Agreed. I've always preferred the idea of expansions over DLCs, and would rather pay a higher one-time fee, than a dozen small ones that in summary turn out to cost more and provide less.
And they do have a good precedent with it too, witcher 3 expansions were better content than core game, well worth the asking price. If this one is even half as good, I'm in.
For predominantly single-player games, I fully agree. Sell me a meaty expansion, don't trickle things out as little pieces of DLC.
I don't think the expansion model really works for multiplayer games though. You end up fracturing the community. It's why I think cosmetic microtransactions are a net positive, but only in the context of multiplayer. It's why games like Apex, Fortnite, and CSGO are not only still relevant, but actively updated and improved for so many years after their release.
MMOs have done expansions well. I personally wouldn't ever pay money for micro transaction cosmetics, but I will buy every decent expansion for an MMO I'm playing.
100%. Charge me what you think is a fair price for your content and I'll pay for it if I also agree that it's a fair price. I prefer to pay for a full game, and then pay for actual expansions. I will not buy a battlepass or pay for microtransactions, no matter what. Funny enough, if a game is free, I usually immediately write it off as likely MTX-filled nonsense, but if they throw a $70 price tag on it and don't add MTX, I'm more likely to play it. Maybe I'm just getting old, lol.
I think that there is a legitimate case for very small purchases. Like, I can legitimately imagine, oh, a multiplayer game where people want one specific outfit or something like that. Or even certain things in single-player. I would have been fine buying a la carte additional radio stations for Fallout 4, for example -- one area where I wish that more content was available. I would be happy getting some kind of pop rock station, but I have no interest in a country station. And I don't really want to buy $40 or whatever of even pop rock radio stations, the kind of amount that would be required for the price to reasonably reflect the kind of cost involved in putting something like that together for a larger DLC. Making players buy a larger bundle with things that they do not care about for the sake of avoiding microtransactions seems unreasonable.
That being said, I also think that microtransactions have been hugely overused, and often they are for things that are quite expensive relative to purchasing a larger bundle.
All that being said, I did generally like the "expansion" model that games used to have, and which seems to be less common now, so I'm certainly not complaining at all about the Cyberpunk 2077 model here.
Literally this. Even in older games journalism there was a difference between additional content and true expansions. We used to call developers out for labelling something as an expansion that didn't have enough additional content. This is pretty close to what full expansions used to cost ($20-25 is what I remember for something like Shadows of Amn), and the amount of additional content fits.
I think a lot of people are used to the incremental and constant content release for live services games that are generally free. More is not always better, though...and free is not always free lol.
If there was something that was incomplete about Cyberpunk, it was the stuff that they've done to the game up to this expansion that fixed problems it launched with. A game isn't incomplete just because they add more to it later.
I think additional content is fine, even if it's expanding the story. That's not super unusual even going back years ago to Baldurs Gate 2's expansion finishing the story, and is often referred to as a trilogy due to the expansion, or Lord of Destruction.
It sounds like the changes made to the base game will be implemented even if you don't buy this DLC which is good. Base game changes and improvements to AI shouldn't be sold separately.
This is one of the things I love about Paradox games, when they release expansions they always release a free big patch with them to include all the non-expansion stuff.
It's weird to me that people say it was ever unfinished (prev gen consoles aside) It was buggy and wasn't the life simulator nerds wanted but the story is among the best in video games and the game play is incredibly satisfying. While also having the best looking graphics of any game to date.
I don't get that. Cyberpunk is by no means perfect. But how is it not a complete game? I put in a ton of hours and thoroughly enjoyed it. Are you saying that because the AI was bad, it's incomplete? Cause very, very few games are complete if that's the benchmark we use.
It got over hyped, but capital G gamers did what they do best and blew it out of proportion as if someone kicked their baby.
Note: I played on PC several months after launch. Maybe it was incomplete when it came out, but it sure as hell ain't now.
The totality of those expansions in a lot of cases ended up costing $30 and having similar amounts of content. Dishonored had two story DLCs for $15 each, part 1 and part 2. So...that's $30. Yeah, if there's a controversy here, there shouldn't be.
I bet this is a falling out with Hasbro execs on royalties. BG3 royalties were a cash cow this year for Hasbro, pushing Wizards (as a division) to be quite profitable, while almost all other divisions in their company lost money.
So now the agreement is over, and Larian is like: we will own the IP on our next project instead of paying $90M to Hasbro… And fair enough – they’ve shown they can kick ass. Hasbro is probably gambling that it’s the IP that made the money, and not Larian being magic in a bottle as a developer. So they’ll kick tires on selling BG4 to another studio.
