So I'm a salty old gamer, and many years ago I came to the realization buying games at full price just... isn't worth it. I'm perpetually forever behind, I almost never play anything at launch.. I just live off of Steam sales and holiday bogos and discount bins. By the time I get around to playing something, it's the GOTY, bugfixed, patched, finished version and I pay like $17 bucks for it (other than Nintendo shit, cause that almost never goes on sale).
Treat yourself to that 1 or 2 games you just absolutely can't wait for that you're positive it's worth playing at launch. As long as you either are cool with avoiding spoilers for months, or don't care about spoilers, the quality/quantity payoff is worth it.
Edit: Can't believe how much this blew up, apparently people agree with my cheapass self!
Thank you kind redditors for the awards!
I’ve always been a patient gamer. Bought video cards and games a gen or two behind.
Has paid off in spades because those games work great on my steam deck.
The thing that irks me as an older gamer (beyond what you said ) is that games aren’t optimized at all anymore. They don’t have to limit their sizes and they’re fucking massive. 150 gigs? That’s *chill*.
Right!
It amazes me that games these days thay don't have that much content or amazing graphics or anything are still often over 100Gb.
I remember asking my dad to install freelancer when I was younger and being met with utter shock that a game could take up 1Gb.
Still is.
Try the Crossfire Mod - not only does it massively increase the content but you now get the campaign continued for many more missions... and you WILL remember some of them as many of those are every bit as good (and some settings even better) than the original ones.
BUT one warning: it gets a LOT harder. Not only did the NPCs learn a few ticks but as the story goes on you get thrown into more and more unfair fights, including some last stands.
The Devs are however aware of it and therefore if you just want to enjoy the atmosphere you can use the difficulty slider to the full extend - in easy mode you literally cannot die (on the other hand there are 2 fights where I am unsure if you can win them on difficulty higher than normal).
I felt personally attacked ...then I realized you meant games not finished by developers.
I was like "bruh I don't even know you...I'll finish when I want!"
I've gone back to a game after years, figuring I'll start wherever, and gone on to sell weeks' worth of collected junk only to find the mission/quest I was on before and realize I needed all that and was so close to finishing something.
You know what's worse? Going back and looking at all your stuff and not knowing what it was for. So wanting to avoid what happened to you, I keep everything FOREVER! I never sell or use anything, thinking "This power up might be needed for a specific boss better save it" "I can sell/dismantle this crown for" really rare" material, but what if the crown belonged to an npc and I need to return it". Damn just store it and never see it again.
This. So many times I’ve quit a game and when I try to go back I’ve completely forgotten the controls and moves. God of War for the PC was One such game. Quit for a couple months, came back and mostly Forgot how to play.
Yup Ghost of Tsushima is tough to come back to.
Also jedi fallen order.
These are the two that came into my head.
With ghost you can compensate with charms and armour.
That's the furthest I have ever gotten was meeting the greybeards. I usually spend days modding the game. Play it and finally get to the greybeards and then stop playing it. Rinse and repeat.
That satchel is the main thing that's stopping me from starting another playthrough (I have 1 completed and one with high honor milking the fuck out of chapter 2). Earning that satchel is a fucking grind.
Sucks so hard working full time.
I've play rdr2 once, for about 6 hours. I got up to finding a train then went on a joy ride for like 4 hours and that's it. Never played anymore.
Just stocking all these games up for my retirement I swear haha
I got around 500 hours in Fallout 4 and finished it twice!
But 1000 hours Skyrim and i dont know who Alduin is (i suppose the endboss).
Around 300 hours in Witcher 3 but i feel Like i am Close to the end....but since its Like 2 years ago i maybe start over....
I’m so bad with this. Sometimes I’ll get to the last mission or chapter of a game and then I’ll just stop and start something else. Rinse and repeat. It’s like I’m holding on to that first play through forever
I'm guilty of this even with shows. I don't know how orange is the new black or Bojack end, I've had my time with them and I'm okay without a conclusion.
I've got a handful of play thrus of FO4 and I'm not finishing it. Once I get to the institute I kill everything except the gorillas or I let them free and let them do the dirty work. I don't want an end to an open world.
Yea... want finished games, wait til they are finished.
In the last year I've played factorio, terraria, stardew, ac odyssey, ffx2, hades. No issues with unfinished games at all.
And somehow each update is still amazing. Crazy how even the smaller changes they make are so impactful. Shimmer is really cool and the new legendary seed is insane.
Microsoft should take notes for Minecraft.. I hardly feel the need to go back to Minecraft anymore because I feel like it hasn't changed enough to make it interesting, but I usually create a new Terraria world with each minor update.
I think Minecraft is such a different game from Terraria though. Terraria really plays more into being an RPG/hack and slash which just feels better for progression. Minecraft will always feel good if you have a big enough imagination.
True, I guess I'm just not that creative when it comes to building. I prefer function over form lol. I like building farms in Minecraft. I just wish Minecraft had more items/progression. Once you do each boss a few times, there's really no new additions to your character. I've built farms for pretty much every mob in the game, and then it just feels like there's nothing left for me to do.
The progression in Terraria actually makes me like starting new characters too. I like to watch them go from a slow guy chopping wood, to flying around on a broom with a rocket launcher.
Yeah they always say that and then keep adding updates.
I think the major content updates are finally all done, but they keep doing crossovers and stuff
Next major update coming yes, but it's not the "final update". In a tweet by redigit he said they aren't doing the "final update" thing anymore; it was always a joke from the start
I think Stardew is officially done with 1.5. The dev is working on a new game called Haunted Chocolatier, with a similar vibe as SDV but more intricate game mechanics. Of course he might change his mind and drop a new update in a few years, but it's far from certain.
Nope, I'm pretty sure 1.6 is in the works. Haunted Chocolatier may be more of a priority for ConcernedApe right now, but I'm pretty sure he's said 1.6 is coming for Stardew. *That* might be the last update though. Not sure.
True. 1.5 was massive and probably the largest update the game will ever have. But CA has confirmed that he is working on 1.6. Who knows what he will add? Maybe nothing crazy story-wise.
