Pheonixdown

@Pheonixdown@lemm.ee

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite 1000+ hour games?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  There are a few sections restricted to solo only, but it’s not the default, the matchmaking is pretty quick for a random group and there’s a variety of people always looking to form groups for different tasks. One word of warning, people move fast, until you get parkour down, you might just end up running from the start to end of a level if you join groups, they’ll have completed the objectives and be waiting for you to extract.

  Clans exist, and each have their own space station called a dojo that’s customized by them (cost is based on size of the clan, as a solo I was able to build up and level a clan on my own).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are your favorite 1000+ hour games?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Path of Exile.

  I’d say I’m a fairly mid-tier player, get better with each season I play, the breadth of mechanics and depth of complexity is mind breaking. I’ve only played like 2000 hours though, I’ll get it all figured out eventually… Right?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2024 is about 75% done. Let's recommend the best games of 2024, but with a twist: only the ones with no paid DLC!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  #ZERO SIEVERT (Steam)

  I’m bending rule 4, because the official 1.0 release is announced for less than 1 month from now.

  ZERO Sievert is a tense top-down extraction shooter that challenges you to scavenge a procedurally-generated wasteland, loot gear, and explore what’s left of a devastated world. When the odds are stacked against you, you’ll need to do more than just survive.

  I’ve played through it a 2nd time recently, it’s a fun solo experience, the difficulty is largely customizable, the different zones feel unique, lots to explore, even just a little morality testing on some quests. Decent enemy variety, the guns generally feel different, and different ammo types do matter. Skill will take you far, and carelessness, even in the easy areas, will be punished.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wireless mouse with silent switches recommendation⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been using the Zelotes C-10 (wired for my desktop) and F-17 (wireless for work laptop), when they say vertical, they mean it. Anecdotally, it has helped with my wrist pains. I also wanted the extra buttons on the C-10, so I could map them for gaming (I also use a Razer Tartarus for my left hand for gaming).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Wireless mouse with silent switches recommendation⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I used a Nexus (nxstek.com) for years and it still worked great, only replaced it when I switched to a vertical mouse for wrist ergo, now my wife still uses, and it’s the mouse that’s lasted her the longest (she’s hard as fuck on mice for some reason). I’d suggest you check out the SM-8000B from them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Says AI Could Break Reality⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  For public ones, depending on what people started getting, it’d really strain the AIs. You could go in like 1 or two ways, probably different people getting both.

  Something very uniform but still unique, like a QR code kind of deal, AIs would hallucinate the crap out of that. Or abstractions, like people do to change the way the shape of their face to combat facial recognition.

  For private ones, just don’t ever get it photographed, any image showing that area without it would be probably fake.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google Says AI Could Break Reality⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I am waiting for people to start getting both public and hidden authentication tattoos, so they can prove generative images aren’t actually them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's out now! The prologue for my solo project, a roguelike tower defense, is live. Check it out.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yep, UI mouseover is fine with it unplugged, issue returns when replugged.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's out now! The prologue for my solo project, a roguelike tower defense, is live. Check it out.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  1. PC, other than M/KB, I have a Razer Tartarus.

  2. I was using the scroll wheel, might have missed the cue to use keys, that’d fix it for me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨It's out now! The prologue for my solo project, a roguelike tower defense, is live. Check it out.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Played a couple runs. Definitely seems up my alley.

  Feedback:

  1. Idk why, but when cursoring UI menus, it just ticks from where I cursored to the top like I’m holding an up arrow. Happens in Menus, Stats, Level ups and Shop. Clicking works fine, just really couldn’t read any stat descriptions.

  2. When teasing the locked towers/skills, when you obscure the text with the X of locks, it’s hard for me to read and get excited about getting access to that thing. Maybe move the lock indicator somewhere there isn’t text (top right?).

  3. This is maybe more fundamental, and idk how it fits with your vision, but scroll wheeling between skills feels clunky, could it maybe be key based (either as well or in addition), think that’d feel snappier to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Xbox Console Sales Are Tanking⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Any new purchasers (I am one) are also probably waiting for the mid-generation update coming later this year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some of the best mini-games youve played? (games inside games)⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  FFX Blitzball is the mini-game that I sunk the most time into by far (100+ hours), and always had fun.

  Gwent from Witcher 3 kind of goes without saying, the framework is so good it’s spawned 3 full games that I can think of.

  Best Hacking mini-game goes to the newer Deux Ex games, quick, the right amount of challenge but if you didn’t like it you could basically never do it.

