Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 12:23:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 09:21:

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 08:34:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 08:07:

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 07:54:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 05:07:

r00ster wrote on Feb 15, 2025, 17:29:
I'm about 8 hours in and I share alot of their sentiments. Even a small quest about some lost necklace can change into a 5 minute lore dump conversation which isn't very engaging. Exploration and combat are good to keep me going but I dread every time i have to go into a city.
Overall it doesn't feel like a 70 dollar game in many aspects. Seems like its a product to be dumped on gamepass and I'm afraid we'll see alot of similar games from microsoft in coming years.

I think Avowed (like DA:TV) is one of the last games where most of its development time was during the era that feelings were more important than skill. Have a loud mouth and a strong opinion about politics that we like? Go ahead and be our writer / art director / etc. That time has passed, I think, and the games we'll be seeing from now on will be much better again. Gone are the blue hairs in lead roles.

I adore the hypocrisy of saying "I think feelings were more important than skill." You feel, it is true, in other words.

But you have no experience, or skill, to prove it. You just dump your feelings as truth.

You've never been in a studio. You don't know any devs. You don't understand the policies that anger you. And you think something that never happened is over because of your emotions.

Ignorance. So much overwhelming ignorance. The world doesn't work like you think it does, and you should learn instead of just feel.

Somehow others manage, but I don’t care for your tantrums, Beamer. This is a forum, not a developers studio, and I’m not ashamed to express my feelings. You posture like you’re above emotion, yet all you do is feel.

You don’t know me, yet you feel certain about what I know and don’t know. You feel superior. You feel like this response makes you look insightful. But all you’ve done is stomp your feet.

And that’s all the engagement you get from me.

Your posting is more about feelings than skill. You're angry because you realize I'm correct.

Be better. Don't let ignorance and emotions define what you give to the world around you. If that's what you want, go to an echo chamber like kotakuinaction or r/conservative

I don’t need hard data to have an opinion on what I’ve seen over the years, and I’m fine with that. It’s an observation, not a thesis. If you disagree, that’s fair -- but reducing the discussion to a "gotcha" is just petty and reeks of a need to feel superior.

Again, you don't see the stupidity of how your "feelings" are that others put too much faith in their "feelings."

You can't name a single game that was ruined by "blue hair." You can't name a single person given positions of power due to "feelings" over skill. But since your feelings tell you it must have happened, you trust is as gospel

I’m not here to write a thesis, but I’ve observed how DA:TV squandered goodwill with a poorly written and forced transgender subplot. Taash being transgender wasn’t the issue -- the execution was. It was clumsy, felt tacked on, and broke immersion. This isn't just my opinion; the backlash was widespread, and it undeniably contributed to the game becoming a meme rather than a celebrated entry in the franchise.

Do I connect this narrative choice to Corinne Busche, the game director, who had just publicly transitioned? Yes. Because the shift in writing focus seemed more about making a statement than crafting a compelling story. And the result? DA:TV lost a significant number of potential buyers, putting the series' future in jeopardy.

Look at Concord. Would it have been a masterpiece without its tone-deaf character design? No. But would it have failed as hard? Probably not. When people say "no ‘blue hairs’ have impacted the gaming industry," they're either uninformed or willfully blind to the patterns that have emerged.

I know this argument has been rehashed countless times, and frankly, it's more entertaining when I'm just eating the popcorn. But pretending ideology-driven design choices haven’t affected game quality? That’s the blissful ignorance you're accusing me of.

That said, you’re correct about one thing -- even though you didn’t quite say it outright. Avowed has little to do with this discussion, and I probably shouldn’t have brought the “blue hair” comment into this thread. My comment was more about the broader sentiment that game quality has declined in recent years, which led me to express my observation.

ps.: I'm done with this back-and-forth btw. I know when I'm engaged with people with many narcissistic traits, and those interactions are very toxic. I was stupid to get their attention.

Teddy wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 17:34:

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Feb 16, 2025, 21:11:
bRUH, I just finished a quest to steal some supply's for the "bath house" and it turned out to be an illegal herb used for birth control and abortions, then my companion Kai wanted to know how i felt about it... LOL, WTF, can't say that I ever played that quest line before.

Did it pause right after to transmit your response to your local government so they can decide whether to add you to the list or not?

