wtf_man wrote on Sep 21, 2020, 18:26:

Spektr wrote on Sep 21, 2020, 18:16:
I have a bad feeling about this...

This doesn't bode well at all for Id games running on OpenGL/Vulkan. And I guess id software games on Linux belonged to another era.
In fact it doesn't bode well for pretty much anything I can think of.
Is MS trying to become the Disney of video games?
Did I mention that this doesn't bode well?

It also doesn't bode well for any more Zenimax / Bethesda / iD games going to GOG.
There are zero Microsoft published games on GOG.

inXile games are on GOG, aren't they?

Honestly, I'm ok with this. What I read from this is MS is attempting to further flesh out value for Gamepass for both console and PC users and to bolster a more tertiary first-party stable of games that doesn't require them to be solely developing them.

Dev wrote on Sep 10, 2020, 11:46:
aka "that 'free' ea game pass we added actually isn't so we will raise the price for everyone even if you didn't want the EA pass"

Or...if you were paying attention you'd know that $4.99 was a temporary price from the get-go. Microsoft didn't really hide this fact and they had already made various comments over the course of when they introduced Game Pass Ultimate that they were going to not continue $4.99 forever.

That said, the price is still better than the old system of having Gold + Game Pass.

Beamer wrote on Aug 13, 2020, 10:25:

JohnBirshire wrote on Aug 13, 2020, 10:13:
People be installing 50 different launchers just to get 100's of free games that cost a grand total of two days of minimum wage.

Actually, most EGS games have been worth well more, several considerably more, and honestly, what harm is a launcher if you only run it when you use it?

True, between things like GTAV and Kingdom Come Deliverance (and now for 24 hours, Total War Saga: Troy), you're looking at some decently priced games given out for free. That doesn't even include the more niche titles, all for the cost of the use of a launcher, which, at worst, has the same information that Steam collects and doesn't have a shopping cart.

First world problems...

Kxmode wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 19:35:

DarkCntry wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 17:22:
Except at $30/yr, that makes it $2.50/mth...less than a cup of coffee at many places. So yes, they bank on a lot of people not constantly using the service, just in the same way as every other streaming entertainment service does...but honestly, if $2.50/mth is breaking the bank, then buying a single $60 title at release is not even a feasibility.

I agreed with your points until you went below the belt at the end. A bit of professional courtesy, don't criticize a person's financial status no matter how easy you think it is or how much you believe it'll improve your reasoning. It's petty. You can do better than that.

I think you misunderstood my statement, I wasn't criticizing a person's financial situation, I was making a remark about if $2.50 is a problem for some people insomuch that a $60 title is even a greater issue to swallow, not as an attempt at denigrating, but as an example of cost measures and choices made.

Kxmode wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 17:12:

DarkCntry wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 15:50:
At the price point, this isn't anything more than a damn good bargain, probably the most consumer-forward action from EA in a long while.

For the cost of a budget title, you can play pretty much all of EA's games for the entire year, which is more than enough time for almost all of the games.

It's a gamble. EA employs a team of physiologists who know humans are fundamentally lazy. Loot boxes are a perfect example. They're betting that most people will be too lazy to cancel and activate their subs based on what they think they are or will be playing. For instance, on a game like Cyberpunk 2077, people will likely be on that for a couple of months. They left their EA Access sub going and didn't use it. EA made a residual income of $5 per month for nothing. Essentially it's free money.

Except at $30/yr, that makes it $2.50/mth...less than a cup of coffee at many places. So yes, they bank on a lot of people not constantly using the service, just in the same way as every other streaming entertainment service does...but honestly, if $2.50/mth is breaking the bank, then buying a single $60 title at release is not even a feasibility.

Kxmode wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 17:02:

Cutter wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 16:46:
That's awesome. I'm already subbed to the EA Vault. For $30 a year it's stupid not to do it.

It's not a genuinely good value. Effectively what you have is a Rent-To-Own model that never ends. Your access to their games ends after the sub expires. On a typical EA game, most of the high-end cost happens within the first three months of release. After that, they get discounted heavily, and even more so during big promo sales. So unless you plan on playing every game in their line up, per month, I suspect you'll only play one or two. If you play anything other than the latest release, you'd be better off waiting for the upcoming Labor Day promo and making a one-time purchase. But, hey, you do what you want. I am merely providing the bigger picture.

