UPDATE/EDIT: Bethesda has stated that this entire thing was accidental and is working on fixing it. Apparently you never had to repurchase the games anyway. Sounds more like a PR save than...
UPDATE/EDIT: Bethesda has stated that this entire thing was accidental and is working on fixing it. Apparently you never had to repurchase the games anyway. Sounds more like a PR save than anything else because I can't imagine how removing an entire series from the Xbox backwards-compatibility program can be an accident. But still, if you already owned them, no repurchase was necessary and the prices were the same.
I've never seen a company go from beloved darling in the gaming scene to being hated by basically everyone except real diehard fans.
Fallout 4 was controversial at best, especially at launch, but at least it followed the classic Bethesda model of releasing a buggy, broken game open to be modded to hell so the community could fix everything. Don't know if they actually fixed the speech system, as quite a few complaints were lobbied against the limited replies you could give.
Fallout 76 was Bethesda's attempt at a live service (Todd Howard basically admitted in an interview that with older games they couldn't "interact" with their customers because they just shipped the game with some updates and DLC and that was it). Hint: "interaction" here means making money.
Except they forget the key aspect of Bethesda: They release fundamentally broken games which then get fixed by the community. This didn't work in F76 for obvious reasons, but at the same time, F76 was broken and unfun at such a fundamental level I have to wonder what the fuck the game desigers were doing this entire time. Most likey the game got relaunched internally multiple times, so everyone was probably getting crunched to death.
Then of course we had all the fiascos surrounding Fallout 76. The bag disaster. The fact that when applying for a refund, people somehow got access to the customer rep database and could view all pending tickets, home addresses and CC info included, etc. etc. The fact that after quite some time after launch, it stll isn't fixed or on it's way there. No Man's Sky was a disaster at launch, but that was because an indie studio decided to do something different, made their shot and failed while the publisher (and Hello Games' Sean Murray) overhyped the game till kingdom come. But after that humbling experience, they worked hard and now No Man's Sky is actually good.
I don't see that happening with any of Bethesda's games. They already announced that they were going to stick with the game engine they had been using for a bazillion years for their next two major games (so till ~2025 at least) so I don't see a way out of this, unless they do some serious QA now and release functioning games.
Bethesda main strength is worldbuilding. Usually the main quests themselves aren't even that good, but their worldbuilding is strong and they release very moddable sandbox games where communities can come together and build something better out of the base that Bethesda delivers. But I don't know if doing that again is going to win them back any good graces.
Shit like this doesn't help at all. It doesn't matter if Bethesda's publishing arm and development arm are different beasts, the public sees them as largely one company. What they need now is releasing things for free and not sell ancient video games again.
FO76 is driving me nuts. The game was insanely buggy at launch, but overall I really enjoyed it for a quite a while (I'd say up until a few months ago). They'd patched most of the worst bugs,...
FO76 is driving me nuts. The game was insanely buggy at launch, but overall I really enjoyed it for a quite a while (I'd say up until a few months ago). They'd patched most of the worst bugs, addressed cheaters, and it started to look like there was light at the end of the tunnel with some of the upcoming content. Then a few patches ago we started to have major bugs re-introduced, bugs listed as "fixed", but clearly not, and entirely new bugs. Then there are some challenges (the means of collecting Atoms currency w/o spending money) getting bugged out to the point where they can't be completed at all. And then to add insult to injury, they reworked a bunch of early game challenges to reward useless items rather than atoms. And they keep releasing interesting items in the atom shop as parts of bundles, which are overpriced. You can't just buy a single item, you have to buy that entire $20 bundle, which costs more than some folks paid for the game initially.
I'll keep playing it when new content's added and whenever I get an itch for a SBQ fight (some of the most fun I've had with multiplayer since WoW), but they've basically put an end to me playing it daily for a few hours. Too many bugs, too little effort from Beth, too much greedy bullshit on the atom store.
I joined the game a month or so after release when the worst of the bugs/glitches had been fixed. But what initially kept me was the story. Not having human NPCs was a very bold move that...
I joined the game a month or so after release when the worst of the bugs/glitches had been fixed. But what initially kept me was the story. Not having human NPCs was a very bold move that obviously rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but personally I enjoyed it. It made sense from the story standpoint and I found the lack of humanity and exploring storylines via terminals, tapes, and robots to be really interesting. But the story doesn't have much replay value, admittedly. In subsequent playthroughs I've mostly just skipped around the story. If you're wondering why I'd have multiple characters it's because it's fun to try out different builds. There's a painfully slow means of respecing your character in-game, but it's a lot more fun to just start over.
What kept me was that they kept releasing content for the game. We've gotten quite a few substantial content updates to the game release and we're not even a year in. All for free, too. We got a new dungeon, several events, legendary vendor, and a handful of new questlines. They announced earlier today we'd be getting another raid and the BR mode that was introduced last month or so is getting a few more maps. Believe it or not the BR mode is surprisingly fun and I generally hate BRs.
There's also an element of grind in the end-game that scratches the itch that WoW once did for me. Gearing up and running through Whitesprings or the Borrows for legendaries and supplies can be a lot of fun. Plus there's also CAMP building, but I'm a sick son of a bitch who loved Settlements in FO4 :)
So that's why this is so frustrating to me. On one hand they're doing things right with frequent free updates and fun gameplay, but they're doing literally everything else wrong with all of these bugs, greedy atom shop practices, and lack of worthwhile communication with players when shit hits the fan.
Another boneheaded move by Bethesda re: Doom ports. Re-releasing with feature parity is one thing. De-listing the prior games and re-releasing a version that's arguably worse is a great way to stop people from talking about the surprise release and instead talk about how you never own digital games.
