I mean they could also just be adding the much requested melee weapons/combat people seem to want which probably wouldn't be too hard to do
Unless they already had a lot of work done on some cut content that seems like a whole lot to add from scratch in a few months.
That’s new animations, new items, actually coming up with a fitting way to mesh that into the current game design, rebalancing all the current content around the new additions and then actually putting in a proper QA cycle after all that.
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
I'm really happy that you are excited for the game @Local H Jay, wish I could be too, especially with my love of DC.
This game is just the one two punch perfect storm to make me roll my eyes so far in the back of my head that I strain something.
I'm tired of WB trying to make the Suicide Squad a big brand. They aren't. They won't ever be. The fact that we have this major SS game coming out and still no major game about almost anyone else is just stupid. Then on top of that they made it a GaaS, looter shooter, get new guns to make the numbers go slightly up, battle pass, everyone plays the same so they can shoot the purple weak spot piece of blech. Yea, it's just not my cup of tea. The game is just DC's Avengers with Guns: The Game. I honestly hope is crashes and burns and somehow at the same time doesn't sink Rocksteady. Let them go back to what they do best, single player, story driven action games.
I will give the small chance that it might end up being better than it looks. I mean heck, my expectations for Gotham Knights was super low but I ended up having a great time with that one. I enjoyed it despite some of the (hilarious to be honest) jank and the constant get new equipment to make the numbers go slightly up mechanics that weighed the game down.
But the Suicide Squad game is much more steeped in the Avengers/Anthem level GaaS garbage than Gotham Knights ever was so the only way I'm willing to try it is if they provide it for free. Judging how those other games went, that is a distinct possibility.
I mean, I can see the other comaplints and just not being into the game (and I'm not really into it, there are far better looking open world co-op shooters - WAYFINDER and REDFALL for two - coming down the pike to get to excited about another over-corporatized GaaS affair), but nothing in the gameplay beyond the basic hook of "fast movement" makes me think these characters are all going to play the same.
Like, if you're comparing it to AVENGERS in terms of character identity, sign me up - because that game had that at least going for it.
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0
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I mean they could also just be adding the much requested melee weapons/combat people seem to want which probably wouldn't be too hard to do
I have worked on multiple game projects with melee systems. This is not something you jumble together and shove into a game in several months if you don't want it to be utterly half arsed.
But then that would just fit with the rest of the game here, so maybe it is what they're doing.
Edit: I think their choice was simple. Send it out to die against some of the biggest games coming out this year or delay it for a slight fighting chance. As they are a GaaS game they aren't going anywhere other than announcing the servers will be turned off in ~1 year of they dont get a decent player count.
Ok well what I said wasn’t speculation and I even started by noting that there could have been work done on it already which would change thing s so not sure why you repeated that part either.
But yea just “adding a new type of combat” is not a simple thing like you suggested.
I'm not getting the whiff of "money pit" here. Six years doesn't seem particularly long given COVID. Like is it just the GaaS that are making people go with the kneejerk "Oh, this game is CLEARLY in development hell?"
I'm not getting the whiff of "money pit" here. Six years doesn't seem particularly long given COVID. Like is it just the GaaS that are making people go with the kneejerk "Oh, this game is CLEARLY in development hell?"
Even with longer development times six years is still extremely unusual for a AAA game.
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+2
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 10
I will say the pandemic did add about 1-2 years to every game's cycle though.
I think in general people are just antsy cause we are in year 3 of the PS5/XBX era and it still doesn't feel next gen yet.
Hell most big titles released last year still had PS4/XB1 versions.
1) Hardware availability in the first two years was extremely scarce. People couldn't get PS5's and XBSX's because of a combination of industry-wide parts shortages and also because bots/scalpers were buying a huge portion of available inventory. And software companies don't want to release software for hardware with tiny install bases.
2) COVID completely fucked development pipelines, and many games that are coming out now are games that should have come out 3-4 years ago when the PS4/XBO were still current gen.
I've seen industry analysts making predictions that the PS5/XBSX hardware generation is going to be longer than normal, because the adoption rate for both hardware ownership and software support has been so slow, that the industry is just now starting to fully adopt the new hardware. The middle-period between generations has been exceptionally long, which has produced a lot of weird industry knock-on effects as a result.
