At first I thought it had to do with lootbox mechanics and scheduling and reward system gaming, but nope, this one was straight up just “he played vidja too much and I’m afraid of him when I take away his games”
One is multiple parallel goals. Makes it hard to stop playing, since there’s always something you just want to finish or do “quickly”.
Say you want to build a house. Chop some trees, make some walls. Oh, need glass for windows. Shovel some sand, make more furnaces, dig a room to put them in - oh, there’s a cave with shiny stuff! Quickly explore a bit. Misstep, fall, zombies, dead. You had not placed a bed yet, so gotta run. Night falls. Dodge spiders and skeletons. Trouble finding new house. There it is! Venture into the cave again to recover your lost equipment. As you come up, a creeper awaitsssss you …
Another mechanism is luck. The world is procedurally generated, and you can craft and create almost anything anywhere. Except for a few things, like spawners. I once was lucky to have two skeleton spawners right next to each other, not far from the surface. In total, I probably spent hours in later worlds to find a similar thing.
The social aspect can also support that you play the game longer or more than you actually would like. Do I lose my “friends” when I stop playing their game?
I don’t think Minecraft does these things in any way maliciously, it’s just a great game. But nevertheless, it has a couple of mechanics which can make it addictive and problematic.
The social aspect can also support that you play the game longer or more than you actually would like.
This is the part of any online game I absolutely hate. The feeling of being even slightly beholden to someone else, like now I have to think about them having a good time too.
Games that forbid direct communication, and allow you to drop in and out of a match without hurting others feel a bit better in this respect imho
Isn’t that more of just part of interacting with people, though?
Like, if you play some kind of real-life game with no regard for anyone else, that’s generally considered poor sportsmanship. That wasn’t invented in online gaming, it’s been a concern as long as people have been coming up with games to play together. We accept that if you sit down and play a game of chess or golf or pool or D&D or paintball, you’re going to try to not cheat or blow the game off or be a jerk about it. Some people are better sports than others, but the general idea is that we accept the wins and losses and the game going in different directions, because otherwise there’s no game.
What’s an aberration is this concept that people you meet with over an electronic connection aren’t real, don’t matter, and are never owed anything.
What’s an aberration is this concept that people you meet with over an electronic connection aren’t real, don’t matter, and are never owed anything.
What you said is all true, but what I’m saying is precisely the opposite of this. I don’t like playing certain games with others because I empathise with others and want them to have a good time.
So I usually avoid games (video and otherwise) that are designed so that my continued enthusiastic participation are required for the enjoyment of others. To me, that doesn’t feel like play; it feels like work.
I’ll do it, but it’s exhausting. Maybe it’s an introvert thing, because I’ll come away from those games feeling completely drained.
Note I’m not saying those games are bad, just that i hate them. At least, if my social battery is already used up for the week (which it usually is just from regular life).
In the case of Minecraft the issues you listed are pretty much present in almost anything entertaining, video games or not, including in-person events and social functions.
As with anything moderation is key and people just need to learn not to let it control them. Some people are incapable of that though.
There are definitely certain things that game companies need to avoid doing but multiple goals, a little bit of luck, and online cooperative play is not it.
I think the course of action is clear. Ban it from tournaments/official events. Since I'm not in the LoL scene I don't know if that might already be the case. Now, regular players will know that playing with this enhanced hardware will disqualify them from tournament play anyway. So now you simply create two modes of gameplay: tournament-legal, and casual. People who aren't aspiring to play in a tournament will play the casual game and it'll be acceptable there to use enhanced hardware. People who wish to play with people using tournament-legal hardware will play in the tournament-legal mode. There is little to no incentive to cheat in the tournament-legal game because you won't be able to cheat your way into an actual tournament that way.
Except cheaters would flock to the tournament-legal game mode because there’s less cheaters. Why would they bother to try and win against other cheaters if there’s a better chance to win against easier opponents?
Cheaters cheat so they win easier. They don’t care about fairness.
I mean, they get their arses handed to them by people better than them anyway. I understand the ranking system is something of a dark magic fudge, but it should roughly put you with/against people who have a similar chance of winning as you, right? If people play with cheats, they get to pretend they’re better than they are (ooh, look at me up here in silver, ooh), but then they fit in with others who, with or without cheats, match a similar level.
