Xbox Game Studios Stupidity Hate Thread Game Pass Edition

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Understand that I'm completely out of the loop but I've seen no one excited for Starfield beyond the usual jewtube bugmen, but they'd be hyped for anything they figure will roll content.
I agree with this. Even the Xbox fans I know IRL are only willing to try Starfield on Gamepass. I would love to see how many copies it would move on day 1 without gamepass
Nah, we got a look at some skill trees, they're just so bland and gay you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a challenge screen.
Then forgive me for mispeaking because I genuinely didn't know they had shown skill trees. Is it run and gun only, or is there magic and melee?
No, they should hand it to fans. Obsidian has never made a good game period. Fans saved New Vegas from being yet another unplayable buggy piece of shit.
Respectfully disagree. I don't doubt fans made F:NV more enjoyable in the same way they made Skyrim a playable game. I do doubt that the base game was unplayable. I played it on Xbox360 and while the graphics were crap and there were bugs, it was still a lot more of a Fallout game than F3 or F4 could ever be. F:NV not getting a remake or remaster is because it would show just how shit F3 and F4 really are.
 
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I do doubt that the base game was unplayable.
I was there at release. It was unplayable shit. It took them months to get it into a semi stable condition. I get you hate Bethesda because they ruined your childhood or whatever, but no, New Vegas was that bad at release.

People need to stop giving Obsidian a break because they hired a few decent writers for a few games a decade+ ago. Just bring those writers back, because if you get Obsidian on this you're going to get something worse than Redfall.
 
Then forgive me for mispeaking because I genuinely didn't know they had shown skill trees. Is it run and gun only, or is there magic and melee?
It's news to me too. The only reason I heart about it was because it came up in some shit on patrician's stream. Here, the stream in question, timestamped for your viewing pleasure. I can't remember if attributes or their equivalent are making a return but it just seems like Fo4 but worse.

There are five trees; physical, social, combat, science, and tech, and each skill has ranks with an associated challenge for unlocking the ability to drop a point into each rank. It looks really dumb. It looks like there's at least two melee skills but I can't tell if there's shit for space magic. The main plot involves magic alien mcmuffin artifacts so maybe you get some alien crap but the tree doesn't show up until the story progresses. Think of how in 2017 Prey, all of the psi skills don't show up until you get the psychoscope but you can still guess at something like that as the skill tree seems only half complete up until that point.
 
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It's news to me too. The only reason I heart about it was because it came up in some shit on patrician's stream. Here, the stream in question, timestamped for your viewing pleasure. I can't remember if attributes or their equivalent are making a return but it just seems like Fo4 but worse.

Thanks for sharing that but to be honest, it looks shit.
There are five trees; physical, social, combat, science, and tech, and each skill has ranks with an associated challenge for unlocking the ability to drop a point into each rank. It looks really dumb. It looks like there's at least two melee skills but I can't tell if there's shit for space magic. The main plot involves magic alien mcmuffin artifacts so maybe you get some alien crap but the tree doesn't show up until the story progresses. Think of how in 2017 Prey, all of the psi skills don't show up until you get the psychoscope but you can still guess at something like that as the skill tree seems only half complete up until that point.
Those skill trees sound like Bethesda are trying to bulk out a dead world. Social and combat are fair enough, but physical is combat (unless melee and shooting are totally different ways to play) science and tech are the same fucking thing. Hopefully you will unlock more skill trees because it seems totally arse at the moment.

I won't judge them too harshly because Skyrim was a half-decent base game with a massive world to explore. The modders made it the masterpiece that it turned out to be. OG, non-modded Skyrim skill trees were really shite though. The mage became useless after level 50 and the mana balance was wank.
 
I agree with this. Even the Xbox fans I know IRL are only willing to try Starfield on Gamepass
I think going for 'grounded' human only sci-fi will be the kiss of death for Starfield. Bethesda's selling points for their other two big IPs are alien and diverse/extremely imaginative settings. Buzz Light-year aesthetic is the exact opposite of that.
 
I agree with this. Even the Xbox fans I know IRL are only willing to try Starfield on Gamepass. I would love to see how many copies it would move on day 1 without gamepass
I don't understand why anyone wouldn't try something out on Gamepass before buying it.

You have to be a complete retard shill to just throw a full 60-70 dollars out there on a whim, especially if you already have Gamepass.

I think going for 'grounded' human only sci-fi will be the kiss of death for Starfield. Bethesda's selling points for their other two big IPs are alien and diverse/extremely imaginative settings. Buzz Light-year aesthetic is the exact opposite of that.
It will live and die based on how much it can be modded and how well space travel works IMO.

