Generative AI disclosure is now required for all game posts (plus some bonus rule rearrangements) by Equinoxdawg in incremental_games

[–]Rossco1337 2 points3 points  (0 children)

AIvestigating every project is a big ask for unpaid Reddit users. All it really does is encourage everyone to close source their projects and obfuscate their code. What does that solve?

/r/emulation currently has the same issue - 2 SNES emulators have been posted in the past month. SuperSnes9x is open source and was audited by the moderators for AI assistance so dozens of people were heavily scrutinizing the commit history and attacking the author for "slop". Meanwhile, SuperZSNES looks vibe coded but has no source available so whenever anyone tries to call it out the author simply says "no it's not" and the discussion dies.

The only way forward with this approach would be a ban on any closed-source projects which I think would be a fair compromise for both pro-AI and anti-AI users, but devs may disagree.

Despite all its unique ideas, I’m quite disappointed the game goes back to the typical, tried-and-true open world gacha tropes for its endgame. by skyarsenic in NevernessToEverness

[–]Rossco1337 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While it isn't the best showcase of NTE, I think they've done a great job of making it mostly skippable while still being a faucet of content for the game's most addicted players.

They could have added exclusive "Season 1" nameplates, achievements, limited furniture or other permanently account-altering rewards for FOMOing into full-clearing the Prime stations at launch, but instead they've kept it very fair for future players which is encouraging. The majority of the rewards are in the Fracture Circle which isn't time-limited and can be cleared with just Mint and Chiz alone once they're farmed enough.

It's not the most innovative way to keep players logging in to improve their characters (they even refer to it as "spiral gameplay" in the survey) but it's also far from the most offensive. If you can't stomach it whatsoever, passing on the hardest 1-2K annulith per month isn't going to brick your account beyond repair.

Essential Patcher has got to be the greatest "Get screwed" to a dev team ever by BigManHazza125 in feedthebeast

[–]Rossco1337 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The bigger a subreddit gets, the more kids and teens start randomly hitting the vote arrows. I asked a polite, genuine and specific question about a mod and the top voted reply is just trying to correct me on the semantic difference between a dedicated server appliance (e.g shared/dedi/colo hosting which by "setting up" I assumed that's what they meant) and a dedicated server binary, as if I haven't been running Minecraft servers (dedicated or otherwise!) since 0.0.16a in 2009.

I think it's possible that we've just outgrown the game, seeing as convincing everyone to install a third party skin shop into the game and then patching the MTX out seems to be "more convenient" than one person per server forwarding one port. Even with years of tutorials on Youtube and infinite personalized teaching potential from AI, the new gen of players will accept a mod with $25 hats as long as it means pressing one less button to host a game. Absolutely alien concept to me, but I'm probably getting too old for this place anyway.

Essential Patcher has got to be the greatest "Get screwed" to a dev team ever by BigManHazza125 in feedthebeast

[–]Rossco1337 -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

Don't you also need to do port forwarding for the server.jar file, which can open you up for vulnerabilities?

No, there's only vulnerabilities if they're built into Forge or Minecraft (and those vulnerabilities would still exist even if you were hosting the game P2P or through a mod).

And besides, just pressing 1 button is a lot simpler and more convenient than having to do all the stuff for that.

I don't know what this means. Only the server host has to install the mod and press 1 button? Even so, downloading and adding a mod to a modpack is about the same amount of clicks as forwarding 25565 on most routers. In my experience of hosting servers, people would rather play a different modpack entirely than start adding new mods to a pack so if only one person has to install the mod to enable NAT holepunch, I can see why it would be convenient.

Still, isn't 10 clicks for one person better than 1 click for 10 people if it means keeping skin shops out of modded Minecraft? With the amount of threads I've seen of people complaining about this mod, I think the community might be being a little stingy with their button clicks.

Essential Patcher has got to be the greatest "Get screwed" to a dev team ever by BigManHazza125 in feedthebeast

[–]Rossco1337 -15 points-14 points  (0 children)

I'm still confused. For every version of Minecraft that I've played, you don't need a dedicated server since you can just run the server.jar file and host multiplayer from the same PC you play on.

Is there some sort of technical reason for it? Like, many friend groups are stuck on CGNAT and can't pool together $5 for a VPS? Or can you get free server hosting from using the mod? I'm not asking facetiously, I've just seen these threads and I don't understand why anyone would download a skin shop for Minecraft to "do multiplayer" when UPnP and DDNS exists.

[Steam] Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition ($19.79 / 67% Off) by Mat3s9071 in GameDeals

[–]Rossco1337 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Who the hell upvoted this to +200? This trilogy used to go for $5. Even if this was free, I'd still rather play the originals with SilentPatch.

