Cram wrote on Sep 1, 2022, 12:52:
Surprised Wolcen is still getting support. Game has been averaging, on Steam at least, only 100 - 200 active players the last 6 months. 300-500 average the 6 months before that.

It's to bad too. It had such potential never realized. In my opinion anyway.

I've been wanting to play it, but I'm told to stay away. Is it really that bad? Grim Dawn and Path of Exile bore me now. I want a new challenge.

Nexusmods owner has been known to throw hissy fits in the past. He's not well liked at all. What's sad is they have a bit of a monopoly on the hosting of mods.

I struggled to beat Inquisition/DA3, and never went back to play it again, unlike the first game. I'd like to think they could return the series to its former glory (as brief as it was), but calling that development studio "BioWare" is like trying to pass off a fast food cheeseburger as filet mignon.

I'll keep my eye on it though. Read the reviews whenever it comes out and see what the consensus is. If they bring back the non-linearity, player choice, fast paced but strategic combat, and leave the wokeness at home, then I'll probably buy it.

Not holding my breath though.

Getting a Steam Deck was easier. Shame I still haven't got a PS5 though. Debated paying these ebay folks 1200 bucks for one, but they need to get a job.

These survival games never last long, except Ark, which I think has an edge over the rest as just having a bigger established player base since it is much older.

Valheim didn't resonate with me, but I have been playing and enjoying V Rising with a friend who bought a server. Fun to compete against other players and raid castles, go on boss hunts together, etc. Should keep me occupied for a couple months.

WaltSee wrote on May 24, 2022, 14:59:
Still can't believe Martin hasn't finished the GoT books! Incredible. I started reading them in the 90's. Still hasn't finished.

Yeah I got into them thanks to their connection to Dragon Age Origins, and that was 13 years ago.

Jim wrote on May 21, 2022, 21:41:
No console game has steam features and nobody misses them.

And that's why I only play games on PC now. Steam has surpassed Xbox Live. Many years ago in fact.

And to your earlier statement in this thread where you stated "Steam could pay for exclusivity too" I suppose you weren't around in 2008/2009 when Steam was begging major companies to use Steamworks as their DRM so as to move them away from the broken, intrusive Games for Windows Live that required an Xbox account to use.

Steam and Gabe Newell worked hard to make their service what it is. Epic just sold their rights to Tencent and pockets fortnite money charged on the credit cards of teenage kid's parents.

I'm guessing they aren't as confident in that many Diablo fans also being mobile gamers now as they were a few years back when the announcement was made. Smart move.

If it isn't full of microtransactions I'll keep an open mind and give it a try.

MikeJ wrote on May 1, 2022, 19:28:

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on May 1, 2022, 13:20:
So sick of seeing CP2077 on the Top Ten Fake sales. Everyone knows the game sucked, nobody bought it and if they did, they demanded a refund.

I played CP2077 on release and absolutely loved the game. I had only a few minor visual bugs. I completed the story line in several ways and had zero problems. Of course, I play on a high end PC.

My first trip through it was on my old rig at the time, an Athlon 5 with a 580 GPU. Ran decent in medium settings. About 45-50FPS

My second trip was on a core i9 with a 3080. Maxed out, 2K, ultra ray tracing and would pull 90FPS on average.

Never crashed a single time on either setup. It was honestly one of the most stable games I ever played. Was it feature complete? Heck no.....but it WAS stable as can be.

Darks wrote on Mar 25, 2022, 11:37:
Yawn, wake me when its on steam and on sale.

Looks like I'll have to do what I did with BL3. Buy it a year later when the GOTY edition with all the DLC and patches hits Steam. Their loss.

These parody articles from the Babylon Bee are getting really funny, I think. Kudos.

Cram wrote on Dec 17, 2021, 12:37:

GinRummy wrote on Dec 17, 2021, 12:25:
So, it's kind of a dialbo-ish isometric ARPG? Looks a little interesting, but not sure it's really my cup of soda. Anyone with experience with it?

Diablo'ish, yep but less complex than even Diablo 1 (example: loot and loot drops aren't even random). I owned it in 01/02 on the GC. I remember enjoying it at the time quite a bit. I recently, last year, played it again through "alternative" means. It did not hold up at all; I can't recommend it for $33.99 CAD. Deep steam sale, sure.

imo, the 2nd one was far better. In Dark Alliance 2, you could multi-class, and upon beating the game, were given a 2nd class to specialize in that wasn't available in the main game, letting you play a harder new game plus mode as a cross-class. For instance, the Barbarian became a Druid/Barbarian and started learning druid magic.