Truthfully, how often do you replay most games? I'd say on average it's somewhere around twice in any given year. So, you purchase a new EA title for $60, complete it twice, and then maybe in a couple years time, play it again...you just spent double the cost of EA Access to play one game to completion twice and still not have access to the hundred other titles on the service.

In every sense of the phrase, EA Access is a really good deal. If you decide that you really, really like a game so much that you see yourself playing it every day for the next 4 years, then you can get EA Access, wait for the inevitable deep sale within a year of release, buy it with the 10% discount, and still have access to other games, all for roughly the cost of a single new title.

jdreyer wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 16:23:

Ozmodan wrote on Aug 10, 2020, 16:15:
Just a bad port. Their testing team should be fired if they even have one.

It's unlikely that the testing team was terrible. It's my experience that in these situations these are likely:
1) The company didn't put enough resources into testing.
2) The company provided only virtual testing environments which are good at catching driver and OS compatibility, but no good at catching hardware compatibility issues like the ones we're seeing here.
3) The testers found and reported the issues, and a business decision was made that there wasn't ROI in fixing them.

To expand on 2, it's a port of a game that existed solely in a fixed hardware environment and originally programmed as such...now it's a game that exists in an ecosystem that is as varied in hardware as you can get, using more advanced technologies...it's bound to work flawlessly for many just as much as it is bound to have issues of varying degrees of severity for many others.

It's hard to fault any of the Dev team, and only marginally the publishing arm, for issues like this; it's all but impossible to have a release like this work without hiccups.

At the price point, this isn't anything more than a damn good bargain, probably the most consumer-forward action from EA in a long while.

For the cost of a budget title, you can play pretty much all of EA's games for the entire year, which is more than enough time for almost all of the games.

I9-10900KF @4.9GHz (base 3.7GHz, max turbo is 5.3GHz)
32GB 1600 DDR4
2080 Super
OS Drive is an EVO 970 Plus
Intermediate install drive (for open world games) is a EVO 970 Pro

Steam shows me at around 10 hours and I've had one crash that I can trace back to a video driver issue in the first 15 minutes of playing because of HDR, haven't crashed since updating the driver. I'm running on mostly ultra settings @1440p and the benchmark averaged 77fps, and I believe not once dropping below 72fps. I think my average load times is like 5 seconds, with a max of 10 seconds...first game load is about 15 seconds.

Luckily I haven't had any issues with the game stuttering or obnoxiously crashing, but I also know that my system is not what you would call a slouch in terms of raw power. I have a bit more graphical hitching in Death Stranding than I do Horizon, but even there it's minimal and only when there's a lot of stuff happening on screen (see: 'boss' fights).

Edit: Just checked, the game does ping the CPU more than GPU in general gameplay and heavily pings the GPU during initial loading and intermittently in area 'transitions' and cutscenes. On average, CPU will hover around 60% utilization on all cores, with occasionally upwards to 80% on a single core.

This comment was edited on Aug 10, 2020, 15:39.

Bully Hunters 2.0...

I'd like something like this to work, but I know Internet culture can't allow it and it will be inundated with trolling.

eRe4s3r wrote on Jul 21, 2020, 00:55:
Exactly, man I binged the game the past week on my week off, 72 hours and only now I am getting bored. What an amazing experience, cinematic, an interesting story, extremely detailed graphics and some of the best facial animations I have EVER seen in any game ever. Not to mention the feeling of satisfaction when you place a thing because nobody placed it for you in a location and over 70k likes for it

Zip lines are also amazing to me. Imo one of the best games on PC this year by far .. so far, anyway

Also it runs buttery smooth on 1440p on my rig.

This game is an absolute must play imo. People who call this a walking simulator probably call Total War: Warhammer 2 are a building sim. Ie. they have no clue what they are talking about. There are so many secrets hidden too, like a shrine in the mountains, mystical towers of .. something.. waterfalls... and funny dialog not to mention some of the craziest side-stories in a long while.. (Emails are worth reading in-game)

Anyway, I had my monies worth and then some.

It's not a walking simulator, it's the best pizza delivery simulator available

Avus wrote on Jul 19, 2020, 19:04:
really than many people like walking...

Yea, it's surprising that people have a wide variety of eclectic tastes when it comes to entertainment...

Prez wrote on Jul 16, 2020, 12:37:
Why is this 'Dr. Disrespect' so interesting? Is he supposed to be a big deal or something?

