- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
This really does not sound healthy. The game is released, for a certain amount of money. If people don’t like what they get for their money, they simply should not buy it.
But by now gamers have been so trained to expect to endless content treadmills and all their ilk like mtx and battle passes that publishers/developers get egged on if they don’t work on their game 24/7 and forever.
You must log in or register to comment.
Game Publishers: complains about how users expect endless content
Also Game Publishers: Mostly pushes for live service games and Free-to-Play
surprisedpikachu.gif
is Manor Lords live service? seems like they’re arguing against the notion that every game must be live service.
No, but it is still Early Access.
I was speaking of the gaming industry as a whole. I know very little about this developer. Perhaps they’re one of the good ones swept up in unfortunate-ness.
Alternatively
Game Publishers: Release unfinished game that gets horrid backlash until they work overtime to patch it to a slightly more playable hell, get caught in an update loop, game inadvertantly becomes live service.
Sometimes, it works out (No Man’s Sky)
Most of the time it ends up shovelware, though.
see elsewhere: doubt about whether all game publishers are the same
Not saying they are. Just the ones that are the biggest and make the most money
I don’t care about extra content, it is a welcome addition for games with long-term support like Stardew Valley. If the dev and publisher have a lot of money I do expect long-term bug fixing.
Until they ditch the “live service” model, this will continues. How many big title games today are really sold in a complete no BS state where DLC actually means extra contents? No much I guess.
That stems from the revenue model, and not by gamers.
Minecraft falls squarely in this category. I paid 15$ some 12 years ago and am still getting a yearly update for free.
And yet if you go in the MC community, one of the most common complaints people have is that the updates are never enough and the Devs are lazy etc… I guess this goes to the point of this article, people can easily be trained to have unrealistic expectations.
I’m not crying for Mojang/Microsoft but I can’t imagine how it feels to be an indie dev and have people shit on you because the work you do for free is not good enough.
Minecraft is a special case. They promise a lot and what we got is a version of the game that’s microtransaction hell. Texture packs, mods, maps, etc all cost outrageous amounts of money in the console/windows10 version of the game. The community is mad because they’re clearly spending way more money on making content for the store than doing any actual updates for the game. The most we get is something like a new mob every six months…
microtransaction hell
As far as i know the full game is entirely playable without spending a dime more than the price of the game. You can join an infinity of multiplayer servers or play the game solo from start to finish and beyond, and you still get the yearly update which, despite your statement, includes much more than “a new mob every six months”.
I personally don’t mind that cosmetics and entirely optional non-game-advantaging additional content are paid, as it is what bankrolls the studio to keep pumping out free updates every year. How do you propose they finance this otherwise ?
As far as i know the full game is entirely playable without spending a dime more than the price of the game.
That’s not the point, they took something that was free and community-driven and locked it down so you can only install things from the store where everything costs money. Only specific people even have access to make mods in that version.
as it is what bankrolls the studio to keep pumping out free updates every year.
They’re not a small indie company. Mojang earns hundreds of millions of dollars per year. They can afford to do something with the game other than pumping out dozens of microtransactions a month. They could optimize the good version of the game but actively choose not to. They promised a proper modding toolkit for the game but never made it because it would harm their paid store. The game practically lives off its modding community and in the last 10 years they’ve done nothing for them.
I’d recommend the java version
I don’t know, the bedrock version started in 2011 way before Microsoft bought the studio. It was never free or community-driven, it is cheaper than the Java version, but it doesn’t have access to the free modding community. This sounds like a relatively good non-toxic deal to me, either you pay upfront or you suffer the micro-transactions. If you don’t have the money, you can still play the full game for a relatively low price.
Your implication that they don’t optimize or develop new content for the base game is simply unfounded and proven wrong every year like clockwork.
And yet if you go in the MC community, one of the most common complaints people have is that the updates are never enough and the Devs are lazy etc… I guess this goes to the point of this article, people can easily be trained to have unrealistic expectations.
Tbh I think a big part of the problem is Mojang’s failure to communicate with it’s players, less so the lack of features being added.
I don’t know, they have an annual event, affiliate youtubers who distill the news as they come, “leakers” on twitter. You can’t really expect a studio to pull a 1.16 every year, but short of that it seems there is no way to please the MC community.
I feel like Paradox games falls into this category, problem is everyone is so used to playing the okder title with all of the dlc that people feel the new title is barebones and unfinished.
That is because DLCs add a lot of value to Paradox games (excluding recent controversies) so people wait then grab all DLC in a bundle discount.
Yeah but if you wanna buy say, Stellaris, with all its DLCs, you’re looking at at least $100-$200 depending on the sales. You pay for that bigger game.
Definitely. Age of Wonders 4 was awesome to play at launch, but it definitely feels more “complete” now that all 4 DLCs are out. It feels like it was clearly hacked to pieces to be sold separate.
It depends on the game. If I buy a game from a smaller publisher I expect it to be a complete work with full story line. Unfortunately… When I buy from a large publisher I expect to be getting a ¾ complete game that will give me expansion packs.
This isn’t the case with Nintendo games though. I feel like and Nintendo game is just done and any extras are… Extra.
Read back what you just wrote, and go for a walk to let it brew for a bit.
