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net00, do games w Even Starfield's community patch modders are growing 'disenchanted' with the sci-fi RPG, as volunteers depart in droves: 'If nobody comes forward, we may have to retire the project'

It was bound to happen, modders can’t fix a soulless game. There’s no interesting characters, factions, or world setting to grab anyone’s interest.

I thought modders would have abandoned it sooner though.

scrubbles,
!deleted6348 avatar

It was incredibly mid. For something Bethesda hyped for over half a decade they sure made a bland game. Throwing aside all of the incredibly dated gameplay, you hit the nail on the head. It was boring

You can tell every faction was decided by a corporate committee inside Bethesda and Microsoft. They couldn’t be too risky, couldn’t come close to possibly offending one person or risk having slightly fewer gamers. That results in a boring as hell game. Everyone was too goddamn nice in the game. No one ever got mad at you. You could punch someone in the face and the response would be “hey, that’s not nice” and then they would continue on. Hold on there don’t want to possibly scare off a potential customer by having a realistic situation there.

Aganim, (edited )

Meanwhile a Bethesda game like Fallout 3 had its fair share of flaws, but gave you plenty of opportunity to decide if you wanted to be the good guy or not. Blow up a town? Kill off all residents of Tenpenny Tower, or whack all the ghouls that want to take up residence? Why not all of them? You decide!

It also wasn’t afraid of locking players out of quests if they behaved like an asshole. I liked that, why would somebody try to work with you after you just gave them the proverbial finger?

Far better than ‘oh golly, you just told me that I’m not a nice person. Well, that’s not very neighbourly of you, but I’ll pay you my life-long savings if you hop over to the next hub and return my package that I conveniently know is collecting dust over there, but can’t be bothered to fetch myself’.

drosophila,

In Fallout 3 you can kill the entire BoS faction (minus the essential NPCs, that go unconscious), wait a day, and they’ll be your best pal again.

In Starfield there is the exact same morality system, with lawmen who will attack you if you are evil and some random faction that will attack you because “we hate goody two shoes”, but you are shoehorned into being Jesus at the end of the game with the same issue of the ‘good’ faction having to mandatorily become non hostile to make the final quest work.

The way people feel about Starfield is the way I feel about every Bethesda game since Morrowind.

Aganim,

Yeah, FO3 wasn’t perfect, but at least it had its darker edges. Feel like a slaver? Sure, no problem, you can enslave random wastelanders and sell them for profit. Screw over BoS? Broken Steel let you do that, RIP Citadel. The Pitt gave an antagonist with a motive which turned out to be a bit more nuanced than it initially seemed. You could roleplay a fat-shaming, racist PoS if you wanted to, instead of presenting only safe options.

koncertejo,
@koncertejo@lemmy.ml avatar

My biggest issues were that the world building felt so lazy, in that every faction essentially boiled down to Space America in various aspects. You got the Space American Liberal Authoritarian State, you got the Space American Cowboys, the Space American Technocrats, and the Space American Religious Fundamentalists. I found all of these factions kinda repugnant for one reason or another, and uninspired to boot, and so I never felt a pull to experience the world on a deeper level once I had gotten tired of the regular gameplay.

reksas,

i’m kind of grateful for starfield actually. Feels like I can see bethesda as it actually is, even though it was obvious even before. Its so easy to just not care about anything they do. They can release next elderscrolls all they want, its all dead to me. Even if they manage to make it decent i still dont want to even look at it. Its going to cost 80€ or something like that most likely, so that is so much money saved for something more worthwhile too.

Kolanaki,
@Kolanaki@pawb.social avatar

Modders could fix that, but why bother making it a mod when you could just make a whole new game from scratch for just a little more work?

NONE_dc, do games w On the prospect of an $80-$90 GTA 6, former PlayStation boss says 'it's an impossible equation' for big-budget studios to keep their prices down
@NONE_dc@lemmy.world avatar

People expect games that are ever more ambitious

Nono, people expect Good games, that doesn’t have anything to do with ambition.

LandedGentry, (edited )

deleted_by_author

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  • filister,

    Nowadays games are very repetitive and grindy. That’s very unfortunate as it kills the game. Very few of them have engaging side quests that don’t feel like generic AI generated crap. So longer gameplay doesn’t automatically equate to better quality games.

    Yermaw,

    Repetitive and grindy

    It’s working out good for me personally. Between that trend and having gamepass. I don’t have much time to game any more, so can barely get past a tutorial before real life steps in. By that point I feel like I get it though so it’s OK.

    slaneesh_is_right,

    I absolutely love kingdom come deliverance 2. Usually in games like that i just mainline the game and even then i usually don’t finish them. I did everything in this game before i even touched the main quest. The game is just very fun to play.

    filister,

    I have the first part, but I am not exactly sold on it. I really like the idea, the historical precision, etc., but the gameplay, especially the fight mechanics are a bit putting me off to a point that I have never completed it. Is the second part better in that regard?

    ampersandrew,
    @ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m struggling with this too, about 1/3 of the way through the main quest. They tutorialize you on feints and defensive mechanics, but you can’t really punish aggression like you can in a fighting game, and the NPC never falls for my feints, basically ever. Getting through a melee fight feels like luck. The last one I got through was because I managed to impale him with three arrows before the sword fight actually started.

