Suicide Squid: Kill the Justice League

It's bizarre that Anthem's failure kind of ruined a whole genre as it was just getting started.

4 player co-op with friends, blowing shit up, doing cool missions whilst levelling up characters stats and abilities? That was what I dreamed about for gaming as a kid!

Why are all the games that do this so bloody boring and grindy? Why aren't there more games like Left 4 Dead, Overcooked and the like? Great concepts, great games and fuck all grinding in them but plenty of fun and depth.

It's like giving batman a SMG. Hope they never do that...

Yeah, I've said before - GaaS is not just time investment but money investment. Releasing a decent game isn't enough, you have to release something that convinces players to abandon that investment in favour of your game. There are only so many players willing to engage with GaaS, with so many hours each, and they aren't going to just split those hours between more games.

Releasing multiple GaaS titles that compete with yourself is just suicide, cannibalising your own audience. If you make a non GaaS it's not such an issue and will also reduce your budget needs too.

The only GaaS title I absolutely despise is Rainbow Six Siege, it's not that I think it's a bad game (it does nothing for me) but because it means we apparently will never get another RS6:Vegas like title again while Ubisoft is making lots of money out of their Counterstrike clone.

I'll always hate Fornite for that.

I'm 100% convinced a modern UT game could work, aside from the whole cannibalising your audience with multiple GaaS stuff.

You could just completely lift how Fortnite monetises with selling skins that are purely cosmetic. Classic voice taunts and emotes etc in the battle passes. Custom announcer voices, weapon skins.

Identify a few visual themes to build maps from rather than each map having its own visual theme to keep costs down, open up the level editor to users and select the best user made maps to be made official to ensure that it's got a big, UT sized map library. Ship it with the requisite game modes you'd expect. Custom matches with mutators etc, limited time events can bring new mutators.

Then to tempt people in, share the shop currency between Fortnite and UT. So you can earn Fortnite currency by playing UT (getting those players to dip in regularly) or UT currency by playing Fortnite. Sorted.

Say what you want about Fortnite, but they must spend a lot of money on adding new features all the time.
It's not like they just stuck the game out there, and then sat back and waited for the regular money to come rolling in as everyone bought cosmetics. They're constantly adding new mechanics, new vehicles, new locations, new story bits, etc..
They probably spend more on making content than they'd do just releasing a new game every few years.

Though even then they've cottoned on to the fact that if they can get players to produce the content for free then profits will be even bigger.

I think me and the kids have spent a grand total of under 3 pounds of Fortnite, despite playing it for a couple of years now.

But crucially it's a free multiplayer game. I wouldn't want any of that stuff bolted on to my single-player campaigns.

Are there any full-price single player games that have managed it successfully? Diablo I guess? Is Destiny kinda single-player / coop campaign?

The studio heads/co-founders already left (or will at the end of the year - can't remember) - never a good sign.

And does nothing except help bridge combos so they don’t break.

I’d actually quite like Captain Boomerang to have a useless boomerang though.

Can I have it please?

I can get you the finest silks and spices from all of Indochina.

He only wants it so he can shit on the game anyway

I doubt Rodger Warner visits this site. I can kind of guess it's still a bit shit, though.

That makes two of us!

Would a game that isn't that game but is exactly like it be good or shit?