I agree! It’s not easy to measure this and my equation of course falls a bit flat. But as a rule of thumb I think it’ll do. Albeit more so for the games I tend to play I guess.
My question stems from having seen people complain that pricy games were to short. I’m kind of thinking about it like a cinema visit you know? If you enjoyed the movie that was 2h and cost $10 (taken willy nilly from the air), how could you equate that to a game?
If it’s tedious, why would you keep playing? Just stop and move on to a different game. If you only play it for 15 hours before dropping it, then that becomes the figure for the $/t ratio.
I don’t know, this whole 60fps thing is a new demand from gamers. Frankly I don’t care about reviews anymore. Everyone skews negative, and I’m tired of it.
My hard takes:
60fps doesn’t matter. It’s not a shooter. Even CS1 I could only get 50ish on a new map, and that’s with hardware that’s 6 years newer than the game.
RAM should be used. For gaming it would be wasteful not to use it. If you aren’t using all your ram then you’re loading textures, shaders, and everything from disk, which is thousands of times slower and that would lead to … you guessed it, gamers bitching about lag. What are you using that ram for anyway when you’re gaming that’s a higher priority? If you’re watching someone and they’re complaining that a game is using too much ram shut them off. They don’t how computers work. These aren’t the days of 256MB of ram. I have 32 gigs. I want them to use it.
Marketers are paid to lie. They don’t understand what the game can do, they’re paid to sell it. Cyberpunk was disappointing for many because they believed marketers running unleashed, saying the game would be a revolution, that it would be gaming evolved. It wasn’t. Instead gamers “only” got a fun open world RPG and they were disappointed by it. (And bugs, they had legit concerns but marketing was stupid around that game and every one of their marketers should have been fired )
I find that people who watch reviewers are exponentially more disappointed in games because they let reviewers tell them how to feel. If you want to start enjoying games more, stop letting them tell you if you should be disappointed. They’re going for clicks and views, and the rage train gets a lot of them. Just try it and return it if you don’t like it.
I haven’t watched anything and I’m excited. I’m not “hyped”, I don’t think it will redefine city building forever. I think I will enjoy my time in a game that is by definition an iteration of the franchise. Maybe it’ll be great. Maybe it’ll be worse than the first, but I’m going to decide that myself, not let some reviewer begging me for a subscribe tell me.
60fps doesn’t matter. It’s not a shooter. Even CS1 I could only get 50ish on a new map, and that’s with hardware that’s 6 years newer than the game
It does not sound like 50 FPS on 6 years old hardware. Maybe half?
RAM should be used. For gaming it would be wasteful not to use it.
Don’t be afraid, I do use my RAM. Like, it’s full of other important programs and filesystem cache.
But the game shouldn’t take it away from other programs, and it should also be aware of the fact that windows starts swapping out programs when RAM usage has reached ~70%. This will significantly affect any programs you run simultaneously, but the game itself tooz because it’s less used memory pages will be swapped out more. Random access for reading back swapped pages is much slower than loading the resources in smaller groups sequentially.
16 GB usage sounds like the game has loaded ALL of its models and resources, even those that are not needed (not in view, and probably not even accessible to the player), and probably has multiple copies of most with different resolution and such.
Loading to RAM that much data would be fine if they managed it to only be loaded to a cache, that can be released for other programs, but I don’t think you can do that in any other way than using the filesystem cache, at which point the RAM usage does not even count against your process, or as usage at all.
If you aren’t using all your ram then you’re loading textures, shaders, and everything from disk, which is thousands of times slower and that would lead to .
Obviously the game does not have to use all the RAM. It only needs to preload textures and models that are useful on your system (based on graphics settings) and are in use right now or can be in use very soon.
Also, loading from disk is not as slow as you make it seem. Yes it is if your users install games to a drive that’s bad for that purpose (like SMR tech hard drives), or if you haven’t placed the resources strategically, by which I mean grouping resources so that commonly-used-together resources are placed sequentially for a quick and efficient read.
