277 replies to this topic

[Xperimentor]

Aullido, on 13 August 2012 - 07:03 AM, said:

The internet made easy to release patches, quality insurance took a lesser priority.

Patches aren't an excuse for poor quality, games should be a working product to begin with. You don't see repair kits for toasters handed out (or on shelves) when you buy a toaster. Nor do you have to buy seats separately when you buy a car.

[Elessar]

Sporkee, on 19 August 2012 - 05:07 PM, said:

The problem with alot of campanies is that the publisher will push for a early release date and build alot of hype for the game. This prevents the developer from getting it to where they want it.

Best example are Sword of the Stars II and Stronghold 3.

Both games were released in a state that wasn´t even Beta worthy.

Well the developers of SotS II did the right thing, by listening to the fans and going on a patching spree to introduce missing features and get rid of bugs, making it a good purchase at the moment.
The developers of Stronghold 3 on the other hand published a few patches and then declared the end of patching. Unfortunately Stronghold 3, even with the patches, is in a sorry state ... with less entertainment factor than all previous parts of the Stronghold series and with still remaining bugs (making Stronghold 3 a good example of "Games were better a decade (or more) before")

[SakuranoSenshi]

I agree, to me, SotS 2 is still disappointing but I picked it up on sale as a show of support for the company and because they have indeed been trying to sort it out. Even so, not a good way to operate and I doubt everyone is as forgiving.

[cinco]

they found out that people can be exploited with impunity and started making easy cookie cutter games for the masses with day one dlc, etc.

oh and 4/5 people despise the way they're being treated but continue buying their games. it's like an abused wife who can't leave her husband. it's pathetic.

[Atavism]

This right here is what's wrong with gaming today. The gamers. People know damned well what makes a bad game, and they are prepared to say so. Then they go ahead and throw money at it anyway. As long as we keep on paying for sh*t, that's exactly what we'll get.

[The Basilisk]

This effect doesn't apply for videogames only.
Everywere in Science and Engineering, overbording commercial intrests took their toll.
Sometimes with "just" the effekt of pushing out repolished products that don't inherrit real progress or innovation. But in an alarmingly increasing rate this way of running buissines interferes with....how should I say this...LIFE. (more the idea of life, not the process)
In most major concern the leading council is composed of "merchants". In most cases this people have at maximum a marginaly knowledge about the technology they are selling and have a strong disregard for the engineers, scientists, artists and workers who created their merchandise.
As long as a company is defined by non primary merchants it grows and develops technology or creative artful products.
EA, Blizzard, Ascaron....and so many more. Degenerated from creator driven to publisher driven....and ultimately dying, sucked empty of talent, skill and creativity.
Thats the way life goes. Something hatches, something growes and then it gets either eaten or infected with some kind of parasite and finaly it dies.
Companys are somewhat like plants.
Big straight grown trees get with increasing age increasingly attractive to either parasites or woodchopers.

[Morventhus]

Hammish, on 13 August 2012 - 09:25 AM, said:

This has been coming for a while now, sadly. More people are just starting to take notice of it, now.

Graphical abilities are more symptomatic, though, than a true cause. The video hit it right on the head: the root cause is companies like EA. Not just with the /current/ business model.. but with the steps they took to get there.

Any gamers out there old enough to remember the original Westwood Studios or Origin (the production house, not the distribution system) know exactly what I'm talking about. Never forget. RIP Westwood.

i shed tears when ever i think about the fact that westwood or ensemble or fasa are closed

[Batlin]

Ohh Westwood, Origin (Wing Commander & Ultima) and many others that have passed on.....We'll never forget.

Thank the community for mods and they are the sole reason I am playing Freespace (I and II) and many other old games again.
Its about 50 / 50 for the games I play the are quite new and 10+ years old !

[brainbreeze]

Dragonlord, on 13 August 2012 - 06:44 AM, said:

This is not about MWO, but computer games in general.
[...]
These are things that genuinely puzzles me, and I'm hoping someone here can actually provide some useful answers.

It was another time back then. Games today are way more complex than 15-20 years ago. Software complexity has grown enormously concerning the number of lines of code and used technology. And speaking of complexity, today there arent just 4-10 people working on a game. You need to somehow manage that complexity but that holds true for all of bigger software development projects and is a known problem around the world. And at the end of the day you need to pay all the involved workers, there is just no place for "idealism" in that industry anymore.

