The company that introduced horse armor is charging horrendous prices for small DLC?
I mean considering that single skins cost 20 in Overwatch or Dead by Daylight, 7 for an actual mission is almost generous.
Fuck gaming is fucked…
Eh, skill up had a great take on this. The thing is it’s wayyyyy easier to be a small indie developer than it ever was before. Making a game (or any art) still isn’t easy, it never was and never will be, but it’s viable without a giant publisher in a way it just hasn’t been before.
Its the AA titles that are on the most precarious footing, but I bet even those do ok. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy some AAA stuff time to time, I’ve got a stupid amount of hours in overwatch, but I’ve never once paid for a skin because… why would you?
The thing that’s going to suck is losing the studios like Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect but they were freaking cool, and they basically always got the raw end of the deal. Even Prey(2016), their masterpiece, is the product of corporate bullshitiery they had nothing to do with. So we’re probably going to miss studios like that for a while (as they get re-tasked to fortnite/cod support teams) but “indie” stuff has already been stepping up to fill that void, and is less indie all the time.
Look at Dave the Diver. That’s not exactly an indie studio. They had resources. There’s going to be a gap for a bit, but there’s still a demand for good games and art. Those AA breakthroughs are what people want. Again, I continue to spend dumb amounts of time on overwatch, but it’s not where I spend my money. Microsoft hovelled themselves by buying all these studios and not taking the leap with supporting them. Distribution just doesn’t have the value it once did. So if microsoft wants to become CandyCrush, feeding an addiction loop to grab the whales, sure, whatever, but there’s plenty of bread out there for studios doing other stuff.
The one and only point that I disagree with you on is your take on mtx. They may not affect you, but everything about them is designed to be psychologically exploitative, and the wealthy whale is largely a myth. The vast majority of money from mtx is made from people with addiction issues and other mental health issues or atypical neurology, like people with depression or ADHD.
Microsoft bought up all those studios and didn’t support them, but that’s business as usual for Microsoft, and the money that they’ll make from mtx like this will more than make up for it. I recently watched a former Blizzard dev who was talking about how a single $15 mount for WoW made more money than StarCraft 2 did.
The big issue I see is that most people largely don’t know about anything beyond the big AAA releases, and as we’ve already established, that’s an exploitative wasteland nowadays. There’s plenty of demand for good games and there always will be, but while the indie scene is the best that’s it’s ever been, the majority of indie companies go under after their first game. It’s still hard out there for them, too. There’s just enough of them popping up and putting out truly great games that they can actually compete with the AAA space.
It was Thor from pirate software on Twitch talking about the mtx beating SC2 for folks who care great guy to watch if you want to chill and hear some good life advise.
That’s the one. He’s got it as a clip on the YouTube channel, and that got served to me by the almighty algorithm.
oh yeah, I didn’t want to be dismissive of the mtx stuff. It’s absolutely predatory and awful, but I don’t think it fully stands in the way of developing good games.
Which is related to what you’re saying about indies going under even after success. Game development takes time, and you need money to underwrite that time. I just think there’s going to be a split; right now AAA studios are shitifying their games, turning them more into CandyCrush skinner boxes. But the demand for good games hasn’t gone away, there’s just less financial upside than making CandyCrush. My point is, even though it’s less money, there’s still a good amount of money to be had there. Eventually the gaps going to be filled. Microsoft cant fill it because on the balance sheet, things like COD and anything from King are where they should be focused. And it sucks right now because they sucked up a stupid amount of talent and thanos snapped them, but thats not a sustainable practice.
But yes, it’s going to be painful. It’ll suck seeing really nifty indie stuff have to struggle so hard. Like I said I’m also going to miss the polish that comes with AA stuff. I’m going to miss the hell out of Arkane. Their games weren’t perfect, but they had so much soul. They didn’t deserve to have Redfall be their epitaph.
It’s fucked because there are people buying that shit, in numbers that turn a profit over the cost of developing it. And it’s a very low cost because the skin support is something they put in when they make the game, and then get an intern to shit out a gaudy skin.
