[Sledgehammer]

If a desire to see software at least free of bugs is considered hardcore it is no surprise why game industry is where it is. I bet those poor huge ass companies have no money to hire competent play-testers for their simplified as fuck games anymore, yet they ask $60 for base games (and that is now generous), make shitton of overpriced DLCs or sometimes microtransactions. Imagine if people actually tried to justify expensive food being spoiled, poisoned or made of shit. Fuck, if people in good restaurant constantly had health problems due to quality of food, said restaurant would be in big trouble, at best they would just lose their reputation and majority of their consumers forever. I'm not even speaking of PC market because it's a norm to see buggy games even on consoles.

Sure thing food business isn't as complex as developing software and you can't get rid of absolutely every bug, but fixing critical issues before releasing a game or shortly after release (that includes performance issues obviously) isn't impossible unless you're alone (which just means that it would take more time to fix bugs).

[NNC]

Forge, on 05 January 2019 - 01:11 PM, said:

You're doing everything you can to prove that you deserve the reputation you have.

refer back to my post about your lack of self-awareness.

'nuff said.

You don't even react to what I wrote, but repeat your predetermined narratives like a parrot, which narratives are nothing else, but personal insults. Without any kind of prelude or context, you just came up shitposting, which you call joking (yeah, "intestinal fortitude" and others), and you're surprised I'm offended. I perfectly know my shortcomings and know my own attitude problems, it's you, who don't understand what's the serious flaw with what you are doing here. At least next time, try to spit on me when I give you some reasons, ie. I'm "hating" something. Thank you, friend, end of debate from my side.

[Forge]

Sledgehammer, on 05 January 2019 - 01:49 PM, said:

I bet those poor huge ass companies have no money to hire competent play-testers for their simplified as fuck games anymore,

That's why most of them have 'early access'. They use the community to test their copy-paste code and engine. Some even charge for the privilege.

[Jimmy]

Zaxx, on 05 January 2019 - 11:53 AM, said:

I was talking about how the large majority of the arena FPS audience evaporated because they went to games that offered a lower skill ceiling with more approachable gameplay. In CoD you don't have to care about controlling the map, you don't have to care about pickups, there are no advanced movement mechanics, all of the weapons demand a similar skillset (no projectiles vs. tracking vs. hitscan, usually just hitscan) and the outcome of a match is decided by the spawns on the noob to avarage skill levels = easier to play. And sure, there are people around who stuck to the more demanding, old school titles just like there are people who keep games like Quake Champions alive but it is a smaller niche than fighting games now and not because the suits came in, decided to casualize the market and people just ate that shit up but because most people genuinely wanted those casualized games (even in the 90s).

Sure, the industry got bigger and now there are significantly more casuals than back in the day but they were always there and they were always the majority.

You're arguing my point for me yet missing the most important part: The industry DECIDED to cater to casuals.
Basically we should kill all the casuals and the developers who make games for them.

Sledgehammer, on 05 January 2019 - 01:49 PM, said:

If a desire to see software at least free of bugs is considered hardcore it is no surprise why game industry is where it is. I bet those poor huge ass companies have no money to hire competent play-testers for their simplified as fuck games anymore, yet they ask $60 for base games (and that is now generous), make shitton of overpriced DLCs or sometimes microtransactions. Imagine if people actually tried to justify expensive food being spoiled, poisoned or made of shit. Fuck, if people in good restaurant constantly had health problems due to quality of food, said restaurant would be in big trouble, at best they would just lose their reputation and majority of their consumers forever. I'm not even speaking of PC market because it's a norm to see buggy games even on consoles.

Often times these DLC and microtransaction items are things that should have been in the game in the first place, if not literally and purposefully cut out the game to be resold later. (Duke Nukem Forever, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect series, Fallout series, etc etc)

[Forge]

Jimmy 100MPH, on 05 January 2019 - 11:49 PM, said:

Often times these DLC and microtransaction items are things that should have been in the game in the first place, if not literally and purposefully cut out the game to be resold later.

That's a result of the casuals demand to keep the selling costs stagnant for the last two+ decades.

[Jimmy]

I've always wished that a "proper" Tony Hawk's Underground sequel would be released, because the character customization would become a hilarious playground of microtransaction bullshit. Remember when you could use hundreds, even thousands, of customizable options in games right out the box? It was just a feature!

