People like linear, story-driven games fine. Just because there was major backlash when EA messed up Mass Effect 3's ending doesn't mean we don't like narratively driven games.
It just means EA's bad at making them.
Maybe if we saw a game without any forced multiplayer or uninspired copypaste open-world design we'd be more hyped about it.
But... is there any really good reason to? Wouldn't it be so much more interesting to see an actual new IP rather than these unoriginal watered-down-for-mass-appeal franchise-chasers.
Tolkien's world deserves a lot more care than the money-printing-machines of the big media industry will care to budget for.
Used to be that people bought a game, and they got a game that was good enough at launch to be played over and over and over. They were called "single player" or "offline", near mythical terms this douchebag probably never heard of.
These games-as-product titles were much the same as books, movies and tv-series, in that people would come back to them over and over even with no change at all. As long as the games were good and weren't prohibitively long or bloated with pointless side-content.
These kinds of games don't have the same explosive profit potentials as when you include exploititative microtransactions and DLC passes though. Almost like they were made to be good games rather than to print money.
@locke90: Oh don't get me wrong, one of my most wanted games is a real sequel to WC3 which just pretends WoW isn't a thing and just continues the plotlines from TFT and starts a couple of new ones.
WoW is still a main continuation of the story. It's the continuation of the story. It's not an RTS of any description but it's no more spinoff than the Warcraft movie.
The fact that WoW isn't a spinoff (like Hearthstone or Heroes of the Storm) is really the problem, because there's now 13 years of baggage separating the people who played WoW all that time AND participated in all the big raids and major questlines and the people who didn't play WoW at all, or played it but didn't raid, or played it for a while but then eventually stopped, etc.
There's no mention of WC4 because they'd need to either pull a Disney and scrap years of worldbuilding and story progression. Or alienate all the RTS fans who didn't get into an MMORPG for whatever reason. Or a hard reboot/spiritual sucessor of the franchise which is also bad because people are really attached to the major characters in the present story and wouldn't want them gone or reset to start.
"Guillemot said. He noted that introducing mechanics like RPG elements to single-player games can increase their appeal because they extend the game's replayability."
Pure BS, replayability is exclusively a factor of two things (in a kind of basic sense), the same two things that govern how rewatchable a movie is or how rereadeable a book is or how relisteneable an audioplay or whatever other media you want to re-experience.
How much do you want to go through the same experience again (which is usually also a factor of how long it's been since last time you experienced it).
Versus
how much of a hassle/timesink is it.
Which is why I'm looking forward to replaying Journey and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons for more than the 3rd time, and soonish. And why i'm planning to read The Wheel of Time bookseries of some 14 long volumes a second time sometime the latter half of next decade.
"Guillemot also said that Ubisoft is working on implementing user-generated content to entice players to continue playing these kinds of titles longer periods of time."
AKA our game is only gonna be good while it's current and we need you to be still playing when we release all the DLC. We have no multiplayer to keep people plugged in for the next 4-6 months, so we need another excuse for the community to stick around and have the game remain current.
Not that mods, custom maps/lvls/campaigns or whatnot can't be good, (custom maps made WC3 one of the best games of all time and helped it spawn two new genres), but that really shouldn't be a draw for a solid single player experience.
So while playthrough variance can be neat, especially I guess for playthroughs which are close in time. And while player-made content can be absolutely fantastic to the point of spawning new genres entirely. Artificially grafted-on "replayability" and fanbase-recruiting UGC facilities isn't gonna keep single player games relevant.
Good games with compelling narratives, well excecuted gameplay and strong concept/premise. Is gonna keep single player games relevant forever. 'cause they will be made, 'cause single player is videogame's biggest strength in that it's something you don't need other people for.
Multiplayer classics still fade away and only become playable when you can scrounge together people who both want to replay an old gem AND are of comparable skill level to each other.
Single player classics remain playable for as long as you have them, just like a good book, movie, radioplay, music collection... anything. And neither are classics because of minor-to-medium playthrough variance or an abundance of mods/custom maps.
Single player games never needed any help to survive, not trophievments, not DLC, not extra rpg-mechanics and certainly not extensive "UGC" capabilities.
All they ever needed was people who wanted to make something for a single player to play alone. And somehow I'm not convinced we'll ever run out of those.
That's a travesty. Shutting down studios making great single player games (something the "AAA" industry seems to be having a problem with) to reserve resources for the cancer and pollution that is "games as a service".
The idea needs to die so we can get games which are good at release and are replayable in that form 10-20-30 years down the line.
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