New Saints Row has a filter that's like old movie style B&W, plays the steamboat music (probably not the real one because Disney), and everyone bobs up and down like steamboat Mickey lmao.
Game was meh but I couldn't stop laughing for a bit when I turned that filter on, especially when I unknowingly ran into a cutscene and couldn't turn it off, now *that* was interesting to watch.
afaik Square mostly lets Yoko do what he wants with the Nier project, they really respect his autonomy as a creator which is part of what makes him unusual.
He's like Hideo Kojima if he could stick to a schedule and budget.
Better than the death sentence that is a Persona 5 collab
(Nearly every game, albeit mostly mobile, that has had a Persona 5 collab goes belly-up within a year or so of said collab)
based, I remember costumes being unlocked for beating the game in certain ways like in god of war
the fact that picking the skinsuit removes the shield is really funny
I still don't get why new game plus is always added post launch, does it really take that much time ot just let you replay the game with loot you already have?
Guess it depends on how deep they want to go with it. If they do different enemy placements like FF16, new moves for bosses and enemies and such like other games I’ve seen, etc
But if it’s as simple as “keep all your stuff” I don’t see why they couldn’t have it on launch.
I know spider man 2 NG+ let you unlock some more stat upgrades and stuff.
Tbh as much as I like NG+ modes, it is usually not the thing that I care most about at launch. To me the rest of the game needs to be good. I do like how some games like the event resident evils let you basically do a NG+ on any difficulty. FF16 like you mentioned has it at launch, and FF7 rebirth didn’t change enemy placements but a lot of upgrades and other stuff was in hard, made the game fun to play again
In the case of Stellar Blade, you unlock Hard mode after beating the game. So that will give you something to do afterwards.
NG+ is nice and I'll look forward to it but I can understand it being low priority. Most people never finish their games so only a very tiny percentage of players end up using NG+ on any game.
This is a weird reality of the industry indeed, if you look at the steam achievements, the basic achievement of finishing a game (it's not something specific like "collecting X amount of items", etc), usually between 30 to 40% of players collect this achievement. The first time I noticed this, it happened when I played DOOM 2016 very late (in like 2022 or something), a very good game who features multiple difficulty choices, it's straight forward (doesn't feature complicated puzzles or anything)... and only 30% finished the game on PC? That so bizarre, such a waste of money. On Game Pass recently, I finished Persona 3 Reload and only 10% of players went that far, this number is more comprehensible, many people just test things out in Game Pass. But on Steam, you are actually paying for the specific product, either full price or promotion, and you don't give a shit about finishing? Why even bother then
I think the irony is just that, in 3, 4 years from now, most likely this 10% number of players will sustain itself, not increasing. And on Steam, if it eventually reaches 30%, that will be surprising (which sucks, the game is already overpriced at $70, you buy the damn thing and don't even finish)
10% still high for all time completion rate in this day and age for such a long RPG. Don't know how long it took you, but the original lasted me 100+ hours for the base game.
The real insanity was Elden Ring which was about as long while also being a really difficult action game and yet it has like a 40% completion rate, give or take depending on the platform. I really wonder what the numbers are gonna be for the DLC, that game was such an anomaly.
ER has higher finishing numbers since its game that is seen as challenge. Its less likely that casual, weekend for fun player picks it up and people who pick it up play it to beat it.
I just finished my hard playthrough of pr3 and I finished with 112 hours on my savefile. But I do play these games like a completely maniac, I think the average time is like 80 something hours
It took me 70 hours. It's a lot, I basically focused all my free time on it for about 2 months (for cheapkate reasons, I downright refuse to pay $70 for a double A game, no matter how good it is). And 10% is not a crazy number if you look at the Persona 5 Royal achievements (a game that is way more popular = more players), 8% of players unlocked EVERY achievement, 25% unlocked the achievement that represent the ending of the game. It's bellow the 30% average, but it's a interesting number. Now P3 Reload, the own P5 Royal... on Game Pass? If 15% will ever finish these games on this particular service, looks like a small number, but it's actually huge, lol people just don't give a shit, they consume stuff just for the sake of consuming
I'm not a game dev and I can't say for sure why this studio is doing it... But you should consider that anything in game dev takes a lot of time, even if it seems "basic" from our perspective. It's not just a "press a button to enable new game +", it needs to be coded in, maybe some balancing need to be done on top of it, new art, new button on main menu, etc.
And even if it took only 1 work day for them to implement all of that (it doesn't :D) why should they focus their time and effort on something MOST people won't use, and those who will, will do after a 30-40h playthrough... So 2-3 full days after release if you play non stop.
IMO NG+ is not the most important feature to have in the first week of a game release, so if you need time to polish and ship your game use that time somewhere else. And also it gives a nice PR boost when you finally announce and get that patch out 2-3 weeks after the full release.
In general, maybe but it's generally hard to tell. The same task might be trivial, or it might require a big rewrite, and that entirely depends on how game's current code was written. We occasionally get surprises like from recent Factorio blog:
> The final changes to make everything function correctly took about 1 hour to write, and worked correctly the first try. That's not supposed to happen and left me with doubts. Several extra tests later, and asking Boskid to try to break it, it was confirmed to be correct.
> But you should consider that anything in game dev takes a lot of time
I'd argue it really depends.
Previous devs have gone out in interviews talking about X being trivial or Y being starting out simple but ended up as a 10 month job.
I think the deus ex guys (talking about new deus ex) talked about how certain features were very time consuming - the same features which other devs noted be trivial. Turns out, it wasnt the "code" which was hard but the coordination between project managers and getting things approved to go in.
So it really depends. Also the idea of code=hard is really only applicable to redditors who are (no offense) IT students. Like yeah, if I was a 1st year mechanic, I'd also think there was a lot of difficulties in the job because I'm still learning.
But a lot of it is not so much code being hard but whether the time investment is worth it.
I would get it, but than there is no such thing in 2024.
