jeff-from-marketing

[jeff-from-marketing]

YOUNG MAN!

There's no need to feel down,

I MEAN YOUNG THEY!

I forgot your pronoun,

[jeff-from-marketing]

[jeff-from-marketing]

Congratulations! @void-of-nonsense You are the 100th customer I mean victim I mean reblog!

You have earned One (1) free bite, to be redeemed right now >:)

[jeff-from-marketing]

For fuck sake, I'm this close to just blocking the asexual tag on Tumblr. Not because those people aren't valid, they're so fucking valid and deserve to be loved and respected! I love you all and you deserve to be represented in society

But apparently some people don't know how to not conflate aromanticism with asexuality. Say it with me people:

ROMANCE AND SEX ARE NOT ONE IN THE SAME

They're different things! Yes, for many they can be tied together, but that doesn't make them inherently interchangeable! You can love someone with all your heart and never want to fuck them, and conversely you can want to fuck someone you find hot without ever even knowing them.

The amount of fucking times I've seen a post only aimed at asexual people tagged with all the aromantic tags is absurd. I'm not ace, I do not identify with being on that spectrum. But I am fucking aromantic! Stop putting me in the same group when they're not the same thing! It's disingenuous to people who are only asexual and not aroace, and it's dangerously fucking close to just erasing aromantics.

I don't like trying to police how people use the site, even if it wasn't a pointless endeavour it would just be rude, and I don't want to be that person. But I'm also just tired of seeing every other post tagged with aromantic actually just being about asexuality. I don't want those posts to stop, I just want them to be tagged properly so that asexual people get proper representation without drowning out aromantics. Obviously if it's an aroace post then yeah tag both, that makes sense, I'm not going to fight that. But otherwise, please, I just want to be able to see stuff about aromanticism without it being drowned out by asexuality.

I want to be seen.

(side note: the reverse of all this is obviously true. Do not fucking tag a post that's just about aromanticism with asexual. We all deserve our own representation without drowning each other. We should be working to lift each other up, not use each other as stepping stones)

[jeff-from-marketing]

Hey it's been a hot minute, I'm gonna go off about Helldivers 2 for a bit, because the whole thing fascinates me.

Funnily enough it's not even the actual game itself that truly fascinates me, as great as it is. I do genuinely think that, while not perfect, it's a very solid game that knows what kind of experience it wants to deliver, and does a fantastic job delivering on it. The Starship Troopers-esque satire is hilarious, and I love how much the gameplay reinforces that satire through things like reinforcements canonically being a whole new Helldiver sent into the meat grinder, and that the mission still counts as a celebrated victory even if you never make it back alive. I could even talk about how the objectively clunky system for calling in orbital support is actually a positive for the game, but only this game and the type of experience it's selling.

But none of that is what fascinates me about this game so much. Because y'see, I played the first Helldivers game, and it was also a great bit of fun! It's actually why I was interested in the second one to begin with. But I also know that the first Helldivers was not a very wide reaching game, none of Arrowhead's games have been. They've not done poorly by any means, they're still in business and have been for over a decade now. But they've always been fairly niche affairs. Until now. To really sell the picture, I wanna rattle off player counts for their previous games:

Magicka in 2011, Arrowhead's first big game and published by Paradox, had an all-time max player count of 11,727 players according to SteamDB. I don't believe it was on any other storefronts, but I could be mistaken. A quick wikipedia visit tells me that the game sold roughly a million units over a year which, again, not bad! Especially for a game that is admittedly fairly unusual, but is a lot of fun!

The Showdown Effect in 2013, which I only just found out about right now after double checking my numbers, had a all time high of just 3,284 according to SteamDB, and is now delisted from Steam. Though apparently there's a remake from another company happening? There's a lot less info on this one in general.

Gauntlet in 2014, this one I do know a bit more about since I also played this one. A remake of the original 1985 game, and was a good bit of fun as well! This one is trickier to get an accurate player count reading, because it did have a PS4 release and those are harder to find numbers for. Regardless, it was also on Steam, so therefore I can use those numbers at least, which gives me a max consecutive player count of 12,730. I don't know how much PS4 factored into this.

