Considering the amount of gambling, exploitative practices, dark patterns, etc that exists in modern live-service games - saying that comes across as rather disingenuous.
It is good to hear this particular live-service game is bucking some of the recent trends, but I think it is safe to say these types of games, in general, have done damage to the industry and the wallets and minds of players. Enjoy yourselves, but be cautious and don’t let your guard down because these companies will screw you if they think they can. We have seen it so many times.
Nah, fuck them. They thought they could get away with this predatory debt-trap system that was marketed at children and they are clearly salty that they got caught. Not to mention the whole idea of not even owning your own PC or the data within which would set a bad precedent for everyone everywhere.
There are so many competitors in the industry NZXT operates in; it would be very easy to avoid ever buying their stuff again. And I intend to do just that. Get bankrupted, you pieces of shit.
And they are using paid influencers to promote said debt trap to those that don’t know any better, particularly children.
Probably the most insidious part of this to me. Seeing those clips of “influencers” pushing the idea of convincing your parents to get you a rental PC. Disgusting.
Same. I’m still pissed that 2020 was left in the state it is in with tons of its own bugs and missing features that were promised. I remember talking to a friend and saying that MSFS2020 was a cool flight sim but still had the vibe of an early-access game at times… and then they drop an announcement for 2024.
Turns out that a massive Earth-scale game that requires streaming of gigabytes worth of data every play session for each user and has next to no local storage is a really awful idea.
Agreed. TES just hasn’t had good world design and lore since Morrowind. If I remember correctly, he also wrote much of the books in the TES universe which are still used in Skyrim.
ESO might be an exception. I don’t think it has the best writing but it does have much more interesting lore and world design than Oblivion and Skyrim.
Agreed. Modding doesn’t “fix” Skyrim either. It adds surface-level content and tweaks but the fundamental bones of the game are still there and they are heavily flawed. One of the few exceptions I can think of are things like Skywind but that’s only because it removes Skyrim’s story entirely, overhauls many of its mechanics, and uses the world/lore/story of one of Bethesda’s better games.
And in the case of Starfield - it’s entirely beyond salvaging with mods. Mods will not be able to fix the biggest problems with that game because they are literally the very way the game was made. To fix them would require basically remaking the entire game from scratch.
They can take as long as they want. After Starfield, I have zero confidence that TES6 will be any good. Bethesda has some serious issues they need to sort out with their production pipelines and methodology and they need to rethink how they approach story-driven open world experiences.
Every time I see a Starfield video and see the camera turbozoom in on a character as they deliver a forced, robotic line with terrifying facial animations - I get teleported right back to 2006. It is very obvious this studio does not know what they are doing and has learned little from their previous releases and from other contemporary games.
With all the studio buyouts, closures, layoffs, etc to pile on top of all the usual greedy macrotransaction crap - it’s really hard to give a shit about games right now. Seriously, the only upcoming game I’m even remotely interested in is Tiny Glade.