If you are and older gamer like me you have seen a lot of games, playstyles, stories etc. dont underestimate the "age"-argument. The industry tries hard to get people into the games, but because you have seen so much it sometimes feels like its all the same, like "been there done that". The "all new"-feeling is simply gone. Some games can compensate for that with a nicely laid out story and emotional attachment as MGS 4 did for me.

[Elessar]

brainbreeze, on 20 August 2012 - 02:02 AM, said:

It was another time back then. Games today are way more complex than 15-20 years ago. Software complexity has grown enormously concerning the number of lines of code and used technology. And speaking of complexity, today there arent just 4-10 people working on a game. ..

Most of the time at least.
Although it is interesting that, in terms of gameplay complexity, 1-2 man donationware projects are often multiple times more complex than commercial titles.
Just think of Dwarf Fortress or Aurora 4X (hell, many games developers themselves play Dwarf Fortress and incloude small tributes to the game in their own games ).
Thanks to completely foregoing complex graphics and extensive game music, they don´t have to employ a large staff dedicated to graphics and sound and can put their full work into gameplay

[Crankwerk]

As I've mentioned earlier in this thread is several ways to get your voices heard, yet it becomes negligible as most people contradict themselves by protesting then buying it after all - Hence the wallet impact on said developer/publisher is not even noticeable for them to consider it a factor. Heck the rating from metaCritic impact the payday more so for some developers than actual sales, e.g Fallout Las Vegas.

Also factor worth considering in computer gaming and console gaming is the fact that there seem to be less money in general being spent on conventional gaming, yet the mobile gaming is still seeing a big growth - so more and more developers are moving over there to cater to a bigger market.
The console market doesn't seem to want to take notice or want bridge their differences, if they did they could focus on unique gaming experiences that the mobile platform can't offer. You could argue better graphics and better hardware is big factor, yet it doesn't seem to apply as the stepping stone into gaming on a phone only factor is being able to use the app store. You could argue gaming quality on apps or browser based is bad - yet they use the unity engine which is the foundation most games we grew up on were built on, anyhow I digress and might be of track but please suffer a bit more.

We as consumers as "Old School Gamers" or Hardcore gamers must also accept we are a niche group of consumers now, what we desire out of game will not be a mainstream concern, hence the difficulty threshold is going down, the learning curve in games are more or less none existent and we go baby steps into the actual real game play. Now if we accept the fact and look at gems coming out in the gaming market right now and treasure those, while the market matures a bit more - we will most likely see there will be more game companies selling niche products for the audiences the mainstream market are not reaching as the market in reality is growing (if you put console, mobile and PC market together) and the demand for our niche products for simulators, hardcore fps game, etc will grow as there will be a bigger market for them.

Or we can become that old fart on the corner reminiscing about WW2 and how wars were so much fairer back then, Nobody shot you in the back right? And nuclear weapons didn't exist and there were no ominous evil presence looming over the world called the government.

So I suggest if these genres interest you take a look at these games, as they are not the typical mainstream product and coming soon:

ARMA III (infantry simulator)
Borderlands 2 (RPG & FPS adventure game more or less)
Cyperpunk (RPG by the team that gave you ..."drumroll" Witcher series)
End of Nations (MMO?RTS by Trion , with 16vs 16 players in one map..*** in an RTS?)
Heroes and Generals (MMO WWII something something with classes, seems interesting)
Bioshock Infinite (last game in the series, I believe)
Clank (sword game were you have to swing the sword)
War of the Roses (the FPS of sword and board)
Forge (arena FPS mmorpg combat without levels just your skills)
Shadowrun Returns (Return of the Shadowrun game, will be based of the SNES game we all loved)
Shadowrun Online (based of the current tabletop version of Shadowrun 4.0 mmorpg browser based)
Carmageddon: Reincarnation
Impire (Dungeon Keeper inspired RTS)

[BFalcon]

Atavism, on 20 August 2012 - 12:22 AM, said:

This right here is what's wrong with gaming today. The gamers. People know damned well what makes a bad game, and they are prepared to say so. Then they go ahead and throw money at it anyway. As long as we keep on paying for sh*t, that's exactly what we'll get.

