conciselyverbose

conciselyverbose, 6 miesięcy temu

What about bigger games like BG3? What’s stopping me from buying it full price, copying the files somewhere and then instantly reselling it? It would probably force them to implement strict DRM restrictions, and probably the nasty rootkit kind.

The same thing that's stopping you from downloading the files now. A combination of ethics and the value legitimately owning the game adds to your purchase.

conciselyverbose, 6 miesięcy temu

Since getting a PS5, a good chunk of my time has been spent with my PS4 library I fell off of when loading was too obnoxious. I had a Last of Us Left Behind save on grounded difficulty that I had never beat because, while I enjoy the brutal difficulty of the last encounter, waiting to load every time I died was miserable. The much faster (but slower than PS5 games lol) load time got me over the hump.

I'm getting into the Last of Us 2 next.

conciselyverbose, 6 miesięcy temu

As much as I think this is exploitive and that pay to win horseshit shouldn't be allowed, I don't see how there's any kind of merit to this case.

Pay to win is allowed and there's nothing deceptive happening.

conciselyverbose, 6 miesięcy temu

That's literally the entirety of what their currency is. There isn't anything else.

It never in any way implies that it's transferable or applies to other games. It's very clearly a purchase of advancement in that specific game.

conciselyverbose, 6 miesięcy temu

Pay to win is literally the only part any human being with a shred of intelligence could in any way find objectionable.

You're literally paying to advance in a specific game. That's the transaction. It is not possible to believe it could possible apply to anything else.

conciselyverbose, 6 miesięcy temu

Which is why their lawyer should be disbarred for wasting the court's time.

There is no possible argument that's either legally or morally justified in any context that the purchase should transfer.

conciselyverbose, 6 miesięcy temu

Sea of Stars.

It's a nice take on an old school JRPG. Keeps the complexity manageable, doesn't take itself too seriously on the story, but stays engaging.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

I reluctantly pulled the trigger on PS+ with the Black Friday discount because I have to have it to play Madden, and downloaded Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart because it's included. It does a beautiful job leveraging the PS5's features, and it's really fun. I also love the art style. Too many games go too hard at "realism" instead of just making a beautiful game.

Also, because I got it as a PS+ game years ago and just regained access without buying it, started playing COUNTER SPY again. I don't think it ever got the attention it deserved. It's a fun 2D stealth platformer smoothly combined with a cover shooter mechanic where you can aim and shoot in 3D from fixed cover points. Dying raises the threat level, and if you raise it past DEFCON 1, you get a countdown timer to complete the level or fail your mission. There are a couple mechanics to lower the threat level, and you can choose to gain your intel from US or russia themed enemies who are otherwise the same. Levels are procedural, and there's meta progression by unlocking guns. It doesn't really get to rogue lite because there aren't random powerups, weapons, skills, etc, but it feels similar otherwise. I would have loved a sequel expanding on the premise, but it's still worth a run every now and then.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu (edited 7 miesięcy temu)

The tech difference between the PS4 and PS5 is massive.

It genuinely can be a complete overhaul, more than just graphically. Also worth noting is that the $10 cost is just the difference in pricing from last gen, and doing split gen like that has let them keep the PS4 versions the same pricing without making them rebuy games when they get a new console. They just make up the difference.

I don't and won't buy a lot of full priced games because I can wait, but their approach really isn't that bad.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

If you have a disc, can you still get the upgrade (does it get treated like other DLC)?

I haven't been following the PS5 closely until I recently got it.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

PC would just not offer the discounted last gen version.

And also can't do either the seamless loading (or the controller features unless it's hard wired) that are the defining features.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

You shoot people in the head while planes fly by

You can also shoot Hitler in the dick.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu (edited 7 miesięcy temu)

Have you seen road redemption? It's a more modern rogue-lite spiritual successor.

I can't promise it will scratch the same itch, and it's not cutting edge technically or anything, but I got some mileage from it.

Edit: It's bundled on Fanatical for a couple bucks right now.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

The fact that it's usually fine is probably why they didn't feel like they had to do this to start.

The failure rate probably isn't that high, but it's extra wear over time that can be prevented.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

They told you the performance target is the same.

It would be silly to expect the performance to be meaningfully different.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

No.

Solving the same problem isn't what plagiarism is.

And the problems are similar at best.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

They destroyed Destiny with live service horseshit, so I'm guessing it's more of the same.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

They make a good shooter mechanically.