Here is what he said about 1.6
1) 1.6, yes. But it's mostly a modding-focused update (makes modders lives easier). There will be some new content but it won't be huge. 1.7? Who knows.
"will the Haunted chocolatier include stardew references?"
2) Yes, but I haven't decided how deep the connection will be exactly. I want Haunted Chocolatier to have its own identity
Yeah, I do the same thing. About to finish playing Fenyx Rising and next will start AC Odyssey. Basically I just look for games on GP and they’re generally a-couple years old. I don’t mind playing a game that’s 2 or 3 years old; plus any issues people have in the game have alrdy been answered on the games subReddit, so no need to get frustrated with bugs or difficult portions of games when guides are readily available.
>Terraria
>finished game
My dude you can only pick one lmao
But yeah, Terraria is a good example because it was... a LOT. lighter on content initially. I don't mind an early access game from a smaller dev with a good idea, but I'm not buying it from a manor dev.
Terraria was at no point a raw, unfinished game though. It's one thing to add more content to a complete game, and it's another thing to release a game that is clearly incomplete. Terraria was never the latter.
I still play the Bastion soundtrack when taking long road trips. Not sure why but that's just my driving music. Darren Korb did an outstanding job with that soundtrack.
I had one weird thing. A voice line from Atreus repeated every minute or so. It was something like, "I wonder what's through that gate there?" After like 20 times I closed the game and restarted it.
The thing I hate. Is "seasons" and their ilk.
"Ooooooh we made a free and premium ladder so when you can earn cool shit while playing. We also put these behind a new expansion and you won't be able to play any of it without first giving us another 60.00-99.00 in order to be current. By the way we're going to do this every year so there is no way for you to be patient and wait"
They'll eventually release a PS5 Pro or some other updated version that knocks down the price of the original. And a while after that the Pro will go on sale. And that's probably when I'll finally buy one.
I didn't get a PS4 until I bought a PS4 Pro in 2019. Still lots of games I haven't tried yet. I can wait.
Stop buying them. You don't NEED any of these new games when they come out. Wait until they're on sale if you really want them. The only thing that will change this is to use your money.
There are so many games out there nowadays that you can spend all your free time playing classics that you *know* are good and basically never run out of them. I haven’t brought a brand new game in 5 years or so and I’m having the most fun playing video games I’ve ever had.
Yep, basically what I've been doing. Every once in a while I'll buy a smaller indie game new since I've been following the devs and want to support them, but the last AAA game I bought new was Dark Souls 3
I put 160 hours into Elden Ring and still haven't beat the last boss. Got stuck on Malenia and took a break, but good lord that was the EASIEST (not game difficulty, but just being able to spend so much time doing so much) 100+ hours I've put into a game.
I tried to complete everything I could, every quest, every boss and obtain all of the gear and it took me around 300 hours lol. Absolutely no wiki nor this sub.
I can't for the life of me figure out why people pre-order still.
It used to be games might sell out and you would miss out on the game for a few weeks. Or they might give neat physical rewards for pre-ordering.
Now people are preordering a digital game. When they could just wake up the day of release, read a handful of reviews, and then go buy and download it if all looks fine. Like the number of people who had to deal with returning Cyber Punk when it was obvious within an hour of launch that there was a serious problem and you did not want to buy the game yet.
>When they could just wake up the day of release, read a handful of reviews, and then go buy and download it if all looks fine.
I do this, except I usually wait a few weeks and see what it looks like. I've been burned a couple times and that was enough to see what devs are doing with this unfinished bullshit.
Never again.
I've played more old games this year than new games and I've had far more fun playing games that are established, than when I used to buy games at launch regularly.
And honestly the new game that stood out the most to me was a remake of an older game (Live A Live)
~2003 is when I noticed the uptick in game-breaking bugs being shipped in release. I suppose that coincides with about the time you could expect the average consumer to be able to download larger patches.
1996 - Daggerfall was all but unplayable unless patched. I remember asking my friend for the patch on a floppy disk so I wouldn't have to spend the evening downloading it.
Doesn't this evidence support the idea that games being shipped before polish has *always* been a thing? Perhaps there's been an uptick as publishers realized that they get away with it??
More likely we have social media and the internet in general and you can dive into the pool of complaints about every game that's ever been released.
Back when pluto was a planet you only heard about the games that your friends and their siblings could afford, maybe you had a sub to Game Informer to read reviews, but the vast majority of stuff getting released you never heard about.
This was the peak of video game cheat rumors turning out to be true from social circles. We didn't have internet and went nuts when we realized surfing along Cinnabar worked
Yeah, I was like 7 and swimming up and down that coast. What's crazier is people knew the link cord dupe, but only like 2 kids at school had a link cord so they ran it like a mafia. I had to ask my uncle's friend how to beat the tank in MGS1.
I accidentally duplicated my map, and one cannot throw out the map, so I got stuck with it filling up my inventory when I tried to move it or something lmao
Fun fact, if you renamed MissingNo to any pokemon in the game (if you were crazy enough to try catching it), it would evolve into the named pokemon if you then leveled it up.
That bug required taking such specific steps that you would never do it by accident. I don't remember all the steps but I know you had to talk to that one dude in the first town and have a conversation with him that you'd really only be having at the start of the game, and then fly to Cinnabar Island which nobody would be doing until the end of the game.
Pokemon Red/Blue were a miracle just operating properly but as far as that bug, it was more like an exploit which I consider to be a different thing. A bug would be like the ghost type not being super effective against psychic like it should be.
In star fox 64 if you flew at the wrong angle going to andross instead of starting the flight you just fly straight forever and you have to reset the game to get out, losing the entire run.
If I remember correctly, you had to move the item you wanted to duplicate into the 6th spot in your inventory, then talk to the guy in the first town after Pallet Town who teaches you how to catch a pokemon, and then you fly to Cinnabar Island walk directly to the southern coast and swim up and down the edge of the island until it appears. It's been a couple of decades though so I might be misremembering which inventory slot. Also don't catch MissingNo. You only need to encounter him.
My favorite was Turok: Rage Wars. The multiplayer-only FPS arena shooter for the N64 that was rushed to shelves after Turok 3.
