I've been browsing older Forgotten Realms sourcebooks and the love that the authors put into those is amazing. It hurts to see D&D and the worlds I grew up loving destroyed by a soulless entity that cares only about profit.
If it’s at all of interest to you, there are a bunch of good novels set in the Forgotten Realms, too.
There’s a pretty great thread from just a few years ago on the Candlekeep forums where someone read through every single book and gave a brief review of them. I can’t remember their opinion in great detail, but the biggest authors (Ed Greenwood and Bob Salvatore) were relatively lowly rated, while Elaine Cunningham and Erin M. Evans consistently rated much more highly.
I’ve never read Cunningham myself, but I’ve read all of Evans’ FR novels and am a huge fan. Plan to read her non-FR novels once I’m finished with what I’m currently working through, if I can find a copy that’s not from the rainforest company.
Was trickier to find than I thought because of the unorthodox title. But here it is.
It’s a 35 page thread with others chiming in with their thoughts as the original author makes his way through the list, and some summing up on pages 33 & 34. And technically still ongoing as new books slowly trickle out, though most of it was finished in 2020.
Unfortunately it looks like the author never fully finished his wrap-up either. He said he was gonna do favourite series, fav individual books, fav authors, and misc comments, but only ended up doing the first two of those as far as I could see.
Personally I mostly read through the reviews of Evans’ books back when I first saw the thread, and my vague recollection was that he/others liked them and mentioned also liking Cunningham, but I could be misremembering.
Happy to provide my own review of Evans’ work if interested.
I’m in a rare slump of not knowing what to read. I’ve been meaning to dig in to forgotten realms for a while, and wanted to start out with Drizt, but heard mixed things.
No worries! If you didn’t already see it, I wrote a fairly lengthy review of the Evans novels in response to another user a few comments down in this thread.
Regarding Drizzt, my understanding is that “mixed things” is basically right. Some of the books are very well-liked, and others are not so much. My own personal experience is only that I’ve tried listening to the audiobook of The Companions, the Drizzt novel which is the first of The Sundering series. But I’ve ended up bouncing off of it twice, just not really caring about the characters.
I’ve been searching all around for Cunningham books and I can’t find any. Not any libraries around here, virtual or physical. Not any used book stores. No where!
I’ve really struggled with the first of Evans’ Brimstone Angels series for a long time, too. The rest of the series was easy to come by, but the first one goes for over $100 second hand.
My local library had it for a while, but seems to have gotten rid of it. Thankfully, all Evans’ books are excellently narrated in audiobook, and are also available in ebook (including easily pirated, which I don’t feel too bad about considering I’ve bought the physical copy of all but the first, as well as the audiobooks of all of them).
I would guess the same should be true of Cunningham’s works, though I haven’t looked. (And the quality of the audio narration may not be as excellent. I know the narrator of the small number of Greenwood books I read was less than stellar.)
Audiobook unfortunately isn’t much of an option for me due to attention issues. All I know is it’s been impossible for me to find the Starlight & Shadows series.
If you have any recommendations for Evans’ books I’d love to see if I can check those out, as well.
Evans only has one standalone novel and one 6-book series.
The standalone: The God Catcher is set in Waterdeep, and is about the daughter of a minor noble who flunks out of wizard school and becomes a rogue, getting caught up in the scheme of some dragons who have found a way to bypass Waterdeep’s mythal and get into the city. It’s a fun ride.
The series is the Brimstone Angels series, about two twin tieflings abandoned at birth and adopted by a curmudgeonly single dad dragonborn. The prologue shows one of the twins accidentally forming a warlock pact with a devil. The biggest ongoing appeals of this series are:
the nature of an infernal warlock pact and the relation between the warlock and patron
the experience of a race that internally is absolutely no different to humans (unlike, say, half-orcs, which are canonically actually more likely to be aggressive) but which are perceived as evil
the politics of the Nine Hells (her patron becomes, especially as the series goes on, a sort of deuteragonist of the series, and we see a lot of internal political dealings, schemes, etc. between different devils of different ranks)
If you’ve read the 5e Player’s Handbook, the quotes that are at the start of the tiefling and dragonborn racial entries both come from this series. The tiefling one is part of the prologue of book 1 (Brimstone Angels) and the dragonborn one is—from memory—from book 5 (Ashes of the Tyrant). The last two books are especially good if you’re interested in dragonborn, or if you like creative fantasy world building in general, because Evans’ background before she got into writing was in anthropology, and the dragonborn culture was not very heavily fleshed out previously, so she had a lot of leeway to do some really cool unique work with them. She’s got a number of articles on her blog about draconic language and dragonborn culture as sort of fun supplemental material. Here’s part 1 of “playing a Dragonborn in the Forgotten Realms”. There are also parts 2 and 3 of that series, plus 2 posts of the draconic language.
Book 4 is set in Cormyr, and deals a lot with Cormyrian politics. The closest parallel to which in more popular fantasy that I can think of is Wheel of Time’s Andoran succession crisis
Book 3 was explicitly part of WotC’s The Sundering, a series of books set around the time of the Second Sundering, the in-world explanation for the rule and setting changes between 4th and 5th edition. But Evans was allowed to set all of her remaining books 3–6 during the intermediary period, so book 6 climaxes basically right as the Sundering itself is hitting the world, which plays into her story threads in a major way.
There’s stuff about how Asmodeus came to be a god, how tieflings came to look like they do in 4th and 5th edition, how Azuth returned to life after being presumed dead, and a brief excursion to Toril’s twin plane of Abeir, the magic-less land ruled by dragon tyrants from which the dragonborn escaped.
There’s one other of her blog posts that I’d like to recommend, but I’m putting it down here because it’s a little different. It’s less a lore thing and more something interesting in the writing. Good if you want interesting ideas for narrating at a table, maybe, but mostly interesting if you’re interested in hearing about the writing process. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys seeing the “behind-the-scenes” of movies and the like. It’s this one where she’s talking about how she weaves in a game mechanic into the narrative in a seamless but necessary way. Specifically, how she used a 4e “healing surge” in the first book, a mechanic that was often derided by people who didn’t like 4e because of how unrealistic it was, but which she utilised in a way that was both flawless and entirely necessary (because the character doing it had used an ability that required they be below half health, and then later in the same scene used one that required they be above half health, to be faithful to the game rules).
But yeah, it’s safe to say that I’m a huge fan, and highly recommend her. Unfortunately if audiobook is not an option, book is the only way to get the first Brimstone Angels book, unless you’re lucky enough to have a library with it. But at least when I was buying 6 or so years ago, all the other books in the series were easy to get a hold of.
Oh, I’ll just also add that she’s got two other books set in her own world that I know of. I think at least a third is planned. And next year the classic MMORPG RuneScape is releasing a book set in its world’s past written by her. I’ve not read any of these, but plan to.
