This thread will attempt to provide a place to discuss past/present/future PC gaming deals. While mainly focusing on Steam games, any standout sales may also be presented. I will not be updating every Daily/Weekly/etc. sale. The tools to help individuals become a smarter shopper will be provided below.
See this POST for links to store sale pages, threads of interest and other tools to help you become a more informed PC game shopper.
Time to stop bothering getting Chrono coins. In the time it took me to go get lunch I missed getting a game on my wishlist. Way too few copies of the games compared to the vast number or coin hoarders.
I'm guessing this is sarcasm. But to compare a $20 indie game (that routinely goes on sale) like Rocket League to an overpriced derivative shell that costs $60 is reaching. Further, I believe Rocket League didn't have cosmetics until after-the-fact? It's something they added later on in the form of DLC when the community grew, yes? Maybe I'm wrong about that but the point about the significant price differential remains. Better comparison would be to Overwatch, a game where the price crashed rapidly to the point it was stuck in a Humble Bundle... a point at which it costs more to buy Diablo 2 than Overwatch.
Yeah, well, I think the millions of folks subbing to WoW would disagree. So would the lunatics who buy Starcraft skins. Basically Blizzard's entire business plan revolves around selling people $60 games followed by $60 expansions, charging them $14 a month to play some of those games, and charging them real money for hats and pets.
A fair point but Blizzard is clearly trending away from this as WoW subs continue to dwindle and Activision-Blizzard stock has been dropping noticeably since this year's Blizzcon.
Charging $50 for expansions every two or so years from an MMO isn't out-of-the-ordinary. And, yes, Blizzard has been cramming their fee-based MMO with cosmetic microtransactions for years now but that is only to forestall their heavy loss of subscribers. WoW in 2018 is almost certainly carried in large part by whales. The token is good evidence of that. People with tons of money buy gold for cash which also helps to inflate the number of subs because people are able to keep playing for 'free' (paying only gold they farm). WoW is a borderline F2P game at this point -- you can even buy the expansions with gold because you can transfer the tokens you buy with gold to Battle.net money.
Consider the reality of Overwatch I mentioned above, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and now Diablo Immortal. WoW only maintains its sub because a large part of those subs are... sub...sidized by whales paying $20 for gold tokens. Also keep in mind WoW has not changed the price of its $15 sub over the course of 14 years -- it has not kept up with the cost on inflation so in real money value the sub price of WoW has essentially dipped to around $10-11 per month.
A fair point but Blizzard is clearly trending away from this as WoW subs continue to dwindle and Activision-Blizzard stock has been dropping noticeably since this year's Blizzcon.
Okay, I believe I understood most of that, but what the heck is a whale? I'm assuming this word does not mean what I think it means, because if the marine mammals have started playing MMOs, it's a sure sign that we're about to become not-the-dominant-life-form on this planet.
Okay, I believe I understood most of that, but what the heck is a whale? I'm assuming this word does not mean what I think it means, because if the marine mammals have started playing MMOs, it's a sure sign that we're about to become not-the-dominant-life-form on this planet.
It's borrowed from casino lingo where a 'whale' is someone with tons of money goes into a casino and gambles away hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars. So the casino will comp these people rooms, food, whatever as it comes out far ahead given the take on their gambling losses.
In games with microtransactions, whales are the people who open their wallets and buy every skin, hat, virtual-currency, whatever. In effect, whales are the people who support the F2P model because they spend far more cash than the average player.
For every WoW token a player buys with gold, there's a corresponding whale who pays $20 ($5 above the standard $15 monthly fee) for an amount of fluctuating gold (currently I think it's around 100,000 gold). They buy huge amounts of gold so they can buy costly in-game mounts or raid carries or whatever from the auction house. Were it not for this scheme that Blizzard implemented a couple of years ago, the WoW 'sub' base would be significantly lower than it is now... and it isn't particularly high in comparison to the game's zenith in Wrath of the Lich King.
Skill Up, who almost never does impression videos, did one over the disappointment of the Beta...
The game honestly seems so bad/I'll planned that its laughable...
I would need some heavy discounts and boat loads of improvements for me to even consider buying it... Honestly it's best feature, to me, is it not being on Steam. I'll never have to feel the need to buy it to complete my Fallout collection.
A fair point but Blizzard is clearly trending away from this as WoW subs continue to dwindle and Activision-Blizzard stock has been dropping noticeably since this year's Blizzcon.
Charging $50 for expansions every two or so years from an MMO isn't out-of-the-ordinary. And, yes, Blizzard has been cramming their fee-based MMO with cosmetic microtransactions for years now but that is only to forestall their heavy loss of subscribers. WoW in 2018 is almost certainly carried in large part by whales. The token is good evidence of that. People with tons of money buy gold for cash which also helps to inflate the number of subs because people are able to keep playing for 'free' (paying only gold they farm). WoW is a borderline F2P game at this point -- you can even buy the expansions with gold because you can transfer the tokens you buy with gold to Battle.net money.
Consider the reality of Overwatch I mentioned above, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and now Diablo Immortal. WoW only maintains its sub because a large part of those subs are... sub...sidized by whales paying $20 for gold tokens. Also keep in mind WoW has not changed the price of its $15 sub over the course of 14 years -- it has not kept up with the cost on inflation so in real money value the sub price of WoW has essentially dipped to around $10-11 per month.
Okay, I believe I understood most of that, but what the heck is a whale? I'm assuming this word does not mean what I think it means, because if the marine mammals have started playing MMOs, it's a sure sign that we're about to become not-the-dominant-life-form on this planet.
Whale is a term used in association with "Free to play" business models to describe the only 1-3% of players they need to spend large amounts of money in order to make their F2P game massively profitable. Whales typically account for 97%+ of the spending.
You can give everybody tons of shit for free as long as your game remains a whale playground. (lootboxes, skins, exp boosters, other cosmetics.)
F2P games in which whales can succeed through paying money are then graduated into "Pay to win" or P2W status. Most financially successful mobile games fall under this umbrella.
Okay, I believe I understood most of that, but what the heck is a whale? I'm assuming this word does not mean what I think it means, because if the marine mammals have started playing MMOs, it's a sure sign that we're about to become not-the-dominant-life-form on this planet.
lol. Surprised you haven't heard the term before. The people who you see spend $3k or $5k on a F2P game, some times in a day. Some of them have Youtube channels. They're the reason gacha free-to-play games even exist.
There's also dolphins, who spend significantly less than whales, but enough to buy multiple games at MSRP.
Anyways, my point is this: FO 76 doesn't seem like it's a mod here (i.e. Apallacia of however it is spelled sounds way too big for that, even despite the lack of NPC's and it also now has online features), yet it also doesn't seem like it's a full-priced $60 game either. It sounds like it's somewhere b/t the two - i.e. a stand-alone expansion/DLC (think anywhere from $20-30 MSRP).
It's been pretty much a slow and steady corporate takeover by Blizzard, over the years. Activision and EA slowly but surely destroy their studios. David Brevik, The Schaefers, and Bill Roper (i.e. key/core figures behind Diablo 1 & Diablo 2) are no longer there at Blizzard.
yeah the only irrational complaint to me is that it's not on steam
due to the engine and nature of the games pretty much all of bethesda's games just feel like mods of each other but you can say the same for a lot of franchises. honestly i don't think this point really matters much at all, though.
new vegas is vitually identical to fo3 but it's pretty much universally considered the best fallout despite that due to its quality. the "it feels like a mod" complaint is valid to an extent, but nobody would care if the game itself was good
That's b/c Fallout: NV actually brought w/ it really good storytelling, narrative, much more choice, personality, the dark twisted FO humor from previous games, and many other things that....well, Bethesda really isn't that great at.
NV actually felt more like the older Fallout (Fallout 1 and 2) w/ the above stuff that I mentioned and mixed w/ the FO3 engine, gameplay & foundations.
I do wonder besides the 30% Valve-tax for games put on Steam, if Beth didn't put FO76 on Steam b/c they were afraid of possible Steam-review-bombing from players. Instead, well...backlash wound up on Metacritic.
Anyways, my point is this: FO 76 doesn't seem like it's a mod here (i.e. Apallacia of however it is spelled sounds way too big for that, even despite the lack of NPC's and it also now has online features), yet it also doesn't seem like it's a full-priced $60 game either. It sounds like it's somewhere b/t the two - i.e. a stand-alone expansion/DLC.
EDIT:
Without a SP component/campaign, call me when it's $10.
EDIT 2:
Blizzard died right after Diablo 2: LoD, TBH.
It's been pretty much a slow and steady corporate takeover by Blizzard, over the years. Activision and EA slowly but surely their studios. Brevik, The Schaefers, and Bill Roper are no longer there at Blizzard.
I doubt they'll fix the 60fps+ issue, where the physics go...out-the-window. This has been an issue...forever.
This issue really doesn't help those who have monitors that can hit 75hz, 90hz, 144hz, 165hz, 240hz, etc.
The thing is: ES and FO games are as great as they are usually not just b/c of its shooting elements alone. No, it's b/c of the sum of all its parts and its systems: the NPC's/characters, the quests, the choices, the big open world, the locations, the exploring, the lore, and the action.
By removing one or too many of these elements, something feels missing and these games can...well, fall apart; which is what it sounds like happened w/ FO76.
lol. Surprised you haven't heard the term before. The people who you see spend $3k or $5k on a F2P game, some times in a day. Some of them have Youtube channels. They're the reason gacha free-to-play games even exist.
There's also dolphins, who spend significantly less than whales, but enough to buy multiple games at MSRP.
Here I was getting ready to blame climate change, pollution, and general dickishness on the part of people for pending extinctions, but I see now all of these mammals are blowing all of their spare cash on WoW, leading to a rise in poverty, disease, and crime. Is there no end to your depravity, ActiBlizzard?!
It's been pretty much a slow and steady corporate takeover by Blizzard, over the years. Activision and EA slowly but surely destroy their studios. David Brevik, The Schaefers, and Bill Roper (i.e. key/core figures behind Diablo 1 & Diablo 2) are no longer there at Blizzard.
Well, I liked Diablo III. I also liked Starcraft II, at least the first and second parts. Somehow between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, it became annoying or I began to lose my patience with it. Not sure which is true--maybe both.
Well, I liked Diablo III. I also liked Starcraft II, at least the first and second parts. Somehow between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, it became annoying or I began to lose my patience with it. Not sure which is true--maybe both.
I liked D3 also, but RoS was really what improved that game and made it great. Loot 2.0, RoS content, and the Adventure Mode took D3 to the next level.
Regardless, Diablo still hasn't been the same since those key figures left - which was after D2: LoD.
D3 mainstreamed the heck out of the Diablo experience - no control over numbers/stats; not much control over upgrades; and always-online for the PC version since D3.
Well, I liked Diablo III. I also liked Starcraft II, at least the first and second parts. Somehow between Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void, it became annoying or I began to lose my patience with it. Not sure which is true--maybe both.
I'm right there with you on sc2. The first part was great and a lot of fun, the swarm one was pretty good too but not great, but legacy of the void was just boring and really not very enjoyable. Protoss was my favorite mp faction too!
Modern Blizzard shows active disdain for the old-school folks that made the company what it is today and seems to want to go out of the way to morph any and all franchises they had a hand in away from what they used to be and towards a singular cartoonish style that in some cases (Diablo) fits them very poorly but makes it easier for them to combine the franchises into one giant blob so they can do things like HotS and whatever cross-universe Battle Royale game that they almost HAVE to be making.
The dumbing down of gameplay and skill systems and the toning down of the grit and darkness from past Diablo titles is not going away and although they might make a game that is eventually fun like Diablo 3 is after a lot of patches and an expansion; I find it best to expect the worst from Diablo 4 when it finally appears and save yourself the disappointment if it is basically D3-at-launch all over again.
If Path of Exile had an interesting story and less-obtuse lore in general, nobody would be playing Diablo 3. Mechanics and gameplay-wise, PoE is a vastly superior game but it starts very slow, the setting and story are never interesting and although the world has a fair amount of lore, it is buried like the lore in Dark Souls games.
And yes, always-online in D3 meant no modding and mods are why there are still large and active D1 and D2 communities and will be for the foreseeable future.
Uplay started their Black Friday sale. Far Cry 4 gold is $15, Far Cry 5 Gold is $45, and Assassin Creed Origins $40 are some notable titles. Lowest prices so far. Most likely Steam and Humble will not have cheaper even for end of year Steam Winter as why would Ubi have the competition sell at lower price?
On a different topic; has anyone heard about DLC/Season Pass content for Ni No Kuni 2? Also, why in the heck is this game not on sale for less. It has been $20 for Ps4 several times now including a deluxe version. Sorry, I started to slip into the difference that I perceive of console title sale prices versus computer game prices (mainly on Steam/Humble/Ubi/Origin).
Oh and while I am here, I have not played it since the beta bored me but I know a dozen or so people playing and enjoying ESO and they go on and on about how much fun it is now. I'm not sold on it although I think occasionally about either giving it a try or trying out the rebooted Secret World. But more likely if I dive into another MMO anytime soon it will be Final Fantasy which is AMAZING but I am afraid of it because the brief time I played I saw how much I could enjoy it and also saw just how much of my life could be sucked into the black hole of MMO addiction if I allowed it.
Uplay started their Black Friday sale. Far Cry 4 gold is $15, Far Cry 5 Gold is $45, and Assassin Creed Origins $40 are some notable titles. Lowest prices so far. Most likely Steam and Humble will not have cheaper even for end of year Steam Winter as why would Ubi have the competition sell at lower price?
On a different topic; has anyone heard about DLC/Season Pass content for Ni No Kuni 2? Also, why in the heck is this game not on sale for less. It has been $20 for Ps4 several times now including a deluxe version. Sorry, I started to slip into the difference that I perceive of console title sale prices versus computer game prices (mainly on Steam/Humble/Ubi/Origin).
You're absolutely right. I find it troubling too. Prices on current games, the ones I want to play, stay higher for much longer on PC. If you're any sort of 'new release' type of gamer then things are usually more expensive on PC. Many of them also take longer to release. The games also have no residual value once you activate the key. This is why I'm against the fully digital future. Are many people buying these sweet games like Nier, or Nioh, or Divinity 2 when they first hit 40 dollars? I really don't think so; partially because you still don't really own them (can't resell or collect them). PC gamers can't justify the prices most of the time.
Bundles are great. You get older games for dirt cheap. But aside from that there has been nothing beneficial about PC fully embracing going digital. (Some of) The savings from the ease of digital distribution from big budget games has not been passed along to us as consumers. Publishers just keep more of it. It's analogous to the failed theorem of a "trickle-down economy". Things just don't work out that way; money stays at the top. If you don't mind bundles dictating all of the random games you are going to play then perfect. Honestly I do get a little pissed off too when I buy something like Civ 6 on what I consider a good deal for 40 bucks when its a couple months new and then it gets included in a bundle several months later. The whole ecosystem practically discourages early buying.
I've never forgiven Blizzard for the D3 idiocies of online only, the real money auction house, or the gold version where early on the only good upgrades were bought off the AH (made the game almost too easy until you saw the ramped up nightmare mode). Just horrid itemization then gold nerf, then magic find nerf. I lasted a month, two characters cleared normal and I realized how much I am burned out on arpg games. I shouldn't have bought the expansion but at least it was on sale. The fixes were just too late IMO.
That said, the worst was online only with error 37 in that first week. Of course they then brought D3 out for PS3 and it had no online only requirement.
I've never forgiven Blizzard for the D3 idiocies of online only, the real money auction house, or the gold version where early on the only good upgrades were bought off the AH (made the game almost too easy until you saw the ramped up nightmare mode). Just horrid itemization then gold nerf, then magic find nerf. I lasted a month, two characters cleared normal and I realized how much I am burned out on arpg games. I shouldn't have bought the expansion but at least it was on sale. The fixes were just too late IMO.
That said, the worst was online only with error 37 in that first week. Of course they then brought D3 out for PS3 and it had no online only requirement.
I couldn't agree more with everything you just said.
Basically Wow came out, did well, and they halted production on all of their other games. SC2 was delayed for years. D3 had no priority. It wasn't good enough for Bobby Kotick to be making billions in WoW subscriptions. They had to further monetize it, add microtransactions, and ruin the long-term health and achievement status of the most successful mmorpg of all-time. Then D3 released and quickly became probably the most disappointing release in video game history for me.
Honestly I do get a little pissed off too when I buy something like Civ 6 on what I consider a good deal for 40 bucks when its a couple months new and then it gets included in a bundle several months later.
Don't need to worry about that anymore as the quality of bundles has gone downhill now too. Humble is really the only bundle site left worth buying from for me and a lot of the games in their bundles are meh for me.
You're absolutely right. I find it troubling too. Prices on current games, the ones I want to play, stay higher for much longer on PC. If you're any sort of 'new release' type of gamer then things are usually more expensive on PC. Many of them also take longer to release. The games also have no residual value once you activate the key. This is why I'm against the fully digital future. Are many people buying these sweet games like Nier, or Nioh, or Divinity 2 when they first hit 40 dollars? I really don't think so; partially because you still don't really own them (can't resell or collect them). PC gamers can't justify the prices most of the time.
Hm. I'm actually okay with a mostly-digital future for PCs and consoles. Yes, it's true that I can take my copy of Scratches, Bad Mojo, or Ground Control II and, with some finagling, probably play them on my modern PC. Then again, it's a somewhat inherently risky proposition. Any game that's old enough that it requires me to use a loader like DOSBox, well, there's a good chance that it just won't work and what I really have is a shelf full of coasters. While I like a nice, physical collector's edition as much as or perhaps more than the next guy, collecting box versions of games just for the sake of doing so seems a little silly to me now. The only problem with collector's editions in modern times is that the really nice ones are comically-overpriced (I'm looking at you, Witcher 3), and most of the rest are just "game+DLC pass." I have a copy of the CE for the original Neverwinter Nights on my bookshelf. I think I only paid around $30-40 bucks for it back in the day. It came with a copy of the game, a CD soundtrack, a 224-page manual, a fabric "poster", a 120-page art book, a mouse pad, and a (long-sleeved) T-shirt. Blizzard used to make some pretty kick-ass CEs. I could probably make a really long weblog post talking about the crap on my shelves, but a few years ago, I paid about $25 for a Diablo II CE sans game keys. It came in a huge box with a DVD movie containing all of the game cinematics with dev team commentary, the game on three CD-ROMs,a signed game manual, a CD soundtrack, and a Diablo II PNP role-playing game, complete with a rule book, quest guide, DM screens, and set of custom dice (d4, d6, d8, d12, d20, d100). These days, what do you get in a regular game box? 9 times out of 10, it's just a piece of paper with a code for a digital storefront. Some contain physical media, but that's not all that common.
I feel like this physical v. digital argument is, for the most part, utterly pointless. It's like me complaining about how ridiculously overcomplicated the therapeutic marijuana scheme in my state is; it doesn't matter because we're going to have to follow this bizarre set of rules until the inevitable day, probably within five years' time, when recreational use is legalized, and then all of the effort that's gone into developing an infrastructure to support those rules will be rendered moot by legislative fiat.
Are people buying games when they first come out? Sure. The people who really like that genre or that franchise and, most importantly, have the means to do so, are absolutely willing to shell out $60 on a new game every few months. As an example, I'm not a guy who makes a tremendous amount of money, but I played the heck out of Injustice, so when Injustice 2 came out just about a year ago today, I ponied up about $60 for an Ultimate Edition key (I think that's what it was called before it was converted to Legendary and everybody started wearing gold lame) from GMG. Likewise, when Jurassic World Evolution came out, I picked it up new. It boils down to how excited and interested you are in playing a game when it's new, recognizing that a) it will get cheaper fairly quickly, and b) the dev will probably be ironing out rough spots with you as a guinea pig. I think that's why people will mostly wait for games to get a little dust before buying them.
I do, agree, however, that it's time to bury this ridiculous argument that publishers should wait to release PC versions of products because of piracy. I just don't believe the evidence is out there to support this absurd claim. That's why I had to wait until November to play Injustice 2, while console nerds got access to it in May. We all need to call BS on this. Pirates are going to pirate games, and legitimate customers are going to pay for them--it's as simple as that.
Bundles are great. You get older games for dirt cheap. But aside from that there has been nothing beneficial about PC fully embracing going digital. (Some of) The savings from the ease of digital distribution from big budget games has not been passed along to us as consumers. Publishers just keep more of it. It's analogous to the failed theorem of a "trickle-down economy". Things just don't work out that way; money stays at the top. If you don't mind bundles dictating all of the random games you are going to play then perfect. Honestly I do get a little pissed off too when I buy something like Civ 6 on what I consider a good deal for 40 bucks when its a couple months new and then it gets included in a bundle several months later. The whole ecosystem practically discourages early buying.
Eh, once again, I'd say this is only true to the extent that you're not really excited about playing a particular title. Everyone on this site is here because they're generally not paying retail MSRP for new games, but people do make exceptions, and they do so knowing, as I said above, that those games will drop in price sooner or later. People who bought Civ 6 in a Humble six months after release are not the people who were pre-ordering Gold editions of the game from Firaxis's website (let's call them Meierheads--can I make that a thing?). I tend to be more leery of paying even sale prices for indie games as opposed to AAA games due to the bundle effect. Humble rarely gets its hands on AAA titles very soon after release, and, as I said, I and many others here are perfectly content to wait for their AAA titles to hit 50% off or greater during big sale events.
That particular version of Ni no Kuni 2 is actually not as great an example as you might think. The modern tendency is for companies to produce console-exclusive CEs or "premium" versions that they will only sell physical copies of on consoles while selling the ostensibly-equivalent digital versions on PC. What I have found is that even when companies do the rare thing and actually make a PC version of a physical CE for a game, it's on a much more limited scale ( and sometimes they're only released in European markets, which have a relatively larger number of PC gamers). For this reason, it's often easier to find cheaper versions of console CEs or premium or limited editions of games out there than PC versions--especially when those CEs didn't sell as well as publishers anticipated and stores find themselves sitting on a lot of backstock.
I've never forgiven Blizzard for the D3 idiocies of online only, the real money auction house, or the gold version where early on the only good upgrades were bought off the AH (made the game almost too easy until you saw the ramped up nightmare mode). Just horrid itemization then gold nerf, then magic find nerf. I lasted a month, two characters cleared normal and I realized how much I am burned out on arpg games. I shouldn't have bought the expansion but at least it was on sale. The fixes were just too late IMO.
That said, the worst was online only with error 37 in that first week. Of course they then brought D3 out for PS3 and it had no online only requirement.
I don't get as much into Diablo-type games as other people do, so that's why this didn't bother me that much. I got a $10 copy of the base game during some crazy sale that Toys-R-Us had (pm'd at Best Buy), and played through the campaign on normal with a couple of characters. Occasionally, I'll fire it up and fool around with my barbarian (my first playthrough was with a wizard, so when you inevitably ask whether I'm a wizard, the answer is, of course, "yes").
I couldn't agree more with everything you just said.
Basically Wow came out, did well, and they halted production on all of their other games. SC2 was delayed for years. D3 had no priority. It wasn't good enough for Bobby Kotick to be making billions in WoW subscriptions. They had to further monetize it, add microtransactions, and ruin the long-term health and achievement status of the most successful mmorpg of all-time. Then D3 released and quickly became probably the most disappointing release in video game history for me.
This is absolutely true. Hey, you've got to give them credit for recognizing a cash cow when they made one. There were a lot of us who kept hoping this would be the year they would announce Warcraft IV, but, you know, why do that when you can just sell a reskinned version of a game everyone's already played and owned for 10 years? As I've said before, the Warcraft franchise is old enough that there are people who are huge WoW nerds who weren't alive when the original games came out.
D3 mainstreamed the heck out of the Diablo experience - no control over numbers/stats; not much control over upgrades; and always-online for the PC version since D3.
Honestly, the best Diablo III was either Path of Exile or Marvel Heroes at one point in time...
Marvel Heroes shot themselves in the foot by changing the gameplay for console release and all skill points went away and you couldn't have as many skills as you once could. (It wasn't perfect... They forever had balanced issues (50+ characters so it was always going to be a problem) and far too many bugs that no Blizzard game would ever have tolerated.
I've liked my limited time with PoE a lot but I get tired of the loot... You could have one decent battle with a few mobs and spend 10 minutes trying to deal with the loot and with a bunch of currency types I pretty much felt obligated to pick it up cause who knows what I would really need.
Honestly, the best Diablo III was either Path of Exile or Marvel Heroes at one point in time...
Marvel Heroes shot themselves in the foot by changing the gameplay for console release and all skill points went away and you couldn't have as many skills as you once could. (It wasn't perfect... They forever had balanced issues (50+ characters so it was always going to be a problem) and far too many bugs that no Blizzard game would ever have tolerated.
I've liked my limited time with PoE a lot but I get tired of the loot... You could have one decent battle with a few mobs and spend 10 minutes trying to deal with the loot and with a bunch of currency types I pretty much felt obligated to pick it up cause who knows what I would really need.
Once you get far enough into PoE you learn to filter the loot and subsequently only via sound effects. I really dug PoE this last summer but I've moved on because the end-game grind laughs at MMO's end-game. I honestly feel like Grinding Gear Games hates its player base after experiencing that end-game.
As an unabashed player of western-oriented AAA games and Ubisoft open world fests, I have no real complaints about the state of PC gaming. The most I've paid for a new title in the past 18 months has been 40% off at launch (Tomb Raider) down to under $15 for AC Odyssey at launch. Apparently having little interest in the Japanese import scene has its advantages.
Hm. I'm actually okay with a mostly-digital future for PCs and consoles. Yes, it's true that I can take my copy of Scratches, Bad Mojo, or Ground Control II and, with some finagling, probably play them on my modern PC. Then again, it's a somewhat inherently risky proposition. Any game that's old enough that it requires me to use a loader like DOSBox, well, there's a good chance that it just won't work and what I really have is a shelf full of coasters. While I like a nice, physical collector's edition as much as or perhaps more than the next guy, collecting box versions of games just for the sake of doing so seems a little silly to me now. The only problem with collector's editions in modern times is that the really nice ones are comically-overpriced (I'm looking at you, Witcher 3), and most of the rest are just "game+DLC pass." I have a copy of the CE for the original Neverwinter Nights on my bookshelf. I think I only paid around $30-40 bucks for it back in the day. It came with a copy of the game, a CD soundtrack, a 224-page manual, a fabric "poster", a 120-page art book, a mouse pad, and a (long-sleeved) T-shirt. Blizzard used to make some pretty kick-ass CEs. I could probably make a really long weblog post talking about the crap on my shelves, but a few years ago, I paid about $25 for a Diablo II CE sans game keys. It came in a huge box with a DVD movie containing all of the game cinematics with dev team commentary, the game on three CD-ROMs,a signed game manual, a CD soundtrack, and a Diablo II PNP role-playing game, complete with a rule book, quest guide, DM screens, and set of custom dice (d4, d6, d8, d12, d20, d100). These days, what do you get in a regular game box? 9 times out of 10, it's just a piece of paper with a code for a digital storefront. Some contain physical media, but that's not all that common.
I feel like this physical v. digital argument is, for the most part, utterly pointless. It's like me complaining about how ridiculously overcomplicated the therapeutic marijuana scheme in my state is; it doesn't matter because we're going to have to follow this bizarre set of rules until the inevitable day, probably within five years' time, when recreational use is legalized, and then all of the effort that's gone into developing an infrastructure to support those rules will be rendered moot by legislative fiat.
Are people buying games when they first come out? Sure. The people who really like that genre or that franchise and, most importantly, have the means to do so, are absolutely willing to shell out $60 on a new game every few months. As an example, I'm not a guy who makes a tremendous amount of money, but I played the heck out of Injustice, so when Injustice 2 came out just about a year ago today, I ponied up about $60 for an Ultimate Edition key (I think that's what it was called before it was converted to Legendary and everybody started wearing gold lame) from GMG. Likewise, when Jurassic World Evolution came out, I picked it up new. It boils down to how excited and interested you are in playing a game when it's new, recognizing that a) it will get cheaper fairly quickly, and b) the dev will probably be ironing out rough spots with you as a guinea pig. I think that's why people will mostly wait for games to get a little dust before buying them.
I do, agree, however, that it's time to bury this ridiculous argument that publishers should wait to release PC versions of products because of piracy. I just don't believe the evidence is out there to support this absurd claim. That's why I had to wait until November to play Injustice 2, while console nerds got access to it in May. We all need to call BS on this. Pirates are going to pirate games, and legitimate customers are going to pay for them--it's as simple as that.
Eh, once again, I'd say this is only true to the extent that you're not really excited about playing a particular title. Everyone on this site is here because they're generally not paying retail MSRP for new games, but people do make exceptions, and they do so knowing, as I said above, that those games will drop in price sooner or later. People who bought Civ 6 in a Humble six months after release are not the people who were pre-ordering Gold editions of the game from Firaxis's website (let's call them Meierheads--can I make that a thing?). I tend to be more leery of paying even sale prices for indie games as opposed to AAA games due to the bundle effect. Humble rarely gets its hands on AAA titles very soon after release, and, as I said, I and many others here are perfectly content to wait for their AAA titles to hit 50% off or greater during big sale events.
That particular version of Ni no Kuni 2 is actually not as great an example as you might think. The modern tendency is for companies to produce console-exclusive CEs or "premium" versions that they will only sell physical copies of on consoles while selling the ostensibly-equivalent digital versions on PC. What I have found is that even when companies do the rare thing and actually make a PC version of a physical CE for a game, it's on a much more limited scale ( and sometimes they're only released in European markets, which have a relatively larger number of PC gamers). For this reason, it's often easier to find cheaper versions of console CEs or premium or limited editions of games out there than PC versions--especially when those CEs didn't sell as well as publishers anticipated and stores find themselves sitting on a lot of backstock.
I don't get as much into Diablo-type games as other people do, so that's why this didn't bother me that much. I got a $10 copy of the base game during some crazy sale that Toys-R-Us had (pm'd at Best Buy), and played through the campaign on normal with a couple of characters. Occasionally, I'll fire it up and fool around with my barbarian (my first playthrough was with a wizard, so when you inevitably ask whether I'm a wizard, the answer is, of course, "yes").
This is absolutely true. Hey, you've got to give them credit for recognizing a cash cow when they made one. There were a lot of us who kept hoping this would be the year they would announce Warcraft IV, but, you know, why do that when you can just sell a reskinned version of a game everyone's already played and owned for 10 years? As I've said before, the Warcraft franchise is old enough that there are people who are huge WoW nerds who weren't alive when the original games came out.
Might drop that low on Amazon, too (it's currently the same $409 price it is now on Newegg). Seems like one of the best deals for a 1070ti for BF given what they want for the 20X0 series and Vegas's being comparatively mediocre and costing relatively the same as the 1070ti's.
For me it's just a choice between $200ish for an AMD 580 or $400ish for a 1070ti. This BF I don't see any other good values price/performance-wise.
Once you get far enough into PoE you learn to filter the loot and subsequently only via sound effects. I really dug PoE this last summer but I've moved on because the end-game grind laughs at MMO's end-game. I honestly feel like Grinding Gear Games hates its player base after experiencing that end-game.
Learn to craft
Learn to farm certain maps/atlas with modifiers
Learn to trade stuff from PoE trade
Download a NeverSink Loot filter (regular until end game, then strict)
The end game is amazing. You need to play more to understand how it works. It doesn’t hold your hand like most games nowadays
Learn to craft
Learn to farm certain maps/atlas with modifiers
Learn to trade stuff from PoE trade
Download a NeverSink Loot filter (regular until end game, then strict)
The end game is amazing. You need to play more to understand how it works. It doesn’t hold your hand like most games nowadays
I play on Xbox. Essentially a completely different (nerfed) game. And I don't care what you say, running T13 maps over and over again (I understand modifiers and how they affect drops, I didn't get to 91 by chance) to never get higher tier'd maps is stupid and a waste of my time. The trade market on Xbox is extremely inflated compared to PC and to boot you can barely filter items which turns simple transactions into hours long endeavors. And finally, the end game is not amazing, it is a waste of time and I am glad I moved on.
It's not an argument; it's a preference. I understand the way things are, and why things are the way they are.
But I would prefer to have more things like this:
or this:
A Wall of Text draws near. You gain a preemptive strike!
Companies are perfectly capable of activating a permanent digital key for you as well, if you were to buy and install from a physical edition. They just don't. Because they suck. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing scenario like it is with ancient, broken-install CD-ROM discs, or Steam codes in a box. Just look at blu-rays and 4K UHD discs for example. Almost all of them include a digital code for a copy of the movie. Publishers are essentially giving out a second copy of the movie for free. People can sell them, trade them, or give them to a friend. It's not a problem, it's not lost revenue, and it's not killing their business. They are selling many more discs than they normally would be because it's a better service. The same could be said for PC video games if publishers did a better job. Just look at all of our buying habits. You know that it's true. Sales on new releases are low because the value proposition for customers simply isn't there. AAA publishers could find a way to get you both a hard copy and a digital copy of their games if they wanted to.
AAA PC game publishers give the least amount of effort, both they and their customers have chosen the path of least resistance (towards selling and buying new games), and customers put up with it. Nearly everything is 'games-as-a-service' now. Meanwhile day1 game purchases have their value depreciate and evaporate faster than ever, making the value proposition for the customers go up in a cloud of smoke. Poof. Look at Destiny2. It has zero value. Activision gave it away for free and they bundled it. Half of people who spent $60 on the game are not pleased. They are also less likely to buy another game like that in the future.
You know it sucks. That's why you, and me, we all buy full priced PC games maybe once a year. And then you feel compelled to also have to justify the reasoning to yourself and to other people.
Sure, ok, the argument is pointless. So is buying brand new PC games. So round and round we go until developers get pennies on the dollar because the only way they can sell their games is through dollar store digital bundling.
I view the collector's edition thing like the before mentioned "whales" in F2P games. Take game, add another $6 worth of low grade metal keychains, tin cases and plastic "resin" statues and sell it for an extra $70 to a certain narrow segment of your clientele. I have too much crap in my house as it is.
I play on Xbox. Essentially a completely different (nerfed) game. And I don't care what you say, running T13 maps over and over again (I understand modifiers and how they affect drops, I didn't get to 91 by chance) to never get higher tier'd maps is stupid and a waste of my time. The trade market on Xbox is extremely inflated compared to PC and to boot you can barely filter items which turns simple transactions into hours long endeavors. And finally, the end game is not amazing, it is a waste of time and I am glad I moved on.
It's not an argument; it's a preference. I understand the way things are, and why things are the way they are.
But I would prefer to have more things like this:
or this:
A Wall of Text draws near. You gain a preemptive strike!
Companies are perfectly capable of activating a permanent digital key for you as well, if you were to buy and install from a physical edition. They just don't. Because they suck. It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing scenario like it is with ancient, broken-install CD-ROM discs, or Steam codes in a box. Just look at blu-rays and 4K UHD discs for example. Almost all of them include a digital code for a copy of the movie. Publishers are essentially giving out a second copy of the movie for free. People can sell them, trade them, or give them to a friend. It's not a problem, it's not lost revenue, and it's not killing their business. They are selling many more discs than they normally would be because it's a better service. The same could be said for PC video games if publishers did a better job. Just look at all of our buying habits. You know that it's true. Sales on new releases are low because the value proposition for customers simply isn't there. AAA publishers could find a way to get you both a hard copy and a digital copy of their games if they wanted to.
AAA PC game publishers give the least amount of effort, both they and their customers have chosen the path of least resistance (towards selling and buying new games), and customers put up with it. Nearly everything is 'games-as-a-service' now. Meanwhile day1 game purchases have their value depreciate and evaporate faster than ever, making the value proposition for the customers go up in a cloud of smoke. Poof. Look at Destiny2. It has zero value. Activision gave it away for free and they bundled it. Half of people who spent $60 on the game are not pleased. They are also less likely to buy another game like that in the future.
You know it sucks. That's why you, and me, we all buy full priced PC games maybe once a year. And then you feel compelled to also have to justify the reasoning to yourself and to other people.
Sure, ok, the argument is pointless. So is buying brand new PC games. So round and round we go until developers get pennies on the dollar because the only way they can sell their games is through dollar store digital bundling.
While I always would prefer a retail copy on disc - the problem is that the digital services made that quite useless. We sometimes get patches a lot, sometimes get big patches, then we get expansions/DLC's. Sizes change. Retail games get patched (even on Day 1), files get over-written, things get added, and other things. All of this can render the original Version 1.0 Retail copy often at some point pretty much worthless/useless (or close to it).
Which means, we need somewhere to back this up, in case crap hits the fan. And especially if you don't have great Internet. Whether it's BR discs; BD-XL discs; flash drives; and/or HDD's/SSD's (best option, bank for buck wise in IMHO currently) - nice to have this stuff backed-up in case you need it, at your fingertips, you know?
Then, we have the problem at retail for us: what's the format to get games on? CD, DVD, and even sometimes BR are all not that hot formats anymore. We have some games like Gears of War 4 PC eating up an insane 130GB or so. Only format, I guess, would be a flash drive - since probably most PC's actually have a USB port that can take a flash drive. Those flash drives of that size ain't always cheap either; not compared to say a CD/DVD/BR.
Only good thing about a digital future is: well, we can get our games at any time via download...of course provided we have a decent connection to the Internet. Once they become ultra-popular, like anything else, high prices over there will be the normal and publishers won't be cutting discounts like they used to - and it seems like the big titles are starting to go that way, too: Far Cry series, AC: Origins and AC: Odyssey, and COD: Black Ops 4 on PC really ain't had that great of discounts digitally.
We still need companies selling retail boxes like retail stores like Best Buy, GameStop, Target, etc; and places w/ warehouses that sells those retail boxes like NewEgg & Amazon b/c it seems like to get CoD games, Far Cry games, AC titles, and other things cheap - those willing to clearance out keys and/or retail boxes...just to move some keys and/or retail boxes. We need more fighting b/t retailers w/ retail boxed games and digital stores - so they both are competing w/ each other over who is offering the best price for a game.
Is this the sequel to Papers, Please? This time you are running the front desk at an 'establishment' in Amsterdam's "Red Light District?" A man can dream can't he?
Is this the sequel to Papers, Please? This time you are running the front desk at an 'establishment' in Amsterdam's "Red Light District?" A man can dream can't he?
That sounds like a great idea to pitch MangaGamer, only they'd replace "front desk" with "gamut of my relative's genitals" and "Amsterdam" with "Republic of Prolapsing Anus."
I think over 200 hours into a game is not "playing it fully". I was literally unable to progress w/o having lucky RNG to get additional map drops, my char killed Atz and Elder w/o problem, I was caught in a loop that no amount of skill could get me out of. I stand by my opinion, the end game of PoE sucks.
Blizzard. Those greedy pieces of shit. Overwatch is the only good thing they've done (in the last 11 years) since The Burning Crusade.
