Does Quality Assurance No Longer Exist?

[Guest]

On 26/11/2021 at 6:18 AM, Domalish_TG said:

Hi. I think it depends on publisher's greed. That's quite lazy answer but I'll try to explain. 

 

First. EA, Ubisoft and some other are not really interested in quality of game neither their profit. Just change game somehow and add +1 to the name. They don't allow really cool developers make something

 specific. But there is another plus. Sometimes allowing game directors do whatever they want, makes games even worse. As an example Death Stranding. It's has a cool plot but the gameplay isn't so good(as for me). It's repeatarive and don't give any emotions to gamers. Publisher that tries to limit them, also interested that the game must entertain gamer.  They just think that entertainment = money. 

 

Second. Some developers are not really interested in some projects(like Rockstar and GTA Trilogy). They have more cool things to do(I hope). As an example GTA 6 or something else. If someone in the office/company don't want to work on it they just change studio(that's why staff turnover. Yeal there are sometimes some other reason like toxicity). 

 

Final. Publisher thinks that doing remake or remaster of a game will give a lot of profit because of nostalgia. 

 

Sorry for ma English but I hope you understand me.

 

 

 

what a terrible example you used to corroborate your point, my dude. the more people I see complaining about DS, the more certain I am of its greatness.

[Jelly Soup]

21 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

For once, I have to say you bring up a lot of good points @Jelly Soup.

 

And a Merry Christmas to you. :/

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by Jelly Soup

[Dauersack]

Of course it still exists, but it is starving, they basically only have it out of habbit at this point for the bare minimum. You have to remember that you are dealing with corporations here, not just any corporations, pretty much the second most vile caliber corporations you will find across the board for the most part, with subhumans like Bobby Kotick in charge of making many of the decisions. These corporations are guided by nothing but greed, if it does not directly translate into short term profit taking off they are not interested in it, they go out of their way to rather make money off the problems instead of fixing them, and sadly most customers being mouth breathers who never learn from their bad experiences with certain companies making it all too easy. These companies sell gambling to children, they have no morals holding them back from exploiting people, and no financial reason not to do it either.

 

Why present a nearly bug free and polished release like God Of War? You will get the same money from customers, as they regularly buy broken shit games for full price, so the financial incentive is just not there, on the contrary even, releasing something in a finished and polished state costs them a lot of extra money for roughly the same expected profit, people testing stuff costs money, delaying the release so you have to pay your people to fix stuff costs money. Instead of doing that they just slap an Early Access label on it so the testing gets done by people who bought it early, people who basically paid to be Alpha and Beta testers, people who even buy day 1 dlc, cosmetics, gambling and other extra monetization after they paid premium money to be creditless testers. It is pretty hard to be too mad at a greedy company that sees this comparison and decides to go for the route that is just objectively far better for them short term, as the customers are generally too lazy or dull to let these companies feel noticeably long term damage from such anti customer decisions.

 

The moment I look at these annual sports game releases from 2K games and the like I know that there is little hope for the industry to enter a different route. This release it broken and never fix it, or have people fix it for you, mentality already arrived even in the indie game scene, with more and more games getting released in worse states every year. We even reached the point of games like No Mans Sky that by all rights should have been a cause to be sued into oblivion getting delivered in a downright non functional state, bought for full price, and then people are grateful and hail these developers up in the air if they finally deliver years later what they originally promised. Tbf that still is better than crowdfunded games getting released in an entirely broken state, never to be fixed.

 

Sadly we can't really do much about it. I am mocking all people in my friend circle whenever they buy some garbage at full price and then fling the game into a corner after a few days of experiencing crashes and hilarious bugs to never touch it again because by now they know it won't ever get fixed, but their regret is forgotten in a few months or even weeks when the next obviously broken turd appears with a shining trailer. Before long pretty much any company will be like this, as I am certain that nothing short of another grand scale industry crash will lead to this behavior being corrected.

 

[AJ_Radio]

In regards to what's going on with Sony, I believe @Sergen actually hit the nail on the head in regards to why we keep getting low quality, broken, poor effort games on the store. I don't know where he said it but I know he made mention on one of his status updates.

