NuXCOM_90Percent
@NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
- Comment on What are the best free mmorpgs for a beginner? 1 day ago:
Unless you are playing purely for nostalgia, I would very much avoid runescape. It isn’t a game for kids to play during typing class. It is very much an obnoxiously sweaty (set of) game(s).
I think you can play the entire original campaign for FF14 for free? And FF14 is probably THE best theme park MMO out there. That said, my experience is “it is the best community on the internet” is very much marketing and you WILL have bad experiences during dungeons… which are mandatory for story progression. You can negate that if you join a clan but then you aren’t really playing with The Community and are already into hardcore-ish play.
I don’t know where the free/paid demarcations are, but I would actually recommend Guild Wars 2 or Elder Scrolls Online for a newbie. The latter does suck if you want to do any crafting as a free player (and inventory management in general will be hell) but you are there for the overworld gameplay. And both GW2 and ESO are very much geared toward playing solo in a crowd. As in you’ll walk around the overworld which is basically a single area with 10-20 other players. You’ll do event quests together, see each other while you go to the store or walk toward an instanced area, and so forth. But you won’t have to worry about someone telling you they are going to <REDACTED> your family because you didn’t skip a cutscene or aren’t holding aggro properly in newbie dungeon.
If you get into those? You can maybe find a guild and play some of the higher level content. Or you can go pick up FF-MMO or WoW or even SWTOR (apparently it is still going).
- Comment on Waypoint Writers Quit Over Removal Of Articles Related To New Steam Policy 2 days ago:
Good on nu-Waypoint but I do want to make it clear:
This is not the Waypoint that made a name for social justice oriented reporting and leftist gaming content. They all got fired. Austin Walker has nine million side hustles but is mostly over at Friends at the Table, Natalie Watson has a fucking BAFTA as part of Half Mermaid, and Rob/Chia/Patrick are now Remap. And the rest of the crew have also moved on.
This is the Waypoint that Vice created because they decided they wanted to have a gaming outlet again after firing old Waypoint. And mad props to Valens et al for standing up for THEIR writing but… big ol’ asterisk.
- Comment on Alabaster Dawn (CrossCode sequel) - Demo Release Date Trailer 2 days ago:
I don’t know enough about the underlying code (I am the guy who still makes jokes about how html is super easy before remembering that it has been 30 years since I made websites with frames…) but yeah. HTLM5+Javascript with a heavy reliance on Impact support libraries.
The end result is that it is a god damned shitshow to get running on modern platforms and controller support is an even bigger mess. Like, I STILL don’t entirely understand how it manages to detect the difference between an xinput device and a device Steam is binding to xinput… on Linux via Proton. And it tends to break for anything but a proper microsoft made xinput device…
- Comment on Alabaster Dawn (CrossCode sequel) - Demo Release Date Trailer 3 days ago:
Crosscode was a RIDICULOUSLY good game. It genuinely captured the feeling of playing an MMO for the first time and making new friends while having VERY dot hack vibes as you learn more about the world as a whole.
Combat was… fine. When it worked, it worked. When it didn’t, you lowered the difficulty.
Then you get to the dungeons. Which… honestly, I just did not have the patience for puzzles that spanned two or three rooms that I worked on over the course of five overall puzzles and had to have pinpoint accuracy to launch an orb six screens away. I love a good puzzle game (Talos Principle is love. Talos Principle is life) but far too many of these were just more frustrating than fun.
Which is a shame. Because most people nope the fuck out after the second or third dungeon… and that is basically right before the story goes completely off the rails in all the best ways. Shit went REAL hard in ways it had no business even trying but pulled off perfectly.
And… the engine was a technical marvel even if it was also a huge mistake.
So yeah. VERY VERY excited about Alabaster Dawn. And here is hoping Radical Fish didn’t write it in html5 this time.
- Comment on The Star Wars Outlaws flop - Guillemot blames waning interest in the franchise 3 days ago:
Its a fundamental mindset that goes into pitch meetings and the like.
Its the same idea behind game design/balance. If you listen to The Gamers, everything will be insanely OP and there will be no curve or balance at all. When the reality is they DO want that balance even if it means their favorite gun is slightly nerfed. But it will basically never be what they actually say when asked “what do you want?”
And same with franchises. People will always say “I want a game where I am Han or Luke” or “I want another KOTOR” and so forth. When the reality is that they don’t actually know what they want.
