• Etterra@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Okay we can’t keep having to go accept these rewards, it’s wrecking our production flow. So we hired Larry here to be our official award acceptance guy. Oh and those new shelves have been finished so we’ll be getting all the trophies out of the break room by tomorrow.

    • Dagnet@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Larry actually goes to award ceremonies and says “wow guys, we are so thankful for this award but can’t accept it. Like, literally can’t. There is no more space to store them, Jim had to give up his office and the cleaning crew is complaining too. So yeah, take this back please”

      • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Could you give us, instead of yet another reward, some competition? Like, any at all? We want to do even better, but have nothing to compete against. Please. We can even pay you (in free trophies, no micro payments needed).

    • pyre@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      when has Todd ever listened dude. he’s too busy working on a game that takes 1400 hours to fully explore but has 2 voicelines repeated a billion times whenever you walk by an npc.

      meanwhile a 25-person studio like supergiant records like 20 different voicelines for when you pause during a certain situation in their early access game.

      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        Oh, he’s got access to Miscrosoft’s arsenal of AI resources now.

        So expect 4000 hours of gameplay (or 2 hours of gameplay repeated 2000 times), and a load of NPCs that all sound like voice assistants.

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Bethesda is one of the few studios where that would be an upgrade in writing. I’m so sick of their half-assery.

          • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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            5 months ago

            I enjoyed Skyrim I’ll be honest, but that was a long time ago now. In that time we’ve had The Witcher 3 moving the goalposts and Baldur’s Gate 3 putting them on a different planet altogether, and the idea of a sea of badly lip-synced talking heads telling me to try to find their obviously dead relatives who’ve gone flower picking in Murderfang Cavern just isn’t going to cut it in 2027 or whenever Elder Scrolls 6 is supposed to be out.

          • luciferofastora@lemmy.zip
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            5 months ago

            At the point he’s talking to me, it’s too late for stealth. Besides “Mace to the Face” has a much more personal touch. Alternatively, stab him with a dagger and yell “sic semper arrogantibus!”

            For those that don’t know: The assassination of Julius Caesar was done with daggers and accompanied by the declaration “Sic semper tyrannis”, meaning “Such [will] always [happen to] tyrants”. I’ve just replaced tyrannus with arrogans, which unsurprisingly is the ancestor for the modern “arrogant”.


            It should be noted that “tyrants” didn’t quite share our contemporary definition and simply referred to autocratic rulers that had come to that power through non-constitutional means, and had no inherent valuation. A general staging a coup and usurping control could be a “good” tyrant if they were popular.

            The Roman conspirators’ concern wasn’t necessarily with Caesar being a cruel warmonger, but with him twisting a tool designed for a short, crisis-time intervention to effectively supplant the Senate’s and the ruling elites’ control. The Republic was a useful system for those wealthy enough to afford entering a political career, so one of them holding all the power was understandably unpalatable.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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      5 months ago

      I love how to get like 85% of the shit in Morrowind into Morrowind, members of the team would just gaslight Todd with actual shitty shit so when they showed him what they really wanted to do, he was like “yeah ok, just don’t do that other shit you showed me.”

  • Billegh@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This is the industry’s plan to finally catch up to Larian. Sadly, they still haven’t figured out what they actually need to be doing with all of that free time though.

  • sylver_dragon@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    And the best part:
    Larian isn’t going to get shut down by some shitty vulture capital firm which bought up a ton of studios and then killed them all when times got tough.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      5 months ago

      No you forgot to step or forcing them to develop a crap game with a bunch of micro transactions that no one buys because it’s full of micro transactions. Then they shut the studio down for being unproductive, never mind that it was made unproductive by their decisions.

  • ansiz@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m still having so much fun with this game that the lack of DLC hurts my feelings, lol! I’m just amazed they didn’t give Larian a blank check to do anything DLC wise once the awards kept flooding in.

    • Björn Tantau@swg-empire.de
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      5 months ago

      Oh, they definitely could have done DLC. But they didn’t want to. They just didn’t feel like it. And I think this shows how great this studio is. Instead of making a shit-ton of money with some mediocre DLC they instead opted to follow their passion.

