eRe4s3r wrote on Aug 26, 2010, 16:37:
I was just saying that nobody is forcing anyone to buy a game on release date, particularly games from an (albeit Large) Indy Developer. Expecting perfection on release might work for games that have a 400 people Q&A department in their back - but for Indy developers you have a release date and if its not done till then you add to it till it is.. after release. Sad for gamers who buy games on release but reality non the less.

Accepting broken games (and worse being an apologist) just encourages developers to release more broken games. There is some wiggle room for bug as catching everything in a large project can be near impossible. However, Stardock has been far exceeding that threshold and gone into territory that I am honestly at a loss to find comparison. I cannot think of another game released more dysfunctional than Demigod. That includes Relic unforgivable screw up where units permanently ate up population cap, the failed to fixed that for 2 months. Yet, Demigod somehow managed to be worse.

Plenty of Inde games release in respectable states too.

You want higher quality releases from developers, let them clearly know releasing games in this state is unacceptable and stop giving them business.

kxmode wrote on Aug 25, 2010, 17:21:

Flatline wrote on Aug 25, 2010, 17:15:

kxmode wrote on Aug 25, 2010, 17:03:
I watched several videos showing Brad and company taking a lot of responsibility for Demigod's launch on themselves. I don't know if they were acting because them seemed very genuine.

The authenticity of their "mea culpa" can be seen in how readily they repeat their mistakes.

So far, they're batting 2 for 2 in the "fucked up release" category. Anyone can screw up a launch, but to screw up two in a row, that takes some stones.

True, but I think saying 2-for-2 is a little disingenuous. Stardock didn't actually develop Demigod; Chris Taylor's GPG did that. I think Elemental is Stardock's first official game launch. This is all the reason they need to get things right from launch. As long as they stick things out and continue releasing patches I don't see how this is a huge failure.

Stardock had a hand in Demigod's development. Particularly the buggy as crap non-functional lobby code that made it very difficult to get a game started and pretty much impossible to get a 5v5 going. All the parts of Demigod that had huge problems were the parts that Stardock worked on.

ASeven wrote on Aug 25, 2010, 19:26:
is it me or a lot of posts in the Elemental forums are being deleted, locked and people are being banned left and right?

I doubt it is just you, they did that with Demigod too. They started banning people who complained the game was unfinished crap when it was clearly unfinished crap.

Kajetan wrote on Aug 25, 2010, 15:08:
Not again this bullshit about "breaking the street date" ... but right, ok, of course. Retailers have stolen pre-release code, pressed it on CD and sold it, MONTHS, heck, YEARS before the game should have been finished.

Brad, you are LYING! Once again! Go home, please, you're embarrasing yourself!

Exactly, this is the same bullshit they pulled with Demigod. They have a barely functional or very buggy product. They ignore the people in the beta telling them the game is nowhere near ready for release and they promise that the Day 0 patch is somehow a miracle patch that fixes everything. How many of these so called miracle patches actually deliver? Especially those within the first two weeks of release?

As for the Qt3 comment "please stay away from our games in the future", it is actually good advice. Stardock had all the time in the world to do GalCiv and someone else did Sins of a Solar Empire. After 2 games in a row (Stardock did the non-functional netcode for Demigod that ruined it) released in a horrifically buggy and incomplete states it is pretty clear Stardock doesn't have what it takes.

They are all talk, months down the line it will still be buggy, Brad Wardell will act like a martyr wondering why his "virulent community" is angry about being sold a broken game, and they will turn on their fans again.

Creston wrote on Aug 24, 2010, 20:36:
Actually, I don't really agree with that idea that Blizzard HAS to do this.

They could shit in a box, call it Diablo 3, put a 60 dollar sticker on it, and it'll sell 3 million copies.

That they (probably) DO make sure it's perfect is admirable and good for PC Gaming. But the idea that they HAVE to do it is just wrong.

Edit : Oh, and Max? Release Torchlight 2 before you start talking about Torchlight 3, or even RELEASING Torchlight 3. First off, plenty of devs have killed themselves because they were thinking too far ahead, and second, it gives me a bad taste in my mouth that you guys are already thinking about what to put in Torchlight 3, since that likely means it WON'T be put into Torchlight 2.

Make one game at a time. You're not Bioware.

Creston

While I agree Blizzards fanboys are crazy enough to buy basically anything they put out, releasing sub-par games would start to burn Blizzard's reputation, which is their most valuable asset. The reason millions of copies are sold before the game even releases is due to Blizzard's reputation and following.

Creston wrote on Aug 24, 2010, 13:13:

We want to make a great game

Unfortunately, we possess no talent in Cryptic that's capable of actually MAKING a great game.

Also, no offline play, so basically this is just "always-on internet" DRM under the guise of cooperative online gaming.