I just finished the story of Gotham Knights. When I first started playing I thought it was a pretty good game. Having finished it I have to say it is pretty mediocre. Combat is super floaty, story was forgettable, gear system was unnecessary, etc. The weirdest thing was that as far as I can tell the batcycle only goes like 25 mph. They should have not included the distance to the target because while the blur effect looks cool you can easily calculate that you are barely moving. Usain bolt can run faster that! Probably have about 5 to 10 more hours to get the platinum but I doubt I will ever think about it again once I am done.
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0
-Loki-Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining.Registered Userregular
The weirdest thing was that as far as I can tell the batcycle only goes like 25 mph. They should have not included the distance to the target because while the blur effect looks cool you can easily calculate that you are barely moving. Usain bolt can run faster that! Probably have about 5 to 10 more hours to get the platinum but I doubt I will ever think about it again once I am done.
The weirdest thing was that as far as I can tell the batcycle only goes like 25 mph. They should have not included the distance to the target because while the blur effect looks cool you can easily calculate that you are barely moving. Usain bolt can run faster that! Probably have about 5 to 10 more hours to get the platinum but I doubt I will ever think about it again once I am done.
Did we ever hear how long Suicide Squad got delayed? Or did I miss it?
Later this year is all we know
Technically we know less than that - I did a search and apparently Rocksteady never confirmed the delay, even though it's been a month.
Considering the game is scheduled for May, you'd think they'd announce that delay soon. Or maybe it's not actually delayed? Though they never confirmed that, either.
Did we ever hear how long Suicide Squad got delayed? Or did I miss it?
Later this year is all we know
Technically we know less than that - I did a search and apparently Rocksteady never confirmed the delay, even though it's been a month.
Considering the game is scheduled for May, you'd think they'd announce that delay soon. Or maybe it's not actually delayed? Though they never confirmed that, either.
The person who reported the delay was well known journalist Jason Schrier who has a pretty good track record with this type of thing. Here's the Bloomberg article about it
Warner Bros. has again delayed a video game based on the Suicide Squad comic book franchise, pushing it from a May release date to later this year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, a multiplayer shooter game starring a group of comic book anti-heroes, was originally planned for release in 2022 until it slipped to 2023 early last year. Last fall, London-based developer Rocksteady Studios said it would be out May 26. The new release date was not yet clear.
A representative for Warner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Suicide Squad was showcased during a PlayStation event in February but received criticism from fans due to its service elements, such as purchasable cosmetics and a requirement to play online.
The delay is necessary mostly to fix bugs and improve aspects of the game that were lagging behind and won’t overhaul much of the core gameplay that had led to the backlash, the person said, asking not to be named discussing information that isn’t public.
I'm guessing based on that it may land a few months behind
Did we ever hear how long Suicide Squad got delayed? Or did I miss it?
Later this year is all we know
Technically we know less than that - I did a search and apparently Rocksteady never confirmed the delay, even though it's been a month.
Considering the game is scheduled for May, you'd think they'd announce that delay soon. Or maybe it's not actually delayed? Though they never confirmed that, either.
The person who reported the delay was well known journalist Jason Schrier who has a pretty good track record with this type of thing. Here's the Bloomberg article about it
Warner Bros. has again delayed a video game based on the Suicide Squad comic book franchise, pushing it from a May release date to later this year, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, a multiplayer shooter game starring a group of comic book anti-heroes, was originally planned for release in 2022 until it slipped to 2023 early last year. Last fall, London-based developer Rocksteady Studios said it would be out May 26. The new release date was not yet clear.
A representative for Warner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Suicide Squad was showcased during a PlayStation event in February but received criticism from fans due to its service elements, such as purchasable cosmetics and a requirement to play online.
The delay is necessary mostly to fix bugs and improve aspects of the game that were lagging behind and won’t overhaul much of the core gameplay that had led to the backlash, the person said, asking not to be named discussing information that isn’t public.
I'm guessing based on that it may land a few months behind
No, I believe you, Schreier has an awesome track record. It's just that not announcing the delay by now is very, very weird. Games go gold about a month before release, and, well, we're here. Plus retailers have to make plans and such. Either Rocksteady quietly reversed the delay, or... something? Odd attempt at trying to mitigate bad press?
If it was them trying to quell bad press they'd probably have said it themselves over having one employee leak it to Bloomberg. Maybe it'll be a short delay, so that the day one patch actually arrives on day one but doesn't throw a wrench in their manufacturing plans
Also the header for that article shows Shark and Boomer using their melee weapons which I know was a fan complaint
10 months is a significant amount of time. But also, it's fairly insignificant when you look at how long it has taken them to get to this point. Arkham Knight released in 2015. That's 8 years ago. New projects have a ramp-up time, so I'll be generous and assume that full production didn't begin until 2016-2017. So if we use 6-7 years as the assumed production time on the game, another 10 months on top of that is not a lot.
