Here’s the thing though, these games are highly reviewed and played but it may still in fact be more profitable to keep pumping out mid tier trash. For companies that have long forgotten the time when they had a soul and were a group of passionate gamers, that’s all that matters.
Im starting to believe the big triple A game industry is starting to collapse, not the gaming industry it self, but the big companies that make generic after generic blockbuster kind of games. They keep getting more and more desperate and predatory in order to appeal to the share holders and maximize profits because their type of games have become so expensive to produce.
Remember when games didnt have to put the same amount (or even more) of the development cost into marketing? Good games sells themselves, every gamer knows it, but the monkeys with suits who run the companies nowdays cant compute that. Instead they keep coming with more and more shitty ways to steal our money. They will try anything instead of listening to their developers ( who are the actual gamers that know what works and what dosnt).
And so here we are. Just in this year I have seen a single player game put a mechanic like the NG+ mode only availible for the deluxe edition (yakuza), an extra save game file or fast travels as microtransactions (dragon dogmas 2), extra missions and a 3 days early launch acces for single player game only allowed in the 110$ edition (star wars outlaws), and a company literally changing their former terms and conditions in order to sell a 250$ p2w pack and killing it self and the work of the last 5 years? in less than 24h (tarkov)
Im starting to believe the big triple A game industry is starting to collapse, not the gaming industry it self, but the big companies that make generic after generic blockbuster kind of games.
I’m not that hopeful, casual gamers keep buying the same low effort games like Fifa, NBA, Pokemon every year even though they got enshitified 10 years ago. The opinion of game-educated and demanding people that represent a minority of their market will not change those game companies. It’s like asking fat food chains to get into Michelin ranking, they don’t care. All we can do is allow good quality independent game makers to exist by giving our money to them instead of the fast food games companies.
When i was a kid we made fun of hipsters, but as I’ve matured and examined the world with a critical eye, I’ve realized that hipsters are entirely correct. Popularity is a bad thing for the health of anything you’re into. It’s a very rare creator that can become as big as Tolkien or Larian and not go to the dogs.
Exactly. Ubisoft is the perfect example of this. Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, R6. They used to take risks and try to push gaming forward with amazing ideas and design that made my kid brain explode.
Now those IPs are dead or extremely stale. And it’s because releasing an AC with microtransactions makes them more money than making an offline single player Splinter Cell. Or releasing a skin for 20 euros for R6 siege makes them a huge profit for the time invested in creating it.
God I wish we’d get a new single player Splinter Cell. Some of my best memories I have as a kid are playing the original Splinter Cell. Even if we do, it’ll be riddled with microtransactions and will fail to capture the magic of the original games.
Yup. The go-to example is that Blizzard made more money off of a single $5 mount in World of Warcraft, than it made on the release of Diablo 3. An entire fucking game launch made less money than a $5 microtransaction. Why would a publishing company bother with creating solid self-contained games, when a single micro transaction can make more money for far less dev time?
Players need to stop purchasing shitty games and shitty microtransactions, because it only encourages devs to keep making them.
It’s strange though, because Ubisoft on paper should be something I hate, but when I actually play one (and I’m a single player gamer), they’ve got fun gameplay, and the store, although it is there, generally keeps out the way and when I accidentally press the button in the menu that goes into it, there’s nothing I’d ever consider handing over actual money for. The game never points you at it, or makes you feel it’s needed.
I don’t even know who it’s for. Who buys cosmetics in a single player game? It genuinely feels like it’s just been put in to appease the beancounters.
That said I don’t get excited enough to buy them at full price, and normally wait until they’re on PSPlus or something. There’s nothing in most of these AAA games to truly love. They’re a sea of merely “alright”, and they’re all way too long.
There’s nothing in most of these AAA games to truly love. They’re a sea of merely “alright”, and they’re all way too long.
But why bother with alright when there’s thousands of highly regarded indie games out there for a quarter of the price?
Probably same reason people go to McDonald’s.
The largest issue with indie games is simply discoverability. I’m sure there are tons of amazing indie games out there. But you need to wade through a sea of complete fucking garbage to get to them. Meanwhile, AAA studios can spend thousands of dollars on marketing. Unless an indie game goes viral, there’s very little chance that I’ll ever hear about it in order to consider buying it.
