The Hidden Price of Changing a Game
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- Опубліковано 16 тра 2023
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It's hard to get people to accept change. So how can we make changes in a game without costing you your fan base and adding real value?
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Ha
Wait wait wait wait what?!!? Your players are at risk of becoming Darklords? How evil are your players, in general?
You're telling me after all the rereleases of Skyrim, monetizing mods, and Fallout 76 Bethesda still can't afford a few lean years to transition to something more sustainable? Don't you love capitalism? Grow, or die
I think one of the peak example for the cost of change is the US sticking with Imperial unit system
Meanwhile here in the UK we use both Imperial and Metric in different and same industries. For example land is measured in acres but architecture is measured in metres but road signs list distances as both kilometres and miles and car speedometers use mph.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it!
I don't really care whether a project uses standard or metric, but you need to just pick one and stick with it. Too much stuff uses metric dimensions with inch fasteners. If you're gonna go metric, then you need to go _completely_ metric like the auto industry.
@@lukestevens9375 The US auto industry took like 20 years to finally actually go fully metric.
@@Cemi_MhikkuTyres (Aussie English) and hubs are still measured in Imperial like 16" rims or 24" all-weather.
As Technology Connections once said, the only thing better than perfect is standardized.
That channel is a trasure for the world.
I loved that
Its very dystopian, but ya...
I worked for a large corporation doing industrial instrumentation. We had part of the software we called "bugtures" that is (generally minor) bugs that could not be fixed, because doing so would affect the procedures of client, and those procedures would cost millions in retraining to change, even if the change is just "stop clicking on that button that should not do A to do A, instead go to the right place to do A".
Friggin' Windows 11 context menus, changing everything into icons (instead of text-and I can promise icons are not as clear as the designers seem to think they are), and constantly changing UIs in productivity programs (Google's online Office Suite and Microsoft Office are two excellent examples) are a few examples of changes that frustrate me.
One of the things I've come to appreciate as I get older is there's a huge difference between learning something for the first time and updating your knowledge of a thing. With the latter, you have to keep straight which version you're working with, which means you have to sort through more information in your head. This will ease over time, but for things you might only use occasionally, it's brutal. And not being able to use a new version of something with the ease and mastery you could use the previous version because the designers changed the UI yet again is deeply frustrating.
ooh what they did to the taskbar is my biggest issue. the forced application grouping of buttons so now I can't group programs by task or workflow no I can only group them by what application they are, or the fact that if you pin anything to your taskbar then open that program the program opens where you pinned the icon, which if you got a few pinned programs opened that each opened a few windows, good luck finding the other pinned items as they got pushed off. I'm sure this helps some people and is probably more touch screen friendly. But I don't have a touch screen, and now I have to spend time searching for the program on the taskbar when I need to switch instead of being able to stick related ones together simply because they are not the same app... I'd be fine if they added it in as a optional feature but to force it's use just annoys the crap out of me.
@@CrossRoadsOfTime Yeah, I liked having a double-height taskbar and not forced-grouped icons in Win10.
I think you've hit upon something important, which is that I have no idea why the Windows team removed customization options.
At least there's a registry edit you can make to revert the context menus.
Did you know blizzard was going to announce OW2 cancellation of PVE, or was this just masterful timing
Oh damn, I stopped playing a bit before 2, but they announced that recently? Wasn't that supposed to be the point of 2?
@@edwardnygma8533 YUP, it was and they did.
Honestly, it seems like they dramatically overscoped, and then realized they didn't have the manpower to make, essentially two different games at the same time, so they cancelled it and went back to "We'll release small scale PvE missions like we used to back in OW1".
Something that they stopped doing in OW1 because they wanted to pour their time and money into a sequel that could let them make a story mode to begin with.
The whole thing is a very big OOF.
@@AegixDrakan Glad I left when I did, but disappointed I didn't leave sooner tbh. Thanks for the news though lol.
@@AegixDrakan They weren't pouring time and money into the game, they were pouring it into the Esports scene. A scene which is somewhat floundering as Kaplan predicted when he told Blizz to *not* try and force an Esports scene into existence.
I think they announced the shift from an actual campaign to just doing anniversary style missions a while ago, we just got slightly more detail on it now, like how they're abandoning the planned RPG mechanics.
As a great engineer I worked with once said, "if you do not have time to do it right, you do not have time to do it wrong."
