@Chlocean I know what you're saying, but nowadays the term JRPG really is independent of country of origin. It's a wonderful French take on the genre, but it's still a JRPG through and through (and I don't think the developers would disagree).
The most exciting aspect of the new consoles to me is that they'll finally have pretty beefy multi core CPUs in them.
Most AAA developers probably won't take full advantage of it, but it does open up a lot of potential for AI, physics and the like. Since everyone develops for consoles as the baseline, hopefully some mid size studios (like platinum) will be able to do interesting new things.
@thesilverbrick Steam allows developers to generate and distribute as many keys as they want with no fee, they only charge commission on sales through their platform.
I don't know the specifics of Platinum's deal with Nintendo, but if it goes by industry standards they'd have to pay ‰30 of the retail price to give you a Switch eshop key.
@Daniel36 I feel like this conversation comes up every time 'rogue-like' is used. There is usually someone saying that the only rogue-likes feature perma-death, procedural generation, no progression between runs and are preferably turn based in a dungeon setting. Pretty restrictive if you ask me.
Hence the term 'rogue-light', which this game is. To me I define rogue-lights as games with permadeath, procedural generation and progression between runs. Anything else is fair game.
In terms of true 'next-gen' features that are actually exciting, the big hardware upgrades that matter are SSDs and powerful multu-core CPUs.
SSDs will obviously lead to faster load times, but will also allow assets to be streamed so much faster that they'll be able to do things that haven't been seen before with draw distance and texture pop in.
I don't know if developers will take advantage of the CPUs, but there's at least potential for seeing new things with AI and physics that weren't possible before. It's hard to overstate how much the garbage CPUs in last gen consoles crippled innovation.
Most AAA developers are actually super lazy when it comes to doing new things, so I'm not holding my breath on a wave of innovation, but 'better' graphics are the least exciting aspect of the hardware.
I definitely agree that batch crafting should at least be an option, at least if you get a 'gold' crafting bench or whatever. Crafting from storage would also be great. It's too bad that nobody seems to care about changing island reps though, that's a huge oversight.
My wife started the game, but she very casual about her playtime, so now I have to juggle playing her to actually advance the island, and playing me to just play. Not fun.
@C-Threep That's my issue too. My wife started playing first, so now all progress is tied to her, but she's lazy. They really need to patch in at least transferring 'ownership' of the island.
My brother is an elementary school teacher in Kyoto. I skyped him a couple of days ago, and it was pretty eye opening how little regard people have for the disease there. Yes, they've been taking some measures, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that Japan's built in social distancing and habits will be enough to stop the spread, and that it really is just another flu.
At his school, every teacher gets their temperature checked at the start of the day. If it's 1 degree higher than normal, they are asked to voluntarily stay at home for 2 weeks, without pay. Hopefully everything works out OK in Japan, but they are not taking anywhere near the measures of most other first world countries, yet. I'm sure the Olympics are a large part of that, maybe things will chat when they are inevitably delayed.
To me, the coronavirus threat has two faces. First, the actual health threat to societies, which still remains to be determined, but I personally have no problem playing it safe.
Second is the public reaction when cases start popping up in particular regions. I live in Austin Texas, which is about to host SXSW, and there's no sign they're considering canceling it or stripping it down. I just bought $300 of non perishable groceries, not because I think it's the end of the world, but if a panic does hit, I don't want to be stuck dealing with the consequences. When hurricane Harvey hit Houston, you had to wait hours for gas on the off chance that someone would still have some. I'll use those groceries down the line either way, so what's the harm, since I actually have enough money to do that.
The severity of coronavirus (which is still a legitimate concern) goes hand in hand with taking simple preparation measures for possible reactions to 'your' town getting it. I work in service, if it does hit austin I'm screwed.
I think people are confused about the names of the games in the series. It was 'The Wonderful 101', 'The Terrific 202', 'Thee 303' and finally the 'Formidable 404'.
@WOLF13 Your point about the market correcting itself if people just stop buying bad ports or taking part is flawed. These AAA gambling games have a massive built in base, but their revenue stream is based off of a small fraction of their users. Until you can convince the whales to stop spending money (which you never will), it won't go away on its own.
@Ventilator The whole point of the discussion is that these practices are completely unregulated and allowed to be as predatory as they want, without the stigma of gambling attached to it.
I know nothing about the plaintiff in the suit, who is irrelevant to the bigger picture, but the entire industry has been running a massive con job for years. FIFA just happens to be the target because they make the most money, but the whole system is broken and predatory.
Micro transactions are a bane on video games in general, and have degraded the user experience. 'Gacha'/loot box mechanics on the other hand are full on criminal enterprises, exploiting loop holes in gambling laws. The main defense of them is that you receive nothing of 'real' value, so it's not gambling.
Which makes it even worse. At least in casino gambling you have a chance to win something with real world value, and that actually costs them something when they pay you out. In FIFA (and plenty of other predatory games, Nintendo isn't exempt), there's no cost beyond initial development when people 'cash out'. They can give the reward away a million times and it still costs them the same money.
It's still gambling, the only difference is that you can't sell what you win. It's time to regulate it under standard rules. EA and everyone else should be under standard gambling regulations. Pay your taxes, warn people, and keep it out of the hands of kids.
PS, I personally love to gamble and don't want to see it outlawed, but proper protections are paramount.
With the rumors of Sony loosening its death grip on some of their 2nd party exclusives (horizon zero dawn and the last of us), we might slowly be ushering in an age of limited exclusivity. I totally understand holding onto the evergreen 'system sellers', particularly first party IPs, but realistically, after a year or two, many of these properties offer limited value by remaining exclusive. I think a lot of it will have to do with how those games sell as test cases.
