Opinion - 6 Worst Gaming Trends

OR, they might start silently forming joint venture businesses to spread the costs (see: Activision Luvs Blizzard because of Battle.net).
Blizzard is part of Activision, not sure I'd call that a "joint business venture" :)
 
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For example Assassin Creed Odyssey is £50 on both Steam and Uplay stores. However, you can very easily get it for £40 on uplay as they offer these 20% discount vouchers for members etc.

You are missing the point of my rant.
The problem is that AC: Odyssey is £50 on both Steam and Uplay…
AND at my local game store in physical form.

For the digital, you get the game, and there it is.
For the physical, I get the game, a disc, a plastic holder, a nice printed cover art, and even a handy Spartan Mask keychain!
Heck, I can even play my physical copy of AC:Oyssey as long as my computer is working! (=20+ years in the future, where PSN, Steam and co. won't ever exist anymore!)

So, my good Sir, you are badly ripped off with your fancy digital copy, because I get more value for the same amount of cash (and, no, it's not just the keychain).
 
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Regarding number 3: There are DLC's (horse armour) and there are DLC's (Add-ons). For instance the Dragonborn and the Dawnguard DLC's of Skyrim were huge…
I'm not protesting on proper expansions that can easily be a standalone game. Especially if those are actually released as a standalone (examples are AC:Freedom Cry, FC3:Blood Dragon, both Dishonored games DLC), these are awsome things where you don't have to acidify the vanilla game for months because you're waiting to play DLC.
You are missing the point of my rant.
The problem is that AC: Odyssey is £50 on both Steam and Uplay…
Unless you don't have any game on uPlay already, AC: Odyssey and any other Ubi title are all -20% off if you buy them directly on uPlay store. Works with preorders too. And different (stupid and confusing business IMO) versions - because of that discount I bought the super duper edition, otherwise it'd go for version vulgaris.
 
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What no mention of the trend of Games as a Service?

How about Online Singer-Player game worlds also?
 
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Gaas is not a trend yet, it's several filthy rich CEOs' masterplan how to milk even more $ from the cattle. Us.
I'm hoping the whole thing will fail miserably, but we'll see, depends on percentage of stupid people out there.

About always online thing, it didn't take much roots. Only a few games insist on it, but most can be played, finished and even 100% while being offline (MGS5 is one such example).
 
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Gaas is not a trend yet, it's several filthy rich CEOs' masterplan how to milk even more $ from the cattle. Us.
I'm hoping the whole thing will fail miserably, but we'll see.
Some new games beg to differ it's gaining momentum, but yes not every game has switched yet. Have to say come back to this topic in ten years from now.
About always online thing, it didn't take much roots. Only a few games insist on it, but most can be played, finished and even 100% while being offline (MGS5 is one such example).
New Blizzard games, Anthem, & Rune can't be played off-line. A few new games use this model also. Basically you have to play on a server or logged live service to just play SP.

Even Arkane is keen to include a live service in future games like Dishonored.
 
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Blizzard needs always online for their auction houses. To make sure noone is selling an item cheated it, even singleplayer needs to be always online. On one hand, a business model they probably earn more $ than without auctions. On another hand, nothing they make interests me any more so I don't care if it's offline or online, they can rot with their mediocrity and ignoring inventions. I mean, how stupid a company can be to ignore a fanmade map that later turned into a genuine new genre that earns billions annually (LoL).

Anthem is mmo. As such it needs to be ignored and forgotten.
 
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Anthem is mmo.
Anthem is not an MMO Joxer.;)

Don't make me get azarhal to explain it to you.

That man is a BioWare fanatic.
 
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Just dream on.

As I said before. A mmo doesn't need 34789234785629347865023645978234657826598 people to play it to be mmo. It just needs to be planned as 34789234785629347865023645978234657826598 will play it on some server or through p2p where one can see and interact with each other inside the game.

Azarhal has a different defintion. To him mmo is a product where at any time wherever you look you see 34789234785629347865023645978234657826598 people playing the game.

I'm still waiting for Fallout 3: Dream a lil dream of me instead of FO76 abomination.
Till then, in my head a game that is planned to be mmo is still mmo even when it sold 0 copies.
 
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My pet peeve; using the term "launch" for a game going into Early Access or some other early stage of development. So-and-so game launches into EA on 10/28, for example.
 
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Releasing buggy software is still tops in my book, followed by grindy repetitive action, and completely relying on randomly generated content and "emergent behavior" to tell a story. But I suppose those aren't "trends" any more. Of the ones listed, I'd say microtransactions are the worst because it can skew the game design in a non-fun direction.
 
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Cultured Vultures shared their opinion on the 6 worst gaming trends of this generation.

Funny that Vulture Culture is an album by The Alan Parsons Project …



By the way …

WTF "Gaming Candles" ????? This does exist ???
 
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For anyone that doesn't want to click link.

1. Loot boxes
2. Expensive season passes with no info.
3. Announcing DLC before game released.
4. Hold button to interact.
5. No physical releases.
6. Microtransactions in single player games.
 
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so now that manuals are gone, we’re getting more and more tutorials for people to find out how to play the game, because apparently, we can’t read anymore.

very right ! So very, very, very right !
 
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When you buy a game - physical or virtual you are paying for the intellectual property. The physical version these days typically includes a key and a few sheets of paper - yea it might be more expensive than the virtual copy to produce but barely a fraction of what you pay - and as joker said - it is bad for the ecology.
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Btw it is not free to move those bits to your pc. There is an actual cost well above what you pay your internet provider. You didn't mention that cost - and while today it is a lot cheaper than it was 10 years ago - it is more expensive than stamping a cd. Furthermore you are paying for the ability to get 'real-time' patches - whether you want them or not.
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While your model is fine and dandy for a car; it hardly applies for something like a pc game.

Disagree. You are buying a virtual product, where the virtual product's price roughly equals to a real product's -- and why's that?

Brace yerselves, economy 101 will follow.

Any given product's price is calculated by four big cost factors:
- development,
- manufacturing (mass production),
- distribution (logistics, retailing),
- marketing

For the physical, you pay for all four.
Since digital has no manufacturing and distribution, you won't pay for these -- only for development and marketing.

Yet, the digital's price roughly equals to the physical's -- which means, the publisher has silently inflated the prices while reducing costs, and you, My Dear Customer, happily pay extra for nothing.

Definitely not good, and if you advocate 100% digital, you advocate a legit consumer ripoff practice.

Just sayin' ;)

(… and I haven't even mentioned a nasty side effect of this illicit practice: market saturation!)
 
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Don't much disagree with the sentiments expressed in the article, but it could have done with a re-write or three.

It makes the game slower, and it leaves so much room for mistakes where you end up reloading a bunch of times instead of actually doing the right thing, and the fact that you take longer because you have to hold the button means that split second decisions to open a door as cover or turn something on quickly are completely invalidated.
 
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7. Burritos+Mountain Dew combination
( though this mostly applies to 'Mericans)
 
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Sound like minor annoyances to me. Gaming in a pretty good place if these are really the worst trends imo.

As for physical media I don’t miss it at all. I recently did some console gaming and switching discs every time I wanted to play was annoying.

I do however miss a good physical manual. A good compromise imo would be to just sell the manuals with a game code in them.
 
Personally I would add "3D" in first position. The effort put in 3D graphics could make all other aspects of games so much better. For me 3D just has very little value.

I don't need anything physical - don't even remember the last time I bought a physical version of a game. But what's really annoying in digital distribution: different platforms. I don't buy anythig that's not released digitally without any platform, on GOG or Steam. Those last two have are more than enough.
 
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