t3rmit3

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

to WINE about

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu (edited 2 miesiące temu)

There’s a totally fair criticism that Windows is no more or less comprehensible or usable than e.g. Ubuntu, but familiarity is the differentiator. If someone is opposed to changing settings in a .conf file but not a .ini file, or fine with making registry changes but not service changes, it’s not an issue of usability or accessibility, it’s just familiarity.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

I’d guess your graphics drivers are the issue in that case. Sounds like it was probably kicking all the games over to the integrated GPU.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

I got a laptop recently with an AMD GPU, and installed Ubuntu on it, and the first time round I got the AMD drivers working, but every boot the discrete GPU and the integrated GPU would change their device IDs (e.g. gpu1/ gpu2), so Steam would end up launching games on the integrated GPU half the time. I got frustrated and installed Windows, but found out that you can’t buy Win10 anymore, so got Win11 and hated it so much I went back to Ubuntu. Second time around, I found a thing for setting the GPU in the launch options by GPU name, and that has fixed it.

Linux is not ready for average consumers if they have to install it themselves, but neither is Windows; most people buy a computer with the OS preinstalled, and never have to deal with driver setup; the Win11 install had a bunch of driver issues too.

SteamDeck is such a huge revolution because it’s really the first time that a company has made preinstalled Linux machines available in a way that average consumers don’t have to go looking for or pay through the nose (cough System76 cough).

If someone like Dell or Lenovo (or hey, even System76 or Framework) could get their laptops in-store at BestBuy, with everything pre-configured and ready-to-use, that would be Linux being “ready” for the average consumer.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

Lego Island was an action town sim set in a Lego-themed world. There was nothing particularly “Lego” about the gameplay. I mostly just loved riding the motorcycle around the island as a kid.

The real Lego video game is still just Minecraft.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

Manor Lords was the top-seller on Steam for a couple days if not a full week, so Hooded Horse definitely has enough money for a good while.

Bender said Manor Lords sold 250,000 copies in the last month after selling over two million copies in its first three weeks MSN

2,250,000 * $30 = $67,500,000

I think they’ll be good for a while.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

Their choice to post it on pro-endless-growth LinkedIn sure makes it feel like a snipe.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

Yes, exactly.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

Great game! I wish there was a randomized map, because it feels like I know every corner by now, and I do the think resource cost scaling gets ridiculous (try building a train of any length with 2 people), but it’s a really great survival crafter + factory builder.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

I bounced off of it, and went back to Farthest Frontier.

I was not a huge fan of the way the villagers are accrued and assigned; it felt like they were trying to emulate Banished, but didn’t execute well on it.

I did love the way you draw housing plots, and the ability to add extensions onto houses that have different bonuses (e.g. a chicken coop that gives eggs).

I think if the city-builder+RTS hybrid aspect is very appealing to you, it’s one of the few out there. If you want a more traditional city builder, check out Farthest Frontier.

t3rmit3, 2 miesiące temu

I really like it’s progression of resource tiers, and it’s exploration mechanic that lets you delve into ruins to find artifacts that give you bonuses to town morale.

It also has a nice pseudo-complex farming system, where you can manage the soil composition to favor different crops (or just choose to plant the crops that that area’s default soil lends itself to).

It also has randomized maps, which I like to reload until I find one with an interesting layout.

There is combat, but you can granularly control it, or disable it altogether (there are raiders, and wildlife like bears and wolves).

It feels very laid back, which is my jam.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

There’s not one. Sexting is very broad, it does not have to be pictures or direct references to boning. Any sexually-oriented text communication can be considered sexting.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

Locker room humor generally refers to talk between guys, which could have sexual undertones, but isn’t normally something I’d think of as “sexually-oriented”.

And flirting can range all the way from smiling long at someone at a cafe or calling them ‘cutie’ in conversation, to me spanking my s.o. as they walk by in a sexy outfit and telling them they’re gonna get punished if they keep distracting me from work- so there’s a huge range in there, some of which I’d definitely consider sexting, if texted to someone.

Frankly, I have zero sympathy for him, because it’s very easy not to interact over direct message with fans at all, much less underage ones.

