In case anyone didn’t want to open the article, the feature is improved image quality due to AMD’s FSR2 on PlayStation being used over 2x MSAA on Xbox.
There’s also a slightly different gamma on PlayStation, combined with the different anti-alliasing it results in cleaner looking frames. The article has side by side comparisons as well.
I don’t really understand the purpose of showing FSR2 vs FXAA/MSAA with still frames… FSR2 struggles most with motion and thin/dense high-contrast areas, none of which are showcased in the screenshots, so of course FSR2 is going to look better.
Companies NEVER care about their customers. They care about profit.
Sometimes, it is profitable to be considerate of the consumers, but when customers are willing to give a company money despite their bad practices, they will always prioritize profit.
That’s the problem, if at least a part of us would start to punish companies, not with comments or bad reviews but with their actual wallet, and instead “reward” them for customer friendly behavior, the industry as a whole would be in a faaaaar better state.
I think maybe it requires legislation or a change in systems. It’s not really feasible to rely on millions of individual customers coming together to punish bad companies, it just doesn’t seem to happen effectively or make a significant impact.
If I recall correctly the team behind Skyblivion was (or still is) in contact with Bethesda throughout the development and had no problems with the latter in regards their work. Heck, Bethesda itself posted about the mod on their site in 2023.
They’ve been aware of Skyblivion for years and there’s no indication they’re interested in killing it.
That goodwill can change in an instant, especially if they are releasing a competing product, and especially if the legal team gets in the loop rather than the development staff.
We can already see it with stuff like the Beamdog remasters. People insist that it is totally better to play BG2 with these five mods, that launcher hack, etc. And everyone except for the usual suspects just say “Buy the Beamdog release. It has almost everything you want and is zero effort”.
Also, the mere existence of a fan project (that will never release in a satisfactory manner…) shows that Bethesda is super mod friendly and blah blah blah.
How does it not? It is the same game map, same missions, even the same character names. You just know the corporate bros would hate an alternative to their paid remaster that is basically the same thing.
Can it change? Sure. There’s just no reason to expect that based on Bethesda’s approach to modding until now. I’d rather base my expectations on their past actions rather than assume the worst just in case.
skyblivion is great marketing, and it’s free to let them keep going for now. Keep people excited about a new oblivion, and then kill the only other option besides yourself. I actually think it’s more likely than not that there is a last minute reversal.
Also, Skyblivion will, at worst, only cut into their PC sales. The official remake will be the only option available on consoles due to the nature of the mod.
Maybe they aren’t, but what about the company that is doing the remake? They might argue it will hamper their ability to meet estimated sales and overall profit.
At the end of the day Virtuos are just a contractor - Bethesda are the ones with final say in the matter. Despite all their flaws they never really showed to be hostile towards these kind of projects (or at least I haven’t seen them act that way) so there’s no reason to automatically expect the worst. That’s just my opinion though.
For all their faults, Bethesda may be the most mod-friendly AAA studio out there right now.
I can vaguely recall a single instance where they shut someone down, and that was over re-used audio assets from an older game. That was almost certainly about contractual licensing obligations to voice actors.
Did they even shut them down back then? I might be thinking about a different situation but I remember one of the other remake mods (was it New Vegas on Fallout 4 engine?) where they simply told the team they can’t use the original audio. The cancellation of that mod happened months later and didn’t even have anything to with that issue, I believe.
Either way, this kind of scenario is something I skipped over in my initial question since banning reuse of assets in different engines is a legal thing. I mostly meant them blocking/killing projects for no “serious” reason.
Still, it was a good idea to mention these kind of issues as well.
Yeah, I don’t remember all the details myself, so you’re probably right. I was basically trying to support your thesis that Bethesda getting nasty over mods would be something entirely new and out of character. The only example someone could even try to point to had a bunch of other (better) explanations than “mod bad, Bethesda mad.”
I actually thought about including this case in my original post but I have tendency to waffle way too much and in the end decided against it to keep things shorter. It is a useful example to mention so thanks for that.
That’s true. It’s still on Bethesda, but yeah they could have an agreement. Skyblivion has been in development longer than this though I’m sure, and Bethesda was aware of it and said it was OK, so I’m assuming there’s no agreement like that. If there were then Bethesda would have done something that will make them look really bad, which they do tend to do so it is a possibility.
The way skyblivion has been implemented avoids all this. They have made it very clear they are not in any way using original assets or providing the game. They are mods that utilize both Skyrim and Oblivion game files and you must have both for it to work. It is modding those game files, not providing them.
Awesome to see them win this. If other games can have poker or other cards games where the characters are gambling and not have that influence their shit, the roguelike that uses playing cards in the same way Go-Fish does definitely shouldn’t be smacked over this.
Fuck EA and all the loot box game makers that don’t get hit with this crap
If other games can have poker or other cards games where the characters are gambling and not have that influence their shit
I doubt it though because the game doesn’t have any gambling in it at all. It just uses the imagery of poker, that’s it. I have no more of an idea how to play poker now than they did before spending 900 Brazilian hours on the game.
That’s what I’m saying tho, it’s bs that Belatro would get hit simply for the imagery they’re using, while other games get a lesser penalty when ACTUAL (both real money and in game currencies) gambling is happening.
Whatever it ends up being, I’m not interested. Never cared for competitive gaming. Sad that Valve has decided to use part of their enormous talent pool for, well, this while almost any genre would’ve been better.
Also, this is already a highly saturated niche. I don’t doubt Valve’s technical prowess and knowhow to develop a game that can surpass all the other ones in quality, but a gilded turd is still a turd under that gold leaf, even if it’s technically the best turd in the world.