Edit: I can see it now in Bioware style: "Kai approves! (Happy-faced Kai icon) The GOP disapproves! (Frowny-faced Trump icon)

Damn, where are the Avowed servers? With my luck they're in Texas or whatever and now I am catching a case.

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Feb 16, 2025, 21:11:
bRUH, I just finished a quest to steal some supply's for the "bath house" and it turned out to be an illegal herb used for birth control and abortions, then my companion Kai wanted to know how i felt about it... LOL, WTF, can't say that I ever played that quest line before.

Did it pause right after to transmit your response to your local government so they can decide whether to add you to the list or not?

Edit: I can see it now in Bioware style: "Kai approves! (Happy-faced Kai icon) The GOP disapproves! (Frowny-faced Trump icon)

This comment was edited on Feb 17, 2025, 17:46.

Coalfax wrote on Feb 16, 2025, 12:11:
It's this price because of the Publisher (Obsidian) ...

The publisher is Xbox Game Studios. The developer is Obsidian.

Oh I agree. Lack of self-awareness coupled with impossible assumptions of certainty are extremely aggravating. But you can't make enemies out of half the populace. Of course, any logical adult would immediately answer that with the simple question of "why not?". To which I say, umm... cuz it's bad, mkay? Irrefutable logic.

What can I say? I believe in the carrot instead of the stick.

Prez wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 13:58:
Oh Beamer, I love you man, but ugh you seem to love making enemies. 😁

It's the attitude of "I know what's going on" while posting something ridiculous, combined with "I feel they're just getting ahead because of feelings." How does that irony get missed?

Half the bullshit going on in the country is due to people feeling they know something while being completely ignorant and believing absolutely insane bullshit that makes them feel superior to people that only exist in their heads.

Oh Beamer, I love you man, but ugh you seem to love making enemies. 😁

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 09:21:

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 08:34:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 08:07:

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 07:54:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 05:07:

r00ster wrote on Feb 15, 2025, 17:29:
I'm about 8 hours in and I share alot of their sentiments. Even a small quest about some lost necklace can change into a 5 minute lore dump conversation which isn't very engaging. Exploration and combat are good to keep me going but I dread every time i have to go into a city.
Overall it doesn't feel like a 70 dollar game in many aspects. Seems like its a product to be dumped on gamepass and I'm afraid we'll see alot of similar games from microsoft in coming years.

I think Avowed (like DA:TV) is one of the last games where most of its development time was during the era that feelings were more important than skill. Have a loud mouth and a strong opinion about politics that we like? Go ahead and be our writer / art director / etc. That time has passed, I think, and the games we'll be seeing from now on will be much better again. Gone are the blue hairs in lead roles.

I adore the hypocrisy of saying "I think feelings were more important than skill." You feel, it is true, in other words.

But you have no experience, or skill, to prove it. You just dump your feelings as truth.

You've never been in a studio. You don't know any devs. You don't understand the policies that anger you. And you think something that never happened is over because of your emotions.

Ignorance. So much overwhelming ignorance. The world doesn't work like you think it does, and you should learn instead of just feel.

Somehow others manage, but I don’t care for your tantrums, Beamer. This is a forum, not a developers studio, and I’m not ashamed to express my feelings. You posture like you’re above emotion, yet all you do is feel.

You don’t know me, yet you feel certain about what I know and don’t know. You feel superior. You feel like this response makes you look insightful. But all you’ve done is stomp your feet.

And that’s all the engagement you get from me.

Your posting is more about feelings than skill. You're angry because you realize I'm correct.

Be better. Don't let ignorance and emotions define what you give to the world around you. If that's what you want, go to an echo chamber like kotakuinaction or r/conservative

I don’t need hard data to have an opinion on what I’ve seen over the years, and I’m fine with that. It’s an observation, not a thesis. If you disagree, that’s fair -- but reducing the discussion to a "gotcha" is just petty and reeks of a need to feel superior.

Again, you don't see the stupidity of how your "feelings" are that others put too much faith in their "feelings."

You can't name a single game that was ruined by "blue hair." You can't name a single person given positions of power due to "feelings" over skill. But since your feelings tell you it must have happened, you trust is as gospel

That, my friend, is ignorance. You seem to enjoy wallowing in it. You don't want to be correct or accurate, you want to feel superior. And yet you claim I'm doing so. You think you're superior to some phantom blue haired developer with no talent that you made up in your head.

It's just so incredibly sad to think people go through life like this.