  Best lockpicking I’m going to give to Starfield. Literally the only part of the game I actually enjoyed, each is a great little puzzle.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Grown Adult Coward: 'I'm OK With Just Watching Alan Wake II' - Aftermath⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been watching and enjoying Jesse Cox (on his CoxClips youtube) play it. He knows a lot about the universe lore and does some explaining for people who may not be as familiar. Someone related to the game also mailed him some ARG stuff related to the game before it came out and he did a few videos on his jessecox channel for it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I tried over 20 Steam Next demos so that you don't have to!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Everyone has a bias and that’s expected and the stating of opinions as opinions is good, the line is stating opinion as fact or review bombing.

  I didn’t play it because I didn’t want to log in, isn’t a review of the actual game, it’s at best review bombing against secondary logins. It tells anyone interested in playing the game nothing other than that a secondary login is needed.

  The definition of the minimum criteria for what makes a game is pretty nebulous, but survivor styles are well above all but the most disingenuous definitions of what makes a game. Saying it isn’t a game because you don’t enjoy it is not having a bias that causes you to like something less.

  The trending of most games to be 7+/10 is largely driven by idiots who tied the success of a game to metacritic scores and publishers who retaliate against games journalists for “hurting” that success by not cooperating with them on future products by providing review codes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I tried over 20 Steam Next demos so that you don't have to!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  “I don’t like X game/genre” is a fine take, calling something you don’t like “not really a game" is not, unless you can really justify it not meeting some minimum criteria to be called a game (doesn’t present a challenge or problem to overcome, doesn’t have a fail-state, has no player agency, etc)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I tried over 20 Steam Next demos so that you don't have to!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Most of your write ups seem decently done if you clicked with the game at all, but if you’re going to continue to review things, you might want to do reign in your personal biases a bit.

  Low scores for games you didn’t play or realize you don’t understand the appeal of are pretty bad takes.

  Vampire Survivors was quite literally one of the hit games of the year when it came out, to call other games of the genre that are following on its coattails “not really a game” and saying people shouldn’t buy a literal genre is just ridiculous. Is FatalZone trying to be some huge blockbuster, no, it’s just iterating on the survivor concept (same as Deep Rock Galactic is doing, which has more polish but less features than most). The game is literally $5 to buy right now in early access and as one of the many who do enjoy the genre, it’s probably worth the price with the content it has now (unknown if it’ll be same insane value VS has been).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meet the men hiding their FIFA Ultimate Team addiction from their families⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  People with a gambling addiction will find an outlet for it unless they get help controlling it, just like people with any addiction. Addiction is treated on an individual basis, not by banning an activity that the vast majority of the population can partake in with self-control.

  We don’t have tons of public numbers to be able to discuss the initial development, licensing, marketing, support and ongoing development, distribution and overhead costs vs initial costs, expansion and MTX income of games at a large scale. But you can be sure the companies that make the games have those numbers, and they’re used for pricing and budgeting of future development. And that’s before we open the can of worms that is discussing how much profit is ethical.

  Maybe they could make less money, maybe they could not make certain features, but where does the ethical line fall when it comes to predatory features and marketing? Who needs protection? From who? How do you implement it without infringing the rights of others? Is it ok to let them gamble if there’s a deterministic worst-case scenario? What if there’s a limit on how much they can spend? What if purchases are purely only deterministic, but they’re limited time exclusives that will never return? What about if you can earn them by playing or pay extra to just get them up front or faster? What about if they carve that feature out of the main product and sell it as an additional cost? These are all predatory in some way, but we don’t need to ban them all when a person can make their own value judgments and interact with games in a way that brings them enjoyment. Otherwise, it’s a slippery slope to asking why we even let people “waste” money on entertainment.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Meet the men hiding their FIFA Ultimate Team addiction from their families⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Whales subsidize the cost of the game for everyone else. If there weren’t whales, the cost goes up for everyone or the product diminishes. Reality isn’t a magical realm where the company will not use ROI and net profit to determine what to make or how to price things, it’s all interrelated and you don’t get to hold everything else constant when asking for something to change.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cities: Skylines 2 "absolutely cannot" have the decade of DLC features that the original game added | GamesRadar+⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  While that’s true, there’s also a huge difference from like 20+ years ago when they more often than not released games as a complete functional product as opposed to a “we hit the date” buy-in beta test. Games just tend to release with less features and polish than they used to, for the most part companies will keep working on it and get it where it needs to be so the final product is comparable, but it makes for a murkier cycle, buy in at release and probably suffer or wait and try to time when it’s actually ready.