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Author Topic: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game  (Read 37060 times)

Graknorke

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #90 on: May 29, 2012, 10:21:28 am »

DLCs have the problem that you shouldn't really need to pay for something when it's jut what you've already payed for. Especially when it's [insert newest generic FPS here], because it's basically just paying for extra maps, even though the modding community makes more and for free without necessarily being of lower quality. Even when it is something more complex like more weapons, you should really just get it with a game patch/update because it is a part of the game; the game which you have already payed for.
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dizzyelk

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #91 on: May 29, 2012, 11:16:42 am »

My problem with DLCs is its an attempt to squeeze more money out of you. I'd rather drop $20 - $30 on a good expansion pack that adds some new items, a new quest or three, a new character, perhaps some new game play elements than $1 each thing. It just feels more substantial to me. No single item in a game is worth one real life dollar to me. And, sure, some mods are crap. But there are tons of mods out there that are amazing. I really only stuck with Morrowind long enough to download mods, since I hated that Oblivion punished you for leveling up (at least that's how I see monsters scaling with the player), but the horse ranch in Morrowind? Amazing. The were little realism mods that added birds and wild animals, there was the mod that added thousands of NPCs all around the island that would be there at different times to make it feel more real and lived in, there was the mod where you could change how your character started, from standing on the docks by Ebonheart to drowning in a ship wreck off the eastern shore, there was the gladiator arena mod, hell, there was even a mod that made the signposts readable. And, of course there were mods that replaced textures so bodies and terrain looked better. I even dabbled with the modding tools and created a wizard's tower that had a chamber with random weather in it, and a door that would take you to 4 or 5 different chambers each time you went through. Its one of the best things about Bethesda's games, they release bad games, and modders make the into great games. However, I feel that games should stand or fall on their own merits.
And don't get me started on pre-ordering bonuses. Those are just wrong. I shouldn't have to gamble the full purchase price of a game to get an exclusive item or three.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #92 on: May 29, 2012, 12:36:26 pm »

Holy wall of text batman!

Do you have a better source than the Bethesda forums? Because that is basically anecdotal evidence and doesn't help your point. The anecdotal evidence I posted earlier was about console players actually, I'm the only PC gamer in my group.

RE: Your DLC vs Mod rant. Personally I prefer DLC over mods most of the time, they are made by professionals and generally higher quality than mods (horse armor aside). Mods and DLC are both great for gaming and they show that  new is better, but that's a point I'm not interested to argue at the moment.

If I try Googling for average hours, I just get hundreds of reports of the same things - either 85 hours overall for april, or 75 hours for just the PC in February.  I take it that, in recognition of the PC/Console flamewars, they didn't want to put out the comparison numbers, but again, I seriously doubt that PC players have only added 10 hours on average to their playtimes in two months. 

I guess you can go ahead and believe I'm talking out of my ass, but I think I've spent more than enough time on this topic to not feel like doing research that takes serious work on it. 

I will, however, say that the game was developed with the lead developer playing exclusively on XBox and how everything DLC is released a full month ahead for XBox than for anyone else because they know console players are going to quit earlier, and PC players are going to still be playing a month later, and that gives them time to patch things.

Apparently, Bethesda's trying to jam XBox's laughably horrible motion-sensor controls from Kinect into the game instead of patching away some of their mistakes, which they just rely upon modders to fix.  I can't even imagine how they could think that's a good idea or how flailing your arms around while holding an XBox controller will make you feel more immersed in a gameworld when there is nothing Kinect does better than make you feel LESS immersed.  Well, I know why they thought it was a good idea - Microsoft gave them huge loads of money in the desperate hope that maybe having Kinect controls in popular games would save their absolute trainwreck of a control device from the scrapheap.

And as for mods - did you ever download anything made with OBSE?  That thing was basically how modders added more content for free by fans than was in the game to begin with.  No DLC released by Bethesda actually expanded any sort of game content beyond giving you a new house or a couple new quests - all of which were capable of being done by mod, anyway.  The only thing that really tried expanding much of anything was Shivering Isles, and that was a full expansion pack. 

