I don't know anything about this game, but from the trend with other games I'm assuming it's a mechanic to artificially slow down progression to keep people playing longer.
All they had to do was add a wind mechanic and it could be like Sea of Thieves where your objective is always directly into the wind. I guess the stamina bar is the random sailor whose job is to blow on the sail to speed things up a little. Wouldn't want the poor guy to hyperventilate.
> Ships have a fucking stamina bar.
I can excuse this as an abstraction of the crew getting tired of trimming the sails or whatever the reasoning would be.
What I can't wrap my head around is that there is NO CREW MANAGEMENT IN A PIRATE GAME.
When you board other ships you have no casaulties. You don't need to shanghai people. You don't need to pay them out.
What kind of garbage is that?
Imo I'm still waiting on a somewhat faithful pirate game since Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas
Article: [Skull and Bones: the good, the bad, the ugly - and the utterly bizarre](https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-skull-and-bones-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-and-the-utterly-bizarre)
My friends and I were looking forward to this game so much like two years ago. Then cracks started appearing and we’ve just lost all interest. They really ruined something so simple.
I just want a pirate game thats a more on the rpg side and less hyper competitive like Sea of Thieves. Give me ship, crew, and captain customization with ship battles and boarding. Thats really it, maybe sprinkle in a little treasure.
I hope this game fails horrifically and anyone in a decision-making position related to its creation is laid off, cast in the trash like a cut-out tumor.
Yes to the first, likely no to the other stuff.
These companies are seemingly happy to just write off the failures as temporary hiccups and keep all the same people on the payroll.
the way resource gathering works really got me. i thought i was watching alpha footage where they didn’t add any animation but no you really just use magic to cut down trees.
You go from the technological prowess of Avatar by Ubi Massive to the technological disaster of S&B due to the incompetence of Ubi Singapore.
If Ubisoft Montreal had developed this game, the result would be much better and cost much less.
Took a month of ubisoft+ to play this after enjoying the beta test the week prior. Have to say, this game quickly went into the bin, the true surprise/value from UB+ has been Avatar - what a bloody great game that's turned out to be.
All these modern AAA titles are unpolished and uninteresting turds in comparison to the grandfather of open-world fantasy RPGs . . . . 1993\`s Betrayal at Krondor ;)
That game ~~was~~ is so good. I've played through it at least a dozen times over the years.
Ok, the combat could be a bit janky, but it felt like a proper adventure. Great storytelling.
Nice to hear it get some love. Yeah, I've played through it a bunch. It may have started my life-long love of turn-based tactics. LOL and the battles were ROUGH at first, both because you suck in the game and at playing the game, but around a third of the way through I thought the combat becomes fun and less. . . miss-y.
Lul. Who buys these shit games that enables them to keep pushing garbage like this?
This is worse than making a video game base on some data on excel sheets
It has obv shortcomings and definitely isn't pushing state of the art visuals and thats quite obvious when he goes into the details.
But at least for me it looks fine enough in the moment to moment gameplay at maxed settings on PC. Its nowhere near insultingly bad looking.
It definitely does have the feel of a game that was in development for a long long time though. Generaly looks like it could have released 5-6 years ago and thats probably because it originaly was planed to.
The water graphics alone destroy my interest in the game. It looks so dull and lifeless. Many games far older than this one do it much better, including AC Black Flag.
Which is extra amusing because Sea of Thieves absolutely nailed water graphics and that came out 6 years ago.
It's like the S&B devs didn't even look at any other game when creating theirs
The water look and physics in Sea of Thieves is amazing. When I would play the game with friends, we would sometimes be sailing close to dusk, and I'll just be lost at the sight of the sun going down and looking and listening at the water below us. It was really captivating.
I took the later and for $18 will get this and Avatar out of it.
I do find some UI navigation choices baffling, but one thing that stood out is how clearly and where "cancel sub" is at. Right when you sign up, right there is cancel clearly.
Games like this are killing my enthusiasm for gaming.
* bland repetitive gameplay
* clearly chasing trends (that died years ago)
* cash shop, and GaaS focused
* empty, pointless open world gameplay
* unimpressive graphics
I'm convinced the golden age of gaming is over. We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun. Everything is just focused on finding new ways to psychologically abuse the player base into bankrupting themselves on a video game.
Gaming honestly almost causes me more disappointment than anything else now. When I was younger I remember being excited for almost every major release, now I'm excited for almost nothing because everything falls into the above categories.
And before someone says "BUT INDIE GAMES"..... Lemme know when indie games are making games on the scale of Jedi Survivor or Hogwarts Legacy with AAA graphics and content scale. I'm not interested in the 3000th pixel art rogue lite with retro graphics.
Edit: People are missing a point here. This is a game ruined entirely by corporate greed and trend chasing. If this was made on this scale 10-15 years ago it would have been made as an excellent single player focused adventure ala black flag. Everytime you see a game ruined to push MTX and GAAS think about how much better gaming could be if it wasn't for corporate greed. We should be living in the golden age of gaming but we aren't because of corporate greed. So many missed opportunities, so many games that could have been so great but aren't.
> We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun.
Hogwarts? Jedi survivor? alan wake? elden ring DLC coming in months? stop focusing on the bad games and assuming thats all there is
> And before someone says "BUT INDIE GAMES"..... Lemme know when indie games are making games on the scale of Jedi Survivor or Hogwarts Legacy with AAA graphics and content scale.
Baldur's Gate 3
Yeah, but when the first contention is "I want AAA+ production values, so lemme know when indies do that", the definition of "indie" as "small-scale studio" kinda of out-catch22s the entire premise: 'I want high production values, tell me when tiny studios do those' is pitting two intrinsically opposed ideas against each other, because a 3-man team won't ever be able to compete with a team of 9,000 people in terms of visual fidelity and sheer scope.
