Not Online!!! wrote: Also EA and bioware abandon anthem.
See this is what happens, RPG Studios get masaacred for life Services and microtransaction bs.
Not Online!!! wrote: Also EA and bioware abandon anthem.
See this is what happens, RPG Studios get masaacred for life Services and microtransaction bs.
Not Online!!! wrote: Also EA and bioware abandon anthem.
See this is what happens, RPG Studios get masaacred for life Services and microtransaction bs.
Come off it man, the writing isn't so much on the wall as the wall has been torn down and rebuilt ten times taller in the shape of the words "DED GAEM" then painted in fluorescent colours and augmented with flashing high powered neon.
Read between the lines and apply some logic based on the industry's previous behaviour; "what is next for Anthem" is a slow slide into even further irrelevance with token updates of low-effort skins and "content" based on recycled assets intended to drag out every last penny they can from what remains of its playerbase as it makes futile attempts to "pivot" into a knockoff Fortnite.
Not Online!!! wrote: Also EA and bioware abandon anthem. See this is what happens, RPG Studios get masaacred for life Services and microtransaction bs.
No they aren't they add a seasonal update (huray) and a bunch of corporate speech.
Try reading. I hear it's fundamental!
They're moving away from the Act structure(which saw us getting fully voiced and animated cutscenes as part of a story arc, with new missions and dungeons introduced) to something else(as of yet unannounced) and there are seasonal events finishing out this year.
Come off it man, the writing isn't so much on the wall as the wall has been torn down and rebuilt ten times taller in the shape of the words "DED GAEM" then painted in fluorescent colours and augmented with flashing high powered neon.
Read between the lines and apply some logic based on the industry's previous behaviour; "what is next for Anthem" is a slow slide into even further irrelevance with token updates of low-effort skins and "content" based on recycled assets intended to drag out every last penny they can from what remains of its playerbase as it makes futile attempts to "pivot" into a knockoff Fortnite.
Polly wanna cracker? In case you miss the reference, I'm saying you're doing nothing but parroting the drivel espoused by people who don't actually play the game and just follow the "EA bad!" crowd.
Because spoiler: Everything you said is wrong about what the Cataclysm update was.
I swear the number of times Kanluwen pops up to defend anything from EA makes me think he has all his savings in EA stocks or something. How can anyone not see Anthem as something EA is trying to quietly let die and ignore at this point?
Next thing he'll say is that 2K20 was the best iteration of the 2K series so far and that the gambling in it gave him "pride and accomplishment".
Come off it man, the writing isn't so much on the wall as the wall has been torn down and rebuilt ten times taller in the shape of the words "DED GAEM" then painted in fluorescent colours and augmented with flashing high powered neon.
Read between the lines and apply some logic based on the industry's previous behaviour; "what is next for Anthem" is a slow slide into even further irrelevance with token updates of low-effort skins and "content" based on recycled assets intended to drag out every last penny they can from what remains of its playerbase as it makes futile attempts to "pivot" into a knockoff Fortnite.
Polly wanna cracker? In case you miss the reference, I'm saying you're doing nothing but parroting the drivel espoused by people who don't actually play the game and just follow the "EA bad!" crowd.
Because spoiler:
Everything you said is wrong about what the Cataclysm update was.
You mean the Cataclysm update the template for which has now been explicitly set aside and won't be done again, with them instead focusing on desperately trying to hawk a store-brand version of "seasonal" MP-focused systems, that Cataclysm update? The Cataclysm update I didn't actually say anything about at all, which you apparently didn't notice over the honking flashing alarm that alerts you to don your shining armour and ride to the defence of Corporate Daddy, that Cataclysm update? You're always a giggle Kan, never change.
Also; EA are, in fact, bad, and I don't need anyone else to tell me that because I have functional senses, a brain, and a memory of the last twenty years of the gaming industry's behaviour.
I feel like at this point its pretty clear that the new Dragon Age is going to be the Final Fantasy for Bioware that Square had originally intended....
Dragon Age is going to charge for sword swings and arrows. It will allow one save file, and charge 30$ for an extra one slot. Achievements will be paywalled.
A dev has all ready said DA4 is Anthem with Dragons, now admittedly that was before BioWare gakked the bed and released it as Anthem but still there are big flashy warning signs all over DA4.
SeanDrake wrote: A dev has all ready said DA4 is Anthem with Dragons, now admittedly that was before BioWare gakked the bed and released it as Anthem but still there are big flashy warning signs all over DA4.
You can't spell scamer without EA.
Ofcourse there are warning signs all over it.
I miss the old days when Electronic Arts was made up of hungry gamers who wanted to make the next Baldurs Gate, or the next Heretic, or the next Commander Keen. It's now a bunch of corporate shills that have never played video games in the life, couldn't figure out the first level of Gauntlet, and don't see games as a art form, but simply as a business model.
We need more Hideo Kojima and less Preston Watamaniuk.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I miss the old days when Electronic Arts was made up of hungry gamers who wanted to make the next Baldurs Gate, or the next Heretic, or the next Commander Keen. It's now a bunch of corporate shills that have never played video games in the life, couldn't figure out the first level of Gauntlet, and don't see games as a art form, but simply as a business model.
We need more Hideo Kojima and less Preston Watamaniuk.
Honestly its the same thing GW had up until the CEO change. Big companies steadily get more suits in the upper ranks and more focused on the return on investment, shareholders, profits and such. They can so easily lose sight of the product and the customer to the point where it actually starts to harm their sales. Sadly its often a steady effect and takes a long time for them to realise that they are losing customers; masked by the fact that they start to milk heavily on those that do remain. So the profits might even be up even if the number of active customers is going down.
PC games have also masked this heavily by, at the same time, going from niche to mainstream anda massive market expansion. So the loss of customers is hidden by the fact that there's a lot of new generations and new customers coming in the front door for the first or only second time.
In the end hopfully the UK regulations and changes along with other governments will spark an attitude change at the big companies. AT best we might hope that they move off the micro milking cow and gambling milking cow. At worst they might do what Konami did and say "well ok gambling, even with the regulations, is way more lucrative so lets just keep going! Gambling all the way" and we end up with a bunch of IP licences used purely as "fruit machine title fronts" ona generation of AAA gambling games.
Overread wrote: Sadly its often a steady effect and takes a long time for them to realise that they are losing customers; masked by the fact that they start to milk heavily on those that do remain. So the profits might even be up even if the number of active customers is going down.
It's not that they don't realize; its that they don't care. Once the well is dry they'll cash out, take a few massive bonuses for good measure and find a different industry to run into the ground. The active word in "robber barrons" is robber. They're just breaking in, taking everything that isn't nailed down and getting out before they get caught. Nobody cares about the well being of the house they just burgled.
Overread wrote: Sadly its often a steady effect and takes a long time for them to realise that they are losing customers; masked by the fact that they start to milk heavily on those that do remain. So the profits might even be up even if the number of active customers is going down.
It's not that they don't realize; its that they don't care. Once the well is dry they'll cash out, take a few massive bonuses for good measure and find a different industry to run into the ground. The active word in "robber barrons" is robber. They're just breaking in, taking everything that isn't nailed down and getting out before they get caught. Nobody cares about the well being of the house they just burgled.
Robber Barons are not exploiter capitalists.
A robber baron is someone that has enough economic Monopolistic and monolithic position, that he can influence his core buissness. (basically Pre cartelllaw capitalism.)
An exploiter capitalist is basically a selfdestructive bubble capitalist, cashing out and running a company into the ground for personal gains and is more strictly connected to Stockmarkets.
I just want to say again, I have over 120 hours in Witcher 1 and 2 alone, and 3 is shaping up to be over that alone. All told, I have spend close to 100 on the entire series.
They just don't make them like this, much anymore.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I just want to say again, I have over 120 hours in Witcher 1 and 2 alone, and 3 is shaping up to be over that alone. All told, I have spend close to 100 on the entire series.
They just don't make them like this, much anymore.
Man, if you haven't gone through the DLC yet for Witcher 3, you're going to be even more blown away. The DLC is an example of what DLC should BE, not just cut out content from the main story, playing W3 for the first time is probably one of the best experiences I've had in this console generation.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: I just want to say again, I have over 120 hours in Witcher 1 and 2 alone, and 3 is shaping up to be over that alone. All told, I have spend close to 100 on the entire series.
They just don't make them like this, much anymore.
Man, if you haven't gone through the DLC yet for Witcher 3, you're going to be even more blown away. The DLC is an example of what DLC should BE, not just cut out content from the main story, playing W3 for the first time is probably one of the best experiences I've had in this console generation.
Ayy, the dlc are the icing, except they are also another cake with icing on top.
So, last night, played the game for about 2 hours....gotta ask:
Is there anything that doesn't try to have sex with Geralt? They put more into the sex scenes in this game than EA and Bioware put into the entirety of Anthem!
He's kind of like that in the stories too - I mean he's basically totally disease free and can't father children so basically guilt and risk free sex.
That said once you make it to parts in Witcher 3 like the Baron's story arc then that seriously shows the teams story telling quality. Heck that sub-story within the narrative is better than some full RPG stories!
A big problem is there is no "good guy" route. Everything is a lesser evil. It's like the whole Roche choice in Witcher 2. You want to help the racially oppressed people, but they are sorta mass-murderers. You want to help Roche, as he's a honest and good man, but he's going to re-enforce the racial divide and destroy the Scoiatel. I'm feeling really bad about most of my decisions.
FezzikDaBullgryn wrote: A big problem is there is no "good guy" route. Everything is a lesser evil. It's like the whole Roche choice in Witcher 2. You want to help the racially oppressed people, but they are sorta mass-murderers. You want to help Roche, as he's a honest and good man, but he's going to re-enforce the racial divide and destroy the Scoiatel. I'm feeling really bad about most of my decisions.
Atleast you are thinking.
That is a good thing for an RPGimo, and the reason i like Fallout 1.2. and NV more then 3 and 4.
76 shall not be named.
I dunno. Being an adult has robbed me of the desire to invest 100-200 hours into a game, amazing though it maybe, with little or no positive result in the end.
Why play a game you can't win? If everything still sucks at the culmination of the adventure, was the trip worth it? It's the same feeling I got at the end of the Mass Effect series. I felt cheated. Whelp, that was a giant waste of time, mining all those planets and finding every stupid nook and cranny.
I want to believe I'm making a difference. At the end of every Witcher game, I feel like I've made everything....worse.
I rather like it in a sense that at least the choices make you think. DnD style games the choices are often very bland and open. You either save the orphans from the fire or you leave them to burn. One is clearly perfectly good and the other is perfectly evil. They also throw in the odd "neutral" option as well.
Witcher kinda makes you take choices that are neither perfectly good nor evil and sometimes you can't see the ramifications of the choice until you've made it.
Of course neither is perfect. Sometimes its nice to play a simpler adventuring game where the morals are bright and clear and you can be that pure good/evil character that you wish to be (though I tend to find it feels very odd when you've made the polar opposite choices through hte game and yet you're in the same position each time)
Yeah Ghost Recon is kinda special a game so gak the devs will sell you stuff so you don't actually have to play it through to the end.
I even heard that the uninstall button costs 5$ to use but it's the best value thing in the game.
More seriously I played the Beta and it's just not a good game but as a Ghost Recon game it's a fething travesty. Even Wildlands for its many faults felt more like GR and was actually fun in small doses or with friends.
It basicly feels like a Division 2 mod more than it's own game and we all know how much people were desperate for more Division *snigger*
As for the micro transactions I have seen shovelware mobile games with less aggressive microtansaction schemes, I think the only reason we have seen less of a backlash is due to ActiBlizz gaking the bed so spectacularly and pulling the heat off them.
More seriously I played the Beta and it's just not a good game but as a Ghost Recon game it's a fething travesty. Even Wildlands for its many faults felt more like GR and was actually fun in small doses or with friends.
It basicly feels like a Division 2 mod more than it's own game and we all know how much people were desperate for more Division *snigger*
Harsh but fair imo.
But considering ubisofts spree of meh to bad games recently....
Oh and also winnieh the pooh was not happy with some Blizzard emplooyees.
Man I used to loved the Ghost Recon games. I was so excited to see it coming back with wildlands, Then AAA greed happened. I didn't even bother following the news for breakpoint. Future Soldier is just gonna have to stay the final game in the series for me I guess.
balmong7 wrote: Man I used to loved the Ghost Recon games. I was so excited to see it coming back with wildlands, Then AAA greed happened. I didn't even bother following the news for breakpoint. Future Soldier is just gonna have to stay the final game in the series for me I guess.
Could be worse though.
Considering C&C mobile fate.
Hawky wrote: Once a glorious game in the form of the Red Alert 2 or Generals, now a rotting carcass that shouldn't even exist in the first place.
What happened? EA happened.
Sad to see that Ubisoft is the same terminal disease for many great titles and series.
I feel more like this :
A publisher is more like steel.
It provides support and stabilizes Processes.
EA, Activision and consorts are more like uranium or lead. .
They poison everything they touch, are toxic in behaviour (cough Actibliz cough) and longterm damaging.
