osage no onna wrote on Sep 25, 2021, 04:26:
Is there even anywhere on their site where you can actually log in? Or do you have to install the whole thing in order to redeem the code?

It's not like I'm likely to actually play the game so maybe I shouldn't bother, but I do have an ancient account from around the time the game originally released so might as well spruce it up.

I'm in a similar situation and was wondering this, myself... It does appear that the store interface where you redeem codes is only accessible in-game.

BTW, expansion content is not included in their definition of "all quest packs," however they do have the first six of those on sale for 99 cents each for the duration of this promo, as well. That's everything from Mines of Moria (2008) up through Mordor (2017), which I see they normally sell these days as a $59.99 package.

Ant wrote on Sep 24, 2021, 23:55:
I really wished D2R & D3 didn't require online Internet to play offline single player. Open beta was nice though.

Diablo 2 Resurrected does NOT require internet to play offline mode. That's kind of the point of calling it that. You can literally yank your network cable and then launch the game (even without the Battle.net launcher running), and it doesn't show any attempt at making a network connection or complain about not having one unless you try to do something like select an online character.

This comment was edited on Sep 25, 2021, 03:57.

PHJF wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 20:50:
I logged in early enough to get a druid named Druidia!

Unique names are not a requirement in the new millennium -- newer Battle.net IDs are what distinguish players on global servers with cross-progression spanning multiple platforms.

Online mode has been unplayable any time I tried today. It literally wouldn't even start, just hung on a black screen after clicking 'Play,' and you only get that far if you're lucky enough for the server to successfully process the creation of a new character. So, offline mode FTW, I guess. There are no ladders yet, anyway, because they knew there would be issues at launch, lol...

This comment was edited on Sep 23, 2021, 19:22.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 15:29:
Not to be confused with Ember Labs which just released Kena: Bridge of Spirits.

Nor the in-development Firefall successor, forced to be renamed to Em-8ER after so much competition for the one-word title. That is, they couldn't call it Ember any longer -- they weren't forced to use a dumb hyphen+number variation, but they did anyway.

Tipsy McStagger wrote on Sep 23, 2021, 14:40:
Did i miss something? what the hell is this even about?

Just some particularly bad jokes from Blue, the quoted text is all that came out of Respawn's Twitter.

It looks really good. Obviously there is far more depth to this than that obtuse minigame they had in Kingdom Come (physics, to start), then a huge portion of it is the shopkeeping sim with organic story elements. And I can get 30% off from GMG, hmm...

El Pit wrote on Sep 22, 2021, 01:10:
Wasn't there a rumor that Microsoft will soon be buying another huge company? Could ActiBlizz be the target? They could be cheap right now with all the bad press.

Uh, no... The rumor was that they're eyeing another company the size of Zenimax/Bethesda. Activision is around 10 times larger than that, even with the bad press.

Ozmodan wrote on Sep 21, 2021, 10:57:
Kind of hard to patent something Blizzard has been doing for years.

Try reading beyond the headline... This is a system where many Steam users can/will contribute file usage data on ANY game in order to create a profile of how it functions that can be exploited to enable such things as "instant play," reducing memory footprint, and improving or possibly even eliminating load times. That's very different than Blizzard or whoever else intentionally structuring their game files in specific ways to allow playing before the download is fully finished.

They also officially announced today a new mode called DLAA, which just gives you the FANTASTIC anti-aliasing of DLSS without the upscaling part. I pray this brings us closer to the death of that blurry piece of shit TAA...

Kxmode wrote on Sep 18, 2021, 20:02:
McDonald's doesn't sell cheeseburgers. They sell meat and cheese sandwiches.

* unmelted cheese
* a single sad pickle
* a dab of onions
* wilted meat patties that have the appearance of being "microwaved"
* half-a-spoon of ketchup (always in one spot)

If you're going to honor National Cheeseburger Day, don't do it at McDonald's. McDonald's is an insult to cheeseburgers.

Asinine semantics aside, they probably deserve the holiday the most for basically inventing fast food. Quantity over quality is what made them #1, and their cheeseburgers are fine if that's what you're looking for. My only problem with it is that they charge way too much now for what you get, 'cause so many weirdos decided they're willing to pay extra to make a "dining experience" out of what is supposed to be a quick and crappy meal. So they remodel all their restaurants and expand the menu and cater to the whiny "breakfast all day" crowd, and now the prices are higher for everyone. Give me a little drive-thru shack with 8 things on the menu so I can get a decent price on a double cheeseburger anytime, not just one day a year with a long wait from the huge crowds.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 18, 2021, 20:05:
$36 though...

