"What went wrong with Gaming"

[Sithaer]

I mostly only play single player games outside of Magic the Gathering, even my original Playstation 2 catalog was mostly single player games. I know what you are saying though.

For me personally, I still think it is a golden age of gaming, I legit have like 500+ games I really want to play, I won't get to all of them, lol

I mostly agree with that, I also have more backlog games than I will ever have time to play and finish and now that someone gifted me 1 year of ultimate game pass I found at least 10 games on it already that I want to play/interested in + a good few that will get added to it later next year.

I played Call of Duty Infinite Warfare campaign a month ago, only took about 7 to 8 hours to beat it, but it was some of the most fun I have had in ages. I won't be playing any multi of it, and it is an older CoD, but man that team did space combat so well, it was honestly a lot of fun. I feel bad for people who only ever played multi and skipped over that campaign, truly a hidden gem.

Recommend playing at high refresh, 125 fps is the cap for single player campaign, the space combat is insanely fun in the campaign.

I also agree with emulators being cool too though, lots of fun to be had there.

edit: I have no interest in playing any other CoD's, it was a one off for me cause I was in the mood for sci-fi combat.

And this, I've played almost every CoD but strictly single player only and honestly I had fun with those and the same goes to the single player part in Battlefield.

Dunno maybe for us who are variety gamers things doesn't seem that bad or worse than before but I can have the same fun gaming like I did ~15-20 years ago the only difference is that I don't put in as many hours.

 

[64K]

Publishers have become risk averse over the years. They don't want to take a chance creating a new IP that might flop so they keep serving up a cookie-cutter version of a known popular title or a remaster/remake of an older title that made a lot of money. CoD is an excellent example of this mindset. A new game every year but from Activision's point of view it makes really good business sense since they take in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually doing this. The CoD franchise has generated over 30 billion dollars in revenue so far.

 

[Vayra86]

I was going more down the line that games are becoming less niche and less unique to attract the widest audience possible, very similar to the modern big budget movie industry. Assassins Creed needs to be more "RPG" like because look at what the witcher III did in sales but not too cRPG because that's a niche audience. Dragon Age needs to be more "console friendly" than its inspiration Baldurs Gate because that audience is too niche...oh wait people like MMOs? Let's make Dragon Age III more MMO like.

Oh yeah absolutely I can see that aspect too. @64K said it too. Risk averse publishers. However, they seem to forget many franchises are established because they brought a concept further, introduced a new concept, or just combined concepts we already knew in a great way.

Dragon Age 1 was great because it offered accessible party based cRPG with decent depth - a golden combo, and every part after it was arguably worse because it tried to change that balance. One could, and many did, argue that Baldur's Gate while brilliant was also a tad complex and at times even straight up unfair; heck, with permadeath characters it could play like a roguelike even. Danger around every corner, too, and lots of insta death bullshit on your way... 'oh, you didn't read the whole chapter here in the chat box? sucks, eh'

Assassin's Creed 1, was console-ey simple since part 1, but it did offer novelty in quite a few ways; the concept of translating buttons to 'body parts' to move and use stuff was revolutionary and suited intuitive movement in 3D. But basically, it just took Prince of Persia, added knives and parkoured with it...

Similar things happened in open world gaming and in MMO's. The amount of WoW spinoffs is immense, as are the GTA spinoffs.

At the same time, I get the search developers do in finding that balance between accessible and deep. Its a hard thing to do, and depending on what balance is struck, you are going to attract certain kinds of players. The best games offer both: accessible in its basic premise, and depth evolving in front of you as you gain experience with the concept. I feel like ARPGs do that in the most visible way. They introduce new damage types as you go, or make them strong enough to force you to build resistances; and with each type added the whole system gains in complexity.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Don't get me wrong I'm also not a fan of this whole cash grab thing but ppl who keep burning a fortune in such games are also to blame partially that more and more games with this business model are relased.

*Fully is more like it, if the model didnt work we wouldnt have this garbage shoved in our face.

 

[caroline!]

After listening the whole thing I started to realise how out of the loop I always was, BUT that has helped me a lot.

I was never on facebook so the whole farmville thing never caught my eye, and it never caught my eye because I don't have a smartphone, and I don't have a smartphone because I don't have any use for one, why? I don't know, when those first came out I was like "nah too expensive" even though I knew nothing about how *bad* smartphones are, for a variety of reasons you may or may not be aware of. But, that's not the point.