I’ve worked customer-interfacing jobs that required a high level of direct, personal relationship-building before (sometimes even gasp with people I found attractive!), and I never once felt compelled to take those communications into a private space, and there was never even a potential for those people to have been kids.

You don’t “stumble into” private messages with a minor that “get out of hand”.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

Grim Dawn is my favorite ARPG since Nox.

I’ve played Last Epoch, PoE, D1/2/3, and a LOT of others, and Grim Dawn just knocks it out of the part for me. I really want more from Crate, once Farthest Frontier is wrapped up.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I actually enjoyed Outer Worlds a decent bit, but I would consider it much less of a space game than Starfield. For all that people rag on Starfield about the ships just being loading screens, you got to manually assemble spaceships, and then walk around inside of them. Outer Worlds was really just spaceships as loading screens.

I don’t really go in for Annapurna games, for a number of reasons.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

Yep, I’ve played it!

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I’m sure I’ll rotate back around eventually! :)

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

Thanks for the detailed breakdown!

Starbound is I think very much reliant on you wanting to play it as a sandbox. It definitely has a lot of shortcomings. It sounds like you didn’t play it with mods, or at least with Frackin’ Universe, because FU solves most of the QoL pain points from the vanilla game (like movement being slow). The boss arenas actually used to allow you to build in them, but it completely ruined the difficulty; you could go into any boss room, build a box around yourself, and just whittle them down imperviously. While that might be someone’s preference, I don’t fault the devs for not wanting that, and that’s pretty standard for games to remove ‘cheesing’ exploits for bosses.

Starsector is really interesting to me, because I don’t feel that way about it at all.

I almost never end up running out of command points, if only because I only need to re-task ships if something is going wrong. Usually if I’m running low on them, it’s because I’m trying to kill off incoming DPS by focusing fire on one ship at a time, and at that point I should probably be retreating anyways. I can’t speak to the skill tree changes in detail, because honestly I mostly rely on them for the larger fleet bonuses, or tech unlocks (e.g. AI). They never struck me as being impactful enough to make my ship into a ‘hero unit’, so I never tried to see if they could.

The combat is definitely (imho) about fleet composition rather than fleet control.

But really, combat is only one small part of the game to me. Exploration, missions, building up colonies, looting ruins, etc etc. That’s what I really love about Starsector, and what sets it apart to me.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I’m going by development budgets, not scope.

I wish people would consider Rimworld and Kenshi AAA, and CoD ‘A’, based on scope or hours of playtime offered. :)

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

That is actually #5 on my Small Games list. It sort of straddles the line in terms of size and complexity, but in the end I think it really falls under being a small, Indie game, being as it’s FOSS and community-developed and all.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I do love Alpha Centauri! I’d probably add that under “space-adjacent” games.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

Yeah, Freelancer is very special. I really think it’s completely unappreciated for how open the world really is, because it’s very easy just to follow the storyline and never just sod off and explore the world. I recently was replaying it with a bunch of mods, and I went exploring the ice asteroid fields in the south end of New York system, and it’s so atmospheric and cool.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I’ve never actually played Warframe, mostly because I’m not really into competitive arena shooters (with CS:GO and Apex being notable exceptions, though I’ve long since left them behind), and from my short glances that’s how it appeared to me. Does it take place in space?

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

Haha, I admit that is my personal bias. I was burned in several ways as an E:D Kickstarter backer, especially when the “all updates” part turned out not to include… all updates.

But honestly, I just lost interest. I was doing rare goods trading routes and Frontier nuked them into the ground, and it became very obvious to me that they wanted to force people to play a certain way.

Wrt Mass Effect, I personally think that “space game” shouldn’t just be limited to “flying a spaceship”. I think it’s fair to say spaceships should be part of it, but Halo or KOTOR or any number of other RPGs that are literally all about space aliens and other planets wouldn’t qualify.

I think that Space Sim or certainly Space Combat sub-genres are fair to require actually flying the spacecraft yourself, but Space Games ought to be a big house, imho, to include RPGs and tactics games and even just Alien Planets, so long as the alien part is really the point (which is why I’d consider Stranded: Alien Dawn more of a space game than Rimworld, though it’s a pretty subjective position to be sure).

