bridge_too_close

I’ll call it a night in a few minutes. I need more iron…

A pair of official Joy-Cons is around $80 USD.

Agree on both points. It’s nice to have options. I think the real fun will begin when Valve opens SteamOS up for other platforms, so it can be put on these higher-end handhelds, and even desktops.

I also like how they try to stay within a certain price range and focus on experience and efficiency, rather than push the latest hardware.

Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I am not against Epic because of their privacy policy. I don’t like Epic because of their business practices and owners, and don’t want to give them anything, even if it’s just a bogus email address and a few clicks or whatnot. And no, I never tried to imply other companies don’t do the same thing.

Here’s the bottom line, as far as I’m concerned:
I don’t like Epic, and want nothing to do with them. If others want to interact with them, even if it’s just for the free games, that’s their decision to make.

They collect and use quite a bit more than that, it’s in their privacy policy:

https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/privacypolicy

Sure, their primary focus is most likely generating interest and usage of their platform, but they’ll also use analytical and statistical information to influence their business decisions.

If that’s something you don’t care about, then more power to you - enjoy your free game.

On a personal note, I made the decision as a consumer to not interact with them as much as possible. Even when I did have an account to collect free games years ago, the only thing I actually played was a Satisfactory alpha/beta event. I have more than enough games to play, so I am not concerned with collecting their free games.

But it does. You’re still giving them your data, which they can use for all manner of things. If that’s something you don’t care about, then more power to you - enjoy your free game.

Ultimately, if you want a free game and have no issues with Epic, then hurray, you get a free game. Some of us don’t like Epic and prefer to give them nothing (including our data), even if it means passing up on free games. I have no shortage of games to play, so I won’t be missing a free copy of FO3 or whatever else they decide to offer up.

Early access isn’t necessarily different from a beta version, it’s just the name of the program used by devs to generate some revenue and get feedback during development. The game can be in alpha or beta or whatever.

Personally, I avoid games in early access on principle (with a couple exceptions) as I would rather play them once they are completed.

A lot of devs already do this. That’s what Steam Early Access is for. Now, whether or not the devs actually listen to feedback is a different story…

What is or isn’t immersive is subjective, for sure. As far as a UI goes, some people may think that having a UI with too many elements or taking up too much space can detract from actually experiencing the game and its environments.

I didn’t say anything about actually believing you are the character. Immersion doesn’t have anything to do with deception and is more about being engrossed or deeply involved with something. You can be immersed in other things too, like a tv show, book, or tabletop game.

I think it’s less about being “tricked” into believing you aren’t actually playing a game, and more along the lines of having the mindset that you are actually playing as your character. It’s more like the difference between performing tasks, going from A to B, and checking boxes on a list, versus actually feeling like you’re going on an adventure.

It’s next on my list to play!

Whew, what a relief!

JK, though I have been waiting since before 1.6 to play again.

I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I’m getting my hopes up.

My personal opinion is stay away until they show positive change. I stepped away from WoW in 2018 when it became increasingly apparent that they are designing to keep players grinding, rather than actually having fun, then the infamous Blizzcon that year (Blitzchung debacle and “Do you guys not have phones?”) cemented my stance on not playing anything Blizzard. They have shown that they only see their players as wallets to extract money from and their employees as cheap labor to exploit and discard.

So has there been positive change? Not that I’ve seen. It’s still too early to tell if the MS acquisition will do anything on that front. From what I’ve heard of Diablo 4, it’s pretty boring once you get pas the initial “ooh, ahh” factor, and Overwatch 2 has been more or less a dumpster fire since it released.

I couldn’t tell you since I quit WoW 5 years ago, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

No worries, it happens.

As someone who has put countless hours into various MMOs (including FFXIV), I totally get people getting anxious about their characters looks potentially changing. I remember when WoW had their character model update as the feedback from players then. Blizzard resolved the issue by adding a client-side option to toggle between old and new character models.

It is the same model, but the difference is in the horns and scales. Those pics don’t do a very good job of showing it, though. From the paragraphs right above the pics:

Following community feedback after the announcement of the graphical update back at the fan festival event in Las Vegas, he shared an update of the Au Ra race, whose updated horns and scales had been initially revealed as looking very reflective but a little too much like enamel.

“This reflectivity looked very high quality so it was good for showing off, but it didn’t really match our vision of what we wanted the Au Ra to look like from our original design back in 3.0, so we continued tweaking,” Yoshida admitted before sharing a new headshots of a male and female Au Ra where their horns look less reflective and more natural. “This goes for all of the updates for the other races as well. What we showed in Las Vegas wasn’t the final product but a work in progress.”