r/Games • u/AutoModerator • Nov 22 '24
Discussion Daily /r/Games Discussion - Free Talk Friday - November 22, 2024
It's F-F-Friday, the best day of the week where you can finally get home and play video games all weekend and also, talk about anything not-games in this thread.
Just keep our rules in mind, especially Rule 2. This post is set to sort comments by 'new' on default.
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WEEKLY: What Have You Been Playing?
MONDAY: Thematic Monday
WEDNESDAY: Suggest Me A Game
FRIDAY: Free Talk Friday
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u/KawaiiSocks Nov 22 '24
The regional pricing changes on Steam has been messing with Kazakhstan for the last year+ and it is getting to a point where I fully expect piracy to make a massive comeback in the region. We jumped from roughly 12000-14000 tenge for a big release (BG3, Cyberpunk etc.) to now 33000 for Avowed and 26000 for Star Wars: Outlaws, for example. That is just way too much for a regular consumer.
I am a big Eora/Pillars Universe fan, but I am definitely not getting Avowed for 33000, that is just asinine. And we are no alone in this — Poles and Ukrainians, for some unknown reason, pay more than the US for the game. Something is really, really, really wrong with Microsoft publishing, and they are not the only ones with this issue.
I don't know whether it is possible to change that by screaming into the void of Reddit, but maybe someone sees it re-evaluates this trend that, in my personal belief, doesn't really result in more money for the publishers, as most people I know in the KZ/UA (don't know a whole lot of Poles) are now back to pirating big games, even though that wasn't the default for the last decade+.
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u/HammeredWharf Nov 22 '24
I guess it's mostly a way to combat key resellers. So they lose some sales in the affected countries, but their games don't get sold on third party reseller sites for half off at launch. Still sucks for the people who would buy those games if they were priced reasonably, of course.
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u/ArchDucky Nov 22 '24
I think im addicted to killing the robots in Horizon Zero Dawn. I have touched the main quest since the world opened up and now im Level 45 and the main quest is like level 18 or some shit. Its a real problem.
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u/x_TDeck_x Nov 22 '24
Why does it feel like everything is taking longer to do recently? TV and games especially.
Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim: 9 years, Fallout 3 and 4: 7 years, Breaking Bad: whole story 5 years, Lord of the Rings trilogy: 2.5 years, Harry Potter 8 movie series: 10 years
Nowadays
Skyrim to ES6: 13+ years, Fallout 4 to 5: 11+ years, Severance 1 to 2: 3 years, Wheel of time 1 to 2: 2 years, House of Dragons 1 to 2: 2 years.
Anime series especially are insane with things like Re Zero season 1 to 2 taking 5 years then season 2 to 3 taking 3 more. Meanwhile Bleach's original run released 16 seasons of 20 episodes each in 7 years
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u/PositiveDuck Nov 22 '24
It's insane to think the span of time between Skyrim and TES6 will be similar to the span of time between TES1 and Skyrim.
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u/aestheticbridges Nov 22 '24
For games, we’ve hit a wall where the technology is no longer the limit. Just manpower and logistics. scope increases workload exponentially in software, and the animation/art is also a massive barrier.
The added time it takes to complete projects, the more risky/expensive they become.
I think in general, also, we just have a lot of competition for consumer time. Something either needs to be an event, or otherwise it’s competing against endless user generated content, indies, or shovelware or social media.
Also, crucially, the business model has changed for TV. It doesn’t depend on ad dollars anymore, so there’s no reason to flood the market for airtime. Shows used to have 20+ episodes a season, but they also had a ton of filler, small scope and factory like production values. And that stuff just can’t really compete with social media/user generated content.
Like my nieces and nephews don’t really have the patience for movies anymore, and they dont really play games outside of fortnite/roblox either.
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u/GuudeSpelur Nov 22 '24 edited Nov 22 '24
AAA games are taking longer because studios are larger and developers are more specialized. It takes longer to manage & mesh together the work of a few hundred developers who are all highly specialized vs. fifty guys who have a lot more overlapping skills crammed into one floor of an office.
Anime takes longer because they've now reeled back working conditions from "child coal miners" to "sweatshop workers." Edit: sorry, that was mostly a joke. The real reason is that it's very difficult for anime to turn a profit - the actual broadcast is basically worthless, it's all promotion for the manga & merch. Unless it's a guaranteed mega-hit like Dragon Ball or One Piece where they can monopolize a studio for 20 years, they usually have to wait and see how the revenue shakes out before approving another season. In the meantime the studio will pick up other projects which delays the follow-up seasons even further.
Not as familiar with movie and TV production but I think part of it is because streaming has blurred the lines between movie and TV acting rosters & so the big name stars have busier schedules that take longer to work around.
