general gaming

[craggy vine]

oh

[slim thorn]

oh

[craggy vine]

That Wii ain't HD

[mossy flume]

Twilight Princess was a simultaneous release on GC and Wii, and was a Wii launch title

Just like BotW

[slim thorn]

man I paid no attention to consoles back then

[mossy flume]

I was so fixated on the Wii back then that I actually had no clue there was a GC version

I didn't learn that for like two years

[craggy vine]

OHH okay that is probably why I don't hear anything about the gamecube version really

[fresh bane]

:trixieno:

[craggy vine]

The Wii and gamecube are both the original versions then I guess

[mossy flume]

The Wii version mirrors the world

[fresh bane]

the Wii version is the same as the GC visually

[mossy flume]

And thus makes Link right-handed

[craggy vine]

what why did they mirror it

[fresh bane]

the only difference is that it's flipped because they had to account for the wiimote motion

[craggy vine]

ooooh

[mossy flume]

To differentiate it between the GC and Wii versions, that's all

Oh right, that too

[craggy vine]

Gah that's so weird

[mossy flume]

90% of people are right handed

[slim thorn]

I assume I played it on GC since I don't remember motion controlling it

[craggy vine]

Did the wii version allow for just a controller? Could you play without a wii-mote

[mossy flume]

But the mtion controls were just... you flicked it. It wasn't like Skyward Sword where your motion actually mattered.

No

[fresh bane]

It's not just to differentiate the versions, there are some games that I'm pretty sure got re-released for the Wii just fine like RE4 for example which is just a straight up better version of the Gamecube original in that it has more content and is rendered at a higher resolution, RE1R and RE0 as well, but other than that the Wii games are pretty much the same as the GC versions which is impressive because it's not usually the case with re-releases on other consoles like PS

[mossy flume]

You had to use the Wiimote + nunchuck

[craggy vine]

Bruuhh

[fresh bane]

Nintendo just gets really crazy about its gimmicks that's why they went a little ham on the Wii and DS, a lot of games had the stipulation that they had to use the features to show off what the console was capable of

[mossy flume]

Honestly, I'm missing the Wiimote when replaying this

I'm probably going to break out the Wiimote + nunchuck later

It feels wrong to be playing this on a Xbox gamepad

[fresh bane]

So a lot of DS games had a very annoying over-reliance on the touch screen and touch controls, a lot of Wii games had to use the Wiimote and Nunchuk, and they never really grew out of that mentality until the 3DS where games like OOT3D and Majora's Mask 3D basically function the exact same as the console counterpart except that the secondary screen offers useful information, acts as a menu, has the map and just lets you do things more efficiently which is the best use for the second touch screen

[craggy vine]

I played it on a Wii U gamepad

[fresh bane]

At least that's a joystick, I played this originally on Dolphin with a keyboard

[craggy vine]

I 100% would have never finished the game if I was forced to use motion

[fresh bane]

I also played all KH games and the entire DMC franchise on just keyboard when I was binging both in 2018

[mossy flume]

I never really played the HD version except a couple years ago on an emulator on my Steam Deck, and I was a bit annoyed by some of the changes

[craggy vine]

They were also focusing on the 3D at that time

But I do gotta say, I loved playing OoT in 3D on the 3DS

[mossy flume]

It's "motion" in that you just waggle the controller in your hand. It didn't take much

[fresh bane]

It varies a lot, some people don't care about the visual changes and are completely fine with the tradeoff if it means better controls or more QoL features

[mossy flume]

Honestly I don't even really think of it

[craggy vine]

I guess it wasn't that much yeah. But on the Wii U I could play it while laying in bed!

[mossy flume]

But I also played countless hours of this on the Wii in my teenage years, so I guess I'm just wired for it

[fresh bane]

The 3D was so inconsequential that they even made an entirely separate console that didn't even have the 3D function at all, and by that I mean that it just didn't nearly intrude in your gameplay experience as much as motion controls on the Wii or touch controls on the DS

[mossy flume]

Skyward Sword was a different proposition and that definitely sucked

[fresh bane]

The Switch version of Skyward Sword is probably the one I've seen everyone almost unanimously agree is the superior version

[mossy flume]

I think the one thing that actually genuinely annoyed me in the HD version was that they simplified the light vessel hunt sections. A lot.

I didn't think that was entirely necessary, and that made the Twilight sections too short

[craggy vine]

Yeaah true, it was like, just a visual effect

[craggy vine]

Wait I didn't know there were differences like that

[mossy flume]

Yep, there are gameplay differences.

Also some tweaks to animation timing.

[fresh bane]

Even with Windwaker a lot of people think the WiiU HD Windwaker takes away from a lot of the original game's 2D cel shaded aesthetic by making everything so much more HD, OOT3D is kinda the same but some people will definitely prefer the more muted palette of the original and there are some visual changes like lighting being different especially on the last Ganon fight where his obscured shadow with the glowing eyes is much less striking, Majora's is even more divisive in that it actually goes further and makes gameplay changes too, but Skyward Sword on Switch is the one where nearly everyone agrees it's the better version

[mossy flume]

The bugs instantly die and the light pops out immediately, but in the original version there's an animation and a brief delay

It felt like a bug to me, but apparently this was supposed to be a QoL improvement???

Like "yeah yeah, let's just skip the twilight sections as quickly as possible, cut out content from them and make them quicker to blast through"

It was weird

[craggy vine]

That is so weird yeah

[mossy flume]

Also there are fewer bugs to kill

Each twilight section has like half of the light bugs than they used to in the HD version

[craggy vine]

God damn

Also with OoT from N64 to 3DS like.. That at least was a very big graphical jump at times. Like the town going from 2D backgrounds to being a proper 3D environment

[mossy flume]

Really? First I've heard of that complaint with the HD version of WW

Personally I feel like it looks so much brighter and better than the original...

Then again I wasn't big on the cel shading, but I feel like they refined it in a positive way in the HD version

[fresh bane]

100% a lot of people think it just changes the overall direction and artstyle a lot, not that it's worse just that it undeniably is different and some people just don't feel it as much as others

[mossy flume]

And yeah, the OoT 3D's final fight with Ganon was indeed less striking than the original. Made him a bit too bright.
MM3D definitely went too far, IMO. I can see why they felt the need to make QoL changes in MM, but... they were way too aggressive.

[mossy flume]

...huh, yeah, I don't really see the problem XD

[fresh bane]

it's not a problem is the thing, it's just different

there's nothing 'wrong' with either, but they're undeniably different

[mossy flume]

I don't see it as "different," I just see it as higher quality

Like WW HD was the most 1:1 HD remaster Nintendo did

[craggy vine]

The cell shading is a cool cartoony look

[mossy flume]

The only different thing I can really recall from the HD version is the red sail, which is a huge QoL improvement

[fresh bane]

I would have to disagree on that heavily, I don't have a particular horse in this race because I never played Windwaker but they absolutely have different vibes and are not the same visually at all

It's not even about the bloom like a lot of people say just the higher fidelity lighting, the more realistic skybox compared to the flat deep blue of the original, it's an entirely different vibe

they're both great vibes but not the same vibe

[slim thorn]

it's also difficult to judge anecdotal sentiment on this since the people most likely to even form an opinion on remake differences are also the ones in dedicated communities on the topic and with emotional attachments to the original, i.e. exactly the people you'd expect to dislike the newer version even if it was an improvement

[craggy vine]

What if I go to those groups and be like 'I like then all '

[bitter stream]

Immediately taken out by fans of both sides.

XD

[indigo pine]

imagine this. GTA vi. but with source engine instead of the gta engine

[slim thorn]

one of the funny things about playing retro games is constantly getting surprised at how the actual game does not match the way people talk about it

in multiple directions; some were better, some were worse, some were... good but for different reasons?

[indigo pine]

what games can you think that fit that?

[slim thorn]

within recent memory

Link to the Past surprised me by not merely being great for its time, but still excellent by modern standards. Literally the only thing I would change is the save system (and if you're emulating it, you have save states anyway so it's fine). I do think A Link Between Worlds edges it out as the best 2D Zelda, but ALBW is sort of an LttP remake anyway and the margin is so small it's insane.

Symphony of the Night was the opposite; I couldn't even finish it. Being the first of the metroidvania-style Castlevanias is obviously a big deal historically, but the combat was painfully bad, and the exploration quickly became tedious. A lot of the movement felt like it was still designed for the older arcade-style games in a way that just doesn't work in these more freeform levels. Playing Aria of Sorrow after this was night and day.

[indigo pine]

much interesting

[mossy flume]

I should play ALBW at some point…

And yeah, LttP aged so well

[fresh bane]

That is actually hilarious that I heard not only you say that but also Pat from 2BFP who's a huge CV fan and did a 24hr stream for his 40th birthday and played all of SOTN also said that it aged badly despite being excellent still

and for me, as someone who is not a CV fan, SOTN is the best feeling Castlevania I touched from minute 1

I just find that peculiar

[slim thorn]

[fresh bane]

I tried Aria and it's definitely the best GBA one, I tried Ecclesia and the double weapon thing is cool but something about the way SOTN feels just feels so much better and apparently all CV fans just on a majority agree that SOTN aged badly somehow

[slim thorn]

yeah that's honestly in "did we play the same game" territory

SotN is the only one where the player character movement is so slow compared to the enemies that it's literally not possible to win a fight through skillful dodging and positioning, only through sheer build/stats cheese, and for certain bosses straight-up AI manips

Aria instantly felt better because that was not the case

(that slowness was fine in the "arcade-style" games like Rondo of Blood because the whole game is usually one giant hallway, usually all the enemies come at you from the same direction, and you're kinda expected to memorize them anyway for a truly clean run)

[fresh bane]

Yeah that's crazy because I felt Aria so much slower compared to SOTN and I liked how Alucard attacks way better than Soma

and by that's crazy I don't mean you're wrong I just think it's crazy how different my perception is

[slim thorn]

yeah I have no explanation for that

[fresh bane]

