I don’t love this example because enjoyment of the object isn’t really a cost. If I buy a book or a videogame or a movie, the time it takes to enjoy the media is the value, not the cost.

If you’re talking about maintenance and upkeep on your car, that is a different type of cost that has to be weighed against the cost and time expenditure of a bus pass or whatever your alternative was.

In other words I feel like this is a catchy phrase that kind of falls apart once you start to dig at it.

I feel like there’s a lot more to this than “pay it twice”. If you’re talking purely in dollars, then you’ll want to consider maintenance and upkeep over the expected lifetime of the object and compare that to alternatives. Additionally, everything has an opportunity cost because no resource is limitless and you could have allocated it elsewhere. Finally, emotional and other intangible benefits are something that most people have a very difficult time quantifying.

If you want to say “consider more than just the purchase price” then I’m with you.

If all you’re trying to do is limit bots and trolls, just make your $10 a required donation to help with hosting costs. I’m sorry but this sounds like yet another blockchain solution in search of a problem.

And who decides what counts as bad behavior worth forfeiting funds? Sounds ripe for corruption.

Cheers, I’ll remember that for next time.

The way I see it - does the game have a final boss? Or a difficult climactic ending sequence? A meaningful resolution? Then I did the part that matters, and feel fine saying I beat the game. The side quests and collectible junk usually is just busy work that wouldn’t pose a challenge, I just don’t have the time or interest.

I never could get into Crusader Kings or Europa Universalis. I generally love grand strategy and play a ton of things like Civilization but for some reason Paradox’s maze of menus and mechanics never seems to click for me.

I have wayyy to much money in Warmachine minis - a hobby I loved that the WotC lawsuit starting killing and the pandemic more or less finished off.

I also have dabbled in creating my own stuff for board games such as Gloomhaven.

I suppose I’ll believe it when I see it. Thanks for the context though!

I know basically nothing about this game but I’m completely burned out on the Ubisoft open world model of a huge map completely littered with mindless collectible junk and grindy side-quests. Is there reason to hope that this will be different than the same junk Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry have been pushing out, or are most expecting the same thing in a Star Wars setting?

I bought into some smart LED lights years ago with dreams of automating when they would turn on, setting mood lighting, etc. The features were cool and all but disconnects, lag times and just general bugs kept reappearing periodically and I decided that lighting is something I want to “just work”. And that’s for a relatively minor inconvenience where I always had a lamp or a flashlight nearby as a backup plan. I can’t imagine putting something like a door lock on the internet, even if I trusted the company - which I assuredly don’t.

Spec Ops: The Line looked like yet another generic first person shooter, but it is full of surprises and gets deep in a way I never expected. Highly recommend it, and go in as spoiler-free as possible.

I think it depends on your opinion of what was “wrong” with Cyberpunk to begin with. If your issue was the bugs, it’s a lot more stable now. If your issue was that the story was unengaging and player actions lacked weight and consequence, adding more of the same isn’t going to do much good.

Much like your No Man’s Sky example - if you thought the core gameplay loop was lacking before, you probably haven’t changed your mind no matter how many little goodies the devs have added since launch.

100% agree… I’ve played through the game several times and the only time I meaningfully engaged with crafting was in my bow-only build. And that was out of necessity not by choice.

Bonus points if you have to go out of your way to find resources to CRAFT consumables. Just - why??

I never got into any of the souls games until Elden Ring, but I’m now working through it for like the fifth time. Truly one of the best games I’ve ever played.