Lego Dimensions Cancellation - Eurogamer report

juno_2023

For anyone here who follows Lego video games, this is likely old news anyway, but Eurogamer has a pretty solid article on the quiet cancellation of Lego Dimensions: 

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-10-18-the-sad-slow-death-of-lego-dimensions

Ayliffe

There are no plans I have heard of to formally announce the end of Dimensions

"Please let me go home now, I haven't seen sunlight in months" the Dimensions twitter intern screams as WB Games tightens his chains and double-locks the dungeon doors

sid3windr

I just jumped in a few months ago, when this already was foretold. It's a bit sad, yeah - but on the upside I still have LOTS of content to explore... (and packs to buy at reduced pricing). The mashup stuff is great in my opinion :)

The fact that TLNM video game is not "in Dimensions" (and that they didn't have a Switch version) pretty much already confirmed this...

graphite

I'm just hoping TRU has a buy 1 get 4 free type of sale on the packs eventually like I saw they had on the Disney Infinity I think it was.

Charmiefcb

Dimensions was a good idea at the wrong time.
I have played it and most of the level add on packs that interested me.
It came at a time when interactive video games were coming to an end. See Infinity and the amiibo fad.
If it came in maybe 2010-2012 or so it could have been able to last alot longer.

juno_2023

The idea they had about involving a digital camera to "scan" built sets intrigues me. And as a fan of Lego video games in general, I liked the idea of more obscure themes getting a chance at a Lego-ized game (the minifigs and sets were icing on the cake).

I hope they keep some of these ideas in mind for the future. I love the idea of a platform for games that may not work as a full-size game (like the level packs) but could be introduced in a similar manner.

Overall, it sounds like they bit off more than they could chew, and I'm at least happy with the effort.

Legoboy

Dimensions lost its support in my household from a game perspective when the massive online downloads became a requirement.  Sam was so excited to buy the Ghostbusters story pack with his own money and almost died of boredom when he found he wasn't able to play until 1am on a school night.  Ridiculous.

VictorLovesToys

The updates are ridiculous but worse is the amount of bugs. It's very sad because I enjoy the game very much.

Shib

Charmiefcb said:

 See Infinity and the amiibo fad.

Amiibo still seem to be going strong. Look at aftermarket prices for some of the Zelda series amiibo and how quickly they sell out on pre order.
I think this is because amiibo are not typical TTL figures, but instead unlock extra content across a range of games rather than being absolutely required to play the game.

I still think I’d have preferred Dimensions without the TTL element - the mash up story line is a lot of fun. I do however appreciate that it got us some minifigures we were unlikely to see otherwise, just could have done with a CMF series to give fans the chance to get other characters from those franchises.

sid3windr

Legoboy said:

Dimensions lost its support in my household from a game perspective when the massive online downloads became a requirement.  Sam was so excited to buy the Ghostbusters story pack with his own money and almost died of boredom when he found he wasn't able to play until 1am on a school night.  Ridiculous.

I'm a bit confused there, how would you release a game initially containing all the data for packs released 3 years down the line? Yes, the updates may be massive but there's a lot of extra content there (and likely plenty bugfixes).

Also, you could have downloaded that DLC at any point in time before you actually got the box o' bricks. I'm likely spoiled with my internet connection but I pretty much clicked the 'yes please give me ALL THE THINGS' button and I didn't have to wait until 1am... :)

obi_g

sid3windr said:

Legoboy said:

Dimensions lost its support in my household from a game perspective when the massive online downloads became a requirement.  Sam was so excited to buy the Ghostbusters story pack with his own money and almost died of boredom when he found he wasn't able to play until 1am on a school night.  Ridiculous.

I'm a bit confused there, how would you release a game initially containing all the data for packs released 3 years down the line? Yes, the updates may be massive but there's a lot of extra content there (and likely plenty bugfixes).

Also, you could have downloaded that DLC at any point in time before you actually got the box o' bricks. I'm likely spoiled with my internet connection but I pretty much clicked the 'yes please give me ALL THE THINGS' button and I didn't have to wait until 1am... :)

i think part of the problem is that every time there was a patch or update for dimensions you had to download the entire game again. other games just download that patch or update.

CaptainPirateMan

The game crashes a lot, which is really frustrating. Having said that, the Ghostbusters 84 and Back to the future content made it a must have for me. Honestly, it's the the best game ever made for a fan of the original Ghostbusters film. Recreating that film to such detail has been a personal dream of mine ever since video games really started to "improve". I played the original Ghostbusters game on Atari and NES as a boy, and while I still find enjoyment in them, they are not in the same league as the Dimensions game. 