Yeah, this is going to be AWESOME. :-yawn-:

Creston

I this case, I am willing to bet the online aspect is more about blocking mods than DRM. Their business model is probably going to be selling new classes and dungeons via DLC. Modders would probably just go and implement the other 4th edition classes and wreck their model.

These is very likely going to be a huge korean F2P MMO influence here.

Fion wrote on Aug 23, 2010, 12:59:
The Spellplague is a new addition to 4th edition D&D in the Forgotten Realms setting. With the death of the goddess of magic the weave (a layer of the universe that magic stems from) was destroyed and it killed most mages and caused a virtual cataclysm that changed a great many aspects of the setting.

But yes, the city certainly has had more than it's share of disasters over the years.

Edit: I'm sad to see there will only be five classes, as there are more in the first Players Handbook of the 4th edition and many others in the three plus years since, most of them excellent and diverse. I do hope at least they aren't the simplest five: Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard, Ranger.

Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, Wizard are given. That's the D&D IP. They are probably planning to trickle the rest of the classes out as DLC at a ridiculously overpriced rate. It's not like anyone will have to worry about that though, considering Cryptic's history the game is very likely to be bad.

They dropped the DRM, but the damage is already done. Many gamers will simply assume it has the UbiDRM and avoid it.

Verno wrote on Aug 17, 2010, 15:22:

Slink wrote on Aug 17, 2010, 15:11:

I have to admit, at first I wasn't too pleased with the way they handled Dawn of War 2, but after playing it I got hooked and found it entirely engrossing, and all other RTS games seem old in comparison.

I don't understand though how you can like the gameplay in Company of Heroes but not Dawn of War 2. They're pretty similar.

If you mean the multiplayer, no one really has a problem with that. I can't speak for him but when I bitch about DoW2, its about the singleplayer. Dawn of War 2 isn't even a real RTS in singleplayer, it's like some bizarre mashup of a poor mans Diablo and some budget Hero RTS for 10 year olds. You control extremely limited numbers of troops at best. The only "strategy" is basically finding cover and item pickups. The expansion was an improvement and return to form in some respects but after the base games SP campaign should have been free.

Company of Heroes had some "squad" missions but for the most part missions would open up after an introductory and allow you to make/control enough units to form some measure of a strategy game.

They released the multiplayer in a horrifically broken state for DoW II with a show stopper bug that made units permanently eat population cap. Then they didn't bother patching it for a full 2 months. Relic has good core mechanics but tends to fail at balance and QA (I don't think they even bother testing before pushing stuff out the door.)

Prez wrote on Aug 17, 2010, 18:58:
At first glance, it does seem a bit of a dick move on the part of Valve, but I'll wait until I hear their reasoning for this.

My guess is that they are actually calling their game DOTA or some acronym that abbreviates to DOTA as a reference to the custom map.

I wouldn't be surprised if Riot was nervous about Valve's entry into DotA style games. Valve is a juggernaut and threatens to knock the wind out of them.

kxmode wrote on Aug 16, 2010, 13:46:

justice7 wrote on Aug 16, 2010, 13:41:

BobBob wrote on Aug 16, 2010, 11:19:
I imagine a person paying $1500 on a TV either a virgin, living with parents, or at least doesn't have a girlfriend, or is in serious credit card debt. Even $1500 on a computer is extreme and wasteful.

Whoa there nelly...

I spent $1600+Tax on my TV three years ago. 52" LCD 1080p HDTV from Samsung. I don't regret it at all.

Not a virgin, i own my own house, I have a fiance and am getting married in a couple months, and don't have credit card debt.

You will. The credit card debt part. It's unavoidable.

Credit card debt is certainly avoidable. You will most likely have to get a loan for a house and car loans can actually make sense (particularly the 0% interest for the life of the loan on certain new cars), but if you keep a reasonable amount saved away you can avoid credit card debt even if some unexpected expenses emerge. Credit card debt adds up very fast an eats up a lot of your money with the interest.

Wookiestick wrote on Aug 12, 2010, 22:11:
In all honostly, I can see the logic in this. Heres a list of id tech 4 games:

* Doom 3 (2004) – id Software
* Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil (2005) – Nerve Software
* Quake 4 (2005) – Raven Software
* Prey (2006) – Human Head Studios
* Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (2007) – Splash Damage
* Wolfenstein (2009) – Raven Software
* Brink (2011) – Splash Damage

Of all those games there are really only 2 games not sponsored by id: Prey and Brink. Everything else if it wasn't made by id software they were made by close collaborators of id software using their ip (Quake, Wolfenstein, etc.)
I'm inclined to agree with this decision.

Tech 4 was id's weakest moment. Tech 2 and Tech 3 absolutely dominated the market. Modern Warfare's current engine was built off the tech 3 engine. Look at how many games use the Unreal 3 engine, id is one of the few companies that could put together a real contender for it. There is a lot of money in being the big engine, so much that you don't have to make games anymore at that point.