Despite what some people claim about Bethesda being done with modding, I doubt they are really going to throw out the one thing that gives their games the strongest legs. Despite what everyone says, enough normie retards buy creation club content even though free alternatives are available for most of it through the modding scene.

So that just leaves space travel. As long as it is even passable at launch, you're going to see enough sci fi people interested in modding the game that no matter how grounded Bethesda wants it to be there are going to be all sorts of fantastical shit being thrown in.
 
Those skill trees sound like Bethesda are trying to bulk out a dead world. Social and combat are fair enough, but physical is combat (unless melee and shooting are totally different ways to play) science and tech are the same fucking thing. Hopefully you will unlock more skill trees because it seems totally arse at the moment.

My guess would be combat is all the shooty shooty, and physical is melee plus athletic stuff like stamina, jumping, and worthless shit like that. Complete dump stat. Science is what they're going to lump all the crafting in. Tech is probably your starship stat.

But the heart of why all this levelling is a bunch of nonsense is that they're trying to substitute attributes with something else for the sake of having something else. Mad Leveller for Morrowind and the analogous mod for Oblivion had this problem solved for the last 15-20 years. They don't have to be this static stat point that you dump 5-10 points into every level, just give an attribute point every 5 level ups from the corresponding set of skills, and level up a skill as you use it. For fuck's sake, they were literally right there with Skyrim, just add on an attribute layer so if I main sword and board half the game I'm just mediocre instead of abysmal if I try out a two hander at level 30.
 
I was there at release. It was unplayable shit. It took them months to get it into a semi stable condition. I get you hate Bethesda because they ruined your childhood or whatever, but no, New Vegas was that bad at release.
I don't hate Bethesda. I hate that they, like Blizzard and Bioware, have spent so long milking one franchise that they've forgot or lost all talent that they once had.

I bought New Vegas on release and it was buggy, but it wasn't unplayable. i will admit that maybe I enjoyed F:NV so much that I overlooked the bugs. It was far from perfect but it's the best Fallout games since Fallout:Tactics

People need to stop giving Obsidian a break because they hired a few decent writers for a few games a decade+ ago. Just bring those writers back, because if you get Obsidian on this you're going to get something worse than Redfall.
Obsidian have made some quality games recently. Outer Worlds was under-rated as a new IP, though the criticisms of wokeness were valid, there were so many ways to play the game that it made it a brilliant RPG. Not to mention PoE1 which was enjoyable, if not a little short. Again though, no bad for a first attempt at an isometric old-school RPG.

I have more respect for Obsidian for still being able to knock out good games, than Bioware, Blizzard and all the other hacks. Bethesda have not got a good track record since Skyrim, so on that basis I can only err on the side of caution and believe Starfield will be shit.


I think going for 'grounded' human only sci-fi will be the kiss of death for Starfield. Bethesda's selling points for their other two big IPs are alien and diverse/extremely imaginative settings. Buzz Light-year aesthetic is the exact opposite of that.
Absolutely. If you can't play as another race - like you could in TES with Kajjit etc, then it will be a short-lived game. I expect Starfield to be a decent game in about 2 years when the mod scene have properly fixed everything.


I don't understand why anyone wouldn't try something out on Gamepass before buying it.

You have to be a complete retard shill to just throw a full 60-70 dollars out there on a whim, especially if you already have Gamepass.

You misunderstand. I will absolutely play it on gamepass or wait for GOTY+price drop because there are very, very few games worth buying on day one nowadays. What I meant was Starfield would crash and burn without gamepass. I don't doubt the Bethesda faithful would buy it, but Microsoft have conditioned Xbox fans to not pay for games.

I don't like paying for games and much prefer the sub services to keep me ticking over while the industry goes through the dark ages of creativity.

My guess would be combat is all the shooty shooty, and physical is melee plus athletic stuff like stamina, jumping, and worthless shit like that. Complete dump stat. Science is what they're going to lump all the crafting in. Tech is probably your starship stat.
Sounds terrible tbh. I'm not shitting on Bethesda or Starfield but I want to see gamers criticise shit that deserves to be criticised, without it being hand-waved away as fanboyism, misogyny or racism

But the heart of why all this levelling is a bunch of nonsense is that they're trying to substitute attributes with something else for the sake of having something else. Mad Leveller for Morrowind and the analogous mod for Oblivion had this problem solved for the last 15-20 years. They don't have to be this static stat point that you dump 5-10 points into every level, just give an attribute point every 5 level ups from the corresponding set of skills, and level up a skill as you use it. For fuck's sake, they were literally right there with Skyrim, just add on an attribute layer so if I main sword and board half the game I'm just mediocre instead of abysmal if I try out a two hander at level 30.

