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Kanos posted:Kargath meets you in the (actually pretty good) intro questline of WoD, which introduces the various Warlords and sets them up. You fight an arena encounter with him involved, escape, and then he gets pissed about you running away; it's actually a decent attempt at setting up an antagonist that the player has a personal history instead of the usual parade of boss candidates such as Lord Vaxulon The Corrupted, Random Guy You've Never Seen Before This Raid Opened. To expand on this a tiny bit, during the WoD beta, there was a split in the outcome of the Kargath raid fight, based off difficulties. I don't recall the full details, but I think LFR-Heroic Kargath would run away at 2%, leaving his severed blade hand as the lootable object; while Mythic difficulty ended the same way it does now. I'm not sure if they had previewed the Mar'gok fight at this point, but a lot of people started complaining about canonicity of fights, and only seeing the "Full story" on mythic. Plus, I think Blizzard realized they couldn't really do anything with Kargath after this fight, or they'd have to spin some weird "I wasn't really dead!" bullshit for people that saw that version of the fight, so everyone gets to kill him. That was the first red flag I remember before WoD became a lost cause. Aside from Ner'zul dying in a dungeon, this change basically destroyed the hope for a Warlord-themed raid to cap off the expansion.
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Sep 30, 2021 07:43
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webmeister posted:I mean the bar for Blizzard writers is basically “doesn’t publicly thirst for Sylvanus” at this point Doesn't Steve Danuser still write WoW's "Story"?
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Sep 30, 2021 08:27
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Desfore posted:To expand on this a tiny bit, during the WoD beta, there was a split in the outcome of the Kargath raid fight, based off difficulties. I don't recall the full details, but I think LFR-Heroic Kargath would run away at 2%, leaving his severed blade hand as the lootable object; while Mythic difficulty ended the same way it does now. I'm not sure if they had previewed the Mar'gok fight at this point, but a lot of people started complaining about canonicity of fights, and only seeing the "Full story" on mythic. Plus, I think Blizzard realized they couldn't really do anything with Kargath after this fight, or they'd have to spin some weird "I wasn't really dead!" bullshit for people that saw that version of the fight, so everyone gets to kill him. they do that a lot and I don't like it
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Sep 30, 2021 08:47
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Kanos posted:You really can't expect a multiplayer game to remain broadly popular nowadays unless you're either releasing a new version constantly(the CoD model) or you're continually pushing updates and new content for the playerbase to consume(the Fortnite model). Blizzard tried to abandon the latter in favor of the former but they are absolutely terrible at actually releasing new products on a timely basis. For OW it wasn't even a problem of getting new content constantly, it was that the game sat in horrible metas for extremely long times over and over and over again, and the team would take anywhere from years to half-year periods to tune back those metas that just completely poo poo on everything else. The population as a whole just wanted small shifts of fine tuning to bring things up to par, but instead they would just go wild and crazy on their balance patches doing poo poo that didn't address any of the problems that caused those metas in the first place and just set the game up for a horrible meta trashfire transition period between those megametas when the things they made egregiously powerful were suddenly enabled when they nerfed the heroes causing the problems in the first place. Just fine tuning things and heeding a little bit of the analysis by the professional esports players/staff would have kept the game going a lot stronger, but instead they spent so much time just sitting on their hands going "Wow as the devs we are completely powerless to solve these problems that everyone is talking about" while the population was begging them to just try anything to make the game fun to play instead of just lovely to play OR watch. It's been years and I still remember so many patches where I was looking at the patch notes and had reactions like "What the gently caress is wrong with the people making these decisions? Have they launched the game in the past year?" It wasn't me being adamantly against change and disliking anything that shook the game up, it was me looking at the game being made actively worse because it was clear they had no intent, mission, direction, or methodology to making changes. Someone with a dart board and a random number generator could've made patches with similar results. Commoners fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Sep 30, 2021 |
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Sep 30, 2021 09:57
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Blizzard could've made a ton of easy money treating Overwatch as a merchandising opportunity by continuing to release things like animated shorts and other things that keeps the casual community engaged instead of taking a year of furious lore brainstorming to come up with "Soldier is Gay"
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Sep 30, 2021 10:28
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Desfore posted:To expand on this a tiny bit, during the WoD beta, there was a split in the outcome of the Kargath raid fight, based off difficulties. I don't recall the full details, but I think LFR-Heroic Kargath would run away at 2%, leaving his severed blade hand as the lootable object; while Mythic difficulty ended the same way it does now. I'm not sure if they had previewed the Mar'gok fight at this point, but a lot of people started complaining about canonicity of fights, and only seeing the "Full story" on mythic. Plus, I think Blizzard realized they couldn't really do anything with Kargath after this fight, or they'd have to spin some weird "I wasn't really dead!" bullshit for people that saw that version of the fight, so everyone gets to kill him. I remember one of the questing zones in WoD centered around what Cho'gall was up to and it ended with him getting away. I was pretty bummed out to learn the ending to that long quest chain was exclusive to the Mythic Highmaul raid.
