Slaps the hood of Baldur’s Gate 3 this bad boy can fit so many wildly exceeded expectations for a complete AAA-title at launch in 2023
Wasn't it also early access? At least some part of it? Or am I remembering the wrong game.
I'm confused why people are upset at early access. It can be done badly to sell a game that isn't finished for full price.
But Larian has always done early access this way: first act for testing. And it works great.
It was early access for like 3 years. Which allowed them to release a fully finished game, or the closest we had from that state since no one remembers when actually.
The first of three acts was in early access for nearly 3 years
There's a reason they changed the name from expansion to DLC.
Man we don't even get dlc anymore in the past you would get an expansion pack and it would only be like 75 hours of additional content then it became dlc and that was still like the ballad of gay tony undead nightmare now its micro transactions and its a car that was part of the base game that they removed so you can pay for it again
GTA IV DLC was soo good. I was hyped for what theyd do with some smaller stories within GTA V but they never came :(
Im worried about gta 6 the main story is supposed to be much shorter than gta 5 and there apparently going to be combining the main story dlc with gta online
It's not the same Rockstar that was making GTA 1-4 anyways. That ship sailed a long time ago.
As someone who started playing gta 3 and up rdr bully the warriors its hard to let go of old Rockstar that actually cared about there games
Thanks Bethesda
Don’t you know? This kind of quality is impossible for poor little AAA studios to keep up! We really should just settle for tech demos. :(
Well there is Hope with games like Baldurs Gate 3 and most indie titles
Indie is the way to go. The number of times I’ve been disappointed with “AAA” games is ludicrous.
You just have to be VERY careful with buying them day 1. I mostly just wait for a "complete edition" or "goty edition" or smth and THEN wait til that is cheap.
Yes, been loving BG3 but my best experiences with games in recent years have all been indie, from Outer Wilds that made me completely rethink what a game experience is meant to be, to Vampire Survivors that tickled all the right parts of my brain into making me spend hours watching pixels flash on screen in the most mind-numbingly addictive way. Indie devs really seem to be carrying forward the soul of gaming that larger gaming companies have lost, the exceptions being so rare that Baldur's Gate 3 is getting lauded for basically meeting what would have been normal expectations for a AA title in the early 2000's
Baldur's gate 3 is a work of art.
That's why i don't game anymore, well that and because I keep getting fucked by young people in multiplayer games
Oh, I still game, but mostly older games and GotY editions. And Indies.
AAA titles are dead for me, I want to buy a full game, with no in-game store, no 10ish DLCs available, no always on fuckery etc.
And if there are 1 or 2 huge expansions (like in Witcher 3) I have no problem with that. I bought expansions in the past, that's fine.
I used to be fine with all the shit practices you mentioned since I just wanted to play the games, but then I played Baldurs Gate 3 and remembered how gaming used to be.
I don't think I'll continue to buy DLC-ridden, half-finished and sometimes even outright broken games. Looking at you Diablo 4...
In that sense the publishers were rightfully afraid of the game. I guess it reminded a lot of us what we lost over the years.
From Soft is the light in the darkness.
Turns out that a creative director that unapologetically makes exactly the game that they wanted to make is a winning formula.
I live, breathe, and sleep video games but this is a problem we made for ourselves. You don't have to buy the latest and greatest games from million dollar companies. Heck, you don't have to buy any games at all. Stop buying crap and they'll stop making as much of it. Go play something else or, and I say this as someone who's currently designing homebrew for a TTRPG in another tab, go touch some grass.
Damn straight, the amount of times I've heard "It's probably gonna be shit, oh well. Still gonna pre order cause of this [dogshit] skin for the gun that won't be meta for longer than a week cause it's so busted."
I saw this coming back in 2013 and have been trying to convince people that it's going to be a problem and get worse as time goes on.
Well LOOK AT ME NOW, WENDELL!!!!
My unpopular opinion is that DLC is not, in and of itself, bad. If you don't want it, don't buy it! If you do want it - great, no problem! In a world without DLC, you either have to buy the whole game, or not. If you tried it and didn't like it, you have wasted the whole price of the game. Whereas in a DLC system, you've spent the price of the base game, but that's effectively just a fraction of the total game price. You risked less.
What is a problem - and what I think most people who think they're mad about DLC are actually mad about - is charging a price that isn't commensurate with the amount of content you get. If a full game is "worth" $60, and it's split up into a $20 base game and 4 $10 DLCs - great, everyone is (or, should be!) happy. But if the publisher charges $60 for $20-worth of base game and then charges for DLC on top, you should be pissed - but you should still be pissed about that mispricing even if the DLC didn't exist. Yes, DLC is the reason why that pricing strategy is adopted - but that doesn't mean that DLC itself is inherently bad. There are possible implementations that are not flawed.
DLC isn't modular like that, you aren't buying a fraction of the product and then completing the full thing with DLC. You're still buying the base full priced game, and then DLC is typically additional content expanded upon that.
I think it makes no sense for a publisher to split up a game and get less money upfront, unless they want you to pay more for all the pieces than one complete game would have cost you. Therefore DLCs are almost always bad for consumers. The only exception are full scale expansions, because they are basically full games themselves. If they want to let people get a taste before buying then they should offer a free demo, or full refund within a certain time window.
Fuck unfinished titles that are priced at almost a hundred at launch; I'd rather wait a year or two and buy the same thing for 15 EUR.
Edit: and yes, if you buy those at launch, you are part of the problem.
I remember the launch of mass effect 3 in 2012, when EA and Bioware removed all the prothean companion content (very relevant to the story) from the base game and sold it as 10€ day 1 DLC. They even boasted about "releasing a game for 80€" back then IIRC.
This is one big reason why I support indie titles and piracy more than ever. The whole "we can't be financially bothered to put out a functional title on launch, but our shop with 60 DLC skins each coating $400 each works perfectly" mentality has driven me far away from ever paying for triple AAA titles again and is also why I will never play a remaster of any game outside of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.
If you cannot be arsed to put out a functional title on launch, maybe you should be retired and sent to the ranch.
To each their preferences, if people want to play "AAA" games or w/e that's their choices. If you're sick of the way they sell though I suggest trying something else, there are plenty of very good games out there that don't shamelessly take their customers for piggy banks.
stop!... this hurts too much.
This kinda ignores how early access is a great tool for indie developers catering to a small audience. They don't need to bend down for some publisher that then sets them rules, but freely decide what they do. And if whatever they do turns out to attract not enough customers, they can simply stop, get a job at a company. And don't need to worry about what the publisher wants.
Things sure have changed since the old school shareware days with classics like Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, Doom, etc.
You get the body free, but pay to spin a wheel to get the other parts. Also, there is a chance of getting copies of parts you already have.
This is why I am hesitant to get excited for any new games. I've been waiting for Payday 3 for a long time and I was excited but I'm concerned that the base game will be lacking and DLC will be almost necessary. I mean they're already selling three DLX packs and the games not even out. Yeah DLX kept Overkill alive while everyone was sueing everyone else over the IP rights of Payday 2, but now that it's settled and we're getting a third game, I don't expect anything else.
But this baby can fit so much spaghetti! 
I miss expansions. The command & conquer expansions were always better than the base game by far.
Last true expansion I remember is Blood and Wine from 2016.
Victoria 3
