Things you wish you knew before you got into gaming

[Creamhoven]

Hello dear atariagsters,

 

in this thread I kindly ask you to share your personal insights about gaming you wish you knew from the get go.

 

For me a big one would be knowing that modern gaming will be a disappointment to me and to focus more on the classics instead, as well as knowing about the price climb of retro gaming.

[Tanooki]

- If I knew that people would turn it into a scalping orgy starting around a decade ago, I would have tried my ass off in/after 2006 to get back anything and everything I cared about I had lost because pre-2011/12 it would have been a breeze.

 

- If I knew that a bunch of suck-ups and puppets would have gone along with the xbox manchurian candidate of the industry making it normal and ok to charge for multiplayer, and worse, that mass storage would have been not used for saves and creation but abused to release unfinished games I would have never bothered with as many things as I did saving thousands of dollars and hours of wasted time.

 

- If I knew greed would get so bad people would dare make a full game, charge full price, but sell me only a large part to charge me even more for the rest I'd have not touched that hardware or specific game at all...ever

 

- If I knew I would never have bought a digital game on a platform now considered a walled garden if there was another alternative that would keep it viable for decades (Nintendo Wii through 3DS shops, PSN, XBL) and stuck to just PC and Nintendo only.

 

- If I knew most of what the trolls at LRG, SLG and the rest said were limited weren't, because they could be bought physical in english-ASIA regions for the same, usually less, and 3-6+months faster delivery I would have ignored them entirely.

 

How's that?

[zzip]

If I knew how fast the hardware would evolve, I wouldn't have spent so much time lusting after better graphics and sound since new hardware was always around the corner that could do everything I imagined and more

 

On 4/29/2023 at 8:45 PM, Tanooki said:

- If I knew greed would get so bad people would dare make a full game, charge full price, but sell me only a large part to charge me even more for the rest I'd have not touched that hardware or specific game at all...ever

I don't really understand this anti-DLC argument, but I see it a lot.

 

For perspective, In the 80s, we'd pay $30-40 for a new game that had maybe 15 minutes of content tops-  instead they focused on difficulty.  Few get to see all the content because 3 lives and you have to start over.    Adjusted for inflation those games would cost $90-120 today.

 

So today, we pay $60-70 for a new game,  it might have a huge open world to explore, a 20 hour main story maybe another 10 hours in side quests.  And that's bare minimum!  I spent dozens of hours on the main quest in Elden Ring.   You get so much more for less money these days.   

 

And the old games might have been developed by one person in three months or less,  today you have large teams collaborating on games for three years or more.  Development costs have gone way up.   Production values are way up.   

 

After spending all that time and resources on developing the game engine, game world, lore characters,  why not have DLC to extend the life of that effort?    It's like the D&D model:  you make a hefty investment in all the rulebooks that allow you to play the game, but then you buy much cheaper 'modules' that keep adding playable content to the gaming system.   DLC is the digital version of that.   $15 for another 10 hours of content is better than $60 for a whole new game.   And it's optional, if you're sick of that world, you don't have to buy it.

[Tanooki]

Guess we will agree to disagree on that.  Maybe you're thinking earlier 80s, but around 1986-87 Nintendo changed the formula and created games that took hours and still in the same price point of what were short hellish 3 lives and you're done arcade style stuff even they broke ground on with the black box titles.  I don't and won't ever buy the whole AFI (adj for inf) argument as it's a crap cop out trying to rationalize things, that's then, this is now.  Not just the value of the dollar has changed but process, manufacturing, total capability and more too...costs are lower now than they were then and mass more items are out there too.

 

How about we crack into the 90s for the hell of it.  We did have DLC but not, as it was retailed.  Yet it was not called DLC or a synonym to it, it was called the extra chapters, expansion, new missions, whatever...but you got this as an aside made after the fact of a full game given out for the paid MSRP of the era.  These expansions were anything from many additional chapters to damn near utterly a new game using the existing engine and some assets, and you'd happily pay another $20-30 for this.  Call of Duty did this with its expansion adding new fronts to the WW2 field of combat, yet you never felt hosed or taken advantage of if you didn't opt into it because you got the full intended game.  That is getting very scarce these days.