It's so bad and ubified that, well Sterling is drunk and the other two aussies jumped on it.
So I've been playing it since Saturday and there is nothing wrong with the game. I understand that the weekend patches already fixed a number of issues with the game. So far, my experience with it has been great. I'm enjoying to story and the game play, and I really, really like the way they created and handled all their side-quests here. Personally, I think the internet is once again running things way out of proportion in order to feed the need for outrage.
It's not going to blow over, because the conflict at the core of the whole thing isn't a one-off.
Actiblizz, like a lot of western companies, want loadsamoney from the Chinese market. They also, like a lot of companies in gaming, have a chunk of their shares owned by Tencent. China aren't going to stop repressing human rights and engaging in sundry other dodgy dealings any time soon, and they're not going to stop trying to leverage soft-power to contain & shut-down criticism of their actions.
People might get bored and drift away from the whole blitzchung/Hong Kong affair, but it's only a matter of time until the next deployment of corporate power in defence of Chinese interests in a way that resonates with western audiences(because that's been going on for years without most people caring enough to even know it's happening), and then we begin again.
That's actually why the folk trying to turn Mei into a symbol for the Hong Kong protests are so clever IMO - they recognise that the only way to force a change from these companies is to try and poison the wells and salt the earth, to make maintaining relations with the Chinese regime impossible not by appealing to the ethics and empathy of corporate culture - they have neither to appeal to - but by triggering the hypersensitive regime itself so much that they cut ties.
LunarSol wrote: It's clever, but Activision will just replace Mei with a new, Chinese friendly character in the game, likely exclusively for players in that region.
That in its self would be a victory as it will lead to more bad press as Blizz remove a symbol of democracy from the game at the behest of there Chinese masters
Also somthing to note regarding why they over reacted in the 1st place cod mobile has still not had the nod from the chinese government yet for release.
Honestly, I just find its lead to games that are boring. They're compelling in the sense that I feel the need to keep playing, but they don't, to borrow the phrase, really spark joy moment to moment. This isn't totally a result of the live service open world design; as I go back and replay games you can see the padding required to allow players to spend hundreds of hours on a single game creep in to various degrees back to the SNES era, but the MMO bubble is where you really see busy work take the industry by storm. I've gotten better about skipping sidequests in general, but I still find myself accomplishing nothing after a couple hours in most games and would rather have cleared a half dozen levels in a retro or retro inspired game.
Or the urge to spend 60 hours playing a 20 hour game, aka the Ubi forkwittery of selling a soultion to a problem they made, although part of me is impressed by the sheer balls of sticking a MMO idea into a single player games just cos they knew they could
I generally don't buy that garbage, but I also find the progression of a lot of these games pretty dull and the moment to moment gameplay a little too repetitive to hold my attention long without progress.
I just look to the mobile market. The heyday of Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, Where's My Water, Plants vs Zombies and the like made my phone my primary gaming device. Their respective sequels were all full of miserable busywork, forced delays and lots of random things to buy. I don't even have a games folder on my main screen anymore. I haven't used it for gaming in years.
LunarSol wrote: I generally don't buy that garbage, but I also find the progression of a lot of these games pretty dull and the moment to moment gameplay a little too repetitive to hold my attention long without progress.
For me this is a huge issue. Many of these games have very simplistic and repetitive gameplay. They can be a lot of fun, but once you're gaming to just grind and "earn" you can very fast lose the fun in actually playing the game itself. It becomes a chore because you've got to game and win multiple times as fast as you can in order to get the next "unlock" reward.
From my eye more and more mmo style games ave moving that reward further and further away, which puts more pressure on you to pay with real money to unlock it now or faster (boosters) so that the game returns to that fun point where you gain suitable reward for your invested time.
For an MMO type game I can at least appreciate the ongoing costs of keeping the game going. However its clear that there's been a big move toward making high profits off titles now and that developers are pushing things to maximise profits.
For Ubi and their idea to put this business model into singleplayer games I think is horrible. At least with a singleplayer game there isn't the ongoing need for any costs from the developer in the same way there is for an mmo. So its pure greed and profit that tey are gunning for. Esp ontop of charging AAA prices just to get the game
The games are artificially stretched out to whittle down your controll and generate an issue and sell you the solution to it.
Also, the whole goal isn't to get your money Togusa, but the money of people that have addictive tendencies and or that have allready ended up on blcklists for casinos for reasons.
Oh and to genereate the next generation of addicts.
One of the big side effects of raid culture for me is that its created a large culture of risk minimization in order to maximize reward efficiency. When the goal of a challenge dungeon was simply to defeat the superboss, you tried, and failed and tried again. You learned from failure and your near victories were exhilarating. And that's honestly fine if that's the goal.
The problem is, MMOs and WOW in particular changed the goal from "beat the superboss" to "beat the superboss every day" and that put a ton of demand on perfectly optimized play intolerant of mistakes in which failure wasn't a learning experience but an actual loss of opportunity to find out if you randomly got to progress or not.
I've pretty much entirely retreated to platformers and single player action games these days. I feel like a successful raid is the biggest waste of my time because there's no real engagement. It's so mechanical and the only real reward is the promise of doing it again tomorrow. I want games that push back but for the most part, all they seem to push is sheer volume of repetitive tasks.
Breakpoint is scummy with regards to the stuff they are trying to pull off with it, but it feels rather kiddy compared to the stuff EA or Activision have done in the past. Though they can always go all out later down the road like they did with Wildlands and gradually roll out more scummy stuff over time. Biggest offender in the game right now is the battle crate system, where you can unlock free stuff like skins, unique weapons and vehicles by completing special missions. Downside to this is.. you can only earn so many points every day, making it a hard task to unlock everything they've got on offer there before the season is over. So, later this season they'll be releasing a booster that allows you to earn more points each and unlock stuff faster.. Costs real money obviously. The system isn't helped either by the missions mostly giving you a paltry amount of points and always being the same, turning it into a daily grind that takes up quite a chunk of time to fill out the meter. Faction leaders give you special missions that pay out big, but.. are always the same each and every day. Just in a different location, but same laptop you need to hack, same truck you need to hijack.
Locking a lot of the cosmetics and camo behind real money is also a massive downer, as Wildlands had a lot of this stuff out and available from the first time you boot up the game. So, cough up if you want to look like a crayon eater or chair force commando. Though some of the "pay real money stuff" winds up as a drop in the game, as rare as it is. Probably a bug. Breaking the camo up into weapon and uniform categories is also awful.
That said, what they didn't do much to my surprise was artificially slowing down XP gains or the lower amount of drops and the quality of those, getting to max XP level and to a comfortable gear level that opens up the entire map to you is piss easy and doesn't require any boosters or the like. Buying replacement weaponry at the ingame store using the common ingame currency (which is also dropped everywhere at copious amounts, so again no boosters needed Ubi!) is also suspiciously user-friendly, always giving you level appropriate gear with a good chance of getting purple or gold level quality goods.
I like the game, open world is my kind of thing, but looking at my list of bullet points breaking things down into good (good shooting mechanics, fun stealth, a large map), bad (bugs, stealth kills) and ugly (season pass, lack of an ending to the campaign(!), bugs).. it's okay, buy at discount and play in coop, as that's where the game really shines.
That said, what they didn't do much to my surprise was artificially slowing down XP gains or the lower amount of drops and the quality of those, getting to max XP level and to a comfortable gear level that opens up the entire map to you is piss easy and doesn't require any boosters or the like. Buying replacement weaponry at the ingame store using the common ingame currency (which is also dropped everywhere at copious amounts, so again no boosters needed Ubi!) is also suspiciously user-friendly, always giving you level appropriate gear with a good chance of getting purple or gold level quality goods.
Oh they did but alot less so then odysee, because they got quite a lot of gak from that debacle left over.
LunarSol wrote: One of the big side effects of raid culture for me is that its created a large culture of risk minimization in order to maximize reward efficiency. When the goal of a challenge dungeon was simply to defeat the superboss, you tried, and failed and tried again. You learned from failure and your near victories were exhilarating. And that's honestly fine if that's the goal.
The problem is, MMOs and WOW in particular changed the goal from "beat the superboss" to "beat the superboss every day" and that put a ton of demand on perfectly optimized play intolerant of mistakes in which failure wasn't a learning experience but an actual loss of opportunity to find out if you randomly got to progress or not.
I've pretty much entirely retreated to platformers and single player action games these days. I feel like a successful raid is the biggest waste of my time because there's no real engagement. It's so mechanical and the only real reward is the promise of doing it again tomorrow. I want games that push back but for the most part, all they seem to push is sheer volume of repetitive tasks.
This is also very true and something I dislike as well. It takes the game out of the game and creates a very stressy game environment for any random team ups. Esp for any on the team who don't play to the meta/play perfectly etc... It's not helped that many of these team games often only reward plays with personal actions, so you get a whole set of issues where people don't like you "stealing their kill" and such.
It's shifting the whole concept of the game from the actual raid or battle or whatever and into earning for the dailies and such.
To my mind its basically taking working concepts too far into the extreme which renders them less enjoyable but no less functional.
LunarSol wrote: One of the big side effects of raid culture for me is that its created a large culture of risk minimization in order to maximize reward efficiency. When the goal of a challenge dungeon was simply to defeat the superboss, you tried, and failed and tried again. You learned from failure and your near victories were exhilarating. And that's honestly fine if that's the goal.
The problem is, MMOs and WOW in particular changed the goal from "beat the superboss" to "beat the superboss every day" and that put a ton of demand on perfectly optimized play intolerant of mistakes in which failure wasn't a learning experience but an actual loss of opportunity to find out if you randomly got to progress or not.
I've pretty much entirely retreated to platformers and single player action games these days. I feel like a successful raid is the biggest waste of my time because there's no real engagement. It's so mechanical and the only real reward is the promise of doing it again tomorrow. I want games that push back but for the most part, all they seem to push is sheer volume of repetitive tasks.
WoW doesn't let you do that every day, so that's a weird place to put blame. Raids and world bosses are on weekly timers, and progress is entirely an illusion at this point.
The big thing that contributes to intolerance of failure is they're a massive investment of time and herding idiots, so failing at them is essentially wasted effort. One that most players will happily blame on other members of the group.
However, you're right about no engagement. Personally, I feel part of it is they're set up (storywise) as once in a lifetime events, as you murder the current Big Bad and bring the story arc to what passes for a satisfactory conclusion- there isn't any reason to do that again and again, other than rewards. The weird part is the rewards for current (and the expansion just past) content really suck, unless you're really chasing the necklace (or in Legion, artifact) XP bar, which is what substitutes for character progression these days. But there are other ways to get that the don't involve managing a group or grinding through millions of HP over the course of several hours.
On the other hand, if you go back to raids 2-3 expansions back, you can farm boatloads of gold which you can throw at pretty much anything in the game and item (and therefor character customization options) drop a lot more (in current raids, you have a % chance to get one item, in legacy raids (ie, not legion or BFA) you're guaranteed to get five. They aren't useful gear anymore, but clearing each raid is a couple thousand gold for basically no effort, far less time, and no other people screwing things up.
WoW doesn't let you do that every day, so that's a weird place to put blame. Raids and world bosses are on weekly timers, and progress is entirely an illusion at this point.
The big thing that contributes to intolerance of failure is they're a massive investment of time and herding idiots, so failing at them is essentially wasted effort. One that most players will happily blame on other members of the group.
It's a weird example simply because I don't really play WOW and don't know the current specifics. It's just really the only remaining MMO of its style with enough cultural reference to use as shorthand for the raid experience. It's just where I felt things really break down for me, as gaming shifted from accomplishing things in the game to accomplishing the same things day after day in the hopes of being blessed by the RNG. I got really disconnected from where games were going as they felt increasing less about what you do and more about what you get. WoW is just the most well known example of games where everyone seemed to be trying to skip as much content as possible to hit the level cap and get to the "good" part.
The last good MMO was pre-NGE Star Wars: Galaxies IMO. First WoW pretty much snuffed MMOs as a genre, then the themepark-treadmill model of "progression" metastasized out to the whole AAA industry.
I was thinking and it is strange how loot boxes target specific sections of the market.
Of all the games I own, only two contain loot boxes; Mass Effect 3 and Hearthstone!
But I mainly play strategy and puzzle games. If you play mainly online FPS, you might struggle to find two that don't.
The annoying thing for me is actually DLC, the full suite of Field of Glory II DLC costs £60 which is twice the price of the main game.
And that seems mild compared with Paradox games or Total War games!
No where near as problematic as the 'pay for a random chance to get the thing you want' of loot boxes i'll grant you.
But it's annoying if you fancy playing a particular army or faction, only to told you have to pay more money to play that part of the game you just bought.
Thing is a game like Crusader King 2 has a lot of DLC, but at the same time the core game works great on its own and was popular; they just released more extensions to the core game instead of making Crusader Kings 3. Plus a lot of it goes on big sales every so often which cuts the price down if you don't need it at launch.
