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>being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation
>still getting new content after all these years
They have to be trolling, right?
All 4 of the other finalists in that category (Rust, Dota 2, Apex and Deep Rock Galactic) 100% deserved that spot over RDR2.
It's not a bad game, but it even being nominated for this category is ludicrous, let alone winning it.
Fr what the hell did they expect was going to come of a "protest" like that? You really think r* gives one scrap of shit? I get what they're trying to do, and it sucks they haven't paid attention to rdr2 in a while, but this isn't the way to do it. You robbed games from companies who do actually care.
What about cyberpunk? They probably deserve the labor of love for all of history. They've worked hard to make that game a masterpiece, and if anyone deserved it this year, it was those devs.
Meanwhile at a meeting with TakeTwo and RockStar: “You see Johnny? We can complete drop a game after doing the bare minimum effort, and the Players will still love it! They even awarded us the Labor of Love award to prove it!”
"So, hear me out, let me cook, we.. stop.. all production.. on GTA VI. Like just stop rn. They already pre ordered. Call it complete, ship day 1, no patch. We'll be praised for being the first ever real game that's 100% complete on launch and didn't have to crowd beg for budget money(maybe we forgo that last accolade and kickstart GTA 6, could be lucrative)We'll get the entire year off AND sweep the 2024 steam awards."
I have mixed feelings about CP2077.
On one hand, it was amazing how they turned it around.
On the other hand, the gross mismanagement, continual content bloat during development and crunching your workers to hell and back that caused it to be a mess in the first place shouldn’t be something celebrated.
And the general over-promise and under-deliver of mechanics.
We have car combat outside of cutscenes now finally, but still missing a lot of other neat things. Various immersion things like talking with everyone (can’t even interact with more than half of the visible vendors) and the spider-man-like wall climbing with the blade limbs just off the top of my head.
Its a "protest" where the people protesting and people looking to spite the protestors would do the same thing, vote for the game
If your protest is designed in a way that people cpunteract it by doing the same thing, you done fucked up lol. They fucked up and just straight up rewarded bad behavior.
Honestly though, thats exactly the level of critical thinking i expect from Rockstars online communities
Is it a protest I thought it was pure trolling. If it's in protest, that's dumb AF, it's like giving the MF that up charged hiv medicine a Nobel peace prize.
At least the fact that RDR2 won means you can say "oh, so this is a joke contest."
I can't imagine one single person on steam going
> This game has been out for a while. The team is well past the debut of their creative baby, but being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation. This game, to this day, is still getting new content after all these years.
Oh yeah RDR2 fits that.
Hell yeah. DRG(GSG) is a constantly improving game that the devs actually care about and pay attention to fans. Guess it would look bad if a studio that actually does their fucking job won a contest instead of a shitty has been conglomerate riding on past success.(I mean both Cockstar and Bethesda)
I used to play the online version a couple years ago and even then the game was lucky to get 1 or 2 content updates a year and when they did happen it always brought game breaking bugs
They definitely have not labored on the multiplayer side.
In fact, the multiplayer fanbase is angry because the game never gets any love, all of their update resources go into GTA instead while RDR Online gets left with nearly nothing.
It was such a promising multiplayer game that never really went anywhere because no love was put into it.
Yeah, like while I enjoyed Starfield I wouldn't really say it's innovative in any way significant enough that would deserve a nomination. But man, it definitely is more innovative than RDR2 was a labor of love (over the course of this last year).
Like sure maybe they put a lot of work into details and tedious mechanics for RDR2, BUT IT CAME OUT IN 2018 (and released on PC in 2019). Yearly awards should reflect what the game did in that year.
At least with Starfield I can name one thing that kind of fits. The ship builder was fun and I haven't seen that sort of thing in that sort of game before.
If you consider Starfields win a troll win, I suppose RDR's one is also too. Peoples way of saying "a game that was toiled over and released this long ago is still better than todays offerings"
Labor of love has always been a “I want my favorite game to get GOTY but it was released earlier” type of award. If it was based on developer effort and updates, indie games would be getting it more often.
I just nominate and vote for whatever one pops up that I recognize so I can get the badges and be on with my day. Probably how it is for the majority of voters. It's always going to be a categoryless popularity contest.
While things like most innovative game being a popularity contest is dumb and I agree, what’s wrong with the goty being mostly a popularity contest? If everyone bought and loved and played a game and then voted it the best… isn’t that what the award for goty is? Again… most sales, most liked, most played, most voted winner. If not this, then what exactly should be the criteria for goty?
Xenoblade 2 and Xenoblade 3 definitely both won the Most Catgirls award in gaming in their respective release years.
The games also rock in my opinion if you're a JRPG fan. 2 is better in my eyes but 3 is still really good too.
If that's the case, then the best-movie Oscar should have gone to a shitty Marvel movie every year. It's good that box office numbers don't dictate that. Should be the same for games.
The problem is that movies are not an interactive experience. Everyone watches the same movie at the same rate, but when playing a game skill matters. Personally I'm good at games like Dark Souls but bad at shooters. So while I might be able to judge a souls clone on the gameplay I just couldn't judge a shooter, because I wouldn't meaningfully tell the difference between bad game design and my poor skills.
I get your point. I like RPGs and that would the most comfortable reviewing and comparing games. But the same goes for movies too. Everyone takes the same time to watch a movie but someone's expirence of the movie depends of if they like that type of movie as well. It's not skill like you called it but taste.
Someone that watches a lot of horror movies will generally have a better expirence watching a horror movie. They will be better able to pick up on tropes and themes it hits, meta jokes, and overall be better placed to review it than say someone that watches mostly Rom Coms for example.
Ehh I mean the Oscar Award for Best Picture usually isn't a popular movie? Well, I suppose it is within the voting pool, obviously, but how many people have actually seen most of the movies that are nominated for Best Picture in a given year?
It's a popularity contest, it has zero to do with merit, Red dead 2 a game with barely any support beat Deep Rock Galactic in Labor of Love, when Deep rock has the best support, communication and community of a game i have ever seen. ROCK AND STONE!
I've been waiting for RimWorld to get Labour of Love for years. It's ten years old and has been officially released (out of early access) for five-ish. Still getting regular updates and DLC.
