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[Grief.exe]

Can't blame anyone here caring about their own wallets before developers.

Some publishers were playing wait and see how it turned on, let's see how it works out in the end.

The games I ended up purchasing were at or below their lowest discount levels.

Anecdotal evidence.

 

[Dusk Golem]

I will say this, the discounts are decided by the developers/publishers, so they can choose how to discount it. But there is discussion of the devalue of games and to be wise of your product, but there's a lot of different viewpoints on this topic.

However, my hope is to find some other way to make sales 'fun' for the more hardcore fans. Valve kind of experimented last Winter Sale with the Gem Raffle system and earlier this year with the Clicker minigame thing. Both are not tied into daily deals, are were a bit of fun (I liked the raffle more than the Clicker game, personally), so if they can find other avenues like that, I think most wouldn't mind as much. While I know a sale is a sale and it doesn't need to be 'fun', I think that was one attractive aspect to Valve's storefront, even though the data does show that the sales do a lot better with their new method.

 

[The Dear Leader]

Here is a pastebin of the original.

Seems pretty silly if you ask me.

Yeah I agree, after reading it there's like nothing new in that post it's just a combination of common sense and stuff that would be very easy to come up with. I don't know anything about the story or the release date expect for it will probably have the G-man in it and it might come out this year... you don't say!

 

[crazyrabbits]

I've considered picking up DA:I, but everything I've heard about the game on GAF and elsewhere tells me that it's stuffed with filler quests and there isn't a whole lot of meat to it.

They need to go back to the ME2 style of gameplay, which IMO was the best balance between exploration, leadership and consequences. Despite the stupid concept of the plot help your squadmates get over their daddy issues so you can save the galaxy), I absolutely agree with the concept of an entire game that revolves around loyalty and recruitment a la Suikoden.

 

[KingKong]

ok ok but when is Sin episode 2 coming out

 

[Jawmuncher]

I've considered picking up DA:I, but everything I've heard about the game on GAF and elsewhere tells me that it's stuffed with filler quests and there isn't a whole lot of meat to it.

They need to go back to the ME2 style of gameplay, which IMO was the best balance between exploration, leadership and consequences. Despite the stupid concept of the plot help your squadmates get over their daddy issues so you can save the galaxy), I absolutely agree with the concept of an entire game that revolves around loyalty and recruitment a la Suikoden.

A balance of ME2 with some ME1 would be the best thing for Andromeda to me.
Have planets people can explore with the Mako, but also don't sacrifice the main story for it.

 

[The Dear Leader]

I've considered picking up DA:I, but everything I've heard about the game on GAF and elsewhere tells me that it's stuffed with filler quests and there isn't a whole lot of meat to it.

They need to go back to the ME2 style of gameplay, which IMO was the best balance between exploration, leadership and consequences. Despite the stupid concept of the plot help your squadmates get over their daddy issues so you can save the galaxy), I absolutely agree with the concept of an entire game that revolves around loyalty and recruitment a la Suikoden.

There's a 6 hour campaign and unlimited multiplayer trial for Dragon Age Inquisition on Origin. I played the whole six hours and I had already started to get tired of the grind, so it made me hold off, the multiplayer is actually kind of fun though.

 

[Turfster]

ok ok but when is Sin episode 2 coming out

Way to go, now you've made me even sadder.

 

[Grief.exe]

I will say this, the discounts are decided by the developers/publishers, so they can choose how to discount it. But there is discussion of the devalue of games and to be wise of your product, but there's a lot of different viewpoints on this topic.

However, my hope is to find some other way to make sales 'fun' for the more hardcore fans. Valve kind of experimented last Winter Sale with the Gem Raffle system and earlier this year with the Clicker minigame thing. Both are not tied into daily deals, are were a bit of fun (I liked the raffle more than the Clicker game, personally), so if they can find other avenues like that, I think most wouldn't mind as much. While I know a sale is a sale and it doesn't need to be 'fun', I think that was one attractive aspect to Valve's storefront, even though the data does show that the sales do a lot better with their new method.

With the loss of dailies it would be advisable for Valve to ifind ways to increase consumer engagement, MegaGames, gems, cards, achievements, etc.

I've considered picking up DA:I, but everything I've heard about the game on GAF and elsewhere tells me that it's stuffed with filler quests and there isn't a whole lot of meat to it.

