They didn’t really need to do anything in my opinion. Innersloth just made a video game version of mafia in space… and they weren’t even the first to do that.

D2R's "launch issues" are massively overstated from my personal experience. D2R maybe had "launch issues" for a few hours on its first night.

People have been reporting inability to join or create a game, vanishing characters, levels lost, stash vanishing, and I (along with many others) still can’t even launch the game (despite it running flawlessly in beta), none of which I recall happening with WoW. That said, I never played on EU servers so I really can’t comment on that.

RogueSix wrote on Sep 28, 2021, 20:23:
WoW launch was a complete shitshow for many, many *months* before Blizzard was able to bring up more servers and hire/train more CSRs.

I don't know about that. I deliberately held off until early January mainly because of the issues. When I picked it up then, it was pretty much smooth sailing for everything other than maintenance - which we would usually get game time credit for. It had only launched at the end of November.

Don't get me wrong, there was still plenty of complaining going on, but I never really encountered anything I thought was unreasonable. It was probably a better launch (by that point) than D2:R is looking to have.

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 25, 2021, 14:04:
if it turned out Apple was telling the truth.

I imagine they are, they just aren't including people with free access. I haven't paid anything for Apple TV, and yet I have it though the start of 2023 or so. Lots of people received a year or two with the purchase of a phone/computer/watch. I imagine the idea is, get enough content out fast enough (because they do have quality content - just not all that much) that a chunk of those actually subscribe. That was basically Netflix etc 's model for streaming. Well, really, it was everyone's model... Except Disney, who went more the "WE WILL BUY ALL THE THINGS, AND THEN THE MOUSE KING SHALL RULE FROM HIS GOLDEN THRONE!" approach that (while excessive) is apparently effective.

Then again, as much money as Apple has, this whole thing could just be a vanity / halo project, who knows...

IIRC: motherboard and CPU early 2010, added more RAM in 2012, GPU 2019.

Since I game at 1080, it has been more than powerful enough, never had any issues. Even the most recent Battlefield was fine. Though the issue here isn't power, the beta was fine. They just apparently use either a different compiler or at least different compiler settings for beta and retail releases. I don't know how their numbers compare, but if they are close to the Steam ones, this will impact around 10% of their players.

I have a laptop with discrete graphics that could run it, but I would have to install Windows and I would just rather wait for them to fix it or ask for a refund.

Midnight wrote on Sep 25, 2021, 07:54:

MattyC wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 22:18:
I find it rather strange that the first thing my prehistoric i7 CPU can't run is not a modern graphics heavy shooter, but rather a minor graphical update to a 21 year old game.

"minor graphical update"?!? They replaced every old sprite and background with completely 3D assets and lighting! That's a staggering amount of work done by the studio, and a whole lot of polygons, textures, and shaders to push around.

I mean I guess you could say it is a lot of art, yes, but that doesn't have much to do with the CPU. That art was all in there a few weeks ago when I played it, and it ran just fine. The underlying game is almost entirely the same and they have said as much. I am pretty confident that an i7 930 and a 2060 RTX can more than hold its own against an i3-3250 with a Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7850 and whatever ARM-4 is in the Switch.

Ultimately it isn't really a big deal. They can either fix it or they can send me a refund. I already own multiple copies of D2 that work fine. In the future though, if they are going to add a system requirement (particularly one that is entirely arbitrary) while ignoring their beta user data, they really should update the listed system requirements before it goes on sale.

I find it rather strange that the first thing my prehistoric i7 CPU can't run is not a modern graphics heavy shooter, but rather a minor graphical update to a 21 year old game. Hopefully they will undo whatever they did because the beta ran just fine and I am not buying a new CPU / mobo / RAM for this. If I made it this long I can wait for prices and supply on components to improve again.

WannaLogAlready wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 21:09:

MattyC wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 20:40:
How is it? ...

Not my cup of tea being 2D and retro, but ...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/298630/The_Escapists/
94% score at recent reviews.
90% resulting score at 13259 older reviews.
People seem rather crazy with it. Grab it !

The Metacritic was in the lower 70s, but I would trust Steam reviews over Meta. Thanks, I always forget to check Steam for EGS things simply because they used to be largely exclusive with their freebies.

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 19:03:
Oh man, I just made room on my hard drive for another free epic game and then I realized I already had it. They’ve given away this freebie before.

How is it? I mean for a freebie, obviously I could just search for reviews for what it is like retail. If anyone here has even mild praise for it I will probably give it a go at $0. Worst case scenario I waste 15 minutes figuring out that I don't care for the title.

