The reason it’s forgotten because most people aren’t able to play it. If valve really did put important story in a game that they knew most gamers would never be able to play that’s kind of shitty
The idea of sinking $500 into a headset and then another $80 for one game is pretty crazy. Not like Valve doesn't have the ownership numbers from the hardware survey. It was never going to sell like HL2.
Given how different it is to other, normal 3d games, I don’t think the comparison is fair. Additionally there are a lot of other, really great games in VR too.
Regardless, I don’t think the problem is financial anymore. Rather that VR requires a sort of “commitment to inconvenience” where you feel cut off from the outside world (among other things) that I don’t think a lot of people are comfortable with.
Are "plenty of people" enough to make a game commercially viable? And not in an indie way.
I zone out, completely cut off from others, while playing games all the time. What I don't want to do is fork over more cash for things that will collect dust (like a headset for a single game).
Given how different it is to other, normal 3D games, I think it's a bit much to stake your franchise on something most people will never have. It's obvious Valve knew that, they're not idiots and have put out good hardware that didn't see mass adoption in the past (Steam Controller, Steam Link, etc.); it's clear they wanted to try out something new even if it wasn't a huge blockbuster. They have lots of revenue from other sources to fall back on.
They probably hoped that some people would take a chance and get the hardware to play the game, and some people did. But to expect that most would do that? Lol. They're not that dumb.
"The idea" was to do something no one had done before with a beloved franchise. Not to sell headsets.
I don’t think they particularly cared if you bought their headset, but they had the premium offering if you were interested. I think they wanted Alyx to be the Mario 64 of VR.
It’s both financial (huge investment for a single game) and not. Playing with a thing strapped to your face does not sound fun. Especially with glasses. Or in the summertime. Plus I’m a Linux gamer, so I’d probably run into a lot of issues before I could run it.
I also run on Linux exclusively and I could play Half-Life Alex almost flawlessy on the Steam Index. And other VR games as well, including Beatsaber, Gorn, Walkabout Golf and many others. I’m really grateful to Valve and their Proton.
I mean it‘s 5 years old now and what has Valve released for VR since? A single game isn‘t gonna make a hardware and they know that. It was a failure in the end of the day.
5 years old now and what has Valve released for VR since?
You know Valve has released a whopping 3 things total in that timespan (didn’t include deadlock cuz I’m not sure that’s officially released yet), right? A free steam deck teaser, the card game they’ve been working on for a while, and the CSGO 2 update
Valve works slow, my guy
A single game isn‘t gonna make a hardware
Good thing there are a shit ton of other games, then
It was a failure in the end of the day
No it wasn’t, you high? They sold out of Indexes around the games launch. Would have sold more if not for COVID, too
Hold on. Why are you replying with unrelated things that Valve did instead of focusing on VR to get people onto that platform? Kind of proves my point, doesn‘t it? Also Covid? Seriously? If anything Covid should‘ve accelerated development on VR games.
Also Covid? Seriously? If anything Covid should‘ve accelerated development on VR games
Your claim was that the game was a failure, my point with COVID was that you would have been extra wrong about that had there not been a pandemic limiting how many headsets they could actually sell, which was the point of the game. In the world that we got they sold out and had Back-orders for a year, had there not been a global pandemic those Back-orders would have been sales, and likely many who couldn’t buy one would have been able to as well
The rest of your comment shows you have 0 idea how Valve works internally. The whole studio doesn’t just work on one project, there are smaller teams that pick and choose what they do. This is why Valve tends to release shit a couple years apart that are wildly different (Alyx and Artefact), but 5-8 years between similar products (Portal 2 and Alyx). It being 5 years or more since their last major VR release is to be expected from them, not a sign of failing at anything
Do you know about gaming consoles? 3D accelerator cards? Graphics cards? Or… CD ROM drives?
People have been buying hardware to play a certain game for literal decades. The games are called “system sellers”. Games so good they sell hardware. It’s usually even the opposite: if your hardware doesn’t have such a game, it doesn’t sell (atari Jaguar anyone?).
