TheRedComet

@Unlucky13

Yeah it’s definitely an issue long term.

I play both single player and multiplayer games. And frankly I think everything would be better if they were kept entirely separate.

@CrashLanded

And that’s the conundrum.

I’m in the middle on this. I do believe in doing everything to protect the integrity of the game’s community. On the other hand, I firmly believe that single player only content should be available offline.

Which is the central issue with cross progression between offline and online game modes. Like I said in my other post, every other online game developer watched Sonic Team and Sega wage an unwinnable war against cheaters in the GameCube and Dreamcast versions of Phantasy Star Online.

And in the end, they basically surrendered and shut down those two versions earlier than was necessary because the community was destroyed by exploits all going back to people modifying the game offline and then brining those save files online.

Frankly the solution is to completely separate the two game modes. But then that raises a problem for games like Gran Turismo, which is a live service game designed for five to 8 years of continuous content updates for both single player and multiplayer.

@KnightRider1982

To be fair, that’s basically impossible. There will always be exploits in games that store data locally.

Every developer saw what happened to Phantasy Star Online in real time on Dreamcast and GameCube. It was the most widely played console online game until games like SOCOM and Xbox Live titles launched. The game’s community was destroyed by exploits, and those two versions died premature deaths because the non-hackers all dropped the game and the player base collapsed.

@AdamNovice

I think every developer is terrified of what happened to Phantasy Star Online on Dreamcast and GameCube.

Those versions of the game featured cross progression for offline and online game modes. Whatever you did offline carried over online and all save data was stored locally. Turns out there was a TON of exploits and cheats you could do on both versions utilizing PC as a bridge and some could be done even without a PC. You could create your own broken items, modify your characters stats to your liking, modify game memory (so you could unlock the highest difficulties without having to play through the game) and you could even steal items from teammates. It was completely out of control and destroyed the game’s community.

By comparison, cheating was far less prevalent in the Xbox and PC versions. Those had online only requirements for both offline and online play.

The sucky part is that without modding your Xbox and getting a patched version of the .iso, the Xbox version is no longer playable in any capacity. The PC version’s official servers were shut down way back around 2008, but there are custom fan servers for multiplayer and hosting save data so the game is still playable on PC.

The GameCube and Dreamcast versions are still perfectly playable offline. And that’s why the online only requirement with all data hosted on the server is a double edged sword. Yes it does help clamp down on the worst exploits, but it breaks the game once the servers are no longer cost effective to maintain.

With that said, I do think they should try to find a middle ground. Perhaps allow gamers to run two different campaigns. One that is online only, and the other is offline only. Two different save files. If you play the offline campaign you can’t participate in multiplayer modes or post to leaderboards.

I’m fine with this. My PlayStation is always online unless the power is out. Which in that case I can’t play it anyway.

I have two ISPs. One is Fixed Wireless and the other is a decent Hotspot modem. The hotspot is slow, but it’s fast enough for single player game uploads. So if my primary service modem decides to take a dump (I hardwire my PlayStation to my router for that one) then I can just connect it to the hotspot over wifi. Wouldn’t play multiplayer like that but it’ll be fine for the single player content which is what I plan on sinking my time into anyway.

I’m a huge car nerd. So games like Gran Turismo are porn to me.

Still my favorite simulation racer I ever owned was Forza Motorsport 3. I sunk an insane hours into every class and game mode on that game.

The pride of my collection on that game was a monster Dodge Ram SRT-10 I built strictly for the drag events. At the time I was trying to find one to buy in real life (ended up backing out of a deal and going with a LS1 Trans Am instead for half the price) so I guess I was building a dream truck haha.

@KundaliniRising333

From the details it looks like it’s bringing back the traditional campaign mode that was last featured in GT6.

GT Sport pretty much nailed the community and multiplayer aspects of simulation auto racing. So I’m thinking they heavily focused on the single player aspect while multiplayer will be very similar to Sport.

@AFCC

I don’t think Sony intends for everyone to play each title simultaneously.

I’m hoping Sony’s idea is to release a variety of live service multiplayer titles in different genres to appeal to a bunch of different tastes.

One of the best Battle Royale service games I’ve ever played (and continue to play on occasion) is Tetris 99. I’m sure Sony has a bunch of genres planned out for this push. Maybe even their own puzzle service game.

As long as they keep pumping out great AAA single player experiences too, I’m fine it.

Sony needs a balance. We need Sony to go back to the latter half of the PS3. They had a varied 1st party portfolio at that time. They were launching great big budget single player titles, great multiplayer offerings, and were also pumping out oddball AA titles.