 

When Sony went from Sony Computer Entertainment to Sony Interactive Entertainment there were a vast number of changes. This was in early 2016 and I feel this helped mark the beginning of the end for the PS Vita, as Sony was abandoning the handheld as the industry was already moving towards mobile. I felt this also marked a change in trophy standards. There is no doubt in my mind that My Name is Mayo would of never passed as such an easy platinum back in 2013 - 2015. In fact, some games, like Blacklight: Retribution, weren't allowed a platinum trophy (you earned a gold trophy if you earned all the other trophies in the base game set).

 

Unfortunately I think this is just a sign of the times we're living in. The industry is more concerned with gambling mechanics (microtransactions, lootboxes, etc), cosmetics and season passes than they are delivering a quality game at launch, which was the standard up until the mid - late PS4 generation. Just 10 years ago, AAA games were more finished on release, with maybe a couple patches here and there to iron out some issues players were experiencing at launch.

 

My real problem with Assassin's Creed Valhalla is what Ubisoft is doing with it and I'm afraid this will quickly become the new standard. So not only are we having to deal with games now being $10 more (PS5 games are now $69.99 instead of $59.99 like PS3 and PS4 games were), you are getting the games incomplete in many cases. At first I felt the Day 1 patch was a bit suspicious but being so commonplace anymore it's practically a necessity for all the big, new AAA games. Multiple season passes bother me a lot more, and these companies feel fit to purposely tuck away content that could of been in the base game behind a paywall. I warned people over a decade ago that DLC was a bad, malicious practice, but nobody listened. Now it is a whole lot worse.

 

Sport games have gone the way of the whales and the people dumb enough to spend hundeds and thousands of dollars on them. NBA 2K practically screams live service, complete with all the packaging, polish and in-game advertising to remind us gamers to spend more of our hard earned money.

 

I feel a big disaster looming over the horizon. The question is not how or why, but when.

[Rozalia1]

I'm not so sure on Sony moving from Japan to America means all that much here. I suppose you could argue that the Japanese sense of business is more into having games complete and bug free while the American sense of business is more push things out to make money who cares about bugs... but well, we can't really say for certain such a thing is affecting them. Also to be clear to anybody who might take issue. There are of course Japanese companies that put out buggy incomplete stuff and American ones that put out non-buggy and complete stuff out. 

 

Ultimately there are a lot of factors at work. The culture of the companies involved is very important with some companies wanting to put out a complete and non-buggy game even if they have to delay a title as they see such a thing as part of their "prestige" and wouldn't want their reputation to be harmed. Others, like the hated companies (who make a lot of money) that I won't name already know their names are mud and so not caring about any of that is promoted in their minds. 

 

The idea that the PS360 generation was putting out complete and non-buggy games is... something. @AJ_Radio mentions "late PS3/early PS4 era" specifically when it got bad on this matter and... sorry, no. It actually improved during that time if anything. The PS3, which has its fans yes, was a problem at launch due to the Cell and so most developers were faced with a problem. Either release the 360 first and continue to work on the PS3 for later, release both at the same time with the PS3 version often having certain problems, or delay the 360 version also while working on the PS3 version. I don't have to state what 99% of companies decided to do when in that situation. As time went on and developers got better with the PS3 this problem started to reduce of course. 

On the matter of game completeness, again, not accurate. You might have felt many of these games were complete perhaps but that was often actually not the case. The "HD" era if you will was a costly one and killed many companies, with those that survived often having to downsize their vision, cut content, and so forth simply to not risk losing money they could not afford to be losing. Such a thing is of course an issue whatever the era, but that one specifically was infamous for how bad it was.

[AJ_Radio]

The PS3 was not a friendly platform to code for regarding anybody who wasn't associated with Sony. That's probably why certain games like Super Meat Boy didn't get released until several years later. The Xbox 360 however had the game back in 2010, which was the original release date.

