Hey, listen I know it’s bad and all but discord makes it really easy to create your own channel, customize it however you want and organize study/gaming with friends.
Since it’s convenient and easy to setup and use, people use it for things they really shouldn’t.
To bring back forums we need another equally easy to setup and host forums system that modernizes the bbs.
Modern BBSes aren’t an issue – they’re out there, and they’re pretty good these days – but the lack of VC funding that lets them fund massive user growth isn’t there, so the level of friction re: setting up your own remains high.
Discord’s advantage is that it’s not just easy to set up, but also free. You’re not going to get that in the forum space anymore. ProBoards isn’t going to invest the money into making them sexy anytime soon.
I think the main thing is that it’s the lowest friction for just sending a message, making a “post” gives people pause, but sending a message people will do no problem, so small communities get more activity in Discord than anywhere else
It’s even become mandatory by communities in some games, which is something I hate with passion. For instance, many MMORPG communities are on Discord these days (e.g. Guild Wars 2, more specifically the raiding scene).
So I subscribed to these communities and started using Discord. I still don’t get the appeal, it’s a cluttered mess all over the place and it doesn’t feel intuitive to use. Maybe I’m getting old…
I hate how discord has replaced this forum culture in many places for this reason, but overall it’s incredibly good for participating in communities in real-time, especially smaller ones. I agree with the forum part, but aside from that it has also replaced IRC, Skype/MSN/ICQ, TeamSpeak, etc. all in one place, while even expanding on their features. It’s unbeaten for friend groups or smaller communities to create a space just for themselves that features text chat, voice chat, screen/video sharing etc.
Unfortunately though the open source alternatives, even the ones trying to be fully compatible with discord, have not yet reached this featureset and usability level. Also one big issue with communications tools like this is they rely heavily on adoption. Doesn’t help me when I can convince my closest friends to switch to Matrix for example, when there’s so many more people that I interact with on a daily basis through discord who I have no control over. Especially when the alternative just doesn’t cut it for all these normies who don’t understand the implications of big companies controlling such exclusive spaces.
I do not believe “everyone” wants to zoom. I like the engaging combat they’re going for. I think the loudest people in the community like the idol game mechanics of most modern ARPGs but I think the genre is ripe for innovation.
Everyone praises their boss design and enjoy that aspect of the game, which to me reads “we like engaging combat with balanced rewards” but when that logic is theoretically applied to monsters we get people throwing online temper tantrums which tells me they don’t know what they want except for the thing they’ve already been given.
They’re missing the mark with the monster design, getting closer than anyone else in the genre (besides maybe No Rest for the Wicked). They need to look at roguelikes such as Hades and make each monster have a “role” when building encounters. Give each monster abilities like the bosses in the game and don’t make it about being auto-hit to death and they’ll have a truly next-gen ARPG.
I’m positive the first team to crack the infinite loot/immense player expression of ARPGs and engaging combat loop of action games (or really all other genres besides idol click farmers) will make the next genre defining game akin to Diablo 2.
I think PoE2 is on the road to doing that but the immense pushback they’re getting online seems to be wearing them thin. Which they asked for, for releasing an unfinished game and not having a clear line in the sand.
I mean to say “idol” as in… Oh fuck. Omg I’ve been misspelling idle in literally weeks worth of comments. Woooooow. Okay. Feeling a bit dumb.
I meant idle mechanics. Hopefully that makes a bit more sense but just in case - I’m making the argument that most modern ARPGs since Diablo 2 have not innovated on the gameplay directly but have innovated on the systems of the genre. This behavior has led to what I consider to be a stale endgame game to game that often or exclusively boils down to trivializing the content such that it’s comparable to a slot machine, an idle game like Eggs Inc., or a “phone” game.
I think PoE2 is working hard to evolve the genre to what id consider to be a “next gen” ARPG, where most or all previous games fall into a large “Diablo 2 inspired” bucket. I think No Rest for the Wicked is similarly attempting to evolve the genre. A counter example for the genre is Titans Quest 2 which seems to be falling squarely in the “Diablo 2 inspired” bucket.
I’d like to see more “No Rest for the Wicked” level of swings regardless of if you consider that EA game a hit or miss in its current state.
