The New 'Red Dead Redemption' Reveals the Biggest Problem With Marquee Games Today: They're Boring as Hell. (theoutline.com)

An anonymous reader shares a column: Everything about "Red Dead Redemption 2" is big. The latest open-world western, released in October by Rockstar Games, constantly reminds you of this. It takes roughly 15 minutes for its bland everycowboy star, Arthur Morgan, to gallop across the 29-square-mile map. It has 200 species of animals, including grizzly bears, alligators, and a surprising number of birds. It takes about 45.5 hours to play through the main quest, and 150-plus hours to reach 100 percent completion. There are more than 50 weapons to choose from, such as a double-barreled shotgun and a rusty hatchet. It's big, big, big.

[...] On top of all the bigness, "Red Dead Redemption 2" is also incredibly dull. I've been playing it off and on since it was released, and I'm still waiting for it to get fun. I'm not alone in thinking so -- Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit called it "quite boring" and Mashable said it's a "monumental disappointment." There are a glut of Reddit posts from people complaining about how slow the game feels, usually with a tone of extreme self-consciousness. Unless you're a real a**hole, it's not exactly fun to stray from popular consensus. Perhaps the general hesitancy to criticize the game is due to the fact that it's not technically bad. Its graphics and scale really are impressive. It is designed to please.

And yet "RDR2" seems to exemplify a certain kind of hollowness that's now standard among Triple-A titles. It's very big, with only tedium inside. Call it a Real World Game. The main problem with "RDR2" is that it's comprised almost entirely of tedious, mandatory chores. It always feels like it's stalling for time, trying to juke the number of hours it takes to complete it.

Comments

Online

[Anonymous Coward]

I played several hours of the single player and I agree it's pretty slow. Online however is a blast. Needs work but I've really enjoyed it.

Re:Online

[desdinova 216]

that's part of the problem, so many major games are being released that treat the single player aspect as more or less a tutorial and base the "real game" on competitive multiplayer. probably because writing even a subpar story is expensive.

Re:Online

[Killall -9 Bash]

....because no one is going to buy stupid hat DLC unless they can SHOW IT OFF TO OTHER PEOPLE.

Re:Online

[mentil]

Hiring a writer for the premise, and a few more to handle dialogue, is relatively cheap. Paying for all the voice-acting is much more expensive, particularly the editing and integration (unless you already have a toolchain that automates that). In this case the game is a prequel, so writing the premise is much easier than normal since most of it was already done and laying around since the last game.

Modeling and texture work is far more expensive, note the hundreds of names listed in the credits in that section for a modern AAA game.

Every review of Red Dead I saw

[rsilvergun]

even the positive ones said the same thing: It's a great experience but a lousy game.

This is the problem with "Live Services". Because the game has to go on forever with an endless loop chock full of microtransactions and loot boxes nothing substantial or interesting can happen in the game. Even Destiny 2 with it's instance dungeons fell victim to that.

The consoles still have 2 or 3 decent single player releases a year so there's that. But they're only there to move consoles. If we ever get the "ever-console" that streams the games then we'll lose that too.

What I don't get is these kids who pay real money for crap in game. Guess I'm just too old, but it ruins the experience to have a store front in my face non-stop. Even when I was at the arcades as a kid I didn't have that. Once the quarters dropped the game was a game (Double Dragon 3 not withstanding). Pac-man didn't distract me with a power pellets store and I couldn't buy armor for my flying ostrich in Joust.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[AmiMoJo]

"A hundred yards short of your objective, accidentally ride off a cliff and die"

Once I stopped giggling I started to think about older games. Many didn't have any save or password options at all. You got an hour in, died and had to go right back to the start. We really are spoiled with modern games that let you save after every mission, or even at waypoints during the mission, and give you infinite lives and continues.

The bigger problem for me is the amount of grinding in modern games. I don't mind a challenge that I have to work at and where I feel like I'm improving and making progress, but with GTA a lot of it is just fairly easy missions where you fail mostly due to bad luck or the janky game engine, and there is just so much of it. Seems like RDR2 is the same.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[DontBeAMoran]

Pac-man didn't distract me with a power pellets store and I couldn't buy armor for my flying ostrich in Joust.

But there was in-game weapons stores in Black Tiger and Crossed Sword. Granted, it used in-game currency, but still.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want to play a good 'open world' western, get GUN. It's not the prettiest game (even when it came out), but it's quite fun through its run time.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Anonymous Coward]

"A hundred yards short of your objective, accidentally ride off a cliff and die"

Once I stopped giggling I started to think about older games. Many didn't have any save or password options at all. You got an hour in, died and had to go right back to the start. We really are spoiled with modern games that let you save after every mission, or even at waypoints during the mission, and give you infinite lives and continues.

Those old games in reality took only a few hours to beat if you didn't die once.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[skam240]

"This is the problem with "Live Services". Because the game has to go on forever with an endless loop chock full of microtransactions and loot boxes nothing substantial or interesting can happen in the game. Even Destiny 2 with it's instance dungeons fell victim to that. "

I'm puzzled. The core Red Dead 2 game play is single player (so much so that multiplayer was still in beta on launch) which has no micro transactions.

"The consoles still have 2 or 3 decent single player releases a year so there's that. But they're only there to move consoles. If we ever get the "ever-console" that streams the games then we'll lose that too."

Why would they stop making successful games because of game streaming? Online gaming where they lock you into needing an internet connection already exists and they still make single player games. Streaming wouldn't change a thing in this context,

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[cfalcon]

"Once the quarters dropped the game was a game"

Games had a variety of ways to ensure that the average quarter didn't stretch too far. Sure, Pacman can be played for hours (until you die or the game locks up) on a single quarter, but no one knew how back then- it took years to figure out the patterns, and to this day only a few people can execute them flawlessly. For the most part, the monetization was aggressive and subtle. Heck, by the 90s, that 3D Gauntlet game would start buffing enemies and eventually squeeze you out, and they added these patches in waves, each willingly installed by operators to keep good players paying something.

By contrast, when an arcade game hit your home console, this stuff was mostly taken out, as it was only ever added to fit the actual sales model of the game. And when a home system WAS made available as an arcade- such as the Playchoice 10- the quarters directly paid for time.

I'd say that games have ALWAYS been created around their sales systems, that this has ALWAYS determined how the game is designed, developed, and implemented, and that even the progressive difficulty you find pleasing in old school games was created by the desire to get you to put more quarters in the game, by honest implementation at first, and by harsher tricks as you went on.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Anonymous Coward]

Even when I was at the arcades as a kid I didn't have that. Once the quarters dropped the game was a game (Double Dragon 3 not withstanding). Pac-man didn't distract me with a power pellets store and I couldn't buy armor for my flying ostrich in Joust.

But you could spend extra quarters in Cyberball for enhanced defense or better players. And in Xybots you could put in quarters for more in game currency to buy additional supplies, including the energy packs that kept you alive. Pay to win's been around longer than you might think.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Kjella]

Because the game has to go on forever with an endless loop chock full of microtransactions and loot boxes nothing substantial or interesting can happen in the game.