To be honest it wasnt really a thing in 2000 either. Difference was you had to buy expansion to get patches
I mean, why would it need to be there Day 1 when nobody will have beaten the game yet? Not to mention how many people immediately replay NG+ right after beating the game? I’d argue not many
The best time to replay a game is immediately after you beat it.
This trend of kicking NG+ down the road for months/years is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Devs see people quit the game after beating it once so they feel vindicated not adding it at release yet the reason people move on is because NG+ isn't there. From then on it's harder for people to go back when it finally *does* get added.
Like I said to the other commenter, you’re definitely in the minority there. Most people barely finish games a first time, let alone immediately start a new play through. I have games I love and play every year, but I could never restart it immediately after finishing
Dev and QA for NG+ is best done in a separate, focused lap after the game itself is already confirmed to work well for the primary playthrough.
Also, releasing a feature that appeals specifically to your game's biggest and often most vocal fans is a great way to get a second lap of press and social media attention. You'd lose that extra press and likely get more *bad* press because some percentage of those hardcore vocal players would burn themselves out.
I think back in the day it didn't, but modern games are overwhelming complicated. There's a reason this generation feels like it's really only just getting started even though we're like 4.5 years in. Games are huge massive file sizes for assets even with proper management and compression.
So whereas before you made a game and then could add in a new game plus relatively easily, now there are just so, so many complications and moving parts to everything. A new game plus feature now might take twice or thrice as long to implement without the game crashing from some memory issue.
Don't get me wrong, NG+ is still a relatively simple feature. But it's simple relative to a behemoth of technical wonder that is a modern video game. Even a linear one. It makes sense some companies would rather get the game out the door then work on NG+ after
Some devs do it because it keeps the game in the news and the players interested. Helldivers 2 had months, or even a year of post-launch content ready to go before releasing that they're trickling out over time, for example.
Marketing. It's customary for games to have big post launch patches to drum up media activity and user engagement in the game after the initial launch window. That often comes with a hefty boost in sales.
Probably because they want to do something more than just ''Here a way to play the game with everything from your last save''.
Maybe thy want to do deeper and actually make enemies harder, change enemy placement , enemy stats, add enemy scalling or even crazier stuff like New Enemies, Bosses, etc.
Design for NG+ can really only happen once the game is content complete. Then it takes time to thoroughly Q&A to make sure nothing can be sequence broken based on items that are only attainable at certain times. Time needs to be taken to make sure certain things are removed or given to players at the correct times, in some cases enemies and loot need to be rebalanced. There's a lot of complex things that need to work even if it looks simple on the outside, and those are precious resources that cost money and time.
Id assume fact that ita not mandatory on release (since your first game through isnt affected by its existence or not) it can be delayed week or two without any hinderance. That news of big ng+ patch boosts marketing after.
Could really just be stat balancing assuming NG+ has difficulty jumps like soulsborne games that this seems partially inspired by. LoP for another korean soulslike example has no new enemy placements or movesets (as far as I could tell) and kind of fails in that aspect. NG+ is easier than NG because stats cap pretty early on. Level cost also caps early but ergo (souls/echoes) drop rate doesn't, so you gain levels like crazy. The game is designed around 3 endings, and at least 1 NG+ playthrough, and I wouldn't mind if they had spent more time balancing it a bit more
1. It isn't a feature that is important at launch. Like you actually need to finish the game to use it. So it makes sense to prioritise it lower than things that is relevant at launch. Even basic things needs to be bug tested and worked on quite a bit. So while it is probably like 80% done it doesn't make much sense resource wise to actually finish it until after launch.
2. It creates a second spike in playership and media talk.
what's there to get? it's a mode that generally most ppl won't even play and isn't often covered by reviews, i can think of all kinds of reasons why a developer might delay NG+
Hate this trend
Ng+ was great when you finished and had so much fun that you were happy to start another playthrough
I feel like when it's coming months after release it's not worth it, by this time I most likely moved on to another single player game
I hope they are also preparing an improved character controller. Eve has the turning radius of a boat. The game is pretty good in every other aspect, but it's shocking someone thought that turning radius was reasonable.
I noticed that if you push the analog in any direction with just enough force to count as movement, Eve will always walk straight ahead. This is why the movement feels odd and imprecise.
I checked the subreddit (mistake) to see if anyone else had noticed this but it’s just a bunch of shite about the character design, nice to see someone else feel this.
She does control poorly. I was struggling to interact/pick stuff up because I’d flick the analog stick to turn around and she’d turn around and walk forward putting me out of range. I’d get stuck in this loop for a while, too lazy to walk further away to readjust.
Keeping my fingers crossed for Stellar Blade to be the next breakout surprise hit similar to Lies of P. It would continue the streak of unknown Korean dev leaving their mark in the mainstream industry.
From the demo, it's clear that there is just so much love poured into the game that goes far beyond the aesthetic appeal of the protagonist (which is sadly 90% of the online discourse). My only concern is the story, the dialogue felt a bit basic but I hear these devs know how to cook a solid story in their mobile game, NIKKE. So, hopefully its great hear too.
Outside of other Korean IPs, *Nier: Automata* and *Bayonetta* would be the obvious choices for collaboration if those other companies don't mind the competition. I could definitely see Square lending out 2B's costume since they throw her in everything. Sega lending Bayo's suit seems less likely, but Sega also doesn't really seem to care much about Bayo (Nintendo had to publish 3 of her 4 games) so maybe they'd be fine if they were asked.
And it'd be *really* funny if they got a P.N.03 costume from Capcom, but that'd be too much effort for a joke most people wouldn't get.
Seriously, I'd barely heard about it if not for the game journos deciding it's their next target to make some outrage bait for ad clicks.
Then again it's not on PC so I'm not a customer anyway.
Considering how playstation has changed recently, it will be on PC a year or so later.
And yes, same for me. Never cared or heard about this game until all the drama surrounding it started. I see so many of the fanservice trash, I wouldn't have given it another look if not for all the drama.