Larian pls make a new series based on the Pathfinder ruleset. I think the success of BG3 has helped the mainstream to get used to DnD ruleset. Although Pathfinder is more complex, I think they have the chops to make it more accessible to the masses.
Forgotten realms is basically the IP for standard fantasy. This is an enormous strength for an IP. Divinity doesn’t have this strength, it doesn’t speak naturally to everyone like this.
Frankly I was really excited for the Divinity project they dropped for BG3, precisely because I like the “high middle age/early modern” feel of, eg. Pillars of Eternity that FR kinda lacks.
Pathfinder was created as an updated version of D&D 3.5, which was very complex. PF food streamline parts of it, but ended up just as complex at some point, mostly due to the massive variety of options available through splat books.
Meanwhile, D&D 5e was released to be much less complex by getting rid of stacking bonuses and the vast majority of math.
Parhfinder 2 (which I have not actually played yet) did not do that. They opted for streamlining the existing system by combining several similar subsystems into one (i.e. everything is a feat now). But the math is still there.
Parhfinder 2 (which I have not actually played yet) did not do that. They opted for streamlining the existing system by combining several similar subsystems into one (i.e. everything is a feat now). But the math is still there.
I disagree. I’ve played 5E and GM PF2E (so I’m biased, but informed). In PF2E there’s no stacking bonuses of the same type, and there’s only 3 bonus types now.
Also, while there’s a ton of feats, Paizo didn’t just toss everything into feats.
PF2E is built off of a few frameworks for subsystems, one of which being character creation. There’s also the monster creation framework which allows homebrewing creatures and encounters that follow challenge rating suggestions. There’s even guidelines for building your own subsystems for thibgs like investigation, chases, research, etc. That are easy to learn get you fairly close to what Paizo would design themselves.
Meanwhile, the streamlining of 5E that you’re hinting at is WotC stripping out almost all character options. I always got tired of D&D campaigns by level 5 because your biggest meaningful choices are at 1st and 3rd level unless you start making multiclass abominations. And there’s also little support for GM’s, requiring each one to come up with their own rules for things like how ships work or designing magic items.
I’d rather have a system like PF2E that provides options, because you can always choose to ignore them and build your own thing. If you’re playing 5E, you don’t have that choice
Pathfinder 1e was pretty much just straight-up continuing D&D 3.5e, but with some tweaks. Pathfinder 2e overhauled a lot of stuff, often simplifying things, but still pretty complex.
Compared to D&D 5e, Pathfinder has more rules, but those rules often make things easier, or (IMO) get you more return for the effort. So, for example: The feat list is bigger and more complicated, but in practice, it means you only need to look at a handful of them when you level up, which is easier (and the rules give you guidelines for swapping things out if you don’t like them). The monk has more decisions to make with stances and attack types, but that’s… kind of what you want with a monk to make combat interesting. There are rules for boats, and holy shit how does 5e not have rules for boats.
The last example might sound silly, but it’s part of what convinced me to switch. It’s an annoying omission in and of itself, but also speaks to a broader pattern of 5e just not supporting Dungeon Masters, letting them fix the either broken or incomplete rules, or else take the blame for them. Pathfinder actually supports Dungeon Game Masters, as though their time, effort, and fun were just as valuable as anyone else’s. /rant
Pathfinder 2e is what I’d play if I wanted something like 5e, but runs differently. If I wanted something similar, I’d pick something else, but that’s a longer, even more off topic discussion to go into unprompted. :P
That sounds cool. My only exposure to Pathfinder was the Pathfinder: Kingmaker game, which felt a lot like the predecessor to Baldur’s Gate 3. I haven’t played it on Table Top. I’d definitely try it if someone had the books though. I already have a lot of D&D books, which makes it my go-to game.
They just launched some new Pathfinder books that are effectively pathfinder 2.x, with a lot of small (and some larger) tweaks, but technically the previous 2e books are still able to be used interchangeably.
To that end, there’s a Humble Bundle going on where you can pick up a TON of that legacy 2e content in official PDF form, so if you’re interested you should check it out! I believe most tiers include the Beginner Box, which has an intro adventure for new players and includes some sort of single player content that would give you a glimpse into how the game runs :)
Yeah, it’s definitely in the same wheelhouse as modern D&D, so if you like that general experience but want to try something new, it’s worth checking out. It’s my pick when I want high adventure, superheroic fantasy, with engaging set piece encounters, which is the vibe both games are going for.
@machinaeZERO is also right on the money. There’s going to be a revision coming up, but the old stuff is still compatible and in Humble Bundle right now. (Pathfinder does that periodically, and they’re pretty sweet deals!) One more thing is that all the rules are free, legitimately. There’s a wiki called The Archives of Nethys, which has ALL the rules content from ALL the books. Paizo allows it, and explicitly gave the site the green light to do that. The books are still nice to have, and you still need them if you want adventures or lore, but you never have to buy a book just to get some rules in it, like a class or feat or whatever.
Yes it is. Pathfinder made for builders who want to create a character with hundreds of options to choose from. It is rule heavy in the tradition of dnd 3rd edition. Pathfinder 2e is much more refined, but I doubt they went away from this philosophy. It’s still very rule heavy.
Pathfinder was to get around WotC dropping D&D 3.5. Paizo was started by veteran D&D writers to sell adventures, which they still do as adventure paths, rather than a system. When WotC updated to 4e, meaning no more print books that Paizo could reference in their adventures, Pathfinder was a way to print new 3.5e PHBs and Monster Manuals.
Paizo didn’t initially change much in PF1e. There were a few balance tweaks. The books were better laid out than 3.5. The players did the math on things like combat maneuvers in advance. In practice the game played pretty much the same, my groups jumped over seamlessly.
Having run and played both, I do think Pathfinder 2e is counterintuitively simpler in play than 5e D&D. 5e plays fluidly almost immediately, move and act. PF2e is pretty demanding for the first hour or three, the three action economy and Conditions ™ are an armful, and many players need to unlearn some D&D habits. Once a player has below average system mastery PF2e is as fluid as 5e. Beyond that PF2e shines. The rules scale better to complex scenarios, giving players more clear options of how they could act and giving the GM a better framework to figure out exactly what someone needs to roll. I also think it’s easier for players to go from average to good system mastery in Pathfinder, it’s mostly just learning how to optimize their character and learning more conditions and spells that work in the framework the player already understands.
For new players in session 1 D&D is simpler, in session 5 Pathfinder pulls even or maybe ahead, and in session 50 Pathfinder still sort of works where D&D falls apart.
PF2e character customization, though, is much more complicated, which some people like and others do not.