If you don’t like it you’re obviously not the target demographic anymore. It’s mobile gaming tactics creeping their way on PC.
I kind of feel like anyone who spends $20 on a video game skin shouldn’t be allowed to make any financial decisions for themselves. Like, it was a test and you failed.
Except that shit is designed by literal psychologists to prey upon people with poor fiscal responsibility, like people with ADHD, depression, addiction issues, and kids.
It’s like blaming people for smoking cigarettes after they got addicted from secondhand smoking.
Also remember they were purchased by Microsoft. Who in turn also just purchased Activision/blizzard
Also remember Horse Armor DLC for Oblivion, released by Bethesda? Considered by many to be the catalyst of this kind of BS.
Horse armor that didnt even give the horses armor. It just gave them a cosmetic appearance change and increased their health by like 3 times.
Seven dollars to loading screen to your ship, watch an animation of your character sitting down, loading screen to space, loading screen to the system it’s in, Dodge some pirates, loading screen to the surface, hop along the completely barren landscape to go to a copy pasted outpost, loading screen back to your ship?
I feel like you could get all of the value of that dlc by just playing a mission over again.
This…this right here is the reason I quit playing this game, the reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It was just too fucking disjointed, you are so right.
I didn’t make it very far in to the game, I’d held on to my game pass subscription just waiting for it to come out, and cancelled my game pass after a few hours in Starfield. I made it to like the first big city a few small settlements after that, and everything felt so fucking lifeless. NPCs just didn’t seem to belong in the space they inhabited. Oblivion and Skyrim NPCs really seemed like they owned the space they inhabited. Fallout 4 even once you got your settlements going really felt like they were home. The constant loading screens just made everything feel like it’s own little universe, apart from the rest of the game. I did have fun raiding some base around the moon, one of the few times I had fun exploring. One of the few times I had fun, honestly.
The most fun I had in Starfield was probably a zero-G fight at one point, can’t remember if it was the main storyline or not. But I got as far as the final main quest line fight, after which New Game+ would become available. I realized before going into it that…I just didn’t care. And I am not one to experience the sunken cost fallacy. So I just logged out, canceled Xbox PC Game Pass, and did something else.
I haven’t played this so take my 2 cents with a pinch of mixed metaphor.
My assumption for this game was that DLC would be new copy pasted outposts, weapons, etc. That’s the way a lot of procedural games go. It’s not bad really, you take a good core game and pump it full of new set pieces and toys til hell freezes over.
Players could like stop paying for it… such an easy, low cost solution…
That is my current solution. Currently enjoying Factorio, which had the perfect monetization scheme: you buy the game and enjoy it.
Not to mention, it is entirely possible to get home from work, play, and then realize you are now late for work.
Its just engaging on a level that most modern game’s can’t hope to achieve.
Hell, I’ve installed a game (old), then installed mods, then resolved all the mod issues, then launch it to realize I don’t actually want to play it.
Factorio? Mods are easy, and vanilla is enough to keep someone occupied and happy if they lack internet or something.
Its light weight too, it costs me virtually nothing to install it on anything that can run it.
Factorio also interestingly, never goes on sale, Wube said that the value of the game is what it is and that’s that.
This only works because it’s like $30. If this was a $60-70 game, I don’t think it goes over well with the public. Nintendo is the only one that seems to get away with that
I think that’s exactly the point though. “We didn’t mark it up to mark it down, the price is just the price”. As a chronic patient gamer part of me hates that (I love finding older classics for like $10) but I don’t mind shelling out for a good game. The biggest expense is my time, and if a bunch of years later the price hasn’t moved it’s probably worth my time.
$35, actually.
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Damn, R.I.P.
I got starfield for free with my video card, and I still feel ripped off and wish I could refund lol.
But yeah, I’m not dropping a single goddamn penny on Starfield. It feels like a game that was made for the xbox 360 or something, with all the loading screens and shit.
You get baited into accepting the quest and playing the first mission. Then you have to pay to continue.
WTF! That shit shouldn’t be legal.