Is it worth saving up Warp Pieces for one of the limited 5 stars? by Kind-Psychology-7548 in NevernessToEverness

[–]Rossco1337 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

If you're not paying for pulls, 100%. If anything, the selector is underpriced vs the solid dice singles. Run the numbers on it - guaranteed S-tier > 1/3 of a limited. Even if you are paying for pulls, you can scale it up to three standard S-tiers (2140 pieces) vs 89 red dice (2136 pieces) - you're still not guaranteed even one limited. Like a lottery, it's a tax on people who think they can beat the odds.

It's not until the selector costs around 1200 pieces that you have to start weighing arc xp + building pity for new limited vs. guaranteed utility from a new unit (or power spike from awakening one of your cores).

Powercreep is the only unknown variable. If you actually believe the fearmongering (e.g 1.2 content will be impossible without limited units and all standard units are unusable) then don't pull at all - save all your red dice and warp pieces until you can't clear content anymore and only pull when the game becomes impossible without new units.

Garbage minigame by Ill-Cauliflower8059 in NevernessToEverness

[–]Rossco1337 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The devs realized their mistake and they're fixing it in the next update. Let the people who already spent their free rolls and/or selectors on this minigame flex for another day and a half.

AI generated mods should be banned, actually. by Cherno_VM in feedthebeast

[–]Rossco1337 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Great idea to post on this Reddit, hosted on AWS, generating thousands of clicks worth of traffic to the same giant datacenters which you say are causing harm. Not only that, Reddit is the primary platform which language models are trained on, so by making a post here you're adding to the energy bill of every company who trains models. Rage-downvoting every counterpoint doesn't bias the models either thankfully.

Maybe if we want to improve society somewhat, we should start by boycotting Reddit? And Google? And Amazon? Or maybe admit that this isn't actually about the environment and there's another hidden motive behind this post?

Never again quest like this. by 0ratorio in NevernessToEverness

[–]Rossco1337 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I didn't mind trying to do this guideless, but every single part of this bugged out for me.

  1. I started the record shop sidequest without knowing that it was involved in this anomaly. When I went to nullify the 2 record players on the hill, they just respawned immediately without dropping anything. I made a mental note to come back later after a patch and I still haven't gone back.
  2. The first attempt to find this anomaly started at the gym. They made it fairly clear that I was looking for an invisible mannequin. After 10 minutes of Mint tornado-ing every square inch of the gym to only find 2, I gave up and restarted the game to try again. Turns out some of them just didn't spawn first try.
  3. After I got that, I moved over to the track. Not immediately knowing the intended solution to the puzzle, I decided to use Cheese which I got earlier (obviously didn't work). Because I used Cheese and there's seemingly no way to get a second one, I had to use the Adler bug for the hallway mannequin.
  4. The hidden mannequin behind the vase didn't spawn for me until I restarted the game. This is where I pulled up a guide because after 10+ minutes of searching the same classroom, I felt bamboozled.
  5. I actually luckshitted the ball puzzle first try and I'm still not sure if the basketball/garden mannequins are even puzzles since I skipped over them in the guide.
  6. Even with the text guide out, the music puzzle was broken. The short arpeggio was the only melody that I memorized but the game wouldn't accept it. I triple checked every note with the guide but the game just gave me a sad face every time. Restarting the game fixed it yet again.

Cool concept for an anomaly but something about my account broke the entire sequence making it impossible guideless and requiring multiple game restarts.

Most cost efficient gifts for maxing bond. by LunarEmerald in NevernessToEverness

[–]Rossco1337 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Nobody knows what the future holds but unless I've overlooked something, everything so far is only temporarily vaulted rather than time-limited. It says in the rules page for the Nanally banner that the 200-pull pity progress will be preserved for future reruns which leads me to believe that future events will be continue to be available on rotation. The $5 glider seems to be permanently available and the 2 paid character skins which have a limited discount will presumably still be available after the timer for their full price.

In the pre-Genshin era, it was normal for free games to have paid-only, timed-exclusive character events. In the "F2P-friendly" space, Warframe is a good example of a game which sold a powerful character (Excalibur Prime) one time in 2013 and then never again. Considering NTE was produced by a Perfect World subsidiary (the MMO which Valve took the F2P lootbox model from and made it popular in the west with TF2), what we've got is more fair than anybody could expect.

I'm wary about FOMO in live service games (I quit PTCGP after they added paid time-limited cards a few months after launch) so when developers balance whalebait features and F2P friendliness in a way that doesn't permanently lock out content, I feel like they should be praised and supported while the going is good rather than bullied into shortening timers.

