Community MetaSteam | April 2023 - We destroy chaos from a galaxy far far away

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kio

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Apr 19, 2019
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I think the most I've spent on a single game of the past 20 years was ~35€ (Sekiro and XCOM2).
No way I'm paying 60€, let alone 70€. There's enough A and AA releases to last a life time, that are both better games and much more affordable.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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The game industry is usually in the “find out” phase of “fuck around and find out”, but it seems to have “found out” several times recently, and the occurrences of “finding out” is happening at an exponential rate.

Usually the best thing to do is learn a lesson from this, but the industry seems wholly incapable of that.
 

NarohDethan

There was a fish in the percolator!
Apr 6, 2019
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At the end of the day, there's probably an Excel file with a gigantic macro in EA HQ that measured the preorder numbers, the projected day 1 purchases, the usual percentage of refunds that spitted the answer that they could ride the bad press of releasing an incomplete game for a couple of weeks to give the enough crunch time for the dev team to correct the issues.
 

STHX

MetaMember
Sep 20, 2021
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You know what's the funny thing about the new 70$ (and even worse 80 fucking €) prices? They launch -> get bad rep because the game is broken or nothing special -> people quickly stop buying it -> desperate to make back some money the game is put on a -50% sale after a month or 2
So all of this to just go back to a more sensible price

Hmm... you know, maybe players aren't so hot on paying 80€ to beta test a game other players will get months later at 40. If only there was a solution to this conondrum...
 

Dragon1893

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Apr 17, 2019
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Gonna replay RE5. That game has been a guilty pleasure of mine ever since launch. Can't even remember when I last played it.

I'm so used to huge install sizes that I'm actually shocked it's only 8 gigs lol.
 
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thekeats1999

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Dec 10, 2018
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My god, it must have been either monumental arrogance or monumental stupidity to not realise that when you start putting the price up of something like games people are going to be priced out of the market. And when you do it around an economic downturn then people are going to decide that other hobbies may be looking good around about now.
Because companies love money more than their customers, the only way it stops is for more people to not actually buy the game at launch or at the very least refund the damn thing. However, gamers are a forgiving and forgetful bunch and many will let themselves get burnt over and over.

Some gamers also still act like we should be grateful when a PC game or port is released no matter the quality and buy it on gratefulness that it exists grounds.

I wonder sometimes if this is a problem only related to the game industry.

Genuinely asking because I don't know but If a band releases a turd of an album do music lovers go around saying "well at least they made something! even if it was awful and allowed us the opportunity to buy it"? "Better suck it up as they might do better next time."

Also, fuck their apology.
There does seem to be an odd disconnect when it comes to gamers. I mean i stopped listening to Muse when they decided that dubstep was a good direction to go in. I trusted them twice and then no more. However I was out of pocket to the grand total of £20 over the span of 3 or 4 years. If you go off some of the AAA games released this year alone I could have been out of pocket to the sum of several hundred pound In the first four months.

However I do think DF, Steam reviews and a refund system are doing their part. People are getting more vocal about bad games and shouting about it from the rooftops. Is it enough to make a difference? Probably not right now but I am hopeful that it will and sooner rather than later would be great.

on a more positive note, Honkai Star Rail has been a lot of fun so far. Game seems to run well and looks pretty.
 
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Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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My god, it must have been either monumental arrogance or monumental stupidity to not realise that when you start putting the price up of something like games people are going to be priced out of the market. And when you do it around an economic downturn then people are going to decide that other hobbies may be looking good around about now.
Thing is, it's not only in games (where it sure isn't new with the constant stream of DLCs, season passes and all that anyway), everything is being priced higher nowadays, hence why it's called greedflation and is not even remotely related to the inflation propaganda that we've hearing about forever as a convenient scapegoat.
There is a reason why we pay more for things while companies suffer so much from it they have +700% profit year/year.

If you let prices go unchecked, that's just the natural response of capitalism, profits must go up, no matter what happens to the customer base.
 

thekeats1999

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Dec 10, 2018
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Thing is, it's not only in games (where it sure isn't new with the constant stream of DLCs, season passes and all that anyway), everything is being priced higher nowadays, hence why it's called greedflation and is not even remotely related to the inflation propaganda that we've hearing about forever as a convenient scapegoat.
There is a reason why we pay more for things while companies suffer so much from it they have +700% profit year/year.