    TwinTitans,
    @TwinTitans@lemmy.world avatar

    Exactly. Look at Nintendo. A fun game doesn’t mean you have to have bleeding edge visuals.

    imecth,

    Yes look at Nintendo, shitty visuals and high prices.

    dormedas,

    Makes profit or they’d stop doing it.

    echodot,

    Their games have always been expensive , but they are but they’ve always been this side of reasonable. Let’s see how $90 games treats everybody.

    I wouldn’t want to spend $90 on my kid, the little shit isn’t worth it.

    treyf711,

    https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/a1fa74dc-b312-414e-a486-e74b5b4e1ca9.jpeg

    My son‘s birthday is coming up and I’ve been telling people for years to get us steam gift cards.

    echodot,

    I think I realised what my big problem with $90 games is for Nintendo and it’s this, when I was a kid I used to save up money and buy game boy games. It was an important thing my parents made me do because it meant that I learnt you don’t just get given things for free (gifts are of course fine but at some point you need to learn about working to get money for things you want).

    There’s no way he’s going to be able to get $90 in a reasonable time frame. What’s he going to do, cut lawns for 2 years in a row?

    dustyData,

    Work at the meat plant, with all the other 10 years old.

    /s

    slaneesh_is_right,

    And crappy framerate. No sales and a predatory dlc system

    dustyData,

    Dear internet person, this whole discussion is being triggered because Nintendo, of all people, decided $100 was an acceptable price for a video game. They are the asshats who opened the flood gates for the corporate zombies to waltz in.

    TwinTitans,
    @TwinTitans@lemmy.world avatar

    I appreciate being formally addressed. Thank you.

    Unfortunately this will continue to happen with or without Nintendo being first to do it. They happened to be this time, and it’s BS. But now more than ever people need to vote with their wallets.

    slaneesh_is_right,

    People praise expedition 33, that game might as well be an xbox 360 game and it people would still absolutely love it.

    4am, do games w 'My personal failure was being stumped': Gabe Newell says finishing Half-Life 2: Episode 3 just to conclude the story would've been 'copping out of [Valve's] obligation to gamers'

    We’ve been waiting for so long that games don’t even remember Half-Life. It’s all “silksong copium” memes now lol

    darthelmet,

    Clearly this just means that Silksong IS Half-life 3.

    missingno,
    @missingno@fedia.io avatar

    I think HL3's meme status is the only reason a lot of gamers today do know it. If it had come out, it would've been forgotten.

    iAmTheTot,

    I honestly don’t even see it memed anymore.

    interurbain1er,

    Just like duke nukem forever was. Had to think hard to remember the name.

    4am,

    That depends on how good it was but yeah when has the third in a trilogy ever been good?

    LiveLM, do games w Someone finally figured out a good use for NFTs: Peter Molyneux is using 'land' sales from his failed blockchain game to fund the development of his new project

    So no, he didn’t figure out a good use for NFTs, he just scammed people

    Virkkunen,
    @Virkkunen@fedia.io avatar

    It always surprised me how people keep falling for Peter Scamyneaux

    givesomefucks,

    It’s the same use everyone else has “found”…

    Getting people to give you money for it

    But why not just sell pre-orders like a Kickstarter game?

    bigmclargehuge,
    @bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world avatar

    Cause he did that for his last game, Godus in 2013 and it still isn’t finished

    echodot,

    So the normal use for NFTs

    LiveLM,

    Correct. The same old “viRtUaL LAnD” shtick.

    NocturnalMorning, do games w God of War Ragnarök will require a PSN account to play on PC

    I don’t honestly understand why Sony is pushing this do hard.

    Kolanaki,
    !deleted6508 avatar

    They want your data so they can market you a PS5 better.

    ImplyingImplications,

    There’s definitely a CEO whose bonus depends on hitting a certain number of PSN accounts. I can only assume account info is being sold because why else would they care? It’s either that or they eventually plan on charging PC players a monthly fee to play all their Sony games.

    KoboldCoterie,
    @KoboldCoterie@pawb.social avatar

    It’s either that or they eventually plan on charging PC players a monthly fee to play all their Sony games.

    That would be hilarious, I’d love to see the backlash if they tried that.

    littlebluespark,
    @littlebluespark@lemmy.world avatar

    It would sound an awful lot like the high seas, methinks.

    NoneYa,

    Could be market share. More PSN accounts than Nintendo and Xbox in competition.

    Just to play devil’s advocate here.

    But I’m with you, either selling data or both of these.

    acosmichippo,
    @acosmichippo@lemmy.world avatar

    could also just be as simple as getting people’s feet in the door to their marketplace. if you already have an account maybe you’ll be fractionally more likely to buy other stuff in the store. multiply that by a few million or whatever… it’s not nothing.

    MrScottyTay,

    This is the actual strategy they’re going for I think

    accideath,

    Yea. Someone higher up at PlayStation (I forgot who, might have been the CEO) recently said that they believe PC gamers would buy PlayStations to play exclusive sequels to their PC games (like Horizon Forbidden west, which is not yet on PC). Forcing PSN accounts for their games on PC opens the door to getting a PlayStation just a little bit further.

    moon,

    Marketing. They want to increase PSN account numbers to increase their valuation, to have more data, and to make it easier for customers to move to their products/services since the account creation is already done.

    aniki, do games w Star Citizen's first-person shooting is getting backpack-reloading, dynamic crosshairs, procedural recoil, and other improvements to 'bring the FPS combat to AAA standard'

    imagine paying pcgamer for an advertisement like this to shout about dynamic crosshairs and backpack reloading like its fucking 1998.

    mjhelto,
    @mjhelto@lemm.ee avatar

    Worse than all that, it’s a fucking space sim. Why are all these space sims wanting to add FPS?

