Oh, shut the fuck up CDPR.

Besides the ocean of technical issues that are mostly fixed now, the game is not even a tenth of what Mike Pondsmith and CDPR drooled and parroted the whole decade prior to its release.

It’s a beautiful looking FPS with enormous production values, PS2 era AI, no joke Vice City has a more lively world, and it has Assassin’s Creed Valhalla’s depth for it’s "RPG" systems. Even when you accept the puddle deep experience and try to like it for what it is, the game gives a huge "fuck you" with how offensively quick the game ends.

As someone who loves the CP TTRPG and was an idiot to trust Pondsmith and CDPR, hating on C2077 was something that came from inside me.

Follows the Reddit flock to join Lemmy. *

Ughh… People are such sheep.

I think that the right balance doesn’t depend on the game but the player. Survival games are about surviving. Some people like other surrounding aspects of survival games, but if you genuinely enjoy the core loop of survival games, the game ends when you secured your survival in the game.

It’s the exact same issue with tabletop RPGs and complexity… You can write an essay on why combat isn’t engaging and how it only slows down the "good parts", and before you know it, there will be someone scratching their head trying to wrap their head around someone finding combat boring. Same thing with narrative systems vs luck systems vs crunchy systems. Some people treat RPGs as improv/acting sessions, while others expect the G from "RPG" to be a meaty G. One thing is certain: You can’t please everyone and the concept of "balance" varies wildly from person to person.

Using the Minecraft example, you indeed reach a point in which you stop engaging with the survival aspects, but is that a bad thing? Does surviving in Minecraft needs to be more complex or "interesting"? I think it’s part of the flavor of the game just as it is right now. Surviving is an obstacle that drives you to play the game, and overcoming that obstacle is a landmark event of the experience. Some people like it, and others would much rather play creative mode.

Personally, I love survival games and when I’m itching for one, I’m actually itching to get that "from rags to riches" experience. Skyrim has a huge scene for survival mode to please people looking for a "tedious", realistic survival experience. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with the ANOMALY turns the game into a hardcore survival experience. Case and point, one of the most downloaded addons for ANOMALY is a mod that adds lengthy animations when the player eats food, drinks water, opens their backpack, smokes a cigarette, etc. I love those, but there are times I just want the simplicity of Minecraft’s survival experience.

Monetize this, u/spez.

Who gives a fuckidi fuck?

Are Androids picky with this? Shouldn't 64-bit devices be able to run 32-bit just fine?

Nope. This website has a very specific demographic and a ton of more “casual”, non-tech/internet topics see zero activity in here, for the simple reason that there’s virtually no interest or demand for them amongst the Fediverse users.

Deleting my Reddit account made me look for already stablished forums on certain topics tho.

Frivously downvoted dis. 👨🏻‍🎨

Ah, Kotaku again with the shitposting.

So the author is mad that Jill isn’t the main character and she loves the actual main character, who happens to be a dude.

I don’t miss it because I keep using it. The communities I follow there are niche and they are completely dead on the Fediverse. I keep opening Kbin every other day just to find that my "new" feed still shows posts from 2 weeks ago without even scrolling.

Also, most of what I dislike from Reddit is still here.

Tons of people on the Fediverse craft their responses to fish upvotes, and circlejerking/echo-chambers are here too. Just last week I got a fresh breeze of downvotes and angry commenters because I expressed that I dislike Steam, on the PCgaming magazine, which is the same thing that would’ve happened on r/gaming, r/pcmasterrace or another similar toxic cesspool on Reddit.

I don’t think that’s going to be the case.

The fediverse instances are just lacking a few things here and there to be Twitter/Reddit clones.

Most open source software sans few exceptions like Blender are like 15 years behind the curve in terms of features, workflows, and design.

Come on SEGA. Stop the sass and show all these lame ass video game and console makers how it's done.

Return to the console industry with a goddammit Dreamcast 2!

Right. It’s a Reddit-esque reaction, when literally the very own comment section of that incredible piece of journalism is filled with people calling the author disingenuous. But what kind of nuanced discussion you expected to happen when you only typed a single sentence? Have you played the game? What’s your opinion about it?

Anyway, let’s have a nuanced discussion about the article:

The author spends one third of the article praising Jill as a character because she’s fiery, emotional, has killed people and is the powerful vessel of inhuman powers that she gets to control. And then goes to compare her with Hello Kitty, a mute character, despite Jill having more lines and screen time than any other character, besides the main one. Why? Because she’s a composed character and doesn’t crack to pressure.