You see, this whole gambling thing requires one basic yet very important thing: money, though not physical but a series of numbers in a screen, a bank account. Take that away and there are no lootboxes, pretty simple, right? It is, and my particular experience with games comes down to the fact that I can't put any money in games, why? because it's worthless and no platforms want it, not even us locals want it so... if I cared about gambling boxes and wanted useless cosmetic items in a game I'd have to go through a series of steps that would make me regret wanting to purchase those items. There are a series of strict requisites few people in my country meet that allow one to have a VISA credit card for international purchases, because games only take USD or Euro, mainly, some platforms like Steam might accept local currencies that don't have monthly inflation rates of over 70% but I dunno, just first world things I guess, I'll never know how living in a normal country feels like.

So unironically what kept me of gambling in games were having an incompetent government, an useless currency and my lack of interest in multiplayer games altogether.

Now if I go deeper there's the fact I've never in my life paid for a videogame, except some old famicom cartridges (including an interesting obscure bootleg that came with a word processor and a fast typing test, my console was shaped like a C64 so it had a keyboard) back when I only had that, but never for a PC, for the same reasons I don't gamble. Piracy is the only reason I can access games, yes there are "free" games but we all know they suck, why? microtransactions, and we've come full circle again, free games are not free just like having a Facebook account is not free since you're the product.

So a proven solution to this would be... ruin your country forever with communism? but I don't think it'd work now, it had to be in the 50's, people from other parts of the world are too used to have money at a glance, even the Chinese, that's why microtransactions and gachapon mechanics work, they have access to money from their phones and computers, spend with a single click and MOST IMPORTANTLY buying a game, even at "full price" of 60 US dollars doesn't means spending your entire monthly income in it, without adding a comically amount of zeroes to the prices let's say spending $60 when your income is $65 means you'll die of starvation for a game but spending $60 when your income is $6000 is tossing a coin to your witcher, the cost is insignificant compared to your income. Whether the game is WORTH that money is a whole different topic of discussion but the core idea revolves around "having money makes you prone to spending it in moronic FIFA player cards".

In the end, my thought is that smartphones are just like games, made to siphon money AND data out of you. Now, I didn't knew this when I was I dunno 12 years old and saw a smartphone on sale for the first time but something told me it was bad, I didn't knew the rabbit hole of corporations being shitty and using people for their profit was so deep but I'm glad it went this way.

 

[kiriakost]

When you do get mad by the game play and a server loaded with cheaters, (EA servers), the last that you will be puzzled about this is your dress-code.
Battlefield™ V = Battlefield of useless cheaters who are in denial to advance skills and rank up slowly as is intended.

 

[caroline!]

When you do get mad by the game play and a server loaded with cheaters, (EA servers), the last that you will be puzzled about this is your dress-code.
Battlefield™ V = Battlefield of useless cheaters who are in denial to advance skills and rank up slowly as is intended.

All Battlefield games are full of cheaters.

All multiplayer FPS games are full of them in fact. It's rancid. Go singleplayer

 

[Frizz]

Mobile gaming . I believe Battle Passes and Loot Boxes are just the start when each individual player that play Gacha games is able to put down hundreds/thousands at a time to max out a character.

Buying Triple A titles with private hacks that can remain undetected are cheap in comparison.

 

[RadeonProVega]

The only MMO I ever spent any real time on was Defiance. That was the TV show connected to the Game. It made for cool Saturday morning Alien drop Missions with hundreds of PVE enemies and bosses that needed 360 degree coverage to deal with. The allure of skins and pay2 to win for me was Marvel Superheroes. To me that was better than the Avengers Game they released and way more interesting. As both of those Games are no longer playable (Haven't tried with Defiance). It's not all bad though MMOs are one part of the experience.

OMG, we all want Defiance the original to come back, 2050 was the downgraded version and imo was a very bad business decision. The original was better in every way. I personally hate Trion/gamigo and hope they shut down and I'm not the only that feels this way. Nobody likes them anymore and Defiance was their money making game, the rest of the games weren't. Maybe trove is, because trove is the only game that still has the highest playerbase. I boycotted trion/gamigo.

I would pay 100 dollars right now for a offline edition of Defiance. I had like 28 characters hahah, lots of loot and gear, cars. I Hope one day a game similar to defiance comes out, the only closest thing to defiance i found and have been playing for years and years is Hellgate London & Hellgate GLobal, its basically defiance without the vehicles. It has all the customization, plus more, random color loot, modding weapons, etc.

 

[Kapone33]

OMG, we all want Defiance the original to come back, 2050 was the downgraded version and imo was a very bad business decision. The original was better in every way. I personally hate Trion/gamigo and hope they shut down and I'm not the only that feels this way. Nobody likes them anymore and Defiance was their money making game, the rest of the games weren't. Maybe trove is, because trove is the only game that still has the highest playerbase. I boycotted trion/gamigo.