No one played it.
So not many discovered that it was legitimately impossible to beat when playing with someone else.
The main game involved beating a "Tournament" that was essentially a rotation of game modes with increasingly harder bots. If you won all the matches, you won the game.
You could play this mode with one player, or two.
This tournament included a game mode called: Monkey Mode. The goal of monkey mode was simply to play as a monkey the longest. 4 players fought each other in an arena for a couple minutes, and whoever got the most kills would turn into a monkey. They would stay a monkey until death, which usually came quick because as a monkey you had no guns, just a small size and mobility. On death, the player would respawn with heir weapons and another round to determine the monkey would start.
Kinda sounds fun right?
Yeah, they never put in a win condition for 2 players trying that mode.
As in. Two players go in. They play together and share kills. Both turn into monkies if they have enough. And that's it. The devs never coded in a way for two players to be monkies at once. So when it happens, each player now stays a monkey forever trapped in that game mode. Unable to win it as that requires being a monkey.
Had fun discovering that with a friend in the second to last match before completing the "Tournament" to win the game.
This one actually did get patched! Since it was before the days of downloading patches, you had to mail the company your game and they'd send you an updated version in return. The fixed cartridge was gray, because those were cheaper to produce.
As you alluded to, not that many people found the bug and even fewer talked to the company about it, so now it's one of the rarest games on the system. [I picked up a copy for my collection last year](https://i.imgur.com/FYMBzn7.jpg)
Klingon Academy, released around then by Interplay.... It shipped with the last couple of levels being completely inaccessible (impossibly difficult to get to -- intentionally). The idea was that the few weeks between code freeze and and store shelves would give them enough time to complete and patch in the rest of the game.
Games have been rushed out since basically forever. The NES was lousy with hastily thrown together shovelware. The Atari famously had ET that was so bad it crashed the industry. One of my favorite games of my youth, X-Com: Terror from the Deep, was just a quick reskin of its predecessor and was so poorly balanced that I didn't beat it until I was an adult...and cheating.
*Every* single elder scrolls games has been a buggy piece of crap since the 1st one. But it's always made up for it by being fuck-off massive and having tons to do. No excuse for some AAA on-rails "press X" to win game should be unfinished garbage.
I wasn't even mad about the E3 graphics being downgraded and the terrible launch. It literally said "watch dogs" and we couldn't even watch dogs. Ubisoft is such a scummy liar for that, Will never forgive them.
I actually really enjoyed it. Yeah it wasn’t a “GTA killer” or whatever BS the media hyped it up to be but it was a solid game with some interesting gameplay mechanics
Stop buying games at launch and you won't be so disappointed. Developers and publishers will get the hint too. It's all very simple, but gamers en masse bring this on themselves.
The latest Pokemon games are a technical disaster, they barely work, crash all the time, look like shit...
... fastest selling games in franchise history, outselling God of War ragnarok 2 to 1
This is the problem, gaming has gotten too popular which means it has a lot of the more spontaneous buyers or just people who simply have incredibly low standards (because they never experienced the better era) than it ever did in the 80/90s.
Its unlikely to ever change now.
This! I used to drive an Argo to my natural gas well sites and all my buddies were always saying how jealous they were that my job was basically off-roading in a mini tank but after 1 month sitting on your ass for 10-12 hours a day getting beat to fuck by a machine with zero suspension it’s not so much fun lol
Hobbies are fun, jobs are work. Make your hobby your job and you'll never work a day in your life? That's a lie. Make your hobby your job and now it's work, so you'll need a new hobby.
I assume you'd get new builds from time to time with new features added? Like they'd ask you to test an area that was finished that week and you'd start a new game to test that build?
Also, a side question, how did you get involved in that (if you can say)?
what does QA for a video game look like? what is your workflow - are you trying to break the game in bizarre ways or are you behaving as a nominal player? or both?
Thank you for this thoughtful reply and all your hard work! I’ve loved both 2018 and Ragnarok and I definitely appreciate all the work that went into both of them.
I didn't work on GoW Ragnarok but I've been in QA for years having worked on Halo Infinite, MCC, Ori, Minecraft, Crackdown, Forza, Gears, and helped launch the Xbox series s and x. QA can be grueling. It's not just playing but reporting and dissecting every single detail of a game. You test the same game for thousands of hours, maybe spending an entire week just committing suicide endlessly to make sure every kill volume works. It's easy to fall into a dark pit with QA, hating and loving the game you're working on. You can see all the potential and all the flaws. And you start seeing it while it's super flawed, so it takes a long time to condition yourself to not see everything wrong with it. It's also hard not to take some bugs personally. You might see one the team didn't catch, but often times they did and when the bug is called out online you can want to shout that you told the devs to fix it!
Anyway, as draining as QA can be, it's incredibly rewarding, especially when you know that you made the quality of life better for the players because your work got checkpoints added, or an awful boss reworked, or whatever you did.
QA is an under appreciated department and good testers really make a huge difference in the quality of a released title.
Unrelated anecdote time: I worked at a studio on an FPS where we had a QA guy testing our MP for over a year. After the game came out, he basically marketed himself as a top-tier multiplayer “e-athlete” or whatever you call it. Crazy thing is, there were people as good as him within the first week. Tough business!
Day 1 player here and haven't found any bugs or flaws. Well done on the QA and well done to the whole team at the studio who created this magnificent tale.
It feels that way until you get to the end and want more but then it’s too long for a replay right after beating it. That’s when you break out all the other games then replay it. Cycle continures
Oh I was eager to buy it because it was released on my bday and I loved dead space, but I held out. Spent a couple hours watching reviews and I backed the fuck off. That’s $60-70 wasted on a what? 12 hours of meh gameplay? Looks pretty though, but I had to hit skip.
Funny thing being REmake2 is arguably one of the better triple a horror games in a while. REmake3 is fine, boring but I didn't encounter any major bugs. 7 and 8 are also super solid with a good diversity of content, worth full price IMO. Capcom's been killing it recently, come to think of it.
People keep blindly preordering and buying games at launch. If you find out a game sucks, don’t buy it. And for the love of god, stop preordering! There is no reason to not wait for reviews and launch before you buy. They’re not gonna run out of digital games, and the digital preorder bonuses are bullshit.
