Last year, I pointed out how many big publishers came crawlin’ back to Steam after trying their own things: EA, Activision, Microsoft. This year, for the first time ever, two Blizzard games released on Steam: Overwatch and Diablo 4.
Why is it so hard for companies to build a game launcher that doesn’t suck? Is it just a lowest bidder situation?
I think it’s just priorities, those other companies weren’t interested in making a launcher, they were interested in tying their customers into their eco system.
Steam started out like that in appearance at least, nobody really wanted it and it was kind of forced on you if you wanted to play HL2 but since Valve seemed to understand the value in a platform like steam and actually work at making it good it became pretty good.
At this point it’s actually kind of hard to fully appreciate how much work has gone into steam. Not just the basic stuff like chat and forums and a store with a functioning search, or the banal stuff like inventories and trading cards and points I still don’t understand, but also the stuff most people don’t see like all the stuff for developers launching a game on steam and managing sales and keys and betas. Not to mention all the experiments they’ve done along the way to try and figure out what the best way forward is.
Steam is kind of a huge undertaking and unless a company is really invested in competing with it they’re simply not going to be able to.
IMO my favorite launcher to use out of all is probably Battle.net, even over Steam. This is probably mostly because Steam is terrible unresponsive and its startup is still kinda ass (I just tested the start and noticed its 3 fucking loading screens: Verifying installtion, Logging in and finally loading the page. All as separate windows).
If your goal was only to make a good launcher, it would be easy. If your goal is a lot of DRM shenanigans as if we were still in 1998, it’s really hard.
As always with the Crown Prosecution service in the UK they love to bully and make an example of Autistic people. Only added by corporation running the court system, The CPS' Prosecution barristers are known to enjoy a life of luxury and gifts from them but you cant touch any of it.
Following an assessment by a psychiatrist, however, the judge in the case determined that Kurtaj was unfit to stand trial, and so the jury was asked only to determine if he had actually committed the hacks, but not whether it was done with criminal intent.
He’s not talking about Larian, he’s talking aboutbthe actual D&D team at Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. Hasbro got a new CEO last year and the way they’ve been operating certain business units like WotC has changed dramatically, coupled with massive layoffs across many Hasbro subsidiaries. All he’s saying is the DnD team at WotC now is completely different to the one that Larian knew as they developed BG3.
spoiler alert though, it’s literally everybody. because everyone else is doing it, it’s not possible to survive as a business in a competitive space without doing, for lack of a better word, the devil’s work. It will take a major social disruption to change this, but it won’t happen in an organized fashion because we as a species are pathetic. The disruption will be the end of the world - North America cracking down the middle due to all the fracking, the Greenland glacier sliding into the ocean all at a go, something like that. FAFO endgame shit, due any minute now anyway.
Thank you! The CEOs’ children need Maseratis, boarding school, college, jet fuel to pedo islands, and so many other necessities! We can’t let them suffer!
The same Hasbro that tried to make a land grab for all D&D derivative content by changing their Open Game License to grant them irrevocable, perpetual rights to it. This is not a nice company as they demonstrate time and again.
So maybe it’s time the RPG community stopped thinking Hasbro are ever going to change, mourn for what D&D has become, but move onto something else.
Yeah Pathfinder 2e is good. It’s more crunchy than 5e, but that also means there are rules for most situations that come up. I like the 3 action system, much better than the old, “main action, swift action, move action, move- equivalent action” thing the old version had going on.
I have a group of friends, half in same town as me, half on the other side of the country, that get together once a week ion discord and play dnd via a self hosted foundry virtual tabletop docker. We used to play 5e but we decided to try out pathfinder 2e to see if we liked it and we haven’t gone back, pathfinder is fantastic. The flexibility with the actions makes it feel like you always get a chance to do something and you aren’t just wasting your turn when you are getting into position or whatever. Feels close enough to 5e that most of your intuition will be pretty close, just use a different website to look shit up. Highly recommend pathfinder!
What? We don’t have a plethora of other games here in the US? I’ll have to remind the owners of all those shops that those hundreds of other games they’re selling currently only exist outside of the US. How embarrassing for us…
The OGL License happened after Larian teamed up with Hasbro to make Baldur’s Gate 3. Thankfully Larian is still independent so it can continue on to make better RPGs without Hasbro.
Guess Larian just got a load of designers and writers. Such a shame as 5th ed was a real highlight, but now a lot of people seem to be heading back to pathfinder like the 4th ed days. Luckily, the Divinity universe can stand on its own and there’s a wealth of other tabletop rulesets waiting for their amazing adaptions
I don’t think it’s too controversial to suggest that 5e mechanics are not the strength of BG3. It would be arguably praised more if it kept the world design of BG3 and replaced the combat to have the spell scope of DO2 with the basic actions of 5e (aka shove, which arguably BG3 tweaked anyway to make it fun in combat)
I’ll miss the design approach of the game but BG3 was just a big advertisement to how good a D:OS3 will be
“Let me put it to you this way, Tav. You can buy better games than Solasta, but I like Solasta. Yes, it has a linear story, and the voice acting is rather stiff, and you can’t multiclass, but–it’s brilliant!”
I don’t actually know that I would say BG3’s story is undeniably better. It’s more polished, sure, and it’s more open-ended, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better. Granted I’m not done with it yet so I can’t say for sure, but I really like Solasta’s story, especially the second campaign.
I think there’s also something to be said about having four fully voiced player-made protagonists instead of one silent protagonist and a ton of NPC companions. There are scenes made up entirely of your party talking to each other. Which like, yeah, BG3 has that too, but Astarion and Shadowheart aren’t mine. Nora and Crag were. The writing isn’t as tight, the voice acting is relatively amateurish, but I like it.
The story in bg3 better, as it’s closer to tabletop experience. Ofc no video game ever will be as open to player’s choices as an actual living DM, but bg3 here is way better in that regard than solasta. Solving an encounter by convincing multiple people to kill eachother is amazing
I still like solasta more, as there’s just so many things in bg3 that infuriate me, like individual exp instead of party exp, and personal exp rewards for “background related” stuff, allowing for someone get ahead or behind the rest of the party on level ups. I was playing with my gf and let her be the party face, which made me about a quarter of a level behind by act 3. Or flight being a glorified dash.
I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help but be upset by the individual xp. Either I get jealous when my friends level up three hours before I do, or I feel guilty having a level on them for three hours. That shit does not fly at most tables, why would they think to include it in this game? Why isn’t there an option to share xp???
I made the change almost a year ago now after all the OGL nonsense they tried to pull and I honestly believe Pathfinder is a much more fun game. My entire table enjoys it more than 5e and they are a real variety of different player types.
I have a hankering to go back to it regularly and I’m playing on the Switch so it is less smooth, but yes I am a forever fan of Larian Studioes after experiencing just a tithe of DOS:2. Hard to explain why it is so good, but the mechanics are creative, fun, and challenging. The story is epic and actually epic in scope and the characters are all so fleshed out and the voice acting is professionally done and immaculate. It is very open ended and very long but very very good.
I’m so ready to get the kind of polish and mastery that BG3 has applied to a new game in the Divinity universe. I haven’t finished DOS3, not by a Longshot and don’t have time to play it, but it blew me away and I think about playing it again often. I will one day. It is daunting when you haven’t played a game like that in a while, to continue on. Especially on the harder difficulties lol RIP. Larian is the GOAT game studio up there with From Software and the Zelda team imo.
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