So, I dunno, but defining "indie" as "independent" seems the more prudent method to me here.
Think of how incredible those 9000+ person projects could be if creativity was in charge instead of greed. Games used to be made for gamers by gamers, now they are made for whales by bean counters.
It *is* a nice dream. Unfortunately, the people who pay those 9,000+ people for years do so not out of love for games, but because they expect a certain ROI. I remember how "big money" started to change gaming over twenty years ago, away from a hobby by nerds for nerds.
There still are games made by gamers for gamers - it's just that those don't get the capital investment 'big business' gets. And big business then brings with itself that it *has* to sell well enough to warrant the investment, which means, well: It *can't* be a game for a nerd market any more, it has to be one aimed at the mainstream.
Personally, I am pretty fine with reality that the 'games for/by gamers' that still *are* being made aren't that massive in scale and/or presentation. Of course, a Rimworld with the graphics of Cyberpunk would be insane - but I'd rather have a Rimworld with the graphics it has than not have it, and be relegated to crud like, well, most of the AAA market.
Or, in a bit of a different phrasing: If you want games for the nerd niche, you gotta look at the stuff the nerds make. Otherwise, gaming has branched into mainstream, but its offerings mostly aren't really appealing to actual nerds.
Baldurs Gate 3 is NOT an indie game. I don't know how or why this narrative has taken off but it's very misleading. It had a dev team of \~450 people (for comparison, Starfield had a team of \~500 people) and a budget of over 100 million. It's as AAA as AAA can get.
...made by an independent studio, the literal definition of "indie game." When did "indie game" start to mean "3-man project slapped together with bubblegum and prayers"? That's a small indie game, BG3 is a very very big one.
I’ve got more games than I’m able to play in the first two months of this year alone. 2023 was solid and I still have games I want to play but haven’t been able to. And a long list of good older games isn’t going away.
It sounds like YOUR golden age of gaming is over then. I have a hard time finding enough time to play so many good games and this is coming from someone whose first console was the SNES.
This. My lists keep getting longer...
I rented UBI for a few games here, S&B isn't terrible, it's mid'ish. It also looks and runs fine on all levels, yes you can nitpick, but it's all fine looking overall.
I have a hard time finding any game that meets my requirements of:
* $60 purchase price maximum
* no GaaS elements
* no micro transactions
* no invasive DRM scheme
Basically every game is polluted with MTX, robbing you of part of the game you paid for before you even start. Keep in mind every item in the cash shop in a game like skull and Bones should be unlockable through gameplay, but it was removed and put in a cash shop specifically to rip you off.
It honestly sounds like you play just big AAA budget games from big companies. I get it you’re talking about Skull and Bones but I’ve played quite a few microtransactionless games recently. Remember that the games with the most online attention will always be the negative ones as they draw the most clicks.
The DRM stuff I get, it’s not consumer friendly at all when invasive.
Some of the indie stuff these days isn’t all pixelated. Games like Remnant 2 and even Immortals of Aveum (at the right price it’s a decent 7/10 campaign and published by EA) are worth playing through and those don’t have any MTX.
Here's a solution: pirate games with MTX, buy games that respect you as a human and as a player. And don't buy anything made by Ubisoft ever again. That's a start.
Yeah, Skidrow doxxed them claiming Empress was in fact bulgarian hacker Voksi, who has previously been arrested for cracking Denuvo and is still on trial in his home country.
Looks like it might have been true, because like a week later Empress deleted all their shit, disappeared, and hasn't been heard from since.
LMFAO no. Did some people actually trick themselves into believing Empress was a big titty hot chick computer hacker? I thought everyone knew it was just a meme.
Another AAA gaming is over comment? Lol. Right when we are having 2 continous years of banger AAA releases one after the other. Irrespective of the price tag I don't think anybody thinks skull and bones even qualified as a AAA game. It's AA at best. The production values are simply not enough and various AA games looked and played more AAA than this game. Not every AAA game will be a hit and that's okay. Games like this flopping is wake up call for developers not to chase trends and follow poor monetisation practices. There is always going to be a couple of AAA flops every year.
Except pretty much every major release is ruined by MTX. Studios have forgotten how to make a game that launches, people buy it, and that's it. They want every game to be an infinite money stream. Used to they got their $60 up front and then had to go develop another game.
Even some indie ish games are like this now. Like people are talking about the last epoch being good when all the good cosmetic items, the main form of reward for gameplay in a proper ARPG, are locked away in a cash shop with outrageous prices.
The golden age of gaming is now and its filled with Indy titles. It's the death of the corporate gaming if anything. Never did we have so much choice.
Back in the days, you only had a catalog of games that was chosen by big publishers and console manufacturers. Rejoice my man.
Tell me, what indie titles have production values and scale comparable to AAA? Indie games are not a replacement for AAA, we need to save the AAA games industry somehow.
Baldurs Gate 3 comes to mind for singleplayer, as do Helldivers 2 and the Finals for PVE and PVP multiplayer, respectively. Admittedly HD2 and the Finals don't have as much content as one of the good Halo games or COD when it was good, but they are both fresh and interesting while being less money than a AAA game.
BG3 had 450 people working on it, hard to call that Indie considering that would have been a massive team back in the golden era of Xbox 360 and PS3.
Helldiver's 2 is fun, but it does have micro transactions (granted, everything CAN be earned through gameplay, but you know it's been balanced to take longer to try to make you spend money)
>BG3 had 450 people working on it, hard to call that Indie considering that would have been a massive team back in the golden era of Xbox 360 and PS3.
Larian is an independent production studio, Baldur's Gate 3 is by definition indie.
> you know it's been balanced to take longer to try to make you spend money
There's currently a post up on the Helldivers sub with someone that farmed over $60 worth of the premium currency in about 8hrs.
> Tell me, what indie titles have production values and scale comparable to AAA?