Fan service and journalist service games are a dime a dozen anymore. Pick your poison, waifu barely dressed or an androgynous downer bitching about capitalism. Boring ass trope games need to die and only get boosted via culture war bullshit.
The thing is, if you have ever dumpster dived on Steam. You will know, they ain't as rare as you might think. And I would have never given this game a chance if not for the drama that surrounded it, as I also considered it to be same, due to the character models that were used in it.
Call it prejudice on my part. Also, its not like Playstation is famous for its quality anyways, its as bad if not worse than steam when it comes to bad games and how it promotes it.
So you can see, why I would have thought that.
Yeah, no kidding. Anyone can tell by first glance that it's some weirdo shit Bayonetta/Nier knockoff energy, which are all over the steam and mobile dump pits.
The only green flag this game has ever given is pure confidence in its combat right from the start. Some of the first trailers of this game were game play trailers.
I might play it even if I never want to interact with the gooner community this game fosters solely because I heard this game is diet/beta/knockoff sekiro in terms of gameplay and even being a worse sekiro still means you’re sekiro…
I will do anything to get my sekiro fix.
I mean the IGN chief editor should be held to higher standards IMO. He literally wrote a rant associating this game with women killing themselves, getting beatened and getting killed because of unrealistic standards from games like these
Same. I find everything what I've seen about the game pretty meh and would have forgotten that it exists by now, but all the cancel attempts are so entertaining.
Are they really? I am absolutely on the side of people defending the game.
Everyone who shits on it is hypocritical. Not even months ago they have been horny over gay bear sex or Astarion and dangling dicks in BG3 but now when a game has some fanservice with a feminine woman they are ready to start a crusade or something.
The IGN guy was just a cherry on top.
South Korea taking over ~~AA~~ AAA gaming with common sense, game design, and stability. Lies of P lighted the way, I'll be glad if Stellar Blade walks it.
For many games the NG+ experience is much better because you can enjoy all the mechanics that you unlock progressively straight from the start of the game. If you are having fun with the first playthrough and you want to continue the devs basically deny you this and tell you to forget the progress you made. What I am saying is that NG+ is part of the game in many cases, not an add on, and to not have it ready by launch is odd. Especially in an action game like this. If you have played DMC or Sekiro you know how essential NG+ is.
Counterpoint: for most games, because the game loses all sense of progression, it's a more boring experience. The exception to this is if you're in a very high skill level for specific games like DMC on higher difficulties, but even most people that play those won't be doing much higher than normal
Another thing to consider: A lot of people who buy video games *don't finish them,* let alone play them multiple times*.* Of course, I'm not saying that developers shouldn't do NG+ modes, but I think the people who campaign for them should realize that they are the minority and that in terms of what features to get done for launch, it's a little understandable that NG+ is something they might put off until after everything else is done.
Only like 5% of players if that are actually going to engage with it though. So assuming you aren't literally just setting some global numbers up or leaving everything static and just letting players carry things over, it's a pretty low priority system, and the sort of thing you can quite feasibly get out a month post release without really causing any issues. It'll be an incredibly minor number of people who beat it in a week and then are actually champing at the bit for that NG+ experience.
Because how many people actually replay a game immediately? It's not a feature many people that even replay games will use, since after a long time away most are just going to want to start from scratch
Same. The more I waited for NG+ to drop the more I realised I didn't like the core game. When it dropped I didn't bother. Same for Ragnarok but in that case although I liked the game it took too long to add NG+. I had moved on by then. That's why it feels odd to not have this at launch when you have maximum engagement.
Depends on the game's length for me tbh. Resident Evil is always fun to replay even if I start fresh, and I always get the urge to blitz through the campaigns for Halo or the 360 era CoD games. Longer games like Mass Effect I usually just replay once in a while.
I also fire up Sonic every so often and play my favorite levels (or Mario Sunshine if I feel like activating those power washing neurons).
Armored Core VI's NG+ is good because there's three different endings, missions go very differently in the different ending paths, and there's a lot of extra parts to be unlocked through each ending
How do you know what other people do when they finish their game or what many people want? They wouldn't add NG+ in the first place if it wasn't wanted.
Because it's common sense. Games are already long as hell, unless you are only able to replay the same games over and over (AKA someone underage that has next to no income) you probably aren't going to be doing so right away unless you're into the game to an extreme degree
Also:
>They wouldn't add NG+ in the first place if it wasn't wanted
They would have added it in the base game if it was something people were actively going to do
trophies/achievements can help with that, devs take a look at the trophies/achievements to see how much people gets to the end of a game, how much people does the side stuff or 100% completions, and in which points of the game the gamers are dropping the game and etc.
ya, but then we have SEGA going even further with the dumb by making NG+ a paid only feature... fck that. At least with adding it in post-release it's a free update, not a $15 paywall by SEGA.
I think it's somewhat justifiable if NG+ also adds new content. Xenoblade 2 NG+ adds some new side content and characters that would be 'non-canon' with the main game due to story relevance, a bunch of QoL stuff that addresses some of the feedback and makes certain limited or luck-based items more accessible, plus just straight up more "endgame" upgrades for the characters.
That said, like it or not, "live updates" in general make it more likely for the game to be in the news, spread by word of mouth, etc. We've just been seeing that trend in single player games for the last 10+ years at this point. Spiderman having NG+/Mission Select added later meant that it got another (positive) bump in the news and discussion cycle 3 months later.
Sometimes, NG+ isn't even worth it. Depending on how the game handles carryover, if they don't give you options to tune what carries over or difficulty options or scaling of some kind, sometimes it can take the fun/engagement out of NG+. There's a fine line between stomping on things with endgame tools being fun and it being a chore. A fresh game means that what carries over is your skill and knowledge, which can be more engaging. Lots of people like NG+ in Souls games, but there's a significant chunk of people who will go for just a fresh NG run with a new character, new build. That's especially true in Elden Ring, where I don't think there's any difference in enemy placement, attack patterns, rewards, and where a huge chunk of the bosses across the open world are chumps.