I guess I'm just an internet veteran, or an untrusting person, but I've never fallen for these scams nor would that Zelle one linked here have got me. The first big mistake those people did was respond to the text. I had a guy charge my card in 2004 for about $4500 and Bank of America never called me. I only found it when looking at my notice. They caught him and refunded me (and blacklisted him), but I learned your bank doesn't really care and "fraud protection" is B.S.

I get text's all the time asking if I did this, did that, wired this, authorize that, and I block the numbers every time. They do this with paypal all the time, saying someone hacked my paypal. Which is hilarious because I don't have one. You never respond to those things. Never let them know they have a number that belongs to someone. It's better to just check your accounts every few days as a habit, and if you see anything odd, freeze it. I did that recently with a company that triple charged me when their website glitched. Did a charge back too,.

HorrorScope wrote on Dec 12, 2021, 20:49:

Icewind wrote on Dec 12, 2021, 19:00:
So do we cancel Bungie now like we did Activision, and Ubi, and whoever? I guess every company in the known world has to be super super super gentle with every single employee or it's abuse.

Well since you have no clue as to what they are referring to in great detail, yes any employee that was wronged against policy should have their case handled appropriately, not a guaranteed win, but handled appropriately and a proper resolution given. Why would that be in question? When was that not how things were done? To me we are just catching companies asleep at the wheel and/or sweeping things under the rug, those are not ideals to champion.

Were people getting held down on the middle of the floor and sexually violated? Were people getting punched out? From what I'm seeing in their apology it was:

#1: We didn't hire enough women (and paid the ones we did have less than males)
#2: We didn't hire enough non-whites
#3: We didn't fire people who were rude/unkind

Might as well shut down 99% of businesses then.

So do we cancel Bungie now like we did Activision, and Ubi, and whoever? I guess every company in the known world has to be super super super gentle with every single employee or it's abuse.

Jivaro wrote on Dec 3, 2021, 00:22:
Completely irrelevant...but sometimes I read these articles and picture the look on my 20 something year old self's face if you had told me these things at a particular moment in time.

Like, imagine yourself being told the following in April/May 1999: It's 2021 and Quake, by id, is still for sale and being updated. It's even on an online store run by Epic, makers of Unreal. By the way, you can buy both games on a store called Steam run by Valve, the company that made Half-Life. Half Life 3 never happens and Duke Nukem Forever nearly took forever, not coming out until 2011. Microsoft now owns id. Electronic Arts buys out Bioware. You know how Bullfrog doesn't have much original staff left and Peter Molyneux just started Lionhead a year or two ago? That happens to Bioware except slowly and painfully instead of the relatively quick death of Bullfrog.


There might be some mental lapses in timing there but you all get my meaning. It is strange how this industry has turned out so far.

You know....SOMEONE should write a book about that.....someone who has been following the industry for a long time. Maybe even RUNNING A WEBSITE that follows the industry? cough*BLUE*cough I know I would buy it.

I often think about that myself. I am 45 and have been gaming since I was 6. Won awards for journalism, have a degree in it. A published author who quit the game community due to the toxicity of it. Had a popular youtube channel that, back in 2006-2009, documented gaming history and showed gameplay to games that were never shown on youtube at that time. I could do this.

But the gaming community beat me down to the point where I no longer have the desire.

I guess people are judging it by the lack luster multiplayer. Me, I'm just anxious for the campaign and hopefully the opportunity to co-op it with some friends.

They're so hard to get I still can't get one...but yet managed to snag a 3080 and build a new PC.

At this point I just gave up on playing the Demon's Souls remake. That's all I wanted the PS5 for anyway.

It's cool that folks love New World and all, but secretly, the best Amazon Games MMORPG that everyone wants is Lost Ark. That doesn't come out until the Spring.

RaZ0r! wrote on Aug 13, 2021, 12:15:
The DarkPlaces quake project will be hard to beat I think.

You beat me to saying this.

I still have the same modded dark places install I've been using for a decade. I use it for Scourge of Armagon as well and still play it. Not to be a negative nancy, but I don't think anything modern triple-A devs can do will be as good as what a bunch of dedicated fans did. I'll stick with Dark Places.