Ashtear

Ashtear, wczoraj

RPGs come immediately to mind. Your partner in Disco Elysium is more competent than the main character for reasons that will be immediately obvious. Bethesda’s RPGs are also open world, and while you’ll start out alone in them, you get permanent companions pretty quick (especially if you know where to look). They also get more chatty in the world and more character development in the later games. Fallout 4 more so than Skyrim more so than Fallout 3, for example. Starfield makes you swap them out if you do the main story, which I don’t know if you’ll like or not.

For a dedicated shooter, I think Titanfall 2 has the most protective companion I’ve seen in the genre. Get this one on sale, since it has its robust multiplayer priced in, but it has an excellent–if a bit short–single-player campaign.

Ashtear, 2 dni temu

Meanwhile I’m over here thinking about how I greatly prefer to put my saves in my own cloud storage (too many games these days not giving me as many slots as I’d like), the community forums are some of the most toxic places on the Internet right now, it’s a coin flip whether Steam’s going to give me a problem with my DualShock4, I hate how the Workshop is a walled garden, and I’m so much happier with my streaming now that I’ve dropped Steam Link and moved to Moonlight.

I guess the guides and Big Picture Mode can be nice?

Steam’s still the #2 best option for me on PC storefronts; the battle.net launcher has some aggressive advertising, as an example of hellscape we’re avoiding here. But Steam continues to not offer me much added value. I go there only because some of my games aren’t available on GOG.

I will say I appreciate what Valve is doing with the Steam Deck, and I’m really hoping it continues to grow an ecosystem that directly competes with Nintendo. They are actively burning up banked goodwill right now, and that segment of the market is getting unhealthy without someone keeping them in check.

Ashtear, 2 dni temu

Probably the same reason it’s happening all over the corporate web: fewer eyeballs moderating content. I was never enough of a regular on Steam communities to be sure, unlike GameFAQs (which I can tell you has always been that way).

Ashtear, wczoraj

Sure. There’s just degrees of it. Your average Steam community discussion board is far, far worse than the community you’re in right now.

Ashtear, 2 dni temu

Dropping a random tip here that might help a couple people that are running Metaphor on PC with an RTX card: turn on DLDSR and FXAA from your Nvidia Control Panel, and set 100% rendering scale in-game. The game doesn’t have anti-aliasing for whatever reason and the shimmer is real bad compared to Atlus’s earlier games. The best you can do in-game is crank up the scale, and I think some pretty beefy hardware is still required for good framerate with that.

Some stuff is probably going to be bad no matter what you do (like Strohl’s vest), but this way I can reduce a lot of the aliasing and still get a rock-solid 60 FPS on my modest 3060Ti. There are likely better third-party solutions being developed by the community right now, maybe even some good presets in Reshade.

Ashtear, 4 dni temu

As a general rule of thumb, if it has dialogue, it’s going to be pretty good, and surprisingly so a lot of the time. The Witcher 3 is still unmatched for quality and quantity of side quests.

This wasn’t a particularly good open world game even for its time, so I’d say ignoring the map markers completely is often smart.

Ashtear, 7 dni temu

The term is more specific than that, referring to runaway capitalism being the cause. Otherwise you’d just use something simpler like “worsening.”

The original context comes from a 2022 blog post.

Ashtear, 7 dni temu

Unfortunately, FromSoft wasn’t on Tenchu until later in the series when it…wasn’t so great. Still, that Sekiro started as a Tenchu concept is why I picked up the game in the first place. And like Tenchu, effective stealth is there, it’s just especially challenging.

Now, Zelda: Skyward Sword is one I can’t defend (and one of the reasons I’m surprised OP is getting crushed for this post).

Ashtear, 7 dni temu

I blame Metroid Dread for that one. Such a bizarre design choice for Phantom Liberty, especially being very late in the game. At least Dread flipped that around.

