What are you playing this weekend? 2024-11-01
What are you playing this weekend? 2024-11-01
One day late, didn't know where the week go.
Played some Trails in the Sky: SC. Got stuck at the boss of Chapter 2. It's pretty tough. Though I have couple of ideas that can help, but sudden difficulty spikes like this annoy me a lot, so taking a small break from it.
Started Spider-man 2 on PS5. After playing and dropping Batman: Arkham Knight, I needed play something similar but not as slow, so got Spider-man 2. Have played a few hours and loving every minute of it. From combat to traversal to story. Great game!
Also started WWE 2K24. Haven't played a wrestling game in a very long time, but since I got it for "free" as PS+ monthly game, gave it a try. Having tons of fun with it.
On Switch, most of the time was spent with the NSO Playtest thingy, and some Picross S4 in-between. I was stuck at one Picross puzzle (P-133) from a long time (and same puzzle in Mega-Picross), so wasn't playing it much. Finally looked up a video online (watched a video instead of turning on assists, to figure out how to solve it, instead of just getting the solution), basically just had to do a wee bit of brute force thingy to check possible values 3-4 moves ahead to get couple of invalid positions, after that it was simple enough. Just have last page of Picross and MegaPicross remaining now, and then 4/5 extra-big Extra puzzles. So, should be finishing it soon.
That's all from me, what about all of you? What have you been playing
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Slow week. A lot of drama on another of my hobbies (Magic the Gathering), and I spent quite a bit of time putting in action a plan I had in my mind for a while to change how I interact with that game.
Busy weekend too so it's unlikely I'll be able to play a lot, but I really want to finish my current VN ASAP so I can start Ys X.
Playing My Girlfriend is a Mermaid!?!
Very minor progress this week.
Playing Vampire Survivors!
Played this during the NSO Trial and loved it, it's stupidly addictive and a great game to play in short bursts. Focused on unlocking more characters and items right now.
Oooh, what happened with Magic the Gathering? I love the idea of these card collecting games, but can't justify the amount you have to spend on them. Disney's Lorcana looked interesting, since you could just get one starter pack and play without worrying about anything, but with so much stuff coming out for it, I am not sure how feasible it is anymore.
I played a bit of Vampire Survivors trial too. After playing Brotato and couple of mobile games like that, I know it's not something I'll play long term, so I played a few hours to see what I was missing, and I am happy with the amount I have played. Don't have an urge to buy it. So, that's one game off my loooooong wishlist.
Oooh, what happened with Magic the Gathering?
Wizards of the Coast (the game manufacturer) announced they are going hard into "Universes Beyond" sets, which are based on 3rd party IP like LOTR, Final Fantasy or Marvel. They have been releasing a few of these in recent years, but next year that'll be half of their product line.
This is rather controversial for several reasons:
- A lot of players dislike this mish-mash of franchises, and see it a loss of identity of the game. This comic from 2020 has been reposted non-stop during the week as a prediction of the future of MTG.
- So far these sets have been more expensive, likely due to the IP licensing costs.
- They also announced a change where all competitive formats will include those sets, removing the option to play without them.
There's a lot of discussion going on if this is just the cynical attempt at short-term cash grab sacrificing the long-term health of the game, or if this new focus will help increasing the playerbase.
And that adds to a few other problems that are already plaguing the game.
- Product and wallet burnout: They doubled the amount of new cards being released in the last ~4 years making it very hard to keep up. And they announced even more sets in 2025 so this will probably continue keep getting worse.
- Power creep: This is something that always existed in the game, but also sped up a lot recently. There's also concerns that they'll push cards too hard to ensure these "Universes Beyond" sets sell - as an example we had a LOTR set last year and "The One Ring" was an game-warping card. Even worse, 18 months later it hasn't been banned and lot of people are questioning if this is going to be the trend with these sets.
For a lot of people this was the breaking point to drop out of the game, or change the way they interact with it. I'm moving away from competitive play for good, and will only play unnoficial "nostalgia" formats based on the game's past like Premodern (1995-2003) or 2015 Modern (2003-2015) where I can just stick to old decks and ignore all new releases.
TL;DR: "Magic the Gathering" is now "Fortnite the Gathering", and a lot of people are pissed.
Wow, that sounds bad.
I knew that people aren't happy with Wizards of the Coast because of their decisions with D&D, but didn't know MTG people weren't happy with them either.
MTG and D&D are both amazing games owned by a horrible company.