August 2023 PC Gamer Article Links and Discussion

[mainer]

really liked that you got to pick two classes and pick skills from both skill trees to make builds, which I hadn't seen before in an ARPG. However, I couldn't get past how linear the game is after being used to the open world of Sacred.

Sacred 2 was and still is my favorite ARPG of all time, with the ability to go any direction you wanted, follow the main quest or any of the hundreds of side quests that you'd run into. There was no hand holding in that game, or channeling you to the next area. And the Blind Guardian concert quest is still unique in ARPGs.

I really liked Titan Quest, mostly because of it's unique theme, but as you said, it was very linear, and it pales in comparison to Sacred 2. That game should have been way more popular than it was.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon review

FromSoftware does it again.

www.pcgamer.com

Once I've finished with Baldurs Gate sometime in 2025....

 

[ZedClampet]

Obsidian needs to dump Avowed and get to work making an expansion for BG3!
"Baldur's Gate 3: Mask of the Oathbreaker"
<grinning or begging, I'm not sure which>

No. I will enjoyed Avowed much more than BG3.

 

[Johnway]

Epic goes on the hunt for even more exclusives with a new program offering bigger payouts to smaller studios

Epic First Run is a new program that aims to attract new releases from smaller developers and publishers.

www.pcgamer.com

What interests me is the 100% of the profits side of epic as well as allowing them to continue selling keys on other platforms apart from steam. Sounds like an absolute no brainer. the only one draw back is that i rather not see AAA companies benefiting from it seems like a rather dicey prospect especially when the first 6 months is the hot period and not make a tiny amount of money from it.

Personally i have no stake in this, as i don't buy games when they first come out and the epic store has mostly been a place for free games or ubisoft games. But, whether the long strategy will work, only time will tell. Perhaps if they made some additional improvements and perhaps even changed the prices of the games a bit it might happen.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Epic goes on the hunt for even more exclusives with a new program offering bigger payouts to smaller studios

Epic First Run is a new program that aims to attract new releases from smaller developers and publishers.

www.pcgamer.com

What interests me is the 100% of the profits side of epic as well as allowing them to continue selling keys on other platforms apart from steam. Sounds like an absolute no brainer. the only one draw back is that i rather not see AAA companies benefiting from it seems like a rather dicey prospect especially when the first 6 months is the hot period and not make a tiny amount of money from it.

Personally i have no stake in this, as i don't buy games when they first come out and the epic store has mostly been a place for free games or ubisoft games. But, whether the long strategy will work, only time will tell. Perhaps if they made some additional improvements and perhaps even changed the prices of the games a bit it might happen.

I know I shouldnt care, but I just prefer Steam as a platform/launcher so it is annoying to have to buy games on Epic.

On paper this is great for smaller devs, but I wonder if sales will be affected by being on Epic only and if getting 100% of the income will offset any potential loss from not being on Steam.

 

[Pifanjr]

I know I shouldnt care, but I just prefer Steam as a platform/launcher so it is annoying to have to buy games on Epic.

On paper this is great for smaller devs, but I wonder if sales will be affected by being on Epic only and if getting 100% of the income will offset any potential loss from not being on Steam.

You can release on Steam after those first 6 months, so I don't think you lose out on any Steam sales.

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

You can release on Steam after those first 6 months, so I don't think you lose out on any Steam sales.

Missed that thanks, I assumed it was Epic exclusive afterwards as well.

 

[ZedClampet]

Epic goes on the hunt for even more exclusives with a new program offering bigger payouts to smaller studios

Epic First Run is a new program that aims to attract new releases from smaller developers and publishers.

www.pcgamer.com

What interests me is the 100% of the profits side of epic as well as allowing them to continue selling keys on other platforms apart from steam. Sounds like an absolute no brainer. the only one draw back is that i rather not see AAA companies benefiting from it seems like a rather dicey prospect especially when the first 6 months is the hot period and not make a tiny amount of money from it.

Personally i have no stake in this, as i don't buy games when they first come out and the epic store has mostly been a place for free games or ubisoft games. But, whether the long strategy will work, only time will tell. Perhaps if they made some additional improvements and perhaps even changed the prices of the games a bit it might happen.

The problem with the 100% of the profits thing is that, per court documents, there aren't any profits and games sell extremely poorly on Epic's store. So you could get 100 percent of 500 sales on Epic or 70 percent of 100,000 sales on Steam, for instance. But indie devs have shown in the past that they aren't particularly business savvy, so this will probably seem like a great deal to many of them.

*****

You can release on Steam after those first 6 months, so I don't think you lose out on any Steam sales.

You can take this or leave it. I don't have any interest in going back and collecting the numbers again (and I'm not sure it's even possible at this point to reconstruct it), but at least when Epic first started, I tracked--only occasionally and very poorly and with little interest in actual accuracy--the estimated sales of games that came to Steam after the Epic exclusive period, and they were very anemic except for the lone exception, Satisfactory. I always assumed that some of the new game shine wore off after a game had been somewhere else for awhile, that games were missing out on a big launch week. I know that the Playstation games sell a tiny fraction of what they would have sold had they come to PC to begin with, but those games are older than the ones coming from Epic. Still, I think Epic reduced the exclusive period hoping to address this problem. I have no idea how that went, but I doubt it went well. You only really have one launch week. There are throngs of day one buyers. A portion of those are going to move along after six months.

Again, I only haphazardly "tracked" these games. I don't put much stock into what I determined, tbh, because I only checked in rarely and wasn't overly interested in it. But there did seem to be a serious lack of sales for these games. However, there's no way of knowing how much they would have sold had they launched on Steam, so it, perhaps, doesn't mean much.

*****

The BioWare layoffs include the writer responsible for Dragon Age's best character

Varric would not stand for this.

www.pcgamer.com

@mainer I assume you are following the lay-offs at Bioware. I'm tempted to say that I have even less confidence in Bioware's future, but all my confidence was already gone. We'll be lucky to ever get that Mass Effect game that is currently in pre-production.

 

[mainer]

The BioWare layoffs include the writer responsible for Dragon Age's best character

Varric would not stand for this.

www.pcgamer.com

@mainer I assume you are following the lay-offs at Bioware. I'm tempted to say that I have even less confidence in Bioware's future, but all my confidence was already gone. We'll be lucky to ever get that Mass Effect game that is currently in pre-production.

Yes, sadly, I am following all the Bioware articles, which tend to be mostly about either someone resigning or layoffs. The one that you linked just feels like corporate babble to me, whether it's Bioware management or EA management, or both. How can they claim to be focused on Dreadwolf when they layoff 50 employees?

Adding to that fire is this article:

The BioWare layoffs include the writer responsible for Dragon Age's best character

Varric would not stand for this.

www.pcgamer.com

How can they justify laying off Mary Kirby, who's been with the company since 2006, worked on all the Dragon Age games, and created one of the series most iconic characters in Varric? How is that better for the Dragon Age team, or for the game itself?

I've tried these past few years to maintain some hope that Bioware would pull things together, but after these recent articles I can't help but feel that my beloved Dragon Age & Mass Effect series are effectively dead. Even if they actually release Dreadwolf, I think it will be a DA game in name only, with little of the depth of characters and story that we've seen in the past.

 

[Brian Boru]

You only really have one launch week. There are throngs of day one buyers

That tracks with other entertainment industries. Movie guys know how a movie is going to do long term after the first weekend sales 'picture'. A book's launch figures predict its log-term sales profile.

It looks like a lot of gamers are as interested in 'consuming' games, as much as 'playing' them—diff being involvement in the initial hype and on-offline water coolers.

 

[Pifanjr]

The problem with the 100% of the profits thing is that, per court documents, there aren't any profits and games sell extremely poorly on Epic's store. So you could get 100 percent of 500 sales on Epic or 70 percent of 100,000 sales on Steam, for instance. But indie devs have shown in the past that they aren't particularly business savvy, so this will probably seem like a great deal to many of them.

*****


You can take this or leave it. I don't have any interest in going back and collecting the numbers again (and I'm not sure it's even possible at this point to reconstruct it), but at least when Epic first started, I tracked--only occasionally and very poorly and with little interest in actual accuracy--the estimated sales of games that came to Steam after the Epic exclusive period, and they were very anemic except for the lone exception, Satisfactory. I always assumed that some of the new game shine wore off after a game had been somewhere else for awhile, that games were missing out on a big launch week. I know that the Playstation games sell a tiny fraction of what they would have sold had they come to PC to begin with, but those games are older than the ones coming from Epic. Still, I think Epic reduced the exclusive period hoping to address this problem. I have no idea how that went, but I doubt it went well. You only really have one launch week. There are throngs of day one buyers. A portion of those are going to move along after six months.

Again, I only haphazardly "tracked" these games. I don't put much stock into what I determined, tbh, because I only checked in rarely and wasn't overly interested in it. But there did seem to be a serious lack of sales for these games. However, there's no way of knowing how much they would have sold had they launched on Steam, so it, perhaps, doesn't mean much.

I wonder if a lack of marketing around the Steam release plays a part in that. You lose a lot of hype if you just stop the marketing for the entirety that the game is exclusive on Epic.

 

[Johnway]

The problem with the 100% of the profits thing is that, per court documents, there aren't any profits and games sell extremely poorly on Epic's store. So you could get 100 percent of 500 sales on Epic or 70 percent of 100,000 sales on Steam, for instance. But indie devs have shown in the past that they aren't particularly business savvy, so this will probably seem like a great deal to many of them.

you're probably right, steam is still the bigger platform and people are patient enough to mostly wait a year for exclusivity to end and buy it then. But i wouldn't be surprised if AAA publishers might consider the deal.

 

[neogunhero]

Following a trademark dispute with a calendar, beleaguered zombie survival game The Day Before looks like it's getting a new name, but this one might already be in use too

The Day Before was removed from Steam in February over a trademark dispute with a calendar app.

www.pcgamer.com

The Day Before gets into some more trademark issues. They may be looking to change the name to Dayworld, but that is the name of a trilogy of novels already. I have always had this tiny inkling in my head hoping that this would be a good game because the whole premise is exactly what I want from a zombie game, but with next to zero gameplay footage, I don’t have any high hopes. Maybe if the devs were more transparent and showed their game off more, people would support them and their troubles, but the reality is that no one knows much about the game, it’s hard to support a cause you don’t know anything about.

I’m disappointed in myself for just now thinking of this joke… but isn’t it funny how it’s called The Day Before when the game takes place after the zombie outbreak?

No? Not funny?

 

[Zloth]

Maybe they can call it The Day After? Oh wait....

 

[neogunhero]

Maybe they can call it The Day After? Oh wait....

That’s how I imagine the internet will act when they finally release some real gameplay footage

 

[Johnway]

Honestly, even if they changed the name and got it released, i'm not touching that game with a barge pole due to its checkered history... The team doesn't expire confidence there is little actual gameplay (their trailers are controlled by them so it looks good)

 

[neogunhero]

Honestly, even if they changed the name and got it released, i'm not touching that game with a barge pole due to its checkered history... The team doesn't expire confidence there is little actual gameplay (their trailers are controlled by them so it looks good)

That’s how I feel too. The gameplay that is out is so scripted and does not feel like a real player controlling it, they made it look better than it probably really is. It’s really a too good to be true kind of game, and the problems they keep facing is kind of interesting to follow.

 

[ZedClampet]

Remnant 2 player loses hardcore character to the game's most annoying ledge, which is becoming condemned territory for permadeath runs

The deadliest foe in Remnant 2 is a wonky platform.

www.pcgamer.com

I post this only because I'm not certain the article is completely accurate/fair. The guy doing the hardcore run is wearing the heaviest armor, by a long shot, in the game. I believe from watching the few second long clip that he has every piece of that set on, which means that he can't even perform a dodge roll. Even with only part of that set, especially when you use the chest piece, the best you can do is fall on the ground instead of roll. So why is he trying to make precarious jumps and grapple onto ledges? I never tested it because I didn't like wearing heavy armor, but I would bet a few pennies that ledge grappling isn't even a thing if you are that heavy. and I know your jump distance is shortened.

Given my mad skills at doing dumb things and falling to my death, I think I recognize some of that going on here.

 

[Johnway]

That’s how I feel too. The gameplay that is out is so scripted and does not feel like a real player controlling it, they made it look better than it probably really is. It’s really a too good to be true kind of game, and the problems they keep facing is kind of interesting to follow.

Its generally why i do watch trailers, game previews etc as they're either A: too spoiler heavy or B: hyped up garbage. Too often we see trailers for trailers, announcement trailers or non ingame footage trailers and all of that is mostly garbage or not reflective of the actual end game experience. The AAA publishers love doing this. A prime example was star wars battlefront 2 or the new elder scrolls game or beyond good and evil 2 (ffs how many times have we seen reboots and tid bits of non game related content? I'm starting to think they've done more making the trailers then the game itself).