If they add a melee combat system to the game, that means literally every fight, every encounter, in the entire game will need to be re-balanced or remade completely to account for melee combat. Since right now combat appears to be about 96% shooting, with the remaining amount being special-ability finishers. I'm not so sure 10 months is enough time to rebuild every single combat encounter in the game to account for the addition of melee combat. Because that means enemy mechanics have to change, boss mechanics change, and the flow/pace of combat adjusted for every single fight.
I think people should temper their expectations. Yes, some changes will happen. Yes, they might find a way to make each of the four characters feel more unique to play. But I also wouldn't expect a major overhaul of core combat systems. Even with 10 months of extra time, a total redesign is not a realistic expectation.
The biggest complaints the community seemed to have are:
1) Character design is homogenous and too shootery for a cast of characters who all have fairly unique combat styles in the source material.
2) Combat encounters were shown to be shooting purple blobby weak points on giant bullet sponge enemies.
3) Gear with super generic stats really hurt Marvel's Avengers, and also hurt Gotham Knights, and it's a reasonably safe assumption to think it won't help SS:KtJL either.
They might be able to alleviate some of those problems and smooth some of the rougher edges, but I don't think 10 months is enough time to fully fix or fully address all of them in a substantial way. Basically, what I'm expecting from this delay is that SS:KtJL will suck slightly less than it appeared to in the State of Play gameplay trailer, but it still is gonna be bad. I hope I'm wrong. But that's my expectation. They're just too far down the LiveService, Generic Looter-Shooter hole to completely salvage the sinking ship in 10 months.
+1
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 14
I think in general the problem with chasing fads in this day and age is that game development takes so much longer that you're really gambling when you do it.
It isn't the 90s where you could pop out a decent budgeted title in 1-2 years.
If they manage to salvage this game I'll be surprised but I'm mostly hoping it doesn't kill the Arkham series.
Thing is destiny survived years of content droughts by just being fun to play moment to moment. The shooting has just felt plain good. And to me, if this game was Live Service Crackdown? Sounds amazing to me
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited April 14
Destiny was also the first game to really make a big splash in that particular market. So
The market now is very different. We are talking 9 years and a ton of GaaS that have come and gone.
If you want to make a footprint in a saturated and very competitive market you got to have a hook.
Cause the thing is most casual people are for the most part over the fad. And the more hardcore people need a reason to tear themselves away from their particular GaaS.
Yeah, the GaaS industry is in the same place in 2023 that the MMO market was in back in 2007.
Destiny, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Valorant, Sea of Thieves, The Division, and a few others have managed to carve out a permanent place in people's game rotations. But the problem is not quantity of games. The problem isn't even quality of games. The problem is time. There are simply not enough hours in the day for people to play one, maybe two, live service games at the commitment that developers are asking for.
Battlepasses are a great way to drive player retention and engagement metrics. They're great for shareholders and generating Monthly Active Users. The problem is, if I'm a Fortnite player and I'm already invested in the Fortnite ecosystem and am happy grinding the seasonal Fortnite battlepass, I literally do not have the time to also play Valorant. Or whatever. Time is the limiting factor.
There were a ton of great MMOs that came out during the MMO boom of the early-mid 2000s. But the problem is time. There's not enough time to play more than one MMO. And if a person tries to divide their time, they're not going to be able to max out either one of the games they're playing. City of Heroes, Wildstar, Star Wars Galaxies, all of those were good games. But they were asking people to quit WoW, and quit FF11, and quit EQ, and quit Runescape to play them.
It's not like singleplayer games where you can play for two weeks and be done and be satisfied and immediately move on to another game. That's not the way MMOs and GaaS games are designed. GaaS is specifically designed to consume as much of your time as possible and keep you engaged in grinding for as long as they can. And there's just not enough time for a person to engage with multiples of those types of games. Even if they're all really good.
In a way MMO's were almost "better" about this thing, because MMO's were their own genre and mostly competed with themselves. Though really I think that competition wasn't about time as it was about money. Nobody was going to pay for 3+ subscriptions.
GaaS though now competes with everything. As you say, the problem is time. It starts to choke out even traditional single player games. Where do you find time to play Zelda when everything else is a time consuming GaaS? And maybe more insidiously... the issue of money is still there. Instead of an upfront subscription, it's now microtransactions. And they're by design to be much less noticeable. A subscription is a potential hard barrier that might stop you, but you might easily spend 3x as much on MTX and not even realize it.
