Um ... it's not a game though.

Interesting words from a man whose father made his fortune creating and selling pachinko and pachislot machines. The operators of those machines have effectively bypassed Japanese gambling regulations and contributed substantially to the funding of North Korea's military.

theglaze wrote on Jan 6, 2022, 13:09:
This video goes into detail https://youtu.be/2MKtgP7cHEk

Here's my quick breakdown...

• Senior BF devs starting leaving the team after BF4. Some claiming they knew what fans wanted because they were fans of the franchise, but management was calling the shots and controlling creative direction. The youtuber suggests corporate was focused on chasing the success of competitors, rather than building it's own unique content from within
• Design was focused on free battle royal because EA decided it NEEDED to compete in this space. It didn't know if Apex Legends could pull it off, and decided the BF name recognition was needed to attract fans to its F2P BR model.
• It took 3 times longer than anticipated to get BF on an upgraded Frostbite engine, so it started behind schedule
• More senior staff left BEFORE post-production started of BF2042, suggesting they knew it was going to be a steaming pile. Most people on the team have 7 years of experience or less, some new to Frostbite, new to BF, or new to both
• The switch from battle royale to full price 'traditional' BF experience happened a month or two before post-production.
• The UI team was so gutted by staff departures, it was almost entirely outsourced just a few months before the game was released.
• Covid protocols meant that workers were no longer going into the office as the team transitioned to remote working. Many devs didn't have the hardware at home (consoles or PC) to test their code and changes, because EA provided that gear in the office. Remote workers had to download a new build every day on home networks (100 times slower) and ask fellow coworkers to test their bug fixes on their personal PS5 or XB or PC
• Management hesitated to push out the launch, settled for a few weeks when everyone involved in development was asking for months

Thanks for the summary. Sounds painful. Hopefully they do some serious post mortem on this one, rebuild the team properly, and focus on the things that made BF great: working together as a squad, having epic battles with large team sizes, interesting and properly sized maps, vehicles that enhance the game instead of ruin it, a variety of fun game modes, satisfying progression that isn't too grindy, the right balance between casual and hardcore, and maybe even some destructible environments. Yeah it's a lot to ask for but they did it before. BC2 was probably the peak IMO.

Was this one released too unfinished, poorly designed, poorly executed, or all of the above?

In any case, with 33% of Steam reviews positive and a 3.0 user score on Metacritic, it's a hard pass. Maybe it'll shake things up enough at EA to produce a good BF game next time around but I wouldn't count on it.

As dumb as this is, the publicity will probably be a net win for them.

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Nov 19, 2021, 15:11:
Yeah, i bet that's just becasue it is EA. Every EA game gets review bombed, because EA is the devil, and WOKE, and they have girls in war games, and they hate TRUMP, Christians, Patriot's, and are directly contributing to the ongoing while genocide. The list goes on, and on, and on.

Well then... let's see how some other recent EA titles are rated on Steam:

FIFA 22: "Very positive" (80%)
Lost in Random: "Very positive" (92%)
Madden NFL 22: "Mixed" (59%)
STAR WARS Jedi: Fallen Order: "Very positive" (90%)
F1 2021: "Very positive" (80%)
STAR WARS™: Squadrons: "Mostly positive" (72%)

Eh it's not just reddit. The game is featured prominently in the Steam store and when you click on it, "Mostly Negative" - "22% of the 13,989 user reviews for this game are positive."

OUCH!

That was a great blog post by the EdgeDeflector guy. I don't need to use something like that as I avoid all of the Windows "features" that would use the microsoft-edge "protocol". But Microsoft is trying hard to force people to use Edge and it's probably going to keep getting worse, so it's good to have people fighting to raise awareness of this crap. I will never use Microsoft's browser, willingly or unwillingly, just as I will never use their pathetic search engine.

If it can't be licensed in perpetuity, don't license it. Don't use it. Do something else. It's that simple.

"You should buy a second monitor!"

* a really expensive one

** with our affiliate link

It's probably something like...

If detected CPU behavior does not match brittle hardcoded list of approved CPU behaviors, it's time to "manage" those "digital rights".

This sort of stupidity has been going on forever and will continue as long as companies keep buying into the sales pitches of the scumbags who sell this trash.

