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One of the more common complaints among gamers is that AAA studios play it safe. They release the same game with minor updates year on year and are rewarded for it. That's why it can be so exciting when a developer releases something new and deviates from the path, but so often they seem to be spoiled by the micro-transactions and top-down development that can really drive away players.
Ars has a great breakdown of why Rainbow Six: Siege, one of the more innovative first person shooters to be released in recent years is really struggling. It's for the same reasons that Evolve is a wasteland, despite its relatively fresh take on FPS multiplayer gameplay: players feel like they're being ripped off.
It almost seems like those making the financial decisions at the developer/publisher want to have their cake and eat it too. In both the case of Evolve and Siege, the games were released at a premium, AAA price, but then also come sporting pricey micro-transactions, offering experience booster packs, weapon unlocks and DLC, all of which fragments a community and makes it feel as if you have to pay to get ahead. That's something gamers have rejected and continue to do when it rears its head in games.
Maybe what we need is a mashup?
Of course when you think your game is going to be huge, making millions after release on DLC and cosmetic items and then it doesn't, executives start to panic. That's why Siege had a free weekend right after launch and the retail price has tumbled to £40. But that only has people thinking that before long the retail price will be reduced again, perhaps even dropped altogether making the game free to play, so why buy now when you can be given it later?
It's not like bugs and issues help either and both Evolve and Siege feature(d) their fair share. Connection issues, problems with matchmaking, bugs and flaws in the actual gameplay itself, all make the experience frustrating for players, which is such a shame, as both games offered something very different to their player base.
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KitGuru Says: Ubisoft and 2K can't be the only ones that have gimped their own games so. Do you have any other good examples of solid games being swamped by nonsense and annoyance, making them much less likely to succeed?
Dirt 3 is the only game i’ve bought that annoyed the hell out of me because you were expected to spend more to get the complete game.
YA GTA V Online side.. NO longer can u just jack any ride… and all the guns lying around…
Instead u have to buy them all ether buy grinding or paying real money for ingame money
Also I believe Killing Floor 2 has come in for a lot of criticism lately for its micro transactions, which the dev’s promised they would never do.
Demigod.. Ruined because they coded the multiplayer setup badly, and cracked copies of the game crashed there service. They then spent months trying to fix it. It could have been the first LoL, or DOTA2, but they messed it up.
also R6 Segie BLOWS not becuz the micro trans.. But the COMPLETE lack of dedicated servers, No server Browser, and constant Peer2Peer connections disconnects
And any one that believes the game is ran on Server is kidding them self’s.. The entire MP is managed by Match making master server that unloads the entire lobby onto a single players computer..
The focus for too many developers is very much on building a successful business model as opposed to building a successful product. Without one, you really can’t have the other.
Still better than killing floor 1. There you had to spend more money for a pack of character skins when you’d only want one. At least now if you want a character you’re not over-spending.
Though at the end of the day as long as you’re paying for cosmetics i’d consider fine. doesn’t create a pay to win scenario and there’s no obligation to buy it if you don’t want it so you can simply turn your head
Which means their focus is NOT on building a successful business model ;). They (the people in charge, shareholders, not the actual developers) are blinded by the massive amounts of money people spend on FTP games and want a piece of the cake.
Payday 2 adding in Cosmetic Loot Crates that give stat bonuses to the weapon… the worst was when your random cosmetic was for an item locked behind DLC :’) it was at that moment I uninstalled.
Well, they’re not blinded, that’s just the prerogative of shareholders. Shareholders don’t care about product quality and longevity, they care about their dividend or the size of their portfolio.
But see, that’s my point. If you make way to expensive crap, then you have no short term profits either, so the shareholders end up with nothing. (I just thought of the shareholder paradox: if shareholders always have short-term interests at heart, then at each new point t they will do anything to profit at t’>t, which basically leads to infinity. So long term interests are secure, while they are being sacrificed :P).
The problem is that shareholders (and obviously the executive board) aren’t always right. Business plans go wrong. Just because they love short term profits, does not mean that their strategies are the best strategies for short term profits. They make mistakes too, because they are blinded by the potential for crazy loads of cash.
Payday 2 has to be the best example of how quickly micro-transactions can kill a game. The difference between these games and a game like LoL or DoTA, is that micro-transactions are mostly cosmetic. EA sort of started the “Pay to get ahead” trend when they sold unlocks for real money. It doesn’t mean you automatically win, but it certainly gives you a leg up.
The huge bugs and full price tag was what crippled it, the micro transactions was just the final blow.
It’s not the micro transactions that killed R6: Siege, it’s the fact the game is full of bugs and has the worst servers imaginable for gaming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDXvzvk–yI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OMWD_GjRdQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrNIXBOtHzI
Fallout 4 was a perfect example of a developer “playing it safe.”
I refuse to buy any game with microtransactions. I’ll buy DLC, once on sale, but MT’s need to disappear.
By releasing something that was a huge disappointment and could have come out 4 years ago? Sadly few devs have actual vision nowadays. They all rehash the same junk or have no idea what the market wants (e.g. Simcity)
Clipping is still a thing? dynamic culling is like graphics programming 101 how are devs overlooking this? especially in a competitive game
Pretty sure UbiSoft’s hired the most incompetent developers possible. The game fails to do what’s been possible and bug free for over a decade e.g. match making.
Lets see how well the new IPs of this “generation” sell. I guarantee that Quantum Break will be multiplatform.