Kxmode wrote on Oct 2, 2022, 18:21:
I'm a little confused, but what exactly does "new animated series for kids, family-friendly" mean for a video game based on a toy line for kids? Hasn't Transformers always been for kids, or, at least, a glorified advertisement for toys?

It might seem like that, but I hear they're more than meets the eye.

Jivaro wrote on Oct 1, 2022, 23:16:
dude, if you have a battle.net account (which you do if you have a blizzard game these days) then they have had your phone number since the day you created it. This isn't new.

No, in fact, they don't. Maybe YOU chose to give them yours, I did not.

Slick wrote on Sep 27, 2022, 20:30:
Class-shaming has never been more rampant in any other game.

That sounds like something a Hanzo-main would say.

Prez wrote on Sep 27, 2022, 22:07:
Normally I would balk at the thought of a big corporation recording and storing what people say. But having heard and seen the horrendous things that people say to one another in chat in Overwatch there is no other way there would be any deterrent at all to someone being a complete shit bag. I despise the idea of giving out my phone number to any corporation, especially one as greedy and unsavory as Activision/Blizzard but given how despicable people were in the paid game I shudder to think how bad it could get in the free version if they didn't do something like this.

As weird as it is, you can likely get away with using a $10-15 burner phone to avoid giving them your actual number unless it regularly forces you into a two-factor ID through the phone you chose.

Gotta love a $32 billion dollar company spending a few thousand on something and calling it 'big news'.

PHJF wrote on Sep 26, 2022, 19:54:
Anthem 2

Nah, I assume the "BIG" reference is relevant. Something EA Sports Big related.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 25, 2022, 13:18:
A lot of those games look like trash, but looks like Kentucky Route Zero will be coming soon. That's worth a look.

A lot are generic crap mobile games, but they've got Oxenfree, Kentucky Route Zero (soon), Into the Breach, Moonlighter, Immortality (I haven't played but it's reviewed well). They're making some solid indie additions, it seems.

Razumen wrote on Sep 22, 2022, 00:05:
Congrats, you just described what a game in alpha is, which is exactly what SC is.

SC has been in development for more than 10 years. If they're not past the Alpha stage by now, they're literally NEVER going to finish the game.

bstar wrote on Sep 20, 2022, 13:52:
Based on the reviews, it looks like it's crazy short (7-10 hours). MI2 took me almost a month to beat back in the day. Not sure how I feel about potentially beating this game in 2 sittings.

If it took you a month to beat, that's on you. Monkey Island 2 takes approximately 7 hours to beat. Roughly the same as Return to Monkey Island does.

Jivaro wrote on Sep 14, 2022, 22:51:
Does any game have more dlc then a Sims game?

Train Simulator Classic lists at 680 purchasable DLC's.
Fantasy Grounds Classic clocks in at 1969 purchasable DLC's, though that's more of a platform and the dlc's comprise games on the platform. Still worth mentioning.

Also, if we're talking cost-wise, apparently if you bought everything you can buy for cash in Entropia Universe the total cost is about $6 million USD.

On this same note, Eidos Montreal now owns the rights to Deus Ex and Thief.

Nerian wrote on Sep 6, 2022, 10:09:
who the hell cares that they used some hyperbole. Wow.

I care. Using nonsense terms like "miracle pill" immediately lumps them into a category of people I can't be bothered to listen to, right alongside GOOP and other charlatans. Words have meanings, and they carry with them implications and associations that ACTUAL WRITERS should know and understand. The author of that article is an idiot that did a disservice to the information they were trying to convey and to the people who did the actual work studying the issue. This isn't a question of simple hyperbole, this is co-opting language that has been used for decades to promote pseudo-scientific claims and applying it to actual scientific claims. The resulting skepticism is not only natural, but expected.

The only thing that's pathetic here is the author's choice of words.

Bodolza wrote on Sep 6, 2022, 12:19:
What non-sensical action are we talking about, here?

I've got no problem with warrior-Galadriel. She's thousands of years old by the time LotR happens, and she and her family have been through multiple huge wars. The Silmarillion has her as one of the leaders of the group that goes to Middle Earth to fight Morgoth. She also still has thousands of more years to evolve into the "wiser" Galadriel we see in LotrR.

