when you grow old, you start to hate every new change :)
I hate what video games have become
551–560 of 690 posts
Re: I hate what video games have become
#552On the other side, I'd pay an extra to buy a fully unlocked Gran Turismo because I don't want to spend time to get driving license again for the nth time, money for the nth time, tracks, cars, etc. It's a total waste of time. Let me drive and that's it. So I didn't buy any of the most recent versions of the franchise. A loss for sellers, I can play with what I already have.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#553Over the last few years I have gotten hundred of hours of enjoyment from games like League of Legends, Valorant and Halo Infinite and couldn't even tell you how to spend money on those games if I wanted to. I honestly doubt I would have ever picked up any of those games if they were not free and I'm guessing since many other would say the same thing the lobbies would be empty and the games would die. In those case th…
My experience lines up with yours, as a looong time Halo veteran who is a bit bummed with the state of Infinite, I'm happy to not pay a cent, despite spending thousands on Halo over the years. I've also spent a decent amount of the previous year playing Valorant, and I almost feel bad that I've paid nothing for it, but the the problem is that apparently the economists Riot employs have figured the sweet spot for sell…
I completely agree! I feel that way about Hearthstone Battlegrounds cosmetics. I've been playing a lot and thought I might buy a skin pack or two to vary the experience up a bit, but all of the packs were more than $20 a piece! I was totally down for like $5-15, but once you hit $20, it's a like a switch flips in my brain to not worth it...
Re: I hate what video games have become
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of pay-to-win games, but LoL is not one of them. LoL has cosmetics, and pay-to-progress, but there's nothing you can buy that will give you an advantage in-game over people who play for free. Unlocking new characters with RMT is not pay-to-win, because all the characters are obtainable for free without requiring unreasonable effort. You're not forced to get them from random lootboxes like Gacha games…
You and I clearly have a different definition of pay to win. If I start the game on a new account, and don't have access to the same champions as my enemy from game 1 unless I spend money, then the game is pay to win. Period. The fact that I could pay money, in that moment, to win, means the game is pay to win. Edit: Further, here is an article[1] breaking down how long it would take to unlock all champions without p…
I would heavily disagree. LoL now practically throws champions and skins at you now with some of their currency systems. I think the other thing is that you don't need all the champions unlocked to be good. You would probably do better by choosing a set couple of champs and getting good at those. Yes, meta's change, but that is on top of good mechanics. LoL is a lot of things, but I would strongly argue against pay to win.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#555A few years ago, Nintendo made a wonderful game called Super Mario Run. It was simple - Mario automatically runs and you tap to jump - but surprisingly deep. The timing of the jumps and the height of jump was paramount, and there was a ton of replayability in trying to get out-of-reach coins and finding shortcuts. It also captured the aesthetic of the Mario World games with modern graphics. I was VERY skeptical of a…
This story makes me sad. What a sorry state we've let the mobile (phone) gaming market become purely because of ads.
It's not popular to say, but maximizing accessibility (by minimizing up-front cost, in this case) has downsides: mechanics and business models end up needing to be shoehorned into the dominant economic model.
Touch controls and IAP impose serious constraints on the mobile game market still. There are some gems, but it seems like the golden age of gaming is occurring outside of mobile games.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#556I don't agree.
The industry has begun splintering in the same manner as Hollywood. Disney releases popcorn-entertainment and makes money off merchandise. Indie studios are creating quality movies of a tier that we never used to see before. Lastly, have some quirky bigwigs (wes anderson, Edgar Wright) who reliably create highly-stylized memorable if familiar works.
Epic, EA and Ubisoft are the Disney equivalents. Nintendo, CDPR, Naughty Dog, Kojima, From Software are your quirky stylized studios. Then you have indie studios making games like Hades, CupHead and Hollow Knight that provide excellent & complete experiences at the fraction of the investment. You get to pick which one you want.
