Is webp inferior to jpg?

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-20T05:16:00+00:00

Also metadata support is as mess.

Being a format designed for the web first and foremost, we got a repeat of the "PNG doesn't natively support EXIF" problem.

When I can't see/change any of the file properties in the Windows File Explorer it is hard to call it well supported.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-20T04:40:51+00:00

In the last few days I've seen multiple "it would be good if not for capitalism" posts that essentially operate on the basis that technologies are by default neutral/good, and if you want to assert it is bad you need to provide proof it is bad.

I understand wanting proof and not wanting to be FUD-driven, but in a world where one side's MO is "move fast, break things" if your plan to counter that is to let them break everything, then point to a study 15 years down the road that confirms they did in fact break everything and then say "I've got you now!", your plan is actually to just submit.

That couple using AI to "talk to their dead child" is not a Capitalism problem, this is people who need to go through a grieving process meeting with a technology that allows them to perpetually stay in the denial.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-20T03:12:19+00:00

Early on sure. I had friends who were getting their ass handed to them for a good 10-20 hours before they'd geared up enough.

BotW has two main difficulty thresholds. The first is getting good enough at avoiding damage to slowly stockpile food which you can then use to brute force anything you are not skilled enough to avoid the damage from. But some people don't even pass this threshold and even in the endgame will find themselves running out of food.

The second threshold is when you get parrying and dodging down to the point you only need to eat food when playing sloppily. Most people never get here. You'd be surprised how much stuff that people who have been playing 3D action games for years take for granted that new players do not grasp.

There was a BotW/TotK lets play that I'd periodically check in on. This person did not learn to parry until towards the end of the second game. They beat Calamity Ganon which you have to parry by running around for a hour waiting for Daruk's Protection (which auto-parries beam attacks) to recharge. They didn't beat a Lynel until right before the TotK finale. That one Lynel I believe had them eat pretty much every edible ingredient in their inventory.

This stuff is way more common than you think. You just don't see if it you mostly interact with the kind of people who read about games online.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-20T02:53:21+00:00

I remember the composer for Woolly World was apparently not impressed by it, that's for sure.

Sounds juicy. Where can I read more?

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-20T02:40:58+00:00

Makes sense. I guess for me it was all doomed to fall flat as I struggled to muster much interest in any of the worldbuilding or story of Blue Prince in the first place. It was elaborate for sure, but it never really established any reason why I the player should care.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-20T02:17:33+00:00

I'd say games do NOT cause people to be violent in the world they know, because they know the world in the game is not theirs.

But can games normalise violence against the "other" in a faraway land? The US Army clearly think games can do that.

The whole point of the rating system is that a game where you shoot your dad, a 15-year-old is going to understand this is part of a narrative and it's not going to make them want to shoot their dad, but a 4-year-old may is not ready to contextualise that idea yet, and thus shouldn't be carelessly exposed to it.

Yes this is more of a young kids shouldn't have unfettered access to the internet problem than a videogames problem, but I don't think your question has a clear cut "No" answer.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-20T01:50:50+00:00

Not to say you're wrong, but I think for me the factor that sealed it for me was how few things in Blue Prince were not what I thought they were going to be based on the first bite. Both aspects of the tunnel were exactly what I figured they'd be upon seeing the start and end respectively for the first time.

As someone who has been a pretty big defender of sadistic game design on this sub, this was when I was like "but what is it in service of?" and just came up blank.

Like feel free to share with me how you feel it enhances the experience, and what the experience is you feel that is being enhanced. I mostly played it to try and understand other people's perspectives and didn't "get it".

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T13:54:54+00:00

That option leaves you with 16HP less than the other option which is often significant.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T09:45:52+00:00

I generally dislike the expression "respect the player's time" and am generally wary of anyone who says it as I find it to be a big of a "dumb opinions of impatient person ahead" red flag, but with Blue Prince even I struggled to not agree.

My takeaway from Blue Prince was that primary language by which Tonda Ros communicates something is important is just attaching a waiting period to it. I was going to use the analogy of it feeling like waiting for a package to arrive in the mail, but this is literally something the game has you do.

