NuXCOM_90Percent
@NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
- Comment on Avowed - Thoughts After Playing For 10 Hours & Interviewing The Devs 1 hour ago:
It was an amazing expansion that deserves to be in the same conversation as Planescape: Torment
But whoa boy was it incomplete and jank.
- Comment on Avowed - Thoughts After Playing For 10 Hours & Interviewing The Devs 12 hours ago:
Both Pillars and Tyranny are nowhere near on the same level as a New Vegas or a KOTOR 2 but, trust me, Obsidian continued to launch games REAL hot well after they made a south park game.
They haven’t done a “This is 75% of one of the greatest games ever” since Mask of the Betrayer. But they are still Obsidian.
- Comment on Avowed - Thoughts After Playing For 10 Hours & Interviewing The Devs 20 hours ago:
Mortismal has a terrifyingly high tolerance for jank. But if they are excited then I am excited. Both because we tend to have very similar tastes in CRPGs but also because they are one of the bigger PoE fans on the internet.
- Comment on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl | Review Thread 2 days ago:
Skimmed through a few of these earlier and REALLY excited for later today (pre-ordered on Steam for the bonuses, will refund if it is a total trainwreck)
The scores are all over the place because this is a B-A game so it has to actually technically perform well (unlike AA-AAA games like Jedi Survivor that get a pass…), But the actual text is fairly consistent:
The world is amazing. The early-mid game balance is brutal and unforgiving and you will spend a LOT of time using AKs so degraded that they WILL jam. The emergent behavior from the storms and enemy placements lead to frantic struggles to reach cover. And the performance and bugs are all over the place and we all REALLY hope the day-one patch fixes things but nobody is that optimitsic.
And… as a STALKER fan who loved SoC and CoP (and didn’t hate CS…):
- Comment on The PlayStation Portal remote player experience to evolve with new system update 2 days ago:
but games consoles and its peripherals are indeed related enough to games to be allowed.
I still have no idea what you are on about and it sounds like you actually have a different set of rules you want to enforce.
So rather than confuse everyone when you are tired… maybe update the sidebar and the list of rules so that people know what you want this board to discuss?
- Comment on How Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 uses machine learning AI, and how much of your data it might need 2 days ago:
Actually “data” is a better term for that.
Bandwidth is capacity in the moment. Data is what is metered by Comcast.
To put it in less technical terms: Bandwidth is your max speed at any given moment. Data is your max range. The more Bandwidth you use, the faster you consumer your Data
- Comment on The PlayStation Portal remote player experience to evolve with new system update 2 days ago:
REALLY curious how “rigid” your interpretation is and how you feel this is not “related to games”
- Comment on The PlayStation Portal remote player experience to evolve with new system update 2 days ago:
…
Wait. It didn’t support the PSN cloud from the start?
Like, I thought it was questionable that it couldn’t play ANY games locally (PS1 games run on a potato at this point) but sure. But I assumed it at least supported the cloud streaming Sony occasionally remembers they try to sell.
This thing was SOLELY for playing people’s own PS5s? What the fuck?
- Comment on Freelance Video Game Journalists Are Propping Up The Industry, And Many Are Being Paid Dogshit In Return 1 week ago:
Yeah, Rawlings is awesome. I forget if Matt Easton ever did anything for GS or if he only does Insider (and scholagladiatoria) or what.
For me it is mostly that everyone else has fun and does the “Okay, this wouldn’t work but it is really cool. It might be inspired by XYZ”. Whereas the armor guy just gets incredibly smug and complains that the armor on that Ork isn’t historically accurate.
And yeah. Had a bad feeling when they skipped the week after the Fandom layouts were announced. And last week (the ArmA 3 DLC one) has a note from Dave saying that is the final episode because he was fired.
For what its worth, Jonathan and the rest of the Royal Armouries do weekly-ish shows. Less video game oriented but the same gun nerd logic and the discussion of historical context.
- Comment on GOG launch their Preservation Program to make games live forever with hundreds of classics being 're-released' 1 week ago:
So glad you contributed that.
Also: Be involved with an acquisition or a “pilot program”. You have multiple managements.
- Comment on GOG launch their Preservation Program to make games live forever with hundreds of classics being 're-released' 1 week ago:
That is not at all what I said.