I guess I'm gonna have to give Aria of Sorrow another try maybe if I end up beating all of SOTN to check if I'm just finally losing my grip on reality

Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance I definitely will not be trying again

I don't know what people's opinions on those are but... I'm good, I tried them for a couple of screens and immediately didn't enjoy the feel

[slim thorn]

I only have a vague impression of them being fine but mostly no one's favorite

I don't know any details about either

[fresh bane]

they're a surprising amount of people's favourites but I always see it prefaced with ''because it was my first Castlevania''

there's just far too many compromises made in gameplay and technical details to really bring either of them up on a conversation about CV games let alone the best ones

but I do recall Circle of the Moon getting more favorable reactions from people most of the time, Harmony is very strange it's a freak pick for sure

they're both 'whip-vanias' is what I call them, you walk instead of run, you attack with the whip, but both came after SOTN so they're not classic vanias, and that's just really strange to me especially since I don't like the whip gameplay, I know a lot of people love the tactical aspect of getting the timing of the whip and jumps and positioning just right, it's not for me at all so I'll stick with any post SOTN games myself

[slim thorn]

yeah, that sounds like exactly what I mean by the slow/stiff combat that kinda works in the classic arcade-y games (and Bloodstained: CotM)

[fresh bane]

the weird thing is that they both have post SOTN CV elements so it just exacerbates the weirdness of the classic gameplay for me a lot but some people are into that

now that I think about it, I'm actually super curious to see how Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is gonna feel like to play for me now that I actually have some CV games under my belt at least just actually getting a firsthand experience with some of them and even casually going through SOTN whenever I pick up the PSP and decide to play for 10 min every so often, because that game is straight up SOTN the tribute but it looks so much more fluid and has so many modern metroidvania elements it might actually hook me way more than any CV I tried (for now at least, until the new CV drops which looks great)

https://youtu.be/s5IUiPqSOL8?si=OTZAIBWQlCoih3fM

[slim thorn]

I've also heard people recommend that one, it's relatively low on my list atm since I think I've had my fill of CV-likes for now

[fresh bane]

the spritework and the controls and the movement look very smooth in this and that's my usual complaint with CV games is that to me they lack satisfying feeling combat and movement at least for me, this looks much more akin to Blasphemous in that sense, if I had to compare it to a more modern Metroidvania because I didn't play any of the other ones that everyone else surely has played, so I'm actually very curious to try this one sometime and see if I like it more, which I actually suspect I will

[slim thorn]

yeah, Blasphemous would be my go-to for relatively slower MV combat that's not harmed by the slowness (not least because it has a real dash move )

[fresh bane]

well if you ever get the feel for CV likes again then this is the one to go with, the best way I could sell it to you is what if CV but you play as proto-Frieren

[slim thorn]

in fact it might be the only CV-like left on my wishlist

[fresh bane]

to be fair I mostly mean Blasphemous in that this game looks like it has all the QoL features of just being a modern metroidvania so everything just feels that much smoother, just walking around and jumping and fighting feels good in Blasphemous it all feels very satisfying to do and this looks exactly like that and I really liked Blasphemous so I'm hoping this will have all the pros of CV without any of the cons, at least for me anyways

I probably should play Hollow Knight and Silksong but I have Nine Sols in my wishlist for years now I think

I'll get around to it sometime

[indigo pine]

play it. and play it in order. hkS assumes you have basic skills from HK

[slim thorn]

oh geez my steam wishlist has 35 games with the metroidvania tag, even after excluding pre-releases

probably some of these "aren't really MVs" but still

and I already have Biomorph to play when I'm done with Hades 2

[wind stump]

i should probably get back to Blasphemous, i got like 10 minutes in

[slim thorn]

and Grime 2 will probably be the priority after that

(I guess Grime is another example of relatively slower combat but I think Blasphemous has the edge there)

[wind stump]

though my consistency with finishing games is about as good as my commitment to... most anything

[fresh bane]

The real question is whether or not Soul Reaver is also a MV or not

[indigo pine]

start doing achievement hunting. it can be fun

[slim thorn]

I'd say it's pretty safely in the Zelda-like/Metroidvania bubble

without wading into whatever the correct terminology is for 3D games with that design philosophy for level maps and progression abilities

[fresh bane]

The LOK franchise was done by the time Prime came out so unfortunately they didn't have the time to get inspired by what apparently is the best example of a 3D metroidvania, at least from what people say, I never played them

[slim thorn]

Prime 1 is definitely a peak, though whether it's the peak is gonna come down to that confounding terminology issue

[fresh bane]

The Soul Reavers are a bit peculiar in that both are so obviously focused more on telling a story than being crazy about gameplay so both end up feeling a little weird compared to the rest, not that they're bad at all I actually love SR1's gameplay loop, SR2 is a bit... Less
But Defiance is a DMC clone, Blood Omen is a LTTP-like, and Blood Omen 2 is a full blown RPG so all of those have a lot more going on gameplay wise

[slim thorn]

indeed, both soul reavers feel like more content was meant to go in this world

...and like more payoff was meant to go in this story

[fresh bane]

Well the funny thing is when I was watching Woolie, also from 2BFP, playing through SR1 recently and then talking about it on his podcast with Pat they actually pretty aptly pointed out the ending of SR1 is probably among the best examples of a "we ran out of money" ending ever

It ends so abruptly it's almost surprising

and then SR2 does the same thing

[slim thorn]

I do appreciate that SR1 ends with Kain basically saying "Oh, you thought we were going to fight and end the story here? That's adorable. How about no."

but, you know, with 100x more medieval gravitas

[fresh bane]

It's almost quite literally a "the end? No, this is the beginning" ending
And also at the same time the funniest "fuck you, you didn't win" ending as well

[slim thorn]

the videos I've watched about the Shenmue games ended up giving me a similar impression of a franchise that is tragically incapable of writing a story with an actual ending at the end

[fresh bane]

Shenmue is a franchise I've never encountered at all and only heard small tales about like one would tell about a local urban legend/myth, the only thing I know is apparently they were supposed to be super groundbreaking ambitious games but they're all just really bad

But that's what I know, probably not what it actually is

[slim thorn]

yeah, by modern standards, there's basically no reason to revisit them except historical interest

the original one probably was legitimately pushing the boundaries of what an open world game on a console could be at the time, but no one bought a Dreamcast so GTA ended up setting that standard instead

The environmental detail was considered unprecedented, with numerous interactive 3D objects, a day-and-night system, variable weather effects, non-player characters with daily schedules and various minigames.
yeah, that, thanks wiki

though I will probably always remember the oddly plot-critical forklift racing

that got a lot of laughs in the GDQ run

[fresh bane]

The craziest part is knowing GTA 3 was meant to have a DC port and what that timeline might've looked like

Maybe they still would've been around now

Oh weird there was a Shenmue game in 2019, I thought this was just a really old dead franchise that stayed in the past

....I'm gonna guess it also wasn't good

[slim thorn]

Shenmue 3? yeah, that's a sad story all around

[wind stump]

I worry for Oatachi...

[wheat aurora]

Wow, you've got laser eyes

impressive

[wind stump]

and now i can't unsee it

[nimble moon]

Og dragon ball finally got some recognitions

Goku's model is on point imo

Looks identical to the anime

[wheat aurora]

damn, bulma is going to have some moves

[cunning galleon]

Bro.. I don't want to beat up the polish guy

Are the options different if i have high honor??

I have neutral honor i don't want to beat him up because i sympathize with him

[hushed onyx]

What Polish guy? Are you playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Or its sequel?

[bronze abyss]

isnt henry czech?

[cunning galleon]

Oh my bad, i was playing RDR2

Herr Strauss has you collect debt and the first one i did was a polish immigrant and i have to beat him up to get the debt

[hushed onyx]

Sure, but Neo was talking about “I” don’t want to beat up “the Polish guy,” suggesting that the latter is an NPC. And it would not be surprising if there was a Polish NPC in a game set in Bohemia!

[mossy flume]

The Twilight Princess PC port sure has a bunch of interesting default settings. They disable Link’s stagger in a few circumstances, which is a weird choice.

[wind stump]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iujy19OLvuc

[random steppe]

I hate this and everything it stands for

[wind stump]

In a good or bad way?

[random steppe]

Bad

But I am also half joking.

[wind stump]

[river veldt]

2007 was kind of a crazy year for games when i look at it

Portal, Halo 3, Mario Galaxy

[astral steeple]

Lego star wars the complete saga was 2007 too

Tony hawk proving ground too

Both really big games too

Skate 1 as well

And assassins creed 1

And call of duty 4 modern warfare

And bioshock and mass effect

And rock band and guitar hero 3 legends of rock

Oh and team fortress 2 + the orange box lol

Oh yeah unreal tournament 3 as well

[slender wolf]

2004 is hard to top, with thug2, GTA San Andreas, mgs3, Pikmin 2, world of Warcraft, Pokemon FireRed, halo 2, ESPN NFL 2k5, gran Turismo 4, Star wars battlefront, half life 2, burnout 3, doom 3, unreal 2004

And Metroid prime 2

And the Sims 2!

