aksdb

@aksdb@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are the best free mmorpgs for a beginner?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  If you like Lord of the Rings: Lord of the Rings Online is extremely nice story wise. It’s an old school MMO, but that shouldn’t shock you when you only know old school ones anyway.

  If a low initial fee is fine, wait for Elder Scrolls Online sale. You can regularly get the base game for $5 or so. It has no forced monthly cost so those $5 are worth hundreds of hours or quest content.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Star Wars Outlaws flop - Guillemot blames waning interest in the franchise⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s really sad. I truly believe that Yves (or rather the Guillemots in general) were passionate about game development once. Now it feels mostly corporate, even though they still claim to be pro-gamer and innovative and fun. It’s double sad because they acquired quite some good studios that have to be shaped into their corp structure and ultimately lose their innovation. It’s not as bad as old-school EA, but it’s still subjectively bad.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Steam is cracking down on porn games, to keep Payment Processors happy.⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it’s not that easy. From what I understand, the payment providers enforce that for the whole store, otherwise they don’t want to be involved. Quite shitty, but they have enough weight to pull shit like that off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Hard choice to make⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “No sex!!!” … “You don’t even give us grand kids 😭😭”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Romero Games reportedly met with Microsoft just a day before the publisher pulled funding for the studio, and there was 'no mention' of the decision that put over 100 people out of work⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think EA was still worse. At least in my perception.

  I think EA actually bought studios just to get the IP and immediately get rid of the employees. I also think they tried to milk a few of the IPs before letting it go downhill.

  MS, from what I can tell, gave studios quite a lot of freedom to do what they do best. I don’t think they intentionally wanted to fuck over studios, but they rather sacrificed them.

  Don’t get me wrong: that’s still bad. But there’s a difference between fucking studios over with intent and reacting badly to changed circumstances.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I imagine it’s rather licensing. If they have to provide the software at some point, they can’t use components they are not allowed to distribute. And I agree, that this will impact development costs. But with the law in place, this is not an unexpected cost but one that can be factored in. Might be, that some live services are then no longer viable… but I don’t care. There are more games than anyone could play and games are cancelled or not even started to develop all the time for various reasons. One more or less is just noise.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Same for the “online only design” argument. The moment they decide it’s not viable anymore and they want to shut it down: what does it matter to them, what players do with it? As long as they offer the service themselves, no one is bugging them. (Although I would absolutely be in favor of also getting self hosting options right from the start, I am realist enough to accept, that this would indeed lower economical feasibility of some projects.)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Statement on Stop Killing Games - VIDEOGAMES EUROPE⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Do you want to know more?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft layoffs are reportedly underway, with ZeniMax and King employees losing their jobs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you go for subscription, you accept that the stuff is temporal. Or at least you should. So it should make no practical difference if a game vanishes because it gets pulled from the catalog or if you decide to cancel the subscription because you consider it too expensive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft layoffs are reportedly underway, with ZeniMax and King employees losing their jobs⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If it fits your gaming profile, it’s a pretty good deal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Day 332 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games l've been playing⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  My impression of Starfield (after release, at least) was, that it was a bunch of pretty well intended and implementation subsystems (as is, to my knowledge quite common in game development; each team works on a different one), but they just don’t fit really well together. All the subsystems are good parts of a theoretically good overall big picture, but the complexity seemed too high for them to actually flesh out the big picture.

  Technically it all works, but IMO you feel the conceptual gaps whenever you transition (UX wise) from one gameplay mechanic to the next. It just doesn’t (or didn’t) feel like a cohesive game.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨SteamOS massively beats Windows on the Legion Go S⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would rather bet that most people have no clue what an operating system is and that the one they (unknowingly) use is made by Microsoft. On the other hand if they play games (on that PC), they will know Steam, because they actively had to install it and click it’s icon frequently.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Helldivers 2 and Palworld devs wish players understood that 'easy' additions and updates are sometimes really hard: 'That's half a year's work. That takes six months'⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It kind of is, unfortunately. Games are often developed with a lot of pressure and the constant dangling of the budget being cut off. I don’t think the devs are incompetent and think what they produced (code quality wise) would be the best, but what could they do if they need a result to present to the publisher end of week and then don’t get money (aka time) to clean it up but instead they get the next deadline.

  On the other hand I am also not sure I can blame publishers. Things can easily spiral out of control if managed badly in the other direction… see Cloud Imperium Games (i.e. Star Citizen).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 hits 1m sales in just one day⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  The second one gives you the necessary flashbacks to catch up if you should intend to follow the story. It also explains all the basics of the game mechanics as part of the quests.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2k Launcher has been fully removed from all games⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Ah, good to know. Thanks!

