Tonight on GeekNights, we review The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It's one of the best pieces of entertainment software ever made. 11/10. S-Tier. A case study in good game design. Just go play it if you aren't already. In the news, Overwatch 2 is banning 5,000 cheaters a week, Street Fighter 6's control modes are looking pretty good, and Wizards of the Coast called the Pinkertons on a youtuber.
Things of the Day
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On the Overwatch 2 issue with rise in bans and how easy it is to make another account with another phone number. Couldn’t Blizzard just make so a credit card is also required to register for account.
First of all, stolen/fake credit cards.
Second of all, free to play. The point of going free to play is to get tons of players, mostly children. If you require a credit card that eliminates all those legitimate players, even if you were never going to charge them money. Might as well just charge money.
I mean from what Rym stated about the sheer number of bans having happened since overwatch went free to play . Makes one wonder is there really such thing as legit free to play game player who does not have a credit card? Freezing out little Jimmy and little Suzzie of the gaming world who just wants to cheat. By requiring a credit card could be enough to remove large number of those toixc gamers and make a better experience for everyone else.
If you want to have a serious competitive game with a good experience yes, you need to have some kind of gatekeeping into the area where the serious gaming is happening. It could be a money gate, or some other kind of gate.
But that’s what Overwatch had before. If their top priority was to make a serious game with a good experience, they already achieved that about as well as anyone has, given the circumstances.
They went to free to play to make money. If they require a credit card, even if they never charge it any money, they’ll make even less money than when the game wasn’t free to play because the playerbase will collapse.
I get what you are saying. But I don’t believe the player base would suddenly collapse if a credit card were required to it’s free to play game. There are different ways Blizzard could do it and still make their money and give a better player community.
Blizzard could do a from this day forward new accounts are required to register a credit card after 14 days or something. And existing player accounts will not be required unless they have to make new account.
You are incredibly naive. The player base would collapse. At best it would return to Overwatch 1 levels, which weren’t good enough to satisfy capitalism, which is why they went to F2P in the first place.
Wasn’t Mario Galaxy 2 just a simple sequel to Mario Galaxy?
They required a legit phone number for a while, but had to back off because tons of people didn’t have phone numbers at all except from shitty and predatory companies that also sell to scammers.
Good point! Forgot about that since I played each game just once and then never again.
Worth noting that Mario Galaxy 2 was quite a large improvement over 1, though not essentially different.
It’s one thing, bafflingly, that Blizz is actually good with. I remember in OW1, even people using other people’s credit cards(That they knew, people using stolen cards obvi aren’t going to broadcast the fact) were still getting insta-banned as soon as they started the client. Even swapping hardware wasn’t good enough by itself, you needed someone else’s card, AND entirely new hardware to evade a ban, and shockingly often, people would still get caught again and banned.
Rym is like the Mandate of Hyrule.
Guys, it’s Ganon.
100 years later
Still Ganon
100 years later
Ganon again! Obviously!
What do you see?
WHAT DO YOU SEE ACHAMIAN?
The majority of TotK content online looks like this and it’s great.
This frickin game. I’m learning something new every day xd
Me every time I complete a shrine:
I’ve left the shrines for last. I’ve completed all the side adventures and most of the side quests. Doing all of the miscellaneous stuff now, before I fight Ganon.
I have plenty of minibosses to finish off to get all of those medals, but that’s all postgame stuff.
Apparently I’ve already spent more hours on TotK than I have BotW!
How far is everyone else? (maybe hide your spoilers IDK)
I beat TotK. Overall, it’s fantastic. Really fun to play. It’s Breath of the Wild, but 3 times as much.
But! I had a number of gripes.
The cutscenes - they really explained everything a in terrible detail, across many cutscenes. BotW by comparison gave you glimpses and you can think about what exactly happened 100 years ago. I wish they left some more mystery in this one.
The UI felt like a step back. Stumble into a fight, exciting! Hold on, let me pause and scroll through 100 items in my inventory to attach X to an arrow.
Your gang of friends - pretty frustrating to activate the right power with your assistants moving around and running away from you, especially as the team grows. Much worse than “hold the button for a second” in BotW.
The fusion mechanic - I know everyone’s crazy for it, but I didn’t enjoy it a ton. I found it fiddly to get parts attached just so to solve whatever puzzle. I don’t know how you’re supposed to beat many of the dungeons, I cheesed probably half of them by sticking stuff together until I could climb over the thing.
So with all that said, they’re pretty minor things, and it’s a really fun game. The depths and sky, especially the Rito mission, felt like exploring ancient and mysterious places.
