marelooke

That's not how consumer protection works. I don't need to sue, or prove damages, I just need to prove that they violated my consumer rights by not living up to their end of the bargain. Unlike in other cases where the perpetrator was outside the EU this time the ECC can take action since it's inside their jurisdiction. If anyone will be suing it will be the ECC, not me. If I order a VW Beetle but you deliver a Bentley you could argue that's an upgrade so I should just stfu and take it, but unless I accept said deal you've still violated my consumer rights by not delivering what was agreed upon, and if I insist you must deliver me that VW Beetle. The assumption is made here that the choice of delivery platform is unimportant (even though it was part of the initial agreement) or that the extra stuff they offer (free DLC) offsets the negatives so they expect people to accept their new agreement, no questions asked. It turns out they miscalculated. Anyway, I'm still undecided about what I'm going to do about the situation. I might just contact the BECC (Belgian wing of the ECC) and ask what's what (since they offer free legal advice on my rights). Doesn't mean I'll act on it, but then again, if their attention is drawn to it they might follow up on it anyway as it's not like they need my permission to act on such public violations (if someone litters the police aren't going to wait with fining until someone files a complaint either). In either case I'll at least have a better idea as to what my options are should this situation repeat itself (which it might, if it's proven they can just get away with it).

It's a fairly deliberate move (btw, PP was going to be on Gog, so there's that as well) Also won't be surprised at all if they suddenly decide to add DRM on top given how true to their word they've proven themselves to be I kinda expect anything at this point. Moreover I'm pretty sure what they're doing here is illegal (at least in the EU) since they've already started taking money for pre-orders. I suspect they're just hoping that the "it's just a game" mentality will persevere and they get away with blatantly violating consumer protection laws. I wouldn't be surprised. It is an ambitious project and very much looks like one people would miscalculate the costs of. Oh, they calculated it alright, according to a screenshot from the official Discord that's circulating on Reddit they've done the math. So they very deliberately scammed their backers (also Epic must be throwing stupid amounts of money at them for how niche this game is if they can fund the studio on it for a year). Guess they didn't watch Metro close enough or they should have expected this backlash. Refunds also go through a third party instead of the same channel the original pledge went through (wonder how the GDPR factors in there). I'll see what they're planning on doing about honouring the original deal with their backers and pre-order buyers (which they legally should, it wasn't just out of the kindness of their hearts epic "allowed" it for Metro). If they don't do that I might go and talk to the Consumer Protection Agency, given how Snapshot Games is headquartered in the EU (Bulgaria) this means I'm even entitled to free legal advice, apparently.

It's even worse since they used the backer money to be able to make the game in the first place, then, when they have something they can shop around with they pull this bait and switch. Vile, just vile.

Hang on to your helmet Pretty places

Did BioWare even doing any testing at all before releasing the game? It seems like a lot of the issues are things that would easily have been caught early on in the testing phase. Doesn't look like it. Besides supposedly starting development before Destiny 1's release they seemingly managed to ignore every looter shooter for the past 6 years and learn nothing of the mistakes made by those others in that timespan. Honestly the game looks like it did an Andromeda, meander in development hell for years and then rush something out in the last year or so before release. It's mind boggling. Truly hope they can turn this ship around, but between the engine limitations, EA's reputation for shooting anything that smells remotely like it failed, and the negative press I'm not getting my hopes up.

Depending on how far they played you could just replay the "Vor's Prize" quest (which is basically the tutorial mission of the game) from the Codex, though you'll be stuck with whatever gear they chose during that quest, at least until you can get your hands on alternatives (everything can be acquired eventually). Although you'll probably miss out on unlocking all the functionality of the Orbiter if they already did all that, which isn't all that much (imho) Well, just checked ingame and turns out that, despite it being a heavily requested feature for like 6 years it's still not possible to replay "Vor's Prize" And of course you could try and see if support can reset the account, they won't on PC, as it's easy to just create another one, but I'm not convinced they might not do it on consoles. I guess you could, as last ditch effort, have them delete the account, there's some warnings attached but I'm not sure how relevant those are for the console versions (I play on PC). And in a severe act of desperation you could just play through the tutorial stuff on a PC (Warframe is rather well optimized so it'll run on most things barring a literal toaster) and then go back to the PS4 if that's your preferred platform.

re: void missions. It depends on the missions really. They're tier based (as you probably noticed) and the lower tiers are pretty easy, especially when you group up. That said, for solo play, the enemies that spawn from the Fissures can be rather nasty if unprepared (they're slightly tougher than their Void equivalents, so if those are no problem same tier Fissures shouldn't be too much of one either). Anyway, also been playing quite a bit of Warframe, given how there's a bit of a content draught I've started grabbing those last few items I don't have yet so I can maybe even make it to Mastery Rank 27 (which is the highest attainable at the moment). And while the other day I was proclaiming how Warframe, despite being grindy, respects its players' time DE decided they'd undo that feature by replacing the random "alerts" system with some sort of tiered (and time-gated) Battle Pass (or Reward Track, if familiar with GW2 PvP/WvW) type system that makes you do all kinds of random, and often annoying, stuff. It's basically MMO dailies all over again

Similar issue here. After ME3 and DA:I I didn't really want to play Andromeda, and definitely not at the release price, barring rave reviews (and we know how that went). If it had been more in my face I'd probably have picked it up in a sale by now though, if only to see what's what. But it only being on Origin and there not really being any reason for me to check Origin all the time it just never happened.