I imagine they saw the ActiBlizz and slapped their hands together while shouting “HOT DAMN, we couldn’t have timed this better!”
Good luck to Bethesda employees when they finally decide to change the engine. It's going to be a MONUMENTAL leap they have to land to keep gamers satisfied.
Given the buggy messes they're now infamous for, I don't think they have much left to lose
Couldn't they make smaller games with a different engine to ease the learning curve?
I'm guessing that "decision" will never happen. If they do switch engines, it will most likely be involuntary.
@@Toonrick12 Depends on how much you want to pay the game engine owners for that use. The reason studios even bother with making their own engines is to create their own customized engine that doesn't require permission from third party owners or even paying them for the privilege...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 Another big reason they make their own is to keep any and all engine issues able to be diagnosed quickly. It's a good and a bad thing, since Unity (for example) has a gigantic userbase and is thus easier to properly diagnose a bug, but slow to fix since you need to wait for the engine developer to fix it. If you own your engine, you can fix the bugs as they arise, provided you can accurately diagnose them.
Hot keys in RTS are a good example of this, you don’t have to have the best hot keys, you just have to have trained on them and know them well
I once told a friend: "Hotkeys are like a set of knives: maybe yours are better but I'll take less damage using mine"
Of course, there's a problem there: the default expectation for "attack move" in RTS games is the "A" key, but now we've all grown to expect that WASD should move the camera. I'll be interested to see how the upcoming crop of RTS games tackle this.
@@bevanfindlay if you’re using the keyboard to move the camera in an RTS somethings gone wrong
@@bevanfindlayI mean, back in '98/'99 when StarCraft and Brood Wars first launched, it was Arrow Keys to move camera as WSAD was saved for movement for true-3D shooters like Duke3D and Quake (DOOM and Wolf3D were 2.5D), even back around '93 with WarCraft 1 Arrows was for camera movement.
I think a thing this is missing is that when you're changing things, you're learning things. And a game that's build by a process of releasing, learning from the community and making small changes is going to be better than one that tries to get everything right in one big go.
I needed the laugh from the train hat depicted in the Bethesda segment. Still blows my mind that that was the workaround that was come up with and implemented.
I wish this could be explained for all software, not just gaming. Smartphone updates, apps, Microsoft, etc. Sometimes it gets changed seemingly just for change, not for any specific reason
Sometimes even when the reason is plainly stated in advance, the blowback to the change can still be disproportionate. For example, between GIMP 2.6 and 2.8 they fundamentally changed how the "Save" command worked and WOW the controversy over that was huge.
That is to say, in prior versions you could "Save" to any image format GIMP was capable of outputting, but as of 2.8.0 they restricted the "Save" command to GIMP's preferred (internal) file format only, moving all other image formats to an "Export" command. There were some pretty strong design reasons for this (e.g. the "Save" command clears the "dirty" / "unsaved changes" session flag where "Export" does not) but it was an uncomfortable switch for a lot of users.
@@Stratelier I didn't know that Save and Export used to be the same lol; by the point I started using GIMP, they were already two separate buttons. However I did change the hotkey for Export to be Ctrl+S hahaha
@@LionHeartSamy There was also a significant change regarding all Select tools between 2.4 and 2.6 (I've used GIMP for a long time, ever since 2.2). In 2.4, if you click-and-drag on a selection it would automatically "float" the selected area to a temporary layer so you could move it around, but in 2.6 the same click-and-drag would only move the selection _mask_ -- if you wanted to float the selected _area_ and move it around you had to perform that as an extra step. Even with a new shortcut to automate this (ctrl+alt+click-and-drag, I believe) it was still a major change to a previously intuitive behavior (though it did _not_ receive the pushback that Save/Export did).
I do not dislike change, however even if a layout is changed, all previous options must be open somewhere. Oh my aim assist isn’t on the right controller pop-up, cool, I can adapt, but where is it now?
"When everything's worse, our work is complete!" - Every tech company
also team rocket, they also said that
I watch youtube on an ipad most the time, and stupid touch control changes have made my experience way worse. Its been months and its still infuriating.
My biggest QOL improvement on my work laptop with a touchpad, was figuring out how to disable every gesture except click, drag, scroll, and zoom.
Haha the timing with this and OW2 is astounding. But also probably unsurprising given it looks to be a problem across the industry anyway.