My only issues with the show so far are the somewhat lacking attempts at Tolkienesque dialogue, and the strong implication that the Stranger is Gandalf, who shouldn't be showing up in Middle Earth until well into the Third Age. If it is Gandalf, that just feels like pandering to the movie fans.

The problem isn't with warrior-Galadriel. It's with the fact that the writers of that scene literally had to make everyone else wholly useless and incompetent as a warrior to make her look better. Literally, her team of warriors was getting their ass handed to them while not putting up a single effective bit of effort against the enemy. Then she leaps into the fight and dispatches it single-handedly without a scratch to herself and seemingly without any significant effort on her part.

Why would she even keep these people around if they can't hold their own as a team against a single opponent? The ONLY reason to have them there was to display them as bumbling idiots so she could look better. It's lazy writing and reeks of pandering.

The short of it is, if you have to make everyone else look bad to make your 'badass' character look good, then you've written a bad scene or worse, a bad character. That's where that scene failed. It could have illustrated her as a leader, someone that pulled her team together, fought, and won together. Instead, it showed her as someone that didn't need her team there, to begin with.

Quinn wrote on Jul 12, 2022, 11:02:

Pr()ZaC wrote on Jul 7, 2022, 17:01:
What?
No pirate jokes?
I'll start.

Rated HARRRRR!

Sadly, Skulls and Bones is more"Somalian rapist" pirates than "Harrrr booty!" pirates. Think more Captain Phillips and less Pirates of the Caribbean.

I'm disappointed it's more realistic than fantasy. The most exotic thing we will find now is some tribal cannibals. No skeletal fortresses and underwater cities...

I don't know that this should be a 'sadly' thing. It's literally a game placed in a setting that I don't think has ever been done in a game before. People are always complaining that things aren't original enough, they're doing something original and should be commended for it. Hopefully it turns out to be a good game.

Kxmode wrote on Jul 17, 2022, 07:09:
Purely from a business standpoint, I understand Musk's reasons. If you plan to spend 45B for something, you expect full disclosure before proceeding. In this case, he has expressed concerns that more than the claimed 5% are bots. Given the Internet and how it works, it would not surprise me if the percentage is closer to 10-15%. That means the data is falsely painting a picture of an asset worth more than it should be. It also means shareholders aren't being told the entire truth as required by SEC law. In the interest of full disclosure, investors and shareholders have the right to know how many on the platform constitute real people.

Except for the fact that Twitter has done the work as best as anyone knows how to figure out how many users are bots, has disclosed the results of their findings to their shareholders, and has provided Elon Musk with all the data they have on the matter as per the agreement. It's not their fault that he doesn't know how to read the data, and literally, NO ONE has proven that the results Twitter got from their own analysis are false. You can think it is all you want, you can choose not to believe they're telling the truth, but unless you can prove it, then you're just making libelous statements in claiming they're falsifying information to shareholders.

Imagine trying to buy a company in a field you literally know NOTHING about, then demanding they provide information before you pay and when they do and you don't understand it, expecting that you can get out of a signed contract. That's the sort of entitled rich boy man-child Elon Musk is.

RedEye9 wrote on Jul 16, 2022, 13:38:

Xil wrote on Jul 16, 2022, 13:25:
link

Seems he want it next year and take longer then April for a reason

Ah

The debt financing package committed by banks for Musk’s acquisition expires in April 2023. That means if the trial began in February and did not finish by April, the deal could collapse.

Yep. Then he can legally just say that he can't meet the funding requirement anymore and the worst it costs him is $1 Billion and not the $44 billion he's on the hook for right now.

This statement isn't as bad as some people are making it out to be. People hear monetization and some people immediately jump to thinking about microtransactions or DLC. Monetization is the simple act of figuring out how you're going to make money off of something. That includes what price point you're going to set. Are you going to try for indie levels $20-30 range, or AAA range $70-80? Are you going to sell expansions or DLC? It also includes microtransactions. Are you going to sell cosmetics? Are you going to sell game mechanic assistance like XP boosts, or actual mechanics themselves like say horse riding in some free to play MMOs?