And now we get to the real interesting one: Helldivers 1. Again, this is tricky because not only was it on console, but it was actually on console before it was ever on PC, which heavily skews numbers. SteamDB has the peak at just 6,744, but this doesn't sit right with me. I've seen estimates of 50k people around the place, some say 35k, but never a solid source. It's also very difficult to search atm because of how much Helldivers 2 is blowing up. Speaking of...

So Helldivers 1 is their most popular game, and I'll be generous and say that the 50k count is the accurate one. So surely Helldivers 2 can't be that much more- oh I'm not even going to pretend, you already know what's going on here. The game has reached ~450k concurrent players just on Steam alone! And the game also exists on PS5, and if I recall correctly: there's official statements saying that the player counts are roughly equal with each other. That means a peak of ~900,000 individual players. To illustrate how bonkers batshit insane that is, motherfucking Fortnite has a current consecutive player count of roughly one million.

Let me reiterate: a game that came out of basically nowhere with little marketing, from a small studio with only about 100 employees, is rivaling the juggernaut that is fucking Fortnite. That is insane.

As someone who has played all of Arrowhead's previous games besides The Showdown Effect, this is bonkers. There's a reason the sentiment was "there's no way to have predicted this" when the servers were at their worst, because look at the previous data! How is anyone supposed to predict a sequel to a niche game (from a company very few people have heard about) to get a ~1800% increase in max player count? Their initial server capacity was 250k, which would've been very optimistic if you were just going by Helldivers 1 numbers. But then that wasn't enough. And then 360k wasn't enough. And then 450k wasn't enough. We're now at 700k server capacity and just finally getting things under control. This game just exploded in a way no one could have reasonably predicted. And I have no idea why this is the case either.

I'm not saying it's not deserved; it absolutely is! Like I said, game is great, and there's not even any shitty business practices I can bitch at this time! It's just so sudden and out of nowhere that it baffles me. Such a small percentage of these players would've even heard of the first game, let alone played it. It didn't have a massive marketing campaign, this is pretty much all spread through word of mouth, which is insane in its own right. It's not even like the game is entering an untapped market, it shares its existence with games like Deep Rock Galactic, Vermintide, Darktide, the actual Starship Troopers game, probably some others I'm forgetting. And yet, despite all of this, it breached containment something fierce. I don't have a big conclusion to make from all this, I'd love to be able to say "oh people are just getting tired of Triple A- oh I'm sorry, Quadruple A gaming and this is a breath of fresh air" and it is that, as was Baldur's Gate 3, but I'm not naive enough to think that's the main reason. Not when so many other great games continue to go undiscovered, and so many people still end up buying whatever the next big Triple A thing is. It's a great game to play with friends, and there's a lot going for it and a lot of charm, but such is also the case for the other games I already listed in this paragraph and they don't see the same popularity.

Whether it's just dumb fucking luck, or a really oddly specific set of circumstances at play that I can't see, I'm just dumbfounded and flabbergasted. But I'm not exactly gonna complain. It's fun getting sent into the meat grinder to spread Managed Democracy, and I'm glad the game is doing as well as it is, though I do hope that the devs get to have a bit of rest once the dust finally settles a little bit.

[jeff-from-marketing]

There's so many games I love for this reason that it's hard to pick just one.

Cyberpunk 2077 was the first thing that came to mind, even in the state it was at during launch you could still feel just how much love was being put into it despite the circumstances. Seeing it now, after all the updates, is nothing short of beautiful. I could (and have) gone on entire rants about the themes and stories, to the design of Night City, to just how wonderfully animated every single character is and all the little details, their choices of music and leitmotifs throughout, etc. This is a game where, despite the development hell it went through (and I do hope the devs get better treatment) you can still feel the love and care put into it

Control is another really good one for me, and it's one where you can tell every single word was chosen very carefully. To say nothing of the art and how it resides perfectly in the realm of the uncanny, and how wonderfully crafted the gameplay itself is. I've rarely seen a game like it achieve the ebb and flow that it does without making it seem like you're putting in a tonne of extra effort. Everything just goes together without even thinking about it, and you just know that they spent so much time fine tuning it to get it to that point. Then you have all the little written documents around just to fill in the world they've spent all this time working on.

