Archival is extremely important and one of the side effects of copyright schemes is that they limit its viability. The less access people have, the more likely some work becomes lost forever. I’ve seen it a few times already, with recent work, but in one or two hundred years we’re talking about libraries of art that could have been preserved but are just gone.
Closed source software, that’s actually distributed to people, has all kinds of problems beyond that too. Tons has been written about that, but from an artistic perspective, I think the biggest loss is that people can’t legally expand the original work. Giant franchises with a central cultural presence get walled off and usually just go through a huge creative decline, which is crazy because there’s millions of people preoccupied with the concepts from the franchise who are barred from using them to express themselves. With software in specific, if it’s open source you can modify it, fix it, expand it, maintain it, whatever - there’s all these great resources they could use, but we won’t let them.
It’s pretty insane. At first I thought damn, from now on our culture will be so thoroughly documented that future historians will struggle to parse it all, but now I can’t trust anything to last for 5 years and I can’t have copies of it, either.
Piracy shmiracy, some random dude’s homegrown server is not an archive, and anything that fails without electricity to power it is not a copy.
Currently takes about 6 seconds to swap between characters. Every time. Every turn. Click, clunk, click, clunk.
Playing really thoroughly, we’re up to 60 hours, level 7, and just starting Act 2.
It’s bad design that part of Act 1 is behind the exact same prompt as the end of Act 1. I nearly missed a whole zone there, as well as an awesome weapon.
A message from Meta Quest with a picture of quadrupedal orange alien with purple spots down its spine and large green eyes named Bogo from the Oculus Quest experience of the same name. Below the image is the text:
“Hi Kolorafa,
We are reaching out to let you know that Bogo will no longer be supported as of Friday, March 15, 2024. You may continue to wave at, pet, and feed Bogo on your Quest device until 11:59 PM PT on that date.
We admit we’ve gotten attached to the little guy too! There’s still time to grab that just-slightly-out-of-reach fruit one last time. Bogo will appreciate it. And so will we. 🐾 🎆
Thanks,
The Meta Quest team”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Partner found out about the unity crap when a bunch of steam library games published updates about changes in development, at least one of which stated they’re transitioning from free to paid
This is the natural progression of the games-as-a-service model. Any game that relies on online support of some kind just to function will eventually cease like this.
Is it stupid that a vr game about a pet relies on online support to function? Absolutely. But it is what it is. Buy more offline games.
This is also the reason I’m all open source. Not just games, but seeing someone abandon a program hurts. Or just wanting to make a change on your own to suit your needs. I don’t have any big fancy programs, but I at least put my code openly on github.com for that reason. Both my “big” ones are just me using another program and realizing I could make something that worked better for me. At like 100x the time investment, but programming is fun.
Looking at the retro computer scene should make anyone a diehard open source fanatic, it’s god awful how much retro stuff relies on a single guy happening to find an old disc in their basement and upload it to the internet, and a lot of the time that never happened and so the software is just lost forever and the only way hardware can be used is by people writing their own software completely from scratch and sharing it with others.
And of course if they then don’t make it open source that’s extra fun.
Don’t you fucking dare say that name. I have never in my life seen a game with so much promise be self fucked so hards by it’s own devs that it kills the game in its tracks.
NO ONE FUCKING ASKED FOR A BATTLE ROYALE - AND WE SURE AS SHIT DIDNT ASK FOR PAID BATTLE ROYALE SEPARATE FROM THE MAIN GAME.
…UGH.
EDIT: I WAS THINKING OF BATTLERITE BUT MY FRUSTRATION IS STILL VERY REAL.
I believe the founder and first queen of Carthage said that if we don’t learn to circumvent that, we deserve nothing more than we get. She went on to claim that nothing we have is truly ours.
Is it just me or was that Phoenician quite a bit ahead of her time?
Ac Odyssey. Hopefully finish it soon. Been good but a bit of a long slog. How would I know which quest is just a standard fetch or which one is worth it.
AC Odyssey was the first one in the entire series I couldn't push myself to finish. I used to love just bumping around eliminating every single map icon, but Odyssey was way, way too big, and having my zen ruined by bounty hunters all the time was exhausting.
I heard Valhalla was even worse. It was the first one I skipped after playing each one since the original (even some of the 2D ones).
Yeah. I beat Odyssey completely. Absolutely loved it. I’m a huge fan or Norse mythology so I thought Valhalla would just totally captivate me but… I got bored! It was just too much. Started to feel incredibly repetitive.
You can just pay off your bounties instantly at any time from the map screen, and I've always had so much money in that game that I've never had to deal with a bounty hunter unless I wanted to, and I don't even sell any gear, I dismantle it all.
If you're a compulsionary completionist then the game is probably too big, but they make it as friendly as they can to not have to complete the world. Unique gear drops only seem to come from unique Cultist leaders or checking vendors, and there's no achievements for completing all map markers, it's just supplemental content for XP and some gear or if you just really want to do it, there's no huge cost to just moving on to actual quest content if you want.