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Personally I'm intensely curious to learn what's happening behind the scenes. Rocksteady's swearing this is just for polish and not changing the game system, but - 10 months is a LOT of time for polish. Wouldn't surprise me if a few things are being bent or retooled.
I'm also curious how the final game will turn out. I mean, maybe it will be great! Plenty of games survived rocky development processes and came out great. But... plenty didn't. Guess we'll have to see.
They claim to be doing a whole series of these. And from this first video, it sounds like they're pretty committed to the February 2024 release date. So I guess this is what we're gonna get...
Spoilers for some of my thoughts after having watched it.
-- Everybody criticized the mobility powers of the characters back when they dropped the infamous bad demo from earlier in the year. Well, in this new video they showcase snippets from the scene that provides the in-game justification for why these characters have the mobility powers that they do. In my opinion, it doesn't help. It feels like a thinly veiled contrivance to allow Harley to sky-grapple, and Captain Boomerang to bamf about like Nightcrawler. And it still doesn't work. It still feels wrong in my opinion.
-- The dialog is atrocious. Nearly every spoken line in the trailer is absolutely terrible. Rocksteady has gone full Marvel with the quips and one-liner conversations. But the problem is, 100% of the spoken lines are quips or one-liners, or both. It doesn't feel natural to have characters speaking like this all the time. They're supposed to be having conversations, but it feels like each and every line that they deliver is constructed to be a tag line in a trailer.
-- Something looks really "off" about Harley's face when she's wearing her prison garb. Her cheeks are puffed out and she looks like an adult Cabbage Patch Kid or something in all of the scenes where she's shown wearing that outfit. Her classic Harley outfit doesn't have the same problem. Her cheeks aren't puffed out or baby-like when she's wearing the red and black jester costume.
-- Combat still does not look engaging to me. It's just a bunch of hovering around and spamming attacks, without much nuance or variety. It all looks very samey. And just like in my point above about the contrived mobility powers, shoe-horning guns onto Captain Boomerang, and giving King Shark a minigun feels wrong. They are not playing to the established versions of these characters at all, and just doing whatever they can to force this game to be a looter shooter. The problem is, 3 out of 4 of the characters they picked for this game are not really compatible with looter shooter. Not without feeling forced and contrived, exactly as they have done here. It feels wrong.
At a glance it looks like a very detailed Fortnite clone. There's something about the movement and shooting that really reminds me of it.
Honestly it looks kinda fun in a "play in short burst"but I have not idea how they'll keep it interesting for a full campaign.
And Harley is a character you REALLY got to thread the needle with or you make her really annoying and it seems like they're not doing a good job of that.
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Unless they already had a lot of work done on some cut content that seems like a whole lot to add from scratch in a few months.
That’s new animations, new items, actually coming up with a fitting way to mesh that into the current game design, rebalancing all the current content around the new additions and then actually putting in a proper QA cycle after all that.
I have no idea what message you are trying to convey here as a response to my post.
This game is just the one two punch perfect storm to make me roll my eyes so far in the back of my head that I strain something.
I'm tired of WB trying to make the Suicide Squad a big brand. They aren't. They won't ever be. The fact that we have this major SS game coming out and still no major game about almost anyone else is just stupid. Then on top of that they made it a GaaS, looter shooter, get new guns to make the numbers go slightly up, battle pass, everyone plays the same so they can shoot the purple weak spot piece of blech. Yea, it's just not my cup of tea. The game is just DC's Avengers with Guns: The Game. I honestly hope is crashes and burns and somehow at the same time doesn't sink Rocksteady. Let them go back to what they do best, single player, story driven action games.
I will give the small chance that it might end up being better than it looks. I mean heck, my expectations for Gotham Knights was super low but I ended up having a great time with that one. I enjoyed it despite some of the (hilarious to be honest) jank and the constant get new equipment to make the numbers go slightly up mechanics that weighed the game down.
But the Suicide Squad game is much more steeped in the Avengers/Anthem level GaaS garbage than Gotham Knights ever was so the only way I'm willing to try it is if they provide it for free. Judging how those other games went, that is a distinct possibility.
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Like, if you're comparing it to AVENGERS in terms of character identity, sign me up - because that game had that at least going for it.
I have worked on multiple game projects with melee systems. This is not something you jumble together and shove into a game in several months if you don't want it to be utterly half arsed.
But then that would just fit with the rest of the game here, so maybe it is what they're doing.
Edit: I think their choice was simple. Send it out to die against some of the biggest games coming out this year or delay it for a slight fighting chance. As they are a GaaS game they aren't going anywhere other than announcing the servers will be turned off in ~1 year of they dont get a decent player count.
Ok well what I said wasn’t speculation and I even started by noting that there could have been work done on it already which would change thing s so not sure why you repeated that part either.
But yea just “adding a new type of combat” is not a simple thing like you suggested.
If true that would be a much more interesting delay, and would actually give them time to fix stuff.
How long has this game been in development? Six years? How much money has been shoveled into this furnace?
The post-mortem stories about this one are going to be fascinating.
Even with longer development times six years is still extremely unusual for a AAA game.
I think in general people are just antsy cause we are in year 3 of the PS5/XBX era and it still doesn't feel next gen yet.
Hell most big titles released last year still had PS4/XB1 versions.
Last year? Resident Evil 4 Remake is on Ps4...
1) Hardware availability in the first two years was extremely scarce. People couldn't get PS5's and XBSX's because of a combination of industry-wide parts shortages and also because bots/scalpers were buying a huge portion of available inventory. And software companies don't want to release software for hardware with tiny install bases.
2) COVID completely fucked development pipelines, and many games that are coming out now are games that should have come out 3-4 years ago when the PS4/XBO were still current gen.
I've seen industry analysts making predictions that the PS5/XBSX hardware generation is going to be longer than normal, because the adoption rate for both hardware ownership and software support has been so slow, that the industry is just now starting to fully adopt the new hardware. The middle-period between generations has been exceptionally long, which has produced a lot of weird industry knock-on effects as a result.
PSN:Furlion
Reminds me of this.
Hot damn. I bet the speed running community already knew that though.
PSN:Furlion
Later this year is all we know
Technically we know less than that - I did a search and apparently Rocksteady never confirmed the delay, even though it's been a month.
Considering the game is scheduled for May, you'd think they'd announce that delay soon. Or maybe it's not actually delayed? Though they never confirmed that, either.
Yep, the website still says May.
The person who reported the delay was well known journalist Jason Schrier who has a pretty good track record with this type of thing. Here's the Bloomberg article about it
I'm guessing based on that it may land a few months behind
No, I believe you, Schreier has an awesome track record. It's just that not announcing the delay by now is very, very weird. Games go gold about a month before release, and, well, we're here. Plus retailers have to make plans and such. Either Rocksteady quietly reversed the delay, or... something? Odd attempt at trying to mitigate bad press?
Also the header for that article shows Shark and Boomer using their melee weapons which I know was a fan complaint
Alright, but where is the mallet?
Idk I haven't played it yet ask one of these other guys who have
That's it, you kicked the seat too many times, we're turning this whole game around and going back home.
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It was either this or send it out to die, because I guarantee you they did not have a better option after the reaction to that gameplay reveal.
Gotta have long enough to add some melee and then 30 $3.99 skins for them.
10 months is a significant amount of time. But also, it's fairly insignificant when you look at how long it has taken them to get to this point. Arkham Knight released in 2015. That's 8 years ago. New projects have a ramp-up time, so I'll be generous and assume that full production didn't begin until 2016-2017. So if we use 6-7 years as the assumed production time on the game, another 10 months on top of that is not a lot.
If they add a melee combat system to the game, that means literally every fight, every encounter, in the entire game will need to be re-balanced or remade completely to account for melee combat. Since right now combat appears to be about 96% shooting, with the remaining amount being special-ability finishers. I'm not so sure 10 months is enough time to rebuild every single combat encounter in the game to account for the addition of melee combat. Because that means enemy mechanics have to change, boss mechanics change, and the flow/pace of combat adjusted for every single fight.
I think people should temper their expectations. Yes, some changes will happen. Yes, they might find a way to make each of the four characters feel more unique to play. But I also wouldn't expect a major overhaul of core combat systems. Even with 10 months of extra time, a total redesign is not a realistic expectation.
The biggest complaints the community seemed to have are:
1) Character design is homogenous and too shootery for a cast of characters who all have fairly unique combat styles in the source material.
2) Combat encounters were shown to be shooting purple blobby weak points on giant bullet sponge enemies.
3) Gear with super generic stats really hurt Marvel's Avengers, and also hurt Gotham Knights, and it's a reasonably safe assumption to think it won't help SS:KtJL either.
They might be able to alleviate some of those problems and smooth some of the rougher edges, but I don't think 10 months is enough time to fully fix or fully address all of them in a substantial way. Basically, what I'm expecting from this delay is that SS:KtJL will suck slightly less than it appeared to in the State of Play gameplay trailer, but it still is gonna be bad. I hope I'm wrong. But that's my expectation. They're just too far down the LiveService, Generic Looter-Shooter hole to completely salvage the sinking ship in 10 months.
It isn't the 90s where you could pop out a decent budgeted title in 1-2 years.
If they manage to salvage this game I'll be surprised but I'm mostly hoping it doesn't kill the Arkham series.
The market now is very different. We are talking 9 years and a ton of GaaS that have come and gone.
If you want to make a footprint in a saturated and very competitive market you got to have a hook.
Cause the thing is most casual people are for the most part over the fad. And the more hardcore people need a reason to tear themselves away from their particular GaaS.
Destiny, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Valorant, Sea of Thieves, The Division, and a few others have managed to carve out a permanent place in people's game rotations. But the problem is not quantity of games. The problem isn't even quality of games. The problem is time. There are simply not enough hours in the day for people to play one, maybe two, live service games at the commitment that developers are asking for.
Battlepasses are a great way to drive player retention and engagement metrics. They're great for shareholders and generating Monthly Active Users. The problem is, if I'm a Fortnite player and I'm already invested in the Fortnite ecosystem and am happy grinding the seasonal Fortnite battlepass, I literally do not have the time to also play Valorant. Or whatever. Time is the limiting factor.
There were a ton of great MMOs that came out during the MMO boom of the early-mid 2000s. But the problem is time. There's not enough time to play more than one MMO. And if a person tries to divide their time, they're not going to be able to max out either one of the games they're playing. City of Heroes, Wildstar, Star Wars Galaxies, all of those were good games. But they were asking people to quit WoW, and quit FF11, and quit EQ, and quit Runescape to play them.
It's not like singleplayer games where you can play for two weeks and be done and be satisfied and immediately move on to another game. That's not the way MMOs and GaaS games are designed. GaaS is specifically designed to consume as much of your time as possible and keep you engaged in grinding for as long as they can. And there's just not enough time for a person to engage with multiples of those types of games. Even if they're all really good.
GaaS though now competes with everything. As you say, the problem is time. It starts to choke out even traditional single player games. Where do you find time to play Zelda when everything else is a time consuming GaaS? And maybe more insidiously... the issue of money is still there. Instead of an upfront subscription, it's now microtransactions. And they're by design to be much less noticeable. A subscription is a potential hard barrier that might stop you, but you might easily spend 3x as much on MTX and not even realize it.
I'm also curious how the final game will turn out. I mean, maybe it will be great! Plenty of games survived rocky development processes and came out great. But... plenty didn't. Guess we'll have to see.
Rocksteady published a 19 minute Story and Gameplay video yesterday for SS: KtJL.
They claim to be doing a whole series of these. And from this first video, it sounds like they're pretty committed to the February 2024 release date. So I guess this is what we're gonna get...
Spoilers for some of my thoughts after having watched it.
-- The dialog is atrocious. Nearly every spoken line in the trailer is absolutely terrible. Rocksteady has gone full Marvel with the quips and one-liner conversations. But the problem is, 100% of the spoken lines are quips or one-liners, or both. It doesn't feel natural to have characters speaking like this all the time. They're supposed to be having conversations, but it feels like each and every line that they deliver is constructed to be a tag line in a trailer.
-- Something looks really "off" about Harley's face when she's wearing her prison garb. Her cheeks are puffed out and she looks like an adult Cabbage Patch Kid or something in all of the scenes where she's shown wearing that outfit. Her classic Harley outfit doesn't have the same problem. Her cheeks aren't puffed out or baby-like when she's wearing the red and black jester costume.
-- Combat still does not look engaging to me. It's just a bunch of hovering around and spamming attacks, without much nuance or variety. It all looks very samey. And just like in my point above about the contrived mobility powers, shoe-horning guns onto Captain Boomerang, and giving King Shark a minigun feels wrong. They are not playing to the established versions of these characters at all, and just doing whatever they can to force this game to be a looter shooter. The problem is, 3 out of 4 of the characters they picked for this game are not really compatible with looter shooter. Not without feeling forced and contrived, exactly as they have done here. It feels wrong.
Honestly it looks kinda fun in a "play in short burst"but I have not idea how they'll keep it interesting for a full campaign.
And Harley is a character you REALLY got to thread the needle with or you make her really annoying and it seems like they're not doing a good job of that.