Nintendo has to weigh the benefit of keeping something like bayonetta 2 (as a random example) exclusive, against the very tidy profit they'd make by opening it to PC and Playstation.
The switch definitely isn't going to immediately fizzle out once the next generation of consoles launch, it's found its niche as the portable kinda console that is a great secondary to PC/Xbox/Playstation, but is just competent enough to satisfy people that don't want to buy those.
That said, I don't see how they don't launch a new one within 2 years. It's a great device that fills many people's needs, but it can't fall completely behind everything else out there.
Or maybe it can, merging their console and hand held products worked out amazingly. As long as they have the most user friendly, convenient hand held (with all of the 1st party gems) they're in a pretty good place.
As an aside, with the news that Sony is looking to break into the PC market and test the waters of releasing some of their exclusives on other platforms, it will be interesting to see how Nintendo responds. We're talking a hypothetical few years down the road, but if Sony starts making bank by releasing dead catalog titles, is it really a stretch to think that Nintendo might try releasing older games onto other platforms?
Witcher 3 is definitely the one game that I can only appreciate on PC, and not just because of better graphics/framerate, though that's a factor. The biggest reason is all of the mods, especially the QOL ones. Infinite inventory weight, auto-loot herbs, auto apply oils and fast travel from anywhere are things I couldn't live without now that I've used them.
There's already so much to do in the game, so anything to streamline the more tedious aspects is huge.
I played it on PC in VR when it came out, definitely fun, definitely VR centric. That said, a big portion of the enjoyment comes from whether or not you enjoy the humor.
It was surprising how fun the gameplay was, but I'm not sure how well it would translate. If you're a Rick and Morty fan it's definitely worth your time, even without VR, since it sounds like the implementation didn't ruin it. But dang, good VR is really fun, and this was good VR.
I enjoy rocket league now and again, but they've always been predatory with their transactions. As others have said, this is 100% charging 'insane' prices at first, so that when they revert to merely 'outrageous' prices it seems like a good deal.
@JayJ Call of duty and fifa are those crazy evergreen franchises that will seemingly never lose sales, despite [removed] the majority of people that pay attention.
To me, the moment those franchises stop being automatic top sellers is the moment AAA companies actually start trying to put out decent games again.
@Kalmaro I mean I specifically bought this game physical because I foresee it being something that I won't be playing long term, and I'll want to lend out to friends. That plus having the option to resell it are the main factors for me.
Some people want physical game collections, totally valid too. Your entire argument seems to rest on the fact that people only buy physical to avoid having to take up space on an SD card. I'm sure those people exist, but they're definitely not the majority (plus the fact that the patch will presumably be far smaller than the actual game).
@rdm22 Heh, exactly. I can't look at nes golf without thinking of galf now. I can't wait for the next thing from the golf story devs, one of the great, under appreciated indie gems of this generation.
@Ludovsky It's much more story driven than other rogue lites. Almost every time you finish a run or unlock a new area, there are little narrated story vignettes. Also, as you progress you unlock multiple main characters who all play very differently.
Finally, I played solo, but from all reports it's even better as a coop experience, if that's your thing.
I'm curious what soundtrack they're using for this version. In the original, the composer recorded everything with a full symphony orchestra, but provided really bad midi tracks for the actual game (outside of the opening credits), so he could sell soundtrack CDs with the 'definitive' version.
I played it on PC, and fortunately someone made a mod to replace the awful midi with the proper recordings, but it was a super sleazy move. The dude can write good music, but to tell the people who paid you for the music that they only have the rights to the intentionally crappy version is just terrible behavior. And once I played with the intended music, the game was so much more enjoyable.
@almosteveryone The file size stuff isn't quite as simple as certain people are saying. Nintendo are absolute masters at optimizing their games, there's no questioning that, but the majority of file size bloat in modern games comes down to two things:
Textures are obviously the biggest. Cartoony style games generally can utilize far smaller textures than 'ultra realistic' ones. But it's not as simple as that. Many modern developers just don't bother allocating the resources to properly optimizing textures.
Ie., it helps to use a massive texture on things that will be viewed close up (regardless of user resolution), but often they don't think it's worth the man hours to separate the textures that actually need to be big and the ones that don't. Unless they are running into vram issues, they don't care about file size.
The second huge file size bugaboo that isn't usually talked about is that many games include uncompressed audio in as many as 9 languages. It's another example of developers not caring one whit about filesize, and only for squeezing every frame of performance they can from consoles. Realistically, there are audio compression formats that use almost no cpu overhead and are lossless, but because the current generation of consoles have such backwater processors, developers don't want to sacrifice any of it.
When it's time to allocate resources to optimize a game before it heads out the door, the lowest priority is file size. (except for nintendo, which is yet another reason they're unique and special in the industry)
Nintendo isn't the only gaming company looking at mobile revenue and wondering why they're not getting enough of the action, but the key thing that most of these companies are missing is that mobile revenue has very little to do with actually making a good game. It's all about addictive mechanics and monetization, and is dominated by the aggressive slum lords who will do anything to make more money.
It's a horrible, dirty business that has nothing in common with actual gaming other than the word 'game'. There are slow signs that this crap will actually be regulated and reeled in, but for now, the more nasty and predatory you are, the more money you make.
I hereby propose that the term 'mobile gaming' be changed to 'mobile buggery'.
