Community MetaSteam | April 2024 - Definitely there's no rest for the wicked.

[PC-tan]

Part of this is me just preaching to the choir.








I saw this thing from that Icon Era (Sony focused place) about how PC has been declining in EU. I think that the information that they showed was mainly for EU and not for America and Asia though.

It was showing how sales for hardware and software has either declined or not been climbing mearly as much as consoles sales have since at least 2018.

Is part of the reason for this, to do with Nvidia and just how expensive PC components have gotten? I'd imagine that and the increasing cost of games now and also the large number of GaSS has affected people buying habits. Why buy a game at launch if you are not even going to play it and instead just mainly focus on the GaSS title you are currently mainly playing for the season.


The charts they provided didn't mention anything about Asia.


But I did find it weird how some people do think that if Sony was to make it's own launcher that it would be successful. Just replicate the features of Steam they said and it would be more successful then steam. Neither Epic or MS were able to.


But the idea of cross buy definitely would be an insensitive for some people to buy the game on PS though. Look at what MS is doing with Xbox and Microsoft Store, you have to at least admit that is a nice idea. When it works, since at least MS store is not always reliable.

One thing I thought was weird was how they were saying that some publishers would favor Sonys store. Which didn't make sense since they also mentioned that third party could still release on Steam as they are right now. But now that I think about it, in reality that does seem like a tall order since that's basically saying that devs will need to have another build of the game to release on PS store on PC. Which as we already know is a hassle for devs. And I'd imagine that they would have to pass some sort of certification test on top of that.



One of the other things that stood out to me was how they disregard Nintendo. And were saying that Xbox was dead. By the way it was not all bad and some people did say some reasonable things. So at least the OP of that post was saying how games sell a fraction of a fraction on PC



OP did mention how Ubisoft was very profitable when it left Steam. Which I'm still not sure about. Yes they made money but I'm curious as to where it came from. Was it because Valhalla sold very well on PC? Was it because it was also on EGS and Ubisoft had a deal with Epic? Since I'm not sure as to the reason. I mean did it really matter? Ubisoft ended up coming back and this is even despite one of the executives saying that they didn't need Steam because of their 30% "tax* or something like that.


But you also had companies, mainly in Japan were PC has been booming, even more than PS currently has. The whole idea of why do you even need a PS anymore is not that weird of an idea there right now since all you need is Nintendo and PC to play a vast majority of current releases. And this is not even looking at how some smaller third party games don't even release on PS at all or if they do it's much much later.


What I did thing was must mind blowing was how they mentioned that Steam was in the little leagues why PS was untouchable, or something to that extent of PS just being way better than the rest and it not even being a competition type of thing. Which is insane considering how there are things that Steam is doing that is years ahead of what PSN is doing. And how Steam keeps on evolving. I'm not sure if they realize a pig portion of that games from how much Steam relies on Users, it needs users too keep the platform going, meanwhile PSN doesn't really need that. Since part of it is curated by a staff and they choose what to show you, which has some benefits but it's not really done in a way to point you to a smaller game that you might potentially want to play.


Etc maybe later.

 

[FunnyJay]

What is the latest someone has ever bounced off a game?

Prototype.

Got to the final boss of the game. A boss that can stunlock you and I think you have to throw missiles at hime or something (or he threw them at you maybe) and everything is on a short 5 minute timer or so.

So you have to beat this boss that can stunlock you for several seconds, and he has a massive health bar, all while you are under enourmous time pressure.

No thank you.

Prototype was a game that wanted to be a power fantasy, but immediately didn't let you experience a power fantasy, since immediately after you get these fantastic powers, megasized monsters knock you all over the city, while helicopters are filling you with minigun fire and tanks are constantly shooting shells at you. All while you are rag-dolling around and wondering when the fun part is about to start.

 

[Line]

snip

It is an extremely common view in a specific part of the videogame industry, not only Sony but particularly present on the PS platform, that the only thing that matter is the big AAA, cinematic action stuff.
It's very much reinforced by forums since anyone left on those like we are would be around 30+, so right at the correct age to have grown with Playstation, but it also reflects on game reviews or game awards shows, it's all the same generation, so a lot are genuinely convinced that it is what is important and somehow leads the industry.

Of course we know it's false, you don't even need to bring Steam in the equation (although we would hear the same people cum their brains outs if their plastic box had a +40% growth YoY in Japan, and not a decade long death spiral), there's plenty of games that single handedly have more players and make more money than the entire console industry. And that's without even talking about the mobile world!

But as some people are quick to damage control, those are not "real games", because the propaganda told them that what matters is third rate zombie schlock, or spess muhrine corridors with walking sections, and open worlds with RPG sprinkles.
So it quickly becomes an echo chamber that completely ignore the reality of the industry and it reflects all over the place, from the TGA to games with zero reviews but millions of sales.
And of course, in the development of the games themselves - and that's the obvious reason why so many are just running to their doom (if they haven't already), because their target demographic is this specific subset of 30, 40 years old with an ever increasing budget as they've trained them to only consider those games as the worthy ones, while the market is ever shrinking, and not even tryin to expand: it's not only that they ignore the people that are not part of it, but that they've completely forgotten about renewing their customer base, the youth doesn't give a shit about all of it and obviously has no ties to the history of PS, Xbox and all.

