nocoolnamejim

If only this was a year ago this announcement would be greeted with applause.

So.... Now that Obsidian's bribe from Epic to have a year's worth of exclusivity is over and I've bought the game at half the price on GoG, I'd like to revisit this topic.... And to reiterate how weird (and frankly utterly absurd) the argument to have "no player choices on romance options in order to expand player choice is". Yes, over a year later I'm revisiting this forum to tell Obsidian both how much I hated your decision to give the Epic store a timed exclusive for a FULL DAMNED YEAR was and also how much I hated your decision to remove romance options for "player choice" (translated: these are hard to do right and take actual effort). The actual game is good so far, about 12 hours in. REALLY GOOD. So I don't want this to come across as just bashing on Obsidian. But, yeah, I'm thread necroing because both of those things (and also selling yourself to Microsoft) still bother me a year later.

lol Fair enough. I'm guessing though that while some people are single-issue passionate, just because we're on a gaming forum and you don't see their passion on other subject doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

The Syreen Commander Talana? Given that the ending of the game features the protagonist waking to her face, and then fast forwarding to telling their mutual grandchildren about their story I would consider it fairly important. Ironically for the anti-romance faction, it's a fairly thinly done romance for sure. But hard to argue that it wasn't important to the game given she ends up committing her race to joining the New Alliance of Free Stars then marrying and having children with the protagonist.

That's quite a broad statement based on.....?

But does this automatically mean that it's a good thing to have in a game? I would argue that many people seek things in games they cannot have in real life. It's escapism after all for many players. Firing guns and killing terrotists in a game might be more appealing to a player who wants to escape and office job for some time than it would for a Navy Seal I guess. So survival specialists actually like survival games? So... if you've had you fair share of romances in real life you might not be that much interested in romances in games compared to people who lack that experience. I know that romances in RPGs were ok for me when I was younger. But I went out to see the world, studied, met some nice ladies, got older, married, procreated... If I look at RPG romances now - they are often so cringeworthy and awkward. And silly, too. The dialogue options - jeez... So I'd prefer if developers put their effort into something else entirely. Like in general - in any game. Except maybe if it's about human relations and focusud on that thing in the first place. FWIW, I'm also actually happily married, although without the children. My wife didn't want to have them and it wasn't a deal breaker for me. But, just from my own personal experience (which is obviously anecdotal), I don't think it's necessarily true that just by having had romances in real life it makes seeing them in media (movies, tv, games, books) any less interesting. I do agree with your points that games are escapism to a very large degree, but not that romances can't be done well. Or that if they can't be done perfectly you shouldn't even try. That logic seems faulty to me because you can apply it to just about anything in a game. For example, at times in RPGs I've made "moral dilemma" type choices that lead to the game judging the response in a way that I didn't think was correct (or at least in a way I didn't anticipate). Like romance, morals and ethics are a pretty complicated subject and sometimes they can be done in a pretty hamfisted sort of way. At times I've found myself shaking my head trying to imagine what a writer was thinking. But I don't think the logical conclusion to them being done poorly is not to bother trying! My argument is that developers should just try and do romance options better, not to just figure that it can't be done or that it'll just be hard. I can understand how you personally no longer find them interesting. That's fine. But you earlier asked the question on whether or not having them is inherently a good thing to have in a game. To that, I would answer that it depends on the genre. In an RPG, I personally think a glaring lack of romance is fairly immersion breaking. But naturally I can't speak for everyone else's immersion level based on this factor so YMMV. Edit: Sorry for the slow response by the way. Was sick over the last few days.

