I held on to physical media for a long time, and the legal ownership implications are scary for digital media, BUT the argument of avoiding creating plastic waste at one point outweighed this for me, and I've been all digital ever since, but to each their own. Definitely pros and cons either way.

Most people that complain about digital media aren't fanatics for physical items. The problems usually come down to who actually owns the media in question.

While I don't disagree, when I eventually get a PS5 I plan to get the disk version, simply because I can often get disk games second hand for a fraction of the price that they are on the playstation store

There are several reasons that people may prefer physical games, but I want people to stop propagating the false relationship of "physical copy = keep forever, digital copy = can be taken away by a publisher's whim". Most modern physical copies of games are glorified digital download keys. Sometimes, the games can't even run without downloading and installing suspiciously large day 0 "patches". When (not if) those services are shut down, you will no longer be able to play your "physical" game.

Meanwhile GOG, itch, even Steam (to an extent), and other services have shown that you can offer a successful, fully digital download experience without locking the customer into DRM.

I keep local copies of my DRM-free game purchases, just in case something happens to the cloud. As long as they don't get damaged, those copies will continue to install and run on any compatible computer until the heat death of the universe, Internet connection or no, just like an old PS1 game disc. So it is possible to have the convenience of digital downloads paired with the permanence that physical copies used to provide. It's not an either-or choice at all, and I'm sick of hearing people saying that it is.

I like lending games to friends. If that was supported with digital games, I wouldn't ever care for physical games.

For example, after I beat BotW, I gave it to a friend to play. They likely wouldn't have bought it, and I no longer have any interest in playing it, so it worked out. I rarely play games twice.

I also like the idea of selling games, but I never actually do it.

I agree whenever it comes to PC games, but I won't buy digital media for consoles.

Knowing that the platform will stop being supported, even if it's a decade+ later, makes me not want to buy from it. Especially since if I want to play it again I will have to pay resell prices for the game. I bought so many cool games on the Wii that I won't have access to anymore.

Also, I like buying second hand at local swap meets and garage sales. It's a small hobby for me lol

I was really being snobbish at battle royal type game. I'm an older gamer. Been playing TDM for years. I didn't get the concept.

But I got into Apex when it released. I think it's the best game I've ever played. The gameplay and movement is phenomenal, I can't play any other FPS.

And being in the last 3-5 team alive on the last few ring is so much adrenalin! I love it.

Only PUBG (pre bots) has ever got my heart rate above 180; my first win. No other game has done that.

Shame it sucks ass, now.

Also basically no replayability because there's zero progression. Since every round starts exactly the same as every other, there's nothing to unlock other than skins, and you have to pay for the battle pass to even unlock those. Meanwhile games like Battlefield or Battlebit or COD have tons of things to unlock that you can use when you want.

Well that's a subjective opinion, but I will agree that it is not for everyone. I love battle royale games because of how intense they are.

It's one of the only game modes that make me feel like I have something to lose if I do not perform my best. There are actually consequences to my actions, and that's why it's so intense.

Sure, technically I can start another game, but I will not get back my previous investments.

Also, the last couple fights before I win a game are more intense than any other game I've ever played

Yeah, I completely agree. It's even worse when the platforming is forced in a game that's not about platforming.

2D platforming is way better. Far less frustration, and there's a lot games can do with it.

Some of them felt like they were set up to force weird camera angles and be luck of the draw. That's not adding challenge. That's just being a dick.

Did you ever try A Hat in Time? Out of all 3D platformers I played I still think it has the tightest controls and also a lot of camera settings.

But I agree, 3D platformers never really reached the fluidity and tightness of 2D platformers. I still love both but for different reasons.

Yeah I love 2D platformers, but can't get into 3D. I did enjoy Super Mario 64 when it came out, but on replay I find it's often finicky and hard to control, simply because of the 3D format.