In the case of Sony, it's reinforced by Xbox effectively throwing the towel, I would not give the brand more than three years before it's gone, and it's not new: Halo died years ago and didn't wait for Infinite to fall apart, and the franchise was already irrelevant in the entire world bar three NA countries. Very symptomatic of that blinded part of the community.
Now they feel Playstation has won, despite being trounced by Nintendo, because again, not real games so it's just denial. Of course Sony is blaring the alarms that the exact thing is happening to them and is running on PC for a reason, but it still won't fix the original problem that their target demographic is ever aging, ever leaving it behind. And for that, they'll need more than ports of Ghost of Tsushima... but I don't know what the future is made of.

 

[crimsonheadGCN]

After 11 years in early access, 7 Days to Die will be leaving early access soon:

7 Days to Die - 7 Days is leaving Early Access - Steam News

The Fun Pimps are happy to announce 7 Days is leaving Early Access! Join us with TFP Co-Founder Richard Huenink in this Video with details on ‘7 Days to Die’ plans to leave early access, the launch dates for PC and Console Alpha 22 (Now 1.0), the roadmap of planned future updates and features...

store.steampowered.com

 

[Spamlynguist]

Today in cool looking indies I found on Twitter:

 

[Derrick01]

For curiosity sake, what's the fastest you've ever bounced off a game?
I think I just set a new personal record with Nioh 2. After 10min I'm completely done with it and can't see myself ever trying to go back.

I didn't even make it through the first level of bayonetta 1. I remember it not making an ounce of sense, typical of platinum games especially back then, and I just said nope I'm not doing this I'm not putting myself through this again. Quit it and never looked back all these years later. Was never a big fan of the overly flashy and dumb JP character action game anyway.

 

[Madventure]

After 11 years in early access, 7 Days to Die will be leaving early access soon:

7 Days to Die - 7 Days is leaving Early Access - Steam News

The Fun Pimps are happy to announce 7 Days is leaving Early Access! Join us with TFP Co-Founder Richard Huenink in this Video with details on ‘7 Days to Die’ plans to leave early access, the launch dates for PC and Console Alpha 22 (Now 1.0), the roadmap of planned future updates and features...

store.steampowered.com

For all intents and purposes they're not changing their plan at all they're just slapping a 1.0 on it jacking up the price and sticking to their "Releasing" content patches whenever on a loose schedule

They're absolutely horrible at doing anything on schedule.

They're one of the first games to be accepted by Steam Greenlight, and Steam Early Access, and they were a kickstarter game. They haven't even delivered on all of their kickstarter promises yet and has been 11+ years at this point. Steam Greenlight doesn't even exist anymore.

They're also releasing a shitty tower defense/Overlord version of 7days to die so the only logical conclusion I can come to is that they're running out of money or something.

The game isn't horrible, it's just that every major content update they don't actually do a major content update. They're revamping a entire section of the game that didn't need revamped. They have gone through 4? 5? Iterations of their skill system for literally no apparent reason, they had one or two that were great most everyone loved them then they went Okay lets use books!! No Magazines! No Skill points! No Magazines And Skill points! No Just use the abilities and you'll gain skills naturally! NO FIND MAGAZINES TO GAIN SKILL POINTS!

Then they changed loot to specific zones and Loot to be by level in zones. Which made crafting redundant. The best items found in the game are from just finding them where you could previously RANDOMLY craft amazing stuff. They removed that

I could go on and on and on. I played a lot of the game and They've removed and tweaked more system for seemingly random or no reason and It just annoys the shit out of me.

Their Roadmap goes all the way to Q4 2025 with a giant caveat at the bottom saying DATES SUBJECT TO CHANGE
The way I would stay up to date previously was I would play the content drop for X Amount of time uninstall and wait for the next patch and that would take usually 1.5 to 2 years so yeah.
My last play through I pretty much said I was done with the game because they said "look at all these amazing changes we did!"
I went through the game going "Okay what did you change? I dont see anything different"
Because the patch before that had just introduced their horrendously awful Loot system that has half assed, and their low level junk versions of only half theitems and they sat like that for a year and a half~

 

[Li Kao]

I’m surprised at, broadly, how much Dawn of War 1 still works. Was really scared by the traditional UX hell of older PC games, but no, it’s good, or passable. And the game still slaps.

 

[dex3108]

For curiosity sake, what's the fastest you've ever bounced off a game?
I think I just set a new personal record with Nioh 2. After 10min I'm completely done with it and can't see myself ever trying to go back.

