being hard to get into the game.
I have an example, most of DCS World’s content is made by external people, each “mod” that adds a new aircraft priced at full game price, and is actually worth the money.
Bohemia is trying to do something similar to Arma, with some community mods being sold as essentially DLCs.
I can’t say I don’t like the model, if the content is big enough. No microtransaction crap though like the first iteration of paid Skyrim mods. Those sucked.
Is console bigger than PC? This is the first thing I’ve found and it suggests PC is around 20% bigger and projected to stay bigger than the console market.
New Crazy Taxi title will be an open-world, massively multiplayer AAA game, according to Sega (automaton-media.com) angielski
Why People Don’t Catch The Politics In Their Favorite Games (aftermath.site) angielski
IGN immediately lays off every non-UK person at their newly bought sites, including some key members like deputy editor Alice Bell (aftermath.site) angielski
Welp, this didn’t take long....
Microsoft to release next 'Call of Duty' game on subscription service, source says (www.reuters.com) angielski
The RTS genre will never be mainstream unless you change it until it's 'no longer the kind of RTS that I want to play,' says Crate Entertainment CEO (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Cyberpunk 2077 director thanks fans as the game hits a 95% positive review rating on Steam (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Sony cancelled the PSN account linking requirement for Helldivers 2 (lemmy.world) angielski
Bethesda’s Failure To Capitalize On The Fallout Renaissance Has Been So Very Bethesda - Aftermath (aftermath.site)
"PSN isn't supported in my country. What do I do?" Arrowhead CEO: "I don't know" (lemmy.world) angielski
Helldivers 2 now delisted in 177 countries (steamdb.info) angielski
Looks like Arrowhead might be moving forward with PSN despite “internal discussions”.
Skywind 2024: The Road So Far (youtu.be) angielski
TL;DW:...
Let's discuss: Mass Effect (beehaw.org)
The format of these posts is simple: let’s discuss a specific game or series!...
The wild successes of Helldivers 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 send a clear message: Let devs cook (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
shockedpikachu.jpg
How Greed Ruined Gaming (www.youtube.com) angielski
To most of us, this is probably just a summary of events over the past year or so. But, it’s good to know that this sort of news is reaching non-gaming channels.
Why are there two different genres both called ARPG?
ARPG aka Action Role Playing Game....
Take-Two is Preparing for a Mafia Series Announcement, it's Claimed (insider-gaming.com) angielski
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Review by MandaloreGaming (www.youtube.com) angielski
There is one uncleared level remaining in Super Mario Maker, with 18 days to go before the servers shut down (www.issmmbeatenyet.com) angielski
UPDATE: Ahoyoo has confirmed that Trimming the Herbs was uploaded with TAS tools, meaning that The Last Dance was the final legitimate level all along! Congrats to kazeihinn on the Last First Clear! The journey continues in Super Mario Maker 2…...
Denuvo Unveils New Tech That Will Make It Easier for Devs to Track Down Leakers (www.ign.com) angielski
Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection Launch Is a Disaster - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
Many are worth checking out (lemmy.world) angielski
[Opinion piece] Starfield Killed My Hype For The Elder Scrolls 6 (www.thegamer.com) angielski
Hogwarts Legacy - Developer Blooper Reel (youtu.be) angielski
Ubisoft CEO defends Skull and Bones’ $70 price despite its live service leanings, calls it ‘quadruple-A’ (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
Oh trust me. I know your frustration better than you do. (lemmy.world) angielski
China announced new laws to limit microtransactions, affecting major corporations like Tencent. (gamerant.com) angielski
These laws will ban rewards for spending money within a game for the first time, ban rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions, and ban rewards for daily log-ins.
Microsoft Flight Sim players have the world at their fingertips; now they want a time machine, too (www.polygon.com) angielski
Bethesda is once again adding support for paid mods to Skyrim (steamcommunity.com) angielski
Seems like Bethesda wants another go at this
GTA VI won't launch on PC (www.businesswire.com) angielski
Grand Theft Auto VI is coming to PlayStation® 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems in 2025.
Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1 (www.youtube.com) angielski
Dragon Age: Dreadwolf - Official 'Thedas Calls' Teaser Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Full reveal summer 2024...
I made a boat elevator for Minecraft Bedrock 1.20 (youtu.be)
I tried posting to the Minecraft subreddit, but the post would get deleted immediately. I just want to show someone!...
Disney's CEO Is Reportedly Being Urged to Consider Turning Company Into a 'Gaming Giant' [and buying EA] (me.ign.com) angielski