 

I get costs are higher, teams are larger, tools are more up front.  That's a fair argument, but what I'm saying is fair too with the CoD reference.  Give me the full game, then as it's rolling out to get pressed for retail, start working on that v1.5 of the game, the total expansion people can opt into if they want more of the same until a true sequel happens.  Diablo did it with Hellfire, Doom/Doom2/Heretic/Wolf3D did it with added mission packs, Age of Empires did it with a ton of new countries, gear, and modes to play using the original engine, and so on.  All this was done as a pseudo sequel using original assets, adding a bit more, but not while compromising the original game by cutting chunks out to sell to reeled in suckers for another $30 stuck with a partial game.

 

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Guess we will agree to disagree on that.  Maybe you're thinking earlier 80s, but around 1986-87 Nintendo changed the formula and created games that took hours and still in the same price point of what were short hellish 3 lives and you're done arcade style stuff even they broke ground on with the black box titles. 

Yes the games started to become longer.  on the other hand you were still exploring 8-bit worlds of a limited size, while games today feature large open worlds full of 3D assets that can consume 100Gb in some cases.    Now sometimes open world game design leaves something to be desired, sometimes it feels padded out with pointless side quests.   But the amount of detail that goes into these worlds is amazing, especially when the player may not see all of it.   So I don't feel like there's been a shortage of content compared to what came before anyway.

 

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

How about we crack into the 90s for the hell of it.  We did have DLC but not, as it was retailed.  Yet it was not called DLC or a synonym to it, it was called the extra chapters, expansion, new missions, whatever...but you got this as an aside made after the fact of a full game given out for the paid MSRP of the era.  These expansions were anything from many additional chapters to damn near utterly a new game using the existing engine and some assets, and you'd happily pay another $20-30 for this. 

So then it sounds like we agree at least in concept that expansions to a game can be a good thing.

 

I guess I don't understand why people feel they are a rip-off, or the original game has been cut as an excuse to sell DLCs.

Maybe there are games that do this as a rip-off practice, and I just haven't encountered them.   But if the base game is substandard, I certainly wouldn't pay for DLC.   I'd only buy DLC if I enjoyed the base game and want to extend the experience.

 

I know people complain about free-to -play games that nickle and dime you for everything, but I don't see this so much in full priced retail games.

[Keatah]

That the 2600 would still be relevant today.

 

On DLC. First encounters with it would be Mission Packs for Comanche on the PC, and SubLogic Scenery Disks for Flight Simulator II and Jet on the Apple II. Perhaps PrintShop add-on graphics if you stretch it.

 

[Tanooki]

17 hours ago, zzip said:

So then it sounds like we agree at least in concept that expansions to a game can be a good thing.

 

I guess I don't understand why people feel they are a rip-off, or the original game has been cut as an excuse to sell DLCs.

Maybe there are games that do this as a rip-off practice, and I just haven't encountered them.   But if the base game is substandard, I certainly wouldn't pay for DLC.   I'd only buy DLC if I enjoyed the base game and want to extend the experience.

 

I know people complain about free-to -play games that nickle and dime you for everything, but I don't see this so much in full priced retail games.

I don't think expansions are a ripoff, they're fantastic, when they're actual expansions.  My problem is charging someone $60-70 these days for a game, but by design holding back let's say 20% of it and charging another $15-25 for it to get the intended full game.  That's shitty and I won't support it.  But in the case of like COD on PC with the 2 full new campaigns expansion CD package in the mid 90s...hell yeah.  That's a proper expansion not at the cost of giving me part of a game for a full price.  I don't even hate DLC or IAP when it's inobtusive and utterly optional to the primary game, whether it means you take months (year?) to farm the goodies someone paying can just get, or it's a true set of extras exterior to the intended story (like added Fire Emblem campaigns on 3DS/Switch to the primary.)  There's just a right way and a wrong set of ways of doing things, and I just won't do the wrong one.  And in some cases I'll wait a year for the 'Game of the Year' editions popularized in the PS3 era and pay the $50-60 for the full game instead of most of a game for $60, then +3 $10-15 expansions... Mass Effect 2 comes to mind on that one for me specifically.

 

To what Keatah said, for me, it was buying Wolfenstein 3D shareware for a few dollars for the floppy, then having the choice of one amazing adventure, or buying 5 more for what another $30?  Doom did it too, same company after all as did Commander Keen.  Outside of Apogee/iD stuff -- Wing Commander 1 and 2 with their special ops (2 full campaigns) and speech packs, and the X-Wing and TIE games that had added multi-campaign boosters too.  That really was your monies worth.