VR has the extra element of needing a suitable living space to play in, though. Other games I can do at my desk or in my tiny, cramped living room, but I have nowhere I can easily set up for VR that would allow for significant range of motion.
I own a VR headset, but I only really use it for games that allow you to be stationary and just use the headset as an immersive monitor with a standard controller. As one would expect, it doesn’t get much use, because not many VR games are made to play that way!
Sure, but if people love Half-Life and don’t care about other VR games it sucks that it’s locked behind hardware requirements that even Valve doesn’t give a crap about considering it’s the only VR game they made.
Edit: I’m sure all of you would be pissed if Sony released a new PlayStation with one game from a beloved series and then just said “now it’s in other people’s hands, let them take care of creating more games for our hardware!”
It isn’t up to Valve alone to push forward the industry and release top-tier VR games every other year. They took a risk and created one of the best games I’ve played, and I’m not alone in that opinion. Valve are trying expand the gaming experience, they are trying to be innovative, and people blame them for “not giving a crap”. Say what you want, but I thank Valve for what they are doing.
Most of the common ones now do wireless streaming from the PC for PCVR. But yes, for PCVR games you will still need a PC to run it. There are some VR headsets that are capable of running some games on it without a connected PC, like my Quest 2 can run Superhot or BeatSaber etc.
It’s also way different from the goal of HL2. Downloading a launcher called Steam for free is not the same thing as buying specific hardware to play one game.
The “other reasons” people aren’t buying affordable VR setups is because they don’t trust Meta or their privacy policies. If the new Valve headset was $300-500 it would go a long way. But $1200 isn’t it.
The only other one ove used is psvr1, and one of those smart phone ones, psvr2 is obvioisly miles ahead of bith, though i cant say how it compares to Index, or quest. Id imagine its probably near quest quality.
I’ve used pretty much all of the headsets on the market. I still haven’t tried a Big screen VR headset though :(
For popular headsets I’d rank them kinda like this
Valve Index - it’s just really old and really expensive now, don’t buy one unless you get a hell of a deal on it used
Quest 2 - Still very very good, screens are getting a little dated now
PSVR2 - its a little janky on PC but it works fine and the OLEDs are sublime
Pixmax Crystal - Money not a problem this is the best headset I’ve tried. The FOV is crazy, displays are beautiful, and tracking is damn near perfect. Its just like $2300 for the whole lot
Quest 3 - Overall the best headset on the market. Its $570 (just get the pro strap, trust me) and gets you so close to the big boys in screen quality, plus it’s wireless, plus it has crazy good passthrough (I use it a lot, most people don’t), and streams PC games perfectly.
PSVR2 has really really really good looking displays, but it has some other downsides which really bring it down in the rankings. I’d stay away from it unless you get a deal on a used one, then it would absolutely be worth it.
This assumes people are rational and that what they say they are willing to pay matches what they are actually willing to pay. And that is just the people not trying to abuse the system.
Personally I don’t think I’d advocate for OP’s suggestion, but you could solve the problem by making the suggestion also a commitment for X period of time. If you make the suggestion, and the price drops within 90 days, it automatically purchases it, etc.
You can put in a buy order at 0.1 for a share worth 100. You’re dreaming, but you can still do it. Don’t think it really qualifies as abusing the system.
I’m guilty of this. So many times, I’ll see something at full price and say I’ll wait to buy it on sale. Then it goes on sale and I don’t feel like spending the money at all. Granted, I’m not trying to sway the market and screaming my bid, this is just my internal monologue. I have a backlog of games and a busy adult life, so it’s not like I’m game-poor. Just regular poor.
Terraria, for something crafty-buildy with combat and very cartoony/2d blood and gore. 1-8 players.
Don’t Starve Together, survival crafting in a hand-drawn Tim Burton-esque style. 2-6 players.
Awesomenauts, 3v3 fast paced competitive game in the style of Saturday morning cartoons. 3-6 players.
