Cloud gaming is a meme though, they've tried this for a while now and it hasn't caught on. Remember OnLive? Or that one Sony bought a while back? Or the original Xbox One marketing? Or stadia? Hell, take steam machines, that couldn't even manage to stream from your own PC without latency problems ).
Now subscription models like Game Pass might stay for a while, but I think they'd eventually face the same issues movie streaming faces now : more subscription services means less options per service, less interest and consequently less subscriptions.
Nobody did, all it took was one input lag comparison video for me and I was like "nah i'm never using this shit"
It’s so weak, you feel alone (you have no confidence in this service)
I play Geforce Now all the time. Sure, it's not meant for pro-gamers (TM) with 0 input lag, but I love that I can play georgeous intensive games without an expensive gaming rig.
I got a Shield TV to replace my dying chromecast and I haven't been disappointed. It's pretty good for faffing about in 90's JRPG's, or DISCO ElySIUM GAME OF THE DECADE!
Obviously I'm not going to be able to play 240 FPS competitive Battlefield: Call of NATO 7 or whatever the fuck rooty tooty shooty comes out every six weeks. But who gives a shit about those games?
I just wanna cure Rosa's desert fever and grill. :grillman:
i think there is a difference in that you can only sink so much time into any particular show, unless one of the weirdos who watches office 30 times. you can however play the same games continuously with no inherent time limit and the game company can sell you the subscription as long as youre interested in that game.
This is literally the present though and has been for like decades though lmao, people literally pay subscription fees to MMOs that randomly get shut down
When Half-life went episodic we had countless op-eds about it being the future of gaming... cancelled after episode 2.
Hitman tried it as well for the World of Assassination trilogy and dropped it after the first game.
sub based mmos are barely a thing anymore
only wow, ff14,
and i think ESOneed a subSome flight sims games seem to use that model, with 1st and 3rd party modules coexisting
Destiny is an interesting case because it's cheaper than a traditional sub and also shows off modern predatory marketing tactics. Instead of having people pay 15 bucks a month, they have a ten buck fee every three months but make it so if players don't play during that period they permanently miss out on large chunks of cosmetics and content
So while it's better price-wise, it's kinda worse in the way it treats the consumer than the original MMO models were
Just play warframe, you can miss out on battle pass and event stuff for free
yep, and it's a damn shame too because the game has brilliant aesthetics and gameplay when it's not being tired as fuck
like the new campaign was a ton of fun and it was like I was playing halo all over again and then bam
it's right back to "wake up sweetie it's time to do the seasonal activity and gambit 500 times in a row again" :yes-honey-left:
I enjoyed Warframe for a while, but it eventually just felt like I was grinding endlessly just to do the basic Open World quest lines.
Same with WoW. Even with some of the most generous respawn mechanics in MMOs to date, it still just felt like a second job rather than a fun online community. I'll admit I never really got into a Guild or tried the juicy end-game content. But if it takes you 80 hours just to get there... eh.
Yeah it took me way too long to find out, but I've learned that I like the idea of MMOs more than actual MMOs lol
even in the best case scenario you're ultimately going to just be doing busy work in repeated content at a certain point
I've done the raiding and the guilds and stuff and while the social aspect is fun, ultimately after the first week or two of learning the raid, the gameplay ends up being doing the same methods on the same boss fights over and over for infinity
My favorite part of MMOs was exploration. Dungeon delving was fun. Finding new and exotic landscapes was fun. Seeing iconic characters in their home settings was fun. The whole game was like an endless fun house with something cool behind ever door.
But eventually I get to the point where I'm too low level to open the door, or I need to do ten annoying things to get the key, or I'm just not the right class to participate in the next round of delving.
