nsfwmodszzz

Job description sounds more like writer than designer. I thought nowadays in AAA productions those are two different jobs and sitting above them is the game architect/director. It's a rare talent to be able to excel at both.

Nice to get a reminder of Witcher lore. The origin story was barely talked about after TW1. I've never read the books but it makes more sense that the author imagined Geralt (or witchers in general?) as sickly looking to infer the fear and disdain of the Plague among the general population of medieval Europe. This I think works much better than the yellow eye Nordic god of the CDPR interpretation, but probably with less visual appeal in a video game or live action movie/series.

I must be the only person who think Altered Carbon represents the typical Netflix bloat. To be fair, it is not as bad as I think it to be but everything in that show reminds me what a shitty experience I had with Ghost in the Shell (lead writer now show runner). A good Ghost in the Shell movie should be Ex Machina with kick ass actions but instead we got Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch of Big scenes, Big Sets and Big Speech. Characters and small details are what make the Big Concepts ticked in sci-fi. I actually don't have a problem with Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell. Besides that no one in real life could look remotely like the characters in the manga, Major's ethnicity has no bearing on the story or the character. Ghost in the Shell is just a terrible movie. Character motivation is what matters, which is why I think Idris Elba could make a good 21century Bond but James Bond would never work as a female. It's been a long time since I played TW1 but aren't witchers society outcasts feared and discriminated against by "normal" people? So a non-white Geralt could make sense even in a medieval European setting, especially now that through genetics we know the "original" Europeans have dark skin and blue eyes (fair skin genes came from Central Asia much later). Geralt and witchers could be from an ancient bloodline that is mostly extinct. I am not saying that I want a different looking Geralt from CDPR, which I think CDPR also took liberty of the Geralt from the books, but I don't see it alters Geralt's motivation.

Plus: The studio doing the Netflix Witcher adaption did the intro scenes for all CDPR games. Minus: All Netflix Originals suffer from the Netflix Bloat Disease (both in execution and artistic intent), a result of too much money and not enough producer oversight.

Nice to know but having to watch 5 minutes of video just to get a piece of information that the guy read it off a website in 10 seconds is why I hate the whole Youtube influencer phenomenon.

Considering realBioware is already dead and buried I am not as concerned about this as that BF2 sold 10 mln copies. It's a big fall from 14 mln of BF1 but 10 mln is still a lot. No wonder EA has no qualm of announcing that they will bring MTX back. Gamers get the games they deserved.

I doubt Bethesda ever wanted FO:NV but Obsidian was licensed by Interplay to make a FO game to follow Bethesda's FO3. Instead, Bethesda bought FO from Interplay in 2007 before FO3 was released with Skyrim in mind for 2011. Bethesda probably told Obsidian that the only way Bethesda would publish a Obsidian FO game under the old Inerplay license was if the game can be delivered by 2010 (so not to overlap Skyrim). As to why not let Obsidian have until 2013 (two years after Skyrim and three before FO4). Obsidian probably didn't have the money to handle a 5 year development by itself and no way Bethesda the publisher would risk financial resources to a product it didn't want. It is likely that Obsidian offered the same turnaround deal it had with Bioware, which is a standalone game built technically like an expansion.

I guess I am the minority here as FO:NV in its vanilla state is the only game I connected with in the FO/TES franchises. Bethesda can't do storytelling if their lives depend on it and Obsidian is second only to the realBioware in weaving character driven narratives in video games, which is what I prefer in a RPG. I enjoyed FO3 and still screwing around in Skyrim but mostly for their set pieces and not Bethesda's lore building.

I want to say something about Patreon and given NSFWMod does not have much traffics at the moment hopefully questioning site rule will not be a source of "drama" or the post be seen in the words of a moderator from another site as "word vomiting" Patreon solicitation and free modding are not mutually exclusive. Quid pro quo is paid modding but taking donation AFTER a mod is released to public is not. Tactics such as a-taste-and-pay-for-more or bait-and-switch are unethical behaviors within the grey area between free and paid modding and this is where the clinical examination as Kendo2 referred to should come in. LL's problem is not that Ashal allowed Patreon but that its admin staff cannot or refuse to distinguish between the platform and behaviors and chose to squash user dissents to appease mod creators. Patreon can do good to promote free-to-play mods and LL is not managing Patreon right but NSFWMod is not offering a better alternative by rejecting Patreon. TL/DR: Patreon and free modding can co-exist. The rules should be about behaviors and not the platform.

Didn't BF2015 sell over 10 million copies in its debut? Assuming US is 1/3 of global sales then BF2017 is easily down 70%. Considering EA did similar shit in FIFA and that game with microtransactions actually became one of if not the biggest money maker in EA history, Star Wars fandom showed that they are fans and not addicts.

It doesn't make sense for Disney to buy EA at all. Disney is all about accumulating timeless IP (and buying off politicians to kill off public domain). EA has no IP that can withstand test of time. EA's power/value is its sports monopoly but EA Sports is not itself an IP like ESPN, which Disney also owns and is not currently aging well so no way Disney is looking to double down on an inferior model. EA's second biggest money maker is actually Star Wars games whose value lies within Disney. EA will die when someone with a bigger pocket and similar predatory business model makes a play on its sports licensing. It won't be CDPR. CDPR has not the cash nor the interest in getting into the addiction extraction business. Valve or Blizzard maybe, but the most likely candidate would be Tencent. Tencent is a bigger evil than EA but is too powerful for Disney to let Star Wars be in its hands for the same reason Disney is pulling out of Netflix; so there is a silver lining... A more likely scenario if the stock price is cheap enough to attract hostile bids is that management will get in bed with hedge funds for privatization. There will be enough interest and the management team can make even more money for themselves that way.

EA empire is built on the cash flows from EA Sports, which its management recognized is an addiction and remade a content business model into an extraction model. Financially it was brilliant, evil but brilliant nonetheless. As long as EA can keep extracting from its sports monopoly the company can and will fund its evil tentacles into other genres and IP, even if EA's culture means every original content it acquired will wither and die in its hands. Interestingly Tencent of China is likely to make a play for FIFA and NBA licensing at some point which could destroy EA. However Tencent is even more evil than EA so just as we thought the Empire has died a new one could rise and take its place...

Just read that update 1.5.24 added new scripts for new CC and broke SKSE64 again. Didn't Bethesda reject SKSE team's proposal of integrating their works into SSE in that Skyrim is "done"?

The difference of making money off DLC and addiction is that all DLC are consumed only once and every new DLC has to prove its value in the free market all over again whereas addiction is about extracting as much as the addicted can bear with the same method/product. Guess which is more profitable? Same inputs but totally different business models. Meth is produced the same way as any chemical drugs but its profit model has nothing to do with healthcare. However, most chemical or neurological addictions are not illegal or even regulated; adrenaline, sugar, fat, nicotine, caffeine just to name a few. Jolt Cola was illegal where I lived before it went out of business but not in most places. Pot was illegal everywhere but now legalized in many places. The more science reveals the more we know about what we are addicted to. Where to draw the legal line is tricky and will continue to be as science and technology advances. Gaming becomes gambling if the game is designed to prey on greed, which is an addiction. However, the legal definition of gaming has nothing to do with addiction but with tying real money to chance. It's a powerful label. No country allows minor to gamble and gambling is outright illegal in China, Japan (on paper) and Korea, the three largest p2w microtransaction markets in the world. In particular, China's humongous gaming market, the largest in the world is almost entirely based on addiction mechanics, though not all are chance+money addictions, i.e. gambling. Chew on this, within the last 15 years, addiction mechanics has gone from almost zero to be responsible for nearly 1/3 of total world wide industry revenue and its share of profits is far higher than its revenue share. No wonder Valve and Blizzard don't care about single player games anymore and EA and Bethesda are looking to pivot. It's like seeing Pfizer and Merck "pivoting" to crack and meth because they are more profitable, which they would have if narcotics were legal and unregulated (cough, opioids, cough). Hell, the British Empire "pivoted" the global trading system and fought two wars to get Chinese addicted to opium because the Brits could not fight off their own tea addiction. The same tea addiction also led to USA. TL/DR: I think the best comment I have read about micro-transactions is that any non-cosmetic micro-transaction design is inherently in conflict with game balance and narrative cohesion. This sums up perfectly that making micro-transaction "games" and making entertainments are actually two different businesses. DLC people are in the content business while the micro-transaction people are in the addiction business.