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 09:28:

Prez wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 09:14:
I literally have no idea what Scallywag is ranting about, but I agree that it doesn't feel like a $70 game, Because no game to date feels like a $70 game. They certainly didn't help themselves pricing this so high.

Haha, it’s not really a rant -- just an observation. The last few years brought a lot of weak AAA releases, and I believe that’s because the industry shifted its focus in the wrong direction. But lately, there’s been a course correction, and I think we’ll start seeing the benefits of that soon. So if anything, my "negative" take comes with the silver lining: better times ahead.

games have been $70+ for a minute, I doubt that Golden Eye on the Nintendo 64 would be considered worth it today.

The industry has shifted its focused in the wrong direction? Really since when? It has always been going in the wrong direction, forever and ever. that's what they have said my entire fucking life now.

"The insidious nature of the video games' harmful effects is the primary danger. The child does not know he is being injured. He does not realize that with each successive game he is closer to being rendered sterile, blind, lethargic, incontinent, and prone to dope addiction, devil worship, and mopery. " - The Gay Blade by Henry Gay, The Devil's device, page 4 of The Dispatch - Wednesday, Jan 27th 1982. That's what, forty fucking three years ago?

and you know what? I am tired of hearing how woke the games are getting by the same group of people again, and again, and again.

I was just wondering what politics were being pushed in Avowed. I have watched a let's play and for better and for worse, it's like every other Obsidian game ever made. I've just never heard them being accused of having an agenda before.

I will add that I am sensing this discussion veering toward the idiotic and utterly pointless woke and dei talking points, so if that is where this is going I'm out. I don't wish to read it, much less partake in it. Play the games you like; avoid ones you don't.

This comment was edited on Feb 17, 2025, 10:26.

Steele Johnson wrote on Feb 16, 2025, 15:01:

Coalfax wrote on Feb 16, 2025, 12:11:

Steele Johnson wrote on Feb 16, 2025, 03:10:
This is definitely not a $70 game. Why such a high price? It just seems like a "been there done that" with less features and a weaker story. Wait a year when it's all patched up, then pay $20 on a deal

It's this price because of the Publisher (Obsidian) and that's what the norm price point leveled out to be these days. No, I agree it's not worth that price, maybe more in the 30-40 range, but that's easy to armchair quarterback and spout. I'm not the one making the Game and have to pay the workers. (they call the whipping until morale improves paying I guess)

At some point the price will normalize based on sales and the grey market. Just don't jump at it now for certain.

If the game was $30 - $40 day one, I'd probably buy it. But since they've put the now "standard" AAA(A) price on it, I'd think most gamers will wait until it's much lower. I know devs got to put food on the table, but I don't typically buy products with charity in mind. I mean, this is Microsoft we're talking about.

I wonder if this wasn't also on Game Pass if that's the price point they would have chosen. Publishers are charging high prices off the rip to capitalize on the FOMO crowd before putting it, "on sale". The problem with this is that the savvy are just getting it on Game Pass which gives the publisher only a fraction of the revenue.

All of this seems to be happening because they want subscription numbers but it leads to the Dot Com fallacy of market presence = company value. At some point in the next few years I expect to see advertising revenue get injected in to these subscriptions because of ads since that is the only way I can see for them to get real, monetary value out of them.

Prez wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 09:14:
I literally have no idea what Scallywag is ranting about, but I agree that it doesn't feel like a $70 game, Because no game to date feels like a $70 game. They certainly didn't help themselves pricing this so high.

Haha, it’s not really a rant -- just an observation. The last few years brought a lot of weak AAA releases, and I believe that’s because the industry shifted its focus in the wrong direction. But lately, there’s been a course correction, and I think we’ll start seeing the benefits of that soon. So if anything, my "negative" take comes with the silver lining: better times ahead.

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 08:34:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 08:07:

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 07:54:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 05:07:

r00ster wrote on Feb 15, 2025, 17:29:
I'm about 8 hours in and I share alot of their sentiments. Even a small quest about some lost necklace can change into a 5 minute lore dump conversation which isn't very engaging. Exploration and combat are good to keep me going but I dread every time i have to go into a city.
Overall it doesn't feel like a 70 dollar game in many aspects. Seems like its a product to be dumped on gamepass and I'm afraid we'll see alot of similar games from microsoft in coming years.

