I think both ideas can be true: that game development is a complex, creative endeavor and that as a product, consumers can be dissatisfied with a video game they paid $70 for.
Lately, I'm finding myself waiting for sales on AAA games because so many release in a buggy, incomplete state. This paid dividends with games like Jedi Survivor, that had a big number of bugs and performance issues at launch and plays decently now several months later.
Jedi survivor didn’t have a big number of bugs, there were some yes and they were patched almost immediately. Anecdotally, I played it starting week one and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as the average experience.
If you’re going to give an example, how about an actual buggy mess of a launch like cyberpunk, especially since you are also talking about incompleteness. Jedi survivor was an excellent and completed game on launch
Anecdotally, I played cyberpunk starting day 1 and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as the average experience.
Isn’t that like… Literally the point of waiting for a review? Anyone can have a game work flawlessly when others are having massive issues. Some people may want to test that for themselves, but an increasing number just don’t want to deal, and will… Well, use the reviews to make a more informed decision.
If you’re going to give an example, how about an actual buggy mess of a launch like cyberpunk
Anecdotally, I played it starting day one and didn’t experience a single bug, you’re just parroting what you read about and framing it as a bad experience. Cyberpunk 2077 was an excellent and completed game on launch.
Except for gta online and the trilogy remaster, and rdr2 online. Thats only like 10 years out of the infinity of never, so its probably a good percentage, right?
They fail to deliver on PC every time, and there’s no way I’m buying a console just to play it. I’ll probably even wait for a PC sale since I’ll already have to wait for 2+ years for the PC launch because Rockstar wants to double dip.
The thing is that this industry(AAA) runs on poor impuls control and maybe on younger people wo don’t know it any other way.
Why should they(AAA) change? They make profit so there is no incentive.
And If no one would buy that shit on release they would blame the market (“there just isn’t enought people wanting singleplayer expiriences”). Like a child who blames the dog for the fartsmell.
In my opinion it is best to just ignore them(AAA). There are enought devs(AA, A, indie) who deserve my money and, what is more important, NEED the money.
And with those i am more inclined to listen why it couldn’t be the game they promised. NMS for example with their flooded office.
Fair enough, but as far as NMS goes they way over promised what was coming out on release day. They have since really done a good job of cleaning it all up and making a good game, but all they had to do was set realistic expectations rather than the PR nightmare they stirred up.
You can’t argue me into believing the game is fun when it’s just… overall not that fun compared to other Bethesda efforts.
To be clear, it’s far from an outright “bad” game, but I’m still frustrated that I spent $70 on the fucking thing. If you charge that much, it’s completely reasonable for me to have high expectations for your game.
I enjoyed it but I also know that it wasn’t “great”. But I’ll admit that I got it on game pass and I’m a BES nerd, so that probably elevates it more. Had I paid full price my attitude would probably be very different.
And that’s why I never buy on release. Studios have consistently rewarded waiting for months to a year since you’ll pay a lower price for a better product.
The only reasons I’d buy at launch are:
I’m a game reviewer and somehow didn’t get a free copy
I’m a streamer, so that’s the cost of doing business
it’s an MP game and I can’t convince my friends to play something else
I play almost exclusively SP games, I don’t stream, and I am not a reviewer, so it’s in my interest to wait several months for patches and sale prices.
It’s tough to make games, so I cut the Devs a lot of slack. Starfield was definitely too ambitious for the engine they built it on but it’s probably the best it could possibly be… With that engine.
I disagree, I’m pretty sure the same-y dungeons and lack of interesting space traversal (but requirement to engage in it) was a design choice, not an engine limitation. I’m happy to cut them slack on a lot of things, but not game design.
There are great smaller game devs that actually incorporate modders with their contributions into the game with mentioning and a certain amount of the future revenue. This makes mods basically commercial pull requests. Bethesda should be honest and do that too.
Oh I’m pretty sure I know exactly “why it is the way it is”…
It feels like every other Bethesda game ever made, because choosing to continue using the Creation Engine means you can only make games that feel this way.
Seems to me more like they repeated all their old mistakes and made new ones. The engine might've slowed development (and gave some influences/limits etc) but design direction seems to be the issue. Being on-par with their older games would be a step up, it's like they missed the point of why people liked their worlds.
I mean, at this point i don't really know why people like their games either. I loved New Vegas but never bothered after. I bought skyrim at some point and i understood why people like that game. When fallout 4 launched i was sick at home and bought it because i had nothing to do. I rebooted the game like three times because i thought i accidentally bought some asset flip scam. No the game actually looks that shit and is a horrible buggy mess. Idk if people really enjoy collecting trash for hours just to not being able to sell it, or if these games have something that i don't see.
For me the main draw was always being able to freely explore their beautiful handmade worlds, be it Tamriel or a post-nuclear US. You always knew you’d find something interesting around the next corner. I’d be happy with this being just Fallout in space too but it seems Starfield is mostly procedurally generated and you can’t even drive any vehicles so in that front they lost most of my interest.
For me, its the way they used procedural generation. Like its literally the same exact points of interests on every planet.