BG3 will go down in history as the legendary game before enshittification. Larian will make a few great games that don’t sell as well – before selling out to a whale that dumps money on the owner’s front lawn (see also BioWare). The devs who made BG3 will found indie studios and make cool shit for a decade or two. So the wheel turns.
Hasbro is probably gambling that it’s the IP that made the money, and not Larian being magic in a bottle as a developer
This is probably true, but how can executives be so stupid? Every review I read praised Larian specifically and how the made a huge game with no microtransactions and tons of little loving touches. You have to be willfully ignorant to think it was the IP and not the developer and their work that people were responding to.
I think it’s probably more a situation where they are not a good fit for each other anymore. The D&D license has value and Hasbro rightly wants to capitalize on that. Larian is a hot commodity right now and they don’t need to borrow the credibility that comes with a big license like D&D. There’s also a timing issue. BG4 is unnecessary when BG3 will continue to sell for years to come. Larian will put out at least a couple more games before BG4 makes sense.
Larian is in a position where they can make whatever game they want and it will sell like hotcakes. Why the hell would they want to pay enormous royalties again when they can bring the writing in house? Sure, Hasbro could reduce their fee, but they can’t reduce it to the point where it’s worthwhile for both them and Larian.
If I’m running Larian, there’s no way I’m making another D&D game. The lore is great, but the rule set sucks. There are better systems in the tabletop space and there’s no reason to even be limited to that after you’ve already made the decision to not make D&D. Wizards isn’t exactly a paragon of reliability and stability either so there’s risk there. Not to mention, it was Larian who helped pull Hasbro’s asses out of the fire. They were facing massive backlash from their core customers until a kick ass movie and BG3 made everyone forget about it.
In short, Larian is riding high and Hasbro is not. There’s a lot more money for Larian doing something else and probably good money for Hasbro licensing to another developer.
I think it’s more that executives think the average consumer is stupid and cares too much about IP branding. And I feel they are not completelly wrong. Though I think the OGL fiasco showed the D&D fanbase might be smarter than that …hopefully.
Jack Welch is seen as MBA-Jesus and they all strive for similar stockholder returns as to what happened under him with GE. If you want a good read, GE under Welch is the OG enshitification story. He took a juggernaut of a company and completely destroyed it for short term shareholder gain.
Now it’s just a shell of its former self, but those guys at the top sure made alot of money.
Screw Hitler. If I invent a time machine, Jack Welch will get a tommy gun to the back of the head before he can lay off one worker, or gut a single workers protection.
This. If you like the mechanics of bg3, go play Divinity Original Sin 2. It has a lot of the same enhancements that Larian added to dnd for BG3. Including more comprehensive elemental fields and height mechanics.
And it has a great modding community.
The sad part about Larian and BG3 is I was hoping for a definitive edition that gave Karlach her good ending.
Nah, that's her kinda bad ending. They cut the good good ending.
There is another ending for her involving the upper city(cut at the last minute due to performance issues) and I suspect the purified metal you get at the factory that involves her staying.
I don't think we're going to get the dos2 level of tools, simply because it would become a competitor to wotc's fabulous virtual tabletop microtransaction simulator.
DOS2’s fatal flaw for me is that you really can’t have an optimal mixed-damage party because you have spell shield and armor, which each block one of two kinds of damage. If you go all physical, you can just blast through armor and then kill people that way. All magical and you can do the same thing for people with shield. Mixed damage parties just kinda suck by comparison because you’re effectively splitting your damage output.
It’s true, you should go either full magic, or full physical within a specific character, however a 2magic/2physical party is great as well since almost all the combat encounters will have a mix of heavy physical armor guys and heavy magic armor guys.
But really once you learn how the action economy works, as long as you don’t gimp your characters by putting dex on a mage or whatever, you can blow up most encounters regardless of the magic/physical make up of the party.
And of course you can also go lone-wolf archer and single handedly win all encounters on your own ;)
Same. It bugs me that people think larian only existed when making BG3. When DoS2 released on steam that game hit overwhelmingly positive in no time and I bought it day one with no idea what it was because the reviews were so good. Larian will be fine because they stick to what they’re great at and they’ve been around a long time.
I feel like this was part of their plan though. Get the limelight with dnd and show the kind of games that they make to people that wouldn’t have known beforehand. Now their next fully owned game is going to make them absolute bank in both money and good faith I think.
