Well, one is a linear, turn-based, 3rd person party cRPG.
The other is open world, real-time, 1st person with optional followers, sandbox action-RPG with space shooter elements.
Utterly different animals and any comparison is as invalid as comparing BG3 to Elite, DCS or RaceRoom. I've no interest at all in BG3 because turn-based party RPG-s are not really my jam. And I've never cared much about story-telling, either. I like good worldbuilding, sandboxing, looting, crafting, trying different builds, doing whatever the hell I like at any moment while completely forgetting that something called "main quest" exists, getting technical and modding the crap out of a game and this is where Bethesda shines.
Generally the term cRPG is used for specifically tabletop RPG-s adapted to digital realm. Action RPG-s take those classical RPG concepts and adapt them to a first- or third-person action game—basically Doom with leveling systems.
Especially if you’re playing a class not covered by the default companions. My paladin has been awesome, smashing goblins with a Warhammer, and still able to talk her way through just about anything. Playing a wizard, rogue, or cleric feels like it would make it tough to justify bringing someone along.
I tried a rogue that I built into heavy crossbows and line-holding while also having Ass Orion, there are definitely times I feel that it was redundant/wasteful (such as skill checks) but it pays off during stealth fights.
Having 2 characters that can move, enter stealth, and sneak attack in the same turn is extremely powerful.
[SPOILERS BELOW] Beat the cenobite doctor and the toll house lady back to back using this at lvl6, neither bosses got any attacks off on my guys. Idk if this is supposed to be impressive or anything, but In both cases I used both rouges to exploit the bosses AI, although admittedly the toll house fight was clearly designed for stealth.
My bard and Astarion work as a team to do the robbing. When you perform, crowds gather around you, so it’s very useful for redirecting prying eyes so Astarion can pick pockets.
What in the fuck. Can devs please start compressing this shit better? I know this is more of a me problem, but this is like half my SSD just for this game alone. Ridiculous.
I was going to install CoD: Cold War from PS+ on my PS5 since I wanted to check out the campaign but I'd never buy it. Fuckin 230 GB for that shit. I lol'd a bit and moved on to something else. So ridiculous.
Lmao 230gigs fuck that. Sitting here cursing my own life because I have 10 gigs of Sims 4 mods. For 230GB the game better come with a hologram that pops out of a USB port to suck my fucking cock.
The only games I'll bother keeping installed that are over 100gb are my ESO with all the addons on PC, and Star Wars Battlefront II on PS5, and only because my friends and I play co-op every Friday night. But it's still ludicrous. My most played game recently, Battlebit Remastered, is a whopping 3 GB lol.
Just one more reason why the obsession with the latest greatest OMGWTF HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHICS is the worst thing to happen to gaming since the Atari Jaguar.
We can compress textures into ridiculously small sizes, I doubt it's a problem. Audio on the other hand...
In a dialogue heavy game such as this one, each voice line for each language must be shipped with the game on steam. There's no way to split the downloads between regions and languages from within developer console on steam.
I think it's one of the most popular requests devs posted in the dev forums.
Standard lossless compression (without further assumptions) is already very close to being as optimal as it can get: At some point the pure entropy of these huge datasets just is not containable anymore.
The most likely savior in this case would be procedural rendering (i.e. instead of storing textures and meshes, you store a function that deterministically generates the meshes and textures). These already are starting to become popular due to better engine support, but pose a huge challenge from a design POV (the nice e.g. blender-esque interfaces don't really translate well to this kind of process).
Not everything can be easily compressed to significantly smaller sizes. In fact, for any random arrangement of bytes, finding one that is compressable by any significant amount is rare.
I’m sure that what can be compressed is compressed in these game files. What we really need is more intelligent assets. When downloading, the platform should take your localization settings and only download the assets required for that locale. I bet this would heavily reduce the size of many of these games.
I don't think that localization would help much. Most, probably all, assets that are taking up so much storage space are not going to include language directly.