If you let prices go unchecked, that's just the natural response of capitalism, profits must go up, no matter what happens to the customer base.
Maybe I am in the minority here, but no game is worth £60 to me. Hell, £50 was too high for me. And I know capatilism is built on the principle that there Is no such thing as too much profit. It just gets frustrating that it devours common sense.

And I am self aware enough to know I am a bit of a hypocrite. I don’t want too think how much I have spent maintaining a sub on FFXIV, or how much getting the factions I like for Total Warhammer DLC or the expansions for Stellaris.

I just worry that the market is on the cusp of imploding and taking a lot of companies. Or that it continues down this spiral of exorbitant prices and people happy to pay the price. Just not sure which scares me more.

However I know this is me being a bit of a downer. I am happy as long as I get good games to play and fortunately their are still people releasing great stuff out there.
 

LRB1983

🎥 アダルトビデオ
Oct 8, 2021
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Consoles game prices are quite more cheaper than they are on PC this gen. You can easy buy gift wallet cards on cdkeys, eneba, gamivo, instant-gaming, G2A or so with 20-33% discount,
this for new releases but if you do this with already discounted games you can find very nice deals.
And usually if you go to allkeyshop, keysforgames or ggdeal you usually find another discount code to add to that discounted card (the same discount code you find for steam key games, promo codes like AKS8, AKS3, etc…) during checkout process to add another 3%-8% discount to final price.
I’ve been doing this during this whole gen since sony decided to stop selling game keys on third party stores.

If I’m not wrong was AyumiLumi who, before he deleted it, showed that screenshot comparing ps5 games prices vs. steam prices where cleary steam games were more expensive in his country. Something I pointed some times, and this if we only talk about straight prices from official stores and not doing third party key discount wallet search.

That said this shouldn’t be a pc vs console games prices war, here the “bad guys” are platform holders and publishers who should low the prices for us, people who buy games.
It wasn’t that far when PC games -new release- were A LOT cheaper than console games or PSX -32 bit era- games were a lot cheper than SNES -16bit era- games during cartridge to cd/dvd transition. Some SNES games were 75€ to 100€ at change in my country like Super Butoden or Super Street Fighter 2, without inflation. Instead we got 36€ to 45€ for psx games at change, Something should had been even cheaper when platform holders and publishers decided to destroy physical market and go to digital. Not only they got this physical stores margin profit, they even increased prices with production costs excuse.
 
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fantomena

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Dec 17, 2018
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Consoles game prices are quite more cheaper than they are on PC this gen. You can easy buy gift wallet cards on cdkeys, eneba, gamivo, instant-gaming, G2A or so with 20-33% discount,
this for new releases but if you do this with already discounted games you can find very nice deals.
And usually if you go to allkeyshop, keysforgames or ggdeal you usually find another discount code to add to that discounted card (the same discount code you find for steam key games, promo codes like AKS8, AKS3, etc…) during checkout process to add another 3%-8% discount to final price.
I’ve been doing this during this whole gen since sony decided to stop selling game keys on third party stores.

If I’m not wrong was AyumiLumi who, before he deleted it, showed that screenshot comparing ps5 games prices vs. steam prices where cleary steam games were more expensive in his country. Something I pointed some times, and this if we only talk about straight prices from official stores and not doing third party key discount wallet search.

That said this shouldn’t be a pc vs console games prices war, here the “bad guys” are platform holders and publishers who had to low the prices for us, people who buy games.
Most of the key shops you named are not authorized resellers and should be avoided.

I remember Factorio dev stating they'd rather want people to pirate the game than buy the game from someone like G2A.
 

hersheyfan

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Jul 17, 2021
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Yeah, Like a Dragon is awesome. Just hit this crazy difficulty spike in chapter 12 though. Really weird considering how relatively easy the game has been so far.
The game is notorious for this, its a way of forcing you to engage with the underground dungeon (where you can encounter enemies that give you ridiculous amounts of XP, similar to how Metal Slimes work in Dragon Quest). Keep at it, its not too bad!
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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Consoles game prices are quite more cheaper than they are on PC this gen.
I really don't agree with this, at all. It goes directly against what I've observed.

