Buttflapper

Buttflapper, miesiąc temu

I agree with you, to an extent. I would say it’s a lot more complicated than that with World of Warcraft, which is an MMO, and does not revolve on gambling except in the aspect of random number generated loot. This is probably the majority of looter shooters out there today as well and a large number of other games. Pure chance in just the loot and rewards. Personally, World of Warcraft did not affect me adversely, because I have very strong self-control, and was able to develop very strict limitations for my own personal life which was important in college.

But I think there’s something you’re definitely missing. Sure, while World of Warcraft can be blamed by some people flunking out of college or high school due to its addictive and fun nature, Have you considered the fact that the world we live in is simply so boring that they don’t want to pay attention to those things? Over a 20-year time span since I have graduated, high school and college has not evolved. It’s the same boring ass mess that it was when I went to school. Unnecessary classes, study only for the test and never use that information ever again, very rarely are their projects and when there are, they are silly group projects in which two out of the four members of your group are lazy and don’t want to do a damn thing. You also are faced with constant demoralizing facts thrown at you from the media and the outside world that your college degree won’t help you get a job, you won’t see any student loan relief, the wealthy elites are in positions of power and rising faster in companies than you ever will be… Reality is so disappointing. So I can understand why these people have trouble paying attention in school and want to turn to stuff like World of Warcraft, theme park MMO that has so much fun and enjoyment in it

But when we’re talking about a gacha, This feels so much more insidious. Every aspect of the entire game, not just the loot, is gambling, and you’re gambling with real money. Not your time. In World of Warcraft you don’t get a drop, oh well, try again next time. You still paid $15 for that entire month, so you can try as many times as you want on as many characters as you want. But when you pay 50 bucks for Genshin impact and you get nothing, you know what that money goes towards? Absolutely nothing. You lose that money forever. Now you are mentally afflicted with that, and you’re already considering whether or not you should pay another 50 bucks to try and get it again with the gamblers fallacy in the back of your mind that if I pay another $50 I’m already $50 in, so I have a much better chance of getting it now. It’s sickening

Buttflapper, miesiąc temu

Also sounds like you haven’t played in a while.

No, I’m a current member of World of Warcraft.

The addition of real currency to gold trading creates an even more direct pipeline from one’s wallet to in-game gear dice rolls. Guilds selling raid gear is even more common now, and with crafting orders, a whale can spend to reroll secondary stats on crafted gear.

It has literally always been like this. Where have you been? People were selling power leveling runs through stockades back when the game first started. They were selling BOE gear for gold, and that gold was obtained with a credit card through gold selling websites. The introduction of wow tokens just changed the recipient of the money from Gold farmers to Blizzard entertainment. I assure you that most people who are active players of the game are not buying tons of gear with gold that has been obtained through their credit card, and even if they were, it doesn’t affect you at all. The guilds that sell runs through challenging content, they have always been doing that, since the very beginning. I remember back in burning crusade people spamming chat that they would carry you through black temple near the end of the expansion. So there’s not like some new shift towards that. It’s always happens like that. The only thing that has shifted is that now, more than ever, you can play the game on your own and get your own gear. The introduction of solo delves has made it possible to gear up your character completely on your own without any additional help from others

With the way Warcraft is throwing currencies at players now, it’s clear Blizzard has taken more than a few cues from how gacha and other live-service outfits are doing things these days. Plenty of opportunities for ruinous, addictive behavior.

I fully agree with this and they have been ignoring player feedback about it for a while now, it’s completely bullshit how many stupid currencies we have and it almost feels like they are AI generating the game design at this point. Like they are going to chat GPT and asking, “what’s a good way to create an addictive loop of currencies for players?” Because some of them are in your bags, some of them are in the currency pane, some of them are bind on character, bind on account, some of them can be traded and some can’t. It’s utter insanity. Truly ass game design. This is the first time they finally made a shift back to using a single currency for PVE though, the flight stones and valor stones. Kind of like marks of valor back in wrath.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

This isn’t a collectors edition though? It’s not even a steelbook. The word collector isn’t even used in the marketing. It’s just a physical release of a free to play game.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

People that buy this want the cards, keychains, and (especially) the exclusive in-game items.