    Zahille7,

    I think some of them want players to be “pirates,” so they give them the tools to do so.

    I’m only speaking from experience in other space games I’ve played.

    owen,

    Yeah, whenever I get in contact with another vessel my instincts tell me to board and start blasting

    mjhelto,
    @mjhelto@lemm.ee avatar

    That’s a cool aspect of it, no doubt, I just wish it took a backseat to the core game play. We have so many FPS games, but not many great new-gen space sims.

    intensely_human,

    And if this space sim can create perfect FPS experience, now you’ve got all the FPS money funding the development of a space sim.

    See how that works? Markets create synergies and non-zero-sum games. In this case, putting the limited resources for the space sim into FPS elements makes new resources available.

    mjhelto,
    @mjhelto@lemm.ee avatar

    But that’s never how these things go. They put so many resources into FPS aspects that they almost entirely abandon the space sim. Just look at E:D for an example. They dedicated a whole DLC to walking around your ships and then threw ground assault missions into it.

    The immersion from being a part of the world, walking around and experiencing stuff is neat and immersive. If the focus was on that stuff first and FPS second, cool, but that feels rarely the case.

    Thanks for the comment!

    Zron,

    It’s not a space sim.

    It’s a life sim set in space.

    Chris won’t stop until ShowerTech™ is in the game with realistic health debuffs so there’s a consequence when you don’t do the maintenance gameplay loop on your ship’s bathroom.

    I wish that was entirely a joke.

    But Star citizen has always had FPS missions as a core gameplay aspect, and it’s really one of their main selling points. In no other game can you walk out of a mission, into a ship, hop in the pilot seat and go from the ground to orbit with no cutscene and all of it under player control. The amount of crazy shit you can do just because your character can leave the pilot seat is ridiculous. A month ago I teamed up with some dude who did bounty hunting. He EMPd the other player, had me EVA over to their ship, shoot open the airlock, and gun down the target, all so his buddy could come over and harvest the ship for resources to sell. The emergent gameplay, even though the game can still be very rough, is a really cool aspect of what they’ve made.

    mjhelto,
    @mjhelto@lemm.ee avatar

    I admit, I was a backer of the original campaign for Star Citizen. However, with the dev cycle what it is, I think I’ll be a grandparent before the game releases from early access. Last time I played it, it was a buggy mess, with only combat, and was not fun to me. I also admit, a lot of my angst comes from the way Elite: Dangerous tried to make FPS combat, etc., a thing. As someone who plays that game to explore, that entire DLC, as well as the alien shit they added, was part of system I had no interest in and, in my opinion, has further led to the downfall of E:D, a game that has been waiting for atmospheric landing, etc., but still, years later, barely has non-atmospheric landing.

    I get the desire to walk about your ship, have carrier ships you can walk around with other players, and space stations you can visit actual NPCs in. However, if I wanted to shoot stuff, I’d play an FPS. I play E:D to explore and get that fear/anxiety/dread I only ever feel watching American politics. Just not my game play when I wanna just chill and narrowly avoid crashing my ship while exploring!

    robdor,

    Because you can get out of your ship?

    mjhelto,
    @mjhelto@lemm.ee avatar

    You’re right, getting out and moving around and hoping into the pilots seat of your ship is cool and I love to see that stuff. However, I don’t know why it always has to tip toward violent encounters instead of just having the ability to feel immersed in a space ship or station.

    robdor,

    You should be able to avoid violent encounters but yeah you would be limiting where you can go.

    intensely_human,

    Because an FPS avatar is the body many people are most used to inhabiting in game worlds.

    If you want people to feel immersed in an environment, you have to give them the virtual body they’re used to.

    Like imagine you’re playing Battlefield 5, and then UFOs land and you go on a big space adventure. If you’re not still able to pull out that tommy gun and fire rounds the same way, your body feels different. It doesn’t feel like you’re there.

    FPS is the biggest genre with the most resources in it. That makes it a standard for virtual environments everywhere.

    GlitterInfection,

    This is what killed Starfield for me. My character is a down on his luck diplomat who cares for his retiring parents and has to take up a mining job…

    Nope, murder hobo. Literally in the tutorial.

    Hadriscus,

    I have to agree. Games tend to resort to violence immediately now, no need for justification. I didn’t imagine Starfield would be a shooter at all in fact. Ultimately it was almost exclusively shooting

    GlitterInfection,

    And a terrible one!

    RealFknNito,
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    I get the desire to compare the two games but Starfield tried too hard to color inside the lines by giving a story and lore while simultaneously trying to make an open ended sandbox which gave us neither. There’s a LARPing town of cowboys with dirt roads existing a few minutes from a hyper advanced planet with platinum roads and somehow they haven’t made contact? The cowboys haven’t progressed their dirt and wood town despite being in spitting distance of a planet of machines that could fabricate advanced tools in seconds?

    Star Citizen seems to take the Dark Souls approach of light narrative, heavy world building, “go learn the world by experiencing it.”

    GlitterInfection,

    I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted here…

    But I would honestly say that the only things I liked about Starfield are the things you’re kind of dismissing. The story and ambiance pieces worked really well, and I ONLY wanted that part.