Hearthstone Battlegrounds recently started changing how certain heroes appear in different levels of play - that is, they implemented nerfs that only affect the higher end of competitive play. Most of these are to strategies that are beloved by beginners, but are quite bad in low-level play, but that have very high, nerf-level winrates for better players. Granted, these are the simplest possible "number nerfs", not complete redesign; but it does show that this action is POSSIBLE.
Here's a problem that isn't mentioned... sometimes, developers make a change and treat it as an objective improvement, genuinely believing that it makes the game better. But the players, or at least a certain segment of them, simply *disagree* - seeing it as a downgrade, or at best a 'sidegrade' that's purely a matter of taste, and doesn't suit *theirs.* That's an INCREDIBLY effective way to alienate that particular segment, permanently, unless it's very carefully handled - telling everyone "Look, we made out game BETTER!" also sends the message of "If you think the game is worse now, you're not part of our target audience, and this game isn't for you." It can even put you off a developer altogether, and not just a single game, if you wind up feeling like their idea of 'fun' is fundamentally different from yours.
This has happened a few times to me. I like turn-based games, particularly turn-based RPG's and turn-based strategy - and when a game or series that has until now been turn-based gets 'upgraded' to a more 'fast-paced, action-packed, real-time' system, it just... *feels bad,* basically. Like I'm being erased - after all, the developers are saying "Real-time is inherently superior to turn-based! Nobody likes that kind of slow-ass slog, it's just a thing that we used to do due to technical limitations!" - they're leaving those like myself who actively prefer turn-based systems completely out of their calculations. And that's why I don't even bother to look at Square-Enix games anymore...
There's a similar story with some fighting games that used to appeal to a very specific niche only to have extensive changes done to it that alienates all those that had supported the series for years for the sake of chasing mass appeal.
You basically summarized Pokémon and Legend of Zelda since the jump to the Switch.
I feel like this is not an equivalent change to what is being talked about and is also a mentality that is detrimental to the industry as a whole. There is a large difference between making changes to an existing game people are playing and making changes to games in a franchise you also don't need to buy. Sure, we all want games which we want to play, and I think RTS fans have a MASSIVE whole that they would like filled again. But you are saying all games should play how you want them to, including ones which aren't even out yet. Part of the point to an entirely new game in a franchise is to try something new while still trying to keep the core of the franchise. Imagine if WoW was still a RTS or if Resident Evil was still a fixed camera/tank controls game? I'm sure both of those ideas would have caused their respective franchises to not last as long as they have.
@@ScottAndNumbers That's a rather negative interpretation of my point. Firstly, the video definitely also discusses the cost of changes made between entries in a series. Secondly, all I'm saying is that if you try to sell me a game that's "The Last One with a Bigger Number on the End", or even "The Last One: Remade With Shinier Graphics", it's not unreasonable to expect similar gameplay. If you change the gameplay on a fundamental level, try to sell it to me as a pure upgrade, and I *don't agree* with that assessment, I'm not going to be a happy customer - ESPECIALLY if I'd been looking forwards to that sequel or remake for a long time...
@@BlakeTheDrake And that is 100% a horrible thing for the industry. You are entirely expecting games to be made purely on your standards. Assuming you are specifically talking about Final Fantasy, the series has ALWAYS been trying new things. 2 was very different from 1. 7 was barely even a Final Fantasy game compared to 1-6. And the series hasn't fully been turn-based since 10. So to expect FF16, or the FF7 Remake, which was NEVER announced to be turn-based, to be turn-based is you having completely flawed expectations.
Like I said, what if Resident Evil was still fixed camera and tank controls simply because that's how it was from 1-Code Veronica? What if Metal Gear never went to over the shoulder? What if GTA was still purely top down camera? What if Mario was still purely a 2D platformer and nothing else? What if Fallout was still a turn-based isometric game?
You can dislike things game do. That's your opinion and there are probably other games which do what you want. But to expect franchises to never do anything new at all is to wish for the industry to whither and die.
Looking at you, EoC in RuneScape. The price of change was 70% of the playerbase- far, far too high.
Wish I can go back 11 years ago in time just to join the riots in Falador lol
The Creation Engine as you mentioned is a similar thing that occurred to CDPR with Cyberpunk. They had big ambition, but their Red Engine just couldn't keep up anymore with how big the project was. Every new hire had to learn their internal engine, which took money and time and turned more and more outdated. Which caused the aftermath of the mess to push CDPR to abandon the engine and go to Unreal Engine 5 in the future, cost less to keep up because most know it and is continuously updated by Epic Games. Internal engines can be very good for a time, but darn are they a cost in the long term.
