I want to enjoy the game, but I keep getting got by campers spamming grenades or that one submachine gun. I haven’t even been able to unlock any new weapons or gear beside the base ones because of that, or another map to play on. I’ve played for an hour and 52 minutes, and I really don’t know if I should keep trying or just give up and refund it.
Solo? Try talking to people. I’ve found that almost everyone in solo matches are likely to be friendly if you talk. (There’s also a communication wheel if you don’t want to or can’t use a mic.)
Groups tend to fight 95% of the time though. At extract it’s often OK, but before then not really.
Regardless, it sounds like you just might not be used to the genre. You can rat, and play really safe, avoiding high loot areas where players are likely to be. Alternatively, just pay attention. There’s almost always signs players are around. If you see ARC with yellow or red lights, there are players there. If you see open containers or doors, or destroyed ARC then players have been there. You can also hear footsteps and looting pretty well. Just pay attention and you usually won’t be jumped.
I don’t feel like campers are an issue in the game though. I haven’t experienced it. There are people who will spot you with the third person camera who it may feel like are camping, but they’re almost always just being observant while looting and spotted you first. It’s not like they’re waiting at extract for you. I haven’t seen that once yet and I’ve played a lot of matches.
You might be interested in Zero Sievert. If you already own (or obtain) Escape from Tarkov there’s an amazing Single Player Tarkov mod that is legitimately probably the best way to play the game.
For the PvE aspect, the third person is great. The AI are an actual threat, and having the camera to look around corners or see around the player really helps.
For PvP I think it’s a negative. It promotes safe play and gives an unfair advantage to certain situations.
Overall, I think it’s a wash. Personally, I’d slightly prefer first person, but they’ve made third feel very good. I think you need to try it before making a judgement, and try it with an open mind without an opinion already formed. I thought I’d be more annoyed with it than I am.
Thank you, do not need to try it, as the view has been presented before… You are missing the gist of my message. I am talking about controlling someone, which should instead “be” someone.
You aren’t someone when playing a video game besides yourself. A third person view doesn’t suddenly make people unable to feel as if they’re playing as that character any more than a first person view does. For example, people can have a similar feeling even from books, with no agency.
You’re making a weird argument based on some purity metric. Either way, you’re playing a video game and controlling a character in the game. Neither view let’s you be that character. Both let you be immersed and inhabit their role in the world.
(I’m sorry, I should have specified my sarcasm) It’s a thing the creator of Death Stranding made up to troll journalists who kept asking him what type of game he made.
I…don’t know what an extraction shooter is. Until I’m corrected I will assume everyone is a dentist trying to collect teeth from their opponents.
Take on missions, collect loot, leave the area. If you die, you lose everything on you. At least as far as I know, I don’t play any but have seen some escape from tarkov videos.
You mean other than extraction? Sure, arcade like L4D series, rpg like fallout series. Team death match like Quake or COD series, survival like RUST or 7 days to die. There’s lots.
You decide what gear to bring with you, get dropped into a map in some fashion, find loot, and try to make it to an extraction point alive. If you die, you lose what you brought with you and anything you found. Add in some AI enemies and PvP, and it can be fun. I feel that the most challenging part of making these types of games is finding that sweet spot between risk and reward. If it’s too punishing, you’ll feel frustrated, like you’re wasting your time. Too easy and it’s boring. ARC found the sweet spot. Very responsive ai enemies, working proximity chat for pvp to call a truce, very well designed maps, just enough help to keep you going back for more, great audio design, and extraction mechanics that result in some tense moments. I’ve played 4 or 5 raids on only one map and so far each time was been unique, tense, and fun. This is my first time playing an extraction shooter and I picked a great one. I’m usually pretty bad at pvp but this one just feels good.
‘One of the biggest’ You mean ‘one of the only’? Extraction shooters aren’t common that I’m aware of unless I’m out of the loop. The only big one before this I was aware of was Tarkov.
The Cycle yes, but an extraction shooter is defined as a game you loot items that you then extract with to use in future runs or sell. Hunt and Helldivers doesn’t have that mechanic at all.
You can make the argument that Helldivers is more of a mission based shooter, and many people will agree with you.
Hunt is absolutely an extraction shooter. You take gear into a raid, fight other players, collect money and even their guns, fight a boss and collect the bounty when you extract.
No, not at all. Extraction shooters require you to take in gear, which you can lose. Find loot or better gear and extract with it. If you die during the mission you lose pretty much everything, high stakes are required. DRG has no stakes, you just go and complete a mission for some progression.
Someone said not Hunt. I disagree. I would say it is.
