The Gaming Industry and why it needs another crash.

As someone who most people would probably view as a “hardcore” gamer, I have been pretty irritated about many aspects of the gaming industry for a long time now. I am mostly going to be talking about FPS games but this applies to gaming in general.

Back when I was a little kid playing games like Quake 3, Tribes and Counterstrike, games were actually awesome. They were considerable cheaper, higher quality and more challenging. Most importantly, they were FINISHED games at release. Also, when new content was added to the ames, we didn’t have to pay a dime for it. It was free. The gaming community was different then as well. We had higher expectations for games and didn’t take any crap from the companies. If companies back then would have tried this DLC crap or releasing unfinished games, they wouldn’t have liked the response from the community.

******The Casual Gamer Craze******

There are quite a few problems in the gaming industry that I want to address here. I will start with one of my biggest peeves as a competitive gamer; the fact that today’s games are just too easy. The main reason for this is the industry’s decision to cater almost entirely to the much larger demographic of casual gamers on the consoles. You know who I am talking about here… The type of gamers who go crazy for the latest annual release of another painfully dumbed-down Call of Duty game and all of the other cookie-cutter games like it.

If you think about it, Call of Duty and World of Warcraft are the two franchises that really created the big casual gamer craze, which started the dumbing-down of the entire FPS and MMO genres. Other than resulting in the dumbing-down of games, casual gaming isn’t necessarily a bad thing itself. After all, it brought a much wider demographic into gaming, which in turn resulted in more profits for the developers. More profits means more money to spend on game budgets. Unfortunately, the problem is that most of the developers decided to focus only on the casual players and ignore their core (the hardcore gamer) audience that got them to where they are in the first place. Before console and PC gaming went mainstream, it was the hardcore gamer who kept the business going. This casual craze has also caused the decline of the PC gaming market much more than the piracy issue. PC gamers generally have higher expectations for products so you shouldn’t expect huge sales when you give us a bunch of half-assed console ports and dumbed-down games.

Games have become worse and worse during the past several years with most other developers trying to immitate successful casual games like COD and WoW. You pretty much can’t buy an FPS game anymore that doesn’t have the casual “bells and whistles” like achievements, unlockable weapons, leveling, full-stat tracking, various over-powered and easy to use weapons, etc… When I was a little kid playing games like the Tribes series and Counter Strike we didn’t need any of those things to remain interested in our games. It was all about game-play. And don’t even get me started on the MMORPGS and their easy to follow objectives where everything has a big arrow pointing at it or quest items are glowing. These games treat casuals like they are complete idiots.

******Bugs! Bugs everywhere!******

The gaming industry definitely doesn’t believe in quality over quantity. Far too often we see companies releasing games before they are actually finished so they can increase those quarterly profits, which means we are essentially paying $60 to be beta-testers. Even some of the biggest companies in the industry do this pretty often. Remember that buggy mess known as Skyrim when it was first released? Battlefield 3 and 4? The Sim City disaster? These days companies don’t bother with much beta-testing and just rely on fixing all of the bugs through patching after release.

******The Price of Gaming******

The cost of gaming has risen to an insane level during the past several years as well. So we’re getting lower quality games at higher costs. Whether they are running their franchises into the ground by releasing annual versions of their games or giving us an endless stream of DLC, games are far more expensive than they were when I was first starting out in gaming. It has very little to do with prices going up either. Yes, the base games are a bit more expensive now at around $60 each but that is just one of the problems.

Downloadable Content (DLC) is probably the worst thing to happen in the history of gaming. Now companies release half-finished games and want you to pay for the features that games automatically included at one time.

The common practice in the industry seems to be to release incomplete annual versions of their games, worry about fixing the bugs later through patches and charge us $5-$20 for features, maps and items that should have been in the game in the first place. Right now we are spending around $100 per game on a lot of them. But you don’t HAVE to buy the DLC right? Wrong. In the case of FPS games with DLC maps, you pretty much have to buy them unless you want to play alone half the time. Eventually most servers are using the latest DLC maps. DLC just segregates gaming communities and forces everyone to buy the latest maps if they want to play with their friends. And worse, in the case of weapon DLC, it can often create an unfair advantage for one person.

What is worse, is that developers will often cut out parts of the game they are making just so they can release it later as DLC, which means we get shorter games with less features for the SAME price that we used to pay for full games.

