Think I know what happened here. Apple will reject updates if there’s anything broken or outdated in it. ie, support for a new screen aspect ratio, the dynamic island thing, new processor type, new version of Xcode, etc. Square can’t just fix one bug and ship it, they have to also check for and update anything that may have fallen a few years out of date. Sometimes you just recompile and click a few new checkboxes, sometimes it’s more work. If the app’s profits are winding down already, it could make more sense (to bean counters who don’t care about game preservation) to retire the app entirely.
Are they? Genuine question. Some of the FF titles I’ve played in the past were technical marvels on their respective consoles. FFXIII still gives modern games a run for their money on the graphical department, despite being 15 years old at this point. Not sure how they fare up nowadays though.
I’ve never heard of SE being known for bad code except for when they first started doing pc ports. 13-1 and 13-2 were bad but they figured it out by 13-3.
That’s not the developer, that’s a Discord mod, and they said in that message specifically that they haven’t heard anything from the dev. It also says nothing about what “the agreement” is. It could very well be a legal settlement.
He is a developer (github) and in fact had a pull request merged in August. I suppose it’s possible it was a “legal agreement”. It seems implied that it wasn’t, and that was what I remembered when replying
I can’t say I’m surprised to see Gamepass get a price hike; it always seemed like it was in the loss leader stage to try to grow market share.
I wonder what the reasoning was to institute the hike now, though, since I’m not sure how strong their market share actually is on it.
My theory is that either:
Microsoft is tired of footing the bill and expects results now
Microsoft/ Xbox think they have enough market share, so it is time to stop cultivating and time to start harvesting
My understanding is they are still releasing new Series S models, which are basically just Gamepass machines; so I would expect they are not happy with their current market share (though corporations literally never are), which makes me think it’s the former option, not the latter.
All that being said, I wonder how much the price can increase before the value proposition of Gamepass is moot. Right now 20 USD a month doesn’t sound bad as long as you’re playing at least one new game a month, but I wonder how much more room there is in the price before the number of games you would need to play becomes unreasonable.
Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the Gamepass model since I like owning my games physically (it’s the main reason I prefer console to PC), so I don’t have much of a horse in this race; but I will be interested to see what becomes of Gamepass in the long term.
Gotta be honest, rockpapershotgun’s coverage of this game hasn’t gotten me very interested in this being anything other than a hyped flash in the pan but we’ll see
Literally the only thing I know about it is “pokemon with guns” and “it’s SOOOOOOOO popular! You should try it because it’s popular! READ HOW POPULAR THIS IS!”
i mean the good part about it is the survival aspect. it’s a pretty similar direction as ark except it’s actually playable (unlike ark). and it deviates from some other games like valheim enough for it to feel like a unique experience
the enslavement is just a neat bonus
right now it already feels like it had a lot more player-experience effort put into it than many already popular games (and way more than pokémon if that’s relevant lol), and even though it has some noticeable bugs and doesn’t have as much content as you might want, it definitely is something that feels like it has a lot of growth ahead of it. the mechanics on their own set up a good foundation for new additions ahead
the main thing that bugs me about it is some quality of life things, probably the biggest being storage management/sorting (god damn it this happens in every game i play) & not as much automation as i’d expect. if they made it so you could, i don’t know, link all your chests/storage nodes with some storage interface (maybe that pal computer that is already used for a lot of stuff), allowed you to assign which chests/chest slots pals can put which items in, allowed pals to take items from specific assigned chests to e.g. automatically craft certain proportions of items, etc. it’d make me want to play the game 100x as much. add a “factorio but with slaves” aspect to the game to appeal to a wider range of players, you know, even the minecraft redstoners might get in. basically adding a “storage & task management screen” would be sick
another thing is that i’ve found it really tedious to manage a large number of tasks/pals currently, which is why i mentioned “task management”, it’d be cool if you could easily manipulate priority/necessity to certain tasks and stuff
overall though they just need to focus on ironing out the bugs and then adding more content to the world to make it feel actually rewarding/interesting to explore (i guess this basically just means add more lore to the world, because it is severely lacking in story), and it’ll be an actually really worth-it game
That got to me overtime. That, and the fact that every pal left out overnight would be depressed/weakened and it’s an utter pain in the ass to make medicine, let alone administer it to each and every one individually…
I just feel like what you are saying is “once the game is actually developed it will be good”. It sounds like an early access starfield.