Give me some Celeste any day though

On TOP of this, the companies know that their market demographic is the under 18 segment, who isn't mature and lacks the self-control of a fully fledged adult. They bank on this immaturity and use it to further entrench gambling addiction in young adults. The people who excuse this as "oh if you don't like it then just don't buy it!" have the absolute most trash opinions of all.

If not microtransactions for cosmetics, then what would be a better business model in your opinion?

Oh, well, I understand this sentiment but I’d ask everyone here to reevaluate why you hate them and then listen to these points to consider.

1. Cosmetic items are created mostly by artists. Artists are only needed during certain time of development. So this is a way to keep them on a project consistently or to salary them.
2. Most cosmetics are optional and add nothing to the game. In a single player game, just don’t pay for it. Evaluate each games value on the inclusions or exclusion of micro transactions. It’s not necessary to say “if it has them, it’s a worse game” because I’ve been ignoring them for awhile and my games are fine. Just evaluate the game as if they didn’t exist or as if they’re part of the price.
3. Micro transactions support ongoing development. These offers keep projects going. I like playing games like Deep Rock Galactic and Hell Let Loose which are both smaller games by smaller studios. They keep their community alive with OPTIONAL content while producing free updates. It’s a great deal.

And lastly 4. People who buy plenty of these cosmetics and other transactions, often called whales, are subsidizing games for you. It’s cheap money for a development team for someone who wants to buy boosts or cosmetics or whatever. So why wouldn’t they do it?

I disagree. I don't think that micro transactions make the developers bad people. I also don't think they're bad at all

The thing about these games is that they aren't meant to be played once then put down. It's kinda like going out with friends. My friends and I have a bar we go to for food and drinks, and because of the new drinks, food, or activities they add every once in a while, it makes it more interesting for us. I know that a drink that costs me $5 doesn't cost them $5 to make, but I know the extra money is going towards those new activities, drinks, food, employees, rent, and their profit.

The micro transactions are going towards the artists, developers, servers, etc. Not even mentioning that because of the long lifespan of these games, things like compatibility, hacks, and bugs, are found more often and they do have to be fixed to keep the player base happy. If they don't adapt then they won't keep their players. That's why we don't see games that were released at the same time as fortnite with as many players. They already went through most of the content the games have to offer.

What do you mean too expensive? While the higher-end GPUs are still ridiculous, you can find something like the 6650XT for ~$200 and that is more than enough for 1080p gaming. Meanwhile SSDs and RAM are at an all-time low price because of how cheap NAND flash is. Throw in a previous gen Ryzen 5 or i5 for ~$100 and you could easily build a competent gaming PC for $500. Plus you don't have to pay the $60/year tax for online and get access to Steam sales and mods. And torrents if you're into that.

It really depends on your expectations. Once you clarified that you meant parity with current consoles, I understood why you wrote what you did.

I'm almost the exact opposite of the PC princesses who can say with a straight face that running a new AAA release at anything less than high settings at 4K/120fps is "unplayable". I stopped watching/reading a lot of PC gaming content online because it kept making me feel bad about my system even though I'm very happy with its performance.

Like a lot of patient gamers, I'm also an older gamer, and I grew up with NES, C64, and ancient DOS games. I'm satisfied with medium settings at 1080/60fps, and anything more is gravy to me. I don't even own a 4K display. I'm happy to play on low settings at 720/30fps if the actual game is good. The parts in my system range from 13 to 5 years old, much of it bought secondhand.

The advantage of this compared to a console is that I can still try to run any PC game on my system, and I might be satisfied with the result; no-one can play a PS5 game on a PS3.

Starfield is the first game to be released that (looking at online performance videos) I consider probably not being worth trying to play on my setup. It'll run, but the performance will be miserable. If I was really keen to play it I might try to put up with it, but fortunately I'm not.

You could build a similar system to mine from secondhand parts for dirt cheap (under US$300, possibly even under US$200) although these days the price/performance sweet spot would be a few years newer.