"A long time ago there were expansion packs. These were 50% of the base product and gave you about 75% as much content. Then came DLC, often costing 20% of the base product and giving you 5% new content. Now we’re in a world of microtransactions, where 3% purchases give you 1% content. Respectively, the cost per content is like: 1.5x, 0.25x, 0.33x. Developers are giving you much less content at much higher profit margins. So much so it’s all they seem to talk about before the game is even released. To me, that shows a brazen amount of disrespect to its consumers." That says it all.

And just when you think it can’t get any worse, a game called Evolve comes along. The developer is actually BRAGGING about how the game is basically designed around DLC and promises to nickel and dime us to death “more so than any other game before.”

How long will it be before we are paying around $200 for a complete game?

******Its time for another crash******

Many of us either weren’t alive yet or were too young to remember the last big crash of the gaming industry but we could see one in the near future if things continue at this pace. What caused the last crash was an endless stream of low quality games that consumers were tired of buying, which is only ONE of the problems we have in today’s industry.

* We also have the complete lack of creativity and innovation. Far too many developers just create clones of other popular games instead of working on something different. Even those few that dare to be different at first will often begin to slowly turn their games into copies of others. This is especially true with MMORPGS (copying WoW) and FPS (copying COD) games.

* Then we have the bug-riddled unfinished games being pushed out by the people in charge.

* We have the ever-increasing base prices along with all of the extra (DLC) costs. These inferior games are getting more expensive.

* People are being burned out by the annual releases of so many popular franchises just so companies can try to milk them as much as possible.

This could all very well lead to another industry crash if the consumers decide that we have had enough of it again. We are already starting to see signs of this, considering that many formerly popular developers have either been going under or they are in financial trouble. Personally I think a crash could be good for the industry much like the last one.

You don't understand what caused the crash

Everything you said is in no way fixed by another

To address your complaints:

1) the "casual gamer" craze is something that's been happening for longer than you think. Arcade machines and the older generation of consoles had difficult games because they were so short and didn't cost much to make. To make them last longer, they often had to make them artificially difficult, resulting in the whole "Nintendo-hard" craze. Speaking of Nintendo, they're the ones that tried to get everyone into gaming with their child-friendly franchises like Mario and Zelda. If anything, games have always tried to appeal to the highest possible consumer demand.

WoW and Call of Duty simply had mechanics that anyone and everyone could get into, and thus allow them to push past the barrier to entry and try other games, if they so choose to. People tend to copy what's popular at the time in an attempt to see if they can ride off the success of the innovator. It happens in any industry, games included. The problem is not that the games produce copycats. The problem is lazy developers who want to keep it safe by trying to compete with Call of Duty or WoW, which they fail to realize they can never do. And besides, there are plenty of games out there that are fairly original and don't try to imitate the success of others. If elements seem to be similar, it's because there's little true originality anymore, same as with anything else in the world these days. Two titanic franchises like WoW and CoD aren't the culprit here. They just happened to turn into monstrous successes because people liked playing them. End of story.

As for developers focusing their efforts on the "casual" market, it all goes down to business strategy. Hardcore gamers like to think they're the only ones that mean anything for developers when in fact, they are a small population and thus will not bring most companies the profits needed to make such games. Making a game appeal to a more "casual" market allows them to achieve the budgets and resources to make niche games from subsidiary developers under the big names like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, as well as the 3rd party devs like Ubisoft, Activision, and EA.

And from the PC perspective, the decline is more to do with the high cost of actually owning a high-fidelity gaming PC, which far exceeds the cost of a console in many cases if you want top-of-the-line graphics cards and processors, as well as the rather selective types of games PC gamers tend to go for--the RTS being one of them. The only reason for making a game easier is to allow people not used to playing games to have a chance at actually being able to play, which I don't think is such a bad thing. The more people that get into gaming, the better. Skill only comes with time and practice, especially when it comes to video games. We've been doing this for so long that we take it for granted.

2) For as long as video games and computers have existed, bugs have existed. Programming errors are fairly common. The problem back in the day was that, if a game had bugs, there was nothing you could do about it. You had to take the game as is. Sometimes they were minor, and other times they broke the game. Hell, if your cartridge was dirty, it screwed up the game even worse, something that doesn't tend to happen nearly as often with the latest Blu-ray discs. What made games back in the day much higher quality than today? If anything, it's about the same in my opinion. The difference is that now, due to the increasing graphical and technical capabilities of games, we're noticing such bugs more and more often, as the errors are blown up due to the aforementioned reasons.