UPDATE/EDIT: Bethesda has stated that this entire thing was accidental and is working on fixing it. Apparently you never had to repurchase the games anyway. Sounds more like a PR save than anything else because I can't imagine how removing an entire series from the Xbox backwards-compatibility program can be an accident. But still, if you already owned them, no repurchase was necessary and the prices were the same.
I've never seen a company go from beloved darling in the gaming scene to being hated by basically everyone except real diehard fans.
Fallout 4 was controversial at best, especially at launch, but at least it followed the classic Bethesda model of releasing a buggy, broken game open to be modded to hell so the community could fix everything. Don't know if they actually fixed the speech system, as quite a few complaints were lobbied against the limited replies you could give.
Fallout 76 was Bethesda's attempt at a live service (Todd Howard basically admitted in an interview that with older games they couldn't "interact" with their customers because they just shipped the game with some updates and DLC and that was it). Hint: "interaction" here means making money.
Except they forget the key aspect of Bethesda: They release fundamentally broken games which then get fixed by the community. This didn't work in F76 for obvious reasons, but at the same time, F76 was broken and unfun at such a fundamental level I have to wonder what the fuck the game desigers were doing this entire time. Most likey the game got relaunched internally multiple times, so everyone was probably getting crunched to death.
Then of course we had all the fiascos surrounding Fallout 76. The bag disaster. The fact that when applying for a refund, people somehow got access to the customer rep database and could view all pending tickets, home addresses and CC info included, etc. etc. The fact that after quite some time after launch, it stll isn't fixed or on it's way there. No Man's Sky was a disaster at launch, but that was because an indie studio decided to do something different, made their shot and failed while the publisher (and Hello Games' Sean Murray) overhyped the game till kingdom come. But after that humbling experience, they worked hard and now No Man's Sky is actually good.
I don't see that happening with any of Bethesda's games. They already announced that they were going to stick with the game engine they had been using for a bazillion years for their next two major games (so till ~2025 at least) so I don't see a way out of this, unless they do some serious QA now and release functioning games.
Bethesda main strength is worldbuilding. Usually the main quests themselves aren't even that good, but their worldbuilding is strong and they release very moddable sandbox games where communities can come together and build something better out of the base that Bethesda delivers. But I don't know if doing that again is going to win them back any good graces.
Shit like this doesn't help at all. It doesn't matter if Bethesda's publishing arm and development arm are different beasts, the public sees them as largely one company. What they need now is releasing things for free and not sell ancient video games again.
FO76 is driving me nuts. The game was insanely buggy at launch, but overall I really enjoyed it for a quite a while (I'd say up until a few months ago). They'd patched most of the worst bugs, addressed cheaters, and it started to look like there was light at the end of the tunnel with some of the upcoming content. Then a few patches ago we started to have major bugs re-introduced, bugs listed as "fixed", but clearly not, and entirely new bugs. Then there are some challenges (the means of collecting Atoms currency w/o spending money) getting bugged out to the point where they can't be completed at all. And then to add insult to injury, they reworked a bunch of early game challenges to reward useless items rather than atoms. And they keep releasing interesting items in the atom shop as parts of bundles, which are overpriced. You can't just buy a single item, you have to buy that entire $20 bundle, which costs more than some folks paid for the game initially.
I'll keep playing it when new content's added and whenever I get an itch for a SBQ fight (some of the most fun I've had with multiplayer since WoW), but they've basically put an end to me playing it daily for a few hours. Too many bugs, too little effort from Beth, too much greedy bullshit on the atom store.
Genuine question: How can you enjoy F76 for multiple hours every day?
The game is such a boring broken mess I really wonder why people play it.
I joined the game a month or so after release when the worst of the bugs/glitches had been fixed. But what initially kept me was the story. Not having human NPCs was a very bold move that obviously rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but personally I enjoyed it. It made sense from the story standpoint and I found the lack of humanity and exploring storylines via terminals, tapes, and robots to be really interesting. But the story doesn't have much replay value, admittedly. In subsequent playthroughs I've mostly just skipped around the story. If you're wondering why I'd have multiple characters it's because it's fun to try out different builds. There's a painfully slow means of respecing your character in-game, but it's a lot more fun to just start over.
What kept me was that they kept releasing content for the game. We've gotten quite a few substantial content updates to the game release and we're not even a year in. All for free, too. We got a new dungeon, several events, legendary vendor, and a handful of new questlines. They announced earlier today we'd be getting another raid and the BR mode that was introduced last month or so is getting a few more maps. Believe it or not the BR mode is surprisingly fun and I generally hate BRs.
There's also an element of grind in the end-game that scratches the itch that WoW once did for me. Gearing up and running through Whitesprings or the Borrows for legendaries and supplies can be a lot of fun. Plus there's also CAMP building, but I'm a sick son of a bitch who loved Settlements in FO4 :)
So that's why this is so frustrating to me. On one hand they're doing things right with frequent free updates and fun gameplay, but they're doing literally everything else wrong with all of these bugs, greedy atom shop practices, and lack of worthwhile communication with players when shit hits the fan.
(related: https://tildes.net/~games/fyy/1993s_doom_requires_a_bethesda_account_to_play_on_switch_quickly_becomes_an_internet_joke)
Another boneheaded move by Bethesda re: Doom ports. Re-releasing with feature parity is one thing. De-listing the prior games and re-releasing a version that's arguably worse is a great way to stop people from talking about the surprise release and instead talk about how you never own digital games.
As a long-time Elder Scrolls fan, I'm really worried for what Bethesda is going to do with ES6.