@davidh219: Oh no, I totally get it. This type of game is popular with the masses and therefor it must be torn down. We're too cool to be identifying with something mainstream.
You're forgetting that this is a comment section. Of course I'm going to jump down your throat for posting hypocrite nonsense.
In all fairness, it just seems like you are oblivious you're making one-sided arguments. Of course you can like The Witness. Of course you can dislike The Division. And of course you can for any reason you want. It's just that in a discussion, they are weak arguments. I could dislike The Witness for being first person, having an open world, trying to make a bright world and using snake maze puzzles. That would be my opinion, and It'd be fine. But you'd know that's a dumb argument.
That's all this is.
I should have read your comments first, then realised it was pointless writing my answer above, hehe. You already said it all perfectly. It's fine to not like The Division. The argument that it does nothing new is completely silly, however. Specially in the context of the games @davidh219 likes, which seem to be indie puzzle games and metroidvanias. The latter a genre of games named after the two games they are all derivatives of, hehe.
You guys, man... wtf. I know negativity is the shit online, the biggest cynic wins and all that, but come on. This multiplayer concept seems really novel and cool to me. Sure, you might be able to draw parallells to the "forever in early access" survival genre plaguing Steam, but that seems really reductive. I've played most of those game and you know what they all have in common? They are not fun to play.
Compared to most new releases this game seems fairly innovative and brings a lot of new and interesting concepts to the table and the visual style is on point. There haven't even been that many cover shooters coming the last couple of years. Hell, the last one of those I played was... uhm... Dark Void? I could go for hiding behind cover while shooting some dudes again, for sure.
I'm happy for you, and also jealous. It's never a bad thing to be able to enjoy something, because that means you win and I lose. I wish I could. Please keep that in mind and let's be friends, okay? You are the winner! =P
I'm far from a negative person, or cynical. I don't think it's at all cynical to point out stagnation when you see it. When the majority of full release games are shooters, you start to get annoyed about it. At a certain point they all seem like the same game with nearly identical controls. And you know, it's funny you should say the visual style is on point, because to me it has no visual style. It looks "realistic," like most other games. Like every other Tom Clancy game has always looked. When something is just doing what the default is, can it really be said to have an art style? I think it would be far more cynical to shit on something for trying something new and putting itself out there. People who dismiss The Witness out of hand because Blow is a pretentious ass are cynical. At least it looks and plays far differently than everything else that's out right now. It actually has an art style. Let's run down the elements this game has that are vastly over-represented in mainstream games.
Shooter
Open-world
Realistic/military setting, theme, and art style
Shallow progression system/rpg mechanics
Some people will always want more of that. Some people will also like a song no matter how much it's overplayed on the radio, but a lot more people probably won't, and that's what you're seeing in the comments right now. If this were the N64 era it would be 3D platformers people were calling generic and creatively bankrupt, because that's what they were making way too much of at the time with no major innovations on the concept. If you're not going to innovate very much, maybe don't make a game in an over-saturated genre with reused and overly familiar mechanics? Just a thought.
You know what I could go for? Things I've never seen before, or which there are only a couple of their kind every year, or that haven't been around for a long time and were just brought back. Every game I actually liked for the last several years fits one of those categories. The Witness/Talos Principle, Bloodborne, Mario Maker, Axiom Verge/Ori, etc. They all have something in common, which is that similar games don't show up often enough for me to get tired of them even a little bit. If I want to play a modern military shooter my options are staggering. It's going to take more than a slightly different approach to multiplayer to make me give even half of a fuck, but I'm glad you're excited about it.
Hey man, I guess we are both winners because the games you listed from last year all seem very dull to me. I did buy the Talos Principle and got maybe a third into it before dropping it. The rest of them were either completely unappealing to me, or complete letdowns. Bloodborne, for example. I never even tried it, because it looked like Dark Souls (which is one of my favourite games ever) without any options in how to shape your character. "You're going to use a gun and a sword and you're going to like it"! Very novel.
That said, there have been plenty of Ori/Axiom Verge games lately, "metroidvanias" if you will, they don't seem nearly as rare as you claim. And indie puzzle games are a dime a dozen.
You don't like this type of game, and that is fine! We all have different tastes. I just very much disagree that the games you like bring more novelty and innovation to the table within their genres than a game like The Division does to its genre.
This game looks like the most boring, generic, cookie-cutter garbage ever.
In what world? The only game that's even remotely similar to this game is Destiny and that's not even open world. There is literally no game existence that is like this.
Things I am sick of:
MMOs.
Cover shooters.
Over-the-shoulder camera angles in shooters.
New York City.
New York City getting destroyed.
Boring videogame voice actors with zero personality doing awkward reads of badly written dialog.
Random loot.
Open world games where 90% of the gameplay is walking around punctuated by fights against AI trash mobs.
Games with such crummy art direction and obsession with looking "realistic" that they have to layer tons of UI overlay cruft on screen to maintain playability.
Floaty UIs rendered at weird angles and with tons of pointless VFX that exist to look cool rather than actually be useful or readable (Dead Space, Borderlands, etc.).
Bullshit account systems nobody cares about that you are forced to use.
Ubisoft wasting 500 billion man hours that could have been spent doing something useful, like curing cancer.
Seriously, it's like someone took a list of every single boring ass mass market trope in videogames, and made a love letter to them.
