holding down a button to win is more of a build issue unless you’re running embarrassingly low difficulty. There will always be easy builds and more challenging, technical, timing based builds. Finding a fun build is part of the fun of ARPGs.

A well designed game does not have the “fun thing” work against “the smart thing”.

I prefer Last Epoch to Grim Dawn. When I played Grim Dawn it felt like the “right” way to play was to put 90% of my skill points into stats, which is frankly boring. In Last Epoch I get to put skill points into customizing my abilities in pretty diverse ways.

You don’t own anything on Epic either. Epic is actually significantly worse for people losing their accounts and having no way of recovering them.

If for some reason I lost access to my Stream account I would just pirate copies of the games I’ve already purchased.

You’ve said nothing and refuse to elaborate.

Maybe the pushback isn’t because you’re criticising Steam but because your criticism lacks substance and you refuse to provide any.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly

I don’t understand, how is Steam good for Indies but bad for studios?

I could see myself enjoying Helldivers if it wasn’t for the trolls I get matched with.

I’d recommend Last Epoch, lots of interesting customization options but not overwhelming like PoE.

I did not expect when I created a rogue to be using 2 handed maces, but zipping around swinging the heaviest weapon I could find 5 times a second was very satisfying.

Hey, it’s me, your reminder. Did you buy your game?

There were certain “sudden death” sequences I had to repeat a couple times and the torture porn aspect is an issue there.

I guess all the time I spent playing Balatro makes me an expert in Poker. Vegas, here I come!

Fair. I have quite the backlog of games to play, so if something on my wishlist is on sale I don’t bother if I currently have something I’m playing. The sale will come around again.

Yo ho ho

If you like ARPGs I’d recommend checking out Last Epoch, I found the customization and skill trees much more satisfying than Grim Dawn.

I ignored the autumn sale because I knew the winter sale would be right behind it and assumed it would have better deals

Recently started playing and it reminded me of when I used to play MtG and tried to build decks with broken combos.

You can turn off combat in both games if you just want factory building. Shapez and Shapez2 are all solid entries in the factory game genre.

If Steam blocks my access to my legally purchased games or I refuse to run the Steam launcher there is no moral or ethical issue with me pirating my library.

That rich asshole doesn’t try to actively interfere with things in my life.

And if your only response is “Gabe is also rich” I guess that means the rest of my post stands.

So we’re talking about everything except this moment in time?

1. Epic doesn’t have disks either so it’s irrelevant to the discussion of Epic games. If you want to complain about eliminating physical media try talking about it in regards to someplace that actually sells physical media.

If Steam is bad because no physical media then so is Epic.

2. But I guess Epic is okay because of how things are right now right? but I shouldn’t bring up how things are on Steam right now? In direct comparison?

Pick an era in time you would like to complain about, and if it’s the early 2000s then go bitch to people in the early 2000s. I’m sure many of them are complaining about the loss of physical media. People still used Steam anyway and now it’s the norm. Now people are complaining about exclusivity deals, if people still use Epic anyway then that will become the norm.

going to bite our asses real bad when gaben retires.

Blizzard was a good company when they released StarCraft, so I purchased StarCraft. Blizzard is a shit company now so I do not purchase or play their games now.

If Steam becomes a shit company in the future I’ll stop using it. I don’t understand the argument of "you should purchase for a shitty company now instead of a good one, because if you purchase from the good one it might one day become a shitty one.

Steam is really good, they’ve been putting massive resources into making it better for many years

Damn, imagine how good Epic could be if instead of buying exclusives it spent that money on improving itself?

Copying my reply to someone else:

Epic is anti-customer: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7

Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.

This tells me that

1. Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
2. Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
3. Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.

If I like the game then good for them. Epic didn’t get any of my money and they’re the one I have an issue with.

Consumers are going to use the platform better for consumers. I’m not going to purchase a shitty car because the company pays its workers more.

The difference is the developer deciding they don’t want to bother going through the effort of making their game available on every platform on the Internet, vs. a dev saying “we are going to release a game on this platform”, even doing presales, and then saying “oh, some guy just gave us a bunch of money to not sell you the thing we promised.”

Ya, that’s great for the devs being given a bunch of money, but that’s shitty for me so I’m not going to give money to the rich asshole doing this so that he can keep doing it

That’s great that devs can benefit from it, I will not purchase the game until it’s available on other platforms due to Epic’s general shitty behavior.

You couldn’t sell it to anyone else, or even let them play it.

Epic lets you sell your games to someone else?

As to your 2nd point I play my friend’s games all the time. I haven’t purchased Satisfactory but have almost 100% it on Steam playing my friend’s copy.

https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7

They waited until a game previously announced for Steam was finished development and had a launch date, then tried to bribe them with an exclusivity deal to not provide the game on the platform they promised to backers.

They weren’t paying a damn thing for development, just to eliminate consumer choice. Instead of, you know, providing a better service in some way so people want to purchase from you instead.

I would have purchased Borderlands 3 day 1, instead I waited and was warned off by shitty reviews.

Copying my reply to someone else:

Epic is anti-customer: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7

Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.

This tells me that

1. Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
2. Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
3. Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.

Downloading the games does not cost Epic anything. They paid a flat rate to make it free to download, regardless of how many people actually download it.

You signing into the store and claiming the free games provides user metrics that Epic can use to entice investors.

That kind of thing can stay on consoles.

I understand console exclusives. The hardware is different, it takes extra time and money to be compatible with multiple systems.

Epic exclusives is just “fuck you you have to buy from me because I threw some money around to say so.”

Copying my reply to someone else:

Epic is anti-customer: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7

Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.

This tells me that

1. Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
2. Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
3. Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.

Epic did save me from wasting money on Borderlands 3, so I’ll give them that.

Epic is anti-customer: https://medium.com/@unfoldgames/why-i-turned-down-exclusivity-deal-from-the-epic-store-developer-of-darq-7ee834ed0ac7

Tldr: Kickstarter Game with a lot of interest while in development announces a release date on Steam. After the date announcement they get contacted by Epic saying “we’d love to host your game” for an exclusivity deal.
Dev responds that they would be happy to have their game on Epic but promises were made during crowd funding that it would be available on Steam.
Epic replies that they aren’t interested if it’s not exclusive.

This tells me that

1. Epic is full of shit. "We’d love to have your game, but only if it’s exclusive.
2. Epic doesn’t care about being a better service for its customers. Having the game available on Epic as well is strictly better for Epic’s customers and they easily could have done that. They chose not to.
3. Epic is not interested in actually having to compete with other companies. This would require them to provide a better service in some fashion. They are only interested if they can force people “if you want to purchase this game you have to buy it through us” which is anti-consumer.

Are they trying to disrupt a “near-monopoly” or is Epic trying to create its own monopoly through exclusivity deals?

you took time to reply to a worthless take? How little do you value your time and opinions that you’d go out of your way to deride mine?

Well, this took a quick turn into Godwin’s Law faster than I’ve ever seen.

I don’t know anything about Grayson or why someone would have an issue with him, but you’ve made it very clear very quickly that you’re not providing view points worth looking into, so thank you for that.

Mailbox and auction house access is priceless.

Create the problem, sell the solution.

There’s no reason not to let all players access their mail and auction house anywhere through the menus, except that Blizzard has decided to paywall that ‘feature’.