11 replies to this topic

[Biffa Buttocks]

I'm no Piranha fanboi by any stretch but I have been hugely impressed with the staging of these events and the giveaways, but it's made me notice how little others are currently doing.

What I don't understand is why mostly all the others in the games industry continue to charge full wack for their games when they know we are currently a captive audience of gamers desperate for some escapism and laughs?

There are sales for Spring and Easter, you name it, but they are ignoring what is currently going on and simply cashing in as we are all stuck in our homes.

There is no excuse, they're not even prone to the massive layouts and financial hits like other industries by the very nature of their business, surely these huge companies must be making a fortune out of us all at the moment?

Many gamers like everyone else are facing huge financial loss, job redundancy and a very insecure future, surely they can show a bit of good faith and knock a few quid off games to do their part too?

Edited by Biffa Buttocks, 29 March 2020 - 04:41 AM.

[LTC Kilgore]

You want most other developers to release minimally viable products with a lot of problems that they lack the talent/knowledge to fix?

[Kodyn]

Judging by what I've seen posted by the devs of other games I play, a lot of them are working from home and struggling just to keep up with current content, keeping their games running, adjusting to not being in the office with access to all their resources, etc.

I think we're lucky that any of them are doing anything special right now, and that they're able to keep their content alive during all this. PGI certainly deserves credit for their choices here- and they've always been pretty good at giving out free stuff at times. They may not be very good at much else, but Matt or whoever comes up with events and giveaways is solid. That said, good on PGI, but I wouldn't say that anyone else is failing or should look to PGI as an example of anything.

[VonBruinwald]

Kodyn, on 29 March 2020 - 06:25 AM, said:

PGI certainly deserves credit for their choices here- and they've always been pretty good at giving out free stuff at times. They may not be very good at much else, but Matt or whoever comes up with events and giveaways is solid.

And it's thematically appropriate although I don't like the connotations.

Think about it, you get the Quarantine (good) but if you take it out the hanger you end up with the Virus (bad).

[JediPanther]

If game developers took after pgi there would be no industry for video games and it would make the video game crash of the 80s look like just a few bad off days. Good thing all the work is digital now because I'd be after the land fill pgi dumped all their catapult models in.

I've gotten plenty of free games. You just have to know where they are and sign up for email notifications from publishers that you like their games. I've got most of the silent hunter series and wish ubisoft would do a sixth silent hunter but instead I have to do mods or that indy u-boat game on steam.

[Kodyn]

VonBruinwald, on 29 March 2020 - 06:46 AM, said:

And it's thematically appropriate although I don't like the connotations.

Think about it, you get the Quarantine (good) but if you take it out the hanger you end up with the Virus (bad).

You know that Matt did that on purpose, lol. Spotify is being thematic too, I had a mix going that had a massive variety of music on it- played the songs Contagious, Infection and Down With The Sickness all within a half hour yesterday for me... Like really, we can't escape anywhere? All everyone's talking about in half my matches too. Yay, let's escape the harshness of reality by talking about it on the internet while listening to songs about it and playing themed events, just so we're all fully aware at all times!

[GuardDogg]

I dunno, if PGI or Piranha games looked how DCS is doing. Things would be different in MWO. Not pricing, but how other companies help DCS alone. DCS been out longer than MWO, and still doing okay.

[MTier Slayed Up]

So basically you want a half baked product that gets updated every few years, crappy balance changes, ridiculous bugs that won't be fixed, and the ingenuity of an overused gym sock?

I'll hard pass.

CDProjektRed for the win.

[Warning incoming Humble Dexterer]

PGI is extremely generous with it's events, but not as good at making a profit, or making their game accessible to new players.

On other MMOs you'll win the equivalent of ~1000MC per year, earning a premium tank is like a full-time one month long job, and as a new player you have to grind through months of low-end matches to unlock your first "assault mech", which are too expensive to keep using without using premium time.

In comparison MWO is one big mess where everyone and everything is mixed in almost right from the start (meaning as soon as you reach Tier3)... with extremely generous events.

[FRAGTAST1C]

PGI's Art department, the Support Staff and events and giveaways should get most of the kudos. What the higher-ups lack is the willingness to learn. They're far too stubborn and think they know how to make stuff which they clearly don't.

1. That's the reason why there's no new content (they thought mech packs alone is a viable plan but didn't think what would happen if people had no new maps and modes to play them in)
2. That's why it seemingly takes them "250k" to create a new map (who the hell came up with that pipeline?)
3. That's why the Match Maker is so bad ('cause everyone should be Tier 1, right? The devs themselves don't have enough skill to judge and they hardly play their own game lol)
4. That's why most good mechs are now bad ('cause rather than making bad mechs good, they nerfed good mechs to match the bad ones or made them worse. So, what's the point in buying mech packs anymore?)
5. They made a singleplayer game where mech chassis are so identical to one another in variants that entire groups are useless. Why make all Annihilators not be able to carry even 1 big ballistic weapon? Why make all Assassins and Griffins so weight restricted and have terrible hardpoints? The missions themselves are passable with only a couple of them being memorable.

So, no. Other companies should not take PGI's lead. If you want free games, they are on offer. Steam had a couple. They gave out Tomb Raider for free. EGS gives out free games. There was Kingdom Come Deliverance, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, World War Z and a bunch of indie games. GoG sells games at throw-away prices and if you recently bought Fallout : NV, you'd get Elder Scrolls : Arena and Daggerfall for free.

[Sniper09121986]

FRAGTAST1C, on 29 March 2020 - 07:13 PM, said:

PGI's Art department, the Support Staff and events and giveaways should get most of the kudos. What the higher-ups lack is the willingness to learn. They're far too stubborn and think they know how to make stuff which they clearly don't.

I think the top level is simply unwilling to deal with consequences of being wrong. Remember the FW matchmaking fiasco? Players wanted to separate the queue like it is done in QP (solos and groups), and they instead separated it by unit tags (which was their understanding of the problem and not how it is done in QP or how the players wanted it to be), and when that went the only way it could go they threw a hissy fit, reverted it to normal and foresworn to touch it ever again. So now they worked themselves into this state of mind that doing anything that might result in a failure (which amounts pretty much to doing anything at all) is streng verboten. That has restricted them to making mech packs (because they are always welcome by someone at least and others do not complain) and not making anything else. The question is now what they are going to do with the license extension they bought for five years because MW5 is not going to sell that long.

[Kodyn]

I feel bad for Matt and the art people sometimes, because we talk them up so much, while saying the opposite about their bosses. I hope it doesn't result in them being treated poorly, but rather the higher-ups trying to learn from their example. (I am well aware of the absurdity of this hope.)