There is Zero Sievert, which is single player, Gray Zone Warfare, Arena Breakout Infinite (it’s an Asian game with Kernel level AC, so I can’t play it on Linux), Escape from Duckov recently, The Cycle (which I think is dead), and I’m certain I’m missing some.
It’s not a huge genre, but there’s still quite a few.
I don’t think there’s anything about the genre that requires multiplayer. My favorite way to play Escape from Tarkov is the Single Player Tarkov mod, for example. It’s the same game, but without wipes or other players (I play it for no wipes).
How do people feel about this company using generative AI? That was a concern of mine around The Finals; they’ve defended the decision on voice acting and it made me wonder where else they’re using it.
EDIT: Learned some new things from the responses, certainly an interesting situation. I’ll consider them.
Embark released blog posts about how they’re integrating AI into their development workflow back in 2019/2020. The entire studio was founded by former Dice devs bc they were burned out with game development and had quit, then realized they could build tools and pipelines that allowed them to focus on the fun parts of game development, and got together to form Embark and do exactly that. Their vision preceded the vast majority of the public’s awareness of AI, and was not influenced by the current wave of LLMs and generative ai.
If you want to hate feel free that’s your prerogative, but be aware that anything Embark makes is going to be built on tools and pipelines that deeply integrate some form of AI/ML, and just stay away from anything the studio makes. It’s your loss really because their games are the first in a long time (in their genres) that I can feel the love the devs poured in seeping from every single aspect of the game, but again it’s your prerogative.
To defend the voice acting in The Finals - they obtained the consent for all the voice actors they use, and they pay them a commission for each new line they generate. It’s believed that one of the reasons they made that decision was to have things like improvised dialogue possible by the announcers (Scotty and June), for example.
They definitely aren’t cheating people out of money, fortunately.
IGN put out a first preview video of Arc Raiders couple months ago and it was borderline hit piece. The quality of the video was unbelievably bad. They made the game look muddy, dated, and choppy. This wasn’t IGN trying to showcase the game on some realistic typical gaming hardware. In reality the game is well optimized and visually really good on moderate level hardware. I hear the game looks fantastic on consoles. Maybe they’ll do a full review now that the game is finally released but I question the journalistic integrity of IGN.
They’ve done this with a few other games. I remember the EU5 review being really choppy and it turned out they were running it on like 6-7 year old hardware. It might just be a cost cutting measure to not buy the latest stuff for all their reviewers but I basically ignore most of what they say now.
tbf a lot of people don’t buy a top notch rig for RTS games, so I think it’s entirely valid to test on a dated PC and point out if this is a weakness - but not record gameplay on it exclusively.
If one reviewer has an insufficient PC, assign it to a different person - at least the gameplay recording.
EU5 is grand strategy, not RTS. Just a small correction. RTS is like Starcraft — ~30m matches and then everything goes away. Grand Strategy is ~100+h of constant progress where nothing resets. They’re both strategy games, but they couldn’t be more different.
IGN: “Traditional gamer journalism is dying. Please support honest journalists.”
Also IGN: “Good work, 47. Now publish the article and locate an exit.”
Maybe someone else on the IGN payroll will do a proper review because a big reason the review was ass is because the reviewer was also ass. He was literally pressing the “ESC” button at the bottom left with a mouse. IMO the biggest crime of this IGN review is that the reviewer still works at IGN.
Arc Raiders is a fuckin blast. Having just as much fun with my group on this as we did in like helldivers and hunt showdown, but Arc Raiders has real depth that I think will keep us coming back. This game feels special and I hope it’s can go the distance for my group and I because it’s one of the best group games we’ve played in a while.
Solo is fun too, it’s just a completely different game. It’s more tense, more stealthy, and you’re 100x more likely to find friendly players which is really cool.
It’s hilarious how different people respond to playing it solo. Some people say it’s the tensest thing ever but I’ve also seen a video from an elderly cozy gamer who thought it was the most relaxing thing she’d seen in a while. I’m more in the latter camp, been playing solo since launch and it’s been pretty chill.
I think it’s the difference between having gear fear and not having gear fear. As someone who comes from Tarkov ARC raiders solo is kind of a walk in the park because gearing up is much easier. Meeting other players is about 50/50, either they start shooting without asking questions or they’re cool after you say “don’t shoot”. I hope this vibe doesn’t die off when the player count drops. Yesterday I had a raid where I met another raider, we agreed to not shoot each other and then impromptu teamed up and took down another team of raiders. We then found a third raider and the three of us extracted together. It’s pretty rare to team in up Tarkov because most people shoot first and ask questions later.