      • ansiz@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I think any DLC would have been far from mediocre. Given how much post release support they’ve done, I have no doubt DLC would have been stellar. But that’s my point, the passion for the core game is so clear! But I’m excited to see what the mod community can do with good tools.

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          Might just be my opinion, but DLC in this game would’ve had to be what we used to know as an expansion pack. Think Age of Empires games where the expansions added completely standalone campaigns.

    • OttoVonNoob@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Im currently on my 3rd playthrough once I found out you can recruit Minthara as good guys:X. I learn alot of new things every playthrough.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Freedom in games adds more surface for bugs.

      Many of us have come to accept bugs in games that give you a lot of freedom. Sometimes they’re even funny.

      The real reason they get so many awards is that they actually put out a game that’s fun, doesn’t hound you to buy microtransactions, has good replayability, etc.

      When it was released last year, there were articles saying “you shouldn’t hold other RPGs to this standard because (insert whiny reason here)” because other devs were legitimately getting scared they’d have to start putting out better games…

  • unmagical@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    Why can you win awards for games that are still under development? Doesn’t that indicate the game isn’t finished and you’re rewarding something that people might not necessarily see?

    • PythagreousTitties@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Balders Gate 3 was released awhile ago. What are you talking about?

      Do you think companies release a game and then send everyone home and shut the company down lol

      • cdipierr@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        No, any business major could tell you they release the game, then lay everyone off and sell the IP for parts!

        • pyre@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          almost there but you never sell IP. you sit on it even if you never do anything with it ever again.

          • cdipierr@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            You sure?? This Embracer Group seems like some smart young men, and they make a compelling offer. Can I at least sell them a beloved fantasy classic?? As a treat?

            • pyre@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              embracer group doesn’t buy IPs as much as they devour studios. the EA method. selling IP is really rare. think about all the games you want but never got made because the IP owner has been hoarding it for decades even though they clearly want nothing to do with it.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      You do realize that after a game ships, they’re still working on fixing bugs, adding new content post-release, right? That’s still development time. They don’t just send out a game and move on.

      Well, some developers seem to, but not most, and definitely not the good ones.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        IDK, Nintendo essentially does that. They build a game, properly test it, and then ship it. There’s very few fixes post release because the game was solid at launch.

        This constant stream of updates post release isn’t something to be praised, most games should ship in a good state and the devs should start work on the next one.

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            Yup. Seems much more common in indie games and way less common in AAA games. So I mostly buy indies and don’t buy AAAs anywhere near launch.

            As a kid, I had no such issues. Games couldn’t be updated post launch, so they had to be good or they’d fail. I miss those launches…

            • Salix@sh.itjust.works
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              5 months ago

              As a kid, I had no such issues. Games couldn’t be updated post launch, so they had to be good or they’d fail. I miss those launches…

              Idk… As a gaming kid in the 90s, I always wished companies could fix the bugs in their games or rebalance stuff. I was so happy when computer gaming started having patches available.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                To an extent, sure, but that was when the bugs were small because they were operating on the assumption that games wouldn’t be patched (e.g. for consoles, many people didn’t have reliable Internet, etc).

                Now that updating post launch is a thing, they don’t bother with as much pre-launch testing, so you only get to the quality we should’ve had after 6 months or so of patches. I’d much rather they delay games by 3-6 months and have a solid launch instead of releasing crap and patching their way to success.

                I’m not against post-launch patches, I just think they should be much smaller and way more rare than they are. The launch version should look substantially similar to the patched version some 6 months later.

                Case in point, I just bought Cities: Skylines 2 after 6-ish months post launch, because it’s finally at the point where I feel like it should’ve been at launch. Performance seems okay, features work mostly as advertised, etc. I’d still like some performance tuning, but reviewers gave the recent patches a thumbs up, so I’m finally getting into it. That’s a bit of an extreme example, but it’s indicative of the state of gaming these days.

