Doing that in a permadeath MMO like Realm of the Mad God would be one thing. Where a character takes 20 hours to maximize their stats, and then can be used for hundreds of hours beyond that to grind for general account progress.

But in a roguelike, a singleplayer game designed around short 2-8 hour runs, where survival during that singular run is the entire point...I don't see why I would. I don't see why I would pay real money to revive myself in Risk of Rain 2 or something.

I mean, just explain it.

You can fairly easily make someone understand why something was instrumental to the creation of something else. Or why it holds so much value to you.

What you can't do is make them share your personal nostalgia or personal emotional investment in it...they didn't live those experiences.

And to be honest I don't get why we put games on a pedestal just for being important in their day. I can acknowledge that Wolfenstein 3D was very important for the development of FPS games...while still thinking it sucks ass as an actual game.

The general consensus among Borderlands fans is that BL2 is the best one, so I don't see how it's overrated.

Which, I also disagree with that consensus. Or at least don't entirely agree.

Weapons were more mundane, but that also made loot feel more impactful. Even just boss weapons in BL1 felt like a major upgrade. The exact opposite of this is Tiny Tina's Wonderlands where everything is roughly leveled the same and every gun is quirky so nothing stands out and I just don't care about looting at all.

The atmosphere is a lot more grounded and gritty in BL1, striking a better balance. Unlike BL2 which just put the entire franchise in a trajectory towards memeshit that is just dated today.

Spot on for the vast majority of AAA games.

Not really true of indies at all. Not to say indies don't have their own separate issues, but being overly cinematic isn't one of them.

When minorities and political dissidents face persecution in real life, and play a videogame that treats them as no different than anyone else or validates their worldview, how is that not also "escapism" for them.

If you don't get it, it's because you're actually intelligent and realize their rhetoric doesn't make sense to begin with and has no internal logic to it.

I'm not sure how well it actually holds up but I was addicted to Scrapland as a kid. Fairly unique, vaguely similar to GTA. You get to fly around in spaceships and explore, race, and fight with them, upgrading and customizing them piece-by-piece. You also have on-foot sections where you can transform and disguise into the different robot races that make up the population of the city all with their own unique abilities. And a pretty cheesy but fun robot-noir story.

The gameplay is generic MMO fare, just with an Elder Scrolls skin. If you were expecting typical ES mechanics you're gonna be thoroughly disappointed.

But it is possibly the most lore-rich game in the franchise otherwise. And lets you visit just about every part of Tamriel.

You are also from Eastern Europe, so not surprising.

Care to share your favorites?

They have given away some pretty surprising and worthwhile games. Like Wolfenstein New Order, Supraland, Control, all three Bioshocks, Darkest Dungeon...

Though yeah it feels like most of the time it's just obscure filler that I don't even know why I bother even grabbing aside from being a loot goblin. Not like I'm ever going to actually play them.

OP said there's no more free games in this hypothetical.

I'm not particularly interested in most of the (typically temporary) exclusives either.

So functionality is the only thing left for me. And it's functionally worse.

...because why would I use over Steam it if it doesn't?

No. Because like you said, from a functionality standpoint it does virtually nothing better than Steam.

DREAMWILD. Psychedelic 90's-CGI style roguelike shooter.

Cruelty Squad. Even more incoherent, MS-Paint shitpost vibes, with heavy tones of post-capitalist cynicism.

Amid Evil. Similar aesthetic but a more grounded, dark-fantasy theme.

Postal Brain Damaged. Enter the bizarre and twisted brain of the Postal dude. Retro styled though a bit more detailed.

Night of the Consumers. PS1 style "horror" game. Working retail can be pretty scary.

Wrought Flesh. Biopunk game where you can steal organs from enemies and use them yourself.

HROT. PS1 style shooter with supernatural themes, programmed from scratch to feel even more authentic, with weird bits of absurdist humor here and there. Inspired by Quake / Chasm The Rift.

Lost in Vivo. Slightly more detailed but very early 2000's horror vibes.

Super Kiwi 64. Inspired by classic N64 collectathons like Banjo Kazooie.

Agent 64. Spiritual successor to Goldeneye.

People are really nostalgic for 2017?

F2P MMORPGs are probably the worst about this. There's so many different and completely detached-from-each-other premium currency and progression systems designed to keep you spending money in all of them.

1. Mine and Smelt Ore to smith a Weathered-state weapon.
2. Imbue your weapon with a special stone granted during PvP events to give it elemental damage.
3. Upgrade the weapon at the Whetstone to increase it's stats up to a maximum of +10.
4. Login daily or complete premium radiant quests to get special fairy dust that gives the weapon another mythical boost to it's stats for 24 hours.
5. Go to the barter NPC and trade your Weathered weapon for a Pristine one for even better stats.
6. Complete guild quests to gain a blessing of the guild for your weapon to even further it's performance.

>Someone mentioned Star Wars though I’m not sure those would really count.

I mean, why not? There are a shit ton of Star Wars games dude.

Spyro had 13 excluding the remakes. Even more than that if you technically count the Skylanders games as part of the franchise. Though how it has that many is beyond me since only the first three games are any good...

Tom Clancy has something around 40 different games if you go by brand name alone, though they are fractured into different storylines and settings. Even if you only count related games though, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six still have well over 12 titles.

Medal of Honor at 15.

Grand Theft Auto has 11 standalone games...so almost.

>Note: This is just a random likely very wrong observation that I made and I am willing to accept that it’s a completely wrong one.

Nah, I don't think so. Japan has just been in the gaming business a lot longer and a lot harder than the rest of the world, and the giant corporations like Nintendo didn't have too much direct competition back in the day so only natural they'd survive and prosper into the modern era with long-running franchises.

Mario has been around since 1985, Xbox has only existed since 2001.

14 games if we exclude remasters.

8 FPS titles with two of those being story spinoffs (Reach, ODST)

2 RTS spinoffs.

4 Arcade games.

Political!11!!! REEEEEE

Ah, Gamers.

That said, they look good but I find them pointless, in the sense that I hate that Minecraft has default vs Paid skins to begin with. When Java lets you be whatever you want.

And in a game where you can be anything, people want to be robots, monsters, celebrities, anime characters, videogame protagonists, walking genitalia, so on. No one wants to use Steve. No Black guy is waking up like fuck yeah, Black-Steve!

>Skyrim the nickelback of RPG's

They hated him because he spoke the truth.

Art Style.

You can take a 4k resolution photograph of a pile of shit but that doesn't make it appealing to look at.

Meanwhile..

To an extent the two are related, in that you obviously can't have a scene portraying dust or fog or godrays or colored lighting or so on if you don't actually have the graphical technology to make those things happen. But Art Style is by far the more important thing.