Many people consider 2004 the all time greatest year for gaming

https://youtu.be/lF90l7zWHMg?si=4gaGFljPGocpE9iX

Classic

[cerulean herald]

top 10 years for gaming:

wonder what such a list will look like

[fresh bane]

1998

That's still probably the craziest year

RE2, MvC, Ocarina of Time, Spyro, Crash 3, SFA3, Tomb Raider 3, Banjo, StarCraft, Half Life, F-Zero, Fallout 2, Tenchu, Xenogears, NFS Hot Pursuit, Parasite Eve, Soul Calibur, Fatal Fury 2, Medievil, Grim Fandango, Thief, Baldurs Gate

[slender wolf]

Imo 1998 is hurt because 3d was stilll rough around the edges so a lot of those games, while great, don’t age the best

Ocarina’s low frame rate and Spyro having all the downsides of being a 3d platformer on the PSX, for instance

Warping, pop-in, and such

[cerulean herald]

i mean are we gonna rank the years based on how much they hold to todays standards
or how big it was at the time

[slender wolf]

Good question

I personally prefer lasting appeal because it’s really hard to judge anything else and also I don’t want the early 80s to be over represented despite most of their games not holding up at all

Like 1980 and 1982 were super influential, golden age of arcades, but also most of that stuff is super basic by even 90s standards

If we go by lasting appeal probably no year could be eligible before 1986

[fresh bane]

I'm not even taking into consideration whether these years hold up to today's standards, that's irrelevant to me
But 1998 isn't just full of games that still hold up but a bunch of games that started their respective franchises which some still are around today, which is why it's considered one of the best years

[slender wolf]

That’s true, 2004 was the Year of Sequels

Almost all the games i listed are sequels

1998 is more the year of OG i guess

In general, almost all the “good” games in 2004 were sequels, often to very long running franchises

Something like San Andreas, or GT4, for instance, both of which are long runners

San Andreas is the fifth game in the series and GT4 the fourth

[astral steeple]

unreal tournament 2004

[slender wolf]

I mentioned that, calling it” unreal 2004”

[astral steeple]

oh lol

[slender wolf]

(I omitted the tournament for some reason)

[astral steeple]

also pog. finally changed my wallpaper on my gaming pc

[slender wolf]

Also, for early years, you have to decide which release to count.

For instance, if you want to describe 1991 in video games, do you count both Zelda Link To the Past and Mario World?

Mario world came out in 1990 in Japan, and 1991 in the USA, and LttP in 1991 in Japan and 1992 in US

If you use US dates only, you only get Mario world, and Japan dates only, only link to the past, if you allow both you get both

This obviously matters a lot when deciding how big 1991 is for videogames

If you award it both Mario world and LTTP, that’s a big get

[river veldt]

2017 was a pretty great year

BotW and Mario Odyssey

[astral steeple]

2020 had some big releases too

Fall guys, among us, cyberpunk, ghost of tsushima, animal crossing, doom eternal, last of us part 2, half life alyx

[winter cargo]

Ghost of Tsushima was 100% not 2020

[astral steeple]

Ps4 original release

The directors cut expansion thing was the year after

July of 2020 it first came out

Was originally going to release June of that year but was delayed because the pandemic

So it came out the month after

[rugged flax]

https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/immortal-snail-meme-turned-into-desktop-game-where-you-only-get-one-life-3362903/

[arctic fern]

Lol

[rugged flax]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4149320/Dont_Touch_the_Snail/

Steam

Don't Touch the Snail

!! ⚠** WARNING **⚠ !!

You have signed a pact and are granted immortality with a catch……

Release Date

May 2026

[craggy vine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cqn85Tkq7U Dreamcast has a PS1 emulator

[fresh bane]

https://fxbsky.app/profile/tristanacooper.bsky.social/post/3mledppaqtc2a

Tristan Cooper (@tristanacooper.bsky.social)

Deeply fascinated by the new energy drink lore implied by the new Star Fox art. Is the whole crew crushing Space Celsius to keep nimble

**💬 18 🔁 292 ❤️ 1.4K **

FxBluesky · May 8, 2026, 6:18 PM

''So good, you'll want to do a barrel roll!''

very much fascinated with videogames being sponsored much in the same fashion as a sports team or a car driver, I guess videogame development costs got to that point where this is what has to be done to keep the lights on

this has to be my absolute favourite gaming brand deal personally

it's canon, Big Boss was hanging out in Costa Rica in the 70s chugging Mt Dew and stuffing doritos down his throat in the jungles

https://fxbsky.app/profile/smashtoons.com/post/3mleujlryi22q

Dalton | SmashToons (@smashtoons.com)

#Starfox

Quoting Dalton | SmashToons (@smashtoons.com)
︀
I like to think the crew took on a shitty energy drink sponsorship to pay the bills.
︀︀
︀︀But the brand didn't pay cash and now they've got an excessive amount of 12-packs stashed away on the Great Fox.

**💬 20 🔁 1.9K ❤️ 5.6K **

FxBluesky · May 8, 2026, 11:18 PM

[river veldt]

Mario Kart 8/Deluxe have the uhh

Audi

or whatever

that was funny

[cerulean herald]

what the hell

whats the context of that?

[fresh bane]

money

it's not cheap producing the RE games

The same reason why Snake has an iPod and Sam drinks copious amounts of Monster in Death Stranding

[fickle garnet]

https://bsky.app/profile/racecarart.bsky.social/post/3mljnf7vcis23

Racecar (@racecarart.bsky.social)

Arwing christening 🌟🦊
#art #StarFox

Reposts

928

Likes

2940

Bluesky · May 10, 2026, 8:54 PM

https://bsky.app/profile/krossan.bsky.social/post/3mlhuss52js2v

Kros (@krossan.bsky.social)

#starfox 🦊

Reposts

3875

Likes

14787

Replies

101

Bluesky · May 10, 2026, 4:02 AM

[fresh bane]

there's gonna be a big resurgence in starfox fanart in the coming months for sure

I wonder if the original games also made a big deal out of Fox's dad or if this is gonna be the first time you get to see what happens to him

[cerulean herald]

didnt know he had a dad

or rather, that he is shown (and also relevant, from the looks of it)

[fickle garnet]

They gave his dad a whole prolouge cutscene in the direct for the remake detailing what happened to him prior to the events of the game

I think it's the first time we've actually seen him, but I could be wrong

[fickle garnet]

There already is from what I've seen

[graceful bridge]

https://insider-gaming.com/forza-horizon-6-leak-drops-155-gb-content/

They forgot to encrypt their preload data.

[bitter stream]

oh damn

hahah

[craggy vine]

So where can I download it and play it

[indigo pine]

its been. opened.

[wind stump]

ominous ball

OH MY GOD IT AIRHORNS

I'M DYING

all the fustration and pain was worth it for those two minutes of glorious, unhinged fucking batshittery

[winter cargo]

It's also one of those party balls with the multiple colors that the lights filter through

[rugged flax]

https://unknownworlds.com/en/news/subnautica-2-5-million-wishlists-thank-you

aw man I missed getting the Seamoth statue
it was a Twitch drop for the pre-launch showcase that they did Saturday morning and I was busy

[graceful bridge]

https://www.eurogamer.net/mouse-pi-for-hire-makes-money-back

Indie game broke even in less than a month.

[wind stump]

good for them

[rugged flax]

youtooz making Subnautica plushies?

[rugged flax]

Subnautica 2 has been preload enabled!

[little badger]

They just made a statement

[light gate]

Uhhh

Does that imply they got hacked?

[little badger]

They weren't hacked. They pushed the data to steam. But forgot to encrypt it

[light gate]

But they’re denying that saying it isn’t a result of a pre-load issue???

[little badger]

Well that's what happened.

[light gate]

Probably should fire the PR person

[little badger]

If it wasn't then who knows but that's likely what happened. Hardware bans are good and apparently the game is already cracked

[light gate]

Such a MS way to handle things lol

[little badger]

I mean I pre ordered the premium edition but the build they have isn't a complete one

[slender wolf]

Why would you ban people for accessing a leaked build

Baffling

[craggy vine]

Maybe I won't download it then

Even though I could play it right now it seems

[gaunt marten]

https://youtu.be/MWe-aiSb5I8

Decino with an 80 minute video

[wind stump]

i don't think this is legal

BALATRO IN MY BLACKJACK BAG?!??!

[wind stump]

i understood this reference

[astral steeple]

🤔

[fickle garnet]

You can post multiple images in one post, you dont need to make multiple posts for multiple images

[astral steeple]

Ive always just posted each image one at a time

Way easier

[fickle garnet]

It's much nicer when you post them in one post, it also takes up much less space on the screen

[astral steeple]

Eh

[gaunt marten]

What do the pictures even mean?

This looks vague marketing nonsense

[fickle garnet]

That's exactly what it is, it's just teasers for free to keep games

[astral steeple]

They want people to guess what the free games are based on the color pattern

First one could be mirror's edge maybe?

Could be spiderman miles morales too possibly as well

[fickle garnet]

I really like that the StarFox redesigns have digitigrade legs, I also really like that they gave Falco talons

[quiet swift]

I have P3R on my steam deck but I've hesitated to start it when on a production, since that can be interrupted at any time... now that I have free time today, I'm gonna start it and find a good place to pause/save.
Have done P4G and P5R. Noticing the menu music of P3R is the same music used when visiting 👃 guy

[wind stump]

oh no
no no no

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

Engulfed Castle
Entrance is entirely underwater
looks at description
"No it can't be, ri-"
image shows IT

i am not ready for Waterwraith-sama, yamero

[quiet swift]

Yametekudastop!

[wind stump]

okay now i'm certain people who played Pikmin 1/2 in their younger years made this game

they wanted to inflict a whole new generation with Waterwraith

me in the Engulfed Castle waiting for The Bastard to drop

YOU

[quiet swift]

MC is awfully nonchallant about all the weird shit happening

[rugged flax]

Subnautica has a non-Fandom wiki now
https://wiki.subnautica.com/sn/
the devs have been preparing this for the launch of SN2

[quiet swift]

I saw a short, basically Ryley didn't get enslaved after owing all that money to the corp, and instead got paraded around by them as a survivor and wrote a book about his exploits on the planet? (perhaps as a way to repay that debt). And the company is making mad cash off of selling everything related to such explorations to more explorers

[wind stump]

h'oke, here's the plan
i'mma rush Engulfed Castle
get Purples
and then run through again with them on hand to kill The Bastard when he turns up

yea that went badly...

[wind stump]

ohhhh... while you can take other mins into Engulfed Castle, you can only go to the first floor, it'll not spawn a thing that lets you go deeper and only an exist.
bastards outplayed me.

[rotund forge]

heheheheheheh

[quiet swift]

Ayo wait an apple pickin' minute

Open comments, literally first/top comment

[mossy flume]

Appul

For which MMO?