For all of the people saying they can't tell the difference between 60 and 30... More power to you, but it's absolutely a big deal, particularly in fast paced games. Of course, a huge caveat is to say that a steady, locked 30 will feel much better than a 60 full of stuttering. This comes from me having an overpowered PC that has spoiled me somewhat. That said, I have no problem fully enjoying things on my switch that don't always perform as well, but good frame pacing is critical (as opposed to max frame rate).
Once again, no antagonism intended, but watching a side by side video on a phone or even a TV is far different than playing something. So I'm still waiting for a proper switch review to see if you feel it during gameplay.
Major studio game development is notorious for being the highest stress, lowest paying environment for programmers and developers. They can get away with it, because so many people want work in the industry, and are willing to put up with much more than someone say, making banking software. The problem is that if you speak up or stand up for yourself you are targeted as a problem and will have a hard time finding work anywhere else. It doesn't matter how talented you are (unless you're fortunate enough to have made a name for yourself), because there are 50 other talented people waiting in line behind you.
Some studios are more draconian than others, but they all do it to a degree. Some of the best AA studios have come from industry veterans that are sick of that treatment and want to create an alternative, but unfortunately it's obviously really hard to find the money for that, so there are only a handful of successful ones.
The talk of 'if you don't like it, just quit!' is nonsense. Unfortunately, if you're passionate about making games, you either have to suck up insane, unreasonable demands on your sanity, or be willing to not make any money for a long time, which just isn't realistic for most people.
@molkom Like other people have said, it's not a massively long campaign, but every moment is wonderfully done. I spent 10 minutes listening to the music and appreciating the environment right after the intro, when you have a second to chill.
I'm a relatively accomplished and successful musician, and what they did on this game is spectacular. (not about me, but this is something worth appreciating)
Nobody seemed to agree or disagree with golf story, it's just the game that got ignored for some reason. It's one of my favorite unexpected surprises and just so delightful.
I wish nintendo would make a proper new mario golf and get the developer to do a retro style companion game. Mario tennis aces isn't terrible, I don't regret the purchase despite the online community being nearly dead, but they seem to have lost the magic touch on their sports games.
Really nice to see these changes, in particular the checkpoints and revised strength weakness chart. It was really frustrating than having to re-play the first section on really hard/long maps that you'd already 'figured out' just to get back to the part where you got your ass handed to you.
VR is totally not quite ready for prime time, and at the same time really really incredible when it 'works', often in ways you wouldn't consider. I bought a cheap windows MR headset on sale for my gaming PC, and still use it semi regularly.
My wife on the other hand plays for like an hour every day. Playing what you ask? VR pinball. Which is actually totally awesome. Being able to move your head around the table to line up your shots is a tiny but incredibly important thing that fixes many of the problems with video pinball.
I'm not saying VR pinball is the killer app that will make it mainstream, but there are still a lot of unique vr experiences that haven't been tapped, it just comes down to smoothing out the technology. Less cables, lighter headsets, and things like varifocal lenses/foveated rendering will be a game changer. It's not going away, but it also won't supplant regular gaming for a very long time.
It might be because it was primarily (maybe exclusively?) an arcade game, but why does nobody talk about crazy taxi anymore? They'd have to add some new game modes for consoles, but that game was awesome.
Hopefully the S stands for 'soundtrack'. I have it on PC, and it's a really nice game with pretty visuals and nice animations, but outside of the opening menu, all of the music is really horrible midi tracks that loop incessantly.
Midi tracks can sound good when done right, I mean some super Nintendo games sound great to this day, but these are offensive, with no love put into them. The worst part is that the entire soundtrack was recorded with a full orchestra, but the composer wanted to sell that separately as a music CD and refused to let them use it in the game.
There are some people working on a mod for the PC version that swaps the orchestra tracks for the canned ones. Until that happens, I'll continue playing with the music muted, it's that bad.
I personally hate every version of in home streaming I've tried. I might just be overly sensitive to input lag, just like I'm overly sensitive to non incandescent light bulbs or motion 'smoothing' on modern TVs. Some people just don't give a damn, but it's all I notice.
Streaming from my PC to TV, even with hard wired connections has never been good enough for me to enjoy it. Now I run a 40 foot video cable, plus a Bluetooth booster for the controller to play pc games in my living room.
Trying to stream to my switch, with its dubious wifi just sounds like an exercise in torture.
We've seen basically nothing of what it looks or plays like, my hopes aren't high, but I will say that on my PC VR setup the boxing games are some of the most intense workouts I've ever had.
The majority of the comments have completely misread this analyst's comments. They basically revised their insanely bullish, way outside of the mainstream positivity to being just hugely bullish. They're still predicting nintendo to way outperform general expectations, just not as much as they had initially thought. Opposite of a Pachter type.
I give Psyonix a half pass. They're by no means the most egregious offenders with lootboxes. Many players have treated the crate keys as a means to cast their vote in rewarding a developer for delivering a great product at an affordable price across all platforms.
On the flipside, they're only able to make it affordable for everyone because the crates have completely dwarfed any money they make from direct sales. Rocket League is such a perfect storm of 'easy to learn, hard to master', so the diverse crowd of people it attracts obviously includes a large share of youths who are extra susceptible to gambling triggers.
They get a half pass. They haven't been evil, but they've also been profiting massively off of preying on people's base instincts.
Picked it up last night, really fun game. It ramps up the difficulty smoothly forcing you to play smarter without ever getting frustrating. I'd give it a 9/10 (boosted for just feeling really fresh).
Well, they certainly nailed pixel art billowing cloth. Whole lot of... Billowing cloth in that trailer. Recettear+Zelda is obviously a great combo if done right, I just hope the UI and controls hold up. Definitely one to watch.
