• RolyRamen@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s exactly a DLC that Activision realised they could make people pay £70 for instead of half that. Only a few weeks after MW2 came out it was being floated that there was no COD for 2023, and instead a Ghost focused expansion would come out to fill the void.

    Don’t like it don’t buy it but FFS stop with faux shock and horror. COD is of the most aggressively monetised franchises in mainstream gaming, from a company with zero scruples. Facts that have been valid for a decade or more and the regular news cycle attached to it all gets tiring.

    Ignore the bugger and maybe they’ll be forced to do better next time when this sell’s poorer (you can hope at least). It’s not like this is some long awaited sequel either, just skip this one. There’s so much more to play this year in particular.

    • jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      The achievements on Xbox and PS5 even show up as a DLC of MW2. I wonder how late in the development process did they realize that if they could sell almost the same game every year then they probably could literally sell the same game twice.

      • AZERTY@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        They realized that in 2012 tbh. I haven’t purchased an MW game since (old) MW2 because I hated their practice of yearly releases while only adding incremental changes.

        • Bone@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It was a better package deal when Zombies was at its heyday. It was the only reason I got CODs, though I would play multi as well. Now that Zombies is a pile of steaming shit I have no reason to buy COD.

    • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I think those of us who spend a little more time on forums and such talking about games really over estimate how knowledgeable the average consumer is about these things. Millions of people never, ever question the quality of games they want. They played call of duty for a decade, so they just kinda have an expectation. Same thing when I go out to buy a loaf of bread. Just more expensive lol

      So it’s not a faux-shock. For some people this is the first time they bought a game that they had an expectation for and it fell radically short. Why else would they start complaining? They haven’t had a reason to before and they just aren’t generally aware of all of this. If you ask the average call of duty player what they think of Activision, they probably have little to no opinion on them and haven’t even heard of Blizzard. Just like how I don’t have an opinion on every single director, movie studio, etc.

      • MrBubbles96@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Agreed. To us, it’s not surprising because we decided to look into it because we’re either big into a series, or we got burned enough in the past. for others? It’s either legit the first time they’ve gotten burned, or the straw that broke the camel’s back and made them at least somewhat critical/wary of the media they consume.

      • TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Same thing when I go out to buy a loaf of bread. Just more expensive lol

        you mean the bread right? A loaf of bread once a week easily goes beyond one COD game per year

    • Bonskreeskreeskree@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Leading up to mw2 launch, they were repeatedly saying it was the first 2 year release. They said there would only be a paid dlc at the end of the year. A few weeks into launch they back pedeled and released a statement saying that wasn’t true. Something they could have done before launch, but didn’t, for sales. There are maps in mw3 that have been in the code of mw2 since launch andnwere never released. Fuck them.

    • Ear_of_Corn@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      My thoughts exactly, we live in a world where content creators have to make content on new releases to stay afloat. Never pre-order and VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY

    • circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      I think this is also what happened with AC: Mirage. Ubi originally had planned it as DLC for Valhalla.

      At least they had the decency not to charge $70 for it, but still, it’s MBA businessthink in charge of AAA gaming right now. Unless people stop buying them, nothing changes.

      • eoddc5@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        At least - and I can’t believe i am defending Ubisoft - they released “hey this dlc, let’s make it bigger and better and into its own game”

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You don’t have to ignore it just don’t pay for shit. Sail the seas if you have to

  • Ear_of_Corn@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    If you’re sick of massive AAA developers running cash grabs, my suggestion is stop patronizing their games until they get their sh*t together. An excellent alternative if you’re looking for a fun FPS game is Battle-Bit Remastered. I personally love this game, and there is a long running joke that the three guys that made this basically shat on the AAA developer world when they released a full featured FPS for $15 that is enjoyable and has 0 micro transactions.

    • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I totally respect what they’ve done, and I admittedly am not a Call of Duty player, but Roblox graphics are an instant turn off for me and I really don’t think the general CoD player base is going to be drawn in by it either. If there was a graphics pack that made it look modern and zero percent like Roblox I might be able to get into it, but not as it is.

      • tal@lemmy.today
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        1 year ago

        I’ve played some surprisingly good games with untextured polygons.

        • Star Fox

        • Race the Sun

        • Carrier Command 2

        That’s not to say that you couldn’t take the same games and make a flashier version that I wouldn’t like more, but I do kind of think that it forces the developers not to use glitz as a crutch. Like, if you’re going to make a game with untextured polygons and sell it, you are going to have to have solid gameplay.