Personally I would love if they made something based on FATE. I would have absolutely no clue how to do it in a CRPG, but I love the system for actual pen&paper.
I don’t really think it is possible. FATE rules do not contain a game in a traditional sense and the game itself is created during play via Aspects. A computer game that attempts to do FATE right would just end up with a FUDGE adaptation. Maybe when the LLMs are much better…
I was impressed by how good Larian made BG3 in spite of using tabletop mechanics, but the Divinity games still had much better game play. I hope they start a new IP and add more of the roleplay options that made BG3 great, but with their own mechanics (hopefully without a charisma stat)
I hated the magical + physical armor parts in the D:OS mechanic. I think using a DnD ruleset instead of their own helps BG3 mainstream success. This is anecdotal evidence but I have a friend that is unable to play D:OS2 but loves BG3 very much.
I can understand why people familiar with DnD mechanics and setting would find it easier to get into BG3, but they’re certainly not easier to learn. You have 4 separate tabs of actions, loaded with different icons (half of which you probably won’t use). I’ve played 5e for years and even I found it pretty cumbersome, especially when 90% of the time your best option is just to press attack. Now that I say it though, maybe that’s why it’s easier. Divinity’s armour made sure you engaged with a variety of different classes and abilities whereas you can go through BG3 just whacking everything on the head and ignoring all your abilities. I’m glad they reached so many people with BG3 but I hope they go back to great tactical combat in the future
PF2e is a lot more approachable than 1e. It’s a lot harder to truly botch a character in 2e, while preserving variety of options. The 3 action system is also much more intuitive than action types.
This would be my absolute dream. I loved BG3 but the weakest part of me was being based on D&D 5e. PF2 is just a better system in pretty much every way imo.
If they could make a PF2 CRPG, that would be incredible.
Any chance you might be able to give some highlights of what you consider significant differences between 5e and PF1/2 (your choice)? My only experience is 5e tabletop and BG3.
PF2 quick highlights:
Action economy. You get three actions and can spend them however you want. Attack three times? Sure! (Note: there’s a -5 penalty for the second attack and a -10 penalty for the third attack on the same turn (note: some feats can mitigate this eg. one that drops them to -3 and -6 respectively)). Move three times? Yeah! Move attack move? Attack move attack? Cast a spell (typically consumes two actions) and then attack? Sweet. Got a feature on your spell where you can funnel more actions into it for a bigger effect? Very cool.
Degrees of Success: Roll more than ten below the DC? Oof, that’s not just a miss, that’s a miss where you also fall on your ass. Ten or more over? That’s a critical! You get sweet (and clearly defined) bonus effects. Roll a natural 20 or 1? That bumps you up or down a success tier instead of being an automatic failure or success. You might just be turning a critical miss into a regular miss on a 20 (given extreme DCs) or even a regular miss into a hail mary shot, like Bard hitting that gap between Smaug’s scales.
Counteract as a broad mechanic: Counterspell is now just one implementation of a greater and robust counter mechanic, wherein you make a bid and possibly get a better result. The counterspell example is that you can counter a spell of up to three spell slot levels higher than the one you spent just by rolling high (see degrees of success above). This is also how you disarm traps and dispel auras.
Counterspell itself gets way more granular. It is very different depending on which class you’re pulling it from, which means it feels way more satisfying, not having been smashed into a one-size-fits-all shape. You can build it up with feats, playing with the resource economy and requirements. My personal favorite is a feat which allows you (GM’s discretion) to counter spells with thematically relevant spells, like fizzling a fireball with create water. It’s intricate, it’s interesting, you get way more control over your kit, and you get to feel really cool when you do cool stuff. Which applies to the system on the whole.
There are consistent rules that are written out pretty verbosely. This can be scary at first but also ‘generally’ prevents a lot of table discussion. There are tons of characters choice and it is pretty hard to make a low power/high power character; also encounter/monster building rules actually work. Price of this is that there are a lot of options that were balanced out of their fun. Thankfully they have been getting better at this.
Personally I think 5e sits at a weird point. There are games like PF2, 13th Age, etc. that deliver better gaming frameworks with depth and there are better ‘simple’ games like WWN and numerous retroclones that provide the bare minimum and empower GM to improvise. Where as 5e has had an approach more like the former to the rules interpretation and character complexity, with tons of unofficial official rules clarifications and specific character, while having the actual rules written out more like the latter group providing very little guidance to how to use them. It awes with fun abilities yet provides little on how they interact. It is not a bad game if the GM knows what they want out of it, but most games I have been in was a disparate mix of ‘things others do’. A lot of the blame lies with the DMG.
I played em both and even did a secret ending run. Love both but it’s based on PF1e and it’s still built with RTWP by default. I love the various origin characters that Larian made for BG3 and D:OS2 that made your party members feel like real characters that have their own motivations unlike other RPGs that have your companion to be more like henchmen.
They’ll never release HL3. They are not a developer anymore. They are just a game store/directory. HL3 has been overhyped so much that anything released would be a disappointment. The gaming market has changed too much from when they made a game engine and released half life to showcase that game engine.
I can probably list a million more reasons why they’ll never release, but those are the big points.
Half-life Alyx was HL3, just it was better to name it not HL3, because fans would lose their minds.
On the one hand, yeah. On the other hand, HL:A ended with an obvious sequel hook, and that hook was the ending of HL2:E2. Spoilers, I guess, but the game’s been out for a while.
Of course, that doesn’t mean another game is coming, but it does mean that HL:A doesn’t mean another game isn’t coming, either.
And check your local inheritance laws. Some places will take pre-death gifts into account depending on how long the time between gift and death is. The UK, as an example, looks at gifts made up to 7 years before a person’s death. It’s messed up.
If they can prove you got a bunch of gold with a loan and then your descendants suddenly have a bunch of gold, but they can’t prove it’s the same gold, is that enough to make the descendants pay back the loan?
What if you did it with Monero to make it impossible to prove it’s the same money?
My dad did this. Was almost 70k in unsecured debt at the time of his death. I gave most everything away except his fishing stuff. He had so much shit.
Only one credit card company said “it’s good you are taking over the payments”. Told her I never agreed to that, just informing you of his death, and if they contact me again my Saul level lawyer is going to enjoy that lawsuit. Never heard from them.
Aw damn, I’m glad you knew better, that’s downright predatory and should be illegal. You know there are people out there now paying their parents’ credit card bills, thinking that that’s just how things are. I hope that when those people find out, they are entitled to getting every penny back with interest.
Most debt actually can't be inherited, instead debt collectors get first dibs on inheritance assets until they're made whole or the estate runs out of assets, whichever comes first.
That doesn't mean that debt collectors won't try to convince family members to pay. Just tell them where they can shove it.
