Game News 2.0

pixelburp

Is it just a resolution bump, or is there actual extra meat being put into the Switch within the unit? It's obvious the Switch is lagging behind the current generation, despite the miracle work being done by studios like Panic Button. It needs a little bump in its chipset IMO, not 4K (would love to know how actually prevalent 4K is across countries, 'cos i question it)

Markitron

pixelburp wrote: »

Is it just a resolution bump, or is there actual extra meat being put into the Switch within the unit? It's obvious the Switch is lagging behind the current generation, despite the miracle work being done by studios like Panic Button. It needs a little bump in its chipset IMO, not 4K (would love to know how actually prevalent 4K is across countries, 'cos i question it)

4K TVs are standard these days, anyone buying a new TV would have to go out of their way to get a 1080p panel. If I was to guess I would say it is capable of outputting 4K in the way that PS5 and Series X are capable of outputting 8K. It is technically possible but I can't see it happening very often.

johnny_ultimate

Don’t think there really could be a simple resolution boost to 4K without a substantial upgrade to the underlying tech! Can imagine it being akin to the mid-gen refreshes last gen, which were reasonably meaty upgrades that brought a substantial performance boost.

earthwormjack

Hopefully Nintendo get Nvidia's DLSS fully integrated next time somehow. That would give a huge performance boost.

pixelburp

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Don’t think there really could be a simple resolution boost to 4K without a substantial upgrade to the underlying tech! Can imagine it being akin to the mid-gen refreshes last gen, which were reasonably meaty upgrades that brought a substantial performance boost.

True enough; will wait n' see I guess. I specifically chased the Switch fadó that had the battery-life bump, so won't jump on a new one unless I see there are particular performance gains. I don't have a 4K TV so that Feature does nothing for me

If there's a trade-in exchange, that would definitely turn my head. Love my Switch and is now my standard, go-to system for gaming TBH.

Mr Crispy

This is quite the undertaking for Hidden Path. It's a far cry from Defense Grid!

https://twitter.com/HiddenPathEnt/status/1366801985450598400?s=20

Still, an open-world AAA D&D game should sell bucket-loads if it's in any way competent, especially with TES6 being so far off.

Retr0gamer

earthwormjack wrote: »

Hopefully Nintendo get Nvidia's DLSS fully integrated next time somehow. That would give a huge performance boost.

That needs the tensor cores, this is more than likely just updating the hardware to the latest nvidia shield chipset.

Markitron

Retr0gamer wrote: »

That needs the tensor cores, this is more than likely just updating the hardware to the latest nvidia shield chipset.

That is a shame, can think of no better use for DLSS than a Nintendo console. Would be nice to play one of their amazing games where it isn't pixelated AF.

I'd be happy if the new switch could manage 1080p as standard with the odd game running at 1440p.

earthwormjack

Retr0gamer wrote: »

That needs the tensor cores, this is more than likely just updating the hardware to the latest nvidia shield chipset.

I know but I'm foolishly hoping against all hope that they've done something in this refresh.

Retr0gamer

Markitron wrote: »

That is a shame, can think of no better use for DLSS than a Nintendo console. Would be nice to play one of their amazing games where it isn't pixelated AF.

I'd be happy if the new switch could manage 1080p as standard with the odd game running at 1440p.

I kind of prefer nintendo's dedication to rock solid 30 and 60 FPS games.

Markitron

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I kind of prefer nintendo's dedication to rock solid 30 and 60 FPS games.

Yea that's why I still don't mind paying for them, they are still fun and play really well, they just look awful on a large modern television.

pixelburp

Hopefully if nothing else it'll see a bump in performance on those various games that have been a disaster area such as Outer Worlds. Though I still maintain that particular dogshít port was down to the Devs, rather than the hardware.

ERG89

They should just wait and release their new system in late 2022. They're obviously working on things that are that far out so don't ask people to buy another halfstep that will be out of date in 2 years anyway.

Even back in 2017 when released Breath of The Wild wasn't exactly rock solid on the Switch & Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was shocking.
This past year you've had Age of Calamity run bad, Bowzer's Fury have framerate dips and that new open world Pokemon game already looks ropey which is hardly a shock as all of the other Pokemon games don't run well either. Link's Awakening had performance issues too.

