What feature about a game makes you think the long dev time wasn't worth it?

Dying Light 2 has a tumultuous development cycle. Delays, Chris Avellone, and a worldwide pandemic probably didn't help what is already a difficult task. Now that the game is out it is being met with a mixed response. Some reviewers are loving it, others are running into a host of bugs and issues.

However, Dying Light 2 isn't unique. Plenty of games are announced, disappear, get delayed, or run into a litany of speedbumps along the way. Some are greeted with apprehensive glances. Others with tremendous excitement.

So what is that red flag for you? Before you've purchased or sat down to watch a Quick Look, what stands out about a game that reveals it isn't for you? Are you expecting some polished graphics? Extremely refined gameplay or design? Or just hoping it runs smoothly?

I'm having trouble reconciling the thread title ("how long is too long?") with the apparent question that is more about "what feature about a game makes you think the long dev time wasn't worth it?"

To kind of answer both, SpyParty comes to mind. It started some kind of development in 2009, became broadly playable to the public in I guess 2018 in Early Access, but is still considered an Early Access title on Steam. That's a long time, my dude.

Sure, the game looks better than the super early alpha footage, but for a game with such limited locations I still think the animations and models could look better, and they could've put more polish into the user experience where the spy controls/how-to-play are more approachable for those just picking up the game. The premise of an asymmetrical cat-and-mouse thing is cool, but I still think the controls for the spy are way too finnicky.

@bisonhero: Yeah I wrestled with a different title and couldn't think of one. But I did just steal yours :)

'procedural generation' of design is usually a red flag for me. granted that's painting with an extremely broad brush- and it has its uses (using it for environmental elements like foliage, to background design elements that the players won't scrutinize closely etc).

but when i hear things like destinations, quests, narrative, or other typically bespoke elements have been made modular and put in the blender- it usually tells me the scope of the project is too large, and the seams will start to show very quickly.

but i'm also a very particular type of player that prefers linear, heavily curated experiences over chaotic/emergent systems-based games, so take that for what it's worth.

I'll instead offer a feature that does justify more dev time: reactivity. When a game acknowledges what I've been up to an answers in kind. Some examples would include the nemeses in Shadow of War being very specific about the ways in which I've been killing and dying, Wildermyth building larger stories out of my actions in a run, and the gods in Hades always having some custom-tailored comments ready to go. When I see stuff like that, I think "hey that probably took a while to get right, but it was worth it."

Battlefield 2042 is still fresh on the mind, so I'm gonna say the 128 player matches. The change was completely unnecessary, and combined with the excessively large, and excessively empty maps, it made matches incredibly tedious. They should have just gone with maybe 48 v 48 on maps sized similar to those of the past games.

I always thought the Nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor was underbaked and rickety in a way that I never understood why anybody else found it impressive.
There's certainly the bones of something quite cool there but the actual feature as it shipped always felt pretty lacklustre and obnoxious in the way it drew attention to itself.

I feel like @gtxforza has something to say about the current state of the Gran Turismo franchise. Just look at how many Forza Motorsport and Forza Horizon games Turn 10 Studios has made or DiRT games Codemasters made in between the releases of Gran Turismo 6 and Gran Turismo 7.

Jesus, even Ubisoft Entertainment made more racing games in that span of seven to eight years, and for what? Better sounding cars?

@zombiepie:

Ok, here I go and let me explain the current state of these driving games that you brought up are.

Gran Turismo:

So what I can tell about Gran Turismo 7 (Polyphony Digital), is the developers have been working so hard to get it improved over the last two games (GT6 & GT Sport) in terms of the driving model (But retain as Simcade to make it accessible for controller pad and racing wheel users) while listening to the fanbase to bring back the nostalgic feel, but if it was a full sim then the controller pad optimization will be a total disaster.

If I remembered correctly that GT Sport was supposed to be GT7 during its development days and I guess that FIA asked the developer to focus more on online so it resulted in GT Sport (Making it as iRacing of Simcade, due to online feature similarities).

Forza Motorsport:

I can tell that the developer (Turn 10) appears are not ready to show up their next trailer of Forza Motorsport Reboot since they're on their progress of getting this game heavily improved over its predecessor (Forza Motorsport 7) such as driving model (In order to match up to Simcade standards), tire compound change to suit the track conditions and much more other features while listening to their fanbase.

Forza Horizon:

This is a Forza spin-off that focuses more on fun factors rather than the proper realistic driving so they have street racing scenes and stunt shows that appeared to be inspired by BBC's Top Gear series so they don't have to spend so much time developing these installments as well.

DiRT:

After the release of DiRT 3, this game has received quite a lot of complaints as the community criticised it for having an arcade feel as they wanted it to be more like a proper Rally Sim game such as Richard Burns Rally or something so they developed DiRT Rally (Some end up complaining to being too hard), while for DiRT 4 appears to be more forgiving by having dual driving models (Simcade and Sim) and stages as well, then DiRT Rally 2.0 appears to be an improvement over its predecessor.

