With initial hype but failed promises, live service games have gotten a lack of trust from players due to poor performance. Therefore, is it worth investing?
Well my friend, It simply shows that a perfectly crafted single-player experience can offer just as much, if not more, fun than a live-service solution.
We really need to stop phrasing it this way. It is not "live service" or "single player". You can be multiplayer and not live service; you can be single player and live service. If I'm not playing live service games, it's not because I don't enjoy multiplayer. I love multiplayer games. I just hate games that are designed to self-destruct.
True, it's a curse that the hitman reboot trilogy is one of my favorite "games" of all time. Simply nothing can match it for me, not even the older titles in the same franchise. And it's always online. If they don't offer a contingency plan for end of life down the line my favorite experience will eventually disappear.
Never again. They literally deleted story and forced everyone to buy expansions if they wanted anything more than plinking at random bad guys around the map.
I never even touched Destiny 2 after they blocked off content in Destiny 1 for people who didn't buy DLC. I wasn't gonna pay more to play content I used to be able to.
Same. I loved the first one when I had a PS4 and was so excited when the 2nd came to PC then stadia. I thought that meant for sure it'd run on Linux. But nope
Multiversus is the strangest one. It came out like gangbusters, hotter than Salsa Picante de Mama Funkystein, then they shuttered it for over a year before releasing it again, at which point everyone had moved on. Why did they shutter it when it was hot?
They were woefully unprepared to handle as many players as they got, because that game is built with a very small team. But if it wasn't a live service, they wouldn't have had to shutter it at all.
There are a ton of underwhelming and outright predatory single player games too. I think the biggest takeaway is that live service is the new hotness for over monetized live service games using popular IP and players should be extra wary of those games just like they should be for single player games.
There are still a few live service games that are not predatory. I picked up Helldivers 2 for the $40 standard price and have unlocked all the warbonds and bought a chunk of the stuff off the super store with super credits earned in missions. While you can spend more money on the game if you want, it is not in your face or predatory at all. And they are keeping the living world changing on a constant basis.
It can be done, just have to watch out for the worst offenders like Multiversus.
Lol I am on the opposite side of the spectrum. I've unlocked everything possible with medals and am constantly looking for them to add new content for me to spend them on.
I don't care if it's predatory; the server requirement means they can change that at any time. It also means that it's not built to last like thousands of other quality games are. Helldivers 2 will be completely unplayable in 30 years, but we'll still be able to play Baldur's Gate 3 no matter what happens.
Not every game needs to be playable forever. Yes, BG3 should be playable indefinitely and with mods it would probably be worth it too!
But there is also space for games that have a design for a shared group experience with a changing world that will result in a limited lifespan. If the world in HD2 didn't chsnge and there wasn't an evolving setting it would probaably grow stale a lot faster as the gsme play itself is repetitive. Events like wiping the automatons off the map and them reappearing are only clever once, and wouldn't hold up on a replay. Without major orders there is less community engagement with the fantastic setting leading to more multiplayer dives once all the unlockable stuff has been unlocked.
It is a different kind of game and there is space for that alongside the other replayable games that don't have a limited lifespan. It isn't like all the games similar to BG3 are going to hold up nearly as long as BG3 either, it stands out as one of the best of its genre.
Literally why I won't touch most of them. At least shit like Helldivers is instanced, mostly designed around rando play, and Co OP encouraged. I hate all the other live service crap.
Gotham Knight was another where it was like... Almost good? But they made it an RPG with levels. Nah.
The machine needs money to run, keep paying more and more, while you wonder how you'll be able to afford a roof over your head, the managers are drinking champagne.