Poggervania
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Last time I’ll respond to you since it seems you’re a Bethesda fanboy - or at least a very ardent defender.
I think you overestimate how many people actually install or care about mods. Many people just seems to like what Bethesda does.
Then why did Beth go out of their way to include mod support for consoles for Skyrim and Fallout 4, as well as announce mod support for console versions of Starfield? Plus people were clamoring for mods on console versions of their games even going back as far as Morrowind - but their games back then were more complete, so you are correct in that more people were okay with not having mods because at least the games were decent enough.
Oblivion was a smash hit on Xbox without mods. Since that the main sellers seems to be the console versions.
During 2006? Yeah, you’re correct - but interesting you’re bringing up Oblivion instead of Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and even Starfield. Y’know, the games that have been pretty devoid of any worthwhile vanilla content.
Two things: 1) You’re making it sound like swapping engines is incredibly easy (it’s not, and you have to train staff on how to utilize it from the ground up and that can take a while), and 2) you’re probably right on why they keep using CE, and the sad reality is that Bethesda absolutely intentionally designs uncooked barebones games because they realized they can just have the fandom make actual interesting content, or QoL changes. They also know that Creation Gamebryo Engine does limit them a lot to what they can do, but rather than going through the cost and time of changing over engines, they just let the fandom create the script extenders that are available for literally every single game of theirs since Morrowind so modders can literally do things the base game can’t let them do.
So this is more of a case where the craftsman has shoddy tools, but they don’t care because they’ll churn out a piece-of-crap and have their audience improve it for them for free. And then the craftsman will have the gall to try and get a cut of the audience’s work somehow.
Funnily enough, what you said is pretty close to what happened in canon. The Emperor at the time (I forget who it was, probably Tiber Spetim) had a legitimate methaphysically-powered Gundam/EVA unit and used it to basically terraform the jungles of Cyrodill into what we see in Oblivion
So he basically modded Cyrodill with the power of Numidium.
Actually, you can argue that they are still limited by what the engine can do - which, in turn, means it affects game design due to the fact they might want to implement an idea, but either they would need a hacky way to do it (like trains in Fallout 3 being a fucking equippable hat with an NPC running underneath the map, which is probably why their Fallout games don’t have drivable vehicles) or simply cannot due to technical limitations of the engine.
This is like saying a good wood carver can still be good if they have shoddy tools, when the reality is that a good craftsman is only limited by the quality of tools they have. If I can’t fully realize my wood carving because my knife is too blunt and do the best I could with what I have for an inferior design, is that my fault or the tool’s fault?
Bruh, TES games are button mashers if anything. Dark Souls and any other related games has got TES games beat by lightyears in that department.
TES lore, on the other hand, is just as interesting as Dark Souls lore for different reasons - mainly how wacky and weird the stuff Kirkbride wrote for Morrowind and Oblivion, like the fact gameplay mechanics like saving and loading, console commands, and even mods are legitimately canon thanks to CHIM, or the factoid that Pelinal Whitestrake might have been a time-travelling gay cyborg depending on how you interpret his descriptions. And who can forget that Vivec, a living god, has a spear that is implied to be the penis of Molag Bal after Vivec gave him a blowjob and bit his dick off. Then you got shit with Lorkhan, the Dreamsleeve, and of course Talos being 3 different people at the same time.
I mean, you can argue that Google actually has a monopoly on web browsers right now. iirc Firefox takes a ton of money from Google, so if the choices are “Google’s proprietary browser” or “a non-Chromium browser backed by Google” (EDIT: unless you’re on Apple hardware and use Safari), then Google comes out on top either way.
Wish we could get another good browser engine that isn’t Chromium, WebKit, or Quantum.
But gamers don’t actually need to understand game design or why a certain choice was made.
I said this in another thread: if it’s a shit design, it’s a shit design. Knowing why the shit design was made does not suddenly make it not shit. In fact, I do not care to know why you made that decision in the first place - if it’s bad, then just own up to it and either try to fix the issue or actually resolve to do better next time.
The main issue with a lot of “printers” nowadays is that they’re usually not just printers anymore - it’s a printer/copier/scanner with faxing capabilities. The more complicated shit you cram into a single machine, the more likely something else completely unrelated will break.
I have a HP laser printer that is literally just a printer with the Wi-Fi turned off and it’s been working well on the odd occasion I needed to use it. Only reason I got it was because the Bother printer I wanted wasn’t on sale and this HP was going for under $100, so I went for it since I needed it at the moment and figured I could use it until it either dies or HP decides to not offer the toner anymore, whichever happens first.
BG3 is based on arguably the most user-friendly version of Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition (5e). Larian themselves also do a fantastic job at easing you into the mechanics via gameplay, so you can honestly jump in and just play something that sounds cool to you without worrying about having to min-max or optimize your character. The game lays out what you get on each level-up pretty well and it defaults you to being a single class, so you won’t have to worry about multi-classing unless you want to - and because it’s based on 5e, you can honestly get away with not optimizing your build that much, if even at all, and manage to do fine as long as your main damage (STR for melee, DEX for ranged and Finesse weapons)/casting stat (INT for Wizards, CHA for Bards/Sorcerers, and WIS for Clerics/Druids) is high.
Can’t speak on OW2, but with games like Deep Rock Galactic and Vermintide, I found it’s best to just play it and figure stuff out slowly from experience. A lot of it can sound complicated, but I found it’s easier to digest the complexity of the mechanics and systems a bit at a time as your experience with the game grows. Like with Vermintide, as an example, I recently started really diving in deep with Cleave, Stagger, and Frontline/Heavy Frontline/Tank property mechanics and numbers for melee weapons; you literally cannot see these things from the game’s UI, and starting out I had no idea these things even existed, and it only really matters once you start playing on the hardest difficulties, Legend and Cataclysm. If I had to figure out all that stuff early on, I would nope out of the game super quick lmao.
no ads from Micro$oft
no tracking whatsoever
don’t need to spend money on a key if you’re worried about using crackers for Windows
less resource intensive and better performing than Windows
practically can do pretty much anything on Windows either natively or through emulation
customizable to the point people can recode bits of the OS
Yeah, I’m not too sure either
Never forget the infamous NCIS co-op hacking on a keyboard scene.
Oh, don’t get me wrong - the technology behind them is something we should be embracing more than we currently are. Being able to publicly have transactions out in the open is great, and ensuring that both parties have to authenticate on both their ends helps a ton in preventing stuff like fraud.
I just think cryptocurrencies and NFTs are squandering the blockchain and the tech behind it. There are a couple of cryptocurrencies that make sense because they have something backing it (which I just personally prefer straight-up, even with fiat money), but it’s otherwise pretty much all crypto follows Bitcoin’s trend, which in turn is more akin to a stock where it just… sort of arbitrarily goes up and down. NFTs as we currently know them, on the other hand, are just a huge scam through and through lol.
GDP isn’t the end-all be-all for economic performance. Consider that real estate also contributes to GDP, and we have been getting some fucking expensive housing in recent years. It doesn’t equate to more money, so it’s effectively padding our GDP. All GDP does is give a rough estimation of how much a country is valued at best, and at worst it’s a padding game to show who has the biggest number.
If you want a good indicator for how well a country is doing economically, CPI is a better start than GDP - which, by the way, China is fucking decimating the US in that regard. Their reported CPI is around 100 points while the US is at around 300 points. You generally want lower CPI as it indicates inflation if it’s super high like the US.
Because this only harms the ones who aren’t corrupt and doesn’t do anything for the ones who are corrupt.
What they should be doing is getting rid of lobbying and disallowing corporate and business interests in politics, but we fucked that up decades ago, so I’ll settle for forcing politicians to wear tracksuits that have patches from every single person and company that had paid them.
Last time I’ll engage with you on this topic.
The PS5 Controller is not entry level quality. It’s not my problem equivalent PC peripherals are expensive.
You’re right - it’s the only entry in at that price point. If you just want a wireless PS5 controller, you either pay Sony $70… or you pay an approved 3rd-party retailer $150+ at minimum for a non-Sony controller. So it’s comes out the same as the Viper Wireless you mentioned.
My Razer Viper Wireless cost $150 and the build quality is just slightly worse than a Dual Sense. It’s built to be lighter weight so that’s understandable. But it’s twice the cost, and that doesn’t include a keyboard. I tried the G305 and didn’t care for the build quality personally.
How the fuck can you compare build qualities between a controller and a mouse?? Like, how do you actually do that? You’re comparing apples to oranges here at best, and at worst you’re doing a strawman argument by cherry-picking things that support your point. You also prove that enjoying build quality is subjective - I personally loved the G305 mouse and how it felt in my hand, and I have used stuff like the Viper Wireless and Glorious Model O. But you what the best mouse I have used to date is? The CoolerMaster MM720, which is a $30 wired mouse. The consumer have choices at different price points when it comes to gaming peripherals, and you are right that they can be crazy expensive at the top end - but don’t pretend $180 controllers don’t exist, either, and don’t try to conflate high-price point items as being good, because you can easily get a good quality mouse with bells and whistles in the $60-$80 space.
Equivalent wireless keyboards with the quality control of Sony are $80-$100 too. I’d probably cheap out on the keyboard before the mouse, but every keyboard I’ve used under $85 had Quality control issues from switches stop functioning to buggy software (Anne Pro II), and Wireless was terrible on all of them.
That I will give you, but you’re also deliberately shopping in the $40 range for stuff like the Anne Pro II Keyboard you mentioned. I can say every PS5 controller I used under $70 was awful, but that doesn’t mean much once I mention I was buying $20 controllers.
I’ve heard issues dealing with multiplayer and anti-cheat as recently as this summer, so it’s nice to see it’s better, but until games are officially supported with no third party patches or workarounds, I don’t count it.
Anti-cheat has also been on consoles for decades now - not as bad as PC to your point, but once again don’t act like consoles don’t experience the issue either, especially when stuff like Xim exists.
PS5 is FreeBSD based, so yes it’s Unix-like. But that doesn’t mean anything. MacOS is also Unix-Like and it’s terrible for gaming. It all comes down to support.
Good point, forgot Macs exist tbh lol. It is also only one OS that doesn’t have good gaming support, but honestly it’s a toss-up. Linux has gotten some really good support though.
At the end of the day I don’t want to have to deal with drivers, or configurations to play a game. I want to press a button, and start gaming. For me personally Consoles are going to win that war 95% of the time.
Which is a completely valid point - but that’s not the point you were making initially. Since you said right off that bat:
Need to add a good quality mouse and keyboard to your numbers at minimum. Consoles come with controllers. Should also add a $99 Windows license too.
You made it a point to talk about the price of the computer versus a console, not the ease of use of it.
I spent almost 3 times the cost of a PS5 on a Graphics card last year for some reason.
Because you deliberately chose to spend that much on a GPU that outperforms a PS5 in graphical power? I bought a $400 GPU that slightly beats the PS5 out a couple of years back, so that’s moot.
How is that a bad faith argument?
Because I’m dumb and I just learned what “bad faith” actually means lol. My apologies on that, it was the wrong usage - “cherry-picking” is literally the word I should have used.
100% agree with that, but even then the sharing of physical media seems like it’s being slowly replaced with sharing digital libraries. PS4 allows a hokey way of sharing libraries between two people, and Steam does offer a similar janky way of sharing libraries between multiple people. With GOG, you should be able to download a standalone installer on a USB and then give that to a friend (which now I think about it, is the PC equivalent of lending your friend the disc lol).
Wondering how long it will be until people go “remember when we used to share discs with each other?”
Now you’re just arguing in bad faith lol.
If you want a mouse with a good sensor for competitive games and a linear switch mechanical keyboard with NKRO, those are generally the two best entry-level options. Rechargeable wireless mice can be a bit pricey, which is why I’m assuming you used a vague descriptor of “quality” and specifically mentioned it just for the sake of being arbitrarily on par with what a PS5 offers. But if you want a good budget option for a wireless gaming mouse, you can with a Logitch G305 for around $50.
As for the OS stuff, that’s a good point, and it’s true - if you’re talking about 5 or so years ago. Once Steam said “hey, we’re integrating Proton into our Linux version of Steam”, it’s been leaps and bounds in improvements for Linux gaming. By the way, fun fact: the PS4 used FreeBSD for the system’s OS which is based off Unix - and surprise, Linux is also based off Unix. Wouldn’t be surprised if the PS5 OS is also based on FreeBSD.
Ok. Logitech G203 for $20 and a Redragon K552 for $45 - a tiny bit cheaper than a PS5 controller which retails at $70 before tax.
Windows you can literally get for free from Microsoft directly. You’re basically paying a license to get rid of the “Activate Windows” bit and to be able to change wallpapers, but functionally you can play games and do computer things with an unactivated Windows license. You can also opt to play on Linux instead since Steam offers Proton with their Linux version, and you can also use WINE for games that won’t run on Proton. Linux is also free.
It’s still less expensive than a PC hobby
Only if you plan on either never paying for an online sub for the console or paying for an online sub for less than 5 years on the console, and also take into consideration that a PC can both game and be a computer you can use for other things.
A gaming PC has a higher upfront cost, but it’s a better long-term value. Let’s say you buy a PS5 for $500, and then pay for 5 years of PS+ for the old price, $60. That’s $800 for a friggin console already, but let’s also consider that most people either have a laptop or a tablet for doing computer-related tasks. Reasonable people would pay probably somewhere in the $400-$600 range, but let’s give the console a chance and say we got a $400 laptop. That’s $1200 now.
Using that $1200 as a budget, you can get a computer with a 4060ti, a 12th gen i5, a 1TB NVME SSD, and 16GB RAM for around $1100. Note that, say, 5 years down the line from buying this PC, you can just swap in and out parts as you want and be able to sell old parts for some money back, so staying up-to-date to play whatever current games can be cheaper too depending on the part prices.
Yeah, totally glossed over the bit where you were focusing on Shove being a bonus action and causing some wacky balance. Thought it was moreso the fact that it’s even a mechanic in the first place.
I mean, while it was hilarious I could shove all three bosses in the Goblin Camp into chasms before they aggro’d me, it is broken in that A) you can shove non-hostile NPCs indefinitely with no repercussions, and B) you can do a full attack and always Shove in a single turn, which has huge benefits for characters with high STR.
Ah, I see. Yeah, Shove being a bonus action is a bit ridiculous - it should’ve been an action from the start since it’s an insanely easy get-out-of-jail-free card. Honestly wouldn’t mind a book implementation of 5e Shove being a normal action, and then just have the game’s current Shove be a “Forceful Shove” or something that takes up both normal and bonus actions.
That being said, the problem the other dude brings up is basically solved with trying to stay in a better position. If you’re gonna fight near a chasm or a very high-up walkway, you should expect to get shoved or pushed off somehow.
Ngl I kinda want them to use this logic and see what happens when they try to apply it to Nintendo’s own Virtual Console, which are emulators playing ROMs basically.
Hell, the games you can play in Animal Crossing are literal emulators with ROMs since they found iNES data in the headers.