This is probably the most honest review I have seen, that points to gripes I would have playing through it, as opposed to the way other articles and videos have glossed over those very concerns I had while watching gameplay footage. Thanks for including it!

I heard animals in there, Ventura. I heard them again in there this morning, scratching around.

Oh shoot I knew I missed one! The battle pass is weapon is op and then we will nerf it just before the next battle pass drops, to ensure an OP/Nerf cycle to enforce you always have the newest battle pass and buy tiers and have more time than filthy grinders to abuse it’s OPness

Scrumptious Billabong

But not more effort than management put into ruining a game

The meme is because Skull and bones is so bad of a fumble, to also just fumble its name. I picked it up from some review but I can’t remember who it was. Dunkey? Ah too long ago.

To elaborate a bit more than just budget/marketing, AAA games used to be distinguished from AA titles. Modest mid level titles from a studio between tentpole releases that would pay your bills and didn’t break the company if they didn’t sell well. It also generally related to the price you would be expected to pay. These days a AA/Indie game is $40, and a AAA title is $60/70. The rise of AAAA is a self aggrandizing to try and justify slapping a higher pricetag on products.

A great example would be an excerpt from Activision in 2004. Doom 3 in August would be AAA, then in September a bunch of AA games - cod game “united offensive”, X-Men legends, Rome:total war, and Shark Tale. Then in October a AAA title with Tony Hawks underground 2.

And for $70 more you can play it 2 days early! For why? No fucking reason other than to flex! Gotta flex on those poors by getting it earlier than them amirite?? This ensures you will be invested in our product from the very start and you are the type of person who we can do no wrong.

And for $30 there’s 2 extra skins that are just the worst looking piles of shit. But again if you don’t have them how will you flex on the poors? This is lumped in with the earlier assurance that we can do no wrong in your eyes.

And the battle pass is $10 - every 30 days. It has nothing of value except at tier 150, which is a new flagrantly pay to win weapon. This ensures we own your time, every month.

But also we didn’t finish the game, instead we released a roadmap. We will scrap this roadmap a week and a half after the disastrous launch because the game sucks so my donkey dick we cannot possibly add content to the absolute bugfest of a game. This is an abuse of loyalty to our brand, but you’ve stated you don’t care as long as you get to play it.

Now that the game is out for a month, we’ve added a cash shop. This flies in the face of regulation on the box not indicating gambling elements, but fuck those stooges standing in the way of our profits! We can make a new box with the proper markings on them in a month. Surely you would like to buy a sword skin or character skin beyond looking like normal Mario right? Also there will be at least 1 skin that blends in with the background a little too well and attracts p2w allegations for the multiplayer mode. We don’t care and neither do you because you will buy it. You wanna be a winner right?

We noticed you’re already level 8, congratulations! We halved level reward drops, but increased rarity of those items by 30% but from here on we tripled enemy hp at every 10 levels to make sure the game is a slog, so you buy overpowered shit from the shop and battle pass.

You reached level 10 in only 5 hours? That’s amazing! How about a XP Booster? Like the above we actually made progression become ungodly slow after level 10 unless you pay us $35 for an XP booster - in a single player game. We will make sure this pops up every time you level up to remind you we intentionally slowed progression so you make this purchase.

Also we can’t help but notice you picked up a Fancy Locked Box. You can divert from the main quest to grind the crafting materials and it will take 6 hours to craft, OR you can buy a key for ONLY $5! This will pop up EVERY time you pick up a Locked Box with the option to go to the shop, and be SUPER disruptive, to get you to cave.

And lastly, a “donate” button on the main menu where you just give us money for nothing, because at this point why not right?

In a single player game no one should give a shit. Give yourself a million dollars. Mod in a gun that does 50,000 damage. A car that does 350mph.

It’s pvp where people notice/care you’re cheating

Every time. Seems more like companies aren’t “hit with” them at all, more like… They “get to participate” or “decide to indulge” in layoffs.

indulged in. When a company does not lay off people from the upper tier, they are indulging in layoffs.

“Hit with” implies an unavoidable, tragic, and forced event. They knew this would happen months ago when KTJL face planted. Videogame companies complain about the “cost of making games” but they’re the fucks what spent the money. Maybe spend less on your marketing and budget, and when a game doesn’t sell well it isn’t a cataclysmic event that sinks the whole company.

But really, if game companies weren’t constantly at risk to have implosions from bad decisions, the board wouldn’t get their “please don’t leave us” money. So really this always comes back to - fuck the management, and the board. Videogames are treated as products so here we are.

I’m not comfortable with that. 25,000 is $400 a month (5 years). But yeah trucks are ridiculous. People gotta be taking out 8-10 years to pay for those

The number in OP was $25k

For electric cars yes. (As opposed to the civic question). The reason I would posit is a culmination of my points. Companies love to over engineer these systems to justify high R&D to allow prices (and margins) to go up.

Manufacturing costs go down but also there is an increase in technology, fuel efficiency, and especially safety.

Not something you or I could answer, but are these costs truly matching inflation? In this era I am hard pressed to believe profits are still only 10% that is listed online.

No one is doing that. Just because it has the same name doesn’t mean it’s even remotely the same car as it was 20 years ago…

Many parts do the exact same stuff they used to. A radio head unit nowadays is the same head unit 3 and 5 years ago in a new shell. Bluetooth, USB, Apple/Android carplay, am/fm. And now they’re hooked up to the touchscreens. Why change what already works in a new facelift year, except for no reason other than to intentionally prevent parts from becoming commonplace. The rims I mentioned. No one will notice when buying a car if those rims were reused those 4 years.

Because backup cameras were mandated in 2016.

