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Saw some interesting news that not long after their latest DLC has just come out, they've confirmed the game will have no more updates and make the latest DLC free to play. That means a curtain will call at some point in 2026 or 2027 surely. Mad to think its been out for 5ish years or more and its not had enough backing to finally be turned off at some point soon. Hard to take on a WoW alternative game these days.

Given I have two kids, I have the following which I have streamlined now as used to have quite a few more over the years. I look out for the cheapest packages where possible. - Netflix (Basic package with 2 screens and ads. £5.99) - Disney Plus (Basic package with ads. £4.99) - Spotify (Family package for all of us £19.99) - Amazon (Prime for quick parcel deliveries which also gives you Prime Video. £8.99) - Sky TV (This is luxury one. We have sports and movies as sports is on 24/7 virtually all the time and Dax will watch some movies with us. Currently £70. This depends on what they do for existing customers, although frustratingly gives new customers for about £30-40. Been with them for 17 years) Its a funny one subscriptions. I really do dislike them, but what I try and do as you can see is play the system for what it is. Ads don't last long and we use them as loo breaks or to get a cuppa. £5 sometimes doesn't even get you a coffee in todays world. If I needed to, we'd drop Sky too if money became the most urgent issue in our house. Playstation I don't class as a sub, even though it is. Always paid the annual basic one to play online. Anywhere between £40-60 once a year. We shouldn't need to, but at least I get my money's worth with this one too.

Subscriptions are unviable for both the consumer and the content publisher in most cases. I have zero and if I see something I want to watch, play or listen to, I will buy it outright if it's worth the money and that way everyone gets paid a fair price. The likes of Spotify have bloated in the music industry so much so, talent is becoming buried and some artists barely get paid £90 for 50,000 plays. Even top artists have reportedly only seen about $1500 after deductions whilst reaching 1m listens to a song. We already know what a shambles Microsoft have made of their Game Pass in killing most of their in-house developers and reducing income to laughable levels, all in the aim of trying to take a slice out of Sony. TV is probably the most attractive form of subscription but that's riddled with bloat between services and content. You can spend more time trying to find something to watch than actually watching. The Xbox subscription will cost $360 for a year next month and if people are also paying $150 for music and another $150-300 on TV and retail subscriptions then it tots up to huge levels of expenditure for consumable products you don't own and wont be able to revisit. I can't support streaming as a concept or the damage it does to the 'small people' aka developers and musicians who don't have much of a choice but to go down this route and see income potential crumbling to laughably low levels. The likes of Microsoft and Spotify will never reveal the income dividends which says it all.

Okay, so I have to admit, MOST of the maps I really do like. I equally like that the capture points are slightly different with each game mode. The only ones I've struggled with which seem to be consistent with others online are the 2 desert ones. I think its down to the sheer scale of how open it is, coupled with how bright you stand out when running from one control point to the other. You can see how vehicles can really help dictate how well you do on these maps. On the 2 new maps incoming - I've only played Black desert one. The lighting on this with the sunsetting looks cool but has annoyed me in parts as I think you stand out in certain places to the enemy. Needs a few more plays to see how it really feels. The other one looks similar to what Battle Royale is based on and the buildings on that work really well for cover so that looks promising. My best maps are hard to separate. Manhattan Bridge, with C on top of the building that can get continually destroyed is cool. I think that's up there with Siege of Cairo and Iberian Offensive. Cairo is really cool finding different ways to flank the opposition whilst tanks always converge through the map on to C. Thoughts all?

I think I am similar to James in that none really stand out apart from the god awful firestorm map, why they thought that was the one to bring back I have no idea and I think they really missed a trick in that they should have made the central tower fully destructable. I think I lean towards the siege of Cairo as my current favourite as the destruction is really good and there is plenty on that map. On the point above I thought they had said they were already exploring naval maps or have them in mind for future release? I will say if you compare them to maps in BF1 or V I think they still have a way to go with this game and you can certainly feel the COD elements that have been brought over with the current people in the design process, not necassarily to the benefit of the game either.

