I’m worried about where video games are currently headed. To be more specific, I am talking about the practice of selling broken games for full price, then patching them after initial backlash. An example of this that hurt me the most was the release of Fallout 76. While I haven’t bought it, I enjoy Bethesda games, having played Oblivion, Skyrim, and even ESO (that also had rough release). The release of Fallout 76 especially hurt because it worries me about the direction Bethesda will take with its upcoming TES installment. When it eventually comes out, will it turn out as a Day-1 mess? Will its release be so horrific that no number of patches or free DLC could redeem it? I can only see a future where notable developers like Bethesda follow the same archaic path in an evolving market that demands both quality and change.
If it says Bethesda Game Studios on the box, it will be a mess. And modders will fix it. It's as certain as time passing.
Don't buy online crap, and eventually the chance of a proper SP title emerging will increase. Don't preorder and wait a few days after launch to see how bugs come along. That's the most sensible way to approach any game buy these days...
I for one like the fact games get major patches after release. I don't mind buying into an early access game when I have the belief that the developer will get it right. Also, this helps them to carry on working on the title I want to play. I remember when games would release back in the day, say in the 90s, they would be far from bug free and they would rarely get a patch that came on a magazine floppy disk or CD. I buy games from developers I believe in and games I know are the genre I'll enjoy. Assetto Corsa Competizione is a recent example. The game is getting better and better. There's many other games that got a lot better after release, The Division is another one of those and it was all due to work after release. Fallout 76 is obviously a turd but anyone who bought that game only has themselves to blame, Fallout games have been utter garbage after Fallout 2, NV was ok but far from great. Fallout 4 being a big dose of "nope" should have been the warning sign.
Hey it's this thread again... only with a new name. Sorry, but this comes up all the time. And really, anyone could've looked at Fallout 76 and saw it was going to be a mess. The fact that Todd shuffled it over to an untested, freshly restructured and renamed studio instead of working on it with his team... Should've said a lot
Honestly you could've seen Fallout76 turning out to be a train wreck from 50 miles away - comparing those announcements ('16 times the detail') and how the beta played. To me personally even FO4 was a joke, with the fps tied to the actual ingame speed and other stuff. Abs pathetic. At this point you have to question pretty much everything Todd announces. Therefore i'd say the next TES is 10 years away and hopefully Todd has been replaced by someone who knows a new engine was needed 10 years ago.
It's been like this forever or really since the time games became major industry with big publishers and big money in it. Simply do it like everyone with common sense and just don't preorder anything. There is no point to it anyway, you will not get any benefit out of it and you will see right on release whether you like a game or not, as there is always a ton of gameplay available. The Fallout76 looked like absolute trainwreck from the time of the first announcement. Although I would argue that all of the Bethesda games are kinda crappy with a lot of bugs and they just rely on community to mod it and fix everything they couldn't be bothered doing themselves. I really wonder how much longer will this last, but I'm definitely not buying the next TES if it's still on that 20 year old gamebryo engine.
Although with 76 they cannot rely on the community like they have in the past, they actually have to do it themselves.
Yeah, and we can see the result. Although I kinda liked it, it was really funny to watch Fallout76, like a trainwreck in slow motion and you didn't even had to buy the game.
Can we blame publishers though? If we the consumer buy the cr*p they sell then they will continue to sell us cr*p. Here's the question if you're one of the folk who demanded the publisher fix - No Man's Sky - Aliens CM - Destiny - FO76 why did you not wait? I am not talking waiting; a month, a week or even a day. Literally hours after a game launch you will be able to find out weather a game is a; buggy, boring, broken mess at which point you can then make an informed choice on weather to buy the game. If you buy the game
It's easy to preorder and then refund if you don't like it. I preorder games where I trust the developer. I have had a good experience with their games and I want them to continue produce games I like. Sometimes you get burnt, sure, but even then, if you know the dev/publisher well enough, more often then not they fix the issues and improve the game. Perfect recent example would be The Division, the game turned from turd to an absolute classic, one of my most favourite games. It's also about the genre you enjoy. You might enjoy playing racing sims or RTS games. There's not that many of those coming out so the niche consumer will buy all of the titles in these genres. I also enjoy ARPGs and honestly, other than the mess that was Wolcen, I purchased every single one of them. Some of them not as good as others but there's not enough of these games. You like some more than others and you'll play some for other reasons than the others. Thinking about it, this applies to games with endless replay-ability. Sim racing, ARPGs, MMOs etc. Not some single player story driven games because those you beat in say 30 hours and then you're done with them.
Now that I'm older and have more patience I've learned to wait for games. Most at least. If you wait a year, for a GOY edition or whatever they label it, you usually get a $59.99 game for $39.99 with all DLC added in for one price. And usually by then, all the bugs are worked out. If I didn't start doing this I would have left the hobby. It's still disgusting that PC gets very little love from developers in comparison to console when PC has shown profitability for years now, but the piracy stigma has never gone away.
At least in the old days we could download a patch from whatever server we wanted. Nowadays, we're stuck with all these seperate game clients and platforms.
I miss server browsers and the communities that games actually had because of them. Back in the day my friends and I would either have our own server or we would favorite servers that we liked which led to playing with other regulars which created a lot of friendships. Nowadays online (PC) gaming is so... random and anonymous. That's not exactly a 'bad' thing, depending on how you look at it, but to me it feels like the community is gone and so is part of the charm. The lack of custom servers has also increased the amount of unavoidable obvious cheaters and trolls. We used to have servers with admins that would remove some of this. On the flip side, we also had childish admins that kicked/banned you for "cheating" because you keep killing them. Another complaint is how some games are moving away from custom files and are eyeballing ways to monetize mods and custom work. Bethesda. Custom files, modifications, etc are a staple to PC gaming. If the game is offline I should be able to do whatever the heck I want to it. Certain restrictive DRM, "Creation Club", UWP (Microsoft Store), Stadia/game streaming, etc are all things I personally despise because they move away from that open concept. There are too many games where something as simple and yet important like FOV adjustments are required to have the game feeling right. There are thousands of games I wouldn't be able to enjoy if it wasn't for modifications. To me these kind of changes are some of the most egregious because we are literally having choice and power being taken away from us. Then of course you have games being released broken and that whole garbage concept of 'Liiiiiiive Services' to throw on top of that. I'll also note.. where are the real tactical shooters of the past? Ghost Recon IS NOT GHOST RECON ANYMORE. I'm looking forward to Ready or Not, but it's really sad to see the tactical shooter genre be completely ignored by the AAA market. All hero shooter crap that I personally can't stand. Even Rainbow Six Siege... the Terrorist CoOp in that is a complete side item and the PVP is nothing more than a glorified Overwatch game with real pew pew weapons.