 

PS4 brought in a lot of indie games, whereas the PS3 generation was mostly dominated by AA/AAA stuff. The early years of the PS3 (2006 - 2010) were bad, one being the console was a lot more expensive than the Xbox 360. Two, it lacked highly praised IPs like Halo, Gears of War and Forza. Sure, the PS3 had Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, God of War and so forth, but many of those franchises exclusive to Sony did not hit their stride until later in the generation. Killzone 2 and Killzone 2 were released in 2009 and 2011 respectively, long after the PS3 had launched.

 

I'm not going to claim I know everything, but you @Rozalia1 are coming off here as "We're all wearing rose tinted goggles, we're blind in nostalgia". There were a lot of shitty games, particularly licensed crap like Terminator Salvation and others that aged badly. If you were to jump a generation earlier, the PS2 era had even more shitty games.

 

I've been around in the gaming industry my entire life, and the PS3/360 generation resonated with me because that was back when I was in my college days playing a lot of console games as well as some MMOs on the PC.

 

I feel I cannot agree with game completeness being inaccurate because at the time the prominent developers such as the guys who worked on Dead Space had to make the games more complete. This was right when DLC started coming out which was 2008 - 2009ish, and a lot of people resented it because you have to pay more money to access content that could of been in the base game. In contrast to a decade ago, DLC is far more prominent and much worse than we could of imagined.

 

Today a lot of developers release their products unfinished and it's especially bad in the AAA gaming industry. No Man's Sky should of been a wake up call to anyone who was going to invest their money into that game, but instead people bought into it and they reaped what they sowed. This wasn't so much the case back in the late 2000s, early 2010s. As a matter of fact I resented both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 getting DLC. As a matter of fact Mass Effect 3's first DLC was on the game disc, which angered a lot of people including myself.

 

There's a lot of things in play right now that is driving me away from the modern games and have me mostly play old titles and indie games. I am concerned for the future of this industry, but sadly most people are turning a blind eye to it as whales are becoming more commonplace and companies like Ubisoft feel fit to release half assed products at full price.

 

I honestly think you are making issues like the Cell on the PS3 during that generation a lot worse than they've turned out to be.

[Jerry_Appleby]

I find that QA never really existed outside of Nintendo, mainly because devs feel that no matter what they release, they can always patch the games later to fix bugs.

With older NIntendo games, patches don't exist, so they were forced to test the games over and over to polish them to perfection. Nowadays, everyone just wants to hit their quotas of launch dates on time, so they don't rigourously test things as much anymore like they used to.

 

I'd rather have a game delayed knowing they're working on fixes than have something released on time being a complete mess.

[Rozalia1]

14 hours ago, AJ_Radio said:

The PS3 was not a friendly platform to code for regarding anybody who wasn't associated with Sony. That's probably why certain games like Super Meat Boy didn't get released until several years later. The Xbox 360 however had the game back in 2010, which was the original release date.

 

PS4 brought in a lot of indie games, whereas the PS3 generation was mostly dominated by AA/AAA stuff. The early years of the PS3 (2006 - 2010) were bad, one being the console was a lot more expensive than the Xbox 360. Two, it lacked highly praised IPs like Halo, Gears of War and Forza. Sure, the PS3 had Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, God of War and so forth, but many of those franchises exclusive to Sony did not hit their stride until later in the generation. Killzone 2 and Killzone 2 were released in 2009 and 2011 respectively, long after the PS3 had launched.

 

I'm not going to claim I know everything, but you @Rozalia1 are coming off here as "We're all wearing rose tinted goggles, we're blind in nostalgia". There were a lot of shitty games, particularly licensed crap like Terminator Salvation and others that aged badly. If you were to jump a generation earlier, the PS2 era had even more shitty games.

 

I've been around in the gaming industry my entire life, and the PS3/360 generation resonated with me because that was back when I was in my college days playing a lot of console games as well as some MMOs on the PC.

 

I feel I cannot agree with game completeness being inaccurate because at the time the prominent developers such as the guys who worked on Dead Space had to make the games more complete. This was right when DLC started coming out which was 2008 - 2009ish, and a lot of people resented it because you have to pay more money to access content that could of been in the base game. In contrast to a decade ago, DLC is far more prominent and much worse than we could of imagined.

