Neshura
Just some IT guy
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A) funny how that works with Steam everytime. “We don’t need Steam” > sales plummet > “Release on Steam in 60 days”
B) I don’t think releasing the game on Steam will save them here, from what I’ve seen it’s just a bad game plain and simple. It will maybe fill the gap a bit but probably not by enough to actually achieve the sales numbers they would like to see.
Baldur’s Gate is a prime example for people not actually being bothered by the “woke” stuff all that much. It just gets the blame when the product turns out shit because it’s an easy tool to explain why everything else about a game sucks.
The mechanics are bad? They must’ve spent more time arguing how to include pronouns than how to make the game fun.
Buggy? Obviously revisions to make the game more inclusive had more priority.
Are those speculations true? Idk but stuff like the leaked Sweet Baby Inc. talks about how to include more progressive aspects in a game make it seem believable enough for most people.
There is a (from my guess) sizable chunk of soulslike fans who want to play Bloodborne but won’t get a console just to do it. The noise around it is likely as loud as it is because it is the only Fromsoft soulslike released after the initial success of Dark Souls that is not available on PC, the other games all either got a PC port (Dark Souls 1-3) or released on PC from the start (Sekiro, Elden Ring)
Difficult to say, Arm is a bit weird when you compare it to x64 CPU’s because it does not have comlex instructions (by design) which means that for low intensity and ‘simple’ workloads an Arm CPU will be vastly more power efficient. However the more complicated the workload gets the more x64 has an advantage due to specialized instructions.
So for most users yes Arm will start being very competetive since the #1 metric there is battery life. However for datacenter, workstation and gaming usage Arm just cannot compete and very likely never will.
As much as I currently prefer AMD processors over Intel I would hate to see them go. Without serious competition AMD will just do the exact same thing Intel did before Ryzen dropped. The problem I see now is that if Intel gets into a situation as horrible as AMD was in there are not as many revolutionary concepts out there anymore that would get them out of that hole.
Personally I have complicated feelings about this DLC.
The world design is a 10/10 for me but the rest…
For a start the Open World feels a bit unrewarding. I don’t really have a problem with the abundance of empty space but the rewards you get for exploration feel a bit weak to me. I would have liked a few more weapons in chests and other places instead of Smithing Stone 8 #1241. Case in point: They added 8 new weapon categories but from what I can see barely one of these new categories has more than a single regular weapon in it. Definitely a missed opportunity.
As for the combat it’s fine outside of the bosses. The enemies hit like a truck but once you figure out the gimmicks it’s quite manageable. The bosses however are some of the worst in the entire game. I’m not an outstanding player, I’m not even good. But me being bad is not quite the problem I have with these. The problem I have with these bosses is that they are frustrating. For example the first Dancing Lion Boss has such an arsenal and length of combos that, when coupled with its flowing moveset, I cannot find a reliable gap to exploit. I think I found one only for the boss to switch up the Combo the 3rd time around (not HP related changes) and kill me anyway. Add to that the camera being absolute garbage and it feels like I’m fighting a duo boss. The cooldowns between their combos also are annoyingly uncertain, sometimes you have a gap to heal after a combo and sometimes they start the next combo almost immediately. Now mind you there might be gaps I don’t see but if the only people who can even find the gaps are the top 20% of players then negative reviews will be inevitable.
What makes this entire thing worse is that as soon as you employ spirit summons the entire charade is exposed. The only reason these bosses are “hard” is because they hit you in a relentless torrent of combos. The moment there is any other target to take the heat off of you the difficulty plummets into the core of the planet. Oh and also their pathfinding is absolutely shot, I’ve had multiple cases where Bosses (and regular enemies) got stuck path finding towards me because I was standing on a little pebble or behind a pillar. I think mages are also completely fucked because almost every boss I’ve stumbled upon was in permanent distance closing mode. No or extremely rare walk phases where a mage could fire off a few spells but instead just constant pressure.