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

Yeah, it’s definitely very intimidating to get into, and I don’t think I could start now just because it feels like it’s too late; already 21 years old as a game.

If you want a space game that is very similar to Eve, but not online, check out Astrox Imperium. Be warned, it is very janky and indie.

I’ve got a bunch of other recommendations, but I’ll save those for my med/small posts, so I can write more about them.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

Huh, interesting. Is it a shared-world-shooter, like Destiny or The Division?

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I think that I was probably spoiled by Eve in that regard. It has a lot of “wow” moments too. Or SC, though obviously that came after E:D. I’m also just not sure it really had the impact on the genre that the others have, though some of their impacts have not all been positive, obviously.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu (edited 3 miesiące temu)

Yeah, I still play it. I’m based down in Eldjaerin in Minmatar space, right near losec where I do my capital production.

Occasionally I like to try to bait the Russians in Frulegur and Konora (e.g. Coastal Brotherhood) into attacking my carriers or HAW dreads, but I think they’ve learned not to anymore. :P

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I will probably add E:D to the list, but under protest. ;P

I kickstarted it, and I just honestly didn’t find it that much fun. Once Frontier started doing lots of “balance” changes that nerfed money accrual, I really bounced off. I’m not someone who plays any single game exclusively, but it felt like it was going to take 60+ hours just to move up each ship level, and I wasn’t gonna wait 6+ months realtime, or however long it would’ve taken, to buy an Anaconda (and not be able to afford insurance, and lose it anyways).

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

They’ve really added a lot with the DLCs, but as usual with Paradox it’s crazy expensive to get everything at once.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

Just to clarify, Star Citizen is the game that is currently playable. Squadron 42 is still under closed development.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

I think that depends on what you love about NMS.

If you’re a fan of the procgen exploration, Avorion, Starbound, or Elite:Dangerous

If you’re a fan of the multiplayer interaction, Eve Online or Star Citizen.

If you’re a fan of the base-building, Space Engineers or X4.

If you’re a fan of the Alien interactions, that’s very tough, but probably X4 or Star Control 2/ The Ur Quan Masters. xD

There aren’t a lot of other single games that have as many systems as NMS does.

I think that I would probably say start to check out X4 if you want 3D, and Starbound if you don’t mind 2D. Be warned, X4 does not fit well with “not much time to play”, though.

t3rmit3, 3 miesiące temu

We’re getting 2942 :P

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

Navok noted that if a game costs $100 million to make over five years, it has to beat what the company could have returned investing a similar amount in the stock market over the same period. “For the 5 years prior to Feb 2024, the stock market averaged a rate of return of 14.5%. Investing that $100m in the stock market would net you a return of $201m, so this is our ROI baseline,” he explained.

This is why capitalism ruins everything. So it’s not even about making art that is profitable, it’s about beating out other investment opportunities that someone could have chosen, even if it meant the art didn’t get made.

That is so ass-backwards.

Investment should be about wanting to grow a company whose products you believe in, both to see returns when those products perform well, but also to enjoy the future products.

Someone whose attitude is “I don’t care about your products at all, I just care about cash ROI” will turn around and short your stock and disparage you, if they think it’ll net them more money. In other words, they won’t actually look out for the best interests of the company, and will always be looking out for opportunities to plunder the business for more profit.

And this is supposed to create a healthy market for goods? Please.

“The free market makes goods compete to see what customers prefer.” Apparently not.

Apparently it creates a situation where the products can be profitable and amazing and well-loved, but a bunch of wealthy assholes who don’t care about the products at all can decide the company isn’t up to their standards, and punish or kill it.

There was another post here on Beehaw about housing costs, where someone noted that “voting with your wallet” doesn’t work because wealthy people can “out-vote” you, on a level that even collectively you can’t compete with, and this really illustrates their point well.

Late edit:

I think it bears saying that under this model of ROI calculation, depending on how well other industries are doing, it is entirely possible that no video game could feasibly outperform the market for a given timeframe… so should the whole games industry just fucking shut down in that case?

