marelooke

...I wouldn't dare! But the screenshot threads have been missing a certain something lately... I too can quit whenever I choose!

Wait, when did we start talking about Anthem? (I'll get my coat)

I've been collecting me some Wyrdstone... Gotta man up and finally get through that Sisters of Sigmar campaign (yups, still, my middle name might be "procrastination", maybe. I'll check, later.), but easing into it as I'm a wee bit rusty and I'd rather not wipe out my Warband at this point.

Making a note to figure out where Keyrock lives so I can plan my walking trips around that knowledge, literally Still playing Destiny 2 (with some Skyrim on the side), turns out the mission I thought was the end of the campaign (killed the "big bad" and all), well, wasn't. Unlocked an entirely new area now that I can explore, yay! On that note, I kinda like Destiny's setting (or at least the more grounded bits), this "post golden-age apocalypse" kinda does it for me, the combination of technology and archaeology is awesome when combined with the atmosphere, the feeling of nostalgia for what used to be, the lingering dreams of the inhabitants as to what could have been... A game in such a setting that allows us to just dig through stuff and uncover the stories of the places would be mint. I mean rather than deal with space magic and shoot bad guys I'd prefer to just stay on Titan and dig through the ruins of the floating cities, or the labs on Mars, or whatever is left of Earth... I'll accept that I'm just weird though, but a man can dream...

Finished up Destiny 2's Forsaken campaign, was good fun. Unfortunately the game's servers (or the game's networking code) appear to be terrible, disconnects are rampant and usually happen when the game tries to save state (iow it's not related to the P2P nature of matchmaking), like loot or mission progress. Having to redo 2 out of the 8 barons (which are solo things, so P2P doesn't even factor in) because the game bailed after beating the boss was...not enjoyable. Other than that trying to get better so I can keep up and contribute a bit more meaningfully in the Verdant Forest, unfortunately that event ends soon.

Resident Evil VII was on sale...

Turns out James Ohlen is now working for WotC in a new studio that is focusing on "creation of original IP outside the Magic the Gathering and D&D brands" (no BG3 here, folks). Pretty much no other information there but this could potentially be interesting. Source (linked at timestamp so you can skip the Epic bollocks):

Picked up my Shadow of the Tomb Raider playthrough. Story still hasn't grabbed me but some of the challenge tombs are fun at least.

Right, so after a day with the upgrade I have to come back to my point about the old "My activity" stream: it no longer appears to exist in this version, meaning I have to check all the threads I've replied to manually by just going through all the forums, which is rather inconvenient, to say the least. The "Profile" lists all threads a user has replied to, much like the old "My activity" that also was under profile, unfortunately it does not tell you which ones have replies. The activity streams just give you a stream (or flood, rather) of all the replies to threads you've subscribed to, if there's any large volume threads you've subscribed to that feature is just entirely useless. If there is a way to just see subscribed threads and whether there are new replies or not, then please point me to it, if not then at least for me, that is a major loss of functionality.

Sword in the stone Eep! Move over Lara, this tomb needs raiding! Dark places EDIT123532523412312: still doesn't show up in Firefox, works fine in Chrome, no more whining about insecure content on a secure website though so probably just Firefox being derpy. I must say adding that 's' to "http" was quite the nightmarish endeavour in the new UI.

Since Thin Bloods are counted as a clan that means there's another clan from VtMB that won't make the cut for initial release. Alas.

Looks spiffy. Upgrade seems to have gone smoothly as well, nice job! So on to the remarks: Another vote to get BBCode mode back EDIT: editing images is practically impossible in the new UI, something as simple as modifying the URL turned into an ordeal that almost made debugging multi-threaded code seem like fun, comparatively. Any way to get the "Content I Follow" in a more convenient location? This 2 level AJAX menu is kind of...annoying for regular use. Eg. back under the "My activity" in the Profile menu would be nice (and back to where it used to be before the upgrade), but just putting in the menu bar would be nice too. EDIT: looks like it might still be under "Profile" just that threads from before the upgrade didn't carry over?

