I don't hate the idea of midichlorians, honestly. Or rather, I do hate them but I think that's the point - to show that the jedi have kind of lost their way, are judging everything by "midichlorian counts" and tried to standardise and automate the process as much as possible rather than properly considering the human element and doing things on a case-by-case basis. If it's not the point then, well... it should be.
I think there are some decent ideas in the prequel trilogy, I just think the execution was pretty bad.
I'm definitely a little confused about Tango - I'm hoping we'll at least get more details come out about why Microsoft shuttered them. I mean, Ghostwire Tokyo was... whatever, and I could understand Microsoft not wanting to have them working on that kind of scale again any time soon. It wasn't bad by any means, but it was fairly expensive and perhaps didn't do as well as they hoped. But I'm surprised they didn't want to just downsize the studio and aim for another HI-FI Rush-esque game (or sequel).
But Arkane Austin being closed definitely makes sense. Not only was Redfall a disaster, but by the time Redfall released, 70% of the people who'd worked on Prey had left the studio. (Largely because the studio's president had left the studio just after Prey, I believe, rather than because of the Microsoft acquisition of Bethesda.) All that was really left was the name.
I don't think the Steam Workshop is the issue here. I'm glad it exists, and direct downloads or snv links are still a reasonable alternative for mods that can't be hosted on the Workshop for whatever reason.
The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.
it's hard to feel sorry for people who pre-ordered because they got exactly what they paid for - a game of unknown quality and quantity of content
it's hard to feel sorry for people who bought post-release because they also got exactly what they paid for - a game where reviews detailed poor quality and quantity of content
customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
people abusing the devs is not reasonable
I'm not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it's obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I've not played it myself) and should be improved. But I do think gamers could learn to be a little more responsible with their purchases and inform themselves before buying a game.
I'm pretty over the whole cycle of games coming out and not meeting expectations, people buying them anyway (through pre-orders or day-one purchases), people being unnecessarily rude/hostile/sending death threats to developers as if they were forced to buy the game as gunpoint. Yes, developers should try to do better, yes publishers should often give developers more time to polish up games rather than announcing the release date two years in advance and refusing to delay, but also consumers could really take some responsibility for what they decide to give money to.
these people SHOULD be putting this negative pressure on them. It’s deserved
Was it not implied I agree with that when I said:
The angry customers and the state of the game are problems.
and;
customers being disappointed and/or wanting a refund is perfectly reasonable
people wanting the game to be better is also reasonable
I'm not going to defend the poor quality of the game because it's obviously bad (from what I gather, anyway - I've not played it myself) and should be improved.
?
I don't see why that would make my opinion stupid. Yes, the studio/publisher should be held to account for the crappy release. But a big part of holding them to account should be not giving them money for it in the first place; not just handing over money and then complaining afterwards. Complaining afterwards is reasonable for the people who did hand over money, but they should also hold themselves accountable for financially rewarding a company that puts out a crappy product - they're part of the problem.
I think it's important to look for the nuance in situations and not treat everything as zero-sum. Both sides can have good points and be open to criticism at the same time (this isn't an "enlightened centrist" take, I promise!). I think a lot of discussion online does tend to strip away nuance and take the position that if you show any empathy with one side then it means you must hate the other - I do my best to avoid that!
There certainly was some actual "ethics in video game journalism" discussion early on that I felt was legitimate, but that got drowned out pretty quickly by the misogynists (which, from what I gather, was the entire point - it seems the misogynists started the whole thing and used the "ethics in game journalism" thing as a front to try to legitimise their agenda).
I think the discussion about the personal relationships game journalists have with developers in general was a reasonable one to have. It unfortunately ended up just laser focusing on Zoe Quinn supposedly trading sex for good reviews, which was untrue, sexist and resulted in nasty personal attacks. But I think it was worth at least examining the fact that game journalists and game developers often have close relationships and move in the same circles, and that game journalism can often be a stepping stone to game development. Those are absolutely things that could influence someone's reviews or articles, consciously or subconsciously.
And another conversation worth having was the fact that gaming outlets like IGN were/are funded by adverts from gaming companies. It makes sense, of course - the Venn diagram of IGN's (or other gaming outlets') readers and gaming companies' target audience is almost a perfect circle, which makes the ad space valuable to the gaming companies. And because it's valuable to gaming companies, it's better for the outlets to sell the ad space to them for more money than to sell it to generic advertising platforms. But it does mean it seems valid to ask whether the outlets giving bad reviews or writing critical articles might cause their advertisers to pull out, and therefore they might avoid being too critical.
Now I don't think the games industry is corrupt or running on cronyism, personally. And I certainly don't believe it's all run by a shadowy cabal of woke libruls who are trying to force black people, women (and worse, gasp black women shudder) into games. But I do feel it was worth asking about the relationships between journalists, developers, publishers and review outlets - and honestly, those are the kinds of things that both game journalists and people who read game journalism should constantly be re-evaluating. It's always good to be aware of potential biases and influences.
