Well yeah, naturally, how it always was. SBMM and the addition of bots completely killed many online shooters.

Console mindset, they don’t realise the only ones screwing them are the companies that create the consoles they buy.

Now remove skill-based matchmaking too.

There’s a few, like Openguessr too. But they are not really Geoguessr alternatives in the same way Geotastic is, with all the community features, I also like the transparency Geotastic has with running costs, I can donate to cover my own usage without overspending for profiteering like is the case with Geoguessr now.

Was good until they hiked the prices, removed free play and ruined the interface. Would highly recommend Geotastic instead.

The main writers have since left Rockstar. Dan Houser left in 2020. I feel GTA will lose it’s charm with this next entry, I hope I am wrong, but something just feels off. Either way, won’t be buying it until it’s on a good sale, reviews dependent too.

If it’s free to play, then some cosmetic mtx are fine, thats what I used to think, the problem is how egregious they have become. They are not designed as a way to support a game, they are designed to suck as much money as they can from you. Which is why I disagree with supporting them at all anymore.

Games should be a one-off purchase, with no extra added bullshit.

No, that’s just a raffle. They had mini games during the sales.

They kinda died along side the flash deals. I miss the crazy sales, but I understand why they removed them.

PC is the fastest growing market. Consoles are slumping and I think the return of Steam Machines done right would accelerate the market shift.

I was talking about the people buying the microtransactions. I should have made that clear, I thought it could be deduced, given Valve aren’t exactly ruining the game industry by stat tracking 1.7 million users, but I can see how it was confused.

Lmao… it’s not Steam hate, it’s the people buying the MTX. I wasn’t clear enough, my bad.

Thanks to them (the people buying microtransactions) for helping ruin the industry!

No, you dont understand, if a Chinese company owns 1 share, it is spyware!!1!1!!1!!!

Priced at MSRP + like 100-200 extra for the more premium cards in Europe. Just a clickbait article.

By that logic all games would need to be rated higher, as any game can be addictive for any one person.

Something about a mass grave.

Yeah, any game I deem worthy to play, is worthy of my money anyway, so I would rather buy them on Steam/GOG.

I have some free games on Epic, but havent even had the launcher installed for like 7 years.

The PC market is growing faster than the console market, the value of consoles has completely plateaued.

You can build a PC for just slightly more, an added cost you recoup anyway after a couple years. You can do a lot more with a PC than a console, you have upgrade flexibility, your library of games will always be playable, you can even emulate and play console games.

There’s no reason to buy a console if you put a bit of effort in, their only appeal is the initial plug and play, which you can do with a PC anyway if you buy prebuilt.

There’s probably loads of builds online with new components, I haven’t built a low end PC for a while, so I am not sure on the market. As I said though you have to consider the lifespan and the savings, even just 3 years later you have saved $360. And you can definitely build a PC that is better than a PS5 Pro for $1060, peripherals included even.

With discs falling out of fashion, games are absolutely cheaper on PC for patient gamers. As you say though, the savings do depend on what games you are interested in personally. Big publishers are much more stingy on giving discounts in sales.

The Arc cards are stronger than the PS5 and are like $200-250 new, you could get used RX 7600/6600XT for cheaper than that. There’s definitely paths to a PS5 equivalent PC for a similar price, and even if you spend $100, $200, $300 more, that pays off in 1, 2 or 3 years anyway.

Big games yeah, but I don’t buy those anyway myself. The 30% tax is what Xbox/Playstation take from each game sale. Steam on PC takes 30% too, but doesn’t require a subscription ontop of that to use their online services.

You can build a PC as powerful as a console for near enough the same price these days and you save massively in the long term from cheaper games and no subscription. If you have the know how. But yeah, the barrier of entry is lower for a console for sure, but that gap is only closing more and more each year with PCs becoming more accessible.

It’s still crazy to me that people will pay 30% tax on all their games and then fork over another $120/year just to be able to play them. Or in Playstation’s case, to not play them.

All they have to do is add a skin or some shit as a pre-order bonus and people will deposit money. It’s absolutely crazy, especially with the state almost every launch is in these days.

Big games are like 50% off after a few months anyway, no point buying those at all until then.

