Fallout 76

[Art Blade]

 

[fragger]

If you ask me, the rot started with the introduction of pre-ordering, and it has been getting worse ever since. And Bethesda is hardly the only guilty party. It's industry-wide. The practice - and apparent success - of making broken, unfinished games available for pre-ordering has emboldened these companies to become more and more brazen in their attempts to push shoddy products out the door and leads to exactly the kind of unconscionable practices we're seeing today.

This debacle over FO76 is precisely the reason why I will never pre-order a game. EVER. I slipped up once with NMS and I won't make that mistake again. If people would stop pre-ordering and caving in to microtransactions, it might give the industry the good boot up the arse it needs. But I know that will never happen. As long as people continue to blindly part with their money for games that haven't yet been released - or even beta-tested - and keep paying extra for overpriced add-on rubbish, they'll get the industry they deserve.

People can rant and rave all they want about how shonky the gaming industry is getting, but really, they have brought it on themselves. If you aid and abet a thief, you can hardly complain when he nicks off with your money. If you want game developers to clean up their acts - MAKE THEM! How? By saying "no" to their lousy practices and keeping your wallet firmly closed until they deliver a fully-functioning and completed product. As for microtransactions, tell them to sod off. I will be damned if I will ever be a party to that (and in Bethesda's case, I'd really like to know how the "micro" part applies...)

I know I'm ranting in futility. People will keep pre-ordering and micro-buying even while they're complaining about how bad things are getting

And if the industry crashes and burns, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Might give me a chance to catch up on my reading

[LowPolyOWG]

Good rant  Well, there is no-one to hold them accountable (legislation) and those companies are free to do what they want. We have customer protection laws for physical goodies, but no law regulating the moneymaking schemes by the triple ayyy industry.

"I hate it, how the AAA game industry thinks it is its own little flower who can get away with everything and not take any responsibility, while sitting upon billions in cash and still plead poverty" - The derailed magician

[Art Blade]

I pre-purchased (which is distinctly different from pre-ordering) one game recently. It was Hitman 2. I did that because I knew the devs (IOI) were guys who loved their games and kept polishing and maintaining Hitman Season 1, a game that I love to bits. Also, it was that game which I bought one YEAR after its release, more precisely: after it was complete, showing them that their idea of an "episodical" release, part after part after part, was bullshit. I knew that IOI had had a hard time with their previous publisher Square Enix and that they parted ways before HM2 was even ready. We feared it would never make it. I know they had to let off staff and all that to get out of the contract with Square Enix, but did not enjoy that in the least. However, they managed to keep the intellectual property of the franchise and by that, were a stand-alone company dedicated to getting their own thing done, and properly. When it was clear that they would publish HM2, and as a whole rather than episodically, I pre-purchased it to support them. Like, here, I trust you guys, and I don't want to see you fail. Here's my financial support for you.

And boy, did they deliver It was worth every penny, and I got extra value for my coin, and they have been supporting their fans and adding and fixing and all that, I don't regret having pre-purchased that game from them. It was a tactical decision to pre-purchase it, not a mindless act.

[PZ]

You gents make good points. 

In the case of RDR2, I have to say that R* did a good job with the game. I have my PS4 offline so I can continue to play with the money glitch so my version is still 1.00. I can play just like I have played video games in the distant past, when there was not much going online. To date I have not seen hardly any problems, and definitely no game breaking or other weird gongs on. I'm perfectly happy playing offline.

[Art Blade]

no game breaking or other weird gongs

What gongs, Qi Gongs, nipple gongs.. stroke of the gong..?

And no, I am not sorry

[PZ]

 

[Art Blade]

I've only watched 10 minutes but decided you've got to take a look, too. Hilarious if the subject wasn't so sad.

[Art Blade]

I finished watching it, and damn, I think that guy got it exactly right

I won't get this game, not even if it was for free.

[fragger]

That's pretty damn bad... What were they thinking with this?

