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Dark_Arc

@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg

Hiker, software engineer (primarily C++, Java, and Python), Minecraft modder, hunter (of the Hunt Showdown variety), biker, adoptive Akronite, and general doer of assorted things.

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Former PlayStation exec says "$70 or $80" games are a "steal": "As long as people choose carefully how they spend their money, I don't think they should be complaining" (tech.yahoo.com)

It feels to me like the closer we get to the Nintendo Switch 2’s June launch and the, apparently, $80 games associated with it, the more people are fighting with themselves over what is and isn’t worth it. But at least Sony veteran and previous head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida is free from inner turmoil – he...

Dark_Arc,
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If you look at inflation adjusted pricing, it really is a deal. IIRC we should be at like 90 or 100+ dollar games at this point.

Dark_Arc,
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Sure, but that doesn’t mean the game developers don’t need to be paid. It’s still a bargain for the work that’s being done.

Dark_Arc,
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That is how inflation works… when costs go up prices go up.

Yeah, your computer probably should cost a lot more in “today dollars” but because performance of components gets more efficient over time, you can likely get a better computer for less money.

It’s the same reason you have a computer more powerful than multiple thousands of dollar super computers. The technology has improved enough you don’t have to pay as much.

Do you think prices should just be locked in place for eternity at $60?

Dark_Arc,
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How is it late?

Dark_Arc,
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Yeah, those do look extremely similar to such I’ve pulled out of mid journey.

Dark_Arc,
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I mean any and all corporate support of a cause (like LGBTQ) is going to be performative. Don’t expect corporations to take a stand unless their existence is predicated on that cause.

Dark_Arc,
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I’d argue you’re the one that’s committed the nirvana fallacy if anyone.

You want them to take a useful stance but you quit supporting them because it wasn’t enough of a useful stance.

I’m just saying, don’t moralize companies … they’ll let you down every time. It’s not about doing what’s right, it’s about fitting in. Companies are like the virtue signalers in high school, they’ll only do it if it’s cool.

Maybe that’s useful to your cause, maybe it isn’t, maybe you support them maybe you don’t, but I wouldn’t expect a company to do things from a place of morals.

Marathon vs. Arc Raiders - Discussion of the games' opposite opinions

At least in my perception the initial reactions to Marathon are overwhelmingly bad and for Arc Raiders overwhelmingly good Im genuinely interested in what key differences these two extractor shooters bear to spark such a delta since I like to talk about game design specifics....

Dark_Arc, (edited )
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I haven’t played Marathon, but I did get into the ARC test. This will mostly be some ramblings…

I’m still waiting to play ARC with some friends. I only did some solo stuff.

I’m coming from this as a big Hunt Showdown player (1,200+ hours) and someone that’s played a bit of Forever Winter (~20). I still like Hunt better; I think it’s the only extraction shooter that didn’t take a ton of influence from Tarkov.

I wasn’t crazy about the marathon art style, but I’m not ready to pass judgement on it until I’ve been in the world.

ARC’s art style I found beautiful but also perhaps too sparse. There were so many wide open spaces … I just don’t see that being a good thing for an extraction shooter. The world felt vast and empty … I prefer Hunt’s more cluttered and dense design.

ARC does seem to have a lot of potential in like how it’s designed its AI, Hunt’s is very primitive in a lot of ways and kind of secondary. I think the AI is going to be a bigger deal in ARC.

Third person also feels worse to me than first person. I hope they add a first person mode to ARC, but I kind of doubt they will.

I definitely agree that ARC felt like it was being set up to tell a story and felt very cinematic at times.

The UI also felt like the best extraction shooter UI I’ve ever encountered.

I’m concerned about the long term health of ARC. The progression system seems like it will certainly lead to established players dominating newer players. The lack of a primary objective that’s shared by all the teams on the map … I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it may lead to a more relaxed experience, on the other hand, it doesn’t curate players towards each other like Hunt does; it seems looting and crafting are the primary motivators instead.

The fights that I did get into, they lacked the complex environment and buildings in Hunt so I didn’t find them nearly as engaging, they were much more straight forward gunfights than leveraging the map to use it to my advantage. I think that aspect will ultimately hurt the game as it makes it feel like a bit of a generic shooter.