Well I have rule, I finish what I start XD I will maybe take a break for few days/weeks but I will eventually finish game. So I rarely drop games, I really can't remember what was the last one I dropped.

 

[Kyougar]

It is an extremely common view in a specific part of the videogame industry, not only Sony but particularly present on the PS platform, that the only thing that matter is the big AAA, cinematic action stuff.
It's very much reinforced by forums since anyone left on those like we are would be around 30+, so right at the correct age to have grown with Playstation, but it also reflects on game reviews or game awards shows, it's all the same generation, so a lot are genuinely convinced that it is what is important and somehow leads the industry.

Of course we know it's false, you don't even need to bring Steam in the equation (although we would hear the same people cum their brains outs if their plastic box had a +40% growth YoY in Japan, and not a decade long death spiral), there's plenty of games that single handedly have more players and make more money than the entire console industry. And that's without even talking about the mobile world!

But as some people are quick to damage control, those are not "real games", because the propaganda told them that what matters is third rate zombie schlock, or spess muhrine corridors with walking sections, and open worlds with RPG sprinkles.
So it quickly becomes an echo chamber that completely ignore the reality of the industry and it reflects all over the place, from the TGA to games with zero reviews but millions of sales.
And of course, in the development of the games themselves - and that's the obvious reason why so many are just running to their doom (if they haven't already), because their target demographic is this specific subset of 30, 40 years old with an ever increasing budget as they've trained them to only consider those games as the worthy ones, while the market is ever shrinking, and not even tryin to expand: it's not only that they ignore the people that are not part of it, but that they've completely forgotten about renewing their customer base, the youth doesn't give a shit about all of it and obviously has no ties to the history of PS, Xbox and all.

In the case of Sony, it's reinforced by Xbox effectively throwing the towel, I would not give the brand more than three years before it's gone, and it's not new: Halo died years ago and didn't wait for Infinite to fall apart, and the franchise was already irrelevant in the entire world bar three NA countries. Very symptomatic of that blinded part of the community.
Now they feel Playstation has won, despite being trounced by Nintendo, because again, not real games so it's just denial. Of course Sony is blaring the alarms that the exact thing is happening to them and is running on PC for a reason, but it still won't fix the original problem that their target demographic is ever aging, ever leaving it behind. And for that, they'll need more than ports of Ghost of Tsushima... but I don't know what the future is made of.

The same people also cry about the death of the retail market and how some retailers are completely phasing out retail boxes of games.
And they don't even see or want to acknowledge, that the reason is, that filling those places with the few high-profile console releases doesn't make sense anymore because it only represents 10% of the amount of titles a console section would have had in 2000.

 

[Alexandros]

I saw this thing from that Icon Era (Sony focused place) about how PC has been declining in EU. I think that the information that they showed was mainly for EU and not for America and Asia though.

It was showing how sales for hardware and software has either declined or not been climbing mearly as much as consoles sales have since at least 2018.

Do you have a link?

 

[CommodoreKong]

The same people also cry about the death of the retail market and how some retailers are completely phasing out retail boxes of games.
And they don't even see or want to acknowledge, that the reason is, that filling those places with the few high-profile console releases doesn't make sense anymore because it only represents 10% of the amount of titles a console section would have had in 2000.

That and physical sales continue to decline. Retailers would rather use the shelf space for something that actually sells well instead of something that’s clearly dying.

 

[「Echo」]

I don't normally bounce off games because I'm a masochistic completionist. However, about 8 hours into Code Vein I just could not take the level design anymore. I've never gone back to it, but sometimes I think about it. Even if I just rushed the story, idk.

Uncharted series on Playstation. It's just Tomb Raider in a new skin and it's fucking garbage. Bullet sponge enemies are not fun in any game ever. That's not how ballistics work on humans, and ND is shit at shooting feel.

Horizon as well. I hate fucked my way to that games Plat. I was over it about 2 hours in.

Edit: Oh my God how could I forget. I've bounced off Zelda: BotW 4 different times. Longest I ever made it was about ~20 hours and felt like I accomplished nothing. Absolutely vapid design.

And that's not me being a Zelda hater. I've beat each entry multiple times up until Skyward Sword.

 

[fantomena]

Had my fill of Helldivers 2 after 30 hours. A really fun and good MP game, but now it got quite repetive. Even managed 30/38 cheevos.

 

[Line]

If we're talking games abandoned quickly, it's like 70% of all games I play.
I like to try things to see if they're for me, so I will start things knowing full well I won't continue, but at least I can get a taste of them. And sometimes, I do find interesting things in genres I don't usually play.

Now I also don't finish that many games, I often lose interest after some time if they're very long and don't really keep anything new for later. I've never stuck to games because of the sunk cost fallacy, nor do I care about backlogs for a second, so I probably have a low, low completion rate...

 

[Le Pertti]

Speaking of dropping games, Im kind of getting burnt out on Dragons Dogma 2, I love it from a systems point of view, but it's not very engaging when it comes to world building and story. Feels like Im just fighting monsters on an endless line.