Meanwhile, AAA studios can spend thousands of dollars on marketing.
I don’t really get the notion of listening to some marketing department lying through their teeth. It’s not like AAA games ever deliver on their marketing promises.
Unless an indie game goes viral, there’s very little chance that I’ll ever hear about it in order to consider buying it.
You don’t have to go dumpster diving in order to find awesome games, somebody already did. A good starting point is the top rated games list for Steam: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/
90% of them are indies and there is something for everyone on those 3 pages.
That’s honestly what astounds me sometimes, but I guess it makes sense. There’s heart, soul, and passion in an indie game made by a small team.
AAA games fall victim to the “designed by committee” sameness and just-good-enough gameplay.
There’s nothing in most of these AAA games to truly love. They’re a sea of merely “alright”, and they’re all way too long.
Captures Ubisoft’s philosophy on one sentence. But it’s what makes them money, so they’ll keep doing it.
Character creation in single player games is often a big thing and considered in a lot of reviews. I played a lot of midnight suns, and while I would never actually buy any cosmetic stuff, I definitely liked unlocking the skins and had ones I particularly liked. I even changed up once in a while. I would think even in multiplayer games, people aren’t generally buying the skins for other people, but because they like to look that way.
It comes as no surprise that single player cosmetics is a source of revenue.
To be honest, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint was the most mid, regular, non-surprising game I’ve played in years. I know they tried later to make it better, but it was just so empty and repetitive, like The Division 2.
Wildlands surprised me multiple times, Breakpoint only made me ask myself multiple times: why is this not possible?, why do I have to do this all over again?, why do we have vehicles if most of the places can’t be reached normally?
Also, The Division 2 was incredibly boring. I really want to like it, but I have to repeat the same things over and over, and you don’t even get good rewards, farming is boring and doesn’t compensate the time spent, at least not like in The Division 1 and its incursions, you were at least guaranteed something.
I haven’t bought any game from Ubisoft after TD2 and Breakpoint. I can already spend time in those games if I want the ubisoft experience. I
Especially as Michael Ironside seems to have gotten over his medical troubles. I know he’s 74 now but one last outing as Sam Fisher? Imagine?
This is it. The reviews only matter to the extent they affect sales. Many shit-scored titles make billions for the suits (eg. FIFA, COD), and do so year after year without significant risks involved
I, for one, intend to stop paying for mid tier trash
Principal Skinner = no. The children yearn for the microtransactions
Helldivers’ business model is primarily microtransactions. The microtransactions affect gameplay, so it’s in the direction of “pay to win”. It’s not the paragon of non-predatory monetization that people make it out to be.
(Baldurs Gate 3 and Palworld both are good examples of a healthy pay once and actually own a copy games)
Also none of these games released without serious bugs.
The fuck are you talking about, you can unlock everything without ever once spending money. Even if you DID drop thousands that would only give you more bonds and some cosmetics you can’t buy medals. You have to play to unlock things
This is how microtransaction driven games typically work.
You technically never need to pay, but they keep adding more content locked behind 1000 credit warbonds, and some of that content is very useful, and getting to 1000 medals takes a while if you aren’t specifically trying for it.
If you actually want all of the gameplay affecting content (war bonds) you either need to grind specifically for medals for a long time or you need to pay.
Other games that use a similar business model:
- League of Legends
- “Gacha” games like Genshin Impact and a lot of mobile-only games
- Fortnite
- typical digital TCGs
(Also note all of these are free to play and only make money off microtransactions, which IMO makes Helldivers more predatory for double dipping)
I’m very aware of how micro transactions work. I’m trying to say that this game is nowhere near as egregious is literally any of the others on your list. I don’t play a lot, I get on once every maybe couple days and I do a full set of missions so three Maps.
I just about hit level 27 recently, I already have two of the premium more Bonds on locked and then most of the way through them and I am on page 7 of the overall main war bond. I have not spent any money on the game.
