1. last night when I was playing Fallout 4, I think I came to the conclusion to why the game bothers me so much yet I still play it.
It was playing Weathervane questline where have to do the same exact thing each time (get on top of high buildings) with more and more enemies ELVEN times and the reward you get for this tedious quest is... Nothing, not a single thing beside 150 caps which I can get anywhere and the quest giver flat out emitting they wasted your time.
It was that made me realize, most of this game feels like busy work to keep me distracted, most of the quests I have are radiant ones (repeatable ones with no impact to the story), the constant annoying settler stuff etc and or "kill everyone here" quests over and over again, mostly because anything more substantial then that is mediocre and hampered by the way the game minimized its dialogue system, lack of roleplaying and bad plot.
The characters are good for the most part, but they don't interact as often as I want and I can only bring one at a time (wish Bethesda would allow 2-4 followers at once).
It feels like when I'm playing Destiny, am I actually enjoying myself or is it my just playing out of sheer hope something better comes at some point?
2. I simply couldn't get into The Last of Us and found the opening predictable because Zombie works are so predicable.
3. Also, I considered saying a game series has modernized (aka, switched genres to one that is used by more games lately) the same way when people say a game series matured because it switched game genre, in a lot of case, it means you've made the game series feel more generic, it's rather meaningless and implies some game genres are worthy of less respect than others.
Also one of the reason publishers get into their heads that "Single player is dead!/Survival Horror is head!/Turn based combat is dead!").
Still think X-Com is the best example of this, the "Moderenized" game was panned and sold poorly, while the one that kept its genre sold well despite not being a "modern" or popular genre.
4. I've grown more and more a dislike for the competitive side of Fighting game and the "FGC". I'm sick of the elitist attitude, the want for WWE style "drama", the whole "CAUSAL will like anything, only WE can tell difference!" and this sheer disdain for anyone that isn't them or likes fighting game for more than just tournaments and online. I'm sick of Street Fighter fans thinking they have the right to make people feel miserable for not liking SFV, or MvC fans bud into every conversation to take their frustrations on everyone else because MvCI didn't make the cut for EVO or anything with the Melee v WiiU war.
And honestly, I'm sick of seeing more and more fighting games that had fine single player focused content getting stripped of that to be EVO worthy or Esports, isolating anyone that isn't interested in that. It killed Soul Calibur V (which makes me very hesitant about VI because I'm worried it will make the same mistake) and Dissidia Final Fantasy NT for me and I want to see more single player and less competitive mode (or at least a different type of competitive mode) in fighting games, it feels like it's a game genre that isn't able to explore and grow like others because it's devs and a small part of it's already not that big audience seems to be incapable of doing anything other than another competitive fighter rather than seeing what you can fully do with it and explore other possibilities.
5. The constant fan demands for cuts in Smash reminds me of this:
6. I believe the increased prominence in Hype culture is hurting fandom and causing more toxicity and extreme reactions. I've been thinking about for a few days now and now believe that the thing I hate a fandom, the whole "If you criticize something, you must hate it (regardless if you love/like the series or work)" is a result in this.
I believe the film/TV/Game companies need to realize this and learn to promote their work without needlessly creating zealots for said work (something we've seen to the extreme with stuff like No Man Sky, Zelda fandom multiple times, Star Wars etc). They need to promote their works, but also make it clear that toxicity isn't welcome from the start and not do stuff like over promise, baiting etc.
Fandom as a whole needs to learn what the difference between subjective and objective is, stop using aggregate sites like Metacritic and RT as the end all be all and need to learn to stop being jerks to each other and understand the criticism doesn't automatically hate, not liking one piece in a series doesn't mean hating the series and it's okay to like/dislike things others do.
And sites and news need to be more critical and not encourage or fuel the zealots and the Hype culture to such an extreme. Also make sure if you do reviews, have links to how their scores works and get moderators.
Also Aggregate sites need to emphasize more the individual reviews over the overall score because for example, not all 5/10 mean the same since their is no universal review system which the overall score doesn't show.