That’s totally cool by me, it’s a fun game. PoE2 is probably the best ARPG on the market, it’s just falling short of what they sold me (and the community at large) on. But for now, it’s definitely an idle game during mapping with the right build (and the wrong build will see you roadblocked progression-wise).
I have a powerful computer for my work with a 3090, i9 etc. I still prefer gaming on the Xbox, it’s in the living room, it doesn’t bother me with driver issues, CPU overheating, and other random bugs I get on the big machine, and it’s in the living room where I’m also spending the time with my family rather than stuck in my cave upstairs.
The article was incredibly light on specifics. What were the hateful / threatening messages? Why would anyone have a problem with helping developers find new jobs? Why were those developers fired in the first place?
The “Go woke, go broke” man babies who believes that failed games were because of politics™, and any attempt to help those people is a act of aggression.
Because the term means nothing, really. It’s just a vehicle for hateful rhetoric, incorrectly applied to everything that they don’t like. Yet half the things they like would be considered “woke” by their standards if they were released today.
I will not pay 15-ish bucks for decade old games that I already purchased long time ago at release. Also not with another buck discount off. Definitely not since they are Blizzard games and these days that studio is not worth supporting anymore.
Good initiative from GOG, but this feels like wasted money to me. Warcraft 1 is definitely a hard sell because of how terrible playing it will feel. Or did they change that in the Remaster? You used to be able to only control one unit at a time. In Warcraft 2 they upped it to 9 units? Or am I off and it was 9 units in 1 and already more in 2?
If you already purchased it a long time ago, and you can still get that copy working, then cool. But having a DRM-free copy designed to work with modern systems is very appealing. Buying DRM-free shows them where customers want to purchase their games. There are plenty of decades-old games worth more than $7.50 each.
The good thing is that thanks to how GOG works, as long as some pirate purchases a copy, they will always be able to keep a current update available to the pirate community.
Yeah, I said I will not. I didn’t say no one should. I think it is great that GOG preserves them but the price is still to high for something from a scumbag company.
How does it work with the money GOG is charging, does Blizzard see anything of that? If not, then nice, makes it more worth to me to pay so GOG gets more funding.
If Blizzard does get a cut then GOG should give a rather hefty discount as a final “fuck you” to Blizzard. Because that’s all they deserve.
you could group multiple in W1. you could only build buildings adjacent to your road though, I remember making a road right to the enemy and putting the barracks in their camp lol
He should make a meta verse. I still won’t buy it, but having 2 of them completely fall flat because a billionaire thought they knew what entertainment was would almost be as funny as that time Sony re-released Morbius in theaters.
Obviously that steam guy was probably coming from a place of bad faith, but the response is maybe imperfect no? This would look pretty bad if the roles were reversed I think. (genuine question I am hoping I am told why this may not be the case; I have nowhere else to ask)
Yeah the history of oppression is definitely reason to dislike those that support it, but it seems ill-fitting to have this affect all people who identify as straight no? (Not just cis straight people who don’t support that oppression but also trans straight people and other exceptions, as another commenter pointed out)
It’s okay to take context into account and not just look at it as a math problem. Targeting a minority isn’t the same as doing it to people who make up 90% of society but are whiny.
I totally agree that an unacceptable proportion of straight people are whiny about any manner of minority representation, but doesn’t this also affect straight people who are normal about this? Maybe it’d be more fitting to give a demeaning title to homophobes, eg. the steam complainer, but provide regular title to everyone else somehow? Thanks for taking the time!
I mean, are straight people who are normal about it clamoring for the title to begin with? This seems like a problem invented basically entirely by the whiners. You could just as easily say it affects gay people who want an ironic title, or straight trans people, but for obvious reasons the whiners don’t really care about that.
All that said I have no idea what the price tag means in terms of gameplay time to acquire it. If it’s unachievable without 10 hours of grinding or something that’s a little mean, but not enough that I really care.
I haven’t played the game for very long, but from what I’ve seen it would take a few hours to get to the point that you can just get a thousand bucks and blow them on a title, but it’s entirely doable. You would have to focus on upgrades anyways to start with just to get a proper income up and running, and then once you can fish with greater speed and with a greater success rate it should be fairly trivial.