What do you mean “dont turn it into a weapon,” i have a dedicated spot on my action wheel specifically for turning things into weapons. My barbarian buddy can do it as a bonus action
The only thing better than owning the competition, is putting them out of business.
So they buy studios that compete, fire all the workers, keep the IPs, and call it a day.
If we enforced anti-monoply laws this wouldn’t be a thing. But monopolies dontate a lot of money to politicians so they say monopolies aren’t a big deal.
Average Americans are being priced out of democracy by both parties. The candidate for both will be who the wealthy pick, and everyone will have to vote if they want to keep who they hate most out of office.
If you’re wealthy there’s no way to lose, if you’re the other 99.9% you can’t win.
Regular people can’t out lobby Microsoft and Disney, and unless a progressive third party emerges the system will keep getting worse.
While political system is captured... I am talking about gen pop discourse. Vast majority got nothing to hide, it is convienient, poor people suck, shoulda worked harder, quit being poor, there is nothing can be, we just really don't know.
This rhetoric is pathetic for any self respecting adult yet here we are.
Sure if everybody got educated about their lot in life they could theoretically vote in a third party but let's be real here, we got some app to circle jerk for engagement slop that induces you to buy plastic shit to make feelz
unless a progressive third party emerges the system will keep getting worse
If a progressive third party emerges, they’ll split the vote with Democrats, making both of them weaker. That’ll just give every election to Republicans and make the country get worse even faster.
The only way to get progressive candidates is by moving the Overton window to the left, and the only way to do that is by voting for Democrats.
People tried to block the Activision acquisition. Some were mocked for their attempt and some were mocked for their stance. It wasn’t enforced because for all the attempts, it couldn’t be proved which is more an indicator better definitions needed to be in place
They started out pissing off Steam users with Metro Exodus going exclusives and pulling it from Steam. Not a great first impression and a lasting one at that. Not everyone will care and will buy from epic, but alienating a whole bunch of Steam’s core users off the bat is probably going to ensure they’ll never win them over.
I claim games from epic and have bought from even origin and uplay, but I’ll probably never spend any money at epic.
This article is absurd. Corridor made a tech demo to show what's possible with AI. They weren't suggesting that it should or shouldn't be how things are done in the gaming industry, just how it could be done. What sort of smoothbrain neanderthals take issue with a tech demo?
This is being reposted everywhere as news but is super misleading. The $60 price tag gets you the universal app, meaning one purchase lets you play the game on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It’s still a full game just like the Steam version, and if you look at Resident Evil Village, it will surprisingly run super well on M-series Macs.
The distaste comes from mobile apps rarely being over $10, but if you think of it as bonus mobile access alongside a fully fledged macOS game, suddenly nothing is wrong here.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been an iPhone user since the 3GS (over 14 years) and I’m highly skeptical that this price will sell. KotOR retails at $10 on the App Store as does San Andreas, and both go on sale down to $5 and lower very often. I believe the whole bundle for Final Fantasy 1-6 is like $65 and then FF7 is $15 or $16. Who is the audience for a $60 iOS game??
I recall when BioShock was originally available on the App Store. For one, it cost like maybe $15 at the most, but then it got pulled from the store and then the App Store made the change to 64-bit apps, meaning that even if you’d bought BioShock previously, it would no longer run on newer devices.
Over this last decade, I’ve watched fun, old school games get released for iOS and then pulled and then re-released as crappier MTX versions, if they got re-released at all, countless times. How is RE4 going to be any different?
Not sure if it’s an Apple issue or a developer issue, but for a $60 price tag, there’s got to be at least some sort of guarantee that an iOS update or App Store change won’t render the game suddenly unplayable on my device. iPhone 15 might be ready for AAA games but the App Store and iOS in general are not.
Yeah, we will see how it goes. Apparently one purchase gives you access on all devices running iOS/TVOS/iPadOS/MacOS but even Mac had a bunch of games that used to be available on the Mac App Store that were delisted when MacBooks transitioned to Apple silicon and are no longer available for purchase
The game being available on both iOS and iPadOS should be a given. TVOS also feels like it should be a standard because of the way Apple’s ecosystem works. A MacOS addition is a nice change, but I’m still left wondering about the target audience for this.
If you’re a gamer, your “main” device isn’t usually within Apple’s ecosystem. Most of the Mac people I know who are gamers use consoles, so for them, it would make more sense to buy this for Xbox or PS5 and use either’s virtual play option to play on iPhone if desired. If you’re a PC gamer, the PC Xbox GamePass option is even better. Gaming on MacOS has always been something that you can do if you really want to make it work, but there have usually been better options available.
I’d like to see true mobile gaming take off, but until there is a sense of stability within the mobile space, I just can’t see it. Phones and tablets are different from consoles. I’m not going to carry around my old iPad 2 just to play my 32-bit mobile games, but I still have my original PS1, PS2, and Xbox 360 hooked up to TVs and can jump onto them anytime I’m home. I still play PC games I bought in 2002 on the PC I purchased in 2022. There’s usually some options available to make games designed for Windows XP run well on Windows 10 or 11.
With Apple in particular, there’s never going to be an option to jury-rig an iPhone to play mobile BioShock again, not without jailbreaking which sort of defeats the purpose of having an iPhone in the first place. That sort of thing is acceptable for maybe $10-15, but for the price of a full game, it feels like throwing a bundle of cash back and forth over an open fire and wondering when it will all get singed.
The mobile market has to make a different approach to “proper” gaming because the space itself is far different from console or PC gaming, and the first place to start is the price point.
Indeed, when I spot an apparently good mobile port I’m often hesitant to purchase it because an OS update may break compatibility at any point, and most developers don’t give a damn about updating their games so they stay compatible.
Until they fix this major structural issue, I don’t see premium smartphone gaming taking off. People will only invest their money if they have the confidence they’ll be able to play their game for the foreseeable future.
If iOS/MacOS becomes a legitimate gaming platform then that problem solves itself. But the challenge is getting users and retaining them and having them make enough purchases to keep the platform viable meanwhile users want to wait for the platform to be proven to make investments in it, thereby the whole process is a vicious circle of fail.
It would probably take a killer app, and short of buying Nintendo I don’t see how Apple ever breaks that barrier
The crazy thing is how hysterical they’re being over something you can fail to even notice is there. It gave me male pronouns as I choose the male body type, and the button prompt to change it is hidden way down at the bottom of the screen. It’s literally on screen for a few seconds and then never mentioned again in a game with hundreds of hours gameplay.
Yeah, it took me ages to realise the prompt was at the bottom of the screen, I didn’t even want to change them, I was just wondering why it set off such a wobbler with the bald bloke.
They need to force their views on others. If anyone believes what they believe, then they are suddenly just like everyone else instead of the bigot they know they are deep down
Insisting that Nexus Mods should host this bigoted mod is the losers who walk in fear of “woke culture” trying to enforce their bigoted views on the rest of the world. The assholes are still free to install that mod but Nexus Mods is just as free to not host that trash.
They aren’t really forcing their views on anyone though, they’re just jacking themselves off. No nonconforming person is going to download this and inflict it on themselves, and they have no reason to use it themselves unless they’re just really closeted and lack the will to not express their own nonconformity. It can literally only exist to rile people up who sought out the mod specifically, which includes only them.
If they weren’t trying to force their views on others they’d just make their character a guy and move on. They go through the trouble of coding this mod to push their agenda on others.
What I’m trying to say though is that most of them just do make their character a guy and move on. They don’t need the mod and the people who they think do need it aren’t going to install it. It’s not just a transparent attempt to ignite culture war arguments online, but it’s a stupid and ineffective one.
The point of the mod is not to change something in game, its to appear in the list of mods and remind some people that they are hated and bigots will never stop hating them.
I have trouble imagining enough people wanting to download a mod to do this to get it to appear on anything but the most recent releases list, and to only be on that list long enough for some other mods to get released.
Well, the type of person that would do this wouldnt be opposed to spoofing the number as well. And they can just keep reuploading the mod so it’s always appearing in the list.
The point is, their ineffective methods still worked a little. Ruining someone’s day, hour or even minute is validation enough
Apparently nexus mods has some sort of ad sharing with mod makers. Could be a grift. Grift is popular among right wingers, possibly because they are on a fundamental level stupid.
Some grifter makes an anti “woke” mod that probably took 5 minutes. A bunch of stupid chuds download it to pwn the libs. Grifter makes money. Chuds feel good about their shitty lives.
Because it's not actually about the pronouns. These people aren't actually angry about pronouns.
They're angry about trans and non-binary people. They're angry that people are growing to accept these people, who they do not think should be accepted. They are angry that a group they don't think is normal, is being accepted as normal.