I would pay 100 dollars right now for a offline edition of Defiance. I had like 28 characters hahah, lots of loot and gear, cars. I Hope one day a game similar to defiance comes out, the only closest thing to defiance i found and have been playing for years and years is Hellgate London & Hellgate GLobal, its basically defiance without the vehicles. It has all the customization, plus more, random color loot, modding weapons, etc.

Sometimes it was just fun driving around on your ATV. The show brought me in the Gameplay kept me but my library is absolutely huge and I am trying my best to enjoy it.

 

[kiriakost]

Mobile gaming . I believe Battle Passes and Loot Boxes are just the start when each individual player that play Gacha games is able to put down hundreds/thousands at a time to max out a character.

Buying Triple A titles with private hacks that can remain undetected are cheap in comparison.

What hacks, poor people in Brazil play all day long to elevate a character and then sale it to rich bored people.
They might get 7$ a day as earning, not enough even for food.

TV documentary shown in Greek television few months ago.

 

[neatfeatguy]

The video doesn't tell me anything I don't already know.

What's tough for me is trying to explain how these games are developed and designed to my 10 year old. He's always asking if he can spend some of his money on a Roblox card so he can get stuff in game......I have to, about every 6 months, go over things again and remind him that nothing he buys in the games he plays will ever improve how the game plays. I have to tell him how the games are designed to make him feel like if he isn't spending money that he is missing out.

I know he understands it, but as you play a game and you see many other people in game running around and they look all fancy and flashy because they spent money for skins, it's hard feeling like you're missing out on something awesome.

I still play an online MUD game. The folks that run the game has taken upon themselves to build in many of these P2W aspects. The company has done well to add in multiple in game currencies that are only tied to pay events and at these events you can get new, fancy items or upgrade your existing items in ways that 10+ years ago were only possible if you entered into a very limited raffle during a merchant event and got lucky enough to be drawn and then spent millions of in game silver (the original in game currency). Now upgrading your stuff is as easy as hitting up an automated merchant if you've farmed enough of the pay event currency (by paying real money for access to games/combat events to obtain small handfuls of the currency) and earned a RNG chance at getting an invite to the automated merchant......it's just a numbers game in the end. Spend more to have chance to earn more and do more.

I avoid spending extra money on any phone game or the MUD I play or any game I play that might be part of being online. You can't fool me into wasting my money on all this microtransaction crap.

 

[watzupken]

Misquote. It's “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.”

At the end of the day, love of self is the main reason. I want more money because I want more power, I want to buy better things, live better lives, etc. The root is because we love ourselves. You can list out all the reasons, but the word "I want" is always going to be there.

 

[wheresmycar]

All Battlefield games are full of cheaters.

All multiplayer FPS games are full of them in fact. It's rancid. Go singleplayer

I agree!! Sadly, i'm hooked on the Battlefield franchise and a couple of other fast paced FPS titles. The cheaters definitely ruin the game when they're about but theres plenty of times when they're not (i hope). Some of them are smart using in-game macro keys or configurations which are less detectable or damaging hence they get to stick around for a while.

 

[Frizz]

What hacks, poor people in Brazil play all day long to elevate a character and then sale it to rich bored people.
They might get 7$ a day as earning, not enough even for food.

TV documentary shown in Greek television few months ago.

This is all part of the same P2W blackmarket EpicNPC, Player Auctions etc.

Passionate small time developers can and do make a killing from slotted subscriptions from their trainers. $160 USD a month for Takrov as an example and is not enforced by the law in most countries.

 

[freeagent]

It got popular, and overly glamorized

Then it got tied with overclocking and mixed with RGB

It is now a cesspool

 

[theFOoL]

I think I'm going get back into prototype 1/2

 

[wheresmycar]

It got popular, and overly glamorized

Then it got tied with overclocking and mixed with RGB

It is now a cesspool

hey nothing wrong with overclocking Used to be a rewarding deviation from stock, although nowadays you get peanuts in return.

 

[kiriakost]

I agree!! Sadly, i'm hooked on the Battlefield franchise and a couple of other fast paced FPS titles. The cheaters definitely ruin the game when they're about but theres plenty of times when they're not (i hope). Some of them are smart using in-game macro keys or configurations which are less detectable or damaging hence they get to stick around for a while.

My new hobby is to report them, and to write about it to Chat-All = xxxx moron reported to EA

 

[Totally]

That sh!t didn't start with horse armor it started with F2P, technology being limited is why we didn't get mtx's right out the gate. F2p is when they started with dabbling alternative methods of monetizing the player base. Some of the earliest examples were f2p games with small banner ads on the game launcher, and with some directly in some form in game, and I guess with horse armor made them realize that our wallet was a far easier nut to crack than chasing those advertising dollars. Consoles were far removed from this because requiring an internet connection was a fairly recent development. This was why I was against f2p, despite being called elitist, I knew this was going to happen but at the time had no way of explaining it besides the adage 'there's no such thing as a free lunch.' always knew devs were going to collect in some way.