I just wish AAA games didn't forget how to implement key rebinding, it seem half the big new releases these days have broken rebinding one way or another, which sucks a lot for left-handed players or non-QWERTY players (especially left-handed players because you can't just swap hands like you can swap keyboard layouts).
I dislike how much influence Esports has on multiplayer game balancing these days. Back in the Halo 2/3 days the high level players just banned the parts of the sandbox they didn't like and used the small portion of the game they deemed acceptable for their matches. Now it feels like every weapon has to cater to the pro players, even the goofy fun stuff like the Needler or the Gravity Hammer, and it all gets homogenized to keep balance in line with what the pros want.
Back in the Melee days, high level players simply banned everything that wasn't Fox or Final Destination or No Items....
A standout example of this (and in the open-source community, of all things) is when the GIMP development added a hard split between "Save" and "Export". In previous versions you could open a standard image file, make a few tweaks and then "Save" back to that same file and/or image format. But with 2.8.0 the "Save" command became limited to GIMP's internal file format only (.xcf), with all standard file formats moved entirely to the "Export" command instead. The ensuing controversy over this one change between versions was INTENSE.
To be fair, the key benefit was that when working on a complicated image project _already_ saved in GIMP's native file format, the link between the open file and the saved copy on disk wouldn't get broken whenever you wanted to export to a standard image format. (That is, previously if you "Saved" a project as file A.xcf then "Saved" a copy to file B.png, all future "Save" commands in that session would target file B.png, not file A.xcf, and accidents happened)
That extremely specific example of the Nier raids in FFXIV made me smile. And yeah, not only were those raids fun as hell with a solid story, the rewards were very nice too. They are literally the only raids I farmed for every single thing they offered. Also, my character finally had a butt thanks to 2B.
I think it was a bit of a cop out to not use the monetisation elephant that was standing in the room as example. That's imo a way harder challenge and way more thematical for that segment.
@@Kenionatus Eh, that's low hanging fruit and is an obvious change that doesn't really need an explanation.
The secret world did a major rework and I couldn't get past the changes. It made me sad as there's really no other game like it and I miss the story but it just isn't fun to play anymore
I've seen a micro/ DLC that killed a player base within a few weeks of it being bought to the public.
Which specifically?
For me, hopping from Halo 1 to Halo 2 (both classic) felt like a massive change. Something just...felt off when I first picked up Halo 2 after hours and hours on Halo 1. How the Chief moved, how guns reloaded, animations, how Covenant weapons functioned, vehicle durability and manoeuvrability, the total lack of ammo requiring the constant need to pick up a new weapon or be a melee fanatic...it just all felt wrong. I got used to it, but there was a massive adjustment period.
Halo 2 to Halo 3 felt like it hit a middle ground and I found myself liking the feel of it a hell of a lot more. Even when 343 took over and Halo 4 popped out, there felt like there was less of an adjustment compared to H1-H2 (don't start a flame war, it's not a sin to like both companies).
I felt this way when Mass effect 2 started using ammo instead of the over heat system. the lore for getting rid of like real bullets, so there is an reason for over heat balance.
I think another key reason the NieR crossover works is: *optional*. It's a fine raid series, don't get me wrong, but it would've been way less popular if you'd *had* to engage. The way it was structured meant paying the cost of change is optional, which isn't always possible for changes to the base gameplay or systems. (FFXIV has also pulled off a number of those, mind you, but not to e.g. the base monetization options.)
I feel the advice for devs having to put predatory stuff because of higher ups should be "quit and go into a more indie studios" but it's the biggest change there is... Not many can afford that in this industry I suppose, I don't know how representative the semi-frequent news of "big name X has left - insert terrible company here - to create his own studio" can be
All change has a cost, but all costs are hypothetical until actually implemented. And as illustrated by the Bethesda example, not changing also has a serious cost (reputation, product quality, staff attrition, customer loyalty,…). I suspect the cost of change is overinflated relative to the cost of not changing because the cost of change is more immediate, and thus more off putting, and thus scary. It’s always cheaper in the moment to procrastinate until the problems become unignorable.
That is a wide-spread issue in the economy.
There's imo still too much emphasis on upfront investment cost and not enough on operating cost.
