KoboldCoterie

KoboldCoterie, 10 dni temu

“It’s as fun as Marvel Rivals!” could become the new face of apathy and sarcasm.

KoboldCoterie, 13 dni temu

I have been watching the Prince of Persia game, but I would absolutely have glazed right over its release while entranced by Hades II, so yes, I agree with you, it’s a very smart decision on their part.

(Also, can I just say, holy shit is Hades II some good value. It’s basically two games worth of content in one. More than twice the size of Hades I. Utter insanity.)

KoboldCoterie, miesiąc temu

You encounter the merchant where you can buy the MTX stuff in the first few hours of the game. You can’t even use the majority of them before reaching that point.

I would honestly bet money that they’d designed the game to not have microtransactions, then some executive at the 11th hour told them to find a way to include them, and they made them inconsequential as a sort of malicious compliance. Not that I think it’s OK to have them in the first place, it really soured me on the game initially. I think it’s considerably worse for including them, but they are completely meaningless.

KoboldCoterie, 2 miesiące temu

It’d honestly be hilarious if all the creators just started rebranding their fan projects with Palworld Pals (or any other similar IP). Start shifting the discourse away from Pokemon. I’d love that.

KoboldCoterie, 2 miesiące temu

For better or for worse capcom is doing this shit in nearly every one of their games so i kinda expected this shit And if we stop shitting on them for doing it, we let it become normalized.

Denuvo is a cancer This pretty much sums up the topic.

Optimisation. It is poor apparently. Nothing new really as far as pc games go. It’s actually a lot worse than that. It’s been a while since I played something that had this level of problems. The fact that it’s CPU-based performance is actually the bigger issue because it doesn’t matter how beefy your graphics card is, you’re still dropping a ton of frames in that city specifically. I can run the game at 144 FPS until I go to that city, then it drops to 40, which is just outrageous. Gaming PC build logic has for a long time been to prioritize a great graphics card over a great processor (assuming you’re building with a budget and not a ‘money is no object’ type build), because that’s what matters for games, but suddenly with this one specific game, the processor is the bottleneck.

KoboldCoterie, 2 miesiące temu

To add to that, the DLC thing really pisses me off particularly because I bought the game last night, and there was no DLC. The DLC didn’t show up until a few hours later, and by that point it was too late to refund it. Kind of felt like a bait and switch, because normally I wouldn’t buy a game at launch if they did that shit.

KoboldCoterie, 2 miesiące temu

Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game. If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time.

Well this is exceptionally exciting. This potentially solves 100% of my complaints with Family Sharing as it exists currently.

KoboldCoterie, 2 miesiące temu

They could have made it an AU only feature, though, and didn’t, to their credit.

KoboldCoterie, 2 miesiące temu

This isn’t Steam specific; this applies to almost every digital marketplace. Yeah, it sucks, but there’s some things you just have to accept. When’s the last time you bought a physical copy of a PC game?

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

I consistently get far more hours of playtime per dollar spent with indie games I buy for $5-$15 than $60 AAA games. (I say $60, not $70, because I haven’t bought anything at $70, and don’t intend to start.)

If they want to charge $70 for games, maybe release them in a complete state and don’t include microtransactions and offer post-launch support for a decent period of time. Their ‘Video games haven’t changed price since the 90s! The price isn’t keeping up with inflation!’ argument is a crock of shit because in the 90s, you bought a game and that was that. There’d maybe be a $40 expansion a year later that roughly doubled the content in the game. There were no $60 games with $150+ of day 1 DLC.

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

I have a difficult time with this announcement from Capcom specifically, because the only AAA games I’ve consistently gotten 300-1000+ hours from have been Monster Hunter games, and I really don’t want the enshitification to claim MHWilds. If it releases at $70 and without excessive microtransactions, I’ll have a really hard time not buying it at that price. On the other hand, if they do have those microtransactions and a $70 price tag, I’ll probably just ignore it, as much as I’ll hate doing so.

