WaltC wrote on Jan 13, 2021, 20:08:
Twitter is a sewer, comparatively. AMZN is dead wrong about this. The country is getting very tired of stupid censors waging war against freedom of speech. Let them all move to China if they want to surrender their rights so badly. The Chinese will be happy to take theirs away.

Twitter and Amazon are private companies and they have every right to ban Trump from their platform. They are not arresting him and throwing him Twitter jail. Comparing this to China is idiotic and shows a complete lack of understanding of what freedom of speech really means.

Sepharo wrote on Jun 2, 2020, 18:47:
You guys are talking about something that actually came with this update...
This news post doesn't have the details but mentions the new game mode "Spike Rush"

Oh yeah, haha. Sounds pretty good.

heroin wrote on Jun 2, 2020, 14:18:
I agree, they have this super polished game, with these nice super short rounds but then you have to play 12 rounds each side, 24 rounds! (Edit: first to win 13 rounds, so could be 25 rounds). Ends up requiring a lot of concentration over a long stretch of time. Seems like 3 or 4 rounds each side, max, would do the trick. It is quite fun though.

They already reduced it compared to CS, which is 15 rounds each side. New more casual game modes should be released in the future though, which will help.

Civ4 was the best. The lead designer for Civ4, Soren Johnson, has a new Civ style game coming out called the Old World.

Beamer wrote on Apr 27, 2020, 11:37:
I, uh... went Sacred Coil first. Is it that different than others? I've only done like 3 missions since that choice, so I'm barely in.

Edit - just read. Apparently the boss battle is impossible unless something gets glitched or you get insanely lucky (which may be the same thing.)

Looks like I'm starting over.

I did Sacred Coil second and went to the boss mission with a good team. It was by far the most difficult fight so far, nothing else even came close.

Verno wrote on Apr 27, 2020, 11:13:
If you mean XCOM2, the saves are seeded at mission start so you can't savescum. Statistically it often feels like you're missing a disproportionate number of high percentage shots but I could never detect any form AI "cheats" when I was screwing around in the game files for modding purposes. It is frustrating to miss a 83% shot then a 92% shot but statistically speaking it will happen.

XCOM cheats in your favor on lower difficulty settings but otherwise the probabilities are exactly as they are listed. Plenty of people just don't understand how probability works

Also people don't understand that turn based is an abstraction. When you catch an enemy in the open, that doesn't mean it's standing perfectly still waiting for you to shoot it. It's easier to conceptualize the enemies as in the process of running, dodging, diving for cover, etc, and no, you should not just get a guaranteed 100% shot just because it's in the open.

Oh, and here's an article Riot published 2 months ago talking about their ring 0 level anti-cheat driver, so anyone accusing them of trying to hide that fact is talking out of their ass.

This looks like a mod for XCOM 2. Don't really like the changes, especially since it looks like you have a limit pool of agents and a mission fails if one of them dies. But its worth a shot for $10.

Who am I kidding, I even bought X-com Enforcer and there's no way this will be as bad as that game.

Beamer wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 09:06:

Yifes wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 07:43:

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 21:42:
Who owns Riot?

Parent company- Tencent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent

Tencent = China

I really dont want to have a piece of root level chinese software on my PC.

And who owns Tencent? Their largest shareholder is Prosus, which is Dutch. So Tencent = Dutch? That's not how multinational conglomerates work.

And "Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in West Los Angeles, California."

If you think Riot Games = China then you are an incredibly naive and ignorant person.

There's a big difference between a parent company and a largest shareholder.

I don't think anything is being reported back to the Chinese, but as a parent company, Tencent can force Riot to do whatever they want. They can fire anyone that does not listen. They have full, absolute control.

That is generally not true for largest shareholders. Prosus has 2 seats on their board, and no one in management. They can be outvoted on anything Tencent chooses. With only 31% of the company, their share is significant but their voice is listened to, not obeyed.

The point is saying Valorant is "chinese software" is flat out wrong, and about as stupid as saying Tencent is Dutch. Valorant is written by American developers in California. Riot is an American company. Sure the parent company can tell you to do whatever it wants, but the idea that a group of American developers are willingly colluding with Tencent on behalf of the Chinese government is idiotic. You'd think that somebody would speak up if a hostile foreign government was interfering with your company? Threatening to fire someone is scary enough to keep everyone's mouth shut?

The entire idea is not only moronic, but a pretty offensive baseless accusation.

Muscular Beaver wrote on Apr 14, 2020, 00:03:

Yifes wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 19:56:
The software is not from China. The software is made by Americans in the USA. There is a huge difference between this and Wechat.

This is a good case of "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Riot has often been incompetent in the past, but I don't think it has ever been malicious. You'd think that having the most popular game in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly players, they would be under pretty heavy scrutiny over the last decade.

I know from first hand experience that stupidity can be at least as bad as maliciousness.

Yeah, like religious nutjobs ignoring coronavirus distancing orders and congregating at churches. The point is that Riot is always known for their shitty code, but they have been around for more than a decade now, and their shitty code has done nothing more malicious than negatively affect the player experience.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 21:42:
Who owns Riot?

Parent company- Tencent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent

Tencent = China

I really dont want to have a piece of root level chinese software on my PC.

And who owns Tencent? Their largest shareholder is Prosus, which is Dutch. So Tencent = Dutch? That's not how multinational conglomerates work.

And "Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher, and esports tournament organizer based in West Los Angeles, California."

If you think Riot Games = China then you are an incredibly naive and ignorant person.

ColoradoHoudini wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 19:21:
On a piece of software running on Level 0.... from China.. not remotely acceptable. Then after you uninstall the game, it's still there.

The software is not from China. The software is made by Americans in the USA. There is a huge difference between this and Wechat.

This is a good case of "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Riot has often been incompetent in the past, but I don't think it has ever been malicious. You'd think that having the most popular game in the world, with hundreds of millions of monthly players, they would be under pretty heavy scrutiny over the last decade.

jdreyer wrote on Apr 13, 2020, 18:31:

Riot has gobs of cash, I'm sure they're paying streamers. That's usually how it works.

This is almost certainly wrong. See my other post. Or read this if you're still wondering why it's popular among streamers.

Also, this looks nothing like Lawbreakers, other than that both are character based shooters.

This comment was edited on Apr 13, 2020, 19:37.

What is the local take on the game? I don't see the draw, but I see a LOT of the top streamers are playing it. (Also seems to be pulling from PUBG and other games)

Do yall think the developer is paying the streamers?

There are not paying the streamers to play it. There are plenty of reputable streamers playing the game who would notify their viewers when they are playing a sponsored game. Streamers are playing it because there is record breaking viewership for the game right now, with top streamers routinely racking up 200k+ concurrent viewers. This is because watching a drop enabled stream on Twitch is the only way to get a beta key right now.

There was a scandal recently when a big streamer Dr. Disrespect pretended that his stream had beta key drops enabled when it wasn't. The devs approached him initially to stream the game, but he wasn't interested because they weren't offering him any money. Now he's jealous of the attention other people are getting and lied to get more views.

Some of them I don't see playing the game and they aren't all that excited while they are playing.....

I don't see this game hanging around.

That's because many streamers have been playing the game every waking hour. it's probably hard to stay excited after one week of playing the same 3 maps 16 hours a day. Every current or ex CS pro that I've watched had positive things to say about the game, and with Riot's plan to constantly update the game like LoL, you can bet the game will be around for a LONG time. Whether the game can overtake CS:GO, now that's a more debatable question.

This comment was edited on Apr 13, 2020, 17:54.

Bhruic wrote on Feb 20, 2020, 20:56:

RedEye9 wrote on Feb 20, 2020, 20:27:
What's the developer payday if purchased on GOG .

$15,000,000 million dollars to host a file. I'm in the wrong business.

Yeah. "Host a file". That's all steam does. /s

For a single player game like Witcher 3, that's essentially all Steam is good for. I don't see any reason to buy Witcher 3 on Steam over GoG.

fujiJuice wrote on Jun 27, 2019, 23:56:
So we should buy it broken and not what was stated in the hope that it gets fixed? And which is the dumb argument?

Be a reasonable person and realize things are not black and white? Use your judgement, do your research, and realize it's perfectly fine to buy some games on release once in a while?

I'm like 95% sure I'm going to get Cyberpunk 2077 on release. I would preorder it but the bonuses are not interesting.

eRe4s3r wrote on Jun 7, 2019, 03:27:
Personally I'd rather it be true to DnD 5 than true to Infinity Engine games, as much as I like BG2, the combat system in Infinity engine games is not particularly good nor true to the ruleset for that matter (movement, cover etc.)

Really hope they don't make it true to DnD 5e. 5e is streamlined and while it's good for a pen and paper setting, it really lacks tactical depth and customization. There's not much you can do with its limited feat system to really distinguish your character from someone else's.

I'd much rather see Larian use their own creativity but that's probably unlikely given WotC's involvement.

Brazor wrote on Mar 12, 2019, 14:04:
The only reason why I'm ok with that is that it counters the Lib propaganda. None of them are good of course.

The Washington Post is pretty good. They have a pretty high standard for journalistic integrity and publishes addendums on the rare occasions that they fuck up. Compare that to Fox News, which lies constantly and never attempts to correct itself, a true hallmark of a propaganda network.

Saying no news orgs are good is a false equivalency and a lazy way of ignoring real criticism.

Muscular Beaver wrote on Mar 9, 2019, 07:48:
Same way I feel. Japanese games/anime are not my thing because of it.
Some are better done, because they aim directly at a broader range than just Japanese culture, like Resident Evil, but even in those you still taste this stuff, the overacting, the weird dialogues, etc.

Play Darksouls/Bloodborne. Awesome non-arcadey combat. Little to no dialogue. Problem solved.

Timmeh wrote on Feb 24, 2019, 10:33:
The left or whatever the heck they are now has the world so @#$%$-up.

So now we are not supposed to want to see women in bikinis... ok....

At some point the left need to reevaluate what you have become. Its insanity, its moronic and it needs to end.

That's not what the article says at all. The problem is that searching for “photos of my male friends” on Facebook returns no results, and automatically assumes you're searching for photos of females. You can still search for whatever pictures you want in your spare time. Either you're too lazy to actually read the article, or you're terrible at comprehension.

Also, the issue was raised in Belgium of all places and has nothing to do with your politics. Jumping to politicize this bullshit is just ignorant and dumb as fuck.