marelooke
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Posts posted by marelooke
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Well, Gorth gave the inspiration, so I might as well
admit to my problemjoin in:
From left to right (oldest to newest, only lvl80 characters included):
1st row:
- Sylvari Daredevil
- Human Dragonhunter
- Charr Berserker
- Sylvari Chronomancer
- Sylvari Herald
- Sylvari Scrapper (sPvP) / Holosmith (PvE)
- Human Necromancer (WvW) / Reaper (PvE)
2nd row:
- Sylvari Weaver
- Human Mirage
- Sylvari Scourge
- Sylvari Spellbreaker
- Sylvari Druid
- Sylvari Firebrand
One thing I notice is that while the relative size difference between the races is readily apparent, the size difference between different characters isn't (my Spellbreaker is like a full head taller than my Chronomancer, and I'm pretty sure she's taller than the Human Mirage as well).
I do have Norn and Asura characters, but none of them managed to make it to lvl80 yet (ironic, as my oldest character is an Asura). I was kind of, errr, shocked at my race bias, to be honest.
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I never finished TW1 because the loading times were killing it for me. Seriously, it was unbearable. TW2 improved this a lot.
Were you playing the disc version? I had stupid long loading screens as well (and regular crashes) which were caused by the DRM reading the disc on each load. The download versions (or the newer DRM-free ones) didn't suffer this defect, so if the DRM was the issue it might be worth revisiting the game.
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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.They can't work for a living like other devs, they have to take Epic's bribe?
*chuckle*Well I can see why you have no problem with Snapshot's dishonesty.
And I can see you would prefer the dev team's children starving before they took a publisher deal! Why would you murder children!?
I know you're being facetious here, but Bulgaria is a civilized country with a working social security system. If Snapshot Games folds no-one is going to starve.
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Someone posted a rather interesting post about the Epic store on the Phoenix Point reddit. The post itself is a bit old (at least for this instant news age), so maybe some here have already seen it.
The tl;dr is that the Epic Store is bad for small developers as well and that, if the cut was such a big deal, there are other alternatives that take even less of a cut that are conveniently ignored when it is brought up. My takeaway here is that the constant bringing up of the smaller cut Epic takes is either misinformed or plain dishonest shilling.
My takeaway is that Epic doesn't have anything over the alternatives except for bags of money to throw around, and them doing so effectively hurts some of the better alternatives (eg. the entire Gog thing, but I wouldn't be surprised Humble might also be feeling it)
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@marelooke
The car analogy doesn't work though. Because they aren't giving you something different.
They are telling you that your car will be delivered a year late. To which your claim is that you need the car to get to work now. Then you get your money back and buy a car somewhere else.
It sucks. But you can get your money. Consumer protection will have a hard time forcing them to release early on other platforms and invalidating the contract with Epic.
Ah, but the contract with Epic is newer than the one with their backers (and pre-order customers). Meaning they signed a contract they couldn't adhere to, not sure how that's handled legally but "not valid" seems to make the most sense to me (but ianal).
They should just have done what the Metro devs did, keep their end of the deal at least for the copies that were already sold (one could, I guess, argue about KS backers, but not about the pre-order customers)
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And with crowdfunding delivery dates are in constant limbo. I expect at best you could get a refund, but as that is already offered, there is no legal action to take. You can't sue someone to get something they have freely offered.
"If you offer me a full refund I'll sue you for a full refund!" is not the basis for legal action.
For legal actions you must prove damage.
If you weren't damaged financially by a transaction as you are offered a refund, what damages are you arguing?
And people are not currently complaining about the delay or comparative access to the game. They are arguing about not getting Steam or GOG keys,which within two hours of the announcement were then offered (with the delay). I can't argue I am not getting something, at least not in a legal frame, when a clear frame of when I'll get exactly that has been given. If that time frame is not to my liking I can demand a refund. And that has freely been offered.
But as outrageous choices go, this is one of the most harmless ones I have seen.
We are all old enough to have witnessed EA's planned DRM for Spore (go online daily, if you fail to go online two days in a row permanently lose access to the game), SecuROM, and so much more.
I think the EPIC store exclusive thing is bad. I think it is a crap move to tell people that if they want their platform of choice they have to wait a year. I think for pre-orders that is especially problematic, because while crowdfunding is in theory less of a purchase but funding, pre-orders are purchases with an implied promise of release day access.
I do feel people should adapt their outrage as the situation changes, and be honest about what they are outraged about.
