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Keyrock · April 4

1 hour ago, Hurlshort said:

I don't think the analogy works. I mean, unless the game is missing the ending

Funny you should write that because some live service games can be accused of exactly that. I mean, they have an ending; every game technically has an ending, there is a point at which you can't keep playing further or a conclusion to the main story if it's a game that you can keep playing after finishing to do side content or grind for gear or whatever. Whether that ending is satisfying is a different matter entirely and live service games can, and have been accused of having weak "endings", and this is by design, because it's not really an ending but but an end to a chapter of a story that, in theory, will keep going for many years to come. Granted, unsatisfying endings are hardly exclusive to live service games.

The lie that we are fed is that we get a full-featured, complete game and then in addition we will get more game periodically. The reality is that we get a stripped down, bare minimum shell of a game and maybe that shell will be filled out over time.

Obviously I'm generalizing. The Division 2 was relatively well received so it is possible to have a good live service game. I played The Crew many years ago, I didn't buy it, it was part of PS Plus or something, but I quite liked that game and it had TONS of content. Of course, I played it some 3 years after release so it had 3 years of content added to it, I can't speak to how the game was at launch. I think that's the move with live service. Wait like 2 years after launch and, assuming the game is still alive at that point, buy it then and you'll get it cheaper as a bonus.

Edited April 4 by Keyrock

Hurlshort · April 4

12 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Funny you should write that because some live service games can be accused of exactly that. I mean, they have an ending; every game technically has an ending, there is a point at which you can't keep playing further or a conclusion to the main story if it's a game that you can keep playing after finishing to do side content or grind for gear or whatever. Whether that ending is satisfying is a different matter entirely and live service games can, and have been accused of having weak "endings", and this is by design, because it's not really an ending but but an end to a chapter of a story that, in theory, will keep going for many years to come. Granted, unsatisfying endings are hardly exclusive to live service games.

The lie that we are fed is that we get a full-featured, complete game and then in addition we will get more game periodically. The reality is that we get a stripped down, bare minimum shell of a game and maybe that shell will be filled out over time.

Actually my buying of a piano did play out in a similar way. At my children's school open house, my kids were showing me their music classroom. They both went over to the piano and started playing a tune. I was amazed. I immediately went out and bought them a nice piano.

It sat for the next 3 years with nary a tickle of the ivory keys. Apparently at home they'd rather watch TV and play video games. I finally sold it off to recoup some money. There were no concert pianists in my household.

As for live service games, there are going to be good and bad versions of this. People get pissed when a game comes out and the developers don't support it at all. Didn't you play a ton of Conan Exiles like me? They've been live servicing that game for a decade. It definitely launched as a shell of what it has come to be. I can see how the big developers are going to try and milk this horribly, but it also allows games to grow into themselves.

Keyrock · April 4

I didn't really think of Conan Exiles as a live service game. I suppose it might qualify, I don't know, the definitions get kind of muddled at some point. For example, would you consider The Witcher 3 to be live service? I wouldn't, but it has multiple expansions, the game was sort of a living thing for a few years. Then again, Conan Exiles did eventually add a battle pass and microtransactions, so I guess it is live service now? :shrugz: Back when I played it the game didn't have some of that stuff, I played it briefly since then but didn't really engage with the battle pass or the microtransactions at all, I would just collect the freebies from the battle pass whenever I got a freebie and then forgot about it until I got another freebie.

Hurlshort · April 4

I guess I'm just saying I care less about the label they give it and more about the intention and economics of it. Developers gotta eat. Funcom has continued to develop Conan Exiles and I've found the stuff they put out has been well worth my money. Stellaris (or Paradox as a developer), on the other hand, keeps putting out expansions and they rarely seem worth the full price. But that's very much an opinion.

Honestly most of the games I'm playing now are indie developers, and they have to put out little add ons to keep the lights on. I had no problem dropping money on the Wartales expansion because I ant them to keep working on the game. Same thing with Battle Brothers. Whether it is live service or not, I'm just trying to support the content that I like to see more of.