 

[Gelf]

The games I bounce off quickly are usually so forgetable I couldn't possibly tell you what they are. Uninstall, set it to hidden in my library, move on.

For a notable game I actually remember, I abandoned Skyrim after one dungeon because of how unsatisfying I found the combat.

 

[fantomena]

After lots of Helldivers 2 Im back to some more "one and done" games. First is The Knight Witch, suprisingly decent fun.

 

[lashman]

 

[dex3108]

That's 9th game finished this year (8 of those i played and finished on Deck). Latest finished game is Alice Madness Returns. It took me 15-16h to finish it and game really has imaginative levels but game is stretched too thin so a lot of mechanics repeat. Also some encounters have really poor design. But overall it is ok 3D platformer with mostly pointless collectables and mediocre story. i was thinking about playing first game too (i even modded Alice Madness Returns on Deck and played a bit of first game) but from what i saw in some gameplay videos it is kinda the same as MR but more clunky. So i skipped it and just focused on MR.

 

[Derrick01]

Speaking of dropping games, Im kind of getting burnt out on Dragons Dogma 2, I love it from a systems point of view, but it's not very engaging when it comes to world building and story. Feels like Im just fighting monsters on an endless line.

That's pretty much what it is. It's almost a carbon copy of the first game they didn't expand on any idea the first had which is one of the most baffling things I've seen this year. They've had 12 years to sit on ideas for this game and finally got the greenlight to make a sequel and they just...made the same game again.

I was personally hoping they'd go harder on the RPG side of the game. Capcom is not known for storytelling (or really anything except combat) but I had hope they would use this game to at least try to do something outside of their wheelhouse.

 

[Dragon1893]

Finished Infinite Wealth. Played through the whole thing on the Deck.
The ending is meh but the game is my goty so far.

 

[Cacher]

Discussion - What are you currently playing? (Week 17 of 2024)

New week, new thread! What are you playing? My progress in Helldivers 2 slow down a bit during the week because the Internet at my place was a bit unstable lately. A lot random disconnection here and there. I did have fun killing bugs and bots during the short login time though. Apart from...

metacouncil.com

 

[Hektor]

Finished Infinite Wealth. Played through the whole thing on the Deck.
The ending is meh but the game is my goty so far.

Honestly, the ending was really disappointing.
Not sure what was going on with it, as usually Yakuza endings are always really great, but this one felt like a Part 1 of 2.

 

[PC-tan]

Do you have a link?

Go forward at your own risk.



It's the first comment, you can easily see some of the information for some of the regions when they mention countries and stuff with links to post but the last image you have to sign in to their website in order to be able to view.

 

[STHX]

Go forward at your own risk.



It's the first comment, you can easily see some of the information for some of the regions when they mention countries and stuff with links to post but the last image you have to sign in to their website in order to be able to view.

 

[kio]

Go forward at your own risk.



It's the first comment, you can easily see some of the information for some of the regions when they mention countries and stuff with links to post but the last image you have to sign in to their website in order to be able to view.

what a sad day to have eyes and know how to read...

 

[Li Kao]

If we're talking games abandoned quickly, it's like 70% of all games I play.
I like to try things to see if they're for me, so I will start things knowing full well I won't continue, but at least I can get a taste of them. And sometimes, I do find interesting things in genres I don't usually play.

Now I also don't finish that many games, I often lose interest after some time if they're very long and don't really keep anything new for later. I've never stuck to games because of the sunk cost fallacy, nor do I care about backlogs for a second, so I probably have a low, low completion rate...

You are my new role model. Everything sucks ! /jk
But yeah great and inspiring post. I tend to more and more lose any will to play near the 20 hour mark, and I don’t think that’s a mystery as games are bloated with copy paste content and it’s generally the moment where I feel I have seen all the tricks the game has to offer.
I’m guilty of pushing further to an unreasonable level, not sure why. I feel it would be a waste of sorts. Maybe a sunk cost fallacy for irl time ? And my completed game list is suffering these days.
Pretty sure I should simply let it be and list the dropped games.

But if you don’t finish a game but had your feel, did you finish a game. My BG3 play through is more cold than an iced turkey by this point. I LOVED BG3… until act 3 when I didn’t love it anymore.

 

[Derrick01]

Seems like eiyuden is a bit of a mess. They can patch the technical stuff but I've also seen people say it's for better or worse a ps1 style rpg through and through and it brought back memories of the 2014 crpg revival where everyone was just happy crpgs were back and I was sitting here like "yeah it's nice but can we have more than that?" (we'd go on to have OS2, pathfinder wotr and bg3 so turns out yes we can, but this is strictly about the 2014/2015 kickstarter crpgs). I had a decent enough time with wasteland 2, shadowrun dragonfall and pillars of eternity 1 but my ultimate feeling on those games were that these are just inferior, less deep versions of games I had played 10-15 years prior. I was happy we were getting crpgs again but I'm someone who wants games to move forward so I felt pretty unfulfilled by those games.

In my opinion there's too many people out there who want to chase the feeling certain games gave them when they were younger and happier and I think this shows itself in kickstarter games more often because most of the backers are people who just want BG2 again, or Suikoden again and damn it it better not deviate even a little bit from those things or else we'll raise a shit storm. You can see elements of this pop up in FF7 Remake topics too where there's a tiny but loud segment that literally just wants a 1:1 replica of the original game with slightly better assets. It's such a boring and unambitious thought process that stymies creativity. BG3 would have never happened if we just kept expecting crpgs to be (at best) on par with games that came out in the late 90s.

Anyway rant over. I hope eiyuden is successful enough for them to aim much higher in a sequel. Note that "aim higher" doesn't mean AAA graphics, I'm talking about doing new things with its game design and not just trying to be a ps1 game again.

 

[Durante]

That's a rather inaccurate rant at least as far as Pillars of Eternity is concerned. PoE did quite a lot of things to fundamentally change and advance RtwP gameplay and design (and its sequel did even more). And not just small tweaks -- e.g. the engagement mechanics fundamentally change how battle strategy works compared to any of the popular 90s/00s RtwP cRPGs, and its spellcasting and rest mechanics eliminated a lot of fundamentally silly player incentives (this is particularly obvious in a comparison to the Pathfinder cRPGs).

But that's not really the main point of discussion here.

What I'd like to argue more generally is that, even if Eyuden does indeed stick close to the PS1 formula (I don't know -- I haven't played it yet and I don't trust the opinion of random people on the internet), in my mind there is a massive difference between doing "another" game in a style that basically doesn't exist anymore versus doing a very derivative game in a style that is popular.
Creating a new PS1-style (and specifically, Suikoden-style) JRPG, even if it is derivative, is very worthwhile because absolutely no one does that, and hasn't been doing that for over a decade.
Compare and contrast with e.g. creating another very derivative Ubisoft-style open world ARPG-light. Tons of such games are being released all the time, so if one of those completely fails to innovate then that does make it forgettable.

 

[AHA-Lambda]

People keep saying this in response to the crew but were any of the crew games ever officially cracked in the first place. I don’t think any Ubisoft games have been cracked in a hot minute actually.

This.

People keep saying that "if a game disappears then just sail the seven seas", Denuvo at least has made cracking games much harder than it used to otherwise be.
Far as I've read many games take ages to crack or don't happen at all.

 

[NarohDethan]

Go forward at your own risk.



It's the first comment, you can easily see some of the information for some of the regions when they mention countries and stuff with links to post but the last image you have to sign in to their website in order to be able to view.

When I'm in a 'dumbest motherfucker ever' competition and my rival is a Sony fanboy.

 

[dex3108]

Why nobody told me that Pedestrian is nice and charming little game that works great on Deck? xD

 

[Mivey]

I haven't played any of the Suikoden games, so I can't really talk about how new or how derivative Eiyuden is or isn't. What I can say is that, at least so far (played around for a couple hours) I'm having fun. Combat is a bit on the simple side, but that's completely normal in early battles. I'm expecting difficulty and perhaps also complexity to increase as the game goes on, surely if it has some kind of "war" mechanics, as the Suikoden games apparently did.

I'm also looking forward to the remaster of Suikoden 1 and 2 from Konami, but it seems pretty unclear when those might see the light of day

 

[Derrick01]

What I'd like to argue more generally is that, even if Eyuden does indeed stick close to the PS1 formula (I don't know -- I haven't played it yet and I don't trust the opinion of random people on the internet), in my mind there is a massive difference between doing "another" game in a style that basically doesn't exist anymore versus doing a very derivative game in a style that is popular.
Creating a new PS1-style (and specifically, Suikoden-style) JRPG, even if it is derivative, is very worthwhile because absolutely no one does that, and hasn't been doing that for over a decade.
Compare and contrast with e.g. creating another very derivative Ubisoft-style open world ARPG-light. Tons of such games are being released all the time, so if one of those completely fails to innovate then that does make it forgettable.

I don't see the difference at all because in the end I'm just getting more of the same. Done once or done 100 times it makes no difference to me, it's the same experience I could get 25 years ago and I don't want to play the same thing again. I expect more with 25 years of game design knowledge and progress the industry's had instead of just nostalgia chasing a feeling that is impossible to regain.

If the argument is that they need to walk to be able to run then sure I guess. I mean we ultimately did move beyond the low point of the crpg revival with pillars 1 and 2 and divinity OS1 (which I think of as a borderline tech demo since it had a non existent story and no party members) to pathfinder wotr, OS2 and now bg3 most recently but I remember in those days it was very much NOT a sure thing that these games were going to happen. In fact it started to feel like after OS2 came out crpgs died again (this is before owlcat really burst on to the scene) and we were just going to have to wait for Larian's next game to get any kind of fix.

