I think the reviewers are really salty that the money train has ended for them. All the payola goes to streamers now. The measure of that impact is up for debate, but the streamers are at least transparent about it. EA paid a bunch of them to play Apex Legends, for example, and they told their audience that was the case, and they wound up liking the game anyway. When Sea of Thieves launched, MS paid some top streamers to play the game for a week. It didn’t help SoT because it was boring.
KevinC
1604
Am I just getting wacky RNG or is everyone playing Storm at low levels? All my groups thus far have been 4 storms, or 3 storms and one big guy.
That doesn’t explain the super-negative streamer reviews for this.
Another obviously salty and disgruntled review
Teiman
1607
Storm is pretty strong and have a infinity ult glitch thay let people melt boss in seconds
I think it explains the end of the 7-9 scale.
Streamers don’t need the corporate payola to survive. It helps, no doubt, but they don’t need it. DisguisedToast made a video breaking down his income a few months ago, it was very enlightening.
KevinC
1609
This is just personal opinion and I’m not trying to convince anyone, but I think if this game didn’t have the EA or Bioware name attached to it the reviews would be higher. I think you have a combination of things here, where you have some people with very high expectations disappointed. You have people with Bioware expectations disgruntled. And you have the much-deserved EA hate train as well.
If this game came out of nowhere from a random developer, I bet a lot of these scores are a good 10-15 points higher. Perspective and expectations can make all the difference between “Some of this stuff is really good, but it’s hamstrung by all these shortcomings” instead of “Wow, this stuff is really good! I’m excited to see how they build on this foundation and it will only improve as they iron out some of these launch issues”.
jsnell
1610
I don’t think that’s it. Apex Legends launched with the same EA problems, and should have had a backlash due to them killing Titanfall in favor of a F2P PUBG clone. But despite that it got universal acclaim.
It also came out of nowhere and there was no buildup and expectation. It was also free.
To add to this, Apex is a legit great and polished game with innovative features. Best in class, imo, so the praise is actually deserved.
Apex Legends is EA too, though. That doesn’t seem to have an EA Hate Train on it.
I think like I said earlier, this game set up some expectations that it hasn’t met. That’s ultimately the biggest issue. If it comes from Bioware with lowered expectations, maybe it does better? It’s pretty clear it’s not really “done” though. It had a deadline for release that it met and now they’ve got a problem on their hands. The real question is whether they stay the course like Bungie/Activision did with Destiny or does EA pull the plug before it can find its footing?
I also think this genre of game is a tough sell to some people, me included. I’m out on Anthem and decided that earlier this week despite liking the way it played in the demo. I just came to realize that co-op AI pincushion blasting is probably not my thing.
My speculation is that the hobby/industry is starting to push back against the GaaS model designed from the ground up to push MTX. Most of the recent games that took big review score hits that shocked everyone have been designed in this model.
Also, the GaaS games typically get something functional out the door for 1.0 then promise tons of support and content long term. Reviewing a bunch of future promises doesn’t work well.
I will be interested to see what the reception for Division 2 will be like.
This is just all wild speculation on my part but kind of a personal theory I’m batting around in my head.
I don’t think you’re wrong. You can promise content, but the content you ship day one better be good and it better be enough for a single player game’s worth of entertainment, because really that’s what you’re selling on the day it ships.
Games as a Service, like all service oriented software, feels like a rip off because you feel like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop when you have to pay again.
Eh. They aren’t as independent as all that. Many of the big name streamers still very much rely on access regardless of the income source. You aren’t pulling healthy Patreon numbers with old content. If the publishers cut them off and stop giving them early peeks at upcoming stuff or don’t invite them to events, their audience will drop.
Sort of off topic, but all this talk about live service games makes me love Monster Hunter World even more. They went out of their way to say NOO WE ARE NOT A LIVE SERVICE. And then delivered a live service with new content for an entire year after release. For free.
You can play it for a month for $15, then pick it up again if they add a bunch of new stuff for another $15. It’s only a $60 game of you want it to be. Or a $6000 game of course :)
kerzain
1618
The reaction of that little yellow guy makes me laugh every time.
jsnell
1619
People will complain that post-apocalyptic Washington DC is an incredibly boring environment compared to mid-apocalyptic NYC in the middle of a Christmas snowstorm. They’ll complain that the core gameplay hasn’t changed at all, that shooting still doesn’t feel great, that the loot is boring, and that there’s not enough repeatable endgame content.
And then it’ll end up with a metacritic average of 79 and a commercial success as most of the Division 1 playerbase migrates to 2. Because actually all you need for a loot-shooter is for it to be technically competent and for the progression system to work. I don’t know that the gameplay even needs to be that fun. The game just needs to hold up long enough for the progression system to get it’s hooks into the players.
The Division 2 private and public betas were solid, and they showed in Division 1 that they could build a top-notch progression system out of what initially looked like absolute garbage loot. (Specifically all the interlocking systems around talents with stat requirements, and the recalibration/optimization system).
I’ll absolutely believe the posters in this thread who talk about how fun the combat in Anthem is. But there’s also no way I’m day 1 or even day 30 on a game that’s had so many widely reported technical issues.
Entirely fair.
I think your comments about Division 2 reception is spot on. If the sequel actually builds on what it did right the first go round, isn’t a buggy mess, and feels good to play, it’ll be received well.
That’s kinda all you need to pull off with one of these games, right?
If Anthem hadn’t become a loading screen meme and actually ran well, Bioware would be in a very different position.
The load times to get out of Tarsis are a bit long, but understandable.
But it’s those expeditions that involve mid-mission loading screens to, say, enter a mine. Those are poorly executed. Especially when you have to exit the mine. The load to enter the mine isn’t as bad, as the mine itself isn’t a huge level. But then you have to re-enter the world… yikes.
The differences are especially bad on PC, where some players are on SSDs while others are on HDDs. The HDD players will exit the mine, only to find that the SSD players have already zoomed way off to the next objective, forcing them to do the rubber-band load.
kerzain
1622
There’s only one loading screen that bothered me, the stupid loading screen to open and adjust my inventory. Sure, Tarsis should never have existed in the first place and we should never have had to walk around outside of our suit, but that inventory loading screen was just such a drag.