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Sep 30, 2021 11:00
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Abhorrence posted:To clarify, I probably should have said a "perceived focus on eSports." I don't mean to say that eSports are bad, seeing OW playing on TV in a bar was cool, actually, and I am not going to delve into any balance concerns, but it feels like there was a limited amount of content for casual players to consume, players like me who would have been happy with a little story content outside of the "once every April" lore drop. Doing things like... advancing the plot, or having a plot, or just showing the characters interacting in new ways, would be nice. Instead there were OWL updates, OWL skins, etc etc. It FELT like Blizz just cared about OWL. I was excited for the promise of a whole rear end PvE mode with story content, and if OW2 came out in 2020, or even early 2021, I would have eaten that poo poo up. But now the ship has sailed for ABK, at least for me. it wasn't "the dev team is focused on esports poo poo instead of making new content for the game" though, the esports stuff is a whole different team. it's really just that blizzard could not keep up with updating it to anything near the same standard as other big multiplayer titles - only a new character every four months & new maps about the same regularity, & irregular, usually terrible balance patches. obviously the fortnite model of absurdly constant updates is only possible due to extreme crunch on the dev team & that sucks too & you shouldn't expect that level of updates from anywhere, but it just seemed like blizzard wasn't throwing the resources you'd expect at new ow content at all.
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Sep 30, 2021 11:53
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tithin posted:they do that a lot and I don't like it It's why FF14's approach to EX / Savage / Ultimate fights works so well. The normal difficulty clear is the story based "this is what happened" one. Unless there's an actual reason for it to exist in reality (primal summoned again with a bigger pile of crystals) the harder tiers are you just fighting a ramped up simulation of the fight, or you're doing the version of the fight that a bard is embellishing when singing of your tales to drunks in a tavern, because of course he would make the encounter sound even more epic, he's a bard. Don't Rashomon the actual story of what happens based on player faction or encounter difficulty, just make it clear what is happening and leave reward tables for repeated clears or harder difficulties as something you just handwave on the side. Otherwise there's no reason to engage with the lore.
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Sep 30, 2021 14:26
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I think people need to stop anthropomorpizing companies. Don't get so attached or loyal to them. Great games are made because a group of specific developers worked at the same company in the same time period. It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company. It's disgusting when I see people reminiscing about Blizzard like it was an ex.