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

Hours per dollar isn’t a great metric for all sorts of reasons

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, because I’ve been using that metric for many years to gauge how much I’ll spend on a game. If I’m only going to spend 20 hours on it, I’ll spend $20 or less. Part of that comes from the sort of games I play, but if I spent $60 on a game and finished it in 20 hours (‘Finished’ as in done playing the game, including whatever post-story content or multiplayer is engaging), I’d feel pretty bad about that purchase.

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

Part of it, I think, comes down to the sort of games I typically play… if I’m buying a AAA action game, it’s something something like Sekiro, and I’ll absolutely expect to get my hours : dollars value out of it. (Incidentally, I played Sekiro for 62 hours after buying it for ~$48, so that one worked out fine.)

And to be clear, I’m not here for useless padding, either. If I lose interest before reaching the end of a game, it doesn’t matter if there was 60 hours of content there - I’ll judge it against however much time I spent before getting bored and uninstalling it. I’m also not against short games… I often prefer short games, but I also won’t pay $60 for them; I’ll check the estimated playtime and wait for an appropriate sale. I’m absolutely not advocating for every game to be 60 hours long.

There’ve definitely been games that I didn’t get my 1 hour / $1 from, and were still happy to have played… Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons comes to mind. I paid $15 IIRC and it’s over in 3 hours, but that stuck with me for a really long time. That’s my equivalent to going to see a movie (which I also do incredibly infrequently); it’s a “waste” from a purely monetary perspective but sometimes that’s okay, and I’m willing to splurge. I’ve seen 5 movies in a theater in >10 years, for the record. I would not consider it a good use of money, generally speaking.)

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

Halo is a great example, actually, because even though Halo 1 is a relatively short game (I guess normal by FPS standards but in general it does not take long to beat, even on a first playthrough), I got way more than 60 hours of playtime out of it. Easily hundreds. A game doesn’t have to have a long storyline or whatever to offer a lot of play time. Sometimes having replayability, post-game achievements that are fun to work towards, or compelling multiplayer, for example, is all it takes.

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

I strongly suspect that we just prefer different sorts of games. I wouldn’t expect 1 hour per $1 from a modern AAA FPS, but I also wouldn’t buy them anyway for the most part, so that doesn’t really affect my purchasing habits at all (nor would I factor into their cost analysis as a result). All of the FPS games I’ve bought lately have been $10-$15 “boomer shooters”.

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

Anything upcoming that you’re particularly excited about?

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

For what it’s worth, if you customize the difficulty of your game (which you can do at any point, including after reaching the 40s), you can change most things, including resource drop rates and how much effort it takes to mine them, xp rates, Pal encounter rates, capture rates, etc.

I had a similar experience as you; by the time I hit 42 or so, I had the capture power maxed out, and most eggs were not giving me anything interesting, and I had the whole map revealed, so exploring had lost its luster and I was not enjoying the thought of grinding out another 6-8 levels to start being able to tackle some of the harder challenges in the game; I set the XP rate to x4, and doubled the resource rates, and it pretty much solved the problem for me.

Obviously if you’re playing on a server this isn’t an option, but if it’s just your own single player game, consider trying it; you might find some settings that smooth it out for you.

KoboldCoterie, 3 miesiące temu

There is a fairly nice base location near the center of the map that has ~6 coal and ~6 ore nodes, and is on a plateau making it functionally immune to NPC raids. I found it completely accidentally; there’s the 3 wildlife sanctuaries around the outside of the map and they all face inward at different angles, so I was trying to triangulate where they were “pointing” to see if it was leading somewhere. Turns out it was leading to a sweet base location.

This is noteworthy because there’s 4 resources (ore, coal, sulfur and quartz), so you need a base with access to 2 of them if you want to have all 4 generating passively.

KoboldCoterie, 4 miesiące temu

In my opinion, the fact that so many of these competing devices run windows just ruins them out of the gate. The fact that you can cleanly suspend and resume games on the Deck is its best feature by a mile, and I’ve yet to see any windows-based device manage to even come close to doing that reliably.

