Steam reviews paint an over-promised and an under-delivered picture.

Anyone care to share their thoughts?

Very disheartening to see so many pre-orders top the sales chart.

It's not technology that leads to this, it is these 50-year old grandpas that make the laws that allow the usage of technology for such purposes that lead to this.

the reddit one

Blue, it's be nice if you included some form of notice that articles are fake for those not too quick on the uptake.

Wouldn't it be nice if, from the ashes of this shit, out comes something that is actually, real games journalism? Some people stand up and say "we are going to show them what real journalism is about"? Is there even any room for journalism within the games industry? Does journalism exist within any other entertainment media?

William Usher wrote on Sep 8, 2014, 13:38:
I'm just curious what will happen if/when #GamerGate actually gets out into the wild so the larger community out there will know what's going on? Once this breaks through to mainstream it's going to be game over for the larger websites.

If by the "larger community out there" you are referring to actual journalistic publishers that report on more than just games, then you need not worry. That "larger community" never even thought of these so-called "game journalists" as anything more than just paid-for reviewers anyway.

Consider this for example
http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1281/1027/original.jpg

Played this for a day during the beta, then realized that characters will be wiped before release, so what was really the point of trying it now when I could try it when it releases, since it'll be F2P anyway.

But still, during that one day I got pretty mixed feelings about it. It looked pretty well polished as far as Korean F2P games go, and the skill system looked quite interesting (you can choose 3 "classes" from which you want to pull skills from, and freely reset your skill points and choices of those "classes" for a fee any time you want). So the different combinations that those could afford would be interesting to see, but of course until the game goes live and people have a really good go at it it's hard to tell whether or not it's going to suffer from having "FOTM" builds that are simply outright better than anything else and everyone will flock to those builds or not.

As far as all the open world sandbox crafting and stuff is concerned, none of that was apparent during my play up to ~ level 15, which is what some people already warned about anyway. Although I guess I did see a little bit of it in action. I ran out into the mountains off one of the roads in the newbie area, and on the other side of those mountains was a little flat clearing where somebody had apparently purchased land or something because there were house plans laid down and farm animals (all neatly assembled into rows like a military parade for some odd reason), so I'm guessing that's the sandbox crafting bit, although I really can't tell what you do with your houses and farm animals anyway.

I also swam to a little island off the coast of the continent area where you start, and it too had a nice flat clearing which I thought would be perfect for a little secret island base, if only I could just somohow claim it. Instead I spent all the time doing boring typical MMO quests and running very large distances from place to place.

I can't imagine why you're forced into this for supposedly 30 levels only to have the game change and become a sandbox crafting thing. Those are pretty different gameplays, why would you have one first and then just completely change and have the other as the end game? It feels to me like I'm supposed to suffer through the themepark quest ride for 30 levels to "earn" the right to experience the game's sandbox elements, which is a pretty darn stupid shit to do in my opinion.

Speaking of crafting, there is apparently a cap on how much you can craft/gather/etc. Which is the most bizzare thing ever to me. Why would you limit how much people can craft and gather stuff, if that is supposed to be the point of a sandbox crafting game? They have something called "labour points", which you can imagine as something like a mana resource. When you mine or craft, you spend some of those points. Over time, not really sure how quickly, but on the scale of hours, you get those points recharged. And the total amount is increased as you level up. But still, imagine logging into the game, crafting some things and then you're out of points and the game that is based on crafting tells you "NOPE! Can't craft anymore!". That's just stupid.

Maybe I'm not really understanding some part of the game that would make sense of this cap on crafting, since I never got to that part anyway. Some people were saying rather absurd things like "it's to prevent you from just crafting everything in one go". That's absurd because if the only thing preventing you from "crafting everything in one go" is a cap then you've got something very wrong in your game. That should be obvious. In games with crafting, traditionally the limiting factor are the resources and time required to gather and craft, and that's logical. You have to invest time into gathering the resources you need, or trade for it from other players. And then you spend more time and effort into the actual crafting process. You don't ever get to "craft everything in one go", that's absurd, and I truly hope that's not true with this game.

