”STOP LIKING THINGS I DON'T LIKE YOU DUMB KIDS!"

There we go. Everyone can move along home now.

Kxmode wrote on May 10, 2020, 18:52:

Jivaro wrote on May 10, 2020, 15:15:
PC Gamer coming with hardcore topics I see.

Luke Winkie doesn't work for PC Gamer. He's a freelancer writer and reporter. According to his accolades, he's written on topics for Heated, OneZero, Elemental, Medium, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Myspace, The Independent, USA Today and more. He doesn't strike me as a hard-core gamer, but more a hard-core trend chaser and opinionated flavor of the mouth spewer.

Which is fine and dandy, but, when you pay a hard-core trend chaser to appear on your site, it doesn't exonerate you for posting garbage - it means that you didn't have that variety of garbage in stock, so you went out and bought garbage to smear all over your site. I would almost consider that even worse.

I'd venture that 90%+ of people using computers don't know what Ring 0 or Kernels are, and another large section does, but doesn't care because they want to play the game.

At that point, they've already got such a huge chunk of the potential market that the few people who know, and also care, don't matter. It's not even a big loss for them.

Alamar wrote on Feb 5, 2020, 10:54:
Good on him for trying to learn from his mistakes...

No, please, do not encourage him. He's already half-waffled on his retirement, and we don't need anyone to open the door for him.

His failures burned his own empire to the ground, and took down everyone in his studio with him. If he really thinks that some digital bathrooms and how women looked in a fast paced shooter is what caused the fire, he's learned nothing, and we don't need him back.

Between the free games on Epic, the"free" games on Twitch Prime, and the odd giveaway, I got over 100 free PC games on the last year, and a lot of them were legitimately good games. Add Game Pass coming to PC, and I didn't need to spend as much.

It's not all on Epic, or Amazon/Twitch, or Microsoft, but if you add them all up, it's pretty obvious why the numbers are down.

Verno wrote on Jan 14, 2020, 11:50:
It would be nice if these threads could not be a fucking dumpster fire all year round. Whether its actual trolls or just people thinking they are clever by "preempting" the trolls, its really getting tiresome. Looking forward to actual game discussion in the free game threads, if that is even possible.

If only.

Nobody cares who 'snagged' a free copy of a game, again.
Nobody cares who made up a sarcastic ha-ha so funny Epic games store is like Hitler, but I'm sorry I had to take the handout lol copypasta, again.
Nobody cares who actually thinks the Epic Games Store is Hitler, again.
Nobody cares who refused to take a free game because they don't like the people handing it out, again.

It's been the same old people baiting the same old other people, who always take the bait, and bait back, for ages, and it makes actual discourse a chore for everyone else.

So, not just a pedophile, but one that needs two first world countries worth of children? Come on Cutter, give some respect where it's due.

Beamer wrote on Nov 19, 2019, 09:40:

Jonjonz wrote on Nov 19, 2019, 06:34:
It always amazes me just how willing game review sites are willing to pull their punches just to stay in the good graces of the sources of their free games and stuff. What a chorus of "it's not that bad, as long as you don't pay attention to the details."

Stadia is a luxury product aimed at the trust fund kids of the 1% with way more money than sense.

Have you tried it? Then how do you know comments like "massively disappointing" are "pulling punches?"

And considering there are people here with graphics cards that cost in the 4 figure range, I'd say we can't really pass judgment on people spending money on gaming.

While it was the Beta test, I played the Assassin's Creed Oddessy streaming back when it was out a year ago, and, it wasn't even close to being at an acceptable level. The graphics were trash compared even to console, and, far more importantly, the game did not handle well, even on a connection which was wildly overkill (I was able to test on both a stable home connection, and, a University connection, during break, with absolutely minuscule latency and an absurd amount of bandwidth). At the time, I'll admit that it felt borderline acceptable, being that I had never played an AC game... until I played the standard version afterwards. A console would be the vastly superior experience, let alone a PC of decent strength. There was just no comparison - the game just played so much more smoothly. The experience as a whole was affected by how much better it felt.