KoboldCoterie, 4 miesiące temu

I prefer playing characters as little like me as possible. If there’s a non-human option, I will always take it. The further from human available. Weird alien race? That’s my jam.

If I have to be a human, I’ll often play a female character because it’s the furthest from ‘me’ I can get within those constraints. I’ll also usually play a character of a race I am not, for this same reason.

KoboldCoterie, 5 miesięcy temu

To see a marching band.

KoboldCoterie, 7 miesięcy temu

Still takes like 20 headshots to down someone.

I think this is largely dependent on build and weapon. I’ve been playing a stealth / throwing character and throwing knives kill almost anyone with a single headshot, as do revolvers. If I try to use an assault rifle, though, I can empty a clip into someone’s face and they’re still standing.

KoboldCoterie, 7 miesięcy temu

They’re out of their fucking minds.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

Just to echo what Marc said, we are so sorry for our earlier actions.

We are so sorry you took our earlier actions so poorly.

Genuinely disappointed at how our removal of the ToS has been framed across the internet.

Genuinely disappointed that our removal of the TOS was noticed and publicized across the internet.

This new Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. And Marc’s response is true, you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity you are using as long as you keep using that version.

This new Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity, whereafter we will do everything we can to invalidate prior versions of Unity, and force upgrades on users.

We do have a fireside chat ongoing with Marc where he will answer some Q’s live

We do have a fireside chat ongoing with Marc where he will answer whichever Qs live we find convenient to our narrative, and ignore any that are not.

Please forget about our attempted greed, so we can try again in a stealthier manner in the near future, at our earliest convenience.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

The worst isn’t even people currently developing things - it’s developers who already have released products. Imagine if you released something like, over the summer, for example. You’ve been paying the current revenue share, and will continue to do so until Jan. 1, then you’ll start paying the per-install fee. So you’re paying twice for the same customers’ purchases.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

Exactly - as others have pointed out, if they can do this, what’s stopping them from raising it to $1 per install, or $100?

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

Seriously. If they were changing the terms going forward, that’d at least be defensible, but trying to make it apply to everything that’s ever been made is just nonsensical.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I agree with you; they’d have to give plenty of notice that the changes were coming and maybe even offer exemptions for developers who can show they were working on something significantly before the announcement… I don’t think there’s any way they could reasonably do it that would avoid all backlash, but this just seems like the absolute worst way to handle it.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Any future installs starting on January 1. It does, however, mean that many developers will be more or less forced to pull their games off of storefronts, if it actually goes through. It also means that if you bought a Unity game in the past, you’re costing the developer money every time you install it (again, if this actually goes through - I can’t imagine they won’t backpedal.)

The real issue with this isn’t the policy itself, which I would bet money won’t actually be enacted, but the fact that Unity (thinks they) can just unilaterally and retroactively change their policies. If this actually held up in court, which I think is a tenuous possibility at best (but I am not a lawyer so take that with a grain of salt), it sets an awful, awful precedent.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I haven’t played Starfield, but that sounds like No Man’s Sky when it first released. A few points of interest per planet, nothing else of note to do there, and the entire planet just became a rather boring trip from point A to point B to point C and nothing more.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

There could be will be mods in a couple months.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

This article is about consoles, not PCs. Good luck copying your console game to another folder on the HD.