That killed it for me.
same dude, i love the art and the environments but it's all of the job-like stuff you have to do surrounding them that gets eugh for me, a good chunk of MMOs i've tried have ended with me just stopping leveling, walking around the cool zones that it lets me, and then uninstalling lol
eh, i like the way GW2 does it, good for me because i can't afford to keep my ff14 sub up, never really felt like i NEED to log in either like a lot of other MMOs
While I didn't play much of either game, I loved how Star Trek Online and Neverwinter let players make custom mission content with a level editor for other peop--
oh nevermind i just looked it up and apparently they got rid of that back in 2019 lmao
I got into destiny 2 a long time back and trying to get back into it after missing 2 or 3 years is daunting af. There is so much shit u gotta buy with content you're technically paying for now cut which is just not a good feeling to me
ESO doesn't need a sub but you do need to buy the game. Their sub service is pretty good though, you get all the expansions for free and $15 (the price of the sub) worth of the premium currency.
although if you want to engage with the crafting system at all in ESO the subscription is basically mandatory provided you don't want to see every single inventory space you know and love on every single character filled up with hundreds of different crafting materials
True, the lack of a crafting bag is bullshit and does essentially lock you out of the system.
I just fill up my chests with crafting materials I can't easily replace and wait for ESO+ free trials to shove it all in the craft bag to free up the space again.
I'm not running out of bone any time soon.
You get all the DLC for free but the latest chapter is always behind a paywall.
It usually doesn't go to ESO+ availability until the next big one comes out.
those are like the top three MMOs on the market though
and the alternative models are arguably worse and far more similar to modern cloud services, essentially filling the game with ads unless you buy optional stuff that ends up being more pricey than a traditional subscription model anyway
compared to how it was when i was younger, when every mmo was a subscription there is a marked difference
true, but my point is that the OP is already here and has been for a while, and is still true for some of the most popular games that currently exist
There is a whole community attempting to preserve games that are now defunct, usually cause they were games as a service but there are a few other reasons out there. It's noble of them but it's s lot of fuckin work and so few people give a shit sadly
Shitty micro-transactions aside, Marvel Heroes was a tight as hell Diablo clone, and I'd still pay money to play it if I could.
not played any AAA games in years, don't intend to start now :grillman:
Imagine sinking 80 hours into an AAA game when you could play another 500 hours of RimWorld instead :bean:
Reject modernity, embrace characters that look like thumbs.
I use mods for their appearances, but even with the anime faces and the detailed bodies they still look like thumbs, just thumbs with a killer 6 pack when you're stripping them at the butcher table.
Most AAA games only have 20-40 hours of content in them. Really a huge waste of money.
Play AAA games from 5-10 years ago. Any modern PC with an entry level gaming GPU would run them perfectly fine.
Games that old are often on heavy discount, thousands of reviews to decide if it's any good, plus you don't need to wait for the dev to fix the game or finish implementing all the content because games are released half finished these days.
The most dystopian part is how projects will be decided. Which is by algorithm such as on Netflix and Amazon. Things designed to have broad appeal via math.
We already are progressing that way with season passes.
I miss regular subscription games. I like upping FF14 for a month or two and then canceling when I’ve grown bored.
I even treat Game pass the same way. But I also have been regularly buying and renting games at a steady clip for a long time.
I honestly hate the games designed/ planned to be a lifestyle/hobby into themselves.
It’s just A game.
The most dystopian part is how projects will be decided.
That ship sailed a while ago. And the only real resolution is in platforms like Steam or KickStarter or similar player-centric sponsorship systems, which will inevitably be riddled with grifts.
I'm not seriously worried about the future of gaming, simply because the backlog of good games is so massive. The Retro movement is strong in no small part because we've got a mountain of quality content already in existence. If the entire industry collapsed tomorrow, the worst thing that would happen is going back to emulators and enjoying a thousand hours of old PS1/PS2 and Nintendo games I never had a chance to play.
if i could retire tomarrow and spend the rest of my life gaming i don't think i'd be able to touch even 50% of the total catalog of stuff that's out there right now.
at this point enough games have been created where you will have enough to play your entire life and not run out, new games are not required.
If game streaming ever becomes the norm i will just play my back catalogue of archived games which will honestly last me until civilization ends.
Once upon a time I invested a shitton of time and effort in a MMORPG that is now dead. The friends I made were more important than the ingame treats and it was really harsh to have it all switched off one day. Some of us exchanged emails etc before the shutdown but the community was forever scattered.
I will never forget that lesson. It was like somebody came and deleted every chessboard in existence and we were all left with our chess pieces and nowhere to place them.
