marelooke
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Posts posted by marelooke
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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.
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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)
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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)
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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.
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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).
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Bought Elex, because Gog sale, and then I also got Diablo because, well, I got tempted...
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How much say does Obsidian have over exclusivity deals when they own the IP rights to the game?
Wouldn't owning the rights give you more control in the matter?
The leverage they have is that they can threaten to take the IP elsewhere for sequels. In this case that has already happened though, since MS bought Obsidian in the interim the IP has already gone elsewhere. If PD handling sequels was written into the contract even that leverage would not be there. Walking out of the contract would also be an option, but not a practical one.
Except in a very few cases the publisher has effectively total freedom in determining how the game is published because they are providing the funding and ultimately taking most of the risk. A situation like PoE/ Deadfire would likely be one of those different situations as there were obligations to honour KS/ Fig pledges like being on GOG/ Steam and the bulk of the funding was provided by crowdfunding and Obsidian itself- but minus IP ownership TOW seems to be a classic work for hire situation. Phoenix Point shows that even crowdfunding obligations can be... delayed, with enough inducement.
Eh, PP mostly shows that crowdfunding obligations are worthless (or worth as much as the word of the developer, which I guess says a lot about the decision makers at SSG) in practice since pretty much no-one is going to take the steps to enforce them given the relatively small amounts of money involved. I'd love to be proven wrong though and I'd be very interested to see the outcome of any such case, especially in the EU (where Snapshot Games is based).
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Guess it's not really "news", more like "olds", but S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl turns 12 today.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, when?
EDIT: Whelp!
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BloodLines 2 is set in the new WoD, not the Gothic inspired one from the first game, right?
Any other major differences we should be aware of, other than art style?
Official website here, btw.
I notice there are 5 clans listed, and one bonus, so that's one less than the original Bloodlines. Wonder which one got axed, I hope it's not the Malkavians. But maybe some don't exist in the new WoD, kinda know nothing about it tbh (except that they moved away from the Gothic look, unfortunately)
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I just tested the Windows store and I didn't hate it. Nothing to download, sign up for, or configure.
Just putting that out there for those that don't want Epic or to install an additional client
The nothing to sign up for bit is only true if you linked your Windows account to a Microsoft account, If you didn't then you still need to sign in (possibly even create an account), and be very careful so they don't intrude into your Windows experience outside of the store. (because anyone who didn't link their OS account did so on purpose, MS kinda "hid" that option on purpopse)
Just fair warning: do not pre-install (which is not the same as pre-loading) on the Windows store (or at least be aware of the caveats), if you install a game before its released it will download some placeholder data. It will then happily pull in the entire game on release. And fail to install it with a vague error. The only way to fix it is to uninstall and redownload. I've had this issue with all three Forza games, so I'm going to just assume it hasn't been fixed yet (and those aren't exactly small games, so I wasn't too please about having to redownload 40GB+ each time). Given how helpful the errors were it took me multiple hours (and multiple failed downloads) to figure out what was going on the first time.
If you get lucky and they either fixed it, or you manage to avoid it, go you, if not, now you know what to do
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Only took them 15 years to get tired of it, that's some endurance
In all fairness, it's been getting worse and worse, there just had to be a tipping point somewhere...better late than never, I guess...
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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.Imho they don't have the features because they figured they could get away without having them and now they're just doing what every video game dev has been doing for a while: well, it's broken, and there was backlash, so, errr, we commit to fixing it, later, here's how we plan to do it. See? We're good guys?
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
Well, realistically the EGS is just a rebranded Fortnite launcher, so it's not exactly as "new" as they want you to believe. They just changed the name and threw it out there without putting in the effort to add even the most basic of features. That they are now adding those at a rapid pace might be nice, but until the features are out there they don't exist.
If anything it only shows how low effort the entire thing was (putting in the effort ahead of time wouldn't exactly have bankrupted them) and how contemptuously they view their customers.