They need to go back to the ME2 style of gameplay, which IMO was the best balance between exploration, leadership and consequences. Despite the stupid concept of the plot help your squadmates get over their daddy issues so you can save the galaxy), I absolutely agree with the concept of an entire game that revolves around loyalty and recruitment a la Suikoden.

If you're a huge fan of Skyrim then there is a good chance you will enjoy DA:I, but it's one of those games where it becomes largely mediocre when you start deconstructing and assessing the individual elements.

I'm of an opinion that I'm not in Bioware's intended demographic anymore, so I'm not worried about their current or future crop of games.

 

[Messiah]

I will say this, the discounts are decided by the developers/publishers, so they can choose how to discount it. But there is discussion of the devalue of games and to be wise of your product, but there's a lot of different viewpoints on this topic.

However, my hope is to find some other way to make sales 'fun' for the more hardcore fans. Valve kind of experimented last Winter Sale with the Gem Raffle system and earlier this year with the Clicker minigame thing. Both are not tied into daily deals, are were a bit of fun (I liked the raffle more than the Clicker game, personally), so if they can find other avenues like that, I think most wouldn't mind as much. While I know a sale is a sale and it doesn't need to be 'fun', I think that was one attractive aspect to Valve's storefront, even though the data does show that the sales do a lot better with their new method.

Funnily enough, this is my biggest gripe with the sale. I always enjoyed the metagame, no matter how stupid it was.

I enjoy the focus on personalization valve is going for with the big focus on the discovery queue ... at least in theory. In actuality it just recommended me games I mostly was not even remotely interested in which is kind of a bummer. Hope they improve on that.

The only reason I missed the daily deals was because I had no incentive whatsoever to check out the shop each day, I kinda missed that as someone who uses Steam everyday anyway.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Despite the re-used assets, still vastly prefer DA2 to DA:I. Since to me DA2's biggest flaw was just the huge reusing of assets over anything else.

 

[MUnited83]

Well, the flash sales were the three times a day thing. The dailies were still great though, and they lasted for 48 hours, those are what I'll miss.

They actually changed the flashs too and they would be on during 24 hours I think.(and feautured on the store for 12). That was more than fine.

 

[crazyrabbits]

A balance of ME2 with some ME1 would be the best thing for Andromeda to me.
Have planets people can explore with the Mako, but also don't sacrifice the main story for it.

Honestly, planet exploring in ME1 was a chore, not the least of which was because it felt incredibly copy-pasted. Every mine looked the same, every enemy base looked the same and some of the graphics were shockingly terrible for a game released in 2007 - the textures on the Prothean pyramids you run across sometimes looked like something out of a mid-90s RPG.

Once I got past the initial shock of ME2 being highly linear in terms of level design, I came to appreciate that when juxtaposed with the loss of the Mako. I don't mind if they bring back planet exploration, but it had better mean a hell of a lot more than random fetch quests/resource collecting/lazy coding.

 

[pahamrick]

DA:I's biggest flaw, imo, is that they took the complaints about DA2 and went overboard. They took the complaints of lack of content and shoved too much worthless content that was there for the sake of being there and padding playtime.

I really enjoyed DA:I, I've got enough hours in it with different character playthroughs so show it, but too much of it just isn't worth spending your time on.

They actually changed the flashs too and they would be on during 24 hours I think.(and feautured on the store for 12). That was more than fine.

Ah yeah, I forgot about that. There was really plenty of time to see all the deals, I just hope they do something to make the summer sale a little more interesting. The Winter sale seemed more like a simple 2 week long running deal than an actual sale to me. Course, my only reason for spending / getting so little is being broke or I'd probably have picked up more things if I didn't have a strict budget I had set.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Honestly, planet exploring in ME1 was a chore, not the least of which was because it felt incredibly copy-pasted. Every mine looked the same, every enemy base looked the same and some of the graphics were shockingly terrible for a game released in 2007 - the textures on the Prothean pyramids you run across sometimes looked like something out of the original KOTOR.

Once I got past the initial shock of ME2 being highly linear in terms of level design, I came to appreciate that when juxtaposed with the loss of the Mako. I don't mind if they bring back planet exploration, but it had better mean a hell of a lot more than random fetch quests/resource collecting/lazy coding.

Completely agree. That was the main reason I was never very impressed with planet exploring in ME1 and why I prefer ME2 as you do.