Once the world is fleshed out I will play it, I could care less about an empty open world with vague promises. I could also care less about mediocre mechanics (is anything in pal world as fun as trying to nail a deer with a spear in valheim?).
To be fair Valheim has actual sailboats that sail according to the wind which is my pet peeve that other games don’t ever play around with this (sailboats are magic motorboats usually) so it is going to be hard to beat for me.
Meh, the sailboat part of valheim was the least interesting part for me. The wind would ALWAYS blow against me, seemingly by design, so getting anywhere would take forever. Yeah you get a way to somewhat alleviate that, but it doesn’t last forever, and you have to sail a LOT. I’ll take the magic motorboat any day.
Ok for sure, no judgement if you don’t like sailing but I grew up learning how to sail sunfishes and other derpy small sailboats.
Sailing is fun as shit. Yeah intense racing type sailors are absolutely insufferable but if you have ever had the pleasure of having a sailboat to fuck around in, it is like kayaking except you don’t have to do work. Wonderful. Amazing. Sailing is so god damn underrated in video games.
The basics of sailing are pretty simple and easy to grasp. Yet… 99% of games with sailboats as optional craft never actually make the sailboats behave like sailboats. They are just lame motorboats you drive until you can manage to hijack a speedboat. It sucks.
Or there are pirate/tall ship games where the ships just magically go in any direction you want and it just utterly kills the vibe.
There should be entire genres of sailing games by now that are basically just open world space trading games but with actually interesting vehicle controls and living dynamic universes (the fucking ocean) with regional wind patterns.
WHERE ARE ALL THE SAILING GAMES???
sigh but again no judgement if you hate sailboats but as long as a game implements them like Valheim, than rowing gets you there plenty fast enough i.e. you can just ignore them. Valheim sadly undersells sailing though since if the wind is blowing against you sailing upwind is slower than rowing which robs you of one of the fundamental magical feelings of sailing (how am I rapidly traveling my in the opposite way fronthe force powering me??).
There are so many reasons to love sailing, it connects us with human history, it is fun, and it provides a vehicle piloting experience with lots of mechanical depth.
Dang are you the hypeman for sailing, because i’m feeling the energy haha. I’m sure real life sailing is actually fun. My grandfather had a sailboat back in the day, and while I never got to go sailing on it, I did get to step aboard, and I could imagine the adventures one could go on with it :) But yeah in video games it’s usually just kind of boring. You’re mostly just waiting to get from A to B, with little to do inbetween. I did like how it was handled in Windwaker to some degree, but that may also be because you don’t lose all your stuff 30 mins from home because a random mosquito attacked you out of nowhere 😅
I did like how it was handled in Windwaker to some degree, but that may also be because you don’t lose all your stuff 30 mins from home because a random mosquito attacked you out of nowhere 😅
Oof I got attacked by a “mosquito” and lost all my stuff way far from home in valheim and it made me temporarily quit. The mosquito was weird though, it was like 100 feet long with a big menacing mouth full of teeth, no wings thankfully.
Also some of the most fun sailing is in the tiniest sailboats you can get like sunfishes, lasers, j20s etc… they are simple, quick to tack (i.e. they keep speed through turns) relatively inexpensive and easy to get in the water and a blast to sail like a fool and capsize. Sometimes there are sailing clubs/classes you can sail these at that are pretty affordable if you live near water.
But yeah in video games it’s usually just kind of boring. You’re mostly just waiting to get from A to B, with little to do inbetween.
This is true but it is so silly, if you ever get the chance to go out sailing on a windy day on like a 20 foot hobie cat style catamaran with someone who knows how to sail it and you would NOT say the experience was boring or full of long periods of nothing stimulating. Even if the water wasn’t its own unique dynamic environment just the mechanics of keeping the sailboat hiked over with your body weight to get maximum speed without flipping over are complex and stimulating and those things FLY. In a video game there is no reason game developers couldn’t dial up the arcadeyness and speed to make this experience even more fun, but I just don’t think most game developers give a shit about sailing so they don’t even think to try. They just program a motorboat and animate a cosmetic sail on top of it that swings around to whatever direction you are going and call it a day.
Wellinaturally assume any game is shit on release in regards to bugs and stuff so I try to avoid games for a few weeks minimum. I’m more of the Patient Gamer type. I can wait a few years until the game is more or less in final form before getting it.
