**long neglected because of monetary incentivization (aka corporate greed), a bias towards subscriptions and microtransactions.

I recently started playing Diablo 4. I’ve never bought DLC or cosmetics but I recall the horse armor uproar. My shock when some of these cosmetics are $20 for mount or town portal…what?!

I don’t get it. The original Hellblade was always a niche success, not exactly mainstream. It simply blew people’s mind about what an indie studio could deliver. I’d never expect a massive player base. Is this all because of Microsoft’s marketing?

🤨 when did Reddit overtake Twitter? Reddit used to be a niche destination that you’d barely see it in comparison to the other big name sites.

Yup. Same here…the building stuff was never for me either. I’d love to be the person who thoughtfully builds pretty settlements but normally I’m just plopping things down so I can move along.

Different strokes for different folks, as they say. I’m def not knocking on those who enjoy it and get the most out of it.

classic Bethesda experience

I messaged my friend a couple hours into the game and said “…I dunno dude. This feels like Fallout 4 but in space.” I’ve never finished an FO game, despite trying many times, because they just feel boring and overwhelming at the same time (for me anyway). I was late to the Skyrim party, first played it on Switch and loved it - loosely because the story drove me forward and kept me engaged.

Witcher 3 and CP2077 had me hooked the entire time. Even though they’re entirely different games, I also miss the little nuances in NMS - like actually flying into a planets atmosphere and landing, being able to zoom around the planet in my ship, engaging “warp.” All without a whole lot fewer loading screens or opening menus. To be fair, I got tired of NMS super quickly because resource mining and grinding aren’t my thing.

All that to say that I’m enjoying it though I’m not sure how long it’ll stick with me. It’ll hold me over until Phantom Liberty comes out.