[quiet swift]

WoW

[mossy flume]

Huh

[rancid herald]

I didn't believe at first. Then, I noticed the hat

[fresh bane]

''that's ridiculous, there are plenty of horses with similar color sch--''
giant mouse clicks and drags hat png onto horse
''APPLEJACK THE PONY??''

[gaunt marten]

Cowboy Epona

[fickle garnet]

Epic games store isn't loading, so I cant uninstall the game I want to

Guess I'll use control panel

The game doesn't even appear in control panel wtf😭

Thanks Epic

[chilly mural]

where would society be, without epic games store?

[fickle garnet]

Probably a better place

[astral steeple]

lol

the rewrite of EGS is releasing within the next few months iirc

it'll run way better

it was made in unreal engine to begin with

[mossy flume]

Boy that can't come soon enough

[astral steeple]

it was never originally meant to be a full on store

[mossy flume]

Their launcher is a disaster

Yeah

[fickle garnet]

So thats why it's so ass\hj

[astral steeple]

was meant for fort itself and that was it

[random steppe]

At least it's not Uplay, but yeah, it's not a good piece of software

Uplay easly takes the cake as most dogshit launcer I've ever had the displeasure to use

[fickle garnet]

True

[mossy flume]

They fused it into a EGS + Fortnite + Unreal Engine + Twinmotion + RealityScan launcher and that's just a completely incoherent concept

[astral steeple]

for some strange reason they had decided to make the launcher in UE instead of just like through other ways

[mossy flume]

And they also use it for Fab asset management too, which it is absolutely not built for

Everything about it is stupid

[fickle garnet]

I wish all I needed was steam

The only thing I use EGS for is the free games, If there's an exclusive I want, I just get it on console😭

[quiet swift]

You and everyone else

[astral steeple]

i mean yeah free games are nice lol

ive claimed a few of the free games i just dont really use my pc for gaming too much at all due to only having like 50gb free currently

i gotta get a 2nd hard drive at some point

i really only use EGS itself currently for the epic rewards lol

came in clutch so many times

[fickle garnet]

Ok, It's working now after restarting my pc

Dunno why it wasn't working before

[astral steeple]

only games i have owned on EGS currently lol

none of which are even installed

[cunning galleon]

I only have hell let loose

[astral steeple]

i had Hogwarts installed like back in december, but only because i had to play through like 2 hours of it to unlock a item in fort and it was free

though i had to slog through playing it at like 5fps at the time cause i didnt know dedicated graphics and integrated graphics were two different things at the time

cause when i had first got this pc from my brother, i had the hdmi in the integrated graphics hdmi, so every game would run like super slow

then i found out about displayport so i switched to using that since then

since that was through the GPU itself

[quiet swift]

I think I have over 500 free games from epic

[astral steeple]

jeez lol

[quiet swift]

Maybe less than 10 of those ever installed

[astral steeple]

i should have started claiming the free games way earlier

ive never really been much of a pc gamer at all

i mainly play on xbox

only got more into pc games recently when i got this pc

due to my prior pc's all not being too good

the first pc i had was a 2gb ram single core emachine desktop

then after that i had got a 4gb ram dual core laptop which was the acer aspire v5

then a 8gb ram quad core ryzen 5 hp laptop

[quiet swift]

And why did all that need to be on separate lines?

[astral steeple]

ive always typed like that

my current desktop pc is a 32gb ddr4 ram i7 with a geforce gtx 1060 6gb with a strix z370 h gaming motherboard

which is like way more powerful than all those other computers

[cunning galleon]

We've had one Desktop, broke, and now I'm on my 1st ever laptop

16gb ram, i5 12450h, 6gb rtx 3050

[random steppe]

That's pretty good, definitely gonna work pretty well for most things.

[astral steeple]

yeah

never had a gaming pc like this before up until i got this pc back in november

this is the case itself

such a cool case overall

this is the monitor im using

which is apparently 500 dollars wtf

I had gotten it for free when I got the computer from my brother

[random steppe]

I am still using an ancient coolermaster case because well, it's a piece of aluminium

Not many things that can break in a case you can't easly swap, so it's hard to justify buying one

Like, unless you drop an anvil on it, it's gonna keep be fit for use

[river veldt]

rate my setup

[cunning galleon]

10/10

[craggy vine]

The carpet is stained from the steam deck's exhuast vent

[rugged flax]

[minor gorge]

I should order it.

[rugged flax]

Preload is such a useful feature
Don't have to wait for download on launch day or worry about a big game release crashing the steam store or something
Just gotta wait for steam to decrypt the game package once it goes live

[hasty patio]

There might be a small download, but the bulk is there.

[rough sleet]

lets gooo

also got my bf copy of the game

bsf*

[indigo pine]

gay

[hidden elbow]

Oh i just can't wait

(for those who don't know Sacrilege is a reimagining of Isaac Repentance soundtrack in style of Flash isaac ost"

[rugged flax]

the fish is flipped the opposite direction on the Subnautica 2 icon

[chilly mural]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnirxFNs20w @fresh bane

[fresh bane]

Interesting development...

[quiet swift]

Downloaded it on pc and steam deck. Am ready.

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/q9c9vcpreEk

[slender wolf]

My gaming handheld

[minor gorge]

And I got it.

Here is hoping my computer can handle it.

[proud warren]

🐟/10

[fresh bane]

https://fxbsky.app/profile/stupjam.bsky.social/post/3mlmouopdzk2j

stupjam (@stupjam.bsky.social)

zelda pets the floof #starfox

**💬 12 🔁 980 ❤️ 3.7K **

FxBluesky · May 12, 2026, 1:59 AM

[fickle garnet]

Fox is not happy

[rugged flax]

https://youtooz.com/search?q=subnautica
Youtooz is dropping Subnautica plushies

[quiet swift]

The others are nice but the leviathans will sell out ultra fast

[mossy flume]

Y'know, it kinda sucks there isn't a way to directly port your Miis from your 3DS to the Switch. Best you can do is assign a Mii to an amiibo, and then read that amiibo on the Switch

[mossy flume]

News update: This is another use case for my Flipper Zero.

[bitter stream]

what's a Flipper Zero?

[river veldt]

https://www.rxddit.com/r/Steam/s/XApS768N20

[bitter stream]

huh, discord doesn't pick up the audio from that, time to go to reddit haha

[rugged flax]

it's true
https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamController/comments/1tbkmoi/it_screams/

[bitter stream]

hahahahah

omg

[astral steeple]

They should have made it have glados say "you monster" instead

[rugged flax]

Never doubt Valve's ability to sneak in a meme

[fickle garnet]

I'm finally going to download Nine Sols

[bitter stream]

oooh nice nice

I'm sure there's a contingent of players on this server for that game

[toxic seal]

0/10 unplayable

[mossy flume]

tldr, it's a hacking multitool. It has a bunch of radios and can record/replay various protocols. Such as copying and emulating amiibos.
https://flipper.net

[bitter stream]

oooh neat!

[mossy flume]

...is this abusing the vibration motors to play audio files?

[rugged flax]

it has a speaker

[fresh bane]

It's actually not speakers

at least not the kind of speakers most people would think anyways, I don't have the technical knowledge to really explain it but it apparently uses the rumble to do the noise

[river veldt]

sorta like the joycons

[mossy flume]

Yep, I assume it’s the same trick as the joycons.

Looked it up, it is indeed the haptic motors, just like the Switch 2. It does not have a speaker.

[hasty patio]

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/roguelike/darkest-dungeon-studio-refuses-to-ai-generate-deceased-narrators-voice-despite-his-permission-i-would-never-ever-erode-his-incredible-and-timeless-performances/

[mossy flume]

Basically the haptic motors are linear actuators this time around, which means they can actuate very very quickly. Usually they generate rumble effects in around the 20-80Hz range. When used to play sounds they’re actuating at 100s or 1000s of Hz and they resonate with the plastic casing of the controller itself, using the plastic shell as a substitute for a speaker diaphragm, producing sounds.

This works quite well to the point where you don’t really need a full speaker for a lot of different kinds of sounds

[bitter stream]

oh that's interesting

[rugged flax]

i c
One reddit comment I read said it did have a speaker
but as we all know the initial batch of them disappeared instantly so I don't have one yet to play with

[bitter stream]

oof, hope it's not too long before they sell the next batch

[slim thorn]

It’s me. I’m the contingent.

[cerulean herald]

you've activated the sleeper agents

I'm going to Nine your Sols

[bitter stream]

hahah nice nice

maybe Ping sillysnep so ya'll can thread up and discuss how it goes

[cerulean herald]

there hasnt been a 9S thread most discussion was thru here

[slim thorn]

yeah, I don’t usually make threads for all the games I play that no one here’s been talking about

(and since I started modding 9S I’ve had threads in other servers)

[craggy vine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q11Sm2maSTg Some of these I didn't even remember existed

[wraith condor]

I started two gaming threads earlier for Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy if anyone’s interested. I know there’s a thread for FF14 but there wasn’t one until today for the other FF games.

[cunning galleon]

My choice of mount looks so cool in rdr2

[bitter stream]

very neat

[cunning galleon]

Supposedly one of the best horses, i named her Duchess

[astral steeple]

https://www.gematsu.com/2026/05/garfield-escape-from-monday-announced-for-ps5-xbox-series-switch-and-pc

Peak??????

[cunning galleon]

i like this guy

[gaunt marten]

Why do I have a 3GB hollow knight mod log?

[wind stump]

[cunning galleon]

3gb txt file??

[winter cargo]

I remembered something funny about what I did in Fire Emblem Three Houses.

I wanted to get in lesbians with Edelgard(I eventually went to Silver Snow... ||I take people trying to kill me quite poorly||), so I ended up with the Black Eagles.

I don't like Hubert, I never did, so to humiliate him, I chose to send him into the Dance competition. He won. He won the competition

[visual hill]

I might get my hands on one soon-ish

[fickle garnet]

Nine Sols is fun

[bitter stream]

what makes it fun?

[fickle garnet]

The gameplay is really smooth

[bitter stream]

oooh nice

the art style look scool

[fickle garnet]

It is a very cool art style

[slim thorn]

Compared to my other top metroidvanias, imo what stands out the most about Nine Sols is that it has possibly my all-time favorite MV combat system. Right from the start there’s more to do than the basic 3-hit combo, the parry timing indicators are so good they made me like parrying for once, several excellent bosses, and there’s a “story mode” so the skill floor to enjoy it is zero (despite the ceiling also being quite high).

[fickle garnet]

The combat system is really fun, yeah

[slim thorn]

(and yeah the art style and the story are also great)

[fickle garnet]

It's definitely challenging, but not to the point that it's unfair

[wind stump]

https://youtu.be/R2FEXNxBplI

[cunning galleon]

Rin penrose no way

[mossy flume]

As a reminder, because I only just remembered myself, the boot chime the Steam Deck plays when it turns on is actually played by its haptic feedback motors under the touchpads, and not the speakers.

Despite having speakers.

It’s kinda just showing off

So yeah, this is very much a thing these days.

I believe that the PS5 controller can do this too, but I don’t think anything uses it this way?

Also, if you have a DJI drone, you would notice that it plays a chime whenever it turns on. It doesn’t have a speaker, either. No DJI drone has a speaker. Again using the motors.

[worthy rose]

https://bsky.app/profile/len.bsky.social/post/3mlb4m3fhvc2i

Len (@len.bsky.social)

CK3 putting in their official changelog, "Your infidelity will no longer be broadcasted to everyone as it happens. It’s the Middle Ages, not a Coldplay concert." is a What The Patch Notes Actually Mean-worthy joke. Very good. No notes.

Bluesky · May 7, 2026, 11:32 AM

[teal sonnet]

remind me of this somehow

[mossy flume]

Well, you can press a button and the intro will be skipped.

[unreal idol]

Lmao

[mossy flume]

But also lawl

[river veldt]

this post was before they added that feature

[mossy flume]

I had the Steam Deck at launch and I'm pretty sure it could always be skipped?

[astral steeple]

🤔

[green fulcrum]

🎶 I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed~ 🎶

[indigo pine]

this is peak male physique you can argue with it. but its true./j

game is payday 2

[cunning galleon]

Epic, CTA is cool

[astral steeple]

peak

playing through neversoft's game GUN

[mossy flume]

...you sure about that, game?

[minor plover]

you are technically at a complete stop on the runway.

[cunning galleon]

Well, yea, that is a successful landing

[mossy flume]

SMASH
Flight computer: "ENGINE 1 FIRE. ENGINE 2 FIRE."
Game: "Successful landing :3"

[rancid herald]

the game never liked those engines

[cunning galleon]

A failed landing would be you being dead tho

Unless the objective calls for a proper landing, in time of peril you kind of don't have time to line up on final approach so you just hope for the best with a belly landing

[dense crypt]

Nuclear Option?

[mossy flume]

Yep

[quiet swift]

"Define successful."
"Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die?"

[little badger]

Best buy right now: insert sweating man gif here

Video source is by @Frogboyx1Gaming on Twitter

[graceful bridge]

https://youtu.be/JdatH4vRQFc?si=t09LSlQRhhIDOuke

I started doing something similar to this, set up a Shelf on Steam and just put a handful of games I want to play next on it.

[slim thorn]

I mostly use installed status for that purpose

I currently have maybe ~10 games installed, including the ones I mod, the one I'm playing normally, and a half dozen I want to play

sometimes I have two games being actively played, it depends on the games whether that's viable or helpful

right now it's just Hades 2, that is not a game I can multitask with lol

[graceful bridge]

I'm a digital hoarder, I have so many games installed.

[slim thorn]

the reality of a finite hard drive completely blocks that for me

especially if I feel like one of those AAs/AAAs that takes >50 GB

(or Talos Principle 2; love the game but did it really need to be >100 GB?)

well I'm also spending a few dozen gigs on movie/TV torrents at any given time

[graceful bridge]

I've got a bunch of old hard drives I kept shoving into my case over the years.

I probably should archive a bunch of stuff I'm not going to play for a while.

[slim thorn]

unrelated: this morning I think I accidentally talked a coworker into trying Hades

[graceful bridge]

Heh!

[hushed onyx]

I usually only have the games installed which I feel like I might get to "in the near future"

...this reminds me, I should uninstall some games

Anyway, the upshot is that it usually takes months at best to get "through" a game (only being able to play an hour a day at best will do that!), so there's no sense having five hundred games installed when it will be years or decades before I can even play any of them.

[wind stump]

o no you're turning them gae
because you know
damn

[astral steeple]

with my xbox i have a 5tb external drive connected to it at all times with like 3.4tb still free

so i can just install whatever games whenever

[gaunt marten]

You can use Steam's backup functionality to hoard games you won't play soon but want to keep on your drive for offline access. This allows you to compress them and keep more of them around.

[uneven epoch]

oh! thats an interesting information, i guess ill look it up later

my external disk has started failing lately (disconnects here and there) so i was thinking of buying a new one and, well then i saw the prices

i wont be getting a new external disk lol

[gaunt marten]

It's not going to work miracles for you. If you're really low on disk space, you're better off deleting the game and redownloading it when you want to play it again

And if you don't want to do that, you can get better compression from 7z than from steam (it's just annoying to work with)

[uneven epoch]

https://www.tumblr.com/eganmont/784095447626170368/they-forgot-what-they-were-arguing-about @wind stump for your viewing pleasure

[wind stump]

Love it

I should use Steiner more, he's a good tonk and I feel like I'm relying too much on elemental damage.

[gaunt marten]

But Steiner is an elemental damage dealer

[random steppe]

Assuming Vivi is around at least

[gaunt marten]

yeah

[wind stump]

oh right, Sword Arts (online)

[gaunt marten]

I would not use him without vivi

[random steppe]

It's been a while since my last playthrough so I don't remember what my favourite teams were

[wind stump]

well what i mean is that i would primarily use him for physical damage/tanking, with Sword Arts (Online) as a backup if I needed it

[random steppe]

Never been much of an optimal player though

[wind stump]

i dunno, gonna have to do a bit of farming and not looking forward to that

hella underlevelled, apparently

[random steppe]

I think a problem is that I kinda want Garnet and Freya around at all times, so that doesn't leave much space for Steiner.

[gaunt marten]

Don't keep garnet around then

[wind stump]

(I could abuse the 9999 damage thing but it kinda goes against the spirit of the game, speeding up and disabling encounters temporarily feels fair, it's not fucking with the actual gameplay in a major way, imo)

[random steppe]

Heals are good and summons are badass though

[gaunt marten]

Freya gives heals

[random steppe]

Yeah sure, occasionally, but I want her jumping

[wind stump]

it's annoying because i like using Garnet/Dagger, but at the point of the game I'm at she keeps getting distracted and that means she's kinda unreliable

[random steppe]

Oh yeah she gets benched during that part of the game for sure

[gaunt marten]

If you bring Steiner to deal damage, Freya doesn't have to jump as often

[wind stump]

Maybe when i start playing again I'll swap Dagger for Eiko

(yes i know Dagger is a psudonym but like, i kinda respect her name change, even if the reasoning is hilariously dumb.)

[random steppe]

(I didn't remember how she was called in the English localisation)

[wind stump]

i mean she's still technically Garnet, but her default name is Dagger
kinda gets used interchangably

also i just love the reasoning

"Oh what's this?"
"It's a dagger."
"Dagger? Banger name, ngl"

[random steppe]

I still get sent by the fact that her ffxiv ||equivalent is just named after another gemstone||

[wind stump]

i also like the fact Garnet's disguise is a tradtional White Mage hood.
It's just a cute detail.

[slim thorn]

since I mostly play RPGs for the story, I often run into this exact problem that I'm effectively forced to pick my favorite side characters immediately to see all the unique dialogue you get from having them in the party

one reason I end up preferring the model where narratively everyone's there all the time even though only 3-4 of them participate in combat for some reason

[random steppe]

FFIX does work that way too, so narratively is not a big problem

[slim thorn]

I also appreciate E33's "reserve team" trick so it's not even weird that they're absent from combat (even if I never leveled them enough to help )

[random steppe]

I am actually surprised I don't know of any game that has a similar system

[gaunt marten]

Final Fantasy 7 and 8

[slim thorn]

I don't remember 7 doing that?

[random steppe]

We are specifically talking about a system where your main team gets wiped out, you can send in the team in reserve.

[gaunt marten]

Yes!

The endgame has fights where that happens

[slim thorn]

huh

[random steppe]

Oh yeah, but that's like, the exception not the rule

[gaunt marten]

In FF8, ||the final boss deletes characters that have been dead for a while, and other characters replace them|| whereas in FF7, uh ||I think for the final boss you have to pick three teams that fight simultaneously||

[random steppe]

Having split teams is pretty common in ff, but I feel like that's something different

Like you do it in ff6 and ff9 as well at different points

[gaunt marten]

Makes sense

[slim thorn]

in my mind this is the difference between a "scripted event" and a "mechanic"

definitely not perfect since "boss-specific mechanics" are a thing but eh

[gaunt marten]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq86bVrMojQ

[green fulcrum]

This is amazing

[astral steeple]

Today's free games on EGS

[slim thorn]

for the first few lines I was genuinely unsure if this is an easter egg in the real game

[frozen gate]

only if u do the konami code

[teal sonnet]

ITS OUT

SUBBING TIME

[quiet swift]

I thought it was tomorrow?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cbSGSHJNGg

[visual hill]

textures are often 80% of a game's size, but 1080p players could probably get away with half-res textures (= texture size reduced by 75%)

also, use CompactGUI on your Steamapps folder

I saved like 100 GB by doing this

[slim thorn]

yeah, it’d be nice if you could choose how much texture to download without creating N different games

[visual hill]

some games have HD texture DLCs, but mostly on consoles only

I think Fortnite has it on PC?