That's not how consumer protection works. I don't need to sue, or prove damages, I just need to prove that they violated my consumer rights by not living up to their end of the bargain. Unlike in other cases where the perpetrator was outside the EU this time the ECC can take action since it's inside their jurisdiction. If anyone will be suing it will be the ECC, not me.
If I order a VW Beetle but you deliver a Bentley you could argue that's an upgrade so I should just stfu and take it, but unless I accept said deal you've still violated my consumer rights by not delivering what was agreed upon, and if I insist you must deliver me that VW Beetle. The assumption is made here that the choice of delivery platform is unimportant (even though it was part of the initial agreement) or that the extra stuff they offer (free DLC) offsets the negatives so they expect people to accept their new agreement, no questions asked. It turns out they miscalculated.
Anyway, I'm still undecided about what I'm going to do about the situation. I might just contact the BECC (Belgian wing of the ECC) and ask what's what (since they offer free legal advice on my rights). Doesn't mean I'll act on it, but then again, if their attention is drawn to it they might follow up on it anyway as it's not like they need my permission to act on such public violations (if someone litters the police aren't going to wait with fining until someone files a complaint either). In either case I'll at least have a better idea as to what my options are should this situation repeat itself (which it might, if it's proven they can just get away with it).
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Yeah,
They added it within the first two hours of the announcement, but it apparently wasn't in the initial text.
I just can't get all that up in arms about it, because it is less problematic than Harebvrained's announcement for Shadorwun Returns back when they were going to go Steam exclusive and would drop the promised GOG keys, because after nearly finishing the game, and having wasted most of backer's cash on scrapping everything and changing engine, and dropping the in-game mod support, they finally read the licensing agreement with Microsoft and found out they had to have DRM.
Then we were supposed to blame evil Microsoft and rally around the poor devs who made promises to backers without reading the contracts they were signing.
Harebrained had not offered refunds. How could they, they had already wasted all the money.
Snapshot on the other hand is making an stupid move, but it does come out of deliberation. It may enrage part of gamer culture for a while, but that may blow over, and if it turns out the way they hope it may make the studio healthier.
And the addendum to the FAQ came out a LOT faster.
Doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but people have put up with this kind of **** moves before.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but on this forum I am in the vast minority holding a grudge over the SR thing; most people forgot or didn't care.
It's a fairly deliberate move (btw, PP was going to be on Gog, so there's that as well) Also won't be surprised at all if they suddenly decide to add DRM on top given how true to their word they've proven themselves to be I kinda expect anything at this point.
Moreover I'm pretty sure what they're doing here is illegal (at least in the EU) since they've already started taking money for pre-orders. I suspect they're just hoping that the "it's just a game" mentality will persevere and they get away with blatantly violating consumer protection laws.
Limiting sales, possibly drastically, only makes sense if Snapshot blew the money and are hurting for more.
I wouldn't be surprised. It is an ambitious project and very much looks like one people would miscalculate the costs of.
Oh, they calculated it alright, according to a screenshot from the official Discord that's circulating on Reddit they've done the math. So they very deliberately scammed their backers (also Epic must be throwing stupid amounts of money at them for how niche this game is if they can fund the studio on it for a year). Guess they didn't watch Metro close enough or they should have expected this backlash.
Refunds also go through a third party instead of the same channel the original pledge went through (wonder how the GDPR factors in there). I'll see what they're planning on doing about honouring the original deal with their backers and pre-order buyers (which they legally should, it wasn't just out of the kindness of their hearts epic "allowed" it for Metro). If they don't do that I might go and talk to the Consumer Protection Agency, given how Snapshot Games is headquartered in the EU (Bulgaria) this means I'm even entitled to free legal advice, apparently.
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ah cmon, its still a d1ck move for those who funded it. I would be furious if I backed it and expected it to get it on gog or steam
It's even worse since they used the backer money to be able to make the game in the first place, then, when they have something they can shop around with they pull this bait and switch. Vile, just vile.
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Hang on to your helmet
Pretty places
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Newest Anthem drama: Level 1 weapon is better than anything else you can get in the game.
This sounds to me like the worst one yet. A loot and shooter where gearing up your gun is meaningless.
Did BioWare even doing any testing at all before releasing the game? It seems like a lot of the issues are things that would easily have been caught early on in the testing phase.
Doesn't look like it.
Besides supposedly starting development before Destiny 1's release they seemingly managed to ignore every looter shooter for the past 6 years and learn nothing of the mistakes made by those others in that timespan.
Honestly the game looks like it did an Andromeda, meander in development hell for years and then rush something out in the last year or so before release.