Wahrammer TW is somewhat similar, though the DLC was far more planned in advance. That said you pay less than you would have back in the "golden age" for an expansion pack and you get a full faction and content. So whilst in the past I recall paying £15 for Broodwar which was 30 new missions and 6 new units (plus music and cinematics and stuff); the new TW warhammer is generally about half that for a DLC and gives a full new 3D faction which has WAY more uniquely designed units.
To me they are examples of games that are great to buy into from launch; which can seem daunting if you look at them a long while after launch, but which also go on regular sales so you can get the stuff cheaper.
I think the way it is presented is key. CKII is a good example were there are some meaty expansions for a decent price, and there are things like portrait packs or the ruler creation tool which I don't think I should need to pay for!
Automatically Appended Next Post: The point about sales is interesting, are lootboxes or 'nickel and dime' DLCs less of a problem if they are on sale?
The only time I've been suckered into buying lootboxes was because they were on sale and I thought I was getting a good deal. In fact nothing about a lootbox is a good deal!
Kroem wrote: I think the way it is presented is key. CKII is a good example were there are some meaty expansions for a decent price, and there are things like portrait packs or the ruler creation tool which I don't think I should need to pay for!
Automatically Appended Next Post: The point about sales is interesting, are lootboxes or 'nickel and dime' DLCs less of a problem if they are on sale?
The only time I've been suckered into buying lootboxes was because they were on sale and I thought I was getting a good deal. In fact nothing about a lootbox is a good deal!
The difference is , i guess, that you get what is on the "box" so to speak with DLC. Nickle and dime DLC though i feel are only more acceptable because more and more people forget that they weren't allways a thing and secondly comparatively to other monetization shemes are acceptable (e.g. Normalized)
Whilest with lootboxes you get something, well technically nothing but you get my meaning.
Both prey on whales though altough i think on diffrent types: the shopping addict and the gambler.
I think the key difference is that when you buy a DLC pack from Crusader King 2 you get exactly what it says on the box without question. You know the contents exactly and there's no need to buy it again.
A random loot box you might get one and get the exact item you want, or you might be a hundred and still not get it. The content itself is random which necessitates repeat buying to get what you're after. Smart trading (if the game allows it) can also work, but often as not trading systems within games can be just as expensive to work unless you basically run it like a shop.
Both can be predatory, though the difference is often subtle. Crusader Kings 2, for example, is a functional full features game as a base game, it works. Additional content has been made after release to extend the core game.
At the same time you get games where core content is clearly stripped out (often you notice this with sequels) you could say that of something like Galactic Civilizations 3 where a fair few "core" features only appeared as DLC options after release.
It's a very subtle line though and sometimes hard to measure when its beneficial and when it becomes "abusive".
Sales do change things, but at the same time the starting price is important to consider.
To use Paradox games as example, CK2 and EU4 are fine, they were perfectly decent games on release and added stuff through DLCs. HoI4 was a mess at release and added stuff that should be core mechanics in DLCs. No bueno.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: To use Paradox games as example, CK2 and EU4 are fine, they were perfectly decent games on release and added stuff through DLCs. HoI4 was a mess at release and added stuff that should be core mechanics in DLCs. No bueno.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: And then there's Man the Guns where they remade the entire naval combat system and it came out just as broken as before.
I was very enthusiastic about HoI4. Was.
Laughs in Sub 3 xD With u-boat effort.
For those that don't know: Hoiv naval is completely borked atm partially because A you can't really find subs and B Subs tier 3 are doubly as effective as subs 2 but cost the excact same ammount of everything in production.
This in combination with the fact that you need to massively invest in infrastructure for radar and Airfields in order to even have a chance to finding maxed out subs makes it nearly impossible for the allies to win in a multiplayer scenario in which Sub 3 are allowed.
Also: Monetizing for the priviliege of turning you into an advertisement.
Kroem wrote: Isn't that kinda reinforcing what the big publishers are saying though, that loot boxes are optional and don't prevent you from enjoying the game?
It does not reinforce it, because they're deliberately making inferior games in order to try to make money off of people who mare vulnerable to gambling addiction.
I have actually avoided buying certain games-- especially Ubisoft games-- just because I've had a lot of bad experiences with games that are deliberately made worse to entice players to gamble on lootboxes or buy "xp boosts" to get past the intentional, deliberate decision to make the game a slog and a grind in order to sell said boosts. There's games I have yet to finish because honestly they made the games so much worst in order to sell said boosts and lootboxes that it's to the point of being non-fun and instead the games in question have become work. And it's not even work you're being paid for... it's work you're paying to do!
Overread wrote: Thing is a game like Crusader King 2 has a lot of DLC, but at the same time the core game works great on its own and was popular; they just released more extensions to the core game instead of making Crusader Kings 3. Plus a lot of it goes on big sales every so often which cuts the price down if you don't need it at launch.
Well, somewhat cuts the price. Paradox games are insane for the amount of DLC they release. Just look at the publisher sale on Steam
Crusader Kings 2 Imperial Collection at 59% off is £91, down from £210!
A bunch of that CK2 stuff is cosmetic stuff like unit packs (skins, not stats) and heraldic shields for various countries/regions that don't affect gameplay mechanics though.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: A bunch of that CK2 stuff is cosmetic stuff like unit packs (skins, not stats) and heraldic shields for various countries/regions that don't affect gameplay mechanics though.
It's still expensive.
Well CK 2 atleast was somewhat complete at the start of it.
It's more a case of paradox desiding that it needs to MILK, every bloody penny out of a game, because it is cheaper then producing CK3.
Otoh with their recent trends i would think it is better they did not produce CK 3 else it would be another HOIV debalce all over again.
WoW doesn't let you do that every day, so that's a weird place to put blame. Raids and world bosses are on weekly timers, and progress is entirely an illusion at this point.
The big thing that contributes to intolerance of failure is they're a massive investment of time and herding idiots, so failing at them is essentially wasted effort. One that most players will happily blame on other members of the group.
It's a weird example simply because I don't really play WOW and don't know the current specifics. It's just really the only remaining MMO of its style with enough cultural reference to use as shorthand for the raid experience. It's just where I felt things really break down for me, as gaming shifted from accomplishing things in the game to accomplishing the same things day after day in the hopes of being blessed by the RNG. I got really disconnected from where games were going as they felt increasing less about what you do and more about what you get. WoW is just the most well known example of games where everyone seemed to be trying to skip as much content as possible to hit the level cap and get to the "good" part.
I think a better example wouldve been WAR. If y'all recall, once you hit max level there were levels of set armor like "devestator" and "annihilator" or whatever armor. The end game dungeons were kinda set up to where you could do the first one with whatever gear, but the only way to beat the 2nd dungeon was if 3/4th of the party had X gear, which you could ONLY get tickets for from the first dungeon (and you had to grind open PVP a crap ton to get renown rank high enough for some armors)
Star Trek Online currently does similar with their events: grind event daily for X marks/points. After Y number of days, you unlock special event thing, oftentimes a ship (wherein quite often the ship itself is a largely cosmetic aspect of the game, albeit one that can affect your play style depending on the slot setup)
No, not the AI! The AI! Scourge of everything, everywhere... somehow.
I'm not going to bother with something so click-bait. Do they present an actual argument at some point, or is this just basically magic that will just happen and 'whales' will automatically buy into?
I think its more just using an AI to identify spending patterns in player groups. Once you can identify spending patterns in your most affluent market you can use that to design products to better focus on that market.
At the same time such AI might well be used to study patterns on other types of customer. Eg seeing what makes casual users likely to spend little to nothing actually spend. Heck they can also cross reference things to see how many free users they need per "Whale" to ensure that the big spender has enough game interest in order to retain their higher spending status.
Basically its data gathering and then using that to produce models to then predict gamer spending patterns. It's not really "AI" its just spending pattern prediction technology.
Overread wrote: I think its more just using an AI to identify spending patterns in player groups. Once you can identify spending patterns in your most affluent market you can use that to design products to better focus on that market.
At the same time such AI might well be used to study patterns on other types of customer. Eg seeing what makes casual users likely to spend little to nothing actually spend. Heck they can also cross reference things to see how many free users they need per "Whale" to ensure that the big spender has enough game interest in order to retain their higher spending status.
Basically its data gathering and then using that to produce models to then predict gamer spending patterns. It's not really "AI" its just spending pattern prediction technology.
That's about what I figured. Pattern dredging is something real-world 'AI' is actually good at.
The confluence of context-less video clips and the usual terminator/matrix bait (ie, magic fantasies about AI) is just super annoying.
Eh we are in an age where there's so much material being produced online that many content creators get a bit extreme to get you to watch their stuff. And once they've an extreme style they stick to it.
Terminator AI watching your buying habbits is far more interesting to the lay person than "purchase pattern recognition and prediction software"
As for the AI used to collect data to then manipulate your winnings from lootboxes etc, is quite frankly nuts.
Even Casinos have to test their machines and maintain them, but lootboxes don't and actively push you to buy more.
Yeah and this is another angle on why so many pressure groups want lootboxes classed as gambling. It throws in a huge number of protection measures designed to help reduce abuse of the system. Even something that, on the outside, seems really simple like declaring the random chance to get items on packs (say for magic cards they have to declare the chances to get content within them including shinies). It means that each pack HAS to attain the same specified chances on the packet. They can't vary pack rarity and make half the packs contain more rares and half contain less. It has to be at the value they state.
As for the AI used to collect data to then manipulate your winnings from lootboxes etc, is quite frankly nuts.
Even Casinos have to test their machines and maintain them, but lootboxes don't and actively push you to buy more.
Yeah and this is another angle on why so many pressure groups want lootboxes classed as gambling. It throws in a huge number of protection measures designed to help reduce abuse of the system. Even something that, on the outside, seems really simple like declaring the random chance to get items on packs (say for magic cards they have to declare the chances to get content within them including shinies). It "means that each pack HAS to attain the same specified chances on the packet. They can't vary pack rarity and make half the packs contain more rares and half contain less. It has to be at the value they state.
"bUt iT's OpTiOnAl, aND nOt StRIcTlY gambling!!!!!!!"
As for the AI used to collect data to then manipulate your winnings from lootboxes etc, is quite frankly nuts.
Even Casinos have to test their machines and maintain them, but lootboxes don't and actively push you to buy more.
Yeah and this is another angle on why so many pressure groups want lootboxes classed as gambling. It throws in a huge number of protection measures designed to help reduce abuse of the system. Even something that, on the outside, seems really simple like declaring the random chance to get items on packs (say for magic cards they have to declare the chances to get content within them including shinies). It means that each pack HAS to attain the same specified chances on the packet. They can't vary pack rarity and make half the packs contain more rares and half contain less. It has to be at the value they state.
The scariest thing I've seen in a while is EAs new patent on lootboxes that degrade as they are purchased. So like the first 100 purchases have a 20% chance of a rare, but the next 1000 drops to 10% until they drop below 1% or something like that. Limited time better odds just sounds like an absolute nightmare.
As for the AI used to collect data to then manipulate your winnings from lootboxes etc, is quite frankly nuts.
Even Casinos have to test their machines and maintain them, but lootboxes don't and actively push you to buy more.
Yeah and this is another angle on why so many pressure groups want lootboxes classed as gambling. It throws in a huge number of protection measures designed to help reduce abuse of the system. Even something that, on the outside, seems really simple like declaring the random chance to get items on packs (say for magic cards they have to declare the chances to get content within them including shinies). It means that each pack HAS to attain the same specified chances on the packet. They can't vary pack rarity and make half the packs contain more rares and half contain less. It has to be at the value they state.
The scariest thing I've seen in a while is EAs new patent on lootboxes that degrade as they are purchased. So like the first 100 purchases have a 20% chance of a rare, but the next 1000 drops to 10% until they drop below 1% or something like that. Limited time better odds just sounds like an absolute nightmare.
......
i am at the point where i respect the gambling industry infinitely more then the gaming industry.
...
We have successfully entered ultra dense territory. The gambling industry has more ethic behaviour then the gaming industry.
Exactly - the gambling industry as a beast (not at the individual level) would certainly use degrading rewards and all other kinds of tricks to prevent winners. Heck even with the legislation and rules enforced by law today many gambling establishments will bar players playing poker if they catch you "card counting" even though its not an illegal move and simply represent playing the game really well (they also pool data so getting banned from one major establishment can roll over and block you from others as well - that's something game companies don't yet do - share background information between publisher studios - that we know of).
Degrading loot boxes and the like are all simply evolution of the core concept of increasing user spending. Often by gradual amounts.
Sadly its also something that clearly requires legislation. That quite a few major companies are willing to take these big steps in concept and in actuality is honestly quite worrying, but also just a reflection of how big business can often end up focused far too much on their own end return and shareholder returns and forget the customer.
Depends, you had here atleast quite a bit the urge to selfregulate, altough that might correlates with the fear that the general population decides to make nails with heads if they 'd screw up.
Not Online!!! wrote: Depends, you had here atleast quite a bit the urge to selfregulate, altough that might correlates with the fear that the general population decides to make nails with heads if they 'd screw up.