I wouldn’t even play it if they paid me $7,-
That’s my route. Mods run on pirate skyrim just as well as legal and the best missions in Bethesda games aren’t made by Bethesda.
Yeah a lot of these entertainment companies forget that they need to earn my business with high quality product AND services, otherwise I will take matters into my own hands.
This aint like housing and work, where they can just fuck you as if they are your prison guards. We got options baby!
or worst case wait for the legendary version in a couple years with bug fixes and all dlc included.
Fallout 5 is going to suck
Fallout 4 sucked, too.
Its a fun shooter game, but its not a fallout. Throwing supermutants into a game doesnt make it a Fallout. Especially with how they fucked SPECIAL.
Fallout TV is probably the last decent product from Bethesda, and I’d wager thats only cause Bethesda isnt in charge of writing.
Fallout 4 is like 4 different games crammed into a trench coat.
- high emotion story game. Go rescue your child!
- high action shooter. Boom! Headshot!
- stats driven RPG. That naked bandit is level 40 so you can’t kill him even if you shotgun his face
- settlement management game. Build and decorate a little town! Set up trade routes!
All of these are kind of badly done, and mashing them all together didn’t make something greater than the parts.
And the only aspect thats any good is the shooter part. Cause it is a fun shooter. Especially at higher levels with more exotic weapons.
But the story is shit
The RPG Elements… the SPECIAL/Stats were shit on and ruined to enable some vague idea of nearly infinite growth within an uncapped level system.
and the settlement building is somehow worse than how a New Vegas mod managed to do it.
The perk system was fine imo, but the fact that attributes (except for charisma) did not influence dialogue at all was extremely disappointing.
Roleplay opportunities were traded in for a better gunplay experience. It became an FPS, not an RPG.
Look the perk system was bad but it’s wasn’t Fallout New Vegas bad. It was okay for a Fallout game but they probably should’ve done level ups by doing each 5 levels gives you 2 SPECIAL points to spend rather than spending normal points on the core stats.
Eh, I liked it better than 3.
talk about damning with faint praise…
I had fun with both. Fallout 4’s flaws are still there, but if you’re going to make a punching bag out of one of them, 4 is a better game than 3, IMO.
Better than 3 maybe, but doesn’t even hold a candle to New Vegas. Hell, id argue 3 with NV’s engine is leagues better.
No ones disagreeing with that.
Fallout 3 was all around an inferior game. Not just an inferior fallout, but an inferior game, compared to 4.
Mostly cause Fallout 3 was a disjointed mess.
But just because Fallout 4 is better by comparison, Doesnt mean fallout 4 is good.
I hate beets. But give me the choice between a bowl of shit and a bowl of beets, and put a gun to my head? I’ll eat the beets gladly and happily. Doesnt mean I love them.
Neither is shit. 4 is way better. 1, 2, and New Vegas are better still. But 3 doesn’t tend to come up in these conversations when people talk about Bethesda Fallouts being worse. They always go to 4, and that surprises me.
because Fallout 3 is at least fallout-ish.
4 is just a shooter game with Vault Tec and Super mutants thrown into it.
As an RPG player, people kept saying I should play Fallout, but I never have because it always looked more like a shooter than an RPG, and I want to play an actual RPG, not a shooter with RPG elements (especially because I despise shooters).
Play 1 and 2 if you dont mind isometric, cause they are a definitive roleplay experience.
and New Vegas if you gotta have that 3d.
Then play Fallout 1, 2, and New Vegas.
In all the previous shooter Fallouts, you can basically use VATS to never have to aim yourself if that’s what you want to do (or melee build!), it’s like an auto-aimer. You won’t miss that much and maybe that way you can enjoy the universe.
I hate modern gaming. Opinions aren’t allowed to be held. I don’t like this thing so ITS THE WORST OF THAT THING
I hate having discussions. Opinions aren’t allowed to be held because theres always some entitled ass that has to come in and misrepresent what everyones saying so they can fulfill their personal fantasy of being offended and attacked.
Once you take high school English your teacher will tell you not to write “in my opinion” in front of everything you write because it is unnecessary. Of course it is your option, you said it.