Yep - STILL boycotting the Modern Warfare series btw - when I say I'm going to boycott something, I do so... so it's not a threat I issue lightly. Your screenshot, though, is why I left that group - it's too full of weakminded fools that didn't carry through on their threat.

I remember, in the UK, PC Gamer standing up and rallying the gamers over overpriced games - X-Wing cost £45, games afterwards cost more like £25. I remember picking up the X-Com boxed set - Enemy Unknown and Terror From the Deep and both guide books, for £30 after that campaign... but the quality of the game didn't crash, numbers buying each game just went up.

It used to make me laugh - console gamers complaining because their games cost more and then they act just like that EA video with any piece of good-looking tripe that's spewed out.

Classic example: Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Written by Codemaster, rather than the team who wrote the original game (who now make Arma 2, as well as the MoD training software for the UK, btw) it was a very pretty game, but one that, ultimately, ended up being boring as hell. I ended up (I bought it not knowing that the original wasn't made by the same team) spending more time rallying around the island than actually playing the game. Written for the consoles and then ported, it had no CD key, no decent copy protection and was pretty much left to die right from the start with minimal support. Multiplayer then suffered from all kinds of hacks, pirated copies and all sorts of fun and games. Did Codemasters care? Nope - they just went on and produced another game in the series a while later, having raked in all the money from the sales in the first place. Sad, since they used to be a good games house. Needless to say, Codemasters are another brand name I try to avoid whenever possible (I have, however bought one game since some friends were playing, Grid, but that was second hand - I refuse to help producers who do not support their games or who bring down the standards of PC gaming).

My opinions on PC gaming standards and not supporting any games houses who mistreat the gaming community is why I have a Legendary tag next to my name - PGI have proven, so far, that they are willing to uphold the basic standards of PC gaming. I'm also cutting them some slack because they've gotten so far in just a year with, I've been told, just 65 members of staff. It sounds more like the old-school PC gaming production to me... the small guys writing games they WANT to write.

[Chrystoph]

CCC Dober, on 13 August 2012 - 08:58 AM, said:

Speaking of dragons, does anybody know what happened to the dev team of Dragon Age once they shipped the first title (a rather recent quality game). I have no idea who was responsible for DA2, but I can't believe it was the same dev team. DA1 was brilliant, DA2 was an abomination. How is that possible? Management buy-out? Devs got kicked out? Both?

Fact of the gaming business: Most of the permanent staff of any gaming firm are the business types.

EA only recently started retaining permanent programmers, and that is only for ongoing projects such as the Play for Free projects. Notice, however, that the people in those projects are content developers, not idea people. They make clothing, weapons and, occasionally, maps.

For the OP, it is guaranteed that the original team was not reassembled to do the sequel. SOME of them may have been brought back in, but the group that created the first game did not create the second.

[Bansheedragon75]

Blane, on 19 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

X-com was great ,because not only was the gameplkay solid,but it was fun if you just want to run a quik saved mission and blow stuff up anyway you wanted. try various manuevers to keep your troops aliveve etc. That's why I'm stoked about the new release of the game coming up. they're keeping the flavor of the original and bumping the graffics for the new age. Not trying to redo the entire thing .

I have been reading up on that New X.com game, and I'm honestly still a little skeptical.
In the other games you build bases around he world to support yourself and defend the planet, here it sounds as if you have one base only to do all you work.
Whats more they are not releasing a PC exclusive game, but releasing ti for Xbox 360 and PS3 as well.
That alone makes me worry, because games that are released in such a fashion has never been good.
Normally I would jump at a new game in the series, but I have been burned twice now with what seemed like good games, so this time I'll rather wait and see what happens.

Batlin, on 20 August 2012 - 01:46 AM, said:

Ohh Westwood, Origin (Wing Commander & Ultima) and many others that have passed on.....We'll never forget.

Thank the community for mods and they are the sole reason I am playing Freespace (I and II) and many other old games again.
Its about 50 / 50 for the games I play the are quite new and 10+ years old !

