I can’t remember which of the videos it was, I think it was Skillup, but it seems like Helldivers 2 is live-service until stated otherwise, since Sony said the only games releasing day and date on PC are live service. Ah well. It was the most interesting looking to me of the 4 Sony Sci-Fi shooters shown. I never played the first one, but I’m fairly certain it was really different from what this game appears to be.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@Th3solution The first game was a isometric twin stick shooter, though less arcadey feeling then Housemarque's games. The game was pretty tough to play especially solo though other players can randomly join your missions if you allowed it. I seem to recall you can call for airstrikes or request new weapons to be dropped.
Everything in the first game seems to have carried over.
As for the live service element, I can see them doing seasonal missions and locations with the MTX been focused on cosmetics.
The news about The Last of Us is so weird to me. I was really looking forward to Factions, but I never really saw it as this AAA Destiny-like service game. Just a standalone updated version of the first Factions, in which they didn't care about keeping the game running for aeons and aeons, just a product to cash in on TLOU hype. A kind of AA release.
Apparently it was shaping up to be something different, bigger. And that's puzzling to me. Why would you let a studio like Naughty Dog, that is great at a certain thing, not just be great at that thing? Wouldn't if be way easier to find a good multiplayer studio, to let them make a big TLOU game?
Not saying a single player studio should never be allowed to make a multiplayer, because they should if they have a vision for it. But I don't think going from TLOU2 to Destiny makes any sense practically. Testing the waters with this release and gaining experience, that would make so much more sense.
It's... I don't get this story. How can Naughty Dog and Sony take such big risks? No sense to me.
@Kidfried I was surprised that they revealed that it's set in San Francisco when it would have been more efficient to just set it in Seattle again. My whole vision of what I thought it would be was more like The Division where you had a large environment to do mission and resource gather for your camp but there would be infected hop spots that you needed other players to help get through.
I personally don't think Sony are interested in having a multiplayer mode to compliment their single player game because it won't drive the kind of revenue they would be after.
@Ralizah@Kidfried The thing is that I've read people's arguments for why they disliked the showcase and I agree with their points. I think it's because I haven't been a huge part of the PlayStation "fandom" in recent years due to my interest in Xbox that I wasn't bothered with things like lack of first-party titles. Because that's actually my reasoning for why I dislike Xbox so much now; they simply aren't releasing much first-party content. But 2022 was at least a good year for Sony in terms of that, with titles such as God of War Ragnarok, Gran Turismo 7 and Horizon Forbidden West. I do think I'm going to be much harsher on Microsoft during their Xbox showcase next month if they don't show a lot of first-party content, lol.
I was actually planning on watching the showcase live on PushSquare but I fell asleep right before it started lol. But maybe that was a good thing! Maybe it's for the best to enjoy these things on your own in order to avoid being affected by others' opinions.
@Kidfried Yeah, that was somewhat frustrating to see (the Bungie take-down of Naughty Dog’s Factions). I know that’s the whole reason Sony bought Bungie — to be an internal consultant and lead their live-service initiative. But I have no doubt that whatever ND had brewing was of very high quality. The reason Bungie shot it down (pun not intended) was because they didn’t think it had the ability to keep gamers’ engagement long term. So there you have it — A good game does not necessarily translate into a good live service game. And I would venture to say the opposite — A good live service game does not require that it be a good game! All it requires is that it keep people coming back for a long time. Which is a sad statement to have to make.
Its really quite frustrating, since the ND multiplayer modes that they did for Uncharted and TLoU were really good and fun even for me, who doesn’t like multiplayer. But of course with ND everything is going to be tight, cinematic, and have a clear direction and attention to detail. Those qualities aren’t necessarily what makes for good live service.
The scary thing is that Bungie must have signed off on Fairgame$ and Concord. You’d have to think if they had the power to veto the game being made by Sony’s flagship studio, then they would be keeping an even keener eye on these new studios. We haven’t seen gameplay of those games yet but I’d venture to say Factions probably had a more intriguing concept and structure than either of those, based on the trailers we saw.
I know you haven’t played TLoU2 yet, so without spoiling anything, there’s a few awesome sections in that game that show a really good idea of what a TLoU multiplayer game would be like. The gameplay in TLoU2 is really, really good. I think it would translate well into the online arena, which is already so saturated with Sci-Fi FPS games.
@Kidfried
I personally don't even care, don't even like, don't even want to know every single things from those Western AAA rated M games on PS4 / PS5.
I pretend they don't exist.
Whatever fuzzy from those AAA games that made arguments by peoples here, I just don't care their existence.
I just only care with the upcoming kids games I can pick for my PS4 / PS5.
Yes, they are not the games that users here in PushSquare talked about not even think about, doesn't matter at all for me since I only like, I only want to play more kids games, more cute games, more quirky games on PS4 / PS5.
And that makes me different from other users here.
So, for me, I don't know if it's a bad thing Bungie shot parts of it down. Development seems to have been rocky from the start: starting out as something then becoming something else, the involvement and then not involvement of Bend in this title, the fact that even before Bungie started to get involved, they had already two years of constantly delaying to show anything.
What Bungie did, the downsizing, might be an enormous blessing. Because I think Last of Us Factions functions better as a AA game than Sony's next flagship game it set out to be before Bungie came in. And retention is not only about making money due to people coming back, every multiplayer game should be able to retain player engagement over its gameplay loop. Maybe that loop was just not exciting, I don't know.