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Sep 30, 2021 14:30
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The Gadfly posted:It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company. The mild irony being the era of the "big name rockstar developer" was the other end of the spectrum, misattributing one person as "the sole responsible person for this game being good" and resulting in a glut of overpromising and underperforming kickstarters based entirely on the fact that "one person involved was in the credits of that game you liked from years ago", even more amusing given that a bunch of places are using ex-Blizzard credentials to whip up some easy starter fanbase
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Sep 30, 2021 15:23
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Ursine Catastrophe posted:The mild irony being the era of the "big name rockstar developer" was the other end of the spectrum, misattributing one person as "the sole responsible person for this game being good" and resulting in a glut of overpromising and underperforming kickstarters based entirely on the fact that "one person involved was in the credits of that game you liked from years ago", even more amusing given that a bunch of places are using ex-Blizzard credentials to whip up some easy starter fanbase quote:For Mega Man, Inafune designed several minor enemy characters, and also designed the boss character "Elec Man"
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Sep 30, 2021 15:31
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The Gadfly posted:I think people need to stop anthropomorpizing companies. Don't get so attached or loyal to them. Great games are made because a group of specific developers worked at the same company in the same time period. It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company. big agree. the amount of capital abk has access to is staggering, and in no way does that capital equate to greater ability to produce a good game. i wish people would play more games developed by small indie studios/individuals instead of eating the poo poo shoveled into their mouths by faceless mega-corps. a lack of direct communication by the actual people developing and designing the game and its systems is a big red flag to me. the roguelikes thread has plenty of examples of individual people developing games that have built goodwill with me and people like me for many years. I'll continue to support them based entirely on that goodwill because I have a somewhat personal connection to their work and i trust their ability to make good games unormal, hand of luke, and their game caves of qud is a good example of this
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Sep 30, 2021 15:45
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The Gadfly posted:I think people need to stop anthropomorpizing companies. Don't get so attached or loyal to them. Great games are made because a group of specific developers worked at the same company in the same time period. It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company. I don't think anyone in the universe really feels any loyalty to ABK, the giant conglomerate. They feel a sense of lingering attachment to specifically Blizzard Entertainment. For like the first fifteen years of its existence, Blizzard had a virtually unprecedented record of banger after banger that was almost entirely unmatched in the industry. In terms of products released to products beloved ratio, it was in the running with titans like Nintendo. It's not unreasonable to expect that a company is going to be a reliable source of good products if they build a consistent record over many, many years. The developers are the important part, but in the specific context of Blizzard, they had several high profile, hugely influential developers like Bill Roper and Dave Brevik depart the company during their golden era and the company did not, at the time, seem to be affected overmuch by their departures, which added more oomph to the mythology that it was Blizzard Magic that made their games so successful rather than any individual dev's contributions. Many people reminisce about Blizzard because Blizzard games were an important part of their lives at one point - a lot of people still playing Blizzard games at this point were people who grew up playing them. It's almost exactly like finding out that your favorite musician was/is a sex creep, or your favorite TV star was/is a domestic abuser; it forces you to reexamine all of those happy memories and recontextualize them in an unpleasant way that taints those memories and makes you wonder if you're somehow hosed up or wrong for ever having liked that person/thing. It's not really weird for people to want to wax nostalgic about "hey remember when we lived in a world where as far as anyone knew Blizzard Entertainment did not sexually harass a woman to the point of suicide", as long as they don't mentally avoid or rewrite the truth in the process. Kanos fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Sep 30, 2021 |
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Sep 30, 2021 16:51
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The Gadfly posted:I think people need to stop anthropomorpizing companies. Don't get so attached or loyal to them. Great games are made because a group of specific developers worked at the same company in the same time period. It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company. 100% corporations are not people and are not your friends, even the "good" ones
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Sep 30, 2021 16:53
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Endorph posted:the funniest was the inafune thing where everyone literally just lied about his involvement. THE FATHER OF MEGAMAN I'll admit THE FATHER OF ELEC MAN doesn't have quite the same ring.
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Sep 30, 2021 17:16
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The Gadfly posted:I think people need to stop anthropomorpizing companies. Don't get so attached or loyal to them. Great games are made because a group of specific developers worked at the same company in the same time period. It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company. Totally agree, and going back to the scandal this is why it doesn't matter if Blizz is fined or even bankrupted. The company can't feel pain or fear. Justice has to target individual sex offenders and collaborators in order to, you know, exist.
