Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Ralizah I honestly found Monster Hunter to be better than how Animal Crossing handled it, since you still had hours of content out of the gate, as opposed to Animal Crossing having less content than the last entry that came before.

I'd honestly have been fine if New Horizons had even less content at launch if the villagers were interesting instead. In hindsight, that's my biggest problem with the game (and the series as its gone on), and it might not even be close. It's really annoying especially when you see the hints of actual characters beyond just bland enjoyment of things and odd, quirky moments.

Also I never had the same issues with Splatoon's launch content, because I still played it more in the first couple of months of the original than I would to beat most of the games I played growing up. Granted, it probably helped that it was a genuinely novel game that came out when Nintendo had nothing else going on, but my rule for whether something is worth my money at full price is often "is great for 20+ hours". And Splatoon did that before updates. And then actually got updates. And having played through Splatoon 2 way later, its very apparent to me how much updates make me want to play this game, because now that I've done both campaigns, I find it hard to justify playing it more with other games waiting.

While I do obviously think Splatoon 3 should have more content at launch than the previous games did, I'd genuinely prefer the game to give me reasons to play it after launch. Otherwise, I find it hard to justify going back to games nowadays.

@kkslider5552000 Eh, the issue for me wasn't just that the villagers were lacking, but the fact that the game is supposed to be where you progress on your own, within your own pace. The updates sort of defeat that in a way, with them basically withholding content, telling you when you can get it, instead of just working towards it on your own like other Animal Crossing games.

Not to mention, that some of the updated content doesn't even really make you work for it. You were pretty much just handed it.

@Pizzamorg I think the situation is that back in the Halo 2 days there wasn't much console online multiplayer FPS competition and Halo 3 had release timing advantage to have a strong population. Then the increase in competition due to stuff like massively popular annual CoD (Modern Warfare onwards) meant all competitors decided on ways to maintain their playerbase. Over time that became free content updates with loot boxes and then free to play games with free content updates with battle passes and microtransaction stores. Nowadays Fortnite puts pressure on everything.

I mean, that's pretty valid. But at my pace, I never even finished paying off my house, nor finished the museum, after like 100 hours.

Actually the other big problem, the initial loading time. As someone who often played it in fairly short sessions, that was painful in the long term.

@VoidofLight This. When playing new leaf I was happy that I was able to just get on get off, play tomorrow, but with NH holding content, just defeats that daily life thing.

@Snatcher After about a month in New Horizons, I kind of lost all will to continue playing until they updated more into the game.

@VoidofLight Eh. Entirely different types of games. Animal Crossing is very laid back, so the pace at which you play it is more controlled. And, even if they add more stuff to it, the core of the experience isn't really altered. The entire game was there from the beginning, just with more distractions. IMO, it's easy to lose interest in New Horizons because they completely gutted the daily simulation element of it. It's less of a social sim and more of a 'customize your island and show off to your friends' sorta game now.

MH Rise took months to patch in the literal final story boss. As a result, people like me who play one game and then move on to the next have never seen the actual conclusion, because we were done playing months before the game was properly finished.

Ok, that's way worse. Though at least Capcom didn't make you pay money for the ending of the game this time. :V

Actually, I bought Asura's Wrath just a few years ago, and never even bothered buying the DLC. Though not necessarily because it was scummy, but because I can't imagine Asura's Wrath staying all that compelling for any longer than I had already played.

@VoidofLight can’t blame you mate.

@Ralizah You do bring up a really god point, because they did take months to patch the final boss in, the thing is, I’m not sure if it was due to a time issue, or if it was done for months, because I think ac was finished with there content for a long time.

@Snatcher I think with Monster Hunter Rise, it was the pandemic, but with New Horizons, it seems like they intentionally gut the game at launch, given how absolutely everything which came in the final update was in the code on day 1.

@VoidofLight Thats what I was thinking, because I hear AC had it in the code for a good wile, and I found it odd how long it took. When you look at MH however, They not only put it out in a shorter time frame compared, but MH as a series is not a live service like game, so it had to get hold back, compared to the likes of AC were they treated all the seasons like events.

@VoidofLight Animal Crossing is developed by the same team that does Splatoon, I believe, which means, yes, gutting the game and then finishing it over the course of several months with "content drops" that unlock stuff that was already in the code in the first place is totally intentional. Although Splatoon's single-player content is always complete at launch, which makes it a little less offensive in that respect.

@Snatcher It makes me wonder if the game's physical cartridge that comes with the expansion will include the updates that patch in the final act of the game, or if the physical copies of MH Rise will just forever remain incomplete?

@kkslider5552000 Never played Asura's Wrath, but that sounds offensive enough that I'd probably refuse to buy the game at all on principle.

Yeah this is a good point, too. Nowadays we have so much content just instantly accessible at our finger tips. Everything is fighting for our time, all the time. It's very easy now to hop to a new experience every five minutes.

To be fair to the developers, we only know that the assets used by the later features of ACNH were present, not whether the code for them actually worked. I'd think it far more likely that they still had bugs to sort out at launch but it was deemed that the game was complete enough to get it out the door.

Also, the sheer number of patches the game received - some of which were only a few days apart - supports this. Were it just a case of them enabling features that already worked, we'd have had a lot less of them at regular three month intervals or whatever.

You could perhaps argue that it would have been better to wait until much more of the game was working, but then again it released at a particularly opportune time with much of the world locked down because of COVID and they'd have missed out on that.

@Ralizah Yeah, and not to mention how Splatoon gets it right, given it's a primarily multiplayer game, while Animal Crossing is meant to be a singleplayer experience, accompanied by a bit of multiplayer. It feels like either Nintendo or the new series director for animal crossing forgot that Animal Crossing isn't about online play, or playing with friends.

@Matt_Barber Eh, I don't think Covid had any play with New Horizons ending up like it did. Nintendo just decided to release a game and say "Eh, we'll finish it later". It was just circumstance that it sold as well as it did.

@VoidofLight true, if it hadn’t been for Covid, this game probably wouldn’t have gotten as popular as it is. I mean it still would have been, but not just blown up the way it did.

@TheAceOfGurren Never played SWS, but judging on how botw borrows gameplay elements from it, I would say that’s fair.

I'm not sure how anyone could misinterpret what I wrote as even meaning that. Obviously the timing was fortuitous. It's not like anyone even knew COVID lockdowns would be a thing when they set the release date.

Also, they clearly had some minimal standard that the launch content had to meet because they'd already delayed it once. If they truly didn't care at all about the state of it, they probably would have released it for the previous holiday season.

@VoidofLight Well, see, had they doubled down on the social aspect, it would have been fine as well. Replace the locus of social simulation so that real friends are the focus of the simulation. I could have adapted very well to that. But somehow this latest AC game has nothing to actually do with friends. Not even the little island activities that New Leaf had. It's less a "play with friends" game and more of a "narcissistically show off to friends" game. In that sense, I suppose, it's no wonder the game exploded in popularity like it did.

@TheAceOfGurren Thinking RE6 is the best game in the series is one hell of a hot take.

On the other hand, even though BotW is my favorite game in the series, I'm not really inclined to disagree with you about its dungeons. I imagine most fans are the same. Clearly they were the aspect of the game that enjoyed the least development this go around.