RogueSix wrote on Oct 9, 2024, 05:39:

Razumen wrote on Oct 9, 2024, 00:31:
Roguesix swings and misses again. Being forced to login to a service that's banned in your country (~121 currently), for a product you already bought, which was being sold in countries that couldn't access it, because of said ban, or you'll lose access, is a pretty fucking damn valid complaint.

That was Helldivers 2 ages ago which tried to enforce it retroactively but where ya been, man? There have been plenty of games (new releases) with a non-retroactive Sony account linking requirement in the meantime and the toddlers of the gaming world have been screaming their lungs out over the alleged outrageousness of it all.

Double standards. Hypocrisy at its finest.

The simple truth is: Most gamers are not consistent on this but they only rage against additional account linking or launcher requirements if it is publishers that the hive mind has declared despicable.
Rockstar (and mostly Blizzard) for some mysterious reason get a free pass, even though especially Rockstar, by its association to Take2, who are making 80%+ of their revenue from the detested plague called MTX, is a really weird exception but it is the same hypocrisy, I guess.
MTX are only bad when EA, Ubi et al do it. MTX milking galore is totes fine when Rockstar/Take2 does it. It's called gamer "logic".

Arrowhead didn't have a choice, they're owned by Sony, SONY forced them to do it, just like they're doing with their other games. It has nothing to do with MTX at all.

And why shouldn't they complain about it? Why do they need to login to PSN to play GoW: Ragnarok
when they've bought the game on Steam, and it's a SINGLEPLAYER game?

The simple truth is you're a troll that misrepresents facts and supports companies screwing over paying customers.

The thing is Steam platform is nothing short of formidable.
The amount of gamers opinions, help, guides, solutions to bugs, maps, etc. that I get every day is staggering.

Every day I look the releases filtered by my interests and mark as ignored (after years: 55,277) what I dislike -and copy the rest with Capture2Text to my safe master text file-.

So I know every potential game that I don't own but interest me, hundreds.
Impossible to do if Steam didn't exist.

$50 price point. LOL! Can I get some of what you're smoking, R*? 'Cause that must be some GOOD SHIT.

I don't interact with Roguesix much anymore, because he is a troll. But I am glad you said it. This is revisionist bullshit. People hated Rockstar's platform (social club when I remember it). People hated Steam too, though over the years as digital distribution buried boxed copies, they softened their stance on it as it was a platform to consolidate their growing digital library and developed a pretty complete ecosystem surrounding your games library. I'm fairly certain that I have an account for all digital storefronts - Epic, Origin, Social Club, Ubisoft+, Battlenet, PSN, XBOX Live... I think that I am forgetting one. But the point is, I will use a competing platform if I am forced to. I play Jedi Survivor, and after Steam does its thing Origin then loads and it has to download an update, install it, restart, and then demand a login that I don't remember. Same with The Division that uses Ubisoft's crap. Or a Microsoft game except it uses XBox live. Or now it's PSN and the same shit. And so on. It's an annoyance, a hindrance, or a complete wall depending on the day and the situation.
Not the end of the world, but when you stop to think that all this extra shit provides the customer exactly zero benefits and instead offers hindrances and annoyances, it pisses me off a little. I'm tired of being collateral damage in the little petty wars going on between all of these corporate monstrosities. Just let me play a game and leave me the fuck alone. I have terabytes of pirated games that I won't use unless forced to. They are there just so I have backups for what I own. I buy every game that I play, and I have for decades. But we're slowly reaching a point where I am starting to care less and less about doing things on the up and up because these companies are bending over backwards to make everything under the sun as annoying and difficult as possible for no reason except their own self-serving interests. I'm really losing patience at an accelerated rate these days.

This comment was edited on Oct 9, 2024, 16:13.

RogueSix wrote on Oct 9, 2024, 05:39:
Rockstar for some mysterious reason get[s] a free pass

You keep saying that, but it's not been my experience.
Most people hate(d) the Rockstar launcher and still feel it's completely unnecessary.

I haven't had an issue with the Blizzard launcher because it's very unobtrusive (feels lightweight, not sure if that's true but seems fast/efficient) and works without issue. What it does it does well.
Steam doesn't give me issues and is very full featured, more of a community platform and store than a game launcher.

Ubisoft's launcher has always sucked.
Never had to use Sony's I guess.
2K's launcher I had to use like once, seemed bloated and unnecessary.
Epic's still seems kind of janky and missing a ton of stuff, and ultimately unnecessary for everything but Epic's first-party titles. Like if Epic's launcher more closely matched Blizzard's in scope and feel, I'd be more okay with it.

This game looked gorgeous when it came out 15 years ago on PS3 running at 720p 20fps. But now at 1440p 144fps it really shows its age with such dated lighting and animation. It's nice they added features like UW and DLSS, but it's a pass for me.

Razumen wrote on Oct 9, 2024, 00:31:
Roguesix swings and misses again. Being forced to login to a service that's banned in your country (~121 currently), for a product you already bought, which was being sold in countries that couldn't access it, because of said ban, or you'll lose access, is a pretty fucking damn valid complaint.

That was Helldivers 2 ages ago which tried to enforce it retroactively but where ya been, man? There have been plenty of games (new releases) with a non-retroactive Sony account linking requirement in the meantime and the toddlers of the gaming world have been screaming their lungs out over the alleged outrageousness of it all.

Double standards. Hypocrisy at its finest.

The simple truth is: Most gamers are not consistent on this but they only rage against additional account linking or launcher requirements if it is publishers that the hive mind has declared despicable.
Rockstar (and mostly Blizzard) for some mysterious reason get a free pass, even though especially Rockstar, by its association to Take2, who are making 80%+ of their revenue from the detested plague called MTX, is a really weird exception but it is the same hypocrisy, I guess.
MTX are only bad when EA, Ubi et al do it. MTX milking galore is totes fine when Rockstar/Take2 does it. It's called gamer "logic".

Having never played it on PS, I am happy. Now as long as we don't have a sequel to the "GTA Definitive Ed." debacle. Which is by no means a given, as Take2 is a very stupid and greedy company; a perfect compliment to Rockstar, who are just as greedy and just as stupid.

another old game from this company

RogueSix wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 13:36:

It will but the hypocrites don't care. Requiring an account or launcher is only wrong when Sony, Epic, Ubi or EA do it. When Rockstar or Blizzard require an account it is (mostly*) fine.

* yes, I have seen a few complaints about the Battle.net account linking on Steam but nothing major and by far none of the cry baby temper tantrum muppet shows we are always getting with other games these days (especially Sony as of late which really triggers the cry baby whiners super-hard for some reason). No review bombing either. Rockstar and Blizzard are immune to that thanks to their armies of cultist fanbois.

Roguesix swings and misses again. Being forced to login to a service that's banned in your country (~121 currently), for a product you already bought, which was being sold in countries that couldn't access it, because of said ban, or you'll lose access, is a pretty fucking damn valid complaint.

JTW wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 15:25:

FloorPie wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 14:23:

RogueSix wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 13:36:

LurkerLito wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 12:58:
Probably requires that social club nonsense too I reckon.

It will but the hypocrites don't care. Requiring an account or launcher is only wrong when Sony, Epic, Ubi or EA do it. When Rockstar or Blizzard require an account it is (mostly*) fine.


* yes, I have seen a few complaints about the Battle.net account linking on Steam but nothing major and by far none of the cry baby temper tantrum muppet shows we are always getting with other games these days (especially Sony as of late which really triggers the cry baby whiners super-hard for some reason). No review bombing either. Rockstar and Blizzard are immune to that thanks to their armies of cultist fanbois.

It probably has to do with the fact that people generally have less technical problems with Steam or Bnet. Not that I am a fan of linking those either and I haven't linked them. I already run bnet so it makes little sense to run one of their games thru steam and bnet. Rockstar's launcher is generally junk and I don't have that linked either because the games/codes I bought were cheaper for the Rockstar only version or only available on Epic/Rockstar for a month before the Steam version (RDR2 on PC launch).

And Battle.net predates Steam by a number of years. Unlike Ubishaft, EA, Sony, and similar launchers, they're established platforms that had a purpose all along - they aren't just random extra logins intended for better data tracking.

First, you are wrong about tracking as Steam already tracks everything. It is not even possible to top that as Valve has invested the most effort and time (21 years now) into turning Steam into the finest oiled sales/marketing/tracking/analysis platform in gaming. Aside from the sheer number of MAU, that is the no. 1 reason it is so popular with publishers. They get all the data they want from Steam.
As far as other "per game" data, publishers do not need their clients/launchers. They simply use in-game telemetry. Every game has in-game telemetry these days and very few games offer an opt out.

Secondly, as I said, Ubi and EA absolutely do have their purpose as they are, whether you like it or not, fully-fledged store clients but thanks for confirming my point about hypocrisy . I bet you haven't even ever looked at the Ubi or EA client or you'd know that they are stores and not trackers as your favorite conspiracy nutters on YouTube or TikTok have told you.

Loved it when it came out on PS3 but this game is pretty dated and objectively inferior to RDR2 in every conceivable way. It features the most empty-feeling open world of any Rockstar title, which may suit the setting of the game... but doesn't make for a very compelling game.

But it has DLSS with Frame Generation, guys! Come on!

Holy 15 years too late! *yawn*

Prez wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 13:22:
Definitely a rush job.

If there is a mobile port of this game, then Rockstar will ask a team of inexperienced developers in Bangla Desh to base a pc port on the mobile game and release the pc port in less than a year.

I am sorry but I am really disappointed! The graphics did not updated for the almost 6 years old RDR2 level!!! This is shameful!

Looks like they couldn't even be bothered to use AI to improve the texture sizes. Still looks PS3 quality.

FloorPie wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 14:23:

RogueSix wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 13:36:

LurkerLito wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 12:58:
Probably requires that social club nonsense too I reckon.

It will but the hypocrites don't care. Requiring an account or launcher is only wrong when Sony, Epic, Ubi or EA do it. When Rockstar or Blizzard require an account it is (mostly*) fine.


* yes, I have seen a few complaints about the Battle.net account linking on Steam but nothing major and by far none of the cry baby temper tantrum muppet shows we are always getting with other games these days (especially Sony as of late which really triggers the cry baby whiners super-hard for some reason). No review bombing either. Rockstar and Blizzard are immune to that thanks to their armies of cultist fanbois.

It probably has to do with the fact that people generally have less technical problems with Steam or Bnet. Not that I am a fan of linking those either and I haven't linked them. I already run bnet so it makes little sense to run one of their games thru steam and bnet. Rockstar's launcher is generally junk and I don't have that linked either because the games/codes I bought were cheaper for the Rockstar only version or only available on Epic/Rockstar for a month before the Steam version (RDR2 on PC launch).

And Battle.net predates Steam by a number of years. Unlike Ubishaft, EA, Sony, and similar launchers, they're established platforms that had a purpose all along - they aren't just random extra logins intended for better data tracking.

I never even finished the first. I got pretty bored of the gameplay after a while.

Prez wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 14:10:

Burrito of Peace wrote on Oct 8, 2024, 13:18:
Is this one less tiresome than the sequel? Because in the second, these motherfuckers couldn't shut up to save their lives.

By that do you mean that the cutscenes and story bits went on too long, or that the NPC's kept barking at you about this or that?

Yes to both and I felt no regard whatsoever toward any of the main characters. I wanted to put a bullet through Dutch's head after about five minutes of listening to him prattle on, for example.

For myself, narrative games only work if there is choice. Not the illusion of choice by limiting the player to binary choices but actual choice. If a game wants to take me down a highly structured, predetermined path then what's the point of playing when agency is reduced or stripped away? I can read a book if I want to be a passive observer.