• The Sixty Dollar Myth (The Jimquisition)
    80 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;52763366] These are the DLCs. Many of them contain extremely important features for gameplay. Want to play as a Muslim? $10. Want to play as a Jew? $10. Want to play as a Pagan? $15. Want to play as a Hindu? $15. And that's just religious stuff, not to mention getting to use government types, diplomacy, interaction, character development, etc. Before you go "But what about those content packs? They don't seem necessary". They are if you want to be immersed, but I'm not going into that. tl;dr: AAA is not the only one at fault. The idea of getting everything on release is a lie and it's a disease plaguing all companies right now.[/QUOTE] I'd like to add that as well as the DLC being pretty damn expensive, they also CUT CONTENT OUT OF DLCS AND RESOLD IT AS SMALLER DLCs. You just bought the Horse Lords DLC adding in mongolia and the steppes? Well sorry if you wan't these new characters to look asian, you have to buy the Horse Lords Content Pack to unlock asian portraits and mongol looking units. And it was like that for EVERY DLC THEY RELEASED. And then they decided they have too much DLC, so they started bundling it together. So now instead of at least being able to choose which portrait and unit packs you want, you have to buy the entire Content Pack for around $20. If I just want my Nords to look like vikings I can no longer spend $5 for this, you have to pay $20 to get the Nords, Muslims, Asians, Africans (yes on release, everyone in Africa was white/middle eastern) ect. It's disgusting. I love CK2 but people actually defend this shit (and on this forum!) and it's what makes Paradox's games absolute fucking trash at launch, see Stellaris and HOI4. NEVER EVER buy a Paradox game at launch, it's going to be buggy as hell and have 40% of the content it should have.
[QUOTE=AtomicSans;52763168]AAA is dying for me. Is there a term for game devs somewhere between full AAA and indie? MachineGames is a good example, I think, they're decently sized and professional but definitely not AAA.[/QUOTE] I think that's called AA gaming. Recently Senua's sacrifice is I think a good example of this. It features an almost AAA quality game at like 2/3 or half the price of a AAA game. Really, the key thing is to look for either indie games that have found publisher funding (without publisher handling, see "We Happy Few" for the shit they got when that happened) or outside funding like Kickstarter/ other crowdfunding websites. (Although These often means you never know what you're going to get as end product) [editline]9th October 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=Zillamaster55;52763366]I'm trying to stick to Grand Strategy and non big-title games, but the problem is with those, is that Paradox Interactive (Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and now Stellaris) have absolutely cornered the market. Your choices are to stick with them, go to Matrix Games (i.e i hope you like spreadsheets) or go down to 4X games like Civ. For those not in the know, here's one of the big controversies that happened about a year ago: Stellaris, a space 4X/GS hybrid has "portraits". These portraits represent species, blah blah, tend to be unique and add flavor. A while back, they released "Plantoids", which was a new set of portraits that had, you guessed it, plants. The thing is, it came with a handful of portraits, some city sprites and some ship models. Neat, right? Not until you saw the $8 price tag for something that they [I]explicitly[/I] said that modders could do with PS+Maya for free. How did they respond to the criticisms? Notice that this guy is the head of creative direction, and essentially the head of development. Besides that, Paradox is notorious for having lots and [I]lots[/I] of DLC. Worst example is Crusader Kings. $40USD for something that was released in 2012. It has remained at this price since release. These are the DLCs. Many of them contain extremely important features for gameplay. Want to play as a Muslim? $10. Want to play as a Jew? $10. Want to play as a Pagan? $15. Want to play as a Hindu? $15. And that's just religious stuff, not to mention getting to use government types, diplomacy, interaction, character development, etc. Before you go "But what about those content packs? They don't seem necessary". They are if you want to be immersed, but I'm not going into that. tl;dr: AAA is not the only one at fault. The idea of getting everything on release is a lie and it's a disease plaguing all companies right now.[/QUOTE] To be fair, you still generally get a good amount of content from free updates and base release from Paradox, and they don't release gameplay DLC every month or so. The lack of sales is shitty, but supporting a game from 2012 with more content doesn't mean it should be free. That's just entitled imo. [editline]9th October 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;52763983] I love CK2 but people actually defend this shit (and on this forum!) and it's what makes Paradox's games absolute fucking trash at launch, see Stellaris and HOI4. NEVER EVER buy a Paradox game at launch, it's going to be buggy as hell and have 40% of the content it should have.[/QUOTE] Although yeah, I can't defend that initial releases from paradox are bug filled and feel like you're playing with debugging software.