The Ghostbusters game that was released back in 2009 or so, is the best Ghostbusters game overall, but it's REALLY Ghostbusters 3. The dimensions game allows you to play the first (and best) movie. As a Ghostbusters fan, that's pretty special imo.

Mr_Hobbles

Although the writing has been on the wall for a while (Even before the reports I was convinced of this once WB started spacing out the last few waves), it's quite disappointing for me.

I really enjoyed the game even with all of its bugs, and I feel the game allowed us to get many sets and minifigs for themes that otherwise would never have seen the light of day in Lego. Themes like the A-Team, Sonic, Gremlins, Portal, etc.

I was still holding out for a swan song - that last rumoured Lord Vortech pack, as a farewell to the game, but it seems like we won't get that. I suppose releasing this pack would signal an end to the game, something they don't seem to want to do with the Christmas period approaching (The perfect opportunity to get rid of old stock).

Prepare for incoming stock clearance/Christmas sales! I'm still missing this last wave to complete my Dimensions collection, and I'm waiting until the sales.

sid3windr

obi_g said:

i think part of the problem is that every time there was a patch or update for dimensions you had to download the entire game again. other games just download that patch or update.

Ah, I can't speak of that, as I only downloaded it in July 2017 and there likely haven't been too many patches since. It did download all the extra packs I selected separately through the Wii U E-shop though.

I've only had one crash so far, when I switched to a new character where a build instruction should pop up for the accompanying build, while in the middle of some boss fight or so. It didn't seem to like that so it just hung there.

Funnily enough my daughter had lots of fun last weekend playing the Midway arcade oldies from that level pack.... Paperboy, Gauntlet ...

Would be a shame to not have a Lord Vortech pack indeed. Meanwhile I keep ordering discounted packs left and right to complete the collection.. :D

leetshoe

As an avid gamer l hated the game. Not surprised it's ending.

MattDawson

My local supermarket has stopped selling them (replaced by Nintendo Switch) and TRU seems worse for wear...

Lego_Star

Which supermarket @MattDawson? 

MattDawson

Sainsburys - it had one unit for XB1, a second for PS4 and another for Dimensions, but today that 3rd was the Switch and accessories for the other two.

Legoboy

sid3windr said:

Legoboy said:

Dimensions lost its support in my household from a game perspective when the massive online downloads became a requirement.  Sam was so excited to buy the Ghostbusters story pack with his own money and almost died of boredom when he found he wasn't able to play until 1am on a school night.  Ridiculous.

I'm a bit confused there, how would you release a game initially containing all the data for packs released 3 years down the line? Yes, the updates may be massive but there's a lot of extra content there (and likely plenty bugfixes).

Also, you could have downloaded that DLC at any point in time before you actually got the box o' bricks. I'm likely spoiled with my internet connection but I pretty much clicked the 'yes please give me ALL THE THINGS' button and I didn't have to wait until 1am... :)

I would have hoped that perhaps the story packs might have come complete with a CD to provide the relevant updates for the next wave and if an online download was required on occasion, let it do so quickly.  It was clear the download speed was being throttled.  Incredibly slow.  Toturous.  They were huge files, but not so huge it should have taken as long as it did.  We download HD films in minutes.  Dimensions downloads in hours.

But yes, we could have downloaded at any time, but not until my son had decided to buy did we know we needed to.  His first phase games didnt require it, why would he think he needed to download something when he's buying what he thought was complete?  I just don't think it had been well thought through.  

sid3windr

I'm not sure which console you're on, but at least on Wii U the updates come from Nintendo's servers, and I didn't see any throttling... But yes, fair deal. Especially the update on disc could have helped!

drdavewatford

Up until now I've bought various Dimensions expansion packs purely because I liked the minifigs and/or builds, but I've now decided that I'd like to actually play with some of these packs in-game (shock horror!).

So how exactly does it work? I have the starter pack on XBOX ONE and played it for a while around launch but that's it. Can I just boot up the game and slap a random character or vehicle onto the toy pad, as the instruction leaflet suggests, or do I need to get to a certain point in the basic game to use them? I did a quick Google search and found it surprisingly hard to locate info online which discusses the actual mechanics of playing specific characters or themed levels. Can anyone shed light on this?

Shib

@drdavewatford - once you update the game with all the relevant content you can call in any character and vehicle at any time.

one of the biggest criticisms of Disney Infinity was the inability to play as any character in any level so LEGO Dimensions used any character and any vehicle in any world as their USP.

