My post came out more victim blaming than I meant. “how to get people to stop paying for exploitive games” might be regulation or education. I don’t have an answer.
On the other hand, casinos have been around forever so maybe we’re stuck as long as we’re human.
It’s frustrating because like … people could just not spend money on garbage. Like there are exploitive games that make a ton of money, right? How do we get people to stop spending money on them?
We probably can’t because many people are morons who can’t pass the marshmallow test.
This is neat. I don’t know if I’d stick with it enough to justify paying, but I like the idea. Also big fan of one time purchase options instead of a subscription
Outlier in that my favorite was doom 1. Probably its second episode was my favorite, but they’re all good.
The graphics at the time were amazing. The skyboxes for some reason really made an impression on me. There’s like green mountains in the background of episode 1 I think. As a kid I used to think about exploring them.
The first time I beat the third episode without cheats, I finished off the spider mastermind with exactly 1% health left. Memorable as shit. (I think the game might do the thing where the last few percents of health count more, so it feels exciting when you just barely hang on. If so, it worked.)
I remember thinking my older cousin was so cool because he could clear all the levels without cheats.
Playing it now with mouse look and wasd it’s a much easier game, but back then as a child with keyboard only it was daunting.
Doom2’s level design had more confusing and frustrating parts for me. Also I didn’t get a copy of it until several years later, so it didn’t have the full magic of youth.
Doom 3 I don’t remember very well. I liked it but it didn’t have staying power.
I didn’t finish the new dooms. They’re fine but I never really clicked with them.
I got a girlfriend a long time ago to give the game a shot. She had played stuff before- she was playing BioShock on Xbox when we met. The rats by the big drake on the bridge literally made her cry. Felt pretty bad.
(We did eventually finish the game together in co-op, but we’re long since broken up for largely unrelated reasons)
Pillars of Eternity is very good. The writing is fun and I liked a lot of the classes. Especially Cipher.
I think the second one is better though. You get a ship! And the powers are per-fight instead of per-rest, so you don’t have to worry about camping much at all. Also multiclassing is fun. I wasn’t a heavy optimizer but my rogue/monk just punched stuff into chunks.
I don’t really like looking at men. Yeah, the Witcher games are pretty alright but Geralt is kind of boring for me to watch. Given a choice between watching a buff dude throw a goblin at another goblin in bg3, or a buff woman do the same? Probably want to see the woman. Maybe it’s just low grade ambient horniness.
I never think of the character in a game as “me”. I had a friend who would always make himself. White guy with short hair and a short beard. That’s not for me. I don’t want to watch myself get blown up, stabbed, eaten by a dragon, whatever.
I don’t like when games feel like they’re just giving me eye candy or lazy titillation, though.The whole bikini armor thing I’m not into. Someone else mentioned they hate heels. Same.
Seems very good. It’s wvw reset night right now. There’s a 16 person queue to get into the eternal battlegrounds map, and <10 on the other ones. Non reset nights the wvw maps are usually active with the occasional queue. I do a fair amount of wvw. The other night we had a wild 40 v40 v~40 fight in the garrison. Great stuff.
For PvE stuff, there’s almost always people doing the meta events. I never had trouble getting a group for fractals or strikes. Raids I see sometimes in the LFG tool, but I only do them with a training guild I joined.
Also, with PvE they added megaservers a while ago so it doesn’t matter what “server” you’re on. For WvW, they’re supposedly implementing guild-based matches instead, but that’s been in the works for a while.
I haven’t seen anything new and exciting on sale. Some stuff I already have is on sale, though. BG3 is great. Pillars of Eternity is also great.
I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 a lot. It’s on sale. New expansion came out recently. It’s the only MMO that doesn’t piss me off. Feels like an actual video game.
My time at sand rock is kind of like stardew, but 3d and I liked it better. I haven’t tried the multiplayer , but the single player was fun.
Baldur’s gate 3 is a huge game of the year smash hit. Good coop. Turn based combat. Local split screen. Probably turn the difficulty down if you don’t care for DND rules and just have fun.
Audio surf I believe has co-op. It’s a fun little toy of a game, but not very deep. You steer a car over a track generated from your music