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Sep 30, 2021 17:19
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Maybe not the thread for it but the discussion makes me curious if there are any worker owned game development co-ops. I follow like 0% of the industry.
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Sep 30, 2021 17:25
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External Organs posted:Maybe not the thread for it but the discussion makes me curious if there are any worker owned game development co-ops. Yes, the devs of Dead Cells are a co-op. (A number of them left to form a traditional model studio and they called it Evil Empire lol) The devs of Night in the Woods formed a co-op called The Glory Society
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Sep 30, 2021 17:29
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Desfore posted:To expand on this a tiny bit, during the WoD beta, there was a split in the outcome of the Kargath raid fight, based off difficulties. I don't recall the full details, but I think LFR-Heroic Kargath would run away at 2%, leaving his severed blade hand as the lootable object; while Mythic difficulty ended the same way it does now. I'm not sure if they had previewed the Mar'gok fight at this point, but a lot of people started complaining about canonicity of fights, and only seeing the "Full story" on mythic. Plus, I think Blizzard realized they couldn't really do anything with Kargath after this fight, or they'd have to spin some weird "I wasn't really dead!" bullshit for people that saw that version of the fight, so everyone gets to kill him. The extra kick in the teeth is that Kargath was built up as this insanely cool badass who lead a slave revolt, and brutally shanks the god-king of the arakkoa to death despite his only power being “has a sword for a hand”… but because he was the very first raid boss of the entire expansion, they had to make him a relatively easy fight. Meanwhile, one of the hardest bosses that came after him was just a generic ogre whose whole backstory could be summed up as “a butcher who went insane”. Mind you, I get the idea of wanting pathos by having him die in the very same gladiator arena where he made his name. It just hits a lot less hard when it’s the very first thing you do in the raid, instead of saving it for some climactic midpoint or penultimate battle before the final boss.
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Sep 30, 2021 21:07
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Eej posted:Blizzard could've made a ton of easy money treating Overwatch as a merchandising opportunity by continuing to release things like animated shorts and other things that keeps the casual community engaged instead of taking a year of furious lore brainstorming to come up with "Soldier is Gay" They are missing the big one in WoW. 3D print your characters. That poo poo would sell loving zillions. Once per expansion, all the whales would get their characters in the latest end game gear. But nah, here's a loving mount that you will use for 5 seconds, but have to pay for 6 months.
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Sep 30, 2021 21:15
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External Organs posted:Maybe not the thread for it but the discussion makes me curious if there are any worker owned game development co-ops.
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Sep 30, 2021 22:20
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happyhippy posted:They are missing the big one in WoW. This was absolutely a thing back in Wrath - almost got one but never did! Looks like they're still going - https://squip.com/product/wow/
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Sep 30, 2021 22:30
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The Gadfly posted:I think people need to stop anthropomorpizing companies. Don't get so attached or loyal to them. Great games are made because a group of specific developers worked at the same company in the same time period. It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company.
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Sep 30, 2021 23:04
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Strategic Tea posted:This was absolutely a thing back in Wrath - almost got one but never did! I'm glad I never about this when I still liked wow
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Sep 30, 2021 23:20
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The Gadfly posted:I think people need to stop anthropomorpizing companies. Don't get so attached or loyal to them. Great games are made because a group of specific developers worked at the same company in the same time period. It's these developers that people should respect for solely their game-making ability, not the overall behemoth of a company. Don’t like things you fuckos, when will you LEARN
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Sep 30, 2021 23:45
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I think everyone here understands that corporations are not friends, but it's not unreasonable for human beings to get bummed when a group or company that used to make things they really liked loses that ability for whatever reason.
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Sep 30, 2021 23:57
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Eej posted:Blizzard could've made a ton of easy money treating Overwatch as a merchandising opportunity by continuing to release things like animated shorts and other things that keeps the casual community engaged instead of taking a year of furious lore brainstorming to come up with "Soldier is Gay" Second time this post has popped up and it's kinda silly imo. Video games have bonkers potential profit margins, while physical merchandise always has the costs associated with physical goods. Meanwhile, a Mercy skin can just make money, forever. Game companies really only care about bringing in players through associated media, not the profits in that media or merchandising. It's why you don't see more gaming franchises expanding out to film. The studios with enough money to invest in film already have a successful business model with more potential profit, why make a CoD or GTA movie at that point?
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Oct 1, 2021 00:18
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the point of expanding the IP is so u get more people playing your video game to buy mercy skins imo
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Oct 1, 2021 00:22
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I mean they are making a Mario movie and they already made a sonic and Pokémon movie
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Oct 1, 2021 00:23
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Studio posted:Second time this post has popped up and it's kinda silly imo. Video games have bonkers potential profit margins, while physical merchandise always has the costs associated with physical goods. Meanwhile, a Mercy skin can just make money, forever. Game companies really only care about bringing in players through associated media, not the profits in that media or merchandising. I'm counting skins as merchandising. My point was that they squandered an opportunity to develop a narrative universe that a ton of people were interested in. They dabbled with this with the various story events that had skins tied to them. Heck there's even two Nendos of Mercy, one of her default skin and one of her cobalt skin. In any case for the first year or two they were putting out animated shorts and comics and the fanbase ate it up. Don't know if it's entirely related but when they pivoted to eSports that mostly dried up. That's about the time I noticed a lot of my casual friends disengaged from the game, meta be damned.
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Oct 1, 2021 00:32
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Vengarr posted:Don’t like things you fuckos, when will you LEARN its not about not liking things. you can still like things... hell you can even still like blizzard games. its about not developing an unhealthy relationship with a soulless corporation because they all suck rear end and see you as a resource to exploit and are not your friend
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Oct 1, 2021 00:36
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what about soulful corporations can i make friends with them
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Oct 1, 2021 02:44
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What about a souless ngo
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Oct 1, 2021 02:47
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Great thread op! Just a reminder Diablo 2 Remastered was released recently, available in all stores now (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Oct 1, 2021 02:50
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Studio posted:Second time this post has popped up and it's kinda silly imo. Video games have bonkers potential profit margins, while physical merchandise always has the costs associated with physical goods. Meanwhile, a Mercy skin can just make money, forever. Game companies really only care about bringing in players through associated media, not the profits in that media or merchandising. The profit margin on most Blizz merch is 100%. A third party making a physical good, selling and shipping it to a customer and giving Blizz money for doing nothing except negotiating a contract and maybe tossing an ad up on the bnet client. There’s SOME official merch that Blizz actually shells out for then sells, but most of the big ticket stuff is third party.
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Oct 1, 2021 03:10
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orange juche posted:Doesn't Steve Danuser still write WoW's "Story"? Lead devs write the story then hand it over to the writers and go "this is the plot, polish it up for us"
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Oct 1, 2021 07:53
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Doom Rooster posted:The profit margin on most Blizz merch is 100%. A third party making a physical good, selling and shipping it to a customer and giving Blizz money for doing nothing except negotiating a contract and maybe tossing an ad up on the bnet client. the shrinking fanbase also means the places willing to make and sell licensed merch are less and less competent so you've got people receiving stuff that looks straight up counterfeit
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Oct 1, 2021 09:06
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FAUXTON posted:the shrinking fanbase also means the places willing to make and sell licensed merch are less and less competent so you've got people receiving stuff that looks straight up counterfeit Hey I like the Weaper action figure and backpack with blue orcs on it my mom got me
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Oct 1, 2021 12:39
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Itzena posted:Lead devs write the story then hand it over to the writers and go "this is the plot, polish it up for us" Which step is the horny for Sylvanas added? Lead devs? Smaller writers? Both?
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Oct 1, 2021 13:56
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I can see how such a process resulted in the deep and well-developed villain named “THE JAILER”.
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