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’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.
Also remember they were purchased by Microsoft. Who in turn also just purchased Activision/blizzard
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
You get baited into accepting the quest and playing the first mission. Then you have to pay to continue.
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!
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.
Fallout 3’s world doesn’t feel like Fallout but the tone of the writing comes close.
Fallout 4’s tone and writing doesn’t feel like Fallout, but the world does.
New Vegas is the only 3D Fallout game that feels like Fallout in both the world and the writing.
I can almost guarantee that unless Josh Sawyer and the other original talent that made 1, 2, and tactics that also worked on New Vegas are working on it, it will never feel like a true Fallout game.
I would love for Obsidian to get another crack at Fallout, but I don’t think they are the only ones capable of making a good fallout game (though they would undoubtly be the best).
It just takes passion for the property, and a vested interest in the world. Something Bethesda is clearly lacking. Bethesda seems to be in the phase of “throw darts at a bunch of sticky notes on the wall” of trying to figure out how to make a game, and it just leads to a disjointed experience.
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.
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).
I hate modern gaming. Opinions aren’t allowed to be held. I don’t like this thing so ITS THE WORST OF THAT THING
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.
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.
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.
Try going to a casino where you put a $5 in a slot machine and get 12,350 credits.
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.