Yes, Desinty comparisons are rampant. However they ignore that (as SkillUp pointed out, I think on Laymen Gaming, not on his own channel) Destiny had "good bones" iow, the core mechanics were solid and the technical underpinnigs were solid whereas in Anthem many of the technical issues appear to be tied to the engine (eg. the incessant and long loading screens) and according to some the combat appears to be broken at a fundamental level (I didn't enjoy the combat during the demo, but that might just be me. Or me going solo and there basically being no scaling towards solo play). Anyway, another rather decent review: Didn't really comment much on all the Anthem stuff since I played the demo, game turns out kind of as I expected based on my time with the demo, unfortunately. Personally been hopping between Warframe and Skyrim lately. Warframe is, once again, in a bit of a content drought where most veteran players are mostly playing other stuff until DE releases something new. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if they weren't making a habit of these content droughts... (I've never been this close to acquiring all the gear in the game ever before...) Skyrim's still an enjoyable exploration game, and can be made to look rather really pretty with some modding effort. For some reason I kinda lost interest in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, despite my misgivings with some of the previous reboot titles I did play through both of them at a pretty solid clip. Shadow just doesn't really grip me, unfortunately.

Not bad for a 7 year old game...

What baffles me is that they've apparently been working on this game for 6 years and this is what they've come out with..? I mean, before release I was mainly worried about EA's monetization plans (which could still sink the game, assuming the shoddy launch doesn't already) and the possibility that I just wouldn't like the gameplay or "endgame" (I mean, always a valid worry for a game you haven't played, I'd say ) But the state the game's in, the content it's apparently released with...that took BioWare 6 years? Really? For comparison DE, a small studio, started working on Warframe a little over 7 years ago, with a skeleton crew. Anyway, Ars Technica is still rather positive about the game compared to some of what I've seen (quite a few people aren't quite as positive about the story and NPCs, for example) and they conveniently dodged the micro transaction topic, so I'll share what I"ve found. Apparently at endgame "coin" acquisition dries up severely. If you do your daily challenges you can get up to a couple thousand coins per day. With epic skins costing over 60000 coins, meaning a multi-month grind for a single skin (or paying 9USD, of course). Apparently there is a higher tier of skins as well (legendary) of which none have been released yet but which, one can assume, will be even more expensive... Of course, with new content there might be new ways to earn coins as well, but still, we're getting in the vicinity of that 20USD for a skin territory that the internet threw a fit over with that pre-release store screenshot... Bugs can be fixed, the UI improved, prices adjusted and content added, of course, but there's a bunch of things in there that might not be as easy to fix like the constant (long) loading screens. Will be interesting to see where the game goes in the coming months. Game could still end up fine, after all.

Kind of surprised this one didn't make it into the thread yet, as far as trailers go the Skyrim one is pretty darn good imho: And of course Warframe's Fortuna trailer: Though I don't understand why they even bothered with that trailer when they had this:

Heh, they canned that new Unreal Tournament they were "crowdsourcing" for Fortnite and their "Epic Store". That being said, UT3 wasn't exactly great (also the only UT without DE involvement, coincidence?) so if the new instalment (which, to make things easy on everyone, they just named "Unreal Tournament") is anything like it I'll stick to UT99 and UT2k4 for my UT fixes. It's not like many of the people that made UT still work there anyway, the Tencent acquisition burned quite a few of the well known ones out, if the stuff on Wikipedia is anywhere near accurate, and the other half of the UT team (UT = Epic + DE, after all) is happily making Warframe.

Warhorse Studios has been bought by THQ Nordic as per this. So that means another studio basically owned by Koch Media...

And it's the exact same in Europe. Gambling in games is fine, if you abide by the laws (that means AO 21+ here in BE though).