[QUOTE=27X;52762232]Because they are. Think of what you payed for Witcher 3, what you payed for the DLC for Witcher 3, and what any other AAA company has been charging you for the last four years. Or Divinity OS 2. Think objectively about the content you received, not whether it was great or not or you liked it, but how much and of what build quality it was.[/QUOTE] excuse me did no one else notice his misspelling of 'paid'? i find that i spend more hours playing games that cost below 60 dollars versus games that cost more than 60 dollars
Last AAA game I bought was Fallout 4. Before the even darker times of the CC. It was disappointing in retrospect. I switched to PC gaming at the beginning of 2016, and being scared of buying a game I couldn't run led me to sticking to 'modern classics' and indie games and I think it has paid off in another way considering the state the industry has become in that small amount of time. Even going backwards to Doom mods has been more interesting than anything the AAA market has produced since I made the switch (barring the Nintendo Switch itself :v:). Seriously, have you heard any positive buzz about a non-Nintendo/indie game post-release? Or any sort of good developments in the industry? For the last few months all I've heard is games being killed and microtransactions. That's all the AAA news has become. Meanwhile, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, A Hat in Time, Furi... These have been smash hits relative to their studio size and made waves in the community. I've heard more positivity over the old Star Wars Battlefront 2 coming back than I have about the new one. Even the 'Star Ops: The Line' single player thing has been consumed by microtransaction controversy... I'm rambling now, sorry. I feel like I dodged a sniper bullet I didn't even know was coming. [editline]10th October 2017[/editline] That said, looking forward to The New Collosus
I've felt the need to commit to a fully priced purchase less and less over the years despite having a net increase in income. I initially thought it was because I now had to pay for my own shit so I had to watch out a bit more for what I would spend but I came to realize that I simply don't want to deal with all these second wave purchases. And I've also managed to dodge most instances of lootboxes out there so far and I certainly intend to never spend a dime on a lootbox, that system cannot die early enough.
Reasons like these are why Valve used to be good back when their business was games instead of gambling. Their products used to be the definition of consumer-friendly and high-value.
I would urge a lot of people dissatisfied and considering walking away from video games to get in to older games. I don't necessarily mean old as in NES either, take a trip back to the gamecube and PS2 era for a while. After all, games could have stopped being produced after those and you'd still have more games than it would ever be possible for you to complete, and a lot of them you probably didn't play due to the fact that you couldn't have ~every~ game that came out, which is now pretty possible due to emulation and a lot of old games being really cheap if you don't care to emulate. I think a lot of people have forgotten how good older games were. Because [I]old[/I] does not mean [I]bad[/I] or [I]outdated[/I], it just means old. And with older games, there's a feeling of [I]completion[/I] that I think is missing from most modern games. Like, if I play Simpsons Hit & Run, I have it. I have the whole game. There's nothing more to be added. There's no Simpsons Hit & Run Deluxe edition. No season pass, no DLC, no anything. If I have the disc it's something solid that's mine and can't be taken away from me. And it's not just that there's nothing more to be added, there's usually more filled in where in modern games there are gaps. Bonus missions, extra vehicles and costumes, weapon varieties, cosmetics, these are all just [I]there.[/I] Not to make extra cash, but to make you enjoy the game more. Hell, they're very plentiful in a lot of them. An experience I had recently was that someone I know bought Forza Motorsport 7 for a hundred bucks. They seem to have had a decent time playing it, but nothing too exciting, just at their computer quietly playing away. They had a steering wheel peripheral though, and I just thought, y'know what, that shit would be the bomb on F-Zero. Turned out they had F-Zero GX for Gamecube kicking around their computer so we got the steering wheel working with it, and that's where the contrast started. It was a fucking blast. It was fast paced and exciting and it had all these insane tracks and great music (although for some of them we substituted our own [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doEwWzMz99A]fitting anime race music[/url]. It stood out to me how playing it, they were covered in actual visual, hell, [I]audible[/I] excitement and genuine [I]joy.