Aielman15 @ Aielman15 @lemmy.world

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28

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592

Joined

2 yr. ago

I wish the DnD/roleplaying community wasn't as hopelessly horny as it is.

I did the same thing. And then I took it to the next level and taught my entire party elven expletives so that they could join me in insulting the leaf-suckers. Fuck you. You are not better than me just because your farts smell of wet moss.

My character is also deep into the conspiracy theory that elves marry humans only because they are after their inheritance. Think about it, guys: an elf lives for hundreds of years. A human marriage will last about 50-75 years on average. Those bush-wearers could marry half a dozen humans in their lifetime and live the rest of their existence comfortably rich with the accumulated riches and possessions from all those marriages.

Wake up, sheeple!

Fuck. It was one of the few remaining good videogame-related publications. They will be sorely missed.

Where to go from here?

Thing is, they don’t need to sell consoles anymore. They’re in the gamepass business now.

They need to sell consoles to sell GamePass to people. Nobody is going to play games on a Firestick. Same reason why nobody bought the mobile ports of Resident Evil. Those who play games, buy the hardware for it. Some go overboard with the high-end PC and some prefer to buy a cheaper console, but nobody is like "yeah I'll play Elden Ring on my phone". Gamers want the hardware, and casuals don't buy gaming subscriptions. It's a lost cause.

"MS doesn't care about selling Xbox console" is a lie they have been pushing for a while now because their console sales have been tanking for that many years. They would LOVE to sell more consoles, they just can't, so they attempt to spin the story a different way so that the shareholders are still happy. What, you want to know about sales? But who cares about sales, it's all about engagement! Look at those big, happy numbers we are showing you!
Nobody enters a business with the idea that "whatever, even if we don't sell enough, it's fine, we still had a great time". MS didn't became the world's biggest corporation by being lazy.

They currently have roughly 34 million subscribers (as of February, I’m guessing Activision Blizzard King is going to bump this number up further), let’s assume an average of $12 a month. That’s over $400 million coming in every month or 1.2 billion every quarter on the books. They don’t have to rely on a big game to have a good month.

That's great until you consider the fact that GamePass doesn't operate in a vacuum. To put games on their service, they have to pay developers. They then need to please shareholders who want subscribers and revenue to increase. The fact that they increased the price twice in a row and effectively doubled the price of GamePass overnight suggests that they are not pleased with the current revenue.
Heck, we don't even know how many of those 34m subscribers are paying customers, and how many just got into GP by paying $1 or benefitting from some other deal. I was one of those 34m back in February, because I got a year for free with the Rewards program (back when it was still worth something; they axed that one as well, because of course). When they asked me to pay to renew it, I cancelled the subscription. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

You’re more valuable to them having the gamepass subscription and just playing on your phone over someone who buys a console and purchases 7 or 8 games a year.

Sure, but that's the same as Don Mattrick asking customers to "stick to their X360". The choice is not between buying games on XOne or subscribing to GamePass on your phone. The choice is between an Xbox, a PS5, a Switch or a PC. Two of those choices means that they have lost a customer (you can't subscribe to GP on PS or Nintendo consoles), and I'd be curious to know how many people are subscribing for GP on PC instead of just buying games on Steam. You don't need GP to play online on PC as you do on console, and the prices are cheap enough that you are probably saving money just buying those games instead of renting them.
And let's not talk about how terrible the user experience is on their PC storefront compared to literally any other competing storefront - I'd rather buy a game on Epic than use their Xbox store, and that says a lot. I had a game on PC thanks to the Play Anywhere program (bought it on Xbox, got the PC version as well), but I had to buy it again on GoG to mod it because MS considers their game files more precious than the holy grail itself and wouldn't let me go anywhere close to them, let alone touch them.

His performance may have drawn some gasps from the audience, but I doubt it had the same effect on his fan base. He was not there to speak to the US as a whole; he was there to speak to his die hard supporters - those who actually enjoy his racist, sexist, hateful remarks and voted for him in 2016 because of them; the same people who were willing to stage a coup in his favour in 2021, after four years of ignorance, pettiness and hatred.