[slim thorn]

huh, how does that not break the games?

[bronze abyss]

whats compactgui

[visual hill]

transparent compression, Windows handles it (compact.exe). CompactGUI is a frontend for it which can watch folders for changes and compress new/changed files

Linux has Zstd transparent compression support in btrfs, it's on by default on Fedora

it's how I stored 2.3 TB of data on a 2 TB SSD once

[slim thorn]

ok, I’ll keep it in mind for my next AAA game

[visual hill]

it's pretty fast, loading times are largely unaffected in Xpress8K mode (slightly more in Xpress16K on slower CPUs)

[gaunt marten]

It just exposes this functionality: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/compact

It's mutually incompatible with Window's "compress contents of this file to save space" but better in almost every situation

It's also faster and less error-prone

[wind stump]

you know, how did Olimar get his ship back after the events of Pikmin 2?

you do see the Dolphin in 4, after all

(Not sure about 3)

actually makes sense for the snowy dwarf to be in the snow biome

[unreal idol]

I've only ever played the first Pikmin

[wind stump]

I don't think this was in the original

[river veldt]

no he says this in the original too

[slender wolf]

I find it funny that Ntfs has two forms of compression and they aren’t compatible and they didn’t like, have one replace the other, at least in the gui

The gui one still is the old one

Average Microsoft moment

[hushed onyx]

Interesting, I may want to play this. Too bad it starts in a future setting instead of something closer to today where space colonization is more of a long-term investment and you might have to balance it against other needs.

[arctic fern]

just booting it up now

[gaunt marten]

The second one is meant to be used by advanced users for executables

[smoky sonnet]

talos principle 3 next year!!!!

[gaunt marten]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3214480/Prime_Monster/ neat game

Steam

Prime Monster

In the Fractured Kingdom, politicians really are monsters.

Whether it's the Vampires ensuring that the population have the calorie content of their blood tattooed on their necks, or the Zombies implementing speed limits on walking - the nation suffers just the same.…

Price

$16.99

Recommendations

180

It's by the same developers as the Sexy Brutale

The concept is interesting. You're running for prime minister and do debates and campaigning using a roguelike deckbuilder system

[worthy rose]

Setting wise it feels a bit like the expanse

[wind stump]

What the fuck

[ember flame]

the wardrobe demo for Restitched came out, so I made a little pony with it https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3725986229

[gaunt marten]

Cool!

[visual hill]

Bluesky is canon in Pikmin let's goooooo

[arctic fern]

subnautica 2 is VERY good so far

[fickle garnet]

My sister and I are gonna play it later

[rugged flax]

Sadly I probably won't have time to play SN2 until tomorrow night

[mossy flume]

I probably won't be able to play it for a bit either, but I already bought and downloaded it.

[rugged flax]

Same
the fact that there was already 1M copies sold by the morning of launch day when preload was only open for 72 hours beforehand is nuts

[mossy flume]

Isn't that well past the threshold for them to get their bonus?

[rugged flax]

Absolutely.

[mossy flume]

Honestly I just want them to get their $200M entirely out of spite, haha

[rugged flax]

Pretty sure the entire gaming community does

[mossy flume]

Given the bullshit they went through, they deserve it

Yeah, no doubt

[rugged flax]

Gamers are not a force to be reckoned with, Krafton
alone we are small, but together, we can accomplish some ridiculous things

[mossy flume]

Honestly I wasn't originally planning on getting it because I never played the other two. Wanted to, I even own them, but never got around to it. The whole situation with Krafton convinced me to chip in.

But it's also a handy excuse to go ahead and give it a shot

[arctic fern]

honestly its well worth giving the original a shot first

below zero... you can take it or leave it

[mossy flume]

Noted

[arctic fern]

also because 2 is still early acess obviously lol

tho its already pretty feature rich? it seems already in a much better state on launch than 1 and even below zero at present, tho i havent gotten very far into it yet

[rugged flax]

they also switched engines from Unity to Unreal 5 for this one

the modding community wasn't too happy about that, since writing Unity and UE5 mods are completely different, but oh well

[arctic fern]

yeah but unity shot itself in the foot multiple times

[rugged flax]

runtime fees

they only lost like 60% of their stock price and nearly half of their representation at certain game jams because of that

[mossy flume]

Yep

CEO was fired, they undid all of that, and came up with a much more reasonable monetization scheme.

But damage was done

[ripe mica]

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

[wind stump]

WE'RE RICH
MUSHROOM

[green fulcrum]

Wish the female Dwarves had beards

[worthy rose]

Yep that's 90% of my reason to buy it

[rotund forge]

Is the story storying properly?

[winter cargo]

Fodlan fire emblem runs out of context: I keep annoying the voice in my head.

The joke with context is I keep annoying Sothis in Three Houses and Arval in Three Hopes

[cunning galleon]

wow this sucks

[fresh bane]

https://youtu.be/KDVzwVizJpI?si=1syDn0JVD7ThkE9x

You know regardless of how the new Starfox ends up being like it's really nice seeing people actually talking about this franchise a lot more again

the N64 version of this game looked pretty crazy advanced I have to say, looks really really nice visually

[mossy flume]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWQSxN-ZukE

Y'know, it would be nice if this game ever came out

And actually worked

[cerulean herald]

was gonna say, isnt this the game thatll never come out

[mossy flume]

They're locked into releasing the campaign this year, actually

[river veldt]

wait ive heard of this game

[mossy flume]

Or so they insist

[river veldt]

As of December 2025, combined crowdfunding and early access sales have reached nearly US$1 billion, becoming one of the most expensive video games to develop and among the most expensive single pieces of entertainment ever produced.
what the fuck

[mossy flume]

I have access to it, but I kinda refuse to bother playing it until they stop resetting everyone's progression every few weeks

Yep

[river veldt]

this better be the greatest game ever made

[mossy flume]

That's the idea

"The space sim to end all space sims" is the basic pitch

[cerulean herald]

Silksong 2

[mossy flume]

I contributed to their Kickstarter way back in 2012

[river veldt]

Silksong only took like 6 years and i don't think it costed a zillion dollars to make

[mossy flume]

Their problems have basically boiled down to "They started over from scratch at least three times, changed game engines at least twice, proceeded to make their own game engine, and only then started to make real progress. Also massive scope creep."

But they sure have a lot of money.

Every time I try to play this though, basically nothing works.

So, kinda the expected result.

[river veldt]

yea taking this long to make it reeks of scope creep

[mossy flume]

Yep.

The scope creep was immense.

Also the general technical ammbition was kinda nuts from the get-go

[rancid herald]

I tried star citizen once

literally could not figure out how to get out of bed

you wake up in bed, there doesn't seem to be any instructions on how to not be in bed

frankly 11/10 simulation, accurately simulating my life

[mossy flume]

Well, guess I'll give this a go

[mossy flume]

Ha, yeah, for... a long time the key to do that was not actually bound IME.

For basically the entirety of the alpha's life, the keybindings have been a disaster

At least in my experience

[cerulean herald]

they were too busy working on bedsheet crumple physics tbf

[mossy flume]

Also, getting access to the fancy ships will still run you thousands of IRL dollars

I don't think they do the $10,000 package anymore?

[river veldt]

the what

[mossy flume]

Yeah, the big dreadnaught packages are gone

So for a long time they had pledge bundles that ranged anywhere from around $100 all the way up to $10,000+, and that got you lifetime access to what were then the biggest ships in the game (or planned to be in the game)

Now you can give them $600 for a ship and that gets you 10 years of insurance on it

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/en/store/pledge/browse/extras/standalone-ships

Eventually this should become optional and you should be able to just buy these ships with in-game currency instead

But the persistent economy (or player persistence) hasn't actually launched yet

Oh, huh

They have a subscription now

TIL

[river veldt]

$10,000 is an insane amount to spend on a game imo

[mossy flume]

Yep. Especially when it's buying things that didn't exist yet and are only promised to eventually exist.

Where "eventually" translated to something like a ten year wait before they were actually flyable in the alpha, I think?

Star Citizen was, for the looooongest time, the most crowdfunded thing in world history.

I think it's now beaten by crypto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowdfunding_projects

Yeah here we go

Fallen down to the 5th most crowdfunded thing

[robust latch]

i have backed 4 things on that list

[cerulean herald]

which ones?

[robust latch]

StarCitizen, Prison Architect, Exploding Kittens, Mystery Science Theatre 3000

[mossy flume]

Hmph, fallen all the way down to 32nd

Oh it has a tutorial now

A 30 minute tutorial

[river veldt]

https://www.engadget.com/2173357/the-original-doom-soundtrack-is-officially-in-the-library-of-congress/

[mossy flume]

…surely there’s a way to disable the ever-present global public chat in this game

[cunning galleon]

dont mind if i steal yummy

[cunning galleon]

stealing another

[mossy flume]

Well, wow, thisgame seems to actually mostly work

For once

Still a lot of user experience and performance issues, though

[mossy flume]

https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendo-explains-switch-2-price-rise

[rugged flax]

https://www.rxddit.com/r/subnautica/s/yN91ePTZQB
The fear mongering is strong with this one
The reddit comments tore their arguments apart

[mossy flume]

Has this person never read a EULA before?

All of that is bog standard table stakes

Also “full data collection” is so paraphrased as to be a useless and clearly inflammatory statement

[arctic fern]

I have no idea how much story there is in total, but whats currently there is fascinating

[cunning galleon]

RDR2:
Beaten up some racist asshole in St. Denis, feeling good

[fresh bane]

I think some people saw movements like stop killing games and started getting a little bit too excited

I'm pretty sure even Steam itself probably likely has some sort of similar wording in their ToS too

also speaking of we stopped updating on it each week but stop killing games seems to still be going pretty strong so that's good

[mossy flume]

Yep

Steam is very clear on the purchase page that you don’t own the games, you license them.