I won't be getting FO76 either. Looks like an exercise in boredom broken up by moments of sheer exasperation.

I don't know why the guy is playing in 3rd person mode, mind you. I guess some people just prefer that, but I briefly tried playing FO4 in 3rd person and I couldn't stand it that way. Even FO4 in 3rd person felt clumsy, and the aiming stank. Maybe 76 might be better in 1st person, as far as handling and aiming and such goes. But that won't make up for all its other flaws and shortcomings.

Nah, I'll definitely pass on this one, too. If a company feels compelled to drop the price of its product by almost half within the first few weeks after release just to keep it moving, you know there's got to be something seriously wrong with it

As for the people who were silly enough to pre-order it, I have no sympathy for them. Like I've said before, people take their chances doing that, and if they end up pissing their money into the wind, it's nobody's fault but their own. Trouble is, they encourage more of the same rip-offey shenanigans from gaming companies, so that ultimately everyone suffers. Pre-ordering and micro-transacting will be the death of the gaming industry if they're not careful, as the lure of a (relatively) easy buck eclipses quality control.

[Art Blade]

if you browse YouTube with your focus on the downfall of the AAA gaming industry, you'll see a handful of major (or, formerly major) companies showing up the names of which are familiar, like Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft, and a couple more, and they're always mentioned together in the same vid. Essentially the commentators are saying that it's the companies' own fault, mainly by IGNORING what we, the customers want, and by getting too greedy. The shares of those companies have been plummeting beyond what could be pushed aside as temporary changes, they're essentially losing about 50% of their value, during the past six months (I didn't research that stuff myself, but hey.. sounded reasonable enough and someone showed some charts like those you know from Wall Street reports) So yes.. let's see how and where that all goes. Definitely not good for those greedy companies. Either they go down or they learn their lesson. It makes room for indie games and for new ideas rather than the umpteenth version of a game that USED to be cool decades ago. Well, let's wait and find out

[fragger]

That's true. If the greedy ones crash and burn, the indies and others might rise to take their place. We just have to hope that THEY don't then later succumb to the same siren song and let their standards slip.

Another thing I noticed during that clip (and others) is that a great deal of stuff like building textures, furniture, junk items and other objects look exactly the same as they do in FO4. The devs were either too lazy or in too much of a hurry to upgrade objects and textures apparently, instead just reusing existing ones from FO4 (although they did create all-new foliage). The somewhat dated graphics engine works fine for FO4 as there is just so much else the game has to offer that you can let the aging engine slide (and it's not a horrible-looking game by any means - in fact I love the atmospherics of it and its dynamic weather system), but it's a bit inexcusable for 76, seeing as how there is no story to speak of, no proper dialogue and no NPCs. To look at, 76 appears more like an expansion pack for FO4 than a new and fully-fledged game in its own right.

I liked the guy's comment that the graphics engine is "old enough to vote"

[LowPolyOWG]

The entire engine is a mess, that according to Todd Howard, "just works"  It's very modular and I wonder why Bugthesda is not technologically competent to keep the modularity and fix core issues with it.

[Art Blade]

hehe, "the engine is now old enough to vote," surely is a funny remark

Apart from being old, Bethesda has been keeping bugs in the engine and obviously relied on THEIR CUSTOMERS (those who are modders) to fix tons of bugs for them And the list of other infuriating facts is quite long.

In a way, from first sneak previews and later presentations, the way the "final" product FO76 was released and the reactions of the paying customers after that reminded me very much of No Man's Sky.

[LowPolyOWG]

PS3 Bugthesda games had a save game memory overflow issue on Skyrim and FO3. The save file basically grew larger in size, causing game performance to suffer and broke quests. Never got fixed by Bugthesda. People had to reboot their systems to fix that after long hours of gameplay.

For Skyrim, Bugthesda broke the game with their own patch Dragons flew backwards, player skills didn't worked and caused more performance issues...