Unrelated to the topic, but

led by a strictly limited physical collector’s release created with game preservation at its heart

This sentence is so funny. How is a limited edition made for people who want to pay extra and have shiny object on their shelves working towards game preservation in any form? It’s so funny when they try to play “here, have more disposable plastic and pay 50 extra bucks for it! I swear you’re ALSO doing it for a good cause!”

While I agree that @Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world’s data isn’t exactly correct in covering the percentage of games that can be played, their sentiment is not so random.

For example:

• Both the PS4 and the PS5 in the database you linked show that roughly 25-28% of games will require a patch to be played without “bugs that are either too severe or too many to provide a mostly flawless experience”. That is almost one game out of three that, without internet connection/dead servers, will live in an odd limbo in which you own a disc with unpatched/crude software. One out of ten will be useless plastic. In comparison, a GOG installer can be re-downloaded as soon as a game is patched, and you can store it away locally once again.
• Often, buying games at launch means you don’t have a complete package for the title, which nowadays comes in the form of DLCs and season passes. Those are not registered in any way onto the disc (naturally), and are only tied to your account. If Sony closes down services that check that you own such content, you don’t have access to it anymore.

One could argue that Sony’s going at great lengths to keep services alive; for example, the PS3 still lets you download and update content. One also can, however, easily imagine that there will be a day when such service is not considered profitable enough, since you soon won’t be able to buy games for it anymore. What then? Can we realistically expect Sony to keep servers and checks alive for a console that does not generate any new profit whatsoever? I honestly doubt so.

It’s a fantasy world! We’ve seen much worse, haven’t we?

They were already floating against bad publicity because of famous “anti-woke” streamers constantly giving them shit, this move sadly doesn’t help: I understand they wanted to shift away the focus from COE33 - after all, it got enough publicity as it stands.

But they could’ve taken so many different approaches; like, for example, instituting a different prize and move Clair Obscur to their own category (I don’t know, call it “shine of the year” or something), but CLEARLY state you are doing this in honor of Indie Awards core concept, which is to highlight less known games.

Calling out a very minimal and almost accidental usage of AI that has been patched out for months just to ban it out… meh.

You do have a point, there are things to do. But they’ve been the same four/five activities since ARR. Those activities don’t really require you to actually explore either, you only need to drop inside of the map (thanks to teleporting) and go straight to point xy. That’s it! The only thing requiring you to explore is the sightseeing log - an activity which very few players partake in without looking up a wiki.

It’s still my favorite mmo, don’t get me wrong! I just wish there was more unique content to each map in order to make worlds feel more alive in general, force more player to hop around instead of lingering around Limsa’s crystal while waiting for queue to pop.

100% agree. We’ve gone back and forth between dimensions and worlds, fought the strongest gods conceivable, yet the starting world itself feels mummified. I know solutions can’t be easy (as suggested by @Kronusdark on another comment) but imagine how immersive it’d actually feel.

Late to the comment section, but the game works pretty much on any distro, thanks to the XIVLauncher flatpak. I know the original launcher also works fine, but XIVL is such an improvement to the original, it really is worth trying out!

Used it on OpenSUSE, Fedora, Debian, you name it.