My bitterness towards modern gaming vs gaming 10 years ago, summed up in this article

[Squall Leonhart]

https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/1/11141082/what-video-games-to-play-in-2016

...except the article lists the differences as positives, when in many ways they are negatives too.


How is DLC cash grabbing a positive?

How is single player being supplemental to multiplayer a positive?

How is mandatory pay to play online a positive?

How is the dominance of realism and the improvement of graphics making most games look generic/similar and less stylized a positive?

And this one triggers me to no end....but DOTA, League of Legends, etc....it's just Warcraft 3 man. And I enjoyed Warcraft 3 much more. I'm completely baffled by the explosion. When the hell are we getting Warcraft 4?


As he notes, it isn't even the same hobby anymore. I played games for escapism, an interactive movie with a great story, with multiplayer when I occasionally felt competitive with my buddies. If I wanted to play sports I'd go outside.

Video games were always more than an online sport. They were an artistic experience, a place to play with cool toys and collect them, OR a place to play against a buddy.

I might sound like an old fogey, but I'm 29 and 10 years ago I was 19 lmao Can I get a fuck yeah?

 

[Shaved Rabbit]

Maybe you should stop playing video games and find a different hobby you enjoy then if they aren't for you rather than complaining about them online.

 

[Squall Leonhart]

Maybe you should stop playing video games and find a different hobby you enjoy then if they aren't for you rather than complaining about them online.

I still play them, I just have old games to choose from, or remakes, or games that are similar to those of the previous era.

 

[m52nickerson]

Games have changed in the last ten years, but it is far from all bad. There are still great single player games out. DLC, well wait long enough and you can pick up total editions of games with all the DLC for cheap. Heck if anything the move to have some games simply receive updates keep the game alive longer without the need to buy the second edition of it. Minecraft comes to mind.

 

[God_Emperor_Of_Mankind]

Warcraft 4....yes that game, i was looking forward to it 10 years ago..

 

[echohead]

I am not going to get into the article but all the threads like this I say the same thing: Games aren't worse, consumers are worse.

If you think gaming is worse you aren't digging enough. I'm older than OP and think star wars tie fighter is the best game ever and I still have more recent games on my backlog than I could ever finish.

 

[Squall Leonhart]

I am not going to get into the article but all the threads like this I say the same thing: Games aren't worse, consumers are worse.

If you think gaming is worse you aren't digging enough. I'm older than OP and think star wars tie fighter is the best game ever and I still have more recent games on my backlog than I could ever finish.

I think the current climate for FPS' and MMOs is wonderful. Very specifically those genres. Sure, I guess fighting games have better servers now, but other features are seriously trimmed down.

 

[My Spot]

How is mandatory pay to play online a positive?

Sounds like console peasantry.

 

[Squall Leonhart]

Warcraft 4....yes that game, i was looking forward to it 10 years ago..

And I still am. I was disappointed when Starcraft got the nod. The story of WoW is a shadow of the W3 story.

Which is more fun, controlling one character and upgrading him or her like countless other games do, or controlling legions of monsters and beasts on a grand scale? I guess i'm in the minority because I think the latter.

 

[Squall Leonhart]

Sounds like console peasantry.

I should be specific, I never was THAT much of a PC gamer, mostly because I couldn't afford a full setup.

 

[Andy]

GTA 5 is the greatest video game ever created.

 

[fatlas]

When the hell are we getting Warcraft 4?

I used to want this too, but then I realized it isn't the early 00s anymore and Blizzard would just mangle it.

 

[blaseblah]

There are tons of single-player focused games with minimal or no DLC. If you can't find them you arent looking.

 

[ThulsaDooom]

Good DLC is awesome and it's funny people call out businesses for cash grab moves because when studios don't make money, they close and the people who make those games lose jobs. Sure, some publishers go about it in a very wrong and distasteful way but I love getting 10-15 hours or more added to a game I love at a low affordable price. The Witcher 3 would still be a great game but it was elevated to a classic with Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine, Fallout:NV had amazing DLC packs, the best content in Dark Souls and Bloodborne is in their DLC releases, etc etc.

People demand quality and quantity for fully priced releases now, which is just being a smart consumer and their right to do so. But when the next big budget single player game comes out, you'll see a million posts on the internet saying they'll wait for a Steam sale or PSN price drop or buy it used or Humble Bundle package.

 

[SeefourDC]

https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/1/11141082/what-video-games-to-play-in-2016

...except the article lists the differences as positives, when in many ways they are negatives too.


How is DLC cash grabbing a positive?

How is single player being supplemental to multiplayer a positive?

How is mandatory pay to play online a positive?

How is the dominance of realism and the improvement of graphics making most games look generic/similar and less stylized a positive?

And this one triggers me to no end....but DOTA, League of Legends, etc....it's just Warcraft 3 man. And I enjoyed Warcraft 3 much more. I'm completely baffled by the explosion. When the hell are we getting Warcraft 4?


As he notes, it isn't even the same hobby anymore. I played games for escapism, an interactive movie with a great story, with multiplayer when I occasionally felt competitive with my buddies. If I wanted to play sports I'd go outside.

Video games were always more than an online sport. They were an artistic experience, a place to play with cool toys and collect them, OR a place to play against a buddy.

I might sound like an old fogey, but I'm 29 and 10 years ago I was 19 lmao Can I get a fuck yeah?