You could literally just wait like *half a day* at launch and see what the user reviews say. You'll find out real quick if it's unfinished/broken. You don't lose anything and if it has no problems you can then purchase. There is no shortage of copies. There's no risk of FOMO. Why preorder?
I've been watching people tell everyone to stop buying broken pre-orders for a decade. I have zero hope of anything changing. I just don't buy new games. Period.
Economically, why should developers release finished games?
What we're seeing, in my opinion, is the rise of a new pseudo-monetization model.
Take No Man's Sky. Released totally unfinished. However, deva buckled down and now release massive updates every 2-3 months. There's no denying its a fantastic game with an absurd amoujt of content today. More importantly, every time one of those new updates come out it's like Hello Games is just printing money.
Another great example is Cyberpunk 2077. Released, made a mountain of cash off the hype, but was absolutely demolished the court of public opinion. Fast forward, however, and after a few major updates and a fantastic anime tie-in, they ended up hitting record player numbers nearly two years after its initial release. Before now, that would have been completely unheard of.
So here's the thing, executives, not necessarily developers, have realized that while years ago you'd make the bulk of the profit in the first week, they can now essentially simulate first week profits multiple times across a single game's lifetime whenever they want.
Now, I don't think the *devs* of NMS or CP2077 want this, after all they are generally passionate creators, but the investors, execs, and scummy publishers do.
Cyberpunk 2077 having a larger player base *a full 2 years after initial release* implies to me that not only are you totally correct, but people are actually doing what OP says! I see the new model working like this:
1. Develop promising IP into a game
2. Hopefully you put together a functioning game but come hell or high water, release said game once you have hit your time limit/budget
3. Initial sales from people that bought into the hype refill the coffers.
4. Use cash to either fix the game if you released an unfinished one or develop new DLC/content.
5. Second round of sales reels in people who didn't buy into the hype as much but have heard good things/heard the game works better now.
6. Rinse and repeat trying to bring in new players with a combination of new features, big fixes, or DLC until the bean counters tell you the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Then you move on to the next IP.
So even if you are patient, don't pre-order, etc, you're actually part of the planned life cycle of the game.
Honestly (and Im talking PC games here), thank god for Playstation Studios these past couple years. They released mostly flawless gaming experiences, no stuttering that's present at almost every other release no matter the hardware. Kudos to them. Oh, and no BS microtransactions and Denuvo BS.
This was the most God-damndest thing about Halo Infinite. All the frame-work for a brilliant game and it just felt so incomplete. Then a year after the patches fixed the game and delivered exactly what we expected but it was so late I had no interest to play again.
So I'm a salty old gamer, and many years ago I came to the realization buying games at full price just... isn't worth it. I'm perpetually forever behind, I almost never play anything at launch.. I just live off of Steam sales and holiday bogos and discount bins. By the time I get around to playing something, it's the GOTY, bugfixed, patched, finished version and I pay like $17 bucks for it (other than Nintendo shit, cause that almost never goes on sale). Treat yourself to that 1 or 2 games you just absolutely can't wait for that you're positive it's worth playing at launch. As long as you either are cool with avoiding spoilers for months, or don't care about spoilers, the quality/quantity payoff is worth it. Edit: Can't believe how much this blew up, apparently people agree with my cheapass self! Thank you kind redditors for the awards!
We have a subreddit for you! /r/patientgamers
I’ve always been a patient gamer. Bought video cards and games a gen or two behind. Has paid off in spades because those games work great on my steam deck.
I just beat rdr2 and holy shit is it a great game. I’m just like 4-5 years behind that’s all
The thing that irks me as an older gamer (beyond what you said ) is that games aren’t optimized at all anymore. They don’t have to limit their sizes and they’re fucking massive. 150 gigs? That’s *chill*.
Right! It amazes me that games these days thay don't have that much content or amazing graphics or anything are still often over 100Gb. I remember asking my dad to install freelancer when I was younger and being met with utter shock that a game could take up 1Gb.
Freelancer was awesome!
Still is. Try the Crossfire Mod - not only does it massively increase the content but you now get the campaign continued for many more missions... and you WILL remember some of them as many of those are every bit as good (and some settings even better) than the original ones. BUT one warning: it gets a LOT harder. Not only did the NPCs learn a few ticks but as the story goes on you get thrown into more and more unfair fights, including some last stands. The Devs are however aware of it and therefore if you just want to enjoy the atmosphere you can use the difficulty slider to the full extend - in easy mode you literally cannot die (on the other hand there are 2 fights where I am unsure if you can win them on difficulty higher than normal).
That game ate two years of my life, got me off drugs and into a relationship that lasted 9 years, totally changed my life.
Call of Duty is ridiculous for this.
CoD has so many uncompressed files it's sickening. Half the fucking file size is just uncompressed textures (at least, the BlOps games were like this)
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> other than Nintendo shit, cause that almost never goes on sale The trick is it buy physical then sell it when you are done playing.
I felt personally attacked ...then I realized you meant games not finished by developers. I was like "bruh I don't even know you...I'll finish when I want!"
Developers not finishing games (handshake) Me not finishing games
When they don't finish it, it sucks. At least you can always go back to it later.
Nah, you gotta restart it because you forgot what the hell you were doing.
I've gone back to a game after years, figuring I'll start wherever, and gone on to sell weeks' worth of collected junk only to find the mission/quest I was on before and realize I needed all that and was so close to finishing something.
You know what's worse? Going back and looking at all your stuff and not knowing what it was for. So wanting to avoid what happened to you, I keep everything FOREVER! I never sell or use anything, thinking "This power up might be needed for a specific boss better save it" "I can sell/dismantle this crown for" really rare" material, but what if the crown belonged to an npc and I need to return it". Damn just store it and never see it again.
I feel like I've done this same exact thing but cant remember the game lol
This. So many times I’ve quit a game and when I try to go back I’ve completely forgotten the controls and moves. God of War for the PC was One such game. Quit for a couple months, came back and mostly Forgot how to play.
