forameus

Because once they've got them, they've got them. And for a lot of people, they'll keep trying until they do. In terms of the "icons more accessible" part, they said that back at the start of 20, but they were deliberately vague about it. In general terms, icons are more accessible. The previous year every icon, even the utterly shite ones, were ridiculously expensive because they were needed in SBCs. So they said that wouldn't be the case anymore, and then brought in Swaps. The vast majority of icons were then more accessible to the average player, albeit the ones people wanted were slightly rarer. I'd say that was a really good change. Of course, they then took all that decent work they did last year, threw it away, laughed, and then thought how they could be complete arseholes. They've gone backwards in pretty much every sense, other than their own engagement and financial numbers.

They pretty much had to given the things people would be saying about them. End of the day, they've pretty much been stolen from, and are the injured party in this. They've worked very hard at making sure these cards are utterly unattainable, and now someone's pocketing cash for them. They'll be furious.

To be honest, Shane vs Braun will probably be fun. It's not going to be good by any means, but it'll be fun. It's going to be Braun getting to throw someone around the arena for 10-15 while they sell. I'd certainly rather Shane - because he's always going to be on the card - get a match like this rather than a standard wrestling match.

I do that with my 3 year old, but I've realised that there's now a finite group of games I should probably play while he's watching. No Man's Sky was a safe one (although he kept demanding I "blast off"). Death Stranding, which I've told him is just Postman Pat. When I played FIFA he would celebrate the goals. Making the most of it before he thinks I'm a fucking loser once he hits the teenage years.

Well they'd probably pass it off as that because that's what it is. If the reporting is how it seems, then the guy has essentially been stealing from EA, giving out these cards that are near priceless to EA themselves, and pocketing the cash. EA are likely to be fucking furious. But nothing will come of it that's visible to us. I expect that if they can identify who did it though, then they can say goodbye to much of a career in the industry again. Could probably even face legal action if EA can find an angle.

Well, I don't know. I couldn't see Vince* or HHH wading onto Twitter to have a slagging match with someone on Twitter about takedown requests to be fair. * Although I'd fucking love to see what mad shit he'd fire out on a platform he doesn't understand...

Heard those rumours...interesting. On the titles, it seems like a crazy decision. The tag titles they've already got are booked like a joke, so adding a second set doesn't seem like the best decision. Although these ones will be being booked by NXT, not main roster, so could well end up better. But how many female tag teams are there? We about to see a big influx? Although if it means they can better use the roster they have and give people a shine, fire in. On the two night thing...it could go either way. Having two shows the quality of the usual Takeovers will be brilliant, and they've got the talent to do it, but will it make it feel less special? The beauty of Takeover is that it's five matches and all are given time. No need for cramming absolutely everyone onto the card just for the payday, just the five best matches they can put on. Hopefully this isn't going to overexpose them. Fucking hell, that's going to be a crazy week of WWE - Wednesday and Thursday Takeover shows, presumably Hall of Fame Friday, then Wrestlemania Saturday and Sunday.

So outside of constantly going over the same points from certain people, are we any closer to actually starting on the 20th?

Anyone trying to make a game of this type with a narrative should be made to study the Bloody Baron questline. It's incredible.

I liked both TLoU games, but never really saw what others seemed to when they talked about it amongst the best ever. The first one had a very focused story and was enjoyable as a result, but the gameplay made it feel like they wanted to write a book, but were quite good at programming too. Like they just built mechanics around a very strong story so they could call it a game rather than just a "narrative experience". That's not to say the mechanics were bad at all, they were just...ok. Solid even. But not enough to push it towards being talked about as one of the best packages. TLoU2 was exactly the same, but they took more risks with the story. I really liked it, but can see why some did it. But can also see that the mechanics just remained solid, nothing really revolutionary. apart from the ropes.

Was Gran Turismo 3 the one where it started to go a bit South? I remember playing one of them and putting stupid hours into it, but I thought it was two. I remember you spent the entire game like it was Auto Trader, picking up shitey cars and souping them up to build up your empire. But then they moved away from that and just towards "pretty car driving simulator" and it got a bit shit. I did try the most recent (I think) one when I got PSVR and it was fairly unremarkable.

