Quboid wrote on Feb 18, 2024, 17:45:

thestryker wrote on Feb 18, 2024, 16:00:
The problem Arrowhead has is their current choice is between people not being able to get in or people randomly not getting rewards. While it's frustrating I think they made the right choice, and honestly I haven't been trying to play this weekend because of it. I do think it's a giant red flag for anyone looking to buy the game until it has been resolved.

As was said before the Galactic War requires a master server keeping track of mission progress so host it yourself is absolutely not an option. I suppose they could do an offline, but then you'd never get anything for your runs so kinda blows up the point behind that one too.

Doing runs should be fun regardless of the wider context, no? I understand that a private server wouldn't tie in to the wider conflict, but it should be an option and it should be fun in isolation.

Oh absolutely, but with everything synced together it simply isn't possible with the current design of the game. As with every coop game though I'd be super happy if they just did a Diablo 2 style online and offline characters making them separate. At that point you can cater to folks who don't want to play as part of the bigger picture and/or those without online access.

Jim wrote on Feb 18, 2024, 18:14:
When you compare to palworld it becomes apparent how much more robust the server setup was for that game. helldivers must have gone with a different solution that does not scale very well. and yeah, "they should have known...." blah blah blah, meanwhile the rootkit people are all doom and gloom on the game so the success is despite all that....

Not even remotely comparable, because palworld is all P2P/dedicated servers. Helldivers 2 has a master server which handles everything regarding the characters, mission progress, rewards and manages the Galactic War.

This comment was edited on Feb 19, 2024, 02:10.

The problem Arrowhead has is their current choice is between people not being able to get in or people randomly not getting rewards. While it's frustrating I think they made the right choice, and honestly I haven't been trying to play this weekend because of it. I do think it's a giant red flag for anyone looking to buy the game until it has been resolved.

As was said before the Galactic War requires a master server keeping track of mission progress so host it yourself is absolutely not an option. I suppose they could do an offline, but then you'd never get anything for your runs so kinda blows up the point behind that one too.

I liked Aikman and Buck earlier in their career together, but towards the end of the time on Fox and especially now on ESPN they're just not as good. They were my favorites until the Romo hit broadcasting and his analysis rapidly became my favorite. I don't know if it's the shifting dynamics in the way networks are pushing broadcasting or his heart just isn't in it but the last couple of years especially just dumped in quality. By the end of the season I think Olsen was doing the best job of anyone with regards to the primary broadcasting teams.

Regarding women making it from sideline to the booth I doubt we'll see it. Amazon hired Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer to do their split games with Fox and aside from the first season when they had no resources it was better than broadcast. The hate they got for existing in the broadcasting booth never ended though and when Amazon got the exclusive they hired Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreet.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jan 29, 2024, 17:38:
Oh oh! TRON 3 has begun filming! I'm excited about this.

I was excited when they announced it was really happening as I'm a big fan of the first two. Then they revealed the creative team and hired Leto as the lead and my carefactor dropped to zero. I hope it isn't a pile of shit, but there's nothing to give me confidence it won't be.

FloodAnxiety wrote on Jan 28, 2024, 23:28:

thestryker wrote on Jan 28, 2024, 19:21:
The largest language dataset every big model used was largely comprised of stolen (meaning stuff that isn't public domain) works which the creator of the dataset admitted to because they think it's fair use. This behavior is what I'm referring to when I use the word theft as it's not just stuff people put out there for whomever to use.

Thank you for clarifying. I am 100% in agreement that theft should be punished. Legit AI players are not stealing though, and any AI players stealing content should face consequences.

FWIW Meta flat out admitted to using it and they're certainly not the only ones who did just the only one who admitted such publicly (OpenAI has never disclosed what makes up their datasets AFAIK). Soon as word got wide about that dataset using stolen works all the big players went private and now don't disclose anything about their datasets.

FloodAnxiety wrote on Jan 28, 2024, 14:04:

thestryker wrote on Jan 27, 2024, 21:30:
"AI" as it stands only exists because of mass theft of material and should NYT win it would destroy the entire industry as it is built today. While I have no problem with this happening as I'm firmly in the camp of creative folks who put their talent to work for themselves deserve to get paid I don't think that's how courts will view it. It will probably get deemed fair use even though it literally could not exist without works (a lot of which have copyright) being fed into it.

My "thieving" eye balls and ears, along with every other human being in existence, has been "stealing" this way since the beginning of time.