I didn’t grind, I didn’t specifically go for things, and I didn’t spend money. You will get absolutely nowhere for free with that type of casual play in any mobile game or League of Legends
Yeah, it’s not pay to win, so much as pay to unlock faster. Plus it’s co-op, so that’s not a huge deal
TL;DR:
It’s not hard to earn the ingame currency. No FOMO. Definetly not pay to win, since you get decent equipment, can unlock everything else with little time, it’s a PvE Co-Op game with many difficulty levels to serve most player tastes. Buying ingame currency has some dark patterns though, but it’s extremely better in comparison to other games with microtransactions.Long version:
You can earn the paid (and sadly obfuscated) currency by playing the game and collecting some stuff. You don’t need to pay at all despite the game’s price initially.
It takes me about 15 to 30 hours to get enough of the paid currency in order to buy a warbond (the “battlepass”, basically a package of weapons, tools and skins you get access to by buying such a warbond once). And that’s me not even trying to farm the currency. I’m sure you can get there a lot faster if you’re aiming for farming it.It’s also not pay to win. I understand the first impression, since it’s actual different sets of weapons and armour which are locked behind it. But: on the one hand, you still have the standard warbonds which you don’t need to unlock using that special currency; there, a decent collection of items is already present in order to find a style with which you can beat the game. On the other hand, it’s a PvE Co-Op game with a lot of different difficulties to choose from. You can play it from extremely easy to very hard. It’s not intended to be played solo. Although you absolutely can if you’re good. That means: winning is easy. Even with equipment you don’t like as much.
And let’s not forget that it isn’t that hard to earn the paid currency by playing the game. Unlocking the paid warbonds that way can be another incentive to play and get a feeling of progression.What’s also very important:
There is no FOMO. The warbonds stay where they are. You can complete any of them at any time in any order you like. Also, even in the ingame shop, there is not really FOMO: there are literally just four items: two helmets and two armours. Those switch every couple of days. But that switch is a cycle. Meaning, after some days those, you’ve seen on one day, are back.The devs also made clear in a statement that they explicitly don’t want that FOMO stuff and don’t want it to be pay to win.
I have more than 200 h in the game and have unlocked every item in every warbond earlier than that. Never paid a cent. Not even for the game itself since I got it as a gift, lol. Also several of the shop items. (That depends on difficulty though. With lower difficulties might take longer.)
Yes, they are not “the paragon of microtransactions”. First, because they still have microtransactions at all. Secondly, because it’s obfuscated and superlinear (ratio between spent money and amount of received currency is not the same between the packages: you get much more if you spend a bit more). But if you compare that to other games, which employ microtransaction shit, it’s waaaaay better and right at the top, after Deep Rock Galactic.
Regarding difficulty - on lower difficulties it’ll take longer to earn up the medals (though the major order rewards definitely help there) but I actually think it’s faster to farm super credits on the easiest 3 difficulties.
microtransactions isn’t relayed to this at all though… I hate them as much as anyone else but this is about giving the devs the time they need.
Your reply is basically “I know buzzwords but don’t know what they really mean so I’ll just reply with whatever comes to mind about games nowadays being bad”.
Crazy, if you make good games, people will buy them and pay for them.
And don’t over price it, I can buy a copy for myself and a friend for less than a shitty “AAA”/“AAAA” Title
Insane
that can’t be true, it’s way too simple, there must be a catch somewhere
Naw, the companies will miss the point and demand studios go as cheap and dirty as they want for Helldivers 3 and Baldur’s Gate 4
I suspect that may be part of the reason Larian isn’t making a Baldur’s Gate 4. At the very least, they probably realize that lightning is very unlikely to strike twice, so why tempt fate? Get out of the series while everyone still loves you. They probably also recognize that they would face a Knights of the Old Republic 2 situation where the IP owner will want more profit faster, and so they will set deadlines which don’t fit with Larian’s design model. At best, BG4 would be a rushed mess, with Larian struggling for years afterwards trying to deliver the game they wanted to deliver and burning down all of the goodwill they have built up with gamers. It’s just not worth it. If they walk away and stand up their own IP, they get complete control and can take the time to deliver what they want to deliver. Sure, they don’t have the built in fanbase that a D&D title would have; but, I suspect they are going to have a lot of that fanbase follow them anyway.