    Every time I had to do anything space travel, combat, space combat, or inventory management, I died inside.

    I also felt like the cities and locations were tiny and didn’t feel lived in or real. Basically the immersiveness of the game which thrives on immersion was not handled well so I was left with a terrible shooter.

    RealFknNito,
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    Well the story held the game back because the game wanted to be more open than than the story allowed and vice versa where the game held the story back because a lot of areas were underdeveloped or don’t make sense with where they are for the sake of the story they wanted to tell. It felt like two conflicting ideas at the core which ended up with what we have.

    Why are cowboys within trading distance of a future tech planet? How have they not interacted to a point where they don’t need dirt roads? The only answer seems to be for the sake of being neat and is baffling. Empty planets being explained as being on purpose to ‘get more joy out of discovering ones with things on it’ and just… it was astoundingly average and competes for the worst Bethesda game against 76.

    Bethesda excels at world building and it was disastrous to watch them fail at that.

    GlitterInfection,

    Yup. I agree with all of that. It was very disjointed at every stage.

    RealFknNito,
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    Then let us raise our glasses in agreement and hope Cloud Imperium can make Star Citizen as well as they hoped.

    Asafum,

    That’s the ultimate goal though. Just last night I flew from a mining outpost on a moon to find resources, scanned a whole bunch, pulled out of my ship with a mining buggy, mined a bunch, and then logged out from my bed within the ship. 0 combat. That’s a life they want to have possible and I’m all for it! lol

    I think it’s just that fps stuff sells and all the COD kiddies wouldn’t look at SC at all if they didn’t focus on pewpew everything. Hell they have a cargo ship that has an advertisement of it shooting its guns …lol ffs why? It’s just marketing bs.

    RealFknNito,
    @RealFknNito@lemmy.world avatar

    That’s the entire thing they’re doing. The violent encounters are being planned for, obviously, but they’re not a requirement.

    Star Citizen’s approach seems to be to add the ability to do as many things as possible while giving you the option to define how you want to interact with them. Of course, you’re probably going to have to defend yourself from the stray pirate or bandit with whatever you end up doing but that’s par for the course.

    owen,

    LOL. I totally thought these were internal names for novel features from the headline🤣

    yamanii, do games w Helldivers 2 boss apologizes for 'horrible' dev comments, says Arrowhead has 'taken action internally to educate our developers'
    @yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

    “Given the opportunity players will optimize the fun out of a game”

    Crashumbc,

    Pretty much true.

    GoodEye8,

    Except people are complaining because they were having fun before and now they’re having less fun. It hasn’t affected me as I’ve replaced the railgun with EAT, but I do think the nerf was mostly unnecessary. All it did was give players less options for higher difficulties.

    deegeese, do gaming w 'Today is the end of Steam': Argentina and Turkey floored by new Steam price hikes as high as 2900%

    This is a tempest in a teapot.

    Steam ended pricing in those currencies and reverted the prices to USD without local adjustment.

    Any developers who want to sell in Turkey or Argentina will set a local price in USD.

    This really only affects older/abandoned games where the developer never updates pricing. Those games will be left charging US prices in poorer countries.

    BananaTrifleViolin,

    Yeah it's a nonsense. Argentina and Turkey have atrocious economies, with inflation at crazy levels. Turkey's is at 60% and Argentinas is at 143% currently, on a background of years of terrible economic decisions. Their local currencies are effectively trash so it makes absolute sense for Steam to move to dollars if they're going to continue bothering trading in those countries.

    gary_host_laptop,
    @gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml avatar

    I’m from Argentina, the prices we have now are absolutely ridiculous even with the LATAM USD, an Argentinian might have a monthly income of something around 250-350USD, and some games are something along the lines of 40USD even with the regional pricing, you need to add to that the fact that there is a tax on the dollar of 155%. I assume a normal person from the US earns something along the lines of 1500-3000USD a month, so it’s completely incomparable. To give you an idea, physical retro collectible games are cheaper than virtual ones.

    mindbleach, do games w Payday 3 developer drops Denuvo from the game before it's even out

    I admire the concept behind Denuvo.

    Programs bounce around between a ton of different code segments, and it doesn’t really matter how they’re arranged within the binary. Some code even winds up repeated, when repetition is more efficient than jumping back and forth or checking a short loop. It doesn’t matter where the instructions are, so long as they do the right thing.

    This machine code still tends to be clean, tight, and friendly toward reverse-engineering… relatively speaking. Anything more complex than addition is an inscrutable mess to people who aren’t warped by years of computer science, but it’s just a puzzle with a known answer, and there’s decades of tools for picking things apart and putting them back together. Scene groups don’t even need to unravel the whole program. They’re only looking for tricky details that will detect pirates and frustrate hackers. Eventually, they will find and defeat those checks.

    So Denuvo does everything a hundred times over. Or a dozen. Or a thousand. Random chunks of code are decompiled, recompiled, transpiled, left incomplete, faked entirely, whatever. The whole thing is turned into a hot mess by a program that knows what each piece is supposed to be doing, and generally makes sure that’s what happens. The CPU takes a squiggly scribbled path hither and yon but does all the right things in the right order. And sprinked throughout this eight-ton haystack are so many more needles, any of which might do slightly different things. The “attack surface” against pirates becomes enormous. They’ll still get through, eventually, but a crack delayed is a crack denied.

    Unfortunately for us this also fucks up why computers are fast now.