Deep Rock Galactic, coop shooter where you play space dwarves and shoot bugs while doing missions together. Gore may be a bit strong for your liking, but it’s very stylized and only against bugs and robots. 1-4 players.
Risk of Rain 2, shooter where you try and escape a planet together with lots of different ways to play. 1-4 players.
Age of Empires 2, old school fast-paced medieval strategy game modernized with new graphics and such. 1-8 players.
Valheim, viking survival crafty buildy game in which you explore and conquer a dangerous world together. 1-10 players.
Cassette Beasts, technically not multi-player yet but they’re adding it as a free update January. It’s a Pokémon-esque game where you’ll all be trainers in the same overworld together capturing beasts and taking down challenges together. 1-8 players when it comes out.
All of these games are rated T for teen, but it sounds more like you’re opposed to M rated violence and language than T levels. They’re all also insular in that this friend group doesn’t need to involve other people to play together and can either play with or against each other or the computer.
I just want to avoid the porn games on steam, and any super-gory shit like dead space. I thought Diablo would be fun for him but it is a bit too much right now. It was different when super pixelated back in the D2 days.
Overcooked can make for some fun chaos, though it tops at 4 players. Team Fortress 2 could work, but it does have graphic violence and I dunno if it’s available for the newer xboxes. On PC, it has loads of mods and custom maps that offer similar experiences to what you can find in Roblox
The OP said that the friend group has Xboxes, and I assume that you can’t mod the games. I may be wrong though, I haven’t used an Xbox since the 360 and mostly game with the pc myself.
Yeah, to stop another CrowdStrike, but it’s not a sure thing, yet there’s talk of api’s etc and wouldn’t surprise me if certain companies got a pass. An article covering your point: theverge.com/…/microsoft-windows-kernel-antivirus…
Nope. They’re developing an alternative set of APIs for userspace in conjunction with security vendors for their products to use but it’s all still a long way off and will be optional to start with.
Given the volume of mission-critical devices security products are installed on (which the CrowdStrike fuckup highlighted), getting them out of kernel space would be a huge risk reduction for the world. And security vendors would love to get away from that risk as pulling a CrowdStrike costs a lot of money setting things right with customers.
But an anticheat used by consumers on their personal devices for a game, not such a big deal.
While I’m sure MS will eventually deprecate and then kill off third party kernel drivers, it could take a decade since MS has so much business (both internal and within their customer base) that relies on legacy crap.
I have a feeling you’re right about this. I do wish Microsoft would take the Apple approach as Apple steamed ahead with deprecating kernel-mode access.
Love them or hate them, Apple take security a lot more seriously than Microsoft these days and it’s a real shame MS see security architecture as a nuisance rather than a core responsibility of their business.
it’s a real shame MS see security architecture as a nuisance rather than a core responsibility of their business.
I’m pretty sure the reason behind this is that they treat backwards compatibility as a higher priority in a lot of cases. There are so many odd choices I see in my day to day that I can only explain away by backwards compatibility. It’s part of the reason you see them take forever to depreciate old and insecure protocols until they get an encouragement from a vuln hitting the news.
That’s what I’ve noticed as well. They keep the old stuff around for as long as they can, because some software made 30years ago is critical to our society so they need to support it or we’re doomed
And it’s not like the companies will update old stuff, either. They’ve shown a willingness to forget about old games as soon as the revenue dips too much. The result will be that those games will be unplayable in the future.
Pop it in your calendars? Maybe I’m using calendars wrong, but mine aren’t filled with things I should avoid doing. But, I’m willing to learn. What date should I put “Don’t Buy Subnautica 2” on?
For those who don’t know, this streamer is only tangentially related to the stop killing games petition because he made a comment about it being BS because he misinterpreted what it was supposed to do. He used his misinterpretation to spread false information about this petition leading to it not getting the support it initially should have.
When the guy behind the petition made a statement saying he didn’t think the petition was going to get enough signatures in part because of the misinformation being spread about it, PirateSoftware doubled down on his false claims and all of this lead to people doing the research they should have done in the first place and deciding to support the petition after all.
