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I said come in! posted:I really have zero interest in a new LOTR mmorpg. I would rather get a single player open world RPG that is super ambitious in scope. Paw closes, Bethesda gets the rights
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May 20, 2023 22:39
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Starting towards the end of last year, AGS announced that they'd transition away from the team's monthly Developer Videos and shift towards a weekly video series called Forged in Aeternum. While this initially seems like a good decision, because those monthly videos tended to be overly long and sparse on meaningful information, the new weekly cadence hasn't exactly helped with the game's communication issues or the fact that the videos still feeling underwhelming in providing useful details about the game's development. Today's 4 minute long video provides a really good example of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voC_XhTnPaM I wouldn't recommend watching the video if you want to learn more about New World as a player, but I think it's worth the time if you want a great metaphor of how much AGS seems to focus on meeting content-delivery deadlines rather than content quality thresholds. The video is essentially 2 people explaining the most fundamental idea of software versioning schemas, and I don't see how anybody could think it was a worthwhile use of viewers' time. On a related note, the game is now down to record-low player numbers again (dropping below last year's bottoming out), and there's at least 6 more weeks until the game's next major update (the release of Season 2, which will add transmog and a larger-scale group PvE battle). Edit: In more New World news, they're finally starting to address the issue of their dwindling population not being able to support more than 1 server in various regions, focusing only on the AP-Southeast region for now:  Of course, they're doing it in a hosed up way. When they initially launched the Fresh Start Servers, they released an FAQ ahead of time, and one of the things they said was that Fresh Start Servers would NEVER be merged with Legacy Servers. Obviously, the situation is dire enough to warrant them breaking that promise, but it seems like instead of being direct about it they're taking this weird transitional step where they're just changing a dead Fresh Start Server into a Legacy Server... which only enables existing Legacy characters to now transfer to the previously Fresh Start Server (using a paid transfer token). It's a pointless exercise that they obviously think doesn't technically break their promise, but it also doesn't benefit players in any way. Also, this took them way too long to take action on, and it should already be happening for the South America and US-West regions as well. Here's some population charts for reference:    In summary, AGS is doing something several months too late, and they're doing it in a way that isn't just bad, it's genuinely hard to understand their thought process behind it. Edit 2: To top everything off, they started a new half-off sale for the game today. So, you know, never a better time to get started! Discospawn fucked around with this message at 23:00 on May 22, 2023 |
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May 22, 2023 17:59
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Discospawn posted:In summary, AGS is doing something several months too late, and they're doing it in a way that isn't just bad, it's genuinely hard to understand their thought process behind it. Just retroactively post this at the start of every new page and it'll have always been on point.
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May 22, 2023 23:05
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Earn Númenorean Ducats for completing daily activities, or acquire in Strider's Store (695 for $7.99 BEST VALUE)
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May 22, 2023 23:21
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They've made another flurry of News releases today, this time announcing their plans for Season 2 of the game, scheduled to launch on July 6th. They're pushing a new build out to the Public Test Server with some of this content in a few days, so we'll wait and see how that plays out, but 1 of the funniest things about the announcement is related to to heavily-anticipated Transmog system they're adding to the game. The feature won't be part of the game when Season 2 launches, but instead is being advertised as a "mid-season" release, and of course it will be based on a "Transmog Token" system where tokens can be earned through the Season Pass or microtransactions. It's impossible to tell if the Transmog feature is just delayed because it hasn't been implemented yet, or if this is a marketing tactic to try to get players to return to the game halfway through the Season. For Season 1, the player population is already down to pre-Season-1 numbers, with 6 weeks left until Season 2, but trying to fix this by pushing back 1 of the most anticipated parts of Season 2 might just result in players not bothering to re-install on the Season 2 launch date. Edit: Also, a new emote in the cash shop store: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlH-YS-gbD4 and 2 new skins: 
Discospawn fucked around with this message at 21:45 on May 23, 2023 |
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May 23, 2023 19:13
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Wait, how is this transmog system different from what is literally already in the game now? The current system is fine.
