• erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Come gather round the stump young’ns, and I’ll tell you a tale of when video games didn’t need to be connected to the Internet.

      • DaCrazyJamez
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        1 year ago

        God bless Larian and Baldur’s Gate 3, the lone bastion in a sea of AAA microtransactions and early access skin-stores.

      • jabrd [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Damn this brings me back to a time period when DLC was first becoming popular and replacing expansion packs as a concept but it wasn’t a given that everyone had internet access yet so you could go down to gamestop and buy your $20 horse armor DLC for Oblivion

      • erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Well, back in 19 and dickaty-2 there was whisperings of a movie tie-in. The money spent, well I won’t bore you with that, wouldn’t mean much these days. But let’s say it was epic - do people still say that? Boy, they used to.

        Anyway, they rushed to production and built a million billion cartridges. Do you know what those are? These little black boxes that had the whole video game on these massive chips. Of course they were small in those days.

        So they send it to market and it doesn’t work. So then nobody bought it. And did you know, they buried all those cartridges way out in the desert some where, and that’s where the aurora borealis comes from - the sky used all those chips to paint pretty pictures. And the video game industry began a bloodless vendetta that’s still around today, to make up for that blunder by making as much money as possible, even if the game’s not worth it.

          • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            that’s a rather questionable take. that’s like saying if Russia drops a nuke on Ukraine it’s the US’s fault for inventing it.

        • msage@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Sure, but at least Dota and CsGo don’t hide any game-relevant content behind a paywall (I’ve played TF2 a bit, and having different weapons unlockable really isn’t fair).

          • Ser Salty@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            Also, just a cool thing, you can generally sell the cosmetics from TF2 and CSGO (never played DotA, so don’t know), so If you don’t care about it, sell it on the marketplace, some enthusiast will buy it, and you get 3 bucks to spend on the next sale.

            • msage@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              Yes, that works with Dota too.

              I have spent ungodly amounts on that game to support it, and I sold some of my swag back to buy more games.

    • GreenMario@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Literally invented the loot box and NFTs (I know not EXACTLY, Poindexter but its selling JPGs. Close enough.)

      Otoh, Proton and Steam Deck. Valve is a yin yang company.

    • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You can still find matches on pc pretty easily, helps that there’s been no good successor other than the -tide games and people not into warhammer or 40k stuck to l4d(2)

      • NielsBohron@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’ve been enjoying Back 4 Blood, despite all the deck building and cosmetics BS. I quite like the mechanic of finding new, more powerful guns as the run continues, as it encourages you to use gun classes you wouldn’t normally consider and makes every model of every gun class viable. Which is great, because every gun has different personality and mechanics, even from the same class, so you really can have a different experience every time you play the same chapters.

        Vermintide 2 is ok, but has even more of the cosmetics, loot boxes, and microtransactions. I like the medieval fantasy flavor setting, but I hate supporting GW, because they haven’t released a complete game that didn’t have $100+ of DLC to get basic features since Mordheim (that one only had 20$ of DLC, lol)

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Tbf GW doesn’t make any of the video games, they just sell license rights to developers who make the games and do whatever they want to recoup that cost. GW probably should be more selective or have a heavier say in those games but they aren’t their games.

          Now also tbf GWs business model for tabletop isn’t any better, they’ve been charging $60 for 5 little plastic soldiers for decades now so you can’t really say they’re a consumer friendly business

          • NielsBohron@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            True, I know they’re not developing the games themselves, but it seems like they encourage the microtransaction business model pretty strongly, since lots of developers that didn’t used to follow that model jump on board when it’s a GW property (I’m looking at you, Total War franchise).

            Plus, like you said, I can’t think of any tabletop companies that treat their fans worse than GW, so it’s pretty par for the course with them.

      • Algaroth@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Also compounded by Darktide being an unfinished mess. I might go back to it in a year or so but as it stands it’s really just an unpolished cash grab. The only thing that was finished on launch was the cosmetics store which you can buy for real money and even they have a bunch of clipping issues.

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I saw last night they unveiled class skill selection overhauls that looked promising. They’ve been trying to fix since release but yeah the clear cashgrab at the beginning was certainly frustrating

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I thought about mentioning KF& KF2 but since they’re round based not run through this map point A to B based I didn’t

          • ezures@lemmy.wtf
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            1 year ago

            Honestly the best new coop shooter is deep rock galactic, fun game, many bugs to be shot, no monetization after buying (theres a free battlepass, but after the season the cosmetics get into normal loot drop, and supporter skin packs).

    • DustyNipples@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ha ha this reminds me of a funny / not funny glitch that happened. Me and my friends were sneaking past a witch, being super stealth then one of the characters yells WIIIIITCH right next to her. Carnage.

    • Martytix@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Daily goals the game gives you to achieve for extra XP. Usually something like win 3 online matches, heal 10 teammates, or capture 2 flags. Basic skinner box methods to get the player on the game every day.

    • TheCaconym [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      From the name I assume they’re similar to the daily quests MMORPGs like wow assigned players back in the day ?

      That is, tasks to accomplish once per day to get some rewards; it’s a hook to increase the chance the players come back to the game

      Why what looks like a non-persistent-world online game would need it I have no idea mind you

  • aesopjah@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I loved vermintide, but this was the issue with it. Hard to convince people to play when they have to grind for hours to have their character be competent even if the player is super experienced. L4D2 for sure the GOAT