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Video Games: A (Sonic 3D) Blast From The Past


KiDisaster

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8 hours ago, Corvinus said:

It's funny, for years, many other fans were hoping for fantasy TW games (see Medieval II mods), and when it finally happened, here came the historical purists. Once again, the old saying goes you can't please everyone.

I don't know the ins & outs of their business, but it's clear that CA has now managed to significantly expand their team. They are not giving up on Warhammer, or fantasy in general, any time soon, but they have the crew to work on more than one game at a time, which means we could very well be getting some TW game every year from now on. That's something to celebrate.

The Total War historical fans are some of the most picky and irritating game fans I've ever had the mispleasure to experience. I spent some time at TWCentre and the level of griping and moaning about the wrong shaped sword or the wrong unit name was immense. Some of the most fun elements in Rome 1 were attacked every day due to their less than historical nature. 

I think Rome 2 gave them what they wanted, and I found that the game totally sucked ( for many reasons obviously not related to its historical nature), but in some ways it was never as fun or interesting as the more fantastical games. 

I love the historic games but in the end they are games and have to be fun. 

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But while I think it was a probably a really good business decision (not that I know anything about such subjects) to go with a pretty obscure tabletop game for their first foray into licensed IP's, I maintain that I have the right to bitch about them devoting like 5 years to it.

 

Warhammer wasn't really obscure by any means. The IP argument is interesting though. Sega licensed the Warhammer 40,000 IP primarily so Relic (which they also own) could make Dawn of War III and GW threw in the Warhammer fantasy IP for a song, which allowed Sega to make the Total War games (which have sold excellently whilst Dawn of War III bombed, hard).

If Sega/CW want to make more fantasy games, they'll have to stump up more money up-front but they should also have a lot more confidence after the success of Warhammer. A GoT or Middle-earth game should sell a lot more.

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29 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Warhammer wasn't really obscure by any means. The IP argument is interesting though. Sega licensed the Warhammer 40,000 IP primarily so Relic (which they also own) could make Dawn of War III and GW threw in the Warhammer fantasy IP for a song, which allowed Sega to make the Total War games (which have sold excellently whilst Dawn of War III bombed, hard).

If Sega/CW want to make more fantasy games, they'll have to stump up more money up-front but they should also have a lot more confidence after the success of Warhammer. A GoT or Middle-earth game should sell a lot more.

Do I remember correctly that Blizzard tried to license WH and 40k and when they were denied, just made Warcraft/Starcraft?

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46 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

The new Total War Saga game: Thrones of Britannia - no gameplay shown, just an inspiring cinematic; campaign starts in 878 AD, don't know how far the time period extends.

 

Yay a time period they have already done twice before.  How exciting.

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3 hours ago, Rhom said:

Do I remember correctly that Blizzard tried to license WH and 40k and when they were denied, just made Warcraft/Starcraft?

Yup. Well, they tried to licence Warhammer and didn't get very far. They didn't bother with 40K. GW I think have regretted not suing them ever since (since GW would be crushed like an ant if they tried now).

 

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Yay a time period they have already done twice before.  How exciting.

 

They're clearly cashing in on the Vikings/Last Kingdom market. Also to be fair, the Viking Invasion was on the old province-based map, so was fairly basic. The Kingdoms version was fine but it looks like the scale of this version is about twice as large, so the gameplay is going to be rather different (especially with the Warscape engine mechanics thrown in as well).

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1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

The new Total War Saga game: Thrones of Britannia - no gameplay shown, just an inspiring cinematic; campaign starts in 878 AD, don't know how far the time period extends.

 

So it's kinda like an official version the Medieval 2 mod The Last Kingdom. Which does work pretty well for me, as I really like that mod as  well as the old Viking Conquest expansion pack.

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1 hour ago, Slurktan said:

Yay a time period they have already done twice before.  How exciting.

 

59 minutes ago, Werthead said:

They're clearly cashing in on the Vikings/Last Kingdom market. Also to be fair, the Viking Invasion was on the old province-based map, so was fairly basic. The Kingdoms version was fine but it looks like the scale of this version is about twice as large, so the gameplay is going to be rather different (especially with the Warscape engine mechanics thrown in as well).

22 minutes ago, GallowKnight said:

So it's kinda like an official version the Medieval 2 mod The Last Kingdom. Which does work pretty well for me, as I really like that mod as  well as the old Viking Conquest expansion pack.

Oddly enough I haven't played either the old Viking Invasion expansion, nor the Last Kingdom mod for Medieval II (how new is that one?) And the Kingdoms campaign covered a different era (13th century). But a more recent one is the Age of Charlemagne, which is just a couple of generations away from this one, and with the Warscape engine, the games could very well be way too similar. Which is why I hope one thing they do for this one is add some complexity and differentiation between factions to army mechanics. The fyrd system that Alfred developed, and the building of defensive burghs would make for a different style of gameplay for the Saxons, than if you played with the Danes, who relied heavily on their naval power. A feudal system for raising armies would be nice, which is something they've tested out a bit with the Bretonnian faction in Warhammer.

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20 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I'm not sure when or how this loot box thing started, but I am increasingly infuriated by the idea.