Yeah I agree with this. The best implementation of skills I've seen in a game was Advent Rising. They had levels for everything from jumping to shooting to reloading. The more time you spent with a gun, killing, reloading etc, the better you got with that gun, but skill points also spilled out into other guns. So if you were bored of SMG'ing it, you could swap to a rifle and not be complete shite. Same with melee and magic. Sometimes a swift kick was all that was needed to kill an enemy in close combat, or a force push to throw the enemy overboard of a star ship, or into a force field. Killing enemies with the environment never seems to happen anymore.

TL;DR i fucking hate the current state of the industry, saved for a handful of games and I want gamers to take this shitehawking, greedy, scumbag publishers to task instead of choking on corporate cock.
 
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Despite what some people claim about Bethesda being done with modding, I doubt they are really going to throw out the one thing that gives their games the strongest legs. Despite what everyone says, enough normie retards buy creation club content even though free alternatives are available for most of it through the modding scene.
Do they? I can't remember if the cc is the only way for consolefags to access modded content but on pc at least the alternatives are better than whatever the cc has to offer. The only things I could see being tempting are some of the player home creations. Everything else is boring tat. Unless they're using AE sales to inflate those figures, I don't see how cc would be a success.
 
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Do they? I can't remember if the cc is the only way for consolefags to access modded content but on pc at least the alternatives are better than whatever the cc has to offer.
The only mods that aren't accessible (at least depending on if the mod creator chooses) on Xbox are script extender mods.

The thing with CC is that it was pretty low cost for Bethesda because they just hired that shit out to regular mod creators anyways, plus console players outnumber PC players by a large portion and they're the types that like to pay for DLC content anyways. Creation Club was successful enough through these avenues, although I'm sure they'd love it to be even more successful I'd be really surprised if Starfield would be the game where they eliminate modding content since Todd has made such a big deal about pushing Xbox to be even more modder friendly and how he still thinks modding is a huge avenue for future game developers.

@Bog-standard Poster
Obsidian have made some quality games recently. Outer Worlds was under-rated as a new IP
lol, lmao even
 
Outer Worlds was under-rated as a new IP, though the criticisms of wokeness were valid, there were so many ways to play the game that it made it a brilliant RPG.
This might be the single hottest take I've ever seen on Kiwi Farms in my entire life.

Outer Worlds might be the worst game that Obsidian has ever put out and it felt like one of the least fleshed out or finished games I've ever played in my life.
 
This might be the single hottest take I've ever seen on Kiwi Farms in my entire life.

Outer Worlds might be the worst game that Obsidian has ever put out and it felt like one of the least fleshed out or finished games I've ever played in my life.
I felt the same on the first playthrough. But with the recent update to make it (4k? or whatever) it looks better and there are more than one way to play. If you listen to the Dr who brings you back to life, he says on a few occasions that he is worried that the injection will turn you into a murderous psychopath, which is why he stays behind glass.

You can go through the game playing like John Wick and gunning down everyone in the game. Everyone. It's a lot of fun and adds a new dimension to it.

I can't hate them for making a game which has several layers to it, more than just "go to X, collect Y, then rinse and repeat Z times".

IIRC Outer Worlds was pushed out before it was finished, on the orders of the fucking buffoon, Phil Spencer

lol, lmao even
Which games weren't good? Compared to new IP's or even the same rehashed wankery that UBI, EA etc churn out yearly, OW was at least different, open and full of shit to do.

I'm not going to say OW is the best game of last gen, it wasn't. I want to see more attempts at RPGs that have several ways to play.
 
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You can go through the game playing like John Wick and gunning down everyone in the game. Everyone. It's a lot of fun and adds a new dimension to it.

I can't hate them for making a game which has several layers to it, more than just "go to X, collect Y, then rinse and repeat Z times".

IIRC Outer Worlds was pushed out before it was finished, on the orders of the fucking buffoon, Phil Spencer
"Go to X, Collect Y" is literally the entire game.

OW was at least different, open and full of shit to do.
On what planet was OW different? It was just a Fallout clone and a really bad one at that. You were welded to the main quest, there was almost 0 itemization, the characters and locations were made of cardboard, and the story was terrible.

I think you might just like Outer Worlds much more than the average person (and that's fine) but it wasn't all that deep of a game.
 
"Go to X, Collect Y" is literally the entire game.


On what planet was OW different? It was just a Fallout clone and a really bad one at that. You were welded to the main quest, there was almost 0 itemization, the characters and locations were made of cardboard, and the story was terrible.

I think you might just like Outer Worlds much more than the average person (and that's fine) but it wasn't all that deep of a game.

The story was serviceable and I did enjoy it. I enjoyed it more, probably because all of the games around it were dogshit, so by comparison it seemed better.

It wasn't as deep as other games, but again, on the scale of the absolute dross being released nowadays and around when OW was released, it faired well. Fwiw i did prefer Wasteland 3 and felt that was another under-appreciated game.

This sounds like Fallout 4 but everyone says that's shit.
Fallout 4 was shit because the main story made no sense. They used tech mcguffin nonsense to try and make the twist special, when it fell way outside of the realms of what a Fallout game was supposed to be, main story wise. Fallout is about 50's aesthetics in a futuristic post-apocalyptic world, where the main hero is a lone-wanderer through the wasteland.

Having base building could have worked if they focused the game around the ideas of Fallout:Tactics. In a single player game it was just a waste of time and resources. IMO Fallout 4 was two games rolled into one, when it should have been two separate games; a single-player and a co-op, base building, multi tribe, multi-race game.

I'll put my hands up and admit Fallout is my favourite game series of all time and I am a bit autistic about it. If it wasnt for the woke bollocks infecting the tech sector, I would like to see Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 to be remastered, not remade, by Inexile.
 
>Xbox sales are active
>spends $5 on easy 1000G game
>gets enough credit for $10 gift card
>PROFIT

1684530368199.png

Done. Literally took longer to download the game than to achieve 1000G. Best $5 I spent yet.

 
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Again the result of leaving things on auto-pilot:

The lack of clear vision and creative direction​

  • Arkane started working on Redfall in 2018, when its owner ZeniMax was trying to sell itself. At the time, the company also pushed its studios to make live service titles with microtransactions.
  • The game’s co-directors, two veteran developers Harvey Smith and Ricardo Bare, were initially excited about the concept of making a multiplayer project where players would fight vampires together.
  • However, employees were baffled by the idea of “multiplayer Arkane game” and the possibility of incorporating signature immersive gameplay elements from the studio’s previous titles into a co-op game like Redfall.
  • Some team members told Schreier that Smith and Bare failed to provide a clear direction for the project. The leadership kept changing references, from Far Cry to Borderlands, and couldn’t resolve the “fundamental tension between single-player and multiplayer design.”
  • Developers who worked on Redfall claimed that the game had a “significant microtransaction plan” that was only abandoned in 2021 due to growing criticism of the GaaS model from gamers.

Talent exodus and staff shortage​

  • Arkane Austin, responsible for making Redfall, employed less than 100 people, which wasn’t enough to make a live service game. According to some employees, attracting devs from ZeniMax’s Roundhouse Studios also didn’t help.
  • On top of that, experienced developers were uninspired and didn’t want to make a multiplayer title. As a result, 70% of employees working on Prey left the Austin office by the end of Redfall’s development.
  • Arkane alo experienced trouble hiring new staff due to ZeniMax’s reputation for paying lower than average salaries, Texa’s social policies and laws, and the fact that Redfall wasn’t yet announced (the studio couldn’t pitch the game to potential employees).
  • It also wanted to hire some devs with experience in multiplayer shooters, but those who agreed to work at Arkane wanted to make single-player immersive sims in the spirit of the studio’s previous games.

Poor management and hopes for a single-player reboot​

  • After Microsoft acquired ZeniMax for $7.5 billion in 2021, some Arkane employees hoped that the new owner would cancel Redfall or let the team reboot it as a single-player game.
  • Microsoft, however, preferred not to interfere in ZeniMax’s operations and the work of its studios and even presented Redfall as one of its key console exclusives at the 2021 Xbox showcase.
  • At the time, Harvey Smith tried to calm down the developers, ensuring that the game would get “exponentially better” thanks to the “Arkane magic” (probably akin to the infamous “BioWare magic”).
  • Following the distracious launch of Redfall, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer promised to revisit the company’s processes in terms of quality control and management. However, he also noted that he would never “push against creative aspirations of our teams.”
You would expect with this and Crackdown 3 they would have learned their lesson by now, but then you remember Perfect Dark is a thing and the amount of directionless crap keeps piling up.
 
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