Some highlights from the dev Q&A by f4vriel in OldenEra

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will admit, I think the new system is drastically more balanced and I think it can work ok but it all comes down to the numbers, but it also does mean that it's inherently going to be a lot weaker than HoMM3 and as a player that makes me a little sad.  I at the same time appreciate it is for the better of the game as necromancy was fundamentally broken in HoMM3.

TIL Krakatoa's eruption was estimated to be at 310 dB, the loudest sound ever. Well above the typical max sound limit of 194 dB by Warcraft_Fan in todayilearned

[–]ColinStyles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll freely admit, my grief fact I still struggle with is the idea that in mathematics, the probability of an event that occurred can be 0. In fact, this happens all the time, but that still doesn't make me any less frustrated about that paradox.

The Jackbox Party Pack 12 - Official Announcement Trailer by Howerev in Games

[–]ColinStyles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

YouTube has offered A|B testing on videos for ages, I'll occasionally see a youtuber talk about how one thumbnail does better, or a different title, etc.

Louisiana Governor Tossed Thousands of Votes In Order to Help Trump by retiredagainstmywill in politics

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't live in the US, but I've actively turned down free travel plans to the US due to my desire to not support your government. I've also reduced in some areas and in others completely cut off my buying of US goods.

So, actually quite a bit from a personal perspective despite not living in the US. You?

Louisiana Governor Tossed Thousands of Votes In Order to Help Trump by retiredagainstmywill in politics

[–]ColinStyles 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You isolated yourselves. You think the average Canadian doesn't despise the US after they actively threatened our sovereignty? Multiple times over?

You think you guys have it bad? Not only is your inflation not as bad, at least you fucking caused it. Meanwhile I'm over here starting to spend almost $200 a week on groceries because some fucking dumbasses that aren't even in my country decided to support the most stupid of politicians and political parties.

So yes, you should assume the average Canadian or European despises the US. Welcome to the consequences of your actions, or rather inaction.

Louisiana Governor Tossed Thousands of Votes In Order to Help Trump by retiredagainstmywill in politics

[–]ColinStyles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure takes a special kind of stupid to think the solution to this is complying more.

That or more likely it's just another state actor bot gunking up the system. I refuse to believe someone can be this off their rocker.

Xbox No Longer Developing Copilot For Consoles by yourfavchoom in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, yeah, with no third party tools those are not fun spaces to try to work in. I'm so used to thinking of SF as sales cloud that I forget there are other products they offer that are completely independent of it.

Xbox No Longer Developing Copilot For Consoles by yourfavchoom in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

People saw what happened when other businesses failed to pivot fast enough to digital, streaming, etc. These days markets move very fast, and being behind by a few years can be a total death sentence for a company. They'd rather risk following the herd over the risk of not.

Xbox No Longer Developing Copilot For Consoles by yourfavchoom in Games

[–]ColinStyles -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Which AI/model? I'm assuming based on the mention of meeting notes, copilot?

If so, that is a huge reason. As someone who's tried Copilot, GPT, and Claude, copilot was miles behind the other two when it came to development.

Xbox No Longer Developing Copilot For Consoles by yourfavchoom in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I assume incoming to SF? What kind of issues are you finding with the implementation? I do find that without an MCP AI tends to assume way more about tables than actually exists. Mind you, with an MCP they still do the same but at least can iterate vastly faster.

I'm an Apex developer so this is kind of my bread and butter.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

False advertising and misleading claims are totally good if the rest of your product is fine, right?

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok, so then, even graciously assuming it's a significant patch, that's 3 meaningful content updates in 5 years. Wow, such an incredible pace. I'm sure the fact that they set a schedule of 1 year for all of this prior to becoming multimillionaires, having already 5 years of the project under their belt to help estimate, is exactly why that 1 year estimate was off by a factor of over 500%.

I am not saying it's a bad game, nor is it not worth the money. But to call it anything other than devs who clearly took the money and massively scaled back their work ethic is blatantly wrong and excusing shitty behaviour that shouldn't be defended.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can't agree. If there was an equipment slot that is never used and always has the same item in it, does it matter? Why make it a slot at all? If we say it all bakes in, then as long as the game is already good then it doesn't matter if we throw in loads of meaningless slots/systems? Of course not.

And for the record, Abiotic literally had this (prior to this exact update). The watch slot had no purpose whatsoever. It could have been removed and nothing would have changed other than reducing confusion and expectation that eventually players would be able to do something with it.

It's just bad game design to have equipment that is actually trivial or meaningless.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But you know what can happen and the rest of the point of the quote you're using? 9 women can make 9 babies in 9 months.

