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Anthem Next has officially morphed over to Anthem Never. For the four or five people still regularly playing it, the "live service" will continue to shamble along as is. It's too bad that they sank Mass Effect Andromeda to focus on this and now this is being dumped to focus on the next Dragon Age title. I hope folks remember this string of events before preordering upcoming titles.
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
Voss wrote: Hm. Gives me some hope for the next DA and ME games.
Realizing the need to focus for quality rather than spreading teams out over too many big projects is an important step.
And not throwing good resources after bad is also a useful skill.
They're promising a lot for the next Dragon Age, so I hope this means they can live up to it.
They promised alot for ME:A. Did they live up to it?
They promised alot for Anthem. Did they live up to it?
They promised a post release roadmap to fix Anthem and then gave up on it... in favor of a No Man's Sky style ground up revamp... which they now cancelled. There's always a next game to "focus on" at the expense of the one you screwed up and at the cost of the customers who already paid you for it. If you're ok with that and think it's a useful skill, I'll just have to agree to disagree.
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
Anthem is the only BioWare game I never had any interest in playing, so I can't really say that I'm sad about this. It just always seemed so weird to me that a studio renowned for its single player games would want to make a Destiny clone. I thought it was just EA being stupid for quite a while, but apparently BioWare really wanted to make this title. I'm sorry it didn't go better for them, and even more sorry for the people who loved it.
I don't have high hopes for anything the studio has in the pipeline. It's just been too long since they've made something good.
I dunno.. Anthem is a solid idea. The original intro /gameplay was rich. The final product was bland and downscaled to be a pitiful destiny wanabe clone. Squandering potential.
This is because thats what EA does. In true corporate fashion takes something created with passions and then forces it out the door before its ready/ sufficient quality because it needs to recoup those $$$ and then can shut down and sell off.. How many studios, IPs and Franchises has EA gutted now?
AngryAngel80 wrote: I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "
I'm also half expecting Kanluwen to enter the thread and somehow explain this is as a good thing from EA.
What's the point of setting up a live service game and market it as "supporting it with content for years to come" when they drop support on a dime and don't even bother to make sure the game is solid on launch?
I feel like EA just wants to create a perpetual hype machine for the next big live service thing and then underdeliver so people move onto the next half-baked game they shove out of the door.
creeping-deth87 wrote: Anthem is the only BioWare game I never had any interest in playing, so I can't really say that I'm sad about this. It just always seemed so weird to me that a studio renowned for its single player games would want to make a Destiny clone. I thought it was just EA being stupid for quite a while, but apparently BioWare really wanted to make this title. I'm sorry it didn't go better for them, and even more sorry for the people who loved it.
I don't have high hopes for anything the studio has in the pipeline. It's just been too long since they've made something good.
The current Bioware is not the bioware. Its bioware in name only.. all the creativity has gone elsewhere. Bioware is only bioware sdo that EA can capitilise from the name and goodwill. Now that's going in the trash it will follow all the other studios EA has sucked dry..
AngryAngel80 wrote: I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "
Voss wrote: Hm. Gives me some hope for the next DA and ME games.
Realizing the need to focus for quality rather than spreading teams out over too many big projects is an important step.
And not throwing good resources after bad is also a useful skill.
They're promising a lot for the next Dragon Age, so I hope this means they can live up to it.
They promised alot for ME:A. Did they live up to it?
For someone playing on consoles? Yep. I would have liked to see some SP content come out...but given how hard people like Paul Tassi and Jimquisition were rabblerousing over stupid crap like "OMG FRAMERATES!!11!!" or "lolz look at this animation glitch!", that wasn't happening.
Games now have a two week window, effectively, around their launch to really land. If the usual suspects of bad takes get all onboard dogpiling it(which inevitably happens to any EA title), the game's basically sunk.
FFS, those goons said Titanfall 2 was "too generic" when it arguably set a new standard for some interesting concepts in FPS games.
They promised alot for Anthem. Did they live up to it?
They promised a post release roadmap to fix Anthem and then gave up on it... in favor of a No Man's Sky style ground up revamp... which they now cancelled. There's always a next game to "focus on" at the expense of the one you screwed up and at the cost of the customers who already paid you for it. If you're ok with that and think it's a useful skill, I'll just have to agree to disagree.
What, exactly, do you think the updates they were doing for the game itself were? Because they had a rather significant number of patches they went through. They actually had seasons that had activities and the like.
