The Half Elf wrote on Oct 19, 2021, 11:09:
Ubisoft needs to just stop right now. Everything with exception of AC Vahalla has been sub-par, or as I call it "Work From Home" quality. Re-gather the troops in the office, and put some quality into their games. Quality not quantity.

It's not the number of projects or where the workers work. It's the working conditions, the planning of each title, how much random content - most of which no one even likes - is crammed into each game, pretty much the core philosophies of the company. But yes, quality over quantity.

Solution: allow players to play their character on whatever server is open. Use instancing for places where real estate is important. Let players switch their instance as needed. Design your game to work - and be fun - with these limitations.

What research did they do that let them think 2000 player max per server was a good idea.

Patents cover an invention - as long as the mechanics of the invention are new it can be patented, even if the same kind of thing has been done before. Virtualizing the filesystem in order to crowd-source the access paterns of which data a game needs to start is pretty novel. As far as I know, other methods of launch while downloading have used inside knowledge of which packages need to be downloaded to start the game and which can be updated at a later date.

A patent would be the wrong way to go about this anyway. It's really Among Us' unique presentation of the ideas than the ideas themselves which are being trampled on here. So IP. But I think Epic changes enough to make it not legally stealing the IP. It's just close enough that everyone knows what's going on here, everyone knows it's shitty, but whatareyagonnado?

Quinn wrote on Aug 9, 2021, 11:00:
Opinions are all over the place regarding B4B. This is one of these games you probably got to try yourself to know what's what.

I stick with my opinion that anyone who buys the Valve Index instead of the wireless Quest 2 almost a full grand cheaper, is criminally insane. 😌

If Valve Index were a greand cheaper it would be free. Quest 2 is definitely a better buy but a lot of people in vr want to go for the highest FOV - quest 2 is pretty disappointing there.

Bad workplace culture... to create entertainment.

It's an oxymoron, and there are no good excuses for it.

Jonjonz wrote on Jul 26, 2021, 07:09:
New World opening sales on Steam. Every wanna bee streamer jumps with the herd onto any new game bandwagon. Give it a month. From what I have seen so far, combat is just plain stupidly bad. Quests are sophomoric, kill X turkeys, kill XX turkeys, kill XXX turkeys etc.

Guaranteed to be F2P within a year.

Erm, does it need to be f2p when it is a one time cost like Guild Wars 2? It's basically premium f2p already.

Why did this thread get political? People passed around a nude photo of a coworker who later killed herself. No consequence. Workers had their work rejected unless they gave it to a man to pitch. No consequences. Women were not given the normal raises and promotions their coworker partners were. This isn't about thin-skinned political correctness, it's about people being awful and those in charge, who are responsible for their company culture, not giving a damn until it is too late.

It doesn't even matter that the people who were harmed were women, except that it is so prevalent for women or minorities to be the targets of this abuse.

It's not because men are more likely to be pigs. It's because men in powerful positions are less likely to call out their friends. It's because this behavior has been entrenched for too long and become a part of the industry, rewarded and enabled by money. It's going to take a lot more than some very flimsy apologies to rectify.

I wouldn't think anyone would be looking to buy one of these and hope it can compete with their desktop for performance - but you know, people be people. This is going to be my new emulator of choice, while also letting me still progress a bit in some of my beefier games in situations where I can't use the desktop.

This looks good I probably will get one. Will I finally finish my older backlog titles like Deus Ex Human Revolution if I can play them in bed will my partner watches a sitcom? Chances certainly go up, and I'd prefer to deal with less than perfect graphics hardware vs less than perfect streaming.

Idiotic. Hire less of a diva and replace the likeness for the pc version. If you are going to use actor likenesses like tv/film, then fans will have to live with the inevitable recasts that also happen in tv/film.

Nice, they also removed the might and magic X forums from ubisoft.com.

Well damn, my habit of buying games, getting halfway through, letting them sit for a few years and then coming back to actually finish them is not great.

What a terrible trailer. I heard good things about Elex - after a slow start. But I dunno my piranha bytes love never made it past Risen 2.

This is a really cool technology, I think the danger is in too many games that have no business being a massive open world being pushed in that direction.

I wish they would fix steam proper. The new library interface was a nice try but it's worse in some ways than the old one (which had a lot of room to grow). Big picture mode really looks like it hasn't been touched in 5 years.

It's bonkers to me. I'm one of the biggest ubisoft fanboys around, but it feels like if they just cut every one of their AAA games in half content wise they would be better for it and also cost less to produce. And barely anyone would notice.

Valve doesn't need to pay for exclusives because they don't need to entice devs to release a game on their store. Devs will do it because you would be crazy not to target their market.

Exclusivity, along with it's guaranteed income, and being promoted to a market where you are liable to be a bigger dog, is an incentive for a store that has a much lower market share.

Anyway, steam also doesn't need to pay for exclusives because they have their own tools that give them exclusives anyway. You people always seem to conveniently forget that steamworks exists. Yes, it is a more meaningful value-add than just paying someone, but often effectively means the game is exclusive to steam as well. It started with skyrim (if you bought it in a store it would install steam off of the dvd) and continues to this day.

All these companies, valve included, want the same thing. Customers to get stuck in their ecosystem and pay them for life.

Sometimes projects under microsoft can continue to thrive, but it's true they don't have a great track record with social tools. It's mindblowing to me that they didn't have a skype offering that could compete with zoom in 2020.

Hopefully discord doesn't go there to die, in the past couple years it's become my defacto online community.

"launch"