Yeah I think it's worth a visit. I'd like to go back someday and explore more. The building architecture is really different from any place I'd ever been to and there are canals all over. There's a grand scale to things. Nevsky Prospect. Tons of history. Huge museums with so much interesting stuff I barely had time to scratch the surface of. I went in the summer and got to see the White Nights Festival and the Scarlet Sails. Lots of people were gathered outside at 2AM and it was still fairly light out, bridges lit up with colorful lights. There was a lot of everyday normal stuff that was interesting too. Huge squares and monuments. The metro (one of the deepest in the world apparently). Old-style apartment buildings in various states of decay. I ate at a stolovaya (cafeteria) and rode a marshrutka (shared bus/taxi) with random people. Even went to a water park.

I would recommend going with a friend or someone else you can trust if possible. And if you're really into it, take some time to get at least basically proficient with the language. It seems pretty tough as far as languages go but you can at least get the basics down with free apps like Duolingo. Maybe there are better apps now. Part of the fun of the trip was being able to at least sound out what I was seeing everywhere and understand some of it. Signs on buildings, aisles in a little grocery store. Having basic conversations was a blast. People were very friendly in my experience.

Thanks for the Soviet-era metro pics. They brought back some good memories of a visit to St. Petersburg. I rode down a seemingly endless escalator and found myself in a surprisingly beautiful and artistic space. The train cars looked just like the ones in these pictures and they took off with quite a lurch. The different stations had very different themes. All in all, it was like being on another planet.

Yeah, I agree completely. I went to PAX East a few times and it was lots of fun. Very similar experience to what you described.

Discovering new games and talking to the devs was the best. They also had a cool pin collection thing going on ("Pinny Arcade"). There were some organized competitions which I didn't do but some friends did and it was fun to cheer them on. I had some fun with the totally chill retro gaming spaces. I was able to revisit Soul Calibur on a real Dreamcast and smack down some poor unsuspecting random guy. "Yeah I played way too much of this a long time ago..."

Online-only does not compare. Completely different thing.

Long live the fighters.

Nullity wrote on Oct 25, 2021, 13:03:
3. If it's too heavy or too big, there's always the non-Pro model

Nope. The non-Pro model is 207 grams. The Pro model is pretty much the same at 210 grams.

If you're going to compare with Samsung, the S21 Ultra is 229 grams which is also stupidly heavy, but it's a huge phone. At least they have a smaller and lighter model. The regular S21 is 171 grams.

My current phone is 157 grams which is tied for the heaviest smartphone I've ever had and heavier than I want. But this is the industry trend. Huge displays and ever-increasing weight. Ugh.

The Flying Penguin wrote on Oct 25, 2021, 13:12:
Tom: I know there are several different versions of the litany spoken in the book. Villeneuve is very familiar with the book, and he may be quoting the actual litany used in that scene in the book.

Sorry, but I'm afraid you're mistaken. This is easily verified with an electronic version of the book. I checked. The Litany appears twice in full form (recited by Paul both times) and once in abbreviated form (recited by Jessica). There's no deviation in wording. It's 100% consistent every time.

Of course, in the new film they had Jessica recite it instead of Paul. This is another deviation but I'm willing to let it slide. Changing the wording, however, is not acceptable behavior from someone who boasts about how faithful to the book he is while trashing David Lynch.

So here's an article about explaining the changes from the book and it mentions the Litany very explicitly, but it fails to mention or explain why the words of the Litany were corrupted. What a missed opportunity. I'd like to know who's responsible for it. Who thought it would be a good idea to screw with "the novel’s most famous inner monologue" as this article puts it? Or did the script writer or Rebecca Ferguson just plain screw it up through incompetence and nobody noticed during production of the film? I can't imagine any defensible reason for altering the wording the way they did. The 1984 film got it right!

I wouldn't get a tattoo with the Litany. But I did memorize it many years ago. It really stands out when someone recites it incorrectly. Surely I couldn't have been the only person to notice...

As for the changes Villeneuve made that WERE explained in the article, I found his reasoning to range from unsatisfying to infuriating - with the exception of his omission of the Baron being a pederast. I'm ok with him leaving that out, although I think David Lynch deserves respect for trying to tackle it in his own weird way.

Even if one did trust Google, the thing is a pig weighing in at 207 grams. No thanks.

My impression was that both movies would be mostly impenetrable for those without prior familiarity, so that is interesting. So much is left entirely unexplained. What is there is often just hinted at or explained poorly. I wouldn't expect a movie to cover the whole book accurately, but it would be nice to form SOME sort of coherent story. Did they really do that? Difficult for me to tell.