The fact that the whole thing almost immediately got twisted into misogyny, death threats and a general hate campaign was both disappointing and horrifying. And the fact that it led to the alt-right, and that you can trace a line from it to Brexit and to Donald Trump becoming US president, is even worse.
I'm feeling a bit better. Starting today, I'll be returning to work as much as possible. This week will likely be spent catching up on tasks, replying to emails, reading overdue comments, etc. I also need to work with Piotr on instance infrastructure. I'll be more actively handling spam as well, but it's clear that we need...
I'm glad that you're feeling somewhat better and are on the mend!
Bringing more people on board for moderation is definitely a good idea, as is delegating administration. I think it's clear to everyone who keeps up with all your updates that the coding/development is where your heart lies :) Absolutely prioritise these things; reddit's IPO is in a week and a half, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the fediverse, and /kbin, grow because of that.
I'm happy to put my name forward for helping out with moderation (as I'm sure plenty of other people will, too). You've made something special in /kbin, and helping keep it focused and spam-free through moderation feels like the least we could do to help out!
There are definitely technical reasons why saving mid-run is a lot more complicated. With Pacific Drive, right now when you save, it'll save:
the state of your car - this will likely be done by looking each individual "equipment slot" the car has, assigning them a number, assigning each possible upgrade for that "slot" a number/letter, and storing its damage state (which is probably just a scale of 1-5 or whatever). So the game will store everything about your car in the format off "slot x, upgrade type y, damage z", which can just be three values.
your quest state. The game won't remember what quests you've done or how you've done them in the way that you remember it - it'll just store that you've completed quest step 14a and that 14b is your active objective.
It makes for a fairly simple, small save file. Being able to save mid-run would add a lot of complexity because it'd need to save a complete map state, including:
the map layout
your position in the map
the enemies and hazards in the map - their positions, states, etc.
what's happened already in the map
the loot in the map, and whether you've collected it or not
And so on. Not only does it massively increase the complexity, it would also increase the size of save files a lot and make saving and loading a lot more cumbersome. And that's just a simplified breakdown; there are definitely other factors that can make it much, much more complicated.
There are definitely some games where "easy mode" save systems could be implemented without much changing on a technical level, but I don't think Pacific Drive is one of them.
1.0 is getting a "true offline" mode where there won't be any chat (and where a connection isn't required for server authentication). Personally, I quite like the chat and the sense of community it brings (apart from when it's filled with "D4 bad") but I can see myself wanting it turned off if the game gets much more popular and attracts a more casual playerbase.
Honestly, though, I feel like that's such a minor quibble to have - especially for a game still in beta. While Last Epoch obviously doesn't have the budget behind it that Diablo 4 or Path Of Exile has, I think it's done a great job of cementing itself as a worthwhile addition to the genre already. The developers have done a brilliant job of coming up with creative solutions to problems (both LE's own problems and problems that other games have suffered from) and I think they've laid a very strong foundation to continue to build upon going forward. The game is mechanically interesting, has probably the most interesting itemisation and by far the best crafting in the genre, and generally feels good to play.
I agree that the art style isn't as strong as Diablo 4, Path Of Exile or Grim Dawn, but I think it looks much better than a cheap Unreal asset - especially with the lighting overhaul in 1.0. And I'm glad that it isn't just another dark fantasy setting; as much as I love those kinds of settings (Grim Dawn's, especially), having the more lush, vibrant style of Last Epoch makes for a nice change.
It's not a perfect game by any stretch, but I think it's a very good game and I think it has a lot of room to grow going forward.
I absolutely agree about Herbert not being a good storyteller or writer. I found it a difficult read simply because of the prose, and I really didn't like his use of an omniscient narrator. I don't really like omniscient narrators in general, but I found Dune's narrator especially difficult because of how freely it switches between characters. I often found that if my focus slipped even slightly, I'd realise a couple of minutes later I had no idea whose perspective the narrator was giving any more and have to backtrack paragraphs or even pages to work it out.
I think I perhaps appreciated the book more than you, but I didn't find it an enjoyable read. It certainly gave me a greater appreciation of the film, though, which I also very much enjoyed! And I'm glad I read it simply because it's such an influential book in a genre I love - it's interesting to see how so many things have build from its foundations.
Grim Dawn also has a mod called Reign Of Terror that lets you play the entirety of Diablo 2 in GD, complete with classes, skills and items! It has some differences because it's built on Grim Dawn's systems, so it has the dual-class system from Grim Dawn (with similarly laid out skill trees), item affixes work like Grim Dawn, etc, but it feels great to play! And you can combine Grim Dawn classes with D2 classes, D2 classes with other D2 classes, or just play the D2 campaign with a regular Grim Dawn build. It's great!
Last Epoch and Grim Dawn are probably most in line with Diablo, I think.