To be honest, I found the entire lack of grandiose world-turning events in RDR2 refreshing. This is not Skyrim where you're the grand savior, you don't have any great hidden powers and you're not a pawn/hero in the great battle between good and evil. You can be a good guy, bad guy, neutral hunter/trapper/fisher guy or whatever but nobody has at any point given the impression that Arthur Morgan would change the world. Sure a few guns are unlocked but you start out a gunslinger, you end a gunslinger. If that makes the game "lack direction" you're simply in the wrong game because you want to be on the rails following an epic story. Unlike most other games it also makes sense that you run off to do side-quests where in most games it's like doomsday is coming, but I'll go collect dandelions and help a guy find his lost dog. How it'll be online I don't know, but there hasn't been a micro-transaction in sight in single player, just straight up fun.

Does it have long-winded riding scenes? Yes, if you want action it does but on the other hand... if you just don't care and just want an arcade shooter it's not a very challenging game. Granted I screwed up a bit more than I should but most missions didn't take many attempts and I was never like stuck. Which goes back to the fact that you can't really grind for level/gear, if they made missions too hard they'd simply stay too hard and people would never get on with the story. But that's okay I don't feel like this is the kind of game you should master in that sense, like beating the end boss. It's over when you don't find it fun anymore and it could be after 5 hours or 50 or 500, hopefully I won't be riding around in there like that guy in Westworld though. There's only so much do to and I expect it will get old eventually, but that's cool.... I'll have had lots of fun while it lasted.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[fazig]

But how long did the average player have to practice the game before they could beat it without virtual deaths? I'd wager that most players of these old games have never reached the ending on their own before saving features were introduced.
I would say that this practice made the games still repetitive. So that's not a good argument here.


Disclaimer: Now I'm talking about myself here in a more subjective manner. Your mileage may differ.
I used to play games. I'd still do if most of them weren't just so terrible. What do I mean by terrible?
When I was first confronted with video games, this new form of media thrived on innovation. Practically all games had their unique angles that required the player to either learn new motor skills or new ways of thinking to solve the problems the game posed. You had to learn to master these new skills in order to beat the game, which then was a reward on its own.
Today however, most of the games have to play pretty much exactly the same, because apparently you can't ask from your consumers to learn and train a new skill, which can lead to frustrating experiences if it doesn't work right away. Therefore pretty much every big first person shooter has to play exactly like Call of Duty or Battlefield. Every 3rd person shooter has to play like Uncharted. Every 3rd person action RPG has to play like Dark Souls. And so forth. Then there's also this competitive-multiplayer craze, which I won't touch here because it'll take too long.
From my perspective the few things that make these games different are their graphics and the stories they try to tell. The one thing that distinguishes games from other forms of media -- interactivity -- appears to become less and less important.
So I came to the realization that I do not need to spend $60 every time a big studio craps out one of these games, just in order to get essentially the same experience that I can get on platforms like youtube or twitch (played by a trusted streamer) for almost no additional costs. There's no more need for an expensive gaming computer or maybe a console as I can watch these things on my phone, while I'm on the go. If I want good stories there are even simpler ways like picking up plain simple book or even audio book if I'm lazy.

Now and then I still pick up some simulation games like ArmA or DCS. The odd low budget indy game can be interesting to me. But all in all I've shifted my focus on other, factually healthier activities for my spare time.
Maybe I'm just getting old and bitter.

Re: Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Killall -9 Bash]

no no no, the genius of Gelatinous Cube is that the final boss is unbeatable.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[lgw]

Those old games in reality took only a few hours to beat if you didn't die once.

Many just take a few minutes. The speedrunning community is amazing.

I'm still torn by which I'm most impressed with: the cubing community with their blindfold cube solving, or the speedrunning community beating Punch Out blindfolded (the final fight requires 1-frame accuracy).

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Tom]

You got an hour in, died and had to go right back to the start.

But that was designed into the game. The early jump & run games, for example, were all made so that any individual part was not crazy impossible, so you always made progress. But to get to the end with enough lives left to conquer it was hard.

So on your first play, you'd lose one life here and one life there and then be out of lives maybe in the middle of the level. Then by design you start at the beginning again, with full lives, because on your second run you reach the middle with one or two lives left, and go further into the level with them, but not enough to reach the end. The third time through you know the level well already and get to the middle with only one life lost... you get the idea.

And, of course, games like nethack had much of their challenge exactly in the permadeath. Once you figured out how to save and restore save games, they became much less interesting.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[apoc.famine]

The one thing that distinguishes games from other forms of media -- interactivity -- appears to become less and less important.

I would agree with that wholeheartedly. As the publishers started to get a hard-on for ham-fisted scripted games, I really started to rage about that shit. The first "fuck it, I'm out" I remember really, really clearly was the first Assassin's Creed. I was supposed to kill a dude. Managed to spend a large amount of time once I found him to stealthily infiltrate the building he was in, navigate above him, and line up my kill-shot. I dropped down and....CUTSCENE! I walk in through the front door, witty banter ensues, and then all the guards come to have a giant fight with me.

It's not just the interactivity, it's ripping control of the game out of the hands of the player to force it to go the way the publisher has laid their animated movie out. And the way they laid it out is a linear, inflexible, predictable path, with a couple of sharp bends right where you'd expect to find them. Maybe if we're lucky there's a fork in there somewhere, but more than likely no matter which one you pick you end up back on the same path.

Thinking back to games of yesteryear, a lot of them let you play the damn game, successfully or not. I definitely remember breaking games by dicking around in them. Killing a critical NPC. Making quest-givers mad at me so I couldn't progress. Unintentionally ruining things I needed later. Today, very few publishers are willing to allow stuff like that to happen, because inevitably some entitled twat will go and post a shitty review because the game allowed them to fail.

Lately, I've been playing text based RPGs, because those are all human-driven, and don't have significant issues with a storyline being imposed on the player. I've been a Duke in a doomed kingdom, and a minor criminal in a modern-times crime game. Those are/were tons of fun, and not having a story imposed on me was very liberating.

I also dabble in Dwarf Fortress every now and then. I really need to be in the mood to battle that dumpster fire, however. My current save is a fortress where I have an abundance of dead dwarves, and nobody will engrave memorial slabs or make coffins because they're being haunted, so more ghosts are showing up because the dead are lying around everywhere because nobody is making memorial slabs or coffins. I'm trying to drag the corpses way off to a corpse stockpile on the edge of the map, but nobody seems interested in doing that either, because they're all traumatized due to seeing dead bodies and ghosts.

Maybe I'm just getting old and bitter.

Maybe. Personally, I find battling something like a vicious ghost cycle a hell of a lot more interesting than fetchem quests and heinous railroading to force a game story to unfold in a single, uncompromising way.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Uberbah]

We really are spoiled with modern games that let you save after every mission, or even at waypoints during the mission, and give you infinite lives and continues.

No more than you are "spoiled" by being able to vote without being male and owning property.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[nessus42]

Even Destiny 2 with it's instance dungeons fell victim to that.

Instance dungeons in Destiny 2? After thousands of hours of playing have I missed something?

Do you mean Lost Sectors? Or the Infinite Forest? I suppose they could be considered "instance dungeons". I agree that Lost Sectors and the Infinite Forest are not terribly exciting. But they are also fortuntely not particularly central to the Destiny 2 gameplay experience.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[thegarbz]

Once I stopped giggling I started to think about older games. Many didn't have any save or password options at all. You got an hour in, died and had to go right back to the start.

