Dark Arisen just gave you most of the MTX content for free. When you start the game and pull an Eternal Ferrystone out of your bank along with all the starter armor that sells for 500k gold - yeah, that was all MTX gear.
I’ve been buying skateboard sims trying to chase the high I got from Skate 3 but none of the more modern ones are able to replicate the sheer fun of it somehow. I no longer own a ps3 and Skate3 runs like shit on an emulator so my options seem limited.
Re: The MUD situation, I know from personal experience that Iron Realms has still been cranking out a few of them in the last few years. I was a big fan of Starmourn but that one just got demoted to Legacy recently, I guess because of lack of players. Shame because it was really neat and polished. But they’ve got a triumvirate of Lusternia, Achaea (my personal favorite) and Aetolia as active MUD worlds.
Now granted Iron Realms is a whole ass company, not just some nerd hosting a game off his basement server rack strictly out of love for the game, and open source self-hosting enthusiasts may not be super jazzed about that. But as far as I can tell they’re about as harmless as a company can be and do seem to still be in business more as a labor of love than anything else. At least as far as I’ve ever been able to find out. They mostly exist on donations so far as I know, I’ve never had to buy anything from them or been served an ad. And I do really, really like their Nexus client, the interface is really slick and it adds a lot of features and conveniences that I found lacking in other older MUD clients (though, granted, the only non-Iron Realms MUD I ever put any significant amount of time into was Aardwolf and I think I had to use a third party client for that).
All that said, MUD is a dying genre and any influx of new users would help revitalize many of these worlds. If it sounds interesting to you don’t hesitate to go check it out. Veteran users have always been universally helpful in my experience, unless they have an actual lore appropriate reason to be hostile to you - then, watch out! Although even most of those guys won’t stomp on a brand new noob without warning. Players who enjoy social roleplay will find themselves at home in a MUD. Players who enjoy social roleplay and have, or gain, a little bit of scripting knowledge will find themselves especially at home in a MUD. Give one a shot, they’re free and fun and it’ll raise your typing speed a lot.
There’s far too much sequential quest nesting that blocks you out of content for no reason.
The reason is for replayability and having a fresh experience each time. You get blocked out of content because there are about 60 unique paths you can take through the game with different content for each.
Not to mention the bugs
The few I experienced personally were fixed within a couple months of release. I haven’t seen a bug of any sort, actually, since January.
Save scumming shouldn’t be a part of normal gameplay
Then… Don’t do that. Save scumming also isn’t a part of tabletop gameplay. You fail a roll or fuck up your plan, you deal with the outcome. Saves are only for emergencies if some bug does come up.
You’re allowed to not enjoy the game, and that’s fine, it’s not for everyone. But your reasons why are poor reasons.
There’s been a big revival of that genre over the last 10 years or so and I think Boomer Shooter was adopted as a way to differentiate it from your standard FPS. Turbo Overkill is very different from Borderlands which is very different from COD. You’ll need a way to communicate that difference if you want fans to buy your game.
Nioh can be best described as “dark souls gameplay with Borderlands itemization” which I personally love. It’s not for everyone. But the folks it is for will love it. You know who you are.
This is the most absolutely buck wild and inefficient version of this idea I’ve ever seen, ever. Director AI’s have existed over a decade, and have already been used to solve problems exactly like these. If I was Joel and was woken up at 2am to go drop a couple more bugs on Leedle III I’d tell my entire management team to eat shit and do it themselves. What the fuck. Who came up with this? This is half baked as hell
How’s Helldivers been? I was a big fan of the first game but I’m having trouble justifying the full price purchase with a lot of the reviews talking about crashes. I’ll still probably end up buying it though.
Balatro. It’s good. I love making cursed poker hands with aces that count as every suit and granite blocks and then racking my score multiplier up to 86x with stacked jokers. It’s a fun game.