But I can see how it’s absolutely stressful for some people because gear fear makes you think the stakes are much higher than they really are.
Unless people have been playing an insane amount since release, I don’t think anyone’s really going out into a raid with the equivalent of late wipe geared up Tarkov equipment. I’ve barely seen anyone tossing out wolfpacks, I haven’t seen anyone using a hullcracker or an equalizer, and I haven’t taking any damage from a bettina yet. And has anyone seen a Jupiter in game?
All in all I agree with you though, this definitely is t Tarkov, and the people who are stressed are probably pretty new to the whole extraction shooter thing. I was running some raids with a finals friend and an old Tarkov mate, and we were just vibing dude. Super chill. And yeah anything I go in with right now I can pretty easily recraft in an instant. The tiered crafting mechanics seem way more intuitive than in Tarkov. I really like how the damage is governed by the weapon, not the bullet type. Losing a gun might sting for a second, but at least I’m not micromanaging my ap rounds and shit. Or holy fuck I forgot about this, stacking mags with ap at the top and staggering as you get through the 30. Although putting tracers as the last 5 like I did irl was always fun.
I think both sides make sense here. If you shoot at everything that moves and refuse to cooperate it can be a hell of a ride. But if you focus on looting and are willing to socialize it can be almost a cozy experience. It reminds me of Team Fortress 2 where players would sometimes just make up their own rules mid game and turn everything on it‘s head.
See that’s interesting because it’s more cozy for me when I shoot on sight and more tense for me when I socialize. I’ve lost loot when I’ve tried talking it out and maybe that stings more because assuming I lose some of those engagements I must have saved more loot than lost when talking.
Idk, it’s the social pressure like in a fictional apocalypse of like “will these humans be friendy or not”, they’re unpredictable. Also I think the map has an effect on friendliness as well. Like Dam had a lot of friendly people but blue gate was like 50/50 at best.
It’s just so cool that the game can change so much from playing solo vs squads.
Yep. I played solo for the first few hours before friends picked it up. I had a 100% extraction rate over like 10 runs because it seems like 100% of people are not there to fight. They’re just trying to loot and get out. It isn’t worth the risk of dying, especially near the end of a run when you can’t carry anything else anyway.
Playing as a group, it’s probably a 95% chance people won’t talk and just fight. Everyone is in a Discord chat and not using in-game voice and are just anti-social. Occasionally you can extract with other people, but during the raid I don’t think I’ve ever had people be friendly. We even had a team down to one person before and told them they could leave and they still decided to try to kill our three man.
I just picked it up to play with a couple buds, and it’s GOOD. $39.99 good? No, just good. The vibe is great, the gunplay feels good, the extraction is forgiving. Definitely worth the price in my opinion.
Fair, but what I’m saying is that it’s not only worth the price but I’d pay more having played it. 60 bucks? Probably not because I know I’m not that into extraction shooters, but it doesn’t feel like a discount game. Also, I was in my cups when I typed that.
Out of what? Like 5 extraction shooters? I don't get the popularity, it's pretty damn bland and shoves MTX in your face like crazy, but I have been pretty out of touch with the mainstream market for a while now.
I don’t think I would call HD2 an extraction shooter. I mean sure, you shoot things and try to extract, but for the same reason HD2 isn’t a RPG just because you can roleplay or an RTS just because you need to make strategic decisions in real time, there’s a lot more to these genres that HD2 doesn’t include. Hell, technically you don’t even need to extract, as the only thing successfully extracting gives you is any samples you find… completing the mission counts as a win regardless.
ARC has the exact same system by the way. It’s the battle pass thing where you choose the things you want each tier, and that includes the credits (Raider Tokens I think is what they’re called here). You can also buy them. They’re used to unlock other battle passes (no others available at the moment besides the one free one) and also cosmetics.
Some of us actually understand that the quality of assets has significantly risen since the 00s and it takes artists significantly more time and effort to make high quality cosmetics. We’re talking about going from assets taking days to assets taking weeks. Is the cost of the game supposed to eat all that extra development time? Are artists supposed to work for free? The realistic alternative to paid cosmetics is no extra cosmetics because quality cosmetic items are too expensive to make for free. Is that what you want?
You’re free to be the old man yelling at the cloud but at least acknowledge that that is what you are.
No need to start throwing insults. It takes away from your argument. If you want to pay for cosmetics, sure go for it, but that's how we got in this mess.
Artists get paid either way, they are not paid on commission of skin sales. Any extra profit goes to the executives anyway, not to the artists. So that entire point is null.