Jim Sterling has been on an anti-lootbox campaign for a while. He discusses the origins here 

While they've been around for a long time as briantw mentions Jim squarely lays the blame for the current rampant use of these in full price $60 games on Overwatch. 

 

20 hours ago, briantw said:

I don't know when it started, but Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike have been doing it for years.  

The main difference is that, in both of those games, crates give either cosmetic items or unique weapon skins, so they don't offer any kind of competitive advantage.  TF2 was also free to play by the time crates came around, so no one really took issue with the idea of paying to unlock them.  They just offer unique ways to customize your character or give your weapons add-ons that track kills, head shots, etc.

I don't take issue with a F2P game having loot boxes, or crates, or whatever, especially when they don't actually give the people who unlock them any sort of advantage outside of looking more stylish. 

Loot boxes are BS in any game. What the heck is wrong with buying an item directly? Whichever way you look at it, loot boxes are all about getting you to spend more money to get what you really want (and in the process get a whole bunch of crap you don't want) than what can be charged for through direct sale. 

If games are mostly meant to be about fun for the player, and cosmetics do give those people who buy them more fun then it's clear that even cosmetic items affect the player's primary reason for playing a game. So while it's not the same evil as pay to win items, loot boxes for cosmetic items is still BS. IMO.

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33 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Jim Sterling has been on an anti-lootbox campaign for a while. He discusses the origins here 

While they've been around for a long time as briantw mentions Jim squarely lays the blame for the current rampant use of these in full price $60 games on Overwatch. 

 

Hey! Didn't that guy used to do the Escapist?

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4 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Hey! Didn't that guy used to do the Escapist?

Maybe, though when I first came across hims he was with Destructoid, I think, definitely not The Escapist. You may also be thinking of Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw who does the zero punctuation reviews, who is still with The Escapist.

He left Destructoid (or wherever) so as to become completely independent of the quagmire that is game journalism and critics who are reliant on game ad revenue for income...and loot bags at game events and conventions, for which they don't have to buy an unlock key.

Since then he has really unloaded on the shit business practices of just about all major game publishers. So it was a good move IMO.

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Started a proper Empire Grand Campaign and wow, the difficulty goes way up after the Road to Independence campaign. Enjoyable though. Playing as England, keeping out of continental affairs and going the colonisation route, which is interesting. I did get sucked into a war with Sweden which ended with me taking Norway and now there's massive raging battles over the Norwegian-Swedish border which are entertaining.

Went wild in the Caribbean and ended up wiping out the Pirates faction and taking over all of their islands. Also landed an expeditionary force in India and took two provinces, but bloody hell, the Indians are pretty tough. I might need to make peace to consolidate for a while and build up fresh forces.

The American mainland campaign started well but ran into logistical problems: there's a land bridge across the Great Lakes which is bugged and doesn't work, so I can't get out of western Canada to attack the Iroquois or Commanche, who I need to defeat to fulfil my quest objectives and get the Thirteen Colonies to formally join the British Empire, which is necessary so I can then push the French out of North America; Canada can't do it alone. The only way out is to go through French territory, and I don't want to go to war with France just yet.

This is quite good fun, a complex, multi-theatre war raging across three continents.

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5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Loot boxes are BS in any game. What the heck is wrong with buying an item directly? Whichever way you look at it, loot boxes are all about getting you to spend more money to get what you really want (and in the process get a whole bunch of crap you don't want) than what can be charged for through direct sale. 

If games are mostly meant to be about fun for the player, and cosmetics do give those people who buy them more fun then it's clear that even cosmetic items affect the player's primary reason for playing a game. So while it's not the same evil as pay to win items, loot boxes for cosmetic items is still BS. IMO.

Can't speak for other games, but in TF2 you basically can.  There's a community marketplace where you can buy pretty much anything that someone is willing to sell.  I've made a ton of money selling stuff on there over the years, which has given me plenty of free (sort of) Steam games.  TF2 also has trading, so you can get items you want that way.

Generally speaking, though, as long as the crates only have cosmetic or otherwise meaningless items (like new skins for weapons), they don't really bother me.  Now, if a game is sixty bucks and still expects you to pay for that kind of shit, that gets a little ridiculous, but in a F2P game it makes sense as a way to make money.  And of course, any game that offers a competitive advantage in paid crates can fuck right off.

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3 hours ago, briantw said:

Can't speak for other games, but in TF2 you basically can.  There's a community marketplace where you can buy pretty much anything that someone is willing to sell.  I've made a ton of money selling stuff on there over the years, which has given me plenty of free (sort of) Steam games.  TF2 also has trading, so you can get items you want that way.

Generally speaking, though, as long as the crates only have cosmetic or otherwise meaningless items (like new skins for weapons), they don't really bother me.  Now, if a game is sixty bucks and still expects you to pay for that kind of shit, that gets a little ridiculous, but in a F2P game it makes sense as a way to make money.  And of course, any game that offers a competitive advantage in paid crates can fuck right off.