But as I said, I'm sure we will continue to see big publishers try and milk the system.

Wormerine · April 4

2 hours ago, Keyrock said:

For example, would you consider The Witcher 3 to be live service? I wouldn't, but it has multiple expansions, the game was sort of a living thing for a few years.

Well, no. Live-service doesn't equal post launch content/support. Live-service model sees games and platform, rather than a title. It's a game meant to be played endlessly and continuasly with a regular trickle of limited time content.

There are of course games that blur the lines. Are new Hitman's live services? I would say they definitely try, but there is a great, selfcontained game there with live-service stink all over it. For a while now even non-live service games implement live-service like monatizations (Street Fighter6 battlepass for example).

I can't speak of Conan Exiles, but I am pretty sure MMO was were a lot of live-service concepts were first born - than publishers became interesting in having same long term "engagement" through habit and ongoing revenue through microtransactions in other titles.

I think that if a game releases post release content, and you are not pressure to log in play it/buy it right now, it is not following live-service design. It has less to do with how much post launch content it gets (god knows, a lot of services tend to die rather quickly) and more with how it tries to "engage" its players.

Keyrock · April 4

I think it boils down to publisher priority. I think a lot of these live service games that have been spectacular, high-profile disasters (not necessarily financially, but definitely in reception and what they have done to the reputations of their developers) come down to the monetization model being the initial focus of the project and then the developer does what they can to make a game to fit said monetization model, which, from a creative standpoint, is completely bass ackwards. It should be make a good game AND THEN figure out how to best monetize it. But business gonna business, I guess.

Maybe these businesses should look at Capcom who is selling games like gangbusters, their stock value has something like quadrupled over the last 5 years. How did Capcom do it? By releasing great games. Their success has largely been built on the strength of single player games, the types of games that ***holes in suits keep telling us are no longer profitable and live service is the future. Games like the Resi games (remakes and new) and most recently Dragon's Dogma 2, which, for all its technical problems, and believe me, as a guy who has 36.5 hours in the game according to Steam, I have experienced said technical problems more times than I'd like to admit and they are frustrating, is an AWESOME game and it has sold quite well. I'm nominating that last sentence for Run-on Sentence of the Week. I'm sure that's not the whole story. I don't know Capcom's company structure, culture, etc. However, the fact that the company has been HIGHLY profitable and successful for a sustained period of time tells me that they are well managed and efficient. The flip side... It would be easy for me to $#!+ on Ubisoft here, and Lord knows they deserve it, but I $#!+ on Ubisoft enough as it is, time for WB to take one on the chin. WB had the biggest hit of the year in 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy (coincidentally a single player game) and by a WIDE margin. That game has sold well over 20 million copies so far and was well received, a HUMONGOUS success by any measure. An yet, the entire rest of 2023 was such a disaster for WB that they STILL are bleeding money and needing to restructure their business. How ****ed up is your company when you have a MASSIVE GIGANTIC SMASHING success and still can't have even a decent year overall? Every person in upper management at that company should be fired immediately.

Edited April 4 by Keyrock

uuuhhii · April 4

didn't care much before but comment section of any video about this game is insane

then read some news from south korea and those fan service certainly become a little weird

Edited April 4 by uuuhhii

Keyrock · April 4

12 minutes ago, uuuhhii said:

didn't care much before but comment section of any video about this game is insane

What possessed you to read YouTube comments? That's a descent into madness.

uuuhhii · April 4

it feels far more difficult and grindy than holocure

all the pathfinder reference doesn't mean much since the gameplay are so different from ttrpg rule

mage are certainly the most fun

HoonDing · April 4

More like Epilepsy Survivors.

uuuhhii · April 4

28 minutes ago, HoonDing said:

More like Epilepsy Survivors.

strange free game like holocure have option for attack transparency but this one doesn't

Wormerine · April 4

5 hours ago, Keyrock said:

IMaybe these businesses should look at Capcom who is selling games like gangbusters, their stock value has something like quadrupled over the last 5 years. How did Capcom do it?

