It's a move that has worked very well for China so why wouldn't they go down this route? It's not like most gamers have shown they care in the slightest about abusing people so long as there's a game they want to play.

1badmf wrote on Sep 20, 2022, 14:59:

Overon wrote on Sep 20, 2022, 14:41:

ZandarKoad wrote on Sep 20, 2022, 14:01:
I'm only in the market for 3090's for the foreseeable future. Especially EVGA 3090's.

I don't give a damn about games. I need VRAM for my language models. 2x3090 is just barely enough to fit a lightweight version of GPT-NeoX for fine tuning.

40xx series does nothing in the VRAM department, so there is no reason to look at that generation.

The fact that Nvidia intends to sell 12 GB VRAM 4000 series cards means they have their heads up their ass. The fact that they are selling 3000 series cards with 8 and 12 GB of VRAM means they had their heads up their ass already. Also don't forget expect triple slot cards and power requirements through the roof.

yeah the 4080 12GB is 100% bullshit. 12GB is not enough today for a top end gamer card, and only 192 bit memory bus too. that'll start hitting memory limits sooner rather than later which is completely unacceptable for an $800 card. for that price it needs to last the entire product cycle. it SHOULD be a 4070.

You mean $900 card:

GeForce RTX 4080, 16GB and 12GB GDDR6 versions. $899 for 12GB, $1199 for 16GB

Oh and they're keeping the 3060/70/80 as "lower end" without adjusting pricing so Nvidia can get fucked at this point. I wish AMD was looking to reset pricing, but the last two generations have just shown them pricing with Nvidia. That leaves us with maybe Intel, but if they stick to it and have a competitive product there's no way they'll reset pricing.

The absolute comedy of anyone at Sony crying about exclusivity shouldn't be lost on anyone. They've done more damage with exclusivity than anyone else in gaming given how content and characters get stripped out of multiplatform titles.

jdreyer wrote on Sep 14, 2022, 11:18:

thestryker wrote on Sep 14, 2022, 01:17:
Riot's anticheat they use for Valorant paved the way for this type of system. I have my doubts regarding EA's competence with regards to getting it right, but if they do it's clearly superior to third party anticheat systems.

I'd prefer that they just use a VM, Sandbox or UWP for the MP portion of their games as this would be infinitely less invasive for users. This would undoubtedly cost more money to develop and maintain so they're going the cheap/easy route.

Wouldn't that affect performance?

UWP has zero impact on performance, but is easily the most problematic/controversial because it locks you into Windows 10/11 and requires a lot of understanding how it works. I may be wrong, but I don't believe any of the MS store exclusive PC games were so much as pirated successfully until they left the store (UWP was mandatory originally for the MS store).

Any form of sandboxing would certainly add in overhead, but I think that's certainly a much better tradeoff than kernal level access. It's one of those things: would you prefer a game to have higher system requirements or an anti cheat which requires you to trust a gaming company to do due diligence with coding and has to be enabled on boot so any time you didn't want it running you'd have to reboot and do the same for when you wanted it running.

While I'm not opposed to what they're doing in theory I'm also thrilled they're rolling it out in a game I'd never play. I'm all too happy for someone else to deal with their teething issues first because it's pretty much guaranteed to come to every other competitive multi-player game they sell.

Riot's anticheat they use for Valorant paved the way for this type of system. I have my doubts regarding EA's competence with regards to getting it right, but if they do it's clearly superior to third party anticheat systems.

I'd prefer that they just use a VM, Sandbox or UWP for the MP portion of their games as this would be infinitely less invasive for users. This would undoubtedly cost more money to develop and maintain so they're going the cheap/easy route.

WitcherOntheProwl wrote on Sep 8, 2022, 15:08:
Well CD was doing good until Shadow of the Tomb Raider. SotTR is one of the worst in terms of 90% of the game. I was hoping CD would get replaced by another dev that actually knew what a good story is.

They didn't make Shadow of the Tomb Raider Eidos Montreal did. Also Rhianna Pratchett wrote Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider but they chose to not involve her after the first two games. There was also some high level corporate meddling when it came to the comic adaptations where they forced changes upon the creators which leads me to believe SqEnix had people butting in all across the franchise.

Steele Johnson wrote on Sep 6, 2022, 15:46:

thestryker wrote on Sep 6, 2022, 15:24:

Steele Johnson wrote on Sep 6, 2022, 13:27:
"These included the difficulties in adapting to a new generation of hardware, the challenges in QA testing more complex games, and the fact that so many big games are now made with multiple studios."