You make a tool for a customer to mass-produce some part and try to design and build it as fast and as cheap as you can so you can sell it to the customer at the lowest possible upfront investment, but over the tool's lifetime, it now costs more because it wasn't optimised for reliability and ease of maintenance.
I think we humans are just hard-wired to think short-term and really strugle to consciously overcome our caveman wireing...
And if I had a nickle for every game I quit on after an update trashed my gameplay, I could probably buy Diablo 4 with change to spare.
Diablo changes alone could pay for itself.
And then there's the switching from Pigmen to Piglins that everyone loved
Back when i had a nokia brick phone and everything was simple... my phone decided somehow to put my background on shuffle. Every few days the background would change. I never figured out how to make it stop.
But i swear to you, the first time it did that, i opened my phone and my brain broke trying to make sense of the interface. Everything is different, my head screamed at me. I literally didn't know how to use my phone.
Until it clicked with me that it was just a visual change and nothing else changed. But man, that freaked me out so bad.
Allow me sir to go full in, I'd present: Stellaris, 4X game from Paradox, it had changed so many times with free patches, DLC, Expansion packs that everyone on the community gets used to it , I personally I'd like to say a day before a patch "Time to re-learn Stellaris again"
Though for me the constant changes, additions and removals of core systems made me wait until there's no more updates until I pick the game back up.
A recent example of this is Lone Fungus. It launched out of Early Access into 1.0 only to have EIGHTEEN updates in the month after launch. Changing everything from the layout of menus to the way abilities worked and it just lost me in the shuffle. I really enjoyed it but by update 10 I had a pit in my stomach every time I saw a new update. By 17 I'd given up on the game and uninstalled. Then I saw update #18 a day later and knew I'd made the right choice.
There's a big thing going on in the Destiny 2 community recently on this topic where people are constantly saying that an engine change will fix all the bugs the game is accruing, which is just nuts
Well they're not wrong (given enough time) ... but then, a few projects have become infamous in part for trying to adopt a new engine. (Duke Nukem Forever, anyone?)
This was amazingly insightful. Thanks.
Thanks for the amazing video. I am not actively working on a game I am building software and can see how this logic would help me in releasing new updates.
A game that has started doing all these practices very well is Guild Wars 2. They have started communicating VERY WELL to their player base mitigating player frustration.
But where they have always shined in the way that you're describing is making a change that helps a small subset of player but hurts the majority. One thing that GW2 did from the outset (which was a practice from the Guild Wars 1 game as well) was that they split their game modes (PvP, PvE, and World v World) in a way where changes only effects one game mode. This has allowed them to make changes for their eSports scenes without affecting their PVE scene. So, if you're looking for what Matt is describing in practice go take a look at how they are handling it.
O_o did you forget a /s?
They certainly did not do the split from the outset. In fact they resisted the splits because they didn't want things to be different as players changed game modes. Even when they finally did split it was PvE/PvP while WvW got left out(forgot which side it got stuck with). Eventually they did split.
In the early days when they were more focused on PvP there were cases where things which were already bade in PvE got nerfed because of PvP.
After they gave up on that esport dream the situations swapped. It was only after than the splits came in.
Making confusing changes without providing any explanation wasn't all that long ago either. It was only in the most recent changes that they have gone back to providing reasons for some of the changes.
GW2 is a great place to look but more for all the wrong ways to do it than how to handle it well. The CoherentUI to CEF change has also resulted in some annoying changes to the TP with no explanation.
Got this problem with online rpg Adventure quest. They for some reason multiplied the hp and damage numbers by ten. They however didn't do it for heals making them practically useless, and with lvl90+ character it really sucks. Dropped the game after that.
nah, a lot of time developers just make crappy choices. This is why i basically never update my apps cuz they always ruin them.
this says a lot about not just the game industry but us as human beings as well
I love watching these despite never ever designing anything vaguely game related
I think a prime example of the cost of annoyance is Star Wars Galaxies and the 2005 New Game Enhancements where they did such a complete overhaul of the game that they would have been better off releasing a sequel. Where they made one class that you needed to grind for months accessible to everyone from character creation, while only giving those who did all the work a fancy title, a robe, and a lightsaber crystal and so many other changes. It was a dumpster fire because of all the backlash. I think it might have made the news at one point. Sure it helped reduce the learning curve for new players, but the number of people who were upset was immense.
Then there was the Combat Upgrade A few months prior that there were in-game protests against.
