Topic: Your Latest PlayStation 5 Purchase

@GirlVersusGame I think my time with Elden Ring was around the 400+ hour mark, with another 100+ hours for the expansion.

The only game that comes close to that level of exploration and freedom for me is Zelda Breath of the Wild. That is the only game I played extensively on Switch. It has almost been gathering dust since.

@GirlVersusGame You’re welcome and I’m happy that it helped clarify. I’m no expert, but here in the States it’s a hot topic. I think there’s similar situations in England, but we’re a bit worse with the pendulum swinging back and forth between the two extremes. The current administration is ultra conservative so there’s been a lot of ‘anti-DEI’ sentiment. The leadership doesn’t reflect the opinion of the people though, so it’s quite a mess. I really should just leave it at that because the topic is a quagmire that is best avoided. If you really want more info then just let me know over on the chit chat thread and I can try to give a few basics, but I think you said it perfectly — “Agendas are too overwhelming”. My opinion is that it’s important to be informed but that the agenda driven discourse is a monster that is difficult to tame. I do try to be moderate and balanced though, and I’m one of just a few Americans on here so if I can help, then let me know.

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And with that, I now turn this thread over to its regular discussion —

@JohnnyShoulder That’s a remarkable amount of time spent with Elden Ring. I’m setting my record with Baldur’s Gate 3, and I anticipate I’ll hit 300-350 hours by the end and I feel ashamed the game has taken me that long. I’m honestly scared to try Elden Ring now.

On the subject of purchases, what percentage of your playtime over the last year or so has been on purchased games vs PS+ games? For me it’s about 70/30 with the majority of time spent with purchases. However, the number of games I play from PS+ is almost 50/50 because most of the games I play from PS+ are shorter and indie types of games (Sword of the Sea, Lost Records, etc), while my purchased games are the big ones (BG3, Star Wars Outlaws, etc)

@JohnnyShoulder Did you try many playthroughs of Elden Ring? My first one was magic, it made the game a little too easy. Then I went back and tried prayers and used them for when I was summoned into other peoples worlds. Everyone said to use blood swords, I don't think I ever did. It was solo though so I did use the mimic tear. I forgot there was an expansion, I need to play it eventually. The last big one for me was Cyberpunk, I went through every ending, also Abiotic Factor. I feel like a lot of people skipped that game because they thought it was some tedious survival game. They missed out if they did, that was Plus+ too and I'd never have heard of it otherwise.

I'm scrolling through now to see what I played last year. Oblivion is only down as two hundred hours, Palword ninety, Ark two fifty, Harry Potter sixty, and everything else seems to be an Indie. Maybe I'd played more open world games on PS4. I wonder how accurate the times are, both Killer Frequency and Viewfinder say twelve hours. Elden Ring says three years ago at six hundred and thirty eight hours. Platinum was the twenty eighth of March 2022. It's hard to believe it was that long ago, Forbidden West too, It feels like that was last year.

It feels really strange holding a controller after a month, the sticks feel odd. It looks like I missed the star for my Christmas tree in Satisfactory too. Someone logged into my account to collect some gifts so I could craft the tree, I have some lights for it at least. Maybe I can use a light on a pole, same effect. It's not all that bad looking even without the star. The building in the first picture is what I'm making to store my materials. There are too many containers everywhere. Instead I'm having conveyors belts run straight into it from all over the map. It's linked to maybe fifteen more factories, that was a lot of audio-books. That's the thing about forever games, they create a backlog because their very nature means you won't ever stop playing them. I should be trying a new game but I know ten thousand other things I need to do in this one.

I need to unlock more paint palettes too. It's very orange. The tree looks pretty good at day-time.

That's the last thing I built before we left. Those black pipes should be giving off a lot of the big smoke you mentioned. My console was left on for days so all of my production lines hit maximum capacity and because the new materials had no where to go my power grid was less stressed, so no smoke. It doesn't look like anything on the grid is consuming power, which is a good problem to have. The last time I blew the grid I had to go and find the breakers to turn it back on, it probably took an hour. I need to move away from coal, maybe onto oil, I'm hundreds of hours away from nuclear power. Maybe even further.

@Th3solution I saw pretty much everything the game had too offer I believe, but didn't get the platinum as it requires multiple play throughs/save scumming.

I'm the other way round, I think I only purchased 3 or 4 games last year (all on sale and only one full priced game on or near launch) plus a couple of 2nd hand games using store credit. I think I played 30 or so games last year, so the rest was through PS Plus.

@JohnnyShoulder I have to catch up on Minecraft too. I've almost built the entire Isle of Dogs. What I do is virtually travel down the street/city and build everything I see. And try to get it as accurate as possible. That's almost at the edge. If I started building to the right I'll be in Greenwich, I'm not looking forward to building the Millennium Dome. I'll probably design and build it on my PC server then patch it into the PS5. I might just keep going North into Marsh Wall and further into Black Wall. I want to build Hackney too but that's probably a few years away. I considered going further South and building Brixton. I've only seen it on Netflix, it might be an interesting build.