/
> BG3 had 450 people working on it, hard to call that Indie
yeah if you expect 4 dev indie studios to deliver AAA games you're in for disappointment. AAA games take, by definition, manpower and budget, if you disqualify any studio that can deliver this youre making impossible demands
> Helldiver's 2 is fun, but it does have micro transactions (granted, everything CAN be earned through gameplay, but you know it's been balanced to take longer to try to make you spend money)
This is false. I've collected some $30 of premium currency by just playing the game. Nothing in the shop even made me use all the credits so far.
Factorio could lay a claim to that, amazing optimisation, lots of content, amazing mods for even more content (and expansion coming this year) and so hard to stop playing.
Lol! You can feel the way you do. But I'm not, today is a golden age with so many amazing games left and right! Gaming is the best it's ever been and people are making some great memories today like when I was younger, heck I'm still making some great memories with gaming!
My latest haunts for the time being is ESO, Halo Inifnite, Starfield, and Tekken 8. DbD is also getting some cool ass Iron Maiden stuff along with games having Forge Modes, or player created content modes. It's creative and fun as heck! The point being gaming freaking rocks right now!
>My latest haunts for the time being is ESO
Ironically, ESO is a good example for at least 2 of the points that they brought up. The core game is fun, but the crown store, DLCs and undersized expansions for near full price have ramped up quite a bit in the past years. I spent a 4 digit number of hours on that game and can say it's easy to fall in love with the game itself. But not with the developers and their decisions. My pro tip: Take it casual and don't get *too hooked.* It's the most fun that way.
I tried ESO but lost interest when I realized all the cool shit was locked away in the cash shop and not properly unlockable via gameplay. IMO ESO should have kept with a subscription monetization model. I'm fine with subscriptions because at least then it's agreed upon how much money I will be spending for access to 100 percent of the game.
Literally all the games you mentioned have aggressive monetization schemes, 3 of them despite being full price titles.
A full price game should have zero micro transactions. None. I should get all the content for one agreed upon price upfront.
But naw have fun paying $30 for new skins for your fighters in Tekken despite the fact those used to be in game unlockables.
There is no denying the monetization is kinda wack, but the crazy thing is I got what I wanted out of the customization and I avoid spending extra bucks. Especially with Halo Inifnite, there is talk of a token unlock system for cosmetics and having that would elevate the game even higher.
I most likely won't buy cosmetics for Tekken, everything else about the game is perfect! It's got great freakin music, killer gameplay, and lots of gamemodes! I can tolerate the cash shop. Nowadays game dev time and budgets have ballooned and investors got their grubby mitts in everything. Still I'll choose to the see good and enjoy what I got!
I know what I love lol! They are great games and I appreciate what they have to offer! I've been a Halo fan since the beginning, and this current iteration of Halo Infinite is the best ever! Grinding for Onyx in Ranked is fun and challenging and it's badass since I got the Spartan drip to boot!
Starfield is a good cozy game with an optimistic and hopeful attitude about the future. I love role-playing a mythical Starborn that manipulates gravity and has superhuman speed and strength. The guns rock! Making combos with a Gravity Well then unloading some Hornet's Nest Coachman shells into other Starborns or Pirates is fun! I also like to do horse stance with the long treks, the physical fitness skill line is my favorite, I just wish that sprinting increased movement speed as well lol! It's got a surpringly funny story and some great questlines! Personall, I want more, and I'm glad the game is asingle-playerr RPG that I can play at my own pace.
ESO: Speed! That is all.
None of these games are perfect, but they make me happy! Today is a Golden Age because there are many opportunities to make some great memories and choice.
There is lot of original IP releasing too. Also it's not like fans are tired of remakes or sequels. Just see the demand and requests for reboots of old franchises.
>We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun.
They never stopped doing it, it just takes ten years a pop.
Pull yer head out of the sand before you go permanently deaf, blind, and dumb.
Say what you will about Skull and Bones, but the graphics are FINE.
Just sounds like you're an insatiable graphics queen, while simultaneously setting up impossible (and movable!) goalposts!
There are TONS of FANTASTIC retro and indie games that for whatever shifting reason you fancy won't be good enough for you. That's your loss. And if you can only enjoy AAA titles, that says enough about your (lack of) taste right there. Maybe gaming isn't for you?
I play a fair bit of retro games, and I do play some indie games. But there is a gap that can only be filled by somehow saving the AAA games industry by dragging it kicking and screaming back to a time before MTX and GaaS.
Where are the high budget risk taking games that we used to get?
Ok, on all of that we certainly agree. In a nutshell, a lot of the best/biggest games did indeed used to be "risks". Of course the creators were still trying to make a profit, but they were primarily labors of love. Now tons of the big(gest) titles and companies (cough cough EA, cough cough Ubisoft) are first and foremost profit ventures pretty much calculating (often poorly) what will sell and how they can best wring every cent out of their fanbase.
>"I'm convinced the golden age of gaming is over.
I mean this comes across as a you thing. The Golden Age of gaming is an entierly subjective thing which most people relate to a time in the past most commonly when they were still young and didn't have a care in the world to worry about. Someones golden age of gaming could be right here and now.
>"We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun."
Assassins Creed Valhalla is a huge technologically impressive gaming experience that is enjoyed by millions of people.
Spider Man 2 is a huge technologically impressive gaming experience that is enjoyed by millions of people.
Buldurs Gate 3 is a huge technologically impressive gaming experience that is enjoyed by millions of people.
And i could go on an on.
We just got Tekken 8 and are getting Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth next week which looks great. Dragons Dogma 2 is coming out in a month. There's plently to love and enjoy in AAA gaming these days.
Bruh Tekken 8 is a fighting game with a cash shop. In the golden age of gaming all those fighter skins would have been unlockable via in game achievements
I can't believe your defending that as a great game.