And this is what really makes me roll my eyes: The author claims Jill is like Hello Kitty for not saying much, but then cites Clive brushing off a ton of pain and and anguish saying "It was nothing." So now both the main male character and the secondary female one are Hello Kitties for keeping things for themselves? But the problem for the author is that we see the main character, Clive, later exploding from all the pain and pressure, but Jill doesn’t get that scene for herself, and when Clive explodes she’s an spectator.

Then her normal relationship with Clive is seen as a problem by the author because patriarchy. Her being pretty? A problem because "there are studies that show that pretty people are often seen as smart and kind". Her being "cisgender" and white? A problem.

In my opinion, the author is literally looking for any reason to complain about the game. "Jill should be more than pretty" reads off as "Jill’s and Clive’s roles should’ve been swapped, Jill should’ve been queer, ugly, and anything but white." in all Kotaku’s fashion.

And regarding you blaming me for being part of a problem you felt in your gut, well, I’d just tell you to grow some thicker skin because an expected opposing opinion shouldn’t be a deterrent to voice yours. You wanted to have a nuanced discussion but I’ve yet to read your opinion on Jill as a character and the article.

After being with Steam for over a decade and disliking it more and more, I ended up trying everything to maintain myself away from that platform and GOG was a godsend.

There’s a public list that has all the GOG releases that treat the GOG customers like "third class citizens", but if the game I want is not on that list, I will 100% buy it there over any other storefront. It’s great to read they’re doing well.

Oh, but look at those petty downvotes you fished.

A similar thing was happening with Americans and Spaniards/Germans extracting oil from Mexico, just so the Mexicans bought it back from them, despite Mexico having the technology and infrastructure to do it all themselves.

After all the military grade weapons that the Obama administration sponsored to the Narcos back in 2012, and Trump’s racism campaign, the current Mexican president took back the oil extraction and refinery industries and and nationalized them, which got a lot of people mad, especially the American press, like The NY Times which constantly publishes articles depicting Mexico as a dictatorship paradise on its way to become the next USSR.

And now look how the Mexican "super" peso is doing…

If cats grew thumbs, we would be fucked, lemme tell ya.

Though choice! I choose Sagrada just because of how much I like the real game and how well made is the digital version, but Ascension, Mystic Vale, and Through the Ages are close.

Oh and tips to keep them engaged, well you need to read the room and identify which parts of the game they enjoy the most and the least, and the reason behind that.

Give them what they want and make all of them participate. With adults it also happens, but it’s way more prominent with kids: some will talk much more than the rest, and some will be ashamed or have shyness to let themselves go. You need to kindly guide the shy ones into the spotlight and reward them for participating.

Also, when you narrate the places and events, ask them to complete your idea. For example: “As the group follow the trails, a vendor interjects them and tries to sell them micro-hamburgers, but Player #4 doesn’t loose focus and realizes that just around the corner, drenched in the glow of the neon lights from the skyscrapers, is the vehicle that Mr. Jenkins gifted to the group… What does this vehicle looks like, Player #4?” Do this every now and then for places, NPC descriptions, the smells and sounds, etc. Make them have as much agency as possible in the world building, instead of just having them react to your dice checks.

Yeah...really. The thing is that, if you like to run older games on era-accurate hardware, Steam was already a pain in the ass to run on older machines. Probably 70% of these games, I purchased on Steam, and a lot of them are old titles.

Maybe this is ludicrous to you, but le good ole Prototype runs like a nasty turd on my main W11 machine that I use for design and 4K video editing. I'm not new to modding, troubleshooting, and I've even dabbled in game development, but none of the fixes online seem to help me run the game at more than 10 FPS, with dips to the 3FPS realm.

But guess what? Prototype runs like a dream on my restored Windows XP PC with a Core Quad and GTX260. Same as with Far Cry 2, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Jade Empire, and so many others. And don't even get me started on games from the 90s. Even if they run OK on W11 and I get past all the text rendering issues, I still want the experience of running them on W98, with a CRT monitor, metal ball mice and bone white mechanical keyboards. I paid for them, but Valve wants to dictate how I should run 'em.

If you can't install Steam on older hardware, you can't install your Steam games that you previously could. 🥸

I'd love if they could spark a revival of sports games, like the ones in the days of Activision O2 and EA Sports BIG.

Times have changed and the wackiness of the 90s, the edginess of the early 00's are long gone now, but I'm also incredibly tired of the clean, hypercorrect, "everyone can do it!" chill vibe, and braindead PG10 humor of the AAA sports titles from the past 15 years... but knowing Microsoft, that's exactly what they'd go after.