Yeah, but at that rate, why not just launch a store then and sell those items? Blizzard has their own store. Plenty of franchises do. It’s so weird to see a disc version of a free game. Can you imagine if fortnite did that? I don’t remember if they ever had a disc version of their game, but if they did launch one today, people would be scratching their heads

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

I worked at GameStop a long, long time ago. Lots of old console games that couldn’t be sold went right to the landfill. Xbox 360 for example. So many niche small games that no one wanted even when marked down to a dollar each. We’re talking tens of thousands of them just in one small city alone. I’ve also been to a lot of thrift and antique specialty stores in my area, and there are so many plastic case games there people are trying to get rid of. Hundreds of them. No one wants them anymore. Eventually all this plastic is just going to be thrown into a landfill. Those who actually keep this stuff long-term, maybe they don’t have a lot of games or they have the space for it. But consumerism is a major issue across the world that we are struggling to keep up with.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Yea… I kind of went into this one blind. When someone gives you a gift, you don’t go and look up a bunch of reviews on it and stuff. You open the present and start figuring it out yourself. So uhh yeah 😅 I did that… To myself kinda

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

What LMAO That one’s even worse! How do you find this stuff?! 🙀

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Huh, interesting. For “research purposes”, does one find a “good” one of these games? 🤔 Like, are there ones with decent story or actual gameplay? I was honestly surprised by how well the rendering and textures were in this game, but it was created entirely in unreal.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

It’s a decent game but a terrible one if you are comparing it to the original Overwatch.

I’m just genuinely curious why/how it’s still getting updates and people are playing it with the way it’s talked about, they make it sound like the worst game ever

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Thanks for the awesome response. What do you recommend as an alternative? Valorant? TF2?

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

I feel as if the “lack of clear path forward” is a bit over an overreaction from the community.

I don’t think it’s an overreaction considering the fact that they have been building up to the end of this story for about a decade now, it was the grand finale of everything in the entire game’s overarching dialogue, and frankly, no one even considered what would come after that other than the release of Destiny 3 if there even would be one

Bungie is still announcing plans at the same rate they used to

This is just the first time the players haven’t known the 3 year plan in a long time.

Now all we have are leaks from some twitter accounts and the title of the next year of content.

You’re contradicting yourself. You’re saying that they are still announcing things at the rate that they used to, but players don’t know what’s going on, and all we have are leaks from Twitter accounts. How does that make any logical sense? We have no idea what’s going on, but we also know exactly what’s coming, but we also don’t because it’s just leaks and rumors… ummm

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Seems like most live service games these days are built off of addiction or gambling. For example, gacha gaming is becoming more popular everyday, with their rolls and gambling loops. You can see this in games like Genshin impact. Kind of makes me miss the old days where we had games like battlefield and Call of Duty old school style, just running around playing something that we enjoy for fun.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Monkey see, monkey do

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Chat is non-existent in World of Warcraft anymore. You can get banned or muted for basically anything now because people have a right click report button and often abuse it for no reason. I was completely banned from the game for an entire week for this exact same username that I have here, someone reported me and said my name was inappropriate. I’ve had it for 15 years, and was randomly deemed to be not allowed anymore, so banned. Also had guild members that I was very close with through discord banned for a week for simply making a joke or saying the word fuck.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

I’ve known about this for a while. Sadly, I don’t think it’ll ever be finished. Even if it is, Skyrim is an extremely old engine and looks like crap, runs like crap. I modded the hell out of it with 4k graphics on an RTX 4070… It’s just awful. The engine isn’t great. They need to make something new. Even Starfield had the same old ass dated engine.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

I wouldn’t hold your breath on it. That mod collection has been in development for many years now. They keep pushing the release date forward, and even when it is released, it’s still built off of the really old Skyrim game engine. People who want a remake, not a remaster, want a game that has the same capabilities but with a newer game engine. It really does matter, because it affects what is possible to do in the game. You can’t just use the old outdated game engine and upscale the graphics. It’s simply will not be possible and will be sluggish, slow as hell. Look at Starfield. Utter failure because many people expected it to have a new game engine. The one it has now is just not up to par

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

This is a big reason why inceldom has risen imo

I haven’t seen it nearly this bad until this year. This is the worst year I’ve ever seen for it, and Hoyo games are by far the worst

hey if impregnation is your kink, you do you

It seems like it’s worse than that. I’ve seen people making extremely inappropriate comments about young characters. For example in Zenless Zone Zero subreddit, there are people that post pictures of the young characters that look like children, Piper and a few others that I don’t recall off the top of my head. But they are half naked and fan art of them in extremely suggestive positions. Borderline pedophilia but it’s a made up fictional character so they claim it doesn’t count and it’s perfectly fine. Such a strange view on reality

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

I hate the phrase “borderline pedophillia.” Either they’re sexualizing children or not.

They hide behind the fact that character age isn’t expressly stated anywhere, so it’s technically not pedo behavior since it’s unknown what age it is. But me personally, I think they’re underage.

Example from Zenless subreddit. Piper is a character that looks like she’s anywhere from 10 to 15 years of age, and people are posting her half naked.