He's absolutely right that not thinking about this early in development is stupid, if you're creating a game with the intention of selling it at all. More to the point, nowhere does the statement that you should think about monetization earlier mean that you should think any less about the gameplay, the mechanics, the art and story or anything like that. Just don't forget that if you're making a game as a business, you're need to know how you're going to make your money.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Jul 1, 2022, 05:52:

Teddy wrote on Jun 30, 2022, 23:44:

WannaLogAlready wrote on Jun 30, 2022, 19:04:
How many developers disappeared when piracy ate their investments and efforts of years ?

How many? Can you actually name any? I'm sure there are people who claimed it as an easy boogeyman to blame, but usually companies fail because their games just aren't that good or fail to inspire the interest of the gaming public for whatever reason. That or plain old mismanagement of funds.

Obsidian, from those that *survived*.
And they were famous.
Bethesda f@cked them with their stellar Fallout New Vegas (shining specially on their DLCs), denying them a crucial bonus by a difference of peanuts in sales.
Without piracy they would have made it.
Then Obsidian was in a bad place a couple times, from where they returned to solvency with Pillars of Eternity by Kickstarter.
"... multiple rounds of layoffs. One of those layoff rounds came around the same time when the Irvine-based company missed a Metacritic average review score goal for Fallout: New Vegas, which meant Obsidian reportedly missed out on a bonus payment from its publisher Bethesda."
www.gamedeveloper.com/business/spurned-by-traditional-publishing-obsidian-turns-to-kickstarter

Which is it? Did they not get a bonus because of a metacritic score, or because of piracy? Wikipedia says it was entirely about the metacritic score, and you neglected to mention the 'South Park: Stick of Truth' issues where the game was in limbo for ages after THQ failed, or Tyranny that they poured resources into without it being particularly well-received. It also sold poorly. So, no then... you don't know any companies that disappeared because of piracy. Thank you for clarifying that.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Jun 30, 2022, 19:04:
How many developers disappeared when piracy ate their investments and efforts of years ?

How many? Can you actually name any? I'm sure there are people who claimed it as an easy boogeyman to blame, but usually companies fail because their games just aren't that good or fail to inspire the interest of the gaming public for whatever reason. That or plain old mismanagement of funds.

RogueSix wrote on Jun 30, 2022, 17:00:

Armengar wrote on Jun 30, 2022, 16:36:
TBH you are coming across a bit too fanboy. In my yoof I might have graced a few scenes myself, not so much in the later years when I actually had money. I cant ever recall getting a virus, having details stolen, having CPU cycles robbed by coin miners etc. Im not saying such payloads in cracked games arent out there but anyone in the know can get clean releases. I haven't heard of any uncrackable games though (outside online only ones such as D3 etc).

The bold part does not apply to the vast majority of people. I worked for a PC system builder in the early 2000s. Every day dozens of people piled into our store with their PCs under their arms complaining that we sold them a shit PC that no longer works.

I'm seriously not lying or exaggerating when telling you that 9/10 cases was user error and that 9/10 machines were infected by viri or malware. Many machines literally had hundreds or even thousands of different positives from trojans to worms to mal- and annoyware. I will never get the constant Avira beeping out of my head.

When examining the internet history of these machines, it was very clear that the so called "work PC that I need back tonight at the latest" (as per the customer) was in reality mostly used for p&p (piracy of games and movies & pr0n). And it would have been as easy as running the free Avira to avoid any of this crap but the vast majority of regular customers was either careless and stupid or simply too full of themselves (I'm too smart to contract viri or malware since I pay attention to what I'm doing).

Yeah, the online world is a very different place than it was 20 years ago. Malware and viruses exist, but they're nowhere near as common as they were. Either way, your personal opinion and anecdotes are not proof that the people who have suffered poor performance in denuvo games have computers loaded with viruses or malware. Professional sites have done tests that proved it has caused problems in the past, Tom's Hardware among others.