The only people I believe who should be considering Stadia, based upon my personal experience of the Beta, and the reviews coming out now which seem to coincide with my previous experience, are people who do not want to expend almost any money in hardware to be able to play the odd game, or *MUST* be able to take it with them without lugging significant hardware. That is the only viable market that I can see. If it works for them - cool. I'm all about people being able to get into something they want to try. I think there does exist an audience that could use this and be happy with it.

It is not made for traditional gamers though. It shouldn't be marketed to core gamers, and the reviews that "matter" should be the ones from non-gaming publications, since their audiences should be the real target market.

Just an opinion, and, while I haven't tried the production Stadia service which is now out, I don't think they've done anything to justify me doing so. I'm clearly not who they're trying to sell this to.

People are getting exactly what they deserve. At this point, I have zero sympathy for the people buying the same broken garbage year after year, and pouring more money down the drain on pay-to-win lootboxes.

If anything, EA is doing us a favor by making a containment zone for all of those geniuses to play with each other, and leave us in peace.

While it may have been marketed as a die-and-retry type game, it's being widely reported that with the game designed to have a sidekick with you, it's significantly easier than anything it's being compared to - some people are saying too easy.

I think you would need to really have a self imposed limit of no sidekick to have any problem on that front. If anything, due to this, it may the jumping in point for people who don't like things being too difficult, but do want to play something in the vein of Souls.

Can't speak to it personally - I'm waiting to see how things shake out before I consider jumping in.

They cancelled it because they would need to have ten people still playing the game on a platform for the mode to work, and they couldn't find a fix for that issue.

I think it was actually a definite answer, just spruced up enough to hide the downside as best they could.

They did say that you would be able to use Google Takeout to get your data (saved games) in the case that Stadia folds - which leads me to believe they've thought about this enough to know that users certainly won't get a copy of the game.

While the saved game is nice, since you won't lose your progress (I still mourn the death of my 400+ hour save file for Disgaea on DS - I re-bought the game with no regrets, but those 400-some hours died with the old cartridge), it's a tough sell when you have to basically say that the safety net is that you can still go buy the game elsewhere and have your progress.

I won't judge people for jumping in to Stadia, because it may fit the needs of other people more than me, but I'm 100% not going to be an early adopter. Likely not at all.

Kxmode wrote on Jul 2, 2019, 13:33:
Crowdfunding for this game was nothing more than a disposable loan with no commitments to those who helped bring the game to life.

Any company who goes to path of Phoenix Point or Shenmue 3 is scum and should never be allowed to crowdfund another product. Not that it matters though. I'm pretty sure they doomed themselves. Nobody is going to trust them again on any other projects, so they better hope their game sells like hotcakes on EGS.

Trust loss in the people who pulled this garbage is one thing, but, imagine how much harder it is going to be for legitimate developers who now have to contend not only against people thinking crowd-funded games are 99% risky garbage, but also that at any moment, a game can just pull a move like this and screw over the people who funded their success.

For a company who likes to talk about how much they care about the poor devs, they don't mind cutting the legs out from under the little guys. And, why? To protect the big fish that already have dump trucks full of cash.

Tim Sweeney can keep patting himself on the back all he wants, but, he's no better than anyone else.

I'm not sure Blizzard is in the position to make anything that is going to be worthy of the Diablo brand these days. They're lodged under the thumb of Activision, so, what would we be looking at as almost certain?

- Creating a campaign that will follow up one so bad that it was basically patched out of the game (effectively) by Adventure mode in Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls. Oh, and, under a regime that has started removing campaign modes from their games. A real recipe for quality.

- Grotesque horror themes are going to push away some users - it should have a more accessible feel to ensure maximum purchasing audience. Definitely going to soften the tone further.

- They're not going to want to retcon the entire plot from 3, so, we have to continue from the mess that is now the Diablo story universe, unless it's a prequel. And, yes, I know I already mentioned plot. It was that bad. In an ARPG it shouldn't even matter - it was so bad in Diablo 3 that it matters twice.

- Activision isn't going to want them taking risks - who cares if the genre has seen notable improvements and refinements from the likes of PoE, Grim Dawn, etc... we're looking at more of the same formula, likely simplified further. Diablo 3 was already pretty heavy handed in cuts from D2, could you imagine a cut back Diablo 3 system?