AFAIK competitive gaming events always happen on hardware that is provided by the organizers so everyone has the same. In some games players are allowed to bring their own mouse and/or keyboard/controller but imo that’s already a pretty big “vector of attack” for hacks
You can’t just give everyone the same mouse and kb if you want it to actually be fair tbh, different people have different kbs and mice for preference and ergonomic reasons. Different switches, maybe tolerable. Different kb size, very awkward and will lead to misclicks. Different mouse size? Even different sensor position? You will lose some precision until you’re used to it.
Though organizers could provide a specified model, and ban peripherials with features that are deemed unfair.
Yeah that’s why most games’ competitive events allow players to bring their own, but given the fuckton of dependencies some of the “gamer” peripherals install I’m kinda surprised I haven’t seen anyone exploiting a vulnerability to use some cheats yet.
For example I have a gaming mouse with onboard memory, and I don’t really trust Razer to secure that shit correctly (given the fact that their driver updating software doesn’t even bother not downloading the previous versions when not necessary nor cleaning up downloads after installation. Fun fact : I recently discovered I had 10+ GB of download cache after barely a year of usage, for a mouse)
It’s because they keep buying random companies. Then weirdly there’s those random companies don’t make them any money, and so the obvious illusion is to buy some more random companies.
This is the new narrative for Cyberpunk 2077. I’m guessing cdprojekt greased some palms ahead of the new DLC release.
But make no mistake, and don’t fall for it; cyberpunk is still a wholly buggy and unfinished game with extremely janky mechanics that will never be patched out.
If and only if you can overlook such issues, and I know from personal experience some can, should you consider paying for the new DLC.
It was a great game at launch, and it’s an even better game now. It runs like butter. Choose to not play for whatever reasons you have, but it is still a great game.
I’d like to disagree. Even if you disregard all the bugs I had and content/features that was promised and never included, CP 2077 was maybe a good game in 2020. I didn’t think it was great by any means.
Well, one is a linear, turn-based, 3rd person party cRPG.
The other is open world, real-time, 1st person with optional followers, sandbox action-RPG with space shooter elements.
Utterly different animals and any comparison is as invalid as comparing BG3 to Elite, DCS or RaceRoom. I've no interest at all in BG3 because turn-based party RPG-s are not really my jam. And I've never cared much about story-telling, either. I like good worldbuilding, sandboxing, looting, crafting, trying different builds, doing whatever the hell I like at any moment while completely forgetting that something called "main quest" exists, getting technical and modding the crap out of a game and this is where Bethesda shines.
Generally the term cRPG is used for specifically tabletop RPG-s adapted to digital realm. Action RPG-s take those classical RPG concepts and adapt them to a first- or third-person action game—basically Doom with leveling systems.
Especially if you’re playing a class not covered by the default companions. My paladin has been awesome, smashing goblins with a Warhammer, and still able to talk her way through just about anything. Playing a wizard, rogue, or cleric feels like it would make it tough to justify bringing someone along.
I tried a rogue that I built into heavy crossbows and line-holding while also having Ass Orion, there are definitely times I feel that it was redundant/wasteful (such as skill checks) but it pays off during stealth fights.
Having 2 characters that can move, enter stealth, and sneak attack in the same turn is extremely powerful.
[SPOILERS BELOW] Beat the cenobite doctor and the toll house lady back to back using this at lvl6, neither bosses got any attacks off on my guys. Idk if this is supposed to be impressive or anything, but In both cases I used both rouges to exploit the bosses AI, although admittedly the toll house fight was clearly designed for stealth.
My bard and Astarion work as a team to do the robbing. When you perform, crowds gather around you, so it’s very useful for redirecting prying eyes so Astarion can pick pockets.
What in the fuck. Can devs please start compressing this shit better? I know this is more of a me problem, but this is like half my SSD just for this game alone. Ridiculous.
I was going to install CoD: Cold War from PS+ on my PS5 since I wanted to check out the campaign but I'd never buy it. Fuckin 230 GB for that shit. I lol'd a bit and moved on to something else. So ridiculous.