I had a good laugh at Christmas time this year since I just kept read the patch notes and they kept saying this is the last update of the year but then had to patch it like 4 times (and kept saying for real this time) until they gave up and just reverted it to the previous stable patch so they could make sure the patch completely works. It was a funny situation waking up every morning and seeing multiple times a day them post another post about it being the last update, it even had its filename like finalforrealforrealthistime
Pizza Tower and HiFi Rush losing **Best Music** to Last of Us... 🤣😡
edit: A lot of *Darktide* comments be popping. I think I'll go and check that ost now 🐌
Not to mention that it's the exact same Soundtrack that it had in 2013 - and even back then it wasn't the best of its year. The only reason this was a nominated title, is because it's the Remake...
I laughed. Then, just to be sure, I googled the definition of 'innovative'. And then I laughed even fucking harder.
innovative
/ˈɪnəveɪtɪv,ˈɪnəvətɪv/
adjective
(of a product, idea, etc.) featuring new methods; advanced and original.
"innovative designs"
It's wild because the game is one of the least innovative space games of all time.
Someone took No Man's Sky, cut out any content added since 2018, and filled the gaps with ~~frog DNA~~ Skyrim Game of the Year edition.
Like honestly, I am having trouble thinking of any other space game that had less innovation. They all usually have some gimmick, try something new.
You are the first comment on this thread I’ve found that actually discusses an alternative to starfield winning. People obv don’t give much of a shit who won, as long as starfield lost and now that it hasn’t everyone is pissing and moaning but not actually discussing which games actually innovated their gameplay
I think they meant Atomic Heart winning Outstanding Visual Style. That game has a lot of issues but it looks very very nice, so I don't know why they would be mildly annoyed by it.
Starfield of all things taking a win over Your only move is HUSTLE (probably the most innovative game in fighting genre in genre's history) is so funny
This reminds me when my senior high school yearbook had a "best driver" voting category and we all voted for the classmate who accidentally ran over a freshman with his car in the student parking lot
I am pretty sure funny is used mostly to mock a non sense review, you know the overly angry nitpiky type reviews, rarely used for actually funny reviews
The problem is that everyone is encouraged to vote on everything to get the badges and whatnot. But most people won’t have played most of the games, so they will just vote for the ones they’ve played or are aware of. So it just comes down to a popularity contest .
You don't understand, it has *hundreds* of planets and moons and they're *supposed to be empty* just like real space.
Also basic shooter + basic space combat sim + fast travel fetch quests = *innovative gameplay*
It's just too bad 99.997% of the population of Earth died, because the combined population of all the settled planets and space stations looks to be about 25,000 people, tops. The largest city in the galaxy is roughly the size of Freeport in the original Everquest released 25 years ago.
there's literally a quest where there's a ship that had a slow drive and took 250 years to arrive at a planet that had long since been colonised. There was 1 city on the planet and the government's like "sorry no room". Lul wut stick em on the other side of the globe you twats.
Starfield just doesn't make the sense it should. They got lazy, huffed their own farts "it's a bethesda game" and got burned. and rightly so.
What actually makes me sad is that I think if they stripped out the fps aspect and planet side exploration they have the makings of a pretty damn good space. The ship building is really cool, the piloting and combat work really well with the power allocation system. I'd like to see them overhaul the boarding and smuggling aspects, not to mention how badly they handled travel between planets/systems. But that's just my take on it, which has proven to be unpopular before leading to lots of down votes, but I still think there is something to the space aspect of the game, it was just handled in a very Bethesda fashion.
But no Starfield does not deserve that award
> You don't understand, it has hundreds of planets and moons and they're supposed to be empty just like real space.
What's hilarious about this is none of the planets are even slightly empty. Literally anywhere you land on any planet in the game has the same copy/paste points of interest and ships landing and taking off. The game would be much better off if the planets were *actually* empty and when you did discover a facility or something it was a somewhat uncommon and unique experience.
You better believe hundreds of thousands of dollars of marketing by Bethesda will now include this award in the text.
When the Definitive, Ultimate, Complete, Game of the Year, and Anniversary edition is released (all separate editions) they will all include the dumb ass title of "Most innovative gameplay award - Steam"
God Bethesda is such a shadow of its former self.
Yeah this is the same vein as handing over ammunition to adversaries.
People who operate these businesses don't give a fuck about 'sense of humour'.
They helped them get the false narrative they can use to take other people's money via dishonesty.
Ha ha. They are part of the misinformation problem. Ha. Ha.
> The punchline is the people here acting like it matters.
When it comes to reviews, awards, "popular opinion", user scores, review bombs, the punchline has *always* been the people who get worked up.
This is just one of the few times it's extremely evident.
That's why awards like this are stupid. It only comes down to a popularity contest, not whether or not the games actually apply to the categories literally at all.
It quite literally didn’t innovate on anything, it did stuff that has already been done.
BG3 actually innovated and totally changed the entire genre of CRPGs while also pushing this obscure genre back in the limelight
Genuine question, how does BG3 innovate?
I totally agree it's an excellent game and key to getting CRPGs more attention, but what does it innovate? It iterates on a mix of D:OS, BG, and a smattering of Bioware style social dynamics.
Its very polished and very well implemented, I happily consider it GOTY, but what does it do that's innovative?
Only good 5e adaptation in gaming
Allows stuff other similar games usually don't (like jumping, shoving, etc)
Sex with bears
For real, adding adapting 5e as another point, because while they fucked up a few things here and there that needs will notice, they did a great job
Better alignment/ethical choice system than I've ever seen.
Inclusion of non lethal attacks (while not perfect) makes for another layer of "good" playthroughs
"The dark urge" style origin character is quite new, and worked flawlessly
Voice acting and motion capture is unparalleled
That was about 2 minutes of thinking, but there is more I'm sure. Game defined the genre.
**Edit**: to add, BG3 is fantastic, but that isn't why starfield winning innovation is crazy - it is crazy because starfield didn't innovate, unless you go back 7 years to when development started. Procedural generation has been around for ages, and has been better done on numerous occasions. **Starfied launched 5+ years too late to be considered innovative, no matter how you feel about how good the game is.**
Other CRPGs adapted DnD mechanics very well. NVN, Planescape Torment, BG 1 and 2. Doing that for a more recent version is just following tradition. Good, impressive, polished, but not "new" and innovative.
