Personally “as a service” is OK if it’s actually sold that way. If I pay a fee per month or in some other way per use and that gives me access to the whole game as long as I play then I’m a happy camper and it gives the developer a steady stream to use towards improvements and keeping the servers online.
When you start double dipping or even triple dipping is when I start getting peeved. You can’t do a monthly fee and also lock stuff behind microtransactions, it might be somewhat OK if what you lock away is purely cosmetic and if you can still get them via say an in-game auction house a la SWTOR.
But some games have all of these:
Pay for the game itself to let you play it
Pay a monthly fee or have season passes to get access to certain content or very needed “convenience” features
Have microtransactions that aren’t just cosmetics but give power / convenience or unlock features/content
And then it just feel like a money milking machine.
Generally if you do one of those you’re most likely OK, two can potentially work if you’re really careful. But all three is a no-go.
The Division did two and felt OK to me, the microtransactions on top were only cosmetics but it felt kinda shitty when you had already bought the game and paid for a season pass/expansions.
Destiny also did two and felt OK as well but after I quit I heard they made some really unpopular changes to the cosmetic system and their microtransactions?
League of Legends did one, the last one, and still felt OK from a monetization stand point. Same with Valorant.
Diablo 3 did all three and was brutalized for it to the point of changing it, but that’s the only example from the top of my head of someone triple dipping.
While I agree there is room for actually useful use cases in the NFT technical design the fact is unequivocally that GameStop built a market place for the dumb pictures. And that was a collosal waste of money and good will. They went Hero to Zero in my eyes with that move.
I’d say there’s a reason PC gaming handhelds popped up when they did and a large part of it is that APUs has reached a level of performance per watt where they actually work, I.e. provide decent frame rate in popular new titles (in 720p). Putting in an older part will give worse performance at the same lousy battery life and you can’t really drop below 720p without getting compatibility problems.
And if anyone wants to say “but the Nintendo Switch is running on super old hardware?” then please keep in mind that there is a world of difference between consoles and PC even with “standard” hardware in them (x86 or ARM). The fact that all Switch games will run on the exact same hardware opens up for a level of optimization that just isn’t realistic on PC and that extremely diverse landscape.
What could, but likely won’t, happen in the future is standardization around one APU per two/three years such that all gaming PC handhelds use the same APU and then differentiate on other parts, like Legion GO vs ROG Ally. Then it becomes feasible for developers to do targeted optimization to that APU.
For sure, but since PC handhelds will always have quite powerful APUs it’s not necessary like it is for the Switch. I mean the Z1 Extreme pushes tflops like an Xbox Series S, not by any means a perfect metric but still indicative of the level of raw performance the chip actually sports, which is why it can play most titles in 1080p with 30 fps (just like the series S).
I have this weird thing where I love a game to be challenging because it’s not engaging if it’s easy, it makes the game boring to me, but at the same time I despise grinding and generally rote gameplay with the only purpose of amassing more points to be able to challenge the next boss. But very few RPGs I like are like that. Baldurs Gate 1/2 are excellent games that I love but I get extremely frustrated by some encounters which just feels like absolute bullshit and require extreme grinding or going off to do a myriad of side quests to bump up your level. Same holds true for Pillars of Eternity which I also love.
Though I tend to be a stubborn person so I generally come back a week or month later if I get stuck but I tend to put the game down once I’ve dealt with the immediate challenge and realize that I need to do all that boring stuff again for the next boss and then I just don’t start.
Well the “early” fight with the noble / king / count can’t remember in PoE had me tearing my hair on the difficulty I played on, took intense space bar action and every trick I could muster in terms of abusing targeting and kiting, etc to win it. I don’t know how many times I reloaded and how many days I tried, must’ve been in the hundreds by the end when I finally got it due to a few lucky crits and rolls.
It’s a long game, I think I just overestimated how far in you’d be at 20 hours. Since I really jammed with the game (and it was before I had 3 kids 😂) I had done all the side quests I had found but I hadn’t explored further away than the zones the side quests took you to. I will say though that plot wise it would make absolutely no sense to save it to the “late game” if that’s even possible. But that is the fight I was talking about, 100%.
