I left the pc gaming scene about 20 years ago and only came bacj this year. I found my steam credentials from when they were initially seeking players and revived my account (I closed my email on the account back in 2009, so i couldn’t recover).
I’ve mostly been playing vSkyrim, BG 3, and a few emulated Zelda games. I finally ordered a new gaming laptop because Cyberpunk 2077 is hard to rrad on the Deck, even on a 50" tv on hi-res.
All that is just so you all know where I’m coming from, i am both a newb and a veteran!
From a business standpoint, looking ant it form the non-gaming financial point of view, the move to online-only makes very compelling sense.
It fully implements the licensing model, gives them total control over the property, enables them to generate reports that accurately identify trndsvin user populations, pinpoint steady revenue figures, and they can kill the game as soon as it isn’t valuable to them anymore, and they don’t have to worry about losing revenue from sharing, passing the copy to an otherwise paying customer for free, or a significant pirtiin of piracy loss.
Itvis the end state of the “we are mearly licensing it to you until such time as we decide ee want it back” model.
It sucks, and if i can know it is online only before buying, i will pass. All of us should. Revenue is king to them, and if they lose even a little, they will try something else.
Why’d you bring up tem tem specifically? It’s supposed to be “Pokemon but an MMO”. That’s the entire appeal. I had Pokemon loving friends that played it at launch and loved it dearly. It’s sad that it’s died, but if you want a single player version of tem tem, there’s about 22 Pokemon games according to Bulbapedia. Go play one of those.
Yeah, I’m an offline RPG gamer and this generation is leaving me behind. Thankfully there’s still some great options like Zelda, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy. But I feel our options are slimming down.
It’s easy to avoid the worst offenders. Also “live service” is a very broad term and covers a lot.
One aspect that I really don’t like is when games just seem to hang on too long with updates and/or DLC. Be proud to finish the game and move on to something new (looking at you The Long Dark…)
I liked that No Man’s Sky basically became an online space game with the yearly updates, and look at that, it still has an offline mode! It’s not impossible at all.
It’s mostly just finding some reviews/word of mouth sources that you trust and which align with your tastes.
On the review side of things Second Wind covers a decent spread of indie games. I also occasionally see some new stuff from streamers, but that’s more of a toss up since there’s a lot of sponsored coverage.
Almost everything on my store page is AAA or liveservice trash.
Very little on my Steam page is. This is just one data point but still it suggests their suggestion algorithm somewhat works for this.
Just an observation on that specific thing not a disagreement with the problem. Live service is trash and needs to go away if it’s not an exclusively multiplayer game.
Look at what pirate repackers like fitgirl and dodi are putting out. They have a much lower throughput and often focus on popular indie or small studio titles.
That’s not my experience with steam at all. Only one or two options of the steam store tend to show AAA games over indie games. If you browse by category or using the dynamic recommendation you’ll see plenty of good games.
I’m pretty dialed into indie games. What kind of games do you like? I might be able to recommend some. I get most of my indie recommendations through word of mouth or curators.
The steam store page has an algorithm tuned to your preferences. If you’ve already been playing a lot of live service games, then it assumes you must like them. Once you start showing an interest in other games, you can probably just cruise through your discovery queue.
To skip the algorithm, you can try looking at the steam store web page in a private / incognito window. But if most of the money makers are live service or free-to-play then that may just be the default offering.
I think this may be algorithmic. Like steam gives suggestions based on what you have already purchased, and what other people who purchased the same games also like. Additionally it’ll tell you what your friends are playing if you friend them on steam. This sort of gives everyone a different picture of steam suggestions that is tailored to them. It might be a good idea to find older non-live service games you like, add them to a new profile or wishlist, and then see what new information pops up for you.
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There are dozens of other very good games for every one live service. Find some you like and play them.
I left the pc gaming scene about 20 years ago and only came bacj this year. I found my steam credentials from when they were initially seeking players and revived my account (I closed my email on the account back in 2009, so i couldn’t recover).
I’ve mostly been playing vSkyrim, BG 3, and a few emulated Zelda games. I finally ordered a new gaming laptop because Cyberpunk 2077 is hard to rrad on the Deck, even on a 50" tv on hi-res.
All that is just so you all know where I’m coming from, i am both a newb and a veteran!
From a business standpoint, looking ant it form the non-gaming financial point of view, the move to online-only makes very compelling sense.
It fully implements the licensing model, gives them total control over the property, enables them to generate reports that accurately identify trndsvin user populations, pinpoint steady revenue figures, and they can kill the game as soon as it isn’t valuable to them anymore, and they don’t have to worry about losing revenue from sharing, passing the copy to an otherwise paying customer for free, or a significant pirtiin of piracy loss.
Itvis the end state of the “we are mearly licensing it to you until such time as we decide ee want it back” model.
It sucks, and if i can know it is online only before buying, i will pass. All of us should. Revenue is king to them, and if they lose even a little, they will try something else.
The campaign is still going: https://www.stopkillinggames.com/
Easy solution don’t buy them. Sail the seas if you must play it.