 

Today a lot of developers release their products unfinished and it's especially bad in the AAA gaming industry. No Man's Sky should of been a wake up call to anyone who was going to invest their money into that game, but instead people bought into it and they reaped what they sowed. This wasn't so much the case back in the late 2000s, early 2010s. As a matter of fact I resented both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 getting DLC. As a matter of fact Mass Effect 3's first DLC was on the game disc, which angered a lot of people including myself.

 

There's a lot of things in play right now that is driving me away from the modern games and have me mostly play old titles and indie games. I am concerned for the future of this industry, but sadly most people are turning a blind eye to it as whales are becoming more commonplace and companies like Ubisoft feel fit to release half assed products at full price.

 

I honestly think you are making issues like the Cell on the PS3 during that generation a lot worse than they've turned out to be.

 

Of course the PS2 had that. As I said, such things are a problem no matter the generation, however it was particularly bad in the PS360 era as so many studios got taken out by it due to the cost/trouble involved compared to previous generations. 

 

DLC? Haven't seen that manner of attack in some time now. While there were such cases of a DLC being entirely in the game files and simply being enabled by a "key" you had to purchase, some cases from companies seeking to just make more profit, others simply needing more money to survive... the anger at DLC was largely erroneous. Due to the process of game publishing and companies not halting their operations once a game is ready, they'd have a timeframe where they were free to work on DLC for the game which would then be ready on release/shortly after. So in those cases people's anger was completely misplaced and showed an ignorance of how developers operate.

 

Games are bigger than ever and we have to remember that many developers are now putting out games for PS4/5, Xbox One/S/X, Switch, and PC. With all those different platforms these things will happen as time is split on testing and fixing. Then there is outsourcing specific versions out too which is done as the developers don't have the manpower/time to do it themselves so another studio gets it and all the respect to them, but working on another's game as it is being built for a limited period of time usually means problems follow. 

[starcrunch061]

1 hour ago, Rozalia1 said:

Games are bigger than ever

 

I think this is a cause of many unnecessary problems. I have no problem with a "big game", provided that all of its hugeness comes from a corresponding "big vision". 

 

But too often, it feels that people have a manual that says, "This 30 hour game really needs to be 60 hours, so...put more stuff in." And I'm not even talking about bloat (though that's certainly the problem). 

 

I'll pick on CyPunk77 some more. CyPunk has some great main stories, and a few stellar side stories. It has requisite bloat as well, but let's ignore that. CyPunk77 also has a ridiculous number of vehicles to pilot, together with races. It has first-person fist fights. And these things are AWFUL. The vehicle stuff is particularly bad: audio screws up all the time in vehicle sections. The game does weird things when driving a vehicle for a long period (glitches and bugs and the like). And...the game crashes during vehicle sections. 

 

Why is it there? Because seemingly, someone says it should be. You need a vehicle to travel the (empty) open world. You don't need 50 of them. If they wanted some customization, give a couple of cars with paint jobs. But no - the game has to be BIG, so we need it.

 

Maybe it's time to downsize...

[AJ_Radio]

I'm perfectly fine with downsizing. I keep bringing up Assassin's Creed Valhalla but it's a good example of what I don't like about the modern AAA gaming scene. There's simply too much bloat. As awesome as Assassin's Creed Odyssey was for the first 30 - 40 hours, it got real tedious and boring after that. There were literally no less than a couple hundred locations that had you doing the same objectives, with copy and paste enemy camps with the same enemies every time.

 

One of the things I really loved about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was every other location was unique. Fallout 4 doesn't do this quite so well, given it's old outdated game engine and it's share of bugs/glitches, which is typical of Bethesda. But at least a number of locations do offer up something a little different, a little on the repetitive side but nothing like the newer Assassin's Creed games. I'm just under the 100 hour mark in Fallout 4 as I'm wrapping up the final DLC pack but I can definitely say I haven't wasted my time on the game. It's been worth the time and money spent.

 

Unfortunately, like many other AAA companies, Bethesda has dropped the ball, and I'm not going to bother playing anything past Fallout 4. I'm probably going to be doing the same with Ubisoft, as they seem intent on selling the same business model for all their IPs. No matter how many people say it's great, I simply don't care about Far Cry 6. I looked at Far Cry 5 and I simply said nope.