Granted, that's not just Epic, but customers are getting tired of the "we will fix it later, promise" attitude, and yes "incomplete" is, imho, a form of "broken" and also something that needs "fixing". No Man's Sky and Anthem both released technically OK(-ish), but they still needed a "roadmap" to get to a usable, or at least desirable, state, and so does the EGS. Finish your product before releasing it, it's not hard, especially not when you sit on such stupidly high piles of money that they would make Smaug drool.
tl;dr can be summed up by a quote from the most tactful developer ever: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." (or the product, in this instance)
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And think of all the games you will lose if Epic manages to ruin Steam.
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.
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the fact that they are customer unfriendly on purpose (by not allowing reviews or letting publishers pick whether they want reviews, for starters)
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.
Unless they changed their tune they are allowing publishers to disable those at a whim, so my point stands. Moreover, before you try to compete I think you should have the basics down, a working refund policy is one of those. Being "new" is no excuse here, Steam has had to thread new ground on a lot of topics, Epic does not have that excuse as there's enough other storefronts they can pick and choose ideas from nowadays.
Imho they don't have the features because they figured they could get away without having them and now they're just doing what every video game dev has been doing for a while: well, it's broken, and there was backlash, so, errr, we commit to fixing it, later, here's how we plan to do it. See? We're good guys?
If, and when, they get their act together they might become an actual competitor, assuming they stop the exclusives bollocks, but as it stand? Nope. Even the Microsoft Store has more features, and that's really saying something.
Moreover Epic has made it abundantly clear that they are going to be as biased towards publishers as they can get away with. The fact that user reviews are even on there does seem to indicate that the backlash must have hit rather harder than they (or the publishers) expected.
But hey, Steam had to be gently nudged on a lot of occasions as well, so who knows, there's hope yet.
I'm a bit out of the loop but what's the reason for people being so upset about the actual epic store? Is it really bad to use?
Depends on what you consider "bad". It might be OK-ish technically but it's lacking a whole lot of features steam has, whether those are relevant to you is for you to decide.
The main issue (imho) is their way of doing business (just outright trying to buy customers by exclusivity rather than competing on features, or price) and the fact that they are customer unfriendly on purpose (by not allowing reviews or letting publishers pick whether they want reviews, for starters), basically all the progress that was made on information being readily availably to customers they intend to roll back so publishers can keep releasing broken products with as little repercussions as possible.
Because, face it, for most consumers there are two sources of information on a new game: platform reviews (Steam, Gog and the MS Store, all have them) and gaming "journalists". Seeing how the latter are about as reliable as leaving an alcoholic to guard a liquor store (the biggest trainwrecks from AAA publishers still get scores in the 60s and 70s...) they just try to get rid of the former.
There's also their refund policy, which apparently has improved, so I'm not sure if it's still a train-wreck but they made it as annoying as possible to get one so people, well, just wouldn't, really.
For the more "dedicated" gaming clientèle nothing really changes as we tend to rely on peer reviews and/or YouTubers anyway, but catering to publishers by actively being user-hostile doesn't particularly sit well with me.
Also, they are still not GDPR compliant as far as I can tell. I'll admit to not having looked really hard to see if they've changed that.
From reading part of it, they are still in violation. They still collect personally identifiable information without asking explicit consent (mentioning it somewhere in the ToS or Privacy Policy is not good enough, that's why all those horrible cookie banners pop up all the time)
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I'm a bit out of the loop but what's the reason for people being so upset about the actual epic store? Is it really bad to use?
Depends on what you consider "bad". It might be OK-ish technically but it's lacking a whole lot of features steam has, whether those are relevant to you is for you to decide.
The main issue (imho) is their way of doing business (just outright trying to buy customers by exclusivity rather than competing on features, or price) and the fact that they are customer unfriendly on purpose (by not allowing reviews or letting publishers pick whether they want reviews, for starters), basically all the progress that was made on information being readily availably to customers they intend to roll back so publishers can keep releasing broken products with as little repercussions as possible.
