Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mephisto]

It does seem a little strange that consumers are growing to accept that an incomplete game on release is an acceptable state of affairs.

I wouldn't say accepting. Firaxis has a track record for making pretty good games so it's marginally more acceptable in my opinion. I usually wait until there's a discount on the inevitable complete collection that renders it at most the price of the game at launch anyway.

[BigD145]

It does seem a little strange that consumers are growing to accept that an incomplete game on release is an acceptable state of affairs.

It isn't that big of a stretch. Games have come out needing patches for awhile. Then kickstarter gave people a taste after demos became rare. It was gradual. Sudden shifts are less acceptable unless there's a monopoly.

[puke]

shoot; day0 patches, day0 DLC, it's been happening for over a decade now, and it has nothing to do with the size of the development studio or the publishers behind the game.  Early Access and Kickstarter has just codified what was the big boys were already doing.

And lets be totally honest here:  It would have been happening in the 1980s If companies didnt have to get floppy disks to your local game store.  In the 70's if they had a way of remotely patching the audio cassette you hooked up to your 8 bit supercomputer.  It is only the distribution mechanism that was preventing it from happening previously.

But hey, that's fine.  I'd rather see lots of rapid innovation and fresh ideas and tiny indie games that don't work quite right but continue to get patched if they catch on.  The alternative is that you only ever see games that have a huge development and QA budget, which means someone is only going to fund it if it is a sure bet, which means a return to the doldrums of safe, derivative, boring games from the 90's and early 2000's.

Sure, there is a lot of slop out there.  But there is also lots of great stuff that we wouldn't get to play with otherwise.  It really seems to be a golden age for this kind of stuff.

[Sappho]

shoot; day0 patches, day0 DLC, it's been happening for over a decade now, and it has nothing to do with the size of the development studio or the publishers behind the game.  Early Access and Kickstarter has just codified what was the big boys were already doing.

And lets be totally honest here:  It would have been happening in the 1980s If companies didnt have to get floppy disks to your local game store.  In the 70's if they had a way of remotely patching the audio cassette you hooked up to your 8 bit supercomputer.  It is only the distribution mechanism that was preventing it from happening previously.

But hey, that's fine.  I'd rather see lots of rapid innovation and fresh ideas and tiny indie games that don't work quite right but continue to get patched if they catch on.  The alternative is that you only ever see games that have a huge development and QA budget, which means someone is only going to fund it if it is a sure bet, which means a return to the doldrums of safe, derivative, boring games from the 90's and early 2000's.

Sure, there is a lot of slop out there.  But there is also lots of great stuff that we wouldn't get to play with otherwise.  It really seems to be a golden age for this kind of stuff.

I concur!

[Mephansteras]

So some time ago I got Civ V (and didn't play it much) but none of the DLC's, and ever since, I never bought said DLC's because I was annoyed at the idea of paying as much for the Complete Edition (or whatever) as I would if I'd never bought the base game. Now that steam bundles discount for items you already own, I'm considering grabbing the DLC for $10. Is it well worth it in singleplayer/do many people still play multiplayer?

To answer the Civ V single player question, I'd say yes. Civ V is a good bit more interesting with the expansions, and I like the various civs and whatnot that got added as DLC.

[Shadowlord]

The alternative is that you only ever see games that have a huge development and QA budget, which means someone is only going to fund it if it is a sure bet, which means a return to the doldrums of safe, derivative, boring games from the 90's and early 2000's.

1. Games were a lot less costly in the 80s than they are now, owing to the simpler hardware and capabilities. There were games with huge plots but simple graphics - the Ultima series until 6 for example, but 6 and 7 were even more advanced simulation-wise and still improved massively in graphics as well.
2. Safe, derivative, boring games like Deus Ex and System Shock 2? Master of Magic?

On the subject of Civ 5, I own it and ask the expansions but never play it - it seems boring and the mp is a shitshow, for technical reasons. I've been spoiled by dominions 4, however.

[TD1]

So some time ago I got Civ V (and didn't play it much) but none of the DLC's, and ever since, I never bought said DLC's because I was annoyed at the idea of paying as much for the Complete Edition (or whatever) as I would if I'd never bought the base game. Now that steam bundles discount for items you already own, I'm considering grabbing the DLC for $10. Is it well worth it in singleplayer/do many people still play multiplayer?