People have mentioned Path Of Exile, and I've played a lot of it, but I don't think it feels particularly like Diablo any more, even though it started out that way. It's quite unforgiving, and even a lot of experienced players feel like they need to follow build guides rather than work things out for themselves. Its learning curve is hundreds or thousands of hours long. Of course, the reason for that is that it has incredible depth, variety and complexity, which may be a selling point or a deterrent depending on what you like! I definitely like the complexity of it myself, but it's very overwhelming when you're new. The reason I don't think it's all that in line with Diablo these days, though, is simply the pacing of the gameplay. You blow up screens of enemies at a time, and your deaths are often so fast that you're not really sure what killed you.
Path Of Exile also heavily revolves around its trading economy. Item drop rates are balanced around players being able to trade for them, which makes trading somewhat mandatory (unless you're a bit of a masochist). The economy is fairly complex, with there being a lot of different currencies, and quite a lot of factors that can affect the value of an item. I'll let you decide whether you find this appealing or not - some people do, some people don't! I do think it causes some issues with the balance and progression of the game, but it's interesting to say the least, even if you wish you didn't have to engage with it.
Grim Dawn feels a little mechanically dated at this point but it's still solid. It's got some good builds, the dual-class system and constellations system make for some interesting variety. It's got an offline mode, as well as online co-op play. Its real selling point, though, at least for me, is it's absolutely soaked with atmosphere. It's very, well, grim, but the world is really immersive and it has a great setting in general with a solid story and some great lore. It also has quite a lot of mods available (including the Reign Of Terror mod I mentioned in another comment in the thread that adds the entire Diablo 2 campaign and all its classes to Grim Dawn).
Last Epoch is more mechanically interesting than Grim Dawn, I think, but it's lacking in the story and world-building. It's still in early access, although its full release is next week. It has quite a lot of depth and complexity, but it's all done in an intuitive way that means you can jump into the game blindly and work things out for yourself fairly easily. It has a good variety of skills, and the fact that each skill has its own fairly comprehensive skill tree means you can play the same skills in very different ways. It has a wonderful itemisation system that does a great job of making you actually engage with the loot you find on the floor (which is an issue in other loot games), and some of the best crafting I've ever seen in a game. The dev team also manages to come up with some really creative and somewhat intuitive solutions to things they perceive as issues in other ARPGs.
Last Epoch's biggest drawback is that its endgame is currently a little lacking in comparison to POE (which has a very rich and deep endgame, but is also a ten-year-old game that's been updated constantly). It's still far, far better than Diablo 4's, though, and will obviously only improve as more is added. Last Epoch has some truly brilliant systems in place for the devs to build off - and frankly, I still think it's great now - but it'll only get better as more content gets added over time.
I love all three games I've talked about for different reasons, and honestly, they're all well worth playing!
I heard about it when Skill Up, whose YouTube channel I have notifications turned on for, posted his review of it. Before that, I'd seen absolutely nothing about it, and I heard very little about it after that, too. I was shocked to find out it was an EA game - partly because it didn't look (visually) polished enough to be an EA game, and partly because of the complete lack of marketing I'd seen for a major publisher game.
Finding out it was an expensive flop and not just a smaller AA game they decided to put out on the side is a surprise, too.
Not that your suggestion is necessarily bad in general, but I don't really think it's necessary when it comes to Factorio. I think it should be clear from playing the demo whether 100+ more hours of that seems worth the asking price for someone. It's probably the most representative demo I've ever played; the full game is just the demo but more. There are no surprises down the line. There are no random pivots to other genres, or the game trying to stick its fingers in too many pies. There's no narrative to screw up. There's no "oh, they clearly just spent all their time polishing the first hour of the game and the rest of it is a technical mess". It's the same gameplay loop from the demo for another 50 hours until you "win".
... and then another 50 hours after that when you decide to optimise things. And then another 100 hours when you decide to make a train-themed base. And then another 700 hours when you discover some of the mods that exist...
I'm not cheering for the layoffs, of course, nor am I necessarily in favour of monopolies and the consolidation of the gaming industry (although, in this instance, I think it's probably a positive thing for fans of Blizzard IPs). But layoffs during this kind of merger/buyout are expected. Microsoft has its own legal departments, payroll departments, marketing departments, etc, and while they might need expanding slightly as the company grows/absorbs new companies, they don't need an entire second company's worth of those departments.
These layoffs were about cutting redundancy rather than just chasing short-term profits. It sucks for the people who were laid off either way, but I think it's good to be realistic about why they happened.
Unfortunately, I doubt it'll have much of an impact. Most of the properties/studios Embracer owns aren't popular enough to get people to make noise about it. And people don't tend to see the bigger picture - especially when these stories about studio closures are trickling out rather than all happening at once. I'm sure there'll be a lot of talk about it if something happens to do with Gearbox/Borderlands or The Lord Of The Rings, or if multiple studios all get shuttered at once, but other than that, I expect it'll just be small stories that continue to fly under the radar.