Someone with basic logic can extrapolate from that that if someone says something like “Fallout 4 is bad” that is clearly someone presenting an opinion and not an objective truth.
Only if you don’t buy the Season 1 Vault-Tec Access Pass for $49.99. Imagine not doing that and then not ever being able to get your Overpowered Armor at pass level 5. You would absolutely be ruining it for yourself by not investing into the seasonal passes.
🏴☠️
Crypto would at least offer a non-zero chance of ROI.
But it’ll actually cost players $10 because they must purchase 1,000 Starfield creation credits to afford it.
At first, I read this as if you needed to ingest a verification can before you’re allowed to make a purchase. But alas, it is the usual shit where you have to buy their fake money.
I thought that credit shit died after the 7th gen and its wii/xbox points.
That it still exists, only for a single game baffles me.
That shit is never going away, and for one simple reason: it’s incredibly profitable. By converting real money into some nebulous fun bucks that doesn’t directly correlate in value, they obfuscate how much money you’re actually spending and make it more likely that you’ll spend more than you intend to. The same reason that casinos have no windows and pump extra oxygen into the air so you feel less tired, all so you don’t realize how long you’ve been in there.
Sure it’s profitable, but it’s also (correctly) seen as a manipulative, and some companies have stopped using those.
As I said Nintendo and Xbox store used to do that, but they transitioned to prices in real money quite some time ago, and if they got a wallet, they let you fill it with the exact amount of what you’re buying. Same with PS store, most PC game stores, even freaking playdate catalogue and itch.io where the average payment must be like $3.
I expect that from shitty mobile games, because I know mobile gaming monetization is fucked forever, but I didn’t know major publishers still used that garbage unemptiable wallet strategy.
yep. Never underestimate how stupid the average gamer is.
Then realize half of them are even dumber than that.
Which is why gaming is in the state it is right now, cause a bunch of drooling mouth breathers keep throwing their wallets at problems because god forbid they do without or make a single sacrifice.
Except it’s even worse than that. Because these companies hired psychologists to tell them exactly how to tweak the levers in people’s brains to get them to pay.
So you have the stupid people, but also the people whose brains are naturally wired to be played like a fiddle by these companies, and then on top of that, you have the new generation of gamers who have simply never known a world where you didn’t pay for skins.
But it’s okay, “because it’s just cosmetics.”
Except it’s even worse than that. Because these companies hired psychologists to tell them exactly how to tweak the levers in people’s brains to get them to pay.
Which is where the whole concept of using real money, to buy fake money (and never in the exact amounts that they charge for items), so you obfuscate the actual cost, especially once people start carrying a balance of fake money due to never being able to get the exact amount of fake money for the item came from.
Not only that, but if the mission costs $7 but you can only buy in increments of $10, that’s $3 free money.
Try going to a casino where you put a $5 in a slot machine and get 12,350 credits.
Probably exactly where they got the idea from.
Like Dave and Buster’s play cards and games that cost 7.8 credits (at least right now, higher weekend evenings because of dynamic pricing) and needing to get out a fucking calculator to do the conversion from dollars to points to figure out you are spending $3.72 or whatever to play a single shitty game.
Still a thing on PC with Uplay and Origin stores sadly.
Wow. What a load of crap indeed.
Shark cards, Robux, that Fortnite currency and many more.
Only for a single game? That shit is in almost every multiplayer game I play nowadays. Valorant, Apex Legends, Dead by Daylight…
Pretty sure he meant that each type of credit only works for one game and yes, it’s real dumb.
Ah, you’re right! I failed to grab that context.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
We’ve known what Bethesda is for years.
It began with horse armour…
Removed by mod
There’s people playing Strarfield to get upset in the first place?
How does that horrible game even have players?
I’m sure a rational response is just going to get downvoted to oblivion, but it’s actually a fun game. Not my favorite from Bethesda, but I definitely enjoyed the 1k hours I put into it last year, and I look forward to dipping back in once the DLC drops and there are more mods (not paid creations) available.
