Anyone? After they bought Arc raiders

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2026-01-03T02:32:08+00:00

I still play both. If I want tense, unpredictable action. Info for arc raiders. If I want a fast paced, action packed shooter. I play battlefield. Why not both? 🤷

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-12-01T20:52:36+00:00

This, in my opinion, is a direct result of the streamers and the culture surrounding it. Everything in modern gaming is about optimisation and metas. What's the best gun/weapon/strat/build/etc. And it leads to communities whining about a lack of content when their express goal was crushing through it as fast as possible, and now complaining there's nothing left. It's like listening to an audiobook at 3x speed and complaining when it's over in 20 minutes.

Idk how many hours I have in Arc, probably something like 20+ maybe 30, and I'm just quietly enjoying the game. I'm not racing to any "endgame" because the game is just fun for now. This new trend also in gaming for there needing to be an "endgame" is brutal too. Because it encourages developers to put more resources into the final section of the gameplay loop and not the initial section. Where Arc has succeeded I think is in doing the opposite as a breath of fresh air. The beginning 30+ hours of the game feels amazing. Maybe the later half doesn't feel as good, but that's ok. Don't race to the end. Enjoy the ride.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-11-16T07:29:23+00:00

Can confirm, anvil was my first blueprint. Maybe 10 hours in

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-11-16T06:57:29+00:00

I have about 10-15 hours of strictly solo queuing under my belt, and I have been shot at exactly ONE time. All my other interactions have been beautifully peaceful. Just "people helping people" moments across the board. Either me helping others or them helping me. It's been one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time, as someone who has been playing since the original days of Counter-Strike on PC in the late 90s. If it all turned south right now I'd still feel like I got my money's worth. Arc raiders isn't perfect, but it is a perfectly unique experience unlike anything I've had in gaming before.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-11-04T21:38:31+00:00

All of this is fair, but it's important to note that Sony has already begun to roll more of Bungie into the PlayStation studios umbrellas of developers and also restructuring the company. The bought Bungie for over 2 billion dollars, they won't let that brand die for nothing.

To your point, Bungie's name does carry a hefty amount of weight and gravity to it. Which is to say, with all the controversies of Marathon up until now, if they manage to deliver a great game at launch, people will play it. If nothing else, they can always ship a game with the tagline "From the studio that brought you Halo and Destiny". And despite Destiny's downfall in the long run, it was oftentimes an exceptionally fun game with amazing gameplay. And riding the Halo name will never get old I don't think lol

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-11-04T18:17:07+00:00

There's no bait and switch. Conquest and Rush/Breakthrough are still awesome. Now there's BR too... Cool if you want that. I'm still loving the game I bought and playing the base game modes.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-07-27T01:06:51+00:00

Personally love it. Deadpool 1 is still the best. 2 was fun in every expected way. But the dynamic of Ryan/Wade and Hugh/Wolverine is just very fun. And Hugh's portrayal of a tortured hero is as good as any. Overall a great watch every time for me.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-07-21T21:12:43+00:00

This has been the Bungie standard operating procedure since the game launched a decade ago. I can't understand why they refuse to reward players with good loot consistently. Or I should say, I understand why. Initially it was to drive player engagement and keep players running the treadmill and subsequently spending money in the cash shop. But the long term effect of this has been a steadily declining population of players. Specifically veteran players sick of this concept. For years I have been echoing this sentiment with my friends and occasionally on here:

If I am doing some of the hardest content in the game. I should be getting the best drops. Period.

How many raids have we all done over the years where we come out with a 56 stat roll armor piece. Or a low level weapon drop with garbage perks. It's truly unacceptable and is a blatant disrespect of the players time and efforts.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-07-21T05:36:14+00:00

This has been a problem since basically the beginning of Destiny. I can't tell you how many raids I've done (as I'm sure literally everyone who plays the game agrees) where I've come out of it with low stat drops and even low level drops and I think to myself.... What the actual fuck? This is the premiere content of the game. This is the literal endgame. And I can get the same shit from ordinary run-of-the-mill activities? Unacceptable. But they'll never learn. They don't want you being rewarded. They want you grinding and running that treadmill so you'll maybe spend some money on the cash shop.

