Yeah, No Mans Sky is a great example but this goes the other way too. They've completely destroyed Minecraft, the single player aspects, ruined the formula with too many terrain adjustments. I expect a live service game to evolve and be different but single player games should have the earlier versions made available for download when they change so much thst it is a different game than what you initially paid for or sliders in game simular to what Xcom 2 did with it's DLC and expansion, allowing you to add in the extra content you want and tailor even the small changes to your campaign. 

I now have a mission to buy 1.0 physical versions of some games in my top 50 that I own digitally. Harder said than done as they update the files on discs too, first up is Clair Obscur but I'd have to drive 50 miles to get a copy right now. I'm so fucking glad I grabbed the PS5 disc drive version, I nearly took the 100 discount to buy an extra game.  

I wish I were as optimistic, but multiple formats have come and gone, and their media along with it. I don't see a reason that would be different now, even if there's no leap in quality. Hell, people willingly gave up higher quality Blu-rays for bad Netflix encoding.

In the end, even digital libraries will be gone (as a mainstream thing, at least). It'll be all subscription-based, because that's what makes more money and gives companies more control. Invalidating a game key or a license has a bad ring to it, despite it being legal, but removing something from streaming is just a part of life.

Depends. If something makes it onto a commercial or add, and then they remove it, you're easily teetering into legal issues. It's happened before.

Either way, I don't like it. When I buy something, it's mine. No one is changing my vacuum cleaner, toaster, couch, shoes, jackets. Gibson is not coming into my house and updating the frets on my guitar without my permission. We have allowed certain companies within the digital era to come into our homes and alter our things and it's bullshit, period. And if I buy something where that is the case, and there is literally no way for me to stop it? I will either not use the device or sell it. I just will not tolerate it.

Nah, I don't believe it. They simply can't make games like the way Netflix makes content, the reason Xbox needed to release on PS5. Sadya is not seeing the return. People keep saying it'll all be streaming too but unless we get flawless Internet infrastructure globally, make weather a non issue sort signal and have this all for an affordable price in the biggest markets where people are still dealing with 3g and data caps...nah. decades off. This might be the last physical gen (I still doubt it after the PS5 pro backlash and rush for disc drives) but it's def not even the penultimate last gen for choosing your games games singularly and buying them... or renting, leasing whatever it is we do to pay for them to be in our libraries. 

By 'streaming' I'm including services like Game Pass here since they're functionally the same, it doesn't need to be running on remote hardware per se. My bad, forgot to specify that one.

That being said, there are emerging ways to reduce latency massively with input prediction for actual game streaming (machine learning and statistics-based methods both), and these algorithms will only get better in that regard. Flawless internet won't be needed.

One might not think such a thing would work but rollback netcode, for instance, works wonders for online fighting games. It literally makes the whole thing viable as if it were local.

yeah sorry to hear that. That does suck. I guess in this case I am in full agreement: updates like this I think should really be avoided for SP experiences. 

i think a better way to go about this would be to have more robust combat accessibility options. Something like TloU2 comes to mind where you can play around with stuff like damage output, difficulty etc.

ideally no, but thats wishful thinking. Realistically there will always be bugs to be fixed of some game-stats that need a little balancing - emphasis in "a little". If those "fixes" dramatically affect the gameplay then its clear the game was rushed and needed more testing before release.

Seconded.

Rebalances are really annoying. Stellaris is a great example of a game rebalanced so often that when you're studying how to play or what certain things mean, what you'll find on the internet is very unlikely what you'll find matches precisely to the game you're playing - or even the UI of the game you're playing.

Fixing bugs (not design bugs) and performance enhancements should be the limit.

If design changes/fixes need to be made, then perhaps one tactic is to use a proper expansion that changes the game into its own sequel - like the way Microprose and Blizzard used to do. Civilization 2 became Civilization 2: Fantastic Worlds or The Test of Time (which was actually a completely independent release which included Civ 2 as the foundation). Starcraft became Starcraft: Broodwar, and both games kind of existed as two separate entities, rather than a continuum that depends on when you're playing the game.

Of course, Star Craft had its own issues with balance/gameplay changes - so Blizzard did a lot right before doing wrong. IMO.

Platforms are an issue too. I recently found myself "well fucked" with Nintendo's change to how they managed digital game access, and basically lost my ability to play my current game, and any multiplayer game ever again. Unless I want to shell out full price for new licenses. Part of the reason I went digital is so I wouldn't have to deal with the bullshit of physical games, and now Nintendo brought a large part of that bullshit to digital.
I fucking hate corporations...

Clair obscur does many things right against industry standards and this is another area, they done exactly what you said, just a quick patch to change one little thing that was extremely broken. They still allowed for all the crazy builds, even left that one as one of the best but they pulled it back from being able to one shot everything consistently early on in the end game. I know they will get corrupted and maybe end up like CDPR or get bought out but I'm thankful for them for now. 

It's a pity about the Khazan devs, they made such a good game but they just won't listen to feedback at all. It's like they are deaf to what the vast majority of their players want and make these silly little changes that was effecting nothing like allowing for a build that had decent Stanima regen, the game obviously plays better when there is more stanima but they insist on you having to be slowed down or funnel your build towards stanima as a main stat regardless of build and pushing people away from experimenting until the very last stages of the game when you get stanima up to a proper standard. Sorry for the rant. 

You put my OT in much clearer words than I ever could and expressed my frustrations in this post.