No. It's a weird article saying that having a continued development roadmap is a bad thing. Apparently they think interacting with the community and trying to continue to make the game better is the same thing as games trying to continually monetize an audience with churn.
How would you continually add meaningful content season after season when these games are heavily story driven? You’d run into the same problem Destiny is having but faster as you try to keep a story running infinitely.
Thing is, thats not what attracts us. Its the way the world is alive. Lords finally did it too. The world is built to where it tells a story.
The Fire Giant is imprisoned by the kiln, left to be the last lone guard.
We arrive at the Temple of the Deep, only to hear i passing from an NPC that Aldritch isn’t there, when we arrive where he should be he is not there.
The weird singing beasts around Liurnia can have their song translated, and they sing of being persecuted by the “Golden Ones”.
These things are crafted with care, knowledge, and purpose. All of this is antithema to the quick bursting format of GaaS, where content is live for all of 3 months before becoming dead. It does not serve the art form, and you’ll be left with hollow shell of a game as devs don’t have time to breath life into each boss. You’ll also end up getting even more reskins and people already complain about that.
Mans has gone hollow, doesn’t think the atmosphere and lore are a major draw of FromSoft Souls games. So much so that nesrly every other Soulslike has tried to have a mind blowing story. Look at the genre dude, its painted in Miyazaki’s favorite colors.
Edit: and soulslikes really refers to two things:
currency experience
dropping it when you die
That seems to be what the industry has decided on when they tag a game “soulslike”. But they’re missing the most vital pieces. Thats why “2D rpgs with deep lore” are role playing games and not soulslikes.
You can, but specifically, soulslikes have currency experience, you drop it, and there are checkpoints that refresh the area. Its a specific gameplay loop and mechanical feel that makes it a soulslike. Yes, they are technically RPGs in the same way an IPA is also a beer. Idk what you’re pulling at. I can frame Fallout as a survival horror. These bins we put games into are slightly arbitrary, but it means they contain systems that are alike and provide much of the same feel or user experience. Fallout does not provide the same user experience as dark souls. If you want to discuss in good faith I’m all for it. But you seemingly want a battle of wits, and have arrived unarmed.
I was arguing for the opposite. A GaaS soulslike would be filled with garbage content and uninteresting bosses due to the development environment created by the unending stream of new “content”. You can do it, but its not going to taste good.
Then make it dude. Make that big pile of shit. Stress your devs out so they can’t place all the tiny details in the environment that connect the boss to the area. Shit out new areas and bosses so fast they have no lore. Watch, as your game sells none because soulslike players aren’t there just for the mechanics. Which, speaking of mechanics, they will be garbage too. Do it. I won’t stop you.
What is your point here? Are you saying if I make a bad game then I’ll realize that only good games exist in a genre? Or are you upset that you realized genre is independent of quality?
What is your point? I’m telling you a GaaS Soulslike will fail. You won’t make any money with this idea because it lacks the things that make us keep coming back to FromSoft year after year. This isn’t an FPS where razor thin attention spans must be constantly stimulated. Soulslike fans will scoff at constant microtransactions and skins and your stupid in game store. Wanna know how I know this? Because there is a soulslike GaaS! Wanna guess the fucken name? Since its such a good idea you should have heard of it, right? I will honestly wait for your reply to tell you the name.
Soulslikes are very popular. We watched the genre explode ourselves.
I don’t like GaaS, you probably know that by now. But I don’t see anything wrong with it giving free access to players. There are plenty of genres that are geat. Racing games, Shooters, sports games could probably do it easy.
But the soulslike genre in particular, the true legends of it, are not the GaaS games. Thats why FromSoft is still the biggest dog in soulslike, they know what the genre fans want. I guess Nioh 2 could be considered GaaS with its dailies and all. But I am more specifically referring to the cancerous revolving door of content type of GaaS. That would not serve a soulslike too well imo.
Games as a service has never once resulted in high quality, well designed and polished content. The incentives are too broken. It is not capable of doing so. The model inherently removes the time required to do the bare minimum.
If every frame isn't carefully considered, it is not a souls like. The entire definition of the genre is built around deliberately approaching enemies that are extremely polished mechanically. There are some cases where the windows to act are small, but if you're frame perfect, you will always win. Games as a service effectively guarantees that there isn't time to ensure that consistent behavior, making it something entirely different.
They very clearly are ARPGs. Not all ARPGs are Diablo clones with isometric graphics and big showy splash damage.
What distinguishes souls-likes from other ARPGs with similar gear and stat mechanics is the fact that your skill level is a core element of progression. Carefully designed enemies define a souls like. Calling a game without them a souls like is like calling a game without realistic physics a racing sim. It doesn't matter what the developer's intent is. If your physics are arcade-y, you're not a racing sim. You're just a racing game.
You don’t sound like you are coming from a developer background
If I pitch a game as an ARPG people are going to assume a soulslike - simple combat where you wait for an attack then parry/dodge and hit back then repeat until the fight is over
All that matters is the developer’s intent
In your example it is still a racing sim, just a bad one
I love Dark Souls. I love the lore of Dark Souls. But to say they are heavily story driven is false. They’re literally built around the game, and then the story is shaped around the gameplay. They’ve said this themselves many times. In that sense, it wouldn’t be that difficult to continuously add fun game content and then write some small story shit to make it fit in the existing lore.
Not that I necessarily want this. I’m just saying From, at least, could pull it off considering they already operate in a way that doesn’t impact it like actual story-driven titles.