Key example most have interacted with is every player of a mmorpg, hearthstone/MTG/shadowverse (strategy card builders), moba is aware and loves/hates is patch notes whenever we there is a balance patch or content added. With patchs there be overhauls, removals, additions that are loved, hated, agreed upon or confused by. Sometimes we get reasons for why said changes occur, usually fixing/changing interactions, changing a stale meta and or making a new one. There is also the matter of expansions... Some times the changes are really different... class overhauls, new game mechanics, stat squishes (usually understood why the occur i find, so no rage).
I Know for myself with GW2... the way they have handled their trait system over the years has been questionable at times. Which has lead to all degree of drama. The way story is delivered to the player as well was another one. Then there are things they've done system wise that was praised overall, finally moving on from direct x9->11, there recent chromium upgrade for the in game AH. With technology changes there is also the matter of long it can be stable, overhauled/upgraded. And with that how secure is it vs moving to a new system (another reason why the chromium upgrade happened if i remember right from their post on it).
Changes with Cost can be a tricky thing to realize... some is due to inflation and cost of staying operation. Other changes such as the increase/additional of micro transactions is usually bad, doubly so if they give power that can only be gained via buying it (think gear/buffs). Some costs like more character slots, storage space can be hit or miss and really depends on the game's model... f2p/b2p to a extent do need ways to keep the lights running to maintain/continue on the game. Games that are gacha for units is a whole topic on itself so /shrug.
Oh wow, I didn't know that you were a fan of Enter the Gungeon . Its great to see that game mentioned out and about.
And when you complain about it, some people go and say "it's that you just grew past the game"... when it's clearly the game turning away from what got you hooked to it.
A change I noticed recently that I found disappointing was that Nintendo removed the need to upgrade your stamina wheel in Tears of the Kingdom from its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. There were several parts of BotW that (without glitches) were nearly impossible without upgrading. You might be able to find a way around but it was difficult. So you had lots of challenge there. Either beat enough shrines to get a big wheel or very creative with your tools. In TotK, you can reach every high place in the entire map with just the default stamina wheel and no refills. They might as well have taken out the option to upgrade stamina at goddess statues and made it only heart containers. On the one hand, I like how free exploration is bc it means the developers have shifted focus from interesting ways to get places to having interesting things to do at those places, but I feel it's come at the cost of early game challenge.
I think sequels are a bit of a different bag. You should expect new/removed/tweaked systems and things as the ideas from the first entry are iterated upon. Though even if you disagree and think what was changed was just fine how it was, you at least still have that original thing to enjoy the thing in, as opposed to many updates in games where you're stuck with the new stuff with no recourse.
I've played through all of BotW except some of Trial of the Sword without any stamina wheel upgrades, and without over-reliance on stamina boosting food or potions either. It took a little more thinking about situations, but all in all it wasn't too bad. Definitely made climbing more engaging as I had to really plan out routes and look for those shallow slopes I could rest on for a second before I started to slip. So far TotK hasn't felt too different. You have more options to ascend vertically, but the vertical distances are also much more extreme.
@@SkywardShoe "So far TotK hasn't felt too different."
It has for me. I didn't get very far in BotW before deciding to grind shrines to increase stamina bc I felt like I couldn't get anywhere. Climbing was annoying most of the time. After a while it went from annoying to challenging and then to easy. A nice little progression. In TotK, I've gotten everywhere in the first couple hours. It felt like it started easy.
"Definitely made climbing more engaging as I had to really plan out routes and look for those shallow slopes I could rest on for a second"
I think that's where the difference I'm perceiving is. The tweaks they've made to the over world, albeit small, have increased the number of those little ledges and runnable slopes tenfold. It's not engaging in TotK bc I don't have to plan or look for those routes like I did in BotW bc they're everywhere.
Maybe I'm wrong and they really are very similar, but they feel very different to me.
This reminds me of the situation for Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. When that game was first released it faced a lot of pushback from fans due to just how different it was from past entries. These days however it is seen the same way in the series as Ocarina of Time for Zelda and that the modern titles aren't changing enough.
Change doesn't bother me like it does other people. If something changed, it's usually because there was some reason. So I always find myself asking why. How does this change affect things? What improvement were they aiming for?
A lot of the time, I get it, and it makes sense. Swipe navigation coming to android (years ago), which most of the people I know *still* don't use. But I switched over because, well, more screen space! And it's easier too, and didn't even take much getting used to.
