ToasterToastin'

Thor was quite good. Jeff Goldblum is a menace to society.

Speaking of Loot Boxes and The Companies That Are Facing Backlash, our latest Battlefront 2 news says stocks are down (though competitors' stocks are up, suggesting it's not an overall industry thing).

I'm frankly shocked that we're actually seeing something happen. Whether or not it maintains enough momentum to do something in the long term... well, it's cool to see that it's so highly visible, I guess?

7 hours ago, Idiot Cube said:

I feel pretty helpless.

Pretty much it. It's a decision that's going to be handled well outside any control I have. I have no say, and I'm not going to delude myself thinking otherwise, so I'm just stocking up on lube for the time being.

I literally just picked up my roommate's Switch from the entertainment system to look and see if Fire Emblem Warriors looks as good as I hoped. It does.

And I was one of the few that was a big fan of the WiiU's screen-gamepad hybrid - I preferred playing games on it instead of a TV, for instance, something I'm finding more and more was due to failing eyesight before I got my glasses - so the Switch is amazing for that.

I want one really bad but I also want to wait for a sale or something, because I never buy a console full price, just like I never buy computer parts full price, or really anything if I can avoid it. Nintendo's been (understandably) stingy in that regard. Heh, maybe I'll use the money I was setting aside for a ticket (which the officer never got around to submitting, so I think I get a free pass) for one.

Meanwhile, Battlefront is the gift that keeps on giving.

4 hours ago, Spectre said:

 

”The ability to purchase crystals in-game will become available at a later date, only after we’ve made changes to the game. We’ll share more details as we work through this.”

 

Best part of the PR statement.

 

As a certain redditor pointed out, it's all part of EA's damage control plan. Their true intentions have been exposed already. Nothing can stop them from deploying P2W progression inside loot boxes a few months later after the launch week.

 

Taking out microtransactions temporarily won't change the fact that the gameplay is a mess.

Not to mention it's been in for, what, 2 days or so? (or is it only 1?) They already made their whale money at launch. They're also going to eventually reactivate it, which means they still are showing their hand (though I guess it's better than implying they won't? I mean, hardly, but slightly less snake-like.) And... on top of this all, the bought rewards are still in the game, so the whales still have an advantage.

EA loses little, and ultimately gets a little PR boost for lofty, inconsequential move.

Gee, I wonder if the returns button on Origin being gone has anything to do with Battlefront coming out today. Gee.

Sometimes I miss the snow. But, then I remember that just because it's cold doesn't mean it's snowing and I stop missing it.

Cold without a foot of snow is just awful. At least if there's snow, you have an indicator that "yep, pretty chilly."

2 hours ago, Spectre said:

They even scheduled a Reddit AMA on Wednesday for Battlefront 2. I'm sure everything will go well...

 

*polishes pitchfork

I do not see this going well, and that's hilarious to me.

Nice to see the stockholders got worried, though, because stockholder worry actually makes EA do stuff.

However, again, EA pulls off the censor trick: make something so outlandish that it's sure to be caught by the censors, so they miss the other, subtle things you actually want in. I'm sure the 60,000 was never a final number, even internally, and 75% of that looks nice in comparison.

2 hours ago, Spectre said:

EA's PR train wreck is the gift that keeps on giving.

As much fun as it is to deride EA, the fact that they're getting attention at all feeds their goals, and thus their pockets. There is no such thing as bad publicity, after all.

9 hours ago, Medic said:

That's why cold weather is better than hot weather. If you're cold, put more clothes on. If you're hot, you can't take more clothes off once you're naked.

You say that like you need your dermal layer.

8 hours ago, Spectre said:

Edit: Holy moley! The EA developer response on reddit just broke 100k downvotes.

It's not stopping, either. And it's certainly made me glad I never got around to preordering.

Thing is, same thing is same, and it's never going to go back. Either the industry is gonna get so preoccupied with games as a service that people stop caring and it dies, or games are going to turn into an elite pastime, only enjoyable in the Hamptons or something.

3 hours ago, Dr. Rynjinstein, MD said:

 

There's no duplicate items as far as I know, which is a big plus, and you tend to get enough gold to just buy whatever skin you want at the time.

 

There's less duplicate items than before, when a patch reworked the drop sequencing, but they still happen. In fact, somewhat ironically, having less dupes works against the player, since with dupes you at least got a (paltry) amount of currency to buy the one you want. Now, you can't even get that, and instead are forced to unlock pointless spray after pointless spray in your third 3-whites-1-blue box in a row.

Blizz knows they can't just give people the option to purchase individual skins with actual money, even at a premium, because that makes the whole gambling aspect moot and less profitable. It's why the original Summer Games drops didn't have a purchaseable option, even with the in-game currency, and why event drops cost 3x more. They only changed their event approach because the outcry was so bad they had to (and because, like Battlefront 2, they could spin it into being the heroes of the story). The only mitigating factor in this scummy practice is the lack of impact on actual play - aside from arguable hitbox/visibility changes, and some custom dialogue depending on the skin, drops don't do anything.

4 hours ago, Moby said:

Did anyone expected anything else from EA?

Sad but true. Always gotta push that envelope as far as they can. What's sad is that it's gonna work (not talking about myself; I was going to actually preorder after the old "fix", but this news has effectively dissuaded me yet again, and the fact that I've been dissuaded twice is pretty damn telling) and the cycle begins anew, one step deeper in the shit, until EA/Activision/whoever thinks up the next best nickel and dime and we can sink further in.