@audiobrainiac It's a fact that it would be a wonderful project, but how weird is it that your kids won't intrinsically understand how cool an arcade cabinet is? Granted, once they see the real thing, they'll get it.
I'm pretty flabbergasted by a 5 gig save, that's just poor optimization by any standard. As far as out of control file sizes in modern aaa games, I really don't know the motivation publishers have for pushing these massive file sizes, or how much it has to do with somehow attempting to curb piracy.
People often blame texture sizes, but as the pc game repack scene has shown, a shockingly large portion of many games is that they usually install multiple languages completely uncompressed. Even though there are plenty of lossless audio compression formats that would at most impact gameplay by less than a frame, many publishers insist on forcing users to install tens of gigs of raw audio data.
@gatorboi352 I honestly think the new paradigm of mid gen incremental upgrades is a disaster waiting to happen. A big draw of consoles over PC has always been their simplicity to use and set up, and games developed for a single, shared experience.
Once you start forcing developers to support multiple iterations of the same device for every title across multiple platforms, you start losing all of that. Pretty soon even more games will be unoptimized messes that either don't run properly or are dumbed down to work with 5 different flavors of the same console.
That's always been an issue with PC gaming. More raw power, but without developer focus on a single setup too many things squander that power.
If they patch the load times I'll definitely be picking it up to play with the lady, it seems like a nice little game. Now it's up to them to deliver a polished end product.
@Landlord I honestly think that the graphics come down to poor optimization. There's absolutely no reason for the long load times based on what the game does. Like they have needlessly over detailed character models, and rather than dropping the level of detail, they just turned off all of the effects and called it a day.
Small things like the completely unnecessary delay on inbound passes really drag down the polish of the game. Even so, it's a pretty fun time, and I don't regret getting it, I just wish they'd spent more time on the smaller details.
@Mylie All I can say is that I'm horrible at / not interested in most games that have even the remotest esport competitive mentality (except for splatoon), but there's almost no barrier to overcome before you start having fun, unlike most competitive shooters and fighters.
You play, you have fun, and maybe you eventually start trying to get better. Just because it's that fun. Based on psyonix's history, it should be affordably priced as well, theyre one of best developers out there at not trying to gouge their customers. Unless the switch version has massive performance issues which I just don't see happening, the game is as close to a must buy for pretty much everyone as I can imagine.
@Jimtaro They announced at e3 that it would support cross play with pc and Xbox. Sony prefers to have a closed environment, out of psyonix's hands. But yeah, the cross play will do tons to ensure the longevity of the game.
This game is a perfect fit for the switch, I've been playing it on pc with an Xbox controller. Super fun, and I now only suck a lot instead of completely suck. The only real bummer is the lack of analog shoulder triggers. Regulating your speed is a real thing in the game. Not a game breaker, and I'm sure it'll be possible to adjust your technique to do micro taps on the throttle, but it's still a bit of a bummer. Even so, I'll definitely be picking it up.
Anyone else not get a server outage? My lady has been playing MK8 for hours now, and it's only a few more hours until the end of 'maintenance' . I guess they were just warning of potential down time.
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Re: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Developer Seems Open To A Switch 2 Port
@Chlocean I know what you're saying, but nowadays the term JRPG really is independent of country of origin. It's a wonderful French take on the genre, but it's still a JRPG through and through (and I don't think the developers would disagree).
Re: Platinum Studio Head Doesn't Think Next-Gen Hardware Will Be As "Ground-Breaking" As The Switch
The most exciting aspect of the new consoles to me is that they'll finally have pretty beefy multi core CPUs in them.
Most AAA developers probably won't take full advantage of it, but it does open up a lot of potential for AI, physics and the like. Since everyone develops for consoles as the baseline, hopefully some mid size studios (like platinum) will be able to do interesting new things.
Re: The Retail Release Of The Wonderful 101: Remastered Has Been Delayed
@thesilverbrick Steam allows developers to generate and distribute as many keys as they want with no fee, they only charge commission on sales through their platform.
I don't know the specifics of Platinum's deal with Nintendo, but if it goes by industry standards they'd have to pay ‰30 of the retail price to give you a Switch eshop key.
Re: Feature: Firesprite Games On Bringing The Persistence, A First-Person Sci-Fi Roguelike, To Switch From PlayStation VR
@Daniel36 I feel like this conversation comes up every time 'rogue-like' is used. There is usually someone saying that the only rogue-likes feature perma-death, procedural generation, no progression between runs and are preferably turn based in a dungeon setting. Pretty restrictive if you ask me.
Hence the term 'rogue-light', which this game is. To me I define rogue-lights as games with permadeath, procedural generation and progression between runs. Anything else is fair game.
Re: Port Specialist Virtuos Ready To Help Bring Next-Gen PlayStation And Xbox Titles To Nintendo Switch
In terms of true 'next-gen' features that are actually exciting, the big hardware upgrades that matter are SSDs and powerful multu-core CPUs.
SSDs will obviously lead to faster load times, but will also allow assets to be streamed so much faster that they'll be able to do things that haven't been seen before with draw distance and texture pop in.
I don't know if developers will take advantage of the CPUs, but there's at least potential for seeing new things with AI and physics that weren't possible before. It's hard to overstate how much the garbage CPUs in last gen consoles crippled innovation.
Most AAA developers are actually super lazy when it comes to doing new things, so I'm not holding my breath on a wave of innovation, but 'better' graphics are the least exciting aspect of the hardware.
Re: Poll: Animal Crossing: New Horizons - What Would You Like To See Added In An Update?