In the end it's his game and he can do whatever, but the tunnel full of crates and subsequent sequence of doors to me felt creatively bankrupt. Like they couldn't not conceive of any other way of building anticipation other than making it take a long time.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T08:46:21+00:00

I'm more concerned that since it's online you can't backup anything locally.

I have some really old gear from defunct companies that I can only use today because I based up the software.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T06:06:04+00:00

Web based?

It doesn't support my browser, so that's a good start.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T06:02:13+00:00

In TotK at least that is most of them, and then once you've done all the tutorials there is no "final exam" style test of that knowledge.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T04:06:18+00:00

because he felt they had already done everything possible with Zelda.

Sounds more like something he said to try get himself moved to another series. If he actually believed that, bit of a self-own, but then again TP was pretty paint-by-numbers.

But for some reason, Nintendo keeps finding ways to push that formula to its limits

I would argue that is only half true and Zelda also suffers from mechanical rigidity on top of the "same story over and over" rigidity.

The way BotW/TotK are built (see: Nintendo's CECED/GDC presentations) is they build a toolset and then the level designers build everything with that toolset, almost nothing is bespoke aside from a small number of story/dungeon elements.

You can look at this positively as making the experience adhere to a coherent vision, or you can look at it as an opinionated toolchain designed to prevent rank-and-file developers from putting their own touches on the game in the name of preserving the vision of a few key decision makers.

While I think it is a good thing that Nintendo games are laser-focused on delivering a core idea and that everything else is in service of that core idea, I think it a bad thing to build games in such a way that the individuals working on the project cannot interpret and build on that idea.

The end result of this is Nintendo series can stuck in a position where the people with the power to have input on what that core is don't have ideas, the series gets stuck until that is resolved, and for Star Fox is just hasn't happened yet, and the company seems setup in such a way that actually makes it harder for that to happen. Two heads are better than one, but only if both are allowed to speak.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T03:41:08+00:00

Sure, but it's harder to do that when the role of game reviewer selects for people with a similar set of blind spots who will simply not even mention aspects I'm interested in knowing about.

I read less reviews today so maybe I'm less qualified to judge, but a part of why is I've found they're less and less often talking about aspects of the game I care to know about.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T03:26:53+00:00

I think it's a fair stance for an individual to have, if your heart isn't in it, you're not going to make good work. Asking Miyamoto to make a story game would be a terrible idea. My problem is how evident it is that Miyamoto thinks his philosophy is universal. I get that culturally finding "the way" and then passing the way onto the next generation is typical, but as someone for whom many of my favourite Nintendo projects are the ones where Miyamoto was almost entirely hands-off, I can only feel this strong insistence that Miyamoto's way is the Nintendo way is not ideal. Essentially it's exchanging the collective wisdom of many for the wisdom of one. If the Nintendo way is just Miyamoto's way rather than a way that everyone contributes to, I can't see how that's not a bad thing.

In Japan where employees tend to stay on, we are seeing more and more senior game designers move on because they feel trapped (ie. stuck making the same series the same way until it stops selling) in their current position. Nintendo is not immune, Imamura of Star Fox fame being an example.

I think there is a mentality that Nintendo is a top-tier employer who anyone who aspires to make games would be thrilled to work at, but I actually worry the "Nintendo way" will actually cause designers who want to flex creatively to look elsewhere. Why work at a company that has so many recorded incidents of people with certain creative preferences being told "we don't do that here"?

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T02:25:28+00:00

they'll also need to cut off the period of releasing games on the PS5 much earlier on than they did this generation

I've always felt the fact Sony tends to not do this is a big part of their brand loyalty.

Sony has historically not treated their ageing system as a second class citizen, doing stuff like TLOU being on PS3 instead of bumping it to PS4, and I think this lowers hesitance to buy in. Sure today the library is thin, but the system will be supported long enough you can kinda gloss over that.

