Ferk

Ferk, 5 miesięcy temu

At least it's just a "considering"...

I remember back when they scrapped the multiplayer promises they made for Cyberpunk 2077 there was also word about them preparing some separate standalone multiplayer game for the future instead. To me this "considering" is more of an indication that the new game won't be multiplayer focused (if it has multiplayer at all), rather than a promise of anything.

Ferk, 5 miesięcy temu

And that was just the warm up.
850k concurrent players and rising right now...

Ferk, 5 miesięcy temu (edited 5 miesięcy temu)

Even when you care about a product, at the end of the day you still have to put a price tag on it, and you'll still have to give fair shares to all the people who worked on it, while saving up as much as you can to invest in more well cared products... without making it so expensive that not enough customers will buy it.

Caring about the product, investing on it and producing something that is actually good and that people place in high value (so they are willing to pay more for it) is not incompatible with maximizing profit. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Larian is profitting quite a bit from all the good publicity (imho, well deserved) they are getting for not having gone down the road of predatory monetization tactics.
Probably they would not have been as successful if they had. So I'd argue they are maximizing profits in the best way an independent game studio can.
Choosing to not participate in Subscription services at the moment is likely also in their best interest, profit-wise. Particularly at this point and with this momentum they are having.

Ferk, 5 miesięcy temu (edited 5 miesięcy temu)

I'm not convinced that the gacha model works for every demographic. And even if it did, I'm sure it's much harder to be successful selling that kind of crap as an independent studio with no prior experience doing that. Maybe exploiting the D&D / Forgotten Realms franchise would have helped.. but after the OGL fiasco (which is a good example of how profit was affected negatively when D&D fans cancelled their D&D Beyond subscriptions on the wake of new plans for monetization by WOTC) I'm not really convinced the game would have made as much money as they can with this different focus.

Reputation also affects profits. And long term, I'm convinced Larian approach will prove to be more profitable than it would have been had they chosen to enter the wide and unforgiving world of competing RPG gacha games by introducing "yet another one" in a market that is increasingly tight, and with a public that is getting more and more tired of it.

Yeah, Diablo Immortal / 4 or probably even Fallout 76 made money with those tactics... but I don't believe those profits are gonna last that long, or reach an overall total as high as could have been when you think long term. They have managed to get a lot of people to stop caring about those franchises, so I'd argue they are actually burning down their golden goose just for a short big burst of cash, instead of actually maximizing the profit they could have made from the goose had they been taking care of it while steadily producing golden eggs people actually wanna buy...

Ferk, 5 miesięcy temu

Even if they did hallucinate answers, it wouldn't be the first game that relies on the "unreliable narrator" trope.

Ferk, 5 miesięcy temu (edited 5 miesięcy temu)

Apparently, this article is talking about the "Legacy CS:GO Version" that was available (even after the CS2 launch) for devices that were unable to run CS2. It seems that was less than 1% of CS:GO players, so they are ending support for it, even though they claim it should still be available with reduced compatibility.

I think anyone can switch to this version in the "Beta" tab of the properties window for CS2 by selecting "csgo_legacy".

What is the legacy version of CS:GO?

The legacy version of CS:GO is a frozen build of CS:GO. It has all of the features of CS:GO except for official matchmaking.

What will happen after the end of support for the legacy version of CS:GO?

After January 1, 2024 the game will still be available, but certain functionality that relies on compatibility with the Game Coordinator (e.g., access to inventory) may degrade and/or fail.

Ferk, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Yes.. honestly, imho, any game that's competitive should either embrace "cheating" and design its gameplay to be as transparent as chess (ie.. make it ok to be tool-assisted) or be designed around controlled environments that forbid using tools like that.

Anyone who doesn't want to surrender to a controlled environment (whether it's in the form of some kernel-level control or VPN / Stadia-like platform) should just look for coop games.

It's sad that FPS have evolved towards the competitive landscape... to me, the best experience in the original classic Doom was coop mode. Yet Doom Eternal, at most, only supports some wacky asymmetric team deathmatch.

Ferk, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Doom did have networking, using IPX. You had to start the game with a parameter from the DOS commandline. Like Quake, the maps had special player spawn points & items for deathmatch too. The term "deathmatch" was coined by the Doom game mode.

However, there was no frame interpolation in the original Doom, instead, there might be a latency in the inputs. The game state only advances when all players have sent an update for that "tic" (1/35 of a second), so the game might be laggy for everyone if the connection from one of the players is slow.

But multiplayer back then was mostly for LAN parties. At least in my area. I didn't even have an internet connection at that time, personally. In fact, even during the Quake age, I was only able to play on LAN... and I still liked coop better.

Even co-op games have lots of cheating but the nature of the game means the cheating affects people who don’t want to cheat less. They aren’t directly subjected to it, it’s still a problem though, the cheating still affects things like the game economy and player perception of the game.

Yes, what I meant is that cheating becomes irrelevant in coop, not that it doesn't exist.

If a game has an economy that makes some players richer than others (like say.. in many MMOs), and you actually care a lot about being rich in that universe, then it'd starts being more of a competitive thing and less about coop... a game can be competitive and be PvE.