Yeah, Andromeda's main problem was clearly bad project management more than anything, they had more than enough time if they used it well. It's a massive game (as is DAI), but there isn't enough to hold interest. The fps gameplay is actually pretty good but it's hard to see how the RPG systems would have worked well on any other engine either, they're kind of disjointed in a way that suggests people were developing systems and even planetary narrative in isolation; and the characters, plot and antagonists being so poor is 100% not due to the engine. Plus despite Andromeda following DAI and theoretically having extra time to work out any kinks DAI was a far more consistent end product. Bad project management seems to have be Bioware's ongoing problem too given Anthem and DA4 clearly have had or are having a lot of problems too with development being rebooted. Supposedly they weren't forced to use Frostbite. ISTR they had to use the same engine for DAI and Andromeda but it didn't have to be Frostbite. Clearly the engine wasn't the sole problem, although at least in Anthem's case it seems the original concepts they had went out of the window because they couldn't get them to work in Frostbite. Which doesn't mean it's impossible, but something being possible means very little when you don't have people on staff that can make it happen. What I do have difficulty believing is the "they were not forced to use it" line. While sure, technically they probably weren't forced to, as in, nobody put a gun to their head nor do I consider it very likely they were outright told they "must" use Frostbite. But if a big corporation publicly states they want to standardize on something... then yeah, it's generally not a good idea to diverge from that, especially if you're a very visible part of said corporation, like BioWare is. EA management: "Hai guys, we're going to standardize on Frostbite which is this awesome engine that can do anything we want it to and doing so will save us tons of money, because we no longer have to pay royalties to outside parties!" Investors: "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!" BioWare management: "Yeah, that's nice and all but that engine won't really work for us, we'll use something else instead." Investors: *confused faces* EA management: *very angry glares in the direction of BioWare management*

I though this quote from the Kotaku article summed it up nicely: On top of that its tooling is apparently seriously sub-par when compared to the competition and it takes ages to render something before you can test to know whether it actually worked. Add to the above that the thing wasn't built for the kinds of stuff BioWare has been trying to use it for. It doesn't support third person, for example, that's something BioWare had to hack in, with barely any support from the Frostbite team from the sounds of it. It also couldn't handle the map sizes of DA:I and I'm sure someone at BioWare has a very very long list of other things the engine didn't support that are basic requirements for what BioWare was trying to do. It might be a good engine, but if you use a tool for something its not designed for you're just setting yourself up for a lot of hurt. tl;dr: Frostbite + BioWare = round peg, square hole.

In a very real sense the video games industry seems over-saturated. Eh, if you remove all the exclusives that list might quickly become pretty manageable I'd expect, especially with the backlog I've managed to build up. Unfortunately. There's not many good MMOs around (and many of the ones that are/were decent are suffering from massive neglect and/or being sold to F2P cashgrab companies) and innovation is absolutely nowhere to be found in the genre. Barring a very few exceptions they're all just WoW clones in some form or other and WoW was already a dumbed down clone of what came before.

Honestly, the initial vision for the game sounded pretty neat. Closer to Monster Hunter World than the Destiny clone we got now. Bit of a shame that one of the major reasons it didn't get made was because the engine foisted onto BioWare just couldn't handle it (that and keeping it engaging over longer periods of time). Unless they somehow manage to modularize that engine so they can basically have multiple engines with the same underlying technology Frostbite is just going to stay the Achilles heel of EA, and probably ends up costing them way more than just licensing an engine that's actually fit for the task ever would. But it looks like a saving, on paper at least, just like outsourcing everything...