Again: Anthem got tons of flak from people with some weirdly devoted fanbase regularly publishing "articles"(using the term loosely) that constantly complained about Anthem being too repetitive, too little content, etc etc...then those same people kept lauding Bungie and Activision for Destiny 2!
I bought anthem. I played anthem. I enjoyed anthem despite it not being as rich as initial E3 demos.. I played anthem until their served DC (ps4) and I got booted from the game and couldn't get back on. I didn't bother playing anthem again after that..
FULL DISCLOSURE: This was like a 6 months after it was out. I never invest into brand new games due to corporate "lets just get it out the door and fix problems later" attitude, and allow some time for issues to be fixed an patched out. It cost £4 at a second hand game store. Unprecedented low price for a brand new title. Its still sat on the shelf underneath my TV gathering dust and I cant even be bothered to trade it because I would get like 50p for it..
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/24 23:29:50
AngryAngel80 wrote: I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "
Argive wrote: I dunno.. Anthem is a solid idea. The original intro /gameplay was rich.
And I'm certain that had Anthem been a single-player game in the style of Bioware's other efforts, that it would have worked.
EA's desperate need to get into the 'Live Service' market with their own micro-transaction-stuffed 'Looter Shooter' took what should have been an amazing single-player experience and turned into a soulless husk of a game.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/25 05:58:22
Voss wrote: Hm. Gives me some hope for the next DA and ME games.
Realizing the need to focus for quality rather than spreading teams out over too many big projects is an important step.
And not throwing good resources after bad is also a useful skill.
They're promising a lot for the next Dragon Age, so I hope this means they can live up to it.
They promised alot for ME:A. Did they live up to it?
For someone playing on consoles? Yep. I would have liked to see some SP content come out...but given how hard people like Paul Tassi and Jimquisition were rabblerousing over stupid crap like "OMG FRAMERATES!!11!!" or "lolz look at this animation glitch!", that wasn't happening.
Games now have a two week window, effectively, around their launch to really land. If the usual suspects of bad takes get all onboard dogpiling it(which inevitably happens to any EA title), the game's basically sunk.
FFS, those goons said Titanfall 2 was "too generic" when it arguably set a new standard for some interesting concepts in FPS games.
PC as well. I was fine with Andromeda, would have liked to have seen more (I finished it and have gone back to it twice), but the base game was, IMO, one of the better Mass Effects (certainly better than 3, and arguably better than 1, still too much Fedex questing, but at least the run (or drive) between quest location and quest giver wasn't exclusively through empty corridors; or mindlessly looking for shiny things on featureless planets). I could quibble about the amount of fighting Evil Orc Monsters over exploration, but that as much personal preference as anything else.
I wouldn't agree with two weeks, but Andromeda definitely got dogpiled for little stuff without much analysis of the actual game.
Kan wrote:
warboss wrote:They promised alot for Anthem. Did they live up to it?
They promised a post release roadmap to fix Anthem and then gave up on it... in favor of a No Man's Sky style ground up revamp... which they now cancelled. There's always a next game to "focus on" at the expense of the one you screwed up and at the cost of the customers who already paid you for it. If you're ok with that and think it's a useful skill, I'll just have to agree to disagree.
What, exactly, do you think the updates they were doing for the game itself were? Because they had a rather significant number of patches they went through. They actually had seasons that had activities and the like.
Again: Anthem got tons of flak from people with some weirdly devoted fanbase regularly publishing "articles"(using the term loosely) that constantly complained about Anthem being too repetitive, too little content, etc etc...then those same people kept lauding Bungie and Activision for Destiny 2!
Exactly this. They tried to salvage Anthem. For far longer than I would've expected them to. They stuck out trying to fix it for three years, in the face of criticism, indifference and scorn. Some of it was deserved because it was an indifferent game (and just missing a lot of what makes for a proper Bioware game), but how long does anyone expect them to stick things out and keep pouring money into a failed game trying to make something new of it?
They're even keeping the servers up, so its not like its a total loss for people who like it. Most games don't get three years of post-release support, so they idea that they just 'gave up on it' out of the blue is nonsense.
----
Tl;dr They tried something that wasn't their wheelhouse and failed. They spent three years trying to fix it, with little to no return for that effort. Why would they keep going?
This isn't a betrayal, its long past the time to accept that it didn't work out. They're keeping the lights on, which is more than a lot of games get when the companies give up on them.