It's mind boggling.
Truly hope they can turn this ship around, but between the engine limitations, EA's reputation for shooting anything that smells remotely like it failed, and the negative press I'm not getting my hopes up.
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So much for that game then
Thanks
Depending on how far they played you could just replay the "Vor's Prize" quest (which is basically the tutorial mission of the game) from the Codex, though you'll be stuck with whatever gear they chose during that quest, at least until you can get your hands on alternatives (everything can be acquired eventually). Although you'll probably miss out on unlocking all the functionality of the Orbiter if they already did all that, which isn't all that much (imho)Well, just checked ingame and turns out that, despite it being a heavily requested feature for like 6 years it's still not possible to replay "Vor's Prize"
And of course you could try and see if support can reset the account, they won't on PC, as it's easy to just create another one, but I'm not convinced they might not do it on consoles. I guess you could, as last ditch effort, have them delete the account, there's some warnings attached but I'm not sure how relevant those are for the console versions (I play on PC).
And in a severe act of desperation you could just play through the tutorial stuff on a PC (Warframe is rather well optimized so it'll run on most things barring a literal toaster) and then go back to the PS4 if that's your preferred platform.
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Warframe
I am almost done with the missions on Mars. I also did some void fissures but I figured that they are best suited for higher ranks. Speaking of which: I need to rank up!
Also, back to Fallout 4: Nuka World DLC. It seems that I haven't upgraded my armor properly, only deep pocketed my armor pieces for the sake of carrying a heap of junk around. I need to upgrade my armor because the enemies in tha Nuka dlc are pretty tough.
re: void missions. It depends on the missions really. They're tier based (as you probably noticed) and the lower tiers are pretty easy, especially when you group up. That said, for solo play, the enemies that spawn from the Fissures can be rather nasty if unprepared (they're slightly tougher than their Void equivalents, so if those are no problem same tier Fissures shouldn't be too much of one either).
Anyway, also been playing quite a bit of Warframe, given how there's a bit of a content draught I've started grabbing those last few items I don't have yet so I can maybe even make it to Mastery Rank 27 (which is the highest attainable at the moment).
And while the other day I was proclaiming how Warframe, despite being grindy, respects its players' time DE decided they'd undo that feature by replacing the random "alerts" system with some sort of tiered (and time-gated) Battle Pass (or Reward Track, if familiar with GW2 PvP/WvW) type system that makes you do all kinds of random, and often annoying, stuff. It's basically MMO dailies all over again
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I never bought Andromeda for one reason...it isn't on Steam. It's not a protest or anything, it's just I only log into Origin on the rare occasion, but I log into Steam every day, and every day I see that store page, and every day some game on my radar pops up, and eventually I end up buying them all. But I never really get reminded that I haven't bought Andromeda, or that it is now on sale, so I still haven't picked it up. So I'd say EA can fix some issues by simply opening themselves up to all outlets.
Similar issue here. After ME3 and DA:I I didn't really want to play Andromeda, and definitely not at the release price, barring rave reviews (and we know how that went). If it had been more in my face I'd probably have picked it up in a sale by now though, if only to see what's what. But it only being on Origin and there not really being any reason for me to check Origin all the time it just never happened.
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I haven't played it, so this is hearsay, but the comparison I keep hearing about Anthem is that it's like Destiny 1 at launch, before all the improvements they made to that game over time.
It's a bit ironic that Apex Legends is a game that EA was very hands off, didn't advertise almost at all, and just sort of quietly shoved out the door and it's a smashing success that is almost universally praised. Anthem is a game that EA was very involved in, was hyped and advertised tremendously, had a big demo and staggered launch campaign and the reception has been *wet fart noise*.
It's almost as if EA is the problem.
Yes, Desinty comparisons are rampant. However they ignore that (as SkillUp pointed out, I think on Laymen Gaming, not on his own channel) Destiny had "good bones" iow, the core mechanics were solid and the technical underpinnigs were solid whereas in Anthem many of the technical issues appear to be tied to the engine (eg. the incessant and long loading screens) and according to some the combat appears to be broken at a fundamental level (I didn't enjoy the combat during the demo, but that might just be me. Or me going solo and there basically being no scaling towards solo play).
Anyway, another rather decent review:
Didn't really comment much on all the Anthem stuff since I played the demo, game turns out kind of as I expected based on my time with the demo, unfortunately.