Your perception of the situation is really just nostalgia from a time in your life. One of my favorite games from me being the sameish age is Everquest. I LOVED Everquest. Everquest was a terrible game compared to everything that has come since. Things are MUCH better now in gaming in general. It's actually somewhat amusing that this article highlights that DLC is a new thing.. Example: When you were 19 in 2007 there were about 1000 sims things, mostly DLC released. You don't think that was a cash crab? 2 out of the top 10 selling video games in 2007 for PC were sims "expansions" (which would now be called DLC).

Secondarily lets talk about pay to play online in one word. Stability. Networks are flat out 1000x more stable than they were back then thanks to the regular cash infusions that keep them going. Good.

Lastly some of the greatest video game artistic experiences ever have been released in the last couple years:

There are so many amazing images from HZD but the sunsets were some of my favorites:

From Software has been producing some of the best artistic visuals for some time now: Bloodborne then DS3

 

[Sano]

10 years? Heck, go back 20.

Warcraft 2-3 and Frozen Throne, Diablo 2:LOD, Counter Strike (the original game), Quake 2 and 3, Starcraft 1, Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Baldurs Gate 2, so on. Games were just better.

 

[Wariowokecancel]

The fact that people spend time watching racist assholes play multiplayer games sums up the state of gaming in 2017.

 

[HereticBD]

Unfortunately, it's unfair to blame the industry for doing the "wrong" thing, when you have a complacent customer base feeding the beast.

Even though I don't agree with a lot of the practices the industry has adopted, how can you blame them? It's a business at the end of the day, and if they can turn $1 into $2, without alienating their customer base, they will do it.

 

[Torrid]

Curmudgeony bullshit.

DLC can be great (or exploitative). W3's DLC Blood & Wine and Hearts of Stone are huge; practically expansions. Super cheap DLC keeps massive cooperational games moving along like PayDay2. Games like PoE are awesome and literally completely free to play - the micro-transactions are just if you want to look like a fuccboi Korean MMO character with angel wings or something.

For some reason, if you're complaining about DLC, I just assume you're stuck on console and don't get the mod market that PC players do.

There are a bunch of great single player games always coming out: Prey, Shadow Run, Hollow Knight, W3, etc. Just because some single player games have multiplayer doesn't make them bad, heck, it usually makes them better (Divinity 2's multiplayer is fantastic and my friends can drop into my campaign whenever, and leave whenever).

Tons of games are stylized, just go look for them. Games like Shovel Knight, Abzu, Transistor, Hollow Knight, etc are beautiful.

If you don't like MOBAs, just don't play them - they literally have nothing to do with WC3 besides the engine though; there's no base management. It's not like the RTS is dead either, there's the whole Total War series.

10 years? Heck, go back 20.

Warcraft 2-3 and Frozen Throne, Diablo 2:LOD, Counter Strike (the original game), Quake 2 and 3, Starcraft 1, Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Baldurs Gate 2, so on. Games were just better.

Games used to suck. There's a reason why I had to play only a few games, and several of them longer than I wanted to: because there weren't that many games. If I could trade the time I spent on most J-garbage from the PSX era, I would.

CS:GO > CS
PoE > Diablo 2 LoD
Quake people literally still talk about how Quake was the best game ever; they're a frightening, smelly bunch that I won't offend.
Morrowind? Yeah, Morrowind rocked. Vanilla Skyrim is just god awful, but if you mod the shit out of it, it's great. SkyRe, Deadly Combat / Dragons, Climates of Tamriel, etc.
BG2 is a classic but quality RPGs are still coming out and with Divinity 2 literally launching last week, you're pitching a tough sell.

The mantra most people should pitch is:
Games were perfect when I played them regularly, but now that I don't play them, they must be bad.

 

[usmctanker242]

DLC is a necessary evil since gamers have this horrible attitude that no matter what a game shouldn't cost more than $60. I grew up with a NES and NES games were $60 back in the late 1980's. Adjusting for inflation and buying power that's almost exactly $120 of buying power in 2017. So what's happened is the price of AAA games has literally been cut in half, yet players want 10x more shit than they used to get back in the day. People like "Angry Joe" crying about game developers having the balls to charge $60 for a game... he sounds like an absolute moron when he talks about that shit. So if we want more games, and aren't willing to pay for it, DLC and mictro-transactions are going to be a constant thing we're just going to have to get used to. Otherwise be willing to fork out $120 or more for a AAA game, but the trend has already been pushed and DLC / micro-transactions are here to stay.

I also don't mind paying for Xbox live as with money comes the ability to make the equipment and features of the online service better. Do people really expect their console producer to provide this kind of stuff for free? They're not in the business of giving shit away and neither should they be. Gamers have things so good right now in terms of diversity of games, quantity of games, quality of games, etc and all they ever do (myself included sometimes) is bitch about everything. Imagine paying $120 for Mario Bros 2 and finding out that it's not even really a Mario Bros game... just some weird offshot that has no real connection the original game. How about $120 for TMNT which is so fucking difficult that 99% of the people who play it couldn't get beyond the water level?

So yeah... the hipster attitude of gamers as a whole has forced the hand of the developers and game studios. They can't afford to take a risk on a game without DLC / micro-transactions because at the end of the day there just isn't enough money being brought in to justify the risk.