General Complaints

[toastification]

I believe that if you sell something you should stand behind it. If you don't have enough faith in your products to offer a refund if customers are unhappy then I think that is on the person/company that lacks the testicular fortitude to stand up for the quality of their products.

 

Consumer protections were put into place because many companies are greedy and will readily shovel crap to the consumer. There are no such protections for games, unfortunately. What is mind boggling are poeple who stand up for companies/corporations like those groups have the people's interest at heart. They want our money, that's all. It is our job to be vocal and critical of the services and/or products offered to make sure that those products and services become better.

Your expectations for customer satisfaction and company conduct are ridiculously romantic and idealized. That's all I can say, really, without trying to turn this into a philosophical debate. I've seen this argument enough times and will politely agree to disagree from the get go.

You can talk alll the blah blah you want though toasty ... the longevity (or lack thereof) of this game will tell its own story.

Your attempt to impose a universal standard on what constitutes the value of a game is amusing, but hardly has any weight behind it. Bioshock was some of the most fantastic 60$ I ever spent, I finished it in 10 hours and never touched it again, nor ever will I. Team Fortress 2 cost me 5$ and I have over 300 hours logged in it. Dungeon Siege 3 hit a point in between them - a decent game I played 4 times and enjoyed them; not great, clearly in need of more work, but not "zomg refund." A game like Halo, despite nigh universal acclaim, was one of the greater disappointments in my gaming history, even after I tried out its "amazing" multiplayer at insistence of friends saying "it will be great!"

 

I see such (and much more varied/extreme) reactions from every gamer I know. There are games out of which I got maybe 10$ per hour, there are games out of which I got a cent per hour. There are even games where I paid for a vague, torturous expectation that the next hour will get better which many other people genuinely enjoyed. See the picture that paints? Unless the game objectively hurt your computer, unless the game was a clear-cut scam, unless the game is physically, unequivocally rendered unplayable by its technical/design issues, the "quality" of the game comes down to personal taste and subjective standards. To even consider a policy of refunding people based on "i dun like it" is insane on multiple levels. To proclaim the longevity of the game as the indicator of its "success" is not paying attention to the game's design.

A half baked game like this should be released for half price. Its an OK game that does some things well but lacks ambition and longevity and is missing features I believe to be central to the genre.

Impressive. You are capable of formulating an "I believe" statement, proving you have familiarity with concept of subjectivity. Consider, for the moment, that this game simply isn't intended to be placed in the subset of the genre you believe it to be in. That the missing features are missing not because of incompetence, but because of a conscious decision to not have them because its not in the direction they wanted to take this game into. That persistent multiplayer, replayability in form of NG+, pseudo-open gameplay with an army of branching side dungeons, etc. weren't included because they didn't want to turn it into that kind of game.

 

Is it still "a bad game" that people "should be given a refund if they are not satisfied with?" From my perspective, this is looking like a complaint about orange eaters that the apple they bought is nothing like the orange. At worst, Obsidian's / Square-Enix's fault is that they didn't explicitly spend time and money educating people about what this game is not. Can't blame them, to be honest. The information they put out was plenty for anyone with an hour to burn, and word-of-mouth from like-minded individuals whose preferences mirror yours is a few clicks away.

 

Are there criticisms you can make? Yes, and people make them, including you. Is the cost to content ratio a bit low? It's less than some games, equal to others, more than the rest - but acceptable ratios vary between people. Can you proclaim that this game went into a direction you dislike? Knock yourself out! But when such statements turn into repetitive whining and enter the chorus along with the standard "this game blowz f u obsidian" and more/less polite variants of such... it's trollish. Very trollish. Even if you made genuine posts before, when you start defending the blatant crybabies you paint yourself with all sorts of negative associations by condoning their behavior.

 

If it makes you feel better (you seem genuinely offended when "fanboys" defend companies), my position that if these... design decisions turn out to be merely things cut because Obsidian ran out of time, I would accept their return in a potential continuation. I would be disappointed and probably not play this game beyond a cursory playthrough to see what happened in the sequel, as I strongly doubt that anything short of a miracle on Obsidian's side will distract me from Diablo 3; but I won't berate Obsidian for sacrificing what I consider to be the strongest direction of this game for sake of appeasing the standard ARPG urges from the hack'n'slash crowds.

 

Finally, I've never asked for a refund I have simply stated that other people who are unhappy with the product should receive a refund from SquareEnix.

A not-to-subtle implication when making a generalized statement of "people should do this" is that you are including yourself in that subset, unless you do not consider yourself to be part of "people."

Edited June 27, 2011 by toastification

[AnjyBelle]

Also M&M changed its mechanics quite a bit over its entries and went from fully turn-based to realtime. It didn't change quite as much as in DSIII but its still a very weird example.

 

AFAIR the M&M-games I-IX were never "turn-based" per se; initiative, speed etc. determined a character's turn. But perhaps you didn't notice that.

And of course - the game changed over time. From 6 - 8 party members the group shrinked to 4. But nevertheless, the player had full control over them.

I agree - there were simplifications in the later sequels in regard of skills, but never down to a level which would nowadays be called "dumbed down".

 

But still - all sequels were full scale RPGs, with nice playtimes (50 hours+), with an abundance of items and stuff and the possibility for individual party development. Thus, no party was

like the other. Tons of quests and sidequests, many towns, no level cap (at least I never came close) and... and... and

 

 

You think, that the example is "weird"?

I don't care.

Erm, can you check your quote please? I didn't say that, I think you meant to quote C2B!

 

 

Oh... sorry. Of course you're right

I meant Post #31

Edited June 27, 2011 by AnjyBelle

[Bakercompany86]

It appears it's a good thing I never did play DS 1 and 2, because from the sounds of it this one plays nothing like them.

 

In that respect, I'm glad I went in not knowing the previous installments. I'm thoroughly enjoying this game, from the fun combat, to the solid (though not very deep) story, to even the loot I find along the way. The only complaint I have is the sometimes awkward camera angles.

 

That's how I feel. The #1 butthurt complaint on here is that its a farcry from the first 2, which for me would be an issue if it were the same developer. But its not.

 

I love the combat, story is definitely good enough to get the job done (ie. I actually care), graphics are find, loot is great and the inventory is nice and easy to understand.

 

I just wish it didn't end. Give me some kind of Last Stand mode (such as in Dawn of War II), or an arena, or New Game+ (with extreme difficulty). Any of those to add infinite replayability with friends (the DoWII Last Stand Leaderboard is a fun thing to climb).

 

Camera could use a *minor* tweak. People are blowing this way out of proportion. I've played with 4 people, and its fine. Not great, but it works just fine.

 

That and balance the loot for MP, it clearly favors the host. This can all be fixed with 1 TU.

[MonkeyLungs]

Inventory: You're making dungeon siege. Do not change the inventory. Inventory management is a pillar of gameplay for dungeon siege. The game practically revolves around the acquisition of items. We've all played console games with fun inventory systems, even the original diablo port to PSX had the inventory right. Do not assume you must make a boring clunky inventory screen to support consoles. You're better than that. I hope.

 

Equipment appearance: Again, the game revolves around acquisition of loot. Why in the world would you regress so badly from the original two games? Surely you felt you could improve some aspects of the older games and branch out from them and put your stamp on the game, but why did you choose to neglect one of the main pillars of the game?

 

Paper Doll display from the inventory would be pretty awesome. It would be nice to be able to see all the gear on your character directly from the inventory so that you didn't have to enter and exit the menu jjust to see how a different piece of armor looks.

 

I agree on your second point as well ... this is part 3 there should be MORE armor and weapons, not less.