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May 23, 2023 23:23
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I said come in! posted:Wait, how is this transmog system different from what is literally already in the game now? The current system is fine. Obviously, there are a lot of details that are still unknown that could make the system underwhelming, but it's still a new/different option than the only skins in the game being the ones from the cash shop (especially considering their often dreadful quality).
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May 24, 2023 02:41
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Wait it’s Destiny transmog but only for money? Even Destiny isn’t that greedy.
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May 24, 2023 03:58
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yeah lol that is an extremely poo poo system and is ultra greedy.
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May 24, 2023 05:16
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Here are the results of me going down the Amazon Games rabbit hole this week. A History of Failure Amazon Games' product catalog from their Wikipedia article:  Considering that the studio was founded in 2012 and has been reported as spending hundreds of millions of dollars annually, at least during some points in its existence, the results are... not stellar. Let's take a look at their unreleased games (the ones that haven't been cancelled) and see how things are progressing. Blue Protocol This anime-inspired, free to play MMO developed by Bandai-Namco signed a publishing agreement with Amazon Games that was announced in December of 2022, with a projected release in 2023. Yesterday, it was announced that the game's release would be delayed for Western audiences from until 2024 (specific date TBD). Perhaps more strangely is how there has been virtually 0 Western coverage of the game by Amazon, as the linked News article on the game's official US website is the only activity the site has seen since the game was originally announced back in December 8th, 2022. Throne & Liberty Throne and Liberty is a Korean MMO that has been in development hell since it was first announced in 2011. After a long period of silence after the publishing agreement was announced in February, the game finally provided an update on the game's progress by hosting an open beta for it. Apparently, it leans very heavily into the tropes of Asian-MMOs that promote mindless grinding over any other type of content, going so far as to make combat in the game happen automatically for PvE content. Here's the top clip on Twitch from the game's beta earlier today: https://clips.twitch.tv/FunDullJayDogFace-kOy5mMKrTk4TuKp1 Every mention I could find of the beta from English sources had unanimously negative comments about it, and the game's subreddit is actually pretty hilarious to read through right now. Untitled Tomb Raider & LotR MMO Amazon Games also holds the publishing rights to the next Tomb Raider game (which has yet to be officially announced or given a title/time-table), and they also made the big announcement last week about reaching an agreement to develop & publish the next Lord of the Rings MMO. The IP/development rights to both Tomb Raider and Lord of the Rings video games are owned by Swedish holding company Embracer Group, which today saw its stock price plummet by nearly 50% after 1 of their recent, $2 billion acquisition deals fell through at the last minute, with no publicly available details about the situation. This is not the first bit of bad news the group has released this year, as they've repeatedly had to update their financial projections downward. This is the kind of thing that can destroy companies like this, if there becomes a negative feedback loop of the stock dropping due to the lack of delivering on promises, and then the business not being able to accomplish their new goals because they have less capital due to the drop in stock price. Conclusion It looks like Amazon Games is a house of cards caught in an earthquake.
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May 24, 2023 18:40
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4 Fake Games is all you need to revolutionize the industry.
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May 25, 2023 17:58
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They've had to delay the Season 2 PTR, in exactly the same way that they had to delay the Season 1 PTR: I genuinely think AGS is an organization that rigidly enforces following established process diagrams, but they fail to update those plans when they prove deficient. The only difference between these 2 delays is that they closed the official forums, so there's no link to follow for more information or updates. Edit: Meanwhile, as a follow up to yesterday's post, Embracer Group's stock has continued to fall, and today's release of "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum" has resulted in an officially licensed Lord of the Rings game receiving some of the worst reviews a video game has ever had. Both of those things don't bode well for AGS' AAA LotR MMO. Discospawn fucked around with this message at 21:46 on May 25, 2023 |
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May 25, 2023 21:30
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What the gently caress is this Gollum game. Where did it come from?
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May 26, 2023 18:53
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Rexicon1 posted:What the gently caress is this Gollum game. Where did it come from? Its a 3rd person action / stealth game that just came out, and it's pure loving garbage. 30% average review score on Steam, and around 35% average on MetaCritic.