 

[Vayra86]

Mobile gaming . I believe Battle Passes and Loot Boxes are just the start when each individual player that play Gacha games is able to put down hundreds/thousands at a time to max out a character.

Buying Triple A titles with private hacks that can remain undetected are cheap in comparison.

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Darwin fixes this eventually, I hope...

What's encouraging is that the growth of mobile does not go at the expense of anything else.

 

[Veseleil]

If you meant "wrong with PC gaming", my answer is gaming consoles. I think I don't need to expand on this. Just look at the UI we PC users must put up to, just so the console users could even use theirs.
As for gaming on all platforms, I think the biggest problem is that the 99% of the gaming industry products nowadays are exclusively tailored to appeal and target the most vulnerable ones - the children. I think I don't need to expand on this neither, as I expect that the majority of forum users are mature enough to figure it out.

 

[Kapone33]

If you meant "wrong with PC gaming", my answer is gaming consoles. I think I don't need to expand on this. Just look at the UI we PC users must put up to, just so the console users could even use theirs.
As for gaming on all platforms, I think the biggest problem is that the 99% of the gaming industry products nowadays are exclusively tailored to appeal and target the most vulnerable ones - the children. I think I don't need to expand on this neither, as I expect that the majority of forum users are mature enough to figure it out.

I can promise you my 5 year old has no interest in TWWH3, however we both enjoy Sonic Frontiers and Humble Choice is so varied that you would wonder why you ever thought that way. As an example today's Free Game on Epic was on Humble choice years ago (not DLC). Does anyone know how many PC Games have actually been made? It is all about focus. If you are nostalgic install MAME and see if you can finish the Arcade version of Rygar. or see how Gyruss finishes.

The problem is the narrative is very powerful. It is so powerful that Fortnite went from 3D Minecraft to PUBG and no one batted an eye. This stuff started with Everquest and also is generational by the number of "Gamers" that considered WOW the breath of all Gaming when today's 20 something olds came into the workplace a few years ago. I guess it's the way we socialize changing vs when I was a kid but there is a real cycle of this stuff.

I love how TWWH3 has been added to reviews (No shade on TPU) and laugh when they use the benchmark tool built in the Game to gauge and report performance. As all that tool tells you is the Game will run at your monitor's refresh rate if your GPU can do it (in battle). Show me a 4X4 20 ultra unit battle with 3 or more unit/Campaign mods in 4K with no time limit and you will see exactly what TW can do to your PC. There are also 2 other benchmarks in the Game but I guess they don't matter. What you will hear is time does not permit for that but you could do someone's Campaign battle as TW allows you to share Campaigns online as long as you own the Game.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Darwin fixes this eventually, I hope...

What's encouraging is that the growth of mobile does not go at the expense of anything else.

its already there, mobile is based on pay2win models.

 

[Veseleil]

I can promise you my 5 year old has no interest in TWWH3, however we both enjoy Sonic Frontiers and Humble Choice is so varied that you would wonder why you ever thought that way. As an example today's Free Game on Epic was on Humble choice years ago (not DLC). Does anyone know how many PC Games have actually been made? It is all about focus. If you are nostalgic install MAME and see if you can finish the Arcade version of Rygar. or see how Gyruss finishes.

The problem is the narrative is very powerful. It is so powerful that Fortnite went from 3D Minecraft to PUBG and no one batted an eye. This stuff started with Everquest and also is generational by the number of "Gamers" that considered WOW the breath of all Gaming when today's 20 something olds came into the workplace a few years ago. I guess it's the way we socialize changing vs when I was a kid but there is a real cycle of this stuff.

I love how TWWH3 has been added to reviews (No shade on TPU) and laugh when they use the benchmark tool built in the Game to gauge and report performance. As all that tool tells you is the Game will run at your monitor's refresh rate if your GPU can do it (in battle). Show me a 4X4 20 ultra unit battle with 3 or more unit/Campaign mods in 4K with no time limit and you will see exactly what TW can do to your PC. There are also 2 other benchmarks in the Game but I guess they don't matter. What you will hear is time does not permit for that but you could do someone's Campaign battle as TW allows you to share Campaigns online as long as you own the Game.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think you've missed my point. I was referring to the brainwashing. Gaming industry became just another marketing department with the same goal. There are exceptions of course, but found mostly among indie production titles. For example, we'll never get a game like TES III again, and it's a gruesome fact. I might be spoiled by it, but it's my benchmark for any other game of the genre.