ampersandrew
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world
- Comment on GOG caught using AI tools, head of product tweeting AI Instagram scams 10 hours ago:
Not anymore, but I doubt a graphic like the one they used would have cost a pretty penny.
- Comment on Horizon Hunters Gathering reportedly delays Horizon 3, as Sony prioritizes multiplayer PS5 game 1 day ago:
Sure, don’t update it, and it will continue to exist without further intervention from the developer. We used to get this all the time. A multiplayer mode that isn’t expected to continue to grow or maintain an active player base month after month, because that’s an absurd goal to hit that only a lucky few will ever succeed at under the best of circumstances.
- Comment on Horizon Hunters Gathering reportedly delays Horizon 3, as Sony prioritizes multiplayer PS5 game 1 day ago:
Xbox doesn’t really do exclusives, but that’s worse than doing “exclusives” that end up on PC months later?
- Comment on Horizon Hunters Gathering reportedly delays Horizon 3, as Sony prioritizes multiplayer PS5 game 1 day ago:
Although spin-offs and even an MMORPG then surfaced, there were hopes that a new single-player title would arrive as soon as 2027.
I think plenty of Horizon fans would be just fine if they integrated a non-live-service multiplayer mode alongside the main single player mode, but AAAs have just about forgotten how to make multiplayer modes that aren’t live service.
- Comment on GOG caught using AI tools, head of product tweeting AI Instagram scams 1 day ago:
If it results in less or worse work getting done, we’ll either see it manifest as the customers and it will affect my future purchasing decisions with no harm to what I’ve already bought, or they’ll stop drinking the kool aid. I worked on a game project with a die-hard NFT believer, and even he eventually backed down on trying to shoehorn them into the game after it was clear they were more controversial and less productive than monetizing the game with a Stripe account.
- Comment on GOG caught using AI tools, head of product tweeting AI Instagram scams 1 day ago:
I don’t care much at all that they used an AI generated banner ad for a store sale, but plenty of people do, and it was predictable that they would. If they wanted to save money, it would have only cost them a single game’s revenue to find someone on Fiverr to make a similar graphic.
- Comment on 1 day ago:
GOG just had an AMA and they had a cheeky answer for FF7 in particular that makes it sound like it’ll be in the next batch or that the ink is dry on the deal that will bring it to GOG.
- Comment on A Baldur's Gate HBO series is in the works, will be set directly after Baldur's Gate 3 with new and returning characters 2 days ago:
BG2 only takes a few things from the previous game and throws out the rest. I haven’t played Dragon Age, but Mass Effect and Telltale infamously had “the choice diamond” where they respect your choices up until it has to eventually lead somewhere, so they all end up funneling back into only a few options. These are just different ways to dress up the same problem. Fallout the TV show does exactly the same thing as Fallout 2 did to Fallout 1, which is the same as your Dark Souls example: it’s set far enough in the future that you’re unlikely to run into anything contradictory.
- Comment on A Baldur's Gate HBO series is in the works, will be set directly after Baldur's Gate 3 with new and returning characters 2 days ago:
Video games sequeling other choice-based video games run into the same issue, and you quickly forget once you’re in it that maybe you treated Shady Sands differently than the canonized decision about it. As it takes place further in the future than any of the games, it acknowledges what happened in their past, creates new events that happened since we last saw them, and also steers them in new directions, because people change, and the old leaders would have long since been replaced by new ones. That’s all just part of continuing a story. The only way to avoid having to pick a canon is to never continue it ever, but I’m happy we got this show at all.
- Comment on A Baldur's Gate HBO series is in the works, will be set directly after Baldur's Gate 3 with new and returning characters 2 days ago:
To each their own, but I thought they completely nailed the tone, respectfully incorporated the established fiction, and even wrote some great new characters.
- Comment on A Baldur's Gate HBO series is in the works, will be set directly after Baldur's Gate 3 with new and returning characters 2 days ago:
We’ve had a pretty good hit rate with video game adaptations lately. Fallout and Arcane are both among my favorite TV shows. I think we finally got far enough along that show runners are gamers themselves and aware of what makes these things good and what needs to change to be a good show.
- Comment on A Baldur's Gate HBO series is in the works, will be set directly after Baldur's Gate 3 with new and returning characters 2 days ago:
Other than Jaheira, almost all of the connective tissue is found in Act 3, but that makes sense, because it takes place in the titular city. There are at least two characters in Act 3 that are not in your party that return from previous games.
spoiler
One is in the Shar temple, and one is in the Bhaal temple.
- Comment on Horizon Hunters Gathering - Announcement Trailer | PS5 Games 3 days ago:
Both Dauntless and Horizon are games inspired by Monster Hunter that I like more than Monster Hunter. And not only does this look worse than both of those, it’ll probably be monetized to hell.