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May 26, 2023 18:58
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It is not an action/stealth game, there's 0 combat, and you can reasonably get through the first 60% of the game without doing a single stealth takedown. it's a "platformer" with bad physics, mind numbingly simple puzzles (I am including the "stealth" in the puzzles part since it's entirely standing in shadows and waiting for someone to patrol past you) and no collectables, and it charges you 10 dollars if you want the elves to speak in the elf language and not english. It looks and feels like an original xbox launch title that jumped out of a time portal from 2001 and it wasn't even one of the good ones. They are charging people 60 dollars for this (70 dollars if you want the aforementioned sindarin pack and also additional goodies like A Lore Menu)
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May 26, 2023 19:49
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I said come in! posted:Its a 3rd person action / stealth game that just came out, and it's pure loving garbage. 30% average review score on Steam, and around 35% average on MetaCritic. Nah it must actually be good, PC Gamer gave it a 64%, in contrast they gave Dead Island 2 a 55% despite it being a perfectly enjoyable, if derivative and uninspired, game. In fact the same "publication" gave New World a 60%, which means it's nearly as good as the Gollum game!
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May 26, 2023 21:31
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Scruffpuff posted:Nah it must actually be good, PC Gamer gave it a 64%, in contrast they gave Dead Island 2 a 55% despite it being a perfectly enjoyable, if derivative and uninspired, game. In fact the same "publication" gave New World a 60%, which means it's nearly as good as the Gollum game! Same reviewer for each review?
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May 26, 2023 23:12
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Zotix posted:Same reviewer for each review? Good point. Nope - not for any of those three. I'll have to dig into the reviewer's other articles to unravel the mystery. Maybe it's a MST3000 kind of appreciation. Scruffpuff fucked around with this message at 00:13 on May 27, 2023 |
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May 27, 2023 00:02
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I'd hate to see what kind of dumpster fire they'd still give a 49%.
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May 27, 2023 01:02
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It is no longer unusual to have developers post apologies immediately after their game is released, but the one for Gollum seems sadder than most: I think what makes it different is the lack of any specific references to why the game is bad or what they're doing to fix it. They're just apologizing for its existence. On a related note about bad games, here is the most popular post on New World's subreddit today:  Never mind that the subreddit's top post of the day only has 50 upvotes, it's funny that they're using the quality of the AGS-published Throne & Liberty to somehow praise New World by comparison. Oh, and the delayed PTR release still didn't happen today, so the assumption is that it won't come out until next week at the earliest. There's been no more communication from AGS about it, but this officially makes the Season 2 progress worse than the Season 1 rollout, where the initial PTR delay was only for 1 day. AGS went to all the trouble of switching to a model based on delivering 3-month Seasonal updates, with what seemed like a meager amount of content, and it turns out they still managed to overestimate their ability to deliver on the revised schedule.
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May 27, 2023 03:10
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It's gotten to the point where I don't think I'd trust AGS to develop and release a match 3 game and release it on time.
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May 27, 2023 09:40
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Discospawn posted:I think what makes it different is the lack of any specific references to why the game is bad or what they're doing to fix it. They're just apologizing for its existence. Not sure that's all that different. The Redfall "apology" comes off the same way. The Saint's Row reboot seems to have be different, with the studio releasing a lot of things to fix moment-to-moment gameplay pretty aggressively, but they're hamstrung by the core design (no, I'm not towing a car across the map several times, thanks).
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May 27, 2023 14:14
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Guys I hosed up. I brought this game.
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May 28, 2023 03:51
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HardKase posted:Guys I hosed up. smh
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May 28, 2023 03:55
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HardKase posted:Guys I hosed up.  Steam has a 2 hour played window.
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May 28, 2023 07:50
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You can always just degenerate into a Capitalist Consumer Robot and Get Your Money's Worth.
