tegan

I Had a Random Thought (About Video Games)

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The world is a weird fucking place.  An Egyptian TV anchor used footage from a video game to praise Russian military, apparently unaware that it was footage from a video game. 

 

Didn't something like this happen with BBC or something with ARMA 2 footage shown off as actual event? XD ... oh wait I should be sad about this :x

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Microsoft claims that a vast majority of Kinect owners are still using their Kinects. Putting aside the fact that surely they are lying, this is an implicit admission that the Kinect gathers user data and sends it to Microsoft (they have breakdowns on how the Kinects are used). Did people know about this? I feel like if they did, there would have been outrage, and I don't remember outrage.

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I doubt they're lying. More likely the extent of the usage is people saying "xbox on/off". And uh, what is the outrage for? That they are keeping track of what features you use on the system? They basically say in the article that's how they decide what to develop further, redesign, etc., and I'm sure most modern software does something similar.

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Modern software does, but it always asks you for permission to send your data back to headquarters. People got mad when Windows 10 did so much as switch the default from "don't send data unless user accepts" to "send data unless user turns it off". Data gathering is the sort of thing I'm used to people getting very upset about.

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The Little Inferno people have a new game out called Human Resources Machine in which you have to program office workers to be efficient like machines, crushing their humanity and making them perfect corporate citizens.  I am intrigued!

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Sigh I'm kinda pissed that the Scholar of the First Sin revamp for DS2 has kinda killed the way I like to play the game.

I've been a decently skilled player but what I really liked about Souls is that if a boss is too hard for you or you needed to repair items, farm souls, gain free humanity , you could just run bosses with people. I think running bosses with people was my favourite part of Dark Souls 2 but it seems like the entire PC community in my area has the SotFS DLC which leaves vanilla DS2 as this sad ghost town for me. Like at the moment I'm stuck with the early forms of a pvp build that I'm only just getting the hang of but I feel stonewalled without the extra help that can get me over weird build hurdles. It sucks and it's made the game super unfun for me until I can afford the expansion if ever.

Anyway I just wish that fragmenting the player base like this was a super taboo thing that barely anyone did.

I'm feeling the same way with the way that Guild Wars 2 has launched a same price, full prices game expansion with the previous version of the game included and no benefit to veterans except 1 extra character slot.

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I'm going to be devil's advocate and suggest you get SotFS. It's really good, and I think it's quite a bit better than Vanilla DS2. It's probably not going to b very expensive on a future Steam sale.

 

I know that's probably not the answer you wanted, but other than "git gud" there's not really any other options. I do really like SotFS though. It got me back into DS2 and made me appreciate it a lot more.

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I'm going to be devil's advocate and suggest you get SotFS. It's really good, and I think it's quite a bit better than Vanilla DS2. It's probably not going to b very expensive on a future Steam sale.

 

I know that's probably not the answer you wanted, but other than "git gud" there's not really any other options. I do really like SotFS though. It got me back into DS2 and made me appreciate it a lot more.

 

I know it just sucks going from being able to buy superfluous things to not having any spending money at all. By the time I do have income again DS3 will likely be out and Bloodbourne will be on PC so the community will have moved on. Eh I'm just having a vent. There are obviously more things out there I can spend my time on it's just annoying to be reminded that I can't get what I want from a particular game because I don't have the particular purchasing power. It's a lucky thing that all of the games I name my best are either F2P or end up with super long term community support and cheap sales.

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I'm feeling the same way with the way that Guild Wars 2 has launched a same price, full prices game expansion with the previous version of the game included and no benefit to veterans except 1 extra character slot.

 

This really bothered me as well. I ended up making my peace with it, especially after it became clear they were doing this because they were going to make the base game free-to-play, which is a great move that also screws over veteran players. I understand Wildstar people feel the same, except there's no expansion on the horizon there and going free-to-play is much more clearly a desperation move in that case.

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This really bothered me as well. I ended up making my peace with it, especially after it became clear they were doing this because they were going to make the base game free-to-play, which is a great move that also screws over veteran players. I understand Wildstar people feel the same, except there's no expansion on the horizon there and going free-to-play is much more clearly a desperation move in that case.

 

Yeah I understand that they're trying out a model where all newcomer's have to do is make one US$49.99 purchase and they have access to the base game and every expansion after but.. Not even offering a discount to people that did pay $60 for the base game and will likely pay that price over and over for the next few years feels like a really jerky way to treat your fanbase. At least if they offered some in game gems or a free server transfer or something. Wildstar at least gives previous buyers a lot of perks within their freemium model. I actually think they're one of the best examples of a F2P transition from an MMO. There is no sign of progression hobbling (like SWTOR) or annoying Crate and Key (TERA) services around. Well for the time being.

Never going to happen, if Demon's Souls is any guide.

That is a very painful thing that I usually try to ignore with the magic of comedy.

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 Yeah I understand that they're trying out a model where all newcomer's have to do is make one US$49.99 purchase and they have access to the base game and every expansion after but.. Not even offering a discount to people that did pay $60 for the base game and will likely pay that price over and over for the next few years feels like a really jerky way to treat your fanbase.