And regulators don't seem to care about video games unless people make noise. They get involved in things like loot box regulations or Microsoft acquiring Activision because those are big deals that almost everyone in the gaming sphere has an opinion on. But unfortunately, I don't see Piranha Bytes having issues or being closed getting enough attention for anything to change.
You've got some good answers already, but I can expand on it a little: businesses in most sectors are feeling the impact of increased interest rates - both because they can't borrow as much themselves any more, and because there is less money coming in from investors because they can't borrow as much either - but tech (including games) is doubly impacted because there was such a surge in demand during lockdowns. While other businesses tended to struggle during lockdowns, and have simply had that struggle replaced with a different struggle due to the interest rates, the tech sector grew massively during the pandemic.
People working at home, or furloughed, had more personal time and more disposable income because they weren't spending money on travelling to work, on overpriced lunches, on dining out with friends, going to concerts, etc. It all added up, and they spent that money on streaming subscriptions, video games and just generally on recreational, home-based activities, many of which revolve around tech these days. So the tech sector grew a lot because of the low interest rates, and it grew a lot because more people were buying its products/services. And now, rather than having more disposable income, a lot of people are facing a cost of living crisis, meaning not only have they reduced their spending because they're back in the office and dining out and going to concerts again (and all those other things people spend money on when they're not confined to their house), but many people have less money to spend on gaming, subscriptions, etc, than pre-pandemic.
Also, because the tech sector was doing so well during the pandemic, it was an attractive prospect for investors (who themselves had increased money, as well as great interest rates), meaning it grew even more. Everything kind of fed into each other and the tech sector grew exponentially as a result. Whereas right now, not only does the increased interest rate for borrowing mean investors are throwing their cash around less in general, but the fact that the tech sector is struggling makes it a less attractive prospect for investors, meaning the whole sector kind of doubly loses out on that front.
So these tech companies invested their money into growing their companies and expanding their businesses' scopes like good capitalists. Which does generally make sense - if you find yourself sat on a huge pile of money, it's generally better to find a way to invest it into something useful (or to invest it into something makes you an even bigger pile of money if you see the Monopoly Man as aspirational). The issue is, most of them were somewhat short-sighted (plus global economics is a tricky thing to predict); they spent money as if it was always going to be coming in at the same rate. And now that they're being impacted by increased interest rates on their own borrowing, the loss of investors, and the reduced spending power of consumers and they're very suddenly having to make massive cuts to stay afloat.
It absolutely is. Although, putting aside the obvious ethical debates, I will say that least AI has some practical uses. Crypto-currency and NFTs felt a lot like a solution looking for a problem, and while that can be true of some implementations of AI, there are a lot of valid uses for it.
But yeah, companies rushing to use AI like this, and making statements like this, just screams that they're trying to persuade investors they're "ahead of the curve", and is absolutely indicative of a hype bubble. If it wasn't a hype bubble, they'd either be quietly exploring it externally and not putting out statements like this, or they're be putting out statements excitedly talking specifics about their novel and clever implementations of AI.
I don't think consumers were the target of the scam; if they were, I don't see a reason why they wouldn't have accepted pre-orders for the game. In fact, I think they know that accepting pre-orders would have left them open to false advertising lawsuits which is why they didn't go for them, and I think they were well aware that people could just refund the game so trying to scam consumers (in this instance) was probably not worth attempting.
Instead, I think the investors were the target. The brothers who own(ed?) the studio have been living off investor money for the last few years, and which how suspicious their finances are (their ludicrously high travel expenses, in particular) I'm sure they've hidden away a bunch more money.
The game that exists is a shameless, cheaply-made asset flip that I suspect only exists at all because it makes it much harder for investors to sue for fraud when there's an actual product. If they'd just tried to take the money and run without releasing anything it'd be obvious fraud, but now they can claim they tried their best, expectations were too high, etc, and it's difficult for the investors to prove otherwise.
Despite being nominated for numerous awards and even winning Game of the Year in 2018, the creator of God of War, David Jaffe, is not a huge fan of the new direction the series has gone in. Jaffe himself hasn't worked on these new God of War games, but thinks that they're not staying true to the spirit of the character and the...
I don't think looter-shooters (and loot games in general) are inherently limiting, but loot needs to be exciting. I've played thousands of hours of Path Of Exile, and hundreds of hours of other looter games, and what holds my interest is interesting loot and build variety/depth. That simply doesn't happen in Destiny. Compare Destiny to Borderlands, for instance, and you can see how boring the loot really is. Look at games like Path Of Exile, Grim Dawn, or Last Epoch, and you can see how boring the skill trees are. In all of those other games, I've had items drop where I've been excited to redo my entire build to accommodate it, or to make a new character built around it. In Destiny, items just don't feel exciting enough. (Not every game needs to be as complex as Path Of Exile, but Destiny is incredibly shallow.)