What we should probably be learning from this is that we should do our own research, and find out things instead of taking the word of random people online.
Edit: electric has brought to my attention that it wasn’t just one clip, but in fact a whole video dedicated to spreading misinformation that was made by Thor from PirateSoftware. Just wanted to be clear about that.
A comment? Am I misreading your comment or is this just ignorance of the situation? Because PirateSoftware made a whole ass video on the subject way back (the one allegedly rife with misinformation). I remember it on my feed when the campaign was getting traction, but didn’t watch it because my view of him was souring.
From what clips I’ve seen*, PirateSoftware misinterprets the majority of what he addressed. Either maliciously or unknowingly, which is why he was blamed for tanking momentum since that video did get a ton of views (before people wised up to him being a total cunt).
*Yes I know the irony of what I just said there after reading your last paragraph. I believe these terminally online streamers because I would not put it past PirateSoftware to be this awful after watching his videos for a small period and then the subsequent controversies coming out.
He may well have done but the only clip I have seen is the one where someone asks about it while he’s streaming games and he responded to that person with misinformation.
Ah. Makes sense. I caught a stream once and he pretty much just did discussions with the chat. A lot of his videos were just cuts from his streams when someone asked.
I think a lot of people didn’t hear about this guy until about 2 days ago. Personally I didn’t even know about this petition.
I knew about the lawsuit against The Crew, but I didn’t know anything about any more general petition, so I think the greater problem was simply a lack of advertising.
System scanning: EGS is known to automatically scan your system and send your data back to them. While this seems to be the same type of analytics Steam does occasionally, in Steam’s case, it’s opt-in, and done with full, informed consent.
Paid exclusives: Epic has been known to pay publishers to make their games artificially exclusive to their own store. They regularly claim this money is to support the development of the games in question, but this is easily disproven, as they’ve been seen buying games known to be complete more than once. Additionally, this has resulted in bait-and-switch-like situations, where users would prepurchase Steam copies of games, only to be informed that they wouldn’t be getting them.
Publisher-centric behavior: Another user here claimed that EGS is pro-developer and anti-consumer, but this is only half true. This only rings true in the case of self-published games. There have been cases of developers getting unwarranted backlash after aforementioned bait-and-switches, when they were just as surprised to learn about all the “development support” they received as anyone.
Tim Sweeney: Tim Weeney, the CEO of Epic, is an asshole. A giant, narcissistic, hateful shitbag. Just look at his Twitter, the dudes a giant POS.
Additionally, this has resulted in bait-and-switch-like situations, where users would prepurchase Steam copies of games, only to be informed that they wouldn’t be getting them.
I didn’t know about this.
It happened to Metro Exodus (great game btw) but iirc all pre orders were honoured and the game was just delisted.
“I’m still recovering from a brutal c-section that almost resulted in a rupture (but went well because my surgeons are goated). Glad that I left the house and it gave us a small idea of how to gauge bringing our daughter to tournaments and travel. She was actually chill.”
Feels like every “make me a sandwich” asshole [G]amer on earth just got humbled.
I know it’s “just a local” but as someone with a history in (very technical & skill-based) competitive gaming during my youth: mad respect
It's one thing to read a cyberpunk novel or watch a cyberpunk movie and "get" the moral of the story, which is usually "misuse of technology is bad".
But it's another thing to actually spend time in that world; to feel the effects of corporate corruption on your community, to experience the addiction to mind- and body-altering technologies, to watch loved ones - who you've spent hours looking directly in the eye and having conversations with - have their lives taken from them unfairly so that the richest person in the world can get 0.0001% richer.
I'd always been wary of techno-corpo bullshit. But that game instilled an all-new level of hatred in me; a hatred toward billionaires and megacorporations, toward oligarchs and aristocrats, toward those with the resources to change things for the better but too apathetic to stick their necks out.