Sadly, Hasbro absolutely will be willing to burn down any and all goodwill BG3 has built up. I expect we’ll see some smaller developer handed BG4, put under unrealisting timelines and the result will be a disaster. It will not be the fault of the development team. I suspect any dev team is going to be salivating at the prospect of making a D&D title. It’s a dream project and they will bend over backwards to get it. They just won’t realize, or hope they can avoid, Hasbro breaking their back in the quest for short term profit.
If Larian released mod tools, hasbro will watch the community build an open source of the paid model they were trying to force on everyone
From the last patch notes:
This next patch will also begin introducing our official modding tools, letting you change up visuals, animations, sounds, stats, and more to overhaul Baldur’s Gate 3 into the weird nightmare realm of your dreams.
So, maybe.
Your comment just says that you don’t know anything about Larian, so don’t slander them for no reason at all
larian isn’t making bg4, and hasbro are
absolutely
going to fuck it up trying to milk it
Larian is not making Baldur’s Gate 4. Stand down soldier.
But they probably think that
How bad is your reading comprehension? Reread just the first sentence.
- Corporations aren’t your friends, stop stanning
- Larian doesn’t own Baldur’s Gate and wouldn’t be the ones making decisions for BG4, that would be Wizards Of The Coast
Eh, there’s a lot that could be said about Helldivers, at least as a PC port.
Great game, nice content delivery, very cool. No DLSS, no modern FSR (it straight up uses an horrendous implementation of FSR 1.0), very bad usage of multiple threads, quite a few bugs - the armour ratings literally did not work, as in, a crucial feature of the game that changes the entire balancing of gear and enemies did not apply, meaning you could have a party of a heavy gear tank and light gear medic and both would take the same damage from the same enemies.
Again, the game itself is very fun. But I’m absolutely not going to praise this port and claim it’s a shining example of developer quality.
Releasing a perfect game that doesn’t have any bugs isn’t what the article is about.
It’s talking about teams that have honed their craft over many years of developing titles they cared about working on and investing in continuous improvements, of which both Arrowhead and Larian have done.
That’s true for virtually every game. Diablo IV: hated by many, considered a major downgrade, Blizzard bad, gets boring, doesn’t handle live content updates right… yet go watch the videos with the team that designed the dungeons and the assets, they’re extremely passionate, they are proud of their work, they explain how they spent a looooong time just working on little details they thought people would appreciate.
It’s super unfair to raise Helldivers and Baldur’s Gate to this elevated “worthy passionate developer” status and disregard others while, at the same time, being selectively blind about the issues both of these games had and still have. In fact, Baldur’s Gate straight up required months of Microsoft intervention to finally (partially!) fix CPU affinity issues.
you can be incredibly passionate while still having mbas breathing down your neck
if you don’t think there was a ratio of developers to neck-breathers of at best 2:1 at blizzard you have more faith in their internal management than me
You need to touch grass I think.
Great argument!
if you respond to “touch grass” with anything along the lines of an imperious “hah what fallacious and illogical reasoning” while pushing up your glasses on the bridge of your nose like an anime villain, then yes i think it might be meadow time for you
I have no idea how to respond to this lol, I couldn’t understand a single phrase on this comment. What’s anything got to do with anime here?
I know this is tangential to the argument at hand, but you guys reminded me I really need to touch grass, I’ve been buried in way too much work. I think I’m going to drive out to the coast and stare at the waves for 30 min today.
Somewhere along the way I lost the verve to argue about this kind of thing. It’s not that I can’t, I just don’t care anymore
Edit: The guy below me has a valid point. Ignore this comment.
Then why are you here, trying to start arguments?