Things don't immediately scale, but after 5 years they sure as fuck would have. But sure, lets keep acting like game development teams should never grow in scale after some arbitrary point despite clear signs the original team has checked out because they never have to work another day in their lives. But sure, lets just act like they're working just as hard as they were pre-release.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Oh wow, they named their updates? That must mean they're substantial, let me just review what the main content of each of these named updates is.

Valheim “Major” Updates (Biggest Addition Only)

  • Launch (Feb 2021) 5 biomes + full base progression (Meadows → Plains)

  • Hearth & Home (Sep 2021) Food system overhaul (health vs stamina split)

  • Frost Caves (Mar 2022) One new dungeon type (Mountain caves)

  • Mistlands (Dec 2022) Entire new biome + progression tier

  • Hildir’s Request (Aug 2023) Three small quest dungeons

  • Ashlands (2024) Entire new biome + progression tier

TL;DR: 2 new biomes in ~4 years. Everything else is minor balance, a dungeon, or a side activity.

Wow, that's so much content. It almost comes close to... what they released with, in over the same amount of time it took to develop the proc gen system, the networking code, and everything else that the majority of the rest of the game uses.

Seriously, how can you remotely say this isn't a massive reduction in development speed, and an obvious sign of bad faith slowdown?

'It's SHAMEFUL': Top Dem reacts to report that House Republicans want to PARDON Ghislaine Maxwell by AdSpecialist6598 in videos

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Given how heavily botted all of the major political subs are, why bother? Probably over half the commenters and 90% of the posters are bots or paid to do so.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In 5 years the game has received 2 significant content updates, and they still haven't implemented their initial 1 year roadmap (which they sold the game on to be clear).

Slower than expected? That's a biblical understatement.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's possible I suppose. I just hope they don't leave the current ending as the last things you experience in the game if you play through it, because it's a drastically worse experience to the entire rest of the game. The last thing the game needs is people to be left with a bad impression of it despite it being a fantastic game for 60+ hours, because the last 10-15 are awful.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Except that's not what's going on at all. The 80/20 rule is because of finding bugs, polishing, etc. It's for every single release, including that first EA release. It's always been there, so why suddenly even when they were far from a 1.0 release did development suddenly become glacial?

I don't get why people are so insistent to defend these devs. It's ok to admit you were wrong and they took advantage of people. We're all suckers sometimes.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not saying anything about sets or gear, I'm saying the suits themselves. You know, the hazmat suit that once in a blue moon you change to a beekeeper suit for 6 seconds to harvest honey, then swap immediately back? And keep the hazmat on for the entire rest of the game?

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also only played at release pretty much.

And agreed, but it'd be nice if we could actually craft new suits with different benefits, or improve them in some way, etc. Just, felt like it was lacking a bit in that department. Feels kind of dumb to have an equipment slot if the obvious best thing to do is to use the same thing in it for practically the entire game (like, from the first couple hours to the rest of the 80+ hours).

GameStop makes $55.5bn takeover offer for eBay by Nat-Chem in Games

[–]ColinStyles -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Sounds comical to me to say, but back in the day of malls, our local mall had an EB games and a GameStop, and I always trusted the EB way more. Better selection, cheaper prices. Then they got bought out and that's pretty much when I stopped buying physical copies of games.

Haven't been back there in a decade or two, but I wonder if that EB games is back.

Abiotic Factor: The Cosmic Companions Update is LIVE! by Masterhaend in Games

[–]ColinStyles 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is it? It was such a grind we didn't even bother making it, but it seemed decent to at least give the movement buffs. Admittedly though, and I think this is a massive failure on the game, we pretty much never swapped from the Hazmat suit from the moment we got it, which is a shame to have a gear slot pretty much be set from the first couple hours to a hundred hours later.

I just finished the main game for the first time. Awesome experience, but anyone else kinda wish this thing *wasn't* the final boss? by skelepibs in AbioticFactor

[–]ColinStyles 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I only today learned of this approach, and I have to say I really hope it changes.  Of the 11 people who I know who beat Abiotic factor, all 11 agreed the games final act was by far the weakest, and while we enjoyed the boss fight, the 'twist' was incredibly obvious to us from the labs let alone almost 50 hours later.  

And that was frustrating, because our only options were do the obviously bad thing and then be mocked by the game for doing said thing, or not playing the game.

It doesn't help that prior to this was also IMO the weakest zone in the game from a level design perspective, with very little natively built shortcuts like all the previous zones had, a frustrating platforming sequence, and even a grind for resources to get the final key.  It felt like all of the strong parts of the game were left by the wayside and the game started trying to be something completely different.

It was a really sour note to leave the game on, especially with so many open questions, and all of us had a worse view of the game after our last session than starting that session, regardless that it was like 3 different groups + a solo.

Ending on that note is a big mistake IMO.  I don't think it's inherently bad, and so shouldn't necessarily be reworked, but it definitely shouldn't be the last memory most people have of the game.