I had Resi 2, nothing touches that for me. I thought I'd be well into the Remake too, but just ended up watching a Let's Play rather than buying. Just not the same as the original and its 2-4 hour story. Probably the high-point of the entire series too. Might be controversial, but 3 wasn't quite as good, 4 was..different, 5 and 6 were utterly disastrous. 7 seems like a complete reinvention, so class it as new. So aye, 2 is the best clearly.

Fair points, although I'd argue, as a developer myself, that the pressure doesn't magically disappear. You've got customers paying monthly. They've likely got every right to expect something for that money, and given their history, likely won't expect you saying it isn't ready yet. I don't doubt that some problems get solved if you move to that model, but it's also fair to say you'll create more. Certain games and products are going to thrive under it and are well suited, but not convinced it works for them all, and I'd expect definitely not for the likes of annual releases. But who knows, maybe they'll move to it, thrive, and I'll have to buy you a boxed copy of some Zelda title or something, I don't know. And since this is the thread, we're in, and we've corresponded fairly civil so far... That's subjective, and I'd argue none. It's always playable. Sometimes shite and not fun? Absolutely. But always playable.

Fair enough. Yeah, the price was "fine" (although maybe slightly high for what was achievable within the game) On sub models, I don't think it particularly helps the developers deliver the best product, and I expect you'll ultimately pay more longer term. The benefit for users, I guess, would be that if you think a game's shite after a month or so, you can drop after paying, say, a tenner rather than the sixty up front. That's great for us, but what does it mean for the developer? I think people like to think that it means they have to get better to make sure people keep buying, but having more pressure and less money isn't always going to be a great breeding ground for innovation. In EA's case, I expect the game would just become more and more cynical, as they keep getting emboldened by people continuing to play no matter what shit EA shovel in. For SI, I think it could kill the product (if it ever happened, which I doubt it would, because it might kill them). I like the model CoD/Warzone are currently using, to be honest. You buy your base game (or don't in Warzone's case) and then you have it and all of its features. If you want to get a bit of a boost, or access to certain cosmetics, you can pay them for a season pass as additional stuff, but it's by no means required. And - the really nice part for me - part of that season pass involves earning the currency that lets you buy the next one. I bought the fiirst one for CoD Zombies, and didn't need to buy the 2nd after earning it through playing. I think that's quite a nice way of doing it, without going too hard either way.

It definitely failed because of the model. That model meant that for every new world they opened, after an initial period of excitement, the vast majority just fucked off. Think it was 1000 to a world, and by the time it had settled down you probably had about 100 actually appearing. Like any live game of its type, it wasn't perfect, and it would have needed a lot of work, but the model they built meant they never built themselves enough time to actually do it. If they'd anticipated their entire model being shit, they could have bought themselves the time and improved things (which they were doing prior to them canning it) but alas, no. And they'll likely never try it again unfortunately, as the competitive nature of it added something that FM/CM have always been missing. EDIT: Although looking at who you replied to, if you're saying that it didn't fail because of being priced as subscription, then you're right. People were happy enough to pay that. It failed because of the model they had after you'd paid. EDIT2: And since we're in this thread, and you have to throw out aggressive comments, I completely disagree about a subscription based model for either FIFA or FM, think it would make the product worse rather than better, and believe it'll never happen.

Retired actually, sadly enough. Presumably decided to can his football career in lieu of his true calling - just being a fucking dreamboat.

To be fair though, WWE have about 8 million on their roster, and a vast majority of those could be released tomorrow, picked up by another company, and do very, very well given the right booking. Bit harsh to complain about those companies picking them up when it doesn't seem like a bad thing, and as others have said, is their only real choice outside of those not at all interested in WWE.

While I agree, this one would be pretty easy to implement and enforce. Tell developers that if they give the means to do it, they'll get the punishment. It'll stop immediately. Obviously that's fucking mental, and I doubt it'll ever get to that, but would you put it past the greedy c***s in charge of these things?

