better hardware has always been an advantage, but this is more in line with bmw charging a subscription for heated seats. it’s a new stage of nickel and dime monetization. and just because there’s existing ways to use money to gain an advantage doesn’t mean we should be inventing new ones. rich people don’t need the help, and these companies don’t need the money. accepting and enabling them on this will continue to consent to more and worse pay to win features.

this is explicitly and exclusively a feature to improve performance. whether it’s effective is irrelevant. they intend to let you pay to gain an advantage natively in game. a non scummy game would instead try to minimize and mitigate the differences created by hardware, not add new ways to widen that gap.

i couldn’t remember if there was active pvp. i just remember never actually running into it in my time playing.

the base invasion system in metal gear solid 5. it was a risky optional side part, but you would place your best guys and equipment around your base and other players could try to break through that. i don’t remember many of the specifics, but it was kind of interesting.

ooh wasn’t there a post going around yesterday about a bug that actually puts comments on the wrong threads?

obviously a news show isn’t going to feel the same rewatching it. that’s not the point lol.

that would be like saying it’s dumb to preserve newspapers in libraries because it’s not going to feel as good rereading the “Hitler is dead” headline. people don’t look at old news to have a good time.

boy was it silly of us to preserve that kind of thing and it totally never comes in handy/s

that’s not even what people are upset about anyway. comedy Central mostly makes entertainment programming that isn’t news based and can still be enjoyed whenever. believe it or not, comedy Central has a lot of content that will stand the test of time. especially when looking at their stand-up catalogue.

this is the destruction of a library. a digital one, but a library none the less. that’s what people are mad about.

but you’re right. we should just dump all of our old movies and shows. they’re worthless moldy junk anyway… 🙄

also, there was a religion mechanic, but no religious victory.

I would like it to come out with the same number of win conditions that the previous ones had. diplomacy was a base feature in at least the last 2 games before it. it wasn’t a dlc feature before. they removed it this time, then added it back as dlc. they do shit like that every time.

that’s a weird thing to say about a game that came out without diplomacy or diplomatic victories. but ign has a long history of overating games from waelthy companies.

edit: but also, the way that ign feels the need to praise it for being fully featured at launch when it was still missing a base mechanic really helps my point. they always do this. this may actually be the least bad one they’ve ever done. that’s just a low bar. like the 4th least bad release.

idk man… i guess In today’s market this behavior has become less bad by comparison to everyone else, but I’m not going to ignore the rising temperature of the water in this pot. the whole industry is getting worse. I’m not going to give this company ground to legitimize their greed because the rest of the industry shot past them in shittyness. this was one of the first series to explicitly be scummy with dlc. they helped create the modern landscape of battle passes and gacha bullshit. they were once some of the worst out there…

it was diplomacy that was stripped then re-added this time. in base civ 6 there was no diplomacy. that’s ridiculous. that’s like one of the most core mechanics and win conditions. then when they did add it it was so busted that you’ll often accidentally get a diplo victory on your way to any other victory.

and that’s greedy and why i don’t play that series.

civ 6 literally added diplomatic victory back as a dlc

i mean civ is never really worth buying until they put out a complete edition with all the features they removed so they could slowly sell them back to you as dlc.

that’s the thing though, these aren’t bullet hell either. i agree that the “survivors” branding is confusing, but i don’t think bullet hell is accurate either.

there’s enough of these games now, they need a proper genre title. i legit have a hard time getting people on the same page when discussing these games (vampire survivors, magic survival, deep rock survivors, League of Legends swarm mode, etc…) it usually takes a good 5 minutes before they actually understand what kind of games I’m talking about unless they actively play them. I’ve just been calling them “vampire survivors like” even though i know it’s not the first, it’s the one most people are familiar with.

i think the “survival” part of it is that the only and exclusive goal is to stay alive. The way you choose to build toward that goal is where the gameplay comes in. bullet hell is similar in that regard, but the main goal of bullet hell is to dodge shit to stay alive. the main goal of these is to figure out a build path that makes you kill everything. it’s more like a puzzle than a game of skill. once you get it right you shouldn’t be dodging. i know many people that like bullet hell, but and not these, and vice versa. I’m one of them, i like these games, but not bullet hell. similar on the surface, but the appeal is way different.

my buddy had his keep crashing during the intro sequence as they were running to the vault. when he checked the discord it seemed many were having this issue and that it was fixed by turning debris off.

hmmm idk, i disliked the live action because of the acting and writing on cowboy bebop. i also don’t think three was any reason to make that live action. it felt like a soulles cash grab.

compare that to say the one piece live action, or the last of us series, or even twisted metal. those were all shows that adapted things well while also changing a lot. it’s fine to adapt things to a be medium and tell your own story, just don’t expect a free pass if that story you tell is worse than the material you were given. like the Witcher, for example. that shouldn’t have even been that hard. it wasn’t actually a video game adaptation. it was supposed to adapt the books. but then they just went and did their own story with the characters that just wasn’t very good… certainly not nearly as good as the source material.

i think that’s what frustrates me sometimes. when an adaptation just doesn’t hold up to the source. the cowboy bebop lie action wasn’t that bad, but the anime was fucking incredible. in a few years everyone will forget they even did a live action of it. it just wasn’t really worth remembering.

baldur’s gate was incredible at this. i think part of that was their mindset wasn’t “how do we make this more accessible to casual players?” they’re mindset was more “how do we make this less tedious and/or annoying for everyone?” like the quick select buffs ui that comes up with every roll. in early access, and other larian games it was still possible to add buffs mid dialogue, but you’d have to like ungroup the buffer, sit then outside, start the dialogue, then sneak them in to hit you with the buff, which might not work right if you already opened the roll interface…

they’ve even added a custom difficulty mode where you can turn off more of their ease of use features. for example, i personally believe the game is better with the “perception check failed” notifications removed. if your whole party fails the perception check, you still know the trap is there… it makes the whole mechanic a bit pointless at times. with it turned off you’ll still do the check, and it’ll still show you if you succeed, it just hides the rolls from you until then.

mod makers need to want to make mods for it first… we can’t just assume that the modders will fix it if there’s nothing worth fixing. multiple modders that have made mods for previous Bethesda games have said they aren’t doing this one.

yeah, once you have the drives, building the rest of the system can be done for dummy cheap if you look at like cheap used workstations that some company or school is offloading. and it would still probably be a more capable system all around.

hmm idk… the only real reason vr has playeued so hard is because of the high barrier to entry. the tech is fine, but there’s not that many good games because it’s expensive and not many own it.

I’d argue that ai will continue to see raid growth for a little while. the core technology behind LLMs may be plateauing, but the tech is just now getting out in the world. people will continue to find new and creative ways to extend its usefulness and optimize what it’s currently capable of.

basically, back to the vr example. people are gonna start making “games” for it. did one’s free, and everyone is hungry for it. I’m putting my money on human creativity for now…

yeah, often the script writing brain storming season doesn’t really start until you’ve been spinning your wheels for 8 hours going nowhere and now it’s 2am and someone just said “but what if she never went outside”

sometimes we don’t get there until we get a little goofy. I’ve heard it might just be how creatives work.