But it’s dangerous to incentivize it, because you get short-term gains by firing anyone, whether or not it’s the right long-term call.
It’s also just difficult to identify bad performers. Fundamental attribution error is a bitch. And because we’re really bad at seeing the entire system surrounding someone’s productivity, we tend to blame operator error only to find that the next operator we hire has the exact same problem.
Exactly. It’s just goosing the numbers. The company made this much in profit, and the cost-cutting from firing people will save money immediately, so it looks great… on paper… for a little while. It doesn’t matter if the company is gutted, because the CEO and most of the investors will dip before things get too bad, and go onto the next thing. The employees will suffer and the customers will be upset, but CEOs don’t answer to them, they answer to shareholders, and shareholders just want the line to go up this quarter.
I don’t know whether valve has violated anti-trust law or not, and I certainly don’t think gaben deserves any more protection from covid than the general public but;
this is a stupid ruling. Why on earth can’t he appear remotely, as he requested? They can’t “adequately assess his credibility”? Are they gonna have an FBI body language expert on hand? Check his forehead for sweat droplets? There’s nothing they can ask him in person that they can’t ask him over a camera.
Feels like the plaintiffs are doing some kind of lowkey spite thing here, and I’m surprised the judge played along.
You’re going to need a lot more than just I’m afraid of covid to get out of being in person for a trial. People with actual fears of being killed for testimony, still appear in person. At this point with vaccines making any serious complications nearly impossible for covid, it’s a really desperate attempt to avoid attending.
I was a juror last year for a civil case, half the witnesses were cross examined over zoom before the days of the trial and played back for us. The judge made it explicitly clear that we were to take remote testimony the same as any others done in person
This isn’t a criminal trial with Gabe Newell as the defendant, it’s a civil trial against the company Valve.
Because you would expect the people in charge of the company to answer questions regarding the actions of the company.
If you were driving your truck and crashed into a traffic light, and it was caught on camera, you would be expected to answer questions about that. Even if you weren’t driving, as the registered owner you’re still going to be asked about it, or at the very least to identify who was driving.
Gabe isn’t just a tertiary witness, he has direct responsibility. Not that I think he’s done anything wrong here, I’m just saying it makes sense to have him answer questions live in court, rather than give a pre-recorded interview. Doing it live but remote invites other issues, such as poor connection quality, which would rather be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
Another thing with the trial I was a jury member on was the plaintiff themselves were not always present, most days it was just their lawyer and paralegal. The judge reminded us each day that we can’t hold their physical presence or lack thereof for or against them.
I’m no lawyer, but if neither the plaintiff nor the witnesses needed to be physically present I don’t see how they can justify forcing Gabe Newell to be. Despite being CEO he’s still not the defendant.
I mean he is pretty close to being the defendant, up to the limited liability of the company he owns and operates.
It’s also a fact that different courts, and even different judges, may treat things differently. I have no idea how Seattle handles things, but I reckon this is in line with other cases they’ve heard.
Having everyone in court wear masks absolutely does help protect him. However, what would protect everyone better is proper ventilation systems - but that would cost businesses money, rather than passing the cost and responsibility onto individuals.
Leaving the mask on the entire time is the only way it works. If everyone is taking it off to talk, they’re gonna be spreading shit around every time they talk. What state is this court in? Texas?
Everyone leaving their mask on the entire time is the most effective way it works. The judge is seeking a compromise, presumably with the intent of being able to clearly hear him speak and see his facial expressions. I don’t think anyone else will be taking their masks off, not even the lawyer asking him questions, so in that regard Gabe will still be somewhat protected.
Like I say though there are far more effective measures involving good ventillation. If you spend a long enough time in a sealed room with someone infected, even the mask won’t be enough protection, but if there is good ventillation then you won’t be breathing in anywhere near as much of other peoples’ germs.
Accordingly, Mr. Newell is ORDERED to attend the deposition in person as noticed. (See Dkt. No. 165-2.) In hopes of alleviating Mr. Newell’s health concerns, the Court mandates the following additional health measures: all participants (including questioning counsel) must wear a tightly fitting certified N95, KF94, or KN95 face mask throughout the deposition. At his discretion, Mr. Newell may provide those certified masks to participants. But Mr. Newell shall remove his mask when responding to questions from Plaintiffs’ counsel.
The bit about Gabe providing the masks makes me raise my eyebrow a little, but I think everyone would still be required to wear a mask regardless of whether or not Gabe hands them out at his own expense - I think it’s just so that Gabe can be sure everyone’s mask is up to snuff, if he’s concerned about that.
So they are still not absolute in that the users still get to buy a PC or an Android phone or get satellite connectivity via a global ISP, which boils the issue down to inconvenience/cost/hardship, not the absence of alternatives.
It’s the logic of the comment I responded to. The existence of this upcoming trial alone is proof that the mere presence of alternatives is not enough to claim there’s no monopoly in the relevant market.
The (my) comment that you responded to presented you a list of actual monopolies that have no alternatives on their platform. There was no “logic” presented, it was a statement of observation.
The existence of the lawsuit does not mean there is proof, it means that Wolfire has enough of a case to begin discovery on two of their claims that the court is interested to find out more. That’s it.
One of the claims is also very weird and I can’t actually find any information corroborating the claim besides the claim itself (re: Valve acquiring and shutting down World Opponent Network). The only thing I see is that Sierra was acquired by Havas who made WON into it’s own entity, then merged it with PrizeCentral under the name Flipside.com and the last WON game was released in 2006.
The only thing relating to Valve I can see is that Valve announced Steam in 2002 and then they removed WON from their own games, which they had every right to do so.
WG’s strongest claim is the MFN clause, and they actually have to prove that it’s for anticompetitiveness.
I was watching Mo1st play Helldivers the other night and he mentioned someone’s comment about it having the kernel anti-cheat, and one of his buddies immediately said “that guy’s a redditor.”
I had never felt more attacked yet agreed with something so much.
If people knew what devs said (justifiably) about players when nobody is looking, the internet would implode.
Like, I’m not trying to be an asshole, but holy fuck gamers are the worst about actually knowing how games are made or the consequences of various decisions they want made.
I don’t know why 80% of gamers think playing games means they know how to make games, but it infuriates many of us to no end. We get that it’s just misguided desire to see the games improve but jfc it makes life incredibly difficult (especially for the CMs)
EDIT: Imagine someone told an architect “You should just remove that load bearing wall. This other building doesn’t have one in that position and it’s great. Why is it so hard for you?”
Oh they definitely say that, and some are dumb enough to shop around for engineers they can bully. Just look at the Millennium Tower in San Fran. Idiot investors found engineers they could bully, built an inadequate foundation, and are now trying to save the building. A huge building they just built.
