Off Topic Discussion Megathread

[Kolsykol]

More side projects = more money in the CEO's pocket for all the initial sales for the game, up until people realize it's a pile of garbage. Unfortunately they are going down the road of many KR MMO projects: focus on quick cash cows rather than cultivating polished and enjoyable game experiences that will keep people playing and buying them for years.

At this rate, I'm kind of terrified for the second part of FF7R and what sort of crap might be done to it/put into it due to SQE's recent and highly questionable decisions.

I think in KR it's moreso that it feels that way to us when in reality it's just designed for a KR/ CN mindset, the whole P2W thing is just kinda normal there.
I wonder sometimes how it really is in KR too especially, I mean we don't get all of their games there's a lot of KR games we simply never end up knowing even exists.
It does lead a little it seems tho to a small minority keeping the game alive long term, especially with how most of them are F2P.

Really sucks tho because I love Blade and Soul but I just don't trust it to stay afloat long term, but I definitely think that KR puts out some really high quality stuff even with relatively small teams and budgets.
The business model is just a big culture shock in the West but I think less so with time these things are becoming more and more normalized in the West too.
A lot of kids grow up nowadays being bullied for not having skins in Fortnite it's really bizarre but it's definitely seeping into our culture too.

In regards to Square Enix I think it's worth remembering too that they don't only publish video games they're a company with a pretty broad catalogue.
The FF series I am less worried about because it holds quite a lot of cultural value in Japan and for the most part I think they've always had pretty big budgets and never been truly terrible or anything on a more objective level.
Their Western branches tho have put out an endless barrage of extremely generic and tired games full of the typical AAA shenanigans.
Apparently they lost like 200 mil $ recently on them which makes the sale perhaps a bit less strange even if they sold them really cheap.
But they didn't sell IP's like Life is Strange which one can think what they will about but they still are pretty popular and seem to make a profit.

I am a bit sad they sold Tomb Raider tho because I actually really would've loved to have seen a Japanese studio get to make a Tomb Raider game.
At least it'd have a chance to be a bit different rather than just typical AAA Western game bs, the reboot is already so completely far off from the Classic games and totally unrecognizable.

Sucks being so fickle sometimes. I just wake up some days, look at something, and I'm like "yeah, actually I don't like this". I woke up the other day, and I don't really want to log into Lost Ark anymore either, at all. I mean, I still do play it, but when I don't want to do something it really, really tends to burn me out quick. For me, taking a break from something like Lost Ark isn't that simple, because if I take a break, I never want to play it again, because I don't want to not have outfits, all due to taking a break. So if I stop playing that game I'm never playing it again.

Can't stand limited time mechanics. Fomo doesn't make me keep playing games, and buying, as intended, it makes me quit altogether. I realize the stuff can be bought in that game's in-game market, but I don't want severely marked up prices. At least in Warframe, stuff does come back, in time, but even in that game, the last time I took a break, I took a break for five years.. Got everything I could for my account collection, then took another break.. (last year).

My go to game most of the time is basically Total War Warhammer 1-3 ( still waiting for the blood and Immortal Empires in Warhammer 3... Yes... There's no blood, it's DLC... LOL ).
But yeah I still just don't feel like playing Lost Ark because I really don't like AGS and I don't trust them at all.
Also Reaper isn't in the game yet, it's really dumb how they're handling it imo it just feels like a total waste of time to hold so much content back...
Especially Summoner which was literally completed and they just removed it for the launch, and it's not even the first class added back in rofl.
They're just sitting there with it locked away even tho it's done and ready to go.