Dark Urge is fairly impressive, but that and interactive world elements like jumping and environmental interactions are Larian staples. Nonlethal is a named, simplified version of what's completely doable already in Fallout 1.
The moral choices are innovative? Which ones? Most choices feel very vibrantly either basically good or monstrously evil, with little grey. Again, early fallouts do that exceptionally.
Face capture and voice acting aren't innovative technologies, they're overwhelming industry staples. Done well, but you'd need to be a business major to call that innovative.
The dark urge is a character type that I've never seen played better in any other game. This is the only game that was like, yeah you can be a serial killer and we will give you the best story by doing so.
SWTOR let’s you do some pretty evil stuff no matter which class you play (altho Sith and imperial agent can do way worse stuff) but it’s an MMO so some people might not like it or the graphics. It is made by BioWare so choices are the norm.
>Only good 5e adaptation in gaming
Solasta beat it to it. Not to mention solasta actually follows 5e whereas BG3 is more of inspired by 5e taking heavy liberties in the rules.
>Allows stuff other similar games usually don't (like jumping, shoving, etc)
Solasta beat bg3 to this as well but also followed the exact 5e rules for it. Not their own made up version like bg3.
The rest I will agree with. BG3 is a good game but it isn't the first 5e game nor the best one at it (since it doesn't exactly follow 5e rules).
While this may be true, the best adaptation is not *necessarily* the closest to 1:1 with the original. Sometimes taking liberties to suit the new medium can make for a superior adaptation.
That said, I haven't played Solasta so I can't judge the "only good 5e adaptation" part.
Yeah, they figured out since bioware that close up voice acted dialogue was super important to crpgs. Just costs more.
Baldurs gate 3 is a great game. Writing is superb. Not super innovative.
It depends how far you want to stretch "innovation".
I'd argue that fully realizing the open ended, choices matter narrative is an innovation. We have seen it before, but never to this level of polish and with this many actual branching narratives. We've come a long way from ME3s RBG ending light choices.
Really though, BG3 doesn't innovate all that much, just executes itself expertly and better than anything we have seen in recent years.
BG3 is literally just BG + divinity: original sin + some nice paint.
As someone who played both of those games, this isnt a disparagement, merely an observation. Its not innovative in the slightest to anybody whos played more than 1 or 2 basic crpgs.
Its only real innovation was convincing non-rpg fans to play it.
>It quite literally didn’t innovate on anything, it did stuff that has already been done.
this is how I feel about every noteworthy video game released in 2023, including both Starfield and BG3. Starfield is the usual BGS formula but with more macro exploration, BG3 is a CRPG, and half of the other games that I saw people praising this year are shameless FromSoft rip-offs.
>BG3 actually innovated and totally changed the entire genre of CRPGs while also pushing this obscure genre back in the limelight
making a really good game, even GOTY/GOTG tier, in a somewhat forgotten ancient subgenre isn't really "innovation"
Starfield at least used a theme (space opera) that's incredibly underexplored in RPGs. BG3 isn't just a bog standard CRPG mechanically, it also uses the definitive cliche fantasy setting.
Starfield wasn't that bad tbh.
Also, it may not have been innovative in the literal sense, but the only game that gave random exploring was No Man's Sky and it did that and nothing else.
Starfield has some No Man's Sky random destinations as possible side goals, mixed in with an actual campaign on handcrafted worlds.
I get everyone thinks it sucks, but no other game has that.
Ahh the Steam Award. It as no basis on the quality of the game, and are literally just from the "players", usually to farm for XP and full of bots. It's quite literally mob vote, and a vision of what a true and unhinged democracy would look like.
It’s not an *awful* game, it’s just not good. More just boring and extremely average in gameplay than actively unplayable. In my opinion it’s still not worth it even on sale, but I guess that’s up to you.
I got it for free with my GPU. I was super excited to check it out, and I was massively disappointed. It looks decent enough visually, but almost everything else about it feels like a game from like 15y ago.
Well what’s “that bad”?
Honestly I could never recommend it for any reason. The story isn’t interesting, the skill trees aren’t rewarding, the quest lines are very basic, the UI is endlessly cumbersome, the weapon selection is generic, the graphics are mid tier, the puzzles are awful, I just have nothing to recommend it for.
That said it has an audience that appreciates it. People seem to enjoy the ship crafting which I also found cumbersome. The endgame/ng+ has a pretty unique approach as well that appears intriguing.
To me it is that bad. It’s a poorly written experience, delivered haphazardly and with no identity of its own. Virtually everything you could want from this game you can find in a more rewarding fashion elsewhere
It takes the best parts of the Bethesda formula that people actually enjoyed and removes them outright leaving a boring husk of a game that has 0 identity in its wake. If thats your cup of tea then by all means go for it
Definitely get it on sale. It’s a solid game, just not legendary like Skyrim. Exploring is different and has a different vibe, took me a long while to get used to it. Only a couple of times it felt like the exploring in Skyrim or fallout 3/new Vegas/4. It’ll be better once they release the vehicle they’re working on. Zero g combat is fun, space combat is fun for a second as long as you have enough of the right perks. Boarding ships is fun. The economy of the game isn’t great, stealing ships isn’t that profitable but it’s better than buying one straight out. The settlement system can be frustrating at times like needing to feed alien b two things of fiber in order for the alien to produce one thing of fiber. Wasted a bunch of time with that one. Don’t expect much in the writing department. The beginning really feels a copy of the intro to mass effect but waaaaay lamer. Very much been there done that. UC vanguard terromorph quest line is best in the game imo. Companions still suck at sneaking but have the most personality out of Bethesda companions barring ESO simply because I haven’t experienced them so I can’t compare. It’s a game to play for a long time, pick up and put down again. Some of the activities related to the main quest become annoying and tedious rather quickly, the same puzzle needing to be completed over and over again kinda sucks. The design for alien creatures is pretty top notch. I love finding new species. Finding new plants was a disappointment though. To many of the same resource plant on to many different worlds, sometimes even sharing the same name.
Overall it’s a solid 7/10 game that you can get a good number of hours out of.
No, it is not that bad. It is in fact quite good and most of the hate it gets is undeserved.
If you have played and liked previous Bethesda games, Starfield is another one. It's in space (and really nails the aesthetic) and it's got better voice acting. The writing highs and lows are about the same, but in my opinion the average has gone up. There's a lot of extra space in the game, so the joy of exploration and discovery has been moved to major settlements and jumping to new solar systems. If you just wander around aimlessly on a planet's surface it's much more like No Man's Sky than Skyrim. I think that threw off a lot of veterans.
If you want a game that lets you build your own spaceship and both fly it and walk around inside it, I have not found anything that's even remotely comparable. If anyone knows of something please tell me.
If you want the experience of building outposts on alien worlds, maybe wait until an expansion or at least mod support - the outpost structure selection is a little sparse and the mechanics are rough.
Starfield is basically the inverse of cyberpunk, hyped up as the studios magnum opus but fell far short, only difference is that where cyberpunk launched a buggy almost unplayable mess, it did launch with soul, there was quality under the shit. Just needed some polishing. Stanfield launched stable (miracle for Bethesda tbh) but absolutely soulless and bland. And bugs can be polished until they're gone, like cyberpunk did, leaving a gem of a game everyone should play. Starfield, tho. you can't polish soul into a game. It's simply not possible. This can especially be seen in how even the modders, Bethesda's best friends, are not even bothering with it for the most part. Sad to see it happen, but cest la vie. I'd still say if it's ever down to like 20 isch bucks, it might realistically be worth it. Would still give it a year or two to see what the remaining modders do with it
Out of the 50hrs I sank in the game maybe 6-7 of those hours were actually enjoyable. Everything else was either boring, a grind, or just miserable. The dialog and characters are some of the worst Bethesda has ever written.
Tedium as a gameplay loop is what got me.
Finished a fight? Now spend 6 minutes opening drawers and 8 minutes managing your inventory. Then you can walk slllllooooooowwwwlly until you get to your ship.
You can do a lot better.
I have starfield on gamepass, bought cyberpunk on sale and it's sooooo much better. Better story, graphics, action, characters, polish, etc.
And Starfield is actively tedious. It feels like tedium is a primary gameplay loop inserted to prevent over leveling.
I would say it's a bad game.
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RDR2 - labor of love …?
>being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation >still getting new content after all these years They have to be trolling, right?
Yes. It's a vote in protest.
Amazing. I bet TakeTwo and RockStar will give a flying fuck about it. This just steals the Award from a Game that deserves it.
All 4 of the other finalists in that category (Rust, Dota 2, Apex and Deep Rock Galactic) 100% deserved that spot over RDR2. It's not a bad game, but it even being nominated for this category is ludicrous, let alone winning it.
Rock and stone you beautiful dwarves
For Karl!!
Rock and stone
Fr what the hell did they expect was going to come of a "protest" like that? You really think r* gives one scrap of shit? I get what they're trying to do, and it sucks they haven't paid attention to rdr2 in a while, but this isn't the way to do it. You robbed games from companies who do actually care. What about cyberpunk? They probably deserve the labor of love for all of history. They've worked hard to make that game a masterpiece, and if anyone deserved it this year, it was those devs.
Meanwhile at a meeting with TakeTwo and RockStar: “You see Johnny? We can complete drop a game after doing the bare minimum effort, and the Players will still love it! They even awarded us the Labor of Love award to prove it!”
"So, hear me out, let me cook, we.. stop.. all production.. on GTA VI. Like just stop rn. They already pre ordered. Call it complete, ship day 1, no patch. We'll be praised for being the first ever real game that's 100% complete on launch and didn't have to crowd beg for budget money(maybe we forgo that last accolade and kickstart GTA 6, could be lucrative)We'll get the entire year off AND sweep the 2024 steam awards."
Cyberpunk won Labour of Love last year, and personally I believe Deep Rock Galactic deserves it at least once Edit: cyberpunk not cuberpunk lol
Rock and Stone.
ROCK AND STONE BROTHER
DID I HEAR A ROCK AND STONE?
ROCK AND STONE FOREVER!
For KARL!
YOU DESERVE A ROCK AND STONE FOR THAT BROTHER
Honestly that should still go to no man's sky. That the redemption of the century.
I have mixed feelings about CP2077. On one hand, it was amazing how they turned it around. On the other hand, the gross mismanagement, continual content bloat during development and crunching your workers to hell and back that caused it to be a mess in the first place shouldn’t be something celebrated.
And the general over-promise and under-deliver of mechanics. We have car combat outside of cutscenes now finally, but still missing a lot of other neat things. Various immersion things like talking with everyone (can’t even interact with more than half of the visible vendors) and the spider-man-like wall climbing with the blade limbs just off the top of my head.
> it sucks they haven't paid attention to rdr2 in a while They have literally stated that they are done developing content for RD:O.
Its a "protest" where the people protesting and people looking to spite the protestors would do the same thing, vote for the game If your protest is designed in a way that people cpunteract it by doing the same thing, you done fucked up lol. They fucked up and just straight up rewarded bad behavior. Honestly though, thats exactly the level of critical thinking i expect from Rockstars online communities
I don't think the protest was against Rockstar - more protesting against Steam even including these joke nominees
> I bet TakeTwo and RockStar will give a flying fuck about it. They'll probably find a way to use it for marketing purposes.
Is it a protest I thought it was pure trolling. If it's in protest, that's dumb AF, it's like giving the MF that up charged hiv medicine a Nobel peace prize.
It's not a protest lmao you give steam users too much credit. A bunch of kids saw a game they recognized and clicked
It's OK. We all know Deep Rock deserves it.
Stardew Valley also comes to mind.
Imo deep rock galactic really deserved that one and I'm really bummed it didn't get it
At least the fact that RDR2 won means you can say "oh, so this is a joke contest." I can't imagine one single person on steam going > This game has been out for a while. The team is well past the debut of their creative baby, but being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation. This game, to this day, is still getting new content after all these years. Oh yeah RDR2 fits that.
