I would consider the download size issue to be normal. the same could be said in 2012 with respect to 2002 and in 2002 with respect to 1992, well in this case maybe a little less.
It has always been that way, and it will continue to be. A texture from a current game occupies what all the textures from the original Quake occupied, for logical reasons. Like the operating system, it occupies several times more than its previous versions, and this is not new either.
The problem with downloads is not having access to an internet connection suitable for that volume of downloads.
For me the big problem, and that will bring consequences, is the disappearance of physical storage media for these games.
But there may not be many viable options.
The big problem for me with new games is the abuse that developers make of the possibility of updating the game easily and thus they do not worry about offering a really finished product and even more the abuse of games in development that in many cases they never become a finished product.
I also find the DLC issue questionable, but it is a different business model than expansions.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-06-18, 20:00:

Peter.Mengel wrote:

nowdays evryone uses UE or Unity or Cry Engine

Which is not a problem. You can make drastically different looking games on these engines, all while avoiding the horrors of GPU driver issues, which were oh so common in early 3D days.

Sure you can, but most Devs stay at basic features, similar Assets and well the same Effects. Thats why iam saying back then many Devs had plenty of Engines in Use
it was a more Devirsed Picture of Technology. Sins vs Hl as Example.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-06-18, 20:53:

Gmlb256 wrote on 2022-06-18, 20:50:

I think that these days there are a lot of game developers that just wants to create a game and lacks the required programming skills to create a new engine.

Does rolling a custom engine matter though? Building an engine doesn't necessarily mean the game it is used for is going to be interesting or innovative.

The main effect of the availability of engines like Unity, UE, etc., is that it's lowered the barrier for game development. We have far more games being made than have ever been made in the past.

Yeah ill count thats as PRO for the Nichy Games. But in the Indy Dev A/AA Part World of Games its a Downgrade cause none of them has rly a clue how to perform best
as its all in the web as a howtodo so why bothering even thinking about own ideas and Skills if you can copy paste alot of the graphical features which then looks the same.

tannerstevo wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:03:

leileilol wrote on 2022-06-18, 20:53:

It's Rockstar, that filesize is going to be the least of your problems. Hope you're putting that on a SSD...

My download speed is 1GB per day if I am lucky, so the size is a factor for me.
I have some games in my steam library that I will most likely never play because of the download size.

Where on Earth do you live with a 64kbit Modem Internet?

brostenen wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:24:

tannerstevo wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:03:

My download speed is 1GB per day if I am lucky, so the size is a factor for me.

That is roughly 24 megabyte an hour.... Are you on dial up or something?

Dialup at best was half that

brostenen wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:16:

Hate is such a strong word. Modern games just dont do it for me personally. That is my reason, but I don't hate them I just choose not to play.

There are quite a few indie games that are quite good.
Brothers: A Take of Two Sons is really good. You can even control both characters at the same time with a dual analog stick gamepad...

A Boy and his Blob is another really good one.

The Trine games are also really good.

Dust: An Elesian Tale is another good game.

All the above are either 2D or 2.5D games.

I used to play Warframe a lot and although it is "free to play", you really do need to at least buy some extra character slots which is not big deal because they have 75% off coupons for the in-game currency every once in while.

It still ends up being less than a regular game as far as cost goes.
Last time I played, the game had gotten so much larger that I was pretty much completely lost.

Another good thing about it is that you don't need an insanely fast computer to max out the video settings and it also has pretty good graphics.

leileilol wrote on 2022-06-18, 18:36:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-06-18, 18:36:

we would get bug free disc games

Sierra, Bethesda, Troika, Obsidian, Black Isle and Origin would like to have a word with you

ZellSF wrote on 2022-06-18, 20:47:

BEEN_Nath_58 wrote on 2022-06-18, 18:36:

I think about those times where we would get bug free disc games

I must've missed those times. Definitely wasn't between 1980-2022.

Sarcasm, YES 😀

brostenen wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:16:

Hate is such a strong word. Modern games just dont do it for me personally. That is my reason, but I don't hate them I just choose not to play.

Yeah I was ranting. Ofc I don't hate modern games but there are things I believe used to be much better.

Most of the time I just don't care for them, I'm looking for the excitement I used to feel, but I usually just don't feel it. Probably because most games are just variations of half life with pretty textures. Maybe I grew out of some genres.