3) The price of gaming is directly related to the increasing resources needed to make games. From programmers to engine licenses to sound studios, games need a higher budget to keep up with the cost of production, and that's not even included the marketing cost of AAA games these days. Because these budgets are so huge, the price of the game has increased as well. Games cost an average of 50 to 100 million bucks to produce, give or take, and AAA budgets are even higher than that. And as for DLC, that's not even a big issue either. Granted, the problem of developers making unfinished games so that you have to buy the DLC to get the full experience is an issue, but it doesn't stem from the existence of DLC itself, per se. Again, it goes back to lazy developers who want to make a quick buck (*cough* Capcom *cough*). As for map packs, that's to keep interest in multiplayer alive. Who really wants to play the same base maps over and over again? It gets boring after a while. Their pricing might be called into question, but sometimes, when the maps are created after the game's release, you have to bring back the cost of that particular part of development. Like I said before, it's all a business in the end. In the best cases, some DLC packs are expansions for a game, and have a significantly lower price point than expansion packs from the old days. RPGs like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have proven this to be true, and even for the larger ones, the games are simply re-released with the expansion pack included for a smaller price point, and that's not including Game of the Year editions of bigger titles. DLC isn't as bad as you think, as most games do end up being finished after release.

The crash of 1984 was the result of an oversaturation of gaming consoles and video games that all had the same functionality and felt no different from one another. Combined with insanely low costs and games not meeting their sales expectations (see the Atari Pac-Man port and E.T. games for the biggest culprits), and you have yourself one massive crash. In this modern age, I'd say we've avoided that problem almost entirely. There are only 4 major competitors in the gaming industry so far: Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and the PC industry. Yes, there might be an oversaturation of shooters and MMORPGs out there, but the major sellers are still selling well, and those that don't meet expectations are thrown into the bargain bin and left to never be remembered again. If anything, the industry is healthy for the most part. The only thing people need to do is start looking for other types of games besides First-person shooters and MMOs. And yes, they do exist if you look hard enough. We're not headed for another crash, in my opinion, as the gaming industry by far has the film and music industry beat in terms of entertainment, cultural, and financial factors, and only behind very few things like the porn industry.

yes, games are released unfinished. yes, they overcharge. yes, games are easier and dumbed-down and geared towards true casual players.

yes, i will continue to not buy games when they are released and will get them years down the road. yes, i will continue to not buy dlc, unless, it is correctly priced for what it offers. (i can count on one hand how many times this has occurred.) yes, i will wait for goty versions.

yes, multiplayer hurts my single-player game. yes, devs spend their money on worthless components of their games.

yes, devs have gone beyond wanting to make a profit and are into greed territory at my expense.j

yes, i won't buy another console. yes, i will continue to show restraint in the games i buy and support.

however, too many casuals and too much money means no crash will occur.

Uhm.... You are whats wrong with the industry.

Infact my pet peeve is to blame everything on the community, not the industry. Also Call Of Duty is most definately not a casual game, and Casual Gamers actually have a better grasp of what gaming is really about.

@Lulu_Lulu: lol, sure and up is down, black is white, right is wrong.

Any modern day crash would be due to a plethora of factors different from caused games in the 80's to go downhill.

The only thing similar to the past that you can blame is.

People who don't know jack about video games, being allowed to influence video games. Especially naive investors and physical goods marketers. It's like you wanna ask the lot of them "Do you even GAME bro?"

We don't have enough Carmack's and Newells who fight tooth and nail to maintain creative control over their properties, and only some build their games to be modded and experimented with, or really foster a strong community of user generated content thats not exploitative but consumer driven.

The rest get abused like rappers on P Diddy's label without an exit strategy. But that's how the entertainment biz goes. People are out there selling playable commercials. Creators need more power man.

You have CEO's pressured to make bank by Hollywood-izing games for mass appeal. When if the shit plays good, gamers aren't gonna wait for a committee, and there's no need to OVERsell them.

But theres still a market for it, and like mastermetal said the crash had a lot of homogonized hardware without a lot standing out. Today's different platforms are distinct enough to drive consumers in one direction or another, but ultimately somewhere.