[/I] At this game, this full fledged game, that they literally just had [I]laying around on their PC[/I] after they downloaded it on a whim, having been untouched for several several months. I seriously wonder if today's game industry has made a lot of people forget that feeling. Most people seem to be looking for something decent and trying to skate around or ignore the corrupt corporate drama that covers everything. Rarely do I see genuine excitement and giddiness when it comes to AAA gaming, I usually only see it in the indie sphere anymore for things like Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Cuphead and so on. For me, I love it. I [I]love[/I] these old games and the complete feeling they bring me. It's like, hey, you're worried about microtransactions in your early access triple A game? Go back to older games and you can't even find fucking [I]DLC[/I] the majority of the time. The closest you can get a lot of the time is a fucking expansion pack which blows any modern DLC out of the water by adding like 15 hours worth of content. The only thing new games tend to have over old games is graphics. That's it. Not even more aesthetically pleasing mind you! Just more advanced. And does that really sound like it's offering much over everything I just described? Hell, I'm not doing anything, I'll even get you started, PM me with your interests and I'll give you recommendations for old gold to play.
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;52765107]tigol block o text[/QUOTE] I can relate; The only game I've really had this feeling of in recent memory is The End is Nigh. Surprise surprise, an independant game, but a game that had everything I could want out of a hardcore platformer for an acceptable price. Something that made me feel both accomplishment and genuine excitement at some of the mechanics introduced later in the game. And it made me feel fucking amazing when I beat it. I compare it to another game I was pretty excited to get into: Fornite (PvE, not PvP. The Battle Royale is still great), where that initial sense of "wow this is really fucking fun" soon dissolved into "oh, there's a shit ton of pay gating later in the game and the whole thing is a massive slog to try and make me buy more fucking loot crates". I still enjoy it, but... For a game that's base concept is right up my alley, it's nowhere near that level of enjoyment I had with a McMillen independant game. And it cost three times as much. And I'm aware the game is going to be free to play later, but honestly it would be so much better as an ordinary game you buy for £40 and get the full game.
The last game I bought on release was Fallout 4 and by god, did I regret that. The only worthwhile thing about that game for me was the Far Harbor DLC. Otherwise I just stick to buying older titles or buying the "new" games several years later down the line.
[QUOTE=Dom Pyroshark;52765270]The last game I bought on release was Fallout 4 and by god, did I regret that. The only worthwhile thing about that game for me was the Far Harbor DLC. Otherwise I just stick to buying older titles or buying the "new" games several years later down the line.[/QUOTE] I bought Civilisation 6 on release. £60 of regret.
its funny but bethesda games are at this point only worth buying a year late and on sale 1. You get the 'complete' version 2. Mods by then will be established 3. Patches will fix... some of the bullshit 4. Its singleplayer, so the shared experience doesn't matter at all here 5. Possible bonus in future, VR versions + all DLC included for 30usd
[QUOTE=ThatSprite;52765289]I bought Civilisation 6 on release. £60 of regret.[/QUOTE] You aren't getting much more out of Civ 6 than you do out of Civ 5 + all expansions. It's going to shine later down the line like Civ 5 did.
I'm so glad he went back to [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpG4t54g2fk"]born depressed[/URL], the new theme was awful
Man, I can only wonder how many takes it took for him to nail that ending note that's over a minute-and-a-half of un-spliced footage. That's honestly impressive.
