I love the story of Final Fantasy XIV, but it can easily categorize as “One of the most expensive singleplayer games of all time”. On top of buying the expansions, you’ll need to pay for each month you play; and unless someone’s really speedrunning, that will start to add up. Worse, for a first timer setting up their account, their website and payment system is really stuck in 1998, making giving them money an obtuse task. And, while the story has its great moments and excellent side content, a depressing amount of it is extensive polite dialog with just simple quests where you move to a location and right-click on someone. I’ve finished Dawntrail, and am glad I experienced it, but I can’t blame anyone who sees it all as beyond them.
Counterpoint: Someone can play up through Stormblood without having to buy anything.
But, yeah, I agree. I don’t really want to think about how much I’ve spent on this one game over the last 12 years. But roughly spitballing:
ARR, Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, Endwalker, Dawntrail…I’ll say that’s 6 x $40 (not accurate since I bought special editions for some and moved from PS3 to Pc so that’s an extra cost there, too): $240
$13/m for 11 years (I’ve played ARR since launch but there have been some times where I turned off my sub for a little bit so I’ll just knock off 12 months): 13 x 12 x 11 = $1,716
Various Mogstation purchases, roughly $40?
Total for me with this napkin math: $1,996
Woof. But, I do love the game and spent all weekend playing it just now. So there’s worse things to spend money on.
This expac broke me. Played for a decade. Decent ranked tank. The new raids are more of the same and PF has no healers. Tried to play Sage to balance it out and no one could make it work.
The game lost touch with what made it great. It’s no longer innovative. The story is ass. It’s just a whale hunter.
My thing with FFXIV is that, so much has blown by me, that just trying to get into it now is so overwhelming. There was a friend I knew that was into FFXIV and he was one of those people that spoke about it like it is his second language. He had his friends too that were into it and it was like they've built this in-depth chemistry through FFXIV and I even watched some of his livestreams of it.
But anytime I tried playing FFXIV, I really stuck out with this empty feeling because I never had that.
I’d love to play Baldur’s Gate 3 with a diverse group of real people and share an adventure together, but have no friends who enjoy games that aren’t mindless slop.
Same with other slow-burn games like Project Zomboid and other survival/crafting games.
I learned to do slop to hang out with others, I even got good at slop like Rivals just to keep social contact alive. But I can’t drag anyone into a game that doesn’t have 2-minute matches filled with flashing lights and colors and gambling mini-games.
I’m in this boat with you. A few months ago I restarted my Valheim server for friends… And only one person joined me, for all of about 30 minutes. I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.
I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a Zomboid server, too, but I know it will be the same. We’ll play as a group maybe twice, and that will be it.
I spent a bunch of solo time just building up a base and trying not to progress too far so I wouldn’t ruin the fun.
I have about 20 games where I stopped before getting too far “just in case they decide to join me.” Those games are now piled up in dusty, forgotten crates alongside the Ark of the Covenant in that same giant warehouse. I think I’m part of the slim margin of people who enjoy simulated hardships as a social bonding experience, I don’t know if makes other people too bored, or too anxious, but I can’t make people play hard, slow games where you have to rely on each other and talk through problems.
I used to be able to, I had great success running groups in SCUM and Project Zomboid but as more and more short-attention-span gaming has been released, people have migrated away from investment-gaming and now just want to “chill” with some colorful slop and fast battle royals or loot extraction. Now when I ask if someone wants to play something like SCUM, they ask if we can play a server where loot and experience gain is turned up to max, enemy robots are disabled, and you can order high level gear from discord bots in chat.
I've about given up on chasing multiplayer, even including friends. It never fails. Because, there would be times some friends I know are playing a multiplayer game that is big and they're all involved and I want to be involved. Then by the time I get it, they've moved on to something else and it would be a chore to have tried and get them to come back to the game I just got so we can have some of our memories poured into it.
It would never happen, they've grounded their footing into that next game and I would be a little begrudged and eventually I'd get that game, only for the cycle to repeat.
So, I've stopped doing that. Now I have a bunch of all of these games that were fun to have played with people on, just sitting and collecting dust because I tried playing with people I know and cared about. Now most of them play FFXIV, Escape from Tarkov or some other MMO-like game and they know I won't go there to them because I'm not a MMO player, but I was always open to play something else that was multiplayer, but they never bit.
I should be playing Baldur’s Gate 3, and I want to be playing Baldur’s Gate 3, and my wife wants me to be playing Baldur’s Gate 3, and I sit down intending to play Baldur’s Gate 3… and then I play Stellaris.