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

I don’t know how to encourage investment without the stock market

I invest in stuff that’s not stocks all the time. When I give money to someone so that they will hopefully create a cool new product in the future (e.g. a video), I’m not paying for an individual product, I’m investing in them as a creator in hopes for future ROI. That’s Patreon.

We treat the addiction to wealth accrual different from any other addiction, in that we laud it, but make no mistake that it is addictive. Watching numbers in your account go up gives you a rush, just as sure as watching numbers in a video game.

When other addictions cause harm, we push people to get treatment, or at very least condemn the addiction. When someone is addicted to the accrual of wealth, even to the detriment of others, we call them, ‘genius’, ‘savvy’, ‘visionary’, or ‘shrewd’.

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu

That could work if these firms were somehow competitors, but these aren’t Sony-aligned studios they’re buying, these are studios that were releasing games on Xbox.

This is definitely a case of, “what makes stock line go up? New games, Big names, More stuff!” Then later, “uh oh, did that and stock price not going up. Layoffs mean less cost, now stock line go up again!”

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

As someone who used to really like Phil, I agree with this. He’s clearly banking on his popularity as a “celebrity” within the gaming community to put a smiling spin on what is a clearly horrible business record.

The question here is not whether Microsoft does the same things that all businesses do (i.e. be evil Capitalist monstrosities that run people’s livelihoods over in the name of investor greed)- that much is obvious.

The question is whether Phil Spencer is actively enabling this behavior and also covering for it- which he is.

And that is why, as the article suggests, people need to stop treating him as anything other than a corporate representative who wants to extract as much value as he can before it all runs into the ground.

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu

I vote he stays.

The article didn’t say he needs to go, they said people need to stop treating him as though he is actually on the side of consumers and employees, rather than investors.

The literal last line of the article is

I hope moving forward Xbox fans and the media hold Spencer more accountable for future mistakes, cuts, and failures.

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

PSP, followed by Gameboy Color, followed by Advance SP.

I recently got a Retroid4, and took an amazing trip down memory lane with Mana Khemia, MG:AC!D, FF Tactics Advanced/A2, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and a bunch of pkmn ROM hacks. All of them easily held up today.

Unless SteamDeck counts, in which case it wins hands-down.

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu

Isn’t the switch itself just an iteration on the GameGear, or close to ‘home’, the GBA?

It’s not the first chunky, horizontal handheld. The only thing that was new about it was the joycons, and they ditched those immediately for the Lite.

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

I think that calling BOtW similar to other full-scale console games of 2017 like Sniper Elite 4, Middle Earth: Shadow of War, Nier Automata, Prey, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, RE7, or AssCreed Origins, is a biiiiiiig stretch.

It was a huge jump for Nintendo (it was basically putting GameCube-level games on a handheld), but it was still far behind other consoles. Witcher 3 (2015) even eventually released on the Switch in 2019, and it was massively graphically gimped compared to ahem real consoles.

t3rmit3, 4 miesiące temu (edited 4 miesiące temu)

I didn’t say it’s not good, I said it’s not equivalent to console releases of that year. Graphics isn’t everything, and I still enjoy playing Pax Imperia and Nox, but that doesn’t change that it was a handheld game, not a console game. Pokemon Red/Blue were also some of the best selling games the year they released, but that doesn’t make the Gameboy equivalent as a console to PSX or N64 either.

t3rmit3, 5 miesięcy temu (edited 5 miesięcy temu)

ARPGs should be the Diablo-likes. Half the time, Souls-likes are barely even RPGs.

Diablo-likes have skill trees, classes, leveling… You know, the player-customizable “role” part of Role-playing.

Souls-likes often are just action games of dodging and equipment stats, without any ability to change the intrinsic role of a character.

I’m an IT dork, and if I pick up a wrench I don’t suddenly become a plumber or mechanic.

t3rmit3, 5 miesięcy temu

I fired up 7DTD a couple months ago, and I definitely did not feel like it was anywhere close to being done. Releasing out of EA feels like they just want to be done with it.

t3rmit3, 5 miesięcy temu

OH SNAP!