 

How is that different from every time a game gets its price lowered though? If I buy a game for $60 and the next week it drops to $40, I'm out $20 and we all accept that that's how the market works. A 100% price drop on the base game is obviously larger, but why can't the same "You weren't paying to have it, you were paying to have it now" logic apply?

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How is that different from every time a game gets its price lowered though? If I buy a game for $60 and the next week it drops to $40, I'm out $20 and we all accept that that's how the market works. A 100% price drop on the base game is obviously larger, but why can't the same "You weren't paying to have it, you were paying to have it now" logic apply?

I think the closest analogue would be WoW although even WoW by now does offer discounts to existing players for a limited times after the big launch window. Sometimes as early as within the first six months of the expansion coming out you can nab it for 40% off (or more). Price drops aren't always advertised, and when they are they usually come at a time when they're expected to drive net sales up. But we are at a point where if you go on steam and buy a game for $60 and see it on sale for $40 a week later you can actually go to steam and request to be refunded in order to purchase the game at sale price which shows that there is some understanding that refusing some kind of recourse/benefit for earlier adopters is being seen as consumer unfriendly. At least enough for companies like Valve to give money back to steam users. 

Besides I think that applying the clean version of your argument (i.e. take my money now) without filtering it through the context of price discounts for the expansions of a game and/or flash steam sales ends up being quite harsh when full priced game expansions are more of a consumer oddity in today's market left to game lines like WoW or Starcraft, or Destiny: The Taken King (which people complained about as many saw it as being Destiny 1.5 [or Destiny: Actually Enjoyable] sitting at a $40 price point). Basically it's becoming an oddity that only games with publishing juggernauts like Guild Wars' own Arena Net can get away with and even then people are annoyed with it.

 

I think the other question is if the content being added from here on out as expansions is really worth a full game's price every time. Is a longtime player of this MMO expected to invest say $150 into the franchise if they played from launch? Most people have already met the microtransaction store more than once. A-net has given a generous amount of content for the game already through it's living story updates, fractals, and frequent in game events, they actually do put in a really commendable amount of free content into the game and I think I'd even sympathise more if they just bluntly stated that this expansion price isn't just to cover the cost of the new class, raids, extra pve  pvp zone, & class rebalance but also the content that they've already created (although each new event does come out with MTX and judging from how much the new shiny gear does crop up during events I'd expect they already cover their costs). But in the end it's a AAA priced Buy to Play game with a micro-transaction store that already does well for itself asking for an additional ~$50 =+|-10 every time they come out with anywhere between 3/4 -1/3 of the existing game's content in a big new drop.

 

I'm all for paying the creator's what their expansions are worth. I'm sure the things they're putting in took a lot of time and effort and will be well crafted, ect. But I still feel like they should at least acknowledge existing users beyond a single character slot which is only being given out so people can play the new class. If they're not going to knock the price down they could at least give away a custom skin set + pet or something.

 

Also while I don't know how viable it is I actually like it when developer's start with low price points for early adopters and then raise their price at release. I think it's cool that they lower the barrier to entry for their game while it's still unproven/unfinished. I think Jason Roher's The Castle Doctrine is a good example although I wonder if his no sales at all policy did eventually hurt his game's exposure as it feels like small pc indie games tend to fall off most people's radar until the steam summer sales come around.

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I just watched some gameplay of the upcoming Rainbow Six game and it looks like a lot of fun to me. I love single-life short-round first-person shooters and the barricade/breaching, looks like it'll give me anxious highs.I have to get a GTX 970 before the Oculus Rift comes out, this may be the game I get with it for free. If only I knew what was going to be offered later, or if there will be some sort of Oculus/video-card bundle, or how about just some recommended specs for the Vive so I can have some flexibility in the case that the Rift gives my wife motion-sickness.

#Shopping

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Has anybody got a Steam controller? I'm curious about it, but also have some serious reservations about my ability to adapt to one.

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Rebel Galaxy is pretty good. I'm not sure if I have enough to say to sustain a thread, but  :tup:

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I think this may have been discussed before but do you guys actually look at the face buttons on a pad or have you internalised it all enough to translate instantly between systems and layouts, letters and shapes? It occurred to me that I have now completely acclimatised/acclimated to Nintendo's ABYX set-up. After years with a 360, which aped the Dreamcast (which evolved from the Saturn and Mega Drive layouts) I'm now used to X up top and A on the right. I never had a SNES and the N64 and GC had their own layouts.

I still can't memorise the colours though. I bought the New 3DS mainly for those sexy buttons but the Sega/Xbox colours (A=green, B=red, X=blue, Y=yellow) still seem more logical to me. Is there a story behind why Nintendo chose the colours they did on the SNES pad?

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After years with a 360, which aped the Dreamcast (which evolved from the Saturn and Mega Drive layouts) I'm now used to X up top and A on the right. I never had a SNES and the N64 and GC had their own layouts.

 

 

That's curious, because on the 360 pad, X is on the left, and A is at the bottom?

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I've never used a controller with any regularity, I don't even know where A and B are on my Gameboy. I have no idea where any key is suppose to be. Any time I touch one I have to look down to figure out what buttons are there and where they are.

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