Tipsy McStagger wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 15:35:

HoSpanky wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 14:07:
ARK is feature-complete enough, and stable enough, that if they never finish it, I'll be happy with what they've got out now. Except that's not what's happening; there's at least a patch a day (making running a server a pain in the ass). They're adding content at a nearly impossible pace, fixing weird issues and adding community-requested features all over the place. The only thing wrong so far is framerate, it requires some pretty beefy hardware to run KIND OF smoothly. You won't get 60/1080p out of it no matter what you throw at it, but you can probably squeeze 40 out. Unlike most EA games, you can SEE where the performance went.

Anyway, point is, it's earning that 10million. It's a fun, if slower paced, game to play with your friends. Planning excursions to start at dawn so you can get back safely before night, with a few resource-laden dinos in tow, is a neat change of pace. Night still comes on too fast, by the time the sun looks like it's setting, you have approximately 30 seconds before nightfall. You do NOT want to be out at night, as you can EITHER carry a torch, or a weapon. Not like a weapon's going to help when you hear trees falling and a bellow...those moments are truly terrifying and awesome. We have our own PvE server going, as the douchebaggery going on the public pvp servers is more than we want to deal with. The various dinos are providing JUST the right amount of failure-to-success for an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

Sounds like this game would actually be fun in an MMO with a better PvP system implementation. yet, it's still on a counter-strike server (like the rest of them) with horribly laid out PvP (like all of them).

Meaning, it's a horrible alpha game that shouldn't be making money (like all of them).

These are the most broken games in the gaming industry right now

I don't think so. The MMO screws it up because it is one server, one set of rules, it is made to bring in cash all the time, there will be people that put in time you simply can't get anywhere close to matching. To samey, to grindy in its way, mmo's I always feel pulled to have to keep moving fast.

I'm squarely back into Player Run Servers. More variety, you can get a little group of people on it, roughly same amount of time for each player, no one's trying to strike it rich, cheating removed with right group and modified rules as you go, also you can jump on other servers with their own unique settings for a different vibe.

As for the OP in this reply, I can say 7D2D is very similar in what you mention. Is Ark allowing mods?

Task wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:33:
That is not what I was implying. 37% of steam games haven't been played that people buy (whether the actual game is "good" or not), that sit in back logs. Take Witcher 2 on steam for example, only 16% of people that own it on Steam have actually finished the game on any difficulty.

Maybe it's just me, but I very rarely ever finish games with single player campaigns. I get to the last level or near the end of the story and typically move on. Got to the Xen level of HL, and quit (Did finish HL2 though). Same for XCom (all of them). Same for BL2 (although I did finish BL1). Oblivion twice. Bioshock Infinite. Batman. Bulletstorm. Doom 3 (actually only made it half way - heh). Far Cry. BFBC2. Red Faction.

It's not intentional, I think I guess I must just see the end in sight and decide it's good enough and go do something else. Oddly, I did finish the SP campaigns for CoD: MW1 & MW2.

Primalchrome wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 14:10:

Task wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:33:
Take Witcher 2 on steam for example, only 16% of people that own it on Steam have actually finished the game on any difficulty.

I have hundreds of hours on Skyrim and haven't finished it.

Skyrim is an open worlder time waster do whatever floats ya boat (increases/decreasing dependent on Mod Bloat), Witcher 2 is story-progressive linearly chaining to new chapter areas/non-open world.

HoSpanky wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 14:07:
ARK is feature-complete enough, and stable enough, that if they never finish it, I'll be happy with what they've got out now. Except that's not what's happening; there's at least a patch a day (making running a server a pain in the ass). They're adding content at a nearly impossible pace, fixing weird issues and adding community-requested features all over the place. The only thing wrong so far is framerate, it requires some pretty beefy hardware to run KIND OF smoothly. You won't get 60/1080p out of it no matter what you throw at it, but you can probably squeeze 40 out. Unlike most EA games, you can SEE where the performance went.

