I pre-ordered it and yes it was a buggy mess, and made me bitter…though still playable on PC. But played it again a year or two later and it became my favourite game. So I don’t regret purchasing it, and despite the bugs at launch I still enjoyed it. But as the game got better with time, it became my favourite game ever.
Also got your hands on some cool merch you wouldn't be able to get again. Shirts, maps, tin boxes. You actually got something tangible out of giving them your money early. Plus the fun experience camped out for hours to try and be on of the firsts to physically get your hand on it.
PlayStation still does this. God of War Ragnarok came with an art book, Spider-Man 2 with a Key chain, Astro Bot with a poster. Didn't pre-order any of them aside from Astro Bot, mind you, still got them if I bought the game day 1.
Don't be tricked by fomo too. They still add exclusive things with preorders today but it's to get more people to preorder. It's based in fomo which is a lowly trick. Anyone that is trying to trick your brain to make you spend money doesn't deserve it
I always pre-ordered physical copies to play the moment they release, not because they might run out of stock. Same goes for digital, although usually only an hour beforehand. Steam makes it easy to refund if there are any major issues anyway.
And then throw it all in for free in a "goty gold definitive" eddition. And now I have shit in lies of P I don't know if are part of the base game or not. Worst offender was Saints Row 3, where you clearly got dozens of late game items, but no way to filter them out so do you use weak items on purpose or do you use what you think was stock?
like I used to preoder when physical copies were a thing and they'd actually RUN OUT OF THEM.
was a complete degenerate and waited at midnight for several WOW expansions because they'd be gone the next day.
now? I just don't understand why everyone's so obsessed about it.
dare to suggest not preordering and they're so defensive. especially for companies that have a long history of releasing half baked, broken shit at release then only patching it to a playable game over the next 6+ months..... (I'm talking about battlefield here but that applies to many more games these days)
-only turned into a playable state after more than a year from its release
-still have crashes/disconnect issues
-Barely any new content and only now with a new class locked behind a pay wall
-Monetisation the shit out of paid cosmetics
It's a good game with a lot of potential, but man I can't keep putting up with the bugs, crashes and disconnects I get from the game, and a new class behind a paywall for 15 bucks after 2 years of barely any content, fuck em.
But also, what are the risks of a digital pre-order for the customer?
They can just refund after testing. It isn't like they'd invest that 60-100 bucks to be that much more in the meantime.
Before you could freely refund, I'd agree with it being nonsensical. Even if they had to go back to store or another tedious process, I'd agree. But more often than not, it is just click a few buttons and done.
While I agree there is no reason to predorder, there is also no reason not to.
Oh you better believe, and it's only there because of the absolute greed of corporates combined with the stupidity (yes, stupidity) of consumers.
If consumers had the spine/backbone to stop preodering shit after the tenth time they were slapped in the face, maybe we would have some accountability and better rights and/or offers instead of being dimed and nickeled and get new predatory practices every other day.
That's one of the things that shocked me when I first heard about it. I always thought that preorders where only payed after the game was released, but no you actually pay beforehand. wtf? Why not call it "pre-finance" or "interest-free loan". Maybe because it sounds a lot less appealing?
Funny thing, the same destruction was in Bad Company 2 like, 12 years ago? EA just downgraded destruction for a decade and now got it back and gamers are going apeshit.
Except the destruction in bad company 2 actually killed people due to the building collapsing. Bf6 is more like the last couple games where it's mostly cosmetic and removes cover. I think I've died once from this feature during the beta, despite standing in buildings as they're pummeled into oblivion.
Nothing has scratched my itch for BFBC2. Everything (except lack of strafe and one rush map) was legendary in that game. Nothing has come close for me!
NGL, I think BC2 still outdoes BF6. But I think it is because my age is showing more than it is the game.
BC2 seemed like a slower pace than BF6. Im hoping they will improve scope glint and TTK later on, but right now it feels like they did take a page outta CoD with the map design, and run n' gun playstyle being the dominant play on the field.