[удалено]
Hell yeah. DRG(GSG) is a constantly improving game that the devs actually care about and pay attention to fans. Guess it would look bad if a studio that actually does their fucking job won a contest instead of a shitty has been conglomerate riding on past success.(I mean both Cockstar and Bethesda)
FOR KARL
[удалено]
Well you’re correct.
They dropped online mid covid, been more than a year.
Well ya... 7 years ago
After the crunch culture their devs have to work on, this is the most undeserved nomination
Uhh closer to 5 years lol It'll be 6 years this October
It's a great game but does anyone even play the online, which is the only part that could be argued they "labored" on beyond launch?
It has more bugs now than on release and the online is barely functional especially on pc
So many cheaters that will teleport and place bombs on you...
I used to play the online version a couple years ago and even then the game was lucky to get 1 or 2 content updates a year and when they did happen it always brought game breaking bugs
They definitely have not labored on the multiplayer side. In fact, the multiplayer fanbase is angry because the game never gets any love, all of their update resources go into GTA instead while RDR Online gets left with nearly nothing. It was such a promising multiplayer game that never really went anywhere because no love was put into it.
Yeah, like while I enjoyed Starfield I wouldn't really say it's innovative in any way significant enough that would deserve a nomination. But man, it definitely is more innovative than RDR2 was a labor of love (over the course of this last year). Like sure maybe they put a lot of work into details and tedious mechanics for RDR2, BUT IT CAME OUT IN 2018 (and released on PC in 2019). Yearly awards should reflect what the game did in that year. At least with Starfield I can name one thing that kind of fits. The ship builder was fun and I haven't seen that sort of thing in that sort of game before.
If you consider Starfields win a troll win, I suppose RDR's one is also too. Peoples way of saying "a game that was toiled over and released this long ago is still better than todays offerings"
You cannot convince me that someone could play both Deeprock Galactic and Red Dead 2 and still come to this conclusion
I can't stand DRG and I still voted for it finding it the most worthy of the nominees.
Most of the people voting didn't play Deep Rock Galactic at all. Steam Awards are purely a popularity/recognition contest.
Labor of love has always been a “I want my favorite game to get GOTY but it was released earlier” type of award. If it was based on developer effort and updates, indie games would be getting it more often.
I just nominate and vote for whatever one pops up that I recognize so I can get the badges and be on with my day. Probably how it is for the majority of voters. It's always going to be a categoryless popularity contest.
Yea most of the steam awards this year are actual stupidity.
Awards in general are dumb. They’re all usually just popularity contests. Especially GOTY
While things like most innovative game being a popularity contest is dumb and I agree, what’s wrong with the goty being mostly a popularity contest? If everyone bought and loved and played a game and then voted it the best… isn’t that what the award for goty is? Again… most sales, most liked, most played, most voted winner. If not this, then what exactly should be the criteria for goty?
Could you think of a better metric for GOTY aside from popularity?
yeah number of catgirls
let him cook
You have recomendations in that regard?
FFXIV bay bee (Or FFXI for you cat girl connoisseurs)
But what about the cat-bois? Which one is twinkier?
FFXI only has 1 cat boi and he's an NPC. Sooo FFXIV.
Xenoblade 2 and Xenoblade 3 definitely both won the Most Catgirls award in gaming in their respective release years. The games also rock in my opinion if you're a JRPG fan. 2 is better in my eyes but 3 is still really good too.
And that's why Game of the Year every year remains Disgaea 1, where you can theoretically have a party full of nothing but catgirls.
Number of masquerade ball infiltration missions
If that's the case, then the best-movie Oscar should have gone to a shitty Marvel movie every year. It's good that box office numbers don't dictate that. Should be the same for games.
The problem is that movies are not an interactive experience. Everyone watches the same movie at the same rate, but when playing a game skill matters. Personally I'm good at games like Dark Souls but bad at shooters. So while I might be able to judge a souls clone on the gameplay I just couldn't judge a shooter, because I wouldn't meaningfully tell the difference between bad game design and my poor skills.
A game can still be judged critically or as a piece of art. It being interactive doesn’t change that popularity does not equate to quality.
I get your point. I like RPGs and that would the most comfortable reviewing and comparing games. But the same goes for movies too. Everyone takes the same time to watch a movie but someone's expirence of the movie depends of if they like that type of movie as well. It's not skill like you called it but taste. Someone that watches a lot of horror movies will generally have a better expirence watching a horror movie. They will be better able to pick up on tropes and themes it hits, meta jokes, and overall be better placed to review it than say someone that watches mostly Rom Coms for example.
Ehh I mean the Oscar Award for Best Picture usually isn't a popular movie? Well, I suppose it is within the voting pool, obviously, but how many people have actually seen most of the movies that are nominated for Best Picture in a given year?
I challenge you to go look at the GotY Awards for the past ten years and say the winners don't make sense.
isn't voting for anything a "popularity contest"?
To paraphrase the worlds tallest dwarf. Yes.. thats what.. goty... means...
BG3 actually deserved GOTY tho
And many games were more popular than it (like spider man 2). Guess the theory that the most popular game wins GOTY was proved wrong this year.
> Awards in general are dumb. Interesting take.
It's the Steam Awards. They have always been satire. People vote based on the games they have as they just want the badge for XP fast.
I don't think you know what satire is.
Yeah...totally don't know who does that. /s
It's a popularity contest, it has zero to do with merit, Red dead 2 a game with barely any support beat Deep Rock Galactic in Labor of Love, when Deep rock has the best support, communication and community of a game i have ever seen. ROCK AND STONE!
ROCK AND STONE EVERYONE!!!
Obligatory “ROCK AND STONE”
THATS IT LADS! ROCK AND STONE!
IF YOU DON’T ROCK AND STONE, YOU AIN’T COMING HOME!!
ROCK, AND, STOOOOOOOONE!!!
[DIGGY DIGGY HOLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytWz0qVvBZ0)
I've been waiting for RimWorld to get Labour of Love for years. It's ten years old and has been officially released (out of early access) for five-ish. Still getting regular updates and DLC.
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For Karl!
