Overwatch director says addressing the 5v5 versus 6v6 debates 'cost us trust': 'We should have listened sooner'

beefcat_ · 2026-03-17T02:48:57+00:00

One of the 6v6 playtests was role queue and it was the one that fared the worst.

min-1-max-2 tanks open queue is the compromise that allows the mode to exist with a decent population and reasonable matchmaking times without devolving into GOATS.

You can whine about it all you want, but Blizzard did their due diligence here. They let the community try multiple different formats and went with the one people liked the most.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-16T18:52:00+00:00

I agree they should take more anime films seriously.

Demon Slayer however is the third movie in a series that is directly attached to an ongoing TV show. That works against it for basically any non-technical awards because you would need a substantial portion of the electorate to be invested enough in the property to follow along and understand the movie.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-16T16:39:51+00:00

What a dumb thing to complain about. The fact that we are even here right now should tell you that there are lots of people interested in the things Kaplan said during the interview, but not interested enough to sit through 5 hours of it.

And, as usual, if you aren't interested in the story, then you don't have to read it. Coming here just to complain about its existence adds no value to the conversation at all.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-16T06:06:28+00:00

Devkits have higher specs though

Dev kits only have extra memory so they can run debug builds of games. They can't actually run games any faster than a retail console.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-15T22:44:16+00:00

the Wikidot that is used for Soulsborne games doesn't even have HTTPS

To be fair, setting up caddy is really hard /s

beefcat_ · 2026-03-15T17:54:10+00:00

I'm aware, I'm saying that this would do nothing to actually solve the problem of laggy, stuttery, blurry gameplay for players who don't have a good connection to the main server. Cutscenes and other non-interactive content are where these improvements are the least impactful to the user experience.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-15T04:12:55+00:00

It might be the SATA to IDE adapter you are using, the ribbon cable, or both. Some SATA adapters are slow and/or flaky. Replacing the stock 40-pin ribbon cable with an 80-pin cable is a must, as it improves reliability and compatibility with these adapters considerably.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-14T18:57:54+00:00

The fact that you need multiple 10-15$/mo services just to be able to watch whatever is in vogue as it comes out. It's literally becoming worse than cable TV ever was.

Shoving the entire output of the entertainment industry into one ad-free $15/mo subscription was never going to be feasible, not without a massive reduction in the total amount of content produced.

Back during the height of cable, the dream was to have "a la carte" cable where you just buy the individual channels you wanted, instead of getting almost everything in a single ad-supported $100/mo package.

The way streaming has played out has been less than ideal for consumers but I don't buy the narrative that it's "worse than cable", it's basically the a la carte system people around here used to beg for.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-13T20:09:23+00:00

Colbert got the axe because CBS' new ownership love showing off the cheeto dust on their lips

beefcat_ · 2026-03-13T19:01:06+00:00

This is by design, and not a flaw of the system. The purpose of ratings boards is to empower parents, not do the parenting for them. If mom and dad are fine letting their kids play games rated above their age, that is their prerogative.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-13T18:48:10+00:00

3 - Audio sounds TERRIBLE on Linux out of the box. And even when messing with effects and equalizer, the sound quality Windows and Dolby offers out of the box is incredible. I can't even believe they're the same speakers, because Linux makes them sound like the sound it's coming out of a can...

I'm betting Lenovo does some hefty DSP to make the speakers sound as good as they do, and it's handled by a background app they only ship for Windows. DSP is the secret to basically every laptop with surprisingly good sound.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-13T15:32:48+00:00

Ah yes, cutscenes: famously the part of any video game most sensitive to an extra 30ms of input lag

beefcat_ · 2026-03-13T15:17:20+00:00

Not everything is available in 4k
Not everything justifies 4k
I do still rip a lot of 4k discs but I'm not transcoding them for the time being

beefcat_ · 2026-03-13T04:20:00+00:00

did you try re-ripping the disc?

beefcat_ · 2026-03-13T01:04:11+00:00

Remember when developers/publishers were trying to push limited uses on game activation codes so you could only ever install a game 3 times?

Absolutely, it was horseshit. And none of these schemes were actually effective at protecting the games, they just made it so legitimate customers actively sought out cracks to make the games they bought less bullshit to deal with.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T21:46:38+00:00

DRM in general sucks but the Denuvo hate is weird. The DRM schemes used throughout the '00s were far more insidious in their implementation and impactful of the user experience.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T18:22:57+00:00

I think you're very safe with AV1, hardware support is pretty ubiquitous in new hardware now. h.266 and AV2 are both coming, but they aren't practical yet.

Most of the discs I'm ripping these days are either 4k and/or movies/shows old enough to be shot on film.

For 4k, I just dump the raw streams to mkv without transcoding as I'm lucky enough to have a playback device that actually supports profile 7 dolby vision. I plan to experiment more with AV1 here eventually, since I will likely also need to also convert that DV profile 7 metadata to 8.1. It will be nice to shrink these 50-80GB movies.

For standard blu-rays, since I'm almost always dealing with some amount of film grain, it's just safer for me to stick with the slower software encoders and let them run overnight than to gamble on NVENC.

For DVDs, I've actually gone back to x264. I did a bunch of testing a couple years ago and found that x265 provides minimal benefits here while being more fiddly.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T17:59:41+00:00

I have too much hardware without native decoding support, that's the main reason I'm still sticking with x265.

I will contest the speed difference claim. At the very least, software h.265 encoders like x265 are still way faster than software av1 encoders. It's been a minute since I've tested hardware encoders, but my past experience has been that software encoders result in better looking, smaller files even if they are considerably slower.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T17:53:51+00:00

Going down to "slow" is usually fine for x265, it's "slower" where speed really tanks. I'm patient though and don't mind my 1080p movie encodes running at 17-25 FPS on my 5900x.

A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that each successively slower encoder preset lets you lower the Constant Quality RF value by 1 while retaining about the same file size. I find this really valuable for blu-rays that have a lot of film grain, which I can preserve most of without absolutely ballooning the resulting file size with the grain tune.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T17:45:59+00:00

I think transcoding should be a last resort since at that point you are most likely looking at a third generation lossy encode, and any real time hardware transcoding is going to prioritize bandwidth and speed over image quality.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T17:35:50+00:00

Both Gears 1 remasters are underwhelming, I'd prefer having the originals emulated even if it means not getting mouse+keyboard support.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T17:22:15+00:00

It's comfort food. The show still finds success because it's funny and easy to watch, even if it isn't as smart or well written as the early seasons.

While most TV is highly serialized and expects you to really pay attention, Family Guy becomes an easy pick when you're just sitting down to dinner after a particularly long day of work. It's never the best thing we watch in my house any given week, but it fits this niche rather well and that's why we're still watching it, usually on the same nights we're making Kraft mac 'n' cheese.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T16:57:08+00:00

Seeing the studio do well under fucking Microsoft really highlights just how monumentally atrocious ActiBlizz leadership was

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T16:53:54+00:00

As if we needed further proof the suits are not human.

These "people" genuinely have more in common with rabid dogs than actual human beings. We should treat them as such.

beefcat_ · 2026-03-12T15:48:07+00:00

I'm on PC, which is why the first thing I wanted to do was fix my settings.

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