Paid mods and Bethesda announcement on the E3

[Crag]

Paid mods are alright as long as they deliver huge mods like Bruma, with voice actors and so on.

This whole CC affair has been a failure from the very beginning due to how badly priced and redundant their content is.  

I'd agree with this if said mod was the size of a DLC. Bruma is a good example. There are others too. Wymstooth comes to mind. InterestingNPC is another. But Beth would have to label it something else. I have no problems with Beth paying modders to produce such a mod and charging us consumers for it. Fine. That's contract work. 

 

Most of the mods on the CC now are vanity and textures. Even FO4 it's armor, clothes, and guns. CC is an in-game store. But I ask myself, would I have bought FO4 knowing there was a store? Probably. 

 

And the dev's know that. The best I can do is make damn sure I don't spend a dime in any in-game store.

[Jazzman]

Am I as a business woman really the only one that still doesn't live in the Orwellian double-plus-good parallel world that takes a ghastly win-lose for a wonderful win-win? If so, I really should get me an upgrade - the awesome blue pill - and a free millennial cupcake in a cup, yep!

[ToJKa]

it has a gotten to the point that said companies are making patents to apply intrusive microtransaction protocols in a game...

The good thing about that is only Activision will be using it. And when was the last time anyone bought an Activision game? :trollface:

[27X]

So why is it anyway that gamers are collectively seem to be suffering from some sort of Battered Wife Syndrome?

 

"They aren't forcing it, so it's okay?"

"I'm sure they'll patch it"

"But making games is so much more expensive these days"

 

Meanwhile, i just finished the indie game Hollow Knight yesterday. There's still that skill and passion like in the games before Big Publishers

Until they get popular and dumb down their games down for the mainstream, of course

 

Most of the people approving this content don't pay for it, someone else does on their behalf.

 

When they have to start paying it for themselves, things will change.

[ToJKa]

 

So why is it anyway that gamers are collectively seem to be suffering from some sort of Battered Wife Syndrome?

 

"They aren't forcing it, so it's okay?"

"I'm sure they'll patch it"

"But making games is so much more expensive these days"

 

Meanwhile, i just finished the indie game Hollow Knight yesterday. There's still that skill and passion like in the games before Big Publishers

Until they get popular and dumb down their games down for the mainstream, of course

 

Most of the people approving this content don't pay for it, someone else does on their behalf.

 

When they have to start paying it for themselves, things will change.

 

Sure, and i'll start farting rainbows with a pot of gold at the end of each one

Just one of those things i'll believe when i see it.

[27X]

 

 

So why is it anyway that gamers are collectively seem to be suffering from some sort of Battered Wife Syndrome?

 

"They aren't forcing it, so it's okay?"

"I'm sure they'll patch it"

"But making games is so much more expensive these days"

 

Meanwhile, i just finished the indie game Hollow Knight yesterday. There's still that skill and passion like in the games before Big Publishers

Until they get popular and dumb down their games down for the mainstream, of course

 

Most of the people approving this content don't pay for it, someone else does on their behalf.

 

When they have to start paying it for themselves, things will change.

 

Sure, and i'll start farting rainbows with a pot of gold at the end of each one

 

 

 

You'll have no problem paying for stuff then.

 

Handy.

[CaptainChaos]

I cannot remember the last time I paid full price for a game. I remember the last time I preordered one: Brink. This is a losing/lost battle. It started with unlocks on Battlefield 2 as EA tested the water. People rightfully complained. Boycotts were had. EA laughed all the way to the bank because they already had your $50.

 

Beth tested the water with Horse Armor DLC. And whereas Horse Armor is the butt of many jokes, it was also wildly successful, making Beth a cool couple mill IIRC.

 

There's a reason I just keep loading up Skyrim for all my sandbox bullshit. And even that game is a cutdown action-adventure fest when compared to Oblivion. And how Oblivion is the same thing compared to Morrowind. And Morrowind to Daggerfall. They've learned: the more they cut, the more they gouged, the more money they made.