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u/Izzy248 Nov 23 '24
I noticed this a couple years back too.
Every time I look at the timeline of games that came out years ago compared to know its quite wild. It feels like the more advanced technology got, the longer it took to get things done, rather than making it easier.
As a kid, I got games only during special occasions so I never really took notice, but when I looked at the timeline of release for games I loved like Jak and Daxter or Tomb Raider. Its surprising how many of those came out back to back year after year and were good quality. You could say the games were more simplistic than the games of now, but considering what they were working with, and how many work arounds they had to do, that doesnt mean they were any easier.
I think a lot of it has to do with people like features in games more than games itself now. Its the first thing I always see be talked about games, and a bulk of the conversation a lot of the times. People talk about the graphics, accessibility, and all these other pack in featuers, rather than the game itself. When you cram that much stuff into a game, it takes so much more time to make. Plus, they are adding so many more layers onto games now that games are being held together even more with paperclips and prayers.
A lot of games nowadays dont look too much better than games that came out 10 years ago, with those games performing arguably better, Back then you just made Arkham City, and you made it look good. Now I think they are relying too much on stuff on DLSS and AI Upscaling to give themselves that same level of quality. Its hurting the optimization of the game, increasing the length of time to make, increasing the storage size, and for not even much better results. You get the job done quicker when it comes to visuals...but then you spend extra time patching it up, rather than just baking it in, and making it look good from the start.
Idk...I just feel like the more advanced tech got to make things "easier", in actuality it just added more obstacles in other places, and made things take longer as a consequence.
As a side note...I think theres too much bureaucracy in game development now too. Devs have the meta human creator and mocap to help speed up the creation of characters and their animations, yet it still takes months for them to finalize anything. Yet some modder in their spare time will get the same thing done by themselves in weeks or days as a hobby.
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u/Izzy248 Nov 23 '24
Im not a big frames per second guy, so I was wondering if someone could provide some context. I was watching Force Gamings impression video of Avowed, and one quirk he said he noticed was that the game performed surprisingly well, especially in FPS, but he noticed dips when it would go from 120 to 90, and said it was a bit of a problem. He didnt show that footage, but I thought it was a weird quirk.
In my mind, that still sounds great. He said the game didnt go down to 60, or anything below that. It stayed high the entire time in the 120fps range, but would occasionally dip down into the 90s which was a problem. Is that bad? I mean, I guess I get that it can be noticeable when you are playing and and you drop about 30 frames, and Ive noticed when games go from 60 to 30, but Ive never played a game at 120 so I wouldnt know how bad going down to 90 is. Being at 90 still sounds pretty good to me.
1
u/DemonLordDiablos Nov 23 '24
Depends on the person. For me the more frames I have the less it matters.
Like you said, dropping frames when it's 30 or 60 looks bad. But when it's 120? 160? I can't say I care too much.
120-90 is a pretty substantial dip though, losing out on 1/4 of the frames.
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u/Blenderhead36 Nov 23 '24
There's two things at play here.
The first is that, the higher the frame rate, the more responsive the game is. The time it takes to render a frame is how long it takes the game to acknowledge your input and relay the result to you. At 30 FPS, that's 0.033 seconds. At 60, it's 0.017, at 90, it's 0.011, and at 120, it's 0.008. This is why a lot of esports (especially Counterstrike) are played low rez, low settings, highest FPS the player's monitor can handle; those tiny gains are perceptible, and let the player process and react faster. The general rule of thumb is that every 100% increase creates a noticeable difference (30 to 60, 60 to 120, etcetera). Even for a single player game, that responsiveness is something you can feel.
The other issue is consistency. The problem isn't that 90 FPS isn't good enough, it's that the fluctuation between 90 and 120 makes you notice a frame rate that you would normally think is great. In the example given, the reviewer would likely have had a better time by capping the FPS at 90, eliminating the fluctuation.
TL;DR: It's not the number, it's the inconsistency that's the problem.
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u/Izzy248 Nov 23 '24
That makes sense. I have friends who participate in the fighting esports, and they are very good. They will study the frames of moves to time their combos, reactions, etc. If you are counting those frames, know them by heart, and all that stuff becomes muscle memory, I could see why it would be an issue when you press a button, and the reaction time is off from what it would normally be.
I was thinking in terms of what Im visually seeing, but yeah, if you are playing and the reactions feel more delayed than what you are being accustomed to, then that makes sense. Thanks for the input.
1
u/EsperGri Nov 22 '24
More companies should make their video game soundtracks available for purchase on Steam, other video game stores, and places to buy digital music.
I was hoping to get the soundtracks for some of Atlus' games, but they seem to only be available physically.