While you don’t technically own the DRM games you buy on Steam, it’s a whole world different than putting games behind subscriptions.

Ignoring graphical aspects. It might be good game, it’s just not a DOOM game other than in name and monsters. I played the shit out of the originals and I felt with D2016 they really captured the essence of it but with just a few new simple additions to keep it fresh, then when I started Eternal it felt like I was playing a different franchise, wall climbing and grappling hooks? The pacing was all off. Maybe the dev team moved on, I dont know, but I was left extremely disappointed.

Imo, they have downgraded each time.

2016 was a great reboot of the franchise, it felt like a modern version of the originals. It looked great and ran great.

Then Eternal added pointless wall climbing, loads of skills, put the whole game on rails. The start of the game is like a tutorial for 2 hours, good game design doesnt require you to tell me exactly what to do every 5 minutes. The graphics got downgraded with some shitty AA added, probably Temporal, I cant remember and the performance was down across the board. The game just didnt feel like DOOM anymore and was a poor continuation from 2016.

Now we have this forced ray tracing, probably going to require DLSS and shit. This has to be a case of Nvidia slipping cash right? No way they would be so stupid? It’ll probably be a case of updating to remove the requirement a few months down the line.

The last price hike was really the final straw, but I still have a grandfathered subscription. If any of this goes through, I will cancel and will probably never return.

What is even suggested in the survey is absolutely absurd.

Because people really like the core game, so they subconsciously (or consciously) look over the issues and refuse to admit issues even exist half the time (the amount of people who tell me it has no bugs… lmao).

Doing a playthrough at the moment and have come across a lot of the same bugs and issues from when I played at launch, along with new ones. The game definitely needed more time in development, but maybe the money was running out, I have no idea. It does seem like they rushed to finish a lot of questlines when you play and that list you posted is just concrete evidence of it.

Still I enjoy it overall, but won’t be buying their next game as quickly. Especially if they still don’t fix the fucking camera…

Hopefully this or DOS3 is a smaller more refined experience, there’s still so many bugs and narrative inconsistencies in Baldur’s Gate 3, I think they went a bit too big with it.

Yup, while keeping their mouth shut works for a lot things, it is awful for many others.

The point is, hardware is powerful enough for native 4K, but instead of that power being used properly, games are made quickly and then upscaling technology is slapped on at the end. DLSS has become a crutch and Nvidia are happy to keep pushing it and keeping a reason for you to buy their GPUs every generation, because otherwise we are at diminishing returns already.

It’s useful for use on older hardware, yes, I have no issue with that, I have issue with it being used on hardware that could otherwise easily run 4K 120FPS+ with standard rasterization and being marketed as a ‘must’.

Legitimate upscaling is fine, but this DLSS/FSR ML upscaling is dogshit and just introduces so many artifacts. It has become a crutch for developers, so they dont build their games properly anymore. Hardware is so strong and yet games perform worse than they did 10 years ago.

Yes, fuck all this frame generation and upscaling bs.

Well, yeah, you are right. They only sell at a loss initially until the hardware is old and therefore cheaper.

Oh yeah, they will still have “cheap” ones, but they will make these “Pro” versions more and more expensive.

PCs are a lot easier to use than they used to be, you don’t have to mess around like you used to, just the initial setup (which is done for you if you buy a prebuilt one anyway).

But yeah, the initial cost puts people off, even though the long term savings are incredible. Ignoring the cheaper cost of games, just from the console online subscriptions over 5 years, you are saving over $400 (and the last generation of consoles was 8 years, so that’s well over $600 of savings).

I’d highly recommend anyone tries PC, you have so much more freedom than you do on a console. There’s a reason the PC market share is growing so fast.

Consoles exist to grift, now they are realising they might not need to sell the actual hardware at a loss anymore.

I agree, but people wouldn’t willingly watch that :D

The game awards is just an advertising show. I don’t understand why anyone watches it.

Like any awards show, the awards are completely subjective anyway, so it’s completely pointless to even care about them, it’s not like an old gaming magazine’s recommendations.

To be fair, I don’t remember the last time I had mobile signal without any sort of internet. The coverage pretty much overlaps these days.