Agent_Karyo

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

Fascinating business model.

rental sales of CDs

CDs? What would you rent CDs for? The only thing I can think of is music and win 9x games.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

That’s a fucking wild bill if you are not from the US. One would almost think you are being scammed (I am talking about the deceptive structure of the bill, not the values).

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

The weird discount application and the sales taxes.

The sales tax always drove me nuts (and in total I loved in North America for a decade), I could never get it over it.

Where I live we just get an item list (with true cost per item) and a subtotal.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

I think the bigger deal is Lemmy/Threadiverse getting 100K MAU and seeing steady growth beyond that. We are currently at around ~50-55K MAU.

Subs are a deceptive metric, MAUs are far more important.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

In principle I agree with you, but it’s also a “chicken and egg” type problem. Many people aren’t going to switch to Lemmy if there isn’t a modicum of coverage for more specialized topics.

I think getting to somewhere beyond 100K MAU will have a transformative effective on activity in some more specialized communities.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

I have yet to try the demo, but I believe with Entitled, it’s actually not the story. You have the standard “save the world/princess” narrative (their page describes this in an ironic way) which you can complete, but you also have a management/tycoon x lifesim hybrid:

The world of Entitled is a quirky mix of fantasy and real life. Modern economic themes blend with a medieval fantasy setting. One moment you’re delivering swords for the blacksmith, hoping someday you will own a sword of your own and become a proper hero. Shortly after, you pay taxes and attend lectures on supply and demand on the job market. All that to figure out what to actually do with your mediocre life.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

I tried the demo (this was over a year ago, so much could have changed). Seemed solid, but a little bit average. The world was compelling and I was curious to learn more. Some unique mechanics were included.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

Those castle and pond shots are beautiful.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

I thought this was unique enough to share in !games. 😆

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

The Black Isle version of Fallout 3 (Van Buren).

Bethesda’s version had expansive and impressive maps and visuals, but the writing and world-building were subpar compared to Fallout 1/2 and New Vegas.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

That’s a fair point. We did have Arcanum in 2001 and while it’s arguably legendary in CRPG circles, I don’t think it did all that well commercially.

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

They are on my “to play” list. :)

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

What was your experience like? Interesting to hear from someone who tried it now as opposed to when it was released. I will add that it’s not merely a matter of nostalgia, but you also have a better grasp of the core gameplay and the general storyline beats if you’ve played it several times since release.

Did you get the HD patch?

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

Thanks for the write up.

I mostly agree. The combat is indeed terrible with both real-time and turn based. Turn based just feels off and pure real time is not viable. I play with real-time with pause.

I had the misfortune of playing as a technologist on my first playthrough in the early 2000s. It was really rough. Over time you can figure out strategies/approaches to make it easier, but I would argue many of them almost break the game.

I agree you need a measure of tolerance for retro gameplay/jankyness and honestly combat was subpar even for its time (Fallout 1/2 combat had many issues by modern standards, but it was definitely much more refined than in Arcanum).

Agent_Karyo, 2 miesiące temu

First few hours of both FO1 and FO2 are pretty rough. Lots of almost comical kiting and a bunch of tiring save scumming seem mandatory.

Combat in the mid to late game is fun though. You have hard encounters, but you also have the opportunity to be prepared.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Might have to check this out when I do my next replay of Hl1/HL2 (I do them every 2-3 years).

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Cheer!

My last playthrough was about a year ago, so I have time. :)

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Jesus Christ, the DLC prices. They’re selling each additional ship for ~$50? Like, the game with all ships is ~$700? I mean, I know that DCS World and Il-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Stalingrad use that model, but I can’t imagine that the ships function as differently from ship-to-ship as the combat aircraft in those games, bring as much additional gameplay.

It’s the Star Citizen model. Players should be happy they are not paying $400 for a concept art piece of a ship.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Dredge is really cool if you are looking for something a bit more casual, but with decent narrative and very strong world-building.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Did not know about Dave the Diver releasing FOMO DLC, it’s been on my medium term wishlist, but I might just skip it. I have more then enough games to play.

It just doesn’t seem like that kind of game to do FOMO DLC.

Thanks for the update. Lots of interesting highlights.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

I played a lot of Simcity 2000 (it was the first game I played), so for me the visual, size and quality of life upgrades in Simcity 3000 were always impressive.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Honestly, just try Simcity 3000 or Simcity 4 (some community mods are mandatory). Simcity 3000 is easier to start imo.

Just remember to watch spending and make sure to always have new zones (primarily industrial and residential) until you hit 1950 or so.

Start at the edge of the map with an industrial district that goes parallel to the edge of the map.

Plan ahead with your transport structures (leave a compact corridor for a railway line) and zone locations.

Initially focus on surplus budget and growth (i.e. surplus budget mostly spent on expansion), but try and invest into education so that by 1950 you have a more educated populace.

Have fun!

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

I am glad I am not the only one who is still playing it somewhat regularly. :)

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

“It has been over a quarter of a century since SimCity 3000 was released in 1999.”

First off, rude.

😜

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Haven’t played the 2nd one, the first one is solid though. I did find the political simulation to be a bit inflexible, I think I disabled political impact on my runs.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

So this is what REPO looks like. I heard it was super popular, but never had a chance to encounter it.

Cheers!

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Never heard of The Escapist before, sounds like a fun game.

Cheers!

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Surprised it’s your GPU fans that are the loudest, I barely hear my 3080 and I regularly heard the CPU cooling fans, but then again I most play strategy games that heavily bottlenecked by CPU.

GPU fan noise is not something that’s easily fixable, unlike CPU cooling.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

This is a good addition to Lemmy.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Dunky video

What if you don’t know who Dunky is and you didn’t find the video funny (seems pretty low effort).

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

So now i have a few fox cubs along with the dozens of cats i have populating my base.

Do fox cubs mix with cats? :)

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

I honestly didn’t mean it in that way. 😆

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

I wouldn’t go as far a stating that it’s mainly a systemic problem. Individual choices also matter to some degree.

Agent_Karyo, 3 miesiące temu

Some Steam games don’t come with any DRM and function like games on GOG.

steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

It’s a pain to deal with it, just pointing out that there are Steam games that are fully DRM free.