general gaming

[mossy flume]

Oh, awesome!

I have that too

[astral steeple]

I'm not

[little badger]

[mossy flume]

I love it :3

[fickle garnet]

I know, I was joking

[mossy flume]

I also have the SR2 variant

[little badger]

If we get mass effect news at the game awards it’ll be

[mossy flume]

I'm skeptical we'll hear much

[fresh bane]

Everytime I see one of these videos I can't stop thinking about that meme of someone going ''gaming isn't fun anymore starter pack'' and it shows their Steam library with just COD MWII, FIFA 23, GTA V, CS2 and a pre-ordered Fallout 76

[mossy flume]

Might be another year, I guess

[slim thorn]

you should've switched to the contract for telling everyone how great E33 is like the rest of us did

[mossy flume]

Given what they've said this year

[little badger]

4 years ago https://youtu.be/Lg-Ctg6k_Ao?si=H49pHh6IpC2Ren-W

[astral steeple]

I just find it funny for someone to say that competitive gaming and optional microtransactions etc ruin games when they really don't

It's only when they're implemented badly that its an issue

[fresh bane]

I mean that's true for most things

[mossy flume]

And then they did something like 2 years of preproduction, it sounds like?

[fresh bane]

for almost any thing, really

[mossy flume]

That trailer was a recruitment announcement, bascially

Going to be such a long wait

[slim thorn]

yeah I want to be empathetic to this whole argument since it's clearly a serious problem if your favorite kinds of games are e.g. multiplayer shooters... but when your argument includes "literally every game is like this" when every game I play is not, that kinda rules out any interpretation besides "touch grass/other games"

[little badger]

It’s probably still in early ish development. Maybe a level would be shown I wouldn’t mind it

[mossy flume]

Yeah

2, maybe even 3 years of preprod

[little badger]

I miss the old mass effect days

[mossy flume]

Probably took them a while to get the script done

[slim thorn]

(especially when I still have a seemingly endless backlog of more games which are not like that)

[little badger]

Imagine we got a Krogan boss fight

I liked andromeda but it was all over the place at times.

[wind stump]

In most cases they are.
You have limited-time events that give a feeling of FOMO, buying in-game currency that dimmishes the actual cost of what you're buying, making some purchases just under what you might want so you overspend getting the next largest pack, incentive to engage with the game even if you don't want to because "Well I already bought the battle pass" and other Sunk Cost Falicy stuff that causes you to be attached like a barnacle.

[light gate]

Didn’t Fortnite just had a FOMO event where an entire scripted cutscene is played real time and you interact with it? Only for that cutscene to never be replayed ever again?

[fickle garnet]

That's how Fortnite's in game events have always been and it's stupid you can't replay them

[light gate]

Yeah, and I really like the Simpsons collab but I can’t finish that in a month.

[astral steeple]

A lot of games recently are adding or have already added a thing where you can buy the exact amount of the currency you need instead of having to buy the packs

Fall guys and rocket league etc already have it

[wind stump]

Yeah I'm not doing this again.

[astral steeple]

Also i mean yeah the big live events are generally a one time thing because it's concluding the chapter itself to move onto the next one

Wouldn't make sense to be able to replay it at any time

[wind stump]

[astral steeple]

It's a big special narrative moment

[light gate]

Its a special moment that will be forever gone and if anyone missed their chance, it’ll sting them for the rest of time.

I don’t like that.

Sorry.

[astral steeple]

I mean that's how life is

[slim thorn]

let's cut down on the passive aggessive emojis and just say the thing

[astral steeple]

That'd be like getting upset because weddings are generally a one time special moment lol

[light gate]

I don’t want to continue this further but I’ll say that these are games, and they don’t need to expire.

[cerulean herald]

yeah its like, "late to the party? screw you for not being into the game earlier"

[quiet swift]

Let's not have this conversation again, instead. Neither side is ever going to convince each other, we've seen it happen like a dozen bloody times already

[fickle garnet]

You can play story games multiple times, so I don't see how it doesn't make sense

[slim thorn]

when the response to "they're doing <100 bad things>" is "but 1 of those things is optional now", even if technically correct, presenting it as some kind of defense it mostly makes you look dismissive of the other 99 and how bad those are

[fresh bane]

It wouldn't, you're right, but do you at least understand that that's why a lot of people don't like these games and how that's an inherent problem with the game design of these types of games for a lot of people?

[slim thorn]

also the complaint against time-gated content is not that nothing in life is ever time-gated, it's against artifically adding that gate when it had no reason to exist besides incentivizing people to spend money

[random steppe]

I mean, I don't like how some games do things a lot of the time, but I don't think that anyone here that was at the launch of a big expansion of a MMO; can argue that there aren't ingame events in some of their games that are pretty much unique in the life of the game.
I was there at the start of Burning Crusade in WoW to name but one.

[slim thorn]

no one complains about LAN parties and other multiplayer game events that are genuinely one-time only because they require other people to be around to do the event

[astral steeple]

Also with the battle passes they literally made it so 18 months after a season ends the cosmetics will be in the shop

That took effect last August

They're no longer exclusive

[random steppe]

That's probably good

[light gate]

That is good

[astral steeple]

Any pass from then till after

[light gate]

Still, if you paid the pass… I feel like you should retain the quests so you can unlock it.

[random steppe]

Yeah it makes sense, since they sold the other ones for real money in BPs under the impression they'd stay exclusive, they can't probably make those older skins sold differently

[light gate]

Like imagine how cool would it be to pay the pass and unlock it without being stressed over the time.

Its almost like if they were quests.

[random steppe]

Yeah I like that approach to BPs personally

I don't thnk it's the only way to do it, but I think it's the most ethical way to do it

[light gate]

Yeah…

Its not perfect but its a farcry better than current implementation.

That way I don’t have to hate myself for being unable to play and missed all the stuff.

[astral steeple]

The season system generally works

Wouldn't make much sense having simpsons quests when the simpsons season is over in a completely unrelated season with none of the same locations etc

[random steppe]

I get that you usually have specific challenges that change per BP, but they could just make it if you are working on an older BP, you get one extra generic challenge each cycle that you put towards one of you older BPs you didn't complete.

[astral steeple]

The quests are usually specific yeah

[random steppe]

So you wouldn't have a simpson challenge, you'd have a "kill 10 players" that gives you points to whatever BP you selected as your active older BPs

[light gate]

And I say this knowing I have BF6 BP (yeah I did eventually cave again due to friends wanting to play it so bad, sorry) but even I feel exhausted knowing they gonna do another season and its gonna be an annoying grind.

Like I want to support the game’s life but not this way

[random steppe]

There are ways to do it, I don't think that the fact that they don't do it is uniquely horrible, and that approach does encounter other problems, like the fact that you might buy BPs you don't finish even when you are not playing the game to get around to it eventually

But that's just Steam business model anyway

With extra steps

[light gate]

Yep

We shouldn’t hurt ourselves for something that is supposed to be fun.

[river veldt]

fortnite is interesting because for like a little over a year i really liked playing it but then i stopped playing after it started feeling like a chore 😔

[light gate]

Welcome to the club

[random steppe]

That's pretty common for most Games as a Service

The daily quest fatigue has been a phenomenon since the WoW reputation grinds of like 2007

[astral steeple]

I've never really had to grind at all

I've just played normally and unlocked everything

Granted its the only game I play but still lol

[light gate]

Meanwhile I’ve been playing Bf6 like a freak because the game is almost sandbox like military shooter.

There is battle royale but most of the community seems to care little lmao.

[river veldt]

i havent played consistently since like, 2019 i think

if it ran on Steam Deck without having to install windows that would be cool and maybe would bring me back

[astral steeple]

Them adding the zero build mode also helps lol

I always hated the building mechanic

Super annoying to use

[light gate]

Like this is such cool moments that never are exclusive, but are always great to see them on occasion.

[mossy flume]

That’s precisely what games as a service are tuned to. The idea is that as long as you don’t split your attention away from it to other things, you’ll likely get most if not everything out of it and it’s paced precisely to that degree of time and attention investment. It punishes those who don’t or can’t by design.
Welcome to the economics of game design 101.

[proud warren]

I have yet to meet an individual who said they liked the building mechanic in any way shape or form

I guess that streak stays ongoing

[river veldt]

i thought the building mechanic was what made Fortnite so unique tbh

[light gate]

I liked it during Fortnite’s BR Beta test.

But it has gotten way too fast

And too chaotic

[mossy flume]

I would explicitly explain more of my previous statement, but others have mostly figured it out already and I’m busy making lunch and thus on my phone.

[light gate]

I should eat

[cerulean herald]

yeah its not viable for people who play other stuff (or have other hobbies) or dont have much free time in general

[astral steeple]

It has a super steep learning curve

So most people who started later than 2017 weren't able to keep up

Them switching towards the everything game angle made it so much better lol

[mossy flume]

But otherwise if you want to better understand what I mean by everything in my earlier post, I’d recommend picking up books on commercial game design. You’ll learn a lot about why live service games are the way they are and why gaming today feels so much like a chore. (This is a general recommendation to everyone, I can pick out specific books later)

[random steppe]

That's Games as a service in general.
There is that one dude that is playing WarThuder since 2012 I'm sure, every GaaS has some of them.
I think the interesting thing is that we kind of got to some hard caps on how many games a player can realistically keep up with and actually not burn out

[light gate]

I think live service games can be ethical.

But its not common

[mossy flume]

I’m not convinced that they can be.

Maybe

But I’m not fully convinced

[light gate]

It needs proper exploration

[mossy flume]

No Man’s Sky’s model, perhaps. But they’re frankly an anomaly.

[random steppe]

Warframe is pretty fair IMO, but we have to accept that, if you are not buying the game, they will make money somewhere

[slim thorn]

we know it's possible because almost none of these complaints apply to the earliest live service games, like the early MMOs

[proud warren]

Are you saying the potential is there, but just not yet found?

[slim thorn]

the problem is that in the current market, they have incredibly powerful incentives to be unethical

[mossy flume]

Yep. You might say that my earlier comment contradicts the MMOs I play, but it almost completely doesn’t.