I think the Bosses can’t even be easily rebalanced because the problem is not that they are too tanky or deal too much damage, they are imo just terribly designed to where they are too hard when in a 1v1 and too easy in a 2+v1 due to their move-/attacksets. If they rebalance anything maybe the frequency between combos could be tuned a bit but I really don’t think that’s going to change much about how people perceive these bosses.
Well yes but actually no. The phrase “dual screen” is descriptive yes. But that is not what Nintendo called their product. The official name for the Nintendo DS is, well, Nintendo DS. So they very well could have trademarked the “DS” naming to keep for themselves for all eternity. Especially since they could argue that the shortened “DS” is distinctive since it is an abbreviation and not just a plain description.
All I’m saying is I’m surprised the asshole suits at Nintendo didn’t do it, don’t know if they tried but failed though.
I would expect a lot of the greenlighting comes from people not too deeply involved in gaming so market saturation probably was not even a factor in their decision making. New World also suffered heavily from that (plus all the bugs and other issues at launch).
They probably would have fared better had they built a name in a Genre first instead of diving head first into one of the most competitive niches in gaming with 2 projects.
Not entirely well versed in the New World Saga but from what I’ve heard and read here’s roughly what happened:
- The dev team was developing a hardcore always-on PvP MMO, which is fine but not for everyone
- Playtest rolls around and the devs get back player numbers you would expect for a hardcore PvP MMO
- Speculation: the higher ups really don’t like the projected return on their investment given the abysmal (for their ideas) player numbers and force the Studio to pivot to PvE content
- At this point the entire game has been designed around PvP and the devs now have only ~1 year to somehow shove PvE content in there
- Launch comes and since the devs had to spend all available time on forcing in PvE content what is present is buggy and doesn’t fit the game mechanics
- Ensue several months of panicked back and forth patching of the game by the devs, making the entire mess worse because everyone is pissed by one change or another
It sort of is an optimization problem though because excess textures and audio files could be separated off into their own DLC packages (see Age of Empire II High-Res texture DLC and Steam’s Language Selection feature)
The really big problem is people being riddled with 4K textures on 1080p monitors and 20 audio tracks for different languages when they only need one.
How? Epic is using money to force exclusivity, it’s only natural that the devs accept if they throw enough money at them, can’t fault them too much for accepting. Point is the exclusivity is not a natural market effect, it’s artificially forced into existence by means of burning piles of money. If Epic stopped paying devs for exclusives tommorrow, I can guarantee you would not see a single 3rd party dev going Epic exclusive. If they bound their Online Services to their Store then maybe some would take the offer. But the vast majority of devs would go back to Steam, even if it meant retooling the game for Steam’s Online Service.
If a supermarket chain comes into a city and starts to undercut the competition by subsidising the losses from other stores, that is not a natural monopoly forming. It’s a company forcing out the competition. Now Steam is by no means in such a position but it does not change Epic’s actions. They are acting in a manner where it is clear they care little for a better developer experience, nor for a better customer experience. They want marketshare. Should Epic manage to snatch the monopoly crown from Steam before they run out of money to throw at exclusives I guarantee you they will start hiking up their revenue cut as mich as possible and lock down their services to be store bound. It’s the same old playbook that has been ruled illegal in every other industry but because the gaming industry is currently a natural monopoly no laws against the rpactice exist.
Their store? I dunno but a lot of games on their got a upfront payment to only be on that store. If the devs choose to limit themselves to one store, fair enough. But I have a very deep problem with them receiving payment for it. Because suddenly the game isn’t “who can attract the most customers/devs via the best platform” but instead “who can pay the devs the most”. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see which of the two leads to better store fronts (case in point: even EA, etc. abandon their store exclusivity regularly because customers refuse to use inferior stores/launchers and want to stay on steam)
Epic is paying devs to only distribute on their Store, they are not competing with a better product, they’re trying to compete with deeper wallets. Because of this I try to boycot as many games as I can that have even the resemblance of a connection to their store.
Beyond that I don’t trust Epic, their store practice has shown them to be plenty untrustworthy and so I see their “free” Epic Online Service and instead of being happy about a good cross-platform online service I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
If a game I’m interested in does this it’d be a deal breaker. Not because of the extra login but because I absolutely hate Epic’s MO in running their store. I can get behind EA, Activision & co. making their own stores and deciding to not sell the games their studios develop on Steam. Fair enough, they make it so they can choose where to distribute. But Epic forcing exclusivity through monetary payments is introducing a cancer I will never support.
I heavily disagree. There is no “free” service, ever. Steam does not offer their Online Services for “free” they offer them with the expectation that it will bind more sales and users to steam than to other platforms. If Epic is offering their Online Service to be used for free but require a login you can do the math on how “free” that service actually is. Besides no one is guaranteeing that Epic won’t turn around and monetize this service once it becomes popular, forcing a shutdown on less popular games anyway.
Or just release it as early access with a 5€ discount or something. That way people who don’t give a shit about the optimization can get it early while the rest gets the full release (Baldur’s Gate 3 was in Early Access for a long while for example)
Although I think in this case it’s a bit more complicated. The marketing campaign was rather large so I think they thought they could deliver on time but ultimately were unable to do so. This is likely also why we are hearing only now about mods, they were still working on it with the hopes of making it in time and had to make a judgement call last minute - in this case to delay the modding tools until after release.
Not sure in your case but I’d guess it has been over 2 weeks since purchase. The auto accept part is literally stated in their refund policy:
It doesn’t matter. Valve will, upon request via help.steampowered.com, issue a refund for any reason, if the request is made within the required return period, and, in the case of games, if the title has been played for less than two hours.
As well as
There are more details below, but even if you fall outside of the refund rules we’ve described, you can ask for a refund anyway and we’ll take a look. Consumers in some jurisdictions may have additional rights to a refund in circumstances where the game is faulty.
which is ambiguous and, from my experience, is definitely applied when the time played exceeds 2 hours.
Remember when you were able to buy complete games?
Remember when games were so complex you could run them on a calculator? Remember when “Free Content Update” didn’t exist? When “Hotfix” was a bunch of patched files of questionable origin distributed on forums? Times change, development costs change. Are most gaming companies nickel and diming the customer? Absolutely. Does Paradox’ DLC policy encourage their devs to salami slice deliver content? Also absolutely. Was Cities Skylines negatively impacted by that? Looking at how they sliced up the DLC so you could pick and choose, as well as the workshop being a thing: No, I don’t think Cities Skylines was negatively impacted by it. The cosmetics DLCs were thematically self contained. The radio stations were for people willing to spend extra for little in return (sort of a donation). The major expansion were self contained in the feature sets, you don’t need to buy any additional DLC to fully enjoy an expansion. Don’t think you’ll like the Campus DLC? No problem, you are losing nothing by not buying a game addition you don’t like. Yes “addition”. The base game was good when it released. The only problem with it today is that we know the DLC exists. The reference frames back then were: SimCity 2013 and SimCity 4 and Cities Skylines landed in between the two: Vastly Better Gameplay than SC2013 but worse than SC4. Vastly better graphics than SC4 but only on-par/worse (depending on who you ask) to SC2013. The game back then wasn’t “incomplete”. Nor do I expect this one to be. From what I can tell via Preview footage from the YouTubers it’s a complete, self contained, product. There will be DLC but from the feeling I have right now, not because they intentionally made a core gameplay loop worse with the main goal of making it DLC content.
I already proven that their major expansions don’t go past the 50% mark
where? cuz last comment chain I checked you were full of bullshit with that claim. Although I’m sure you’ll make up another one to “be in the right”
constantly
8 years
uhuh
one major expansion
here’s three, two if you want to be pedantic about campus (who am I kidding, of course you will be)
https://steamdb.info/app/715191 60%
https://steamdb.info/app/369150 66%
https://steamdb.info/app/944071 60%
have not been on sale at all
The number of DLCs that have not been on sale can probably be counted on a single hand. I haven’t checked through all of them but I only found 2 when looking at the 10 most recently released ones (you know, the ones least likely to get a sale)
And stop the “gameplay” argument, as if “cosmetic” content is irrelevant
It is a valid argument. You won’t ever actually need most of the cosmetic packs, even if you do there is the workshop as a free alternative. And besides there are also the radio stations which don’t even impact the look of your city and can be omitted entirely without losing anything of value.
