PunchingWood

Games don't need to be PS5 exclusive to be PS5 Pro enhanced.

Or they gonna introduce GPU attachments instead of the disc drive lmao

But seriously, it's beyond sad how awful this "upgrade" is. First it's an insane price for minimal upgrade, there are no new games to even make use of this, and now even older games can't properly make use of the better hardware. The whole reason to even upgrade diminishes really quickly, and it wasn't even worth it in the first place.

Although it's kinda funny to read about people who bought the Pro and then share negative reviews how so-not-worth the purchase was. Listing all kinds of negatives that they could've known prior to buying one if they put in even minimal effort to research.

Feels like the Steam community groups and discussions are so massive that it's going to be an impossible job to start managing it now, unless they just nuke the entire thing and start over.

I've also mostly enjoyed online multiplayer games, but I play a bit of everything. I think these are the games I've played most in order it must be:

World of WarCraft - Been at it since a year or so after it originally launched. Played a lot of Guild Wars 1 before that, and also lots of other MMO games before and in between, but WoW is the one I always keep coming back to. Longest break must've been like 6-7 years around the Cataclysm expansion, and then back at it at the end of Legion. It's on the back burner now again because of another mediocre expansion, but I still check it out occasionally. I think I must've sank at least 5000+ hours (probably way more) into this game over the past 20 years.

Elite Dangerous - Been backing it since Kickstarter, had high hoped for the game and it was fun while it lasted. But I lost all hope in Frontier in managing this game. They're only focusing heavily on microtransactions, currencies and paid early access content now. Must've been about 1500-2500 hours or something, but I've been out of this one for a couple of years now. I had high hopes for the future of this game, but Frontier is a master of promising glory and delivering disappointment.

Squad - Last, but certainly not least for me, around 1400 hours playtime (including the testing branch client). Got into this game right when it launched into early access on Steam. Was very tired of the themepark rides that Battlefield and CoD were turning into, but didn't want to commit to Arma's milsim style either. Squad fits in between perfectly. Also one of the greatest game communities I've got the pleasure to be playing with, never had so much fun with completely random strangers. The mandatory voice-chat really ties it together to create amazing and fun moments. This game really taught me that voice chat in games can actually be good, and not just kids spitting insults.

That said, I have a lot of games on multiple platforms, that I usually won't ever hit a 1000+ hour mark on most of them anyway. Like I played Witcher 3 twice (and a half I think). But that's like only 150 hours or so total. And this year's favorite has been Helldivers 2 by far, but that's only been almost 300 hours so far.

It's definitely a generational thing, aside from people being completely focused on achievements and run around with a go-go-go mentality that everything must be achieved as fast as possible.

I personally only use Discord for talking to friends in voice chat though. I absolutely hate how most communities it's barely anything more than Twitch chats where the feeds go faster than you can read and it still feels like talking into a void. At least in most Discord channels I've been, you can't really have discussions. Not unless you have smaller groups that aren't a rotating door of people coming and going.

I've played WoW basically since it ever came out like 19/20 years ago, just after Guild Wars 1 and among many other MMOs for shorter times. And communication in MMORPGs has definitely been a lot better back in the days, or at least felt more engaged than it does now. Now it's often been difficult to get people to talk, even after like a good dungeon run people will often just leave without having said an entire word the entire dungeon. It's not as chatty as it used to be back in the days, and a lot of people are the toxic type that only respond when something goes wrong.

I think your best bet would be to join guilds in these games. I used to be in great guilds as well, where everyone could talk to each other in guild chat, but it kinda devolved into an alternative looking-for-group chat over the years since most guilds just invite anyone to get the guild bonusses and have easier access to people wanting to do raids and dungeons and stuff.

Guilds often don't feel like the band of friends they used to be, and more like a collection of people doing the same type of content. It's like most players just treat MMO games like a second job, they log in, do their chores, and log off again. But you can get lucky and run into a great guild that's more casual, it heavily depends on the game and servers though.

In the past years I found that local chat is mostly used by roleplayers, WoW has a few servers where a lot of roleplayers flock to, and it really helped make the world feel alive as well. As for everyday non-RP chat, it just feels like most MMO games turned into a singleplayer game where you run around doing your own thing, with a lot of other people that are also playing their own game.

I do think that free-to-play games are worse when it comes to communication though, since anyone can hop in, and it often attracts the most toxic entitled people. The paywall with games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy Online definitely help filter out the majority of them though.

On a side note, I often play shooters as well. And I really hated voice chat in basically all of them, since most of them were just kids screaming vile things about mothers and what not, so I just ended up turning it off. Eventually I started playing Squad, which is a more serious Battlefield type of game with voice chat that attracts a more mature audience. At first I was a bit hesitant to use voice chat at all, but now I absolutely love talking with random players and couldn't imagine the game without voice chat, most fun I've had with complete strangers in any game.

Sometimes it's just a step to get over, and it gets easier. It's worth giving it a shot in the games you play, but I would say it's more likely to have a better experience outside of free-to-play games since there's a lower chance of running into toxic players ruining the vibe.

I bet it's a major reason why they decided to drop it.

Unless they'd pair it with a new game. Wasn't the last one over 10 years ago?

Oh well, can't be disappointed about something I didn't even know was in the works lol

Imagine tripping in the water with that thing on

Nah it's a long way from dying, I doubt it will ever go under in the foreseeable future anyway.

People are constantly announcing their departures from X and make a whole show about it. Only to come back after a couple of days or weeks.

To be fair, everyone except for 4 other drivers on the grid has less than half of Max lol