And, of course, Destiny's story has consistently been disappointing. There's some great lore there, but they've failed to translate that into a well-told, engaging story over and over again.
See, I love spreadsheets and being able to optimise things, but I do need to actually be able to feel the impact in the gameplay, too. And yeah, Destiny is terrible for that; the buffs and upgrades you do get just feel irrelevant, for the most part. Especially with the terrible scaling system they use where you never feel any stronger against weaker enemies, just weaker against stronger enemies. When getting a huge numerical upgrade (in terms of gear score) doesn't change anything about how the game feels to play, I think that's poor design.
I always find this discussion interesting. I don't personally tend to play Paradox games at all so I've no real horse in the race, but I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with the model. It's designed around people being able to buy the specific parts they want, and those specific things having a good level of quality / depth to them.
Like, if you're really into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house thrown into a "kitchen sink" DLC pack that you can copy-paste over and over into your city with no options to customise or expand on that, or would you prefer an entire DLC dedicated to that style so you can build a full district or city in that style?
And conversely, if you're not into early 20th century Japanese architecture, would you rather have a single house in that style thrown into your DLC pack that you don't care about and won't ever use, or would you prefer your DLC pack to contain things you are interested in?
Maybe the average consumer does look and think "wow, I really need to spend $404.40 to be able to play the game" and decide against it, I don't know. But personally, if I see a game has DLCs like "specific niche cosmetic option pack #2" then I see them as not at all necessary, and figure I can play the base game first and just buy any additional packs I want later.
I don't think the controller support is too bad from what little I've played with a controller, but it can feel pretty build-dependent. It's clear some skills were designed with mouse targeting in mind.
I've played hundreds of hours with mouse and keyboard, though, and I think it's shaping up really well. It already feels great, but with more content variety down the line it'll only get better.
The idea that only having a €15M budget is what caused this game's issues is ridiculous. It's not a game that had good ideas and just failed to execute them properly; it's fundamentally bad on a conceptual level.
The setting and story concept are bad. When the game was first announced, I don't think I heard or saw a single discussion where someone was excited to experience playing through the story of Gollum in that time period in the story. Or even playing as Gollum at all - he's a great secondary character in the books and films, but he's hardly a character you want to play as in a video game. There's no room for character development either.
The game design is bad. It's just bad. No amount of time, money or polish is going to fix the terrible basic design principles the game is built on. And even if they had 10x the budget and hired a world-class lead game designer from the start, it still would have the issues with the story and character.
The whole project is one that shouldn't have left the brainstorming session it was conceived in.
Nah, it wasn't removed for technical reasons; Sony removed it because CDPR went behind their back and blanket-offered refunds. Which was the right thing for CDPR to do from a consumer-friendly perspective and from a PR perspective, but they should have communicated with Sony more first seeing as refunds on PlayStation go through Sony's store. I thought it was a bad look for Sony, though, personally.
That's not to excuse Cyberpunk 2077's performance on consoles in any way - they deserve flak for that.
I just finished playing Cocoon. It was short-but-sweet - it took me two evenings to finish, so probably in the 5-7 hours range - but it was one of the most interesting and engaging puzzle games I've played in a long time. What's especially fascinating to me is that its controls are so simple - everything is done with one analogue stick / WASD and a single interact button - and it's a very linear game, yet it still feels so engaging to play. It's from the lead designer of Limbo and Inside, so it has pedigree.
I played it via Game Pass (ha...) so it's hard for me to say what the value proposition is like. It certainly isn't going to give you the most time for your money, and it doesn't really have much in the way of narrative or themes, at least beyond abstract ones. But it has a gorgeous aesthetic and some fantastic puzzles.
Despite some of the players complaining, a lot of the audience likes the pay-to-win mechanic. It's not a game funded purely by whales; a lot of average players will spend money on the loot boxes. "I like that it means I don't have to grind for ages, I don't have time for that" and "it feels like the sports trading cards I had when I was a kid" are a couple of the reasons I hear somewhat regularly. The idea that it could be designed to not be grindy in the first place doesn't even occur to them.
Not releasing on PlayStation solely because Bethesda is owned by Microsoft, and MS want to sell more Xboxs, is anti consumer.
It's less that Microsoft wants to sell more Xboxes and more that they want to sell more Game Pass subscriptions. That's their primary model at this point. They even said a couple of years ago that their first-party games will be released on any platforms that support Game Pass. Basically, they were saying if Sony allowed Game Pass on PlayStation, Microsoft would release their first party games on PlayStation.
And it's on Game Pass. In my friend group, 80% of us are playing it via Game Pass rather than on Steam. Obviously that's anecdotal, and other groups of people won't have any Game Pass subscribers among them, but I have to imagine the number of Game Pass players of Starfield is pretty damn high.