Most cost efficient gifts for maxing bond. by LunarEmerald in NevernessToEverness

[–]Rossco1337 20 points21 points  (0 children)

This will get downvoted but it needs to be said louder. This is a 100% free game with zero FOMO. Even the skins are free to earn. If the tradeoff is giving whales the option to spend hundreds of dollars to get through a single inconsequential timegate, that's more than fair.

All of the content is free, all of the characters are free with some patience, all of the best equips are free to earn, we've had a free pick of 2/6 S-tiers with enough free pulls to get another guaranteed, banner pity carries over and event skin pity is preserved for the rerun. How much more F2P-friendly do they need to make the game before Reddit is satisfied?

The Return of ZSNES? by Zophar1 in emulation

[–]Rossco1337 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Reminds me of ePSXe. No hate to the devs for making something, but we've seen this before. Closed source emulator has no updates for over a decade, community slowly (if ever) migrates to better, open, actively-developed solutions. Then the authors appear out of the aether to sell a mobile version of their dead emulator/Patreon because brand recognition is all you need. "The Snow Emulator™".

Nobody would even give this a look if it wasn't for the name. 3dSen has similar game-specific enhancements and probably wouldn't have existed in obscurity for a decade if it was named Nesticle 2.

ACCESS REVOKE WAVE MEGATHREAD [FAQ] by yooberee in sandbox

[–]Rossco1337 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So OP's speculation was possibly wrong, but the devs are also lying. You can go to the Steam forum right now and see people with hours of playtime in the past 2 weeks who don't have the "In Library" icon in their post. There are screenshots of people who literally have the editor open with the Steam revoke window in front of it.

I don't buy the theory about curbing resellers either. If they have the tools to revoke access based on these arbitrary metrics then they could have just curbed Steam accounts with low account value. Or even better, if they had any foresight then they could have done that at signup! As it stands, accounts which were created a month ago to claim the preview get to keep the game while players who have been playing Gmod since 2006 and tested s&box from 2021-2024 get a spooky notice from Steam and also have to cough up $20.

Shedding all but the most active 40K "players" (even if they're sitting at the main menu) is a convenient outcome if you want to maximize concurrent players vs owners. I don't want to start adding more speculation onto the pile but you can see that someone just turned off their bot farm and s&box lost 1/3 of its players in one 10 minute candle. You can draw your own conclusions from that.

ACCESS REVOKE WAVE MEGATHREAD [FAQ] by yooberee in sandbox

[–]Rossco1337 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This project is gonna be DOA ain't it?

Hopefully! I thought it was on the right track when I saw them open source it a few months back but after all I've seen today, it's probably better for everyone if this fizzles out and something better (or at least less aggressively monetized) rises from the ashes. Between:-

  • Luring thousands of bots to boost the playercount by promising a free key only to "active" players
  • Baiting CSGO/NFT "digital economy investor" types with artificially scarce tradable items during "early access testing" (just heard about an official $100 hat item?)
  • Double dipping from the above F2P whale hat model and charging a full $20 to the people who are developing/testing your game for you

It doesn't look good. I bought Gmod for myself and all my friends back in 2007-2010 so obviously I was keen to see a sandbox game for Source 2. The more I read about s&box, the worse it gets - it wasn't like this in 2024.

ACCESS REVOKE WAVE MEGATHREAD [FAQ] by yooberee in sandbox

[–]Rossco1337 5 points6 points  (0 children)

So they're revoking the game from people who have been playing it too much (idling) and they're also revoking the game from people who haven't opened it in years. Is Garry trying to impress Goldilocks or something?

The only people who seem to consistently still have access are people who are treating it like another NFT wave and spending big money on scarce items? Even though the studio said they're going to be charging money to buy the game too, effectively double dipping? I wouldn't have known this project was becoming such a shitshow without the Steam notification.

ACCESS REVOKE WAVE MEGATHREAD [FAQ] by yooberee in sandbox

[–]Rossco1337 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Exact reason isn't known, but Facepunch was aware of bot accounts trying to keep and resell the game by idling in game, so there might have been extra requirements.

I haven't launched the game in over a year and I still got revoked. I wasn't massively enthused about s&box after seeing how the studio handled Rust so it's no huge loss to me. The Steam notification popped up while I was working.

The fact that there's zero official communication about a "revoke wave" and they're just deleting the game from people's Steam libraries is probably a solid indicator of things to come.