Its a good thing when The creators aren't interested in implementing it The narrative doesn't support it in a way that isn't contrived The development of romance options would take resources away from creating other interesting role playing opportunities The development wouldn't support the creation of romances within the scope of the project in general I'm sure there are more reasons we could come up with. Don't get me wrong, I think there is a place for a well implemented and thought out romance or romances in a RPG, but that doesn't mean it has to be present in the game anymore than, say, swords or relationships with your parents. I understand your points, and perhaps my opening post was a bit sharper than it should have been, but here's my take if you don't mind a bit of a rebuttal. Romance is one of the biggest and most important aspects of the human condition. Some might call the search for love and acceptance THE single most important factor in that human condition. So completely divorcing this aspect of playing a role from a role playing game is essentially removing one of the biggest aspects of playing a character. Love, and the search for it, is one of the biggest motivators out there. Romance done well can add far more to a story than romance done poorly can detract from a story. (IMO of course.) Some of the best video games of all time have featured love as a central component, and I have a hard time listing a bunch of all-time great RPGs that completely ignored this aspect. A short list of my favorite RPGs of all time: Planescape: Torment - Has romances Witcher 3 - Has romances Jade Empire - Has romances Mass Effect Trilogy - Has romances Dragon Age: Origins - Has romances Kotor - Has romances Kotor 2 - Has romances Neverwinter Nights 2 - Has romances Dragon Quest VIII - Has romances...really, really bad ones but they are there. Star Control 2 - Has romance Final Fantasy IV - Has romance Final Fantasy VI - Has romance Final Fantasy IX - Has romance Persona 3 - Has romances Persona 4 - Has romances Fallout 1+2 - No real romances to speak of tbh. The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind - No real romances to speak of. Chrono Trigger - Has romance, but very little. I do get that romance in video games can be a challenge. I get that they can be poorly written. I get that they can be expensive and time consuming to implement. But the list of all-time great RPGs that ignores this side of the human condition is pretty damn short. This is obviously excluding games that fall more into the "action RPG" trope than actual RPGs. I like From Software's games but there's precious little roleplaying even if they are labeled as "Action RPGs" because it has stats and leveling up and stuff. I consider most of them to be all-time great games, but I don't consider them to be RPGs.

Why on earth would a lack of romance OPTIONS be considered a good thing? It's literally less role playing in your role playing game? The key word is of course optional. Have romanceable characters but not a requirement. If players decide that they don't like any of the options, they're free to friend zone them all. This is making a pretty important role playing decision for everyone.

No, people who pre-order Anno 1800 on Steam are getting it on release day. It's actually a better deal than what I suggested earlier (which was giving people Steam keys that don't activate until a year after release). The Outer Worlds was in the top 3 most wishlisted games on Steam. Private Division could totally have demanded something like this from Epic and gotten it. It's some kind of compromise, but I'm not sure it's a great one from a customer standpoint. It's offshoring the developer's risk at the expense of the customer. In return for the game being available in a timely manner on their preferred platform, they assume all financial risk that the game sucks. It works GREAT for the developer. They get those sweet, sweet Epic store bribes without looking quite as ****y to the people who aren't a big fan of Epic AND they likely juice preorders all in exchange for the low, low price of making their customers buy something before the reviews are out unless they want to read the reviews first and then either buy on an inferior platform or wait a year. It gives you two lousy choices.

Having exclusives does the precise opposite of forcing competition and innovation, except for competition on buying exclusives, which is nothing the consumer benefits from. Competition happens when several stores offer substitutable products. Then the consumer can pick one over the other because the overall package appeals to them the most. Well aware of all of that. Check out some of the other posts I've made. I definitely agree that, in the short term, the way Epic is choosing to "compete" only benefits them and not the end customer.

