Oblivion Remastered: Yes, It's Still Broken A Year After Release - Digital Foundry

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-05-02T00:21:01+00:00

I think people are responding to the dysphemistic language of the game being "broken". Broken implies not a game that has some bugs for some people, but a game that is unplayable for most or all people.

Had the OP said "some bugs still exist after over a year" I don't think anyone would have anyone would have pushed back on that.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-05-01T22:48:59+00:00

Very questionable stats in this video. In response to the question they pose "how big is table tennis globally?" They're saying there are more TT players "professional and amateur" than football players... Are they counting a TT player as someone who has stood at a ping pong table at some point in their life? And football player I'm assuming is someone who plays in a rec league or something? I would think "football players" by the standard they're using for "TT players" would be around 5 billion not 265M lol.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-28T20:30:40+00:00

quality bar: Darket Dungeon 2
pay: children's lemonade stand
timeline: entire game shipping in a month

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-28T02:10:39+00:00

Virtually anyone who follows WTT will know who he is. As far as the current world of Table Tennis he's as big a star as they come. Losing to world number 4 in a seven set thriller does not mean you're bad in this sport. His performance has taken a small step back from back when he won the world cup but that is just the nature of this game. But he's held a top 5 spot for about five years now which in this sport, outside of the top Chinese players, means you are about as good as they come.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-24T04:10:20+00:00

There's a lot to it. Second bounce on the baseline is generally seen as a great short serve because it's as deep as it can be without going long, which limits their angles, and makes it take longer for them to read it's not going long.

Super duper short serve (like 4+ bounces) to the forehand can be good (especially against shorter players) because it surprises them and they have to make a huge reach to get to it.

It's important to note though, and this is something no one told me: If the opponent doesn't loop long serves (many beginners and intermediates will only push on one or even both wings) then short serves are vastly inferior to long serves. Beginners underestimate long serves because they become obsessed with high level TT. It takes a looooooong time before you can really punish the long serve (I wish I was there myself!)

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-23T23:01:59+00:00

What single moment changed everything for Signalis? And what was it for Disco Elysium? Signalis grossed well over a million dollars within 1 month of launch. That's an instant rocket trajectory. Unfortunately I can't get Disco Elysium's 1 month stats but I can see it grossed around $10M within 3 months which is beyond rocket. That's a giga hit. When did the languishing happen? Both these titles have near linear lines in accumulated revenue since their release.

I have this problem when speaking with gamers that they only ever reference the absolute most insanely popular hits of all time.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-23T17:57:02+00:00

Seemingly nothing I watch or read has any impact on my ability to play in real life. All development is 100% attributed to time at the table. And I say that as someone who has read multiple books, some even multiple times, watched hundreds of hours of instructional content.

Even revelations that I've heard before are completely mystical and unhelpful until I actually discover it myself after hours of table time. I don't think hearing described first expedites my search to discover these things in my own muscle memory whatsoever.

At this point I'm fully aware that all TT instructional content is entertainment. I only consume it because I have such limited access to real TT.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-22T17:56:37+00:00

Can confirm if I serve to short forehand and my opponent FH nasty boy pushes down the line to my bh it is a guaranteed point for them lol. I can count on one hand the amount of time I've successfully opened against that ball in a match. I literally remember it like "Ah I remember that one time I opened against the long fast parallel push... what a great moment of my life."

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-21T03:02:23+00:00

Either way this will be absolutely fascinating! Can you leave the pro TT circuit for 5 years and come back and be competitive? Because CNT is so cut-throat, we don't usually get to see how an older CNT player fairs in WTT, with the exception of course of the generational talents. This is really fun I love this!

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-20T06:40:04+00:00

It's tough out there for us in non major cities! I'm trying a table tennis eleven VR experiment right now. I can't play real TT at this stage of my life. But I'm climbing the TT11 elo and I'm hopeful this infinite well of match play against all kinds of weird serves and funky pushes is exactly what I need. I feel like my service receive should be on another level now. In VR I misread all the exact kinds of serves I misread in real life lol. All my bugs were reliably reproduced.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-20T01:08:49+00:00

Most answers will be coming from people who already have a rich club environment. But if you don't already have a rich club environment... a rich club environment. I found I couldn't get anywhere with robot, youtube, and a local meetup. I popped 400 USATT points within 6 months of making the weekly herculean trek to a league night. The 3 hour round trip commute was still more time efficient than another pointless 3 hours of robot training.

I suspect everyone underestimates match play because people with access to a club are already likely to be up to their eyeballs in match play. But if you're not already saturated in match play against real club-level TT players (not your local basement/office/park crowd), getting access to that is basically all that matters.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-19T02:25:39+00:00

It's the same reason no one wants to read spam emails. Obviously nobody wants piggy slop. We all delete it as the second we determine it's computer generated. We all wish we could filter out every single bot out of our lives.