Kerre

^Exactly the same experience as @Legoboy here. Updates on PlayStation Network can be slow and downloading patches off PSN is never fun but Dimensions' big slabs of downloads  - 10 GB patches are common - take many hours to complete (download and install). It's so bad I have check the night before me & the boys plan to play in order to update if necessary. 

For the record: it's definitely not the internet connection. Other downloads easily saturate the 200Mbps DL cable connection. No issue at all with my quite sizeable Steam library for instance.  

drdavewatford

Shib said:

@drdavewatford - once you update the game with all the relevant content you can call in any character and vehicle at any time.

I assumed from reading this thread, e.g. @Legoboy's posts, that when you place a new character or vehicle on to the pad it triggers the relevant download - is that not the case? Also, how do you access the additional levels from the packs? 

Shib

No, if you haven’t updated it then putting later figures on does nothing, it just doesn’t read them.

Once you’ve updated the game to the most recent version and downloaded the character tag packages from the later added download manager then placing a minifigure from a world you’ve not downloaded will ask if you want to download that world.

Shib

Also all the vehicle tags are blank, you write the vehicle data onto it after putting the character on the pad and going through the building instructions - if it’s a level pack then you need to reach a point in that level to unlock the building instructions but fun pack ones will trigger when you put the character on the pad.

Shib

@drdavewatford
 my advice is launch the game and run the update, then look for the download manager in the game menu and download whatever packs you own and any that are called something like Character data. Then start playing and it should become fairly obvious.

drdavewatford

Great - thanks for the info, @Shib - I'll give it a go.

Legoboy

Kerre said:

^Exactly the same experience as @Legoboy here. Updates on PlayStation Network can be slow and downloading patches off PSN is never fun but Dimensions' big slabs of downloads  - 10 GB patches are common - take many hours to complete (download and install). It's so bad I have check the night before me & the boys plan to play in order to update if necessary. 

For the record: it's definitely not the internet connection. Other downloads easily saturate the 200Mbps DL cable connection. No issue at all with my quite sizeable Steam library for instance.  

Exactly the same other than with Microsoft.  Extremely fast connection with lightning fast downloads any other than time, but not for updates or installs.  And yes, schedule in when it will next get played to avoid hours of watching and waiting.

Exactly the same.

paul_merton

I picked up the PS4 starter pack when it was just under £20 in Argos last year, mainly for the exclusive polybag in it!

I ended up getting a PS4 earlier this year, but never felt compelled to even start playing the Dimensions game. Partly because I'd already bought other games that I haven't even got round to playing yet, but also because the beauty of the PS4 - to me - is that you can just pick up the wireless controller and start playing from across the lounge, without having to sit on the floor or have a table in front of you. It's so casual. In contrast, faffing about with the RFID reader base and all the different sets didn't appeal to me.

That said, I'll definitely be up for some of the expansion sets when they are 75% off :)

sid3windr

Sounds like Nintendo is the only one not throttling downloads - and/or maybe the updates for the Wii U were smaller than the XBox/PS ones.

It's weird that the updates are 10GB though, that sounds like TT was doing something odd :-)

For me it also wasn't clear how things worked, just like DrDave. So I just slapped a minifig on the pad, and it did nothing. That was quite confusing. Turns out the tag was busted, once I built another fun pack things did work as they were supposed to. I only built the accompanying build once in front of the TV though, those tiny pieces always run away so I just built them using the lego.com PDFs in advance and skip through the in-game build instructions.

MugenPower

Just wondering if the difference in download speeds has to do with Sony and MS servers probably getting much higher action than Nintendo's...  Just a thought.

drdavewatford

Have to say I didn't have an issue with slow downloads while updating XBOX ONE with expansion pack data yesterday - I downloaded everything available and it was fairly fast. 

Legoboy

drdavewatford said:

Have to say I didn't have an issue with slow downloads while updating XBOX ONE with expansion pack data yesterday - I downloaded everything available and it was fairly fast. 