I wouldn't call myself a "good artist" at all, and I've never released anything, I just make music for myself. Most of the music I make starts with my shamelessly lifting a melody, chord progression, rhythm, sound, or something else, from some song I've heard. Then I'll modify it slightly, add my own elements elsewhere, modify the thing I "stole" again, etc, and by the time I've finished, you probably wouldn't even be able to tell where I "stole" from because I've iterated on it so much.
AI models are exactly the same. And, personally, I'm pretty good at separating the creative process from the end result when it comes to consuming/appreciating art. There are songs, paintings, films, etc, where the creative process is fascinating to me but I don't enjoy the art itself. There are pieces of art made by sex offenders, criminals and generally terrible people - people who I refuse to support financially in any way - but that doesn't mean my appreciation for the art is lessened. I'll lose respect for an artist as a person if I find out their work is ghostwritten, but I won't lose my appreciation for the work. So if AI can create art I find evocative, I'll appreciate that, too.
But ultimately, I don't expect to see much art created solely by AI that I enjoy. AI is a fantastic tool, and it can lead to some amazing results when someone gives it the right prompts and edits/curates its output in the right way. And it can be used for inspiration, and to create a foundation that artists can jump off, much like I do with my "stealing" when I'm writing music. But if someone gives an AI a simple prompt, they tend to get a fairly derivative result - one that'll feel especially derivative as we see "raw output" from AIs more often and become more accustomed to their artistic voice. I'm not concerned at all about people telling an AI to "write me a song about love" replacing the complex prog musicians I enjoy, and I'm not worried about crappy AI-generated games replacing the lovingly crafted experiences I enjoy either.
Yep, although at least that was a pro-consumer move on CDPR's part. It's very understandable why Sony wasn't happy about it, but it wasn't a shady move on CDPR's part. Whereas the same definitely can't be said for Unity right now.
Oh absolutely, I agree! I just wanted to point out that CDPR's move was at least well-intentioned so it's harder to judge them poorly for it. But you're right that communication is important in these situations.
Diablo 4, Path of Exile, and the rest of the ARPG genre has competition in the mega-ambitious Last Epoch, built by its Reddit community and heading towards 1.0.
I've played Last Epoch for ~250 hours (and counting) over the last year since I bought it, so I'll give a mini-review here. The TL;DR is that it feels like a brilliant middle ground between Path Of Exile and Diablo - it has depth and complexity but doesn't have the brutal learning curve that Path Of Exile does. It doesn't have the content variety that Path Of Exile has, but it's also an early access game right now so that's expected. It's a great foundation, their patches have been substantial, their communications tend to feel good, and I feel like they're a good development studio. A lot of the developer insights make it feel like they take very good approaches to problem-solving, too.
The combat feels absolutely fantastic. The animations are smooth and feel modern. It can feel a little "floaty" for some people, but personally I have no issues with the way it feels. It's paced in such a way that fighting regular enemies still feels engaging (unlike Path Of Exile's zoom- and dopamine-fest) but isn't a slog, and more powerful enemies can put up really good satisfying fights. There's a good variety of skills and the way you modify them with the skill tree system can change them significantly. The build depth isn't quite as crazy as Path Of Exile's, but considering most POE players just follow build guides rather than taking their own builds, I'd say that won't matter for most people. And for people who do like creating their own builds from scratch - which I do - there's still plenty of depth to Last Epoch's system.
It's very realistic (and encouraged) for new players to experiment and create their own builds. Respeccing is pretty simple, and the skill systems are simple enough that new players can work it out for themselves, but there are also some interesting combinations and min-maxy things for more advanced players can figure out and build around. Each skill has its own skill tree, and while the trees aren't super complex, there's a good variety of ways to modify each skill. Some of the skills also have interactions with other skills - for instance, Teleport has a modifier that means your next skill has no mana cost; Meteor has one where your Fireball has reduced mana cost for a few seconds after casting it. You can chain that into a skill rotation: Teleport > Meteor (which normally has a high mana cost) > Fireball spam and suddenly you're going to have a much better time with mana sustain, but perhaps need to work out a way to deal with the fact that your movement skill is being used offensively and won't be available for dodging. So the game sort of gently hints at some skill combos like that, but they never feel forced and you still feel smart when you put it all together yourself.
The loot system is good. It has the single best crafting system I've seen in any ARPG, and crafting is absolutely worth your time and a necessity if you're pushing your build as far as it goes. But you need good starting items to work with - you can't just take a terrible item and craft it into something amazing. Crafting lets you upgrade the tiers of modifiers, add new mods if there's space, and sometimes modify items in slightly more spicy ways if you're feeling brave. But items have a "crafting potential" which depletes as you craft on them, so looting items is important.
The legendary item system is also very good. Unique items have their usual fixed stats, but they can have something called "legendary potential", which rolls between 0 and 4. Legendary potential does nothing by itself, but it allows you to combine a purple-tier item with your unique item; the amount of legendary potential you have dictates the number of mods from your purple item that will be randomly added to your unique item. Non-unique items can have 4 modifiers, so being able to create legendary items with the unique stats and powerful regular item stats is a really good end-game chase.