[Rozalia1]

On 03/12/2021 at 6:03 PM, starcrunch061 said:

I think this is a cause of many unnecessary problems. I have no problem with a "big game", provided that all of its hugeness comes from a corresponding "big vision". 

 

But too often, it feels that people have a manual that says, "This 30 hour game really needs to be 60 hours, so...put more stuff in." And I'm not even talking about bloat (though that's certainly the problem). 

 

I'll pick on CyPunk77 some more. CyPunk has some great main stories, and a few stellar side stories. It has requisite bloat as well, but let's ignore that. CyPunk77 also has a ridiculous number of vehicles to pilot, together with races. It has first-person fist fights. And these things are AWFUL. The vehicle stuff is particularly bad: audio screws up all the time in vehicle sections. The game does weird things when driving a vehicle for a long period (glitches and bugs and the like). And...the game crashes during vehicle sections. 

 

Why is it there? Because seemingly, someone says it should be. You need a vehicle to travel the (empty) open world. You don't need 50 of them. If they wanted some customization, give a couple of cars with paint jobs. But no - the game has to be BIG, so we need it.

 

Maybe it's time to downsize...

 

That doesn't exist in a vacuum. Developers aren't deciding to just bloat their games for no reason. They're doing it in response to the thought among the players that if a game is short than it "ain't worth buying at full price". I'm sure you've seen that yourself from many people. 

 

A shame because while long titles obviously have their place, 15-30 hours is a pretty nice range of content especially for people who have less time. 

 

As for Cyberpunk. I didn't follow it as I had no interest but as far as I know what you're describing is a consequence of them having too large of a vision compared to what they could actually do. So I wouldn't put that down under bloat personally. They just kept expanding their vision repeatedly and had no one around who put their foot down and said no more. If they did then you'd likely have gotten a functional level based game of about 15-20 hours and they then could have promoted the second title (which they'd have more time to work on) as having an open world, improved melee combat, and whatever else. Of course I understand that they did heavily hype the game so perhaps they thought they couldn't do that so they decided to gamble. A gamble which made them a lot of money now yes, but likely has lost them a bunch long term as their reputation has been heavily hurt. 

[starcrunch061]

Just now, Rozalia1 said:

That doesn't exist in a vacuum. Developers aren't deciding to just bloat their games for no reason. They're doing it in response to the thought among the players that if a game is short than it "ain't worth buying at full price". I'm sure you've seen that yourself from many people. 

 

Agreed with the sentiment that many people (myself included) don't want to pay $7 an hour for a game, but at the same time, devs/pubs are answering this thought in the dumbest, laziest way possible. It reminds me of when Squeenix put out Final Fantasy XIII-2. People said they wanted a more lively world with more side content. Square decided that this meant to add fetch quests with no visible purpose within the game (there does end up being purpose as far as unlocking endings, but it makes zero sense within the game world itself).

 

I'll freely admit that if a game is short, I don't want to buy it at full price. But I think you're being a little too flippant here. Yes, gamers want an experience that is worth their dollar. But developers have taken this in the most cynical way possible...which is perfectly fine. I don't denigrate businesses for wanting to make money. But I absolutely DO denigrate them for claiming that "this is what you asked for!", and I DO denigrate them for failing to deliver a competent technical experience within this bloat, and then blaming me for "requiring" them to add this bloat.

 

I question whether any gamer whatsoever asked Ubisoft, "Please put in 402,361 fortresses for me to take down in the exact same manner!" 

 

9 minutes ago, Rozalia1 said:

As for Cyberpunk. I didn't follow it as I had no interest but as far as I know what you're describing is a consequence of them having too large of a vision compared to what they could actually do. So I wouldn't put that down under bloat personally. They just kept expanding their vision repeatedly and had no one around who put their foot down and said no more. If they did then you'd likely have gotten a functional level based game of about 15-20 hours and they then could have promoted the second title (which they'd have more time to work on) as having an open world, improved melee combat, and whatever else. Of course I understand that they did heavily hype the game so perhaps they thought they couldn't do that so they decided to gamble. A gamble which made them a lot of money now yes, but likely has lost them a bunch long term as their reputation has been heavily hurt. 