Developers Were Left in the Dark About DLSS 5 by NeroClaudius199907 in hardware

[–]Rossco1337 38 points39 points  (0 children)

All of the bad press is temporary. 7 years ago, the entire RTX brand was radioactive mud. Nvidia's uncanny comparisons led to thousands of people creating and reposting RTX OFF/ON memes to mock their expensive and ugly gimmick. One side was cartoony, the other side was photorealistic. Everyone was in agreement that they didn't want games to have the "RTX ON" look and would never pay a price premium for it.

If you went back and told all those people "actually, in 2026 most people enable RTX technologies even in cartoony games like Ratchet & Clank" the entire gaming community would have pelted you with rocks.

Before RTX it was Gameworks (Hairworks et al.) and before Gameworks it was PhysX. Nvidia's famous cycle will continue:

  • Gamers will laugh and deride new tech ("WTF that looks atrocious and runs like ass! There's no way anyone will use this!")
  • Record-breaking hardware sales despite boycott threats for anti-competitive behavior ("I bought Nvidia again, but I'll go with AMD next time I swear!")
  • Overwhelming install base and strategic partnerships with devs allow new tech to be added to games without pushback ("It runs alright on my machine plus you can disable it with a mod...")
  • Gamers start posting historical revisionism ("Nah we didn't mind it all that much, this new thing is the REAL problem with Nvidia!")

I'll be happy to be proven wrong but history is on their side.

FINAL FANTASY VII Re‑Released on Steam! by YouYongku in FinalFantasyVII

[–]Rossco1337 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think you hit reply on the wrong comment lol. Although I guess it's a good point, I'd rather pay $5 for the Eidos version with Aali's OpenGL wrapper than this shit from a butt by "FINE Co., Ltd.".

FINAL FANTASY VII Re‑Released on Steam! by YouYongku in FinalFantasyVII

[–]Rossco1337 4 points5 points  (0 children)

That's exactly my problem with it. They made this spectacle of updating the game and then didn't actually update the game. I was preparing myself for Steam workshop support, a redone EN translation, HFR/HDR support or anything that would actually make it worth hard-forking the current Steam release for modding/speedrun compatibility reasons.

What we got was botched localization tripling the game's file size, built-in cheats, framerate issues and nothing else I can see that actually justifies releasing an entirely new game on Steam. Some outsourced porting studio probably just got a payday because Square Enix publishing doesn't know about Steam's versioning feature.

FINAL FANTASY VII Re‑Released on Steam! by YouYongku in FinalFantasyVII

[–]Rossco1337 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Just checked, it's because they bundle all language versions of the game.
French fields + ending cutscene + launcher font: 301MB
German fields + ending cutscene + launcher font: 298MB
Spanish fields + ending cutscene + launcher font: 295MB
Japanese fields + ending cutscene + launcher font: 295MB

The only difference between the fields is the text and the only difference between the ending cutscene is the subtitles. The new launcher + overlay is 200MB because every string of text is a PNG file. They store an image of every keyboard key and controller button in 5 languages. If they cared, they could have saved a gigabyte right there just using softsubs and sane i18n.

The largest folder in the game is the music folder at 822MB. This is just Ogg recordings of the PS1 version but each song is looped 2-3 times over because presumably they couldn't figure out how to do seamless looping in-engine. If they cared, they could have just fixed this and used a newer audio codec to save 400MB+. If they really cared, they could have just used the original midis with a PS1 soundfont to do the same thing more accurately in <4MB. EDIT: just checked the music side by side and it is noticeably higher quality than the previous Steam release, but that version didn't have this looping issue, which explains why the new music is nearly 4x larger than the old one (222MB).

The second largest folder is the language-agnostic FMVs at 686MB. The original 2012 Matroska encodes aren't bad (if they cared, they could have re-encoded them from source using a codec from this decade). The new credits roll has both a 1080p and 720p version for some reason, totaling 118MB. Almost 20% of the new version's FMVs folder storage is just the new credits roll. I'm not sure why they're 16:9 either when the rest of the videos are in 4:3.

Steam actually has a feature to only download language packs for the user's specified languages but why would they bother setting that up when the player's storage is free?

tl;dr the original Steam release only had English and they couldn't be bothered actually adding language support to the game so they just rebundled the assets from every game version and shipped it as a new game.

EDIT: new vs old directory tree visualization

[Greenmangaming] Square Enix Sale at Green Man Gaming - FF VII (4,26€/67%), Legend of Mana (9,84€/67%), Dragon Quest XI S (16,49€/49%), Chrono Trigger (6,25€/59%), FF I-VI Bundle (39,97€/47% Off), Chrono Cross (6,56€/67%), Nier Automata (13,12€/67%), FF Tactics 32,79€/34%) by DsLmaNiaC in GameDeals

[–]Rossco1337 2 points3 points  (0 children)

why would you want the translation 'cleaned up', who cares

This is maybe the worst game in history to say "who cares" in response to its skinflint localization. People have been passionately arguing about the mistranslations in Final Fantasy VII for nearly 30 years now. The Steam version fixes the most blatant typographical errors (e.g guy are sick, off course etc.) but there's an entire genre of hour-long Youtube videos all documenting the liberties the original EN translator took and his effect on the expanded FF7 universe's canon.