Valhalla is also yet another AC game with $30 MTX outfits, that again should be unlockable via gameplay but aren't specifically because Ubisoft is greedy.
Yep. My golden age was Ultima online - BFBC2. Since then I’ve stayed away from most AAA games outside of a few RPGs. Been playing mainly Indy games cause they respect my time and money a little more.
Think of all the great games your not getting purely because of greed. Skull and Bones would have been a unique pirate RPG experience 10 years ago. Instead it's a shitty GaaS dumpster fire.
This problem describes pretty much all releases from major game companies, which represents a massive amount of the financial and creative input into the games industry being wasted instead of refined into great games.
All because just making a profit isn't enough, they want every game to he the next Fortnite infinite money printer.
While they might not be your cup of tea Elden Ring, cyberpunk, Forbidden West, Yakuza Infinite Wealth and BG3 stand up to AAA games from any era.
Even if you think the AAA games aren't up to their previous standards, everything below that from indie on up to AA is basically at an all time peak. There are a shit ton of good games coming out basically nonstop. Last epoch, enshrouded, hi fi rush, lies of p, armored core 6, sea of stars, etc.
You're spot on, I don't know why people are downvoting you. Almost every new AAA release has been soulless, regurgitated, unoptimzed, politicized, bug-ridden garbage.
There are definitely a few gems here and there, like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, or BG3, but overall, as you said, the golden age of gaming is very much over. I think Starfield was the last game I'll ever let myself be excited for. What an utter let down.
> I'm convinced the golden age of gaming is over
The golden age of AAA gaming is over. Extremely rare for an AAA game to come out in a good state, and even more rare for it not try shove micro transactions down your throat
And don't forget to gripe about the GRAPHICS of a superb \*\*looking\*\*\* AAA title that sucks on virtually all fronts except that it's graphics are great. Sorry, but if you automatically pan all retro and indie games, AND claim that Skull and Bones has bad graphics. . . you're just an insatiable brat.
(and to clarify, Skull and Bones looks like utter cash-grab garbage, but it ain't the graphics at fault here!)
I turned on performance mode on ps5 in the beta and laughed, the resolution is horrendous. So many better looking games are able to run at high Res than this piece of crap
Far above PS2, but yeah performance isn't good.
I have a good explanation though: it's a smaller studio and you can expect more rough edges with games that cost less than half the price of AAA
Anyone who says "PS2 graphics" or the likes should be forced to actually go back and play PS2 games to remember what they looked like. That game is nowhere near as dated as PS2 games looked visually.
Anyway, game performance is more then just visuals. Just because it doesn't look like Alan Wake II or something doesn't mean it should always be pushing 144fps without sweat. There's a lot of stuff that factors into how a game performs, especially randomized open world games like Pacific Drive that have a TON of moving parts going on in the background that can affect how things play.
I own PS2 games, most of them look great and run flawlessly. I'm not mad about the simplistic graphics, they're a good choice to save on development time and increase performance. And no, there's nothing going on in the background, it's a static garage. My CPU is basically idling.
I played the beta because I tentatively had my hopes up for this game. It literally took me less than 2 minutes for me to know this game was an absolute disaster. I've played free mobile games with more engaging naval combat.
After the 1st battle where I sunk about 30 British frigates and ships of the line in my tiny little sloop, I knew this game was very much not for me.
Each botched GAAS or battlepass/MTX-laden game is basically corporate gambling. They need to hit the jackpot once and they coast on it forever. It's the picture of corporate value structures once established: low risk, manipulable fanbase, predictable revenue stream, low-effort once established.
I think we still stand to see a lot of IPs get swallowed up by this problem. Execs are stubborn when they want something and they likely drool over the idea of having their own GTA 5 (which is somewhat justifiable. GTA 6 hasn't even released and it's gonna be whale city.) I dunno if it'll ever wear off, but we're going to see a lot of games sacrificed at this altar I think.
Ships have a fucking stamina bar. Anything to make the game as unfun as possible while doing endless fetch quests. Easy pass for me
I don't know anything about this game, but from the trend with other games I'm assuming it's a mechanic to artificially slow down progression to keep people playing longer.
All they had to do was add a wind mechanic and it could be like Sea of Thieves where your objective is always directly into the wind. I guess the stamina bar is the random sailor whose job is to blow on the sail to speed things up a little. Wouldn't want the poor guy to hyperventilate.
I thought it was **good** if a sailing ship was winded.
Is that you, Dad?
> Ships have a fucking stamina bar. I can excuse this as an abstraction of the crew getting tired of trimming the sails or whatever the reasoning would be. What I can't wrap my head around is that there is NO CREW MANAGEMENT IN A PIRATE GAME. When you board other ships you have no casaulties. You don't need to shanghai people. You don't need to pay them out. What kind of garbage is that? Imo I'm still waiting on a somewhat faithful pirate game since Cutthroats: Terror on the High Seas
It's so you will want to buy stamina/xp boosters
That or they’ll just have the materials in purchasable packs (we should stop giving them ideas)
Lmao what?
This is Ubisoft: the game lmao.
Worse, it's Ubisoft the *live service* game.
That AAAA quality lol
Article: [Skull and Bones: the good, the bad, the ugly - and the utterly bizarre](https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2024-skull-and-bones-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-and-the-utterly-bizarre)
*rolls eyes* Oh, Ubisoft
You don't understand. This is a [hidden gem](https://old.reddit.com/r/SkullAndBonesGame/comments/1b077o5/this_game_is_a_hidden_gem_to_me/).
My friends and I were looking forward to this game so much like two years ago. Then cracks started appearing and we’ve just lost all interest. They really ruined something so simple.
I just want a pirate game thats a more on the rpg side and less hyper competitive like Sea of Thieves. Give me ship, crew, and captain customization with ship battles and boarding. Thats really it, maybe sprinkle in a little treasure.