And Steam has the right to revoke that license

An example screenshot from their checkout process I grabbed just now

And yeah I’m pretty sure you also go for arbitration when signing up on Steam

[teal sonnet]

also who in the fuck would go in a class action lawsuit against fucking subnautica game

its a mf survival water game

read any game TOS and will have similar stuff, is just generic stuff

[cunning galleon]

Fuck i accidentally shot the blind man in rdr2 fuuuck

I can't save scum and go back

I thought RT was aim weapon not shoot it

I wanted to test if he was actually blind unlike that guy in St. Denis

[cunning galleon]

Stabbed that dude

[wind stump]

the ai in this Mario Kart romhack is... varied.

[wheat aurora]

tag yourself, I'm petey pirhana

[wind stump]

how the fuck am i supposed to get yellow pikmin across this lake

was temporarily considering "carry each one across the lake literally on my back"

[teal sonnet]

double it

well fucking deserved

for a early access game, it looks so fuckin damn good

I'm loving it so far

the content it has feels polish as fuck

the only " access game" so far that I feel is that they will def add so much more content

also its so fucking well optimized

UE5 can be optimized if the devs have time and give a fuck

[green fulcrum]

I think Hytale is on a similar level. Right now the devs are focusing on the updated world gen so content is a little slower than it was initially, but once that's done we'll be seeing regular updates again filled to the brim with content.

[teal sonnet]

mhm

[wind stump]

i may be biased but Slay the Spire 2 is well on its way as well

[wind stump]

ah yes this is the Pikmin 2 experience that i "missed"

[visual hill]

if it came out, it would 100% have been the best-looking N64 game

if you play the recomp, you'll be amazed at times by how well it holds up relative to earlier N64 titles

(the recomp will get an update soon-ish with a lot of QoL)

[random steppe]

Me trying not to buy this despite being a massive Subnautica fan because I want to experience it in its complete form

[arctic fern]

it honestly feels like 80% there

its probably closer to 50% but everything genuinely feels like a finished product so far, tho ive encountered at least one balance issue and bug, namely the only silver ive found requires a power tool, which requires silver
also titanium ingots, which i dont have the recipe for for some reason

[wind stump]

I didn't know Pikmin 2 was a horror game

[rugged flax]

more drops are live right now for watching drops enabled SN2 streams live for 15 minutes on Twitch

[cunning galleon]

The Count is an Arabian too?

love this game

huh, the count is an Arabian

because mine is from that lake in the grizzlies

lost because duchess decided to send me 50ft in the air

[rugged flax]

development roadmap is already out

[teal sonnet]

I want new vehicles

[teal sonnet]

titanium ingots u need another machine to make it

silver is so fucking insane hard to find lol

[arctic fern]

reeeee

[cunning galleon]

I wonder how many fish i need to catch to get my honor back up in RDR2

[wind stump]

P L E B I A N

[unreal idol]

Shy guys are powerful

[rough sleet]

it really is
but after 6 hours me and my friend ran out of content LOL

waiting for a new big update, ig?

[arctic fern]

I just hope they dont scrap the existing story like they did with bz

[fickle garnet]

https://bsky.app/profile/racecarart.bsky.social/post/3mlmp6v66u226

Racecar (@racecarart.bsky.social)

The inevitable follow-up (the paint is non-toxic, thankfully).
#art #comic #StarFox

-# Racecar (@racecarart.bsky.social)
Arwing christening 🌟🦊
#art #StarFox

Reposts

989

Likes

2978

Bluesky · May 12, 2026, 2:04 AM

[fickle garnet]

https://bsky.app/profile/racecarart.bsky.social/post/3mlrvts4jyk2i

Racecar (@racecarart.bsky.social)

I like to think that James named the team after his son and not the other way around.
#art #StarFox

Reposts

3935

Likes

13188

Bluesky · May 14, 2026, 3:47 AM

[mossy flume]

https://youtu.be/NlAFWaa9UQo?si=yMzMmi4esFrh4o1J

Ha, I thought so. Still a very impressive sequence, goddamn

CDPR devs are nuts

[wind stump]

"You know this Pikmin 251 mod looks pretty cool, I should listen to the OST."
goes on youtube
starts typing pikmin 251
pikmin 251 Palace of the Wraith
NOPE I'M GOOD.

dreading submerged castle

[fresh bane]

https://fxbsky.app/profile/racecarart.bsky.social/post/3mljnf7vcis23

The first part of this

Racecar (@racecarart.bsky.social)

Arwing christening 🌟🦊
︀︀#art #StarFox

**💬 27 🔁 1.9K ❤️ 6.5K **

FxBluesky · May 10, 2026, 8:54 PM

https://fxbsky.app/profile/racecarart.bsky.social/post/3mljniieb4c23

Racecar (@racecarart.bsky.social)

↩ Racecar (@racecarart.bsky.social)
Based on this shot in the prologue. You can thank my husband for this piece, as he's the one who pointed it out. :)

**💬 1 🔁 24 ❤️ 275 **

FxBluesky · May 10, 2026, 8:56 PM

[mossy flume]

I noticed the big pawprint, but not the second one. Very cute

[fresh bane]

also on the topic of dino planet it's really funny and adorable how different the N64 Krystal was, she's so tiny

she went from an adorable little mascot kitty to bodacious babe kitty

there's a lot of expresiveness on her eye animations that's really impressive for the N64 too

[mossy flume]

Huh

Y'know, I've never actually looked into Dinosaur Planet much at all

That's quite a contrast

And I forgot how Adventure leaned so heavily into the dutch angles

...come to think of it, a lot of games of the era did

[visual hill]

I like both Krystals to be fair

there is a funny bug in Dinosaur Planet where Krystal can merge with the rideable log and become Logstal

there's even a speedrun category where the goal is to become Logstal as quickly as possible

[visual hill]

Dinosaur Planet is one of the few N64 games that is voice-acted and has lipsyncing

I think Turok 3 did it too? Perfect Dark is voice acted, but lacks lipsync

Perfect Dark's Joanna is voiced by the same person as Krystal in Dinosaur Planet

and Krystal in SFA is voiced by the same person as Joanna in Perfect Dark Zero, go figure 🙂

[fresh bane]

Yeah it seemed to be both fully voice acted and had sophisticated enough models for lip syncing and really nice facial animations with various different eye textures, they even updated the dialogue to be Starfox related before they cancelled it and went with Adventures instead

Krystal's VA is also really nice she's got a really sweet voice, and it makes the original tiny Krystal so much more adorable lol

[slim thorn]

Makes sense. I didn't play a lot of N64 games, but spamming dutch angles seems like exactly the sort of thing creators would overdo a bit when true 3D engines had only recently made it feasible to do whenever they felt like it.

[mossy flume]

Yep. It was probably helpful to keep things looking interesting, too

When you had such a constrained polygon budget

[slim thorn]

then there's your Silent Hills and Resident Evils where all the fixed angles had to be carefully chosen for gameplay reasons which often made a lot of them dutch angles by cinema standards

[visual hill]

that's an interesting idea, I never realized how common dutch angle was back then

MGS1 used it quite a lot in cutscenes too

maybe it was a cinema trend back then too?

[slim thorn]

I doubt it but I don't know what the cinema trends were back then

[mossy flume]

Not as often in the 2000s, I think?

I don't know the 90s too well

[slim thorn]

I know in the wider history of cinema, Citizen Kane was huge in popularizing those angles in live action movies, but that's 1941 so you'd expect the industry to be more than used to the novelty of it by the time video games come around

[hushed onyx]

Oh no, a game that is targeted to my interests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCYhFE4YghI

Very strongly reminiscent of Age of Empires in aesthetic, rather suspiciously so...

[wind stump]

embrace the wololo

[hushed onyx]

If only I had a Windows machine, I would

I could criticize their narrative around the Bronze Age Collapse (it's a bit outdated history), but it is, after all, a video game.

[hasty patio]

https://www.ign.com/articles/lego-2k-drive-set-to-be-delisted-next-week-with-multiplayer-shutdown-scheduled-for-2027

[fresh bane]

Oh wow this place is actually pretty decently populated I came across a bunch of people running around

I actually already had a character and an account for this game from like 2014 which is insane, that's so long ago I didn't even have this game on Steam yet I had to download the actual standalone launcher for the game, it even has my old username and everything

yeah, can you tell this character is from the 2010s?

this is bad, I played for about 80 min and actually had a lot of fun, these games are dangerous they're such time sinks but I wanted to give it an honest try after so long, so far that was pretty fun I enjoy a good ''go here, kill 10 of these creatures, get back here, get shiny item'' experiences

[mossy flume]

SWtOR is actually a good WoW clone

Its story content isn’t too shabby either

[fresh bane]

The thing that made me really wanna give this a try is that from what I've heard it's actually a really good and pretty complete experience even if you play exclusively F2P so that's very compelling, free.99 is my favourite price to pay for something
Apparently you get pretty much the full campaigns so it's basically a free to play single player RPG if you want it to be, some expansion stuff is also free? And even if you pay once you get access to a bunch of things that a F2P wouldn't so I heard that a lot of people subscribe once and that basically gives you access to much of whatever you'd want out of this game

but also I already like Star Wars so that's a bonus

[quiet swift]

I wouldn't quite call it a wow clone, it plays at a very different speed. STory is definitely the strongest point of it

[quiet swift]

Not exactly. Unless its changed since I left the company (or rather they let me go), you can play maybe 2-3 of the xpacs/content patches after hitting level 50 (the original max level). There's still like 4 more xpacs after that. But all you need to do is just do the subscription once, and it unlocks all content, even the current stuff.

