People trolling the POE2 Steam site ...

[Amentep]

I get being being disappointed.

 

 

Perhaps for some disappointment turns to anger.  But people act like companies have betrayed them personally with these decisions to go to the Epic storefront (or to be exclusive to a system during the console wars) in expressing their ire (and doing things like trolling the PoEII steam page which has nothing to do with the decision).

[Boeroer]

Yes, that's silly. But young people often do silly things.

[Amentep]

So you're saying I'm old?  GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!

[bringingyouthefuture]

Another perspective, I still refuse to use Amazon completely!! lol but normally I can buy a product through the creators own website so it is a little apples to oranges.  Developers / publishers should always have their own stores, its strange that they don't - it seems like a solid infrastructure investment.  You cut out the middleman, and for the video game consumer with their awareness of needing to support companies they like, it seems like most would go directly to them to purchase.  Why doesn't PD or Obisidian sell there own games?  I mean even if it was boxed versions with USB / old school serial codes to start the game, or even just USB stick with no box and a serial code.  Is it because they are to easy to hack?  Does Epic and Steam, maybe even GOG give the companies an advantage in stopping the spread of pirated copies?  It seems unlikely.

 

Edit:

I mean I run a Hackinstosh at home, if you can hack the Mac OS onto a PC you can definitely hack a video game.

Edited March 25, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture

[mychal26]

I think it's more than just one platform vs another. The Epic store does some very fishy things such as data logging from other programs, accessing dll files, reading root certificates, in addition to perusing your browser keys. That's not even counting that it tracks your internet traffic. Why it would need to do any of these things is beyond me, but it certainly doesn't seem to be a friend of privacy and transparency. That's not to say Steam is king of privacy, but it's certainly the lesser of two evils at the moment. In this sense, it doesn't surprise me in the least that people are bombing reviews for a company that will soon have a game exclusively on the Epic store, as they'll either need to pirate or bite the bullet to play it.

 

(All of this has got me thinking though...we get Google, etc, for free as we're basically the products they're making money off of. What if that's the Epic store angle? Instead of making a higher percentage from game sales, they make additional revenue from their user usage information?)

[bringingyouthefuture]

Not sure about that argument - data mining these days is like breathing.  If they use a browser, go to a webpage, use social media, you get mined lol.  To nitpick about that from an online consumer perspective is pretty naive, I am no data expert or hacker but honest if a company wants to know I logon to this site a ton to read what's going on I am okay with that - I am sure Google is doing it anyway.

 

But that being said, if POE2 was an Epic store exclusive I would be like what the hell and annoyed - but if Obsidian makes a little more cash from it, I would totally be okay with it and bite the bullet.  Is the Microsoft store in China?

Edited March 25, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture

[Ethics Gradient]

I think it's more than just one platform vs another. The Epic store does some very fishy things such as data logging from other programs, accessing dll files, reading root certificates, in addition to perusing your browser keys. That's not even counting that it tracks your internet traffic. Why it would need to do any of these things is beyond me, 

Almost all of that has been calmly debunked by software engineers.  

 

It's fine and well to have a healthy suspicion of what your software gathers and transmits, but much of the Epic client's behavior is consistent with boringly routine stuff.  For instance, root certs are the backbone of why HTTPS is secure.  It would twice as fishy if the Epic Game Store didn't verify their site's certificate chain all the way back to a valid root.  Why does it need to know how your browser works? Because the EGS front-end is a browser, and would really like to verify connection settings before trying to contact the outside world.  Etc...

 

If people want to take issue with the EGS launcher tracking cookies and monitoring page views, okay, sure.  But it's still doing that for the same reasons that Steam or any other webpage does.

 

If anyone is interested in a healthy rebuttal of some of these claims by Epic's VP of Engineering, check it out.

[Boeroer]

So you're saying I'm old?

That would be like Elvis Presley calling James Dean's hairdo a greasy pompadour.

[xzar_monty]

I get being being disappointed.

 

Perhaps for some disappointment turns to anger.  But people act like companies have betrayed them personally with these decisions to go to the Epic storefront (or to be exclusive to a system during the console wars) in expressing their ire (and doing things like trolling the PoEII steam page which has nothing to do with the decision).

 

This is indicative of a general societal trend starting from approximately the beginning of the new millennium and increasing at a steady rate since then. The reasons are quite obviously manifold, but given that it's particularly prevalent among affluent North Americans, it probably has something to do with overly cosseted youths utterly unable to deal with disappointment. Incidentally, if one's reactions to something as insignificant as this are seriously as drastic as we've seen, it's rather unlikely that that person's adult life is going to be rosy, in terms of emotional stability or maturity. Tantrums are ok, of course, if you're two years old.

 

But now we're getting maybe a bit off topic.

[Boeroer]

I don't like the "everything was better in the old days" and "oh my - today's youth" sayings.

 

Until today every generation has the impression that the youth behaves worse than it did in their generation - and that's most likely nonsense.

 

If you know Hans Rosling you also know that the world improves constantly (of course there are potholes) - despite the constant feeling that "we're doomed".