They don't tell you when you've completed a whole region for a reason, to disincentivize completing it all unless you're a madman. I'm doing world completion just because I like grinding the game, but it's been two years in the making with big breaks in between, and if you ever feel like your gear or levels are behind the curve and you have to grind, the difficulty settings can be changed and can be set as forgiving as you like, they actually alter the level scaling and RPG aspects.
I think it's a great game worth playing, but you do need to be ready to tell yourself when enough is enough because they give you too much for weirdos like me that just wanna experience it all over a really long... Odyssey.
I'm glad you had fun with it. Do accept that my inability to have fun with it doesn't negate any of the enjoyment you got out of it. Respectfully, something this long instructing me of all the ways I must have played it wrong if I didn't enjoy it as much as you comes off as a little condescending. I'm sure it wasn't your intent, but like... I know I have the option to put it down or skip things. I know I can pay off bounties. I was there, these systems and ideas are not hard to find. But for me, the fact that I'm allowed to skip engaging with a system or put it down before I see all the devs put there for me to see is the opposite of a selling point.
For me, it's like I ordered a meal at a favorite restaurant, the plate came out with portions three times larger than expected and gorgeously plated but with so little seasoning I couldn't stomach it. Saying "you don't have to eat it all" and "there's salt on the table" doesn't make it a good meal.
We find different things fun, and that's okay. May we both have a good time with Mirage.
Sorry, my intent was not to sound condescending, I was erring on the side that you weren't aware of the ways you could get around those issues in order to enjoy the parts you wanted to. Your criticisms are definitely valid, I would agree that even needing to know about the workarounds sort of proves that what was included wasn't an entirely cohesive and tight product to begin with, the way I played is not necessarily right or wrong, and neither is yours, it's just how I was able to mine the most enjoyment out of what was there.
My main idea is to not let someone see your comment and assume that that's how the game is and there's not another way to enjoy it or any clear ways to identify where content you'd want to play begins and ends, I was able to figure out and selective play the parts I enjoy, but even still there is content in that game that I skip because it's, definitively, not fun. Even still, it's become one of my favorite games of all time, but no one game is for everyone, thanks for the mature discussion, sincerely!
Yeah I haven’t needed to grind at all. Only time I dropped the difficulty level was with the poison boar. My gear stresses me out. I want the perks but then I hold onto it for like 10 levels.
Money has only been an issue as I wanted to upgrade ship and legendary tier is stupidly expensive. I’m sure by the time I finish the main quest I’ll have enough cash
Once you get the perks you want you totally can hold onto it. Every ten levels all of your perk and major attack stat bonuses on gear get more powerful, (but there's no stat bonus to upgrading before the 10 level threshold at all) even when you upgrade the same old gear you had, but it happens at the "first" level of each ten, so not at level 20, instead it's 21, 31, 41, etc.
Basically I've had the "same" gear for like 30 or 40 levels, now, just every time I hit the new stat range I go and upgrade all of it. It costs a shitload of gold, but aside from ship upgrades I don't have another major gold sink, so it's worth it to me, my perk loadout is extremely optimized for assassin damage, which is important for me since I'm basically playing it as an open world stealth game where I only fight if I get caught, I can one shot anyone I want, no exaggeration (using critical assassination when necessary).
The final ship upgrades are very expensive, yeah, just seems like they give you something to grind for if you get that far
It's not always the best option, like if you wanna save your gold for the ship upgrades it'll eat a big chunk out of that, but you could totally keep your gear perks that way if you really like them, you can upgrade at 61, don't have to wait for 62
I really enjoyed it. Beautiful scenery to explore but it is annoying with bounty hunters. There’s just too many quests. I think Valhalla was actually better in this regard. Honestly all games are repetitive. Most RPGs have a lot of fetch quests or something similar.
It’s not too bad of the game is 40 hours or so. It really grinds you down if it’s so big with millions of exactly the same quests. Each island each city.
The quests you get from the quest boards, especially the ones with the hourglass icons can be pretty much blanket ignored. Otherwise you can tell when talking to the quest giver if Alexios/Kassandra accepts the quest generically and doesn't respond to anything the giver says very specifically other than "I'll take care of it" or things like that.
I love the shit out of that game, have been world exploring and only doing the unique side quests.
The ones that aren't timed (don't have the hourglass icons) are worth picking up because they're all just like "kill 20 Athenians", "sink 5 ships", basically shit you're already doing, so you just swing by, pick them up, and keep playing like you already were and randomly one will pop and you'll get fat XP for doing what you were doing already anyway, but that's only if you want the extra XP, it's totally unnecessary
Funnily enough playing BotW on CEMU was what got me to get a switch, it was just so good I wanted to play it without any caveats or messing with settings or working around the gyro controls and the allure of playing it portably anywhere was high.
The only problem I’m having now is the gyro controls . Only found one temple so far that needs it but I’ll probably be able to get that works with one of my controllers .
lemmy.world
Aktywne