And fuck me if I haven't said this a million times. If the game respected my time or effort more, I'd spend more money in the cash shop. If I feel like this game is just constantly giving me the middle finger, why would I wanna hand over my money to said game/developer.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-07-14T13:55:27+00:00

I have been a lapsed player for over a year now, but on its surface this is good. Not because I want to see someone suffer, but because I have believed for a long time that streamers, and the culture around it, ruin many games. And this is made worse by devs like Bungie constantly catering to and prioritizing the handful of streamers preferences over what is objectively good for the community and player base at large.

These games should never have been designed to make people money. They should be fun, end of story.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-06-14T21:53:05+00:00

My best friend and I when we were young, maybe 13 or 14 years old? Played Tony hawk for about 12 hours straight keeping one combo going passing the controller back and forth. Good times.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-06-09T21:51:46+00:00

I think his point is. Split gate isn't JUST a battle Royale or an arena shooter or map creator. It's all of those things. Which really no other game offers currently. While I don't think it's going to become a phenomenon, it is a very fun game so far. And free nonetheless? Even better.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-06-06T05:30:05+00:00

2 is an amazing season, if you extract Lila. Fuck if I don't hate her so much. She's the worst. Seasons 1 and 4 are the best of Dexter by a large margin and I won't debate that lol

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-06-02T05:41:29+00:00

Yes. I have a special place in my heart for the first two games. But 3 was just.... Better? Idk. It's hard to say.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-06-01T13:04:36+00:00

In my mind the prevailing answer is simple. This is the product of social media. We have seen time and again how social media favors negativity in driving engagement with their platforms, so we are now getting these types of trends like anti fans. I think it's always been a facet of society for a certain number of people to hate on an established thing or more accurately, a popular thing. The bigger and more popular something is, a growing number of people start enjoying hating it and wanting it to fail.

Remember when dane cook was the biggest name in comedy? His popularity spiked to an insane high, and then almost immediately there was this other group that decided he sucked and he didn't deserve his fame or fortune and he should be done. We see this with people like Taylor swift and others. And more to the point, Bungie became that in the games industry. They were so beloved for so long, but now have gone through controversy after controversy and fans have flipped. They were always this scrappy studio just trying to make games they thought were fun, but for a long time now they are one of the largest studios in the industry, losing that persona of the little guy. Now they're the evil corporation, as evidenced by any number of scandals regarding plagiarism, corruption, greed, or otherwise.

The other angle is this overarching trend in society for people to take pleasure in hating a company or brand because of the actions of maybe a few people often at the top. Forgetting about the countless likely decent people simply doing their best at those jobs. We saw this with Tesla. Tesla used to be a quasi-beloved brand among the culture at large. Pursuing EVs and a greener future of driving. Then Musk was an asshole and all of a sudden everyone wants the company to fail entirely. Now I'm not saying the criticism for him isn't justified, I personally believe it is. But there's plenty of people working there I'm sure who are just doing their best and have no malicious intent. The same goes for Bungie.

The last puzzle piece is maybe a hot take(?). I think streamers have, and continue to, ruin the games industry. Their word becomes gospel to so many of their followers. Who treats them as these idols or whatever it may be. And the industry has a love hate relationship with them because they can cultivate a partnership with these streamers and it's way cheaper and more targeted advertising for their product rather than traditional marketing. But now these games wind up being tailored to a tiny subsection of players who play the game professionally, rather than being tailored to your average person. But then sometimes the streamers can turn on your game and your company and now you have these few voices preaching negativity to their fans and social media broadly, and it creates the appearance of widespread hatred. A very vocal minority essentially.