Last one, because otherwise I'm here forever, but I want to give another shoutout to Metal: Hellsinger. That game is a love letter to all things metal, and it shows through every little bit of the game. The music choice is obvious, even getting big name metal singers is pretty obvious, and if you're making a love letter to metal then it only makes sense to make the game focus around the music. And this is where it shines. The escalating intensity of the music as you defeat enemies, the encouragement to stay on beat to the music, the fact that the world itself reacts to the beat (Hi-Fi Rush does this too, and it's also a wonderful gem of a game!). Then you have all the creative ways they make different weapons that feel different to use despite all of them working on the beat. Plus there's all the animations, like how the main attack with Paz is just him headbanging to the music, or how the ultimate ability for a couple weapons has your character flashing the devil horns hand gesture.

I could keep going, but I'll spare ye all for now. The main thing I want to get across is that they are absolutely correct and that the best games are always the ones where you can feel the love and soul put into it. Side note: absolutely correct on Monster Hunter

When I say I like games that are artistic experiences btw I'm not just talking about story focused games or games that try to be movies. For instance I think monster hunter is a deeply artistic experience. So much creativity and passion is on display when you look at these monster designs, their biology and lore, not to mention the different weapons and how intricately designed their movesets are. People clearly put a lot of heart and soul into all of that, and that's what I love to see. It's about that human creativity.

[jeff-from-marketing]

So peaking through the notes and no one has mentioned the best part about female charr in Guild Wars 2

Y'see, in Guild Wars 1 you never saw any charr women, because the Flame Legion are (or at least were) massive misogynists and viewed women as inferior. Couple hundred years later in Guild Wars 2, while Flame Legion is still the worst, the Iron, Blood, and Ash Legions don't have this issue. Women are viewed as equal to the men.

Why am I bringing up this in game history lesson? Because it means the devs had a unique challenge: with charr now being a playable race, how do they represent female charr? They've never been seen in GW1, so there was no existing design. There were a few designs put forward, some of which were definitely closer to the more traditional catgirl style.

Eventually they decided to go closer to what we see today, but there was still one conundrum: boobs? They still wanted ways to differentiate between men and women, and boobs are usually a good shortcut to that. However, they felt that it undercut some of the work they did in other areas to make the women look fierce and badass. So after some debate, the art team was given an ultimatum.

"Either be subtle and downplay the breasts (it wasn't a point of the race, anyway) or go full-on realistic. Yes, that's right —none or six!!" - Kristen Perry, former character art lead for Guild Wars 2

And I absolutely love that so much! I love that they thought about going with the catgirl route and decided against it, and I absolutely love the ultimatum of "look if you're going to add boobs, you have to give them six of them. I will take nothing in between" because I find it hilarious.

Anyway this is your Guild Wars 2 related boob rant for the day. You're welcome

no shade to ffxiv but...female charr supremacy

[jeff-from-marketing]

meme image aside, I love how (with maybe the exception of the first thing, though I wouldn't say no to USB-A) those are all genuinely great features, and also shit we used to have in phones.

3.5mm headphone jack is just great, unironically a big part of me getting a digital audio player. Bring back the headphone jack!

charger+cable in box is something we used to get standard with phones. Now it's an additional accessory to up sell you to under the guise of "protecting the environment" which is total BS

replaceable battery is also something all phones had, and is a massive boon to user repairability and extending the lifespan of a phone

60hz display is something we already have if not higher

open OS, yes??? There is literally no downside here (other than Big Corporation not being able to have their walled garden ecosystem, boo-fucking-hoo)

SD card slot, once again something phones used to have as a selling point until they stopped doing it. Because why sell something you can expand yourself later if they can up sell you higher capacity phones now, and also a subscription to whatever cloud service they own? Again, a very big reason why I got myself a digital audio player.

back to the image though, some of those would unironically also be great. I now want a phone with a physical volume dial, that sounds sick as fuck. You could also totally make a phone that doubles as a cassette player as well, and I can damn near guarantee someone would buy it (I would honestly be tempted, that sounds awesome). Also, a device like this, while probably not helpful as a mobile phone, would actually be awesome for anyone who needs to deal with a bunch of older and/or niche pieces of physical media with odd connectors.

people seem so scared of ports on their devices though... just don't show them any half-decent digital audio player. I think mine with three different headphone jacks, USB-C, and a Micro SD card reader would probably kill a devout Apple fan just by sheer exposure

ok this looks ultra mega based, are you kidding me? can you imagine the bullshit i could get up to with this bad boy? fuck yes i want ten

[jeff-from-marketing]

No but genuinely it's such bullshit, especially if you happen to live in a country like Australia which is well renowned for having just dogshit internet compared to much the rest of the world, because our government absolutely fucking bungled NBN and we're still trying to get it working right about a decade later.