Anyway, point is, it's earning that 10million. It's a fun, if slower paced, game to play with your friends. Planning excursions to start at dawn so you can get back safely before night, with a few resource-laden dinos in tow, is a neat change of pace. Night still comes on too fast, by the time the sun looks like it's setting, you have approximately 30 seconds before nightfall. You do NOT want to be out at night, as you can EITHER carry a torch, or a weapon. Not like a weapon's going to help when you hear trees falling and a bellow...those moments are truly terrifying and awesome. We have our own PvE server going, as the douchebaggery going on the public pvp servers is more than we want to deal with. The various dinos are providing JUST the right amount of failure-to-success for an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

Sounds like this game would actually be fun in an MMO with a better PvP system implementation. yet, it's still on a counter-strike server (like the rest of them) with horribly laid out PvP (like all of them).

Meaning, it's a horrible alpha game that shouldn't be making money (like all of them).

These are the most broken games in the gaming industry right now

Verno wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 14:01:

eRe4s3r wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 13:30:

Esoteric wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:11:
Yeah, because they're horrible games and no one likes playing them.

He means because these games are out for what seems eternity now. Either way, imo this was one of the worst sales in quite a while, nothing I wanted was properly flagged down in price.... I bought Waveform... for the value of a good trading card sale (19ct).. and aside that I hoard money and have nothing to spend it on...

Usually with such sales in the past I found at least 2 or 3 gems... but this time it was just depressing.

I don't know, I thought it was a fine sale as usual. I think a lot of people just under estimate how much they over stuffed their gaming library. Newer EA games aren't on Steam anymore either so that removes a big chunk of potential titles. I have a large back log and still found 3 games to buy. There were very respectable sales on pretty much everything I've purchased in the past too.

CS:GO is insanely popular, the franchise has attracted the youth demographic again somehow all these years later. L4D2 is still played a fair bit and goes on deep sales.

Maybe it's because of currency exchange rates.. but to me tons of these sales were far above the "what I find acceptable to pay during a sale" limit ;p I mean even more depressing even is that most of the GoG sales.. was for games I already own. As in, physically. The CD's ;p

HoSpanky wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 14:07:
ARK is feature-complete enough, and stable enough, that if they never finish it, I'll be happy with what they've got out now. Except that's not what's happening; there's at least a patch a day (making running a server a pain in the ass). They're adding content at a nearly impossible pace, fixing weird issues and adding community-requested features all over the place. The only thing wrong so far is framerate, it requires some pretty beefy hardware to run KIND OF smoothly. You won't get 60/1080p out of it no matter what you throw at it, but you can probably squeeze 40 out. Unlike most EA games, you can SEE where the performance went.

Anyway, point is, it's earning that 10million. It's a fun, if slower paced, game to play with your friends. Planning excursions to start at dawn so you can get back safely before night, with a few resource-laden dinos in tow, is a neat change of pace. Night still comes on too fast, by the time the sun looks like it's setting, you have approximately 30 seconds before nightfall. You do NOT want to be out at night, as you can EITHER carry a torch, or a weapon. Not like a weapon's going to help when you hear trees falling and a bellow...those moments are truly terrifying and awesome. We have our own PvE server going, as the douchebaggery going on the public pvp servers is more than we want to deal with. The various dinos are providing JUST the right amount of failure-to-success for an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

Thanks the write up, it sounds pretty cool. I swore off early access awhile ago but that does sound pretty tempting. I wonder if they will hit their release target next year.

Task wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:33:
Take Witcher 2 on steam for example, only 16% of people that own it on Steam have actually finished the game on any difficulty.

I have hundreds of hours on Skyrim and haven't finished it.

Pillars pretty much went nowhere considering there seemed to be a consensus that it would do well, it never even cracked the top 5 while D:OS during it's honeymoon summer sale sat #1 for many days at a time.

Horn... I'm tootin ya!

(I wish pillars did better tbh, cant get enough good rpgs these days)

ARK is feature-complete enough, and stable enough, that if they never finish it, I'll be happy with what they've got out now. Except that's not what's happening; there's at least a patch a day (making running a server a pain in the ass). They're adding content at a nearly impossible pace, fixing weird issues and adding community-requested features all over the place. The only thing wrong so far is framerate, it requires some pretty beefy hardware to run KIND OF smoothly. You won't get 60/1080p out of it no matter what you throw at it, but you can probably squeeze 40 out. Unlike most EA games, you can SEE where the performance went.