[axl]

Jimmy 100MPH, on 05 January 2019 - 11:49 PM, said:

Often times these DLC and microtransaction items are things that should have been in the game in the first place, if not literally and purposefully cut out the game to be resold later. (Duke Nukem Forever, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect series, Fallout series, etc etc)

Yes, but there were even examples in the good old days. Blood for instance. We all love Blood, however when version 1.0 was released it was not only filled with bugs (it crashed all the time on my system), but lacked certain features that were supposed to be in the main game: some weapons didn't have alternate fire such as the napam cannon. This was only added with the purchase of the Plasma Pak. Moreover the levels were cleary old levels that they hadn't used in the main game.

[Jimmy]

Well of course things get cut or forgotten over the course of development and of course developers were planning to release expansions or sequels, but if you look at a game like Mass Effect 3 or Duke Nukem Forever that's clearly not what happened. Mass Effect 3 paywalls dozens of important storyline parts at various parts of the game, it doesn't add more afterward, but during! And don't even get me started on DNF where entire sections were obviously chopped up and switched around because they just couldn't fucking finish it in time, even after a hundred delays.

[Ninety-Six]

If I'm going to be honest, the idea of finishing up and repackaging "beta" content (not the most accurate term but by saying it you understand what I mean) as DLC is not the worst way of doing things. You could argue it's a way for developers to salvage something they spent time on but had to cut due to time or other issues. On the other hand, taking a knife to a game in development solely to sell DLC of it is the sort of thing you should be whacked with a bat for.

[Sledgehammer]

Forge, on 05 January 2019 - 04:59 PM, said:

That's why most of them have 'early access'. They use the community to test their copy-paste code and engine. Some even charge for the privilege.

Don't forget about never finishing or at least fixing all the issues. This, terrible business practices overall, microtransactions, overpriced garbage, shitton of DLC, all of it exist for the same reason why nobody cares about bugs.

Jimmy 100MPH, on 05 January 2019 - 11:49 PM, said:

Basically we should kill all the casuals and the developers who make games for them.

They're already dead. People who allow such treatment have nothing in their empty shells. As for developers, they're either okay with it or cowards, in the end it's their owners who really exploit their consumers.

Jimmy 100MPH, on 05 January 2019 - 11:49 PM, said:

Often times these DLC and microtransaction items are things that should have been in the game in the first place, if not literally and purposefully cut out the game to be resold later. (Duke Nukem Forever, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect series, Fallout series, etc etc)

Add to that Soul Calibur 6, the most recent example where they decided to announce with a trailer a DLC character even before the game was fucking released, a character they clearly cut. That was really blatant but they got away with it. If I'm not mistaken after that they even made a "if the game won't sell we'll drop franchise" ultimatum too for damage control purpose.

[Zaxx]

Jimmy 100MPH, on 05 January 2019 - 11:49 PM, said:

You're arguing my point for me yet missing the most important part: The industry DECIDED to cater to casuals.
Basically we should kill all the casuals and the developers who make games for them.

I'm not arguing against your point, I agree with it along with the fact that the industry is catering to casuals, I just think it's important to see the reasons behind that. The main reason is that they are the much bigger audience so if you want to make a game that's successful (even if it's a niche title) you have to cater to the casuals. That's the best approach you can have, there is nothing wrong with that BUT it's important how you cater to that audience.

And that's where they fuck it up usually: they cater to the casual audience by dumbing shit down and designing games for dummies. For some titles that can work but if you do it for a game that is hardcore in nature you will fuck it up, you get rid of the game's identity and at the end all you have left is just a corpse of a game. A hardcore game can only cater to the casuals by smartening them up with game design that's streamlined in the right places without taking anything away from the hardcore aspect (streamlining does not equal to dumbing down) and by implementing stuff that can help casuals get better and more invested. I think the perfect example of this is how Firaxis handled XCOM: they took the old X-COM franchise, got rid of a lot of stuff that prevented casuals from getting to the tactical layer and focused the game a lot more on that. They got rid of time units, replaced them with a system that gives you the same gameplay choices but is a lot easier to calculate with and then just went on with there. Casuals loved it, hardcore players loved it and the two new XCOM games are the most successful titles in the franchise as a result.