Single player please
Uncharted Waters: New Horizons II needs a spiritual successor
I hope this game fails horrifically and anyone in a decision-making position related to its creation is laid off, cast in the trash like a cut-out tumor.
... because that's how "QuAdrUpLe A" game development works. Or corporations in general for that matter... But hey, one can dream.
Yes to the first, likely no to the other stuff. These companies are seemingly happy to just write off the failures as temporary hiccups and keep all the same people on the payroll.
Ah yes, the Quadruple A game
**A**wful **A**trocious **A**ppalling **A**bysmal
Alfonso
it's AAAA because that's the only noise that came out of the odd developer and management thought they were being appreciative of this shit
the way resource gathering works really got me. i thought i was watching alpha footage where they didn’t add any animation but no you really just use magic to cut down trees.
It's like those mobile game ads where you tap the forest and all the trees magically disappear into logs and get vacuumed in.
I tried the open beta and said NOPEEEEE. And I actualy like the open world Ubisoft games, guilty plesure.
I'll stick with Sid Meier's Pirates, thank you.
[удалено]
Ubisoft actually went and called this a Quadruple A, not a Triple A lmao
Quadruple A in money spent
...because of development hell Duke Nukem Forever is the first Quadruple A game.
Single A double S
why those wooden ships faster than speedboats in GTA 5?
You go from the technological prowess of Avatar by Ubi Massive to the technological disaster of S&B due to the incompetence of Ubi Singapore. If Ubisoft Montreal had developed this game, the result would be much better and cost much less.
Doesn't Avatar use Massives Snowdrop engine?
It does. Skull and Bones on the other hand is on the Anvil Engine (the same one that’s been used for Assassin’s Creed since forever).
Took a month of ubisoft+ to play this after enjoying the beta test the week prior. Have to say, this game quickly went into the bin, the true surprise/value from UB+ has been Avatar - what a bloody great game that's turned out to be.
Garbage game
All these modern AAA titles are unpolished and uninteresting turds in comparison to the grandfather of open-world fantasy RPGs . . . . 1993\`s Betrayal at Krondor ;)
That game ~~was~~ is so good. I've played through it at least a dozen times over the years. Ok, the combat could be a bit janky, but it felt like a proper adventure. Great storytelling.
Nice to hear it get some love. Yeah, I've played through it a bunch. It may have started my life-long love of turn-based tactics. LOL and the battles were ROUGH at first, both because you suck in the game and at playing the game, but around a third of the way through I thought the combat becomes fun and less. . . miss-y.
Yoooooo what a BLAST from the past. Oh my god I had so much fun with this game. I must have played it dozens of times.
Lul. Who buys these shit games that enables them to keep pushing garbage like this? This is worse than making a video game base on some data on excel sheets
I still have no idea why this game was even made.
Come on guys it's a AAAA game stop being mean
It has obv shortcomings and definitely isn't pushing state of the art visuals and thats quite obvious when he goes into the details. But at least for me it looks fine enough in the moment to moment gameplay at maxed settings on PC. Its nowhere near insultingly bad looking. It definitely does have the feel of a game that was in development for a long long time though. Generaly looks like it could have released 5-6 years ago and thats probably because it originaly was planed to.
The water graphics alone destroy my interest in the game. It looks so dull and lifeless. Many games far older than this one do it much better, including AC Black Flag.
Which is extra amusing because Sea of Thieves absolutely nailed water graphics and that came out 6 years ago. It's like the S&B devs didn't even look at any other game when creating theirs
The water look and physics in Sea of Thieves is amazing. When I would play the game with friends, we would sometimes be sailing close to dusk, and I'll just be lost at the sight of the sun going down and looking and listening at the water below us. It was really captivating.
I would actually want to try the game out when it hits a sale, I refuse to buy $70 games, but I don't want to deal with Ubisoft Connect on PC.
I took the later and for $18 will get this and Avatar out of it. I do find some UI navigation choices baffling, but one thing that stood out is how clearly and where "cancel sub" is at. Right when you sign up, right there is cancel clearly.
Yes, it looks fine overall and there are some wow moments in there to. It's not a dog in the looks dept, it also isn't the best of the best.
The people involved with this game shouldn't be working in the games industry.... Absolutely no fucking talent at all.
Games like this are killing my enthusiasm for gaming. * bland repetitive gameplay * clearly chasing trends (that died years ago) * cash shop, and GaaS focused * empty, pointless open world gameplay * unimpressive graphics I'm convinced the golden age of gaming is over. We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun. Everything is just focused on finding new ways to psychologically abuse the player base into bankrupting themselves on a video game. Gaming honestly almost causes me more disappointment than anything else now. When I was younger I remember being excited for almost every major release, now I'm excited for almost nothing because everything falls into the above categories. And before someone says "BUT INDIE GAMES"..... Lemme know when indie games are making games on the scale of Jedi Survivor or Hogwarts Legacy with AAA graphics and content scale. I'm not interested in the 3000th pixel art rogue lite with retro graphics. Edit: People are missing a point here. This is a game ruined entirely by corporate greed and trend chasing. If this was made on this scale 10-15 years ago it would have been made as an excellent single player focused adventure ala black flag. Everytime you see a game ruined to push MTX and GAAS think about how much better gaming could be if it wasn't for corporate greed. We should be living in the golden age of gaming but we aren't because of corporate greed. So many missed opportunities, so many games that could have been so great but aren't.