[zzip]

27 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

My problem is charging someone $60-70 these days for a game, but by design holding back let's say 20% of it and charging another $15-25 for it to get the intended full game.  That's shitty and I won't support it. 

What are some examples of this?    I don't have a problem with them developing DLC during the game's development cycle as long as the main game or 80% as you put it feels like a complete game.   If I felt like I was cheated by the main game, I'm certainly not going to buy the DLC.   But I can't think of any games I've played where I felt cheated out of content.   If anything there's too much content-  too many pointless side quests and things to pad out the game length  and I'm tired of it by the time I get around to the DLC.

 

36 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

And in some cases I'll wait a year for the 'Game of the Year' editions popularized in the PS3 era and pay the $50-60 for the full game instead of most of a game for $60, then +3 $10-15 expansions... Mass Effect 2 comes to mind on that one for me specifically.

Yeah there's few games I will buy day one,   It pays to wait-  you can often get those GOTY editions on sale for $15-20

[Creamhoven]

On 4/30/2023 at 12:45 AM, Tanooki said:

- If I knew that people would turn it into a scalping orgy starting around a decade ago, I would have tried my ass off in/after 2006 to get back anything and everything I cared about I had lost because pre-2011/12 it would have been a breeze.

 

- If I knew that a bunch of suck-ups and puppets would have gone along with the xbox manchurian candidate of the industry making it normal and ok to charge for multiplayer, and worse, that mass storage would have been not used for saves and creation but abused to release unfinished games I would have never bothered with as many things as I did saving thousands of dollars and hours of wasted time.

 

- If I knew greed would get so bad people would dare make a full game, charge full price, but sell me only a large part to charge me even more for the rest I'd have not touched that hardware or specific game at all...ever

 

- If I knew I would never have bought a digital game on a platform now considered a walled garden if there was another alternative that would keep it viable for decades (Nintendo Wii through 3DS shops, PSN, XBL) and stuck to just PC and Nintendo only.

 

- If I knew most of what the trolls at LRG, SLG and the rest said were limited weren't, because they could be bought physical in english-ASIA regions for the same, usually less, and 3-6+months faster delivery I would have ignored them entirely.

 

How's that?

Well done, Nook. You have written a post that I not only completly agree with, it is intelligently and well put together. Good job!

[Tanooki]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

What are some examples of this?    I don't have a problem with them developing DLC during the game's development cycle as long as the main game or 80% as you put it feels like a complete game.   If I felt like I was cheated by the main game, I'm certainly not going to buy the DLC.   But I can't think of any games I've played where I felt cheated out of content.   If anything there's too much content-  too many pointless side quests and things to pad out the game length  and I'm tired of it by the time I get around to the DLC.

 

Yeah there's few games I will buy day one,   It pays to wait-  you can often get those GOTY editions on sale for $15-20

I'd have to dig to give multiple, but one that irked me in recent years oddly was a Nintendo stunt they didn't repeat due to push back.  Mario Golf on 3DS.  They created the game, then kept parts of it out to sell for $15 more a season pass with all 3 of the split packs (which are $6/ea) and a reserved gold Mario character.  It's evident when you play parts are not there that should be there, kind of like the old hate EA would get selling Tiger Woods Golf games where you got a full price package, light on content, then (as IGN added it up like a decade ago or so) another $100+ to buy the missing players/courses which it would nag you about each time you hit the menu or started the game.  It's just obnoxious.

[Creamhoven]

Like imagine seeing a Van Gogh where there are things blurred out, and you have to pay to see the full picture. It is ridiculous.

 

If you are making art you don't hold back, but you are delivering the full expression in one whole. The DLC model is more a mercurial influence and not one that is concerned with creating real artistic expressions.

[Keatah]

6 hours ago, Creamhoven said:

Like imagine seeing a Van Gogh where there are things blurred out, and you have to pay to see the full picture. It is ridiculous.

Something like that, nope. Not gonna do.

 

6 hours ago, Creamhoven said:

If you are making art you don't hold back, but you are delivering the full expression in one whole. The DLC model is more a mercurial influence and not one that is concerned with creating real artistic expressions.

I don't mind the DLC model if the content is good, worthwhile, does genuine expansion, or makes the old game seem like a new expanded one.

 

DLC can extend the life of an original work. All one has to do it look at add-on levels for Doom and similar.

[Creamhoven]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

Something like that, nope. Not gonna do.

