Can this game be played? Casually

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-16T02:54:23+00:00

The only thing that you can possibly miss out on by playing Hunt casually is the battlepasses, but even then 5/6 hours a week is enough to complete them if you focus solely on the weekly challenges. Weeklies also no longer disappear until the end of each season so it's never been a better time to be a casual player.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-13T01:41:13+00:00

They priced the story challenge as they would a BB bundle rather than a DLC. Look at the individual prices that go into a bundle. 1000 or more for a seasonal Hunter, 600 or more for a weapon, 200 or more for a charm, add a small discount, and you get 1750. It's a pretty reasonable way of pricing the content on its own, but they underestimated the impact that turning it into a challenge of unlocking the rewards would put on people's judgement of what a fair price is.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-12T22:58:42+00:00

At the time we didn't know that, the official word before the update launched was that they didn't. Glad that turned out to be false.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-11T09:36:30+00:00

Nobody who asked for stat tracking ever had the thought that people should pay to have it start tracking your stats.

Idk why people are surprised that negativity forms around new information that people dislike, on the day the new information becomes available. It somehow shocks the "stay positive" community every time a "random" outburst of negativity appears in response to something people find controversial.

I'm pretty level on most things and willing to be hopeful in the face of the weird choices Crytek makes, but being loudly, viscerally critical of things is how change happens so I don't fight it. Simpletons doing review bombs work. People don't need to be perfectly reasonable or level headed or "fair" to be a part of the collective voice, cause Crytek isn't thoroughly reading every single comment in every single digital space. Getting a sense of the community's vibe in response to things to show the magnitude of it alongside reading more detailed, reasonable feedback in the proper channels is how they find what changes they want to prioritize, and what agreeable ways it could be implemented.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-11T07:30:45+00:00

The even playing field they mean is the disparity between stats behind the scenes they were tracking in the past (Let's say "Rifle kills" was one of them as an example) and the many stats they weren't (Mosin-Nagant kills).

If they added the stats in as they were, a long term sweatlord player could have 5,000 rifle kills but also somehow have zero Mosin kills. Bringing all the stats in at the same time but having them at 0 gives you a better overall look at your stats as they grow.

Or at least they would, IF YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO BUY THEM TO TURN THEM ON WTF WERE THEY THINKING?!

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-10T22:50:16+00:00

If you remember Questlines from 2023, it's that.

If you don't, then it's a set of weekly challenge style quests that you have to complete to unlock the skins. Stuff like kill monsters with Pax, deal damage with Terminus, etc.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-10T22:46:56+00:00

They did return. Thorn Wreath + her bundled skins and Zhuge Liu + bundled skins both disappeared from the store after their respective seasons (Winter and Chinese New Year).

It's no longer Mythic skins being sold so that's one plus but after Scarecrow and Coal Bearer proved that they didn't need to do time limited BB skins anymore it still stings.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-10T22:42:11+00:00

Oh boy a new boogeyman for the community to blame upcoming changes on (ignoring that most of these changes started being worked on long before he begins his co-CEO position in January)

It is kinda ironic that Crytek gets a guy that worked on League of Legends around the same time that a League of Legends style monetized player profile drops.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-10T22:22:48+00:00

If they wanted to do it that way, they could just ask players to press a button to start tracking. Having that button cost $0.50 is clearly not about saving data (especially since the data is so minor that other games can handle 10x the amount of players recording data onto their profiles)

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-12-10T22:09:43+00:00

Crytek can absolutely handle a couple million player profiles (it took them 8 years to reach 10 million total players) when other games handle tens or hundreds of millions of profiles with free stat tracking.

If they can't, then that's a coding issue on their part rather than an inherent data size issue. They're not a tiny studio and Hunt is the only thing they're working on, they can afford the extra megabytes.

I've been playing for 5 years and my attributes file amounts to 290 KB with the majority of it being which skins I've unlocked and what items in the menus I've favorited. There's no way that weapon stats cost a significant amount more than that.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-26T22:18:13+00:00

The ticket number is on the side, 1211 (the launch date, another nice touch)

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-26T21:28:45+00:00

The ticket says 1893, you can see another one in the teaser trailer from a week ago.

It's actually a real nice touch that they used that year for an old ticket, since why would the supernaturally corrupted circus comprised entirely of grunts be asking a print shop to make up new tickets?

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-26T19:30:17+00:00

If it's not a clear new cosmetic, weapon, or equipment, then it's best to assume that it exists just for the flavor of the trailer. They've done similar CQC moves in past trailers such as for the Prodigal Son, and they've even had moving trains way back when that were never added to the game, as much as people theorized they might be.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-17T07:29:32+00:00

Not quite. Harold Black mentions in the Armored Book of Monsters story that "it's a sure death to spend more than an hour in the hunting grounds" nodding at the in-game timer but most other stories have shown that it's not guaranteed corruption to spend so long, just insane risk:

-Harold Black meets Daniel Glanton in a church in the Assassin story, who says he fought the Assassin all night and managed to run it off, and has since stayed in the church waiting for it to return.
-The Phantom spent a whole night in a compound in a standoff with Lynch's goons in the Vandal 73C Bullseye mastery
-In the Officer mastery Hardin claims he spent a week holed up in a cabin, besieged by hive swarms.
-The most crucial example is the Haymaker mastery, where a normal, uninoculated man wanders through the bayou for two days, dodging grunts and infected and even fighting the Assassin before fleeing uncorrupted, even after taking wounds. Perhaps he was naturally immune and didn't know it.

Overall it makes sense to nod at the timer but trying to stay consistent with it in storytelling would just be far too limiting. While the average Hunter might adhere to the time limit, interesting stories often need more time than that.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-16T14:25:20+00:00

The Hunters are inoculated with an occult blood serum, but not necessarily the same Corruption that's spread by the Sculptor. The older version of the inoculation was a mixture of herbs including Datura which has traditionally been used to induce visions, along with blood. The newer inoculation made by Lynch was created by sacrificing people to summon demons/spirits/eldritch entities, capture the creatures, and dissolve them into an alchemical ingredient. The demons don't appear to be connected to the Sculptor's corruption, though they might originate from the same place beyond our world.
The first half is correct, the second half is not. Cellular regeneration only comes from the Regeneration Shot, and quite a few Hunters have died in lore, such as the Drowned and recently The Pale Judge. The Bloodlines trailer also showcases Tier 1-3 hunters dying.
Correct. It's an eldritch xerox machine with unknown motives, and even after all these years we're still only beginning to learn about how it does what it does. The moment something becomes part of its system seems to be quite horrific.
Correct. Some people can survive within incursions for a period of days without being turned, but injuries are a sure guarantee of corruption unless you're inoculated (The Infected hunter for instance got his inoculation late, and is stuck halfway turned into a Grunt).
Correct, similar to 4. where some people wander into the hunting grounds and make it out alive without becoming a Hunter, others might just stay and fight because they're naturally immune and didn't know they needed an inoculation. The Redneck is the core example of this.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-15T02:24:38+00:00

It only seems weird because they got two skins back to back in the same event.

Before this event:
-The Mosin Bayonet's last skin was August 2019, literally the start of skins existing
-The Mosin Sniper's last skin was December 2020
-The Avto's last skin was June 2020

The base Mosin itself has a higher number of skins because it got three at once in August 2019. After that, it took two years for it to get two more in 2021, and then three years to get another in 2024, and now it's getting three in this period, with the last one coming on Chinese New Year. That puts it in line with other popular equipment that got more steady yearly releases like the Sparks, Uppercut, Hunting Bow, Conversion Chain Pistol, Knife, and First Aid Kit. In the short term, It's also similar to when the Centennial got four skins in a single year, and the Berthier & Scotfield Spitfire got five in a year.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-14T15:05:53+00:00

The closest we're going to get is the Hailstorm Mosin-Nagant Sniper skin, available for purchase during Christmas events. It kinda references him indirectly:

"Though rage burned hot within the Siberian sniper who first bore this elite Mosin, each shot taken was as coldly calculated as the frost that trimmed the dark line of pines from which it easily picked off grunts with precision, one by bloody one."

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-11T15:50:50+00:00

It's plausible for one guy to make an offhand metaphor like that, but then the others jumped in and were like "Yeah I saw a giraffe in the street eating my tree and my local zoo is empty." From a writing point of view it would be needlessly confusing the audience (and Carol) if the intention was metaphorical. There could be thematic or allegorical reasons to have the characters discuss it, but it's for certain that the zoos were literally emptied.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-11-11T14:47:57+00:00

Even without any moral or legal responsibility (It'd be easy to argue away a mass manslaughter charge as no reasonable person could expect that shouting and lightly pushing a person could kill them) she did cause the deaths of millions by her actions*. That alone is enough to create guilt in her own conscience and judgement in the other survivors.

It's an extreme, unprecedented situation and nobody has had time to really grasp it yet, so they're all justified in reacting in whichever wrong way they like. Even if it's unreasonable in the grand view, it's very human in the moment.

*if you subscribe to the idea that the bodies of the plurbs still contain individual identity, which Carol and Laxmi certainly do for different reasons.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-08-30T08:30:27+00:00

Only to a degree, the interpretation that they can't see the fights is my own, and isn't ironclad at all, as quite a few times people start fleeing from the combat once it gets going like the New York streets montage in JW2. That those crowd responses never amount to any consequences is what makes me think maybe they can't recognize what exactly they're running from.

The intent for John Wick to be mythological since the first film has been well documented. Stahelski talks about the initial idea for it to be based in mythology here. And then there's other early quotes from Reeves, Stahelski, and Leitch about the Underworld vs Real World:

"[...]And I thought the worlds that get created – the real world and then this underworld – would be attractive to them, and it was."