A friend owns a 2019 Ford Fiesta that has a backup camera on the installed screen that’s 5 inches tall to 6 inches wide. It’s incredibly minimalist and I know most people do enjoy an infotainment system now. That doesn’t change my point here that brands embraced putting an iPad in your car, and won’t give you buttons back because the ever increasing size screens are incredibly cheap compared to the radio/climate/headlight buttons you see people bemoaning they want back. It also feeds back to the “you can’t fix it yourself” problem that car brands have manufactured for consumers.

This might be hard to believe but 2005 was nearly 20 years ago…cars have improved in nearly every way possible, then add 20 years of inflation to that and it starts to sound like a good deal…

Comparison of all 3

Using an online inflation calculator shows the 2005 price inflating to 21,400, and the 2015 price inflating to 24,900. It would seem the civic is matching inflation. So, I’m wrong on how inflation has impacted the value of most cars, but that still doesn’t solve the problem that New cars aren’t being released for under $20,000 (stateside) anymore - and subsequently how much debt people have to sink into to buy New. Inflation has run what should just be a basic ass car into $24,000+

But my turnaround question would be does the cost to manufacture this car truly not fall? Is the manufacture cost also meeting inflation the way we found the MSRP has? Has manufacturing one truly remained at 90% MSRP? (A quick Google says profits are usually only 10%). If so, why? I understand facelifts and upgrades over the years but if you’ve been making the same “name” car that shares parts with itself through the years from 2005 till 2025, how are some of those parts not dirt ass cheap - because car brands are intentionally not reusing the parts. A great example is the 2012 and 2014 Chevy Sonic rims are the same. 2013 and 2015 are the same too. Why aren’t they they same across 4 years? Also why is the 2012 one a bolt pattern 5x105 - a size and pattern never used again or previously? Because fuck you, consumer, we needed them to be scarce so the price stays at $300 per rim. (Personal experience I had in 2017). A civic, and any other long life car model could be cheaper, but they’re not because car makers insist on convoluted systems and “innovation for innovation sake” so a new car is always full of new R&D they need to pay for.

Also cars are covered in touchscreens now. Do you know why - touchscreens are just a TV with a digitizer like your phone. And we have been making those for 20 years so they ARE cheap as dirt. Touchscreens are so popular in the face of consumers wanting buttons because they’re so cheap to put in and make a UI for. In fact the UI doesn’t even have to change, it just needs to look new every few years and anyone with some computer knowledge will tell you how far changing a jpg image for a button goes to fooling people you did a lot of work.

So they…don’t like profit? Because that also contradicts OP.

No, they made cars nearly unfixable to most mechanic shops and you, the consumer with computerisation/combining parts (climate controls are built into the radio unit on mustangs) and own the market on tools to fix their brand. Most Dealerships state parts/maintenance make big bucks. If your car is new enough Chevy and Dealerman are making bank by selling you, for example, a radio head unit that specifically fits around that climate control system, for $500 and then $70/hr in labor.

Not just the consumer, they also get to rake shops across the coals because they make parts that need a unique tool to access and then charge the shop $500 for the tool to prevent them getting their value out of its use. No shop will get $500 of use out of a cube tool that resets the brake caliper of a Kia Sedan in 2006, 2007, and 2008. So shops didn’t buy it. Where does that bring you but back to Kia Dealerships. (Or attempting it with needle nose pliers)

In our stage of capitalism, these arent even exceptions. 16k for a Versa. Is probably the best deal I’ve seen in forever, because almost no one makes sub $20,000 cars now. The last New cars I saw for that were economy cars (Sonic/fiesta/fit etc)

Weird, Nissan doesn’t have a problem selling Versas for $16k? Chevy doesn’t have a problem selling a Malibu for $25k? Honda doesn’t have a problem selling a Civic for $25k or an Accord for 28k?

Malibu used to be sub $20,000 new. (2008) Civics were $13-15,000 in 2005 brand new. These prices are outrageous for the amount of car you get by comparison. $25000 for a civic? It’s small and goes vroom. For 3,000 more you have an Accord! Compared to an Accord Civics have no storage, small legroom, an engine that makes them zippy for sure, but it’s not as if the Accord is a slouch. At this stage mpg is comparable.

And what happens to the customers who literally can’t afford the expensive models? There’s a lost sale for every one of them.

If you’re not interested in playing the game of taking on massive debt Then that’s fine - in their eyes you can keep buying used cars. For this type of person, they’ve fought so hard to make every car so unfixable to the average person. Parts and service departments are free to make a killing if you can’t fix it yourself.

For those that insist on buying dates models you CAN fix - You can forever own hand me downs with ghosts under the hood, gremlins in the electrical lines and odometers with 6 digits. It’s just a numbers game where eventually you will buy one that shits out way sooner than you can afford before your mentality suggests “maybe reaching deep on a CC and getting something with warranties wouldn’t be so bad?”

Not surprising, Journey to the West is really popular, and even western societies like Ancient Chinese mythos stories. Wukong and Nezha are probably the 2 most popular, if I had to guess. On top of this not surprising a Chinese publisher making a game about a Chinese mythos is doing well in China, when almost no one is competing in that regard so the market is hype for representation and seeing “their” story made into a playable game.

And Liches hide them very well. No one’s ever found the holy Grail, so this tracks

Any Reddit super moderator who survived the Rexodus bent the knee to Spez and did not maintain closures. They valued their stance as a moderator over others more than the shit getting pulled. He absolutely would have been present for those meetings and message rooms during that time. Anyone like that is not a friend of the average user of any platform.

Engagement go brrrt.

Number not go up?

Abandon ship to the next company where accountant promises number go up.