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[-] tangelo@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

The rules, seemingly a carbon copy of the ones from Reddit, state to "use primary sources," but I think there is a tendency for this to cause undue emphasis to be placed on "authoritative articles" from big online magazines for the sake of posting news. Those links usually have grandiose/clickbaity titles and are often thinly-veiled advertisements or PR hype campaigns in advance of a game's release (not on the part of the poster, but on the part of the web magazine).

It seems like the posts with the most engagement on a pure post count number tend to be actual questions or comments from users, such as someone waxing about a game they really like, or some kind of meta conversation.

Obviously you want to disincentivize low-effort posts like "My keyboard broke--how do I fix it?" but some middle ground would be good here, so that enthusiasts can actually discuss the nitty-gritty of games with each other, rather than the magazine turning into a silent news aggregator.

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by tangelo@kbin.social to c/PCGaming@kbin.social

Beloved robot friend simulator and first-person shooter Titanfall 2 has had a matchmaking problem for years. Even after its previous server issues were fixed, players would still be disconnected if they had to queue for any length of time. And, given that Titanfall 2 came out in 2016, it's pretty likely you'd be waiting in that lobby a while.

Surprisingly, an official update has appeared out of nowhere and got it working again. Players are now flooding back, with Titanfall 2 hitting a peak player count of 22,604 in the last 24 hours. What's more, the featured playlist rotation has started being updated again, and weapon loadouts in the 1v1 coliseum mode have changed.

Meanwhile, the patch notes for a recent Apex Legends update include a sly nod to its predecessor Titanfall. The patch notes for the Harbingers event conclude with the words "Incoming Transmission…. Subject: Nessie…." and three numbers: 1394521200, 1477638000, and 1549267200. Those numbers are the Unix timestamps for the release dates of Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends.

Does this mean we should expect a new announcement regarding the wider Titanfall/Apex universe? Since finding out that Respawn canceled Titanfall 3 in favor of going battle royale in Apex Legends, the Titanfall community has largely given up on there ever being another game in the series. That doesn't mean it isn't possible, but the odds of some kind of Titanfall-themed seasonal event crossover in Apex Legends seem more likely. Maybe they'll add wallrunning, or even titans?

Titanfall 2 is also on sale right now, going for 90% off on Steam.

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Implementation was rather bad on Linux despite reports and warnings of extreme breakage during the beta, and the legacy client was the only escape hatch for many after they bricked it following force pushing the beta into the mainline client, with no rollback option. If you follow Valve's bugzilla tracker, you will see hundreds of bug tickets over the last month relating to this UI, which didn't account for regressions around CEF, Gnome, upstream Nvidia drivers, focus-follows-mouse, memory leaks, screen readers for the blind, instability with system dependencies (Steam carries around a basket of old dependencies), and more. Here is but one example: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9805. Steam only targets Ubuntu and seemingly only tests on that platform, and in so doing this causes a myriad of problems. It's not an aesthetic issue.

Speaking of memory leaks, one of the most egregious issues right now is the client rapidly consuming all VRAM within a matter of minutes when the window is interacted with (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9638), effectively killing the system and making rendering games impossible.

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

This is bad :(

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I think you missed the minus sign there and misread this, I will translate it: "The chance for rare loot to drop should be continuously reduced by 10% for every hour you log inside the game. I.e., you should receive rewards for completing difficult challenges rapidly, that is, skillfully." The implication seems to be that if the challenge is hard and you are not good at it, and are just throwing yourself at a wall repeatedly, or the challenge is non-existent/mindless (chore simulator), if you are repetitively doing either and grinding hours away, they are one and the same, and neither is a meritorious achievement. I think this is an interesting angle, as very few games reward skill expression or eureka moments as a momentous achievement. The vast majority, genre and budget irrespective, rely on the (easier to implement) crutch of locking progression behind pointless tedium, so given enough hours sunk in, everyone can win. It is interesting to think about how, whether, and under what conditions games could reward the above.

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GOBLiiiNS5 on Steam -- with demo! (store.steampowered.com)

GOBLiiiNS5 - The Invasion of the Morglotons Point'nClick adventure game in 2d. French and english version. 16 great levels full of puzzles, characters and humor.

OP's comment: one of my old faves, hope it holds up to the originals!

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

What are some good games that opt for a grounded approach? I agree that it is few and far between (whether that is good, bad, or indifferent is a topic for another space). A few that come to mind are Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive (takes place in a survival situation) and Dreams in the Witch House, which incorporates shop/money mechanics and other survival management elements.

You wanna know which came ISN'T grounded? Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy. If you are in the mood for some hilariously baffling moon logic, outlandish set design and embarrassing period voice acting and CG, with a plot that makes slightly more sense than The Mystery of The Druids, give it a shot. It's basically "we have Blade Runner at home."

Guess how they travel in the cyberpunk future presented in this game: flying cars. But guess how they receive documents when out of the office? Public fax machine booths mounted on walls of train stations. That's right. FAX MACHINES. The future is now.

The game is not bad per se, it will definitely stay in your mind with its utter weirdness. Grimbeard did a detailed video on it if you are curious.

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

Well, I've been playing it in jags. It says I have 92 hours total.

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago

I happen to be two years deep into a playthrough now, and the DLC seems very good. I would suggest you do it midway through your adventure, though, as I got mixed messages from the game's plot/NPCs about what was coming up, so I put the White March questline and some other tasks off till the end, thinking I wasn't at the last chapter and could visit them later. Then I realized I was at the end of the game, so had to rollback my save and I am doing those now, but it seems like I don't really stand to benefit much from it now, since I'm already overpowered, nor does the content feel as relevant. Good luck with the recovery.

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not using USD either, but the linked page is from a company based in Michigan. As far as I have seen, USD is always used as the "base" currency of reference on Steam, SteamDB, game discount threads, and other sites. I just reprinted the article here; I'm not the author of it.

[-] tangelo@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I'm sorry, I'm not the author of this list, I just reprinted it

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Weekend PC Game Deals (www.neowin.net)
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In this release, we're updating the engine from SDL to SDL2, and there are many optimizations to go along with it. Aside from the optimizations, SDL2 is also the stepping stone to ports. We have Linux compiling and playable; it just needs some testing.

Moreover, there is now a(n experimental) multithreading option in the game settings that makes the game even faster!

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Nightmares exist outside of logic, and there’s little fun to be had in explanations; they’re antithetical to the poetry of fear. In a horror story, the victim keeps asking ‘why?’ But there can be no explanation, and there shouldn’t be one. The unanswered mystery is what stays with us the longest, and it’s what we’ll remember in the end. My name is Alan Wake. I’m a writer.

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Diablo IV would be the second game to support the technology behind Square Enix's Forspoken.

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Ross goes on vacation in Kyrandia.

If you are not familiar with this guy, he makes opinionated longform videos about bygone/obscure games and analyzes pointless minutiae in a humorous manner. Videos take months to years to come out.

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Next Fest June 2023 - NOW LIVE! (store.steampowered.com)

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/nextfest

Steam Next Fest is a week-long celebration featuring hundreds of FREE playable demos as well as developer livestreams and chats. Players try out upcoming games on Steam pre-release, developers gather feedback and build an audience ahead of their Steam launch, everyone wins!

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tangelo

joined 1 year ago