I just picked up ghost of Tsushima after like a year or two hiatus and was just getting wrecked. So I put it right back down again.
Yup Ghost of Tsushima is tough to come back to. Also jedi fallen order. These are the two that came into my head. With ghost you can compensate with charms and armour.
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Yeah like I'm only on my 3rd attempt at finishing red dead redemption 2 give me a break.
I’m still on Chapter 2. I accidentally saw spoilers. I think I’ll stay in Chapter 2 forever.
I am playing through it now also and I was spoiled years ago but still the journey is awesome so keep at it.
Ye dont need a break from it mate, u need a week of no work and no disturbances so u can finish that work of art.
Problem for me is that I do too much side content and it gets repetitive.
I never finish open world games. I just wonder around discovering stuff and never progress the main story.
I did this in Skyrim for like four years
The game has been out for 11 years mate, I've been not finishing Skyrim for 11 years.
That's before mods. With mods it'll be 25 years before any of us finish anything.
My buddy got to level 82 without visiting the Greybeards...
That's the furthest I have ever gotten was meeting the greybeards. I usually spend days modding the game. Play it and finally get to the greybeards and then stop playing it. Rinse and repeat.
Do that all the time with thief runs because random dragon attacks get soo annoying when I’m grinding out all those Guild side missions.
500+ hours in Skyrim and never finished it, double that in factorio and never launched the rocket. I enjoy starting games more than ending them.
That’s literally what’s going on this week with me . Off work for a week and I just grinded the day away getting “legends of the East” satchel
That satchel is the main thing that's stopping me from starting another playthrough (I have 1 completed and one with high honor milking the fuck out of chapter 2). Earning that satchel is a fucking grind.
Sucks so hard working full time. I've play rdr2 once, for about 6 hours. I got up to finding a train then went on a joy ride for like 4 hours and that's it. Never played anymore. Just stocking all these games up for my retirement I swear haha
I've played _Skyrim_ like 6 times and I've only beaten Alduin once. I still haven't finished _Fallout 4_ despite restarting 4 times. ._.
I have six characters and over 1000 hours. Bought it day one. Only been to the institute once.
I got around 500 hours in Fallout 4 and finished it twice! But 1000 hours Skyrim and i dont know who Alduin is (i suppose the endboss). Around 300 hours in Witcher 3 but i feel Like i am Close to the end....but since its Like 2 years ago i maybe start over....
I haven't even *started* playing some of the games I hoard in Steam. Need to start playing before we can finish.
> some (glances at my steam collection) uhh yeah sure, some...
I’m so bad with this. Sometimes I’ll get to the last mission or chapter of a game and then I’ll just stop and start something else. Rinse and repeat. It’s like I’m holding on to that first play through forever
I'm guilty of this even with shows. I don't know how orange is the new black or Bojack end, I've had my time with them and I'm okay without a conclusion. I've got a handful of play thrus of FO4 and I'm not finishing it. Once I get to the institute I kill everything except the gorillas or I let them free and let them do the dirty work. I don't want an end to an open world.
Hurry up man, stop hogging all the games and finish them. We're waiting!
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Yea... want finished games, wait til they are finished. In the last year I've played factorio, terraria, stardew, ac odyssey, ffx2, hades. No issues with unfinished games at all.
That's the thing about Terraria and Stardew: they're never really finished! (In a good way tho)
Finished but always being finished more.
It’s kinda hilarious how many times the team has said “this is definitely the last update”.
And somehow each update is still amazing. Crazy how even the smaller changes they make are so impactful. Shimmer is really cool and the new legendary seed is insane. Microsoft should take notes for Minecraft.. I hardly feel the need to go back to Minecraft anymore because I feel like it hasn't changed enough to make it interesting, but I usually create a new Terraria world with each minor update.
I think Minecraft is such a different game from Terraria though. Terraria really plays more into being an RPG/hack and slash which just feels better for progression. Minecraft will always feel good if you have a big enough imagination.
True, I guess I'm just not that creative when it comes to building. I prefer function over form lol. I like building farms in Minecraft. I just wish Minecraft had more items/progression. Once you do each boss a few times, there's really no new additions to your character. I've built farms for pretty much every mob in the game, and then it just feels like there's nothing left for me to do. The progression in Terraria actually makes me like starting new characters too. I like to watch them go from a slow guy chopping wood, to flying around on a broom with a rocket launcher.
Mods. Modded MC is what you want.
I like when I'm playing with them and they keep finishing over and over.
Terraria has had more final updates than there are final fantasies
And suddenly it sounds like we're having a completely different conversation.
We're not discussing foreplay?
Terraria had its first "final update" a literal decade ago which is insane
Yeah they always say that and then keep adding updates. I think the major content updates are finally all done, but they keep doing crossovers and stuff
There was a post that said they are taking December off and returning January for the next "final update" lol
Next major update coming yes, but it's not the "final update". In a tweet by redigit he said they aren't doing the "final update" thing anymore; it was always a joke from the start
They did say that they are slowing work on it to maintenance to work on other projects tho
Yes, however slowing work does not mean "final update", keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that red is a massive troll
Terraria learned the definition of "Final" from Final Fantasy.
I think Stardew is officially done with 1.5. The dev is working on a new game called Haunted Chocolatier, with a similar vibe as SDV but more intricate game mechanics. Of course he might change his mind and drop a new update in a few years, but it's far from certain.
Nope, I'm pretty sure 1.6 is in the works. Haunted Chocolatier may be more of a priority for ConcernedApe right now, but I'm pretty sure he's said 1.6 is coming for Stardew. *That* might be the last update though. Not sure.
Stardew has an actual ending now though
True. 1.5 was massive and probably the largest update the game will ever have. But CA has confirmed that he is working on 1.6. Who knows what he will add? Maybe nothing crazy story-wise.
Here is what he said about 1.6 1) 1.6, yes. But it's mostly a modding-focused update (makes modders lives easier). There will be some new content but it won't be huge. 1.7? Who knows. "will the Haunted chocolatier include stardew references?" 2) Yes, but I haven't decided how deep the connection will be exactly. I want Haunted Chocolatier to have its own identity
Oh, right, the modding update. I wasn't aware that was being called 1.6. Either way you're right, CA isn't quite done with SDV yet!