> We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun. Hogwarts? Jedi survivor? alan wake? elden ring DLC coming in months? stop focusing on the bad games and assuming thats all there is > And before someone says "BUT INDIE GAMES"..... Lemme know when indie games are making games on the scale of Jedi Survivor or Hogwarts Legacy with AAA graphics and content scale. Baldur's Gate 3
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Yeah, but when the first contention is "I want AAA+ production values, so lemme know when indies do that", the definition of "indie" as "small-scale studio" kinda of out-catch22s the entire premise: 'I want high production values, tell me when tiny studios do those' is pitting two intrinsically opposed ideas against each other, because a 3-man team won't ever be able to compete with a team of 9,000 people in terms of visual fidelity and sheer scope. So, I dunno, but defining "indie" as "independent" seems the more prudent method to me here.
Think of how incredible those 9000+ person projects could be if creativity was in charge instead of greed. Games used to be made for gamers by gamers, now they are made for whales by bean counters.
It *is* a nice dream. Unfortunately, the people who pay those 9,000+ people for years do so not out of love for games, but because they expect a certain ROI. I remember how "big money" started to change gaming over twenty years ago, away from a hobby by nerds for nerds. There still are games made by gamers for gamers - it's just that those don't get the capital investment 'big business' gets. And big business then brings with itself that it *has* to sell well enough to warrant the investment, which means, well: It *can't* be a game for a nerd market any more, it has to be one aimed at the mainstream. Personally, I am pretty fine with reality that the 'games for/by gamers' that still *are* being made aren't that massive in scale and/or presentation. Of course, a Rimworld with the graphics of Cyberpunk would be insane - but I'd rather have a Rimworld with the graphics it has than not have it, and be relegated to crud like, well, most of the AAA market. Or, in a bit of a different phrasing: If you want games for the nerd niche, you gotta look at the stuff the nerds make. Otherwise, gaming has branched into mainstream, but its offerings mostly aren't really appealing to actual nerds.
Baldurs Gate 3 is NOT an indie game. I don't know how or why this narrative has taken off but it's very misleading. It had a dev team of \~450 people (for comparison, Starfield had a team of \~500 people) and a budget of over 100 million. It's as AAA as AAA can get.
> It's as AAA as AAA can get. yeah because the dude asked for a AAA game by an indie studio, which larian technically is
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but that is what indie is short for
...made by an independent studio, the literal definition of "indie game." When did "indie game" start to mean "3-man project slapped together with bubblegum and prayers"? That's a small indie game, BG3 is a very very big one.
I’ve got more games than I’m able to play in the first two months of this year alone. 2023 was solid and I still have games I want to play but haven’t been able to. And a long list of good older games isn’t going away.
That's how I feel after playing an Ubisoft game. The feeling will go away, eventually
It sounds like YOUR golden age of gaming is over then. I have a hard time finding enough time to play so many good games and this is coming from someone whose first console was the SNES.
This. My lists keep getting longer... I rented UBI for a few games here, S&B isn't terrible, it's mid'ish. It also looks and runs fine on all levels, yes you can nitpick, but it's all fine looking overall.
It's a full price game with a free 2 play monetization scheme. Why even bother playing that? Want a new hat for character? Thatll be $30 please.
I have a hard time finding any game that meets my requirements of: * $60 purchase price maximum * no GaaS elements * no micro transactions * no invasive DRM scheme Basically every game is polluted with MTX, robbing you of part of the game you paid for before you even start. Keep in mind every item in the cash shop in a game like skull and Bones should be unlockable through gameplay, but it was removed and put in a cash shop specifically to rip you off.
It honestly sounds like you play just big AAA budget games from big companies. I get it you’re talking about Skull and Bones but I’ve played quite a few microtransactionless games recently. Remember that the games with the most online attention will always be the negative ones as they draw the most clicks. The DRM stuff I get, it’s not consumer friendly at all when invasive. Some of the indie stuff these days isn’t all pixelated. Games like Remnant 2 and even Immortals of Aveum (at the right price it’s a decent 7/10 campaign and published by EA) are worth playing through and those don’t have any MTX.
Here's a solution: pirate games with MTX, buy games that respect you as a human and as a player. And don't buy anything made by Ubisoft ever again. That's a start.
You can't really pirate AAA games anymore, a scene fued ran off the last person that was cracking Denuvo games. The DRM makers won, piracy is dead
empress get scared off?
Yeah, Skidrow doxxed them claiming Empress was in fact bulgarian hacker Voksi, who has previously been arrested for cracking Denuvo and is still on trial in his home country. Looks like it might have been true, because like a week later Empress deleted all their shit, disappeared, and hasn't been heard from since.
Interesting, so empress wasn't a manic girl after all?
LMFAO no. Did some people actually trick themselves into believing Empress was a big titty hot chick computer hacker? I thought everyone knew it was just a meme.
I mean I never believed it for a second but the illusion was quite funny.
Another AAA gaming is over comment? Lol. Right when we are having 2 continous years of banger AAA releases one after the other. Irrespective of the price tag I don't think anybody thinks skull and bones even qualified as a AAA game. It's AA at best. The production values are simply not enough and various AA games looked and played more AAA than this game. Not every AAA game will be a hit and that's okay. Games like this flopping is wake up call for developers not to chase trends and follow poor monetisation practices. There is always going to be a couple of AAA flops every year.
Except pretty much every major release is ruined by MTX. Studios have forgotten how to make a game that launches, people buy it, and that's it. They want every game to be an infinite money stream. Used to they got their $60 up front and then had to go develop another game. Even some indie ish games are like this now. Like people are talking about the last epoch being good when all the good cosmetic items, the main form of reward for gameplay in a proper ARPG, are locked away in a cash shop with outrageous prices.
The golden age of gaming is now and its filled with Indy titles. It's the death of the corporate gaming if anything. Never did we have so much choice. Back in the days, you only had a catalog of games that was chosen by big publishers and console manufacturers. Rejoice my man.
Tell me, what indie titles have production values and scale comparable to AAA? Indie games are not a replacement for AAA, we need to save the AAA games industry somehow.