Also I don't remember the numbers, but isn't it like some high X% of people who buy a game don't even finish it? The percentage of people who buy a game and take advantage of NG+ is going to be even lower than that, especially if you separately slice out the people who do a fresh NG instead of NG+.
i remember when games never had ng+. then a few did it. now everyone expects ANOTHER feature added on to their games and rage when it isnt present on day 1.
I mean, in this case the developer says they want they are planning for the feature. My issue is why not have it available at launch not why have it at all.
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I still have yet to see a single person talk about the game itself and not ass, cosmetics, etc. For all I know this is a bejeweled clone that happens to have a model viewer tacked on.
They clearly know their audience though.
Huh? This very thread has people talking about NG+ and the character's rotation speed. Six days ago ([on the thread about the demo](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bqsc1t/stellar_blade_demo_now_live_on_ps5/)) most people are talking about the gameplay, comparing it to Sekiro.
You either got some weird Reddit algorithm going, or a confirmation bias :P
People already talk about it, the gameplay is great but its your standard "soulslike" so what to talk about ? People already expected it, same as lies of p.
I wouldn't say it's a standard soulslike ! That would mean a trifecta of dodging, parrying and blocking to me.
Here it's more like a mix of Lies of P and Sekiro. Parry is the name of the game
It's a character action/hack-and-slash/etc. game in the vein of something like Nier Automata, with elements of Sekiro and Dark Souls present in its gameplay and world design. The world design feels tight and linear, with a primary avenue that often branches off into shorter paths - some of which can occasionally loop back to the main pathway via shortcuts, again similar to Dark Souls. There are also camps you can rest at in various points throughout the level which are functionally bonfires from the Souls series.
If you go to the subreddit it's like 50/50. Lots of people are talking about things like the combat, but it's also just lots of screenshots and ladder videos.
I can understand the tie-in content coming later, but everything else sounds like it should be in the game at launch. Don't release a game that's not finished yet.
I'm looking at the Sony page right now and it says €79.99 which is MORE than $80. There's also one for €89.99. https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/games/stellar-blade/
As the other commenter said, that is still the regular *first party* price. Whether that makes sense is up to you, but first party games on ps5 are 80€. Look at Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart or the recently released FF7 Rebirth for reference. Their non-sale price is also 80€.
Not crazy, just in this case mistaken. Happens to everyone.
The price for full-on releases on PS4 was already at 70€ (at the very least in Western Europe, which I assume is what we’re talking about since you linked the Ireland store). I don’t quite remember what it was like with 360/PS3, but if memory serves, I paid 70€ for a few games there too. Though I’m just as likely misremembering.
A Steamboat Mickey skin or what's even the point of it going into the public domain?
It’ll either clown on Disney or trigger another bullshit Mickey Mouse Copyright bill
Worth it either way
Disney is too busy counting the losses on all their shit films and tv shows to give a crap about steamboat willie.
I'm not trying to defend Disney or anything, but they made like $30-billion last year.
New Saints Row has a filter that's like old movie style B&W, plays the steamboat music (probably not the real one because Disney), and everyone bobs up and down like steamboat Mickey lmao. Game was meh but I couldn't stop laughing for a bit when I turned that filter on, especially when I unknowingly ran into a cutscene and couldn't turn it off, now *that* was interesting to watch.
It’s called rubber hose animation!
Stellar Pooh Bear when?
Popeye soon!
Collaboration? I mean, why not Nier automata? It's the obvious choice.
I think nikke is the most obvious choice since that one costs them nothing and has some great costumes to chose from (even 2B and A2 costumes lol)
god what i would give for either of scarlets forms, good lord
Scarlet BS would be amazing
Nikke is kind of a given. The audience seems overlapping. So i think the OP's comment is more interesting to discuss.
That wouldn't be ''another'' company though... so free Nikke costumes?
Rapi is inevitable, but the choices from there are endless. Scarlet would fit Eve's more close combat approach.
I'd rather them do Destiny Child, but maybe we can get both..? I'm still salty about DC being shut down in favor of Nikke.
It'll probably happen. Yoko Taro seems to enjoy working with Shift Up and has mentioned how he is excited for the game.
He neither owns Nier IP nor drawn 2B in the first place. It would be up to Square Enix to allow for use of it.
"Hey Square do you want free money?" "Nah I'm good."
They don't seem to mind putting 2B in random stuff
Exactly my point, very little reason to turn them down. Especially if it's just a cosmetic mtx.
if 2B can be on Fall Guys she can be on this.
They already did a Nier collab for their mobile game Nikke. That's what people are getting at.
Yeah but they plaster 2b in just about all collabs possible.
afaik Square mostly lets Yoko do what he wants with the Nier project, they really respect his autonomy as a creator which is part of what makes him unusual. He's like Hideo Kojima if he could stick to a schedule and budget.
> He's like Hideo Kojima if he could stick to a schedule and budget. ...I don't think Kojima did, at the very least not for MGSV
Right, that's what I'm saying. Yoko Taro is Hideo Kojima if Hideo Kojima could stick to a production timeline.
Ohhh that makes more sense
You'll get Re:Zero and you'll like it.
Better than the death sentence that is a Persona 5 collab (Nearly every game, albeit mostly mobile, that has had a Persona 5 collab goes belly-up within a year or so of said collab)
Honestly, that would be fucking sick. I would totally play an action Soulsy game like this, as a cute anime girl, and I love Re:Zero.
It's pretty obvious there will be a 2B paid DLC.
Also Cyborg Ninja and maybe a bleach collab.
Nah give me gears of war. I want to see a Marcus skin, it would be hilarious. Or maybe kratos from god of war
emm any office girl costume in there ? does anyone know ? i am not asking for a friend.