Overall ARC felt very middle of the road from what I’ve played of it so far. I had a similar feeling about The Finals. Embark seems like a talented studio and I wish them the best as they go up against Bungie and Crytek.

Dark_Arc,
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Yeah for me, it’s the variety of tales that you author. Every game feels a bit like a new adventure, after a while similar to ones you’ve been on before, but still new.

ARC has those elements, but something feels off so far for me…

Also typically the progression is in terms of variety (Roguelike) instead of straight power (Roguelite). That keeps things fair because even a new player, if they trade the aim, can pose a real threat to a seasoned player of similar FPS skill. ARC seems like it’s decided to go for a sort of Roguelite experience and that seems risky.

Dark_Arc,
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Three, before there was Discord there was TeamSpeak and they’re still fighting

Dark_Arc,
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Have they had any recent developments?

TeamSpeak has been working on a new TeamSpeak 6 client and server that allows users to set up effectively their own personal federation of gaming servers with text, voice, and video chat rooms in a modern cross platform client that supports Windows, Mac, Linux and mobile operating systems.

They’ve also built up their own infrastructure so less technical folks can directly rent servers from them rather than needing to buy through a third party.

Dark_Arc,
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Anything with a server software you can host can be played on LAN (okay probably not some things because they’re being weird but in general this is true).

That means counter strike, Minecraft, supertuxkart, xonotic, enshrouded, pal world, etc

Dark_Arc,
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But I have such a soft spot for how beautiful the console is from a design and hardware standpoint. That boxy gray box is such beauty.

Agree to disagree lol

Dark_Arc,
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Market share and yes, Proton/WINE ultimately lessens the need for a native Linux port.

In a fair number of cases, even when there is a native Linux port, Proton/WINE has worked better than the native game.

If Linux gets to 5-10% of the market, we’ll probably see them come back for platform specific optimization reasons. However, without a larger market share and with the translation being so good these days, there’s not a lot of need.

Dark_Arc,
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Arguably Brighter Shores is a cozy game and it’s got an appealing art style to my eyes

Dark_Arc,
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Jagex is particularly guilty of this

Dark_Arc, (edited )
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Come join !brightershores and get away from this mess

Dark_Arc,
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It’s definitely still an early access game, but it’s progressing nicely, incredibly stable, charming, backed by a passionate team, and well priced.

Dark_Arc,
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😱😱😱😱😱

Dark_Arc,
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Eh I’m pretty happy with the upscaling. I did several tests and upscaling won out for me personally as a happy middle ground to render Hunt Showdown at 4k vs running at 2k with great FPA and no upscaling or 4k with no upscaling but bad FPS.

Dark_Arc,
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I mean this is FSR upscaling that I’m referring to. I did several comparisons and determined that it looked significantly better to upscaling using FSR from 2K -> 4k than it did to run at 2k.

Hunt has other ghosting issues but they’re related to CryEngine’s fake ray tracing technology (unrelated to the Nvidia/AMD ray tracing) and they happen without any upscaling applied.

Dark_Arc,
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I’m in like the opposite camp… But I’ve never been able to get past the initial learning curve of the game. Something has never clicked with this one for me

Dark_Arc, (edited )
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People blame the sunsetting decision, but most people stuck around. Honestly I don’t think the stuff they sunset was all that good. The original planet designs were feeling tired. They have brought missions back as well… But it’s been too long since I played to remember exactly how they brought them back.

The actual issue in my mind is they’ve decided making things hard means giving it a lot of health and make it take almost all of yours in one hit. So the only things that are viable are people’s cracked builds.

Basically without a full team of good shooter players, even easy mode dungeons are out of reach. Things just do so much damage and have so much health, it’s just not fun. Everything feels like a slog unless you go look up a cracked build someone made.

Actually, not everything feels like a slog. The content that doesn’t, everything just dies without any challenge.

So the options to play are roughly:

  • comically easy
  • this will take forever
  • this will take forever + 1 and hit like a truck
  • this will take forever + 2 and you instantly die

With some content having only the last 3 options.