<<So, in essence .... EA Cockblocked themselves. >> Like when EA destroyed SimCity2013 with unnecessary online connection or Sims4 by slicing off too much contents for future sales? Both were examples of EA's pivot to greed shot themselves on the foot but blaming the fans for not supporting the company's effort of "progress". The difference though was that in those cases EA miscalculated the value proposition of the products and the free market responded. The current disputed microtransactions models are unethical techniques hiding behind a facade of technology and "fun" designed entirely to prey on human weakness. They are not about monetization of legitimate goods or services. In Japan the government to this day still insists that Pachinko industry is about "fun technology" and not gambling. At least Pachinko is regulated like gambling whereas even though the Chinese government does recognize f2p and p2w economy was built on addiction the bureaucrats' inaction out of fear of being accused of "not getting technology" has allowed a predatory monopoly like Tencent to become the largest market cap company in Asia, even surpassing Apple.

Too broad a stroke and completely missed the point. This is about business ethics and not the value proposition of the products or the delivery methods. The current business models are wrong because they are using technology to trigger sensual and neural reflexes in human weaknesses of greed and vanity to induce addiction and exploit the vulnerable financially. While an argument can be made that all modern consumerism is about some kind of exploitation, the key point being as civic societies we recognize certain practices are ethically wrong. This is why bait-and-switch is illegal, subliminal messages are banned in TV broadcasts, narcotics and gambling are heavily regulated etc. The current microtransaction profit models use techniques from all these activities. EDIT: I want to add that "current microtransation profit models" should be "current microtransaction profit models in dispute".

GTA5 and GTA Online is probably how CDPR is positioning CP2077's SP and MP. Rockstar being a dick when it comes to modding notwithstanding, how moddable is GTA technically due to the presence of GTA Online? Is it just skins and stuff or Bethesda style modding is theoretically possible? EDIT: At this point we don't know that CP2077 won't have MMO like play. We just know that CDPR is looking to surpass TW3 Wild Hunt in SP experience. That GTA Online has very profitable microtransactions does not detract from GTA5's single player value. It merely removes financial incentives to invest into future single player contents. CDPR can easily use CP2077 Online as fan service to prolong interest and boost future expansion sales instead of maximizing profit extraction, or that CP2077 SP will have enough SP content to "surpass TW3 Wild Hunt" therefore CP2077 Online can justify charging some microtransactions to finance its operations. EDIT2: I have no idea what is this "social hub" concept people kept talking about. MP is pretty much coop or PvP. Getting players together in a virtual room to play mini-game sounds pretty lame and beneath CDPR. EDIT3 : I read somewhere that the "social hub" could be used by CDPR to test out commercial viability of mini-games. If popular the game could be repackaged into separate games like Gwent or Android/Apple offshoots. This is probably the best outcome for SP fans but hardly envelop pushing given the hype.

Disney is probably pissed at the PR management than wanting to side with the consumers and that would lent credit to the story that it was Disney pressure led to the temporary suspension of day0 Crystals. It surely did not sound like EA as its modus operandi has always been to circle the wagon. Disney on the other hand cares about its image. However, all the crap BF2 is adding started with Star Wars:Galaxy of Heroes and that game has been printing money since 2015. The success of SW:GOH was surely behind EA's "pivot" announcement this year that ironically started with BF2. Obviously the difference being SW:GOH is f2p and BF2 costs $60 but Disney knows what EA was doing.

EA still has 5 years left of the original contract. Even if Disney is not happy with EA the earliest of us getting a decent SW game is at least 7 years away...

From the MP rumors/speculations it does not sound like CP2077 will be moddable, at least not in the scope of TES/FO I get that great games don't need mods but it was nice to dream that CDPR could foster a new generation of adult modding given the decay in Bethesda and EA and their associated modding ecosystems.

NSFWMod has codified its stance on IP very clearly in the rules but not the "forever free" part. What is "forever free" when it applies here? Is it the site does not agree mods should have paywalls? Or "NSFWMod itself is free and that is it, activities about paywalled mods on this site including recommendation and support is OK". Either is fine but just be clear. People got censored and banned now on LL for "backseat moderating" on this issue because the site is not clear what its stance is.