Video Game News and Miscellany

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

CynicismKills said:
Folks are starting to worry that, in line with the way most other NA-developed NCS properties that struggle/sink, the game will just get the axe instead of going B2P/F2P.
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The main reason City of Heroes got the axe when it did is because NCSoft needed a cash infusion to keep a Korean MMO afloat. It had nothing to do with the profitability of City, as it was pulling in several hundred thousand a month even without the subs and the low population/low graphics meant it was essentially free to keep it up. It was simply sacrificed to keep another game (Aion) afloat. Generally speaking, this has been seen as a poor business decision, as NCSoft has no desire to do anything with the license they own for the game and Aion is all but failed... but is unwilling to sell it and let someone else profit on the franchise (as this would get someone canned over Korea).

As for Lineage... it's kind of like Ultima Online at this point: virtually all PCs can run it, even shit boxes from 5-10 years ago. So it's still big in parts of the world where you can't get a decent PC without a fucking pile of gold.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

AshburnerX said:
The main reason City of Heroes got the axe when it did is because NCSoft needed a cash infusion to keep a Korean MMO afloat. It had nothing to do with the profitability of City, as it was pulling in several hundred thousand a month even without the subs and the low population/low graphics meant it was essentially free to keep it up. It was simply sacrificed to keep another game (Aion) afloat. Generally speaking, this has been seen as a poor business decision, as NCSoft has no desire to do anything with the license they own for the game and Aion is all but failed... but is unwilling to sell it and let someone else profit on the franchise (as this would get someone canned over Korea).

As for Lineage... it's kind of like Ultima Online at this point: virtually all PCs can run it, even shit boxes from 5-10 years ago. So it's still big in parts of the world where you can't get a decent PC without a fucking pile of gold.
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But it's not just CoH/V, there's also Tabula Rasa and at least one or two others. They might axe something to funnel cash elsewhere, but WildStar has, all in all, been such a colossal failure that I can't see it surviving another year with the way NCS treats non-Asian games.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

CynicismKills said:
But it's not just CoH/V, there's also Tabula Rasa and at least one or two others. They might axe something to funnel cash elsewhere, but WildStar has, all in all, been such a colossal failure that I can't see it surviving another year with the way NCS treats non-Asian games.
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Tabula Rasa was canned for a bunch of reasons, not least of which was the absurdly low population of the game or the huge cut Richard Garriot was getting for his work. Remember: NCSoft went to the trouble of forging a letter with his name on it to try and screw him out of MILLIONS of dollars they owed him... and did this WHILE HE WAS IN SPACE.

But yes... WildStar is fucked. It's not making money, people aren't sticking around because the end game sucks, and other games (like WoW) have SO MUCH MORE CONTENT that it's hilarious. It's not a bad game but it's fucked.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

AshburnerX said:
Tabula Rasa was canned for a bunch of reasons, not least of which was the absurdly low population of the game or the huge cut Richard Garriot was getting for his work. Remember: NCSoft went to the trouble of forging a letter with his name on it to try and screw him out of MILLIONS of dollars they owed him... and did this WHILE HE WAS IN SPACE.

But yes... WildStar is fucked. It's not making money, people aren't sticking around because the end game sucks, and other games (like WoW) have SO MUCH MORE CONTENT that it's hilarious. It's not a bad game but it's fucked.
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It's actually the opposite. WS's endgame is the only good thing it has (plus the insane raid attunements have been nerfed to nearly nothing), but getting there is such a ridiculous chore new players aren't committing. On top of that, the initial response to the game is sticking pretty hard and even the free trial periods aren't pulling new blood in. I've been using the free time to see how the game is, and it honestly has a lot of potential. Sadly without new people to flood the lower-end dungeon and PvP queues and grouping for leveling zones, nobody's going to stick around past their trial periods.

e: But in the end, you're not wrong. The game is boned as it stands right now.
 
AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Konami confirms that it will be focusing on mobile titles from this point on.

So... that's it then. Konami is basically dead to me because...

- Metal Gear with Kojima isn't Metal Gear.
- Castlevania without Igarashi isn't Castlevania.
- Silent Hill without Team Silent hasn't been Silent Hill. (Though Downpour wasn't TERRIBLE)
- They haven't put out a mainline Suikoden title since the PS2 era.
- The last good Contra titles have all been outsourced.