When did learning from publicly available materials become stealing? The moment someone wrote software that could also do it and started making money from it, now people want to intentionally mischaracterize it and call it stealing because everyone wants a slice. If I do it myself, not stealing, it is learning. If I write software to do what I do, now it is stealing. Riiiiiiggghttt.

If there is actually theft here, i.e., someone using something that was not made public because they stole it, then we have laws for that already.

The largest language dataset every big model used was largely comprised of stolen (meaning stuff that isn't public domain) works which the creator of the dataset admitted to because they think it's fair use. This behavior is what I'm referring to when I use the word theft as it's not just stuff people put out there for whomever to use.

While I'm very against scraping I do understand that it's the reality we live in so I don't really hold that up in the same light.

I do not think this will matter when it comes to the court cases as we have no laws that are applicable to what the AI models are doing. From my relatively limited understanding of fair use due to the output not being a direct mirror the laws don't really apply.

FWIW I think NYT is just looking for an angle (one I don't think is good) since the US Congress is incompetent. Their arguments I've seen publicly don't make any sense in the context of how the AI models work.

FloodAnxiety wrote on Jan 28, 2024, 14:04:
People are just scared because in the competitive marketplace of their choosing, AI is now competing in that market place. Competition is good. If you are not good enough to compete, you can do something else.

I'm not sure why you think AI is being used to compete in any marketplace as opposed to being used to eliminate them. This is more like a really extreme version of outsourced manufacturing where instead of going to where it's cheaper it's being eliminated entirely.

FloodAnxiety wrote on Jan 28, 2024, 14:04:
Note for context of my over arching beliefs: I've been a pro-UBI person since the 90s. UBI will be necessary in the future as automation and AI become more prevalent.

There's also no sign of that being a political reality whereas the damage being done to people is very real. Hopefully as the scale ramps up we'll see movement quickly as I certainly agree with you.

"AI" as it stands only exists because of mass theft of material and should NYT win it would destroy the entire industry as it is built today. While I have no problem with this happening as I'm firmly in the camp of creative folks who put their talent to work for themselves deserve to get paid I don't think that's how courts will view it. It will probably get deemed fair use even though it literally could not exist without works (a lot of which have copyright) being fed into it.

Prez wrote on Jan 26, 2024, 19:52:
Far be it from me to presume that I know more than a lawyer (which the author is) but I don't know if I buy his reasoning as to whether a court could order the outright destruction of something like an LLM based on the Times' contention. I was under the impression that would only be an option if the court determined that the offense in question was the only reason ChatGPT existed and could not be repurposed. I think that is pretty easily demonstrably not true. But I know we have a few legal experts in our midsts. I could be completely wrong.

If they're found guilty of infringement and cannot remove the infringing portion then it's over. From what I understand it's impossible for them to remove it so they would have to retrain their models from datasets not using copyrighted materials. This would in theory satisfy removal of anything that could be infringing without destroying the algorithms which created the model.

(you are half right that is one of the two criteria used to determine destruction, but it's an either or not both situation)

Given that the team hoped to return to UE leads me to believe it wasn't near release. That means they'd have to convince Microsoft that whatever their vision was would make enough money to justify years to complete development. I'd like to think Redfall broke Microsoft of the notion that shoving out an incomplete game was better than nothing.

Mostly just feel bad for all the folks working on it who lost their jobs as it sounds like most of the team got the axe.

An awful lot of the problems we're seeing today seem to be caused by ignorant investors who saw nothing but dollar signs. This is akin to when amazon was telling everyone that the boom in business was due to the pandemic and nothing to be expected because they were trying to head off a future plummet of stock pricing.

In the games industry everyone seems to have been seeing green, but it's an industry where the product takes a lot of time. A lot of games that got greenlit during the pandemic rise are probably just now starting to come out, but investors aren't patient because they're really high stakes gamblers who try to leverage their victory.

Prez wrote on Jan 22, 2024, 12:25:

"Why take a gamble with a games company when you can just stick the money in the bank and earn 5%?"

If you think like that, please, for the good of all of us, get out of videogames and go talk to a bank representative. If you actually have to ask that you have no creative drive remaining within you whatsoever. No one except bandwagoning greedy rich bastards and morons get into creative endeavors of any kind because they want to be rich. Finding an outlet for your creativity and becoming successful doing something you love is what makes it worth the risk. If that passion is gone, I get it. Just don't pretend that everyone else's is too.

That quote is from a venture capitalist which is pretty much in line with how the "investor" class is these days. They want high returns quarterly and don't actually care about the health of the business. If they can't get that, or they can't play games with the stock pricing, then they move on and seem it a bad bet. At the end of the day that's all they're doing is trying to make stacked bets to maximize money. It's gross, but there's no incentive for anyone with the power to do anything about it to do so.