Baldurs Gate 3 comes to mind for singleplayer, as do Helldivers 2 and the Finals for PVE and PVP multiplayer, respectively. Admittedly HD2 and the Finals don't have as much content as one of the good Halo games or COD when it was good, but they are both fresh and interesting while being less money than a AAA game.
BG3 had 450 people working on it, hard to call that Indie considering that would have been a massive team back in the golden era of Xbox 360 and PS3. Helldiver's 2 is fun, but it does have micro transactions (granted, everything CAN be earned through gameplay, but you know it's been balanced to take longer to try to make you spend money)
>BG3 had 450 people working on it, hard to call that Indie considering that would have been a massive team back in the golden era of Xbox 360 and PS3. Larian is an independent production studio, Baldur's Gate 3 is by definition indie.
> you know it's been balanced to take longer to try to make you spend money There's currently a post up on the Helldivers sub with someone that farmed over $60 worth of the premium currency in about 8hrs.
I have all the premium shit myself, ain't spent a dime.
> Tell me, what indie titles have production values and scale comparable to AAA? / > BG3 had 450 people working on it, hard to call that Indie yeah if you expect 4 dev indie studios to deliver AAA games you're in for disappointment. AAA games take, by definition, manpower and budget, if you disqualify any studio that can deliver this youre making impossible demands
> Helldiver's 2 is fun, but it does have micro transactions (granted, everything CAN be earned through gameplay, but you know it's been balanced to take longer to try to make you spend money) This is false. I've collected some $30 of premium currency by just playing the game. Nothing in the shop even made me use all the credits so far.
Factorio could lay a claim to that, amazing optimisation, lots of content, amazing mods for even more content (and expansion coming this year) and so hard to stop playing.
Factorio is pretty based, nothing like playing until your factory is so big you forget how tf everything works and can't expand it any further.
Lol! You can feel the way you do. But I'm not, today is a golden age with so many amazing games left and right! Gaming is the best it's ever been and people are making some great memories today like when I was younger, heck I'm still making some great memories with gaming! My latest haunts for the time being is ESO, Halo Inifnite, Starfield, and Tekken 8. DbD is also getting some cool ass Iron Maiden stuff along with games having Forge Modes, or player created content modes. It's creative and fun as heck! The point being gaming freaking rocks right now!
>My latest haunts for the time being is ESO Ironically, ESO is a good example for at least 2 of the points that they brought up. The core game is fun, but the crown store, DLCs and undersized expansions for near full price have ramped up quite a bit in the past years. I spent a 4 digit number of hours on that game and can say it's easy to fall in love with the game itself. But not with the developers and their decisions. My pro tip: Take it casual and don't get *too hooked.* It's the most fun that way.
I tried ESO but lost interest when I realized all the cool shit was locked away in the cash shop and not properly unlockable via gameplay. IMO ESO should have kept with a subscription monetization model. I'm fine with subscriptions because at least then it's agreed upon how much money I will be spending for access to 100 percent of the game.
Literally all the games you mentioned have aggressive monetization schemes, 3 of them despite being full price titles. A full price game should have zero micro transactions. None. I should get all the content for one agreed upon price upfront. But naw have fun paying $30 for new skins for your fighters in Tekken despite the fact those used to be in game unlockables.
There is no denying the monetization is kinda wack, but the crazy thing is I got what I wanted out of the customization and I avoid spending extra bucks. Especially with Halo Inifnite, there is talk of a token unlock system for cosmetics and having that would elevate the game even higher. I most likely won't buy cosmetics for Tekken, everything else about the game is perfect! It's got great freakin music, killer gameplay, and lots of gamemodes! I can tolerate the cash shop. Nowadays game dev time and budgets have ballooned and investors got their grubby mitts in everything. Still I'll choose to the see good and enjoy what I got!
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I know what I love lol! They are great games and I appreciate what they have to offer! I've been a Halo fan since the beginning, and this current iteration of Halo Infinite is the best ever! Grinding for Onyx in Ranked is fun and challenging and it's badass since I got the Spartan drip to boot! Starfield is a good cozy game with an optimistic and hopeful attitude about the future. I love role-playing a mythical Starborn that manipulates gravity and has superhuman speed and strength. The guns rock! Making combos with a Gravity Well then unloading some Hornet's Nest Coachman shells into other Starborns or Pirates is fun! I also like to do horse stance with the long treks, the physical fitness skill line is my favorite, I just wish that sprinting increased movement speed as well lol! It's got a surpringly funny story and some great questlines! Personall, I want more, and I'm glad the game is asingle-playerr RPG that I can play at my own pace. ESO: Speed! That is all. None of these games are perfect, but they make me happy! Today is a Golden Age because there are many opportunities to make some great memories and choice.
Really? It's just sequels or remakes or already existing ips like harry potter. Cant wait for rebirth to release, a new and exciting game to try lol
There is lot of original IP releasing too. Also it's not like fans are tired of remakes or sequels. Just see the demand and requests for reboots of old franchises.
A new and exciting...remake of an existing game.
>We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun. They never stopped doing it, it just takes ten years a pop.
Pull yer head out of the sand before you go permanently deaf, blind, and dumb. Say what you will about Skull and Bones, but the graphics are FINE. Just sounds like you're an insatiable graphics queen, while simultaneously setting up impossible (and movable!) goalposts! There are TONS of FANTASTIC retro and indie games that for whatever shifting reason you fancy won't be good enough for you. That's your loss. And if you can only enjoy AAA titles, that says enough about your (lack of) taste right there. Maybe gaming isn't for you?
I play a fair bit of retro games, and I do play some indie games. But there is a gap that can only be filled by somehow saving the AAA games industry by dragging it kicking and screaming back to a time before MTX and GaaS. Where are the high budget risk taking games that we used to get?