DA:I's biggest flaw, imo, is that they took the complaints about DA2 and went overboard. They took the complaints of lack of content and shoved too much worthless content that was there for the sake of being there and padding playtime.

I really enjoyed DA:I, I've got enough hours in it with different character playthroughs so show it, but too much of it just isn't worth spending your time on.

This is how I feel about Final Fantasy XIII-2. So I get annoyed when it's called the best of the XIII trilogy, just because it has side quests and such.
Especially since a lot of it isn't even all that great. Beat it in like 20+ hours after I realized that.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Despite the re-used assets, still vastly prefer DA2 to DA:I. Since to me DA2's biggest flaw was just the huge reusing of assets over anything else.

DA2 is only marginally worse than DAI. Unfortunately, it takes, like, 40 hours of playing DAI to realise this, at which point Stockholm Syndrome is in full effect.

...And really, as far as story content is concerned, DAI and DA2 aren't far off from eachother--there's an amazing amount of nothing in both games.

 

[milena87]

Despite the re-used assets, still vastly prefer DA2 to DA:I. Since to me DA2's biggest flaw was just the huge reusing of assets over anything else.

I have to agree. DA2 is an incredibly flawed game, but at least it didn't have the horrible combat system that DAI had and I liked both the story and characters.
Little more than a year later, all I can say about DAI is that I liked the character creator and some of the companions. I'll certainly never replay it.

 

[Jawmuncher]

DA2 is only marginally worse than DAI. Unfortunately, it takes, like, 40 hours of playing DAI to realise this, at which point Stockholm Syndrome is in full effect.

...And really, as far as story content is concerned, DAI and DA2 aren't far off from eachother--there's an amazing amount of nothing in both games.

Guess it just depends on what you want. I remember DA2 far better than I do DA:I despite not playing it as recently. The fact that it doesn't force a points system on you to go to the next main missions helps a lot.

I have to agree. DA2 is an incredibly flawed game, but at least it didn't have the horrible combat system that DAI had and I liked both the story and characters.
Little more than a year later, all I can say about DAI is that I liked the character creator and some of the companions. I'll certainly never replay it.

In the same boat.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Guess it just depends on what you want. I remember DA2 far better than I do DA:I despite not playing it as recently. The fact that it doesn't force a points system on you to go to the next main missions helps a lot.

I just wish DA2 actually did something with it's whole ten year thing. There was so much potential there and they wasted all of it.

 

[Dusk Golem]

All I know about BioWare games is stuff from my sister.

And I am incredibly jealous of my sister, she loves BioWare games and somehow has gotten into the 'in-circle' of them due to connecting and luck. When she goes to cons she often hangs out with friends she's made, and through her friends she keeps on making new ones. There was a cosplayer who she was close friends with who ended up having a major voice role in Inquisition, and the person she voiced impressed Troy Baker, and they bumped into each other during Comicon and apparently he loved her work in Inquisition and it was the 'waifu' in the game, so my sister ended up hanging out with Troy Baker and some other voice actors, who lead to them hanging out with Bioware developers and now they follow each other on their personal twitters, and while I'm happy for her, I admit being a bit jealous.

But she blabs to me a lot about the games, and I know her favorite is the second Dragon Age game, even though it has flaws, elements appeal to her. She originally liked Mass Effect a bunch, but Dragon Age has settled as her personal favorite game series. I haven't played them, but I know a hell of a lot about them because she loves to talk about them with me.

 

[pahamrick]

Guess it just depends on what you want. I remember DA2 far better than I do DA:I despite not playing it as recently. The fact that it doesn't force a points system on you to go to the next main missions helps a lot.



In the same boat.

The whole needing points thing to unlock missions was such a huge misstep I can't help but wonder who thought it was a good idea. My first play was on the PS4 version, and I used the dupe glitch to be able to buy those papers from the one vendor that gave a ton of inquisition XP and points used to unlock missions so I could skip whatever side content I didn't want to do.

Replaying on PC made that even easier.

 

[Phinor]

Page views and revenue of games outside of top 500 is almost completely meaningless. Of course those games had increased revenue because that group of games has 3000 new games compared to winter sale in 2014. 45% seems a bit low even. And page views are obviously not comparable to last year at all because millions of people struggled through the discovery queue to get cards and were exposed to games outside of top 500. It's good that some games got wishlisted/bought because of that feature, but that number (35% of page view share, 4x compared to last year) also tells us nothing if you think about it for a second.

