I was replying to both, I understand your point, my point is the beginning of the comment you were responding to defeats itself with stupidity before your logic (which I agree with) has even gotten out of bed and put pants on for the day.
Another SOLID recommendation is Valheim, it has horror elements but isn’t really a horror game, still it is one of the better co-op open world games period.
Agreed, I guess I meant it potentially had a great interface, I have memories (I SWEAR they are real -I scream into the void) that the xbox 360 had a really slick interface at one point with very clear effective panels/tabs that was progressively enshittified… but if it hadn’t… it would have been nice.
That was a different timeline, if such a one where microsoft didn’t enshittify xbox exists.
Hey, it benefits me when more people play these awesome indie multiplayer games!
It pains me when people put up with insane amounts of nonsense when they just want a battlefield like experience, they don’t want lootcrates, popups that distract you when you open the game… skins… casinos… battlepasses…
If that is your jam, great, but it is alarming how little indie big map multiplayer vehicle shooters there are for the health of the genre as a whole, I have made long rants about how EA fucked over the genre by dropping mod support after Battlefield 2 ughhh.
Because of that I get a lot of joy sharing these games because I know most people like me until fairly recently hadn’t heard of some of these gems and they are the perfect anodyne to all the AAA enshittification nonsense happening in multiplayer big map competitive shooters that actually have good vehicle gameplay.
Here are some better recommendations for games that aren’t owned by EA.
Operation Harsh Doorstop - free and moddable tactical shooter with big maps and vehicles, vanilla gameplay is fairly realistic but there are mods that totally change up the gameplay like Casualfield. This game has a dedicated group of youtube content creators who hate on this game… I don’t get it… because the gunplay is fantastic and the mechanics are an elegant evolution of Project Reality type squad spawns and player built basic infrastructure. Sniping is also a BLAST. Singleplayer is in heavy development but multiplayer is where it is at now with the game. It is in early access and is definitely rough around the edges, but the core gameplay is just straight up better than 99% of fps games I have played so I don’t really care lol.
Easy Red 2 - Really fantastic WW2 tactical shooter with big maps and LOTS of different period accurate vehicles and a quickly growing population of players. The general interest this game has in portraying WW2 beyond the tired and boring moments that are usually portrayed is very cool and the gameplay is ROCK solid. This game is extremely affordable for the amount of scenarios, weapons vehicles and historical context that is brought into the game design in a clearly thoughtful way and I recommend ALL of the DLC even as an impulse buy when you purchase the base game. It is worth it, Easy Red 2 is an absurdly easy recommendation at its price point.
Angels Fall First - A superb Battlefront-like/Battlefield 2048 that is first person. This game is in early access and has a small playerbase but the core gameplay is polished, locked in and very very fun. Weapons feel great, vehicles are easy to jump in and start using but clearly have a lot of skill depth to them… Overall the menu and UI is FANTASTIC, at the deploy screen the game will prompt you if a vehicle is available to take and let you spawn directly into it, you can also see a cue of vehicles that are going to spawn for your team soon… Check it out! Even with the low playerbase it is a great bot bashing game, the AI is fun to play against and uses vehicles.
Also, for kicks and giggles I am gonna recommend Empires Mod an old source engine multiplayer RTS/FPS team based hybrid that is actually still in development which is super cool. By now the UI has lots and lots of quality of life additions and tooltips and the whole thing is very impressive even if the age of the source engine and various components going into the experience are obviously very dated, Empires Mod is legitimately still an awesome game and it deserves way more players! There is a discord you can check out to find out when games are happening.
Ok I had to add another oldie but goodie that has an open source project around it now!! That game is Enemy Territory and if you know that game you likely have fond memories of spending hours playing it like I do. No vehicles but the teamplay is very objective based a lot like payload in Team Fortress 2 (which is TF2s best mode by far so…).
Some more obscure recommendations that didn’t quite make my main list of team based objective games with a lot of depth to them but also lots of action…
Unvanquished is a spiritual successor to Tremulous, I haven’t played it so I don’t want to recommend it in the main list but the idea of a team of alien monsters and space marines fighting asymmetrically is super cool and riffs on games like Empires Mod in a cool way.
Renegade X is a fan re-make of C&C Renegade a FPS/RTS hybrid game that was quite fun back in the day, the mod is still pretty rough around the edges so I didn’t want to put it on main list with others. The same developers also are making another game called Firestorm which is based on a different time period in the C&C universe. These developers are not employees of EA or making money off this I believe, you can see the developers really had fun making Renegade-X from my brief experience.
You aren’t understanding me, you keep trying to debate from the axiom that this is a zero sum game.
In otherwords when I say
“We need to increase wages and employment opportunities across the board for immigrants including tech worker immigrants”
You hear
"We need to hurt tech workers born and raised in the US who are already hurting.
My point of issue is that I did not say that, rather you are applying an axiom that those two MUST be inextricably linked and if there is even a remote chance we can improve the wages and general quality of life of tech workers born and raised in the US AND tech workers that want to immigrate to the US than the logic of applying that axiom becomes fundamentally questionable.
The US is the richest country on earth, or was… it is a lie the oligarchs and ruling class tell us that we cannot afford to pay US workers a living wage, tech workers or otherwise and it is a further lie that hopeful immigrants (tech workers or not) are a threat to the wellbeing of the US, far from it, immigrants are certainly the lifeblood of this country if there is anything still yet redeemable to it.
That is what you don’t realize or refuse to realize.
This is NOT a zero sum game between tech workers who want to immigrate to the US and tech workers who were born and raised in the US.
The future is a shared solidarity not an increasing division, don’t take my word for it, notice rather that large corporations favor this kind of atomization of workers into nationalisms, it makes the job of people oppressing workers in the US and abroad far easier when we take your perspective.
I am not disputing the details of anything you are necessarily saying, what I am saying is that you are even still leaning into the lie that there isn’t enough decent work to gone around for all of us.
You need to get that out of your head, fundamentally, before we can begin to envision a humane path forward for tech work in the US, either for immigrants or people born and raised in the US.
Well yes, but understand this is the function of gamepass being so cheap at the moment, to convince you temporarily that it is in your best interests as a consumer to rent video games rather than buy them because for now massive corporations like Microsoft are artifically holding the consumer price of these subscription services low to entice enough customers to buy in that they can then turn around and destroy other methods of earning a living in the video game industry as anything but a tiny indie game studio and waves wand with flourish all of a sudden the video game industry sucks even more than it used to and you have to watch ads every 10 seconds even though you are paying more for gamepass “premium crystal edition” than you do for all your streaming TV services combined…
Look if that is the future y’all want, great, but just be honest about it at least?