Even disk-based games on newer consoles often don’t include the full game; in many cases they’re just an installer, really, which then requires downloading the bulk of the files from the net.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I tried copying game data when we were replacing our PS4 hard drive, but it just caused a lot of problems (with games having to “verify” the installation when launched, which was a very lengthy process, probably longer than just re-downloading it would have been; I don’t know what it was actually doing). We were able to preserve save data, though.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I have been waiting for playable kobolds to be a thing to buy the game; I was not expecting it to be this fast! Guess I know what I’m doing this weekend.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

That’s not really FOMO. FOMO would be like, pre-ordering a special edition of a game you aren’t even sure about wanting for $90 because there’s a “Preorder-Only” in-game perk and you just have to have, or falling for those “Limited Time Only” microtransactions in FTP games.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I guess I can see where you’re coming from. Kind of the fear of missing out on being a part of the gaming zeitgeist.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

Personally I’m excited to see what the mod landscape is going to look like in a year. As with most Bethesda games, I couldn’t care much less about the game itself outside of that key feature.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I had this same experience. The gunship dies in 3 melee hits. I can only conclude that all the people whining about how unreasonably difficult it is are either just not moving around at all, or are trying to stay on the ground and gun it down.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I was not referring to you specifically, but rather the significant number of people complaining about the difficulty of that encounter - take a look at the negative Steam reviews, for instance - at least when I was looking at them a day or two ago, about 30-40% of them mentioned that specific fight as being too hard. I’ve also seen it mentioned in a review, which is just unreal to me.

To respond to you directly, though… You seem to want the PS1 / PS2 era AC, which I don’t think this is trying to be. You even note that AC4 and AC5 started to skew away from that; why would you assume that AC6 would be a return to the “old ways”, rather than a continuation of the evolution they’d already started?

I’d also note that the ‘Fly up and hit it with the melee weapon’ boss is the tutorial boss in the first mission, before you get the ability to customize your AC, so your argument is kind of misplaced there.

KoboldCoterie, 8 miesięcy temu

I don’t think FromSoft ever stated that it was a return to OG form. Reviewers say all kinds of things (including that the tutorial boss is too punishing, heh).

You’re obviously free to dislike the game, though; I’ve been having a great time with it, but I also didn’t come into the experience expecting (or even hoping for, really) AC1/2/3, so maybe that’s got something to do with it. Is it different? Yes, absolutely, but it’s still fun.

KoboldCoterie, 9 miesięcy temu

That decision is working out so well for them, too! It’s setting records!

https://pawb.social/pictrs/image/8986dad2-4102-4475-995d-38f88ae7954f.png

KoboldCoterie, 9 miesięcy temu

If you’re not averse to piracy, you could go that route.

If you are averse to piracy, and have consoles to play on, buy used copies of games (where it’s even possible to) - the publisher sees no proceeds from that.

Failing that… There’s a lot of great indie games out there that aren’t problematic. I know it feels like you’re missing out if you aren’t playing whatever the current big AAA game is, but really, there’s plenty of indie games that are just as good, or that you’d get just as much enjoyment out of.

KoboldCoterie, 9 miesięcy temu

You know, it’s funny, I used to feel big FOMO when it came to games I wanted to play. Then the Epic Game Store came along, and started paying for timed exclusives, and I adopted the philosophy that I’d just wait for the games to get a Steam release.

There’s only been a handful of instances where I even bothered buying them once they came to Steam; turns out that by not buying them when they’re being hyped by all of the new release marketing, I’ve mentally moved on to other things by the time they come to Steam, and I just don’t feel the need to buy them anymore. I just needed help getting past that initial mental hurdle.

The same applies to companies whose philosophies I object to; as long as I have a reason to mentally justify not buying them initially, I just lose interest in the products entirely very quickly.

KoboldCoterie, 9 miesięcy temu

It’s weird to claim that only Japanese creators can make JRPGs. That’s not true at all, it just implies a specific style of gameplay, not the country of origin.

KoboldCoterie, 9 miesięcy temu

Not OP, but for me, it was gameplay. I’ve tried multiple times to get into that game, but the gameplay just detracts so heavily from it (for me personally) that I haven’t been able to get into or enjoy (if ‘enjoy’ is even the right word) the story.

KoboldCoterie, 9 miesięcy temu

You’re basically playing PoE like an incremental game. Your first character advances at a glacial pace, and dies. Your stash is basically prestige currency your next character can draw from to be faster. And so on and so forth.

I kind of love it.