The problem is self regulation is hard if, say, the random chances with the lootbox start to change. You might be happy with 1 box a week with a decent return on investment in terms of in-game content. But if the developer then puts in a code that after two months lowers your chances that return on investment lowers, pressuring the player to change their buying habit. Those on budget or with more self control or less interest in the game might well pass; others will get hooked.
The key is that humans are predictable and there are ways to predate on our behaviour patterns and abuse how we think and react to situations. That's why we have legislation for things like gambling. Gambling in itself is totally voluntary and totally open to you walking away and yet many people don't. They get hooked.
Furthermore as a gaming community do we want to see more games, esp big budget ones, move toward ever more expensive systems that steadily not only lock out more players; but also put pressure on us to play only one game so that we can put more of our money into it. Esp when, even in the not distant past, we got more for less of our coin.
I meant more in regards of the swiss gambling industry which has allready to be quite cautious.
As for the rest, yes i agree fully.
It is hightime that the excuse "but it's not strictly gambling" get's eliminated as a cop out for them and they faace the responsibility.
Prefereably by backwards taxing according to the law.
Yes that would HURT alot, however at this point i am perfectly willing to let the AAA industry crash.
Like arcades did.
The problem is self regulation is hard if, say, the random chances with the lootbox start to change. You might be happy with 1 box a week with a decent return on investment in terms of in-game content. But if the developer then puts in a code that after two months lowers your chances that return on investment lowers, pressuring the player to change their buying habit. Those on budget or with more self control or less interest in the game might well pass; others will get hooked.
I don't want the AAA industry to crash and burn because I respect the fact that many of the tools they create filter down to other smaller companies. Heck how many companies rely heavily on things like the Unreal Engine to produce their games? Sure its not totally free (from what I recall Unreal is free until you ship over a certain threshold of product); but it provides tools that many other smaller companies would never be able to afford (in time and money) to produce in-house on their own.
Overread wrote: I don't want the AAA industry to crash and burn because I respect the fact that many of the tools they create filter down to other smaller companies. Heck how many companies rely heavily on things like the Unreal Engine to produce their games? Sure its not totally free (from what I recall Unreal is free until you ship over a certain threshold of product); but it provides tools that many other smaller companies would never be able to afford (in time and money) to produce in-house on their own.
And that matters how?
A new industry will grow.
Just like Video games after the arcade Crash.
One that does not make the same mistakes.
I think what you mean to say is that you want several of the current AAA title companies to close doors rather than all of them (CA and CDProjekt aren't involved in microtransaction gambling, nor is Paradox).
LunarSol wrote: I mean it will, but the 20 odd years it takes to get there will be lovely.
Didn't know companies exist like cdPR the indy or the b tier industry.
Don't get me wrong there would be a drought for a year or two but there are enough companies that don't abuse the greyarea of lootboxes.
Well. Its not quite a loot box, but a new surprise mechanic:
Bethesda wants $100 a year (or $13/month) for 'exclusive' fallout 76 features, including:
private servers (you+ 7 person cap)
unlimited storage
survival tent (movable fast travel/utility point)
in-game store 'currency' per month
new outfit
icons/emotes
So a sub fee around about what the remaining full-service MMOs charge, in exchange for... basically the ability to shut the hordes out and play single player/with buddies plus some extra conveniences
Just to add insult to injury, the 'actual NPCs' that were planned are suddenly pushed back to next year... <.<
And Doom Eternal also got pushed back from next month to March.
Because Bethesda has proven time and again that they really don't get actual gamers.
It's like when they tried to make mods in Skyrim a paid service. Taking whole community that had grown around the game over years and trying to force a paid subscription system onto the mods. Whilst at the same time offering no curation or validation of the mods, just straight up going "Oh we can suddenly charge for mods and, er, the community will police itself.
This is just another one of those choices, though its a bit backward. They are basically saying that they don't want to adjust the game to run client side so will basically rent private servers to customers for a 7 person game - without NPC? I mean that just sounds dead boring once you've got past the novelty of dropping nukes on each other.
To be fair, adjusting the game to run client side would be a massive undertaking, and would require rebuilding large parts of the game from scratch, to the point of not really being a feasible option without consumers paying something.
Similarly, private servers (well, instances of the game world, really) will cost them a pretty penny to run over and above their current costs.
Now, I don't think that justifies a $13/month subscription fee, but I don't think they have the willingness to admit they gakked this one up and do better next time.
They took the Fallout/Skyrim with Friends idea in the exact wrong direction, and are trying to backpedal to what people wanted in the first place, and charging for the privilege.
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Truthfully, I think a paid DLC for a single player version would have gotten less flak. 'It's yours now, have fun' could have been a selling point. Still gakky, but not as predatory as a sub.
Yeah and whilst people find it gakky the whole "stand alone sequel" is a tried and tested means to get reward out of a project that has otherwise failed. Whilst you might never get back what you lost on the title, you can at least recoup some.
It's what Fallen Enchantress did a long while back when the first game utterly utterly failed. Stand Alone sequels both mechanically and marketing wise can help a game break free. It won't fix the first but sometimes you've got to know when to let go.
Overread wrote: Yeah and whilst people find it gakky the whole "stand alone sequel" is a tried and tested means to get reward out of a project that has otherwise failed. Whilst you might never get back what you lost on the title, you can at least recoup some.
It's what Fallen Enchantress did a long while back when the first game utterly utterly failed. Stand Alone sequels both mechanically and marketing wise can help a game break free. It won't fix the first but sometimes you've got to know when to let go.
The funny thing is, asset-wise, '76 was largely just a 'stand alone sequel' to FO4. They didn't spend a lot of time or money adding to the art or animation assets at all.
But yeah, truthfully if I were BethSoft I'd feature lock 76 and move on, not try to milk the leftover playerbase.
$100 subscription? Bethesda really thinks that F76 was a massive hit, beloved around the world, don't they?
Voss wrote: To be fair, adjusting the game to run client side would be a massive undertaking, and would require rebuilding large parts of the game from scratch, to the point of not really being a feasible option without consumers paying something.
They've done that twice already: Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.
H.B.M.C. wrote: $100 subscription? Bethesda really thinks that F76 was a massive hit, beloved around the world, don't they?
Voss wrote: To be fair, adjusting the game to run client side would be a massive undertaking, and would require rebuilding large parts of the game from scratch, to the point of not really being a feasible option without consumers paying something.
They've done that twice already: Fallout 3 and Fallout 4.
There was more game in those as well.
It doesn't matter if f76 was bad.
They want to cash in on the whales.
And that way they can do it, what is however more ridicoulus is that private Servers and modsupport are locked behind it due to vastly highering the entry barrier into their market place called game.
So it doesn't even really make monetary sense, which boggels my mind even more.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh and btw: This happened.
Obviously rigged microtransaction spinning wheel is obviously rigged
I don't think its a matter of active attempts at removal so much as recognizing the existence of a new demographic being lucrative enough to not care if the old guard sticks around or not. I mean, when cigarette companies realized a lot of their loyal customers were dying of lung cancer, they didn't try to get them to quit, they just focused on people who didn't yet know better.
LunarSol wrote: I don't think its a matter of active attempts at removal so much as recognizing the existence of a new demographic being lucrative enough to not care if the old guard sticks around or not. I mean, when cigarette companies realized a lot of their loyal customers were dying of lung cancer, they didn't try to get them to quit, they just focused on people who didn't yet know better.
I think the difference is that game companies are scared of the oldguard. Look at the mess Blizzard is in currently. All of their social media is a shitstorm. It wouldn't take much to tip something like this for any of the other companies. WoTc for example decided to take the opposite stance after seeing how their fellow company has faired.
Companies are actively trying to create bad-will among older players in order to force them out of the hobby.
The younger generations are much more positive with regard to paid content and will usually go along with such content without much of a fuss.
Remove the old guard, and then set up a purely monetized system of making games, creating a near infinite stream of cash that no one will resist.
Change my mind.
That's definitely a conspiracy theory.
It doesn't at all match up with what I've seen of industry analysis, since a lot of the 'whales' the industry depends on are older folks who find money easier to part with than time.
Creating 'bad-will' doesn't make any sense at all. Being indifferent to demographics that don't pay out does, but not intentional alienation.
LunarSol wrote: I don't think its a matter of active attempts at removal so much as recognizing the existence of a new demographic being lucrative enough to not care if the old guard sticks around or not. I mean, when cigarette companies realized a lot of their loyal customers were dying of lung cancer, they didn't try to get them to quit, they just focused on people who didn't yet know better.
I think the difference is that game companies are scared of the oldguard. Look at the mess Blizzard is in currently. All of their social media is a shitstorm. It wouldn't take much to tip something like this for any of the other companies. WoTc for example decided to take the opposite stance after seeing how their fellow company has faired.
But the negative social media Blizz is facing seems to be younger people, not the 'old guard.' A lot of the older folks who complained about Blizzard came back for Classic and stopped complaining.
You seem to have things backwards in all regards.
"I thought my life was a comedy. Now I realise that it's a tragedy!" - Todd Howard (reversing a quote from Joker!).
Meanwhile, the idiot running Ubisoft has once again taken the wrong lessons from Breakpoints abject failure:
1. There isn't enough time between live-game experiences; 2. with Ghost Recon Breakpoint's innovative implementations weren't handled properly; 3. Ghost Recon Breakpoint didn't stand out amongst the competition.
No, gak head. Breakpoint was terrible because it wasn't different to the last game, and you monetised everything, plus a season pass, plus a battle pass, plus multiple editions.
God... "we didn't innovate correctly". That's a Bobby Kotic answer.
So they delayed the Watch Dogs game? That seems a bit excessive. I was vaguely interested in that.
Gods and Monsters has an odd art style, but sounded like it had potential
Why does it matter that generic shooter was generically crap?
Oh, wait, a quote from some Ubi bigwig
Article wrote:Guillemot said of the delays: "We want our teams to have more development time to ensure that their respective innovations are perfectly implemented so as to deliver optimal experiences for players."
Can't tell if this is Corp-Speak for 'they weren't going to be done on time anyway' or just meaningless blather akin to repeating 'realigning our paradigm' over and over again.
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In other wackiness, the Fallout76 nonsense is basically happening on the eve of the release of the Outer Worlds.
Which is available day 1 on the Xbox Game Pass (for PC as well). which, if you've never signed up before, is... $1 for the first month.
Main reason I'm hesitating is the MS store (well, beyond dealing with the MS Store) mentions (under additional information) that "This app can Access all your files, peripheral devices, apps, programs, and registry."
What?
And honestly if their store was fully featured and had a better safety track record I've have zero problem with it. Honestly once its updated somewhat and brought into line it should be fine.
And honestly if their store was fully featured and had a better safety track record I've have zero problem with it. Honestly once its updated somewhat and brought into line it should be fine.
Nope, not so long they are exclusive.
Regardless off time.
And honestly if their store was fully featured and had a better safety track record I've have zero problem with it. Honestly once its updated somewhat and brought into line it should be fine.
It's also on the Windows Store, but you gotta be on Win10 for that. I'm still chugging along on Win7. Next year I'll make the upgrade when I build my new PC for Cyberpunk 2077.
I'm still on Win 8.1 as I tend to find being behind the times helps when being a gamer because typically the newest and greatest OS tends to be a nightmare for comparability. Though win 8.1 has been pretty solid, though one suit of games won't work due to some security violation in relation to some anti-copy software bundled with games years back so MS patched out the part of windows it needs. However most are on GOG so can at least be bought and run once again.
And honestly if their store was fully featured and had a better safety track record I've have zero problem with it. Honestly once its updated somewhat and brought into line it should be fine.
It's also on the Windows Store, but you gotta be on Win10 for that. I'm still chugging along on Win7. Next year I'll make the upgrade when I build my new PC for Cyberpunk 2077.
Don't forget that all support for Win 7 ends in December 19. After that your system will be highly vulnerable to security breaks.
And honestly if their store was fully featured and had a better safety track record I've have zero problem with it. Honestly once its updated somewhat and brought into line it should be fine.
It's also on the Windows Store, but you gotta be on Win10 for that. I'm still chugging along on Win7. Next year I'll make the upgrade when I build my new PC for Cyberpunk 2077.
Lol: Indy dev asks if he can be on multiple plattforms, get's denyied.
Non indy dev: Sure please do multi plattform.
APEIC: We do it to break the monopoly of steam guys? Guys?
Eh. I'm surprised to see so many people several versions behind. Especially stopping at 8, which was pretty rubbish.
I've had 10 for two years now, had no problems, compatibility or otherwise, even did a clean install when my boot drive failed and it took a fraction of the time I expected with no issues at all.
I think the only issue I've had is lack of a default media player for reasons that I can't discern. The invasive pestering can be cut down to prior levels, but that kind of thing hasn't been avoidable for decade*. We're just more aware of it now.
8 was a mess at launch but a huge part of it was the madness of putting a tablet system onto a desktop. Plus madness such as getting rid of the start menu. 8.1 runs fast and smooth and has had the least number of crashes or issues I've had in a very long while on windows. Raytracing is about the only thing that I feel I'm missing with not having win 10 and it will be a few years before the latest directX is mandatory. So for me I don't see any real benefit to updating
I mean, even if you have 10(I now do, because 3D Builder is just too useful for fixing STL files for printing), the Windows Store is hardly an appealing alternative to Epic.
