Why I'm Getting A Refund For Outriders (The Jimquisition)

I think you found out why pre-ordering is being pushed so hard on digital. They want to lock in your money. Physical pre-orders made sense. GameStop wants to make sure they get the right number of games to the right stores. 5$ down that could be swapped for other pre-orders or purchase or returned was a good deal for me way back in the day. Now, pre-ordering is a service and they don't have to deliver a working product or refund a busted one. It is very disgusting and consumers need to rebel. (And by that I don't mean boycotts, I mean write letters, physical paper letters, to their political representatives and make demands.)

ABear

The Patent actually expired last November, so gameplay loading screens are back on the menu

Harry Moore

Now, is there an alternate universe where assholes hadn’t patented loading screen games and some of these $70 menu simulators curiously ended up taking off because their pitiful state gave significant access to superior gaming experiences on the endless loading screens?

Emil Johansen

When we had an entire second generation of Boomers in the Millenials, facts became debatable, apparently.

Trevor Bond

Tokyo Jungle is a gem that needs a pc release NGL

Harry Moore

Did You see that sony backtracked on the ps3 and vita digital stores? I had already gone to check that Tokyo Jungle was still working on my ps3 just in case.

phredgsanford

One reason I could see, as happened with Diablo 2, is to mitigate the risk of duped and hacked items. At one point the hacked items on D2 got so bad they were openly traded. I don't think the always online solution is the way to fix it, but it is A way to fix it. Qualifier to that though is having solid game support. League of Legends is always online, but that shit rarely goes down.

Harry Moore

I would really like to receive an honest explanation why this game has to be always online. I would like to point one thing out, though. I have been in a position where I was involved in configuring and analyzing a games meta data on the dev side and in this case it was 100% only used to help deciding how to improve the gameplay in further updates. Such as checking if the tutorial worked or if player spent too much time in a certain section or which part of the content was the most played and would gain the most from further content. The data was strictly handled anonymously as it was scrambled and encoded in the game client even before it reached the server, so it tracked gameplay events, not "the user" as an actual individual. It was super helpful and everything that was learned fed right back into making the game better. I obviously can't speak for other devs and publishers, I know that the f2p market uses those stats for maximizing money spent on ingame purchases which is either a grey zone or outright diabolical. But my point is, gathering data alone must not necessarily be something evil per se.

Death stranding was supposed to be a revolutionary game that was going be genere breaking. It was an interesting walking sim with a 45 minute ending and the worst gun combat I have played. But that is it. Borderland 3 was going to be a genre defying blah blah blah. 76 was the ultimate in something with the best gameplay and graphics since the dawn of time. It looks exactly like the division and anthem. My guess is that it does nothing new. Even if Steph managed to find it at all interesting, my guess is that it would be mediocre at best.

Benedict Holland

I’m a little baffled by the claim that it’s a unique entry into the looter shooter genre. Because to my eyes it looks like The Division but with a science fantasy aesthetic a la Borderlands and Destiny.

It isn't wierd at all. Steph is on a totally different platform. That is like saying that you find it wierd that their car won't turn on because you flew in a plane and it worked great. They could have different servers, terrible netcode, a broken game.... look at cyberpunk. It wasn't just graphics that didn't run on the ps4 or ps5. It was everything from top to bottom. It ran on a 7000 dollar pc because that is what they built it for and those were pcs that they used to test with. I don't know why we would be surprised that it didn't work on a ps4.

Benedict Holland

I was reminded of Lemmon laws. If the dealer doesn't fix the car problem 3 times, it is a Lemmon and they give you a new car. I wish we had something g similar for games. I pre ordered 76 thinking how bad could it possibly be as assumed it was going to be fallout 4 multi-player. I got the beta and asked if I could refund the pre-order. Sony told me no. I said it was a defunct product and couldn't run. They still said no. That was the last game I pre ordered.

Benedict Holland

It's a part of the game experience regardless if it's the "actual game". In situations like this if a score were involved I wouldn't even give a score. "Not Rated (Broken)" is far more damning than a low score.

Scott Kemp

It's so weird. I've had an immensely positive experience with it on PC. There are some bugs tho, this one coulda used another six months in the oven and it disappoints me that it's not going to get the player base it coulda cause they rushed it.

Harry Moore

"Non-binary finery" - okay that line made me giggle - nice!

SnowTheBard