- Comment on The Star Wars Outlaws flop - Guillemot blames waning interest in the franchise 3 days ago:
Like I said immediately after that. Moments of it are brilliant but it is clear there were still a lot of ways the plot could have gone and the showrunners were keeping their options over. And, while I think Aldhani was good, the Citra weirdness and Cassian being a mary sue who could do the entire rebellion better than anyone who was there. Whereas once Vel became more of a main character (and used to contrast Mon’s inability to overtly act) and they focused more on one story rather than having the option to tell ten, it became one of my favorite shows of all time.
As for Season 2? I strongly disliked how zany and fun Cassian’s infiltration of the prototype facility was but also understand that they needed to make something so that the trailers aren’t just bleak and horrifying. But after that time skip it resumed being one of my favorite shows of all time And a big part of that was not even pretending that Mon isn’t the actual main character with Cassian and Kleya more a means to an end… which also fits with what they actually came to accept over the years.
- Comment on The Star Wars Outlaws flop - Guillemot blames waning interest in the franchise 4 days ago:
I actually strongly disagree.
Andor was an example of actually telling a new story. Yes, people were eager to know who Cassian was. But If you had polled the entire Star Wars fanbase, like five of us would have said “Oh, I want a deeply political story with a massive focus on social justice that heavily focuses on a politician and a spymaster’s daughter”. And we would have fully admitted we were on our bullshit.
Which was basically the problem with Outlaws. Everyone has been asking for a Han Solo game since people realized a Star Wars Pacman could be a thing. And you need to go REAL hard to make that live up to people’s expectations.
Which, getting back to Andor: I would go so far as to say everything up until The Prison is REALLY rough. You have moments of brilliance (basically any time Skarsgard is on screen) but it spends too much time on a plot point it had already dropped and Cassian is kind of a mary sue. But we were enthralled because this was something NEW (well, less so if you have ever read a political thriller but… Star Wars!). And once it found its legs… it was painful beauty in all the best ways.
And, to go back to “It is a Han Solo game” or “It is a Jedi knight but not a Jedi Knight” and so forth? It doesn’t take much to realize “I have seen this story a million times” and wander off. Like, I know I basically did that once I heard there were insta-fail stealth sections (although I generally try to not give Ubi money to begin with). Same with Ginger McBoring Face Survivor. It had an interesting hook (I LOVED Dark Times and Dass Jennir) and the gameplay was fine but when it came time to come back for seconds it was just “Eh, I’m good”.
Nah. We need more Star Wars that people don’t KNOW they want to see. Not just the tired crap that an exec would think was gold.
- Comment on Ubisoft Confirms a New First-Person Ghost Recon Game is in Development 4 days ago:
Eh. I am a huge fan of “one last gunfight” stories but video games rarely ever pull those off and I triply don’t expect Ubi to do it.
So it basically just leaves you with a sad and depressing reminder of aging.
Nah. I already don’t think the Wildlands mission was good, but let’s remember Sam with the VERY underrated Conviction.
- Comment on Ubisoft Confirms a New First-Person Ghost Recon Game is in Development 4 days ago:
Michael has had a hard decade or so and a lot of indications are that he already can’t be “Sam”.
At which point you basically just have the GR Wildlands (?) mission where he talks to you for like 30 seconds.
- Comment on Novels and Movies Offer Closure. Video Games Should Too. [The New York Times] 4 days ago:
I deeply hate articles like this. They are just exploiting the hellish state of the industry to argue for why the games they don’t like shouldn’t exist.
First and foremost: Clearly the author (and anyone agreeing with the thesis) doesn’t read or watch movies. Publishers and schools basically constantly encourage leaving a hook for a sequel because it is a lot easier to get a follow up in the same universe published. And that has always been true. Same with movies where the vast majority of major studio films are remakes or franchises now. Hell… television is a thing.
But second? It fundamentally ignores what is ACTUALLY facing the video games industry. Making a successful live service game is the holy grail because it is job security… until it isn’t. But it isn’t like releasing a critically acclaimed single player game will protect you from layoffs because your parent company wanted to juice the Q2 numbers. And just listen to developers like Xalavier Nelson Jr about how hard it is to even get funding for a game these days.
Shit like this is disgusting. It is “I don’t like X. I am going to say that X shouldn’t exist because I totally care about the industry that I can’t even be bothered to pay attention to”
- Comment on YouTuber Faces Possible Jail Time for Reviewing Gaming Handhelds 6 days ago:
Fascists care about setting precedent and “purchased vaguely illegal content” is some great precedent.