As much as I loved the PS4’s first party lineup over the years, I felt like the only games Sony was publishing and developing were the cinematic AAA single player games. Some would have multiplayer tacked on, but it was just that. Tacked on, with no real thought put into how to keep customers engaged with the multiplayer suite.

It was the exact opposite of the PS3 era. There was so much variety in the 1st party line up. And many games had well developed single player and multiplayer suites. Killzone 3 had a great campaign and a great multiplayer component. Both were handled with care. And it was one of my favorite games on PS3; I sunk uncountable hours into both the campaign (multiple play throughs on each difficulty) and a metric crap ton of multiplayer.

My point is that I’m not dismissing Sony’s move into live service just yet. As long as it’s handled with care and we get a larger variety of titles, I’ll be satisfied.

I decided to Re download it and give it another shot. I’m actually really enjoying it. There’s a ton of little improvements to the core gameplay that makes it a ton of fun when ten people are smashing into each other.

I love classic Bungie. I was a big fan of Marathon and Halo. Especially Halo.

I love Destiny’s gunplay (basically Halo), but I never could keep up with the game as I moved between places that lacked decent enough internet throughout the PS4 era.

Overall, considering Sony’s long term objectives, it was a good purchase. Just Bungie’s proprietary shooter engine is a good buy; it’ll help other Sony studios get shooters up and running pretty quick.

Looks like a wait for a big price drop kind of title.

Never played the first one, but I have considered picking up the Switch release.

@shonenjump86

Oh my God it has Rollback?

Thank God.

@Perturbator

I agree.

My only issue with live service as a whole is that it’s really hard to get into after the launch year.

I tried Apex earlier this year and boy it was a rough experience. Not because of the game itself; it’s a damn good game. But because the community’s skills are so well honed that it’s hard for a newcomer to make any real progression.

@Flaming_Kaiser

The PS1 era was fantastic.

As bad as the PS3 launched (it was so bad that I went full Xbox 360 for four years) I think in the end it’s my favorite PlayStation of all time and my third favorite console overall (only outclassed by the Super Nintendo and the Game Boy Advance). It had a crazy varied library. And I think SIE was it’s height during the latter half of the PS3 life cycle.

The early struggles and strong showing from Microsoft that generation really pushed Sony to make the PS3 library second to none. We got a bunch of new IPs, awesome multiplayer games, awesome single player games, and a bunch of the weird crap that engrossed everyone like Little Big Planet.

That’s what Sony needs to get back to. Diversity of gaming. I’m one of those people who loves Sony’s big cinematic games. But a lot of people don’t like them too much. On PS3, Sony’s 1st party catalog was so diverse that it covered all the main bases. On PS4, if you didn’t like 3rd person over the shoulder cinematic games Sony’s own studios didn’t offer much for you.

@Rural-Bandit

Thank you. I fully agree.

Sony’s multiplayer offerings were stellar during the PS3 era. They had a balance back then. They were coming out with the big budget AAA single player games alongside good multiplayer offerings and even threw in some weird AA games once in a while.

I want to see Sony get back to that balance. The PS4 was overly dominated by the big budget cinematic games. Don’t get me wrong, I loved most of them. But SIE’s studios focused solely on those games.

Now that Sony has more studios working under them, I hope we can get back to the well balanced 1st party ecosystem Sony had during the PS3 era.

@IonMagi

So will PlayStation.

There’s 25 SIE games in development currently. Ten of them are multiplayer oriented aka live service.

That’s 15 single player games left. Most of which will be the big budget, cinematic story driven experiences Sony is known for.

@IonMagi

As long as they are all very different from each other it’s fine. They haven’t announced any of these multiplayer games yet (except for The Last of Us Factions) and I’m suspecting they’ll cover a wide variety of genres.

Sony needs more multiplayer experiences. And all multiplayer games today are Live Service. So I’m not panicking about this. I have no doubt Sony will continue to push the big budget cinematic games. It’s what revived the PS3 and sold the PS4. They need the critical and commercial acclaim those games bring.

@gamer_since_83

Nah, we needed new consoles. The Jaguar CPU architecture is at its breaking point and the slow I/O and storage speeds of the previous consoles was really starting to get in the way of game experiences.

I wanted a fundamental rethink of I/O and storage back in 2019 after I played Red Dead Redemption. That’s game’s awful loading times broke me.

@Majk_SVK

That’s kind of how the PS2 was. It was really hard to get to for the first year and a half. Once production caught up with demand the sales skyrocketed.

@lolwhatno

I played Battlefield V at release. It was not even close to the broken insanity of 2042.

