"There aren't even messages in the menus to tell you about the useless cosmetics store! How can this even be a game?" -Ubisoft Dev Probably
I'm getting Elden Ring Deja Vu.
Which means we're looking at another game of the year!
He wants a colorful amusement park RPG on rails that plays itself for him. He doesn't want to be bogged down by silly things like gameplay mechanics, he wants to paint by numbers.
You don't even climb a single radio tower let alone 300 of them.
My favorite is that the later Far Cry games mocked the trope that they invented. But then just added something slightly different. Ubisoft just can't help making checklists
I've played through Fallout 1 and 2 dozens of times.
I have yet to finish Fallout 4 or Fallout: New Vegas.
The sea change from "actual RPGs" to "shooters with occasional minor choices to make" enrages me.
Am I the one that’s out of touch? No, it’s the almost half a million players who are mistaken!
700k+ currently on Steam!
This aligns with my experience of a very particular kind of game designer. I worked with one who, in a casual conversation about games where someone said "there's no wrong way to have fun," they responded with "yes there is, and it's my job to tell people what the right way is".
This is not a systemic issue, at Ubisoft or anywhere else. It's a particularity of a kind of person who is deeply drawn to games, but who also doesn't see other people as, well, people. It's a person who has made friends with games and game systems because they're incapable of being friends with, well, sapient beings.
Video game studio projects tend to have multiple designers working on them, with the creative director (or just "director") and lead designer working on large scale design things - genre, core loop, etc - and progressively less senior designers working on progressively smaller, progressively more soul crushing design work. Think things like item design and balance. Weirdly enough, the ones who think they're the arbiter of fun don't generally progress very high up this chain.
Not in team-based design environments, at least.
The OP isn't wrong. Turn-based combat is falling out of favour with the majority of the new generation. Final Fantasy has dropped turn-based combat for the same reasons.
For several console generations now, all character expressions can be done in real-time. Actions such as ‘press the trigger and your character will shoot a gun’ and ‘press the button and your character will swing their sword’ can now be easily expressed without going through a command system.
It’s now common for gamers younger than me to love such games. As a result, it seems that it does not make sense to go through a command prompt, such as ‘Battle’, to make a decision during a battle.
It was always a design choice born from limitations. It's not going to disappear, but it was destined to decline in use once those limitations disappeared.
CRPGs based on TT rulesets and classic JRPGs aren't the same kinds of turn-based games. CRPGs have more in common with SRPGs and games like X-COM, the latter of which has been increasing in popularity when you look at all the games with turn-based tactical combat now compared to a decade ago.
There's no way all turn-based games are dying out. Some types are more popular than ever, including Western CRPGs. If anything, it's Realtime with Pause that's getting less popular in that space.
It's a design choice born from I'm playing the game while eating, if I twitch for timing I'll spill my drink
No it isn't. We had action games on the NES. pitfall wasn't turn based. It's a design choice that allows greater tactical choices.
They were never about hardware limitations. Limitations of imagination of the designers, maybe, but we've had action games for 35 years now.
Actions such as ‘press the trigger and your character will shoot a gun’ and ‘press the button and your character will swing their sword’ can now be easily expressed without going through a command system.
And yet we can't purge ourselves of the awfulness that is quick-time events. I don't buy the argument. It's an attempt to handwave away trends without discussing real causes and effect. If the suggestion here were true, other similar mechanics, such as QTEs, would have been dead a long time ago, not be a core element of a huge number of triple-A titles.
Being confident in your answer doesn't make you right.
More than one type of game exists. It is always a creative choice. Always has been. I could go into examples, but plenty of people have already provided those.
Fire emblem is super popular.
Personally, I just can't stand playing Larian Studio games. It's like playing with a vindictive DM. It was especially noticable in Divinity: OS2. I played as the skeleton guy who was permanently disguised. I'll encounter a random group of enemies.....and somehow, they just know to use heal on my undead guy to hurt him? He's disguised, what the fuck? Every enemy whether man, animal, or demon knew every weakness, knew which players had the lowest weaknesses, and would exploit the absolute fuck out of them. Exactly like a vindictive DM would.
Yeah I agree that's rough, and probably an unexpected interaction. That being said, other than that, I've played pretty much all Larian Games (even Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga) and I've never felt like the game is working against me, but I have felt like the game is of punishing difficulty in some unexpected ways. When you make a game with so many permutations, there are bound to be issues with some of the edge cases. Not defending them, I'm happy you shared a legitimate complaint, unlike the OP review which isn't a legitimate complaint, but is clearly just salt.
Your particular scenario does seem frustrating, I agree.
For the vindictive DM? Oddly enough, I like that! Lots of subversion to keep it interesting. At least for me who suffers from "pick one strategy in the beginning and run it to the end game".
You can't even pay to double the experience and money you get in game
I can imagine c-suites all over the industry scrambling to figure out what "no microtransactions" means
"You mean this game doesnt have constant pop ups, a giant arrow, repetitive companion dialogue OR flashing UI elements constantly reminding me what to do? How will I even know where I'm going?"
Literally hundreds of thousands of players are proving him/her wrong as we speak.
"If you can't sync with location and see that damn bird fly around again, what the hell are you even doing with your life?"
Do you think this person has ever gotten laid?
I think it would be illegal because they're not an adult.
They've probably coerced their subordinates once or twice.
I love turn based games. Not all of them, but a well made one is pretty sweet. I kinda stopped liking final fantasy at a certain point because it lost that
He just got frustrated because the tower got destroyed in the intro - how will he unlock the minimal now?
Reasoning like this is why they must work at Ubisoft. It's not like Ubisoft is known for their solid decision making.
Do I misunderstood what based means or is this sarcasm?
It's not sarcasm. Just because someone says something "based" doesn't mean they're right. It is "based" in the sense that it is an extremely unpopular opinion and this reviewer is extremely unapologetic.
Honestly though, what makes this funny/sad is that this isn't the first time an Ubisoft dev has gotten mad at a new fantasy RPG - these people (same guy?) had a similar reaction to elden ring which also broke records and went against industry norms. These "norms" have been terrible for gamers because they've allowed publishers to claim that they're making "better games" just because they managed to squeeze out a little more graphical fidelity since the last iteration. Then an independent dev comes around and shows the world how utterly incompetent these mega-publishers are, and their response is to cry and spew nonsense about how "real games" are supposed to be.
Sounds like somebody's hunny mussy was rancid that day.
Is this a corporate flunky? That's not how you do 1337speak. 7 is a T, not an I. Memento Morti guess works? But the phrase is memento Mori.
In actual critique, Ubisoft has no ground to complain about others games after shitting out the same trash unto death.
There have also been a number of big publishers complaining about bg3. That this shouldn't be used as a metric for RPGs because its such an outlier and offers too much to be at profitable. Which is telling.
Imagine their take on battlebit..
Someone feels threatened.
What re Ubisoft devs the saltiest in the business? Did they try and say the same shit about elden ring?
Do I misunderstood what based means or is this sarcasm?
based means roughly an unpopular but correct opinion or being yourself and stating your opinion without regard to consequences
Fucking wut. I've never historically liked turn based or isometric games and BG3 is engrossing as fuck. This person needs to step out of their comfort zone and take it for what it is, or just accept it's not for them instead of shitting on it.
I can’t wait to play it. But got to be honest, I think they’ve done a terrible job at translating Forgotten Realms “style” to the game.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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