@Tjuz Which reminds me. I built a Pride wall into my city/London after first talking to you. I think it worked out well. I like the added colour and assume I got it right. I buy and hack things into the game to improve build quality, everything by default is square and dull. I added maybe five thousand extra pieces. Colours especially, now I have a reason to use them.

I learn a lot about the history as I build too. Especially if it's something commercial or a like a pub, I want to know what I'm building. Then if they do altar or remove something in real life (London is always changing) I copy the original and move it aside for preservation purposes. Sometimes I email historians too, they provide a lot of old pictures. Maybe one day I'll build parts of the city as they once were. Before they were demolished and turned into office buildings. I like how the original Ilse of Dogs looked, it had some character. I really like old brickwork.

@Th3solution I thought you were English, and I thought MD83 was American. This is why I need to actually click on a profile now and then. I might take you up on that offer on the chit chat thread, after I finally finish writing something for there myself. I didn't know there were many Americans on here, but it explains why you were posting at that time of the day/night. I've lived in America briefly and saw some parts like New York, California, Chicago, Alabama, Vegas (awful they force homeless people underground, I'm never going back) not much else so I never got to mix with people much.

I'd like to see Connecticut, West Virginia and West Memphis Arkansas. The last one might sound odd, I supported a case there. Someone who I believed and still believe was innocent. He was convicted, along with his friends because he read a couple of books on Wicca and listened to some Metallica. I want to see the kind of place for myself, it was the first time I was introduced to the Innocence Project. Then I started to see how many people were wrongly convicted as a whole. After that I studied the American prison system and talked to different people who served their time.

I don't do drugs but I think arresting someone for a plant that comes out of the ground is ridiculous. I've talked to a lot of people who were on the inside for ridiculous reasons. I prefer to help put away people for the right reasons, so I don't know American politics but I do know the American prison system. I like supporting different causes, robbing an innocent person of their life and freedom is something I take interest in. I learned about race there too, the ratio of convictions etc. I can't think of many other states I'd like to see, it wouldn't be for tourism. I prefer to see the truth, poverty etc, 'real' people, reality.

The leadership doesn’t reflect the opinion of the people though.

• Something I understand now myself.

@GirlVersusGame Only the one playthrough of Elden Ring for me. I'm not great at replaying games or doing New Game+ runs. I did try some different builds just to mix it up. Katanas were my go to weapons and I did try a blood sword with added fire for good measure. The fabulous sounding Rivers of Blood was the only way I could get past Malenia. Also had a few bonk weapons which were fun to us with some great animations.

Impressive creations from Minecraft and Satisfactory! I don't have the patience for that or a creative bone in my body.

Mine is AC: Shadows and it's been a wild ride 20 hours in. At first I had some weird stick drift also noticed it in Monster Hunter Wilds that I played before this but not as bad as Shadows. Mainly during the map screen but then it just stopped even without adjusting the zones or whatever peeps tell you to do. Now I notice the damn game piledrives the controller battery life but again both things don't seem to be an uncommon issue with a google search. First world problemos though as the game is pretty good so far better than Valhalla or Mirage that's for damn sure. I guess there is going to be a Veilguard moment for some but I enjoyed that game so think I'll survive if it goes all W.

My latest purchase — I went ahead and renewed my PS Plus Premium for 12 more months. Dropping $160 stings a lot, but I’ve done the math and it still works out as a good deal for me. I just hate spending that much all at once.
Last year it was less of an impact because I got a discounted deal for upgrading from Extra, which had been subbed on a discounted deal the year prior for upgrading from Essential. So this is the first time I’ve ever had to plop down full price for my sub. It’s too bad that Sony never offers a sale discount for people to renew at their existing level.
I wonder if Sony has plans to increase the subscription fees in response to Xbox doing that. I sure hope not.

@Th3solution
Do you play with it the premium games or just have to stay in that tier for the portal streaming stuff?
I got premium recently as it was on offer to me for the same price as extra but can't see any retro stuff I'd actually want to play.

@sorteddan I’ve don’t play any of the classic titles, although there’s a couple that I might have interest to play one day. But probably not.

So the attraction for me is the cloud streaming for my Portal. I don’t use the free trials either, at least I haven’t to this point. I use the cloud streaming, and the Extra catalog, the cloud saves, the monthly games, and the occasional exclusive discount.

With essential being $80, Extra $135, and Premium $160, it means I pay $55 (the difference between essential and extra) for the privilege of the Extra library - worth it for me if I play like 2 games from it over the year - and then an extra $25 for the privilege of cloud streaming for the year, which is harder to quantify but if cloud streaming nets me one extra game played per year then it’s worth it.

I almost never engage with the online play, the classics catalog, game trials, SharePlay, and the Sony pictures library. I continue to wish to an option where we could create our own package by mixing and matching the perks that we actually want and only have to pay for those. Since I can conceivably not log in to a single online game all year, nor play a since classics game, I feel I should get a discount for that. Really wish we could pick and choose the perks from a menu. Like maybe, choose 3 perks for $80, 6 perks for $135, and 10 perks for $160, or something like that.