Of course there are the times when the change is objectively bad. It's especially obvious for some games, because I can look at the actual values and run the numbers and say 'no, this thing which had this purpose. It's no longer effective at achieving the specific thing it's supposed to be for.' That's when I get mad about the changes. But not for just the change itself.
Stuff changes, squint at it a bit and see what they tweaked, and do the new thing instead. No sweat.
One very negative change to this video was shoving an ad for world anvil into it, and also making it sound like a part of the video instead what it is, a commercial ad.
The timing on this was funny looking at the OW2 PVE changes
I swear if my Warrior of Light runs into either of those dwarf twins again they are going to get shaken down for answers.
The cost of annoyance is the micro transaction fees because they Throttled the game to be only fun enough to get you interested but not fun enough to play without shortcuts.
Wait so 50 notifications you have to close 1 at a time is not the best way to tell players of changes?
Ugh, Google apps is a perfect example. No, I don't want some business on the other side of the world that happens to use the word I'm looking up, I want information about and related to that word. When I open Maps, I want (shock horror) a map, not to have to tap past pages of recommendations and other thinly-disguised ads. Google stuff is becoming unusable.
Me every time Discord changes something about mobile -_-
1:50 and then I learned css and discovered the stylus plugin, so now I set it all back to how it wass
Funny that the Nier raid of FFXIV was mentioned - that one is a bit controversial due to it not adding anything storywise and feeling out of place because of it
Pvz battle for neighborville is a good example of change to just change nothing backing it up as before the first two instalments of pvz garden warfare were good then this came along and to put it someone elese words "they decided to "innovate" to "innovate" thats a bad reason to inovate"
What is missing in the costs is implementing new features. Back in the days a C++ book stated that a well planned project can save 90% of the costs and vice versa.
Same goes for games that outgrow their primary scope without engineers planning for that. In this case the change is not visible to the player at all, but to the back-end. To the developers, quest designers, level desingeners,... Where there are limitations on objects, types and other stuff that hinder certain things to be implemented. And I am not sure it is a good thing to tell players, "Our engine cannot do that." Or where it can do that in O(n)= n^n or n^5.
Or you don´t do a proper redesign but add things here and there that it kinda works, but is fragile.
Or you just don´t care - looking at you SW:TOR patcher... - there are more efficient techniques out there, but they use the day 1 implementation.
I’ve set up macros in World of Warcraft with the same button appearance as a removed ability so my hotbar still looked “right.”
They only time when change caused me to quit was when the cloning weapon glitch was patched out from dead island and it stop being fun for my style of game
That intro reminds me... Any City of Heroes survivors of the Global Defense Nerf and Enhancement Diversification?
They're a difference between structural changes and additive changes. A structural change effects everything a bit but an additive change give you are place to try out the systems that your familiar with. In an MMORPG it would be the difference between say adding a socket system for equipment or adding a new mid level map region.
The lack of PVP in Sryth makes making changes a lot easier as there is no "Meta" that people have spent hundreds of hour getting used to or the end to balance everything. Instead most the updates are new places you can go and new adventures you can go on and powerfully new items to get.
Thanks again
Just wanted to say I appreciate the reference to the train hat in Fallout 3.
This title got MAD OW2 vibes 😂😂
I admit. I don’t like to much change so I have stuck with iPhone for many years. When there are changes it’s not often. Usually it’s not to big of a change.
When dont starve was still in development, it was fun to get a new round of things every partch.
"Add a Nier crossover to your Final Fantasy game..."
Ah, so someone plays War of the Visions.
Btw, anyone ever hear how the giveaway thing EC had went? Is that thing finished yet?
That Nier/Final Fantasy crossover seemed reeeealy specific, like Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers Alliance Raid specific.
This is the best timing ever
Funny they bring this up as Wizards of the Coast is absolutely bombing their change to their DnD...
The timing of this and the Overwatch 2 news is uncanny
4:00 Yeah that sounds familiar
I really hate new wikipedia layout. I frequently change language and in this new layout it means one more click to do so. And it feels like mobile page not used to utilise medium sized monitor.
And what was said about e-sports is one of many reasons that I don't play multiplayer games anymore. It's waste of time to learn game if You go back to it year later and it's mechanic are totally different.
not want to sound like an add
but that what CoffyStudio (the satisfactory one not valheim one) with small video expaling ghanges done ecc
Theres always an art to nerfs so they dont just dumpster something that was op somewhere. And when the devs make something so op that nerfing damage by 10x wont make a difference they just didnt nerf hard enough.