    Back in the single-digit-megahertz era, this would’ve made no difference to anything, besides requiring more RAM for this bloated executables. 8- and 16-bit processors just go where they’re told and encounter each instruction by complete surprise. Intel won the 32-bit era by cranking up clock speeds, which quickly outpaced RAM response times, leading to hideously clever cache-memory use, inside the CPU itself. Cache layers nowadays are a major part of CPU cost and an even larger part of CPU performance. Data that’s read early and kept nearby can make an instruction take one cycle instead of one thousand.

    Sending the program-counter on a wild goose chase across hundreds of megabytes guarantees you’re gonna hit those thousand-cycle instructions. The next instruction being X=N+1 might take literally no time, if it happens near a non-math instruction, and the pipeline has room for it. But if you have to jump to that instruction and back, it’ll take ages. Maybe an entire microsecond! And if it never comes back - if jumps to another copy of the whole function, and from there to parts unknown - those microseconds can become milliseconds. A few dozen of those in the wrong place and your water-cooled demigod of a PC will stutter like Porky Pig. That’s why Denuvo in practice just plain suuucks. It is a cache defeat algorithm. At its pleasure, and without remedy, it will give paying customers a glimpse of the timeline where Motorola 68000s conquered the world. Hit a branch and watch those eight cores starve.

    sugar_in_your_tea,

    Unfortunately, increasing cache seems to be the direction things are going, what with AMD’s 3D cache initiative and Apple moving RAM closer to the CPU.

    So Denuvo could actually get away with it by just pushing the problem onto platforms. Ideally, this would discourage this type of DRM, but it’ll probably just encourage more PC upgrades.

    Tranus,

    I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with ram-less systems soon. A lot of programs don’t need much more memory than the cache sizes already available. Things like electron bloat memory use through the roof, but even then it’s likely just a gigabyte or two. Cpus will have that much cache eventually. The few applications that really need tons of memory could be offloaded to a really fast SSD, which are already becoming the standard. I imagine we’ll see it in phones or tablets first, where multitasking isn’t as much of a thing and physical space is at a premium.

    sugar_in_your_tea, (edited )

    That’s just not true, here are a few off the top of my head:

    • video games
    • docker containers
    • web browsers
    • productivity software

    RAM is actually the one resource I run out of in my day to day work as a software developer, and I get close on my gaming PC. I have a really fast SSD in my work computer (MacBook Pro) and my Linux gaming PC (some fast NVME drive), and both grind to a halt when I start swapping (Linux seems to handle it better imo). So no, I don’t think SSDs are enough by any stretch of the imagination.

    If anything, our need for high performance RAM is higher today than ever! My SIL just started a graphics program (graphic design or UI/UX or something), so I advised her to prioritize a high amount of RAM over a high number of CPU/GPU cores because that’s how important RAM is to the user experience when deadlines approach.

    Large CPU caches are great, but I don’t think you can really compensate for low system memory by having large caches and a fast SSD. What is obvious, though, is that memory latency and bandwidth is an issue, so I could see more Apple-style soldered NAND next to the CPU in the coming board revisions, which isn’t great for DIY systems. NAND modules are just so much cheaper to manufacturer than CPU cache, and they’re also sensitive to heat, so I don’t think embedding them on the CPU die is a great long term solution. I would prefer to see GPU-style memory modules either around or behind the CPU, soldered into the board, before we see on-die caches with multiple GB capacity.

    Tranus,

    Well you’re right that it’s not practical now. By “soon” I was thinking of like 10+ years from now. And as I said, it would likely start in systems that aren’t used for those applications anyway (aside from web browsers, which use way more ram than necessary anyway). By the time it takes over the applications you listed, we’ll have caches as big as our current ram anyway. And I’m using a loose definition of cache, I really just mean on-package memory of some kind. And we probably will see that GPU style memory before it’s fully integrated.

    sugar_in_your_tea,

    It’s already sort of a thing in embedded processors, such as ARM SOCs where RAM is glued to the top of the CPU package (I think the OG Raspberry Pi did that). But current iterations run the CPU way too hot for that to work, so the RAM is separate.

    I could maybe see it be a thing in kiosks and other limited purpose devices (smart devices, smart watches, etc), but not for PCs, servers, or even smart phones, where we expect a lot higher memory load/multitasking.

    fibojoly,

    That’s a super interesting take on the whole issue. Good food for thought, thanks!

    network_switch, do games w Randy Pitchford asks fans if they'd swallow future Borderlands exclusivity deals, almost 10,000 people say just put your damn games on Steam

    Pitchford is the only person in the industry that seems to love the smell of their own farts as much as Tim Sweeney

    VitoRobles,

    Johnathan Blow comes to mind.

    Peter Molyneux is still top tier delusional, and has a lot of incredible popcorn material.

    I don’t know the drama completely, but the Star Citizen folks. Don’t have any names to rattle off.

    Agent_Karyo,
    @Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

    Chris Roberts is the person behind the star citizen scheme.

    deltapi,

    Phil Fish struck me as someone who needed to huff either his own farts or copium to get through the day. I hope he’s doing ok now.

    pyre, (edited )

    Phil fish stuff was so overblown oh my god. i hate gamers man. they never show this kind of hate toward the actual cunts of the industry.

    frezik,

    Darek Smart will always be the GOAT of… whatever this thing is called.

    redditor_chatter44,

    What if I love my own farts too? Am I a bad or weird person?

    simple, do games w Gearbox's first Risk of Rain 2 expansion gets hammered on Steam as developer admits the PC version 'is in a really bad place'

    Something to note is that it’s not just the DLC, the patch that released alongside it introduced a slew of bugs to everyone who owns the game. Apparently this includes framerate now affecting things like movement speeds, enemies sometimes dealing insane bursts of damage randomly, invisible enemy projectiles, among other gameplay breaking stuff. Total disaster.