Penn

Marvel's Avengers seems to recognise that they had a fairly rocky launch and need to win back players as much as possible. So with the launch of the next-gen version and the Hawkeye DLC, they're going to... make it take longer to level up....

https://avengers.square-enix-games.com/en-us/news/cosmetic-xp-rework/?utm_source=twitter_playavengers&utm_campaign=xp_item_rework_photo_SQEXSOCIAL

The current XP “curve” isn’t really a curve at all. In most RPGs, the amount of XP you need to level up increases as you gain levels in a curve, but our system is a straight line. This has led to pacing issues, such as skill points currently being rewarded too fast, which may be confusing and overwhelming to newer players. We want each decision to invest in a skill or Heroic to be more meaningful.

Based on these issues, we’ll be increasing the amount of XP needed to level up, starting from around level 25. This amount will increase the closer you get to level 50 so that it will take longer to reach higher levels, and will only affect character level, not power level. If you already have level 50 characters, which is the current maximum, this won’t affect you. If you have a character who isn’t level 50 and want to speed up their progress, take this time to do so before the update on March 18.

Yeah, the thing to do when you're going to regularly release new playable characters is to make it take even longer for players to try and level them up.

Zero-Cool

Oh my God stop, it's already dead. Wow how are they making it even worse?

martyos121

It was probably the safest franchise in all of entertainment when the game was announced. You literally would have to sabotage your efforts not to make a huge success of it.

I’m legitimately impressed at how they managed to make a balls of it.

It’s the gaming equivalent of this GIF:

Penn

They forgot that the step before "Keep people playing for longer" is "Make people want to play the game"

gimli2112

nothing infuriates certain gamers more than throttling xp. I don't believe I have ever been angrier than when Bungie were caught doing it in Destiny.

Penn

gimli2112 wrote: »

nothing infuriates certain gamers more than throttling xp. I don't believe I have ever been angrier than when Bungie were caught doing it in Destiny.

I think as bad as it can be in games like Destiny, at least with Destiny there are only 3 different character types. Hell even in the likes of Borderlands there's 4-6 characters in the game to level up. That's a slog to try grind all them up.

When Hawkeye is released, Avengers will have 8 characters, and the leaked list from previously shows about another 10-15 to come. I felt it was enough of a slog to get Thor to max level that when I started on another character (who was already levelled up a bit due to the story mode), I couldn't be bothered with it. 20+ characters? Not knowing if you even enjoy playing as that character until you've levelled them up a decent bit?

They're really f*cking it up. The simplest thing would be to link levels/skill points to the player (eg. each level of XP gives you a skill point for all characters) and then you can play/grind for power level and cosmetics for whichever characters you enjoy playing the most. That would be an incentive to try new characters when they come out and get back into the game.

pixelburp

Snarking about the AAA industry feels a little pat sometimes but yeah, watching The Avengers getting utterly balls'ed up feels like a reminder that yeah, the AAA game industry really is the worst. As another said, this was as close to a sure thing as you could have made in blockbuster gaming. And yet and yet and yet. Greed had to have its say.

J. Marston

Maybe they know it's dead and are just squeezing a last few quid from the whales playing it, presuming there are "XP boosters" for sale.

sniper_samurai

Penn wrote: »

I think as bad as it can be in games like Destiny, at least with Destiny there are only 3 different character types. Hell even in the likes of Borderlands there's 4-6 characters in the game to level up. That's a slog to try grind all them up.

When Hawkeye is released, Avengers will have 8 characters, and the leaked list from previously shows about another 10-15 to come. I felt it was enough of a slog to get Thor to max level that when I started on another character (who was already levelled up a bit due to the story mode), I couldn't be bothered with it. 20+ characters? Not knowing if you even enjoy playing as that character until you've levelled them up a decent bit?

They're really f*cking it up. The simplest thing would be to link levels/skill points to the player (eg. each level of XP gives you a skill point for all characters) and then you can play/grind for power level and cosmetics for whichever characters you enjoy playing the most. That would be an incentive to try new characters when they come out and get back into the game.

