Gaming
Can Gamers Actually Give Up Pre-Ordering?
We’ve all heard the rallying cry to give up pre-ordering games, but will gamers ever start voting with their wallets?
After the failed launches of Batman: Arkham Knight, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Diablo III, and many other games the battle against pre-ordering has been growing strong. Outlets like Kotaku and GameFront wrote up searing articles about why we should give up on pre-ordering games altogether. Echoing gamers belief that it encourages developers to ship a broken game because they already have your money.
That isn’t the only reason that gamers have it out for pre-orders, they also say the system encourages developers to lockout content that should have come on the disc. A recent example being the Harley Quinn story missions for Batman: Arkham Knight that gamers could only get by pre-ordering. Deals like that gamers say are making games shorter and more expensive at the same time. South Park summed up gamers argument against the system best:
So obviously pre-ordering games is bad and gamers are constantly claiming that they will “vote with their wallets” and not put money down on a game. Yet year after pre-orders still plague the industry with millions of players putting down money early for upcoming games. They can’t seem to give up all of the exclusive items and deals that publishers put on the table.
What hope does the industry have of breaking a bad habit like pre-ordering when gamers keep encouraging it? The sad thing is we may never know because those exclusive pre-order deals are more tempting than the far-off goal of fixing the industry.
Since the excellent Baldur’s Gate 3 has been out in the wild for a while, interesting data can be gleaned, such as how players choose to play an innovative new RPG from home. Stats from developer Larian Studios and posted on the PlayStation Blog show that most people want to play as a stealthy archer like in Skyrim when given nearly limitless options.
According to a fascinating graph, Rogue/Ranger is the most popular multiclass build, with over 175,000 players using it to snipe unsuspecting enemies from range. The next two builds reveal similarly. 150,000 played Barbarian/Fighter because they loved pummeling things, and 109,00 played Barbarian/Paladin, which lets players talk to their victims before beatings.
More sense emerges as you descend. If the Paladin/Warlock/Sorcerer/Bard has high Charisma, any combination can be interesting. Charisma helps these classes cast spells and abilities and interact with NPCs outside of combat.
Playing a single class through Baldur’s Gate 3 feels great, which is what most players do. A pure Fighter or Wizard becomes so powerful by game’s end that we don’t blame you for not mixing things up!
Play as a Tiefling Oathbreaker Paladin, Dark Urge Origin (which you must resist), or Bard for real moral dilemmas. You could also play pseudo-Aragorn again.
Techland is continuing to release Dying Light 2 content as part of its long-term support. This is surprising since the meaty Good Night, Good Luck update was released a few months ago. It’s nice to know what’s coming, but no timeline was given.
IGN-exclusive roadmap trailers reveal more co-op missions, board quests, a tower raid, and replayable GRE anomalies. Executions and finishers may be added to the April Gut Feeling update, which overhauled melee mechanics. Graphical options, weapon repair, gear, and mod dismantling are always welcome.
Knives, polearms, and more enemy variants are coming, including a Nightmare difficulty. Changes to NG+ include firearms. Players can finally dress to their hearts’ content with new cosmetic options.
Has Techland’s Dying Light 2 support lured you back? Would you rather focus on something new?
Epic Games expanded the Fortnite V-Buck “pricing alignment” after laying off almost 900 employees, citing “inflation and currency fluctuations”. Fortnite’s premium currency will rise in international markets, including the largest.
Epic Games will raise the price of V-Bucks and real money content packs in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Eurozone countries, Hungary, Japan, Norway, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Turkey, and the US (including all US Dollar storefronts) on October 27.
Raising the price of this fictitious currency was successful when the company trialed it in the UK, Canada, and Mexico, so it was decided to announce it worldwide now. These USD increases range from $1 (1000 V-Bucks, previous $7.99) to $10 (13,500 V-Bucks, previous $79.99).
How do you view Epic’s timing and pricing increase?
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