Wing Commander
My favorite Space Combat Sim of all times.
I have WC 4, and all 4 games in the series are available from GOG.com.
I'm thinking of getting the other 3 because they are so good games

Crankwerk, on 20 August 2012 - 03:06 AM, said:

So I suggest if these genres interest you take a look at these games, as they are not the typical mainstream product and coming soon:

ARMA III (infantry simulator)
Borderlands 2 (RPG & FPS adventure game more or less)
Cyperpunk (RPG by the team that gave you ..."drumroll" Witcher series)
End of Nations (MMO?RTS by Trion , with 16vs 16 players in one map..*** in an RTS?)
Heroes and Generals (MMO WWII something something with classes, seems interesting)
Bioshock Infinite (last game in the series, I believe)
Clank (sword game were you have to swing the sword)
War of the Roses (the FPS of sword and board)
Forge (arena FPS mmorpg combat without levels just your skills)
Shadowrun Returns (Return of the Shadowrun game, will be based of the SNES game we all loved)
Shadowrun Online (based of the current tabletop version of Shadowrun 4.0 mmorpg browser based)
Carmageddon: Reincarnation
Impire (Dungeon Keeper inspired RTS)

Carmageddon coming back?
Damn those games were fun, I have been waiting and hoping for years for a new one in the series.
My best buddy is gonna completely freak out when I tell him about this.
He loves these games and still has fun playing the old games.

A good FPS game I always enjoyed playing was Serious Sam.
This game is not trying to sell good graphics or a story.
Its designed with the idea of you being a one man army shooting your way through hordes of monsters.

Edited by Dragonlord, 20 August 2012 - 04:55 AM.

[MercilessTRADER]

I missed alot of this discussion but ill try to make this short and sweet. What happened to Video Games of old??? Its called Zynga and the droves of causal gamers.. Why have long production times when the industry can make games that where around 20 years ago and stick them on facebook... and millions play with farm animals... Think about it??

[Melcyna]

Zynga and casual games are not directly parallel with each other though,

if you notice Zynga pretty much just blatantly copied or ripped off the design of older popular game or pretty much any popular game and redress it, hell they sometimes do it in such blatant manner that EA sued them for literally ripping off almost down to the assets design.

They've been doing this for ages, and everyone knew about it but this is the first time a major publisher sued them for it.

But think about it again, what do Zynga rip off or copy? Existing popular games, but that means there needs to be a popular game they can rip off to start in the first place.

So can they work if they are the one that had to come up with it themselves? Unlikely... Zynga is a separate problem, it's related with casual games to an extent... but Zynga itself is a FAR worse abomination than casual games, casual games can at least be good sometimes, some of them are actually well designed... but Zynga have no such thing.

[Isingdeath]

Computer games are victims of their own success. When they hit mainstream they pulled in people trying to cash in. Happens in all fields. Corporations that go public (traded on the stock market) are now more interested in catering to the stock price rather than the product that they are making. In other words the product is the means to an end rather than what they are in business to do. This happens all over the world now. A reason I go with mutulized insurance companies. They are more interested in the business as insurance company then in the stock price.

The second problem as others stated is console games. The target of these games and the philosophy have translated over to all computer games. Why is this because it works. Why spend tons of money on developing a good game when you can get the same amount of money for just making a clone game thats buggy for a lot less cash up front. There is no pay off or great incentive to go the extra mile. MWO seems different because the makers love what they are doing so it is a labor of love not a bottom line.

Third the gaming industry is a dangerous business. It takes alot of money up front to produce a game and you have to wait a long time to realize profits. All this time you still have to pay the workers and there is no guarantee that the product will sell enough to cover cost much less make a profit. Then most of that profit goes back into development and support. Support is a double edged sword. You have to have it but it brings in zero revenue (yes a better product means more sales but this is not always the case). Once a game has been on the shelves and has not sold well it will be in the bargain bin or gone. There is a reason EA is still around when so many others have gone belly up. They now how to work the system. Good for them not so good for us.

[Crankwerk]

Dragonlord, on 20 August 2012 - 04:52 AM, said:

Carmageddon coming back?
Damn those games were fun, I have been waiting and hoping for years for a new one in the series.
My best buddy is gonna completely freak out when I tell him about this.
He loves these games and still has fun playing the old games.

Yeah, seem to be mostly the same UK team doing it as the original game. http://www.carmageddon.com

[nektu]

Melcyna, on 19 August 2012 - 01:05 AM, said:

Similarly when it comes to gameplay, there's not much room in either space or processing power for anything that isn't useful to the gameplay itself. Which is why when games like System Shock came out it was nothing short of phenomenal for the amount of gameplay mechanic and interpretation that they managed to cram in with so little space..