Of course all of this depends on which games you buy (e.g. from which publisher), and where you buy them from, but out of curiosity at the (relatively rare) times when I buy a "mainstream" AAA game I frequently check prices, and console pricing is almost invariably higher (while finding the best deal on each respective platform).

For example, I bought Elden Ring for €35.49 pre-release, and I don't think it was possible to get it on console for even close to that price at the time.


Edit:
I was wondering whether I missed some development, so I checked with the latest and "greatest" AAA, Jedi Survivor (a game I'm most certainly not going to buy).

The best deal for PC I can find is 47.14€, but that's from a dodgy site. The best I would actually be very comfortable buying is 49.49€ from CDKeys.
The best deal for PS5 I can find is 52.54€, but that's some super dodgy "you'll get an account with the game in it" thing. The best deal I can find that I would buy is actually a boxed copy for 59,90€.
 
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Alextended

Segata's Disciple
Jan 28, 2019
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They didn't have to pad the list with ancient stuff like Vanquish and VC4 making it seem as if it's true that most new games get bad ports, there are plenty newer stuff to include. If we're going that far back then there are probably too many games to even begin listing yet that looks like there's been less than twenty good releases in 6+ years & just 2-3 per year, lol. Also, what is "extensive steaminput support" I thought it's a Steam thing that can take over any game's native stuff. Naturally Microsoft wouldn't have Sony prompts, it's hardly worth mentioning and making even included "well ported games" have asterisks to their quality.
 
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Alexandros

Every game should be turn based
Nov 4, 2018
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A while ago I made a distinction between an unfinished game (where the developers clearly made an effort to make a good PC game but the publisher forced a premature release) and a bad port (where it's clear that it was a result of a lack of care and effort). Jedi Survivor belongs squarely in the latter category. Its bog-standard Unreal Engine settings menu, awful performance across the board and smaller things like the mouse not working properly in menus show that the developer or the publisher or both simply didn't give a fuck about providing a competent product to their customers.
 

Derrick01

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Oct 6, 2018
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This article is a strong reach and it's the author putting their own inference into the data. It could be related to pricing, but it could be any number of things. All the data says is PS sold 36m less third party games than the previous year.

The more likely culprit is how bad last year was from a release standpoint. There were 2 big 3rd party games that I can remember in the first half of the year, elden ring and lego star wars collection. After elden ring we went months until a notable game came out and some of the stuff later in the year tanked commercially (gotham knights, saints row, callisto protocol etc). Also last year we still weren't seeing a ton of $70 games, many of these games were still 60.

I'm betting this year will see a dramatic increase in game sales due to so many big hyped games coming out and many of them will be $70 too due to dropping cross gen. Hogwarts, RE4, Street Fighter, FF16, Diablo, tekken, MK12 and more will lead to a sharp increase in game sales regardless of whatever price they are. 2022 was one of the weakest years in gaming history from a game lineup perspective, it shouldn't be used to infer any kind of patterns in the industry. Now if sales stagnate or somehow decline again this year then we can start saying something's wrong.
 

thekeats1999

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Dec 10, 2018
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So, being A bit more positive than I was yesterday, Honkai Star Rail is a very good game. Like really good. Finished what was effectively the games prologue last night and reached the first planet. Was surprised with the turn based combat, especially as Honkai Impact has a great action combat system.

There are a couple of warning signs on the gatcha front. It has the usual levelling up items. Then there are four sub systems. About four or five different currencies. Some/All of which can be purchased for real money. However I am not sure how egregious Genshin Impact was on this front.
 
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C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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There are a couple of warning signs on the gotcha front. It has the usual levelling up items. Then there are four sub systems. About four or five different currencies. Some/All of which can be purchased for real money. However I am not sure how egregious Genshin Impact was on this front.
I also have no idea how bad Genshin is on this front, but when the different currencies and complicated (and likely monetised) subsystems started rearing its ugly head I dropped the game.

I wasn’t optimistic that Star Rail wouldn’t be like this, but I’ve never actually played a gacha before and it’s fucking gross and intentionally confusing/terrible game design.