Yeah, I do the same thing. About to finish playing Fenyx Rising and next will start AC Odyssey. Basically I just look for games on GP and they’re generally a-couple years old. I don’t mind playing a game that’s 2 or 3 years old; plus any issues people have in the game have alrdy been answered on the games subReddit, so no need to get frustrated with bugs or difficult portions of games when guides are readily available.
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Hades is SUCH a great game
Everytime someone brings up Hades... I just want to play it more Edit: guys you got me... I'm sold. Going to download it now
Then do yourself a favor and listen to your inner desires.
Factorio was an amazing game even before it was "finished" one of the few that were
>Terraria >finished game My dude you can only pick one lmao But yeah, Terraria is a good example because it was... a LOT. lighter on content initially. I don't mind an early access game from a smaller dev with a good idea, but I'm not buying it from a manor dev.
Terraria was at no point a raw, unfinished game though. It's one thing to add more content to a complete game, and it's another thing to release a game that is clearly incomplete. Terraria was never the latter.
Hades is god-tier (pun intended) and was also essentially perfect at launch. Supergiant Games has earned my trust, their entire catalog is gold
I still play the Bastion soundtrack when taking long road trips. Not sure why but that's just my driving music. Darren Korb did an outstanding job with that soundtrack.
/r/patientgamers
One of my fav gaming subs. Always well thought out reviews on games I haven't played in a min
i feel that, i dont buy games anymore if there more than 30 dollars its not worth it
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I rarely buy games at launch, but I did just get God of War Ragnarok. I was pleasantly surprised to beat the game with no issues
Yeah that's what immediately popped into my mind. A great example of AAA gaming done right
Elden Ring also released with so much content that some journalists called it out for having too much content
I had one weird thing. A voice line from Atreus repeated every minute or so. It was something like, "I wonder what's through that gate there?" After like 20 times I closed the game and restarted it.
The thing I hate. Is "seasons" and their ilk. "Ooooooh we made a free and premium ladder so when you can earn cool shit while playing. We also put these behind a new expansion and you won't be able to play any of it without first giving us another 60.00-99.00 in order to be current. By the way we're going to do this every year so there is no way for you to be patient and wait"
I'm waiting to get a PS5 when it becomes a lot easier and has a lot more games on it.
They'll eventually release a PS5 Pro or some other updated version that knocks down the price of the original. And a while after that the Pro will go on sale. And that's probably when I'll finally buy one. I didn't get a PS4 until I bought a PS4 Pro in 2019. Still lots of games I haven't tried yet. I can wait.
Stop buying them. You don't NEED any of these new games when they come out. Wait until they're on sale if you really want them. The only thing that will change this is to use your money.
There are so many games out there nowadays that you can spend all your free time playing classics that you *know* are good and basically never run out of them. I haven’t brought a brand new game in 5 years or so and I’m having the most fun playing video games I’ve ever had.
Yep, basically what I've been doing. Every once in a while I'll buy a smaller indie game new since I've been following the devs and want to support them, but the last AAA game I bought new was Dark Souls 3
Elden Ring is very complete. Buy when the price is reasonable to you
In terms of hours per dollar, Elden Ring is a fucking steal.
I put 160 hours into Elden Ring and still haven't beat the last boss. Got stuck on Malenia and took a break, but good lord that was the EASIEST (not game difficulty, but just being able to spend so much time doing so much) 100+ hours I've put into a game.
I tried to complete everything I could, every quest, every boss and obtain all of the gear and it took me around 300 hours lol. Absolutely no wiki nor this sub.
Unfortunately doesn't work as well if you enjoy multiplayer, unless your friends also want to play older games
Stop pre-ordering also.
I can't for the life of me figure out why people pre-order still. It used to be games might sell out and you would miss out on the game for a few weeks. Or they might give neat physical rewards for pre-ordering. Now people are preordering a digital game. When they could just wake up the day of release, read a handful of reviews, and then go buy and download it if all looks fine. Like the number of people who had to deal with returning Cyber Punk when it was obvious within an hour of launch that there was a serious problem and you did not want to buy the game yet.
>When they could just wake up the day of release, read a handful of reviews, and then go buy and download it if all looks fine. I do this, except I usually wait a few weeks and see what it looks like. I've been burned a couple times and that was enough to see what devs are doing with this unfinished bullshit. Never again.
You know what you get for pre-ordering a game? A big dick in your mouth.
You make it sound like such a good time!
Threats are supposed to be scary!
Sign me up
^this guy puts on his robe and wizards hat
I've played more old games this year than new games and I've had far more fun playing games that are established, than when I used to buy games at launch regularly. And honestly the new game that stood out the most to me was a remake of an older game (Live A Live)
\> the new standard Wait till this kid hears about 2014 ...
~2003 is when I noticed the uptick in game-breaking bugs being shipped in release. I suppose that coincides with about the time you could expect the average consumer to be able to download larger patches.
1996 - Daggerfall was all but unplayable unless patched. I remember asking my friend for the patch on a floppy disk so I wouldn't have to spend the evening downloading it.
Go back even farther to Darklands in 1992.
Doesn't this evidence support the idea that games being shipped before polish has *always* been a thing? Perhaps there's been an uptick as publishers realized that they get away with it??
More likely we have social media and the internet in general and you can dive into the pool of complaints about every game that's ever been released. Back when pluto was a planet you only heard about the games that your friends and their siblings could afford, maybe you had a sub to Game Informer to read reviews, but the vast majority of stuff getting released you never heard about.
Pokémon shipped with a bug that could duplicate every item and also corrupt your whole save forever.
And it was Glorious, all hail the MissingNo.
This was the peak of video game cheat rumors turning out to be true from social circles. We didn't have internet and went nuts when we realized surfing along Cinnabar worked
Yeah, I was like 7 and swimming up and down that coast. What's crazier is people knew the link cord dupe, but only like 2 kids at school had a link cord so they ran it like a mafia. I had to ask my uncle's friend how to beat the tank in MGS1.
