User information for JTW

Real Name
JTW
Nickname
JTW
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Signed On
February 6, 2003
Total Posts
776 (Graduate)
User ID
16074
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776 Comments. 39 pages. Viewing page 1.
Newer [  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10  11  12  13  14  15  16    39  ] Older
16.
 
Re: Palworld Passes 25M Players
Feb 23, 2024, 23:57
JTW
16.
Re: Palworld Passes 25M Players Feb 23, 2024, 23:57
Feb 23, 2024, 23:57
JTW
 
gfunk wrote on Feb 23, 2024, 00:29:
How has it not been shut down by Nintendo yet?

Because they have no legal basis for doing so?
6.
 
Re: New GeForce Drivers and NVIDIA App Beta
Feb 22, 2024, 13:34
JTW
6.
Re: New GeForce Drivers and NVIDIA App Beta Feb 22, 2024, 13:34
Feb 22, 2024, 13:34
JTW
 
And as long as they don't re-enable automatic optimization of installed titles. That is a huge pain in the ass.
5.
 
Re: New GeForce Drivers and NVIDIA App Beta
Feb 22, 2024, 13:33
JTW
5.
Re: New GeForce Drivers and NVIDIA App Beta Feb 22, 2024, 13:33
Feb 22, 2024, 13:33
JTW
 
As long as they don't "modernize" it by removing all of the user-facing options. There are a huge number of solutions to game issues that are solved through the control panel. Hiding, say, pre-rendered frames would break a whole bunch of fixes.
6.
 
Re: Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Early Access
Feb 15, 2024, 00:40
JTW
6.
Re: Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Early Access Feb 15, 2024, 00:40
Feb 15, 2024, 00:40
JTW
 
DRG has nailed it when it comes to things like regular updates, handling seasons and 'battle passes' (they cost free), cosmetics, progression, balance, and the whole nine yards. It really feels like a game where doing more gives you more options rather than just more power, so if you don't want to put effort into progression, you don't have to. But if you want to, it's there.

I have no doubt that they'll work on this until it's right.

jacobvandy wrote on Feb 14, 2024, 13:08:
First of all, you can DEFINITELY play and enjoy DRG single-player. They give you a little floating robot buddy that is more capable and helpful than a majority of the real people you'll encounter in that game. Literally 90% or more of my 400+ hours in that has been just me, alone with Bosco. You just set it to solo mode and nobody will be allowed to join you AND you can press Esc to pause it at any time.

Absolutely. Bosco is more than capable of filling in for missing players.
3.
 
Re: etc., etc.
Jan 27, 2024, 00:46
JTW
3.
Re: etc., etc. Jan 27, 2024, 00:46
Jan 27, 2024, 00:46
JTW
 
Most of those are a real stretch. Inspired, yes. Copied, no.
14.
 
Re: Palworld at 8M; Patch Released
Jan 26, 2024, 02:03
JTW
14.
Re: Palworld at 8M; Patch Released Jan 26, 2024, 02:03
Jan 26, 2024, 02:03
JTW
 
Teddy wrote on Jan 25, 2024, 23:21:
Unless someone can show ACTUAL art assets stolen or copied, or any attempt to use copyrighted material: That means, scene, setting, characters, music or actual copied images. Since this game is set in a different world, with different characters, different music and none of the 'pals' are direct copies of existing Pokemon, then what exactly do people actually think they're going to 'take it down' over?

This. Game mechanics can't be copyrighted, and neither can art styles. If they could, Games Workshop would have sued Blizzard into oblivion in the 90s (GW are bigger lawsuit-slinging copyright trolls than Nintendo ever was.) You can straight up copy a design as long as there are enough differences.

If (as some have suggested) they actually ripped Pokemon models and tweaked them, then yeah - that's a problem. And there are some possible arguments to be made about certain trademarks rather than copyrights (they're kind of pushing it with their Pikachu clone having a lightning bolt tail, for instance, despite other differences), but none of those things are 100%. And taking this to court would result in a very high-profile case that isn't a guaranteed win. A company as obsessed with image as Nintendo may not want anything to do with that.

I'm sure they have a team of lawyers tearing apart every line of code looking for a magic bullet, but unless they find it, it's unlikely that anything is going to happen.
1.
 
Re: OotB: I'm only sleepy when it rains
Jan 25, 2024, 12:59
JTW
1.
Re: OotB: I'm only sleepy when it rains Jan 25, 2024, 12:59
Jan 25, 2024, 12:59
JTW
 
Seriously. That cat was showing warning signs. It nipped her, and she responded by sticking her hands in its face. She earned that slap.
4.
 
