The Gaming Thread

[DarkRose]

Allowing apps for weed-searching but banning apps for cigar friendly restaurants could be posted in the insane social justice thread. That's SJW hypocrisy right there.

https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/apple-removes-where-to-smoke-from-its-app-store

 

[sharkey]

https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/apple-removes-where-to-smoke-from-its-app-store

Thanks, just installed from Google Play.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

SuperBunnyhop takes a look at the Wolfenstein series

[video=youtube;vqLE1Bh190g]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqLE1Bh190g[/video]

 

[ArcadiaGP]

Massive backlash at EA regarding pay-to-win aspects of Star Wars Battlefront. Huge refund campaign.

Also, Nintendo is close to agreement with Illumination Entertainment, studio of "Minions," to make animated Mario movies. Nintendo’s creative guru Miyamoto likely join effort as a producer.

 

[T.Lex]

Massive backlash at EA regarding pay-to-win aspects of Star Wars Battlefront. Huge refund campaign.

Been following this because Battlefront 2 will be a Christmas miracle at our house.

It'll be a miracle if we don't play through it in a couple days.

I'm glad they're reducing the costs down.

 

[Jordan_J]

Been following this because Battlefront 2 will be a Christmas miracle at our house.

It'll be a miracle if we don't play through it in a couple days.

I'm glad they're reducing the costs down.

From what I gathered they're reducing the costs down by 75% but they're also cutting back the amount of credits you get too. To me it seems like they're just trying to save their butts for now but until there are more reviews on the topic we won't know if it actually is any better.

I am trying to find the post but there was a PR guy talking about how he thinks EA will try to handle the situation. He said that basically they will put their worst foot forward and have already planned for some of the backlash including lowering the costs but they will find other ways to stick it to people.

 

[T.Lex]

From what I gathered they're reducing the costs down by 75% but they're also cutting back the amount of credits you get too. To me it seems like they're just trying to save their butts for now but until there are more reviews on the topic we won't know if it actually is any better.

I am trying to find the post but there was a PR guy talking about how he thinks EA will try to handle the situation. He said that basically they will put their worst foot forward and have already planned for some of the backlash including lowering the costs but they will find other ways to stick it to people.

That makes sense.

I also read that the prices may have been artificially inflated for the beta/preview period. If no one complained, then they're money ahead. Now they can tweak it until it is more or less a "market" rate.

 

[Jordan_J]

Found the guy's post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBa...ork_in_electronic_media_pr_ill_tell_you_what/

 

[dung]

I pretty well hate DLC and loot crates. I remember when expansion packs were big enough to justify buying outright, not just a handful of levels for a fricking premium price. The battlefront 2 beta seemed to cure most of the boring battlefront 1 play, but I sure won't be purchasing it.

 

[Jordan_J]

I pretty well hate DLC and loot crates. I remember when expansion packs were big enough to justify buying outright, not just a handful of levels for a fricking premium price. The battlefront 2 beta seemed to cure most of the boring battlefront 1 play, but I sure won't be purchasing it.

I don't mind unlocking characters/things after a long period of time. Goldeneye 007 on N64 had the last two levels unlocked, you have to unlock characters in literally every fighting game I've played since Super Nintendo, guns and accessories are unlocked in multiplayer shooters, and so forth. I think it's fine and great to incorporate into games when it's the only way to get the unlockables.

When they include "pay to play" methods I hate it because I don't want to spend $200 to play a game for a year or two and then have them shut off the servers and me never get to play the game again. Hearthstone is a great example of this. It's going strong but why do people want to spend money on a virtual card game? At least with Magic or Pokemon Cards you have the physical cards in your possession. With Hearthstone, if the game ever tanks and they decide to shut it down (5, 10, 15+ years) then all of the money and cards you have are gone. When it first came out I loved it and played and was pretty decent but as soon as they started releasing expansions and I didn't want to spend money things got out of control fast. I took a break after the first expansion and when I tried to get back in they had released like four more and I did even more terrible. Unless you spent money you wouldn't get cards very quickly. Unless you had the new cards you were severely limited in how good you could be. I understand that "pay to play" is huge and makes them tons of money but people just haven't figured out how badly they're getting ripped off yet. Yet another reason retro gaming appeals to me. For the price of a new game and all of it's DLC I could purchase a rare and "expensive" old game that won't change or need updated if I don't play it for a year or ten.

 

[T.Lex]

I think the loot crates are a generational thing.

My son loves the Overwatch loot crates for the emotes and the sprays and the skins.

I would rather have ability or weapon upgrades that I don't pay for.

