Sheikah

It's a shame that almost all debates must end this way Ronnie. If you think I'm equating death threats/destruction of property with people calling out industry bullshit then you don't know me very well. I do think Nintendo have made missteps here, and potentially more if they paywall too heavily. One thing to remember is that their service remains relatively unproven and still an unknown - I'm hoping that this means they don't enforce it hard as soon as it releases.

I bet you nodded your head in agreement at EA's "sense of pride and accomplishment" comment on Reddit. XDPeople's sense of standing up to industry bullshit is one of the better things to come from the gaming community in recent years.

It's confusing in the sense that there are many people who don't know Switch will go pay to play online. Maybe confusing isn't the right word, rather shocking. There are also those that have been playing it so long that they assume this is how it is now. Whatever Nintendo do there's going to be a shock/confusion either way. Selective pay to play is already a reality. Your nephew was confused when his Plus subscription ended but that would be immediately rectified when he tried to open the game, no? Either way, it's not a harmful thing to have some games not need a subscription. At best, some people that just want to play MK needn't pay an annual subscription if it remains free to play. At worst, they get "confused" and pay for a subscription that they didn't know they didn't actually need to carry on playing MK. In that case, they'd still be no worse off than if an online subscription had been required, since they'd still be paying out. There is literally no downside to the consumer for legacy games to be free. None at all!

I don't see how saying it's "anti-consumer" is contentious. If they restrict access to something previously accessible by paywalling then...hell yes that's an anti-consumer move. It's hardly a "pro" one, is it?

Most people are saying they don't see "how" they could do it or Nintendo will most likely not do it, rather than actually supporting it (which makes sense, given it's anti-consumer). The thing is, there's going to be confusion no matter what they do as people will be caught out one way or another. Either they paywall old games and people get caught out (as they inevitably will), or keep some old games free and people may be somewhat confused as to which games need online subscriptions. Though, given PS4 has plenty of free to play games (e.g. critical success Fortnite), I don't really see that as much of an issue. Nintendo should think about how often the carrot is better than the stick, particularly with a new service, as it's clear they're not fully decided on its implementation yet. Rather than the the stick approach of "pay or lose the access you once had", consider the "here's something cool we're giving you" approach (a la PS Plus at its inception).

When you start talking about "features" I can't help feel you are deliberately missing the point here. This is not about a hard choice between paid online (and the features that may bring) and free online (which may potentially be basic), which is the point you mostly just argued there. Rather, a choice between A) paid for online with free legacy game support versus B) totally paid for online. So far you have not justified why B) is preferable over A) in any way other than from Nintendo's naturally profit-guided perspective. There is no reason why any consumer should want to ask for some previously accessible content to be paywalled. In fact it is somewhat concerning to see that viewpoint held. With regards to a muddied message with "pick and choose" online, I can see nothing more muddied and confused than the people who will wake up one day to find their old games need a subscription to play now. No matter what Nintendo have done to publicise "what's coming" (very little IMO), lots of people will still be caught out regardless. What is better - confusion that benefits the consumer, or benefits Nintendo?

But when asked if you'd rather be greeted by a message telling you to pay if you want to continue playing MK online, you'd agree it's better for that message not to appear in the first place right? Because if you disagree with me on this one, you're basically saying you'd rather see that message appear than not appear. To me, that's like, crazy. Nobody so far has been able to justify this in any other terms than "it's good for Nintendo". The same company-sided justification can be used in defence of any publisher and microtransactions - always great for them, but bad for us. I'm not financially invested in those companies so...I'm not going to say something like "paywalling old content that doesn't need to paywalled is a good idea". I do find the "sense of entitlement" comment a little strange. A sense of entitlement of...the thing you've already been having for 18 months anyway? Never mind that those affected are people who invested in your console early on, who might deserve to carry on playing those games they bought, rather than asking them to pony up more cash. I personally don't see a muddied message at all - these were games released in the dark days as far as their online services went. Even if they add party chat at an OS-level with their new service, it would take considerable upgrades to MK for me to see the added value you're suddenly getting for the money if you're just casually playing MK now and then.

So you would prefer to load up Mario Kart and be asked to pay 20 dollars to continue playing online, versus paying nothing?

What I mean is that the whole situation is so ridiculous (charging for online partway through the console life) that there are no examples or indicators that we can reliably consult to figure out what Nintendo mean by this. Personally I think they were being vague at the time with their language to adapt a needed. I really think it would be odd (and anti-consumer) for them to charge so long after they released those games, but Nintendo being Nintendo it wouldn't surprise me if they do paywall everything.

Who knows what it means apart from Nintendo... In fact, maybe not even Nintendo right now.

It even says in your very image Ronnie that "most" games will require you to pay to play online, so it's not at all explicit in saying that previously "free" to play online games will now cost money. Also: "Exceptions may apply". I'm hoping they had enough foresight when they came up with that wording to see that it makes little consumer sense to do this.

But if you just want to carry on playing your game online that you were playing yesterday, you can no longer do it. It's just a very strange decision if they do that for games that will be 1.5 years old by that point.

Well the logic would be to not charge for something that you haven't been charging for for a good while. Going on this "logic", tell me the logic behind the reason for me having to pay 20 quid or whatever to carry on playing Mario Kart? What am I getting now that I wasn't getting before for this money? There is no case for logic here. Business logic sure, for them to make more money, but not for the consumer. If they're going to make new games with fully realised and implemented online elements then that would justify charging from that point, but to shoehorn in a tax to carry on playing Mario Kart after so long seems pretty absurd by me.

Roughly how many of those encounters end without you being pepper sprayed though?

Nope, that's what I'm saying. No company has done this before with their console. It's weird to me that you could have played a game for a year and a half online for free, then they suddenly want you to pay to carry on playing that (now somewhat old) game online.

The whole idea is ridiculous really. Have you ever heard of a company taking away free online from games that have had free online already for a year and a half?

Thanks much for doing this, really enjoyed reading through it.

Given I've already pumped about 120 hours into this game and I'm not really that close to finishing, starting a new game plus is about as appealing to me as taking a cheese grater to the face, but I can see how it will appeal to some.

Just about any monster will still fuck you up if you're using a potion and it suddenly targets you because it will outpace you by far. You're much better off trying to find a bush really.

You can only move fairly slowly (even while "running") after using a potion, and you still have to put away your weapon (other than sword and shield). Honestly though not sure how you could be against that, there's so many quality of life changes the archaic-feeling series desperately needed that this game brought with it. I'm super impressed with this game.

Fantastic, I remember a while back when some remarked that this would always be on handheld because of Japan. Great to see the game doing well as it's much better than the previous games. Been seeing this advertised on screens in London including outside Blackfriars station.

I went to a recording of an episode in the first series (the one with Bob Mortimer). It was pretty cool, but haven't really kept up with watching it.

Yeah I wish it was optional. There's just not enough there in terms of online multiplayer titles that warrant the cost for me, even though it does cost less than the others. There's also games like Smash which in my opinion have always been very poor online experiences. I should point out that I don't care for Splatoon either.

There are no microtransactions in this though.

Great headset, a lot of us on here have it.