u/CoffeeDrinker83

The more information and gameplay clips we get the more I am realizing that Fortune's Weave is just going to be Three Houses 2.0, in all the worst ways. If it does well, I don't see why they would ever deviate from this formula ever again and the series will just become more and more focused on the mediocre storytelling and repeat the same mid gameplay over and over again.

I know people are going to say that we just need to wait and see but Engage just did so many things right on the gameplay front that I think it may have been lightning in a bottle. I'm praying I'm wrong, but my excitement for FW is turning into dread day by day. I love Engage, a top 5 game of all time for me, but I just don't want to look back in 15 years and realize it was peak.

I still prefer physical media. I buy all my Switch/2 games on physical when I have the option and I am building out a library of Evercade games. I support GoG over Steam because you can backup the installers if you want and they don't have DRM. I support the Stop Killing Games movement.

However, I am also a rational mature adult who can understand that digital only has benefits that appeal to a lot of people and that media publishers have some legitimate reasons to support digital over physical. Digital is more convenient. You don't have to go to a store or wait for it to come in the mail, and if you preorder, it can download early and be ready to consume the second it goes live. You don't have to worry about losing it or damaging it because you can download it again. You don't have to carry around a case full of carts, for a switch for example, to take multiple games with you. Etc.

The culture at large is extremely permissive to piracy of media, and DRM is one of the only tools publishers have to fight back. Like I said, I prefer DRM free, but I understand why they do it, and honestly, I can't blame them. Gabe Newell is wrong; it's not a service problem. It's a price problem. Steam has DRM. People love them because of the sales. The fact that people refuse to understand this is mind-boggling.

Whether you or I agree with those points doesn't change the fact digital has the momentum. I am not owed a physical copy of media. If I want more physical media, then I need to buy physical media but that still may not be enough to keep it alive in the long run.

Grand Theft Auto VI going digital only is not some apocalyptic event for physical media. It's just one more example in a trend towards digital only. Sony recently reported over 85% digital sales, Capcom over 90%, and Nintendo over 50% (which is high for them).

These companies don't care if your "wallet is closed" because they aren't offering physical. Instead of focusing on what people aren't offering and being obnoxious about it, focus on the people who are offering physical and reward them. That's just my two cents. Probably shouldn't be unpopular but I think it is.

Maybe it's just the way my organization has it configured, but I just cannot understand how Outlook is this terrible. As I have been moving up the management ladder I am spending more time on Outlook than ever before, and its many flaws are really pissing me off.

Search

First of all, and I'm not exaggerating for effect, the search is the worst I've ever seen on any product ever. I'm in my 40s, I've been on the internet since before Google existed, and even the very old keyword searches people used to use were better than this because at least if you put the correct keyword in it would find the damn thing. When I try to search for an email I know exists in my inbox, and I use the advanced search put in their (correct) email address and relevant words that are in the subject line, it still doesn't show up in the results. HOW!!? Then I have to go back and scroll through thousands of emails until I get back in time to approximately when I know it was sent and find it that way.

My solution to this problem has been to pin anything that seems remotely like I'll need to reference it again, but as a result my pinned section has about 150 emails in it at any given time, so now it's a chore just to read through those!

Mobile App

Speaking of pinning, how is the android app this awful. Why do I have to do a multi-step process to see my pinned emails? Why are they hidden by default? It's not like that in the web app. I can maybe understand that with the limited space they think people want to see new emails, but still.

It also never refreshes properly. I am convinced, without evidence, that it is trying to authenticate me but just doesn't tell me I need to authenticate again. It will just hang, sometimes for minutes, trying to refresh, and sometimes it just won't refresh at all! What fun.

This might just be a matter of personal preference again, but why does the agenda view in the calendar scroll between days? It's too easy to just accidentally scroll into the next day. I'm trying to see my meetings today, because it's today!

General Grievances

• Why can't I forward an email in the middle of a conversation without forwarding the entire thing?
• Why does the modern app sometimes just fail to download attachments (I have probably spent 20 hours going down the rabbit hole on this one)
• Why do forwarded meetings sometimes not get updated. On many occasions I would be forwarded a meeting, accept, and then miss it because the details were changed but they weren't pushed through to the forwarded people, so my calendar still has the old details
• Why is are the formatting options so lackluster compared to sister Office products
  • Why is it so bad at displaying tables pasted in from Excel. Why are the options to adjust a table so poor once it's in there.
  • Why does it have so much trouble with bulleted lists being pasted in? Anytime I paste in a list copied from a pdf it never works. I have a remarkable for taking notes in meetings, but I have to be sure to email them to myself as plain text or Outlook can't handle it
• When I pop-out a specific email into its own window so I can keep it on hand, it sometimes goes white and just refuses to reload after a while

I'm sure I could think of more if I wanted to, but at the end of the day, I just believe the experience should be better than this for a product this mature made by one of the biggest software developers in the world.

I expected Fortune's Weave to be a sequel of some kind to Three Houses (obviously), at least in terms of setting, story, etc. However, I was hoping they would learn from Engage on the gameplay, but it looks like FW will have the same bland nothing maps, class system, etc. The thing I like about Fire Emblem the most are the battles, making builds, etc. Three Houses was a struggle for me because of how basic and boring those aspects were. Why are we going back to that. Can the team that made Engage please make the next game.

Sorry, just venting