marelooke

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.

Not bad for a 7 year old game...

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.

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:

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.

Warhorse Studios has been bought by THQ Nordic as per this. So that means another studio basically owned by Koch Media...

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).

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'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

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.

Jim pretty much sums up my feelings about the entire "restructuring" thing:

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. 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.

Bought the new Tomb Raider and Wolfenstein in the Steam sales.

That sums my feelings about Apex Legends up better than I ever could have. From what I've seen it actually doesn't. The "tell" system is so good that unless you want to really play competitive you seemingly don't need a microphone. Jim Sterling was rather positive about the game (barring the monetization: because lootboxes, obviously) and that's one of the things he praised especially heavily.

Let's also not forget that connectivity isn't exactly great everywhere either.

Grandmother, why do you have such big ... claws...? Meow! EDIT: hmm, thumbnails not loading for me. Though it was because I used PNG files at first but JPG doesn't seem to work either :/

6 is more entertaining than 5, but in a holy **** I can't stop laughing at how utterly terrible this game is way. Luckily, I have a video handy to explain! Speaking of which, I still need to play Revelations 2. I thoroughly enjoyed the first Revelations. Before Resi 7 came out, Revelations was the last bastion of hope for fans of the series' survival horror roots. It was a case of a spinoff becoming more like the main series than latter games in said main series, sort of how Bravely Default is more Final Fantasy than Final Fantasy is these days, if that makes any sense. [tangent] As an aside, I've grown to appreciate the setup Squeenix has with their big jRPGs. Squeenix has 2 big, famous, long running RPG series: Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. The former they have reinvented again and again and again and again, for better or worse. The latter, while there have been some refinements, has been largely unchanged over the decades. For the people that want a more action oriented, western style RPG, Final Fantasy has been going in that direction. For grognards, like myself, that just want their beloved jRPG series left the hell alone, we still have Dragon Quest. [/tangent] Revelations 2 was definitely a good game and they did fix some of the issues with the original Revelations (at least I don't recall the boss battles being quite as obnoxious in Revelations 2). Unfortunately the setting didn't really work as well for me, maybe it reminded me too much of the Tomb Raider reboot (that I played around the same time)? Then again, that cruise ship was just awesome and, I imagine, hard to top. I've never been able to get into the "newer" RE games (I think I tried 4 and 6, didn't get very far in either). Come to think of it I think I have RE0 and RE1 in my library, hmm, time to get to those maybe.

Usually game patches aren't exactly news (well, unless Bethesda updates Fallout 76, but, ehm, right, moving on...) but this one I thought was worth mentioning: ArenaNet published a pretty significant update to Guild Wars. Yes, there is no 2 at the end, the original, the game that has been basically discontinued since 2012 with the release of Guild Wars 2. There have been minor changes to the original Guild Wars before, mostly minor fixes generally related to yearly events and chat changes but this is the first time in a very very long time that there are actual AI, QoL and UI changes. Anyway, as a summary of the changes: updates to how the AI uses some skills, making both enemies and henchmen more adept at their use. Suffice to say this has the potential to be huge "standard" builds and group compositions that have stood for like 7 years might suddenly need revising. inventory and storage space have been greatly increased, which is a major QoL change I always thought it was pretty cool of Anet to keep the old Guild Wars servers running (they barely use server resources, apparently), but updating such an old game when a successor is out?

That part where she complains about not being able to play a first person shooter with a controller. #despair Game looks pretty good though, noticed I was already following it on Steam too. About $150 million a year, if I'm not mistaken. Not too shabby. To put that in perspective: it was one of the best selling games on Steam in 2018, purely through in-game purchases... https://store.steampowered.com/sale/winter2018bestof/ Daniel Erickson described it as "basically a huge, sprawling, ever expanding BioWare storyline with a multiplayer marketplace, social spaces and PVP". So, more like the episodic format of KotFE, and less like Ilum PVP. more on that from the perspective of someone who did QA for the game early on That was really interesting. I kind of wish they'd stuck with their original vision. But their inability to "sell" DA:O to marketing kind of explains that (also explains why all those AAA titles tend to end up looking so samey, I guess...) I found this interesting though: This is basically what Digital Extremes does with Warframe. At one point I took an extended break and an e-mail about an event got me back into the game.