 

[lashman]

Why nobody told me that Pedestrian is nice and charming little game that works great on Deck? xD

you never asked

 

[STHX]

I don't see the difference at all because in the end I'm just getting more of the same. Done once or done 100 times it makes no difference to me, it's the same experience I could get 25 years ago and I don't want to play the same thing again. I expect more with 25 years of game design knowledge and progress the industry's had instead of just nostalgia chasing a feeling that is impossible to regain.

There is a short answer and a longer answer here. The short is: because there is a market and some people want the same thing all over again (even when it doesn't require additional money, see all the new Skyrim mods or Doom WADs that keep being made and are still played to this day). There is also no proof doing something different will actually produce positive results

The longer answer: I feel like this specific reasoning could be applied to basically every piece of media: what's the point of more shounens after Dragon Ball or Yu Yu Hakusho? What's the point of more mecha anime after Mazinger and Gundam? What's the point of another open world game with towers after Assassin's Creed? What's the point of more Dark Souls inspired Metroidvanias after Hollow Knight? Were all the Zelda games between OoT and BOTW unneded? If something is reduced to the most basic elements how many works in a certain genre are even truly original? Even your BG3 example: is it really so revolutionary compared to OS2 outside of the 5th edition ruleset and the new graphics, or is that enough to make it different? What's wrong with a game that targets a specific audience to be targeted to that specific audience? Besides let's be serious: I have seen entire companies destroy themselves because they tried to reinvent the wheel even if there was no reason to do it (look at Dynasty Warrior 9. The damage was so severe the series basically skipped a whole generation and there is still no new game coming). In the end chasing nostalgia is the same as making a sexualized product: if the product successfully finds it's public that means the creator hit the mark. When Persona 6 gets announced will the people that hoped "the game would no longer be set into a japanese high school, star an adult protagonist, won't let you date multiple girls including a teacher, don't have a monthly schedule and don't have most of the enemies be Shadows" be more than the ones who are fine with having their Persona 5.5 as they wanted? I say let the sales decide

 

[Line]

You are my new role model. Everything sucks ! /jk
But yeah great and inspiring post. I tend to more and more lose any will to play near the 20 hour mark, and I don’t think that’s a mystery as games are bloated with copy paste content and it’s generally the moment where I feel I have seen all the tricks the game has to offer.
I’m guilty of pushing further to an unreasonable level, not sure why. I feel it would be a waste of sorts. Maybe a sunk cost fallacy for irl time ? And my completed game list is suffering these days.
Pretty sure I should simply let it be and list the dropped games.

But if you don’t finish a game but had your feel, did you finish a game. My BG3 play through is more cold than an iced turkey by this point. I LOVED BG3… until act 3 when I didn’t love it anymore.

I live my life very simply.
I try things, and when I don't like them, I don't do more of them. I can assure you, it helps.

For games, I think it's even worse, forcing yourself to finish things when you don't want to might even change the fact that you liked them to begin with. I definitely feel that for some rogue-lites, coming back years later when they added more content making you feel like you need to? Not a good way to restart a game.

 

[dex3108]

Guy composed this



and probably said: "I reached perfection" and never composed anything for games and went to do his personal projects XD

It is really interesting that two most recognizable GTA Themes (GTA San Andreas and GTA IV) were composed by same guy Michael Hunter.

 

[Derrick01]

There is a short answer and a longer answer here. The short is: because there is a market and some people want the same thing all over again (even when it doesn't require additional money, see all the new Skyrim mods or Doom WADs that keep being made and are still played to this day). There is also no proof doing something different will actually produce positive results

The longer answer: I feel like this specific reasoning could be applied to basically every piece of media: what's the point of more shounens after Dragon Ball or Yu Yu Hakusho? What's the point of more mecha anime after Mazinger and Gundam? What's the point of another open world game with towers after Assassin's Creed? What's the point of more Dark Souls inspired Metroidvanias after Hollow Knight? Were all the Zelda games between OoT and BOTW unneded? If something is reduced to the most basic elements how many works in a certain genre are even truly original? Even your BG3 example: is it really so revolutionary compared to OS2 outside of the 5th edition ruleset and the new graphics, or is that enough to make it different? What's wrong with a game that targets a specific audience to be targeted to that specific audience? Besides let's be serious: I have seen entire companies destroy themselves because they tried to reinvent the wheel even if there was no reason to do it (look at Dynasty Warrior 9. The damage was so severe the series basically skipped a whole generation and there is still no new game coming). In the end chasing nostalgia is the same as making a sexualized product: if the product successfully finds it's public that means the creator hit the mark. When Persona 6 gets announced will the people that hoped "the game would no longer be set into a japanese high school, star an adult protagonist, won't let you date multiple girls including a teacher, don't have a monthly schedule and don't have most of the enemies be Shadows" be more than the ones who are fine with having their Persona 5.5 as they wanted? I say let the sales decide

I mean if we're letting sales decide they decided suikoden and CRPGS were dead 20 years ago and they were all but dead again after the revival when all of them came out and outside of original sin 2 none of them sold all that well. They sold to the tiny minority who wanted more of the same and that was it. Your dynasty warriors example I don't really agree with because that was just them chasing trends instead of having bold new ideas they wanted to do. DW9 was them going "oh open worlds are the thing now? Lets do that I guess".