Meanwhile, you have mods adding in crafting where you have to smelt the iron and pound it with your hammer, training dummies to build up your melee skills, survivalist/food based game elements, economic mods, companion rules that were more advanced even than the ones that Bethesda wound up ripping off from the modders, and let's not forget tons of completely new character and clothing models.

Sure, Sturgeon's Law is in full effect, and there are obscene numbers of mere restatted palette swap clothing and "My first house" mods, but it's not hard to find the quality, and it's much more fun to completely rewrite everything in Oblivion from the ground up and play fan-made quests exclusively and forget what the base game of Oblivion ever was than it is to play with laughably thin value of getting a tiny house with a "badguy" theme or something for $5. 

In fact, Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (a total rebalancing of the game where Oscuro rewrote basically all the loot drops and monster spawns as well as rewrote the leveling rules and pretty much everything related to game mechanics...)  was so well-done and popular that they just out-and-out hired Oscuro to work for them.

(And it seems as if Bethesda kind of got the message after Horse Armor became synonymous with "rip-off DLC", because they're promising "fewer DLCs with more content" as their advertising strategy to players, which is code for "Yes, you've made us painfully aware of how much you thought our last DLCs were insultingly low on content for the money we asked.")
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CodexDraco

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #93 on: May 29, 2012, 02:23:07 pm »

Spending a lot of time arguing about a subject doesn't magically turn you into the authority of the subject, made up numbers are still made up even after repeating them a thousand times. No offence but I prefer to believe in a quote from Bethesda than one from you, unless you work for Microsoft or Valve.

As for Skyrim DLC coming early for X-Box, this is just the way Microsoft rolls, no need to invent conspiracy theories here.

There is going to be a lot of DLC hate now so I'll move on, but I'm just going to add that buying DLC is a good way to reward developers making games I love and a way to extend the fun I had have with a game. Of course there will be crappy DLC just as there will still be crappy games. This is the way of life.
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Circusdawg

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #94 on: May 29, 2012, 04:22:23 pm »

Name yourself Urwa Doomed Doomed the Doomed Doom of Doom And die by a crossbowman
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alexandertnt

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #95 on: May 29, 2012, 08:09:46 pm »

There is going to be a lot of DLC hate now so I'll move on, but I'm just going to add that buying DLC is a good way to reward developers making games I love and a way to extend the fun I had have with a game. Of course there will be crappy DLC just as there will still be crappy games. This is the way of life.

I would have no problem with DLC's if they dropped the price of the game. So you could sort of buy the extras you want. But they just sell the game at the same AU$90 or whatever crazy price and then unload a pile of $2 tweaks. It often seems like they put less content in the game on release.

As for rewarding the develpers, it would seem much nicer if it could be done directly. I sort of feel like im rewarding the executive or whoever thought of the idea of releasing DLC rather than the developers.

I dont hate DLC's, its more just that they are not being done very well at the moment..


If I try Googling for average hours, I just get hundreds of reports of the same things - either 85 hours overall for april, or 75 hours for just the PC in February.  I take it that, in recognition of the PC/Console flamewars, they didn't want to put out the comparison numbers, but again, I seriously doubt that PC players have only added 10 hours on average to their playtimes in two months. 

It would be interesting to see play times of Morrowind vs Skyrim (except Morrowind never recorded that, so its never going to happen). I have a feeling the trends would probably look quite similar, with the majority of players playing for mostly 50 hours or less, and a smaller number of die-hards playing for hundreds.

Also I would have considered 85 hours a long time playing a game...
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #96 on: May 29, 2012, 09:36:11 pm »

Spending a lot of time arguing about a subject doesn't magically turn you into the authority of the subject, made up numbers are still made up even after repeating them a thousand times. No offence but I prefer to believe in a quote from Bethesda than one from you, unless you work for Microsoft or Valve.

Count me as unimpressed with your disbelief, then. 

I stand by what I said - they wouldn't have only mentioned PC gamers having an average of 75 hours, and then wait months to announce the average across all platforms was up to 85 if it weren't for the fact that they knew PC gamers made up the bulk of those playing for the long-haul, and XBox as the bulk of the short-term buys.

You can look over the press releases from Bethesda to get the breakdown of where sales were, what platform they were primarily developing for, and how sales on PC continue for years after you can't even buy a used copy of the XBox version.