Yeah, and anyone with an ounce of common sense will point at that and be like “See? This is what happens.” But an outrageous chunk of gamers seem incapable of applying the same logic to game development 🤷
Edit: btw this is why knowing how to give good feedback is a really good skill to learn
Bad feedback: “You should remove this button, it sucks and I don’t want it”
Good feedback: “It disrupts my experience when I go to press button A but accidentally press button B because it’s so close.”
I totally believe it. Just based on complaints in gaming subs and communities I’ve seen over the years, I can confidently say there isn’t enough money in the world to convince me to make a game and have to deal with all the grief from certain types of gamers lol.
“If people knew what devs said (justifiably) about players when nobody is looking, the internet would implode.”
I feel that applies to every profession. Im a mechanic and sure we get a bad wrap on the internet for all the dodgy work and ripping off we do.
But when we’re dealing with customers and their cars are filthy gross and full f rubbish and they’re in for the dumbest of shit you just wish you could come back at them with facts and keep your job.
I’ve attempted to do public-facing technical support for a game and dear Christ you’re spot on. I love people for wanting to engage with something I’ve spent a substantial part of my life putting together and trying to make it run okay, and am sympathetic to people feeling frustrated when technical issues prevent them from fully enjoying an early access game. Early on when the community was small I had a great time shitposting with the players, but once we hit release the environment turned toxic pretty much overnight as the community suddenly grew.
But like, none of them know how hard we crunched to get even a playable version of the game out, nevermind one that’s playable on the lowest of netbook specs. None of em know how complicated the system is that’s breaking preventing them from logging in, that that’s not actually my area of expertise and that I’m just feeding them information from the matchmaking team who are all freaking the fuck out because this is the first time we’ve tested this shit at scale. None of them know that we were getting squeezed by our publisher, who wanted us to do a progression wipe that we didn’t want ourselves, but like they control if the game gets shipped at all so… not really a choice there. And we can’t admit any of this because accusations of incompetence come out pretty early, tend to stick around, and leave devs very little room to make bad decisions (which happens a lot!)
And like, being trans now on top of that? Hell no, I’m never touching a public server again if I can help it. Slurs and mistrust were already flying before, I can’t throw myself in front of that bus again. I’m gonna miss it because I cared a lot about connecting with people playing the game and for a while found a lot of joy in responding to bugs and fixing individual system issues and integrating into the community. And there were some amazing people who were great to talk to that I really missed when I left. But the inherent abuse that comes with that gets so overwhelming and it drained my desire to even work on games at all for quite a while.
I totally understand this. I used to do CM work and support stuff, and took the first chance I got to switch to a technical role.
It takes a special type of person to not be permanently fucked up by some of the stuff that gets said and done. I have the utmost respect for the CMs that are able to brush that stuff off over and over again. Cause I sure as shit can’t
Especially the bit about publishers making bad decisions and being unable to even talk about it. That stuff hurts
I don’t think it has kernel anti cheat tho. Runs just fine on Linux without root permissions
Damn, getting downvoted for just stating my experience. It doesn’t require kernel level access on Linux and runs fine—it’s not a stretch to think it doesn’t have kernel level anticheat (it doesn’t on Linux, just on Windows).
From what I understand, it does not get kernel access on Linux. That’s why the game wouldn’t run the first couple of days. After they patched it, it just makes a web call and lets you play the game.
I don’t know if this makes me “a redditor” somehow or what, but…
As a dev, I am deeply troubled by the gaming industry so calmly walking into kernel anti cheats. It’s insane and being tossed around like it’s nothing.
Helldivers especially, since they picked one of the sketchiest ones and it’s a game that entirely doesn’t need it.
I have no idea if Reddit has suddenly picked up on this, but I’ve been pissed since at least Valorants release, but have seen more YT videos talking about it recently.
I really do not understand how server anti cheat is not way easier. I feel like devs are caught up on realtime anti cheat and not willing to do anything asynchronous. Or they really like paying licensing fees for client-side anticheat. I just don’t understand how any competent software engineer or systems admin or architect trusts the client so fervently.
Game servers are incredibly expensive, and server side anticheat is more costs.
Whether or not the studios can afford it (they can.) is irrelevant, it’s simply cheaper to go for flawed client side because the client will do most of the processing.
Any software developer worth their salt simply does not trust the client, but management is gonna manage and the engineers have to come up with a solution to “we must have anticheat because we said so, and you must keep server costs per user below x”. It’s easy to forget that most implementation choices in video games aren’t made by developers who like games, they’re made by middle managers who view games as a money-generaring industry.
I really do not understand how server anti cheat is not way easier.
In a clean slate, it is. It’s also way more effective (except for things like wall hacks, aim bots, recoil suppressors, etc, but most of those things are only really important and popular in competitive FPS). It’s also much simpler to understand and to leave no “holes” behind. It also lives in the developers domain so it can’t be “compromised” or circumvented.
The thing is that client side “anti cheat” can be commoditized. Every game with server authority/anti cheat needs specific server software to run their game logic. Client anti cheat is basically “look at everything else running on the system and see if any of it seems suspicious”. As such, there’s not really anything “game specific” to these - they basically are just a watch dog looking for bad actors - so as such, one company can come along, make one, and sell it to other devs.
This being “off the shelf” and not something the dev team has to think about besides a price tag means that management is just going to buy a third party solution and check off the “anti cheat” box on their task list.
I feel like devs are caught up on realtime anti cheat and not willing to do anything asynchronous.
First, this is a management problem and not the devs. Any dev worth their salt knows this isn’t really a good solution.
But I’d say the more relevant and prominent thing here is that game companies just don’t want to have to run servers anymore. It’s a cost, requires dev time, and requires maintenance, and they don’t want to do that. If these games had servers running the game world like games used to, they’d inherently have their own “anti cheat” built in for free that wouldn’t necessarily catch everything but would do a better job than some of these. And it could be enhanced to cover more bases.
But studios don’t want to do this anymore. It’s easier to make the game p2p and slap an off the shelf anti cheat and call it a day.
Some games still require matchmaking servers etc, but the overhead there is way lower.
Or they really like paying licensing fees for client-side anticheat.
Not that I agree with the decision, but it is definitely cheaper and faster than the alternative. But picking something like nprotect totally fucking baffles me. There are better options.
I just don’t understand how any competent software engineer or systems admin or architect trusts the client so fervently.
In some ways, same. Every project I’ve been on that has gotten anywhere near client side trust I’ve fought adamantly about avoiding it. I’ve won most arguments on it, but there are some places where they just utterly refuse.
But then there are things like New World… I don’t know how the fuck that shit released like it did. The number of things trusted to the client were absolutely baffling. I expected Amazon’s first foray into gaming to be a fucking joke, but I was totally appalled at how bad it turned out. They even touted hiring ex blizzard talent to get my hopes up first.