Ashtear, 7 dni temu

Can’t help but feel like this is a step back for Brace Yourself on their music games. Loved the first NecroDancer and Cadence of Hyrule. Tried the demo, but this one just wasn’t for me. Maybe I need a gimmick for these kinds of games–for Dance Dance Revolution it was the dance pad, Rez had the vibrator and the visuals, Frequency and Amplitude exposed me to new music genres, etc.

Elite Beat Agents and Theatrhythm both did well in the games that were just press-the-right-button, so I know there’s an audience for this. I’m just not in it, I guess.

Ashtear, 11 dni temu

“AAAA” isn’t a thing. That was just Guillemot being an idiot and flailing on an investor call.

Ashtear, 14 dni temu

They really leaned into the Chrono Trigger vibe with this one.

I like their marketing approach here by making a big splash at TGS. Sea of Stars also had a broader marketing approach. I’m not entirely sure how possible grassroots marketing is with this kind of thing anymore, at least in English-speaking communities. Chrono Trigger is a sacred cow in the JRPG community, and Sea of Stars got a surprising amount of backlash for not living up to those lofty expectations (yes, ridiculous ones considering CT was lightning in a bottle even among a dream team of developers and producers).

Ashtear, 14 dni temu

Same. I had my eye on this because anything that remotely looks like the next Pharaoh or Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom always catches my eye. There was also so. much. micro. I’d rather be shuffling citizens or buildings around than manually selecting what plants to harvest. Plus I hate the name, lol.

I’ll probably check it out again after 1.0.

Ashtear, 14 dni temu

LiS2 wasn’t my favorite. It started to feel like misery porn after a while, not to mention bordering on the absurd with the variety of situations they put the kids through. I think the story would have been stronger without the cult chapter. Expanding on the themes in the last chapter might have been a better choice and more consistent with the overall narrative. I will say, though, the endings are solid in the “choices matter” department. Best in the series with that, and a standout in gaming in that category.

I liked Before the Storm and True Colors, so I’m definitely looking forward to Deck Nine continuing the series with Double Exposure.

Ashtear, 15 dni temu

Whoa, not every day you see Ys II in the wild!

Ashtear, 15 dni temu

Yes, there are going to be opinion pieces like this one filling the space for a major news story like this one, but there’s still room for proper journalism right now. I recommend folks check out PC Gamer’s interview with an IP attorney that worked in Tokyo (which was also the second link in this posted article).

Software patents are a thorny topic, and it’s worthwhile for enthusiasts of the industry or those interested in IP law to read up on the concept in general. There’s risk for Nintendo here, and I found Sigmon’s offhand comment about how Nintendo’s ramped up legal hiring to be particularly interesting.

Ashtear, 16 dni temu

The most likely reason is, in short, forced arbitration was a way to prevent consumers from collectively taking legal action, and attorneys ended up doing that anyway in a way that’s even more costly to companies like Valve than class action lawsuits.

It’s also caused some ugly press recently, and the US has already passed legislation prohibiting it in certain agreements. I’m not expecting it to be in terms of service agreements much longer.

Ashtear, 20 dni temu

30 plus minute show.

Kidding aside, I agree, probably nothing earthshaking coming ahead of TGS.

Ashtear, 23 dni temu

Hrm, no mention of the super blurry character models that I had in the demo, so maybe they fixed that since and I missed it. Most of the footage looks pretty clean in this regard, too.

I had a pretty good experience with the demo with what DF would probably call low-to-midrange at this point (3060Ti, OC’d 10600k), and I’m the kinda person that’s sensitive to frame drops/stutter. I still think I’ll wait for a performance patch to be sure, though, if not a sale. Too many games for me to buy this season anyway.

Ashtear, 25 dni temu

Similar visual design happens all the time in Japanese media and there’s rarely litigation over it. Patent lawsuits are much more common in Japan.

Ashtear, 25 dni temu

It has to do with how the statute is written (I used to do comparative international IP policy research and analysis). Japanese works are given fairly wide latitude in creative sectors based on artistic intent. For example, you’ll see knockoff brands all the time in anime or manga, but the intent is clearly world building (or parody), not appropriation for promotional use. That artistic intent standard is used in the courts. This is why all the side-by-side comparisons people here probably saw on Twitter when Palworld came out was more of an ethnocentric American approach. Plus, copyright infringement is frequently incidental and not the result of large investment (unlike patents), so, in a country that prefers to handle domestic disputes informally, these incidents are less likely to go to court.