I'd be willing to bet that the game will be available in a compressed format from a repack site with no content loss. At least 30% smaller. A recent example that I just checked, Forspoken, Original Size: 103.9 GB Repack Size: from 63.6 GB
Before I had an unlimited connection for monthly bandwidth usage I would frequently download an already purchased game from the repack site and then have steam "repair" it. Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War come to mind specifically. Saved so much of my limits at the time.
What they need to do is utilize steam's branch feature to allow smaller installs for low resolution assets and with minimal language support without an opt in to other languages needed.
The steam deck really has me wishing Steam had pushed for that as part of fully verified (or have "great on deck" be a tier above and only for games that do the extras like that). So much space is spent on things I don't need at 800p
Eh… you can have high quality assets or you can have small size, but you can’t have both.
Game assets are typically some of the most heavily compressed assets there are (it’s often quicker, even from SSDs, to load a compressed asset and uncompress it than otherwise). There’s an entire middleware industry grown up around minimising asset sizes while keeping quality. 122 GB to me just screams “this game is fucking massive” rather than “this game is horribly unoptimised”.
Wait, I thought this game was a depiction of what we subject horses to, using a horror lens to drive home the point? I’ve never heard of something less sexy?
My understanding is that there was a scene where a young girl rides a naked man/woman around. Apparently it has since been changed to make the child older, but… I can perfectly understand why anyone would be hesitant to accept such a game based on that description alone. Even if it’s not intended to be sexual, the developers were certainly pushing the line
That’s not how this works, you don’t get to decide what is acceptable for other people. It’s people like you who galvanize Mastercard and Visa in trying to control what kind of content we’re “allowed” to purchase.
To be clear this all sounds repugnant to me, but i realize Im not the sole arbiter of taste and have no interest in telling other adults what (legal) things they are and aren’t allowed to do.
If the game is so bad it’ll tank, it doesn’t need outside forces influencing it.
That’s not how that works. You don’t get to decide what a store does and does not sell. Steam refuses hundreds of games a year, this one doesn’t get special treatment.
Saying “I understand why (store) would not want to carry this product” is not the same as saying “no store should carry this product.”
I’m not admonishing the store, as you said it’s up to them to carry what they like. I’m admonishing you and people like you for trying to exert pressure on the store to not carry something you personally don’t like, because again, you’re not intended to be in charge of what others sell.
Earlier this year steam updated its guidelines to prohibit content that “may violate the rules and standards set forth by steam payment processors and related card networks”
Visa and Mastercard pressured steam to remove a game because they didn’t agree with its content. Visa and Mastercard only care because they believe they end users care - that’s you, a potential end user of visa and Mastercards service. Valve only cares because visa and Mastercard care.
You saying “I see why they wouldn’t want to sell the game” helps them to pressure steam into self censorship.
You’re speaking with an awful lot of confidence on stuff you don’t seem to be very well versed in.
For example, you somehow missed the fact that just months after payment processors forced steam to remove a game, they’re suddenly self-censoring.
Um, he didn’t say he was deciding for others, he said he could understand how others would be hesitant… sounded like he was supporting your very point that people have a right to have their own opinion.
The only reason someone wouldn’t want to sell something is because of pressure from others - you boil it down enough and the logic is “I don’t want to sell this because others will judge me”, which stems directly from others judgement, being my entire point.
You can claim “Valve doesn’t want to sell it for moral reasons”, but they’re not a moral body, they’re a corporation - their only job is to earn money.
The more people feel they can dictate what a retailer sells, the worse it gets for all of us, and retailers choosing to drop things rather than “roc k the boat” is a problem.
Sure, this is a pretty repugnant case, but the slippery slope starts somewhere.
I regret my short hand of “slippery slope” but it’s not a coincidence that less than 6 months ago payment processors used their influence to get a game pulled from steam and now all of a sudden steam is self censoring based on content.
Whatever the non-fallacious version of “there’s an escalating pattern here” is what’s happening.