Then you have games like Quake Champions where the game design itself is absolutely aimed at the hardcore audience even with the inclusion of champions but there isn't even a fucking worthwhile tutorial in the game and its microtransaction system is clearly aimed at casuals who want cosmetics. The result: old players and new players who actually know what Quake is stay, casuals are intimidated and leave because they don't even understand what the fuck is happening on their screens. Yet when it comes to marketing, community streams and whatnot they keep implying that QC is a fun little game and everyone can just jump in and have fun. In reality it can be argued that QC is even harder than Quake 3 / Quake Live because in the old games everyone had the same movement system, the hitboxes were large and there were no abilities to worry about so it was just easier to read. In QC one character has a large hitbox while against others you're shooting at mosquitos that move in a way a casual, new player can't even comprehend. So new players are hard to find while the hardcore audience that is there is not really supporting the f2p business model since they don't care about loot boxes, battle passes and whatnot. And that's how fuckups happen, by catering to the casual audience in a bad way and not catering to the hardcore audience in the business model. The game should teach new players a lot more instead of the marketing fooling them into thinking that QC is the next Overwatch and they should sell more shit hardcore people are interested in instead of just shitty cosmetics. Their community managers and their game economy designers have no idea what a Quake player wants and QC esports is managed by a former Quake 3 pro player who actually has no experience in esports management = it's a fail on so many levels.

TLDR: There is a balance that should be maintained and then everyone can eat.

[Jimmy]

Let the casuals eat cake.

[Forge]

Jimmy 100MPH, on 06 January 2019 - 10:21 AM, said:

Let the casuals eat cake.

smart phone games.

[gemeaux333]

The cake is a lie !

[Zaxx]

gemeaux333, on 06 January 2019 - 12:22 PM, said:

The cake is a lie !

Especially when videogame publishers talk about it lol. I mean you get a cake but it's made of nylon.

[gemeaux333]

As Glados said : "Before, I was fully involved in my tests, no one to kill me, no one to put me in a potatoe, no bird to eat me, it was happyness !"

[pacman]

Zaxx, on 06 January 2019 - 09:28 AM, said:

I'm not arguing against your point, I agree with it along with the fact that the industry is catering to casuals, I just think it's important to see the reasons behind that. The main reason is that they are the much bigger audience so if you want to make a game that's successful (even if it's a niche title) you have to cater to the casuals. That's the best approach you can have, there is nothing wrong with that BUT it's important how you cater to that audience.

And that's where they fuck it up usually: they cater to the casual audience by dumbing shit down and designing games for dummies. For some titles that can work but if you do it for a game that is hardcore in nature you will fuck it up, you get rid of the game's identity and at the end all you have left is just a corpse of a game. A hardcore game can only cater to the casuals by smartening them up with game design that's streamlined in the right places without taking anything away from the hardcore aspect (streamlining does not equal to dumbing down) and by implementing stuff that can help casuals get better and more invested. I think the perfect example of this is how Firaxis handled XCOM: they took the old X-COM franchise, got rid of a lot of stuff that prevented casuals from getting to the tactical layer and focused the game a lot more on that. They got rid of time units, replaced them with a system that gives you the same gameplay choices but is a lot easier to calculate with and then just went on with there. Casuals loved it, hardcore players loved it and the two new XCOM games are the most successful titles in the franchise as a result.

Then you have games like Quake Champions where the game design itself is absolutely aimed at the hardcore audience even with the inclusion of champions but there isn't even a fucking worthwhile tutorial in the game and its microtransaction system is clearly aimed at casuals who want cosmetics. The result: old players and new players who actually know what Quake is stay, casuals are intimidated and leave because they don't even understand what the fuck is happening on their screens. Yet when it comes to marketing, community streams and whatnot they keep implying that QC is a fun little game and everyone can just jump in and have fun. In reality it can be argued that QC is even harder than Quake 3 / Quake Live because in the old games everyone had the same movement system, the hitboxes were large and there were no abilities to worry about so it was just easier to read. In QC one character has a large hitbox while against others you're shooting at mosquitos that move in a way a casual, new player can't even comprehend. So new players are hard to find while the hardcore audience that is there is not really supporting the f2p business model since they don't care about loot boxes, battle passes and whatnot. And that's how fuckups happen, by catering to the casual audience in a bad way and not catering to the hardcore audience in the business model. The game should teach new players a lot more instead of the marketing fooling them into thinking that QC is the next Overwatch and they should sell more shit hardcore people are interested in instead of just shitty cosmetics. Their community managers and their game economy designers have no idea what a Quake player wants and QC esports is managed by a former Quake 3 pro player who actually has no experience in esports management = it's a fail on so many levels.