It's just fucking normal for us for our internet to just simply drop out entirely in certain areas. If you go any distance on public transport in particular then you're almost certain to have parts where you just don't have good (or maybe even any) internet. And this is in urban areas. Start going more rural, and good luck!

It's even worse with companies like Disney announcing that they're no longer selling physical media versions of their films or shows here, so we have to rely on streaming for any content owned by Disney (or other methods, but shhh) and guess what? Even if streaming had everything I wanted and worked consistently (it doesn't) our internet on average is literally not fast enough to give the same quality that one would get through something like blu-ray. So we're having to rely on an always online service for a worse product. And pay a subscription for it. Cool.

And to go all the way back to the phone point, modern flagship phones can cost $1,000+ AUD now and you get 128gb unless you pay closer to $1,600+ for more. That money sure as shit ain't going to battery either, because you're lucky if you get more than a day. Sometimes lucky to even get a day's worth of battery! Not to mention that modern flagship phones don't even come with SD card slots anymore, so you can't even expand the storage yourself. Hell they don't even have headphone jacks anymore, and no I will never let this go because fuck bluetooth. Flash memory is not expensive anymore, so what are we getting for the higher price and fewer features? What are they using all that extra space for? Sure the newer cameras are cool and all, but y'know what's even cooler? Being able to store shit locally and actually get extra features for the higher pricetag.

smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

[jeff-from-marketing]

One of these days I'll remember what blog I'm on when I go to inflict psychic damage on my partner... But today is not that day!

Will I ever learn from this? No.

Will I apologise when this keeps happening? Also no.

This head is so empty and I'm not about to go filling it with thoughts!

[jeff-from-marketing]

@void-of-nonsense

love pinning discord messages its like hanging them on the fridge

[jeff-from-marketing]

Hey Discord? There's this consumer rights law you're violating at the moment, you might want to look into that!

For context, Discord has rolled out "Avatar Decorations" which... are all sorts of shit, namely because to even buy one you already have to be a Nitro subscriber. You heard me: you have to be a paying customer for the privilege to spend more money. That already pisses me the fuck off, but no, that's not why I'm ranting. That I could ignore and move on with my day. It's this that made me stop and go "oh now hang on a second, that's actually a crime!"

Look at how they represent their pricing real quick.

Remember: you can only purchase it if you already have Nitro. But how does this read to you? Genuinely, I'd love to know if your first thought wasn't "the crossed out price is the standard price, and the highlighted price is the sale for if you already have Nitro." Because that's how it reads to me and everyone I've shown this to so far. Now the problem here is: that $10 price is fake. Because, as I've said multiple times now, you can only make this purchase if you already have Nitro, that means the only price that actually exists is the $7 one.

That means that they are not selling it at, nor have ever sold it at $10, and that's just a marketing tactic to make you think you're getting a deal when that's actually just a standard price. In Australia, where Discord has users and operates in, this is a crime. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (better known as the ACCC) have a track record of going after companies for pulling this shit, and winning. The ACCC does not fuck around. Even our big stores like Coles and Woolworths have gotten in shit with the ACCC for this.

Shitty capitalistic bullshit like having to pay for the privilege of spending more money is one thing. Committing actual crimes? Now that's a new one, at least to me. Discord really must want to burn through all its good will as quick as possible.

[jeff-from-marketing]

So I've had a pretty extended amount of time to sit down with Baldur's Gate 3 and mull it over in my head, and I have some thoughts.

Up front, the game is still fucking great, however it's very telling that all of my problems with the game actually stem from the fact that it's a D&D 5e game. It's hard for me to pick what the "biggest" issue I have is, so this will probably be a little all over the place, kinda like my general thought process.

