I'll never understand polygon. I guess it's that my interests never intersect with theirs.

While flawed and I totally get (and agree with) the criticism, NMS is actually pretty decent and interesting, for what it is. I also agree with the very common point brought up - this isn't a 60 dollar game. 30 at release, dropping to 20 very soon after would make it something much easier to swallow.

Still, I find myself wanting to go back and lose myself in the worlds again. It's weirdly addicting and soothing.

Yes, many are saying the game is internally rendering at a lower res than the screen resolution. It looks that way on my setup as well.

Other than some of these things, I'm enjoying it. It is indeed a "very chill" game. It's a nice diversion after a clusterfrank work day.

One source of the stuttering and odd performance:
The default FPS limiter is set to 30. :/

I set it to 60 and things are much smoother, as expected. The hitching seems to have gradually gone away. But yes, when first launched its a bit of a lurchy beast. I suspect some of the NV shader caching doing first compiles might be related.

This is why I give my son allowance AFTER the chores are done. Otherwise, same story: hookers and blow.

I'm curious about the game, but yes, I've played enough games which described themselves as impossibly huge to wonder how much REAL content there is.

The early elder scrolls series, with the real scale contintent. "It would take weeks just to walk across!" Of course, everything is basically the same, just repeated.
Elite Dangerous, which is a galaxy and huge. Except everything is basically the same, just repeated.
etc.

All these games would be more fun with a dramatically smaller "world" but one which was actually crafted.

NMS could be cool, but I'll just wait for a couple reviews to say "wow, it's random but they seeded it with a lot of really cool stuff to see and do" or similar. I fear it's "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike".

Great, stuff for the part of DOOM I never play.

I like how so many are trying to sound scary. "We're coming for you." "You've made a powerful enemy."

Oooooh. I'm sure blizzard is just mortified of the sassy little threats.

I've grown fond of Geralt's attitude towards everything.

My favorite line must be "You don't need a hero. You need a professional."

Evolve still makes me sad.
The DLC and pricing was bad enough, but also lack of design forethought killed it too. When one side is just one player, your ability to balance anything becomes nigh impossible. I watched some twitch streams to see if I'd like the game and every time it was:
20 minutes of chasing around.
3 minutes of a fight, wildly lopsided in one direction or the other, totally dependent upon monster player skill.

Yeah, I'm starting to think people sobered up from the "direct to the metal!" fervor.

There are reasons we had higher levels of abstraction, and those reasons still exist. It's hard enough for *GPU vendors* to write a code path to optimally use their hardware. Asking game devs to do it well for current AND future cards - good luck with that.

Because DX12 is basically crap.

I'd like to see Vulkan supported though, although much of the same problem applies there (game developer needs to know ins and outs of the cards).

They *do* detect bots and exploits, they do ban people using them, and they do sue companies which make them.
I'm not trying to say blizz or overwatch is perfect, but I don't recall playing an online FPS with a smaller number of cheaters.

Not everything happens client side. It's a predictor-corrector model, where the server validates everything based upon its actual server-side game state. Latency critical things (like hitscan weapons) are "guessed" by the client, but the server can and does override it.
And again, putting the calculations on the server doesn't protect you from aimbots either.

I think you're confusing blizz with ubisoft. Blizz has great anti cheat, verifies client actions server-side, and is aggressive with bans. From Ars:

And you couldn't accuse Blizzard of not being thorough; one user reported that he couldn't play Overwatch after his ban despite reformatting his entire PC, changing his hard drive ID, his MAC address, the BiosDate in registry, or even after he bought a new VPN.

They're doing this over the "look the other way, sell another license" ploy of other titles.

EQ was unbelievably player-hostile. Generally you had fun because you were in some sort of shared-trauma situation with several other people.
The time it required to do anything was intense, whether it was waiting and hoping for a rare spawn, or just getting somewhere.

And it actually got worse the more hardcore you were. Everything required a ton of work from you, and you HAD to keep up with your guild or you were just F'ed. I saw it destroy lives at a horrible clip.

What it DID have is a sense of accomplishment. This game did not in any way spoon feed you anything, and quite to the contrary, it tried to kill you with the spoon regularly. Just getting TO a raid was often very complex and dangerous.
As such, the community was real. These were people you fought along side, or often competed with. Remember, no instances. All of you are in the same dungeon. "kill stealing" is a real thing.

No, I would NOT recommend you play it. You won't get a player to level 20 without losing your mind at the glacial pace.
You'll also be surprised at the complete lack of any concessions to player comfort. Die? All your stuff stays on your corpse. Under the thing that just killed you already. You lose experience which took you hours (days, later in progression) to get.

Oh, it's a feisty bitch. Which is why that remaining group loves it. WoW it is not.

Awesome, about as timely as making a Warcraft 1 movie after even the World Of Warcraft interest faded to its lowest level.

They are altering the deal.

It's waaaay too heavily tilted towards rogues, specifically rape ambush gangs.

I'd be totally down with fun shootouts against rogues. But, that basically never occurs due to the mechanics which overwhelmingly favor ambush ganks.

So yeah, I don't bother going in the Gank Zones anymore, it's just absurd.

I really wish Pelosi and Feinstein would just retire. Please.

I don't teach my kids to say please to routers, canopeners, webservers, TV remotes, dishwashers, etc.

They all do useful work, but... they're not people. And my kids do actually understand that, because they aren't stupid.

So very close to being ready.

DAMN YOU (AVATAR and) WINDOWS 8.1. DAAAAAAMN YOUUUU!!