At least we have old games until the service dies and then we're left with no games. Semi-related, I rediscovered Museum Madness on one of the old abandonware DOS sites and played it for a bit. I remember being terrified of that game as a kid, and I never beat it, so I tried to do it now but then it crashed and I can't be bothered to run through the intro scene or annoying maze puzzle so back into memory it goes.

Nothing permanent, but the BSODs were about bad memory allocations so that was kind of terrifying.

I installed a third monitor today that took me through a few BSODs, 2 system restores, and a multitude of driver installs and uninstalls. Totally worth it.

I have an addiction to multi-monitor setups.

Moira hot take, assembled after one game against bots: Somehow, Blizz took what makes Sym terribly annoying and made it even more annoying and powerful. I also don't think I did more than 200 points healing that wasn't self-heals.

Her voice is nice though.

Just had a massive roommate debacle that's really making me consider moving out.

Also apparently being home about 40% out of a month entitles me to cleaning the bathroom and kitchen that I had 40% of input in (and did last time to boot)

On 10/7/2017 at 5:16 PM, ToasterToastin' said:

It's a shame, because I really want to like New Battlefront 2. It looks incredible, and more importantly it looks complete, but I knew as soon as they said "no paid DLC" they were going to find some other way to nickel and dime people out of money. Should've known it'd be P2W elements.

If there's a good thing, it's that I wasn't really planning to play it multiplayer because multiplayer sucks (especially on console), but depending on how much is locked behind "multiplayer only" like the first one I'm about to give it a hard pass.

An update to the whole "Star Card Loot Box" thing.

While I'd love to give credit where it's due, it's EA, so that's just not possible. In fact, I read this "resolution" as more the original intention - it's still slightly P2W, just less so than originally. I wouldn't be surprised if EA just ramped it up to absurdity, knowing full well they'd be called on it, so their "less extreme" version would be regarded as a godsend and the best thing to happen to gaming since the last best thing. Any other company (though maybe not, since I'd fully expect Activision to pull the same stunt) and I'd regard it positively, but, well, EA.

Conspiracy aside, though, this actually makes me interested in the game again, so I guess it worked.

Been working on this tonight. If not for the Dremel being a bit too loud to run at 1 AM, I'd be finishing it tonight - and it's a lot of fun.

1 hour ago, Medic said:

In most games, you're the chosen one or something like that, the only one to do these quests and challenges. I find this particularly odd in MMOs because that means everyone is a chosen one. So I like to pretend I'm just some sort of background character who's just following the protagonist and tripping over all these quests.

I think that's a key reason I've never really loved MMOs, nor really gotten into them. I'm big on story in games, and the "everyone is the chosen one" phenomena pulls me too far out of the story for said story to be enjoyable. There's an argument to be made regarding ensemble-based chosen ones (your typical party, generally oriented around a single class per character) versus singular chosen ones, but all in all I find myself really struggling to get in to a game/story if me and the 100 people with me are all chosen ones.

I'd like the idea of an area denial afterburn, and I've always felt like pyro needed a flamethrower that could "paint" the ground, so this seems pretty cool.

But it's never going to see play, because everyone's gonna be using the jetpack.

USA, so I think the UK is out. I also forgot to mention a budget, which is ~$400, so nothing Alienware or Razer, of course. I've found a handful of well-reviewed laptops with decent specs that seem to fit my desires and can do some vidya. I had no idea even budget laptops were robust enough to play modern games, albeit on low - but I have a sweet desktop, so I don't need to worry about the graphics. But, everything I'm seeing that's worthwhile is around $100 over the budget. Again, weird chasm where the units under or at the budget are glorified web browsing machines (which I could just get a Chromebook or even a cheap tablet for) and the units over the budget are over $100 over and do way more than I need, and there's absolutely no middle group.

However, I suppose selling my old laptop could make that $100, so I might be able to convince myself to take the plunge. What I'm really, really worried about, though, is buying too soon and missing a killer sale.

So, since my laptop of 4 years is finally about ready to bite the dust (and it wasn't even that decent to start with). I currently don't use it for much more than supplementing my desktop, but I do play some mildly-intensive, older 3D games on it - Civilization V comes to mind, which my current laptop struggled with constantly - and would like to keep doing so since this is the laptop I use to play things/do work outside the home. Unfortunately, this usually means that most other budget laptops are also out because of the weird "all or nothing" chasm that exists within the laptop market, with no comfortable middle ground - either the integrated graphics suck and can't run a 10 year old game, or they're super incredible and super expensive.

I can navigate creating a desktop from scratch no problem; I've done it thrice. However, managing comparisons between laptops is a whole new, unfamiliar and frankly daunting task. Does anyone have any pointers? Also, pointers on manufacturers.

2 hours ago, Dr. Rynjinstein, MD said:

Puzzle and Dragons is a pretty solid (if heavily RNG based in what monsters you get) match 3 game with Pokemon-like elements that can actually change your puzzle strategy to get the most damage. I enjoy it a lot.

I'll vouch for this too, though it's definitely Japanese gacha. I also spend copious amounts of time (and other things *cough*) on Fire Emblem Heroes, but I've long given up on that battle and have accepted my fate.

KOTOR (like, the standalone RPG) is another thing that exists on phones, which is honestly pretty weird, but it's a solid game even with mobile controls.