And yeah BG3 was extremely different than OS2. The level of reactivity bg3 has is unlike anything we've seen before and unlike OS2 (and 1) it doesn't just rely on larian's style of gameplay it also goes hard in dialog checks which those games really didn't. The reactive things you could do in OS2 was more limited to strictly gameplay, like a basic example of that would be stealing something important from someone before talking to them or yeeting them into a trap to maybe avoid a big fight which bg3 does have too, but bg3 takes that to the next level where talking to people after doing some of these things can cause entirely new things to happen in a quest or dialogue tree. It's like the reactivity of fallout 2/new vegas or pathfinder wotr combined with larian's style of gameplay shenanigans.

 

[Deku]

I don't care about your political stance, but the loser are the people who got stuck between to two parties who are fighting each other. Itch.io is hosting another mega bundle where all the money will go towards Palestine Children's Relief Fund.
There are 373 items in this bundle. Not sure what the highlights are. I copied a list of games from a reddit thread

a monster's expedition - extremely polished sokoban puzzle game. draknek is one of the best puzzle designers working today
anodyne - arty zelda-like
beglitched - charming casual puzzle game
bleed 2 - intense twin stick platform shooter
love 2: kuso - lo-fi precision platformer with place-your-own checkpoints and a banger OST. also includes all of the levels from the first game.
lucah born of a dream - well-reviewed action game with a visually distinctive aesthetic that ensures "hidden gem" status
solas 128 - line puzzler where you have to figure the rules out as you go, a la the witness
thunder kid - sort of like an alternate reality PS1 mega man where capcom tried to directly translate the linear action platforming into 3D, instead of the dungeon crawling of mega man legends.
zeroranger - one of the best shmups ever made, a must-play for anyone with even a passing interest in the genre.

Palestinian Relief Bundle by ghosthunter and 358 others

Palestinian Relief Bundle: 373 items for $8.00

itch.io

 

[Eila]

] put off Dead Space 2 since like 2011 or whenever the humbe origin bundle happened. Picked it back up a couple days ago and I'm almost finished with it. That's got to be the longest time I've done between starting a game and finishing it.

 

[Alexandros]

Go forward at your own risk.



It's the first comment, you can easily see some of the information for some of the regions when they mention countries and stuff with links to post but the last image you have to sign in to their website in order to be able to view.

Thanks! As expected (based on the idiotic thread title), the poster's conclusions are pure nonsense. Console growth was mainly driven by the increased availability of next-gen hardware after covid. It is exactly what Phil Spencer said, that the people buying these consoles aren't new customers but people who owned last-gen consoles and are now upgrading, thus the market isn't actually growing. The poster of that site just read what they wanted to read.

 

[kio]

In fact it started to feel like after OS2 came out crpgs died again (this is before owlcat really burst on to the scene) and we were just going to have to wait for Larian's next game to get any kind of fix.

I take issue with a lot of your post but I won't argue against it because it can be boiled down to personal tastes and preferences but this last sentence is blatantly false and can be easily proven just by searching cRPGs since 2017 on steam. The reality is that there were a lot of pure cRPG releases that you seem to be dismissing for one reason or another just to prove your point.
Even if we broaden the search a little to anything cRPG adjacent like stat-heavy Strategy or Sandbox RPGs you'll find a lot and probably the best examples of these subgenres we've ever had. We can even throw ImSims in there since they are basically the cRPG brother in terms of design.
Just because D:OS 2 hit new heights back then doesn't mean it was solo carrying the genre. I love Larian but let's be real, let's praise them for what they did and what they accomplished but let's not forget everyone and everything that surrounds them.

 

[Lashley]

Guy composed this



and probably said: "I reached perfection" and never composed anything for games and went to do his personal projects XD

It is really interesting that two most recognizable GTA Themes (GTA San Andreas and GTA IV) were composed by same guy Michael Hunter.

Vice City's theme is an absolute banger and I'll hear nobody disagree

 

[Derrick01]

I take issue with a lot of your post but I won't argue against it because it can be boiled down to personal tastes and preferences but this last sentence is blatantly false and can be easily proven just by searching cRPGs since 2017 on steam. The reality is that there were a lot of pure cRPG releases that you seem to be dismissing for one reason or another just to prove your point.
Even if we broaden the search a little to anything cRPG adjacent like stat-heavy Strategy or Sandbox RPGs you'll find a lot and probably the best examples of these subgenres we've ever had. We can even throw ImSims in there since they are basically the cRPG brother in terms of design.
Just because D:OS 2 hit new heights back then doesn't mean it was solo carrying the genre. I love Larian but let's be real, let's praise them for what they did and what they accomplished but let's not forget everyone and everything that surrounds them.