ForgedReality wrote on Aug 12, 2010, 18:11:
Fuck Bioshock. The first two were mediocre, and overrated at best. Great. More of the same.

The were above average, nothing mind blowing. They were fairly solid single player shooters. Nothing you wanted to drop $50, but when steam inevitably puts then on sale for $20, good enough to buy.

Kobalt wrote on Aug 11, 2010, 17:28:
Click to move is considered gimped now? What?


Anyway, here's hoping for the first mass market dota game(that doesn't suck like demigod) rather than a quick source port of the original dota. Although the fact that it's been in development for less then a year means it will just be a cheap port like hon =/.

Semi on topic, I remember seeing a video of a dota style game for the xbox live arcade. No clue if it's already out/good or not. Played like a third person shooter but had the equivalent of creeps and lanes, towers etc.

That's Monday Night Combat, came out recently. It is fairly fun, it is like if TF2 and DotA had a baby, except all the boring slow periods of DotA got cut out.

I doubt Valve would do a straight port of DotA, there is way too much wrong with it. It has a good idea at the core, but it also has a lot of problems (some of which are engine limitations.)

Jerykk wrote on Aug 8, 2010, 22:39:

I just hope CDProjekt does not sell out to consoles and screw over The Witcher 2.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty concerned about Witcher 2 as well. For one. all the recent demos have been done with a 360 controller. Secondly, they've added quick time events and button mashing sequences to the boss fights and various cinematics. They've also added a type of dialogue wheel with paraphrased dialogue options. All of these things are pretty console-centric additions to what's supposed to be a PC-centric game.

I'll wait and see how the inventory screen turns out before passing final judgment. If they get rid of drag-and-drop and replace it with long text lists, consolitis has struck again.

Witcher was more about the storyline, the environment, and how they handled the choices in the game. The combat system would probably work better on a console. The combat wasn't anything great.

One small problem, who is going to make this one? Atari lost both Bioware and Obsidian. I would love a good Neverwinter as much as the next guy, but Atari's internal devs are absolutely horrible. Do they have any good studios left to make this?

As for 4th edition, that almost seems made to be played as a video game.

He deserved the money. Yes, he lost NCsoft a lot of money and his games lately have been horrible. That doesn't give NCsoft a right to screw him with his contract though.

TorchMaster wrote on Jul 30, 2010, 11:50:
I wonder if this has the potential to force NCsoft into bankruptcy. That’s a sizable judgment and NCsoft hasn’t exactly had many hits lately, see: Aion and Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa. I was interested in what Guild Wars 2 would bring us…

=Torch=

$28 million is a small sum for a company the size of NCsoft. It will put a dent in the quarter's revenues, but in the big picture its just a drop in the bucket. Their MMOs have sucked lately, but they still make a good deal of money of Lineage and City of Heroes. Guild Wars also made them a ton of money back in its day. They've had some spectacular failures, but they've also have some great successes.

D_K_night wrote on Jul 29, 2010, 12:17:
...so SF4 wasn't enough pull them out of the red? Hey Capcom...I think it's time for you to come with some...you know...new games, not just rehashed titles over and over.

This is first quarter so jan-mar, it doesn't include SSFIV (which obviously made a lot of money.) They didn't release anything good in that quarter so profits were low. I can guarantee you profits for 2nd quarter will be way up.

I wouldn't get too excited about this one, Relic has had some massive bug problems in their games lately. Its probably a better play to wait a few months and get something like this on sale or used (for the console.)

Kajetan wrote on Jul 16, 2010, 11:31:
Nobody speaks of you. Nobody cares what you want. We are talking about customers, who will sell their grandmothers soul to be able to play a fuckin CoD game. These people will gladly fork over shitloads of money.

Yes, people are crazy about CoD right now, but that doesn't mean CoD can get away with doing whatever it wants. There is competition out there. CoD's gameplay is nothing spectacular. They just crammed leveling into an FPS and people went nuts over it. Its something competition can easily replicate. You add a monthly fee for online play and you give people a reason to go to your competition. We've already seen BC2 targeting PC CoD players offering the dedicated servers MW2 didn't have. They were quite successful here.

On top of that, a lot of the CoD players started in single player and tried out multi-player because they want more. You toss a barrier like a monthly fee in there and people will think twice before paying that monthly fee. Some will pay it, some won't, but you have reduced your online player base. A major part of CoD's success was its momentum and gravity due to the large player base.

There are a lot of stupid gamers out there begging to be exploited, just like their are a lot of people with horrific taste in music. These masses can be fickle and once you lost them to competition they are hard or impossible to get back.

If you want to collect a monthly fee build CoD: MMO edition. There is a market to be exploited, but you have to make sure "Why should I pay a monthly fee?" is answered in spades.

The game is dying fast, but I think they'll probably keep it around until The Old Republic emerges. It is kind of amazing how they managed to be worse than Age of Conan, which in itself was spectacularly bad.