I definitely agree that batch crafting should at least be an option, at least if you get a 'gold' crafting bench or whatever. Crafting from storage would also be great. It's too bad that nobody seems to care about changing island reps though, that's a huge oversight.
My wife started the game, but she very casual about her playtime, so now I have to juggle playing her to actually advance the island, and playing me to just play. Not fun.
Re: Poll: Has Your Family Bought A Second Switch To Play Animal Crossing: New Horizons 'Properly'?
@C-Threep That's my issue too. My wife started playing first, so now all progress is tied to her, but she's lazy. They really need to patch in at least transferring 'ownership' of the island.
Re: Updates For Animal Crossing: New Horizons May Be Postponed
My brother is an elementary school teacher in Kyoto. I skyped him a couple of days ago, and it was pretty eye opening how little regard people have for the disease there. Yes, they've been taking some measures, but the prevailing attitude seems to be that Japan's built in social distancing and habits will be enough to stop the spread, and that it really is just another flu.
At his school, every teacher gets their temperature checked at the start of the day. If it's 1 degree higher than normal, they are asked to voluntarily stay at home for 2 weeks, without pay. Hopefully everything works out OK in Japan, but they are not taking anywhere near the measures of most other first world countries, yet. I'm sure the Olympics are a large part of that, maybe things will chat when they are inevitably delayed.
Re: E3 2020 Concerns Grow As Los Angeles Declares State Of Emergency Over Coronavirus
To me, the coronavirus threat has two faces. First, the actual health threat to societies, which still remains to be determined, but I personally have no problem playing it safe.
Second is the public reaction when cases start popping up in particular regions. I live in Austin Texas, which is about to host SXSW, and there's no sign they're considering canceling it or stripping it down. I just bought $300 of non perishable groceries, not because I think it's the end of the world, but if a panic does hit, I don't want to be stuck dealing with the consequences. When hurricane Harvey hit Houston, you had to wait hours for gas on the off chance that someone would still have some. I'll use those groceries down the line either way, so what's the harm, since I actually have enough money to do that.
The severity of coronavirus (which is still a legitimate concern) goes hand in hand with taking simple preparation measures for possible reactions to 'your' town getting it. I work in service, if it does hit austin I'm screwed.
Re: Hideki Kamiya Explains Why The Wonderful 101 Needed To Be Remastered
I think people are confused about the names of the games in the series. It was 'The Wonderful 101', 'The Terrific 202', 'Thee 303' and finally the 'Formidable 404'.
Re: New Lawsuits Claim FIFA Is Built On "Illusionary And Addictive" Pay-To-Win Mechanics
@WOLF13 Your point about the market correcting itself if people just stop buying bad ports or taking part is flawed. These AAA gambling games have a massive built in base, but their revenue stream is based off of a small fraction of their users. Until you can convince the whales to stop spending money (which you never will), it won't go away on its own.
Re: New Lawsuits Claim FIFA Is Built On "Illusionary And Addictive" Pay-To-Win Mechanics
@Ventilator The whole point of the discussion is that these practices are completely unregulated and allowed to be as predatory as they want, without the stigma of gambling attached to it.
I know nothing about the plaintiff in the suit, who is irrelevant to the bigger picture, but the entire industry has been running a massive con job for years. FIFA just happens to be the target because they make the most money, but the whole system is broken and predatory.
Re: New Lawsuits Claim FIFA Is Built On "Illusionary And Addictive" Pay-To-Win Mechanics
Micro transactions are a bane on video games in general, and have degraded the user experience. 'Gacha'/loot box mechanics on the other hand are full on criminal enterprises, exploiting loop holes in gambling laws. The main defense of them is that you receive nothing of 'real' value, so it's not gambling.
Which makes it even worse. At least in casino gambling you have a chance to win something with real world value, and that actually costs them something when they pay you out. In FIFA (and plenty of other predatory games, Nintendo isn't exempt), there's no cost beyond initial development when people 'cash out'. They can give the reward away a million times and it still costs them the same money.
It's still gambling, the only difference is that you can't sell what you win. It's time to regulate it under standard rules. EA and everyone else should be under standard gambling regulations. Pay your taxes, warn people, and keep it out of the hands of kids.
PS, I personally love to gamble and don't want to see it outlawed, but proper protections are paramount.
Re: Nintendo Was "Fine" With Platinum Releasing The Wonderful 101 Remaster On Other Platforms
With the rumors of Sony loosening its death grip on some of their 2nd party exclusives (horizon zero dawn and the last of us), we might slowly be ushering in an age of limited exclusivity. I totally understand holding onto the evergreen 'system sellers', particularly first party IPs, but realistically, after a year or two, many of these properties offer limited value by remaining exclusive. I think a lot of it will have to do with how those games sell as test cases.
Nintendo has to weigh the benefit of keeping something like bayonetta 2 (as a random example) exclusive, against the very tidy profit they'd make by opening it to PC and Playstation.
Re: Nintendo Raises Annual Switch Sales Forecast After Stronger-Than-Expected Nine Months
The switch definitely isn't going to immediately fizzle out once the next generation of consoles launch, it's found its niche as the portable kinda console that is a great secondary to PC/Xbox/Playstation, but is just competent enough to satisfy people that don't want to buy those.
That said, I don't see how they don't launch a new one within 2 years. It's a great device that fills many people's needs, but it can't fall completely behind everything else out there.
Or maybe it can, merging their console and hand held products worked out amazingly. As long as they have the most user friendly, convenient hand held (with all of the 1st party gems) they're in a pretty good place.