Games existed before with no paid cosmetics, they would exist again without them. This used to be the free-to-play model, but now they realise they can charge you for the game and then again and again for skins. These types of games are designed to extract as much money from you as possible, that's their entire purpose. They are not giving you extra skins to be nice and then paying the artists more from it. A skin is made one time and sold a potentially infinite amount of times for ridiculous prices.
As I said:
It's so ingrained it's actually crazy.
Why would you ever want to advocate for a worse experience? It blows my mind, but that's the situation we got ourselves into.
No need to start throwing insults. It takes away from your argument
Pretty ironic considering you’re implying people who think it’s okay to pay for cosmetics are crazy.
Artists get paid either way, they are not paid on commission of skin sales. Any extra profit goes to the executives anyway, not to the artists. So that entire point is null.
Like I said before, the realistic alternative to paid cosmetics is no extra cosmetics. Artists get paid anyway but if their work is freely given away how does it justify them working on it? And if you strip away the capitalist BS it becomes even more apparent that the artists making the assets deserve to be compensated for their labor.
A skin is made one time and sold a potentially infinite amount of times for ridiculous prices.
A game is also made once and sold infinite amount of times. Why aren’t you complaining about having to pay for games?
Why would you ever want to advocate for a worse experience? It blows my mind, but that’s the situation we got ourselves into
I’m not, which is why I’m advocating for cosmetic items to be reasonably priced. You’re advocating for a worse experience where cosmetic items get made with minimal effort (if they even get made at all) because the labor is not going to pay off.
I said the situation is crazy, not a specific person. I dont blame any individual, the strategies used over the years by these companies to sell skins and make consumers complacent are all very manipulative and effective. The people designing the systems and the ones doing the marketing have done a very, very good job.
You seem stuck on artists all being freelance, getting paid on some sort of commission. They are almost always salaried employees like anyone else at the development company.
Weird analogy, paying for a game, something usually worked on for years, is a lot different than paying for a cosmetic change to something. It's like going to the movies and paying the price of the ticket again to sit in a green chair instead of a red one and being told that's completely normal and something you should do.
I agree, if skins were sold for $0.50, $1.00, max $5, then I would have less issue with them. I'd still have issue with the predatory practices used to sell them though. Some people are more susceptible to this than others, so I would rather it didnt exist at all.
You buy a game once, have all the content and are not pressured again to spend anything, that's the ideal scenario, why would I compromise on that?
Games should be a sustainable art form, not gross corporate projects to extract as much money as possible from consumers.
I said the situation is crazy, not a specific person. I dont blame any individual, the strategies used over the years by these companies to sell skins and make consumers complacent are all very manipulative and effective. The people designing the systems and the ones doing the marketing have done a very, very good job.
Maybe you should’ve been clearer on what you meant considering your passive aggressive tone towards the consumer like “consumers keep sucking it up” (I don’t think this one need explaining) or calling them complacent (indirectly criticizing people for being too passive or indifferent) or saying we forgot cosmetics used to be free (implies we used to know better and now don’t).
You seem stuck on artists all being freelance, getting paid on some sort of commission. They are almost always salaried employees like anyone else at the development company.
First of all, whether they’re freelance or not shouldn’t matter to you considering you’re claiming they shouldn’t get paid either. And secondly I don’t think you understand how companies operate. People at companies work to generate revenue. Free cosmetics do not generate revenue and if they’re packaged with the game their contribution to the pricing is marginal thus the labor cost of making these assets would be disproportionate to their value and they don’t get made. The artists will get paid by they won’t be working of cosmetics. For artists to work on cosmetics there needs to be an incentive to work on them.
Weird analogy, paying for a game, something usually worked on for years, is a lot different than paying for a cosmetic change to something. It’s like going to the movies and paying the price of the ticket again to sit in a green chair instead of a red one and being told that’s completely normal and something you should do.
Is it? Last time I checked money goes off my account and I get something that costs no extra for the company (outside of making the thing).
Or are you drawing the difference at the amount of time it takes to make something? So a game made within a month should be free? A cosmetic that for some reasons took years to make should be paid? Or is it a matter of respect? That you respect game devs and their labor but you don’t respect artists and their labor?
As for your cinema analogy, some cinemas have higher quality chairs in the same theater and as a matter of fact, you do pay extra for them.
I agree, if skins were sold for $0.50, $1.00, max $5, then I would have less issue with them.
Are we starting to move the goal post here? Cosmetics costing less shouldn’t matter to you at all because your issue is that you have pay ANY amount for them.
I’d still have issue with the predatory practices used to sell them though. Some people are more susceptible to this than others, so I would rather it didnt exist at all.