Who spends the money for a VR setup and then balks at the price of one game? Especially what is probably the best one?

Mr. Tact wrote on Sep 17, 2021, 18:44:
I wonder what number would actually make Gabe cave and sell? Is there one? If there is, Microsoft is one of the few companies which could probably reach it.

Gabe is personally worth about what they paid for the entirety of Zenimax, so I'm thinking that would be a much bigger deal than the rumor suggests... Not that I think Gabe would go for it, just on principle. And why would MS want Valve, anyway, if the goal is to bring more exclusive games to their platform?

Other "Bethesda-level" targets would be more along the lines of Take-Two, Ubisoft, Embracer Group, Square-Enix, etc. Pretty much any publisher outside of EA, Activision, Sony, and Nintendo.

Microsoft realizes people don't want to pay $220 for a 1TB proprietary SSD... Solution? Soon you can pay ~$150 for 500GB!

WannaLogAlready wrote on Sep 13, 2021, 23:14:
Half Life unforeseen consequences music.
Forcing/heating hardware beyond normal specs at today prices and availability, with faster deterioration risk.
Even slight, no thanks.

That's not a thing anymore, new GPUs are smart enough to take care of themselves regardless of what you tell it to do. But they all automatically overclock themselves about as far as they can go within their power and thermal limits, with a "boost clock" as much as 30-40% higher than the "base clock" listed in the specs.

I haven't had an AMD card in a while, but I know for the NVIDIA 3000 series, its max clock is reached when it's around 60-65 degrees, which is about 50-100MHz higher than when it's at 80 degrees, and stock settings tell it to start drastically lowering that speed when exceeding 83-85 degrees (quickly reducing by around 100-150MHz to stay cool). I.e. an average RTX 3080 will realistically peak between 1950-2000MHz, compared to the specs saying 1440MHz base and 1710MHz boost.

This is why manually telling it to go higher doesn't really do much, 'cause the higher speed just makes it reach the power draw and/or temperature limit that much faster and cut speed down to stay within safety limits. In fact, setting the clock too high is usually worse for performance, since you end up "bouncing" off of those limits and causing repeated fluctuations in clock speed. Better to leave it alone or even do the new popular tweak, undervolting, which is to reduce power usage and tell it to not try raising the clock quite so high so you get a steady 95% performance with 10-20% lower wattage and temps.

Unless you have some crazy custom cooling, in which case you can do whatever you want. Some people hit 2200MHz+ that way, but that's a lot of money to spend for an extra ~10% performance boost.

Sheeit.

The games going offline are between 7 and 13 years old, for the PS3/Vita, too. At some point it makes sense to cut those off anyway, especially if ALL of their user-generated content is still being preserved within the PS4 version of the game.

And in searching those release dates, I found out it wasn't just a DDoS issue. Said asshole(s) also abused exploits in the games to inject hate speech and other offensive messages into error pop-ups, which were forced onto your screen by malicious scripts embedded in some levels. The more I read about it, the less I am surprised that the latest Sackboy game on PS5 is a straightforward platforming adventure game, without any sort of level editor or online community features... A few rotten apples spoiled the bunch. That sort of bullshit is exactly why Nintendo has such barebones online servicing for their games. It's just too much of a headache these days to keep it clean enough for kids.

Or you can blame the asshole(s) relentlessly DDoS-ing their servers and forcing them to tighten up security...

Rilcon wrote on Sep 13, 2021, 16:51:
I think I'll wait until this is on Gamepass; it being Arkane it's probably a veritable work of art with great gameplay, but these sort of hybrid-PvP type experiences never work out as planned in the real world and I can't be bothered having my immersive sandbox-y trial-and-error experience meddled with by someone exploiting the latest meta tactic to insta-ruin my game.

FYI, as well as anyone else turned off by this: PVP is optional. Just like in Watch_Dogs, Dying Light, Dark Souls, and any of the other games with this sort of feature, you just play offline if you don't want to interact with other players. Although, your "invader" plays more of a central role in Deathloop, so it'll still be there under AI control.

Simon Says wrote on Sep 13, 2021, 02:41:
And it's not "miners & gamers voted with their wallet". It's miners, period.

LOL, okay... At least this random YouTuber openly admits his hot take is a wild guess.