Why do most new video games suck?

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Antnee wrote:

There's a few gems out there. Gimme a genre, I'll recommend something for you.

Shooters? I've seen some that showed promise, but they all end up having a serious downfall. Insurgency has no progression whatsoever.

Horror? I mean actual horror. Until Dawn is a perfect example of both a shitty game and jump scares.

ARPGs? I'm talking like Diablo 2 quality. I've tried quite an extensive list of these.

I'm interested in just about anything non-anime and non-2d.

I grew up with Baldur's Gate, but Pillars of eternity, nostalgia aside is just as good or better.

Morrowind had a great open world, but the Witcher 3 has better.

Diablo was great for it's time but Dark Souls does everything in the Action part better. And even in atmosphere.

Mass Effect 2 had great choice and consequnce system, but it was far surpassed by The Witcher 2 in that regard.

Games are only getting better.

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Natharias wrote:

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Antnee wrote:

There's a few gems out there. Gimme a genre, I'll recommend something for you.

Shooters? I've seen some that showed promise, but they all end up having a serious downfall. Insurgency has no progression whatsoever.

Horror? I mean actual horror. Until Dawn is a perfect example of both a shitty game and jump scares.

ARPGs? I'm talking like Diablo 2 quality. I've tried quite an extensive list of these.

I'm interested in just about anything non-anime and non-2d.

I uh... I'm into 2d games. I've failed you all.

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Poutsos wrote:

I grew up with Baldur's Gate, but Pillars of eternity, nostalgia aside is just as good or better.

I have played both. Don't see the connection. The Baldur's Gate that I played was more similar to Diablo than Pillars of Eternity. Pillars gets a "meh" from me because of game mechanics. Always needed a stealth. Some of the attributes were useless. 99% of the game is "tank and spank" to win. Did not buy the expansion.

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Poutsos wrote:

Morrowind had a great open world, but the Witcher 3 has better.

Keep hearing good things about the Witcher. I have the first Witcher on Steam. Have not played it much at all. Not really liking the combat.

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Poutsos wrote:

Diablo was great for it's time but Dark Souls does everything in the Action part better. And even in atmosphere.

Played and beat the first Dark Souls. Difficulty was over hyped in my opinion. I died a fair amount in the beginning, but after the learning curve I didn't struggle much at all. To be fair, I never killed the dragon though. Dark Souls is different genre to me because encounters are not random and the weapons are a different system. Even combat is too differentiating.

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Antnee wrote:

There's a few gems out there. Gimme a genre, I'll recommend something for you.

I'll have to think about it some more while at work. Civilization 6 is saying all the things I want to hear but we shall see.

My top 5 list: (no order)
Socom
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 10
Diablo 2
Warhammer Online (PvP/RvR not so much the PvE)

Looks like maybe fantasy action.

Best new RPG available is Divinity Original Sin. If party based tactical turn-based rpg is your thing.


Best new old-school RPG is Underrail. If single character tactical turn-based and hard is your thing.

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Kavlor wrote:

I discovered a free game recently Astroflux on Steam,seems a bit of a gem so far.

Trying this since it is free and takes 30 seconds to install.

So far a little meh.

Movement is odd. No reverse or strafe? Upgrades seem boring so far. Weapons just seem like number increases. One of my crew members has "cold" skill. Hell if I know what it does. Picking up metal scrapes is borderline a pain in the ass. Good thing there is a cash shop purchase that makes it easier :/.

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Entropic_Fire wrote:

My take on the problem, it mostly comes down to developers targeting the widest possible audience (aka the lowest common denominator) and all the money they can bring. You can target a very specific audience and that audience will go gaga over the game, but most people outside of that audience won't enjoy your game much at all then, for a perfect example look at this game. For a great (sad) example of a series devolving from a targeted audience masterpiece into mass market drivel just look at the Fallout series.

This is pretty close to how I see it. I don't completely agree, though.

Imagine if Prego or Ragu - spaghetti sauce brands - decided they were only going to sell a single sauce. To do this, they'd take all the varieties they sell currently, weighted by how popular of a seller they are now, and blend them into a single sauce. How do you think that would fare?

The gaming industry is obsessed with breaking records. They're trying to make every game the best seller ever, appealing to the broadest audience to get the biggest revenues... to justify the biggest budgets. It's idiocy. As a consumer, you don't benefit if the games you play are popular; you benefit if they suit your taste and are of quality. Their urge to be big doesn't serve you. Their urge to be big doesn't make them money.

Gaming needs more smaller titles with smaller audiences which do just one thing and do it very, very well. We need more instances of two (or more) smaller titles covering an audience, rather than one big one. But this means developers need to know when to something has reached its cost/revenue breakpoint and stop developing it; it means setting realistic expectations on maximum audience size. This seems to be something developers - even this one - seem utterly incapable of doing. Games just get more and more piled top of them, always with an eye for addition rather than refinement. Quantity, over quality.

And that is why games suck these days.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Games just get more and more piled top of them, always with an eye for addition rather than refinement. Quantity, over quality.

I think you have a great point here. Reminds me of a particular circumstance.

Old school games simply did not have patches. The game was shipped and the consumer got what they got.

It feels, to me, that the internet has actually made game development worst in this aspect. In a way, it is ok to make games with bugs these days. Because, the developer can just patch it out later. Maybe, this is a luxury that developers lean too much on.

Perhaps, I am being too critical here though. Modern PC games have to work on a vast variety of systems. Retro games just have to work on a single system.

However, I also wonder about the budget of QA departments. It must be hard to explain to publishers the need for a good QA team. The consumer expects a bug free game from the start. The publisher doesn't get to market, "hey play our game, it doesn't crash your computer!".

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SuicideAll wrote:

It feels, to me, that the internet has actually made game development worst in this aspect. In a way, it is ok to make games with bugs these days. Because, the developer can just patch it out later. Maybe, this is a luxury that developers lean too much on.

With many PC games it's gotten even worse than that; the original developer doesn't aim to fix the bugs, ever, or even polish the UI design or streamline graphics processing, because a third-party developer (aka modder) will do that work, for free, within days of release.

I mean, take Path of Exile. No first-party trading search function? No problem.