sugar_in_your_tea

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Honestly, that’s exactly what I expect from a puzzle game sequel, the same core gameplay with some new mechanics and nicer graphics.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Yup, like the original.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Pathing should be low hanging fruit here. Most NPCs don’t need accurate pathing, and can use a much faster algorithm to calculate. Hopefully the devs do a round of optimizations for late game content since that seems to be where most of the issues are.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Oh it’s certainly pushing it to the limits, which is why they need to change things. If it’s pathing, they have a ton of options to make it smoother, since most NPCs don’t need fancy pathing logic.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

But you need to do the same on GOG, no? So that’s kind of a silly argument imo.

Once it’s downloaded, you can copy the game directory somewhere else and never need to download it again.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I don’t think you do need Steam running. If it’s truly DRM-free, just copy the game directory to a new machine and the game will run. Don’t launch through Steam, launch it directly from the game directory.

I’ve run games directly without Steam running on a handful of occasions, such as when someone else is using my Steam account (e.g. my kids on my other computer) and I want to play a game. I could probably play in offline mode I guess, but running it directly isn’t that hard.

It’s not an installer, but I don’t need an installer when I already have all the game files in one directory.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Or that some people use non-“standard” layouts like Dvorak and Colemak. It’s not hard to just use the key code instead of relying on the key label.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I was with you until Warcraft 3. Warcraft 2 was the best of the series, fight me.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

IDK, I think Diablo 2 was peak Blizzard. We had StarCraft and Warcraft 2, and imo World of Warcraft was kind of the sign of the end, at least when it seemed they would keep doubling down on expansions instead of new games. I thought StarCraft 2 was just alright (bought Wings of Liberty on launch), and I didn’t bother with Diablo 3 due to it being always online.

So for me, peak Blizzard was around 2001. Granted, I never played Warcraft 3 (was just too different from the earlier Warcraft games), nor did I play World of Warcraft (didn’t have stable Internet, stable income, or stable time), so maybe the peak should be pushed out a few years.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Yup. We limit our kids (2 under 10)to 2hr/day, though they need to “earn” that time by reading, and we give them a free hour each week.

We think that’s fair, and that’s our choice as parents. As they get older, we’ll give them more freedom to set their own rules.

If my local government made the same restrictions as I make, I would totally oppose it. I as a parent should decide what my house rules are.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

Or worse, fill it with microtransactions.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

I don’t pay for microtransactions out of principle, yet I’m sure there’s someone else who will not than make up for me. I honestly don’t get it.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

That’s the excuse those companies give for it. There’s nothing stopping someone like Microsoft from making “Bedrock” and “Java” Minecraft versions play together. Just establish an API and make separate clients if needed.

sugar_in_your_tea, rok temu

And those separate behaviors would be minimized if they supported cross play between Java and Bedrock.

As for cross play and always online, you’re absolutely right that it doesn’t require it, but it makes things a little simpler. If a game requires you to login with the server on startup, that check only has to happen once, instead of happening when you engage with the multiplayer mode. It also makes it so the game can integrate social aspects pretty easily (friend X is online, do you want to play together?).

So if a game offers multiplayer as it’s intended main gameplay, then it can make sense to require always online.

That said, I still hate it. I would prefer companies be forced to support offline play if they offer a significant single player experience. I know it’s something I consider when buying a game (I play with my Steam Deck offline quite frequently), and ideally game stores would have similar requirements as well.