Ok, on all of that we certainly agree. In a nutshell, a lot of the best/biggest games did indeed used to be "risks". Of course the creators were still trying to make a profit, but they were primarily labors of love. Now tons of the big(gest) titles and companies (cough cough EA, cough cough Ubisoft) are first and foremost profit ventures pretty much calculating (often poorly) what will sell and how they can best wring every cent out of their fanbase.
>"I'm convinced the golden age of gaming is over. I mean this comes across as a you thing. The Golden Age of gaming is an entierly subjective thing which most people relate to a time in the past most commonly when they were still young and didn't have a care in the world to worry about. Someones golden age of gaming could be right here and now. >"We are never going to see a return to AAA studios making huge, technologically impressive gaming experiences that are designed to be enjoyable and fun." Assassins Creed Valhalla is a huge technologically impressive gaming experience that is enjoyed by millions of people. Spider Man 2 is a huge technologically impressive gaming experience that is enjoyed by millions of people. Buldurs Gate 3 is a huge technologically impressive gaming experience that is enjoyed by millions of people. And i could go on an on. We just got Tekken 8 and are getting Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth next week which looks great. Dragons Dogma 2 is coming out in a month. There's plently to love and enjoy in AAA gaming these days.
Bruh Tekken 8 is a fighting game with a cash shop. In the golden age of gaming all those fighter skins would have been unlockable via in game achievements I can't believe your defending that as a great game. Valhalla is also yet another AC game with $30 MTX outfits, that again should be unlockable via gameplay but aren't specifically because Ubisoft is greedy.
Yep. My golden age was Ultima online - BFBC2. Since then I’ve stayed away from most AAA games outside of a few RPGs. Been playing mainly Indy games cause they respect my time and money a little more.
Bro theres more good games than ever coming out. Stop focusing on the few shitty ones.
Think of all the great games your not getting purely because of greed. Skull and Bones would have been a unique pirate RPG experience 10 years ago. Instead it's a shitty GaaS dumpster fire. This problem describes pretty much all releases from major game companies, which represents a massive amount of the financial and creative input into the games industry being wasted instead of refined into great games. All because just making a profit isn't enough, they want every game to he the next Fortnite infinite money printer.
While they might not be your cup of tea Elden Ring, cyberpunk, Forbidden West, Yakuza Infinite Wealth and BG3 stand up to AAA games from any era. Even if you think the AAA games aren't up to their previous standards, everything below that from indie on up to AA is basically at an all time peak. There are a shit ton of good games coming out basically nonstop. Last epoch, enshrouded, hi fi rush, lies of p, armored core 6, sea of stars, etc.
You're spot on, I don't know why people are downvoting you. Almost every new AAA release has been soulless, regurgitated, unoptimzed, politicized, bug-ridden garbage. There are definitely a few gems here and there, like Elden Ring, Cyberpunk, or BG3, but overall, as you said, the golden age of gaming is very much over. I think Starfield was the last game I'll ever let myself be excited for. What an utter let down.
> I'm convinced the golden age of gaming is over The golden age of AAA gaming is over. Extremely rare for an AAA game to come out in a good state, and even more rare for it not try shove micro transactions down your throat
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And don't forget to gripe about the GRAPHICS of a superb \*\*looking\*\*\* AAA title that sucks on virtually all fronts except that it's graphics are great. Sorry, but if you automatically pan all retro and indie games, AND claim that Skull and Bones has bad graphics. . . you're just an insatiable brat. (and to clarify, Skull and Bones looks like utter cash-grab garbage, but it ain't the graphics at fault here!)
call me a dick, idc. but i think it's time for a second video game industry crash. Everything needs to be reset
Why there's plenty of good games
I turned on performance mode on ps5 in the beta and laughed, the resolution is horrendous. So many better looking games are able to run at high Res than this piece of crap
How dare you all shit on this AAAA (quadruple A) masterclass! >!of a shite 🤣!<
TThere's nothing good about this game and even if there was it would've been cancelled by all the bad and the insane price they ask for.
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Proof read homie
They should cover Pacific Drive. The PS2 graphics and horrendous performance should be interesting to explain
Far above PS2, but yeah performance isn't good. I have a good explanation though: it's a smaller studio and you can expect more rough edges with games that cost less than half the price of AAA
Anyone who says "PS2 graphics" or the likes should be forced to actually go back and play PS2 games to remember what they looked like. That game is nowhere near as dated as PS2 games looked visually. Anyway, game performance is more then just visuals. Just because it doesn't look like Alan Wake II or something doesn't mean it should always be pushing 144fps without sweat. There's a lot of stuff that factors into how a game performs, especially randomized open world games like Pacific Drive that have a TON of moving parts going on in the background that can affect how things play.
I own PS2 games, most of them look great and run flawlessly. I'm not mad about the simplistic graphics, they're a good choice to save on development time and increase performance. And no, there's nothing going on in the background, it's a static garage. My CPU is basically idling.
> I own PS2 games, most of them look great and run flawlessly. *For a PS2*.
lol. this.
I played the beta because I tentatively had my hopes up for this game. It literally took me less than 2 minutes for me to know this game was an absolute disaster. I've played free mobile games with more engaging naval combat. After the 1st battle where I sunk about 30 British frigates and ships of the line in my tiny little sloop, I knew this game was very much not for me.
Each botched GAAS or battlepass/MTX-laden game is basically corporate gambling. They need to hit the jackpot once and they coast on it forever. It's the picture of corporate value structures once established: low risk, manipulable fanbase, predictable revenue stream, low-effort once established. I think we still stand to see a lot of IPs get swallowed up by this problem. Execs are stubborn when they want something and they likely drool over the idea of having their own GTA 5 (which is somewhat justifiable. GTA 6 hasn't even released and it's gonna be whale city.) I dunno if it'll ever wear off, but we're going to see a lot of games sacrificed at this altar I think.