On the up side that first hour was actually fun. God forbid you plodded along for 15min doing nothing only to die without a save point.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[1ucius]

To each their own, I guess... I sorta prefer scripted games because it might be several months(!) between play sessions. As opposed to open world games, where I've forgotten all of the silly sub-quests and sub-characters during the gap.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[amicusNYCL]

Even GTA seems like an improvement though, even though it's older. I haven't played RDR because it's not available for my platform, but I felt the same way with the Mad Max game a few years back. It started out fun but eventually it became clear that it was just a grind across a large map. Kind of the same with the recent LOTR games. I think that what separates those from GTA is that, with all of the games you might have a certain objective to get to across the map. With LOTR or Max Max or (presumably) RDR, you're taking your one form of transportation in a more or less shortest path to get there, and once you do get there you're doing something that you've done a dozen times before. With GTA, you might have a certain waypoint across the map but you can get there as chaotically as your heart desires. Everything on the small scale is random enough (traffic, etc) that it doesn't necessarily feel like you've done this same exact thing dozens of times before.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Darinbob]

I would like to play it, since I like open world games like Fallout, but it's not on PC. I wonder if console users have become so used to games that are tightly on the rails that they're uncertain how to deal with open world games or games with more RPG than action. Having a store in a game is a bad thing, but I gather that this is pretty common in modern games.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Darinbob]

I dunno, when I first played video games, other than the arcade ones, you didn't need that much in the way of motor skills for anything except action games. They didn't have the atrocities of "action RPG" or "RTS" games invented yet.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Darinbob]

To be honest, I don't even remember that many games that did not let you save anywhere you wanted to, and I've been playing computer games since Adventure and Wizardry 1. When I first saw a game that only let you save at save-points I thought it was crazy.

Re:Every review of Red Dead I saw

[Darinbob]

Fallout: New Vegas is pretty much a western in many ways.

The problem is...

[blahplusplus]

... CEO's realized the way to expand the market and recoup development costs was to make movies and not games. This trend towards making the game a movie pushed aside gameplay beginning around 2000 with the jump of PC devs to console as PC games were getting costly to develop due to 3D cards making dev costs explode and greener pastures on a locked down platform with less technically informed population.

Now that the market has expanded to the bottom half of the bell curve we get shit games and mind blowing levels of stupidity like mmo's, drm, steam, etc. The internet brought the stupid masses online and being stupid didn't withhold their bucks from game companies stealing games out from under them which is why videogames are in such a dystopic state. The average gamer is a fucking mouthbreather. It began with ultina online, everquest and wow back in the late 90's to early 2000's as big videogame companies started stealing games and calling it drm. Up until around 2000 we got complete games both muli+ single player to run on our local machines. The internet has enabled the biggest theft and destruction of videogame culture in all of human history thanks to the ignorant masses getting internet. To think the internet would unleash the PC game nerds worst fears from the 90's... and now even windows 10 has drm in it. A giant wtf to how fucking stupid our species is.

The reality is now most gamers hate actual gameplay and you have hack devs who are also part of the 'new generation' of gamers with shit taste and it is reflected in the games they make. We went from complex games like Civilization, Starcraft 1, Quake 3 /w mods, UT2004 to microtransaction ridden garbage with diablo 3 and SC2 held hostage on the other side of the internet with always online drm where you can't run the game fucking completely stand alone. Shit sucks.

Re:The problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole 'they want to make movies' thing is kinda ten years out of date. None of the big publishers are interested in linear, narrative focused games anymore. They're mostly trying to convince us all that online only hamster wheels are the way, devoid of both gameplay and narrative

Re:The problem is...

[blahplusplus]

The whole 'they want to make movies' thing is kinda ten years out of date. None of the big publishers are interested in linear, narrative focused games anymore. They're mostly trying to convince us all that online only hamster wheels are the way, devoid of both gameplay and narrative

That only happened as mobile phones got to the point to put gambling inside of games. Gacha didn't become predominant until around 2010's. And big single player movie games are still mainstays. Just look at the latest god of war. Titanfall 2 and TF3 will also have a singleplayer "inside the movie campaign". The single player campaign is not dead. It's just companies now have access to easy money because mobile and internet gave them complete control over the game to put mtx inside it. Microtransactions didn't get added to Team fortress 2 until around 2011.

Re:The problem is...

[Opportunist]

Dude, have you been playing any games lately? Yes, you have to lay off EA, Ubi and Blizzard like they do developers, but there has NEVER in the history of gaming been a larger, more open market for independent game developers that offer great games without any DRM bull.

Forget about the big studios. They're a lost case and probably won't shit out anything worthwhile anymore. They can't take no risk, they will offer nothing interesting. What they do is to give last year's turd a new shine, slap the current year onto the title so there is actually a noticeable difference to what they sold you last year, sell it to you for 60 bucks, sell you the 0-day DLC for another 30 (that you need to finish the game at all) and milk the rest from you with microtransactions. Forget them, they're a lost case.

But aside of those studios there is a very large amount of small game makers, usually with only a handful of games to their name (if that) that sell you absolute gems for maybe 20 or 30 bucks. Without DRM, microtransactions or any other bullshit.

Of course they have less money at their disposal for advertising. Their money is in the game.

Re:The problem is...

[plague911]

I agree, there are loads of GOOD games. Cheap ones as well. Darkest Dungeon, This War of Mine, The Awakening of Theam Wasteland 2. All great, all without EA or Ubi behind them ripping you off. You can easily avoid the big guys 90% of the time. The only problem is that the humongous studios tend to buy up any good IP or small studios and destroy them. What I wouldn't give for a decent version of Civilization to come out again.

Re:The problem is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, there are loads of GOOD games. Cheap ones as well. Darkest Dungeon, This War of Mine, The Awakening of Theam Wasteland 2. All great, all without EA or Ubi behind them ripping you off. You can easily avoid the big guys 90% of the time. The only problem is that the humongous studios tend to buy up any good IP or small studios and destroy them. What I wouldn't give for a decent version of Civilization to come out again.

Civ 6 is great. Civ 5 was better, but Civ 6 is awesome.

Maybe the problem is your expectations. People often conflate the fact that it's hard to capture that naive wonder of games you had when you are younger. I finally accepted that games I enjoyed immensely when I was a kid like Counterstrike (as the Half-Life mod, not the stand alone) and Diablo 2 simply don't hold the appeal for me anymore. I can blame it on modern shooters and Diablo clones being interesting, but the dark secret is it's really me that has changed.

Re:The problem is...

[CrashNBrn]

Civ 5 was better than Civ 6? And Civ 5 was a raging dumpster fire.

Re:The problem is...

[gweihir]

Couldn't agree more. The most fun I had last year was with Oxygen Not Included by Klei. And they are still not even out of early access.

15 minutes to ride across the map?

[skam240]

"It takes roughly 15 minutes for its bland everycowboy star, Arthur Morgan, to gallop across the 29-square-mile map."

Apparently the author is new to modern RPGS
            A) Relative to other modern RPGs, that's not very much at all
            B) The game has fast travel

Everything else in the review just makes me think "Well, maybe you need to accept that big open world RPGs are not for you".

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[TheCastro1689]

People want more variety in these games. They all have limited mission types, boring play mechanics for things like, fetch water/chop wood/gather plants/etc.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[DontBeAMoran]

It's a western-based game that has a western-based environment and western-based tasks to accomplish.

Maybe the author doesn't like westerns.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[skam240]

"People want more variety in these games."

Which is why these games sell so well?

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[JD-1027]

This game is definitely of a slower pace. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I've enjoyed that pace just fine.

