The company that introduced horse armor is charging horrendous prices for small DLC?
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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I mean considering that single skins cost 20 in Overwatch or Dead by Daylight, 7 for an actual mission is almost generous.
Fuck gaming is fucked...
Eh, skill up had a great take on this. The thing is it's wayyyyy easier to be a small indie developer than it ever was before. Making a game (or any art) still isn't easy, it never was and never will be, but it's viable without a giant publisher in a way it just hasn't been before.
Its the AA titles that are on the most precarious footing, but I bet even those do ok. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy some AAA stuff time to time, I've got a stupid amount of hours in overwatch, but I've never once paid for a skin because... why would you?
The thing that's going to suck is losing the studios like Arkane. Their games weren't perfect but they were freaking cool, and they basically always got the raw end of the deal. Even Prey(2016), their masterpiece, is the product of corporate bullshitiery they had nothing to do with. So we're probably going to miss studios like that for a while (as they get re-tasked to fortnite/cod support teams) but "indie" stuff has already been stepping up to fill that void, and is less indie all the time.
Look at Dave the Diver. That's not exactly an indie studio. They had resources. There's going to be a gap for a bit, but there's still a demand for good games and art. Those AA breakthroughs are what people want. Again, I continue to spend dumb amounts of time on overwatch, but it's not where I spend my money. Microsoft hovelled themselves by buying all these studios and not taking the leap with supporting them. Distribution just doesn't have the value it once did. So if microsoft wants to become CandyCrush, feeding an addiction loop to grab the whales, sure, whatever, but there's plenty of bread out there for studios doing other stuff.
The one and only point that I disagree with you on is your take on mtx. They may not affect you, but everything about them is designed to be psychologically exploitative, and the wealthy whale is largely a myth. The vast majority of money from mtx is made from people with addiction issues and other mental health issues or atypical neurology, like people with depression or ADHD.
Microsoft bought up all those studios and didn't support them, but that's business as usual for Microsoft, and the money that they'll make from mtx like this will more than make up for it. I recently watched a former Blizzard dev who was talking about how a single $15 mount for WoW made more money than StarCraft 2 did.
The big issue I see is that most people largely don't know about anything beyond the big AAA releases, and as we've already established, that's an exploitative wasteland nowadays. There's plenty of demand for good games and there always will be, but while the indie scene is the best that's it's ever been, the majority of indie companies go under after their first game. It's still hard out there for them, too. There's just enough of them popping up and putting out truly great games that they can actually compete with the AAA space.
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Also remember they were purchased by Microsoft. Who in turn also just purchased Activision/blizzard
Also remember Horse Armor DLC for Oblivion, released by Bethesda? Considered by many to be the catalyst of this kind of BS.
Horse armor that didnt even give the horses armor. It just gave them a cosmetic appearance change and increased their health by like 3 times.
Seven dollars to loading screen to your ship, watch an animation of your character sitting down, loading screen to space, loading screen to the system it's in, Dodge some pirates, loading screen to the surface, hop along the completely barren landscape to go to a copy pasted outpost, loading screen back to your ship?
I feel like you could get all of the value of that dlc by just playing a mission over again.
This...this right here is the reason I quit playing this game, the reason I couldn't quite put my finger on. It was just too fucking disjointed, you are so right.
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Players could like stop paying for it... such an easy, low cost solution...
That is my current solution. Currently enjoying Factorio, which had the perfect monetization scheme: you buy the game and enjoy it.
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I got starfield for free with my video card, and I still feel ripped off and wish I could refund lol.
But yeah, I'm not dropping a single goddamn penny on Starfield. It feels like a game that was made for the xbox 360 or something, with all the loading screens and shit.
You get baited into accepting the quest and playing the first mission. Then you have to pay to continue.
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Fallout 5 is going to suck
Fallout 4 sucked, too.
Its a fun shooter game, but its not a fallout. Throwing supermutants into a game doesnt make it a Fallout. Especially with how they fucked SPECIAL.