Re: Evening Legal Briefs
Jan 17, 2024, 00:32
JTW
4.
Re: Evening Legal Briefs Jan 17, 2024, 00:32
Jan 17, 2024, 00:32
JTW
 
Simon Says wrote on Jan 16, 2024, 19:20:

As long as: Monthly fee * how many months they can get away with it * millions of clients > fine/payout.

They will keep doing it...


Months? They have somewhere around 95 million subscribers. If they only have one line each, that $3.30 monthly fee is earning Verizon the full cost of this payout every ten days. They could be fined another $100,000,000 every month and still come out ahead to the tune of 2.5 billion dollars per year just from this one fee.

Levying fines against corporations worth billions is a completely ineffective deterrent. They make more money by continuing to the do thing that got them fined and just paying the fines than they ever would if they stopped.

It's like punishing a thief by making them pay $30 for every $100 they steal. As long as they get to keep the other $70 with no other consequences, they'll never stop.
14.
 
Re: Portal Revolution Nears
Jan 7, 2024, 00:19
JTW
14.
Re: Portal Revolution Nears Jan 7, 2024, 00:19
Jan 7, 2024, 00:19
JTW
 
Alyx took place before HL2. Lost Coast took place in the middle of HL2 (it was originally part of the Highway 17 level.)

They really did leave Ep. 2 on a cliffhanger, but after 17 years, it's not happening. If there were a follow-up, it would be a full sequel, not Episode 3. And since Valve only seems to develop games as a side thing now, I wouldn't count on it.
21.
 
Re: etc., etc.
Jan 6, 2024, 22:05
JTW
21.
Re: etc., etc. Jan 6, 2024, 22:05
Jan 6, 2024, 22:05
JTW
 
If you actually look at the dates, 'Boomers' were never the market for those games. "Boomer Shooters" should be called "GenX Shooters." Although we'd have found a way to put a few more Xs and Ks in the name...
5.
 
Re: Saturday Tech Bits
Jan 6, 2024, 21:06
JTW
5.
Re: Saturday Tech Bits Jan 6, 2024, 21:06
Jan 6, 2024, 21:06
JTW
 
Hated that wave design.

Back when I was a writer (strategy guides, paper manuals), and I had to alternately game-write-game-write all day, every day, that keyboard was the only thing that brought my carpal tunnel back under control.
15.
 
Re: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Sells 5M
Jan 4, 2024, 22:55
JTW
15.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Sells 5M Jan 4, 2024, 22:55
Jan 4, 2024, 22:55
JTW
 
Also, it's kind of funny how many people sing the praises of GoG for being consumer-friendly, and yet rage about CDPR being a huge company that doesn't care.
14.
 
Re: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Sells 5M
Jan 4, 2024, 22:53
JTW
14.
Re: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Sells 5M Jan 4, 2024, 22:53
Jan 4, 2024, 22:53
JTW
 
Jim wrote on Jan 4, 2024, 18:51:
Congrats to cdpr, but they use a different business model than no man’s sky. Their update was paid DLC. OK they did make a lot of improvements to the regular game, but this is going to be at for cyberpunk 2077. Where as hello games is still updating no man’s sky - for free.

They put out a number of significant updates that fixed the game prior to the paid DLC, and the most recent super-patch was free as well - the paid DLC just added additional content in addition to the free fixes.
11.
 
Re: Get Escape Academy for Free
Jan 1, 2024, 22:20
JTW
11.
Re: Get Escape Academy for Free Jan 1, 2024, 22:20
Jan 1, 2024, 22:20
JTW
 
RedEye9 wrote on Jan 1, 2024, 14:16:
jdreyer wrote on Jan 1, 2024, 14:10:
Have you heard of this piece of internet functionality called a "hyperlink?"
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=upcoming+epic+free

Ah, LMGTFY, the last refuge of those who are so desperate to be sarcastic that they're willing to put more effort into doing so than actually just linking the page that supports their own claim would have required. But that would be a little too courteous, and leave so little space for snark.
14.
 
Re: Half of Steam's 2023 Top-Grossing Games are F2P
Dec 28, 2023, 19:19
JTW
14.
Re: Half of Steam's 2023 Top-Grossing Games are F2P Dec 28, 2023, 19:19
Dec 28, 2023, 19:19
JTW
 
Jim wrote on Dec 28, 2023, 18:44:
the opposite of Love is not hate, it’s apathy. It says something when somebody bothers to put together an eight hour video on how Starfield sucks. Redfall is an objectively much worse game but nobody talks about it. Why is that? it seems like people are offended that other people actually like Starfield.

Lower expectations, and the insistence of people who have never played a Bethesda game before that it is the greatest game in history. It was hilarious that it got a nomination on Steam for 'most innovative gameplay.' With very few (and not meaningful) exceptions, all of Starfield's gameplay has been around since Oblivion.