[slim thorn]

I don't see that changing until the general public cares enough to push politicians into passing legislation on issues like this so all live service games have to meet similar standards of basic decency

[river veldt]

i just remembered that Garry is making s&box
strange

[proud warren]

It pays to not care about the gaming experience

[slim thorn]

...or until whales go extinct, if that's possible

[random steppe]

I do think we moved in a good direction already personally, with the downfall of random elements...
except for gacha

Those have gotten worse

But it's really the one subgenere with massive amounts of random elements nowdays

[light gate]

Yeah, mainly because corporate refuses to reach ethical as they want infinite growth. But some other more ethical companies could change this and improve the design for good.

I have hope for a better middle ground.

[river veldt]

gotcha rhymes with gacha

coincidence ?

[slim thorn]

supposedly even gacha games got some Chinese regulation for mandatory pity systems, but I've never been able to find a clear citation for that (and we'd want way more than that before calling them "ethical")

[proud warren]

There are examples of non-preditory gachas, but the existence of those are sooo few and far between

[random steppe]

I need an example

[astral steeple]

S&box wanted to be the sequel to gmod but at one point they tried stopping third party ip stuff from being put into the game

The thing that literally made gmod popular to begin with

[cerulean herald]

huh, thats a very interesting way to spell "sandbox"

[random steppe]

I think there are less predatory gachas, that I agree

[quiet swift]

https://euperspectives.eu/2025/11/developers-push-back-the-digital-fairness-act/ and meanwhile

[fresh bane]

This is a personal opinion of mine but it's really funny to hear you say that because the building mechanic was literally the only thing that separated Fortnite from any other battle royale clone and made it unique and gave it an identity of its own and added another layer of technicality that players could learn to be better at the game, so hearing someone say they'd rather play the version of Fortnite that makes it function basically like any other battle royale and would make it no different from just playing PUBG or COD Warzone is really funny to me

but I guess that's par for the course for Fortnite considering its identity now is just parasiting off of other franchises' identities while having no identity of its own

(again that's just me)

[random steppe]

Oh wait, if you are talking about DNA, I agree, well no I don't, but it's A LOT better in a measurable way

[river veldt]

s&box looks interesting and it's cool that it's Source 2 but i'm still not big on the character models

[bronze abyss]

wholeheartedly agree

[astral steeple]

The intended direction since 2017 was becoming the everything game

After they realized the game itself was a good base to do it on

[random steppe]

I think at the point they introduced "no build", Fortnite did have its own identity enough that even without building elements, people wanted to play fortnite rather than those other games...
Like I know to us it just sounds an aesthetic clusterfuck, but the fact that you can meet hatsune miku and peter griffin in the same game is actually a draw for a lot of people that play it.

[slim thorn]

the aesthetic clusterfuck is Fortnite's identity now

[quiet swift]

They and Roblox have clocked in to user generated content that the company can monetize is the future

[slim thorn]

clearly Arianna likes it

while most of us are not interested

and there's not really anything else to say about that

[cerulean herald]

roblox is really bad with the whole robux monetization

[light gate]

Roblox used to be ok

Now its…

[astral steeple]

Yeah they've straight up said many times now that the whole idea has always been that it's like you're playing with action figures on your floor as a kid

[proud warren]

Let's not get into the issues going on with the company rn

[light gate]

Yeah

[astral steeple]

That was what they always wanted it to be

[quiet swift]

And despite that, while money to finance making games is overall drying up, roblox is one of the only things that is on a continued upward trend vs the rest of the industry

[random steppe]

(I lowkey have zero interest to games like Smash Bros for the same reason I do not care about Fortnite mix and match aesthetic, but people seem to like that one)

[light gate]

Fighting genre is complicated

It requires a lot of time and patience

[slim thorn]

it probably helps that every Smash Bros character comes with unique gameplay

[random steppe]

I have low interest for fighting games in general that's true, but if I had to play one smash would be at the absolute bottom of the pile for me

[cerulean herald]

smash bros also doesnt use a health bar, just a percentage meter thingy

[bronze abyss]

stamina system its called

[cerulean herald]

[slim thorn]

and that Smash Bros itself was innovative enough to start a whole subgenre (Fortnite arguably could've been with the building mechanic but obviously that's not what happened)

[light gate]

That is technically a “health bar” but all it does is increase like the momentum of being yeeted at mach 12.

[fresh bane]

It's a whole topic but I wouldn't even count Smash Bros as a fighting game just because it's so different from the usual idea people have of a fighting game, but it's a topic people that know more about fighting games than I do have debated for years anyway

[slim thorn]

also Smash Bros has none of the predatory monetization and live service practices

I'm not interested in fighting games either but at least it's easy to see why there's such a difference

[light gate]

For now

[random steppe]

Well, arguably Fortnite did popularize the genre

[cerulean herald]

well ig the closest thing was the DLC fighters

[random steppe]

Even tho they weren't first to do it

[proud warren]

dont give Nintendo ideas man

[slim thorn]

I think it popularized monetization more than battle royales lol

[light gate]

Remember locked dlc on the disc

[random steppe]

Them and PUBG were the big dogs in town

[mossy flume]

PUBG was perhaps the first?

[slim thorn]

battle royale was hardly an unpopular format before it came along

[cerulean herald]

smash bros now has season/battle passes

[mossy flume]

I’m pretty sure PUBG was the first to popularize it, at any rate.

[slim thorn]

that's what I've always heard yeah

[mossy flume]

Fortnite was an accident.

[river veldt]

do people still play PUBG

[mossy flume]

Yes

[random steppe]

Fortnite did grow way past pubg though, I definitely think that the reason most companies at least considered puting out a BR was Fortnite

[bronze abyss]

h1z1

[light gate]

Fortnite really was an accident lmao

[mossy flume]

Ah yes

[random steppe]

PUBG was the first big one

[astral steeple]

Fortnite itself also kinda changed gaming immensely by heavily pushing for cross progression and cross platform multiplayer

Now it's the standard for a lot of games

[random steppe]

The original formula was an Arma 3 mod

[river veldt]

what's h1z1

[light gate]

Uhh

[fresh bane]

I don't think most people even remember that the battle royale mode was added afterwards for Fortnite and the original gamemode was a tower defense style game

[light gate]

A dead battle royale game

[bronze abyss]

generic grounded battle royale with guns n shit

[slim thorn]

fwiw I knew this

[fresh bane]

I think they realized really quick that if they kept that as the default the game would die so they hopped on the battle royale trend and it ended up working out well for them

too well

[mossy flume]

Yep. Thus why I said this.

[random steppe]

Yes, I remember when it released and failed like a month after, then they kitbashed together a whole different game, and were widly successful with it

[mossy flume]

Fortnite got popular because of a throwaway side mode

[bronze abyss]

did save the world even ever leave early access?

[random steppe]

Massive props to them, it does require a lot of skill to nail a formula that hard in a very short time

[astral steeple]

It's still in early access and is locked behind a 18 dollar pack lol

[mossy flume]

Epic Games pivoted hard on it, they weren’t even considering it to be a major product

[random steppe]

It wasn't a sidemode, it basically relaunched.

[light gate]

yikes

[mossy flume]

They just stumbled upon success there

[astral steeple]

Its basically unfinished story wise

After like the 4th zone

[random steppe]

Well it was purposeful, they noticed this up and coming genre and remade a game that had failed into that genre, it does take skill to do that, even though the foundamental idea wasn't theirs.

And it did have unique elements

The destructable enviorment and building mechanics were theirs

But still, it's easy to execute on an idea badly, especially when your constraints are "this pile of junk we launched and it completely bombed is the base for this game"

[slim thorn]

not every games company has an already-failed multiplayer shooter just lying around to conveniently retool into a new subgenre of shooting; they saw an opportunity and took it which was smart

[light gate]

I still remember what I said when I was playing the beta for BR before it released…

“This is gonna be big”

[astral steeple]

Iirc it originally took like 2 months after the 2017 save the world launch for them to develop the br mode

[light gate]

Shame Fortnite overheated my PC

If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably be an old school fortnite user.

[slim thorn]

and by the time the other big trend-chasing publishers could pivot, Fortnite had beaten them to it, and they discovered the hard way that players can only have one lifestyle game at a time

[random steppe]

TBH right now my prime concerns are gachas, Fortnite sure, it has some dark patterns but it's like, not nearly as completely and utterly fucked as the average gacha is.

[slim thorn]

if there were some decent legal limits on how predatory monetization could be, there'd be nothing to object to in this story, just businesses competing at business

[quiet swift]

All this has done is remind me to grab this week's free game on epic

[light gate]

You still do that?

I don’t even have Epic launcher installed.

[random steppe]

Most people here don't play them so they don't have the context of how actually evil those pieces of software actually are.

[river veldt]

i think i own New Vegas on epic launcher

[quiet swift]

Don't need to, I just do it on the website

[river veldt]

that might be it

[slim thorn]

one of my friends plays gacha so I get to ask lots of questions about the evilness
which always makes it funny when she drops a gacha because it's too evil

[light gate]

Oh, well I don’t even bother since their client is pretty awful.

[quiet swift]

There's still a few gems to grab here and there, I just do it weekly 'cause why the heck not

[river veldt]

what is a dark pattern

i feel like ive heard that term before

[astral steeple]

Overall fort has been pushing more towards consumer friendly stuff than previously

Granted a lot of that was probably from the lawsuits

[slim thorn]

broadly speaking, UX patterns designed to help the company at the expense of the user

[mossy flume]

They had the advantage of being their own engine developer as well. Means they could graft on new engine fetures for the purpose of building out Fortnite. Which they did. A lot.

[cerulean herald]

I just 🏴‍☠️ lmao

[light gate]

The 30% stunt was wild

[river veldt]

ah

[random steppe]

Like, we talked about FOMO, that's a vanilla dark pattern

[slim thorn]

a classic example is UIs that are designed to make you accidentally click on things you didn't want to click on

[river veldt]

so many nods

[astral steeple]

The apple thing?

[quiet swift]

Or the one most people know without really realizing it, is how easy it is to subscribe, but you need 50983509 steps to cancel

[slim thorn]

oooh I like "roach motel"

[mossy flume]

Or even must making the hitboxes unrelated to the GUI layout. Which is a thing that mobile devs do these days for the purpose of gaslighting you into thinking you missed the "x" button.