His strategy against Biden was winning because it gathered him bipartisan support - even Democrats were dubious about Biden being able to do a good job - but now that that's out of the question, Trump has fallen back to his usual script, because it's too late to do anything else. After all, questioning Obama's birth and throwing sexist remarks against Clinton won him an election; why wouldn't it work again? Just stick to the fanbase that won you an election once and almost won you another the second time, and hope for the best.

Edit: Wait, Braid Anniversary didn't even include new levels? No wonder it didn't sell! All it has is a documentary track and some visuals.

"Braid: Anniversary Edition launched in May and adds 40 new levels, as well as over 15 hours of commentary"

From the article.

I feel the problem is not the industry but the fanbase. As of the last few years, it's become pretty common to see videogames become target of hatred for "going woke": H:FW's Aloy's "peach fuzz", TLOU2's Abby being too masculine, women not living to the average beauty standard, LGBT characters "shoved down people's throats", character editors decoupling gender and sex or using gender-neutral language, narrative being cringe because it targets millennials (as if older games didn't target young audiences, too)... The industry is going forward, but I don't think the fanbase is ready yet.

Sometimes I think the fanbase is regressing, even. I've seen people lamenting increased "politics" in their videogame, yet saying that MGS or FFVII or Bioshock are their favourite games. Gamers don't even pay attention to what they consume, they merely parrot whatever their favourite influencer says. "Woke" is a meaningless term that gets thrown around whenever they don't like something.

There's not much point in subscribing for $20/month to play a game that frequently goes on sale for less than that and can be owned forever.

I don't have/follow a dnd YT channel, but I do homebrew everything I play.

You couldn't pay me enough to play a vanilla 5e fighter, and OneDnD sucks balls.

Martials are already underpowered enough without forcing them to give up even more of their meagre power.

I feel like this should be satire, but it never becomes funny and just reads as a poor (and, quite honestly, not very original) attempt at trolling.

Lol, enshittification came faster than expected. At least Netflix was successful before the price hike, and then decided to be greedy because their user base was willing to pay.

On the other side of the fence, Xbox Series consoles tanked harder than XOne (which was already a colossal failure) and Game Pass subscribers fell short of corporate expectations every year since its inception. And they decide that this is the best time to double the price of the service? Good luck with that decision, Microsoft.

Who is gonna pay $15/month for a catalog of old games? Old games are already cheap enough that you can buy them directly and still "profit" over keeping an ongoing subscription. And $20/month for day one games? At that price, you're better off just buying the damn game. GP was already hard to justify at its previous price, but this new price point is egregious.

Great games, I have fond memories of me and my brother playing those flash games.

If you don't want to pay, the Flashpoint Collection already has these flash games and they are fully functional, although I think I'll grab this release to support the dev after all these years.

Wasn't this already confirmed a few months ago?

This is what happens when the Paladin needs to choose between using their bonus action to Lay On Hands, or to Smite.

You mean the harness, or the halfling?

DM: Trying his best to write an emotional moment

Player: I play the flute while I loot the dead kid's body

"Okay guys, you brought this onto yourselves... For death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth!"

Hourglass of Lost Chances
Wondrous item, legendary (requires attunement)

This magical hourglass, crafted from a material more resilient than steel yet as transparent as glass, contains sand that remains curiously still and does not flow.

While you have the Hourglass on your person, you can utter its command word as an action to activate it. Upon activation, the sand begins to flow from one bulb to the other, a process that continues unabated even if you turn the Hourglass upside down.

While you have the active Hourglass on your person, you can utter its command word again as an action. Doing so reverts the timeline to the moment you activated it. Every event, including death, is undone, but all creatures across the multiverse retain their memories of what transpired during that timeframe. However, any creature that was not within a 1-mile radius of you at any moment while the Hourglass was active experiences this as a sense of déjà vu.

The Hourglass becomes inactive 10 minutes after activation or immediately after you use it to revert the timeline. Once deactivated, it cannot be activated again for the next 7 days.

(Edit for clarity)

It's more a figure-eight of life.