Besides fast travel, you also have "Cinematic Travel"... it is basically auto-steer... set a waypoint, and you can set the controller down and enjoy the (very well done) scenery as it takes you to your destination. I've not seen that in a game before, but I don't play a ton of games, so it has probably been done before.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[cfalcon]

Yea for a game that has several simulationist pieces and tries to put you in a virtual wild west, I don't exactly know what is expected. You can make a straight full action fps with a cowboy skin, or some kind of vaguely interactive movie with a western plot, but for an open world game, why all the complaints?

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[ravenshrike]

You set a waypoint, get on your horse, get on the nearest road/path in the vague direction you want to go and switch to cinematic mode. Then, unless you have a very high bounty or are very early or late in the game you can get to where you're going without doing anything.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[UnknowingFool]

My understanding that you have to unlock fast travel which at the minimum requires you to have visited that location before and completed enough of the campaign. If you are playing the game for the first time you’re going to have to slow travel to locations for a while.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[Stolovaya]

This. It's a western game. What was expected?

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[drinkypoo]

My understanding that you have to unlock fast travel which at the minimum requires you to have visited that location before and completed enough of the campaign.

Most games only let you fast travel to places you've visited before, but most games also put new objectives near to old ones. It's much less common to make you unlock fast travel at all, but it's not unheard of.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[Calydor]

I haven't played RDR2, but the description KINDA sounds like flight masters in WoW although that's between hard set travel points. An evolution of an idea, perhaps?

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[TheCastro1689]

Probably train robberies whenever they want, lots of shootouts, etc. They wanted the best scenes from westerns, not the middle part where they rode across the desert over a month.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[TheCastro1689]

I think this game sold well based on rep, I know most people stopped playing it by their own metrics before the first 1/3rd of the game is completed. They made it too slow for the audience. I haven't gotten on RD2, but loved RD1 and would play it at a slower pace. Going on lots of diversions, etc.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[TheCastro1689]

I should add, the low play will effect the next release from Rockstar unless they make online play better/cheaper.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[CrashNBrn]

Seems like it should be pretty exciting to travel on a horse at 120mph.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[thegarbz]

"Well, maybe you need to accept that big open world RPGs are not for you".

Big open world RPGs and big open world yawn fests are not the same thing. RDR2 is pretty, like really pretty. Unfortunately that's about all it has going for it. Once I stopped being fascinated by graphics I found it to be one of the more boring RPGs I've played.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[thegarbz]

(too quick to hit submit) And that's before you consider it's not much of an RPG.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[skam240]

Of course most big games like this are never finished so your anecdotal evidence matches up with all big games like this https://www.theguardian.com/te... . Shit, in the article's major example just 6.4% of players finished Pillars of Eternity.

People not finishing big games has been a well known trend in gaming for at least a decade.

"They made it too slow for the audience. "

  It's fairly certain that if you dont like a game with scores like these https://www.metacritic.com/gam... it's not a problem with the game, the game is just not to your taste.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[skam240]

It will? You just said you loved Red Dead 1's slow pace. That game's slow pace certainly didnt hurt Red Dead 2's sales.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[Darinbob]

Agh, I'm not on any rails! What do I do now? Please Mister Developer, give me more cut-scenes and Quick Time Events!

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[Darinbob]

You mean maximum of 15 minutes until they hit the end of the map?

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[Darinbob]

Maybe the "audience" that found it dull wasn't the intended audience? Sure, any genre of games that I dislike I tend to end up disliking, that's to be expected. Maybe the fault is with releasing the game for consoles where it's a completely different class of players who are unused to open world, sandbox, or RPGs that don't have a J in front?

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[Darinbob]

Most MMOs have something similar to this. It's "fast" travel though as travel faster than you normally can.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[thegarbz]

Meh each to their own. That said I would still rate the game high despite becoming bored of it while playing, and if you read through the reviews you'll find a few of the highly rated ones in your link do the same. This game IS worth buying, it IS worth playing. However I'm hardly engrossed with it.

But like you said each to their own. Personally one of the most interesting games I've played in the past few months was Subnautica which is the opposite end of the spectrum. Nothing spectacular graphics wise, the engine has horrible problems, but man was it fascinating and terrifying (neither words I've ever used to describe a survival game which I fully expected to be boring).

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[Raidion]

Zelda: Breath of the Wild, also an amazing open world game, has something similar. A horse automatically follows the path, so you only have to nudge the controller at intersections and whatnot instead of having to be driving the whole time. You're also able to fast travel, but honestly, if the option is a 30 second load screen, or a 3 minute trip through some scenery, I'm taking the 3 minute trip most every time.

Re:15 minutes to ride across the map?

[mentil]

LA Noire did the same thing when you ride in a car. You could press a button to reach the destination instantly, though.

The real biggest problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the surging rates of adult ADHD in western society.

Re:The real biggest problem

[DontBeAMoran]

The real biggest problem is the surging rates of adult ADHD in western society.

I see what you did there.

Re:The real biggest problem

[billybob2001]

Was it intentional or occidental?

Turth, its all about the grind now

[evanchik]

Older games, had better "playmaking" , which is the act of actually feeling in control not the other way around. Granted new games "graphics" have went up , and with the advent of the internet , and multiplayer some things have improved. But ultimately, Desitny , the top game now, requires so much work, you need to put in at least 40 hours a week to get all the perks. Sports games can leave you in debt, thanks to EA sports and collecting "cards" and players to use on your ultimate team. Its a mess, just choose wisely

Re:Turth, its all about the grind now

[Darinbob]

A lot of newer games have something similar, but you can ignore them. If designed for consoles most developers feel obliged to cater to the teen and pre-teen crowd who just want the interactive movie bits. Ie, the Thief reboot had a lot of stuff to simplify things, including the tell-me-where-to-go options, auto-saves, and such. That game got a lot of flack from Thief series fans, but I give them credit for taking the criticisms to heart and addressing them as best they could before being fired, too bad the Tomb Raider reboot didn't clean up its act as well and remove the QTE events and other console silliness.

Re:Turth, its all about the grind now

[tjonnyc999]

"A feature I find funny in new games is the ability to press a button and the game reveals the path the player is supposed to take. The Tomb Raider games do this."

It depends on the game.

Dead Space 2 & 3 - the challenge is the dark environment & mutated bastards jumping at you from every corner. The challenge isn't pathfinding. So yeah, "Press right stick" to light a path is good in this case, because it doesn't take away from the main game, it's still dark and creepy and tense, but at least now you know which dark and creepy door to go through. Oh and it's done seamlessly, since you're in a powered suit with AR/VR display, so it MAKES SENSE for the system to draw a glowing line. It's not like a 3D path overlaid on a dungeon.

Or Borderlands - thanks to the sheer size of the environment, and the fact that it's split into different areas, yeah, you kinda need waypoints and markers. The goal of the game is to have fun, chuckle at the odd humor & cultural references, and kill bandits and Hyperion robots with a huge variety of weapons - not to laboriously crawl over every inch of a million-square-mile map looking for that one f**king key.

TL;DR: waypoints and pathfind hints aren't necessarily a bad thing, as long as they're done for a reason, with style, and without taking away from the challenge of the game.

It is an RPG

[jgtg32a]

And you play the role of a cowboy and everything in the old west just kinda moseyed on. Apparently if you can get into it and move at the game's pace it is a fantastic immersive experience if you can't it is complete shit.

Re:It is an RPG

[jbmartin6]

Fair enough. I want a divertive experience, not an immersive one.