I imagine what makes it more of a grumble-fest for developers is that these days, a high majority of players will be coming from consoles. While cheaters do exist on consoles, they’re far less common, meaning that a majority of your playerbase is using game clients they can’t plausibly modify - meaning MOST of the clients can be trusted. So, signing on with something like EAC is really only resolving a cheating gap for a smaller percent of players.
There have even been situations with cheat-heavy games when console players will request the option to disable crossplay in order to assure they aren’t matched with cheaters, who are often on PC. Sea of Thieves may have been one such instance.
It was something I was aware of and against when I was on Reddit ever since I first heard of them.
And they don’t even make cheating impossible. Cheats don’t need to be running on the OS that is running the game. It could be running in a VM. I believe many VM implementations will let the guest OS know that they are running on a VM, but that isn’t mandatory. Other hardware in the system can have full access to the memory space and do reads/writes without the OS knowing (though caches complicate this). Some cheats just act as a display and mouse, processing the display as it passes through the device to the monitor, and modifying the mouse input to correct aim based on what it sees. If it spoofs a monitor and mouse, nothing in the kernel will necessarily see any difference.
New IP comes out, people are apprehensive if they know nothing about it.
Sequel to popular IP comes out, people trust it because they know and like the earlier game, and assume a sequel will be more of that.
And if a sequel ever deviates from the proven model of its predecessors, people lose their shit and send death threats to developers.
That’s why you see so much recycled garbage come out, because trying something new usually results in more risk and lower returns. Not always, but usually.
I appreciate requiring everyone wearing a good mask while he’s in the courtroom, but I don’t understand how having him in the room to testify would be substantially different from an online appearance.
Larian Studios does technically have a single shareholder in Tencent—which owns around 30% of the company. However, an important piece of context is that Tencent appears to own what’s called a “preference” share, meaning that Tencent doesn’t have voting rights when it comes to Larian’s decision making. The rest of the company belongs to CEO and Founder Swen Vincke and his wife.
Few people do because Larian keeps lying about it. Part of me understands you don‘t go around telling people a Chinese government asset has big money in your company, given the ongoing genocide and all (speaking of toxic work environment eh) but it‘s publicly accessible information anyway. They‘ve been so consistently dishonest about it that I can‘t take them all that serious about anything anymore. Because alternatively to lying they could just… shut up and keep making great games. They don‘t need that sugar coating.
Tencent own preference stock. They could sell their stock, which could potentially harm the company, but they hold no voting rights and carry no decision making power.
I am not a fan of China, nor Tencent, but spewing bile without understanding the context does NOT help this discourse.
Well, penny stocks exist. It’s possible that Tencent suddenly liquidating their 30% share could bottom out the share value temporarily. If the market decided that Tencent liquidating their holdings was a sign that the company was going under, that should drive the price down, correct?
Can’t see how it would harm the company. Stocks and shares are just a way to raise money in a company. I’ll sell you x% for $yk and own that amount now.
Even with normal shares 30% is a minority stake especially if a single entity owns the other 70% (ie. You can express your opinion but I outvote you every time). Unless Larian are planning to raise additional funds by selling equity and need the stock price to remain high for that reason, Tencent are free to sell their portion without any impact to Larian. (Heck a drop might even let Larian buy itself back)
They’re not publicly traded, and the only shares are the ones that Tencent owns. The shares are worth whatever someone buys them for. The price doesn’t fluctuate because there’s no market with which they are traded on
It is true that a non publicly traded firm won’t see an immediate effect if one of the shareholder leave the ship, but businesses work on trust. If Tencent sell its share, it is a sign that it doesn’t trust the studio anymore. Thus, potential private investors, like banks, will be more hesitant to work with them, and will ask for higher rates to compensate for that perceived lose of trust. Thus, hurting the Studio.
Shareholders have a right to sell their shares. If there is no other buyer, then the company will have to pay them for it. They may not have enough liquid capital to pay off 30%. Other assets might have to be sold off, which may make it difficult to operate.
I did a little more research, and it tends to be only specific circumstances and shareholder agreements, but there are times when a shareholder can force a company to buyback the shareholder’s stock.
It’s so irritating to see how eager people come to defend Larian on their lies every time someone calls it out. You’re acting like I said Tencent has Larian on the leash. I mean you’re not even disagreeing with anything I said. Tencent holds shares. They are shareholders, as the article states. Maybe read it again? Do you also claim Larian didn’t receive funding from Tencent? Because Larian was very vocal about not receiving any funding, playing dumb when people wondered how Larian even made such a huge game.
Rumors have it Hasbro’s gonna sell D&D and Tencent is the most likely buyer. We’ll see how much of Larian’s soul will be left when they get approached to make a huge D&D mobile gacha or whatever Tencent comes up with.
I’m getting whiplash from your logic. You just accused another user of acting like you said tencent had larian on a leash, which we can all agree is not true. Then you go on to say Larian is going to lose its soul when tencent approaches them with a gacha game, as if larian would take them up on this like Tencent has any say in what Larian does.
Also, Hasbro isn’t selling DnD. Tencent is attempting to buy adaptation rights to the DnD IP, which may not even be true. By all accounts, WotC is the most profitable division of Hasbro. Sounds like you read another headline and didn’t read the article…
No, I am saying Larian will do it on their own accord rather than losing out on money in the end. It‘s a tale as old as the gaming industry. We‘ve seen so many downfalls that parallel this pattern and if they‘re already this dishonest at their peak, then I‘m really worried how bad it will be when they‘re at the bottom. Even CDPR didn‘t show nearly as many red flags prior to the Cyberpunk debacle.
Oh yeah if Habro says so it must be true… boy oh boy.
This is great but my fear is that one day he will go public and not share the profits with the employees. I worked at a company like that. Said they would never sell until they did for a record amount that they didn’t really share with the employees.
Gaben will then slowly drop his head and whisper into the microphone with a wry chuckle - “You fool. You have just activated my trap card.”
Immediately, the Half Life 3 release will drop. Gaben has been holding it back, continuously updating for decades, awaiting exactly this moment. The judge, completely flabbergasted at the proceedings will immediately declare a mistrial. Legal scholars will then study the “Gaben defense” for decades.
Forget HL3; where’s HL2: Episode 3? I wanna know what the fuck happened to that garden gnome I carried all the way from the beginning to the rocket at the end.