Hmm, do I want to give all my personal information to Tencent and Epic in exchange for an inferior experience to Steam, or do I want to allow the Windows Store(per their terms of use) access to every part of my PC including all files and search history and also be subject once again to the Microsoft telemetry systems I spent hours trying to gut out of W10 when I first got it?
Pass. I'll wait and see, maybe I get it on Steam in a year, maybe they get beaten to the punch and I hoist the colours, in which case they might get a fiver in a Steam sale eventually.
Yodhrin wrote: I mean, even if you have 10(I now do, because 3D Builder is just too useful for fixing STL files for printing), the Windows Store is hardly an appealing alternative to Epic.
Hmm, do I want to give all my personal information to Tencent and Epic in exchange for an inferior experience to Steam, or do I want to allow the Windows Store(per their terms of use) access to every part of my PC including all files and search history and also be subject once again to the Microsoft telemetry systems I spent hours trying to gut out of W10 when I first got it?
Pass. I'll wait and see, maybe I get it on Steam in a year, maybe they get beaten to the punch and I hoist the colours, in which case they might get a fiver in a Steam sale eventually.
Plus the windows store basically just does not work if you read the reviews for any of the popular games there’s normally hundreds of 1* results just because games will not download or do download and just don’t work and ms seem to have no interest in fixing it.
Epics just shifty and I won’t use them either besides I’m not sure how long the epic store will last now that governments are starting to look at loot boxes etc and even mentioned back taxes in some cases. When your entire company is built on one game/micro transaction vehicle you look vulnerable since they are unlikely to be making any money off the epic store at the moment with all the huge bribes sorry exclusivity deals they made.
Epic isn't just shifty, they're downright unsecure and will result in your personal information being stolen and do not give a damn about protecting it.
I mean feth, I will complain about Valve and Steam all day, but the fact is, they're still the best on the market, even if ta this point "the best on the market" is damning with faint praise.
Overread wrote: 8 was a mess at launch but a huge part of it was the madness of putting a tablet system onto a desktop. Plus madness such as getting rid of the start menu. 8.1 runs fast and smooth and has had the least number of crashes or issues I've had in a very long while on windows. Raytracing is about the only thing that I feel I'm missing with not having win 10 and it will be a few years before the latest directX is mandatory. So for me I don't see any real benefit to updating
I've been using WIN 10 for over three years now, since 2017 on both my Home machine and my work machine. I've never once had a crash or problem with the system, I actually like it a lot more than WIN XP, which used to be my go-to.
Melissia wrote: Epic isn't just shifty, they're downright unsecure and will result in your personal information being stolen and do not give a damn about protecting it.
I mean feth, I will complain about Valve and Steam all day, but the fact is, they're still the best on the market, even if ta this point "the best on the market" is damning with faint praise.
Tbf, valves competition is not really competing and just works with exclusives, even the non epic ones. And that is imo more scummy then valves curation
Further though because many of their self selling Shops suck and the content on them (Ubisoft and Co. Atm und the AAA devs just don't manage top get the core demographic it seems ) steam as Nr 1 market place is more or less only really attacked by epic.
And in epics case, well, it's the worst market place with the worst security and the worst behaviour especially in regards to multiplattform and indy devs.
LunarSol wrote: Can't watch at the moment. What happened now?
Mostly highlighting that Outer Worlds is basically everything Fallout wants to be and isn't. It's basically saying that Bethesda's dominance of the open world RPG environment game is coming to an end. At the same time it highlights many of the recent game and company faults that are plaguing the recent Fallout online game.
Basically he's beating the dead horse a lot, but its also highlighting that Bethesda is basically getting left in the dust by other developers. With games like Witcher 3 also on the market and the ever steadily approaching Mount and Blade 2 and loads of others its basically saying that if Bethesda doesn't improve their company attitude and policies and their actual game content (both in code and in content) then they are likely to fall to one side. Of course with Eldar Scrolls and Fallout its likely going to be a prolonged death because those are big and popular franchises and many gamers will still give them a go with new titles.
Having seen how Bethesda handled things ilke paid mods in Skyrim I have to say I mostly agree, Bethesda needs some new attitudes in their company. Sadly I suspect if they start losing market they'll just double down on the same money gauging strategies they've tried to use thus far which will only make things worse.
LunarSol wrote: Can't watch at the moment. What happened now?
Mostly highlighting that Outer Worlds is basically everything Fallout wants to be and isn't. It's basically saying that Bethesda's dominance of the open world RPG environment game is coming to an end.
Keep in mind, Outer Worlds isn't 'open world' in any sense (and benefits immensely from it). It doesn't waste a lot of time on vacuous empty 'content,' (which is the bread-and-butter of Bethesda's open world filler 'Radiant Quests') but instead story focused quests on fairly constrained maps. The map of one of the moons, Monarch, is the largest and comes closest, but the major areas have a quest tie-in, except for a couple stray buildings in the landscape. The rest of the game maps are centered around a single hub and small area around it, or just a small slice of a city and almost all the open buildings are relevant to something.
Obsidian has always been the slightly less proficient, vastly more ambitious love child of Bethesda and Bioware. It's not really no surprise that given the opportunity, they could make something that appeals to the huge crowd that's been burned by both.
LunarSol wrote: Obsidian has always been the slightly less proficient, vastly more ambitious love child of Bethesda and Bioware. It's not really no surprise that given the opportunity, they could make something that appeals to the huge crowd that's been burned by both.
Obsidian also is in many ways the spiritual successor of black Isle which created Fallout 2.
Imagine if bethesda would've given them more time and money for new vegas.
God that Fallout would've been probably the single greatest one ever.
One can dream.
LunarSol wrote: Obsidian has always been the slightly less proficient, vastly more ambitious love child of Bethesda and Bioware. It's not really no surprise that given the opportunity, they could make something that appeals to the huge crowd that's been burned by both.
Obsidian also is in many ways the spiritual successor of black Isle which created Fallout 2.
Imagine if bethesda would've given them more time and money for new vegas.
God that Fallout would've been probably the single greatest one ever.
One can dream.
Yes they are! Meant to mention that and got hung up on the F:NV/KotOR2 side of things.
LunarSol wrote: Obsidian has always been the slightly less proficient, vastly more ambitious love child of Bethesda and Bioware. It's not really no surprise that given the opportunity, they could make something that appeals to the huge crowd that's been burned by both.
Obsidian also is in many ways the spiritual successor of black Isle which created Fallout 2.
Imagine if bethesda would've given them more time and money for new vegas.
God that Fallout would've been probably the single greatest one ever.
One can dream.
It still was the best one, hands down for me. The story was epic, the characters were quirky and fun, and the landscape still awes me, even though most people think it's drab and ugly.
It still was the best one, hands down for me. The story was epic, the characters were quirky and fun, and the landscape still awes me, even though most people think it's drab and ugly.
The ghouls launching off in the sabotaged rockets is one of the best moments in any Fallout game. Absolutely hilarious to see the rockets failing in various ways as Ride of the Valkyries is playing over a PA system
It still was the best one, hands down for me. The story was epic, the characters were quirky and fun, and the landscape still awes me, even though most people think it's drab and ugly.
The ghouls launching off in the sabotaged rockets is one of the best moments in any Fallout game. Absolutely hilarious to see the rockets failing in various ways as Ride of the Valkyries is playing over a PA system
That mission was one of the early highlights of the game. What I loved about FONV was that you would commonly be on your way following the main quest, only to have to stop to investigate something in the area, that would open whole new avenues for you, Exploring Nellis and Vault 22 will also go down as one of the more memorable parts of the game for me.
Posting something I found on Reddit regarding Blizzard's Self-immolation:
These were complete hearsay until the Overwatch 2 announcement confirmed several of them, which is why I’m posting them now.
These date from June 18th, allegedly posted on /v/ by an angry fired employee. Spoiler warning, etc. They were sorted by game. I’ve starred the SJW stuff.
Full disclaimer, these are from 5 months ago, things could have changed, blah, blah, blah.
Company Culture
It’s gotten really, really bad.
StarCraft and Diablo 3 are dead, the chase for esports $$$ is very definitely killing Overwatch, (hence Overwatch 2’s attempt at reframing the gameplay) Hearthstone is in trouble.
Battle for Azeroth is “an unmitigated disaster”.
4 projects cancelled last summer.
Anyone who started working there after 2004 had their salary slashed and a lot of people quit.
Morheim bailed and quit.
Higher-ups insist that every game become “esport-ready”.
Massive brain drain means that people who do not know how to make video games have been promoted into executive and supervisory roles.
Cheap labor shortage being filled by unpaid university student interns.
Crunch to the level that people are sleeping under desks and missing births and funerals.
Female employees forced to log and disclose their cycles. (WTF)
Artists let go and asset design outsourced to sweatshops in Asia.
Overwatch 2
These are the ones that have pretty much gotten confirmed by now.
Essentially Left 4 Dead with robots; think the seasonal event, but $60 and legally not-lootboxes.
Now a “completely lore-focused game”, with some backstory changes:
Tracer’s GF will die. She’ll be paired with Widowmaker.
McCree is a clone of S76.
[SJW] Reaper and Widowmaker now LGBTQ+ for quota reasons.
New third faction with hero that can raise the dead.
[SJW] Women of color who were working on the game requested transfer after being “creeped out” by 4 overweight white men salivating over “a game with no white men”.
[SJW] Several years ago, the ethos of the studio was to keep heads down and avoid ERA. Apparently most employees on the OW team are now are True Believers who keep ERA open all day as they work.
Belgium’s law killed lootboxes, but seasonal purchases are aggressively timed now.
Couch co-op coming for console versions.
No engine upgrade to make the Switch port doable.
Diablo 4
Massive shareholder backlash over Diablo Immortal. Not because of fan backlash, but because of some other reason, unknown.
First-person “shooter”, made in the Overwatch engine.
Overwatch-style ult mechanics. (Press “ULT” to win…)
Meant to be a replacement for Destiny.
Plans to pitch it to journos as the “first fantasy looter-shooter”.
1,000 years after Diablo 3, the angels are now the bad guys, you fight with the demons.
Tagline is “LET OUT YOUR INNER DEMONS”.
Ending cutscene pulls some “subverting expectations” stuff that retcons all the previous games.
Launches Spring 2021 on new XBox, PS5, battle.net, and Microsoft’s Stadia streaming thing.
World of Warcraft
Devs literally not allowed to talk about FFXIV.
[SJW] There’s a “no negativity rule” that stifles discussion of why the game is losing subscribers.
Lootboxes were planned, but Belgium’s law required reworking into a legally distinct thing.
Level Squash being tested for addition.
Reaction to Sylvanas story was written off as “eh, people will come around”.
Negative response to Chrissie Golden and Void Lords has Blizzard worried.
New expansion lowers level cap to 60 and scales everything (think TES:Online)
Vulpera and Mechagnome join Alliance.
Race unlocks come to the in-game store as a paid unlock after the expansion ends.
Huge drama with WoW Classic
Classic devs “look like the happiest employees of the company”.
Whichever WoW team makes more money gets control of the whole IP.
WoW devs super-paranoid that Classic devs are gonna unseat them and are unsure where else in the company they can go.
BC and Wrath servers to be added to the Classic trilogy.
StarCraft
Blizzard on RTS: “It’s a dead genre.”
Story-based live-service shooter planned.
Tycus rebuilt as a cyborg or something.
Planned ending has him survive with a new enemy to lead into paid expansion DLC.
Game was designed “live-service first”.
Bizzard wanted to “out-Gears the Gears games”.
RPG elements planned.
After the last StarCraft 2 DLC flopped and Diablo 4 took up the FPS mantle, it’s likely this game will be delayed, cancelled, or DoA.
Hearthstone
These leaks were before the Hong Kong ****show.
New project lead appointed, hated by everyone on the team.
User loss is “staggering”. No Blizzard game has lost so many people so quickly.
Fear of governments classing card packs in lootboxes as gambling.
Experimental system in the works to restrict legendaries to paid adventures.
Dead as an esport.
Planned VR port killed.
Well, that reads like a mix of paranoid fantasies, outright incorrect info (vulpera are the next horde allied race, for example) and some alt-right whining.
A lot of it reads like trench perspective. It's not totally wrong, a lot of the problems are real problems, but the perspective is limited and a lot of the issues don't actually make it out of the trench. That said, the stuff that pertains to the people and not the properties is probably spot on and hardly unique in an industry in need of some worker protection.
It still was the best one, hands down for me. The story was epic, the characters were quirky and fun, and the landscape still awes me, even though most people think it's drab and ugly.
The ghouls launching off in the sabotaged rockets is one of the best moments in any Fallout game. Absolutely hilarious to see the rockets failing in various ways as Ride of the Valkyries is playing over a PA system
T was glorious.
Why has bugthesda the fething IP?!?