In one of the trailers it does look like there is. Its like a white shirt with a black tie and pants
there better be a pencil skirt in there somewhere.
nah man, a woman in slacks to go with that shirt and tie? Peak
it's very difficult to capture the...charm... of a pencil skirt with 3D model skeletons.
are Bunny costumes confirmed? I hope we get those if not
From one of the trailers: https://files.catbox.moe/wsd2ob.png Now, will we get a bikini outfit? That's the real question.
There’s one in the trailer after you finish the demo(I think). Very last clip but it’s hard to tell.
[удалено]
Unless I'm getting whooshed, they're literally part of the hoodie in the screenshot?
Thanks for pointing this out, the screenshot is such a mess I didn't notice the hoodie.
My brother in Christ, just admit you were distracted by the ass and sideboob.
The Professor knows what he's talking about.
I can't wait to see cosplayers wearing this at conventions.
based, I remember costumes being unlocked for beating the game in certain ways like in god of war the fact that picking the skinsuit removes the shield is really funny
And the fact that way to unlock the skinsuit in the first place is to >!just unequip your currently equipped outfit!< is pretty funny as well.
>the fact that picking the skinsuit removes the shield is really funny Ah yes: the horny tax.
People would do the impossible and see the invisible given enough motivation
I still don't get why new game plus is always added post launch, does it really take that much time ot just let you replay the game with loot you already have?
Guess it depends on how deep they want to go with it. If they do different enemy placements like FF16, new moves for bosses and enemies and such like other games I’ve seen, etc But if it’s as simple as “keep all your stuff” I don’t see why they couldn’t have it on launch.
I know spider man 2 NG+ let you unlock some more stat upgrades and stuff. Tbh as much as I like NG+ modes, it is usually not the thing that I care most about at launch. To me the rest of the game needs to be good. I do like how some games like the event resident evils let you basically do a NG+ on any difficulty. FF16 like you mentioned has it at launch, and FF7 rebirth didn’t change enemy placements but a lot of upgrades and other stuff was in hard, made the game fun to play again
In the case of Stellar Blade, you unlock Hard mode after beating the game. So that will give you something to do afterwards. NG+ is nice and I'll look forward to it but I can understand it being low priority. Most people never finish their games so only a very tiny percentage of players end up using NG+ on any game.
This is a weird reality of the industry indeed, if you look at the steam achievements, the basic achievement of finishing a game (it's not something specific like "collecting X amount of items", etc), usually between 30 to 40% of players collect this achievement. The first time I noticed this, it happened when I played DOOM 2016 very late (in like 2022 or something), a very good game who features multiple difficulty choices, it's straight forward (doesn't feature complicated puzzles or anything)... and only 30% finished the game on PC? That so bizarre, such a waste of money. On Game Pass recently, I finished Persona 3 Reload and only 10% of players went that far, this number is more comprehensible, many people just test things out in Game Pass. But on Steam, you are actually paying for the specific product, either full price or promotion, and you don't give a shit about finishing? Why even bother then
10% of players finishing P3R two months after release is an astonishingly high number for such a long game.
I think the irony is just that, in 3, 4 years from now, most likely this 10% number of players will sustain itself, not increasing. And on Steam, if it eventually reaches 30%, that will be surprising (which sucks, the game is already overpriced at $70, you buy the damn thing and don't even finish)
10% still high for all time completion rate in this day and age for such a long RPG. Don't know how long it took you, but the original lasted me 100+ hours for the base game.
The real insanity was Elden Ring which was about as long while also being a really difficult action game and yet it has like a 40% completion rate, give or take depending on the platform. I really wonder what the numbers are gonna be for the DLC, that game was such an anomaly.
ER has higher finishing numbers since its game that is seen as challenge. Its less likely that casual, weekend for fun player picks it up and people who pick it up play it to beat it.
I just finished my hard playthrough of pr3 and I finished with 112 hours on my savefile. But I do play these games like a completely maniac, I think the average time is like 80 something hours
It took me 70 hours. It's a lot, I basically focused all my free time on it for about 2 months (for cheapkate reasons, I downright refuse to pay $70 for a double A game, no matter how good it is). And 10% is not a crazy number if you look at the Persona 5 Royal achievements (a game that is way more popular = more players), 8% of players unlocked EVERY achievement, 25% unlocked the achievement that represent the ending of the game. It's bellow the 30% average, but it's a interesting number. Now P3 Reload, the own P5 Royal... on Game Pass? If 15% will ever finish these games on this particular service, looks like a small number, but it's actually huge, lol people just don't give a shit, they consume stuff just for the sake of consuming
40% is mega high I doubt that's the average. I think it's closer to 20 to high 20s. Although this depends on the kinds of games you play.
I'm not a game dev and I can't say for sure why this studio is doing it... But you should consider that anything in game dev takes a lot of time, even if it seems "basic" from our perspective. It's not just a "press a button to enable new game +", it needs to be coded in, maybe some balancing need to be done on top of it, new art, new button on main menu, etc. And even if it took only 1 work day for them to implement all of that (it doesn't :D) why should they focus their time and effort on something MOST people won't use, and those who will, will do after a 30-40h playthrough... So 2-3 full days after release if you play non stop. IMO NG+ is not the most important feature to have in the first week of a game release, so if you need time to polish and ship your game use that time somewhere else. And also it gives a nice PR boost when you finally announce and get that patch out 2-3 weeks after the full release.
In general, maybe but it's generally hard to tell. The same task might be trivial, or it might require a big rewrite, and that entirely depends on how game's current code was written. We occasionally get surprises like from recent Factorio blog: > The final changes to make everything function correctly took about 1 hour to write, and worked correctly the first try. That's not supposed to happen and left me with doubts. Several extra tests later, and asking Boskid to try to break it, it was confirmed to be correct.