The real reason for the crafting cap actually seems pretty simple. They sell potions in the cash shop that gives you labour points. So they've essentially locked away crafting behind a pay wall. Wanna craft and progress? You have to wait for labour points (getting bad FB games vibes from this), or pay now and get labour points immediately.
If this game is supposed to have a free open player-driven market this is going to play havok on that. People being able to gain advantage over others by paying for labour points. It's obvious they intend to rake in the cash from this, but that's pretty terrible from a player's perspective.

So yeah, the prospect of open world sandbox crafting is pretty tempting, but why should I suffer 30 levels of themepark questrides for that? And why should I suffer through a mechanic that caps my ability to do the things I like (crafting), unless I pay for them?
Being free, I think I might put in a few hours into the game now again when I'm bored, because the skillset mechanic is an interesting toybox I haven't fully played with yet, but I don't know if I'll last to the point where the game transforms into a sandbox, and whether that sandbox would be any fun to play in from what I've seen so far.

Elf Shot The Food wrote on Sep 8, 2014, 11:47:
I never get tired of looking at the graph of RPS' page views going off a cliff in the wake of the Quinnspiracy.

Where do you get to see that?

Also, that Total Bisquit video is pretty old, but seems pretty darn relevant in a time like this, don't you think?

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 15:20:

garrywong wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 15:16:
Pray tell, what are such sites? I'm in the same boat, but haven't really anywhere else to go other than RPS. The fear of blundering onto the likes of Kotaku is preventing me from really searching.

http://makealist.com/content/quinngategamergate-support-list

Nice list, thanks! I'll be sure to go through them all. I hope some will focus on PC games

The cookie comes from Blues? Or from Amazon? I browse with cookies disabled, and would like to know which site to put as exception.

Verno wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 14:43:

jdreyer wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 14:18:

Verno wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 11:18:
I was a huge fan of RPS but they pushed me into foregoing their site entirely.

Um, baby, bathwater?

Come on dude, seriously? I defended RPS for a long time when others said the same thing but the past year they have really tanked. There are many other places to get my news and the editorials took a nosedive both in quality and content. I can find other websites to get the same level of information without being talked down to like a baby about someones misplaced moral crusades.

Pray tell, what are such sites? I'm in the same boat, but haven't really anywhere else to go other than RPS. The fear of blundering onto the likes of Kotaku is preventing me from really searching.

Bodolza wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 12:31:

LittleMe wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 12:04:
All that said, the I still think issue has been blown well out of proportion.

I don't know about that, considering the future of human civilization is at stake, and that's not an exaggeration. Look at all the ways the Internet has transformed the world over the past 20 years. How this plays out will determine the shape of the internet.

USA is not the whole world, FFS!

Verno wrote on Sep 5, 2014, 11:18:
Great write up. As the author says, I'm tired of editorial opinion pieces that have little to do with gaming itself and just attempt to force a social agenda on you. I was a huge fan of RPS but they pushed me into foregoing their site entirely.

Same with me. I bet that's also why their best writers had left. It's too bad some of them have left the games industry entirely as well.

Anyone played this? What's this like in comparison to others?

I don't get it. How does anyone expect Valve to fully refund a game purchase when they only take a supposedly 30% cut of the purchase?

It is standard that refunds are handled by the party that produces the product, not the distributor. And yes, the producer loses money since the distributor is not going to give them back the 30% cut. This is all standard everywhere. Companies like Amazon that do straight up refunds are an exception, not the rule.

I hope Valve goes to court and argues that they are not responsible for handling the refunds.

A lot of what I was gonna say is invalid since that article is fake. However, do we know if the shooting of that innocent person during the raid was real or also made up?

Still, fake or not, this article conveys a very good point. I almost wish this gets circulated among the idiot kids that do this without anyone noticing it's fake.

I agree their headlong rush to expand was rather foolhardy. Dust, and some unknown MMO that nobody knew or was looking forward to. And at the same time nearly abandoning the very game that was keeping them afloat.

However it seems they have recovered well enough. Last few updates to the game were pretty awesome and I'm sure it'll only keep on improving.

Then stop calling the language you speak English if you don't want to follow the rules.

Balked? You mean Baulked? Cause saying balk makes it sound like they are sounding like chickens over there, "balk balk balk". Which I guess is quite apt anyway haha