Tbf, they've pretty much eliminated xp levels in Destiny and are now only basing gear on your power level.

Xp is a shared pool across your account and is only used for loot drops from the season pass and old premium cosmetics.

Mr Crispy

Mr Crispy wrote: »

I completely forgot this was in development, but Cold Iron Studios and Fox have revealed the Aliens game they've been working on - a class-based co-op shooter. Won't be getting too excited yet.

IGN managed to get a play of it. Looks alright actually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZco0Da52K0

Penn

J. Marston wrote: »

Maybe they know it's dead and are just squeezing a last few quid from the whales playing it, presuming there are "XP boosters" for sale.

No XP boosters from what I remember. Think they made sure the only MTXs were for cosmetics (to avoid the obvious backlash).

Don't think there's any way to boost XP. Just gotta keep trudging through the same few areas with the same robot enemies and stupid goddamn turrets everygoddamnwhere to fight Abomination/Taskmaster/Bigger-Robot over and over and over again.

For me the most laughably bad bit of the whole game was some of Thor's missions where they make it seem like there's a fake Thor with an army of frost giants. So you instantly presume you're going to have a boss fight at the end and fight either an AI version of Thor, or maybe it's actually Loki, or at the very least you're going to fight some frost giants.

Nope. Just Cryo-robots. Just the same robot enemies you've been fighting. But blue. And cryo instead of fire.

johnny_ultimate

Obviously the Avenger’s game the world got is a particularly egregious example of all that is wrong with modern AAA ‘live service’ game. I’m not sure it’d be an easy win of a franchise any other way, though. Trying to create a game to fit several wildly different characters would give even the absolute best designers with creative / budgetary freedom a headache. Developers haven’t managed to crack some of the individual characters in solo games, so trying to design levels and mechanics that fit Hawkeye, Black Widow, Iron Man and The Hulk simultaneously is a hell of a design challenge. Some of that is the curse of superhero games, mind you: incredibly overpowered characters often aren’t compelling to play with unless there’s a great central hook (eg webslinging through Manhattan).

Please don’t take this as any sort of apologising for the ****e decisions made with the Square Enix game though

Penn

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Obviously the Avenger’s game the world got is a particularly egregious example of all that is wrong with modern AAA ‘live service’ game. I’m not sure it’d be an easy win of a franchise any other way, though. Trying to create a game to fit several wildly different characters would give even the absolute best designers with creative / budgetary freedom a headache. Developers haven’t managed to crack some of the individual characters in solo games, so trying to design levels and mechanics that fit Hawkeye, Black Widow, Iron Man and The Hulk simultaneously is a hell of a design challenge. Some of that is the curse of superhero games, mind you: incredibly overpowered characters often aren’t compelling to play with unless there’s a great central hook (eg webslinging through Manhattan).

Please don’t take this as any sort of apologising for the ****e decisions made with the Square Enix game though

I agree, and I actually thought the core gameplay for the most part was great. The characters felt very different to each other, their powers worked well, and there was a surprising amount of depth when it did come to levelling them up and choosing different variations of their powers.

The issue was just there was nothing to make the endgame or grind worth it in any way. So few missions, enemy types, and just the same corridors and battle areas in different configurations.

That's the worst part imo. Even leaving aside their huge selling point in terms of brand recognition, they have a decent (if uninspiring) base game there. They just decided to hold back so much planned content to try and keep players waiting for more, without giving them enough reason to wait. And giving players different characters to choose from with new free characters every so often, but make it a huge repetitive grind to level them up.

https://twitter.com/tamoorh/status/1367547894597787648?s=19

Zero-Cool

https://twitter.com/EAPlay/status/1367897852492537858?s=19

Mr Crispy

Bawww.

https://twitter.com/yosp/status/1367796510100877312?s=20
https://twitter.com/artenvelope/status/1367888809757581315?s=20

Zero-Cool

Is it stealing if the original game never came out? This crowd don't seem to think so. They could have at least mirrored the exact same hall from P.T to make it look different.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAk5uoatFWg

CatInABox

https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1368853507047063554

Zenimax acquisition approved, should be properly announced soon. MS have a gaming event later this month as well, should learn a lot more then.