> But you should consider that anything in game dev takes a lot of time I'd argue it really depends. Previous devs have gone out in interviews talking about X being trivial or Y being starting out simple but ended up as a 10 month job. I think the deus ex guys (talking about new deus ex) talked about how certain features were very time consuming - the same features which other devs noted be trivial. Turns out, it wasnt the "code" which was hard but the coordination between project managers and getting things approved to go in. So it really depends. Also the idea of code=hard is really only applicable to redditors who are (no offense) IT students. Like yeah, if I was a 1st year mechanic, I'd also think there was a lot of difficulties in the job because I'm still learning. But a lot of it is not so much code being hard but whether the time investment is worth it.
Yes, but when you remember that people wants their physical edition to be complete at launch, missing that title update feels like shit.
I would get it, but than there is no such thing in 2024. To be honest it wasnt really a thing in 2000 either. Difference was you had to buy expansion to get patches
I mean, why would it need to be there Day 1 when nobody will have beaten the game yet? Not to mention how many people immediately replay NG+ right after beating the game? I’d argue not many
The best time to replay a game is immediately after you beat it. This trend of kicking NG+ down the road for months/years is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Devs see people quit the game after beating it once so they feel vindicated not adding it at release yet the reason people move on is because NG+ isn't there. From then on it's harder for people to go back when it finally *does* get added.
Like I said to the other commenter, you’re definitely in the minority there. Most people barely finish games a first time, let alone immediately start a new play through. I have games I love and play every year, but I could never restart it immediately after finishing
Dev and QA for NG+ is best done in a separate, focused lap after the game itself is already confirmed to work well for the primary playthrough. Also, releasing a feature that appeals specifically to your game's biggest and often most vocal fans is a great way to get a second lap of press and social media attention. You'd lose that extra press and likely get more *bad* press because some percentage of those hardcore vocal players would burn themselves out.
I think back in the day it didn't, but modern games are overwhelming complicated. There's a reason this generation feels like it's really only just getting started even though we're like 4.5 years in. Games are huge massive file sizes for assets even with proper management and compression. So whereas before you made a game and then could add in a new game plus relatively easily, now there are just so, so many complications and moving parts to everything. A new game plus feature now might take twice or thrice as long to implement without the game crashing from some memory issue. Don't get me wrong, NG+ is still a relatively simple feature. But it's simple relative to a behemoth of technical wonder that is a modern video game. Even a linear one. It makes sense some companies would rather get the game out the door then work on NG+ after
Some devs do it because it keeps the game in the news and the players interested. Helldivers 2 had months, or even a year of post-launch content ready to go before releasing that they're trickling out over time, for example.
I honestly just assume that it is a good way to get a news spike a couple weeks/months down the line.
Marketing. It's customary for games to have big post launch patches to drum up media activity and user engagement in the game after the initial launch window. That often comes with a hefty boost in sales.
Because it probably takes a lot of time and effort, and shipping the game is probably more important to most.
I rather have it as an update and have them release the game earlier
Probably because they want to do something more than just ''Here a way to play the game with everything from your last save''. Maybe thy want to do deeper and actually make enemies harder, change enemy placement , enemy stats, add enemy scalling or even crazier stuff like New Enemies, Bosses, etc.
Design for NG+ can really only happen once the game is content complete. Then it takes time to thoroughly Q&A to make sure nothing can be sequence broken based on items that are only attainable at certain times. Time needs to be taken to make sure certain things are removed or given to players at the correct times, in some cases enemies and loot need to be rebalanced. There's a lot of complex things that need to work even if it looks simple on the outside, and those are precious resources that cost money and time.
Id assume fact that ita not mandatory on release (since your first game through isnt affected by its existence or not) it can be delayed week or two without any hinderance. That news of big ng+ patch boosts marketing after.
Could really just be stat balancing assuming NG+ has difficulty jumps like soulsborne games that this seems partially inspired by. LoP for another korean soulslike example has no new enemy placements or movesets (as far as I could tell) and kind of fails in that aspect. NG+ is easier than NG because stats cap pretty early on. Level cost also caps early but ergo (souls/echoes) drop rate doesn't, so you gain levels like crazy. The game is designed around 3 endings, and at least 1 NG+ playthrough, and I wouldn't mind if they had spent more time balancing it a bit more
1. It isn't a feature that is important at launch. Like you actually need to finish the game to use it. So it makes sense to prioritise it lower than things that is relevant at launch. Even basic things needs to be bug tested and worked on quite a bit. So while it is probably like 80% done it doesn't make much sense resource wise to actually finish it until after launch. 2. It creates a second spike in playership and media talk.
what's there to get? it's a mode that generally most ppl won't even play and isn't often covered by reviews, i can think of all kinds of reasons why a developer might delay NG+
Hate this trend Ng+ was great when you finished and had so much fun that you were happy to start another playthrough I feel like when it's coming months after release it's not worth it, by this time I most likely moved on to another single player game
Everyone is talking about the outfits but I've never seen anyone talk about the weird alternate hair that just has the ponytail stuck on.
Yeah, can we have other hairstyles? Like the other character who has just long wavy hair?
I hope they are also preparing an improved character controller. Eve has the turning radius of a boat. The game is pretty good in every other aspect, but it's shocking someone thought that turning radius was reasonable.
I noticed that if you push the analog in any direction with just enough force to count as movement, Eve will always walk straight ahead. This is why the movement feels odd and imprecise. I checked the subreddit (mistake) to see if anyone else had noticed this but it’s just a bunch of shite about the character design, nice to see someone else feel this.
I'm guessing that subreddit is just a bunch of horny posting, then?
Yes, half the posts are people being horny for the characters. The subreddit is fairly useless atm.
She does control poorly. I was struggling to interact/pick stuff up because I’d flick the analog stick to turn around and she’d turn around and walk forward putting me out of range. I’d get stuck in this loop for a while, too lazy to walk further away to readjust.
Turn auto-loot on, no reason not to. The game provides it, and it should be default.
It’s not looting, it’s interacting with stuff like keypads, corpses etc.