Fallout TV is probably the last decent product from Bethesda, and I'd wager thats only cause Bethesda isnt in charge of writing.
Fallout 4 is like 4 different games crammed into a trench coat.
- high emotion story game. Go rescue your child!
- high action shooter. Boom! Headshot!
- stats driven RPG. That naked bandit is level 40 so you can't kill him even if you shotgun his face
- settlement management game. Build and decorate a little town! Set up trade routes!
All of these are kind of badly done, and mashing them all together didn't make something greater than the parts.
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Fallout 3's world doesn't feel like Fallout but the tone of the writing comes close.
Fallout 4's tone and writing doesn't feel like Fallout, but the world does.
New Vegas is the only 3D Fallout game that feels like Fallout in both the world and the writing.
I can almost guarantee that unless Josh Sawyer and the other original talent that made 1, 2, and tactics that also worked on New Vegas are working on it, it will never feel like a true Fallout game.
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Only if you don't buy the Season 1 Vault-Tec Access Pass for $49.99. Imagine not doing that and then not ever being able to get your Overpowered Armor at pass level 5. You would absolutely be ruining it for yourself by not investing into the seasonal passes.
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But it'll actually cost players $10 because they must purchase 1,000 Starfield creation credits to afford it.
At first, I read this as if you needed to ingest a verification can before you're allowed to make a purchase. But alas, it is the usual shit where you have to buy their fake money.
I thought that credit shit died after the 7th gen and its wii/xbox points.
That it still exists, only for a single game baffles me.
That shit is never going away, and for one simple reason: it's incredibly profitable. By converting real money into some nebulous fun bucks that doesn't directly correlate in value, they obfuscate how much money you're actually spending and make it more likely that you'll spend more than you intend to. The same reason that casinos have no windows and pump extra oxygen into the air so you feel less tired, all so you don't realize how long you've been in there.
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When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
We've known what Bethesda is for years.
It began with horse armour....
There's people playing Strarfield to get upset in the first place?
How does that horrible game even have players?
I'm sure a rational response is just going to get downvoted to oblivion, but it's actually a fun game. Not my favorite from Bethesda, but I definitely enjoyed the 1k hours I put into it last year, and I look forward to dipping back in once the DLC drops and there are more mods (not paid creations) available.
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It's free on gamepass
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Who cares? The community will have player made expansions in a year that will likely be free and of higher quality.
Regardless, BGS is a shell of its former self. Whenever I see people clamoring for TES 6 I just scratch my head and ask why?
Starfield was the final straw for me, I will never get excited for another Bethesda game again. They've shown that they refuse to truly shake up their game design. When people asked if Starfield would have the same magic as FO3 or older TES games, they said, "it'll have the same DNA." I assumed that meant it'd have fun exploration and interesting quests. While it has some decent quests, the exploration is utterly tedious and just unfun. I truly wish they'd had just focused on fleshing out 2 or 3 planets in one solar system, maybe some instanced, hand-crafted dungeons/whatever outside of it. I have zero interest in exploring proc gen worlds, it's not that fun in No Man's Sky and it's not fun here. At least with NMS, it's all relatively seamless.
For myself and many people Skyrim is the best game they've ever played. It was the first fantasy game I played since Runescape to have multiple cities spread out through an open world, with long narrative multi stage quests involving a number of locations and NPCs. Both games also have a leveling sytem based around you get better at what you use ie "skilling".
I want "TES 6" in that I want another game that hits those marks, but I no longer trust Bethesda to make it.
Edit: note I know a lot of people dislike skyrim and think calling it a great game is absurd, and I get the criticism but I love the game anyway
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FO4 is why I waited and ultimately didn't buy starfield. I LOVED elderscrolls, and FO:NV is like my alltime favorite. I didn't hate FO4, there's some fun to be had, but you can see pretty clearly from it where FO:76 came from. From what I've seen and read, I'm not missing anything with starfield.
