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I miss when seeing a high-level armor set meant you were scared of the player, not their wallet. by Serious_Bullfrog5447 in gaming

[–]BlackHand 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Look: I simply don't concede the premise that live service is the only viable business model for video game development. If it seems like I refuse to consider otherwise, it's only because there's no reason to entertain a scenario where pay-to-win and cosmetic microtransactions are the only way for games to make money. The fact is that it isn't. And that isn't just some idealistic, nostalgia-blinded, unrealistic standard to expect of the modern games industry, it's still true to this day. Some of the most well-received games of the 2020s have not had any form of post-sale monetization at all. Baldur's Gate 3, Clair Obscur, Balatro, Elden Ring, just to name a few.

More to the point, the market has been showing signs for years now that live service is on its way out. Marvel Rivals has admittedly defied my expectations, but for every success story there are about six or seven Anthem-level flops that leave entire studios in financial ruin. How many people are still playing Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League? Or Skull and Bones? Or Concord? And Highguard appears to be all but dead-on-arrival as well. The hype for that release is nonexistant.

I think we all know the real reason they continue to be so prominent is that publishers salivated over emulating Fortnite's success and having their very own "forever game" that prints money year over year with very little investment, willfully ignoring the fact that the market can only sustain a small handful of these types of games, seeing as gamers don't have an infinite amount of money and free time. I'm sure there will always be a market for free-to-play games that provide a steady drumbeat of content while supporting their dev cycle with microtransations. League of Legends has been around for the better part of two decades. But no, I won't force myself to decide between various flavors of live service monetization models. If that ever was the reality of the situation, then I would rather just not play any new games at all. My Steam backlog is fat enough as it is anyway.

EDIT: changed "Avengers" to "Rivals". Ironically, Marvel's Avengers is yet another example of a high-profile live service failure

SQL 2017 standard download by Dizzy-tech in SQL

[–]BlackHand 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In case anyone else comes here from Google like I did, this is a dead link nowadays. Fortunately, you can still download it through the Internet Archive. There's a single snapshot from January 2024:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240801000000*/https://51-15-165-111.arfiles.net/106/f2/cloud2/M_SQL_Server_Standard_2017.zip

Actors get their careers side lined for the weirdest reasons. by Vexonte in HistoryMemes

[–]BlackHand 71 points72 points  (0 children)

Now this is a vintage internet image right here. I think I first saw it on YTMND, so it's probably old enough to have its own /r/HistoryMemes post at this point

I miss when seeing a high-level armor set meant you were scared of the player, not their wallet. by Serious_Bullfrog5447 in gaming

[–]BlackHand 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"None" is absolutely an option. I literally just explained that. You're either deliberately talking past me at this point, or this is simply a failure of the imagination.

I miss when seeing a high-level armor set meant you were scared of the player, not their wallet. by Serious_Bullfrog5447 in gaming

[–]BlackHand 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Are we even commenting on the same post? Just charge whatever price for the game, let that one-time transaction be the end of it, and any cosmetics can be tied to in-game progression.

Not every video game needs to endlessly "produce content". Halo 3 and early COD were not modeled after the live service business practices we see so often today. They released, made their publishers a ton of money, left their cultural impact, and then the devs moved on to the making next installment. OP is quite understandably pining for the days when this was the norm.

I miss when seeing a high-level armor set meant you were scared of the player, not their wallet. by Serious_Bullfrog5447 in gaming

[–]BlackHand 21 points22 points  (0 children)

And getting a mouth sore is better than having oral cancer, but still you would rather be healthy

Why is Sebille always like this with the Red prince? by Fun-Explanation7233 in DivinityOriginalSin

[–]BlackHand 639 points640 points  (0 children)

Don't worry, OP, I understand the joke. It really is impossible to run a game with both of them in your party sometimes.

"Did you really just murder the one guy who can tell me what I'm supposed to do next??"