I think Avowed (like DA:TV) is one of the last games where most of its development time was during the era that feelings were more important than skill. Have a loud mouth and a strong opinion about politics that we like? Go ahead and be our writer / art director / etc. That time has passed, I think, and the games we'll be seeing from now on will be much better again. Gone are the blue hairs in lead roles.

I adore the hypocrisy of saying "I think feelings were more important than skill." You feel, it is true, in other words.

But you have no experience, or skill, to prove it. You just dump your feelings as truth.

You've never been in a studio. You don't know any devs. You don't understand the policies that anger you. And you think something that never happened is over because of your emotions.

Ignorance. So much overwhelming ignorance. The world doesn't work like you think it does, and you should learn instead of just feel.

Somehow others manage, but I don’t care for your tantrums, Beamer. This is a forum, not a developers studio, and I’m not ashamed to express my feelings. You posture like you’re above emotion, yet all you do is feel.

You don’t know me, yet you feel certain about what I know and don’t know. You feel superior. You feel like this response makes you look insightful. But all you’ve done is stomp your feet.

And that’s all the engagement you get from me.

Your posting is more about feelings than skill. You're angry because you realize I'm correct.

Be better. Don't let ignorance and emotions define what you give to the world around you. If that's what you want, go to an echo chamber like kotakuinaction or r/conservative

I don’t need hard data to have an opinion on what I’ve seen over the years, and I’m fine with that. It’s an observation, not a thesis. If you disagree, that’s fair -- but reducing the discussion to a "gotcha" is just petty and reeks of a need to feel superior.

I literally have no idea what Scallywag is ranting about, but I agree that it doesn't feel like a $70 game, Because no game to date feels like a $70 game. They certainly didn't help themselves pricing this so high.

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 08:07:

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 07:54:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 05:07:

r00ster wrote on Feb 15, 2025, 17:29:
I'm about 8 hours in and I share alot of their sentiments. Even a small quest about some lost necklace can change into a 5 minute lore dump conversation which isn't very engaging. Exploration and combat are good to keep me going but I dread every time i have to go into a city.
Overall it doesn't feel like a 70 dollar game in many aspects. Seems like its a product to be dumped on gamepass and I'm afraid we'll see alot of similar games from microsoft in coming years.

I think Avowed (like DA:TV) is one of the last games where most of its development time was during the era that feelings were more important than skill. Have a loud mouth and a strong opinion about politics that we like? Go ahead and be our writer / art director / etc. That time has passed, I think, and the games we'll be seeing from now on will be much better again. Gone are the blue hairs in lead roles.

I adore the hypocrisy of saying "I think feelings were more important than skill." You feel, it is true, in other words.

But you have no experience, or skill, to prove it. You just dump your feelings as truth.

You've never been in a studio. You don't know any devs. You don't understand the policies that anger you. And you think something that never happened is over because of your emotions.

Ignorance. So much overwhelming ignorance. The world doesn't work like you think it does, and you should learn instead of just feel.

Somehow others manage, but I don’t care for your tantrums, Beamer. This is a forum, not a developers studio, and I’m not ashamed to express my feelings. You posture like you’re above emotion, yet all you do is feel.

You don’t know me, yet you feel certain about what I know and don’t know. You feel superior. You feel like this response makes you look insightful. But all you’ve done is stomp your feet.

And that’s all the engagement you get from me.

Your posting is more about feelings than skill. You're angry because you realize I'm correct.

Be better. Don't let ignorance and emotions define what you give to the world around you. If that's what you want, go to an echo chamber like kotakuinaction or r/conservative

Beamer wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 07:54:

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 05:07:

r00ster wrote on Feb 15, 2025, 17:29:
I'm about 8 hours in and I share alot of their sentiments. Even a small quest about some lost necklace can change into a 5 minute lore dump conversation which isn't very engaging. Exploration and combat are good to keep me going but I dread every time i have to go into a city.
Overall it doesn't feel like a 70 dollar game in many aspects. Seems like its a product to be dumped on gamepass and I'm afraid we'll see alot of similar games from microsoft in coming years.

I think Avowed (like DA:TV) is one of the last games where most of its development time was during the era that feelings were more important than skill. Have a loud mouth and a strong opinion about politics that we like? Go ahead and be our writer / art director / etc. That time has passed, I think, and the games we'll be seeing from now on will be much better again. Gone are the blue hairs in lead roles.

I adore the hypocrisy of saying "I think feelings were more important than skill." You feel, it is true, in other words.