Lmao 230gigs fuck that. Sitting here cursing my own life because I have 10 gigs of Sims 4 mods. For 230GB the game better come with a hologram that pops out of a USB port to suck my fucking cock.
The only games I'll bother keeping installed that are over 100gb are my ESO with all the addons on PC, and Star Wars Battlefront II on PS5, and only because my friends and I play co-op every Friday night. But it's still ludicrous. My most played game recently, Battlebit Remastered, is a whopping 3 GB lol.
Just one more reason why the obsession with the latest greatest OMGWTF HIGH DEFINITION GRAPHICS is the worst thing to happen to gaming since the Atari Jaguar.
We can compress textures into ridiculously small sizes, I doubt it's a problem. Audio on the other hand...
In a dialogue heavy game such as this one, each voice line for each language must be shipped with the game on steam. There's no way to split the downloads between regions and languages from within developer console on steam.
I think it's one of the most popular requests devs posted in the dev forums.
Standard lossless compression (without further assumptions) is already very close to being as optimal as it can get: At some point the pure entropy of these huge datasets just is not containable anymore.
The most likely savior in this case would be procedural rendering (i.e. instead of storing textures and meshes, you store a function that deterministically generates the meshes and textures). These already are starting to become popular due to better engine support, but pose a huge challenge from a design POV (the nice e.g. blender-esque interfaces don't really translate well to this kind of process).
Not everything can be easily compressed to significantly smaller sizes. In fact, for any random arrangement of bytes, finding one that is compressable by any significant amount is rare.
I’m sure that what can be compressed is compressed in these game files. What we really need is more intelligent assets. When downloading, the platform should take your localization settings and only download the assets required for that locale. I bet this would heavily reduce the size of many of these games.
I don't think that localization would help much. Most, probably all, assets that are taking up so much storage space are not going to include language directly.
I'd be willing to bet that the game will be available in a compressed format from a repack site with no content loss. At least 30% smaller. A recent example that I just checked, Forspoken, Original Size: 103.9 GB Repack Size: from 63.6 GB
Before I had an unlimited connection for monthly bandwidth usage I would frequently download an already purchased game from the repack site and then have steam "repair" it. Shadow of Mordor/Shadow of War come to mind specifically. Saved so much of my limits at the time.
What they need to do is utilize steam's branch feature to allow smaller installs for low resolution assets and with minimal language support without an opt in to other languages needed.
The steam deck really has me wishing Steam had pushed for that as part of fully verified (or have "great on deck" be a tier above and only for games that do the extras like that). So much space is spent on things I don't need at 800p
Eh… you can have high quality assets or you can have small size, but you can’t have both.
Game assets are typically some of the most heavily compressed assets there are (it’s often quicker, even from SSDs, to load a compressed asset and uncompress it than otherwise). There’s an entire middleware industry grown up around minimising asset sizes while keeping quality. 122 GB to me just screams “this game is fucking massive” rather than “this game is horribly unoptimised”.
Wait, I thought this game was a depiction of what we subject horses to, using a horror lens to drive home the point? I’ve never heard of something less sexy?
My understanding is that there was a scene where a young girl rides a naked man/woman around. Apparently it has since been changed to make the child older, but… I can perfectly understand why anyone would be hesitant to accept such a game based on that description alone. Even if it’s not intended to be sexual, the developers were certainly pushing the line
That’s not how this works, you don’t get to decide what is acceptable for other people. It’s people like you who galvanize Mastercard and Visa in trying to control what kind of content we’re “allowed” to purchase.
To be clear this all sounds repugnant to me, but i realize Im not the sole arbiter of taste and have no interest in telling other adults what (legal) things they are and aren’t allowed to do.
If the game is so bad it’ll tank, it doesn’t need outside forces influencing it.
That’s not how that works. You don’t get to decide what a store does and does not sell. Steam refuses hundreds of games a year, this one doesn’t get special treatment.
Saying “I understand why (store) would not want to carry this product” is not the same as saying “no store should carry this product.”
I’m not admonishing the store, as you said it’s up to them to carry what they like. I’m admonishing you and people like you for trying to exert pressure on the store to not carry something you personally don’t like, because again, you’re not intended to be in charge of what others sell.