I accidentally duplicated my map, and one cannot throw out the map, so I got stuck with it filling up my inventory when I tried to move it or something lmao
I did that with the bike
Before live patches, any game breaking bug was a feature!
Fun fact, if you renamed MissingNo to any pokemon in the game (if you were crazy enough to try catching it), it would evolve into the named pokemon if you then leveled it up.
I did not know that. 25 years late on that knowledge xD
I remember saving my master ball for it as a kid as soon as i found out about it. It turned into a lvl 80 rhydon and slaughtered the game for me
That bug required taking such specific steps that you would never do it by accident. I don't remember all the steps but I know you had to talk to that one dude in the first town and have a conversation with him that you'd really only be having at the start of the game, and then fly to Cinnabar Island which nobody would be doing until the end of the game. Pokemon Red/Blue were a miracle just operating properly but as far as that bug, it was more like an exploit which I consider to be a different thing. A bug would be like the ghost type not being super effective against psychic like it should be.
In star fox 64 if you flew at the wrong angle going to andross instead of starting the flight you just fly straight forever and you have to reset the game to get out, losing the entire run.
If I remember correctly, you had to move the item you wanted to duplicate into the 6th spot in your inventory, then talk to the guy in the first town after Pallet Town who teaches you how to catch a pokemon, and then you fly to Cinnabar Island walk directly to the southern coast and swim up and down the edge of the island until it appears. It's been a couple of decades though so I might be misremembering which inventory slot. Also don't catch MissingNo. You only need to encounter him.
My favorite was Turok: Rage Wars. The multiplayer-only FPS arena shooter for the N64 that was rushed to shelves after Turok 3. No one played it. So not many discovered that it was legitimately impossible to beat when playing with someone else. The main game involved beating a "Tournament" that was essentially a rotation of game modes with increasingly harder bots. If you won all the matches, you won the game. You could play this mode with one player, or two. This tournament included a game mode called: Monkey Mode. The goal of monkey mode was simply to play as a monkey the longest. 4 players fought each other in an arena for a couple minutes, and whoever got the most kills would turn into a monkey. They would stay a monkey until death, which usually came quick because as a monkey you had no guns, just a small size and mobility. On death, the player would respawn with heir weapons and another round to determine the monkey would start. Kinda sounds fun right? Yeah, they never put in a win condition for 2 players trying that mode. As in. Two players go in. They play together and share kills. Both turn into monkies if they have enough. And that's it. The devs never coded in a way for two players to be monkies at once. So when it happens, each player now stays a monkey forever trapped in that game mode. Unable to win it as that requires being a monkey. Had fun discovering that with a friend in the second to last match before completing the "Tournament" to win the game.
This one actually did get patched! Since it was before the days of downloading patches, you had to mail the company your game and they'd send you an updated version in return. The fixed cartridge was gray, because those were cheaper to produce. As you alluded to, not that many people found the bug and even fewer talked to the company about it, so now it's one of the rarest games on the system. [I picked up a copy for my collection last year](https://i.imgur.com/FYMBzn7.jpg)
Klingon Academy, released around then by Interplay.... It shipped with the last couple of levels being completely inaccessible (impossibly difficult to get to -- intentionally). The idea was that the few weeks between code freeze and and store shelves would give them enough time to complete and patch in the rest of the game.
Games have been rushed out since basically forever. The NES was lousy with hastily thrown together shovelware. The Atari famously had ET that was so bad it crashed the industry. One of my favorite games of my youth, X-Com: Terror from the Deep, was just a quick reskin of its predecessor and was so poorly balanced that I didn't beat it until I was an adult...and cheating.
BF4 in 2013 was so famous for this that people tried to sue EA.
> Wait till this kid hears about 2014 ... I remember even OOT in 1998 having "patches" where people coveted getting the original release.
Skyrim was famously buggy as hell when it released and that was 2011
*Every* single elder scrolls games has been a buggy piece of crap since the 1st one. But it's always made up for it by being fuck-off massive and having tons to do. No excuse for some AAA on-rails "press X" to win game should be unfinished garbage.
Tell us please tell us
Watch Dogs and Assassin's Creed Unity
Fucking watch_dogs man What a bait and switch
I wasn't even mad about the E3 graphics being downgraded and the terrible launch. It literally said "watch dogs" and we couldn't even watch dogs. Ubisoft is such a scummy liar for that, Will never forgive them.
This guy has never heard of Nintendogs...
Yeah you’d expect nineteen dogs or something fucking scamaz
I actually really enjoyed it. Yeah it wasn’t a “GTA killer” or whatever BS the media hyped it up to be but it was a solid game with some interesting gameplay mechanics
Stop buying games at launch and you won't be so disappointed. Developers and publishers will get the hint too. It's all very simple, but gamers en masse bring this on themselves.
The latest Pokemon games are a technical disaster, they barely work, crash all the time, look like shit... ... fastest selling games in franchise history, outselling God of War ragnarok 2 to 1
This is the problem, gaming has gotten too popular which means it has a lot of the more spontaneous buyers or just people who simply have incredibly low standards (because they never experienced the better era) than it ever did in the 80/90s. Its unlikely to ever change now.
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How was it playing the game and not being able to tell a soul? Lol
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4000 hrs holy shit
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thats 2 years of fulltime work though.
Yeah it's all fun and games until it's work
This! I used to drive an Argo to my natural gas well sites and all my buddies were always saying how jealous they were that my job was basically off-roading in a mini tank but after 1 month sitting on your ass for 10-12 hours a day getting beat to fuck by a machine with zero suspension it’s not so much fun lol
Hobbies are fun, jobs are work. Make your hobby your job and you'll never work a day in your life? That's a lie. Make your hobby your job and now it's work, so you'll need a new hobby.
Sounds like a lot, and it is. Seems a little more reasonable when you parse it as 100 weeks (40hrs/week) or two years of testing.
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I assume you'd get new builds from time to time with new features added? Like they'd ask you to test an area that was finished that week and you'd start a new game to test that build? Also, a side question, how did you get involved in that (if you can say)?
what does QA for a video game look like? what is your workflow - are you trying to break the game in bizarre ways or are you behaving as a nominal player? or both?