You do suffer on stuff like max amount of credits you can use, how much bank space, etc etc

used to work as a GM / customer service for SWTOR for like 10 years

Ah yeah. Most of the story content up to level 60. Anything after that, get the sub once then cancel, and it remains unlocked

[fresh bane]

From what I gathered from looking at a couple of different videos on the matter recently both a couple nights ago and in the past few months
The first two expansions are supposedly free to play, you can fully finish whichever class storyline you picked with no issues at least as far as I've come across, the limitations start with things like the level cap which is 60 from what I've seen, max of 1 million credits, you get access to less perks obviously and the other expansions are not free to play, things like XP are earned slower for f2ps and you can't do some online stuff like raids apparently, you also get less slots for characters less quickbar stuff and restrictions on things like fast travel timers and whatnot

[quiet swift]

That sounds about right

https://swtorista.com/articles/swtor-free-to-play-vs-preferred-vs-subscriber-guide/ swtorista is the go to page for anything swtor, honestly

[fresh bane]

but from what I've read especially as of the past few years, the baseline base game is actually fully playable and the restrictions are stuff you can easily put up with if you purely just wanna play the game, but a lot of people, a lot of people do recommend paying subscription at least once to access as much content as you can since the subscription for a month is like $15

[quiet swift]

Yeah that's what I'm saying

[fresh bane]

Yeah it seems like a lot of the restrictions on F2P accounts start to matter when you already finished whatever class storyline you picked and once you start hovering around like, what, 80+ hours into the game? Basically when you want to access any endgame stuff

[quiet swift]

https://vulkk.com/category/swtor/ also a good site for swtor info/stuff. SWTORista is probably still better but there's options

[fresh bane]

so for anyone like me who just wants to give it a look and see if they like the game, it sounds like a very considerable amount of the game is fully playable for free which is nuts

[quiet swift]

https://swtorista.com/articles/swtor-free-to-play-vs-preferred-vs-subscriber-guide/#Content_Restrictions and the next part will literally tell you exactly what you have/don't have access to

Yeah if you want to get an impression of the game, yes, you don't need a sub yet. If you like what you see, and even spend the time finishing all 8 class stories and shadow of revan and want more class story (which isn't separated and is more a singular story at that point), then it's worth the 15 to get the rest

[rugged flax]

Just finished playing through Deliver Us The Moon
Saw it was on sale cheap and thought I'd give it a try
Interesting story. Missed a few things that I still need to go back and get and then maybe try to finish all the achievements for the 100%.
Worth the $4 I paid for it to experience the story

[quiet swift]

And on Vulkk i see that 7.9 was just announced two weeks ago, finishing the 'legacy of the sith' storyline which is the 7.0 content/xpac. Interesting

[fresh bane]

I never actually seriously played any MMOs before, not even Runescape, if you wanna know which MMO I ever played for myself look up Sherwood Dungeon it's a f2p browser MMO that I played back in like 2013 because I was a kid with no money and a computer worth less than anything at the time, so I'm very much in the ''just giving this game a look'' category here, but if I end up getting super into it I will absolutely buy at least one subscription to get the access to the rest of the content

[quiet swift]

I think you can experience a lot of it alone, I believe some non-current-xpac raids have story modes that you can do with NPCs too

[fresh bane]

Like I said I do love a good ''go here, kill these things, get back, get item'' gameplay loop so I suspect... I'll probably enjoy my time

I have come across a bunch of players I don't actually know if I can interact with them at all, I haven't tried thus far

but I'm not actually playing with anyone so yeah, probably gonna be solo

[quiet swift]

From what I remember, most people said the imperial agent has one of the best stories of the bunch

(Also Sith Warrior and Jedi Knight)

[fresh bane]

I did hear that, I went with the Sith Warrior which I hear is also good, but I was very much tempted to go with a pew pew character

Maybe for my next character?

[quiet swift]

ANYWAY it is very late and I must z

[fresh bane]

[mossy flume]

True; WoW just kinda doesn’t care about its own story at all, whereas SWtOR emphasizes it

[fresh bane]

I would've thought WoW would actually be all focused on the story, I only played WC3 but I always kept hearing stuff about WoW, I would imagine the lore would go super deep and whatnot

[cunning galleon]

Wow, Romeo and Juliet in RDR2?

"and if they find out.. They'll kill him (Beau) and send me to some place horrible like.. Ohio.."
fucking got me cackling

[robust latch]

https://youtube.com/shorts/tCJOk4UlbZw?si=F6qaz4C_pnqU6sFZ

[wind stump]

Mario gets DK space
somehow ends up worse off in the rankings afterwards

[wind stump]

"Man I'm getting a lot of coins, surely that means I get a lot of starts!"
AI Daisy: gets two stars in one turn
The Star: slides over just one space behind me

yeah that's mario party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5phIVGzubfk

[chilly mural]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsXRa7A71y0

[quiet swift]

I mean, once they killed off some of their most important characters, it kinda veered off into crazy stuff. And then there's the whole debacle of one of the game directors wholesale copying the lore of a previous game and putting it in WoW...

[frozen gate]

i figure mmos hardfocusing on story can turn people off so it's just out of the way if u so chose, but that idea comes from gw2 being my main experience

but i also played ffxiv which is like night and day

ffxiv will not let you do anything unless you progress the story, which is like

tbf a way better story than gw2

but i wish people could join u thru it

[frozen gate]

gw2 has tons of instanced sections in its storylines, but it lets your party tag along and everyone still hears the dialogue in the world and progresses together, whereas ffxiv makes u wait til ur first dungeon and only in dungeons throughout

[random steppe]

Yeah, you are 100% correct on this.
Compared to WoW or other games in the genre (not sure about GW2) FFXIV does have the upside that is really easy to join your friend in a low level dungeon/raid or do daily rulette content together even if you are several times their level in progression, thanks to the game synching you down automatically, which is arguably its best feature for playing with friends, but you are 100% correct that anything that is story related has only very occasiona activity to do in a group.

Added to that, getting to endgame is hundreds hours journey through 12 years worth of content

[frozen gate]

oh gw2 syncs you down in the open world even, so you're absolutely always on level with the people around

but yeah it's like a stark shift in design philosophy

ffxiv feels more like ur playing a singleplayer jrpg at times, which is great to have for those that prefer that content

[random steppe]

It does have a few things you can do earlier than endgame to be fair, for evenings with friends.
Treasure maps and deep dungeons being a couple of them.

I kinda wish and went back and added content that scaled through the whole game more often

Ocean fishing is also another fun activity to rope your friends new to the game into

You definitely have to go out of your way to do these things though, they are very side stuff, if your friend is questing, you are proably not playing together

Beastmaster is coming too which is lvl 1-50 content, but it seems to be largely oriented to single player as well

[frozen gate]

deep dungeons i remember being fun since it's roguelite-esque but does get a bit old doing it too much in one sitting since it's p samey

i did do the stormblood one enough that i got the weapon from it as glam for my sch's book

[random steppe]

I think they have 4 total now, I have yet to do the last one they introduced, but it's lvl 91+ anyway. so not exactly new players content

[frozen gate]

ya only potd is new players i guess

otherwise open world stuff feels incidental when u can do it with friends

in the end i would jus not say the game is the best choice for like

"mmorpg i wanna do with my friends"

[random steppe]

Yeah GW invests so much on their openworld, FFXIV has fates and hunts which aren't really much to write home about, and treasure dungeons which are really good.

[frozen gate]

ive been spoiled on the gw open world hahha

so it's really skewed my perception

[random steppe]

They did say that they want to do fewer fates but a lot more impactful in EC which is a step, I'm curious to what they do, and I'm happy they are taking another look at their Openworld content in general and try new ideas

[frozen gate]

that would be good

[random steppe]

I guess field operations are more involved open world, and they are pretty good, but also they start in Stormblood endgame so it's quite a while away

[frozen gate]

right, i cant comment too much

it's been a while since ive played n i stopped around the beginning of shadowbringers

i do really like ffxiv's crafting though

my last hundred hours was leveling the hand/land classes

[random steppe]

Field Operations is what the game ended up settling as a name for modes like Eureka

Of which we have 3 now

[frozen gate]

i might notve done any myself when i was playing haha

how are those

[random steppe]

Basically is a series of open world maps (2 to 4) that conain between 72 and 144 players tops per instance, and they have a certain number of special fates that can be spawned by fulfilling certain conditions

Like killing enough of a certain type of enemy

Enemies spawn and don't spawn based on time of day and weather conditions

And they generally add special elements to the gameplay, for example in Eureka you have an elemental wheel you can set to enhance your defense and offense against the enemy you are fighting against based on their element

And also have a separate progression that is detatched from the outside world level

They also have special dungeons that follow unique rules and that you have to fulfill specific sets of conditions to qualify for, usually requiring high coordination from the community to make things happen, they are really interesting if a bit of a clusterfuck

[frozen gate]

ahh that sounds good yeah

[random steppe]

It's transaprently a proving ground for ideas the devs consider a bit too involved or ambitious to fit in the normal open world framework, as such I think a fair assessment would be kind of a mixed bag, because there are good ideas in the mix, some excellent ideas even, and some...less good ideas

[frozen gate]

bhaha

im positive on them at least trying aomething for it

it's like uhh

well it's good to have some places that are more involved, i think the tradeoff with gw's zones is there's less of them while ffxiv gets to have more, and then u could have some more involved instances to put the effort into like in field ops it looks

[random steppe]

I am in part optimistic about their commitment to bring more involved fates to zones in EC, exactly because they had 3 attempts at making Field operations before and they aren't exactly blind as to what works for that kind of thing

[frozen gate]

though a big thing that ive got positive for gw's zones for is you cant fly over everything and the geometry matters for your movement, even with mounts, sort of like a platformer, which is a nice bit of interactivity and that's the main thing i like ironically and really want in the end, i guess

[frozen gate]

it is v good experience

[random steppe]

I really should go back to GW2 at some point, but time is what it is

[frozen gate]

right yeah

if im playing an mmo im basically only playing that game

[random steppe]

I can juggle 2 or 3 games, if I like them a lot.
But yeah usually I have one main focus and the others are "1 day a week I'm doing this instead" kind of deal

[frozen gate]

im awful at spreading my time at all on video games lol, i only try to keep it as "this is my grind game" and "this is my normal game," so 2 at most

just so i can give myself a break more so

[random steppe]

Yeah my distinction is usually "game I can listen to podcasts/audiobooks while playing and games I can't"