#for the battle pass and my FOMO

[comfychomps]

i’m sorry i have like fully abandoned this account, i’m still playing fortnite almost daily but i don’t really care to keep up with the fandom anymore because the lore lately has been so middddd. Do you guys remember when fortnite was fun? I do.

[buginacup]

It's unfortunate that my (very good) Multiversus fanart from last year resurfaces whenever people look for Multiversus content on Tumblr. For the record I'd like to state that I have no clue whether the game will be good when it comes out later this month.

I stand by my opinion that the developers (as of last year) had really passionate ideas for iterating on the platform fighter genre. We've seen so many platform fighters emerge in the past few years and I think largely people are too content to be melee! Multiversus at launch seemed genuinely interested in pushing the genre into new areas - and I'm not referring to the monetization.

With that said, Multiversus is a Games as Service game relaunching during an unprecedented industry crash brought on by Games as Service fatigue and owned by the company currently most notorious for erasing expensive digital media in favor of tax writeoffs.

My point is; please do not spend any money on Multiversus.

After a full year of expensive battle pass cosmetics, "Founder Packs" and prohibitively cruel XP grinds, Warner Bros. shut down access to the game without much warning last year. It's back now, but there's nothing stopping them from getting rid of it the second they realize that the Fortnite formula is no longer an infinite money machine. Any cosmetics you buy could be lost to time before a year has passed. Don't let the FOMO get you.

Since I'm the only person who ever seemed to like this game, it's my duty to keep it real. Let the dust settle before you consider buying in to any of it.

[dr-spectre]

I really am glad that my brain decided that Splatoon shall be my online competitive game that i can get good at (I'm at S+ tehehe).

I swear to god every other online multiplayer gaming community is so vile and toxic and just so insane.

I've been binge watching videos about Overwatch 2 and man, the community is just constant complaining, over and over and OVER AGAIN! I get why but man, it seems so unfun. COD has always been toxic and racist and sexist and all kinds of bullshit. Fortnite is mid af and started the whole battle pass fomo shit that i despise. Counter strike as well seems incredibly toxic, crazy take i know!! Valorant too. I could go on and on and on and on about online shooters because a lot of them are just.... yuck community wise.

But with Splatoon? it's less toxic which is good!!!! There are bad eggs ofc duhhh. But it seems like there's way less of it. The community seems to be a lot more positive and happy and excited, rather than whinnying and screaming and getting mad all the time. There is still the vocal minority of players who complain about Splatoon and constantly complain about the game when it's really not that bad. "Oh Splatoon 3 has a lack of content!" yeah when you put in over 500 hours and have bled the game dry yeah it can seem like the game has a lack of content lmao. Sure you can complain about the catalogue system and yeah i agree there needs to be changes like instead of 3 months it should be 2, and more updates and patches would be nice. But it's not as bad as some people say come on guys.

I remember getting Splatoon 3 at launch and seeing ALL the content that was on offer was overwhelming! WHICH IS GOOD! It has the most amount of content out of any Splatoon game, let's not try to kid ourselves here.

Also the Splatoon community is very diverse too which helps reduce the toxicity, the community is mostly very accepting of other people's race, background, culture, gender, sexuality, neurodivergence, etc. And it helps too that the main Idols of the game reflect this diversity in the community and there's a character for everyone to get attached to, it's awesome.

Although there's racist shit going on and that needs to get resolved asap.... You know what I'm talking about... ugh....

Anyways, i wanted to ramble.

[blakeandaffairs]

Regarding PB's response to players leaking paywalled content

Listen, I completely understand their concern in regards to losing profit due to this sort of thing happening, since if people already see the leaked story, then people wouldn't want to pay for outrageous prices. BUT.

Note: my opinion, and obviously, I am a little biased here because I myself am an F2P player.

~~Yap session under the cut~~

The issue comes with the fact that that battle pass content is ridiculously priced! $50 for one card and some goodies! The new scammy Hall of Legends battlepass with LeBlanc is better priced than this, and that says something because its...yknow, LEAGUE OF LEGENDS. And before anyone says that I shouldn't compare a small gaming company to a megacompany like Riot, Sky COTL is run by thatgamecompany, an equally independent small game studio with 50 people, and their battle pass price? ONLY $9.99!

And also the fact that they're making it next to impossible to obtain cards that ARE possible to get (aka the Solomon's Seals L cards) by TIMEWALLING it for 3 months. I only expected the 3 month timewall for Lucifer due to the fact that he's a brand new king, but apparently, it's the norm now, which is outrageous! 3 months to wait for a new king card. They're basically making you feel FOMO and want you to buy Solomon Seals (which the pricings are already ridiculous btw) to have a CHANCE to get them. Didn't get them in the 200+ times you could?