Testing more complex games? Sure, graphics tech has gotten more advanced, but I don't feel like gameplay has. In fact, I've yet to play a story-based first person shooter that has better AI than Half-Life 2, and that was released almost 20 years ago. I think what he's really getting at is the grinding nature of the job and how it affects the turnover rate these days. Keep your employees happy and you'll release a quality product (with minimal delays)

I think the biggest issue is actually the size of the games not so much complexity. I can't imagine how godawful it is trying to test an Assassin's Creed type game.

...

yeah, I can see that a bloated game like AC could be complicated to test, but honestly, the real fix for that is to make it smaller/shorter. I've yet to hear anyone say that they liked the length of that last 2 AC games. A repetitive grind in different locations doesn't make a better game. haha!

...

Oh I agree with you completely! It's just that is the direction many "AAA" games seem to be going in so it's inherently making the QA job a bigger nightmare than it already was (working conditions etc).

Steele Johnson wrote on Sep 6, 2022, 13:27:
"These included the difficulties in adapting to a new generation of hardware, the challenges in QA testing more complex games, and the fact that so many big games are now made with multiple studios."

Testing more complex games? Sure, graphics tech has gotten more advanced, but I don't feel like gameplay has. In fact, I've yet to play a story-based first person shooter that has better AI than Half-Life 2, and that was released almost 20 years ago. I think what he's really getting at is the grinding nature of the job and how it affects the turnover rate these days. Keep your employees happy and you'll release a quality product (with minimal delays)

I think the biggest issue is actually the size of the games not so much complexity. I can't imagine how godawful it is trying to test an Assassin's Creed type game.

As for AI for all its faults Rage had some solid AI, but generally I've got to agree with you on brain dead AI. For all the tech they bring to the table I'm constantly thinking of 90s/early 00s when devs were trying to make AI act better, add destruction and innovate on feel. It seems like the majority of that is just gone from much of modern game design.

I'm mostly waiting for a second revision because it ought to have all of the power enhancements from their 6xxx laptop cpus leading to a better overall experience on top of the increased performance.

I've been kicking around some sort of handheld for a while and the only one which was close to a buy is the Ayn Odin. The promise of a new Steam Deck has stopped me though since I really like what Valve seems to be trying to do.

I'm hoping this isn't the last gasp to get all the content they'd already made assets for out.

I played through the game shortly after launch and didn't have any of the issues that seemed to be complained about so none of that got in the way of my enjoyment. Biggest disappointment for me was really that your origin choices didn't really make a big impact. I know they won't change that now, but I'm hoping for a bit more from your choices with this expansion.

I always roll my eyes at this sort of thing, because this is a constant from what I like to refer to as the ignorant left. Military bad seems to be the beginning, middle and end of the "logic" applied. They're obviously *not* going to be working on weapons systems. As for the company itself the vast majority of their weapons of war have to be signed off on by the US government for foreign arms sales so their problem is really with the government.

There's also the fact that the vast majority of tech companies sell data, feed division, make better tracking technology, do business with china, and on and on. Nobody's hands are clean when it comes to corporations so these people need to grow up.

Noctua definitely makes some of the best PC fans, and is reliable across the whole stack. I got a bunch of Noctua Redux fans when I was redoing my server box since it's on 24/7 and has multiple fan sizes. Phanteks T30 is currently the best 120mm fan on the market though, and for my current machine I just bought a 5 pack of Arctic P12 pwms for case fans because that cost as much as 1 Noctua/Phanteks. I think I'd probably spend the extra money if I was doing fans for a cooler, but due to the price I decided to take a shot for the case fans and they've been very good so far (about 10mo in).

It's definitely time for a new CPU if you're looking at RTX 3080+ performance level. You wouldn't be losing a ton of average FPS, but your minimums would be atrocious.

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-ampere-cpu-scaling-benchmarks

Conveniently AMD and Intel are both launching new CPUs in the next two months.

The whole SLS program has been an example of what happens when an underfunded agency is controlled by congressional pork barrel spending. It should never have been started and most certainly should have been canceled one of the many times it failed timelines. I can't help but wonder if their launch strategy isn't partly a middle finger to congress over how stupid the program has been.

Video card wise I too was in the same boat, but pulled the trigger when the RTX 3080 12GB dropped to $800. I was able to get an EVGA model with a closed loop cooler so I wasn't worried too much about further price drops. I would say that I wouldn't get anything below that VRAM capacity wise now so if that price is higher than you're looking to pay wait for next generation. AMD might have competitive ray tracing (the only reason I didn't go AMD instead this time) and/or Nvidia could have higher VRAM on lower cost competitive cards.

Simon Says wrote on Aug 20, 2022, 16:20:

thestryker wrote on Aug 20, 2022, 14:21:
Yeah this is one of the most common violations companies make. Perhaps if the penalties for violation were severe it'd stop.