Plenty of new popular singleplayer releases: https://steamdb.info/stats/gameratings/2024/?min_price=0.01&min_rating=85&displayOnly=Game&category=2&sort=followers_desc
Edit:
If you want less popular games take these (collected from YouTube, [email protected] , steam etc):
Wild Bastards - roguelike strategy fps
Arco - turn based rpg
Nova Drift - bullet hell roguelike
Scorchlands - city builder
Linkito - puzzle game
SCHİM - casual platformer
Bō - 2d platformer metroidvania
TerraScape - puzzle city builder
Gestalt - retro rpg metroidvania
GHOSTWARE - boomer shooter
Selaco - boomer shooter
Nine Sols - metroidvania
Reus 2 - God game
The Rogue Prince of Persia - roguelite
Galacticare - hospital tycoon
Synergy - puzzle god game
Paper Trail - puzzle
MULLET MADJACK - boomer shooter
Gatekeeper - roguelike
Ingression - 2d portal platformer
ZAU - metroidvania
Laysaria - city builder
Children of the Sun - puzzle sniper
Pepper Grinder - 2d platformer with dragon hills like mechanic
Death of a Wish - 2d spectacle fighter
Thaumaturge - rpg
Penny’s Big Breakaway - 3d platformer
Please, Touch The Artwork 2 - casual
20 Small Mazes - casual puzzle
Islands of Insight - mmo puzzle (can offline)
Banishers - rpg
Oblivion Override - rougelike
Anomaly Agent - roguelike
New Cycle - city builder
If you want AAA/AA games from previous years, I can recommend:
Hellblade 1 - action adventure
Sleeping Dogs - gtalike
Chorus - space dogfighter
Also check out [email protected] , someone posts nice old games every other day there
Edit 2:
Plucky Squire - 2d+3d platformer
Inkulinati - turn based strategy
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Check the edit :)
Didn’t know you could put so many filters to search for games over at steamdb, thanks for the link.
Resident Evil series? Survival Horror games… Boomer Shooters… Pathfinder games… Everything from Larian studios… Totalwar Games…
You can support games like Inquisitor martyr that shut the servers down, but patched the game first to allow you to pick any season to play offline.
Play niche genres like shmups
yeah, I didn’t get into any live play games, and now I’m going to continue not getting into them.
be the change you want to see.
Step 1: Buy only from GOG
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit
Why’d you bring up tem tem specifically? It’s supposed to be “Pokemon but an MMO”. That’s the entire appeal. I had Pokemon loving friends that played it at launch and loved it dearly. It’s sad that it’s died, but if you want a single player version of tem tem, there’s about 22 Pokemon games according to Bulbapedia. Go play one of those.
And even more indie clones like Monster Crown if that’s your thing.
Hell, even Palworld can scratch that itch a bit.
Try one of these: https://libregaming.org/play-libre-games/
Yeah, I’m an offline RPG gamer and this generation is leaving me behind. Thankfully there’s still some great options like Zelda, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy. But I feel our options are slimming down.
It’s easy to avoid the worst offenders. Also “live service” is a very broad term and covers a lot.
One aspect that I really don’t like is when games just seem to hang on too long with updates and/or DLC. Be proud to finish the game and move on to something new (looking at you The Long Dark…)
I liked that No Man’s Sky basically became an online space game with the yearly updates, and look at that, it still has an offline mode! It’s not impossible at all.
Almost every game is a indie game at this time, stop looking for big capital games
Itch.io has some great games. Steam has an entire section. Totally agree with you.
I just got Good Boy Galaxy. Awesome game.
All I find on itch.io is shitty horror games
Try this: https://itch.io/games?exclude=tg.horror
It excludes the horror games.
Thanks
deleted by creator
Lemmy, friends, YouTube, websearch.
It’s mostly just finding some reviews/word of mouth sources that you trust and which align with your tastes.
On the review side of things Second Wind covers a decent spread of indie games. I also occasionally see some new stuff from streamers, but that’s more of a toss up since there’s a lot of sponsored coverage.
Very little on my Steam page is. This is just one data point but still it suggests their suggestion algorithm somewhat works for this.
Just an observation on that specific thing not a disagreement with the problem. Live service is trash and needs to go away if it’s not an exclusively multiplayer game.
Steam is literally constantly doing showcase events for different genres of small games.
Literally on the front page right now there’s a turn-based RPG showcase. OP seems wilfully ignorant.
Look at what pirate repackers like fitgirl and dodi are putting out. They have a much lower throughput and often focus on popular indie or small studio titles.
That’s not my experience with steam at all. Only one or two options of the steam store tend to show AAA games over indie games. If you browse by category or using the dynamic recommendation you’ll see plenty of good games.
I’m pretty dialed into indie games. What kind of games do you like? I might be able to recommend some. I get most of my indie recommendations through word of mouth or curators.
The steam store page has an algorithm tuned to your preferences. If you’ve already been playing a lot of live service games, then it assumes you must like them. Once you start showing an interest in other games, you can probably just cruise through your discovery queue.
To skip the algorithm, you can try looking at the steam store web page in a private / incognito window. But if most of the money makers are live service or free-to-play then that may just be the default offering.
I think this may be algorithmic. Like steam gives suggestions based on what you have already purchased, and what other people who purchased the same games also like. Additionally it’ll tell you what your friends are playing if you friend them on steam. This sort of gives everyone a different picture of steam suggestions that is tailored to them. It might be a good idea to find older non-live service games you like, add them to a new profile or wishlist, and then see what new information pops up for you.
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If people stop paying for them they will go away
Steam does an indie show case almost every week, to the point it’s almost annoying. Idk how you’ve apparently missed every single one of them