Doesn't surprise me sadly. Games like these need consistent and clear development and they need to get decisions correct from the get-go. When you piss players off early on, lose a huge chunk of them and then spend the next two years trying to recover to a small population, it's kinda game over really.

There's no real standout maps for me but the larger New York one is quite good. The rest are all pretty meh in Battlefield terms and even the two bigger ones are pretty small and rather bland. You compare these to the staggeringly detailed and carefully scaled and constructed ones from from older titles - even BFV, and they are very plain and compact in comparison. Sure, you can get into gunfights aplenty but that isn't what this series is all about and you can tell from interviews that the developers are petrified of modern gamers getting bored because they aren't in a firefight every 15 seconds. Flags also change hands so often that even conquest has become arcade domination. You look at the Sobek City map compared to the Gulf of Oman one and it's pretty embarrassing in comparison. No naval maps is absolutely criminal also. I don't think there is a truly terrible one aside from the new one oil released in season one, as they are all playable to what Battlefield has become in its design philosophy, but there's is zero that radically changes how matches play and in the roles you choose. The watered-down Operation Firestorm is another huge showcase of how inferior maps can be in the wrong design hands.

I am praying its as good as the first series. A great watch.

Frankie back on DayZ. Not been on for a while myself so I finally shut down the private server. Might jump on again over the winter months and see if there's any community servers. The one featured here is very heavily modded

Dishonored (2012) This game is pure art still and timeless

I don't watch enough TV to justify a subscription, so I don't subscribe any more, I used to do Netflix, Amazon, Disney and NowTV. I may do Disney Plus just for a month at some point over the winter just to binge watch the Alien series and possibly Andor. Plus Amazon for the next instalment of Fallout. BBC iPlayer stays as i do pay the licence fee lol. Anyway, I've a mate who pirates everything and he'll download stuff for me if I ask him to, i'm too lazy 🫠 Music-wise I'm probably going to drop Spotify, I get most music from YouTube lately, plus i found out recently the Spotify CEO Daniel Ek invests heavily in military AI and don't really want to support that kind of shit behaviour. Game-wise I'll stick with GamePass until the fee goes up, as I do use it but won't really miss it if I stop.

So I am giving this thread a nudge because spotify are increasing their price again, this is happening a lot with a lot of the streaming services at the moment, regular price increases and I don't think it will be long before we are being asked to pay £20 a month for music streaming. At what point does it begin to become unviable for the average person? I could afford a number of subscriptions however I am at the point now where I am regining them back in because if I enjoy and rely on them too much now then in 10 years time it may be a whole lot more difficult to draw myself back when prices are higher. So how many subscriptions do people have? Do you limit them to games or do you have games, music, multiple tv subscriptions too?

Drops on Thursday and I'll be playing on Steam 😘

Ah good old Frankie, the whole reason I have about 3k hours on dayz on the ps5 was watching his vids all the way back when it was just an arma 2 mod. Sadly most of his stuff was scripted back in the day, was still entertaining though

PS5 release is imminent, and i highly recommend, particularly as they recently added night vision.

Two new maps it seems

Season 1 trailer

Bob Mortimer national treasure 🤣

Yeah I'll be picking this up, it played decent on PC for me in the first playtest so I think that's where I'll go for it. Tough game and yeah, although its 3rd person it reminds one a lot of Tarkov as it's essentially an extraction shooter.

New map preview 🙂

I did give it a try and if you like tarkov I think you will quite enjoy this as it has the same sort of atmospheric vibe, it's great visually. Think my only downside is that the game is played in raids as far as I can see so you sort of start at a hub, buy things, craft things etc and then move into a round, find a load of stuff and leave again. The gameplay is great and some of the bots are genuinely scary to come up against.

So, this,game finally drops on 30 October, there was a playtest this weekend but I missed it. For certain this will be my next purchase, just have to decide whether its PC or PS5

I've watched several reviews now and sadly this has gone from a day one purchase to maybe when deeply discounted in a sale, which is a shame. Seems its more an action adventure than a RPG. What a pity. At least my modded standalone version of the original is still playable. Modern RPG-wise I may finally pick up Dragons Dogma 2 but will see.