This just also is a smart attack because the usual crowd is going to come out to insist that it is OWN’s fault for playing Nintendo games and piracy is the greatest problem facing the world and that Nintendo Switch Online™ is a great service.
Its the same as when the christofacists attacked Pornhub via Visa et al in the US. Everyone hates revenge porn and child porn (well, except for certain heads of state…) so nobody is going to complain but it made it very clear the path to destroy content that goes against the fascists’ interests.
- Comment on YouTuber Faces Possible Jail Time for Reviewing Gaming Handhelds 1 week ago:
Seen this going around.
Is anyone familiar with the channel itself? Because based on the article, it sounds like mostly (presumably he) is getting made an example of for reviewing hardware that comes with ROMs on an SD Card? But… a LOT of these “retro consoles” do and outlets just ignore it in favor of their totally legit collection that they don’t talk about.
Did OWN actually show what is on the SD Card and emphasize that these units came with it?
- Comment on Valve change Steam's rules to let banks and credit card firms prohibit "certain kinds of adult only content" 1 week ago:
- No it won’t. People aren’t going to change their bank because their debit card doesn’t like a company
- It wouldn’t change anything. Take a look at said debit card. Notice how it is probably either Visa or Mastercard (Discover if you’re nasty (ain’t nobody use American Express)). THOSE are the companies that matter
- Don’t use your debit card for online purchases. Get a credit card. The fees are the same on the vendor end and you get much better protections AND cash back
And its always worth remembering what happened with Pornhub back in 2022. I genuinely don’t care what anyone thinks (or were told to think by the tates of the world…) about porn. “Special Interest Groups” largely speareheaded by right wing fascists built up a narrative that Pornhub was nothing but revenge porn (not wrong) and child porn (still way less than facebook or twitter. And I am talking 2022 twitter, not mechahitler twitter) which led to credit card companies immediately cutting it off and the company wiping almost its entire video library almost literally overnight.
And while I do think that was a net good, it is worth remembering where it came from and the implications of christofacists pressuring Visa et al to boycott a company for you.
So this is mostly Valve saying “We aren’t going to fight this fight and it is on you”. Which… considering how the usual response to a journalist fighting for the truth is “UGH! HOW FUCKING DARE YOU LINK TO PAYWALLED CONTENT!!!”… I don’t blame Gabe The Knife Collecting Libertarian at all.
- Comment on 8BitDo Pro 3 Controller Announced with Swappable Buttons, Available for Preorder 1 week ago:
- Update the firmware of the controller and dongle (technically the dongle isn’t necessary if you are using bluetooth). I did this in a VM because Linux
- Fully power down the controller. Switch to the connectivity mode you want
- Hold the Circle/B button and power on the controller to enable directinput mode
- Update Steam to the Beta branch
- Open Steam’s controller remapper
- Regardless of connectivity, you should have mappable L4/R4/BackPaddles. If you are using bluetooth you will also have the gyro
- Comment on 8BitDo Pro 3 Controller Announced with Swappable Buttons, Available for Preorder 1 week ago:
It isn’t that the buttons are less repairable.
It is that you get the same swappability AND drastically improved repairability by… making the controllers easier to disassemble to replace parts. Why build an elaborate magnetic swap system when you can just take off the face plate and swap a small piece of plastic?
- Comment on 8BitDo Pro 3 Controller Announced with Swappable Buttons, Available for Preorder 1 week ago:
Not sure how I feel about this (aside from it being 8bitdo so even understanding what SKU is what is hell).
The swappable buttons remind me a lot of the framework usb c dongle “ports”. In theory it sounds awesome. In practice it sounds like a LOT of engineering work going into something people will touch once when they buy it and never again. Would much rather a bigger focus on repairability so that swapping the buttons isn’t a big deal WITHOUT a magnetic system and special keypuller and so forth.
I also don’t think ANYONE will ever use the “arcade thumbsticks”.
- Comment on 8BitDo Pro 3 Controller Announced with Swappable Buttons, Available for Preorder 1 week ago:
Ultimate 2 is fully bindable in Steam (even gyro if you do directinput over bluetooth).
Valve gonna Valve but there isn’t a reason to assume a regression on that. But, like everything, don’t preorder things.
- Comment on ROG Xbox Ally Is $700 And Xbox Ally X Is $1050 1 week ago:
All signs are that is the “next xbox”
Migrating the Series to Windows would end horribly. Theoretically there can be a path from xbox OS to windows but it is going to be a pretty large update and will be prone to erroring out. And it also feels like a REAL good way to accidentally jailbreak your own consoles. And people already (rightfully) lose their shit when MS change the dashboard every year to add even more ads and make it even harder to find your god damned games.
I forget what The Leakers are saying but this console generation more or less started in 2020 and we are coming up on the 5th year. Assuming a 7 to 8 year cycle, the XBOX 2 Pi would be coming out as early as Fall of 2027. So massive software/firmware hell combined with support burden versus potentially breaking their lockstep with Sony and trying to pivot more toward the Nintendo “We are your second console” mindset. Except that your “second console” is also your netflix box and your MS word box and how you watch pornhub and so forth.
- Comment on ROG Xbox Ally Is $700 And Xbox Ally X Is $1050 1 week ago:
800-1200 for a low end “gaming laptop” isn’t super out of the realm.
Figuring out specs on the Z2s is… hard but pcgamer.com/…/amds-baffling-new-ryzen-z2-apus-for… seems to be the best comparison out there and it sounds like it is within the realm of the Steam Deck plus AI Magic NPU. Which is potentially incredibly good in a handheld for upscaling/framegen purposes if you roll that way (I don’t care if you do or don’t).
And the ROG Ally 2023s seem to be at the 650-900 range. So new chip gen combined with pre-pricing for tariffs and those are “reasonable” if you like the rest of the ROG specs. Personally? I think a 120 Hz 1080p display on a handheld is idiotic but if it is your only device there might be an argument. I forget if those support VRR.
But yeah. Definitely feels like another increasingly common MS fail which is becoming increasingly the case as they devote all of their competency toward enabling genocide (friendly reminder that BDS encourages boycotting of MS)
But with the Switch 2 just launching and being the perfect device that will give you a handy while you play? And the Steam Deck still kind of the best all arounder for closer to half the price than not? Really feels like this is being sent out to die.
- Comment on LIMBO and INSIDE are being delisted from GOG on July 17th 1 week ago:
GoG is very much about the marketing of game preservation. That said, to my knowledge, they (like Steam) don’t remove it from your account. Just from the store. So if you bought it, you can still play it.
GoG is a bit better in that their DRM model only requires you to authenticate to download, not reinstall. So you can theoretically archive all of your purchases if you have way more storage than you should. But it also is horrible at surfacing when an installer has an update so… mostly this is only viable for truly dead games.
- Comment on RimWorld - Odyssey expansion and update 1.6 out now! 1 week ago:
Auto scaling feels good IF it encourages you to play smarter or adapt.
Rimworld’s model encourages you to build the same death funnels/mazes on every single colony.
Which I think is my biggest complaint. Okay, no, the edgelord bullshit is my biggest. My SECOND biggest is that Rimworld is just so clearly designed around an optimum path. Whereas games like Dwarf Fortress or Oxygen Not Included very much are about actually running a colony. Making sure needs are satisfied and prioritizing them. Not “oh. Okay. The game decided I had too much food stockpiled so five meteors just hit my solar farm”.
- Comment on RimWorld - Odyssey expansion and update 1.6 out now! 1 week ago:
I want to like Rimworld but every time I even think of giving it another go it is like a massive wave of fans come out of the woodwork to scream about how they are all cannibals with slaves locked up to make pleasure farms and just… yeah.
Also I am not a fan of the storyteller system. It is nice that you get some variety but it mostly just boils down to tedium (and I think most players just switch to Random Ricky or whatever so it won’t actively destroy their colonies?). And, overall, I don’t like that you can go from success to wipe in like ten days. I am not saying everything needs to be Dwarf Fortress “Oh… we have been in a fail state for ten years…” but I do prefer there to be a long enough time period to actually realize I done fucked up.
- Comment on Now You Can Buy In-Game DLC And Pay It Off Later 1 week ago:
Financing can actually be an incredibly good idea if you expect inflation to increase at a greater rate than the interest. It literally saves you effective money.
That said, it also tends to involve a credit pull (which hurts said interest rates) and becomes a monthly bill.
So if you can afford the monthly bill AND it is a meaningfully large purchase AND you have every reason to expect inflation to increase more than the interest rate? It is actually a pretty good idea.
For even a 200 dollar battle pass: no, it is not.
- Comment on The Steam controller was ahead of its time 2 weeks ago:
Understand the Steam Controller came out 10 years ago and was meant to be used in the decade or two prior to that when “real PC games” didn’t support gamepads. Contrast that with today where CRPGs and RTSes often have official bindings.