It’s using an ancient discontinued engine. Hopefully we see improvements with time
quite a few bugs
Those are a feature.
yeah but ultimately it doesn’t matter because the end product is good on the whole
i feel those kinds of details are exactly what meddlers would want to meddle in, when the entire argument of the article is that the game manages to be good on the whole not despite its lack of meddlers but because of it
also no rebalancing the games progression so you can shoehorn mtx into it helps a lot too
I expected Helldivers 2 to be good, but not “unforeseeable appeal that knocks out back-end servers and leaves players in a weeks-long login purgatory” good
It continues to boggle my mind that people will take this objectively bad thing built in to the game’s design and turn it into good press. Being unable to play the game you paid for is a bad thing. They could have let you host the game yourself. Yes, even the dungeon master part that Joel does. That they don’t let you not only leads to login problems with unexpectedly populous launches but also an expiration date that Baldur’s Gate 3 doesn’t even have when it comes to online multiplayer.
Agreed. This is one of the frustrating casualties of live service microtransaction games. Can’t let people run servers or mod it because otherwise how can you sell them stuff?
Having launch issues seems to be the norm nowadays.I do lot think anyone expects complex software to be bug free.
But the response and speed of fixing issues from arrow head are very good, and an example for others to follow.Dedicated servers are awesome tho. And all great games have that. Makes the game live forever if the community cares enough. Cnc renegade and enemy territory still have players.
Considering Helldivers 1 just finished it’s 135th War cycle, I’m not particularly afraid about an expitation date from the DM/online play side. Heck, I’d imagine when Arrowhead finally pulla the plug on HD1, they’ll likely update it so it works offline.
And the gameplay portion kinda already does.
I’m not particularly afraid about an expitation date from the DM/online play side
It’s actually inevitable.
Heck, I’d imagine when Arrowhead finally pulla the plug on HD1, they’ll likely update it so it works offline.
I’m pretty sure I can count on my fingers the number of games that have actually patched their online-only functionality to work offline. Off the top of my head, it’s just Knockout City, and I think maybe a Gran Turismo game somewhere along the line.
It is a possibility for sure, but HD1 is still going after 8 years, and because AH doesn’t host the gameplay servers, I reckon the server costs aren’t excessive.
L4D2 is 15 years also, and still going, and still played. I hope and trust HD2 will be up long time.
Left 4 Dead 2 has LAN, and it’s entirely peer to peer when online. “A long time” is still worse than forever. It would be a damn shame if your favorite movie made before you were born didn’t survive long enough for you to enjoy it. And the more expensive it is to build and operate a given live service game, the shorter its lifespan is. Games like Warhaven and Hyperscape didn’t even last a few years.
It’s Match Making isn’t peer to peer, and requires a connection, though. I’d reckon the playerbase to wither quickly without Valve servers and/or Steam friend list, even though technically possible, and a 3rd party could devise a system of finding players.
Valve offers ubiquitous matchmaking services as a part of Steam. They operate as long as Steam does. They’re funded by all the revenue that comes in every time anyone makes a purchase on Steam; these same services apply to third parties who choose to use them, too. Helldivers 2’s servers are run by some function of Arrowhead and Sony, and they shut down when Helldivers 2, in particular, stops making money, rendering the game inoperable.
There’s a much better game in that regard:
Factorio
Been on my wishlist for quite some time. Don’t really know much about it. Is it really that good?
Factorio is the best manufacturing/logistics sim by a huge margin. Some of that is technical things, but the biggest contributor is game balance and the complexity curve. They spent years iterating to find a sweet spot.
Satisfactory is pretty amazing. I won’t claim it’s better but that margin is not as big as you’re making it sound.
It is the best, and the benchmark, for the survivalcraft factory RTS genre. They optimised the game to an absolutely ridiculous degree, that it will even run smooth on a Nintendo Switch.
Probably the best game i am playing, 6000h+ into it now. If you like that type of game, you will love factorio.
Has a free demo on steam, so you can try before you buy.A demo? Great. I have a feeling I’m going to regret this based on the comments here.
Okay yes, but helldivers is still filled to the brim with bugs. Not quite an equal comparison
Edit: wild that fanboys will down vote you for simply stating a fact
People talk like it’s game breaking, or completely unplayable. But I have an absolute blast playing this game every night with my friends. Bugs be damned.
I damned those bugs myself with a combo of napalm, flamethrower, and incendiary breaker.