[QUOTE=JCDentonUNATCO;52765306]You aren't getting much more out of Civ 6 than you do out of Civ 5 + all expansions. It's going to shine later down the line like Civ 5 did.[/QUOTE] Heck, Civ 4 is still grand and has quicker load times.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;52763366]I'm trying to stick to Grand Strategy and non big-title games, but the problem is with those, is that Paradox Interactive (Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis and now Stellaris) have absolutely cornered the market. Your choices are to stick with them, go to Matrix Games (i.e i hope you like spreadsheets) or go down to 4X games like Civ. For those not in the know, here's one of the big controversies that happened about a year ago: Stellaris, a space 4X/GS hybrid has "portraits". These portraits represent species, blah blah, tend to be unique and add flavor. A while back, they released "Plantoids", which was a new set of portraits that had, you guessed it, plants. The thing is, it came with a handful of portraits, some city sprites and some ship models. Neat, right? Not until you saw the $8 price tag for something that they [I]explicitly[/I] said that modders could do with PS+Maya for free. How did they respond to the criticisms? Notice that this guy is the head of creative direction, and essentially the head of development. Besides that, Paradox is notorious for having lots and [I]lots[/I] of DLC. Worst example is Crusader Kings. $40USD for something that was released in 2012. It has remained at this price since release. These are the DLCs. Many of them contain extremely important features for gameplay. Want to play as a Muslim? $10. Want to play as a Jew? $10. Want to play as a Pagan? $15. Want to play as a Hindu? $15. And that's just religious stuff, not to mention getting to use government types, diplomacy, interaction, character development, etc. Before you go "But what about those content packs? They don't seem necessary". They are if you want to be immersed, but I'm not going into that. tl;dr: AAA is not the only one at fault. The idea of getting everything on release is a lie and it's a disease plaguing all companies right now.[/QUOTE] Paradox kind of blew up just before they adopted their more controversial monetization practices. They may not be AAA, but they've gotten pretty damn close.
Every time a game like The Witcher 3 comes out I think about someone at companies like EA and Warner Bros. shaking their fists cursing that someone in the planet made a good game without being shitty as them :vs:
The industry is in dire need of a downsizing.
[QUOTE=Kegan;52765546]The industry is in dire need of a downsizing.[/QUOTE] It needs to be regulated, corporations need to have the incentive to split up, developers to work more directly with the market. The entertainment industry needs to exist for people to be able to work with and provide entertainment for other people but that's only a small part of how the situation is. As young and unprecedented as the game industry is, combined with it having grown so big, with more people pumping in money into it - consumers and businesses - and shifting the economy, capitalistic hierarchies are sorta shakily establishing themselves. The biggest companies in the market are mostly businesses with a majority of people employed that are not directly working with the product, but are there to make sure it sells as well as it can. There's supposed to be a fine line that these companies can walk where they make profits as companies are supposed to do but also don't risk betraying the trust their consumer base has for them - that's the capitalistic ideal I think? Well, there have been increasing amounts of efforts from within the companies to take small greedier steps, pushing against the consumers and their faith in the product - and finding that the consumers don't really resist much. I think two things are going to happen in the near future. Regulation first of all will come more and more, for better or for worse. Second, I think consumers have for long taken video games for granted and as they find themselves increasingly disappointed with the products they are spending so much money on they'll learn to better understand the market and make more informed decisions. And I think it is these issues that people like Jim Sterling and TotalBiscuit have been trying to adress for the last few years, and doing a pretty good job at aswell, and they'll probably be remembered for it.
[QUOTE=latin_geek;52765311]I'm so glad he went back to [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpG4t54g2fk"]born depressed[/URL], the new theme was awful[/QUOTE] Nah his new theme was great. Born Depressed is nice, but i liked Stress more. I even listen to it on its own from time to time. Plus it fit so well with the show, the band's called Jim's Big Ego for God's sake :v:
I must admit. I really liked his hat.
I'm wary of watching any of this guy's videos ever since he rated Senua's Sacrifice a 1. He's since gone back and changed it to a 7, but I can't forgive the guy for blaming a game for his own idiocy. Minor spoilers: [sp]Seriously, the voices in your head specifically tell you, "HEY IDIOT, DON'T GO IN THERE WITHOUT A TORCH." Granted they can be kind of contradictory anyway. This is more a problem with when the autosave was and not anything else.[/sp]
[QUOTE=Penultimate;52767046]I'm wary of watching any of this guy's videos ever since he rated Senua's Sacrifice a 1. He's since gone back and changed it to a 7, but I can't forgive the guy for blaming a game for his own idiocy. Minor spoilers: [sp]Seriously, the voices in your head specifically tell you, "HEY IDIOT, DON'T GO IN THERE WITHOUT A TORCH." Granted they can be kind of contradictory anyway. This is more a problem with when the autosave was and not anything else.[/sp][/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure he's addressed it enough times that it was a mistake giving the game a 1 but even then it isn't his fault he dies and the autosave breaks the playthrough. But if you want to hold a grudge that's up to you.