Unlucky for you.

If they really don't want this game to lose it's playerbase, they really need to start investing their time in f2p players instead of focusing all their resources on p2w, it's the damn Sahara for f2p players content wise!

[noellevanious]

🔥

Fortnite in general but specifically "Furry" fortnite shit like Meowskulls is garbage and not worth anybodys time

(spurred on by this showing up on my twitter tl 👇)

(Giant essay below the cut)

Meow Skulls, and any other fortnite shit, is marketing grossness, and while I don't take issue with people liking them per say... You can do better

Like.... sure actual talented artists may be behind their designs. But Fortnite is the most "Profit-first" videogame experience ever and just reeks of Bad Vibes from how it perpetuated the Battle Pass, Rotating Window Shop, and other FOMO-Focused garbage, to how blatantly Target-Demographic-Focused its cosmetics are, and always have been, with nary a hint of artistic pride or creativity behind them.

I recommend watching this 👆 video to get a good idea of how disgusting everything about Fortnite is and has been, once you pull away the Thin Veneer of a Live-Service Product.

There is nary a creative leaf in the Barren, Desert Wasteland that is Epic's Live Service Media Franchise Fortnite: Battle Royale, and the way it has somehow seemed to grab a small but vocal minority of Furry culture, and pretty intentionally dress up its pure Profit-driven Business Model into a sort of facsimile of a parasocial relationship via the Meow Skulls character disappoints me.

Also, separating myself from all of the above Radicalization and "Fuck Capitalism and Fuck Products" rhetoric - I think both Meow skulls characters are ugly and boring. A 5 year old's drawing of any cat has more personality, appeal, and charm than either of those characters.

[rocketsimp]

Logo to make my battle pass shovelling, micro-tranasction pumping, pre-order endorsing, early access swindling, fake footage fabricating, asset flipping, bad community manager operated, FPS loathing, abrupt studio closing, AI powered, crunch time triumphing, harassment governing, broken day one uploading, FOMO baiting game look pretty nice :)

[dandelion-wings]

I honestly think I would buy Genesis Crystals if they were just a little cheaper. I've always had a gaming budget for F2P games, at a set $20 a month. On Flight Rising that was about enough to get you a premium scroll or two; in ESO I just paid for ESO Plus whenever I was playing enough for it to be worth it; in Pokemon Go that gets me super incubators and sometimes a few remote raid passes. In Genshin, that gets me... less than a ten-roll.

If I could pay $15 or $20 for a ten-roll, I would do it once a month or so! Once every other month, maybe, since if I max out the battle pass in a BP period I go ahead and spend $10 for the premium half of it and I've been doing that a lot lately. Sometimes I get the Welkin Moon, which is frankly a way better deal than the $15-dollar crystal package, but I dislike the FOMO feeling of having to log in to get the benefit (it's the same reason I was intermittent about ESO Plus and rarely play subscription games in general). And I've spent once each to get crystals for Jean and Ayaka's special outfits. But like, if $15 got me an easily parse-able, useful amount of primogens, if it was just a flat 1600 crystals, I would probably be giving Hoyo more money, on a more regular basis, than just the-battle-pass-when-I-max-it and this-is-my-birthday-month-so-let's-get-a-Welkin.

I'm sure there's some kind of psychology behind it that makes the not-as-parse-able numbers more useful when getting people with bigger budgets than I have to buy them. But my budget's still sitting here at that $20 a month, divided with Pokemon Go, and right now Niantic is getting much more benefit of it than Hoyo is, because Niantic makes their coin packages much more directly and immediately worthwhile than the crystals.

[the-happy-hotel]

I think probably the most saddening part of all this Overwatch 2 business is that it used to be a genuinely good game. When it was simply "Overwatch" it was a welcome new twist on the team shooter. I adored it and yeah some characters were busted but that was part of the charm. They all felt deep and compelling and best of all, fun. You could tell there was genuinely love put into it. Tracer was the first openly gay character I saw and I felt very seen by her. Now it stinks of corporate sanitization. The characters skill sets are optimized and balanced to the point where they err on the side of the characters too weak a lot which really takes a lot of the fun out of playing any of them, the 5v5 and faster respawns and larger health bars to make games more "streamlined" but it again just ends up being un-fun, and of course, the skins that come to the store exactly once before disappearing forever, and of course the awful battle pass with loot that ALSO disappears forever once the season is over.... yeah. It breaks my heart to see what was once a genuinely enjoyable experience become a FOMO-fueled, loveless, un-fun cash grab that respects neither its players nor their time, all thanks to ActivisionBlizzard being a company that cares about nothing but it's bottom line, and would rather a great game die than be perfect and less profitable.