Instead of only making games in genres they're good at, the developers try to expand into every popular genre, and usually fail miserably. Not only Obs but even Blizzard fumbled. I'm not sure I'd blame Bioware this time. It's worth remembering that SWTOR wasn't initially conceived as a MMO to kill WoW -which in retrospect justifies the awful choice of engine- and "sources claim" that they have repeatedly attempted to make a more traditional KotOR (even going so far as building a prototype), but EA just isn't down with the idea. This jibes with their constant push to make everything a service that players can keep going back to, which was precisely their reason for canceling Ragtag and Orca. Anthem looks to me like an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle in the vein of ME3MP, only designed from the get-go to be their billion-dollar-per-annum shooter holy grail. I don't need to consult my magic 8-ball to see that it's going to fall short of that. Out of curiosity, what was SWToR initially conceived as? I can't remeber it ever having been brought up that it was not initially conceived as a MMO. Also I'm pretty confident they could have had a WoW killer (or at least a decent competitor) if the game had been released in an actual finished state, as it was many a guild fell apart because it took months for them to get the "endgame" to a playable state (source: I was there). If instead they could have worked on new content they might have been able to keep something going, at least for a while. Indeed, and it's not just about the monetization aspect. Most other games in the genre are just first person "tranditional" MMOs (aka WoW clones), they badger you into playing daily with "daily heroics", "heroic dungeons", "raid lockouts", the works. The entire progression is locked behind these mechanics, this is the case for Destiny 2, it appears it will be the case in Anthem. I have no idea about the Division but I suspect it's also the case there. Warframe does not have any of that(*)(**), despite being grindy as hell the game oddly enough manages to respect your time to an extent very few other MMOs do. If I don't feel like playing for a week I just don't, there's no "need" to keep up or fall behind, moreover unlike other games Warframe is not in the habit of having "timed" stuff, as in there's no gear that is here and will be gone forever if you don't get it now(***) and the same goes for the vast majority of cosmetics (there is/was some minor stuff tied to partnerships with things like Twitch, Steam and some other things though). Rewards for timed events do, eventually, make their way back into the game in some form or another (sometimes takes a very long time, but it has always been the case so far in the 5 years I've been playing the game). Now this leads to some issues, but I'd rather DE continue innovating along this path rather than revert to the tried and, imho, tired time gating employed by virtually everybody else. (*) technically there are Sorties, which are daily, but their rewards are not mandatory for any content in the game. (**) there used to be Trials (raids), which did have lockouts, but those were scrapped pending a rework, their rewards were moved to Eidolons, open world bosses that you can kill as many times as you are able in a single day (or rather, night). (***) three very specific items excepting as those were part of the Founders packs, which basically boils down to them being "Kickstarter rewards" for those supporting the game before it was able to stand on its own.

Throwing a fit about someone throwing a fit. It was funny to watch the entire thing to be sure. Jim Sterling, of all people, covered the thing in the most level headed way (and also articulated quite well what the problem is with the entire Epic deal without even having to go into the total lack of features of the Epic store or terrible reputation of Epic and its current owners). It seems Jim also was the only one that didn't feel the need to drum up additional drama by attributing a ragepost by a single dev to the entire studio. Either way, nothing's changed for those of us not interested in supporting underhanded business deals. EDIT: in case anyone actually cares. It turns out the 4a Games apology for the raging dev was actually written by their publisher as per: https://www.reddit.com/r/metro/comments/amrtja/a_statement_from_4a_about_the_epic_games_store/efojo7s/