You know what a more than adequate violation penalty would be?

- -50% on the salary AND NO BONUSES for the higher ups and management for 20 years and no salary increase allowed until 20 years pass. If people leave for another job among them, the penalty FOLLOWS THEM AROUND for the whole 20 years. New hires / sub-contractors get the same penalty. Unless they were among the whistleblowers then they get a 35% increase, indexed to inflation and 1% per year on top for 20 years. If they're laid off, the company will need special permission from the FTC.

- All shareholders lose 50% of their shares, to be redistributed equally among all employees of the 2 lowest rungs.

- +35% on the salary of the lowest rung AND salary indexed to inflation + 1% each year for the next 20 years, including new hires and employees ( or the sub-contractors of sub-contractors, anything so it CAN'T BE DODGED ) of sub-contractors until the 20 years expire.

- +20% a rung higher AND salary indexed to inflation + 1% each year for the next 20 years, including all new hires and employees of sub-contractors until the 20 years expire.

I feel anything else would just be a slap on the wrist.

But with this? There would be PLENTY of incentives for EVERYONE INVOLVED to make sure laws are followed to the letter.

Agreed completely, because it seems like every current punishment is a relative slap on the wrist.

Yeah this is one of the most common violations companies make. Perhaps if the penalties for violation were severe it'd stop.

For indies that are self published I always try to buy them through Epic simply because the devs get a higher percentage of the sale.

I'm not sure why anyone cares which launcher launches their games, but as someone who actually backed Phoenix Point I can say they gave out Steam keys once they were available and they did offer refunds. I ended up with 2 copies of the game (Steam one went to a friend) it's just that the Steam ones came later.

Yeah I'm not sure what the point of a dedicated piece of hardware that doesn't do anything locally is. The whole point behind cloud gaming is leveraging what you already have when away from your gaming hardware or if you don't have said hardware in the first place.

Security wise it is probably okay as long as the device isn't also being sold in China. If it is you can be sure their version would have all the spyware which means the other versions could easily end up with it too.

Cutter wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 13:40:
I just picked up a Black & Decker 40V cordless leaf vac/blower for $200 clams and it works amazingly well for the purpose it's employed - which is light duty work vacuuming up seeds and shells from the critter food I leave out. That's the sort of thing it's designed for and it does it amazingly well. Yet, I see people complaining in reviews it's not picking up huge piles of wet leaves. Well duh! There's a reason professionals used $500 gas powered Husqvarnas for that sort of work. A lot of people out there really don't understand the limits and intended uses of many tools and devices.

I'd say pick one up from Costco if you can - I still find they have the best return policy - and try it for a month. If it isn't all that and a bag of chips, return it.

We have the 40v cordless mower and I feel the same way about the people complaining about it: don't let your grass get high/wet then bitch about poor performance. We originally got it because at the time Black and Decker was the only company with swappable batteries between equipment. The only other one we have right now is the string trimmer which is also good. If we had more of a leaf/debris problem I'd definitely get one of the blowers.

jdreyer wrote on Jan 24, 2022, 15:00:

thestryker wrote on Jan 24, 2022, 14:37:
The game was amazing, but yet again shows that sudden death should have no place in the NFL.

Growing up watching football I thought it was absurd that a team could just get into field goal range and win because they'd won the toss. When they changed that, in I think '09, to only safety/TD ends it I wondered why they didn't go all the way. Since then we've had multiple key seasonal/playoff games decided by a coin toss and that will never sit well with me.

It's not guaranteed that the team that gets the ball first will score a TD. Someone has to go first. What would you prefer? 10 minutes of OT, and then let the score determine the winner? Give each team one drive? Especially due to the lack of granularity in football scoring, the potential for games to drag on for another hour or two in OT is pretty high. Sudden death prevents that. Football games are already quite a bit longer than a lot of matches in other sports. OT making games 4-5 hours would be pretty bad.

The change that FCS made this year seems like a very good, and fair, way to do it (overtime periods end after both teams score):

• Beginning with the second overtime period, teams must attempt a two-point conversion after scoring a touchdown.
• Beginning with the third overtime period, teams will begin to run alternating two-point conversion plays instead of offensive possessions.

Could even skip the first "normal" overtime period and force two point conversion attempt if touchdowns are scored and then switch to the shootout if both teams are still tied after the first period.

NFL under the current overtime rules (in place since 2010, regular season games has been since 2012):
11 OT playoff games, winner of the coin toss has 10-1 record, and of those 10, 7 were first drive touchdowns. As a fan I don't know how anyone could defend such an obviously bad system.

Edit: The competition committee has never seriously considered any real changes to the overtime rules despite KC and Baltimore coming up with reasonable changes in the last few years.