I remember going to a planet full of high level fauna and discovering a cave where you find a dead pirate that says these things are everywhere ahhhh. I thought it was cool. Next planet I went to had no fauna, and sure enough that same cave and dead pirate was in there saying the same thing with absolutely no fauna or enemy NPCs in there.
Its like they made 20 unique assets for the procedural generation tool to pick from. This is the exact laziness I found and drove me away from ESO. Just the same experience, with maybe a different faction here and there but the same points of interest over and over.
Other than that, I liked it. Basically skyrim in space. But very empty and they forced you complete like a 2 -3 hour mission before stuff opened up to you. And another 20 or so hours before a mission locked skillset is introduced. Huge waste of time IMO.
Its an alright game if you have a lot of time to kill.
I feel like that’s not even procedural generation at that point it’s just copy and pasting with a fancy name… by definition procedural generation should, you know, generate new stuff not just reuse the same couple things haha
My biggest complaint is how they absolutely murdered the modding scene for the sake of greed… They wanted their cut of a thing they had NO input in so they forced their way in to have input and in the process ruined modding for those that were good at it…
Seeing how amazing Skyrim was with mods gave me so much hope for what this game could become and now I’m just sickened by what they did… So much potential gone. Now you’ll have to pick between what 4 mods you want as you’ll have to spend $5+ for each one… Yeah I’m not spending $100+ just to make your game fun for you while also paying you…
It’s the changes they made to the way you mod in order to sell mods that screwed with how modding works supposedly. Apparently a few of the good modders have already said “fuck this garbage” and bailed. That coupled with starfields flop leaves less people interested in fighting the system to get mods to work anyway :(
I know people really like Todd for some reason, but i find it rather sad that they spend all this time and money and manpower to build his "dream game" since he was a child and that's the end result. Todd foe the live of god, maybe you should dream bigger
I only “like” Todd because of how easy it is to meme him and his bullshit. Now that Microsoft owns Bethesda, they should change the BSOD to a photo of him saying “It just works”
He was slightly less irritatingly smarmy back when. Myself, I at least took his Skyrim hype with slightly less skepticism than "lol, yeah, pull the other one" before it came out.
I just finished xenosaga episode 1 and it was way better executed than starfield. Starfield felt like chores while Xenosaga managed that I tuned in completely.
Kind of sick of devs being such cunts and denying the criticism so publically.
Starfield might not be objectively shit, but there is heaps of fair criticism. I fucking hated it for what it’s worth. Probably worst game I’ve played in 3-5 years.
Kind of sick of devs being such cunts and denying the criticism so publically.
Well this was going to be their next big cash cow game that they keep re-releasing for 10 years, and they find it hard to accept that it's not working out.
Orrrrr “sorry guys but you wrote a dog of a game so we’re letting you all go” since that seems to be in vogue these days.
Maybe some enterprising souls in the mod community will release an overhaul at some point, but that point will unfortunately not be soon, given the work it would entail.
If anyone thinks they won’t, then they haven’t been paying attention since fallout 4’s release. Then fallout 76’s release. And now this. No way elder scrolls doesn’t shit the bed in 20 years, or whenever it’s coming out.
To this very day 76 runs like absolute dog shit. They just released a paid DLC (on top of all the MTX bullshit) and yet shooting enemies is still broken and takes literal seconds in some cases to register, enemies still teleport around, and there’s no real direction or incentives to explore anything. One of the worst games I’ve ever tried to play and every time I give it another chance, nothing has improved for the better.
I’m gonna try and save you time and money. Just wait for modders to make that game in Skyrim. I’m fairly sure Beyond Skyrim: Elsweyr isn’t as far along as some of the others, but you’ll have other major mods to play in the meanwhile.
Remakes are nice but what about new Star Wars games? First person shooters, soulslike, roguelike, realtime strategy, 4X, flightsim, survival, city builders. A new Battlefront not by Dice/EA.
I love Star Wars for its stories, but I don’t think a SW reskin is that interesting. There are a few places where I could see it maybe working because the SW setting could justify additional gameplay elements (city - > star system builders with a heavy automation and trade components, sekiro-like).
Instead we need SW games that tell their own stories well in a modern format. That does not mean a KOTOR remake. The bioware format had its time, but a remake in the same style is going to feel dated by the time it comes out.
For some reason I don’t trust new Star Wars products to be good anymore with how much the tv/movies were a let down the longer it ran. And everything is afraid to not tie into the original trilogy.
So it’s one of those cases where I would prefer a remake.
I’ve found that I tend to agree, and I’ve only come to this conclusion relatively recently.
And looking back, with hindsight (and I’ll probably get downvoted for it), even the original trilogy wasn’t that great when you take off the nostalgia goggles.
Disney: Yes there is a lot of demand for this game but the reality is it was made in a different era in gaming. There’s just no way for us to turn this into a live service or aggressively monetise it through microtransactions or battlepasses so our hands are tied.
Also Disney: Sorry, money-cows fans, but we do not understand what is this “quality” thing you speak of. Our panel of highly skilled market analysts fail to identify any correlation between it and higher profits, so we ignore it.
There’s just no way for us to turn this into a live service or aggressively monetise it through microtransactions or battlepasses so our hands are tied.
The irony is that they already have a game that allows for all that predatory shit, The Old Republic MMORPG.
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