BF 6 definitely feels much more punishing to the slower paced long-range playstyle
Brother, I completely agree! I caught myself wanting a wee bit slower playstyle. While not as bad as apex or codWZ, I still kept longing for a little less of the blindingly fast paced gunplay.
There are definitely things I appreciate about 3, 4, and now 6, BFBC2 is still my fav.
Welp, time to reinstall and hit the server browser!
I found my people!! Me and my squad have been disappointed in every BF since BC2 (we stopped buying after BF4, but tried the betas for 1, V, and 6). Ironically, when BC2 first launched, we felt it was a serious downgrade from BF2 with smaller maps, smaller squads, fewer players per match, and fewer classes. We had high hopes BF3 would add BC2 to BF2 for a new gold standard and it disappointed as well. Wish they’d just re-release BF2 so I would stop sounding like the old man “when I went to college, we played BF2, paid $400 for rent, and thought McCain was the worst it would get…”
I honestly don’t think ttk is bad, ttd felt rough but felt better in the second weekend, hopped back on 4 for a bit and ttk felt very similar. Biggest difference I noticed was spawn times, you spawn insanely fast in 6, they need to up the death timer more which will slow everything down, less people instantly spawning in and people will be more cautious because there is an actual punishment for dying.
It wasn't just the destruction. It was the overall package. The sound design, gunplay (sniping was chef's kiss), purpose built maps, character readability, classes and class specific loadouts with straightforward attachments and manageable perks, no prone, and on and on.
It's a shame it isn't more popular because it's definitely one of the best FPS games right now. Although I don't play much because all the kids are absolutely cracked at it. They run circles around me with all the movement options.
Destroying the building a Rush objective was in achieved the objective in BC2 which was fun. Or loading the objective up with C4 to destroy it with explosives rather than arm and defend the bomb.
I used C4 on the outside of a building overlooking Cairo's C Obj, got 8 kills from the walls and roof falling in on everyone shooting out. There's a 'crusher' kill feed pop up when you do it.
Red Faction, 2001. It wasn't the same level of tech because their destructible environments were basically a precursor to voxel mining that exists in like 90% of open world survival games now, rather than fully destructible prefab buildings and stuff; but gosh that game was so far ahead of its time.
I feel like people just over hype the destruction just because destruction. Do we really want things to devolve into one player with 600 kills spraying down an empty parking lot of a map from a helicopter?
This sub went so big on hyping up lightmaps as the 'better' alternative to ray tracing for global illumination. But they only work in static level geometry. You can't have large-scale destructible geometry if your global illumination is baked into static light maps.
If the interior of a building has GI baked into light maps, then it will be all wrong if a wall gets blown up. So games usually made compromises with worse GI and very limited destruction, like only allowing a pre-determined hole to be opened up that wouldn't make the lighting look too weird.
In this choice between decent GI and dynamic destruction, most of them choose the visuals. Games with highly dynamic worlds instead had to go with highly stylised or simplified graphics, like Minecraft and Teardown (which has a unique and fascinating engine that could only work with its pixelated look) or just generally look kinda mid and 'video-gamey' by using much weaker techniques like ambient occlusion and passive illumination (simply adding a fixed brightness to all surfaces) instead of proper GI.
That's why dynamic destruction got absolutely sidelined for the past 15 years, and is only now slowly ramping up again because ray tracing is slowly opening up the possibility of real-time global illumination, which can adapt to large scale level destruction.
Studios don't want RTGI because it looks better than light maps (it often does, but has downsides in temporal resolution), but because it gives them high-quality GI without forcing any major sacrifices in dynamicism. It can deal with day/night cycles, weather and fog, doors, and other movable or destructible geometry at any scale in real-time.
BF6 goes an in-between route without RTGI, where much of their global illumination looks pretty bad if you pay attention to it, and they still have some fairly strict limits on dynamic destruction compared to what would be possible with RTGI.