Well played Right in the feels, ouch... On that note are there any exclusives by company that tend to publish actual sales numbers? I'd be really interested to see the impact (even though financially their sugar daddy covers them so the publishers/developers won't feel it, at least not in their pockets). Note that the 2.5 times LL "numbers" from Epic are meaningless marketing bs since we don't have actual sales numbers for LL. Do we know if those 2,5 mils might potentially include the Steam pre-orders or is it explicitly Epic only? It's not 2,5 million copies. It's 2.5 times the amount Last Light sold. Given how LL was, at the time, arguably even more niche than The Witcher 2 and there was a bunch of negativity around the day one difficulty DLC I very much doubt 2.5times that number is anywhere close to 2.5million copies (in fact, 2.5million would be beating out The Witcher 3's PC sales in that same period, which I would consider extremely unlikely). To quote a thought exercise I did a little while ago: But, as noted: extrapolations on top of assumptions (I should note I've also been rather generous towards Exodus in the above). Hence why I'd very much be interested in an Epic exclusive company that provides actual sales numbers (I doubt there are any, but one can hope someone comes up with something ).

Well, Borderlands 3 will include xp and loot boosters in the "deluxe" and up editions (going up to a ridiculous 250 USD edition). Going to assume these will be purchasable with real money as well and until reviews roll in proving otherwise I'm just going to assume the grind is tuned to sell those things to people. Guess there should have been more outrage about the practice AC:O after all. If the Epic thing wasn't enough reason to hold off (and the fact that I never managed to finish Borderlands 2, ) this on its own would definitely be enough reason for me to toss this game onto the "wait-and-see" pile. Inside Gaming link for reference:

Well played Right in the feels, ouch... On that note are there any exclusives by company that tend to publish actual sales numbers? I'd be really interested to see the impact (even though financially their sugar daddy covers them so the publishers/developers won't feel it, at least not in their pockets). Note that the 2.5 times LL "numbers" from Epic are meaningless marketing bs since we don't have actual sales numbers for LL.

The funny thing being that BioWare's response came literal minutes after the Kotaku article was published, in other words, it was a canned response written before they even bothered reading the entire thing based on the synopsis sent to them by Kotaku (which they didn't bother responding to). So yeah...

Well Kotaku (you were warned) has a lengthy piece about Anthem's development. The tl;dr is basically Anthem is Mass Effect: Andromeda 2.0: chronic lack of vision, Frostbite woes, bad leadership, and the game was eventually slapped together in the last year or so. Oh, and DA:I apparently went through the same deal, albeit a little more successfully.

Yeah, none of the Anarchs struck me as particularly memorable in general. Regarding Jack, whether he behaved as expected or not, I find it rather hard to deny that he was pretty memorable. I'd like to add Pisha (the flesh eater), Fat Larry and Chunk though. None of them were major characters but they were imho rather important for the atmosphere (and background exposition, in Pisha's case) and I felt that especially Chunk added a very much needed touch of normality and humanity whenever spoken to. Heather was also pretty memorable, I guess, if only for the "Oh ****, what did I do now?" effect. (of course, people in the know would've seen this coming so there's that I guess)

I have noticed they're calling you commander, yet you don't get to pilot jetpack-powered dragon. I find this development unsatisfactory. Wonder what it will be like. I definitely wouldn't mind an improved Dragon Commander, I thought that game had potential, but alas, it seems Larian only throws out a quick strategy game when they need more moneys (see also: The LED Wars) so it was kinda left to rot, unfortunately. So here's to hoping this one gets the attention it needs. (also talk about not a lot of information available, couldn't even find a way to get to the trailer from the Larian website, heh. The only mention there is a banner on the forums that just leads to the Divinity: OS 2 website)

Does anyone remember who created the Ocean House Hotel level? I remember an interview (or rather, more like an AMA) with the guy, likely on Gamebanshee before they ruined their forums, but I'm entirely unable to find it again Btw, what made that level special, at least for those that weren't knowledgeable about the WoD, is that you had not idea what was out there. For all you knew on first entry there actually is something in there that could easily give you your final death. Of course, like many levels designed like that they only really work once.

Bethesda is giving away free copies of Morrowind GOTY through their Bethesda.net launcher when using the code "TES25TH-MORROWIND" to celebrate 25 years of The Elder Scrolls. Since they are apparently having some capacity issues they've extended the give-away through the weekend (worked just fine for me though).