Star Rail would be a good game if they let you pay £50 and have a good time. Alas, it’s not to be.
 

Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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So, being A bit more positive than I was yesterday, Honkai Star Rail is a very good game. Like really good. Finished what was effectively the games prologue last night and reached the first planet. Was surprised with the turn based combat, especially as Honkai Impact has a great action combat system.

There are a couple of warning signs on the gatcha front. It has the usual levelling up items. Then there are four sub systems. About four or five different currencies. Some/All of which can be purchased for real money. However I am not sure how egregious Genshin Impact was on this front.
As far as powering up characters go in Hoyoverse games, none of those are in the shop.
Though it will take you some real time to do so, which you can shorten a bit by expediting the grind with the battle pass (and other options, a bit more complicated than that), but it's widely frivolous to do so, that's not a problem at all.

Much bigger issue is that in their games, like many gachas, you can get dupes of the character, and that can vary from "whatever get 2% more damage" in Genshin Impact to "you need 19 copies or your character is worthless".
Which one Honkai Star Rail falls onto is a bit hard to say... but I can already see the game being on the agressive side since the gameplay is just rubbish.

This is the most vapid and outright non existent turn based combat you can find. And that's not exaggerating, any other turn based gacha is far, FAR more involved than Honkai Star Rail is, Epic Seven, FGO and all that old stuff is vastly more involved than HSR is, somehow.
You don't even have a Guard or Item option!
They don't use Genshin's elemental reaction system for some reason, so there's nothing else than "hit the color", stun the mob once and do a bit of damage (and apply a dot for 4 out of the 7 elements, which tells a lot about why they did it like this - to sell different elemental characters that do exactly the same thing but that you very much need to hit the arbitrary color).
No All out attack like Persona, vulnerable state like the trillion other games with a turn break system, no skill chain or anything... and of course, since everyone is one dimensional "hit one color" and nothing else, it's not like you can adapt, just use the color shown on enemies, you don't even have to analyze them or anything.

Beyond that I'll allow myself to complain about the game being just empty corridors that make Another Eden feel like it's high budget despite being ugly 2D - making pretty ultimate animations that you endlessly fast forward is not making the atrociously ugly dungeons good looking. They are genuinely PS2 level, and nowhere close to FF12 or even lesser games.

As a Genshin player, and not playing Honkai 3rd despite seeing its strengths, I'm pretty stumped about what they're doing with Star Rail, because it's a massive step backward and gets trounced by literally the most popular mobile games around that have been out for years and years....
 
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thekeats1999

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I also have no idea how bad Genshin is on this front, but when the different currencies and complicated (and likely monetised) subsystems started rearing its ugly head I dropped the game.

I wasn’t optimistic that Star Rail wouldn’t be like this, but I’ve never actually played a gacha before and it’s fucking gross and intentionally confusing/terrible game design.

Star Rail would be a good game if they let you pay £50 and have a good time. Alas, it’s not to be.
For me, I usually wait to the point I am getting tempted to buy the currency to do whatever it is I want to do. That is my warning sign/tolerant point for this sort of game. So I will play until I feel the need to pay.

On more serious note Durante please expand your team and start porting AAA games. Or at least do consulting work with development teams.
With all of my negativity over the last couple of days Durante is what I consider the gold standard that all ports should be aiming for. These are the ports that should be lauded. They do a lot more than the bare minimum.
As far as powering up characters go in Hoyoverse games, none of those are in the shop.
Though it will take you some real time to do so, which you can shorten a bit by expediting the grind with the battle pass (and other options, a bit more complicated than that), but it's widely frivolous to do so, that's not a problem at all.

Much bigger issue is that in their games, like many gachas, you can get dupes of the character, and that can vary from "whatever get 2% more damage" in Genshin Impact to "you need 19 copies or your character is worthless".
Which one Honkai Star Rail falls onto is a bit hard to say... but I can already see the game being on the agressive side since the gameplay is just rubbish.