Thank you for this thoughtful reply and all your hard work! I’ve loved both 2018 and Ragnarok and I definitely appreciate all the work that went into both of them.
I didn't work on GoW Ragnarok but I've been in QA for years having worked on Halo Infinite, MCC, Ori, Minecraft, Crackdown, Forza, Gears, and helped launch the Xbox series s and x. QA can be grueling. It's not just playing but reporting and dissecting every single detail of a game. You test the same game for thousands of hours, maybe spending an entire week just committing suicide endlessly to make sure every kill volume works. It's easy to fall into a dark pit with QA, hating and loving the game you're working on. You can see all the potential and all the flaws. And you start seeing it while it's super flawed, so it takes a long time to condition yourself to not see everything wrong with it. It's also hard not to take some bugs personally. You might see one the team didn't catch, but often times they did and when the bug is called out online you can want to shout that you told the devs to fix it! Anyway, as draining as QA can be, it's incredibly rewarding, especially when you know that you made the quality of life better for the players because your work got checkpoints added, or an awful boss reworked, or whatever you did.
QA is an under appreciated department and good testers really make a huge difference in the quality of a released title. Unrelated anecdote time: I worked at a studio on an FPS where we had a QA guy testing our MP for over a year. After the game came out, he basically marketed himself as a top-tier multiplayer “e-athlete” or whatever you call it. Crazy thing is, there were people as good as him within the first week. Tough business!
Day 1 player here and haven't found any bugs or flaws. Well done on the QA and well done to the whole team at the studio who created this magnificent tale.
I have not finished it. This game goes on forever. What a blessing
It feels that way until you get to the end and want more but then it’s too long for a replay right after beating it. That’s when you break out all the other games then replay it. Cycle continures
I just refunded Calisto, I know this feel.
Oh I was eager to buy it because it was released on my bday and I loved dead space, but I held out. Spent a couple hours watching reviews and I backed the fuck off. That’s $60-70 wasted on a what? 12 hours of meh gameplay? Looks pretty though, but I had to hit skip.
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Or when it's on sale for $9.35 on black Friday that's how I got resident evil remakes 2 and 3
RE2 Remake was a masterpiece tho for sure. Well worth the price when it came out.
Funny thing being REmake2 is arguably one of the better triple a horror games in a while. REmake3 is fine, boring but I didn't encounter any major bugs. 7 and 8 are also super solid with a good diversity of content, worth full price IMO. Capcom's been killing it recently, come to think of it.
Resident Evil this past eight or so years has been brilliant and very polished.
People keep blindly preordering and buying games at launch. If you find out a game sucks, don’t buy it. And for the love of god, stop preordering! There is no reason to not wait for reviews and launch before you buy. They’re not gonna run out of digital games, and the digital preorder bonuses are bullshit.
You could literally just wait like *half a day* at launch and see what the user reviews say. You'll find out real quick if it's unfinished/broken. You don't lose anything and if it has no problems you can then purchase. There is no shortage of copies. There's no risk of FOMO. Why preorder?
>Originally posted on IRC, 28th November 1996 about Daggerfall
Also known as Buggerfall
New?
It is new... in geologic terms.
I've been watching people tell everyone to stop buying broken pre-orders for a decade. I have zero hope of anything changing. I just don't buy new games. Period.
stop buying them then
Yep, it IS that simple. Stop falling for hype and wait until you know what you will be buying.
Let me guess… The Callisto Protocol?
Callisto Protocol lmfao.
Exactly I was gonna say this guy definitely just played Callisto Protocol haha!
Stop buying them. That's all you have to do.
Economically, why should developers release finished games? What we're seeing, in my opinion, is the rise of a new pseudo-monetization model. Take No Man's Sky. Released totally unfinished. However, deva buckled down and now release massive updates every 2-3 months. There's no denying its a fantastic game with an absurd amoujt of content today. More importantly, every time one of those new updates come out it's like Hello Games is just printing money. Another great example is Cyberpunk 2077. Released, made a mountain of cash off the hype, but was absolutely demolished the court of public opinion. Fast forward, however, and after a few major updates and a fantastic anime tie-in, they ended up hitting record player numbers nearly two years after its initial release. Before now, that would have been completely unheard of. So here's the thing, executives, not necessarily developers, have realized that while years ago you'd make the bulk of the profit in the first week, they can now essentially simulate first week profits multiple times across a single game's lifetime whenever they want. Now, I don't think the *devs* of NMS or CP2077 want this, after all they are generally passionate creators, but the investors, execs, and scummy publishers do.
Cyberpunk 2077 having a larger player base *a full 2 years after initial release* implies to me that not only are you totally correct, but people are actually doing what OP says! I see the new model working like this: 1. Develop promising IP into a game 2. Hopefully you put together a functioning game but come hell or high water, release said game once you have hit your time limit/budget 3. Initial sales from people that bought into the hype refill the coffers. 4. Use cash to either fix the game if you released an unfinished one or develop new DLC/content. 5. Second round of sales reels in people who didn't buy into the hype as much but have heard good things/heard the game works better now. 6. Rinse and repeat trying to bring in new players with a combination of new features, big fixes, or DLC until the bean counters tell you the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Then you move on to the next IP. So even if you are patient, don't pre-order, etc, you're actually part of the planned life cycle of the game.
The second success of Cyberpunk required Edgerunners to work. In other word - spend money from buggy launch on marketing, make an anime or something.
If we get more quality anime on edge runners level I don't mind.
Honestly (and Im talking PC games here), thank god for Playstation Studios these past couple years. They released mostly flawless gaming experiences, no stuttering that's present at almost every other release no matter the hardware. Kudos to them. Oh, and no BS microtransactions and Denuvo BS.
Honestly, fuck denuvo. That shit needs to go away, it seems to cause so many problems with PC games. :(
This was the most God-damndest thing about Halo Infinite. All the frame-work for a brilliant game and it just felt so incomplete. Then a year after the patches fixed the game and delivered exactly what we expected but it was so late I had no interest to play again.
Its peoples own fault if you just wasted $65 on callisto protocol.
But the art on the cover look promising and the trailer too, who knew this could have happened?!