Do I have faith that the next DA and ME will be great? Feth no. But they've got a better chance with more resources and some of their developers cut loose from a failed attempt that's been functionally dead for years now.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/25 00:44:06
LordofHats wrote: They were still developing Anthem? Could have fooled me
From what I heard a while back, the plan was to try and do something similar to what Square-Enix successfully did with Final Fantasy XIV. The initial launch of that game was an utter and complete disaster. The 2.0 release - "A Realm Reborn" - turned the game into a massive hit. In that vein, work was going on behind the scenes on the Anthem revamp. The game itself was left up, and some stuff was added post-launch. The work for the revamp was all being done where the players couldn't see.
2021/02/25 17:28:27
Subject: Re:EA/Bioware's Anthem Development stopped
Alas, the Bioware of old is long dead. I was at one point a pretty die hard fanatic of their stuff, but they really just haven't seemed to have it together for the last decade or so.
I'm honestly kind of surprised it took this long to kill of Anthem though. Given the state of the launch it didn't look promising, and the failure to meet pretty much any of the post release roadmap it was really hard to see where it was salvageable.
Neat flying mechanics, there was some cool core gameplay in that, but they never managed to flesh that out or really bring the narrative/story elements of their earlier work to Anthem.
Unfortunately, Bioware's future doesn't look much more promising from my perspective as a consumer. I'm not really interested in a remaster of the ME trilogy after how that ended, that appears to be their current major cash cow endeavor however, and given their increasingly dismal release record since then, it's hard to get excited about any future titles from the studio. Hopefully I'll be proven wrong, that would be great.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/25 17:57:26
IRON WITHIN, IRON WITHOUT.
New Heavy Gear Log! Also...Grey Knights! The correct pronunciation is Imperial Guard and Stormtroopers, "Astra Militarum" and "Tempestus Scions" are something you'll find at Hogwarts.
Voss wrote: Hm. Gives me some hope for the next DA and ME games.
Realizing the need to focus for quality rather than spreading teams out over too many big projects is an important step.
And not throwing good resources after bad is also a useful skill.
They're promising a lot for the next Dragon Age, so I hope this means they can live up to it.
They promised alot for ME:A. Did they live up to it?
For someone playing on consoles? Yep. I would have liked to see some SP content come out...but given how hard people like Paul Tassi and Jimquisition were rabblerousing over stupid crap like "OMG FRAMERATES!!11!!" or "lolz look at this animation glitch!", that wasn't happening.
Games now have a two week window, effectively, around their launch to really land. If the usual suspects of bad takes get all onboard dogpiling it(which inevitably happens to any EA title), the game's basically sunk.
FFS, those goons said Titanfall 2 was "too generic" when it arguably set a new standard for some interesting concepts in FPS games.
PC as well. I was fine with Andromeda, would have liked to have seen more (I finished it and have gone back to it twice), but the base game was, IMO, one of the better Mass Effects (certainly better than 3, and arguably better than 1, still too much Fedex questing, but at least the run (or drive) between quest location and quest giver wasn't exclusively through empty corridors; or mindlessly looking for shiny things on featureless planets). I could quibble about the amount of fighting Evil Orc Monsters over exploration, but that as much personal preference as anything else.
I wouldn't agree with two weeks, but Andromeda definitely got dogpiled for little stuff without much analysis of the actual game.
If Andromeda wasn't named Mass Effect I'd probably have liked it a whole lot more.
ultimately what I want out of a mass effect game is an immersive character-driven narrative with some fun arcadey video game segments thrown in to break up the talking. I couldn't get into Andromeda or DA Inquisition because I just didn't want tons of Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild in between my immersive story beats. If there's too much there I just tend to forget what I'm doing in the story, or where I'm supposed to be going, or why I am where I am - in BOTW that's fine because the story could have been written by a two year old, as, IMO, the overarching story in a game like that should be. If I'm going to be wandering around, going through cool environments, fighting dudes and solving puzzles and whatever with a big ol' open world, I don't want a narrative. And if I'm going to be following a narrative thread, I don't want all that stuff distracting me from it that much. A well designed, elegant, basically on rails linear shooter like a bioshock infinite or a mass effect 2 or a tactical turn-based strategy game like a fire emblem or a banner saga is exactly what I want in my narrative game.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/25 18:35:16
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
the_scotsman wrote: A well designed, elegant, basically on rails linear shooter like a bioshock infinite or a mass effect 2 or a tactical turn-based strategy game like a fire emblem or a banner saga is exactly what I want in my narrative game.
