Zeusthecat

I would be down for a weekly trials group but it seems that my normal play time in the evening doesn't line up well with many people here.

I have a real issue with the whole mentality that if people are truly passionate about making games, they should have no problem with crunch. 40 hours per week is plenty and as the expectation of hours worked gets higher and higher, you slowly squeeze out pretty much anyone who isn't a single person without any other life commitments. I mean, maybe it's not that extreme but I imagine that mentality makes it near impossible for anyone with kids or a family that they hope to spend any time with to make any kind of life long career out of video game development. I think paying people a salary based on a 40 hour work week and squeezing 60, 70, or 80 hours out of them is an absolutely disgusting practice that I can't believe so many people are okay with. But I guess it means we get cheaper games made by a bunch of like-minded single dudes so yay? Sorry for the hyperbole.

One thing I've also been wondering is if the poor state of working conditions in the game industry is directly related to the current price of games. For instance, if games were to double in price and somehow maintain the same number of sales would the result be less of a need to crunch and squeeze 80 hour work weeks out of people who are making the same salary regardless? I like to think that some of the more noble companies would apply the increased revenue towards hiring more staff and more evenly distributing the workload to allow a situation where everyone is working 40 hour weeks consistently instead of needing to crunch for weeks, months, or years on end. But of course other companies would probably just continue the same practices so they can further line the pockets of investors and shareholders. I think an interesting experiment would be for a company to try raising the price of their games by a substantial amount but with the promise that the increased price would put them in a situation where it would create a better working environment for their employees. Personally, I would pay $120 for a game if I knew that everyone working on it was paid a fair wage and never had to work more than 40 hours per week. I'm sure it would result in a higher quality product too.

For me, I'm probably going to take this opportunity to just focus on improving my PvP game. I do still need to run CE regular and hard mode to finish off my year one stuff but with everything else completed, most of my gear leveled, and little incentive to acquire any other gear aside from exotics, I can finally put some dedicated focus on exploring PvP more without feeling like I'm missing out on the weekly PvE events.

I hadn't really given much thought to digital pricing as I still pretty much exclusively buy physical copies but I think that is a really good point. I have a hard time understanding why a digital copy of a game should ever be more expensive than a physical copy.

I've had a similar problem with Borderlands 2. Each time I play it just gets harder and harder to get past how janky it feels compared to Destiny. I'm constantly getting hit by enemies with almost no indication of where it's coming from, there is no clear indication of how to avoid getting hit by the many one hit kill AOE attacks that all of the stronger guys seem to have, and there's no fucking double jump. Seriously, the double jump is probably the number one thing that has ruined my enjoyment of other FPS's. It just feels so good and makes traversal so much more enjoyable than it typically is in an FPS. I think the one thing this game nails better than any other FPS though is how clearly they communicate everything that is going on in any given battle. I feel like I always know what I'm getting shot by, where enemies are, and how each enemy is going to behave in any given situation. Borderlands, by comparison, just feels constantly messy and frantic. I still enjoy a lot about that game but the act of playing it is just starting to feel subpar.

Are there any good modern games that scratch the same itch that Ogre Battle 64 did?

tabacco, I see what you're doing and I like it. Keep up the good work sir.

This is my favorite GTA 5 video ever.

I can get behind DLC being better as a responsive thing rather than something that is fully defined and planned out in advance. I do think it is the preferable model. But at the same time, I don't really begrudge other companies for carving out parts of their game ahead of time to sell as separate DLC. I used to be really bothered by it but if development costs (for big AAA games at least) really are continuing to rise and selling a game for more than $60 isn't an option, I don't think it's all that unfair for them to carve up some parts of it to sell separately. Generally speaking, I still feel like I get good value out of most $60 games and they still feel like complete products to me. Not always, but usually.

My wife mentioned that she heard Shaun the Sheep was getting really good reviews. Somehow it's sitting at 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie seems like it just came out of nowhere.