 

You (and I) don't matter. Not just because there's a bunch of new 12-year-olds breaking into the scene, but because there's even a large number of aging "gamers" that also don't know any better. Skyrim was their first "RPG" just like I know more than a few "gamers" my age that think of Final Fantasy VII as the "first Final Fantasy." "Skyrim is cool! FOOS-ROW-DAH! LOL !" They don't want to get lost in a sandbox RPG. They want to be lead with waypoints to every objective. And they don't want to actually mod the game. They want to click a button, pay a few coins, and join the glorious revolution with some retextured bullshit.

 

You demand quality. You demand content. You demand something worth $60 because you have experience with good developers and publishers in this area. So, the other Publishers say "fuck you, I'll sell shiny pebbles to this group of people over here who don't know any better."

 

They want new shiney things that have been marketted to them heavily. The games that "everyone has to have." Those games have always existed, but now you can spend a bit of extra scratch for Gold Guns and shit like that to lord over the poor people.

 

Ain't gaming fucking grand? I've been watching this coming since 2000. I'd be angrier about it, but I've already lost more than enough hobbies to normal people to get all that worked up about it.

 

Am still kind of pissed MMOs brutally murdered Co-op RPGs like Neverwinter Nights.

 

The don't complain when games get worse and worse.

With less content for more $.

There are just so many games to play that to play all of them you would have to be unemployed and not need sleep.

Its really that simple all of our bitching as gamers will fall under what I described earlier.

 

The only people I will ever pre-order from are CDPR. They have proven themselves so they deserve my confidence.

The rest? They can wait.

If you reward bad behavior then that's what you encourage.

 

[firehawksh]

 

Am still kind of pissed MMOs brutally murdered Co-op RPGs like Neverwinter Nights.

 

While it's nowhere near as popular as it once was, you can still play Neverwinter Nights in a sorta coop way on a high quality server called Higher Ground Path of Ascension. Content that lasts you several years, chance for solo and teamplay and that classic lore and gameplay that made AD and D so wonderful.

[winny257]

 

---snip---

 

You (and I) don't matter. Not just because there's a bunch of new 12-year-olds breaking into the scene, but because there's even a large number of aging "gamers" that also don't know any better. 

 

---snip---

 

---snip---

 

if all the players would be like me (Old), then Bethesda would already be bankrupt.

because I (Old) do not buy every shit. 

[winny257]

 

The only people I will ever pre-order from are CDPR. They have proven themselves so they deserve my confidence.

The rest? They can wait.

If you reward bad behavior then that's what you encourage.

 

CDPR exists since 1994, so still a very young company, how many games made they?

they become not equal with the door fall into the house! 

 

we'll talk about it again in a few years!

Money does not stink.

 

 

but what the gaming companies do, stinks! 

[GrimReaper]

 

I cannot remember the last time I paid full price for a game. I remember the last time I preordered one: Brink. This is a losing/lost battle. It started with unlocks on Battlefield 2 as EA tested the water. People rightfully complained. Boycotts were had. EA laughed all the way to the bank because they already had your $50.

 

Beth tested the water with Horse Armor DLC. And whereas Horse Armor is the butt of many jokes, it was also wildly successful, making Beth a cool couple mill IIRC.

 

There's a reason I just keep loading up Skyrim for all my sandbox bullshit. And even that game is a cutdown action-adventure fest when compared to Oblivion. And how Oblivion is the same thing compared to Morrowind. And Morrowind to Daggerfall. They've learned: the more they cut, the more they gouged, the more money they made.

 

You (and I) don't matter. Not just because there's a bunch of new 12-year-olds breaking into the scene, but because there's even a large number of aging "gamers" that also don't know any better. Skyrim was their first "RPG" just like I know more than a few "gamers" my age that think of Final Fantasy VII as the "first Final Fantasy." "Skyrim is cool! FOOS-ROW-DAH! LOL !" They don't want to get lost in a sandbox RPG. They want to be lead with waypoints to every objective. And they don't want to actually mod the game. They want to click a button, pay a few coins, and join the glorious revolution with some retextured bullshit.

 

You demand quality. You demand content. You demand something worth $60 because you have experience with good developers and publishers in this area. So, the other Publishers say "fuck you, I'll sell shiny pebbles to this group of people over here who don't know any better."

 

They want new shiney things that have been marketted to them heavily. The games that "everyone has to have." Those games have always existed, but now you can spend a bit of extra scratch for Gold Guns and shit like that to lord over the poor people.