[dinotriple]

Idk if I told you guys (tumblr people) but I’m playing fortnite now. Friends successfully peer pressured me and you know it’s been pretty fun. Mostly play it with friends but I’ve been able to hold my own ok. Rhythm game fun also and the character designs are so good. Bad thing is this game is like a nightmare for fomo Havers (me)😭 I should have listened to them and played sooner why are all the sick skins battle pass

[beechersnope]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. 🩷

Using this one to rec from just my F1 fics.

Welcome To My Island | Unfinished but I am slowly making progress on it, I swear. Have you ever wondered what would happen if Max was a girl, secretly a virgin, and so encumbered by FOMO that she pretends to date George just to gain access to a super exclusive sex island? Because that's all this is.

Good Battle | This was my first F1 fic & I think it's fairly underrated despite everyone's apparent enthusiasm for Gax! Where were you all when the sacred texts were written??? Anyway, definitely read this one. There's eventually a third part coming (it's half-finished) that involves Christian & Toto as well.

Phantom Limb | The Lando/Logan hate sex fic is probably my favorite out of all of the SoC fics I wrote. I'm sure you have all read this one already, but if you haven't: run, don't walk.

Maxiel Wet/Messy | This was a prompt fic that I would love to incorporate into a longer work at some point. I think all the sensory details were really solid, which is the sign of a successful piece of writing for me personally.

RLSD (First-Time Rimming) | There's never enough M/F rimming, especially with the man receiving, so I'm doing what I can to rectify that, one angst-filled AU at a time. I also really like the general atmosphere of this fic (and the AU in general) because I prefer drawing from familiar environments in order to jampack little details into a scene.

[toriel-2]

video games are always just a battle for time. not even live service games, with their battle pass and fomo and having to spend countless trying to get better so you have even a chance of winning, but single player games too feel like they're asking for 100s of hours of your time and when my attention constantly feels divided even just finishing single player games can feel like a struggle unless they've completely sunk their hooks into me and im putting just All of my time into it. i work 4 days a week and on my 3 days off i can either get a couple hours in and get absolutely nothing done or i can spend the entire day and make a small dent into a game. but maybe this is just me. maybe this is just my problem. dont look at me im hideous

[emptyheadgamer]

Picked up the need for speed unbound base game in the steam winter sale for under $10 and honestly for what I paid I'm pretty happy with it. It's pretty clearly built on the same framework as the previous games and has mostly the same cars, but the new stylized visual effects are fun and the driving is solid enough. Campaign is pretty short but there's enough of it I don't feel cheated.

Not touching the multiplayer or online content. I can already see battle passes and micro transactions leaking out of it, and from what I hear its grindy as hell. But for a $10 purchase I feel I'm getting my money's worth even ignoring all that. That said, I would never recommend anything other than the base game. When I saw there was a dlc to buy the contents of battle passes that you may have missed I knew the online was gonna be fomo microtransaction bullshit all the way down

[scarletpath]

I just feel like I need to get this off of my chest. Now, I love LOVE Overwatch. I pretty much started to play it when it first came out. I was completely in love with the characters and I just had to play the game. This was my first FPS too. I loved how the people working on the game continued to carefully craft and update the game with the players in mind. It felt good. Not only could you play as you wanted, but you also got rewards for working hard. Especially during the events. The skins and other unlockables that you gained all had a story behind how you got them. That D.Va Police skin? Yeah, I had to win 10 games in HOTS. That legendary Halloween skin? I was lucky and got that with the free Lootcrate I was given. I was grinding and earning anything that I could unlock. Even if it was for a character I didn't play. It was fun and I felt a great sense of accomplishment.

So imagine how excited I was with the launch of OW2. The promises of new content, new characters and maps. Upgraded graphics and more. I couldn't wait. I happily hopped onto my computer the day it released. At first it felt refreshing. Almost nostalgic of when I first started playing the game. But the Store. It made my stomach a little uneasy. I thought to myself "Yes, they removed the Lootcrates because it could be seen as gambling. And that it was illegal in some countries." So I let it slide for a bit. I honestly didn't mind the Battle Pass system they had in place. But I did notice that you couldn't work for anything that was in the Store. Everything had a price. Then came the first event. Halloween. One of my favourites. I was so excited to see what skins they would release. Imagine my disappointment when again, price tags were placed on the event exclusive skins. I even checked the rewards you could get during the event and it was pitiful. I felt like I was going to pull my hair out of my head, constantly being teased by the items I couldn't obtain without having to open my wallet. Every time I opened the game, it seems like they keep adding and removing items. Using FOMO to tease and tempt me. And I knew this feeling all to well. And I knew that if I fell prey to it, it would be very hard for me to get out of that hole.