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-06-19, 04:18:

There are quite a few indie games that are quite good. Brothers: A Take of Two Sons is really good. You can even control both ch […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:16:

Hate is such a strong word. Modern games just dont do it for me personally. That is my reason, but I don't hate them I just choose not to play.

There are quite a few indie games that are quite good.
Brothers: A Take of Two Sons is really good. You can even control both characters at the same time with a dual analog stick gamepad...

A Boy and his Blob is another really good one.

The Trine games are also really good.

Dust: An Elesian Tale is another good game.

All the above are either 2D or 2.5D games.

I used to play Warframe a lot and although it is "free to play", you really do need to at least buy some extra character slots which is not big deal because they have 75% off coupons for the in-game currency every once in while.

It still ends up being less than a regular game as far as cost goes.
Last time I played, the game had gotten so much larger that I was pretty much completely lost.

Another good thing about it is that you don't need an insanely fast computer to max out the video settings and it also has pretty good graphics.

I liked some of those titles, I'll make sure to check out the ones i don't recognize, thanks. 😀

I like survival games and yes they are not that huge but now days everyone is the same. Install unity, pick up a location/graphics, collect rocks, avoid the generic animal/robot, build generic box to sleep in and remember to eat...

File size itself isn't really a reason to hate modern games but I would say content bloat is. Games that have 80 hours of content of which only 20 hours actually matter and further the story. I'm looking at you, Assassins Creed: The New Ones. By reducing the gameplay hours from 80 to 20 hours that would free up a lot of developer time, the game could have been released cheaper, or developers paid more / not had to crunch as much.

The other reason to hate modern games is the obvious revenue generation in them. You can tell games are designed from the ground up as revenue generating products entirely built around a micro-transaction funding model (with optional "plus continuous expansions). I'm sure developers and publishers have data on how many people will buy what DLC and how long people play for before stopping and how much they spend etc. They design the game to be just difficult enough to get the 'right number' of players to buy a level up time-saver (priced just right to get the right number of people to purchase it) or whatever other Pay to Win element. Provide just enough cosmetics to get people interested and then they know how much to charge for cosmetics to get the right number of people interested. All of this to get the right number of revenue in Q3 2022.

Reasons to hate modern games

The absolute worst that games do these days?
For me it's companies making a 'game' and then just trying to make you addicted to it. Some games will use all the tricks in the book to achieve this, including using some real psychology to figure out how they can implement more addictive and scummy mechanisms in their products. Lootboxes, FOMO, more gambling, obscuring the real cost of items, micro transactions, power creep, create a problem and then sell the solution, artificial scarcity so they can inflate costs of certain items more. Their products are basically elaborate 3D adverts trying to pretend to be real games.

Their typical player is someone who will log in every day (or else miss out on precious login bonusses), gets frustrated a lot (BUT fear not the player can always pay his way out!), normalizes gambling and overpaying for the game by stating it's still cheaper than going to a bar or because they don't have time due to their jobs and getting good stuff from lootboxes gives them that happy feel (of cheap (, planned and dosed) dopamine mechanics).

It's the companies that want to turn their playerbase into a brainless addicted cattle who are (without them realizing this) pretending for the game to be fun and them still being in control of their spending.

There's plenty trash out there but for me these are the worst kind of ''''''''games''''''''. Imo these barely are real games, they just present themselves as such so they can sucker you in.

EDIT: I forgot to mention another thing people playing these online addictions do, is to see the money they spend on those games as 'investments'. Their accounts have so and so much rare items which are very very valuable of course and sought after. But in reality with games like these you don't own anything. It's all pixels which can all be deleted with the press of a button and will disappear once the parent company goes under (or sells out).

But yes, I seriously dislike these kinds of games 😜 (and tbh for good reasons, I think this is THE worst development for gaming for the last....10 to 15 years or so (disregarding games like Evercrack existed even before this)).

It's not the modernity aspect that bothers me, but the "features" that are "popular" these days on many modern games :

- DRM requiring Internet connectivity regularly or constantly
- Online-centered games that either depend come mpletely or in part on publisher's server infra (which is never perpetual)
- No allowance for self-hosting (or third party) multi-player server setups
- Subscription based stuff
- Pay to win (or gain advantage)
- Endless streams of non-free DLC .
- The mandatory (AFAICR) GTA V "social club" or whatever it is called
- Mobile gaming that is designed to be played on a touchscreen

Joakim wrote on 2022-06-19, 06:51:

Yeah I was ranting. Ofc I don't hate modern games but there are things I believe used to be much better. […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:16:

Hate is such a strong word. Modern games just dont do it for me personally. That is my reason, but I don't hate them I just choose not to play.

