$20 game for $50 price tag

[King Midol]

I believe that GA would have been a lot better received by the Steam community if it was an appropriate price tag from launch. $20 or maybe $30 at the most. Does anyone agree?

My logic about game prices might be skewed, though. I believe a total SP game, like Metro 2033 and Just Cause 2 for example, should never be full priced. We're living in a different gaming era than our daddies.

:)

[Scoobings3]

I know there are some who agree with you. I bought mine when it was 50 bucks (it's 40 bucks now btw) and I don't feel the slightest bit ripped off. I think I got my 50 bucks and more out of it so I'm happy.

[Zyat]

I'd buy it for $30. At the current price and with the currently low playerbase I'm not planning on purchasing until I'm positive the game will last, and there needs to be more maps/content.

Yay for free trials though. They got me interested with the trial, now they just have to hook me... the 1.3 update might work. I'll wait a few more weeks to see what the playerbase thinks before making up my mind on a purchase or not.

[kramit]

Yeah, excluding the content that will eventually be subscriber-only, this game is an easy $20-30. Especially since they plan on making a large part of the content subscriber-only. I think they muddled things by announcing it as a full-priced subscription MMO with a full-priced free to play game attached. It didn't come close to delivering either. They would have been better served selling it as a $20-30 free to play game, and then went ahead with what they're doing now, which is trying to make it worth subscribing.

Honestly, I am completely bored of the PVP. The maps are repetitive, the matchmaker rarely gives you a balanced match, you can't switch classes mid-game, you can switch gear but if you're specced for one style switching will somewhat gimp you. The levels do make a pretty big difference and it is a grind to get to 30.

I quit the game a while ago but decided to come back to try a couple classes I didn't get far into. Now the only fun I'm having is just in running PVE missions to see what the classes are capable of, but as soon as I hit 30 with a class I realize... It's actually not much fun. Few maps, same enemies and strategy/gameplay over and over. I've almost hit 30 with all the classes, at which point the game will likely disappear from my hard drive.

So, I invested 500+ total hours into L4D1/2 without touching anything other than PVE campaigns, a game with no leveling or gear or "MMO" aspect... Yet I'm so quickly bored of GA?

[bravado07]

if it were to stay the way it is now, i'd agree its probably worth $30-35 (something like TF2).
I bought it at $50 and i dont feel ripped off, as i have fun with it. I know ive spent money on worse (plus the beautiful hangover the next day)

i'll agree the pve is 'eh' at best, once you figure the maps and bosses. pvp seems fine (for me atlesat).

[kramit]

if it were to stay the way it is now, i'd agree its probably worth $30-35 (something like TF2).
I bought it at $50 and i dont feel ripped off, as i have fun with it. I know ive spent money on worse (plus the beautiful hangover the next day)

i'll agree the pve is 'eh' at best, once you figure the maps and bosses. pvp seems fine (for me atlesat).

Yeah the PVP is pretty good, it just lacks new maps and the matchmaker kills it for me. Round after round where one side steamrolls the other. Balancing classes doesn't work, because you might end up on defense with a pile of robos, which is arguably better than on offence, or you might end up with one poison medic while they have a healing medic.

IMO they should balance on level and/or past performance, to give you an even match in skill, and then let you respec or even switch classes mid-game. For example, they could let you build out 3 full specs and gear loadouts ahead of time, and then at the spawn location you can choose any of them to respawn as (with no stupid cooldown after changing gear). Feeling useless as a healer and need to push the point for a while? Switch to poison spec. Medics not helping you tank? Switch to an explosives build.

As well, if you're in a match and getting steamrolled, and your team is sorely in need of a medic, and you happen to have one that is leveled, you should be able to swap it in. If it works in TF2 why can't it work here? The only problem is if someone gets in a match full of level 10s and pulls out a level 30+, but they could just restrict class switching to something no more than X levels higher than the average level of all players in the match, or something.

As for PVE, it just needs more thought and variety. Imagine a tower defense mode, that would be awesome. Or an L4D-like survival mode. New maps, more modes, bosses that are a little more complex, raid content, wider variety of enemies. Maybe some solo play modes. Hiring AI mercenaries like in Guild Wars could be fun. One aspect of L4D that makes it fun is that the common enemies only take a couple shots. It's much more satisfying to kill 30 enemies that take little damage, than to kill 5 enemies that sap your energy bar. Or at least mix it up.

Another thing they could learn from L4D is the crescendo moments. They have the security systems, which is awesome... But what if there is a security system you HAVE to trigger to move on, that is more complicated than just spawning 5 bots on you.

[james_2k]

My logic about game prices might be skewed, though. I believe a total SP game, like Metro 2033 and Just Cause 2 for example, should never be full priced. We're living in a different gaming era than our daddies.

:)

WHAT!? single player games which need a lot more effort and work to develop content for vs multiplayer games which is pretty much do the same thing over and over?!

insane, mr banned, insane. my top 5 games of all time dont have MP in at all.

[kramit]

WHAT!? single player games which need a lot more effort and work to develop content for vs multiplayer games which is pretty much do the same thing over and over?!

insane, mr banned, insane. my top 5 games of all time dont have MP in at all.

For me, my top 5 MEMORABLE games don't have MP at all... But my top 5 MOST PLAYED games are all online. So, while the production costs were higher for those memorable games, it's arguable whether I got the same value out of them.

Plus, you can't ignore the effort and work developing the online portion of a game. It's not as obvious to the casual player, but I'm sure a massive portion of the GA dev team's time went into making the online and persistent portions work the way they wanted, something a developer making a SP only game doesn't even have to think about. So a game like GA probably pours money into more devs and sys admins, while a game like Portal 2 pours that money into writers and artists.

That being said, I will gladly drop full price on a pre-order of Portal 2, while I still kinda regret paying full price for Global Agenda....