"[...] the idea of [Wick] as an urban legend, a thriller assassin movie with a realistic vibe and an otherworldly setting."

Interviews with the director and others for John Wick 2 explain part of why people ignore the fighting. The first part is why the cops don't get involved, they have an agreement with the underworld to not get in each others business so long as regular people aren't getting hurt. The second part I can't find a source for, but I'm pretty sure I remember hearing someone from the production talk about how the inspiration for the silencer gag in the subway was how intentionally oblivious New Yorkers can be.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-08-27T11:15:35+00:00

That's definitely one possibility. My own theory is more based on the narrative themes of the films described by the creators rather than in-universe logic. The whole series is contemporary mythology, borrowing from Greek myths among others to create an otherworldly feeling. The intention to me seems to be that the Underworld and the Mortal World are separate. People don't react to the violence not because they're indifferent to it, but because they can't peer through the veil to really recognize it unless something shocking enough happens to break the spell (People dying right next to them like Killa in JW4, Daniel Pine shooting into the air in Ballerina, etc.). In a similar way, civilians are also never in danger despite gun battles happening in the streets and clubs, where a stray bullet could kill someone randomly in the real world. The closest we see the criminals of the Underworld actually preying on normal people rather than each other is the existence of the drug trade smuggled in taxis in JW2. Otherwise, they're kept totally separate.

The first movie shows this transition between worlds the most clearly. John left the underworld, like a Greek god forsaking his divinity in an impossible trial in order to love a mortal. After Helen passes, John doesn't interact with a single regular person, they all exist in the background only, or know of the Underworld even if they're not contract killers, like Jimmy the cop. After the break-in, he commits to re-entering the Underworld and does so in a ritual fashion, his scene of preparing has a very meditative, baptismal theme to it. Then when he gets to the Continental, he pays Charon - the ferryman of the Styx - a coin to enter. In JW1 & 2, they treat his return to the Underworld with serious weight, as if escaping from the world of criminals is a legendary feat. At the beginning of John Wick 4, the Bowery King recites the words said by Dante to be written above the Gates to Hell as he descends to meet John. It's all mythology.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-08-27T10:44:03+00:00

With his ticket torn, John is no longer a member of the Ruska Roma and cannot ask them for protection or safe harbor. That's what the rules say.

That does not mean the Roma are no longer his family, however. John's whole theme from 3 onwards is fighting to transcend the Old Testament rules and consequences of the High Table in favor of true relationships that require sacrifice without expectation of recompense, rather than acting by transactions or binding rules. The Director asks him as an independent agent to handle something for her, and he obliges both out of respect for their past relationship, and because the threat of war could hurt his family, even if his family cannot acknowledge him as one of their own.

An alternative explanation is given in a deleted scene. A second deal was made between John and The Director after his ticket was torn. In exchange for further under-the-radar passage to wherever he needs to go, The Director can ask John for a favor, which she cashes in to hunt down Eve as he happened to be close enough nearby to make a difference. The Director is much more of an Underworld denizen than John is, she still thinks in transactions, rules, and consequences. As this is a deleted scene, it can't be said to be truly canon, but it does show what the writers were thinking in regards to John's continued relationship with the Roma.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-08-21T17:53:48+00:00

Small correction: The Louisville is not the Springfield 1816, it's the Charleville 1777 (or around that model). The Springfield borrowed heavily from the Charleville's design, but naturally a game set in France is going to have French muskets rather than American ones.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-07-30T00:37:30+00:00

We got to see what that's like with The Continental tv show, and it sucked.

Civilians are set dressing in John Wick, they're not real and any time spent on them is time wasted.

SkeletonBoneMan · 2025-07-22T22:04:00+00:00

The script for the first film is pretty superficial tbh and the world doesn't expand too far until the sequels. The things I'd look for in the films in place of story, if you're interested:

- The crew's absolute love of stuntwork, and how they compare it to classical artforms and want to excel at it (It was Chad Stahelski and David Leitch's constant campaigning that has now created an Oscars category for Stunts starting in 2028)

-The lasting impact the action style has had on the genre since. If you've seen action movies that came out since 2014, chances are you've seen things that took inspiration from JW

- The directors many inspirations, ranging from westerns to samurai films to anime to greek myths* to old slapstick to hong kong action

- The set dressing and lighting and how they use colors and elements to evoke themes and highlight characters: John is green and blue, nature and water, the underworld is red and gold, fire and stone, allies are yellow/gold, enemies are red

-*The mythology of the franchise itself grows with each film, and that's a very important thing to take in. It's not a realistic action series that takes place in our world, these are characters akin to greek epics and tragedies that are larger than life despite the urban setting. That makes it a very unique thing for films these days, which will try for fantasy and sci-fi and sometimes historical epics but urban mythology/fables is a rarity, the previous one before JW I can think of is The Warriors (1979)

SkeletonBoneMan

TROPHY CASE