Minor Nitpicks in Gaming

[psychic_dream]

There are a couple of minor gripes I have with modern gaming that I rarely see anyone mention, let alone explore in detail. A few of them are:

1. Performance degradation - It puzzles me that technical issues like shader compilation stutter seldom get brought up. In recent big studio releases, you can end up waiting 10 minutes or more just for everything to load, and even then, performance isn’t always consistent - even on a decent, up-to-date PC.


2. Bugs and crashes - Another annoyance on the technical front is how common bugs and crashes have become. It feels like people have simply accepted glitches and random crashes as the norm. Back in the 6th generation, devs were expected to deliver polished, functional games. If a title launched broken, it would get heavily lambasted by both the customer base and reviewers. Nowadays, day one patches and ongoing roadmap updates are expected parts of a game’s lifespan.


3. DLCs - This ties back to my previous point. With the PS2 and GameCube, what came on the disc was the full game - no updates, no future add-ons. Everyone experienced the same thing. So it strikes me as strange when people ask studios like Larian or FromSoft to produce DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3 or Sekiro, not recognizing that they’re contributing to the ongoing practice of breaking games into parts. They seem oblivious to how they’re enabling the issue.


4. UI design - Whatever happened to imaginative UI design? Almost every modern game seems to have the same bland interface. You see your character idling in the background while navigating clean, Unix style menus clearly meant for controllers. Someone once posted a collage on 4chan highlighting how strikingly similar modern game UIs all appear - I wish I could find it again.


5. Social media integration - This one’s self-explanatory. I’m not a fan.



What subtle flaws in gaming do you rarely see people talk about?

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

Fans giving excuses for developers launching broken games / releasing DLC that’s way behind schedule which people paid for .

It absolutely drives me up the wall how in any other service/ product this wouldn’t be tolerated but games get a free pass and even worse is how there are people actually **** on individuals who bring up those legitimate issues.

[maidenhaver]

Gaben could squeeze their nuts, but he won't.

[Stack of Turtles]

3. DLCs - This ties back to my previous point. With the PS2 and GameCube, what came on the disc was the full game - no updates, no future add-ons. Everyone experienced the same thing. So it strikes me as strange when people ask studios like Larian or FromSoft to produce DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3 or Sekiro, not recognizing that they’re contributing to the ongoing practice of breaking games into parts. They seem oblivious to how they’re enabling the issue.

"Expansion Packs" and other types of addons have been around since the 90s. For that matter, sequels are just the same thing at the end of the day.

[maidenhaver]

3. DLCs - This ties back to my previous point. With the PS2 and GameCube, what came on the disc was the full game - no updates, no future add-ons. Everyone experienced the same thing. So it strikes me as strange when people ask studios like Larian or FromSoft to produce DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3 or Sekiro, not recognizing that they’re contributing to the ongoing practice of breaking games into parts. They seem oblivious to how they’re enabling the issue.

Lots of console games had revisions and patches, some were catastrophically bad, but I never bought games at release, so I was spared.

[J1M]

Picking up crafting items.
Crafting items going in the inventory.

[ThulsaDoomer]

What subtle flaws in gaming do you rarely see people talk about?

Waiting. Endless ******* waiting before gameplay finally begins. Waiting for a 5+ minute cutscene, waiting for animations, waiting for terrible dialogue, etc. Turn based is plagued with this disease, but RPGs are not far behind.

[Cipher]

3. DLCs - This ties back to my previous point. With the PS2 and GameCube, what came on the disc was the full game - no updates, no future add-ons. Everyone experienced the same thing. So it strikes me as strange when people ask studios like Larian or FromSoft to produce DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3 or Sekiro, not recognizing that they’re contributing to the ongoing practice of breaking games into parts. They seem oblivious to how they’re enabling the issue.

"Expansion Packs" and other types of addons have been around since the 90s. For that matter, sequels are just the same thing at the end of the day.

Except, because an expansion pack involved a new purchase that required a previous purchase, usually devs had to actually put some content into them or else there was a high chance no one would buy it. Also, most expansions came due to sales. Since the game actually made a good profit, then the devs could provide additional content that maybe was planned early and had to be cut or stuff that they wanted to do but couldn't due to lack of understanding of the engine or lack of time.

Take Brood War for the original Star Craft. You get 2 new units for the 3 species/factions. But, with that you also got a host of balance changes and a whole new single player campaign.

Lord of Destruction for Diablo II. 2 new full classes, a host of balance changes and new mechanics with the introduction of charms and runes as well as new full Act and area.

Compare that to the original DLC and all you fans of Oblivion that created this mess, the ******* Horse Armor. Sure, it was cheap but it was also an extremely minute amount of content. That opened the flood gates for the corpos to start to nickel and dime customers with on disc DLC, day 1 DLC and such. Blatantly showing the content was there all along and deliberately planned from the get go to be sold separately.

I've said this in a different thread, but as much as it is convenient to just one click download and install games instead of relying on CDs that can get scratched or destroyed, that made is so devs don't really have to invest in QA. Why should they? Gamers have demonstrated that they will gladly pay EXTRA to play the game a few days early in a very late beta version and let them patch the errors away after gamers have paid, handsomely at times, to QA their game. I also said this on a previous thread, but that's also why there's no need for optimization. Back then, in the PS2 era they had to optimize games to fit the DVD storage space into what amounted to basically witchcraft. Now, they don't. They will give you a 300gb download and if you don't have enough space then you are SoL.