A lot of games nowadays require stupidly long shader building already. Then you might even have to go through 5 hotfixes before the games run adequately, each one of course also requiring their own redoing of the shaders. By the time you actually got the game running and in a playable state you’re typically well past the 2 hours. And games that straight up don’t run properly, despite tinkering and a lot of work, are then still denied with idiotic automated messages, because no real person actually reads your pleas and explanations what you’ve spent your time “playing” actually with.
sure, if believing that that’s what happened helps you cope, please go ahead.
Get that head out of corporates asshole and then we can maybe talk again.
I literally said “don’t buy the dlc if you don’t want to” how tf is that being stuck in a corporate asshole?
And Paradox doesn’t go below I think it was like 50% discount for their shit anyway, so if you wait for a good deal, you’ll wait practically forever. Meanwhile, the next game is already coming out while you try to scrape together the content for the previous one
Well first of all, you’re wrong. Paradox does discounts up to 80% but those are mostly on the base games. And looking past that if you can’t “scrape together” 100€, or even 200€ if we’re being really generous to your idiotic claims, in 8 years I don’t think the price of the game is the problem.
Listen buddy, if you’re this angry I think you should just go read a book. Nobody is forcing you to buy anything, if you think the price is too high then don’t buy it. That simple.
Although after reading the entire thing I think I know what’s going on. Going by you complaining about the prices a lot and for some reason needing to manually apply hotfixes to games (I don’t need to do that on linux ffs) I have a guess what’s going on. Stop playing games on Windows 95 hardware
Would be nice if devs today would still offer demos so that people can see if the games even run on their system.
The Steam refund policy pretty much serves this purpose nowadays. Since the refund is auto accepted if you have 2h or less in play time and bought the game less than two weeks ago. After that you still have good odds for a refund but you’ll have to actually explain why you want one (“game gets too slow toward late game” would be a reason that would very likely get your refund granted)
Nobody forces you to buy DLC either, there is plenty of content in the free updates. Plus there are always sales if you really want a DLC and from historical precedent Paradox offers decent discounts even on recent DLCs and massive discounts on older ones.
- vastly improved road tools
- (seemingly) traffic AI comparable or even better than TM:PE
- seasons (!)
- Actually Useful Unique Buildings
- Vastly improved industry handling
- More Zoning, importantly mixed use and degrees of residential
- Better Custom Industries mechanic (not district based, expanding on the new base will allow for more engaging additions through DLC, Updates or Mods)
- Improved Outside interactions (ability to buy/sell electricity for example)
- Ability to create outside connections without mods
- Finer expansion planning via smaller squares (map size aside I think the squares being smaller is a good thing)
- Overhauled city expansion mechanic, you don’t have to spam population to unlock new things and you don’t automatically unlock everything. Instead you gain points via xp you get through multiple activity sources (you can level up a city solely by building streets for example). The points can then be spent on more advanced buildings of the basic unlocks (highways have to be “bought” using those points after unlocking roads, trains have to be “bought” after unlocking busses, etc.)
On another note this will make for an easy comparison of Denuvo ridden game vs Denuvo removed. The Day 1 Patch bringing some Fixes and Performance gains would muddy the results a bit but I think it’s still a good idea to have a test like that. If the rumors/speculation about Denuvos performance impact are true I doubt even a Day 1 Patch would manage to balance out the performance difference.
Finally, just the thing that was missing to compliment the Steam Deck. Never quite used the Steam Deck’s full capability control wise because I could not get the same input scheme in dock mode or on my PC, going by the render that’ll finally be a non-issue