 

Ain't gaming fucking grand? I've been watching this coming since 2000. I'd be angrier about it, but I've already lost more than enough hobbies to normal people to get all that worked up about it.

 

Am still kind of pissed MMOs brutally murdered Co-op RPGs like Neverwinter Nights.

 

 

Well, there already was a huge crash for the gaming industry in 1983 and I think we are headed there again. The market gets oversaturated with games that want to bind the customer to them so that they can steadily buy more and more microtransactions and lootboxes. Problem is, just with MMORPGs in the past, that people don't tend to try your new game if they already are havily invested in another. From what I've read, one of the reasons EA closed down Visceral Games and their Star Wars game was that this game was a linear action-adventure and not a game the customer would come back to again and again. There's a huge trend where they want to establish games as services and I don't like that one bit.

 

[FauxFurry]

 

I cannot remember the last time I paid full price for a game. I remember the last time I preordered one: Brink. This is a losing/lost battle. It started with unlocks on Battlefield 2 as EA tested the water. People rightfully complained. Boycotts were had. EA laughed all the way to the bank because they already had your $50.

 

Beth tested the water with Horse Armor DLC. And whereas Horse Armor is the butt of many jokes, it was also wildly successful, making Beth a cool couple mill IIRC.

 

There's a reason I just keep loading up Skyrim for all my sandbox bullshit. And even that game is a cutdown action-adventure fest when compared to Oblivion. And how Oblivion is the same thing compared to Morrowind. And Morrowind to Daggerfall. They've learned: the more they cut, the more they gouged, the more money they made.

 

You (and I) don't matter. Not just because there's a bunch of new 12-year-olds breaking into the scene, but because there's even a large number of aging "gamers" that also don't know any better. Skyrim was their first "RPG" just like I know more than a few "gamers" my age that think of Final Fantasy VII as the "first Final Fantasy." "Skyrim is cool! FOOS-ROW-DAH! LOL !" They don't want to get lost in a sandbox RPG. They want to be lead with waypoints to every objective. And they don't want to actually mod the game. They want to click a button, pay a few coins, and join the glorious revolution with some retextured bullshit.

 

You demand quality. You demand content. You demand something worth $60 because you have experience with good developers and publishers in this area. So, the other Publishers say "fuck you, I'll sell shiny pebbles to this group of people over here who don't know any better."

 

They want new shiney things that have been marketted to them heavily. The games that "everyone has to have." Those games have always existed, but now you can spend a bit of extra scratch for Gold Guns and shit like that to lord over the poor people.

 

Ain't gaming fucking grand? I've been watching this coming since 2000. I'd be angrier about it, but I've already lost more than enough hobbies to normal people to get all that worked up about it.

 

Am still kind of pissed MMOs brutally murdered Co-op RPGs like Neverwinter Nights.

 

The don't complain when games get worse and worse.

With less content for more $.

 

There are just so many games to play that to play all of them you would have to be unemployed and not need sleep.

Its really that simple all of our bitching as gamers will fall under what I described earlier.

 

The only people I will ever pre-order from are CDPR. They have proven themselves so they deserve my confidence.

The rest? They can wait.

If you reward bad behavior then that's what you encourage.

 

If you want a proper old school co-op RPG, try the Divinity: Original Sin games.

[CaptainChaos]

 

While it's nowhere near as popular as it once was, you can still play Neverwinter Nights in a sorta coop way on a high quality server called Higher Ground Path of Ascension. Content that lasts you several years, chance for solo and teamplay and that classic lore and gameplay that made AD and D so wonderful.

 

Yea, but it's 2017 and "Multiplayer Elder Scrolls" means "Let's just make an MMO." Why? Because it's easier to flush more money out of the woodworks with an MMO. The only thing close is really Divinity. Well, Fable 3 but hahahahahahahaha!

 

This same thing happened to Raven with Jedi-Outcast/Academy. Both games were made on the cheap and made Lucasarts a mint. But a Raven dev talked about how, when time came for another game, they were told "Arena Shooters are dead, we're going a different direction."

 

And we got Force Unleashed. Ugh. Because Halo and CoD (also, the console controller itself) had basically killed the Arena Shooter.

 

 

if all the players would be like me (Old), then Bethesda would already be bankrupt.

because I (Old) do not buy every shit. 

 

The average male gamer is like 35 now. The average female gamer is in her 40s. Skyrim alone (like Halo) was incredibly popular among college students (DudeBros) and those in their late 20s and early 30s. These aren't children, even if their attitudes are similar. "Shiny! Must have!"

 

 

 

I cannot remember the last time I paid full price for a game. I remember the last time I preordered one: Brink. This is a losing/lost battle. It started with unlocks on Battlefield 2 as EA tested the water. People rightfully complained. Boycotts were had. EA laughed all the way to the bank because they already had your $50.

Well, there already was a huge crash for the gaming industry in 1983 and I think we are headed there again. The market gets oversaturated with games that want to bind the customer to them so that they can steadily buy more and more microtransactions and lootboxes. Problem is, just with MMORPGs in the past, that people don't tend to try your new game if they already are havily invested in another. From what I've read, one of the reasons EA closed down Visceral Games and their Star Wars game was that this game was a linear action-adventure and not a game the customer would come back to again and again. There's a huge trend where they want to establish games as services and I don't like that one bit.

 

 

I've thought about this, but I don't know if another crash anywhere near as bad as the 80s is even possible at this point. By moving into F2P garbage with micro-transactions, they can make tons of money for little to no effort. Dungeon Keeper was just.... fucking awful and lambasted by everyone. Even getting EA sued by the EU for false advertising. But it made EA millions for... how much could that shit honestly have cost to make?

 

As bad as games are. They aren't like ET for Atari. They aren't just garbage code piled into a cartridge and marketed to high hell. Most AAA garbage these days at least WORKS. At least LOOKS ok. Launch day issues are terrible, but the new class of "gamer" on the scene has been conditioned to accept this. To accept micro-transaction, always online, 15GB patches.

 

They're never seen anything else. As this trend continues, shitty publishers will continue to slowly chip away. You want a good example, look at how Blizzard has slowly turned World of Warcraft into.... what it is today. I can't just list examples because I'd be at it all day. Cash shops, RNG on top of RNG, Diablo 3 style World Questing. Stuff in that vein.

 

They've hemmoarged subs, but they still make easy money off the game because they aren't spending the money to develop content and they make up for lost subs with micro-transactions.

 

I'm worried these companies are just too goddamn smart in the business aspect of video games even if actual development skills have taken a dive. They are just moving into an area where they can create the next "Candy Crush." But if it DOES happen, at the least there's a "fairly" solid indie development system around these days. Gaming is big now. Worth billions. Can make more than Hollywood on a given year. And if 15 years of PG-13 garbage reshashes couldn't do more than slow Hollywood down, I don't see how the kids playing games these days are going to give up on the next MUST HAVE game where EA spent more on marketing than the actual game.

[GrimReaper]

Don't forget that today the vital part in running a business is to make more profit than the previous year. The industry can still crash, maybe even more so today. It's not enough to make enough money to survive, the shareholders want to see their money grow and if it doesn't you've already failed. Matching the profits from the previous year isn't a standstill, it's a loss. That's why stacking RNG on top of RNG is so prevalent (I've played Legion as well for 2 months until I had enough) nowadays, they don't want the customer to finish the game, they want the customer to come back again and again to entice them to spend some more money on services and microtransactions. They want you to play THEIR game and theirs exclusively and they want you to buy these shiny lootboxes. The problem is, that mindset already failed really hard when everyone saw how successful World of Warcraft was and suddenly everyone wanted to have a MMORPG on the market. Pretty much all of them failed in one way or another. The same will happen here if they keep that shit up, because people neither have the time nor money to get invested in multiple games that all demand all the time and money you have.

[Jazzman]

The average male gamer is like 35 now. The average female gamer is in her 40s. Skyrim alone (like Halo) was incredibly popular among college students (DudeBros) and those in their late 20s and early 30s. These aren't children, even if their attitudes are similar. "Shiny! Must have!"

Source pls. From what I've seen since the late 90s the coms are steadily growing in numbers. The Nexus had some 2.5 thousand members in its first year and 2.5 million members in 2010. That number has quadrupled in the last six or seven years. Due to the fact that only a few oldies would ever start their gamer career beyond their prime of life and many of them simply fade out, my observation (which includes my now 5-year old son) coincides with the growing numbers - the average gamer gets younger with each 5-year gamer generation (which reflects the 5-year game cycle as a rule of thumb in the T and M-category of the RPGs). How young the starters in RPG actually are is hard to tell, due to the fact that the coms have no restrictive age control. So, the starting age could be anything from, say, ten years upward (the average intellect that shows up online is hardly a proof to the contrary). That alone lowers the average age of today gamers. Thus methinks that the assumption of the teenage as the average player age is much, much safer.

 

I have no idea what makes you think that the average age of female players would be five years older than that of males. Do you perhaps assume a five-year sleeping beauty delay till awakening when it comes to the use of technology? Wrong. All my female classmates have started to play electronic games in primary school (the generation of my son already in kindergarten), and we were born in the late 80s - the electronic Stone Age. Female fear of technology is just a myth as is the die-hard idea that women on the internet do not exist, or at least 'not really'...

 

There is a slight female pref. for console games tho'. Why? Perhaps it's the kumbayah effect when you play with your real friends directly and not just indirectly with virtual ones. I was immune to the console, by means of whatever, fear of early finger arthritis played no role.

[GrimReaper]

There are a few statistics out there regarding the age and gender distribution of gamers but they usually don't say much because what makes someone a gamer is not very clearly defined. Playing vidya is obviously a strong indicator but if all you do with games is playing some F2P-games on your smartphone, well. Also, statistics on websites don't usually say much about them, especially if you go back to the early days of the internet where a good connection wasn't widespread and pretty much everyone just used it for chats and forums. It could also mean that the nexus gained in popularity, I remember back then the nexus had more of a reputation of being a raunchy site dedicated to video game smut.

[Jazzman]

There are a few statistics out there regarding the age and gender distribution of gamers but they usually don't say much because what makes someone a gamer is not very clearly defined. Playing vidya is obviously a strong indicator but if all you do with games is playing some F2P-games on your smartphone, well. Also, statistics on websites don't usually say much about them, especially if you go back to the early days of the internet where a good connection wasn't widespread and pretty much everyone just used it for chats and forums. It could also mean that the nexus gained in popularity, I remember back then the nexus had more of a reputation of being a raunchy site dedicated to video game smut.

When was 'back then"? I was already member of the preceding Morrowind Fan Board, and that name already points to the main area of interest on the Nexus in the following eight or ten years - Bethesda RPGs. Today that's no longer valid due to the diversification of the offered game palette. 'Smut' as you call it appeared parallel to the coming of nude mods which gained much attraction among the juveniles - endless lines of the same old same old naked stuff in the screenshot sections. That led to the blocking of nude shots in general (demanded by the new sponsors) and the shift of erotic into the newly founded supporter section (2 US$ or something, one-time). That was in 2009, if I remember me correctly.

 

Back to topic. The younger the average gamer gets, the easier they are to be deceived by the company whose games they love to play. That love alone makes the producer utterly 'trustworthy' and immune to crit. The fact that the kids will learn the opposite the hard way is of no use for us in the context of the CC but it might explain the high number of happy lemmings in the scene of today... and their willingness to fight for Bethesda. Remember, idols are always right, until they get kicked off from the pedestal for their misdeeds.

[GrimReaper]

Dunno, many people who defend publishers for their greed are in their 30's or so, they welcome the ability to buy shortcuts with money because they don't have that much time to play video games anymore, or so they say.

[zzz72w3r]

You guys are still thinking that microtransactions is about getting you to pay more for the same or less entertainment.  It's not, not anymore.  The gaming industry (the gambling kind) since the 90s have been known to use neurosciences and psychology to reduce inhibition and induce addiction.  With complete attention of your brain and direct access to your wallet the video gaming industry and all social networking platforms are taking those studies to a different level.  The key of selling microtransaction is about getting that next "high" and why the objectives of big publishers are now all about addiction and extraction.  That is far more profitable and predictable than selling consumed once only entertainment products.