Jonjonz wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 06:23:
Tim effectively kicked Crapple in the balls, so no wonder they are pissed. Losing all that sweet microtransaction revenue from online transactions is really the whole ball game with today's game economy. Both companies are evil, but Crapple has done way more harm to consumers than Epic ever dreamed of.

If the internet has taught me anything, it is that corporate wordplay (like Micro$oft or Crapple) is the hallmark of a cogent argument!

Invading your privacy at the same time as telling us “we value your privacy”

Wow, that is rich considering the alternatives. Chrome and Edge are so well know for valuing and respecting user privacy...

None of them are particularly good when it comes to privacy, but Firefox is by far the best of the group.

phinn wrote on Sep 9, 2021, 22:01:
It's beyond confusing that they couldn't spend the time just making KOTOR 3.

I could be mistaken, but I thought Disney had zero interest in KotOR and that made any completely new entry a non-starter?

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 7, 2021, 21:13:

RedEye9 wrote on Sep 7, 2021, 20:51:
The EFF fingerprint tracking checker is cool https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Interesting. Brave seemed to do pretty well, my scores against the average scores indicated were all better than average (many significantly better). I didn't look over the information closely, but I did notice it incorrectly detected how much RAM I have. I have 32 GB, it detected 8 GB.

It got basically nothing on me. Nothing detected on RAM, CPU, etc. It got that I was using Firefox on Windows and what fonts I had installed. It couldn't even tell if I had an ad-blocker. I guess that should be comforting?

fakespyder wrote on Sep 5, 2021, 18:34:
Although shining the light on flying debri and crows could get monotonous.

Ugghh, this so much. Why he didn't just leave during the day after the umpteenth nightly encounter could have used some more detail. Just vaguely implying obsession is basically a cop-out. That said, beyond those two things, I really enjoyed the game.

Alpaca San wrote on Sep 2, 2021, 09:27:
I am surprised there are actually 24 RTX 3090s being used for gaming, that must be most of them.

I am surprised there are actually 24 RTX 3090s period. From what they have been going for (actual price, not MSRP) I assumed there were 2 or 3 in all of existence.

Sempai wrote on Aug 27, 2021, 14:54:
my airpods 2nd gen i purchased in 2019 died a few days ago, went into the store and they basically snickered at me along with a comment from the genius bar "they lasted you two years? That's good!"

aww..fuck apple.

I would take that to an Apple authorized repair shop if you can (I honestly don't know if they do the headphones) and see what they say. I had a MacBook Pro many years ago with the nVidia 8600 GPU. Known issue where it would die, black screen. I took it to a Genius Bar and they tried to tell me I needed to "replace the logic board and it will be $1100". I was like, the computer, with the known issue, that I can hear do the boot chime, that I can watch it get an IP from my router, I can then ping that IP, and even SSH into the machine? That computer needs the motherboard replaced? I don't think so... I took it to a local Mac shop and the guy fixed it in a day or two, sent the bill to Apple. He probably did replace the board, but that wasn't the point, it didn't cost me anything because it was a known issue Apple was covering. Genius Bar employees are usually early college aged kids, don't assume they represent what the company is willing to do or even know what they are talking about.

While batteries gon' batterie (I had a user just the other day with an 8 month old Dell with a dead battery) and those batteries are very small, 2 years isn't "good". Tolerable maybe, but not good.

Dev wrote on Aug 22, 2021, 10:17:
Also, why not put it on your 10tb mass storage drive? Presumably you have non SSD? I remember getting drives like that for only around $100.

SSD for the OS and the software you use most often, spinny metal plates for anything else.

That said, it doesn't hurt to check your C:\Windows\Temp folder. Sometimes old update files and other junk can clog that up. Also, if you just let Windows sleep there was a bug (no idea if it was fixed or not) that would let the saved states build up and use massive amounts of space until you did a full reboot. I once had a user with a full 512 GB SSD, threw out all the temp files and they were only using about 350. The rest was just uncleared junk. Ran systeminfo and they hadn't actually rebooted in months.

After spending some time with the beta I am reasonably impressed and probably going to pick it up. The ability to switch between new and old visuals is great for nostalgia and it really is just D2 with QoL improvements so not much to dislike.

Ant wrote on Aug 20, 2021, 23:10:
This better be fun like old Diablo games.

I am approaching it with caution, but I am going to give it a chance. StarCraft remastered was very good, but WC3 remastered was very very bad.

For the 10 people on the planet earth who don't already own Skyrim?