Most unique items are target farmable in the end-game. That's not to say you can get them immediately, but you can target "unique rings" as a reward, for instance, or target a specific boss that can have a chance to drop the item you're looking for. So overall, I think it's a good item system!
I think they've taken a very good approach to problem-solving - their upcoming trade system, for instance, looks (on paper) like it'll fix the biggest issues with Path Of Exile's trade system and Diablo 3's auction house, while also having the benefits of both and while giving players an avenue to progress without engaging with trade at all. (Basically, players join either the trading guild or the "solo" guild. Traders can trade, solo players get a boost to their loot and can target farm things more easily. People can trade with their party/friends separately from this trading system so the whole guild system doesn't matter for co-op play.) It's smart, and that kind of thinking can be seen across multiple systems in the game.
It was somewhat less of a knock when they first started making the game; it was a successful Kickstarter project ~5 years ago so it's been in development for a while. For what it's worth, I've got ~250 hours in the game and think it's shaping up really well (you can find my not-so-mini-review elsewhere in this thread).
You're welcome, of course! I'll definitely see about refining it and finding somewhere to post it, that's a good suggestion! It's given me some ideas to discuss in a more broad essay about complexity, depth and accessibility, too.
One criticism I'll add that I didn't mention in my above comment (because I ran out of characters and had to trim some stuff!) is the atmosphere of the game. It's not bad, and some of the level design is really nice, but the game doesn't have a strong tone, aesthetic or level of writing in the way Grim Dawn does, for example (although Grim Dawn is probably the peak as far as atmosphere and world-building in ARPGs goes, I think, so maybe that's not a fair comparison). Last Epoch has some interesting ideas relating to time travel, and it's pretty cool seeing some of the same areas in different eras (plus it's a clever way for them to reuse assets, I imagine), but I'd say it's weaker than other major ARPGs in the story/world-building/atmosphere department. Of course, most people tend to play ARPGs for the gameplay first and foremost, and LE does a great job with that, so it's a more minor criticism from me than it would be in other genres of game.
This is stupid. I have no love for Overwatch or Blizzard - I've been boycotting them for years, in fact. But there are far, far worse games on Steam than OW2. The fact that, to my knowledge, it runs properly, doesn't have crypto miners built into it, and isn't just made from stolen assets already puts it at like a 5/10 at minimum.
I'm all for consumers standing up for themselves and being critical or poor products, but I really wish people wouldn't get caught up in these hate bandwagons.
Like I said, I've been actively boycotting Blizzard for years now; I'm not sure why you think I'd want to "slop on their dick". But yes, if a game is fine on a technical level and mediocre in every other sense, why wouldn't it be a 5/10? A game that runs properly and is otherwise unnoteworthy is probably already better than the average game out there. There's a lot of shovelware.
There's a reason review outlets like IGN rarely give scores below 5/10 - it's that almost any AA or AAA studio is going to be competent enough to get their game to run and have something to it. Even Redfall is a 5/10 on Metacritic. 5/10 games aren't generally worth your time, but that's only because there are so many 7+/10 games competing for your time/attention.
Even though I have no love for Blizzard as a company, and have never played Overwatch 2, I refuse to believe it's in the bottom half of all games ever. A lot of the grievances I've seen about it seem completely justified, but it's not a game that's truly awful. It's good on a technical level. It has good art direction. The characters are unique and identifiable, even to people who've never played Overwatch. I get that people don't like the balance, they don't like Blizzard's money-grabbing, they don't like the change to 5v5(?), and they don't like whatever else people are complaining about. But that doesn't make it the worst game on Steam, and it doesn't make every single aspect of it bad.
It's the second article from this site I've seen today - both posted by the same account - and they've both been horrific. The Cities: Skylines 2 one had some awful title gore, too.
Part of me wants to just block OP so I don't ever see this website again. But part of me doesn't want to because I want the news still, and I think there can be valuable discussion in the comment sections even if the article itself is awful.
Yeah, it looks pretty bad from that list. It may not be quite as bad in practice - some of them may have their name attached because, for instance, they co-own a production company where only person is involved but all three co-owners get their names on the credits. And some of them may be involved on the technical side, some for the story side, some just for financing, etc.
But even so, that looks like far too many names to have any kind of coherent vision.
George Lucas Says Ideas in the Original “Sort of Got Lost” in Post-Disney ‘Star Wars’ Films (Gee, you think?) (www.hollywoodreporter.com) angielski
Lucas reflected on his life in work in a wide-ranging chat in Cannes, where he received and honorary Palm d'Or.