Because, face it, for most consumers there are two sources of information on a new game: platform reviews (Steam, Gog and the MS Store, all have them) and gaming "journalists". Seeing how the latter are about as reliable as leaving an alcoholic to guard a liquor store (the biggest trainwrecks from AAA publishers still get scores in the 60s and 70s...) they just try to get rid of the former.
There's also their refund policy, which apparently has improved, so I'm not sure if it's still a train-wreck but they made it as annoying as possible to get one so people, well, just wouldn't, really.
For the more "dedicated" gaming clientèle nothing really changes as we tend to rely on peer reviews and/or YouTubers anyway, but catering to publishers by actively being user-hostile doesn't particularly sit well with me.
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Really stupid decision by Private Division and Microsoft. That's some bad PR you really don't want, especially after how well received the game initially was.
And naturally, it isn't Private Division and Microsoft taking the heat from casual twats. It's Obsidian. You've just bought a new studio and you start by doing this. PR wise this is exactly the move you should avoid. But I guess Epic paid enough dollars that no one cares for the developers burnt fanbase.
Question is: Which one is worse MGS or EGS? With other exclusives I'll just wait until I can get the game dirt cheap, might actually want to buy this at release date.
MS's is better from a consumer standpoint (has reviews, for one), Epic is likely better from a technical standpoint.
Either way, pre-order is out of the window now and if it doesn't get rave reviews, well... enough games to keep me busy for another year.
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It's kind of funny that Epic's reputation among Extremely Online Gamers is so bad that this news would actually have been more well-received if the game ONLY launched on the Windows Store.
Well it makes me open the Microsoft Store front page for the first time in my whole life.
I'd probably buy something from it for the first time in my whole life as well simply because of this. I'd say it's a relatively efficient way to adversite the windows store.
The Windows Store is utter garbage though, I've used it for Forza games and it's been an issue for all three of the Forza games I've played through it, but at least it has user reviews, so it's got that over Epic's even lower effort attempt at a digital storefront.
Talk about having to choose between ebola and the plague.
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Whelp, the two most atrocious places to get games from. Sigh.
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To be actually specific, an algorythm will look through reviews and when it sees "off-topic review bombs" (ie, the devs tweeted they like Mars over Snickers so Snicker fans start boycotting the game) it'll flag it for supposedly actual human evaluation and if those guys find the reviews inapproriate, will disconnect those reviews from the aggregate graph. The reviews themselves will still be there to read and "enjoy" or you can switch so the graph incorporates the bombs as well.
Or so they said it'll work, we'll see once it's implemented.
I thought TheQuartering had a decent idea here. Just let us "review" publishers/developers, since generally review bombs happens because either of those did something stupid, so giving people a way to rate the companies involved (and display that rating, of course) might cut down on the review bombing.
Might help keep companies more honest as well, I imagine, as a negative company rating would carry over across games, while a review bomb generally doesn't...
Eh, who am I kidding, that would actually benefit consumers so it'll never happen, at least not voluntarily.
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Steam going to hide review bombs from its customers: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1808664240333155775
The inverse is not being tackled, of course.
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Is this the part of the thread where I should be bringing up Jeanne d'Arc?
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Playing mostly Warframe, new event boss went live and it's a lot better than the previous "Orb" bossfight they released. Fairly easily soloable by experienced players, I imagine (I mean, I managed just fine after failing and then looking up the mechanics) since it's mostly a mechanics battle and not a damage based fight. Only real negative so far is that there's no mission for it, so finding a group requires either going through clan or recruiting chat (or just learn to solo it, I guess, Zephyr works wonders for those around here that play Warframe).
