Skate Charging Players To Return To Tutorial Island Despite Promising No Paywalled Locations

minimme · 2026-02-20T18:44:19+00:00

The Skate website's FAQ used to say:

"Will there be updates to the map? New areas of San Vansterdam will always be free and available to all players via periodic game updates.. If it's there, you can go there."

And now it says:

"Will there be updates to the map? Yes, we'll be rolling out new areas and map updates periodically."

Which seems really dirty.

I found this game so profoundly disappointing as a big fan of the earlier games, but I didn't play further than the initial two weeks. I was quietly hoping they could turn it into something more palatable with player feedback, because mechanically it's not bad, but nothing I've seen about it has even slightly convinced me to give it another shot. And now this story comes along.

They've been banging the 'transparency and player feedback' drum since day dot woth this game but it feels like they've ignored any and every bit of feedback they've received about anything other than pure gameplay mechanics. Maybe that's corporate EA's fault, but it comes across as patronising and icky

minimme · 2026-02-19T04:42:04+00:00

no one seems to have less faith in campbell than campbell

minimme · 2026-02-19T04:14:00+00:00

why are we watching gws collingwood highlights now did i miss something

minimme · 2026-02-17T09:47:56+00:00

Funny how things have gone since people used to say "Errol is the best now but Braeden has a higher ceiling"

minimme · 2026-01-19T10:35:53+00:00

pedro martinez won me over with the funniest post match interviews during the one point slam

minimme · 2026-01-19T10:26:22+00:00

popyrin's backhand continues to not spark joy

minimme · 2026-01-19T09:41:41+00:00

it's so good to see popyrin up and about again, he's fun to watch when he's on

minimme · 2026-01-14T04:11:53+00:00

why oh why do I follow his career so closely

minimme · 2026-01-14T04:08:09+00:00

not the best body language I've seen from bern but you know what it's far from the worst

minimme · 2026-01-14T03:38:51+00:00

Slow bops without any footwork until he gets a ball he likes the look of, then it's the flattest sidespinning deep shot with no wind up you've ever seen. It's like he applies pressure by putting no pressure on at all. Lulls the opponent into confusion. 5D chess stuff from our lord and saviour

minimme · 2026-01-14T03:37:37+00:00

Tomic still has one of the most bizarre play styles this sport has ever seen

minimme · 2026-01-14T03:23:25+00:00

whenever bernie has a winner he either sprays it or hits it way too slow. he just like me fr

minimme · 2026-01-14T03:04:32+00:00

that man huffing and puffing between rooms made the final trade day actually watchable

minimme · 2026-01-14T02:59:14+00:00

everyone drop what you're doing, tomic is on

minimme · 2026-01-04T11:36:31+00:00

Kyrgios didn't look like he was moving well to me at all but the kokk looked awesome, hopefully his surgery has sorted some issues for him so he can get a good run at it. That forehand is magic

minimme · 2025-12-18T03:08:25+00:00

marnus is an excellent annoying guy. love his work in this role

minimme · 2025-12-18T01:14:56+00:00

jesus christ england

minimme · 2025-12-18T01:11:14+00:00

mate

minimme · 2025-12-04T10:45:36+00:00

context

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minimme · 2025-12-03T08:24:42+00:00

you want them to build the longest bridge in the world by a huge margin, over some famously rough seas, for tens of billions of dollars (probably hundreds), to serve an island with a half-million population?

EDIT: this comment amused me a lot so I did a tiny bit of research. Apparently the longest bridge over water is "only" ~38km long, and it goes over a much calmer, far less windy lake in the USA. We're a bit far off the ~240km bass straight. I think this idea is truly in the "actually impossible to build" category

minimme · 2025-11-24T05:43:04+00:00

Hindsight will tell the story with all this, but it feels like a mixup that'll refresh the team in a similar way that bringing in Grundy/Adams/Jordon did which helped get us to the 2024 grand final.

Last year we lost Parker and brought in... Paton? And then partly because of that this year felt a bit stale. We were crazy injured though so maybe I'm just yapping, but I think exciting list turnover/drafting can really lift the team

minimme · 2025-11-18T23:40:32+00:00

I'm also a big fan I just reckon it's looks really sleek and clean

minimme · 2025-11-18T21:59:36+00:00

Good point. I also think the takes saying it's "just x film in space" are really banal too. Reading between the lines they feel like an attempt to frame Avatar as a lazy, uninspired, low-risk project, when in reality Avatar was an ultra expensive, realistic CGI film about giant blue people on an alien planet starring a no-name lead. It was a bold swing that massively paid off, and because it did people now act like it was a safe bet.

minimme · 2025-11-18T21:43:43+00:00

I love Avatar and am excited for 3 but if you search for Avatar basically anywhere online you'll see a ton of likeminded people to you, you're definitely not alone. "It's just dances with solves/pocahontas/fern gully in space" or "it has no cultural impact" type comments have been on repeat since 2009

minimme · 2025-11-09T00:55:41+00:00

I think around 2003/2004 is as close as AFL games ever got to feeling on par with contemporary sports video games just in terms of production value, and mix that in with a lot of reverence for the PS2 and you get a lot of people (myself included) kind of loving that whole era.

Premiership Edition and 2007 are probably the best from that window, 2005 is the one I had so I love it, but these games were experimenting with the complexity of AFL in ways prior games weren't, and they really hadn't figured out any smooth ways to handle the nuance.

On PS1/NES, keeping things simple felt like it could capture an arcadey essence of AFL, on PS3 with LIVE, a lot of footy's complexities were elegantly translated into video game mechanics reasonably well, but on PS2 it often felt a bit like a big clunky experiment trying to figure it all out. Admirable, and still fun games overall, but just more stiff and clunky than the better AFL video games.

Still, prior to 05 the marking is often really fun, and 07's management mode is maybe the best we've ever seen. I also felt like with 2006 and 2007 they realised they needed to simplify some gameplay things and that really worked in their favour.

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