    Sigh… I guess we saw it coming with Gearbox…

    xavier666,

    You mean if I just update my game on Steam, it will get messed up? I don’t have the DLC

    simple,

    Yes.

    Laurentide, do gaming w Dr Disrespect fired by the game studio he co-founded: 'It is our duty to act with dignity on behalf of all individuals involved'
    @Laurentide@pawb.social avatar

    Why am I not surprised that a guy who had a full crying meltdown over the existence of pronouns would turn out to be a pedo?

    Habahnow, (edited )

    Lol what are you talking about? any links or ways to find this?

    EDIT: found it: sh.itjust.works/comment/12339443

    Habahnow,

    NVM found it. Damn doc is getting lamer the more you learn about him. ggrecon.com/…/dr-disrespect-calls-out-bethesda-ov…Basically, Starfield mentions your pronoun after character creation and mentions that you can change your pronoun if you like. Doc then looks up someone from Starfield or something looking for their pronouns in the company website. He then says “Its all starting to make sense” in such a way that shows his disapproval of that option being in the game.

    Its not some crazy event, but it just adds another thing to a pile of things that show he’s kind of a crappy person. Starfield had mentioned they didn’t want to partner with him due to the previous twitch controversy, I feel his continued actions (getting pissy over this option, that he could completely ignore) really proves Starfield’s decision was a good one.

    Laurentide,
    @Laurentide@pawb.social avatar

    Oh, sorry, I had the wrong guy. I was thinking of Dan Vasc, whose red-faced screaming meltdown is embedded in the article you linked. Must have gotten the names mixed up.

    Let me try this again.

    Why am I not surprised that the guy who turned out to be a pedo also gets upset about other people having pronouns?

    GnuLinuxDude,
    @GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml avatar

    I forgot about this but as soon as you said red-faced it came back to me. This “adult” became a tomato because he could choose to be referred to as he/him in a video game. I only ever saw toddlers and small children scream the way he did. So pathetic!

    Habahnow,

    Lol I looked that one up. That was most definitely a meltdown as well LOL.

    GrayBackgroundMusic, do games w Arrowhead initially planned to make Helldivers 2 in 3 years—instead it took 7 years, 11 months, and 26 days

    I’m not in software dev but 8 years seems a long time to make a game like this. I love the game and play it daily, but it’s not that deep. It’s has 5 maps and 20 guns and 2 kinds of enemies. That doesn’t doesn’t seem like an 8 year dev time.

    krdo,

    Likely a lot of time was spent iterating and experimenting with different ideas, testing out concepts, tweaking, etc. Haven’t played the game but I do work as a software developer.

    zaphod,

    Probably, especially if you consider that the first Helldivers game was a top-down shooter.

    zelifcam, (edited )
    @zelifcam@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

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  • XeroxCool,

    Why do people always feel like their inexperience on a topic is relevant?

    Probably to politely invite contrasting opinions and experiences from people in the field

    GrayBackgroundMusic,

    Probably to politely invite contrasting opinions and experiences from people in the field

    Exactly. “I’m no expert, but this feels weird.”

    zelifcam, (edited )
    @zelifcam@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

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  • GrayBackgroundMusic,

    I forgot where I heard it.

    zelifcam, (edited )
    @zelifcam@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

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  • GrayBackgroundMusic,

    Claiming not a lot of work was done

    No, just the opposite. It’s a ton of work for not a lot of results. It’d be like saying it took you 3 days to make a sandwich. That’s wayyyyyy longer than I’d expect it to take, with the caveat, I’m not a professional sandwich maker.

    GrayBackgroundMusic,

    Why do people always feel like their inexperience on a topic is relevant?

    Because this feels unusual but I’m not an expert and I can’t say whether that amount of time is truly usual or not. I’m in manufacturing and when people say what I said, then it’s usually as an invitation to discuss the topic.

    zelifcam, (edited )
    @zelifcam@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

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  • GrayBackgroundMusic,

    That’s what I thought I did, though I implied it instead of ask directly.

    magic_lobster_party,

    They probably developed, refined and scrapped 100s of ideas before they landed to the final game.

    Goronmon,

    I’m going to provide a different reply than the others.

    Yes, I would consider 8 years a long time to make a game like Helldivers 2.

    But all that means is that a studio in a good position to make that type of game would likely be able to do it in a much shorter amount of time.

    In this case, we have a studio that was, in hindsight, too small and trying to be too ambitious in the game they were trying to make. So, trying to grow a studio at the same time you are trying to build an overly ambitious piece of software is going to have multiplying affects on how long said project will take.

    JDPoZ,
    @JDPoZ@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m guessing they went back to the drawing board several times - probably because they felt their sequel wasn’t really as evolved or as fun as what they had hoped it would be, so they shifted I’m guessing from their overhead view to the behind the player 3rd person style game we know now at some point after churning at it for a couple years at least…

    Like you know that Doom 2016 was the 3rd complete from scratch redo from what they originally started working on after Doom 3, right?