- While we'll almost certainly not see full Activision greed, Blizzard has shown that they're not above selling anything without a stat-point attached these days. Expect more micro-transactions than you can swing a Loot Box at if you want to look cool - and a full retail price to go along with them. Maybe sell us some character slots while they're at it.

- It can't be marketed as an E-sport, so, expect minimal after the sale content/support.

- ...Unless they make it a true live service (Which could fit why they are not ruling out hiring a Lead Character Artist and Lead Concept Artist for a game which is not even ruling out a 2020 launch). If it fails like D3 did at first? Go ask the Anthem player-base how that feels.

I loved the Diablo franchise, but, at this point the horse is dead. If you really want to come out and bludgeon it a few more times, just don't expect us to show up to watch.

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Jun 4, 2019, 14:47:
Cataclysm sucks. Sure I haven't played it yet but Anthem sucks because it was made by EA. Also all the YouTubers who haven played it yet either informed me that cataclysm sucks...so don't bother.

Yeah people, come on! We should be expecting these Cataclysms to have every bit of polish, care, and quality to them that Anthem did on launch. Saying anything less of them is just toxic gaming culture. Completely disgusting.

Beamer wrote on Jun 3, 2019, 10:52:

Prez wrote on Jun 3, 2019, 10:17:
Once again pirates will provide the necessary archival for those who own legal copies. Tell me, who are the bad guys again?

Pirates. Pirates are the bad people. You can find one example where, for a couple hundred thousand, they're doing something beneficial, but overall, pirates. Pirates are always the bad people.

But, wait - wouldn't what you described just make them almost-always the bad people, but not always the bad people? If we're passing judgment here, we should probably be as precise as possible.

Oh, but I thought Capcom was totally committed to PC gamers with Monster Hunter now - I mean, they said it, so it must be true, right?

Capcom would never lie about that, right?

Armengar wrote on Apr 5, 2019, 14:17:

The elimination of region locks will also mean that publishers will likely raise prices in less affluent regions to avoid price arbitrage

cry me a river. So publishers wanted to gouge, fell foul of EU law, now have to play fair.

Maybe it's just me, but the fact that they wanted to offer lower prices to people where income is lower pretty much means they weren't gouging. Entirely the opposite.

If anything, the bad guys were the consumers who took advantage of the system where people in lower average income economies could get a discount. It was offered so that someone didn't have to pay half a month's wage for a game because the economy in their country sucked.

To combat that, the keys were geo-locked, so that some twat in the US couldn't buy AAA games for 90% off by buying a different region code. Now, the normal price is going to remain the same, but people in countries with poorer economies are going to have to pay much, much more if thet want to game as a hobby

People celebrating this are either trolls, who delight in sticking it to random innocent people, or, are completely, vapidly ignorant of that which they're talking about. Since this is the internet, it's about 50/50 determining which type of undesirable you're dealing with.

ExGemini wrote on Apr 3, 2019, 09:15:
EA appened.

Anthem was originally designed with tons of microtransaction like BattleFront 2.
After EA hit the fan with its own shit, they had to scramble what was there to begin with.

Anthem today is the result of such rush scramble, not quite finished.

Except, according to the 19 sources tapped for this article, this is not at all what happened. Just because EA is trash does not clean Bioware's hands of culpability here - in fact, EA seems like the much less guilty party in all of this.

Continuing to believe in "Bioware magic" is what has landed Bioware where they are right now.

Part of the problem regarding the Epic Store/Publishers being able to shrug off (in my opinion, completely valid) anti-consumer claims and point instead to toxic consumers being the problem is that as soon as people see something go Epic exclusive, a very vocal-minority of them do get really, really toxic.

I'm not talking about people who refund their purchase and move on, or even express disappointment in a reasonable way and refund, but there are people over on the game's subreddit posting screens of themselves/discussing talking shit at the company via the company's own social media direct messages/Twitter, brigading, etc... Those people, and the ones they incite, who are often so very full of themselves for "sticking it to the man" have guaranteed that Epic doesn't even have to consider changing anything.

The 95% of us that can handle ourselves like grown adults then get to stand in the middle and enjoy getting crapped on by both sides.