Yeah I was ranting. Ofc I don't hate modern games but there are things I believe used to be much better.

Most of the time I just don't care for them, I'm looking for the excitement I used to feel, but I usually just don't feel it. Probably because most games are just variations of half life with pretty textures. Maybe I grew out of some genres.

cyclone3d wrote on 2022-06-19, 04:18:

There are quite a few indie games that are quite good. Brothers: A Take of Two Sons is really good. You can even control both ch […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2022-06-18, 21:16:

Hate is such a strong word. Modern games just dont do it for me personally. That is my reason, but I don't hate them I just choose not to play.

There are quite a few indie games that are quite good.
Brothers: A Take of Two Sons is really good. You can even control both characters at the same time with a dual analog stick gamepad...

A Boy and his Blob is another really good one.

The Trine games are also really good.

Dust: An Elesian Tale is another good game.

All the above are either 2D or 2.5D games.

I used to play Warframe a lot and although it is "free to play", you really do need to at least buy some extra character slots which is not big deal because they have 75% off coupons for the in-game currency every once in while.

It still ends up being less than a regular game as far as cost goes.
Last time I played, the game had gotten so much larger that I was pretty much completely lost.

Another good thing about it is that you don't need an insanely fast computer to max out the video settings and it also has pretty good graphics.

I liked some of those titles, I'll make sure to check out the ones i don't recognize, thanks. 😀

Of course the new-age gets less as we get more experienced. Part of the fun of gaming while we were young has to do with it being a new experience and as we get older it becomes harder to get a new experience into something we've done for years now.
Perhaps it's just sort of a natural thing for us to evolve gaming more into a way to relax and let our experience guide us instead of just yoloing in like most of us probably used to do?

I don't play as many games as I used to anymore, but I still tend to get taken away from time to time and get sucked into the game (in a good way!) and enjoy the 'magic', so to say 😀
But unfortunately this feeling wears off after a while, or at least it does for me.
The last game that did this for me was Deep Rock Galactic. It's perhaps THE best coop game I ever played (and it runs at high fps on my not very ultra-high-end hardware 🤣 while still looking very nice...but then again I still think that games like Skyrim are still looking very nice) and how it plays is actually more reminiscent to (for me personally that is) a mix of FPS and RPG (there's moments of exploring and moments that are like Aliens square or something like starship troopers with loads of aliens trying to swarm your positions with 20 seconds or so to find a good spot to defend and prepare defenses to defend against hordes of swarming bugs, so many that their corpses sometimes even block LoS to the other end of the corridor 🤣 (once a bug is dead its corpse becomes collisionmesh-less and despawns after 5 seconds or so).

The initial feel of excitement for DRG lasted for about 3 or 4 months iirc? After that I still enjoyed the heck out of it but the magic will at some point wear off.

I've heard fairly good things about Warframe, but tbh I've become somewhat hesitant to want to ever try anything which includes "Free 2 play" again, I'd rather pay full price at front and then be done with it 😜

EDIT: Even just talking about DRG or seeing a streamer play DRG makes me want to start up DRG and play a few games. Afterwards I'm almost always fulfilled with that feeling of being satisfied. I can just log in, play a few games and exit an hour later without it dragging me in for too long a time (unlike games I do consider good but eat up ridiculous amounts of time like Stellaris 🤣).
But for me this is a good representation of what a good game should do to me. Just being able to log in or out whenever I want, no FOMO bs, no artificial frustrations, just me having a good time! 😋 (yes there are sometimes grievers like in any game, but this game at least features a *KICK* button 🙂🙂🙂🙂:P so usually people will try to behave 😜 ).

Tetrium wrote on 2022-06-19, 07:20:

Reasons to hate modern games

The absolute worst that games do these days?
For me it's companies making a 'game' and then just trying to make you addicted to it.

Thanks, you put the feeling I've had for several years into words. When I talk about this with modern-only gamers they just look at me funny.