Yeah, I first finished with the ending where >!I’m gliding to somewhere beautiful with the woman I love. !<
Right after that, I did the one where >!I sign myself off to the corpo, so my physical body is about to be destroyed, and I just walk there as a cow to a butcher. !<
That hit hard. Especially listening to the same messages from different people: “haven’t heard of you, I hope you are in a good place!” I was depressed for a couple days since, until I did a third ending where >!I give a kid my guitar. !<
This is what I call “choices matter”! Many endings, which have their own missions that lead to some actual changes and bend the narrative, not just several pre-made cutscenes.
What I especially love about the endings is that there isn't any "good" ending in the game. Some are worse than others, but there's never a net positive for V. No matter what, there is a human cost to victory. Night City would never allow some lowly merc to have a happy ending. Arguably, the "third option" can be seen as the "best" ending, as it costs the fewest amount of lives. But holy shit, the voicemails you get in that ending are heartbreaking.
Also, I think this is just an Mbin issue, but the spoiler tags don't work if there's a space before the closing tag.
Spoiler tags aren’t working for me either, I don’t think they’re correct for Lemmy markdown. It should look like this:
::: spoiler Spoiler Title
Spoiler text body goes here
:::
And hopefully work like:
Spoiler TitleSpoiler text body goes here
Anyway for Cyberpunk endings I agree, and happy endings don’t really go with the setting. Personally the one I felt best about was doing the “Don’t Fear The Reaper” secret ending path into the Temperance ending, for me that was an awesome and fitting resolution. But I had grown quite close with Johnny over my playthrough. Caveat that I haven’t finished the DLC yet and I know it adds endings, so maybe I’ll like one of those better.
I think “the sun” variation where you take Rogue with you is the best ending. It’s still sad, but you do get to realize your dreams and do crazy awesome merc shit in the Path of Glory epilogue.
For me that was the first ending I got, Rogue’s path followed by the Sun. I felt like absolute shit afterwards personally. I took Johnny’s offer because I was appealed by the idea of redemption, but instead he dragged Rogue down with him one last time. And then in Path Of Glory V had learned nothing, discarded all the character growth and ignored every lesson to instead let Night City consume her like it does everyone else that fails to realize it’s a festering swamp you must leave behind at all costs. That’s why the two endings that have a positive undertone - The Star and Temperance - involve the main character leaving Night City behind.
Yeah, they’ve all got serious drawbacks at best. The most terrible ending is the Phantom Liberty one where you take Reed’s help, imo. You literally squeak out with nothing more than your life, and you’re a shell of your former self.
I think Temperance was the first ending I got, but I’ve played it so many times it’s hard to remember now, haha.
The Tower is bad, but The Devil may be worse. Once you know what Yorinobu is up to, the one ending where he’s stopped before he can pull it off is pretty bad.
For me the best and canonical ending is the secret ending and letting Johnny take the body. Mostly because I tend to play a solo tank build and that building is a joke even on very hard. Also because johnny is V’s bro by the end so i give him the body. Makes no sense to just waste some preem ‘ganic material like that by letting V just die.
The first time I played through it, it didn’t really sink in. When I got to the ending where
SpoilerYou you give up Songbird in exchange for your cure and you find that they are able to heal you only by removing your cybernetics
I booted the game back up the next day, but just couldn’t bring myself to continue with my character. It felt like I finally got them out of that world. I didn’t pick it back up again for another month and started with a fresh character because of how hard it sunk in.
That’s exactly why I think the game has value despite being a mediocre experience as a game. Adam Something did a video recently on how terrible it is, and while he’s not strictly wrong, he missed a deeper point. Yes, the traffic modeling is terrible. It’s terrible in many of the same ways that real traffic is terrible. That doesn’t make for a good game, but it does make a different point.
Also, if you want to ride motorcycles, that game is worth a play for traveling around on one. Not because the physics of the game motorcycles are good–they’re shit–but because it can teach you how to learn to avoid target fixation. Car pulls out in front of you and your eyes will naturally focus on the car. Then you will just as naturally hit the car. If you learn to dart your eyes to the side, you will tend to miss it. Very valuable skill for actual riding. They accidentally made a target fixation trainer.