Global EV production is so focused on making and meeting the demand for more vehicles on the road that the after market is handled as an after thought. This is partly offset by EVs being mechanically simpler and more reliable (mechanically) but that is little comfort when you do have an issue that needs parts to fix. And for Hertz it hurts when a car is out of commission for an extended period, so this is a very reasonable action in my opinion.
Mobile is just such a fucking powerhouse of revenue while having so few truly good games.
Sure we have ports of old PC/Console classics like KotOR and Baldurs Gate but the majority of the revenue is from shit like clash of clans, various card games, raid shadow legends and other “merge RPGs” and gacha games. And all the best ones tend to have a much better experience on PC/Console like say Genshin Impact, PUBG and COD.
It kinda blows my mind that the revenue leader by such a massive margin only has stuff like Candy Crush and Angry Birds as their “triple A exclusives”.
That said, with 3 kids I sadly spent more 2023 on Mobile games than PC games… So I’m part of the problem here, it’s just so accessible when the gaming I want to do just isn’t feasible due to life and work.
I assumed I would boot up the app and there would be a big red button saying GAMES … but no. I have to sign up to PREMIUM. Then find the YOUR PREMIUM BENEFITS section. Then find EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES and select TRY EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES. Then find the TRY GAMES ON YOUTUBE part therein and tap on TRY IT OUT.
Well look at China back paddle again, where is that “evidence” some troll mentioned about and psychology class 101 blah blah. This is so predictable just like the western “think for the kids” policy changes without any long term thinking or any science backing that decision. (like some US states pushing for abstinent for...
I firmly think that the proposed regulation on games were a great idea. What they wanted to curb were patterns that are inherently toxic and that hits young people and kids disproportionately. Hell I’m not young and have more than enough money and education and still fall for those tactics from time to time. I don’t necessarily blame anyone but myself for that but at the same time believe it is the governments purpose to set rules to protect its citizens from corporate interest. The repeal of the proposed regulation here only shows that money is more important to China than some people want to believe, in my opinion at least.
Not surprised in the slightest. All old guard (western +Japan) car manufacturers, Tesla Included, were greedy and delusional enough to think they could push virtually exclusively high-end, premium vehicles as BEVs. The few forays into affordable BEVs from the old guard auto makers were Zoey from Renault, the Leaf from Nissan and a few more but we got literally zero of the most sold body types as BEVs, i.e. hatchbacks, SUVs and station wagons. Instead we got Sedans, a dying breed outside BEVs and CUVs which lack the U part of the name and all at significant price premiums compared to their ICE sisters and cousins. Hell even the relatively cheap stuff like Mazda MX-30 and Peugeot Mokka-E / 2003-e are very premium for those brands.
Sure, but at least in Sweden 90% of all Model Ys (and there are a fuck ton of them) on the road are corporation owned cars. The heavy subsidies for BEVs made them very attractive especially since they had (this is changing rapidly right now) a very low rate of depreciation. I’d hazard a guess that this is a common pattern, i.e. cars that are privately used but commercialy owned as well as a lot of subsidies at play.
Prior to the Tesla the most common corporation owned cars in Sweden were XC90s which aren’t exactly cheap either.
Further what do you think I meant with high end premium? I meant expensive and the model Y is very expensive. Are you implying that if there was a sub $15K Dacia Logan MCV it wouldn’t sell better? A car like that with no bells and whistles but a BEV with decent range (say 300 km) would sell like hotcakes given that they’d pay for themselves for a majority of car owners. But instead they focus on stuff that is simply to expensive for the masses.
… In what world is an ID3 or 4 an SUV? They’re the aforementioned CUVs I was bitching avout. And further why in the fuck are they so expensive? Where is an electric VW Polo for a pricetag the average family can actually afford? Say €30k ish. Not €45-60k
BYD as an example sell the Dolphin, a hatchback of the body type and size most sold in recent years in Europe, for €30k and a normal sized SUV (Atto 3) for €50k. And I’m very confident that they print money at those prices in Europe, but they can charge that because there is very little competition at anywhere near those price points and also even few actual models that are similar in body size while being BEVs
Steam has got to be the most loved monopoly ever. It’s inherently toxic to the gaming community in ways that aren’t instantly apparent but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that it’s not a great thing that every game you buy isn’t yours, it’s effectively an unlimited time rental that can be withdrawn for a multitude of reasons. GOG and the like actually sell you the game proper such that it’s yours to keep forever no matter what happens to GOG. But still they sit at single digit market share for anything that’s not their own game and even Cyberpunk 2077 only sold 10% of copies on GOG…
DLSS2 doesn’t have frame generation. Nvidia refuses to add support for DLSS3 to their older cards so the open source community ported FSR3 which has frame generation (and is open source).
By all metrics DLSS3 is superior to FSR3, but that doesn’t help Nvidia 3xxx/2xxx owners at all. Nvidia is a very skilled company, just greedy little absolute shits. This whole debacle mirrors G-sync vs. Freesync (which is the basis for the VESA standard VRR).
No, and why? Because outright anti-consumer shit like that tends to leak. And if it did that would be very bad for Nvidia. Just look at the backlash Blizzard got for the Taiwan debacle or how costly it got for Google in the Epic vs Google case just recently. It’s much much better to not rock the boat and go with the route of just not spending the (small) effort on making the feature work on the older cards. At the end of the day Nvidia has what? 90% market share in PC GPUs? Even though AMD is trying to be the more consumer friendly company they’re not getting any results from that approach. Hell if we disregard ray tracing AMD has given significantly more FPS / $ for a looooong time without that mattering to the majority of consumers. Hell even Nvidia cards that can’t really deliver decent ray tracing like the 3060 absolutely crushed AMD in sales numbers.
In the end Nvidia doesn’t need to do shit but not fuck this up for themselves. Their only competitor in reality is their older cards so by not porting the cool new stuff to them they get more new cards sold. People getting FSR3 working on the old cards via hacks is a threat that is vastly smaller than the threat of bad PR if they had a strategy to outright block stuff that could benefit their older cards.
EDIT:
I wanted to add that if this was someone getting Nvidia DLSS3 Frame Generation working on the older cards then it would result in screaming internally and a sign that they kinda suck at their job. But this is FSR3 and a very unstable hack at that. It’s technically impressive that they got it to work but not a real threat to Nvidia bottom line. At worst a couple hundred techy dudes don’t upgrade as early because this hack holds them over a year or two. Big woop. It’s not something Joe random is going to run or tinker with.
Superior. Have you even looked at it? It’s unstable at best and doesn’t give much of a boost at all in most games. It’s something a few hundred will try, at most. It’s not ever going to be a mainstream thing. Remember most consumers barely even read reviews, let alone tech news about some hack giving some performance.
And patch? They’re tricking the game to think FSR3 frame generation is DLSS3 Frame Generation, it’s not really even sure it’s only on the Nvidia devs…
Super cool that a “feature” like that could stay hidden for so long. This could potentially be really useful since modding a PS1 these days is a massive waste since it devalues the hardware but with this hack you don’t need to, as long as you have a copy of Alien Isolation.
Then downvote and move on. No need to make people that actually post content feel unwelcome and unappreciated. That just leads to no content and thus no reason to even use Lemmy / the Fediverse.
PC. We played through all of the 3+ player ones around a year or two ago in chronological order and it was stupid fun, what we liked about it and are hoping to find elsewhere is it being a shooter with an emphasis on movement and it’s physics sandbox (AKA CHAOS) while still having at least 3 full campaigns to play through in a...
Gears of War comes to mind, not much physics but a lot of emphasis on movement but in a different way from Halo, still stupid fun to play the campaign Co-op!
This varies between “functionally impossible” to “tricky but doable” depending on the game. Generally speaking getting old games to run via using the original media is very hard. The easiest way is to buy them again on GOG.com. Second easiest is to quasi-legaly (legal in my country, illegal in others) download a pirated copy of the GOG version. The other options I’d need to know which game before I promise anything.