Re:It is an RPG

[saps1e]

it is a fantastic immersive experience

Exactly. There are many who play games like this because they want to escape their surroundings and live, for a while, in another time/place/reality. It's escapism, a vacation.

RDR2 is the closest thing we have to a real Westworld right now. Sure, there's a story line and objectives so you can still consider it a game. But that's just to support the real purpose, which is to live as a cowboy for a while.

Why is this news?

[steelwraith]

Looking at the articles by the author he's not a games 'journalist' (and very few of the people calling themselves game journalists have a clue how to actually be a journalist), so I'm not sure why I should care what he thinks about RDR2 (BTW I have not bought/played the game, so I don't have a dog in the fight myself). If this was an article of cultural or artistic aspects of the game he might be a bit more qualified in his opinion, but to someone who is not specifically interested in this genre of games of course this is going to be boring.

Imagine trying to get Johnny who's only game experience is CS:GO to play Civilization. He might take an interest, but I'm going to bet he's going to think you're torturing him by making him play a slow/boring game.

Re:Why is this news?

[Parker Lewis]

The fact he is not a game journalist is exactly what make him credible for me.

Re:Why is this news?

[ravenshrike]

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect says you shouldn't inherently trust anything any journalist says.

Re:Why is this news?

[Darinbob]

Really? We already know that there are millions of people out there who will dislike your favorite game. Why listen to them? You want someone to say "I've never used a computer before so this computer game thing is pretty weird, and frankly silly so I advise you to just go watch a Jim Carey movie instead"? Do you listen to people who say not to play chess because there's not enough explosions? Do you base your decisions based upon a silly metacritic score?

Essentially you've got someone who doesn't like a game. So what? What game actually exists such that everyone is supposed to like it? None. Every game has a different audience and some will like it and some will dislike it.

Re:Slashdot is M. Smash's blog

[Red_Forman]

I SAID GOOD DAY! - Fez

Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[jeff4747]

If you think riding across the map is boring, don't do it. Use fast travel, or use it as an indicator it's not a game you find enjoyable.

We don't say there's a terrible problem in books today when someone who likes mysteries does not find an autobiography interesting.

An open-world RPG is going to have certain game elements, no matter what the setting. Like repetitive "chores", and a slow pace. If you don't like those elements in your video game, don't play an open-world RPG.

It's not like RDR1 was a frantic experience, so you should know this going in to RDR2.

Re:Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[DarkOx]

The thing is those certain elements can be done better and worse. Bully Scholarship Ed is still the best thing they have ever done IMHO. There is repetition, classes you must attend, even chores but never feels tedious. They found the right balance of "a day in the life" and real action.

Re:Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[plague911]

You are intentionally ignoring the point. Even the people who like particular types of games are finding the latest big name releases awfully boring. No matter what type of game you are a fan of, they latest iterations simply lack substance.

Re:Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[jeff4747]

And the complaints about RDR2 are the opposite of your complaints. On-rails makes for a shorter, more directed game. The "slow" pace is because it's not on rails.

And there's a hell of a lot of people on both sides of that. See: Fallout New Vegas vs Fallout 3/4/76. There's a market for both, but playing a game from the "opposite" side will be significantly less fun.

Re:Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[jeff4747]

Yeah, I went through the same rose-colored-glasses thing when I was younger. Thankfully, things like GoG exist so I could play those titles I remembered as having so much more depth and fun....and figured out that >90% of them lacked substance too now that I was not longer a kid.

Re:Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[guruevi]

Fast travel takes you out of the game imho.

In these modern 'open world games' it can, even with fast travel take anywhere from 5-20 minutes before you get to the 'action' part and you're doing repetitive tasks until you meet some internal counter.

Even old 'open world' games like Duke 3D, you had various avenues to get to your goal. In modern games, they program a single path and place to victory and straying from that path doesn't get you anything until you get back to it.

Re:Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[Darinbob]

When I first hit some of these games that are on rails but which appear to be more open I was disappointed. Ie, Dragon Age Origins, everyone talked about how it was open and you had tons of choices, but it felt so restrictive with plenty of invisible walls and funnels everywhere. Now that's ok with something like the original Tomb Raider because it's obvious you're on the rails, there's only one path and it's not even a maze and you can see all of the walls, and it's a puzzle game and not an exploration game.

Re:Alternatively, it's just not the game for you

[tjonnyc999]

Depends on the game. Borderlands 2 did fast travel in a creative and amazing way. If you die, you're digitally reconstructed ("digistructed") into a new body, complete with memories; so if you need to travel to the other side of the world, it's the same process - you're scanned into the system and digistructed somewhere else, makes no difference to the system which "3D printer" you're coming out of. Thing is, you're in a gameworld complete with spaceships, robots, AI, lasers, etc - having a matter-to-energy/energy-to-matter converter is perfectly normal and sensible.

Also, at one point, the sudden and surprising LACK of fast travel becomes a challenge and a chapter in itself.

But yeah, Fast Travel in games whose gameworld you can walk across in 5 minutes is frankly ridiculous.

So FT isn't a bad thing in itself, as long as it's appropriate to the setting and actually needed.

The game wasn't slow,, the character is slow

[oic0]

I found the gameplay to be ok, what made it feel slow at times was how ponderous and slow the character is. Yes that's how people are in real life, but people in real life aren't trying to serve up entertainment.

When you judge by numbers, you get numbers

[Opportunist]

We started judging games by the hours it takes to play through them, is it any kind of wonder that game studios try to maximize the hours it takes to play through them?

The problem is that many modern games have zero replay value. After you've seen the game and its story once, there is very little incentive to do it again. You already know how it unfolds. If you're the achiever type you can try to slaughter a billion (insert animal here) or find all hidden masks of Ujawuja in the cave but for the normal, non-OCD player, being done with the story means being done with the game.

Let's not even get started

[foghelmut]

on the multiplayer. Its a complete garbage fire of griefers and no content.

Re:Let's not even get started

[desdinova 216]

the only multiplayer that's not like that is co-op and nobody puts that in unless it's a MMO. because it's cheaper to just set up player v player

Different design philosophy

[rsilvergun]

older games needed hard penalties so you didn't blow through them in an afternoon. When I was a kid I could make it through Shinobi on the Master System in an hour flat.

Good Modern games have a ton of content, so they don't need lives to keep you from blowing through the game. Bad modern games, OTOH, don't have much to do, so they substitute grinding.

In the old days the goal was to keep the game out of the used bins (and before that to keep your parents from getting made when you asked for a new game in less than a day). Nowadays the goal is "engagement". To keep you playing so they can sell you more crap. That'd be fine if the crap was more gameplay, but these days it's skins and minor stat tweaks.

What I hate about modern games is how the constant nagging for microtransactions reminds me of the real world. I play games to unwind after a long day. It's an escape. Nothing drags me back faster than a frickin' advert and a reminder about real money in the real world.

Re:Different design philosophy

[AmiMoJo]

I never had a NES but I have heard that Shinobi was quite a difficult game, so when you say you could get through it in an hour I guess you mean after putting in many many hours of practice.

Modern games have more content, but are more like interactive movies where even poor players get to see it all just by relentless grinding. Open world games are particularly prone to that - if you suck just grind more equipment and weapons until it becomes unbalanced in your favour.

Remember GoldenEye on the the N64? The first level gives you objectives like "install covert modem" and "extract data", with no tutorial and no hint as to how to achieve them. A few years later and every game had a tutorial, often unskippable. It was also the badass era so you tended to be playing some military ninja commando type who would get covert messages from base like "press B to climb the ladder", like he was a total noob who hadn't even passed basic training. Way worse than the 'tude era.