Even singleplayer games can be competitive if you make it about beating your friend's "score" or speed.. almost anything is susceptible to speedrunning.

I guess the question on coop vs competitive is more about what are the goals of the players. If people play games to have a fun time, or if it's because they want to have some way to prove themselves they are good at something :P

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Thing is... video games don't really "need" actors. At least not in the same level as they need writers.
Sure, some games might want to add realistic expressions and maybe even voice acting, but it's not something really required for most forms of video game entertainment. Even story-heavy games do perfectly fine with just good writing. In fact, for RPG universes meant to be extensible / moddable, it makes a lot more sense to not be restricted by how many lines of dialogue can the game afford to voice. Morrowind has a lot more dialog options than Oblivion and extensibility / flexibility in how the users interact with NPCs, despite Oblivion having superior AI and a lot more budget.

In fact, a lot of the videogames that do make use of voice acting, only do so for one (or at most, a few) languages... meaning that there's always some subset of players that don't really understand anything the voices say and still enjoy the game. They might as well be speaking autogenerated gibberish, like Animal Crossing characters do.

Add to that how nowadays 3D animators have a good dataset of information to tap into for creating convincing expressions, plus how AI can be very good at generating decent voice lines... and it gets even harder for a walkout like this to have any success. At least when it comes to the video game market.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

The mod doesn't work, though. I can call my male character "Silvia" (a female name). The game gives you the option to choose names that do not match what is culturally traditional.

They should give you less options. Don't allow choosing names either.

In fact, remove character customization entirely, then there won't be any "imperialism", right?

I'd go further: make the game more lineal. Remove meaningful choices for the story. Do not allow the player to play in a way that might end up fitting any particular imperialistic agenda. People shouldn't have freedom to choose to follow any ideal.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu

But that's not what you are doing. You don't need this mod to make the choice that allows you to play the way you want.

I mean, I have no problem with modding anything anyway (in fact I believe it was wrong for Nexus to remove the mod, the only thing it did is making certain kind of obstinate people go into a silly crusade to defend a silly mod). But this mod is objectively removing options, not adding them.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

This has nothing to do with biology, it's 100% English grammar. Biology books are not the ones explaining what's a "pronoun". In fact, many languages don't even have pronouns, and yet their biology books can perfectly be translated.

English grammar is constantly evolving. In fact, it would make it a lot more realistic if there were more strange expressions and mannerisms, even outside of pronouns. Battlestar Galactica did add some funny nonsensical expressions like "frak", "rook", "frimp", "pogees" and popular phrases like "so say we all" that added a layer of depth to their futuristic culture, making it a lot more believable.

I don't think this mod really helps with "realism". It would in fact be unrealistic to expect no linguistic changes at all in 300 years. The only reason why I think some people are mad is because they think it's pandering to a political agenda so they don't even want to see an option be given at all.... despite it actually being a totally optional and even totally believable aspect of a future hypothetical culture. Whether you agree with the direction that this hypothetical futuristic culture developed towards or not.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

The whole concept of "charity" is political.... all charities are "political groups", no charity would be valid based on that judgement.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Particularly in the US, where having a gun is relatively easy... to the point that even school kids can end up getting hold of them. I'd be scared.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

As far as I understand (someone correct me if I'm wrong) games that are free / non-commercial and have zero revenue are not affected at all by this, they still don't have to pay anything regardless of the number of installs.

If the game is no longer being sold (and thus no longer commercial / having revenue), then I expect that even under those new rules Unity would also not charge the dev.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu

Another reason to use Godot.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

There's already Mod support, but it's 'unofficial' (https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/).
Most likely, what they actually mean with this announcement is that they'll add some store like they did with Skyrim 'special' edition, where they can sell you the mods and get a cut...

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Yes, it's kind of ironic to complain about exclusivity while at the same time wanting to promote a company that has built an empire out of exclusives.

if you wanna fight exclusivity don't buy devices designed to be walled gardens in the first place. Whether it's PS, Xbox or Switch.

Ferk, 9 miesięcy temu (edited 9 miesięcy temu)

Wouldn't it be relatively simple to have the ship be automatically stopped as soon as it gets at a certain distance from a land-able object and open some dialog asking whether you want to land / enter atmosphere or something like that to initiate a cutscene / loadscreen?

And if you say no, the ship's computer could make up some in-game excuse, such as needing to avoid the gravity well of the planet, for it to automatically turn around and move away from it.

I mean, I get that they probably didn't expect someone to spend the time to actually go and attempt physically reaching the planet, but after all the attention this thing is getting it could be an appropriate approach to take for when they do the full release, if only to shut people's mouths. It's just one small detail.

Ferk, 10 miesięcy temu

Now we need a Windows handheld mode for these Steam Deck competitors

No, what we need is for game companies to stop using DRM that blocks Linux.

Ferk, 10 miesięcy temu (edited 10 miesięcy temu)

It's worse, he's smashing his face with it and yet refuses to acknowledge the parking sign while complaining about some other imaginary obstacle instead.

If it were true that Americans & social media wanted such simplified plot, it would have been more successful than it was.