But all the great enemy design and map design that Destiny started with took a back seat to constant content churn with all the actually well designed stuff taken away and made impossible to play again.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

It was always "always online" (though you could play matchmaking only activities solo pretty easily). But it didn't always have the traits of live service that destroyed it.

Destiny 1 had relatively little content, with excellent enemy design and level design, done in a way that the content had a lot of replayability purely for the sake of the mechanics. Playing a strike again (provided you weren't too overleveled and mowing through everything) never really felt the same because you and your party didn't do the exact same thing. This was supplemented with nightfalls (which were a live service like timed event, but didn't have to be) and other strikes with modifiers to expand the replayability more. Every once in a while there was an expansion, with a well designed new map, and you could still play all the old stuff. There were a handful of new type of enemies, playing on the old ones, that were still thought out and well structured.

Destiny 2 obviously threw out the D1 content. Fine. It's a new game. But, because of "not enough content" complaints, they constantly threw old stuff in the trash for rushed, badly designed new ones. They stopped focusing on well balanced strikes and focused on new game modes designed to serve the "season" model by forcing you to use specific weapon types to even do damage on certain enemies. They mostly threw the well balanced original enemies in the trash for poorly thought out new ones for the sake of "this is new" at a pace that made no sense.

New content being different is fine. Taking away old better content to force people into half assed content churn is not, and that's what the live service emphasis did. I'm not even sure the significantly worse content was an "innocent" consequence of the bad pace, either. The poor design significantly cut down replayability, meaning more players are clamoring more for new opportunities to throw money at new bad content.

conciselyverbose, 7 miesięcy temu

It gives combat stakes.

TTK is obviously substantially longer than an FPS, so instead of the 15 seconds you need for an objective mode there, you need something more substantial for battles to fundamentally work.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

Laika: Aged Through Blood

I almost never buy metroidvanias before they go on sale pretty heavily because there are just so many good choices, but I played the absolute hell out of that first flash bike game that you controlled balance front and back. This is that, but with a big map to explore and combat I'm really enjoying. You block bullets with your bike, reload ammo with a backflip and a bullet parry with a front flip, and aiming your gun is bullet time, but because you're aiming in the air a lot, you still have to pay attention to your rotation, so there's a nice tension to it. I'm two bosses in, and both are decent takes on the unique flavor of their mechanics. I'm hooked hard.

Steam has a demo so you don't have to buy it without knowing if it clicks for you.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

It's mostly AAA games that don't bother. A lot of smaller games do, because they know it's worth it unless you're riding a crazy hype train with wild expectations.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

Vignetting is the darkening in a circle pattern at the edge of a photograph/movie caused by the fact that the lens is round and the film/sensor are square.

My guess is that he's referring to games using a similar effect (some do it with blur, too) extremely heavily on a large portion of the edge of the screen to create a tunnel vision effect in some contexts. I couldn't name which games do it, but I've seen it on sprint, stamina depletion, and low health in different games.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

I don't think making it the default is realistic.

But steam offers games to offer custom branches for users to select. It would not be particularly difficult for publishers to provide one (or more) lower resolution asset branch for users to select. I really wish Steam had taken advantage of publishers wanting to support Steam deck to nudge them into doing this.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

What a douche move lol.

It would be less disrespectful just to leave the steamdeck version equally fucked than to openly slap people in the face with "it's arbitrary, but fuck you".

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

Of course we won't. It's too late.

The day they stole games that already had a steam page and had sold steam copies to be Epic exclusive, there was no path to any Epic exclusive for any reason ever being forgivable again.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

Yeah, it's fine to have it, but it's really about less material for them.

It's not actually "better" in any meaningful way, just smaller. No one ever cared.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

If you inject code, they ban you. Seems pretty straight forward.

They said they'll unban when they can identify them correctly, but it's not their fault.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

No, it's caused by AMD deciding hijacking CS's execution was acceptable.

It's more standard than standard that you can't do that in a competitive game.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

You know copyright is literally exclusively about completed work or direct copies of some meaningful portion of a completed work?

Even if you could own a genre, (which is absolutely not the case), it would not be copyright infringement. It would be some other type of IP theft.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

IDK how you block it when it probably doesn't even make Microsoft the leader in the console space.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

No it doesn't.

Any other store can straight rip their compatibility tools if they want. It's not their fault no one else can be bothered.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

This one actually seemed interesting to me. I'm a sucker for mining as part of the loop of it's done well.

It gave me "invalid platform error" on steam deck though.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

Eh, maybe it won't work for me. The benefit of a demo, in theory.