Hmm, are you referring to Riven mods? That's basically the only lootbox-like thing I can think off and they're honestly closer to RNG Diablo 3 gear when the marketplace was still a thing, except that you can totally ignore their existence in Warframe and do all content more than fine. There was a lot of controversy (that DE ignored entirely) about the introduction of these things, many veterans absolutely refuse to touch them and even many of the major Warframe Partners ignore their existence when creating builds for weapons (eg. Brozime). I'm a big fan of the Hek, myself. Fun fact: the Hek is one of the oldest weapons in the game and when DE tried to modernize it by updating its fire sound (back in 2015, apparently, ouch) there was quite the riot in the Warframe community, thankfully they saw the light and changed it back to its current sound. Come to the Church of Hek, we have guns with lotsa oomph: music to my ears: EDIT: linking the correct things is hard, apparently

Eh, nothing new to be sure, but given how this drives our economy (and not just video games) I guess it bears repeating. Anyway, I think Bright Memory was mentioned here at some point. It's an episodic FPS game made by a single Chinese developer that looked rather impressive. Well, it is on sale, and while debating whether I should get it I came across a Steam review that pointed to this. So it turns out the developer admits to using stolen assets, an "issue" he will try to rectify. He doesn't want to say where he stole the assets from but according to the aforementioned Steam review these were from Bless Online and Aliens Colonial Marines, which, it would seem, means those might have finally landed in a game with some promise Not really sure how this will affect the game going forward. It's still being sold on Steam but I imagine that if the rights holders feel like it they could very well put him out of business.

Jim pretty much sums up my feelings about the entire "restructuring" thing:

I've always been looking for games where you can actually be an archer without feeling like you're gimping yourself because the combat was primarily designed for melee/magic combat instead. In that case, the game you're describing is on my radar now. (Also, in the case of Dragon's Dogma, producer Itsuno last week outright said that Capcom already gave him the approval to work on a Dragon's Dogma 2, he just chose to make Devil May Cry 5 first - which heavily hints that DD2 is already in pre-production. When I heard this last week, I got really giddy. I need more Magick Archer in my life.) Oooh, I sure hope it can live up to DD1, a bit more polish and a better PC UI would be top of my wishlist. No, that's my story and I'm sticking with it! Been playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. So far (but I'm not that far in, so take it for what you will) the game feels like a pretty big step back when compared to Rise of the Tomb Raider. It's as if Shadow was made by the same team that made the original reboot while Rise was made by an entirely different team. It's weird. Can't wait to start having a crack at those challenge tombs, I've found one but I couldn't get in because I didn't have the right tools, hope I'll be able to go back soon.

Bought the new Tomb Raider and Wolfenstein in the Steam sales.

That sums my feelings about Apex Legends up better than I ever could have. From what I've seen it actually doesn't. The "tell" system is so good that unless you want to really play competitive you seemingly don't need a microphone. Jim Sterling was rather positive about the game (barring the monetization: because lootboxes, obviously) and that's one of the things he praised especially heavily.

Let's also not forget that connectivity isn't exactly great everywhere either.

Grandmother, why do you have such big ... claws...? Meow! EDIT: hmm, thumbnails not loading for me. Though it was because I used PNG files at first but JPG doesn't seem to work either :/

6 is more entertaining than 5, but in a holy **** I can't stop laughing at how utterly terrible this game is way. Luckily, I have a video handy to explain! Speaking of which, I still need to play Revelations 2. I thoroughly enjoyed the first Revelations. Before Resi 7 came out, Revelations was the last bastion of hope for fans of the series' survival horror roots. It was a case of a spinoff becoming more like the main series than latter games in said main series, sort of how Bravely Default is more Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy is these days, if that makes any sense. [tangent] As an aside, I've grown to appreciate the setup Squeenix has with their big jRPGs. Squeenix has 2 big, famous, long running RPG series: Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The former they have reinvented again and again and again and again, for better or worse. The latter, while there have been some refinements, has been largely unchanged over the decades. For the people that want a more action oriented, western style RPG, Final Fantasy has been going in that direction. For grognards, like myself, that just want their beloved jRPG series left the hell alone, we still have Dragon Quest. [/tangent] Revelations 2 was definitely a good game and they did fix some of the issues with the original Revelations (at least I don't recall the boss battles being quite as obnoxious in Revelations 2). Unfortunately the setting didn't really work as well for me, maybe it reminded me too much of the Tomb Raider reboot (that I played around the same time)? Then again, that cruise ship was just awesome and, I imagine, hard to top. I've never been able to get into the "newer" RE games (I think I tried 4 and 6, didn't get very far in either). Come to think of it I think I have RE0 and RE1 in my library, hmm, time to get to those maybe.

Usually game patches aren't exactly news (well, unless Bethesda updates Fallout 76, but, ehm, right, moving on...) but this one I thought was worth mentioning: ArenaNet published a pretty significant update to Guild Wars. Yes, there is no 2 at the end, the original, the game that has been basically discontinued since 2012 with the release of Guild Wars 2. There have been minor changes to the original Guild Wars before, mostly minor fixes generally related to yearly events and chat changes but this is the first time in a very very long time that there are actual AI, QoL and UI changes. Anyway, as a summary of the changes: updates to how the AI uses some skills, making both enemies and henchmen more adept at their use. Suffice to say this has the potential to be huge "standard" builds and group compositions that have stood for like 7 years might suddenly need revising. inventory and storage space have been greatly increased, which is a major QoL change I always thought it was pretty cool of Anet to keep the old Guild Wars servers running (they barely use server resources, apparently), but updating such an old game when a successor is out?