I know they exist, but I'm just not going to spend the time it takes finding them.  If you care that much, you look it up and prove me wrong.

It would be interesting to see play times of Morrowind vs Skyrim (except Morrowind never recorded that, so its never going to happen). I have a feeling the trends would probably look quite similar, with the majority of players playing for mostly 50 hours or less, and a smaller number of die-hards playing for hundreds.

Also I would have considered 85 hours a long time playing a game...

"Hundreds" isn't as much as you think.  I've clocked in 233 hours into Skyrim already, and I haven't really played it since January. (I've been meaning to get back around to modding it now that the SDK is out, but got sucked into doing DF stuff instead.) 

I've easily put one or two thousand hours into Oblivion (and DF, for that matter), so "hundreds" isn't that much for a game as wildly moddable as TES.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
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CodexDraco

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #97 on: May 30, 2012, 11:19:24 am »

I know they exist, but I'm just not going to spend the time it takes finding them.  If you care that much, you look it up and prove me wrong.
You have already demonstrated that you don't care about evidence or an informed debate, so educate yourself, or don't. I'll try to find better debate elsewhere.
« Last Edit: May 31, 2012, 12:12:21 am by CodexDraco »
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alexandertnt

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #98 on: May 30, 2012, 08:27:32 pm »

I stand by what I said - they wouldn't have only mentioned PC gamers having an average of 75 hours, and then wait months to announce the average across all platforms was up to 85 if it weren't for the fact that they knew PC gamers made up the bulk of those playing for the long-haul, and XBox as the bulk of the short-term buys.

You can look over the press releases from Bethesda to get the breakdown of where sales were, what platform they were primarily developing for, and how sales on PC continue for years after you can't even buy a used copy of the XBox version.

I know they exist, but I'm just not going to spend the time it takes finding them.  If you care that much, you look it up and prove me wrong.

It would be interesting to see play times of Morrowind vs Skyrim (except Morrowind never recorded that, so its never going to happen). I have a feeling the trends would probably look quite similar, with the majority of players playing for mostly 50 hours or less, and a smaller number of die-hards playing for hundreds.

Also I would have considered 85 hours a long time playing a game...

"Hundreds" isn't as much as you think.  I've clocked in 233 hours into Skyrim already, and I haven't really played it since January. (I've been meaning to get back around to modding it now that the SDK is out, but got sucked into doing DF stuff instead.) 

I've easily put one or two thousand hours into Oblivion (and DF, for that matter), so "hundreds" isn't that much for a game as wildly moddable as TES.

Well of course if you cant even buy a used copy of the game (and the game has stopped being manufactured) then you can't buy the game. Infact I would have thought the lack of availability of a game in the second hand market suggested that the people who bought it don't want to sell it, and continue to get enjoyment out of it.

In regards to the play time, given the large sales, and general maturity of the game, it seems reasonable to assume that a significant number of people who bought have other commitments (job/study/family etc) and may not even have the time to invest. This might explain the relatively shorter play time.

For example there is no way I could find 2 thousand hours (almost a quarter of a year straight) to put in a game. No matter how much I love it. I have a feeling a very lage ammount of people are in the same position.
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This is when I imagine the hilarity which may happen if certain things are glichy. Such as targeting your own body parts to eat.

You eat your own head
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Mrhappyface

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #99 on: May 30, 2012, 10:49:55 pm »

HOLY SHIT. 2k hours? How the hell did you find the time!?
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CodexDraco

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #100 on: May 31, 2012, 12:15:34 am »

Wow missed the 2k number! That's crazy, but I guess it's reasonable if it's split on a period of a few years.

Anyway, I just recalled an Extra Credit episode about DLC, it's worth checking it out: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/mass-effect-3-dlc
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Xantalos

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Re: *POOF!* Dwarf Fortress is now a generic adventure game
« Reply #101 on: May 31, 2012, 01:11:56 am »

Name yourself Urwa Doomed Doomed the Doomed Doom of Doom And die by a crossbowman
This is actually the most on-topic post in a while. That said, aquire band of companions, each with their own personal problems that they're worried might get in the way of the mission, but never do. (They do that themselves)
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