ELEX ELEX II - Jax is back

[Hobo Elf]

I've searched meticulously the whole installation. Found two drugs in the safe, 70 or so Elexit, one message, one scrap, one potion. That's it.

such discoveries! such exploration!

First time playing a PB game, I see.

 

[Nikanuur]

I've searched meticulously the whole installation. Found two drugs in the safe, 70 or so Elexit, one message, one scrap, one potion. That's it.

such discoveries! such exploration!

such advenchur

But anyway, the meaning was it is a location, you'd want to search, yet there is hardly any loot. Contrary to the overburdened beginning.

 

[Grunker]

I've searched meticulously the whole installation. Found two drugs in the safe, 70 or so Elexit, one message, one scrap, one potion. That's it.

such discoveries! such exploration!

First time playing a PB game, I see.

I played Risen and thought it was hopelessly mediocre. Then got baited by people touting Elex. Never again

 

[Israfael]

Installed Elex 2 in case Gabe steals all our accounts here. Can't say I'm surprised, Elex 1 simply crashed on launch for me for a year or so Ah, back to the Elden Ring, I guess, will check E2 in a year.

 

[Israfael]

Do you happen to play with an AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 GPU? Because this sky bug is a known issue even with the day 1 patch:

Yes, I have Vega 56.

 

[harhar!]

The game is becoming a meme.

Dex reminds me of the kids from the Guild 1 intro:

 

[Tweed]

I'm waiting on some patches so I only got as far as talking to Dex while murdering critters. That am I'm really hoping someone goes ahead and fixes SoyJax.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Well bummer. I was cautiously looking forward to this, but was already turned off by the price point, and based on the impressions I'm seeing here it sounds like waiting for an 80-90% off sale is the way to go.

And I don't really have a horse in this race, but fucking lol at the people who are saying it might be doing totally fine financially due to pre-orders; it's currently 79th in US top sellers (not too surprising considering the Eurojank), but much more damningly it's sitting at 36th on the global top sellers. The game is a flop. Definitely not expecting an ELEX3 after this launch.

And while no one knew that Elden Ring was going to be quite as big of a deal as it turned out to be, everyone knew it was going to be a pretty big fucking deal. THQ Nordic are either complete morons for releasing it here or they were just trying to quietly put it out to die.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"bows, crossbows, and harpoons"
uses bullets as an icon
quality!

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

You have to be pretty autistic to nitpick about a single icon.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Or just, you know, arguing in bad faith.

Not that Rusty would ever do that of course.

 

[Bah]

Well bummer. I was cautiously looking forward to this, but was already turned off by the price point, and based on the impressions I'm seeing here it sounds like waiting for an 80-90% off sale is the way to go.

In the early to mid 90s, most brand new games were $50. I very much remember having to save up my odd job money to afford Quest For Glory games as a kid. Per an inflation calculator, $50 in 1993 is the same as $97 today, yet the game is only $45. It's more than half the price of new games in the 90s. It's really not expensive at all.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the extreme leniency given to some developers on this forum never stops being funny

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Well bummer. I was cautiously looking forward to this, but was already turned off by the price point, and based on the impressions I'm seeing here it sounds like waiting for an 80-90% off sale is the way to go.

And I don't really have a horse in this race, but fucking lol at the people who are saying it might be doing totally fine financially due to pre-orders; it's currently 79th in US top sellers (not too surprising considering the Eurojank), but much more damningly it's sitting at 36th on the global top sellers. The game is a flop. Definitely not expecting an ELEX3 after this launch.

And while no one knew that Elden Ring was going to be quite as big of a deal as it turned out to be, everyone knew it was going to be a pretty big fucking deal. THQ Nordic are either complete morons for releasing it here or they were just trying to quietly put it out to die.

In the early to mid 90s, most brand new games were $50. I very much remember having to save up my odd job money to afford Quest For Glory games as a kid. Per an inflation calculator, $50 in 1993 is the same as $97 today, yet the game is only $45. It's more than half the price of new games in the 90s. It's really not expensive at all.

I’ve talked about this ad nauseam in the adventure sub-forum, but this is a false equivalency. In the 90s p ublishers had to pay for packaging/printing costs, they had to give a higher cut to sales outlets than what Steam takes, and in the most extreme examples they had to actually guarantee the brick and mortars a minimum number of sales or make up the difference if they wanted shelf space.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

it's a false equivalency because the market size for video games has grown exponentially for years
video games inherently have infinite(inelastic) supply therefore the optimal price is one that ensures the most copies are sold while creating the most profit. People who say "games aren't expensive" are completely misunderstanding that digital goods cannot be valued like physical goods.

 

[curry]

Disappointed so far. The game doesn't feel like a Piranha Bytes game and I don't like the graphics either.

 

[Bah]

I’ve talked about this ad nauseam in the adventure sub-forum, but this is a false equivalency. In the 90s p ublishers had to pay for packaging/printing costs, they had to give a higher cut to sales outlets than what Steam takes, and in the most extreme examples they had to actually guarantee the brick and mortars a minimum number of sales or make up the difference if they wanted shelf space.

You're looking at just one factor and convienently ignoring many others. According to Corey Cole, Quest for Glory II cost $450,000 to produce. In today's dollars, that is $875,547.