But of course they can spin it any way they want and most people only see increasing numbers without thinking the big picture. To me as a customer, the only number I care about is how good the deals are and overall they were worse this year.

(Of course they were worse because 3000 new games were introduced and new games on average get smaller discounts than older games so that goes against my thinking but on a personal level, I only care about my own wishlist and many games had worse discounts than a year ago.)

 

[Jawmuncher]

I just wish DA2 actually did something with it's whole ten year thing. There was so much potential there and they wasted all of it.

Yeah it was odd they never did anything with that. Kind of kills any reason to have the gap.

The whole needing points thing to unlock missions was such a huge misstep I can't help but wonder who thought it was a good idea. My first play was on the PS4 version, and I used the dupe glitch to be able to buy those papers from the one vendor that gave a ton of inquisition XP and points used to unlock missions so I could skip whatever side content I didn't want to do.
Replaying on PC made that even easier.

Yeah I recall going out of my way just to get more Inquisition XP so I could go on to the next mission. Doesn't help that later on you realize there's only like 5 main missions (not counting the companion stuff). Which to me are the most worthy things in a bioware game. Not collecting or killing X stuff.

 

[lashman]

.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Speaking of Firefly, Rebel Galaxy is pretty coo.

The whole needing points thing to unlock missions was such a huge misstep I can't help but wonder who thought it was a good idea. My first play was on the PS4 version, and I used the dupe glitch to be able to buy those papers from the one vendor that gave a ton of inquisition XP and points used to unlock missions so I could skip whatever side content I didn't want to do.

Replaying on PC made that even easier.

The whole of DAI--as in, the regions and main story--are so patchwork that I wouldn't be surprised if it was all stitched together at the end of development. That's really what the whole game feels like, disjointed and scattershot.

 

[Jawmuncher]

.

Should totally run with some false advertising posters and trailers.

 

[pahamrick]

Yeah it was odd they never did anything with that. Kind of kills any reason to have the gap.


Yeah I recall going out of my way just to get more Inquisition XP so I could go on to the next mission. Doesn't help that later on you realize there's only like 5 main missions (not counting the companion stuff). Which to me are the most worthy things in a bioware game. Not collecting or killing X stuff.

Pretty much. The main missions and the companion missions are the only things I bother replaying.

I did like the war table stuff a bit, but only because of some of the characters that made an appearance there that didn't show up in the actual game. Alas, that was also mostly worthless aside from a few token bits where there was a continuing story you could follow.

Speaking of Firefly, Rebel Galaxy is pretty coo.


The whole of DAI--as in, the regions and main story--are so patchwork that I wouldn't be surprised if it was all stitched together at the end of development. That's really what the whole game feels like, disjointed and scattershot.

I'm really curious about the sacrifices and how much was cut in order to make it work as a cross gen title. There are some things that made me feel like there was supposed to be more after it, but it never happened.

 

[FiveElementNinja]

.

Amazing.

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

Yikes. Hope it isn't final.

 

[crazyrabbits]

Guess it just depends on what you want. I remember DA2 far better than I do DA:I despite not playing it as recently. The fact that it doesn't force a points system on you to go to the next main missions helps a lot.

I'm okay with games that "incentivize" the plot, but if it's just going to use a system that's not even explained clearly, has random values that don't correlate with each other and just exists to gate the player off from certain content, it can go fuck right off.

Honestly, ME2 and 3 were easy to play through. They're highly linear and you never really have to tax your brain thinking of what to say or do. When the path tells you to go right, you go left. Always do all side content before main missions. "Good" decisions are always the best, regardless of what the developers want you to think.

 

[iosefe]

Dafuq

 

[Jawmuncher]

Yikes. Hope it isn't final.

It's coming to iOS no way it's more than 19.99

I'm okay with games that "incentivize" the plot, but if it's just going to use a system that's not even explained clearly, has random values that don't correlate with each other and just exists to gate the player off from certain content, it can go fuck right off.

Honestly, ME2 and 3 were easy to play through. They're highly linear and you never really have to tax your brain thinking of what to say or do. When the path tells you to go right, you go left. Always do all side content before main missions. "Good" decisions are always the best, regardless of what the developers want you to think.

It's not a random system, but you do end up getting forced with busy work to unlock further story missions. It's sort of a way to regulate levels I think, rather than scaling the game to your current status I think. Still sucks though. I spent so much time doing trivial tasks so that I could continue the story.