V had some fundamental issues, but these were issues that could improve over time.

The core of 2042 is rotten. It was designed as a battle Royale game (explains the piss poor huge map designs) first and foremost. And then hastily converted to a “traditional” Battlefield title once Apex Legends blew up in popularity.

They need to kill this game, issue refunds for those who bought it (I bought it and returned it over a weekend near launch, so I got my money back), and go back to the drawing board. Take Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 and use those as starting points for a new Battlefield game.

@Boucho11

They need to completely rebuild the game from scratch.

Even the basic gunplay is broken.

They just need to kill this game, refund everyone’s money, and go back to the drawing board. 2042 is trash and will never be acceptable.

@Divergent95

I honestly think Sony wanted Bungie for three primary reasons.

1. To pull profit from Destiny 2 and the eventual Destiny 3.

2. To have Bungie aid PlayStation Studios in developing multiplayer Live Service titles. None of Sony’s studios have ever made a live service title, whereas Bungie has been doing it for over 7 years now. That’s a lot of experience to tap into and would hopefully help them with a successful launch.

3. Bungie’s proprietary game engine. Despite the flack Destiny 2 rightfully gets, no one can deny that the engine that powers it is state of the art and rivals competing engines from Epic and Id Software. Sony’s current engines, outside of Decima, have never been used for a FPS game and it takes careful configuration and optimization to translate an engine to a game type it was never conceived for. This gives Sony’s smaller multiplayer studios it’s building a leg up and let them start building games rather than having to build their own engine or license Unreal since ID Tech is now owned by Microsoft.

They could always use Decima, but that engine from what I’ve read is extremely complex to build games in. Only Guerrilla knows how to use it to its fullest potential; they had to assist Kojima Productions with Death Stranding because of the engine’s design not being as straightforward for Kojima’s developers as Fox engine was.

@BRT15

I don’t think they were ever owned by Activision-Blizzard. Activision-Blizzard simply published the first Destiny title.

They were owned by Microsoft at one point, but they wanted to be independent and offered to buy themselves out and hand over the Halo IP and all Bungie developed Halo titles to Microsoft in perpetuity.

@nessisonett

War tends to bring out both the best and worst traits of humanity simultaneously. It’s a weird dichotomy.

But you’re right. The Cold War was staggering from solely the cost to human lives. Korea killed 3 million. Vietnam almost four million. Nearly 750,000 dead during Afghanistan the First. 500,000 dead during the Iran-Iraq war. That’s not even including the blood shed across Africa during the fall of colonialism, most of which were Cold War related. Not including the suffering of Eastern Europe under the Soviet system.

People tend to overlook the losses of the Cold War simply because it came after humanity’s two greatest tragedies, the two world wars. But the Cold War was a tragedy in its own right, too.

And considering how similar the PS4 and Xbone are to the PS5 and Series from an architectural standpoint, I’m not surprised that most cross Gen games are running so well. As long as the developer does their due diligence in optimizing for the weaker hardware, the game should perform admirably.

I mean look at Horizon Forbidden West. I’m blown away by how good the base PS4 version looks in their screenshots.

@Flaming_Kaiser

I agree. It’s inexcusable how that game was released on PS4 and Xbox One.

It’s a game they designed for PC with high end hardware and then suddenly realized they promised a console version. It felt like they literally pieced it together and threw it out without doing the due diligence to optimize it for the weaker hardware.

The PC version suffers as well. The game doesn’t run good on what are otherwise excellent mid range graphics cards.

Pretty much a PlayStation weekend; the Switch is collecting dust. I’m working towards the platinum on Ghost of Tsushima (first plat I’ve ever actually went for; wish me luck) and I also decided to try and force my way through God of War. I’ve tried playing through it twice (both times back when I had my PS4) but I got burned out on it. So maybe third times the charm eh?

That said, once Forbidden West releases my PS5 will be dedicated solely to that for a long time.

@ScottyG

Only other one I’ve seen in person is the one my best friend has.

We got them on the same day. I got my order in at wal mart on launch day. He got his a day after. Both arrived at our respective houses the same day.

I used to love collecting strategy guides for games back in the PS1 and PS2 era.

Pride of my collection was the Saga Frontier II guide.

Pretty bad selection this month.

I am interested in planet coaster; a friend of mine is obsessed with it. But it doesn’t seem like the kind of game I would enjoy without hooking up the mouse and keyboard.

@Uncharted2007

I think it was the community aspect that kept it alive so long in Japan.

It was healthy enough for Tekken 7 and Street Fighter IV to see arcade releases.