 

Not really. While I don't count it as "bloat" (I tried to make that distinction in my original post), I felt that at some point, the "vision" of CyPunk became a cover-up, in much the same way as, say, the continually added elements to the story of Kingdom Hearts is a cover-up for its overall emptiness.

 

Obviously, that's opinion; quite a few people like the story of Kingdom Hearts, but the point is, instead of rectifying issues in earlier storytelling, that game just added more elements to the mix. In the same way, CyPunk77 could have worked on their pathetically dead open world. They could have, e.g., made contextual dialogue meaningful to the game (a la Fallout: New Vegas). They could have done more to tie police scanner missions to the world at large (incidentally, though ultimately these missions were pure bloat, there's little question in my mind that originally, they thought those missions would tie to other aspects of the story, as you pick up snippets of conversation and text between the participants of those missions). But instead...let's add a fistfighting competition. Or some car racing. It's got nothing to do with the game. There is literally one person in the entire world that talks about car races, and one person in the entire world that talks about fisticuffs. That's not vision at that point; that's akin to Nelson telling Milhouse to throw some crud on his electric racing track. 

 

And that would be fine, still, if that additional content didn't actively fuck up the game itself. Again, the auto sequences in CyPunk77 literally disrupt the stability of the Night City universe. No fooling: if you drive around for a long time, across the various regions, the game will just start putting up walls on the road. They're not even invisible!

 

But, speaking of bloat, this post has gone on far too long. In short, I agree that gamers want value for their money, and often, that value is equated with time spent. I have no problem with devs/pubs filling that in the most cynical possible. But I do have an issue when these selfsame devs/pubs then claim that their broken game was rushed.

[Rozalia1]

2 minutes ago, starcrunch061 said:

Agreed with the sentiment that many people (myself included) don't want to pay $7 an hour for a game, but at the same time, devs/pubs are answering this thought in the dumbest, laziest way possible. It reminds me of when Squeenix put out Final Fantasy XIII-2. People said they wanted a more lively world with more side content. Square decided that this meant to add fetch quests with no visible purpose within the game (there does end up being purpose as far as unlocking endings, but it makes zero sense within the game world itself).

 

I'll freely admit that if a game is short, I don't want to buy it at full price. But I think you're being a little too flippant here. Yes, gamers want an experience that is worth their dollar. But developers have taken this in the most cynical way possible...which is perfectly fine. I don't denigrate businesses for wanting to make money. But I absolutely DO denigrate them for claiming that "this is what you asked for!", and I DO denigrate them for failing to deliver a competent technical experience within this bloat, and then blaming me for "requiring" them to add this bloat.

 

I question whether any gamer whatsoever asked Ubisoft, "Please put in 402,361 fortresses for me to take down in the exact same manner!" 

 

Remember when many developers would add in multiplayer modes to their single player games? That was "adding value" so people didn't feel the game didn't give them enough to be worth full price. Developers have tried many things to add value, bloat is the easiest and seemingly the most successful. 

 

A game that has a 5 hour campaign and that is it at full price? I can understand that wanting that at full price. 15-30 hours though? That is a good length and the game is not overstaying it's welcome with needless stuff. 

 

Ubisoft stuff is horrible on that yeah. Have a few on my list and then just stopped as it just ain't worth it. Yakuza games are also really longer with a lot of content though people seem to be more accepting of that as the content is more varied. 

 

8 minutes ago, starcrunch061 said:

Not really. While I don't count it as "bloat" (I tried to make that distinction in my original post), I felt that at some point, the "vision" of CyPunk became a cover-up, in much the same way as, say, the continually added elements to the story of Kingdom Hearts is a cover-up for its overall emptiness.