It sounds like that’s exactly what I should do here. I might toss gamepass a few bucks this month to try it out. it sounds like as is, I would stop playing when I go to build. I absolutely love building things, I used to crash fallout 4 all the time because my cities were so filled with things. Then there’s starfield where I got to s point and realized the entire cargo system was broken, and stopped playing the game entirely. Not like I was playing it for it’s gripping story…
This game might be perfect for others as is, but imma wait a bit and try it Soonish.
The building in this is not great. I kept getting frustrated trying to build around its weird limitations. If you want a game with good building, you may want to give Enshrouded a try. It’s the first game i’ve seen where I can actually build caves and even tunnels! I watched someone on youtube make a whole hobbit house in the ground… pretty cool!
It’s just a well made game in an era of badly made games that hype themselves up bigger than they are.
Palworld is “just” good monster collection, good combat and some good survival crafting. I’m not going to play it, but it’s very easy to see the appeal.
It’s like the newer doom games. They’re “just” good shooters. You “just” get to go through well built levels, nice visuals and good music.
There may be a few catches here and there, but overall the game works, the world is pretty big / big enough and the features are well designed and well paced enough to keep people entertained for several dozens of hours.
That’s what I mean by “well made”. It’s not an actually unfun game with bad explanations.
Idk I guess I still didn’t get the vibe it was anywhere as special as the hype train is treating it. It honestly feels weirdly artificial for a hype train too.
This feels like a weird take if you haven’t even played it. Like, how would you know?
The game is flawed, but genuinely super fun, and has a ton going for it outside of “Pokemon with guns”. In a lot of ways it’s what I always wished Pokemon could be, at least in the ways it makes its monsters feel unique and like actual partners instead of battle slaves, which is ironic considering Palworld is the one with actual slavery.
I doubt a no name company would be pulling all this attention out of marketing alone. If it was this easy everyone would do it.
In all fairness, this is not a great game. It’s a very derivative game whose only appeal is that it combines things in a way that hasn’t been done much. Like many other hype trains of questionable quality, it just happened to scratch the right itch for the right people at the right time.
Kind of how Fortnite was a rehash of stolen ideas (originally) of PUBG
The reason people originally hated Fortnite was because not only did they blatantly plagiarise PUBG, Sony also intentionally screwed over PUBG to make Fortnite more popular
It’s been quite a long time but iirc there was originally a deal going on between them that got last second tossed out for Fortnite instead. Sadly I don’t fully remember
You’re getting downvoted, but I think there’s something to this, even if it’s not the whole story. The game had a robust presence unnaturally quickly on Tiktok and among streamers. This studio isn’t big enough to have engineered a big campaign, but it’s quite possible they did some small, targeted marketing and it really paid off.
I’ve been seeing people mention “the game has been in development for 2 years” and all these trailers and stuff but… I didn’t hear a thing until the game released, it exploded and now it’s all I’m seeing.
Yeah but also I think the nature of viral content is just spinning out into chaos with the amount of AI generated content and bots. I am sure palworld deserves its popularity to an extent but it’s the velocity and utter completeness of palworld’s popularity that feels weird. At some level I think algorithms are heavily distorting cultural phenomena like this to be much more “winner takes all” in terms of popularity. It is not only how humans tend to act but it is also the most profitable way to monetize culture.
The studio doesn’t make games for the good ideas, but to make money. Shocker, I know. But get this; the developers are paying for this parser that determines what kind of product will sell well, based on social media.
The developers have admitted to using something like that to decide what kind of games they’ll make.
I had no intention of getting it after finding out it’s less like Pokemon with guns and more like Rust with Pokemon, but a friend got it for me a few days ago.
I am already bored. I never got into shit like Rust or Ark before, either. The loop is the same, except with the addition of capturing critters to use as laborers in your base or to help in combat; not the sole means of combat and relying on them sucks because you don’t command them like you do in Pokemon but like you would in Elder Scrolls with AI about as smart. You level up to learn new tech that ultimately just helps you do higher level areas or lower level areas faster.
I think with most players it is just going to be forgotten in a few months; but the people who really like Rust and Ark and things like that, will keep Palworld going a long time because it is, at least on a technical standpoint, better than those and does have quite a lengthy tech tree to unlock. Plus it’s cuter.
Yeah I definitely think that the whole direct control of pals could be improved. I’d like to see something like holding a trigger to issue direct commands to your pal with face buttons. Would require rearranging the buttons a bit though.
With how the purple elk things (I’m so bad at remembering the names lol) double jump, I immediately thought of Torrent from Elden Ring. You can dodge on him (kinda) and doing it that way would at least feel like you’re not just taking a huge disadvantage by fighting mounted to control the attacks.