Yeah a title in some fishing game definitely seems like a really strange thing to be upset about (and yeah you’re totally right that this doesn’t just affect cis straight people). I’m just saying that the presence of only that title for people who would like a regular version or don’t care about titles and just see it in passing might feel unwelcome through no fault of their own y’know? (Though obviously feeling unwelcome would be a little ironic)
I’m just saying that the presence of only that title for people who would like a regular version or don’t care about titles and just see it in passing might feel unwelcome through no fault of their own y’know?
I completely agree with this. For example, they don’t currently have a gender fluid title. Most gender fluid folks may not be clamoring for them to add the title but if they joined the game and saw that the gender fluid tag was harder to obtain for no discernible reason, was in air quotes, and had the description “mhm” I think they would feel pretty unwelcome. Also - a lot of people won’t know the context that there were people complaining about the lack of the title.
I’m sort of the opposite. Give characters sexualities! Make them people! Give them criteria by which they will or won’t find my character attractive! I feel gross when every NPC is pansexual and aggressively attracted to the main character for no reason. Then again, I’m acespec, so.
If it were me, I’d do something like not really focus on what their actual “real” sexuality is unless it is somehow relevant to the plot. Then if it is so something like make them a 1 or a 5 on the Kinsey scale instead of a 0 or a 6.
I don’t think games should be required to do, I’m not trying to force some sort of universal bi/pan agenda. I’m just saying it personally annoys me when I am locked out of pursuing a character just because of the gender I happen to be playing as because I typically don’t play games multiple times. It also annoys me when games don’t allow you to pursue all characters. Like in BG3, as far as I know, all characters are bi/pan but not all are poly. The game forced me to pick between Astarion and Karlach, for example. I put 100 hours or so into the game before I quit. I’m not willing to put over 100 more hours into it just to see what would’ve been different. It’s just a waste of my time.
An alternative approach is only having “sex scene” type content gated behind gender, but everything else can still be seen by friends. E.g., anything a character would eventually tell a lover they still tell close friends. Which is still sort of annoying but not really as bad because you can easily just look up a sex scene, but experiencing things like dialogue and special quests in game isn’t comparable to looking it up on YouTube.
I understand your perspective but I guess I just fundamentally disagree. I’d be annoyed, in the same vein as you, if every character was poly (unless they were actually poly and they had other lovers and referenced your other lovers and it was genuinely part of their identity) or if a relationship with them wasn’t different from a close friendship, besides having sex (because sex isn’t the only thing separating a close friendship from a relationship).
I guess, the way I approach the kind of game that we’re both talking about is just different. I’m not interested in exploring 100% of all the content possible, but rather having a rich experience in the content that I do explore. I’ll take an authentically written gay man and an authentically written straight girl who both won’t explore a relationship with me, over the opportunity to have more content that’s shallower. But yeah, again, thats just a different approach we both have to games.
I’m not interested in exploring 100% of content either, but I hate when games artificially block content off. For narrative reasons, I don’t care. I don’t mind the idea of mutually exclusive companions based on choices in game. But something as minor as gender at character creation? Come on now!
Obviously that steam guy was probably coming from a place of bad faith
The Steam forums actively encourage this kind of bad faith behavior:
when a post gets a new reply it’s moved to the top of the forums. So as long as people are engaging with a post, even if it’s just to make fun of a bigot, it keeps getting pushed back to the top.
Users can “award” posts for various things (helpfull, cool, funny, etc) and users have taken to giving ‘Clown’ awards as a way of making fun of posts. Whenever one of your posts gets an award, you are given Steampoints you can use in the Steam cosmetics store.
This results in every game having bad faith posts “complaining” about wokeness so that people will make fun of them with Clown awards as a way to farm Steampoints. The developer bringing attention to it just helps them get more.
I understand that half of the world is currently healing psychological trauma from the US election results but Atlus has been commenting on politics in their games for much longer.
Pcgamer sure is putting a lot of words and intentions onto people.
Edit: I have now read Firewalks wiki and I’m starting to see a picture. Just seeing the words “Sony”, “Bungie” and “Activision” repeated everywhere does kinda give an impression of what the hopes for the game were.
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