TLDR: There is a balance that should be maintained and then everyone can eat.

actually QC is seen as a joke within the hardcore Quake scene. Only pros that make money are playing QC and then a mix of some people on the hardcore side that want to play it because of tournaments and some newer casuals. The rest is still playing QL. see esreality.com

Q3/QL was the best 1v1 fps competitive game, trying to reinvent the wheel is just not going to work because noobs would rather play more friendly games and hardcore fans of the series will stick to the real quakes with no gimmicks.

the main reason id/bethesda isn't making QL f2p is because they are scared QL would surpass QC in player base.

[Zaxx]

Most of the playerbase switched to QC, QL is dying slowly but steadily. I get what you are saying and partially even agree but let it go, mate. Quake needs change...

...but for the love of God I hope they do something about QC's current duel format because it's just insufferable.

[Hank]

Zaxx, on 11 January 2019 - 06:38 PM, said:

Most of the playerbase switched to QC, QL is dying slowly but steadily. I get what you are saying and partially even agree but let it go, mate. Quake needs change...

...but for the love of God I hope they do something about QC's current duel format because it's just insufferable.

I'm a Quake fanatic. Can play 'I' and 'II' in my sleep and pass with high marks, even use the Quark/netradiant editor to do stuff.

The video game industry has changed.
It does not matter what had worked, only what will may make billions(millions) for them, now.
Life is short! Try IndieDB, and look for real new games, you'll find them. But it may need some time to do, though.

[Zaxx]

Hank, on 11 January 2019 - 08:16 PM, said:

It does not matter what had worked, only what will may make billions(millions) for them, now.

Stop there! There is a misconception about what Quake Champions is and what it is not so even though it's off topic I'll try to have a go at explaining it properly.

First things first: QC is not Bethesda's attempt at taking Quake and making it into something that's "popular with the kids". Sure, it's a free-2-play game with a business model based around buying characters, cosmetics and battle passes but that's an industry standard these days to fund development, maintenance and to make money. It kinda works since the game is generating a profit as of now but I think it could do a lot better with different things.

Second: QC is not an AAA project, its budget is somewhere between an indie title and an AAA game.

Also: QC is not a "casualized" version of Quake and it's not copying games like Team Fortress 2 or Overwatch even if it may seem like that at first glance. QC wants to make arena FPS more interesting by mixing everything that was in the old games with a set of new ideas. Some champions have Q2/VQ3 style movement, others use QW/CPMA or Quake 4's crouch sliding mechanic and there's even a character where movement can be best described as a mix between Quake and Unreal Tournament 2004. On top of this all the champs have a unique active and passive ability, for example as an active Ranger can throw an orb to do damage with, teleport to the orb's location and if he hits someone with it and teleports into the opponent at the right time he can telefrag (if the opponent's HP+AP is lower than 100) + as a passive he gets reduced self damage from rocket jumping. This stuff adds a lot of variety to the gameplay but it does not make the game class-based so you're never limited to a certain role with a specific character.

The game has a fairly mixed reputation now but that's mainly for two reasons:

- Old school Quake 3 veterans pretty much hate change since they view Q3/QL as the perfect arena shooter.
- The game is as early access as it gets: the engine is unfinished and lacks final optimization + balance changes to the gameplay are frequent.

It's a great game when it works and thankfully nowadays the balance is in a good place + there is light at the end of the tunnel for the engine too. Personally I find the champion aspect a breath of fresh and that's the reason why I went back to my "arena shooter glory days", they just need to polish the whole thing up.

Anyway as for where the game is now I think this video summarizes it pretty well:

[Hank]

Zaxx, on 11 January 2019 - 09:08 PM, said:

Stop there! There is a misconception about what Quake Champions is and what it is not so even though it's off topic I'll try to have a go at explaining it properly.

True, we are off topic
Still ...
Yep. Fair enough. However, it's run by Zenimax.
https://bethesda.net...erms-of-service

Zenimax, is in my shit box (black list etc.) ever since they dared to sue John Carmack's brain, for their own.
John won the first round.
https://www.gamesind...lawsuit-is-over
but, what is Zenimax's priority? Making vast cash or making good games?