But you have no experience, or skill, to prove it. You just dump your feelings as truth.

You've never been in a studio. You don't know any devs. You don't understand the policies that anger you. And you think something that never happened is over because of your emotions.

Ignorance. So much overwhelming ignorance. The world doesn't work like you think it does, and you should learn instead of just feel.

Somehow others manage, but I don’t care for your tantrums, Beamer. This is a forum, not a developers studio, and I’m not ashamed to express my feelings. You posture like you’re above emotion, yet all you do is feel.

You don’t know me, yet you feel certain about what I know and don’t know. You feel superior. You feel like this response makes you look insightful. But all you’ve done is stomp your feet.

And that’s all the engagement you get from me.

Scallywag Sally wrote on Feb 17, 2025, 05:07:

r00ster wrote on Feb 15, 2025, 17:29:
I'm about 8 hours in and I share alot of their sentiments. Even a small quest about some lost necklace can change into a 5 minute lore dump conversation which isn't very engaging. Exploration and combat are good to keep me going but I dread every time i have to go into a city.
Overall it doesn't feel like a 70 dollar game in many aspects. Seems like its a product to be dumped on gamepass and I'm afraid we'll see alot of similar games from microsoft in coming years.

I think Avowed (like DA:TV) is one of the last games where most of its development time was during the era that feelings were more important than skill. Have a loud mouth and a strong opinion about politics that we like? Go ahead and be our writer / art director / etc. That time has passed, I think, and the games we'll be seeing from now on will be much better again. Gone are the blue hairs in lead roles.

I adore the hypocrisy of saying "I think feelings were more important than skill." You feel, it is true, in other words.

But you have no experience, or skill, to prove it. You just dump your feelings as truth.

You've never been in a studio. You don't know any devs. You don't understand the policies that anger you. And you think something that never happened is over because of your emotions.

Ignorance. So much overwhelming ignorance. The world doesn't work like you think it does, and you should learn instead of just feel.

r00ster wrote on Feb 15, 2025, 17:29:
I'm about 8 hours in and I share alot of their sentiments. Even a small quest about some lost necklace can change into a 5 minute lore dump conversation which isn't very engaging. Exploration and combat are good to keep me going but I dread every time i have to go into a city.
Overall it doesn't feel like a 70 dollar game in many aspects. Seems like its a product to be dumped on gamepass and I'm afraid we'll see alot of similar games from microsoft in coming years.

I think Avowed (like DA:TV) is one of the last games where most of its development time was during the era that feelings were more important than skill. Have a loud mouth and a strong opinion about politics that we like? Go ahead and be our writer / art director / etc. That time has passed, I think, and the games we'll be seeing from now on will be much better again. Gone are the blue hairs in lead roles.

I hate framegen, upscaling and Ray Tracing -- basically all the new shit NVIDIA and co came up with. It's all reasons for developers to do shortcuts on optimization; some of those UE5 games are practically unplayable without framegen or upscaling, and the lighting sucks ass because they let the resource hog called Ray Tracing do the work previously done meticulously by map designers. I think Stalker 2 is a perfect example of all of this. That game doesn't look good at all and its optimization is the stuff of nightmares. Yes, somehow people are defending that game even on this forum. To them, all I have to say is this: compare KCD2 with Stalker 2, both in terms of visuals and performance.

"At Native 8K, our NVIDIA RTX 5090 was pushing 19-21FPS"

This is the only metric that matters, not that 8K is realistic scenario, but 21fps is just not playable. The main point is thatiIt doesn't matter that with "frame generation" (it's really just frame interpolation) gets you up to 130 "FPS", because 1. At the setting they're using, 75% of those "frames" aren't real and don't react to input. and 2. The lower your base framerate, the bigger the hit to latency framegen causes.

Unlike upscaling, which has its own issues, "framegen" is NOT a tool to get you to 60 FPS or higher, if you're using it like that, that game is going to feel remarkably worse to play compared to native because of the drastically higher input latency it creates. As a base, you want AT LEAST 60 FPS, ideally 70-80, before enabling framegen. Why? Because the cost of enabling framegen at 20 FPS is 3x the cost of rendering time it is at 60fps, since you're delaying the most recent frame in order to create those additional interpolated frames.

Framegen is even worse than DLSS and should never be used in any sort of performance metric. It's only real use case is to saturate a high refresh rate monitor when you already have decent performance.