Initially I agreed with your statement but patient gamer and PC gaming go well together. I do think the idea of spending 1k or 2k plus is ridiculous and the high end stuff offers zero value for money though.

Lol your unpopular opinion was so unpopular you got into a nice little chin wag with someone over if consoles can provide better graphical fidelity than a pc you can build for the same price.

I'm on your side though. I think the console has better specs to cost for just hardware. Steam sales (and humble bundles) will get my dollar significantly further than it ever will on a console. I bet dollars to donuts Dave The Diver will never be cheaper on Switch than Steam.

This. The price of graphics cards means my hobby is about to become super expensive for me; I bought a OneXFly, but that's because the Steam Deck won't play some of the games I play most often, and I had two RoG Ally systems fry themselves from some sort of quality control issues. I also have to buy a portable bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo since I'll be playing mostly games like OpenTTD and Stellaris.

People said consoles were dead. That innovative high-end phones are dead. That PC Gaming is dead.

I think they're going to survive, but by merging. PCs have a role that will keep them viable, but XR goggles are quickly making phone screens obsolete and I think (at least until/unless the economy recovers and/or capitalism finally dies) we're going to be relying a lot more on portable gaming PC phone hybrids in the future.

The last gen of GPUs was real bad on price, but it's gotten better. I'm still paying a little more for my PC parts than I would a current gen console, but I always more than make up for it with lower prices on games and accessories, no online access fees, etc.

My concern with PC gaming right now is that it's starting to look like a midrange PC won't get you 60fps anymore, and sub-60 is generally a dealbreaker for me. Maybe it would have been easier if I'd grown up during the fifth console gen when 15fps was common, but 60 was the standard for my consoles for years.

This year it was like every other big PC release was Crysis, and now I gotta wait until my PC is a gen ahead to run them how I want. At least that keeps me on the patient gamer path?

Ah Yes $500 plus $70 a year plus a library that won't work on the new one in a couple years plus more expensive periferals is definitely much cheaper than a used PC

Surprising how this is actually mildly unpopular, but I agree with you! You just get a more convenient and better experience (relative to the investment, I mean) from consoles nowadays, and you can resell the games if you bought a physical copy. I don‘t think PC gaming is dead, but consoles have the edge for now. Personally, I have a PC and a Switch, haven‘t had a „big“ console since the PS2 but I agree.

That one talks so much around the compatibility of gaming and regular parts, how laptops and smartphones are so much more popular now for non gamers, and fetishism about how expensive everything is.

Gaming on PC used to be just buying a graphics card and putting on your regular computer, maybe upgrading the PSU, now although a low end graphics card on a regular desktop can give you pretty good results, most people don't have desktops, and notebooks are getting less and less modular.

I also blame how the community seems proud of spending a lot and getting diminishing results. The market sees how people are spending irresponsibily and know they can raise the price as much as they want.

At the end of the day, gaming on a PC ends up cheaper because you own everything, and a good computer makes your life so much easier outside of ganing. When on console, you are kind of forced to play by the company's rule, at least if you don't buy everything on the diminishing returns region instead of the cxb region.

I kind of wish all forms of popular media could just, like, agree to defund a bit. Just step things down a few notches. There's just too much money involved for anything truly unexpected to happen in these industries.

Agreed. I want creative games that take risks, yet the AAA gaming industry is all about eye candy and mass market appeal.

So I play a lot of indie and AA games instead.

I don't care if the AAAs survive. They make games that are sometimes worth having in a sale but I won't miss them much.

I think there is still place for AAA games since a lot of them cannot be made by smaller teams.

I don't think games like Zelda BOTW or even Elden Ring could have been made by smaller studios. At least not to the same scale.

its one of the few things that never increased with inflation nor quality

SNES games were 60 dollars and could be beaten within a weekend

games today can take weeks to beat, if you rush it

The massive amount of work that goes into a modern AAA title is truly mind blowing. It's gross that so little money goes to the people who actually make the games but certainly the effort is astounding even in titles that fall short of expectations.

Disagree with 2. You get used to it, especially when playing more older games. After a few hours of Ocarina of Time even the 20fps works eventually lol

1. I was about to post this. Morrowind is genuinely great, but that's an outlier.
2. I think 40 is fine, but only if your monitor supports adaptive sync or can be locked to 40 (e.g. Steam Deck)
3. Disagree. If I want something mindless, I'll farm something useful so my next play session is more "productive." That could be grinding levels, money, crafting materials, or fetch quests. Just ticking icons isn't fun.

2&3 completely agree

On 1 though, I agree IF every other game embraced the modding community as much as Bathesda games do. GTA is the only other game I heavily mod, and in comparison it's such a pain in the ass, the game engine is not designed to support it so you get weird bugs, just overall a worst experience.

So I think it's fair to rate the base game highly for its support of mods. They've decided that providing a great experience for mods is a high priority for them. Maybe they can make the base game better if they don't have to make it compatible with whatever modders want to throw at it.

Depends on the kind of MMO. In vanilla WoW having an underpopulated server while trying to level means you'd really struggle trying to quest solo in areas around your level, depending on your class

Funny, I kinda preferred ds1 over 2 and 3 because it felt a lot more methodical, almost like a turn based strategy game.

I had similar thoughts about DS1, except that's the only one I've played. Are the others better? I assumed everyone who likes them just likes pain.

Anything with i-frames is not for me.

I really appreciate games like Dishonored, where you have massive levels to explore but they're still very tailored experiences, and each level gives you something brand new.

My one gripe with Dishonored is that the way runes, bone charms and money (the main upgrade materials) work encourages you to explore every nook and cranny of each level. While some may like that, I'd prefer to find a fun way to reach my target and then on future playthroughs I could find another dozen completely distinct routes, making every run feel fresh.

That whole second paragraph has nothing to do with your point, I just felt like mentioning it.

I don't even care about an illusion of an open world, I want a hand-crafted experience. I felt Zelda BotW was empty, and I much prefer Skyward Sword.

I have enjoyed a handful of open world games, but I generally avoid them because there are so many that waste my time.

I actually love the concept of open world games. Ive sunk tons of hours into skyrim, oblivion, fnv, far cry 4, witcher 3, gta v, etc.

But now so many games want to be open world when they dont need to be. I loved the shit out of old school halo and never once thought damn i wish this was open world

Huh, I'm a software engineer, and when I get home, I'm excited to do stuff on my computer. I even like building software at home for fun.

I'm not big into tinkering with game settings though, I am much more excited about playing or making games than tuning them. So maybe that's what you don't like? I find the Steam Deck's defaults to be extremely reasonable and it feels just like a console.

I use my pc on my TV with a controller for this reason. It limits the games I can play since so many aren't optimized for controller but I generally like the games on PC better. I also use my pc for movies and TV as well so it serves as an overall entertainment center.

You can use a controller

Yup, this is it. One of the major benefits of the Steam Deck is how they’ve consolized the experience. I can’t wait until they fully support a regular gaming PC deployment of SteamOS. I’d drop Windows in a heartbeat. The reduction in flexibility is worth it to just be able to turn on the PC after a month and just play a goddamn game instead of troubleshooting & updating for 45 minutes first.

You don't need to be rich in a western nation to get a console, but if you mean the value proposition of having the newest console sucks then yes, absolutely.

Most of my gaming friends who play on consoles are well off. There's an abundance of games that you can play for free/cheap on PC that don't need a lot of horsepower to play. Most people play on cheapo laptops or cheap PCs with less than 500 USD budget to build. My brother in law still plays on a Ryzen 1600 and RX 480 PC built in 2017 right when it was released and the only upgrade made to the system is getting 1660 Super or 1660 Ti 3 years ago. He mostly play Brawlhalla and Forza Horizon.

