I wager the vast majority of players do not buy a game on release day and beat in like a week. And it is just standard practice now to release a game then release patches and updates and, yes, new features. I see no reason why NG+ can't be one of those features. By the time it comes out, day 1 players are ready for more if they want it, and the vast majority of players buying the game- i.e., not on release- will get NG+.
That's where you're wrong. It doesn't matter if a player does new game plus or not. I am not expecting everyone to beat a game within a week or two, but the option should be there regardless. We're in the 2020s, there is no excuse not to have a NG+ at launch or as soon the game is beaten. If all these old games from generations 5-7 can do NG+, then it shouldn't be a problem with modern games. It's especially crazy when indie games and plenty of AA games get it right.
Evil West got NG+ at the start
. Resident Evil VII, VIII, and
RER2-4 got NG+ at the start.
DMC5 and
Bayonetta 3 got NG+ without any patch updates. Nearly every
Dark Souls games and clones have NG+ when beating the game.
Armored Core 6 has plenty of NG+'s. Even
Oneechanbara Z2 & Origin has NG+ unlock as soon as the game is beaten. It's a standard practice where developers gotten lazy by putting in a fix it later mentality.
Granted my bias is that I almost never care about or play NG+.
Congratulations, but it doesn't apply to everyone else. I know you're no implying that.
So I understand someone more into this sort of thing disagreeing with me.
But I still don't think NG+ is some super important feature or anything wrong with it being one of many updates to a game post-release.
Like I said before, if all these other (Japanese) AAA games, AA games, and Indie games get it right, then it's no excuse for most of these Wester AAA games to do the same and have NG+ at the start. Especially when their previous title had it at the start. Not budging from this, and most people would see the problem with this.
Example Polygon or one of those sites complained that the MJ stealth/kill section in Spidey 2 is bad because journalists don't sneak around tazering people. And of course the answer is "well, you know... video game!" And increasingly it seems like this is not good enough for people.
Ultimately criticism of this end is that a video game mechanics "feels video-game-y." lol.. wut is happening even..
While better than the first game, I still don't care for these sections. Though not for the same silly reasons Polygon hates them. They always have garbage click-baiting takes. Ignore their usual dumb ass selves.
Yes there was a time in my life where I wanted video games to exclusively prioritize narrative and then I tried to play Heavy Rain and Detroit Become Human and Quantum Break and you know what?
And those are all shit, or don't have much gameplay going for them, because they're held back in scope by being more like TV and movies!