In a lot of cases, you didn't miss.

[slim thorn]

yeah this is the entire reason I stopped paying for more than ~3 subscription services

[quiet swift]

The worst offenders are the ones where you have to call to cancel

[slim thorn]

I'm fortunate enough to be able to pay for everything I consume, but when you make it that hard, nothing's worth the time cost of dealing with you any more

[mossy flume]

Or the hitbox requiring multiple hits and hit 1 calling one function while hit 2 calls the close function.

[astral steeple]

Subscription wise all I really pay for is game pass ultimate and that's it

[random steppe]

i liked the apple lawsuit, I like when walled gardens get challenged.

[astral steeple]

Yes

[cerulean herald]

last time I played amobile game, clicking the X just took me to the playstore

[random steppe]

May have been not completely sound but it did get results

[cerulean herald]

[quiet swift]

At the risk of going against R2, there was legislature in the works to force companies to stop the roach motel process, but that's since been scrapped because you know why

[mossy flume]

While in some ways Epic Games had a point, in a lot of others, they really really didn't.

But that's a whole thing

[light gate]

Yeah.

Most companies had 30% as the average fee. Then suddenly Epic starts suing Apple because it was too high and got banned for attempting to skip it, then Google got sued and somehow lost, then the idea shifted to opening their own app store which I’m like ok whatever, but they just kept pushing so many things that now its a bit of weird mess.

[random steppe]

My favourite change is that now every company shows the chances when you open anything that is up to chance.

That basically made looboxes evaporate from existence in the vast majority of games

[astral steeple]

I mean yeah somebody had to go after apple being dumb lol

They just happened to be the only big company willing to do it

[mossy flume]

I'm severely unimpressed with Epic Games and their Apple and Google lawsuits. Because they started it as a publicity stunt. "Oh look, we willfully and brazenly violated the terms of service and we got BANNED! How EVIL of Apple to do that!! How DARE they ban us for breaking the binding developer agreements that we had agreed to!"

[quiet swift]

And replaced with what we have now which is arguably worse

[astral steeple]

That was intentional

[light gate]

It was fun to watch the chaos tho

[astral steeple]

They knew apple was gonna ban them

[mossy flume]

And let's not pretend that they did it for selfless reasons

[random steppe]

What in particular is worse?

OW specifically yes

[quiet swift]

Just direct buy cosmetics that are wildly overpriced. With loot boxes, you could still arguably beat the odds and get it on the first box. Extremely unlikely but not impossible

[random steppe]

I prefer it with the price upfront

[river veldt]

i remember the weird ad Epic did parodying the iconic Macintosh ad

[mossy flume]

Ah yes, loot boxes are rather disgusting exploitation as well.

[astral steeple]

Directly buying cosmetics and knowing the prices is 1000x better than loot boxes

[quiet swift]

I mean when you're looking at 50$ + cosmetics

[astral steeple]

Lootboxes are gambling

[mossy flume]

Gambling for children, even

They skirt around gambling laws

[random steppe]

I feel like no matter what it's less exploitative.

The problem is that especially in OW looboxes felt more rewarding than what they replaced them with

But that's their failure for not providing a substitute

[river veldt]

Overwatch 4: this time it's personal

[mossy flume]

The thing is that I know how to make a really evil game. If I wasn't just personally disgusted by the idea I know how I could make a ton of money and make a small game studio that makes use of at least thirty dark patterns in a product... I'd have no concerns with spinning up a business to do that because I'd definitely be able to make it work. I'm just morally opposed to that. >_>
Heck, Peach Hack and I accidentally made a slot machine once.

We just did something we thought was cool and we were asked to do, so we made a neat presentation and after a couple hours of showing it to people I realized what we had done

[slim thorn]

it is surprisingly easy to do these things by accident

of course pumping millions into it and never putting any safeguards on it is something else

[random steppe]

Ok so, DIgital Extremes made cats happen in Warframe at some point
You could spend real money currency to reroll your cat appearence for a while

Normally it gets rolled based on genetics, and if you want another appearence you had to breed another cat

They did remove that, in like a month, after they saw some people were rolling that shit 200 times a day

[mossy flume]

(The AI generated ponies we sold at EFNW and BronyCon in 2019, incidentally. And before you get all angry, we were actually asked by the con chairs to do that. And by a ton of pony artists. This was before the anti-AI sentiment had started and we weren't in any way shape or form misrepresenting what it was, it was obviously bad AI art because that was the whole gimmick. We would not do that today.)

[slim thorn]

I remember "this pony does not exist", was that related at all?

[mossy flume]

We beat them to that, yeah.

[astral steeple]

That reminds me that I still need to figure out unreal engine at some point to try and make a game lol

[light gate]

I mean, I still would rather play at a casino for the potential of getting more money than gambling on lootbox skins that I don’t own and the servers can go down at any time.

[mossy flume]

The person who owned that domain came up to us a little annoyed because we did it first XD

We did not profit off of it, incidentally

[river veldt]

this pony does exist

[mossy flume]

The sales were literally just to cover material costs, but we were still net negative (profit was not the point)

[random steppe]

Just to be clear, most of those are horrifying nightmare creatures.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ILNYBNyOjY4

[wind stump]

What da cat doin?

[random steppe]

That's a vampire cat, because that's silly

[slim thorn]

what is Warframe

[random steppe]

1 sec

Let me grab a quote from the creative director

https://youtu.be/Q0eKXiIjS7Y?t=49

[wind stump]

A MISERABLE LITTLE PILE OF SECRETS

[random steppe]

Also, the best part of all of warframe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dFdyg2G3Yk
You are welcome

[mossy flume]

True

[wind stump]

I dived a bit deeper and both of them trying to turn away as soon as they saw the "FUCK YOU"

Man why did I bounce off of Warframe?

[random steppe]

Joking aside though, Warframe is a Free to Play looter shooter, which has a pretty okay monetisation structure, where everything is earnable in game, except cosmetics, and is surprisingly story heavy for its genre
It's science fiction as you might expect when the backdrop is the solar system in possibly the far future where various factions are in conflict for the control of the fallen Orokin empire, and you play as a Space """"ninja"""" and play in various kind of missions for and against those factions

The best part is that the dev team is fucking hilarious

[mossy flume]

"Oh yeah, we could just have a big TV show off a set of designs all the time, up to 3 minutes at a time per design, change them one at a time every 30 seconds, and people at the booth can decide to claim one as a sticker or button printed right there or just have the file emailed to them if they want it. And it could be like a "Don't have a pony OC? Get a unique, never-before-seen one here!" sort of thing. That'll be pretty fun."

we ended up with a bunch of people pulling up chairs and blocking the walkway because they wouldn't stop staring at the constantly changing display of AI ponies
"Oh fuck, it's a slot machine"

[random steppe]

Also it has the voice actor of Astarion ||playing a giant talking fish||

[wind stump]

this is the part where i blame ffxiv but...

also oh god, nearly 50gb

[light gate]

Still smaller than warzone

[hasty patio]

You also forgot the Stalker VA too.

[wind stump]

Warzone came out later, to be fair.

[light gate]

Yeah I know

[mossy flume]

Isn't Warframe also a F2P live service game?

[light gate]

Yus

[random steppe]

Yes it is

[mossy flume]

Alas

[slim thorn]

Gen basically said that yeah

[wind stump]

and that's the only time in my life that "warzone" and "to be fair" will be in the same sentence out of my mouth.

... aside from that.

[light gate]

Lmao

I find it crazy that the BF6 story missions are somehow better than the BO7 ones.

Someone ate the crazy hamburger

[wind stump]

too much of the stupid sauce

[random steppe]

TBH the game do expect to pay something at some poitn to enjoy it fully, but as I said, if you play a F2P game you have to expect it to get its money somewhere
And to be fair, if you are a big grinder, you can trade with other players for the premium currency, so you can play it F2P and have access to cosmetics and all the other shit too.

[wind stump]

player markets are the only good way to run a F2P game

[random steppe]

It's just that if you are an adult, it's probably like, better for you to spend a few bucks once you get a big platinum cupon once rather than grind for platinum

But it's technically possible, I have like 1k platinum in my balance currently and the only reason I don't have more is that I don't need them, I could very easly sell more stuff and get them at any point

[wind stump]

Then again I'm an on and off TF2 player, I am a tad biased in the player ecomony idea.

[fickle garnet]

I tried Warframe, but didn't play much of it. I'm not really sure why

[wind stump]

How much is 1k plat worth, exactly?

[random steppe]

The calculation is always gonna be skewed since most people buy them when they have 50% off or 75% off coupons but lemme check

1k is the 45€ pack on the market not discounted.
I never bought platinum not discounted though and I assume the vast majority of the community doesn't unless they are IDK; Saudi princes or some shit

So realistically, factor in between a 50 and 75% discount

The reason I say that buyin some of it is almost necessary, is because there are limites slots for weapons and warframes in the game.
You do earn more of them overtime, but like, they are a big fun limiting factor right? You want more warframes and weapons because they are dictating your playstile, so you can get plat ingame by trading but if you have a job, you realistically are gonna drop something at some point anyway.

I would say that Warframe is more of a "some amount of money" game that let you start for free for a few months before it asks for the price, or at least that's my assessment.
Or at least that's gonna be the experience for most people that don't drop it

[wind stump]

The reason I say that buyin some of it is almost necessary
Sounds like TF2 alright, with some of the alternate weapons being near necessities.

though like the buy-in is like, $2.50 for a key to get all the weapons if you don't care about cosmetics

[random steppe]

The weapons are all obrainable ingame, same as the frames

Everything that gives power is an ingame thing

You are buying slots with the plat as a largely F2P player, so the ability to have more variety sooner than waiting to get those slots the way the game gives them out to you

[wind stump]

Which is nice and good and god i wish games did this nowdays

[slim thorn]

meanwhile I'm the type of player where even that level of monetization is an instant turn off

not a moral objection per se, just that it's usually the game's job to balance when it gives me more mechanics and equipment, and I have every reason to believe I'd do a worse job at it than the game's own designers

[gaunt marten]

I would do a lot better than the game's own designers because I'm the me designer

[random steppe]

I have some patience for it as long as the game is at least F2p

There is a switch that changes for me when I haven't paid for the game, I accept that the price is to be bothered in some other way

If I paid for the game if you show me a shop I'm probably out

[random steppe]

If you ever go back HC send me a DM; I like playing with new players, I have a few buff builds that don't just nuke the whole map for new players.