Now if all gaming were entirely a mobile tablet scenario, and entirely cloud dependent, under current industry business practices *shudder* then gaming would suffer from being too homogenized, and piecemeal across all devices and titles, and without enough marketing outlets for games to stand from each other, or the next side scrolling or skinner box craze-of-the-month but that still might not be enough for a total crash.

@udUbdaWgz1

Save it for System Wars buddy... You and TC don't belong here. :p

@Lulu_Lulu:

now I do agree that it seems there are casuals are just trying to have that childlike fun with games, while there's a lot of stodgy complaining around core games, but hey all of us are guilty of complaining about things we hold deep interest in.

If we didn't care, we wouldn't be here. Alls the OPs saying (and I'll give a toy or toybox analogy) is.... you need your 'rubiks cubes', 'Tabletop RPGs' and 'chess sets' your dedicated behemoths of playtime as part of the overall economy.

Sure they're made for the elite minds, and tend to draw more uptight players that imaginative loose youngsters with wind up dolls, but wind up dolls are tossed away and rubiks cubes go awhile. Can't sustain an industry on only the former. We gotta have really fleshed out, dedicated experiences to give this medium its overall worth. Otherwise the western public will consider games like cartoons, mostly temporal, throwaway things for brief enjoyment, and not really capable of anything else.

I always like to say that I was unlocking weapons and perks in counter-strike mods before anybody was doing it in CoD. CoD's mass appeal goes way deeper than that.

Anyway, I'm spending less per unused game right now (much less, if you factor in inflation) than I was when I was in high school. Steam sales and all sorts of different pricing models allowed by digital distribution have been much easier on my wallet. Gone Home and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons were my 2 favorite games last year and I spent $35 total to get them both full priced. This year, I've spent WAY too much time playing Hearthsone and it hasn't cost me anything.

I've played plenty of hard games too. There's Everyday Shooter, Braid, The Banner Saga, Papers Please, and then for some reason gaming decided that rogue-likes should be popular. Still, I'm seeing more and more developers go the Supergiant Games route and make a moderate but gradual difficulty curve while sticking in some legitimately challenging side content.

Bugs definitely suck though. In theory I guess you could say that bugs in console games never got fixed before they went online but it seems now like developers simply don't have the same urgency to do QA.

@Lulu_Lulu: lol, system wars? i could care less about any company who produces consoles or pc's.

so, huh?

I really doubt that we'll see a crash like before, the video game industry has simply become too entrenched in today's entertainment industry overall for that to happen. I grew up before the crash and went through and from my perspective I can't see why anyone would want that to happen again. In fact that kind of sentiment strikes me as being a bit selfish. I'm an old school gamer but I'm still very much enjoying gaming these days and feel that on the whole gaming has improved dramatically over the years and that's more diversity then ever before. I thrilled to see how gaming has gone from where it started to it's more mainstream status now. There's so many great and fun games coming out then I could ever hope to play. I think some people let their judgment become clouded with feelings of nostalgia.

@udUbdaWgz1

System Wars here on gamespot was never about systems. Its always been the center of whiners, Trolls and Fanboys.

Gaming is more affordable than it's ever been given the pricing strategies. There already was a time when games cost over $200 each thanks to the Neo Geo. But even the affordable consoles like SNES and Genesis hit us with $90+ games in the states, games like Phantasy Star IV and Lufia 2. N64 games were routinely priced at $80. Thing about these games is that they also rarely went on sale unless you bought used.

Nowadays, you can walk away from a Steam Summer Sale with 20 games for under $100...and they don't have to be shitty games, either. You could get Witcher 1 and 2 for about 6 bucks total this year. Even console games routinely drop to to $30 or less within the first couple years. If you're paying $60 for a game and think that's too much, then just wait.

Right its time for people to lose jobs and homes and join the unemployment line and families to hurt, Why stop there Hail, why not wish for a global crises? like back in the 30´s i'm sure that would also help and screw that there are people hurting , as long as you can feel better about games.

Which btw leads to the most crazy part about your post its insane to think that a industry crash suddenly would make developers revert away from things that makes them a shitton of cash, which is the reason they keep making these kinds of games and keep making DLC. and Annual releases because people still buy them.