To answer the Civ V single player question, I'd say yes. Civ V is a good bit more interesting with the expansions, and I like the various civs and whatnot that got added as DLC.

Definitely get the expansions - civs are added, but there are also other things like faith and better trading added.

[IWishIWereSarah]

About Civ 5 : The extensions bring a lot to the game. They make the single player game go from "meh" to "nice", and I doubt you'll find many players to play multi without them.
About the civ adding DLCs, I think it's good to get them for the mods that they unlock (they bring additional features that are used and mandatory for many balance mods).

If you like games like civ, the compelte Edition, and some balance mods can make it a really great game.

[IronyOwl]

It does seem a little strange that consumers are growing to accept that an incomplete game on release is an acceptable state of affairs.

It isn't that big of a stretch. Games have come out needing patches for awhile. Then kickstarter gave people a taste after demos became rare. It was gradual. Sudden shifts are less acceptable unless there's a monopoly.

And lets be totally honest here:  It would have been happening in the 1980s If companies didnt have to get floppy disks to your local game store.  In the 70's if they had a way of remotely patching the audio cassette you hooked up to your 8 bit supercomputer.  It is only the distribution mechanism that was preventing it from happening previously.

While I think they're more forgiving of releasing broken crap D1 knowing it can be fixed D2, the basic idea of releasing half a game or an unbalanced mess or whatever is old as dirt.

I mean, look at Master of Magic. Ancient revered classic no other game has ever quite managed to match etc etc, and half the spells don't work, or they do the opposite of what they're supposed to, or they're over- or under-powered as all hell, and so on. If patching had been available at the time, they probably would have done so.

X-Com, same deal: We've got everything from difficulty setting not actually doing anything to outrageous maintenance costs for demolished stuctures to the main questline breaking if you research things in the wrong order. As a bonus, its sequel was a soulless reskinned incremental cash grab before those were cool either.

And those are the good ones, the ones so legendarily awesome people still talk and complain about how they don't have "proper" sequels or were in some mythical now-extinct ultraclass of "good" games. There's whole fields of peers that were probably just as buggy and rushed, but not awesome enough for anybody to still remember or care.

[Shadowlord]

Master of Magic was patched - the final official version was 1.31, I think. There were still plenty of bugs and some literally game-breaking spells in that version, though.

Edit: Strangely, both Master of Magic and Master of Orion 2's last official patch was numbered 1.31, and Master of Orion 1's was 1.3.

[Rolan7]

to the main questline breaking if you research things in the wrong order.

TBF that was only the rushed sequel...
In other words, all the other stuff is true AFAIK.  Though I didn't hear about the demolished structures bug, but I'm not surprised.
I mean, like you said, the difficulty setting literally didn't work in default XCOM 1.

[Mephisto]

X-Com, same deal <snip bugs>

And then there's the base defence bugs. Too many items? You might not be able to equip your soldiers because the game is showing you all of your alien alloys. You've got elerium? Each piece shows up on the map as an elerium crystal, which you can pick up and bring back to your base (?!?) for a massive increase in supplies.

[Culise]

And those are the good ones, the ones so legendarily awesome people still talk and complain about how they don't have "proper" sequels or were in some mythical now-extinct ultraclass of "good" games. There's whole fields of peers that were probably just as buggy and rushed, but not awesome enough for anybody to still remember or care.

And then, on the far side of the forgotten masses of mediocrity, there are the ones that were infamous for the bugs.  My favorite was probably Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, where the most infamous bug didn't even affect the game at all.  Rather, if you installed it to a non-default directory and later attempted to uninstall it, it would fail to locate the install directory.  It would then fall back on deleting everything on your computer, which would chug quietly along without any outward sign until it hit your operating system.  At this point, hilarity ensued.

EDIT:
Whoopsie, I mixed it up with Myth II.  Myth II would willingly eat your entire hard drive partition with fava beans and a nice chianti, though they literally caught it right before it went out the door with the net result that they literally had to rip open all the boxes and swap out the discs.  Pool of Radiance simply sniped key system files in your Windows directory, which had much the same effect. 

[Shadowlord]

How does pool of radiance find your windows folder from dosbox?

Oh wait, that's the terrible remake that I tried to forgot existed, isn't it?

[Yoink]

Well, I bought Red Solstice.
I'll try it out once it finishes downloading... depending on how well it runs on my computer, it might be the first Steam refund I try to get. >.>