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May have been obvious, but that answers my question to:"It was not our intention to scam anyone. The best we can do is offer compensation in the form of free extra content, which we will deliver throughout the launch year. This will include at least three major DLC packs. They will also receive a Steam key or GOG key, in addition to their Epic key, at the end of the exclusivity period. If they are not happy with this, we will give a full refund."
- 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."We sent an email to all our 47,000 backers on Tuesday informing them about the Epic deal," he said. "The following day we had 1300 requests for refunds. The day after it increased to 1600. We don't anticipate that more than five to six per cent of our backers will actually request refunds in the long run."
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.
That first sentence is an outright lie. They said they had the money to deliver on the KS promises. The deal with Epic is just to secure future funding. So they threw their backers under the bus out of pure greed, not even because "whoops we miscalculated and we really need this money to be able to deliver", which is often the case (and while still sad, would at least be more understandable). Offering a refund is just cynical, since they literally just used their backers to get an interest free loan so they would have something to shop around with.
If this doesn't have any serious repercussions then then this might just be the deathblow for crowd funding. Teams failing to deliver is one thing (and a risk you knowingly take on when you back) but a successfully funded project in no financial trouble rewriting the agreement when it suits them is something else entirely.
I don't necessarily have any interest in getting my money back (hell, since I backed a physical tier me refunding would probably be better for them as that would absolve them from needing to provide the physical rewards). What I want to see is a crackdown on this outright scummish behaviour, if it turns out there is no protection for either backers or pre-order customers (without literally going to court, which besides expensive is also extremely slow, and absolutely not worth it given the money involved) even in the EU (as mentioned previously, Snapshot Games HQ is in Bulgaria) then I fear crowd funding is just dead as that would mean there's literally no guarantee a company will live up to any part of the agreement they have with backers and thus opening the floodgates to this type of behaviour.
It's really just a matter of perspective. Were you crowdfunding a game or were you crowdfunding platform availability? It looks like they will deliver the game, so I can't see how the vast majority of the backers won't see it as success, particularly if it is good. The delivery method of the game is a minor part of the agreement we make when backing, so I don't see this affecting crowdfunding in any way.
Still waiting on the next Space Quest, btw. I'll take it on any platform or delivery method at this point.
I was crowdfunding a game that was explicitly promised to be available through certain means (there's a reason some of these projects are vague about this stuff). The delivery method was part of the agreement, whether that was a minor part is a matter of perspective and not something someone can decide for another person. It's minor for you maybe, but there are enough valid reasons to not want to deal with the Epic store, whether those concern you or not are up to you.
Regardless the simple fact is that they are still walking back on an established agreement, which is shady (and legally dubious) in itself and serious "slippery slope"-material and sets a rather dangerous precedent to boot.
It's also not the first time they walk back on their agreement with backers: they already dropped Linux support, likely because they were already negotiating with Epic and knew they couldn't support it on their client, so why bother, right? Or are you going to argue that doesn't matter because that's minor platform anyway? The argument that it's too hard to support Linux also doesn't fly here since they had a working Linux version up until the point they decided to screw over their Linux backers.
Or how about the Chinese backers that will now be unable to play the game they funded since the Epic Store is banned in China (ironic, given all the Tencent hubbub, if nothing else), or any of another number of countries that are not supported by Epic (there was a list at one point during the Metro rage)
As already mentioned, it's not like they needed the money to get the game done, they've publicly stated they could fulfil their crowfunding promises with the budget they received, so they get zero sympathy for me there either as the only reason to do it is the ego of Gollop (he wanted to do more than he got funded for) and/or pure greed. The condescending way in which they have communicated with their backers (and pre-order customers) since hasn't exactly done anything to garner any sympathy from me ("even if y'all refund we're still good; so **** you", would summarize it pretty well).
This is seriously different from a company mismanaging budget and going under, or any of another number of ways that things can go wrong (overreaching etc.). "Do not attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence", unfortunately Snapshot Games has made it very clear that no incompetence was involved and that this was a very deliberate and very well calculated move to violate the agreement with the people who made it possible for them to create the game in the first place, and without which they would have had nothing to go to Epic with.