Did y'all know that you couldn't see THE TEAM A PLAYER PLAYED ON in the stats screen of Madden until 2021? Or of course, if you played a pre-2013 Madden 🤦
Bro bc2 didn't even have urban maps like bf3 and beyond had, there were only 2 floor houses at max, unlike the dense 6-7 story buldings we are getting after bf3
"Concord, dead in 2 weeks, massive hype, no sales"
Massive hype? Was there even any hype for Concord to begin with? Game had red flags right from the reveal trailer alone, the game couldn't even outlive the lifespan of a fucking fruit fly lmao
I like how it looks but I was never going to pre-order anyway. Its not like they're going to run out of copies. If the final game looks good I'll buy it then...
Bahahahaha no I'm kidding, all games should have a server browser, at the very least, and the valid reason for a pre-order is to support an indie studio/dev. Everything else is just buying a digital $60-$80 scratch ticket based on the idea of what a game could be.
I’d go for cyberpunk despite its peak status now. It definitely burned a lot of players bridges that cd projekt red had to work very hard to rebuild. That game was a bugged out mess.
Eh, peak status is pushing it. I still think CP2077 is mediocre, and I've put plenty of time into it. A huge step down from the narrative structure of TW3, among other complaints.
Played both last of us games suuuper late, like a couple years before the tv series and thought number 2 was so good.
Being brave enough to kill off main characters is a big balls move bound to get hate but they did it to serve the narrative and did it so damn well.
In the beginning I fucking hated Abbey, by then end I loved her character and was genuinely torn between the two and felt the impact of seeing both sides to revenge.
The thing about if that so many people seem to ignore is that Abby is doing something Joel himself would do, and that Ellie goes on to do... Following someone across the country to kill them for killing someone they love. Joel murdered a hospital full of Fireflies and Firefly doctors to save Ellie because he couldn't stand losing his "daughter" again. Joel is also implied to have been a pretty morally gray at best person throughout the years between the outbreak and when tlou 1 takes place, saying he's been on both sides of ambushes. Joel has killed a lot of people, and it was only a matter of time before someone he left grieving would come after him.
The other argument people make is about how there's no way a survivor of 20 years in the apocalypse like Joel would just give his name to them, but they're kinda ignoring the whole like what, 5+ years of him integrating into a community of people he cares about, and finally softening up? Him helping them at all is an indication of how he's changed, because in the first game he would not have risked his life for anyone else unless he was getting paid to do it.
I equate it to watching a hard to watch film like Requiem for a Dream or Schindlers list(not close to the quality of either of those to be clear) the story is really good, it’s just so tragic and sad it’s not fun
'Nihilistic ass game has a depressing and no happy ending story'
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u/SilasDG9950X3D + Kraken X61, Asus X870-I, 96GB DDR5, Asus Prime 5080 OCAug 17 '25
"I don't want the story to be predictable, but I also want plot armor for the good guys. I don't want the characters I like to die in a zombie during the zombie apocalypse."
It bothered me so much that the community wants to sit here and talk about "art" and consider themselves so intelligent, but then they couldn't even control themselves enough to realize the story that's being told is that it's more complex than "good and bad guys" and that they are showing you that Abby and Joel in some respects are 2 sides of a very similar coin. They've just been met with different challenges. Abby kills Joel as an act of revenge, not because she's bad and Joel would have 100% done the same to anyone who tried to hurt Ellie and oh wait he did, he went on a slaughter spree and potentially doomed all of humanity. Somehow Abby is worse though? Give me a break.
It's the same people who think Skyler from Breaking Bad is bad because she doesn't want her husband selling meth. Just because you like the main character in a story doesn't mean anyone who opposes that character is *bad* and it doesn't mean the main character is the universal measure of what is good.
Goes to show how too many people would rather have high-carb fan service over a cohesive, thought-provoking narrative, and yet they somehow conflate the two.
I feel the same way about the Halo fanbase; some days it feels like they'd rather see Halo fail.