I'm not much interested in videogaming anymore beside the retrogaming rare moments that are more related to the hardware itself than the real gaming and even in the far past when I had patience and less amount of everyday life problems to concentrate on videogames, I've never been a serious all day videogamer so beside the interesting technical improvements of modern titles, I find most boring even looking some short youtube video reviews about their gameplay.

So not being expert of modern videogames logics, for what I understand I think the online requirement logics came with few positive but many less positive sides for what could easily be installed into a blueray disc, which I don't see any reasons (for the users) that could not be just like in the past. Not only for the huge download times problem that requires internet costs added to the game cost itself, but also all the client/server/credit card dependencies, in-game possibility to buy/add features, these might be seen as "improvements" but I prefer the idea of actually buying and owning something that has a box, a disc, a code and might last "forever" instead of the possibility the hard disk might fail and the whole installation of the o.s, sw, games etc.. would requires so much effort to restore. Also a product should be considered finished and not upgradable everytime maybe even depending on more costs. I understand few patches that always happened and were free. But also in the past the thing began with the Half Life 2 logic. I have the original game and box with its orange sticker code, bought at day one in the 2004 and I can't play that version of engine/game on a retrohardware anymore beside whatever logic that could make it work it's the point itself of something you own and can't use anymore that isn't good.

For me the current state of software in general, not just games drives me mad:

1- Software prioritizes its updates over immediate usability. Start computer, wait for update. Open PowerPoint for presentation in front of 10 people, wait for update. Open browser, wait for update.. etc. Turn on PS4, wait for update. Launch game, wait for update. This is BS and has to stop.

2- All modern platforms barrage you with notifications. I JUST WANT TO FOCUS HERE PLZ! I dont want to know about the status of the last virus scan, nor whether updates are ready, nor emails, nor friend logins. It's a nightmare chasing those and turning them off.

3- Unnecessarily huge updates. A quick fix is 1.5GB?

4- Everything wants to take my data. Games have been collecting data for two decades already. They log your moves, where you die, where you get stuck, what you choose, and send all this telemetry back to the publishers, along with any personal identification the platform allows them to get to. The devs back in the office then put the data in a heatmap and start discussing the next update (again). BTW, some platforms REQUIRE you to log this data, so it's not just a publisher/developer decision. Yay!

So execuse me while I go back to playing on DOS and writing my reports with Office on Windows 98 SE. I can get the job done way faster due to less distractions, on software that serves me first before it serves itself. And when I have 30mins to play a game, I boot up to DOS, CD GAMES\SomeThing, run.. bam.. instant entertainment.

Funny how back in the days PC gamers envied console gamers for being able to play just by flicking up the power button of the SNES or Sega. Now I'm bragging about flicking up DOS against a PS5 😅

1- They are not proper games, they're basically just like making a game in the rpg maker 2000. Noone bothers to create a new engine anymore. Everything has to be a quick cash grab rpg maker game nice.

There are many amazing modern games.

But they are not made by many of the big names anymore. If you are only allowed to play games released by EA, Blizard/Activision or the handful of other major scummy publishers ... then yes, your selection is limited.

However, there are more games than just that ...yYou don't have to choose to play the games with monetization or/and pay to win mechanics. Good base games come with enough content that you don't need to buy the DLC if you don't want. But like always, you have to choose to be an informed customer and to look out for the good games amongst the chaff.

There have always been god awful games at all times and platforms, anyone remember the tsunami of shovelware that appeared on the Wii, or an even older example, the Atari 2600 ... but now you have so much information on the internet, you can be selective in what you buy, you can always pick things up on special, and you can still enjoy games if you choose to do so.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-06-18, 19:03:

My Flight Simulator install is approaching 200 GB. Graphically it looks amazing and is approaching photorealism.

While I could easily play a much older version of the game, it won't look nearly as good. So I put up with the space requirements and load times, because that's the price of gorgeous graphics.

Looks at ARK install size ...200Gb . .rookie numbers.
A full ARK install sits at 432gb on disk.

That's no mods or extras .. just ARK and its DLC.

It'll be over 500Gb soon as there is yet another DLC coming.

One of my main reasons I can't stand many modern games is the bland humor. I've seen so many games trying to be funny, but they're not even slightly amusing, let alone funny. It seems every joke has been passed through a committee to make sure there's not even a single person amongst the 7 billion people on Earth that could possibly be offended. So there's only shitty jokes left.