(…)

WB had the biggest hit of the year in 2023 with Hogwarts Legacy (coincidentally a single player game) and by a WIDE margin. That game has sold well over 20 million copies so far and was well received, a HUMONGOUS success by any measure. An yet, the entire rest of 2023 was such a disaster for WB that they STILL are bleeding money and needing to restructure their business.

I remember seeing a quote of one of the higher up suggesting that all WB learned from that was: “dang, we should have monetized Hogward’s legacy more”.

I don’t hope that Capcom will stay its current awesome self forever. Line must go up and at some point continuing to release great games will stop doing a trick and they will start cashing in. Really, a line between good and bad Capcom is them being more forceful about current monetisation.

Keyrock · April 4

57 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

I don’t hope that Capcom will stay its current awesome self forever. Line must go up and at some point continuing to release great games will stop doing a trick and they will start cashing in. Really, a line between good and bad Capcom is them being more forceful about current monetisation.

Of couse, I don't expect this great streak from Capcom to last, but I'm going to take advantage of it while it is happening. At the very least, I hope they're still kicking ass like they currently are until Monster Hunter 6 comes out. That said, even when Capcom are doing great, like they are now, they can't help but do some stupid things. Case in point, the whole online shop thing. Dragon's Dogma 2 is just the latest example, Capcom has been inexplicably shoehorning completely and utterly pointless microtransactions into games for a while now and creating controversies for no ****ing reason whatsoever. I've been trying to wrap my head around it and...

I mean, I have to assume that somebody is spending money in these shops. Otherwise why would they keep shoehorning them into games? I just cannot figure out who the **** buys stuff from a Capcom online shop? And for what? You never ever need anything from those shops. You can just completely ignore the online shops in recent Capcom games, play the games normally, and be completely fine. You'll never hit a wall where it's like "$#!+, I'm going to have to grind for hours to get strong enough to get through this next part, or I could spend $5 and get this booster from the shop and be good to go". That just doesn't exist in these games. So why the **** even have the online shops?

Edited April 4 by Keyrock

Wormerine · April 5

16 hours ago, Keyrock said:

I mean, I have to assume that somebody is spending money in these shops. Otherwise why would they keep shoehorning them into games? I just cannot figure out who the **** buys stuff from a Capcom online shop? And for what? You never ever need anything from those shops.

Well, that's unfortunately not the case in Street Fighter6, but otherwise I see your point. Still, difficulty for me to not be apprehensive about every Capcom release, as they tend to come with a lot of red flags. It's like Bethesda not sending out review codes for Doom2016. Just... why?

Maybe Capcom is playing a long game - releasing years of quality releases, making us complacent and make us stop worrying about microtransactions. And when we do: BAM, mictrotransaction driven Resident Evil live service.

Keyrock · April 5

18 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

Well, that's unfortunately not the case in Street Fighter6, but otherwise I see your point. Still, difficulty for me to not be apprehensive about every Capcom release, as they tend to come with a lot of red flags. It's like Bethesda not sending out review codes for Doom2016. Just... why?

Maybe Capcom is playing a long game - releasing years of quality releases, making us complacent and make us stop worrying about microtransactions. And when we do: BAM, mictrotransaction driven Resident Evil live service.

I have a theory. My theory is that there is one ***hole at Capcom... Capcom is a large company, there's almost certainly more than one ***hole, but this particular ***hole is in a high enough position of power that he or she cannot be ignored. This ***hole has a hard-on for microtransactions and insists that they are present in every title. The other top execs have the devs just whip up some quick online shop, it doesn't really matter what's in it, no one will use it, slap it in the game, have the devs do all of ZERO work to balance the game to entice the player to use the shop, and shove it out the door. They're just doing this to appease that one ***hole high level exec so they are putting no effort whatsoever into it.