You claimed Steam banned this because of the payment processors. The same payment processors being used by stores that didn’t ban this. Seems a relevant point to the discussion we are having.
The article from July explains why Steam banned this game last month, despite Itch (which stopped selling certain games due to the payment processors) is selling it?
Who is this article writer that can see 4 months into the future?!
Along with the official release date of the game (December 2), the statement revealed that Horses was indefinitely banned on Steam in June 2023 – days before it was set to premiere on IGN’s Summer of Gaming event.
This is useful information I was not aware of - thank you.
While I was wrong about Horses, the issue with payment processors forcing censorship on Steam is still true and an enormous issue - Visa doesn’t get a say in what I purchase.
People are free to pressure retailers on what to sell and what not too. Saying they can’t would be far worse. And the retailer is doing the job of making money… by following the 2ishes of the populace. This is the free market capitalist society we live in. Completly sucks, but it is consistent.
I don’t disagree, I’m just calling the people who choose to complain morons, because again I don’t believe they should be the arbiters of what is acceptable.
Basically, you’re free to have your opinion, but keep it to your fucking self and your fucking echo chambers you regressive fucking failures (the general you, not you specifically)
Interesting point. But in general, who are the people complaining in the wrong spot. I suspect people basically are complaining in thier echo chambers… social media. And likely noone cares. But then the media jumps in and picks it up. So is the media to blame? I read a story about a lady in Britain I think who had like 89 followers and made a statement. It went viral. Suddenly her statement to her echo chamber was in the news. It ruined her life actually.
So are we saying the media should be banned on reporting what is said inside echo chambers, or are we saying public posting of opinions should be banned?
Neither. I’m saying that visa and Mastercards opinion on what I’m buying means fuck all to me, it’s none of their fucking business. I don’t care who writes you a letter, posts on face book, what the media says, it’s not their job to police my purchases.
They’d be 100% in the clear just ignoring these people (the kind of morons who have time to cause this kind of trouble either don’t need credit or don’t have a choice in the matter, so no loss of customers), but they decided to interject themselves in a place they don’t belong. So fuck em, and anyone who tries to enforce limitations on the legal things I do via crybaby disingenuous public pressure.
If everyone felt like me, these attempts would fall flat on their face. Sadly, too many sheepish pearl clutching morons.
On the visa and Mastercard thing I very much agree. In theory they are a business, and can chose who to do business with. But the free market pressures don’t exist to impact the decisions they make. So instead of them being influenced by customer sentiment, they are actually influenced by large organization with an agenda. That agenda is usually just a BS reason to build the organization and make specific people rich. It doesn’t represent the will of the people. So… they should be treated more like a utility. Places are refusing to take cash these days, so it is an easy argument that they function like a utility.
GTA will proceed to break all media sales records because why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy to spend your hard earned capitalism bucks on
why do the right thing when you can buy a new shiny toy
It’s not like they’re plastering “We Busted A Union To Get This Game Out Six Months Late” on the packaging. The overwhelming majority of retail customers have no idea how the sausage is made. Those that are curious enough to ask typically aren’t the ones going in on the “Rape And Loot Simulator” franchise to begin with.
Gotta get off this hobby horse of blaming the anonymous gooner gamer at the bottom of the food chain for decisions made in a smoke-filled board room long beforehand.
The “anonymous gooner gamers” or uninformed consumers are why the companies get away with shit like this. Because they keep throwing money to buy the next best thing
No they aren’t. Games flop all the time and the companies don’t quit this bullshit. No business executive has ever walked out of a tense call with their investors and re-committed themselves to being nicer to the staff. You’re delusional if you think people not buying a game results in the quality of life of that game’s staff improving.
What improves the lives of game developers is going indie and doing well. What improves the odds of doing well as an indie developer is producing games that can compete with the GTAs absent the absurd marketing budgets. That requires a symbiosis between indie games media, indie developers, and early adopters. But the gooner gamer is at the end of the line in any event. They don’t even know the game exists until it gets a splash ad on the Steam Store.