The first problem shouldn’t be your concern: the player shouldn’t expect top performance from hardware that was designed for a totally opposite task.
Marketers are paid to lie.
Yes, but they shouldn’t touch any technical information, including the hardware requirements section. Marketers don’t know shit about the game, just that they want to sell at much licenses as humanly possible.
The hardware requirements, however, is to be defined by those who know shit about the game. Preferably core developers or performance testers, who have an idea about the game’s inner workings and about how much is it expected to use in average and in the worst case.
I find that people who watch reviewers are exponentially more disappointed in games because they let reviewers tell them how to feel.
I can agree with that and your point on Cyberpunk. I haven’t played that game, but not because I’m not interested. It looked fun from content that I have seen.
But the performance concerns sound like that it’s actually a huge problem.
I like it that so far it has been described a solid lunch except land leveling and performance, because the first one can probably be addressed in a few months at most if they want it. But even the published hardware requirements were disappointing, and this is a signal that the game will hardly get any better than that, if it can reach it.
60fps complaints go back to the dark days of 360/ps3 ports where HD resolutions on the consoles meant high framerate was no longer a viable option there. Since AAA games started using console as lead platform pc became saddled with 30fps caps as well. It possibly happened even earlier, but that was the time where I started noticing it.
Rimworld for sure. I paid full price for it on Ludeon’s website and played it a lot. When it released on Steam I started playing it there and now it’s my most played Steam game by far. Based on some quick and dirty math, it’s cost me under $0.03 per hour of enjoyment.
Another big one is Against the Storm. I’ve only played a few hundred hours so far but that’s been worth every penny I spent too. I bought it during the last Winter Sale on Steam and I’ve put in about 200 hours.
Same, about 0.02 USD per hour at this point, with DLC included. Would be even lower if I had bought the game earlier instead of pirating it for months.
I don’t think hours played/price is a good metric. Often games can be way more expensive that only last 10-20 hours yet give better gameplay and enjoyment.
Yup I think of some games as fidget spinners, they’re just zoneout games that fill time… then there are games with amazing stories, mechanics, characters, graphics etc that provide real, if shorter experiences.
Baldur’s Gate 3 - It’s my second run. Part of what I love about these games is that you’ll find new things and different approaches with every play-through. And with every run you get a little more daring and in-character with how you react to situations.
First time round I can’t help but play little miss goody two-shoes, just staying true to my own nature. Second time I feel a bit more daring and actually try to act like the self-centered anti-hero I had in mind for this character. Who knows, maybe some day I’ll even dare to play a villain :)
Playing coop with my friend. It’s so much fun. It’s kinda hard not to mention spoilers, choices or things we’ve done in our main games though hahah. There’s so many choices and branches…
A certain number of hours reached is a fairly easy metric to use and it works great for a lot of games. But let me tell you about Senua’s Sacrifice… that game is short. It was only $20 or something and 8 hours to play through. But it made me ugly cry at the ending. It was so emotionally charged I just sobbed for the girl. That was definitely worth the price.
I suppose I’d prefer if short games weren’t overly expensive, but I never liked the hours per dollar thing. I don’t like replaying games. I’d rather buy six two-hour indie games for ten dollars each and have each one be at least somewhat unique and engaging, than spend 60 on a sprawling hundred hour AAA game filled mostly with repetition and busywork. Life’s too short for that, you know?
Had your pretty run-of-the-mill road to hardcore experience in WoW, complete with the long term semi-hardcore guild I stayed in the longest, helped managed, got in a relationship with the GM and moved countries over it, etc. Eventually tried to go full hardcore, did for a bit and quit the game a few months later. You know your standard stuff…
Just on the topic of demos, I feel like they are making a comeback these last few years (speaking as a PC gamer).
Steam has their Next Fest, which is all about demos, and I’ve found a few games there I bought later or put on my wishlist.
As for Talos 2, while I haven’t checked out the demo, I really liked the first game, so I was gonna get the sequel anyway eventually, unless the reviews thrash it for some reason.
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