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Ahh happy birthday John!! Hope you had a great day and now looking forward to hearing what you're getting! 🥰🤗

Hope you had a great birthday @Tar-Eruntalion 🤗🥳

People that play Fortnite, Apex, Warzone and Overwatch would strongly disagree - these games have lifetime revenues of over £25bn and collectively they get probably close to 50m players each day still. Those games offer strong retention aspects, are constantly developed and are continuously giving people something to work towards. It's also better than players buying lootboxes or skins direct. Battle passes divided into seasons further gives people reason to continue or return and new stuff to work towards. Compare those highly successful games with Battlefield 2042 and Halo Inifnite which are both monumental brands with games that are absolutely dead and in crisis mode less than a year after releasing. These games offered no progression or things to keep people engaged with. It isn't 2009 still - many users these days especially younger gamers want more than to just rattle off 20 matches in a session and gain 7 levels like we all used to be happy with when COD was in its prime and deathmatch wasn't saturated. Overwatch when paid struck a great balance between gameplay and rewards which were an insanely popular progression factor but in the sequel, it may take months just to unlock one thing or cost £179 to complete the set which could've been earned for free when the game was paid. As Diablo Immortal proved, a game being free does not benefit the gamer - it just gives the illusion of generosity to hook people and then get a bigger ATV payoff on committed players who are future-paywalled. I'd rather have levels, unlocks and challenges plus more to focus on rather than just going from one disbanded lobby to another with sweatfest matchmaking. The more content the better and its a win for everybody. Epic know what they are doing 12 months in advance but companies like DICE, Blizzard and 343 just wing it and fall at the first hurdle.

The other month I changed to Virign Media Internet. I initially had 200mb/s but after speaking to them the other day I upgraded to 500mb/s (£8 month extra). I thought I'd see how good it was by downloading a large game. Which game? Why COD of course. Coz they know fuck all about compression apparently. Anyway, a 189GB download would only take an hour. An HOUR! What the fuck? I don't even know what the point of this post is. To brag maybe? To show I'm a nerd? Both I think.

Skins are shit. The only people that enjoy them are the people looking at you. Nothing changes in the game. As far as I'm concerned, make everything free to play and let the kids pay for my games, and I'll keep the stock skins.

Nero is always banging on about progression and giving players something to work towards. It's one of the reasons cold war got called boring. Imagine gran tourismo without a way to earn cars in-game even if it was free would people defend that? It's one of the reasons people want the old prestige system back in cod. It's also one reason people hate sbmm because they get nothing for participating or doing well. One thing is certain these days companies know they can get away with this type of shit because enough people will still throw money at the screen.

That's cute.

Whether people like it or not, engagement features such as unlocks and challenges that equate to progression and gives rewards is what delivers retention and keeps games sustainable. Every deathmatch shooter that has failed to deliver this aspect in the last 10 years has been literally dead within a year. This isn’t 2012 where levelling is merely enough to satisfy longevity through core gameplay. If Fortnite didn’t offer it’s range of awards then it would be as dead as every other Battle Royale right now. Even Overwatch 2 premium owners are being shafted for content under the guise of the game being free which is a stark comparison to what the original offered throughout its entire duration. Games that fumble their monetisation model right off the bat also usually fail pitifully within the first 12 months. Just because something is free doesn’t make it a gesture to the gamers either - as always there is a far greater income model in place and it’s always at the true expense of gameplay or progression elements. I couldn’t give a toss about skins but a game needs to have elements that maintain interest especially in heavily saturated brands. COD games for the past 9 years have almost exclusively been on life support come January so there has to be more to games than just the gameplay itself as Halo Infinite has demonstrated.

Seems like they really killed the progression system in Overwatch 2 - this was the best part of the original game where not only did you play and enjoy the game, you had lots to work towards without spending a penny. Games these days are all just divided into seasons and purchasable battle passes for maximum profit. At least in COD there's still (just) enough meat in the game for standard owners but F2P users in OW2 may as well not even bother with what's on offer. Literally killed the very thing that oozed retention. Basic deathmatch with nothing much to play for does not wash these days and Halo Infinite proved if you have absolutely nothing more to offer outside the shooting in terms of progression and awards, you will lose 95% of your playerbase within 1 year and destroy you brand once and for all. I don't even Blizzard have done it to entice premium owners - it's just pure laziness on their part and a lack of forward planning. It will come to bite and this game will probably lose half its players come the end of he month.