The only console I've bought since the PS3 has been the Switch and it hasn't been absurdly expensive. I've bought almost all of my games second hand.

It can take a while to find them at the right price, but I've had good luck finding people selling multiple games at once and bundling a couple together for a good price. I bought Mario Kart 8 and BOTW for $25/each

Also, the games don't lose much value if you ever want to resell them. I imagine I could still get ~$30 for each one if I really wanted to and in the future they'll probably go up to about $50-$60 once they stop manufacturing them

It really depends on what you are expecting. I got two consoles, a refurbished PS4 slim and an Xbox One S. The PS4 was 125 USD and the Xbox (an all-digital edition with no drive) was 90 USD. Yes, you have to look out for these deals but they're there. PS4 games cost me usually 10 USD max, I buy them during deals or used. Xbox had a lot of game pass tricks you could do so the games were mostly extremely cheap.

But I do understand if you mean playing the newest games. That can be expensive.

This is the line of reasoning I used with my parents as a kid. Dollar per hour entertained.

But I think differently about it these days. I'm looking for maximum value per hour, with an eye towards minimal hours, and with a definite end point if applicable.

And value in this sense could be raw entertainment, but it could be something else, like exposure to new ideas and novel perspectives on life etc.

But I suppose that's what happens when you get older and you've got less and less free time to fill.

Video games retain their value much easier and longer as well.

I absolutely agree.

I do still use the metric, mostly to demonstrate that something that's expensive is still a good value. For example, I've spent hundreds on Paradox games, but I've gotten over a thousand hours from them, so I've gotten incredibly good value from it.

I'm patient because I hate buggy games, not strictly because of cost, though I'll buy something on a good sale if I notice it. If games released mostly bug free, I'd buy a lot more games closer to launch. I don't have a lot of friends who play games, so there's no pressure to buy things say 1, so I wait until the updates settle down.

I mostly agree, but odyssey was a bit of a breath of fresh air for me

what changes did they make to the story?

Where fallout 3 feels like a desolated wasteland, new vegas feels like a generic western with added monsters, it's got none of the charm of 3 despite every other aspects being better

Just wondering, did you play them on consoles? Because I played FO3 on PS3 back in 2011(?) And it worked fine but when I tried picking up NV a few years later, I had to drop it because of all the bugs.

I tried so hard to enjoy New Vegas but honestly I think it just had too many choices that all fucking sucked. Tons of factions, and I pretty much hated them all.

In hindsight I think I'll try to replay it and go full Mr. House.

I mean "bad port" can mean a multitude of things. From bad controls, bad performance, DRM issues and crashes to the game refusing to work at all.

Sometimes all of them.

Its ok to be wrong buddy, you do you. 🙂

I'd agree that they're better in every way except for precision and control complexity. Add in gyro and you get pretty damn close, but even then, I think it's easier to be a better shot on a mouse in shooters.

That and it's very very difficult to play something with complex controls on a controller like Arma, or trying to play competitive StarCraft or something, the controller would just always, invariably be worse

I have sticks, motion controllers, a wheel, and various regular controllers, as well as the classic kb+m, and I just find myself coming back to the kb+m for nearly everything. Virtually every time I preferred using something else was because of poor control design (GTA V flying vehicles), driving and simulation experiences (racing, truck/farm/flight sims, Elite Dangerous), and VR (you can't read the keyboard when it matters).

The extreme accuracy of a mouse and versatility of a keyboard make them extremely hard to beat. I even play Monster Hunter games with both because believe it or not, there are advantages on each side.

My game time is probably a 50/50 split with console and pc but I prefer using a controller whenever I can. It's just more comfortable to me as I can lean back and relax.

I paired my mouse with an Azeron. 99% of the time it's way better than the keyboard. The other 1% is split between keyboard and controller.

Between the two though I much prefer keyboard/mouse over controller, but there are some games I would rather use a controller for. But as far as ergonomics go, I agree with you.