They added some new enemy types recently, but it just hasn’t been enough to really make the game feel refreshed. Like, Remnant II showed how to do this well, different enemies, different ways that they attack you, different ways to ideally kill the enemy (i.e. lots of weak spot variety), lots of different attacks for the bosses (and death is a matter of avoiding the attacks not being in a 12 hour fight), every bullet takes a significant chunk of their health bar, etc

The locations have also felt a bit underwhelming, but that would be okay if the fights felt challenging and rewarding … not just like various reskins of the same enemies with either no or way too much health.

Dark_Arc,
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I do not understand why companies are choosing to make their own streaming services when they are just money pits that provide minimal benefit.

Because everyone thought they could save money by doing it themselves. It’s rarely that easy.

Dark_Arc,
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Brighter Shores! It’s a new game by Andrew Gower on his new game engine (just came out last month).

It’s a point and click game similar to RuneScape that’s mostly a second screen game. It’s in early access and a lot will probably change in the coming months based on feedback (they’ve already confirmed they’re rethinking some of their combat design and adding action queuing).

Unlike RuneScape it’s been designed out of the gate to provide people with a way to engage without sinking a ton of time. You can do fully offline training in this game, so you can be gaining XP while you sleep.

The game runs like a dream, has a very well done sound track, tastefully simplistic graphics, and just generally is a cozy/feel good MMO with light humor and puns.

No micro transactions, generous amount of free to play content, and a $6/mo subscription for all content.

Dark_Arc,
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If you’re interested, now is a good time to start playing. There are some limited edition hats being dropped for the holiday!

Dark_Arc,
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There’s also github.com/OpenTournament/OpenTournament for those looking for something more modern (RIP UT4).

Dark_Arc,
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Yes, they did give that exact example just with the opposite political framing.

What are your favorite 1000+ hour games?

One thing I have struggled with lately is finding good games to play. I bounce around from game to game trying to enjoy it but it just doesn’t scratch the itch like it used to. For example, one of my favorites was old school RuneScape, but it hasn’t really been giving me the same enjoyment that it used to. So then I would...

Dark_Arc,
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You should try Brighter Shores.

The original RuneScape developers and owners (i.e. Andrew Gower and his brothers) are back with a new game, at a new company, with an industry shattering $5.99/mo subscription price for all content.

No micro transactions, no pay to win, no outrageous DLC pricing, no bull shit … just a fun game with many similarities to OSRS but also modernizations, formula improvements, and lessons learned.

Dark_Arc,
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I mean, fishing is more comparable to mining in RS2, there are other skills (typically refinement oriented skills) that have more down time between clicks.

Combat I definitely feel needs refinement. Though, I actually do like the fact that combat is not “I have a bow and I’m shooting something 1 tile in front of me and/or safe spotting.”

The skills are only trained in one area, but they have interactions across areas. You use resources gathered in the forest in town and in the mines. The weapons you make in the mines can be tuned to any other location (etc…)

Andrew does a pretty decent job of explaining the thought process here if you’re interested: store.steampowered.com/…/4442331835939160237

A lot of this is to solve the long time MMO issue of “new content is released but it’s only for high level players and long time layers in general have a ton of advantages in the new area.”

Dark_Arc,
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Or at least the bar should be much much higher. Like if you’ve invented the SHA algorithm… Fine.

However, if you’ve just invented “a way to purchase something over the network via a phone”… That is not patent worthy.

Dark_Arc,
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I think software patents should really only apply to extremely tricky algorithmic “discoveries” (which I would consider inventions, as someone that’s written a SHA256 implementation from reference material, nobody is “just coming up with that”).

“Ingenuity patents” like that loading screen game are everything that’s wrong with software patents. It’s not all that crazy of an idea to add a game while waiting to play the main game. There’s no radical research required there, just an idea.

I don’t think vague ideas like “a game in a loading screen” are sufficiently creative to warrant a patent.

Dark_Arc,
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like the umbrella wedge/spring to make it open automatically.

That to me is a very specific algorithm. It’s a simple mechanism but putting it together might be a bit tricky.