 

[crazyrabbits]

.

But is it as good as the Nickelback TV spot for Batman Begins?

 

[Dusk Golem]

That price is higher than expected, most certainly. XD; Unless they put marginal effort in the backgrounds like everyone is worried about, I wonder why they would put it for so much more expensive than the other FF's?

 

[jshackles]

Yikes. Hope it isn't final.

Yikes indeed. $40 seems pretty high.

 

[inm8num2]

...nah.

 

[lashman]

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India Review (5/10)

Some Trial, Mostly Error

 

[Jawmuncher]

FF9 is coming out on iOS, Android, and PC. I don't see them taxing the PC version like that. Especially when FF7 would be something more likely for that kind of crazy price. I mean there was no PC version to work off of that we know of, but I don't think Square is that crazy.

 

[crazyrabbits]

Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India Review (5/10)

Some Trial, Mostly Error

Seriously, they should have just had Henry Green from Syndicate as the main character. Make it a pseudo-sequel, have him and Evie as interchangable characters, throw in some mysticism and bam! Instant win!

 

[LurkerPrime]

Don't developers regularly charge waaay less on mobile than they do on PC?

Radically different pricing wouldn't surprise me... though $40 seems a bit much.

 

[iosefe]

remember that time i said it looked good?


at least it Looks good

 

[ramoisdead]

Yikes. Hope it isn't final.

I see Squeenix's stragety. Since FF IX was late to the porting game, they are trying to recoup all that revenue they could've had.

Also gonna miss the daily/flash deals during big sale events, especially the potential price errors. However Steam should frickin' do something community related during those events like the games, gem auctions, maybe drop some coupons for more discounts. Anything but some stupid comic and that ARG that went nowhere.

 

[jshackles]

FF9 is coming out on iOS, Android, and PC. I don't see them taxing the PC version like that. Especially when FF7 would be something more likely for that kind of crazy price. I mean there was no PC version to work off of that we know of, but I don't think Square is that crazy.

Well, to be fair, people said Square Enix were crazy when they started doing Android/iOS releases at $20, saying that people would never spend that kind of money on a "phone game". Who knows, but it certainly seems strange that they would price it higher than even their newest Final Fantasy game on Steam.

 

[Jawmuncher]

Don't developers regularly charge waaay less on mobile than they do on PC?

Radically different pricing wouldn't surprise me... though $40 seems a bit much.

Square has kept their pricing the same. Actually I think the iOS version of FF7 costs more as do a few more.

 

[crazyrabbits]

This reminds me that I still haven't finished the PSX version of FF9. Got halfway through, considered it a good ending to the story and put it down. That was a year ago.

 

[LurkerPrime]

Square has kept their pricing the same. Actually I think the iOS version of FF7 costs more as do a few more.

Oh, cool. Crazy SE has my respect.

Those price differences have never seemed right to me.

 

[fertygo]

...nah.

Steam guard mobile authentication is awesome, I have no regret

meanwhile..

I have no youtube ffs

 

[Lain]

Good riddance to the daily sales. Having to check steam three times a day to see if the game you want is on sale and only having limited time to look at new things that pop up was terrible.

This way every game that wants a sale gets a sale and you have plenty of time to decide what you are going to buy. And best yet, you can buy and play what you've been looking forward to immediately. I'm glad the new model has shown to be successful.

But you didn't have to check 3 times a day to see if the game you want is on sale, because the game you want is on sale. You checked 3 times a day to see if the games on sale that you want gets a better discount for 8-48 hours.
With the new model, you get the same baseline discount you were getting before, just not the chance of a special discount on top of that. How is that better? Less stressful sure, more remunerative for publishers/developers absolutely, but better for players/consumers? I just don't get it.

 

[Hero Prinny]

Yo DA:I is hot garbage, its one of the few games where I'd pick Final Fantasy 13 over it. There is nothing redeemable about it besides its pretty graphics but I'm not spending money on games to look at their graphics, I'm playing them to have fun which DA:I isn't. DA2 while very flawed is a fun game, I played all 3 of these games back to back and as far as I'm concerned DA:O + DLC>>> DA2 (> * &#8734DA:I. DA:I is a perfect example of a game that has absolute no respect for the player's time whatsoever.

 

[Ozium]

whatever happened with volvo @ CES?