It is missing too much to call it like factorio or even rimworld as you cant even set task priority or do much optimization, but it has the foundation and could certainly go that route with some major ai improvements.
It’s surprisingly entertaining, but you might want to wait until it leaves early access if you’re on the fence. It’s very buggy and there’s big aspects of the game that aren’t filled out yet.
Ubisoft can go fuck themselves with their little “accident”. I haven’t bought one of their games in years amd this greedy corpo shit paired with lackluster games is exactly why.
They are, in almost every way, taking the console model approach. Updates when there is a significant generational leap and not just yearly updates because AMD made a slightly faster APU (though they did the switch to switch OLED thing but no one complained about that because they kept the LCD models for sale and the OLED really is nicer), selling at a loss (and making up for it in game sales) and of course, the ease of use that a console interface offers over a traditional PC interface.
Then they step it up beyond that by making it as open as possible (software/emulation, games from any source, it’s really a PC) and making the hardware repairable (making parts available and easy to fix in the first place,) and of course, cheap games and practically every game you’d ever want.
What the other handheld PC companies are lacking is (with some exceptions) repairability, that console experience, and price. Us nerds that can do whatever with technology will do it, so a legion or an ally or a gpd will sell just fine to that demographic, especially for the frame rate chasers. But for most of the rest of people, they would just get a switch or a PS5 or Xbox because it’s just plug in and game, and at least in the case of a Switch or Xbox S, the cost of entry is way lower than a PC, be it a gaming desktop/laptop, or even many of the handheld PC competitors. Yes you can build comparable cheap PCs to an Xbox or PS5, but that means building a PC, and most people don’t want to do that (I’m not talking to you, I know you have a sweet rig.) Yes I know games on PC are usually cheaper especially Steam sales or key seller/bundle sites, but console gamers often don’t consider that, and initial cost of entry is very important to non-enthusiast type people in any given hobby.
There’s a reason why Nintendo consoles sell so well despite being behind the competition in raw horsepower. It’s the console model (and in their case aggressive exclusivity of their famous IPs)
The things keeping Sony and Microsoft in the competition are basically the console ease of use, and their all you can eat subscriptions. Even they both realized that they can get more sales putting their games on PC, but that still means forking over MSRP for a single game, so those ps+ and gamepass subs are keeping them afloat at this point.
I’m a huge tech nerd and have been deep in related industries for over 20 years. I know how to do whatever I want with any pc hardware or software, I own a steam deck, and a rog ally, a proper beefy gaming desktop, a gaming laptop, a Switch, and a PS4. Despite all that, in the past 2 years, easily 90% of my gaming has been on the Steam Deck. It does everything I need it to and more, and it does it anywhere, anyhow. If I want to tweak and tinker with it I can, but more importantly, I can just PLAY GAMES with almost no friction. At home, on a break at work, at the airport waiting for my flight, cozy in bed, wherever, whenever, and fast, and easy.
The Steam Deck is the swiss army knife game device that childhood me always dreamed of, and now it exists. That is why it’s outselling it’s competition, and genuinely making PC gaming a viable thing for the masses. No it won’t beat Nintendo anytime soon, but it’s gaining steam on them and other consoles faster than any other attempt ever has before, and it will only get better.
The ease of use of the Steam Deck cannot be overstated. Yes you can tinker with it a bunch but if you just want to play your games, you download and play. The windows handhelds will never be as easy since windows is just crap for this (and MS is not interested in improving).
www.gog.com/en/gog-preservation-program direct link to GOG, because the link provided in the The Verge article is goskimresource that is blocked by my browser extension uMatrix. From the original articles FAQ at GOG:
What about macOS and Linux?
The GOG Preservation Program is currently Windows-only. Our priority is to preserve as many games as possible under the Program, before expanding to other operating systems.
Sad. How about supporting Linux? This would be the right direction to preserve games, as they are no longer tied to the Windows operating system. That’s why I use Steam and do not buy on GOG.
I can understand that their priorities lie with Windows initially. I also prefer Steam for their amazing linux support, but for preservation Steam is also a mess: delisting of games / the fact that the games are not DRM free. A copy you buy on GOG is yours forever, a copy on Steam is less certain. Also know that GOG operates at a fraction of the budget that Steam has, so they don’t necessarily have the money to put someone on linux support too. But hopefully in the future this will change!