That’s very similar to SHA, it’s a fairly simple set of mechanisms but the actual composure of those ideas into something that works as well as SHA does takes very specific research experience. It’s not at all an abstract idea, it’s a very concrete and specific set of operations that you invented first.

Imagine if the patent was “an umbrella can open itself with the push of button” no further details. That’s close to the level of detail some software patents are argued at and effectively what the “put a game in your loading screen” patent was awarded on.

You can’t patent the idea that “an umbrella should be able to open [somehow]” so I likewise think it’s ridiculous that someone was able to parent “your game [somehow] runs another simpler game before it runs.”

Patents should be to protect very specific research so that the private sector can do said research and profit from it. Patents should not block out broad concepts. The patent in the video game situation was and should’ve been ruled as bogus. It’s not the type of thing anyone needed to research or think about, you just literally go “what if I added a game to my loading screen” and you’re in violation.

Dark_Arc,
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The problem is a hash algorithm is exactly the sort of thing that copyright would be horrible at protecting. The source code is hardly relevant at all, it’s the operations that matter.

A big part of patents is to allow private sector research to occur. RCA failed and maybe patents should just fail too.

Dark_Arc,
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Because graphics still sell games. You can do simplified graphics like Nintendo and still sell games, but lots of people want the photo realistic experience and the bar for that has gone way way up incrementally over the years.

youtu.be/GB20A8CitRU?si=ZN-V-FAnKjnxGHBs

Dark_Arc,
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Yeah, maybe I’m just wrong in general … The above doesn’t look that different from say black ops 6 footage.

I definitely wish for a return to the linear format (or simi linear where there are a few concurrent linear quests going on). I think straight up open world just lends itself to making a lot of walking simulators.

Halo Infinity was one of the most boring games I ever played between the weapons sounding like toys and the spread out objectives with no clear central mission.

Dark_Arc,
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Nintendo is in a very envious spot in general. Hell, I think Nintendo makes some great games, I just wish they wouldn’t force me to buy yet another computer solely for the purpose of playing their games. I haven’t owned a Mario Kart or Zelda game in years but I’d love to play if I could do so on PC/Linux.

Are there any apps or sites that collate all the patch notes for games?

As the title says. PS5 is a pain in the arse for not putting patch notes on the console and I hate having to scour the internet to try and find what’s new in an update. Whether it be “join our Discord” or Facebook pages or hoping someone posts it in a subreddit....

Dark_Arc,
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I use Inoreader on both desktop and mobile (they have a very feature rich app, synchronize your experience up, and have a generous free plan).

Dark_Arc,
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I’m happy to say, IMO, you’re still using the meta RSS client haha

Dark_Arc,
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Possibly keep an eye on Diabotical Rogue… Definitely not what you want right now, but it has potential.

Dark_Arc,
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The latest expansion genuinely did shake up the enemies. They still need to … change something. It seems like maybe they will with the next expansion changing how they present the story. We shall see.

Dark_Arc,
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Typically live service games last a lot longer in terms of new content and updates. There are a lot of recent complete failures of live services though that didn’t make it more than a couple of months … they’re just bad games.

Dark_Arc,
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That’s not really true… No closed source software that isn’t actively developed should be expected to last forever. Eventually the binaries will get to the point where nothing will run them.

You also can’t emulate Windows. Maybe you could virtualize Linux and use wine, but even that is a tall order for “forever”.

Dark_Arc, (edited )
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

You can emulate machines that can run Windows, and that’s very effective at preservation.

Hmm… I’m unaware of this, but I guess it’s theoretically possible. Still it’s a lot harder to emulate x86 + some graphics hardware than it is to emulate a Gameboy.

Wine is already better than modern Windows at running software that relies on deprecated dependencies.

Agreed, but it’s not a silver bullet and A LOT of stuff is going to be shaken up now that x86 is starting to be challenged. For a long time PCs have been entirely operating on x86 (which is arguably part of why Java died … the abstraction just wasn’t necessary). That x86 dominance I think may have given a false sense of security for software longevity.

It’s not even that it’s hard to port the games, but without the source code, it’s just not going to happen.

I kind of wish there were laws where source code had to be released after X years of inactivity, especially for games for the cultural preservation aspect. Like if you have abandoned a game and not released any new content (especially if you haven’t released even any bug fixes/have totally abandoned the game), after 10 years the game code must be released.

I don’t necessarily think it needs to be a release of rights, assets, or anything like that … but being unable to operate a game you’ve bought just because it was built for an older piece of hardware is 👎.

But live service is just purposely killing games that didn’t need to die.

Bad live services are killing (in many cases bad) games that didn’t need to die (and might have been better if less time was spent trying to force something to be a live service that didn’t need to be one).

There’s a big difference between Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League and say… PUBG, Fortnite, Hunt Showdown, WOW, RuneScape, etc

Dark_Arc,
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I don’t think Fortnite can be meaningfully preserved anymore than say, Cedar Point can personally.

Live services can also certainly transition out of a live service state; or if the source code is disclosed (per my previous statement) they can be transitioned by the community after they seize operation. Building a game like Fortnite or RuneScape just doesn’t work without it being a centralized “destination.” The experience is about the large number of players as much as it’s about the game play.

Live services are more of a destination than a product … and for match made competitive shooters and things of that ilk … I think that’s fine.

Dark_Arc,
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We’ve had and will continue to have competitive games that are not live service.

Interesting question… What competitive games from the last 10 years would you consider to be not live service games?

Dark_Arc,
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I’ve never really been into fighting games; I did some Smash Brothers when I was younger but that’s about it. I think fighting games are a fairly different beast entirely; they’re a far more “couch friendly” genre.

They also don’t tend to have the absolutely massive operating costs where “it costs literally hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this map” and server costs of “it cost hundreds per month to run just a few servers (because of the complexity of processing all of the elements of an individual match” that Fortnite, PUBG, and Hunt Showdown have to deal with.

Live Service:

Never adopted a live service (but a big name):

Live service is worse for the shooter genre on “eventual death” … but so far none of the popular live service shooter games have really died. Meanwhile games that haven’t and are still trying to compete with the “buy the new game for a premium price tag” (like Battlefield) are hurting. Calling of Duty is another big name that almost certainly is suffering from this problem but it can’t be charted because they reorganized their game as “everything is under ‘Call of Duty’”.

The fighting games on steam don’t even come close to any of the shooter numbers.

Other big genres like strategy do fine with the big release (in no small part because a big part of their game play is single player or “play with a well known group of friends”), e.g., steamcharts.com/app/289070 and steamcharts.com/app/413150 (both of those games also have seen almost “live service-like” levels of service via additional content throughout their lifespan).

Live services get a lot of hate on Lemmy … but there genuinely is something to them when they’re done well. They’re often better for shooters because the incremental changes allow developers to back off and fix things without totally fragmenting their community.

Battlefield 2042 and Hunt Showdown: 1896 are great examples of this … They both had rocky launches. Battlefield is a bigger franchise but because they made “extreme changes” vs incremental changes Battlefield 2042 is in much worse shape than Hunt Showdown: 1896 is and Crytek will in all likelihood be able to fix the things that people are upset about and get their numbers higher than they were. Dice/EA’s best chance is “try again next year” at this point with their model (which will almost certainly cost players another $70 minimum to get into). Even then the game will remain fragmented with all the different Battlefield games out there and the expense of getting a new one.

If you’re frugal you could’ve played Hunt Showdown from 2018-present for its original price of $29 for the battlefield community for the same time frame to play on release you would’ve needed to spent $180 minimum.

How did Call of Duty get to this point? (lemmy.world)

Since I’m a WoW addict, naturally I’m a Blizzard fan, of sorts. But my mind is blown every time I see anything from Call of Duty on the launcher. I’ve been really out of the loop, and recently saw this… and I’m shocked. You have to BUY the game for “open beta access”, like how does that make any sense? Also, the...

Dark_Arc,
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It’s not really beta quality. I hopped on with my brother just to see if I was interested in the game (we both played black ops, the original back on the PS3). It was actually extremely stable and pretty fun. He noticed a UI glitch but … it’s not like there was even a feedback or bug report button.

It’s just early access with the disclaimer there might be something wrong… Which isn’t that different from buying a release day game anymore unfortunately.

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