- Comment on "Benefit of the doubt" is a very important aspect of a game's success 3 days ago:
Even after having gone through the tutorial, 2 hours is more than enough time to see the loop of Highguard several times and decide you don’t like it. 2 hours is more than enough to count as “the old college try” for any game, as it should be a goal of the designers to make your game fun and interesting right away. If I’m waiting more than how long it would take me to watch a feature length movie before I start having fun, then they screwed up.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
I mean, to be clear, I never liked Overwatch. Back when it was new, my friends were so into it that playing it with them was the only way we’d spend any time together. They’re the ones who miss that launch game, lol.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 4 days ago:
I can’t say that was my experience when I played it last year, and you can see my recorded play times for the series below in this thread.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 4 days ago:
Apparently it’s doing really well in Japan and less well elsewhere, but its success in Japan was enough to more than make up for it and exceed their forecast.
- Comment on 4 days ago:
This is salt in the wound for my friends who miss launch Overwatch.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 4 days ago:
If you say so. I can tell you I’ve been tracking my times pretty judiciously in the past year. For each of those Borderlands games, my times were:
Borderlands 1: 23h17m Borderlands 2: 35h15m Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel: 22h21m Borderlands 3: 35h25m Borderlands 4: 28h26m
So I guess Borderlands 2 wasn’t longer, like I may have remembered it. In each case for the above, I basically just did enough side missions to keep pace with the recommended level of the next main story mission, which amounted to a few hours per game. All of those times include the DLC, and the DLC is also very similarly sized and paced across games.
- Comment on Meta progression in roguelites was fun for a while, but it's starting to feel unrewarding 4 days ago:
Add the fact that roguelikes are almost exclusively procedurally generate
If they’re not procedurally generated, they’re not roguelikes. It’s a defining feature. It’s also not lazy to define a set of rules that generate good, interesting levels every time you boot it up. I’m basically the only guy who didn’t enjoy Hades, and a large reason why is that their level generation is sorely lacking compared to so many others (though Hades is more lite than like) I’ve played.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 4 days ago:
Their How Long to Beat times are all a tight spread. Having just played through them all in the past year, I can tell you that the only thing that makes 2 longer than the rest is that it has more DLC.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 5 days ago:
Short? It was a similar length to the rest of the series.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 5 days ago:
I think the onboarding ramp is pretty standard across the series. If you stopped at 2, I thought the active abilities and corresponding upgrades were far more interesting in 3 and 4, even from the get go.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 5 days ago:
I really enjoyed both of them. It may just not be your cup of tea, but I get the sense that the average person just plays them sort of mindlessly. For 3 and 4 especially, I found there’s a really interesting layer in there when you start min/maxing around creating a feedback loop. In case you ever found yourself curious enough to give them another try. It makes them very memorable experiences.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 5 days ago:
Did you play it? I thought the class designs were excellent.
- Comment on Borderlands 4 for Nintendo Switch 2 likely axed, as Take-Two says it’s ‘paused’ development | VGC 5 days ago:
Having played it on PC, if they got that running acceptably on a Switch 2, I’d be shocked.
- Comment on Inside Xbox, Obsidian Entertainment Is Trying to Reinvent Itself 5 days ago:
The sane reckoning that more of the industry needs to have. And both Outer Worlds 2 and Avowed were some of my favorite games from last year, so hopefully what they’re talking about with building on the work they’ve already done can speed things along.
- Comment on As player numbers fall, Highguard makes the actually-quite-good 5v5 mode permanent 5 days ago:
If the world needs more good games, they should have designed it to last rather than inevitably shutting down in under two years if it doesn’t take off.
- Comment on ANALYSIS: Nintendo Switch 2 sales remain well ahead of Switch 1, despite a softer first Christmas in some markets | VGC 5 days ago:
There was a whole price fixing thing for retro games that happened in the same time frame, so it’s not an experiment that could be run with only a single variable. Old hardware is going to become more expensive as time goes on, as it becomes harder to source; young people are finding a curiosity with old tech that has no mandatory online connectivity, for a host of reasons; and quite honestly, the Switch 1 launched with Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild in its first year, with Smash soon after, Mario Kart 8 being one of the best-selling games of all time even before the pandemic, and Animal Crossing would have done gangbusters regardless. I’m convinced the pandemic had little to do with its success, even if Animal Crossing has a major chapter in it.
- Comment on ANALYSIS: Nintendo Switch 2 sales remain well ahead of Switch 1, despite a softer first Christmas in some markets | VGC 5 days ago:
Unless there’s a prolonged software drought, analysts say that if it did this well during the holiday, it will probably do just fine into the future. Switch 1 numbers are a high bar to clear long term, but it’s on pace to outdo most consoles historically. In less than one year, it’s already putting up numbers that rival what the Gamecube or Xbox did in four or five years.