The way the perk cards works screams lootcrates to me as well.
I'm convinced they pulled them after Battlefront-gate. Would have been crates and crates of ammo, materials and crap cosmetics you don't want all to get a perk card that may not even be the one you want.
It's too similar to Battlefront's structure not to have been the case.

Mikemsp wrote:

What’s the betting that the new space game still uses a tweaked version of the same engine they’ve used since oblivion Morrowind?

FTFY.

True, but they can't even be arsed to implement fixes modders have achieved.

The creakiness of the engine is a strange one. Here's a video from a few days ago, with a guy who although his presentation style may grate, has some stuff to say about Bethesda and their use of the Gamebryo engine. I found the whole thing to be quite interesting. 

Most big companies are using the same engine they've used for a long time (I think Red Dead 2 is technically the same engine as GTA 4) but the problem is that Bethesda don't seem to be actually iterating and improving theirs. It doesn't look like they've done much (or anything) to the core rendering tech and they obviously haven't spent time to plug the logic holes that cause the bugs that are in all their games.

Unless they do a massive overhaul for the new Elder Scrolls they are going to be an absolute laughing stock. Even more so than now because I'm guessing it'll be out around the same time at Cyberpunk and considering F76 looks worse than the Witcher 3 they're just going to keep falling further and further behind.

What's that, then?

Ah, thanks.

Good for them?

I dunno you gotta hand it to them for spinning out a headline into 10 ad friendly minutes of youtube content, can't be easy.

By which I mean it can and the weird industry supporting grown men sitting around whining about videogames, and by extension most of youtube, is fucking dumb.

You don't need to look far for the boardgame ones or Warhammer ones, they already exist. People melted their old armies when GW announced the original AoS rulset, and Bell of Lost Souls does healthy traffic by claiming that GW is the devil every week whilst also happily reblogging every piece of news GW put out.

I don't think there's an issue with consumer advocacy in and of itself, I just think some of the ways it is handled by the internet is ridiculous. This whole bag thing is a proper storm in a teacup issue. One which Bethesda could have handled much better, but I also bet they're happy it's front and centre as opposed to there being another weak of reporting on quite how shoddy the game itself is.

I think this has been a weird little microcosm issue all told, an overpriced collectors edition came with all the tat but dropped the ball on the bag, then Bethesda customer service fumbled the response, then a different bag was given to influencers, now they're fixing it. All along the way there's a week of free news for everyone involved.

I'm being cynical I know. I am glad the people got their bags, I just think the whole news cycle is exhausting.

@tempy
It definitely gains momentum., unfortunately that's a thing with most of youtube. People see something getting hits and imitate. There's a whole raft of them that think they are dunkey.

The bag thing wouldn't have kicked off without the rest of the shit surrounding this game, but that again is all media. A big story lands and related or similar stories get published.

LivDiv wrote:

@tempy It definitely gains momentum., unfortunately that's a thing with most of youtube. People see something getting hits and imitate. There's a whole raft of them that think they are dunkey. The bag thing wouldn't have kicked off without the rest of the shit surrounding this game, but that again is all media. A big story lands and related or similar stories get published.

I used to quite like Sterling but I ended up finding him really grating, and he's the best of a bad bunch. I enjoy his wrestling schtick though, that's all quite knowing.

It's a total tangent to this whole kerfuffle (or as Eurogamer punned, Kerduffel) but I really dislike the new wave of personality driven enthusiast press/youtube. Even as a huge advocate for a variety of youtube channels, it's hard not to get disenfranchised when they're raking in a decent Patreon wage to push out a handful of videos a month, and then they cash that popularity in to make more money playing games on twitch or whatever.

Probably the wrong thread for this, the Bag thing has just been kind of insane to me really.

Good for you?

Is there nobody complaining that they coughed up two hundred quid for a plastic space helmet? Who gives a fuck about a bag?

Kow wrote:

Is there nobody complaining that they coughed up two hundred quid for a plastic space helmet? Who gives a fuck about a bag?

I suspect that would have been the general reaction without all the other controversy.
Still, false advertising is false advertising.

They were really put to task in a GameCentral interview a few years ago when Fallout 4 was released - the general gist was 'why don't you at least employ or hire third-party tech to cover stuff like facial animations?'  (which have always been ghastly in their games).  They dismissed the question with development double-speak.  Bethesda always got a free pass on how their games looked, because their open worlds were so mesmerizing, but that ain't the case no more.