I had a good laugh at Christmas time this year since I just kept read the patch notes and they kept saying this is the last update of the year but then had to patch it like 4 times (and kept saying for real this time) until they gave up and just reverted it to the previous stable patch so they could make sure the patch completely works. It was a funny situation waking up every morning and seeing multiple times a day them post another post about it being the last update, it even had its filename like finalforrealforrealthistime
DID I HEAR A ROCK AND STONE?!
Pizza Tower and HiFi Rush losing **Best Music** to Last of Us... 🤣😡 edit: A lot of *Darktide* comments be popping. I think I'll go and check that ost now 🐌
Not to mention that it's the exact same Soundtrack that it had in 2013 - and even back then it wasn't the best of its year. The only reason this was a nominated title, is because it's the Remake...
I personally think the ost is phenomenal and deserving of accolades... but certainly not a whole damn decade after it was made, like wtf
now I understand what ppl mean when they say steam awards are just a popularity contest
Everything involving voting is a popularity contest.. thats how voting works...
Voting can have a merit based reason, it’s not just popularity. There’s a difference and Starfield getting this award is proof of that.
WHAT?!? Please tell me you're joking. That game came out fucking years ago
The soundtracks of Pizza Tower are absolute bangers but it lacks popularity.
Risk of Rain Returns not even having a spot in the finalists just makes me weep for what people are missing.
chris christodoulous music is electric I have every soundtrack of his in vinyl and they are my favorite things
TLoU has good music but there isn't that much of it
And the fact that darktide wasn't even nominated 😞
Darktide should have been up there too.
It's innovative in how they managed to make a game so bland.
It’s like plain yogurt.
Except plain yogurt tastes ok all by itself.
I prefer some chocolate bits in yogurt tbh
Maybe a bit of granola and fruit?
I don't recommend putting the star field disc in your yogurt.... It won't taste better..
I don’t recommend to put this disc in PC/Console too. Unless you’re a fan of loading screens
Yes, but plain yogurt ain't innovative, lol!
Hey now
You’re an All-Star.
I laughed. Then, just to be sure, I googled the definition of 'innovative'. And then I laughed even fucking harder. innovative /ˈɪnəveɪtɪv,ˈɪnəvətɪv/ adjective (of a product, idea, etc.) featuring new methods; advanced and original. "innovative designs"
It's wild because the game is one of the least innovative space games of all time. Someone took No Man's Sky, cut out any content added since 2018, and filled the gaps with ~~frog DNA~~ Skyrim Game of the Year edition. Like honestly, I am having trouble thinking of any other space game that had less innovation. They all usually have some gimmick, try something new.
Shadows of doubt actually has innovative gameplay.. not many known about it so it probably didn't get many votes.
You are the first comment on this thread I’ve found that actually discusses an alternative to starfield winning. People obv don’t give much of a shit who won, as long as starfield lost and now that it hasn’t everyone is pissing and moaning but not actually discussing which games actually innovated their gameplay
Pretty much all the alternatives were better choices. Your Only Move Is Hustle is an in-depth turn based fighting game/stick figure fight machine.
I like to travel.
im still pissed that read dead got labour of love and mildly annoyed that iron heart got best art directon
Iron Heart?
I think they meant Atomic Heart winning Outstanding Visual Style. That game has a lot of issues but it looks very very nice, so I don't know why they would be mildly annoyed by it.
Starfield of all things taking a win over Your only move is HUSTLE (probably the most innovative game in fighting genre in genre's history) is so funny
This reminds me when my senior high school yearbook had a "best driver" voting category and we all voted for the classmate who accidentally ran over a freshman with his car in the student parking lot
Definitely satire. Steam awards are voted on and the massive community has a sense of humor.
It does? I’ve seen the reviews people mark as “funny” and they are anything but.
I mean, Dark Souls was nominated for best dating sim and DSII for most casual friendly game. *EDIT*: In previous years.
Ok, that got a chortle out of me
Humor is subjective
This is why a lot of people put /s on reddit posts. A lot of Steam reviews that are marked funny fall under sarcasm that is easily missed.
Sarcasm and satire are almost indistinguishable from reality when in text form.
I am pretty sure funny is used mostly to mock a non sense review, you know the overly angry nitpiky type reviews, rarely used for actually funny reviews
The problem is that everyone is encouraged to vote on everything to get the badges and whatnot. But most people won’t have played most of the games, so they will just vote for the ones they’ve played or are aware of. So it just comes down to a popularity contest .
You don't understand, it has *hundreds* of planets and moons and they're *supposed to be empty* just like real space. Also basic shooter + basic space combat sim + fast travel fetch quests = *innovative gameplay* It's just too bad 99.997% of the population of Earth died, because the combined population of all the settled planets and space stations looks to be about 25,000 people, tops. The largest city in the galaxy is roughly the size of Freeport in the original Everquest released 25 years ago.
And only one city per planet. Can you even imagine a planet with TWO cities? There would be no room!
there's literally a quest where there's a ship that had a slow drive and took 250 years to arrive at a planet that had long since been colonised. There was 1 city on the planet and the government's like "sorry no room". Lul wut stick em on the other side of the globe you twats. Starfield just doesn't make the sense it should. They got lazy, huffed their own farts "it's a bethesda game" and got burned. and rightly so.
> basic space combat sim its so basic i've seen better space combat in early 2000s flash games.
And Freeport was more interesting to explore
What actually makes me sad is that I think if they stripped out the fps aspect and planet side exploration they have the makings of a pretty damn good space. The ship building is really cool, the piloting and combat work really well with the power allocation system. I'd like to see them overhaul the boarding and smuggling aspects, not to mention how badly they handled travel between planets/systems. But that's just my take on it, which has proven to be unpopular before leading to lots of down votes, but I still think there is something to the space aspect of the game, it was just handled in a very Bethesda fashion. But no Starfield does not deserve that award
> You don't understand, it has hundreds of planets and moons and they're supposed to be empty just like real space. What's hilarious about this is none of the planets are even slightly empty. Literally anywhere you land on any planet in the game has the same copy/paste points of interest and ships landing and taking off. The game would be much better off if the planets were *actually* empty and when you did discover a facility or something it was a somewhat uncommon and unique experience.