One thing I really wonder is if they are going to do anything with the existing raids/PoE to keep them relevant with the new level cap. It sounds like strikes are being re-worked and will probably all be available again in a new playlist at a higher level. It would be nice if they also added a new tier or two to the existing raids with maybe some updated loot tables because I would imagine running a level 30 raid at level 40 would be painfully boring and pointless unless you are looking for some old exotic drops that you were still missing. If they do figure out some way to keep all of the current end game content relevant then I think this game will finally hit a point where there would be more content than people would know what to do with. With 13 strikes, 3 raids, new tiers of PoE, new story progression, new PvP modes and bounties, there would be a whole hell of a lot to do every week and it would be awesome.

So if $3/hour is way too expensive in one case and $10/hour is a great value in another case, how should games be priced so that everyone can look at games and have the general feeling that they are fairly priced? It's hard to buy the argument that games are generally too expensive when you say that $20 is a great value for a short experience in one case but $15 is too expensive for a short experience in another case. If the notion is that the pricing of games is unfair because some games don't provide high enough value per hour spent, I don't see any way to solve this short of publishers or developers finding some way to judge the value of the experience their game is providing and price it accordingly before it hits shelves. I guess I just don't think it's fair to say games are not fairly priced just because some games don't provide as much value as other games. I'm not sure if that's necessarily what you're arguing but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on a good solution where the price of a game in some way reflected the quality of the experience. And honestly, I would argue that the pricing usually shakes out that way over time anyways where the more poorly received games with shallower experiences tend to get bigger price cuts after a shorter period of time whereas Nintendo games from 5 years ago still cost $50. I think this still falls under the category of "releasing additional pay content". And really, balance and usability updates are a pretty standard thing that come out in post release patches for a lot of games. Maybe not usability as much but balance patches are pretty common and are almost always free. Maybe there's some nuance that I'm missing but if Paradox releases a game, then releases a paid DLC with additional content that goes towards funding usability and balance updates, I don't see how that is much different than Ubisoft releasing a game, issuing post release patches to fix bugs and balance issues, and releasing paid DLC.

A GIF of Peter Dinklage with a single tear slowly rolling down his face. It's a good question though. With light levels going away I would assume each person out of the gate would have whatever their current light level is converted into XP so they start from the same level they were before the expansion hit. Then I would guess that regardless of whether or not you have the expansion, you would be able to run whatever strikes or story content is available to you until you reach the level 40 cap. But at that point maybe you would be limited to only the lower level content and year 1 gear?

All I'm really trying to do is provide some perspective. There are people that are legitimately angry and bothered by the fact that a game and a couple of expansions can cost $85. I think it is useful for people to look at other things in their lives that they throw that kind of money at without a second thought and take a few seconds to try to reason out why they have such an issue specifically with games costing that much. Maybe the quality of that one hour at a restaurant is greater than the combined quality of all 175 hours spent playing Destiny and that's fine. But I think it is shortsighted to just be angry about how much they cost without putting it into the context of the greater world around you. I don't buy a whole lot of games new any more but it seems to me that the $60 games are typically those AAA games with giant budgets while games made by smaller studios with smaller budgets tend to have a price point that reflects that. I would argue that when people are complaining about the cost of games, they are almost always complaining about the cost of $60 games, which is almost always going to be a big budget AAA game. Or sometimes they're complaining that Gone Home costs $20.

Honestly, I think any of today's "bad practices" with pre-order incentives, day one DLC, etc. can in some ways be directly tied to the fact that the price of games has not gone up with inflation. In 1993, a new game could cost $50 or more. If we took inflation into account, new games should be costing us over $80 today. Instead, they cost $60. Meanwhile, game development costs have gone up substantially. They can't raise the price of games any further because we are already all complaining about how expensive they are so they have to get creative with things like DLC and pre-order bonuses and collector's editions.