If this happened I think Gabe would just say “it’s not happening, not at least the way you all want” and then we get some half life cyberchip augmented reality game in another 15 years (it is good though)
Legit, I’ve never heard of anti-competetive practices from Valve. Anti-consumer? Sometimes, yeah, though they do a lot more right than most
The argument seems to be that “30% cut is too high” but it’s not like there aren’t other options if you think that’s too high. Epic loves to pay for games to be exclusive there, humble and gog exist, one could even go the retro route and set up their own website (though that’s prolly the dumb idea), itch.io comes to mind…
If Valve HAS done some shady shit to ensure their major market share I’d be down to hear it, but to me as a PC gamer since '10ish (and had PC gamer friends since 06) it seems they got there through being a not complete garbage heap of a company that actually improved over the years on user feedback, which is supposed to be the good example of capitalism innit?
Escape from Tarkov has been very successful with their own site and launcher. I don’t see it ever going to steam and it’s regularly in the top 10 of twitch
No, it’s saying if you make a good game and launcher then you don’t need to rely on one of the storefront that take 30% like epic or Valve. Idk what GoGs cut is but I’ve also never bought anything from there
Thousands fail every day on the platform as well, is that survivorship bias as well or just evidence that trash fails and quality succeeds regardless of location
Wolfire Games created the original Humble Indie Bundle, but they’ve been divested from it for a few years now. From Wikipedia:
The Humble Bundle concept was initially run by Wolfire Games in 2010, but by its second bundle, the Humble Bundle company was spun out to manage the promotion, payments, and distribution of the bundles. In October 2017, the company was acquired by Ziff Davis through its IGN Entertainment subsidiary.
The comment above that Humble’s the ones suing Valve here is inaccurate.
No, humble bundle isn’t run by them anymore. They haven’t been run by the wolfire guys since 2017. If I’m wrong and they are then I’m probably not buying anything from humble again.
Suing valve. Like, valve is the only company I’m okay with having the amount of marketshare they currently have. I’m legit worried that if they go too hard on the lawsuit, it could result in the monkey’s paw curling (“I wish valve didn’t have so much marketshare” “granted: steam has been spun off into its own company. Without steam, valve goes under and “steamcorp’s” new management goes public”)
I think there was some cross-pollination for a couple years beyond that. Sounds like they sold Humble off to be its own thing, but the Wolfire guys were still running it until 2019 (see Wikipedia quote below). Either way, they’ve got out of Humble well before they filed this suit.
Rosen and Graham, the founders of Humble Bundle [and the CEO and COO, respectively, of Wolfire Games], announced in March 2019 that they have stepped down as CEO and COO of the company, respectively, with Alan Patmore taking over the company operations.
…unless you have a policy that requires other marketplaces to sell at the same price as on Steam, undercutting the ability for “better deals” to exist at all.
Which is what the lawsuit is actually arguing is going on.
Hah if 30% is deemed too much the apple app store and pretty much any retail is going to be next. Steam is popular because they don’t pull this nonsense. At 70% growth p/a why bother too
I’m also curious what the allegations are. The only ones I ever heard were from Epic, which was basically making a big fuss to promote their own competitive platform (which was so shit it didn’t gain any traction apart from the free games).
I’ve tried all the online stores ever since the cloudification (remember Impulse?) but none have ever been able to compete with Steam in terms of features and value to the customer. Steam didn’t get to the top by being anti competitive, it got there by being competitive and offering a better product to all stakeholders, not just to shareholders.
And as you mentioned, there is plenty of competition for Steam. Don’t like the monoply? Get it on GOG or Itch instead.
Valve devotes only a small percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store, and dedicates very few employees to that effort.
Okay yeah I was annoyed that it took Epic’s store to make Valve update their ancient UI, but Proton has gone a long way to improving my opinion of them (and it’s open source to boot).
Also is a shame that the court won’t have the background to know that invoking EA’s complaints about anti-competitiveness and price gouging is so completely laughable.
PMFN (Platform Most-Favored-Nations clause): Valve forces publishers to price games on other platforms at the same price or higher than Steam. This is an anticompetitive monopoly because publishers can’t sell the game at lower prices on platforms with a lower cut than 30%, which would improve competitiveness. Very valid point
Keys that publishers can sell on other storefronts are limited. This point is moot. The fact that Steam allows you to activate a product that was purchased elsewhere and then use their infrastructure to download the game is way more than they have to do. They can completely make the rules here as this is basically a free service that you get from Valve.
Some murky points about Valve policing review bombing that isn’t explained properly.
If 30% we’re too high, surely just by offering a competitor that takes a lot less if a cut (say, 12,%), developers would flock to thst competitor because it saves them so much money, right?
Not even just that. They approached games that has already promised not to be exclusives, including kickstarter games that had already been funded with that promise, as well as buying games and removing them from other stores.
They were paying to have the games removed from better stores so they wouldn’t have to compete. That is an example of anti-competitive practices, not just making a better product and charging more for it.
People don’t hate on Epic because their store has content. They hate on Epic because they tried to buy market share with exclusivity deals. Nobody wants PC gaming to turn into the streaming services.
yeah, i think the 30% is fair enough, given the amount of stuff you get as a user by using steam, like
good cross-platform support
a working friendlist and chat system
remote play together
the workshop and community features
profile customisation stuff for those that like it
whishlists and gifts
i honestly feel like while they’re a monopoly, they don’t do anything other companies can’t do, their cut goes to fund features others simply don’t provide, so it’s entierly fair for them to be more expensive than the competition
Valve hasn’t done anything shady, but monopolies are still bad and unhealthy. Both things are true. And there are no other options for less of a cut if you want to actually make sales, pc gamers won’t purchase from other platforms.
Monopolies are bad, but is it a monopoly if they naturally gained market share because their product was first and better?
Honestly I’d be fine with them removing the “PMFN” clause, but I’d rather it be a law that it can’t be enforced because you know Valve isn’t the only one to include it. But even if they did get rid of it, I don’t think they’d see a major shift away from their platform.
Yes, it’s unhealthy for the undustry even if you enjoy it today. Gabe newel is old. He’s going to retire soon and likely sell the company. You won’t like what happens after that, and the fact that so much of the industry is provided via their product means they have a lot of agency to tighten the screws.
“OH but then we’ll just use something else”. That’s not how the monopoly works, you might, most won’t. Most of what you want won’t be on the something else.
Yes. They sued Valve with allegation that they are too successful by providing good service. Sure 30% is too much for some developers, but solution is quite simple… don’t sell on Steam. Problem solved. Go to Epic, GoG, bunch of others. Hell every company now has its own launcher and store.
What’s saddest of all is the fact they are willing to throw millions on this litigation instead of spending that money on improving the service. They claim it’s for the good of all users, but their actions tell different story.
Or even just make it more expensive on steam, if you really want 100% of the revenue for every sale. Pass the cost of using steam on to the user and offer the game on other (worse) markets at a markdown.