So really... I'm just waiting for Hideo Kojima to put out his new, indie espionage action title on Kickstarter so I can watch it pull in millions of dollars in a day and basically shit all of Konami's lawn. That's basically what the Japanese games industry is to me now: my favorite creators shitting on the lawns of their old bosses while they prove, time and time again, that the only reason the companies were making money is because of guys like them.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
List of stuff they took out of Witcher 3 (yes, the PC version too) to make it work on consoles, compared to what was in it at E3 in 2013

http://whatifgaming.com/developer-i...-from-2013-list-of-all-features-taken-out-why

There were several options: build three different builds or consolidate to the nearest denominator, which is what we did. We took the specifications of the lowest performing throughput system which I don’t care to mention here at all to avoid that discussion, and worked our way up from there. As almost a 250 man team, we sequentially had to take out/turn down a lot of features not just from our NVIDIA GameWorks pipeline but our normal game solution scripts as well – these include the following:
  • Level of horizon detail (essentially the draw distance had to be completely tuned down to tax the consoles less)
  • Volume based translucency
  • Ambient occlusion and foliage density / tree count
  • Flexible water simulation / tessellation we resorted to a (script texture effect similar to most games than physical based simulation)
  • Ground/building tessellation
  • Forward lit soft particles (this is the fire, smoke, fog that you would encounter while going through thick terrain into open space)
  • Real-time reflections in the water are completely off and replaced with a cheaper render solution estimator (this is a primary reason blood splatter was also removed from water)
We just did not have the manpower, budget or the console power to produce the vision we intended before the consoles were released to create a more visually stunning game of higher fidelity like 2013 assets. The PCs themselves had more than enough power to achieve this vision, almost certainly. But working on the game across 3 platforms did not make it feasible to keep features included that could potentially break the game as we kept building around it. All the 2013 trailers were actually in-game footage (not prerendered or vertical slices) but essentially just not an entirely finished world running on a high-end PC at the time.
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CynicismKills

CynicismKills

And even with that well-written and precise reasoning as to why PC won't have the game they wanted, it'll sell like hotcakes while people whine that consoles ruin everything.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

I dunno, I mean, if the game's fun who cares if the shadows are a little jaggy?

I guess I don't get the uproar over something being downgraded (but still looking pretty good) so a company can release in a fashion that allows more people to enjoy the game.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Frank said:
Not gonna lie, if all those downgrades allow it to work on my aging PC well, then I'm good. I don't want to upgrade right now.

Heads up guys, it's still fucking gorgeous.

PC Master Ehhh.
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That's an unsound argument. The difference between console and PC is, on your aging PC, you could have turned down graphics sliders, so those things being in the game wouldn't have penalized you.

fade said:
"If people don't like something, they should just vote with their dollars!"
"Oh crap, they voted with their dollars!"
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That argument only applies if there was another company making another Witcher 3, really.

CynicismKills said:
I dunno, I mean, if the game's fun who cares if the shadows are a little jaggy?

I guess I don't get the uproar over something being downgraded (but still looking pretty good) so a company can release in a fashion that allows more people to enjoy the game.
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Now that's a valid argument. Witcher 3 may not actually need all the stuff that was taken out to be a good, enjoyable game.

But part of the hype generated for the game was based upon those things at E3. They were taken out to court consoles, which is a little duplicitous as CDPR previously had pushed hard on their image as a "We are PC gaming!" type company.
 
Frank

Frank

Gas you play on PC, how often are you happy when you have to turn a game down?

No, I am selfishly happy the game will run well and probably VERY well on my aging game PC.
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Frank said:
Gas you play on PC, how often are you happy when you have to turn a game down?

No, I am selfishly happy the game will run well and probably VERY well on my aging game PC.
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I actually did so for quite some time in the past, actually. So really, you're not happy it will run on your PC, you're happy nobody with a better PC will get a better graphical experience than you. Well, like you said, selfish.
 
CynicismKills

CynicismKills

GasBandit said:
Now that's a valid argument. Witcher 3 may not actually need all the stuff that was taken out to be a good, enjoyable game.

But part of the hype generated for the game was based upon those things at E3. They were taken out to court consoles, which is a little duplicitous as CDPR previously had pushed hard on their image as a "We are PC gaming!" type company.
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That's true and I had forgotten about it. In those cases some upset and disappointed feelings would be justified.

I think my problem is I just never put a lot of stock into graphics, for the most part. If a game's ugly to me it's more on the style of the graphics, not the quality. The same goes for replaying older-gen games. Generally I can overlook big nasty polygons and such if the game still holds up in other areas.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
CynicismKills said:
And even with that well-written and precise reasoning as to why PC won't have the game they wanted, it'll sell like hotcakes while people whine that consoles ruin everything.
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And if it doesn't sell on PC, the PC will be declared dead and the poor sales will be blamed on piracy.
 
Frank

Frank

If CDPR comes out and blames piracy for poor sales then we actually do know that PC gaming is dead.

Either that or Ubisoft murdered them and is now wearing their skins.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Frank said:
If CDPR comes out and blames piracy for poor sales then we actually do know that PC gaming is dead.

Either that or Ubisoft murdered them and is now wearing their skins.
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That's true, but you know other outlets will claim "piracy", even if the CDPR doesn't themselves.
 
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