Scheherazade wrote on Jan 13, 2022, 13:34:
sc is cpu bound.

1080 with a 3950 cpu beats a 3090 with a 2950 cpu - at 1440p

iirc the renderer is thread limited (2 threads iirc???), and so it heavily depends on raw cpu core performance.

as of a few months ago, when i last checked in on it***

Yeah, it's part of the Gen12 renderer rework. But for now the game runs appallingly, even on high end systems.

asmodeos wrote on Jan 13, 2022, 08:39:
Star Citizen is a pretty epic technological experience. I have a very high end machine and it would be a disservice to not play around with star citizen on it.

A pretty AWFUL technological experience, sure. Even with an RTX 3080, I get framerates in the single digits at Orison and it probably averages about 20fps there.

Kosumo wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 04:23:
It's very scummy behavoiur that I believe should be illegal. (I'm sure it is in some countries) Taking money for the promise of stuff and then not delivering is criminal.

It's a pyramid scheme - money being taken from new backers / purchases to deliver what was promised to early adopters. If funding dried up tomorrow, CIG wouldn't be able to complete development of the game with the remaining funds. The majority of funding comes from Star Citizen, yet the majority of resources are being used to develop Squadron 42.

OpticNerve wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 01:06:
To be fair, currently one of the strongest PvP ships in Star Citizen is the Gladius light fighter. It's quick, agile and a good player can constantly evade shots, find weak spots and just constantly whittle down even big ships due to it's mobility and size. And it's also relatively cheap to buy with in-game credits at around 1.1m which is absurd given that it's currently the best dog-fighting ship in the game. A lot of the absurdly expensive big ships are mostly for showing off or for big Organizations (guilds)/a group of friends who just want to control one big giant ship together. But if you pit a group of 6 players controlling one big combat ship against 6 players controlling cheap light fighters each, the light fighters will win almost every time (unless they really, really suck). As it currently stands, big, expensive whale ships =/= pay2win

Do you really think that CIG is going to make large multicrew ships that cost over $1,000 ineffective against low-end ships? Because obviously it isn't. Six people in a Gladius aren't going to be able to take down a fully crewed Idris or Javelin, not to mention that those ships could just keep fighters like the Gladius in their hangar bays. Rich backers will always be better able to exploit the current meta.

OpticNerve wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 01:06:
From what I've experienced, it's not that hard (just a bit grindy) to make millions of credits in-game to buy any of the currently-flyable ships either via Mining or doing Bounty Hunting PvE missions so Roberts is not wrong in that regard. The main reason why people spend such an absurd amount of money is because a lot of them are just flight/space sim nerds who have a shitload of money to spend on their hobby. It's the same type of people who literally spend thousands and thousands of dollars to have a fully decked out flight sim cabin with multiple displays, HOTAs setups and extra cabinet buttons and layouts. It's also a preventative thing where there's bound to be server wipes due to a big patch implementing major changes and all of your in-game credits and ships are now gone. The only way to prevent this is to shell out real money to buy ships so they'll be there in your hanger after future wipes.

A key aspect of P2W is making the regular activities "a bit grindy" in order to nudge people to spending money to get around them.

OpticNerve wrote on Jan 7, 2022, 01:06:
I fully admit to scoffing and joking about Chris Roberts and "Scam Citizen" but an online buddy of mines kept bugging me to try it out and he was so convinced that I'd love it that he even offered to buy me a cheap pledge back to join him in the game. Not wanting a handout, I bought a cheap pledge package myself and I do have to fully admit that so far, Star Citizen is really quite addictive if you love space sims/shooters. It's also a weird juxtaposition because while the game is buggy and performs like shit on modern hardware, it also shows an amazing amount of promise because it IS an amazing, unrivaled feeling when you can run around an absurdly detailed city, buy armor & guns, take a flying shuttle to the city's space port, randomly run off any docking-bay platform, leap out into space and zero-G float into and land in the open cargo bay doors of a friend's huge mining ship and run around in its interior while that friend pilots us to a new adventure at a distant planet or moon. All without a single loading screen.

Star Citizen definitely warrants most of its criticism but while Robert's promised game is moving at a snail's pace, the basis of a great online game IS there and I personally can see the game being an amazing online FPS/space sim if it ever does gets released. I really do think that someone needs to reign in Chris Roberts and to get him to polish and optimize what they have now in the online version of the game and release big, new content afterwards. At this rate, I'm afraid it's going to be a George R.R. Martin situation where Roberts is going to croak and the company will go tits up before he's satisfied and releases the game.

The scam is that Chris Roberts isn't even trying to complete SC or SQ42, whilst always pretending that development is on track and major releases are just around the corner. The features added throughout 2021 are mostly features delayed from Q1 2019 (refineries, physicalised inventory, reputation and Crusader/Orison). Meanwhile a lot of other important features promised by Q1 2019 are missing - server meshing, salvage, data running, refuelling, land claims, etc). Despite that, funding has increased from about $35m per year up to $85m.

Features like server meshing are foundational to the game working. Yet back in July 2018, CIG was still claiming it would be released by Q4 2018 - just 5 months away. Now it is currently scheduled for Q4 2022 and has been substantially scaled back from its original concept. There is no way that CIG actually thought server meshing was only going to take several more months to complete back then - it was clearly hiding from backers how far behind schedule the game was.

jdreyer wrote on Jan 5, 2022, 22:26:
@TheAreComingForYou: Any news on SQ42?

CIG initially promised a video series called The Briefing Room detailing progress on SQ42 (only after immense pressure from the community over the frequent delays). It released one video at the end of 2021 and was then promptly abandoned, with Chris Roberts stating the game is too early in production to be showing off anything more. And the one video released was just a tour around a single asset, with no actual gameplay.

It is so far behind schedule that CIG isn't even giving an appropriate release date since abandoned the previous one of Q4 2020. Also worth noting that Chris Roberts talked back in 2019 about raytracing and geometry virtualisation (see: UE5's Nanite) being targeted for 2023-2024 so it seems implausible that SQ42 would release before major upgrades to the engine are implemented. And that's without factoring in any of the usual delays.

CIG has also just started to ramp up hiring for it's UK studio which will scale up through 2026. But that's fine, as CIG raised record levels of funding in 2021 (over $85m) so isn't in any hurry to finish the game.

In other words, don't expect it any time soon.

6 Ways to Delete Yourself From the Internet (may require registration or subscription).

So I have to register for a website in order to find out how to delete myself from the internet? That sounds counterproductive.

WaltSee wrote on Dec 12, 2021, 13:19:
Oh, brother...;) I'm just waiting for the first person in and around gaming to apologize for being born...;) It's coming.

Good grief, stop being such a snowflake. Bungie was called out for its poor business practices and issued an apology on that basis.

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.

Abuse is abuse. There were plenty of issues exposed: mandatory overtime, sexism, sexual harassment and a culture that protected long-time employees from the consequences of their actions. If you wish to keep portraying employees not wanting to be sexually assaulted as 'needing to be super super super gentle' with everyone then that speaks more to you that is does about the situation.

Ah yes, a topic about a delayed gaming device being taken over by US domestic politics. Lovely.

The Half Elf wrote on Oct 31, 2021, 10:02:
I tried the last one. I started in a room in a huge high rise building. Went to use the elevator and died clipping through the elevator and falling into the planet. Over and over and over. I uninstalled.

It really hasn't changed much, except now when you die by falling through an elevator you lose all your possessions and respawn in a hospital. Then you have to manually equip armour and weapons.

Each patch makes the game more and more tedious, and that's without even addressing that performance is worse than ever. They've committed to going for a hardcore survival game, where you need to manage your food and drink intake, balance your drug intake when injured, manage your personal hygiene, select which weapons and armour you need for each encounter, wait long periods of time to be revived if you're downed, etc.

I still remember getting burnt by Brink. That game had so much potential but ended up being a complete disaster. It was a case of marketing over competency.

This is a rather transparent negotiating tactic, signalling that they will change branding if they don't get a decent deal from FIFA for licencing rights.

Quinn wrote on Oct 5, 2021, 12:21:
Installed it today. Looks very slick and Mac-like but that's actually a good thing now that I experience it firsthand. It's very responsive and intuitive. No idea why people complain so goddamn much all the fucking time. It takes quiet contemplation and a few days offline to remember complaining about every fucking little thing actually isn't the human default.

This. What I would say is that it's worth leaving the start menu in the default centre location. It takes a bit to get used to but after trying it out for a while I definitely prefer it.

Xero wrote on Oct 5, 2021, 12:03:
Well, I ran the PC health check and my PC does not qualify for Windows 11. Lol. I think I can feel like I'm pretty outdated now that I can't even run a new OS, lol.

Oh well, she plays most of what is out just perfectly fine at 1080p!

Mine was the same initially, but all I had to do was changed a UEFI setting and I was good to go.

bhcompy wrote on Oct 5, 2021, 03:47:

RogueSix wrote on Oct 4, 2021, 19:03:
Current benchmarks are showing that many games are running slower on Windows 11 while only a few games run faster (usually within margin of error like 1 -2fps). I have also seen some worrying benchmarks with regard to percentile fps. Framerates momentarily drop by up to 60% in some scenarios vs. Windows 10 in games. No game supports DirectStorage yet and it remains to be seen whether the benefits will be tangible at all.

As a gamer, I see absolutely no reason to upgrade at this point. The free upgrade period for Windows 10 users will only start next year anyway. I hope that MS will address the performance issues until then and do a major cleanup under the hood. "Built for gaming" is definitely a bold lie from all the testing and reviews that I have seen so far.

As always, wait until at least the first service pack before jumping to a new OS generation

Meh. I've been running Win11 as my daily driver since the first public insider build and the experience has been great for me. The only issues I encountered were in really early builds with some slight delays when changing themes and some inconsistent context menu interactions. After those first few early builds everything has been rock solid.

In fact, for me Win11 performs better than my previous Win10 install for music production. That is extremely latency sensitive and driver sensitive, yet has been great. For me, the new UI and usability improvements make this an easy upgrade because I despised the Win10 start menu and notification centre.

NKD wrote on Sep 30, 2021, 23:25:
Isn't instantly banning cheaters kind of a no-no? Cheat developers can know right away if they are undetected?

It doesn't say that cheaters will be instantly banned - it says that when they are sanctioned it will cause them to be instantly disconnected.

Tipsy McStagger wrote on Sep 21, 2021, 12:21:
Are we at 10 years yet or is that in about 6 months?

Pre-production began in 2010, so we're well over a decade into development. However, we're not yet a decade from the Kickstarter which was back in October 2012.

I enjoyed some of the previous games, so I'm cautiously optimistic.

Was going to pick this up but then I read all the Steam reviews about Denuvo producing awful stuttering even on an RTX 3080 and am giving it a hard pass. Shame, as the game looks really unique and fun.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Sep 10, 2021, 00:58:
Sam Magg's is not. And they're the one who's going to be doing writing on this. For those that don't remember, she's the one who claimed she was "raped" in GTA5, while falling up the ladder of failure while destroying everything she touched to the point that companies folded.

I had to look this up, because it occurred over half a decade ago. She said in an interview that players engaging in virtual sexual assaults in GTA online are deplorable and should be banned from the servers. I mean, who cares? She's entitled to her opinion.

The question I have to ask is, why are you still going on about something that occurred so long ago? Do you get this upset about every person who has a different opinion to you? Because if so, your life must be a pretty miserable experience.

Fleche wrote on Sep 5, 2021, 11:36:
Anyone else surprised that CIG hasn't started converting and selling all these digital assets to NFTs?

There have been quite a few posts on the forums asking them to add NFTs, though they have usually been shot down quite quickly.