Fascinating look at Microsoft's doomed 2013 Xbox One reveal and how it essentially destroyed the brand for the foreseeable. It retrospect, it's truly astonishing how they managed to screw it up so badly.

Retro means terrible cable management 🤪 I'd say my favourite retro console is the SNES, although the Commodore 64 runs it close with games like Way of the Exploding Fist, Impossible Mission, Spy v Spy, Bruce Lee and so many other classics. Nice collection man 🙂

I get that but regardless he's not wrong we pay more money for less things, things that made the series great. I also think these days we've been given so many crap products we are happy with things being mediocre. It's a shame that as a franchise, much like CoD it's best years and games are behind it.

when you reach 999 999 on tetris

The game is ok, it's nowhere near peak bf imo and when you get someone to actually list what's missing etc you can kind of see why there's reasonable criticism.

Finally reached level 30 and I still got it😎 May have a look at the campaign tomorrow.

I bought the digital copy because game share effectively halves the price. Not played it yet, but looking forward to getting a regular squad.

I've seen Shipment is already up in Portal lol @Luseth I've only been playing the campaign so far but I'll try multiplayer once I'm done with that.

Ooh I never came across Soccer Rivals, or anyone with an Amstrad tbf, but I'll look this up now 🙂

I am having a lot of fun with this game, it's not quite old Battlefield but it's got some of the good aspects of it. Firestorm is one of my least enjoyed maps purely because of the snipers sitting on the fekkin tower. I think they should increase the bullet drop on sniper's to add some more skill to them and that would probably help resolve my gripes with it. Generally the maps are pretty good, I really like Manhattan with the bridge and generally the gameplay is pretty good, I am finishing in the top 4 or 5 spaces most matches so I haven't lost my edge with the Battlefield games which is always a plus. I have not used tanks as much as I did on the past few games either. I think you can see a lot of COD players on the game, the way they move, the lack of utilising the classes, videos online moaning about mines and such and there is often a lack of thinking about how you play, understanding that taking bases closer to enemy HQ in some game modes pulls enemies towards them allowing your team to recapture bases and such. In addition I have also been playing with map editor, it's a bit fiddly but I am getting used to it and despite it's crudeness in terms of just plonking objects down I had my first map published last night so I can now host it in portal. I have every intention to try and create some smaller COD influenced maps just for FG use and maybe we could get them going on FG Friday's if anyone's interested?

I grabbed this in the end and they made some good changes since the beta. It's been quite an enjoyable weekend with no real server problems or any major complaints. Not sure how much staying power the game will have with this pool of maps but there is just about enough content and stuff to do. The progression and unlock system is a carbon-copy of Call of Duty and the gunplay seems a mix of COD and BF. This is definitely the easiest Battlefield game I have ever played and any experienced FPS player will absolutely shred most of the time. The maps are all decent enough but the bigger ones really shine. The New York ones are decent too and hopefully we'll see naval and more snow ones coming up. Operation Firestorm feels off though and a bit unbalanced which is a shame though. Game runs pretty well which is a bonus too!

My current stats in Tarkov, these are my main character stats i.e. my PMC named Makhno, who is the BEAR faction. I've been playing on and off since alpha (back in 2018 I think) but the last few months it's been my main game. I do also play as a Scav but I use that character as a loot collector and that's another 100 raids on top of this, which has a slightly better survival rate but lower KD.

I can confirm that there is no griefing on our server. I saw a few folks in one common area, from other private servers. Game feels great, they also just launched roadmap as outlined below.

I loved the first season, so Fallout season 2 will hopefully be just as good. With it involving New Vegas and rumours of a remaster to what many feel was the best FO game, bring it on please : )

I played far fewer games the second weekend as I was away for most of it, I had a couple of games on the Sunday though, excuse the snippet but it would not save properly on my phone for some reason.

Missed the first weekend but made up for it the second weekend. Stats aren’t too shabby either.