I've spent about $85 on Destiny and probably have about 175 hours or so played. Some other things I've spent $85 on: Dinner at a restaurant for a family of four. We're lucky if that experience lasts us an hour. Going to the casino. If we're extremely stingy only playing penny slots and having fairly decent luck we might get $85 to last an hour or two. Two day passes to Wet n Wild. Good for about a half day of entertainment. One month of cable. Having a pest guy come to my house and spend 30 minutes spraying poison to kill ants. Getting my teeth cleaned at the Dentist I just don't understand these arguments that even charging $85 for a game and two DLCs is some kind of grave sin. It's a fucking bargain when you consider how easy it is for $85 to evaporate out in the real world.

Something about this doesn't add up though. Around the time this expansion comes out, that big weapon re-balancing patch will hit that nerfs all of the currently OP guns in the game. But if the new expansion makes those guns irrelevant, why even bother with the weapon specific nerfs? For PvP I can understand why but Gjallarhorn is specifically being nerfed because of its abuse in PvE, which would presumably become a non-issue when it quickly becomes an irrelevant weapon compared to the new guns. I have to assume that means that exotics will still scale while legendaries stay left behind. Maybe they mentioned that somewhere but if they did I missed it.

Okay, wow, these are all some pretty major changes. A part of me is a little sad that all of these great weapons I've been collecting will become obsolete almost immediately. But the other part of me is excited that I can start with a fresh slate on day one with everyone else. I didn't start playing till this last February and feel like I've been playing catch up ever since. Pros and cons I guess.

I have to agree with you on this. Relative to all the other shit in our world, gaming really isn't that expensive. When people line up every year to buy the new iPad for $800 or new iPhone for $500, a $400 console or two every 5-7 years is a pretty damn good deal. Especially considering all of the features that they are jam packed with these days. And I'm not sure it's fair to say gaming is more expensive than other hobbies just because it costs more money to keep up with all of the latest and greatest stuff. In fact, this is one hobby where that would be incredibly counter-productive because games release more rapidly than you could possibly complete them all unless you only sleep like 2 hours a night and spend every waking hour playing games. Realistically, I would bet that most people could spend the equivalent price of 2 or 3 decent dinners at a nice restaurant and easily bring in half a dozen games per month.

I'm excited for this. I had so much fun with Halo Wars.

Thanks! And holy shit that's a lot of stats.

With 35 Skolas down I'm probably gonna start shifting my focus more towards PvP. Although I do still need to run TDB normal and heroic to finish off my year one stuff so one of these weekends I hope to be available for that. My K/D ratio has continued to steadily rise past the 1.0 mark and I just can't get enough PvP lately. Over the last week, according to Bungie, I've had my all time best game multiple nights in a row, won the last 10 games in a row, and peaked last night on Shores of Time with 19 kills and a 4.75 K/D ratio. I haven't pored over my PvP stats in a game like this since back in the Halo 3 days. The one metric I don't have much context for and seems kind of meaningless without some kind of comparison is the combat rating. From what I've read it looks like it goes up to 200 so it would seem my 95.48 rating is actually pretty terrible. I don't know if that means I'm only better than 48% of players or how that's supposed to work.

We managed to pull off a Skolas kill on our second attempt on Saturday and we ran with two Defender Titans and a Sunsinger Warlock. After we got through the first 25%, we spent the entire rest of the round on that platform on the very right-hand side of the map and just traded Titan bubbles back and forth. It was nice and cozy on that platform. Then when we were close to each mine round we just made sure our supers were up and skated across the level to dismantle each mine before finally returning to our platform. It really helped having the melee buff this week because with Armor of Light we were able to just stay in our bubbles and melee any of the big guys that tried to jump up on our platform. That first ever Skolas kill felt so good. In the end, it didn't seem quite as difficult as we expected but then again we were super focused and had great communication through the entire fight.

It's funny you mention that because my daughter watched a good number of matches during the season and every time Tex did something stupid she would say things like "Oh my god, Tex just hit the ball into our own goal again!" and "What is wrong with Tex? He's the worst teammate ever!". I like to think they do have different behaviors and that it wasn't just random chance that Tex was so terrible.