Specifically for those situations

[wind stump]

I would ask if 8 hours is new but then again it's a live service game

[random steppe]

I have so many hours in this game that I actively don't want to show that

It stopped being a reasonable number a few thousand hours ago

[wind stump]

dw i have no shame anymore

[random steppe]

I do leave games open a lot though to be fair

And I did start playing 11 years ago

So there are mitigating circumstances

[wind stump]

[gaunt marten]

This game has a button you can click to hide hours played so you don't feel bad

[random steppe]

I feel that

[wind stump]

You should beat that last quest.

[gaunt marten]

It's 178

[wind stump]

oh, i can't read

[random steppe]

No it's a bad font, that's different

[gaunt marten]

No the font is really bad.

Quests marked MQ are miniquests and don't count in scoring

[river veldt]

Flitter have you sailed yet

[gaunt marten]

Hell yeah I did

[river veldt]

hell yeah

[gaunt marten]

I'm level 47 sailing. Did you see my boat?

[river veldt]

no i haven't

[gaunt marten]

Hold on, I'll go find it

It's in the great conch, I think

Island looks nice too.

My next goal for sailing is to reach 60 sailing, equip my skiff with a cannon, and also dock at Charred island

[river veldt]

nice ship

[gaunt marten]

Thanks

Today I want to get the 70 construction requirement to do Song of the Elves

[gaunt marten]

Yo Settled has a new series

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXpRRKI6Ztw

[mossy flume]

Sooooon

[river veldt]

when does it come out

[mossy flume]

The 4th

Thursday

[river veldt]

neato

[mossy flume]

Some copies have been stolen from retailers already

But as far as I can tell, nobody has uploaded a ROM of the Switch 1 version yet

But people have started posting screenshots and spoilers, so...

[river veldt]

spoilers metroid crawls

[mossy flume]

[quiet swift]

finds a meme. "If you're ever sad, just remember that the world is 4.5 billions years old and that you somehow managed to exist at the same time as Expedition 33"

..I'm not sure that helps you stop being sad

[gaunt marten]

If you're ever sad, just remember that the world is 4.5 billions years old and that you somehow managed to exist at the same time as your parents

It would suck a lot if you were born at a different time

[teal sonnet]

https://youtu.be/Gz_jwNyhopk

the story how this game was made is already GOTY material

my dude had a goal, and picked up a bunch of random people he could find

and told them to COOK

finding the VAs on reddit and the composer on some random french forum is wild

and the random VA he found end up being the lead writer

[gaunt marten]

What a coincidence

You look on reddit for people to work for you and find that one of them is already working for you as a lead writer

[teal sonnet]

nobody had experience on game stuff, nobody was even veterans on their fields

[teal sonnet]

No no, the VA he hired end up as a writer of the game

[gaunt marten]

I know but it's funnier the other way

[teal sonnet]

lmao fair

[gaunt marten]

I'm doing the Song of the Elves quest, released 2019.

https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Song_of_the_Elves

For this quest, you need to commit acts of terrorism like pretending to be a government official and setting fire to grain stores

And the reason you have to do them is to piss people off and get them to rebel against the king???

[quiet swift]

Check Sandfall's twitter. They did a behind the scenes of sorts for the concert tour they had in France of E33 music

They're also doing a EU tour. There's a stop in Milan! Gen, you going?

[random steppe]

It's possible, I was eyeing it

Depends what my mates think about it

I plan to ask them tomorrow

They are all just in love with the game as I am, it depends from the cost and if we are able to slot our schedules for that day appropriately

[fresh bane]

what I'm wondering is how the hell did they get Charlie Cox on this

I haven't seen much of this game yet and I don't think I'm gonna be personally playing it anytime soon but sure I want to see how these freaks got together and made probably the biggest indie game of the past couple of years

[random steppe]

I'm already hearing people getting mad at this video

To be fair, defining "JRPG" a dead genre is a pretty bad mistake when like, Metaphor released the year prior and was nomanated to GOTY, even though it didn't win it

[fresh bane]

Oh it's one of those videos

Or, one of those people

[random steppe]

Yeah, it's just like, factually incorrect

[fresh bane]

''I can't believe E33 single handedly revived JRPGs!''

[random steppe]

I don't think there is malice behind it, they are just not very good at their job is my feeling

[fresh bane]

There's been like multiple JRPG re-releases and new releases in the past like two years but I have seen multiple articles about how E33 ''saved'' JRPGs

Metaphor literally came out last year and it was absolutely incredible, nobody talked about it though

And the story of Metaphor was really good

[random steppe]

It's true that the genre changed and is somewhat smaller, wint Final Fantasy going away from turn based, but also, Tales, Persona, etc, isn't exactly dead either

To be fair he doesn't say "it's dead", so I'll amend my statement a lil bit
But "no one really made JRPG anymore" is like, not a very good sentence let's say

Leaves something to be desired

[mossy flume]

I've been seeing a lot of factually incorrect stuff in tech journalism lately, even from some nominally good publications... it's been getting a little weird. And yeah, earlier in the year when E33 first came out there were a lot of weird takes about it, like it was "reviving JRPGs" or "reviving turn-based games" and things like that.

[random steppe]

I mean this is a youtuber

It's a mixed bag with those

[mossy flume]

I certainly recall one popularized take which was basically asserting that this was the first successful turn-based game in many years and I'm just like... uh, Persona?

True

[slim thorn]

it'd be understandable if all the JRPGs were obscure stuff, but all you have to do is google the genre name to notice that Atlus has continued releasing more JRPGs (even if some are remakes), and they're probably tied for most famous modern JRPG publisher after Persona 5's success

oh god "turn-based game" includes so much more than just this, that is beyond myopic

[fresh bane]

The only thing E33 did for JRPGs is literally just re-package them in a way the average mainstream gamer can get into, i.e a realistic artstyle with good voice performances and overall cinematic presentation
Even with games like Persona things like the text chat boxes and anime artstyles really really put a lot of people off and makes them not want to play, but if they see Charlie Cox on the box art and they look at a game with an overall cinematic realistic presentation, well that just really works to get people into a game initially
Of course it helps that E33 also did really cool things with its gameplay to set it apart and is incredible in every sense too, but I've seen many articles of major gaming journalist sites of people basically saying ''E33 revived turn based JRPGs!''

[random steppe]

If we are talking speicfically turn-based, Game Awards winner 2023 Baldur's Gate 3?

[mossy flume]

Yeah, that too

[random steppe]

I think the best way to describe it, is that it expanded the audience for JRPGs

[quiet swift]

A lot of the voice actors blind auditioned for it, so the devs arguably didn't know who it was until later

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/clair-obscur-expedition-33-devs-held-blind-auditions-so-they-didnt-know-they-landed-talent-from-final-fantasy-and-baldurs-gate-3-until-after-they-picked-them/

[random steppe]

It's exactly what Hollow Knight did IMO, the genre was well alive before HK came out, but they made a very high quality package that appealed to more than the fans of the genre already

[slim thorn]

that's a good way of putting it

[mossy flume]

Examples of what I'm referring to... ArsTechnica's article about Google's Airdrop reverse-engineering thing, claiming that the EU made Apple change how AirDrop works in order for Google to implement it themselves and saying that for technical reasons it's limited to only a few specific devices... both of which are COMPLETELY false.

And The Verge doing an article where they talk about people being unable to discern AI music from human-made music and completely misunderstanding basic statistics in a blind test they did, claiming that a worse-than-random result was actually a positive win for human's abilities to discern the difference.

[quiet swift]

It caught the mainstream audience, so to speak

[fresh bane]

I guess so, but I really doubt anyone that played E33, at least the vast majority of players who also treat it like the holy grail and like it's the only good game that came out this year, will actually go back and play other previous JRPGs

but, I mean, they should.... Metaphor is right there if they want a similar vibe, but yes, it's actually really fascinating for me to see how so many people that would usually be put off by a genre like JRPGs be totally fine with it if all you do is simply rearrange the presentation of the game, because when you actually get to the gameplay of things E33 is basically your average anime style JRPG, I remember being really surprised with some of the designs and animations, but everything else has that cinematic game vibe so that captures the most amount of people compared to any other anime styled JRPG, hell even Persona

[fresh bane]

I guess it surprises me that a game being put together by a bunch of randoms on Reddit even had auditions I guess that's why Charlie Cox feels so weird about getting so much praise for his role

he just auditioned for this random role, got in the booth for a few hours, then a year later everyone is telling him how incredible he was

[mossy flume]

I have a better question... do people actually recognize E33 as being derived from JRPGs?

[slim thorn]

I feel like that's being a bit uncharitable to E33 and its players... but since I haven't played any Personas or Metaphor myself, only watched others play them, I can't really argue it in detail

[mossy flume]

Or only those who are already well-versed in JRPGs?

[fresh bane]

Of course, especially anyone familiar with JRPGs, I don't know about the average joe who's just getting into it by word of mouth but yes I think I remember the devs being very open about the JRPG influence

I remember it being talked about a lot

[fresh bane]

Okay, for what is worth I gotta clarify I'm not referring to all E33 players, I'm specifically talking about the mainstream average player

The kind of player who would've never played a JRPG, but they did play E33

[random steppe]

I think some JRPGs fans do understimate how offputting can be the anime style and the tropes that come with it to a lot of people.

[fresh bane]

Not you or me or others in this chat, I mean that mainstream audience

[random steppe]

For no fault of their own

It's not just aesthetic, it does feel like a much more western title in a lot of ways.

[mossy flume]

Yep. Calling out the anime-specific tropes is probably the most important part there.