Something that sticks out to me a lot is to do with spells, namely "save or suck" spells like Hold Person or Hideous Laughter. These spells feel awful to use. Because you either get an absolutely game changing effect that drastically changes the tide of the battle, or you get literally fucking nothing but you've still wasted a precious resource (a spell slot). Damage spells for the most part at the very least still do half damage, so you're always getting something out of your resource expenditure. The thing that makes this stick out to me in particular is because I've already seen this problem be fixed in other games and systems, including Larian's other games. Divinity: Original Sin 2 is built all around different armour types and tactical usage of crowd control abilities, because you can guarantee when they'll go off. It's honestly a lot of fun for a combat system. Pathfinder 2nd Edition also saw and fixed this problem with its Degrees of Success system. It's very rare that you'll spend a spell slot and get literally nothing out of it, you'll often get a weaker effect or shorter duration on control/debuff spells against enemies who make the save, but you still get something worthwhile out of it. Compared to BG3/D&D 5e where you get literally nothing, that's a massive boost in not just effectiveness, but in terms of how it feels. Nothing feels worse than spending a very precious resource and getting literally nothing out of it. But again, this was a D&D 5e problem to begin with, so Larian are stuck between "do we make a faithful D&D game, or do we make a fun game?" Personally, I would've gone for the latter on this one, but I know how some portions of the D&D 5e community are.

The other issue I have is the disparity between martials/spellcasters, and across classes in general. Now, to Larian's credit, they have done a lot of work to bridge gaps closer together. The discrepancy between certain classes is massive in base D&D 5e, so it's actually rather impressive the amount of work that's been done to rectify that. Things like Rangers don't suck by default, Berserker Barbarians are not only actually playable, but also just fun now, familiars and summons have interesting uses in combat and don't cripple your character, etc. But it's not all perfect. Monks still have some very glaring problems, like why do they need to spend resources to do the exact same things Rogues can do for literally free? Martials in general, even with all the things Larian have done, are still lacking in options and tools compared to spellcasters. Mostly because so many of them are tied to once per short rest, so unless you're doing a short rest after literally every combat (which honestly, sometimes it feels like the game expects you to do that, which is another thing I'll get to) you'll often end up in a situation where your only options are "how do you want to hit the attack button this time?" Again, this is a problem that have been solved already, and by Larian. Divinity: Original Sin 2 had so many warfare, huntsman, and scoundrel skills you could learn without going anywhere near flashy magic if you wanted to. And they were all just as effective! Pathfinder 2e gets around this problem by not only giving martials a bunch of abilities they can use, but also just saying "yeah go hog wild with them, use them as much as you like!"

Another aspect of this, that I think is just personal taste, is that I'm not super big on the "here's your daily resources, don't spend them all at once, the game will make sure you have to burn through them though" gameplay style that D&D 5e promotes. With so many abilities only recharging on long rests, to me it promotes being overly cautious with resources and just simply not using them. It's the "I have 900 health potions because what if I need them later?" and then never using them problem. Though adding onto this: this can mean that some combats can swing wildly in difficulty. Because there's no guarantee that the players will be at full resources, or just about to run out of steam, the same combat can be anywhere between "this is piss easy" to "oh god oh fuck we're all dying." Which I find leads to a lot more save-scumming, because you often have no way to tell if you don't have enough resources for a fight until you're actually in the fight. Hell, sometimes whether or not something actually is a fight is right down to RNG, which leads to my next problem...

Larian, I get that you're trying to emulate a TTRPG here, I really do. RNG for dialogue choices is not fun. There's a reason other cRPGs moved away from them in favour of binary "do you meet the skill requirement, yes/no?" checks. There's a reason you used that very system in Divinity: Original Sin 2. Because it takes agency away from the player, and means you sometimes just simply may not be able to do something simply because the dice said fuck you. If you don't meet the requirements for a check, you can just say "ah I didn't build my character this way, that's fair, I'll have to try that out sometime." or you feel rewarded for having built your character for speech checks by being guaranteed new options and solutions to problems. With the dice rolling system though, you can invest as much as you want into those skills, but you can still roll low and get completely fucked, making it feel more like "why do I even bother investing in that skill?" The reason the dice rolling works for a TTPRG is because you have a GM there with you to talk things out and apply some reason. You may roll low, but a GM can still adjust things, or you may have a character specific reason as to why the outcome should be different, or you can employ my favourite TTPRG tool of "yes, but-" A computer game can't do any of that. So it ends up feeling a lot harsher and a lot less fair and fun. This leads can very easily lead to a lot of save scumming, and it also makes spells like Guidance feel damn near mandatory to have in a party. Which means: I hope you like Shadowheart or playing a Cleric yourself, because you can't just not have a Cleric in the party.