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Well no downvotes from me, that’s a valid opinion.
You’re the actual proof that unpopular opinion does not result in downvotes to oblivion.
From now on : « remember that guy who said he LIKED Starfield… »
What do you do for 1k hours in Starfield?
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You nailed it. The ship-building, especially with the early mods that allowed more part rotation and clipping, REALLY sucked me in. I am excited to check out the enhancements BGS added to that system when I next play.
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There was a mod that allowed you to (mostly) control door placement, but I’m not sure if it’s even still needed.
Base building, charting planets, roleplaying, bounty hunting, going to NG+, making different decisions in questlines, and more.
The game is actually pretty good.
It’s free on gamepass
Tribalism is surprisingly rampant in gaming, especially when a developer picks a side/is acquired by the creator of “their” console.
Starfield has a lot of good aspects, but also some bone-headed gameplay and content decisions. I had a lot of fun with it for a few weeks and will come back to it if/when it gets to a better state.
Sunk cost, they pre-ordered it, and they are darn well going to play it, even if they don’t enjoy doing so.
Don’t pull the video games especially when they’re digitally distributed. It’s not like they can run out.
Or they actually enjoy it. Just because you and others don’t doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t. I didn’t pay anything for it and thoroughly enjoyed it, and will do so more when the DLC comes out. As with anything there are valid points of criticism but so much of the hate for it is fully because of people’s idiocy and not anything else, I’ve never before seen so much deeply stupid criticism for something.
I have no problem with people liking it. But I know for a fact that a lot of people really are just obsessed with it because they got bamboozled into pre-ordering, because Bethesda, and they don’t want to admit they made a mistake.
People want to believe their lie.
Who cares? The community will have player made expansions in a year that will likely be free and of higher quality.
Regardless, BGS is a shell of its former self. Whenever I see people clamoring for TES 6 I just scratch my head and ask why?
Starfield was the final straw for me, I will never get excited for another Bethesda game again. They’ve shown that they refuse to truly shake up their game design. When people asked if Starfield would have the same magic as FO3 or older TES games, they said, “it’ll have the same DNA.” I assumed that meant it’d have fun exploration and interesting quests. While it has some decent quests, the exploration is utterly tedious and just unfun. I truly wish they’d had just focused on fleshing out 2 or 3 planets in one solar system, maybe some instanced, hand-crafted dungeons/whatever outside of it. I have zero interest in exploring proc gen worlds, it’s not that fun in No Man’s Sky and it’s not fun here. At least with NMS, it’s all relatively seamless.
For myself and many people Skyrim is the best game they’ve ever played. It was the first fantasy game I played since Runescape to have multiple cities spread out through an open world, with long narrative multi stage quests involving a number of locations and NPCs. Both games also have a leveling sytem based around you get better at what you use ie “skilling”.
I want “TES 6” in that I want another game that hits those marks, but I no longer trust Bethesda to make it.
Edit: note I know a lot of people dislike skyrim and think calling it a great game is absurd, and I get the criticism but I love the game anyway
To me that was oblivion, when I got skyrim I just felt burnt out because it felt so similar but at the same time missing some of the stuff I liked like the custom spells etc, then fallout 4 came out and I sort of shelved it but once I got into it I spent soo many hours on it. Maybe it’s like cod now where if you skip a few years it’s fun again but not every single game because they just aren’t that different
I had a similar feeling after Morrowind playing Oblivion. Morrowind is the one game I wish they’d remake/fan mood to he playable on modern systems.
So much nostalgia…
FO4 is why I waited and ultimately didn’t buy starfield. I LOVED elderscrolls, and FO:NV is like my alltime favorite. I didn’t hate FO4, there’s some fun to be had, but you can see pretty clearly from it where FO:76 came from. From what I’ve seen and read, I’m not missing anything with starfield.
NMS is tough. They did an amazing job trying to salvage it, but it will always be a game that was never meant to be that big. It’s not bad but at somepoint in the loop you just go “wtf am I doing?”. I give that team all the credit in the world, but that game never belonged where it is.