[random steppe]

Metaphor is less torpy than most to be fair, P5 is pretty tropy

[mossy flume]

True

[river veldt]

entropy

[random steppe]

But also, you don't know before you play it

So people see the style and assume it's gonna be as tropy as anything else with that style

[fresh bane]

Well yeah that's why it's fascinating to me because underneath it's still very much a JRPG, just with that western cinematic style approach, though from what I have seen I will say you can totally tell where the japanese influence comes through, but it doesn't have an anime artstyle nor any anime/japanese tropes so it's obviously going to be more palatable for a western audience
though I will say games like FF7 seem to do fine in that regard, and FF7 is incredibly japanese, but FF7 is a franchise so it feels unfair to compare it to E33 in terms of how much audience it retained despite the cultural differences

[fresh bane]

Metaphor is kind of a perfect recommendation for any E33 fans honestly

[random steppe]

In some ways, in other ways I'm not 100% sure.

It depends as to why they liked it

And I liked Metaphor a lot, because I vibe real hard with the message

[slim thorn]

as long as we're talking about "mainstream", it's probably worth remembering that a lot of general audiences are more interested in the aesthetic and story of a game than they are its mechanical genre/core gameplay loop; they may not even consider Metaphor and E33 to be similar in the ways that matter to them

[random steppe]

But it was pretty unfocused at time as a story, I think it would have benefit from being shorter a bit.

[quiet swift]

All this after I bought P3R instead of Metaphor

[random steppe]

While E33 is a very focused story

[fresh bane]

Both are good Metaphor just gets more praise from me because it's actually a new thing

[fresh bane]

See that's the kind of comparison I can't really make myself because I only saw like half of E33

Or, less than that

[random steppe]

It's laser focused, it really doesn't waste a scene

[fresh bane]

Metaphor does feel very expansive at times, I don't like saying it drags on but it does feel more like a grand adventure with a ticking clock in the back whereas E33 is a like ''we gotta GO'' type of story

[random steppe]

I agre that both are good, they are just good in very different ways is all, which is why my recommendation would come with an asterisk

To someone that only played E33 in the genre

[fresh bane]

No that message was for P3R and Metaphor

[slim thorn]

I'm not really following at this point, e.g. "a grand adventure with a ticking clock" sounds like most of E33 to me

[fresh bane]

Well, I guess E33 just feels more urgent

[quiet swift]

Nire: I avoided Metaphor because of Atlus' track record of releasing 'complete' versions

[random steppe]

That's very fair

If you waited this long might as well wait for the DLC with the complete version

Assuming they do that

[quiet swift]

Which is funny because of that recent article where Sega themselves said they're aware the sales are lower because of that

[mossy flume]

Metaphor doesn't have DLC, does it?

[quiet swift]

https://www.eurogamer.net/sega-finally-admits-low-sales-of-games-may-have-been-impacted-by-players-waiting-for-definitive-editions-like-persona-5-royal-or-smt-5-vengeance

[random steppe]

Not yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were making one

[fresh bane]

Not any DLC that matters anyway, just costumes

[quiet swift]

Maybe we might hear about it at game awards?

[mossy flume]

It's been over a year

[random steppe]

Oh yeah, I guess it's possible

[fresh bane]

I don't think Metaphor will get any DLC if nothing comes out this year or gets announced anytime soon

It feels like a pretty complete base game already

[slim thorn]

I still feel like I missed out on significant parts of Kingdom Hearts and Mass Effect because the DLCs / final mix-only content looks so good but came out loooooooong after I was done with those games

[mossy flume]

Yeah, it seems like a very complete package as it is

[slim thorn]

but, only those two series

[random steppe]

TBH I think the game could benefit from an extra, I know I already said it's too long but I thought the final stretch wasn't super great for me so if they could add another finale like they did with P5 I'd appreciate it.

[river veldt]

i tried out Persona 5R but quit after i played for like 5 hours and there were still tutorials

[quiet swift]

[river veldt]

listen at least i tried it

[random steppe]

For the curious, I think they kinda ||dropped the ball with the protagonist not actually having to make an argument as to why he'd be the best person to govern, when Louis turned out just want to destroy the fucking world||
Metaphor finale spoilers

[fresh bane]

I wonder if the last stretch of Metaphor is one of those things where it gets better or worse depending on how much side questing you've been doing throughotu the game

[random steppe]

I did complete everything as far as I know

Including the ||dragon bullshit stuff||

[fresh bane]

To be fair the game should be designed to be fun regardless of whether you do every side quest, a little bit or none, but still, I do wonder

[river veldt]

how many tutorials does E3 have

[slim thorn]

I mean, I was getting tutorials all the way into Act 2 of E33, as they introduced more mechanics
I don't remember P5 in enough detail to compare though

[quiet swift]

Yeah, it's a bit of a disservice to call them tutorials in either case

[fresh bane]

I will say one thing, I do think some of the 'reveals' and some of the later parts of the story aren't particularly strong, but where the game shines most is in the characters to me, which honestly in an RPG is perfectly fine with me because if I'm spending upwards of dozens of hours with these weirdos I might as well like them!

[quiet swift]

Like, generally tutorials are a separate level, or level 1 of a game. Whereas for E33 and P5R they add mechanics even like halfway into the game, but its a short thing

[slim thorn]

uh... how often do you play a game where the "tutorial" part is countable?

[river veldt]

uh

not much i guess

[random steppe]

That is fair, but it's also fair to point out how the game does set itself up to be about society and the way it's organised, pretty explicitly, so it's like you start reading a book about economics and by the end you are reading a thriller.
There were some expectations set that were IMO, not fully realised

[river veldt]

joker knife fire money

[quiet swift]

Did you guys know there's a Metaphor manga? On shonen jump (i believe)?

[river veldt]

there's manga for everything

i probably have a manga

[quiet swift]

https://mangaplus.shueisha.co.jp/titles/100427

[random steppe]

Actually it reminds me of another good thing that dropped the ball in a very similar way, Arcane Season 2

[river veldt]

wait was season 2 not good

[random steppe]

Exceptinal TV show, season 2 included

But also, they do set up some ||narrative threads with Zaun and Piltover conflict that do get resolved in a very unsatisfying way in order to tell the story of the characters more directly||

It's not a in depth spoiler

[slim thorn]

it's a minor criticism of a great show

[random steppe]

But thought I'd spoil it anyway

[river veldt]

oh ok

[random steppe]

And that's why I feel like Season 1 is the better product overall, even tho I do love Season 2 as well

[slim thorn]

to me it's one of those situations where, yes, I'd like more to be resolved, but given everything that had just happened to these cities it would also be kinda implausible to successfully resolve them at that particular time lol

[random steppe]

In Season 1 the conflict of the characters was telling the story of the undelying societal conflict, so they were able to do it very efficently back then

In season 2, it wasn't as elegantly done sadly, still good, could have been a bit better

There are parts in which it works in S2 as well, ||Cait and Vi tension works for that for example||

[quiet swift]

I think S2 wanted to up the stakes and did so maybe a bit too much, and lost something on the way

[fresh bane]

it feels so strange everytime I see arcane discussions to me because as a league player I know all these characters (Vi has been my main jungle since season 5 and Jinx has always been a go-to ADC choice) but I have no idea about anything from the show so it feels like everyone is familiar with versions of the characters I know nothing about

like I saw a twitter thread once some time ago now about people being super angry and surprised that || apparently at the end of one of the seasons Vi gets a cop uniform, but.... she is a cop, she's always been a cop || so that was really confusing to me

[random steppe]

Well there is an interesting tension there for how the show is structured

[river veldt]

i dont want to watch Arcane because what if i watch it and contract League of Legends playeritis /j

[fresh bane]

I don't think a vast majority of Arcane watchers have any interest in playing League so I don't think you have to worry about that

League is incredibly paradoxical in that every year it keeps growing more and more and yet you kinda rarely encounter people actively talking about playing League unless you also play League and also anyone who talks about playing League absolutely hates it

I guess they're too busy playing League to go on social media which would make sense, I would drop entire afternoons on matches somedays

[random steppe]

I think they did rush with that fighting game because they know that Arcane has an horrible concersion rate to League of fucking Legends

[fresh bane]

Ehhhh, I don't know if 2XKO is gonna be pulling any big numbers either though...

[random steppe]

Like, there is no reason if you like Arcane that you should like LoL, there is nothing to tie them except a few skins for the characters

[fresh bane]

Fighting game, already from the get go a lot of people are not gonna particularly stick with it, it's quite complex too so it's gonna be hard for new players

Honestly I see the MMO doing much better

....whenever the hell that thing comes out

[random steppe]

I think it's better than league at least

Like, you can go fight some AI, and play with a character you like

[fresh bane]

Conversely there was no reason to watch Arcane either as a League fan, it's why I didn't watch it, Arcane wasn't canon and it wasn't meant to be so they took some liberties with the lore

but then it got really big, so of course Riot then retroactively made it canon, and now Viktor looks different?

and he's a magic man instead of Iron Man/Dr Doom

[random steppe]

In league you get thrown in with a 15yo that calls you every slur under the sun as soon as you die at minute two to a smurf

The fighting game has better chances of converting

[fresh bane]

If you think the fighting game is any different do I have some screenshots of 2XKO's lobby chat for you

[random steppe]

But I agree the MMO would be the best one at that

[fresh bane]

maybe it's because I play on a relatively less populated south american server, but I never encountered a whole lot of toxicity during the many years I played and honestly? The thing that drives you crazy the most is incompetent teammates

Having a competent team that doesn't freak out, make actively bad plays and tries to direct others on what to do every second of a match is fucking heaven in a League match

The thing that will make you want to tear out your own eyebrow hairs one by one with your fingers isn't the 12 year old hurling slurs at you but your teammate pinging the items you're building, telling you how to play and exacerbating every bad play you make, while also simultaneously going 0/12 and throwing the poor jungler under the bus who died to the Yasuo they fed 12 times on their lane

It's genuinely unbearable when that happens because a single person can dictate how shitty the next 45 min of your life will be

[fresh bane]

and I don't even know if that's coming out anymore it got cancelled and restarted development like twice now? and after a whole bunch of people were laid off.... I wouldn't hold my breath on that MMO coming out.. anytime soon really

which really really sucks because the best thing about League is the lore and characters so that would actually be a super good ''main'' game to have

[random steppe]

People do want to spend time in that world, and while a few games that kind of work for that came out, the MMO would probably the one better able to capitalise on that feeling

Like, Hanging out at The Last Drop as your character is what people want, the social aspect of MMOs.