As an aside, with the news that Sony is looking to break into the PC market and test the waters of releasing some of their exclusives on other platforms, it will be interesting to see how Nintendo responds. We're talking a hypothetical few years down the road, but if Sony starts making bank by releasing dead catalog titles, is it really a stretch to think that Nintendo might try releasing older games onto other platforms?
Re: Talking Point: How Often Do You Make The 'Switch Sacrifice'?
Witcher 3 is definitely the one game that I can only appreciate on PC, and not just because of better graphics/framerate, though that's a factor. The biggest reason is all of the mods, especially the QOL ones. Infinite inventory weight, auto-loot herbs, auto apply oils and fast travel from anywhere are things I couldn't live without now that I've used them.
There's already so much to do in the game, so anything to streamline the more tedious aspects is huge.
Re: Review: Trover Saves The Universe - You Don't Have To Love Rick & Morty, But It Helps
I played it on PC in VR when it came out, definitely fun, definitely VR centric. That said, a big portion of the enjoyment comes from whether or not you enjoy the humor.
It was surprising how fun the gameplay was, but I'm not sure how well it would translate. If you're a Rick and Morty fan it's definitely worth your time, even without VR, since it sounds like the implementation didn't ruin it. But dang, good VR is really fun, and this was good VR.
Re: Rocket League Dev Reduces Item Shop And Blueprint Pricing, As It "Did Not Meet Community Expectations"
I enjoy rocket league now and again, but they've always been predatory with their transactions. As others have said, this is 100% charging 'insane' prices at first, so that when they revert to merely 'outrageous' prices it seems like a good deal.
Nasty, nasty behavior. But still a fun game.
Re: UK Charts: Pokémon Sword And Shield Loses Top Spot, But Nintendo Switch Dominates Top Ten
@JayJ Call of duty and fifa are those crazy evergreen franchises that will seemingly never lose sales, despite [removed] the majority of people that pay attention.
To me, the moment those franchises stop being automatic top sellers is the moment AAA companies actually start trying to put out decent games again.
Re: There's No Need To Be Afraid Of This Day One Update For Luigi's Mansion 3
@Kalmaro I mean I specifically bought this game physical because I foresee it being something that I won't be playing long term, and I'll want to lend out to friends. That plus having the option to resell it are the main factors for me.
Some people want physical game collections, totally valid too. Your entire argument seems to rest on the fact that people only buy physical to avoid having to take up space on an SD card. I'm sure those people exist, but they're definitely not the majority (plus the fact that the patch will presumably be far smaller than the actual game).
Re: Nintendo's Golf Joins The Arcade Archives Series On Switch eShop
@rdm22 Heh, exactly. I can't look at nes golf without thinking of galf now. I can't wait for the next thing from the golf story devs, one of the great, under appreciated indie gems of this generation.
Re: Video: 11 Facts About Children Of Morta, A Roguelite Action RPG Slashing To Switch Soon
@Ludovsky It's much more story driven than other rogue lites. Almost every time you finish a run or unlock a new area, there are little narrated story vignettes. Also, as you progress you unlock multiple main characters who all play very differently.
Finally, I played solo, but from all reports it's even better as a coop experience, if that's your thing.
Re: Dragon Quest XI S Producer Discusses The Difficulties Of Using Both 2D And 3D Design
I'm curious what soundtrack they're using for this version. In the original, the composer recorded everything with a full symphony orchestra, but provided really bad midi tracks for the actual game (outside of the opening credits), so he could sell soundtrack CDs with the 'definitive' version.
I played it on PC, and fortunately someone made a mod to replace the awful midi with the proper recordings, but it was a super sleazy move. The dude can write good music, but to tell the people who paid you for the music that they only have the rights to the intentionally crappy version is just terrible behavior. And once I played with the intended music, the game was so much more enjoyable.
Re: The File Size Of Luigi's Mansion 3 Isn't As Scary As You Probably Thought
@almosteveryone The file size stuff isn't quite as simple as certain people are saying. Nintendo are absolute masters at optimizing their games, there's no questioning that, but the majority of file size bloat in modern games comes down to two things:
Textures are obviously the biggest. Cartoony style games generally can utilize far smaller textures than 'ultra realistic' ones. But it's not as simple as that. Many modern developers just don't bother allocating the resources to properly optimizing textures.
Ie., it helps to use a massive texture on things that will be viewed close up (regardless of user resolution), but often they don't think it's worth the man hours to separate the textures that actually need to be big and the ones that don't. Unless they are running into vram issues, they don't care about file size.
The second huge file size bugaboo that isn't usually talked about is that many games include uncompressed audio in as many as 9 languages. It's another example of developers not caring one whit about filesize, and only for squeezing every frame of performance they can from consoles. Realistically, there are audio compression formats that use almost no cpu overhead and are lossless, but because the current generation of consoles have such backwater processors, developers don't want to sacrifice any of it.
When it's time to allocate resources to optimize a game before it heads out the door, the lowest priority is file size. (except for nintendo, which is yet another reason they're unique and special in the industry)
Re: Official Sword And Shield Website Teases New Pokémon With Glitching Image
@Cosats 257.9 pounds is roughly 18 and a half stone if you need something closer to home.
Re: Talking Point: Why Nintendo Is Right To Be Cautious With Mobile
Nintendo isn't the only gaming company looking at mobile revenue and wondering why they're not getting enough of the action, but the key thing that most of these companies are missing is that mobile revenue has very little to do with actually making a good game. It's all about addictive mechanics and monetization, and is dominated by the aggressive slum lords who will do anything to make more money.