Here’s another post with a very one-sided discussion about NSFW art for characters who are clearly minors, in which the community basically downvotes anyone who tries to voice their opinion that creating erotica and other NSFW art for minors and adolescents is wrong. Truly disgusting behavior, and I’m in disbelief that there’s a gaming community out there today like this…

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

In the game, she supposedly has well defined muscles, and slightly larger breasts I guess? I haven’t looked at her enough in the game to really remember it by heart.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

I agree with you. I think this is definitely one of their cutest characters. I really like the cat girl character design when it’s harmless and light-hearted. People get so into this stuff and act like they are real

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

You say this, but on TikTok people are genuinely so serious when they comment on stuff about the game and Zenless. “I need her bro” or “I’d do anything for her"

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

I think there’s two definitions of successful in gaming today. First is financially successful, it generated some decent profits for the stockholders. Second is how it was actually perceived by the community as a whole. Oblivion was spectacularly well received and made game of the Year edition. Fallout 4 was heavily criticized, but still somewhat successful in terms of the community reaction. Starfield was globally frowned upon, as someone who has played that exact game, it’s horrible. I honestly feel like that game is a one out of 10. 1.0 out of 10 would be my exact rating if I had to give it one. It’s not going to get the cyberpunk treatment, so sure maybe it’ll break profits and be considered financially successful. But I don’t think that game should ever be considered a success in any other aspect

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

They failed spectacularly with Fallout 4

Eh, not really. Fallout 4 has its share of fans and while the roleplaying and story was weak, I thought the world was well laid out and fun to explore

When I say failed, this is of course my own opinion. I personally feel like it was a failed game because of how simply unfun it is. I had to mod the game to extreme amounts just to get it to be believable and as enjoyable as Skyrim, Oblivion, other Bethesda games. It simply was not fun and its released state due to the horrible dialogue, basically lackluster and meaningless world. No matter where I explored, it wasn’t really rewarded at all with anything.

It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess

It’s unbelievable that everything in Starfield has a loading screen between it, ran poorly, and was still a buggy mess

Corporate greed and incompetence, plain and simple. It took a mod creator a week or two to cook up a solution for that and make the game free of loading screens, he did that FOR FREE. Bethesda is out here with millions in Budget, they couldn’t have figured that out? Unbelievable. It’s the same crap every single game, too. They’re just lazy. Most Beth games that have been released has had a mod released that makes it 100% open world with no load screens

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Starfield was a big scope with mostly procedurally generated content with a few handcrafted areas, which resulted in very repetitive content since they simply didn’t make enough variety in content.

The budget for Starfield was scales of magnitude larger than No Man’s Sky, and will likely never have even half the updates that game did. Bethesda never carries a game that far, not even Skyrim

Also Bethesda needs to stop relying on mods saving the game for them, many basic functions are missing and I found myself often needing mods to have an even acceptable experience

Agree, and it’s sad they won’t even learn from them either. Every single Bethesda release isn’t open world. A modder has to make that FOR them. Unbelievable man. That’s not even remotely complex, any game developer should be able to figure that out easily, could just go look up one of the already made mods for open world, copy paste, done.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

A 1 out of 10 for Starfield is ridiculous; either hyperbole, or you haven’t played many video games before to see what a 1 out of 10 would truly be

I’ve played 20 years worth of games. My criteria is actually very logical. What is the scale of the company and their resources, the budget, past releases, and then finally, the game itself: How many hours do I get out of it? How linear is it? How believable is it? How captivating? Replayability? I give Starfield a 1.0/10 in all of these. Keep reading if you’re curious why

Linearity: This game is almost entirely linear, despite being called a “sandbox”. There’s no point whatsoever to wandering around away from the main storylines. Unlike Skyrim, Oblivion, hell even Fallout 76… You can’t just go wander off and find some new awesome area to do interesting stuff in. You find a new area, but it’s bland, has nothing interesting, or is very short-lived. So you’re basically coaxed back to just go finish the main story, with is such a linear and plain slog.

Believable: There are so few important choices to make, none of them really feel meaningful either. Also, the story just feels so cheesy. It’s so bad. You’re wandering around with a cowboy and his pre-teen daughter shooting people in the face, really? Yeah, that makes sense. All your companions are judgmental and never STFU with the ‘holier than thou’ attitude, forcing you to basically be good, or to be lectured constantly and nagged. Towns feel pointless and unbelievable. Not a single town I visited felt like a real place. For example, the western style town felt like Westworld. It was so clowny.

Replayability: Once you’ve done the entire storyline, there’s literally no reason to replay the game. It’s such a linear and unimaginitive story that there’s really nothing worth going back and seeing again

Now why is this a 1.0 out of 10? Taking the company size, their past projects, their capabilities, their support network (the entire mod community of all their games)… They had the potential to make SOMETHING better than this, but it was clearly rushed. It’s also highly unlikely they’ll give it the Cyberpunk or NMS treatment, leaving it bland, boring, broken… for $70. Unbelievable. The fact that a multi-million dollar company backed by Billion dollar Microsoft could produce this is just ridiculous.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

with about 300h in Starfield

My God… doing what, exactly? It took me like 40 hours to 100% the game, then everything else is pointless. Every planet is completely barren…

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

There is no mod to make Starfield free of loading screens, the cell structure of the engine demands loading screens

That’s a fair point - it doesn’t completely get rid of the game’s need to load the next area, but it does a good job of hiding when the loading is happening.

but that mod a) destroys the storytelling and lore of the game completely

How, exactly?

c) changes a quick load screen with a boring travel through empty space.