A long way of saying, yes in fact that quote is from a greedy rich bastard.

Prez wrote on Jan 20, 2024, 12:50:
Are there any examples of good consolidation in creative media? Because if your example is Microsoft, I would have to disagree.

There's no such thing as consolidation benefiting anyone but the money people in the long run. I do think there's a degree of bad/good though like the hot potato of Warner Brothers has been a poster child for why it shouldn't be allowed. On the other hand, somehow, the Comcast acquisition of Universal hasn't seemingly caused many issues.

So far the only reason the Microsoft acquisitions in the gaming industry have held up is that they've been largely hands off (though this has come with its own issues with regards to worker complaints/abuse at subsidiaries). They've also been acknowledging unions (I'm sure this is a strategy to get regulators to look the other way) and generally been a positive for workers. These are the only reasons I think it's been viewed positively, but people really need to realize consolidation is bad.

As for Embracer they rode the pandemic wave way too high and bet the farm on a deal with a hedge fund. Worthwhile games take time no matter what great ideas and IP you have, but by overextending that's what they robbed themselves of.

Looking forward to this one a lot as I've had fun with all of their games that I've played. I think there will likely be less accidental FF in this one due to the perspective shift, but fully expect lots of accidental explosive death.

I am hoping the CPU cutoff isn't due to AVX2 because I have a friend who stubbornly won't upgrade his system and is still on Sandy Bridge.

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jan 19, 2024, 15:37:

RedEye9 wrote on Jan 19, 2024, 11:46:
Repeal the Second Amendment.

I'm curious how you think that is going to work in reality. Not being snarky or aggro, just curious.

It's a literal impossibility due to political realities, but I'm not sure what you don't get. Without the second amendment any city/state/federal gun control laws would be pretty much free to be whatever they want. The second amendment is the only thing that currently prevents this from being the case.

Nintendo is extremely litigious and I'd honestly expect them to go after the creator had it been released Valve approval or no.

Prez wrote on Jan 4, 2024, 18:01:
What I see with CDPR is far more sinister, cynical, and corporate.

The CP2077 release is exactly what you said, because the people at the top refused to give it the time needed to finish. It was a cynical release to profit off of the hype and get it in for the holiday season (not to mention it probably shouldn't have been released on PS4/XBO). Their developers were given the time and funds to make it right, but it's a situation that never needed to happen in the first place.

Hello Games releasing a game without being transparent about cut features and going radio silence until their first big patch after launch isn't any better. The reason behind it is almost certainly different as they paid for their own development and realistically probably couldn't afford to wait. They improved communication and have delivered fantastically over the years since.

Personally I view them the same even though the reasons they happened were undoubtedly different though it's certainly understandable why one wouldn't.

While they'll likely end up going to far this is another one of those very rare times where China has the right idea. It has pretty thoroughly infected gaming and especially preys on kids. I don't necessarily think these things should be banned but they're clearly designed in a predatory fashion so slap an AO on them.

I enjoyed it for the most part, but I also haven't liked any other Bethesda games in the past. There's a lot they can easily expand upon and it'll be interesting to see what their focus is.

That being said I can easily see where someone with an expectation of sinking time into it like they would an MMO would be really disappointed. They have a lot of potentially cool systems that either aren't fleshed out or are pointless.

edit: Oh and the game engine holy shit does it need to go. I don't know if they need to modify an off the shelf or custom design their own but there is clearly too much baggage for modern game design.

Hopefully even though they're keeping the leadership team intact there will be some actual accountability. That's seemingly a big thing that's been needed over at ABK and I know MS has been guilty about being too hands off with acquisition companies in the past. Either way the head has been lopped off and with luck things improve for those working there.

I'm assuming this change is about that CCG which was rated AO because you could potentially make money in it. I thought the ESRB was being quite ironic that it gets an AO because you could potentially make money rather than just dump your money into gambling mechanics for digital goods.

Beamer wrote on Dec 19, 2023, 22:52:
It was a launch game, right?

Yeah it was, and the game wasn't bad.

It didn't come to PC until years later, but I'm pretty sure it had a fairly good reception when it did.

The engine itself is perfectly fine and one of the bested threaded ones on the market. EA was beyond stupid for looking at it and saying "well it's good everyone should use it" without having any proper tools or documentation. They set their own studios and projects up to fail in an ignorant effort to shave bottom line. Had they actually gone at it rationally they probably wouldn't be in this situation.