It wasn’t even to release on their software platform, it was more explicitly a “non-Steam” release as games were available on PC via both Epic and Microsoft’s Store.

I can’t really comment on the exact state of the games compared to how they were prior as I never played either of them. While the overall actions were the same, from what I’ve heard, the final state of each game is completely different.

From my understanding, Blizzard promised things and didn’t failed to meet those promises leaving a worse product than what was there. Valve didn’t do that, presumably.

Edit: I should also point out that wouldn’t you have to consider it anti-consumer for a game to do a total overhaul of itself? That prior version will no longer be available? Same with really any update whatsoever. At what point is it no longer the same game? If Valve instead released this updates over the course of a year, is it still the same game then?

Perhaps Blizzard is generally under more scrutiny than Valve. Not to mention, isn’t it still possible to just download an older steam depot and archive that? Sure, it not being readily available via Steam’s basic library makes it difficult to archive, but releasing this as a new game entirely may have caused more issues than it would have this way.

Regardless of any political machinations, this is Unity being given a choice between making more money and making less money. Unsurprisingly, they claim that they’re choosing to make more money.

Rank 3. You only Rank 3 to unlock Master-level locks. Rank 4 is for like making it easier or something.

Okay, but from my understanding, in order to change galaxies, I have to find a portal, figure however to use the portal, and then switch galaxies.

For someone whose put in a few hours into the game multiple times as the game has been steadily updated, I didn’t know about portals or even that switching galaxies was even a thing. So telling me I’m incorrect because it’s NG+ COULD have fixed it for me is pretty disingenuous. How am I suppose to know that after going through 6 more galaxies that I can get what I wanted from the start?

I don’t want to have to beat the game in order to finally enjoy it.

No Man’s Sky still has the same problem it began with, although the landscapes are vastly improved. It doesn’t matter what planet it is, there’s nothing to distinguish it from the last planet other than what species owns the system, the flavor of hazard present, and the overall color.

No Man’s Sky honestly has not enough planets with just dead barren empty planets. At least in Starfield, there’s some magic in seeing actual fauna. You don’t get that feeling in No Man’s Sky because you’ve seen fauna and flora on the last 30 planets you’ve been to. You need those empty planets to make the planets with life actually feel special.

Yeah, it really can’t be helped. The piracy community can always just shut down and congregate elsewhere. It’s significantly harder for a more general community to scatter and reform.

Yeah, I had a similar experience. I got my phone directly from Samsung, so it’s also likely it might have just been the Carrier that did this.

Anything is possible if you have the infinite time and infinite resources, but they don’t. Not to mention, what would ladders even bring?

Honestly though, I hope the land to space transition isn’t just a take-off cutscene. Elevators in Fallout 4 were actually just seamless loading screens, so I hope they do the same in Starfield.

Stop watching the high budget movies then. Higher budgets creates higher risks, thus prioritizing methods to getting a return on their investment rather than just what would make the movie better.

Or better yet, just watch the movies that you think look cool and stop worrying about the underlying political mind games of the film industry.

There were mods minutes after Skyrim’s launch. Unless there’s a drastic change in how the games are set up, there are a set of mods that already exist that will work right out of the box if you install them manually.

So am I, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t take forever and I’d like to play the game at some point and not just play the game in “debug” mode.

Then find better modpacks that do explain. Like the pack I mentioned above, Librum, it does have what is basically a manual describing what it does and what it wants to do and how it differs from the the vanilla game.

Granted, very few modpacks actually explain to that extent, but I mean, most packs from my experience actually do briefly explain what it does. At least in my experience. Not totally sure what else you’re looking for.

Nah man, if you want a truly different experience, try out a heavily modded modpack on Wabbajack.

There’s one I really enjoyed called Librum for the mage playthrough. Didn’t even have any mana to start with and spent like a full playthrough just to get my first spell. Lived in inns for a while a spending day after day to study, doing odd jobs for money. Couldn’t even get into the college at first because I didn’t know magic.

Yep.

Five Percent Chance to Miss?

While some elements were deeply overblown, a lot of it was pretty bad and deserved. Don’t downplay what happened, the game was delayed and then delayed again. Only the final release date had been for after current gen hardware and they obfuscated the awful performance. Early eviews of the game had also required stock footage. And that’s just from the fiasco around launch.