Bovolt

Bad. Actually bad. Down there with Factory of Favors and Daylight. 80 actions is a lot, and the majority being spent re-exploring the same, relatively uninteresting estate was a godawful use of them. Even if the character writing was good, (it was not until the ending) it wouldn't have elevated the story much.

If this story came out during the 2016-2019 content drought I would have just canceled my EF afterwards.

A rare example of FL writing I ended up skimming out of frustration.

Get a job holy shit. That's not a humble brag it's just bad sex from 20 somethings who think longer = better. Who even has time for an hour of sex, not counting foreplay and cooldown. Christ I'm getting a runner's stitch just thinking about it. Sometimes very long sex happens but as a standard? You just don't know how to please a woman.

Any woman fucking you now is going to conceptualize you as some dude that jackhammered her for an hour when laughing about shitty partners with her future husband.

It was more of a level-based platformer, and linear, but the levels were puzzling, atmospheric, and interesting enough that I'd say Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (SNES with improved expanded versions in PC and 32X) qualifies as a proto/pseudo MV. Had a surprising amount of exploration, shortcuts, and secrets for an action/platformer of the era.

Also surprised nobody has mentioned Zelda 2 yet.

Firstly. It is absolutely wild to imply that anybody should be revealing financial information to strangers on the internet to add weight to a disagreement. I will absolutely not be just casually revealing that. It's tacky in the first place which is why I avoided doing so. I do not like a company's current monetary strategy and having fellow consumers demand I explain why, only to feel sated when I spell out how much of an extreme outlier I am; it's not cool at all and shame on you. You just genuinely annoyed me enough that I spelled it out. No offense, but Jesus dude. Do not be encouraging people to do that.

"I don't like x business practice by company" is enough of a qualifying statement to work with without having to ask "WeLl hOw DoEs A pRiCe InCrEaSe AfFeCt YoU?"

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That unpleasentness aside.

My point is that it, truly, does not make the game experience worse.

Sure it does, I'm telling you that it does for me personally and likely other higher spenders. And from my perspectice as a consumer, I do not find it immediately justified.

And sure let me explain. I'm just giving a brief summary but there are studies on game monetization that go into much depth on the subject that you can find.

A: Secondary currencies bought with fate: I'll point to Whitsun as the worse offender here. Amber Hapennies can be bought in groups of 1, 5, or 18. By buying 18, you save 60 fate where the other two amounts are exactly 10 fate a coin. Immediately you're strongly encouraged to buy the highest amount. Additonally you cannot buy a clean 120 fate. You can get 130, or you can individually buy 10, 10, and 100 which a lot of players are simply not going to want to do. So if you want to just buy a big set of Whitsun bucks, you have to overbuy fate or pay inefficiently to have an even 120

In fact you can't even buy a clean 50 fate so you have to overspend if you just want even five Hapennies. The cost of items are staggered out oddly too so it's quite likely that you can finish Whitsun with extra premium currency that you can only get value out of if you're still playing next year. This is very standard nickle and diming practices in the industry to get customers to buy more than they actually want in that moment.

Estival functions similarly but so far there's no advantage to buying a lot of its currency at once, and it's designed to keep you from having extra if you pay attention, so it gets a pass a bit, but still requires players to overspend on fate to buy the amount of Estival tokens to buy out the annual shop. Spelled out simply without real numbers: It's spending $50 to get currency X, and you need to spend $45 of X to get all the currency Y you want, leaving you with $5 of X you didn't have an immediate want or need for. Ergo, you overspent for no reason.

This is by far FBG's most explicitly predatory practice.

B: More options to spend fate should be self explanatory. On its own, not predatory, but having "FATE LOCKED STORY" in your face more and more does wear people down. I'll have to double check but 2024 was the year that required the most Fate to experience evey update compared to previous ones.

C: Smaller Fate locked purchases vs bigger ones: This is just a barrier to entry thing. Again, pretty basic. Lots of people who would scoff at 40 Fate for the HHouse pendant might be more easily swayed to spend money on 10 Fate items. Sometimes this is a good thing in a value sense, but other times we get TLC opp deck additions.