This also extends to things like perception checks as well. Sometimes these are progression blocking, or at least feel like it, but I also think a lot of the issue actually comes down to telling the player too much information. If everyone in the party just failed a perception roll, well... I still know there's something there. The game is just saying "but you don't get to see what it is :)" I know the game doesn't do fake perception rolls (and I also think those are bad practice as well) so I instead know that there's just something there that's probably either about to fuck me over like a trap, or something that's near vital to progress something like a secret door or button, but I don't get to interact with it. If I was never told that the perception checks failed, I'd actually have no reason to suspect there's anything there at all, and the feeling of "well I may as well go fuck myself then" would be a lot lower. Though I think traps would feel extra unfair. I don't have a good solution for that one. This actually leads into a big tabletop problem of "oh one person failed a roll, time to get everyone in the party to make the roll even if they have no reason to" just to game the system. If you're going to keep this as something random as well (I'd argue that it's probably better to have the same "do you meet the skill requirement, yes/no?" binary system that Divinity uses, but that's definitely a debatable thing) I'd actually steal from Pathfinder 2e and hide those rolls from the player entirely. Secret rolls are so good for preventing the "well I rolled low, so I still know something is up, but I'm not allowed to act on it" problem that D&D 5e has.

Going further is a little bit of spoilers narratively, so I'll put those under a cut. If you don't want to keep reading though, I'll just put my conclusion here: I still love the game, you can still tell a lot of heart and soul has been poured into it, and Larian has done a lot of work to make D&D 5e a much more fun and enjoyable experience. It's just unfortunate that it still has some of the same fundamental issues that D&D 5e has on tabletop.

Though I think the real conclusion is: Larian, how much do I have to pay you for a Pathfinder 2e based cRPG?

Going on a brief narrative tangent real quick, and bearing in mind I'm only up to Act 2: I'm not fond of how certain aspects of the world are handled.

I think the goblins at the beginning are the biggest example of where my issues lie. They are, nigh universally, portrayed as quote unquote "evil." They're all raiders, pillagers, torturers, murderers, cultists, etc. And... I don't like that. I don't ever like portraying a race as "this is the evil race." I think it's not only boring and unimaginative, but I also think it's problematic. I get that a lot of people go to fantasy to escape real life, but surely seeing "every single member of this race you come across is defacto a bad guy" has to be raising questions, no? Even ignoring that though, it just stifles narrative creativity. By saying all members of a race are evil, you're removing a bunch of possibly very interesting stories. It's why I love Pathfinder 2e gnolls and goblins so much. They're so fascinating because there's so many facets to them, they're not just all evil. Hell, even whole ass demon lords can find redemption and become forces for good in Pathfinder. D&D has the problem of "evil is evil, and always will be evil" with not much room for the grey area inbetween. Which is a shame really.

I could also get into the problematic nature of "the dark skinned dwarfs are all evil slavers" and "the dark skinned gnomes are all used as slaves by the aforementioned dark skinned dwarfs" but... let's not. That's a debate that's been had a lot already, and it's not one I feel like having here.

I do appreciate that Larian at the very least tried to not fall into that entirely. The hobgoblin and illithid you meet in the underdark in act 1 were actually quite refreshing, it's just a shame (at least so far as I've experienced) there's not more like that. I'd love to have little goblin friends that aren't just The Worst(TM) people ever. And so far I've actually been quite intrigued by Lae'zel's (and by extension the entire Githyanki) storyline, I'm actually quite fond of how that's turning out so far.

That's not to say the writing is bad. Larian are still good at what they do, and there's still some very damn good stuff in here. It's just unfortunately still got to deal with some of the inherent D&D issues by nature of it being a D&D game.

[jeff-from-marketing]

Romance and videogames, certainly an... interesting topic (I think)

Upfront, I just don't really care for it. Doesn't help that I'm very much aromantic, so I'll be discussing things with that lens, but there's one thing that only just occurred to me about how romance is treated in games that I'm particularly not a fan of.

