I mean, based on the source, they’re still even on Twitter which is a lot more overtly fascist than WhatsApp. So…yeah…

I think it’s fine in any type of game…as long as they’re actually not developed in time to be included in the original release. The closest thing in games that I play is civs in RTS games. A civ in an RTS is basically a “character” in a fighting game. New characters in a MOBA would probably be the same. And turn-based strategy civs.

These all require extra dev time to implement new mechanical features. Extra balance work to make sure they’re well-balanced (both on release, and later with future balance patches). Extra design work to make sure they look good and unique. It’s completely reasonable to charge for them. Just not if they’re there, ready to go, day one.

Paradox are the publisher here, but not the developer.

And for this game it doesn’t matter, unless you’re doing multiple playthrough

But that’s the thing, they’ve put the most popular option behind the DLC paywall. And popular because it’s a good standard option. It’s not like the Nosferatu or Malkavians, which are popular as secondary options for a weirder later playthrough. That would be bad enough, as a day-one DLC, but doing it with the Toreador is so much worse.

I’ve never really been a Nintendo guy. Is Luigi very noticeably the post popular (or maybe at worst a very close top 2) racer in Mario Kart? I admit, I’d have guessed it was Mario.

I mean, because I already knew which two clans it was. If I had had to guess, it’d have been a tossup between Toreador and Ventrue for me.

Yeah fair enough. As I said, there was at least one Werewolf game released kinda recently. It doesn’t seem to have had a brilliant reception, but it does exist. They also did release a Wraith game not too long ago, so they’re obviously not afraid to reach into the more niche parts of the world. Changeling may be possible at some point.

Additionally these aren’t new clans they chose the most popular clan that most people chose for their first play through

That’s what gets me. Just looking at the original game and projecting it forward, if the Nosferatu or Malkavians were the ones locked behind a DLC, it would still be shitty, but it would at least make sense. They might be fan favourites, but even then they’re still clans that people usually recommend for a second playthrough, not a first. But the Toreador? Come on! That’s just extortion. Why not lock the Ventrue as well, while you’re at it?

Yeah that’s my feeling precisely. I have high hopes, but rock-bottom expectations, and with those expectations, the cost of the game and the shitty business practices with this day-one DLC are just not going to sell me on the game. I’m going to be waiting for reviews from dedicated fans who have had months to digest the game at the bare minimum, and for any inevitably-necessary patches (whether they come from the devs or from fans). This game and this developer and this price just have not earnt the trust necessary to buy the game at full price shortly after release, let alone pre-order it.

Even gothic did fall victim to the trend. G2 was “triple the size!!!”

If “triple the size” comes with triple the budget—or at least triple that component of the budget that goes towards writing, worldbuilding, and modelling & animating characters, terrain, and buildings—along with triple the time for those tasks…then that sounds brilliant! But more often they get the budget for maybe 1.5x the content, leaving the world feeling half as full.

Oh kingdom come. In theory I would have highly enjoyed the last one. But I only managed 5 hours or so. It’s just too “realistic” for my taste somehow.

Oh yeah for sure. Personally I quite liked its experience of travelling in it. That’s a kind of realism that I enjoy, because the cost (in terms of time) of travel made me think about whether I want to travel.

But its combat system was certainly really polarising. The Souls comparison is a really good one, I think. Usually in an RPG, your chances of success depend mostly on your character’s stats. But KCD’s combat is more like a soulslike or an action game than an RPG. It’s more about your skill as a player than about your character’s skills or gear. And it’s designed to be extremely punishing if you’ve got multiple opponents. Which is realistic, but not usually very fun.

But…Gothic isn’t a big open world. It’s like the size of bg3’s tutorial

To be honest, I find some gamers’ obsession with the land area of open world games rather tedious. I remember the same criticism being levied at KCD during its Kickstarter, saying things like “oh, that’s less than a quarter the size of Skyrim” or whatever it was. I don’t really care. The density of things to do within the area is much more important. And even more important than that is the verisimilitude of the world. That quests feel interconnected in believable (not forced) ways, that questgivers feel like the quests they’re giving are things they would actually care about and that would actually matter, given the worldbuilding and story. That’s all stuff that, from what I’ve heard about it, it sounds like Gothic does really well. Idgaf if Skyrim or BG3 have a larger land area.