Sell software. But customers need to understand they are being sold a license with terms. That was the big controversy on Steam semi-recently and that will continue to be a big controversy because people always forget because nobody wants to think about it
And yes, I do think providing offline installers is good (it is why I still re-buy games on GoG). But unless people have massive amounts of dedicated storage, they are not going to keep all their games downloaded. AND, because there is rarely a notification of an update, they are going to not even be keeping all their games and will instead have “launch” versions of some.
And, as GoG themselves demonstrated, when the site goes down you aren’t getting all your games out in time.
So… you have a license with terms and you are going to go download some torrents when the service shuts down. So… what is the meaningful difference against a Steam or EGS game (assuming there are no additional DRMs on top)?
Or we can just get angry and yell at each other because someone… said they liked your favorite store? Do I need to say why that is fucking stupid and self defeating?
- Comment on GOG launch their Preservation Program to make games live forever with hundreds of classics being 're-released' 1 week ago:
How else would you do ‘buy to own’ for software
I wouldn’t for anything where I don’t 100% own the license and rights in perpetuity.
Because GoG has already lost the right to sell many games (I want to say they lost Interplay two or three times?). And it is a matter of time until a publisher demands a game be fully revoked (which has happened on Steam a handful of times?).
Don’t promise things you can’t deliver on.
As for something where I do own the license and it will last the lifetime of my company? Bare minimum, I would provide a way to be properly notified of whenever an installer is updated. And I wouldn’t have quite so many “secret” serials required for games (like UT or OFP or whatever).
- Comment on GOG launch their Preservation Program to make games live forever with hundreds of classics being 're-released' 1 week ago:
Good on GoG and I do genuinely love most of what they have done.
But the “buy here and you own it” bullshit is a real laugh. It is still just a license that can be revoked at any point. And the “just download it and have it forever” is untenable for larger libraries and… the French Monk Debacle already demonstrated why.
For those not aware, in the first year or so of gog’s existence, they pretended they were shutting down the website and told everyone they had like 48 hours to download everything. People lost their shit, hug of death, etc. CDP immediately apologized and then put a “fun” character in The Witcher 2 that referenced that.
But… that is the reality. If the site goes down, you are only getting a fraction of your library, if that. And GoG have always been horrible about letting you know when a game is updated if you use the standalone installers. So, regardless, you are pirating shit when the site goes down. Same as Steam.
- Comment on Freelance Video Game Journalists Are Propping Up The Industry, And Many Are Being Paid Dogshit In Return 1 week ago:
and Fandom owns and is Giant Bomb.
So yes. Giant Bomb laid off two staff and replaced them with contractors.
The various editors at the blog sites generally don’t want to do mass layoffs either. But the end result is the same. People lose their jobs so someone can get paid much less and have no benefits do that job instead.
- Comment on Freelance Video Game Journalists Are Propping Up The Industry, And Many Are Being Paid Dogshit In Return 1 week ago:
Who reads written text over their favorite YouTube personality, or the SEO garbage that pops up first on their search, or first party articles/recs on steam, and so on?
Few layers to that.
SEO still heavily favors sites like IGN and Eurogamer. Most people aren’t looking at the by-line to see who actually wrote the article.
The other much more insidious aspect? A lot of the legacy influencer outlets ARE still using contractors.
Remap (formerly Waypoint) is awesome and are generally well regarded for having great rates for both written and on-air content. They are also a very “lean” org consiting of three people but pay Janet Garcia to show up for a podcast every week and even a stream or two a month. Janet is ALSO a “cohort” on MinnMax where it is less clear who are contractors and who are core staff.
And, to clarify, I don’t have a (significant) problem with that. It is how you get a broader range of voices out there. But it is still similar to having most of your writing team be contractors (… also, Remap contracts out a decent number of articles).’
But then you look at other outlets. Gamespot spent years HEAVILY dependent on “reaction” content. If you ever watched Jonathan Ferguson talk about guns in video games, that was Dave Jewitt’s work. And… they fired Dave two-ish weeks ago. Haven’t heard if Jonathan plans to still do reaction content for them but you can bet they can find other contractors (like the douche bag who rants about armor).