This is the most vapid and outright non existent turn based combat you can find. And that's not exaggerating, any other turn based gacha is far, FAR more involved than Honkai Star Rail is, Epic Seven, FGO and all that old stuff is vastly more involved than HSR is, somehow.
You don't even have a Guard or Item option!
They don't use Genshin's elemental reaction system for some reason, so there's nothing else than "hit the color", stun the mob once and do a bit of damage (and apply a dot for 4 out of the 7 elements, which tells a lot about why they did it like this - to sell different elemental characters that do exactly the same thing but that you very much need to hit the arbitrary color).
No All out attack like Persona, vulnerable state like the trillion other games with a turn break system, no skill chain or anything... and of course, since everyone is one dimensional "hit one color" and nothing else, it's not like you can adapt, just use the color shown on enemies, you don't even have to analyze them or anything.

Beyond that I'll allow myself to complain about the game being just empty corridors that make Another Eden feel like it's high budget despite being ugly 2D - making pretty ultimate animations that you endlessly fast forward is not making the atrociously ugly dungeons good looking. They are genuinely PS2 level, and nowhere close to FF12 or even lesser games.

As a Genshin player, and not playing Honkai 3rd despite seeing its strengths, I'm pretty stumped about what they're doing with Star Rail, because it's a massive step backward and gets trounced by literally the most popular mobile games around that have been out for years and years....
Well that is a shame and thanks for the heads up. I may just go back and play Genshin instead. Or Honkai Impact. Or FGO (Especially as I don't have to jump through hoops to play it in Europe now). I'll play a bit longer and see where it goes. But now that I think about it, the game does seem a bit less "complex" than Genshin was at launch.

It really is a shame as the story seems interesting and, as I said earlier, Honkai Impact has a great combat system as well.
 
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Dragon1893

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Apr 17, 2019
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The game is notorious for this, its a way of forcing you to engage with the underground dungeon (where you can encounter enemies that give you ridiculous amounts of XP, similar to how Metal Slimes work in Dragon Quest). Keep at it, its not too bad!
I'm actually doing the battle arena in
Sotenbori
which you get access to right before. Leveling up with almost every fight.
 
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Line

meh
Dec 21, 2018
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Well that is a shame and thanks for the heads up. I may just go back and play Genshin instead. Or Honkai Impact. Or FGO (Especially as I don't have to jump through hoops to play it in Europe now). I'll play a bit longer and see where it goes. But now that I think about it, the game does seem a bit less "complex" than Genshin was at launch.

It really is a shame as the story seems interesting and, as I said earlier, Honkai Impact has a great combat system as well.
I really disliked Honkai 3rd for its terrible collisions (that they fixed later by selling you characters with massive range avoiding the issue... :face-with-open-mouth-and-cold-sweat: ), but at least it's pretty cool and the story is well liked.
HSR... its hard to tell, but just from what I felt, it flails hard at being SciFi since everyone looks the same (and it's hilarious that on the first planet March 7th says they're not from here, just look at their clothes... while Dan Heng and Welt look like they came from the same shop as Sampo despite being from different planets that have been separated for centuries, that's the kind of dissonance that really harms the storytelling), and the main story is definitely more of the random anime terms thrown at you for no reason, bu then all the other Hoyoverse games do the same.

Though the most important part of the lore being dumped on you in text form while you're just railroaded trying the rogue like mode is just astonishing bad design, again, I have no idea what they're doing when there are such blatant poor decisions... but maybe the story actually gets good? But then, I didn't play Honkai 3rd for that same reason, not going to play for weeks or months to "get to the good stuff", I have a million games that don't waste my time (and are not P2W liek H3D, because that game is really bad with that).


Speaking of, I started Star Ocean 6, and for now it's quite good, without the usual trappings of the franchise, the explorable levels are not inspired but you move blazingly fast and have a jetpack to zip around so the pacing isn't awful like it usually is, the story starts simple but with pretty decent characters and gives them time to breathe and interact with each other while actually not relegating the SciFi elements as a throwaway comment but without going into the excessive prime directive that some of the other games did, the combat is always good so that hasn't changed, visually it's very solid for the budget...

It's like they made a Star Ocean knowing what they wanted, and just did that. Crazy I know - but that's not a guarantee with the franchise.
Of course it could fall apart later, Star Ocean 3 made its share of weird choices... but it also started right of the bat with awful unending dungeons, and that was a much more pervasive problem that is not present here.
 
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