Preach! You basically nailed my exact feelings. This is genericism the video game. It's like it was made by a robot taking every overused crappy trend and just mashing them together with zero imagination or creativity because those concepts are beyond its programming. I can't think of many games I would want to play less than this. But hey, at least it seems polished with decent controls? I guess?
You guys, man... wtf. I know negativity is the shit online, the biggest cynic wins and all that, but come on. This multiplayer concept seems really novel and cool to me. Sure, you might be able to draw parallells to the "forever in early access" survival genre plaguing Steam, but that seems really reductive. I've played most of those game and you know what they all have in common? They are not fun to play.
Compared to most new releases this game seems fairly innovative and brings a lot of new and interesting concepts to the table and the visual style is on point. There haven't even been that many cover shooters coming the last couple of years. Hell, the last one of those I played was... uhm... Dark Void? I could go for hiding behind cover while shooting some dudes again, for sure.
This is looking amazing. I've been waiting for this since they first announced it. It's great that we're finally getting to place where it looks like it might be released!
Pointing at someone is considered rude in North America. When I was a kid, my mom used to slap my finger with the wooden spoon when I'd point at someone around her.
It's up there with snapping to get a waiters attention.
I wouldn't take advice about proper behavior from someone who hits their kids with a wooden spoon but maybe that's an American thing too.
Wooden spoons make for polite kids, trust me!
Hopefully they don't make for kids who think hitting their own kids with wooden spoons is ok though.
Pointing at someone is considered rude in North America. When I was a kid, my mom used to slap my finger with the wooden spoon when I'd point at someone around her.
It's up there with snapping to get a waiters attention.
I wouldn't take advice about proper behavior from someone who hits their kids with a wooden spoon but maybe that's an American thing too.
So I read through that article. The only part of that article I find in Destiny today is the use of an ingame currency. Did I miss anything?
I'm sorry dude, I just don't feel the same about micro transactions as you do. They are not necessarily a bad thing in my book, SPECIALLY time saving ones. As a father with a full time job, sometimes I appreciate the ability to spend some cash to allow me to progress faster through a game. I definitely have more money than time. I don't see how this hurts anyone else, as long as spending money doesn't provide me with an advantage a non-paying player cannot have.
lol. How you "feel" has no bearing on the fact of the matter, which is that microtransactions are exploitative and predatory. The sole object of using a secondary currency is to obfuscate the true cost of a transaction. It has been demonstrated that people are far less able to understand the cost of a product when it is reframed in the context of a secondary currency. So right out of the gate, the point is to deceive.
Keeping these purchases cosmetic can only be defended from attacks of "pay2win." It cannot be defended from charges of being unethical, or exploitative, or predatory. The only attempt you can make is the one you indeed made here--"it's no different than an electric screwdriver"--which is completely fallacious because the electric screwdriver is a much better value proposition--it's a material object, you aren't restricted to using it only on screws provided by the screwdriver company, it can be used more than once, etc..--and the screwdriver makers aren't trying to confuse you. For the most part, anyway; there are obviously those who tell you your product comes in "just three easy payments," but those are unethical and exploitative practices, as well, and they're not *as* obfuscating as a secondary currency.
So if you want to say you don't care that Bungie/Activision is taking advantage of people, fine. Just say so. What you can't do, however, is pretend that they're not, or that they're just doing what all businesses do. Because that's not the case at all.
Oh, I made the mistake of thinking my opinion on the topic mattered. My bad.
@anund You're not giving this enough thought. Microtransactions aren't typical products. It's an entirely different paradigm. Read this:(it's not letting me post the link; just google "the psychology of free two play") and blush at the shady monitization model Destiny *already had* even before the $30 booster pack. It's an entirely different psychology, designed to deceive.
So I read through that article. The only part of that article I find in Destiny today is the use of an ingame currency. Did I miss anything?
I'm sorry dude, I just don't feel the same about micro transactions as you do. They are not necessarily a bad thing in my book, SPECIALLY time saving ones. As a father with a full time job, sometimes I appreciate the ability to spend some cash to allow me to progress faster through a game. I definitely have more money than time. I don't see how this hurts anyone else, as long as spending money doesn't provide me with an advantage a non-paying player cannot have.
@anund: I don't agree that pay2win business model would not be profitable. I think the amount of people who would stop playing as a result would be small. Arguably, the current level boost already is pay2win, or at least contains an element of pay2win, by providing an ability advantage to lower-level characters in potential PvP situations. It isn't a stretch to imagine them taking it further.
Also, that is not the entirety of my post. You ignored the part about it being a predatory practice that should be fought regardless of its impact on us as individuals.
Then we have to agree to disagree, because this is getting philosophical. I will say one thing though: if you're right and Bungie thinks they will get away with pay 2 win I'll see you on the barricades. We'll fight The Man together. I just think the current barricades are a bit premature and perhaps the people manning them have ulterior motives in that they are just looking for reasons to jump on the "Destiny sucks" bandwagon.
I ignored the "predatory practice" point because it made no sense. Selling a level boost is no more a predatory practice than selling you an electric scewdriver, or whatever other convenience item you can think up. You don't need it, you can always screw by hand, but if the price is right and the convenience is significant enough, it might be worth it. In this case, the price is insane and the convenience is miniscule, so it's no where near worth it for me, but it might be for someone else. There are plenty of people out there with fat wallets.
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