It's a horrible, dirty business that has nothing in common with actual gaming other than the word 'game'. There are slow signs that this crap will actually be regulated and reeled in, but for now, the more nasty and predatory you are, the more money you make.
I hereby propose that the term 'mobile gaming' be changed to 'mobile buggery'.
Re: Video: Can Team Sonic Racing On Switch Keep Pace With The PlayStation 4 Version?
For all of the people saying they can't tell the difference between 60 and 30... More power to you, but it's absolutely a big deal, particularly in fast paced games. Of course, a huge caveat is to say that a steady, locked 30 will feel much better than a 60 full of stuttering. This comes from me having an overpowered PC that has spoiled me somewhat. That said, I have no problem fully enjoying things on my switch that don't always perform as well, but good frame pacing is critical (as opposed to max frame rate).
Once again, no antagonism intended, but watching a side by side video on a phone or even a TV is far different than playing something. So I'm still waiting for a proper switch review to see if you feel it during gameplay.
Re: Fortnite Developers Discuss The Constant Crunch Required To Maintain The Game
Major studio game development is notorious for being the highest stress, lowest paying environment for programmers and developers. They can get away with it, because so many people want work in the industry, and are willing to put up with much more than someone say, making banking software. The problem is that if you speak up or stand up for yourself you are targeted as a problem and will have a hard time finding work anywhere else. It doesn't matter how talented you are (unless you're fortunate enough to have made a name for yourself), because there are 50 other talented people waiting in line behind you.
Some studios are more draconian than others, but they all do it to a degree. Some of the best AA studios have come from industry veterans that are sick of that treatment and want to create an alternative, but unfortunately it's obviously really hard to find the money for that, so there are only a handful of successful ones.
The talk of 'if you don't like it, just quit!' is nonsense. Unfortunately, if you're passionate about making games, you either have to suck up insane, unreasonable demands on your sanity, or be willing to not make any money for a long time, which just isn't realistic for most people.
Re: Review: Katana ZERO - A Razor-Sharp Action Platformer That Everyone Should Play
@molkom Like other people have said, it's not a massively long campaign, but every moment is wonderfully done. I spent 10 minutes listening to the music and appreciating the environment right after the intro, when you have a second to chill.
I'm a relatively accomplished and successful musician, and what they did on this game is spectacular. (not about me, but this is something worth appreciating)
Re: Feature: The 50 Best Nintendo Switch Games So Far
Nobody seemed to agree or disagree with golf story, it's just the game that got ignored for some reason. It's one of my favorite unexpected surprises and just so delightful.
I wish nintendo would make a proper new mario golf and get the developer to do a retro style companion game. Mario tennis aces isn't terrible, I don't regret the purchase despite the online community being nearly dead, but they seem to have lost the magic touch on their sports games.
Re: Wargroove Gets Huge Version 1.2.0 Patch On Switch Today
Really nice to see these changes, in particular the checkpoints and revised strength weakness chart. It was really frustrating than having to re-play the first section on really hard/long maps that you'd already 'figured out' just to get back to the part where you got your ass handed to you.
Re: Video: Sakurai Declined Offer To Work On Oculus VR Games Because Of The Small Audience
VR is totally not quite ready for prime time, and at the same time really really incredible when it 'works', often in ways you wouldn't consider. I bought a cheap windows MR headset on sale for my gaming PC, and still use it semi regularly.
My wife on the other hand plays for like an hour every day. Playing what you ask? VR pinball. Which is actually totally awesome. Being able to move your head around the table to line up your shots is a tiny but incredibly important thing that fixes many of the problems with video pinball.
I'm not saying VR pinball is the killer app that will make it mainstream, but there are still a lot of unique vr experiences that haven't been tapped, it just comes down to smoothing out the technology. Less cables, lighter headsets, and things like varifocal lenses/foveated rendering will be a game changer. It's not going away, but it also won't supplant regular gaming for a very long time.
Re: Sega Wants Simultaneous Video Game Releases Worldwide
It might be because it was primarily (maybe exclusively?) an arcade game, but why does nobody talk about crazy taxi anymore? They'd have to add some new game modes for consoles, but that game was awesome.
Re: The Switch Version Of Dragon Quest XI Has A Special Name
Hopefully the S stands for 'soundtrack'. I have it on PC, and it's a really nice game with pretty visuals and nice animations, but outside of the opening menu, all of the music is really horrible midi tracks that loop incessantly.
Midi tracks can sound good when done right, I mean some super Nintendo games sound great to this day, but these are offensive, with no love put into them. The worst part is that the entire soundtrack was recorded with a full orchestra, but the composer wanted to sell that separately as a music CD and refused to let them use it in the game.
There are some people working on a mod for the PC version that swaps the orchestra tracks for the canned ones. Until that happens, I'll continue playing with the music muted, it's that bad.
Re: Rainway App Is Apparently Still In Development For Nintendo Switch
I personally hate every version of in home streaming I've tried. I might just be overly sensitive to input lag, just like I'm overly sensitive to non incandescent light bulbs or motion 'smoothing' on modern TVs. Some people just don't give a damn, but it's all I notice.
Streaming from my PC to TV, even with hard wired connections has never been good enough for me to enjoy it. Now I run a 40 foot video cable, plus a Bluetooth booster for the controller to play pc games in my living room.
Trying to stream to my switch, with its dubious wifi just sounds like an exercise in torture.
Re: Nintendo Published Game Fitness Boxing Appears On Australian Classification Board
We've seen basically nothing of what it looks or plays like, my hopes aren't high, but I will say that on my PC VR setup the boxing games are some of the most intense workouts I've ever had.