    This sort of thing sometimes happens in creative projects; like when you hear a movie took like 7 years to make, it’s not necessarily that they literally shot scenes every week for the same film that whole time. It’s that the project was shelved, or they changed directors, or the studio lost interest for a while or they got a new script or something.

    GrayBackgroundMusic,

    Like you know that Doom 2016 was the 3rd complete from scratch redo from what they originally started working on after Doom 3, right?

    No, I had no idea.

    JDPoZ,
    @JDPoZ@lemmy.world avatar

    Here’s a video showing everything iD worked on related to what was referred to as “DOOM 4” from like 2007 to 2013 before scrapping a huge part of it and coming out with the critically acclaimed 2016 version (which was only shown starting around 2015 at QuakeCon and E3).

    Note that not EVERYTHING was scrapped, as you can see things like the super-shotgun model are close to the final release - as well as what you can tell were early slower iterations of the execution-style animations the game became famous for doing, but a lot of what is shown in that trailer was never to be seen again outside of these old videos people have attempted to archive.

    Sanctus,
    @Sanctus@lemmy.world avatar

    Pretty sure the maps have static meshes but their placement is randomized. So the maps may be similar with handmade pieces, but those pieces are randomly placed to generate the map.

    You’re leaving out Joel completely. They had to make that system for him to GM us, and I like how we choose what new weapons and stuff we unlock with our actions.

    MufinMcFlufin,

    I haven’t played in a week or two but I’m pretty sure that certain stratagems can deform the terrain, like the 500kg.

    Aphelion,

    deleted_by_author

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  • GrayBackgroundMusic,

    Hahahahahaha

    Martineski,

    “Server meshing is just beside the corner!”

    Butterpaderp,

    IIRC they developed the game on an older game engine that’s no longer supported

    kopasz7,

    Discontinued 6 years ago in 2018. Wild.

    kromem,

    The level of detail in Helldivers 2 is insane for the type of game and company size.

    Deformable terrain and buildings, enemy animations when you shoot off different limbs and they keep moving towards you, your cape burns off more and more as you use your jetpack, etc.

    Call of Duty has 3,000 devs working on their titles.

    Arrowhead has around 100 employees total.

    I very much believe this game took that long with a team that size, and it shows and is a large part of why it’s been so successful.

    Schmeckinger,

    Also all of that in a engine that’s deprecated for years.

    JJROKCZ,

    It has two factions of enemies, each with a dozen or so units…

    LostWanderer, do games w 'Stories are our bread and butter': Larian is building a special team to lay out the plot of its games years in advance

    Larian Games is one of the few that actually care about their games enough to assemble a team for making coherent stories!

    EA or Ubisoft could never, even though their bottom lines would be improved by making games with compelling stories.

    pycorax,

    Ubisoft always had such a team for AC at least. AC Origins had a pretty good story and AC Odyssey was alright. Haven’t finished or played the newer ones yet so I can’t judge those yet but if there’s one thing Ubisoft does right, it’s that.

    LostWanderer,

    AC Origins was a return to form for them, since the Brotherhood days (great story, glitchy climbing and parkour). They trusted that their main historical protagonist would thrive, so the story they told was solid. AC Odyssey had issues because they didn’t trust in Cassandra being the historical MC; Alexios felt like an added on character because they thought a female lead wouldn’t sell well. The more recent games were mid because the narratives felt kinda messy; I watched a play through of Valhalla in parts it wasn’t great, Mirage had a lukewarm response, and AC Shadows had some writing issues (two MCs go from having beef to suddenly trusting one another two hours in). Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed team has fallen asleep at the wheel, the storytelling isn’t quite up to snuff with the latest games.

    I feel the modern world story should’ve been resolved, as it interferes with quasi historically accurate storyline (one can only approximate in these situations, we will never have the full truth as it’s lost to time). The modern world story has dragged on for far too long and needs to be put to rest; we need a game set purely in the modern era, to resolve what is happening. I’d love to see AC games that spin into exploring approximated history, without the burden of a world ending in slow-motion…

    If only Ubisoft actually cared.

    KokoSabreScruffy,

    Valhalla is such a weird beast in the narrative. I just completed the base main story and then end was kinda… awkward.

    At the end of it I still havent uncovered the leader of the order, hell I think less than half of the members are part of the main story. I like that each region was its own thing and the pacing was fine though in writing nothing was really groundbreaking. Replacing side quests with the smaller mysteries was also a good decision but OH MY LORD, can we be done with the modern world or maybe get a team to release a walking sim that resolves it and just go make “historically” - based games with checklist open world.

    LostWanderer,

    Yeah, when I was watching Valhalla I noticed the strangeness of the narrative…They did try something different, making each region a self-contained story. The pacing wasn’t terrible either, it’s just that they didn’t try hard enough to make certain areas of the game better. That’s what hurt Valhalla in my opinion, the wealth of very average writing; the fact they had smaller mysteries could’ve been awesome had it been better executed. Ironically, that’s similar to how Odyssey handles the cult; you don’t figure out the leader until the post game, after killing cultists who weren’t part of the main story. I feel Valhalla’s story structure was inspired by Odyssey, most regions have their own self-contained story that connects to the overarching story. Except Valhalla goes for smaller mysteries in place of the overwhelming amount of Side Quest that Odyssey has (still not finished with half of them, thankfully they can be done post game).