 

Obviously, that's opinion; quite a few people like the story of Kingdom Hearts, but the point is, instead of rectifying issues in earlier storytelling, that game just added more elements to the mix. In the same way, CyPunk77 could have worked on their pathetically dead open world. They could have, e.g., made contextual dialogue meaningful to the game (a la Fallout: New Vegas). They could have done more to tie police scanner missions to the world at large (incidentally, though ultimately these missions were pure bloat, there's little question in my mind that originally, they thought those missions would tie to other aspects of the story, as you pick up snippets of conversation and text between the participants of those missions). But instead...let's add a fistfighting competition. Or some car racing. It's got nothing to do with the game. There is literally one person in the entire world that talks about car races, and one person in the entire world that talks about fisticuffs. That's not vision at that point; that's akin to Nelson telling Milhouse to throw some crud on his electric racing track. 

 

And that would be fine, still, if that additional content didn't actively fuck up the game itself. Again, the auto sequences in CyPunk77 literally disrupt the stability of the Night City universe. No fooling: if you drive around for a long time, across the various regions, the game will just start putting up walls on the road. They're not even invisible!

 

But, speaking of bloat, this post has gone on far too long. In short, I agree that gamers want value for their money, and often, that value is equated with time spent. I have no problem with devs/pubs filling that in the most cynical possible. But I do have an issue when these selfsame devs/pubs then claim that their broken game was rushed.

 

I don't doubt the vision stuff. As far as I know they wanted the game to be one of those "service" games didn't they? Those take a lot of money and work to do properly and they just couldn't do it and now won't be able to as they have to devote so much time and effort in attempting to fix the game. The story/side stories likely were cut down I imagine so if you feel that is bloated already then it could have been worse. As for the dead open world, common enough issue. Should have looked at doing something more like Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, but then if you do you can't promote "a large open world".

 

[Baranov_925]

It depends on how companies can execute their projects. 

[Dreakon13]

It's the fact that many games are bigger than ever, and even the simple games are built on deceptively complicated, imperfect (in the wrong hands) engines... and teams/companies gambling with the PR monster that "good enough" is good enough.

 

Signed,

A tired developer that has let simply "good enough" software out the door because I just couldn't look at it anymore.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Dreakon13

[AJ_Radio]

There needs to be more linear experiences. Maybe I'm just out of the loop as I usually am and I'm thinking of stuff like God of War (original). A linear game when done right can be real satisfying.

 

Ubisoft likes to throw out a bunch of bullshit our way and then sell a product that is merely 100 - 200+ hours long, much of which is just pure padding and boring side content to rack up game time. I think the real reason they're not doing stuff like Rayman anymore and dragging their feet with Prince of Persia is because they probably feel that linear games at the AAA level aren't profitable anymore. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell hasn't seen a new release since Blacklist came out back in 2013. The last Rayman game was released during the same year.

 

Bigger isn't necessarily better, often it's not always better. But far too often the corporate executives and the publishers with bottomless pockets of money that run much of the gaming industry now get the final say.

 

These AAA developers can sell their products at full price, but I'm not going to pay full price for them anymore because it's literally next to impossible to iron out all the glaring issues considering how massive games are now. So I generally wait. I don't care about buying games at launch at this point.

[Z1MZUM]

Allot of the so called AAA games are Games for consumers.

[Dreakon13]

People seem to be confusing live service games with broken games.  A game released somewhat barebones with a long timeline of content (money grubbing as it may be) probably wouldn't end up on a QA teams radar, as long as what is there works.

 

Back in the day you had some sprites/models and hitboxes and maybe some short dialog cutscenes and that was about it.  If one part of the game worked, the whole thing probably did on a technical level.  Not to say it was easy or anything, but probably lighter lifting as far as testing goes.  Nowadays, even the most simple games have something complex about them... whether it's the graphics engine, whether it's the underlying gameplay mechanics, whether it's countless branches of dialog or actions that a game needs to "remember", or all of the above and then some or just the sheer length of it.

 

Couple that with the fact you have a TON of developers now... because of how popular/mainstream gaming has gotten and how streamlined development has gotten with the Unreal's and Unity's making legitimate development engines more approachable... that are probably more creative types than technically proficient.  Who past a certain point are either too exhausted or too over their heads to realistically rewrite and/or fix certain deep seated issues with a game.  And a team deciding that something is "good enough" to release, with plans to either fix it later and/or hope social media doesn't go apeshit over it.

