ampersandrew

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

We went through this song and dance with Indiana Jones and Avowed, too. If this was a strategy that lost them money, they’d stop doing it. It turns out they’re just fine with having tens of millions of subscribers that like the idea of getting access to games like these for, in plenty of cases, cheaper.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

That SteamOS compatible icon came to my Bazzite mini PC just before I brought it along with me for Combo Breaker. I suppose that leads into what I’ve been playing.

I competed in Guilty Gear Strive (0-2, sadly), Street Fighter 6 (2-2, which is better than I should have done given how little I practiced), and Skullgirls (a hard fought 3-2). Unless Street Fighter 6 gets a killer patch in the next few days with Elena’s release, I think this is where I depart the Street Fighter train.

I also played some Devil May Cry 4 on the plane, and I’ll likely do so again on the way back. I would have continued my save of Tales from the Borderlands, but I found out just before leaving that it doesn’t have cloud saves. I’ll continue with that and Kingdom Come: Deliverance back at my desktop at home.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Categorizing this as engagement rather than just the number of people who finished the game seems incredibly stupid.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu (edited 6 miesięcy temu)

But you’ll see similar rates of players finishing the game that have far shorter runtimes. 100 hours is about how long it takes to finish the game, after all, and that percentage lines up quite well with the achievements for finishing the game. Engagement is a horrible metric for a game like Elden Ring that isn’t trying to keep you hooked with anything except a game you like playing; no battle pass, no dailies, no events, etc. I’ll bet A Dance With Dragons has far better engagement metrics than The Return of the King, but it’s a stupid metric regardless, because they’re books.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

1/3 sounds high. Just because it isn’t verified doesn’t mean it won’t work, and most of the non-anti-cheat-related compatibility problems are solved by installing Proton GE.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Definitely go Steam Deck then. No question. You’ll have far more to choose from, and the Deck’s suspend and resume is shockingly good considering you’d never expect that feature to work on a Windows PC mid-game.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

The other way to read this is that they cancelled the marketing so that they’re not throwing good money after bad, like with Concord.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Sorry, but it is a possibility.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

It shouldn’t require a server that I can’t control for multiplayer either.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Yes, I know, Fortnite bad, but this is a big deal. The way we got here is often embarrassing, but this is a major step toward tearing down walled garden ecosystems.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Yes, we want to tear it down. This is a company that was taking a revenue share of any purchase made on their device, whether or not they incurred a cost in facilitating it. It’s universally bad for consumers. It’s why game prices on consoles don’t have competition like they do on PC, and it’s responsible for consumers feeling lock-in to an ecosystem, feeling as though they can’t respond to a bad product by moving to the competitor.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Happens all the time. Netflix is moneyhatting, promises someone who knows how to do the job a great salary to do it for them instead.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Or perhaps even find it to be worth the price.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

I never saw it as a dick move. It always seemed to me like any other creative person putting their life experiences into their work. That didn’t make it good, but his best work in a comedy comic isn’t likely to come out while he’s grieving. It was sort of a shark jump moment for that site, but it always seemed way more distasteful to me to make it into a meme.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

I believe that in the life experience that he’s drawing from, that he based his self-insert character on, he’s in every panel, yes. I certainly took it to mean that he too was grieving the child that he expected to be born into the world. I found it distasteful to make it into a meme because the subject matter it’s mocking is fucked up, plus bullying is kind of disconcerting in general.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

You are free to make your own interpretations as far as how he portrays/portrayed women in his comics. It’s been almost 20 years since that comic went up, and standards in social mores and comedy have changed a ton in that time, but when I read those comics back then, only being familiar with Buckley through CAD comics and nothing else, he never struck me as a narcissist or a misogynist. His self-insert character was a Homer Simpson type (“which was the style at the time”), which is hardly the caricature of a narcissist in my opinion. I find it’s very easy to invent a narrative about who someone is from how they portray themselves publicly, and also…it’s been 17 years. Whoever he was 17 years ago is very likely not who he is today. I don’t know that he’s a bad person, I don’t know that he ever was a bad person, and I don’t think it’s admirable to hound someone with a joke about something that they put out into the world so long ago. Surely whatever he learned from that experience has been learned, and we can move on. I didn’t feel good when I saw that comic the first time, nor was I intended to, but I definitely don’t feel great whenever it’s brought back up either.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Which could just as easily be interpreted as steering into the skid, like a strategy someone might use when they’re relentlessly bullied. But you’re clearly more interested in Tim Buckley’s life than I am.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Nintendo bets you’ll buy Mario Kart even if it’s $80. Focus bets you won’t buy Roadcraft unless it’s $40.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

This one and FairGame$ are both screwed, and they’ll mark the end of an era for Sony and live service. What’s funny too is that Bungie was purchased in large part for being experts in making successful live service games, but it reminds me of something in investing where those who appear to be very smart after a string of successes are compared to being “expert coin flippers” who just got heads a number of times in a row. As we’ve gotten a peak or two behind the curtain after the purchase, it certainly looks like Bungie was only lucky.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

“Recently” also means something different in a time where BioWare makes one game every 5 years rather two games in the same year.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Yes, but then their lives are often uprooted, since the entire existence of their job was based on a bad bet.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

I can name plenty of shooters that don’t let you take attachments off of guns. That might not be your best example of ignoring feedback, because the presence or omission of that feature can be for any number of very good reasons.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

As a customer, why would I ever shop at Epic if the game is also available on Steam and typically has more features? Epic doesn’t solve any problems for me and actively introduces others, like a lack of Linux support. Do I want to play Alan Wake II? Of course I do. Am I going to buy it when they could push an update tomorrow that breaks compatibility with my operating system and offers me no recourse as a customer since it was unsupported in the first place? No, I’m not.