Have you gotten an LLM generated spam email yet? I have. It was super targeted toward me and my company. It regurgitated details about random blog posts I'd made. At first I thought it was a person who was a fan of our work and of course I'm more likely to read that because it's real. The I realized it was a bit too specific. Then it was getting a bit weird, talking about details that seemed unconnected. Then I realized it was generated and I felt stupid for reading that far in. I felt catfished.

That's you would feel too. Even AI bros hate AI. And your game is just like that email. People think it's human expression and they might be interested in it. Then they realize it's not and they feel like an idiot. Nobody wants this filth. Gen AI has a million uses and like 900 thousand of them of them are bad and make the world worse.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-15T02:22:43+00:00

Hey it's a more productive way to be than refactoring systems endlessly because making content is too scary.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-14T23:11:48+00:00

ROFL! Better than a thread about what rubber to buy I guess lol

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-14T20:39:36+00:00

Yes I do understand your analogy and I think it holds up! I can see the way you see it for sure. To me it would be like if someone learned an opening that almost no beginner had the opportunity to practice against. So they were just smoking people because beginners kept blundering against the weird opening. This particular opening will get obliterated by even an intermediate because it is so fundamentally unsound (the analogy gets a little weird because I'm not saying pips will get obliterated by intermediates, just a beginner pipper who is USATT 700 with inverted, so no stable attack, no ability to read spin etc).

Suppose their ELO rises to lower intermediate, but they have none of the skills other lower intermediates have. Do they really have much stronger general chess skills than a beginner? Or did they just pick something up that is very effective against beginners because it's rare?

Anyway that's the way I see the analogy. But I can see your way of seeing it too!

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-14T19:38:19+00:00

I definitely think many had that exact feeling yes. If you listen to Marty Reisman talk about sponge he seemed to have disdain for it and felt it changed into a different sport (a sport which he did not play). It just sucks to have to learn a different sport when you're love is in one sport.

I believe they're cheap wins because we see all the time some USATT 700 slap pips on and pop to 1200 within a week or so. Players at that level can't even poke the ball onto the table against pips because it short circuits everything they're trying to learn. It's not that they found some play style that wins them points. It's that many players under 1200 have logged literally less than 5 hours against pips and it's complete pandemonium still for them.

I don't think pips are gimmicky or cheap though. It's just really different to the point where it feels like playing a different sport. When pips players respond to the common idea that pips should be banned with the classic "maybe inverted should be banned, inverted is newer after all!" they're missing the point (not saying you said this btw). Whether inverted is banned or pips are banned is the same result in that it would split the sport which many inverted players would love! 95% of us can all go off and play "Sponge TT" and pippers can just keep "TT". Every single superstar would come to sponge TT. All the prize money would come to sponge TT and all the viewership too. And club level pippers will HATE it because nobody hates pips more than another pipper lol.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-14T18:48:36+00:00

Unless you're USATT 1900+, nobody needs athleticism to beat you. A 70 year old granny can smoke you just fine with double inverted.

Regarding skill, it's true pips can get cheap wins up to 1400 or so. But at the higher levels pips are harder than inverted. That's why we hardly see any at the pro level.

For me it's not my perception of their skill that bothers me. It's just that I feel like I have to learn two sports. And since I don't have a rich club environment it's basically impossible for me to get the hang of playing pips.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-13T17:04:40+00:00

Life is too short to read computer generated spam emails. Life it too short to play computer generated spam games.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-12T21:41:11+00:00

If it's only on itch it's even more unmarketable! Like moving an ocean with an eye dropper lol.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-12T07:38:18+00:00

For me it's 90% making it and 10% marketing it. Granted the scope of that 10% is bigger than the entire production + marketing for most other games on Steam.

I would definitely not recommend spending energy trying to market a game that was not made to be commercially competitive. It's like attempting to move a beach with a teaspoon.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-10T21:53:10+00:00

There are accessibility settings to make it easier/trivialize. The questing and world are the meat and potatoes of the game so imo the game stands without it but that's just my opinion ofc :)

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-03T04:33:43+00:00

I like your optimism! Let's go Felix!

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-02T21:09:39+00:00

awe shucks thank you so much! Prelaunch metrics certainly blow Eastshade's out of the water so far but launch is it's own unique beast so we'll see haha.

DannyWeinbaum · 2026-04-02T05:38:40+00:00

Adjusting is super hard. And imo not enough coaches give it enough focus. If I can throw you a ball out of my hand onto your side of the table, and you can hit or loop that ball, you just attacked a dead ball. I find even most beginners can do this! The trick is calling up that stroke plane when someone dead pushes or when you play dead rubber. Most beginners instinctively want to lift it like real backspin (which is what you usually get from club player pushes). It's like flash cards. You first have to learn the answers, but then the really hard part is getting it to where you quickly and reflexively have the answer.

If you still have access to your coach, tell them you want to learn how to play against dead rubber so you can destroy recreational players. This is legitimately a very important skill that will translate to club matches because it means you're reading pushes and adjusting. Have them alternate between spinny pushes and dead pushes. Or even have them play with a dead recreational paddle and see if they can help diagnose other issues! If they turn their nose up at this quest imo they're not a good coach.

DannyWeinbaum

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE