CAGcast #379: Follow the Money

Shipwreck and Cheapy talk Destiny and NHL 15, discuss GamerGate's misdirection, and wonder if a Publisher's deceit is good for business.
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Show Linkage/Notes:
Intro: Equador by Sash (Wax Motif 2012 Wikileaks remix) -  Outro: He-Man Lessons
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I guess you can listen to Wombat's other podcast, Uninformed Opinions.

You can have multiple goals in Destiny. Just go to Bounties, and select some. They are things like "Kill X number of enemies" or "Kill Enemy type X with X weapon". Then when you play a story mission you have multiple goals.

Those are bounties, not quests though.

CheapyD said:

Those are bounties, not quests though.

Click to expand...

Oh ok,

Is there more Wombat singing?

Cheapy I think you answered your own question about why EA didn't disclose missing features.  There is only one choice for NHL, so why draw attention to what is missing.  Fans will buy it regardless, but if you start a list of what is missing, they may skip it and wait for the next version.  I can't really think of any industry where they are going to announce what is NOT in a product.  It's also a little unfair to review a game based on what's NOT in it, vs. what is.

As far as Destiny story telling goes, it's the same problem you have with every game that has replayable missions and is multiplayer.  The missions can't have a real sense of permanence.  The story is window dressing for the action.  Loot does drop from the rank and file enemies, just not on as massive a scale.  They have announced that the public events should pick up and I think that should help the game a lot.    

You forgot one key component in you EA discussion. . . INVESTORS.

Thanks for the episode guys!

More loot drops are not needed in Destiny.  99% of the loot in Borderlands is just crap that fills up your inventory and needs to be sold, then you end up with more cash than you will ever use.  If you play Borderlands with 3 other people checking their inventory every time they get a somewhat rare item, and then have to try it out, it gets old real quick.

You will find that nearly all big titles on Metacritic will garner poor user scores in the weeks leading up and directly following the release.  If you haven't noticed, the "cool" thing to do on the Internet is buck mainstream and hate everything that the general public likes or is interested in.

I haven't been disappointed in the PS4 at all, but I did wait till June to get it.  Resogun, AC4, TLoUR and Diablo 3 UEE have all been great.

I skipped Destiny at launch despite liking the Alpha because I'm not the biggest fan of FPS on consoles, and I still have tons left to do in D3.  But I found the muted storyline and atmosphere infinitely preferable to the terrible, unfunny "personality" the Borderlands series has.  Garbage characters like Tiny Tina make those games unplayable for me.

It is interesting to listen to the commentaries and watch the featurettes on the He-man DVDs. They tell you the nuts and bolts of how they put together a low budget, animated, full length toy commercial. They start by figuring out all the stock poses they'll need for the main characters in most common situations, and then animate all those sequences before they produce any episodes. Then they mix and match the pre-animated sequences with 5% or so new animation needed to complete the episode. So you have to wonder how many hundreds of times that animation cell you bought was handled and shot in the course of production.

Early in the Destiny beta that's one of the first things I thought, "I acquired and am piloting my OWN spaceship, WTF am I landing so far from my mission destination for NO reason?"

I have a question about Destiny.

On the box art, how is the guy/girl in the middle able to have their body facing one direction with their head doing almost a 180 to face the customer?? Is that Linda Blair under that get-up??

If Destiny is truly an MMO, they should be able to inject personality as they go, shouldn't they?  The bones (engine, mechanics, gameplay) of the game are good. Hopefully the rest comes over time, but sure would have been nice if they shipped this thing with an ounce of story. 

Omg I was at work listening to this podcast. It was so hard not to laugh hysterically when cheapy kept saying "just want to " over and over and over. Haha haha so funny!

Having a blast with Destiny! Some old Halo buddies and I played for a few hours last night and it was great, reminded us of playing halo 1/2/3.

Theres a lot to be worked (voice chat on the planet and in game lobbies. Make it easier to find people to play story mode with.) But it's still worth the buy in. I feel like this will be my year long game, already got a level 20 hunter...working on a level 20 titan.

They don't want to call it an MMO because ALL of the most recent MMOs have failed horribly. ESO being the latest failure. I think like any MMO, Destiny is a work in progress. Never seen a finished MMO release day one. Neverwinter was pretty close. Trust me these zones are not small when you choose a story mission you get dropped close to the objective but all of the zones for the most part are open at all times. Patrols are free roam if you like that. There are dynamic events which are cool. Too bad Xbox One seems broke in this aspect. I am level 5 on PS4 and I have seen a dynamic event. I am level 18 on XB1 and have not seen one dynamic event.  Check it out this weekend something new should pop. Raids have not dropped yet. If you like Halo and you like MMO Destiny is a great game IMO. 

Uhh XB1 games to get for new owners: Dead Rising 3, Ryse, Metro Redux, Diablo 3, Forza 5, Destiny, Titanfall, COD Ghost. Titanfall may be lacking a single player but for a multiplayer only game it is the best to date. Destiny has to be the best FPS MMO ever. Lacking story? Maybe but most FPS fans just want to go shoot shit. RPG fans rather hear about fairies and wizards anyway hahaha.  Can't please everyone. 

Borderlands, Borderlands, Borderlands. Two words: NO VAULT haha. First REAL dlc is dun dun dun, a vault!!! Borderlands 2 was forgettable and the prequel is already forgotten. I own both Borderlands on playthrough plus plus plus Co op is essential and story on the original was good other than NO VAULT. 

Great discussion this week but I think you kind of missed a point in talking about EA's broken franchises. Maybe this is a cynical attitude, but as long as people are still buying the games, what impetus does EA have to fix anything? Does it really matter if NHL's Metacritic score is in the crapper when people are going to buy it no matter what? Like you said, follow the money and as long as the money keeps flowing, they can get away with business as usual.

I'd almost go a step further and say reviews themselves become irrelevant when the gaming culture is so focused on pre-orders and first day sales and whatnot. People can bitch and complain and create hashtags etc. yet they won't vote with their wallets and stop buying into things. Seems to me like as long as mediocracy is rewarded financially, it only makes sense to expect more of the same.

Anyway, my two cents. Thanks again for an always entertaining podcast.

I don't think Gamergate is about any one thing. And certainly not about people ing. Sure the conversation started when a certain dev did shady things (like failing to donate to a charity they promised proceeds would go to), but the Gamergate movement started when "Games Media" failed. Covering up the issues, deleting comments and threads, banning people, etc. And it blew up with all (some) of the "Journalists" and their Patreon support then giving reviews or coverage with conflict of interest.

Since then, some gaming sites have revised their full disclosure policies on Patreon + Kickstarter and even not letting certain "Journalists" cover certain games. It's about journalistic integrity and people calling them out on it. And their "defense" on the subject is to make articles and blogs about how Gamers are dead. Or that all Gamers are hate filled misogynists that send death threats and lewd comments on twitter. Classy.

I'd like to point you to the comment sections on Youtube (that have nothing to do with gaming). It's crappy, but let's not lump everyone into the crap a few people do.

Whatever the excuse, Bungie was smart not handing out pre-release copies of their game.

.. and this game is no more Massively Multi-player than a COD or Battlefield.

Ship is spot on with Destiny..

I wrote some thoughts on my blog here: http://www.cheapassgamer.com/blog/3907/entry-24403-destiny-thoughts-review-ps4/

It just had so much potential, sure its got hooks; playing co-op is fun with friend, even though you're just doing the same thing over and over. But it's a big let down I expected so much more with this being Bungie.. maybe they've lost their touch. 

It's not an MMO or RPG or anything like Borderlands at all. It feels like an empty, uninteresting, repetitive world only worth playing if you got a couple of friends to grind with you.

Saw a lot of people echoing the regret that they played the beta. Do people not know what a beta is anymore? You're playing a release candidate. Especially in a beta so close to release, you're pretty much playing the retail release. They'll iron out some bugs, but the content is going to remain largely if not completely unchanged. Of course, people saying that they regret playing the beta just speaks to the sub-par quality of Destiny (or at least to the intro portion of the game).

A possible exception is Battlefield Hardline, since they pushed back the launch date. That game has the potential to change quite a bit from what the beta was. But seeing as it's Battlefield and EA, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

Destiny never has more than 16 people running around at a time in any environment. It had been said but most of the loot in borderlands was junk, in destiny the drops are rare, but usually useful. Borderlands had some great humor, but I feel like time is making everyone forget how weak that story was. The core mechanics of destiny are so good and the options really open up at 20. Also nice how mp can give you gear to upgrade your pve character too. Put me on the side with those who are loving it and will be playing it for a long time.

Cheapy, the issue I think EA was worried about with NHL15 was if they had expressed that big features were missing early on, then customers would start asking "why should I pay you the same full price as last year, if I am getting less game this go around?"

"You can't get a decent watch for $350." Whoaho, check out Rich Uncle Pennybags over here. That might the douchiest thing Cheapy has ever said.

The Apple Watch is no better or worse than any other smartwatch that is already on the market. That's a pretty low bar since they're all stupid, ugly, and useless. The fact Cheapy wants one so much makes the rest of us roll our eyes again.

sorry about the double post.. I don't know how to delete a post my bad ^^;;

I hope Tai's still eating his vegetables!