Why * shakes fist angrily at the sky!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LunarSol wrote: A lot of it reads like trench perspective. It's not totally wrong, a lot of the problems are real problems, but the perspective is limited and a lot of the issues don't actually make it out of the trench. That said, the stuff that pertains to the people and not the properties is probably spot on and hardly unique in an industry in need of some worker protection.
Heck if half of that post is true, then Jesus chriest man....
As for the later, didn't Konami use to be that pedantic?
Further Google got the stinkeye recently in switzerland for ignoring national workers rights
H.B.M.C. wrote: So you can either be forced to use the Epic store, or be forced to get Windows 10.
No thanks.
So, fun story.
First, I like Windows 10 just fine, more or less. I don't want to get into OS evangelizing because that's at least as ridiculous as that insane conspiracy theory posted by BCB and also because I'm not really a true believer anyway, there are some issues there despite it being mostly OK.
I thought TOW looked fun, but I am not into the Epic store for reasons already listed. So, I saw that windows is doing this trial of Xbox game pass for PC for $1 first month, $5 each additional, which means that I can play TOW for $1 on launch day. Sounded great. I tried preloading it the day before. Turns out it still had a heavy price.
First off, the in-browser elements went flawlessly, no problem. The problems began when it would launch the MS app or whatever it's called - my microsoft ID wasn't tied to my PC, because I log into my PC with a local login like literally every other normal person. I had to find the correct microsoft account, which I already had from when I had like, a first gen xbox or something, and then I had to create a pin for some reason, and then I was able to tie my PC to my account, but first I had to go into offline mode (which you can only do 3 times a year, for some reason!) and then re-attached. Whatever.
Then it kept saying I had no valid devices. I assumed it meant what it said, but I could install another game just fine, and did. So, I assumed what it actually meant was the game wasn't released yet, and wasn't explaining it well. So, I waited until the next day.
The next day, I still couldn't install it - and I was sure it had been released. turns out, you need a specific version of Windows 10 - the most recent one. Obviously I'm a few updates behind because I know there have been some disastrous Win10 updates. So, I did a Windows 10 update, which took like 2 hours (on a good PC). After that, the game installed and ran OK.
So, a lot of hassle to get it installed, but just playing it post install is like any other game, just open it. However, one niggling annoyance is that I can't take ownership of some of the subfolders. I'd like to delete the intro movies/ company logos, but I don't own the folder from a security perspective. Normally it's trivial to take ownership of a folder as an admin and do what you want, but I literally am unable to take over the folder. It's a pretty minor annoyance, but this is another big step into the idea that Windows 10 has more rights to running my PC than I do, such as updates whenever it wants, open unsaved work be damned. This doesn't apply to the unreal ini file which you can edit without issue. No ultrawide support and you can tweak the FOV in-game, so there isn't really anything to DO in the ini file, but you can edit it.
Anyway the next day I went to sign my wife up for the $1 trial and install the game, and everything worked flawlessly with none of the issues I had - just worked perfectly which was weirdly more annoying than repeating the issues I had. So, YMMV.
I can attest that Microsoft's account system is god awful. Even when you keep up with your MS account and stuff, it's a complete pain to do anything. Heaven forbid you ever need to update your security information. It's the worst boss fight ever.
LunarSol wrote: A lot of it reads like trench perspective. It's not totally wrong, a lot of the problems are real problems, but the perspective is limited and a lot of the issues don't actually make it out of the trench. That said, the stuff that pertains to the people and not the properties is probably spot on and hardly unique in an industry in need of some worker protection.
Heck if half of that post is true, then Jesus chriest man....
As for the later, didn't Konami use to be that pedantic?
Further Google got the stinkeye recently in switzerland for ignoring national workers rights
Voss wrote: Well, that reads like a mix of paranoid fantasies, outright incorrect info (vulpera are the next horde allied race, for example) and some alt-right whining.
That up there, is fake as gak. It reads like a 4chan wet dream post. Too much use of alt-right terminology.
With that said, there are a couple of things in there that I have also heard. Another supposed employee said back in August that the company does indeed keep a calendar of all female employee's cycles. I went back to reddit to look for the post, but with the mass spam of hong kong gak, I can't find it now.
H.B.M.C. wrote: It'll be pretty easy to know if this is true or not when they announce Diablo 4.
Well, the FPS or not part, yes.
But diablo 3 already had Ultimate-like skills on some characters, and the entire point of the diablo 3 expansion was bad-guy angels.
Hawky wrote:Not great, not terrible. The game could use a few more months in the oven.
I think you're being overly kind. Fallout Tactics had more tactical depth, more than decade before. And the roleplaying side just seemed to be the NPCs vomiting exposition about the original game.
I'm not knocking it, but I just never, ever think about gak like this. I get easily confused when I see the stories and then wonder why in the world anyone would care.
The real issue it is and has in regards to AAA is twofold, as above, when longstanding series get sudden changes for what is dubbed "virtue signaling" but really just PR. (under the presumption that any PR is good PR)
And secondly, that even though they say (AAA industry) that these issues are dear to them, basically make 180 as soon as China gets involved.
The real issue it is and has in regards to AAA is twofold, as above, when longstanding series get sudden changes for what is dubbed "virtue signaling" but really just PR. (under the presumption that any PR is good PR)
And secondly, that even though they say (AAA industry) that these issues are dear to them, basically make 180 as soon as China gets involved.
This is why I don't get that attached to the characters. Ultimately, my hobbies are distractions. I never take them so seriously as to expect them to mirror real life.
Voss wrote: Well, that reads like a mix of paranoid fantasies, outright incorrect info (vulpera are the next horde allied race, for example) and some alt-right whining.
I love how "this game will have icky gay people in it!" is given the same gravity as "the programmers are horribly overworked". Clearly these things are equally terrible.
And I think the sources on the Overwatch lore changes would turn out to be Fanfiction.net and Deviantart if you dug a little.
Voss wrote: Well, that reads like a mix of paranoid fantasies, outright incorrect info (vulpera are the next horde allied race, for example) and some alt-right whining.
I love how "this game will have icky gay people in it!" is given the same gravity as "the programmers are horribly overworked". Clearly these things are equally terrible.
And I think the sources on the Overwatch lore changes would turn out to be Fanfiction.net and Deviantart if you dug a little.
It's hard for me to tell, but what I got from that entry was more the quota comment. We need; X number of blacks, X number of women, X number of gay people, X number of trans people, etc.
If your only purpose for the creation of the character is to meet a quota in an effort to make the populace "feel" more diverse, then you're doing it wrong.
I mean take ST: DS9 for example. Ben Sisko was not a tolkien Black Guy. He started out as a very stalwart character, a young commander. Bust as the show went one, he grew and grew (So did Worf) into one of the best written and acted characters in the franchise. Far Beyond the Stars really delta with the topic of racism in a very positive, but realistic light. We didn't have to have something jammed into our faces either, there was a lot more subtlety involved. These days, especially in gaming, diversity is often thrown into the mix in order to appease those who are calling for it, or to force the issue with people who might not support it, or who at the very least are indifferent to it.
Character quotas are often seen as a sign that gameplay elements are being neglected. They don't have to be. But the impression that many players have is that if you know your game is going to suck, then play up the diversity angle to compensate.
Again, your personal experiences may differ. I'm not posting to argue over this with anyone here. I'm merely relating perceptions that I've heard from others.
I wouldn't be surprised if the list is a mix of true and false stuff. But it'll be at least a couple of years before we'll be able to definitively say some of the stuff is fake.
As a FFXIV player, I personally find the claim of a ban on any mention of that game to be hilarious. I also find it telling, if true.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Something that occurred to me...
She’ll be paired with Widowmaker.
*snip*
Widowmaker now LGBTQ+ for quota reasons.
Widowmaker's one of the few characters that had a definite sexual orientation in the game's (limited) background. She got kidnapped by the bad guys, brainwashed, and sent back to murder her husband. Ergo, at one point she was married and had a sexual interest in men (and one in particular).
So assuming this list is legit (and this factoid in particular), Blizzard would be adding the "crazed lesbian" trope to Widowmaker's personality, since her sexuality apparently changed as a result of her brainwashing. Isn't usage of that trope generally frowned upon?
That list sounds like a bunch of crazy nonsense to be honest. I'll bash Blizzard all day, but I'd prefer to bash them over actual facts and their crappy games.
Melissia wrote: That list sounds like a bunch of crazy nonsense to be honest. I'll bash Blizzard all day, but I'd prefer to bash them over actual facts and their crappy games.
We might be able to confirm or deny some of it by Saturday, given that Blizzcon is about to start.
Eumerin wrote: Character quotas are often seen as a sign that gameplay elements are being neglected. They don't have to be. But the impression that many players have is that if you know your game is going to suck, then play up the diversity angle to compensate.
Again, your personal experiences may differ. I'm not posting to argue over this with anyone here. I'm merely relating perceptions that I've heard from others.
See, if we express our opinions in a public forum, we may be engaged on them. It's a discussion board, this sort of thing happens occasionally.
So just to be clear, you've got no problems with representation (of course you don't, you're not a bad person!), but some people whose opinions we should all really care about might hypothetically see it as Blizzard deflecting criticism if their game is bad. And that's clearly.....just as bad a business practice as mistreating your staff or bending the knee to China? Just as big a concern?
Or maybe, just maybe.....the author of this piece has problems with LGBT+ people, and is trying to legitimise it behind a thin veneer of "but think of the fans!".
(And of course, let's not let that sly little assertion that the only reason people might put variety in their character roster is a "quota" pass unnoticed.)
Widowmaker's one of the few characters that had a definite sexual orientation in the game's (limited) background. She got kidnapped by the bad guys, brainwashed, and sent back to murder her husband. Ergo, at one point she was married and had a sexual interest in men (and one in particular).
So assuming this list is legit (and this factoid in particular), Blizzard would be adding the "crazed lesbian" trope to Widowmaker's personality, since her sexuality apparently changed as a result of her brainwashing. Isn't usage of that trope generally frowned upon?
You're giving it way too much thought. I think it's more that somebody saw some girl-on-girl fanart (because the main "good" character will always get paired with the main "bad" character even if they hate each other in canon) and either jumped to conclusions or decided it'd make some good clickbait for the Not Bigoted But crowd.
The really implausible thing is assuming Blizzard will put that much effort into the lore. The Overwatch story has been pretty much stagnant for years beyond "Here's a new character." or "Talon are advancing their vague evil plan to start a new robot war or take over the world or something."
So assuming this list is legit (and this factoid in particular), Blizzard would be adding the "crazed lesbian" trope to Widowmaker's personality, since her sexuality apparently changed as a result of her brainwashing. Isn't usage of that trope generally frowned upon?
Could also be the sex-craved bisexual, a trope which is also frowned upon.
So assuming this list is legit (and this factoid in particular), Blizzard would be adding the "crazed lesbian" trope to Widowmaker's personality, since her sexuality apparently changed as a result of her brainwashing. Isn't usage of that trope generally frowned upon?
Could also be the sex-craved bisexual, a trope which is also frowned upon.
So we shall add, cheap and bad writing for PR sake aswell to the list?
Elemental wrote: So just to be clear, you've got no problems with representation (of course you don't, you're not a bad person!), but some people whose opinions we should all really care about might hypothetically see it as Blizzard deflecting criticism if their game is bad. And that's clearly.....just as bad a business practice as mistreating your staff or bending the knee to China? Just as big a concern?
The problem with that argument is that it assumes that people do (or even should) care about things equally.
How Blizzard treat their workers or the Hong Kong stuff genuinely doesn't matter to some people. All they care about is playing good games, and find that forced diversity just tends to ruin it as it becomes less about the game than it does about making everyone gay or trans or whatever, seemingly out of no where (especially on established characters), just to hit cynical diversity quotas and appease a very vocal minority (it's only worse when it has no impact on the game at all - why even bring it up?).
Me personally? I think the most important thing is the Hong Kong stuff, because Blizz is going to have to address it this weekend, there will be a protest (that I hope is well attended) and if Blizz doesn't address it then they just deserve to fail as a company as far as I'm concerned. Will they ban people from wearing T-shirts with umbrella signs on them? Pro-HK stuff? We'll see soon. It's going to be a very interesting, and perhaps even a make-or-break, weekend for Blizzard.
And all the while, Bobby fething Kotic will be sitting back, counting his multi-millions, and doing nothing to improve the video game industry. The witch.
Kinda disappointed my previous post here got deleted outright, rather than edited by the mods, but dems the breaks I guess when you use the triple consonant word.
@Not Online
Oh 100% clusterfeth, no way Blizzard is able to spin this without coming out as the bad guy. Either they go full censorship and double down on being the lapdop of China or they try to keep it open and get drowned out by protesters. They had their chance to save face in reverting the changes made to blitz chung but with their public statements and half-hearted PR response, they effectively screwed themselves.
Grimskul wrote: Kinda disappointed my previous post here got deleted outright, rather than edited by the mods, but dems the breaks I guess when you use the triple consonant word.
