Dropping in and not having to get back up to speed with a game has become more important to my gaming life than I wish it was. I don’t have time to change it. Even minimal-story games like Valheim or Elite: Dangerous have become too cumbersome because I have to spend a bunch of time figuring out what I did last, what I need to gather, and what I need to build to progress. I can either go mine/sail iron in Valheim, I can hope my pirate hunter ship and pirate activity are close to where I last docked… Or I can just play some basic game and take 5 minutes to get up to speed instead of spending the first 45 minutes recalibrating my memory. It makes a difference when you might only play 3 times a week and have less than 2 hours left. I’m hoping next year goes better, but for now, it’s battle Royale, team match, or racing games.

Obviously, there’s a massive competitive attractiveness for some people to games like PUBG and CS as well. But it’s not all trigger-finger addicts. Some of us are just trying to have an OK time, not the best time.

You say you don’t care for Porsche IRL. If you have any interest in driving performance vehicles and have an opportunity to drive one, try to not pass it up. 10 years ago, I drove a 10-year-old 911 and it remains the best driver’s car I’ve ever driven. So precise, so confident. It’s what they’re known for. I knocked them before because they always looked so understated and the owners seem pompous. While both can be true, it’s still an excellent sports car. I’m out of the car scene and can’t talk about modern hybrids/electrics/SUVs and wouldn’t recommend a Panamera as the basis for your opinion.

FH4 just went semi-offline (no more seasonal or promotional content, still has online play/free roam randos). I wonder if that played a role in that pricing inversion. Last minute cash squeeze? Maybe it ushered the market away from 4 and into 5?

I do enjoy the FH titles. I wish there were more normal cars, but that’s probably partly due to not keeping up with the latest hypercars. With limited time to play, I spend a ton of time cruising in semi-normal cars across the open world. One of the unusual activities is 4th+ gear highway pulls in some blundering V8. Just hear it wind out from idle to redline. FH1 remains my favorite story because it actually had a story, it felt. It was shallow, but it had a clear progression of races, rivalry, and all the world building for the horizon festival. The rest have just too many races, tournaments, and events thrown at you at once. Every race unlocks 4 more. FH2 did an amazing job introducing the open world, drive anywhere style although I found the European map to be bland. FH3’s Australia was more diverse, but I was further overwhelmed by the number of map icons. I’m currently in FH4 and I suppose have finally accepted there’s never going to be another “campaign” style title. I guess that’s really the gaming industry as a whole with all the battle Royales and similar arcade-style games.

I guess I should hurry up and get FH5 before all the time-sensitively content runs out there, too, right? Damn consumer cyclism.

It depends on the situation. There’s plenty of games that made the DLC era notorious by putting out games with only half the content as prior games. In the case of Forza Horizon, I feel they’ve provided substantial content in the base games, at least as far as maps and modes.

I will agree with OP about the number of DLC cars though, because it’s excessive. I wish I could filter out DLC and stop being teased. It’s particularly annoying when basically and entire manufacturer is DLC (Porsche in FH4 I think) or when some 3rd party sponsor brand drops a ton of “sponsor edition” cars. Maybe I’m just out of the pop loop but I do NOT need Hoonigan cars when I can modify any of the base cars to be stupid fast. I rest my cane.

And I thought I was dramatic for always playing that one sad song on the crank-string instrument as everyone logs out

Quickly uninstalled his pants

I would think seasons are the driving reason for an adjusted calendar. Any rotational tilt from the orbital plan will induce seasons. Every planet in our system has seasons, even the gas giants. That will have a cyclical effect on climate. Even in a sealed habitat, thermal regulation and solar power will be affected. The local year will also have an affect on interplanetary travel because, spatially, a day of the year is a specific place in space rather than a specific time. So a local calendar would provide a conversion.

As for a universal calendar, you’re right that it doesn’t fix anything. Instead of a calendar that works in one place and not 999 other places, a universal calendar would “not work” in 1000 places and work correctly in zero places. We already do something similar with global/space operations: make everything UTC time zone. While yes, it’s practically just prime meridian time, it doesn’t do daylight savings.

Not sure if joking… But someone did take advantage of the 3rdgparty heat map and spent a couple dozen hours of game time drawing this dick in the galaxy

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/jqqwe5/someone_mapped_out_a_giant_dick/#lightbox

Oh yeah, I don’t have time to play my main Elite:Dangerous profile anymore but I’ll totally have time to use my free Epic license to plaster my name across the galaxy on deep space exploration.

Lol I thought it was just my advanced age of 33 that made it difficult to understand a game from the Xbox previews. A majority of screenshots look like garbage once you’re not in character and the store highlights that.

Do you not have a whole archive of screenshot because it looked cool at the time and then it didn’t really hit the same later when you no longer had the context of the action? Just me?

I’d like to answer as someone without nostalgia: yes it does. I played Odyssey in 2020 and IV 2022-current. The ship mechanics are very enjoyable to me. I beleive Odyseey made it more polished but I can’t actually remember how, so it must not be that important

If you’re a new homeowner and either have a lot to fix or a lot of projects in mind, a pickup is great. Daily driving it is useful for when you have to grab materials after work. I opted for an older $2000 Ranger 4cyl 2wd earlier this year for that so I’m not killed by fuel economy. It gets 20mpg on my commute but I do also split that with a 50mpg motorcycle. It’s also great for when you see random bulky things on the side of the road you want. I did start with a 4x8 trailer but it’s not as convenient. I admit, part of that was because my wife s car was the only one with a functional hitch.