Earlier this year steam updated its guidelines to prohibit content that “may violate the rules and standards set forth by steam payment processors and related card networks”
Visa and Mastercard pressured steam to remove a game because they didn’t agree with its content. Visa and Mastercard only care because they believe they end users care - that’s you, a potential end user of visa and Mastercards service. Valve only cares because visa and Mastercard care.
You saying “I see why they wouldn’t want to sell the game” helps them to pressure steam into self censorship.
You’re speaking with an awful lot of confidence on stuff you don’t seem to be very well versed in.
For example, you somehow missed the fact that just months after payment processors forced steam to remove a game, they’re suddenly self-censoring.
Um, he didn’t say he was deciding for others, he said he could understand how others would be hesitant… sounded like he was supporting your very point that people have a right to have their own opinion.
The only reason someone wouldn’t want to sell something is because of pressure from others - you boil it down enough and the logic is “I don’t want to sell this because others will judge me”, which stems directly from others judgement, being my entire point.
You can claim “Valve doesn’t want to sell it for moral reasons”, but they’re not a moral body, they’re a corporation - their only job is to earn money.
The more people feel they can dictate what a retailer sells, the worse it gets for all of us, and retailers choosing to drop things rather than “roc k the boat” is a problem.
Sure, this is a pretty repugnant case, but the slippery slope starts somewhere.
I regret my short hand of “slippery slope” but it’s not a coincidence that less than 6 months ago payment processors used their influence to get a game pulled from steam and now all of a sudden steam is self censoring based on content.
Whatever the non-fallacious version of “there’s an escalating pattern here” is what’s happening.
You claimed Steam banned this because of the payment processors. The same payment processors being used by stores that didn’t ban this. Seems a relevant point to the discussion we are having.
The article from July explains why Steam banned this game last month, despite Itch (which stopped selling certain games due to the payment processors) is selling it?
Who is this article writer that can see 4 months into the future?!
Along with the official release date of the game (December 2), the statement revealed that Horses was indefinitely banned on Steam in June 2023 – days before it was set to premiere on IGN’s Summer of Gaming event.
This is useful information I was not aware of - thank you.
While I was wrong about Horses, the issue with payment processors forcing censorship on Steam is still true and an enormous issue - Visa doesn’t get a say in what I purchase.
People are free to pressure retailers on what to sell and what not too. Saying they can’t would be far worse. And the retailer is doing the job of making money… by following the 2ishes of the populace. This is the free market capitalist society we live in. Completly sucks, but it is consistent.
I don’t disagree, I’m just calling the people who choose to complain morons, because again I don’t believe they should be the arbiters of what is acceptable.
Basically, you’re free to have your opinion, but keep it to your fucking self and your fucking echo chambers you regressive fucking failures (the general you, not you specifically)
Interesting point. But in general, who are the people complaining in the wrong spot. I suspect people basically are complaining in thier echo chambers… social media. And likely noone cares. But then the media jumps in and picks it up. So is the media to blame? I read a story about a lady in Britain I think who had like 89 followers and made a statement. It went viral. Suddenly her statement to her echo chamber was in the news. It ruined her life actually.
So are we saying the media should be banned on reporting what is said inside echo chambers, or are we saying public posting of opinions should be banned?
Neither. I’m saying that visa and Mastercards opinion on what I’m buying means fuck all to me, it’s none of their fucking business. I don’t care who writes you a letter, posts on face book, what the media says, it’s not their job to police my purchases.
They’d be 100% in the clear just ignoring these people (the kind of morons who have time to cause this kind of trouble either don’t need credit or don’t have a choice in the matter, so no loss of customers), but they decided to interject themselves in a place they don’t belong. So fuck em, and anyone who tries to enforce limitations on the legal things I do via crybaby disingenuous public pressure.
If everyone felt like me, these attempts would fall flat on their face. Sadly, too many sheepish pearl clutching morons.
On the visa and Mastercard thing I very much agree. In theory they are a business, and can chose who to do business with. But the free market pressures don’t exist to impact the decisions they make. So instead of them being influenced by customer sentiment, they are actually influenced by large organization with an agenda. That agenda is usually just a BS reason to build the organization and make specific people rich. It doesn’t represent the will of the people. So… they should be treated more like a utility. Places are refusing to take cash these days, so it is an easy argument that they function like a utility.
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