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨2k Launcher has been fully removed from all games⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Even CD Project Red added such shit. Instead of directly launching Witcher or Cyberpunk I now have to go through a(nother) launcher now. Pointless.

  Baldurs Gate 3 needed one from the beginning as well.

  I don’t get it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨After 350,000 signatures in an EU consumer rights campaign, Ubisoft is adding offline modes to The Crew games - but not the now-dead original⁩ ⁨⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  While I like and appreciate the campaign, the issue IMO is bigger. IoT devices for example even have environmental impact when services behind them get discontinued.

  I would therefore like a more general rule: whenever a product is discontinued for whatever reason, all necessary documents, sources, etc need to be released to allow third parties to take over maintenance (that also includes schematics for hardware repairs).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What are some game series you would like to see revived? And if possible, which entry should the new game follow from?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Unreal Tournament

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Actors demand action over 'disgusting' video game sex scenes⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wonder if that would be a genuine use case for “AI”. If the voice actor consents to have his voice represented in such a scene but doesn’t want to play it out in a studio, the computer model could take over that part.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is mafia 3 really that bad?⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s an okay game, but far worse than the first two. They forced an open world onto it, and made it pretty repetitive. The DLC is more linear and feels a lot more like a typical Mafia story telling.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Louis Rossmann's response to harsh criticism of "Stop Killing Games" from Thor of @PirateSoftware⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Its not said that they need devs to target home machines, it says they need to give the resources so people can host it themselves, period.

  Before attacking me with such an arrogant rant, maybe read what I wrote.

  I said:

  Once they release the source, people can refactor or reengineer it to run on smaller scale, replace proprietary databases with free ones, etc.

  So of course it’s about releasing anything (!) at all.

  I simply said that you can’t compare a small fan project like a WoW self hosted server with Blizzards infrastructure and the requirements to have a high available setup for millions of players.

  ArenaNet is quite open about their infrastructure and you can see that this is far from trivial, but also allows them to have zero downtime updates. That is a huge feat, but also means that self hosting that thing will be a pain in the ass. Yet I would not want them to not do this just so it could be easily (!) self hosted some time in the distant future.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Louis Rossmann's response to harsh criticism of "Stop Killing Games" from Thor of @PirateSoftware⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Such an architecture is typically shit. Building a system that is simple AND scales high won’t work. Complexity usually gets added to cope with scale. If we don’t allow companies to build scalable (i.e. complex) systems, we simply won’t get such games anymore.

  Again: I am completely in favor of forcing devs to release everything necessary to host it. I am not in favor of forcing devs to target home machines for their servers, when their servers clearly have completely different requirements. That’s unrealistic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Louis Rossmann's response to harsh criticism of "Stop Killing Games" from Thor of @PirateSoftware⁩ ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Not a fair comparison. The private servers were written with the small hosting in mind. They would very likely never scale to what Blizzard has in place. For all I know, Blizzard could run their stuff on a Mainframe with specific platform optimizations against an IBM DB2.

  But I also don’t think this has to be transferable to a local setup without effort either. Once they release the source, people can refactor or reengineer it to run on smaller scale, replace proprietary databases with free ones, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo has DMCA’ed Sudachi’s GitHub⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  They keep paying money for attorneys and court proceedings but don’t get anything in return, since the code is out there and will just be shared again by someone else. Hence: whack-a-mole

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gothic, Risen, and Elex Dev "Piranha Bytes" Reportedly the Latest Embracer Studio to Shut Down⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Actual news: two leads (Jennifer and Björn Pankratz) founded a new studio: Pithead Studios

  I guess they can’t carry over any old IP, but at least we might get more Gothic-like games.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Team Fortress 2⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Sniper.

  I like to stand there, with my bunny ears as hat, and wave at my dead opponents.

  I think that’s the only class I managed to get all achievements for.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Masahiro Sakurai refused to add Dolby Surround to a Kirby game because players had to sit through the logo⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  At least some games parallelize this. The game then already loads assets, caches shaders etc while the intro rolls.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Masahiro Sakurai refused to add Dolby Surround to a Kirby game because players had to sit through the logo⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  That information belongs in the specs/feature list on the encasing, not in the fucking splash screen as dedicated video.

  For the buyer that would be too late and for the one who bought it already and now wants to play it’s utterly pointless.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut - Launch Trailer | PC Games⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  I think the relevant news here is the PC support, not the directors cut. There is no other version for PC (AFAIK).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Microsoft says it needs games like Hi-Fi Rush the day after killing its studio⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Gamepass isn’t cloud gaming, though. It’s a game subscription, but cloud gaming is only optional and only available for a subset of games. All of the games however can be downloaded and are played locally.