Re:Different design philosophy

[Mordaximus]

... A few years later and every game had a tutorial, often unskippable....

Every single GD Match 3 game on this good earth, despite being clones of clones of clones of Bejewelled, insist on teaching you the exact same fraking mechanics.

Re:Different design philosophy

[JaredOfEuropa]

Nothing drags me back faster than a frickin' advert and a reminder about real money in the real world.

I don't like to be reminded too much about virtual assets in the virtual world either. Too much grind required to progress. Oh, grind can be fine if it's sort of optional, in longer games sometimes I do like to do something a bit mindless and get sidetracked, as long as I can get out of it when I want to. But take Battlefield 5. Fine shooter. But then they added all these "seasonal" objectives you have to complete in order to unlock new weapons (and more skins, yay). Kill 4 guys with a headshot in 1 round, do that much damage with RPGs, etc... and the game suddenly turned into a bloody chore, into work. Got seriously fed up with the game for a bit... until I figured the new weapons were kind of meh anyway, and just ignoring the "3 days left to complete campaign X" messages, and jumping in and play the game on my own terms. Which is still fun.

Re:Different design philosophy

[alvinrod]

It's no different than anything else that grows and tries to expand the user base to people who are just starting out and don't have years of previous experience that they can fall back on. Look at the computer industry and early internet where there was little hand-holding and people needed to spend a lot of time figuring things out. Unfortunately if you're a company that wants to increase their customer-base, that naturally requires dumbing-down the product so that more people are able to use it.

Try and make something that harkens back to that time and you'll get called elitist or get accused of gate-keeping. I recall this happening last year (or was it the year before) when Cuphead came out and was brutally difficult, but had a tutorial level that didn't spell things out for you where some hapless reviewer got stuck on something that seemed simple if you had any knowledge of platformers and was pilloried for it.

There's a pretty good video that discusses the whole concept of tutorials and using good level design to teach gameplay that's worth the watch if you haven't seen it already. There's a good deal of profanity used, so you might not want to blast it if you're at work.

Re:Different design philosophy

[Tom]

What I hate about modern games is how the constant nagging for microtransactions reminds me of the real world. I play games to unwind after a long day. It's an escape. Nothing drags me back faster than a frickin' advert and a reminder about real money in the real world.

This. I've had times in life when money was a real problem - I mean, who has money to spare after just buying a house? When I've dealt with finances for the whole day and the result wasn't making me too happy, throwing a "buy this DLC" into my face was a certain shortcut to the uninstall button.

But game designers don't get that, I fear. Or not enough of us do it.

Re:Different design philosophy

[drinkypoo]

I never had a NES but I have heard that Shinobi was quite a difficult game, so when you say you could get through it in an hour I guess you mean after putting in many many hours of practice.

NES and SMS versions of Shinobi were different games.

The big bad super-hard ninja game on the NES was Ninja Gaiden.

Re:Different design philosophy

[apoc.famine]

Oh, grind can be fine if it's sort of optional...

I totally agree. And it blows my mind that games think it's OK to just hand out grind missions.

That's bullshit. It's so fucking lazy and disrespectful to the players.

Stick some barter tradeposts in the game, and price the items in them in terms of grind. 100 bandit bandanas to avenge my father, and I'll give you his old rifle. Medicine man has ED medicine I need. Get me some of that, and I'll give you this pistol. Medicine man needs 25 sequoia seeds to make the ED medicine, along with a live snake. To get sequoia seeds, you'll need to shoot something at the flowers. An easy way to get bandit bandanas is to release live snakes into their camp, so they all run out.

You can build somewhat disguised grind structures into games, and let people opt-into a grind as they want/need to. There's this mentality in sooo many games that you need to have an NPC say, "now go get me 100 bandit bandanas to fulfill this quest", and when you do that you get 100 xp. Um, why not skip the middleman and just give them 1 xp for every bandana? Oh, because they might not do that. Then what? They'll be too low level for the next scene that is not optional and is required to progress in the game.

It comes down to making sure that players don't fail, or find the game too challenging. In my example above, you actually have to think a little to piece the quest and the grind requirements together. And if you don't want the guns, skip it. Maybe down the line that means you can't beat a boss. If that's the case, you'll need to go back for supplies, and hit the grind. But it's not required to do it then, or possibly at all.

I desperately miss games like this. There are a few that come out every year, but they're swamped by the rest of games which railroad and hand-hold, while telling lazy stories with stupid, mandatory grind quests.

Re:Different design philosophy

[Calydor]

It's the rule of the 10,000 new people every day. For a decent number of people, any given Match 3 game WILL be their first Match 3 game.

Unskippable, though. To hell with that.

Re:Different design philosophy

[apoc.famine]

Rather on topic here, thanks for Battlemaster. I played that for several years, and had an awesome time every step of the way. Started as a knight, rose to power, started a second knight, founded a kingdom, and then lost it as well.

Real life got busy, and I realized I just didn't have the time and energy for the game that I felt the other players deserved. I still think about it fondly every time I see you post here. If it's still around when I retire, I may get suckered back in. It was one hell of a ride.

Re:Different design philosophy

[pnutjam]

I don't mind a reminder about what key to press, or what a key does; but I hate unskippable cut scenes.

Re:Different design philosophy

[gweihir]

Well, personally I stop reading game reviews when I see "microtransactions" and I do buy quite a few games. (No TV and not missing it one bit.) If they want to screw me over, they can screw themselves instead. I will rather give my money to those that may have worse tech or worse size but actually understand that this is about entertaining people, not about squeezing as much money out of the customer as possible.

Sadly, I think not many people actually do vote with their money this way. They get drawn in by the hype and then gladly let themselves be screwed over.

Re:Different design philosophy

[Tom]

Thanks for the compliments.

I still love the game, but wish it were up-to-date with technology. That's why I made Might & Fealty, but for some reason it didn't catch on quite as much.

I'd very much love to see the concept of BM in an AAA open-world MMORPG. But I guess the business model just isn't there to pay for that.

What are you looking for ...

[fish_in_the_c]

I once played a game that traced 'hours spent logged in' When I hit 1 year I started thinking...
What else could I have done, learned, experienced, read with that time in my life. I quite gaming and have been much happier ever since.
Games are meant to entertain us, so amuse us and to be a way to expend 'free time'.
But what do you have when you are done. Why not write story, a poem , go explore you city for an hour, read any of the many classic books out there , spend time discussing thing on line or even with real people. Pray or meditate , or excise.

Unless you games are developing a useful skill or helping you to grow closer in relationship to others by sharing a common experience. You are wasting your time.

Re:What are you looking for ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to die either way, people choose what to spend their time on and it doesn't actually matter. Your opinion is that writing a poem is a better use of time, but that is only your opinion.

Re:What are you looking for ...

[tjonnyc999]

I had that moment when I decided to sell my Diablo II account, complete with the game discs.

And as I was writing up all the characters and inventory, for the sale post, I kinda thought, holy crap, how many hours did I invest into this game? Sure, I have every classic build of every class (Fire Sorc, Cold Sorc, Lightning Sorc, Poison Necro, Bone Necro, etc), and literally every unique item in the game (from Sigon's to Windforce), and 6 mules packed with gems and SOJs... but what did that cost me?

