Friendship

As with the several times they tried this before, this is a train wreck of an idea for so many reasons. While I do love the idea of mod creators getting to make money doing what they enjoy, from the consumer perspective this is bound to be awful.. I don't want to have to get nickel-and-dimed by what are essentially third party micro-transactions.. with no grantee that the product I just bought will even work with the others I bought or that they will continue to be supported if the game gets patched a year later. Not to mention virtually zero quality control, leaving users to trust in reviews, AKA other customers who put their money on the line.

And from the mod development side of things, this is going to make building off other mods a complete mess. Think of how many mods you have installed that have had other mods as requirements to work. Are those mods going to need to be bought by the user too? And are the mod creators going to have to set up some kind of revenue sharing with those dependency mods? What happens if a mod developer uses a free mod as a dependency, is that fair to the other mod creator? Do moders have the rights to request their content not be used by other mods? And if so what does that process look like and who arbitrates it? Having seen this tried before, it makes a mess and long term it will stifle collaboration leading to weaker mods.

For new projects it's absolutely a terrible idea to use Unity. The old versions not being subject to the new licensing is great news for existing projects that wouldn't have been able to switch engines though.

Agreed. I'm only two episodes in so far and it's just been a fun adventure set in the Fallout universe which is exactly what I was hoping for from the series. I don't need or even want an amazingly deep and thought provoking plot from this series so it's been basically exactly what I wanted so far.

As I recall Tod Howard went on an interview almost immediately after that trailer and outright said that any real development on the next Elder Scrolls wasn't happening yet and wouldn't be till Starfield was done. Now that Starfield is almost out the door I'm sure more resources will be shifting over towards ES6 soon but that means development is barely beginning. They did claim they put Starfield development on pause to build a feature they wanted to include in ES6 though so they likely have at least some basic concept work done on some level.

Star Citizen. It's a buggy mess as usual but it's such a fun mess. Especially the Siege of Orison event going on right now, I've had some really amazing emergent gameplay moments come from it that have me very excited for the future of this game.

The difference is having skin in the game. The problems with reddit didn't really effect a lot of the users directly and definitely didn't threaten most of their livelihoods (aside from a small number of app developers). Unity on the other hand is a tool people use to make a living and when it threatens that I imagine it will result in much more hesitancy to continue using it.

As you mentioned, they didn't make ESO. Entirely different studios involved in the two games. They probably should have spent some time with the Zenimax developers before trying FO76 though.

Agreed, Bethesda hasn't been idle in the time since Skyrim came out. Granted their last few titles have been somewhat hit or miss but to say they've not been making anything new would not be accurate.

I can count the number of times I've been put into an empty server on one hand. The game has a pretty dedicated playerbase.

That said, I completely agree with the notion that time restrictions don't really make sense right now. The game is far too buggy in it's current state to really make the insurance claim times make sense and the developers seem a little out of touch on that. They have actually tried to increase the wait time several times to massive outcry from the community. I really think they would be better served cutting the grind down a little bit while they iron out the game.

Guildwars 2 is guilty of most of the same things.

Camels are pretty dang well designed creatures so I'd say the committee did pretty great there. And the alternative is being at the whims of a single person or a small group none of whom have any incentive to care about anything other than the enrichment of their own personal finances. It's a literal autocracy.

Governance structures where the workers own and have a say in the means of production are bound to have their own issues to be sure, but it beats out the current model.

I'm confused on how this is legal? Isn't Linux based on a license that prevents them from doing that? I was under the understanding that was how CentOS came into being in the first place.

Honestly even if SQ42 ends up being a great game, it can never live up to the anticipation they've built around it at this point. People are expecting something so completely revolutionary that it will be unlike any other game they have played, but the reality is that it won't be that. Which isn't to say it can't be a good or even amazing game, it just won't be anything different or revolutionary gameplay wise.

I've got very minimal interest/expectations for SQ42 and I'm far more interested in Star Citizen which is still a pipe dream (although pretty fun to play in it's current state too, bugs willing) but has much more potential to offer something different than other games in the genera are doing.

To jump in on Hunt Showdown, the initial learning curve of the game does require a little time to get used to compared to other shooters. However the biggest call out I would have is to not try playing the game solo. Hunt is very much a game that is made or broken by the company you keep while you play it and it takes a very special kind of player (a masochist) to enjoy playing it solo. Either way, definitely understandable to bounce off it, it's a great game but not for everyone.

Agreed, I'd much rather have no Blizzard than the toxic swamp that it was/is(?). I do wish we could have a Blizzard that designed games more like they used to, but minus the toxic culture though, which is what I'm guessing the above comment was meaning as well.

Same, although to be fair I think the reason TotK got boring was because it was so similar to BotW. Both of them are incredible games but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Unfortunately they're likely well equipped to deal with that kind of situation as it's not all that different than normal wiki vandalism.

One can only hope. That policy has left Valve spinning in circles and accomplishing very little for a long time now.

The implementation makes all the difference and if the world is just a boring empty place the novelty has already worn off from all the other games in the open world genre that have already done it. That said, games like Minecraft, Valheim, and the latest Legend of Zelda's leave me with hope that open world games can still be fun.

Minecraft, especially when modded makes for a really fun experience exploring a vast world. I could see a game that leans into the adventuring and finding new dungeons and ruins to explore succeeding provided they make the experience of stumbling across them fun.

Best: Baldur's Gate 3, Star Citizen, Hunt Showdown
Worst: Starfield, Star Citizen

Star Citizen, I like to poke my head in every few patches to see how things have progressed. I gotta say, despite what a lot of the naysayers claim, it has become quite a fun game and their development has only sped up since I first started playing. Still, a couple months hiatus every once and a while is worth it.

Fallout 4, I get that this is one of the more controversial choices but while the main storyline was super weak the world design was phenomenal. I love just wandering through the Boston area wastelands uncovering random things and fighting ghouls and bandits.