It straight up wouldn't download. Maybe I'll try again later.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

What you're describing isn't real, but even if it was, it wouldn't warrant a refund. You can't play 100 hours then make up phantom bugs to get your money back.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

There are effects, like lens flare, shallow focus planes, vignetting, even color misrepresentations, that were kind of side effects of the physics of photography, that have grown into creative tools people deliberately chose for stylistic reasons.

Has anyone with a camera ever deliberately wanted a lens to have chromatic aberration?

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

OK, if the goal is a drug trip, I can see it lol.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

It's kind of in a weird spot, because it's a niche enthusiast market, owned by a company tech enthusiasts know enough to fucking despise.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

If you’re a PlayStation Plus Premium/Deluxe member, you’ll get access to a curated catalog of up to 100 movies***** through the Sony Pictures Core app to stream on demand from the Sony Pictures library as part of your membership. The catalog, which will be ad-free and updated periodically, features movies such as Looper, Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, Elysium, and Resident Evil Damnation.** There will also be additional benefits for all PlayStation Plus members, so stay tuned for more details.

Still not worth the price increases, but I could see that being a meaningful value add to some.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

I would absolutely add 20 super obscure conspiracy nut teasers to every promo and just never acknowledge anything if I was working for one of these companies.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

I'm talking like throwing some messages in binary through specific set of sub pixels of images for a year that all come through because they're my actual plans, then switching them to obviously insane nonsense that will take way longer to disprove and finding a way to get someone to notice.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu (edited 8 miesięcy temu)

I was thinking kind of like steganography.

"If you take the green subpixel at (46,85), (75,32)... it contains just enough letters you could read as words that form a story detail. And in this post it's a gameplay hint. And this one is a character name" but the same locations enough times in a row that it's hard to be random. Then post a crazy fan theory post after the early ones are known facts about the game and I've embedded crazy shit in a few.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

It depends on the apps. Stuff that takes a username and password isn't really bad on the Apple TV if you have passwords saved.

The thing that gets me is fucking half assed QR codes. A QR code is a quick, easy solution when everyone has their phone. But there's absolutely zero reason to use a QR code on the TV, then to still make me manually enter your pairing code. Just making the link complete is so much less than trivial that not including it is very obviously intentionally annoying.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

How does Apple use scarcity to sell products?

They let you get in line with a very clear delivery date when they can't meet demand, compared to basically everyone else who just has stock drops on and off.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

I did really like the original last of us multiplayer game mode.

I have no interest if the plan is continuous monetization, but it was a solid set of modes with enjoyable combat.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

Turn based and action are mutually exclusive. It is not and does not resemble an action game.

The assets are 3D. You do not play in 3D. You do not cast a spell and have the physics of your interaction calculated in real time while 10 other characters are simultaneously acting and having their spells calculated based on the real time movements of all the other characters. You do not hit a jump button and have where you land determined by your speed and direction. The actual gameplay mechanics are all pure dice roll. There are no 3D physics in play.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

The absolute bare minimum:

Your jump must be decided by the vector of your movement when you hit the button. If it is not, there is literally nothing you can do to qualify.

Your actions must be aimed in real time and the outcome determined by the vector of your aim. Hitscan is shit, but it can qualify. If the action (not the vector of the shot) is decided by a dice roll, you unconditionally do not qualify.

There's plenty more. But BG3 is not and does not in any way mechanically resemble a 3D action RPG. It has no common traits. The camera perspective outside of combat isn't relevant.

conciselyverbose, 8 miesięcy temu

No, it is not. You do not have a position in 3D space. You have a position on one of a small number of discrete 2D planes. BG3 is a 2D pure CRPG that happens to be decorated with 3D assets. Calling it a 3D game is the exact same unforgivable fraud as calling Metroid Dread one. It is not and does not in any way resemble it.

If you aren't strictly in real time for combat, you unconditionally cannot be or resemble an action game.

To be fully 3D, literally every part of the core gameplay physics must occur in real time. Hits cannot be determined by any other factor but the vector of the attack projected through 3D space into a character's hit box. The existence of a dice roll to determine a hit (not the vector) is an unconditional disqualifier in all contexts. There are no exceptions, and no room for them.

Everything about your description of BG3 is fully unhinged nonsense that should be offensive to any human being with any understanding of what games are. They aren't nitpicks. You're fundamentally destroying the core definition of very basic terms in a way that completely destroys all meaning. It would be less disgusting to be a flat earther.