Heh heh. You both do.

(I could go into a lengthy discussion of the parallels between modern America and the latter half of the Roman Empire, including my belief that Obama is a modern-day Diocletian, but that might be going a bit deep…)

Challenges are an overdue feature which gives Home itself a purpose. It’s a shame they weren’t deployed with Home’s original open beta release in ’08, but given the PS4 coming up, this is as good a time as any.

Granted, that isn’t easy to pull off with how Home is structured. You’re talking about including a lot of new metadata on top of what every developer is creating independently of each other, and there are a lot of chefs in this particular kitchen. Which is why Home is more of a patchwork universe of disparate attractions. Hence why I’d love to see, in a perfect world, a clean-sheet redesign of Home with all of the lessons learnt from the first iteration — because this is core functionality that has to be planned and implemented from the very beginning.

There have been a few things in 2013 that have really pushed the value of Home. Acorn Meadows Park stands out as a great concept that blends social and freemium in interesting ways, because you don’t constantly need to be in a game to interact with others. The same is true of Peakvox Labs, although the Monsters game is sorely needed at this point.

Granzella’s Kikkai event may be the best use of Home as a gaming platform since Xi. It demonstrated that games needn’t be limited to a single space, and that storytelling across levels is possible.

I’ve always felt that Home’s greatest strength lied in its ability to present games to a ready audience, that it should be the demo interface for the PlayStation Store, offering complete game experiences as well as previews of deeper games that have to be played from the HDD. I also expected much more from the Home Arcade, which started out well but has since languished.

That, ultimately, is what has always set Home apart from the online features of disc games. Grand Theft Auto V is in a box. It does what it does well, but it’s ultimately limited by its gameplay mechanics and the expectations of its audience. Home has no such limitations, but it hasn’t broadened its scope far enough beyond the “buy and decorate” mentality.

Paradise Springs Casino, Sodium 2, Acorn Park and Peakvox Labs all point toward what Home could and should be. Hopefully it gets a chance to expand on those promises.

If i had a nickle for every time I head that Home was dead I’d have several bucks! You can’t kill this thing and I think that’s what pisses off some people who don’t get it.

I feel this Challenges addition to Home is great and I am wondering why we didn’t think of this sooner.

I also wanted to say kudos for the bit when you were talking about GTA being a reflection of our culture at large. Nicely done!

What’s interesting is how consumer habits change when the industry doesn’t. I may not be willing to pay $60 for more-of-same RPG gaming, but would I pay $20-$30? And does time investment still correlate to price? Journey, for instance, is a very short game with a relatively high price for the length of its experience, and yet it’s an amazing, genre-bending game that’s unlike anything else ever made.

If you’re new to MMORPG gaming, then you’ll likely have a blast with FFXIV — and there’s certainly plenty to enjoy for veterans to the genre as well. I’m just personally at a point where I’m not willing to invest significant time or money into a game unless it’s somehow a bit different than the norm.

I just bought Assassin’s Creed IV today, as it looks like it has some interesting new wrinkles, so we’ll see if it’s any good…

As such, Final Fantasy hasn’t exactly been known for pushing the envelope, especially in more recent years. Plus, with Square-Enix not known as a company with intense experience with MMOs (as compared to, say, Blizzard Entertainment), you find out that they may not take too many risks with a formula. My experience with MMOs is limited so my question is: is the story any more complex than Generic RPG: The Sequel? If you described it to anyone without revealing it as a Final Fantasy game, would anyone assume it even is a Final Fantasy game, as opposed to a copycat MMO? If the answer isn’t very positive, perhaps this would help explain why people have fonder memories of offline Final Fantasy titles over their online counterparts (and why FFXIV’s current form is its second go-around).

In fairness, to play devil’s advocate, partially against myself here: when we spent the past five years minimum on a program that has no exact equal, pioneering what it means to be a social MMO in a market that lacks peers, it’s hard to view everything else quite the same again. Home is a rarity, as far as consoles go, and the future for social console MMOs will be dictated by what the future will hold. What happens to the market will be dictated as much by the second attempt at it as, if not more than, the first time.

When we’re the adopters of something that is possibly a generation ahead of its time, how will that influence how we view what else the PS3 has to offer? How will it influence how we view Home’s spiritual successor (if one will exist)?

I’ve only ever been in public GTAO servers briefly, if I find myself accidentally in one I RUN to a private server as fast as I can! Back to my friends. The similarities of GTAO and Home are there; take a look at the conversations of property threads on GTAO forums -- it’s actually amusing to see so many gamers talk like Home users all while oblivious to the irony of the mickey-taking they’ve done to Home users in the past. Yet there they all are, sharing pics of views from their houses, all bouncing off each other trying to decide which house suits them best.

I think I just heard a penny drop!

R* have looked at Home (apparently) and have brought some of that Home feeling into GTAO. But in public servers where people run around like crazied nut-bags killing anything that moves you’d be hard-pressed to see it. My advice to you Norse is to make a date with some friends who also have access to GTAO, and do some stuff together, at your own pace. You may see another side to it you might like after all.

As for the FF games I’m still confused as to WHY we’re using turn-based battle systems in a world soaked in casual gaming machines with the power to handle real-time fights so easily! And the new Home challenges are exactly what Home’s been needing for a long, long time. Here’s hoping it’s just not “too little, too late” for it.

Since I haven’t played FFXIV, I can’t say anything about it; never did go in for MMOs. I preferred FFVI over FFVII because of how menacing Kefka was -- he was a man who you could really imagine as a threat to the world. Plus, the ragtag team of protagonists had their own niceties -- my favorite character was likely Celes.

I freely admit my tastes are outside the norm. People to this day genuflect upon Final Fantasy VII, whereas I think FFVIII is a far deeper and more interesting plot and character study. Go figure.