NMS is tough. They did an amazing job trying to salvage it, but it will always be a game that was never meant to be that big. It's not bad but at somepoint in the loop you just go "wtf am I doing?". I give that team all the credit in the world, but that game never belonged where it is.
New Vegas is notable for not being a Bethesda game per se. It uses something very close to the Fallout 3 engine, but the actual content has little to do with Bethesda. They did publish it, though.
Oh I'm well aware lol. The game is a godamn miracle. But thats the thing, Bethesda has been on this trajectory for a good lonnnnnng while. Like the whole "obsidian good bethesda bad" thing isn't quite right, but what is true is Bethesda has been incredibly strategic about shittifying their games: there's always just enough there to keep you going "ok... one more".
Starfield is the first one I just didn't even bother with.
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I swear gamers have the memory of a gnat. How many times has Bethesda pulled shit like this and people continue to support them? no one remembers the Horse armor all the way back in Oblivion? no one remembers the Skyrim paid mods in 2015? hell can't even remember the SKYRIM PAID MODS IN DEC OF 2023!
This isn't an outrage and no one should be upset AT Bethesda over this, but disappointed and upset with yourselves for yet again falling for their constant desire to nickel and dime their playerbase.
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They're selling a single quest as dlc? I mean if you going to do dlc then at least make a full expansion.
Why waste time with lots of quest when few quest do trick
Right?
Bethesda just released an expansion for fallout 76. It's a game that I'm fairly fond of, considering the amount of dislike I have for fallout 4, it improved on it in every way from the worldbuilding to building to the story, I could go on, point is, I like it.
The new expansion, the first map expansion and like 20 major updates in.
The new map is quite a large region. You'd expect a few side quests to unlock these other locations. Maybe some hidden gems. Maybe some cool NPCs outside of the main "expansion" right?
Its literally: A main quest that's short (beat it in like 3 hours on the first day it dropped)
A single side quest that's more of an optional objective on the main quest
A single new event
A single new boss.
Four things they added. Two of which can only be done once (bad formula for a game designed around repeating similar tasks)
They've just straight up gotten bad. There's no love in their products anymore. It's all taking the easiest way out, lacking any amount of real creativity.
I just want them to migrate from their shitty proprietary engine, buckle down on a good story and prioritizing fun.
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Why are we surprised? They were the ones who pioneered the DLC microtrans model. I would legitimately have been more surprised if this headline were the converse statement.
Hehe microtrans. That's me
$500 for a Krabby Patty?
With cheese Mr. Squidward, with cheese.
Starfield could have been a way better game if all they did was fuck it up like 45% less. They could have alternatively just delivered on their promises of making the game easy to mod and let the community handle the rest but they fucked that up too. Only the most dedicated of Starfield fan would have the patience to sit down and do all the shit it takes to add a new quest for example. Iirc even Skyrim came with a mod editor with ui that was easy to understand. Right now all we have is a community xedit project that's somehow even harder to run on Linux than Starfield is.
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Is repetitive buying of Bethesda games a new kind of litmus test for stupidity? I mean they do this shit constantly and people are still surprised when it happens. Did people really forget horse armor they tried to sell? Or forget about items that were free in Fallout 4, but had to be purchased in 76? It's Bethesda and only one thing Todd dreams about is scamming another dollar from their fans.
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It should be standard practice for Bethesda games to wait for a game of the year edition (or whatever they want to call it) then wait for a steam sale on that.
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Bethesda announced that players could download a new series of missions for a group known as the Track Alliance. The problem is that The Vulture is the second mission in the Tracker Alliance, and it costs $7 to buy. But it'll actually cost players $10 because they must purchase 1,000 Starfield creation credits to afford it.
So they put the first mission out for free, but it turns out the first mission was a fucking advertisement. I remember being super pissed when Dragon Age pulled this shit.
And of course they pull the classic cost-obfuscation trick because it would just be far too convenient to just be able to buy a DLC for actual money and then download it.
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So some people are actually playing starfield?
Ah, so that's why it was lacking content.
Lmao. They are basically speedrunning enshittification% at this point.
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