(and this brings the topic back to Gearbox, same question, my answer is: play chess with real life peeps , and fuck the industry )

[Zaxx]

Yeah, Bethesda / Zenimax is famous for suing people for shitty reasons left and right but from the looks of it and by taking the general workings of intellectual property law into consideration (and it saddens me to say this but when you're a lawyer you just have to make a point like this) they will win that case against Oculus. That's just the legality of it all though, when it comes to the moral questions it's pretty clear that Bethesda did not give a fuck about VR while Carmack was at id Software but now that it seems to work out they want a piece of it one way or the other.

Quote

what is Zenimax's priority? Making vast cash or making good games?

Nobody will spend money on a shitty Quake game so here those two things can agree with each other.

[Jimmy]

Dude stop sucking Quake Champions' dick. Its not taken seriously lol

[Zaxx]

Jimmy 100MPH, on 14 January 2019 - 09:57 PM, said:

Dude stop sucking Quake Champions' dick.

I'm not but I do think it's a great fucking game when it works. If they polish it up then it will be taken seriously.

[NightFright]

It's shocking to see how they rape QC into every hole it possibly has to offer. I bought the Champions Pack back then, but never got around to actually installing the game. Looks like I am better off waiting... or actually just forgetting about it, cutting my losses.

[Sledgehammer]

Quake to them is just a name they can milk to death, same goes for almost anything else they own, even their own child TES isn't safe from it. I mean if you were a corporate who never even possibly heard of what is Quake you would feel nothing about it yourself and surely it being raped would be the least of your concern.

[Zaxx]

NightFright, on 15 January 2019 - 02:13 AM, said:

It's shocking to see how they rape QC into every hole it possibly has to offer. I bought the Champions Pack back then, but never got around to actually installing the game. Looks like I am better off waiting... or actually just forgetting about it, cutting my losses.

If you haven't even installed the game yet that really begs the question of why did you buy the champions pack? Dude, when I started playing the early access version of QC around October of 2017 I did not even have the champ pack (Bethesda sent out lots of f2p keys to people who played the closed beta when early access started, that's how I got in). I hated a lot in the closed beta so I played around 40 hours before I decided to buy the full package.

And really in the one year I've played the game so far I had my fair share of issues and the slow pace of development is something that frustrates me a great deal but overall I have seen nothing but improvement and since the November patch the game is the best it has ever been. The devs are progressing slow, the engine was a dumpster fire for a long time and it still has issues (for example now the game is irrationally memory hungry... why? I have no idea, ask Saber Interactive) but honestly the game's current state does not even compare to how it was a year before.

Quote

I mean if you were a corporate who never even possibly heard of what is Quake you would feel nothing about it yourself and surely it being raped would be the least of your concern.

The design team is the same team that developed and maintained Quake Live.

But really my advice is to just try the game before coming to any kind of conclusion, it's fucking free.

[NightFright]

Well, it looked fun at that time, but until now I honestly just didn't come around to actually trying it. And whenever I want to, I read things about how much Bethesday f*cked up the game in the meantime, so I let it rest again for another time. And so on. Maybe until it comes out of beta?

[Zaxx]

That's a fine approach to have in most cases but when it comes to an online game I think it helps a lot if you can jump in early. For me it was a lot easier to get into the game at an early stage than it would be now because even though back then the player base was so small that you had to play against QL veterans most of the time (trial by fire lol) the game only had 9-10 champions. Now it has 16.

On the other hand guess there will be an influx of new and returning players at the 1.0 launch (and I don't think it's that far away, they way I see it the game can be shipshape by QuakeCon 2019 easily) so maybe that will provide a friendlier starting point instead of just getting destroyed for a few hours. The early "pain and sufferring" paid off for me though, it was a wonderful feeling to win deathmatch after deathmatch when they opened up the game to free players after E3.

[NightFright]

I am not particularly good in really skilled shooting anyway, with all that fancy rocket jumping, predicted aiming and what not. It's more about having fun, and I dunno if I can have that right now when so many things change fundamentally during a rather short period of time. I am more of a singleplayer person in general, I would say. However, since I had already played Quake III and several UTs, my hope was this would at least eventually turn into something similarly enjoyable. Didn't they add bots a while ago?