As a country that more recently entered the world stage based on manufacturing, patent protection is simply going to be taken more seriously as part of the culture. And yes–while I don’t have numbers–patent litigation does seem to get thrown out often when it comes to video games, at least the high-profile stuff, anyway. Here’s an example between Koei Tecmo and Capcom since I was already on Variety.

Ashtear, 28 dni temu

This reads like “the only moral Skinner box is my Skinner box.”

Also sounds like you haven’t played in a while. The addition of real currency to gold trading creates an even more direct pipeline from one’s wallet to in-game gear dice rolls. Guilds selling raid gear is even more common now, and with crafting orders, a whale can spend to reroll secondary stats on crafted gear.

With the way Warcraft is throwing currencies at players now, it’s clear Blizzard has taken more than a few cues from how gacha and other live-service outfits are doing things these days. Plenty of opportunities for ruinous, addictive behavior.

Ashtear, 28 dni temu

The AO rating is still the kiss-of-death for game content in North America, enforced by retailers. Even still, the ESRB only came about because the political climate at the time was very much “clean up your shit or we’ll do it for you.”

Ashtear, 28 dni temu (edited 28 dni temu)

Come on. We both know that legitimizing the RMT system increased the number of gold buyers and normalized the process. Not only does it now capture the players who were both a) squeamish about paying unproven third parties and b) had no recourse if they did get scammed, it’s also a far more convenient process. We know the gold-for-gear (and other services) market exploded in size because Blizzard was finally forced to make systemic changes to fight/redirect services spam. Service sellers are everywhere, and there was a point they were constantly in your whispers, your mailbox, your chat, your group finder. It’s nothing like it was 15-20 years ago.

No, gold buyers are not most players (and no, I don’t care that some players are doing it). Most gacha players aren’t whales, either. My point is that yes, your game is also chasing the whales right now and will continue to design systems to do so.

Ashtear, 27 dni temu

It doesn’t have to be jaded. As with the original quote I riffed off of, these particular Skinner boxes don’t have to always be pure evil and can provide net-positive outcomes, as long as we’re clear-eyed about the consequences of participating. The latter part is what I’m trying to drive home here. Consumer behavior psychology is part of every major live-service game.

Ashtear, 27 dni temu

I don’t know where you’re hearing retailers don’t enforce ratings. Yes, it happens uncommonly, but the FTC previously found ratings compliance was higher among video game retailers than at the box office, and not much has changed in the culture since then. I’ve worked at multiple retailers that sold video games, and the training for video games enforcement was always taken just as seriously as with alcohol sales.

Being the largest entertainment industry in the world now, video game publishers are serious about this stuff. Developers also still take steps to avoid a Hot Coffee situation from occurring again.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

I just wish today’s tech wasn’t so blurry. I miss SSAA (and games being optimized enough to be able to run it sometimes without a supercomputer).

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Yeah, after that time I really didn’t think consoles would be as much as a midrange PC. And yet, here we are. Feels like Sony’s back to late PS2 era levels of hubris now.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

FSR doesn’t use AI hardware. The original comment is overselling it a bit, but something AI-driven like DLSS does offer substantial (if slightly blurry) framerate gains.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Hrm, kind of an odd mix of classics and recent releases that aren’t going to be remembered five years from now. That said, I’m just glad Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is on here. It’s a wonderful hidden gem that barely gets talked about. I don’t even like puzzle games much, but the gorgeous pixel art and soundtrack helped me get really into it.

I’m also reminded that I need to get back to Citizen Sleeper. Was very surprised by it when I tried it (before I got sucked into Honkai: Star Rail).