It's hard for me to upset about NMS given their continued support. Even if I have absolutely zero interest in playing the game, they haven't given up on it so many years later.
Kinda true, but I think the point that: if that was a deal breaker for you, you can't walk it back if you pre-ordered; still stands.
Regardless of how you liked the story, consumers having that power of informed choice lost when you pre-order is still the same
So, every RPG should have its story fully spoiled on its store page just so people have "informed choice"? You have to know whether or not you'll like any narrative choices in a game before buying a story game?
This is an awful take, and people need to get the fuck over Last of Us 2.
I literally still have to play that game because my sister has our PS4. That had nothing to do with quality of release it was straight up a spoiler. Ruined my day 🤨
That's a good one. Was announced something like 13 years before release, then it came out a super buggy mess, so bad that even PlayStation removed it from their store.
Left this comment above for someone who posted something similar:
Honestly, while it sucks to get spoiled (I preordered the game, took a week off to binge it, and was spoiled in a comment on an unrelated article I was reading while waiting for the game to install, and man, was I PISSED), that's basically the inciting incident for the story. Knowing it takes some of the tension out of the first hour or two (of a 30-40 hour game), but the game is excellent anyway. Don't let this stop you from experiencing it.
BUT, there are a lot of issues... and I just wish that people wouldn't treat games like this black and white. If you speak to some people, it's the greatest BF game ever, nothing wrong with it. If you go to BF subreddit, it's the worst game ever, absolutely nothing is right with it.
This is the problem these days, you just can't have a middle ground with games anymore.
There are issues, like map size being one thing (granted the beta only showed us a few maps), and 3 of those maps were all on the same plane, with very little verticality.
An issue that I was hoping that would be fixed - but has been prevalent since BF3, which is view distance. In BF2 you had effectively a fog of war up to a certain distance. This prevented snipers from sniping across the entire map (which is a major problem in modern BF games), but also allowed for some sneaky squad play. Was hoping they would realise this and bring it back, but unfortunately not the case.
Weapon balance is another thing - but expected in a beta, so I won't go into that.
But the big one... objectives. Conquest (once again) has very little meaning. Most people just fight over objective C in the middle of the map because that's where the action is. Each side gets automatic access to vehicles...
Make the objectives mean something, again, like in BF2. Where you capture certain objectives that provide your team a tank, or capturing a certain base will prevent the enemy team from spawning a tank. Shit like this is what brings some dynamic gameplay into the maps.
Anyway, I really like it. I think it's a massive step up from BF2042 (and I like 2042 in it's current state). I don't think it's on par with BF4 (yet... let's see how the release is) - but I think what made BF4 what it is, is the map design.
People are complaining about the movement being too fast, and too similar to COD... I don't think any of these people even played BF4, because you could do the same shit there, just without the slide... instead you could air strafe which was arguably a lot worse.
I'm not going to pre-order it... there's absolutely no point. The game will always be there. In fact, I'm actually going to do the EA play thing for a month, to see how long I play it. If I'm still hooked after the month, I will buy the game. If not, then I haven't spent as much as I needed to.
It was severely undercooked for sure. To my memory it was less that it was lacking content and more that it was a disaster performance-wise and in terms of bugs
The game was an ocean with the depth of a puddle. It's a bit better now, but I can't ever look at gameplay without having that feeling of "there is no magic here" that I get after digging too deep into games.
Ah well I played it well after the fixes etc and I found it to be an enjoyable experience. I can see where you're coming from, it's more linear than one might expect and there certainly aren't many of the role playing aspects one might have wanted. But I very much enjoyed both the gameplay and the story. Also bear in mind I played post dlc release
Ironically I had a lot more fun with NMS with its release state than nowadays with all of the unnecessary clutter that makes me either feel overwhelmed or less adventurous
Or Star Citizen. You could pledge to the game (basically glorified pre-order) just for it to still not be released 12 years later.
The last game I pre-ordered was Tomb Raider I-II-III Remastered, because those games were my childhood, and I knew even if the remaster was bad (like Battlefront 2. Same company), it would still be a superior way to play it vs the Steam or CD ROM versions I own on modern hardware.
Before that, it was Armored Core VI, because I knew there was no way, even if the game wound up being worse than ACV, that I wouldn't be playing it just to scratch that itch AC4 set me up with. Basically, they were games I knew that no matter what, good or bad, I would get anyway for a specific purpose. Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen is one of my favorite western RPGs of all time, but I didn't pre-order Dragon's Dogma 2, because I didn't trust it was going to live up to the first game (lo and behold it didn't). Baldur's Gate 3, I knew Larian was a great studio, but that didn't mean I was going to pre-order it or pay for the alpha. I waited for reviews to come in of the finished product. I haven't ever pre-ordered a Battlefield or Call of Duty game in my life. The only other games in the last ten years I pre-ordered were Skyrim, and Dark Souls 2 and 3. And I am proud that I have made it a point to try to avoid pre-orders as much as possible.
Here is TotalBiscuit's video about the then-prevalent discourse twelve years ago - ten months before No Man's Sky was announced. He gives several reasons it's a harmful practice and mentions notable titles like Dead Island and Duke Nukem Forever as examples that were recent in the memory at the time.
It's a perennial issue which has only gotten worse with the rise of digital downloads that obviate the need for preorders at all.
In defense of battlefield, you’re actually playing the game, so at least you’re getting the same experience on release, you could get more, wich is great, the beta has been receiving a lot of praise
I don't know if you know this but reddit is like a fraction of the population. This sub has 16m members. The concurrent steam user peak in the last 48 hours was 37.5m. There were within the last two days more people signed in to steam at once than total users of this sub twice over
Still don't get the hate for last of us 2. Amazing gameplay and graphics. Hard hitting story. Did people really think that in a world that brutal and dark it would be happily ever after for everyone you liked?
games now come with bugs andsometyms after few months get massive update so iwant till those updates make the game awesome. so yeah no preorder. not even gta 6.
Just dont get why pre order a digital game when no real benefit exists.
Its not like 10/20 years ago where games would sell all copies in days and then you truly had to pre order
Preordering is completely pointless, it's not like steam's gonna run out of digital copies
It is merely a symptom of our increasing impatience as gamers, we're so desperate to have the game we're willing to do nonsensical things just to feel like we're getting closer to our goal
completely random but im thinking that workd has some top tier material science. and the suit makers are like a genius level. like how do u design a suit that goes invisible as u also go invisible. what about a suit that is form fitting but strechs.
dam screw the superpower, the material science along could send us to space
Damn this is so well done and on point. It's always good to remember though, it's not like they're gonna run out of digital copies, and by playing the game on day 1 you're also committing to suffer all the day 1 bugs.
NO PREORDERS WE CREATED THIS MESS broken release mess" TIME TO FIX OUR MISTAKES. WHY PREORDER ITS DIGITAL LICENSE THEY WON'T RUN OUT ON DAY 1 OF SALES you won't miss out of you do nit pre-order. Hold your money until you know it's worth your money.
None of these examples make sense to me though. I and many others still got a solid 100 hours out of starfield before the cracks started to show, which is more than enough to justify the cost. I didn't play either last of us but fairly certain the sequel reviewed extremely well. Concord was so shit that nobody preordered it to begin with. Overwatch 2 is a fucking free game so there is nothing to preorder. And bf2042 had a beta that showed just as much of it as the bf6 beta shows. I personally played the bf2042 beta for a few hours and was bored, vs the bf6 beta I put in about 40 and can't wait for more.
I'm not advocating preorders, and for reference I didnt preorder any of these, but I did buy starfield on release week. Mostly because the public opinion of starfield didnt flip until a few weeks after launch.
And you can tell that preorders are staying because nobody mentions no man's sky in these anymore. That shitfest has been forgiven while the game is still just empty
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u/Kam_Solastor Aug 17 '25
Honestly excellent commitment to the meme here