New Crazy Taxi title will be an open-world, massively multiplayer AAA game, according to Sega

simple@lemm.ee to Games@lemmy.world – 282 points –
New Crazy Taxi title will be an open-world, massively multiplayer AAA game, according to Sega
automaton-media.com
73

Aaaannnnddd its dead. Zero interest. Congratulations SEGA. I was a little bit exctied, and now I am not.

It's a live service AAAA Open World Taxi Royale Roguelite with crafting, survival and deck building, first season pass: Seaman skins.

“Crazy Taxi now leverages the power of AI. This transformative machine learning will transform the way gamers interact in our game, as our AI powered engine will robustly streamline the way gamers connect and socialize. Embark on a new journey, where AI will AI. Now, take the next AI step with AI!”

what is even the point of making a taxi game MMO? just so you can see other players driving fares around you and potentially fucking your shit up?

Exactly, like gta online probably

but at least inGTA you can have PvP and Co-op… what is the PvP or co-op play in driving taxi fares?

You can be an obnoxious passenger threatening 1 star reviews, the driver has an ult calling a wellness check on you

You can now get the experience of being aggresively tailed in a game too!

I mean, both forza horizon and the crew exists and are successful, so multiplayer open world driving is a thing people like, I just don't think how they can put Crazy Taxi on it without diluting the gameplay.

Those are racing games, not Taxi games. Of course racing games are a perfect fit for online PvP. But you're not racing against other players while driving a taxi fare.

Some fuckwit VP needs fired over this decision. It was a simple game: pickup fairs, earn extra time, unlock stuff as you progress. If a publisher want extra cash, do more levels, or different jobs (delivery driver addon anyone?). And a fun soundtrack

Should have been able to bang it out for a million quid, and then reap the rewards. But nooo, now we have a game nobody wants to play, costing 20mil and will have servers shut down 2 years after launch

Everything that is wrong with gaming in 2024

Surely this AAA-budget live service game with a terrible premise won't faceplant immediately and force us to close the studio...but let's make it an MMO, just to be safe.

So... Burnout Paradise, but with competition for fares?

I don't want to play Uber: the Game.

Open world AAA is fine. Praying they are just blowing smoke with their MMO ambitions.

That game needed splitscreen, all I ever want those games to do is be multiplayer locally.

If I had to guess why it didn't have split screen was the open world. My guess it streaming assets from two different places on a huge map was costly to do twice (memory wise). Atleast when it was designed/launched.

Open world, MMO and AAA are like red flags to me lol

Why AAA? Come on Sega, you can get it to AAAA, have people pay for time like back in the arcade days! Game starts, you get "Insert coin" and a microtransaction!

Dream big!

You can finish that buzzword bingo card by having players pay in crypto

I think the majority of developers have thrown in the towel on their crypto/NFT aspirations, thankfully.

AAA means bigger budget which means more money. Investors don’t want a $30 sleeper hit they want a $60 game of the year edition that adds fishing.

I'm willing to keep an open mind until it releases, but that tells me that the gameplay will be nothing like the original.

Idk about yall but as soon as a publisher classifies their game as triple A it’s definitely Walmart discount bin quality to me

Oddly enough, I saw the base Sims 4 and a couple expansions last time I was at Walmart. They were mixed in with the discount PC gambling, match 3, and other low quality games.

And of course it will be full of micro-transaction bs. No thank you, I will keep playing my indie games instead.

You know it. Think of all the skins, decals, tires, and practical effects for the car. Then there's going to be all the clothes for your character! Oh and spray paint for some reason, every game needs spray paints that everyone hates so it can fill up slots in the loot box!

Am I gonna be taxing around other players? Why would they do this to an arcade-style classic? Also clearly using "open world" as a buzzword since the original game was also an open world; you just had a time limit that prevented any real exploration.

Let's be honest here. The original series was on arcades and you had to get from point A to point B. For the current generation of gamers this is the equivalent of a mini-game you play on the loading screen of the main game. I'm not defending the GaaS shit, but what did you guys expect?

In terms of expectation, this is more in line with my fears than my hopes.

All the effort they're putting into slowing the pace of the game is just added cost for development and it's going to hurt them where it really matters, music licensing.

Half the appeal of the original was a soundtrack of popular music that fit the mood of the frenetic gameplay perfectly. Now they'll have to pick lower-energy tracks to suit a meandering "open world" game that might get interrupted by other players at any moment.

Your forgetting the sweet music! Something I'm fairly certain this version wi6ne have.

Well, who else is gonna wait for some passionate fan of the original to play 2 minutes of that game, get a refund, then work on an open source clone of the original that will absolutely be the unofficial official sequel literally all fans wanted?

dont quite think competitive taxi multiplayer online makes much of a great idea. maybe slap some AI on so all passengers tell you dreadfull long stories that make no sense....then I'm in

I wonder how many of the devs working on the title actually believe in this direction

Given that they're still recruiting what seems like the whole dev team, including lead designer, I'd guess none.

This project exists solely in the heads of marketing. Expect a disaster with a begging bowl.

The only way I can see this working is battle royale style, stick 100 taxies on a map and kill the lowest performer every 10 seconds. But also allow for some sort of stealing other people's pasangers and money to make it interactive. That has the potential to be fun if made correctly, which it won't be unfortunately.

haven't heard that name since I was 11 years old in the back of a Dave & Busters

Why?

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It'll be like GTA except you can't get out of the car ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That sounds like a big audience, most of the gamers I know always go for multi-player games so they can play together so I'd imagine it's a big market Sega wants to exploit

Can't blame em for trying i guess, I'm just salty cuz i loved that franchise back in the day. Might be fun though, if it's done right

I mean, that was Driver on psx, which was a good game. It's the MMO bit I can't imagine

As with most games I'll wait until about 3 months after it releases before I consider whether I'm going to buy it. It's not like it's going to run of copy's out is it?

I genuinely dont understand how SEGA are still in business, after decades of being completely detached from reality

So they're turning it into a Driver/GTA clone?

Forza horizon clone.

Yeah, Forza Horizon is literally all I can think of with this announcement. The thing is, Forza has far more mass appeal due to the breadth of options it has. I am struggling to see how the hell Crazy Taxi could even come close to Forza's variety.

The only thing I can think of, is they plan to make it like Twisted Metal meets Crazy Taxi, and by massively multiplayer they're referring to server instances of 100+ players in a city area. You'll have objectives to pick people up, but I would bet they'll end up making it so you can also pick up illicit deliveries or even being a driver for bank robbers or something, similar to GTA Online. Sort of a PvPvE type system as well. If they combine all of those elements, I could see it being maybe fun. But I doubt it will end up fun.

Anyway, agreed with others that they should've just stuck to a smaller scale arcade style game. The previous games were all that way and they were successful and fun. I have no idea why they'd think changing that basic formula is a great idea for a game like this.

I literally pulled the original game out of a cereal box in 2010 and proceeded to have hours upon hours of fun with it. It was on one of those funny small CD-ROMs. Good times.