@Palleon

How does it not look next Gen? It’s gorgeous.

Zero Dawn is pretty old now and it’s still a stunner. This game looks even better, even on PS4.

@SolarSailor

I went ahead and went with the PS5 version.

I wanted the PS5 version on the disc instead of having to download it. Saves on bandwidth. I have a 350 gig per month cap.

@Ralizah

Forbidden West is what will max out the PS4. This will be the system’s final hurrah from a technical standpoint. It won’t get any better than that.

The Pro still has some life left in it, but it’s hobbled by its Jaguar CPU. The GPU still has more to give, though.

For the PS5, we haven’t even scratched the surface yet. It’s the CPU that is such a huge improvement. It’s a quantum leap over the Jaguar. And that is what is going to be leveraged heavily in future games built solely for PS5.

@Grumblevolcano

From a visual standpoint it’ll look really, really good.

The only big things I see the PS4 Pro and PS5 getting visually are higher resolutions, greater vegetation density, and less aggressive LOD.

That last one will be the most noticeable for average gamers. Basically on PS4 Pro and PS5 you’ll be able to see higher resolution textures at greater ranges over base PS4.

But from what we’ve seen so far, the game is a visual masterpiece on all three platforms. The differences won’t be huge if we talking purely about graphical settings.

@Ralizah

The main weakness will be load times.

The Pro is a little more insulated since it uses SATA 3 and you can swap in a good SSD to take advantage of it.

SATA 2 (what base PS4’s use) is slow as sin, which is why SSD upgrades didn’t make a whole lot of sense for PS4 base or slim owners.

I’m suspecting the opening load on cold boot will probably be a minute and a half or so.

With Pro and a good SSD, that’s cut down to 45 seconds or less.

On PS5 (the version I’ll be playing), I’m expecting a fade to black. Less than a second or two.

@sanderson72

I’m 50/50 on the hero lighting. I want to see what it looks like on my tv before I make judgement.

Regardless, PS5 is getting a 60fps mode. That’s how I’m going to play it. Replaying Zero Dawn with the patch was a mesmerizing experience at 60fps.

@pukana

The Sega Genesis era?

@Kienda

I’m sure the guys at Digital Foundry are literally licking their lips at the opportunity to do so. They’ll probably throw Zero Dawn PC in there for good measure.

I’m glad it’s going to look so good on PS4. My buddy is still rocking a PS4 Pro. So he will have a visual feast on his hands.

As for me, I’ll be enjoying it on PS5.

@BoyoArdee

No idea.

But to be fair, Sony is sorely lacking in internal competitive multiplayer games.

Come on Sony. Give us a new Killzone. Some of the best multiplayer you’d ever find on a console.

@__jamiie

It’s needs a PS Vita release asap.

@HUMPERDOO

My only issue with 4 is that it drags on a bit too long.

That said, I don’t really know what they could have cut out without drastically altering the game.

@Medic_Alert

Native 4K is a complete waste of resources for 99% of gamers.

DLSS and eventually Super Fidelity (AMD’s solution that needs some more work, but it’s on its first build) make native resolutions obsolete. It’s so close to native that it’s pointless to rely on Native resolutions anymore. AI based super sampling is the future.

Even without those two, you’re right. Current reconstruction techniques are good enough to cover the transition to all games and all gaming hardware including Super Sampling AI cores.

Weirdly enough, I think Nintendo will be the company to really push AI super sampling into a requirement. I fully believe the next Switch will use nVidia’s newest APU chipset, which includes DLSS features taken from RTX 3000 series. And if I’m right, they’ll mandate its use across all Switch 2 games. Which is a huge deal for DLSS.

I’ll admit it, I never got the Shield Weaver armor. It’s the one thing I missed out on in the base game.

I don’t 100% games. I play them until I feel burned out on them. I never really burned out on Horizon but I had other games I needed to play.

Also regardless of cost I’m getting the PS5 Special Edition physical. I want a PS5 disc and I want it to be a PS5 case.

@XOF

I’ve got two main questions that I hope are answered in Forbidden West.

1. Who or What the hell sent that signal that gave the Gaia sub functions true sentience that kicked off the first games events? And is this same entity responsible for the Blight?

2. What is Sylen’s real angle? What’s his ultimate goal. He always gave me early RE Ada Wong vibes. I don’t think he’s an all out villain (although Forbidden West’s marketing is certainly making him out to be one) but he isn’t altruistic either. I want to know what his ultimate goal is.

I think question one will be answered at some point in the game. Question 2, I’m feeling like they’re gonna hold that one until the final act of what seems to be a trilogy.