Well not if you can dig up and get running the computer you bought the games for, or one say 5-10 years younger. Windows XP will do for anything on a CD, Windows 95 for anything on a 3.5 floppy. 5.25 floppy then most will run on 3.1.
It’s just that it’s a lot of work ensuring backwards compatibility and it’s not always a good idea, I’d argue the software world, in general, strive to much for backwards compatibility but that’s another discussion.
That work needs funding so it’s either pay GOG for the work that has been done remaking parts or repacking to make it run on modern computers. Or look to the hobbyist side of things but since they aren’t paid, they of course seldom package what they do in an easy to consume format leading to enormous guides with 20 steps that maybe works, but probably not if you don’t have an exact setup like the guy who wrote its.
I’ll assume you mean well but that you’re just not super well versed in communicating over text.
You’re coming across as snarky and condecending. The easiest example to help pinpoint a clear example is when you asked if the person you responded to spoke English as their primary language. From a very charitable perspective it could be construed as a benign question, aimed at helping you understand why you didn’t understand each other (since you had differing opinions).
But given the context of an argument, an argument on the Internet at that, the first instinct for pretty much everyone is to assume it’s meant as an ad hominem, an attempt at discrediting the person criticizing you by belittling them for their spelling and/or grammar mistakes.
It’s also important to know that when you’re replying many times in a thread people will likely read more than one of your comments so it’s enough for one of them to come of snarky/condescending/elitist etc for that to the color the reading of all your other comments. This is exactly how we handle verbal communication as well as humans, it only takes one shitty joke, instance of poor attitude or a rude comment for everyone in earshot to form an opinion about what kind of person they deem you likely to be. People with a larger sample size of your behaviour might chalk it up to a bad day or a reaction to something someone else did earlier.
I think this makes a bit of sense though doesn’t it? They wrote “guy”. Given that training data is probably predominantly white “guy” would give you a white guy nine times out of ten without clarification of what the word means to the AI, i.e. ethnically ambiguous. Because that’s what guy is, ethnically ambiguous. The spelling is because DALL-E suuuuucks at text, but slowly getting better at least.
But they should 100% tweak it so that when a defined character is asked for stuff like that gets dropped. I think the prompt structure is what makes this one slip through. Had they put quotes around “guy with swords pointed at him” to clearly mark that as it’s own thing this wouldn’t have happened.
Huh, is this also why my gaming PCs the last 5 or so years are absolutely dogshit at staying asleep? I’ve never come across the term even though I’ve spent too much time troubleshooting and identifying which peripheral woke the computer up. The most annoying thing is that there is a toggle for “allow wake event” in device manager but it seems to be a mild suggestion at best… For some devices like keyboard and mouse it’s 50/50 if it does anything it seems. I’ve resorted to just locking and shutting the screen off…
Personally, and I say this as a huge fan of KotOR, I don’t see any point what so ever in a remake. The original is not so dated that it’s unplayable. And unlike Baldur Gate which got the enhanced edition I don’t think KotOR needs that boost to be played by younger players.
I doubt many people instantly recognize this franchise but the first installment is a game I’d rank highly in the category “way ahead of its time”. Outcast was a massive open world Adventure Game (though a bit more RPG than say Tomb Raider) made possible with the rather shortlived Voxel tech (as opposed to polygons). It had an Elder Scrolls sense of scale while delivering (for the time) great graphics and supported 3D movement. The act of combining those three in one game sounded like a fever dream in 1999 but they did it. It was quite buggy back then but still won a lot of awards and blew even more minds.
I might not be in the majority but I rather liked Andromeda (though I steered well clear of it at release due to how insanely janky it was as stated in reviews). I also absolutely HATE loose ends so tying that up feels like the right decision. Anything else would feel like a cop out, a pussy move. There is potential to tell a fascinating story here so I hope they really did their homework on the writing.
