While I do understand where you're coming from, someone being better at something shouldn't stop a person from doing what they love.
There are millions of people who draw better, sing better, dance better, write better, play video games better, design websites better or just do anything I can do better than I can... and that's fine.
There are third party memory card solutions out there... essentially they hijack the cart slot and allow you to stick in a standard micro SD card to use as storage.
I have two of the standard PSV memory cards (I think a 4gb one that came with my Assassin's Creed bundle, and another 32gb one that I spent like $100 on when the finally dropped the prices into a realm that was at least within viewing distance of sanity), but being able to stick in a cheap-o micro SD card and have ALL the games I purchased (and some extras...) is pretty great.
And because I feel like I'm legally obligated to say this as a Vita owner, hacking the thing was the best decision I made outside of buying the handheld in the first place, when it comes to the PSV. It's way easier now than when I initially wanted to try (and was too scared to do so when the handheld was still being supported), and as long as you follow up-to-date instructions you should be golden.
The main problem is that its not enough to be competitive with Steam at this point... you need to put out something so good that it give people enough of a reason to leave the comfort of Steam... you need Steam and then another layer of goodness on top of Steam.
This is the same issue that a lot of MMOs had when trying to become a WoW killer. You not only needed to have pretty much everything Blizzard put into the game, but more on top because otherwise why would anyone bother to leave the comforts of Azeroth to play something that is maybe marginally better, or a possibly worse experience?
Although a suitable (more recent-ish) alternative was from Mad Catz of all companies, with their XB360 Street Fighter 4 pads.
The Sega Saturn controller was the best (2D) controller made, and I will die on this hill.
Microtransactions are 'small' purchases made in a game (or via some kind of store that allows you to buy stuff to be used inside of a game).
DLC is any additional downloadable content that is not included with the game (so something like a day 1 patch wouldn't be considered DLC, I'd say).
All microtransations are DLC, but not all DLC are microtransactions, generally (before someone comes along with some kind of physical microtransaction or something I guess)
I personally just view microtransations as anything that isn't 'playable content'. So buying a mount from an in-game store would be a microtransaction, while buying an expansion wouldn't be. Map packs kind of blur the line in this instance, because one could argue that they're essentially 'world cosmetics', but its a hard and fast rule and not something I'd try to enforce as a law, ya know?
I see this take a lot, and while I don't disagree... I think it downplays the number of people who DO make 'sensible' purchases in a lot of these games.
I personally don't bother with in-game purchases (I also rarely buy DLC... but I also sub to FFXIV regularly, and have all the content for Destiny 2, so sometimes I can be got) for cosmetics or especially boosts. I'd rather earn the items in game, or a step down, earn in-game currency to purchase those items instead because I'm, at the end of the day, paying for a game to play it and while I want to look good in game while doing so, I'm not gonna drop $15 on digital t-shirts.
But there are plenty of people who don't mind tossing down $60 additionally a year into a game like Destiny 2 for sparkly new transmog outfits from the Eververse store, and they'll see it as any sort of reason to do so ('because I have the money', 'because I want to support the developer', 'because I have to collect everything', 'because because because'), and we can't just pretend like its a handful of dudes dropping thousands of dollars while everyone else nobly boycotts the practice.
The big problem is that a company will look at something like World of Warcraft/Destiny at the height of their popularity and think "We want that!"
Then they'll put out a (we're being optimistic here) serviceable, good game with a respectable amount of content... but it won't be able to hold a candle to something that: already has that much content + more AND players who are already 'stuck' with the game (sunk cost, friends/family/community, etc).
So you put out a game, get a brief spurt of attention from people who are a bit bored of the same ol' same ol', but then once they breakneck through all the content you have in less than a month they turn around and head back to their comfort food game and never look back. Congratulations, you can now put out a master class on how to waste millions of dollars.
In order to make a game as a service now you need either an extremely good hook, or you need to not only be comparable to an existing game but also EXCEED what that game offers and continue to provide content at a staggering speed until you've coerced people to have invested enough in the game to then be their comfort food/sunk cost game of choice.
If Dark Souls had easier difficulties, they wouldn't have the reputation they do. People would turn down the difficulty instead of learning the bosses and how to beat them.
Which is hilarious because people 'turn down the difficulty' constantly by using summons or 'jolly cooperation' all the time in the games and don't seem to differentiate that from a difficulty option.
Superhard Games without difficulty options. Looking at you Soulsborne games; I appreciate that some people like a challenge, but I really think that whole genre would only benefit from giving the player options. I have noticed that seems to be getting more common though.
I'm torn on this... I love playing Dark Souls 1/2/3/etc for the world and the enemies and exploring and overcoming the difficulties and finding cool gear and weapons and trying out new builds.
But I also absolutely hate pretty much every single boss fight in the games.
Yeah, FFXIV makes is super convenient to revisit a place once you've already been there via the aetheryte, meaning you're probably not going to visit it on foot more than a few times. This means you don't really make that connection between zones (or at least, I didn't) and thus don't really view it as an interconnected world (the loading areas between each zone doesn't really help).
I'm struggling to give proper credit to WoW because I'm not sure if its the staggering amount of time I played the game, the time of my life when I played the game (younger brain retaining knowledge better?), or the seamless transition between zones which lends it to sticking in my memory so hard as a 'real, interconnected world'... probably a combination of the three, if we're being honest.
I replay the "Metroid-vania" Castlevanias every few years (SotN, GBA/DS games), and one of my goals is always maximum map completion... obviously not required for actually beating the games, but I only consider the game completed if I get all the rooms on my map.
More specifically for SotN, I also gotta get the Crissaegrim + Medusa Shield otherwise am I even playing the game properly?
Some of the others I try to get all the doodads: cards, souls, glyphs, whatever. Some are a bit more annoying than others, so sometimes I'll skip out on the really annoying ones if I don't get it done before filling in the map.