That’s unfortunate that it’s not a genre you personally are interested in, but it is a popular genre and Valve is a business. Just because it’s not to your tastes doesn’t mean it’s a waste of their talent.
Oh absolutely. I’m not conceited enough to imagine Valve is developing games for me or that I’m entitled to anything. Just venting my personal disappointment with their choice. I still consider them the cream of the crop in game and hardware development.
I’m just curious why Valve looked at the oversaturated hero shooter market (seriously, we’ve had failures 8 years ago now) and said “Oh yeah, let’s devote our resources there”
edit: Like, I seriously can’t understand it. Not even Blizzard is coming out unscathed from Overwatch 2.
Not really my responsibility to make an argument for you. Of all the reasons Overwatch 2 might not have performed well, it being a Hero Shooter doesn’t have any strong evidence and you didn’t provide anything showing that was the reason.
One could argue Overwatch 2 being a Hero Shooter is why it didn’t perform worse than it already has, given its problems.
Blizzard is bad at balancing the game - could be true of any game, doesn’t have to be a shooter
Blizzard cancels promised mode - Blizzard being bad at design and following through on promises.
See 1.
Forcing a game to become the sequel, not making meaningful changes other than monetization
See 1
Blizzard made a bad game
None of these are a result of Overwatch 2 being a shooter, and all of them are a result of Blizzard being shit at making quality games, caring about players, and following through on promises. So thank you, you have done a fantastic job demonstrating that Overwatch 2 being a shooter is not the reason it didn’t perform well.
Competitive online games have been Valve‘s focus for well over a decade so it‘s in line with their portfolio. If anything, Alyx was an outlier they only did because they have a headset to sell it with. I think they know what they‘re doing. Sucks for you to not be their target audience though because they are pretty good at making games.
Like idk, when overwatch came out, it was an absolute blast. I wasn't looking forward to it at all, i didn't care for it a bit until i played it. It just got run into the ground slowly. Also they made team fortress 2 way WAY before, and yeah that's what they excites them.
Valve’s game development division feels more like a weird cult than a proper game company. I don’t think they get “excited” for the things that most people get excited for. (Remember when they were excited for a virtual card game where you have to pay for every card?) The Valve of the 2000s is long gone IMO
But they see a place for broken games that are sold by lying to their customers and maybe fixed two years later. Fuck off, CDPR. Are you sure you are the right people to do the moral?
Crunch is only necessary if something has already gone pretty seriously wrong, either it was feature creep or the time scales were unrealistic, or you pull a Bethesda and try to build a game that’s way outside the scope of your own ancient game engine.
I still love that company. The witcher 3 was amazing, easily one of my favourite games of all time. Cyberpunk had some issues sure, I got it a year or so after release and had fun with it. I really like gog and how everything has no drm and I spend a lot of money there. Compare that to almost every other major competitor and these people are saints.
“Some issues” is a very kind way of putting it. The game was unplayable and had frequent crashes and game breaking bugs. Even now, it’s never really been fixed for old gen (the gen it was marketed for and sold in a console bundle with), they just turned it into a ghost town, reducing NPC spawn rate and turning off environmental lights to reduce the stress on the system.
And worse of all, they knew all of that, and still sold a broken product, and to ensure that people would buy it, they didn’t allow journalists to record their play sessions, only allowing them to use CDPR’s marketing videos in their reviews. I could still forgive them for releasing a broken product on the market and fixing it at a later date, if they were at least sincere with their fanbase, but they chose to lie through their teeth because money was more important than integrity.
The fact that they eventually fixed the game on another generation is not enough for me.
They’re still exploiting their customers who’ve been developing products based on a completely different fiscal agreement; you can’t just change engines after years of work.
The worst isn’t even people currently developing things - it’s developers who already have released products. Imagine if you released something like, over the summer, for example. You’ve been paying the current revenue share, and will continue to do so until Jan. 1, then you’ll start paying the per-install fee. So you’re paying twice for the same customers’ purchases.
I really feel like they're going to lose a lawsuit on that.
Unilateral contracts don't have unlimited power and "we can blanket change what we want to charge you on games already made" doesn't seem like it's going to be enforceable.
“One of the randomly generated points of interest, the abandoned research tower, usually has a computer at the top where you can download the planetary survey data for the planet your [sic] on,” they wrote. “Just a tip!”
You still need to scan individual plants resources or animals to get the Surveying perk upgrades, which gives you better zoom on the scanner, which can be useful sometimes.
It’s a game with exploration elements, so the idea is that an areas you’ve visited may only have estimates of what resources are available. In some cases you could be the first person exploring it or noting its qualities.
The in game reason is the survey data you get is asked of you by one of the constellation members, as their space base “The Eye” has scanned all it can. We use the scan data for finding more artifacts (though I’m assuming it doesn’t outright give more missions). You can get the survey data before this activity and sell it for about half, which is why I assume it doesn’t really affect much.
There are also missions that ask for experienced surveyors to look for hospitable planets for their colony.
It’s a decent way to make money, but not really worth the effort of hunting down all the different flora and fauna. One time I had a planet where I had to land near the ocean and scan fish, that one was a total nightmare.
You can make decent money off it, but first and foremost it should be something you enjoy. Personally I think that’s a very chill way of breaking the monotony, after having spent too much time flying around or walking through cities to complete quests. Exploring planets has got the nice plus of not having to deal with loading screens, unless you want to get back to your ship and move to a different biome.
Yes. We’ve had so many examples of rushed games with great potential that never hit it. It’s actually refreshing to see a delay. It suggests that the dev team is still getting a say and that the game itself and its quality are still primary concerns.
All the people making the shitty decisions will be fine. Everyday people will be the ones to lose their jobs, as is always the way in these things. :-/
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