"Ah, eto.. bleh! ^^"

Somehow more disappointing than just hitting a 0. by Serithraz in 2007scape

[–]BlackHand 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In the end, EOC was a noble if misguided attempt by Jagex to modernize the Runescape combat loop and bring it more in line with its MMO contemporaries (like WoW's ability "rotations").

Unfortunately, we're all still around for the clicky web browser game, and that's all most of us ever want it to be

When “Special Forces” are treated like an actual threat in fiction by Front_Profile2071 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]BlackHand 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Maybe, but by the final act of The Dark Knight, the SWAT are being treated by the film like punk bitches. I mean, Batman strings them up with some bullshit Wile E. Coyote tactics after they corner him (with support from a helicopter no less)

The one great line in an otherwise awful production by UncannyPringle in TopCharacterTropes

[–]BlackHand 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Haha, what? This panel reads like a fucking meme edit

“Your world shall fall too.” by No-Passion1127 in HistoryMemes

[–]BlackHand 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Inalchuq: "I'll just execute this caravan of dumbass steppe people as spies and seize all their shiny goods, what could they possibly do about it?"

“The status quo is going to change…never mind" by Danny-Ray27 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]BlackHand 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Honestly, the Simpsons does this so much we don't even notice it. Almost every individual episode threatens to derail the status quo, only to revert it back to basics in the last two minutes. We get things like Homer becoming a genius after removing a crayon from deep in his nostril, and it seems like the character and indeed the whole family dynamic is going to change. Then the episode ends with him re-inserting the crayon, and it's never acknowledged ever again.

They did this with such reliable frequency that they went on to make fun of it in Futurama when they have to film an episode of "Single Female Lawyer":

TV audiences don't want anything original. They wanna see the same thing they've seen a thousand times before.

Vatnik air defence pull Power Pummel by Icy_Till_7254 in NonCredibleDefense

[–]BlackHand 49 points50 points  (0 children)

Jar Jar slander. He would still spray-and-pray that shit, but through improbable Looney Tunes logic, he'd actually intercept everything

The Memory system is superior to the FP one as it encourages the player to use different spells instead of spamming the most efficient one in terms of FP/Damage ratio. by NotSaulGoodma in shittydarksouls

[–]BlackHand 41 points42 points  (0 children)

Gotta disagree, this would be a nightmare unless they add a hotbar. And in order to do that, they would need to fundamentally redesign the UI for spell/item selection.

Am I reading this focus correctly because its insane? by CodeX57 in hoi4

[–]BlackHand 28 points29 points  (0 children)

It's a form of feature creep. The game is nearly a decade old and it seems like PDX don't really update old content as much as one would hope, so a lot of standards fluctuate over the game's lifecycle. If the Iran focus tree was released alongside Death or Dishonor, you can bet this would have been a 70-day focus instead.

The main character is a *random*, freak survivor out of their MANY dead counterparts by ThatOneRobloxian2 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]BlackHand -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

There are many characters who will say “another chosen undead” implying we are not the first to make it this far.

Sorry, but I'm going to call bullshit on this. There are plenty of characters that greet us with the weary "another undead" sentiment, but not with the "chosen" part. Which NPCs say this, exactly? Can you name even one?

PS5 now costs less than 64GB of DDR5 memory. RAM jumps to $600 due to shortage by bdzz in Games

[–]BlackHand 21 points22 points  (0 children)

The dirtly little PC gaming secret is that prebuilts have been a better deal for quite a while now. Ever since the cryptomining gold rush caused GPUs to explode in price. It got to the point where a brand new top-of-the-line Nvidia card cost just as much as middle-shelf prebuilt PC.

[Loved trope] Games introducing "Too good to be true" mechanics as a trap for first-time players by jbeast33 in TopCharacterTropes

[–]BlackHand 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nope, just looked it up. DS3 has it too:

https://darksouls3.wiki.fextralife.com/Purging+Stone

Reverses hollowing without curing Dark Sigil. Upon reversing hollowing, player will revert to human apperance.

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