So no the industry doesn't need a crash or is even close to one infact gaming is more healthy than ever and there are tons of gems out there..

Also you should post this in system wars instead they are big on the whole Casual gaming is the devil and needs to die.

Indeed. I'd rather not have any crashes of any sort.

What needs to go is all this 'separation'. It just needs to be 'GAMING.' Gamers will pick their levels of intensity, as I'm sure a lot of us already are doing, and have been doing this whole time.

@hailtothequeen: Yeah I think instead of a crash, what we're going to see is just migration of games, styles and platforms. A shake up. With Capcom short on money, and Crytek......smh.

PC I think is where complete finished full campaign games of the future will largely go. Since the market and tools for releasing independent content is wider. The FPS was essentially an indie creation in the turn of the 90's. Gamestop will ruin what last shred AAA had to offer, but I think the 'auteur' designers of the industry are going to do like Carmack and Cliffy B and look for their own platforms.
and look for smaller dedicated groups that have more control over what they make. Hell that's way DOOM 3 took so long to come out, because John Carmack was fighting to keep Id a small team initially, only with Bethesda did he give into publisher control for bigger staff.

My only hope is that Tekken 7 does not DLC off most of the characters like Revolution. Else I might consider throwing my TV out the window, and then go over to a neighbor's house, and tossing theirs out too. LOL.

Agreed. I remember paying $100 for Street Fighter II and $115 for Chrono Trigger on the SNES back in the day. All things considered I think prices these days are pretty fair even moreso when you take into account how quickly and often there's game sales along with how low some of these sales get.

Or you can just go to many of the key-sites out there, steam might be the platform where games are, but they are no longer the place where people buy their games.

GMG, GOG, G2A, Fanshop, Gamefly, and other sites have taken over and are undercutting Steam on every corner, i bought watchdogs for under 20£ even before it was released while it was stil over 40£ on steam and other sites.

So gaming are more accessible today than ever before.

oh, and GMG is having a sale huge discount on a game like Sleeping dogs that blow Watch dogs out of the water and other square gems.

@Lulu_Lulu: lol, well, since, i don't whine and aintz a fanboy, i guess, i'll hit it when i'm trollin. from reading your posts i guess you spend a lot of time there.

@udUbdaWgz1

In the Viper's Nest, one you must be a Viper too. Lest you get eaten alive.

This subforum is actually worse. It's a constant cry of people coming in here creating threads about the terrible state of the industry. A place for a nostalgia trip that's so stuck in the past.

@illmatic87: nostalgia, lol. whenever i read someone using that word i find that 95% of the time it's used inappropriately.

care to give some examples?

@illmatic87

Really ? I think its worse because its usually filled with list threads. As for the nostalgia stuff and the complaining, thats true too.

@udUbdaWgz1

People who always ask for proof are usually just too lazy to checkout the front page:

"The Gaming Industry and why it needs another crash."

"The New Generation of Gamer is Overly- Sensitive"

OK, well answer me this:

What would you consider more casual: a person with a Bachelor's degree in a particular field, or one with a Ph.D? Are you really going to try to argue that someone who holds a Bachelor's has a better grasp than a PhD? I know contrasting such strict formality isn't quite comparable as gaming is a hobby that resides inside a lot of subjectivity, but the fact remains: core gamers are much more aware of what's going on and what this industry's about than casuals are or ever could be.

Don't make the mistake of believing you know what demographic understands something better just because of your own personal preference of what you think it should be like. That preference holds no bearing on the educated and passionate as opposed to the casual passerby who's looking for quick, throw away fun to only then move on to something else.

@MirkoS77

I meet Extremism with Extremism, it restores the balance ! :) now go get me my sandwich !

@Lulu_Lulu: what kind?

@MirkoS77

Surprize Me :D !

@Lulu_Lulu: lol, proof? he brought up the term nostalgia in his comment and i simply asked for some examples of his assertion. simple comprehension lulu.

here, i'll start: people always bring up "nostalgia" when talking about morrowind and those who find it to be a superior game. yet, those people fail to comprehend one simple fact: those of us making superior game assertions are CURRENTLY or have RECENTLY played the game and are comparing it to modern games. "nostalgia" has nothing to do with it.

better? now, go make me a chicken pot pie.

@udUbdaWgz1

I played Morrowind in its hey day and it was an absolutely terrible game.