System Shock was one of a kind. We should be careful to not compare the crème de la crème of old games to the run-of-the-mill games of today.

Melcyna, on 19 August 2012 - 01:05 AM, said:

It's rather depressing when games of that depth became a rarity. Witcher yeah that was pretty good for a modern RPG, still depressing that there hasn't been a SINGLE RPG with writing quality like Planescape: Torment but i can concede that games like Witcher even if it doesn't posses the same level of atmosphere and writing like some of the old classic, is still good enough considering there are so few alternatives.

Well, since I know the books the witcher games are based upon I have to disagree there. However, more generally the difference between witcher and planescape is that between a movie and a book. And books are not the hottest medium either any longer.

Melcyna, on 19 August 2012 - 01:05 AM, said:

EXCELLENT? and World of Tank?

Those 2 don't go with each other i am sorry to say, no games with P2Win aspect should ever be paired with the tag EXCELLENT.
An F2P like LoL? ok i can sort of accept that statement even if i don't like the game itself... but WoT? hell no...

Hehe, yea thats a controversial one.

WoT is simple to get into, but has a surprising depth - and for PvP games thats the best kind of game.

It's fairly realistic armor model requires a fair amount of skill and knowledge to hit the weakspots of tanks (or to hide your own behind terrain), you need situationaly awareness, you need to know where to position yourself and you need to know when to push/when to retreat/when to cower and just stand your ground to play it well.

It has some serious weak points, I agree, but im either past them or I don't really care about them.

The only bad thing about WoT that you cannot excape are the hordes of utterly incompetent players, who directly influence your own chances of success (well, MWO will suffer from that too).

I can basically jump in whenever I have 15 minutes to kill to shoot tanks and have fun (or pop a vein when the dumb nitwits on my team did something mindblowingly dumb ... again). And I dont have to pay nothing for it.

Elessar, on 20 August 2012 - 02:19 AM, said:

Most of the time at least.
Although it is interesting that, in terms of gameplay complexity, 1-2 man donationware projects are often multiple times more complex than commercial titles.
Just think of Dwarf Fortress or Aurora 4X (hell, many games developers themselves play Dwarf Fortress and incloude small tributes to the game in their own games ).
Thanks to completely foregoing complex graphics and extensive game music, they don´t have to employ a large staff dedicated to graphics and sound and can put their full work into gameplay

Well, yea, but in all fairness, dwarf fortress is made for crazy persons. I greatly enjoy reading Let's Plays of it but I wound never ever spend the work to find out how to play it

Crankwerk, on 20 August 2012 - 03:06 AM, said:

Cyperpunk (RPG by the team that gave you ..."drumroll" Witcher series)

Holy wow. Thank you so much for mentioning this. Now im psyched.


Other interesting games are the "Supreme Commander" games. They are RTS games, but try to stear the gameplay away from tactics (aka micromanaging a handful of units) to real strategy (aka managing whole armies with 100s or 1000s of units).

Everybody who likes RTS games should at least try them. A more recent indie game with the same basic idea is "AI War" (its on steam).

Edited by nektu, 20 August 2012 - 09:02 AM.

[Pershaw]

Dragonlord, on 13 August 2012 - 10:29 AM, said:

Just came over that game myself after reading about MWO and E3, which had a link to IGN where you can vote for most anticipated game 2012.

I just watched the video for that game, but when I looked at the pre-order page I got very concerned about the quality of this game.
What worries me is the fact that its not just released for PC, but for Xbox 360 and PS3 as well.


I'll quote Dervim to explain why I'm so worried.



The same goes for a revival of another game I played in my younger days, Carrier Command.
This too will me available on console which will probably ruin the game.

I remember the Original Carrier Command, which was a great strategy game, I was hoping the revival of that game would be worth it, now I'm worried it will not live up to its reputation like so many other games.

However I am still keeping my eyes on those 2 games, as well as Command & Conquer Generals 2, in the hopes that at least one of them will be good.

XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Carrier Command: Gaea Mission
Command & Conquer Generals 2

I'm looking forward to Carrier Command: Gaea Mission myself, I've played Carrier Command alot on the Amiga.
Next closest game to Carrier Command would probably have to be
http://www.mobygames...-antaeus-rising released in 2001. Available on Good old Games.