What crpgs did I forget? Only one I can think of is disco elysium which was a mistake on my part, though after the drama with that studio they're effectively dead now. Wasteland 3 I didn't forget I didn't mention it because it was a dramatically worse game than 2 and felt severely budget constrained (half the length and a much much smaller world map).

I didn't include things like immersive sims because that's a completely different genre. Prey 2017 isn't anywhere near what a crpg does (it's a fantastic game though).

 

[Durante]

And yeah BG3 was extremely different than OS2.

Yeah, no. It's clearly an iteration.

You just pick and choose what you personally consider important and not important, and try to spin it as some sort of objective take. I also noticed that you completely disregarded my point concerning PoE -- one can easily make the argument that PoE is actually more fundamentally different in its core gameplay compared to BG2 due to the design changes I talked about above than BG3 is compared to D:OS2.

Talking about basing ostensibly objective arguments on purely subjective taste, case in point:

Wasteland 3 I didn't forget I didn't mention it because it was a dramatically worse game than 2

Wasteland 3 is not a "dramatically worse" game than 2 in any way, shape or form. It does some things better and some things worse. That's my opinion -- what do people in general think? Well, Wasteland 3 sits at 84% in reviews on Steam, Wasteland 2 sits at 82%, both with several thousand reviews.

Of course, the whole idea that "cRPGs died again" after D:OS2 is blatantly ridiculous anyway. In just the 2 years following its release we got not just the aforementioned Wasteland 3, but also Pillars of Eternity 2 (which is an even better game), Disco Elysium (which is one of the best things in the subgenre in a long time), and Pathfinder (which is more hardcore-targeted and has some quirks, but is also a massive achievement). And additionally several indie releases like ATOM (for a more classic Fallout-like take), Tower of Time (which is more dungeon focused, but Icewind Dale is also a classic cRPG), or Vaporum (I still wish there were more FP-RPGs).

 

[Eila]

I know I'm 13 years late but fuck you EA for not including the DLC on the Dead Space 2 PC port. Looks like it wasn't so good, but it sucks not having the option to play it.
Now the question is, should I play DS3 , or pretend it never existed? I remember people shitting hard on it when it came out.

 

[Cacher]

Darn this site is funny. Bookmark for future laughter.

 

[Derrick01]

Yeah, no. It's clearly an iteration.

You just pick and choose what you personally consider important and not important, and try to spin it as some sort of objective take. I also noticed that you completely disregarded my point concerning PoE -- one can easily make the argument that PoE is actually more fundamentally different in its core gameplay compared to BG2 due to the design changes I talked about above than BG3 is compared to D:OS2.

Talking about basing ostensibly objective arguments on purely subjective taste, case in point:

Wasteland 3 is not a "dramatically worse" game than 2 in any way, shape or form. It does some things better and some things worse. That's my opinion -- what do people in general think? Well, Wasteland 3 sits at 84% in reviews on Steam, Wasteland 2 sits at 82%, both with several thousand reviews.

Of course, the whole idea that "cRPGs died again" after D:OS2 is blatantly ridiculous anyway. In just the 2 years following its release we got not just the aforementioned Wasteland 3, but also Pillars of Eternity 2 (which is an even better game), Disco Elysium (which is one of the best things in the subgenre in a long time), and Pathfinder (which is more hardcore-targeted and has some quirks, but is also a massive achievement). And additionally several indie releases like ATOM (for a more classic Fallout-like take), Tower of Time (which is more dungeon focused, but Icewind Dale is also a classic cRPG), or Vaporum (I still wish there were more FP-RPGs).

I could not care any less about user reviews than I do now. There are shovelware tier porn games on steam that have overwhelmingly positive ratings, people in general only really write positive reviews unless a game has severe technical issues or business issues that piss people off enough to review bomb them. For finding out how good or bad a game actually is they're worth even less than media reviews and that's a real bad sign. So with that being said I stand by what I said about wasteland 3, it's a step down in every way except presentation (where it feels like they put all their budget in) and again it doesn't matter if people agree or not because inxile seems to be done with crpgs after that game. Obsidian is also done with them for the foreseeable future (and after the snoozefests that were pillars 1 and 2 I don't mind this. They are not the studio that made kotor 2 or new vegas anymore)

I didn't respond to your point about POE because it's about something I don't care about at all- combat in a crpg, especially a RTwP one. These games were never memorable for their janky and obtuse combat systems both in the past or now. They were memorable for their stories or their cast and the freedom of decision making they gave players. I can't really debate you about the finer points of dice roll driven combat since it's not something I pay any attention to, nor does it matter to the quality of the game. Not nearly as much as story reactivity which separates bg3 from os2 by a huge margin. Honestly Pillars 2 was massively improved when they added a turn based mode since it made several classes actually work and useful.