New Vegas is notable for not being a Bethesda game per se. It uses something very close to the Fallout 3 engine, but the actual content has little to do with Bethesda. They did publish it, though.
Oh I’m well aware lol. The game is a godamn miracle. But thats the thing, Bethesda has been on this trajectory for a good lonnnnnng while. Like the whole “obsidian good bethesda bad” thing isn’t quite right, but what is true is Bethesda has been incredibly strategic about shittifying their games: there’s always just enough there to keep you going “ok… one more”.
Starfield is the first one I just didn’t even bother with.
The same DNA meant they used the same engine and not much else.
They’re selling a single quest as dlc? I mean if you going to do dlc then at least make a full expansion.
Why waste time with lots of quest when few quest do trick
Right?
Bethesda just released an expansion for fallout 76. It’s a game that I’m fairly fond of, considering the amount of dislike I have for fallout 4, it improved on it in every way from the worldbuilding to building to the story, I could go on, point is, I like it.
The new expansion, the first map expansion and like 20 major updates in.
The new map is quite a large region. You’d expect a few side quests to unlock these other locations. Maybe some hidden gems. Maybe some cool NPCs outside of the main “expansion” right?
Its literally: A main quest that’s short (beat it in like 3 hours on the first day it dropped)
A single side quest that’s more of an optional objective on the main quest
A single new event
A single new boss.
Four things they added. Two of which can only be done once (bad formula for a game designed around repeating similar tasks)
They’ve just straight up gotten bad. There’s no love in their products anymore. It’s all taking the easiest way out, lacking any amount of real creativity.
I just want them to migrate from their shitty proprietary engine, buckle down on a good story and prioritizing fun.
This is not a new thing, even back in 2012 the much-beloved borderlands 2 got five new missions which cost $2 each.
The thing with those is that, while it was a small amount of content, it wasn’t just a mission, each was about an hour of repeatable content that was fairly fun to farm. At $2, they actually still felt worth it with as much fun as B2 was. If they had asked for like $10 each, people would have flipped out.
I’m not a Starfield player, but I would bet this is not even close to as good of a value proposition.
Pretty sure it’s more of a pricing issue.
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I swear gamers have the memory of a gnat
It’s more a “sucker born every minute” thing.
You have to understand.
The overwhelming bulk of gamers just don’t care
Nothing will stand in the way of getting their current precious. Not even their own complaints and bitching.
They’ll sit there and complain about how a company is evil, its practices exploitative, and how everyone should avoid buying from them so they can die in the fires of Bankruptcy.
Then the second the next game/expansion/DLC/Whatever is announced, they are immediately in line to preorder the ultra deluxe mega fuck you 500 dollar package. because it comes with a unique mount and a special armor skin, and they just cant miss those things! they’re rare! and they’ll never be able to get them otherwise! /s
And then they’ll go into the obfuscated-cash-shop and spend another 700 dollars on digital bullshit.
Then, when they are all done, the overwhelming majority of them will come back to the internet, and cry and whinge and moan about how a company is evil, its practices exploitative, and how everyone should avoid buying from them so they can finally die in the fires of bankruptcy.
Cause the majority of gamers are brain damaged fucktards who, at the end of the day, just love throwing their wallet at things.
I mean this is kind of true of all people everywhere. The marshmallow test has flaws but I think it’s still revealing. A lot of people are really bad at self control and delayed gratification.
This is what happens everywhere: they’ll just keep chancing it until such a time as it’s acceptable.
Don’t know. Don’t play a whole lot of Bethesda games. Didn’t play Oblivion. New gamers join the ranks every day. Not everyone has been gaming since the 80’s.
Well most modern gamers are probably like 14 years old and probably never even played Skyrim. So I’m not surprised young kids are buying this creation kit garbage with Mommy’s credit card.
Why are we surprised? They were the ones who pioneered the DLC microtrans model. I would legitimately have been more surprised if this headline were the converse statement.
Hehe microtrans. That’s me
$500 for a Krabby Patty?
With cheese Mr. Squidward, with cheese.
