haha same, as a sylvari main from my first day, I’ll miss my glowing salads, but oh well, as long as they keep GW2 alive…

I wonder how action orriented they will make the game. I saw some speculation that it will be a lot like warframe.

That was my impression too. It will get released on PS5, so the game will deffo need fewer keys than GW2, and I’m betting that GW1’s recent mobile release is another sign that they’ll want to release GW3 on mobile too (just didn’t include it in the first announcement to avoid backlash from the core playerbase).

It’s ok, they want to keep developing all three games. GW2’s population will probably drop a bit when GW3 gets released, but then those who prefer GW2’s MMORPG combat over GW3’s action-adventure will most likely return.

Hall of Monuments 2.0 will be released later this year and will connect GW2 and GW3. Since GWAMM was ported to GW2, it will probably make its way to GW3 as well :)

I guess they had to announce it now to explain why we’re not getting an annual expansion this year.

It will probably be quite different from both GW1 and GW2, since they’re planning to continue active development of all three games, so they wouldn’t want to target the exact same audiences.

GW3 seems like it will have a more console-friendly action-adventure combat, and dynamic movement that preserves momentum between movement types.

*plays the world’s tiniest violin*

holy shit you weren’t joking

I looked at the trailer on Metacritic, and jesus those costumes and poses of the underage-looking girls are really uncomfortable to watch

I liked Watch Dogs 1 mainly because I didn’t consume any pre-release media about it. Whatever downgrade there may have been, I was unaffected.

My game in this vein was Spore. I enjoyed it for what it was, not having seen any of the pre-release hype and changes.

network effect is strong

There’s a lot of both. No wonder it’s a running joke in the Genshin community how many designs have “coochie flaps”, detached sleeves or thigh straps. Or the ever-present high heels on female characters, no matter if she’s a jungle explorer or a desert warrior.

Also, just don’t spend money if you don’t want to. It’s not hard. Nobody forces you to spend money on any game with a gun to your head (hopefully). Just have self-control, it’s easy. And if for some reason you don’t have self-control, work on it. Improve yourself.

It’s not hard for you. But many people are wired in a way that makes it exceptionally hard for them to resist these kind of psychological dark patterns. These are innate characteristics, with some overlap with ADHD and other neurodiversity, not necessarily something one can “work on”. And there’s a reason why these dark patterns are in the games, because they work in extracting more money from players than they would otherwise give.

Stephanie Sterling made a video a few years ago where they go into detail how modern games prey on vulnerable people: The Addictive Cost Of Predatory Videogame Monetization (The Jimquisition)

Saaame, I love games with a ton of dialogue, hell one of my favourite games ever is Disco Elysium. And it’s not even that Genshin’s story is that bad, but it is told and localised very badly. It’s basically the trope of r/Im14andthisisdeep - an overall pretty shallow and meandering story (probably due to its gacha nature), often told using such an extremely dry and ornate language (probably due to direct translation from Chinese) with tons of characters and concepts thrown in in the attempt to pretend it’s something epic and profound, that the end result feels really disjointed. Also Paimon’s constant inane intrusions and hogging of the Traveler’s role is just actively bad storytelling.

Eh idk, I play Genshin for the open-world exploration, which I find really enjoyable. Also love the landscapes and music. The combat is alright too, but the story is below mediocre, and the monetisation is predatory af.

trying to make positive changes in a Sims life, and it only makes me feel worse about trying to improve my own situation.

Haha same, whenever I was working on improving their life, I was always acutely aware that I could be spending that time improving my own :D I guess there was some satisfaction from wish fulfilment (they own a house, wow), but yea I always spent an afternoon setting up mods, another day or 2 playing, then just got bored. Rinse and repeat every couple years. (Though I haven’t touched Sims 3 since the pandemic, and never tried Sims 4 so whatevs xd)

Guild Wars 2 is 14 years old this year, and you could argue that Guild Wars 1 is having a new renaissance after 21 years :)

Yeah I hate voxel graphics, so it never worked for me.

Also not into creative sandbox games. Give me a problem to solve or situation to improve, and I’ll have fun. Give me a big sandbox with no goals, and I just get bored 😅 (Same with Sims and other life simulators. I’d much rather play stories other people wrote, than come up with my own.)

Incremental games are that kind of braindead thing I can play for 5-10 mins at a time, when I’m too tired for proper games :)

But only with an autoclicker, otherwise it’s pure torture.

Yeah, I put 2000+ hours into Genshin over 4 years and have like 75 characters without ever spending any money. But the game is still so full of psychological dark patterns that would squeeze out the last penny from those whose personality or neurodiversity makes them vulnerable against such manipulation.

And yet again, the core of the issue of capitalism. As Stephanie Sterling put it many a time, the companies’ attitude is “Why be satisfied with a lot of money, when we could have all the money.”