Personally been hopping between Warframe and Skyrim lately. Warframe is, once again, in a bit of a content drought where most veteran players are mostly playing other stuff until DE releases something new. Which wouldn't be such a bad thing if they weren't making a habit of these content droughts... (I've never been this close to acquiring all the gear in the game ever before...)
Skyrim's still an enjoyable exploration game, and can be made to look rather really pretty with some modding effort.
For some reason I kinda lost interest in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, despite my misgivings with some of the previous reboot titles I did play through both of them at a pretty solid clip. Shadow just doesn't really grip me, unfortunately.
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Not bad for a 7 year old game...
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Anthem review by Ars Technica.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/anthem-game-review-honestly-its-not-finished/
Undertitle says it all
"It's out, finally. But maybe it shouldn't be."
Now the guessing game starts, whether or not was Apex Legends final nail to the Bioware coffin even before the release or not. *shrugs*
What baffles me is that they've apparently been working on this game for 6 years and this is what they've come out with..? I mean, before release I was mainly worried about EA's monetization plans (which could still sink the game, assuming the shoddy launch doesn't already) and the possibility that I just wouldn't like the gameplay or "endgame" (I mean, always a valid worry for a game you haven't played, I'd say
)But the state the game's in, the content it's apparently released with...that took BioWare 6 years? Really?
For comparison DE, a small studio, started working on Warframe a little over 7 years ago, with a skeleton crew.
Anyway, Ars Technica is still rather positive about the game compared to some of what I've seen (quite a few people aren't quite as positive about the story and NPCs, for example) and they conveniently dodged the micro transaction topic, so I'll share what I"ve found.
Apparently at endgame "coin" acquisition dries up severely. If you do your daily challenges you can get up to a couple thousand coins per day. With epic skins costing over 60000 coins, meaning a multi-month grind for a single skin (or paying 9USD, of course). Apparently there is a higher tier of skins as well (legendary) of which none have been released yet but which, one can assume, will be even more expensive...
Of course, with new content there might be new ways to earn coins as well, but still, we're getting in the vicinity of that 20USD for a skin territory that the internet threw a fit over with that pre-release store screenshot...
Bugs can be fixed, the UI improved, prices adjusted and content added, of course, but there's a bunch of things in there that might not be as easy to fix like the constant (long) loading screens. Will be interesting to see where the game goes in the coming months. Game could still end up fine, after all.
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Kind of surprised this one didn't make it into the thread yet, as far as trailers go the Skyrim one is pretty darn good imho:
And of course Warframe's Fortuna trailer:
Though I don't understand why they even bothered with that trailer when they had this:
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GoG and Steam for me on PC. It is worth noting that CDPR could pull a **** move and release Cyberpunk 2077 on GoG/Console only if they wanted to. Of course they will never do that because... *drum roll*
...it's anti-consumer.
Couldn't Epic Games put all that money and effort into a new Unreal Tournament or a new single-player Unreal game instead?!
Heh, they canned that new Unreal Tournament they were "crowdsourcing" for Fortnite and their "Epic Store". That being said, UT3 wasn't exactly great (also the only UT without DE involvement, coincidence?) so if the new instalment (which, to make things easy on everyone, they just named "Unreal Tournament") is anything like it I'll stick to UT99 and UT2k4 for my UT fixes.
It's not like many of the people that made UT still work there anyway, the Tencent acquisition burned quite a few of the well known ones out, if the stuff on Wikipedia is anywhere near accurate, and the other half of the UT team (UT = Epic + DE, after all) is happily making Warframe.
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Warhorse Studios has been bought by THQ Nordic as per this. So that means another studio basically owned by Koch Media...
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The way I see it, loot boxes in vidya games, so long as they are purchasable with real money, are gambling. People will present all types of loopholes and technicalities, but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, etc... In the United States gambling is legal but it is regulated. Why should vidya games that contain gambling be exempt from said regulations?
they shouldn't
Want to have gambling in your game? Cool, go for it. Your game now has an AO 18+ ESRB rating and whatever percentage of profits from the sale of loot boxes goes to local governments as per state laws (I won't purport to know the details of these laws). As for other countries, the matter is up to them.
And it's the exact same in Europe. Gambling in games is fine, if you abide by the laws (that means AO 21+ here in BE though).
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So, I just figured you can find lootboxes of sort in Warframe.
There's a special mission type with a mixed composition of enemies from a bunch of different factions that you need to complete to open them.
