Fenixp

Oh yeah, I feel you. Some of the question mark locations are actually designed absolutely splendidly, blending in with environmental storytelling exceptionally well - I felt like the best locations for that were White Orchard and then areas added by expansions. In the bulk of the base game however, well... I think the most grievous examples thus far are smuggler caches in Skellige and Hidden Treasure island in Velen, like designers had a quota they were supposed to reach. I don't think I have to say much about the smuggler stashes, but in Velen, there's an island close to Oxenfurt (and the singing troll quest) which has like 4 or 5 hidden treasures on it, with completely disjointed stories, and you essentially get to trip over the 'hidden' chests while on your way there.

Actually, while Amnesia really did have splendid sound design, I never felt like it was cheap per se - the cheapness of sound design in the hotel level mostly relied on it having a whole lot of jumps scares, while Amnesia had a lot more ambience going for it (not saying the hotel level didn't, just... That it wasn't nearly as nuanced). Besides, Amnesia had many more tricks up its sleeve whereas Hotel level did not - I feel it was mostly scary thanks to the shift of overal tone happening, jumping from urban fantasy straight into horror genre. Which isn't saying that it did not work, just that it's not actually that scary and if you were to turn off sound to see the rest of the game, it's totally worth.

That one's pretty cheap in how it relies on sound design and heavy scripting - when you get to the mission, just turn volume all the way down and you're good to go, it suddenly becomes a relatively short detective story focused on things moving about by themselves. And given how heavily scripted it is, next time you're playing the game (thanking Fenixp for encouraging you to get through it, given how ... Unique Bloodlines is), you'll breeze through it, not really even noticing the scares.

Good, Malkavians may become a thing again!

I felt like the combat system was non-intrusive while remaining engaging just enough to remain non-irritating through the 100+h game time I've clocked in W3, and now while replaying it I still feel like fighting stuff is enjoyable, but doesn't get in the way of exploration and questing which are both the real stars of the show. Following tracks became a lot less irritating to me after disabling the fish-eye effect you get with it (I think you can do it in vanilla game, but it may be the UI mod I'm using) - it is faily lazy design which is obviously there simply to facilitate as many low-effort 'detective' quests as possible. Funny thing is, most of these aren't low effort writing-wise, but when it comes to their gameplay design, well... Loot system and levelling sucks arse in The Witcher 3. I mean, just like yesterday, I found two epic swords of the same name and design in two random chests next to each other. ... Yeah. Anyway, there's an option somewhere to remove question marks from the game, and to make exploration feel more organic, I'd suggest doing that. Because not only is there other stuff to find in the world beside the question marks which'll inevitably remain obscured by the tunnel vision, finding these locations while wandering the world just starts feeling a lot more fun and rewarding.

He has a name that can go on the game's store page.

CD Project Red?

*cough* Paradox *cough* Release a few free content packs to gather interest, monetize future ones. Edit: I'm perfectly fine with this tactic in other Paradox titles where it acts more like expansions to a board game, since those are pretty much entirely mechanics-driven. Doesn't sit well with me in a story-driven game.

Yeah, them. The webpage title says "We make great games" so it has to be true. They've only made Blacklight: Retribution so far, a F2P multiplayer FPS. Apparently it wasn't terrible?

I call this collection "Towers of Novigrad" It's supposed to represent a frigging huge city. Because Novigrad's quite big y'see, that's like the ... Symbolism and stuff.

At this point it'd be easier to list projects Chris Avellone is not working on. He has Into the Breach in his credits ffs.

That's nonsense, given speed in which they're releasing fairly major features, it's quite obvious that Epic never really intended to release all client features at once - I'm willing to bet most of these features are baked into the client in various stages of development already, it's just a QA nightmare to release software with all of its bells and whistles enabled from the get go. It makes much more sense to spread features out into a bigger time period to ensure that the basis on which said features are built upon is fleshed out. I'd also like to point out that the client is not in any way broken - feature incomplete and broken are two very different things. Edit: Not offering refunds is BS and, again, violation of European law, but - y'know, they'll sort that out, they don't really have much of a choice in the matter itch.io - those small devs get a much bigger cut and more freedom in how they want to price their product over there as well. Itch.io also strongly discourages sale of Steam key and instead semi-forces developers to upload standalone installers You're either using Windows or are concerned about your privacy when using software. Yes, the two are mutually exclusive. I hope you don't have an Android phone/iPhone as well as drawing a line at Epic store would be line drawn so far nobody'll see it - "Corporations can have all my telemetry on PC and phone usage, my precise location at any point in time and details like that, but damn them if they'll ever get my gaming habits down! ... I mean, outside of Steam. Steam can have those of course."

If that's what you primarily care about, you should not have supported a publisher that won't allow you to download standalone installers. Besides, even if Valve goes under, Steam is at this point too valuable to drop off the face of the Earth. The moment Valve gets done for, Steam'll be almost certainly bought and maintained by someone else. Edit: There we go, Epic has made their feature roadmap public. User reviews are in the "mid-term" column, planned to roll out in 4-6 months. Apparently, features similar to Steam's workshop or automated refunds are also in the works.