Your retail consumer market is a consequence of industry practices, not a cause.
The biggest crime here is that people are actually looking forward to a game that will INEVITABLY be the same GTA slop we’ve been playing since the turn of the goddamn millenium.
Graphics are no longer a selling point, we can make anything look like anything now. Unique gameplay and immersive narratives and interactive mechanics are now the way games stand out. Look how popular far simpler social games are like Repo and the like. look how well a goddamn knockoff of S.T.A.L.K.E.R did (Misery) and it was the most basic survival mechanics and it was made by one person and it looks like it crawled out of a Playstation 2… but it was engaging and addicting because it was trying new ways to do old things.
All that aside, yeah our countries hate unions and hate workers and everyone in power hates you and wants you to die.
Just to address the potential for US defaultism, “our country” in this case should be read as the United Kingdom, where Rockstar is headquartered and the union busting in this instance took place.
Hype around a game is directly related to the marketing budget. If people are looking forward to the next edition in a franchise, it is inevitably because they’ve been bombarded with “NEW THING! NEW THING! NEW THING!” radio/TV/streaming ad reels for months prior.
All that aside, yeah our countries hate unions and hate workers and everyone in power hates you and wants you to die.
We’re going to replace all the working class schlubs with AI, haven’t you heard?
An outright confession of what sure sounds like blatant astroturfing—a deceptive marketing campaign that’s meant to look like natural, spontaneous conversation—is probably not the sharpest move for any company that wants to attract or keep new clients.
The clients are just fine with it. This guy was off talking about it to market his company; publishers that he attracted did so because of what he was doing.
The users being astroturfed are the ones who aren’t going to like it.
What the client is going to be pissed about is that the guy mentioned their actual game while trying to promote their astroturfing company:
Still, Beresnev did what he could to put space between War Robots developer My.Games and Trap Plan, telling Kotaku the intent “was to experiment with a more organic way of promoting games on Reddit—without using bots or fake accounts—and to build a new case study we could use in the future,” and that mentioning the game and studio by name was a mistake.
“This was entirely our initiative and not commissioned or endorsed by My.Games in any way,” Beresnev said. “We understand this was a mistake and have since removed the case study. We sincerely apologize to My.Games and the War Robots: Frontiers team for the misunderstanding and any confusion it may have caused.”
I mean, I would imagine that they may well do that, but there are businesses that buy and sell social accounts. Like, the point is that a legitimate user accrues reputation. I mean, that’s an important element of how humans interact with each other — provide useful information, and I give your opinion more weight and stuff. Social media tends to try to leverage that too. But when someone doesn’t want their account any more for whatever reason, their reputation has value, and so it can be bought and sold.
Reddit Account Marketplace: Sell Your Reddit Accounts Securely
Have an aged Reddit account you’re not using? Turn it into cash. REDAccs is the safest place online to sell Reddit accounts with post karma and history.
AccsMarket offers verified Reddit accounts for marketers, businesses, and automation engineers. They are useful for engaging in discussions, promoting content, running marketing campaigns, and managing multiple accounts for outreach or growth.
So they could develop their own “fake” accounts. Or they could just buy accounts from real, actual users, step into their skin and acquire their reputation. Or they could buy accounts from people who intentionally try to karma-farm — I imagine that that’s probably its own industry.
EDIT: Oh, sorry, maybe I misunderstood — you were quoting the astroturfing guy, using whatever his meaning was. I have no idea what he calls a “fake account”, and I don’t think that I’d consider him to be incredibly trustworthy in the first place. But he might mean that he doesn’t rely on an army of sockpuppet accounts to upvote his astroturfing, I suppose.
We are basically getting a casino shoved in our faces most online games we play now. Not sure why this isn’t outlawed, it is absolutely having an effect on the population, not the mention the growing population specifically (growing as in kids being shoved this in their face while they grow up).
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