The act of opening itself is achieved by a whole lot of unmitigated murder. Y'know, you can be other free-2-play dev and make sure that your lootboxes are locked by a key which you'll be only ever able to get using real money or extremely rare currency, or you can be Digital Extremes and tell player to go and murder fun and, up to that point, unseen enemy compositions in absurd numbers to unlock it.
Incidentally, I started a quest to get a big cat of sorts, because big cats of sorts can, I assume, help with murder.
Edit: Oh right I also crafted dual swords which somehow feel a lot more satisfying to use than their single version, so that's a thing I'm doing. I also found Mr. Shotty replacement, believe it or not - and it's a high-precision rifle of all things. Murder over vast distance is as much fun as murder in close-quarters, so yay!
Hmm, are you referring to Riven mods? That's basically the only lootbox-like thing I can think off and they're honestly closer to RNG Diablo 3 gear when the marketplace was still a thing, except that you can totally ignore their existence in Warframe and do all content more than fine.
There was a lot of controversy (that DE ignored entirely) about the introduction of these things, many veterans absolutely refuse to touch them and even many of the major Warframe Partners ignore their existence when creating builds for weapons (eg. Brozime).
I should jump back into Warframe myself sometime. My favorite gun in the game was the Drakgoon shotgun. That bad boy did ABSURD amounts of damage at short to medium range and was even somewhat effective at long range. I miss going on ridiculous murder sprees with that shotty.
I'm a big fan of the Hek, myself. Fun fact: the Hek is one of the oldest weapons in the game and when DE tried to modernize it by updating its fire sound (back in 2015, apparently, ouch) there was quite the riot in the Warframe community, thankfully they saw the light and changed it back to its current sound.
Come to the Church of Hek, we have guns with lotsa oomph:
music to my ears:
EDIT: linking the correct things is hard, apparently
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So many minutes spent to say so very little in that annoying prat voice.
Eh, nothing new to be sure, but given how this drives our economy (and not just video games) I guess it bears repeating.
Anyway, I think Bright Memory was mentioned here at some point. It's an episodic FPS game made by a single Chinese developer that looked rather impressive. Well, it is on sale, and while debating whether I should get it I came across a Steam review that pointed to this. So it turns out the developer admits to using stolen assets, an "issue" he will try to rectify. He doesn't want to say where he stole the assets from but according to the aforementioned Steam review these were from Bless Online and Aliens Colonial Marines, which, it would seem, means those might have finally landed in a game with some promise
Not really sure how this will affect the game going forward. It's still being sold on Steam but I imagine that if the rights holders feel like it they could very well put him out of business.
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Jim pretty much sums up my feelings about the entire "restructuring" thing:
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Edit:
I should add that not many games make it a priority for bows to shine. I remember liking bows in Dragons Dogma, Horizon Zero Dawn and Gauntlet, that's about it though. I feel like ny character is a Green Arrow of sorts.
I've always been looking for games where you can actually be an archer without feeling like you're gimping yourself because the combat was primarily designed for melee/magic combat instead. In that case, the game you're describing is on my radar now.
(Also, in the case of Dragon's Dogma, producer Itsuno last week outright said that Capcom already gave him the approval to work on a Dragon's Dogma 2, he just chose to make Devil May Cry 5 first - which heavily hints that DD2 is already in pre-production. When I heard this last week, I got really giddy. I need more Magick Archer in my life.)
Oooh, I sure hope it can live up to DD1, a bit more polish and a better PC UI would be top of my wishlist.
Warframe for like 3 hours straight. Is it "grind" when you're having fun?
No, that's my story and I'm sticking with it!
Been playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider. So far (but I'm not that far in, so take it for what you will) the game feels like a pretty big step back when compared to Rise of the Tomb Raider. It's as if Shadow was made by the same team that made the original reboot while Rise was made by an entirely different team. It's weird.
Can't wait to start having a crack at those challenge tombs, I've found one but I couldn't get in because I didn't have the right tools, hope I'll be able to go back soon.
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What are you playing right now?
in Computer and Console
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What the hell brought on that "measured" response? I was just trying to help someone who suffered issues that seemed similar to the ones I had with that game way back when.
I know there were DRM issues with the disc version of TW1 because I suffered them. Loading screens would take forever because the game would check the disc on each loading screen (which would require the disc to spin up, usually since all the actual game data was on the hard drive), if it couldn't access the disc fast enough it would time out and crash the game (CTD). Whether or not one would experience those issues of course depended heavily on the disc drive used, but given the mention of slow loading times I figured this might have been the issue.
The digital versions obviously didn't suffer the issue due to there being no disc check DRM, for extremely obvious reasons.