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May 28, 2023 11:36
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HardKase posted:Guys I hosed up. how are u enjoying it so far
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May 28, 2023 13:52
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Scruffpuff posted:Not sure that's all that different. The Redfall "apology" comes off the same way. The Saint's Row reboot seems to have be different, with the studio releasing a lot of things to fix moment-to-moment gameplay pretty aggressively, but they're hamstrung by the core design (no, I'm not towing a car across the map several times, thanks). The redfall and Gollum apologies just read like the boilerplate stuff publishers/developers feel obligated to put out because everyone does that now. Not an ounce of sincerity.
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May 28, 2023 22:37
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add darktide to the list of fake dev apologies for making poo poo games
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May 29, 2023 05:13
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Thirsty Dog posted:The redfall and Gollum apologies just read like the boilerplate stuff publishers/developers feel obligated to put out because everyone does that now. Not an ounce of sincerity. they misspelled the name of the gollum game in the apology letter. they called it The Lord of the Ring: Gollum which has a certain kind of accuracy to it, but not the right kind lol
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May 29, 2023 05:21
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I saw a cutscene for Gollum, where an NPC demands Gollum make his way to the "breeding room" and now I have to walk back what I said about the game being bad lol.
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May 29, 2023 06:06
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First of all, who even asked for a game starring Gollum? Seriously what the hell were they thinking
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May 29, 2023 07:55
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a gollum game where you're being a lovely little monster biting orc ankles and snatching food from giant spiders and drowning idiots who wander into your cave for 100 years could have been tight. instead in this one you Hang Out With Some Guys, do chores, and raise a bird
Babe Magnet fucked around with this message at 08:13 on May 29, 2023 |
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May 29, 2023 08:02
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Mercury_Storm posted:First of all, who even asked for a game starring Gollum? Seriously what the hell were they thinking It would have been cool if it was like the two Styx games, but it wasn't. Or hell, it could have been cool if it was basically Lord of the Rings meets the Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, but no one involved in this mess was that creative.
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May 29, 2023 08:22
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I remain convinced that a higher up at Daedelic has always wanted to make a Gollum game cause I can’t imagine another reason that it would be done over dozens of more interesting LOTR adventures.
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May 29, 2023 08:25
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I don't think there's anything conceptually wrong in making a Gollum game, just.. This particular Gollum game.
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May 29, 2023 09:30
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Babe Magnet posted:they misspelled the name of the gollum game in the apology letter. they called it The Lord of the Ring: Gollum which has a certain kind of accuracy to it, but not the right kind lol They actually called it “The Lord of Ring: Gollum” which is even funnier. My SA account now is wholly dedicated to reminding everyone of this in any thread where it comes up, forever.
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May 29, 2023 18:18
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Goillum looks so bad I really wanna play it, but I deffo am not gonna pay for it
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May 29, 2023 20:34
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Amazon Video recently released a new, exclusive series called The Gryphon, which is a Young Adult, dark fantasy series in a similar vein to Stranger Things, based on an existing novel series. I hadn't heard anything about it, and I don't seem to be the only one because there's no Wikipedia page or Metacritic reviews for the series, but according to IMDB it is originally a German-language series that has been dubbed for English-speaking audiences. I bring this up because yesterday, Amazon Games announced that they were releasing a new Twitch drop for New World, with assets inspired by the series. As a reference point, here's what the main antagonist of They Gryphon looks like:  And here's the New World skins:   Call me cynical, but it seems like an attempt to justify the game's existence by using the power of SYNERGY, except Amazon Video's exclusive offerings have had an extremely inconsistent track record, and it looks like they decided to SYNERGIZE with an exclusive TV series that even Amazon Video decided wasn't worth promoting. The outfit skins look genuinely cool on their own, and they seem like well-done adaptations of the character from the TV show, but the big dumb helmet/mask and its weird origins made me laugh. Discospawn fucked around with this message at 17:14 on May 31, 2023 |
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May 31, 2023 17:11
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the twitch drops are available now by the way. you can just bring up a twitch streamer and mute them and still earn the drops.
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May 31, 2023 17:23
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