I don't like romance as the end goal of every relationship where it's a potential option.

It feels... weird. Especially when nigh every game that does that also conflates sex and romance together. There's a number of times where I do like a character and think they're interesting, but the only way to actually continue on with their personal stuff is to romance them. If you don't, then they act all sad and disappointed (which, let me tell you, does not do any favours for my "can't make the fictional virtual people upset"-ness) and you can't really do much more with them. Or other cases where you agree to something thinking "ah yeah this is something I'd just casually do with people for funsies" but apparently the game decides to take that as a romance thing for some reason.

It's almost like those games are (inadvertently or otherwise) saying that the only relationships that really matter are the romantic ones, which... I have many issues with that actually. Or that the end goal of any relationship is to end up romantically involved, which I also have issues with. Doesn't help that 98% of games that do stuff like this also only allow for monogamy, like cowards. Though (and I can't believe I'm saying this) polygamy actually has its own issues here, because then this situation applies to so many more characters at once.

Don't even get me started on the conflation of sex and romance, and how the former of those often just feels like a strange form of player reward for doing the romance.

I know games can't account for every single option or every single kind of player, fuck just even thinking about the scope of doing such a thing terrifies me. But, if you're going to heavily include romance into something that isn't predominantly a romance genre, I would very greatly appreciate the option to go "sure I'll go along with whatever, but I don't want anything romantic to come out of this." Without tanking my reputation with them, preferably. Sometimes people are cool enough without a romantic relationship, so let me keep that.

[jeff-from-marketing]

Think you forgot the part where Larrian charged people up front for their "Early Access" open beta for 4 years. Now, did they produce a better *product* than their contemporaries? Yes. But let's not pretend they aren't moneygrubbers while doing it.

And they were perfectly upfront with that as well.

They never shied away from the fact that it was early access, and that it wasn't fully released. They straight up said "this is Early Access because the game isn't ready yet, and we want your feedback"

They actually followed through with that as well, incorporating player feedback and using the EA period as an opportunity to work with their playerbase.

Compared to literally any company that'll charge you full price for a "pre-order" and you get spat in the face in return? I'll absolutely take "pay now to get early access to a product and provide feedback."

Don't want to do that? That's absolutely fine and reasonable, then just wait for the full release.

[jeff-from-marketing]

So Baldur's Gate 3 has now fully released, and it kinda fucks?

Okay more than kinda, Baldur's Gate 3 should be the new standard for larger studios in terms of quality and, more importantly, how they treat players. I can't believe I'm saying that about a D&D game.

So for context to that last bit: I'm super fucking jaded on D&D. I've pretty much jumped ship entirely to any other TTRPG (namely Pathfinder 2e) because I hate how Wizards of the Coast have handled D&D 5e and how they treat their customers.

I fucking love Baldur's Gate 3. It's still got some of the D&D things I'm not overly fond of, but that's a personal taste thing, and overall this game fucking rules. Larian is really out here just making D&D a more fun experience than the actual Wizards of the Coast, it's honestly kinda wild.

But more than just in the context of "a D&D game" I want to talk about Baldur's Gate 3 in the larger scope of videogames as a whole, primarily in the triple A scene. There's a reason Baldur's Gate 3 is doing so well and why it's very quickly become so beloved, and it's not just because of the bear sex. That reason can be largely boiled down to "Larian respects their playerbase, and more importantly respects their money." Too often we're seeing games from big triple A companies that already have way too much fucking money just being absolutely filled beyond the brim with monetisation for something that's likely already $90-100 AUD. Or worse: games that borderline lie to you about how much they cost, Destiny 2 I'm fucking looking at you and your "genuinely the worst monetisation I have seen in a game." Or just straight up gacha games that are purpose built to fuck you out of your money and use similar tricks that the gambling industry uses to make money.