There are things worth solving that Steam does poorly (if they also support Linux customers). Finding out if my multiplayer game will be playable without external servers is a nightmare; DRM sucks, and I want none of it; Steam’s multiplayer/friends network has more downtime than is acceptable; Steam Input should be a platform agnostic library; etc. Instead of solving those problems, they made the store enticing for suppliers (publishers) but not customers. If I’m shopping someplace other than Steam, it’s GOG and not Epic.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

It’s a lot of cutting out for about a minute, but that’s just enough to interrupt a fighting game match. If it was once per week at a predictable time, that might be okay, but it’s been happening more and more lately when it used to only be on Tuesdays.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

GOG is competitive for my dollar. DRM-free is a compelling proposition, and they’ve got an excellent refund program. There are a lot of things they could stand to do better, but those two things alone give me an actual reason to shop there over Steam.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Typically, when Steam handles the matchmaking, it’s peer to peer. But in general, they also sort of broker the connection between you and the other player or server. Street Fighter 6 runs its own servers and matchmaking, but if Steam cuts out, I lose my connection to them.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Allegedly, it’s an improved Windows experience so you get the compatibility without having to use a desktop operating system on a handheld game machine. So, you get Game Pass and kernel level anti cheat games with a UX similar to the Steam Deck (ish). And besides, “everything is an Xbox”. They don’t care how many of these things sell as long as you’re on Game Pass or buying their games.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Every time you buy a PC, you’re buying a platform that Microsoft couldn’t care less if it sells at all, and that’s all this will be. It will be supported by Microsoft as any other Windows PC, for better or worse.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

I finished the game already, but the biggest quality of life update is being able to use Soul Pods to dispel illusions so you’re not more or less locked in with Yatzli while exploring in the later Acts. Set your expectations appropriately, and Avowed is a hell of a game, but it’s got more in common with Dark Souls or God of War than it does Fallout: New Vegas or Skyrim.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Well, playing through the first KC:D now, I can tell you it was rough to go from Avowed’s combat to KC:D’s, but that’s okay, because KC:D has other strengths. When development gets restarted, it’s not because it was shaping up into a better game than what we ended up with.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Do you think there’s any stopping the industry’s shift to digital at this point? Because we just saw another quarter where we went even harder in that direction.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Are you under the impression that Metal Gear Rising is an Obsidian game?

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

Rule #6 in the side bar.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

No linking to piracy

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu

I’m not following your argument. You’re perfectly capable of having the rug pulled out from under you with a native Linux build too.

ampersandrew, 6 miesięcy temu (edited 6 miesięcy temu)

Negative hundreds of millions of dollars. But the point still stands that they believed this was a rational way to make a boatload of money. With hindsight, we’re all geniuses, but yes, this was a stupid move.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

Even the American competitor sources all of their components from outside the US.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

In this case, the anger may or may not be focused at Sony, as tariffs affect far more than just the PlayStations we already weren’t buying.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

If they have to compete, which it looks like they will in some capacity, then it’s totally possible.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

I think more and more people have done the math on what your break-even is with a PC up front compared to noncompetitive digital console storefronts, needless forced obsolescence, and subscription fees.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

And the games that really demand the high-end hardware tend to be pretty rare in the grand scheme of things, not to mention less likely to be as good as the low spec games. I always joke with my friends that I might buy a killer new PC in the next year or so, but my most-played game will still be a 2D game from 2012 that absolutely doesn’t need it.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

Why are people going for Bazzite for desktops? I’ve got it on a mini PC, and it’s great for the living room and travel, but even then the updater still keeps trying to apply an update from April 28th over and over again. Is it a good choice for desktop too? I’m on Kubuntu now but will probably shop around for a new distro with my next PC.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

While SNK devotes most of its efforts toward its King of Fighters series, the Fatal Fury series has remained dormant for 25 years. With the former series already featuring many of Fatal Fury‘s characters, it’s hard to imagine why players familiar with SNK’s niche titles would make the switch.

I’m sorry, but this is terrible analysis. You may as well say no one would play Street Fighter because those characters are in Marvel Vs. Capcom.

The single player offering is weak. The author and I agree that has an impact on sales. The graphics aren’t bad, but the presentation doesn’t really floor you like some other recent fighting games do. SNK has had a rough go of it with the netcode in their games, and people were burned by the non-functional matchmaking in KOFXV for over a year; beta 1 for CotW made it look like history would repeat itself. Ronaldo doesn’t help, but what would have helped is if, like Street Fighter and Tekken, it could have scored a 90 on review aggregators and been called a can’t-miss game, but to do that, they’d have to address the above.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

Click on her profile, hit the Posts link. Then I’ve got a button there that’s the RSS feed icon.

ampersandrew, 7 miesięcy temu

It’s weird, because even though I support the idea of modding as you the customer doing what you want with the product you bought, I also usually refuse to do it for a first playthrough, because I want to evaluate the thing that the developer actually delivered when I have an opinion on it. So even if some mod out there removes the tedium, I want to see what the game is like, start to finish, with the tedium included.