But in all seriousness there are some huge bugs that can ruin a run you spent almost 40 minutes on… So I also bring a 500kg to deal with those.
the way a 500kg can light up the darkest night, its a beautiful thing
Some days I have to restart helldivers after every mission because it crashes during the extraction cutscene.
It’s ok to admit games aren’t perfect while also enjoying them. Helldivers is fun but it’s no paragon of the industry.
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Same i have friends that have crashed perhaps once or twice a week on windows.But never been an issue for me on linux. Only had it for the last month tho. Could be an older fixed issue as well.
Same but i either have an network error or the game closes every other game, which isn’t great. Especially after 20 minutes into a mission. I would say i only finish 3 out of 5 games usually. Don’t get me wrong, i played like 150 hours, it’s still not okay
I had the same issues, was even worse for me. I only got to play 1/3 missions, and had to restart Helldivers everytime I got the disconnection error.
But I upgraded my cpu, and now I have not had a single disconnection error since. Not sure if it’s correlated, but it’s nice not crazhing anymore
I wish the game had single player stuff, it looks quite fun.
You can play the entire game without anyone else. Just close your party and pick a mission. No one will be able to join your in-progress mission if your party is closed. It’s not even that difficult until the higher difficulties, you’ll just spend more time doing things alone without having a full team to sweep through enemies and objectives.
The game is built around playing with a group though, that is how it is intended to be played from the ground up.
I might give it a go, all the reviews I read talked about the multiplayer requirements for the missions and gameplay.
How good is it solo? Have you tried it?
It 100% intends you to play with others. It is not meant to be played single player, it just can be if you insist. You will not get the same experience.
That being said, I’ve played a ton on PC with no mic, just using the in game target and item marking system and a couple text messages occasionally, without any issue. Playing with randoms isn’t a big issue most of the time.
Just don’t take it too seriously. Half of the fun to be honest is not noticing someone threw a stratagem for a 500kg bomb into that crater you’re jumping into kill the bugs and dying to a massive explosion. The game tells you everything a player calls something in and there’s a light from God showing you where it’s going, but sometimes you just miss it. Or the guy was prepping to throw it and died so they dropped it at their feet.
Just don’t take anything too seriously. It’s not that kind of game.
Thank you for the honest take. Sounds like I am going to skip out on this one. Rather learn this way than spend money or deal with the refund process.
It is a great game even if it essentially required multiplayer. You might be able to borrow a friend’s copy through steam’s family library sharing or something like that to try out.
There’s no like ranking system or anything to worry about messing up a friend’s account as a new player.
I can regularly run suicide missions as a solo. The trick is to not die because the forced respawns really fuck you over.
You can definitely solo a lot of content, if that’s your jam. There’s plenty of vids on YouTube showing this, at the hardest level to boot.
I have fun playing it too but it’s definitely one of the buggiest games I’ve played, and while most of them aren’t game breaking, I have experienced a few pretty bad ones. One of my favourites put giant holes in the terrain across the entire map, causing me to get stuck and die several times lol.
I would care about dying a lot if it actually mattered.
The bugs are quite literally a feature.
There’d be half a game if they took out the Terminids.
Not a word of a lie. Filled to the brim with bugs and automatons.
Yeah, it’s bonkers it’s been out for months and months and the Spear is still completely broken.
I just left a game where someone was using the Spear to great effect, although they were finding it a bit of a pain to lock. That’s pretty different to completely broken.
I’m shocked. Every time I use it, I can’t get a lock on anything. When I manage to, it works great, but it’s not worth it for me over the quasar.
Spear isn’t in a good place, but it works after you learn its kinks. I wish they made the locking work better and added a range indicator when you are aiming it too close, so you know why it’s not locking in that case.
Yeah, in one game I was having issues locking at a big distance. Maybe the hitboxes of the hills the hulk was running across were being funky, so it was thinking it was out of sight. Idk.
We killed 2 billion of them a week ago, but they just keep coming.
I find the game in general pretty mid. I’d rather play DRG 100% of the time.
That was true when it launched, but past month I’ve had 0 crashing in about 100 hours of gametime. It was unfortunate, but it’s not filled to brim with bugs, unless you’re referring to the Terminids 😄
Liberty will see you through