Yes, the DRM free games is a huge win for preservation. I’m not discounting the value of GOG. But that’s something we had already. My critique was about the focus on Windows only, which is not the best idea if games should be preserved “forever”. Because Windows 11 will be the only supported one soon.
But any efforts trying to make games work forever is always good. At least they didn’t rule out other OS in the future. While my initial reaction was a bit negative in the nature, because I was very disappointment, I’m still happy they do something about it. It’s even more bitter because they supported Linux in the past… But let’s see how this is going. I don’t want to end this in a negative note. I mean it can only get better with such a goal.
I think, if they are preserved for windows DRM and anti-cheat free, it should be no problem launching them using wine / proton. In the other hand, a native Linux game will not run as smooth on WSL as a comparison.
I’m not suggesting to preserve a Linux version only. If anything, I meant to test and make sure the Windows build works with Proton on Linux, in addition to making sure it works on Windows. Some games have Linux versions, they just do not care about them either. And maybe make a Linux version of the GOG launcher as well.
Wait, why Steam? GOG only sells DRM-free games. Any Windows game that works through Steam on Linux, works downloading it from GOG with standalone WINE. Or via things like Heroic Launcher, Lutris or Bottles.
Off-topic: do you have a guide on how to get uMatrix to do this blocking? That sounds great but it looks to be all manual. Do you run it with uBlock Origin?
Yes, I have uBlock Origin and uMatrix active at the same time, on Firefox. Maybe if you are using a Chromium based browser, it does not work the same? After all Google made changes. Otherwise, I’m not sure which setting in uMatrix will cause to block this. Therefore I’m not sure how to help with that at the moment.
I’ve looked again and it’s probably one of the lists that contain hostnames to block. skimresources appears in all of these three, so enable them manually if they are not enabled: Dan Pollock’s hosts file, MVPS HOSTS, Peter Lowe’s Ad and tracking server list
Edit: In the addon menu you can enable or block the domain dynamically when you are on the page. Unless you save the setting this is only temporarily changed.
Geez, the half-color clicking is really counterintuitive. Why couldn’t they just go with radio buttons or something?! Thanks for the detailed instructions.
I absolutely get where you’re coming from, but to be fair Team Fortress is basically a hero shooter as well, except that there can be multiples of the same “hero” on the battlefield at the same time. Or - and I’m genuinely asking because I haven’t played “hero shooters” in that long - am I missing a core distinction of hero shooters?
I was thinking something more in line with a narrative story-based shooter like half life. TF2 and other competitive shooter arena games were never really my thing.
TF2 is a class based team deathmatch FPS. One class, one character.
In hero shooters you have multiple characters with different abilities that make them distinct from each other, yet all can conform to a certain class type and role.
It’s insane what these people do. They’re rewriting code from the 60s to use even less memory, have to test it in production without physical access, and it takes two days to see if anything changes. It’s an insane piece of engineering and it’s incredible that it’s still sending useful data.
I’d love to see what their test environments are like. You can’t test everything, but they can certainly test some things. A raspberry pi has more software capability.
This thing looks cool even without a disability, TBH. I can't judge its usefulness for disabled people, of course, but I hope it'll be the tool they need to mitigate the issues life has cursed them with, at least for a little while during game sessions.
Next: make it so games can’t suddenly lose their music license. This is so incredible annoying. I know it’s depending on what the publishers negotiated, but it shouldn’t be possible to suddenly patch out soundtracks because of a license expire.
Seriously. If I bought GTA before those licenses expired, my download should always have them, even if newer ones do not (which, to be clear, still sucks that that’s acceptable).
Some games, like Allen Wake, have been full out removed from sale because of expired music license. There has been other cases some come back later with the music stripped.
Much like California’s other good-sounding laws, the fine print is what gets you on both ends, both in the law and in the EULA you agree to when signing up that’s going to say that all transactions are explicitly a terminable and revocable license.
A revocable license for a virtual “product” whereupon they absolutely do not give you back your real world dollars if they terminate said license.
There’s no power imbalance in this transaction at all, no siree.
Anyway, I’m all for making backups of things. So you de-licensed me. Big whoop. I still have the file and I can still play it, and nobody can physically stop me.
I suppose that’s the difference between laws in the US vs the EU. In the US the wording of the law is everything. If you find some absurd loophole due to weird grammar, good for you. In the EU, at least from an outsiders perspective, the law is enforced as it was intended to be, and if you try to fuck around with wording you get fined.
theverge.com
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