There are two ways to use a trackpad. The first is to swipe (like a laptop trackpad) and the second is press and hold. For the former, the delta between where your thumb is and where it was is used to translate to cursor movement. For the latter, think of it like an analog stick. The center of the trackpad is 0 and your input is the delta between 0 and the location of your thumb at this moment.
So press and hold lets it emulate an analog stick and swiping is very useful for moving a cursor on the screen. And there are/were plenty of ways to switch between the modes on the fly.
- Comment on Lo-Fi Games know you've spent a billion hours with Kenshi, so they're working on making the sequel's discoveries even less predictable 2 weeks ago:
That would actually be awesome.
I like Kenshi a lot. But it really feels like Gothic in that the start of any given character more or less feels identical. Same steps to get to the point where you can start doing the stuff that actually makes the game really fun. A lot of CRPGs in the 00s/early 10s had that problem and Kenshi ramps it up to 16.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Yeah…
I liked the concept of GK and the core loop (particularly corpse handling) was great for plate spinning. But they just kept adding more and more and more. And it didn’t help that buying one “wrong” tech could mean you have to spend four or five weeks grinding enough research points of one color. Like, it is very much designed in the Call of Duty “number go up, bells and whistles” mindset.
But I think my biggest issue was that it is… it isn’t an edgelord game but it definitely feels like it REALLY loves Family Guy if you catch my drift. So whereas a Stardew or even a Kynseed has a world that you care about enough to put the time in, Graveyard Keeper actively makes me want to just walk away from everything. And apparently there isn’t even any closure on the core story since they wanted to leave it open for a sequel.
- Comment on The Steam controller was ahead of its time 2 weeks ago:
I mean… if you look at what I bought in the past five years you would think everyone was obsessed with spreadsheets and 100 hour CRPGs. That doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of games are made with cross platform in mind and many historically “M+KB only” games have excellent gamepad support. Sometimes, annoyingly, only in the console build but…
Yes. I do think Steam Input is awesome (even if it was basically just a cleaner interface to xpadder/joy2key). That isn’t the Steam Controller. The Steam Controller is what Valve was using to promote The Steam Machines which was their failed attempt at a console.
Again, just to make this clear: I am not saying the Steam Controller was bad. I am not saying Valve is bad. I AM saying it was not “forward thinking” and was very much rooted in a PC gaming era that was ending as orders were being shipped out.
- Comment on The Steam controller was ahead of its time 2 weeks ago:
“ahead of its time” to let people play a game from 1999 is kind of my point.
The Steam Controller was very much designed with 90s/VERY early 00s gaming in mind where you might have a closet full of controllers for every game you like. A wheel for racing, a HOTAS for flight sims, a different HOTAS for mech sims, a gamepad, a guitar controller, a spinning knob, etc.
But it came out at almost the exact same time that the entire industry standardized on xinput with different face button labels. AND when xinput was making it trivial to just use that xbox controller on your PC.
- Comment on The Steam controller was ahead of its time 2 weeks ago:
Strong disagree. If anything, it was the opposite.
The Steam Controller was AMAZING for playing games that did not have gamepad support. And I still think it is the best way to play Stardew Valley. But it also came out at a time when PC ports to console were more or less expected and even RTSes had gamepad support out of the box.
At which point you have a controller that only makes sense for a very limited subset of games.
That said, a Steam Controller 2 that is basically the deck minus the display would be amazing.
- Comment on Summer Games Done Quick 2025 started a few hours ago 2 weeks ago:
Its also worth remembering that the people who grew up with and have nostalgia for those “classic games” are late late 30s-mid 40s and have other stuff to do than to sit and watch a stream for five days.
At the end of the day, GDQ is a company that raises money for charities. And they need to focus on what will get the most eyes, and thus wallets, on the product. Watching someone glitch through the ceiling in a 2D sonic that nobody in the audience has any real interest in ain’t gonna do that. Breaking apart the games that the audience IS familiar with will.
I dunno. I fully agree it is the correct thing to do and am glad they do it. But I’ve been pretty sour on GDQ proper since AGDQ 2021. The Show Must Go On and all that but something about the discord mods going completely insane to shut down ANY mention of the violent insurrection just rubbed me the wrong way. And, to my knowledge, there wasn’t even a “Hey… this is really fun and all but maybe just check a few news sites during the break…” on the stream. I’ll watch a VOD if it goes viral but it is just hard to vibe with that looming over it.