Counterstrike was once just a nod/gamemmode too

I mean, LoL was inspired by DotA, which was originally a mod for Warcraft 3, so it wouldn’t even be the first time RTS spawned a major new genre.

You’re no superhero but just a regular are able to maybe lift a stick and kick a bug

That’s exactly what appeals to me. I really enjoyed that aspect of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, too. Though unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time for big open-world computer RPGs. I never finished KCD, and barely started Baldur’s Gate and the original VtM Bloodlines (among the only other RPGs I can remember starting over the last decade). I don’t think I finished anything since like 2016. But at least in principle, everything I’ve seen about Gothic appeals to me, so if the remake is good I would definitely like to give it a try.

I have a generally positive impression of remakes at the moment, since the games I’ve put more time into than any other over the last 5 years have all been extremely good remakes. Age of Empires 2 and 3 Definitive Editions, Age of Mythology: Retold, and Spyro Reignited. And I’ve heard good things about Oblivion. So without knowing who the developers behind the Gothic remake are, but knowing how beloved it was, my hopes are high that it’s being done with care.

The aoe thing wasn’t too bad tbh. It wasn’t a standalone game, just a game mode, like a custom scenario. And it was kinda fun for a little while, but they added a full queue for it in the UI and everything. It was moderately popular for about two weeks, and now there’s a queue languishing that nobody ever uses. It was amusing.

My current fear is also the remake of “Gothic”

I only learnt about Gothic fairly recently, thanks to this really interesting video. I’m certainly hoping the remake does it justice, because it looks really interesting.

When you lay it out like that it does sound like a mess.

But actually looking at what they’ve done, from the outside, it wouldn’t be obvious at all. They’ve had a steady pace of what seem to be fairly well-received books, and accompanied them with decent media such as the Jason Carl–storytold LA By Night actual play series. A lot of the old folks don’t love the changes to lore and mechanics, especially in Werewolf, but more broadly they seem to have attracted relatively positive reviews.

I replied to @[email protected] with more information about the corporate structure, but the TL;DR for the purposes of your comment is that Paradox bought White Wolf, dissolved White Wolf shortly after V5’s release in 2018, and brought White Wolf back earlier this year and White Wolf is back in charge of both licensing and publishing. (I suspect they also have in-house development, but it’s not super clear.)

I’m not 100% clear on what you’re getting at in your final paragraph, but Werewolf W5 came out in 2023, and there have been numerous non-vampire World of Darkness video games released during the Paradox era, including 2020’s Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest.

As for Changeling, after doing Vampire: The Masquerade, Hunter: The Reckoning, and Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the lead designer at White Wolf has said their next likely release will be a 5th edition Mage: The Ascension, but he also hinted at Changeling: The Dreaming, so it’s not unreasonably likely that that will get a 5th edition release some time in the next decade. 2018 for VtM, HtR in 2022, WtA in 2023, I’d think worst case 2027 for Mage, 2031/32 for Changeling, unless they stumble across problems that force it to be cancelled.

Yeah Paradox bought White Wolf in 2015, a couple of months after the previous publishers announced they were working on 5th edition. White Wolf brought the development of the game in house, underneath Paradox.

Then shortly after the release of V5 in 2018 there were a few scandals within White Wolf, and Paradox dissolved the company, handing off development to Modiphius with Paradox retaining final approval rights.

In late 2020 they partnered with Renegade to do the publishing of future V5 products. Paradox Interactive were the developers of Werewolf W5, and Renegade published it. It’s unclear to me who exactly is developing W5 and V5 supplementary material, but I think it might be a mix of Paradox, Modiphius, and maybe others.

Then earlier this year, Paradox announced they were re-forming White Wolf to be the company in charge of licensing and publishing of World of Darkness content.

It’s all super complicated, but the bottom line is that since before the release of 5th edition, Paradox has been the big business daddy.

Eh, that date is close enough that I fully believe it.

What I don’t believe is that the quality of the game will be as high as fans were hoping for, way back in early 2019 when it was first officially announced (with a release date then claimed for 2020).

In a world where the budget of the game would line it up with (let’s say) a 60 USD price point but it was actually 50+DLC=60?

Unfortunately, in Australia the base game is $85, and the version that includes Lasombra and Toreador is $130. That makes the DLC almost as much as an entire new game, not merely a DLC.

But yeah, I agree that if the DLC was added to a game that was receiving otherwise good press, and if it didn’t feel like they had just lopped off something that most players are going to want, I could maybe look past it. But this really feels like pouring salt into the already gaping wound.

I thought it was dumb enough when Age of Empires jumped on the bandwagon. But they managed to find something even less in-keeping with the original game’s themes…

It’s not the next multiplayer war-game or FIFA.

Remember when World of Darkness jumped on the battle royale bandwagon?

Yeah. It looked like it was getting close to release in like 2020? Might even have been 2019. They released a trailer back then. Then it got postponed a bit. Then the entire original development team, Hardsuit Labs, was fired from the project, and after a delay, a British company called The Chinese Room (known for linear adventure games like Dear Esther and Little Orpheus) took over development and basically redid it from the ground up. I assume some assets were reused, but the entire story is completely changed, including swapping from a thin-blooded vampire to an elder vampire re-awakened after a century of torpor.

I’ve preordered games before and not regretted it.

This is definitely not going to be such a case. The amount of development hell this game has gone through, it’ll be a miracle if it even ends up good enough that I decide to buy it at all. I’m certainly not buying it sight unseen.

They don’t even seem to be offering any incentive to pre-order? Which honestly might be a good thing. It reduces the accusations of gating content…and they’ve got enough to deal with on that front already, considering two clans and a heap more content are gated behind day-one DLC. $45 day-one DLC, in fact (in Australia at least). That’s as much as a full game in many cases. (Including all of the other games in the VtM franchise. In fact, of the 20 other games in the World of Darkness franchise linked in a collection on Steam from this game’s Steam page, only 2 are more than half that.)

I found this solution worked for me in Australia. It involved clicking a link to add the bundle to my cart, and then another link to check out, rather than going through the normal process.

Ironically (or perhaps completely unironically) the bundle requires a very weird workaround to get it to work in Australia.

Anyway, I redeemed it and got all those games added to my account. I doubt I’ll ever even install any of them tbh, but I just felt like saying “screw you” to my compatriot.

I found this solution worked for me in Australia. It involved clicking a link to add the bundle to my cart, and then another link to check out, rather than going through the normal process.

I found this solution worked for me in Australia. It involved clicking a link to add the bundle to my cart, and then another link to check out, rather than going through the normal process.

I’m also quite disappointed at the change from playing a thinblood to an Elder kindred. I thought the idea of exploring thinblood lore could be really interesting and it would be much more interesting to roleplay someone who starts the game mostly human, compared to a completely inhuman monster right from the start.

Because a paid library is kinda fine as a concept. A library has to function, repair chairs, change lightbulbs, pay security guards and, ahem, librarians, pay for new books and electricity and so on.

Yeah, but taxes can pay for all of that. And being able to read, to access the Internet, to do the many other things provided by library services are fundamental to the human experience or to modern society. You shouldn’t be prevented from these because you cannot afford to pay. A paid library is fine as a concept, but only if it doesn’t decrease the availability of free libraries.

And the more complex your set of rules is, the more it turns into “money buys right”

Well, no. Things being at the whim of who has the most money is what turns it into “money buys right”. It doesn’t matter how complicated the rules are, if the rules don’t permit money to play into it. If libraries were paid, that would certainly turn access to reading into a “money buys right” situation.

Simple laws are great, and you should avoid laws that allow loopholes. But sometimes a more complicated law is required because the situation is more complicated.

in too many levels of representation allowing power to affect representatives

Quite the opposite. Give too much power into one central authority and that allows power to affect representatives. More distributed power at the local level, with restrictions on the abuse of that power coming from a higher level, is a much more equitable solution.

in not wide enough participation

This thread is not about any one particular country. In fact, it’s specifically about multinational companies bowing to the pressure of one minor lobbyist. That said, compulsory voting works wonders. We’ve seen it quite clearly here in Australia. Make everyone vote, and surprise surprise, the impact of a loud minority gets drowned out! Combine that with a voting system other than FPTP and you’re well set for a much better democracy.