The baffling thing to me is that a studio like Naughty Dog tried or was forced to try to make the next big multiplayer game. They're experienced in cinematic games, let them do that. And if they want to do multiplayer games, please start out small first. As someone who works in software, I can definitely tell that most of the time increasing the scope of a project before release by a lot, often ends badly.
It seems like Sony took some of its biggest risks development wise in the development of Factions 2. And it seems to have backfired. That stuff happens in development, for sure, but from the outside it just seems like such an unnecessary risk to take in the first place. I would like to hear the full story, but we never will.
... So, it could als be the case that it was stupid advice of Bungie to scale down the Factions project.
@LtSarge Sometimes when I'm sleeping it feels like I'm wasting my life away. But in truth, if you had a good sleep I don't think you wasted your evening!
@Anti-Matter Being different. It's not always easy, but often it is a good thing. Just keep on rocking, and don't worry about mature games too much. Everyone likes what they like!
My main reason for disliking the showcase was that there wasn't much that appealed to me currently. There's stuff in there that might interest me in the future, but not yet.
For instance, I've not played Marvel's Spider-Man 1 or any Metal Gear game before. They are franchises that I'd likely enjoy, and are high up my wishlist. But until I get into them, I'm not going to take too much notice of new game announcements for them.
Similarly, I don't know what a Dragon's Dogma is, but perhaps that series might interest me once we see more trailers for the upcoming game.
Anyway, I'm waiting for the Summer Gamefest show. Maybe they'll have more third-party announcements that resonate with me. Likewise, there's Xbox's thing as well, they've traditionally been quite good with third-party announcements.
@Kidfried You’re right, I do think studios should maximize their strengths, but I doubt ND was pressured to make this MP game. I got the feeling that ND was passionate to do this on their own. I do think they were probably pressured to make it live service though.
What may have happened was something like this: ND: “We did a multiplayer mode with our other games back on PS3 and they were fairly popular. Let’s include one with TLoU2” Sony: “Ok, that’s fine, but it’s taking a while. I need to release something. We can’t wait any more. Let’s get the main game out the door and release this later.” ND: “Cool. If we do that we can make it much bigger and better. It’ll make more money to carve it out and sell it separate anyways.” Sony: “On second thought, we have a new focus on live-service. If we want to max out profits from a multiplayer title, let’s make it a service game.” ND: “Ok. Whatever that means. This is going to have an expertly fleshed out world and narrative, because you know, that’s what we do. We don’t do Fortnite.” Sony: “We can make it work” Bungie: “What you have here is not a live service game. People will play it and enjoy it but once they see the storyline will stop and then they’ll stop paying for microtransactions and updates. Plus. its just too ambitious to be updating with new content all the time. Scrap this project or at least spend less resources on it because you’re digging a deeper hole” Sony: “Okay. What do you think about these new studios we have and their shooter service games ideas?” Bungie: “Those can work. The resource allocation seems more reasonable and the games look vanilla enough to be able to add quick updates regularly. There’s no overly strong characters or themes that lock them into one isolated experience. People are going to love spending money on new animal masks for that heist game. Genius.”
😂
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
@crimsontadpoles Dragon’s Dogma was pretty cult on PS3. It had a kind of weird story and some incredibly hammy voice acting which made it quite good fun. But it also had a couple of unique features.
First, the pawn system. They were AI companions who you could completely customise and, from what I remember, allow different combat abilities. But you could recruit other peoples’ pawns (and send yours out too), earning the owner currency. If they were familiar with an enemy type, they might even offer advice on how to beat them.
And then the combat was kind of cool as you could climb onto enemies and try to attack them in different ways. It was always awesome to be clinging onto a chimera as it tried to fly off while you tried to take one of its heads off.
It was a really fun game and one that could make for a fantastic sequel if done right.
@Kidfried I think there is quite a big difference between making an 'online' mode for a game to keep people engaged after a decent campaign as part of a package and a 'complete' Online Experience worthy of paying Premium price tags for - where it is the 'Primary' reason to play, not an 'additional' PvP mode for those that want to keep playing in that 'world'.
Bungie know that a 'static' MP will lose players over time with only the 'hardcore' fans staying around. Destiny mixed in Story content (however 'weak' that was) but over 'years' has evolved. Halo too also came with a 'New' Story each time so there was 'depth' in the content and lore - not just the superficial running around on static maps killing other players.
The best Live Service games, the ones that seem to stick around anyway, 'evolve' and 'grow' over time to keep players 'engaged', to make gamers want to see where they go next etc. They add new Characters that expand the lore and/or 'Story', evolve the game over seasons and seasons etc - Its quite a different thing to just adding more maps to MP mode to keep things from getting too 'stale'...
@BAMozzy Yea, very well put. Personally I expected The Last of Us Factions to be more like a static multiplayer game like you described, but it seems to become very much a live game now. I am not surprised that Bungie wasn't too impressed by the live service part of Factions, seeing as Naughty Dog has never made a game like that before. And in truth, I don't know if they are the right studio to make such a game. But we'll see!
Forums
Topic: Showcase 2023 Predictions & Rumours
Posts 101 to 117 of 117
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic