Gears of War 4 headaches

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scotland
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Re: Gears of War 4 headaches

Postby scotland » December 16th, 2016, 8:32 am

Since patches are not going away, what can be done?

For instance, should games be released in sections, like a Telltale game? Should developers open games up for large scale 'early access' to the biggest users of the previous iteration for a few weeks?

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C64_Critic
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Re: Gears of War 4 headaches

Postby C64_Critic » December 16th, 2016, 5:08 pm

Atarifever wrote:Unless you were in Japan, I believe you mean 1985 or 1986. In 1983, you were playing something cool like a Coleco, Inty, or Atari. Or your C64. :)


You got me Atarifever, I meant 1985. It was so long ago I couldn't remember when it was released, so I checked Wikipedia and got snookered into putting in the date it was released in Japan. Now that I think about it, if I even had my C64 in 1983 I'd have been surprised! I think I got it in early 1984.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Gears of War 4 headaches

Postby VideoGameCritic » December 16th, 2016, 7:02 pm

I was just fooling around with this when I noticed a message saying player two "cannot connect to Gears of War services". Are you thinking what I am? In order to play local coop, both players need to be ONLINE. This stuff is ridiculous. And guess what, I bet no other sites or magazines will even mention it. How much would you dock a game for something like this? One letter?

On a related note, a reader asked if you still need to be connected to play the single-player Doom. I said that was still my assumption, but passed along this link which seems to indicate otherwise:
http://help.bethesda.net/app/answers/de ... box-one%3F

I checked and I'm pretty sure my Xbox One is my "home" console (although the horrible user interface doesn't make anything clear). I'm still trying to figure out how this setting plays into anything. Modern consoles are complicated with a lot of rules embedded into their EULAs. And they probably change game to game.

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BlasteroidAli
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Re: Gears of War 4 headaches

Postby BlasteroidAli » December 17th, 2016, 2:14 am

I have played gears of war 4 for about 40 hours so far and find it to be really good but then I am all about the horde. So I play online all the time. I also played and beat the one player game. Very satisfying. 21 gig update. Not sure I even noticed it. Shows I am a xbone gamer.
Though you think that is bad. I bought battleborn the new game by the makers of Borderlands and was like eh? It was real cheap. I now know why. Unskippable prologue movie. Co op shooter where the co op partner keeps getting stuck in the scenery. I have christened it battle bore.

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C64_Critic
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Re: Gears of War 4 headaches

Postby C64_Critic » December 18th, 2016, 11:45 am

scotland wrote:Since patches are not going away, what can be done?

For instance, should games be released in sections, like a Telltale game? Should developers open games up for large scale 'early access' to the biggest users of the previous iteration for a few weeks?


I do like how many Steam games do exactly that; let you buy them early at a discount while they're still in Alpha and Beta form, and let players post back to the developers any bugs they encounter. I guess that'd be harder to do with console games (well, not really, but I also don't see the incentive for AAA title devs to bother with this since they can ship and sell broken titles at full price), but I still find it incredible that any game from any developer worth half a darn could ship in a state that necessitates a 22GB update to it's code to make it playable.

Sadly, the only real recourse is for people to refuse to buy games that ship in such a condition, but they really can't know that until they've bought it and encountered it for themselves since almost no mainstream gaming new outlet bothers to even mention this stuff.

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Atariboy
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Re: Gears of War 4 headaches

Postby Atariboy » December 20th, 2016, 12:23 am

Do you have capped internet, Critic? If not, I really think you're shooting yourself in the foot by trying to keep it offline as much as possible. I know you hate ads and so on, but you seem to hate the prompts to go online and such just as much. And your console isn't going to get a virus or something like that.

So as long as you're going to put up with hassles like this nonsense with huge patches, why make it harder than it needs to be? Your game could've just updated itself in the background, even while you had it turned off, and been all ready to go when you and your friend sat down in front of your tv.

Instead, you wait until you're going to play something to try to update it? Not sure I understand what you're gaining by selectively going online in the midst of a play session like that. You obviously think this nonsense, however user-unfriendly it is, is justified by the experience when you actually get to play a game. So why not at least make it easier on yourself?

It's not like you're surrendering to the devil by allowing updates to happen when they won't be nearly as bothersome. You can hate this nonsense (And rightfully so, in my opinion) while at least trying to mitigate the direct harm.

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VideoGameCritic
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Re: Gears of War 4 headaches

Postby VideoGameCritic » December 20th, 2016, 7:50 pm

Atariboy,
I understand what you are saying, but I'm not going to let the industry dictate how I use my consoles. I would rather see "how the sausage is made" and expose poor programming or lack of testing.

To be fair, this Gears of War experience is an exception to the rule. Typically staying offline allows me to avoid all sort of updates and is much less of a hassle. Believe me, I've tried it both ways.

In addition, I'd prefer to review the original game on the disc, not some patched-up version they rushed out months later to cover their ass.
VGC


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