The reason that they couldn't just patch the game later easily made it so they really had to put some polish and QA before release as something like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077 would NEVER get a 2nd chance. The only reason those game got it was because gamers already had the game and couldn't refund it. If those where physical only releases, with a promised "expansion" pack that would also fix the game into the 2.0 state no one would have bought it. Yes, its a great commodity that you get the fixes for free now even without the DLC. Back then, you would have to get the expansion and they wouldn't be able to convince folks to just "trust them this time".

[Stack of Turtles]

3. DLCs - This ties back to my previous point. With the PS2 and GameCube, what came on the disc was the full game - no updates, no future add-ons. Everyone experienced the same thing. So it strikes me as strange when people ask studios like Larian or FromSoft to produce DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3 or Sekiro, not recognizing that they’re contributing to the ongoing practice of breaking games into parts. They seem oblivious to how they’re enabling the issue.

"Expansion Packs" and other types of addons have been around since the 90s. For that matter, sequels are just the same thing at the end of the day.

Except, because an expansion pack involved a new purchase that required a previous purchase, usually devs had to actually put some content into them or else there was a high chance no one would buy it. Also, most expansions came due to sales. Since the game actually made a good profit, then the devs could provide additional content that maybe was planned early and had to be cut or stuff that they wanted to do but couldn't due to lack of understanding of the engine or lack of time.

Take Brood War for the original Star Craft. You get 2 new units for the 3 species/factions. But, with that you also got a host of balance changes and a whole new single player campaign.

Lord of Destruction for Diablo II. 2 new full classes, a host of balance changes and new mechanics with the introduction of charms and runes as well as new full Act and area.

Compare that to the original DLC and all you fans of Oblivion that created this mess, the ******* Horse Armor. Sure, it was cheap but it was also an extremely minute amount of content. That opened the flood gates for the corpos to start to nickel and dime customers with on disc DLC, day 1 DLC and such. Blatantly showing the content was there all along and deliberately planned from the get go to be sold separately.

I've said this in a different thread, but as much as it is convenient to just one click download and install games instead of relying on CDs that can get scratched or destroyed, that made is so devs don't really have to invest in QA. Why should they? Gamers have demonstrated that they will gladly pay EXTRA to play the game a few days early in a very late beta version and let them patch the errors away after gamers have paid, handsomely at times, to QA their game. I also said this on a previous thread, but that's also why there's no need for optimization. Back then, in the PS2 era they had to optimize games to fit the DVD storage space into what amounted to basically witchcraft. Now, they don't. They will give you a 300gb download and if you don't have enough space then you are SoL.

The reason that they couldn't just patch the game later easily made it so they really had to put some polish and QA before release as something like No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk 2077 would NEVER get a 2nd chance. The only reason those game got it was because gamers already had the game and couldn't refund it. If those where physical only releases, with a promised "expansion" pack that would also fix the game into the 2.0 state no one would have bought it. Yes, its a great commodity that you get the fixes for free now even without the DLC. Back then, you would have to get the expansion and they wouldn't be able to convince folks to just "trust them this time".

One of the first games I ever played, released in 1999, sold the near equivalent of skins or style packs. There was a little more content to them because they behaved differently, but I'm not sure I believe anyone cared more about that than the looks.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Character's casual outfits being sold as DLC rather than useable as a part of the game. $50 casual costume DLCs.

[asf]

good fanboi is ded fanboi

[Tweed]

3. DLCs - This ties back to my previous point. With the PS2 and GameCube, what came on the disc was the full game - no updates, no future add-ons. Everyone experienced the same thing. So it strikes me as strange when people ask studios like Larian or FromSoft to produce DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3 or Sekiro, not recognizing that they’re contributing to the ongoing practice of breaking games into parts. They seem oblivious to how they’re enabling the issue.

"Expansion Packs" and other types of addons have been around since the 90s. For that matter, sequels are just the same thing at the end of the day.

DLC style expansions have been around since then too. Origin was very fond of them. Speech packs, mission packs, etc. Hell, the Forge of Virtue for Ultima 7 handed you a 2-4 hour long adventure that gave you an OP sword, multiple pieces of magical armor, and boosted your stats to max. Also, if you knew where to look you could access another ridiculously powerful weapon for your party. That's the epitome of modern DLC and that came out in 1992.

[Tangerine]

3. DLCs - This ties back to my previous point. With the PS2 and GameCube, what came on the disc was the full game - no updates, no future add-ons. Everyone experienced the same thing. So it strikes me as strange when people ask studios like Larian or FromSoft to produce DLCs for Baldur’s Gate 3 or Sekiro, not recognizing that they’re contributing to the ongoing practice of breaking games into parts. They seem oblivious to how they’re enabling the issue.

"Expansion Packs" and other types of addons have been around since the 90s. For that matter, sequels are just the same thing at the end of the day.

DLC style expansions have been around since then too. Origin was very fond of them. Speech packs, mission packs, etc. Hell, the Forge of Virtue for Ultima 7 handed you a 2-4 hour long adventure that gave you an OP sword, multiple pieces of magical armor, and boosted your stats to max. Also, if you knew where to look you could access another ridiculously powerful weapon for your party. That's the epitome of modern DLC and that came out in 1992.

The Ultima series is the video game equivalent of "Simpsons did it."