[fresh bane]

There's so many places to go too, Freljord, Bilgewater, Bandle City, Ixtal, Shurima, Targon, Ionia, Noxus, Demacia
The Void would be such a cool dungeon style area, just full of super strong enemies and basically nothing except enemies everywhere

all I remember hearing about it is that they were still working on it, and apparently want to release it before 2030, but that's not very promising when it already got restarted like 2 times and who knows if it's gonna happen again, it also happened to 2XKO and look at how long that game took to come out, and barely finished too

[quiet swift]

There's still job listings for it, so

[fresh bane]

It doesn't surprise me after all the layoffs but I don't know who's gonna take up those jobs after... well after the layoffs although I don't know if the MMO team got hit by those but I don't see why it wouldn't have

[slim thorn]

I mean, at this point I don't know who'd take any job in video games

[fresh bane]

You know the sadly ironic thing is stuff like League of Legends inspired me and made me want to grow up to become a good enough artist to work at Riot or do similar work for other games, and the more years went by the less and less that seemed like it would ever come close to becoming a reality and by the time I became an adult it all had gone to hell already

and then I found out about LoR and thought the art and expanded lore/updated character designs from that game were absolutely incredible, and then they took that game to the back of the Riot building and shot it in the head

Good news is though, probably as an artist nowadays you have better chances just offering your skills to any upcoming indie game that may or may not become the next big thing so hey

That's... kinda good I guess

[cunning galleon]

I have a sudden surge in creativity

Was just gonna make this tiger into a generic 131 but.. Iroha's Tiger I

Wrong type tho, she apparently has an H1 because of the Turret cupola

[static bluff]

we played Slay the Spire this evening.

[gaunt marten]

Cool! How is the avocado in the board game?

[cunning galleon]

Oh, nvm, for some reason it's inconsistent

[static bluff]

Ah, unsure. Didn't encounter it

[visual hill]

I was in Reims for a convention last week, heh

[visual hill]

I think gamedev jobs will remain very competitive no matter what, it just has that "dream job" feeling for a lot of people from the outside (even if it's not very true in practice for most jobs)

similar to e.g. being an actor or musician. We will never have a shortage of those, even if you couldn't possibly get paid for it. It's the nature of creative endeavors

[fresh bane]

Probably, I know if I ever in my life was presented with the opportunity of working as an artist for a videogame in any capacity for pennies and I had to work every day of the week, I'd probably still do it

[mossy flume]

It’s also worth noting that the video game industry is monstrous, with a projected $183 billion dollars of revenue for 2025.

It’s not going anywhere.

[fresh bane]

Luckily for me a lot of artist jobs in any big industry setting require relocation and I don't have the means for that so I don't have to even worry about it

And I live in the other side of the world for wherever most of the big studios are anyways

So if I were to go down that route, probably indie games which I guess is still the industry, just a different one

[visual hill]

a lot of this is mobile gaming, which some people loathe working for, but it's known to be decent money even for employees

(the Draw a Box lead was a mobile game artist for years)

[mossy flume]

Yeah, mobile gaming makes up about 50% of the whole industry’s total revenue. It’s nuts.

+/- ~2%

[craggy vine]

My money goes into the games that make the smallest amount of money

[worldly summit]

my money goes to games I don’t play and my time goes to games that are impossible to spend on…

[cunning galleon]

Finally, spent too much time on this

[hushed onyx]

You haven't heard about the Great Crash of 2032 yet then

[visual hill]

why 2032 specifically?

[hushed onyx]

You'll find out

(I was going to say 2033, remembered that was part of the title of Metro 2033, and changed it by one year)

[visual hill]

Deus Ex: Human Revolution takes place in 2027, that's going to be fun in 2 years

[quiet swift]

I feel like there was some movie or game that had something set in 2025 too, can't remember what though

[visual hill]

Perfect Dark was 2023

I can't recall games taking place in 2025 off the top of my head

[quiet swift]

... F.E.A.R, apparently

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Video_games_set_in_2025

[visual hill]

interesting, I'll need to try it soon

I finished NOLF in September

[worthy rose]

I do have pretty fond memories of the game

[wind stump]

Top ten things to do around Wandering Vagrant:
#1: LEAVE.

I fall off ONCE...

[mossy flume]

In Star Trek’s canon, World War III happens in 2026

[gaunt marten]

Yeah but also the irish unification happens in 2024

[wind stump]

yayyyyyy

[mossy flume]

Is it just me, or is Metroid Prime 4 not getting very much marketing? It’s coming out this week, on Thursday.

[slim thorn]

I haven't noticed any (and forgot myself), but I unplugged from the AAA gaming hype machine a long time ago so I often miss the rare AAA that matters to me

[mossy flume]

Maybe they’re not terribly confident in it. (Which to be fair is probably a reasonable bet)

[slim thorn]

or they're confident in its sales with the existing fanbase, and don't think it's the kind of game that a marketing push would bring in enough new fans for

that's right I wanted to double-check my Switch still works before ordering it

completely forgot to do that

[fresh bane]

Did it not get a bunch of reveal and gameplay trailers like a week ago?

[mossy flume]

It got an overview trailer

Which is pretty par for the course for any first/second party Nintendo game

[fresh bane]

Metroid Dread also just kinda came out iirc, Metroid has always been one of Nintendo's most low-key popular franchises it never got the same buzz as Mario or Zelda

also funny that both Metroid Dread and Prime 4 are both long awaited for games by fans that have taken 10+ years to come out and probably restarted development at least once

I thought Prime 4 got decent enough hype though from what I saw

[slim thorn]

on the other hand, it's nice to see at least one big publisher is still willing to make a game even if they don't think it's the kind of lucrative that justifies a big marketing splurge

[mossy flume]

Metroid Dread came out in 2021

[gaunt marten]

I pay zero attention to marketing and it usually works out to my benefit

[mossy flume]

Dread is the best selling Metroid game though, IIRC

And Prime has historically done poorly

Although the Prime remaster did pretty well

[fresh bane]

Nintendo is the one developer/publisher I consistently see still experimenting around with gameplay styles and not completely changing the style of one of their franchises completely, they still make 2D Zeldas, they still make the 2D Metroids, I don't know a whole lot about Mario but I bet they still make those even with games like Galaxy and Odyssey being so popular, I've always really appreciated that they do that even though they couuld totally just look at what's trending on the market right now and copy that for all their franchises to make big bucks

that Donkey Kong game was pretty good I heard too and I don't even know what the last Donkey Kong game was

[mossy flume]

Yeah, that’s one of the reasons why I love how Nintendo does things

[fresh bane]

sure not Mario levels probably but still, they still let developers play around and do that kinda stuff and I appreciate that

[mossy flume]

They do chase trends sometimes, but they still consistently use their own strategies regardless of what’s going on

Yeah, Nintendo’s basic philosophy is that if you’re just doing the same game as before, you should just play the old game. Every new game must do something new.

Sometimes I feel like they take that too far, but overall it seems to work out

And yeah, with the Mario games they also go back and forth between the 2D and 3D games

[fresh bane]

It is, but it's still Metroid, and Metroid never really caught onto the mainstream like Mario and Zelda did, but I thought Prime was always the more popular series
I think Prime 4 could potentially reach more people maybe especially through streamers and after the remaster, but again... it's still Metroid

metroidvanias just kinda never really had the mainstream appeal and sales of other genres, but Metroid particularly has been doing fairly good even before Dread, Metroid 2 remake for the 3DS was really good but I hear it didn't reach a million sales

then Dread was the best sold Metroid game, Prime remastered did over a million sales

[astral steeple]

We still need a new mainline 3d mario game ngl

Wonder would have been way better as a 3d game

It wants to try and not be like the "new super mario bros" games but still ends up feeling like it anyways

[mossy flume]

I think it’ll be a little bit before we get a new mainline Mario. But doubtless we will get one for the Switch 2.

I do want one

I’d like a new Paper Mario, too

[astral steeple]

Sticker star remaster/remake please

[mossy flume]

See if they can learn from the TTYD remake and not fuck it up

[astral steeple]

Peak game

[mossy flume]

Oh fuck Sticker Star

Tbh they haven’t made a good Paper Mario since the third one

I never figured out Origami King’s combat system.

[astral steeple]

Is my most favorite paper mario game

2nd being thousand year door and third being 64

[mossy flume]

Really complicated >_>

[astral steeple]

Never understood the hate for sticker star

Always really enjoyed it

Only one I've hated was color splash

Fuck that game

[mossy flume]

Color Splash was terrible too

They just kept getting worse with each new entry after Super Paper Mario

[astral steeple]

Paper jam is also really good

[slim thorn]

one of these days I need to look up numbers; it does feel like even the most successful Metroids and Castlevanias and HK/Silksong are probably around that same "popular among core gamers but not mainstream" level, but I don't actually know that for sure

[river veldt]

Mario Metroidvania

[mossy flume]

Metroid Dread sold over 3 million copies whereas Hollow Knight has sold more than 15 million copies

[slim thorn]

and I wonder how much of that gap is just multi-platform vs Switch audience sizes

[mossy flume]

I was just about to suggest that

Since, looking at Nintendo’s other games, 3 million for one title is about standard for decently successful

[river veldt]

metroid dread my beloved

[proud warren]

Meanwhile I view the kiby franchise as nintebdo's biggest example (historically speaking) of "ehhh, we dont know if this new idea will work out too well: give it to Kirby and see how that turns out"

Thry did that so many times, that I think the spin-off to official game ratio is nearly 50/50, if not weighed a little more to spin-offs

And even then the spin-offs more often than not nevered played like a Kirby game: they just threw Kirby in there and called it a day

[mossy flume]

Nintendo does pointedly like the concept of taking ideas and making them fit in existing franchises instead of making a new IP. Which is why they rarely come up with new IP.

[proud warren]

When was the last time they did come up with a new ip?

[fresh bane]

Apparently the best selling Castlevania game at 1.7~ million sales was Lords of Shadow

[proud warren]

Was it arms?

[mossy flume]

Splatoon, Arms…

Drag x Drive ???