@Lulu_Lulu: when somebody makes such a comment i know to instantly go to the "combat sucks" vault of rationales.

you see, lu lu, character development and the die saying "miss" is a superb gaming attribute. the only thing morrowind lacked was technology.

@udUbdaWgz1

Don't get me wrong it was a fantastic RPG, it all the right ideas and stats and lore and everything but I don't care about good intentions. The gameplay, everything from combat to basic movement was below average. It literally sucked donkey balls. :p

@Lulu_Lulu: so, you feel that a level 1 character should be able to run and have the endurance of a 20 level character. you feel that a level 1 character should "hit" every time, lol. the combat and movement are REPRESENTATIVE of a game based on CHARACTER MECHANICS.

i hope the witcher3 brings back such basic and realistic and fun game mechanics with modern technology.

you see, some of us, CRAVE hardcore immersive rpg experiences.

it's why mods rule.

@udUbdaWgz1

I didn't say anything about levels, I said the gameplay sucks.

You see, everbody else, CRAVES decent gameplay... :p

@udUbdaWgz1

I didn't say anything about levels, I said the gameplay sucks.

You see, everbody else, CRAVES decent gameplay... :p

ya, i hate living in a free fantasy world where i level up and kill monsters with my swords and bows and magic.

a game where i actually get to DICTATE the rules for every DIFFERENT character i IMAGINE with my brain.

would you like to talk specifics? lol...

Who is casual gamer is subjective.

As for the bug, you must never have working as a computer programmer. There are a number of program testing and even then there is no way to find all bugs in the game. What is amazing is that ratio of bus has gone down.

The price of making games has gone up as the gamer expectation has gone up. Gamers also refuse to pay more and the number of games being sold has not increase. So they make extra to sell on the side. You get the finished and completed game and then you can choose to spend more instead of getting all the extra you may not want for a increase of $20 or more to the game. DLC are the best compromised that game makers can do. Even then they are screwed if they do and screwed if they don't.

A crash is not a magic reset buttons. Indie games are not the sole source of innovation. AAA are not just releasing the same thing again and again. There is no proof that the content in DLC would have been in the game if there were no DLC. The games are complete and finished even if it has DLC.

@udUbdaWgz1

Freedom is overated. I also use to chase the ultimate open world game that allows freedom to do whatever you want how ever you want it and even even though it makes for a great simulator, it still not particularly good game design. Games thrive on rules and borders and things that you can and can not do.

@wiouds: make better games, lol. why would i pay 60 bucks for a subpar game when i can pick it up for a couple bucks a few years down the road?

and, don't discard that fact.

i paid top money for skyrim. i paid top money, foolishly, for gta4. i paid for oblivion. do you expect us gamers to pay for all the shiite? for the occasional good game we don't know about?

nice try, but, pluck u.

@Lulu_Lulu: it makes for a different kind of design. Not necessarily a "good/bad" factor. You just need different expectations for each genre of gaming out there.

@udUbdaWgz1

That wasn't very nice. Please don't be that guy.

@udubdawgz1: Can you please stop saying lol in everyone of your posts? You could at least try to make it seem like you're not a troll.

Also, top money? It's funny that people spend a significant amount of money on cars, that took years to make, and then complain about a $60 game, that also took years to make. You make it sound like you need a freaking loan to buy a damn video game. It's not that much money bro. Get over yourself.

@EPICCOMMANDER: I guess It is good someone can understand him since I could not. I reread my post and I got even more confused.

@mastermetal777

Every "genre" has its own unique, specific criteria that can be used to judge its quality of gameplay, RPGs don't have a gameplay criteria.

If you look back to the days when home gaming was in its infancy you'd see that gaming has not risen to an "insane" level. Games themselves are quite comparable to yesteryear and if anything, I'd say they are a bit cheaper and you are getting much more for your money. The big name titles from the NES, SNES, Genesis, PS, etc.., were quite expensive. I'll venture to say the same thing for consoles. Brand new I paid the same price for my Wii (during launch window) as I did some twenty years prior for my NES (deluxe set). Even some of the more expensive consoles are comparable (in current dollars) to older classics.

You can't reinvent the wheel.

I believe this the perfect time for:

@Lulu_Lulu: Yeah, many RPGs have great gameplay. You're likely just too sour over your hatred of leveling to actually focus on any of the gameplay.