The closest analog I've come across is the Heel persona in professional wrestling. It's a character that does whatever it can to illicit a response from an audience, and usually it's a "did they really say/do that" type. In the Doc's persona, he literally was the toxic FPS guy, which is probably a far more common persona to latch onto when it comes to his general audience.

His whole schtick was to push whatever envelope to get the 'lulz' reactions, kinda like his little outing into the bathroom while streaming at E3...

Personally, I don't care much for the persona because all it does is enable the aforementioned toxic personality in games by giving them validation to do so. My understanding of Guy is that he's a pretty decent businessman behind the scenes and knows exactly where to tap the pulse of his community, so for that I can give him props...but that's the extent.

One of the positives over Origin Access is that UPLAY+ does allow access to all content of a title, including DLC and expansions.

No DLC has ever been this good before, ever...

Cutter wrote on Jul 6, 2020, 20:36:
I'm done supporting companies that are pro-witch hunt..

Based upon your posting, you actually don't support any company, so I'm sure the loss they feel from your lack of patronage is very minimal.

Cutter wrote on Jul 6, 2020, 14:07:

“You can love or hate the game and share your thoughts about it. Unfortunately too many of the messages I’ve been getting are vile, hateful, & violent,” the director said.

You just said you can hate it. Threats aren't acceptable, but vile? Vile is a matter of perspective. Obviously some people find your game vile and reacting accordingly.

We could just talk about Laura Bailey's events where people wish death by cancer on her parents, the desire to kill her kid, or even the basic death threats simply because people don't like the character she voiced.

Yea, if you don't find any of this vile, then mayhap you're part of the problem.

The Half Elf wrote on Jul 3, 2020, 20:50:

necrosis wrote on Jul 3, 2020, 20:01:

Kxmode wrote on Jul 3, 2020, 19:33:

necrosis wrote on Jul 3, 2020, 19:09:
$20 on PS4 but $50$ on PC. For a 3+ year old game.

Then go play it on a PS4. Your entitlement to assume that all the time and expense it took the developers to port it over to PC to then sell it on Steam for $20 minus Valve's 30% is foolish. I own it on PS4 but as far as I see it, this is a new game for PC gamers.

Its the same assets. Same story. 99.99% of the game is already done! Why do we have to pay an extra $20 for a old game? PC users getting screwed over just like when PC games jumped to $60 for no damned reason other than "well we milked the console users for an extra $10 why not the PC users too!".

Actually you're getting 20 bucks cheaper then when it was released for PS4. There are enough PC features that if money wasn't an issue I'd double dip for the PC version. This was the game that made me buy a PS4, and again is worth the money if the port isn't screwed up.

Even cheaper than that, since it includes all the DLC.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 22, 2020, 21:46:
The reason Mixer failed is because everyone hates paid exclusives. If they had just let Ninja and Shroud stream on both platforms so viewers could choose which platform they wanted to watch streams on, it would have been fine.

For partners, Twitch has the same clause in their contracts about exclusivity of streaming. If pushed, Twitch reserves the right (and it has been done before) to revoke the contract if they find any of their partners have been actively streaming on 'competitor services'.

I do believe that each of the platforms have similar clauses in regards to contractual obligations.

Cutter wrote on Jun 22, 2020, 22:01:
30 million dollars to play a kid's video game. Jesus Christ, it's no wonder this world is going up in flames. WWIII can't come soon enough.

It's pretty on-character for you to denigrate people on their line of work because you feel it's beneath you...so good job.

The only PS-exclusive game that I am even looking forward to is Horizon's sequel (and honestly, I doubt it'll stay exclusive forever), but no release date given makes me think its release will be closer to 2022, so I have no reason to purchase the PS5 anywhere near launch...

The lack of PS5 launch date and price have me thinking the rumors of it being 3DO-levels of pricing ($700US) are going to be true and that also keeps me from wanting to even think about getting it anywhere near launch and to just wait until the first revision is made.

Like the past few generations, I've purchased both an Xbox and a PS, so I'll probably get the PS5 somewhere down the road, but I'll stick with the Series X as the first purchase. I actually like that MS took the more minimalist look, and maybe the PS5 will have other options than white cause damn if I wouldn't expect that to get dirty in any non-clean room situation pretty damn quick. That also doesn't even mention the superfluous wings at the top just begging for them to be broken the first time a pet or child knocks things around accidentally.