HolyDuckTurtle

I'd say it's a matter of preference than anything "next-gen". I really liked using a hybrid approach with the Steam Controller a few years back for some third person games with archery, but it has its own drawbacks and complexities so I could see why people would prefer the simplicity of the good ol' analogue stick.

I had to learn more about it after that short clip and found an overview page which is fun to read if your browser can translate it: https://www.dentsubo.net/circle/spe256.html

Keeping details minimal because I can't for the life of me get spoiler tags to work on kbin:

In the middle of Heavensward we learn that a very dramatic death sequence that led to some major events was a ruse. The character is alive and things will quickly return to normal.

I get what they wanted, but big fakeouts like that are not my thing. It felt like the consequences were walked back so I could never take the rest of the story seriously. Anything bad that happens could just be reverted.

Endwalker has a point after a lot of stuff goes down where I was thinking "Yeah this is edgy and all, but they really held back from doing anything actually substantial" then we get introduced to a bunch of cuteness and silly things. It took until then to really settle with me that they mostly want to tell fun and uplifting stories, so making stuff look dark and dramatic but keeping the lasting impact down is more of an objective of theirs than a narrative flaw.

I can appreciate that, and a lot of other things about the game and its story, but that in particular is just not for me.

I'd go as far to say Heavensward may be the benchmark for whether people will enjoy the rest of the game. It's where the voice acting and general presentation upgrades to a level that, to me, remained consistent throughout the rest of the MSQ.

Most importantly, at least to me, you get new plot twists to some earlier events which tells you A LOT about the narrative structure going forward. There's a reveal during the middle of Heavensward that basically killed narrative tension for me throughout the rest of the MSQ.

It's not that their direction there is bad, I had just gotten swept up in the "omg it gets so DARK" hype so I was dissapointed when it consistently walked back major events. It took me until the middle of Endwalker to realise "oh, right, that's not the kind of story and experience they want to tell".

While diving under the ice in McMurdo Sound, some of the team came across giant Antarctic sea spiders that appeared to be mating. So, they gently collected the animals and transferred them to observation tanks to figure out how the heck these enigmatic creatures procreate.

Rude.

I started with Ubuntu and slowly tried getting used to Gnome over the course of a few months (mainly using windows, every now and then hopping into Ubuntu when not gaming). I learned of KDE, tried it in Kubuntu, and it all instantly clicked for me. I switched over in about a week and haven't had much reason to boot Windows since.

It turned out that front-facing experience was incredibly important to me.

I can still feel it when I think the vast majority of these people are vulnerable individuals who have been led to be believe they're being victimized. Things like QAnon provide a the right-wing equivalent of a safe space and community for them.

It's got to be tough seeing it slowly tumble away.

I liked it in general, especially after the first seasn. However, I still get frustrated at how Michael-centric it is (it feels like every time a character has an opportunity to do something cool on their own, they always need help from Michael somehow) and tend to dislike the galaxy being at stake every damn time.

Strange New Worlds delivers on that for me though, so it's good to have different options!

I worked with a startup once where we had individual company emails and had a good giggle at how different the spam is compared to personal stuff! Mostly in our case it was dubious offers of office space, furniture and other such services.

I think from their perspective Tuvok and Neelix weren't "dead", which was why they were more inclined to "correct" the situation at hand and save their crewmates while they still had the chance to do so.

Regardless, it's a fucked up decision, I don't envy it.

I've always wandered if the Captain or other Senior Officer had that idea in their back pocket just waiting for an excuse to use it.

It can be an indicator of post-launch performance. In this case, it performed well at launch but has now stablised like most games do. By my metrics, 30k a day is pretty good at a glance. You'd have to find more actual comparisons to make informed conclusions though, which you sort of find if you go through Forbes' source which is a quote tweet of an article from GamingBolt ( just link the article lmao):

Cyberpunk 2077 may have seen a major new update and a paid expansion, Phantom Liberty, but that was in September. It’s sitting at 23rd in the most-played games chart on Steam, with a 24-hour peak of 36,246. Starfield is currently in 43rd place behind games like Elden Ring, Valheim, Stardew Valley and Terraria.

There are more paragraphs with the same vibe, with the obvious disclaimer that it's on game pass too. But there's a number of other things that would go into an actual performance analysis. e.g, are the "competing" games currently on sale? What other factors affect the current landscape of games played? What do each of these games' numbers look like in the same time period following their launch?

That's the kind of data the publishers have access to and do actual analysis on. I think this reporting is just chasing a trend for engagement. 22 - 30k is not bad for a singleplayer game without mod support (yet) which people will pick up, play, and put down. I don't see anything to indicate it's "in trouble" (we'd probably have heard by now of internal planning changes at Bethesda if that were the case).