 

There's all kinds of pressure to hit deadlines and launch windows too of course, it's all a rich tapestry.

Edited December 9, 2021 by Dreakon13

[AJ_Radio]

I would argue that the gaming industry was better off before it went mainstream. 
 

The PS3/Xbox 360 generation was that sweet spot for me. Since the early - mid PS4 era, I have become increasingly more frustrated and annoyed with the general direction the industry has taken.

 

I’ve been playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 recently. Very old game dating from 1999 - 2000, but somehow it manages to capture the magic and reevaluates why I got into gaming to begin with. 
 

In contrast, I feel the industry became too streamlined. A decade ago it would of been unthinkable to release a game like GTA V for the third time. But here we are today, complaining about the GTA Remaster Trilogy being bugged to oblivion and Rockstar failing to provide anything new. There was no excuse to release that trilogy looking that awful. I don’t think I ever saw something get such low score on MetaCritic as I did for the GTA Trilogy. 
 

Then of course, the trailer that we saw for the upcoming GTA V release on PS5 shows obvious flaws like mirrors not working. Something that has been used effectively for nearly 30 years. 
 

If there is still Quality Assurance, it’s in incredibly short supply these days.

[Z1MZUM]

Have a look at Activision and the incredibly repulsive Bobby Kotick. COD is fucked and why? Greed, firing the QC staff. These non gamer fuckwits buying out and running these companies wouldn't know how to turn a toaster on.

 

Big Names are producing little quality. However we are lucky here in the gaming world as long as you aren't white washed with technology. There are many generations of consoles and pc games. 

 

Currently playing Morrowind GOTY on the Original Xbox. Persona 5 Royal on PS5.

 

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, Z1MZUM said:

Have a look at Activision and the incredibly repulsive Bobby Kotick. COD is fucked and why? Greed, firing the QC staff. These non gamer fuckwits buying out and running these companies wouldn't know how to turn a toaster on.

 

Big Names are producing little quality. However we are lucky here in the gaming world as long as you aren't white washed with technology. There are many generations of consoles and pc games. 

 

Currently playing Morrowind GOTY on the Original Xbox. Persona 5 Royal on PS5.

 

 

Yeah I mean, there's a reason why a few people out there still play Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I've also been playing Age of Empires II HD Edition on Steam. There's more excitement and joy in playing these games than The Last of Us Part II will ever give me.

 

It makes me happy to see a new generation of people play Diablo II Resurrected, but given the sexual harassment issues within Blizzard and the fact they're merged with Activision, who knows what will happen.

 

It's true however that many business executives, including CEOs and even a number of game developers don't actually play games.

[Z1MZUM]

9 minutes ago, AJ_Radio said:

 

Yeah I mean, there's a reason why a few people out there still play Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I've also been playing Age of Empires II HD Edition on Steam. There's more excitement and joy in playing these games than The Last of Us Part II will ever give me.

 

It makes me happy to see a new generation of people play Diablo II Resurrected, but given the sexual harassment issues within Blizzard and the fact they're merged with Activision, who knows what will happen.

 

It's true however that many business executives, including CEOs and even a number of game developers don't actually play games.

 

C&C Remastered is also on steam and I believe Kingpin is also getting a remaster.

 

It's funny really, Most of the time I think remasters are a waste of time but on the other hand yes it is a good thing for the new generation of gamers to see what a complete game is like.  I often forget that I have had gaming experience for many generations. Are these remasters being created through passion? I think so in allot of cases.

 

The casual gamers will come and go, this is also the group that will pay for loot boxes and no doubt the group being targeted by a large portion of the gaming industry.

[AJ_Radio]

2 minutes ago, Z1MZUM said:

The casual gamers will come and go, this is also the group that will pay for loot boxes and no doubt the group being targeted by a large portion of the gaming industry.

 

The whales, the hip and trendy crowd, and the dolts that buy up the latest CoD and Madden. The core gaming audience is the real audience. Old Nintendo veterans know.