Carighan

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah, there are exceptions like Overboard, Storyteller, the Alien Isolation sidekick game or the whole Lifeline space series, but they’re all lost in an ocean of crap.

Carighan, rok temu

Now I will say that a game company maybe doesn’t need 1100 employees. That’s just intuitively oversized, at least to me.

That being said, I cannot imagine a substantial amount of money, that could trivially uphold those jobs, is being wasted on middle management positions which will not be part of these layoffs (of course, they never are), bonuses and C-suite yachts. Plus, the company had no game release sind 2017, maybe not performing too well financially is, well, expected? That is, certainly the wise CEO put significant sums of money from the highly successful early years of Destiny 2 aside to easily cushion the leaner years later instead of blowing it all on cocaine and hookers, right? Otherwise, why would someone keep that management around that cannot even do something as simple as cushioning money? Right? 😑

I hate how this never affects the people who are actually responsible for the losses. You never get the C’s sued to take the bonuses back they got blown up their arses. You never get all the excessive layers of middle management removed. No, they always let go of the actual workers, who could do fuck all to prevent it to begin with.

Carighan, rok temu

Ubisoft is shutting down online services for some games. Damn. Important difference in the title, you made it sound like they’re shutting down fully, say after some ransomware attack or something!

Carighan, rok temu

I remember back when - at least over here in Germany - Gamestop were… cool. When they were just shop for consoles, games and some gaming geek stuff. And the whole used-sales was a small small side-business.

That was a long time ago, but damn was it awesome to have dedicated game shops.

Carighan, rok temu

It’s not my project - I just stumbled upon the repository and figured I’d post a link here - but from what I have seen so far it seems to be a faithful re-implementation so far, so no online MP. I checked the open enhancement requests, and found none. Maybe open one to ask whether they’re considering it?

Carighan, rok temu

Of course, but it was also the generation after EQ1 in a lot of ways. It was able to learn from EQ1’s release and early months and quickly improve its own game as a result of that.

Carighan, rok temu

Same ESDF is my go-to ever since Tribes but it stuck due to MMORPGs making it so much easier to use everything with it.

Carighan, rok temu

Of course, and it’s important to keep in mind how much the context changes. Not just in gaming context, but keep in mind:

• MMORPGs are hardly a new genre. Their players nowadays are a different generation of humans than when the genre was young.
• Social context changed entirely between the start of the genre and today.
• In a similar vein, digital socialisation is entirely normal now. We no longer need a very fancy minigame (EverQuest) attached to your online chat room just to socialise.
• Through WoW and then again with the Wii gaming exploded as a hobby, even before mobile games created a somewhat separate but huge extra market. The modern target audience is on a wholly different scale. Just look at the peak subscription counts for EQ1 or DAoC.

It’d in fact be quite noteworthy if default features didn’t change substantially and continuously.

Carighan, rok temu

Has anyone here played Tandem? How is it? Looks fantastic from just the store page, but had absolutely no spare time in which to try it. :(

Carighan, rok temu

They need to do something to make more money

I’m sorry, but Unity is just not a viable entity. They have consistently lost money since 2004, and in 2022 reported nearly 1 billion in net losses. Just close it down!

Carighan, rok temu

Deep Rock Galactic: Fantasy Edition is looking pretty meh, tbh.

It’s a shame because if you describe it to me on paper, the concept of a co-op game where a group of dwarves build/rebuild Moria or at least a tiny portion of it sounds interesting. But among other things it’d need an art style. I mean it also needs a good one that is evocative of the world Tolkien created, but hey, first of all it needs an art style.

Carighan, rok temu

Idk why people act in this day and age like the Steam Deck is some crippled device

Please don’t misunderstand their criticism. It’s not criticism of the Steam Deck, but of Epic as a company. Epic’s store is the crippled thing, not the Steam Deck.

Yeah, we can work around it, as customers. We should not have to.

Carighan, rok temu

Sidenote: Pioneers of Pagonia is by the actual developer of the actual old The Settlers.

I loved it. And yeah, it’s a simple management game without much depth or fuss, but that chill easygoing settling of the landscape is what enchanted me about the original right around 30 years ago, and it worked just as well with the demo. In fact I found that comparing Against The Storm, I kinda prefer the less gameplay that PoP has, exactly because it has less gameplay. ATS sits a bit in the middle, still being a chill town builder but also wanting to be deeper, and in that case I just want a proper 4X or Grand Strategy game instead. PoP is then the exact opposite of that for me, it appeals to the chill&relax part of gaming, a bit like playing Dorfromantik or something.

Though, as you say, it really was quite janky.

Carighan, rok temu

Just remember how plasticky and stiff the characters in Dragon Age Inquisition looked because of the mandate to use the Frostbite 3 engine for ~everything, no matter how unsuited it was to a high fantasy world.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah but I think they did it back in 2013. No clue whether the contract is still valid or it’s all old capture.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah in theory this sounds awesome. But given the shoddy state of the multiplayer alpha, I wonder how/when this will release.

Still, if they actually bring this out in a year or so, I would definitely check it out (given 1-2 years for bugfixes, learning from CP2077).

Carighan, rok temu

“Opiods are fun. God forbid you enjoy some drugs line [sic] OxyContin 🙄”

It’s not really nice to call an addiction “fun”. Especially if you were to ask an addict about that.