[QUOTE=Penultimate;52767046]I'm wary of watching any of this guy's videos ever since he rated Senua's Sacrifice a 1. He's since gone back and changed it to a 7, but I can't forgive the guy for blaming a game for his own idiocy. Minor spoilers: [sp]Seriously, the voices in your head specifically tell you, "HEY IDIOT, DON'T GO IN THERE WITHOUT A TORCH." Granted they can be kind of contradictory anyway. This is more a problem with when the autosave was and not anything else.[/sp][/QUOTE] No matter how stupid the action is that leads to it, if you can break the game that easily, it's not the player's fault.
Okay, having watched the Indie AAA video, I gotta give him some respect for that. Hellblade is an outrageously important game, and I agree with Jim's point that had there been a publisher involved, it would have been just another generic game.
[QUOTE=Penultimate;52767046]I'm wary of watching any of this guy's videos ever since he rated Senua's Sacrifice a 1. He's since gone back and changed it to a 7, but I can't forgive the guy for blaming a game for his own idiocy. Minor spoilers: [sp]Seriously, the voices in your head specifically tell you, "HEY IDIOT, DON'T GO IN THERE WITHOUT A TORCH." Granted they can be kind of contradictory anyway. This is more a problem with when the autosave was and not anything else.[/sp][/QUOTE] iirc the bug he did was triggered by other players as well without realizing it until it was too late, so it wasn't a bug you had to deliberately go out of your way to do, even if user error is a significant part of causing the bug to happen. It makes some sense that he'd dock the score a little for that, even if a 1/10 was too much.
[QUOTE=Gunzers6;52767694]iirc the bug he did was triggered by other players as well without realizing it until it was too late, so it wasn't a bug you had to deliberately go out of your way to do, even if user error is a significant part of causing the bug to happen. It makes some sense that he'd dock the score a little for that, even if a 1/10 was too much.[/QUOTE] Yeah, definitely. I'm glad he corrected the score and made a video praising the game for what it does right. I guess it's silly to be mad at a guy for jumping to conclusions while jumping to my own. I don't know if he's gotten less arrogant or if the problems have just gotten bigger, but it wasn't a bad video and props to him for talking about it.
He has salient points some time, I still don't particularly like him all that much. Content != character (in either sense of the word)
[QUOTE=Loofiloo;52762864]That's a pretty good point at the end about games like Minecraft and PUBG. I've gravitated away from AAA games and more toward indie stuff over the past couple generations, because indie developers will usually just give you a complete game with little to no bullshit attached. Big budget games these days tend to just irritate me more often than not with things like DLC, sponsored content, DRM, pre-order bonuses (retailer specific, even), exclusive content, [b]paid mods[/b], and all kinds of other anti-consumer bullshit. Smaller developers are making things out of a love of the craft, and the bigger ones are just doing it because it's their job. Any passionate developers working in a huge studio tend to get drowned out by their huge publishers pulling all kinds of strings.[/QUOTE] Paid mods irritate me because of how insipid they are, and (like you said) they're also blatantly anti-consumer. They basically boil down to, "If we can't force you to buy our shitty DLC because there are better, free alternatives available thanks to modders, then we'll make it harder for you to have access to that free, high-quality content. We'll do what we can to draw modders into our business model and get them under our thumb by offering them a small cut while we take most of it for ourselves. Either you go through us for content, or you get nothing." Like, most of the games I play I wouldn't have even bothered to buy in the first place if it wasn't for their modding communities. The number of overhauls and total conversions I've played on everything from the first Rome: Total War to Paradox Interactive's strategy games, GTA, Half-Life 2, etc. I can't even begin to estimate-- never mind smaller mods that added cosmetic features, graphical enhancements, sound improvements, etc. that I either downloaded separately and used or that were incorporated as a small part of those overhauls and total conversions. If it isn't paid mods, then it's just an absolute lack of modding support that has to be tackled... if not hostility from developers. Look at how Take-Two tried to crack down on OpenIV to stifle modding for GTAV by sending its team a cease and desist letter back in June. It wasn't until the community unleashed a backlash against them that they decided to fuck off (a little over a week later from the time OpenIV received their letter).