Why the fuck would anyone slave their only life away, for any employer?
The dev seems to have a good publisher that’s on their side, which is nice to see. I find it bizarre that this rebuttal comes in response to the CEO of Hinterland Studios, the devs of Long Dark, which was in early access itself for ages. Dunno if they think they’re above it all now, but you’d think they would at least be sympathetic of devs facing that kind of shit. Probably just CEO saying CEO shit. Hopefully the Manor Lords dev doesn’t let it get to them much, or at all.
I’d almost love if games were released and getting no updates after that. But only if the games are released in a complete state.
I hate the fact that you shouldn’t play some games as soon as they are released, because you’d be playing the inferior version.
That needs to change.
Manor Lords is early access. At least one patch is to be expected. And of course the publisher is absolutely right. If my memory serves me well one dev developed the game all on his own so far and the challenge of meeting expectations after being a massive success is huge. Hiring more people to get developments going is likely necessary but expanding takes time. Some players have unrealistic expectations in general but even more so when it comes to small indie productions.
Eh, EA can certainly be a problem, but it’s also an incredibly useful resource for devs operating in good faith, opening up the field for talent that would otherwise be priced out of making a game at all. Personally, I’m ok ignoring money grabs if it means the barrier of entry for resource starved talent is lowered.
Yeah same. I mean EA is a bet and you can’t expect to win every bet ever. Just don’t wager money you’d miss if it was completely lost.
Especially with this game, where the dev and publisher have actively worked to manage expectations before early access. That it’s not at all complete yet. There were so many people super hyped, comparing it to total war and what not. So they made it clear this game is on another scale.
If it had been the other way around, if they had hyped up the game like crazy and made huge promises about the post EA launch content, then yeah, it would be a failure.
And I suppose in practice it also would’ve been a “failure” if they hadn’t managed expectations, due to the hype and the general expectation from post launch content these days… (sigh)But what we got is exactly what was promised, so what on earth is that Hinterland guy talking about.
Good thing I double-checked to see if someone else made this point yet.
Yeah. Not only that, but the splash screen when you launch the game makes it incredibly clear that it’s one guy called Greg (very humanizing) and he’s working on it, but he’s not some superhero.
Very reasonable, I hope the dev sticks to his guns and keeps a manageable pace. I feel that it’s right to expect content updates coming in if the game is marked early access, but so long as you don’t pull a Valheim, people shouldn’t be mad at you
I guess I’m OOTL - what happened with Valheim?
Nothing that bad, but the updates are insanely slow and the roadmap of things they promised in 2021 took 3-4 years instead of one. At this rate the game could spend a decade in early access.
God I wish valheim had been finished
Isn’t it still being worked on?
It is. It’s just slow, and you know how G*mers are about slow dev cycles.
“Dead game! Dead game!” Then how come they just released a huge update for it with the next entire biome a few weeks ago?
The game is released, for a certain amount of money. If people don’t like what they get for their money, they simply should not buy it.
The problem does not lie with gamers. It lies with ‘AAA’ developers who publish unplayable cashgrabs that need years of bugfixing before reaching a playable state, thus leading to expectations of ongoing development. Not that Early Access has helped in that regard.
Oh I meant that, that’s why I worded it that way.
Remove ‘gamers’ and insert ‘bloated management’.
Is it bloated management who complains on social media and forums?
Spend years releasing unfinished and incomplete work.
Gamers expect work to be unfinished and incomplete.
🫵
Every single aspect of video game development is trash. From executives to absurdly whiney and entitled gamer population.
If someone complains about buying a finished game and not getting more of it later, they’re idiots and there’s nothing you can do but ignore them.
Publishers that do ultra-early access/roadmaps/live services with promises of content/bug fixes/trust me we’re making the rest of the game later, are clearly to blame for the mess too. They’re the ones poisoning the well.
But plenty of games release in a final state and that’s okay. They have to be firm about it though.
It’s a tough line to walk. You want to create reasonable hype and you have an idea where you want to go, but as you correctly point out, it’s really easy to over promise and under deliver.
Excellent write up by the publisher and good that they warned Greg of the shit storm ahead.
I bought it, played it. It was already fun. The patches fixed some of the issues that made playing it not fun… so good choices there. I left him some small feedback on the game and some words of encouragement in the hopes that helps.
I hope he can continue his development to deliver his vision for the game. I feel like I got my moneys worth already and I’ll spin it up when the next series of updates are done.
Till that time I just saw Timberborn (another one of these jewels) had a cool update so I’ll go and try that or one of the mysiad of other cool Early Access games that still receive a lot of love.
Going Medieval is another colony sim, more akin to Rimworld, but it’s constantly getting updates and patches. They’re almost done with their roadmap.
I felt this way about Back 4 Blood. The game came out, it was genuinely fun and had a good amount of content, and they added DLC that expanded the game while also not ruining things for anyone who hasn’t installed it.
But there was an unending cry from gamers that it was getting “abandoned”. You can still gather 4 players, or fewer with bots, and have a good time. It’s a different appeal from Left 4 Dead with the card system, and that was fine to me.
Agreed. I think it was an OK game but that doesn’t mean that the devs should work to their death to make it totally what I or other people think it should be.