Don't forget that Epic store is not out for a long time and keeps rolling out new features - we'll see what'll happen in the long run yet, but it makes sense to roll polished features out one after another as opposed to releasing them, untested by public, all at once

Apparently yes. Also, Oh me oh my, apparently, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human's also coming to Epic store. And no, they did not misspell The Outer Worlds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g77FPIdz678 Edit: Apparently, Metro Exodus sold more on Epic Store than Last Light sold on Steam in comparable period . While I'm taking this with a bit of a grain of salt as Epic was the store of this info, I've not seen a single report on heavily sub-par sales on Epic store either.

Cliff Bleszinski is also not working for Epic since, like, 2013

But ... Hitler ... Didn't let crap content ... Into his stores, you wouldn't want to be Hitler, would you!?

I know it's becoming a bit of pattern where someone posts something negative about Epic and Fenixp jumps to their defense, so just to elaborate: I don't like exclusives. I never liked exclusives. Exclusives suck. The way Epic goes about getting their place on the market sucks and I wish they didn't do that, let alone a whole array of issues the store has (like, y'know, not complying with GDPR and tiny details like that.) Nonetheless, Mr. Sweeney is entirely correct. Historically, systems which made more sense to develop for (and now I'm not strictly talking about ease of use, throwing bags of money around certainly helps, see) eventually became dominant. I can pretty much guarantee that the people yelling about how Evil epic is and how they're not going to touch their store with a 10 ft pole, while very vocal, are also very much in a minority (see cancellation numbers of Phoenix Point). The explanation's pretty simple: Your average Joe doesn't care whether he installs Steam or Epic store, what he does care is what his friends have installed so that he can play Fortpex Legenite with them. As long as Epic makes sure that all sequels and variations on Fortpex Legenite is released on Epic store, customers will flood to it. For every unique and ambitious release like Phoenix Point, people will flood to it. For every high-profile release like The Division 2 or Metro Exodus, people will flood to it. And all that'll be then left exclusively using Steam will be the vocal minority, which shareholders/CEOs don't really give a toss about.

What kind of security? I'm pretty sure that if I inputted your email right here, on Obsidian boards, you'd be unable to create another account with that email - even if I did not verify said account using inputted email. Usually, the point at which an e-mail address gets reserved is the one where you enter your email at registration. Confirming that you own said email then merely activates said account. When someone else uses your email address to register but can't activate your account, most online software that I know will behave in the same way - it'll tell you that the email is taken at registration, but will allow you to re-activate it/reset password and re-activate it, since it's you who owns the email (Hopefully. Be wary of your passwords.) Sometimes, accounts which go unverified for a longer period of time will get deleted - but that's not really a security precaution, more of a "Don't fill my database with crap" precaution.

Meh, if data mining was their goal, I'm pretty sure it'll happen a lot more subtly than by creating a file in Epic's folder - Epic client has the thing that allows you to find friends based, among other things, on your Steam friends. Not sure about games played. Nonetheless, Steam makes all of that information publicly available via their API as long as you've not set it specifically to be private, so ... Y'know ... As far as master plan for spying on Steam's users, this sounds extremely convoluted

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-03-14-original-x-com-creator-faces-backlash-after-signing-epic-games-store-exclusive-deal-for-phoenix-point May have been obvious, but that answers my question to: - Yes, backers receive both Steam/GOG and Epic keys - Yes, even crowdfunding backers can withdraw their pledges, not just people who pre-ordered In other words, the impact of this decision on their backers appears to be minimal. Then again, question is how many backers actually registered the switch - internet drama and sending out emails is good and all, doesn't mean all backers get the memo. For all I know some of the money I sent out to crowdfunded projects are now used to start forest fires. Incidentally, as it turns out, it wasn't Epic that invested into Snapshot games - it was Snapshot games who approached Epic asking about the deal.

Would you look at that, Dwarf Fortress is getting an official graphical pack with some extra features as a part of a paid version on Steam. Fret not, development and support of the free version will continue along with it. Edit: Removed a bit of the post, sorry!

Software development is work, and vast majority of the fabled "other devs" actually only ever operate by taking "bribes" from "publishers" to develop a product. It's how majority of the industry works - and how a whole bunch of crowdfunded projects went as well, incidentally. *chuckle* And I can see you would prefer the dev team's children starving before they took a publisher deal! Why would you murder children!?

Apparently, by the time Phoenix Point arrives, cloud saves and achievements should be live - the former being pretty much the only thing I personally care about. Anyway, the game costing the same price on Steam launch as it cost on Epic launch would be like selling it at a discount for the devs, since Steam takes a bigger price cut than Epic does, so I'd not be surprised if it did launch fully priced (and, to be fair, how many games permanently drop their price after being on sale for a year?) There's a huge gap between "Keeping the studio afloat for the years to come" and "Dishonesty and greed". In fact, keeping your employer's job secure is by far the most fair way of treating them, whereas the devs quite literally can't really say or do anything online without enraging part of their consumer base. If your definition of "Untrustowrthy developer who will literally say and do anything" is a dev team that created precisely the product they promised and will be delivering them on platforms they promised, just with a few caveats introduced along the way, then you should keep as far away from the world of software development as possible. And business world for that matter. But yes, when taking a look at a kickstarter pitch, you should absolutely go in with the mindset that it's just people trying to scam you for money and if you back a project, you should consider that money lost and adjust the amount you're willing to pledge with that in mind.

Yeah, in terms of gameplay, writing and tone, W3 is very different from 1 and 2 - and I'd say most of the changes, especially in the storytelling department, make a much better experience than both of the previous games combined.