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> I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it h

> I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” In fairness to Microsoft, "half-baked" would be how I describe all of Bethesda's previous releases as well. I don't think Starfield is that far off how Skyrim or Fallout 4 was on release. Starfield's a long shot from where Skyrim and Fallout are now after years of patches and DLC, but I think not far from where they started. > Regarding at least the Blizzard side of the acquisition, I feel like Microsoft ownership may end up being a good thing for their underused IP. Microsoft has strong incentives to release RTS (StarCraft, Warcraft) games to bolster PC usage for gaming and maybe bring more attention to the Windows Store (IMO forcing minecraft onto the Store was a blunder as the upgrade experience was fucking terrible) if they choose to use it. Blizzard needs focus, though time will tell if Microsoft can help with that. Overwatch is a mess right now. The release of Overwatch 2 has gone poorly. The balance is poor. They only do patches like twice a quarter, so it feels like they always have to make very conservative changes because who knows how this change interacts with the 30 other ones in the patch notes. It means heroes that are broken or unplayable tend to stay so for months on end. The pro league is in shambles in the best case, and dead in the worst and most likely. They've been losing players. PvE never really launched, and now they're charging extra for the shitty scraps that came out of it. Diablo 4 is basically dead. 5 million players on launch, 300k last month. They're down to ~5% of the players they started with a year after launch. The core gameplay was not fun, and I can't believe no one noticed it forever ago. WoW is WoW, but it's stale. The most exciting thing they've done in ages was re-releasing old versions of the game. They're basically just waiting to get upended by something actually innovative. At this point, I love Blizzard's characters and worlds, but I think their games are D tier. They have the half-finished feel of a Bethesda game, but they don't have any of the fun. They don't resemble the same Blizzard that originally released SC2 and WoW.

w0m 3y ago
> Diablo 4 is basically dead. 5 million players on launch, 300k last month. They're down to ~5% of the players they started with a year after launch. The core gameplay was not fun, and I can't believe no one noticed it forever ago. Diablo 4 was launched less than ~4 months ago. Feels much longer. lol.
ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
As has been said, these companies are a shell of what they used to be. The real meat were the sublime developers and craftsmen that are no longer in those companies.
burnte 3y ago
> > I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” > In fairness to Microsoft, "half-baked" would be how I describe all of Bethesda's previous releases as well. I don't think Starfield is that far off how Skyrim or Fallout 4 was on release. Starfield's a long shot from where Skyrim and Fallout are now after years of patches and DLC, but I think not far from where they started. Jedi Survivor has been out for 6 months and it's still got major problems. Imagine being in the middle of a saber battle and the game stops responding to your attack key/button. I've paused the game, gone into Control Panel, tested that my controller is still good, gone back to the game, it just won't respond to the command. And then suddenly it will start again. Same with any button, they randomly fail. And it's got to compile all the shaders EVERY time you launch the game, no caching. All AAA game studios push out broken games on launch.
- entropicdrifter 3y ago
  > And it's got to compile all the shaders EVERY time you launch the game, no caching. Man, I've never been happier to use Steam on Linux. Since every game's shaders are transpiled to Vulkan, the Steam Vulkan shader cache works for games with this kind of BS problem even if they were written for DirectX
WorldMaker 3y ago
> In fairness to Microsoft, "half-baked" would be how I describe all of Bethesda's previous releases as well. I don't think Starfield is that far off how Skyrim or Fallout 4 was on release. Starfield's a long shot from where Skyrim and Fallout are now after years of patches and DLC, but I think not far from where they started. I've got friends that go deep into Bethesda releases on launch and they all agree that Starfield was much more polished than Skyrim or Fallout 4 (or Fallout 76) at launch. They are convinced that Microsoft must have actually attacked Bethesda with QA resources.
- holbrad 3y ago
  It's seems to be better from a bug perspective, but it's still the same shallow experience. Which is now even more noticeable in 2023. I sincerely hope that MS will put a lot of time in to make the next elder scrolls good, but my money is on another flop.
brailsafe 3y ago
WoW oscillates. It gets stale, then becomes fun again, and repeats. It's been going and actively developed for 20 years, which is incredible; if that cycle keeps operating for another 10 years for any reason it would be incredible.

w0m 3y ago

> Diablo 4 is basically dead. 5 million players on launch, 300k last month. They're down to ~5% of the players they started with a year after launch. The core gameplay was not fun, and I can't believe no one noticed it forever ago. Diablo 4 was launched less than ~4 months ago. Feels much longer. lol.

ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago

As has been said, these companies are a shell of what they used to be. The real meat were the sublime developers and craftsmen that are no longer in those companies.

burnte 3y ago

> > I do suspect that Microsoft may have been behind Starfield releasing in its half-baked, dumbed down state though a la “We need it on game pass by X, make it happen!” > In fairness to Microsoft, "half-baked" would be how I describe all of Bethesda's previous releases as well. I don't think Starfield is that far off how Skyrim or Fallout 4 was on release. Starfield's a long shot from where Skyrim and Fallout are now after years of patches and DLC, but I think not far from where they started. Jedi Survivor has been out for 6 months and it's still got major problems. Imagine being in the middle of a saber battle and the game stops responding to your attack key/button. I've paused the game, gone into Control Panel, tested that my controller is still good, gone back to the game, it just won't respond to the command. And then suddenly it will start again. Same with any button, they randomly fail. And it's got to compile all the shaders EVERY time you launch the game, no caching. All AAA game studios push out broken games on launch.

entropicdrifter 3y ago
> And it's got to compile all the shaders EVERY time you launch the game, no caching. Man, I've never been happier to use Steam on Linux. Since every game's shaders are transpiled to Vulkan, the Steam Vulkan shader cache works for games with this kind of BS problem even if they were written for DirectX

WorldMaker 3y ago

> In fairness to Microsoft, "half-baked" would be how I describe all of Bethesda's previous releases as well. I don't think Starfield is that far off how Skyrim or Fallout 4 was on release. Starfield's a long shot from where Skyrim and Fallout are now after years of patches and DLC, but I think not far from where they started. I've got friends that go deep into Bethesda releases on launch and they all agree that Starfield was much more polished than Skyrim or Fallout 4 (or Fallout 76) at launch. They are convinced that Microsoft must have actually attacked Bethesda with QA resources.

holbrad 3y ago
It's seems to be better from a bug perspective, but it's still the same shallow experience. Which is now even more noticeable in 2023. I sincerely hope that MS will put a lot of time in to make the next elder scrolls good, but my money is on another flop.

brailsafe 3y ago

WoW oscillates. It gets stale, then becomes fun again, and repeats. It's been going and actively developed for 20 years, which is incredible; if that cycle keeps operating for another 10 years for any reason it would be incredible.