[QUOTE=Mister Sandman;52765107]I would urge a lot of people dissatisfied and considering walking away from video games to get in to older games. I don't necessarily mean old as in NES either, take a trip back to the gamecube and PS2 era for a while. After all, games could have stopped being produced after those and you'd still have more games than it would ever be possible for you to complete, and a lot of them you probably didn't play due to the fact that you couldn't have ~every~ game that came out, which is now pretty possible due to emulation and a lot of old games being really cheap if you don't care to emulate. I think a lot of people have forgotten how good older games were. Because [I]old[/I] does not mean [I]bad[/I] or [I]outdated[/I], it just means old. And with older games, there's a feeling of [I]completion[/I] that I think is missing from most modern games. Like, if I play Simpsons Hit & Run, I have it. I have the whole game. There's nothing more to be added. There's no Simpsons Hit & Run Deluxe edition. No season pass, no DLC, no anything. If I have the disc it's something solid that's mine and can't be taken away from me. And it's not just that there's nothing more to be added, there's usually more filled in where in modern games there are gaps. Bonus missions, extra vehicles and costumes, weapon varieties, cosmetics, these are all just [I]there.[/I] Not to make extra cash, but to make you enjoy the game more. Hell, they're very plentiful in a lot of them. An experience I had recently was that someone I know bought Forza Motorsport 7 for a hundred bucks. They seem to have had a decent time playing it, but nothing too exciting, just at their computer quietly playing away. They had a steering wheel peripheral though, and I just thought, y'know what, that shit would be the bomb on F-Zero. Turned out they had F-Zero GX for Gamecube kicking around their computer so we got the steering wheel working with it, and that's where the contrast started. It was a fucking blast. It was fast paced and exciting and it had all these insane tracks and great music (although for some of them we substituted our own [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doEwWzMz99A"]fitting anime race music[/URL]. It stood out to me how playing it, they were covered in actual visual, hell, [I]audible[/I] excitement and genuine [I]joy.[/I] At this game, this full fledged game, that they literally just had [I]laying around on their PC[/I] after they downloaded it on a whim, having been untouched for several several months. I seriously wonder if today's game industry has made a lot of people forget that feeling. Most people seem to be looking for something decent and trying to skate around or ignore the corrupt corporate drama that covers everything. Rarely do I see genuine excitement and giddiness when it comes to AAA gaming, I usually only see it in the indie sphere anymore for things like Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Cuphead and so on. For me, I love it. I [I]love[/I] these old games and the complete feeling they bring me. It's like, hey, you're worried about microtransactions in your early access triple A game? Go back to older games and you can't even find fucking [I]DLC[/I] the majority of the time. The closest you can get a lot of the time is a fucking expansion pack which blows any modern DLC out of the water by adding like 15 hours worth of content. The only thing new games tend to have over old games is graphics. That's it. Not even more aesthetically pleasing mind you! Just more advanced. And does that really sound like it's offering much over everything I just described? Hell, I'm not doing anything, I'll even get you started, PM me with your interests and I'll give you recommendations for old gold to play.[/QUOTE] I was going to make a post similar to this. Most days, I don't have time for gaming, so I don't usually buy new games on release (Last AAA game I bought was Overwatch last year, just because I was in the mood again for a classic FPS style team based game). I actually just got into Superguns (Consolized arcade boards), and older hardware mods. Just recently finished putting together a Neo Geo MVS board that can connect to my TV, and modding an older arcade stick as a controller for it. [IMG]https://i.imgur.com/LxTdvMg.jpg[/IMG] A lot of it was fun to source and put together. The controller was especially fun, because I soldered the connectors from a Neo Geo controller cord, to the buttons and stick directions. Some of the hardware requires maintenance, but I found the hobby of putting this together more fun then gaming, haha.
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