Which is a completely different issue. I also have issues with predatory practices but the existence of predatory practices doesn’t mean cosmetics should be free.
You buy a game once, have all the content and are not pressured again to spend anything, that’s the ideal scenario, why would I compromise on that?
And if the game releases a DLC with new content are you not pressured to buy the DLC? Are you going to argue that DLC should also be free or are you going to draw another arbitrary line in the sand stating that game devs deserve the money but artists don’t?
Games should be a sustainable art form, not gross corporate projects to extract as much money as possible from consumers.
And how exactly is something sustainable when you give it away for free?
We are certainly not playing the same game, then. All good.
Edit: so, finally back home and started the game. Main screen, after game loads has 0 references to MTX. Zero. Only and only when you go to STORE tab do you get to see anything. Or if you click on RAIDER TOKENS section in the top right. Nothing else, anywhere.
So while I love shitting on game devs, I prefer to do it for a good reason, and not based on lies. You might not like the prices and that’s perfectly ok, noone likes them.
But that does not equal “shoving MTX in your face”.
I’ll agree with the other comment; ARC does not shove then in your face. The only time you see that stuff can be purchased is when you go to the customization menu. That’s it. You also get some of the premium currency for free.
I’m pretty confident theyll handle it well because in The Finals I’ve been playing for about ~2 years and have purchased most of the battle passes and some outfit stuff, all with putting no money into the game. This is a $40 game. I suspect it will be handled well.
You can purchase extra stuff, but you can’t say it’s shoved in your face. It definitely is not. It’s just a way to get extra money from whales. I think it’s probably not smart for a game to ship without some MTX at this point. You can make the game cheaper for most people by having the whales fund it. It’s practical.
It’s bland? You can not like it if you want. That’s fine (if you’ve played it). Don’t make shit up though. In the realm of modern shooters, it definitely isn’t bland. It’s pretty unique. It’s got a style you don’t see anywhere else (though still based in realism), and the gameplay isn’t like many other games.
The enemies in particular are incredible though. That’s where it stands out. They’re actually physically based, and if you shoot out a leg or motor then they adjust to compensate. They used some machine learning to have them run in simulations where they learned how to move with different pieces missing. It’s really special how they feel.
It's bland. That's my opinion. If you don't think so that's fine, but that is literally what an opinion is. The style is very similar to their old Frostbite games. You can see the EA Star Wars Battlefront in it.
The drones just being physics based isnt all that impressive that it makes the game for me, it's not exactly revolutionary, similar things have existed before anyway. The gameplay is like you see in a lot of other games, that's why I think it's bland. It's your run-of-the-mill 3rd person shooter, with some basic extraction shooter elements added.
If you enjoy it, fantastic go have fun, doesn't mean I have to like it and you don't have to defend the game or your position at all.
I was largely being sarcastic. Yeah, Outer Wilds might be the only game that pretty much does it’s own thing I’ve played in many years.
I’ve been playing The Finals a lot for quite a while now. I would say it’s incredibly innovative and unique. However, it’s still a first person shooter based on capturing an objective point. At its core, it’s derivative. The way everything fits together is unlike anything else though. Just listing features that are shared by other games does not mean it isn’t doing something different.
ProtonDB reports say that it runs great under Linux, including multiplayer, so I’m not sure if kernel level anti-cheat can really be in use. Maybe it’s just under Windows?
I’m gonna give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work I’ll refund I guess.
Kernel Level Anti-Cheat For Windows Only. Embark specifically publishes a build for Proton Users validated by Codeweavers. We don’t have to worry about it :)
Yep. Honestly if someone still uses Windows but complains about kernel level anti-cheat they’re hypocrites and only have themselves to blame. If you want sovereignty as a PC user you have to put in the minimum effort and not just sit on your ass and wait until big corp is spoon feeding it to you. That day won‘t come.
I believe for Proton users the kernel level anticheat is substituted for a user level anticheat or is deactivated. Only for windows is the kernel level anticheat utilized.
Not all kernel level anti-cheat are the same. Riot’s Vanguard and whatever Battlefield 6 uses requires TPM and SecureBoot and they quite invasive. I believe Vanguard just runs in the background even when you’re not running the game. which is awful. Arc Raiders devs made some pragmatic concessions to allows the game to run on Proton and Steam Deck which is pretty good.
And worth pointing out that the Linux version of EAC (which is what Embark games use) runs in user space. It’s literally not kernel level anticheat on Linux.
I can confirm, both this and The Finals (same developers) works great on Linux. No Kernel level AC for us. I even load into games faster than Windows people I’m playing with, and I just realized this is possibly why.
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