    I feel the modern world story should be handled with a bit of care, to make that a particularly memorable experience. Going out with a bang is better than ending on a whimper. Walking sims aren’t bad in their own right, but Ubisoft wouldn’t let a writing and dev team handle it with the care it needs (not until they figure out why Larian Studios is so beloved).

    HeyJoe,

    But at the very least we can see that the same developers who worked at Ubisoft are better than they are allowed to be. Clair Obscur Expedition 33 deserves the same love that this got and features mostly Ubisoft employees (only 30 people in total) and shows the company truly hinders how good a game can be.

    LostWanderer,

    That’s why I fault Ubisoft itself…The developer team is only as good as Ubisoft allows their devs to be. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a breakout hit, as that is an example of a dev team that is free from the oppressive weight of a corporation. I’m going to be buying Clair Obscur because I want to send a message that more games from their team would be appreciated!

    HeyJoe,

    You are in for a treat if you enjoy RPGs with modern takes on an old system. I have been playing games for over 30 years and lately haven’t had the funds to buy much of anything in the past year, but I made an exception for this and it thankfully was a good as I was hoping it would be. Holding my interest is getting harder as well, but thankfully, due to this game and a few others, I am starting to realize it’s most likely because I crave something different and unique sometimes.

    LostWanderer, (edited )

    I can’t wait…Though I got a backlog of games that currently are in progress, so I won’t be playing Clair Obscur immediately. Modern games are simply hit or miss, if it’s made by a big studio…Often it’s a blueprint of what’s trended a few years ago because games are so much bigger, it takes a while to make them.

    I feel Indie devs have the most freedom to do something unique, interesting, and fresh without super long development times. I’ve been choosing to play cozy or indie games as of late because a lot of the mainstream games haven’t caught my attention too. Hell, right now I’m playing Oblivion Remastered, and it’s got me in a stranglehold of nostalgia. It’s basically the same game but with a prettier aesthetic (there are some graphical issues that need resolving due to the quirks of Unreal 5). Nothing that Bethesda would be able to produce today that’s a right mix of banal, goofy, lore heavy, and fun.

    HeyJoe,

    I also can’t wait to play Oblivion remastered as well. I just couldn’t see picking up yet another remake/remaster over something original first. I figured the small team could benefit way more from as many sales as they could, plus I just wanted something new, haha. Can’t wait though, I haven’t played it since like 2007.

    LostWanderer,

    As I said: Nostalgia has me in a stranglehold, that’s the only reason why Oblivion Remastered was first on my list. I had a craving for Oblivion again; Clair Obscur being priced reasonably means I can buy it this payday! Though, I will finish Jedi: Survivor before starting a full playthrough of Clair Obscur.

    MossyFeathers, do games w Gearbox's first Risk of Rain 2 expansion gets hammered on Steam as developer admits the PC version 'is in a really bad place'
    @MossyFeathers@pawb.social avatar

    Maybe the most significant issue is that, for some reason, the Seekers of the Storm update has tied Risk of Rain 2’s physics systems to its frame rate. When asked about it on Discord, Gearbox developer GBX-Preston said FPS-related issues, “and all the ramifications on balance/physics/attack speed/movement/etc. were not intentional. This is in our top handful of issues we’re investigating.” As a stopgap, he said players experiencing issues should lock the game at 60 fps.

    Amazing. How the fuck did you do that?

    addie,
    @addie@feddit.uk avatar

    It’s in Unity, isn’t it? So rather than multiplying the speeds by Time.deltaTime when you’re doing frame updates, you just don’t do that. Easy peasy. They’ve got that real “Japanese game devs from twenty years ago” vibe going.

    bigmclargehuge,
    @bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world avatar

    You mean “Bethesda to this day?”

    ms_lane,

    They fixed that with 76, Both 76 and Starfield have physics untied from framerate.

    bigmclargehuge,
    @bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world avatar

    Thats great to hear. Not surprised about Starfield tbh, but I am surprised they fixed it for F76, considering it relies largely on the same tech as F4, which does have that limitation.

    Zoboomafoo,

    Or even a decade ago. Dark Souls 2 had some enemies’ attack animations tied to frame rate, like the Alonne Knights. So they attacked incredibly fast on PC compared to console.

    Weapon degradation was also tied to framerate :(

    Cornelius_Wangenheim,

    At least Gearbox isn’t spending a year+ denying that the problem exists.

    xavier666,

    Minecraft has this wonderful mechanism where everything is dependent on game-tick/server-tick, which is independent of player FPS. Why do modern developers keep using FPS for game physics?

    Baleine,
    @Baleine@jlai.lu avatar

    Minecraft is different because it uses a client and server pattern, separating the physics and display loops completely

    breadguyyy,

    basically every game uses ticks lol this was not intentional

    Annoyed_Crabby,

    Huh, now i know why that particular enemy are janky as heck in every aspect.

    CluckN,

    From what I’ve read they tried to combine the console and PC version into a unified single version. Gearbox must’ve seen the Borderlands movie and sought to lower the bar below the ocean floor.

    p03locke,
    @p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    From what I’ve read they tried to combine the console and PC version into a unified single version.

    JFC. Starting off with something that is cross-compatible is one thing, but trying to merge the two codebases together… that’s a 2-3+ year effort, minimum.

    funkless_eck,

    Destiny 2 still struggles with this. Some enemy attacks 1 shot because at high frame rates they hit the player multiple times as the projectile passes through the player character’s model

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