I was going to put up more examples of great Chris' but it could go on forever. Currently it's a 52-48 split. Which was somehow good enough to give us fucking Brexit but isn't a big enough majority either way. So, in the interests of not dragging this on, let's just agree that both are good names. However, Lee is a REALLY shit name. I feel sorry anybody called that.

I think the issue is the continuing console shortage issue means it's just not worth making a game solely for the new consoles. Publishers simply aren't willing to the lose the amount of sales from making games cross gen. Unfortunately I think it'll be another year before we start getting true next gen games.

I might upgrade again just so I can beat that 🤷‍♂️

That's not a fair comparison, it's more akin to Gran Turismo without being able to change your paint job. In which case, yes I would still buy and defend it. I can say this definitively because most PC racing sims have all the cars unlocked, a few liveries which you can't add to or get more, and no progression because there's no credits or whatever to earn like Gran Turismo as there's no need to buy cars. The "progression" is simply your stats screen of how many races you've entered, how many pole positions, fastest laps, wins etc. For the record, I'm not defending the business practice itself just arguing against there being no value to the game because you can't unlock some shitty cosmetic skins, emotes or stickers that you'll never use anyway. Put it this way, when you go to the cinema do you go to enjoy the film or do you go just because they give you a sticker after the film? I going to assume they don't give you a sticker for attending the cinema but, if they did, would it really make it a better experience?

and here I am satisfied that I now have a 100/10 up/down internet and not the barely 8/1 I had less than a year ago😀 it's so great though and most of the time I am waiting for the game hdd to finish writing

I don't care about the voices. The cgi-animation is outstanding.

thank you Lee @GazzaGarratt, I will make a post in my ppr probably the next week cause I may have two pieces of good news to share, fingers crossed that all things will go well!!!

What?! There's a whole game for free on offer but let's focus on the fact there's no "progression" to collect useless cosmetic items. I find it even funnier given the "progression" in OW1 was non-existent too (compared to games such as CoD, for example).

thank you @phil bottle it was alright, but the real present is in a few days, I am so excited for it😁

Yep, totally agree. Couldn't give two fucks about cosmetics, has zero bearing on the game and that's fine by me 😁

Am I the only that just doesn’t care? I am honestly struggling to understand why people are getting so wound up over the price of cosmetic items. If you don’t like the price, here’s a novel idea, don’t buy any skins. Do people really care that much about what their character looks like? I’m here to play a game, not look in the mirror. If that game comes for free then I’m all for it and am happy to enjoy the game even if I’m in default skins because it’s exactly the same game as people who do spend money on it.

Seems all in the garden isn't rosy

The current government and Conservative party are basically just a Brexit cult. Truss is just another puppet and until we get shot of them we can never have a serious discussion about how Brexit is fucking this country.

It was a good race, annoying to have messed up so I couldn't see my fuel as it hampered how fast I could go though thanks to Lee and you battling, taking each other off and getting penalties did make it much easier. Willow springs is always a good race as that last corner is a pain! The few times I've raced it for the cafe books/circuit experience it seems harder on 7 than sport. Maybe I just need more practise 😄

Great races last week. Congrats to @Greboth winning the first league race, despite fuel saving and not knowing how much fuel he had left🤗 1. Greboth 2. Philly 3. Leeeeeeeeeeigh 4. Mike 5. CBA I think Tom has shown a big improvement and with some practice I'll be looking over my shoulder... Lee made up for Mike's lazy attitude in not shunting me off, by shunting me off. Although tyre choice kind of messed up Mike's race...get a grip @Mikepjbell 🙈 Hopefully @Bluebear has enough credits to get Gr.3 and Gr.4 cars, although the PP race at the end of the night was a lot of fun in crappy cars. I'll put up this week's race in the calendar shortly, Willow Springs.

Dead on. As long as the MTs are cosmetic, I don't give a flying fuck.

To be fair, calling them crazy is letting them off the hook. They're the mercenaries of the rich, not the british public, and I call them criminals.

thank you @Riff Machine , @IRaMPaGe and @slamminbones for your wishes!!!

Happy birthday @Tar-Eruntalion

Happy Birthday John, @Tar-Eruntalion hope you have a wonderful day mate.