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Comment on Many players have become "patient gamers". What are games people might miss out on by waiting for sales?

tuckerm@supermeter.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

For me, the only reason to jump on a game early is if it's necessary for there to be a thriving multiplayer community to enjoy the game. That's something you would miss out on by waiting for a sale. That early stage, where everyone is still figuring out how the game works and finding new strategies, can be fun. But I rarely play multiplayer games now, so I just skip that and I don't mind.

If it's a singleplayer game, there's no reason to jump on it early -- and certainly not to enjoy it as a technical spectacle. It'll look just as good five years from now.

I remember replaying the original Half-Life in 2008 for its ten year anniversary, and thinking, "This is still fun, but the graphics are almost distractingly outdated." But when I replayed the original Mass Effect from 2007 just a couple years ago -- which was more than ten years old then -- I thought it looked just fine.

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kakes@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I would argue there’s some merit to catching the cultural “wave” of a new AAA release every now and again.

Obviously I don’t do it often, but I recently picked up Baldur’s Gate 3, and it’s been fun to talk to people about it at work and such.

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- tuckerm@supermeter.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That's a really good point. Sometimes the fun you can have with the game's "multi player" community isn't in the game itself.
  
  Baldur's Gate 3 is probably the best example I can think of. (And I don't have it, and it is really tempting for the reason you just gave.) I actually overheard two people talking about it at a coffee shop today, and three people talking about it on the train a couple weeks ago. I can't think of any other game that has been like this.
  
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setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The late 90s and early 2000s were a time of rapid increases in game graphics.

We went from DOOM in 1993 with sprite enemies, abstract textures, and technical limits like not even being able to have second story rooms on top of each other to Half Life in 1998 with full 3D characters and objects, physics, and much higher resolution textures.

Jumps in graphics back then could be huge. As graphics get better though, improvements on them become diminishing returns. It stops being going from 2D to 3D or going from flat head models with textures pasted on to modeled faces, and starts becoming things like subcutaneous light scattering. Things will keep looking better and better but we’ve long ago hit a baseline with graphics.

Mass Effect was made on Unreal 3. While we are currently on Unreal 5, there have been lots of games released in the intervening years that either used Unreal 3 or a modified version of it.

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- samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, while there is an improvement in graphics, it largely plateaued after the PS3/360 “HD” era. We’re fast approaching a time when a 20 year old game will still look pretty good by modern standards instead of hopelessly outdated.
  
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  - setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    We’ve also reached a point where the novelty of ultra realism has worn off. People expect certain AAA games to look realistic, but nobody is wowed by it anymore.
    
    (Anecdote time: Personally the last time I was wowed by realistic graphics was Battlefield 3. The Frostbite 2 engine was a noticeable and impressive step up, but ever since then I haven’t felt a sense of visceral awe even if I know graphics keep getting better).
    
    In my mind the graphics themselves barely matter as much as aspect ratio, controls (for some genres), and stability on modern hardware when it comes to judging if a game is “hopeless outdated”.
    
    Since this comment chain started with Half-Life, I admit there’s no way around it looking dated, but it doesn’t hurt my eyes or confuse me as some really old games do (Goldeneye 64 sadly falls into this category). I understand what the game is showing me, and the gameplay, art direction, and tone hold it up for me.
    
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    samus12345@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The last time I can recall being wowed by graphics was when I finally got an HDTV in 2008 and saw Oblivion on it. (the environment, not the ugly lump of clay people.) The jump to HD was huge, but ever since then it’s been incremental advancements.
    
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