Hopefully you're right, and I'm just yelling at clouds. Or crowds. Either.

To be fair though, SI (the people that make FM) are in a weird grey area. They can't legally use the stuff they don't pay for, and don't. Any discussion of that stuff or ways to get around it are forbidden on the forums, threads locked, etc etc. But they also build in fairly robust ways of essentially getting around all that. You can add whatever images you want, even change the way the 3D kits look. I imagine they're pretty airtight in being allowed to do that, otherwise they wouldn't, but it always struck me as weird how easy it is to get around those things. But it is utterly mental the way football has gone with licensing. FM doesn't have the real EPL fixture list, because you have to pay to use it. They've licensed a fucking fixture list. Football is dead. I forgot about that! EA deserve a tiny amount of credit for trying something a bit different, and I did enjoy the early parts of it. But it was a pretty poor execution of the idea as you went on. An idea with massive amounts of potential, spoiled by EA putting their now trademark lack of effort in. Want to be a defender or a keeper? Nah, f**k off. Think it's unrealistic that Harry Kane has joined fucking Newcastle on loan? Again, f**k off. Want to have any kind of branching story other than the one they're trying to tell. Guess what? There's a door over there. f**k off through it. It's a shame, because with proper effort, it could've been brilliant. I'd say if we're grouping them all together, if I want to play a football game, I'd still probably play FIFA 21. That's not to say it's any good, I'm just not a fan of going backwards enough to choose one that's way behind technically (although maybe if I really tried, I'd enjoy myself). The bit that always amuses me is people talking about how they need the game to more realistic, more of a simulation. Who'd want to simulate modern football? It's fucking dull. It's already pitched towards being an arcade game, so they should lean more into that. It doesn't have to be realistic to be fun, but they've decided to abandon both anyway.

Spot on about the game really. It's hard to criticise EA too much though. From the outside, it looks like they're suiciding what was a pretty enjoyable franchise with, at best, anti-consumer features, and at worse, utterly spiteful ones. But they're doing it knowing that the wider community will eat whatever shit they give them. Whether they complain about it, or do it silently, they'll still eat it. It's quite a fascinating social experiment now, and I do wonder whether there's a point where EA will go too far, or whether such a thing is even possible.

Just saw a clip of the end. Fucking lol. I assume it was botched in some way, but fucking hell. Did they really need the "explosions" part of the stipulation to make it work, given you're never going to satisfy the bloodlust of the sort of people who like these kinds of matches? Bet the guy covering Moxley at the end wishes he could have dug a hole through the mat and stayed there. So in the Stupid Stipulations with Stupider Ending Awards, who wins it? This one, or Mysterio getting his "eye out"? WWE get pass marks purely for having Rollins chew scenery and throw up afterward.

The coming weeks will be interesting in a sort of soul-crushing way. Only question is whether we just see a slight rise in cases, or an explosion, as every video I've seen has been maskless fannies all grinding each other. I doubt UEFA are going to do anything about it, as the Euros will be far more strictly structured, and the Scottish Government know that it benefits them far more to hold the games than go in a huff because of this. The question isn't with either of those. It's whether any potential rise in cases pushes back plans for reopening. At the moment early-to-late April seems to be the slow opening. If that gets pushed back a month, surely there's f**k all chance of them risking a large crowd at a game, even in safe settings. But to be honest, us holding the games isn't much of a worry. Far more scunnered by the crowds gathered near enough my doorstep at Auchenhowie, and all over the city that we're essentially tethered to via health authority. If we sit unable to do much on a high-risk tier while the likes of Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen etc start getting to live their lives...

When we won the First Division (fucking hell, lifetime ago), we were told that if we invaded the pitch, the players wouldn't be coming back out for a celebration with us. So we sat there and waited, and got to celebrate properly. Fucking crazy to think that a crowd like that, during a pandemic, was just allowed to grow and grow. Then to top it all, the fucking players decided that encouraging them would be the best course of action. f**k knows what's going to happen next week if that'd going to be the decider. Proper rammy between rival fans I'm betting.

He's quite difficult to look at. Not sure what to focus on.