@Not Online
Oh 100% clusterfeth, no way Blizzard is able to spin this without coming out as the bad guy. Either they go full censorship and double down on being the lapdop of China or they try to keep it open and get drowned out by protesters. They had their chance to save face in reverting the changes made to blitz chung but with their public statements and half-hearted PR response, they effectively screwed themselves.
I still don't think this is an issue. At first, when I saw it I was pretty amused, but now that I've had time to analyze it, I see it for what it is: People Reddit karma whoring.
The actions of this game company have feth all to do with the very complex and old issue of HK sovereignty and the Chinese government. Very few people are going to care about this in a month, and if you go to the r/Blizzard page, you'll see it's already beginning. Many people are taking the pro-HK crowd to task and telling them to put up or shut up. I've seen a large influx of posts from commentators who want the memes and karma posts to go elsewhere. I think this will only grow strong as people get tired of seeing the dead horse beaten into a second death.
One comment I saw really made me chuckle. Someone posted "We get it, you're all assmad, now go the feth to sleep ffs."
So assuming this list is legit (and this factoid in particular), Blizzard would be adding the "crazed lesbian" trope to Widowmaker's personality, since her sexuality apparently changed as a result of her brainwashing. Isn't usage of that trope generally frowned upon?
Could also be the sex-craved bisexual, a trope which is also frowned upon.
So we shall add, cheap and bad writing for PR sake aswell to the list?
Worked for Capcom, I guess. Juri was the only SFIV newcomer to return in SFV...
I was willing to buy the "bad balancing act" explanation for Blizzard's response to the Hong Kong statement up until I found out they fired the guys running the camera. Yes, Blizzard rolled it back later. But the fact that their knee-jerk response was to drop the hammer on two guys who had no way of knowing what was up before-hand sets off alarm bells.
Eumerin wrote: I was willing to buy the "bad balancing act" explanation for Blizzard's response to the Hong Kong statement up until I found out they fired the guys running the camera. Yes, Blizzard rolled it back later. But the fact that their knee-jerk response was to drop the hammer on two guys who had no way of knowing what was up before-hand sets off alarm bells.
It's Activision -Blizzard, hiding behind the last vestages of the good named Blizzard, but don't ever expect something good or decent from them anymore, the old guard from Blizzard got removed /left.
Melissia wrote: That list sounds like a bunch of crazy nonsense to be honest. I'll bash Blizzard all day, but I'd prefer to bash them over actual facts and their crappy games.
We might be able to confirm or deny some of it by Saturday, given that Blizzcon is about to start.
Can deny most of it now. Diablo 4 story and gameplay trailers are up.
- Not FPS.
- Standard demon enemies (mostly the same as d3, in fact).
- New big boss, but she was covered in the lore books in D3, particularly in the expansion. As the Daughter of Hatred, she's the offspring of a Prime Evil (Mephisto).
[Random aside, she also made Sanctuary (the world) with an angel and spawned 'nephalem' and, effectively, humans,
True to the standard Blizzard metaplot, she's been banished to the Void because... of course she has. Blizzard effectively only has one story to tell. The fanfics (and 'art') of her, Kerrigan, and Sylvanas effectively write themselves.
Not much new in the game play, either. A little extra use of the verticality of levels (player and enemy actually climbing cliffs), return of the sorceress and the druid, and the barbarian again.
Gameplay trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RdDpqCmjb4
Elemental wrote: So just to be clear, you've got no problems with representation (of course you don't, you're not a bad person!), but some people whose opinions we should all really care about might hypothetically see it as Blizzard deflecting criticism if their game is bad. And that's clearly.....just as bad a business practice as mistreating your staff or bending the knee to China? Just as big a concern?
The problem with that argument is that it assumes that people do (or even should) care about things equally.
How Blizzard treat their workers or the Hong Kong stuff genuinely doesn't matter to some people. All they care about is playing good games, and find that forced diversity just tends to ruin it as it becomes less about the game than it does about making everyone gay or trans or whatever, seemingly out of no where (especially on established characters), just to hit cynical diversity quotas and appease a very vocal minority (it's only worse when it has no impact on the game at all - why even bring it up?).
So much wrong in one post. Let's break out the bingo card and start ticking things off, shall we?
--First, the big assumption that all diversity is forced diversity. Because nobody could possibly do such a thing sincerely, or think that having a more diverse cast will broaden the appeal of the game and sell more copies and also be a good thing in itself. And come on now, let's not pretend that having the heroes of a game be all hetereosexual white guys isn't equally cynical and calculated. Because it is, it just doesn't stand out to you.
--Second, the attempt to assert that people asking for diversity in a game are an unreasonable vocal minority, but the Anti-SJW's who get hyper angry and concerned about THE GAY in a game are somehow not the exact same thing. This is the thing that really ticks me off when you get the Anti-SJW's doing their Not Homophobic But dance and pretending that they're the reasonable ones. It's pure undiluted hypocrisy and deserves to be called out.
--Third, the assertion that diversity in media doesn't matter, and has no positive effect. That immediately tells me that you don't know how it feels to grow up being told by omission that People Like You don't get to be cool or heroic, but rather relegated to thoughtless stereotypes or sidekicks.
--Fourth and most importantly, the assumption that OW2 will be bad because of diversity. Stop, think and realise how foolish that sounds. Did Tracer's mechanics change when the lore revealed she had a girlfriend? Pretty sure they didn't, and that she was just as good / bad a character as she'd been the day before--this isn't an RPG where getting to know the characters is actually important for gameplay. If you didn't care about the lore, the effect was 0, zilch, nada, nothing. If OW2 is bad, it'll be bad because the characters are unbalanced or the gameplay is broken / unfun, not because of lines in a bio written by a different team from the actual game programmers. Not that that will stop the Anti-SJW's squawking and crowing about how it clearly failed because of those icky gay people.
Voss wrote:Not much new in the game play, either. A little extra use of the verticality of levels (player and enemy actually climbing cliffs), return of the sorceress and the druid, and the barbarian again.
Any notion of the release window? 2020? 2021?
I realize the game likely won't be even as good as D2, but I'll probably still play it some.
Overread wrote:The only thing I want from Blizzard in Diablo 4 is offline pc play .
Unfortunately I think there is almost no chance of this, probably some grumbling notion about "piracy" or "cheating" or something.
Melissia wrote: That list sounds like a bunch of crazy nonsense to be honest. I'll bash Blizzard all day, but I'd prefer to bash them over actual facts and their crappy games.
We might be able to confirm or deny some of it by Saturday, given that Blizzcon is about to start.
Can deny most of it now. Diablo 4 story and gameplay trailers are up.
- Not FPS.
- Standard demon enemies (mostly the same as d3, in fact).
- New big boss, but she was covered in the lore books in D3, particularly in the expansion. As the Daughter of Hatred, she's the offspring of a Prime Evil (Mephisto).
[Random aside, she also made Sanctuary (the world) with an angel and spawned 'nephalem' and, effectively, humans,
True to the standard Blizzard metaplot, she's been banished to the Void because... of course she has. Blizzard effectively only has one story to tell. The fanfics (and 'art') of her, Kerrigan, and Sylvanas effectively write themselves.
Not much new in the game play, either. A little extra use of the verticality of levels (player and enemy actually climbing cliffs), return of the sorceress and the druid, and the barbarian again.
Gameplay trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RdDpqCmjb4
They also said it's years off, these are the first THREE characters, and that a lot if going to change between now and then. I'm betting this will be a 21-22 release.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Overread wrote: The only thing I want from Blizzard in Diablo 4 is offline pc play .
It won't happen. The longer time goes on, the more Internet connectivity will creep in. I can't think of a PC game I play currently that doesn't require an internet connection.
--First, the big assumption that all diversity is forced diversity. Because nobody could possibly do such a thing sincerely, or think that having a more diverse cast will broaden the appeal of the game and sell more copies and also be a good thing in itself. And come on now, let's not pretend that having the heroes of a game be all hetereosexual white guys isn't equally cynical and calculated. Because it is, it just doesn't stand out to you.
May i ask how you come to this conclusion from H.B.M.C's post?
Just curious due to not having english as my motherlanguage.
Well, as I said, the rumours were going to be pretty easy to either debunk or support based upon what Bliz revealed.
D4 isn't a FPS... so that stuff was full of crap. Case closed as far as I'm concerned.
Elemental wrote: --First, the big assumption that all diversity is forced diversity.
Never said that.
Elemental wrote: Second, the attempt to assert that people asking for diversity in a game are an unreasonable vocal minority, but the Anti-SJW's who get hyper angry and concerned about THE GAY in a game are somehow not the exact same thing.
Never said that either...
Elemental wrote: --Third, the assertion that diversity in media doesn't matter...
Didn't say that...
Elemental wrote: Fourth and most importantly, the assumption that OW2 will be bad because of diversity...
And certainly never said that.
I can certainly expand on any of the things I think you said (for example, I do think that diversity and representation is exceptionally important for children as they are growing up, as it effectively shows that anyone can do anything (within reason)), but given that you've chosen to just yell at me over things I never actually said, what would be the point?
When you want to respond to what I said, please do so. In the meantime, I hope you don't have a straw allergy.
The game actually looks nice. I notice a certain artistic shift back in the direction of Diablo 2 in it that looks great in trailer form. And sadly (or amazingly) Blizzard is the only company that ever does the Druid character archtype justice in video games.
Of course, I'll never see what it looks like at release, cause I added Blizzard to my gak list. They can rot with EA. *casually sips tea*
LordofHats wrote: Of course, I'll never see what it looks like at release, cause I added Blizzard to my gak list. They can rot with EA. *casually sips tea*
I'm very torn because I don't like Blizzard at all… but I love watching Starcraft 2 pro matches. So I'm not giving them any money… but I'm still watching their game. But no other esport matches interest me this way :(.
To me, they're both inferior and less watchable than a wide variety of RTS games dating back from well before the original Starcraft's release.
But then again, I remember Starcraft's release, and I wasn't impressed back then, either. It was just another game, not even considered the best game of '97 at the time, never mind the best RTS game of '97.
Melissia wrote: To me, they're both inferior and less watchable than a wide variety of RTS games dating back from well before the original Starcraft's release.
Got links to a good channel broadcasting pro matches of those RTS, preferably in French?
Melissia wrote: To me, they're both inferior and less watchable than a wide variety of RTS games dating back from well before the original Starcraft's release.
Got links to a good channel broadcasting pro matches of those RTS, preferably in French?
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: Then I'm stuck with Starcraft 2, because I sure am not switching to watching League of Legend, Overwatch or Counter-Strike :( !
You could probably watch a coh 2 player or two, altough i have no idea how popular that game is in the french language area.
I kinda like that it brings the Engagement VS Entertainment factor up.
There have been attempts at it beyond CCGs and games like MonPoc.
None have lasted very long.
Heroclix died when the rest of the industry did but has returned.
I do think its kind of interesting to compare loot boxes and the blind purchase boxes, regardless of whether its game form or the kind of funko style collectable that seems to have replaced a lot of those failed games. The former is pretty cynical and manipulative and while the latter certainly has its manipulative hooks, its really more about trying to solve issues of SKU bloat needed to hit mass market distribution to make prepainted plastic affordable. It's interesting that the tabletop market has largely backed off from this space and given up on pre-paints in the process.
There is but it's extremely small (like, the same 12 people are at every tournament and only 2 of them ever win) and they don't market well. To make it worse, finding the tournament videos after the fact is hard cause they don't have a YouTube channel and don't arrange the videos into playlists.
LordofHats wrote: There is but it's extremely small (like, the same 12 people are at every tournament and only 2 of them ever win) and they don't market well. To make it worse, finding the tournament videos after the fact is hard cause they don't have a YouTube channel and don't arrange the videos into playlists.
They recently pushed twitch more and there are some good Ytubers out there on the game.
And the game is decent albeit a frankly absurdly monetized RTS at times, with their commander system and faction system.
Also the newer factions in many ways one up the older ones. (except certain special commanders that shall not be named)
But yes technically there is a scene and it is quite fun to watch imo.
LordofHats wrote: There is but it's extremely small (like, the same 12 people are at every tournament and only 2 of them ever win) and they don't market well. To make it worse, finding the tournament videos after the fact is hard cause they don't have a YouTube channel and don't arrange the videos into playlists.
Well sounds like I still haven't found the SC2 alternative :(.
LordofHats wrote: There is but it's extremely small (like, the same 12 people are at every tournament and only 2 of them ever win) and they don't market well. To make it worse, finding the tournament videos after the fact is hard cause they don't have a YouTube channel and don't arrange the videos into playlists.
Well sounds like I still haven't found the SC2 alternative :(.
I feel like that Genre is dying. With C&C gone, I don't even know who their competitor would even be.
At its core, its a genre that's largely moved to the mobile market. Unfortunately, the niche its found there is one that helped define the current toxic nightmare of micropayments that market has become.
On the flipside, the PC games in the genre need to take a step back from the hardcore and rethink their gameplay. The focus on clicking out hundreds of orders a minute has pretty heavily gated the genre to levels that even the fighting game community would consider elitist. It's a genre desperately in need of a welcoming product that still rewards its existing fanbase. Something akin to SF4.