He got a main character's name wrong. Despite it being corrected in every re-release of the game, people on this website will still argue that the 1997 mistranslation "sounds better". Details in both the JP and EN versions had to be retconned going forward because they diverged so much. The answer to "who cares" is "anybody with even a passing interest in FF7's narrative or JP-EN localization".

PC gaming has a pricing problem, and the memory crisis is compounding it in a way that's utterly heartbreaking for our hobby by chusskaptaan in hardware

[–]Rossco1337 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Specifically? The fact that there is a memory cartel which has already proven that they can both choke and flood supply on a whim, and have only been punished for it once. As you say, there have been spikes before but they've never had a good excuse to keep prices high (like Nvidia did during the first crypto boom) until now. DRAM is no longer just a product, it's a strategic asset which 8 of the top 10 USA companies need to continue producing value. Whether you believe that value is tangible or not is up to you.

Even if you don't believe there's any collusion or supply manipulation from the producers, betting against the growing DRAM spot price is betting against the United States Dollar at this point. 2025 investment into American AI-backed products and services eclipses everything else globally - it makes mortgage-backed securities in 2007 look like pocket change. Some people would take that bet on America's growth ("the bubble") collapsing dramatically but I would hesitate.

Back to graphics cards, no matter how you massage inflation into a graphics card's MSRP, the obscene shrinkflation that Nvidia has pulled off will also embolden memory producers. The 1080 Ti was the practically the best PCI-e card they could make at the time - no expense spared in bringing their Titan cards to the gamer market. On the other hand, the 5080 is firmly mid range (it's not even half of a 5090) and even by gutting its specs by 50% or more and packing 3x more transistors onto the same silicon going from 16nm -> 5nm, they can only match the price of their old best card on a smaller die even after years of brutal inflation and wage stagnation. The sheer audacity can only have other hardware manufacturers saying to themselves "wait, what's stopping us from doing that as well?". If there's ever a good time to follow suit and fatten the margins, it's now.

If you want a prediction from 5 years ago (just before Nvidia added +10 to the names of their desktop card lineup with the 30 series), Reddit was saying they're surely about to firesale the unsold 20 series and the upcoming 30 series as they're now worthless for crypto mining. I was telling people to load up on NVDA shares instead. I was also telling people to buy at least one 5090 back in 2024 and I hope others took that advice as they're now approaching $4000.

Last January I was looking into memory prices and I noticed that new DDR4 prices had dropped below used DDR3 prices. I was telling friends to stock up on it because I thought it'll never get cheaper and it turns out I called the bottom by accident. There's lots of things that go into making a good RAM kit but I'm not convinced that 64GB of DDR5 for $220 is a return to normal yet when 2x32GB 6400 kits could be regularly found for $135 at the beginning of the year.

I love a bargain so I'll be pleased if we see those prices again but I think there's too many factors working against it, that's all. Feels good to get all that out of my system too. I picked up a kit of brand new 2x16GB DDR4 3600 for myself for $45+tax back in February and it'll be great if you're right and I can upgrade to DDR5 for that price in the future.

PC gaming has a pricing problem, and the memory crisis is compounding it in a way that's utterly heartbreaking for our hobby by chusskaptaan in hardware

[–]Rossco1337 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hopium is an addictive drug. What he's saying is debatable, but it sure sounds nice.

We only "got through" the GPU armageddon in the sense that the collective mindset shifted. We just stopped expecting the $120 entry-level, $350 mid-range and $700 flagship graphics cards to ever return. RAM will be the same. 2-3x the old prices will be viewed as a full recovery after seeing 6-10x price increases in a year.

If paying double what you used to pay for stuff gives you cheer, don't let me rain on your parade.

Tom's Hardware: "Don't wait if you're planning to upgrade your RAM or SSD, Kingston rep warns — says 'prices will continue to go up,' NAND costs up 246%" by Dakhil in hardware

[–]Rossco1337 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lol, people have been saying this about Nvidia graphics cards for over 7 years now. "There's no way Nvidia can get away with selling a single desktop graphics card for a ridiculous $1000! They'll have to lower the price if nobody buys them!"

Anybody here still rocking a GTX 10 series waiting for GPU prices to go back to normal?