But Baldur's Gate 3? Pay the full price up front, and you get a full game. There's no hidden "gotcha!" monetisation, no battlepasses, no rotating digital storefront, no fake "premium" currency, no "but it's only cosmetic" microtransactions. I'm not even gonna gripe against their pre-order stuff like I normally would, because you could actually play the game before it was released. Baldur's Gate 3 was in Early Access for literal years before it fully released, and it used that time quite well! It's fascinating seeing where it came from and how much has changed since then. But more importantly: if you "pre-ordered" the game (read: buy it in Early Access) you could still play the game, you still immediately got something for your money. If you didn't like it, you could still refund it if you wanted to. As a nice little bonus: the game mostly just works! It's not perfect, there's some little oddities here and there, but I haven't had the game break yet. But then again, I'm one of the people who somehow managed to have a pretty bug-free Cyberpunk 2077 experience at launch, so who knows.

And plus it comes with couch co-op! Why is that so rare these days?? It feels like the only games you can really sit down with and play with friends these days are party games.

Of course, Baldur's Gate 3 isn't truly alone here. Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West have come out as full games with no monetisation BS and working fine, albeit stuck to PlayStation for a long time before releasing elsewhere (although BG3 is currently PC exclusive, though that should change next month). God of War, while I've not personally played, I haven't heard anything egregious about it. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is such a fun time, but at $125 AUD it's a hard sell, even knowing all the work that went into it (Though that did drop to just $95 AUD on PC). I'm even going to give Cyberpunk 2077 an honourable mention, because if you had a computer that could run it at launch it was still a damn good time. Though that one unfortunately came at the cost of "should never have been released on last gen consoles" and "worker abuse through crunch."

But all of those examples have the "pre-order to maybe get something" issue that Baldur's Gate 3 avoided through its Early Access launch. You also can't really share those games with friends. You can maybe let a friend borrow the game and then talk about it after you've both finished it in your own time, but that's kinda like watching a movie separately and then talking about it. It's just not the same. That's not even mentioning how small that list is. I'd say it's just single player games, but both Bethesda and Ubisoft have shown even they're not safe.

I haven't seen any game from a large studio respect the player as much as I have with Larian and Baldur's Gate 3. I definitely don't feel bad paying full price for this one. Once they're wrapped up with BG3, I don't suppose I could bribe them to make a Pathfinder game? Pretty please? Already like halfway there with Divinity: Original Sin 2!

[jeff-from-marketing]

Hi, I need to be autistic for a moment. Ahem.

STARFINDER SECOND EDITION REAL???

Okay I've got that out my system, what else is here-

FULLY COMPATIBLE WITH PATHFINDER SECOND EDITION???????

Alright, I should be good now.

No not really, but less shouting this time. I'm so fucking hype for this. Genuinely, I went looking for a spacefaring sci-fi TTRPG a little while ago and didn't find anything that quite did what I wanted.

Scum and Villainy is a great system, but it's also incredibly rules lite. That's an awesome thing for those who like those style of games, and there's a lot of merit to the Forged in the Dark system. Hell, there's a reason both Lancer and ICON take huge chunks from it for its narrative gameplay! But, it didn't exactly give me a lot to bite into. I'm someone who absolutely adores playing with game rules, theory crafting, etc. I like a like a little crunch. So this game, as good as it is, didn't quite scratch the itch. I do love the references in the book though!

I did take a quick look at Stars Without Number, and while it sure does have the crunch, it has it in places where I don't want it. The game in general feels very old school in a lot of ways, which is great if that's what you're after, but it very much was not what I wanted.

Even Starfinder 1e isn't quite what I wanted. It's probably the closest, but I've really become quite jaded to the D&D 3.5e and D&D 5e styles of gameplay. Having seen so many other systems now, they really do feel quite clunky and unintuitive to me. If you still enjoy those systems, more power to you! But I don't, so while this was close: it's no cigar.

And then there's the plethora of 5e hacks. Yeah no. There's a reason I dropped D&D 5e as hard as I did. Well... There's several, but shhh.

So, hearing that Paizo is making Starfinder 2e that's in line with Pathfinder 2e rules? That's almost literally a dream come true, that's exactly the kind of thing I was on the hunt for! It's no secret that I love Pathfinder 2e, I have several happy rants here about the topic (and one that haunts me because it keeps getting notes) and I do think it's very well designed in a lot of very important ways.

Finally, it seems like I'll be able to have the spacefaring sci-fi game with just the right amount and kind of crunch that I've been looking for!

You bet your ass I'm fucking hype.

As a side note: I love that they gave the giant lizard lady a giant gun. That's fun