Yes. If you have a story to tell, don't put artificial barriers in the way of telling the story. I don't want to drive a rover for 10 minutes over a bland expansive planet surface with the occasional cookie cutter random combat encounter scattered in there for no rhyme or reason to get to the cool thing. If you have some nice scenery for me to look at on the way? Great, but it is a lot easier to design that when you are making a linear path as you have control of where the players camera is likely to be pointing and can use that to draw their gaze naturally to an epic vista.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/26 09:45:48
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Argive wrote: I dunno.. Anthem is a solid idea. The original intro /gameplay was rich. The final product was bland and downscaled to be a pitiful destiny wanabe clone. Squandering potential.
This is because thats what EA does. In true corporate fashion takes something created with passions and then forces it out the door before its ready/ sufficient quality because it needs to recoup those $$$ and then can shut down and sell off.. How many studios, IPs and Franchises has EA gutted now?
Its all trash now..
EA gave Bioware MULTIPLE extensions. EA's most prominent "meddling" in Anthem was insisting on keeping flying in the game. Think about it. It was the evil, greedy corporate EA execs that decided to keep the only *fun* part of the game in.
Sorry, but Andromeda and Anthem are squarely on Bioware- they handed Andromeda to a secondary studio to let the main team focus on Anthem and then the management proceeded to muck about without direction for years before going into Panik mode and shoving out the "product" in just under two years and hoping "Bioware magic" will carry it through despite the studio being managed like a trashfire.
Blame EA for a lot of things, because goddess knows they're a horrible company, but this is 100% bioware's internal feth-up.
Even the fact that it was a live service was Bioware's choice, not mandated by EA- after all, why shouldn't a company try get those sweet live-service recurring microtransactions?
For far longer than I would've expected them to.
I believe they said something about ten years, I guess 3 years>decade....
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/26 09:58:43
EA gave Bioware MULTIPLE extensions. EA's most prominent "meddling" in Anthem was insisting on keeping flying in the game. Think about it. It was the evil, greedy corporate EA execs that decided to keep the only *fun* part of the game in. Sorry, but Andromeda and Anthem are squarely on Bioware- they handed Andromeda to a secondary studio to let the main team focus on Anthem and then the management proceeded to muck about without direction for years before going into Panik mode and shoving out the "product" in just under two years and hoping "Bioware magic" will carry it through despite the studio being managed like a trashfire.
Blame EA for a lot of things, because goddess knows they're a horrible company, but this is 100% bioware's internal feth-up.
This. The entire fault for the problems of Andromeda and Anthem are on Bioware having awful project management which meant their games failed to get out of the pre-production phase until way too late in the project.
People complain that EA micromanages their developers and sets targets and dictates some inclusions to the games (such as multiplayer in the Dead Space franchise and the weapon crafting system in the 3rd game), but in this case it was the fact that they didn't do that meant that Bioware spent 7 years on Anthem but only actually made the game in 18 months, which only happened because EA realised what a terrible state it was in and clamped down on Bioware to make them actually focus on a deliverable product rather than jerking themselves off about making the Bob Dylan of video games.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/26 09:59:50
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
Voss wrote: Hm. Gives me some hope for the next DA and ME games.
Realizing the need to focus for quality rather than spreading teams out over too many big projects is an important step.
And not throwing good resources after bad is also a useful skill.
They're promising a lot for the next Dragon Age, so I hope this means they can live up to it.
They promised alot for ME:A. Did they live up to it?
For someone playing on consoles? Yep. I would have liked to see some SP content come out...but given how hard people like Paul Tassi and Jimquisition were rabblerousing over stupid crap like "OMG FRAMERATES!!11!!" or "lolz look at this animation glitch!", that wasn't happening.
Games now have a two week window, effectively, around their launch to really land. If the usual suspects of bad takes get all onboard dogpiling it(which inevitably happens to any EA title), the game's basically sunk.
FFS, those goons said Titanfall 2 was "too generic" when it arguably set a new standard for some interesting concepts in FPS games.