 

If you don't know him please check him out. He was awesome: https://www.ted.com/playlists/474/the_best_hans_rosling_talks_yo

 

Some youngsters nowadays may have a strong feeling of entitlement and a lack of tolerance for frustration. But the youth is also more involved, they re better educated, pick better decisions, are more cosmopolitan and so on. Well whatever, that's it from me about that topic.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Boeroer

[xzar_monty]

I did not make the argument that everything was better in the old days or that today's youth is somehow ruined or particularly bad. Not at all.

 

Of course I know Hans Rosling, and although there is rather a lot of good about what he writes, strictly in terms of the statistics he presents, there are also some glaring problems with what he does. For instance, he offers no convincing arguments to support his claims about the hangups in our thinking. Much of that is quite possibly true, or at least partially true, but either way, all of what he writes is on faith, which makes him look bad, given how he claims to rely on facts. Second, if you put all the positive developments he describes on one side, and the danger of climate change gone horribly wrong on the other side, it's quite obvious that the latter is a much more important factor in determining our future and renders much of the other side meaningless.

 

But yes, I would also recommend that people read Hans Rosling.

 

What this topic comes down to is what you describe at the very end of your comment: youth is both better behaved, better educated etc., than before, and the question of entitlement-induced infantilism is also there.

[Boeroer]

I'm quite certain that that's only the impression you get - because nowadays it's much easier for every individual to be heared than it was 30 years ago. 30 years ago, when a youngster would rant about whatever and all got self entitled - who outside his village would have known? He wouldn't have written a letter about it and send it to a newspaper who then would have spreaded the word - no way. All that overly silly stuff was filtered. But I don't believe for one second that it wasn't there. Nowadays the youngster just goes online and posts his nonsense - before he has the chance to sleep over it.  

Edited March 26, 2019 by Boeroer

[xzar_monty]

Entitlement requires certain standards to be met, and although the phenomenon did exist earlier on, it was confined to a very small minority of the population, mostly the aristocracy. One of the things that a lot of people do not understand (until they're told about it) is that many of us on these forums, for instance, have lived our entire lives in a state of luxury utterly unimaginable to nearly everyone throughout human history. We do not know of hunger, thirst, want, etc.

 

The human psyche, just as the human musculature, requires a certain amount of stress to develop properly, and in the absence of that stress, it does not grow and/or it deteriorates in a very serious way. This can produce extreme weakness both physically and psychologically.

 

Silliness has always existed, and the young have always been rash, there is no question. But the specific phenomenon I am talking about has intensified and become more common, for reasons described above. I am not saying it is anybody's fault, but it's there, nevertheless.

[Boeroer]

Is there actual data that supports those claims?

 

Because recently I read about a study that showed that baby boomers act more entiteld than millenials - which would contradict your statement.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Boeroer

[Phenomenum]

Entitlement requires certain standards to be met, and although the phenomenon did exist earlier on, it was confined to a very small minority of the population, mostly the aristocracy. One of the things that a lot of people do not understand (until they're told about it) is that many of us on these forums, for instance, have lived our entire lives in a state of luxury utterly unimaginable to nearly everyone throughout human history. We do not know of hunger, thirst, want, etc.

 

The human psyche, just as the human musculature, requires a certain amount of stress to develop properly, and in the absence of that stress, it does not grow and/or it deteriorates in a very serious way. This can produce extreme weakness both physically and psychologically.

 

Toynbee argues that civilizations are born out of more primitive societies, not as the result of racial or environmental factors, but as a response to challenges, such as hard country, new ground, blows and pressures from other civilizations, and penalization. He argues that for civilizations to be born, the challenge must be a golden mean; that excessive challenge will crush the civilization, and too little challenge will cause it to stagnate. He argues that civilizations continue to grow only when they meet one challenge only to be met by another, in a continuous cycle of "Challenge and Response". He argues that civilizations develop in different ways due to their different environments and different approaches to the challenges they face. He argues that growth is driven by "Creative Minorities": those who find solutions to the challenges, who inspire (rather than compel) others to follow their innovative lead. This is done through the "faculty of mimesis." Creative minorities find solutions to the challenges a civilization faces, while the great mass follow these solutions by imitation, solutions they otherwise would be incapable of discovering on their own.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History

Edited March 26, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Amentep]

I don't like the "everything was better in the old days" and "oh my - today's youth" sayings.

 

If we can count the console wars stuff as being somewhat similar situation to storefront exclusives, I can attest that a lot of the ill will being expressed about the storefront exclusives were mirrored in comments on USENET in the early 90s regarding console exclusives (amid the "which version did it better" debates).  The best example I can think of, though, comes from 1997 when Square bypassed Nintendo's Nintendo 64 in favor of Sony's Playstation for FINAL FANTASY VII.  There were Nintendo fans who swore they'd never forgive Square for forsaking Nintendo (even though we know now that FFVII was never going to run properly on N64 hardware, even with the magnetic disc 64DD add-on).

 

So its really not changed to my eyes; I didn't really "get it" then either.