Mamoulian War · April 5

20 hours ago, Keyrock said:

Of couse, I don't expect this great streak from Capcom to last, but I'm going to take advantage of it while it is happening. At the very least, I hope they're still kicking ass like they currently are until Monster Hunter 6 comes out. That said, even when Capcom are doing great, like they are now, they can't help but do some stupid things. Case in point, the whole online shop thing. Dragon's Dogma 2 is just the latest example, Capcom has been inexplicably shoehorning completely and utterly pointless microtransactions into games for a while now and creating controversies for no ****ing reason whatsoever. I've been trying to wrap my head around it and...

I mean, I have to assume that somebody is spending money in these shops. Otherwise why would they keep shoehorning them into games? I just cannot figure out who the **** buys stuff from a Capcom online shop? And for what? You never ever need anything from those shops. You can just completely ignore the online shops in recent Capcom games, play the games normally, and be completely fine. You'll never hit a wall where it's like "$#!+, I'm going to have to grind for hours to get strong enough to get through this next part, or I could spend $5 and get this booster from the shop and be good to go". That just doesn't exist in these games. So why the **** even have the online shops?

Actually, that's what I call a good in-game shop. No need to buy anything from it to not spoil my game, but if there is anyone who for whatever reason wants to throw his money out of the window, who am I to judge, if it does not impair my experience from the game. Bamco has such microtransactions in som of their games as well. You could buy XP and money, but I have never ever felt in any of their Tales of games, that the balance of the game was skewed to force people to buy this **** :shrugz:

Hawke64 · April 6

8 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Actually, that's what I call a good in-game shop. No need to buy anything from it to not spoil my game, but if there is anyone who for whatever reason wants to throw his money out of the window, who am I to judge, if it does not impair my experience from the game. Bamco has such microtransactions in som of their games as well. You could buy XP and money, but I have never ever felt in any of their Tales of games, that the balance of the game was skewed to force people to buy this ****

Unless it does not affect the game itself completely (e.g. artbooks, soundtracks, clearly labelled donations), it should not be included - any in-game benefits screw if not the balance, then the immersion.

---

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/new-arc-line-is-a-party-based-steampunk-rpg-with-notes-of-bioshock-and-dishonored

Quote

Fulqrum Publishing have just released a story trailer for New Arc Line.

Added the link to the article in case the video does not work.
I would prefer RTwP, but the game looks interesting and somehow reminds of Arcanum (which I have not finished). The PC seems to be customisable.

Mamoulian War · April 6

Certainly piqued my interest as well. I'll see how the impressions end up. And it is scheduled to release on GOG as well.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/new_arc_line

sorophx · April 6

isn't really news, since this game has been out for some time now, but it's really good, and all the Stellar Blade talk reminds me of it, so check it out, it's basically "John Wick the video game".
Here's one of my fav clips from it:
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxgVK-QnATXesUdsfOm3CZLP1e9guZulr6?si=EEH3dlRvUMySx9dE

Edited April 6 by sorophx

HoonDing · April 6

Looks like Saints Row, with more epileptic seizures.

Gfted1 · April 8

The Outer Worlds: Spacers Choice Edition free on Epic: The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store

uuuhhii · April 8

2 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

The Outer Worlds: Spacers Choice Edition free on Epic: The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition | Download and Buy Today - Epic Games Store

almost forget epic exist

how many game did they give away for free now

Azdeus · April 9

On 3/27/2024 at 12:47 AM, Lexx said:

Our new stuff released: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/107410/view/4133814330212415053

So far so good. The negative reviews are as expected. Just a bit weird that the majority is in cyrillic. But oh well, so far so good.

I haven't tried the campaign itself yet, but that Veles rifle popped up in my Antistasi play and it slaps. What scope is it meant to be paired with though?

Lexx · April 9

Anything that zeroes at around 200 to 300 meters should be good to go for it. Since the bullet drop is quite harsh, it's primarily supposed to be used in close range encounters.

Azdeus · April 9

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Anything that zeroes at around 200 to 300 meters should be good to go for it. Since the bullet drop is quite harsh, it's primarily supposed to be used in close range encounters.

I hope I get hold of something then, the MRCO doesn't do it, might try a smg holo

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