And… on the other side of the Fandom family you have Giant Bomb. Who have outright fired two core staff members (Voidburger and Jason Oestreicher) as well as a regular collaborator from Fandom proper (Bayley) all so they could repurpose that funding for contractors. And… at this point there are good arguments that Mike Miniotti is in more content than most of the core staff.
So the influencer based outlets are rapidly doing the same. Some of it is just the necessity of working in a dying industry where funding is mostly dependent on whether fans “vibe” with you. But it is only a matter of time until we have the same content farms. Hell, I want to say that is exactly what Fandom DID until they bought cnet gaming.
- Comment on Pocketpair Confirms Which Patents Nintendo And The Pokemon Company Are Suing It Over 1 week ago:
Sega and RGG just standing there daring Nintendo to try shit.
- Comment on Steam Game Recording is now out of beta 2 weeks ago:
So… I’ve had this enabled throughout the beta and it is definitely recording clips based on the thumbnail previews and the like. But when I open the timeline editor to make clips I just have a spinning wheel and it never starts playing the video.
Anyone have an idea of what package I need to install? Haven’t done a proper debug yet (was hoping Valve would magically fix this for me) but Fedora with KDE and Wayland.
- Comment on The Binding of Isaac Rebith is getting online multiplayer in 2 weeks! 2 weeks ago:
BoI is still one of the best feeling roguelites ever.
But it also very much suffers from the design philosophies of the 2010s. Because you are going to do one of:
- Spend a LOT of brainpower memorizing all the upgrades and their synergies
- Have a wiki open off to the side and reference it every few rooms
- Just YOLO and feel like the entire game is RNG
Because there are way too many upgrades that end up being downgrades that can just kill a run completely unless you plan for them. And there is no good way to understand that in game.
- Comment on PSA: Break Your New York Times Games Streak Today. 2 weeks ago:
Even ignoring the workers’ solidarity aspect of it:
It is actually a really good practice to break those login/usage streaks with ALL services. I read a lot of ebooks and I generally will have a “streak” of even two or three years with amazon kindle since I try to read for at least 20 minutes every night. Over the past year or so I’ve started to migrate out of the amazon ecosystem to better support authors and… I definitely find myself hesitating when picking my next book because I COULD read this non-kindle book or… I could read this other book I have via kindle (the prices ARE good) and make number go up. And Amazon realized that we don’t always have an internet connection so they’ll log that to prevent the old streak breaking that came from not bothering to connect to the hotel wifi.
And the same happens with games. I dip my toe into ESO once or twice a year and it always amuses me how much of that is geared up to make you log-in every single day for a month.
- Comment on Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages 3 weeks ago:
Are you the lemmy cops? Is it your responsibility to chase any link to someone’s website across every instance and make sure people know they are a bit of a jackass?
If you think GoL should be a banned source, take it up with the various moderators. If you think only primary sources should be allowed (which I actually agree with), that is also a discussion to be had.
But rushing in to berate people for linking to one of the most popular news aggregators for a story that people would be interested in because you don’t like the guy who owns that site? All you are doing is discouraging people from making posts in the future.
- Comment on Steam games will now need to fully disclose kernel-level anti-cheat on store pages 3 weeks ago:
I really don’t see a need to drag community drama everywhere. GoL is one of the biggest aggregator blogs out there for… linux gaming. Whether we should prioritize original sources over aggregators is a different discussion.
But yeah. Liam is great for news aggregating but he is 100% the stereotypical linux gamer and has a long history of starting random shit. Still annoyed by how fast he got everyone to shit on the Duckstation devs because they didn’t want to be exploited.
- Comment on BioWare knew the deepest secrets of Dragon Age lore 20 years ago, and locked it away in an uber-plot doc 3 weeks ago:
The architect of the series who was actively involved collected plans and notes into a lore bible over 10 years ago.
You are arguing semantics.
- Comment on Are any games using neural networks for better hard AI that doesn't cheat? 3 weeks ago:
This is reddit. Gotta ignore someone’s post to largely make the same point they did but much more aggressively.
- Comment on Are any games using neural networks for better hard AI that doesn't cheat? 3 weeks ago:
This has been discussed a lot over the decades (with some VERY good articles written by assholes we try to pretend don’t exist))
The gist of it is: AI cheats because the alternative isn’t “fun” and rapidly outpaces humans.