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

This is 100% an “it’s just not for you” situation. I mean, it’s not really my thing either, but it’s literally the best selling game ever in Japan. That’s not just the pandemic.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Coincidentally, loot drama that wouldn’t have been possible in retail WoW is exactly why I stopped playing Classic a few months after launch.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Started playing again with a duo partner and was a bit shocked at the toxicity in Trade chat. I’ve been playing the game less and less over the years, and I guess I was used to it at one point. I suppose I also just have less tolerance for bullshit than I used to.

I don’t know how it is now, but Classic was even worse at launch. Blizzard underestimated player demand for the product from the start, so a company that had already slashed their GM staff to the bone wasn’t ready for it (and players in public chat channels were aware and took full advantage).

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

This is a dimension of the conversation I wish was talked about more. By linking strict norms to behavior in public, we’re telling petite women of the age of majority that don’t have curves that they can’t ever be sexually attractive because it’s extremely immoral and taboo. It’s especially a problem for trans women who can’t afford/don’t want breast augmentation surgery or otherwise can’t develop biological markers that we code as adult. Being told only pedophiles will be attracted to you is harmful to everyone involved.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

This point is premature for Wukong until we see some data that this was anything more than a domestic market success. Steam data scrapers speculate that China sales are over 80%, so we might be looking at (an optimistic) 1-1.5 million sold in the US so far. Not amazing numbers for a AAA project.

The real story here is that this game’s success is the clearest sign yet this vast market has been activated. I’m sure Japanese, Korean, and Western AAA publishers–especially those with a console focus–are very interested.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

I’d just settle for competent AI at any difficulty. I only ever had a few runs in Civ6 because the AI consistently fell apart in late game. Conversely, it’s why I had over 1000 hours in Civ5. Yes, it cheated, but once I started to ignore that, it was really satisfying to climb the difficulty ladder and still feel challenged even into the late eras most of the time.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Between this and weighing in on what defines Final Fantasy (in the original interview), Sakaguchi sure didn’t shy away from the controversial topics in the fandom.

“I understand and know that this is a very widely debated topic, but I really think it has turned into something that has a different meaning for everyone,” says Sakaguchi. “If I had to give some kind of core ingredient, I would say it’s the story and world. These two are a must for any Final Fantasy and the common denominator across all of them. The world setting needs to contain some kind of thematic element that is loosely tied to current events. I think the world itself needs to have some kind of thematic backbone or message that gives a different perspective, or a thought-provoking prompt for players.”

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

I don’t think I realized just how distinct Jennifer English’s voice is, sheesh.

This looks great, I just have the same concern I always have on turn-based systems with timing mechanics added in: how am I going to feel about the system in hour 20? If not great, is there an option to automate it?

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

This community, !gaming, and !games are the most active for general discussion, although both the /c/games communities are heavier on news than discussion.

That game’s old enough for discussion on !patientgamers, which is semi-active and much more discussion-oriented.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Although the demo showed me this was more of a puzzle game than a strategy game (not big on that), the writing was so great and I love the aesthetic and the world concept. Should be a lot of fun.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Didn’t even see the UI. Effectively an in-game cinematic trailer.

Hope there’s more forthcoming soon. Civ’s gotten to a point where I have to know if there’s enough to chew on in the vanilla game if I’m going to buy in early.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Thank you! Looking forward to it.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

Also confirmed by SI.com (which I didn’t know had video games writing, and it’s surprisingly good as it turns out). GI dot biz published a recap yesterday.

It’s been long enough that the publisher would have put out a statement by now if it was false.

Ashtear, miesiąc temu

It’s all over my RSS feeds, so it’s certainly being covered now.

There’s been some (not exactly scientific) indications that the vast majority of the userbase is in China so it remains to be seen if it was actually a success in the West or not.

Ashtear, 2 miesiące temu

Don’t know why you’re getting crushed for this. It’s not even just about this particular game; one of the major players in the largest entertainment industry on the planet is doing something highly unusual. That’s in the public interest.

Lemmy users should know better, too, as The Verge was one of the leading reporting outlets on what happened on Reddit last year. Adversarial tech journalism is part of what they do.