PC as well. I was fine with Andromeda, would have liked to have seen more (I finished it and have gone back to it twice), but the base game was, IMO, one of the better Mass Effects (certainly better than 3, and arguably better than 1, still too much Fedex questing, but at least the run (or drive) between quest location and quest giver wasn't exclusively through empty corridors; or mindlessly looking for shiny things on featureless planets). I could quibble about the amount of fighting Evil Orc Monsters over exploration, but that as much personal preference as anything else.
I wouldn't agree with two weeks, but Andromeda definitely got dogpiled for little stuff without much analysis of the actual game.
If Andromeda wasn't named Mass Effect I'd probably have liked it a whole lot more.
ultimately what I want out of a mass effect game is an immersive character-driven narrative with some fun arcadey video game segments thrown in to break up the talking. I couldn't get into Andromeda or DA Inquisition because I just didn't want tons of Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild in between my immersive story beats. If there's too much there I just tend to forget what I'm doing in the story, or where I'm supposed to be going, or why I am where I am - in BOTW that's fine because the story could have been written by a two year old, as, IMO, the overarching story in a game like that should be. If I'm going to be wandering around, going through cool environments, fighting dudes and solving puzzles and whatever with a big ol' open world, I don't want a narrative. And if I'm going to be following a narrative thread, I don't want all that stuff distracting me from it that much. A well designed, elegant, basically on rails linear shooter like a bioshock infinite or a mass effect 2 or a tactical turn-based strategy game like a fire emblem or a banner saga is exactly what I want in my narrative game.
That's fair. My most recent playthrough of Andromeda basically stalled out on the ice planet because I was sick of driving back and forth on it for all sorts of little quests that didn't matter. The jungle planet was, IMO, much better simply because it was a much smaller area, and much tighter- there are 3 main plotlines running through it (find the vault, rescue the locals, find the taurians), and they're fairly focused, barring the ledge jumping sequence to get up to the useless 'wise old elders.'
Inquisition has a couple empty zones that are completely infuriating, simply because they have NO main plot threads attached to them at all. Its just find hidden shiny things, collect bear butts, and find X camps/shards/astrolabes.
There are reasons I think DA 2 and ME 2 are the best ones. And the lack of running pointless loops in empty spaces is the biggest reason why.
And of course ME 3 pretty much exemplifies the problems of 'Urgent narrative disaster!!! But...you know... by all means, just poke about, faff about searching every corner and solve trivial issues while everyone dies.' Would have been much better with a laser-like story focus and then an extended epilogue exploring the state of things and trying to recover a new normal. That would have been satisfying.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/26 15:00:33
Efficiency is the highest virtue.
2021/02/26 14:56:38
Subject: Re:EA/Bioware's Anthem Development stopped
Dreadwinter wrote: Bioware died halfway through SWToR when the founders left.
There's a comment Drew Karpyshyn made I think last year that really sums it up; link. Karpyshyn is the guy who wrote KotOR, Mass Effect 1, Jade Empire, and he worked on some of Baldur's Gate. He left Bioware in 2018 as part of the talent flight that really accelerated after Anthem's effective 'reboot' within the company. He had this to say as a reason:
"We became more corporate. We were less able to make what we loved, and the teams were pushed to create games based on market research rather than our creative instincts and passions. My dream job became just a job, and I lost the enthusiasm and excitement I once had."
I find this 'Bioware failed, not EA' thing is like the chicken and the egg question. Bioware was successful because of it's team, and talent. EA ground that out of the company and Bioware stopped making the kinds of games that earned it its reputation, but it's not EA's fault that later Bioware games became fiascos? From what we've seen of Anthem's failure, it doesn't seem like executive meddling was the direct cause of that games failure. The problems were largely internal. A lack of direction. A lack of an idea for what kind of game they were trying to make. The project plodded along at a snails pace because no one really knew what they were doing or what they wanted to do. Really, it's almost like all the talent just vanished and no one left actually knew how to manage a project anymore.
EA's sudden and more direct involvement in 2017 and 2018 was more a result of the failure of the team to get anywhere than EA being 'evul' and had they not done that the game probably wouldn't have released. Of course the game released like gak so I'm not really seeing EA warrant any praise on that front, but EA didn't directly make Anthem a failure. They just indirectly ground Bioware into the ground until all the people who made the company a household name in gaming weren't there anymore. Karpyshyn was one of the last of them to walk out (though he'd left earlier and come back). EA didn't ruin Anthem, sure. But there's no real way to put it other than that they burned Bioware out like a candle.