[Outlast1]

Are there any sources you guys could link here, or articles (literature) I can read about this. Maybe these statistics or general numbers and graphs so I can get a handle I have been confused by these numbers as they seem to fluctuate from each given quarter to half quarter. This is getting me confused.

[MadMansGun]

Are there any sources you guys could link here, or articles (literature) I can read about this. Maybe these statistics or general numbers and graphs so I can get a handle I have been confused by these numbers as they seem to fluctuate from each given quarter to half quarter. This is getting me confused.

http://www.geekquality.com/average-gamer-myth/

[Crag]

 

 

Well, there already was a huge crash for the gaming industry in 1983 and I think we are headed there again. The market gets oversaturated with games that want to bind the customer to them so that they can steadily buy more and more microtransactions and lootboxes. Problem is, just with MMORPGs in the past, that people don't tend to try your new game if they already are havily invested in another. From what I've read, one of the reasons EA closed down Visceral Games and their Star Wars game was that this game was a linear action-adventure and not a game the customer would come back to again and again. There's a huge trend where they want to establish games as services and I don't like that one bit.

 

 

There are SP games players replay over and over. Mass Effect 1, 2 & 3, DA , TES, Fallout, etc, etc - come to mind. Go to Reddit and you'll meet players who have played those game dozens of times.

 

The problem is that EA doesn't make money when a player replays a game like that. Developers, like EA, want monthly revenue. 

[KoolHndLuke]

Somehow I got the idea that consolers beat out PC gamers by a whopping percentage.https://mygaming.co.za/news/features/89913-there-are-1-8-billion-gamers-in-the-world-and-pc-gaming-dominates-the-market.html ,  https://www.polygon.com/2016/4/29/11539102/gaming-stats-2016-esa-essential-facts. According to this- they don't. In fact the world plays "interactive entertainment" mostly on PC! So if this is even somewhat true, then why the shift by Beth/Max and others to "cater" more to the console market? Are they just much easier to dupe? Maybe. But there are many PC gamers who do not mind what the industry is turning into. Hell, they defend it! These are people who are old enough to have witnessed this disturbing trend from the beginning and must of decided at some point that they either liked it or didn't care. From what I have been reading in the past few months, the PC comm is about evenly split on this issue with CC and similar ones. So it's not the teens or young adults with their parents credit cards saying OKAY! It is older people like you and me with jobs and families that say OKAY to shit like CC! Fighting that is a losing battle. I'm not saying no one should bitch about it. I'm saying that it probably won't do much good on this front- not when your PC neighbor will gladly pay for whatever shit they are shoveling. You can lead a horse to water......

[Outlast1]

Thank you madmansgun.

 

By what I am reading this reminds me of Vega conflict a little internet browser game I played a couple years ago. you build a fleet of six ships go out and fight other players or against the AI. used to be a skill based game where victory was almost as punishing as defeat. there was a coin system but very little use of it was made when all you could do with it was build shit instantly. not until a year into the game did something go horribly wrong. me and my clan faced up with a wallet warrior cant remember his name but he got killed often but spent hundreds of dollars on coins to insta repair his fleets. and he keep attacking you until you were completely defeated due to attrition. Not long afterwards those types of players were a dime a dozen. Then came the loot boxes, and all the other fun stuff that followed the roll of progress they said the infamous pay to win style of games.

 

Are there any sources you guys could link here, or articles (literature) I can read about this. Maybe these statistics or general numbers and graphs so I can get a handle I have been confused by these numbers as they seem to fluctuate from each given quarter to half quarter. This is getting me confused.

http://www.geekquality.com/average-gamer-myth/

 

 

[winny257]

You guys are still thinking that microtransactions is about getting you to pay more for the same or less entertainment.  It's not, not anymore.  The gaming industry (the gambling kind) since the 90s have been known to use neurosciences and psychology to reduce inhibition and induce addiction.  With complete attention of your brain and direct access to your wallet the video gaming industry and all social networking platforms are taking those studies to a different level.  The key of selling microtransaction is about getting that next "high" and why the objectives of big publishers are now all about addiction and extraction.  That is far more profitable and predictable than selling consumed once only entertainment products.

 

But that only works for younger Target groups, they are rather to manipulate as an old hare like me.

meself personally already goes the smallest advertising on the nerves and therefore I do something against it, what, that is my thing.