That was a sobering thought. Like waking up after a long bender and taking a look around.

Never really invested that much time into games afterwards. Will never get involved in something that forces you to play for hours, or on an ongoing basis. So no "crack" like WOW or EVE... gimme World of Tanks where I can get into the game, spend 15 minutes blowing things up, and then moving on with my actual life.

Game publishers use a lot of psychological tactics to get people addicted, and keep them addicted.

I haven't played the game yet, but...

[hiroshimarrow]

The author of this has never played classic games like Ultima, maybe Baldur's Gate fits in here... certainly early Final Fantasy. This style of game play to make the game longer by having a level grind, or early attempts at karma systems, or intentionally difficult encounters to progress forced swaths of empty exploration and mundane repetition in order to get ready for the next stage of challenge. Whether you approach that challenge over powered, or if you took it on as you felt "just ready" was a matter of how long you ran around performing the grind.

This isn't new, and a super disappointing read to realize that the person can somehow pump so many words in order to just say "Meh, it wasn't the style of game for me, but your mileage may vary depending on tastes."

yawn, boring as hell

[FudRucker]

i rather play GTA5 if i want an exciting FPS game, and it has cars and motorcycles, and a train you can hop on, airplanes and helicopters, and a tank if you can get in to the army base and steal it without getting killed

Chores

[jbmartin6]

I've been baffled by the chores aspect since The Sims was around simulating people washing dishes. Some games I quickly dropped since I was spending time sharpening my weapon or some other tedium. I have enough chores in real life to do, why on earth would I spend my precious free time doing simulated chores?

I suspect it has to do with the way these games make money nowadays. There was an article linked on /. some time ago about all the games catering to the small percentage of players who were addictive types who would spend all their money on in-game purchases, and the designers didn't care much about the other 95% of players who log in for an hour or two a week to shoot some stuff.

More movie-like immersive narrative required

[S.M'anis]

Open worlds are awesome and initially give you a sense of immersion, but that enjoyment wans fairly quickly if you aren't kept "on a rail" and given a lengthy/meaningful mission to fulfill. This is something that the VR game "Lone Echo" really pulls off nicely. There was never a moment of dullness for me in this game and I _wanted_ to push forward for the thrill of what I would see/do next; I could still do a bit of free exploration, but you were still mostly guided/curated along a desired path.

even very old rpg had save

[aepervius]

Even back in 1988 we had game with multiple save, case in point ultima 5. In fact at some point consolisation of the game market partially made us go backward by removing multiple save and adding checkpoint late 90ies early 00ies. But yes we are not spoiled with modern game if anything we are going back to where we were on pc market back early 1990. To go back to the state you are speaking of we have to go back late 70ies or early 80ies. If you remove the pink glasses you will realize that actualy the system you describe were more inconvenience than fun.

Re:even very old rpg had save

[Darinbob]

I see people talking abou the good old days of games realize that they're talking about 1995 or 2000 and that they've never actually seen a game that's not on a console that wasn't solitaire or minesweeper.

There are indeed a lot of players who do want a big open world game that isn't over once the short 40 hour main quest is done. A lot of people used to story driven games that don't give you a choice don't get this. A lot of new games are just slightly interactive movies.

Re:even very old rpg had save

[AmiMoJo]

That someone was trolled by this comment is quite, quite pathetic.

Farming Sim Of the future

[sizzlinkitty]

After I beat the game I spent hours working on a ranch as John Marston, building fences, milking cows and shoveling the barn.

The RDR2 story was great outside the mundane tasks in the game. I didn't agree with the death of Arthor Morgan though, I grew to like his character.

Re:Farming Sim Of the future

[Zaelath]

Not sure if joking, but that was telegraphed so hard it might as well have been on the box art.

common

[Tom]

I find that a common theme in games release in the last decade or so.

I'm a gamer. Not addicted but I've clocked in enough gaming hours and enough different games that it's really hard to surprise me anymore. And somehow, games used to be more fun. For a long while I attributed that to the stupid payment models. Pay2Win, DLCs, subscriptions, whatever, they all require game designers to change the gameplay away from maximum fun to maximum profitability. When you bought a game and that was it, the game could focus entirely on giving you a good time, because that's what you'd tell your friends and they would then buy it. Now, just keeping you engaged for longer maximizes profit (subscriptions) or dangling carrots in front of you does (pay2win) or intentionally making you lose just barely, or making you feel that you almost accomplished that (despite you were far...) or any number of hundreds of tricks they now put into these games.

I've been a game designer in the past (hobby, not commercial, though I'm proud to say that my longest running browser game turns 20 soon and the gods only know what happens when it starts drinking). So I know a lot of how to make a game and maybe spot more of this stuff than pure consumers. And I've stopped playing games because it was just darn obvious that they are manipulating my gameplay and skill didn't matter. You would always just barely win or just barely loose no matter if you played shitty or brilliant, for example. Sure, you would win or lose, but the game would always make it feel close even when it should've been.

But recently, even games that have no pay2win or DLC elements and aren't subscriptions have begun to use the same methods. Maybe the designers just became too used to them?

It suffers from Realism

[Jastiv]

I have this saying about games. Sometimes, making things more realistic is not making things more fun. In fact, this is usually the case. "Realistic Graphics" I have the real world for that. "Realistic Game play" well, I guess I could go do some real life chores. It would probably be more fun. Other things in games never really approach realism enough to be worthwhile, for instance, ridding a horse, or navigating an obstical course can be made in games, something super tedious, that you wonder why you decided to go to it in a video game, rather than actually do it in real life. In my open world game Wograld, we strive to avoid realism and anything that approaches it to closely as well as things that end up significantly less fun and more pointless than the actual experience.

It's not cost

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The cost of putting together a story is no where near a deciding factor. After all RDR2 has a bigger budget than most (all?) Marvel movies. But then it's single player. If it's single player, it's harder to fit microtransactions in (also, if it's too fun to get the items in game, it's hard to fit microtransactions in). It's also impossible to turn off the servers to force upgrades to RDR3 (or GTA6). It's harder to generate a community, which means its harder to show franchise-ness to accountants. There are lots of business reasons why multiplayer is better, but none of them have to do with cost.

Re:The same for Overwatch.

[King_TJ]

Huh? I'm actually kind of a regular player of Overwatch, and all I've found is that after an initial feeling I was "underwhelmed", I started getting the hang of it and got sucked in.

The thing with Overwatch is, a lot of the game really hinges on you practicing and getting good at using each character's unique attributes, but always in the context of how they complement other players on your team (or work against the enemy character(s) you're up against in a given match).

You can get really far in the game just getting good at playing one particular character, BUT there are certain competitive maps where that character is far less than ideal, and times where he/she will just be ineffective because of the character choices the rest of your team made.

Even with all the hours I've put into playing Overwatch now, I'd say I really only "mastered" a few of the characters. Reinhardt is my "main" who I feel most comfortable playing. But every so often, I go up against a team that just has a playing-style that destroys him. You have to carefully chose a different character when that starts happening, to counter the situation.

And what I find even more interesting in Overwatch is the whole dynamic of playing with team-mates who have their OWN notions of how you should be playing your character. Some people will insist, for example, that my Reinhardt needs to concentrate on shielding one or two other characters from taking damage. (That's often a great strategy when someone is playing Bastion and in the gun turret mode, blasting away.) But I generally find him effective when I play with a really aggressive, "Charge in and go crazy, swinging the hammer at everyone!" method. Sure, he's gonna die a lot like that and someone playing a "healer" character will often get irate that "I can't heal you if you keep doing that!!" But I've often cleared a point of 4 or 5 people, just when doing that turned the tide of a match, too.