        Another benefit is that it’s easier to revise a game if you haven’t committed a lot of expensive assets into particular game design decisions. I think that a long, iterative development process with gameplay revisions is probably a good thing for gameplay.

        I kind of wish that one could more-frequently get commercial “HD” DLC for small-budget games, like indie pixel-art games. I think that low-res pixel art is a good way to reduce asset costs, let the player’s brain fill in a lot of the detail, but if a game does turn out to be successful and I like it, I’d like to be able to also get a more-detailed version. That way, I’m only paying for assets on games with good gameplay.

        I’ve seen a small handful of games do that, but it’s definitely not the norm.

        Maybe AI upscaling will help.

  • yuri@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I stated playing battlebit and I don’t even consider bothering with mainstream titles anymore. This release is garbage, the last 5 releases have just been progressively worse and worse, like hey even bother?

    It feels like I have more fun in 1 game of battlebit than I did over the entirety of my 200+ hours of BO2, which was the last mainstream shooter I played that didn’t feel entirely like a waste of money.

    • Risk@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      I bought battlebit but the audio didn’t work, so I refunded it :(

      • yuri@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        That’s crazy, I’m playing on linux with no issues hahaha

        It is still early access, so if the issue hasn’t been fixed already I’m sure it will be before too long!

  • leotonius@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I have basically been addicted to CoD for the past couple of years, but recently finally cracked and got annoyed enough that I don’t play nearly as often, or nearly as long anymore. Expensive and overly monetized, absolutely, but there are so many other issues. This is my way-too-long rant that I always go on about CoD:

    • Camo that is always intentionally very dark so that people will buy it, and then it will get nerfed once sales die down

    • Same with OP weapon blueprints-- sell the new OP blueprint, then nerf it eventually, and then take the PR stance of claiming that you listen to fan feedback.

    • Feeling like I’m playing Pokémon with all the swords and shields… I hate shields. Shields making someone practically invincible on almost half of their body, and them having zero movement penalty when they are on someone’s back is absolute horseshit. Swords, where people can run faster because it’s a light weapon, and you can have the Double Time perk to move even faster, so that they can just rush you and slap you with an instant kill is also absolute horseshit. I DO love sticking a shield person with Thermite, but so many other things should work against them and they just don’t.

    • The game crashing, and crashing often. Which for MWII was only fixed in the last couple of months, in my experience.

    • The incredibly annoying “Restart Game” prompt when you load up CoD, it downloads the stupid store bullshit, and then the game needs to be restarted before you can continue

    • The stupid UI. Let me get to Quick Play, IDK, quickly, maybe? I should not have to click through a million stupid tiles just to get to Quick Play

    • Oh, and stop fucking changing my playlist filter to include some random game mode every now and then. If I have my filter set to just TDM, don’t you damn dare any other mode onto that filter.

    • Night maps. Fuck night maps. MWII has one night map, and there’s zero options in these games to filter out night maps or any other map you may despise (like Border Crossing).

    Despite all of this (and so, so much more) I still have 600+ hours into MWII alone, but the more I play it now, the more I find I just get angry at how shitty the entire experience actually is. The parts of it that are fun and addicting are not worth all the other bullshit. I do not intend to purchase MWIII.

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
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      1 year ago
      • Feeling like I’m playing Pokémon with all the swords and shields… I hate shields. Shields making someone practically invincible on almost half of their body, and them having zero movement penalty when they are on someone’s back is absolute horseshit. Swords, where people can run faster because it’s a light weapon, and you can have the Double Time perk to move even faster, so that they can just rush you and slap you with an instant kill is also absolute horseshit. I DO love sticking a shield person with Thermite, but so many other things should work against them and they just don’t.

      Wait, I don’t play CoD. Can you clarify what you mean by swords and shields? Shields I can imagine being some sort of body armor, but are people carrying around steel swords like they’re medieval knights in a game titled “Modern Warfare”?

      • n00@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        shields are the police shields which completely block every single shot on it, and yea you can literally run around with a katana

    • poke@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I don’t play COD all that much, but I was one of the crowd who made my purchase of MWII in part because it was supposedly going to stick around for 2 years. I feel slighted that they had nearly complete versions of nostalgic maps in Warzone only to never release them in regular multiplayer and instead hold them for MWIII. I refuse to support this bait by spending on COD any further.

      • PixxlMan@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The devilish act of… Reusing a perfectly workable engine and forgetting a piece of text?

        • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No it’s clear that it was meant to be a DLC for PS4 but they reworked it into a new game for PS5 so they could make more money. What’s better for them: $30 for a DLC or $70-$100 to rehash it as a separate game?

  • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    The people who care enough to complain are also largely the ones who keep buying it, so they train companies to realize that complaining is something that can be ignored because it’s all bark and no bite.

    • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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      1 year ago

      The sales figures of this might still be ok, but the next might be poorer, but that won’t be blamed on this.

      • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        They’ll probably think we didn’t have enough DLCs and microtransactions to make people happy, and out DRM needs to be more intrusive to improve our sales.

  • teamevil@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m done with COD after last year’s. If I don’t buy battle pass blah blah…I spent 70 fucking dollars already, that’s the price of the game not a ticket to continually pay. Fuck off.

  • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I feel like CoD has been a joke for like the past 5-7 years. They just keep rehashing the same thing year after year and players gobble it up. My friend is addicted to it and plays it online constantly, I stopped playing it when they shifted focus from the offline single player and two player story/missions to the online Battle Royale style games. I don’t find getting spawn killed and getting screamed at by 10 year olds fun.

    • holiday@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Cod has been a joke since development was taken from Infinity Ward. Infinity Ward worked on the engine for CoD3 but Treyarch developed the game. The last great CoD was the original Modern Warfare.

      • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Do you mean the original MW or the rehashed one? The last one I probably played was MW2. My friend (not the one mentioned above, another friend) loved playing the co-op wave style missions, and the stealth missions.

        I remember playing the one that had Christopher Meloni in it and it ran like shit on my PC which was high end. After that, I lost interest. When I moved in with the one that was addicted, I’d play with him just as a “bonding experience”, then he wanted me to play online with him , which I did occasionally. I remember trying to do the “secrets” and then having some asshole bitch me out because I moved an inch off of a platform or didn’t kill someone in time. Fuck that.

  • Mereo@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Well, you vote with your wallet. This is what happens when gamers pre-order incomplete games and scream about the state of the game on social media: you get crap products like this.

    Money is the only thing that appeals to companies. If people would just vote with their wallets, we wouldn’t have this situation.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Fucking seriously.

      You don’t want to support this shit? Don’t pay them for this shit… If you really want to play the shit, sail the seas ffs

    • NightOwl@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      We vote with our wallets. It’s the huge majority of the mainstream audience that also voted with their wallet by buying that makes out opinions irrelevant.

    • MrBubbles96@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      We do…the problem is we’re a drop in an ocean compared to the vast majority who do not, or as NightOwl put it, they do too, but they help perpetuate the lazy products AAA companies typically spew out by just buying

  • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Okay I’m seeing tons of comments from people about Battle Bit, but is there something good like it that features more realistic graphics? No disrespect to that game but the Roblox style instantly kills it for me.

    • phileashog@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Will probably get down voted to heck, but Battle Field 2042 goes on sale pretty regularly and is a good bit of fun since they fixed a lot of the issues from it’s atrocious launch.

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’ve had it on my wishlist, but I hesitate to buy anything from BF or CoD only for it to be replaced a year later and no one to play with. I mean, CSGo/CS2 has been going strong for years and in that time there have been like a dozen of each of the other franchises released.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      Battlefield 1 is solid and still has decent NA community servers. Semi modern, but not much of a cash grab with good stories and a fun multiplayer experience. Especially the naval battles (imo!)

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’ll give it a shot. I admittedly have never played a single BF game since BF Vietnam, lol, and I somehow own on PC like 7 BF games including BF1. So I’m going to take your advice and give it a shot!

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I have 1942, Vietnam, 2, 3, 4, 1, and 5 (I Believe that’s release order), is BF1 a better choice than 5 to try out?

        • Wahots@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          I mean, I’m biased, but I refunded BFV and put well over 500 hours into BF1, haha. It feels better than V imo.

    • BaskinRobbins@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It’s kind of crazy how it’s really just CoD, Halo, and battlefield after all these years. There’s some more mil-sim type shooters out there that are great, insurgency, hell let loose, squad, for example. It doesn’t seem like there’s much out there though in terms of the less serious team death match shooters. The only other one I can think of is maybe titan fall.

  • loutr@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I’m itching for a good single player arcade-y/soldier-y FPS. Anyone have a suggestion? Haven’t played CoD (nor BF for that matter) since the one with the No Russian level.

  • Artyom@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    As opposed to the original MW3, which was a totally unique experience from CoD MW2 because…well don’t worry about that part, it was its own disk!