Carighan, rok temu

No, whales subsidize the cost of a yacht for the CEO. The games could be paid just from the money you pay for them, if the companies weren’t continuously being siphoned off the top by C-suites and shareholders.

Carighan, rok temu

And yet plenty drugs and medicine are controlled substances because they’d be so easy to abuse or hurt yourself with. We could just assign the same to ingame gambling, no? Since that’s also on an individual basis, handle it the same all around?

So to buy a lootbox:

1. Go to a doctor.
2. Doctor prescribes you a daily dosage of say, 1 lootbox.
3. Each day you can go to the pharmacy and pick up a pack of 1 lootbox code, you can have at maximum a store of 4 of them at home then pharmacies stop giving you more so you cannot stockpile. (going by the pills a friend of mine gets prescribed here)

Carighan, rok temu

You do realize this whole thread and post is about gambling addiction yes? You’re essentially doing the “I have a black friend, I can’t be racist!” but for gambling addiction.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah that’s a bit confusing, too. And sure, Endwalker brought a Healer and Shadowbringers brought a Tank, but they both also brought DPS, and now it’s a DPS only expansion making queues worse again. They need to do 1-2 expansions of only adding a tank and a healer.

Carighan, rok temu

Sure, but they’ll be even easier, so we’ll be hitting Yoshi levels by the next game. 😑

Carighan, rok temu

Oh my! I just finished the reboot, and it was fantastic. Time for more System Shock (again) in my life! 😍

Carighan, rok temu

Ouff, that’s a tough one.

But I think Persona 5 wins this one, owing to:

• Rivers in the Desert
• Life will Change
• Phantom, it’s menu background music
• The spin-off Strikers has the absolutely brain-infecting Love te Wonderland

However, I’ve recently finished Cassette Beasts, and it’s a really really strong contender. Imagine creating an OST piece as amazing as Same Old Story, then going back and adding lyrics for it for when you are fused. And then there’s the even more phenomenal Shot in the Dark (only linking the lyrics version here).

Carighan, rok temu

I crouch on sand, I’d assume. Next to me a woman pulls a purple sword out of her own chest, tells me to get going then disappears. On my other side a sniper with bandaged eyes talks about a piece of her soul before shooting someone.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah but game production isn’t about the consumers. It’s a business.

Carighan, rok temu

Get D4 (Dungeons 4) instead! It’s coming out soon!

Carighan, rok temu

I just finished it, and loved it.

But you need to know what you’re getting. The game looks fresh, and has some relatively minor QoL done with interactions and shooting and all (and the replaced Cyberspace), but it is a nearly 30 years old game.

And the remake fundamentally still is. A very good game that in many regards is still unmatched, but also one tremendously outdated in plenty other regards.

Carighan, rok temu

Eh? That’s not how a block chain works.

Carighan, rok temu

It makes them money off of desperate or in turn grifting people, I suppose. Just like all of crypto.

Carighan, rok temu

My big one, because I am playing the successor right now would be the Commandos-reinvention line of games by Mimimi Software:

• Shadow Tactics (feudal Japan)
• Desperados III (Wild West)
• Shadow Gambit (undead pirates)

They’re very faithful reproductions of the old Commandos-formula, real time tactics about sneaking and stabbing through a dense map full of guards covering each other, finding spots where to get in with specific abilities of your varying characters. In the newest one in particular, your pirates are recruited in any order you like, and being supernatural in nature they have some wild abilities. Your starting character can briefly freeze time for a target. Your Quartermaster can possess people. A skeleton has a golden head he can toss to make guards come over to try pick it up and then make their corpse disappear by using his fishing pole to drag it into the endless chest he has on his back.

Carighan, rok temu

You can always see your own nose BTW, your brain just usually excludes it from what you actively notice.

Carighan, rok temu

Same, I always check whether GOG has a game first, and whether it’s patched up to par. Sadly, surprisingly often while games release on GOG they then lack features (although personally I do not really care about achievements) or worse, the devs give up on releasing patches for the non-Steam versions.

Carighan, rok temu

In what way? Genuine question? The dev cited there has a reason for his opinion, after all.

Carighan, rok temu

💯

Although, I can imagine supporting Epic is annoying. Unlike even GOG, they don’t have their own support mechanism like a forum. I can see why someone would release on Steam (and hence stuff like GMG and Humble) and even GOG but not Epic. Example Baldur’s Gate 3, which released on everything except Epic. Although in their case Larian commented that the decision to not release on Epic was specifically to not show support for their exclusives-everything stance. Hence on everything except Epic.

Carighan, rok temu

This is almost always a situation that can be pinned on Steam, actually. The games that end up doing this are usually using Steamworks, which essentially forces them into a sort of soft-exclusivity on Steam since their multiplayer features and such can only exist there.

But Steam doesn’t force them to use Steamworks, so I don’t really see “steam’s fault” fault here. Although, of course, it’d be cool if Steamworks would work for non-steam games at least for modding/multiplayer. Granted.

Carighan, rok temu

I think the pseudo-quote you wanted to do the other way around.

The thing is, sure, I prefer buying things from say, GOG. But Epic is horrible, and that’s even just from my consumer perspective with it’s bad client, terrible discoverability and lack of forums or anything. So as a consumer I have no incentive to support Epic, no matter whether I want to give my money to Steam or another place.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah same, I always felt this game would be so much more awesome as a cozy co-op thing instead of a tense PvP thing.