 

I don't mind the DLC model if the content is good, worthwhile, does genuine expansion, or makes the old game seem like a new expanded one.

 

DLC can extend the life of an original work. All one has to do it look at add-on levels for Doom and similar.

While this is nice in theory, in practice the DLC mechanism gets exploited way too often to squeeze out everypenny of well meaning gamers. @TanookiT was right about this one. Therefore DLC should be banned until the parasitic types are driven out completely. If your job is not to create beauty, but just to pull money out of pockets and create uglyness in the process, we dont need you. Bye bye!

[roots.genoa]

On 4/30/2023 at 12:25 AM, Creamhoven said:

to focus more on the classics instead

And you keep reasoning like an old fart; there's a big contradiction here. At the time, the games you're talking about were not considered classics YET, so there was no reason to focus on them. And in twenty years you'll regret not spending time on today's classics like Breath of the Wild or Dark Souls. 😩

For the last time, games and movies were not better before. You just remember the good games and good movies from the past, while you forgot about all the duds that were released at the same time, and for good reason. Actually, thanks to indie development, there are probably more good games today than before. But never mind, keep being trapped into stupid nostalgia.

 

Also the reason why DLC has been generalized today is games cost more and more to create, while they are still sold around $60-70. So publishers are kinda forced to add DLC to make you pay the price the game should be sold. Personally I don't care because I'm rarely interested in extra content, so I buy the standard version, beat the game and move on.

[Tanooki]

Uhh don't include me in that crazy.  Banned across the board?  No.  There are some honest developers or at least some honest releases from some developers around others who don't pull the cheat and scheme method.  They do sell worthwhile expansion pack sides additions after the fact, give away free optional campaigns and side stories with no impact to the actual game.  Stuff like that is excellent.  It's just the shit show antics of charging full/near full price for most of a game, to then charge higher for what was held back to complete it.  That's slime 101 antics right there.

[Creamhoven]

6 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

And you keep reasoning like an old fart; there's a big contradiction here. At the time, the games you're talking about were not considered classics YET, so there was no reason to focus on them. And in twenty years you'll regret not spending time on today's classics like Breath of the Wild or Dark Souls. 😩

Okay, I can see your point that games werent recognized as classics. The ignorance towards gaming, looking at it as simply toys for children has been an obsticle for appreachiating the classics for sure. Today however we are educated or experienced enough to appreachiate a classic when it is released. I have played dark souls and was instantly able to recognize it as a  classic. It is like a nice piece of taleggio that is crafted so beautifully and can only be the result of a sophisticated culture and tradition. Looking at how much money is in gaming these days and how much of the output is nasty trash it really is a huge disappointment. It is like having a nice croissant with raw milk butter fresh from the local farmer(gaming till the 2010s), so nice and beautiful and than you put a deepfried snickers bar on it. This is an assault! Shame on you you disgusting pigs! You should be put into american cheese and drown in it for this offense.

6 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

For the last time, games and movies were not better before. You just remember the good games and good movies from the past, while you forgot about all the duds that were released at the same time, and for good reason.

No you are rationalizing things. Gaming is a huge industry by now and if you cant see that there should be higher expectation I am sorry. Please treat yourself to a nice high quality meal and contemplate the beautiful things in life and how nice things could be.

6 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

Actually, thanks to indie development, there are probably more good games today than before.

I agree. Dont you see that you are making my point that the big players in culture creation when indie studios are outmanouvering them?

6 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

But never mind, keep being trapped into stupid nostalgia.

No you dont understand.

6 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

 

Also the reason why DLC has been generalized today is games cost more and more to create, while they are still sold around $60-70. So publishers are kinda forced to add DLC to make you pay the price the game should be sold. Personally I don't care because I'm rarely interested in extra content, so I buy the standard version, beat the game and move on.

No most of the trash shouldnt even be given away for free. Eventhough I disagree with you I appreachiate you perspective.

4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Uhh don't include me in that crazy. 

*heavy breathing*

4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Banned across the board?  No.  There are some honest developers or at least some honest releases from some developers around others who don't pull the cheat and scheme method.  They do sell worthwhile expansion pack sides additions after the fact, give away free optional campaigns and side stories with no impact to the actual game.  Stuff like that is excellent.  It's just the shit show antics of charging full/near full price for most of a game, to then charge higher for what was held back to complete it.  That's slime 101 antics right there.

I wish Nook in animal crossing was DLC.