Mods are a different beast and not representative of the game, devs, or player base. Mods like this often get removed from big modding sites like Nexus, forcing them to be mostly in their own spaces. (There is/was a bg3 mod overhaul that makes every black npc white, some lesbian npcs into men so they are straight couples, the ability to change your gender and lock it to the body types. Etc and so on. But you can’t find it on Nexus. I remember the white Wyll mod but it got removed within 3 days)

It’s another matter entirely when a developer bakes this kind of shit into the game. Not every game has mod support and not everyone mods.

Final fansty isn’t that kind of ip. Different ones are set in different universes/planets, with different casts. There’s a billion different things you can explore. One game is basically medieval, another is basically cyberpunk. The things you explore are completely different and the only similarities are the name of the ip, the names of the gods, and maybe the names of some of the characters.

There aren’t many games you can make that argument with because of the way technology has advanced so much.

Elder scrolls v skyrim was easily the most successful, but your suggestion is stopping at morrowind which is an entirely different game. Tomb raider today is a different game from when it came out. Some ways for the best some ways for the worse. But there are always new things to explore. Even if it’s just mechanically.

Sure you can make that argument over something like the yearly sports games. But these games are not yearly releases.

They did cut a lot of the slog from ARR, it’s not necessarily better because they didn’t rewrite anything they just cut it so there is context missing. As an example, if you don’t start in Uldah, you never meet the real Thancred anymore.

The actual patch series is easier to swallow because most of the dungeons got reworked to be more interesting and you’re not going to the waking sands every 2 seconds to just go back to where you just where, over something you could have told me over link shell. There’s still a lot of travel, but it’s not so bad.

I replayed through ARR as an alt character after the changes, it was before they changed the dungeons but overall the experience is easier to swallow, but again the story is a little clunkier.

The bloody banquet is still amazing though.

This is why I wish linear/act structures games would make a comeback

They care more about putting a dumb whatever the heck on some random ass mountain with nothing else on it and boring exploration so you can claim your game is “an open world xxx% bigger than Skyrim/red dead redemption/etc”

Red dead is one of the only games I think does open world well because the story was still linear and had acts. You could have just released the prologue and the valentine area as early access and people would have tested everything out and have fun with it. Similar with bg3 and act 1.

The other one is genshin impact actually, but that game is live service and released the world in parts. So each part of the world feels like it has meaningful exploration since there’s more than just a korok on this random ass mountain. There will be at least 5 puzzles, the zones have their own stories, quests, and plot lines, and doing that let’s you explore a good majority of the zone. If you were to speed rush the msq on a lot of these open world games you would only really explore 10% of the world.

The older I get the more I hate these open world games. They feel directionless. In terms of world building the newest (open world) pokemon game was easily the worst. The gym leaders and rival gangs had no agency wnd very little personality and impact because you could “defeat them in any order*” (*not really)

When I saw the Witcher 1 remake was not going to be linear anymore I pretty much lost all interest in it.

It was more than just managers and redundant positions that were laid off. And it was mostly blizzard employees laid off specifically.

Also

/no please don’t attack this innocent multi trillion dollar company

Yeah, if I stopped using/buying a product just because the company behind it did something slightly shitty, I wouldn’t have any belongings, food, etc.

I use Firefox just as much as I use opera gx, I use them on each of my browsers. Opera gx is more primary but yeah…

I dont know what I would replace it with. Brave, I guess?

Nintendo is famous for never going on sale. Used can be hit or miss, game may not work at all depending on how the store vets it.

Nintendo isnt the only company that never puts their games on sale, just the biggest one. They also don’t reduce the prices of the game after xx years. In fact, when they re-released older games, they priced them the same as newer ones. I really think Nintendo is sleazy and their games are mid-to-bad but everyone loves them so. /shrug

Then, there’s mmos. If you like mmos and care about them, you can’t wait for sales if they price hike. By the time it is on sale, the expansion is nearly over and it can be extremely difficult to nigh impossible to catch up. After all, there’s like 1-2 years of content you need to do. These sales are only to bring new and returning people in. Not to be viable options for anyone that actually plays the mmo endgame.

This is going to be the new price point eventually. Because most people can’t wait and most people aren’t paitent. It does make the game pass more valuable to me, I suppose. Because I can’t really afford $70+ games. Games haven’t really inflated like everything else has but we really just need to raise wages because we are being priced out of affording anything.

What if you like Nintendo games?

Most AAA games are being priced at this now. And since people are buying it, it is going to continue.

Bruh, its the beginning of November, cat is telling you to put that shit away for another month and a half.

Pro-Israel bots and astroturfers always come out of the woodworks posting whatever they can to make them look in the right/innocent/etc whenever stuff like this happens. They want the world at large to be on their side. It largely works, the things supporters will say about these people is disgusting. They don’t see them as people.

In reality both sides have done horrible things and neither are fully in the right nor innocent. Israel will stop at nothing short of genocide and that has no place in the modern Era. Genocide should be condemned in all its forms. I dont support this war, but I also dknt blame them, they have been the subject to, again, genocide for decades. I can’t blame them for retaliation for years of torture and who knows what else that they successfully cover up. In the end, this is a long, and bloody conflict inherited from long before even before our grandparents’ era. It sadly won’t end in our generation, either.

Slime/goop

The 90s had an obsession with slime/goop. Toys, mascots, etc.

I know, how DARE someone promote inclusivity, positivity, love, and respect for others. The absolute gal. I want my children to be spiteful, hateful, afraid, and depressed! I want them to hate being themselves! I want them to hate the fact they might find someone attractive. It’s what Jesus would want!

The thing is, most of the accounts participating this year were bots made specifically for this. Yes it’s a burst of traffic, but it’s a burst of traffic that will drop off a cliff as soon as it’s over.

The botting was so bad this year that a small community or a single person couldn’t do anything, I tried to mess around with an 8 pixel space and as soon as I put a pixel down, it was undone.

The Germans had something like 50k or more bots set up for this. That’s why there were so many German flags everywhere.

But I can’t mod games on consoles that you plug into the TV. Also my specs are better. :C

There are, but it might not be called so and at the bottom they might write “(may) contain: soy”

I’m talking about pre-made whatever. Salad dressings, sauces, etc. They all have corn or soy in them, sometimes both. It’s hard to avoid it entirely. People with a soy allergy probably have to get specialty brands and/or go to specialty shops since food in North America is so corporate. Many of the food safety laws are a joke. And Canada is stricter than USA. In USA food safety is the whole clown show when compared with the EU.

I have had my own insulated steel water bottle for a few years now. I have bought a couple water bottles since, but it only happens when I forget it and it’s a hot day. I still try to avoid Nestlé when that happens.

Nestlé chocolates are bad too, though. They use palm oil in all of it. However, most chocolate companies do. And it isn’t limited to chocolates. Oreos, which are vegan, use palm oil as well, which is why some vegans and vegetarians boycott oreos. Unfortunately there aren’t many alternatives to go to for this issue. The only viable solution for this one is to “stop eating chocolates/etc” rather than finding alternate brands and companies. Unfortunately this one is rather difficult because palm oil is one of those ingredients that has like 50 different names because companies KNOW that palm oil is one of those issues people feel strongly about and try to avoid. So every company will call it something else, or something very, very vague. Avoiding palm oil is like trying to avoid corn or soy.

I avoid Nestlé as much as I can, I mostly… I just buy a coffee crisp once or twice a year. It’s one of my favorites and I have not found an alternative I like as much/better.

Nestle isn’t exactly making bank off me, that’s enough.

They also cancel just about all their good series while keeping the shit ones. :')