I don't have a good source, but some unreliable ones are claiming that the Elex 2 budget was 1.8 million euros, or 2 million USD. So that's 2.2 times the budget of Quest for Glory 2, yet accounting for inflation it's still half the price.

Sometimes I forget just how poor the average codexer is.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I’ve talked about this ad nauseam in the adventure sub-forum, but this is a false equivalency. In the 90s p ublishers had to pay for packaging/printing costs, they had to give a higher cut to sales outlets than what Steam takes, and in the most extreme examples they had to actually guarantee the brick and mortars a minimum number of sales or make up the difference if they wanted shelf space.

You're looking at just one factor and convienently ignoring many others. According to Corey Cole, Quest for Glory II cost $450,000 to produce. In today's dollars, that is $875,547.

I don't have a good source, but some unreliable ones are claiming that the Elex 2 budget was 1.8 million euros, or 2 million USD. So that's 2.2 times the budget of Quest for Glory 2, yet accounting for inflation it's still half the price.

Sometimes I forget just how poor the average codexer is.

I literally don’t know how that does anything other than what I said; “budgets were smaller because markets were smaller and the publishers therefore were okay with a smaller ROI”.

Er… yes?

and I have no idea what ELEX2’s budget was, but 1.8 million Euro seems low. Game took five years to come out and the studio is located in Germany. Don’t know the size of PB’s team these days, but unless it’s under 8 members members 1.8 seems unlikely.

 

[Bah]

I literally don’t know how that does anything other than what I said; “budgets were smaller because markets were smaller and the publishers therefore were okay with a smaller ROI”.

Er… yes?

and I have no idea what ELEX2’s budget was, but 1.8 million Euro seems low. Game took five years to come out and the studio is located in Germany. Don’t know the size of PB’s team these days, but unless it’s under 8 members members 1.8 seems unlikely.

The point is that you're not actually upset that the game is priced too expensively on an economic-theory elasticity curve. I suspect the business majors at Piranah Bytes have a pretty decent grasp on their expenses, and the expected market-base, and their desired profit margins to price it decently. They have significantly more data to do so than an arm-chair codexer like you or me.

I suspect you're just upset about the pricing, because $45 is a lot of money for you.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

no point in arguing with cult members, not like they'll have another PB game to defend after this faceplant

 

[U-8D8]

Not that Rusty would ever do that of course.

At the very least, some of Rusty's posts are giving people like me something of a glimpse of the game's quality. The shitflinging between people whose sole purpose in the thread is to gloat about the poor reception and those on the other side defending it with such brilliant opening statements as "I haven't played Elex 2, BUT," are fucking useless when I'm trying to tell if I should get it or not.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I literally don’t know how that does anything other than what I said; “budgets were smaller because markets were smaller and the publishers therefore were okay with a smaller ROI”.

Er… yes?

and I have no idea what ELEX2’s budget was, but 1.8 million Euro seems low. Game took five years to come out and the studio is located in Germany. Don’t know the size of PB’s team these days, but unless it’s under 8 members members 1.8 seems unlikely.

The point is that you're not actually upset that the game is priced too expensively on an economic-theory elasticity curve. I suspect the business majors at Piranah Bytes have a pretty decent grasp on their expenses, and the expected market-base, and their desired profit margins to price it decently. They have significantly more data to do so than an arm-chair codexer like you or me.

I suspect you're just upset about the pricing, because $45 is a lot of money for you.

I'm not upset about anything, I'm mildly disappointed that a game that I probably would have never had the time to finish is apparently a significant step down from its predecessor.

I'm also immensely skeptical that there are any business majors at PB. THQ Nordic? Sure, probably, but they're then the same geniuses who decided to put the game out 3 days after the biggest release of the past 18 months.

As to pricing, $45 is a little less than an hour or of work for me, but that's not really the point, is it? The point is that I could spend that same amount of money on multiple games that I would likely enjoy more. Honestly the point is sort of moot though because the reality is that I'm rarely going to have time to finish games that I buy.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Not that Rusty would ever do that of course.

At the very least, some of Rusty's posts are giving people like me something of a glimpse of the game's quality. The shitflinging between people whose sole purpose in the thread is to gloat about the poor reception and those on the other side defending it with such brilliant opening statements as "I haven't played Elex 2, BUT," are fucking useless when I'm trying to tell if I should get it or not.

Don't get me wrong, I like Rusty, but it's often against my better judgment. He's generally a smart and funny dude (albeit one with a fundamentally opposed worldview to that of my own), but he cherry-picks his arguments to such a degree that I view pretty much everything he says with a healthy degree of skepticism.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

rusty_shackleford loves Fallout 76 and Assassin's Creed I think, so his game-related opinions should be laughed at by default. And he always hated Piranha Bytes games, so....

Wait until some normal gamers play it for a while for an actual opinion.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

rusty_shackleford loves Fallout 76 and Assassin's Creed I think, so his game-related opinions should be laughed at by default. And he always hated Piranha Bytes games, so....

Wait until some normal gamers play it for a while for an actual opinion.

exactly the kind of stuffr they always give Bethesda games a pass on (e.g. bugs, rough around the edges before mods).

at least ELEX had an interesting world that felt alive
I've never been able to finish a bethesda game, always get bored a few dozen hours in and quit. I managed to finish ELEX without a problem.