Anecdotes are not data, but...

[ElizabethGreene]

My laughter loves RDR2. The open world tedium immerses her and makes her very happy.

For her, it's an escape from the day to day. She doesn't need or want constant adrenaline from this game. She wants to be in it. When she does want Adrenaline she plays Overwatch.

My favorite game is an excruciatingly tedious open world first person shooter, Arma 3. It's not uncommon for a death in a Zeus match to respawn me on the opposite side of the island, a 20 minute boat ride away from my squad. It makes me much more situationally aware, and is one of the reasons I love the game.

Re:Anecdotes are not data, but...

[mentil]

Mentil likes how you refer to your laughter in the 3rd person.

While that's true very few were completely cheap

[rsilvergun]

e.g. few couldn't be mastered with enough skill. Most games rewarded skill with more play per quarter. This was fine because to get to that skill level you'd invested heavily in the game. As much or more as a console game. But those games understood value.

To be fair they had a _lot_ more competition too. There are very few AAA publishers left. Activision, EA, Sony, Capcom, Ubisoft, Bethesday and Square are about it (might include Gearbox in that). That's 8 companies. There were dozens back in the arcade heydays.

Morrowind didn't have that

[rsilvergun]

There were neat little nooks and crannies all over the map. Never went 30 minutes without doing anything unless you did it on purpose.

I think the author's point is that a lot of these open worlds are kind of empty. Saying "Well, the designers meant to invoke the loneliness of the old west" is all well and good, but while that imagery might make for good cinema it makes for dull as paint drying games...

Re:Morrowind didn't have that

[Darinbob]

It depends if you like doing that sort of game or not. I don't play a lot of chess, I find it boring. But it's a great game even though I personally don't like it. I spent 500 hours in one playthrough of Fallout 4, so there's a good chance I might like playing RDR2 if it showed up on PC, but I can guarantee you that I won't like anything in the Assassin's Creed series. Not every game is for every player.

Independent games are fun and all

[rsilvergun]

but they aren't AAA games. They can't be, they don't have the money. It's a different experience. Like comparing a big budget Hollywood block buster to a cheap slasher flick. Both are fun, but for different reasons, and I liked it when I had both.

Also there's not a lot of AA games left. There's Obsidian, but Microsoft just bought them and who knows what'll happen. Most of the AA Japanese devs are gone (even Konami dropped out except for PES).

Re:Independent games are fun and all

[gweihir]

Yes, AAA can give you an incredible amount of nothing, but independent can give you a reasonable amount of actual fun. I know what I prefer.

Re:Independent games are fun and all

[Darinbob]

You really need a big AAA studio though in order to get your bug count that high.

Re:Independent games are fun and all

[gweihir]

Indeed. Independents can not even write enough code to have that many bugs in there.

Re:Independent games are fun and all

[mobby_6kl]

An indie game can give you a reasonable amount of actual fun, but often they're actually just garbage, exactly like the AAA games.

Sure, RD2 can be boring (no idea, as it's not on the PC) but then there are other games that aren't. Metro Exodus is pretty damn good for example!

Playing should feel like reading a good book.

[devslash0]

It takes a great story to make a good game. Playing a video game should feel like reading a good book and being a part of the story. It's difficult to come across games which feel like that these days. And it's not because creators are running out of ideas. There are always great literate minds willing to write incredibly engaging content. But guess what? Perfection requires thorough planning, attention to detail and, most importantly time. Something that many companies are entirely not comfortable with. Just impose an impossible deadlines, make the team crunch 24/7 at the price of creativity and then deliver a moderate quality product with microtransactions. Deadlines met? Check. Money flowing? Check. Experience is shit? Who cares.

Re:Playing should feel like reading a good book.

[mentil]

Have you tried visual novels?

Re:Playing should feel like reading a good book.

[devslash0]

I've heard about them but it's not my cup of tea. I play a lot of retro adventure and RPG games though.

Tedium vs. tedium

[Anonymous Coward]

If we are talking, mainly, about RPGs then even the classics have plenty of problems. Remember all the micro-managing of inventory we had to do? That's still a kind of tedium (unless you like OCD micro-managing, I guess), but at least the content was usually great. There was very little "grinding" or "mindless fetch questing". You might have to spend some time doing some not-very-fun-things, but the rest of the time you felt engaged by the quests and characters. There was kind of a point where everything came together and the future looked really bright, right around the DAO and FO3 period. Pretty much everything you did felt important, the worlds were big enough, micro-managing of inventory and loot was reduced to sane levels, and there was very little mindless questing. Characters, environment and story all felt compelling.

Then came a very fast big slide towards tedium again. The worlds got bigger, but instead of filling them with a few more compelling quests and characters we got shit like "radiant quests" and crap like collecting bottles in DAO-A, or endless time spend modding weapons in FNV, all of which just distracts from the story, characters, setting, and fun (again, unless you actually like really boring stuff, then I guess those things are for you. If that's the case, I have TON of RL routine daily shit you can do for me that I don't like doing. I would be glad to turn over all my RL tedium to someone who would enjoy it!) Even games that are overall pretty darn good (Witcher 3?) were designed by people who spent time filling the worlds with endless, mindless, tedium rather than simply adding a handful of additional real characters and quests. I remember DAI well. I would have happily traded every single stupid mindless collect-shit quest for one more good NPC and one more really engaging quest.

guess I'm in the minority,

[bonedonut]

but I enjoy it immensely. I already played through it once, and am 30% through it a second time, trying to finish everything I can before the epilogue. It's definitely not as mundane as collecting 900 korok seeds. :)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Workifying games

[jensend]

Obligatory SMBC. It's interesting that people can be persuaded to undergo all kinds of ridiculous virtual drudgery because it matches their schedules of operant conditioning reinforcement better than other ultimately more satisfying ways to spend those hundreds of hours. Like so many white rats.

RDR2 is not unlike RDR1 - so not surprising

[ffkom]

RDR1 was pretty "slow paced", and so is RDR2. I liked RDR1 the way it was, and I like RDR2. If the author does not like games of that type, he could have known before and not bought it.

Re:CorelDRAW X8 Crack

[tjonnyc999]

Anybody who appreciates a well-designed & clean interface, and exact controls that do what you want, when you want, and align things with an almost-prescient clarity.

It's AutoCAD "align this node precisely to the virtual guideline extending from that object, then create 24 clones and distribute them evenly around this curve" mentality vs PhotoShop "drag things around and feel creative" mentality.

Re:When you judge by mods, you get replay.

[Opportunist]

Doing this in a story-heavy environment with a landscape that actually makes sense (like, say, it doesn't have a desert right next to a jungle) is not only tricky, it's near impossible. Mods will kill you any and all stories you might want to pack into the game. Either that or they render it ridiculous, break the 4th wall or are simply very tacky. Procedural world generation usually ends in worlds that look like they have been slapped together from a few predefined stock rooms. Either that or the sudden change in altitude leaves you with areas that are inaccessible, and with a hint of luck there's the all-important quest NPC right where you can't get due to faulty layout.

In the end, these games don't change at all. Just because you put the quest NPC in a different location does not change the quest. And so far I have not seen a game that can procedurally generate a (sensible) story that unfolds as you play the game.