[xzar_monty]

 

Entitlement requires certain standards to be met, and although the phenomenon did exist earlier on, it was confined to a very small minority of the population, mostly the aristocracy. One of the things that a lot of people do not understand (until they're told about it) is that many of us on these forums, for instance, have lived our entire lives in a state of luxury utterly unimaginable to nearly everyone throughout human history. We do not know of hunger, thirst, want, etc.

 

The human psyche, just as the human musculature, requires a certain amount of stress to develop properly, and in the absence of that stress, it does not grow and/or it deteriorates in a very serious way. This can produce extreme weakness both physically and psychologically.

 

Toynbee argues that civilizations are born out of more primitive societies, not as the result of racial or environmental factors, but as a response to challenges, such as hard country, new ground, blows and pressures from other civilizations, and penalization. He argues that for civilizations to be born, the challenge must be a golden mean; that excessive challenge will crush the civilization, and too little challenge will cause it to stagnate. He argues that civilizations continue to grow only when they meet one challenge only to be met by another, in a continuous cycle of "Challenge and Response". He argues that civilizations develop in different ways due to their different environments and different approaches to the challenges they face. He argues that growth is driven by "Creative Minorities": those who find solutions to the challenges, who inspire (rather than compel) others to follow their innovative lead. This is done through the "faculty of mimesis." Creative minorities find solutions to the challenges a civilization faces, while the great mass follow these solutions by imitation, solutions they otherwise would be incapable of discovering on their own.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_of_History

 

 

N. N. Taleb also explores this golden mean in his mathematically interesting but argumentatively infuriating book, Antifragile, which despite its numerous faults is recommended reading. The difficulty does indeed lie in the question of the golden mean: both the physical and the psychological realm can provide both too little and too much stimulus, neither of which is good and an excess of either can indeed be deadly (the physical generally kills quicker). Trying to soldier on in overly difficult conditions may look heroic on the outside but can be extremely detrimental (cf. John Henryism; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henryism).

 

Taleb's main argument is superb and sound: human beings -- and by extension, human societies -- are antifragile, i.e. stress and hardships make them stronger. Minor deprivation, for instance, actually strengthens the immune system by provoking it to work hard. And going to the gym or studying math produces results via stress, which should occasionally be quite intense for brief intervals. But, and this is a big but, antifragility only exists within limits: we all know we can be destroyed by both too little and too much work/stress.

[Manveru123]

 

I don't like the "everything was better in the old days" and "oh my - today's youth" sayings.

 

If we can count the console wars stuff as being somewhat similar situation to storefront exclusives, I can attest that a lot of the ill will being expressed about the storefront exclusives were mirrored in comments on USENET in the early 90s regarding console exclusives (amid the "which version did it better" debates).  The best example I can think of, though, comes from 1997 when Square bypassed Nintendo's Nintendo 64 in favor of Sony's Playstation for FINAL FANTASY VII.  There were Nintendo fans who swore they'd never forgive Square for forsaking Nintendo (even though we know now that FFVII was never going to run properly on N64 hardware, even with the magnetic disc 64DD add-on).

 

So its really not changed to my eyes; I didn't really "get it" then either.

 

Atari vs Commodore wars are even earlier than that :D

[Amentep]

^I wasn't on USENET for Atari vs Commodore like I was for Genesis vs SNES

[Phenomenum]

^I wasn't on USENET for Atari vs Commodore like I was for Genesis vs SNES

 

Ah... i only wish for Donkey Kong and Killer Instinct for Genesis those days... On the other side, Genesis has it's own exlusives - Sonic, Shadowrun... Though most games was available on both platforms.

Edited March 26, 2019 by Phenomenum

[Wormerine]

 

 

For the player it's a matter of installing another client (and using it ONCE to install the game), for the developer it can lead to thousands more $ due to better split, if your sales are good.

Do we know that OuterWorlds will be DRM free (no Epic required to run the game beside download and updates)?

I was assuming it works like Steam? You set auto log-in and it just launches when you double click the game's icon on your desktop

Ha! First of all I misunderstood you. After a bit of research Epic actually seems less invasive then steam. I am not 100% sure if it is true with every game (it might be up to developer/publisher) but from what I used of it it acts as a downloader and updater but it doesn’t need to even be installed to play games that were downloaded using it. I remember it was one of the counter arguments during the Phoenix Point backlash, and yesterday I run two games I downloaded via Epic Store without running the actual platform. That’s a big positive IMO.

[bringingyouthefuture]

“Idleness breeds our better virtues.”
― William Faulkner, The Old Man

[xzar_monty]

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop."

-- A very old saying going back to the 12th century at least.

 

Both are equally true. (And no, nobody should believe in the devil.)

Edited March 26, 2019 by xzar_monty

[bringingyouthefuture]

“A U. S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness.” – Infinite Jest (1996)

 

I think most agree about your critique of American youth ...

Edited March 26, 2019 by bringingyouthefuture

[xzar_monty]

Wow. Some major synchronicity here. I am, as of this very moment, on another window, working on a long (say 16 months at least) project concentrating exclusively on Infinite Jest. A superb work of literature, that is.

Edited March 26, 2019 by xzar_monty