It does not, unless by "more competition" you mean "more games going exclusive." In fact, the SMART move by Valve would be to immediately tank any and all projects it has going to improve Steam and funnel that money into getting exclusives themselves. I mean, there's literally no feature Steam can implement to have me buy TOW with them before the exclusivity year is up, so why would they try? In fairness, Epic has stated that they intend - at some point - to stop buying exclusives and HAS put out a roadmap towards adding new features to try and draw closer to parity with Steam. Clearly it's light years behind at this point on both fronts, but it is at least saying the right things. I agree with you that the smart move for Valve would be to stop sitting on their hands, although I think a better approach would be to reduce the cut they take for hosting games on their store vs. what Epic does of outright buying exclusives. That's going to get expensive quick if both storefronts are running up the bidding. But if these moves by Epic do force Steam to innovate, reduce the amount of revenue they take from developers, etc. it could be a good thing in the long run. It's hypothetical at this point that it will be healthy in the long run, but it does have the potential. Light years is putting it mildly: it's a digital storefront WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A SHOPPING CART*, which is so absolutely ridiculous that if it came up in a work of fiction it would be called out. To be honest, I don't really care what Epic says, because I don't trust them anyway (and even if I did, everything the head of Epic says starts as insulting as goes up from there, so it's not like there's a stellar record there). When they start DOING, then we'll talk; unfortunately, all they've done so far is screw over consumers. There's no lower cut that Valve can take to change this: Epic is guaranteeing minimum sales, menaing what they're offering is guaranteed profit, which is something lower cuts don't do. And, again, this gives Steam no reason to innovate, because Epic isn't doing "look at this awesome feature we came up with," they're doing "haha, features are for suckers, it's our way or bust," and there's no feature that can change that. *The lack of shopping cart doesn't really affect me, but it's an example of how the EGS fails at even the most basic of functionalities. As someone who plays on two computers, though, the lack of cloud saves automatically means I'm not touching it, anyway. But outright guaranteeing profit is not sustainable. It's probably being done in the short term to A) Try and get their foot in the door and B) Give them time to try and get their storefront even remotely respectable. Eventually it will be put up or shut up time because Epic won't be able to just buy up exclusives indefinitely. That part has to be a short term play. Regardless, Steam and GOG for me remain the way to go until someone, anyone, shows me something better than either of those two.

It does not, unless by "more competition" you mean "more games going exclusive." In fact, the SMART move by Valve would be to immediately tank any and all projects it has going to improve Steam and funnel that money into getting exclusives themselves. I mean, there's literally no feature Steam can implement to have me buy TOW with them before the exclusivity year is up, so why would they try? In fairness, Epic has stated that they intend - at some point - to stop buying exclusives and HAS put out a roadmap towards adding new features to try and draw closer to parity with Steam. Clearly it's light years behind at this point on both fronts, but it is at least saying the right things. I agree with you that the smart move for Valve would be to stop sitting on their hands, although I think a better approach would be to reduce the cut they take for hosting games on their store vs. what Epic does of outright buying exclusives. That's going to get expensive quick if both storefronts are running up the bidding. But if these moves by Epic do force Steam to innovate, reduce the amount of revenue they take from developers, etc. it could be a good thing in the long run. It's hypothetical at this point that it will be healthy in the long run, but it does have the potential.

I think Sterling did a fairly balanced take there. In the short term, there's absolutely nothing good for us, the customer, with regards to the Epic Game store. To call it "threadbare" would be generous. (Lacking even a shopping cart feature? lol) Publishers and developers taking a game to Epic exclusively can make sense from a financial standpoint, but it blows from a customer experience standpoint. A game launching there is objectively worse than a game launching on Steam because of all the missing features like cloud saves, mod support, forums, etc. In the long term, yes, it could be a force for good in the industry if it forces more competition and more innovation, but there is the risk of over-fragmentation of the industry where everyone has to maintain 12 different launchers/storefronts for each game from the various major publishers.

The point missed in your tale is that other people still had the OPTION to go to their preferred place to get the game when Steam was not liked, unlike now with the Epic Store. With your analogy, it would be like if Steam were the ONLY place you could get your games in its infancy when it had problems because it had bought out the game from every Gamestop and other store, everywhere, and there would be no PC copies available to buy for a year.

I did include the feature comparison between Steam and Epic. Don't get me wrong, I'm not just bashing on Steam here. But there IS a belief out there that Steam has not innovated as much as they could/should because they have not had to. One example for me personally is in customer support. They lack any sort of phone number for people to call to get customer support. Admittedly that could get expensive, but it sure would have helped with a recent situation I had. (Long story. I'll spare the details.) But for a company that made an estimated $4.3 billion dollars in revenue in 2017, the ability to speak to a live person if necessary seems like something that could be invested in as an improvement to their service.