I don't hate it, but it was a disappointment. Or would have been, had Bethesda not raked me over the coals with Fallout 4 VR, Skyrim VR, and Fallout 76 - three bad games in a row. Since I had low expectations I wasn't disappointed, but I did put it back on the shelf. I'll come back in a year or two when the updates have slowed down and the mods that actually fix the issue Bethesda won't are in place.

Oddly enough, I have much higher hopes for their upcoming games (ES VI is next, I believe.) Mostly because Starfield was the last Bethesda game developed almost entirely before Microsoft got involved (and there have been hints that Microsoft wasn't very happy about how Bethesda has handled their games in the past.)
17.
 
Re: Midday Metaverse
Dec 28, 2023, 19:11
JTW
17.
Re: Midday Metaverse Dec 28, 2023, 19:11
Dec 28, 2023, 19:11
JTW
 
Saboth wrote on Dec 27, 2023, 20:58:
I'd say for 1/3 of my life I was subjected to commercials, but we had broadcast TV, meaning it was free.

Free TV with ads is still a thing. There are a number of channels that operate that way (Pluto, Roku, Freevee, Tubi, etc.)

Now they want us to pay a subscription to also watch commercials.

Just like most of us did through the 80s and 90s (even me, and I was perpetually poor.) In other words, cable.

Back in them there olden days, the thing we hated the most was paying for 20+ stations we didn't want in order to get access to one that we did. You want the ping-pong channel? You can only get it in a package deal with 25 other sports channels. We wished we could just order the channels individually, and even joked about being able to pick which shows we watched and when (that didn't happen until VCRs became affordable, or, later with the DVR.) We're getting now what we wished for then.

But I agree that ads today are awful. They used to be designed for 30-second slots. Now they're designed for 10-15 second slots and try to jam their entire pitch into those few seconds to appeal to the YouTube/TikTok crowd. And since they can assign ads based on the individual rather than the channel/content, you tend to get spammed with the same ads, over and over. The big problem is going to be if they start handling ads the way YouTube does, where you can get three separate sets of ads on a four-minute video.

The death of the Golden Age of Streaming will most likely just launch a new Golden Age of Piracy.
8.
 
Re: Midday Metaverse
Dec 27, 2023, 20:43
JTW
8.
Re: Midday Metaverse Dec 27, 2023, 20:43
Dec 27, 2023, 20:43
JTW
 
People who think that the old model was going to continue are seriously out of touch. These companies' streaming services have been losing money. Netflix and Hulu were the only mainstream services that actually made a profit. They were all counting on continued subscriber growth to survive, and when that stopped as the pandemic wound down, it was a problem. Suddenly their long-term plans for profitability became impossible.

They started pulling off old content (to not pay fees), they started to cancel shows, and they started showing ads. The truth is that most of us grew up with ads paying for shows, and their experiment in an alternative system has now fallen through. That's the real reason that we're going back to the old system on practically every streaming service.

The real negative is that now the niche shows (especially genre stuff) that has flourished are harder to sell to advertisers, and are expensive to make. Expect there to be less of that and more 'traditional' shows, more clones of popular shows, and more 'unscripted' shows (IE - reality shows, which are the cheapest to make.)

Hopefully, though, it will let us move past these six-episode seasons.
5.
 
Re: Rumor Mill
Dec 26, 2023, 18:50
JTW
5.
Re: Rumor Mill Dec 26, 2023, 18:50
Dec 26, 2023, 18:50
JTW
 
There isn't a company out there that hasn't considered, begun, and canceled a number of games for every one they announce.
8.
 
Re: Ubisoft Data Breach
Dec 24, 2023, 13:31
JTW
8.
Re: Ubisoft Data Breach Dec 24, 2023, 13:31
Dec 24, 2023, 13:31
JTW
 
We don't have more to share at this time.

In other words, we've got the information you need to protect yourselves, but it's going to take a while to filter it through our lawyers.

I'm tired of data breaches. But I'm even more tired of companies sitting on the breaches for six months before letting the people affected know - a six-month head start for the criminals to make use of that data.
7.
 
Re: Midday Tech Bits
Dec 23, 2023, 01:18
JTW
7.
Re: Midday Tech Bits Dec 23, 2023, 01:18
Dec 23, 2023, 01:18
JTW
 
Microsoft thinks this will sell more copies of Windows.
I have six PCs in my house. Exactly one of them is compatible with Win11. Does Microsoft think I have the money to replace 5 PCs just because they want me to buy their OS?
776 Comments. 39 pages. Viewing page 1.
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