Microtransactions are mostly restricted to the big studios. Restricting core gameplay aspects via microtransactions or Pay-2-win setups are pretty scummy. But, MMORPGS had those problems in the late 90s. So, it isn't new by any means. In cases where smaller games have microtransactions, they tend to be limited and exclusively cosmetic. The fact that I have played hundreds of hours of Rocket league and Dota without spending a single dollar, is a testament to how secondary the cosmetics are to the core gameplay loop.
I actually wonder if systems built to exploit whales are unethical. In some sense, the poor get to enjoy polished games because the rich are willing to pay an exponentially greater sum to look pretty in game. I don't think that's entirely bad.
Now, I do dislike 'loot boxes' with a passion. They play with our 'monkey brain', forcing us to buy more before our consciousness is able to intervene. Younger kids are even more susceptible and it serves as a gateway into gambling addictions. This part of dota and rocket league is reprehensible.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#557As a (non game) developer, I can say, thay free to play is instantly dead on arrival for me. The moment something is known to become or becomes free to play is the moment I lose all interest. The dishonesty in the system itself is what makes this unbearable for me. Developers need to eat, Managers need to eat, Marketeers need to eat... And sometimes psychologists doing evil mindtricks and supporting gambling addictio…
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Re: I hate what video games have become
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience lines up with yours, as a looong time Halo veteran who is a bit bummed with the state of Infinite, I'm happy to not pay a cent, despite spending thousands on Halo over the years. I've also spent a decent amount of the previous year playing Valorant, and I almost feel bad that I've paid nothing for it, but the the problem is that apparently the economists Riot employs have figured the sweet spot for sell…
> despite spending thousands on Halo over the years But how could you have spent thousands? Original Halos don’t have micro transactions.
Slightly disingenuous to say I spent thousands on Halo specifically, but I used to run LANs/tournaments, so at one point or another I've owned multiple copies of every installation in the series, bought multiple of the same consoles for the sole purpose of those events, combined with controllers, etc.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#559Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of people naively think of moves like this as pure money grabs and don’t appreciate that a lot of these moves are out of survival…especially for games like Rocket League that require a sufficient player base to even be a viable live service game.
Well, Rocket League doesn't need to be a "viable live service game", it could just be a regular multiplayer game that gives you a client and server executable to run your own. It isn't like not being a live service game killed Quake 3, for example.
I have 2600 hours in Rocket League. It's a fair bit for a "casual" player, but it's got nothing on pros (who are mostly up over 15k hours these days). I have some friends I play fairly regularly with, but we don't usually play against each other we play with each other.
The main reason I still play is to continue improving, and I don't think I could ever do that effectively if I was limited to only playing against people in my local sphere. My rank typically puts me somewhere in the top 1% of players (and honestly, I'm not even that good. The skill ceiling is insanely high), online match making may be frustrating sometimes but it's the easiest way to find opponents who will push those boundaries.
Would a hosted server work well for people who are much lower ranks who are primarily playing to just mess around with friends? Probably. I would quit tomorrow if online matchmaking went away though.
Re: I hate what video games have become
#560I’m glad there is this whole parallel universe of amazing single player (or MP-optional) games with absolutely no dark patterns, loot boxes or any of the shit people who play MP games have to put up with. I buy a game, and unless I get the DLC(s)/Expanions pack(s), that’s all I’ll ever have to pay. Civilization V: Over 2000 hours. Pathfinder: Kingmaker/Wrath of the righteous: Over 1000 hours each. Stellaris [0]: Almo…
Paradox DLC policy is problematic I feel: they gate some of the visual flair and more troublingly some of the soundtrack behind payed DLC. How would it be if a movie charged you extra for listening to its score? Also the large number of DLC makes it difficult to determine what set I may have do give a canonical experience or if it is even viable gameplay wise.
> and more troublingly some of the soundtrack behind payed DLC. How would it be if a movie charged you extra for listening to its score?
Why is it problematic that they include extra music in expansions? They're not leaving out an essential part of the game you bought, just adding more of it when you buy DLC. The base game soundtrack is so good that there are times I just pause the game and listen to the music.