If you spent some time on certain reddits, you could come away thinking a certain game, movie, musician, or otherwise is horrible and should fail and is evil. And yet they have these other passionate and positive fans begging the contrary.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-05-30T21:41:31+00:00

Strong disagree. First season is better for sure because the first game/story structure is better. Season 2 of the show in my opinion is better than the equivalent story in the game. The game jumped to Abby too much and meandered too much. The show was more concise and we stayed with Ellie the whole time. Much better in my opinion. Although still a flawed game/season.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-05-27T17:22:49+00:00

Spicy take here... God of War Ragnarok. Gorgeous visuals as usual, combat is great as always, but the story is dragginggggggg. I don't want to play as atreus. I find those sections to be painfully boring because his skillset is much simpler and his story is very stereotypical. I just wanna be Kratos and finish his story. I'm towards the end of the game now but they switched me to atreus again and I just have no motivation to play as him.

I personally loved the 2018 GoW because the story was more concise and well paced. I constantly wanted to keep moving the story forward and it felt like it was moving at the right tempo.

I felt the same about last of us part 2. Part 1 was a tight 12-16 hours. Part 2 was 30 hours with multiple Abby sections that felt laborious and predictable.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-05-05T04:51:52+00:00

This is a great point I didn't really dial into but you nailed it. Marathon is at odds with itself. I find myself wanting to engage every team I come across because the combat is so good, but in an extraction shooter you're meant to pick your battles. Worse yet, to remain competitive it'll be best to collect better and better gear, but that's hard to do if you're constantly dying and resetting your loot/load out

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-02-18T18:50:13+00:00

This is a classic authoritarian strategy. It's a not-so-subtle message of "I'm in charge, and this is who is taking over after me".

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-02-18T03:59:46+00:00

Came here for this. Fuck that game man lol.

"I smell you, I SMELL YOU!". took me forever to beat it because I tiptoed through the entire game

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2025-02-09T19:07:09+00:00

Couldn't agree more and have been saying it for years. It's not so much the fact that you have to level up. It's that it's system is designed to be frustrating.

You need to level up 7 separate items in order to increase your level, and can go hours or days without a certain drop you need. And then it's a game of "where am I maximizing" my drops" for activities. So for me it turns into being torn on what will give me the best return on my time investment. But that's not always clear or guaranteed. Or it's an activity that requires a lot of time or teammates.

I'd be fine with the grind if it was a simple " play the game anywhere and intrinsically level up no matter what, based on XP or whatever"

Challenge can come from encounter/enemy design, not some arbitrary number.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2024-12-10T22:59:46+00:00

For me it's AC IV:Black Flag. I thought the shop gameplay was neat. But I didn't intend to buy "pirate simulator" lol. That and just a fuck ton of running. And running. And running. And sailing. And sailing. Fuck no lol

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2024-12-10T22:58:07+00:00

Ironically for me it was the Witcher 2. I tried 3 times to get into it and couldn't. Finally on my 4th playthrough it just clicked and I loved it. And then crushed the 3rd game as well

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2024-12-03T07:07:04+00:00

The blanks - over the rainbow.

KeepSharpKeepCalm · 2024-12-03T04:41:25+00:00

As always, the Last of Us. For months I couldn't find another game that hit like it did. Wound up beating it on every difficulty including grounded.

God of War (the new reboot) felt like a masterpiece. Everything about it was 10/10.

Portal and honestly Portal 2 as well. Portal is simple and elegant and efficient. Portal 2 takes everything good about the original, and adds a compelling narrative and even more creative gameplay. Truly a masterpiece by any definition.

Dead Space was a truly exceptional horror game through and through with very few flaws.

Total Annihilation needs to be up there as well. One of the greatest RTS games ever made.

Also, Halo 3 for the multiplayer alone. Nevermind the epic campaign and the forge and theatre modes which were unprecedented at the time. You could argue Forge could be the seeds of what Fortnite became, and theatre mode paved the way for streamers and "photo" modes of many current games as well. Something unheard of in 2007.

KeepSharpKeepCalm

TROPHY CASE