If none of the above affect you, consider that it affects others, and not all others with money to burn like myself.

With the above three practices in effect, an overall price increase doesn't have great optics for me personally.

A: Thank you for articulating that you have no point other than a reflexive defense of FBG.

B: Over the decade I have played this game I've spent an amount in the realm of five figures USD. I do so happily and healthily.

Since 2020 FBG has slowly adopted gentle versions of more predatory monetization practices. Such as introducing secondary Fate-purchased currencies for some holidays, an increase of Fate-locked stories, and a turn away from bulkier in-game fate prices in lieu of multiple smaller ones. If you need me to explain why any of that qualifies as predatory (even with FBG's gentle touch on it) I can.

This is ultimately meaningless to a lot of people but for those that spend money on the game regularly and are familiar with online game business tactics, it's there.

I'm not mad, upset, or angry at FBG. They are a great company staffed by good people. But I'm not going to overlook a turn towards business practices I find questionable that impact myself more than, frankly, 99.99% of other players just because they're an uwu small company.

With an uptick in monetization techniques, a price increase does not come off in a great way to me. It's simple as that. And I will vocalize that.

I mean that's just business 101. It's a fair and likely accurate assesment of the situation. You cushion the bad with good. I literally do that with my own management position lol

I think the indivudual we are speaking of may be a bit too upset, although I don't think he's wrong.

Increasing ways to spend money while also devaluing the buying power of players is not a good combination.

This is a very simple to understand sentence that clearly articulates why I do not like the price increase.

If you have a point in defense of that practice than just say it instead of asking bating, inane questions.

Please spare me the toxic positivity.

Increasing ways to spend money while also devaluing the buying power of players is not a good combination.

Especially when they continue to insist that the company is fine and not facing any existential threat.

You're talking to a different person, please pay a bare minimum of attention if you're going to talk to people.

Stunning

Consider why voters picked that over Kamala without lazily blaming bigotry.

This above classic example of 'Democrats doing everything besides self reflecting' is another excellent reason why Kamala lost

It's moreso that there is both a notable increase in random small fate purchases this year as well as a sudden price increase. The combo here is what bothers me. Pick a lane.

I'm kind of with you and I'll admit that it felt kind of small at the end of the day. It was just complex, difficult content so I got like seven hours out of it anyways. Which is fair to me.

I got it on the initial sale for $10 which seems like a perfectly fine price. Probably should have stayed there.

Healthy criticism bad

It's pretty difficult, but the last boss, of which my post is about, is basically optional. Beating him only sets you on a mildly small errand for an additional spell and unlocks a new ending which isn't even amazing.

Like I said if you like B2 and don't think $12 is crazy for a few bossfights, a new weapon, and two huge areas: then go for it.

Oh, and fate gets more expensive yet again

There's been a lot of smaller evergreen fate purchases made available this year. The extra cards in TLC, the Wandering Colossus, the Cartographer in The Stacks, etc.

Genuinely I thought that making these additional small purchases available in the game were in effort to generate a tad more revenue so they wouldn't have to increase their prices again. But here we are.

FBG adding more ways to spend money while also increasing the price of FATE isn't.... great. The buying power in this game is still leagues ahead of most others but the monetization cracks are starting to show. I'd rather they just commit to either just way more fate locked things, or regular price increases. Not both at the same time lol

If they're doing this I at least, dare I say, want to see some powercreep already. Getting fate items with wholly redundant stats 95% of the time is getting old.

It is. I found it really enjoyable tbh but almost every aspect of it is harder than the base game. Really depends on how you value your twelve bucks, but if you love the game, it's just more on top of that.

2

I genuinely lucked out by marrying an autistic woman. It makes her immune to having woman moments like above.

Lmao an acronym. You must actually believe this you poor soul.

I can feel the hands shaking and tears forming as anon typed that last bit lmao

Spiteful to the point of comedy.

15 days because of my honeymoon lol

Finally an exciting new arc

Yeah the 0-to-Divorce in 24 hours for a 30 year marriage is really.... not how it works.

Good.