Anyway, point is, it's earning that 10million. It's a fun, if slower paced, game to play with your friends. Planning excursions to start at dawn so you can get back safely before night, with a few resource-laden dinos in tow, is a neat change of pace. Night still comes on too fast, by the time the sun looks like it's setting, you have approximately 30 seconds before nightfall. You do NOT want to be out at night, as you can EITHER carry a torch, or a weapon. Not like a weapon's going to help when you hear trees falling and a bellow...those moments are truly terrifying and awesome. We have our own PvE server going, as the douchebaggery going on the public pvp servers is more than we want to deal with. The various dinos are providing JUST the right amount of failure-to-success for an enjoyable way to spend an evening.

eRe4s3r wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 13:30:

Esoteric wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:11:
Yeah, because they're horrible games and no one likes playing them.

He means because these games are out for what seems eternity now. Either way, imo this was one of the worst sales in quite a while, nothing I wanted was properly flagged down in price.... I bought Waveform... for the value of a good trading card sale (19ct).. and aside that I hoard money and have nothing to spend it on...

Usually with such sales in the past I found at least 2 or 3 gems... but this time it was just depressing.

I don't know, I thought it was a fine sale as usual. I think a lot of people just under estimate how much they over stuffed their gaming library. Newer EA games aren't on Steam anymore either so that removes a big chunk of potential titles. I have a large back log and still found 3 games to buy. There were very respectable sales on pretty much everything I've purchased in the past too.

CS:GO is insanely popular, the franchise has attracted the youth demographic again somehow all these years later. L4D2 is still played a fair bit and goes on deep sales.

Witcher 2 is a fantastic game and worth playing.

As for games purchased and sitting in the library:

I'd say it's realistic that 20% of my games haven't been played yet. But that's because I buy them on big sales and they sit in my back log of games to complete.

Esoteric wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:11:
Yeah, because they're horrible games and no one likes playing them.

He means because these games are out for what seems eternity now. Either way, imo this was one of the worst sales in quite a while, nothing I wanted was properly flagged down in price.... I bought Waveform... for the value of a good trading card sale (19ct).. and aside that I hoard money and have nothing to spend it on...

Usually with such sales in the past I found at least 2 or 3 gems... but this time it was just depressing.

ockky wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 12:06:
What?! no. People back in the day didn't go to Best Buy to look for games on sale. People, such as myself, do look at the steam sale and buy games once they hit a threshmark. Hell, I've owned CS:GO for over 5yrs and just installed it a week ago. I've owned Witcher 2 now for a couple of years and have never installed it. I have over 170 games in my steam library alone and have yet to install 80% of them.

I went to stores and bargains played a factor in buying. There were plenty of games back in the day I didn't finish, a few I never played. That said, there is no doubt more of this going on than ever. $5 is enticing for a game that looks good even if you don't get to it.

siapnar wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:28:
How to Survive was on sale for less than a dollar. Am I reading that right?

If I recall there was a paid version where you could add First Person to the game, it cost under a buck... Something like that.

dubfanatic wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 12:02:
Finished and played are different things especially for a long game like The Witcher 2. I bet if you could come up with the stats back in the brick-and-mortar days for a game like Baldur's Gate 2 it would be similar.

What?! no. People back in the day didn't go to Best Buy to look for games on sale. People, such as myself, do look at the steam sale and buy games once they hit a threshmark. Hell, I've owned CS:GO for over 5yrs and just installed it a week ago. I've owned Witcher 2 now for a couple of years and have never installed it. I have over 170 games in my steam library alone and have yet to install 80% of them.

EDIT: added quote

This comment was edited on Jun 26, 2015, 12:36.

Task wrote on Jun 26, 2015, 11:33:
That is not what I was implying. 37% of steam games haven't been played that people buy (whether the actual game is "good" or not), that sit in back logs. Take Witcher 2 on steam for example, only 16% of people that own it on Steam have actually finished the game on any difficulty.

Finished and played are different things especially for a long game like The Witcher 2. I bet if you could come up with the stats back in the brick-and-mortar days for a game like Baldur's Gate 2 it would be similar.

That is not what I was implying. 37% of steam games haven't been played that people buy (whether the actual game is "good" or not), that sit in back logs. Take Witcher 2 on steam for example, only 16% of people that own it on Steam have actually finished the game on any difficulty.

How to Survive was on sale for less than a dollar. Am I reading that right?

Yeah, because they're horrible games and no one likes playing them.

I wonder how many of the copies will remain sitting on someone's library unplayed.