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Epic games launcher/store seems to be collecting your steam data: Reddit post and Metacouncil post.
That is ... well, not exactly encouraging. I wonder what they'll come up with as a rationale.
We use a tracking pixel (tracking.js) for our Support-A-Creator program so we can pay creators. We also track page statistics.
The launcher sends a hardware survey (CPU, GPU, and the like) at a regular interval as outlined in our privacy policy (see the “Information We Collect or Receive” section). You can find the code here.
The UDP traffic highlighted in this post is a launcher feature for communication with the Unreal Editor. The source of the underlying system is available on github.
The majority of the launcher UI is implemented using web technology that is being rendered by Chromium (which is open source). The root certificate and cookie access mentioned above is a result of normal web browser start up.
The launcher scans your active processes to prevent updating games that are currently running. This information is not sent to Epic.
We only import your Steam friends with your explicit permission. The launcher makes an encrypted local copy of your localconfig.vdf Steam file. However information from this file is only sent to Epic if you choose to import your Steam friends, and then only hashed ids of your friends are sent and no other information from the file.
Epic is controlled by Tim Sweeney. We have lots of external shareholders, none of whom have access to customer data.
Daniel Vogel
VP of Engineering
Epic Games Inc.
Gamers rising up, again
To be fair, them accessing the Steam files directly instead of using the official API (which respects your Steam privacy settings, for example), like other services, like Origin, do is still dodgy. But yeah, not nearly as nefarious as it's made out to be, at least based on what's being shown.
Even if (and that's a big if) the Epic client is doing illegal things I'm sure they'd hide it better as they're aware the thing is going to be analysed.
Oh yeah, their privacy policy is still in violation of EU Privacy laws, so there's still that. Sending that hardware information (which includes things that qualify as personally identifiable information, per the GDPR) without explicit consent (and per the GDPR hiding it in their TOS/Privacy Policy is explicitly not good enough) is among those. But that's not what this is about, of course.
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May have been obvious, but that answers my question to:"It was not our intention to scam anyone. The best we can do is offer compensation in the form of free extra content, which we will deliver throughout the launch year. This will include at least three major DLC packs. They will also receive a Steam key or GOG key, in addition to their Epic key, at the end of the exclusivity period. If they are not happy with this, we will give a full refund."
- 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."We sent an email to all our 47,000 backers on Tuesday informing them about the Epic deal," he said. "The following day we had 1300 requests for refunds. The day after it increased to 1600. We don't anticipate that more than five to six per cent of our backers will actually request refunds in the long run."
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.
That first sentence is an outright lie. They said they had the money to deliver on the KS promises. The deal with Epic is just to secure future funding. So they threw their backers under the bus out of pure greed, not even because "whoops we miscalculated and we really need this money to be able to deliver", which is often the case (and while still sad, would at least be more understandable). Offering a refund is just cynical, since they literally just used their backers to get an interest free loan so they would have something to shop around with.
If this doesn't have any serious repercussions then then this might just be the deathblow for crowd funding. Teams failing to deliver is one thing (and a risk you knowingly take on when you back) but a successfully funded project in no financial trouble rewriting the agreement when it suits them is something else entirely.
I don't necessarily have any interest in getting my money back (hell, since I backed a physical tier me refunding would probably be better for them as that would absolve them from needing to provide the physical rewards). What I want to see is a crackdown on this outright scummish behaviour, if it turns out there is no protection for either backers or pre-order customers (without literally going to court, which besides expensive is also extremely slow, and absolutely not worth it given the money involved) even in the EU (as mentioned previously, Snapshot Games HQ is in Bulgaria) then I fear crowd funding is just dead as that would mean there's literally no guarantee a company will live up to any part of the agreement they have with backers and thus opening the floodgates to this type of behaviour.
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RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS
in Computer and Console
Posted
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...