Because in an RTS? After you get a build order down, the big decider is Actions Per Minute (APM). From a build standpoint, it is the idea of triggering the appropriate research the absolute second you have enough minerals. From a combat standpoint, it is rapidly issuing move and attack orders so that you always win the combat triangle. The former isn’t significantly different than just having cheaper research or faster build times. The latter is actively demoralizing in the same way that we all died inside when we first got permission to go online in Starcraft. Except at a level that even the good players realize they ain’t shit.
For grand strategy games (barring real-ish time ones like Stellaris) you basically have two real approaches. The first is the games with research options (… like Stellaris. Look, I have been playing a lot of Stellaris lately). We try not to acknowledge it but RNG has a massive impact on that when you really want to get torpedoes but no options are popping so you are just doing the fastest research choices you can to get a new pool. And the difficulty option there is… a known order.
The other are the very elaborate fixed tech trees. Obviously this gets back to build order. And the reality is… the benefit gained from rapidly updating the hard mode AI to use the current meta just isn’t worth it. That IS somewhere that an optimizing function can be applied to (and… semi-off-the-record but that has been a thing for over a decade and is why devs aren’t THAT surprised when a “new” meta takes over in a strategy game) but it becomes a question of how much it is worth it.
All that said, we are seeing a lot more effort put into “learning” AI in racing games (driveatars) and fighting games because those tend to be cases where even the best AI is still expected to be “human” and we aren’t TOO demoralized when we realize we are in a pub with Daigo. That said… there is a reason that modern SNK Bosses tend to have super armor rather than frame perfect inputs. Because the former is “bullshit” but the latter is just mean.
- Comment on U.S. Copyright Office rejects DMCA exemption to support game preservation 3 weeks ago:
Actually quite a lot of games had multiple revisions even as far back as cartridges. That is why you’ll often hear a speedrunner say “This is done on the 1.01 North American version” and the like. Mostly my point was more to say that there is no question of “did every single patch get archived”
And as a huge Dawn of War fan: you can have every single patcher from Fileplanet and STILL not have a snowball’s chance of getting the version you want. But that is more comedic than not.
Because:
MVC2 is preserved as long as you’ve got at least one other person to play it with.
You can play MVC2. You can’t preserve the CULTURE of mvc2. Because, to switch gears to Third Strike: You and me probably aren’t going to do the kind of insane crap that folk like Justin Wong are able to do.
But also, like I mentioned above: You can get a hotel room game going. You won’t have anywhere near enough thoery crafting and experience to really run into cases where one character is noticeably better than another.
With a Discord server, you could fill out a lobby even for a game like MAG that has over 100 players in a match, provided they actually gave you the server to run it yourself.
Let me tell you something as a Tribes 2 player. I can basically get a full server most nights of the week. But all the folk who are still playing Tribes? They never stopped. So the experience of hopping into a game in 2024 is absolutely nothing like it was back in 2004. It is a completely different kind of amazing but it is not “Tribes 2” from a “cultural” standpoint
- Comment on U.S. Copyright Office rejects DMCA exemption to support game preservation 3 weeks ago:
Which I don’t disagree with (even if I suspect I do tend to lean more toward not making extra work for overworked devs than many)
The issue is arguing that you are preserving the culture when that very much isn’t Because what “meta” is there in MvC2 without other players? We all had our moment of “I am really good at Tekken” when we played against bots… and then were completely demolished by some kid at a truck stop who actually knew combos.
Which gets to what we see in reality where we DO have basically every version of MvC2 because it was before software patching was common. I would need to check what is popular for specifics but, like with all games, some versions get played and some don’t. And it doesn’t matter if you have every single revision of Karnov’s Revenge AND two different fan patches to rebalance it: if nobody plays it the meta doesn’t exist.
Which gets back to the difference between preserving games/bytes and preserving culture.
- Comment on U.S. Copyright Office rejects DMCA exemption to support game preservation 3 weeks ago:
But how feasible is it to have a recording of every single time any high school brit lit class put on Shakespear? Uhm… okay, the NSA got you covered but you get my point.
But, again, is a copy of the state of WoW on October 25th 2024 all that important when you consider that what really matter are the players and… I dunno, I guess they are talking about the expensive mounts?