Despite the shallowness, my friends and I are still having a lot of fun with Destiny and Titanfall (still a totally unique and fun experience).

My vote for biggest disappointment of this gen is Watchdogs; I had fun with it at times, but never did I get that "this is awesome, can't stop playing" feeling that I get from Destiny, Titanfall, Dead Rising 3, Ryse, AC 4 or Lego Marvel, my favorites from this gen.

I also agree that Destiny may not be a perfect game (especially for a new father who can't spend hours due to poop drops) but it's a lot of fun.  The MMO aspect isn't really my thing, but I'm still enjoying the game.  I like the cold factor, it feels like an space game to me.  I'd love to see more loot dropping and other kinds of missions.  The drop, fight til you get to boss, and then regroup gets boring.  But it won't be too hard to add new mission types.  Overall, I'm enjoying the game and happy that I got it.

As for EA, FIFA 15 is looking good.  Maybe that's the one game that they don't screw up this year?  And Battlefield Hardline was fun, here's hoping they don't mess it up but make it better.  If they do at least FIFA 15 is great.

EA releasing half-baked versions of sports games is like conflict in the MiddleEast.  

I heard about it in grade school and was shocked and appalled.  25+ years later I'm completely apathetic and believe neither side cares enough to do anything about it.  

Zoe Quinn didn't sleep with five men like her ex-boyfriend claimed in that angry blog post, as he admitted making it up to get back at her. I think it's only been proven that there was just one guy and at that point, it's their private business. The 4chan people from the IRC rooms that posted their chat logs in response to her weird infiltration of their discussions/planning were shown to have focused on her and started the whole GameGate thing to try to mask the attacks they planned on Zoe and others. The ex-boyfriend was a part of the whole thing as he coached them on what to do and how to do it, which his Twitter feed shows the same sort of thing where he actively engages in this stuff in such a weird way that I don't really know how to react to it. It's kind of easy to see these conspiracy people on the GamerGate twitter feed as they find new wrinkles to obsess about that leads to threats against Anita that claims she never filed a police report like she claimed and the focus on Zoe's donations like they find something to spread around that if it were true, would mean nothing in the grand scheme since it proves nothing in their arguments. My point is that it's all insane in the kind of ways that only could occur on the internet and it's a shame that a number of people have had irreparable damage done to them because of it.

I can definitely appreciate the other aspect of GamerGate that is about ethics and conflicts of interest, but the shit-flinging and generalizations being thrown in both directions diminishes my ability to take either side that seriously on the matter.

I agree with Cheapy about the Destiny alpha/beta making it harder to get through the beginning of final game since they included the first several missions that was generous for a beta, but makes it hard for me to rush through those levels for the third time. It's Borderlands syndrome where I've played through the first bit so many times that trying to start over (new platform or class) gets harder and harder each time. I don't think the game really has loot at all. I may still be early, but it doesn't seem to be changing the look of my space person very much and I've seen higher level characters that look like mine with armor of unique colors. I do hope that Bungie has updates in the work to add and overhaul things about the game over the next few weeks and months beyond what the expansions will add.

I'd have loved to see Destiny become a more polished, fleshed out version of the Defiance shooter MMO that released last year and has since become free-to-play on PS3 and PC that is pretty cool for many of the same reason people were excited about Destiny originally.

There's a new 3 part documentary titled, Superheroes: A Never Ending Battle playing on Netflix that you guys might want to check out and discuss on the next show. 

For those who do not subscribe to Netflix PBS will begin airing the show on October 15. 

From the PBS website:

http://www.pbs.org/arts/programs/superheroes-never-ending-battle/

turned it off after Shipwreck implied that Ryse is better than Destiny.

Do you think that the relatively low scores from reviewers has to do with the fact that they were basically forced to grind through the game in order to get a review out. Not that they are doing it out of spite, but a game that is basically one big grind becomes so much worse when you have to play it in 10 hour chunks. If they were given time to spread it out over a week and got to break up the repetition with some competitive multiplayer or strikes or tried the raid, would they still have the same opinion? Does it really deserve a lower score than watch dogs and the same score as ryse? 

dc_fortythree said:

turned it off after Shipwreck implied that Ryse is better than Destiny.

Click to expand...

Sorry I didn't mean to imply that. I meant to state for certain that Ryse is better than Destiny.

I wanna go back to you guys on the last podcast talking about how not enough games are out.  Does that mean EVERYONE has finished every single game that's been out since Ever?  I have like a 100+ game backlog atm and I can't find enough time to finish everything let alone complain about nothing being out! XD  Yet I still keep buying em (>>)


Also - of this week -  SCrew Forza 2, Killer Instinct Season 2. Omg. Get F**King HYPE