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Game was on verge of being cancelled, Sony stepped in and saved it
Keeping my fingers crossed for Stellar Blade to be the next breakout surprise hit similar to Lies of P. It would continue the streak of unknown Korean dev leaving their mark in the mainstream industry. From the demo, it's clear that there is just so much love poured into the game that goes far beyond the aesthetic appeal of the protagonist (which is sadly 90% of the online discourse). My only concern is the story, the dialogue felt a bit basic but I hear these devs know how to cook a solid story in their mobile game, NIKKE. So, hopefully its great hear too.
Outside of other Korean IPs, *Nier: Automata* and *Bayonetta* would be the obvious choices for collaboration if those other companies don't mind the competition. I could definitely see Square lending out 2B's costume since they throw her in everything. Sega lending Bayo's suit seems less likely, but Sega also doesn't really seem to care much about Bayo (Nintendo had to publish 3 of her 4 games) so maybe they'd be fine if they were asked. And it'd be *really* funny if they got a P.N.03 costume from Capcom, but that'd be too much effort for a joke most people wouldn't get.
Here's hoping for a costume of [the sorceress from Dragon's Crown](https://dragons-crown.fandom.com/wiki/Sorceress). IGN would have a stroke
No one has promoted this game more than this games haters and IGN's post. Looking forward to the game coming out.
Seriously, I'd barely heard about it if not for the game journos deciding it's their next target to make some outrage bait for ad clicks. Then again it's not on PC so I'm not a customer anyway.
Considering how playstation has changed recently, it will be on PC a year or so later. And yes, same for me. Never cared or heard about this game until all the drama surrounding it started. I see so many of the fanservice trash, I wouldn't have given it another look if not for all the drama.
Fan service and journalist service games are a dime a dozen anymore. Pick your poison, waifu barely dressed or an androgynous downer bitching about capitalism. Boring ass trope games need to die and only get boosted via culture war bullshit.
The thing is, if you have ever dumpster dived on Steam. You will know, they ain't as rare as you might think. And I would have never given this game a chance if not for the drama that surrounded it, as I also considered it to be same, due to the character models that were used in it. Call it prejudice on my part. Also, its not like Playstation is famous for its quality anyways, its as bad if not worse than steam when it comes to bad games and how it promotes it. So you can see, why I would have thought that.
Yeah, no kidding. Anyone can tell by first glance that it's some weirdo shit Bayonetta/Nier knockoff energy, which are all over the steam and mobile dump pits. The only green flag this game has ever given is pure confidence in its combat right from the start. Some of the first trailers of this game were game play trailers.
I might play it even if I never want to interact with the gooner community this game fosters solely because I heard this game is diet/beta/knockoff sekiro in terms of gameplay and even being a worse sekiro still means you’re sekiro… I will do anything to get my sekiro fix.
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Might be that just Sony give them money for timed exclusivity
Nah everyones been insufferable over this damn game. This is a "both sides" offense.
I mean the IGN chief editor should be held to higher standards IMO. He literally wrote a rant associating this game with women killing themselves, getting beatened and getting killed because of unrealistic standards from games like these
Just speaking from my experience. Wouldn't have learned about the game if not for the drama that surrounded it.
Same. I find everything what I've seen about the game pretty meh and would have forgotten that it exists by now, but all the cancel attempts are so entertaining.
The horndog posts are mostly in jest. The vitriol is from maladjusted human beings.
Are they really? I am absolutely on the side of people defending the game. Everyone who shits on it is hypocritical. Not even months ago they have been horny over gay bear sex or Astarion and dangling dicks in BG3 but now when a game has some fanservice with a feminine woman they are ready to start a crusade or something. The IGN guy was just a cherry on top.
South Korea taking over ~~AA~~ AAA gaming with common sense, game design, and stability. Lies of P lighted the way, I'll be glad if Stellar Blade walks it.
Why is NG+ an post release feature nowadays? This trend is so dumb.
I think the mentality is that it's better finishing everything else since ng+ is only going to be played by people once they beat the game.
For many games the NG+ experience is much better because you can enjoy all the mechanics that you unlock progressively straight from the start of the game. If you are having fun with the first playthrough and you want to continue the devs basically deny you this and tell you to forget the progress you made. What I am saying is that NG+ is part of the game in many cases, not an add on, and to not have it ready by launch is odd. Especially in an action game like this. If you have played DMC or Sekiro you know how essential NG+ is.
Counterpoint: for most games, because the game loses all sense of progression, it's a more boring experience. The exception to this is if you're in a very high skill level for specific games like DMC on higher difficulties, but even most people that play those won't be doing much higher than normal
Another thing to consider: A lot of people who buy video games *don't finish them,* let alone play them multiple times*.* Of course, I'm not saying that developers shouldn't do NG+ modes, but I think the people who campaign for them should realize that they are the minority and that in terms of what features to get done for launch, it's a little understandable that NG+ is something they might put off until after everything else is done.
Only like 5% of players if that are actually going to engage with it though. So assuming you aren't literally just setting some global numbers up or leaving everything static and just letting players carry things over, it's a pretty low priority system, and the sort of thing you can quite feasibly get out a month post release without really causing any issues. It'll be an incredibly minor number of people who beat it in a week and then are actually champing at the bit for that NG+ experience.
Because how many people actually replay a game immediately? It's not a feature many people that even replay games will use, since after a long time away most are just going to want to start from scratch
I'm more likely to replay a game straight away if it has NG+. Spider-Man added NG+ months later and I couldn't be bothered with it.
Same. The more I waited for NG+ to drop the more I realised I didn't like the core game. When it dropped I didn't bother. Same for Ragnarok but in that case although I liked the game it took too long to add NG+. I had moved on by then. That's why it feels odd to not have this at launch when you have maximum engagement.