Re: Wall Street Analyst Warns Of Slowing Nintendo Switch Sales
The majority of the comments have completely misread this analyst's comments. They basically revised their insanely bullish, way outside of the mainstream positivity to being just hugely bullish. They're still predicting nintendo to way outperform general expectations, just not as much as they had initially thought. Opposite of a Pachter type.
Re: Rocket League Developer Psyonix Reveals Item Drop Rates In Game's Crate System
I give Psyonix a half pass. They're by no means the most egregious offenders with lootboxes. Many players have treated the crate keys as a means to cast their vote in rewarding a developer for delivering a great product at an affordable price across all platforms.
On the flipside, they're only able to make it affordable for everyone because the crates have completely dwarfed any money they make from direct sales. Rocket League is such a perfect storm of 'easy to learn, hard to master', so the diverse crowd of people it attracts obviously includes a large share of youths who are extra susceptible to gambling triggers.
They get a half pass. They haven't been evil, but they've also been profiting massively off of preying on people's base instincts.
Re: Review: Battle Chef Brigade (Switch eShop)
Picked it up last night, really fun game. It ramps up the difficulty smoothly forcing you to play smarter without ever getting frustrating. I'd give it a 9/10 (boosted for just feeling really fresh).
Re: Action RPG Moonlighter Has Been Confirmed for Switch
Well, they certainly nailed pixel art billowing cloth. Whole lot of... Billowing cloth in that trailer. Recettear+Zelda is obviously a great combo if done right, I just hope the UI and controls hold up. Definitely one to watch.
Re: Video: How to Make Your Own Awesome Nintendo Switch Arcade Cabinet
@audiobrainiac It's a fact that it would be a wonderful project, but how weird is it that your kids won't intrinsically understand how cool an arcade cabinet is? Granted, once they see the real thing, they'll get it.
Re: Super Mario Odyssey's File Size is Only a Little Bigger Than an NBA 2K18 Save File
I'm pretty flabbergasted by a 5 gig save, that's just poor optimization by any standard. As far as out of control file sizes in modern aaa games, I really don't know the motivation publishers have for pushing these massive file sizes, or how much it has to do with somehow attempting to curb piracy.
People often blame texture sizes, but as the pc game repack scene has shown, a shockingly large portion of many games is that they usually install multiple languages completely uncompressed. Even though there are plenty of lossless audio compression formats that would at most impact gameplay by less than a frame, many publishers insist on forcing users to install tens of gigs of raw audio data.
Re: EA Talks Up the Positives of FIFA 18 on Switch Not Using the Frostbite Engine
@gatorboi352 I honestly think the new paradigm of mid gen incremental upgrades is a disaster waiting to happen. A big draw of consoles over PC has always been their simplicity to use and set up, and games developed for a single, shared experience.
Once you start forcing developers to support multiple iterations of the same device for every title across multiple platforms, you start losing all of that. Pretty soon even more games will be unoptimized messes that either don't run properly or are dumbed down to work with 5 different flavors of the same console.
That's always been an issue with PC gaming. More raw power, but without developer focus on a single setup too many things squander that power.
Re: Video: Overcooked: Special Edition on Switch Could Do With a Little More Time in the Oven
If they patch the load times I'll definitely be picking it up to play with the lady, it seems like a nice little game. Now it's up to them to deliver a polished end product.
Re: Splatoon 2 is Adding "Dualie Squelchers" in Weekend Update
@shani Tenta missiles is useful in the right mode, it's great in tower control for instance
Re: More Free Content Is on the Way to NBA Playgrounds
@Landlord I honestly think that the graphics come down to poor optimization. There's absolutely no reason for the long load times based on what the game does. Like they have needlessly over detailed character models, and rather than dropping the level of detail, they just turned off all of the effects and called it a day.
Small things like the completely unnecessary delay on inbound passes really drag down the polish of the game. Even so, it's a pretty fun time, and I don't regret getting it, I just wish they'd spent more time on the smaller details.
Re: Psyonix Studio Lead Discusses the Porting Process of Rocket League
@Mylie All I can say is that I'm horrible at / not interested in most games that have even the remotest esport competitive mentality (except for splatoon), but there's almost no barrier to overcome before you start having fun, unlike most competitive shooters and fighters.
You play, you have fun, and maybe you eventually start trying to get better. Just because it's that fun. Based on psyonix's history, it should be affordably priced as well, theyre one of best developers out there at not trying to gouge their customers. Unless the switch version has massive performance issues which I just don't see happening, the game is as close to a must buy for pretty much everyone as I can imagine.
Re: Psyonix Studio Lead Discusses the Porting Process of Rocket League
@Jimtaro They announced at e3 that it would support cross play with pc and Xbox. Sony prefers to have a closed environment, out of psyonix's hands. But yeah, the cross play will do tons to ensure the longevity of the game.
Re: Psyonix Studio Lead Discusses the Porting Process of Rocket League
This game is a perfect fit for the switch, I've been playing it on pc with an Xbox controller. Super fun, and I now only suck a lot instead of completely suck. The only real bummer is the lack of analog shoulder triggers. Regulating your speed is a real thing in the game. Not a game breaker, and I'm sure it'll be possible to adjust your technique to do micro taps on the throttle, but it's still a bit of a bummer. Even so, I'll definitely be picking it up.
Re: Nintendo Kicks Off Nine Hours of Online Maintenance for Switch Ahead of E3
Anyone else not get a server outage? My lady has been playing MK8 for hours now, and it's only a few more hours until the end of 'maintenance' . I guess they were just warning of potential down time.