That used to be a more popular sentiment but somehow CDPR manages to get a bunch of goodwill and the ‘labor of love’ award after… fixing all the bugs that still existed in their botched releae.
I have to agree with Frezik too. At least for me, the graphics and storyline are top notch but the gameplay and other mechanics are pretty average. And the open world is stunning to traverse but you realize if you explore a bit more deeply that it’s pretty dead and there’s not much to discover.
I literally had to delete an account because I made a comment on reddit before I left about how I didn’t think cyberpunk has ever really lived up to the hype despite what people say about it now.
Honestly, I don’t think it hit me the same way, and I wish it did. I already went into it agreeing with everything you said from our real world. It’s still a great game and I enjoyed it, but it didn’t change my view on anything because it’s just a heightened version of our real world. If you were paying attention to our world then CP2077 mostly wouldn’t change your opinion. Hell, if anything it’s a nicer view of our future than I have based on our current path. There’s almost more social mobility in that game than there is in real life America currently.
That is to say, Johnny not only was right, but is right.
GTA is a crime story video game. “Dishonest gambling” doesn’t mean “gambling I don’t like”. A science-based dragon MMO Kickstarter is a grift. GTA 6 is a video game.
Are you unaware that there’s a component of GTA 6 besides GTA online? Even in the online mode, they’re milking gamers for weak content using regular gambling. A grift would be like a carnival game that appears winnable but actually never is. For your gambling money, you do get “stuff” in GTA 6, even if you or I would consider it a poor value. I don’t know why a shitty online mode would make me want to play a good crime story single player mode less, but the mere existence of the single player mode easily makes it more than “just” that.
I just think that if you’re going to call something a grift, it should actually be one, because words have meaning. We can call it all sorts of other things. “Predatory” is a good one. I myself called it “shitty”. That’s not arguing in favor of a giant corporation. You can’t just pick your favorite negative descriptor when it doesn’t apply.
Honestly, I’m not. Rockstar has changed their formula very little since 2008. But I don’t exactly have a lot of options for crime stories anymore, and they’ve been telling good stories for just as long as they’ve had this format.
What makes you say that? What sort of things could they add that would make it better for you? I for one, would love the content that’s in GTA online to be available in singleplayer.
You called it something it wasn’t, either because you misunderstood the definition or willfully misrepresented it. That was the argument. The game can be criticized in all sorts of ways, but “grift” makes no sense here, assuming they’re doing what GTA V did and didn’t come up with some crazy new scheme that hasn’t been detailed yet. And even if the online mode was a deterrent to you, there’s a whole other part of the game above and beyond the online mode where you never have to even see that stuff that could make the game worth playing, meaning it wouldn’t be “just” a grift.
remember: people who have something to complain about will post much more frequently. since the fediverse is smaller, these types of comments are found more frequently
Don’t get it either, maybe it also something to do with lemmys demographic being older. ( I believe that is the case with Mastodon vs. Twitter ) Sure it is sad that the planed single-player content was scraped for multiplayer ( even though i had lots of fun with the multiplayer as well, at least in its early days. ) But why crying about VI when it hasnt been released yet? Just see when it comes out…
The multi-player maybe. But they’ve consistently delivered excellent single-player experiences with their flagship titles. GTA 3, VC, SA, IV, and V were all amazing. RDR1 was spectacular, and RDR2 may be the most impressive game I’ve ever played.
At this point, I trust Tockstar to deliver a good single-player game. I don’t really expect much in the way of the quality DLC we got with GTAIV and RDR, but I think the base game will easily be enough for me to justify a purchase.
I’m still gonna wait and see, of course. They’re not getting a pre-order out of me.
I’d agree with everything about the previous games. However, I think they made 10 billion dollars off of GTA online and wouldn’t be surprised if they focus more on that and leave the single player to the wayside.
You don’t have to like games just because they are popular. It’s clearly not for you and that’s really all there is to it, and that is ok. Go try something else that actually piques your interest.
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