LunarSol wrote: The focus on clicking out hundreds of orders a minute has pretty heavily gated the genre to levels that even the fighting game community would consider elitist.
That's why I don't play, I just watch pro players .
LunarSol wrote: At its core, its a genre that's largely moved to the mobile market.
Eh, the best strategy games are still released on PC. And I'm not talking about the "hundreds of clicks per minute" style games, most of those are trying too hard to be e-sports instead of good games.
LunarSol wrote: At its core, its a genre that's largely moved to the mobile market.
Eh, the best strategy games are still released on PC. And I'm not talking about the "hundreds of clicks per minute" style games, most of those are trying too hard to be e-sports instead of good games.
It should also be noted that Paradox has two sides to it. On the one you've got the side that sees a popular game and is willing to expand the content to that game rather than release a sequel - Crusader Kings 2 and Stellaris come to mind. The core base games in both are solid fun working games with complete features.
On the other hand they've situations like the hearts of Iron game (I think) which had clearly stripped content compared to the previous game.
Personally I see Paradox "more" of the former than the latter in general; which isn't a bad thing honestly. Esp as they are willing to work with things like Humble Bundle on the games that steadily build up a huge backlog of dlc.
Worse is situations like, say, Galactic Civilizations 3 where the core game clearly had missing features which were only expanded upon with DLC. It's a fine line between the two but in general you can see when things are cut content and when the game is simply having its core features expanded. Crusader Kings 2 didn't "need" all the new countries and regions that were added to make the core game work; the core game worked great without them and was engaging and fun for many. The expanded content was just using that popularity to fund more development - more content for the gamer and, yes of course, more profit for the developer.
Train Sim sort of gets away with it too because its aiming for a very differnet market approach. They aren't aiming for you needing to own ALL THE THINGS; instead its more of a simulation engine where they are then buying licences and creating accurate real world train maps from the ground up (honestly when you consider the detail they aim for there likely are a lot of man hours wrapped up in that). They are also mostly aiming at the generation of pepole who want to drive trains and own a Hornby Railway set and lack the money/time/space/opportunity to do either
Personally I see Paradox "more" of the former than the latter in general; which isn't a bad thing honestly. Esp as they are willing to work with things like Humble Bundle on the games that steadily build up a huge backlog of dlc.
Erm, there was also the really unfinished and lazy rome one.
it's not just HOI IV
And Stellaris. Three and a half years on and they're finally getting around to diplomacy... in a dlc.
After functionally starting over on the base game because it was just that crap.
Paradox games happily launch with stripped content and then try to sell it back later. It isn't rare or unique to select titles, or even their own titles. They happily encourage it with the small studios they back then buy out.
Stellaris was hardly broken at launch - in fact a lot of people argued that the change from fully open to hyperlanes at the start was a huge issue that made the game "worse" (even though it actually made defensive play possible since now you couldn't just sneak around and snipe out worlds and then run away - so personally I found it improved things greatly - esp in the early game).
Again its a fine line and Stellaris has had diplomacy in it for ages - it was just your standard RTS level of diplomacy rather than an in depth crusader kings 2 experience.
The Federations DLC will launch with content available to people who don't own the DLC. For example, as part of it they're separating our certain civics as Origins-- Prosperous Unification, Galactic Doorstep, and Lost Colony will be the Origins available to everyone at the launch of the DLC. Others will be available to people who own other DLCs-- the familiar Mechanist and Syncretic Evolution will be available for Utopia alongside a unique hive mind one called Tree of Life, while Apocalypse will give the also-familiar Life-Seeded and Post-Apocalyptic origins, and Lithoids and Synthetic Dawn allow for Calamitous Birth and Resource Consolidation, respectively (all of this subject to change). Most of the new Origins are Federations DLC only but not all of them. And the actual federation changes are available to non-owners of the DLC, the DLC will provide more variety and utility in terms of federations and how they function.
So while yeah, Paradox loves to give us tons of DLC (and probably makes more money on the DLC than the actual game by the end of each game's life cycle, something I criticize them about also), they don't JUST release DLC. It's going to be a content patch for non-DLC buyers, too.
I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.
Creative Assembly are guilty of that with the Total War series. If you don't buy the DLC right away, you can find yourself fighting Tomb Kings or Pirate Coast or various Regiments of Renown, but you can't use them.
BattleTech, which is a Paradox game, does the same thing I believe. Hell, Mechwarrior 4 had a bunch of 'Mechs in the game that you couldn't use but could fight unless you bought the specific "expansions" for them. That was before the days of DLC.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.
Creative Assembly are guilty of that with the Total War series. If you don't buy the DLC right away, you can find yourself fighting Tomb Kings or Pirate Coast or various Regiments of Renown, but you can't use them.
I'm generally fine with it in Total War since if I wanted to play that faction I'd just buy it and while I don't want to play as Beastmen or Wood Elves, I still like to fight them and don't want to have to pay to do so.
But then again, I'm pretty lenient with Creative Assembly. Maybe I'd be annoyed if another developer did it.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.
Creative Assembly are guilty of that with the Total War series. If you don't buy the DLC right away, you can find yourself fighting Tomb Kings or Pirate Coast or various Regiments of Renown, but you can't use them.
BattleTech, which is a Paradox game, does the same thing I believe. Hell, Mechwarrior 4 had a bunch of 'Mechs in the game that you couldn't use but could fight unless you bought the specific "expansions" for them. That was before the days of DLC.
That's sort of crap is really annoying.
Actually I'm ok with it. Totally fine. See by doing it that way the game and its campaign structure runs with one instance of the game. Furthermore if you go to multiplayer for any of those games you'd be fighting those same forces. If you wanted it totally split a game like Warhammer TW with the number of DLC factions it has would become unmanageable. The multiplayer would be fragmented into dozens of different combinations of DLC ownership and the same for the campaign. CA would either have to leave huge areas of the map blank (so you'd randomly have nothing in a region) or have countless variations of the map. It would eventually become a total and utter mess.
In the end its far better that you can choose to play as whatever factions you want and buy the DLC if you want to play as them, whilst not being locked out of multiplayer or fighting against them in the campaigns.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.
Sure, that's annoying. But not entirely applicable to Paradox-- the only way you'll see the new Paradox DLC content in-game outside of the nation creation program is if it's multiplayer, in which case, only if the host has the DLC... in which case you can use the DLC content, too, as the host determines what DLC content gets used.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.
Sure, that's annoying. But not entirely applicable to Paradox-- the only way you'll see the new Paradox DLC content in-game outside of the nation creation program is if it's multiplayer, in which case, only if the host has the DLC... in which case you can use the DLC content, too, as the host determines what DLC content gets used.
Yeah except no, HOI IV and some political events when the balkans got reworked created massive issues for me when i tested without the Death or dishonor DLC .-.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I have to say I'm not a fan of DLC that adds stuff to the game so that you can see it and interact with it but cannot use it yourselves.
Sure, that's annoying. But not entirely applicable to Paradox-- the only way you'll see the new Paradox DLC content in-game outside of the nation creation program is if it's multiplayer, in which case, only if the host has the DLC... in which case you can use the DLC content, too, as the host determines what DLC content gets used.
Yeah except no, HOI IV and some political events when the balkans got reworked created massive issues for me when i tested without the Death or dishonor DLC .-.
Fair enough. I admit to already having entirely disliked HoI4 from the start, so I suppose I didn't notice that.
Eh DRM has mostly toned down over the years, helped a lot by GOG being a financial success story. Plus many developers are happy with services like Steam or Origin being the "DRM" and most gamers are happy with that in terms of just having to log in once very few months if they need to validate.
We still get some oddballs and some issues here and there, but by and large it seems to have settled. There's more issue with old DRM systems. I believe SecureRom is a mess because a lot of old games used it, but the service shut down for windows ages ago (or windows didn't renew the contract). However being old titles most are either on GOG now or people are hoping they will appear on GOG at some point.
From what I recall of piracy with computer games much like DVDs and movies the first month and weeks rae the most critical for most game sales (for games that go the traditional pathway - early access is a totally different system). So the DRM technically only has to work for those early days - of course some gets cracked pretty fast.
That said I suspect it won't be a major issue for PC gamers until such time as we see one of the major "not GOG" companies shut down. If we saw Origin or Uplay or heck Steam close their doors and shut down that would be when the DRM monster would raise its head - potentially - again. Of course that all depends how those firms shut down - if its a sudden "we had loads of problems, didn't tell anyone and now we are in administration and shut down everything yesterday without warning" then its going to be a nightmare. If its a controlled shutdown giving people time to download games and for a "runs offline forever patch" to be released then it might go much smoother.
It's something that hasn't really happened in the market yet; the only stores we've lost tend to be smalltime stores which tend to be selling cheaper more "throw away" games in general. Meanwhile many that sell bigger titles tend to just sell codes for other stores (eg steam codes).
The reason SecureRom no longer works is because it relies on a particular driver embedded within Windows. This driver was found to be a security risk at the tail end of the Win 7 era and was removed from Win 8 and Win 10.
So hoardes of XP era games no longer work on Win 8/10.
Bethesda screwed up again.
With a patch, for F76. ....
this time armor loses durability if you reload your gun?!?
In other news.
WoWS made major hijinks via suggestive marketing in the case of their new warship, not really a WoWS player but the first iteration of their marketing suggested that their Event vehicle would be easy to obtain, however if one takes a look at the forums in regards to that, it buns brighter then dakka dakka on a bad day.
Which brings me to the next point, EVENT specific cosmetics and vehicles / items/ Champions and the FOMO / whale hunting going on with that. In a way the Sunk cost fallacy is getting a lot more use since the mobile market strategies have invaded the free gaming market.
Is this that new ship that you have to "build" over the Christmas period? I had a look at that and yeah it seems that you can build it, but you've got to either pay or play a tonne to actually get enough points to unlock it.
I'm not surprised the forums are up in arms, sometimes making the marketing sound too good just backfires.
Overread wrote: Is this that new ship that you have to "build" over the Christmas period? I had a look at that and yeah it seems that you can build it, but you've got to either pay or play a tonne to actually get enough points to unlock it.
I'm not surprised the forums are up in arms, sometimes making the marketing sound too good just backfires.
The tasks are nigh impossible according to the unicorns even, especially because they don't synergize.
I've not even looked at half of them esp as I think they require level V ships to achieve/unlock.
But yeah its your standard "grinding is possible but near impossible" mmo tactic that encourages you to pay; only the ship costs something like 70 odd Euros to unlock - one ship skin for what is the equivalent cost of a fully DLC updated AAA title game or two regular games or three or four indie high end games. Ergo a huge amount for what is basically very little content.
I do wonder if bot-farming accounts might be twisting gameplay data to the point where if there's enough bots running all day every day it gives developers an inflated sense of the population actually playing the game and the game play time; but at the same time you'd think they'd apply logic to any harvested data. Just seems greedy like a lot of other packs and similar tricks.
Yeah, the USS Puerto Rico grind is demented, especially considering the ship is pretty meh performance-wise. You'd have to spend more time playing Warships than you do anything else EVERY DAY UNTIL JAN 13TH to get it for free. It's a blatant cash grab trying to exploit the sunk cost fallacy to make people pay for the remaining progress when the event ends by taunting them with an incomplete ship.
Not Online!!! wrote: in other news, F76 has devolved even more into a dumpster fire, what with the hack going around being extremely simple....
Bugthesda. Bugthesda never changes.
I feel it is worth pointing out that FO76 is designed by the Bethesda "C team" in Austin, and not the main studio in Maryland. The Austin studio is some acquired group that hadn't had any experience working with their code before. Smart Idea, I know, I know.
The fact that F76 garbage is still making news somehow shows the stockholm syndrome that so many gamers have towards certain gaming companies, at this point how are there still people playing this game? Even Anthem seems functionally dead at this point, so I'm surprised FO76 is still going, much less STILL having these issues this late into release. Live service poopoo. Meanwhile quality single player games like Sekiro, and Jedi Fallen Order keep trucking along, making good press and money without all the predatory microtransactions. It's a pity that our system rewards short-term greed for companies.
Grimskul wrote: The fact that F76 garbage is still making news somehow shows the stockholm syndrome that so many gamers have towards certain gaming companies, at this point how are there still people playing this game? Even Anthem seems functionally dead at this point, so I'm surprised FO76 is still going, much less STILL having these issues this late into release. Live service poopoo. Meanwhile quality single player games like Sekiro, and Jedi Fallen Order keep trucking along, making good press and money without all the predatory microtransactions. It's a pity that our system rewards short-term greed for companies.
Honestly i think it's more the case that most have left and only the hard core remains aswell as the media coverage.
Bethesda has overnight ( well over a year) ruined it's reputation as one of the few remaining AAA studios and publishers left after the desasterous 18.
Bethesda managed to upset the whales left.
It allready got coverage and is under hightened scrutiy.
Bethesda keeps fething up, on basic things that would need to be automatically reevaluated when you in essence port a game from single to multiplayer, hence the relative ease at which the inventory hack worked supposedly.