On that note, I wish the remakes of Persona 1 and Persona 2 (both) were available on modern platforms.
2
u/ConceptsShining Nov 22 '24
I've also felt companies should upload their game OSTs to YouTube themselves. People are gonna listen to them on there anyway, so why not do it yourself and take some ad revenue? The Sonic series seems to do that now.
2
u/EsperGri Nov 22 '24
I think I've seen some of them uploaded on YouTube.
"Master of Tartarus": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YfiLqVJ3-c
I'm not sure if they're official or not though.
2
u/ConceptsShining Nov 22 '24
Yeah, I've noticed more songs (both real-world and video game) are getting uploaded to YouTube in this strange, auto-generated way lately. Seems more companies are now doing that and it's just easier to do it this way than to make individual uploads with some more style like Sonic.
2
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u/Izzy248 Nov 23 '24
A question for anyone playing Sparking Zero on Steam Deck, when they are playing solo, or basically any other mode than online multiplayer, are they noticing any performance issues? I heard something about "slow down", but Im not sure if thats a rare occurrence, or something that only affects the multiplayer.
1
u/Heavy-Wings Nov 23 '24
I really struggle when aiming guns on the Steam Deck, no matter the game. Yet when I go to PC with controller I have no issue. I noticed this with Death Stranding and Hitman WoA, the latter of which is really screwing me up because I keep dying in freelancer!
I'm at the point where I'm just gonna do freelancer on PC because there's no way I'll be able to win shootouts if I get caught on Steam Deck.
Speaking of, Freelancer is so damn good. It's actually so much harder to take out random NPCs as opposed to the targets in the story missions. Normally the targets are heavily guarded but in secluded areas and it's not too hard to catch them alone. But a random NPC in a crowd? Good luck doing that without getting caught!
But there's still ways of luring them, catching them alone that make silent kills possible. I've had to become very comfortable with actually sneaking around trespassing in 47's signature suit, which is something I'd never do normally.
It's definitely not a mode I'd recommend unless you fully know the general layouts of each map in the game, because you can really be left in some bad situations otherwise. Not too big on Marrakesh and Colorado!
1
u/Izzy248 Nov 23 '24
I never really took notice, or cared enough to notice until someone pointed it out, but when Virtua Fighter 5 REVO was announced and someone said when are we just going to get a new one I was like, "what do you mean? This is new". Then I realized...hold on...Ive been hearing the same voice say Virtua Fighter 5 for the past decade, and thats what they meant lol.
I think Sega has taken the crown when it comes to staying stuck on a single entry for the longest time with continuous updated expansions. Every fighting game tends to do it; BlazBlue had Continuum Shift-Continuum Shift II-Continuum Shift Extend, Chrono Phantasma-Chrono Phantasma Extend, etc. And I always felt like Capcom took the cake when it comes to their multi versions with: SF2-SF2: Champion-SF2: Turbo-Super SF 2-Super SF2 Turbo, all the Alpha version, all the SF3 versions, all the SF4 version, and all the SF5 versions.
But man...Virtua Fighter 5 has been around since 2006 and they are still stuck on it. I wonder why they keep releasing updated expansions and havent moved on to Virtua Fighter 6 yet.
1
u/Blenderhead36 Nov 23 '24
I feel like there was a wave of indie games trying to be, "The Dark Souls of [Genre]," that missed some pretty important things about Dark Souls. Namely, what failure represents in those games.
If you die in Dark Souls, you're set back ten minutes, tops. Barring some of the nastier boss runbacks in older games, that's about it. You'd lose the souls you were carrying, sometimes forever, but you were never reduced to a state beneath when you died. I've been playing a lot of indies that pride themselves on being difficult, clearly patterned after Dark Souls, but lose sight of the magnitude of what a failure represents.
The two that come most to mind are The Last Spell and They Are Billions a turn-based and RTS game of roughly equivalent mechanics: build up the city during the quiet cycle (and in They Are Billions' case, expand it), then defend it during the loud cycle. Both games use a single autosave with no means to manually save or load. And it sucks. It's very common to reach a mission where there's an inflection point 45 to 60 minutes into the mission, and if you fail, you start over from the beginning. That's not Dark Souls. Dark Souls didn't make you start over at the start of the level if the boss killed you (Demon's Souls did, and all the games that followed abandoned that plan).
I find myself wishing that more of these games prioritized being fun over being difficult. Adding an Iron Man mode is great for people who want it! But I'm currently on attempt 6 of the both the maps I have available in The Last Spell and am considering uninstalling rather than seeing if the seventh time is the charm.
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4
u/like-the-island Nov 22 '24
GOG Code for A Plague Tale: Innocence - GW8M1D059CC1FE2817