[proud warren]

Well splatoon really took off

[astral steeple]

When's nintendo gonna remake/remaster yoshi story lol

[proud warren]

I guess there was also ring fit adventure, but that just feels like a sub-series of the wii fit game(s)

[mossy flume]

Did you see that Nintendo is making what looks an awful lot like a Yoshi’s Story sequel?

[proud warren]

That... would actually be pretty cool, I won't lie

They won't, lol, but it'd still be pretty cool

[river veldt]

was Yoshi's Crafted World the latest Yoshi game

[mossy flume]

I think so

[proud warren]

Ye

Wooly world still better in my eyes

[mossy flume]

I’d like Nintendo to get around to re-releasing Primes 2 and 3 on the Switch at some point.
Also, the “but the Wii controls” issue actually has been solved by multiple methods of Prime 4’s own available control systems. So that’s not an excuse.

[proud warren]

I gotta ask, why are they turning yoshi into a Little Big Planet reject?

[slim thorn]

not Starfox?

[mossy flume]

Sakurai likes experimenting

And Kirby is just an infinitely powerful cosmic horror entity, so he can do whatever he wants

[slim thorn]

which is good, but you've gotta be careful putting existing IPs on an experiment

[river veldt]

man when the hell was the last Star Fox game

was that Zero on WiiU ?

[mossy flume]

Zero, yeah

[bitter stream]

star fox assault was my jam

[river veldt]

Stair Fax Temperatures

[fickle garnet]

I've never played Star Fox

[fresh bane]

I wouldn't be surprised if a new Starfox game ever came out (as if) and kids who picked it up went ''oh it's that fox guy from smash'' just because of how little new games that franchise has received

[proud warren]

I'm talking historically speaking: back in the late 90's/early 2000's, Kirby was doing so many random little games

Nowadays, yeah they aren't messing with the pink puffball formula

[slim thorn]

I played Star Fox 64 a few times, it's not my thing personally, but I absolutely get the frustration that they seemingly never iterated on what made 64 such a classic

[mossy flume]

Controversial: I actually liked Star Fox Adventures

[river veldt]

Star Fox Temperatures had Krystal so that's cool

[proud warren]

I have yet to meet an individual who owned that game

[hushed onyx]

Counterpoint: Everyone loves Krystal.

[mossy flume]

I owned it!

[hushed onyx]

(Maybe a bit too much )

[slim thorn]

I imagine people would be much more amenable to the spinoffs if there had been main games too

[mossy flume]

Not enough

[slim thorn]

like how nobody is bothered by Metroid Prime's existence; it didn't kill off the 2D Metroids

nor Metroid Prime Pinball

[proud warren]

Well I haven't met you in real life (which is what I meant by "met")

[slim thorn]

I guess Castlevania maybe did get killed off by trying to go 3D and failing over and over and fucking over wtf

[fresh bane]

this time it'll work for sure

[slim thorn]

even all of the Bloodstaineds so far have gone "3D is just for graphics, not making that mistake again"

[river veldt]

they should bring Simon back

[fresh bane]

the funny thing is I could see a soulslike Castlevania game doing alright, which is funny considering how much I complain about those but for Castlevania particularly I mean everyone was making the Castlevania comparisons when DS1 was the hot thing people were talking about a million years ago, so I don't see why not

[proud warren]

How many Belmonts have we gone thru in the franchise?

[fresh bane]

''look!11 if you open door from this side, is liek castlevaaania !!!11'' you know

[slim thorn]

ironically, yeah, but it's way too late now; a Soulslike Castlevania would come off as the most generic Soulslike ever

[astral steeple]

The only kirby game I was ever super into was nightmare in dreamland ngl

[proud warren]

I guess the whimsy the franchise has never hooked ya when you were younger

[mossy flume]

Metroid Blast Ball/Federation Force… we don’t talk about that one. That was an instance of an IP being grafted onto an existing game prototype.

[slim thorn]

oh right, I ignored that so completely I keep forgetting it was literally Starfoxed

[river veldt]

i bet there's a freak out there who likes Federation Force

[slim thorn]

we can verb that right

[mossy flume]

Like Sherlocked

[mossy flume]

I loved that one

Nightmare in Dreamland, Air Ride, and Amazing Mirror were my jams

[bitter stream]

I've got Kirby Air Riders coming in the mail today ^_^

[mossy flume]

It’s such a great sequel

Love it

[proud warren]

Return to dreamland was my first Kirby game I actually owned, so I gotta give it points for that

[bitter stream]

good to hear MA! ooh nice nice Talc

[cerulean herald]

whats a good first kirby game for someone new to kirby

[bitter stream]

hmm

[mossy flume]

Nightmare in Dreamland

The new one on Switch is great too

[bitter stream]

ah, kirby and the forgotten land?

yeah

that one is really nice

[mossy flume]

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

Yeah

Those are the ones I would recommend

[river veldt]

my favorite kirby games are Dream Course and Forgotten Land

[mossy flume]

Nightmare in Dreamland for a more classic but well polished 2D game
Air Ride for a novel take on racing and other fun activities
Kirby and the Forgotten Land for the new 3D adventure

[proud warren]

Ah yes, Kirby golf

[mossy flume]

Forgotten Land also has Elfilin and he is super cute

[river veldt]

true

i remember thinking he was gonna become a horrible monster at the end and then was pleasantly surprised he wasn't

[fresh bane]

I don't remember how good the last Kirby game was, I literally never played one so I don't know what to expect out of a Kirby game

[proud warren]

wellll, they're technically a separate part of elfilis, so they kind of were

[slim thorn]

I feel like the best comparison is the old-school 2D Marios, where making it to the end of the level was a challenge of platforming and maneuvering around enemies (...and it's still structured as a sequence of levels)

and of course with Kirby the big gimmick is taking powers from those enemies

[visual hill]

2016, or 2018 if you count the Starlink DLC

his last appearance is in SSBU in December 2018

[river veldt]

that wasn't that long ago

[visual hill]

7 years ago soon

[river veldt]

wait that was 7 years

what the fuck

[visual hill]

:^)

[river veldt]

i remember faking being sick when Smash Bros Ultimate came out so i wouldn't have to go to school

[astral steeple]

2018 being 7 years ago is still mind blowing to me lol

I graduated from high school in 2018

[slim thorn]

all of my milestones are older than that

2018 was just another Tuesday year for me

[cerulean herald]

Ty btw

[astral steeple]

I turn 27 in January wtf lol

God I feel old

[slim thorn]

actually that's a lie, I joined Manechat in 2020, that's a milestone

[cerulean herald]

I refuse to believe you joined after I did

[astral steeple]

I joined this server in July of 2016

Insane

Was the first ever discord server I joined too iirc

[slim thorn]

I was very late to the party on the whole MLP thing

[cerulean herald]

fair, I got into MLP at like, early 2016

[astral steeple]

I think I first started getting into the show at the beginning of season 4 and the first equestria girls movie

[visual hill]

I got into MLP in mid-2017

people were starting to get used to the idea of Starlight Glimmer being a cool character

just starting, but still 😛

[astral steeple]

Daring don't and flight to the finish were the first episodes I had saw

Followed by too many pinkie pies

Then I had started watching in order after that and found the Fandom and fan art and fan music etc

[cerulean herald]

sometimes I forget thats she can be a...rather divisive character

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/zQMroKIEMBw?si=aZOMJ-4jG4rNCo6Z

when I said I wanted Capcom to experiment with smaller scale RE games using the original fixed camera gameplay this isn't what I had in mind but I'm not entirely surprised

what a bizarre game, I kinda expect this sort of thing from Konami more than Capcom

[craggy vine]

I'm playing Dusk for the first time

Did not think it would literally be just like Doom

[slim thorn]

what's really weird about it to me is how little effort seems to be made to give anyone a reason to play it; no marketing, most of the popular characters missing, no alternate skins for the popular characters. Do they expect games like this to just magically make money merely by existing?

(it's also totally lacking in creativity even within the budget and genre constraints, but that part does not surprise me)

[random steppe]

I feel like their horrible monetisation on steam was the Herald for this, I have been shouting from the rooftops.

Half the time I go to consider buying a Capcom game, I go to the store page and leave disgusted by the amount of skins and weapons and game currency they try to sell you alongside it

[bitter stream]

yeah fair enough. It's true of a lot of their recent games, though oddly SF6 doesn't seem to get much content updates/skins or anything worth buying lol

also they put a ticket price to watch Capcom Cup finals.

It's rediculous

[craggy vine]

Can games stop trying to be a service and just be a fun game

[bitter stream]

Those games do exist, it just takes some more looking than the big headline titles.

[random steppe]

And to be clear, I am far from a hater, I love Capcom games, that's why I am mad about it

[craggy vine]

Oh I know, I mostly play indie games. I think I have only played 2 larger game titles that are from the past 5 years

[bitter stream]

yeah that makes sense Genryu haha. I feel similar with Last Epoch. The devs EHG sold to Krafton of all people

and now the previously free updates will be split into paid and free content.

[arctic fern]

Krafton are scum

[bitter stream]

I don't know much about why they are that bad, but they do have a reputation... and the subnautica stuff

[arctic fern]

they own pubg and made a hige stink about how apparently they own the idea of battle royale and generic shipping containers

[bitter stream]

ahh right. that's so dumb

[arctic fern]

very

[craggy vine]

Bitch Minecraft owns the idea to battle royal

I played battle royal in 2013 before it was popular

If we go by that logic

[astral steeple]

Pubg recently announced they were dropping support for the ps4 and xbox one versions of the game

Very stupid

No longer playable soon

[craggy vine]

Those are some very old consoles to be fair

Like I was basically a kid when the ps4 came out and now I an well into being an adult

[astral steeple]

Most people still don't have a series x or s or ps5 due to the price and tariffs etc

A lot of gamers still use lastgen

[craggy vine]

huh damn

[arctic fern]

sounds liek a skill issue

that was a joke
the world sucks rn

[craggy vine]

It's crazy though, like the amount of people out there who could have gotten a ps4 in 2013 and be still using it on current games to this very day

[astral steeple]

Even the switch 2 is super expensive

[craggy vine]

That is an insane production run

[astral steeple]

I mean

I didn't get a regular xbox one till 2019 and its still my main console

Was using the 360 as my only main console before that

[craggy vine]

oh wow damn

I remember playing on my friends xbox one back in like 2015

[astral steeple]

I originally only got the xbox one itself for a single game to begin with

Tony hawk Pro skater 5

Cause the 360 version didn't have lil wayne or the tmnt or the 3 extra levels the ps4 and xbox one version had

Then I started playing other games on it after

[craggy vine]

Ah yeah, when games get downgraded to fit on older consoles

[river veldt]

hell yeah Dusk is awesome

[visual hill]

I wouldn't say "most people" since 2023 or so, but it's true the PS4 still has a big install base

the Xbox One, not so much though. It never did that hot in the first place

[astral steeple]

I thought the current estimate was like 40 to 50 million people still on xbox one though

[quiet swift]

Oh boy. Turns out that beating ball x pit goes into new game +, and beating new game + goes to new game ++

[random steppe]

@uneven epoch what do I need to do to get to try Warframe after you are done with Hades?
Would like, a cultural exchange with me committing to a KCD playthrough be enough? I think the story would be more up your alley than you'd expect.