BREAKING: Microsoft has closed Redfall's Arkane Austin, HiFi Rush's Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda. | IGN (twitter.com) angielski
Garry's Mod to remove ALL Nintendo content from the Steam Workshop due to takedown (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Holy shit, I can’t even imagine the amount of mods that will get erased. There were so many fan-mods, maps, minigames, models… Fucking Nintendo…
Cities Skylines 2: "Beach properties assets are all gone and my city is screwed. Thanks a lot." (forum.paradoxplaza.com) angielski
It doesn’t stop. It just never stops.
Will Smith's Chinese Zombie Game [videogamedunkey] (www.youtube.com) angielski
Game is Undawn. Piped link.
The return of Gamergate is smaller and sadder (www.theverge.com) angielski
Evidently on a posting tear today. What happens when you’re stuck in a Dr.'s waiting room, I guess…
/kbin March update (kbin.social) angielski
I'm feeling a bit better. Starting today, I'll be returning to work as much as possible. This week will likely be spent catching up on tasks, replying to emails, reading overdue comments, etc. I also need to work with Piotr on instance infrastructure. I'll be more actively handling spam as well, but it's clear that we need...
I Just Wanted To Save My Game - Aftermath (aftermath.site)
Last Epoch 1.0 Patch Notes (forum.lastepoch.com) angielski
It's almost here! (Pic of Dune 2 film on IMAX platter) (i.redd.it) angielski
Are there any games like Diablo but not Diablo because Diablo? angielski
EA flop Immortals of Aveum reportedly cost around $125 million, former dev says "a AAA single-player shooter in today's market was a truly awful idea" (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Personally I would not call Immortals of Aveum an AAA game. 😅...
Factorio Friday Facts #397 - Factoriopedia (factorio.com)
It’s really nice to see how they continue to cater to player quality of life, lots of great improvements both for new and returning players here.
Steam Next Fest is back and underway with "hundreds" of playable PC demos (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
If it's demos you want, today's your lucky day; Valve's thrice-yearly Steam Next Fest event is back for another outing,…
Microsoft quarterly gaming revenue up 49% following Activision purchase (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Piranha Bytes, devs of Gothic and Elex, are next on Embracer's chopping block (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Employees Say ‘Sizable Portion’ Of Gearbox-Owned Studio Has Been Laid Off (aftermath.site) angielski
Today on “the gamedev community literally can’t catch a break”…
Square Enix’s president says it will be ‘aggressive in applying’ AI (www.videogameschronicle.com) angielski
The Day Before Servers Shutting Down Next Month, Leaving Game Active for Just 45 Days - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
• Controversial game The Day Before will have servers shut down in January 2024, just 45 days after its troubled launch....
God of War Creator Is Unhappy With New Games and Kratos' Story (comicbook.com) angielski
Despite being nominated for numerous awards and even winning Game of the Year in 2018, the creator of God of War, David Jaffe, is not a huge fan of the new direction the series has gone in. Jaffe himself hasn't worked on these new God of War games, but thinks that they're not staying true to the spirit of the character and the...
Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin Flops, Frontier Shares Tank Nearly 20% - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
Report: Bungie CEO blames layoffs on waning interest in Destiny 2 (www.gamedeveloper.com) angielski
Cities: Skylines 2 "absolutely cannot" have the decade of DLC features that the original game added | GamesRadar+ (www.gamesradar.com) angielski
Last Epoch 1.0 launches Feb 21st, 2024! (forum.lastepoch.com) angielski
New Report Makes Disturbing Allegations Against The Lord of the Rings: Gollum Developer - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski
CD Projekt Spent Roughly $125 Million Turning Cyberpunk 2077 Around Post-Launch (www.ign.com) angielski
Microsoft expected to finally buy Activision Blizzard next week (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
EA Sports FC 24 Players Say $30 Launch Week Loot Box Highlights Everything Wrong With Ultimate Team (www.ign.com) angielski
Destiny 2 is “broken” as enemies completely stop fighting (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
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Terraforming Mars team defends AI use as Kickstarter hits $1.3 million (www.polygon.com) angielski
Unity Claims PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Will Pay Its New Runtime Fee On Behalf Of Devs (twistedvoxel.com) angielski
Meet Diablo 4 and Path of Exile's biggest rival, an ARPG designed and built by Redditors (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Diablo 4, Path of Exile, and the rest of the ARPG genre has competition in the mega-ambitious Last Epoch, built by its Reddit community and heading towards 1.0.
Beautiful games? angielski
Suggest some beautiful games. Genre doesn’t matter. 3d or 2d no big deal. Hyper Light Drifter, Satisfactory, Cliff Empire, etc....
Overwatch 2 is now the #1 of the worst Steam games (feddit.de)
steam250.com/bottom100
Assassin’s Creed Mirage new leak confirm microtransactions (gamerkick.com) angielski
Assassin's Creed Mirage seeks to be a return to the roots of the series, which came to light with Altaïr's adventure in 2007. Ubisoft will maintain an
The Witcher producer blames Americans and social media for Netflix series' simplified plot (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
The executive producer on Netflix's The Witcher has blamed American audiences and social media sites such as TikTok for…