                Whereas for Nintendo, I have no qualms about buying a game at launch. I know it’ll be a solid experience, and by the time I notice bugs, there will probably already have been patches. I wish more devs were like Nintendo…

            • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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              5 months ago

              Two of the most popular indie games, Stardew Valley, and Terraria have had free updates for years. Minecraft too even before it was sold to a MAGMA companie.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                Yes, and there will certainly always be outliers.

                But that’s not at all what I’m talking about, I’m talking about games where, to feel worth the money, need patches post launch. Games where players can point to specific features that are incomplete or way too buggy to consider “done” based on how the game was advertised. So games like Cyberpunk 2077, Ark: Survival Evolved (console), and No Man’s Sky never should have shipped in the state they did. There are plenty more that really heavily on day 1 patches, and yet still fail to meet the developers’ own expectations.

                I didn’t play Stardew Valley or Terraria at launch, but I bought Minecraft and Factorio at launch and was more than happy with what I received as both completely met my expectations. Adding content to increase appeal is different from adding content that was advertised during the development phase.

              • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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                5 months ago

                The original argument was that most good developers tend to support their games post launch. My point is that post launch support should rarely be necessary for good developers, with Nintendo and many indie and AA devs as examples of that.

                Post launch support is a crutch that far too many devs rely on to ship games before they’re actually finished. If you have a list of bugs and features that need to be completed before the game is “done,” you’re not ready for launch. If you have a list of features that you’d like to add to increase appeal of the same, that’s a different story entirely.

                Most official AAA launches should be considered “early access,” and most “early access” launches shouldn’t be released yet. Change my mind.

      • Thassodar@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        The Manor Lords dev came out recently saying the opposite of this, basically there shouldn’t be an endless grind after the release of the game. He seems not to be bound to the “ultra-popular game gotta get content done ASAP” grindset previous games got sucked into.

        I’ve never played Manor Lords, and barely played Palworld, but there are so many games out now why sink 100 to 200 hours into a popular new release, only to complain about the lack of content a week later?

        • MimicJar@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          The Manor Lords situation confuses me since the game is still in early access. Games can be done, and that’s fine, but you have to complete a game first.

          • PythagreousTitties@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            They seem to like putting multiple games into early access at the same time. Not the best example of how to do things, imo.

        • Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de
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          5 months ago

          There shouldn’t be an endless grind, and from what I’ve seen in other interviews, Larian understands that too. They have a couple things they still want(ed) to work on and then move on to their next project(s).

          They definitely shipped a complete product last August. So complete that a lot of the industry, or at least a loud minority, was getting upset at the raised standards (lol). I don’t see how any consumer could complain.

        • vxx@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          The guy was arguing that users can’t expect live service updates but have to wait for longer cycles for updates i n their game, so the devs don’t get grinded to death.

    • Pyro
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      5 months ago

      They were working on it for patches and such. Plus they are probably starting the “next big thing” and having your dev team leave kinda hurts that xp

    • holgersson@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Come on, I’ll bite and feed the troll.

      Why do you think that Baldurs Gate 3 is objectively a fundamentally bad game?

      • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I can’t throw money at it to compensate the lack of my skills. This is why EA games are so good. /s

        A game needs guns that do pow pow for it to be good. Call of duty is a really good game, because guns are cool. /s

        This game forces me to read, which is something I can’t. /s

        This game forces me to think, which is something I can’t. /s

        All games have insane amount of bugs and lack gameplay. This is the gaming standard. BG3 is different, so I don’t like it. /s

        The devs actually put in a lot of effort to produce a proper game worth it’s price. So, do these devs think they’re better then the rest of us or something? Lame. /s

        Clearly the troll is an EA dev.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        5 months ago

        (not op) The strongest argument I could make is that DND 5e is not a good system and holds the game back, but even that doesn’t really make it “fundamentally a bad game”.

        • PythagreousTitties@lemm.ee
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          5 months ago

          I would say, if I wanted to really criticize it, it’s puddle deep compared to Pathfinder… but it’s still an excellent game. In no way is it a bad game.

      • therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip
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        5 months ago

        Its some annoying narrator telling you what’s happening instead of showing you what’s happening. Like it’ll say “you are in anguish” and your character just stands there staring at a wall. DnD this way doesn’t translate well to a game.