tds418

As someone who has not played a Last of Us game, it does seem too soon for this. Games that launched early in the 360/PS3 era definitely feel somewhat dated now so I understand the desire to remake fan favorites from that period (personally, I would dig an Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster). But Last of Us was essentially one of the last major releases of that generation, and was released on PS4 in June 2014 -- less than seven years ago. As a result, this does feel like a cynical cash grab.

I'm hoping to give this a try tonight after work. I thought the last elusive target was fairly easy if just going for the kill, so I might go for a silent assassination this time.

@oursin_360: I don't remember specifically beyond the dungeons. They weren't added to the playlist activity loot pools, no, but they probably would have been removed from those regardless of sunsetting when beyond light dropped.

Raid drops never were, and yes they added non-sunset drops of shadowkeep and dreaming city gear to the pit of heresy and shattered throne dungeons.

It's not correct that Forsaken and Shadowkeep are worthless in terms of loot. All of the loot from the raids in those expansions are still 100% relevant, and some of the world drops from those expansions are being refreshed and made relevant again as well. The Forsaken, Shadowkeep, and Beyond Light campaigns are the main "story" content at the moment, and they're all included in Game Pass, so that would be the place to start.

As for the post-campaign "loop," it's somewhat similar to WoW in that you probably won't be high enough item level to complete the end-game PvE content after you finish the story campaigns. The Director will mark what activities can drop higher level items, so the loop would be completing those activities (a mix of strikes, pvp, gambit, etc.) to gear up for the endgame PvE content, which at this point are raids and grandmaster nightfalls (similar concept to a mythic dungeon in WoW). Those endgame activities drop unique loot. And of course, PvP is infinitely replayable if that's your jam and has unique loot as well.

If you haven't played since before Forsaken, they reintroduced "random rolls" with Year 2/Forsaken. For a lot of the people, the ultimate Destiny endgame is grinding for the 'god roll' of a specific weapon. Each weapon generally has 4 perk slots (2 main ones and 2 minor ones), and each "roll" of the weapon will pull from a pre-determined pool of perks for each of those slots. So if you want 4 specific perks on a random roll weapon, it might take a lot of attempts to get one. Some weapons, including all exotic weapons, are "static" rolls, so you'll only ever need to acquire one.

They've eased up on the FOMO recently because seasonal content sticks around for a full year now, as opposed to just the season (destiny seasons are 3-4 months). They've also gotten better at gradually telling a story over the season, with the current season arguably being the best example of that so far. Each season generally has a unique seasonal activity as well as at least one exotic quest, which is story-related. Each season also introduces at least a dozen weapons or so, so there's new loot to chase every few months.

Games with Gold also isn't what was say 5 years ago, and especially since Game Pass came out.

I believe MS actually did this with a (very) small handful of X360 games. You can't buy a BC version through the MS store, but MS will let you download the BC executable if you insert a disc of the game into an Xbox. I'll see if I can verify that....

Edit: Yeah, confirmed. There's not many, but games with an * on this page "may not be available on the MS store," but can be played through BC if you have a disc: https://majornelson.com/xbox-one-backward-compatibility/

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, but you can play downloaded game pass games offline. It follows the standard subscription service model of "you need to connect to the internet at least once every 30 days so we can verify your subscription status." So you can play an offline game through game pass without needing to be constantly connected to the internet...

The base Game Pass subscription is $9.99/mo (the ultimate subscription, which includes both console + PC + xbox live gold is $15/mo). $10 * 12 months = $120/year, which is roughly the price of 2 new AAA games ($60 *2). So I don't think the value proposition is actually that bad for those people.

Also, while the netflix comparison is obviously appropriate, I'm sure that negotiating licensing deals with game publishers is very different than negotiating film and TV rights with studios. As those licensing deals make up the bulk of Netflix's expenses, it's hard to directly compare profitability. In other words, it's too simplistic to say "netflix struggled to turn a profit, so game pass necessarily will too." Game Pass is probably unprofitable and will be for some time, but we just don't know enough about the underlying deals to speculate beyond that.

tbh I was expecting something totally cringeworthy at first but this wasn't bad, especially for someone coming from an academic perspective with little exposure to video games.