The business these days is that keeping people online provides value to other players who are considering being online. A big online population means new players have reasons to jump in and play. How do they make sure there's a large population? They create psychological hooks to make sure you keep coming back, rather than making a multiplayer game that's satisfying, that you could play with friends whenever you wanted with small group sizes and your own servers. Because the business is to monetize that pool of players over and over again rather than to keep making new experiences via new games every couple of years.
It is a bad deal. I got into a game called Fantasy Strike. It's a fighting game that boils the genre down to basics and gets you right into the fun. I loved it. It didn't sell a ton of copies. So they updated it to be free-to-play; everything gameplay-related in the game was free (with an asterisk...more on that later) and they monetized it with a bunch of the live service trappings and nonsense that bothered you enough to make this post. Limited time purchases for cosmetics, subscriptions, etc. The thing that made me stop playing it was that they added a replay viewer where, much like in Street Fighter 5 and 6, you can just watch anyone else's replays, including your own, but that replay viewer was locked behind a subscription fee. You know, the feature that people use to get better at the game and see what they did wrong. Monthly subscription. It's a horrendous deal and made me put the game down. You don't get to charge me a recurring fee for something that lives on my own hard drive and gets calculated by my own computer. Likewise, these live service games are all things that could be run without their servers, with private servers or LAN, but they want you to keep seeing these opportunities to buy these ephemeral cosmetics where both they and the game itself are designed to self-destruct once the game stops making money.
Wylde Flowers on Apple Arcade! I believe it also just came to Switch as well. Similar to Stardew Valley, but with a little more magic and voice acting. :)
I did the same thing at first. However, many times those free websites are very unstable, especially when I was in the middle of watching something exciting. It's quite frustrating and makes you question life. On top of that, the constant ads were annoying. Later on, I went searching for a reliable IPTV service. Besides spending some money each month, I no longer had to deal with that annoyance.
You can give ATVIPTV a try since they offer a three-day free trial. I'm currently using this IPTV service on my Firestick and haven't experienced any buffering or delays. It offers a wide range of content from over 26 countries, including various types of updates such as sports events, football, boxing, entertainment, movies, and more. They provide a free trial for testing, so I hope this information is helpful to you.
After you find a good provider, check out android app TiviMate. Its not free, but its amazing. Its made for android TV and it cost 11€ a year or 35€ lifetime iirc
Honestly, I was never looking for one, but friend of mine suggested me some local guy. He moved to another providers but Im using the same one for years. Friend told me my guy is bad, but its not for channels I need (I guess lol). Anyway he is finding new providers on forums by direct messages, but also on some random google search or reddit/lemmy recommendations for example. Anything is safe to try afaik, you usually get free trial for 3-7 days. Its best to test when its time for some super popular foodball match or something like that
I say this as someone who doesn't like MTX, but I've never understood how optional cosmetics ever factor into whether a game is "complete". The only way they could be seen as an important part of the game is if you play games to play dressup. Which I get if you're playing a fashion designer style game or a game thats almost purely social, but in the majority of games they don't fucking matter at all. How do people get so bent out of shape about them?
The only way they could be seen as an important part of the game is if you play games to play dressup.
You really shouldn't be but I feel you'd be surprised how many people, especially MMORPG players, care about this. I personally play GW2 a lot and since there's no gear treadmill unlocking cosmetics is one of the main goals you can actually do there, to show off your accomplishments or hard work. Ofc it's not the only thing keeping players engaged but it is a major part of it.
Besides, if it didn't matter to players then it wouldn't be monetized as much in the first place. So whenever I see this argument "well its just cosmetics so it doesnt matter:", I get kinda frustrated because obviously it matters, obviously it works which is why it's still a thing to monetize so much.
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