But I’m talking a Ranger. Like an F-050. 115hp. This little guy has hauled so much already. The only thing it can’t technically do is tow a car and I don’t have the capital left to buy a nonrunning project car. I’ve been eyeing the new Maverick in hybrid form. But maybe by time I have the cash for such a new vehicle I won’t be doing reno projects anymore

Idk who down voted, so here’s one up vote.

I used to be part of such wagons. As I got older, I lost the time available to be so picky. I started with Unity and had a good time. I’ve had a good time with each subsequent entry through odyssey (haven’t played further yet). The same type of people complaining about RPG AC complain about Ubi’s other series, Far Cry. It’s ironic that people vehemently argue whether FC3 or 4 is better while both were departures from 2 which was a drastic departure from 1.

It’s a game. If you have fun, you’re good. If it’s compelling enough to keep you playing, they’re good. I really enjoyed Odyssey, moresoe than Origins. I do wonder if Origins was a sacrificial game that conditioned me to the RPG style, but I don’t have time to revisit it. I know I really enjoyed the sailing warfare mission as Aya so I was certainly happy to find that in Ody. (I’m actually currently 2/3 thru AC4). Still waiting on time for Valhalla and mirage…

PS: whichever version you played between 13 and 18 years old will always be the perfect one. Same goes for music. Or any interest, really.

I don’t remember it looking so good. Maybe lower settings on mine due to Xbox One. I really thought it was going to be Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

This was my hole… reason for checking the comments

Lucky for most, it’s a local inhabited system. Unlucky for you, it doesn’t sound like you’re local.

Sounds like you may have been out for a few years. A lot has changed. I did drop it about 6 months ago, but the major things are: exploration pays now! But pretty much only if you have the Odyssey expansion for on-foot gameplay to search tirelessly for bacteria. Thargoids now have a powerplay-like mechanic and are actively attacking inhabited systems. They’re avoidable though.

As for getting back to the bubble, you may be able to find a carrier passing by to hitch a ride. Did you play recently enough to have seen fleet carriers? Another player directs it and can transport your ship while you’re offline. Just remember to deboard on time!

I don’t have a carrier, but can help get you on your way if needed. I love the lore of the game and can enjoy the mechanics, but I have a real life to tend to so I get it.

I still forget how to tell white dwarfs from neutron stars. Both can charge you, but I think it’s white dwarfs that have 1/4 the jet range for like 1/2 the boost. Basically a deadly waste of time. But I don’t really go far. I have an icy Dolphin that can park in the normal star scoop zone and stay cool indefinitely, so the boost benefit isn’t worth it to me. But I do enjoy that empty dread of the vastness of space and the inconceivable size of celestial bodies.

And of course the dread from the excellent sound design surrounding the Thargoids, the alien enemies you can seek out. But that’s normal dread.

You ever land on mitterand hollow? Or rather, you ever let the moon known as mitterand hollow land on you? That’s an experience. It’s actually incredibly safe due to the spatial reframing, but good luck convincing your brain

I can’t explain this one, but I’d like to offer some other identifiers used. When searching for likely planets, they observe stars for wobble in their position. Large planets like jupiter and Saturn have some hefty pull on our own star. The common orbital point between them, called the barycenter, is still inside the sun, but their great distance apart pulls that barycenter closer to the edge of the sun. Our sun has a pretty notable wobble as a result. That’s the kind of thing they look for elsewhere. If there’s no other star causing the wobble in a binary system, then it must be a planet pulling it.

By estimating the mass of the star by various observations of color, brightness, and brightness variation, they can do some “easy” algebra to calculate the size of the affecting planet. From there, they can scan for radiation frequencies in the darkness where they think a planet is sitting. Water has a frequency, hydrogen has a frequency, oxygen has a frequency, helium, etc. By stuffing objects close to home, we can extrapolate that info and apply it to further objects with some confidence. This is how organic compounds were discovered in Venus’ atmosphere.

A lot of it is based on what we have at home, meaning we’re largely looking for what we have and then identifying it as the same. There is uncertainty about some details, but that’s how it always goes with science. It’s always being updated. It’s takes a lot of creativity to imagine what else might be out there and to devise how to look for it. Black holes are a pretty notable example. Since they’re not observable directly, what do you look for? Well, you look for other things being eaten and hope the matter is hot enough to throw a lot of radiation. 80 years ago, they were just an idea. Now we have images of a few galactic-center black holes. Some have been observed free floating through space by distorting the apparent position of stars behind it. Do we absolutely know it was a black hole? No, but that’s what solid theories can identify it as given the darkness and huge mass required to cause that kind of effect. But, as a result, estimates for dark and cold objects vary greatly because they’re the hardest to observe. There’s talk of finding more “hot jupiters” than expected, but it’s totally valid that maybe wevre just missing the cold Jupiter’s because they’re hard to see.

We keep looking and we keep writing it down.

Damn, that just feels surreal to me. I can’t properly conceptualize the scale of the moon I guess

Existential crisis about how every narrow image shows 100,000x the amount of matter and bodies that I already can’t conceptualize from just our own galaxy