Carighan

Carighan, rok temu

I think the mistake was ever thinking that one company is “good” while the other is “bad”. Companies are just different flavors of bad once they grow above a size of, well, once they are companies.

Carighan, rok temu

I dunno, I don’t think the game would benefit from flat combat and meanigless crafting grinds.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah because in some ways it’s unrealistic. But we need a decision on what the “expected lifetime” of a video game is , I suppose. Much like how for rental flats there exists standards how long a kitchen, a bathroom, etc, last on average until they need refurbishment.

So if it comes down to say 10 years, then you cannot shut down your online services before those 10 years are up. As video games can be expected to last that long. Although I wonder whether this means they could shut it down after 5y if they refund everyone 50% of their sales price.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah it’d be tricky. I would rather see a law that requires companies to keep their games accessible for X years minimum from release, which also affects online services.

Carighan, rok temu

Plus, this is Bethesda, and in particular their open world games. They have always been shit the fans had to fix if they wanted to play it, as the foundation was solid but the company didn’t do any actual development.

Carighan, rok temu

It’s pretty late in its life, could be that anyone who would be a potential sale got one at this point? I remember that being, at the time, the reason for the sharp decline in Ocarina of Time sales in Japan, they effectively sold one to everyone who has an N64 so they “maxed out”.

Carighan, rok temu

Well yeah it is. It’s also heavy on the mtx, non-pushy as they stay (for now). Compared to something like DRG I really don’t feel the appeal, apart from maybe having overplayed DRG at this point.

Carighan, rok temu

unfinished release

I feel “early access” has this implication that it’s not just a product that is unfinished being sold for money with a pinky promise that it’ll get better in the future. It’s better than a normal release that ends up being unfinished, but only by being somewhat open about it.

That being said, game looks fantastic. If they keep at this, could become something really really cool in the future.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah plus from a consumer perspective it’s nothing special.

It’s just a buggy release, only the bugginess and unfinishedness is known and openly announced. Which makes it more earnest, of course. On the other hand just like with any other release you have 0 guarantee or influence over whether missing features get added in the future and/or bugs get fixed. If the content is worth the money asked it’s a buy, if not it’s a wait.

Carighan, rok temu

And there’s so many new kids entering gaming all the time who have never known a better world.

That’s the real big issue here, IMO: The North Korea approach. Kids are starting to become able to spend money who were indoctrinated with this. Because to them it’s the north. It’s just a part of this entertainment that you continuously spend small amounts of cash. To them it’s normality.

Carighan, rok temu (edited rok temu)

TL’DW? It’s >1 hour, and would probably be <5 minutes read as an article.

(edit)
Well, got this rather generic description of the game itself out of Gemini at least:

Scanner Sombre is a walking simulator with horror and desolation elements made by Introversion Software, a UK based indie developer. The game centers around exploring caves with a laser gun that shoots in random directions. The laser gun creates a color gradient on the visor to map the contours of the cave and reveal the player’s surroundings.
The caves are shrouded in darkness and the only light comes from the player’s laser gun. The sound design is important to the feeling of isolation as the player can hear their own footsteps and the constant whine of the laser gun. There are also strange apparitions that show up on the visor, adding to the creepy atmosphere.
The player character, Ethan, is trapped in a cave and doomed to relive his journey forever. He descended into the caves to explore ancient ruins but never made it out. The upgrades the player finds throughout the game are actually downgrades that Ethan experiences on his journey downwards.
The story for the game was added after the main development process was finished and some aspects of the storytelling are not well thought out. Scanner Sombre was not a commercial success and Introversion Software did not make another game for seven years.___

Carighan, rok temu

Of the alternative is waiting 90 minutes in line, sure, why not?

Carighan, rok temu

and what little they did release was insultingly barebones

I mean OTOH for those who bought it, the content there at the time was worth the money asked. Sure it was somewhat barebones but the game is also cheap-ish and if you get a bunch of cool hours out of it with friends, well worth.

Carighan, rok temu

I don’t. They have so many great studios in there, and you just know those will be the ones fully closed in procedures.

Carighan, rok temu (edited rok temu)

It is quite a gimmick, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing tbh. Its neat if you’re a hobbyist dev in particular to expand the way you think about input vs in game design so that when faced with things such as analog triggers, gyro controls or touch surfaces you got a better intuitive thought process.

I will however say that to me, the main use ends there. A neat gimmick in particular for gamedevs.

Carighan, rok temu

Can they please not? I’d rather not have Blizzard stay Blizzard, seeing what they did to WoW, SC2, D3, D4, DI, Overwatch and worst of all, Heroes of the Storm.

Carighan, rok temu

person behind Overwatch 2

is still held in high regard

Ouff. I guess marketing earned their bonuses, sure.