I am only maybe 25% joking, I think you'd either like it or hate every single character in it in a very entertaining way if I know what you like in stories.

[uneven epoch]

steam searches this is a scifi game

[random steppe]

Well, that is true

[uneven epoch]

oh god its a mmo scifi game, do you want me to get a third job

[random steppe]

lol

It's a really unique game, I'll just say that

[uneven epoch]

okay, putting that immediate apprehension aside because we are friends and i am in fact not immune to friend propaganda; can i punch in this thing

[random steppe]

In several ways yes

[fickle garnet]

Warframe is fun, I've only played it once

[slim thorn]

if the footage I've seen is any indication, slide kicking is superior to punching

[random steppe]

There is one Warframe of which the whole lore is that he punched an asteroid so hard that he destroyed it

And he punches real good

There are also dedicated weapons for punching

[uneven epoch]

rhargl my beloved......

[random steppe]

I'll just say, I know it sounds dumb looking at gameplay, but the real draw of the game is the story

[uneven epoch]

well no it looks like a shooter thingy

but if i can punch then its all good

[random steppe]

It is a shooter thing, and it's pretty good too

[quiet swift]

[random steppe]

punches are an option though

Oh right, there is also titania, which doesn't punch but does turn into a tiny faery with 2 uzis, which is very fun

Roomba for size comparison

[uneven epoch]

i shall, add it to my library. i wont promise right after hades bc 7.4 is on the horizon but you have peaked my interest. and thanks to friend privileges i might not even force you to commit revenge while carrying billion kolaches medieval style, tho kcd II is fun and good and fun. i know kcd is a harder sell, tho if i recall you tried it at one point? i could give some tips for smoother sailing on that

[random steppe]

I acually am probably gonna give another shot to KCD 1 before considering 2, I played it a bit but got distracted and these games are really hard to pick back up if you put them down for any lenght of time

I like what I played

[uneven epoch]

oh yeah absolutely, theyre not a kinda game you can feasibly juggle

[random steppe]

I am getting in the mood for RPG so that's probably gonna happen either around the holidays or shortly after

[uneven epoch]

okay (i say very very normally and not at all vibrating in excitement) there is a thread and ive got some tips pinned there and also a few mod recommendations. no huge-huge overhauls, mostly just comfort of playing #1355847131650326691 message. i will be. waiting very totally patiently

[random steppe]

Meet Atlas

[slim thorn]

fair, dash-punching works too

[random steppe]

I think I saw those a few times, thanks for the reminder, I'll be sure to check them out before picking it back up

[wind stump]

gotta do something between Pizza Cutter runs

SHE'S NOT WRONG

[uneven epoch]

hc´s friend game privileges are "bringi is gonna read umineko at some point" for anyone asking

[wind stump]

i'm just saying if the Regalia could fly, FFXV would have been way cooler

[random steppe]

It can

I'm pretty sure

Just not at the beginning of the game

It's a post game exploration thing

[wind stump]

Say.

[little badger]

@green fulcrum

[green fulcrum]

[cerulean herald]

quite a ways away

im sure it'll be worth the wait tho

[green fulcrum]

[wind stump]

hue hue

[sacred grove]

Wait, why are there two different dates

[green fulcrum]

Oh, I just noticed that

Maybe a spin-off film?

It does say a "new film in the universe"

[proud warren]

Big the cat "finding froggy" film when?

[mossy flume]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_(film_series)

No mention of any other films

It's just a sloppy twitter post

Ah, there is a mention, actually

It's just not in the title card for some reason

[cerulean herald]

looks like the Knuckles show finally gets a movie adaptation /s

[proud warren]

I heard the knuckles show was "meh" all around

I haven't watched it myself, but i haven't heard anything good nor bad about it

[cerulean herald]

havent seen it either, but only heard negative things about it

[slim thorn]

I heard nothing about it

[smoky sonnet]

i thought it was kinda fun in a dumb way

[slim thorn]

@little badger please try to find a legitimate source before posting stuff like that

[gaunt marten]

Yeah, we don't want Manechat to be a news feed. Posting twitter screenshots and pinging someone is no good

Just DM that person if you want

[slim thorn]

(at the very least it should be a curated news feed, instead of whatever misinformation ends up on twitter)

[river veldt]

https://www.rxddit.com/r/Silksong/s/oHArCFA2GM

[fresh bane]

bug

[worthy rose]

That reminds me of that one post of... what was it , FF14 jobs ad hollow knight bugs?

Which was drawn by a coworker of mine at EA, actually

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/s/WGhYH34zfx

[little badger]

[green fulcrum]

It's...fine. Inoffensive, kinda funny at times, but not really a "Knuckles" show. More like a "Wade & Knuckles" show.

It's nothing special either. Kinda disappointing, but I wouldn't go so far to call it bad.

It's just fine.

[gaunt marten]

Bug Fables and Hollow Knight should have a crossover

[green fulcrum]

See, I figure you're probably joking, but I actually agree

Hollow Knight is the underground, Bug Fables is the surface.

[gaunt marten]

They could just be treated as different spots in the same world

[green fulcrum]

[mossy flume]

Man, I kinda expected the Prime 4 ROM to have leaked by now, but it hasn't as far as I can find

[slim thorn]

I finally got around to testing my Switch, so I've preordered my Switch 1 edition of MP4

[fresh bane]

I guess we'll get to see if MP4 on the Switch 1 really does look any ''worse''

[fresh bane]

I remember when it happened to TOTK

....and Echoes

[mossy flume]

Yeeeeep

[slim thorn]

took me a second to remember Echoes means the Zelda game, not the Metroid

[river veldt]

lmao i remember when TotK was leaked and i followed the thread on r/gamingleaksandrumors religiously cause i was fervent for that game

[mossy flume]

I also got hung up on that for a second XD

[river veldt]

should i play TotK or Mario Odyssey next ?

i cant decide

[mossy flume]

TotK would be my vote, personally

[cerulean herald]

i also vote for Breath of the Wild 2

[river veldt]

im in the mood for both

ok i'll check this chat again tomorrow morning and count up the votes

[fresh bane]

https://bsky.app/profile/mostlyghostly.bsky.social/post/3kdpc3bk4ne25

_Mostly_Ghostly_ (@mostlyghostly.bsky.social)

Samus when she sees a juicy little X-Parasite: 🤷‍♀️🦠🍬

Reposts

173

Likes

548

Bluesky · Nov 8, 2023, 8:34 PM

thank god it wasn't just me who thought the X's looked like fruit gummies

[cerulean herald]

anything's edible if u try hard enough

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/B8i26g45WeY

[graceful bridge]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-02/creator-of-hit-game-shovel-knight-is-at-make-or-break-moment

[worthy rose]

A story in two screenshots

[worthy rose]

And that's a Jackie version of the Nathan fillion gif

[random steppe]

You know what I just realised

Ender Magnolia got zero recognition at the Game Awards, and honestly, it's not even their fault, the year was so stacked that I don't even know where I'd fit it

I mean maybe in the Best Indie Game, they could have made a spot, even though I didn't play Absolum and maybe it's the better game between the two.

In most years Ender Magnolia wouldn't win, but it would definitely get at least one or two nominations in the smaller categories

[gaunt marten]

The random events are hardly RuneScape's best bot detection — they're super basic and amateurish, as well as easy to automate.

[wind stump]

Was a creative solution at least.

I like the sandwich lady :)

[gaunt marten]

Creative and widely regarded as annoying at the time, since many were actively harmful to real players

The modern iteration of them is nice

[gaunt marten]

This island has cool giant praying mantis enemies.

They're still small compared to a human

They don't seem to drop anything

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/uhVJ_P6dzFg?si=g9208uhkeAJ6uyaq

Oh, weird, that's not the thumbnail that shows on my youtube feed

It's cool to hear that even in performance mode the game still looks incredible, the comment about performance mode even looking significantly better than Prime Remastered on Switch makes me wonder how this is gonna look on the Switch 1

[slim thorn]

I'll post screenshots if I can figure out how

[visual hill]

A/B thumbnail testing

[mossy flume]

The thumbnail was probably changed from when Discord cached it and when you saw it

Also that

A/B thumbnail testing for engagement measurements is a thing

YouTubers do a lot of really crazy things on their own end with the tools that YouTube provides for the purpose of maximizing engagement and thus ad revenue

[mossy flume]

Set up the Nintendo Switch smartphone app. And maybe enable auto-uploads to it.

Otherwise, go to the screenshot in your Switch's album, press A, and click upload to device

It'll show up in the Nintendo Switch app on your phone

[cerulean herald]

i didnt need an app, I just scanned the QR code that my switch displays

[mossy flume]

Oh, by the way, PLEASE DO NOT PING ME WITH METROID PRIME 4 REVIEWS

I'm not yelling, mind, just trying to make it clear

I want to go in as blind as possible so I can have my own untarnished opinions.

[rotund forge]

Opion; metwoid is a gaem

[mossy flume]

[fresh bane]

I guess we could dust off the Metroid channel for any Prime 4 discussion

[mossy flume]

This is unironically the biggest gaming event for me personally since Mass Effect 3 came out.

Which I know makes me weird, but y'know

Yee

[slim thorn]

bigger than Dread?

[mossy flume]

About the same as Dread, true