Sounds like someone just did the Nier Raids in FF14
I feel like this is an essay about Overwatch VS Overwatch 2
Hogwart's mystery's updates have weight me down. Two years ago day events would be more than just being in a class. Now I have to go to classes to success day events. It's boring to do very similar events day after day.
I stopped playing prison architect after it sold to paradox and they added a bunch of "features"
The reason I stopped playing MMORPGs is because I was tired of re-learning classes every time an update came out.
Ah, the NieR x Final Fantasy XIV crossover. I remember some player anger in Final Fantasy about it, but most people I experienced the raids with were relatively happy with the result. If anything, most player rage that I personally see/hear about it now is that there wasn't enough NieR content or "ugh, the YoRHa raids AGAIN? oh well at least it isn't Crystal Tower".
OOOOOOH I'm also running the curse of strahd! Best module ever!
Elden ring addresses the casual/pro divide by having certain spells and abilities have much smaller effects in PVP than PVE (especially the size of buffs).
This video really got me thinking about dead cells. These guys have an awesome game but man can they not stop making changes. One change I really hated was a huge overhaul to which weapons and gear have which affinity (Brutality, tactics and survival). Tactics now have almost no reason to run melee weapons because they changed some really good melee tactics mutations (buffs you can pick up after each level) and gave all the melee based ones to brutality for "class identity". There are melee weapons that scale with both tactics and brutality but you can guarantee I will not use them for tactics.
A 10:20-long advert. Well-done.
The irony of how relevant this video is right now lol
Heck yeah a whole damn video about tech debt, we all need to talk about it more!
The real problem with teh QWERTY thing is that every thing assumes QWERTY, so even if you learned it you'd be forever struggling with software requiring keystrokes that expect a Qwerty layout and are perfectly fin and easy to pull of on qwerty. A more gaming related example is how many games expect users to be using a WASD layout.
It used to be FPSes (or rather "DOOM Clones" used Arrows for movement and had -cheat- *dev* codes inputted with raw QWERTY use. then came WSAD and Dev Console with Duke3D and Quake - now that's the standard to let people use the whole keyboard (within reason) for functions beyond just movement (such as grenades, jumping, crouching, reloading) whilst keeping dev codes (now called cheat codes) hidden away from being easily accidentally toggled on during gameplay...
Too bad Windows still comes with crap like Sticky Keys bound to being activated by using Shift, Ctrl or Alt 5 times in a row, which breaks you out of the game to hunt down and disable that damn stuff.
About Bethesda engine. I disagree. I think the main reason for not making new engine is not the cost of learning new tools and workflow, it's the cost of building new capable and feature rich engine for open world games. It's hard, expensive and would take many, many years to do so. That's the reason why CD Project Red is moving to Unreal Engine from their own tech. They are ready to learn new workflow, cause it's hard and expensive to make, maintain and upgrade their own tech.
I spent more than half an hour last week looking for the google authenticator app. I was looking for the vault g, not this new little star that means nothing
Gears Judgment was an excellent example of a game that changed the core formula and ended up being a game people didn't like.
Blizzard’s overwatch 2 change cost is definitely WAY WAY WAY TOO HIGH! Also Duolingo’s path system as well!
Stellaris is a prime example of this. I sunk hundred of hours into that game before the megacorps expansion launched and I loved it. As soon as that expansion went live, they patched the basic game to be in line with the new changes. The world management system was totally different, the interplanetary trade was totally different, piracy was different and way worst IMO. I hated the new experience and dropped the game independently as it was no longer the game I bought. They, in essence, deleted the game I played for hundred of hours and gave me an inferior product in return
I can't imagine why someone doesn't like the layout change of Wikipedia. The text was small, dense and spanned across the entire page. Way too long for the eye to follow as 60-80 character is optimal. It just felt cluttered
"What if you were ordered to put a NieR crossover in your Final Fantasy MMO?"
Ah, having played through the Shadowbringers Alliance Raids, I know what you are talking about and while this will never convince me to try NieR: Automata, I did enjoy it for what it was: A story about how 2B and 9S got briefly dragged into another world by a hostile program 2P and how the natives of that world dealt with the invasion of the automatons. ;)
I wonder how much "cost" Blizzard had to "pay" to cancel PvE in Overwatch 2 for the "change".
Anyways, I understand the issues and costs for a change especially in a game.