I Finally beat Baldur’s Gate 3 this past week. Act Three was really intimidating but when I came back after taking a 6 month break, none of the items or interactions were as previous as before.
The newer Anno installments. I’m not buying another Ubisoft game unless they get rid of their stupid Launcher, and I’m also not buying anything with Denuvo and similar BS.
I keep trying Civ VI and keep uninstalling it before finishing a single game.
I can’t put my finger on exactly what’s changed since earlier games, but it’s lost a lot of the addicting charm and intuitive flow that made me play prior versions for days. Also, the goofy-ass style and overly dramatic narrative starts to irk me.
If that’s the trend of the franchise I sure won’t be touching any of the later ones.
If that’s the trend of the franchise I sure won’t be touching any of the later ones.
Good news! It’s prolly not. In an interview I’ve read quite some time ago, creators said that they hit a silly problem of not having path of improving the game because everything works and…well, not much to add.
So instead they experiment slightly with each version, making small changes every time to create another “flavor” of Civ.
Played through the Nioh 3 Demo. It seems fine, a lot of changes from the previous games (especially if you compare Nioh 1 to 2, which is mostly the same game), that need some time to get used to.
My main problem with the game right now is the price. 80€ is just far too much, even if I’d probably put hundreds of hours into the game (if the first two are anything to go by). I’ll either wait for it to get cheaper or get it from a key reseller, not sure yet.
Then, I’m deep into Act 3 in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. At this point combat is mostly trivial, although I just completed a dungeon/area that was just a massive slog with overtuned enemies (Blackwater) that made me question my life choices. Nothing new for this series, Kingmaker had similar balancing issues (basically the last third of the game). Still having fun most of the time.
Oh man I missed you starting this up! So glad you picked up Cult of the Lamb! I absolutely ADORE that game, and I’ve been meaning to go back to it since all of the updates (and now with the new DLC too!) I originally 100%'d the full game, but since the updates they added more achievements, so I gotta get back into and re-earn my 100% again lol
Happy to see you’re enjoying it, and best of luck with the rest of the game!
(P. S. I respect the hell outta ya for being able to keep this daily posting up, it’s fuckin awesome😎)
I’m the same way. I’ll try and stack up damage and then just rush the boss. Never goes well. I love poison though because when I finally decide to pull back there’s a flow of damage that keeps going
The last console I owned was a PS3, and I don’t plan on ever having another. Sony thankfully mostly got with the program and released a bunch of their stuff on PC, but Bloodborne remains a standout.
I honestly want to play skyrim on the Switch 2, but I won’t because the input controls function so poorly and the framerate is subpar. I was excited for when we got the boost in power on the Switch 2 but Bethesda fumbled it. Hopefully they do fix Skyrim and that they launch Fallout 4 in a good state with a gold framerate.
Don’t you worry. With every new console release, you can accommodate guarantee that Skyrim will be on it at some point. It’s like Bethesda NEEDS to release it on every single platform… Sometimes multiple times.
Oh Skyrim is on the Switch 2. But it runs so poorly and it’s so unoptimized that it makes it not worth the Switch 2 version upgrade. I’m just going to wait and see if they re-release it again haha.
Out of all the artists/bands, your image has Tessa Violet. Which is insane to me, because I can remember watching her like 15 years ago on a show called =3 with Ray William Johnson. Which was essentially a comedy show that brought you 3 viral videos, and then RWJ would try to be funny over them. Nobody watched =3 for RWJ, and nobody watched Americas Funniest Home Videos for Bob Sagat. We watched both shows for the same reason. To watch idiots get hit in the nuts.
Then one episode, a 15 year old Tessa Violet, then known as Meekakitty, shows up and starts the episode by saying “Betcha didn’t think you’d see ME here!”
And I’m like “BITCH I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO YOU ARE!!!”
But then RWJ tried making music, and she was in his videos. Then she started making music. And I never heard from either of them again because both of their music is terrible.
Tessa is like accoustic guitars, and whiney crying lyrics. And RWJ, despite being close to 25 at the time wrote novelty comedy songs all based around the idea of having sex with your mom. As if written for an exclusively 14 year old boy audience.
Now I see this, and I’m like “eh? She’s STILL making music???”
Crush, the Tessa Violet song shown, was released in 2018 and has very little acoustic guitar or whiney crying lyrics. It’s an electronic pop song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiAuAJBZuGs
Her first album though, lots of acoustic guitar and sadness.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne