Useless gaming news & chatter

[Trippy]

Sony's Xbox Game Pass competitor was announced today and is coming in June:

https://blog.playstation.com/2022/03/29/all-new-playstation-plus-launches-in-june-with-700-games-and-more-value-than-ever/

Three tiers: existing PlayStation Plus (Essential), Game Pass version (Extra), and cloud + legacy games (Premium), plus 4th super sekrit tier for those regions without cloud gaming support

No day 1 releases for PlayStation-exclusives like Game Pass.

Extra is more expensive than Game Pass if you pay by month ($14.99USD vs $9.99USD) but has cheaper quarterly and yearly options than Game Pass normally does ($99.99USD for yearly Extra,  $119.88USD for Game Pass paid monthly, not including $1 offer for new subscribers for first month)

[schild]

It's horrific and bad and they missed the boat.

[Rendakor]

Is any of it actually installable on PC? Or are the only PC options streaming only?

[Trippy]

For the new PlayStation Plus tiers PC is streaming-only (Extra). Some of the Sony published PlayStation exclusives are starting to be released for the PC (Horizon: Zero Dawn, God of War) but those are separate from PlayStation Plus.

[Rendakor]

That's what I had thought, thanks.

[HaemishM]

I don't see much of anything this offers a PC user other than the ability to play some console exclusive games via streaming, which really isn't much of a benefit. I also don't see much in there that makes me interested in upping my PS Plus membership to a higher tier, but that could change if they release a killer lineup of PS1-PS3 games that I really want to play.

[Sky]

Doesn't help that executive messaging is contrary to the subscription idea: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-03-29-sony-exec-jim-ryan-believes-live-service-games-will-dominate-over-subscriptions

[schild]

Well Jim Ryan is an idiot.

[Sky]

UNCONCEIVABLE

https://www.pcgamer.com/f1-delta-time-one-of-the-first-major-nft-games-has-shut-down/

As for what's happened to all those precious NFTs, well, for all intents and purposes they no longer exist. It's worth noting the developers are attempting to compensate owners of those now-worthless NFTs with replacement tokens for one of the company's other blockchain-based racing games.

...those other games which will definitely not fold and render /those/ NFTs worthless...

[Kail]

Indeed, while Animoca's gesture might seem like a company doing right by its customers, the whole point of an NFT is that it is supposed to convey security and permanence to a digital object. It's supposed to say "this thing exists with a uniquely attributable value". Hence, for Animoca to turn around and say to their customers "Oh no, these NFTs are entirely replaceable" makes a mockery of the whole endeavour.

Like, no shit?  Are there seriously people who are so in to NFTs that they didn't know this?  What was supposed to happen when the game shut down, you'd still be able to drive your online racecars around without servers somehow?  Like they'd still exist in some kind of Tron world or something independent of the actual software? 

This whole NFT thing just baffles me, every project linked to it seems like the most obvious bullshit I've ever seen but it's being played completely straight by major corporations and continues to make mountains of cash.  Either I'm an idiot for missing the obvious, or people out there are investing STUPID amounts of money in to tech they don't understand even on a basic level.

[Rendakor]

The more money they invest, they more likely they are to overlook flaws that seem obvious to the rest of us. Anyone who owns one (1) NFT is already so far down the rabbithole that of COURSE they'll be able to transfer their NFTs to some other Metaverse later, that's like, the whole point, man. And eventually they can use their ape as a driver in the F1 racing game, or something.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Is there really much, if any, of a gap between NFTs (at least game elements and artworks) and Star Citizen spaceships? 

[Rasix]

Roberts is just fucking his customers. I doubt he’s gobbling up electricity just to make his jpegs more valuable. So I guess Roberts has ethics in a twisted fashion.

[Rendakor]

Yea, I'd say NFTs are worse but they're certainly in the same ballpark. Legitimately surprised Star Citizen hasn't gone that route yet, though maybe minting NFTs requires too much technical skill for them.

[Trippy]

Is there really much, if any, of a gap between NFTs (at least game elements and artworks) and Star Citizen spaceships? 

In gaming they are essentially the same except for how they are tracked (proprietary vs block chain). See Ubisoft Quartz for an NFT gaming example:

https://quartz.ubisoft.com/

[ezrast]

This whole NFT thing just baffles me, every project linked to it seems like the most obvious bullshit I've ever seen but it's being played completely straight by major corporations and continues to make mountains of cash.  Either I'm an idiot for missing the obvious, or people out there are investing STUPID amounts of money in to tech they don't understand even on a basic level.

The subculture is very very invested in the emperor's new clothes and, contrary to the fable, are not at all suggestible to the notion that the clothes may be made of nothing at all - rather, they have circled the wagons and projected their own level of investment onto the criticizers, who aside from the climate apocalypse angle do not actually care and are just pointing out the obvious because that's what the internet is for.

I imagine the major corporations also do not care much about the imperial fashion situation, but that their analysts have identified the believers as an addressable market with a lot of disposable income, and what we're now seeing is the output of product designers who are true believers themselves, or who got steamrolled by executives and marketing folks when they tried to point out that the product they are now being ordered to design makes no sense.

[Sky]

criticizers, who aside from the climate apocalypse angle do not actually care

There's the whole gpu thing, and I can't help but speculate about the timing of rampant inflation at a time when some techbros have created magical money printing technology. I mean, I know the money /in/ the system is all fake, but when it's traded for currency or goods/services outside the system.

[Khaldun]

It's the same shift as in "shareholder capitalism"--at some point, most CEOs and their executive suite started seeing what the market wanted of them as more important than selling units to customers in terms of how the CEO and executives got paid off; if the company was losing money but the market was happy (because layoffs or something else), you would get paid off through your own share holdings and in your board plumping your compensation package. Now in many cases you have to make techbros/VCs/etc. happy and that means pimping crypto and NFTs because the techbros are heavily exposed to crypto and NFT investments and are desperately trying to bring more investor money into both.

[Sky]

Cyberpunk 2077 expansion confirmed, as well as the recently announced Unreal 5-based Witcher 4. A couple other interesting things on the 2022 roadmap at CDPR.

[Sky]

FYI I've been seeing various reports of a new campaign to get 30xx cards in stock, and I just checked a couple places and they do indeed seem to be 'in stock' (best buy was listing a 5 day delay, which is cute a year and a half later).

If you're looking for a card, might finally be able to buy one.

[Trippy]

If you're looking for a card, might finally be able to buy one.

At or below MSRP, more specifically. You've always been able to get cards if you were willing to pay a markup. Starting around February the high end cards (RTX 3080+) started to become available at MSRP. Now there are high end cards being sold below MSRP as well. The "sweet spot" cards (best price to performance) -- i.e. the "no-frills" RTX 3060 Ti cards -- are still extremely difficult to get at MSRP, so if your budget can't handle spending more than, say, $650 for a GPU right now you'll still need to wait or check daily for news about restocks.

My personal current-gen GPU buying story: Last year I had accumulated most of the parts I needed for my new gaming PC build and I decided I couldn't wait any longer for the GPU market to get back to normal so went looking for an RTX 3000-series card with significantly better performance than my GTX 1080 with the least markup in absolute dollar terms (not least % markup over MRSP) since I knew it would a temporary card. That ended up being an RTX 3060 Ti card for $799, not including tax (shipping was free) with an MSRP of $479 purchased at the end of August. That exact card is currently still being sold at a markup but it's down $650. Three weeks ago a 12 GB RTX 3080 card sold by Amazon (not a 3rd party) restocked and was selling for its MSRP (since Amazon was selling it) of $1300. The 12 GB RTX 3080 is not a good value card and neither is the RTX 3080 Ti for that matter (the performance increases don't match the increases in prices over the 3080) but I had just gotten a promotion and pay raise and figured the extra 2 GB of RAM compared to the regular RTX 3080 would potentially give it a longer lifespan for 4K gaming (the 12 GB model is also very slightly faster than a regular 3080). That card is now on sale at Amazon for $1000 and since Amazon no longer does price matching I have to go through the hassle of removing my card, installing the cheaper card I just (re)bought and returning the old card to get back that $300. And my new build is in an NR200P Mini-ITX case so installing a new GPU, especially one that's full length, is a PITA.

This is my "no-frills" RTX 3060 Ti that's now $650:  https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Gaming-08G-P5-3663-KL-Backplate/dp/B097CMQVF4

And this the RTX 3080 12 GB that I have (and returning) that's now on sale: https://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-12G-P5-4877-KL-Technology-Backplate/dp/B09Q3DH7V3

[schild]

Alternatively you can just do what I do and check Costco and buy and entire computer (XPS if you're lucky)

[Trippy]

Sky did something similar to get his RTX 3090.

I did consider that when the GPU situation was at its grimmest but I had already collected most of the parts and I wanted a SFF build which are harder to find prebuilt or built-to-order and you typically pay an even higher build premium cost than your standard ATX mid-tower prebuilts.

[Sky]

Yeah, it's the best shitty computer I've ever had 

And though I give completely earned shit to the Alienware for its design, throttling the 3090 to 300W, setting up good fan curves and frame limits keeps it quiet and it still kicks the shit out of pretty much every game.

[schild]

Yeah I grabbed an XPS from Costco on sale for like $1700 with a 3070 and it's an absolute beast since i did nothing with it. Glad they went high on the RAM and processor though so it doesn't feel like wasted money.

[Draegan]

If you recall - I just bought an Alienware on sale with a 3080 in it. Got it 30 days early too.

[Cyrrex]

I dropped an unspeakable amount of money on a built machine, one of the newer HP Omens (the prior 30x series had cooling issues).  12700k, 3080, 32gb RAM, 2TB SSD, etc.  Very quiet and eats up Elden Ring in 4k at max settings, just occasional dips into the mid 50s.  Waiting for parts just seems like a losing effort these days when it is pretty easy to get a pre-built machine.

[Mandella]

I put myself on the list maybe about two years ago to get a "cheap" EVGA 3060 TI, and pretty much had forgotten about it until I received notice a couple of months ago if I'd be okay with getting the same card, but "fixed" to not run bitcoin mining. Yeah sure of course and I just got the card last week, for sub five hundred so I'm finally happy.

Of course, I'm only playing games right now that don't benefit at all from all the new-fangled ray tracing...

 

[Rendakor]

Finished the main story in Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, just over 30 hours logged. Thoroughly enjoyed it, it's exactly what I was expecting. The story was pretty funny, with a surprisingly talented voice cast (Will Arnett, Andy Samberg, and Wanda Sykes along with Ashly Burch continuing to voice Tina). Going to putz around with whatever post game is on offering and see what DLC is upcoming.

[Hawkbit]

Its been my favorite Borderlands game so far - taking the looting and shooting from BL3 and making it silly. The end game is a weird rogue-lite-like that is someone like Diablo 3's rifts, but way more random. I recognized how much I dislike the driving portion of BL games; by not having any cars, I 100% didn't miss them.

It's not perfect by any means, but a really solid entry in the BL world.

[Typhon]

Does anyone know if PoE 2 is making any progress?  (really liked what they showed a year ago)

Anyone know if they plan to change the skill system?  Always felt to me like there were a bunch of false-choices in the tree (i.e. if you don't go heavy into defense you are fucked).  Either split the trees into three (offensive, defense, utility) or put all the defensive stuff early in the tree to make the choice between defenses, rather than defense/offence.

[Sky]

Here's a bizarre gameplay video of a Stargate game I hadn't heard about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYB7Pb_7lLE

I enjoy the IP, but this seems like a very weird choice of genre/gameplay for it.

[ezrast]

Does anyone know if PoE 2 is making any progress?  (really liked what they showed a year ago)

Anyone know if they plan to change the skill system?  Always felt to me like there were a bunch of false-choices in the tree (i.e. if you don't go heavy into defense you are fucked).  Either split the trees into three (offensive, defense, utility) or put all the defensive stuff early in the tree to make the choice between defenses, rather than defense/offence.

There hasn't been much PoE 2 news since the reveal. It's probably a year or more away still.

I'd be a little bit surprised if anything drastic happens to the main skill tree aside from the usual rebalancing that happens with every major patch. However! The Atlas tree that was introduced last league got some sweet updates with 3.18, including a pair of nodes that globally modify monster stats in maps - one that gives -25% life, +25% damage, and one with +50% life, -25% damage. I haven't played around with these yet but they should help you get away with very tanky or glassy builds that wouldn't have been viable previously.

Another addition is the ability to completely disable certain league mechanics for a payoff. I've felt for a long time that the game simply has too much stuff in it grabbing your attention in maps so I'm glad to see these, if disappointed that you still can't turn off Betrayal.

[Mandella]

So a few days ago I was about to load up Dying Light (1) to finally finish the main quest line as opposed to mucking about and setting gangers and zombies on fire when I discovered an unexpected six gig plus patch.

Turns out the devs have just dumped all the DLC for free on the base game, which is cool, I guess. I have no idea if all of it is quality or not.

Anyway, it's there if you, like me, own the base game but never bought anything extra for it.

[Sky]

I got all my enjoyment of Dying Light without ever finishing the quest that begins the night cycle  Similar to quitting RE2 every time Mister X is triggered. I just don't enjoy those kind of mechanics.

Loaded up RDR2 to mess around a bit after enjoying the slow play on Cyberpunk. I think one thing that bugs me about RDR2 is how quick the game is to fuck you with a fine. Just messing around for fun and suddenly my little side quest to explore and maybe pick up enough money to lose at the poker table turns into bankruptcy and jail from fines for ticky-tacky bullshit. The game seems to punish any sort of messing around, which seems weird in a game basically built to mess around in.

To be fair, I've always hated the way Rockstar has handled this, but RDR2 being a slower pace it just seems to throw such an outsized wrench into the works it bothers me to the point of making me not want to play anymore (skinner box'd again).

Also, the controls are trash and half the time I'm just trying to say hi to someone and shoot them