It's not "about trans and non-binary people," it's about the injection of identity politics into video games. The removal of the mod shows that activist fiat is necessary to present the illusion that people buy into gender ideology.
Obviously the people have existed, but their conceptualization as "non-binary" is a product of gender ideology. Holy shit, the existence thing, always.
Listen, dickhead. It's you who is misinterpreting people here.
Transgender people exist as transgender.
You keep trying to pretend we are referring to the "existence" of the individual, when we very clearly are referring to the existence of the demographic. To the type of people. Transgender people exist as transgender.
So how about you actually try participating in the conversation meaningfully, rather than immediately seeing the word "exist" and brainlessly throwing your little hissy fit.
Transgender people exist as transgender only within gender ideology. Outside of gender ideology, they exist as people who have a form of body dysmorphia called "gender dysphoria (already poorly-named)," which means they do not feel as though the sex of their body matches the sex of their mind.
What you (and everyone else screeching about existence) are ultimately screeching about is that not everyone buys into your idiotic, toxic, and harmful ideology. People with body dysmorphia need help, and assuaging their delusions isn't it. You're harming them, and you're stochastically creating the illness in others, especially children. That's why public school teachers shouldn't be allowed near children.
Are you a doctor or a researcher? Do you have any credentials? Then go fuck yourself. My opinion is as good as yours.
Your being as a "trans" person isn't harming anyone. Your being as an LGBTQ+(What-the-fuck-ever-else) activist is.
Yeah, having that "he/she/they" toggle and calling sex "body type 1 and 2" instead of male/female sure is political. You know when it became political? When people saw them and went "REEEEEEEEEEEEE" because they're bigoted dumbfucks.
did a bot write this? what are you even trying to say?
Are you one of those people that thinks anything that’s not straight cis white is “identify politics”? That anything that isn’t your world view is “political”? If so, please go fuck yourself. If not, I have no idea what you’re on about.
Not a bot; just a bigot. If you scroll to the very bottom, a good 30% of the total comments are this guy digging a hole trying to prove it’s “woke” society that’s the problem and not him.
The only thing left to fight for is the right to indoctrinate very young school children into gender ideology and show them, graphically, how to be gay.
“Identity politics” always seems to mean “I am upset that different people exist.”
This is a nothing option in a video game. Nobody’s rubbing your nose in it. It doesn’t affect you, at all, but it’s a neat little extra for other people. Do you give a shit about other people? Or does the mere possibility of anyone distinct from you, the protagonist of reality, fill you with emotions you can’t handle? There’s no third option, here. It’s a checkbox for how NPCs choose voice lines, in exactly the same way they’ve done for decades. It’s just separate now.
But of course one glance at your profile shows you’re an unapologetic bigot, and what you mean by “gEnDeR iDeOlOgY” is exactly what every other diet Nazi means by it: you hate queer people, and you want it to be their fault.
The fact that you think so proves that you are a gender ideologue. As such, I know what you think. I know what you think of me, and I know what you think of the people you claim to want to protect or represent. And from that knowledge, I find you to be a massive misogynist and misanthropist.
The existence of trans and nonbinary people is not an injection of identity politics into video games. The fact that they exist and a video game is acknowledging their existence is not political.
Pronouns, gender, genitals, etc. in player-character customization are just yet another option for someone to tailor their gameplay to whatever experience they want.
The only identity politics comes from the people politicizing it.
And the "replaced white people". And the female leaders. If someone wants a taste, go through the Steam forums for the game. It's a complete deranged mess.
Let’s roll it back a bit. There’s a bit of a difference between “accepted” and “tolerated”. For the most part, the trans community is merely tolerated by the majority of the country.
Trans and non-binary people are becoming more accepted as normal over time. The people screaming about pronouns don't actually care about pronouns, they oppose that gradually growing acceptance.
I don’t think it’s even about that, they’re angry because the want to be angry. The why doesn’t matter, if the current right wing outrage du-jour had been… I dunno, left handed people rather than trans people, you’d see all the same people working themselves into a screaming tantrum if a game or movie had a left handed person in it.
Who the hell are you to say that I hate black and gay people? You’re overgeneralizing a group, how much different are you in this case? Stop with that man, this is why we can’t have actual debates.
The other comments are quite negative here, but I do kind of enjoy how Musk seems to think he’s like this hilarious, popular dude while he’s sitting in his office talking to nazis on the social media platform he had to buy so people couldn’t block him, and then every time he shows up at an event where he’s exposed to actual normal people he just gets loudly booed out of the room lol.
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