Carighan, rok temu

Oh I had not yet heard that they’re turning the ship around. That’s really really cool. After all this time I just stopped following stuff around it since it got so depressing over the years.

She’s the one from WoWC, right?

Carighan, rok temu

Weird Crew reporting in, running up to you using ESDF. 😅

Carighan, rok temu

Maybe we should rationalize their CEO with an actual pipeline, to use another euphemism…

Carighan, rok temu

Honest would be “We’re firing people to make our short term profits look better. That’s what my bonuses are based on, after all!”.

Carighan, rok temu

It comes after getting “blasted” I would assume.

Carighan, rok temu

I already got stuck on the name tbh.

I really don’t get how the “Claw” is not a keypad for the left hand or a mouse. Both would be things a gamer might intuitively think of as a “claw” thing. A gaming handheld?! Why? Because you apparently got the hardware out of a claw machine?!

Carighan, rok temu

Well yeah, sure, if your target audience is 8 years old. I guess. 🤷

Carighan, rok temu

Damn, I thought MSI’s mascot was more or less officially the bluescreen? 😛 Didn’t know they changed that.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah exactly, the middle was always pretty empty and aimless.

Carighan, rok temu

What I hate most about this is how they now moved to Rocket Chat.

Come on people. Use a forum. Get the message, finally. Do it!

Carighan, rok temu

They don’t really need a chat though, do they? For their purpose of user-interfacing development and tracking, a forum would be much more useful when coupled with a code hosting system, no?

Can do bug reporting/tracking and development through the latter, while the former allows discoverable FAQ, dev-to-user and user-to-user support. With chat, the last point is just about impossible plus it’s not discoverable.

Carighan, rok temu

That’s the extra funny part, their subreddit is rock solid since they had it a fair while ago.

Carighan, rok temu

Rocket.Chat and Matrix come to mind. The latter’s element client (the default) even looks extremely Discord-ish.

Carighan, rok temu

Essentially just Playnite then?

Carighan, rok temu

You’re new to Ubisoft, right? Ubisoft needs online on installation cm because their shit is so buggy that not even the installer could make it all the way without a crash if not for day 1 patches. No need for DRM if the game doesn’t work!

Carighan, rok temu (edited rok temu)

I got to ask, has reading comprehension really come down that much in the recent decades?

Could the title be expanded to be more prosaic? Sure!
But at the same time, it’s intuitively and entirely understandable.

Who? GAME staff
What? Discovered something
What exactly? That they’re moving to zero hour contracts
How? Via a mass Microsoft Teams call

Or, written together, the title up above. And that’s a completely normal sentence structure, it’s essentially how your brain should expect a sentence conveying that information to be structured, or the final part would be at the start (“Via a mass microsoft teams call…”).

Carighan, rok temu

Ouff, this is difficult.

To me it’s a very close call between:

• Majora’s Mask (atmosphere, inventiveness with the loop, boss battles)
• Link’s Awakening (first self-owned game, lots of memories, also that nerve-wrecking final battle with forms after forms after forms)
• Tears of the Kingdom (the way they hid the third world until release, the grand atmosphere, the whole thing around the Master Sword)

Majora’s Mask probably wins. But it’s a really close call.

Carighan, rok temu

Given my experience so far, it would not surprise me if the assets were AI generated. If not manually controlled really well, those models can quickly become racist, like that Twitter bot.

But big ouff. What a situation for the devs to be in, more so because of how will received True Colours is in spite of these woes.

Carighan, rok temu

Which in most companies is actually everyone because they don’t want to pay someone to work on all the permissions and controls.

Carighan, rok temu

Still pretty early in the game - on the fourth seal - but I love it. Strong “just one more level” energy, plus the constant cycling fixes the city builder problem for me, how it all got stale very quickly. Here it’s all done after 20-60 minutes each time.

I feel they smoothed it all by now. AFAIK the only bigger issue I recall is that there is sometimes an issue with woodworkers delivery because of how some woods can proc a ton of different extra items, which doesn’t gel well with how delivery pickup is done. Fixable by always using a harpy as a hearth keeper, which I like the most anyways.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah I was super-positively surprised by how faithful it was, loved replaying it.

And sure the ending fight was weird, but also, the “proper” ending fight was the room before that. So it felt complete in that regard, the last bit was just finishing off the game. Like in Crysis Warhead when you get the final gun, at that point it’s already won, just about finishing it off.

Curious to see what they’re changing.

Carighan, rok temu

That’s probably on Steam, not Nightdive? After all it’s just uploading some files and downloading them again, something the steam client is supposed to do for you.

Carighan, rok temu

Yeah I remember when this first happened, it felt a bit magical because while sure, the tech was around, this was the first time someone was doing it big. Virtual idols!