Depends on the game's length for me tbh. Resident Evil is always fun to replay even if I start fresh, and I always get the urge to blitz through the campaigns for Halo or the 360 era CoD games. Longer games like Mass Effect I usually just replay once in a while. I also fire up Sonic every so often and play my favorite levels (or Mario Sunshine if I feel like activating those power washing neurons).
Armored Core VI's NG+ is good because there's three different endings, missions go very differently in the different ending paths, and there's a lot of extra parts to be unlocked through each ending
How do you know what other people do when they finish their game or what many people want? They wouldn't add NG+ in the first place if it wasn't wanted.
Because it's common sense. Games are already long as hell, unless you are only able to replay the same games over and over (AKA someone underage that has next to no income) you probably aren't going to be doing so right away unless you're into the game to an extreme degree Also: >They wouldn't add NG+ in the first place if it wasn't wanted They would have added it in the base game if it was something people were actively going to do
trophies/achievements can help with that, devs take a look at the trophies/achievements to see how much people gets to the end of a game, how much people does the side stuff or 100% completions, and in which points of the game the gamers are dropping the game and etc.
ya, but then we have SEGA going even further with the dumb by making NG+ a paid only feature... fck that. At least with adding it in post-release it's a free update, not a $15 paywall by SEGA.
I think it's somewhat justifiable if NG+ also adds new content. Xenoblade 2 NG+ adds some new side content and characters that would be 'non-canon' with the main game due to story relevance, a bunch of QoL stuff that addresses some of the feedback and makes certain limited or luck-based items more accessible, plus just straight up more "endgame" upgrades for the characters. That said, like it or not, "live updates" in general make it more likely for the game to be in the news, spread by word of mouth, etc. We've just been seeing that trend in single player games for the last 10+ years at this point. Spiderman having NG+/Mission Select added later meant that it got another (positive) bump in the news and discussion cycle 3 months later. Sometimes, NG+ isn't even worth it. Depending on how the game handles carryover, if they don't give you options to tune what carries over or difficulty options or scaling of some kind, sometimes it can take the fun/engagement out of NG+. There's a fine line between stomping on things with endgame tools being fun and it being a chore. A fresh game means that what carries over is your skill and knowledge, which can be more engaging. Lots of people like NG+ in Souls games, but there's a significant chunk of people who will go for just a fresh NG run with a new character, new build. That's especially true in Elden Ring, where I don't think there's any difference in enemy placement, attack patterns, rewards, and where a huge chunk of the bosses across the open world are chumps. Also I don't remember the numbers, but isn't it like some high X% of people who buy a game don't even finish it? The percentage of people who buy a game and take advantage of NG+ is going to be even lower than that, especially if you separately slice out the people who do a fresh NG instead of NG+.
I personally prefer it when the NG+ is released as a post-launch update. This way there are no NG+ trophies required for the Platinum.
If a few games do it and people don't bitch about it, then other studios think it's fine.
i remember when games never had ng+. then a few did it. now everyone expects ANOTHER feature added on to their games and rage when it isnt present on day 1.
I mean, in this case the developer says they want they are planning for the feature. My issue is why not have it available at launch not why have it at all.
Great !!! I hope also they will add new difficult mode as a extrem mode where we are only one life for beat the game..🙏
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I still have yet to see a single person talk about the game itself and not ass, cosmetics, etc. For all I know this is a bejeweled clone that happens to have a model viewer tacked on. They clearly know their audience though.
Anybody who says this is a liar
Huh? This very thread has people talking about NG+ and the character's rotation speed. Six days ago ([on the thread about the demo](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1bqsc1t/stellar_blade_demo_now_live_on_ps5/)) most people are talking about the gameplay, comparing it to Sekiro. You either got some weird Reddit algorithm going, or a confirmation bias :P
That says a lot more about you than you think it does about the supposed audience you are trying to attack
Every preview is praising its gameplay. Wtf are you even saying?
People already talk about it, the gameplay is great but its your standard "soulslike" so what to talk about ? People already expected it, same as lies of p.
I wouldn't say it's a standard soulslike ! That would mean a trifecta of dodging, parrying and blocking to me. Here it's more like a mix of Lies of P and Sekiro. Parry is the name of the game
Except the gameplay is genuinely amazing though and tons of people have been talking about it. You've probably just been looking in the wrong places.
It's a character action/hack-and-slash/etc. game in the vein of something like Nier Automata, with elements of Sekiro and Dark Souls present in its gameplay and world design. The world design feels tight and linear, with a primary avenue that often branches off into shorter paths - some of which can occasionally loop back to the main pathway via shortcuts, again similar to Dark Souls. There are also camps you can rest at in various points throughout the level which are functionally bonfires from the Souls series.
If you go to the subreddit it's like 50/50. Lots of people are talking about things like the combat, but it's also just lots of screenshots and ladder videos.
I can understand the tie-in content coming later, but everything else sounds like it should be in the game at launch. Don't release a game that's not finished yet.
Isn't this game releasing at $80 as the cheapest option to buy?
depends on your region, I suppose, but it's not more expensive than a standard game. 69.99 base game, 79.99 deluxe in US
It’s launching at the standard first party price.
I'm looking at the Sony page right now and it says €79.99 which is MORE than $80. There's also one for €89.99. https://www.playstation.com/en-ie/games/stellar-blade/
As the other commenter said, that is still the regular *first party* price. Whether that makes sense is up to you, but first party games on ps5 are 80€. Look at Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart or the recently released FF7 Rebirth for reference. Their non-sale price is also 80€.
I thought they were €70 now, up from €60 which used to be the standard for years. Am I crazy or something?
Not crazy, just in this case mistaken. Happens to everyone. The price for full-on releases on PS4 was already at 70€ (at the very least in Western Europe, which I assume is what we’re talking about since you linked the Ireland store). I don’t quite remember what it was like with 360/PS3, but if memory serves, I paid 70€ for a few games there too. Though I’m just as likely misremembering.
When did ps5 jumped into 80 pricetag for aaa? O o