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Blood and Wine was honestly amazing. I haven’t enjoyed a DLC or xpac that much since Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. I think maybe the Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind’s expansion Bloodmoon was a great contender as well, but Blood and Wine just took Witcher 3 to a new level. It truly deserved its spot at the top of the heap.

If Bethesda created a paid mod market where creators could charge for access and Bethesda only took a super nominal amount of those payments to cover transaction fees (say, 2-3%) I would so be in favour of that. I love the idea of passionate creators being rewarded for their work, and frankly it could (and should) create a new employee pipeline for them.

Sadly though, then Bethesda might make 0.01875% less profit this quarter than they did last quarter, which these days is the death knell of the capitalistic venture.

They definitely did learn. They learned that they could charge for mods and people, sadly, will pay. They’ve learned that they can make more money by paywalling what should be essential patches and bugfixes. They learned that the average gamer is willing to be fleeced. They learned that they can run an IP into the ground and still extract maximum cash from it.

They’ve learned. They just didn’t learn the lesson that we here on Lemmy wanted them to learn. That’s a sad fact of being part of a minority community.

I wouldn’t necessarily say never. Truthfully, I’ve pirated a few games and once I found out I loved them I’ve bought copies. I had the capacity to buy, but didn’t want to sink the money in for a potentially low return. I definitely would never have had the money to buy all of the games I pirated over the years though.

I also don’t consider sharing of ROMs of outdated games that are no longer available for sale in order to use in an emulator as piracy, and I’d say the vast majority of my fee-free game downloads were focussed there. How can I be depriving the creators of anything if I literally have no way to pay them to access the content?

Welp, looks like it’s gonna be yet another Ubisoft cash-grab. Yay.

Communities

Yeah, I’d almost say it’s an essential purchase. I buy a fair few online titles and I’ve found my 128Gb SD to be a bit lacking. I’m considering upgrading to a 256Gb or 512Gb but they’re still too expensive at high transfer rates.

If you have to choose between capacity and transfer rate for an SD card for a Switch, go for transfer. I had an old slow card and that was abhorrent for load times and stuttering on games that were stored there.

I recently bought an adjustable clip to clip the Switch (sans joycons) to my Pro Controller and it’s super comfy for long periods of gaming. I’ve also seen people use 3rd party joycons that are shaped more like the Pro Controller handles which seem comfy too.

You’re right, the base Switch isn’t all that comfy for long periods of play, but there are both ways around that and it can also be played docked, which I think are redeeming features.

Further to this - it doesn’t download cart data to the Switch/SD card, but it does store save data, update data and DLC data on the Switch/SD card. So while BOTW may not download its whole 10Gb onto the Switch, you may end up with a few Gb in other data that’s locally stored.

The Switch design is an evolution of the Wii U controller, which itself was evolved from the the lower screen design of the DS, which itself was modelled on the old Vertical Multi Screen Game and Watches from the 1980s.

Have a look through all of Nintendo’s consoles and you’ll see the lines of inspiration drawn from generation to generation.

Definitely agree with a lot of the listed games but wanted to add some I haven’t seen yet:

• Monster Hunter: Rise. The Monster Hunter series’ most recent main series instalment sees you playing as a Hunter of massive creatures, carving them up and using the parts to craft stronger and better equipment. Multiplayer only available with multiple switches, but is still a very rewarding solo game.

• Cadence of Hyrule. A Zelda and Crypt of the NecroDancer mashup that sees you play as Link or Zelda in a musical world where everything moves at the speed of the beat of the music. Very novel and interesting game, but relatively short.

• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX. This is a true roguelike and a remake of the first game in the offshoot Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series made by the same creators of the Shiren the Wanderer series. Gameplay is turn-based and grid-based, with randomly generated dungeons for you to conquer, and you play as a human who’s been turned into Pokémon alongside many others you can befriend.

I feel like a lot of people haven’t ever played Rogue and so struggle understand what Roguelike actually means. Fair call, it’s a very old game with essentially no graphics, but to understand the genre properly everyone needs to give it a go at least once in my opinion.

Side note; love me the whole Mystery Dungeon franchise. I still need to pick up the Shiren the Wanderer series.

I’m not sure that your two categories of gamers are necessarily mutually exclusive. I’d consider myself somewhere in both of those camps. For instance, I have hundreds of hours logged each on a range of open world games like Skyrim, BotW, WoW etc. but I also love to play incremental games which satisfies my mathy brain. I’m generally a min/maxer and completionist and in RPGs this often means exploring every location, killing every enemy and collecting every item before progressing the main story, so as to be maxed out at all points in time. I’m not a big PvP fan, but when I do engage in PvP I tend to find some balance between whatever the meta is and whatever my personal playstyle ‘feels’ is right.

I tend towards indie games generally, particularly single-dev games like Stardew Valley or a slew of incrementals out there, and I think by definition these issues don’t exist in those spheres. Beyond that I’m a big Nintendo fanboy and from what I’m given to understand Nintendo doesn’t churn and burn their employees as much, however they do work them to the absolute bone and demand nothing short of perfection which is its own kind of hostile workplace.

I recently started playing NMS again right before Echoes, although I didn’t know Echoes was coming up. While I never made a conscious link between seeing all of the news about Starfield and me choosing that game when I was last looking through the plethora for something to inspire me, I think it may have had a subconscious effect on my choice.

That’s basically true of all roguelites, right? The whole genre is built around the idea of playing through, dying, and coming back stronger so you can go farther. I’m thinking Rogue Legacy, Dead Cells, Slay the Spire, The Binding of Isaac etc. etc.

What the fuck did you call me you S’wit?! I ain’t no fetcher!

Which other Obsidian titles felt like that? Neverwinter Nights 2; South Park: The Stick Of Truth; and Fallout New Vegas all felt like very well fleshed out games to me. I don’t think I’ve played anything else from their catalogue.

Honestly I thought that it was more bare-bones than, say Fallout, because this was Obsidian’s attempt at a large-scale RPG without the backing of a big time publisher like Bethesda, LucasArts, Ubisoft etc. I had no idea that it was purposefully made more shallow to cater to more casual players.