There could be a clause in terms of use that Steam won’t allow developers to make their games most expensive on Steam, or at least cheaper than elsewhere.
Pretty much. Meanwhile other stores engage in actual behaviour that deserves an anti-trust lawsuit like buying up developer studio’s and making their games exclusive to their own platforms. Or paying devs to make games exclusive to their store temporarily. You know, things that actually screw the consumer over.
God that would sound so dystopian and futuristic…but to be honest, most articles about AI today would sound like that back then. Damn people would freak out about privacy.
Elon is literally everything Cyberpunk warns is about. He's the biggest corpocunt the world has ever seen. Arasaka is exactly what Elon wants X Corp to be. He's actually trying to make chips that get implanted into your brain. He wants his own Relic. He wants to be the immortal Saburo Arasaka.
You know someone is gonna make a mod that generates random and unique bases from hab complex assets.
And thats exactly why Bethesda doesnt put the effort in. cause they make the game, then the modders make it good for free… Or it used to be that, now they want to charge for mods and take a cut of the profits for shit they didnt make.
At a scale of 1k planets you're going to have to rely on reused assets and procedural generation. At which point people not into procedural generation say that it's "repetitive". Especially if you only gen once for everyone and not each run lol.
AI generation of assets and code will theoretically eventually resolve this, but that's quite a ways off. They're not even usable for such with human assistance yet. And if you have ai generating the content, it's not really a human team making that stuff lol.
They could at least make the random PoI’s interesting if there was some…randomness to them.
Like, I walk into a PoI, I already know where the chests are, the locked doors, are, where the stupid fucking corpse in the shower is, etc etc. cause I’ve ran through this PoI 20 times.
I dont know why at least the locations of chests and locked doors cant be randomized. Make things at least marginally interesting, instead of cookie cuttered to extreme.
You can, but randomizing chests+locked doors is kinda complicated, and the more "interesting" your generations the harder it is to code and the more dev time it takes. And for a AAA game release you can't really do that.
Key+Lock randomization is something that has been solved, and has been used most notably in procedurally generated zeldalikes. But that's still niche indie territory, and not used for major game releases.
Hasn’t this game been in development for like 5 years? And they built it on an existing engine that they have tons of experience with. You could have said “they were limited on how much they could randomize POIs because of the old engine” and I would have believed you because that sounds way more plausible than “it’s hard to code, so AAA games can’t do it”. Like what?
The issue with procedural generation is the game has to be built for it from the ground up and in a modular way. AAAs try to make themselves appealing by using novel new high quality assets that aren't modular.
I haven't played starfield so idk what they ended up doing, but from the sound of it they have pre-made assets/areas that they then place onto pre-generated worlds in a randomized way.
To make one of these "areas" procedural in itself, they'd then have to code a whole system for that. With AAA/3D the hard part is making modular environments without it looking repetitive or ugly.
My point isn't so much that it can't be done in a AAA game. But rather that it's risky to do (not all players like it), and you have to structure your development around it. Lots can go wrong, there's stuff you gotta sacrifice to make it work, etc.
If starfield is on the old bethesda engine then that's even more of a reason. You can't just plug and play an entire procedural generation thing in there without some fairly large overhauls or just gluing on an unrelated system.
In practice, bethesda probably took the lazy route: using their existing engine without major changes, then just making new assets for it, throwing stuff about a bit randomly, and calling it a day.
That's the thing about procedural generation is: it's a lot of effort and sucks up a huge part of the game's development and comes at some pretty strict costs (repetitive looking environments/gameplay, reduced novelty, larger programming dev time to make it work). It can be done, but for a cost-cutting AAA studio they're not gonna bother.
They already have once though. Many of Morrowind’s dungeons were procedurally generated in development then edited a bit after, that was the same engine. Same with Daggerfall altho that was a diff engine.
Very different game but Amnesia: the Bunker has plenty of procedural generation as well.
It’s not at all impossible for one of the largest game development studios to have some procedurally generated, essentially dungeon content. Doing a bit more than the exact same place copied and pasted would be a huge undertaking yes, but if they wanted to they could have. There are plenty of 3D rogue-likes out now as well. Returnal is AAA and haa procedurally generated levels, far more complicated than neccesary for Bethesda to do in order to populate planets in their game about planet exploration.
I didn't say it's impossible. Just that it's harder, takes deliberate effort, etc. For AAA games they don't bother with that kind of thing because it's larger expense and larger risk.
I was never asking for fully procedurally generated dungeons.
I just said randomize chest locations and door locks. It cant be that hard for a company that has been using the same game engine for almost 22 years to implement a node system to roll a spawn chance for a chest, or a door to be locked or not (with a higher chance of node spawns behind locked doors).
Hell, they could have even gone the lazy way and just copy and pasted the PoI a few times and manually changed the cosmetics/appearances.
With space and prefab buildings, they have the ultimate excuse for why every dungeon is identical (at least until you get into the underground caves…), but not every one of them should have the same dead body inthe same location in the same shower, the same succulent on the same shelf. move the body to a different location! Have a chance for a cluster of books to spawn instead of the succulent! Its a prefabricated hab structure, but that doesnt mean they come with such strict instructions as “Only succulent A on this shelf”
yes. I haven't played the game so idk the details of what's up. but at 1k+ planet-sized spaces it's hard to have a team go over that by hand. Planets are large. But I have no doubt that bethesda team was probably super lazy as well.
I actually have that in my library because I bought the Index but haven’t played it yet because I wanted to play the first 2 games first. I didn’t play the first game for very long tho because I got stuck at some point early into the game and haven’t felt like continuing yet. You can also really feel the age of that game, controls and that kinda stuff. Not sure if I should just punch through that game or just say fuck it and play Alyx.
Well you’re in luck because there are VR mods available free for the older Half Life games. Just get the Orange Box or something with all the half life backlog and VR mod them for free.
If by “first game” you mean HL1, you could try playing “Black Mesa” which is a fan remake of the game, in the same engine that powers HL2. It’s not a 1:1 recreation, but it’s close enough (and I feel it improves on some things).
HL2 is also 3 seperate games (HL2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2 Episode 2), so make sure you have all of those in your library.
At the very least, I’d suggest playing HL2/EP1/EP2 before Alyx, since those would provide the expected background for Alyx, despite it technically being a prequel-ish thing.
Half life 1 just got a new big update that makes it much better to play this day and age and fixed a bunch of bugs. Either way you could skip 1. As a kid I never played 1 and went straight into 2, then 2 episodes 1 and 2 with the orange box. I still haven’t finished 1 but with this new update I think I’ll go back to it some point soon now.
Am not sure there’s a way for them to release HL3 and don’t disappoint huge number of people. Not because they suck at making games but because expectations have grown so so so much they are downright unachievable now.
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