A lot of these guys are working for Wizards of the Coast's new game development team now. I wonder if yesterday was as disappointing for them as it was for me XD
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/26 15:39:27
Videogames are like anything else; follow the talent, not the brand. If you want to enjoy comics for any length of time, you can't stick with a character; you have to try out new characters when your favorite author gets tired of writing Batman and moves on to something else. Videogames are no different, and the industry is absolutely loaded with terrible rushed sequels without the spark of their original creator.
LunarSol wrote: Videogames are like anything else; follow the talent, not the brand. If you want to enjoy comics for any length of time, you can't stick with a character; you have to try out new characters when your favorite author gets tired of writing Batman and moves on to something else. Videogames are no different, and the industry is absolutely loaded with terrible rushed sequels without the spark of their original creator.
I think the industry has it a bit worse than comics and movies though. It's still young (relatively speaking). I think companies, developers, and talent, need to put more effort into developing effective relationships that let everyone get what they want; good games, good times, good return. Makes me think of various directors and movie producers and the many different strategies that have been developed for making films. Some work better than others. Some work better with different personalities involved. Bad mixes in how the film is being made tends to make a gakky film. Right now, AAA development tends to be very one note and the games that come out of the process feel good in spite of the hurdles rather than being everything they could be.
Sometimes I wonder if a lot of AAA games are just trying to be too big for their own good maybe. Smaller and more focused projects might be better for everyone. A game with 8-12 hours of play is way to little, but how damn do RPG's need to aim for 120-180 hours of content for 100% completion? AC Odyssey was the first AC game I've played in a decade and it blew me away by how much content was in it. I'm not complaining, but how much crunch did that team endure to get that product out? They could have cut quite a bit and still had a rock solid game. Like what Voss is talking about above, where he got annoyed by empty areas with 'find the shiny bits' content. Lots of games do that, but is it really worthwhile? I know people who aim for 100% completion in their games, but is hunting down various obscure pick ups tucked off in the corner something anyone is really going to miss?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/26 16:34:07
LunarSol wrote: Videogames are like anything else; follow the talent, not the brand. If you want to enjoy comics for any length of time, you can't stick with a character; you have to try out new characters when your favorite author gets tired of writing Batman and moves on to something else. Videogames are no different, and the industry is absolutely loaded with terrible rushed sequels without the spark of their original creator.
I _really_ don't agree. The video game industry is way overloaded with Big Names that ultimately don't mean squat- it ignores the dozens or even hundreds of people on the teams that do the real work. Inevitably when the Big Name has their 'anticipated sequel,' its kind of pants because they aren't working with the same teams anymore, and the juxtaposition of circumstance and talent isn't there to prop up the Name.
In numerous cases, the Big Names also turn out to be really crappy people as well. At this point, my name recognition of the video game industry is seriously more 'people to avoid' than 'people to follow.'
What matters is how a finished product plays, not who is attached to it.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/26 18:39:13
I enjoyed ME Andromeda. Not a perfect game but better than ME3. I enjoyed ME and then ME2 for different reasons. ME3 was meh for reasons besides the ending.
I've moved on from an avid gamer with products on multiple platforms to maybe one game every now and then. I sure as heck don't pre-order anything these days.
One of the big challenges of the industry is just art assets. Animations are probably the biggest gap that separates AAA from the creators. Assassin's Creed is a great example, running off of animation libraries that have been built up over literal decades going at least as far back as Sands of Time.
Important thing to note about "talent" is that by all accounts, Bioware had always had problems with direction when making games, it's just that before this, they always managed to force the staff to crunch to completion. With Andromeda and Anthem, perhaps because they were larger projects, that approach of "we'll fix it in post-production" failed miserably and bared the "bioware magic" for all to see as a horrible management practice.
My faith is in such turmoil this week. Wizards has been absorbed by Hasbro and Magic is in chaos. Something something politics for somewhere else. And now, EA is... deciding that being a helicopter parent maybe isn't the best way to manage their properties?
Does everyone in this universe have mustaches? Cause if this were an evil alternate reality, it would sort of make sense that EA were less incompetent XD
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/27 23:46:55
LordofHats wrote: Wizards has been absorbed by Hasbro and Magic is in chaos.
What's the bad thing here? Because I googled it and this article from the WSJ doesn't seem to be painting a bad picture for WOTC? If anything it seems they'll be overseeing more stuff thanks to how well they performed over the past year.
Eldar- 4436 pts