I was part of the ArmA community when they launched different DLCs. That was very different because so many of the community mods were at least as good as the for-purchase DLC. Plus, BIS did a pretty good job of having lower-end versions of the DLC available to maintain the MP experience.

 

[JettaKnight]

I think Take2 is right on the knife's edge of being generous and greedy; as both a player of GTA 5 and shareholder, I like it.

They never released any new single player content (that sucks), but even after four years they're still releasing new guns, cars, boats, property, planes, game modes, ways to make money, etc.

If you think about it, new content keeps players around, which keeps the game sales going. There's no way they could sell the DLC because that would fracture the player base into separate communities - I can't be in the same world with you if you have objects and modes that don't exist in my world.

Even a brand new player can play on any adversary mode released up to this point, and for the most part be just as competitive. They can even buy anything they want - if they have enough money; money gotten through grinding or pay-to-play. Really, it's not bad as money is earned through fun activities, and while I can't own everything (like a yacht), I can own the things I think are valuable to my player. You have to say "no" to buying everything - just like real life. There's work and challenges and rewards for that. I like that system, it's worked well; the game is just is strong as ever.

Those that can't be bothered to work for that shiny new car can pay - and I thank them, because I've gotten 10x the value of the game for what I paid. Haters gonna hate, but the majority of players find this to be an acceptable compromise.



But EA, they seem to excel at failure.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

I think the loot crates are a generational thing.

My son loves the Overwatch loot crates for the emotes and the sprays and the skins.

I would rather have ability or weapon upgrades that I don't pay for.

I was part of the ArmA community when they launched different DLCs. That was very different because so many of the community mods were at least as good as the for-purchase DLC. Plus, BIS did a pretty good job of having lower-end versions of the DLC available to maintain the MP experience.

Overwatch does it right. It's a good balance, and i have no problem spending $10 or so every holiday for some new skins and emotes. When it comes down to time-locking progress and putting more powerful features/characters behind microtransactions, though... that's when the producer of the game has crossed a line.

It really has nothing to do with the creator of Battlefront. They just wanted to make a good game. It's the producer that forces these money-grabbing features on it.

Also... After backlash from the SW BF2 microtransactions annoucement, EA is now deciding to live as a gay company.

Unlocking Everything in Battlefront II Requires 4528 hours or $2100

 

[KLB]

There is an easy solution. People should not buy the game or that crap

 

[JettaKnight]

Unlocking Everything in Battlefront II Requires 4528 hours or $2100

That's insane! I've got 483.5 hours logged into GTA 5 Online (plus all my single player time) and I've been playing that almost exclusively since June of 2015. I know a few players w/ over 2000 hours, but no one even close to 4528.

 

[dung]

Unlocking characters and guns is fine....I can't complain about that. However, locking them behind a 40 hour (at the time) grind to get a hero character and then forcing that grind to get more is a bit ridiculous. An excessive grind to encourage purchases is not the right way to get it down.

I never purchased unlock packs for Bf3 and 4 as progressing through the weapon unlocks happened quickly through play and is part of the fun. I can see where a few people would buy the short cuts, but it certainly wasn't necessary.

 

[Jordan_J]

That's insane! I've got 483.5 hours logged into GTA 5 Online (plus all my single player time) and I've been playing that almost exclusively since June of 2015. I know a few players w/ over 2000 hours, but no one even close to 4528.

At one point when I was in military training and when I first got to my duty station I played the original World of Warcraft and amassed around 3000 hours played on my main character and I had to play the game everyday in all of the free time that literally was when I wasn't working, eating, at the gym or sleeping. Sometimes sleep suffered because of it but I was a little addicted. This took over a year to do as well and I only quit the game when Halo 3 came out which got me addicted to playing shooters again. I don't have time like that for any game these days...I'm honestly quite impressed I've put in over 200 hours in Breath of the Wild but having a Switch really helps with the playtime.

 

[dung]

Whatever you do, don't start playing PUBG. It will suck you in

 

[ArcadiaGP]

An Electronic Arts PR person posted on Reddit about the Battlefront situation... it became the most downvoted comment ever. Of course it was brigaded, but still.

Here's footage of the PR person after making the post:

 

[Jordan_J]

Does anyone here read any extended universe materials from games and recommend any? Books, graphic novels, comics/manga, anything else?

I have only read some of the Halo books and want to read all of them. I also have the Zelda manga collection and Hyrule Historia.

I'd like to get the Zelda: A Link to the Past comic, Twilight Princess Part 1 and 2 manga that came out this year, Zelda: Art and Artifacts book, and I would like to read the Gears of War books but I don't know if they're any good. Does anyone here know? World of Warcraft has some books I may check out sometime too.