A long time ago, I was addicted to a App game (Avengers Academy I think it was called). And they used this tactic. Bombard users with new items, skins and new characters. Set up events and make it nearly impossible for anyone with a life to obtain the special limited items. Dangle the things they want in front of them with a price tag and rake in the cash. I can't tell you how much I spent on that game. But I developed a problem. An addiction. And I knew what I had to do. I deleted the game and never went back. And now OW2 is doing the same thing. I can't tell you how much I really want to play the game but I know that if I give into the temptation of the store, I'll be in a very bad spot. I want to collect all the skins so much but there is no way I could spend that much money every time they release something new. So I quit playing the game. And it's really a shame. It plays so well. The characters are amazing. The maps are fun. But I know that I will develop an addiction, similar to that of gambling. In all honesty, I think using FOMO to make money is far more damaging than Lootcrates. At least you didn't need to buy the crates to get the items. So until something changes. I cannot go back to the game and it makes me so angry. But I'm doing this for my own well being. I don't mind the Battle Pass idea but they need to stop putting Skins and Characters behind paywalls. Everything should be achievable and rewarded with hard work. And that's just the thing. Every Skin is paid for. There is no reward and no incentive to the skins. So when I see them, I feel hollow.

Sorry, I rambled on. I'm just really upset about this. Again. I love the game. I just hate the greed. And I'm scared that if I just play it, I'm going to fall into a hole. A shame really. I had so many good memories and had so many good times with this game. So, yeah. I'm done playing this game.

[fostersffff]

Exoprimal has an open beta going this weekend, so I got the chance to play a couple matches, and I hate that I am getting the exact same vibes from it that I got from Bionic Commando '09's multiplayer. It's really fun, but there's no way it's not dead on arrival.

Barring anything about the game itself- my biggest gripe with that is that the PvEvP setup of matches is just bizarre- charging $60 for a game that's primarily multiplayer and has a "story" where cutscenes will roll after playing x many online matches feels bad, and then having a battle pass to extrinsically motivate people to keep playing feels bad, especially since I know I'm not going to fill it out because there's too many other goddamn games this year. So if I don't feel it's worth the price of entry, and I'm going to be afflicted with FOMO because I can't make it My Forever Game, why bother buying it in the first place?

[rubalotl]

The Wizard's Vault is good!

So I just wanna praise the new daily system that Arenanet has designed for Guild Wars 2 and I now think all games, especially those with awful battle pass type systems, should adopt this design.

Earn currency at your own pace, do it in the game mode you enjoy the most, and there's no FOMO. All old rewards will still be available even when they cycle out.

Not only that, but getting currency isn't even as grindy as I thought it would be. When I saw that one of the first rewards was a mount skin my first thought was that in order to get that you would have to do a ton of mind-numbing grind. But nope, I already have the mount skin.

[priviie]

I have beaten 14 games this year, most of them over 5 years old. This is the most I’ve played/beaten video games in YEARS and it made me realize why I cut down on playing games.

I thought it was because I am getting older and I’m busier now with work, life, self improvement, etc. While that is partially true, the bigger truth is that modern video games are absolutely fucking exhausting.

You have to patch games and wait an hour before playing, agree to EULAs, connect to the internet, agree to even more EULAs, all that before even pressing start. Then there’s the siren call of FOMO being plastered everywhere. DLC, battle passes, exclusive timed skins and events, daily logins, level boosters, weapon boosters, cross promotions, advertisements etc., etc.. It’s all just so much and all designed to keep you attuned to ONE game as much as possible so they can suck as much money out of you as possible. Publishers don’t want you playing other games because if you play other games that means you aren’t playing their game and giving them money. It’s exhausting! It is draining logging into a game and having to dodge so many different things that are trying to get you to open your wallet before you even load a round/level. It’s even worse if you’re neurodivergent.

Even the AAA games that don’t have everything above, the single player games, are all trending towards open world infinite content nonsense, which is exhausting in an entirely different way and also designed to make sure you spend as much time on their game and not others as possible. It’s all becoming too much.

Meanwhile, I just beat 999 recently and it’s all self contained! There’s nothing like the above! I load up the game and just play without being assaulted by ad after ad after ad. I’m playing Umineko and the worst thing in that game when I open it is a link on the main menu to 07th expansion’s website. A website I can’t even read since it’s Japanese only!

I thought I was getting older and losing interest in gaming. No, it turns that I was just sick of constantly having assaults on my psyche to spend money.