Which gets back to the argument of preserving the games themselves (which I think has a lot of merit) versus preserving the culture around them. And people tend to conflate the two because they think “we are preserving culture” gives them a stronger argument.
- Comment on U.S. Copyright Office rejects DMCA exemption to support game preservation 3 weeks ago:
Arguing that game perservation is cultural preservation gets messy.
Let’s use a somewhat recent example: Overwatch. A lot of us LOVED Overwatch during the first few years. Then there were enough changes to balance out teams for competitive play that a lot of us feel it is no longer the same game and bounced off of it. Similarly, Darkest Dungeon 1 was kind of infamous for some major balance changes during early access that proved the true horror was gamers.
What is the answer there? Is it to back up every single version of every single game? Ha! You’ve fallen for my trap card! (also, remember when yu-gi-oh wasn’t a game where it is about building a deck so you can turn one wipe the other player?).
Because youtubers like Josh Strife Hayes who specialize in MMOs and multiplayer games have talked about this to varying degrees. Josh can play a really interesting MMO where he is literally the only person online for most of his recording session. But… that means he can only talk about the mechanics of the MMO and can’t really talk about progression or what it was like to play.
And that extends to “normal” games. There was a time when EVERYONE who was playing Tunic (and La-Mulana before it) was in chat rooms and message boards trying to understand the secrets. And countless video game essayists will acknowledge this. That coming back to a game in 2024 is very much about trying to understand what the game was in 2004. Hell, Illusory Wall has done some great videos where he actually researches this and points out how many misconceptions people have about what the players of Dark Souls 1 were doing which… is amazing.
Which gets back to preservation of culture. Shakespeare’s works are undeniably influential. But what is preservation? Is it the script? Is it the 1968 film where we all saw some boobies? Probably not, but that is what we see in high school. Is it the 199t movie with a Sword 9mm? I actually have a lot of arguments for why it should be but…
Because also? Most of what people learn about Shakespeare completely ignores the… for lack of a more humorous term, cultural aspects of it. Almost everything that man (allegedly?) wrote was a commentary on politics of the day. And you can read an annotated copy that will add in these references Pop Up Video style (remember that?) but that still lacks the meaning of the dimwitted young actor playing Juliet who doesn’t realize and the veteran playing Mercutio who is keeping an eye on the audience and is ready to bolt if people get angry or some cops show up and decide it is too on the nose and go to beat on Billy S.
But also? Who is to say that is any less culturally important than a 10th grade Brit Lit class putting on a performance where Tybalt both decided it would be funny to pretend he is Keanu in Bill and Ted AND spent all night playing Tribes and never memorized his lines so he is just over-emoting while trying to read off a bunch of cue cards in his sleeve? And the class is equal parts amused and pissed off while the teacher takes sips from a flask because this is the third class that day who did something stupid.
And, going back to games: Who is to say that playing Dark Souls by yourself is any less culturally relevant than watching the influencers of the day lose their shit and get mad at chat because they can’t beat Ornstein and Smough?
Because media is not in a vacuum. Media’s impact on culture is informed by the people who consume it.
Which is why I increasingly think that, from a game and cultural preservation standpoint, youtube and twitch and the blogs of the day are actually MUCH more important to preserve.
- Comment on Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut is OUT NOW! 3 weeks ago:
Yeah. I am not the biggest fan of VNs but last year-ish Cado at Remap did a stream where they did a run of this and I went from “Ugh, VN bullshit. Ah well” to “I NEED THIS”
(Un)fortunately, it feels like every single time I sit down to play it I hear there is another major new update coming. So… here is to finally getting to sit down and see even more of it.
- Comment on No Man's Sky The Cursed Expedition 4 weeks ago:
Huh. I had heard people were bringing resources in but never really followed through on how. Might be worth keeping a long term game.
And yeah. I like the grind and progression of the expedition. I just would want to bring a couple dozen hyperdrive fuels and a launch drive fuel regen mod into any expedition since that is always where I lose interest. In the base game it is fine to grind as you go. In an expedition it is genuinely frustrating to realize I needed to jump to the OTHER system along the way if I wanted to get the radioactive fish or whatever the hell or I landed too far away from the resource I need for a goal. It just results in me playing something else after having had five or six hours of fun that expedition.