Politics should not end at the ballot box, however, and getting people more involved in political life in general would be a great thing. Through communicating regularly with representatives. Through joining a union. Through attending protests. Etc. I’m also quite a fan of sortition.

in there being too much professional bureaucratic entities inside the government

We’ve seen first-hand how terrible it is when someone who thinks the government is “too much professional bureaucratic entities” comes into power, in the US. This is absolutely terrible anti-intellectual rubbish.

I don’t much care one way or the other about 3, it’s an insignificant irrelevance. I have no idea what 6 is even supposed to mean. 7 might be the only genuinely fantastic point.

Jesus christ are you just trolling at this point?

Infiltrated? Who said anything about infiltrated? Are you just making shit up now?

What happened is incredibly simple.

1. Some regressive organisations with no power other than persuasive power told payment processors to stop supporting NSFW content.
2. Payment processors caved in to this pressure and told Steam and Itch that their current NSFW content is not allowed and to remove it.
3. Steam and Itch, wanting to be able to keep making revenue at all, responded to this demand by removing NSFW content.

Anyone can do 1. I could go to Visa and say “stop promoting cats, tell Steam to stop selling Stray and Little Kitty, Big City.” It’s up to Visa whether or not they consider my pressure worth responding to. If they do, Steam has to stop selling Stray and LKBC if they want to stay in business. The blame here lies with Visa for choosing to listen to me even though, in this scenario, I’m being a total fuckwit. In reality, Visa would turn around to me and say “lol no, fuck off”. (Or, more likely, ignore me entirely.)

3 is an inevitable result if 2 occurs. If they can’t take in any money, they can’t continue selling any games. They can’t afford to pay the bills for their servers, or pay their employees, or anything. The only option is to give in.

That leaves 2 as the variable. They decide whether to respond to the pressure or not. And they deserve the blame any time they do.

You’d have to ask them.

The regressive asked the payment processors to do this. The payment processors themselves are the ones that actually did it. The regressive barely had any actual leverage. The payment processors chose to cave.

We can blame the religious organisation as much as we want, but the fundamental problem here is payment processors. They should be common carriers. Content-neutral middlemen who facilitate payment to anything that isn’t literally unlawful. This is no different to an ISP throttling access to Netflix because they operate their own streaming platform. If the storefront, the developer, and the buyer are all ok with a transaction, there’s no good reason for a fourth party to stand in the way of that.

lemon stealing whores …

Dare I ask for context?

My theory is that it’s because people who are into it must be really into it, but people who aren’t into it are very good at ignoring the fact that it’s titled like that or that there might be one or two throwaway lines implying it (especially when it’s “step”). So there’s an incentive for uploaders to title things like that and for creators to add a little nod in the video towards it (without adding too much incest roleplay) because it draws in a large audience and actively turns away very few.

Wait, puppy play would get you banned? Isn’t that just, like, wearing funny ears and walking around on hands and knees or whatever? Maybe at most a tail buttplug? I don’t really get the appeal myself, but it seems pretty damn benign.

I can’t imagine buying a porn game on Steam. And even if I did, incest holds no interest to me.

Even so, I absolutely fucking hate this crap. Payment processors are killing off content despite the producers and consumers of the content being completely fine with it. This should be a Net Neutrality issue. But I’m not seeing anywhere near the same outrage over it that there was over ISPs doing the exact same thing.

But that’s not changing the design, really

Depends on what one means by “change the design”. It doesn’t make a fundamental change to the deeper architecture of the game, no. But it does require some relatively superficial changes, which are themselves a design problem of sorts.

There are, it may surprise you to learn, different types of game that have online connectivity for different reasons. And the appropriate EOL response may differ across those games.

“Live-service” games where the main gameplay is singleplayer but an online connection is required so they can enforce achievements and upgrades (…and “anti-piracy” bs) may be best served by simply removing the online component so it can all be done locally.

Online competitive games can be switched to a direct connection mode.

MMOs and other games with large numbers of users and a persistent online server can be run on fan-operated servers, so long as (a) the server binary is made available, and (b) the client is modified to allow changing settings to choose a server to connect to (it could be something as simple as a command-line flag with no UI if the devs are being really cheap).

There’s been no mention of it in articles that I could see, but that could be from a lack of perceived interest in it as much as because it didn’t happen…

Did World’s Edge suffer from this round of layoffs?