Then finally the release of DiRT 5, this game appears to be developed by the team behind MotorStorm and OnRush while it gets criticised for its name because the gameplay is more focused on arcade rather than proper Simcade or Rally Sim, making it sound more like a spin-off just like Project Cars 3 from Slightly Mad Studio (A subsidiary of EA and Codemasters).

Generally:

They need to hire a good race car driver as their consultant and director for the physics, and here is an example: Lewis Hamilton consults Gran Turismo's driving model to get it as accurate as possible.

Also needed a good audio director and I know how Gran Turismo's engine audio has been heavily improved since GT Sport because they hired an audio director who previously worked for Forza Motorsport's car engine audio.

Edit: I can exactly tell why Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport will both remain as Simcade, because this is their respective developer's decision and marketing strategy for consoles.

Overall, I don't really see the issues with games being delayed multiple times as the developer uses more effort to polish their games.

The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is the best example of a game that got delayed from 2015 to 2017, then it turns out to be a very game for open-world fantasy action-adventure standards for hiring a good director, writer, etc.

The AI in Last Guardian. The best moments in that game are 100% scripted, so they really could have made it easier to "control" the beast. I get what they were trying to do, but the AI and feathers weren't worth the performance hit and so many years of delays. I enjoyed the game, but the studio functionally doesn't exist any longer, so....

I think there are a lot of games where it is obvious they took a lot of time planning, making content for games, but instead of making the content they should have polished a smaller amount of content better.

So, an example would be Assassin Creed games. Tons of blips on the map, thousands of fetch-quests and babbles to find; but I think they time had from each of these games would have been better served with a smaller amount of content that was better crafted. Thus, it is not that I want the games sooner, I just want they time they spend churning-out hundreds of meaningless quest to be used to polish a smaller amount of content. I think FarCry and Assassin's Creed are the poaster children for thinking more is better, when the more they create is ofte no that good - fluff stuffed games of little subtance.

Modding and esports tools when there's no guarantee that the community has any use for those, and if the community does get excited for those features, they'll figure out ways. Max Payne was a game that was supposed to be super open for modding, having seen the success of Quake mods around the same time. I don't know how it ended up being but nobody that I know of ever made anything with it. Same thing with esports, Blizzard made a big deal about all the esports features in Starcraft 2, but that game never reached the popularity of the original Starcraft that didn't have any of those features. Lesson of the story, devs really need to focus on making their games first and foremost fun to play.

On a different point, and possibly missing it, player-driven economies/marketplaces. Challenging gamers of all types to act rationally, generously or without conspiratorial agenda is taking on a lot, and play testing may not be enough to balance it. I can see the draw, but managing and tweaking an economy while keeping your playerbase happy subscribed is extremely tough, and usually requires tons of time. And so, I do think the time is better spent on story, gameplay or even audio experiences than trying to graph the lowest risky asset yield curve against the utility of a Big Bug Smasher 3K gunblade with 3 charges. It's ok if the marketplace is fake, just dont tell me I can play it to infinite profits that ruin the game.

Controversial for me to say it as much as I love the franchise. I feel Kingdom Hearts 3 with a whopping 13 years. It might have been licensing issues but the game didn't feel complete or a Kingdom Hearts game like the past games.

Here I go for the retrospective about Gran Turismo Sport and Forza Motorsport 7's flaws.

Gran Turismo Sport:

• Despite being described as a reboot while the community was criticizing the lack of content at launch
• Always needed internet connection for saves to prevent hacking (To me this is a bad excuse from the producer's logic)
• The penalty system is not perfect (Still having quite a lot of toxic players)
• The classic original/fictional racing circuits such as High Speed Ring, Mid-field Raceway, and many others are absent(So I believe that the original tracks from GT5/6 were tested in this game and they're not optimized for its physics so that's why they get redesigned in GT7 in order to optimize the physics properly)
• Lotus is absent (Licensing issues)

Forza Motorsport 7:

• Unbalanced homologation system (Making the class unfair)
• The brake distancing wise is just almost as unrealistic as Driveclub
• Some cars didn't have accurate driving physics compared to their real-life counterparts
• Buggy launch in its early days
• VIP didn't offer new cars aside from Forza Edition (Modified cars by the developer)
• Never had proper pitstop animations
• Having so many SUVs and Off-Road spec cars while this game itself didn't have any dirt tracks at all
• Lack of proper penalty system (Resulted to have so many toxic players)
• Some cars didn't have mirrors and working tail lights (Viewed in 3rd person perspective) until it gets fixed by later patches
• Japanese developed Toyota cars are absent (Licensing issues)