Hmmm, I wonder what the general unders and overs for the lootbox/gambling economy is. If you are one of the lucky ones and have made more from selling than you've had to sped to accumulate good value items from the loot box dice rolls, good for you I guess. Less good for the unlucky guys who have to pay to roll the dice a shit load of times and come out badly in the negative even when they do eventually get some decent items that can sell for a good price.

I also think people who are willing to pay $100 for a rare weapon or character skin on the lootbox market place are frickin bonkers (or even $10). And if you are making money off these weak minded fools, I mean I just wouldn't feel right doing it. It feels like these people are a kind of addict or something.

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4 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Hmmm, I wonder what the general unders and overs for the lootbox/gambling economy is. If you are one of the lucky ones and have made more from selling than you've had to sped to accumulate good value items from the loot box dice rolls, good for you I guess. Less good for the unlucky guys who have to pay to roll the dice a shit load of times and come out badly in the negative even when they do eventually get some decent items that can sell for a good price.

I also think people who are willing to pay $100 for a rare weapon or character skin on the lootbox market place are frickin bonkers (or even $10). And if you are making money off these weak minded fools, I mean I just wouldn't feel right doing it. It feels like these people are a kind of addict or something.

Well, I haven't only sold items from crates.  I've been playing TF2 since it came out, so I've accumulated a lot of random hat drops and such.  I also played a lot of the MvM mode (basically horde mode), where you can pay a dollar for a ticket and get random loot drops at the end.  Sometimes those loot drops are incredibly valuable, and I've lucked out a few times on those.  Had a gold sniper rifle for a while that I sold for like 100 bucks.

Then again, I've also bought some stuff I wanted on the community market, like a killstreak bow that both tracks your kills and causes you to gain cosmetic effects whenever you're on a killstreak of five or more, so I doubt I've broken even in the long run.  But I enjoy the game, and have enjoyed it for ten years now, so I don't mind dropping a couple of bucks every now and then on it.  This is especially true because the game has no paid DLC.  All updates are free, and the game went from having like six maps to having probably over 100 at this point.

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6 hours ago, briantw said:

Well, I haven't only sold items from crates.  I've been playing TF2 since it came out, so I've accumulated a lot of random hat drops and such.  I also played a lot of the MvM mode (basically horde mode), where you can pay a dollar for a ticket and get random loot drops at the end.  Sometimes those loot drops are incredibly valuable, and I've lucked out a few times on those.  Had a gold sniper rifle for a while that I sold for like 100 bucks.

Then again, I've also bought some stuff I wanted on the community market, like a killstreak bow that both tracks your kills and causes you to gain cosmetic effects whenever you're on a killstreak of five or more, so I doubt I've broken even in the long run.  But I enjoy the game, and have enjoyed it for ten years now, so I don't mind dropping a couple of bucks every now and then on it.  This is especially true because the game has no paid DLC.  All updates are free, and the game went from having like six maps to having probably over 100 at this point.

Sure, I agree it is good (indeed I would say a kind of moral imperative) to continue to financially support games that continue to provide great experiences and provides new content for free on an ongoing basis. And I do that by direct item purchases. Like in Rocket League I pretty much buy a couple of DLC cars each year, to maintain my support for the game. But why make a kill streak bow (for example) a rare crate drop item? Why not make it simply unlockable for purchase when you've achieved, say, a 10 or 15 kill streak in a game, or some other in game achievement. Or make the threshold to unlock the purchase quite difficult for most players to achieve, but if you are a very good player and you reach that threshold multiple times then you can buy the item multiple times, and then you can sell it. Such items still have a rare status and can be resold on the secondary market for more than you paid, because they are still really hard to get. It's just that they would be hard to get through player achievement rather than RNG dice rolls in loot boxes.

I think there are better, more ethical ways of getting persistent revenue and having a secondary market without exposing some young kids to gambling mechanics.

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1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Sure, I agree it is good (indeed I would say a kind of moral imperative) to continue to financially support games that continue to provide great experiences and provides new content for free on an ongoing basis. And I do that by direct item purchases. Like in Rocket League I pretty much buy a couple of DLC cars each year, to maintain my support for the game. But why make a kill streak bow (for example) a rare crate drop item? Why not make it simply unlockable for purchase when you've achieved, say, a 10 or 15 kill streak in a game, or some other in game achievement. Or make the threshold to unlock the purchase quite difficult for most players to achieve, but if you are a very good player and you reach that threshold multiple times then you can buy the item multiple times, and then you can sell it. Such items still have a rare status and can be resold on the secondary market for more than you paid, because they are still really hard to get. It's just that they would be hard to get through player achievement rather than RNG dice rolls in loot boxes.

I think there are better, more ethical ways of getting persistent revenue and having a secondary market without exposing some young kids to gambling mechanics.

I think the simple answer is because the allure of spending $2.50 and potentially getting an item worth a hundred dollars is more intriguing to players than simply paying whatever the market price is for the bow.  I also think that it is done this way to allow a community market to naturally develop where prices set themselves based on demand, which in turn gives Valve more money since they take a cut of every purchase.  

Honestly, it's probably kind of a shit system, but since I'm not forced to buy any of the stuff I buy and the game's updates have been free for ten years (and they literally just released another major update a month ago with new maps and weapons for free), I don't really care all that much.

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