Don’t know why the headline is so shitty, but the “mmo” seems to be a splatoon-like multiplayer game unrelated to pokemon.

Yeah, I guess they should have just locked all of it behind a paywall so entitled people don’t get worked up over not getting everything for free.

Well that is my argument, we hit diminishing returns this generation, and further upgrades are a waste of money.

If you have anything relevant to add, it’s certainly welcome, but ignoring context to try to make my point sound worse is just wasting both our time.

I’m confused why you seem like you’re arguing with me but still fundamentally making the same point. Those improvements don’t inherently make games more fun, but they create opportunities for variety and new elements to the medium. It was previous tech improvements that made Halo and F.E.A.R. possible, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.

But processing power isn’t really a relevant limitation to game design anymore. I genuinely don’t see any future console generations being particularly enticing for me, outside an upgrade to my steam deck, especially when most of what I play is 5-20 years old anyway.

I have to assume you’re too young to remember previous generations.

Increased power makes a difference up to a point, but we’re now so far into diminishing returns you can hardly tell the difference between a ps4 game and the ps5 ‘enhanced’ if you don’t have a 4k TV.

Increased computing power used to open up entirely new concepts in gaming. 3D environments, then larger and larger worlds, dynamic physics engines, more complex NPC Ai and more power to run larger numbers of enemies at a time.

Now, it hardly matters. There’s more than enough power to do pretty much anything you want. Unlimited worlds, thousands of NPCs, photorealistic graphics, and absolutely nothing new. It can always be ‘bigger and better’ but at what point does that stop mattering? For me, it was last console generation.

I made no comment about the quality of Chinese goods, just their ubiquity.

Nah, better lighting doesn’t do a damn thing to make a game more fun. The only notable difference that even matters is better load times.

That’s not really helpful when the vast majority still manufacture in China, and at best ‘assemble’ somewhere else.

Yeah, I’m hoping they finally figure out the tutorial balance in Wilds. Earlier games had next to nothing for tutorials, and you pretty much had to look outside the game to even understand the basic movesets of the weapons, much less how things like skills work. I think they overcorrected with the recent ones though, it’d be nice if they could get a little better about introducing information in the world instead of constantly stopping the action to make sure the player sees it.

But yeah, absolutely do not use the OP armor, you’ll only ruin your fun and then have a really hard time once you get to the real fights. The main reason to use it would be to power through low rank if you’ve done it on another platform or something.

They’re interrelated, and important to talk about together in this context. Sometimes it’s more useful to look at what the asker is trying to accomplish than simply answering exactly what was asked.