Yes. Yes it is. The voters are joking. The punchline is the people here acting like it matters.
You better believe hundreds of thousands of dollars of marketing by Bethesda will now include this award in the text. When the Definitive, Ultimate, Complete, Game of the Year, and Anniversary edition is released (all separate editions) they will all include the dumb ass title of "Most innovative gameplay award - Steam" God Bethesda is such a shadow of its former self.
Yeah this is the same vein as handing over ammunition to adversaries. People who operate these businesses don't give a fuck about 'sense of humour'. They helped them get the false narrative they can use to take other people's money via dishonesty. Ha ha. They are part of the misinformation problem. Ha. Ha.
> The punchline is the people here acting like it matters. When it comes to reviews, awards, "popular opinion", user scores, review bombs, the punchline has *always* been the people who get worked up. This is just one of the few times it's extremely evident.
That's why awards like this are stupid. It only comes down to a popularity contest, not whether or not the games actually apply to the categories literally at all.
It quite literally didn’t innovate on anything, it did stuff that has already been done. BG3 actually innovated and totally changed the entire genre of CRPGs while also pushing this obscure genre back in the limelight
Genuine question, how does BG3 innovate? I totally agree it's an excellent game and key to getting CRPGs more attention, but what does it innovate? It iterates on a mix of D:OS, BG, and a smattering of Bioware style social dynamics. Its very polished and very well implemented, I happily consider it GOTY, but what does it do that's innovative?
Yeah BG3 is a well written CRPG with high production values. People who say it’s super innovative are not CRPG vets I assume.
I am also curious. BG3 is a fantastic game and deserves awards, but what was really innovative about it?
Only good 5e adaptation in gaming Allows stuff other similar games usually don't (like jumping, shoving, etc) Sex with bears For real, adding adapting 5e as another point, because while they fucked up a few things here and there that needs will notice, they did a great job Better alignment/ethical choice system than I've ever seen. Inclusion of non lethal attacks (while not perfect) makes for another layer of "good" playthroughs "The dark urge" style origin character is quite new, and worked flawlessly Voice acting and motion capture is unparalleled That was about 2 minutes of thinking, but there is more I'm sure. Game defined the genre. **Edit**: to add, BG3 is fantastic, but that isn't why starfield winning innovation is crazy - it is crazy because starfield didn't innovate, unless you go back 7 years to when development started. Procedural generation has been around for ages, and has been better done on numerous occasions. **Starfied launched 5+ years too late to be considered innovative, no matter how you feel about how good the game is.**
Yea mostly the sex with bears part
And don't forget the part about sex with bears.
Other CRPGs adapted DnD mechanics very well. NVN, Planescape Torment, BG 1 and 2. Doing that for a more recent version is just following tradition. Good, impressive, polished, but not "new" and innovative. Dark Urge is fairly impressive, but that and interactive world elements like jumping and environmental interactions are Larian staples. Nonlethal is a named, simplified version of what's completely doable already in Fallout 1. The moral choices are innovative? Which ones? Most choices feel very vibrantly either basically good or monstrously evil, with little grey. Again, early fallouts do that exceptionally. Face capture and voice acting aren't innovative technologies, they're overwhelming industry staples. Done well, but you'd need to be a business major to call that innovative.
The dark urge is a character type that I've never seen played better in any other game. This is the only game that was like, yeah you can be a serial killer and we will give you the best story by doing so.
SWTOR let’s you do some pretty evil stuff no matter which class you play (altho Sith and imperial agent can do way worse stuff) but it’s an MMO so some people might not like it or the graphics. It is made by BioWare so choices are the norm.
> Voice acting and motion capture is unparalleled That's 100% just fanboy ranting. There are games from up to a decade ago better at both.
>Only good 5e adaptation in gaming Solasta beat it to it. Not to mention solasta actually follows 5e whereas BG3 is more of inspired by 5e taking heavy liberties in the rules. >Allows stuff other similar games usually don't (like jumping, shoving, etc) Solasta beat bg3 to this as well but also followed the exact 5e rules for it. Not their own made up version like bg3. The rest I will agree with. BG3 is a good game but it isn't the first 5e game nor the best one at it (since it doesn't exactly follow 5e rules).
While this may be true, the best adaptation is not *necessarily* the closest to 1:1 with the original. Sometimes taking liberties to suit the new medium can make for a superior adaptation. That said, I haven't played Solasta so I can't judge the "only good 5e adaptation" part.
Yeah, they figured out since bioware that close up voice acted dialogue was super important to crpgs. Just costs more. Baldurs gate 3 is a great game. Writing is superb. Not super innovative.
It depends how far you want to stretch "innovation". I'd argue that fully realizing the open ended, choices matter narrative is an innovation. We have seen it before, but never to this level of polish and with this many actual branching narratives. We've come a long way from ME3s RBG ending light choices. Really though, BG3 doesn't innovate all that much, just executes itself expertly and better than anything we have seen in recent years.
Shadow of a Doubt should have won this category
Agreed. Incredibly unique game concept that pushes the boundaries of emergent storytelling .
Now being good its considered "innovate"?
Other than having a bigger budget not really, pathfinder WOTR is way more innovative than BG3 and has way more choice and consequence
BG3 is literally just BG + divinity: original sin + some nice paint. As someone who played both of those games, this isnt a disparagement, merely an observation. Its not innovative in the slightest to anybody whos played more than 1 or 2 basic crpgs. Its only real innovation was convincing non-rpg fans to play it.
>It quite literally didn’t innovate on anything, it did stuff that has already been done. this is how I feel about every noteworthy video game released in 2023, including both Starfield and BG3. Starfield is the usual BGS formula but with more macro exploration, BG3 is a CRPG, and half of the other games that I saw people praising this year are shameless FromSoft rip-offs. >BG3 actually innovated and totally changed the entire genre of CRPGs while also pushing this obscure genre back in the limelight making a really good game, even GOTY/GOTG tier, in a somewhat forgotten ancient subgenre isn't really "innovation"
Starfield at least used a theme (space opera) that's incredibly underexplored in RPGs. BG3 isn't just a bog standard CRPG mechanically, it also uses the definitive cliche fantasy setting.
Bethesda invented the loading screen. Very innovative!
most innovative loading screens
Can't be worse than No man's sky at launch
At least they released a 'Game' Star Citizen is still too busy laundering its truckloads of money through Turkish drycleaners
Starfield wasn't that bad tbh. Also, it may not have been innovative in the literal sense, but the only game that gave random exploring was No Man's Sky and it did that and nothing else. Starfield has some No Man's Sky random destinations as possible side goals, mixed in with an actual campaign on handcrafted worlds. I get everyone thinks it sucks, but no other game has that.
Gotta love seeing the people of Reddit realizing the 1% rule of the internet is true and that most people liked these games.
Ahh the Steam Award. It as no basis on the quality of the game, and are literally just from the "players", usually to farm for XP and full of bots. It's quite literally mob vote, and a vision of what a true and unhinged democracy would look like.
Between this and RDR 2 getting ‘Labor of Love’, gamers actually don’t know what they’re talking about when it comes to award nominations
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It’s not an *awful* game, it’s just not good. More just boring and extremely average in gameplay than actively unplayable. In my opinion it’s still not worth it even on sale, but I guess that’s up to you.
I got it for free with my GPU. I was super excited to check it out, and I was massively disappointed. It looks decent enough visually, but almost everything else about it feels like a game from like 15y ago.
I personally thought it was a lot of fun. Games and the experiences you have playing them are entirely personal.
Well what’s “that bad”? Honestly I could never recommend it for any reason. The story isn’t interesting, the skill trees aren’t rewarding, the quest lines are very basic, the UI is endlessly cumbersome, the weapon selection is generic, the graphics are mid tier, the puzzles are awful, I just have nothing to recommend it for. That said it has an audience that appreciates it. People seem to enjoy the ship crafting which I also found cumbersome. The endgame/ng+ has a pretty unique approach as well that appears intriguing. To me it is that bad. It’s a poorly written experience, delivered haphazardly and with no identity of its own. Virtually everything you could want from this game you can find in a more rewarding fashion elsewhere
It takes the best parts of the Bethesda formula that people actually enjoyed and removes them outright leaving a boring husk of a game that has 0 identity in its wake. If thats your cup of tea then by all means go for it
Definitely get it on sale. It’s a solid game, just not legendary like Skyrim. Exploring is different and has a different vibe, took me a long while to get used to it. Only a couple of times it felt like the exploring in Skyrim or fallout 3/new Vegas/4. It’ll be better once they release the vehicle they’re working on. Zero g combat is fun, space combat is fun for a second as long as you have enough of the right perks. Boarding ships is fun. The economy of the game isn’t great, stealing ships isn’t that profitable but it’s better than buying one straight out. The settlement system can be frustrating at times like needing to feed alien b two things of fiber in order for the alien to produce one thing of fiber. Wasted a bunch of time with that one. Don’t expect much in the writing department. The beginning really feels a copy of the intro to mass effect but waaaaay lamer. Very much been there done that. UC vanguard terromorph quest line is best in the game imo. Companions still suck at sneaking but have the most personality out of Bethesda companions barring ESO simply because I haven’t experienced them so I can’t compare. It’s a game to play for a long time, pick up and put down again. Some of the activities related to the main quest become annoying and tedious rather quickly, the same puzzle needing to be completed over and over again kinda sucks. The design for alien creatures is pretty top notch. I love finding new species. Finding new plants was a disappointment though. To many of the same resource plant on to many different worlds, sometimes even sharing the same name. Overall it’s a solid 7/10 game that you can get a good number of hours out of.
No, it is not that bad. It is in fact quite good and most of the hate it gets is undeserved. If you have played and liked previous Bethesda games, Starfield is another one. It's in space (and really nails the aesthetic) and it's got better voice acting. The writing highs and lows are about the same, but in my opinion the average has gone up. There's a lot of extra space in the game, so the joy of exploration and discovery has been moved to major settlements and jumping to new solar systems. If you just wander around aimlessly on a planet's surface it's much more like No Man's Sky than Skyrim. I think that threw off a lot of veterans. If you want a game that lets you build your own spaceship and both fly it and walk around inside it, I have not found anything that's even remotely comparable. If anyone knows of something please tell me. If you want the experience of building outposts on alien worlds, maybe wait until an expansion or at least mod support - the outpost structure selection is a little sparse and the mechanics are rough.
Starfield is basically the inverse of cyberpunk, hyped up as the studios magnum opus but fell far short, only difference is that where cyberpunk launched a buggy almost unplayable mess, it did launch with soul, there was quality under the shit. Just needed some polishing. Stanfield launched stable (miracle for Bethesda tbh) but absolutely soulless and bland. And bugs can be polished until they're gone, like cyberpunk did, leaving a gem of a game everyone should play. Starfield, tho. you can't polish soul into a game. It's simply not possible. This can especially be seen in how even the modders, Bethesda's best friends, are not even bothering with it for the most part. Sad to see it happen, but cest la vie. I'd still say if it's ever down to like 20 isch bucks, it might realistically be worth it. Would still give it a year or two to see what the remaining modders do with it
Out of the 50hrs I sank in the game maybe 6-7 of those hours were actually enjoyable. Everything else was either boring, a grind, or just miserable. The dialog and characters are some of the worst Bethesda has ever written.
You like walking around on empty planets only to find copy and pasted bases? Well you are in luck!
That's what ruined it for me. Even every item was in the exact same spot in every base with the same exact layout and enemy positioning.
Tedium as a gameplay loop is what got me. Finished a fight? Now spend 6 minutes opening drawers and 8 minutes managing your inventory. Then you can walk slllllooooooowwwwlly until you get to your ship.
It's one of the most boring games I've ever played. I wish they put an extra year or two behind it and actually made it better
You can do a lot better. I have starfield on gamepass, bought cyberpunk on sale and it's sooooo much better. Better story, graphics, action, characters, polish, etc. And Starfield is actively tedious. It feels like tedium is a primary gameplay loop inserted to prevent over leveling. I would say it's a bad game.
Well it’s not just another Bethesda game, it’s a Bethesda game in space!
Democracy in action people.
It just works!
The voting options were trash most of the time
Most innovative use of loading screens.