That's because everybody else has given up.  ;)

bandit778

Dumb question time.
Is there likely to be a time limit on how long the updates are available after Dimensions is officially gone or are they available for ages?
The reason I ask is I have all the bits to play the game but haven't gotten round to it yet as my game playing is slower than my set building and the last thing I want is to finally get round to it and find out they are no longer available.
 I'm not really up to date with games consoles so not sure whether to break it out and download everything or just wait till I get time.

sid3windr

While saying I only experienced one game crash, yesterday it crashed again when it was supposed to show me build instructions; luckily not too far from a checkpoint. I shouldn't jinx things like that :D

^ I'm not sure how these things work - the updates are coming from the MS/Sony/Nintendo update servers, I don't know if Lego has to keep paying to keep the updates on there. I'd say it's at least a year out if it ever actually disappears - they would have completely dead stock otherwise.

But once you're on the console, just tell it to download all the packs, I'd say.

In any case with a Wii U I can download them all to my PC as well using the right tools, for safekeeping ;)

drdavewatford

sid3windr said:

But once you're on the console, just tell it to download all the packs, I'd say.

That's exactly what I did, just in case.

JooTog

I bought the game back in 2015 and never really played it. I do have all the packs except the recently released wave (will be getting those soon).

With that said, the cancellation rumors prompt me to go back to the game.

I have my Xbox One set to auto download game updates, so the 10GB updates were already taken care off. It seems that at some point they went with a Download Manager to get individual packs. Some packs show as "permanent" (included in the 10GB updates) and the rest can be downloaded individually. Friday night marked all for download through xbox.com and let the console download them overnight.

Yesterday I completed the Oz level of #71172 Starter Pack and #71228 Ghostbusters Level Pack.

Similar to @paul_merton, I always found it annoying having to be next to the base to swap tokens, and I feel that it is more often in Dimensions than Disney Infinity. Still, it has not stopped me from playing and enjoying the game.

What I need is a list of the minimum set of figures/gadgets needed across all packs and worlds... so I do not have to go back and forth grabbing tokens :-)

Thinking about creating/printing labels for 2x4 flat tiles to place on the toy tags; that way they take less space, easier to handle when playing, and all the figures/gadgets are easier to display.

Shib

^ I’ve never bothered with having the models on the discs - far too many to practically lay out in front of me when playing. I made some simple 2x2 tile stickers (I have access to a vinyl print and cutter) and it’s far easier.

juno_2023

sid3windr said:

While saying I only experienced one game crash, yesterday it crashed again when it was supposed to show me build instructions; luckily not too far from a checkpoint. I shouldn't jinx things like that :D

^ I'm not sure how these things work - the updates are coming from the MS/Sony/Nintendo update servers, I don't know if Lego has to keep paying to keep the updates on there. I'd say it's at least a year out if it ever actually disappears - they would have completely dead stock otherwise.

But once you're on the console, just tell it to download all the packs, I'd say.

In any case with a Wii U I can download them all to my PC as well using the right tools, for safekeeping ;)

I would be very interested in such tools. :)

mafon

I think it was a great idea and it made possible many interesting additions to LEGO "library" and, what is most unbelivable, – new official Portal game.

Sadly, it was too darn expensive and not that great of a game in itself.

There's a future in Lego-to-life entertainment and I imagine it's not in TT-style game, but in something, either more open ended or puzzle-based.

dannyrww

JooTog said:

What I need is a list of the minimum set of figures/gadgets needed across all packs and worlds... so I do not have to go back and forth grabbing tokens :-)

try this
 http://dimensions-builder.com/team-builder

JooTog

@dannyrww Thanks!

fourstud

https://twitter.com/legodimensions/status/922504239368114176

Shib

Glad it’s finally official.

MattPetersen

Shib said:

^ I’ve never bothered with having the models on the discs - far too many to practically lay out in front of me when playing. I made some simple 2x2 tile stickers (I have access to a vinyl print and cutter) and it’s far easier.

For me that was part of the fun. It felt "real" like the characters were actually using the portal and jumping in and out when called upon for help. 

obi_g

I wonder if any of the people giving out grief and abuse on Reddit will now apologise for all the crap they gave out when this was first unofficially announced!

Shib

MattPetersen said:

Shib said:

^ I’ve never bothered with having the models on the discs - far too many to practically lay out in front of me when playing. I made some simple 2x2 tile stickers (I have access to a vinyl print and cutter) and it’s far easier.

For me that was part of the fun. It felt "real" like the characters were actually using the portal and jumping in and out when called upon for help. 

Apparently you have a better imagination than me. :-P

Seriously though I just counted out all the Dimensions stuff I own, if I laid everything out to play with I’d have 124 toy tags...i can even imagine storing them all in a way I could still easily play with them while the models/figs were attached without spending a stupid amount on boxes and trays. 

With just the labelled toy tags it’s easy, stored in a zip-lock bag.