Tried the Anthem demo over the weekend (even bothered to install Origin for it), and...I ended up just quitting the game during the first mission (mission was bloody long, by the way). It's an obvious console-first game with a horrible PC UI, bad defaults (unplayable for me without fiddling with at least the mouse sensitivity, even in the hub area) and a clunky movement system. The last one is especially baffling since everyone appears to be going ape over how awesome the Anthem movement system is. Has none of those people played Warframe? Did everyone just play with a controller? Because, aside from flying being practically unusable with mouse+keyboard I found general movement finicky as well. Both Warframe and Destiny 2 feel well smoother to me, movement-wise. Anthem is a powers first game, and in that respect is more akin to Warframe than to Destiny 2 (where power usage is heavily tempered with cooldowns). But unlike Warframe the gun they gave you in the Anthem demo felt like a total peashooter (judging from what I read it's not just this weapon either, guns really take a back-seat) and the powers have, imho, long-ish cooldowns, for how dependant you are on them. Oh, and enemies are total bullet sponges, even the trash tier ones. They also do love their staggers (which are, imho, pretty badly communicated to the player, which might have lead me to consider movement clunky as it felt like the game was unresponsive before I figured out what was going on) Graphics wise, I also don't really get the hype. Maybe I need to get my eyes checked but the game didn't look any better than the competition to me. Oh yes, and I did play solo, which they heavily discourage, so that's on me, but I'm personally not interested in games where I must do every little thing in a group, especially any and all story missions (I quit Guild Wars 2 when I ran into the final "story quest" being a mandatory dungeon, which they've thankfully rectified by now). So if you don't mind grouping up for everything then the game might be OK, as I'm sure having more people compensates for the amount of bullet sponge enemies they throw at you. Anyway, after the demo this went from a "Might pick it up if it reviews well" to "Meh, might pick it up if it ever goes on sale to see if they've improved it".

That is, at least as of writing, true.

Pretty well thought out discussion, they have some prior videos about the Epic store (some from before the Metro Exodus drama) too which address a bunch more concerns with the Epic store. EDIT: this is the one from December, iow before the Metro Exodus drama: Eh the fact is, there's a ton of games being released on Steam weekly, and most of them are really bad. And this is because it's currently VERY easy to release a Steam game - they barely even check it, and even if it doesn't conform to Steam guidelines, they will often just say "you should fix it, but it's ok if you don't want to". I've released a few games over the last 6 months and honestly this kinda shocks me how Steam goes for quanity over quality. People hating Epic are the same ones who a week earlier were screaming how terrible Steam is. Throwing silly tantrums is what that community does best. Funny thing is, after they're done crying, they will buy the game anyway, even if they have to download a different store client for that. Actually, it's currently really difficult to get your game on Epic store because they have high quality standards, but the stupid mob doesn't seem to realize that yet. There's enough valid reasons to dislike this entire situation, if you prefer to just go along with it that's your prerogative, doesn't make people that disagree with you necessarily stupid though, and calling them such doesn't reflect particularly well on your point.

I've been hopping between Warframe, Destiny 2 and, recently thanks to some people on these forums, Diablo 3. Man, I sure do appear to like my grind I also tried Monster Hunter World and wasn't all that impressed, maybe I need to give it more time, but so far it hasn't really done anything to draw me in. I got the Destiny 2 expansions after playing the free version for a while and while I did hit level cap I'm still making my way through the Forsaken campaign (or I should be, anyway). I still don't really get the Warframe comparisons. Both games are co-op shooters where you have "powers" and that's kinda where it ends. Destiny 2 is extremely stingy with power use and has rather bullet spongy enemies if you don't manage to hit their weak spots consistently, which is quite the contrast to Warframe where spamming powers is the norm and if you're somewhat geared enemies just die when you look in their general direction. I also often find myself killed for no reason I can discern (or because some event dropped something out of the sky that killed me) in Destiny, it's rather an annoying experience and it happens way more than I'd like. "Killed by the architects", har. Oh yeah, one thing Destiny 2 and Warframe do very much have in common is that both games explain basically nothing and rely heavily on player made resources to teach newcomers the game. But that's been a trend in MMOs for a while, I guess.

Wow, I haven't played in such a long time I didn't even recognize that character screen, when was that changed?