Though it is a challenge to weave so many writers different styles and takes on the universe into a cohesive whole. I don’t envy the people taking on the task but I truly hope they succeed, because I need Mass Effect in my life!
Sorry if this is not the right place to ask, but am I the only one who thinks that Star Citizen’s new server meshing technology is an old hat? I believe it’s the same technology that a few highly scalable Minecraft servers have been using for years. WorldQL introduced this back in 2021, but I think the idea was around even...
I don’t think the base game, Minecraft, actually simulates chunks which aren’t loaded. IIRC they’re frozen until loaded into memory again. So no, but not because of WorldQL tech.
“Turning a profit early 2024” if they manage that it would be kinda impressive but I wonder if the platform has any chance of longevity after reducing the staff by over 80%? I can’t imagine staying there if I was a skilled engineer, it just feels like such a cutthroat way of doing business and what do they stand to gain? When they could go to another, far more stable firm like Facebook, Google or Microsoft. And the longer they stay the more stained their CV is going to be I feel, unless X manages to defy the odds and actually succeed in this reconstruction of sorts.
I agree, Mass Effect / The Witcher is vastly more immersive than silent protagonist alternatives like Fallout 3, Skyrim or The Outer Worlds. That said though, Skyrim and The Outer Worlds could never work with a voice protagonist, Skyrim because the variation is just far to intense to make any logistical sense (as in so many race+gender combos). And The Outer Worlds dialog trees and complexity there would be crazy expensive to voice out fully. Though both are budget bound so with AI assistance it might be possible without super intense spending.
And I addressed the expensive part. I’ll even argue that every playable character, even silent ones, are their own character. No game, besides Fallout 3, starts from birth and lets you be whomever as you go. But even in Fallout 3 you’ve still got many things pre-defined, parents, general backstory etc. Same with Skyrim, you’re the dragonborn no matter what you do. It’s really just a budget thing. To the point of the article though I think it adds to immersion to have a voiced protagonist. But others are of a diametrical opinion.
Sure, but none of those still lets you say whatever you want, you’re still locked to a few alternatives that effectively shoehorn you into a character. In the future, with the aid of AI you could match what you personally say or type to an intent and then map that to pre-baked responses. With attacking you or running away as a response to aggression and a “haha very funny but back to the matter at hand” when you’re being silly. And it’s only when we’re there that I’d, personally, say a “silent” protagonist is as immersive as a voiced one.
Yes and no, what they did is they used keywords and synonym lists but they were extremely basic and you needed to build a mental model of how dialogue “works” that fit the developers. Hardly ideal. But with LLMs and NLP and some clever programming making NPCs that react convincingly to your typed in questions / interactions isn’t far off.
They can’t handle a long conversation, that’s the problem. But no RPG I’ve ever played has very long conversations, especially not on one topic. The flow is generally opener -> pick a topic -> follow up questions (a few different that all land you back on the same “step”) -> conversation ender / go back to pick topic. Total sentences about one topic is generally no more than 10. And from the LLM standpoint it’d suffice if we kept the topic as one, joined, conversation and every distinct topic as their own instances. Thus we wouldn’t have time to dig to deep before the conversation ends and functionally resets.
But that, AI generated dynamic responses, wasn’t really what I meant. I more meant using player input in a dynamic fashion instead of selecting pre-baked sentences that your PC “says” without their own voice. So the flow would be that you typed or said “Hello there, can you tell me about the night the dragon attacked?” The AI would then interpret that text and match it to which Voice Actor recorded statement that best fit. So you’d get something like “Oh it was terrifying, the dragon burned down the church!” You’d get the same statement if you ask “whatever happened to that church over there?”
You’d also need recorded statements for rude remarks, aggression, that they don’t know (possibly with pointers towards NPC with more information) etc.
So you’re only replacing the dialog selector, not Voice Actors and you’re not voicing the protagonist.
Baldur’s Gate 3 boss says gamers don’t want mass subscriptions (www.pcgamesn.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/10828130...
GameStop axes its short-lived NFT marketplace as it retreats from crypto (www.engadget.com)
Ayaneo’s Next Lite is a $299 Steam Deck competitor with unofficial SteamOS (www.theverge.com)
What difficult games/game challenges did you give up on?
Be it a game that’s difficult in its entirety, or a particular challenge in a game that you just couldn’t complete....
Hertz 180: Rental giant to sell 20,000 EVs and replace them with gas-powered vehicles (www.techspot.com)
Charted: Video Game Industry Revenues By Year and Platform (www.visualcapitalist.com)
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/b21455ef-26ec-4fce-977d-2d2b54db0c0e.png
YouTube’s video games are almost impossible to find – but once you do, you’ll wish you never looked | Dominik Diamond (www.theguardian.com)
I assumed I would boot up the app and there would be a big red button saying GAMES … but no. I have to sign up to PREMIUM. Then find the YOUR PREMIUM BENEFITS section. Then find EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES and select TRY EXPERIMENTAL FEATURES. Then find the TRY GAMES ON YOUTUBE part therein and tap on TRY IT OUT.
Exclusive: China removes official after video games rules spark turmoil (www.reuters.com)
Well look at China back paddle again, where is that “evidence” some troll mentioned about and psychology class 101 blah blah. This is so predictable just like the western “think for the kids” policy changes without any long term thinking or any science backing that decision. (like some US states pushing for abstinent for...
deleted_by_author
Steam keeps on winning (www.pcgamer.com)
Gamer "Handling Breakup Well" Redownloads Disco Elysium (hard-drive.net)
Mods can now replace DLSS Frame Generation with FSR3 for NVIDIA RTX 20/30 GPUs in multiple games (videocardz.com)
The Hidden Secrets of Alien Resurrection on the PS1 (youtu.be)
Sean Murray is risking another No Man's Sky launch disaster, but he knows exactly what he's doing and it's kinda genius marketing (www.pcgamer.com)
Why E3 Died: A Failure to Evolve, Huge Costs, and Too Much Competition (ign.com)
What are the best multiplayer games to try if me and my friends are looking for a similar experience to a Bungie Halo campaign marathon on Heroic+ difficulty?
PC. We played through all of the 3+ player ones around a year or two ago in chronological order and it was stupid fun, what we liked about it and are hoping to find elsewhere is it being a shooter with an emphasis on movement and it’s physics sandbox (AKA CHAOS) while still having at least 3 full campaigns to play through in a...
Trying to play my old CDROM games on Windows10 and about to lose my marbles. Could you help me?
Okay listen: I am less than tech-savvy, but I tried so many step-intensive things on my dinky PC, to no avail....
Zombie MMO The Day Before's player count drops 75% despite a day one patch (www.eurogamer.net)
Redesigning the Steam UI from Scratch (yt.artemislena.eu)
Bad day (lemmy.world)
ethinically ambigaus (feddit.de)
Prince of Persia The Sands of Time Remake: ...we are glad to announce today that the project has passed an important milestone and development is progressing. (twitter.com)
Windows PCs can't sleep properly, and Microsoft wants it that way (www.spacebar.news)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake Is Dead (insider-gaming.com)
Outcast - A New Beginning | Combat Trailer (www.youtube.com)
Baldur's Gate 3 dev shows off the level of optimization achieved for the Xbox Series S port, which bodes well for future PC updates (www.pcgamer.com)
(Mass effect) N7 Day 2023 | EPSILON (www.youtube.com)
The Aliens did a little trolling (lemmy.world)
Is Star Citizen's new server meshing tech plagiarized?
Sorry if this is not the right place to ask, but am I the only one who thinks that Star Citizen’s new server meshing technology is an old hat? I believe it’s the same technology that a few highly scalable Minecraft servers have been using for years. WorldQL introduced this back in 2021, but I think the idea was around even...
One year after being bought for $44 billion, X is worth $19 billion (arstechnica.com)
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 will have a voiced main character: 'it draws the player in that much more', says the game's ex-Bioware narrative designer (www.pcgamer.com)
2023 Is The Best Year For Games In A While (And Maybe Ever?) (kotaku.com)