This is an absurd and honestly ridiculous complaint. ‘boring travel through empty space’ dude it’s a literal SPACE exploration game, how can you complain about travelling through space, in a space game? Wtf? What do you think Space is? Candyland, filled with gas stations and theme parks along the ride? It’s an empty, insanely large expanse. Some people want that. You could say the same thing for any Fallout/Elder Scrolls game, too. ‘Boring ride through the country’ < oblivion and Skyrim. ‘Boring walk to the next area’ <Fallout

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

but I don’t think the scale of the company or its resources matter one iota

It absolutely matters. I can forgive and honestly move past a 1 person team or small indie company making a huge clusterf*ck of a game. But if you have 25 million dollars to make a game and you produce literal trash, there’s no excuse. The little guys/indie studios struggle, like totally understandable. How does BETHESDA sized company fail so spectacularly? That’s the core complaint.

Superman 64

??? this is a Nintendo 64 game, not even remotely the same resources available. Now we have incredibly powerful tech available in the gaming industry, and although we can’t confirm it, supposedly generative AI is being used. You’re talking about someone building a log cabin and it looking like crap, versus someone an entire construction company with top of the line cranes and huge vehicles.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

incredibly boring procedural generation is the cause. There is little to no value getting excited exploring the world and the incredible world of Skyrim is what makes it good.

Honestly, they could’ve fixed it by adding custom settings for enemy generation. In Skyrim, Obliv, Fallout games, I’ve always downloaded a “more enemies” mod to encounter more things out in the wild/wastes. Even when I found monsters in Starfield, they just wandered by, there’s no danger. If they would’ve simply polled the gaming community, we would’ve told them how to fix it. :\

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Yup, and they fixed it. When Fallout 76 came out, it had the exact same major issues and bugs that Fallout 4 did, that the community literally fixed themselves with their unofficial patches. Bethesda was so unbelievably lazy They could not even copy and paste the unofficial bug fixes off Nexus mods, to me, that’s startling. At least with Morrowind, they fixed stuff

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

So your personal opinion of the game is the only thing that matters

Nope, there’s lots of real reviews out there besides my own. Generally, the community views star field incredibly negatively. You had to purchase it on Steam to leave a review. That’s an objective fact. Ain’t nothing fake about it. It was overwhelmingly negative on release.

How much money a game made, on the other hand, is worthless. Who cares? Call of Duty is objectively very profitable. Does that mean it’s a masterpiece now??

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Exploration is one of the most enjoyable parts of those games. It’s not boring in ES or FO because of all the things you find along the way.

Maybe the first playthrough, sure. But after the first time I played through Fallout 4 (65% explored POIs), I tried to replay it, and it felt stale that quickly. Just going from starter area > concord was such a snooze. Autorun and watch netflix. Oblivion was a little more captivating and scenic, and so was Fallout 3. You’d find random little homes blown up, robots, people trying to stab you with a rusty knife. Fallout 4 and 76 are just so empty and devoid.

Traveling != exploration. Eliminating the load screens just leaves you in boring space with no POIs to discover along the route.

Fair point… No Man’s Sky kinda figured out a way to make it more fun, you can do it much more interactively with the hyperdrive and warping through small spaces in a system. But there’s rocks to find, sometimes pirates that shoot at you. >

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Most people are playing Black Myth: Wukong. Not Skyrim.

How is this related to Bethesda?

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Because I haven’t been following AAA for the past decade…?

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Wow… Can’t believe this game is still getting updates

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Deadlock is destined for the land of toxicity

I don’t think we should assume this right away. TF2 isn’t really all that toxic (that I am aware of). Valve tends to attract less toxic people in general. OW2 however, hoo boy… that game is agonizing to play. People will not hesitate to insult you.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

The only protection we could possibly have HAS to be implemented by the government, look how Germany handles their workforce. They have a worker’s council, you can’t just lay off people or fire tons of people nope. Workers are protected. Here in the USA, people are just servants, building pyramids, and then tossed to the street.

My idea: if a company employs over 50 employees, it should be ILLEGAL to outsource any job overseas, or replace them with AI. Example, voice actors. Should not be legal. Small studios / indie, should be perfectly legal since these are individuals that struggle to get started.

Buttflapper, 2 miesiące temu

Yeah, and unions would change that. Negotiating to ensure that people are hired as full-time employees with benefits, not as independent contractors or consultants with no rights, and finally be treated as human beings.