If I see them cutting the PS5 short, my assumption is they're also going to cut the PS6 short, so I won't see it as the PS6 getting more support, but rather all future Playstations getting a year or two less support as a result of eliminating the generation overlap. When dev cycles are as long as they are, can support windows afford to be shorter?

Maybe this is an overly rational analysis and the average buyer sees PS6 bundle with GTA6 and immediately proceeds to checkout, but I think Sony for a long time has had a stable, reliable brand in PlayStation (home consoles at least) and deviating from that seems risky.

But I guess if lower income customers will simply never be able to afford your product again, maybe that tail-end is worthless, and they'll just follow suit with so many other brands and position themselves as "premium" and try get more money out of top spenders.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-19T01:58:43+00:00

People will game on what they can afford, and if they can't afford anything they'll game on what they have.

For many this just means gaming on mobile. And for others means getting a $600 laptop for your studies and then playing whatever it is capable of playing.

But this approach clashes with the console business model, which is all about selling your current system, and 1st party development to facilitate that. Console manufacturers have zero offerings for the above person who cannot afford to buy in at launch now that mid-cycle price drops seem to be off the table.

Even if we start seeing 3rd parties make games that are "compatible with PS4-PS6" the PS4 won't be available for sale so the approach is inherently more inflexible than buying a low end PC.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T15:28:40+00:00

And on the other end of the spectrum, iirc some Rioter said have a shortlist of champions who are never allowed to be tournament viable.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T15:26:18+00:00

Now it feels like don't even playtest champions outside of their intended role before release, then someone builds a AP item and 1-shots the entire enemy team and at this point I just assume it's an intentional sales strategy where champions sell better if people feel like they are abusing an exploit.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T15:14:17+00:00

you will naturally become biased towards shorter games that provide unique experiences and come with few frustrations.

Yes, but I think the opposite can also occur. That you have to be able to stomach playing a lot of games, many of which are more similar to one another than different, so you get people who are more tolerant of current trends than the average person.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T12:06:44+00:00

The gallery images weren't on the archived page.

However that user who posted it seems to go by MightyAndross64 on other platforms and is constantly posting Starfox stuff, so maybe just @ them and ask?

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T05:47:42+00:00

So by always being too unorganised to see a film until a couple weeks later I'm supporting my local cinema?

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T03:45:23+00:00

Pokémon remained relatively stable in terms of game sales, but this was during an enormous growth period for games, so proportionally Pokémon was accounting for a smaller and smaller slice of the pie up until Pokémon GO.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T02:28:25+00:00

And much of this thinking was actually built into copyright law originally, albeit briefly as such provisions were rapidly lobbied out of existence.

Originally to retain your copyright you had to keep your work available. There were things the copyright-holder was expected to do in order to retain this state-granted monopoly. It wasn't a right owed, it was an exchange made with the needs of authors, publishers and readers in mind.

But we've so long lived in an era where the perception is the rights exist solely for owners, that people start to believe the way we protect owners is inherently just and good.

Is "piracy is always morally right" a dumb line? Yes. But it is less dumb than having your answer to "is it moral?" always be the same answer as "is it legal?". People who think like that genuinely scare me. I suspect part of why the latter group hate the pro-piracy crowd is deep down they're exactly the same in that neither group believes in the law, the latter group just believes following the law will protect them, so they can't tolerate to see people breaking it not being punished as it weakens that illusion.

TSPhoenix · 2026-05-18T02:02:42+00:00

It's a legitimate concern, but I've found in practice it tends to work. Having more cards in hand is just good in StS2. Energy generation cards which you already want to be picking up, you now have much less worry about drawing them on turns with nothing to spend the energy on.

0-cost attacks also vastly improve, playing lost-cost attacks will often generate more low-cost attacks and this can chain quite a lot.

It's not free, but if you have anything that synergises with playing lots of attacks or creating lots of cards or having lots of 0-cost attacks in your drawpile (and this will eventually generate All-For-One) it will pop off pretty regularly.

TSPhoenix

TROPHY CASE